The Warmest Color
Loosely based off of Blue is the Warmest Color. I did imagine this story in its entirety as a movie, so I had trouble putting them into words. The last time I wrote a South Park fanfic, or any fanfic for that matter, was when I wrote Blindfold. I read it recently and was alarmed by how horrible the story was (I wrote it years ago, in my childhood) so I discontinued it. Here's my second attempt to write another Craid x Tweek multichapter fic, and I admit my skills may have gone rusty, and I'm not as keen to detail and references like I used to be. If anything, however, I would make references to the recent seasons, and some relevant episodes I could still recall.
Happy reading!
Chapter One: The Prelude
I loved Autumn.
For once, the heat and the cold put aside their differences and collide into the atmosphere. I loved things like that. No wars, no conflicts, no arguments. Perhaps I've lived my life too long to grow sick and tired of such terrible circumstances. In my mind, the world is perfect, with neighbors greeting neighbors without harboring internal hatred, with honest businessmen and politicians who make good and moral use of government funds, with everyone falling in love with the right person who loves them in return...
In my mind, the world is perfect, and I am happy.
Naive little Tweek, always dreaming of perfect situations. Even as a child during meditation sessions, I find myself at peace at a beautiful garden, watching lilies float by on pristine waters undisturbed. How I envied those lilies. Beautifully positioned on a lush green foundation, slowly drifting by on still water. In my mind, the world is perfect, and I am that lily.
But dreams can only reach so far. When you open your eyes to greet the morning light, they vanish.
This is what I have failed to comprehend for years. You dream, you hope, you wish on fallen eyelashes, on ladybugs, on dandelions. But life is not so simple. Life does not listen to you and change its course to fulfill your happiness. You have to create your own happiness, and that, in itself, is already too much pressure for me.
"Hey kid?"
I jump slightly in surprise, look up and see the bus driver gesturing at me. "Are you getting in, or what?"
I blink a few times before entering the bus and taking an empty seat by the window. I've watched the same streets change day by day, season by season. I've watched the same trees change to the same hues of orange and yellow, and the same leaves fall to the same erratic rhythm. Same scenes, different day.
It takes exactly 14.07 minutes for the bus to reach the public school I attend. When I got bored observing and memorizing the view of my window, I started timing bus rides. It took 2 weeks for me to conclude that even that was unchanging.
Even my friends have this routine. I get down the bus and find Butters waving his hands by the steps. We enter the building and he starts asking me how I'm doing, then tells me this narrative of something he did or something that happened, then asks me questions I don't know how to answer. And every time, I say, "I'm good," "Wow," and "I don't know man, too much pressure."
When we get our books, Stan and Kyle approach us and either start a discussion or start a debate, and every time, I say little to none, or come up with an excuse to avoid taking sides between the two of them.
Then, the bell rings, and everyone parts ways for first period, and the cycle repeats for lunch break, and dismissal. Same faces, different day.
I've long wondered when I'll be exposed to a shift in my life. Something that will pull me out of this routine. Something that will spark a change and make me wonder, for the first time, what's next?
Class ends for the day and it's a quiet walk towards my family's business they had named me after. People often think that they named that coffee shop after me, but it's the other way around, much to their surprise. My parents are obssessed with their coffee. For the most part of my childhood, I was too, until I learned their secret ingredient by accident. It made big news for two weeks at South Park which momentarily destroyed our business and our name until my dad hired Kyle's father to be his lawyer. He gave "solid" evidences how small amounts of meth are beneficial to a person's health, and how my father only ever used it a few times, and that our sources were hygienic and credited.
I never got to know if what he had said were true, but the case was dismissed, and my parents' business got back on its feet. Since then, though, I never drank coffee again. This alarmed them both, but quickly concluded that it was post traumatic stress. It was less of that, but more of the result of anger, but I never vocally expressed that.
I still help out at the shop after school when I don't have homework, and it pays off getting extra allowance. There isn't any bus that passes by or anywhere near the shop, though, so I walk all the way there. A 20-minute exercise.
When the shop appears on my direct line of sight, I notice someone outside, leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. It was strange seeing him there. My mom disapproves bystanders just standing around smoking, drinking beer, or being rowdy with friends outside our shop. She would always get dad to shoo them away who'll then either scare them off with his normally weird character, or threaten to alert the police.
Perhaps he just got here, I tell myself. My attention shifts to the door of our coffee shop that swings open in a rush. A couple of blonds emerge from the shop and greet the bystander, and I almost trip when I watch him take the cigarette out his mouth to kiss one of them. My gaze falls to the ground as they start walking towards me, opposite my direction, and I pretend that I hadn't witnessed what I had just did. I let my nerves rest before lifting my head, but as I do, I catch the man with a cigarette stuck between his lips looking directly at me.
I take a sharp intake of breath. I see it for only a split second before he and his friends pass me by, and I let myself walk a few more steps before twisting my head quickly to look back at him. His eyes are still glued to mine, unwavering and undecipherable. He keeps his gaze as they walk on, only breaking it when the boy he has his arm draped around the shoulders of speaks to him.
I feel my heart jump. What was that? Why was he looking at me, and what came over me that I had to turn around to stare at him back? I've never met him before, and yet I felt that strange connection, as much as I'd hate to admit. The way his eyes kept their gaze as though he knew the answer to a question buried deep in my subconscious. Now, there's an alien feeling at the pit of my stomach, and I want so badly to throw up. For a moment, I ponder over the possibility that I had been cast a spell on, but I shrug at the thought.
I realize that I'm over-thinking the encounter, and proceed to our coffee shop to work alongside my parents. But I can't shake off the memory of his eyes on mine that night as I lie on my bed wondering why I had been captivated by a complete stranger.
