AUTHORS NOTE: okay, hi. i'll try to keep this short. basically, this is going to follow three sets of boys- craig and tweek, kenny and butters, and stan and kyle, starting from the 7th grade and ending in the 12th. i promise it won't be romance/yaoi heavy, more an indepth study of the evolving mechanisms of their relationships. but yeah, it's slash.
just warnin' ya now, chapters are going to be weird and sporadically updated. each one will focus on a specific set. this one's craig and tweek. i apologize if it's confusing at first, i'm sorting out their lives atm.
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Most boys saw the summer as a breath of fresh air. They saw the summer as a chance to stretch their wings and soar- metaphorically speaking, of course- over the heated asphalt of South Park, drowning their tensions, accumulated over the course of a school year, in ice cream and video games and lazy days spent hanging with their friends, young bodies playing on the perpetually-snowy ground.
But Craig Tucker was not one of these boys. A mess of red hair belonging to his younger sister appeared in the frame of his doorway. "Dinner in a few," she informed him. Automatically the boy answered her with his middle finger, a gesture she automatically returned before disappearing from sight. Sighing, Craig stood from his bed and stretch. One more dinner done, one more day done until school started again.
It wasn't that he enjoyed school itself. The learning, the bastards masquerading as teachers, his impossibly aggravating peers – they all sucked. School did, however, provide for one thing his home life never could: peace of mind. He wasn't abused, thank God for that, but there was just something not quite right with the Tucker household. He had known it since he was very little, from his first sleepover at a friends house (Token's? Clyde's? He couldn't remember.) He had noticed an amazing thing – it was quiet. Not in a tense, speak-to-me-and-die way, but in a peaceful, we-are-comfortable-with-ourselves way. It had unnerved him in a way he wouldn't be able to understand until he was older.
His family was famous for their excessive usage of flipping the bird, but apart from that, everyone assumed they were about as normal as citizens of South Park got. Unfortunately, assumptions were usually incorrect. His mother was emotionally absent, so to speak. She was a puppet in housewife's clothing, with glassy brown eyes and a sewed on smile. She played the part of mother like an amateur actress doing her first reading: sure, at times, she'd hit on the appropriate emotion, but more often that not she simply fell flat. His dad, a heavy redhead of fifty or so, was akin to an unstoppable force. He was too heavy-handed, too overbearing, unable to draw boundaries. He angered quickly and cooled too slowly. Although Craig or his sister Ruby had yet to be hit by him, even touched in anger, Craig knew one day he wouldn't be able to catch himself in time. As for Ruby, she got along well enough with her brother, but they both knew that one day they'd grow up, pretend as if their childhood never happened, and become strangers.
Sort of depressing if you think about it, which is why Craig tried not to. But it was a little hard when his father was glowering at him while his puppet-mother quickly deposited a plate of Stouffer's in front of him. Oh, frozen dinners, keeping the family together since '98. Mr. Tucker continued to glower for a few long moments, before Craig sighed tiredly and threw him a look. "What."
The heavy-set man narrows his eyes slightly but plays his hand carefully. He's not angry, then, Craig notes, if he hasn't started yelling then. Tread carefully. "I just don't think it's healthy for a boy to spend his entire summer cooped up in his damn bedroom," his father finally says, his voice not exactly cold, but not giving in any way. "Craig doesn't have any friends," Ruby helpfully points out, as Craig flips her off. "Perhaps then he should make some," his father grinds out. "How fucking hard can it be to act like a regular kid, jesus." The boy groans and shoves his plate away from him. "Whatever, I'm not hungry," he says to no one in particular, flipping off his family over his shoulder as he heads back upstairs. Although he doesn't see them, he knows they've all returned the gesture.
Craig throws himself dramatically on his bed, trying to conjure up some sort of anger or sadness from within him and failing to find it. It used to be that the blue-hatted boy was the fiery one and his father the emotionless one. Somewhere in between his fight in shop class and the Pandemic, though, all the cares drained out of him. He simply disconnected. And where he had disconnected, his father had plugged in- the less he cared, the louder his father got. The louder his father got, the more his mother faded away and the crueler his sister became. He cracks his neck.
If pressed, he could easily name the first occurrence that marked his descent into the detached being he was today. The fight in Shop Class. A dull flame flickers in his chest. Stan fuckin' Marsh and his fucking friends, especially Eric fuckin' Cartman. The bastards had tricked him into fighting this kind of annoying kid, Tweek Tweak. He hadn't ever thought much of the boy before Cartman had made up some bullshit about Tweek telling everyone he ate shit. Even then, Craig hadn't been impressed enough to fight the kid- people said stupid shit all the time. So Cartman had lured him away from his beloved Red Racer, claiming that the Tweek kid had accused him of shoving his guinea pig up his ass. His younger self had boiled in anger. Funny, when you're young, how much something can mean to you- that guinea pig had been his only companion. Back in the days he lusted for, when his dad had settled for complete avoidance and not forced intrusion.
Even then, he would have been willing to let the whole thing slide as neither boy knew how to fight, but no, fucking Cartman and fucking Marsh stepped in again, and after a training sequence Craig would spend the rest of his life denying ever happened, the two boys were flying at each other. Their training had pretty much dissolved into a haphazard collection of impact, the fourth graders clawing and punching at each other. After Kenny had died (Craig felt the slightest traces of sympathy for that guy- to have the freedom of dying, only to be forced to return to Shithole Park every time) they had wound up at the hospital.
It could have ended there. After all, fuckin' Broflovski and fuckin' Cartman had admitted they set the whole thing up. Of course the greedy bastards had to ruin the temporary trance that had fallen between him and the jittery kid by riling him up, something about our parents calling us wusses. And then he had launched himself at me. The kid was surprisingly spry and he had the element of surprise. The shock of the attack had been enough to cause him to switch focus from the Marsh-and-co fags and on to the twitchy freak with a decent right hook. The hospital scuffle had resulted in serious enough injuries to do real damage- but South Park being South Park, they both recovered well enough but for their memories. Both had been forced to spend time in a mental institution for 24 hours of observation. The twitchy freak had deserved it, younger Craig had thought. He was a twitchy freak. He clearly had issues. I, on the other hand, was forced into this.
From that time on, he had hated Tweek Tweak. Despite the fact that it wasn't Tweek's fault, not really, and he knew that and hated Marsh-and-co fags equally for it, but if the damned spaz had just been less fucking naïve, less gullible, they could have avoided the whole scene in the hospital. Fifth grade was then spent seeing to it that Tweek-Twerp got his. Although his emotions were beginning to fade, he reserved them for the spaz, never resorting to outright violence – he didn't need to be suspended – but ruining the year for the skinny boy enough.
The summer before sixth grade, Tweek Twerp had approached him. He still hung out with the other children of South Park at that point. They had been playing baseball or something, and he just came up and said, "Craig, I – ngh! – wanted to apologize for – twitch – the hospital fight," and Craig had flipped him the bird, murmuring "whatever."
From that point on, Tweek Twerp had become a background object to him, nothing of interest.
Sighing again, Craig picks himself off his bed and heads downstairs, ignoring his father's question- demand, really- to know where he's going. The door slams behind him as he steps onto the porch, inhaling the crisp air. Another strange thing about South Park: even in summer, it snowed. Some voodoo was surely afoot. Shrugging to himself, he stepped down onto the pathway to the sidewalk and began to drift, aimlessly. Ruby had been right, but he hated it being put that way. He could have friends, if he wanted. Clyde and he had always gotten along fine enough, at the least. But friends required energy and attention, and that he didn't have to spare. Luckily, he had managed to inspire some sort of lone wolf, don't-fuck-with-me reputation, and was left kindly alone.
He settles down at the lake, kicking his legs in front of him. His hands stay shoved securely in his worn blue jacket. It would be a long summer.
"Ngh!" The messy, blonde-haired kid shrieks as he almost drops his customer's order. The guy eyes him warily but, being a regular and used to Tweek's outbursts, says nothing, merely taking his coffee and slipping a quarter into the tip jar. "Gah! Thank you," he calls out after the guy.
Someone gently clears their throat and he turns, jumping when he sees the three-person line. "Shit, shit, it's too much pressure!" He yelps, wrapping his slim fingers in his partially ruined hair. He hated working at his dad's coffee shop, but he didn't have any choice in the matter. All Tweaks worked at Tweak Bros. It was in their blood- coffee, that is. As he busies himself with customers' orders, Tweek tries to relax.
Relax, he thinks, relax relax relax—GAH! It's not working, I'll never relax because I can never stop thinking about it and then I'll loose focus on what I'm doing and accidentally shoot myself in the eye with the hot coffee and then I'll go blind! And then I'd have to quit working here and my dad would throw me out and I'd starve to death and die! "GAH!" He shouts, practically flinging the order into the hands of thankfully waiting customer. "I don't want to be blind! Or starve!" The blonde adds loudly, as the last of the customers receives their coffee and shuffles to a seat.
A cheerful bell alerts him someone else has just entered. "Erk! Welcome to – twitch – Tweak Bros Coffee!" He tries to sound cheerful, like he's supposed to, but it comes out demented and raspy. For a moment he can't see who it is and then the faces come into view. With it, his heart sinks. Clyde Donovan, flanked by Token Black. Tweek, ever observant, had theories on why Clyde had picked up where Craig had left off – lack of sleep and hours of thinking lead you to these things – he had noticed Craig's complete disconnect from the world around the beginning of sixth grade. Clyde had been hurt by this abandonment of sorts. Clyde wanted to take his anger out on something, so Tweek, having been the object of Craig's anger for so long, seemed a good replacement.
Funny, Craig and he used to be at-the-least good acquaintances.
Coffee-colored eyes, bloodshot, dart around the faces of the two boys. "What do – erk! – do you want?" Token looks annoyed, in a passive sort of way; Tweek knows he was more inclined to be neutral but put up with his friend's hostilities. Clyde reaches over and smirks. "Gimme a cup of joe," he says lazily, and Tweek tenses his shoulders, forcing himself to be steady as he brews the coffee. He knows Clyde will try something, because at work, Tweek can't fight back. Were they anywhere else, he'd go back blow for blow, even if he lost in the end anyway, but fighting would scare away the customers. And then we'd go out of business, and then dad would really sell me into slavery! "Gah!" He whimpers, and bites hard on his lower lip, drawing blood from the already cracked and sensitive skin.
"H-here," he chokes out, placing the cup of coffee on the counter. "What, aren't you going to hand it to me?" Clyde asks, and he almost sounds innocent. Tweek hesitates, but then, because he has to, because Clyde has the power at this moment, picks up the steaming hot drink and slowly thrusts it out. Predictably the other boy slaps his hand to it, sending it flying up and back onto the ragged blonde. "Ack!" He screeches, blinking away surprised tears at the sudden burning on his face and down his shirt. "Shit, man," the boy says, raspily, his voice drowned out by Clyde's laugher. "Oh, oh sorry Tweeky, my bad," he flinches at the nickname. And then, despite how badly he wants to reach over and sock the boy in the face, to grab him and shake him and scream, he glances to see his father observing from his usual spot, across the way, and sucks in his breath. "No it was – gah! – it was my fault, Clyde. Let me get you a new one. Ngh! For free."
Let's see how many cups Clyde will destroy today, he thinks rapidly as he draws out the next cup. He turns back and holds it out reluctantly, a special sort of resignation in his shoulders. Before Clyde can do anything, though, Token snatches it. "Dude, we have a lot of work to do. Can we just get out of here?" The other boy pouts and gives him a sideways look. "Work, but its summer! Time for fun!"
"Uh huh." The black boy stands firm and herds his friend out of the coffee store, giving Tweek a half-hearted look as he walks out. He screws his eyes up really tight, expecting his father's presence at any moment and hoping it won't appear. But it does. His eyes open to the sound of his father clearing his throat, a patience look resting on his face. His dad meant well, Tweek knew, but more often than not he wished he'd just leave him alone.
"W-what do you – nhg – want, dad?" He asks, pained, because his father's eyes are expectant. As if they didn't go through this routine every time someone picked on him at work. "Son, I just wanted to let you know I'm pleased with the way you handled that. You see," he pauses dramatically, lifting his leg to rest on the somehow magically spawned footstool next to him. Tweek twitches and looks around nervously, wishing he didn't have to do this. "When people come to Tweak Bros Coffee, they expect a warm and friendly small town environment. And we provide this environment not only through our fresh, hand-ground beans, but through the caring and attitude of our employees. Namely, you." He's starry-eyed now, fingers wrapped around a steaming mug. "Yes, it's that atmosphere of community closeness that brings our customers back for more. Well," he chuckles, "and our delicious roasted coffee beans." He turns to the man standing behind him, patiently waiting for him to finish. "Wouldn't you agree?" His dad finishes dramatically, gracefully handing the cup of coffee to the man, who takes a deep swig and gives a thumb up.
As the man turns and heads back to his table, Tweek's father straightens up and leans forward slightly. "Those two cups are coming out of your paycheck, young man," he adds, his voice no longer misty, and walks away. The twitching blonde makes a strangled noise, tangling his fingers in his shirt. His parents didn't give him an allowance and they won't let him work anywhere else, so after a few years of wheedling, they finally agreed to give him a paycheck. A meager, barely minimum wage paycheck, but it was enough to provide for the sorts of activities the kids of South Park participated in. Usually. Not that Tweek ever did, as the majority of them just seemed too damned dangerous or made him so nervous and then everyone would be looking at him and he. Just. Couldn't. Handle. That. Pressure.
Tweek was the scorned once and never again type. The last time he'd put himself in a social situation had been the summer before sixth grade. He recalled the scene, frowning.
Craig Tucker had been making his life hell for almost a year and a half, and Tweek was, frankly, sick of it. He understood perfectly WHY Craig felt the need to constantly pick on and belittle him – hell, how could he blame the kid for that – but they were starting middle school, and wasn't this a good chance for them to start over? For Tweek to reinvent himself, or some bullshit? No, that wasn't really it, the point was allowing himself to take it lying down (and he did because he did deserve it in a cosmic sort of way) was fraying his already frayed nerves and the amount of restraint it took to not kick Craig's smooth-skinned face in was ridiculous.
The boys had been playing baseball, Tweek remembers. Stan and his friends, Craig and his, the few oddballs like Christophe and Pip and Butters standing around and watching. Only Tweek wasn't involved. His fingers digging into the thermos of coffee he clutched to his chest, Tweek took a heavy breath and lunged in front of Craig, who was on one of the bases- first, maybe.
Only Craig was aware of him at this point, which he used to his advantage. "Ngh!" he started, then cursed himself for his inability to speak coherently. His head just moved too damned fast for his mouth. "Craig I wanted to – ack! – to apologize, for the, the," he looked down, pressing his thermos even harder to his chest. "Hospital s-stuff," he finally choked out, his hands twitching madly. Craig was silent. But not just Craig- the field had fallen still, and he felt the stares of what seemed to be hundreds of boys and not just the small group it was. He looked around wildly, choking on the words "sweet jesus," registering everyone's looks, ranging from curious to annoyed, and made a small, wild-animal noise in the bag of his throat. His fingers spasmed and involuntarily released his thermos, which hit the ground with a dull thud, and wound as tightly as they could in his corn-stalk hair. Clawing at his scalp, Tweek screeched, loud enough for the whole town to hear, "TOO. MUCH. PRESSURE!"
The group burst into laughter. Craig flipped him off with an accompanying "whatever," and Tweek, ignoring the blood that stained the very tips of his fingers, snatched up his thermos and ran.
Given his luck, Tweek shouldn't have been surprised by the way things turned out. After drowning himself in coffee and calming down- metaphorically speaking, Tweek was never 'calm' – he had actually felt really good with the way that went. Craig flipped everyone off, it was how he spoke. And he hadn't hit him or insulted him, which was also a good sign.
Unfortunately, it seems his sense of timing was bad. With Craig no longer ragging on him, the floodgates had opened. Because of his reluctance to fight back against Craig, the other boys assumed he just was easy to pick on.
The sucky thing about middle school was that's when kids learn the power of, well, power. Tweek went from being Craig's personal punching bag to an open target for not just Clyde, but the seventh and eighth graders as well. He fought back, but everyone seems bigger than him, and the only one he's ever able really keep off successfully is Clyde, which is why Clyde tortures him at work, where he's truly defenseless.
His shift ends in two minutes. Tweek refills his thermos and drinks deeply, half-hoping he could just claw his brains out and leave it at that.