Chapter Text
He found him wandering around a pet store. The poor thing was laying on the side of the tiny, filthy cup he was housed in. He thought he looked sad, his fins all crumpled up and dropping, almost like he was a wilting flower. In a way it was almost like tweek was looking at himself in the tiny cup.
The fish was definitely an impulse buy, he grabbed him a cart and got started on buying all the essentials (after bombarding an employee with questions of what he would need) he could afford with his allowance form the coffee shop. He ended up buying a five gallon tank, sand, silk fake plants, a hide, heater, the dechlorinator (and all the other water safe stuff the employee recommended. Who knew fish needed so much?) and food. By the time he was done checking out he was about broke.
He named him hak. Why hak? After the river spirit in Spirited Away, more specifically his dragon form. The betta was white with small amounts of red on his body and fins, almost making it look like he was in a battle. The way he gracefully swam in his tank made it look as though he was floating around in space.
He admired how despite the fish being so delicate compared to other species they were strong and didn't back down from a fight.
A little after a month hak looked like a completely different fish. His fins unrumpled, his colors were no longer dull but a bright and vibrant. Tweek felt silly for it but he was so proud of the feisty little thing. In a way it became therapeutic for him to take care of hak and fix his tank up, it was almost like gardening and he even got real plants for him.
“Sorry I forgot to feed you this morning buddy.” He grabbed to container and as gently as he could got 3 tiny fish pellets out in his hand. Hak swam to the corner where tweek usually dropped his food.
“ Huh, and who says fish only have three second memories.” He dropped the pellets onto the waters surface and the tiny fish aggressively ate his food making tweek smile at the sight.
He dumped his jacket and backpack on the foot of his bed and flopped himself down afterwards. Today was eventful, after his outing it seemed like everyone was avoiding him or maybe it was him avoiding them. He wouldn’t tell anymore. He still felt like a disgusting outcast in school, at this point he just wanted to be quite, lay low and wait for graduation to come next year. It’s currently his junior year, he could make it till then.
Tweek sighed and he put his right arm over his eyes. He tended to get headaches after school, the stress of it, the constant studying… And maybe getting his head smacked into a locker a few times didn't help.
That reminded him. His locker and the note that fell out of it. It’s like he could feel it across the bed tucked away, unopened, in his jacket pocket just burning a hole into it. Or was it burning a hole in his head? Either way, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The letters he got always gave him a warm fuzzy feeling but on the other hand he felt terrified before opening them. He always seemed to expect the worse, homophobic slurs, hateful writing or threats even, but these letters never had any of it in them. The exact opposite actually.
It started off as little notes on lined notebook paper, sayings or quotes you would see of dinky Facebook picture. But after a bit it turned into poetry and little notes. Sometimes even song verses and the band and title to look up later followed by 'reminds me of you' or 'thinking of you’. Never was there a signature from the person sending them though.
How is it even possible to have a crush on someone you don’t even know? Not knowing their face but reading their inner most thoughts. It sounds crazy to Tweek and if anyone where to walk up to him and tell them they liked someone they had never met he would of thought they were insane. But here he was, the insane one. For all he knew it could be a girl sending them, but judging by the hand writing it looked more like a males. At least he hoped. Hopefully the person isn’t a serial killer…
‘What if this person is the zodiac killer?! He wrote notes right?! Would the killer still be alive now??’ Tweeks thoughts rambled on.
“ugh!” he groaned and rolled on his side, cradling his head in his arms. ‘Just throw them away tweek, don’t even look at the new one.’ He thought to himself. “I don’t need it. I don’t need it.”
Screw it.
“I NEED IT.” He bolted upright and scrambled to his jacket. He grabbed the blue envelope and carefully pealed off the sunflower sticker that held it together.
*
You float around in my orbit
I want to reach out and touch you
Like a shinning star, the brightest I can see
I never want to see you fall
Keep that golden head up high
Baby the universe will be on your side
*
Short and sweet this time. Always cryptic with this person. Tweek read it over and over, trying to decipher and clues he could find but didn’t find anything. ‘so frustrating.’ He thought, but did he really want to know who it was? It was probably some kind of long drawn out prank on him, a cruel way to play with his emotions.
Innocent or not, he couldn’t help but wonder who it was from.
He rummaged around his backpack and found his favorite thermos, he brought it with him practically wherever he went. It was a simple one with a screw on lid that didn't leak, dark brown in color. Over time he got bored of its plain look and started putting sticker on it. It started off as a few sticker he thought where interesting or cool but now you’d barely notice the color underneath.
He took the sunflower sticker that was still lightly stuck to his finger and put in carefully onto the upper more bare part of his thermos. He smiled at it as he looked closer, the flower was quite cute, it had tinny sparkles in the color and looked almost iridescent.
“Uhg!” tweek flopped back down on his bed, red faced. “What do I do Hak?”
---
He woke up the next morning three minutes before his alarm went off. It always aggravated him whenever he woke up before his alarm, happened very often but it was still frustrating.
He slowly sat up and turned off his alarm before it could even go off, still sitting in the dark half asleep, he wondered if school today was even worth it. After about five minutes he forced himself to get into the shower and get ready.
He got dressed, ready and fed hak with about ten minutes to spare. Time for coffee.
He went downstairs and went straight to the coffee pot. His parents usually makes it around 5:30 am before they opened up the family coffee shop. Thank goodness it was still full enough for him to fill up his thermos.
He took a quick sip off of his thermos, it was a French vanilla roast today, and made his was out the door. It was an early Autumn day and it was pretty chilly, especially in the mornings. The leaves where starting to turn beautiful colors of red and orange and the lawns were covered in the morning frost. It was always beautiful in the Rocky mountains and Tweek was glad he wore his brown and green knitted scarf with the chilly breeze blowing in.
He made it just in time to catch the school bus as it came to a rickety stop at the bus stop, a few freshman girls stood in front of Tweek and giggles about some gossip they where talking about before he got there.
He decided that now was a good time to put this earphones in and ignore the world with a more soothing playlist until he got to school. With that door opened and a crabby looking bus driver ushered them in and the teenagers hopped on the bus.
They made it within 15 minutes and clambered off the old rusting bus, people tended to get extra pushy when getting off and Tweek was jostled around a bit till he made it to the walkway outside the school yard.
He made his way to the front door not quite ready to face the day ahead of him.
An arm suddenly swung out and wrapped around his neck and, still being on his toes from what Bill and Fosse did yesterday, Tweek braced himself for the worst. With a startled yelp he tensed up, flailing his arms around to hit the person attached to him.
“Whoa! Hold on dude, it’s just me!” a familiar voice said and they where dodging Tweek's swipes.
His head snapped up as he recognized the voice. He quickly yanked out his headphones.
“KENNY. Don’t sneak up on me like that!” he hissed as he tried to pry the taller blonde off of him. The struggle seemed to amuse Kenny as he held tighter on to him with his signature flirty grin.
“Aw, c’mon! I know deep down you’re secretly a cuddler.” Kenny moved his arms down to tweeks waist and squeezed him tighter as he teased the shorter boy.
“I swear to GOD-“ another swipe “Kenny!”
“Haha! Okay, okay! I’m sorry!” Kenny laughed as he released his pray and continued to walk into the school building with the smaller blonde. “I’ll get you one day.” He winked.
“Dick..” Tweek mocked but Kenny kept on laughing knowing Tweek didn’t mean it. Honestly, he didn’t dislike Kenny, they were friend when they were younger but at this point he was so used to distancing himself from others. Especially old friends. He would hate himself if people started rumors about someone else just because they hung around him.
“Anyways, how’s it going?” Kenny asked once his laughter died down. “Those assholes didn’t try anything again yesterday did they?”
“No the rest of the day was pretty… calm? I guess.
Nothing really eventful happened.” No way in hell was he going to tell Kenny about the mysterious notes he gets.
“Sweet!” Kenny grinned down at him as the two turned down the hall towards tweeks locker. “Hey, wanna hangout after school?”
Now that shocked tweek. No one’s asked to hangout with him for quite a while.
“U-Uhmm..” tweek thought it over for a second. Should he be a normal teenage and go out or stay at home and stare at his fish? Was he just that awkward or was his fish that cool?
His thoughts came to a halt as they made it to his locker, scrawled crudely on the green locker in some kind of marker was “FAGOTT”. He might of actually started laughing that they spelt the word wrong not once but twice. Except this time it’s in public and anyone could walk by and see it. Almost like it’s was a branding. Aren’t the rumors enough? In the background of the white noise in his mind he could vaguely hear the laughter of Eric Cartman followed by Kyle Broflovski yelling something. He could feel the tell tale signs of a panic attack coming on.
Suddenly there was something on his head softly rubbing his hair. Oh it’s a hand, it’s Kenny. Slowly he started to pull out of his own mind.
“Hand sanitizer should remove it.” Kenny gave him a small smile.
“H-how do you know that?” Tweek asked a little confused and a little dizzy.
“A lot of detentions.” Kenny snorted, gentle smile still on his face.
He was trying to help, to make him feel better. It was touching to Tweek, he felt like he was beginning to get a friend back again and he realized he missed that, he really did.
“Alright, let’s hangout today.” Tweek said as he let out a shaky breath.
“Sweet!” Kenny grinned. “Give me your phone dude.”
---
School went on pretty calm surprisingly for how it started, classes went on as usual. Mostly just lectures and practice sheets to work on. History was a bit worse since he had Bill in the same class and said boy kept throwing little things like paper and chunks of erasers at him. It was so hard to concentrate with him trying to keep his tics down from the stress he barely understood what the teacher was saying.
But now it was finally time for lunch which meant he got about half an hour break to relax and eat. Tweek slowly walked down the halls as he made his way to the cafeteria coffee thermos in hand and ready.
Suddenly a student, maybe a year or so younger than him, came almost running around the corner and knocked into tweeks shoulder causing him to stumble. The thermos slipped from his hands, it made a horrible metallic sound as it hit the vinyl flooring, and rolled down the hallway.
“Sorry!” the kid yelled over his shoulder and kept going. Great, now he has to hunt down his thermos. Thank God it wasn’t open.
He could still see it rolling halfway down the hall and swiftly made his way towards it. As he got closer to it he saw it sudden stopped by an All-star shoe the way someone would stop a rolling ball. Said person with the black and white shoes slowly bent down and picked up the thermos of coffee and inspected it.
“I’m so sorry! I-“ Tweek finally caught up with it only to see Craig Tucker in his usual blue chullo and jacket, holding and almost like he was inspecting it, a small dent on the bottom could be seen from where he dropped it. It wasn’t the dent he was looking at, no, he was looking at his arrangement of stickers randomly placed on it. He had a curious look on his face as he turned the cylindrical object around in his hand and after a moment his eyes moved to Tweeks face. The curious look on his face was still there.
Almost as if he new he had been staring for too long he quickly looked away and shoved the thermos into tweeks chest.
“Here. Take better care of your stuff.” Craig said to him as he grabbed it before it could fall a second time.
Craig stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets, still looking away and swiftly walked off.
‘The hell is his problem?’ Tweek thought to himself as he kept walking to the cafeteria.