Chapter Text
How long has it been? Two...three years? Three sounds right. Although Craig has been so internally emotionally volatile lately, he can’t be absolutely certain. But he supposes it doesn’t matter how many years it’s been. Everything is monumentally fucked up one way or another.
“He’s out there again,” Token says, sinking his fork into a slither of grilled chicken, part of the exceptionally bland looking salad he brings for lunch every day. The usual crew surrounds him, Craig, Clyde and Jimmy, sitting on the grey stone steps leading out to the yard where diverse groups of kids huddle together in the same places as always. Little has changed over the years. “What do you think he’s up to?”
Only vaguely listening, Craig shrugs. Sat on the bottom step, leaning back on his elbows with his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankle, his gaze is fixed maybe a little too intently on the figure a couple of hundred feet ahead of them. Tweek Tweak, South Park’s most recent resident uncertified crazy kid, is alone at the far end of the football field where a border of towering green trees separates the school from the forest. Nestled between the roots of a tree Craig has absolutely no idea of the name of, Tweek doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything - except chit-chatting and gesticulating excitedly at this and that, to who knows who.
“He’s fucking crazy, man,” Clyde says, swigging from and then downing a bottle of pulp-free orange juice. He crushes the bottle in his fist and tosses it to the bin a couple of metres away, missing completely and cursing having to leave his spot to pick it up. He tries again to toss the bottle in when he’s nearer. It bounces off the rim onto the floor. “For fuck’s sake… I mean he’d always been borderline but now he’s literally talking to himself. Did he do that before?”
Token hums, shaking his head. “There were a lot of weird things he did.” Only chewing his food an even number of times, praying to aliens not to abduct him on pizza Thursdays, apologising to inanimate objects, to name just a few. “But I don’t think he ever talked to himself.” Token pauses to munch through a piece of crunchy lettuce, adding, “That’s definitely a development.”
Craig is still staring. Yes, it’s definitely a stare, but he doesn’t really know he’s doing it until one of the guys snaps his attention back to real-time. It’s been happening a lot these last two months, the staring thing. Awful funny how it’s been two months since Tweek re-emerged in South Park. What did that mean? Did that mean something at all? Craig wasn’t willing to think too deeply about it. Not again.
“Craig, are you o-o-okay?” On this occasion it’s Jimmy who calls Craig’s attention home. Craig’s eyes slot back into focus, with some reluctance his attention drawn back to reality and his back to his friends.
“Hm, what?” His head lolls backwards to look at Jimmy perched at the top of the steps, his crutches resting a few steps down whilst he balances his lunchbox on his lap.
“You’ve been st…st…st…looking real hard at Tweek. Something bothering you?”
“Aside from the fact one of our ex-best friends has completely cracked since we last saw him?” Clyde chirrups, looking out across the field again. Tweek is on his feet now, his palms and his ear pressed to the scratchy bark of one of the trees. He looks a lot like he’s petting it.
Jimmy and Token are both giving Craig that look they keep giving him lately. Oblivious, Clyde sits back down beside Craig, tearing open a Toblerone bar and snapping a triangular piece off the end. The three of them shake their heads when he offers them some, and he shrugs, muttering “suit yourselves” and mimicking Craig’s position on the steps.
It’s the height of summer, and for a change they’re all coat free, content in loose jumpers and shirts. Dressed in dark jeans, a blue v-neck jumper with a dusk pink shirt underneath, Craig also still has his chullo on, even though his forehead is beginning to prickle with sweat. Token refers to it as his ‘safety blanket’, and Craig wonders if it is, since without it he’s always felt strangely awkward and exposed.
A few times Craig has coached himself into going right up to Tweek and saying “hey”. Twelve times, in fact, four at lunch on the rare occasions Tweek has been spotted in the cafeteria, three on their way out of history class, another three when they were making their ways’ home, and two in home period. None of those twelve times had resulted in a successful interaction, something Craig repeatedly berates himself for. Maybe thirteen will be the charm, he keeps telling himself, if he ever plucks up the courage…
Craig’s not a coward by any stretch of the imagination. But God dammit if Tweek doesn’t give him the jitters, just like he had started to do back when they were twelve and entering that stage of life consisting of awkward unexplainable boners, sweaty palms and racing hearts. Up until their sex-ed classes, Craig was beginning to wonder if he was terminally ill and facing his last desperate weeks on Earth. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved when he found out he was simply ‘growing up’.
Five years ago, Tweek Tweak, with no explanation, no sight or sound, stopped coming to school. Hw stopped coming out to play games with the other kids. He didn’t answer texts, calls or emails. The Tweaks, despite numerous efforts from Craig to see and talk to his best friend in the world, refused to allow anyone inside their home, refused to let anyone near their son, refused to even talk about his existence, despite Tweek often being spotted like a ghostly apparition in the window of his bedroom, forlorn and sad, ephemeral and fleeting.
And was Craig Tucker, the Craig Tucker, heartbroken by the loss? No way, nu-uh, course not.
He can’t keep his eyes off the enigma that is Tweek Tweak. He can’t concentrate in class when he can see that messy blond bird’s nest a few seats over. He can’t do much of anything; eating, sleeping, maintaining a conversation. It’s getting to be a problem.
“You tried to talk to him recently?” Token asks, sounding sympathetic. He’s always been the observant sort. Did talking himself into it and then out of it count as trying?
“Nah. You?” Craig answers casually, pulling himself upright and his legs inwards so he can lean on his knees. He’s watching Tweek again, who is now looking up into a labyrinth of bows, chatting away to thin air.
“Since the first time I tried, he somehow manages to disappear if I so much as look in his direction,” Token answers somewhat mournfully. Tweek had been a close friend to the whole gang, after all, and they’d all missed his presence greatly. “I’d love to know what’s been going on these last few years.”
“Can’t’ve been anything good,” Clyde answers, looking Craig over and shuffling to put himself into the same position as him; his attempt to look ‘cool’, since he always claimed Craig could manage it without a stitch of effort. “Not if he’s gone full-metal schizo.”
Jimmy hits him on the head with one of his crutches and Clyde yelps. “D-don’t make fun of m-m…m-mental illness,” Jimmy chides, setting his crutch back down. Clyde looks apologetic, rubbing his head.
Craig wishes he could just walk right up to Tweek and ask what the fuck has been going on. He wishes, but some part of him also doesn’t want to know. Over the years he’s come up with hundreds of theories, hundreds of reasons for Tweek to stop contacting them, to stop contacting him. And none of them had ever made any sense, not really. At the very centre of everything, there’s so much hurt Craig doesn’t know what to do with it all.
“Maybe he’ll come and talk to us in his own time,” Token wonders, finishing his salad and with a snap popping the plastic lid back onto his lunchbox. He slides it into his backpack and clips it shut.
“Yeah,” Craig answers. Somehow though, he doubts it. “Maybe he will.”
--
Craig doesn’t know exactly what has happened. All he knows is Tweek is distraught and won’t come out of the bathroom stall he always hides in during a difficult episode. This isn’t like the usual occasions when Craig had patiently stood outside the door, waiting for Tweek to calm himself for long enough to put one foot down and lean forward to slide the bolt across, letting Craig creep in with him to pet his hair and squeeze his arm until he’s ready to leave the stall, or at the very least talk.
Tweek has gone well beyond tears to painful heaves of breath, drawing it in by the lungful like there just isn’t enough available. The minutes trickle by, and Craig grows increasingly worried something serious has happened this time. Has someone hurt him? Does he need to break someone’s nose? But no, Tweek is more than capable of doing that for himself. Although that doesn’t mean Craig won’t happily break another bone, just because no one hurts his friend and gets away without an ass-kicking.
“Dude, come on,” Craig sighs, at this point a little exasperated. It’s not that he minds being there for Tweek when he’s upset, but the bathroom is fucking freezing and he missed lunch too. “Just tell me what’s going on. I can help.”
Craig rubs his eyes, aware they’ve missed the first fifteen minutes of geography. Oh well, no big loss there...
Craig steps away from where he’s leaning against the stall door, looking up at the gap above the cubicles. Opening the stall to the left, he puts down the toilet seat and steps up onto it, leaning forward to grip the stall wall, briefly hanging off by his arms and awkwardly swinging himself over the top into the stall Tweek is occupying.
“Gah!” Tweek shrieks, slipping part way off the seat in surprise when Craig lands with a fhwumph. Tweek catches himself against the wall, crying, “no! No, get out!”
“Jesus, Tweek,” Craig says, ignoring the outburst until Tweek begins to flail and lash out. Craig yelps when a pointy elbow jabs him in the face, snatching up Tweek’s wrists to stop him giving him a black eye or worse. Weakly Tweek fights against him, and then all at once the fight drains from him and he sags, defeated. And then very softly, Tweek starts to cry again, pressing his nose to Craig’s warm collar. Cries turn to snotty sobs, and all Craig can do is smooth soothing hands up his back, into wild hair and back down, squeezing and murmuring from time-to-time to remind Tweek he’s there, he’ll always be there.
He doesn’t understand. He rarely does, though he tries. Tweek is a hurricane of emotion, frantic and spiralling. Craig stands in the eye of those emotions, hanging on for dear life. All he wants to do is protect the boy in his arms. But he’s learnt over the years that there are some things he just can’t protect him from, some things he can’t beat up because he just can’t grasp them
Tweek is starting to quieten, breathing evening out, now peppered with soft hiccups. Craig curls his arms tight around his shoulders and presses him nearer. “It’s okay,” he whispers, noticing speckles of colour on the floor at their feet. He peers further over Tweek’s shoulder as he murmurs comforts to him. Scattered around their feet are silken pink and orange petals and tiny green shoots like the kind they grew in jars in fourth grade. Odd.
Tweek is quiet now, his breathing smooth and even. Craig draws his attention back to him, carefully pushing him back. “You’re okay,” he says, though Tweek looks anything but. “You’re okay.”
—-
Craig is in bed watching videos on YouTube of dogs doing dumb things when a skype message pops up. It’s just past 1 o’clock in the morning and he wonders who would be contacting him at such an unusual time of night. Token is always in bed by 11, Clyde has been banned from the internet for two weeks for failing a maths test, and Jimmy rarely uses Skype.
The username is unfamiliar, so Craig is wary when he clicks it. It’s a short message consisting only of his name followed by four question marks. Craig frowns, clicking to see the profile attached to the account. There’s no information listed apart from the username “I_Want_Out”.
Craig types back to ask who it is, curious. He wonders if it’s one of those guys, hoping none of them have gotten hold of his Skype account details. Blocking people is such an effort.
I_Want_Out: its Tweek
Craig’s heart seizes. Tweek. It’s Tweek. It’s Tweek
Craig_Tucker: Tweek? Is this a joke?
I_Want_Out: No???
Craig’s heart thunders inside his chest. He feels nauseous and dizzy and elated. His fingers shake as he types. Months. He’s waited months.
Craig_Tucker: its really you Tweek?
I_Want_Out: yeah... its me. Can we talk?