Craig chokes. He goes completely quiet, and if anyone (like Kenny) is close to his face they would see the slight blanch that overcomes his face. The word echoes in Craig's mind (likelikelikelike). He does not want to answer, but Kenny is not going to let him hide behind his silence again. He stares hard at Craig, and Craig is pinbed him like a butterfly against a corkboard. He can feel nerves in his stomach and crawling up his throat to clog it. He cannot breathe for a second. Like? Does he like Kenny McCormick?
"No" is what he says, but he nods to contradict it. Uncertainty is etched on his face. Dread pools in his stomach. He hopes he said the right thing. Kenny is not looking at him in either approval or disapproval. Only that unreadable expression that makes Craig's stomach churn even more.
Then the expression is gone when Kenny turns to look at the door. Kenny sits up to leave. He never should have offered to be friends with Craig. He knows he is being selfish in his thoughts and actions, but he is tired of trying to save someone who seems to be a little hopeless. He does not glance at Craig. He knows if he does he will be quick to devour that heart Craig keeps wearing on his sleeve whenever Kenny is near him. He will devour it, and he will destroy it. He will corrupt Craig in the same way Craig undermines him with those simple little smiles and that short bubbling laugh that erupts whenever he finds something amusing. (But Craig is not laughing now. No. Craig is not laughing at all.)
Craig has said the wrong thing. He knows it. Kenny is heading toward the door, and suddenly there is a panic. He is at the edge of the bed and grabbing Kenny's coat sleeve. He does not say anything. The action speaks it all.
(Don't give up on me please.)
Bare feet stop on beige carpet. Kenny turns to Craig and looks at the swirling indigo irises encompassed in red-rimmed eyes. He hears the silent plea they mutter, and still he slips his arm from Craig's grasp. He cannot keep doing this to him or Craig. He breathes a soft apology under his breath before walking right out of the door.
Kenny keeps walking. He does not even stop when Karen questions him from the living room. He slams the front door with a loud bang that echoes in the house. His footsteps make tracks in snow up to his ankles (when had it gotten so deep?), and he finds himself at the school. He stares at it. Kenny remembers when he had been smoking and saw a boy sitting huddled in the corner smoking a stubby cigarette tight between bluing lips. He shakes off the thoughts before continuing on. He cannot think about it. He cannot turn back now. He has to give Craig up (before Craig Craig gives up him).
But Kenny does think about it.
Kenny cannot stop thinking about it (or him).
The corner where Craig and Ruby split to their individual schools.
The classroom window where Craig had given him that confused stare.
A window to the school library, where they had gotten tossed out of for laughing too loud. (More Kenny's fault honestly.)
"You are a real son of a bitch McCormick!"
The words cut through ice, snow and flashes of memories. Kenny turns around and blinks. Craig is standing there behind him a little ways down the sidewalk with his hat haphazardly on his head and boots that are for the most part still unlaced. A scarf lays dormant around Craig's neck. His hands are clenched into tight fists in the pocket of the navy windbreaker he wears, and he is still wearing the same pants he has been wearing for the last few weeks.
This is the first time Kenny will ever see true, pure emotion on Craig's face, and what he sees is rage.
Kenny hardly realises what hits him. Craig's fist comes into contact with his face, and he tumbles into centimetres deep of snow. Craig mounts his waist to stop him from running (a thought that never enters Kenny's mind) and hits him again. Then again, and again, until Kenny grabs both of his gloved hands. Craig struggles until he is tired. "You fucking asshole," Craig says, and there is that cracking monotone again. He opens his mouth to say something else, but Kenny tugs him forward roughly by the ends of the tossed on scarf.
"Sorry," Kenny says breathing into the knitted fabric of the hat.
Craig pants into Kenny's shirt. He works hard to catch his breath to speak without meeting Kenny's eyes. "... You forgot your parka."
Kenny has not even realised that small little fact until now. He supposes his frustration is what has been keeping him warm up until now. Craig takes his scarf off and wounds it around Kenny's neck. As Craig follows with the gloves, Kenny is beginning to realise this is what love is. Painful and twisted and so much caring it hurts. Craig's hat is tugged on his head, and Craig is simply sitting there with just his thick jacket, boots and really fucked up hat hair.
Kenny looks up as soon as Craig is done. He softly touches the hat. Yes. Definitely love. Even if Craig did not even realise just how much he cares yet. His eyes fall on the tussled hair, the cheeks flushed from cold and the eyes blazing with an intensity he wants to see more often, and he thinks, maybe he can wait just a little longer.
"I forgot something else too," he laughs, but Craig does not seem to get the joke.
(He has forgotten his heart in Craig's unsteady hands.)