Chapter Text
"I got a boyfriend."
Thomas is eleven years old, in fifth grade (though he's short for his age), and is sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor. He doesn't realize it yet, but with those four words the entire course of his life has just changed forever.
For now, he looks up from his Chinpokomon figurines at his dark haired friend. He's not sure how, but after Craig Tucker's creepy offer to do his laundry before last Christmas, they somehow ended up exchanging numbers and messaging a lot. Thomas let slip that he lives in Denver and ever since, he's been spending a few days every month or so in Craig's company.
Don't get him wrong – the younger boy is still odd. It's just that Thomas has always been kind of fond of hanging with the 'odd' kids, because that way they're less likely to judge him. Plus, they’re more interesting. More real.
Occasionally though, Craig takes being odd to a whole new level.
Like today.
He isn't sure he heard right. "Shit— shit. Y-you got a what?"
Craig pauses the Xbox game and sets the controller down in his lap to blink slowly at Thomas. "I said, I got a boyfriend." A pause. "As in, I'm dating someone who's got a dick."
Thomas grunts and rolls his eyes, returning his attention to where he was making Velocirapstar and Vamporko duke it out over the sandwich crust he's left on his plate. "You think I don't know what 'boyfriend' means? Cocklover, ass-tastic."
Unfortunately, he doesn't get the chance to go back to his game, because apparently this has sparked the rare desire in Craig to have an actual conversation.
"It's this boy called Tweek."
"Cool," says the blonde as politely as possible, even though he doesn't really care. As a general rule, Thomas isn't interested in dating or romance (since, you know... he's eleven), so he's struggling to work up much enthusiasm. Just about the only time he gets invested in this sort of thing is if two of his favorite characters in a comic or a cartoon get together - like that one episode in Bob's Burgers where Gene and Courtney pair up to do the morning announcements. They have what his mom calls 'chemistry'.
Apparently he does too good a job at faking interest (well, that or Craig downright doesn't care about his apathy), because that isn't the end of it.
"He's... weird."
As a self-proclaimed protector of the weird people, that actually catches his attention. He fights down the instinctive urge to defend his own kind. "What do you mean, 'weird'?" he says as calmly as possible, instead.
Craig gets a look on his face like he's trying not to poop his pants. "I mean, he's good at lots of stuff, but he's mostly just loud and panicky. Like a guinea pig."
What.
"A – fuck-me-sideways – a guinea pig?" There's only so much incredulity he can keep out of his voice.
Shrugging, Craig expands on the statement. "Everything scares him. He shakes and squeaks all the time, but mostly when things startle him." The younger boy scratches the side of his head, beneath one of the earflaps on his hat. "He likes coffee. A lot."
With that, Craig makes a thoughtful sound in his throat and turns back to the game.
Thomas is left blinking at his profile, wondering what the heck just happened.
...
That isn't the end of it, though. Not by a long shot.
...
During Craig's next visit, it's raining. Rather than staying inside where Grandma Tucker is baking cookies and swearing loudly at her television (her hearing aid isn't working properly), they go out to one of the nearby parks, which is, predictably, empty. Well, aside from one mad dog walker who's being dragged around the grass by his seven muscly, tail wagging Rottweilers.
They slump down onto a soggy bench like the water isn't soaking straight through their pants and making their butts miserably cold.
Thomas toes at the mulch with his shiny new sneakers and tries not to think about the kid that's been picking on him at school. It's nothing too bad, but there's something really unsatisfying about being so small and weedy for his age, and being picked on by kids a whole year younger than him. He was hoping that Craig would be a good distraction for him this weekend, but mostly he's still just feeling sad.
Out of nowhere, Craig starts to talk.
"He made me watch Zootopia with him, and then got scared at the rabid otter scene and locked himself in the bathroom."
"Aw, shit." Eyebrows drawing down in confusion, the blonde rolls his head towards his friend. "Who?"
"Tweek," says Craig through a sigh, slouching down in the seat and staring up at the miserable grey sky, even at the risk of stray raindrops temporarily blinding him. "He said he doesn't like when things get out of control. Even though he's always out of control."
Pausing, Thomas thinks about that for a moment. Finds he agrees with Tweek’s feelings totally, and that he isn't surprised calm, collected Craig Tucker, master of his fate and about as average as anyone could ever dream to be, doesn't.
"I get that," he says, leaning back to study the sky too. (There isn't much to see aside from clouds, clouds, and more clouds.) "Feeling- cockhead. Feeling like you're trapped in a glass box and being pushed around by everyone outside of it, just waiting for it to tumble over and crack when someone pushes too hard. Asshole."
He can feel the exact moment Craig's eyes start boring into his skull, but he just lets the sentence hang over them.
Eventually they get up and wander back to Grandma Tucker's, drenched through to the bone and feeling pretty sorry for themselves. At the elderly woman's insistence, they change into their pajamas even though it’s early, and sit down with a plate of hot, fresh cookies between them.
A few hours later, they end up curled under one blanket and decide to watch Zootopia, since Craig's still never seen it through to the end.
Even though Thomas has already watched it a dozen times over, he finds himself thinking about how scary the premise of the movie really is: reasonable creatures turning into monsters because someone messes with their minds. He thinks about what kind of animal he would be, and comes to a conclusion he doesn't really like, because there's only one logical answer.
(Predator.)
During the scene where the fox, Nick, goes for his little rabbit friend's throat, he shivers. Wonders if Craig's boyfriend thought he'd have been one of the screwed up carnivores too, and if that was why he had run away when he'd tried watching it.
Being a weirdo – feeling like a monster – isn't fun.
(He decides he doesn't ever want to see that movie again.)
...
It's the second week of summer after fifth grade, and Thomas goes to the train station to meet up with Craig, who's come a few days early so he can stay with Thomas before going to his Grandma's with his little sister, Ruby.
He's barely caught sight of the other boy – who's somehow grown a full inch since they last saw each other – when he's being pulled in for a tight hug.
Standing stock still, Thomas takes the unusual greeting with a funny little skip of his heart, because even though Craig's always been touchy-feely beyond a level that is normal for Thomas, this is new. It takes him a solid minute before his arms unfreeze enough to wrap around the younger boy, and even then all he can do is pat awkwardly.
After an embarrassing amount of time stood on the platform with his friend clinging to him like they haven't seen each other for years, Craig eases off, stepping away to peer down at him.
There's a small smile on his face that Thomas isn't used to seeing, with a dimple on one side of his mouth. It wipes away all of his embarrassment about being stared at by a hundred passing strangers, and it makes him smile back.
They walk along with the crowd outside Union Station and end up wandering through LoDo, looking into quirky store windows at the displays and just generally wasting time. As the younger boy doesn't seem to mind hauling around his huge, bulging rucksack, Thomas just enjoys the warmth of sun on his face and a breeze catching on the bangs he's been growing out.
Eventually they stumble across Tattered Cover Book Store (one of Thomas' absolute favorite places in the whole world), and he drags a quiet Craig inside, to stroll up and down the wide aisles and peer at the rainbow-array of covers and colors and titles. In each new section of shelving something catches Thomas' eye, and he pulls every book and magazine he fancies down for inspection, his tics soothed almost into silence by smell of crisp paper and ink.
Contentment wraps around him like a second skin.
"I've missed you," says Craig, just a whisper, as Thomas flicks through a sci-fi adventure novel meant for people double his age.
"Me too," he says easily, eyes glued to the tiny font as a passage about, 'crafting eternity out of star matter' pops off the page at him. "How long's it been? Two months?"
"Three."
Thomas hums at that, and then keeps on reading. The paragraph talks about how, 'the Ancient Ziriu Warriors dined on the dust of dead suns to reach their fabled immortality, alone and unguarded'. It's garbage, but it sounds kinda pretty.
"Hey, check out this bit," he says.
When Thomas taps at it with one finger, figuring that Craig might be interested (seeing as how he's obsessed with space), the younger boy steps up behind his shoulder and scans over the passage.
A few quiet moments pass with Craig's body heat radiating into his back and Thomas' heart doing another funny hiccup ("Shh-shit," he babbles), before Craig huffs a little breath.
"Tweek'd hate that."
Turning around, Thomas eyes him with curiosity. "What, the fighting? Or the bit about eating burnt rock dust?"
"The eternal life part," says Craig, crossing his arms and peering off into the middle-distance like that'll help reorganise his thoughts. "He's more scared of dying than anything else in the whole world, except maybe Underpants Gnomes." Here, Thomas makes a noise that translates to what the heck? But Craig just shakes his head like it's something he regrets even mentioning, and continues. "But I think that floating through space alone forever, all his family and friends dead, would be even worse."
"Hm." Staring down at the page, he considers spending his life floating around aimlessly with only himself for company, after watching his mom and his few friends die off one by one. An eternity trapped inside his own head, with all his self-loathing and his insecurity and his personal demons. That same strange pang of empathy for this Tweek boy courses through him. "Ff-fuck. What about you?" he finds himself asking.
"I think I wouldn't mind," Craig says around a long yawn. "I like daydreaming. And peace. It'd be okay."
Once again, Thomas is left staring into half-lidded blue eyes and thinking, no wonder we don't have much to talk about apart from your boyfriend.
...
By the end of October, Thomas is getting used to awkward sessions on Facetime or Discord as they game together. (Or rather, as Craig games and Thomas flicks through one of his Transformer comics.)
It's only awkward because they don't say much for long periods of time during their calls, and sometimes Thomas forgets Craig's there, so he ends up snorting with laughter or reading sections of dialogue out loud, right into the speaker on his headset.
One of these times in particular starts very awkwardly.
"'I was only ever using your love as a cover to stamp out the rebellion—'? What? Shit me. How could you say something so—" Thomas freezes mid-yelp when he realizes Craig's stopped clacking at his keyboard.
Looks up from the glossy, colorful page with a surge of heat rushing to his cheeks. In light of the blank stare Craig's levelling him through the monitor of his computer, the drama of his comic is forgotten.
"What was that?" asks Craig, voice flat as ever.
"Um. Cocklord, cock. Just a bit in this." He holds it up comic so its in line with the camera, and watches Craig's expression go from blank to (if possible) blanker. "Turns out the good guy's actually secretly been a baddy all along."
"Oh." The younger boy glances down, presumably at his keyboard, but doesn't go back to playing his game yet.
Somehow Thomas knows that this is one of those moments when he's expected to ask what's on his friend's mind. (As he doesn't have many proper friends outside of his group therapy sessions and his old Summer Camp buddies, he's maybe a little out of practice.) "Why? What'd you think I was – assface – talking about?"
Craig reaches out for something off-screen and returns with a mug, which he lifts up to his face. No doubt it's full of coffee. He takes several long gulps of his drink, even though Thomas spots his upper lip curling when he pulls away.
They sit in silence, Thomas watching the screen and Craig peering into his mug – which stays perched in front of his face, steam billowing out the top in barely-there wisps – like it might hold the answers to the universe. Thomas is just starting to think that maybe he wasn't supposed to ask anything after all, when Craig finally talks.
"He's not my boyfriend."
Furrows his eyebrows. "Huh?"
"Tweek. He's not my boyfriend. Not really," Craig says the words very quietly and glances off to one side, like he's worried someone might hear him say them.
Thomas stares at his friend's pixelated face. Feels a little like he's missing something here. "Wait... then why—?"
"Because everyone pushed us into it." He releases the words in a loud burst that has Thomas rocking back in his desk chair, eyes wide. He's never heard Craig shout before.
Heart thumping from the shock, and shiny comic clutched to his chest, he struggles for a moment to think of anything else to say. Gives up trying to censor his words after he realizes it's pointless. He's never going to be good with choosing the right things to say, so he might as well just go for it and hope for the best. "Why would you go along with that?"
"It was easier." Craig sets the mug down with an audible clunk and scowls back at Thomas. "Tweek stopped getting bothered by his dad about stuff and the chicks at school really dig it and... I dunno. It was that or have everyone think I'm a manipulative cheater. It seemed like the better option."
Right. Okay. This makes no sense to Thomas, who generally considers his life to be nice and dull, if not a little depressing when his Tourette’s is really playing up or when another of the school bullies starts picking on him.
Just then, though, something else occurs to him.
"You said about 'chicks'? Are— asslicker, ass— cumballs. Are you even gay, then?"
Now it's Craig's turn to stare at him like he's a weirdo. "Dude, I'm eleven. I don't even know what I want for dinner at night, let alone if I wanna bang dudes or not." Thomas notes distantly that either Craig's lighting must be really bad, or the other boy's face has gone an unholy shade of pink. "That's like me asking you if you like guys or girls."
This gives Thomas pause. It's honestly not something he's ever considered before. "Huh. Shitbag. I don't know," he says after a couple seconds consideration. "I never really thought about it."
"Exactly," says Craig.
It's around this point that something else occurs to him. "Does Tweek like you?"
He doesn't require a verbal answer thanks to the way one of Craig's eyebrows arches.
"Okay, okay," he holds up one hand like that might calm the other boy down. "So you don't like each other, and you both know you don't like each other. Asshat. Plus you get the benefits of pretending you're going out."
"And he's one of my best friends," says Craig.
(Thomas finds himself hoping that maybe, just maybe, he's becoming one of Craig's best friends, too.)
But... that still doesn't answer what's upsetting the younger boy. "So what's the problem?"
"I just—" Craig rubs one hand over his face. "I can't help but feel like this is all gonna go badly. Like it's gonna blow up on us."
Thomas makes a thoughtful sound, and they lapse back into a quiet that makes all the little blonde hairs on the back of his arms rise up to attention.
In the end, all Thomas can think to say is, "My mom always says we should deal with one problem at a time. Just take – fucking bastard – baby steps."
"Like what?" Craig sounds so interested in what he has to say – in his opinion – that Thomas can't help but grin.
"You go on with how things are right now, and work on figuring out the most important thing first."
"Which is?"
"If you like girls, guys, both or neither."
The younger boy makes another sound of distress. "What good's that gonna do?"
He shrugs, because honestly, it might do nothing at all. What does he know? He's only a kid, after all. "It might make the next step a little clearer."
The silence following that statement lasts so long that Thomas half wonders if his computer's frozen – actually leans forwards to tap at the side of the monitor and—
almost jumps right out of his skin when Craig speaks up again.
"Okay, Tommy... I'll do it. So long as you do it with me."
Thomas' heart does another funny little skip at the nickname he's never heard before, and he gulps down a flutter of embarrassment.
Takes a while to try and figure out what Craig's referring to.
Oh. What kind of people they like.
Well, it couldn't hurt anything, could it? It might even be a fun little project when the rest of his life gets to be a little too sad.
"Y-yeah," he says, smiling down at the cover of his comic. "Yeah, okay. We'll figure it out together."