Disclaimer: Do you know how much i would give to own Tweek? Dude, i don't give a fuck if it cost me millions in coffee, i love the twitchy ikkle bastard with all my black heart.
Warnings: The useual, boy loves, slash, yaoi what have you. BUT it's super lite. Unrequited love. Death. Maybe suicde/murder.
Moi: A painful one-shot on how Tweek is coping with the death of Craig and questions his love and the reality of the Craig he once knew. Tell me if it's not enough. I think Tweek is a bit ooc but dude, think about the situation please?
It's like I never knew him.
Actually I'm not sure I did.
I'm in love with him for sure. His gorgeous grey eyes. Coal black hair on alabaster skin. Stupid chullo hat he wore from the very beginning. I loved him inside to. He had a kind heart under the pain of a hate filled family. He had a soul that was sometimes weak.
Sometimes I'd go over to his house and he'd answer the door with a cigarette in his mouth and a bottle in his hands. He would be wearing only a pair of faded jeans and his skin would be tight around his eyes and grey from a lack of sleep.
"They aren't here" he would say, his voice scratchy with emotion.
Water drops would trail down his bare chest from his damp hair and his fingers would be white knuckled around the Vodka he'd stolen from his dad, or the wine from his mothers secret stash.
He'd then stare into my eyes, green warring with grey, before I'd have a spasm, a twitch. He took this as his cue to look away. Those steely, heartbroken, eyes would glare harshly at the ground and he would turn his back. No invitation was extended but I'd hear the coffee pot start up with a beep and I'd follow the sound.
I'd be left shutting his door and traveling down the short hallway. No pictures marred the white walls, no trophy's on shelves and never a single personal touch. The house always reminded me of a real-estate model. The stuff you need to survive is there of course, but nothing beyond that.
It was the same even in his room. A single worn Red Racer poster taped to the ceiling above his bed the only concession to the idea that he wasn't a robot. He never even left dirty clothes on the floor, always picking up immediately. I was never sure if he behaved that way because it's what his parents expected, demanded, or if it was because he didn't want to believe he lived there.
I'd get to the kitchen to see him slumped over the dining table an empty white mug set on the counter near the coffee for me. Sometimes I'd simply fidget silently, sometimes I'd ask an inane question if the pressure got too much, but mostly we'd sit in silence.
My presence was never asked, but sometimes a tight smile told me all I needed to know. He did want me there, I was helping. He just couldn't say the words. To admit he needed help meant he had a problem, he would never admit to that.
I considered him my best friend, my unrequited love and soulmate.
But did I really understand him?
He changed the subject when I asked about a new bruise on his upper arm. He looked away ashamed when his parents started yelling right in front of me. When I asked why they had kicked him out again, after he showed up at my house at midnight three days in a row, he shrugged.
We never talked about the important stuff. It was always to personal. I never saw him handle the pain and hurt. He drank and smoked and partied but he never seemed to cope.
When he wasn't at home the problems… they just weren't. They became nonexistent and outside consideration. He said once, what's there is there and what's here is better. I didn't understand at the time but now…
I think he was coping. Coping by cutting his life into pieces.
He was the badass, evil and moody when at school. Flipping the bird as much as he talked. Smoking out behind the main building and glaring at passersby. Getting into fights as easily as breathing.
He was the friend when it was just us. Kind enough to make me coffee, considerate enough to do it without me asking. Strong enough to calm my fears, and patient enough to listen as I voiced them. Protective and a calm solid presence.
But at home he was the victim. And he hated that, so he made it unimportant.
He was an emotional block of ice around everyone but Clyde, Token and myself. But even then I'd only seen him cry one single time, when we were twelve, just before he began smoking. I doubt he ever allowed any weakness to show through to anyone else.
That day he'd climbed through my open bed room window and hugged me. Tears had wet my shirt collar but no sobs escaped him. He cried quietly, soundless. Like someone so beaten that screaming wouldn't bring justice to your pain, like someone with no hope.
He didn't speak, we didn't speak. I hugged him and tried to convey wordlessly as I clutched him back how much he meant to me, how strong he was. I regret not shouting it at the top of my lungs now. Things could be different.
He sat in my arms for an hour. Then he stood, adjusting his stupid blue hat, and left. No words at all. Why didn't I ask then? why was I so afraid to pry? We should have said so much.
Maybe he was waiting on me to notice.
And slowly, the time passed. We were senior as of a week ago. A new school year, the last. He would have been free. Just a few months. His eighteenth birthday is one month away. He could have lived with me, even Token. We wouldn't have judged him.
His behavior hadn't changed. No matter what they all think, he was the same as always. A softie inside, aching for love and help and hope while he sneered and flipped everyone off.
And now.
Did I know him?
Was I simply a stranger looking at him through a window, glass separating reality from ideal. Did I view him at all, those brief glimpses he showed of a broken child sometimes. Or was he the asshole he showed everyone else. Did he live a fake life for me showing me what I wanted to see, or did I imagine every instance of kindness and pain. Perhaps the boy I knew was part fiction part actor.
Because I can't face the reality of the only other option.
Perhaps he was in pain, begging me for help.
And I brushed it aside. I was his best friend. He was my soul mate, I knew that. The rest of me, the complement to my trembling soul. Sometimes I thought he knew it to, a gleam in his eyes, a warm hand on my back. Like he knew that one day we could be more.
And I missed it all. I should have done something.
Because now here we are.
We, Token, Clyde and I. Not him, not ever again.
We three stand broken before the newly turned earth; three yellow lily's clutched in our cold hands. Snow is sailing down around us, mounting high. Our faces are numb and my twitching finally stopped. The three of us are standing here in a parody of ourselves, a crippled being missing something crucial.
Our eyes are glazed as they have been for the past two, three hours staring at a grave. At the grave stone. We haven't spoken since the first of it. Not to one another and not to anyone else. No one else could understand, and we all already know what would be said.
We'd broken down and cried at the first voicing of it. Clyde clinging to Token, myself dropping the coffee in my hand. Kyle's mouth had been moving after he said 'dead' I'm sure of it. But I didn't hear. Tears were running down my face and my body was still. My ears were buzzing but those words couldn't be taken back.
It was no joke.
We'd stood in the line of classmates reading about how kind and brave he was. We stood as his parents had emotionlessly stared upon his waxen white face. We'd stood as one, the only three people in the world to mourn this boy, this body.
They'd taken his hat off, but Clyde had pressed it to his cold chest as we'd walked by the cherry wood casket one final time.
It was silly really, but I couldn't help noticing the flowers piled atop the casket were red carnations. He hated the color red. He loved Red racer with all his heart, but he loathed red. He said yellow was the greatest color in the world.
He'd smile a small smile and tug on my hair when he said it. My heart would soar, and then he'd look away. An almost moment, I should have taken it. I could have said I loved the color grey, like the colorless new-dawn that shone out of his own eyes when he smiled for real, lighting the world up with hope. Could have told him how blue was the most gorgeous color in the world because he chose to wear it, a badge of his perseverance and survival, even though his ragged hat was old and ugly.
I should have taken it.
Instead Clyde, Token and I stood.
I was satisfied in some sad way to find our flowers the right color. Proof we knew him, not of him. Something to vaunt us as better than the superficial mourners around us. We were the true victims of this loss, the only casualties of this wicked fate. Something that meant nothing to anyone, outside of us, the group that was now fractured.
We weren't pallbearers. No one seemed to notice us trailing along beside the casket of our best and most loved friend. We watched the last rites, watched the coffin enter the cold barren ground. Watched the dirt fill back up on top of him.
We were the only ones who stayed. Holding the pathetic flowers in our numb hands, they were his favorite color. The right flowers. We couldn't voice it but we knew this was the end.
We had to place the flowers on the snowy ground and leave. But it would be final then. I could never come back here, where his cold body lay, the hat he loved clutched in cold, dead fingers. Alone with no Red Racer, no Tweek following.
All alone.
I bent down and dropped the flower directly on the granite tombstone. Clyde followed stiffly, then Token. We looked in each other's red and swollen eyes and acknowledged what was lost. What would never be again.
Token grabbed Clyde's frozen hand with a final nod to the grave they left. And I was alone with him, without him.
I spoke directly to the cold ground above him. Finally voicing what my soul had screamed for years.
"I love you. The good and the bad. You might not have noticed, but you were always there. They didn't know it. You didn't know it. But you are my world. I'm lost now. Good bye my soulmate, my never-lover, my requited love and my forever."
I spoke softly and stood still for a minute. Almost daring to hope he would walk with his cool swagger out of the night and smile, even the fake crooked one he gave the rest of the world, and say "I know" or maybe just hand me coffee, like always.
He didn't
He was dead. Gone.
Turning around I left behind my heart and soul and future and past.
"Good bye Craig Tucker" I whispered and let the wind take my voice and carry back to him.
StarGuide2011
