A/N:
I wasn't sure I was going to post this here, but here we are, crossposting once again. This is my sequel to Wrong Number. Thank you for reading!

"What a beautiful feeling," Tweek sings softly to himself as he scrubs at his arms with his mint-green loofah, his voice barely audible over the sound of the shower. He knows that he could get away with singing a little louder, if not as loud as he possibly could, since his dorm has been mostly empty for the entire summer. And if it had been a different song stuck in his head today, he might have; it's not like he's never sung in public before, after all. But this song… Tweek smiles, turning around and letting the tepid water cascade over his shoulders and back, squeezing the loofah with both hands. This song is special, and it deserves to be treated that way. "Crimson and clover…"

It's not the type of song Tweek would usually listen to, but somehow that makes him love it even more. It's different, sort of in the same way that Tweek has always seen himself as different from everyone else. Take his specific musical tastes for example: he's always been partial to ridiculously cheesy pop music from the 80s and 90s, the more over-the-top the better, whereas most of the people he's known over the last few years are either mostly into rock music, or die-hard metalheads. Tweek's only ever known two other people who like the same sort of music as he does, or at least, that will admit to liking it, anyway. It's entirely possible that he's not as much in the minority as he thinks he is, and it's just that everyone wants to keep their love for Cyndi Lauper and the Spice Girls a deep, dark secret.

Tweek feels like he has enough deep, dark secrets.

His taste in music is actually the reason he and Clyde had started talking in the first place, last year. About a week into the semester, Tweek had been sitting on the edge of the stage of the small auditorium waiting for Lola, listening to some playlist of 80s one hit wonders when out of nowhere he'd been tapped on the shoulder.

True to form, he'd shrieked bloody murder, twitching so hard he'd flung his phone straight up into the air, causing his earbuds to rip themselves out of his ears in the process. Despite being in therapy consistently for the last three years, Tweek has still never mastered the art of responding to being startled like a normal person. He supposes it makes sense, looking at his past – which is not something he does on a daily basis for obvious reasons – but it's still incredibly, painfully embarrassing, especially when it happens in front of a roomful of people he doesn't know.

He'd immediately tensed up, his body unsurprisingly choosing the third option out of fight, flight, or freeze, just waiting to see who would be the first one to mock him. But it didn't happen. Not only did nobody else in the room even look up, the cheerful brunette guy who had been the one trying to get his attention wasn't looking at Tweek like he was a freak or a weirdo, and in fact, he didn't seem fazed in the slightest by the outburst.

"Sorry!" he'd apologized, scooping Tweek's phone and tangled earbuds up from the carpet in front of the stage. "I didn't mean to freak you out, I just wanted to–" He cut himself off in the middle of passing the phone back to Tweek to exclaim, "Dude! You listen to A-Ha?" Tweek hadn't even had time to respond, because immediately after asking the question, the brunette had loudly begun singing the chorus of Take On Me, making a valiant but completely unsuccessful effort to hit the high note.

He hadn't meant to, but Tweek had visibly cringed at the sound, both hands automatically flying up to cover his ears, along with nearly everyone else in the auditorium. It wasn't that the other guy was horrible at singing, not really; it was just the high notes that seemed to be giving him trouble. And to be fair, in Tweek's experience, Take On Me is a deceptively difficult song to pull off for most people. But even taking that into account, there was no way that anybody could ever mistake this guy for a good singer, and it was a mystery to Tweek why he'd even decided to take musical theater as an elective in the first place.

Tweek had felt bad the second the thought had crossed his mind, especially because he would absolutely not classify himself as anything close to a good singer either; it was just, oddly enough, one of the few things that helped calm his anxiety sometimes. At that exact moment, though, the brunette had shot him a sheepish grin and simply shrugged, running a hand through his hair. "Guess I need some more practice, huh?" He stuck his hand into the empty space between them. "I'm Clyde, by the way!"

"Oh, um, Tweek," Tweek had said, nervously crossing his arms across his chest and staring down at Clyde's hand. He wasn't trying to be rude, he just had an issue with touching people, and with people touching him.

Dr. Zephyr, his therapist, had told him that it was perfectly valid to feel that way after all that he'd been through, and that his personal boundaries are his personal boundaries and he shouldn't compromise them just for the sake of what may be considered social norms. After all, he'd spent practically his entire childhood, up until the age of sixteen, not being allowed to have personal space, feelings, opinions, or establish those boundaries. It was to be expected that he would inevitably be uncomfortable with certain things, like touching or even just making connections with people at all, and that was okay. Taking care of himself, Dr. Zephyr had said, should always be his number one priority.

It all made sense to Tweek, at least there in the office. But here, in a roomful of people, with Clyde right in front of him, his hand hovering in the air expectantly, Tweek had felt a familiar sense of guilty panic begin to bubble up inside him for being horrendously rude to this person who was only trying to be nice to him. His hands, tucked safely in the crook of each of his elbows, began twitching and his mind started racing. Should he shake Clyde's hand? He should shake Clyde's hand, he should actually make an effort to be friendly, he can't rely solely on Lola to get him through the year. Not only would that be unbelievably unfair to her, it would be unfair to everyone else to treat them like lepers just because he's an anxious mess of a human. It's not their fault he's so weird. He should really shake Clyde's hand. Come on, Tweek, just do it, just move your arm, you can do it. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't.

Again, though, Clyde hadn't seemed to see anything weird about Tweek's behavior. He'd just shrugged and said, "Not a shaker, huh? My roommate's like that too, you guys would probably get along," with a charming lopsided grin. He'd then immediately launched into what Tweek could only assume was the reason he'd wanted his attention in the first place, asking if he could partner with Tweek to practice for their auditions for the end-of-semester performance.

Maybe it was because Lola still hadn't shown up yet, and Tweek was still feeling pressure to act like a normal human being. Or maybe it was because Clyde had looked so friendly that, despite all the anxiety, Tweek had felt like he could actually trust him. He's still not sure why he'd said yes, but what he is sure of is that he's so, so grateful that he did.

Because if he hadn't, he never would have met Craig. And even though it's only been eight months, there's still so much they don't know about each other, and they haven't gone further than second base, and Tweek knows that logically it's way too soon to be thinking about forever… He already can't imagine his life without Craig Tucker in it.

Tweek shuts off the shower, still humming, and slips his hand through the loop attached to the top of the loofah; letting it dangle on his wrist, he gathers his wet hair in his hands and squeezes, watching the excess water drip onto the faded tile floor. When he's satisfied that he's wrung it out as much as possible, he snakes an arm out from behind the flimsy shower curtain and grabs his towel from where it's hanging on the metal bar just outside the stall. He quickly dries himself off, then secures the towel tightly around his waist and pulls back the curtain.

The row of mirrors across from the showers show Tweek that the bathroom is still just as empty as it had been when he'd initially come here twenty minutes earlier, and he can't help the tiny sigh of relief that escapes his lips. He'd managed to make it through a whole semester sharing a communal bathroom with the rest of his floor, showering every day, feet away from other guys, but he definitely hadn't felt very comfortable doing it. Being able to be in here alone without having to worry about anyone looking at him, leering at him, even, and judging his body… Tweek shivers, leaning down to pick up his pile of dirty clothes from the floor, partly from the temperature difference between the shower he'd just been in and the air around him, but mostly because of the thought of what people must think when they look at him.

He knows he's still far too skinny. Even after multiple appointments with various different nutritionists over the last couple of years and finally being told he can eat basically whatever he wants as long as it's relatively healthy, Tweek just can't manage to gain very much weight. Guiltily, he thinks about the two cups of coffee he'd had this morning in lieu of a real breakfast and frowns at his reflection in the closest mirror. He really needs to lay off the coffee. He knows that, too, it had been one of the first things he and Dr. Zephyr had talked about when Tweek had started seeing him. Coffee is a trigger, the trigger, for him; every single one of his past traumas stem from coffee and his parents, and Tweek hates the bitter drink with every fiber of his being.

Unfortunately, though, coffee is also one of the other things that can calm his nerves like nothing else can. It doesn't make any sense, and Tweek can't understand how or why something that makes him feel so awful inside can simultaneously lessen his anxiety the way that it does. Dr. Zephyr had tried to explain it in simple terms, that addictions don't always follow what one might consider to be the logical path of thought which is part of what makes them an addiction in the first place, but Tweek still can't wrap his mind around it. He just wishes he was normal.

Back in his room, he tosses his armful of clothing into his small foldable hamper and picks up his charging cell phone from the desk to check the time: just about six thirty, which gives him about fifteen minutes to get himself dressed and ready to go. Tweek slides his thumb over the phone's screen to unlock it, tapping on his messages icon, and smiles when he sees that he's got a few missed texts from Craig. The smile gets bigger, giving way to laughter when he reads what the messages say.

6:45, right? Am I riding?

Shit

Sorry, I meant driving. Am I driving or did you want to!

?*

Tweek doesn't think he'll ever be able to get enough of how adorably awkward Craig is as a person. When Clyde had first tried to sell the idea of getting him together with his "awesome roommate, even if he is kind of an asshole sometimes" last September, Tweek hadn't been very receptive to the idea. Some of it, obviously, had to do with what had happened the last time he'd let his guard down and decided to get into a relationship with someone. But a good part of it was because, from what Clyde was saying, his roommate really didn't sound very appealing. Tweek wasn't looking for someone who was "kind of an asshole sometimes." He wasn't looking for anyone at all, to be honest.

Clyde was insistent that if he would just meet Craig, just for five minutes, Tweek would see what he was talking about, but every time he brought it up Tweek would always shut him down. Respectfully, of course; he knew Clyde wasn't doing it to be a jerk and he genuinely thought that Tweek and this roommate guy would hit it off for some reason. Tweek just didn't think he was ready to date anybody again, or that he ever would be, not with how messed up and broken he was.

And then the last night before winter break had happened. He'd been waiting in the library for Clyde to come give him his half of their final project so he could go run over to drop it off to their professor's office, getting increasingly more panicked with every minute that went by. It wasn't just that he didn't want to fail the class because of someone else's flakiness, although that was absolutely a factor, and a reason Tweek disliked group projects so much in general. But the bigger reason was that if he were to fail the class, he wouldn't be able to take the next highest course level the next semester, which would, in turn, force him to rearrange the entire four-year schedule he'd worked out for himself before even applying to the college the April before. The thought of having to do that was like a punch of anxiety straight to his stomach.

Finally, Tweek had remembered that a month or so earlier, Clyde had given him his number, so he'd texted him. It hadn't registered in his brain that the responses he got hadn't sounded like Clyde in the slightest; and he should have known something was off the second he'd walked in the bookstore and not seen the brunette anywhere, but he'd been too busy freaking out about the time.

He did, however, notice that the guy behind the counter was all kinds of hot. Like the kind of hot that should be outlawed, the kind of hot Tweek didn't think a real person could ever be. If he hadn't been seconds away from a panic attack, he wouldn't have even had the guts to talk to him. And then the guy had said he was Clyde's roommate, and everything had clicked in Tweek's brain that this was clearly a setup, courtesy of that infuriatingly charming brunette.

He'd stormed out of the bookstore, but all the stomping and glaring was more to keep his jaw from dropping than anything else. He'd immediately sent Clyde an angry email, but even then, half of it was about Craig. There was something about him, some kind of immediate connection that Tweek had never felt with anyone else, and if he was completely honest with himself, it terrified him. He'd never done very well with intense feelings.

So when he'd gone over to Hunter Hall that night, after finally getting Clyde to tell him where his half of their project was, and Craig had wandered over from down the hall only dressed in Red Racer boxers, Tweek had clung to the idea that only creepy weirdos did things like that. Because if he could convince himself that Craig was nothing more than a creepy weirdo, he could convince himself that that feeling of connection didn't mean anything.

Thank God he never had been much of a liar.

You can drive, if you want to. I like watching you drive. :) Tweek types back with his thumb. He sets his phone down on his bed next to the dark green button-up shirt and black jeans he's planning on wearing tonight, and opens the top drawer of his dresser to grab some socks and underwear. He knows that message is probably going to make Craig blush like crazy.

Not that he'd done that on purpose, or anything.