Chapter Text
The diamond-shaped signage of the Pioneer throws warm golden light across the thick blanket of snow that’s been accumulating all afternoon. The heavy, wet flakes stick to the tread of his boots, and he has to stand on the ragged red welcome mat, stomping it all off, for a full minute. Inconvenient.
Ryan’s loitering in the lobby, a broom clutched close to his chest. He’s got a small pile of rubbish at his feet – red vine wrappers and pretzel salt, loose M&Ms and popcorn kernels – and a wary quirk to his lips. Great.
“What’d she do?”
“Uh.” Ryan hugs the broom more tightly. “How married were you to the whole, um, Birds thing?”
“We were very engaged. It was a long betrothal.”
“Oh.”
Craig’s mood takes a nosedive.
“She didn’t.”
Very eloquently, Ryan repeats, “Uh.”
Down the hall, up the short flight of stairs to the projector room, Craig finds Piper in his favorite swivel chair, a dull metal cannister perched on her lap, spilling 35mm film all over the threadbare carpet.
“What did you do?” His voice breaks, screeches out like he’s still in grade school.
She puts on a million-megawatt smile. “I thought we’d watch something else tonight. No one likes Hitchcock. He’s so…overhyped.”
Craig stares at her.
She sighs. “Fine. Someone didn’t close the cannister right.”
Her tone makes it clear that someone isn’t her. She brushes a few box braids over one ear and gives him a pointed look.
Craig strides over, rubbing his fingers along the now-brittle strip of celluloid. He should have just switched to digital when he had the chance, but the projector cost more than his car.
“We can restore it,” he decides, even though it will take a buttload of time and cold hard cash that the theater’s meager income isn’t exactly prepped for.
“Maybe.” Piper chews on her lower lip, her dark skin catching the white-hot glow of the hallway fluorescents. “Definitely not in time for the eight thirty tonight.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“Better you than me.” Piper shrugs. “What should we show instead?”
Wordlessly, Craig fishes through the pile of cannisters balanced precariously on top of each other. Each one was carefully selected for the Winter Horror Film Festival, the monthlong gimmick he’s staging to revive the old Pioneer. He chooses one near the bottom of the stack.
“Get that set up, and can you ask Ryan to fix the marquee?”
“In this weather?”
“I’ll give him a bonus.”
“A whole seven dollars more,” she quips, but obligingly hops out of her chair to help. “She’s probably hotboxing in her car.”
“Grrreat.” Craig salutes Piper sarcastically before marching out, down the stairs, through the lobby, and into the blizzard. He spots Tricia’s car toward the back of the snowy lot.
Once there, he tries the handle, but it’s locked. He knocks on her window.
Through the fogged-up glass, she flips him off.
Craig grits his teeth. “Tricia.”
She flips him off again.
“Right, real mature.” Craig shoves his hands in his pockets and jumps up and down, trying to keep warm. “I hope you know you’re fired.”
She ignores him.
He grits out, “Are you fucking serious right now? I’m gonna freeze my balls off.”
Tricia finally cracks the window, half an inch, a cloud of Tolkien’s best strange rolling out to hit him square in the face. “You’d have to use them first.”
“Nice.” Craig wrinkles his nose. “I want your nametag back.”
“Puh-lease,” Tricia intones. “You can’t fire me.”
“It’s my movie theater.”
“I’ll tell mom.”
“I’ll tell mom what a shit employee you’ve been.”
They glare at each other, each refusing to back down, and not for the first time, Craig wishes he was an only child.
“You suck,” Tricia tells him.
“Not as much as you,” Craig retorts, but she’s already rolling up her window, and it’s probably less effective through a layer of glass.
Frustrated, he marches back across the parking lot, where Ryan is dragging out a ladder to change out the marquee. “You had to choose one with way more letters, didn’t you?”
Wearily, Craig sighs. “I’ll spot you, kid.”
“Alright. But if I fall, you’re paying my hospital bills.”
Craig bought the Pioneer last year in what he calls a shrewd business move and most of his friends call absolute lunacy.
Tolkien says movies are a dying art form, and Clyde doesn’t understand why anyone would watch shit outside a streaming service. Jimmy doesn't say anything because he's off on the east coast being a rich bastard, not caring about his hometown friends' lives. But Craig was newly thirty and tired of having nothing he could call his own, and besides, it’s not like he couldn’t fall back on his second job.
Tending bar at Skeeters isn’t exactly a rewarding career path, but it’s lucrative enough. Drinking is South Park’s answer to sports, and their MVPs do it often and well.
So he bought the stupid theater. Hired some high school kids, and his sister. Lost more money on the whole venture than he cares to admit, but. He loves it.
From the musty old projection room to the burnt butter smell, the place is his. And movies are important, right? He’s always thought so. Theaters are the one safe haven Craig’s always had, a place where he can turn off the endless race of his thoughts and just – be.
There’s a sanctity in places like the Pioneer, with it’s art deco wall sconces and worn red chairs.
No one bothers him in here.
At least, no one is supposed to. Craig’s up in the projector room, watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in gorgeous, non-digital detail, and feeling slightly mollified about his choice not to convert to a DCP when the door swings wide open.
Blinded by the sudden influx of light, Craig curses and flails.
“Jay-sus, you kiss your mother with that mouth, Tucker?’ Demands the perpetrator in a familiar silky-smooth drawl.
Craig blinks a few times, forcing the silhouette to resolve into wild blond hair and a hideous orange coat. “Fuck off, McCormick.”
“Aw. You always know how to make a guy feel warm and fuzzy.” Kenny follows the grand tradition Tricia started of not listening to a damn thing Craig says, throwing himself down into the only other chair there – a rickety folding one that creaks ominously with his weight. “Bad day, sweetheart?”
Craig seesaws his hand in the air. “Average.”
“Good, because I need to vent.”
Oh. Craig gestures grandly, encompassing how busy he is and how much he is not interested. “By all means.”
Kenny misses the sarcasm, and consequently his cue to leave. “Kyle-“
“Shocker.”
Kenny hurries to talk over him. “Kyle dumped me.”
Fuck. Now Craig actually has to pay attention. “Bummer.”
The flickering light of the projector plays across Kenny’s features, silver and black and red, taupe and brown. A withered Texas landscape right here, in the winter wonderland of Colorado. He isn’t sad so much as angry, a wildness in his baby-blue eyes that can’t mean anything good. “Yeah. For you. I’m coming to collect.”
“Collect what?”
The meaningful look Kenny gives him would be more meaningful if Craig knew what the heck he was talking about. And Kenny keeps on doing it.
“Are you having a seizure?”
“Dick.” Kenny tilts his chair back its legs, the whole mess squealing in protest. There’s got to be easier ways to tempt death, but if anyone wouldn’t give a damn about that, it’s Kenny McCormick. “We agreed. No pussing out now.”
“Dude, what the hell are you on about?”
On screen, Leatherface hobbles menacingly after a screaming soon-to-be victim. Off screen, Kenny pins Craig with his gaze. “You. Me. Single at thirty. Getting together.”
It sounds more like a threat than a reminder, and Craig asks, “When? When did we agree to this?”
But a scream pierces the empty theater, making the ancient sound system warble with a burst of static.
That’s when he remembers.
What happened was, Craig was in love.
Had been since the fourth grade, although it took him a while to figure that out.
He was playacting besotted long before his heart followed through, but eventually, it did. He fell head over heels over ass, until all he could think of, all he could want, was his own damn long-term boyfriend. That’s how he found out faking it ‘til you make it was a real thing, not just trite BS his parents consoled him with when he was having a bad day.
Somehow, over time, Tweek Tweak became the axis his world spun around.
Problem was, as the years trickled by, Tweek seemed to have the opposite problem. He was losing interest in Craig.
They fought. A lot. Near daily.
With college admissions around the corner, it felt somehow inevitable that the good ship Creek would go down in flames.
Cue the pep rally; basketball championships loomed, the school colors – brown and white, Christ – festooned across the gym. Sneakers squeaked on freshly waxed floors, the entire team smiled and waved and generally looked like a fresh-faced ad for teen acne medication. Joy abounded.
Except for Craig, who was lurking alone under the bleachers like a hunchbacked bridge troll because he’d had yet another fight with Tweek, and he couldn’t face the actual tsunami of school cheer up above.
He should have skipped entirely, but Tolkien and Clyde were his best friends in the entire world, and they’d already given him grief for quitting the team himself, only last year.
Craig’s school spirit was middling, but his jump shot was on point. He would’ve kept playing, but the smell of sweaty gym socks made Tweek nauseous, and upsetting him made Craig anxious, so after years of bickering about it he finally gave it up. Healthy? No. But it bought him time with Tweek, and Craig may not have been a totally hopeless romantic, but there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for that twitchy little fuck.
Love’s weird that way. And it was good, for a while.
Until Tweek found something else to freak out about, something new to get him all fired up, and as much as Craig adored him, every day he was starting to feel more and more like target practice. Which left him here, hiding from his boyfriend and trying to spy on his friends while he self-soothed with some pot he bought off Kyle Broflovski.
It was kind of bad, some fetid holiday special Stan’s dad cooked up, and it would’ve been just as easy for Craig to score better weed if he wanted. Tolkien was an instant hookup, even though he didn’t smoke at all – guy lived on a whole damn marijuana farm. But admitting Craig couldn’t make it through the day without a healthy helping of kush would invite questions he had no interest in answering, so Tegridy it was.
He felt pretty clever right up until a hacking cough cut through his pity party, accompanied by a howl of, “Shiiit, smells like Stan’s house down here.”
Kenny swung himself under the groaning rows of bleachers, his face screwed up in what was either intrigue or disgust.
Back then, he was still slight and malnourished, not quite grazing six feet. He didn’t hit his growth spurt until graduation was in the rearview, gaining inches in leaps and bounds, alongside muscle and like, better hair. But at the moment, Craig had a solid half head on him, even if it didn’t count when he was hunched up like a hobbit.
“Go away.”
Kenny grinned, which tracked. The ruder people were to him, the more he seemed to like it.
It’s why he was able to count Eric Cartman among his friend-group, and why he was able to harbor an ill-fated crush on Kyle, who was good at pushing ganja but also had the manners of a rabid lemur.
“C’mon, Tucker. Let me join your super-secret loser club.”
Craig eyed him, debating whether he could stand the company. “Why’re you hiding?”
“Sports give me hives.”
“Bzzt. Wrong answer, try again.”
Kenny was inscrutable for one brief, lingering beat, long enough for it to weird Craig out, but then a smarmy grin overtook his face. “Okay, you caught me. Watching Kyle in those teeny tiny b-ball shorts gave me a boner. Didn’t want anyone to get ideas.”
“Oh my god, I asked for an explanation, not to be scarred for life.” Craig passed Kenny his blunt so he could cradle his head in his hands. “You’re a sick man.”
“Lovesick.”
“Dick sick, buddy.” Craig knew it was a lost cause, but, “You know he’s straight, right?”
Kenny blew out a haze of deep gray smoke, right into Craig’s face. “I have evidence to the contrary.”
“Doubtful.” Craig snatched the joint back, propping it between his lips. “Now ‘m gonna have cooties.”
“You love it.”
“Even if Broflovski decides he likes cock, there’s only one man he’ll go for.”
“Low blow,” Kenny whistled, but didn’t bother refuting it. His shoulders slumped, then popped back up. “Where’s my favorite meth addict?”
“He doesn’t do meth.”
“Please, I’ve had sips from that thermos.”
“Don’t spread rumors.”
“Don’t dodge the question.”
Craig exhaled. “Tweek’s up there. Somewhere.”
“Thought you had that boy on a leash.”
“Or vice versa.”
“Wow. Bitter.” Kenny tucked his legs beneath him, crouching down beside Craig. They weren’t friends, exactly, but they’d known each other for a thousand years, it felt like. It was enough closeness that Craig didn’t flinch when Kenny touched his index finger to Craig’s chin, tilting his face towards the light. “Wanna tell daddy all about it?”
“Not even if you blew me.”
Kenny laughed, dropping his hand away from Craig’s face. He waved some of the lingering smoke from the air and prompted, “Seriously, though.”
One of the down sides of knowing people forever is that you know how likely they are to be dissuaded.
In Kenny’s case, the likelihood was zero percent.
He sighed. “Tweek wants an open relationship.”
“Hoo boy.”
Quiet overtook the claustrophobic space, the hitch of Craig’s breath loud, but soon enough the cheerleaders on the other side of the bleachers took up a chant – C-O-W-S, what’s that spell? – and it gave Craig the space to get control of himself. He said, “We – he – we’ve been together for longer than I can even remember. Now he wants to see what else is out there?”
“Why are you asking me, like it’s a question?”
“I don’t know.” Craig passed the joint back again and hung his head. It’s not like Tweek had said it, outright. But he’d made overtures, and Craig wasn’t stupid. He knew where this was going. He knew he was going to let it happen, even, if he wanted them to stay together. “I don’t get why this is happening. I love him.”
“Yeah, but like.” Kenny knocked their shoulders together and wondered aloud, “Have you ever tried loving anyone else?”
“Sure, says the guys who wants to climb his best friend like a tree.”
“Hey.” Kenny’s voice assumed the slightest edge. “I’ve been around. A lot. I know what I want.”
He wasn’t wrong. Kenny had dated half the school. He had a reputation.
“I do too,” Craig admitted, clutching his knees. “I want him.”
He had his own reputation, and it was one he liked. One that counted on him and Tweek, together, every night. Craig, tucked into a corner booth at Tweek Brothers with his homework and an Americano while Tweek wore that sexy little apron of his, coffee-splattered and chaotic, spilling drink orders and clumsily flirting with customers for extra tips. Him winking across the store at Craig in the few quiet moments they had.
Or better still, Tweek, tucked into Craig’s arms while they laid intertwined on the Tucker couch, watching old sci-fi and quoting the corniest lines back to each other, Tweek’s blond hair splayed in every direction, the ever-present dark circles under his eyes slightly less purple and tired because Craig was there, and he felt safe and warm.
That was the reputation Craig cherished.
That was the present he liked to pretend he still had, and the future he wanted, desperately.
Kenny said, “Not to be nosy, but if you don’t want to be in an open relationship, you shouldn’t.”
Like Craig had a choice. “What if I do?”
“Alright.” Kenny shrugged. “But you’ve always seemed painfully monogamous to me.”
Craig flinched, and Kenny added, “Maybe it will work out.”
He didn’t sound like he believed it, which. It wasn’t fair. Craig got bullied into this relationship in the first place because no one wanted to believe he and Tweek weren’t gay.
Now that he was all in, he was getting bullied out of it by people who didn’t believe in them anymore. Including Tweek.
Craig couldn’t lose him. It would kill him.
He was dying anyway, in slow motion, with all the fighting and the shouting and the anxiety, but if Tweek left?
That would be it.
By now, Kenny was pinning him with more pity than Craig could stand, and it wasn’t like he could say any of that out loud.
It was too pathetic.
Reluctantly, he joked, “It’s fine. I was planning on marrying the guy, but dying alone sounds good too.”
“I hear that.” Kenny perked up, then, and not because the cheerleaders were getting a little lewder. The word udder was definitely being thrown around. “And hey, crazy idea, but you’re reasonably attractive.”
“Gee, thanks?”
Kenny nodded enthusiastically. “Tell you what. When we’re like…on death’s door, if we’re all alone, why don’t we get together?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
Craig actually had, god help him. “Why would I want to date you? You’re in shambles.”
“Constantly,” Kenny replied, winking. “But I make up for it with raw sex appeal.”
Craig made a face.
“Oh, come on, like you’re any better off.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Besides, Craig had already decided – he was going to be better. Kenny’s advice was well-meaning and all, but he’d tell Tweek he was okay with the open relationship business. It was the only way to win him back.
He had to win him back.
Then they’d be together forever.
He agreed, “Sure. Whatever. When we’re old and gray-”
“So, like, thirty.”
“-right, when we’re thirty, if we’re single, we can do…that,” Craig said, and even as the lie spilled out of his mouth, he couldn’t imagine any kind of future without Tweek.
Not any kind of future he’d want to live in.
But Kenny accepted it for what it was, whooping, louder than the cheerleaders even. And then he started in on a way too detailed description of what Kyle Broflovski’s ass looked like in his basketball shorts, and Craig decided to black the whole afternoon out.
Now, Craig stares at Kenny like he’s out of his mind, because…because…
Teenage promises mean less than nothing.
At least, that’s what he’s always reckoned.
A guy says all kinds of things when he’s a dumbass kid, ranging from:
“Sure, babe. I’d love to spend the day with your family.”
To, “No! I didn’t check her out!”
To, “Yeah, mom, it’s my new favorite shirt.” Or, “This meatloaf tastes great.”
Or, worst of all, “I’ll never stop loving you.”
That last one isn’t something Craig ever said, but he was told it, and it was undoubtedly false.
A thick spray of blood coats the screen, accompanied by shrill screams, and Kenny’s still staring expectantly. Slowly, Craig tells him, “I don’t…want to date anyone.”
“Oh, c’mon. Live a little!”
“Nope.”
“Please?”
“I politely decline.”
“You might like it.” Kenny waggles his eyebrows.
“Doubtful.”
“I’m a catch.”
“You’re an unemployed actor.”
“Ouch. That hurts." Not enough to really wound, apparently, because Kenny is already pushing, "Take a leap of faith, Craig.”
“Maybe you go take a leap and come back when you’re not insane.”
“What I’m hearing is that you’re inviting me back. Maybe for smoochies?”
Craig gags. “Oh my god, you can’t stealth me into dating you.”
“Can I ask nicely?”
“You mean instead of demanding it?”
“I always thought you liked them bossy.”
“I cannot stand you.”
Kenny feigns hurt, pressing a long-fingered hand to his chest and gasping. “Really, honeybun?”
“Don’t do that.” Craig spun around in his chair, trying to get some distance in the tiny room, and some fresh air to boot. “Why would you even want to jump right back into a relationship. When did Kyle dump you?”
That stops Kenny in his tracks. His mouth tugs into a frown, and he hedges, “Er. This morning.”
“This morning? I am not going to be your rebound guy, you asshole.”
“I don’t want you to be my rebound guy!” Kenny takes a deep breath, never one to shy away from conflict. “I want you to make Kyle jealous.”
There it is.
The only thing that makes sense.
Craig closes his eyes, not even surprised that Kenny wants to use him. That’s how people work, after all.
He squints down at his hands, at the faint black outline of a steaming hot coffee inked against his right ring finger. With the sound of a chainsaw buzzing in his ears, he asks, “Did Kyle leave you for Stan?”
“Yeah,” Kenny confesses immediately. “No. I don’t know.”
Craig waits.
Kenny rakes a hand through his wild blond hair and adds, “He’s holed up over at the family farm and he says they’re not…anything, that Stan's hetero, but how am I supposed to believe that? Actually?”
It’s the first time he’s sounded even a little bit broken up about the whole thing.
Craig understands. It’s not like he thought Kenny had been secretly madly in love with him, after all this time, and Kenny wanting Kyle back, or for him to have regrets, or whatever this is – that’s something he gets.
Innately.
Kyle is Kenny’s dream guy. Always has been.
Tweek was that for Craig. He got lucky – he got the once in a lifetime, fairytale romance, the happy ending. Even if it was only for a while. He got to live the dream for years before Tweek dropped him.
That’s all that Kenny’s asking for.
More time.
If he hadn’t been honest, if he had tried to pretend like he really wanted Craig, like this was true love? Craig never would go for it. He wouldn’t believe it – after all, people don’t luck out like that twice.
He’s made his peace with being damaged goods, but he doesn’t want anyone else to feel that way.
Not ever.
Craig ventures, “You really want to do this?”
Kenny brightens. “I really, really do.”
So yeah.
Promises you make when you’re seventeen don’t mean jack shit.
Except when they do.