DOUBLE-POST BECAUSE IT'S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY :D I just turned eighteen. I'm going to go get a tattoo and party hard because, you know, you can do so much when you're eighteen. Hahaha. I get to party with a pack of cigarettes. Lovely.
Art hath an enemy called ignorance.
—Ben Jonson
"Tweek's a fucking health nut, dude." Clyde, Token, and I were inspecting our new refrigerator.
The brunette's comment was the epitome of correct.
His girlfriend had decided to take Tweek shopping this morning—seriously as though she just knew that we'd kissed and had to be the first to get it out of him—bitch even beat Kenny to it—and they'd come home only for them to do this.
No soda, no beer, Clyde's package of bite sized Three Musketeers was missing.
The entire cavity of the machine was a pristine white color as spotless as porcelain. There was soy milk next to the one percent milk; mushrooms, an assortment of peppers, asparagus, fruit to match the vegetables, and a coconut. (I stared at that thing trying to think of all the possible reasons why we needed it and couldn't think of one.) Our bottled salad dressing had been replaced with fresh, homemade ranch and some weird vinegar shit. Something called hummus was hanging out with the pudding of which we had in one flavor: tapioca.
We didn't even want to check the pantry and I was scared to look in the freezer for fear the vodka wouldn't be present. All of this, the shopping and the reorganization as well as some cooking and concocting, had all been done while we were sleeping. Or at least Clyde and I had been asleep. Token swore he'd tried to stop them and clearly failed. He'd went ahead and let the ladies destroy our man cave.
"So where's the beer?" Clyde asked. There hadn't been many cans left and they could've easily been thrown away but he'd bought the last pack and didn't want to have wasted money.
"Your girlfriend doesn't drink it and neither does Tweek. I guess they don't know that beer tastes like piss when it's warm. It's in the closet," Token informed.
Frowning, Clyde stomped over the closet, retrieved the beer, and thrust it back into the refrigerator. The coconut rolled all the way to the back. "Looking better already." He put his hand on the door and stroked the surface. "I'm sorry Token let them touch you, baby. At least you got a bath."
I smacked his butt. "Spoken like a true man. You sweet talk that whore." He grinned at me from over his shoulder. "So did Tweek move in or something? What's the occasion?"
Token shrugged his shoulders, moving to sit at the table. "I think it was more of a bonding thing." Or a gossiping thing. "Pretty Lady's kind of been harping on Tweek's vegetarianism. We all might be forced to convert."
"You sure know how to pick 'em," I chastised, referring to Clyde's woman.
"Hey!" He cried. "You love her."
She and Tweek decided to pop up at that moment. They came in from outside, the dogs racing around their feet. Tweek took one look at me and gawked, cheeks gone suddenly rosy. Clyde's girlfriend threw her arm around his shoulders and pointed toward the refrigerator with an air of haughtiness. "You like?"
"No," Clyde and I growled.
"We like the beer cold," he informed, a warning in his tone.
"And" —I took a look at the contents to find something I could add— "the hummus is irregular. What the fuck is that?"
It got Tweek to crack a grin. "You eat it with pita chips. It's not a favorite of mine, but Thomas likes it, so I thought I'd have—uhm—" he glanced at the lady "—P-Pretty Lady try it." That would be the first time he's called her that. By the approval on her face, I'd go ahead and say Token was right: she was going to convert us into vegetarians. "She liked it s-so she got some. Uh." His smile was wide and very forced yet it managed to look nice all the same.
Clyde was thoroughly displeased. "You turned my girlfriend against us." Tweek opened his mouth to explain further or apologize or probably anything really. The problem was that Clyde wasn't finished yet. "Dude, I handed over my best friend and his bed. You're in debt to us and you stole my girlfriend. That's like slut status right there."
The brunette's exaggerated response was funny up until Tweek heard the word "slut" and his expression completely blanked.
And then the mortification, disgust, anger, and hurt set in.
"I did not mean that literally, Tweek. I was seriously just fucking with you," Clyde said quickly.
Tweek nodded his head, but he wasn't exactly listening I don't think. He kept his eyes cast toward the floor and didn't really cooperate when Pretty Lady tried to console him for whatever was wrong.
Kenny had stepped through the door with a bag of groceries and gestured that he was fine. Clyde held his hands up and asked me what was going on as though I'd know. "Tweek," Kenny called, setting the bag by the floor. Startled, the petite blonde turned around. "Come outside with me."
When the two shut the door behind themselves and everyone had gathered at the table, Clyde asked, "He isn't really a slut is he?"
"God, you're an idiot." This was why I liked his girlfriend. She knew the truth.
"Why else would he get all moody?" He argued, which was a good question.
But since when were good questions relevant to the blonde? If anything, it made sense for him to get upset over a false accusation.
Whatever was the problem, Kenny would let me know. I was positive about that, because for some reason, he's found it necessary to tell me everything that was wrong with Tweek since our little reunion.
Pretty Lady shrugged; there wasn't much else to do. "He was fine at the store. At least I thought he was having a good time. He was like the fucking fruit whisperer."
I imagined Tweek knocking on watermelon and feeling up the peaches. It was actually fairly cute.
Standing up from the table, I made my way to the door, and had to fight the dogs off so that I was the only one who escaped.
Outside, Tweek and Kenny were down by the ledge, Kenny leaning against the rail blocking the drop. The other blonde was on the ground, cross-legged. His jeans were tight and black, boots just the same. He wore a long-sleeved button up a couple of shades darker than his eyes and the way he tucked it in accentuated how skinny he was. I caught a snippet of their conversation just before he saw me, saying something like, "It just sucks that they don't trust me."
He heard my next footstep, looked at me, and shut up. "What?" I asked, scooting down next to him—got all close and shit. "You make me walk out here in my underwear and then you don't say anything?" This apartment complex has seen me nearly naked enough times to consider it natural, though. So I wasn't genuinely complaining.
"Sorry," he murmured, worrying his bottom lip.
Yeah, I did that last night too, my thoughts sniggered.
Kenny pushed away from the rail and started for the door, grinning when Tweek stared after him, reluctant to see him leave. "Explain yourself for once, Tweekers."
When Kenny was gone, his green eyes focused on me. They explored my face, assessing what was probably my rumpled hair and drowsy gaze. I'd just woken up, had the scare of a lifetime upon opening the refrigerator, and it was kind of chilly out.
"So what's going on?" I asked, figuring he wasn't about to start an explanation on his own. As expected, he turned away from me and didn't say anything for a long while.
"My parents," he eventually said, working the words out of his mouth with difficultly. "They don't really like me c-coming out here. Especially with Kenny."
Of course. What parent wanted their mental child leaving town with the neighborhood whore? "That's a bit understandable."
"Yeah." He smiled, but it was a bitter thing. He took another minute before explaining. "To them, right now I'm not making any smart decisions. I'm gay and my brain's not right and I'm susceptible to my friend's influence. They don't think I'm prude or a virgin or very innocent at all at the moment."
Prude wasn't the word I'd describe him as, either. The other night kind of changed that outlook for me. "Oh." His attitude toward Clyde's joke was making sense, though. "They think you're a slut."
His bitter smile morphed into a grimace. "They've called to check in on me. I can hear my d-dad in the background."
"And he calls you a slut?" I didn't have a clear memory of Papa Tweak but I couldn't really see him calling anything a slut. Except maybe a dirty cup of a coffee.
"It's more like 'he's not one of those sluts like his friend, is he'?"
"And you're not."
He gave me this look of desperation. "I can't have my parents t-thinking that about me, dude!"
"Then get a boyfriend." He questioned me like he hadn't heard me. "Get a steady boyfriend that lives out here and they won't think anything of it." But Tweek was prude because he only had eyes for one guy. "Your cockblock crush might not like it and your boyfriend might not like it because you'll be hanging out with me all the time but—"
Tweek started laughing this light, whimsical sound. His cheeks were tinged pink. "Just shut up, Craig. That idea's stupid."
I leaned back against the wall, mission accomplished. "It's a foolproof idea, dude."
"Shut your mouth," he ordered. There was something flirtatious about the way he was grinning at me, all cheeky and such.
"You can't possibly be a slut when you're strictly a one-man type of a guy," I continued.
"Don't make me kiss you," he warned playfully.
My hands shot up. "Whoa, dude. I don't think your boyfriend will like that very—"
Clyde's woman and Tweek were putting together a "healthy meal". That's what she'd called it. We weren't allowed to say lunch anymore.
Rule number two was that only the ladies were allowed in the kitchen. Nobody was even given permission to taste-test, spoon-lick, or ingredient-pick.
So to pass the time, I sat in my room with the boys and sketched while they played with my paints. Often Clyde would say something like, "Look guys! I drew a penis going into a black hole!"
And Kenny would retort with something like, "No, that's just Token's anus."
Clearly, there was a good time to be had here.
Token was waiting for his lady friend to show up, and I supposed that was a good thing, because if it had been a date, he would have gone to get her instead.
All of the ways I'd wanted to capture Tweek, all of the things I'd wanted to draw about him, I was testing out in my sketchbook. It was a lot, so the graphite on my pencil kept running low, and for a simple sketch, I was getting generous with the details. His hands with their dainty fingers and sculpted nails hadn't consumed nearly as much lead as his eyes had, hooded with their thick lashes and dilated pupils showing through the shadows of my room. His pale smattering of freckles and his swollen, wet lips. Disheveled hair, the indent of his fingers biting into my skin. His half-concealed spinal cord.
A detailed mess resembling my rattled memory began to leave very few negative spaces on the paper. I felt like I'd ripped the blonde apart and was pressing him between the pages of my sketchbook like some people did with leaves and flowers. That's when I started scribbling leaves in his hair and flowers in his mouth, things that bloomed from his skin, and I blamed it on when I got him that Sprite because now I could only see him as this little fairy thing with twigs for eyebrows and moss for eyes. I tried to remember all I could from Stark's Pond and put him in the trees, in the water, as this giant sunflower with a blonde head full of petals.
My hand cramped and I let the pencil go. In my chest, my heart was racing, mind still illustrating with an imaginary utensil where I could watch Tweek unfold faster than I could draw. Utterly spaced out, I looked deep inside my head rather than at the ceiling.
"Craig. Dude." Kenny picked the sketchbook up off my stomach. He must've been trying to get my attention for a while since no one else was in my room anymore. From my open door I could hear the dogs barking as well as some muffled greetings. "Bailey's here. Since Token's not interested, I might go in for the kill—okay." He was staring at one particular page with a devious smirk. "Did you take advantage of my boy, Craigy-poo? I'm supposed to be keeping him safe, you know."
When I didn't say anything, he showed me what he was looking at. Tweek appeared noticeably turned on in the sketchbook, I'd go ahead and admit it. "You haven't been doing a very good job then, have you? It was a test." I winked, pointed in the general area of Tweek's bruised lips and added, "You failed. See, I kind of molested his mouth."
Kenny took a closer look and nodded his head. "Oh yes. I see you did. Looks like he took it well."
"Oh, he did."
From down the hallway there came a bustling, and then Clyde showed up in my doorway, winded from the short run. He needed to take up football again. "Dude. Bailey's a fucking lesbian. Tweek confirmed it. She wants my girlfriend. They're flirting!"
"I didn't confirm anything, Clyde," Tweek grumbled, showing up beside him, significantly less exhausted. "I said it's a possibility."
"Well don't change your mind now. I was so excited." My best friend visibly deflated against the doorframe. I imagined he'd been having visions of two sets of boobs, his bed, and a wild night.
Tweek gave him a pointed stare. "Just because I'm gay d-doesn't mean I know when everyone else is." To Kenny and me he said, "Food's ready. Pretty Lady wants to eat outside. Token's friend is joining us."
Snorting, I asked him, "What kind of first impression does it look like my appearance is going to give off?"
Boxer-briefs were all I wore, and after taking a quick glance to see that I was lounging on my bed in a position of pure comfort, Tweek's cheeks colored and he grumbled something about "Then put some clothes on."
"Only if you dress me." He looked at me with a little embarrassment, a little like I was wasting time. I didn't move.
He rolled his eyes and assented, a smile smile on his face as he pulled open a drawer of my dresser to rifle through my clothes.
Coincidentally, he chose the right one: third from the top. It contained all of my clean jeans.
Clyde retreated with Kenny to get a second opinion on whether or not this Bailey girl was a lesbian. I straightened out my legs and leaned back so that Tweek would be able to slip my jeans on easily. He pulled out a pair that were just a nice, dark denim and came over to the bed. "You suck so bad," he giggled, holding the waist open so he could shove my feet into the holes.
The farthest he could stretch was to my knees where he stopped and stood back as though that was enough. Because I was totally going to go out there with pant legs hanging off my feet. I motioned for him to continue no matter the lengths he'd have to go. Huffing exaggeratedly, the blonde crawled onto the bed and shimmied my jeans up the length of my limbs. When he reached my hips, he was loosely straddling me, though it got a bit tighter when I lifted my butt off the bed.
He swallowed and tugged my jeans on the rest of the way, looking up at me with a question in his eyes. Was this good enough? No. To show him what I meant, I looked down at my undone pant halves and then up at him.
His next breath came out shaky, but he buttoned my jeans—knuckles skimming across my stomach—and jerked the zipper up, a hand braced on my thigh to keep the fabric from moving with the motion. On my elbows, I inspected him curiously as he sat there with his hands laying precariously light against my skin, just inside the barrier of my hips. He wouldn't look at me, eyes focused intently on the bedspread beside us. And then he settled down, taking a seat right on top of me.
One of his hands pat my belly, and as he smiled, he dared a shy glimpse in my direction. I was able to clearly see his ribcage expand and contract heavily through the tank he'd switched into. The arm holes were cut low allowing me this. He wasn't necessarily expecting me to do anything, but the possibility was out there and that meant it could happen, so he was thinking about it and freaking out about it and maybe he wanted me to kiss him again.
This was his body's reaction. This stunted, deep breathing and the way he wet his lips. And if his body was going through the trouble of getting ready for a kiss, then I might as well indulge his hormones. They seemed to fancy me. Lord knows how long he's kept those poor, underprivileged things dormant for.
But I didn't get that far because I asked him a question instead. It just kind of occurred me, the stories and tidbits he's told. Not that they couldn't add up or make sense, I just didn't want to have to go through the equation of his past relationship and figure it out when the answer was straddling my lap.
"You never kissed your boyfriend?"
"What?" He asked quickly, blinking rapidly.
"You said you've kissed a girl but not a guy. You've had a boyfriend, though. You just never kissed him?" I didn't blame him for breaking it off with Tweek if that was the case. He couldn't even kiss someone who wasn't his cockblock crush? Even when 'someone' was his boyfriend?
Except he'd let me kiss him.
Maybe he was over it. Maybe that boyfriend of his had been years ago and he's realized since then that holding out for some unrequited crush was useless. He's just never gotten with another man since.
Whatever it was, it was too complicated for my simplistic way of thinking and suddenly I wished I hadn't even brought it up.
"I lied," he blurted out. There was guilt and apology in his expression, so blatantly obvious that I didn't have to draw him to know what it was. "I—I did it so I could— I just wanted to kiss you, okay?" His palm thumped again his forehead and he peeked at me from around his wrist. "It—I—uh, God. I didn't meant to lie! I'm so sorry for lying b-but it just h-happened, you know?" Mood switching violently to desperation, he murmured, "You wouldn't have done it otherwise."
This guy was a riot. Obviously he didn't know who Craig Tucker was because if something was going to happen, Craig Tucker always found a way to make it happen whatever the circumstance.
"Yeah, I would've."
"What?" He asked again, similarly to the first time.
"I still would've drawn you," I explained. "I would've gotten ideas of how to do it and I would've eventually thought of the shadows. Last night would've been your first kiss, instead. That's all. Or it would've been our first kiss—since, you know—you kind of lied to me about your real first kiss." He began sputtering apologies all over the place. "I was just kidding. I honestly don't care that you lied to kiss me. It's actually an ego boost, so thanks."
"You were my first kiss. I lied about k-kissing a girl, too." Tweek was just full of secrets this evening.
"Super ego boost."
He wasn't about to humor me, and our names were called from the living room. His head shot toward the door as though he'd find someone looking in at us. "We should go," he said.
"Why'd you lie to kiss me?" His lips parted to speak and I thought this profile view of him was very nice to look at. The straight slope of his nose and his plump lips, the petite curve of his chin. "Finally decide that your cockblock crush wasn't worth it?" I antagonized.
"Yeah, a-actually. I did," he sputtered, scurrying away.
I kind of felt like he just lied again.