author's note: this is the first sp fic I've ever written, so. Here we go. I haven't actually watched every episode yet (there are a lot of episodes, okay?) but I'm working on it. I also haven't used ffn in... almost seven years (this is my old account I started when I was 13).
Content-wise, as you may have figured out from the description, this will have themes of childhood sexual abuse. Nothing explicit or fetishized and no molestation, but yes there are those themes. That's why I rated this M, so that people would be sure not to read this unless they're prepared to deal. I don't think kids should be mucking around with South Park and its fanfic anyway.
This isn't really a ship fic. Craig and Tweek are dating but the story's not about romance.
uhhh also Mrs. Nelson isn't going to be, like, important, but she's still their teacher in this because I started writing this story before the Vaccination Special came out. This story doesn't take place during the pandemic and does take place when she's their teacher, so. That's the time range we're working with.
I wrote this story because I feel like Mr. Tucker's little art-trading side quest in TFBW where he collects and sells yaoi art of his 10yo was pretty upsetting.
Chapter One
Riding the bus home was a daily mental detoxing process for Craig. The spelling test he had failed, the terrible new comedy bit Jimmy made them all give feedback on over lunch, getting sent to Mr. Mackey's office for flipping off PC Principal—none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was that Red Racer was only ten minutes away.
When Craig hopped off the bus, he walked straight toward his house without looking back. His friends may have said goodbye to him or something, but probably not, since they all knew he'd just ignore them until after Red Racer anyway.
There was a package on his front step. A big one. Craig vaguely wondered if it was something cool. He cut across their snowy front lawn and hopped up the steps. The package was addressed to his dad. He shrugged and dragged it into the house after him—luckily, it wasn't as heavy as it looked. He left the box in the entryway and threw his backpack on the ground next to it.
"Mom, I'm home! Dad got a package!" he yelled in the general direction of the stairs. Without waiting for a response, he went into the living room, grabbed the remote off the floor, and turned on the TV. He plopped down on the couch just as the opening sequence for Red Racer began. For the first time all day, Craig smiled.
The opening scene began, and Craig immediately recognized it as the one where Red Rogers lost his signature hat in a bet and needed to choose between getting it back and resolving his team's conflict with the White Scorpions. It wasn't one of Craig's favorite episodes, but it was definitely at least in the B-tier, maybe A-tier. He sighed contentedly.
It was a Tuesday, which meant back-to-back Red Racer reruns until dinnertime. During the first commercial break, Craig grabbed some lettuce from the fridge and ran up to his room to check on Stripe. Stripe was already awake and waiting for him—the guinea pig knew when the first Red Racer break was and he knew to expect veggies when it came.
"Hey, buddy," Craig said, dangling some lettuce shreds into the cage. Stripe paused for a second to sniff Craig's hand, then snatched the lettuce. He ate it up quickly.
"Wanna come down with me, bud?" Craig asked, holding out his hands. Stripe sniffed around for more lettuce and, finding none, crawled into Craig's hands. Craig gently lifted him out of the cage and stuck him in his coat pocket. He brought him back downstairs right before the commercial break ended and let him wander around the living room.
Craig and Stripe watched TV together until Craig's dad came home. As soon as he heard his dad's keys in the front door, Craig instinctively jumped off the couch to guard Stripe, a trauma response he maintained ever since his mom stepped on Stripe #1 years ago.
The door swung open as Craig scooped Stripe off the floor. "Hey, dad," he said.
"Hello. Oh, good, my package came."
"Is it anything cool?" Craig asked, since it was still during a commercial break anyways.
"Just something for my side business."
Craig's grip on Stripe tightened a little. "The… art thing?"
"Right."
After the ordeal with the Asian girls, Craig's dad had gotten into some kind of art trading thing. Craig didn't think he really wanted to know exactly what was going on, but he was pretty sure it was a yaoi thing. He was pretty surprised his dad was interested in such a thing, but whenever it came up, his dad shrugged and said that there was a surprising amount of money in it. Craig hated the fact that the Asian girls sold drawings of him without permission, but they seemed to weirdly uplift a lot of people… hopefully whatever pictures his dad was selling were also inspiring people or making them believe in love or whatever crap.
"Is that whole box full of drawings?" Craig asked. It was a pretty big box.
"No, I'm expanding into other collector's items."
"Oh." Craig didn't ask for elaboration. Maybe it was worth a lot of money, and they'd get super rich and get a PlayStation 5 and get to go to Disneyland every year. Probably not, but maybe. "Why do people pay so much for that stuff?"
His dad shrugged. "I don't know. It's a subculture thing." He glanced over to the dining room. "Shouldn't you have set the table by now?"
"It's Tuesday. Red Racer isn't over yet."
"It takes two minutes to set the table and you've seen every episode twelve times."
Craig sighed, dropped Stripe into his coat pocket, and ran off to try to do it before the commercial break ended, but then of course, it immediately ended. He cautiously hovered in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, a fistful of forks in his hand.
His dad looked over at Craig and shook his head. "Just finish the job, Craig."
Craig scowled, but there was nothing to gain from protesting.
After dinner, Craig tapped his pencil against his math homework and gauged his progress. It had taken him fifteen minutes to solve zero of the problems and doodle eight rocket ships. At this rate, by the time he went to bed, he would have zero problems and one million rocket ships all done.
Yeah, this wasn't working. He grabbed the math sheet and hopped down the stairs. His mom was busy in the kitchen loading the dishwasher, so he went to find his dad. Since he wasn't watching TV, that probably meant he was in the basement. He usually liked to be left alone down there, but Craig was pretty sure that needing to convert fractions to decimals qualified as an emergency.
He opened the basement door and saw his dad sitting at his desk. He walked down the stairs. "Hey, dad."
"Oh, hello, Craig," his dad said, flipping a colorful drawing on his desk over. "Do you need something?"
"Can you help me with my math homework?" Craig glanced at his dad's laptop, which was open to a page called "BL Collection Connection."
"Sure. Let's take it upstairs, okay?"
"Okay." Craig glanced down—the package from the doorstep was there, open now. And inside was…
"Is that a pillow?" Craig asked.
"Oh." Craig's dad scratched his head and grimaced. "Yes, a body pillow. The Japanese call it a dakimakura. Now, come on."
Craig didn't budge. "That's me and Tweek." There was a huge image printed on the pillow of anime-him and anime-Tweek laying down together in their pajamas, with his arms wrapped around Tweek. It was them. On a pillow.
Craig didn't really look at any of the stuff his dad sold. He knew that the Asian girls at school sold pictures of him and Tweek to basically all the adults in town, but he had kinda held out a faint glimmer of hope that the ones his dad collected and resold were of some other saps.
Craig's dad sighed. "Well, they're not really you. It's just artwork. But yes, they're designed similarly to your and Tweek's appearances. Traditionally, a dakimakura would only have one character on each side of it, usually the same character, to work with the body pillow dimensions. But I did some market research and found some people interested in a design like this one."
Craig stared blankly at the pillow. "Those are my actual pajamas."
"The design is modeled off your pajamas, yes."
"Tweek's are different, though." Craig had seen Tweek in his pajamas enough times during nighttime videocalls and slumber parties to recognize them.
"Well, that's because I didn't have a photo of Tweek in his pajamas to give to the artist," Craig's dad said.
"Why would the buyers care if my pajamas are accurate or not?"
"Son, a man needs to take pride in his work, even if he could get away with doing a shoddy job. Maybe my customers won't know if your pajamas are right or not—but I would know."
"But… it's not for you."
"It's not for me, but we need to treat others the way we want to be treated, like the Bible says. That's not just a good life principle, it's a good business principle. Work hard, take pride in your work, and treat the customer right. Do you understand?"
"I guess so."
"Good. Let's go work on that homework."
As Craig laid in his bed that night, he couldn't justify being unable to fall asleep. He kept thinking about that pillow, but he couldn't figure out why it mattered if some strangers knew what his pajamas looked like. So someone drew him based off a photo of him in his pajamas. And other people were buying that picture. Printed on a pillowcase. From his dad. And it was just his pajamas that were accurate, not Tweek's… but why did that matter?
It was sitting in the basement. With other pictures that Craig hadn't seen. Were all of them of him and Tweek? Maybe some of them were of other people.
It couldn't have been anything too bad. The picture on the pillow wasn't that bad.
Who was buying these? Was it just people in the area? Or was his dad shipping them all around the world? Which option was worse?
"It doesn't matter if a bunch of strangers are buying pictures of you," Craig said out loud. "It doesn't affect you."
He needed to fall asleep. It was late.
He shoved the covers off himself and got out of bed.
He was just curious. He just wanted to know what was down there. Then he'd be able to fall asleep.
Craig grabbed his phone to use as a flashlight and ventured into the hall. Everything was quiet. Everyone must have been asleep. He crept down the stairs and paused at the basement door.
Once he knew what was down there, he could stop worrying about it and fall asleep. Easy.
He opened the door, turned on the basement light, and pocketed his phone.
Maybe he didn't really want to know…
Don't be such a sissy. Just go.
He walked down the stairs and toward the desk. The floor of the basement was cold against his bare feet.
He hopped onto his dad's desk chair so he could properly see what was on the desk. There was only one drawing on the desk, and it was turned facedown. He gritted his teeth and turned it over.
Oh. Okay. It was just a crappy drawing of him and Tweek making snow angels. It was actually kind of cute. Still weird that people would apparently pay money for it, but whatever.
Mission complete. Now go back to bed.
Craig knew there was more stuff than this, though. Intentionally stopping when he was ahead and leaving on a non-creepy note was a good idea in theory, but then he'd just stay up wondering what he had missed.
He pulled open the desk drawer and pulled out a stack of drawings. He leafed through the pictures, one by one.
This wasn't so bad. They weren't so bad. Okay, that one was kind of bad. Some of these were bad. But it wasn't a big deal. It didn't matter if some people somewhere were looking at drawings of him and Tweek. Why were Tweek's pants pulled down on that one? Why was Craig's stomach hurting so much? Why was he still looking at the pictures when they were making his stomach hurt? What would Craig's dad say if he caught him down here?
Getting caught suddenly seemed like a very immediate threat. Craig shoved the drawings back in the drawer and shut it—why were his hands shaking? He didn't even do anything wrong. He was never explicitly forbidden from looking at his dad's basement stuff. He wouldn't even get in trouble for anything more than being up past his bedtime, right?
But still. He needed to hurry back to his room. He left the desk and dashed up the stairs as quietly as he could. He turned out the basement light and tiptoed all the way back to his room.
As soon as he closed his bedroom door behind him, he let out the breath he was holding and crawled back into bed.
It took a very long time for him to fall asleep. His stomach hurt a lot.