Chapter Text
With everything within walking distance in South Park, cars are a waste of money. Insurance, maintenance, gas — Tweek has heard more than enough from his parents.
Craig mounts his bicycle and scrunches him onto his lap, folding Tweek at his waist and hooking Tweek’s knees over the stem. Tweek cradles his bag of soiled clothes. It’s cold and heavy, sloshing around in the thin plastic bag, threatening to diffuse through the pores and leak all over him. The smell makes Tweek’s stomach churn, but he grits his teeth and breathes carefully from his mouth.
Craig begins to pedal. His knees slam repeatedly against Tweek’s bony back. Craig’s bike is a boring blue, vandalized with horrifically girly stickers Tweek was forced to put by Tricia. Despite being the same age as him, she’s taller and stronger; only Craig hits harder than her.
The bike swerves out of control briefly at the intersection, catching on a vicious piece of ice. The peg on the bike’s rear wheel catches on an orange parka and flings the owner to the center of the street. Tweek hadn’t even realized Stan’s group was there, but he squeezes his eyes shut and blocks out the thud and subsequent crunch that follows.
“Oh my god, you killed Kenny!” Stan cries.
“You bastards!” Kyle’s tinny voice shrieks.
Craig flips them off and continues biking.
“You’re gonna get arrested,” Tweek shrills. “I’m gonna get sent to juvie for being an accomplice and you’re going to die in a prison riot, and my parents won’t collect me because they’re not gonna be my owner anymore, so I’ll be tossed in the foster system until I get adopted by the Human Ghost of Kindness and — ”
Tweek continues to ramble.
There are people worse than Craig. There are kids his age getting their throats slit and fingers broken, getting passed between several graying men like a piece of meat, There are kids even younger having their buttholes ravaged by dogs, and babies placed in actual blenders while still alive. All in pursuit of a few slips of green paper and that sickly white liquid.
“I can afford bail,” Craig replies.
“You’ll be a felon,” Tweek counters. “You’ll be denied jobs and I’ll starve to death in the closet while you’re hiding from debt collectors — “
Craig snorts. “What debt collectors?”
“From escaping bail!”
Craig rolls his eyes. “It’s impossible to pull out a loan for bail.”
“You don’t know that!”
“But I do,” Craig snaps. “Breathe and think, Tweek. The loan is inconsequential. Worthless. Do you really think I can get locked up?”
Yes. The word hammers at the back of Tweek’s teeth, almost knocking them free, but Tweek grits his teeth harder and inhales from his nose. The sharp snow-tainted air fills his lungs, biting all the little balls in there. Tweek can’t remember the exact name, areola maybe, but he remembers being seven and stumbling over flashcards to help Craig study for a biology exam.
Money makes the world go round. It fuels his parents’ coffee shop and their business partners, allows Craig to turn his teeth into train tracks, and gives Tweek a roof over his head and cold food to eat. It dominates the stock market and why basically everything in South Park is owned by —
“Token,” Tweek gasps.
Craig smirks. “Bingo.”
Token is the man who tells Tweek to run to the convenience store for a snack haul when he’s over at Craig’s house for a smoke session and allows him to keep the change from the five 20-dollar bills because convenience stores still don’t accept straight hundred dollar bills.
Tweek had first seen him on his first day of kindergarten, which was actually one week after the school year officially started, waiting for his parents to pick him up, while Tricia, his classmate, chased him up a tree and threw rocks at him.
When Craig and his pack arrived, Clyde hunted down rocks, Craig and Tricia threw those rocks, Jimmy cracked jokes more awful than Tweek’s black eye, and Token recorded it all. When the sky grew dark and Tweek’s parents still didn’t arrive, Craig knocked Tweek out of the tree with his backpack and wrangled Tweek’s address out of him before bringing along his entire crew to drop Tweek off as a major detour.
His parents' eyes were bloodshot when they opened the door. Their voices were thin and their upper lips were smudged with white. Craig shoved Tweek inside and told Tweek to be ready outside at 7:20, lips pressed in a thin line, while Craig’s crew were ghostly quiet, except for Tricia, who was asking “why” in a whine that Tweek never had the luxury of developing.
Tweek’s parents scolded him for coming home so late and only shut the door when Craig cleared his throat. They had shuffled back to the backroom, and Tweek was left alone with an aching body and hungry stomach. He stood on his tippy toes to lock the door and managed to nab a pack of ham from the fridge. He gorged himself on it and set an egg timer that woke him up every hour because he didn’t know how to use an alarm clock.
At 4:30 am, Tweek was sitting on the porch wearing the same clothes as the previous day, finishing the final pieces of ham, as his parents kissed him goodbye.
Tweek was eating snow when Craig and his sister, holding hands, arrived at 7:25. He had finished his thermos almost two egg timers ago and a bush concealed a pile of yellow snow.
The snow made his stomach hurt, but everything made his stomach hurt.
The rest of the day blurred for Tweek, but he remembered holding Craig’s other hand and being brought back to Craig’s place after Craig dropped Tricia off at school. He was given a hot bath and fed mouthwatering leftover casserole, and hid under the covers with a baby Stripe as Craig and his parents shouted furiously at each other.
Tweek was wide awake when Craig returned. The ire in Craig’s voice dissolved as he asked Tweek if he wanted to watch Red Racer with him, and Tweek never left.
“Isn’t that wrong?” Tweek asks, voice hushed. His eyes dart around the street, and he’s almost able to ignore the bruises Craig’s knees are bludgeoning against his back. “To use your friends like that?”
Craig laughs. “It’s not. If I’m in deep shit, Token will help. And if Token is in deep shit, you bet me and the boys are gonna save his ass.”
“But money — “
“Token’s stocks will guarantee that we won’t need to work a day in our lives.”
“It still seems wrong,” Tweek nibbles his bottom lip and screeches when a bump sends his teeth slamming down on the sensitive skin — filling his mouth with steaming red blood.
“But it’s not,” Craig says. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“I don’t wanna grow up then,” Tweek gurgles through red-stained teeth.
“Don’t we all?” Craig chuckles.
A familiar blue house comes into view, with a half-destroyed snowman with a carrot stuck far below where the nose should be. Tweek gags, but nothing comes out.
Craig shoves Tweek off his lap, sending him face first into a pile of snow. Tweek moans at how the ice cradles his busted lip — alleviating the fury and staunching the blood flow. Snow is dirty, full of icky stuff from when the sky stole water from the earth, but before Tweek’s brain can assemble panic, Craig has already stored his bike in the garage; he flings the bag of Tweek’s soiled clothes in the direction of the washing machine.
“Remember to take out the trash later tonight, son,” Mr. Tucker says gruffly, scouring over the engine of his car. Something shiny and red with a fancy name.
“Got it,” Craig replies. He grabs Tweek by his shirt collar and tucks him under his arm. Tweek squawks as his feet and hands dangle several inches from the floor. A fragment of snow clings to his wound and Tweek scratches it off. It breaks the barrier, and several incriminating dots of red splatter to the floor.
“And give that boy a bath,” Mr. Tucker calls out. “He reeks.”
Craig flips him off. “Was already planning on it, asshole.”
Mr. Tucker reciprocates the bird. “Language.”
Craig sneers.
He steps through the threshold of the door, and a world of pale yellow swallows them whole. Craig kicks his shoes off, leaving them on the mat, and Tweek hurriedly copies him. His already untied shoes slip easily off his feet.
Craig squeezes him again, and Tweek squeals, swearing he can hear the audible ‘crack’ of his ribs fragmenting. Boa constrictor bruises hug the smatter of purple along his torso. “I should make you lick up the mess you just made.”
Tweek gnaws on his knuckles. Dangling like a shrimp, his vision starts to swim. “Oh, please don’t. I’ll get sick and puke more.”
“More for you to lick up then.”
Tweek’s incisors dig deeper. He almost scrapes the bone, and now blood from his scrawny scar-flecked hand mingles with the wound of his busted lip. “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no nononono —”
“Just kidding,” Craig intones. He kicks Tweek’s shoes into the garage. “Your shoes are going to join the rest of your clothes in the wash. You’re going to clean that mess though, once you aren’t smelling like a trash bin.”
Tweek’s mouth moves on its own. “But it’s your fault I smell like this.”
Tweek quickly covers his head with his arms though he dangles like a wind chime. When the expected blow doesn't land, he sees, blurrily, through blood rush, an easy smile crossing Craig’s face. Dimples poke Craig’s cheeks and his teeth are bright against his braces.
“Yeah,” Craig agrees breezily. “My fault.”
Then Craig punches him in the throat.
When Tweek comes to, he’s naked, sitting in a bathtub of frigid water with ice cubes floating around. He jostles and slips below. Water surges down his lungs, but before anything more than a handful violates him, he’s yanked out of the tub by his hair.
“I’ll fucking kill you if you drown in my bathtub,” His savior says. Craig releases his grip and Tweek’s bony butt hits the bottom of the tub.
He coughs out a mouthful of blood-infused water; it dissipates in the bulk.
Craig rolls his eyes.
Craig grabs dog shampoo and pours a generous amount onto his hand. He sets the bottle down and dunks Tweek’s head back down into the bathtub. He holds Tweek down by the neck with one hand, and with the other, applies the shampoo, scrubbing Tweek’s scalp with his nails.
Tweek thrashes, lungs filling once more with water. His flailing limbs send splashes careening out the tub. Duly, he hears Craig click his tongue, and a tendril of fear immediately wraps around his heart.
Spots swim in Tweek’s vision, much faster than when he had choked on Craig’s dick earlier, and his eyes burn. Tears mingle with ice cubes and the invisible droplets of blood seeping into this skin.
Craig yanks him out the water and Tweek retches out all the water that had filled his lungs, destroying the thin layer of foam that had developed from the shampoo. Tweek can almost see again when Craig dunks his head back down into the tub, scrubbing at his hair viciously once more, rinsing away the foam.
This time, Tweek remembered to hold his breath. When Craig draws him out again, Tweek only gulps down air. “Does the shampoo kill fleas?” Tweek manages to gasp.
“It does,” Craig drawls. “Why?”
“That’s good,” Tweek says. “I don’t want fleas.”
Craig scoffs. He grabs another bottle. Conditioner this time. But instead of submerging Tweek once more, he gently applies it to Tweek’s soaked hair. Tweek squeezes his eyes shut so that the fumes don’t blind him. Craig’s fingers weave through Tweek’s strands, gently untangling knots, massaging Tweek’s scalp, petting him.
Craig’s hand recedes. After a quick splash, a damp washcloth scrubs at his body — behind his ears, his armpits, over the bruises mottling his entire body, and even his private parts. Tweek squirms. He doesn’t get hard like his Dad or Craig, and he tenses when Craig’s fingers ghost his butthole, but Craig passes on by, like a shark neglecting a school of fish, and Tweek lets out a small sigh, the pressure building behind his forehead dissipating slightly.
Now thoroughly scrubbed, Craig removes the stopper and drains the water. Once the tub is completely empty, and Tweek is left with soap suds and a hair full of conditioner, Craig cranks the water on the hottest setting. Tweek screams, and it drowns out Craig’s cackles.
“SHUT UP!” Mr. Tucker’s voice reverberates throughout the entire house. He’s still down in the garage working on the car, but his set of lungs makes it almost impossible to tell that. Tweek has been in Craig’s house enough to be able to determine what room Mr. Tucker is in.
“YOU SHUT UP!” Craig shouts back, despite having inherited his mother’s lungs.
Craig quickly switches the water to lukewarm and scrubs out the conditioner. He scratches off the soap suds coating Tweek’s body and wraps Tweek’s tender red skin in a fluffy towel. “Bath time done, we’re going to my room.”
Tweek only nods in response. His feet leave damp imprints on the carpet. Oh, when was the last time the Tucker’s cleaned their carpet? Did a deep wash? He hopes he doesn’t leave mold on the carpet. Mold does strange things to people, and Craig is already strange enough as it is.
They reach Craig’s room, bypassing Tricia in her own room, and enter heaven.
Craig has a neatness Tweek can only dream of attaining when he grows up.
Unlike Clyde, Craig immediately puts away his clean clothes, refusing to allow them to languish on his bed. Dirty clothes are immediately tossed in the hamper and his game consoles, once he’s finished playing with them, are tucked away — wires roped elegantly and set beside the console in question.
The television Craig had slaved over for several paychecks is mounted on the wall without a single speck of dust, sitting between fat speakers that periodically change colors. LED lights hug the edges of his wall, and his PC, though turned off, follows a similar rainbow pattern.
The posters on Craig’s walls, an amalgam of old and new interests, are perfectly lined.
They weren’t before, but the uneven nature that Craig claimed added “character” sent Tweek into an episode that ended with him in the emergency room, with his parents scolding him and Craig yelling at him, the veins in his neck popping, as the attending physician nodded along, agreeing that Tweek was “stupider than a brain dead hooker” and “will be beaten to actual death” if he “pulls another bullshit stunt like that again”. Tweek doesn’t want to die, so after getting sedated once more, Craig’s walls were reincarnated.
Tweek’s own room is an elaborate strategic mess. If he can’t get to his bed without stepping on a lego, then the underwear gnomes will have an even harder time completing their theft. He’s laid down several traps using the shiny knives Craig had benevolently gifted after demonstrating their efficiency on Tweek’s own body.
C. Tucker rests on his lower back, bumpy from the stitches Craig had done himself, but the writing itself is immaculate, indicative of practice, and giving an explanation for Cartman’s missing cat.
The door closes with a definitive lock, and Tweek shifts his weight, alternating between his left and right leg as if the panic that had been marinating in his brain was leaking down his leg, reminiscent of semen and blood.
Craig rummages through a drawer labeled “Tweek’ in Tweek’s chicken scratch. He fishes out a pair of his old pajamas and tosses them to Tweek. “I got these as a Christmas gift when I was your age. Wear them.”
“Where do I put the towel?”
Craig gestures to the hamper with his head.
Tweek folds it before gently placing it inside. The hamper is navy blue and foldable. Elegant in its design, Tweek can’t even shred it in his dreams.
Craig’s old pajamas hang on him as if he were a coat hanger. The sleeves go past his fingers and the end of his pants are bunched around his feet. Even as a child Craig was a lamp pole.
Craig was the same height as his mother when he completed 8th grade, and when high school began, Craig was already the same height as his father.
Tweek begins to fold up his sleeves when Craig barks at him. “Don’t. Go sit in your usual spot. I’ll let Stripe out of her pen.”
Tweek obediently tip toes to bean bag in front of the television. He sits on the floor, criss-cross applesauce.
Craig opens the Stripes pen, and like a bullet, Stripe shoots directly for Tweek, little paws thumping against the gray carpet. She lunges onto Tweek’s lap, headbutting Tweek’s stomach, and Tweek lets out a little ‘oof’.
“Hi Stripe,” Tweek says softly, stroking her back with two fingers as if he were a guest at an aquarium petting a manta ray. “How are you?”
“Good,” Craig’s falsetto replies. “I slept a lot and ate well, but Dad hasn’t fed me any treats yet.”
“That sucks,” Tweek says honestly. Stripe’s treats are nice, usually small pieces of fresh fruit. Sometimes, Tweek shares with Stripe, either by Craig feeding them one at a time out of the palm of his hand or by Craig leaving it in a little bowl. The bigger one is for Tweek, bought in the cat aisle, and the small one is for Stripe, perfectly guinea pig sized for an even more perfect guinea pig. “Do you want me to give you some?”
“Do you think Dad would mind?” Stripe asks tentatively.
Tweek bites his lip. “Maybe, but I’d like to give you a treat anyway.” Craig is in a magnanimous mood if he’s playing pretend, sounding just like whatever he writes on his instagram account where he pretends to be Stripe. Tweek doesn’t completely understand it, he thinks it’s weird, but Craig often shows him the private messages consisting of guinea pig pictures upon guinea pig pictures upon guinea pig pictures, so for all its strangeness, it’s a brilliant scheme
Tweek looks up at Craig, who’s standing near the still-open pen. “Can I?”
“You know where the kitchen is.”
Tweek gently places Stripe on the carpet. “I’m going to put you down for a little bit to grab some treats. Is there anything in particular you want?”
The falsetto returns. “Strawberries.”
Tweek nods. His upbringing at a coffee shop makes him automatically repeat the order. “Strawberries?”
“Strawberries,” Stripe confirms.
“Get yourself something too,” Craig’s voice returns. “There’s Harbucks in the fridge. I want a beer as well.”
“Strawberries, Harbucks, and beer,” Tweek parrots. “Anything else?”
“Perfect,” Stripe purrs.
“Chips,” Craig replies.
Tweek already knows what kind. “Got it.”
The trek down to the kitchen is nerve-wracking. Tweek is never comfortable in Craig’s home if he’s not glued to Craig’s side, and even then he’s anxious, but it's a manageable type of anxiety, one he’s used to.
He passes by Tricia’s door. She’s constructing the missionary that’s due tomorrow. Tweek had finished it the day it was assigned, with Craig steadying his shaky hands, and helping Tweek glue popsicle sticks together. Craig’s lap was comfortable, and Tweek didn’t realize that he had dozed off until his parents knocked on the door, saying it was dinner time. They invited Craig, but Craig declined, claiming he already had plans.
Craig left with a chaste kiss on Tweek's lips and told Tweek to “do his own homework next time”, though it was Craig who dragged Tweek to the craft store, bought everything, and forced Tweek to complete it the very day it was due.
Tricia notices him. “Hey spaz, get me some apple juice.”
Tweek nods and scurries down to the kitchen, passing by the open garage door. Thomas notices him too. He wipes his forehead with the back of his greasy hand, smearing oil. “Hey faggot, get me a beer while you’re down there.”
“Yessir!” Tweek replies. The insult doesn’t phase him, though Thomas never calls him that when Craig is around. Water is wet, the sky is blue, and Tweek is the little faggot that turned Craig into one.
His arms can barely hold all the beverages. He gives the beer to Thomas first, per seniority, then Tricia, because she’s the second closest. He’s about to go back to Craig’s room when he remembers that he forgot Stripe’s treats and the snacks, so he scampers back down, yelping as he stubs his toe on a corner, and limps back.
Craig is seated at the bean bag chair, toying with the television remote. Tweek hands him the beer and Craig pops the tab open, finishing in three gulps, and then tears into a bag of chips. Tweek carefully places little pieces of grapes and carrots onto Stripe’s bowl, evenly spacing them out. Stripe ‘wheek’s happily and lunges.
Tweek settles down beside Craig, at his spot. He takes a sip of his Harbucks, wet with condensation, and opens his own bag of dried pineapples. Craig made it a habit for him to eat pineapples because it’ll make him taste better when he finally ejaculates. Tweek hopes it’s Craig and not Richard who tries him first.
Craig puts on a show Tweek vaguely remembers Craig’s friends nagging him to watch. He might have been able to remember the name had Craig not unbuttoned Tweek’s pants. His time that night was spent biting through his lip so that Craig and his friends could watch the stoner movie of the week in peace,
Craig frowns, then switches the channel off. He gets up and hooks his laptop up to the television while Tweek continues to gnaw at the pineapples, which settle in his empty stomach happily, giving him the energy he sorely needed. It’s his first meal of the day.
Craig’s laptop wallpaper is a photo of all 3 of them together. Craig is sitting on the beanbag chair, kissing Tweek’s cheek, while Tweek is seating on Craig’s lap. Tweek is holding Stripe, pressing a kiss to her head as she miraculously stares right into the camera. Tweek’s cheeks are flushed, eyes bright, and so are Craig’s. Minutes before, Craig had fucked the life out of Tweek in front of a camcorder. Now that camcorder was used to take a hallmark-worthy photo.
Craig opens an encrypted folder, then goes through a chain of folders until he lands at an unlabelled video with no thumbnail. He presses play and returns to the beanbag chair.
Tweek obediently leans against Craig’s legs, still nibbling on his pieces of pineapple as the raw scream of a girl fills the room from the rainbow speakers, then a chainsaw revs, and then blood splatters across the walls and pours out the speakers and splashes onto Tweek and blinds him. Tweek’s world grows smaller and smaller until all that’s left is Craig’s ice-cold hand around the base of his neck, and the chilling sound of Craig’s zipper digging its teeth into his brain.
Tweek chews faster and hopes that he can finish all his pineapple before Craig gets to him.