Author's Note: Woah, hey. Hi, there. I, uh, this is… this is a piece for emotional ventilation. Nothing really meant to be too amazing or anything like that. I just felt like shit after making a huge mistake, so, what better thing to do than put Craig and Tweek through my own misery?
As soon as I left that office, I was already crying, and began writing this. I started on Monday, and it's Wednesday. The entire thing - not just bits and pieces - was written on notebook paper, with the same pen I've been chewing on for three days. I'm not allowed to use my phone or computer, so this was what came out during my time. Most of it was written in school, anyway.
This is actually set in the same universe as my other fic, I'm Not Going to Think About Him. If you read that, and you're looking for some answers, you're not going to find any here. It'll just leave you asking more questions. Bleh. You don't need to read that to read this, just so you know. They're kinda different. They're just the same Craig and Tweek I used in that.
Anyway, I'm going to stop confusing you. Glad you clicked on this, though. Interpret this word vomit however you like. Enjoy.
(And because I don't think I can go once without asking nicely... leave a review? Please? If you have time, if you like?)
Craig had never seen a person cry so much. Not a spoiled child, nor a newborn baby, could ever cry so much as Tweek. He cried while he cleaned, he cried while he read, he cried while he showered. The simple machine of Tweek's internal waterworks functioned faster by the hour. He would have cried himself an ocean if he hadn't compulsively wiped off every drop that trickled off his face, and onto whatever he may have been doing. There were moments when he'd stop, but just barely - he'd just need a breather, after all, one could only produce so many tears before drying up. Although, when the waterworks loaded up again, the cycle would begin once more: clean, cry, read, cry, shower, cry.
Completely and utterly ignore boyfriend, and cry, Craig thought.
Not that he didn't care. As far as he knew, Craig probably cared more about why Tweek was crying than Tweek cared about why Tweek was crying. Seeing Tweek cry was even worse than Craig seeing himself cry, which was pretty painful in itself - but to see Tweek crying 24/7?
Craig was in agony.
He'd asked him well over one thousand times; it wasn't even something he needed to contemplate. It was an automatic reflex. Before the first tear could even make it halfway down Tweek's face, Craig's internal alert went off, "Why are you crying?" It starts out simple, slightly sentimental. Tweek knows that he cares. Craig waits for an answer. He understands it's hard to speak when you cry. The heavy breathing, the tight chest and throat, the salty tears that trail along the edge of an open mouth, choking on unspoken words.
And even though Tweek failed to speak, the unspoken words spoke for themselves. ("I can't tell you.")
As most unspoken words go, they were unheard. "It's okay," Craig said. "Want to… tell me later? Or something?" Tweek looked at him. His swollen, red eyes, once were clear, bright, and aware - now, all they did was chant. ("I can't tell you, I won't tell you, I'll never tell you, you'll never get it out of me.")
Craig's own stomach dropped with a pit of unsought paranoia.
Had Craig done something? Was the lasagna not as good as usual? Was the coffee machine broken? It wasn't like Craig to be paranoid, but who wouldn't want to ask questions?
"Come here." Craig cupped Tweek's face in his hands, hoping that his face wouldn't slip out of his hold. Tweek held Craig's wrists, lightly, at first, but then tightened his grip on them, as if to say, "Don't go any further."
As the words went unheard, Craig proceeded to lean forward to bring him into a much needed kiss. Tweek let Craig do most of the kissing, as Tweek just remained still. Craig slipped his tongue across Tweek's salty, closed lips, tasting the tears, tasting the reasons. Though, tasted reasons go unheard.
Craig inched away slowly, and kept his eyes closed. Tweek breathed silently.
"I'll make dinner."
Tweek didn't want to be fed. He felt he didn't deserve anything that could keep him alive any longer.
Craig lit a cigarette on the way over to the kitchen to prepare the food. Beef goulash tonight, he decided.
Craig knew Tweek hated it when he smoked in the house; but he knew he hated it even more when he smoked while he cooked. It triggered his paranoia like no other ("Fires! Fires! Fires!") But, Craig knew that things like that rarely ever happened.
Especially in South Park.
Craig adored his own cooking. It occurred to him early in their domestic life that he and Tweek couldn't only live off of microwave meals, and Tweek couldn't go near a stove, let alone a microwave. Someone had to do the cooking around here.
Craig also had a thing for pasta. Not only was his pasta utterly orgasmic (if he did say so himself) but it left him options for creativity. Craig wasn't even that creative in the first place, but he did like food - "Don't like bad food, don't make bad food," he'd say.
As Craig inhaled his beef goulash, Tweek stared into it as if it held the answers of life.
Craig gulped. He circled his fork around in the air and pointed to Tweek's plate. It was that gesture that meant, "You gonna eat?"
Tweek clinked his fork against the plate. Craig took that as a "no."
Craig swallowed again. "It's alright," he said. "I'll just, ah, put it in the fridge, so, you can… eat it later, I guess."
Tweek pushed the plate away without a word. ("I don't deserve to eat.")
That was only the first night.
The fourth night, Tweek had never meant for things to get out of hand.
The fourth night, Craig came home to a mess he only hoped he didn't have to clean up. Well, it really was only the mess he'd worried about when he had to push the front door five times as hard, due to the chairs that now blocked off the entrance to his own home.
It took him longer to even guess where Tweek was than it did for him to climb over all the crap he knocked over. It seemed as though Tweek has planned out an obstacle course for him.
The apartment was destroyed. The dining room table was flipped, the pantry food was all over the floor and beyond, the sofa cushions were nowhere to be seen - God only knows what he did to the bedroom, and the bathroom.
Tweek hadn't said a word during his destruction, not that he needed to. It was his actions that spoke for him, not to mention his tears, which helped with emphasis. His actions still, however, took care of most of the word structuring, the communication. The food on the floor bellowed, "I don't deserve to live!" The flipped table demanded, "How can one live with such instability?" The dismantled sofa pressed strongly, "How can one live in such discomfort?"
When Craig entered the bathroom, he was alarmed by the moisture that seeped through his shoes. With the bathtub filled to capacity, the water flowed slowly, and quietly streamed through the small crannies between the tiles. Every brimming river urged, "Drown me. Wash it all off, please, cleanse me of my sins, anything, anything, drown me!"
After shutting off the faucet and unplugging the drain, Craig turned around, expecting the mirror to be shattered, if he knew his own boyfriend well enough - not much to his surprise, it was. Right in the center.
Every crevice and crack screamed, "I can't stand myself!"
When Craig finally got to the bedroom, he knew Tweek had to be in there somewhere. Perhaps Tweek was suspended in the midst of the clothes that were ripped from the closet, and onto every square inch of the room ("I am vulnerable, naked, transparent."). Craig stepped over his own collapsed working desk ("If I fall, the likes of others are going with me.") and found Tweek curled up on the floor, in the nude. Vulnerable, naked, transparent, as he saw himself. ("Don't look at me.")
After all, Tweek hadn't said a word during his destruction.
It could have gone unmentioned that Tweek was crying - after four nights of the same thing, it became white noise - but Craig noticed it as if it were new. Apparently, destroying the entire apartment didn't do much for coping.
"Now," Craig spoke firmly, "tell me what's wrong, and I won't scream at you for this."
Tweek breathed out. ("You'll scream at me either way.")
Craig offered a hand of help. "Come up off the floor, Tweekie-Bird," he said as kindly as Craigishly possible.
Tweek didn't grab his hand. ("Don't touch me.")
Craig closed his hand and let it fall to his side. "Come on. You've been at this for days now. If you're not gonna tell me, I guess you can't trust me? Hm?"
Tweek didn't know what to say. Even if he did, he couldn't. He wouldn't. He only cried more.
"Just… Just…" Craig began to speak again, rubbing his temples. "Just… Just fucking talk to me, will you?! Since when have we ever had a problem with communication?! If you would just - just, just fucking say something, we wouldn't have this problem, now would we?" Craig was steaming up, face reddened. When Craig was nervous, he spoke loudly. When Craig was angry, he spoke loudly. The thing was, when Craig felt an emotion, he spoke. And his problem was, that Tweek wasn't speaking. "Speak!"
Tweek whimpered. ("Don't listen to me.")
Craig waited for him to speak. He wanted to hear the words come out of Tweek's mouth, not anywhere else. He wanted to hear his voice.
Tweek just eyed him, seeing him now, as a different person. He wasn't his boyfriend anymore. He felt as though Craig was an elder, a figure of authority to be intimidated by, or even a father he needed to apologize to. ("I'm sorry.")
"Well?" Craig pressed. "Have anything to say to me?"
("Pressure! Pressure! Pressure! Not the pressure!") Tweek was so close. So, so damned close to speaking, just this once. His mouth was even open, and it wasn't to cry, nor to scream. It was to speak, and he just couldn't make it. The words were climbing up his throat, one by one. Not even one could make it to the tip of the mountain that was his tongue; each and every word fell to their deaths, never to be remembered.
Craig slammed him up against the wall.
The two were close now, but not romantically, in any way - it was the terrible closeness that was felt when, if they inched any closer, they'd be crossing a barrier of hate. In their case, it was a barrier of synthetic, artificial hate - the kind that was strong enough to take over love in any situation. The kind that makes you hate hate, as the genius super-villain it could be in order to blind love.
They were close enough to take in each other's scents. Tweek smelled showered, physically cleansed - however, mentally, he was a dirty, filthy mess, that not even the most compulsive of neat freaks could clean. Craig, however, smelled rugged; like he'd just come home from a hard day's work, sweating under a coat in a hardly heated apartment. He smelled angry, and neither of them even knew such a scent existed.
Craig leaned in closer; Tweek closed his eyes.
Tweek didn't want to be smelled. He didn't want Craig to be reminded of everything wrong with him.
Their scents used to compliment each other. It used to be an unmistakable smell of fresh ground coffee and soap, infused with Craig's miniscule touch of Axe, and the overpowering smell of cigarettes; but most of all, he smelled like his cooking.
"Why would we be together…" Craig whispered, "…if you can't trust me?"
Craig was so, so damned close to tasting Tweek - the first night, it was a lighter taste; this night the fourth, the taste would be saltier, sour, bitter, and filled with all the more reason Craig couldn't hear the reasons. ("Don't taste me.")
"Fine. Fine." Craig's digging nails released themselves from Tweek's bare flesh. "I didn't think we'd ever have a problem with trust. Secrets. There were no secrets, were there? What is it now, Tweek?" He spoke as if he were in a rush, in a crowd. Loud and fast. "Secrets? What are you—hiding—" Craig punched the wall behind Tweek, his white knuckles stabbing a deep hole into their weak walls. "—hiding from me?"
Anger was quite obviously getting the best of Craig. Blinded by his rage, he wasn't able to see that Tweek, nor himself, was in his right state of mind.
"I am not—!" Craig tried so hard not to yell. So, so hard. "I am not cleaning up after you!"
Tweek's tears had been long gone - he was dried up. He felt dead. He couldn't do anything. He was cold, silent, motionless, thoughtless, Godless.
He's not going to say anything, Craig thought, stop trying.
He looked at the hole in the wall. It was only another addition to the destruction of their home. He looked at his hand; white, but scarred - still, but shaking. Then, he remembered the mirror - what had Tweek used? He'd inferred he might have used a hairbrush, or anything else besides his own hand—
When Craig caught a glimpse of Tweek's bleeding knuckles, he inferred otherwise.
He realized what was happening.
Every word, whisper, wail, that had been caught up and tangled in the word webs in the bedroom walls, was escaping. Not only through the hole he made, but also through the collapsed furniture, such as his desk, which had spent so many years hiding holes, hiding the flaws. And now, they were exposed, and though unspoken, the words lingered through the air, they were liable to be heard and remembered once again.
Every first "I love you," every potential "I hate you," lived in these walls, and whether spoken or unspoken, heard of unheard, they were gone - here, the moment they were said, and gone the next. Fragments, dependent clauses, and paradoxes scattered their way beyond the room, and peered into the bathroom, where their neighbors rest.
The bathroom was more secretive; the doors were always shut, if not locked. It was the home of more whispers and unspoken words. The mirror knows everything about them, inside and out. It holds their self-hating thoughts, their narcissistic ideas. The barrier was cracked now, and the remains were lunged into Tweek's knuckles, every bit and piece of self-esteem dripping with sticky, carmine fluids.
Craig breathed out, collecting himself. "Sorry," he said aloud. "Let's… let's get that cleaned up."
When they both got to the bathroom, Tweek snapped back to life when his bare toes touched the cold water on the tiled floor. He looked at the damage he'd done: bottles and toilet paper rolls were scattered, amongst other toiletries that weren't in their place ("Messy! Messy! Messy!"). Most of all, he noticed the mirror. When he looked into it, he saw a distorted figure, someone who very obviously wasn't himself. Mirrors were quite the liars, anyhow, so, there really wasn't a trace of a difference, was there?
Craig turned the sink on. "Gimme your hand." He grabbed it for him, and let it run under cold water. A hiss of pain slipped through Tweek's teeth. "Sorry, if it's cold," Craig said. "You kinda, ah, used up all the warm water."
The water was ice cold against Tweek's aching hand. Craig scrambled around to look for the bottle of liquid soap and a washcloth. He found both at the bottom of the bathtub, which was now fully drained. The bottle seemed to have been barely filled with any soap, just some bubbly water and perhaps a tinge or two of actual soap. He tossed the cap of the bottle over his shoulder and squeezed out the last of whatever was left in the bottle onto Tweek's hand. When that was done, he threw the plastic bottle over his shoulder, too. He cleaned the wounds in Tweek's hand as softly as possible, careful to not deepen any shards that may have already been in his skin.
"Sorry," Craig said, again, "I kind of don't know how to do this sort of thing."
Tweek wanted to tell him that it was okay.
When Craig was sure that at least enough of the blood was gone, he scoured the room for the pair of tweezers that he was almost sure they owned.
"Please tell me you remember where you threw the tweezers," he pleaded.
Tweek opened his mouth the slightest bit. ("They're under the—")
"Found 'em."
Craig had their only pair of tweezers between his fingertips; this was the first time he'd ever found a use for them. He shut the water off and brought Tweek's hand close to his face, trying to see just exactly where the shards were pressed.
Craig was probably focusing harder on this than anything he'd ever focused on in his life. Each and every shard was just as important as the other, though none of them deserved to stay a part of Tweek forever - each of them needed to leave, to be forgotten.
Forgetting each piece would not be a painless process. Each shard that was pulled out was equivalent to one cry of pain, and one tear to fall on either individual's hands.
Craig pulled out the last piece and, while still holding Tweek's trembling, wounded hand, and brought his lips to Tweek's skin, kissing it gently, healing it for the time being.
Craig dried Tweek's hand off for him, and lead the short way back to the bedroom by linking arms.
And with a few swipes and pushes, the bed was cleared of all wrinkled, piled clothing. Craig's own work clothes blended in with the pile in a short matter of time.
Craig set Tweek down delicately on the bed, like he was a precious doll. Craig knew he'd need to play with him gently now, because he would never forgive himself if he were to break the parts of him that were especially fragile.
Tweek, lying beneath Craig, only wondered - wondered if this was what he really deserved. Did he really, in the end, deserve the pity sex? He wondered if that, in the beginning, if he'd just kept his mouth shut, and kept his actions to himself, that he'd still be going through this right now?
He wondered, what if we lived in a world without words? What is the only way humans could communicate was through body language? How many conversations, compliments, conclusions, would go misinterpreted? If not a single person spoke, would we be able to love? To hate? Would it be body over mind and speech, all day, every day, all the time? Is it only body language that makes us hate and love?
He wondered, if the words "I love you," and, "I'm sorry," didn't exist, would he and Craig be here, right here, right now? Would the several "I'm sorries" Craig offered, and the zero "I'm sorries" Tweek returned, make up for the lack of "I love yous" in this pitiful sex?
Tweek would never know the answers. Everything was just too much pressure to think about; it was an alternate, wordless universe that wouldn't exist for him, and Tweek was almost glad he didn't live in it. Almost glad, because, even when Craig insisted that he loved Tweek and that everything was going to be okay, it was conveyed through nothing but this body language. Everything was going to be okay, because, in the morning, the entire apartment would be cleaned before Tweek even woke up. It was going to be okay, because, in the morning, Craig was going to make an amazing breakfast - the breakfast Tweek deserves, because he wants him to live. It was going to be okay, because, in the morning, Craig wasn't going to ask what the problem was, as long as he got to hear Tweek's voice. It was going to be okay, because, both of them knew that it was okay to pretend it was okay, as long as they had each other. They both knew it was going to be okay, because, the entire time Tweek was cradled in Craig's arms, warm and calm, not a word was said.