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Kyle Broflovski has learned to expect a lot in his days of tutoring.
He doesn’t charge a lot and therefore any parents with a little extra cash and a desire to get their kid out of the house for a bit with the excuse of ‘studying’ sends them his way.
He’s tutored nearly every kid in South Park at least once so when he gets that fateful text of “how much do you charge?”, Kyle is always prepared for whoever might walk through the door of his living room.
Kyle is not prepared, however, for the six feet and three inches of scowling, eye-rolling, chullo-wearing, Craig Tucker to walk into his house.
“What are you doing here?” Kyle hisses, turning to face Craig. “I have a tutoring session in like five minutes.”
“What a welcome,” Craig says, voice deadpan and mouth barely moving from its permanent frown. “I’m here for the tutoring session.”
”You?” Kyle scoffs. “Are here to be tutored by me?”
Craig holds up a finger in mock disagreement. "Not by choice.”
Kyle wouldn’t say that he’s friends with Craig. In fact, he doesn’t think the two have had a proper conversation beyond Kyle pulling Stan off of Craig during fights (that Craig was usually winning). He doesn’t particularly care for Craig one way or the other, though he knows that Stan and Cartman hate him while Kenny would do anything to get in his pants.
Craig is handsome, Kyle can admit that. He’s had to listen to Kenny mope about his rejected advances on Craig for too long to pretend like he isn’t attracted to Craig at least a little bit. The problem is that Craig Tucker is an asshole and he doesn’t even bother to pretend that he’s not, which Kyle supposes is an admirable trait in that 2000s Wattpad bad boy cliché kind of way.
Craig yanks his shoes off by the door, placing them carefully to the side and Kyle finds himself thinking that Craig’s neat behaviour is a stark contrast to his outward appearance (not that he cares. Nope. Not at all).
Focus, Kyle. You have a job to do. You’re not getting paid to stare at Craig Tucker’s abnormally pretty face.
“Okay, what do you need help with then?” Kyle asks, shaking his head to try and focus on his schoolwork. He has all of his binders laid out on the table in front of him, colour-coded for different subjects (red for math, green for science, fuck you Kenny).
“Let me save you some time, Broflovski. I don’t wanna be here, you don’t want me to be here. I’ll leave the 10 bucks on the table and you can tell my mom that we had a fun, gay time together studying Biology or some shit like that.” Craig crosses his arms, pissed at either Kyle or his mom or maybe just the world in general.
“So you need help with biology?” Kyle grins, pulling forward his green science binder.
“No.” Craig scowls. “What I need is a cigarette and really fucking badly.”
Craig digs into his pockets and pulls out a half-empty box of cigarettes. Kyle knows that his mom is going to kill him if she smells cigarette smoke on his clothes, but how is he supposed to tell Craig Tucker, resident addicted-to-nicotine-and-probably-sad-poetry bad boy, that he can’t smoke in his house?
Craig seems to pick up on Kyle’s worried expression and carefully tucks his cigarettes back into his pocket.
“Look, Craig, if your mom is gonna pay me for this then I at least wanna do it right. I can help you for like half an hour and then you can leave, deal?” Kyle raises an eyebrow and Craig looks at him, the cogs turning behind his strikingly gray eyes.
Craig shrugs and then pulls out a chair at the table, sitting next to Kyle.
“So, do you wanna start with Biology or something different?”
“I don’t care.”
“Biology it is then.”
Kyle pulls open his binder, flipping over to the start of the Biology section. His notes are all colour coded and organized, something that took far too long to do than he’d like to admit.
“Is there anything in particular you’re struggling with? Most students tend to struggle on photosynthesis when we go into the photosystems and the Calvin cycle and whatever, but if there’s something you want more help with, we can start there instead,” Kyle runs through his usual spiel even though he’s pretty certain that trying to get Craig’s opinion on any of this is going to be fruitless.
Craig leans over to look at Kyle’s notes. Kyle can feel Craig’s breath on his cheek and Craig’s arm on his back and fuck, Craig is way too close to him right now. He can feel his cheeks heating up and phew, is it hot in here or is that just him?
“Sure, tell me about that.” Craig nods, leaning back in his chair and Kyle almost finds himself missing the warmth of Craig near him.
Kyle goes on and on about electrons and ATP and every little step of the Calvin cycle and Craig listens intently the whole time, biting on the eraser of his pencil. Fifteen minutes in, Craig takes off his hat, revealing soft black curls that Kyle has to bite back the urge to run his fingers through.
Craig isn't just attractive; he’s stunning. There’s a reason he’d been top of the list in the fourth grade and there’s a reason he still is now. It’s not like Kyle wants to date Craig, no of course not, he can just admire a pretty guy when he sees one!
Craig seems like he’s understanding the topics while Kyle explains them. Most of the time, he can tell when someone isn’t understanding by a furrow of their eyebrows or them leaning in closer to stare at the paper, but Craig seems entirely nonchalant the whole time; like he fully understands the concepts. He doesn’t even ask a single question the whole time which strikes Kyle as strange. If Craig understands everything he’s learning, why does he need tutoring?
Kyle peers down at his watch. “Oh fuck, it’s been an hour. I was only meant to keep you for half an hour.”
“S’fine. I didn’t have anything to do anyways.” Craig shrugs, grabbing his hat and yanking it back on over his head. "My mom paid for another session in advance. Next week.”
“Cool. I’ll see you then.” Kyle waves as Craig stands up, digging his cigarettes out of his pocket.
“See you, Broflovski.” the corner of Craig’s mouth twitches up in what is almost a smile as he leaves Kyle’s house, waiting until he’s safely outside to light his cigarette.
“Hey, Broflovski.” Craig smiles that same almost-smile that makes Kyle’s heart melt a little bit underneath his sweater.
“Hey, so I was thinking we just pick up where we left off last time,” Kyle says, pulling open his binder. Craig nods and moves to sit at the table before quickly standing up.
“Actually, can I use your bathroom before we start?” Craig asks, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Sure. Just go down the hall and it’s the first door on your left.”
Craig disappears into the hallway just in time for Kyle’s phone to start ringing. He almost debates not picking it up when he sees the contact name, but the last time he hadn’t picked up one of Cartman’s calls, the guy had come crawling through his window at 2 am with three endangered snakes (which Kyle, to this day, has no idea how Cartman got ahold of).
”Kyle! How’s my favourite Jewboy?”
“I’m hanging up.”
”Wait, don’t hang up!”
“What do you want, fatass?” Kyle spits into the phone, just the sound of Cartman’s voice managing to rile him up.
”You wouldn’t happen to have an extra forty bucks laying around, would you?”
“No.”
”Oh come on, we all know you’re making bank with your gay little tutoring business. Don’t be greedy.”
“Fuck you, Cartman.” Kyle nearly hangs up when a voice sounds out from behind him.
“Hey, Broflovski, you’re out of toilet paper,” Craig calls out, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie. Kyle frantically waves a hand at his neck, urging Craig to shut up. Craig’s mouth falls into a small ‘o’ when he sees Kyle on the phone and no doubt assumes the worst of the situation.
”Was that Craig fucking Tucker that I just heard?”
Kyle can hear the shit-eating grin already plastering itself on Cartman’s face.
”Since when are you all buddy-buddy with that asshole, huh? You wouldn’t happen to be—” here, Cartman gasps dramatically. ”Gay lovers, would you?”
“I’ll bring you the money tomorrow,” Kyle sighs, a dark red painting his cheeks, but Kyle can’t exactly tell if it’s from embarrassment or rage.
”Thanks, Kyle! Love you! Say hi to your boyfriend, would you—”
Kyle hangs up.
“One of your asshole friends?” Craig asks, looking at Kyle with what Kyle thinks is a Craig Tucker sort of smile on his face.
“Cartman,” Kyle grumbles and Craig winces like just the sound of Cartman’s name is painful to him.
Craig pulls off his hat as he makes himself comfortable at Kyle’s living room table. “Why do you hang out with those dicks anyway? I mean, Cartman’s Cartman, we all know what’s wrong with him and Marsh is just an annoying ‘peaked in high school’ type. McCormick’s alright,” Craig pauses, as if thinking about it. "Yeah, McCormick can be annoying, but he’s cool. I can stomach hanging out with him.”
“I was under the impression that you hated my entire group,” Kyle laughs. Craig isn’t a stranger to making it known that he hates anything and everything and ever since the fourth grade, Craig’s been shooting glares towards Kyle’s group that makes it clear there wasn’t a single bone in his body that could tolerate them.
Craig shakes his head. “Not McCormick. Not you. Definitely not you.”
Kyle can’t explain the way his heart swells, like there’s some intrinsic part of him that had been hoping and praying for Craig Tucker’s approval; like being told that Craig Tucker doesn’t hate you is the highest compliment that you can have bestowed upon you.
“I’m up on Craig Tucker’s list of things he cares about?”
“Don’t get cocky, Broflovski. There’s only one thing in this world that Craig Tucker cares about and it’s Stripe,” Craig says, his voice sitting just above its usual monotone, a tone that Kyle had picked up on that meant Craig was joking around.
“Stripe?”
“My guinea pig.”
“Your guinea pig?”
“Yes.”
“You’re telling me you care about a guinea pig more than, I don’t know, your friends? Your family?”
“He has a name,” Craig hisses and Kyle can’t stop the laughter bubbling in his chest from erupting after that.
Craig rolls his eyes, but Kyle can see the twitch of a smile on his lips.
“God, I don’t know why everyone hates you. You’re fucking hilarious,” Kyle manages to squeeze out in between choked laughs and Craig raises an eyebrow at him, to which Kyle frantically waves his hands in the air. “I am so sorry. I don’t mean that everyone hates you! I just mean that—I mean, you know that my friends hate you. I certainly don’t, though. I mean—“
“I get it, Broflovski. You’re cool,” Craig says with a smile.
And then Kyle’s heart is spinning in his chest, knocking against every corner and crevice of the hollow cavity. Kyle’s come to like Craig—as a person, as a friend. Kyle gets why Craig has this reputation of being cold-hearted and rude, but he finds that the people who think this about Craig don’t really know him. They know the persona of Craig Tucker that Craig shows to the world—cold, calculated, uncaring—but that isn’t really Craig.
Craig is funny. He cracks jokes that you don’t really pick up on the first time you hear them, but are funnier when you realise a few minutes later. Craig cares; it’s just that he does so through his actions, not his words.
“You’re cool too, Craig,” Kyle says and he can swear that he sees the ghost of a smile cross Craig’s face
“Thanks, Broflovski—”
“You can call me Kyle.”
…
What.
Oh, Kyle’s going to actually kill himself after this.
Craig turns to look at Kyle, his mouth dropping open into a little ‘o’. Kyle thinks for a second that he’s just fucked everything up because Craig calls everyone by their last name—Kyle doesn’t know why, but it’s just a thing that Craig does—and who is Kyle to get Craig to stop doing that?
Kyle can feel the blood rush to his cheeks and he’s about to drop to his knees and beg for forgiveness when Craig chuckles, so quietly that it’s almost inaudible but it’s there. Craig smiles in a way that is so unlike his usual ‘aloof bad boy persona’ as he looks at Kyle.
“We’re on a first name basis now, Kyle?” Craig says, the smile not dropping off his face and holy shit, Kyle thinks his heart is about to explode in his chest.
Kyle swears to God that Craig Tucker is going to be the death of him some day.
“Seeing as we’re such close friends now, you wanna skip this tutoring shit and go out on a drive?” Craig asks, peering towards the window. It’s just barely past dusk, the moon sitting high in the sky and stars already beginning to twinkle around it.
“I’ve told you this before, Craig, but if your mom is paying me for this, I don’t wanna do a half-assed job.” and Kyle would do anything to go out with Craig alone, but he (unlike the rest of his friend group) has strict morals and he likes to stick to them he does.
Craig hums softly and grabs Kyle’s binder, reaching over for the worksheet they’d been working on together. He bites down on his lip as he grabs a pencil and begins scribbling furiously on the worksheet, his hand dancing back and forth across the page.
It only takes a few minutes until Craig drops his pencil, passing the worksheet over to Kyle. Craig leans back in his seat, seemingly satisfied at his work. Kyle reads it over once, and then twice because he thinks his eyes are about to pop out of his head.
“You—this is completely right? How did you—”
“How about that drive then?”
And that is exactly how Kyle Broflosvki finds himself in the passenger seat of Craig Tucker’s car, the smell of cigarettes lingering on the smooth leather of the seats and an Arctic Monkeys CD playing.
Kyle jerks his head towards the dash. “Good music taste. Kenny loves Arctic Monkeys. Says Alex Turner was his gay awakening.”
Craig nods. “I know. He got me this for my birthday. Least he could do after I gave him cigs every day for the past year.”
“I didn’t know you and Kenny were friends,” Kyle says as Craig starts up the car and revs the engine once with a small smile.
“He’s alright. We’re in the same gym class.” Craig shrugs.
“So the two of you skip every class and smoke in the parking lot?”
“Exactly right, Broflovski.”
“I said you could call me Kyle.” Kyle tugs on his seatbelt to make sure it’s safely fastened and then Craig starts to pull his car out of the driveway.
“My bad. I’m used to calling pretty much everyone by their last names.” Craig keeps his gaze focused on the road and for a second, just one miniscule second of weakness, Kyle finds Craig’s road safety incredibly attractive.
“Why do you do that?” Kyle asks because he genuinely wonders if there’s a reason to that besides Craig trying to uphold his reputation.
“Habit.” Craig shrugs and Kyle thinks it might be because he genuinely doesn’t have an answer.
Craig turns up the music and drives, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the stick shift because of fucking course Craig Tucker would drive a manual car. What kind of 2014 Tumblr bad boy would he be if he drove an automatic like every single other guy in this godforsaken town? No, Craig Tucker has to be unique and he has to look damn good doing it.
Kyle hates him. He hates Craig’s piercingly blue eyes and he hates Craig’s bitter laugh and the way it echoes through his skin, rattling all 33 of his vertebrae individually. Mostly, he hates the way he’s spent so long being under the impression that Craig was an asshole that it had taken him 17 years to realize that he actually likes Craig quite a lot more than he wants to let on.
He wants to chalk it up to sexual attraction; Craig is hot and everybody knows it. There’s no shame in being physically attracted to someone that you can admit is conventionally attractive, but Kyle knows that it goes deeper than that. He knows that Craig is funny, and smart, and actually nice when he wants to be.
It was so much easier when Kyle had been able to hide behind the idea that he hated Craig.
“Craig, where exactly are we going?” Kyle asks as they turn onto an empty street, barely lit up by the headlights of their car.
“Dunno. I’m just driving,” Craig says, glancing towards Kyle with a look that sends a shiver running up his spine.
And just drive they do. Kyle thinks it must be nearly ten minutes before either one of them even dare to speak again, Alex Turner’s smooth voice the only sound echoing around the car.
“Why do you need tutoring?” Kyle’s the first one to talk and he thinks that it’s because he’s a lot more impulsive than he pretends to be. Kyle can’t stand to keep things bottled up—he likes to feel his anger course through him to the beating of his heart and he likes to let it explode.
See, there are two types of anger; hot and cold. Kyle’s always known that his anger is burning hot, fire that laps at his skin at every given moment and does whatever it can to break free. Kyle burns bright and hot, like the sun, Stan had told him once, he burns and he burns and he waits for the day when he’ll burn out.
Craig, Kyle finds, is the opposite; not that Craig isn’t angry (Kyle’s fairly certain that Craig stores more pent-up anger than him), but Craig’s anger is quiet. It’s cold. It simmers underneath his skin and then crystallizes and blends into his bloodstream until he knows nothing except for anger.
“I don’t,” comes Craig’s answer like the idea of him not needing tutoring but still proceeding to go it is entirely normal.
“I’ve seen your grades, Craig. You’re a straight C student and I don’t get it. You’re not stupid! You pick up on this shit faster than anyone else I tutor and every time I explain something, I see this look in your eyes like—oh, don’t look at me like that, Craig, yes you’re hard to read but it’s not impossible—but you give me this look like you already know everything and judging by that worksheet you finished in fucking seconds, you already do!” Kyle’s face is red; his cheeks flushed and his eyes wide open. Craig glances at him, steely eyes meeting Kyle’s own green ones.
Craig doesn’t answer at first, his grip tightening on the sides of the steering wheel. Kyle almost speaks up again because the silence is truly just unbearable, but then Craig pulls into an empty parking lot, a nearby streetlight washing a pale yellow light over the car.
“I’m not stupid, Kyle,” Craig sighs as he carefully parks the car.
“I know that, Craig! That’s why I don’t get why your grades are so bad—”
“I just don’t care.” Craig looks down at his hands, picking at the edges of his fingernails. “What’s it matter if I’m getting a C or an A? I’m not gonna go to some bullshit pretentious college like you. I’ll go to community college and kill myself by the age of 22 and none of that will be affected by my grade in high school biology so why should I even try?”
It’s like the car’s stuck in some parallel universe, floating in between here and there like it’s waiting for something to snap and bring it back to Earth. It’s earth shatteringly quiet; the only thing Kyle can hear is the gentle hum of the ending still running and his chest rising and falling in a matching pattern to Craig’s.
“Craig—“
“Kyle, when you have a reputation like mine—when everyone just thinks you don’t give a shit about anything—you find it a lot easier to actually not give a shit about anything; or even pretend you don’t give a shit about anything when really, you give a lot of shits, but you can’t admit that because you have a reputation. You want someone to acknowledge you, but no one’s going to because you’re fucking stuck.” Craig shuts the engine off, lighting up a cigarette and leaning to smoke out the window. "So I don’t try. Nobody wants me to care so I won’t care. I’m never getting out of this deadbeat fucking town.”
Kyle stares at him and there are stars in Craig’s eyes like he’s waiting for Kyle to disagree; like he’s waiting for someone to tell him that there’s more to him than smoke and sarcastic comments.
“You asshole!” Kyle yells instead, pulling the door of Craig’s car open and clambering out. He slams the door behind him, glancing back at the wide-eyed expression on Craig’s face.
Craig follows him out. “What the hell, man?”
“You could get straight A’s if you tried. You could have your pick of any fucking college if you just tried. Do you know what I would give to get good grades without needing to study my fucking eyes out? Do you even know what I would give to be naturally gifted? All I do is try, try, try and it’s never fucking enough!” Kyle whirls around, a sudden rush of wind biting past his face and fuck, it’s cold out without his jacket. “I would give anything to be you so I’m sorry if I don’t give more of a shit about your little sob story.”
Craig stares at Kyle blankly. “That was not how I expected that to go.”
It fucking sucks. Kyle has tried so hard his whole life; he’s studied until his eyes bled and here Craig is, blessed with this natural talent, and he doesn’t even care! It’s not fair.
“What? Did you expect me to pat your back and comfort you? ‘There, there, Craig. I’m sorry that you could accomplish whatever you want, you just don’t want to.’ I’m sorry that you’re depressed and I’m sorry that everyone in this fucking town has the wrong impression of you, but I’m not sorry that you let it affect like this,” Kyle spits. “I’m sure that you don’t want my fucking pity which is great because I refuse to give it to you.”
Kyle knows that it’s not what Craig wants to hear, but it’s what he needs to hear. Craig wants someone to give him a hug and tell him that everything is going to be okay and enable all of his self-destructive behaviour, but Kyle is not going to be that person. Kyle isn’t going to sit by and watch Craig destroy himself because some people in their stupid town think he’s an asshole.
Craig is more than whatever persona he’s carefully handcrafted to live up to the town’s expectations of him, but until Craig believes that himself, how is Kyle believing it supposed to help him?
Craig’s standing a few feet away from him, but Kyle thinks it’s the closest that they’ve ever gotten. He’s wearing that godforsaken blue chullo and Kyle just wants to pull the damn thing right off his head. His dark hair is windswept across his face and there’s a smattering of red across his pale cheeks, cheekbones so sharp that Kyle thinks he could cut himself on them. Kyle thinks that Craig has.
“I get it, Craig, what you’re going through sucks, but you’re not gonna change people’s expectations of you if you don’t try,” Kyle lets his voice soften and then Craig is closing the distance between them, leaning over to place his forehead on Kyle’s.
“There’s nobody worth trying for,” Craig mumbles, hot breath brushing up on Kyle’s cheek.
“I’m worth trying for.”
Kyle tilts his head up and then he’s floating. He’s floating and he’s drowning and he’s breathing in Craig, Craig, Craig.
He wraps his hands around Craig’s neck and Craig’s hands wander down to the crook of Kyle’s waist. Craig’s leaning down at a strange angle to close the nearly foot-long gap between their lips, but it’s not awkward; it feels like this is exactly what they were made to do. It feels like Kyle’s lips slot perfectly with Craig’s.
Craig’s touch is fire and Kyle wants nothing more than to burn to a crisp under Craig fucking Tucker.
He’s kissing Craig. He’s kissing Craig and fuck, does he like it. He’s kissing Craig and nothing else matters.
It’s like something has clicked into place; like there was something Kyle never really understood about the universe until he had Craig Tucker wrapping his arms around his waist and kissing him like he’s starving.
Craig pulls away first, jet black wisps of hair falling into his eyes as he looks down at Kyle, the tip of his nose and cheeks flushed from the cold bite of the wind.
“You’re worth trying for,” Kyle whispers and Craig leans down to kiss him again.
“Guess who got an A on their biology test.” Craig unfolds a wrinkled piece of paper, a charming Craig Tucker kind of hard-smile on his lips.
Kyle tiptoes up to peck Craig on his cheek. “I’m proud of you, dear.”
“Dear?” Craig freezes, dropping the biology test.
“Oh? You don’t like ‘dear’? I can stop—“
“No!” here, Craig seems to remember that he has a reputation to uphold. “I mean, no, dear is fine. Dear is good. Great, even. Dear. Dear, dear, dear—“
“Jesus, you’re stupid,” Kyle laughs and this time, Craig bends over to let Kyle peck his lips.
“Look, I said I’d bless your relationship if you didn’t makeout in front of me. I can’t believe I never got a chance to get in Craig Tucker’s pants,” Kenny whines as he bounds up to the two of them, grinning widely despite his words.
“Sorry, Kenny, I got here first.” Kyle shrugs and for good measure, he raises an eyebrow at Craig, who immediately understands the signal and snakes an arm around Kyle’s waist to pull him into his side. "And I’ve got him on a pretty tight leash too.”
Kenny slinks away, but not before narrowing his eyes at Kyle and hissing, “Homewrecker.”
“Got me on a leash, do you, Broflovski?” Craig asks with a pointed eyebrow.
Kyle hums, “Sure do. You love it.”
“I do.” Craig smiles.
“You coming over today?” Kyle shuts his locker, waving a quick hello to Wendy and Bebe.
“Considering this.” Craig shakes his test paper in front of Kyle’s face. “I don’t think I need your tutoring anymore.”
“Okay, I know something else we can do other than tutoring then." Kyle winks, watching as Craig’s face literally lights on fire.
“Let’s go.” Craig grabs Kyle’s wrist and starts yanking him towards the exit of the school.
“Craig, we still have math—”
“Skip. We don’t need it. Gay people don’t do math.”