A/N:
:)
When the waiter drops off his plate of fettuccine, it's almost more than Craig can manage to not channel his inner Clyde and cram half of the mountain of pasta into his mouth in one bite. The only thing outweighing his sudden urge to turn his own body into a human garbage disposal is the desperate desire to go at least a half hour without making an ass of himself. With the exception of a little bit of awkward small talk just after Craig had ordered his food, where he had suddenly developed a severe speech impediment reminiscent of Daffy Duck for some reason, he's so far doing remarkably well.
Tweek is on his third cup of coffee in twenty minutes, sitting across from Craig in the booth with his mug cradled in both hands. He's been staring intently down at the dark liquid for at least the last five minutes, ever since their conversation about the best types of pasta had drifted off into silence. Craig had wanted to ask about the coffee thing, because he's never seen anyone be able to chug the stuff like that, and he'd been enrolled in three eight AM classes last semester; but he couldn't figure out a way to ask that didn't make it seem like he was being a judgemental douchebag, so he'd just stayed quiet.
Plus, there was that whole thing earlier, the last time he had said something about coffee. He's pretty sure it had been the drug comment that had made Tweek have that kind of reaction, but without knowing for certain, he doesn't want to risk having it happen again. Pushing people's trigger buttons isn't something Craig is in the habit of doing, especially when the person in question is Tweek.
"What's your last name?" he blurts out, suddenly, while the waiter standing next to him grates fresh parmesan onto his pasta.
Tweek lifts his head, blinking at Craig a couple of times, a bit of a faraway look in his eyes. "What?"
"Oh, uh." Craig clears his throat. Smooth. "I just, uh, realized I don't know your last name." He holds his hand over his plate, stopping the rain of cheese, and with a nod, the waiter disappears.
"I don't know yours either," Tweek says after a moment. He blinks once more, the distance in his eyes disappearing as he focuses back on Craig. "Unless it's actually Racer?" A small smile plays on his lips as he raises his mug to take a long sip of coffee.
"I wish," Craig says without thinking, instantly turning as red as his secret fictional character crush's signature car. "I mean, uh, Tucker." He picks up his fork and begins the process of twirling fettuccine noodles around it. "Craig, um, Tucker, is, uh, that's me."
"Craig Tucker," Tweek repeats, lowering his coffee cup slightly to look Craig over thoughtfully. A tingle shoots up Craig's spine and then all the way back down to his toes at the feeling of Tweek's eyes on him. "Yeah, that suits you. You look like a Tucker."
Craig's grip on his fork tightens and his eyes drop to the plate in front of him. "Yeah?" he says. "What, uh, what does a Tucker look like?"
Tweek laughs, and Craig actually glances over at his cell phone, lying next to him on the seat of the tiny booth, for a moment seriously searching his brain for a reason to open his voice recorder to record that fucking beautiful sound. The idea of having Tweek's laugh as his alarm, waking him up every morning, gives Craig goosebumps. Now that's the kind of alarm that would only enhance a dream, not scare it out of his subconscious.
"Well…" Tweek finishes off the rest of his coffee, then sets his mug down on the table. He gives Craig another contemplative look as the noirette absently continues creating the biggest forkful of pasta known to man. "From my experience, I'd say a Tucker is around six feet tall, and kinda pale, but not in a creepy way. They usually wear dark clothes, although on occasion they've been known to only wear half an outfit, or dress up as the great Red Racer himself. And rumor has it they have black hair, but it's hard to tell for sure since it's usually covered up by a very fashionable blue hat."
Craig's fork slips out of his hand and clatters against the side of his plate. "Oh, right," he says, reaching up to touch the yellow poofball on top of his chullo. "I, uh, did I say thank you? For uh, the hat thing?" He's ninety-nine percent sure he hadn't, but he suddenly can't remember a goddamn thing. Okay, so it doesn't take a genius to be able to describe his basic appearance, and he's sitting right across from Tweek right now so all he has to do is look at him, for Christ's sake, but still; he honestly hadn't thought in a million years that Tweek would actually notice anything about him and actually retain that information.
Not the way Craig noticed things about him, anyway. If Tweek had any idea that there is already a little filing cabinet in Craig's brain labeled with his name, filled with every piece of information Craig has learned about him in the last two days, he would probably run screaming from this restaurant right now. Especially if he were to find out that one of the things in that mental filing cabinet is Craig's dream about him. That fucking dream that keeps popping up in Craig's mind at the most inopportune times.
Like right now. Craig clamps his mouth shut to keep himself from audibly gasping as the memories flood his mind again. He grabs his fork once more, stabbing it into the fettuccine so hard it scrapes the bottom of the plate, hardly even registering the terrible screechy sound that it makes. He can't, he can't do this, this can't be happening right now. He cannot be thinking about Tweek wearing that fucking leather bodysuit; or, God, what it would be like to have Tweek on top of him; or, oh, fuck there's a new one, Tweek in the fucking shower with him, both of them hot and wet and all soapy–
"Don't worry about it," Tweek is saying, with a wave of his hand, thankfully oblivious to Craig's internal crisis. "It was more for me than you, honestly. You know I have trouble with dirty things."
"What?" Craig's eyes grow so wide he wouldn't be surprised if they fell right out of his head and landed in his pile of fettuccine to become eyeball alfredo. Struggling to keep himself from hyperventilating, he takes a deep breath. "You, uh, what?"
"I like to clean?" Amusement sparkles in Tweek's eyes, only making them shine that much greener. "That's the whole reason I was in your room today, remember?" He slides his empty mug over to the side of the table.
"Oh!" Jesus fucking Christ, Tucker. So much for going half an hour without acting like a complete fucking moron. What the fuck did he think, that Tweek had suddenly developed some kind of psychic powers? If that were true, there would be almost zero chance of Tweek even being here right now. "Oh, yeah, uh, I guess Clyde and I, um, don't mind dirty stuff." Craig's cheeks burn with the fire of what feels like four thousand suns and he immediately backtracks, "Not like that, I mean, he and I never, uh, well, except for this one time, but that was a total accident, it was just, um, this one thing that, uh, happened, but uh, so, yeah."
Fuck, fuck, fuck. That was so far from what he had meant to say. He had meant to say that he had gotten used to dealing with Clyde's utter inability to keep anything clean, and that he was able to handle it a lot better now that he'd used to. He definitely hadn't meant to blurt out a secret that should have never, ever seen the light of day.
"Oh?" Tweek's brow furrows, just a little, and a trace of that faraway look from earlier returns. "You and Clyde? Wow, um, that's...surprising."
"Oh, my God," Craig mumbles, covering his face with his free hand. "He's going to fuckin' kill me."
"That doesn't sound like Clyde." Tweek flags down a passing waiter to request another cup of coffee.
Craig sighs, the sound muffled by his palm. He wonders if it's at all possible for him to live the rest of his life with his hand attached to his face like this, because he doesn't think he'll be able to face anyone ever again. "You don't really know him that well, do you?"
"Well, we only had the one class together, but he didn't seem like the murderous type."
"I wouldn't say murderous." Craig peeks through his fingers to see Tweek pick up the small dessert menu from the side of the table. "He doesn't get pissed like that, he usually just cries his face off instead. But he takes promises really seriously, and if you break a promise with him, you'll never hear the end of it." He groans at the thought of what might be in his future. "Just please don't tell him I told you."
"I won't," Tweek says as his eyes travel down the menu in his hands. "It's awful having your secrets spread around."
Something in Tweek's voice hits Craig right in the heart, and he takes his hand away from his face. Tweek's still looking at the menu, but as Craig watches, he sees that the blonde's hands are shaking, just a little bit. He frowns.
"You, um, sound like you're speaking from experience?" Craig nervously tugs on the edge of his hat, unsure if that was an okay question to ask. He feels a wave of word vomit rising up inside him and, to avoid babbling like an absolute idiot yet again, finally shoves a forkful of pasta into his mouth.
Holy shit. He has no idea if it's because he's gone so long without a proper meal, or if it's because this fettuccine is actually that good, or what, but the second the pasta hits Craig's tastebuds he's so overwhelmed by how delicious it is that he lets out an involuntary moan. "Oh, Jesus, Christ."
"Good, right?" Tweek picks up his new cup of coffee almost as soon as the waiter puts it down.
Craig swallows, his stomach rejoicing like crazy with the arrival of some actual food. "This," he says definitively, scooping up another bite. "is the best fucking thing I've ever had in my mouth."
Tweek gulps down some coffee before saying with a smile, "I don't know, I think I have something that might change your mind."
What?! Craig is in the middle of chewing his second bite of fettuccine, but when Tweek says that, he just about chokes to death right there in the middle of Sorriso. No, there's no fucking way he'd heard him right. That can't be what he'd said. Craig hits the rewind button in his mind, replaying the last three seconds over and over again, but coming up with the same thing every time. Okay, so maybe that had been what Tweek had said, but he definitely hadn't meant what Craig can't help but think. He would never say something like that, especially not to creepy fucking weirdo Craig of all people.
"Um," he says, after very carefully swallowing again, the action taking about ten times more effort than usual. "What, uh, what's that?"
Tweek pushes the dessert menu across the table to him, and Craig feels a tiny twinge of disappointment. "Do you like tiramisu?"
"Do I like what?" Craig blinks, the word Tweek has just said entirely foreign to him.
"Tiramisu," Tweek repeats. "It's like an Italian coffee dessert, and they have a really good one here. I can't, um." He bites his lip, and even though he's sitting down, Craig feels his legs go weak. God, would he give anything to be the one doing that biting. "I don't get it very often, but if you wanted to, we could split one?"
"Oh." Craig takes another bite of fettuccine, looking down at the picture of tiramisu on the menu that Tweek is pointing out. He chews this bite slowly, doing his best to appear like he is seriously studying the dessert, but really he's having a little bit of an internal crisis. Tweek wants to share a dessert with him? Obviously he wants to say yes, despite the fact that he can't stand the taste of coffee, because there's no fucking way he would even consider turning down an opportunity like this. It's just that this is another thing that Craig has always figured is a pretty intimate thing to do with another person, and the fact that Tweek is asking him to do it is a huge deal to him.
Granted, the only time Craig has ever split a dessert with anyone, it's been with Clyde, and that wasn't so much sharing as it was letting Clyde eat the whole thing lest he lose a finger trying to get a bite. But it happened all the time in all those stupid movies. Hell, it even happened in the fourth Red Racer movie, the one where they threw in that random love interest for absolutely no reason. Why would Tweek want to do something like that with him?
Maybe he doesn't think of it the same way Craig does. That's pretty likely. God knows Craig is an absolute dumbfuck about these things. Tweek probably just doesn't think he'll finish the whole thing on his own; he had actually eaten his own dinner at the steakhouse, after all. Fuck, honestly, Craig needs get a fucking grip and stop overthinking everything.
"Um, sure," he says, finally. "Just, uh, let me finish this." He straightens up in his seat, having just realized that he's been hunched over his plate like a fucking starving hobo.
"Take your time, I don't have anywhere to be." Tweek taps his fingers on the table for a minute before clearing his throat. "And, um, yeah. I was speaking from experience." He lets out a little sigh. "I, um, it's just not really something I talk about–" Casting his eyes around the restaurant, he adds, the faintest tremor in his voice, "–in public."
"Oh, okay." Craig nods, like he totally gets it, and he actually sort of does. After all, he's not exactly the most comfortable talking about pretty much anything personal ever, in public or otherwise. He goes to get some more noodles on his fork, but Tweek's next question makes him completely freeze up.
"Do you want to come to, um, my dorm after?" Tweek grabs his cup of coffee again, but this time he doesn't lift it to take a drink, he just holds onto it tightly. "I can tell you about it there, if you want."
Yes, yes, fucking yes, Craig wants to yell at the top of his lungs; but a squeaky, "Uh," is the only thing he manages to say.
Tweek takes one hand off his mug to tug on a piece of his hair. "Sorry," he apologizes before Craig can say anything else. "That's a weird thing to ask, I know. And you probably have to work tomorrow, so I understand if you don't–"
"No," Craig interrupts, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. "I mean, uh, yeah, I work tomorrow, but not until the afternoon. I can, uh, come hang out."
Tweek's face brightens a little bit. "Okay," he says, now twisting some of his hair around his finger. "I promise not to keep you up too late."
Craig somehow forces himself to laugh in a way that seems almost natural, but internally he's freaking the fuck out and he's fairly sure he's going to actually have a heart attack. "I'm always up," he says, immediately cringing. "I mean, I uh, I'm up late a lot, so, um, you're fine." Fighting the urge to groan, he looks down at his plate of pasta again, somehow suddenly both starving and not at all hungry.
How the fuck is he ever going to survive this night?