A/N:
Don't worry, they'll get to the steakhouse eventually.
By the time Clyde and Kenny have shown up outside the bookstore to pick him up, Craig has managed to pull himself up off the floor and count exactly one plastic tub of mechanical pencils. And honestly, he's surprised he had been able to even do that, considering how flooded his brain is with thoughts of everything but inventory concerns. He's pretty positive he fucked up the count anyway, since he's not actually sure if the containers can even hold 112 mechanical pencils, but at this point, he thinks to himself, who fucking cares?
Clyde hammers on the door of the store to announce their arrival just as Craig's phone goes off. He sighs heavily, dropping the inventory clipboard on the floor and rubbing his eyes with one hand, already exhausted by his best friend's enthusiasm. For about the fiftieth time in the last hour, he seriously considers just ditching this dinner, but as soon as the thought crosses his mind, two things happen that throw that idea right out the window.
First, his stomach growls again, this time so loudly that Craig actually jumps a little bit and looks down at his body in surprise. "Jesus Christ," he mutters, pulling his keys out of his pocket and leaning down to grab his cell phone from the shelf of pens and pencils. If he didn't know any better, he'd think a herd of wild velociraptors were going to stampede out of his stomach and run rampant all over town.
The other thing that happens that keeps Craig from cancelling his plans, flipping off Clyde and Kenny, and heading straight back to his dorm room is a text message. He sets his keys down on the nearest shelf and looks down at his phone, fully expecting the notification to be a text from Clyde, telling Craig to hurry the hell up because he's absolutely starving, but it's not Clyde's name who pops up on his screen. It's Tweek's.
Craig still isn't used to the reaction his whole body has to even just the sight of Tweek's name, even though he really should be, given the last few days. The way his heart rate immediately increases, the organ pounding away in his chest like a drum solo on crack; the way all the moisture in his throat just disappears, leaving behind a painful Saharalike dryness; the way his hands are suddenly instantly so sweaty that he nearly loses his grip on his phone three times; and just the way he goes from feeling perfectly fine to feeling like he's all of a sudden contracted the worst flu of his life. It would be an interesting phenomenon, if it didn't also come with a side of Dumbass Syndrome that Craig just can't seem to beat no matter how hard he tries.
Ignoring Clyde's yell of, "Dude, come on!" from outside, Craig gingerly sets his phone back down on the shelf next to his keys and wipes his hands on his jeans, grimacing at the feeling of damp denim against his skin. So gross. He picks up the phone and clears his throat, wincing a bit, as he taps on the message.
Hey I got here early, I'm saving a table by the window :)
A small, rare smile blossoms across Craig's face as he rereads the short message over and over. God, not only is Tweek incredibly hot, an insanely good singer, and probably the nicest person Craig has ever met in his life; but it turns out he's the only other person Craig knows who uses the ancient way of sending smiley faces in texts instead of the overused obnoxious emojis favored by the entire rest of the world. And that is just fucking adorable.
He hovers his thumb over the lower half of his phone's screen, his eyes moving back and forth across the digital keyboard as he tries to think of how to respond. Eventually, he hesitantly taps out, Okay, see you soon. It's not even a minute before the Red Racer theme song fills the air again and another message pops up underneath the first, followed quickly by a second.
Oh, oops, that was for Clyde, can you let him know?
He said you were coming too?
Yeah, Craig types, ignoring the sharp pang in his chest at the news that the smiley face text hadn't been meant for him. I'm coming. As soon as he hits the send button, he regrets his word choice with every fiber of his being, but it's too late; the message is already out there, zooming through the air towards Tweek's phone, and there's nothing Craig can do to stop it.
He shoves his hands into both pockets of his jeans, internally panicking a little bit when both come up empty, no keys to be found. Shit. He looks down at the floor, but all that's there is his trusty inventory clipboard and a lone triceratops eraser that belongs in the container by the register, probably kicked over here by some inconsiderate douchebag who couldn't be bothered to take two seconds to pick it up and put it where it belongs.
Scanning the shelves, Craig throws up a middle finger behind his back when Clyde bangs on the door again. Even though there's no way he can see him with all the merchandise in the way, just the action brings Craig a certain level of satisfaction.
"Craig!" his best friend whines. His voice is slightly muffled, and Craig has zero doubts that if he turned around to look, he'd see Clyde's face pushed up right against the glass, practically licking all the germs that live on the surface. "What are you doing? I'm hungry!"
Craig finally locates his keys on the top shelf next to the scissors, right in front of his face, and exactly where he'd put them down two minutes ago. He grabs them with the hand holding his phone, hooking the keyring with his index finger; swinging his other arm around to redirect his middle finger to the shelf for trying to make him look stupid, he heads for the door of the bookstore. Just as he pulls it open, he gets another text notification, the ringtone nearly drowned out by the sound of Clyde cheering.
I washed your hat for you, I hope that's okay :)
Craig almost drops his phone again. "Holy shit," he accidentally mumbles out loud as he turns around to lock the door behind him.
"Aw, now that's what I was gonna say!" A blonde head of hair pops up on Craig's left, which he does his best to ignore.
Kenny McCormick, however, is not easily ignored.
"Clyde told me you were gonna be hatless tonight, but I had to see it to believe it!" Kenny chirps, the sound of his voice grating on every single one of Craig's nerves. "Who'd you lose a bet to, Tucker?"
His head already aching, Craig just shoots Kenny a death-glare, which South Park's resident immortal brushes off with a laugh and a wave of his hand. "I don't want to talk about it," he mutters, shoving his keys back into his pocket and holding his phone up to respond to Tweek's message. Then he pauses.
How the fuck should he respond to Tweek's message? Obviously he doesn't have an issue with Tweek washing his hat in theory, especially considering a trip to the washing machine for it had been long overdue. He's pretty sure the last time the chullo had been washed had been before graduation back in June. But that's sort of exactly the problem – knowing that Tweek had held his hat, looked at it, and seen that Craig was a disgusting lazy slob who had let it go unwashed for six months was mortifying. What was he supposed to say to acknowledge that? "Oh, thanks, sorry you had to touch that toxic petri dish of a hat, I hope you wore a Hazmat suit! Jesus fucking Christ.
At the same time, though, the thought of Tweek doing laundry for him, even just to wash something as small as his chullo, gives Craig a very strange combination of emotions. It's not so much that he gets turned on by someone washing his clothes; he's not that fucking weird – yet. But doing someone else's laundry for them has always seemed to him like a pretty intimate act.
Even back when he was nine years old, offering to do Thomas's laundry, it had been a big deal to him, just in a different way. He wanted to hang around with Thomas and be his friend, so why not do laundry for him? He might as well put all that time spent watching his mom wash his dad's clothes to good use. Right before all the shit with Cartman faking his Tourette's had gone down, Craig had been this close to inviting Thomas to hang out with him at the laundromat.
In fourth grade nobody thought about the implications of things like that, not the way that they do now. Nobody would have called it a date or anything. It was just kids being kids. Craig himself hadn't even put it together until middle school. Of course, by then it had seemed obvious that Thomas had been his very first crush, and that the desire to do his laundry was the only way fourth-grade Craig's brain had let him manifest those feelings.
And now that Tweek has actually gone ahead and taken the time to wash something of Craig's, completely unprompted, on top of everything else nice he's already done for him, Craig's ninety percent sure that he's just fallen even more in love than he thought possible.
"Tweek's got his hat," Clyde informs Kenny with a wide, bright grin before a few gears clink to life in his brain and he turns his big brown eyes to Craig. "Oh, by the way, I invited Tweek to–"
"I know," Craig interrupts, eyes still glued to his phone screen. "He, uh, said to tell you he got there early and got a window by the table. I mean, uh, a table by the window." Get your shit together, moron, he internally screams at himself. He's going to have to work ten times as hard to not act like an utter dumbfuck in front of Tweek tonight with Clyde and Kenny around. Clyde might not be good at many things, but he can read Craig like a book; and Kenny's just got an infuriating ability to know everything about everyone all the time.
"Oh, sweet!" Clyde throws both arms in the air, narrowly missing hitting Craig's phone out of his hand. Kenny swings his own arms forward to high-five the brunette, the loud slapping sound echoing through the otherwise empty building. "Let's go, I'm starving!"
"As you wish," Kenny says with a dramatic, exaggerated bow, a set of keys materializing in his right hand that he twirls around his fingers.
Craig, distracted by the revelation that it's Kenny with the car keys, types out a quick, Yeah, that's fine, sending the message and looking up with a groan. "You're driving? I thought Clyde was driving."
"He's too hungry to drive," Kenny teases, ruffling Clyde's hair with his free hand. "If we leave it to him, he'll just take us through the nearest drive-thru and we'll miss out on all that delicious, juicy meat." Smiling mischievously, he adds, "Well, the steak, anyway. I can get delicious meat whenever I want."
Clyde's face turns as red as the hoodie he's wearing, but he's stil smiling as he reaches over and gently shoves Kenny's shoulder. "Come on, man, Craig doesn't wanna hear that."
"Sure don't." Craig can barely get the words out through the sudden urge to vomit. "Can we just get this dinner over with?"
"Jeez, someone needs to get laid!" Kenny holds up both hands in mock surrender at the murderous expression on Craig's face. "Hey, I'm just joking around with you Tucker, calm down. I'm sure you've already got that covered, what with having your room all to yourself for a couple weeks and all." He winks, and Craig has a moment of panic, thinking back to the one text message in his phone that he has yet to reply to, and what it would mean for him if Kenny knows about that whole situation.
It's a situation that shouldn't exist in the first place, and one that Craig will regret for the rest of his life.
It started in ninth grade, when Clyde had taken it upon himself to set Craig up with someone. Craig had just come out of the closet, surprising very few people, and Clyde was just starting out on his quest to be the ultimate matchmaker in South Park. He'd insisted that he knew someone that Craig would be perfect with, citing their similar personalities and levels of attractiveness. Craig, suspicious as ever even at fourteen years old, had demanded to know the name before agreeing to anything, and after ten minutes Clyde had reluctantly admitted that it was Stan.
At first, Craig had figured he had to be joking, because nobody in their right mind would have actually suggested that he and Stan Marsh would make a good couple. Mortal enemies, yes, but a couple? Not a chance. But Clyde had gone on and on about his theory that the only reason they fought was because they clearly wanted to be together, but they were both too stubborn and prideful to admit it, and if they would just trust him and give each other a chance, they could be the next South Park couple to have an adorable smushed-together name, "...like Cran!"
He'd dragged Craig to Token's annual end-of-school party that year against Craig's better judgement, and within a half hour of arriving had convinced everyone present that Spin the Bottle was a good idea, and the rest was ancient history.
Sort of.
After that night, Craig and Stan had officially been together for exactly one week. One week of going over to each other's houses, shutting themselves in each other's bedroom, and making out the way only two idiotic, inexperienced fourteen-year-olds can. And then it was over. Craig had woken up one morning, opened Facebook on his phone, and been greeted with the message that, "Stan Marsh is in a relationship - with Wendy Testaburger".
It shouldn't have bothered him so much, all things considered – Stan being the kind of person he was, Craig being the kind of person he was, the fact that they had only been dating a week, and that he didn't even really like Stan. But for some reason, it really fucking bothered Craig that things had ended the way they had. That entire summer, he'd avoided everyone, Clyde included, and lived almost exclusively inside his own head, emotionally drowning in a sea of self-deprecating thoughts.
And then high school happened. Out of nowhere, midway through November in tenth grade, Craig was woken up by a text message from Stan at two o'clock in the morning: Outside your house, let me in.
He wishes now that he'd never silently crept down his stairs, careful not to wake his parents or Tricia. He wishes that he hadn't pulled his front door open and seen Stan on his doorstep, hands shoved in his pockets, shivering like crazy in the cold, November, Colorado night. He wishes that he hadn't reached out and caught his nemesis by the coat sleeve, dragging him inside before he froze to death.
He wishes he hadn't let Stan kiss him.
But he was a teenager, and stupid, and Stan was babbling something about breaking up with Wendy again and over the summer he'd just gotten even more attractive, and Craig was sleep-deprived as fuck, so he had. Once, twice, again and again, unsteadily staggering backwards together to fall onto Craig's living room couch in a tangle of limbs. They'd made out for the better part of an hour before Stan had all of a sudden jumped up and taken off back out Craig's front door.
The next day, at school, he had walked right past Craig without a second look, holding Wendy's hand, and it was like the events from the night before hadn't happened. Craig had just about been ready to admit that he'd just had an extremely vivid dream when Stan had texted him, Same time, same place?
And so it continued. All throughout high school, every couple of nights, they'd meet up. At first it was just making out, but eventually, things escalated, and they started to go further and further. They never had real conversation beyond setting up a day and time for their next encounter, and the occasional dirty text message now and again. Publicly, they still hated each other just as much as they always had. Stan was always dating some girl, usually Wendy, but as their breakups became more and more frequent, it varied. Craig was always alone.
He was the one that had put an end to things for good, six months ago, after Clyde had accidentally seen the text messages and found out what had been going on. His best friend had been, unsurprisingly, distraught beyond belief at what Craig was letting himself settle for. "You deserve better than this!" he'd wailed. "I'm so sorry, Craig, I had no idea this would happen when I tried to set you up with him!"
Stan had tried to intimidate him into sticking to their arrangement, because that was the kind of asshole he was, but Craig had just threatened to post their text messages on Facebook or whatever social media platform everyone was using at the time and that had been enough to shut him up. And just like that, it was over.
He doesn't think Stan would say anything, not even to Kyle. He's got his reputation after all. The only person on Craig's side of things to know anything about it is Clyde, and it had been a total accident that he had found out in the first place. It's possible that Clyde said something to Kenny about it, given his unfortunate habit of accidentally blurting things out at the worst times; if it hadn't been Craig's secret, he would be a lot quicker to believe that Clyde had let something slip.
But he and Clyde have been best friends forever, and he's never given up one of Craig's secrets before. Plus, when Craig glances at him now, there's nothing in Clyde's expression or body language to suggest that he feels guilty about anything, so he's probably safe.
Chalking it up to Kenny just being annoyingly Kenny, as usual, Craig grumbles, "Fine, whatever, let's just go get this over with."
As the three of them start heading towards the doors to the parking lot, he turns to Clyde. "Please just promise me there's not going to be any more surprises."
"Pfft," Clyde scoffs with an innocent, toothy grin. "What kind of surprises could there be?"