"This is it," I mused to myself, standing in front of the door that barricaded me from my trigonometry class. I was staring intently, not sure what I was trying to get out of it, maybe in the hopes of opening it telekineticly, maybe because I knew that if I failed then I'd drop out of school and work with fast food for the rest of my life.
I'd gain three hundred pounds, possibly turn into a hoarder. I'd end up on those addiction shows because all my stomach wanted were some french fries. I'd spend my rent money on french fry shaped objects. I'd smuggle myself into France on the loosely based fact that french went with fry.
A girl named Wendy would be my wife because Wendy's had the best fries. On the side I'd have my love affair Jack because Jack in the Box had the best curly fries. He'd be a pubehead, but not a ginger. He'd just have a Jewfro. When I became addicted to meth and heroine, they'd put me on Intervention and people would recognize me as the fat fuck from The Biggest Loser and Strange Addictions, maybe True Life if I felt like being famous.
"Craig? You okay? You're not like dead are you?" Tweek's voice knocked me out of my stupor, dragging me away from my future that was bound to happen if I didn't pass this final.
But if I did pass, what would my life be like then?
I tried to picture myself becoming a millionaire or the manager of some fancy estate restaurant. When that didn't work, I went with a Black Jack dealer in Vegas. All that I could come up with that seemed reasonable though, was partying over summer and getting shit-faced with Kenny.
"I'm just trying to find my balls. I think they went missing when I woke up and realized today might be the start of my gaining three hundred pounds and illegal passage into France."
Tweek actually laughed at that. Damn, his medication must be good. I would've figured he'd think I was a government spy and was working my way back to Headquarters with top secret information about the nuclear power plants in South Park, of which we'd soon bomb. And that I was actually a three hundred pound, perverted man.
"Do you want me to give you chills?" Was that code for can I fuck you with a screwdriver and jizz all over your body? Because that's how creepy it sounded.
"What?"
"Thomas and I give each other chills before every big test. It knocks the nerves out of us."
Nerve-knocking sounded pretty legit to me, so I told him, "Sure. Go ahead." If I was about to get raped, then so be it. My body was ready.
"Okay. You're really fucking tall so I'm not sure how I'm going to do this." Oh yeah, I was going to get butt-fucked. "Take your backpack off." This kid wasn't going to leave me with a shred of hope, was he? "Let's get out of the way first." His petite hands pushed against my back, springing me forward. "Now close your eyes, and you have to listen to my voice." Oh God, he was a kinky bastard.
Against my internal jokes, I let my eyelids flutter shut. "Breathe in." His palms were still on my back, hovering lightly on either side of my spine. When I inhaled, they pressed just a little bit harder. "Breathe out." I let go, breath extinguished from my lungs. "Breathe in." There was the pressure of his hands again. "Breathe out. And listen to my voice."
His fingers slid up over my shoulder blades, across the back of my neck, tickling. Something landed on top of my head. He started talking, chanting almost, and his voice dropped low, like a whisper in the wind trickling over my ear through the cover of my hair. "There's an egg on your head." The outside sounds of the inhabited hallway echoed into a noiseless nothing. There was a crack. "And the yolk is running down. The yolk is running down. The yolk is running down." And the sensation like something was leaking, oozing, so slowly over me.
"Concentrate. Meditate. Listen to what I say." His voice was a ghostly whisper, beckoning me into a mindless daze. "Children are dying, babies are crying. Concentrate. Meditate. Listen to what I say." Between my shoulders, there was a prickling feeling like an object was poking me through the layers of my clothing. "There's a knife in your back." My heart pounded once, a vibrational beat, when he stabbed me. Slithers started down my spine, and I could see the rushing crimson on the backs of my eyelids. "And the blood is gushing down. The blood is gushing down. The blood is gushing down."
Concentrate. Meditate. Listen to what I say. Children are dying, babies are crying. Concentrate. Meditate. Listen to what I say. "Tight squeeze." My shoulders became bunched. "Cool breeze." The whisper in the wind cradled the nape of my neck. "Now you've got the shivers."
When my body wracked with gruesome chills—creeping, uncontrollable things—I jerked upon instinct and shook my arms out, wanting nothing more than to rid of the crawling sensation. "Holy shit, dude," I gasped. "What the fuck was that?" Lingering spider leg-like tickles were continuing to pinprick my body. "Fucking hell."
Tweek bit his lip, smiling at my torment. "Those are the chills." I was more than grateful his voice was back to normal.
"That was just creepy, dude. That was not okay. I can't believe I let you do that to me." My fingers shook out my hair, pushing away the imaginary egg.
"We should get inside before the bell rings," he snickered, ignoring me.
I picked up my backpack, following the blonde into the classroom only to find it strange that the hallways was still quiet even though I'd come to from the hypnotic daze Tweek had put me. Obviously because everyone was in their class, but it was still weird. Almost like everyone had disappeared as though I'd been sucked into some alternate reality.
God, those chills liked to stay with a vengeance. I was going to have to get Tweek to do that to Kenny or Clyde when they were on drugs or something.
After I sat down and got myself situated—this was going to be a long hour of possibly life-ruining test taking—and the bell rang in a finalizing sort of way, Tweek collected my attention by saying my name in a quiet call. I turned my eyes toward him, taking in his hopeful features and the encouragement in his stare.
"G-Good luck," he offered.
A packet landed on my desk, the corner nicking me on the hand as it fell. I brought my gaze to it, aware that there were forty questions inside, each one more diabolical than the last. And I think that's when it hit me: For approximately the whole semester I'd been studying, getting tutored by the paranoid kid from my childhood, and for the longest time I hadn't even known that I cared so much about passing.
It felt a lot like fate, like all of this was supposed to happen for some greater reason than anyone could comprehend, and I suddenly didn't think I had to be asking myself what was going to happen in the future. I had to ask myself what would've happened if Tweek had never come along.
I owed him more than a thank you. He deserved me taking off his boots for him, and when I made coffee for him, and the milkshake and the cherries and the rides home, and he probably didn't deserve my strange form of friendship because I wasn't a very good friend, or my jabs at his sexuality, or my harsh sense of humor and sarcasm. I didn't know what he deserved to be honest.
And I didn't understand why I was getting all sentimental over a trigonometry final, because it wasn't like I was going to change for him or treat him any differently. Maybe it was the thought that counted, or maybe I was just being really fucking retarded by trying to buy time so I didn't have to start my final.
That's when I decided that if I passed, I was going to give Tweek the best massage of a lifetime. I would even look up muscle melting techniques if I had to.
So when I finished my test, I handed it in and asked the teacher if he could grade it first one last time because this was the moment that counted the most. Tweek stood next to me because he'd finished before me, and we waited and it was like the final countdown or something equally stupid, and the clock kept ticking and I wanted to stop looking at it but it was either that or our teacher, and I didn't think I could keep looking him in the face because whenever I did, he'd grimace or put a mark on my paper, and I didn't like that one bit.
We stood off to the side, and we waited some more, and Tweek started fidgeting and pulling at his hair, but I didn't stop him because it was funny to see him freak out over my grade more than I was. Then we waited even longer and more tests were handed in, and the stack next to our teacher's desk was growing bigger and bigger, and the more I watched it, the more I wanted to know who had gotten a better grade than me, but that was just a thought to pass the time, except it didn't pass much, so it was pretty much useless, and we kept standing and waiting and I wasn't sure what to do anymore, and now Tweek was making me nervous because he couldn't stand still.
People were staring at us because they knew. They always knew and they always watched, and I figured they liked to judge our reactions when I got my tests back, although it was more like Tweek's reactions because I wasn't capable of supplying much emotion. Class was almost over, and I bet that if I were a three hundred pound man, I'd be sweating, because our teacher still wasn't done and fifteen minutes had already passed. I wanted to slam his face into his desk and smear his bloody nose all over my final so it would hide the bad score, because that's what I was thinking. That I had failed.
"Alright, boys, get over here. I'm done watching you squirm." Whether my grade was good or not, I was going to rub his severed head all over my paper anyways for purposefully making me wait just so he could fuck with us. What kind of teacher did that, honestly?
"You dirty fuck," I said, snatching my test out of his hand. The class laughed, and since it was the last day, our teacher let me insult him.
"Let me see! Craig, put the paper down; I can't see!" Tweek jumped at my side, standing on his tip-toes to get a good look at the paper in my grasp. I was positive he was staring at all of the little red dashes pockmarking the clean white sheet with scribbly answers just like I was.
My initial reaction was to throw up at all of the ugly hash-lines. And then I noticed that none of them were actually on the numbers or the questions themselves. Our teacher was a cynical bastard for making it appear as though I kept getting all the wrong answers. God, I just wanted to rip off his jaw and eat it or something I was so pissed off.
Then my percentage caught my eye in the upper right-hand corner.
There was clearly an eight and a seven written neatly together. Eighty-seven. Eighty-seven percent. I got a B on my trigonometry final when just mere weeks ago I had had a C in the class overall.
Holy shit. I was a fucking brain machine.
Tweek was punching me in the shoulder, one fist right after the other, calling out "Yes!" with each throw. I wasn't even sure how long he'd been doing that, but my arm really hurt, so it must've been a while. I didn't mind, though.
At least it was better than grabbing my ass while handing out a "good job" like Kenny did after school when he heard the news. Tweek was telling everyone, making quite an apparent note that he was the reason behind it. His favorite person to tell was me. But I was okay with that because it was one of the things he deserved.
But in my opinion, he started going overboard when we arrived at my house and he was the first one inside. I walked in to find him talking with my mom in the kitchen. They've been like best friends ever since the week before last when she found out that I was being tutored. I think he liked her more than he did me and vise versa. Sometimes my mom could be cold-hearted toward me because whenever she made snacks for the two of us—on the rare occasion she was home when we were—she gave Tweek the bigger helping.
When they finally noticed my presence, my mom smiled and congratulated me while Tweek forced me to tell her that I only passed because of him. It was one of those deals where I just automatically did as told because I knew he wanted me to. I really needed to stop that. It was becoming a habit.
"When does Mr. Tucker get home?" Now it was just getting overly weird.
"You want to tell my dad?" I asked, idly resting my chin on his head of fluffy blonde locks. My eyes were interested in what was below him, though. The object that both he and my mom were blocking with their bodies. It was a cake for Ruby's birthday, and my mom's homemade cakes were the fucking best.
My stomach was getting the rumblies just by looking at it, and I didn't give a shit if the frosting was pink or if my sister's name was scrawled on it in pastel rainbow colors. I wanted it in my belly. The whole thing. I'd pull a Clyde and eat in one bite.
"He'll be home soon," my mom answered, removing the beaters from the now empty bowl of whipped icing. "Ruby wants an early birthday dinner. Why don't you invite Tweek to come along?"
That actually sounded like a horrible idea.
I rephrased her question with sarcastic sweetness, anyways. "Would you like to come along, Tweek?"
"Sure. I can tell your sister about how stupid you were before I tutored you." And to top off the insult, my mom handed him a beater and threw the other one in the sink. The dirty sink.
"Wow, mom. You're a bitch. So are you, Blondie." The two of them had the audacity to laugh together.
"Give the bowl to Ruby and tell her Happy Birthday on your way to your room," my mom ordered. An order from her was final. God damn it. She always did this when my friends were over, especially Token. I think she had a crush on him, because whenever he was around, she literally liked to beat me. That's how I depicted the level of likeness between my mom and my friends. The more of an asshole she was, the more she liked them.
As I grabbed the bowl, I asked, "Can I stick my finger in it?" Because it was always best to get her permission first.
"Oh no, sweetheart. Your fingers are dirty."
Now I was just getting pissed. Bitch never let me win. "Can I stick Tweek's finger in it?" The blonde shot his shocked eyes toward me, releasing a choked noise into the room.
"If you must." That's right, bitch. It was always best to use the friends your mom liked because she couldn't say no to them. The rest of my rules were survival instructions, things like: Hide in the Crevice of Your Closet When You Eat the Last of the Ice Cream, and Blame it on Ruby—especially when you knew it was your fault—to refrain from getting butchered by your mother.
No joke, I had a guide on how to keep myself alive while my mom was still living. I planned to get it published as a tutorial: How to Survive Moms for Dummies. I'd be making bank for that one.
"Come on." I nudged Tweek in the direction of the stairs. Ruby's room was on the way, sadly. I lived too close to her and I didn't like it. Her estrogen levels were always malfunctioning and sometimes I felt like they were coming through the wall that separated our rooms. Every now and then I had nightmares that I'd start ovulating.
The blonde returned the beater before starting up the steps. I was actually proud of how far he'd come. Now he only checked under my bed whenever we entered my room instead of the farfetched I'm-not-even-going-to-walk-by-to-piss mode he'd been in during the first week or so of tutoring.
Since I wasn't a dummie, I offered the bowl to Tweek and told him to stick his finger in it. He was cautious about it, like he didn't know what I was going to do, as if it weren't obvious enough already that I was going to stick his frosting-coated finger in my mouth.
"Why don't you just do it yourself?" He asked as we reached the top of the stairs.
"Because my mom knows when I don't listen to her." The blonde stopped walking and turned around, causing me to stand a step below him. Our eyes were almost level so he was probably just an inch or two shorter than me now.
"So what am I supposed to do with this?" When he raised his finger, I leaned forward and snagged it with my mouth. I locked his digit between my teeth to keep him from jerking it away and ran my tongue across the length of his skin. White chocolate cream cheese frosting had always been my favorite, but only when it was made by my mom, and this tasted fucking delicious. I wanted Tweek to stick his whole hand in it, but my life was on the line, so I just sucked on his finger instead.
A pliant gasp fell from his mouth, and the frosting was all gone but I found his reaction entertaining, so I kept the suction going. My tongue rolled around the curve of his index finger as I bit down just a tiny bit harder before bringing my head back, causing my lips to slide up the tip of his finger, then ultimately leaving completely. When I pulled away I licked my lips, aware that he was staring.
Erratically, he thrust his hand against his chest, hiding his finger from sight. His cheeks were dotted with buds of light pink, like the pastel tint of the icing, and his eyes looked like they didn't know how to focus correctly. I smirked, cocking my head to the side as I watched him. He looked like he'd just woken up, confused and disoriented, moving sluggishly.
As he finally came back to the present, he didn't even spare me a glance before rushing toward my room, stumbling once as he made to turn around. My smirk twisted at the corners at his innocent escape. He really was like a scared baby animal, never knowing where to go or what to do.
I stopped by Ruby's door, set the bowl down, knocked a few times, said Happy Birthday through the door, and finished the distance it took to get to my room. Shutting the door behind me, I found Tweek tugging at his hair in the center of my room. At the sound of my entrance, he turned around on shaky, awkward legs. He looked like his tongue was tied but there was something he wanted to say. So I waited.
It took him a minute but he finally began speaking, voice just as uneven as his form. "I—uhm. I've thought a lot about this, like a whole lot, for a long while—" He was talking fast as though he had to get all of this out under thirty seconds. "A-And I don't want you to take this the wrong way because I know how much you like to think I have a crush on you, and I don't, b-but I had an idea of how you could kind of make it up to me for tutoring you. If you don't I totally understand— I mean, it's a weird thing to ask of someone but I think you're the exception to that b-because I know you're really open to everything. You say that you don't give a fuck but that's not quite it, I know it isn't. Y-You're just okay with—with everything. You're not prejudiced against anything, even if you don't like it, y-you know?"
No. I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to get out of that, but he'd caught my curiosity. I wanted to know what this "idea" was. He continued: "I've never—I mean, I know I can wait and that would be fine but I just—I'm impatient, I guess. I don't know, man. I just really want to...to kiss someone. I feel like something's wrong with me because I'm seventeen and haven't been kissed, not even by a f-fucking girl."
Tweek had just admitted he wanted to kiss me. No fucking way, dude. I felt a cheeky smile grow in place on my face because, honestly, this was just too good. He could decline it however much he wanted, but there was no way I was letting this go without getting him to say he had a crush on me first. This was a wonderful moment in my life, it really was, and the blonde must have seen where I was headed because he came forward and shoved his fist into my chest.
"I don't like you," he growled. "I just want to kiss you in a completely platonic way."
That was laugh worthy. "I'll kiss you however you want but you have to tell me it's because you have a boner for me."
His reply was sharp. "I don't."
"Yeah, that's not going to cut it." Lazily, I leaned forward and met the blonde at eye level. He flinched at the close proximity of my face, eyes momentarily drawn to my mouth. "If it inspires you," I started, words a silent whisper. "I'm really good at it. I'd be a perfect first kiss."
"Stop—" My lips seemed to be too much of a distraction for him. Not to sound conceited, but if somebody else had my lips, I'd be distracted too. They were nice. Full and wet, just sitting there, waiting. They had a lovely shape, too. "Stop trying to trick me." He was whimpering now, voice so shallow, and I knew he no longer held any resolve. He was just trying to be stubborn.
"I'm not tricking you. I'm encouraging you." That was the key word: encourage. I was encouraging the idea of a kiss, dangling the offer out there on a golden chain. My breath was warm as it puffed against his mouth and I watched his lips part, so languidly but further with every breath. It was almost enticing to watch the blonde slowly unfold, and I liked how the tips of his teeth showed, how the color of his lips were a muted shade of pink.
Raising my eyes, I caught his gaze, caught the way he was watching me watch his mouth. In the depths of his green eyes, I noted how dilated his pupils were. My lips stretched into a grueling smirk, and the movement caught his vision. His lashes, thick and dark, hovered above his eyes but I still caught the way they gleamed when I dragged my tongue across my bottom lip, leaving an inviting, wet sheen.
"You're not being fair." His words were nothing more than a frail whisper.
I chuckled at his argument, tilting my head slightly. "How is this not being fair?" I left my question to reverberate in the space between us, capturing his cheeks between my palms. Turning his face up, I dropped my mouth to his chin. Slowly, evenly, my lips found a section of his skin where an open-mouthed kiss was placed, releasing only to place another directly above the last, and with a sweet sound that only came with kisses, I found myself enthralled by the moist residue lingering on his skin from my lips.
His cheeks were heating up in my hands, and the sensation was awesome. I licked my lips and left more drawn out kisses around his mouth but never on his lips, eliciting in how smoothly I could move against his skin when it was slightly damp. Damp with my saliva. I liked the thought of that, and I liked how fast Tweek's breath was coming, how warm it was against my cheek. Glancing up, I watched how every time I applied a light suction, his eyelids fluttered.
"Come on, Tweek," I mumbled into his jaw, trailing my hand down the length of his cheek to rest against his neck. My fingers closed around his nape and there was so much heat coming from that one area that I thought my hand was going to crisp up at an agonizingly pleasurable pace. "You told me you thought my Peruvian genes were sexy." I wasn't sure why my breath was so shallow, but I was sure it had something to do with the salty taste of Tweek's skin as I ran my tongue along the underside of his jaw.
For a brief second I thought back to the day when the blonde and I had licked each other, although it hadn't been like this. God, it hadn't been like this at all. "Just tell me I'm sexy because I know you think I am."
The blonde shuddered, body involuntarily rubbing against mine. I hadn't realized when we'd gotten so close, but being so near to him seemed to irk something inside of me, something that I liked very much. Tweek had to collect his breath before speaking, and even when he did, his voice was still so soft and flimsy. "I-I can't."
But he wanted to. I could feel it, definitely in the way his hands were suddenly fisted in the lapels of my jacket, or maybe they'd always been there. "I'm going to tell you something." My words were a harsh breath against his mouth and strangely, I kind of felt like I was losing some control. "And it's going to be like a trade, alright?" My chest felt like it was breaking, like everything was falling apart, like I couldn't get enough air, because all I was inhaling was Tweek, but the feeling I was enraptured in made me want more, and I wondered why nobody else had ever felt this good. "I want to kiss you" —so fucking bad right now— "but you have to help me out here."
"Fuck." He was panting so loudly, panting because of me, that for a second I worried somebody would hear him. "Craig," he gasped, lifting to his tip-toes to grab my top lip between his own, and so quickly I had my own encompassing his bottom. "You're so f-fucking sexy," he mumbled breathlessly against my mouth.
My stomach ignited in flames that licked tantalizingly, and before either of us knew it, I had spun us around and was holding Tweek against my door. I dipped low enough and slipped my arms around him that when I came back up, dragging the blonde to the tallest he could go on his toes, our chests collided and friction formed. His breath hitched, just another noise among the numerous others, locking his arms around my neck to pull himself higher. For an instant I thought about picking him up, how he'd wrap his legs around my waist, and even though I wasn't going to do it, the thought alone provided fuel to the heat boiling in my body.
Our mouths squelched and produced enough spit to make our kisses slick. Between every touch of our mouths Tweek was panting, and I wanted to go mad because I wasn't sure whether I wanted to kiss him more or just listen to his sounds. It was like this wasn't enough, like I needed more, but that was ridiculous. I had never needed anything.
One of my arms coiled around his slender waist, hugging his body to mine. Maybe it was because we were still wearing our jackets, but the heat permeating from his body made my senses sizzle. Unconsciously, my fingers tightened around his hip. I felt his bone beneath my fingers and I scratched my nails across it. Tweek turned his head away, releasing a choked sigh. My vision was fogged, but I could see his mouth clearly enough. Some foreign pull was attracting me to that mouth, telling me that I liked it, that inside was even better.
I leaned down and swept my tongue between the seam of his swollen lips. An immediate heat engulfed my wet, sensitive skin, triggering the roaring fire in the pit of my stomach. When I slid against Tweek's tongue, it felt like Kenny's always did—slippery and intriguing—but the blonde's mouth was excruciatingly warm and as his tongue rolled with mine, I felt disconnected from Kenny. There was something about Tweek's tongue, the way its slickened texture rubbed so shyly against mine and how sugary he tasted, something that I was very fond of.
The wall separating Ruby's room from mine quaked under her vicious pounding. "Craig! Mom said it was time to fucking go like five fucking minutes ago!"
Tweek flinched, breaking away from me with a dangerous snap. "Holy fuck. I-I shouldn't go to the dinner. I shouldn't go. I-I can't go." His mouth was swollen, lips glistening with spit that belonged to both of us. I couldn't stop staring and when the blonde noticed this, his cheeks turned rosier.
"I think you should." My voice came out as a dark, husky tone. I hadn't ever heard myself speak like that before.
The blonde froze, watching my lips with his big doe eyes. They were clouded over, green color all fogged up. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why? You gunna jump me?" I teased.
"Maybe." He was completely serious.
My mouth twitched and I felt a crooked smirk contort my features. "Then why don't you just tell me when you think that's going to happen and we'll take a little trip to the bathroom so I can fix it." I knew how that must have sounded. But I wanted it to be just so, because Tweek's reaction was well worth it.
His eyes half-lidded and his body sagged forward, arms tightening around my neck. "O-Okay. We can do that."
