Chapter Text
“The only reason you’re going to this stupid conformist party is because Craig’s gonna be there.”
Tweek jerked his head up from his notebook at the mention of Craig’s name. “GAH! That’s not true! I’m going because I --”
“You what?”
Gnawing relentlessly on his bottom lip, Tweek fought to scrounge up some sort of excuse for attending the party hosted by the head cheerleader, Bebe Stevens. He really had none; it wasn’t like anyone there talked to him. The only possible reason he’d have to go to a party filled with people he didn’t like was because he knew for certain that Craig Tucker, the object of Tweek’s admiration for years, was going to be there.
(He’d overhead, by accident of course, Clyde harass Craig until he finally agreed to come.)
“I miss being around the other guys,” Tweek tried weakly.
Michael rolled his eyes. “Try again.”
“I was invited?” Tweek’s voice was considerably less confident. Not like it was confident in the slightest in his previous statement.
“No offense, Tweek, but there’s no way in R’lyeh you were invited to fucking Bebe Stevens’ house,” Henrietta said, taking a long drag of her cigarette.
Tweek huffed a sigh, slamming his notebook closed and setting it beside him. With a shake of his head, he pulled a cigarette from the antique cigarette box on the bed above his head. He popped it between his lips and leaned towards Pete, who took the hint and flicked the lighter, springing a flame, and hovered it over the end of the ‘cancer stick’, as Tweek’s lovely mother deemed the object of his unexpected addiction. When a thick smoke entered Tweek’s mouth after a short inhale, he straightened up and rested his back against the end of Henrietta’s bed, his knees pulling up to his chest. “Okay, so fine. I’m going to see Craig. But fucking sue me! I like seeing him!”
“That’s fine, whatever, but you’re just going to get hurt again,” Henrietta said disdainfully. “The world sucks enough as it is without you putting yourself in shitty situations.”
“But it’s never Craig’s fault!” Tweek insisted. “It’s always his asshole friends. I can get over it if I get to see Craig at all.”
Michael snorted. “Masochist.”
Tweek’s eyes snapped to Michael’s, watching as he scratched something out in his notebook and wrote something else in its place. “Dickhead.”
“When everything inevitably goes to shit,” Pete said, “we’re all gonna be at Henrietta’s house. Just so you know.”
Tweek rolled his eyes, letting the cigarette rest between his lips. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“We all know tonight’s going to go awful for you.” Henrietta fixed a genuine stare in Tweek’s direction. “It’s got nothing to do with you. Our school is full of conformist assholes that seek cheap thrills in torturing people that don’t conform to their shitty way of life.”
Tweek smiled to himself in his mind at Henrietta’s words. Listening to the goth kids try to comfort him always either amused Tweek, greatly annoyed him, or straight up sucked the life out of him. It just depended on how serious the problem was, and how lost Tweek felt. When he spiraled into chaos after officially being cut off from everyone else besides the goth kids, and after he was confronted by the only people who would be seen with him, Pete and Michael said things like,
“Only emos cut themselves, and emos are such fucking posers. Just ask for help, Jesus Christ, we’re not gonna ignore you.”
It showed Tweek that they cared, but at the same time it still somewhat isolated him. It invalidated his emotions and made it seem like Tweek was overreacting over his painful loneliness. However, as much as that hurt, Tweek had come to them for help once after they’d informed him that they liked him enough to be a shoulder for him whenever he needed it. And when he sat between the two of them on Henrietta’s bed, shoulders trembling as tears streamed down his cheeks, Pete wrapped an arm around him and coaxed Tweek into leaning his body weight on him. And Michael sat beside him, legs folded in front of him, puffing on a cigarette, and read passages from 1984, because it was one of Tweek’s favorite books. It calmed Tweek down much faster than hurting himself ever could, and ever would, as, after the first incident, Henrietta would make it a point to periodically check his arms. She would never ask outright, but it was obvious what she was doing, and it always made Tweek feel . . . important.
And he hardly ever felt important.
And from the beginning, Henrietta would say,
“You know, I am here if you need me. If you ever need someone to talk to. You’re one of us now. Better than everyone else at our school.” Then she would clear her throat, or take a puff of her cigarette, and add, “Not like that’s a big deal or anything. Pretty much everyone sucks.”
And Tweek . . . well, he liked hearing that. A lot. And he would return the favor, telling her that he was never doing anything besides working, and that his parents always encouraged him not to be a loner, and would almost positively let him leave work in favor of actually having friends. She didn’t ask for help like that, and Tweek knew that. And he respected it. But he wanted her to know that he loved her too, even if she would never say it, and even if he wouldn’t either.
Bebe’s house was packed by the time Tweek slowed to a stop in front of the mansion-like building in front of him. There was loud music pouring out every crevasse of the Victorian, and, through the parted curtains of the windows, Tweek could see more people than he’d ever talked to in his life.
Tweek knew that he wasn’t going to be able to get inside of Bebe’s house by himself, so he waited for a huge herd of some random seniors. As suavely as he could, he attached himself to the back of the group, and walked with them through the front door as they were all greeted by a smiling Bebe.
Once inside, Tweek immediately wanted to leave. The music was 99% bass, with 1% being Rihanna's auto tuned voice, but it didn’t seem like anyone inside cared. There were plastic red cups strewn all over the place, as well as beer and soda cans, and, in one of the rooms, Tweek even spied an empty bottle of Jack.
For about ten minutes after his arrival, Tweek wandered the first couple rooms aimlessly, trying to see if he would stumble across someone that he even recognized. But the only person Tweek had seen so far that he could definitively identify was Bebe, he couldn’t see anyone else. Not even Stan, who was probably the most popular guy at South Park High, and should’ve been in the heat of the party.
But Tweek didn’t really care about all of that. He cared that he didn’t know where Craig was. If he couldn’t see Craig, he had no reason to be there. Because fuck everyone, as far as Tweek was concerned, but don’t fuck Craig because he’s a good guy with really pretty eyes.
Just as Tweek was starting to lose hope, and was just about ready to call it quits and go home, he heard Bebe shout over the loud stereo, “Has anyone seen Clyde?!”
There was a barely-audible response of, “Basement!” from someone somewhere in the room, and that was when Tweek knew he hit the jackpot.
Because if Clyde dragged Craig to the party, then that meant that wherever Clyde was, Craig was sure to be also. Because if Clyde wanted him there, and Craig didn’t want to be there, then the only reason Craig would’ve shown up was to appease Clyde.
So Tweek sucked in a courageous breath, and followed Bebe through an open door, leading to a well-lit staircase that was considerably quieter than the rest of the house. He stayed back a few seconds so it didn’t seem like he was stalking Bebe, but eventually descended the carpeted steps, looking up hesitantly as he reached the bottom.
Tweek wasn’t sure how to feel about it, but the reason he hadn’t seen anyone he knew on the first floor was because everyone he knew was in the basement.
Tweek fiddled with the front of his shirt as he stared around at all of the kids that had collectively turned their backs on him when they were all in seventh grade. It hurt less to see them than Tweek thought it would. Tweek and his old friends did everything together. They went everywhere together, and they experienced the strangest, weirdest, most fucked up shit on the planet together. So when they all started ignoring him on the first day of seventh grade, it hurt like a fucking bitch. For a couple days, he thought he’d actually died, until his parents said good morning to him once, and he realized the real reason nobody was talking to him was because no one wanted to talk to him.
But, seeing them all having fun and laughing. It didn’t hurt. If anything, it pissed him off a little bit, but he let it go. He wasn’t there to please them, or prove something to them, or any other stupid reason.
No. He was there for one person. The last person to say something willingly to him in school, besides the goth kids and his teachers. And the second Tweek laid eyes on him, he felt a weight in his chest lift.
Craig was sitting on the floor in a circle with ten or fifteen other kids, his knees crossed Indian style in front of him and a generic beer can in his hand. He had an elbow resting on his knee, propping his chin upright, and he surveyed his surroundings with a dull, disinterested expression on his face. He would periodically taking a short gulp of the alcoholic beverage in his hand, but otherwise remained fairly still.
That is, until he was smacked on the back by Clyde, and had the words, “Okay, Craig! You’re first!” practically shouted in his face.
Craig glanced down at the empty bottle in the center of the circle that Clyde had been gesturing to, and then looked back up at the smirking brunette. “No,” he said simply.
“Oh, come on, Craig!” Clyde said, nudging Craig’s shoulder with his fist. He had a giggling Bebe on his arm, and it seemed to have increased the dickiness in his personality. “It’s tradition!”
“I don’t give a fuck about tradition.”
“Quit being an asshole, Craig,” Stan interjected, setting his beer beside him on the carpet.
Almost like he was being drawn to him, Tweek started to cross the room in Craig’s direction, an excitement coursing through his veins and pulling at his lips so they curved into a smile that hadn’t possessed his face in quite a while. Not since the last time he’d been allowed to be close to Craig. He didn’t have a plan for what he’d do or say in the event that they crossed paths; really, the only reason he’d shown up was to just . . . be next to Craig? Listen to him talk? Enjoy the view of his obnoxiously-handsome face? Tweek hadn’t exactly developed his plan too much, but so far, it was going just fine.
Tweek weaseled his way into the circle, though remaining close to the outside, and he sat the same way everyone else was sitting. (He briefly imagined all his friends collectively calling him a ‘conformist bitch’, but he tried not to let that thought consume him too much.) He purposefully put himself away from the people he knew; Craig, Clyde, Stan, and the other guys that Tweek had spent an extended amount of time around when he was younger were on the other side of the circle. No one on either side of Tweek seemed to question his presence, although that might’ve been because they probably didn’t know who he was. Tweek didn’t know who they were, so they would have no reason to be aware of his existence.
“Oh, you’re still with us?” Craig was saying to Stan, flat, indifferent eyes fixed to the black-haired quarterback. “I didn’t know you could get your face out of your girlfriend’s pussy long enough to say anything. Which cheerleader is it this time --”
“Shut the fuck up, Craig,” Stan started angrily, only to be silenced when Kyle groaned in annoyance.
“Come on, you two, the party started half an hour ago. Can’t you wait until at least a couple hours in before you start killing each other?”
“If he’s going to be an asshole, then no,” Craig said.
Clyde huffed irritably. “Just spin the fucking bottle, dude, I don’t want to listen to you two argue. You’re worse than Kyle and Cartman sometimes.”
“That’s literally not possible,” Token said, at the same time that Craig hissed, voice borderline irate,
“Fucking fine.” He wrapped his long, slender fingers around the empty beer bottle, and, with a determined flick of the wrist, the bottle went flying, spinning fast enough so that it took a solid ten seconds for it to finally come to a stop.
Right in front of Tweek.
The entire crowd either, “Oooooh”’d, or made grossed-out-groans. Tweek, on the other hand, smacked two palms to his mouth in utter terror, and somehow managed to stare at the entire room at the same time, though it was obvious he purposefully avoided Craig’s eyes.
Had Tweek decided to suck it up and look over at the object of his impending lip-lock, he would’ve noticed a surprised, yet monotone expression on the olive-skinned teen, eyes half-lidded and face relaxed and accepting of his fate. But Tweek’s mind was too busy screaming to even think about returning to his surroundings.
Oh God oh God oh God please tell me this isn’t about to happen to me, or if it is about to happen to me, please tell me that there’s a new rule to this game that says that all kisses have to be done IN PRIVATE because I can’t do this with everyone staring at us, I just can’t, I’ll lose my head, I know I will, and then I’ll do something awful, because that’s all I ever do!
“Tweek?” The sound of his name falling from Clyde’s mouth caused Tweek’s eyes to fly open from the absolute fear of suddenly being the center of attention. “What’re you doing here?”
“How are you here?” Bebe spoke up, gaze unimpressed as she turned to stare at Tweek.
“He probably snuck in through a window or something,” Stan said with an eye roll.
“Yeah, fuck knows he misses actual humans,” Clyde tacked on. “He’s always around those goth vampire fucks that hang out behind the school and smoke cigarettes all day.”
“Probably because they’re the only people who can stand to be around him anymore.”
Tweek’s stares seemed to ping pong to different people as they spoke about him like he wasn’t even there. Tweek knew that the moment he left, he was going to be pissed off about what they’d said, not just about him, but his best friends, too. But he was kind of being targeted by everyone at the same time, and it was thwarting him from reacting like a normal person would to being insulted.
"Yeah, and speaking of, he was not invited --" Bebe started, her eyes narrowing in Tweek's direction.
"Wait," Clyde said, a mischievous smirk in his eyes as he glanced between Craig and Tweek. "Craig did spin first, and he . . . did land on Tweek, so . . ."
"Oh, gross, dude, you're actually going to make Craig kiss him?" Stan said, his face crumpling in disgust and humor, like forcing Craig to kiss Tweek was high-brow pranking.
"It's tradition," Clyde said, nudging Craig's shoulder again. "So. Pucker up."
With a long, heaving sigh, Craig crawled across the center of the circle, pushing the bottle to the side so he didn’t knee it as he moved. On all fours, he kept his eyes glued to Tweek’s anxious, terrified face as he slowly stalked past the anticipating crowd. In Tweek’s eyes, the short moments that it took Craig to cross the five feet to get to him were actually an eternity, because it felt like time stopped. Holding Craig’s eyes, everything around the both of them fell away.
Craig eventually came to a stop in front of Tweek and observed him quietly, resting on his knees but propped forward on his fists.
“ERK! Uh -- hi!” Tweek grimaced, mentally berating himself. Of all the things he could’ve said -- why he had to say anything, he wasn’t entirely sure, and he was annoyed that he had to at all -- he had to pick fucking ‘hi’? The only thing worse, as far as Tweek was concerned, was if he asked, right then and there, if he could suck Craig’s cock. Then, and only then, could his situation by even remotely worse than it was.
Craig tilted his head curiously, but didn’t answer. He simply lifted a hand to Tweek’s cheek, cupping the heated skin with more gentleness than Tweek was expecting from the infamous pitcher of the South Park baseball team. Craig’s baby blue eyes were calculating as they flicked between Tweek’s, an apology lurking behind the normal indifference that Tweek was used to, that the entire class was used to.
“Don’t freak out,” Craig said finally, after a long stretch of tense silence. “It’s just a kiss.” Without waiting for a response, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Tweek’s trembling, parted lips. Tweek’s heart exploded in a flurry of butterflies, (or pterodactyls, more accurately), and he stared, wide-eyed and terrified, at Craig’s closed lids, relaxed and lacking in worry lines or creased skin.
Craig’s lips were slightly chapped, enough to be noticeable, but not too much to be unpleasant. He was warm; he had a warmth to him that not many people could see. But Tweek could -- Tweek was remarkably skilled in reading people, and he’d known, since the moment he’d met him, that Craig had several layers under the surface. And the bottom one -- or a layer close to the bottom -- was soft and welcoming, caring and sweet. A layer that could love more passionately and gently than any other, and ever since Tweek had come to that conclusion, he’d been hopelessly infatuated with the boy.
Because imagine being loved by the person that hated everyone?
Tweek had a bit of an attention complex, stemming from his parents’ perpetual ignorance, and his classmates abrupt dismissal of him from their groups. He had grown to adore having people he liked pay attention to him; he liked when they spoke to him and were kind to him, and Tweek had seen Craig be nice before, he knew it was more than possible. And whenever Craig was nice -- on those rare occasions -- he had a look in his eyes that Tweek found so very intoxicating.
The kiss itself was rather chaste. From Tweek’s perspective, it lasted forever, or a second. Or perhaps both. All Tweek was sure of, aside from the fact that the majority of Tweek’s teen dreams were coming true, was that Craig ended it too quickly. And he did so gently, (so very, very gently, and that made Tweek quiver almost as much as the kiss did), pulling away slowly with a soft smack of their lips as they parted.
There was a beat of tense silence as Craig kept their faces so close, before he leaned back, his hand dropping from Tweek’s cheek. “There,” he said, turning his eyes to Clyde. The only indication that Craig gave that he had just been kissing another guy was a light blush on his cheeks. Other than that, he seemed as deadpanned and indifferent as ever. “You happy now?”
Tweek immediately felt an unwelcome chill where Craig’s body had once been, and he let out a whine from the back of his throat. The sound caught Craig’s attention, who turned back to him and raised an eyebrow.
Without thinking, and without giving Craig a response to his peculiar behavior, Tweek surged forward, gripping the front of Craig’s sweatshirt and smashing their lips together again. At the return of that oh-so-amazing warmth, Tweek whimpered softly, his head tilting and his jaw shifting so that the kiss deepened.
Craig, on the other hand, just let out a surprised grunt, and stared at Tweek’s closed eyes. He didn’t attempt to break himself free from Tweek’s desperate vice grip, though he didn’t move an inch to reciprocate. He seemed surprised, caught off guard, that someone like Tweek would even try something like that with someone like him. It was unheard of. But . . . not entirely unwelcome, Tweek hoped, as he felt Craig’s muscles relax under his hands, a soft sigh through Craig’s nose blew warm air on Tweek’s face.
In the end, it wasn’t Craig who jarred Tweek back into reality, but their audience, a bunch of judgmental kids that Tweek had somehow completely forgotten about. But the second Tweek heard the multiple, very interested voices, he jolted, shoving Craig’s unsuspecting body away from him with a spark of fear and terror at the laughter and jeers that surrounded him. His eyes widened as far as they possibly could so he could soak in his complete and total humiliation and he stared at everything and everyone at the same time.
There were various reactions coming from all sides: most were of disgust, some were of shock, others lamented their appreciation that they weren’t in Craig’s shoes, some were laughing at the ridiculousness of Tweek’s obvious desperation. But there was one shout that made Tweek’s blood run cold.
“Ooooh, Craig, aren’t you gonna kick his ass for that?”
It was probably Cartman. Sounded like something Cartman would say. Or maybe it was someone else, Tweek really couldn’t tell, he was surprised he was even able to pick one voice out of the cacophony of other voices.
Tweek scrambled to his feet, backing away from the circle of high schoolers, a feeling of utmost horror seizing control of his muscles and forcing them to tremble and shake and clench and unclench so it was physically impossible for him to even try to calm down.
“I . . . I, oh, God! Jesus, I’m sorry, I --” Shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut, Tweek spun on his heels and sprinted out of the room to the stairs, then up the steps, through the crowded rooms, and out the front door, his short little legs carrying him as fast as they could possibly go.
No one followed him -- although that was to be expected. The only people who’d taken him in after the start of high school were the goth kids, and that was only because he was an outcast enough to be considered ‘cool’ to them. That, and he had a growing disdain for organized society, was vocal about it, and drank a lot of coffee.
Tweek ran all the way back to his house, and barreled through his front door. He ran right past his parents, but they seemed oblivious to his distress, and only asked how the party was. They didn’t follow Tweek when he shouted, “GAH! It was terrible!” which Tweek was eternally grateful for.
Hopping up the stairs two at a time, Tweek tried to hold back his anxiety attack as best he could. He wasn’t about to be overwhelmed by sobs, (as often as Tweek freaked out, he never cried too often), but his chest was rumbling with anxious grunts and screeches, and he would’ve rather his parents not heard him. It would’ve saved him a lot of trouble.
After Tweek slammed his bedroom door shut behind him, he crossed his room and flung himself onto his bed, crawled up the mattress so he was resting on his pillows, and he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed the first number he could think of.
It rang three times, before a low voice answered, “Hello?”
“Pete Pete Pete Pete Pete,” Tweek chanted anxiously into the phone, curling into a ball under his blankets. He shook his head against the pillow cases, feeling embarrassed tears pool into the corners of his eyes.
“What’s wrong? Did you realize how stupid it was to go to the bubblegum conformist party? We all told you when you left --”
“Oh God, I kissed him!” Tweek screeched, pressing his face into his mattress and squeezing his eyes shut in horror and humiliation.
“Craig?” Pete asked, tone lifting with intrigue.
“Yes Craig, who the fuck else?!” Tweek exclamation was so loud he was sure Henrietta’s entire house would’ve been able to hear his voice. And it seemed he was right in his assessment, as another voice answered him.
“Come over.”
“Henrietta?” Tweek sniffled, lifting his head slightly. Tweek liked his friends, sure, but Henrietta had an air about her that always calmed him down. She was a tough love kind of girl -- all the goths practiced tough love, being caring teens that also didn’t want to seem soft -- but she would say nice things in a tough voice, and Tweek liked that.
“Yeah,” she responded flatly. “Come over. We’re all at my house.”
And, without another word, the line went dead.
Tweek shook his head, annoyed at Henrietta's theatrics, and he heaved himself off of his bed. Running a hand down his face to try to calm himself, he exited his bedroom treading slightly quieter than he'd been before. As Tweek passed the living room, he called offhandedly through the doorway to his parents, “Mom, Dad, I’m spending the night at Henrietta’s." He didn’t wait for an answer, one confirming his plans or denying him from leaving the house. As far as Tweek was concerned, if they wanted him that badly to stay the night, then they would’ve stopped him after he slammed the front door shut behind him and hopped down his stoop.
Tweek’s friends were all waiting for him when Henrietta’s mother let Tweek into Henrietta’s bedroom.
“Henrietta!” the middle-aged woman called in a sing-song voice. “Look who I just found on our front porch!”
“Yeah, thanks, Mom, now go away,” was the goth girl’s response as she flicked the ash from her cigarette into the ashtray in front of her.
“Okay, sweetie, you just call me if you need anything, I’ll be downstairs with your father watching the Wheel of Fortune,” Henrietta’s mother answered, giving the four teenagers a sweet smile, before closing the door behind her.
“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, it was awful! ” Tweek wailed as soon as he was alone with his friends.
“Are you okay?” Michael asked, one leg pulled up in front of him as he flipped through Death and Despair magazine.
Tweek growled angrily at the question. “No, I’m not okay!” He shook his head irritably and stomped through the darkened room to Henrietta, and, even though she hadn’t invited him to sit beside her, he collapsed to the floor, curling into himself and resting his head on Henrietta’s shoulder.
“Do you want me to read to you?” Michael asked, already reaching onto Henrietta’s small bookshelf beside her bed.
Tweek shook his head against Henrietta’s shoulder. She didn’t make a move to reciprocate the physical affection, but she didn’t push him away, which meant that Tweek was allowed to stay where he was. “I just want to wallow in my pain.”
“That’s cool,” Pete said, flicking some ashes from the end of his cigarette.
“Yeah,” Michael agreed. “What happened anyway?”
Tweek groaned, the events of the night playing again in his mind. “We were playing spin the bottle --”
“Gross,” all three goths said at the same time.
“--And Craig went first, and when he spun the bottle it landed on me, and then he kissed me in front of everyone, and it was fucking awesome, you guys, but he pulled back after, ugh, like, three seconds, and then started to move away from me, but I guess I wasn’t done kissing him yet, because I just . . . ERK! I just . . . I grabbed him by the shirt and kissed him again, and I didn’t mean to, but everyone started . . .” Tweek gulped at this part, as the complete and utter terror that swept through his chest just listening to the taunts made his heart stutter all over again. “They all . . . laughed at me, and they're -- GRRRR -- such fucking dicks, but I ran away before anyone could actually do anything, and then I went home and immediately called Pete, and now. . . .” Tweek’s voice trailed off and he pressed his forehead on to Henrietta’s warm, cushiony shoulder, his arms folding over his stomach. “I just want someone to punch a hole in my chest and rip my heart out because this fucking sucks.”
There was stretch of silence. Because Tweek had declined the offer to indulge in his usual self-care routine, (rest his head on someone and listen as someone read his favorite book to him), nobody knew what to do to make him feel better. He was off-kilter, and, although the goth kids were comfortable around a lack of routine, they hadn’t quite figured Tweek out enough to make him feel better in any way other than what he’d told them would work.
“This is bullshit,” Henrietta announced suddenly. “Let me talk to him.”
Michael and Pete exchanged glances. “Does that mean we have to leave?” the former asked.
“Why can’t we stay?” Pete added, snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray beside him.
Henrietta gestured to her bedroom door with her cigarette holder. “Give us five minutes.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Michael inquired, though he was already rising to his feet slowly, using his skull cane to balance himself as he moved.
“I don’t fucking know. Try to convince my mom that you’re demons and see if she calls an exorcist, use your fucking imagination.”
With eye rolls, but silent concessions, both Pete and Michael crossed Henrietta’s bedroom, avoiding the various ashtrays and lit candles that were placed all over the floor.
After the door closed behind Pete and Michael, and when it was just Henrietta and Tweek, there was a severe lack of conversation. Tweek had been expecting some grand explanation that would somehow make him feel infinitely better, because making him feel better was something that Henrietta was surprisingly good at, even if it didn’t seem like she tried (or cared) all that much.
So Tweek had adjusted to the comfortable silence, conceding to the fact that Henrietta’s solution was probably just a nice, desperately-needed silence in a comforting setting, where he could relax into a familiar mind-set that didn’t involve remembering the taunts of his classmates as he embarrassed himself in front of half his grade.
But he was wrong, as was proven when Henrietta said abruptly, “You’re in love with Craig.”
Tweek looked over at her with wide eyes, and saw the girl beside him staring at the BLAUHAUS poster on her wall with a blank expression on her face. She took long drags of her cigarette periodically, more often than normal, most likely to distract herself from the conversation that Tweek could tell she didn’t want to have.
Tweek nodded jerkily, one of his eyes squeezing shut as he twitched uncomfortably at the observation. “GAH! Yeah, and it fucking sucks.”
Henrietta was quiet. She was never the loudest person, but she had fallen deathly silent after Tweek’s admission, her eyes narrowed as an internal battle played across her face.
“I know how you feel,” she said finally.
Tweek’s eyes widened. “NGH! Oh, God, you’re in love with Craig, too?!”
A long of incredulity briefly crossed Henrietta’s face, but she just rolled her eyes. “No, Tweek, I’m not in love with Craig.”
Tweek toyed anxiously with the front of his shirt. “Then who?”
The dark-haired girl was quiet for another long while. “If you laugh at me, I will cut off your balls and mail them to your mother.”
Tweek gulped and nodded quickly to show his understanding. “Oh, Jesus! I won’t!”
Henrietta hesitated, a look of unease and discomfort on her porcelain-skinned face. “I . . . look, it’s not love, because I’ve come to the conclusion that love isn’t something I’m capable of, but . . .” She let out a long sigh and held her eyes shut tight. “I’ve found myself unable to remove the parasite that is Stan Marsh out of my mind.”
Tweek’s mouth fell open in complete and utter shock. “With . . . Stan? But he’s one of Craig’s asshole friends, why would you love Stan?”
Henrietta blinked sardonically. “He didn’t age well, did he?”
“Didn’t -- what? Age well, what are you --”
“Love sucks for everyone. No one ever has a happy ending. Even if you find someone that will return any affection you might have for them, your heart will break regardless. We’ll all die at some point, and either you will become nothing first, or you will watch someone you love become nothing.
“And it sucks extra hard for me,” Henrietta continued, her face so void of emotion that Tweek questioned if she hadn’t died in front of him. “Because I’ve seen him stumble and fall over a string of shitty cheerleaders that have no intellectual intrigue, who only entice him because they have perfect bodies. I’ve given up hope by now, because I know that him and I will never happen.”
“You don’t know --”
Henrietta held a glove-covered hand up to silence Tweek’s emphatic comforting. “I do know that. And trying will only result in my life getting even worse than it is right now. And I’ve gotten comfortable where I am. I don’t need someone else throwing fuel to the hellfire.”
Tweek chewed anxiously on his bottom lip. “Does anyone else know?”
For the first time since Pete and Michael had left the room, Henrietta looked at Tweek, and there was a warning glare in her eyes that had Tweek immediately agreeing to whatever she was about to demand. “No. It’s something I hardly allow myself to think about, let alone confide in anyone. And if you tell anyone a word of what I just said to you, I will string you up outside the school so everyone will see what I’m capable of. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand!” Tweek shrieked, leaning away from her and putting both hands on his neck protectively.
Henrietta sighed, taking hold of one of Tweek’s hand and pulling it away from his jugular vein. “Sorry. I don’t mean to make you spaz out. Sometimes I forget you have feelings.”
“EHGH! But you have feelings, too!” Tweek said loudly.
“Unwillingly.”
“Still feelings!”
Henrietta released Tweek’s wrist, and, to busy herself, stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. “Did you get what I was saying before? About the whole . . . Stan thing?”
“So you’re saying I should just . . . give up?” Tweek asked forlornly, dropping his chin into his palms as his shoulders drooped hopelessly.
Henrietta observed him thoughtfully. “I’m saying Craig and Stan are different people. I’m saying Stan’s an asshole that I should’ve gotten over a long time ago, and Craig has the attractive quality of not caring about anything. Now do you see what I’m getting at?”
Yeah, Tweek thought miserably. You’ve said love sucks a fuck ton amount of times. And that it doesn’t matter who the person is, it’s all going to go to shit, so you might as well lose hope and let yourself die alone. That’s where we’ll all end up anyway.
“Yeah,” Tweek answered, voice matching his inner monologue. “But . . . how do I deal with all the assholes that are going to make fun of me? I’m gonna get it like crazy come Monday!”
“The five minutes are up,” a new voice interrupted. The door to Henrietta’s bedroom closed behind Pete and Michael, who stood side by side with matching flat expressions on their faces. “And, to answer your question, just ignore them. All those conformists and posers, they have the attention spans of fucking squirrels, and they’ll forget about it by the end of the day, tops.”
“I can’t ignore them!” Tweek screeched, his hands flying up to his hair and tugging harshly at several blonde tufts. “They’re going to follow me around all day, and they’ll corner me during lunch and beat me up and tie me to the flagpole naked and let people throw rocks and dirt at me all day!”
“Stop pulling your hair,” Henrietta commanded, not lifting a hand to remove Tweek’s fingers from his hair, but also not letting his subtle self-harm go unrecognized. “You’re going to go bald by the time you’re twenty-five. And they won’t corner you at lunch because you’ll be behind the school with us.”
“That just means I cornered myself for them!”
As the conversation progressed, Pete and Michael made their way to their positions assumed before they’d been kicked out by Henrietta, and, as he passed, Pete put an awkward hand to Tweek’s head, patting him a couple times. “Pain is temporary. You shouldn’t fear it.”
“But I do! What else am I supposed to fear? That’s the only logical thing someone can fear, getting beaten to the point of near fucking death!”
“It’s not logical to fear the inevitable,” Pete responded. “You could get hit by a car tomorrow morning, but that doesn’t mean you won’t leave your house.”
“That’s a horrible example --”
“If it makes you feel any better, we’ll be right there next to you,” Michael interrupted.
Henrietta nodded her agreement. “One of us gets hurt, we all get hurt. So if you’re afraid of being alone again, you don’t have to be. You’re never going to get any lonelier than you are right now.”
Tweek wasn’t sure if that made him feel any better, but it confused him into calming down, so he supposed that their attempts at soothing his panic worked. “But I don’t want you guys to get hurt.”
“And we don’t want you to get hurt.”
Tweek’s freak-out had officially been squashed. The indifference, and yet deliberate care that the goth kids displayed when talking to him had, once again, reassured Tweek that he really wasn’t actually alone. Even if his brain tried to convince him that the goth kids were as finished with him as everyone else was, they would do something, say something, and it’d make him feel better.
So he nodded gratefully, with a long sigh and small smile. “Okay,” was all he could bring himself to say.
There was a comfortable silence.
“There’s a new body in the graveyard,” Pete said finally. “Just got buried yesterday morning. Do you guys want to go meet them?”
If befriending the goths kids did at least one thing for Tweek, it had eased some of the fears that had been instilled in him growing up. One of those fear being to avoid graveyards at night. But with the goth kids, the bodies felt like just that -- bodies. People. Normal people. The bodies of normal people, who, for the most part, just wanted someone fresh to spend time with. That put things into perspective; the goth kids put a lot of things into perspective for Tweek.
And that was why he was so grateful for them, and why he sometimes found himself thankful that the other kids started ignoring him one day, for seemingly no reason. Because if he had never lost all his friends, he wouldn’t have had the ones he did then. And, when he compared his lives before and after the goth kids, he could confidently say that he was in much better company.