A/N: Number one, please, please, listen to Metro Station while you read this. Specifically Now That We're Done. Two, Craig's sissy is named in tribute. I'm using the Nommel surname.
--
It all came down to how he got there.
Walking was safe. Walking was good. Yes. Walking meant so many good things; I was sure if I saw him walking I might fall to my knees (well, I was already on my knees, but whatever,) and thank the God I'd never believed in. Driving was bad. Driving was the worst thing that could happen. Not driving—Tweek was far too afraid to drive. And I had listened to every stupid reason why. Riding a car. In the passenger's seat. Of a car that didn't belong to his parents—it would be stupid to take a special car trip for a distance so short, and besides, Tweek's parents were down at that fucking coffee shop all day. Whoever the hell he was, HIS car.
"What are you doing?" Alex asked over my shoulder. I turned, gave her the finger, and saw a flash of one in return before turning back to the window.
"I'm waiting for Tweek."
"You're such a faggot for him. Why are you waiting like that?"
"None of your god damned business."
Fingers were again exchanged, although I didn't turn to see hers.
She did catch my attention, however, by approaching me from behind and falling to her knees in a meaningless mimic of my own posture, staring out the low-built front window and gripping the sill in a similar manner. Her hands were so tiny for someone with so much anger inside them. Just like my own eleven-year-old self.
"What are you doing?" I asked now.
"It's not your fucking window."
"Alex, seriously, this is none of your—" That shitty tan van slowed to a stop at my curb. The windows were tinted darker than could possibly be legal, so that I couldn't see what went on inside—but the vehicle idled for almost thirty seconds before I heard the muffled slam of the door through the cheap window and saw Tweek round the nose of it, waving with fingers that twitched in toward the palm like a dead spider's legs. He stood on the sidewalk until the ugly van sped off, his head movements telling me he was admitting the occasional grunt. Only once it turned the corner and was out of sight, he walked up the driveway to the door.
"I didn't notice anything funny. Did something good or bad happen?" Alex asked, pushing back from the window to sit with her legs bent beneath her.
"Go to your room, Alex." We never really had that sort of relationship, but like anyone angry, I had an overblown sense of authority. The I'm-so-pissed-I'll-beat-up-anyone-who-displeases-me kind of authority.
"Who do you think you are?"
The doorbell rang.
"Go to your room, Alex!"
"Geez, clean some of that sand out of your vagina." With a deep sort of sarcasm, she stood and walked out of the living room.
The doorbell rang again. Tweek was always a bit over-enthusiastic with knocks and rings and calls and the like. He once called nine times in four minutes (leaving a message with each call) because he had seen some dumb documentary that obviously just used exaggerated claims about terrorism to freak people into watching.
I opened the door for him. He stood, smiling like nothing was new, short and middle-aged and infantile and grey and like he was eternally about to hurl. "Hey." He squeaked.
I didn't acknowledge his greeting, but walked out of the doorway, leaving him to remove his shoes and close the door for himself. I flopped down on the shitty couch, found the remote between the cushions, and turned the weather channel on mute. We never really turned the TV all the way off in my house.
Tweek, the most alarmable person in the universe, had yet to be alarmed. He pulled off his zip-up hoodie (it was new; a white and checkered one I hadn't helped him pick out and certainly not the style his mom usually picked for him,) and carefully hung it up on a spare hanger in the closet. The only other coats in there were things that seemed to have grown onto the hangars like mold—each member of my family had one coat, and they usually ended up on beds, chairs, and floors.
"Tweek."
"Yes?" The first consonant hit a note that I was surprised my ears could even hear, before cracking into something more normal by Tweek standards.
"Um…" Shit. How do you even say this kind of thing? "Who dropped you off?"
There. Tweek started to look like Dr. Katz with a pronounced neck and eye twitch. "Auu—Ah—why?" He stood on the other side of the coffee table, not realizing how scared he looked standing while I sat below him with my torn socks propped up on the low table.
"That…wasn't your mom or dad's car…"
I should've chosen different wording. The words "mom and dad" obviously inspired his rushed lie. "That—that was my uncle! He's in town. This week. Urrghh." He grinned something that was half Cheshire Cat half mental patient, his strained eyes making the whole charade horribly pathetic.
"Don't lie, Tweek."
"I'M NOT!" He shrieked this bit. I knew Alex would hear upstairs—or probably just outside the doorway. Whatever.
"You're LYING again!"
"URRRGHAUU…!" His head fell fast, eye sockets pressed into the heels of his palms as he swayed, his legs suddenly looking like sticks perfectly balanced to support a brick that were beginning to fall. He sat down cross-legged on the ground, unable to stand with his body rippling so fast.
"Tweek?" I stood now, not panicked but concerned, and knelt beside him. The only thing I could think to do (short of giving him coffee, but that would take far too long,) was wrap one arm around his shoulders and press his head into the crook of my shoulder, rocking him slightly like a god damned baby as he waiting for the attack to pass. They behaved almost like orgasms. I shushed him, sure to roll my eyes to save at least an iota of my manhood. I hated this. I would do it, and I would continue to do it, but I hated being a fucking mother calming a fucking four year old. Nommels don't comfort people. Nommels wait until you're low enough and then kick dirt in your eyes.
He was now only panting and staring wide-eyed at the ground. I took the opportunity to leave him long enough to get a mug of the coffee I had brewed, just like I always brew when I'm expecting him. I hate the stuff.
He accepted it and drained half the slightly oversized mug in one breath, Panting now from drinking rather than panic, he managed to turn those huge, exhausted lime pulp eyes up to me and ask, "What d-do you know?"
"I think I know a lot."
--
It was weird for Tweek not to answer his door, even if he didn't expect me. Usually in a weirdly short amount of time after I knocked I would see the curtains of his front window draw back a fraction of an inch, the inside room too dark to show anything beyond that, and then hear the click of three locks. I had knocked three times now, and was growing impatient of standing on the step. As it was during the day, I knew his parents wouldn't be home, and I didn't care much what Tweek thought of my manners, so I tested the knob myself and found it, surprisingly, unlocked.
Something was weird inside. Weird enough that it felt inappropriate to take off my shoes. Something funneled between the floors and somewhat foreign sounding—music—was playing, and on a very tangible layer beneath that, silence. I knew Tweek's music, and this wasn't it.
I ascended the stairs. The music grew louder as I grew closer, like it always did in Jaws when the shark was about to attack. It really was turned up loud. No wonder he hadn't answered my knocking. I stood, awkward and trespassing in my second home, before opening Tweek's door.
I'm not sure why, but it took several steps for me to process what I saw. My first realization was, of course, that there were two people laying on the bed, one on top of the other in a dominating, but obviously romantic, way. I then thought that I had walked in on Tweek's parents, which was rather stupid, because neither one looked much like the person I'd assumed they were—the one who was blocking my view of the other was simply and obviously middle-aged, given what I could see of him—clothing, the sort of socks he wore, his thinned but not balding hair, and the general shape of him that lacked the lanky, uncomfortable shape nearly all sixteen-year-old boys had. Of course the assumption that Tweek's parents were in the throes of passion on their son's bed was quickly dashed from my mind upon realizing that this man was a stranger, and the person beneath him was…
Tweek. Tweek? It was Tweek. I know Tweek. This is Tweek. I could tell it was Tweek by his fucking feet hanging over the foot of the bed, let alone how the man shifted and showed the side of the boy's face, eyes closed and eyebrows lowered in an un-Tweekly desperate, aggressive way.
I closed the door, not caring how loud it was (although it didn't even matter that I didn't think it mattered; the music was so loud they hadn't even noticed me.) I wanted out of the house. I felt like I was trapped in a small dark space with a monster. I easily applied this feeling to something Tweek complained of—claustrophobia. The stairs came so fast that halfway down my independently-moving feet couldn't choose between two steps, and I fell the rest of the way down. Numb and blind, I stood up the moment I hit the tile of the foyer and escaped.
The moment the air stopped weighing 900 pounds the fear disappeared and was replaced with something almost worse. I should've been shocked. Or disgusted. Or panicked, or SOMETHING. But I wasn't. It was like I had been told someone had died. Something did. I wasn't sure what, but something did, and I was filled with so much sadness it all just spilled out. I bawled. I think Tweek's neighbor had been mowing his lawn next door, and shut it off to stare at me, but I maybe have made that up to mock myself later—all I know is that before I could manage to stand up and get to a safer place, I sat on Tweek's doorstep, my knees pulled up to my chest and my face pressed into the crease between my legs, nose running with snot and blood, and bawled.
--
"I've…followed you for a little bit."
His eyes were like a glaring spotlight as he looked up from his newly filled mug in angry, guilty shock.
"I'm not sorry." Lair. "Tweek. You…you can't do this. I won't let you."
"Craig…" Tweek set down his coffee mug on the carpet and stood up. "…fuck off."
Leaving me, once again, alone and naked and in shock, he walked out, slamming the door, and leaving his jacket.
A/N: ANGSTANGSTANGSTLOL if you don't get it wait for next chapter.