Chapter Text
The sun burned a radioactive orange as it crept slowly across the sky and below the mountains. Its sharp, red-hot tendrils stretched down and burned everything they touched; the heavy humidity provided no relief, only a choking weight that beared down on the lungs and drowned the mind. Craig felt sweaty, and smelly, and disgusting under its intense glow. Climate change had come and demolished the landscape of this place totally in his lifetime- he remembered months at a time in his childhood where he seemed to never take off his winter coat. Over the past few years, though, everything had gotten hotter- felt less real. It was all over-saturated, soaked in thick yellow light like an overexposed old photograph. Maybe it was puberty, maybe it was the world ending in front of his eyes. Whatever, he decided it didn't matter.
The weather was unreasonably hot for so early in May. Spring had only started a few weeks ago, but it already felt like the dead heat of late July. He had been spending most of his time trying to escape it- only going places where he knew the air conditioner would be blasting, hiding under the trees whenever he went outside and retreating to his basement whenever he had to be stuck at home.
Today, he wound up roped into hanging out in Tolkein's yard. It wasn't so bad; he had a pool, at least. Clyde had brought around some waterproof speaker, and they were taking turns dunking it under the surface of the water and seeing how deep it could go before it lost its Wi-Fi connection. It was fine, Craig thought, just fine. It had gotten pretty boring about a half hour ago, but it was certainly better than burning to death doing anything else. Maybe not as good as being alone, but fine.
"This is l-l-lame as hell," complained Jimmy from the sidelines. He couldn't swim, sure; but sometimes he did like to dangle his legs into the water and watch them float around for a while. Little bubbles formed all around the hairs on his shins, air repelling liquid away from his thick layer of sunscreen. "S-sun's going down. Let's go get a... get a... get a bottle of coke and some m-m-mentos."
He wasn't totally wrong- it was getting to be lame as hell. The novelty of watching an electronic device touch a liquid is definitely palpable the first few times it happens. After a while, it becomes the same as anything else. Still, the novelty of coke and mentos lasted even less time- about 5 seconds before it became a giant mess you had to clean up. Though, the convenience store wasn't a far walk, and it did have the benefit of housing numerous large freezers.
The other guys all looked at each other for a second before Clyde eventually shrugged.
"Whatever," he said nonchalantly. "Sounds cool enough."
Craig couldn't have cared less about the idea. What they were doing now was stupid, boring, and pointless- what they'd be doing later on would be, too. However, that didn't mean he had any interest in protesting. It was so fucking hot he could feel his skin melting off, why couldn't they all just float in the pool and shut up?
He realized he was being "unreasonable" again. Mr. Mackey had told him that he did that a lot. Still, he couldn't bring himself to give a rat's ass about the speaker, or the mentos, or any of it.
Honestly, he was in a nasty mood. He had been all day. The temperature was getting to him, and that was the explanation he'd stick with as his official story. Really, it was a combination of factors. The first was that he'd spent most of his day in the principal's office again, for some dumb argument he'd gotten in with a teacher over his hat. The second was that he had hardly slept last night past the sweltering heat and howling frogs outside his window. The third, which he would deny adamantly if pressed, was that he had barely seen Tweek since the early morning. Now, instead of making up for lost time playing Minecraft or watching movies at his house, they were both here listening to the dumbest conversation in the world and he was being forced to pretend he didn't even notice that he was wearing swim trunks.
If he just closed his eyes and floated, he could ignore it all and just pretend that none of it was real.
In his head, he screamed and screamed until there was no other sound- just in case anyone was a mind reader.
The hum of conversation sounded like it was happening in a yard next door to him. Everyone's voices were far away and distorted, like he could hear their words but couldn't hold on to them long enough to understand them. They were arguing about absolutely nothing- he knew they would go to the store regardless, because now the idea had been floated and it seemed impossible to go back to anything else. Those three had too much energy to be cooped up in one place all afternoon. He loved them, but on days like today he had no hope of keeping up. Not that he wanted to, and not that they would mind. They knew that sometimes he was content to just lie around and wait for something interesting to happen, and that he may not have been particularly bothered if nothing ever did.
"Craig," came a voice from beside him. "Craig? Hello, Earth to Craig, this is Tolkein speaking?"
"Huh?" He sat up lazily on his big, inflatable doughnut.
"Do you wanna come to the store with us, or are you staying here?"
"Oh," he replied, still unsure. "Um... Should someone stay here?"
"I-I'm gonna stay," Tweek stammered. "Just in case. " Because he's nervous around the cashier, Craig thought. He says he reminds him of the dogcatcher from Lady and the Tramp.
"Well, then," he replied matter-of-factly. "Someone should stay here with Tweek. That can be me."
"Cool man, yeah," Tolkein said. "Whatever you wanna do is cool. Let's just go before anybody thinks of something stupider to do, huh?"
Once the others were gone, the two of them sat around for a while, wading in awkward silence. Things between them had never been awkward before, even after his hormones had crept up on him and suddenly decided-
He tried his best to shake the train of thought. He didn't want, or need, to put words to whatever was going on in his brain. Him and Tweek were friends. Good friends. Basically best friends. There didn't have to be any other reason why he enjoyed being around him.
Why you're always staring at him, why you think his eyes are pretty, why you want to...
"Uh, Craig?" He heard Tweek's quiet voice from beside him, soothing and startling all at the same time.
"Huh? Nothing. What?" Why did it feel like his brain was made of dirt?
"You haven't said anything at all in the past 10 minutes."
Shit. Haven't I? He supposed he had been doing a lot of internal monologuing again, and not much external speaking. Still, he didn't think it had been 10 whole minutes.
"Sorry. I'm just hot," he complained. "It's distracting."
"Okay, it j-just seems like there's something wrong. Are you- ngh- mad at me or something?" His eyes went almost imperceptibly wider. "Oh god, is that why you wanted me to stay back with you?"
"No, fuck," Craig sighed, frustrated with himself and the predicaments he always landed himself in. "I'm not mad at you. I'm just having a bad day. Thinking about a lot."
Tweek didn't seem soothed by this. If anything, Craig guessed that he was probably even more concerned with how intentionally vague he was being. He didn't know how to talk about it, but he didn't know how to stop thinking about it, either. Every stressful situation was another crack in the frail glass tank that held everything inside of him. In the back of his mind, he'd tortured himself with the idea that he might be feeling the same way. Whatever way he was feeling, maybe he wasn't the only one who had been sucked in by it. But the curiosity ate away at him. What if? He knew he'd gone too long without speaking, now, so he steadied his breathing a little, and tried to think of something to say that might alleviate some of his inner tension.
Just say anything , he thought. Anything but that.
"I'm just thinking about how I've never kissed anyone," he mumbled, wanting desperately to be as candid as he could. He could feel the words drowning him the instant they left his mouth, like the pool water had all risen up around him and flooded his lungs. Still, he found it so hard to control himself. The nagging, clawing horror that said that he should stay far, far away from that series of thoughts felt shrouded by the sheer need to reach out and connect with someone. It was rare he got to open up- once he started, it was difficult to stop. For weeks, he had been hurtling toward a cliff. He felt himself gripping now at the edges of it, scrambling to keep from falling into the murky abyss below.
"Oh," Tweek replied, seemingly surprised by the sudden shift in tone. His hands fidgeted at his sides, just a bit more than before. "Well, I- uh, Jesus. I guess I haven't either."
He had approached the little room in his brain where he kept the Scary Feeling- and he could hear it trying to tear away at the door. Shakily, he let it take a small peak out.
"My cousin told me that she had her first kiss with another girl." Tweek didn't immediately respond, so he kept going. Words slopped out of his mouth, one right after the other, like he was worried he might die before he got it all out. "Just to get it out of the way. She was all like 'I never kissed anyone', and my cousin was like 'me neither', and then she was like 'no way, then we should totally kiss' and my cousin was all like 'woah man, no way, because I'm not gay'. And then the girl told her, like, 'no, don't worry, it's not gay because it's totally just to get the first one over with and we won't even like it or anything'. So like, then she said that they kissed and it was like totally cool after that and they never even talked about it again."
Once he was done, he just stared down at the water below him and tried to gauge how red his face had gone. It was hard to tell, with how blue the bottom of the pool was, so he convinced himself it was probably not that bad. There was no reason to react strongly, no reason to be embarrassed. This was clinical. Maybe if he just got it over with and kissed him he would see it wasn't worth fixating over in the first place. Maybe he'd prove to himself that he'd just been confused, and lonely, and feeling jealous of his friends.
Tweek still hadn't said anything, though. He was starting to completely freak out.
"O-oh, sorry! I, um, wasn't sure if you were done," he finally responded. His eyes stayed firmly downward, still waiting for any kind of reaction he could make heads or tails of. Fuck.
"I'm not saying we should do that, or anything," he clarified, starting to panic that he had gotten too brave and implied too much. "It's just a story I was thinking about."
Then, there was a long, extremely uncomfortable silence. In reality, it was probably only a minute or so, maybe even less. To Craig, though, it sort of felt like a century slowly crawled by, as he stared down at nothing and fruitlessly willed himself to turn invisible.
"GAH, um," a voice finally cracked through the void of sound. "Well, would you? K-kiss a guy, I mean, just to get it out of the way?"
"I don't know," he replied cautiously. He lifted his head and made eye contact as best as he could, carefully considering his words. "Would you?"
They stared at each other, both looking like they might throw up at any point. Tweek blinked hard, but didn't look away.
"Yeah," he choked out, his voice hardly a squeak. "I g- I guess I would."
"Cool, yeah," came Craig's shaky, crackling reply. "So would I, I think."
Say something else, Craig urged himself. Just don't think. He was too embarrassed to keep going while they were still looking each other in the eye, so he tilted his head down.
"Maybe," he started to speak again. "We should do that, then."
"O-okay, yeah. Yes, yeah. And you don't think I'm weird?"
"No," he assured. "You're not weird. Not any weirder than me, anyway."
"Right. Okay," Tweek started to shake more visibly. "Alright, then. We just... We... GAH, Christ it's so much pressure! You have to do it first!"
Craig steadied his nerves. They had just agreed that this was totally normal, so it should have been much easier to stay calm. Still, what if he had bad breath? What if the other guys all got back within the next 30 seconds? What if this was all a secret test, and the second he leaned forward someone would come out of the bushes with a hidden camera?
What if he sucked at kissing?
It's cool, it's totally cool, he reminded himself. It's not gay unless you make it gay, so stop making it gay.
Sensing that he may have lost his nerve if he didn't make his move now, he clenched his hands and awkwardly planted his lips in the general direction of Tweek's. Thankfully, he didn't manage to miss entirely, or to fall over onto his face, or anything else equally embarrassing. Instead, their mouths met and just... stayed there, for a moment. He'd intended it to be a quick peck, but neither of them was really moving at all save to press their faces together clumsily. After a few seconds, he got a hold of himself and pulled back, clearing his throat uncomfortably to change the energy.
"Um," he said, unsure what to do now. He couldn't think properly. He wasn't sure he was breathing.
"Y-yeah," Tweek responded, seeming a bit dazed.
It didn't make sense to him. All they had done was touch lips, and it was only for a few seconds. Yet, somehow, he felt like his life was over. Because kissing Tweek hadn't shaken his head clear. It hadn't soothed his nerves, or convinced him he was overreacting, or any of those things. What it had done was shouted a horrible truth right into his ear, so loud he couldn't ignore it anymore. It had felt right. It wasn't supposed to feel right.
He could hear the sound of the others headed back down the road- of Jimmy's crutches on the pavement, Clyde's cackling laugh, and the shitty club music he had blasting from his little waterproof speaker. Shit. Shit. He checked his reflection again, making sure he didn't somehow look different now.
"Th-they're almost back," Tweek pointed out. "Just, uh- God- just act normal."
Craig wasn't sure he knew how to do that anymore, but he tried his best. He wandered back over to his pool floaty, pretending nothing had happened and picturing a peaceful meadow in his mind. It was a trick he'd learned when the school had forced him into anger management a few years ago. Anxiety was an emotion too, he figured, and hoped to god it would work.
"Craig? Before they get back..." He craned his head a bit to look over his shoulder at him.
"That was- um- th-that was cool. Or whatever. Thanks." Tweek's words were casual, but he was staring at him so directly that it made his skin feel hot. The telepathic communication got over to him just fine, and he could have cried when it did.
"Same," he replied quietly. It might not have made sense to anyone else, but at least he knew now that they both understood.
They were both fucked, now.
The guys showed back up with the coke and mentos, as well as chips, candy, pool noodles, bubble soap, playing cards...
"Jesus, did you buy out the wh-whole dollar store?"
"Damn right," Clyde grinned as he spoke, tossing a few pool toys in their direction. "Catch, bitches."
The coke and mentos thing was... Uneventful. Whatever. They might have not even done it, in all honesty. Craig spent the whole rest of the day thinking about the lump of hot coal burning a hole through his chest and threatening to spit fire from his mouth. His body was full of adrenaline, and fear, and something not unlike indigestion. If he could compare it to anything, it was like that feeling he got after staying awake too long. Like all his nerves were exposed, and everything was equal parts hilarious and nauseating.
Tweek's parents called him home early, something about opening the shop in the morning. It would be strange, he reasoned, to suddenly stop walking home with him now. Besides, he needed an excuse to get out of there.
It was all eerily normal, but with a coating of nervous energy that hung between them the whole way. They hadn't talked about it- How could they talk about it? But that hadn't stopped him from wanting to. Part of him was desperate to just start unravelling at the seams, ranting and raving like a lunatic about anything and everything he needed to stop holding onto. But the rational part of him was still trying to cling on; to enjoy the relative peace before they inevitably fucked their whole friendship up and made it even more complicated.
Tweek stopped walking abruptly when they got near his house, at the corner about 3 cars' lengths away where there was a green electrical box guarding pedestrians
in the intersection.
"We don't, uh- we don't have to, Christ..." He yanked harshly on the front of his shirt. His voice lowered just a bit involuntarily before he continued. "It doesn't have to b-be anything. If- if we, y'know. If we- guh- did that again. Nobody would have to know."
The knots in his stomach tightened and retracted in time with his now racing heartbeat. This was too dangerous. It was bad enough to slip up once- making a habit of it would be suicidal.
"Yeah," he breathed out anyway. One day could only test his willpower so much. "That could work."
They hid between the electrical box and a row of hedges where they were sure no one could see them and kissed until their mouths were tired. There was no cautiousness behind it this time, no heavy wall of trepidation there to hold the waters back. It was too overwhelming not to sink to the bottom of.
He wandered home mindlessly, barely aware of his own feet moving beneath him. He felt... Well, how did he feel?
Ecstatic. Terrified. Like he might have heat stroke, or the flu, or maybe some kind of terminal illness. He had hoped he'd never have to face this head on. He'd always heard that lots of people experimented and found out it just wasn't for them. Loads of guys who got too close with friends and confused it for something more. Why couldn't he be one of those people? Why couldn't he have just tried it once, then laughed it off and moved on? Instead, he found himself giddy like a little girl at the thought of seeing him again and struggling to wrestle with the feeling. It made him feel shameful, and disgusting, and worthless. More than anything, it made him angry with himself. Because this proved it. He wouldn't say the word- not out loud, or to himself. But now he knew.
He knew for sure that he was.
Sighing as he approached his front door, he could see his parents through the living room window, watching some awful movie on TV. He grunted noncomittally toward them before he climbed the stairs, and
was pretty sure he heard them do the same in return. Whatever. He didn't care on a normal day.
It was probably too early still to sleep, only about 8 in the evening by now, but he laid down anyway and tried to pass out. He had done this a lot as a kid; just pretend you're asleep for long enough, and eventually you will be.
And, eventually, he was.
When he woke up in the morning, he was relieved to remember it was Saturday. He didn't think he was prepared to face a day at school today- not with all the shit running through his head. Just two more weeks , he reminded himself, and the year is done.
He'd tossed and turned again all night, had terrible and confusing nightmares. Being sucked down into the Earth and buried alive, trapped inside a burning building with his hands tied up, stuck by some invisible force to the bottom of a plane as it crashed into the ocean at 600 miles an hour.
He hardly tasted his breakfast, and noticed his family shuffling with their own even less than usual. It was too difficult to focus on anything at all, let alone some boring ass eggs or his sister's dumb stories.
Really, he decided, this was Clyde's fault. Last summer, he had gotten himself into a supposedly casual but apparently inconvenient fling with Heidi Turner that completely absorbed all his time. Jimmy was dating some girl he'd met at the youth centre, so the two of them were more or less nonexistent for months. Tolkein spent most summers vacationing with his parents, and it had essentially left Tweek and Craig as the spare friends. Naturally, they defaulted to spending the whole break hanging out alone together. In that time, Craig had really gotten to see a new side of Tweek- they'd known each other since the second grade, but something about him was totally different one-on-one than when everybody else was around. He was calmer when he didn't have so many other people to think about; funnier and more outgoing when he had more breathing room. It was nice. It was just really, really nice.
Eventually, he started going out of his way to be alone with him when there was no real excuse. His walk home became three times as long- both because he was regularly walking Tweek home to a totally different neighbourhood, and because he was dragging his feet to avoid having to say goodbye. Any time he went to grab coffee between classes, he tagged along. By the time the semester was almost over, they were hanging out alone together more often than with anyone else.
Then came that goddamned Secret Santa gift exchange.
He had never been big on Christmas- all fluffy feelings and stupid people buying each other stupid presents. Still, the guys had wanted to do something fun, and it was an excuse to get together and have a party, so he had agreed to take part. He had pulled Jimmy's name, and gotten him some bizarre old stand up special he found on DVD at the thrift store and a World's Best Grandpa t-shirt. It was nothing special, but he had correctly assumed the shirt would get a good laugh. The other guys had all gotten each other gifts of a similar calibre; mostly gags accompanied by the occasional something small but genuine. A dirty old vintage Playboy and a handful of Sonic the Hedgehog stickers for Clyde from Jimmy, a Funko pop figurine of Carlton for Tolkein from Clyde, just silly things to make each other laugh, really. And then Tweek had given Craig his gift.
"I, uh- I didn't know what to get you," he stuttered. "I suck at buying presents, it's way too much- GAH- pressure. S-so, here- just... ACK!" He shoved a small pad of paper forward in a jerky, anxious motion.
It was a flipbook- he could tell just by seeing it. Tweek was always drawing these things to keep his mind busy, and some of them were really pretty good. Over the years, they had evolved from stick figure drawings to more detailed narratives. Shortform comics about kids falling into volcanoes, dogs on drugs and cats growing human fingers. Some of it was surreal, artistic stuff, too. Floating miasmas of colour, blobs that bent and twisted together and then popped into a hundred pieces. Real fodder for the guidance counsellor.
This one was a bit bigger than those ones, though. Usually, they were drawn on post-it notes, memo pads or any other little stacks of paper that were handy. This seemed to be a small, soft-covered notebook, with chunky block letters scrawled across the front that read SUPER CRAIG AND ASTRO-STRIPE.
He watched the pages as he flipped through, and carefully studied the short animation playing out inside. It was himself dressed as his childhood alter-ego Super Craig- a blatant and frankly lazy rip-off of Super-Man- and his guinea pig, Stripe #6. They were flying high above town, blasting shit to bits with their epic laser eyes.
It was short and clearly handmade- the lines were shaky and the colouring patchy, like you'd expect from someone as jittery as Tweek. He swore he saw coffee stains on at least 2 pages. It was the best gift he'd ever gotten, maybe the best thing he'd ever seen.
"Holy shit," he laughed. "I can't believe you still remember Super Craig."
"Of c-course I do, " Tweek smiled, and suddenly Craig felt very, very dizzy. "He was the best superhero ever." The room got dark around the edges- or maybe that was just his vision fading. Why did he feel like he was going to pass out?
"He wasn't as cool as Wonder Tweek," was what came out of his mouth, but he didn't quite remember thinking it.
"Aw shit," Clyde exclaimed. "His is handmade? No fair, now we all look lousy!"
Right , he recalled. There are 3 other people in this room . They all laughed, cracking jokes about how Clyde was just mad that he wasn't good at giving out presents, calling Tweek an overachiever, the kind of jokes young boys made when one of them got emotional. But the two of them just stared at each other and smiled.
His expression seemed to say "I hope you like it".
Craig didn't sleep that night. It was so small. So innocent. A little flipbook drawing from a friend. But when he looked at it, something had started ripping at the insides of his guts. It suddenly felt weird that he never had a girlfriend and never cared to. The way he always had to walk past the naked men's underwear mannequins with his head down felt less like a cutesy remnant of his youth, and more like suspicious avoidance. His recent fixation with one boy in particular had become questionable to him in an instant.
How must he have looked from the outside in? Did everyone else already know but him? When he walked Tweek home from school, had people been pointing and whispering?
He really needed to stop acting this way, stop thinking this way. People would start talking.
He really should have listened to himself then. Now, here he was, with no clue where to go next. If he was being completely honest, he wasn't sure he could do anything but sit at home and loaf around the house.
So, that's what he did. For hours and hours, until the sun went down, he sat in his basement and scrolled through his phone, aimlessly changing channels on the TV and numbing his brain. Texts came in, but he ignored them all. Two from Clyde, asking him to get online on Rust and come defend his base, one from his sister, asking if he was ever going to crawl out and eat something, and one from Tweek, checking in to see how he was doing in light of their recent transgressions. He really would have to remember to respond to that one, but right now he didn't know what to say. At the very least, he wanted to make sure he knew he didn't hate him. He might be starting to hate himself, but it wasn't Tweek's fault. On the TV, some chick flick from the 2000s started to play, and he pretended he couldn't be bothered to find something else to watch. The truth was that he was feeling vulnerable, and the cheery girlypop soundtrack was comforting in a nostalgic sort of way. This was the type of music his mom listened to, even though she acted all cold and sinister all the time. Sometimes, he thought he was more like her than he cared to admit.
Eventually, he started to get wrapped up in the plot. His emotions were making him feel like he was on his period or something, and he couldn't help but empathise with the girl in the movie. She wasn't a very good actress at all, but somehow her barely believable performance had totally gripped his fragile teenage brain. Nothing was going right for her at all, and now she was falling for this guy who was totally unavailable- who she shouldn't even have liked, because he was a jerk- but she couldn't help but be attracted to him, and-
He started crying uncontrollably, struggling to breathe through the snot suddenly clogging up his nostrils. Disgusting, heaving sobs shook his shoulders and rocked his head, tears soaking through the collar of his shirt as he tried in vain to wipe them away.
Jesus Christ, he thought to himself. What the fuck is wrong with me?
He knew the answer to that, and it only made him shake harder.
Above him, he heard the telltale sound of footsteps approaching the basement steps. Quickly, he tried his best to calm himself down a bit- sort himself out. The door eeked open gently.
"Hey," came his sister's voice from the top of the stairs. "You haven't come up all day and I can totally hear you crying or whatever. Are you- holy shit, are you watching The Wedding Planner?"
"Fuck off," he groaned back weakly. "I have no idea what I'm watching. It's just... on." Tricia's face fell slightly.
"You're not even fighting back," she complained, closing the door and taking a few steps down the stairs toward him. She could be a total pain in the ass sometimes, but he was slightly relieved to see her. Even though they constantly antagonised each other, he still knew she secretly had his back. His whole family was like that, really. Big emotions shoved into a million tiny bottles. His were all starting to crack open. She took a seat next to him on the couch, and started to speak again.
"You look like shit."
"Bitch," came his immediate reply. He didn't mean it, but she knew that.
"I know you don't like to talk about stuff," she started. "But I can listen if you do this time." He must have really looked like shit to elicit this kind of earnest reaction from his perpetually sarcastic little sister. Maybe she might be the only person in the world he could tell. She was still only 13, and sometimes he thought she had a totally different outlook on life than him despite being just two years younger.
"If I tell you," he warned, "then you have to promise to never ever tell mom and dad. Okay?" Tricia scoffed.
"As if I talk to mom and dad."
"I'm serious, Trish."
"Fine, fine," she raised her hands as if to say I give up . "This is starting to sound intense. I won't tell them anything."
Taking a shaky breath in and out, he attempted to slow down his heart rate and relax his throat muscles enough to speak. Where the fuck was he supposed to start? He wasn't ready to talk about all of it. But he really, really wanted to get all of it off his chest to someone . Could he really trust her?
"What's the worst thing you can imagine? Like, something you would hate me for."
"Jesus," her face got heavy and serious all at once. "Did you kill someone?"
"No, fuck," he said, getting more frustrated. "I didn't kill anyone. Something else."
"Are you a nazi now or something? Unless you're a murderer or a nazi, I probably don't hate you. You're my brother, you dipshit." She was seriously deranged.
"What's wrong with your mind? Why was your first thought murderer and your second thought nazi?"
"Well," she said earnestly. "At least you know whatever it is won't be as bad as that, right?"
"Your stupidity is oddly comforting sometimes." Tricia smacked him lightly on the arm.
"Spit it out already."
"Fine, shit. Stop hitting me." He took another few deep breaths, and crossed his arms tightly across his chest. "I don't know where to start. I guess there's somebody I like at school."
"Oooh," she teased. "Craig has a cru-ush."
"Shut up, or I won't tell you anything else. Like, ever."
She just rolled her eyes, so he continued.
"There's somebody I like, and we're really good friends so it's been totally weird between us. I'm all in my head and shit, and I'm totally sure all our other friends have noticed and I feel like it's been so, so awkward." So far, so good , he thought. You can do this. It's just one word right after another . "And yesterday, I don't really know how it happened, but we kissed. At first just a little, and then a lot... And then it was like we practically couldn't stop kissing and-"
"Woah, woah," she stopped him curtly. "Gross, I don't need to hear all of that stuff. Besides, you're not making this story sound so horrible. It just sounds like you sort of have a girlfriend."
A wave of nausea hit him so hard it almost doubled him over. His fists tightened, his breath got rougher. He had to keep reminding himself not to panic, that he would be okay. She would understand. She would be cool. This was Tricia- she didn't give a shit about anything. Still, he curled his legs up into himself and buried his head in between his knees to hide from the weight of it all.
"I never said it was a girl," he mumbled into his lap. His sister paused for a second before replying.
"Okay," she eventually said. "So you sort of have a boyfriend. What's the problem?" It might have been unreasonable, but he was a little annoyed.
"You just don't get it," he lamented. "You're a girl."
"You're right, I don't." She patted his leg sympathetically. "So, that's lame, I guess. You have a boyfriend and I don't." Craig lifted his head out of his knees.
"He's not my boyfriend," he snapped. "Also, you suck."
"Whatever," she said nonchalantly. "It's still lame that my brother got to kiss a boy before I did."
"I'm older than you."
"By, like, two years. And you're a nerd."
"You're a nerd." God, he was enjoying this. He had meant it earlier when he said her stupidity was strangely comforting.
"You must have kissed another nerd. I don't believe you could get a cool boy to kiss you." They both laughed, until he eventually sighed and threw his head back.
"I'm totally fucked," he told her. "If anybody finds out, I'm fucked."
"Your friends probably wouldn't care." She paused. "Okay, maybe Clyde. Unless Clyde is the guy. Oh my god, is it him?" He shuddered in half joking but half serious disgust.
"Ew, fuck no. I have no idea where his mouth has been."
Tricia scrunched up her face, like she was trying to read his thoughts through his eyes. Stop that, he broadcast mentally. Just in case.
"Wait," she said, as it seemed to dawn on her. "Who's that guy you're always hanging around with- the blonde one? Twitch?"
"Tweek," he supplied, a bit too entertained by the mistake to be bothered denying it. He had found already that it was easier to talk to people when he didn't have to think about lying.
"Christfuck, his parents must hate him. But I'm right? It's him?" He nodded sheepishly, avoiding her eyes. "Thank god. He's literally your least ugly friend."
"Thanks," he said quietly. "Seriously. I haven't told anybody but you."
"No problem," she replied- one of the only things she'd said in a serious tone the whole night. "Now come upstairs and eat something, gaylord."
By the time he actually remembered to text Tweek back, it was already close to midnight. Shit, fuck, he worried. He's got to be totally panicking.
im okay, sorry, he typed out quickly, making sure not to give any indication of stress. been hanging out with my loser sister all night.
His phone started to ring almost instantly. Tweek was always doing that- responding to a text with a phone call. It was weirdly endearing to him, though it would certainly piss him off if it were anyone else.
"Hey," he greeted.
"Sorry to call," Tweek replied. "I-it's way later than I realised."
"S'all good," he mumbled sleepily. "Meant to text you earlier anyway."
"I just, uh, I wanted t-to make sure that everything was, um... Was still cool with us." He left out the obvious part.
"Yeah, we're cool," Craig said. "I might have told my sister."
"Jesus! Why? H-how did she react? Oh, fucksake, she could tell everyone-"
"Relax, " he assured him, hypocritically. "She won't. She's too chronically bored to even care. She says you're cute, though."
"Gross, what?"
"Well, she said you're the least ugly one of my friends." Tweek laughed uncomfortably, still adjusting to the news, but calming down little by little.
"Do you p-promise you can trust her?"
"Yeah. I'm sure."
"Th-then I guess it'll be fine. If you say it will, then it w-will."
Then, there was another pause. Not like the awkward, painful one there had been yesterday, but a comfortable, soothing one. Craig was tired- he had gone to bed unreasonably early last night and slept like shit anyway- and he had cried his eyes out just a few hours ago. He was enjoying just sitting here, listening to the familiar click-clacking of Tweek messing with a fidget cube through the speaker.
"Hey, Tweek?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm falling asleep."
"Okay, do you want me to, um, t-to hang up?"
"Not really," he sighed, barely awake. "This is cool." At this, he heard a small snicker.
"Okay. I'll s-stay here, then."
"Good."
For the next few moments, he drifted in and out of sleep, still listening to the white noise and picturing that it was smooth pebbles, rolling over each other along a gently flowing river, and clattering like tiny stone windchimes.
"You s-still awake?" He wasn't sure if it was real or not- it sounded like Tweek's voice, but it seemed to be coming from the sky.
"Hmm," he grumbled into his pillow. "Don't think so." First, there was laughter- then there was a shaky wind that stirred the surface of the water. The pebbles slid and slotted against each other a bit more intensely beneath the force of it.
"Um, I r-really like you. Just... Just so you know. You don't- ACK- you don't have to say that back. A-actually, pretend I never said anything."
"Yeah," he admitted without really meaning to. "I like you too."
He kept on listening to the rolling rocks, and feeling the soft breeze on his skin.
"G-goodnight, Craig", the sky echoed happily.
"G'night," he replied, and stepped into the river.