Work Text:
12:21 AM
Sandy vagina:
Hey are you up??
12:21 AM
depressed gay bitch:
duh
12:22 AM
Sandy vagina:
Is Tricia up?
12:22 AM
depressed gay bitch:
the fuck r u asking about my sister
12:22 AM
Sandy vagina:
Can Ike come over for a play-date?
Louring lethargically, the glum pout that usually sat on Craig’s lips tightened into a frown of apprehension. The screen of his phone beamed into his face, burning his tired, sleep-deprived eyes. Through the vast darkness of his bedroom, his phone was the only source of light besides the glow-in-the-dark spaceship stickers he stuck to his ceiling at the age of ten and never took down.
Craig wasn’t unaccustomed to staying up late on school nights. In fact, testing how late he could stay awake became a kind of game for him. Probing his own potential became fulfilling, even if he showed up to school brain-dead and baggy-eyed the next day.
Usually that so-called “potential probing” was explored via late night Discord calls or midnight Grand Theft Auto speed-runs with the boys. Nothing adventurous, but playing games after dark was always more worthwhile than staying up late for something lame like schoolwork.
However, of all the boys (and occasionally girls) he spent time with over the years, Kyle Broflovski was seldom one of them.
It was no secret that Kyle, too, was someone whose bedroom light shone through his window until the late, late hours of the early morning. But he had different reasons than Craig. The kid stayed up to study. Kyle was an infamously wretched student, well-known for slaving and sweating over worksheets and AP textbooks—things Craig should do himself, but never fucking would willingly.
The only times he and Broflovski had actually texted each other were the times when Craig needed to get his schoolwork done and lacked the motivation to do so on his own, or the rare occasions when he actively attempted to work, but ultimately capitulated and resorted to Kyle’s assistance. Luckily for him, Kyle always texted back promptly and without a hint of judgment.
That, and they also texted when they were talking about cars. Kyle was about the only kid in school he could talk about cars with.
And now he was asking Craig if he could bring his little brother over for a play-date with his sister.
12:22 AM
depressed gay bitch:
dude
12:22 AM
depressed gay bitch:
its like after midnight
12:22 AM
depressed gay bitch:
on a school night
12:23 AM
Sandy vagina:
I know, but please? Just this one time.
12:23 AM
depressed gay bitch:
theyre not gonna fuck r they?
12:23 AM
Sandy vagina:
Dude, they’re like 12.
12:23 AM
depressed gay bitch:
dont be like that. i was just asking
12:23 AM
depressed gay bitch:
ur bringing him over after midnight. whatd you expect me to think
He didn’t see three dots popping up, and he sucked his teeth in annoyance. It was irritating. Kyle was usually so much better at this.
Craig blew air out of his lips, frustrated as his mattress started to feel uncomfortable beneath him, his pillow too wrinkled and flat. Playing a game to pass the time was an opportunity that didn’t appeal to him in the slightest right now; discerning the Broflovski dilemma was far more preoccupying.
He resorted to rereading their texts, scanning for something he might have missed. It didn’t take long for him to realize something that put a damp feeling in his stomach.
12:34 AM
depressed gay bitch:
hey brofolofski
12:34 AM
depressed gay bitch:
broffleski
12:34 AM
depressed gay bitch:
buttowski
12:34 AM
depressed gay bitch:
brusselsprouts
12:35 AM
depressed gay bitch:
however tf you spell it. dude. you havent corrected my grammar once. ur always doing that
y arnt u scolding me for annihilating the english language
He waited. But no three dots. Nothing.
Normally, he wouldn’t give a damn. Most of the time, he actually embraced the abandonment of conversation. He fucking hating having to interact with people. But silence was the last weapon someone like Broflovski would use, and it wasn’t sitting well with Craig.
12:42
depressed gay bitch:
dude wtf ur usually better at texting
12:47
Depressed gay bitch:
all good?
“Craig, what happened to all the waffle batter?” came the shrill voice of his younger sister, not even knocking as she opened his door.
Luckily for him, he kept his room dark enough that even if he had been jacking off, Tricia wouldn’t have seen a thing. Not that that’s happened before…
“I used it,” he shot back, intently rereading the texts.
“What’d you use it for?”
“To make waffles, what the fuck else?” He sat up to look at her, the bed quilts tumbling to the carpet. “Why’re you up so late?”
“Because you’re a bad influence,” Tricia said. “I can’t believe you used up all the waffle batter.”
“I was hungry, duh,” he shot back. Then, pushing the rest of the quilts aside, he kicked his legs over the side of the mattress and got up to face her head-on. “Hey, Trish. Has Ike Broflovski texted you at all?”
“Ike Broflovski?” her nose squinched up in that tight, princessy way it always did when she was confused. “No? Was he supposed to?”
“He hasn’t said anything to you recently?”
“I mean, we’re working on a science lab together for biology. He told me to get better with my vocab terms and sent me a Quizlet. That’s about it.”
His impermeable stoic frown deepened, and he reverted back to staring at their text page. He started turning the WiFi on and off again, just to see if maybe he was missing something.
Tricia was far from amused. “Why’re you asking about Ike Broflovski?”
Craig deliberately ignored her question. It wasn’t an atypical response from him, neither was resubmerging himself under the blankets and twisting up into a cocoon. But this time, Tricia seemed genuinely upset by his aloofness. She huffed as she slammed his door, storming down the hall. Who cared if their parents were sleeping? Certainly not Tricia.
He sighed, lolling his head up against the bed frame to ogle at the spaceships. His eye snagged on the little green astronaut as he floated out of his ship, tethered to the door by a single, loose wire. He was out in the unknown, all by himself, floating through the dark intercitute of outer space.
His phone buzzed.
12:51
Sandy vagina:
Hey, Craig, we’re here. I didn’t want to ring the doorbell in case your parents are sleeping. Can you please come open the door?
While he knew cordial manners were Kyle’s style, the word ‘please’ felt scarily desperate.
12:51
depressed gay bitch:
no
12:51
Sandy vagina:
No?
12:51
Sandy vagina:
Craig, that isn’t funny. You said we could come over.
He saw the three dots pop up again. If Craig knew Kyle at all, the redhead was already drafting up a reply, typing with fervent speed fueled by raging irritation. His nimble fingers, always with hangnails clinging to them, could type the fastest out of everyone in the whole school. More than once, while Craig was trying to slack off on his computer assignments in school, his gaze would drift to the front of the classroom where the redhead would be pumping out four-page documents like a machine, never with a single typo.
Craig and his gang had given him hell for it a few times, but only because they couldn’t reveal how impressed, or even jealous, they were of him. None more so than Craig.
As predicted, when he opened the front door, Kyle was beating the screen of his phone with lightning-quick agility. Unceremoniously, though, he stopped typing as soon as the door creaked open.
Kyle’s head was bowed, red curls obscuring his face. He stood shorter than Ike, who wore a backpack stuffed so full that the zippers threatened to pop open.
Craig snorted. “Typical.”
“What?” Ike snapped. “What’s typical?”
“Backpack’s so full of books that you’re about to topple over, kid. You take after your nerd brother, that’s all I’m saying.”
Ike blanched. His big, gaping eyes made him look younger than he was, despite being taller than Kyle.
“I don’t have my books in here,” he started to say, but Kyle cut him off.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Craig,” he said, the eternal diplomat. “And thank Tricia for playing with him tonight. You’ll look after him for me?”
“I’m not a babysitter, Broflovski.”
His head jerked upright and their gazes met for the first time. Immediately, something bludgeoned Craig right in the soul, a battering ram straight to his heart. A bruise, purple and twisted, discolored Kyle’s right eye. The skin swelled so much it sagged.
“I’m not asking you to babysit, Craig,” he bit back, somewhat sharply. “Just make sure they don’t fool around and kill themselves or something. You’re an older brother, you should know how this works.”
He stifled the perturbation itching at the back of his mind. Managing to hold a straight face amid chaos was kind of Craig’s whole shtick. He didn’t bat an eye, didn’t even blink, when he called; “Tricia!” into the bellows of the house, “front and center!”
Then came the tumbling of his sister’s clumsy stomps down the stairs. She hadn’t removed her frog-covered rain boots since coming home from school that evening, and nearly tripped in them as she came down from upstairs.
“This isn’t a military prison,” she muttered, straightening her hair with her hands, flustered and peeved. Her choler dissolved at once, however, when she caught sight of the boys at her door.
But her brother’s stern stare, cold as ice, silenced her before she even dared to speak.
“Beat it,” Craig said, patting Ike on the shoulder—his personal version of a kind invitation inside. “Tricia has games upstairs.”
“We can play whatever you want,” Tricia said, making room for Ike as he ascended the staircase.
“Don’t really feel like playing anything,” he said, hugging his backpack to his chest. “Can we, like, read or something?”
“Sure, that’d be fun,” she said, avoiding her brother’s condescending shake of the head—Craig knew full well she hadn’t willingly picked up a book since kindergarten.
The teens stood in the doorway, watching their younger siblings clamber over each other clumsily as they ascended the stairs, Ike nearly tripping on Tricia’s boots on the top step.
Craig waited until her bedroom door closed, the light disappearing with it. Then he stepped outside, slamming shut the front door behind him. He turned on Kyle like a torrent of wind, direct and tumultuous.
“Alright, tell me. Who do I gotta beat up?”
Kyle hesitated, blinking slowly. Then he shook his head, ringlets of curls bouncing off the sides of his face.
“Craig, what the fuck? That’s not funny.”
“Oh, I’m aware. I’m not a funny guy,” he said as he stood out in the cold of his front porch, dressed in an undersized NASA t-shirt that hugged his abs like a crop top, as well as boxers designed with cartoon cars.
“Now tell me,” he said. “Who the hell hurt you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Who hurt you?” he asked, jabbing his finger into Kyle’s sternum. “For the record, I don’t like repeating myself.”
“For the record-” Kyle mocked, glaring, “-I don’t like people poking me and getting into my personal business.”
“You threw your little brother into my home at one AM on a school night. I think I have the right to know what’s going on with you.”
Kyle could barely retain the determined sneer on his face, knowing his heated blush obscured it.
From the beginning he knew that his presence here was unjust. He knew it was wholly selfish. He’d be damned if he hadn’t spent half an hour roiling in self-flagellation over his choice to come here beforehand, because God knew he had.
“Well?” Craig raised a brow. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Kyle forced a scoff, “You say that like I’m a little kid in trouble.”
“Funny that you take offense, because you’re exactly that,” Craig said. “One–”
He put his hand on Kyle’s head, dominating his poor stature.
“You are little.”
“Am not.”
“You’re fucking tiny. Shawty.”
“Don’t call me shawty. You’re just a giraffe.”
“Two, you’re how old again?”
“The same age as you.”
“Yes, but you’re born in what month?”
“May.”
“And I’m January. Meaning I’m four months older than you. Meaning you’re a kid. And three-”
“-God, please stop.”
“You are in trouble. Why else would you be here with a shiner like that?”
At his blunt harshness, Kyle flinched and brought a hand to cover his black eye.
The action only made the stirring in Craig’s stomach churn hotter.
“You’re mixed up into trouble again, aren’t you? It must be real bad this time,” he stroked his chin with the underside of his hand, straining to not reveal his frustration. “Why else would you show up here?”
“I’m here ‘cause I was dropping off my brother,” Kyle stated. “It’s not my fault he’s friends with your sister, so don’t hold that against me.”
“And you’ve done your job. You’ve dropped him off. So where are you going now? Tossing yourself back into the skillet like always?”
Kyle scoffed, though it sounded much too forced. “What’s it to you?”
“It’s nothing to me,” Craig scoffed back, equally forced. “It’s just that if you go get yourself into more trouble and you end up not coming back, I’ll be stuck with your Canadian brother forever. I just want to know where you’re going, Kyle.”
He hadn’t meant to use the boy’s first name. It just slipped out at the end of his sentence heedlessly. It wasn’t intentional, he was just too enrapt in the abstruse enigma dropped off at his doorstep at one in the morning.
Craig couldn’t let his verbal slip-up look like a mistake, though. So he was sure to keep his stoic charade strong, staring down determinedly.
Burdened with red hair and pale skin his whole life, Kyle knew without a doubt his blushing was visible. Even in the obscurity of the past-midnight darkness, Craig had to see him turning red. It was beyond him why Craig’s words drew such a strong reaction out of him. He supposed he had just never heard Craig call him by his first name before.
It was strange, but he wanted to hear it again.
“I’m going home, Craig,” he said, stifling the blithe bubbly feeling curdling in his gut.
“Good,” Craig said sharply. “Get lost.”
“Fine,” he bit back. “I will. Goodnight to you, too.”
Craig watched him turn his shrouded back, and noticed the way his weight shifted unnaturally. He seemed to be repressing a limp, favoring his angled left foot as he walked.
Something sinister stirred in Craig’s stomach.
“Broflovski,” he called, mouth moving quicker than his brain.
Kyle stalled for a long moment, then finally turned—but of course not without a great, showy schism.
“What, Craig?” he demanded.
“Did you get that bruise at home?”
“No!” he retaliated with too much efficiency, too much enthusiasm, for it to be true.
“And you’re going back home now?”
Kyle faltered, his pugnacity crumbling. “I don’t- I mean, it doesn’t-”
“Shit.” The word fell from Craig’s mouth. He bounded down the porch steps, surprisingly light on his feet despite his hulking size.
Kyle cringed when he approached, face twisting in something that looked like disgust, and Craig fell back.
Kyle hesitated. He hadn’t meant to have a reaction so theatrical, but at least now he had Craig’s attention.
“Look, Craig,” he started, “This is nothing you need to get involved in. Everything’s fine, everyone-”
“-Did your parents hit you? Is that why you came here?”
Craig hated the question as soon as it left him, his tongue weighing down heavily in his mouth. “No offense, but why the fuck did you come here, Broflovski? You hate me.”
The assertion stung him, a rash prickling his skin, and Kyle flinched back. Bizarrely, it was the absence of the name “Kyle” from Craig’s mouth that hurt worse than the accusation.
He balled his hands into fists, knuckles turning white from the cold air. Normally he’d be wearing his green gloves, but in his rush out of the house, left them behind. When you had mere seconds to pack your little brother’s shit and leave before the house exploded into chaos, gloves weren’t a necessity.
“I don’t hate you, Craig. I don’t know where the hell you got that idea. You sound like a self-centered bastard right now,” he said. “I already told you why I’m here. I came to drop off my brother. I usually take him to Stan’s house, but I thought it’d be better for him if he had a friend this time. Why am I such an awful person for wanting him to be with his friend?”
“Usually?” Craig’s eyes narrowed coldly. “This is a regular thing, then?”
Kyle balled his fists tighter. “You don’t even know what ‘this’ is.”
“You’re running away from home, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No! Do I seem like the kind of kid who would do something like that?” he charged, exasperated. “No, I’m not running away from home! I just wanted Ike out of the house, that’s all!”
Craig, indomitable as ever, opened his mouth to retort another sarcastic insult, but Kyle cut to the chase.
“My parents aren’t fucking abusive, Craig. They’re great parents,” he said. His right eye bulged just then, and he dug the heel of his palm into it, only worsening the pain. He cringed, but spoke on; “They’re- They’re fine, dude. They just get at each other’s throats sometimes. All parents do that.”
“Do what, like hit each other? My parents don’t do that.”
“Your parents don’t even look at each other. They don’t count,” he scoffed. Immediately after the words left his mouth, he lowered his chin. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
Craig shrugged carelessly. “It’s not like it isn’t true.”
“Still. You didn’t deserve that.”
“Nobody deserves anything. My parents aren’t the best, but if they taught me anything, it’s that. If you want something, work for it,” his voice lingered on the last note, nasal tone lilting. He hadn’t meant to turn tonight into a lecture, but at least now he finally had Kyle’s absolute attention. The kid was a sucker for lectures. Such a nerd.
“And I’m presuming that’s why you’re here, Broflovski? Your parents weren’t giving you what you wanted, so you took your brother and left?”
Kyle scratched the back of his neck, a nervous gesture he’d accidentally picked up from Stan.
“I wouldn’t word it that way,” he said. “Nothing happened, Craig. My parents were… fighting, yes. They weren’t hitting each other, they were only arguing. My mom, she- You know how she is.”
Craig raised an eyebrow, “What, a bitch?”
“Don’t call my mom a bitch, dude. Seriously? I thought you were better than that.”
The disappointment in his damaged glare stung more than Craig would ever admit. He had somehow managed to forget how protective some people were over their mothers. Seeing Kyle so hurt, hurt.
But if he could do anything right, he managed to keep his stoic expression.
“I know how your mom is,” he said, deflecting with crafted coolness. “She’s authoritarian, to use the term from psychology class. Total control freak.”
“She loves me,” Kyle said, looking maybe a little ashamed. “Really, she does. And she loves my dad.”
“Gross.”
“But when they’re arguing, she has to have the upper hand. She’s one of those people who thinks if she’s louder, she’s winning. And if she can’t be louder, she starts throwing things.”
Craig swallowed. A light breeze blew past them, tickling the space between his boxers and bare legs. It was cold, he realized; maybe he could use that as an excuse to invite Kyle inside.
“Is that how you got that shiner? Your mom threw something at you?”
“Of course not,” Kyle tried coming off as offended, but his voice faltered, trickling out to a barely audible level.
“What happened then?”
“You’re rather curious tonight, Craig.”
“Astronauts have to be curious.”
“You’re acting like a five-year-old, dude.”
“At least I’m getting a career I actually want. Unlike you, Broflovski, going to law school just to make Mom and Dad proud.”
The dismay on Kyle’s face didn’t feel victorious like Craig intended. If anything, it seemed to make him envious. How could Kyle stand being so expressive, and still be held together in one piece?
The redhead, as if knowing exactly what he was thinking, stared him down defiantly. “I love my parents, Craig. For that, make fun of me all you want. I don’t care. But my mom, she- She was upset and getting louder, and still not winning, so she took the wine–Pinot grigio, I think– from the table and threw it. She didn’t look where she was throwing, Craig, she didn’t do it intentionally. She was only throwing to make a statement.”
Several times in the waning hours of the morning, Craig had undertaken the burden of cleaning up after his own mother, after she left roseate, crimson stains on the tablecloth after hard nights alone with vin de table.
In less poetic words, he knew how heavy wine bottles were.
“Aw, Kyle,” he sulked. “She threw a wine bottle at you?”
“No,” he rubbed the bruise as if ashamed. “She just threw it, dude. And it- … It was gonna hit Ike, okay? I did what I had to do. You’re a big brother. You would know.”
“Yeah, but I’m a pretty shitty big brother,” he admitted, crossing his arms over the NASA logo of his shirt.
Kyle simpered, green eyes glowing in sympathy.
“Craig,” he mused, practically smiling. “Your sister adores you. What makes you say that?”
“I’m not like you. I’d never take a hit for her.”
Kyle faltered, glancing downward. He tried to recall what specifically spurred him to leap in front of Ike, what stimulus was the catalyst for his inevitable wine bottle battery. But after minutes of thinking, nothing came to mind. He had just been there, setting the table for dinner—a pointless practicality he still did solely for the sake of having some routine in his degenerating household— and then, he wasn’t. One second, setting the table, the next second, shielding Ike.
It was instinct, he supposed.
“I think you just might,” he said, raising his gaze to meet Craig’s again. “If you’re put into a situation like that, Craig, your body acts before your brain does. You think you wouldn’t do it, but you don’t have time to debate it, because you’ve already done it.”
Craig, always far less eloquent than he wanted to be, didn’t know what to say. So he said the first thing that came to mind. “You’re so weird.”
“At least I don’t wear cartoons on my underwear,” Kyle said without missing a beat. “And is that your sister’s shirt?”
“If it is, that doesn’t make me gay.”
“You are gay,” he said, laughter escaping him. Cheeks flushed with merriment, he beamed from ear to ear, “Wow, you managed to get a laugh out of me before the night ended. Not bad, Tucker. You know, you could be really funny if you wanted.”
“Are you going home now?” he asked, concern rocketing through his body.
“Well, you’ve managed to stall me long enough,” he laughed again, turning around. “Kudos to you for stealing my time like that, but I really ought to-”
Blasting forward, bare feet cantering, Craig’s large hand seized Kyle’s wrist in a firm grip. He tugged him back, making him stop.
There, under the dim starlight, on a gravely lawn in a Coloradan mountain town, they were entirely still. Any instinct to move was abandoned. They could stand here, immobilized, and still say all they needed to say.
Kyle’s wrist was small in Craig’s grip. It was birdlike, to the point Craig worried he was holding it too tightly.
“See what I mean?” Kyle asked, voice strangely hoarse. “About the- The instinct thing? Body moving before the-”
“-Can you shut up for once?” he whined, letting Kyle’s wrist go. “Just stop bitching and spend the night here already.”
Kyle raised his brows, caught somewhere between offended and entertained. “I wasn’t bitching at a-”
“-I don’t want you going back there,” he gnarled his teeth, lips curling. “Period. End of story. Stop bitching and get inside already. It’s cold.”
“It’s your own fault you’re cold, Craig,” he tried to scoff despite his smile, laughter threatening to escape him once again. “Look at the way you’re dressed!”
“Please, you’ve seen me wear far worse,” he rolled his eyes. Then, he stopped, sinking lower. “Spend the night here, okay? If your parents call for you, I’ll make up an excuse. And if you want, by the time the sun rises, we can pretend the whole thing never happened. I don’t fucking care. Just get your scrawny ass inside my house before I change my mind.”
“You know,” Kyle’s smile spread wider and warmer, like butter. “You have a very unique love language, Craig. You make tender proposals sound like kidnapping threats.”
“I will kidnap you if I have to.”
“That can’t be true. How are you gonna make it to NASA if you have a criminal record before the age of eighteen?”
“Come on, Broflovski. If you go in with me, I’d be soooo happy.”
Kyle smirked, a dangerous glint igniting in the iris of his eyes. “Well, wouldn’t that be something? I’d love to see the spaceman smile.”
“What do you think they’re talking about?” whispered Tricia into Ike’s ear. She had an elementary way of whispering that was practically yelling, still thriving under the delusion that she was being quiet.
The two of them crouched at Tricia’s bedroom window, peering down into the streets with a pair of one-dollar binoculars Ike won from a prize box at his last dentist appointment. They watched their older brothers with the discreet severity of a noir detective.
“They’re about to beat each other up, duh,” Ike rolled his eyes— a habit he’d picked up after hanging out with Kyle too much. “And my brother’s gonna win.”
“Uh- uh!” Tricia whined. “My brother’s like twice the size of yours!”
“Yeah, but your brother grew up as the town pansy. He’s never done a day of heavy lifting in his life. Kyle actually knows how to fight.”
“Still. Kyle’s small. And Craig doesn’t give up.”
“Neither does Kyle. And- oh shit.”
Tricia’s eyes blew wide at the use of the curse word. She’d heard her brother use words ten times more vulgar, but to hear someone her own age curse was an entirely new experience.
“What?” she demanded. “What is it?”
“I think they’re kissing.”
“Oh my god, gross!” she exclaimed. She reached for the binoculars, “Let me see!”
“No, look away!” Ike cried, throwing his hands over her eyes to blind her. “Look away, look away!”
“But I wanna see!”
“Don’t look!”
“But I wanna!”
“Tricia, it’s gross!”
“Stop! Let me see!”
Back down on earth, warm breath and moisture gracing his upper lip, Kyle pulled back when he heard a muffled racket. He squinted up at the light flickering from the blinds of a closed window.
Craig, somewhat dazed, pulled back as well, and turned to follow Kyle’s pointed gaze.
“That’s my sister’s window,” he said, not even slightly concerned as they watched their siblings’ shadows grapple with one another from behind the blinds.
“Do you think she’s okay?” Kyle asked, diplomatic as always, the picture perfect older brother.
“Meh,” Craig shrugged. “She can wait.”
“You’re a horrible brother.”
“Told you so,” he said. “Wanna make out some more?”
“God, you’re ridiculous,” Kyle sighed exasperatedly, blushing beet-red. Despite the humiliating shade of his face, he roped Craig’s hand into his and led him up the porch steps. “If you want to, fine. But we’re going inside first. I’m not letting you get sick just because you like your car undies.”
“You like my car undies, too,” he said snarkily. Never before would he ever have imagined he’d let someone so stunted lead him into his own house, but there was a first time for everything, and despite what people would believe about him, Craig wasn’t opposed to the extraordinary.
“And if it turns out you don’t like my car undies,” he teased. “You can always take them off.”
“Ha ha ha, you’re soooo funny,” Kyle rolled his eyes. Once inside, he crouched at the front doorway, a vulnerable position, to untie his shoes, which was something that Craig never even did in his own house.
“You’re so weird,” he said again, surprisingly touched by the gesture.
Kyle, still crouched to the ground, peered up at him with a dazed-over look. Here in the indoor lighting, the black around his eye was even more profound. Not only that, but now in the light, Craig could make out where his hair was stained purple, and where small red cuts nicked the skin of his face, as if the bottle had shattered on impact.
Craig’s throat clenched like a fist, closing tightly from the inside, forbidding him to breathe.
“Hey Ky- Broflovski…”
“You can call me Kyle.”
“I’d rather call you Sandy Vagina. That's my contact name for you, you know.”
“Aw, what, seriously? In that case, Broflovski’s fine.”
“Broflovski,” he started again, less stern this time. “I’m happy you’re here. But this is the last time. You’re never taking refuge at my house again.”
His face fell at once.
But Craig was already speaking again, “The next time your parents do shit to you, I’m calling CPS. No buts, no exceptions. I don’t care if you love them. What they did–What they do– isn’t okay.”
Kyle opened his mouth, an articulate rebuttal buzzing at his lips.
Craig shook his head sternly, “No buts, no exceptions.”
Kyle’s smile that followed was insipid, and his eyes were glazed with a thin shine, “Or else?”
“Or else-” Craig said, slowly but surely raising his middle finger, “-I’m gonna give you this.”
“You were going to give that to me anyway.”
“Fuck yeah, I was.”
Kyle laughed a delicate laugh, one frothing with frailty at the rim. Regardless, it was a nice laugh. Like airy tingling bells. A blessing to Craig’s ears.
“Do you wanna…” He scrambled for a congenial offer, which was hard when congeniality wasn’t his forte. “ … play some Skyrim?”
“Dude,” Kyle sighed. “It’s a school night.”
“Let’s just talk about cars, then,” he offered. Anything for a chance to hear Kyle’s voice again, at least until dawn broke. Because while it was still night, and while he was here, Craig knew with confidence that Kyle couldn’t get hurt. Here, Craig had control. He could be sure of that. But once the Sun rose, and school ended, and he went back home…
Kyle scoffed with playful derision. He rose from his squat, wobbling a little on the way up. Without having to think, Craig offered his elbow and Kyle took it to steady himself. When the world was right again, he grinned, arms gingerly wrapped around Craig’s forearm.
“Craig, as much as I love talking about cars with you, it’s still a school night. We have a test tomorrow.”
“We can just talk about cars until we fall asleep, then. No one’s gonna stop us. When are you gonna loosen up a little?”
Kyle, still wrapped tightly around Craig’s arm, grinned mischievously. He leaned up on the tips of his toes, bringing his face dangerously close.
“Mr. Spaceman, don’t look now,” he whispered, “but I do believe we’re being watched.”
Craig knew from the shaped shadows on the floor that Ike and Karen were peering down at them from behind the banister. If he was quiet enough, he could hear them whispering and snickering beneath the thudding of his smitten heartbeat in his ears.
“Eh, fuck ‘em,” he said. “I don’t care. Just come to bed with me. I’ll show you the astronaut stickers on my ceiling.”
“Oh, so you are a five-year-old. Sounds like a blast,” Kyle rolled his eyes, grin spreading impossibly wider. “But, sure. I could use some rest. A good talk would be nice.”
Craig wasn’t the most observant, but he noticed the small hiccup in Kyle’s voice, and the way his smile faltered at the end of his sentence.
“We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to,” he said, becoming stern once again. “I know I’m an ass, but I wouldn’t force something heavy out of you like that.”
“Who said I wanted to talk about anything heavy?” Kyle gazed up at him, eyes twinkling, lower lip extended delectably. “I wanted to talk about cars with you.”
Craig averted his stare from Kyle’s inviting lip, choosing to focus instead on the feeling of his hands around his arm. From the way he clutched him, Craig knew he was scared. Nothing in Kyle’s brave, bruised face revealed the slightest hint of insecurity, but the way he gripped him so tightly, nails digging crescents into his skin, Craig knew.
They could afford to tarry with the safer things tonight.
“Sure,” he said, leaning in closer. “Let’s talk about cars.”