A/N:
I realized, reading over everything I've written for this fandom, that most of my stories are sad and tragic. So I decided to write something different. Let me know what you think.
"Fuck," Craig mutters, an exasperated sigh following the curse word as he sits back and surveys the contents of his bedroom closet and surrounding space. Seventeen years' worth of memories in various forms are strewn across the carpet around him. He frowns down at a stack of last year's biology class notes, kicks aside those horrible pink plastic shutter shades from the metro craze, and flips off his old baseball uniform from the summer between third and fourth grade. At the snort of laughter from behind him, he raises his arm, redirecting the middle finger at his best friend, who is lounging on Craig's bed.
Clyde just grins and rolls his eyes, completely unfazed; he, along with pretty much everyone else in town, had become desensitized to Craig's nonverbal weapon of choice years ago. Leaning back against the wall, he stretches his legs out across the bed, dangling his feet off the edge. "As threatening as you are," he says, his tone clearly conveying the opposite of his words. "I'm just not sure that's gonna work, dude."
Craig lowers his arm, but doesn't turn around, instead leaning forward to sift through another pile of things he hadn't even realized he'd had in his closet. Jeans that hadn't fit him since middle school, complete with a giant hole where the left knee should be; a wooden spoon he'd made in shop class seven – no, eight – years ago; an empty Red Racer DVD case, the disc long since lost. There is a hint of uneasiness in Craig's gray eyes as he takes in the sheer amount of junk around him, but he shakes his head, pushing aside a lock of black hair that falls across his face at the motion. No, he might be messy, but he is definitely not a hoarder. And he needs a fucking haircut.
"You could help, you know," he says, resolving to actually clean his room once this is done - he knows he's not a hoarder, but just to be safe. He looks over his shoulder at Clyde, who is scrolling through something on his phone. "It's your fuckin' bet, not mine."
Clyde moves his shoulders in a halfhearted attempt at a shrug. "You hate when people touch your stuff," he replies, tapping on his phone's screen.
The words, though accurate for the most part, irritate Craig an irrational amount and there is a sharp edge to his voice when he replies. "Does any of this look like shit I care about?" He gestures around him, the sleeve of his black hoodie catching on the edge of a stack of CDs that crash together in a heap on the carpet.
Slightly – but only slightly, because they've been friends since preschool – taken aback by Craig's sudden hostile tone, Clyde tosses his phone down beside him and yawns, lifting his arms to run both hands through his dark brown hair. He flops onto his stomach and grabs the edge of the mattress, sliding himself over so he's hanging off the edge of the bed. "What color is it again?"
"It's not gonna be under there," Craig says with certainty, rolling his eyes. "I haven't thought about that shit in forever." That part's a lie, but Clyde doesn't need to know that. Best friends or not, it's nobody's business but Craig's what he does and does not think about.
"Seems like that's about as long as it's been since you've cleaned under here," Clyde says, his voice muffled as his face is currently underneath Craig's bed. "How the hell do you know where anything is?"
"I have a system," Craig mutters, which is another total lie. The only system he has involves him throwing his hat onto the same spot on his dresser every day when he gets home. Sure, most of the things under his bed are from a more recent time than anything in his closet, but even that isn't always a guarantee. "And it's blue."
"Oh, right, one of those blue systems." Amused, Clyde moves his head out from underneath the bed and looks in Craig's direction, though he can only see his left shoulder from this position. "Haven't thought about it in forever but you remember the color of the notebook, huh?" He is just barely able to keep his balance as he dodges the wooden spoon that comes flying at his face, and the utensil hits the wall instead. Clyde stretches out his arm to pick it up and inspect it. "Is this from shop?" he asks, turning it over in his hands.
"Uh-huh." Craig responds with a grunt. He stares at the back wall of his closet, willing the item he's searching for to just magically appear out of nowhere. It's South Park, after all; stranger things have happened – a fact that Craig is reminded of when he catches sight of his other, diamond-patterned, chullo hat, trapped underneath a ninth grade history textbook he'd never returned.
"No, like, third grade shop?" Clyde looks over in Craig's direction again when his friend sighs. "Dude, there's no way you made this when you were nine." He brandishes the spoon like it's a weapon, slashing at the air in front of him. "It's so good!"
"Just because you fucked up three of them trying to make one," Craig says, nudging the history book aside with his foot and picking up the hat. He stares down at it, having an internal debate with himself about whether or not he should put it on, for nostalgia's sake. When his eyes start to tingle, just a little, he decides it's probably better to just let the past be the past, and tosses it back into the depths of his closet.
"I didn't fuck them up," Clyde protests as his cell phone chirps with a text notification. He drops the spoon on the carpet and pulls himself back up into a sitting position to read the message, blowing the hair that has fallen in his eyes out of the way.
"Uh, yeah, you–" Craig stops in the middle of his sentence as a corner of a sheet of paper with bright pink writing on it catches his eye. It's sticking out of a stack of what looks like trigonometry homework – he's not a hoarder, really – and, as he would never be caught dead with a pink pen, Craig's first thought is that it's something of Tricia's that somehow ended up in his room. But when he pulls the sheet out to investigate, another piece of fourth grade history is staring him in the face. He lets out an involuntary, "Whoa," forgetting for a second that Clyde is in the room and that he's Craig Tucker, the poster child for apathy.
"Find it?"
"Yeah," Craig says flatly, shaking his head and wondering, not for the first time, how the hell Clyde had managed to make it to senior year, with a genius brain like that. "That's why I'm still sitting here."
The sarcasm is lost on Clyde, who's too distracted by his phone to really register Craig's words. "Oh, okay, cool," he says with a nod, typing out a message. After hitting send, he looks up, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. "Wait, what?"
"No, I didn't find it." Craig resists the urge to flip Clyde off, and instead holds up the sheet of paper. "Found this though."
Clyde's eyes widen when he sees what it is, and he scrambles across the bed until he's leaning over the end of it, his face inches away from the blast from the past. His hair is just long enough that the tips of it hang down and brush against the paper. "How the hell did you get this?" he asks, incredulously, his eyes moving rapidly across the page.
"Dude, I don't fuckin' know." Craig shrugs, nearly hitting Clyde right in the face with his shoulder. It's not quite a lie, but not exactly the truth either.
Way back in fourth grade, the girls had taken it upon themselves to craft a list, to determine who the cutest boy in class was. When Butters had frantically informed the boys' lunch table about its existence, Cartman, in turn, had taken it upon himself to recruit everyone, Craig included, to get the list for themselves. Once they'd gotten their hands on it and seen where they ranked, though, everything got...weird.
It had never been the girls' intention to make the list public, if Wendy could be believed. Craig only trusts her about twenty percent of the time, but given what had happened after, he's always figured that she was telling the truth in this case.
Craig had been listed at number twelve, and though he would never admit it out loud to anyone, it had really done a number on his self-esteem. Especially since he had ended up being the lowest-ranked of every one of the other members of his gang. It wasn't like he'd thought he was the absolute best-looking guy in the class or anything, and, okay, he couldn't argue with some of the rankings (which was another thing he would never say out loud). But still, even though he didn't think he was number one material, he hadn't expected to score so low. The only silver lining was that he was higher on the list than Cartman.
Clyde had been voted first on the list, which had made him absolutely insufferable for about six days. Six long, long days, during which Craig had been subjected to the worst kind of torture imaginable: dating advice from his best friend. It was like Clyde had figured being voted the cutest boy granted him some kind of God-given right to pass judgment on everyone else's romantic lives.
Or, in Craig's case, the lack thereof.
When Clyde wasn't on the phone with one of the girls, making promises of free shoes for life, he was going on and on to Craig about how being twelfth wasn't really that bad, and maybe he just needed an image change, like to stop wearing his hat and look into braces to straighten out his teeth a little, and maybe try wearing a color other than blue one day. He'd heard from Red – or it might have been Rebecca, honestly, Craig stopped listening after a while – that green was a color a lot of girls liked. Maybe if Craig wore green he'd have better luck, Clyde was sure there were a lot of girls that would be willing to go out with him, he just had to put in a little effort, and did he want Clyde to put in a good word for him?
It was aggravating as all hell, not to mention exhausting. The fact that Craig had shown zero interest in anything Clyde was talking about hadn't deterred him in any way, and he just wouldn't let it go. It had gotten to the point that Craig had changed his Facebook status to "in a relationship" just in the hopes that Clyde would shut the hell up, but not even that worked. It actually made things worse, because then Clyde kept asking him who he was dating, if he knew her, if she went to their school, when he was going to meet her.
Craig had been this close to snapping and punching him right in the face in the middle of the cafeteria when Stan had shown up with Wendy and the news that the list they had been given was a fake. Apparently there had been a whole conspiracy around it, all because of shoes, which Craig found just absolutely bizarre – of course, he was still wearing the same old beat-up sneakers he'd had forever, so it wasn't surprising the nuances of shoe addiction were lost on him.
Clyde had been crestfallen when he learned that he hadn't really been voted the cutest; he'd cried for the whole last twenty minutes of lunch and if he hadn't been acting like a douchebag for the last six days, Craig might have felt bad for him. But, tragically for Clyde, the emotional wounds from the torture of his incessant advice and questioning were still far too fresh, and so Craig had just turned to Stan and asked, "So what was the real list?" regretting the question as soon as it was out of his mouth.
To this day, he has no idea why Stan had handed it over, or even why he'd asked about it in the first place. Yeah, he was curious about who was actually number one, who wouldn't be? But outright asking like that implied that he actually cared about something; and while it was true that there were actually a good many things he cared about, Craig had worked far too hard on perfecting his aloof reputation over the years to ruin it on something as stupid as an arbitrary list of the girls'.
He hadn't even been expecting a real answer, to be honest. Never mind the fact that he and Stan weren't exactly close friends; after seeing what the fake list had done to everyone, Craig had just figured that Stan would feel the need to hide the real list, or destroy it, or something, to avoid more chaos. He was infuriatingly moral like that, always trying to do what he considered the 'right' thing.
And in the cafeteria, it had seemed like that was exactly what had happened. Stan, with a glance over at Wendy, had just shrugged and said, "We burned it." Craig had responded by not responding at all, simply turning back to Clyde, who was still mourning the loss of his status of cutest boy by talking the ear off of an increasingly annoyed Token. And that was that.
Right up until the end of the school day, when Craig had opened his locker to have a piece of sticker-covered notebook paper flutter out and drift to the floor. Beside him, Clyde was digging through his own locker and saying something about a double date with a couple of Raisins waitresses, apparently over the whole fake list debacle already.
Barely listening, and already planning to answer his friend with only a middle finger, Craig crouched down to pick up the paper. It hadn't registered in his mind what it was until he'd picked it up and seen the post-it note stuck to the back: Thought you should have this. Don't show anyone. The last three words were heavily underlined, and thanks to the previous week's group science project, Craig recognized the writing as Stan's, and then it clicked in his head what exactly it was he was holding.
As quickly and covertly as he could, Craig folded the paper in half and slid it into the pocket of his jeans before straightening up and pulling his jacket out of his locker. If Clyde hadn't been standing right behind him, he would have wasted no time in finding out where he, and everyone else, really ranked in terms of their looks. In fact, being told not to do something usually resulted in the immediate urge to just go ahead and do it anyway; but in this case, and possibly for the first time ever, Craig thought Stan had a good point. Given how everyone had reacted when they'd seen the first list, it was probably better to keep the real one a secret. And so he had.
"You asshole!"
Until now, anyway.
Craig runs a hand through his hair and resists the urge to sigh. He turns his head to see Clyde glaring at him accusingly, having just seen the real version of the list for the very first time. "What?"
"What do you mean, what?" Clyde gestures wildly to the sheet of paper in Craig's hands. His phone beeps again and he reaches behind him to grab it. "How long have you known you were number one?"
With a shrug, Craig looks down at the list, rereading it for what feels like the zillionth time. As incredulous as Clyde sounded, it was nothing compared to how Craig had felt when he'd first seen his name written at the top, a little pink heart dotting the i. He'd been absolutely stunned, and had actually just about convinced himself that Stan had been bullshitting him about the whole thing just to trick him.
Not only because he was first, either, but also because the placement of some of the other guys – one of the other guys in particular – just didn't seem right to him. He still feels that way, he realizes, frowning as his eyes travel down the page. The only thing forcing him to accept that this list is, in fact, the truth – both back then and now, here, in his room – is Cartman being last.
Maybe his being number one was why Stan had entrusted him, of all people, with the list. Maybe he just figured Craig would be the least likely to care and cause Clydelike chaos, given his penchant for liking things nice and boring all the time. He did care, of course, but not in the same way that most of the other guys would, not for the same reasons.
"Token's here," Clyde announces, just as Craig's front doorbell rings. He types out a message on his phone, and a second later the sound of the door opening and closing is heard, Token appearing in Craig's bedroom doorway soon after.
"Hey," he says, leaning against the doorframe and raising an eyebrow as he takes in the disastrous state of the room. "Didn't find it yet?"
"Fucking look at this!" Clyde snatches the list out of Craig's hands before he has a chance to speak, waving it in the air. Craig rolls his eyes; honestly, Clyde's flair for the dramatic could be so goddamn irritating.
Token steps into the room, carefully maneuvering around the piles of junk that have accumulated in his friends' search for a specific blue notebook. "Fucking look at what now?" he asks, taking a seat beside Clyde on Craig's bed.
"Nothing important," Craig says, a weird queasy feeling rising in his stomach as Clyde sits up and holds the sheet of paper out to Token.
He shifts awkwardly, suddenly wishing he'd never shown Clyde; more than that, even, wishing he'd never found the stupid thing at all. Craig, for all his unshakeable indifference and tough guy bravado, hated attention. Nothing made him more uncomfortable than when he was the center of anything, with all eyes on him. It was another one of those things about him that nobody knew, and that included all three of his best friends, two of which had their eyes on him even now.
"Oh, fuck you, nothing important." It's Clyde's turn to roll his eyes and Token just snickers. "Do you know how many chicks you could've gotten if you'd fucking told me about this?"
Who fucking cares, is what Craig wants to say, but he just clenches his jaw and settles for flipping the two of them off.
"He has a point," Token agrees offhandedly as he continues to scan the list. "Wait, wasn't I second on the other one too?"
"Yeah," Clyde says, reaching over to point at the names. "A lot of us stayed the same or only moved a couple places. Like see?" He taps the paper with one finger. "Tweek was eighth on the fake one and he went down to tenth here."
"Look, it was eight fucking years ago, Christ!" Craig doesn't mean to yell, really, and he knows that this reaction is just going to invite more attention that he doesn't want. But at Clyde's words, the queasy feeling gets worse and he wants to just grab the list back and shred the thing into tiny bits of confetti. Suddenly claustrophobic amid the mountains of material memories around him, he stands abruptly, kicking a pile of junk into his closet harder than he should but refusing to outwardly acknowledge how much kicking the edge of a chemistry textbook with your bare foot hurts. "How the fuck do you even remember that anyway?"
The same lock of hair from earlier falls into his eyes again and he moves across the room, to his dresser, to grab his hat. Seriously, he really needs a haircut.
"Are you kidding?" Token looks up and shakes his head. "Have you met Clyde? He remembers the most useless shit."
"Not useless," Clyde protests, a slight whine to his voice.
Token just looks at him. "What was my locker combination in seventh grade?"
WIth a groan of defeat, Clyde mumbles, "Fourteen, twenty-six, nine."
"Exactly." Token hands the list back to Clyde and leans back against the wall. "Useless."
"Completely useless," Craig mutters, pulling his hat on so that it covers every stray bit of hair.
Never mind the fact that he remembers the first version of the list perfectly as well. It's also completely irrelevant that he's spent a fair amount of time crafting his own version of it, and a plethora of other lists over the years.
It started not long after all of the drama with the girls' list. The four of them – Craig, Clyde, Token, and Tweek – had been hanging out in Token's basement, watching some awful movie, the way they did every Saturday night. Someone had suggested ranking all of the characters from best to worst. Craig can't definitively say whose idea it had been, but if he had to venture a guess he would say Clyde, who hadn't shut up about lists ever since the incident. He also can't entirely remember why they'd decided to go ahead and do it, all he remembers is that they did.
The thing was, once they got started making their own lists, Craig actually found himself legitimately enjoying it. Sitting there with his friends, coming up with a completely random topic and debating the hell out of it for hours at a time; it had provided a fuckton of entertainment, far more than the terrible movies they still put on in the background once list-making had taken over as the primary Saturday night activity.
In just under two years, they'd put together hundreds of lists, about everything and anything they could think of. They had a list dedicated to the cheesiest horror movies of the 1980s, a list ranking all the restaurants in South Park, a list of all the reasons Cartman was clearly secretly in love with Kyle, a list of all the reasons Kyle would be completely justified in killing Cartman, a top ten list of Jimmy's best jokes, and so many more that Craig can't even remember. Token, who had the neatest handwriting of all of them, was the designated "scribe"; he would enter each list neatly in a notebook that Craig had swiped from his dad's study – something he'd do any time they needed a new one.
At the end of sixth grade, the new Xbox came out and of course, Token was one of the first kids to get one. Saturday nights were suddenly all about beating each other up in Mortal Kombat or Marvel vs. Capcom or whatever ass-kicking game was popular at the time, rather than making lists. But just because it was no longer a weekly group activity, that didn't mean Craig stopped doing it.
He'd kept going, and even now, he has notebooks filled with lists hidden all around his room. Hidden, because, once again, it's nobody else's business what he thinks about. His own personal lists are about a lot of things, but most of them have one thing in common: they are about the things Craig would never, ever tell anyone else, not even his best friends.
He'd kept all the original notebooks too, and in fact, one of those notebooks was exactly what he had been tearing his closet apart for. Clyde and Token had made a bet the night before about an old list of the best Keanu Reeves movies, and they needed to find it to see who owed who twenty dollars.
"You're useless," is all Clyde can come up with in response, and both Token and Craig just roll their eyes. Comebacks are definitely not Clyde's forte. In a very obvious attempt at deflection, he casts a sullen look in Craig's direction and adds, "You can't even find a dumb notebook."
Craig throws a middle finger up at him as Token says with a grin, "Well, if it's just a dumb notebook, we don't even need to find it. You can just give me my money now."
Clyde turns to Token, abandoning the list on the bed behind him. "Dude, no way!" He slides off the bed and lays on his stomach on the floor, his head once again disappearing into the abyss of underneath the bed. "There's no way we said Constantine was his best movie."
"Pretty sure you said it, and then cried until we let you win." Token's response elicits a muffled whine and Craig lets out a snort of laughter, unable to help himself. Token raises his eyebrows at Craig. "I'm right, right?"
Shrugging, Craig says, "Sounds like Clyde to me." He returns to his former position in front of his closet and leans his right shoulder against the wall; frowning into the depths he tries to think of where the hell the notebook in question could possibly be.
"Hey!" Clyde exclaims from underneath the bed. "I think I found –" There is a loud thud and he interrupts himself with an, "Ow, fuck," then continues, "I think I found something!"
Token leans forward, talking to Clyde's legs that are sticking out into the middle of the room. "Is it the right one?"
"Dunno," Clyde says. "There's just like, a hole in the bottom of the mattress and there's a notebook in there!"
In that moment, for Craig, it feels like time both freezes and accelerates at the same time. He turns back towards his bed, where Clyde is emerging from underneath, holding a green notebook. He sees it happening almost faster than it should, and he's completely unable to move or even get out the "No!" that he so desperately wants to shout. His stomach churns, the queasy feeling from before exponentially worse in the face of what is happening. If either Clyde or Token looked at him right now, they would see panic reflected in his gray eyes; his hands, palms suddenly slick with sweat, curl into fists.
Even as Clyde climbs back up onto the bed to sit beside Token, and flips the notebook open, Craig is frozen – and completely, utterly screwed. All he can do is stand there and watch as Clyde, his best friend since preschool, looks down and reads something he was never supposed to read.
"'Things I' –" Clyde stops. He turns his head, his stunned eyes meeting Craig's, which are just as wide.
"'Things I Love' –" Token doesn't get much farther than Clyde before also just staring at their friend, albeit with less shock in his expression.
The room is silent, so silent all three teenagers can clearly hear the wind blowing outside, though all the windows in the Tucker house are closed. Craig is the first one to break eye contact, pulling his hat down farther onto his head and all but collapsing into a sitting position on the floor. Weakly, he holds up his arm to flip the other two off, but there's no real meaning behind the gesture. He's numb, with the exception of the tears stinging the corners of his eyes.
As far as his friends know, Craig isn't, and has never been, a crier. To them, he's always handled negative emotions the same way, with irritability and middle fingers. Even in fifth grade, when he'd broken his arm falling out of Clyde's terribly constructed treehouse, he hadn't cried when it happened; he'd just flipped off the treehouse and walked back to his house alone. He'd cried at his own house, of course – breaking your arm fucking hurts – but only when he was out of sight of everyone else. As stupid as it is, his reputation matters to him, and always has.
But now? Now Craig figures what the hell, it's all over, his facade of indifference shattered because of one stupid list in one stupid notebook that clearly hadn't been hidden as well as he'd thought. And so he leans his head on the end of his bed, letting the tears drip out of his eyes and down his face.
"Craig?" Clyde says tentatively, the sight of Craig crumpled against the wall one of the most terrifying things he's ever seen. "Um." Not having thought through what he should say, he looks to Token for help.
Token looks down at the notebook in Clyde's lap again, and then raises his eyes in Craig's direction. "Honestly," he says, his voice calm and level as always, "I thought the shrieks would be number one."
"What?" Clyde tilts his head in confusion, and Token waves him off impatiently before continuing.
"Eye color is just a little cliche, you know?"
At Token's words, Craig presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, stopping the flow of tears, and sits up a little bit straighter. "What?" he says, echoing Clyde, his voice a little more nasally than usual.
Token takes the notebook from Clyde and studies it for a second before speaking again. "Yeah, and I didn't think the thermos would be up so high." He shakes his head at Clyde, shushing him before he can say a word.
"Wait – what?" Craig lifts his head and pushes his hat up a bit so he can see again.
Token shrugs, holding up the notebook. "Nine years of friendship, moron. What, you think we're stupid?"
"Wait, you knew?" Clyde says exactly the words that Craig is thinking. Both of them are staring at Token now, identically slack-jawed and dumbfounded.
"Seriously, you didn't?" Token asks Clyde, before shooting Craig a grin. "Okay, wait, take two: nine years, you think I'm stupid?" He tosses the notebook onto the bed. "You're a lot of things, Craig, but you're not a robot, for Christ's sake."
"Fuck," is all Craig can think to say, his heart rate slowing as he realizes that neither of his friends are going to make fun of him or run screaming from his room. And then again: "Fuck."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Clyde's question is directed to both Craig and Token, and it's the latter who answers first.
"It wasn't my business." Token leans back again. "And besides, we're not all gossipers like you, Clyde."
"Wait, so you didn't –" Craig clears his throat. "You didn't tell...anyone else, did you?"
"He doesn't know, no." Token shakes his head as Craig breathes a sigh of relief. "I think you should say something, though, now that we're finally talking about this."
"Who says we're talking about this," Craig mutters, trying to ignore the anxiety that hits at Token's suggestion. He looks down, pulling on the sleeve of his hoodie.
"Someone who's seen the way you look at him every day since at least seventh grade," Token fires back. "Who also happens to be the same someone who's seen the way he's looked at you for almost as long."
"Fuck you, you're lying." Craig's heart is racing again. No way. There's no fucking way.
"I'm not." Token glances beside him. "I'd say ask Clyde, but he doesn't notice shit, just remembers useless garbage."
"Hey!" Clyde whines.
"I'm serious, though, Craig. Do you really think I'm that much of an asshole I'd lie to you about this?" Token asks.
Craig, at the moment, has no idea what to think. He looks up at the ceiling, where there are still some remnants of whatever he'd used to stick glow-in-the-dark stars and planets up there when he was ten. He tries to organize his thoughts and make sense of what has just transpired in the last five minutes. Completely failing at that, he says, to the ceiling, "The fuck would I even say?"
"Dude!" Clyde says eagerly, excited by the prospect of being able to exercise his – in his opinion – absolutely fantastic matchmaking skills. "I can totally help you!"
"What are you gonna do?" Token says, laughing at Clyde's enthusiasm. "Make them watch Constantine together?"
"I didn't say it was the best, shut up!" Clyde shoves Token a little bit and rolls his eyes. To Craig, he says, "I can help teach you to flirt!"
"Oh, please." Token snorts. "I'm sorry, Clyde, but you're not exactly a Romeo, here."
"No, just look, listen," Clyde says, waving his arm in the air. "It's so easy, you just have to find the right pickup line, like…" He frowns as he thinks for a second, and then: "Oh! Like you just have to be like, 'Coffee's a pick-me-up, right? Well, I'll pick you up!'"
"That doesn't even make any sense." Token says after a few seconds of trying to work out what the hell Clyde was even trying to say. "Jesus Christ, no wonder you're still single." He turns to Craig, who has been watching his friends during this exchange, looking very much like he would just like to shoot himself right in the face for getting himself into this in the first place. "Look, as the only one of the three of us actually in a relationship–"
"Douchebag," Clyde grumbles, but Token ignores him.
"–I feel like I should be here to help too, especially if Clyde is going to tell you to say dumbass shit like that."
"You're dumbass shit," Clyde says, again proving his ineptitude with comebacks.
"Whatever." Token waves him off, still looking at Craig, who is still looking at the ceiling. "So? What do you think? Gonna take a chance and do something risky for once?"
Craig slowly lowers his gaze from the ceiling to look at the two of his best friends sitting on his bed. Both of them are looking at him; Clyde's expression is hopeful, Token's more of curiosity with a hint of a challenge in his eyes.
He lets his eyes drift down, to the notebook lying open between them. Token hadn't been that far off when he'd said seventh grade; it had been halfway through sixth when Craig had figured out his feelings. At first he'd tried to ignore them, to make them go away, but as the years went on the feelings just grew stronger and it was impossible to pretend they didn't exist. So he'd taken to hiding them, and honestly, that was getting exhausting.
Despite all of the reasons he knows he shouldn't – reasons that, if Clyde were to turn a few pages in that green notebook, he would find a list of – Craig finds himself actually wanting to take the risk. So his dad would probably disown him, so what? It's not like he and any of his family are particularly close as it is. And yeah, he'd have to deal with everyone at school when they found out, but he's had years of practice handling bullshit drama on behalf of Clyde, who's always had a tendency to get himself into trouble.
Thinking about it now, the only reason Craig can see really being a deterrent is if things were to not work out. But then there's always the flip side of, well, what if they do?
Knowing himself as well as he does, if he were left to try to do this on his own he'd fuck it up before anyone even noticed anything was happening. But with Clyde and Token sitting here, in his room, offering their help and basically telling him that he definitely, absolutely has a really, really good shot…
Craig clears his throat again, and says, before he can change his mind, "I'm not using any dumbass pickup lines."
Things I Love About Tweek
1. Green eyes are fucking hot
2. How his hair always looks like he just got electrocuted
3. The 'Tweek shriek'
4. His smile
5. The way he carries that fucking thermos everywhere
6. The way he laughs
7. How he's so nice to everyone all the time, even me
8. The conspiracy theory shit
9. He can play piano
10. Just...fucking everything