Author's Note: I just wanted to point out that I'm from South Wales so I mainly use UK English, but I did try to use US English for some words that are more frequently used (it felt so weird writing 'mom' instead of 'mum' I'm not going to lie). I forgot when I was writing this that they have mailboxes outside instead of letter boxes on doors in South Park because those aren't common in the UK, but I kind of needed to write it with door letter boxes for one of the elements of this fic to work so I kept it.
Also I'm very used to writing essays so I'm not exactly out of practice, but it's been years since my last finished fictional piece of work so I have to get used to this and find my writing style again. I feel good about how this chapter turned out though considering. I have a lot of ideas and started fics in the works, but I decided to make this one my return to fanfiction writing because I really enjoyed writing it.
The kid's current ages in this fic are seventeen, but in this chapter a couple of other ages are mentioned because of flashbacks.
A small groan came from within the mound of blankets on the floor as Tweek's alarm clock roared to life that morning.
His unruly hair was the first thing to spring into view from beneath the sanctuary of duvets as he slowly shifted into a sitting position, letting them fall around him as he stretched out his arms and felt the popping and cracking of his joints accompanying the movement.
On the rare occasion that his parents were still home when he woke up, they would always question why he slept on the floor when he had a perfectly good bed that was also probably a lot better for his back. His response was that the floor was warmer than the bed. This was true since it was closer to the side of the room his radiator was on, but a bigger part of it was that he didn't have to worry about what may or may not be lurking in the small, dark space underneath him when he slept on the floor.
He gathered up the blankets and threw them on the bed, with the exception of an old, worn blanket from his childhood that he kept mostly for comfort. He kept it wrapped around his shoulders as he shuffled towards his desk. He found his tasks for the day scrawled messily across a few of the infinite post it notes that lined his shelves.
Being someone who forgot things quite easily and panicked at the thought of the possible consequences of losing important information, Tweek liked to leave as many visual reminders for himself as possible. The post-it notes were colour coded depending on their importance and ranged from chores watering the plants to important phone calls and emails he'd received for his parents while they were at work to ideas he'd had for song lyrics that he was afraid he would forget. He placed today's notes on the desk next to his computer, knowing that would be his first and possibly only stop for the day once he'd finished his morning routine.
Going about this routine had become almost automatic in the past four years, only interrupted in the event that a sudden noise from outside made him jump. Although there was one part of every morning that he dreaded and it always arrived sooner than he was comfortable with. The moment he had to open the door and collect the newspaper from outside. It seemed like a trivial thing to stress over, but for someone who hadn't left his house very often since he was thirteen and didn't want to be spotted and have to face an onslaught of questions, it was more than a bit challenging.
He sat with his ear pressed to the front door, waiting for the tell-tale sound of footsteps approaching and then fading into the distance again. Only when he was completely sure no one was out there did he take a deep breath and count to ten before quickly reaching up to pull the handle and edge his front door open. As soon as the newspaper came into view he sprinted across to snatch it from the outside world as quickly as possible before dashing back into the safety of his house and slamming the door shut again. He clutched the paper to his chest, creasing it a little with the force of his grasp and willed his heartbeat to slow down at least a little, only moving from the spot once he'd regained a shred of control over his erratic breathing.
A short while later, as he held a steaming mug of coffee in his slightly shaky grasp, Tweek wondered how his life had gotten to this point. He remembered a time when he could go outside and be surrounded by other people and his only worries would be the ones related to awkward social situations, everyday dangers like kidnappers, the potential of being trampled in a big crowd or something of the supernatural variety somehow putting his life at risk, which had all been pretty legitimate fears considering his past. Maybe he did have a lot of concerns back then too and maybe what actually happened was more science-fiction than the horror-like situations he used to worry about, but the point still stood.
It was when Tweek was about eleven that he started to notice things changing.
As a fairly paranoid and overly caffeinated kid, his therapist had advised him to deal with his moments of panic and stress by meditating and "finding his centre". When he was younger, this had been extremely valuable advice for him and he had created a whole different world to escape to when the real one became too much and he needed to relax. It was just him and nature in this world, for a short time he could relax in a place that looked like it belonged in a painting and hear nothing but the peaceful sounds of the stream nearby and wildlife in the distance. It was the perfect escape for a few years, that is until other people started showing up there.
It started off slowly. Once in a blue moon a confused citizen of his hometown would wander into his subconscious, ask him a bunch of questions about where they were and how they got there and then disappear again. Tweek always told them it was a dream, partly because he thought maybe they were actually figments of his imagination and partly because he didn't want them approaching him in the real world if they were real.
Then things started to get weirder, people were showing up more and more often, questions were replaced with confessions and troubling thoughts as they assumed that Tweek was their conscience or some sort of spiritual guide. He tried to help as much as he could, hoping that they wouldn't come back if he did. Soon after, he started being dragged unwillingly into other people's dreams, daydreams and memories at completely random times and without much warning other than a strange sensation tugging at the edge of his subconscious.
People didn't seem to realise he was there when it was their subconscious he was visiting, but he still found it uncomfortable. It was almost like he was reading someone's diary when he saw their dreams and memories and it often revealed truths about people that he never wanted to know. It felt wrong. It felt like an invasion of privacy and he wished he knew how to stop it, he wished it could have ended there.
However, during one eventful shift at his parents' coffee shop when he was thirteen, he soon discovered that he was hearing thoughts that definitely didn't belong to him. Other people's thoughts were invading his brain and he wasn't even in a state of sleep or meditation, he was entirely conscious and reading the minds of strangers. He could never have anything even close to a normal life after that.
Along with his abnormal abilities also came the ever-present fear of what would happen if anyone found out he was different. When he wasn't watching someone else's dream play out or talking to yet another intruder in his own dreams, he was having recurring nightmares of being stolen away from his town, his family and everything he'd ever known and being experimented on like some kind of science project. He'd seen the movies and tv shows, he knew how things would go down if anyone found out he could do things like this.
He tried to carry on fooling himself and everyone else into thinking nothing had changed by continuing to attend school, work at the coffee shop and regularly go out in public. It was almost impossible to appear normal though, especially when he knew answers before the teacher had even asked the questions, knew people's orders before they had even entered the coffee shop and constantly had to stop himself from responding to things his friends hadn't said out loud. He also found himself experiencing headaches from the chorus of voices in his head that came with being in close proximity to large numbers of people. It was beginning to get more than a little overwhelming and something was bound to give.
One night, when he was sick and tired of hearing his dad's inner monologue about coffee and his mother's concerned thoughts about having not seen him with any friends in a while, he finally snapped. He had slammed his hands on the dinner table, breaking the tense silence that had built up with a cry of "WOULD YOU JUST STOP THINKING FOR FIVE MINUTES?!"
He'd probably remember the looks of sheer concern and bewilderment on his parents faces for the rest of his life, but it was like a dam had been broken and there was no stopping the words that poured out.
"Dad, I'm so sick of hearing nothing but coffee talk 24/7! If I'm not working around coffee, I'm hearing you think about it! Not only do I have to try and focus with all these strangers voices floating around in my head but I also have you thinking about different blends as a background track! I-I don't even know anymore if I actually like coffee or if I've just become brainwashed into liking it by you!" Part of him felt guilty when he heard his dad gasp and saw the hurt look that flooded his features, but he couldn't have stopped then even if he wanted to. "And mom, the reason why you haven't seen any of my friends lately is because they're going to find out how much of a freak I am if I talk to them! Who is possibly going to want to stick around when they realise how weird I am anyway?! I can hear people's thoughts mom! Who the hell is going to accept that?!"
His chest shook with harsh breaths as he finally began to calm down from his rant. He slumped back into his chair and placed his head in his hands. It was finally out there. He'd spent all of that time and effort keeping this huge part of him secret and now it had all been spilled in a matter of seconds. A panic began to settle in as he came to his senses and realised what he'd just done.
He didn't know if he could trust his parents not to react badly and send him away for this, it wouldn't be the first time they'd done something that extreme. If he'd just told them what he could do at least there was a chance they would have brushed it off as his usual paranoid behaviour, but he'd actually said what he could hear them thinking, he'd given them proof. On top of that he'd been way too harsh with them, they were only doing what they normally do and he'd yelled at them for it. What if they hated him after this?
He slowly and shakily looked up, taking in their surprised and hurt expressions. "AH! Oh Jesus! I'm so sorr-"
"Don't." His dad had stopped him. He sank in his chair a little at the abrupt tone thinking this was surely it, they must want him gone now. "Don't you dare apologise, son."
He blinked a couple of times, confusion taking hold. He wanted to ask what was going on, whether they were mad at him or not, but his voice just didn't seem to co-operate. He had looked from one parent's face to the other, trying desperately to decipher their expressions and wondering why now of all times his ability wasn't revealing anything to him. When he'd just about given up and felt just about ready to cry and beg them not to send him away, his mom reached across the table, placing her hand delicately over his and directing a reassuring smile his way.
"You're a very special boy Tweek and we're so proud of you. After all, how many parents can say that their child is psychic?" She questioned, his dad smiling and nodding in agreement.
Tweek sat in a stunned silence. He knew his parents were a bit on the eccentric side, but he just told them he could read minds and they were acting the same way they did back when they heard those false rumours about him and Craig Tucker being boyfriends.
"I thought you were just becoming a socially awkward loner," his dad confessed, "but to think you've been dealing with so much this whole time..."
Tweek fought the urge to bang his head against the table at his dad's statement. He guessed he probably should have expected that his parents would react as if it were good news that he was practically a mutant. Although even now he had trouble believing that there wasn't a catch coming, that this wasn't just a trick to put him at ease before they frantically called authorities once he left the room. Thankfully though, his abilities chose that moment to start working again.
When his father's gleeful exclamation of 'This is almost better than the time we found out he was gay!' entered his thoughts he wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or irritated, but he decided that this had probably been the best reaction he could hope for.
"You're... really ok with this?" He questioned, still not one hundred percent believing that this was real and he wasn't just daydreaming about possible scenarios.
"Of course we are!" Mrs. Tweak responded without a moment's hesitation. "In fact," she added, "we probably should have seen this coming considering the family history."
"T-the family history?" Tweek inquired.
"You see son..." his dad began and Tweek cringed as he recognised the pre-monologue voice, the kind of tone that was usually reserved for a thirty minute long, mind numbing speech about locally grown organic ingredients. continued, ignoring his son's reaction, "...your mother and I both come from very spiritual families. Your grandmother on my side could talk to ghosts and your mother's grandfather used to have visions, didn't he honey?"
"Yes, that's true!" Tweek's mom beamed as if talking about a fond memory, "he used it to do work as a fortune teller sometimes and he once solved one of the biggest murder cases to hit Colorado."
Tweek felt an icy chill creep up his spine. The knowledge that other people in his family had abilities like this made this whole thing too real. He couldn't just chalk it up to his imagination running wild or his general lack of sleep messing with his head anymore. This was actually real, he was actually some kind of psychic. He wasn't quite sure if he was relieved or if this made things worse.
"Things like this have been in our family for centuries," his dad explained, ignorant to his son's turmoil, "but less and less of us have been experiencing these gifts over the years so we were almost certain they had died out. We never would have thought our own son would turn out to be this special."
Tweek thought of this as more of an extreme inconvenience or a curse than a gift, but he wasn't about to rain on his parents' parade by pointing that out. They seemed genuinely, unnervingly ecstatic about this whole situation.
His mom hummed in agreement with his father's words. "We're so proud of you Tweek," she stated warmly, squeezing his hand before releasing it and returning to her dinner. Just like that the atmosphere around the table had returned to normal again.
Tweek's mind was still racing though. While he was deeply relieved his parents had taken this well, he couldn't help but feel frustrated. Sometimes he felt like his parents only really cared about him or told him they were proud of him when they found out he was 'special' in some way. He wondered how things would have gone if he had been completely normal and was actually just having the usual anxiety related issues. They probably wouldn't have cared that much in all honesty. He caught his mom worrying about him every now and then, but they were both usually pretty dismissive of his worries when they weren't related to something unique like this.
His thoughts were interrupted when his dad suddenly spoke up again. "So tell me Tweek, what do our customers really think of our coffee?" he asked. Then the endless musings of which flavours would work well together and poetic descriptions of different beverages resumed.
Tweek pressed his free hand to his face in exasperation, wishing he knew how to block out thoughts he didn't want to hear. "Oh god," he groaned. He didn't know whether this was better or worse than being kicked out to be completely honest.
In the years following, Tweek found it increasingly difficult to continue as usual.
He was struggling to stop his abilities from affecting him in public and his parents, who were all too happy to have a psychic in the family at first, began to worry that the family business would lose customers. Sometimes he unintentionally creeped people out by accidentally responding when reading their mind or suddenly going completely still when he got glances into someone's subconscious from accidentally brushing against their hand when taking their money. He was beginning to build up a bit of a reputation for being weird and possibly deranged.
It was too risky for him to be around large groups of people for long periods of time, he would get overwhelmed very quickly and sometimes when he blurted out things that he shouldn't know it scared people into lashing out at him. He had come home with cuts and bruises several times from getting into fights with people at school. He had also broke down in tears the second the front door clicked behind him on more than one occasion when strangers in town had reacted badly to him warning them about something.
After several outbursts and altercations both in school and at the coffee shop, his parents had finally decided to take drastic measures and remove him from the outside world as much as possible. They removed him from school and found someone else to work his shifts so he wouldn't have to be around other people as much. They still treated him as if his abilities were great and somehow made him special, but he often caught them thinking the opposite. Tweek knew that this whole thing was turning out to be a huge burden on them at times though so he never called them out on it.
The only time he really left the house was when he was sent out on an errand like shopping or picking up deliveries for his parents when they got too busy to do it themselves. When those occasions arose he tended to rely on blasting music through noise cancelling headphones to drown out people's thoughts and distract him from their stares.
Now here he was, seventeen years old and feeling a bit like a prisoner in his own house as he stood alone in the complete silence of the empty kitchen, staring down at the scaldingly hot cup of coffee in his hands. He knew his parents wanted to keep him and their livelihood safe, but he was starting to wonder if it was even worth being safe if this was the kind of life he had to live. The majority of the town probably thought he was dead or locked away in his basement or something and the few that didn't were scared of him like he was the town witch from an urban legend.
There were actually some aspects of going to work and school that he missed. He didn't miss being around so many people and he didn't miss all of the pressure and responsibilities. What he did miss though was the feeling of being productive at work, the sense of structure that going to school gave him and the few people that made the world feel a little less overwhelming. He also really missed learning, he had hoped his parents would give him some kind of home schooling, but it seemed that they didn't think it was that important since they always had the family business for him to return to anyway if he ever figured out a way to stop using his powers. He tried to study as much as he could about the subjects that interested him online and he still practiced music everyday, but it wasn't the same when he knew it couldn't lead to anything.
The only people he had to verbally communicate with now were his parents, and they weren't always around much anyway. It almost felt like he was living alone in a bubble, cut off from the rest of the world. Even though he knew it was for his own good, he kind of wished he could talk to some people his own age. He'd stopped responding to people a little while after his departure from mainstream education, mainly because he didn't want them to become targets if anyone wanted to get to him, but also because he didn't really have anything interesting to share with them anymore. Most of his former friends had given up on trying to get any form of communication from him after getting little to no response for so long. There was one exception, but it was probably only a matter of time until they stopped too.
The rattling of the letter box caught his attention and he carefully placed his coffee down to go and inspect the source of the noise. They didn't get that many letters so a small part of him worried every time that it would be a note from the government telling him that the jig was up and they were coming to take him for experimentation. Although to be fair they probably wouldn't waste their time sending a letter out to warn him when they could just break the door down and be done with it. His entire being filled with relief when he saw the tell-tale shape of the corner of a Polaroid picture sticking out of the letter slot instead. A small smile tugged at his lips as he removed it and held it as gently as he could in his shaky grasp.
He couldn't help grinning when he saw the picture. It was an extremely unflattering photograph in which of one of his old friends, Clyde Donovan, seemed to have had the entire contents of his lunch tray tipped over him. He turned the picture to see if there was a message and sure enough there was yesterday's date followed the words 'guess which idiot grabbed the wrong girl's butt' scribbled down in Craig Tucker's unmistakable handwriting.
An involuntary laugh escaped him and he shook his head at his friend's foolishness. Clutching the photograph tightly, he rushed back upstairs to add it to the growing collection of Polaroids stuck to his bedroom wall before he forgot.
Craig was the only one of Tweek's friends who still hadn't given up on him. Ever since it started to sink in that Tweek wouldn't be making an appearance any time soon, he'd been sending him these small snapshots of the things he didn't get to see in person. Most of them were of his classmates, captured when they up to their usual ridiculous shenanigans or Craig and his family and pets, but every so often there would be something different.
The pictures that he both looked forward to and dreaded were the ones with more sentimental subjects; pictures of places they used to hang out, pictures of the sunset or sunrise, pictures of clouds or stars. Those pictures always came with messages that made his chest ache, messages like 'look what you're missing out on', 'wish you were here', 'where are you?' and 'I miss you'.
Craig wasn't a person who let others have an insight into his emotions that often so Tweek knew those ones must not have been easy for him to send. Not because he was cold or mean as a lot of people suspected, but because he was awkward and wasn't entirely sure how to express himself properly. Thinking about it, Tweek's strange abilities were probably why they'd gotten on so well. Tweek didn't often criticise him for the way he acted like other people did because he already knew what Craig had been thinking or feeling most of the time anyway.
They'd stopped going out years ago now. Tweek had felt like he had too much going on to be able to keep up with their relationship and he was constantly worried about something bad happening Craig because of him. So as much as he didn't want to, he eventually gathered the courage to explain to Craig that he wasn't in the right place for a relationship and fortunately Craig had been understanding about it. They had still been very close… or at least they were before Tweek had disappeared off of the social radar. They'd spent so much time together when they were younger though that even now it seemed impossible for them to stop caring about how the other was doing. It seemed that Craig wasn't willing to give up hope of him returning just yet and Tweek wasn't sure whether that made him feel incredibly happy or devastated. He knew that Craig had struggled a lot when they were younger and he hoped that he was at least content with his life now and not still hurting or waiting on someone who was quite possibly never going to return.
He knew it was selfish of him to wish that the pictures never stopped, to hope that someone out there would still remember him, but he couldn't help it. He couldn't be around his friends anymore because he didn't want them to have to deal with shit from other people by association and he certainly didn't want to face the possibility of them reacting badly if they found out what he could do. Plus there was still the idea that plagued his thoughts more than anything, that somehow undeniable proof of his abilities would get out and him and the people he cared about would no longer be safe.
More than anything though he wished he could talk to one of them again or even just see one of them again, even if it was only for a few minutes. He was tired of hiding.
Author's note: This was over 4000 words and it's only the first chapter so if you made it this far I'm sorry, but also I love you for sticking around. I'm not sure if the rest of the chapters will be this long, but I haven't gotten this immersed in a story I'm writing in forever so they probably will be a little lengthy, but I'll try and cut that down and make the chapter sizes smaller if that gets annoying. Tweek's parents may be a bit OOC, I'm sorry if them or any other characters are. Like I said I haven't written fanfiction in years so it's a bit of a learning process for me.
Funnily enough this was inspired by a k-drama I really like called 'Flower Boys Next Door', where a girl who was bullied in high school lives pretty much in hiding in her apartment and the guy who lives next doors to her draws on post it notes for her every day (I actually preferred her with someone else in the show, but I wanted to use that idea because it was cute so that's where the Polaroids thing came from). I kind of mixed it with sci-fi/supernatural elements though because it's what I love.
I'm not entirely sure why I named this 'Four Walls' to be honest. You could read into it a couple of ways though: Tweek is pretty much confined to four walls (his house) at the moment, there will eventually be four characters with abilities, metaphorical and physical walls are a significant part of the story or simply that I'm kpop trash and wanted to use 'Four Walls' as a title because the music video for 'Four Walls' by f(x) is really interesting and symbolic of the butterfly effect and alternate timelines/universes and I love that shit (plus it's relevant to the story bc visions and dream worlds). I'm trying to be all deep and meaningful in the author's note of a South Park fanfic why am I like this?
If you do happen to watch that music video though, the forest in that is totally what I imagine the world Tweek envisions when he's meditating to be like in this by the way. It started as the place he imagines in 'Free Hat', but now it's like that forest.
Sorry for such a long author's note, but I have two more things to say:
1) This fic is definitely going to involve a poly ship (most likely Creekenny, but I'm debating whether one other character will be part of the relationship too or just involved in the abilities situation with them).
2) If you've read my other story 'Identity: Unknown' and are wondering why I never updated, I've been distracted by a lot of difficult personal stuff over the past couple of years so I put a lot of my hobbies aside and now I'm not sure whether to bother continuing it as is because the other kids have been given official powers in the coon and friends AU now for 'The Fractured but Whole' so it feels a bit redundant. I might re-write/tweak the first couple of chapters a little and continue it though because I did have a plan for it. I'm not sure yet though, I just thought I'd address it since there's a bunch of frustrated comments on there asking why it didn't update. I am really sorry I left it so long.
That's all I wanted to say for now. The next chapter is already underway, but I'm starting my second year of uni at the moment so I don't know how much free time I'll have. I'll try to find a regular update schedule of at least once a fortnight though. I hope you enjoy this as much as I'm enjoying writing it and I promise the author's notes won't be this long next time.