Chapter 5

I spent every moment I could with Tweek, reminding him that I was here for him no matter what. Some days he couldn't get out of bed, so I brought him coffee and helped him work on his papers in any (albeit limited) way I could.

But, to my dismay, he seemed to be getting worse with each day, and when he got worse, I got worse.

In doing everything I could to avoid Kenny, I pretty much only left the apartment for work, to go grocery shopping, and to make midnight runs for cigarettes and chocolate when Tweek shyly requested it like a timid cat asking to be let out.

The two of us remained surprisingly sober for almost a week before, when I returned home from a closing shift at the pizzeria and crawled into bed next to Tweek at three in the morning. It wasn't until my eyes adjusted to the room's darkness that I noticed his arms were red.

I clicked on the bedside light, but he didn't stir. I gently turned his arms toward me, exposing several bright red scars, and, to my absolute horror, needle marks. I stared for a moment before I got up and looked around for the smoking gun.

It didn't take much searching: right on the bedside table, the used needle, tourniquet, lighter and spoon. I knew he'd been getting worse, but I guess I didn't know how much worse he could've gotten.

I sighed, turned him back over and turned out the light, but I didn't get back into bed. I recalled Kenny's words in his attempt to convince me to cheat on Tweek: "Everyone's an addict." I supposed it was true.

When I woke up the next morning – er, afternoon, technically – asleep on the couch, Tweek had long since left for class. Though he'd been spending a lot of time in bed, too depressed to function, his crippling anxiety kept him going to class whenever possible, because, as he said, "I'm more anxious about missing school than I am depressed about having to go."

I wished I could cure him. I thought about what I would say to him when he got home.

I had the day off, so I dicked around, getting nothing done all day, way too focused on reliving the bile that had risen in my throat when I saw the needle marks and the scars. It was Wednesday, so Tweek wouldn't be home until nearly ten at night – if he could make it through the whole day. I sent him some comforting texts throughout the day, but he never responded.

Marinating in front of the TV, I was distracted by my constant stream of thoughts, darting between "is Tweek doing okay?" and "fuck, I wish I could get drunk," and with the occasional, "why am I even alive? I'm empty inside and no good for Tweek and I contribute nothing to society." It was a long day.

The house had no food and I was too lazy to go get anything, so I ordered a pizza.

"Pizzeria on 14th."

"Cartman?" I said into the phone. "It's Craig, can I get a delivery? It's not too busy, is it?"

Eric sighed as if I was asking him for a massive favour. "I dunno, man, we're pretty backed up down here."

He was so full of shit. "It's three-thirty."

I heard Clyde in the background swear, and then what sounded like a stack of pizza boxes collapsing.

I rolled my eyes. "You're playing Box Jenga, aren't you?"

"Fine, fine, what do you want?"

"Just a large pepperoni."

"Okay, anything else, asshole?"

I said, "No, dick, that's it." Then something occurred to me. "Oh, uh, is Kenny working right now?"

But he'd already hung up on me. Shit. Well, I thought, maybe I'd get lucky.

I tried to keep myself occupied with The Simpsons, trying to let my mind numb the way it would if I were drunk. I felt like a shitbag when I realized that, without a doubt, if it weren't for Tweek, I would currently be wasted at three-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon. Pathetic.

But maybe that was a good thing. Maybe being sober was going to be good for me. Sure, I was still an empty shell of a person with nothing to say, no feeling in my heart, but at least I was facing that head-on now, instead of drowning it out in a bottle.

No, I wasn't. I still avoided all deep thoughts like the plague, convincing myself I could make it through the rest of my life without asking myself whether I deserved to live the rest of my life or not.

There was a knock on the door a mere fifteen minutes later, and that worried me – average delivery times this distance from the pizzeria were more like twenty-five minutes.

And I wasn't paranoid. I opened the apartment door and Kenny's eyes stared me down instantly. We hadn't had this much eye contact, though it had only been a second, since the incident in the back alley.

"Hey," he said, handing me the pizza I'd nearly forgotten about. "How are you?"

I swallowed and tried to think of what to do, how to handle this. I set the pizza down on the counter and stammered, "I'm alright, h-how 'bout you?"

"Good," he said. He seemed to be back to his not-socially-awkward self, but I saw his hands clenching. He was forcing it just as much as I was.

We were silent for another moment. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but the next thing I knew, his lips were on mine, and it was like all the tension in the room disappeared.

Pizza long forgotten, I pulled him back against the wall, hand on his neck, his hands on my hips. There were no thoughts, no protests of my conscience, only a screaming need, a primal instinct that drove my tongue into his mouth with the force of a bullet exiting a shotgun barrel.

I didn't think of what I was doing, all I could remember was seeing Tweek strung out on god-knows what, arms red and cut.

I wasn't sure which one of us was leading the other, but we stumbled awkwardly through the hallway to the living room, still kissing between gasps for breath. I pulled Kenny down to the couch and he was instantly on top of me, his hands up my shirt, mine on his hips, pulling him closer. I became all too aware of how aroused I was when Kenny shamelessly wedged his knee between my legs and I groaned in hopeless attraction.

Neither of us dared to say a word as we stripped our shirts off and reattached at the mouth, tongues colliding like wrecking balls. I lied down and the blonde came down with me, our bare chests pressed together tightly.

Kenny grew more and more aggressive and desperate, holding my arms down as he ground our hips together. I let out several reluctant moans of approval into his mouth.

Finally, we broke apart, breathing heavily, and we both started undoing the other's belt. "I didn't know you had a tattoo there," Kenny said, stroking a finger across my lower hip.

I didn't reply, instead drew his attention toward my hand bypassing his boxers easily and grasping his erection. He closed his eyes in ecstasy as I continued to touch him, while pushing his black jeans off his legs to the floor. He was fumbling with my belt, too distracted by my hand slowly gaining momentum.

Eventually I took pity on him and helped, releasing my own hard-on, which Kenny grabbed for immediately to start getting even with me.

We played a short amount of back-and-forth - fighting for dominance - though I think Kenny knew I wasn't planning on letting him fuck me. I was blissfully mindless as we kissed and moaned our way over the edge, way past the point where either of us could call this an accident.

I fucked Kenny on the couch where Tweek and I had sat to watch Conan two nights ago. Where he did the taxes. Where he did his crossword puzzles while I helped without helping. Where we drank coffee late into the night to keep Tweek writing.

When Kenny left, timidly and quickly, I immediately jumped in the shower, trying to distract myself from what I'd just done. I played it over in my mind a thousand times, and found myself getting hard again. Finally, I broke into tears as I turned the water off, and sunk to the floor in shame and self-loathing.

I didn't move for what felt like hours.