A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
—Edward de Bono
The plan was originally to stop by Tweek's house so that he could grab some medication since he hadn't anticipated visiting my old home which was excusable because the Tuckers could be an intimidating family. It ended up being a ploy just so the blonde could escape the inevitable: meeting my intimidating family. He then began continuously attempting to refuse the invitation, claiming he's seen my parents enough times to know who they were.
"You know that it's only fair for you to meet my parents since I did yours."
"I've met your mom before, dude! Just come back to my house once you're done." He was literally stuck to his mailbox, arms wound tightly around the post. I had my fingers hooked through a few of his belt loops and was tugging on him at random intervals to hopefully catch him off guard and tear him away.
"Good. Then it won't be awkward," I said. He looked over his shoulder to glare at me. "Come on, Tweek. You'll love my sister. She's a girl just like you."
"Now I'm definitely not going anywhere."
"I was kidding." My hands flattened out against his body before slipping up the expanse of his chest. "Obviously these aren't boobs."
To shake me off, he twisted away from me and commanded, "Don't touch me."
I grinned and pressed my mouth against the back of his head. "That's not what you want," I told him, lowering my voice and my lips to the shell of his ear. I'm what you want. You do want me to touch you. The expansion of his chest as he inhaled stunted when my fingers traveled back down, sliding along his stomach and running down the fronts of his thighs. When they came up, I slipped one of my hands between his legs. His arms immediately slackened. I stepped back and brought him with me, pressing his body against mine.
My palm dipped, rubbing against the front of his jeans. The blonde's breath fled quickly. I easily noted the slight thrust of his hips, the way he tipped his head back, and the rapid flutter of his lashes. An amused hum from my lips vibrated against his ear, alerting him to his predicament as well as our location. He pushed away from me and punched my arm. "You jerk!" He dove for the mailbox again, but I grabbed him from around the waist and hauled him toward my car. "No! Stop it! Craig, please!"
Ignoring his cries, I flung the door open and shoved him inside. "Shh," I suggested, leaning in to kiss him. He allowed me this and I found that I had kind of missed his mouth. There was a plush softness to it that formed to my own. Not only that, but we were familiar with how the other kissed. We were synchronized, the time of our movements cohesive.
It wasn't planned, but I got closer, nipping at his bottom lip as I caged him against the seat. His hands reached for my shoulders, one threading through my hair. The sensation of his fingers rekindled with my locks irked me into realizing that I'd missed that, too. I didn't want it to go away again. He tipped his chin up and drew me further into the car, clinging to my shirt and the back of my head. Complying, I rested one knee against the seat cushion.
When Tweek's lips parted next, our tongues grazed, inclining me to mesh our mouths together. He arched in a way that tried to bring our bodies as near as our tongues. I dropped one of my hands to the column of his throat because I'd been right: he wanted me to touch him. My fingers drifted, tracing the loose collar of his shirt where I pushed it off his shoulder and covered his skin with the palm of my hand. It was smooth and warm, similar to his mouth and the puff of his breath. His hold on my hair clenched, nails lightly scraping across my scalp. It sent goosebumps down my arms and as a sort of reward or maybe just for my own benefit I tucked my hand beneath his shirt.
He exhaled shakily, skin trembling under the pads of my fingers as they wandered along his side and across his chest. Weeks without physical contact of this sort must've made him impatient because he felt for my free hand and put it with the other. I was surprised by his nobility and chuckled against his tongue, framing his waist and dragging my hands up the course of his ribcage. My shirt rode up due to the responsive fisting of his fingers and I wondered if he was thinking that he could take my shirt off just like I was thinking that I could take my ownshirt off.
It was noticeable, however small, when his hand tugged just the barest bit forward. He took my flannel with it that sparse inch. I could feel how tentative he was, how his mouth lagged as he began to over-think decisions that should've come naturally. To distract him, I circled my thumbs into his skin and hiked his shirt up higher. Momentarily, he forgot his thoughts and flicked his tongue against my own, breathing harshly through his nose. I pushed him against the seat, half climbing into the car so that I could settle my knee between his thighs.
Just the presence of it tempted him and he wound his arms around my shoulders in a struggle to bring me closer. His teeth pinched my bottom lip, and as he sucked, he stroked his tongue across the skin. My hold on him plunged toward his hips where I held him firmly and lifted him onto my bent leg. He moved effortlessly, sitting in a way that brought our chests together. I raised my hands, removed his shirt. The blonde pulled away to pant and I used that as an excuse to trail my lips down his jawline, leaving openmouthed kisses as I went. His head turned, neck outstretched in automatic welcome.
Only a few nips were given before I had to let him choose how this was going to work. "We can either stop right now," I told him, shifting my palms around to his back to press him closer. "Or we can go inside where I'm sure I can persuade you to reconsider meeting my parents."
Tweek groaned for a reason that had absolutely nothing to do with our intimacy. "You're going to make me go either way, aren't you?"
Against his neck, I murmured a quiet affirmative.
"Fine," he sighed. "Let's just go to your house."
"Awh." I feigned a look of disappointment as I buckled him in. "No making out in your room? I'm getting old, dude. I want to feel like I'm fifteen again."
His cheeks took on a pink hue. It occurred to me then that a scenario like that has probably run through his imagination multiple times throughout the duration of this crush. "Fuck no. No kissing, no touching, no anything inside of my house. My parents would slaughter both of us."
"Okay," I grumbled, still feigning sodden emotions. As I bent down to pick up his shirt, he punched me in the shoulder to snap me out of it. At the attack, my mood immediately shifted. "I like this top. It makes you look all cute and tiny."
"Then why'd you take it off?" He snorted, snatching it from my grasp.
"Because I like what's beneath it better." Tweek gawked at me as I winked and shut the door. I laughed on my way to the other side of the car because that had honestly been a pretty gay line. The blonde was still trying to keep himself together by covering himself up as I started the car and backed out of his driveway.
Driving through South Park just made me feel downright off. Like I was traveling through a neighborhood of memories, reliving them in a sense. I passed phantom images of me walking down the sidewalk or traveling in just the other lane. The only thing was that a few details weren't quite right. Certain buildings, houses, and shops I distinctly remembered four years ago were either gone or replaced. The dinky restaurant I'd gotten my first job at was now a quick-stop mechanic's and a few fast food joints had switched themselves around to find better business in different locations even though they were all technically the same.
It wasn't that I missed this town, but it was strange seeing it continue on without me, Clyde, and Token. When I was younger, I had always thought of the three of us as being vital to the town's progression. We'd always been involved despite our—or at least my—reluctance. Maybe I'd just been conceited, though, because this place seemed to be doing fine in our absence. I was picking up a quaint feel from it, which was weird, because this messed up little place was anything but.
My parents weren't going to know what to think when they saw me. It was their job to visit me since I had never expected to come back home, especially not for Tweek. Perhaps I'd finally get a scare out of my dad for once in my life. He was like the fearless man, and I guessed that was where I got my sense of blasé from. I could remember a time when I'd faked my death just to harp him. Even went through the trouble of getting an officer who was the a parent of a friend to break the terrible news. Problem was: he never fell for it. He told the officer to fuck off, both verbally and with a hand gesture, because that was the way the Tucker family did it.
As we continued down a familiar route, one that I was sure missed me as much as I missed it, I spoke to the quiet blonde who was gazing out the window. He'd never been to my house before so this would be a new experience for him. The Tucker's generally weren't a customary bunch. "On a scale of one to ten, how excited are you to meet my family?"
"I don't know," he muttered. "How excited were you to meet mine?"
"Ouch." My sarcasm was apparent. "My heart...it aches." The anticipation was putting him in a bad mood, though I was positive he's always wanted to meet my parents. He had the crush of all crushes on me; of course he wanted to be personally acquainted with them. "I was pretty goddamn excited. A high nine, I'd say. Your mom totally thinks I'm cute."
He refused to drop his attitude at my assumption. "Yeah, well so does Kyle. And Thomas. Stan was a bit wooed by you, too."
"Oh yeah?" I grinned and glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. "And what about you?"
The apples of his cheeks began to change color and he turned his head away to keep me from noticing too late. "What about me?"
"Do you think I'm cute?" He tried to close the conversation by staying quiet, but I wasn't finished yet. "You're too afraid to admit it, but you do. You wouldn't kiss me otherwise." You wouldn't like me so much otherwise. As he grew disgruntled, upset by my straightforwardness, I said, "I think you're cute, too."
For a moment he simply sat there. The blonde might've been content to leave things like that, or possibly just humbled by my confession. Instead, he smiled and contradicted me by saying, "No, you don't." He waited for me to glance at him before adding, "You think I'm beautiful."
That was clearly something he took pride in, and that was okay, because I had no shame. My lips spread into a smirk. "I think you're very beautiful."
Quietly, he asked, voice lost beneath his breath, "What's your f-favorite thing about me? L-Like, which feature is my best?"
"I'll tell you if you tell me," I bargained. Tweek rolled his eyes, agreeing easily enough. This was going to be good. "You're short, but your body is long. It's feline, which is attractive to me."
"Oh." He perked up in his seat, a reaction that satisfied me. "I—uhm. I guess" —he guesses; that's hilarious— "I like… Okay, this is going to sound weird, but I like the change between you from before and you now. You're uh—aging process? Sweet Jesus, this is coming out all wrong. You changed a lot. Like, you were kind of rebellious before and now you just look really classy. It's t-tasteful? Like—fuck, I just like it."
"You like that I look like a gentleman?"
Flustered by my question, he stuttered out a frazzled, "Yeah—uhm—I—It's. You're just a good looking dude."
"And that's my best feature?" Just wait until you see my dick.
"Jesus Christ, Craig." A blunt redness shot through Tweek's face. "I was trying to skirt past that because I like your hips. Your hips are really fucking nice, okay?"
He was so angry and it was so cute that I couldn't help but laugh. I knew he liked my hips and I knew he liked me both from before and now and I knew that he liked everything about me. It was just so funny getting a rise out of him because he made it so easy.
"Okay." I assented, nodding my head as I turned onto a road overrun with nostalgia. The car slowed in time with the sentimentality that took me by surprise by consuming me entirely. "Fuck." I could see my house cresting the others and everything was so recognizable that four years had done absolutely nothing. The thick-trunked tree with its gimp branch was still in my neighbor's yard. My dad still owned the same massive truck. Everything was as it has always been.
There was a mere second somewhere inside of me that never moved. It stayed in South Park and went to the community college down the street. I taught my sister how to drive and let her sneak out in the middle of the night with just her permit, and even though I was still here, the circumstances connecting Tweek and I were going to put us together anyways because that was just the way it was supposed to happen. Sometimes people met each other regardless.
Parking in my driveway ended up being the strangest ordeal of a life time. Did my car remember the driveway? Had it missed the hulking figure of my dad's truck or the blocky frame of my mom's Jeep? It was weird thinking of it as both my mom's and my sister's now. She'd been fourteen when I left—not old enough to drive. "What the fuck," I breathed, confounded and cradling my head as I got out of the car. I started toward the front door with a very strange numbness orbiting through my body. Tweek's boots scrabbled along behind me, background noise compared to the hollow sound of my return.
I didn't even bother knocking because I knew the door would be open. The smell that hit me as I walked in instantaneously connected with a nerve. There was a smile on my face that I couldn't rein in. It was a mixture of my dad's cologne, my mom's laundry detergent, and my sister's signature fragrance. All it was missing was the light scent of my shampoo.
"Holy shit, dude." Tweek met my glance from over my shoulder with a tentative smile. Just as I righted my head and entered the living room, I saw one thing and exclaimed far more sternly: "Holy shit, dude!"
Chapter thirty-eight teaser: On the screen I saw a classic nude shot of the male genitalia and cracked up laughing. Nothing was better than a good old fashioned nude.