author's note: HI I'M BACK! lol why are all my stories written in march or june. anywho, it is time for me to start my second ever multi-chaptered fic, as inspired by one of my favourite songs, Vegas by All Time Low. i've already discovered that it's pretty hard to make a songfic and still make the writing and plot your own, but with a little lyric rearranging/cutting and a load of creativity, i think i have scraped out some sort of backbone to work with. maybe. kind of. i really haven't planned any of the other chapters yet LOL. uhh you can refer to the lyrics if you like, try to predict how this first chapter- or next chapters- will pan out, but that's up to you ;) anyways enjoy.
The headlight lit the vast expanse of highway expanding in front of him, the white glow illumining the shaking teen's expressionless, numb, pallid face as he maintained his pace on the abandoned road. His destination was Away. That is to say, he did not know where he was going at all, and hadn't from the start. Perhaps that had been the issue all along. He did not even know when he had started driving; merely that there had been daylight when he started, and there was moonlight presently. If his destination was Away, then his starting point was Everything, because that is what he had left behind. He had not meant to do it, but that was how it had happened. He could have returned, things could have been different. But Tweek had instead chosen fear as a companion, and in return, his company now was isolation.
He found it grimly fitting that it would end the same way it had started.
As the children of South Park grew up, each individual had a plan for exactly how they were going to get out of this nowhere town and do something that meant something. That, however, was not how most of them ended up. They applied to colleges. They moved out into the world. Only to end up in towns only slightly better than the one they had stemmed from. Some of the surrounding areas were maybe less dingy, perhaps less racist, but none of them ever proved to be any less boring.
Thus began one Craig Tucker's endeavor to entertain himself. One night, he awoke with a sizable amount of wanderlust, and therefore deemed it appropriate to knock on all of his friend's doors in the middle of the night, asking if they wanted to adventure. He was met with tired, irritated eyes and eventually doors slamming in his face. Tweek had been a last-ditch effort, a half-acquaintance, a whim. His fist had hesitated to close the gap between door and knuckle. He had been greeted with a single, wide green orb, purple rings beneath, telltale signs of insomnia. Craig had explained, and he had said yes. That first night, the look of wonder in the blonde's eyes turned skyward, as stars' reflections skirted off their glazed surface, had solidified Tweek's place as fellow wanderer.
The best night had begun at 6:00 pm.
"W-Where are we going?" Tweek asked, as he always did, undertones of anxiety, curiosity, and excitement. He clutched at coffee thermoses, the personal fuel for their trips, quickly loading them into his arms. They were always in a rush to get to the car, only to drive hours on end to a nowhere location.
"You'll see," replied Craig easily, mouth creeping into a smile.
The blonde had known that he would not receive a straightforward reply, had come to expect it from Craig, but he always thought that it had never hurt to try. With his anxiety, he could not help but worry a little, of course; nonetheless, he trusted the noirette far more than the majority of humanity.
The pair clambered into the car, Craig in the driver's seat. He always drove. Tweek did not drive, unless he was absolutely forced to. "Too much pressure". Instead, Tweek doled out tremble-inducing rations of coffee and asked nonsensical questions, which the chullo-clad teen always divulged a level-headed answer to. Sometimes, he couldn't help but laugh at the blonde's eccentricity, but it intrigued him to no end. The purpose of the trips, ultimately, was to find something new, something to marvel at, but increasingly he found the most interesting "thing" to be the mind of the boy seated next to him. He did not mind the questions because it allowed for him to read the ever-expanding novel that was individual human thought, to open up the boy's mind and read it page-by-page. The blonde was erratic, emotional, thoughtful, and overall, unlike any other person he had met.
Tweek, too, was entranced by thoughts. These nights felt so full of a unique whimsy that he had never felt anywhere else. Perhaps it was the time, or the places, but then again, the raven-haired boy with his hands on the wheel was another factor. He found himself pulling questions from every iota of emotion and experience because he longed to formulate precisely how the other teen would respond. He was irresponsible, impulsive, opinionated, and intelligent, and everything Tweek wished he was courageous enough to be.
Seven hours and nineteen minutes, or four hundred and sixty-five miles, later, the two arrived in Cawker City, Kansas. With veins churning solely caffeine, the overstimulated pair trembled out of the car and towards the World's Largest Ball of Twine. It was three in the morning, and vision was obscured, but Tweek's eyes progressively widened as they approached the behemoth. They came within three feet and stopped.
The two promptly began roaring with laughter.
"It's literally a giant ball of yarn!" Tweek exclaimed between gasps of air and giggles.
"Twine," Craig corrected, using his jacket sleeve to rub tears from his eyes. This elicited a light punch on the shoulder from the blonde, and in turn the noirette shoved the shaking teen, who stumbled backwards slightly, still laughing.
"Here, get a picture of me with it," said Craig, handing his phone to the other teen. He walked up to the ball and bent over, butt towards the camera, looking back with teen-girl-duck-face-lips pose. Tweek laughed and reddened at the same time, snapping the picture shakily.
"Augh! It c-came out blurry," He said with a hint of sadness.
"Try again!" Encouraged Craig, booty pose still full-force.
After 11 tries the picture was snapped to satisfaction, and the two strolled across the road from the 12-foot twine ball to an AMPM. They filled the largest cups with the strongest brew, and then perched themselves on the curb just outside. For a while, they sat in silence, steam warming their faces in the dead of night. It was cold, but Tweek could feel Craig's warmth emanating from him. Their thighs were roughly six inches away, their knees, three, and why was he thinking about this? He turned his collar up to touch his frigid jawbone and took a sizeable gulp of coffee, black.
"Why do we only go places at night?" The blonde asked eventually.
Craig looked over, lips slightly parted, eyes thoughtful. For a moment, he just stared, glancing over the other boy's face, then he looked outwards into the black and stretched out his legs.
"I guess it's because- well, it's 4AM right now, yeah?"
The frail teen muttered a "mmh" in reply, accompanied with a slight jerk of the head.
"Almost no one else is awake now. Everyone else is sleeping, missing these hours of the day that no one really experiences that often." Craig was still staring outwards, and slightly up, regarding the peppering of stars overhead as his black hair flowed lightly in the breeze.
"To me, that makes these hours special. The dead of night feels solitary, and invincible. Unique," He added, now directing his gaze to Tweek. "So I've wanted to take advantage of that, and share it with you."
Green orbs looked directly into the brown pair adjacent. A lift of the corners of mouths. A palpable understanding in the chilled air. The whimsy of nighttime.
On the brink of caffeine crash, weight sagging the eyelids of both, the road flicking by wearily. One pale, fragile hand trembled to grasp one strong, relaxed one. A firmer grasp, and the two hands held in the middle divider. The boys exchanged sideways glances. The ghosts of tired smiles.
They continued their way home, not once letting the other go. It was the dead of night, and nothing mattered. And no one cared.
He swore it was the happiest he'd ever been.
A cacophonous explosion of bawling and shaking, blinded by its blast of tears running down the face, thin fingers rush to grasp the steering wheel and jerk it forcefully, vengefully, to the left, running off the road. A bump, a liberal application of breaks, and the gear shifted to park. The blonde arranged himself into a tight ball, knees fixed between steering wheel and chest, arms flung haphazardly around the legs. Hands to the face, wiping endless tears, the wracking sobs that overwhelmed him.
How useless, he thought, how useless am I, I need to drive, the one thing I can do is drive and I can't even do that. An urgent gasp for air, a watery choke, slight hyperventilation. Bleary eyes with fists rubbed against, willing this spur back into his brain, to confine him to numbness and isolation and some miniscule inkling of composure.
Suddenly, exhaustion. He closed his eyes. Blackness. Quiet. Went limp. Palms extended to caress collected dashboard dust. A curl of the fingers. A precarious whisper of a sigh.
Fingers gently clasping his phone, he illuminated the screen to display "MONDAY 12:00 AM".
Another day. Another choice, another regret-
But tonight, he would drive, the interstate his home.
end note: OHHHHKAY. don't you love angst? no? well, you won't like this fic! maybe you will. later. it's not all bad, it gets better. i think. like i said, i haven't planned yet! n_n if we're bein honest, i don't even know why tweek thinks craig is pissed enough at him that he should run away. i should probably think of that LOL... or you can!
FEEL FREE TO SEND RECOMMENDATIONS OF WHAT SHOULD BE IN THE NEXT CHAPTER/OVERALL PLOT. if you are interested in this i can send you the edited lyrics i'm working with. i don't want to post them on the actual fic because i feel that would cause this story to be unable to stand on it's own. i'll probably post the lyrics at the very end, as a "last chapter", but if you wanna know now, feel free to ask.
oh yeah, Cawker, Kansas is really home to the World's Largest Ball of Twine lol i totally looked it up, and the driving directions from South Park, Colorado... /nerd! i've actually been to South Park, Colorado! it's not really a real town, it's a highway stop, and it's not the one that inspired South Park lol.
there is a scrap of a phrase that i "borrowed" from Great Gatsby, brownie points if you catch it. ;b also literarywise, i really like writing in fragments of thought, because isn't that how people actually think? i do at least.
i do not own or claim to own South Park, All Time Low, or AMPM, though i wish i owned AMPM because free slurpies.
I DON'T ACCEPT CRITICISM it makes me feel awful about myself but other than that read &REVIEW please xoxoxoxox!