Chapter Text
"Ow!"
Stanley Barber yelped, picking whatever had been thrown at him from across the room out of his hair. He attempted to stare Syd down from the opposite side of the basement.
"Oh, come on," Syd said with a smirk. She watched Stan's jerky movements from across the room, his hands flailing wildly. At another moment, she might have founds this little quirk of his annoying, the way he moves his body, all twitchy, jolting motions. Right now, in the smoky haze of her mind, she found it almost endearing.
"I didn't hurt you," Syd said, taking another drag from the her joint, waiting for the next wave of calm to hit.
"That's your opinion," Stan said dramatically. "Whatever it was you threw at me- for your information, not that you care- really hurt me, Syd. Physically and emotionally."
Syd rolled her eyes. "It was a piece of popcorn, drama queen."
"Yeah, well, how do you like it!" Stanley said, suddenly hurling a fistful of kernels from his bag of popcorn at Sydney's face. Syd only giggled as pieces of popcorn rained down on her from across the room.
"Okay, okay, I get it, enough," Syd said.
"Nope," Stanley said. The room was dark, but she could hear the smile in his voice without seeing it. "This means war."
"Not fair!" Syd yelled as she was assaulted with pieces of popcorn once again. She tried to duck behind the hideous couch that he apparently slept on, but Stanley Barber had surprisingly good aim. "I don't even have a weapon."
"Alright, alright," Stan said. "There's a bag of bag of pretzel nuggets in the corner by the VHS tapes. Do your worst, Sydney Novak."
"Oh, these are perfect," Syd said, starting to feel light, like she was floating away. She started laughing to herself and was surprised to find that she couldn't stop. "Prepare to lose, Stanley Barber."
"To Snack-maggeddon! The snack-lympics! The great snack-down!" Stan shouted before hurling the remainder of his popcorn across the room in a single fistful. Syd launched her pretzel nuggets one by one at Stan, watching them fly through the air like small, salty bullets.
-But pretzels were not weapons, not bullets. They were simply pretzels. But if they were weapons, they would be delicious ones-
But no, they were not weapons, Sydney reasoned to herself again, her mind foggy and high. Salty goodness is all that they were truly good for, not murdering Stanley Barber. Not that she wanted to murder Stanley Barber. She didn't.
And when they were lying down next to each other a minute later, crumbs from their projectile snacks stuck in their hair, breathing heavily, her drug-addled mind apparently wanted Stan to know this fact. She announced to Stan then, in dramatic fashion, that she didn't actually in fact want to murder him with snack foods, and Stan, in turn, cast her one of those perfect, goofy grins and told her he knew.
"Can I tell you a secret, Stan?"
Syd rolled over to face Stan from her position next to him on the floor. Stan was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, an impossibly large grin on his face. A twinkle in his eye.
"You can tell me anything, Syd."
Syd giggled, picking a pretzel out of her shirt collar, holding it up to the light and examining it between her fingers.
"Stan, you are like this pretzel nugget."
"Oh, really?" Stan said, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
"Uh huh," Syd said, the world around her expanding and receding in waves. She feels the carpet between her toes and realizes she's barefoot.
"How so? Do you find pretzels sexy, alluring and endlessly charming?"
Syd threw her head back and laughed violently at this, had she ever laughed this hard before? If she had, she couldn't remember it.
She certainly hadn't laughed like this since homecoming.
She quickly shook the thought of homecoming out of her mind, instead turning to grin at Stan, who was, for better or for worse- and usually for worse- there for her. Endlessly loyal Stan, whom she had been avoiding for the past few weeks-why had she been avoiding him again? She couldn't remember, and at this point, she didn't even care. He made her feel normal, and that was enough reason to ask him to stay.
Suddenly she found herself reaching out and grabbing Stan's hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. She swore she saw him blush. "-You're like this pretzel because..."
"....Because..." he goaded her.
Syd smiled to herself, staring at the ceiling. "...Because you taste weird and salty but I like you anyway."
Stan laughs endlessly at this, and Syd likes the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles.
"I'm not sure whether I should be more offended on behalf of myself, or on behalf of pretzel nuggets everywhere. It is truly the perfect snack."
"Yeah, okay," Syd says dreamily. She feels her eyelids getting heavy.
"And does Dina- I mean- does Dina really kiss all that much better-"
"-Dina tastes like cherries," Syd says, letting her head roll to the side. Her mind floats back to beautiful, dark cascading curls, perfect pink lips.
"So what I'm hearing is, all I'd have to do, hypothetically, to get you to like me-" Stan says, "-is buy some fruity lip balm? Noted."
"Nope, nope," Syd says, her voice sounding distant, dreamy. "You'd have to become perfect. Because Dina- she's perfect."
They both become quiet for a moment after this, but Stan's silence is louder somehow, more consuming. Syd listens to the steady sound of his breathing next to her, watches the rise and fall of his chest. She closes her eyes for a moment before looking at Stan, and he's staring up at his ceiling like he could see past it into the night sky, and she loved him, then, in some way. Maybe it wasn't the type of love she was supposed to feel for him, the kind of love that made sense. But it was something.
"You're perfect."
He says it so quietly that Sydney almost doesn't hear it, and then he's throwing another pretzel nugget at her. This time it hits her nose- she realized then that they had inched closer to each other. In the darkness, cheeks pressed against the carpeted floor, they were maybe a centimeter apart.
Syd didn't know what possessed her to do it then, but in that moment her lips met his, and it was soft, and it was good. Not exciting exactly, her heart didn't race and her palms didn't sweat. But it was, in a way, comforting. She was reminded of the first time they kissed in his dingy basement, showing each other their hidden acne like it was still the worst thing they had to hide. She had felt safe then, like the world wasn't crashing down around her, like she had finally found someone who understood her and maybe she wasn't so weird after all. It was a simpler time, one that she yearned for, and so she kissed him, and when he didn't pull away neither did she.
He didn't taste like cherries, and her mind was a cloud floating away from her. But in that moment, as she drew back to look into Stan's eyes, forever sparkling with a hint of mischief, Stan was beautiful to her.
Not beautiful in the same way Dina was beautiful. But in some way he was beautiful, and she loved him.
"You're perfect," she whispered back to him, her voice airy and light.
Right there, on Stanley Barber's basement floor, Sydney Novak was most certainly losing her mind.