/
Craig is exasperated, exhausted; Stan Marsh's team wins another fucking scrimmage at Craig's sanctuary, Shoddy Field. Tonight festers within him in unwelcome ways. Wasted back-to-back practices can have you like that—heavy lids, sore limbs, infinite thoughts. Tonight, Craig thinks in massive multitudes, attended by a recently obtained and untouched beer that bubbles through the glass neck and up to the aluminum cap. Being this unbearably tired, this close to unwanted dreams, everything seems a tad unreal. The ground is too soft, like it could surrender underneath his weight. The air is too warm, too thick to breathe. The stars' propinquity is stifling; Craig could reach up and touch.
He drifts until Tweek pokes his cheek.
"Are you alive?"
/
At Shoddy Field, the evening's denouement is baseball: drunken homeruns, metallic laughter, and floating fireflies caressing cap bills and concealing themselves in thatches of weeds. Craig knows if Kenny still played, he'd love it here. If people knew, they'd want him here—especially Stan, who has made an irking custom of coming to these nightly scrimmages. No one has the cognitive capability to put Kenneth McCormick and baseball together. People don't talk about his former tendency to pitch fastballs that could clock over ninety miles an hour at the tender age of thirteen. No one thinks of Kenny striding the length necessary to span the street and pick up where he left off. They forget, perhaps, but Craig doesn't.
There are things he wants to say, but doesn't.
After the game, Tweek affectionately confines a myriad of fireflies in a mason jar, which is only ethical because they're bugs. He murmurs to himself, "B-Beauty is only t-temporary." Craig overhears, pops the cap off his beer, and concedes to the concept of beauty and love and life lasting umpteen eternities, forever reoccurring and forever reciprocated. He thinks of Kenny too—because he will always think of Kenny—and he thinks of a perpetual kiss between them, lasting until they fall into pieces from lack of oxygen, breathlessness, suffocation by excessive affection.
Craig thinks of wishes—stupid ones.
In the interim, Tweek observes as his fireflies helplessly bump against glass walls and glow soft green with a restless smile and dilated pupils. Craig is presented with their captivity in presence of DogPoo Petuski, who has made a habit of sticking around, who has a lone smudge of muck on his temple. He mentions dead Herbert in passing and points.
Tweek inclines to look at the raccoon's tire-tracked corpse over the brick wall, but he curtly swivels to staunchly silent Craig and the severity along his shoulders. He stammers, "H-Herbert?"
Craig shrugs. In absence of words, DogPoo speaks for him, "Tucker named him, all by himself tonight."
Tweek smiles again, lips twitching against his will; DogPoo snickers. They acted like this was some kind of christening. Craig scoffs, his nose scrunching wrinkles over the bridge, and he briefly wonders if they have a clue. Without much incident, his eyes skim the darkness shrouding the neglected house across the street: broken windows, cracked walls, scattered junk. No lights, tonight; he knew, but it's been several hours of covert looks and high hopes that something will change. The disappointment simmers. To play it off, Craig slips his mild grimace over his sleeve.
"I f-feel like I see more and m-more of you every day, Craig."
"It's not a big deal."
But there's a faint and warm smolder ignited on Craig's expression, lapping through the dry-fit folds off his practice uniform and onto his chest and ears and arms. He has a telling blush on his cheeks, colored rose by inane discomfiture, imperceptible by lack of light; Tweek holds up the jar of fireflies for illumination and Craig averts his gaze, lowers it to his scuffed cleats that scratch at each other's skin. Behind two curves of glass, in the odd, vibrant and pulsing firefly emissions, Tweek's mouth moves: "I t-think it is."
Craig ignores him. There's more than this moment marked over Shoddy. Clyde is preoccupied with drowning his ex-girlfriend troubles in alcohol. At school, Bebe walked by him without even looking. "You know how girls look when they miss you, when they still want you," he says. "I think there's someone else. I think it's Kenny, still."
And Clyde still wants to hurt him for sleeping with Bebe, tearing their relationship to shreds, betraying his trust and their friendship; Craig has been righteously defending him for approximately two weeks, mostly because he doesn't believe Kenny has that kind of malice inside of him. Consequently, Clyde has a plethora of bruises on his arms coloring his skin violet and plum and all the shades in between. Craig's never really felt knightly.
Now, Tweek speaks to DogPoo for what seems like the first time; Craig remembers DogPoo saying that Tweek's never been mean to him, not once. They're both very cautious, in a way that could be interpreted as exaggerated. DogPoo takes care to speak quietly, without much inflection, without any reason to incite Tweek's complexities. Tweek eyes the smudge on the other boy's cheek with muted wonder, a quiet desire to comprehend—they way Craig looks at the back of Kenny's skull, that mess of blonde hair. They look like friends—and Craig thinks that's good. He thinks of how they're all intertwined: Craig's friends and DogPoo's friends. He thinks of how there's a greater chance to talk to-
Suddenly, Tweek twists the cap off his firefly jar and flips it upside down, dumping them from their prison.
"What are you doing?" Craig scrutinizes, frown small and insignificant. From Tweek's excitement and wide-eyed wonder, Craig thought that he'd keep his fireflies cooped up all night, take them home and wake to their still and tired bodies heaped at the bottom of the jar. He had devoted most of his night to capturing as many fireflies as he could, bottling them up, and watching them dance in ephemeral illumination. And here he is, witnessing their unenergetic escape. Tweek taps the jar's flat end with his index finger, encouraging the last of the fireflies to head back home. He sighs, and none of his words are erratically hitched or altered.
"If you love something, you should let it go."
/
Despite Craig's chagrin, Tweek and DogPoo drag him back near the dugout, near Stan Marsh—the same Stan Marsh who makes his blood curdle and his grimace unbreakable, the same Stan Marsh who swoons over Kenny like he swooned over Wendy when they were in elementary school. It's infuriating, how they're so involved, so fucking together, and Craig isn't anything of the sort. He's simple and straightforward—not too good at math, too good at baseball, infatuated and irate. He's disbanded, somewhere between concealed longing, lurching unconcern, and endless contempt.
Nearby, he hears Stan laugh and suddenly Craig longs for the beer he left back at the wall, more legroom, and more patience. Stan's method of evading him is the same as his; they tend to move in orbits, circling each other like planets, circumventing collision, but making their irking presences known. Stan makes his enjoyment of life audible to mark his territory and Craig exudes a kind of murderous aura rooted in the furrow of his eyebrows. Their juxtaposed gazes occasionally cross perilous paths, but never long enough to achieve a sense of understanding with one another. Mostly, Craig aims glowers at Stan's lower back, yearning for the chance to pin him during Fuck Fest. But there are instants like these, when Craig's angle doesn't align with the bend of Stan's spine, when he has the capability to brusquely study Stan's profile.
And tonight, he seems pleasant. His smile is generous, but not too much—a little sleepy, maybe. His mouth is that stinging shade of chapped cherry, potentially from nervous gnawing or ardent kisses. Craig thinks of Stan thinking of Kenny and makes himself needlessly bitter. He winds up with a bellyache that churns and swirls and burns the lining of his stomach. It only deepens when Kevin McCormick steps foot onto the field, left and only dimple blemished by a birthmark, grin engulfed by palpable malevolence and interrupted by a cigarette.
At first, his presence goes relatively unnoticed; Craig barely eyes him slinking past the brick wall, but when he does, the night feels ominous, like it could pounce. His stress level clambers near his limit. Stomach throbbing rhythmically with the patter behind his sternum, Craig patiently waits for the inevitable havoc. But Kevin maintains distance, encircled by a few seniors that proceed to spoil him with unnecessary attention, reminiscing the old days when he played for the team. He pitched baseballs fast enough to concuss. Kevin asks if they still play Fuck Fest in the mornings before school, if they found anyone who could match his mettle.
"Tucker," the seniors unanimously agree. Nodding, they solemnly discuss Holden Grace, who hasn't returned to school since Craig nailed him in the back with a four-seam. Someone interjects, "I think he's paralyzed from the waist down. I think." They miss him inexplicably, but not as much as they miss Dylan Moore, who had to receive stitches when a cutter tore into his nape. "He was like, almost decapitated. He had a scar. He was never the same."
Kevin's dimple brightens as he spouts a wave of cigarette smoke. "Craig's good, then?"
"Really good."
"That's nuts. I remember when he was just a fucking pipsqueak—anyone see him?"
The seniors shrug. Craig cramps into a corner of teammates, listless.
Kevin brings his cigarette to his lips, sucks on the filter, sputters over a miffed inhalation, "I remember, when he played little league. He hung out with that kid? The annoying one? The kinda chubby one?" Craig doesn't know why he puts on a charade of not knowing who anyone is, at any given time. But Kevin is a cataclysmic and compulsive liar—this performance must be natural for him. Craig hears Kevin continue, "He sounded just like Craig. They had the same voice back then—I used to swear they were brothers. You know? What's his name? Cl…Cly-"
"Clyde?"
Kevin exclaims, "Clyde! That's it." His gaze parts from the seniors and browses the field, cluttered with alike bodies. "Anyone see him tonight? He's the one I'm really looking for."
The seniors don't hesitate to point out his unmistakable loudness, moping on home base, begging passing teammates for another beer.
Kevin sighs, "What a shame." His icky smile returns. "He needs something to keep him in spirits, right?"
Abruptly, he drops his smoke and finagles Herbert from his gutter grave with bare hands. A myriad of baseball players around the field heave as he waves the raccoon's carcass by his mangy tail, indiscriminately stuffing him into faces and aimlessly whipping him into practice uniforms. Consequently, Herbert's corpse falls apart, darkened remnants haphazardly flung over the field. It could be considered desecration. DogPoo covers his eyes; Tweek screeches, voice aching in indescribable ways.
Stan whispers, "Jesus."
Craig exhales, the tension in his arms relinquished by the spontaneity of Kevin McCormick. He feels like he's a bystander to school bullying. It's awkward, but not any of his business. He tries to keep himself situated and cool and remote, but he's too close to Stan to be anything but uncomfortable and undeniably jealous. He wants to fucking move. A beer can bumps and rolls underfoot; Craig tamps down on it with his heel. He watches Clyde confront their intruder with animated and physical gestures, "What the hell is wrong with you? That's fucking disgusting, man!"
"Disgusting?"
"You're covered in dead raccoon, Kevin! I know it's hard for you, but think of all the fucking diseases!" Clyde's fingers meet the blue round of his baseball cap—an evident gesticulation to the brain. "That's disgusting!"
Kevin laughs, palming his stomach. His tone is overwhelmingly incredulous. Clyde takes offense.
"Want me to spell it out for you? I can. Unlike you, I made it past middle school. D-I-S-G-"
"If you're calling me disgusting, you obviously haven't looked in the mirror."
"Fucking come off it."
"You come off it, Donny."
"Stop calling me that."
"What? Do you prefer Clydesdale?"
"What're you doing? Why're you here?"
"I heard a certain Clyde Donovan has a problem. Came to take care of it."
"Me?"
"You're Clyde, right? Don't you know your own fucking name? Need me to spell it for you? I can."
Clyde chortles, "Listen—I don't know what he said to you, but this 'problem' is between me and Kenny. Okay, Kevin? If you came here to whoop my ass, wipe the floor with my ass, or do anything to my ass whatsoever, it would be a complete disregard of honor." Craig snorts. Like Kevin McCormick gives a damn about honor. Nonetheless, Clyde persists with his argument, "Frankly speaking, Kenny's acting like a bitch for sending you to do his dirty work."
Slyly Kevin smiles, "Kenny didn't tell me."
"Then who did?"
"Bebe."
Clyde flinches like Kevin had laid hands on him, which really wouldn't have been much of a surprise. His vexed expression contorts into one of utter confusion. "What the fuck? What'd she say?"
"She told me that you misunderstood the situation," Kevin says, approaching in lengthy and deliberate strides. "She told me to give you a hug." He thrusts his arms toward Clyde in a blatant attempt of an embrace; Craig notes the unsophisticated branding charred into the skin of his upper bicep, tries to list all the ways he could've received it, if it was as painful as he figures it would be. Clyde swipes at him, but Kevin remains undeterred and relentless.
"No hugs here."
"C'mere, Donny."
Clyde runs. Kevin pursues. The team collapses in on them as they beeline across Shoddy Field's knobs of vegetation and slicks of mud. These days, the baseball players are jubilant for any kind of violence, or drama, or chaos. In a stark contrast, Tweek worries for his friend, twitching throughout his shrill expulsions of distress. DogPoo tries to hold him back as he screams, "Craig, Craig, please—do something!" Cheeks burnished with scarlet, Eric Cartman guffaws at the ordeal, pointing at Clyde's half-assed attempt to dodge Kevin.
Stan pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. He acts like he's above this tomfoolery, which never fails to deepen Craig's frown or provoke a sudden push of irritation through his blood vessels. Stan wouldn't be on South Park High School's baseball team if he wasn't a little fucked up, if there wasn't something a little off-putting about him. But Craig attempts to disregard his holier-than-thou attitude and the dark straight bangs peeking from underneath his ball cap—the bangs Kenny had spent time caressing, tending to, pushing back.
Instead, Craig focuses in on the action: Kevin McCormick's avid pursuit of Clyde Donovan. He zones in on the older boy's movements, how they're so similar to his younger brother's.
Their features are disturbingly parallel too—skin tone, nose shape, eye color, and lip curve—but Kevin is Kenny's antithesis. He lacks his brother's essential charm, his slick and elusive allure, his intangible summer boy attraction. His vices, unlike Kenny's, aren't so tolerable; Kevin's debauchery stabs. Craig's eyes trail Clyde as he's chased around the makeshift bases, as Kevin spouts vulgarity, frightens the freshmen, and vexes a number of the upperclassmen. He does things like this. He perturbs teenagers with filth and sex, even though he's in his early twenties and much too old to nonchalantly hang around a high school baseball team.
"Aw, you smell like fucking road kill! I'm gonna hurl-"
Eventually Kevin traps Clyde in an unyielding chokehold. He forces him in the air with a hunch of his shoulders; Clyde's toes sway and swing for the ground. The color of his face transitions from an exerted crimson to a breathless blue and Kevin—always obliterating boundaries and fondling limits—smashes his grimy hand against Clyde's mouth, leaving a stain of decomposing raccoon. He yelps; Kevin shakes his body like a ragdoll until Clyde chokes on his tongue. "Shut up, twerp. How many times do I have to teach you this lesson?" Craig wonders what this lesson could possibly be as Kevin wrestles his friend unto the cleat-trodden earth. "Don't fuck with me."
"Let go!"
"Nope."
"Fuck you! Let go of me, Kevin!"
"Not till you say Uncle."
"I will never say uncle! As long as I fucking breathe! You hear me?!"
Tweek cries for Craig's assistance again; Stan rotates enough to look over his shoulder at Craig wearily, like he really should do something—and if he were a few years younger, he definitely would. He'd kick Kevin's ass just like he did freshman year in the mall's parking lot, with everyone watching, with all the righteous adrenaline he can muster. But things have changed; Craig has obligations to his team, to his community—but most importantly, to Kenny. So he just gives Stan the bird and rolls the unbidden weight from his shoulders. Meanwhile, Kevin McCormick leers.
"Hey, where's your boyfriend?"
"You fucking dickwad! I am not gay and Craig is not my boyfriend and even if he was I would never tell-" Kevin slaps his reddened expression with his free hand, the one dirtied in raccoon innards. He shoves two fingers in to his mouth and wiggles them to his cheek; Clyde snarls, "Fuck! You!"
"Tell Tucker I said hi, alright? Tell him I want a fucking rematch."
"What's the point? It's been three damn years, Kevin!" Clyde spits a ball of matted raccoon fur. "It's not like you'll win anyway, asswipe."
Kevin hums. He wrangles his arms below Clyde's armpits and clasps his fingers together above his sweat-ridden nape, sick of talking apparently. It's deadly dangerous, but he gradually and skillfully eases Clyde into a hold-induced sleep. And Kevin is barbaric enough to leave him there, collapsed against the pitcher's mound, slumped against the dirt. The baseball team quiets; Eric Cartman calls him a butt-fuck from a safe distance, concealed behind a barrier of intimidated freshmen. Peeling Clyde's baseball cap from his scalp, Kevin mutters, "Stay away from my brother, twerp."
Someone sniffs. Without irony, crickets sound.
Kevin perceptibly notices Stan, who's more in the forefront. He waves.
"Hi, Stan."
Stan's response lolls with hesitation; all eyes convene on his form. He awkwardly tugs on the bill of his cap, "Hey."
"Kenny was looking for you, tonight." Kevin winks, "You better call him."
"Uh, yeah. Okay."
Cartman audibly curses, "Holy shit."
Kevin leaves with the same kind of malevolent smile he came with. He melds back into the darkness of his home, like some hellish creature, and he takes his unsavory vibes with him. In his absence, the baseball team's chatter resumes—quietly at first, until everyone finds the altercation just as funny as it was before Clyde was left to fucking die. That's what Tweek thinks. His paranoia speaks for him, "Kevin broke his neck, Craig! He's fucking dead!" DogPoo tries to console him, palms making compassionate repetitions over tense shoulders.
Stan turns on his heel, toward Craig, who's blatantly unamused. He looks mortified, unfazed by the idea of Kenny wanting him, unfit to be anything to him at all.
"Dude. Kevin wants to fight you? Again?"
/
Clyde became Craig's responsibility, which wasn't unusual. They've been looking out for each other since the beginning of time, since they've cultivated a boyish and uneven kind of friendship: Clyde being too serious, loyal, and partial while Craig is too indifferent and detached. But when he was tasked with the dilemma of hauling Clyde's unconscious body back home or "somewhere that's not here" he didn't object. Craig could've left him by the dumpsters, braced by bags of garbage and swarmed by the buzz of flies—but Kevin was excessively cruel tonight.
So he lugged Clyde by the undersides of his arms, pulling him over the bumps in the sidewalk and the curbs between streets, letting his skull skid along the concrete. He tugged him by the ankles, avoided the claws of Clyde's cleats—and all the while, the vigilant moon beheld their one-sided struggle. Craig only took breaks for a breath, for a single gulp of air; it was rhythmic and regular until he hitched, until the resolve he had directed at delivering his friend to his front porch twists on a fulcrum to another horrendously unrequited predicament: Kenneth McCormick.
And Craig is still here, muscles ablaze, sleeve swiping across a night-chilled sweat trickling from beneath his cap. He's still adrift in the encounter, feet unwilling to budge, eyes reluctant to the notion of withdrawal.
Kenny is drenched in dim streetlight, shadowed by the love of the moon, clouded in thick cigarette smoke that billows from his lips. Curling sweetly, slim smoke wisps wither away to nothingness; what's left is Kenny's languid beauty, his tussled blond locks and unhurried pivots and paces underneath a horde of light-hungry moths. His skin is hued in molten honey, in the planet's afterglow. The color winks in his eyes and dances on his countenance. And yet, Kenny looks ready to disappear, to evaporate, to dissipate into fragile spirals. He makes subtle kissy faces at the night sky—the center of his attentions—pink mouth pursing around any departing smoke, lashes flickering and fluttering before weary cerulean irises.
Craig figures that he's here on account of the cigarette; Kenny must have nicotine cravings in the middle of the night, just like Craig did when he had a dependency on smoking. It must've pried him from his slumber. It must've called him out tonight, to a lonely and clandestine neighborhood street. It's the only explanation Craig wants to imagine, a coincidence that ties them both together by a strand of romance and fate. The thought of him drudging through the night and waiting for Stan—or anyone else—prods at his liver.
He blinks, shakes the concept of a pining Kenneth McCormick, and tries to rid himself of the knot mounting somewhere near his frontal lobe. Craig takes in protracted and consoling breaths, like he has all the sweet time on the planet, all the eternities and forevers that have been wished for by infatuated kids like him—because he's still a kid looking for the means to have what he wants. Kenny makes him feel so juvenile, so insatiable, so possessive, so avid for attention and affection he doesn't deserve. It's like an out-of-body experience; Craig is so tired of being himself—like he's pushing through the oceanic currents of Kenny's eyes, or trying to remember the exact moment he lost something dear to him.
He remembers evenings after little league, everyone pinched together arguing about stupid shit, useless shit, fucking ridiculous shit, or just shit in general. He remembers the roll of Kenny's laugh, the way he fed Craig wooden pencils during practice, slid them between his rows of teeth—even when Tweek yanked them out of his mouth and scolded. He remembers never having to long, because Kenny's vicinity was Craig's vicinity; they didn't share spaces, ignorantly edging near each other's bubbles—they coincided, with strange benevolence and amiable ambitions.
He remembers and remembers—Craig only ever remembers, but there are things that still elude him, that twinge in his head whenever he tries to recall. He thinks of the onset of spring, years ago. He thinks of being vulnerably young and looking apathetic, even if the descent of pink tree blooms into certain languorous meanders of blonde hair made him feel like he would combust in his skin. He thinks of puddles and dewy grass, baseballs smothered in dampness, slicking off palms and past fingers. Kenny was there, beautiful in an effortless way, waiting for-
"W-What the fuck?"
In his arms, Clyde stirs.
"Craig? Holy hell, Craig—my head is killing me."
He sighs, forgoing the past and flicking the present matter atop his marred forehead.
"You're drunk, dumbass. Kevin McCormick put you in a full nelson."
Clyde sounds relatively outraged, "You didn't help me?"
"Can't fight, remember?"
The brunette, whose hair is strewn with grass and springtime dandelion fur, blows a raspberry—a dejected one. "Whatever. That asshole is gonna get it one day, from me. Personally."
Craig scoffs, "Sure."
"I mean it."
"Kevin has your cap, if you were wondering."
"I wasn't." Clyde smacks his lips together, "What time is it?"
Back in the conception of real youth, in the duration of their childhood's peak, the little league team stayed up this late almost every night, spread amongst pallets made of bed sheets and camp-scented sleeping bags. In the flush of dawn, Kenny used to say, "Morning and night. Little bit of both." Those very words nearly pounce from Craig's mouth, but he catches them near his teeth, balls them up, and crunches them back in his throat and in a cache of memories that ache. "It's like, three," Craig says, less confidently than he intends. "Three in the morning."
"You guess?! It's a school night!"
"You weren't thinking about school when you were getting blitzed."
With a nasally imitation, Clyde mocks, "'Blitzed.' Who says that?" He snorts, "You might as well be my fucking mother."
Craig deadpans, "Your mother's dead."
"Fuck you. Take me home." Clyde speaks in a voice inundated with finality, settling himself in Craig's hold. The more indifferent boy pulls him in the wrong direction.
"We're going to my house, dipshit."
In seeming realization, Clyde snaps his fingers, "Better yet, take me to Bebe's."
"Fuck no."
"Why the hell not?"
"You're drunk. You're gonna say something fucked up, her feelings are gonna be hurt, and I'm gonna have to deal with it. I'm not in the fucking mood."
"You're so wrong."
"Yeah? Tell me what you want to tell her."
Clyde bursts from Craig's grasp and stumbles to a standing position. His lower lip trembles, "Bebe Stevens…" His bruised arms outstretch into an attempted embrace and he weeps: "I love you so much." He sniffles, phrases broken by sputters and wails, "When you slept with that pretty piece of shit, you hurt me—but I'll always be here. For you. Come back to me." As Clyde loudly slaps his chest for emphasis, Craig winces, thinks of Kenny being bothered by their dissent. He hisses.
"Those are like, Boys II Men lyrics."
"I'm speaking from the heart! If you had one, you would know!"
Craig huffs, catching hold of Clyde's sleeve and tugging, "Come on. We're leaving."
Clyde snatches his arm back, pulling his friend with him. Craig trips, and in the midst of his stagger, he's able to sneak a quick glimpse of the boy across the street, beneath the streetlight, swathed in pulchritude and appeal. Kenny's looking. The tilt of his chin is more mocking than it is inquisitive; uncharacteristically, Craig's cheeks smolder. His voice cracks from undue and blonde pressure.
"Clyde."
Ostensibly, Clyde discerns the vicious arch of the taller boy's brows, the darkness looming in his pupils and toiling through his irises. He mumbles, sounding somewhat concerned, "You look stressed, Craig." Clyde reaches for him, only for his hands to be swatted away. He squints and slurs, "What's got you all worked up, huh?"
There's another glance, an innocuous and hasty look at Kenny's sneakers, that flitters up to his tattered tank top, that pampers the expanse of his exposed, bronzed arms. He should be cold, even if he isn't, even if it's the springtime—Craig has an awful urge to warm him up, to embrace and feel the bulges of his shoulder blades below his fingertips. He wants to feel the subtle ridges of his ribcage, the ridges that he knows are there because Kenny surprisingly eats like a bird during lunch. Craig wants to whisper that Kenny is lost tonight—why else would you be here?—and that he could find some semblance of the right way home in Craig's bed. He lingers on the idea a little too long, long enough to be conspicuous, long enough for Clyde to frown at him with suspicion.
"Nothing. Let's fucking go."
But Clyde's narrowed gaze follows Craig's previous glance, right to the blonde bemused below a faint streetlight. He doesn't flinch. He isn't upset. There's a moment of peace—noiseless, tranquil, and utterly forgiving. Kenny's eyes click with Craig's, curious, intrusive, prying, and so dreadfully blue—even from afar, Craig can see the oceans and whirlpools and broad currents filling his irises. There's a connection, an attachment, some touch of empathy; Craig's fingers curl, his breath hitches, his heart snaps, his grimace splits into an expression of agony—but then there's Clyde, who misses his ex-girlfriend, who quietly mutters, "Pretty piece of shit." There's Clyde, who has wanted to hurt Kenny for close two weeks, who has a blanket of bruises on his arms because Craig won't let him. There's Clyde, who bolts across the street in metal cleats, with enough inebriated fury to melt the earth.
"Clyde. Don't. Don't fucking do it—stop!"
/
Somewhere out there, love exists—the love that we want. Craig's love is profound and fervent, more than what others would expect of him. His love is the shade of cantaloupe, similar to the taste. It's lenient, indulgent, almost to the point of absurdity; Craig knows that his errors are inevitable, that his fuck ups are inescapable. He always fucks up—with his voice, with his face, and with his fists. But Craig needs clemency like the world needs sunlight—sunlight.
It burns. It bleeds amber through tree branches and trickles into the hole of his chest. Craig's heart is dead and visible, residing between a pair of overworked and singed lungs, connected to a limp aorta. Nonetheless, he can breathe. He can drink up the sun's rays and the consequent shade wavering over his body due to occasional gusts of wind. He can move, sit up, and distinguish his surroundings as a place he's seen before. This is a transparent dream, but Craig doesn't remember falling asleep, or even fighting its arrival.
Overhead, a sky of marmalade douses partial patches of grass below him in a dark coat of indigo blue. Trees enclose Craig in his perch above a baseball field—the baseball field from childhood little league. He feels a puff of warmth ghosting over his nape, a small breath brushing his hair, and behind him, there's a cornucopia of warmth—copious blonde hair and deep cobalt eyes, defined by a sweet caramel tint.
"Kenny, I…"
There's a sudden finger to Craig's gape, lips on his chipped and bloodied collarbone.
"You want me to help you with that?"
Kenny gestures to Craig's heart, runs fingers beside the wound, tongues along the ridge of his clavicle; Craig nods, lips thinning from the feel of Kenny, from the sight of him toying with his senses. He pleads the dream for something more: Kenny kissing him in lieu of a fleeting goodbye, sliding down the shivering span of his body, smoothing palms along his waistline, delving slender fingers below said waistline to make Craig gasp, to mouth over his—
"I'll do what I can."
Kenny smiles, easy and faultless; the beauty distracts. He speaks like a dream would, fuzzy and delighted, tone smirched because Craig doesn't hear him much anymore. He can't remember what it's like. Kenny sighs, "But first, tell me how you've been? When was the last time we talked?"
He comes unbelievably close and unfeasibly closer until they're nestled together beneath the sky and the trees and the lovebirds roosted on their pointed arms, chirping mellifluous tunes of devotion. They whisper every nothing possible, every superficial thought. Their proximity isn't a necessity—there's only the two of them here in this dream—but their hands graze and their smiles brush. Kenny's legs entwine with Craig's and he mentions the occurrence of baseball like a jilted lover. When Craig shushes him with a chaste touch of lips and a murmur or two—don't be like that, you love it, you know you do—Kenny kisses back, playfully.
"I'm sorry that I hate baseball. I'm sorry that you're dreaming. I'm sorry that it hurts."
It's the dream talking, all of Craig's wants permeated through his mouth—but these are things Kenny will never say. Craig exhales, "It's your fault."
His fingers loll into Kenny's tresses, looping his blondeness into ephemeral and lax corkscrews. Kenny sighs, "I'll make it feel better." Craig hums in approval, watching him peer into the manifestation of his hurt. His fingertips return to outline the trauma. Skin seems to have extensively sunk around Craig's ribcage before being ripped to expose his dying innards. Exaggerated perhaps, but when Stan receives any reciprocation from Kenny, it's becoming of the sensation.
Craig thinks of Stan kissing the blonde's pulse, his mop of dark hair propped on his thighs, their comfortable little sphere together at the batting cages. He thinks of the look he gave Kenny, the vehemence of his glower prompting such a coy response: startled eyes, an ample gape, a fucking blush. Embarrassment. It wasn't how it was supposed to be—something Craig is endlessly sorry for.
"Remember when we met?"
Craig voices a passing thought, in midst of other notions. He thinks of how he never looked at Kenny like that before, how he was so upset with himself for not being control of his emotions, for unnerving him. He thinks of how he went home and howled profanities at a pale moon and chucked baseballs across its dimpled face, until the bands and bundles of tendons in his arm had been pulverized.
But Kenny shakes his head, "I don't think so." His fingers worm into the cavern of Craig's chest, within the enclosure of his ribs, clutching that vulnerable, vital, and achingly soft organ. He encroaches upon his heart's atriums and valves, with firm compresses and determined squeezes. Blood renews its course through Craig's body, even as Kenny's brows furrow together in quiet recollection. Craig kisses the gentle creases, omniscient to the blonde's thoughts. He knows; Kenny is thinking of something vague and nebulous—a beginning obscured by youth too forgone to recall. They've always known each other, always—barely touching or looking or speaking now—but Craig wants him to remember that specific moment from so many years ago: heartbeats aligned and smiles fixed and fingers mingled around a baseball-
"You saved me. You don't remember, but you did."
Prompted by a feather-light touch of the artery lining his neck, Kenny shivers. Craig's lips find and linger along his cheek just as delicate, nipping a carmine path to his mouth. The proceeding kiss is prolonged, evoked by gentleness Craig has yet to coddle Kenny with outside of a dream. It's inundated in cautious care and repressed want. As the kiss extends, they become more comfortable with each other. It morphs into benign laps of tongue, an amalgam of odd, astonished breaths and curious, and exploratory nibbles; Kenny's malleability is concurrently challenged by Craig's seething desires, pooled low in his belly. He notes every nook, every ridge, and every tooth of the blonde's mouth, even if they're beguiling impressions of a dream. He's a mouthful of surrealism, distant and indistinct. There's the familiarity of nicotine, a tang of addiction, tinged by the reckless sweetness reminiscent of bubblegum.
Amid osculation, Kenny sighs, damp and swollen lips parting in soft exhaustion; Craig takes the opportunity to confide in Kenny, to divulge. He captures his upper lip between teeth and whispers about romance, "I've been waiting for an eternity and—you won't ever look…" He nuzzles his nose into Kenny's cheek, tells him that this dying heart in his hold has only ever belonged to him—Craig murmurs with saccharine intent, with the most tenderness he can summon, "You're so fucking blind, but I want you."
Kenny laughs the way Craig remembers, a little too light, too high-pitched for his age now. He advances with a lavishing and keen mouth, wrenching his spare arm around Craig's shoulders as Craig clasps his ribs and hips, seeking an anchor against his enthusiasm. Their closeness disregards the state of his torso, gruesome and cavernous; Kenny's hand keeps working between them, inside his chest, steadily hugging Craig's heart with his fingers. He can feel the dig, the blood sweeping and racing through his veins, eliciting the kind of intense passion Kenny deserves.
The kiss finally ceases with a subdued pop, a muted smack of lips, and a quiet dissonance of sated pants. Craig continues to pepper breathless, trivial pecks against Kenny's expression, against a smattering of freckles born from his imagination, against the rose figments of a blush—but Kenny would never be embarrassed over intimacy like this. He's been kissed too many times, by too many other people. But Kenny still leans into him, still wants him, still pumps the heart inside of him all by his lonesome. His blonde lashes adhere to one another in contentment, never ignorance—but Craig feels a tug of vexation yanking at his kidney and yearns for Kenny's attention.
"Look at me."
Craig is painstakingly soft, in Kenny's ear like a breeze. He kisses the shell, brushes back a stray bang. It takes effort to be so amorous, to be so fucking gentle—and Kenny stays motionless, malleable, and picturesque. His countenance is encompassed by Craig's careful palms, caressed by his thumbs, disturbed by his forceful kiss to the blonde's lips, begging for entry once again.
He whispers against the swell of his lips, "Kenny—look at me. Please."
And the dream falters.
It snaps in two, a sprawl of raven colored catastrophe fissuring between Craig and Kenny. From the murky depths, shadows rise and seize their arms and legs. The sky of sweetness shatters and liquefies as drops of rain. The trees' leaves tumble from their branches and crumble into dust. The dream is barren and lifeless, but Craig is only perturbed by Kenny, the facet he calls out to and strives for despite the inky clutches.
Pitch sludge swarms Kenny's limbs with such a covetous and possessive slick Craig feels a burble of envy popping in his stomach. The slime breaches the caramel expanse of Kenny's throat, tickling the sun-loved underside of his chin with sinister tendrils—and Craig screams. He laments for the injustice of his dream being stolen, for the want of love and existence; the hand around his heart stalls until his voice is shattered and futile—until death is inevitable and trailing up his skin in thin black lines, invading and curling around his insides. Kenny resigns himself with a frown, seeping deeper. Tilting on an axis, abundant blonde bangs trail behind him. He forms words slowly in a quiet depth, in a sudden epiphany, "Isn't this the other way around?"
They're both consumed by a sluggish abnormality, the kind that festers in the breast and lingers in the cranium, the kind that tramples through everything and everyone, impulsive and thoughtless. It's the kind of malady that proves that the heart is only meant to take so much, and that endures as unrequited, no matter what.
/
Craig's dream was the equivalent of a pale pink cloud. He fell through, descending through turquoise skies, until he converged with pavement. And when he wakes, pain is all he can feel. It thrums down his frame, inches in his intestines, terrorizes his cardiac system, and culminates in his skull. His vision pulses with flecks of white, but Craig recognizes his bedroom's mess: tightly together curtains, crumpled pre-calculus homework, scattered posters, trash bins of countless baseballs. He's folded on his mattress, on top of his navy blue sheets. Clyde is squashed on his carpet, snoring. There are moments he can't recall, that throb in his cerebral cortex until he gives up.
Craig pushes himself to his window, the one looking onto the street in front of his home. Wet smears of eternal snow are still dotted across neighborhood yards, kitchen lights still flicker through panes, and wooden gates are still left open that were meant to be shut. The world never stopped its revolution tonight, but Craig feels as though he's missing something more than a dream. He pulls the chair out from his desk and props an elbow on the sill, resting his jaw in the cup of his palm. He tries to touch the memory of his dream, its peach soft figments, but it's so intangibly fickle. Craig knows that it'll come back to him in inexplicable fragments, if it will ever come back at all, if it ever bothers to realize his longing.
Dreams remind him of Kenny, the way he refuses to look.
The darkness outside his window shimmers with an infinity of stars, coalesced like his thoughts—scrunched together in infuriating sentiment, in constellations of subtlety. They flaunt their luminescence only to shy at dawn. Craig thinks: in other neighborhoods, nights like this aren't so rare—that we're all subjugated to their blight at some point. He thinks of the velvety awe, slippery and soft, streaming down as tears or coming up as bile that sears the smooths of windpipes. He thinks of the crude and instinctive loneliness jailed in our anxious stomachs, accompanied by the equally destructive craving that aches for everything we lack. Craig muses over night's romance: the eternally perfect time, the perpetually perfect place. He could reach up and touch.
He thinks: Do stars love like this, so fruitlessly, without any kind of substantial fulfillment?
It's a dangerous assumption, but he would like to think that what he's feeling is love. He'd like to think that it's stronger than anything Stan could coddle Kenny with. He'd like to think of romantic things he should never think of, that he's been burdened with since Stan stole him—like a love-ridden home poised between the edge of the universe and a baseball field for two. He and Kenny would pitch comets and bat incessant misses until a homerun pops against the moon and ricochets against the flaming skin of a star. They'd only look at each other. They'd want to make each other happy.
In other neighborhoods, there are heavenly bodies veiled by light pollution. They don't have the chance to shine, to be seen, to be wished upon—and isn't that what they want? Craig thinks of fulfillment and fruition and the childishness of wishing, placing hopes in the nonexistent hands of stars—but sleep whisks Craig away with a cascade of them. Palm cupping his pout, fingers rattling his cheek, eyes batting in a fierce clash against the concept of rest, Craig wishes for sleepless, tangible, and endless dreams. He wishes for a moment Kenneth McCormick's time—just a moment of his concentration and his focus. He wishes for the possibility to at least thank him, for everything: his dreams, his heart, his arm, his second chance.
/
Tell me how you feel, like, from your heart and stuff.