Chapter Text
"I'll sue you!" Cartman whimpered and yelled. "I'll sue you, Tolkien, you hear me, asshole?!"
The snowflakes were falling outside the window, slowly coming down little by little, smoothly. These tiny white invaders in cotton ships moved coherently, didn't collide, gently descended to the ground.
"Who are you suing, me?!" Tolkien snapped. "Yeah sure, you jerk, just you wait for the counter lawsuit."
They descended and enveloped the surface. Having reached Earth, every snowflake received the signal: to merge.
"I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't," Tweek went on and on.
On their own - they couldn't, but together the tiny intruders formed an enormous army, a mighty avalanche that burrowed into the soil, covered the asphalt, swept away the earth's life-form in a wave.
"Marsh, Tweak, Donovan - go to the Principal."
The invaders from a distant planet sprayed their white, shiny soldiers over an impressive territory, the intensity of their interference unshakable: they merged lightning-fast into their highest form, a living solid plane.
"McCormick, Cartman, Black, Broflovski, Tucker - you go to the doctor's."
The plane covered the Earth, enveloping it, burying the struggling Earthlings, who instantly assembled their army for the battle.
"Tucker, go to the doctor. Craig Tucker!" Strong Woman touched Craig.
The reaction was immediate: the middle finger emerged from his folded fist a few seconds before Tucker's gray eyes shifted their gaze from falling snowflakes outside the window to the raging Woman.
"To the doctor!" she shouted. Looked at his finger, grimaced. "And then to the Principal!"
Craig leisurely shifted his gaze back to the window. He took one last look at the alien white spaceships, wished them luck in their attack, got up from his chair, and went to the doctor's office. He sighed.
Everybody was fucking ex-as-pe-ra-ting.
Craig entered the doctor's office later than anyone else. The lighting was harsh, the acrid smell of kilotonnes of drugs wafted up his nose, Cartman's whining in his ears. Tucker sank into a chair and began to wait his turn. He wanted to leave.
"Looks like a fracture," the school doctor stated as he examined Eric's finger. Cartman let out another squeak.
Kyle mooed unintelligibly as the nurse began to treat his shattered lip.
"Please prepare the injured areas in advance."
Kenny started fiddling with his clothes, Tolkien leaned back in the chair, covering his eyes: one of them was swelling rapidly.
After watching the others' movements, Tucker tried to move his limbs. Everything was fine; no broken fingers, no scratched knees. Nothing hurt, except...
Craig stared blankly at his arm.
Six top crimson hollows, six bottom ones. Small drops of blood glistened on three of them.
A bite.
No shit.
The droplets protruded viscous lava that was oozing from the bowels, from the depths of rock whose integrity had been compromised by the flurry of meteorite teeth driving into the skin.
Craig looked thoughtfully at the red dome-droplets: ex-tru-si-on.
It didn't hurt.
Well, it didn't comparing to the squealing piggy Eric, who managed to send tear-jerking voice messages to his mom with his healthy hand.
But... What the fuck, anyway? He hadn't been bitten in, like, two hundred years: it was his little sister's thing, back in the day when they solved conflicts physically, till their parents gave them an important educational talk about how you should never hit a family member, only flip them off.
It can't even be considered a full-fledged mean trick, like a kick in the nuts, for example. What the hell?
Look at Tolkien - he broke Cartman's finger like a sane human being, and got his eye punched out, just as it was supposed to happen in a regular fight.
A drop of blood rolled down his skin, and Tucker stopped thinking about other people's injuries and began to consider the outpouring with deep thought.
"Effusion," he muttered to himself, moving his lips.
He looked up.
He froze cautiously when he realized somebody had been watching him the whole time. And who would've thought, this somebody was the freak who clamped his teeth on his arm in the fight.
McCormick watched Craig silently, with his head thrown back and his eyelids lazily half-closed. Being absolutely relaxed, he met Craig's glare, lifting a corner of his lips.
Fatass kept yelling and swearing at Tolkien, who occasionally snapped back, Broflovski was bickering loudly with the nurse and begged her not to call his parents.
McCormick was silent. He slowly slid his gaze to the bite above Tucker's wrist, and returned his gaze back.
Craig kept a detached expression on his face, sensing a growing discontent inside him. McCormick was staring shamelessly into his eyes, for the first time ever as far as he could remember.
Craig hardly knew his face - he'd been hiding in the depths of the parca most of his conscious life. Their group was conspicuously obnoxious in general, rife with perpetual conflict, bursting with completely stupid ideas, and - why they'd gotten into trouble this time - constantly spewing shit in every direction, with or without cause.
McCormick was an integral part of the company of assholes - squealing, yelling, showing off assholes. He was always with them, hooting and hustling like them, sitting at their table. Got into fights.
Like today, when after the game in the locker room Cartman started arguing out loud that if the butterfingers like Clyde didn't even touch the ball, they'd have a chance. Tolkien interceded on Donovan's behalf, Cartman snidely remarked that he didn't have to bitch about Clyde so much, there were no girls in the room for Tolkien to strut his stuff for, everyone had already noticed that Nicole had been giving him a hard time lately. Stan cut in, what's that got to do with anything, Cartman replied that playing basketball with blue-balled black people is a total crap.
The next thing is the mosh.
Craig tried to calm Tolkien down but Tweek was already in the thick of things as usual, so he had to get Tweek out first, before Tweek would go hurricane on everyone. Broflovski got punched in the face while he was dragging Cartman off, Stan was kicking like a horse. Craig grabbed Tweek's shirt in time to pull him away, but suddenly he felt a pain in his left arm above the wrist. He turned and froze; it was McCormick who had locked his jaws on his arm.
They'd fought before, good and hard: breaking noses, smashing faces.
But no one had ever thought of biting.
And after the bite, casually sitting at the doctor's and staring, with blood dripping from his broken nose onto his T-shirt.
Craig glanced at the burgundy stains blurring on McCormick's fabric. He'd have to soak it in water, but not hot water - it would denature the protein, and it would be hard to wash it out. Craig knows how to wash different stains without Mom noticing.
McCormick was still staring straight into Tucker's eyes. Bitey douchebag.
The middle finger appeared almost uncontrollably, concentrating all the annoyance of the McCormick's close attention.
Kenny flicked his gaze to his finger and back. The corners of his lips quirked, spreading into the widest of smiles, his teeth bared, and Craig squinted his eyes a little: blood from McCormick's nose was flooding his mouth, staining his teeth red.
And Craig got bogged down with this spectacle for a few seconds, pushing the noises and thoughts out of his head.
Because it looked creepy... and beautiful.
"What are you whining about?" Craig asked in a quiet voice.
His arm had been treated and even bandaged. The bandage made him feel better: he could imagine there was nothing underneath it.
"They'll call my dad," Clyde sobbed. He didn't have a single scratch or a bruise. "He'll take the card away."
"They'll call everybody's parents," Token interjected angrily. "You should've seen Broflovski, bitching as fuck about it."
PC Principal interviewed everyone in pairs, listening to versions of what had happened. Some of the parents were on their way, and Craig grimaced as he imagined the fuss the adults would kick up once they get here.
The participants in the incident were propped up against the walls of the hallway outside the principal's office, murmuring about some details. No one wanted to go to court besides Cartman.
"Tucker and McCormick, you're next."
There were several chairs in front of the principal's desk; Craig sat in the first one he saw, while Kenny sat beside him, at the side of the injured arm. Tucker groaned in annoyance - McCormick could have sat farther away.
"I'm absolutely not happy with you," Principal began. "We don't have time for explanations, so let's concentrate on the essentials. Okay," the papers on the table were in disarray, Principal took one of the sheets and read it over. "So... Tweek pushed Stan... bumped into Clyde... yeah, here. To quote Eric Cartman's testimony: 'Kenneth McCormick pounced on Craig like a lion defending his pride and especially his best friend Eric.' Do you get what's it about?"
"No," Craig snapped.
"Yes," Kenny nodded.
"Tweek Tweak's testimony alleges that after Tweek shoved Stan in response to..." Principal's eyes ran down the lines, " 'fucking retard,' Kenny jumped on Craig and bit him."
There was a pause.
"Kenny, is this true?"
"Yep," he smiled.
PC Principal looked at Tucker from under his sunglasses. Craig turned away, folding his arms across his chest.
He didn't like it.
Didn't like it at all.
To be here, to hear the buzz outside the door, to be bitten.
Why the fuck had McCormick bitten him in the first place? Couldn't he have hit him or kicked him in the gut properly?
Kenny was sitting next to him like nothing had happened, touching Craig's leg with his knee. Craig put his legs together, turning away from McCormick in a pointed manner.
"Boys, this kind of behavior is unacceptable within the walls of our school. Many of you behaved completely inappropriately today, and you're definitely going to the counselor."
Craig restrained himself from sending the middle finger to Principal's face. Not Mr. Mackey's office, not again.
"You'll both find yourselves in detention for two weeks."
Craig exhaled noisily through his teeth.
"You mean, he bit me," he pointed a finger in McCormick's direction. "And I gotta go to counselor and get a detention with him? Don't you wanna isolate him from me first?"
Kenny hummed a little, masking his chuckle behind a cough.
"Please, Craig, explain what's wrong," PC Principal suggested calmly, putting his fingers together and bringing them to his lips.
"What's wrong? He bit me. B-i-t me, you get it?" Craig articulated the words sharply. "That's not okay. It would've made more sense if he had kicked me in the balls."
"Craig, biting is a normal act of violence, and if Kenny decided to show his dislike for you with biting, he had the right," Principal chided. "Don't discredit the bite against the rest of the attack moves."
"What?" Tucker blinked.
"However consent is an essential part of any relationships, and Kenny disrespected you. So as a preventative measure, we are going to practice asking permission now."
Craig glanced at McCormick with distrust out of the corner of his eye.
The asshole was almost smiling. He was having fun.
So out of the blue McCormick bit him, instead of socking him a good one like regular people would do, and now he was having fun listening to PC Principal's politically correct bullshit.
What a fucker.
"Kenny, go ahead," Principal asked.
Kenny turned to Tucker, gave him a look that made Craig uncomfortable. He gazed Tucker's face and licked his lips.
"Craig..." He slid his gaze lower, then back to his face. "May I bite you?"
His eyes are blue, Tucker noted. And hypnotizing, because Craig didn't answer right away, zoning out, watching the tip of McCormick's tongue follow the edge of his teeth.
The bite ached.
"Craig?" Principal called.
"No," Craig exhaled, to his discontet noticing that the word didn't come out as harshly as it should have. He flipped off McCormick with his middle finger. Kenny smiled again, the hell knows why.
"Okay, that's the way you should've behaved," Principal said, raking the sheets off the table. "That's it for today, your detention starts tomorrow. You can go now. And tell Kyle and Tolkien to come in."
Craig's parents were predictably indifferent to the incident. Only his sister walked fox-like around him after supper, giving him a sly look. After a brief question "What do you want?" from Craig, she asked:
"Did Kenny McCormick really bite you?"
The demonstrated middle finger was his answer, Tricia pulled out her phone and walked away. The scraps of her voice came to Craig: "Karen, it's true, he really did bite him..." until she abruptly slammed the door of her room.
Craig frowned.
Karen is McCormick's sister, isn't she?
Okay, stop. What did he care about his sister's friends? Despite the fact that Tricia was talking about him with Kenny's sister.
Well, what's the big deal anyway? So he 'really did bite him', so what? Nothing much, right?
Okay, definitely something, Craig realized. It sucked, and it was wrong.
He lifted his arm, rolled up his sleeve, took off a bandage. Scrutinized thoroughly. Kenny had applied enough force, but stil hadn't completely bitten through the skin.
Looking at the bite pattern, Craig replayed in his head the moment when the skin got damaged, clinging to a thought that had flashed through at the doctor's office - McCormick's teeth had sunk into his skin like meteoric impacts. The prints were dotted blue, as if filled with cosmogenic rocks. This transformation - the impact metamorphism - was enthralling: Craig examined the edges of the small wounds, the shifting colors within, the position of the imprinted teeth, mesmerized.
A clash, and the intervening teeth slammed into his arm, plowing the skin. The cover is broken, which means the task is complete, and the invaders are signaled to return to base. At light speed, the ships cut through hyperspace, heading back.
Craig notes the three crusts of crimson, which is where the teeth have managed to pierce the skin to the point of blood. It's better to count the marks.
The prints of two upper fangs and the lower right one were the most punctured. But why not the lower left one?
Tucker slid his eyes to the lower arc-shaped chain of prints, scrutinizing closely, noticing the irregularity of the row and how some of the marks smudged, came out crooked.
Interesting.
Turns out that McCormick's lower row of teeth is uneven.
Tucker almost rejoices at this thought, pleased with his analysis. Even though all the facts are literally on the surface, it's still an impossible theory to prove.
As he lies in bed and surrenders to the stream of unconsciousness, Craig feels a kind of uneasiness. It soon subsides, and Craig's most pleasant dreams - of distant galaxies, cosmic oceans and organized aliens - enter his head.
And the aliens' eyes are blue.