A/N:
Welcome to chapter 3! Part 1 of chapter 3, technically; I decided to split it up so it wasn't ridiculously long, so if you get to the end and want more of the current situation, don't worry, I got you. :D
Boasting just under 200 stores, the South Park mall is a surprisingly decent shopping center, given its small mountain town location. It has something for everyone: an Apple store for the techies; a plethora of clothing stores for the fashionably inclined; various book, game, and hobby stores for those who are looking for some escape from their lives; a food court with so many options even South Park's resident fatass has trouble making a choice; a Macy's because everyone knows a building isn't really a mall without a big department store; and the list goes on. It truly is the ultimate one-stop shop.
What the South Park mall is not, Craig has mentioned to Clyde at least four times in the hour they've been here, is Token's house.
"You didn't say anything about the mall," Craig had said, eyeing the building with disgust as Clyde practically dragged him through the parking lot. He had a death grip on Craig's arm like he thought if he let go Craig would take off sprinting in the opposite direction.
The trouble with being friends with someone since preschool is that by the time you hit your late teens, they know you far too well.
"Well, come on," Clyde had replied, gesturing vaguely to Craig's entire body. "You can't go on your first date looking like that!"
"Shut the fuck up," Craig had hissed, not even registering that he should be mildly offended by Clyde's assessment of his current appearance. A knot of anxiety had materialized in his stomach at Clyde's words, so loud they had nearly echoed throughout the parking lot. He'd instinctively looked around to see if anyone had overheard, but, it being a Sunday afternoon, the area outside the mall was devoid of any people. Thank God.
Clyde hadn't seemed to really understand what was so wrong with what he had said, and still appears confused even after the third time Token has explained it to him, just a few minutes ago.
"I don't get it," Clyde says now, as the three of them navigate through the first floor of Macy's, bewilderment on his face. "It's not like I said it was his first date with –"
"Just." Token interrupts, coming to a halt in the middle of the denim section. He holds one hand up in the air near Clyde's face, keeping his other arm in front of Craig to stop him lunging at their friend. "Stop. Talking."
"But –"
"Clyde," Token says, exasperation seeping into his usually mild tone. He motions to Craig, who has two fists raised halfway in the air, looking at Clyde like he's going to murder him in the middle of the Macy's men's clothing department. "Stop being a dumbfuck."
Clyde blinks at both of them, seeming to finally register Craig's obvious discomfort and the fact that he is very close to getting punched in the face. "What?" he says, taking a nervous step backward, his eyes on Craig's fists.
"It's not," Craig says, his anxious heartbeat thundering in his ears. "a date." He almost whispers the last word, and again has the uncontrollable impulse to check the vicinity for eavesdroppers. Again, when he scans his immediate area, it's completely empty, but he remains tense. Not for the first time since agreeing to his friends' help earlier this afternoon, he has the sensation that he's just made a huge fucking mistake.
"Well, okay, not technically, but –"
"Jesus Christ, Clyde." Token throws both of his arms up in the air, accidentally amputating the arm of the mannequin posed behind him. The plastic limb goes flying through the air, landing with a crash on the floor somewhere in a sea of Levi's jeans. "Listen," he says, ignoring the carnage he's caused, reaching out to place both hands on Clyde's shoulders in a listen-the-fuck-up kind of gesture. "Do you remember in sixth grade when Cartman stole your fucking pet rock?"
"Eduardo," Clyde says, nodding. His normally cheery brown eyes darken for just a second, and then a single tear trails down his cheek as he gazes wistfully towards the ceiling. "I painted him in art class."
"Okay, whatever." Token waves his hand impatiently, both at Clyde and Craig when the latter lets out a scoff of derision. "Do you also remember what Cartman made you do to get it back years later?"
The blush that immediately spreads across Clyde's face is evidence that, yes, he does remember. "You said you were never going to bring that up," he whines, shaking his head like it will shake the color right off his cheeks. "I needed Eduardo back!"
"Yeah, okay, but now think about it." Token lifts his hands from Clyde's shoulders, stepping back and continuing forward through Macy's as he speaks. "The story he told everyone, was that true?"
"No!" Clyde sputters, following after Token as Craig trails behind the two of them, still looking from side to side, periodically checking for spies. "God, no, why would you even ask that!"
"Because you're an idiot." Token stops as they reach the casual clothing section and leans against a display table of polo shirts. He exhales a loud sigh. "Everyone talked about that for months, and it wasn't even true, right?"
"Uh-huh," Clyde replies, the tiniest glimmer of comprehension igniting in his eyes.
"So imagine someone overheard you say Craig's got a da–" Token pauses as Craig coughs harshly and shakes his head in warning before the full word leaves his mouth. "Imagine someone overheard you," he says instead. "Don't you think they'd wonder who this douchebag finally agreed to hang out with?"
The friendly insult lightens the mood a little bit, but Craig shoots Token a middle finger anyway. His friend just shakes his head, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket as it chimes.
Clyde's eyes widen as the realization that Craig might not want rumors about him spread all over town finally breaks through into his brain. "Oh, crap," he says, turning to face Craig with a sniffle. "Dude, I'm sorry," he says earnestly. "I just really want to help you. I guess I wasn't thinking." He blinks again, tears brimming on the edges of his eyelids. "I want you to be happy."
"Fuck's sake," Craig mutters to himself. He sighs, the heavy, world-weary sigh of someone who's known Clyde for years, and says, "Whatever." He lifts his hands up to adjust his hat. "Can we just get whatever shit you're planning done and get the fuck out of here?" It's not that he's eager to get to Raisins and make an idiot out of himself like he had at the coffee shop earlier, he just really, really hates the mall.
"Would you relax?" Clyde says, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, his good mood returning now that he knows Craig doesn't hate him. He moves forward into the middle of the clothing displays and frowns down at a rack full of t-shirts in concentration, swiping some hangers aside. "I know what I'm doing."
"That's debatable," Token says from the other side of the same clothing rack. He lazily pushes the hanger for a neon orange t-shirt back and forth, paying more attention to the phone in his hand than to what he's doing.
"You're debatable." Clyde pulls a red shirt off the rack and holds it up by the hanger, triumphantly dangling it in Craig's face. "Try this one on!"
Craig, arms crossed over his chest, looks from the shirt in Clyde's hand to the shirt on Clyde's body. "That's literally your shirt."
Clyde looks down at himself and grins. "Hey, yeah!" He shakes the hanger again. "It's perfect, don't you think?"
Token snorts, tapping out a message on his phone. "Perfect for what exactly?"
"You know!" Clyde strikes a pose in one of the many small mirrors set up between the racks of clothes, giving his reflection an approving once-over. "Irresistibility."
Craig and Token share a glance. Token rolls his eyes, and then Craig speaks, the shadow of a smirk on his lips. "You're right," he says, his voice completely deadpan.
Clyde turns away from admiring himself in the mirror, his mouth open to, presumably, insist Craig try the red shirt on again, only to be met with the sight of his best friend flipping him off with both hands. "What was that for?"
"Sorry." Craig shrugs. "Couldn't resist."
"Douchebag," Clyde pouts as he hangs the shirt back up with a shake of his head, accidentally executing a perfect emo kid hairflip. He tilts his head, a mischievous smile appearing on his face. "Actually, you know what, you're right. These clothes aren't right for you." He grabs Craig's arm again and begins leading the way back through the department store. "Come on."
Craig does not like the uncharacteristically devious look on Clyde's face, and a few minutes later when the three of them stop outside the last store Craig would ever willingly set foot in, it's clear his intuition was correct.
"No fuckin' way." Craig wrenches his arm from Clyde's grasp and steps back, shaking his head so hard the strings of his hat whip across his face.
"Dude. Look at you." Once again, Clyde gestures to Craig's whole outfit. "You live in black and blue, you're like a walking black eye, this place is so you."
"He's not wrong," Token agrees, offering Craig an apologetic one-shoulder shrug. "Even you have to admit, Craig, it kind of already looks like you shop here."
Craig looks down, suddenly incredibly self-conscious about the way he dresses. Underneath his plain black hoodie, he's wearing a navy blue long-sleeved t-shirt, one of at least six identical shirts he has hanging in his bedroom closet at any given time. His jeans are a slightly darker shade of black than his hoodie, and very well-worn, as evidenced by the fraying fabric at the bottom edge of each leg. His socks are also black, as are his old ratty sneakers, the dirty laces that had once been white now a dull grungy gray. He tugs on the edge of his blue hat before reaching up to touch the yellow pompom on the top of it.
"It's not like there's anything wrong with it," Clyde says quickly, already feeling guilty at the expression of what looks like defeat on Craig's face. It's the second time that day he's seen his normally unflappable friend express real emotion and he finds it extremely distressing. "Everyone has their own style!" He points to Token. "Like, see, he's like, rich-kid casual."
Token nods, holding out his arms to show off his classic charcoal-colored sweater and dark blue jeans, the entire outfit courtesy of Armani Exchange. Waving an arm in Clyde's direction he says, "Right, and Clyde's look says something more like, I-wish-I-worked-at-Target."
"Can you just," Clyde says unhappily as Token laughs. "I'm trying to make a point here."
"I think you made your point." Craig clears his throat, his voice, if possible, even more monotone. "You think I look like shit." The criticism – what he takes as criticism, anyway – of his appearance stings, more than he feels it should. He's worn the same basic outfit for years, and it isn't like Clyde and Token have never commented on it before. For some reason, though, today everything is hitting him harder than usual. It's like when Clyde opened that notebook earlier, all of the locked boxes of emotions in Craig's mind had opened as well.
"No!" Clyde looks desperately at Token. "That's not what I'm saying, I'm saying, just, like–" He pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and shakes it at Craig. "You wouldn't have been number one if you looked like shit!"
"What the fuck did you bring that for?!" Craig moves to grab the list but Clyde shoves it back in his pocket just in time.
"I thought it might help," he says, cringing a little bit under Craig's death glare. "Like later, at Raisins, I thought maybe we could show everyone and –"
"No." Craig holds out his hand, noticing at the last second that it's shaking just a bit. "Nobody else needs to see it."
"But don't you –"
"Jesus fuck, Clyde, just give it back to him." Token shoots Craig a sympathetic look. "I know it's hard to believe, but he's genuinely trying to help you. Remember when he stole the answer key to my history final last year?"
"This is different," Craig grumbles, snatching the list from Clyde as he reluctantly holds it out again. He crumples it slightly, cramming it into the pocket of his hoodie. "This is fuckin'..." He trails off, not quite sure how to finish the sentence. Of course he knows that Clyde is trying to help him. Since preschool, all Clyde has ever done is be there for not just Craig, but anyone he decides needs his help. It's just not in his nature to be a deliberately malicious douchebag, and that's what makes it so hard for Craig to ever actually be truly upset with him.
"I'm sorry." Clyde's second apology of the last half hour comes with more tears, and a few giant disgusting sniffles. "It's just–"
"Shut up," Craig says, looking up at the sign for the store they are currently standing outside of. Hot Topic, home of the emo kids, the douchebag vampire wannabes, and sworn enemy of the Goth kids.
He closes his eyes for a second, knowing he's going to hate himself for the choice he's about to make, but needing to find some sort of compromise that will keep Clyde from bawling his eyes out in the middle of the mall. "One thing," he says, holding up his index finger in case Clyde doesn't understand basic English. He turns his head to make eye contact and elaborates, "You can find me one fuckin' thing."
"Really?" Clyde sniffles again, his face lighting up with hope. "Just wait, Craig, you'll see, you won't regret this!"
Doubtful, Craig thinks to himself. Out loud he says, as he follows Clyde inside the store, Token on his heels, "It just better not fuckin' sparkle."
Tweek carefully places the plastic bag containing the next day's deposit inside the coffee shop's tiny safe, under the register at the front counter, and closes the door. His hands are shaking, and when he looks up at the big round clock on the coffee shop's wall, his stomach clenches. It's just after five o'clock, which means as soon as Kenny is finished mopping the floors, it's going to be time for them to meet up with the other guys to go to Raisins.
Any other day before today, the idea of going to Raisins, or anywhere for that matter, with everyone after work on a Sunday wouldn't be such a big deal. Sure, nobody usually hangs out on Sunday nights because most of the time they're all scrambling to get the homework done that they'd ignored all weekend, but it isn't completely unheard of. Tweek can think of a few occasions where Craig, Clyde, and Token had shown up with no warning just as Tweek was locking the door to go out for tacos or something. It isn't common, but it definitely isn't cause for alarm.
What makes tonight different is that tonight it's not just about hanging out and getting something to eat. Tweek presses his palms flat against the rubber mat on the floor, on either side of his knees, and takes a deep breath. He can just see over the top of the counter, out into the cafe lobby where Kenny is twirling around the floor with the mop, confidence radiating off of him even though he has to know he looks absolutely ridiculous.
He's always been that way, though, as far back as Tweek can remember. Always completely unconcerned with what anybody else thinks of him, more secure in his identity at nine years old than Tweek is even now at seventeen.
They've never really been friends, exactly, Tweek and Kenny. Kenny mainly spends all of his time with Kyle, Stan, and Cartman, for reasons Tweek doesn't think he'll ever understand. And out of his own group of friends, the only one who Tweek would say is relatively close to Kenny is Clyde. But every so often the two of them would get grouped together for class projects, or Kenny would drop in on a movie night at Token's, and so Tweek has seen enough of him over the years to get a pretty decent handle on who Kenny is as a person.
To Tweek, Kenny is like the main character's best friend in a typical teen movie: just as, if not more so, intelligent; well-liked by everyone he comes across, partially due to his overwhelming charisma and the way he can fit into any clique at any time with minimal effort; perceptive as hell with an uncanny ability to offer just the right advice at any given moment. The only reason Tweek wouldn't go so far as to classify Kenny as the main character is because he just doesn't ever seem to have enough drama following him around. Apart from the occasional misfortune of dying – which is old news at this point in their lives – the most drama Tweek can recall surrounding Kenny is when Kyle had cheated on him with Christophe in tenth grade, and their subsequent breakup in the hallway outside the chemistry lab.
But even then, it hadn't even seemed to faze Kenny all that much, and he was still as cheerful and self-assured as ever the next day in class. It's that kind of self-assuredness, that kind of confidence, that Tweek wishes he had. Especially tonight.
With one last push on the door of the safe to double check that it had locked properly, Tweek gets to his feet. He reaches behind him to untie the strings of his apron, slipping it over his head and tossing it into the bin just inside the entrance to the back room. A loud tapping on the front door makes him jump, with a "Jesus!" and he turns to see Clyde waving from outside, his face pushed up against the glass, Token and Craig next to him.
Tweek's stomach churns, but he forces what he hopes is a smile onto his face and lifts an arm to wave back.
"They're here," Kenny singsongs, stretching out the word 'here' and pirouetting over to put the mop away. He grins at Tweek, using the glass of the pastry case to check his reflection. "Ready?"
"Oh, God." Tweek picks up his thermos of coffee from the counter and unscrews the lid, gulping down a mouthful of Sunset Blend.
"Okay, first of all, relax." Kenny drapes his arm around Tweek's shoulders. "You guys hang out all the time, it's not like this is a date for you or anything." He nods to the thermos. "Second, if you need something for courage, I can hook you up with something way better."
Tweek shakes his head, replacing the thermos' lid. "No, I just need to–"
"Breathe," Kenny finishes for him. "You need to breathe. You worry too much." He squeezes Tweek's shoulders lightly. "Just remember. Follow my lead, and we'll have Craig dying of jealousy before the night's over."
Jealousy. That's Kenny's angle for Operation: Get These Crazy Kids Together ("It's a working title," he'd said earlier). "I mean, think about it," he'd reasoned with a laugh. "I know he's considered the leader of you all, but Craig doesn't exactly seem like a real take-charge kind of guy."
Tweek had been in the middle of setting up a coffee tasting, having decided to use the abnormal Sunday downtime to try to impart some caffeinated wisdom onto Kenny. "So how do I make him jealous?" he'd asked, pouring hot water over the coffee grounds in the bottom of the French press sitting on the counter.
"You flirt with me," Kenny had responded matter-of-factly, dodging the timer a sudden twitch had caused Tweek to accidentally throw at him.
"What!?" Timer forgotten, Tweek had stared at Kenny, only for him to laugh again.
"Not for real, Jesus, chill out." And with a shake of his blond hair, Kenny had proceeded to outline his master plan.
It was incredibly simple, as far as master plans go. All Tweek needed to do, according to Kenny, was flirt his ass off with someone who wasn't Craig. This would, in turn, drive Craig "up the fucking wall" with jealousy until he couldn't take it anymore and he finally confessed his feelings for Tweek – that Kenny swore on his life existed.
Kenny had volunteered himself to be Tweek's flirting partner because he was, as he said, "a safe choice", being in on the plan and zero percent likely to catch his own feelings.
"Plus," he'd added cheerfully, clinking his tiny coffee tasting cup against Tweek's. "You want the best for this."
There's more tapping on the glass from behind them and Tweek can hear Clyde's muffled shout of, "You coming or what?"
"Impatient, aren't they?" Kenny takes his arm off Tweek's shoulders. With a tilt of his head, he smiles again, an encouraging smile this time. "You got this, Tweek, I promise. Just relax. He already likes you, we just have to get him to the point where he'll say it." He gestures to the door. "Shall we?"
Tweek takes one more deep breath, nodding as he exhales. Holding tightly to his thermos in one hand, he digs in the pocket of his Tweek Bros brand khakis for the keys to the store with the other. "You go ahead," he says. "I have to set the alarm."
"Deal," Kenny replies, spinning on one heel and launching into a half-assed series of cartwheels across the floor. He pushes open the door of the coffee shop and greets the awaiting trio with, "Avast, mateys!"
"Are you still on the pirate shit?" Token shakes his head. "I still don't think that's going to get you far with Ferrari."
"Hey, if she can't accept me for the swashbuckler I am, it's her loss." Kenny grins. "She's not the only one in this town who'd look great on my arm."
Craig clenches his jaw, shoving his hands as far down into his jeans' pockets as he can; he has a good idea of what Kenny is insinuating, having just seen him through the window with his arm around Tweek's shoulders, and he hates it. He shifts slightly, telling himself that Kenny isn't Tweek's type, but it's a hollow kind of self-reassurance. The thing about Kenny is that he's everyone's type. He's so fucking personable, about a thousand times more likeable than Craig could ever hope to be, and as much as he hates to admit it, objectively Kenny is one of the most attractive guys in the entire town.
He's about to open his mouth to shoot a snarky comment of some kind in Kenny's direction, just for having the audacity to exist, really, but then the door opens again and Tweek slips out, keys jingling in his hand.
"Hey, Tweek!" Clyde says, nudging Craig with his elbow like he needs to inform him of Tweek's arrival even though they're all literally standing right there. "How was work?"
A few months ago, at a movie night Kenny had decided to crash, they'd ended up watching Mean Girls. Clyde insisted it was the most accurate portrayal of high school in a movie he'd ever seen, which had prompted Token to ask when Clyde had been a teenage girl in high school. Kenny had jumped in, mentioning something about "Claudette" in tenth grade, the name bringing a vague recollection to Craig's memory of a rumor about Cartman having lost his virginity to a French maid he'd found on some shady Internet personals website.
The whole concept had made Craig want to vomit, so he'd never looked much further into it; for some reason though, Clyde had gotten upset and refused to speak to anyone again for the rest of the night. Without Clyde's usual incessant chatter in the background, Craig had been forced to pay attention to the movie, which is why he remembers that near the end, one of the characters had been, literally, hit by a bus.
Token had made some Captain Obvious remark of, "That looked painful,"; Kenny had confirmed the assessment, citing the time he'd lost his balance trying to unicycle backwards and had flown right into the path of a bus full of middle schoolers. According to him, getting hit by a bus feels like getting punched in the stomach, launched out of a catapult, and beaten with a meat cleaver, all at the same time.
When Tweek looks up from locking the door behind him and smiles back at Clyde, Craig feels that he can say, with certainty, that he has just been hit by a bus. His breath catches in his throat and he looks down, feeling his face heat up despite the cool October mountain air.
"Slow," Tweek answers, returning his keys to his pocket and clasping both hands around his thermos. "I got all of tomorrow's inventory count done." His eye twitches suddenly and he spins around, peering into the dark interior of the coffee shop. "Wait, I didn't finish the dishes!"
"I did," Kenny laughs, reaching out to ruffle Tweek's hair. "There were like, three mugs, relax."
"Oh." Tweek turns back around, just as Craig lifts his head up, and the two of them make eye contact for the first time that day.
"Uh," Craig says, struggling to remember how he normally greets his friend. "Hey." He can't tear his gaze from Tweek's bright green eyes, several shades lighter than the color of the shirts he always wears. In his peripheral vision he's sure he can see Clyde and Token watching him and he can feel every muscle in his body tense up at the unwanted attention. He takes his hands out of his pockets only to realize he has no idea what to do with them, and crosses his arms awkwardly.
"Hey," Tweek says back, his grip on the thermos tightening. Breathe, he tells himself. Inhale, exhale, cool the coffee. Breathe. Craig is the only person he's ever known that has gray eyes, and Tweek has always thought that they're the most fascinating eyes he's ever seen. Even now, when they're narrowed in what looks like – oh, Jesus – irritation. He twitches, jerking his head to the right and breaking eye contact. He looks down and says, surprised, "You got new shoes."
Craig looks down again, at his feet this time; more accurately, at the brand-new monstrosities that are covering his feet. He should have known that when he gave Clyde permission to pick out one piece of Hot Topic merchandise that he'd go for shoes. He's just grateful that these ones aren't as horrifically offensive to the eye as Clyde's original choice, some rainbow-laced bullshit. At least the shoes he'd ended up with still match his, as Clyde had said earlier, "walking black eye" aesthetic – they just also happen to have obnoxious skulls all over them. "Yeah," is all he manages to say in response.
"About time, Jesus!" Kenny's voice cuts through the sudden awkwardness of the moment. "Like I know you don't care about anything, and all that, but whatever the hell was going on with your old shoes was seriously disturbing."
Craig just scowls at him. "At least I can afford new shoes," he says, falling back on the old reliable method of making cracks about Kenny's impoverished lifestyle.
Kenny just smiles brightly, entirely unoffended by the remark. "Hey, I have a job now!" He nudges Tweek with his shoulder. "And Tweeky here is going to make sure I'm the best, right?"
"Um," Tweek says, one hand pulling nervously at the hem of his shirt. "I mean, I guess –"
"Just wait!" Kenny throws his arm around Tweek's shoulders again and starts leading the way down the sidewalk. "One day we'll own the place and we can have both our names on the sign!"
"Tweek and Kenny Bros. Coffee is a terrible name," Token says as he follows after them, Clyde on his heels and Craig trailing at the edge of the group.
"Duh, we'll combine them, we can call it Twenny Coffee!" Kenny replies. "And everything will cost twenty dollars!"
"Oh, right, because that's going to get you a lot of business." Token snorts.
"I'll buy your coffee!" Clyde says happily, falling into step beside Token, who shakes his head at the declaration.
"You'd need to actually get your hands on twenty dollars first."
"Well, if you'd actually pay me when I win our bets, I'd have a whole bunch of twenty dollars!"
"I'd gladly pay you, if you ever won." Token shrugs. "Tell you what, I'll bet you twenty that Kenny dies tonight."
"Those are some good odds," Kenny says offhandedly from in front of them. "I haven't died in weeks."
Craig glares at the back of Kenny's head, feeling very much like that might change tonight if he doesn't get his goddamn arm away from Tweek's shoulders.
Fifteen minutes, one runaway thermos, and three separate bets later, the quintet of teenagers finally arrive at their destination. Kenny is the one to pull the door open with a flourish. "After you," he says to Tweek with a wink.
"Thanks." Tweek smiles, having calmed down a little on the walk over. The whole time, while Clyde and Token had been arguing the logistics of their bets behind them, Kenny had been whispering advice to Tweek on the best ways to drive Craig crazy. Having some more solid guidelines to follow seemed to have given him just the slightest bit more confidence – which is why, as he moves through the doorway, he lifts his arm and lets his fingers just brush against Kenny's hand that is holding the door open for everyone.
It's a tiny gesture that not even Token or Clyde seem to notice. Craig does, though, and when it's his turn to pass by Kenny into the restaurant, it takes everything he has not to shove him backwards; though he can't help the low growl that emanates from his throat.
"Hi, welcome to Raisins!" they're greeted by tonight's hostess, none other than Mercedes Daimler herself. "Five of you?" Hardly even looking at any of them, the telltale sign of a veteran hostess, she grabs some menus from the stand beside her.
"Hi, Mercedes," Clyde says, beaming at her. He steps forward and leans an arm on the stand. "How've you been?"
Upon registering Clyde's face, Mercedes' huge phony Raisins-smile falters and she lets out a small, barely audible, "Ew." Regaining her composure, she replies, "I'm great, sweetie, how are you?" as she leads them through the restaurant.
"I'm good," Clyde says, trotting after her, oblivious to the fact that she wants absolutely nothing to do with him.
"That's great!" Mercedes stops beside a big semicircle booth, dropping the menus on the table. "You guys have a seat and I'll get Sierra right over, okay?"
"Sierra!" Clyde points triumphantly at Token. "I said Sierra! Hand over my money."
"Don't get too cocky," Token says, pulling a twenty out of his back pocket that Clyde snatches gleefully. "You're just going to have to give it back when you lose the next one." He looks from the booth to the five of them, still just standing beside it. "We going to sit down or…?"
Craig stumbles a bit as Clyde grabs his arm and basically shoves him forward. Managing to catch himself just before smashing into the edge of the table by pretty much falling onto the seat, he glares up at Clyde, flipping him off at the same time. "What the fuck, Clyde?"
"Sorry," Clyde says, his expression innocent. "I tripped." He motions for Craig to move over and slides into the booth beside him.
Token looks down at the inch of space left on the edge. "That's very flattering, guys, but I need a little more than that."
Craig sighs in exasperation, but scoots over to give Token some more room, not realizing until he's scooted right into him that Tweek has slid into the booth on the opposite end.
Startled, and very, very conscious of the fact that his and Craig's bodies are touching from shoulders to knees, Tweek shrieks, "Waaagh!" His leg jerks up and his knee smacks into the bottom of the table. "Jesus!" He pulls away from Craig only to collide with Kenny, on his other side, in the exact same way.
Kenny ruffles Tweek's hair again and laughs. "Jeez, Tweeky, if you wanted to be close to me, all you had to do was ask." He leans over to whisper into Tweek's ear, "Relax, you're doing fine."
"My knee hurts," Tweek whispers back, not sure he agrees.
Craig grinds his teeth together and mutters to Clyde, "I'm going to fucking kill you."
"What? Him?" Clyde gestures to Kenny and replies, as quietly as he can, "Dude, it's nothing, he flirts with everyone."
"Hi, guys, I'm Sierra! How are we all doing tonight?" A bubbly redheaded waitress appears at the end of the table, smiling brightly at the five teenagers assembled in the booth.
Token looks around, assessing the situation: Clyde and Craig hissing at each other on one side of the booth; Kenny and Tweek whispering to each other on the other; the pile of menus all but forgotten in the middle of the table.
With a sigh, he pulls a menu towards himself, and offers the waitress an apologetic grin. "I think we're going to need a minute."
The Girls Don't Know Shit
1. Tweek
2. Clyde
3. Kenny
4. Token
5. Kevin
6. Francis
7. Craig
8. Jimmy
9. Jason
10. Kyle
11. Stan
12. Bradley
13. Butters
14. Leroy
15. Timmy
