Eric Cartman and Tweek Tweak are not friends.
Since the ill-fated "Replacement Kenny" experiment in fourth grade, no one has ever seen them interact in any way. They don't even look at each other.
They never look at each other. Not when they're watching some crappy late-night TV movie, covertly sharing a bowl of Cheesy Poofs under a blanket. Not even when they're close as close gets, wrapped tightly around each other, their silence broken only by hushed gasps and screams. They took each other's virginity, and Tweek doesn't know what colour Cartman's eyes are.
It's been at least six years since they've said a single word to each other, and close to two years since Cartman first kissed Tweek. He didn't know why at the time, and he doesn't know now, but he does know that Tweek kissed back.
They don't love each other. They don't even like each other. Anyone in South Park would classify them as complete opposites- Cartman's strong, loud, forceful, not afraid to get into trouble. He burns like fire and he doesn't care who sees. Tweek's quiet, suffocated by anxiety, rarely confrontational, obsessed with the worst possible consequences. Any fire in him was extinguished long ago, doused with wild paranoia and too much coffee.
They're not opposites. If they were opposites, they could find a happy medium. They're too similar, an effect that pushes them apart and draws them together at the same time.
When Tweek's taken too much of the world's stress and needs to retreat, he finds himself noticing too many similarities.
You like someone who doesn't like you back.
At lunchtime, Tweek watches Craig. They don't sit at the same table anymore. It must be one of life's sick little jokes that his crush started to develop at the same time their childhood friendship had crumbled completely.
At the same time, Cartman watches Butters. His gaze is returned, because Butters would do anything for him- anything except love him the way Cartman wants. Despite his strong feminine tendencies, and his deep affection for his friends (particularly Cartman), Butters had turned out completely straight. Life just couldn't give its sick jokes a rest.
Butters is small and blond, and so is Tweek.
Craig is tall and dark-haired, and so is Cartman.
Maybe it's not so strange after all.
Your family doesn't help you.
Tweek's parents had been the driving force behind his addictions and anxiety since day one. Would he be the same twitching wreck if he had been born to some other family? Maybe, maybe not. It was far too late to test that theory. Tweek just sighed, gripping the cup of specially-blended coffee until his knuckles turned white. Coffee used to make him feel good. Now all it does is make him feel okay, but it's still better than going without.
Liane Cartman is different. She doesn't push vices onto her son, but she certainly enables the ones he managed to obtain on his own. Tweek's never met her, but Cartman tells Kenny and Butters about her latest exploits all the time, his current mood determining whether she's a "heartless ginger-fucking bitch" or "the best mom ever, look, she brought me KFC".
He doesn't talk about his father.
They love their parents, but they can't talk to them, and they can't talk to each other.
Your friends left you behind.
In fourth grade, there had been two distinct groups. Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman and Butters made up one, while the other consisted of Craig, Clyde, Token, Jimmy and Tweek. There had been some kind of rivalry between them at first, but a few mutual friendships brought the groups closer and closer until they merged into one.
They weren't all as inseparable as they seemed. They could have plenty of fun while missing one or two of their friends. And it was always the same friends missing.
They had their reasons, and Tweek knew every last one as if they had been presented to him in a formal essay.
Tweek was paranoid, shrill, clingy, quick to anger, selfish, anxious, weird, annoying.
Cartman was loudmouthed, intolerant, arrogant, self-centred, sadistic, manipulative, belligerent, annoying. Butters and occasionally Kenny stuck around, but Tweek darkly noted that it couldn't last forever. Or maybe they were just as fucked up as he was, but managed to hide it better.
Maybe Tweek had no friends, and maybe nobody really liked him, but someone was choosing his company over solitude. Someone almost as lonely as him.
You can talk without saying anything.
Their silence was natural in the beginning. They had nothing to say to each other, and they couldn't talk if their lips were connected anyway.
It was comforting, knowing that they didn't need to talk. Tweek didn't need to keep up with a conversation that could change subject or tone at any time, where he could accidentally say the wrong thing and destroy... whatever they were doing. It wasn't a relationship- was it? He didn't exactly have anything to measure against. Maybe secret, silent, emotionless romances were a part of life that nobody had mentioned to Tweek. His parents didn't talk to each other very much, and he had never seen much love between them.
Life seemed abstract and confusing, but Tweek found he could make sense of a lot of things if he looked closely enough.
Years later, silence is still comforting, but at the same time slightly suffocating, like burrowing under a warm blanket. "We do not need to talk" has rearranged itself into "We do need to not talk". They walk on figurative eggshells, knowing that one careless word will bring an end to it all.
Still, they get by. They make vague hand signals for "Pass the snacks" or "There's no way I'm watching this stupid fucking movie for another second". For things like "Harder", "Faster", or "Don't stop, I'm so fucking close", a desperate moan is more than enough.
They never use words or eye contact, but they're not lacking in communication.
You're insane.
Tweek's barely holding on and he knows it. He marks the calendar with red every time an anxiety attack sends him running out of class. Yellow for every time he pulls his hair out. Blue for every time he has to hide his face, so no one sees the tears he's desperately trying to blink away. Green for every time the incessant shaking makes him drop something. Purple for every time he wishes to be anywhere else, even a coffin six feet underground.
His calendar looks like a fucking rainbow.
He's hooked on coffee, cough syrup, and some special pills he gets from a stranger in an alley. He's been emotionally neglected since he was born. He gets about two hours of sleep per night. Tweek is ready to collapse under the pressures of life, just like a fragile building expected to support far too much weight. He's a worthless anxiety-ridden junkie and he wouldn't really mind if his chronic substance abuse just stopped his heart one of these days.
He doesn't have access to any internal monologues about Cartman's mental state, but throwaway comments and rumours, and memories of the dangerous light in his eyes even as a child, all piece together to form a not-so-pretty picture.
Their sick minds can't keep struggling with reality for much longer. Tweek will quietly collapse, a danger to nobody but himself, but all of Cartman's twisted fury will burst outwards and unleash pure hell.
Eric Cartman is insane, and Tweek has no idea when the inevitable explosion will come. He just hopes it won't be while they're alone.
You have brown eyes.
He looked. Just a quick glance, while Cartman was completely lost in Butters' blue eyes. It was the first lunchtime that Tweek's eyes had wandered from Craig, just for a few seconds.
Cartman never noticed a thing. Maybe this fucked up "no eye contact" deal had all been in his head. It wouldn't be the first, or even the most elaborate of his delusions.
Those brown eyes looked like they belonged to the dead. Just like Tweek's.
They haven't had a conversation since they were nine, but Tweek knows Cartman better than he'll ever need to know anyone.
He knows none of this can mean anything. They're insane and lonely, and they're simulating the affection they never got from the people who mattered. It's better than lying on his own bed, cold and untouched, waiting for sleep or death to take him.
As long as they have nothing to say, they can keep believing there's nothing between them. They say nothing, and their insistent silence says more than words ever could.