Why am i doing this? because i'm stupid. i should be studying. instead... chapter.
have fun, you guys... next chapter gets... interesting. you remember the rape warning? yeah. it's not going to be the fun, 'he actually really wanted it' rape. this is going to be brutal. i actually hate myself for writing it...
just fyi ^.^
enjoy!
a/n
Chapter Eleven: When There's Nothing Left to Breathe
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..
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I guess / that this is where we've come to / if you don't want to / then you don't have to believe me / but I / won't be there when you go down / you're so alone now / you're on your own now / Believe me.
-Fort Minor, 'Believe Me'
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Craig rolled over, humming contentedly at his warm covers. There was something in the back of his mind telling him something was wrong, but he didn't want to think what it was. It was rare for him to feel so warm and content and he was going to treasure it.
It took him a while to realize why he wasn't just slipping back under the soothing surface of his dreams.
Everything was so quiet...
He bolted upright and promptly fell back down, the blankets tangled tightly around his shoulders. Sitting back up with some difficulty, he listened. There was something wrong, something fundamentally different about his room, and he couldn't place it. There was something that shouldn't be there, or maybe something wasn't there that should.
Tweek.
He swung around, tangling further in his blankets, and squinted desperately at Tweek's cot. He couldn't hear him, his quiet, sleeping breathing and little mumbles. That was what he was missing.
The little bed was empty, the blankets smooth and tucked in.
Everything rushed back to him, smashing through him like a bucket of cold water, leaving him gasping for breath and clutching at the covers.
He had – and Tweek was...
Craig fought his way free from the blankets, trying frantically to escape from their constricting embrace. His first, terrible thought, that Tweek was gone gone, had left for good, was assuaged when he spotted Tweek's neat little piles of clothing shoved under the bed. Craig put a hand to his chest and for a momentary eternity simply breathed, trying to calm the panicked beat of his heart.
When the beats of his hearts were distinguishable and his ribs had stopped aching, he slid out of bed and straightened his clothes. He needed to go downstairs. Just to check that...
Just to check.
He slipped down the stairs quietly. There was a promising clattering in the kitchen, and the quiet drip-hiss of the coffee maker. But it could still be his mom, or his father, or Ruby. She was old enough to figure out the coffee maker, and wouldn't it be just like life for her to pick now?
He peered cautiously around the corner.
And sighed silently in relief when Tweek's unmistakable blond hair came into view. He was bent over a piece of toast, carefully spreading the butter to the exact edges of the bread. There was a hint of nerves in his movement, but that could have been the new brand of bread, or the coffee being slow, or anything at all.
Craig scuffed a foot against the floor intentionally and walked in. Tweek squeaked and whirled around, dropping the toast.
It landed butter-side down.
"Hey." Craig said. It came out odd, and it took him a second to figure out why.
Did he feel... awkward?
"Hi?" Tweek asked him, expression curious. Craig wondered if his tone sounded odd to Tweek as well.
"So... About last night." Craig said, the awkwardness acute in his ribcage. That should have warned him. He never felt awkward. He sailed through life with no expression and a middle finger. Awkwardness was for him to cause in other people.
It should have warned him.
Tweek smiled quizzically at him, expression real in all the wrong ways. And Craig went cold.
"What are you talking about?" he asked, and he sounded serious, he sounded like he honestly didn't remember. Craig gaped at him, actually gaped, expression out in the open and dragging at disused facial muscles in ways he couldn't understand.
His chest hurt.
It literally hurt, an ache deep inside. And it was hard for him to breathe. Bands of... something wrapped around his ribs, tightening inexorably, making drawing breath impossible. His muscles ached to curl into themselves and hide until everything went away.
This was all so terribly familiar...
"Nothing." he said and his voice came out wrong. Too bland, empty of the sarcasm he always hid there. Lifeless.
He turned and walked out, knowing that Tweek was staring at him with panicked eyes. He could feel them burning into his back as he climbed the stairs, but he told himself he didn't care and forced it to be true.
He shut the door of his room carefully behind him. With measured steps he paced to his bedside table. His hand closed around his phone. The number flew off his fingers with speed that was the only break from his calm facade.
"Wendy?" Craig's voice was even more empty than usual, cold and lifeless.
"Craig? What's wrong?" She asked, jumping to her feet.
"I need to talk to you. Can you get to my house?" He replied.
"Sure. Why?" She questioned, bewildered.
Craig said something like 'tell you when you get here' and hung up.
Without another thought Wendy sprinted for her car. She had never, ever heard Craig sound like that before.
Wendy poked her head into the kitchen. Tweek sat on the counter, sipping a mug of coffee with a frown.
"Where's Craig?" she asked. He glanced up and shrugged.
"In his room I think. He's acting pretty weird." His expression flickered for a moment. "I have no clue why. Did he call you?"
"Yeah, he sounded pretty weird on the phone. I'll go talk to him." Wendy sighed. Tweek shrugged unhappily, sipping moodily at his coffee. She eyed the half-empty pot dubiously, but left him alone. If he wanted to sulk his way into caffeinated insanity, that was his prerogative.
The door to Craigs room was closed, which wasn't that odd. What was odd was that the instant Wendy stepped onto the landing the door swung open, revealing a pale and blank faced Craig.
"Craig?" she asked. He made a furtive motion with his hand, gesturing her inside.
She shuffled in, sitting on the edge of the bed. Shutting the door carefully, Craig turned and walked to the center of the room. He stared at her for a long time without saying anything.
"What-," she asked when five minutes of mutual staring had ensued. Craig cut her off.
"I think… I think I might like Tweek." Craig told her. That was a lie. Like was too weak a word. However, he wasn't going to think too hard about his revelation. And he especially wasn't going to say it out loud.
Somehow, when he wasn't looking, he had fallen in love with Tweek.
Wendy stared at him.
Craig bit his lip, almost sobbing with frustration. He needed someone to talk to about this.
About Tweek.
Tweek, who was uncertain, and odd, and probably more than slightly insane. Who could really see music, who spouted insanity at the oddest times, who was scared of horror films. Who was gorgeous and perfect and-
Fuck, he had lost it.
He had promised himself he would never let himself have control. He knew what happened when someone gave someone else complete control. Love was power and power corrupted. It was horrible, and painful, and he had promised himself, damnit, that he would never do that to someone.
"Oh. Why is that a problem?" Wendy asked. She sounded so blasé. She didn't know, he reminded himself. I never told her. She's never had to know.
"This can't happen. Not to him." Craig forced out past teeth clenched against sour bile. Wendy watched in bewilderment as he rocketed to his feet and raced for the door.
Craig reached it and threw it open, dashing for the stair. He had to reach the door and get outside, now. He needed to… He froze.
Tweek was standing at the top of the stairs. He stared at the plainly distraught Craig.
"Are you… um… okay?" He hazarded after a second. Craig opened his mouth and what came out was a sob.
Unable to answer Tweek's question without a total breakdown, Craig pushed past him and careened down the stairs. Wendy called after him, but he ignored her. As he fumbled with the doorknob he heard Tweek ask Wendy a low question. She answered, and Craig hoped she had the sense to keep his confession to herself.
Blindly he pounded through the streets, away from his house and Tweek. He needed space, distance, time.
When his burning lungs and aching ribs finally forced his feet to a stop he was in front of his old elementary, a little under half a mile down the road from his house. Slowly he stumbled in the gates of the playground.
It was a metal and plastic graveyard, musty and devoid of life. A forlorn, discarded sock hung from one of the monkey bars. The light was turning gray with dusk, the sour kind of twilight that curdled out of the dying grasp of a burning August day.
He wandered to the swings and sat on them for a few minutes, and then got up restlessly and sat on the bottom of the biggest slide. He remembered when it had been twice his size and standing at the top made him feel like a giant. Now it was only a few inches taller than he was.
He lay back on the still-warm metal and let his thoughts drain away.
a/n
next chapter: really bad stuff
finals -.- hate. studying...
