Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If you asked anyone what they knew of Scott Malkinson, they’d probably stick out their tongue to speak in an exaggerated lisp and say: “I’m Thcott Malkinthon, and I have diabeteth.” The other kids around them would laugh, and conversation would move on. Nobody would stop to think about the other things that could be said about Scott. Nobody would even look for them to begin with.

Scott Malkinson is practically invisible, but he’s used to it. Being invisible has grown comfortable to him over the years, and he no longer fights for the attention of his peers, perfectly content to hide away in plain sight.

A vigilant eye could manage to learn a lot about Scott by observing his behaviors, but who would ever put in that much effort? Surely not the peers who mocked him for his lisp and diabetes. Everyone knew of Scott, but nobody really saw him.

But if somebody did bother to observe Scott, here’s what they would find out:

1. Scott looks quite a bit like his father. They both have brown hair, hazel eyes, and freckles. Most people do know this one, but their knowledge usually doesn’t extend any farther. It doesn’t cut below the surface of his skin to the real Scott Malkinson.
2. Scott likes to read, especially fantasy books. He loves the thought of magic existing, that even someone as boring and unnoticeable as himself could be something amazing. He likes to imagine himself being capable of being a hero, despite feeling like a background character in his own life.
3. Scott stopped eating lunch in the cafeteria back in middle school. He usually eats in an empty classroom because it’s quieter, and better for reading. Nobody bothered to talk to him in the cafeteria anyway, so he doesn’t really miss it.
4. Scott is learning ASL for his language requirement in school. Most kids chose Spanish, but Scott thinks that if he gets good at signing, one day instead of being the kid with diabetes he can be the kid who can sign, which is infinitely cooler.
5. Scott really only has one friend. He and Sophie have movie nights every Wednesday, and he always watches her soccer practices on Friday afternoons. The rest of his time he usually spends alone.
6. Scott’s favorite candy is butterscotch. He always keeps a few in his pocket in case his blood sugar drops.
7. Scott is Catholic, not in the way most kids in South Park are. He actually believes in the things he hears at church. He likes the idea that God sees him, even if nobody else does.
8. Scott is on the school’s yearbook team. He’s great at taking candid shots because even with a massive camera in his hands nobody notices him.
9. Scott is also in the theater club at school. He doesn’t perform onstage, he’s a part of the stage crew. It’s perfect for him, because you’re not meant to notice the people moving set pieces.
10. Scott is gay Scott definitely likes girls. 

Chapter Text

Scott leaned his head against the window as the bus rumbled down the road toward South Park high. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, not because there was anything majorly wrong with his life, he was just up late reading. It wasn’t that interesting of a night. Scott Malkinson didn’t have interesting nights.

Behind him he could hear Stan Marsh bickering with Eric Cartman. Over the summer Kyle had moved to San Francisco, and in his absence it appeared Cartman had taken to pissing off Stan in his place. The tubby jerk couldn’t seem to go five seconds without picking on someone else.

“Dude, all I’m saying is if you’re gonna wear that much eyeliner people are going to think you’re a fag,” Cartman told Stan. Scott felt his insides twist at that word. Not because he felt personally affected by it, Scott wasn’t gay. He just thought it was a nasty word that shouldn’t be used by anyone.

That was it.

“And if you keep gaining weight people are going to think you’re a hippopotamus,” Stan replied. His voice was flat and monotone, not giving away any emotion.

Scott had noticed Stan had purposely been speaking like that for a few weeks now. In Kyle’s absence he had taken to hanging out with the goth kids more and more. He’d begun dressing like them, smoking like them, listening to their music, and mimicking their gloomy speech patterns. Though he still spent plenty of time with his old friends, it was clear he was starting to pull away from them. Maybe Cartman felt threatened by that.

“Ay! I’m not fucking fat you emo bitch!” He shouted. The suddenness of him raising his voice caused Scott to flinch. He was only about two feet away from Scott, positioned in the seat behind him.

Stan sat across the aisle from Eric in a seat next to Kenny, yet Cartman in typical fashion was being so loud that surely the entire bus could hear his petty argument. He was the kind of guy who demanded to be noticed, who wouldn’t tolerate being ignored. He was the anti Scott Malkinson.

The recognition of that statement was bittersweet.

On one hand, Scott was glad to be nothing like Eric as he found him to be a truly despicable human being, on the other, constantly being overlooked got quite lonely. He wished he could have even a quarter of the attention Eric got from their peers. Even though they hated him, they all still slightly respected him which was more than Scott could claim.

On the rare occasion Scott was noticed, it was nearly always with mocking intent.

“Could’ve fooled me,” mumbled Stan under his breath. Scott didn’t have to look at him to know his facial expression, he could practically hear Stan rolling his eyes.

The bus hit a bump and Scott’s head smacked against the window pane. “Shit!” He let out, sitting up and rubbing the side of his head with the heel of his palm.

Scott felt hot breath on the back of his neck as Cartman peered over the seat. “Oh shit, look guys, Thcott Malkinthon’s on the bus,” the chubby teen announced gleefully, clearly excited to have found a new target for his mean-spirited comments.

“Who gives a fuck?” Scott heard the muffled sound of Kenny’s response through the thick fabric of his orange parka. The window above him didn’t latch properly, and Scott had noticed Kenny always waited until he was inside the school building to take his coat off.

“Yeah dude, nobody gives a shit,” Stan agreed, backing up his friend.

“I’m Thcott Malkinthon and I’ve got diabeteth. I jutht thmacked my head on the buth window. I’m Thcott Malkinthon.” Eric continued to mock Scott, waiting for his friends to laugh. They didn’t. Most kids didn’t  find the diabetes jokes funny anymore, instead of laughing at him they just ignored him. Which was fine. Scott preferred being ignored to being flat out bullied.

He chose to ignore Eric’s torments, and without even looking his way pulled out his glucose monitor and pricked his finger to check his levels: a little low. He fished through his pocket and retrieved a butterscotch candy, unwrapping it and popping it into his mouth.

“Guys, hey guys,” Cartman said, practically giggling with joy. “Thcott jutht checked his diabeteth boxth.”

“Dude lay off, nobody fucking cares about what Scott’s doing,” Stan told him.

Nobody ever did.

Chapter Text

Lunch time rolled around and Scott ducked into an empty classroom. It was one of the science labs, which meant he technically wasn’t allowed to be eating in there, though it was unlikely anyone would actually pay enough attention to him to notice.

Just to be safe he positioned himself in the back corner, sitting cross legged on the floor under one of the tables, wedged into the little stool nook. It was calm in the dark empty lab, and in his position, boxed into the side of the lab table, Scott felt very secure. He pulled out his phone and opened his kindle app since it would be far too dark in the empty classroom to read a hard copy of a book.

A few minutes into lunch he heard the door to the lab opening and felt a slight bit of panic. Had the teacher returned to their classroom? Was he about to be caught? He probably wouldn’t get in much trouble, but might have to visit Ms. Conduct for counseling.

He’d had that happen before. Apparently, him spending too much time alone made the administrative staff nervous. He didn’t really want to have another meeting in which he had to convince the guidance counselor that he wasn’t depressed and planning on shooting up the school.

Scott actually felt quite comfortable being alone, he’d grown used to it. It didn’t really bother him anymore.

“What do you need help with in the science lab?” Scott heard a familiar voice say, along with two sets of footsteps entering the dark room. He doesn’t look to see who’s speaking. Scott is easily able to identify the voice as Butters.

He relaxes a bit, knowing the footsteps didn’t belong to a teacher, but to a couple of kids.

“It’s not specifically related to the lab, I guess I’m just a bit confused right now,” said another voice: Stan.

“Which subject are you confused on? Are you looking for tutoring? I’ll do my best to help but a fair word of warning: I'm not too good at math,” replied Butters.

“It’s not really a school thing,” Stan replied.

 Scott tried to tune out their conversation as he ate his cucumber slices. People often didn’t notice Scott and spilled their secrets in front of them. He didn’t purposely listen in on people’s conversations, others just were careless of the information they were spilling in front of him. He learned a lot of things he had no business knowing that way. It always made him feel a bit guilty.

“Well what is it then?” asked Butters. He sounded really curious.

 “Uh so you know how Wendy dumped me a little while ago?” Stan started. “Well when it all happened, Kyle was comforting me and I kind of kissed him. I’m not really sure how I feel about it.”

Scott almost choked on his lunch and had to will himself not to start coughing loudly, alerting the other boys of his presence. Now that personal info had started being shared it was too late to  just casually walk out of the room. He had to wait it out and remain undiscovered.

There was a shuffling sound, which Scott could only imagine was Butters awkwardly moving his feet around. “I’m not really sure how to help you with that,” he answered. Scott was also unsure about what kind of assistance Stan was seeking out.

“Could I kiss you, you know, just to figure out if I’m actually into guys?” Stan asked.

That made sense. Butters, besides Tweek, was the only kid at school who was known by the general public to be gay after Craig Tucker pulled a total one eighty in the sixth grade, breaking things off with Tweek and telling the whole school it had all been fake for him. Tweek had made no such statement, so everyone just assumed he had actually been gay, and Craig had unceremoniously broken his heart.

“Oh I don’t know about that. My dad probably wouldn’t be too happy if he found out anything about me kissing boys again. I just got ungrounded and I really don’t wanna get stuck back in my room.”

“Butters, look around.” Stan said, causing Scott to curl tighter into the stool nook. “Nobody’s here to see. How would he ever find out? I wouldn’t tell anyone. I don’t really want people knowing I’m kissing guys either.”

There was more of the shuffling sound for a moment before Butters finally replied. “Well, okay I guess it’s fine,” he said, sounding a bit unsure. “As long as you promise not to tell anyone.”

Scott didn’t adjust his position to see if they actually kissed. The thought of watching something like that felt wrong to him.

He shouldn’t want to see two guys kissing, he shouldn’t even think about it. It wasn’t like that was something he’d ever consider doing anyway; he had no reason to be curious about it. Besides, it couldn’t be that different from the kiss he’d shared with Sally Darson in fourth grade. It hadn’t been that interesting, so why would a kiss between Stan and Butters be?

“So uh, did that help you figure anything out,” Butters spoke up after a few moments of silence.

“Uh yeah,” Stan replied awkwardly. “I wasn’t into that at all. False alarm I guess. Thanks for helping me out with that.” Scott heard the door open and footsteps exit the room.

After Stan had left he heard a groan from Butters and the words “Aw hamburgers, I actually was kinda into that,” before he quickly exited the room as well.

Scott spent the rest of lunch wallowing in his guilt about witnessing this event that was clearly meant to be private. They’d both promised not to tell anyone, yet someone had found out anyway. It felt dishonest for him to have not made himself known in the room. Scott felt like a jerk.

Oh well, it wasn’t like he’d ever spill their secret. Even if he had any desire to gossip about them, who would he have to tell anyway?

Chapter Text

Scott rested his head on his hand as he absentmindedly doodled in his notebook. The doodles were nothing special, just a bunch of random circles and stars smooshed together into the margins of the paper. Scott wasn't particularly artistically gifted; he'd rather be reading but Mr. Garrison tended to get really aggressive about people reading in his class.

Scott didn't understand the reasoning behind it. They were in school, they were supposed to learn, reading was learning, therefore he should be able to read in class. It was simple math. He didn't see the logic in refusing to allow it, especially when all his teacher ever talked about was celebrity gossip or his boyfriend, nothing of actual educational value. Then again he didn't see the logic in half the things Mr. Garrison did.

"Alright you little pricks, pick a partner for your project," Mr. Garrison told the class. Scott just kept doodling in his notebook. He already knew nobody would ask to be his partner and was waiting to see what poor sap would fail to find a group and get stuck being his partner. Scott guessed it would probably be Tweek, that was usually who he ended up with.

Except unexpectedly, Scott heard Craig ask Tweek to be his partner. Those two hadn't spoken much since they broke up in sixth grade. Scott wondered if they were going to get back together, or if they'd just worked things out so they could be friends again, then quickly dismissed the thought.

They weren't getting back together. They broke up because Craig is straight, so it wouldn't make sense for him to go out with Tweek again. Besides, speculating on other people's sexualities was rude; he shouldn't be doing it, even if it was just in his own head.

He felt guilty for even thinking about it. Scott would probably bring it up this Sunday during his weekly confessions.

"But Craaaig," Clyde whined. "I thought we were going to be partners.” He was clearly unhappy to have been replaced with Tweek.

Scott had been counting on Craig and Clyde pairing up as well. The two of them were almost always partners in this class, so them not working together was seriously changing his calculations of who his partner might be.

"Not this time, pick someone else," Craig replied. His expression was hard and unmoving, those who didn’t know Craig would believe he was mad at Clyde, but Scott had observed him enough to know that was more or less how he always acted. 

Scott gazed around the room. About half the kids in the class seemed to be paired off by now, but there were still plenty of people still trying to figure it out. He looked back down at his notebook, lightly chewing on his tongue as he scribbled more stars, waiting until Mr. Garrison would eventually ask who hadn't found a partner yet and forcibly pair up the stragglers.

Just then, Clyde turned around in his seat, and leaned his head against Scott's desk, right in front of his notebook, forcing Scott to look directly at him. Clyde gave him a big goofy smile, looking up at him with big brown eyes that reminded Scott of a puppy. He looked incredibly cute at that angle.

"Hey Scott, do you have a partner?" he asked.

Scott felt a warm feeling wash over him. Was Clyde Donovan seriously asking to be his partner? He tried not to get his hopes up too much. Even if they were partners on this project, Clyde would likely go right back to ignoring him once it was finished, just like everyone else did. Scott’s luck in catching the football player’s attention would be fleeting at best.

"No, I don't have a partner yet," he answered, doing his best to keep his voice casually disinterested.

"Well you do now," Clyde replied, lifting his head off of Scott's desk. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "Here, put your number in so we can plan a time to meet up."

Even if it inevitably proved to be temporary, Scott thought it felt nice to be noticed. He was a bit embarrassed to realize that he couldn't help but smile as he put his number into Clyde's phone.

Chapter Text

Scott sat on the bleachers, the coolness of the metal bench permeating through the fabric of  his jeans. He tried to ignore the sensation, rubbing his legs together to warm them.

Every Friday he sat and watched Sophie's soccer practice. Scott liked having a routine, he liked knowing what he could expect from his day. Clyde asking to be his partner earlier had been unexpected, and he wasn't sure how much he actually liked that. He was still deciding. 

On one hand, that unpredictable action had caught him off guard, which brought about some sort of discomfort. On the other hand, someone actually wanted to spend time with him for their history project.

Scott was the only one on the bleachers. He'd seen plenty of girls show up to watch their boyfriends practice before, but nobody really showed up to girls' sports practices. There was a time back in elementary school in which many of the guys at school would have showed up to watch Sophie play, but then the novelty of her moving to South Park wore off and they quickly lost interest. Scott still showed up though, he kind of liked it better now that it was quiet.

He sat with a book in his lap, loosely paying attention to the practice as he read. Scott was reading the Hobbit for like the fourth time. He'd first picked it up in fourth grade after Stan Marsh had given a whole speech on how the works of J.R.R. Tolkien should be made into required reading at school.

Scott was glad Stan had recommended it, as he had thoroughly enjoyed it.

The first time he read through it he just read. Each subsequent time after that he'd written notes into the margins using a different colored pen to signify which read through the notes were created. It was fun to revisit what he'd been thinking of the past couple times he'd read and to compare how certain thoughts had changed as he got older. The margins of his book were now just a mess of rainbow ink. He was beginning to run out of space for his notes and would have to switch over to sticky notes soon.

Scott's phone buzzed in his pocket, and he reached in to check who was messaging him. He expected it to be one of his parents, but instead he was surprised to see Clyde’s name lighting up his screen.

It shouldn't have been too surprising as they'd exchanged numbers for the project, but nonetheless he wasn't really expecting it. He was still a bit in shock that Clyde wanted to partner with him at all.

Why had he? It must've been because he sat directing behind Clyde. There couldn't be any other reason behind it unless he meant to make a spectacle of Scott somehow, but though he was often mocked by his classmates, only Eric Cartman would ever put that much effort into being cruel. Scott quickly decided that a stunt like that would be out of character for Clyde.

He unlocked his phone to read the full message that he’d been sent.

Clyde:

Hey Scott, it's Clyde. You doing anything right now? :D

Scott:

Watching Sophie's soccer practice.

Clyde:

Ooooh ;)

Clyde:

Is she your girlfriend??

Scott:

Not really, no. We're just friends.

Clyde:

Okay sure ;) ;) ;)

Clyde:

Meet me at Tweak Bros when you're done? We can get started on the project.

Scott:

Um okay, sure. I'll text you when I'm on my way over.

Clyde:

Coolio, see you then dude. ^~^

Scott smiled at his phone. He really liked the way Clyde's texts were so expressive. Especially because instead of choosing emojis he took the time to create his own expressions with the keyboard characters. Just that little bit of extra effort made the texts feel like something special. Scott couldn't even remember the last time someone had made him feel that way. Probably in fourth grade when Sophie had found him after he’d made a total ass of himself and reassured him that he wasn’t a total loser and that she would like to get to know him better.

That had been a long time ago.

”Who's got you smiling like that?" Scott heard, causing him to look up from his phone. The field was empty and Sophie stood in front of him. The coach must have called for a water break.

Scott was self conscious now. What was he smiling like? Did Sophie think he was taking to a crush? If he told her who he'd actually been talking to would she think he had a crush on Clyde? He didn't. He barely knew him. Besides, Scott wasn't gay. If he had a crush, which he didn't, it would be on a girl, probably Sophie.

“No one, I just scrolled past a cat video on Instagram," Scott lied, immediately feeling guilty for doing so. He mentally  added it to the list of things he needed to confess on Sunday.

Things Scott Needs to Confess:

1.) Scott accidentally spied on Stan and Butters’ private conversation.

2.) Scott let himself speculate about Craig's sexuality, which was so not cool.

3.) Scott lied to Sophie about who he was texting. 

4.) Scott thinks Clyde is pretty cute.

Chapter Text

The door chimed a welcome as Scott entered the cafe. Clyde looked up from his table and waved him over, smiling brightly.

"Hey Scott," he greeted. "I waited until you got here to order, but I grabbed us a table."

"Thanks Clyde," Scott replied cautiously, setting his bag down at the foot of the table. He still wasn’t sure if he actually trusted this sudden attention from Clyde. He couldn’t think of any ulterior motives the other boy might have, but still he kept his guard up.

The two of them walked over to the counter to order their drinks. There was no line as Tweak Bros wasn't normally too terribly busy. They had a few regulars, but it was nowhere near as busy as the Starbucks across the street. It was mostly just the goth kids who claimed said Starbucks was for conformist assholes.

"Hey guys," Tweek greeted them, twitching as usual. "What can I get for you?"

"I'll have an iced mocha with whipped cream and extra caramel drizzle. Like I want you to load that shit up Tweekers," Clyde told him.

Tweek made a slight face, as if he didn't quite like the nickname Clyde had given him, though it could've just been a normal facial twitch of some kind. It was a bit hard to tell with Tweek.

Craig, who evidently had recently started working at the shop with Tweek, let out a little snort of laughter. "Careful Clyde, you might end up a diabetic,” he warned.

Scott frowned, bothered by Craig's statement. Craig wasn't usually one to pick on Scott, so the shock of hearing him crack a joke at his diabetes hurt extra. "It's not contagious," he told him.

"Dude I know that, I'm talking about his sugar intake. He's gonna fuck up his pancreas if he keeps making it work overtime like that." Craig replied.

Scott was a bit relieved to know Craig's statement actually had nothing to do with him and let himself release the tension in his shoulders. He hadn't even realized he'd tensioned them until he undid it.

"Anything else for you Clyde?" Tweek asked.

"Umm..." Clyde paused, taking a minute to look over the bake-case to see what pastries they had that day. "A chocolate croissant and whatever Scott wants."

"Oh, you don't have to pay for me," Scott told him, not wanting to feel like a burden. He had the money to pay for himself, so Clyde really didn't need to do that.

"No, I invited you out," Clyde insisted. "Let me get it for you."

He smiled at Scott. The way he did it made him feel warm and mushy. Was he really that attention starved that someone smiling at him had such a big emotional effect on him?

Wow, that was pathetic.

"Okay," Scott conceded, turning to look at Tweek. "Do you have any sugar free flavors?" he asked.

Tweek paused to think for a moment. "We have a sugar free vanilla and a hazelnut," he answered.

"Could I get an iced sugar free vanilla latte with almond milk? Your almond milk is unsweetened right?"

Craig reached into the fridge and pulled out the container. After pausing a moment to carefully examine the label he answered. "Yeah it's unsweetened."

“Anything to eat?" Tweek asked.

Scott looked over the bake-case, knowing that anything inside it definitely contained more sugar than he should be eating right now. He settled on grabbing a cheese stick from the cold case. "Just this," he said.

Tweek started punching buttons on the cash register. "That'll be $16.35."

Clyde pulled out a $20 and told them to keep the change. Scott decided that Clyde's insistence on paying was just because he was a nice guy, not because he cared about him or anything.

He found that somewhat disappointing, but also relieving at the same time. Scott had gone so long without any of his classmates paying much attention to him, and he wasn't sure he was ready to suddenly have them start.

"So what topic did you want to do for our history report?" Scott asked once he and Clyde had returned to the table. He opened his string cheese, pulling it apart and placing a strip in his mouth.

"What are the specifications again?" Clyde asked.

Scott pulled the rubric out of his backpack. "The topic has to be a war that America was majorly involved in," he answered. "We can make either a poster or a PowerPoint and we have to explain the impact the war had on the development of the nation."

"We could do Civil?" Clyde suggested. "I'm pretty sure my dad has a few books on it, he's kind of a bit of a history nerd."

Scott nodded. "Okay, Civil War it is then," he agreed.

"Awesome, want to come over to my house to work on it tomorrow?" Clyde asked. "That way we can get a look over the books he has."

"Sure, that's fine," Scott agreed.

"Alright!" Clyde said with a big smile, "it's a date then!"

Scott nearly spit out his coffee.

Chapter Text

Scott picked at a loose thread at the arm of his sweater sleeve. It was the next day and he was sitting on Clyde's couch as the two of them picked through Mr. Donovan's Civil War books. He indulged himself in this nervous habit to avoid dwelling on the awkwardness of spending time with a guy he didn't really know all too well, despite being classmates for several years.

Clyde looked over at Scott, a small frown appearing on his lips. "Don't do that," he said.

"What?" asked Scott, confused as to what he'd done to upset Clyde. He suddenly became self conscious, wondering if he'd accidentally broken some unspoken rule of the Donovan household. Maybe it wasn’t even just Clyde’s home, but some sort of common courtesy he wasn’t accustomed to because he never hung out with anyone.

"Don't pick at the thread. Your whole sweater could come unraveled," Clyde clarified. The imagery of that statement was ridiculous, but Clyde seemed pretty serious about the possibility of it occurring.

"Sorry," Scott apologized reflexively, then he felt Clyde's hand grab his own. A rush of warmth shot through his body at the shock of it, and Scott started feeling a little lightheaded.

Was his blood sugar low? That surely must be it. There was no reason why Clyde touching his hand should elicit a physical reaction like that from him.

"What are you doing?" Scott asked, barely able to bring his voice above a whisper. He felt a bit frozen in place as he tried to process what was occurring.

Then he heard the sound of scissors clicking and Clyde dropped his hand. Scott looked over and saw Clyde holding the severed thread up like a trophy.

"I got rid of it for you. Now we don't have to worry about your whole outfit unraveling and leaving you naked."

Scott bit the side of his tongue. "I'm pretty sure that only happens in cartoons." He told Clyde, uncomfortably folding his arms across himself.

"Better to be safe than sorry, right?" Clyde paused and looked at Scott a bit too intensely for his comfort. Clyde's expression became a bit worried looking. "Hey Scott, are you feeling okay? Your face is really red."

Scott self consciously brought his fingers up to his cheek, feeling how warm they were. Was he blushing? Did Clyde make him blush? "Um...let me check my blood sugar," he said, "I might be low or something,” he replied, pulling out his diabetes kit from his backpack.

He opened the black bag and removed  his glucose monitor, then pricked his finger, a small drop of blood pooling out of it. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Clyde wince.

”Sorry," Scott mumbled.

Clyde placed a hand on Scott's shoulder comfortingly. "Do what you need to. Needles freak me out a bit, but I'll be okay."

Scott's monitor beeped with the results and he looked down, a bit puzzled as he read them. His blood sugar was a bit on the lower side of normal, but it wasn’t so much he should be feeling lightheaded. "Yeah it is a little low, could I get a juice box or something?" He asked, dismissing the nagging feeling that something unusual was happening.

"Sure," Clyde agreed, disappearing into the kitchen. He came back a few moments later with a bowl full of cherries. "We don't have any juice but we have fruit. Will that work?"

"Uh yeah, fruit has plenty of sugar. Thanks," he replied, taking a bite of a cherry. He grabbed a tissue from the box on the coffee table and spit the pit inside.

A few cherries later, Clyde picks up one of his own and plucks off the stem. "You know, I can tie one of these in a knot using my tongue," he announced.

"Uh... congrats?" Scott told him, unsure how else he was supposed to respond. The statement seemed so random to him. Scott had no idea where Clyde was going with this, maybe nowhere. Clyde could just be a bit random at times.

"I read online that it was a way to test if you're a good kisser. If you can tie a cherry stem with your tongue you can kiss good. It's science," Clyde explains.

"I don't think that's science."

"It definitely is," Clyde argued, a playful tone in his voice. "I can show you."

"W-what?" Scott spluttered. "You mean like kiss me?" Scott could feel his cheeks burning as the thought entered his head.

"What?" Clyde asked. “No, I mean like I can show you tying the stem. Sorry Scott but these lips are just for the ladies." Clyde clarified winking and making finger guns at him.

"I wasn't going to take you up on that offer anyway..." Scott mumbled, looking away. He was a bit embarrassed now.

Did Clyde think Scott wanted to kiss him? Scott just wanted to make sure Clyde didn't want to kiss him because Scott definitely didn't want to kiss Clyde. He just wanted to make sure they were both on the same page to avoid any misunderstandings. He hated misunderstandings.

Chapter Text

Scott sat in the pews of South Park Catholic Church, listening intently to Father Maxi as he spoke. As he's grown older, Scott saw less and less of his classmates actually attending services. Butters still regularly showed up, as did Kevin Stoley and Wendy, but other than that, his classmates had stopped going when their parents had finally given up and stopped making them attend.

It made Scott sad to know that the majority of his classmates had only ever attended church because they'd been forced to. He came because he loved it, because he believed in it. It made him feel less alone to know there was someone somewhere who loved him and watched out for him, even though he was just Scott Malkinson. Maybe he only believed because the alternative was too sad, but he wasn't about to open that can of worms.

After the service was over, Scott made his way over to the confession booth. It had been a bit of a rough week, and he had some things that he needed to get off his chest.

 "Greetings my child," said the priest at the other side of the wall. The priest in question was quite clearly Father Maxi, so the wall was really more for decoration than for actually maintaining anonymity. Scott figured Father Maxi had to be able to guess a good deal of the people who came through here, and he would be very surprised if Father Maxi wasn't able to identify his confessional sessions. Scott had a very distinct voice.

"Hello Father," he replied, sitting down on the chair inside the booth. It was probably all psychosomatic, but as soon as he sat down he already felt better.

"Tell me your sins so I can relieve you of them. Let the weight of them be lifted from your shoulders. No longer shall they burden you," said Father Maxi.

Scott let out a sigh, preparing himself to confess everything he'd done wrong this week. "I accidentally witnessed something I shouldn't have. I was eating lunch alone in an empty science classroom, which I know is against the rules. I was in a place I shouldn't have been, and I heard a secret I shouldn't have ever known because of it. I feel like I've violated their privacy by not making myself known."

"The lord forgives you, child," he heard in response. Scott felt a little lighter after letting that one out, so he continued.

"Earlier this week my friend asked me who I was texting, and I lied and said nobody, when I was very much texting someone. I was just too embarrassed to tell her who."

“The lord forgives you," Father Maxi responded once more. This went on and on until Scott had nothing else to confess. He stepped out of the booth feeling cleaner, lighter, better. All around he felt like a new man.

Scott always felt relieved to get the things that constantly weighed him down with guilt off of his chest. He loved going into the week with a clean slate, even if he would just end up scribbling all over it again.

Later that night, Scott received a text message from Clyde. Attached was a picture of a knotted cherry stem.

Clyde:

I've still got it. ;)

Scott felt his cheeks go warm as he imagined Clyde's tongue swirling around, expertly tying the stem in his mouth. Scott didn’t think anything about Clyde’s statement. It wasn't the kind of thing he should be allowing his mind to dwell on, so he doesn’t. It means nothing to him.

Scott:

How do I know you didn't just tie that with your hands and then take a picture?

Clyde:

I swear on my mother's grave!! :0

Scott:

Sounds serious.

Clyde:

It is. Super serious.

Scott:

Okay, I believe you.

Clyde:

Yayyy! :3

Scott locked his phone, and set it off to the side. He closed his eyes and let sleep take him over.

He slipped into a dream, and images of a blurry nondescript girl entered his head. They're on a walk in the park, holding hands. Her features keep morphing and changing. One second she had brown hair, the next it's blonde, then it's brown again but the length is different. His brain can't decide what she looks like.

Scott and the girl make it to a nice spot by the pond and begin setting up a picnic. The sun is setting around them, illuminating her featureless face with golden light. She leans into him, he puts his arm around her, and they watch the sunset together.

Her appearance keeps morphing. She has a ponytail, now it's a braid, her hair turns black, then blonde, then brown, it gets short, and for a split second she's not a girl at all, she's a boy with short brown hair and big brown eyes and just as Scott is about to place where he's seen that face before she changes again, to a girl with curly red hair.

He forgets about the boy he saw in front of him. That boy wasn't important, just a glitch, an error, a transitional stage between two versions of this ever changing girl. He's nothing, Scott feels nothing. Scott's heart didn't speed up for the brief moment he was around, the golden light illuminating him. Scott doesn't like boys.

Chapter Text

On Tuesdays the school's theater club met in the auditorium and surrounding areas. The auditorium was directly next to the hallway that held the music classrooms. At the back of the hall was the props closet and a door to the outside.

School let out at 3:15, but rehearsal for the cast didn't start until 4:00, so while they waited the cast was spread across the auditorium and hallway chatting casually amongst each other, occasionally breaking out into song. The tech crew technically also didn't get started until 4:00, but that wouldn't stop them from continuing work on set pieces they'd already begun.

This year South Park High was putting on The Music Man and currently the crew was working on painting a background for the opening train scene. They were creating flat walls painted to look like the inside of a train, with large square holes cut out in certain parts that served as windows. Then there was a long roll of paper that they were painting a scene of mountains and countryside on.

The plan was to rig the roll up on the back so when someone turned a wheel the pictures would move across the flat in a loop making it appear as if the train was moving. Scott was busy moving around from group to group, taking pictures for the yearbook.

Kenny and Butters (who despite being a cast member often came over to the tech side to hang out with Kenny) were busy painting a mountain together. Every now and then they would break to playfully flick paint at each other. Lisa Burger was carefully painting a field full of cows, and Sally Darson was working on a tree.

Stan and Pete were leaned up against the wall, not really helping much. Pete insisted he'd only showed up because his mom made him join a club, and he'd brought Stan along with him so that he "didn't have to be trapped here with nothing but conformist assholes."

At the other end of the hall some of the cast broke out into song. Tolkien and Clyde dramatically started belting out I'm just Ken from the Barbie movie, while holding on to each other's shoulders.

"I'm just Ken, anywhere else I'd be a ten. Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blonde fragility? I'M JUST KEN! Where I see love she sees a friend. What will it take for her to see the man behind the tan and fight for me?"

Scott snapped several photos of their impromptu performance. With Tolkien's singing voice it's no wonder he was cast as the lead, but in all honesty, Scott couldn't tear his eyes off of Clyde.

He was so expressive, and sang with such emotion. Sure his singing wasn't as technically good as Tolkien's, but technique aside, Clyde's singing was truly captivating. Scott could watch him for hours without getting bored. He was a natural performer.

"You two are such fags," Pete commented. Scott once again felt deeply bothered by that word, and distracted himself from its impact by picking the dirt from underneath his nails.

"What's the matter? Didn't like that song Pete? Well maybe you'd like to hear another one, per se?" Mike Makowski chimed in.

He and Katie Gelson were both cast in the musical this year. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of things vamp kids and theater kids had in common it would practically be a circle. 

"I swear to god if Vampqueer starts singing I'm gonna jump in front of a bus," Scott heard Pete mumble to Stan.

Of course that was exactly what Mike did. His song of choice: peaches, except he replaced every peach with Pete's name. It was a full on romantic serenade.

"Pete, you're so cool, and with my star, we're gonna rule." Pete rolled his eyes as Mike dropped to his knees. "Peeete understand, I'm gonna love you till the very eeeend."

"That's it, I'm out," Pete commented, getting up from his seated position against the wall and disappearing out the back door. A few moments later he poked his head in. "Raven, can I bum a cig? I'm all out," he asked Stan.

"Sorry, my mom found mine and trashed them," he replied apologetically.

"You can borrow my vape," Kenny offered, holding it up for him to see.

"Gross, I'd rather die than use one of those conformist pussy sticks," Pete scoffed before disappearing back out the door.

"So like is the vape open invite?" asked Mike.

"I thought you didn't smoke because it was bad for you," Stan commented, his voice dripping with judgment.

The goth kids were known to dislike the vamps. There was a time when the vamps disliked the goths as well, but they seemed to have long since gotten over the rivalry and instead reveled in tormenting the goths by acting overly friendly with them.

"Well yeah, but it's much more appealing when it tastes like fruit loops," Mike answered shrugging.

Kenny tossed over the vape and Mike caught it easily. "Knock yourself out," they said. "Just don't use it all up. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get more.”

Mike took a puff and breathed out slowly, releasing the steam. The almost sickeningly sweet smell of watermelon danced in the air around him.

Scott noticed Stan staring at the vape a bit longingly before finally saying, "Fuck it, pass it over Dracula. I hate those things but I really need a hit right now."

Mike didn't argue one bit as he passed it over. In fact, he had a bit of a sly smirk on his face, likely proud of himself for corrupting one of the goths into being just a little bit more conformist. Stan took a hit, and then passed it to Clyde who’d been making puppy dog eyes at him, begging for a hit, who then passed it back to Kenny. As the vape made it back into their hands, Kenny took a hit of their own before depositing it back in their pocket.

Scott had never vaped before, and he’d never really wanted to, but seeing everyone else do it made him wonder what it was like. How did it feel? How did it taste? Would the taste linger in his mouth long after he'd taken his last hit? If he kissed someone that vaped, would he be able to taste it off of his her lips?

He wasn't curious enough to give into that temptation though, and he would definitely confess about his curiosity on the subject.

Chapter Text

Tolkien and Clyde were discussing their plans for the weekend as they walked out of the school after practice. Some sort of scary movie night was in the works, including them, Jimmy, Craig, and whatever dates they brought. After the girls left the guys were all going to have a sleepover at Tolkien’s.

It sounded fun, but Scott tried to tune it out. He knew this wasn't an event he'd have any chance of being invited to, and honestly it kind of hurt sometimes to constantly be listening to other people's plans, knowing he wouldn't asked to tag along. Clyde had barely even talked to him since they finished their project. There were no more random texts to show off his cherry tying skills, or messages asking to meet up. It was just nothing, back to the way it was before.

Scott tried not to be too upset about it. He'd known Clyde would forget about him as soon as he was no longer required to remember his existence, but it still stung.

"Hey Scott!" He heard someone calling his name from behind him and turned around to see Butters jogging up.

"Oh, hey Butters," he greeted the excited blond. "What's up?"

"I saw you taking lots of pictures. Are you into photography?" he asked.

Scott glanced down at his camera bag that hung off his shoulder. "Uh yeah, I guess. I'm on the yearbook team," he answered.

He tried not to dwell on the fact that Butters was one of the few people he could actually say he somewhat regularly spoke to, and even he knew practically nothing about him. Nobody did really.

"That's really cool," replied Butters cheerfully. "I was a bit curious actually if I could see the pictures."

Scott nodded, removing the camera from the case and handing it to Butters. "Just be careful with it," he requested. The last thing he needed was a broken camera. He couldn't afford to replace it.

Butters flicked through the pictures happily as they walked. Occasionally the blonde boy would comment on one of them before flicking to the next. Something like "wow look how happy they look," or "the angling on this one is really great." Eventually he paused on one, looking at it for a really long time.

Scott glanced over to see which one he had stopped on. It was a photo of Stan and Butters attaching curtains around the windows of makeshift walls. He stared at it a bit longingly, and Scott was hit with the memory of what he'd inadvertently witnessed happen between the two of them. "Do you want me to send you that one?" he asked. 

Butters' cheeks flushed at the question. "Um, uh, yeah sure. Thanks fella," he replied.

"It's no problem, once I get them off the SD card and onto my phone I'll send it to you," Scott replied. He made no reference to what he'd witnessed, as it really wasn't any of his business. Butters didn’t need any reason to believe his secret wasn’t secure.

"Hey Scott? You have a lot of pictures of Clyde on here," Butters said, looking up from the camera.

"W-what? I do?" he spluttered, caught off guard by the statement. Why did it make him so nervous? He had lots of photos of everyone because he was in yearbook and that was his job. If there were a few extra of Clyde that was just because he was doing interesting stuff a little more often than everyone else. There was no weird reason for it, it was all perfectly logical.

"Yeah," Butters went on. "They're really good. I mean these look professional, and not in the artificial way that school picture day photos do. You really capture his energy." He flicked through the photos, smiling as he did so.

"Oh, uh thanks. I'm sure it's just that Clyde is naturally really photogenic," he said, dismissing the compliment. Scott was rarely ever complimented on his accomplishments and truthfully he didn't know how to handle them. They made him a bit nervous and uncomfortable, like if he allowed himself to be made happy by them he'd get his hopes up too high and disappoint himself later.

After he’d gotten home that evening, Scott hooked up the camera to his laptop and started transferring photos over. Then he pulled up the photos, sorting through them to see which ones were usable and which were too blurry and needed to be deleted.

He flipped to a picture of Clyde and Tolkien, smiling and holding onto each other's shoulders as they sang. Neither had known the picture was being taken. It was perfectly unposed and natural, showcasing each of them smiling in the way they did where no one was watching. Butters was right, Clyde looked really good this was a good photo.

Next was a picture of Kenny and Butters painting, which he almost would've considered a good photo as well if Kenny's vape wasn't falling out of their pocket and in plain sight. Scott sighed and deleted it. Then one of Stan and Pete leaned up against the wall talking: this one was fine. The next one was another of the two of them, in which they'd noticed Scott taking photos. Pete was flicking off the camera with a scowl: this one was no good. He flipped to another picture of Clyde, this time up on stage wearing a silly hat as he ran through his lines with Mike. The stage light hit Clyde's face in just the right way. He was so cute. It was a good picture of him.

Scott dragged all the photos of Clyde into an empty folder on his laptop and labeled it with his name, then started to flip through only the pictures of Clyde for a while, smiling as he studied his face, his big brown eyes, round cheeks, naturally long eyelashes.

For a few minutes he indulged in staring closely at Clyde's lips, wondering if they were as soft as they looked. Then he quickly felt the guilt of his actions setting in and he dragged all the photos back into the main folder.

Was he seriously so lonely that he developed a weird obsession with the first person who even somewhat paid attention to him? God, Scott felt like such a creep for looking at Clyde that way. Knowing the thoughts that had snuck their way into his brain made his skin crawl. This would definitely be coming up in his confessions on Sunday.

Chapter Text

Scott avoided looking at or even thinking of Clyde all the next day. He felt ashamed of himself for the thoughts he’d been having about the other boy lately.

It wasn't that Scott was outright homophobic, he had never been unkind to gay people before. When Tweek and Craig went out he’d never treated them any differently for that, and Butters was one of the few people he’d say he was on friendly terms with.

Scott believed in being kind to everyone, love thy neighbor and all. He hated how the world treated gay people; he thought it was nobody's business who someone else chose to love and the fact that so many countries had laws about it was ridiculous.

Scott had walked past plenty of gay couples in his life and never once looked at them any differently than any straight couple, but when it came to imagining himself in that kind of relationship, it made him feel physically ill.

He knew God would still love him, because God's love is unconditional, but would he be disappointed? Probably. Would the church still accept him? Maybe not.

Scott’s religion was all he had, there was no way he could even risk it. He needed to get Clyde out of his head ASAP.

Maybe he could ask Butters about that super religious camp his parents had sent him to, the one that was meant to help kids work through their confusion. That's all he was right? Confused. Scott was just confused. All he had to do was meet the right girl and then all his thoughts about Clyde would go away.

All he really wanted was attention, for somebody to notice him, and Clyde had momentarily done so. That was all this was. It had to be because Scott wasn’t gay.

The last class of the day rolled around and Scott was confronted with the fact that he couldn't simply just avoid Clyde anymore, seeing as he sat right behind him in that class. Scott considered skipping it entirely.

The thought of having to be around Clyde made him feel nauseous, but the thought of losing his perfect attendance record made him feel even more sick. Scott Malkinson was far too much of a goody two shoes to skip, so he begrudgingly slipped into his usual seat, pulling out his notebook and fixing his eyes on the paper.

All he had to do was keep himself distracted so that he didn't think of the other boy. Scott would keep his eyes on his classwork and he wouldn't even look Clyde’s way. He could handle that. It couldn't be that hard right? He'd gone fourteen years barely thinking of him at all, surely he could make it through a forty-five minute long class.

Apparently Clyde had other ideas.

As soon as he made it into the room he sat down in his chair backwards and rested his chin on his arms on top of Scott's desk. Why was he always getting in Scott's personal space?

"Hey, I've been looking for you all day," Clyde said. "But you were like, totally MIA. I thought maybe you stayed home sick today."

This majorly caught Scott off guard. "What? What were you looking for me for?" He asked, feeling his cheeks heat up. Why would Clyde be looking for him? Scott searched his eyes for any hostility, afraid he'd done something wrong, but found none.

"Butters said you got some good pictures of me at rehearsal yesterday. I didn't know you were like some sort of pro when it came to photography."

"I do it a bit in my free time. That's why I joined the yearbook team," Scott answered, cautiously. He was still unsure about how much he should allow himself to interact with Clyde. Preferably, not at all, but it was hard to avoid doing so when the other boy had directly sought him out. Scott didn’t want to be rude and tell him to go away. Part of being a good Christian was being kind to everyone, even if it made you uncomfortable.

"That's really cool," Clyde replied cheerfully. "Do you think you could take more photos of me sometime?" he asked. "I could use some cool pics for my Instagram, you know, to impress the ladies," Clyde said, winking at Scott.

"Uh sure.." Scott found himself agreeing, against his better judgement. "What kinds of photos were you thinking of?"

"Maybe some football pictures, ladies love athletes,” Clyde mused. “I bet I could really draw in chicks like that.”

"Ladies only love athletes when they're good," Craig commented loudly, in his usual nasal and totally monotone voice.

This earned him some giggling from Tweek. "You’re such an asshole, man," the blond told him.

Clyde’s face fell to a slight pout as he processed Craig’s words. “Fuck off dude, I’m better than you,” he grumbled, which was admittedly a pretty lame comeback considering that Craig hadn’t played a single game of football since the fourth grade.

"I can get some football pictures," Scott agreed. "When's your next game?"

"Saturday at 2:00," answered Clyde. His pout now upturned into a smile, seemingly happy that Scott had agreed to help him.

"Alright, I'll be there," Scott told him, slightly regretting it the moment the words came from his mouth. Sure he was helping out a friend in need, but should he really be committing more of his time to hanging around Clyde? Surely that was a bad idea given the confusion he'd recently sparked.

Scott almost changed his mind right then and there, but Clyde looked so excited and he didn't have the heart to disappoint him. Instead he just bit the side of his tongue and tried distracting  himself by listening to Mr. Garrison go on and in about how much he hated his ex boyfriend Marcus.

Chapter Text

Scott laid across Sophie's bed on his side, propping up his head with one hand. Sophie laid next to him in a similar position, a bowl of sugar free cookies sitting between them and her laptop was propped up in front of them playing Luca.

Just like every other Wednesday, they were in the middle of one of their movie nights. Those nights happened almost much exclusively at Sophie's house as Scott's dad got weirdly aggressive about streaming services, something about how they were ruining the cable industry. He had learned to never bring them up around him anymore lest he want to listen to a at least forty-five minute lecture.

"Wait? Are they seriously going to make a Vespa out of all of that garbage?" Scott asked skeptically. He couldn’t pick out any actual bike parts from the pile of junk Luca and Alberto stood by.

"Maybe not a good one, but they're sure going to try," Sophie giggled.

Scott liked this. Hanging out with her was comfortable. He wasn't nervous and overthinking like he was around Clyde. Now this, this was the kind of person he should be thinking of late at night. Someone he could comfortably hang out with, and laugh with. Someone who had been nice to him for years, even if their first impression wasn't the best. When Scott had met Sophie he'd been so caught up in the fact that finally someone else he went to school with had diabetes as well, he forgot to see past that and look at all her wonderful characteristics. He'd put her in a box in the same way all his classmates had done to him for years, but she’d been kind enough to give him a second chance. Scott was beyond grateful for that.

The reached the scene where Luca and Alberto rode their makeshift Vespa down the hill together. Scott's breath hitched as he watched Luca tighten his grip around Alberto's waist. He wondered how it'd feel for Clyde someone to hold onto him like that, as if their life depended on it. God, he was so touch starved it was sad.

"Dang Scott," Sophie started, breaking him from his thoughts. "Did you actually get any of those cookies in your mouth? I swear your face is just covered in crumbs and melted chocolate.”

"I was just saving some for later," he joked, sticking his tongue out at her. Granted, it had already been sticking half out of his mouth before he even started speaking, so it likely didn't have the impact he was hoping for.

Sophie pulled her sweatshirt sleeve over her hand. "Here let me clean you up a bit," she said, reaching her hand up to the side of his face. She wiped her sleeve around his mouth, getting the crumbs and chocolate off. Then, when she was finished she rested her hand on the side of his face, slightly stroking  his cheek with her thumb. "There, all handsome now."

There was a sort of dreamy look in her eyes that Scott didn’t understand, so he pivoted by making a joke. "Are you saying I was ugly before," he teased.

“No," she replied, a small smile turning up at the corners of her mouth. "You've never been ugly."

Finally, after what felt like forever, she tore her gaze away from him and rolled over onto her stomach to continue watching the movie.

Scott kept glancing over at her. Was that a romantic moment? Or was she just being nice? He legitimately couldn't tell. Did he want it to be romantic? It had felt nice, he'd enjoyed it but it hadn't been anything magical or groundbreaking.

Maybe it wasn't meant to be. His parents certainly never seemed to feel that strongly for each other, but they were comfortable and happy. Maybe that was all love was, finding someone to be comfortable with.

Scott spent the rest of the movie pondering whether or not he had feelings for her and when he got home he decided to look it up online. He found an article titled "Signs You Might Be Falling For Someone” and clicked on it, opening the page.

When something happens, they're the first person you want to tell.

Sophie was usually the only person he wanted to tell. Who else would he even talk to? That was one point yes for Sophie.

You think about them all the time.

Scott didn't always actively think about her, but usually she was at least taking up space in the back of his mind. Maybe like a half point for that one.

They make you feel like a teenager again.

Scott skipped that one. Of course he felt like a teenager around Sophie, because he was one. Evidently this article was written for adults.

They become a priority.

Scott would never dare miss a movie night or one of Sophie's soccer practices. Every Wednesday and Friday he was there. He scheduled things like doctor’s appointments around those days. That sounded like priority status to him. Another point for yes.

They make you feel better about yourself.

She always had. Scott remembered how happy he felt when she tracked him down on the playground after making a fool of himself in fourth grade. She told him she wanted to get to know him better, and at that moment he'd felt totally on top of the world.

You can't imagine life without them.

That one was a resounding yes. Life without Sophie would be pretty dull and lonely. Scott couldn't imagine growing up and not being able to talk to her about the things that happened in his life. He wanted to have movie nights every Wednesday for the rest of his life. Scott didn't like change. He didn't want to imagine a time in his life when he couldn't still have that.

Scott looked at his answers, and with them all laid out in front of him like that, it seemed obvious to him: he loved Sophie. Right?

Chapter Text

Lunch time rolled around Thursday and this time Scott was sitting in the art classroom. The art teacher, Mr. Day was known around school to be a pretty relaxed dude, so a few kinds liked to come into his room at lunchtime either to work on projects or just hang out in a quieter location. Scott usually tended to avoid it in favor of complete solitude, but today he had work to do.

There was a row of computers in one corner of the classroom that were usually used to find references for art projects online. Today Scott was using photoshop to make minor edits to the photos he'd taken on Tuesday, nothing significant, just adjusting the lighting or how it was cropped to make them look a bit nicer.

Scott had a moral objection to using photoshop to change someone's appearance, especially without their knowledge. There was this period of time in fourth grade where girls were photoshopping themselves to look like supermodels to impress the boys and all it really resulted in was everyone feeling bad about the way they looked in real life. Scott would never want to be responsible for adding to someone’s insecurities.

“Wow Butters was right, that is a good picture of me. I look totally hot," Scott heard someone say. He turned his head towards the voice, finding Clyde right behind him, leaning over his shoulder to look at the computer screen. 

"Clyde!" Scott called out in shock, surprised by the sudden closeness of the other boy. His cheeks grew warm and red and he could feel his heart rate pick up. Clyde's face had been so close to his. He could have leaned over and kissed him with minimal effort.

"Scott!" Clyde answered back, mimicking the shock that Scott had displayed, then bursting into laughter. That smile of his was intoxicating. Scott could stare at it forever and never get bored of it. Of course he'd never do that because staring at someone for that long was creepy.

"Man, you're pretty jumpy aren't you," Clyde commented. "I feel like you're constantly getting freaked out. Low-key, it's kinda adorable, no homo though."

"Uh... thanks?" Scott replied, holding his hands in front of his chest and fiddling with them nervously. He didn't know why Clyde was suddenly talking to him so much and it was somewhat making him uncomfortable. Yet there was also part of him that was sad to see him go every time he finally broke conversation and returned to his friends. That feeling confused Scott. “Did you want something?" He asked.

“Just stopping by to say hi, that's all. You know, you're not as lame as people say you are."

Scott was a bit taken aback by this. Sure, the compliment was pretty backhanded, though Scott guessed that Clyde didn't even realize it was, but even so it brought back that warm and mushy feeling. Clyde was cool, a jock, a ladies man, and Scott was just a kid with diabetes and a lisp. How could someone like that not think Scott Malkinson was totally lame? His heart fluttered a bit and he couldn't help but smile.

“Thanks," he replied. Clyde nodded back at him in response then turned around and returned to his seat next to Millie Larson. The two of them leaned in close, staring at each other with wide smiles as they whispered happily.

Scott's heart ached at the sight of that, and he chalked it up to feeling jealous about how Clyde had such an easy time getting along with other people, because it absolutely wasn't because he had a crush on Clyde. He absolutely didn't wish he were in Millie's spot right now. He didn't wish Clyde were looking at him like nobody else existed. He didn't wish for any of that, because Scott didn't like Clyde.

The bell rang, and Millie leaned forward, giving Clyde a kiss on the cheek before walking off and leaving him standing there smiling like an idiot. Watching that made Scott's skin crawl, but not because he wished to be the reason for Clyde’s smile. He just hated PDA.

Chapter Text

Scott couldn't get himself to sleep; he kept thinking about Clyde. The tickle of his breath against his neck as he leaned over his shoulder, the warm mushy feeling Scott got when Clyde smiled at him, the time Clyde had grabbed his hand, and the unease he felt when he saw Clyde with a girl.

What was this weird obsession that Scott had with him? He didn't have a crush on him, the answers to the online quiz he'd taken suggested that he liked Sophie, when he thought about how he would answer those questions for Clyde it simply didn't match up.

When something happens they're the first person you want to tell.

Scott hadn't initiated a conversation with him since elementary school. Clyde was too intimidating, not in his demeanor, but his social status. He was definitely too cool to care about what was going on in Scott's life. Scott had never thought to tell him about anything that happened in his life.

You think about them all the time.

That one was a resounding yes, but one question wasn't really enough to mean anything. It was just a fluke.

They become a priority.

Scott had waited until he was done at Sophie's practice to see Clyde. He couldn't imagine not showing up for a practice or movie night, the thought of breaking that routine made him uncomfortable. That meant Sophie must be his priority, not Clyde.

They make you feel better about yourself.

Thinking about Clyde so much actually made him feel a bit gross. It felt wrong. He definitely didn’t feel better about himself when he was around him.

You can't imagine life without them.

Scott was currently trying his hardest to live life without him, but Clyde just kept popping up everywhere. Maybe the real question was did Clyde have a crush on Scott? Scott decided to list all the things he knew about Clyde.

Clyde:

1. has brown hair and brown eyes.
2. is a little chubbier than the other kids in their grade, not in a bad way, but it seems to make him insecure.
3. is on the JV football team.
4. is an amazing actor.
5. lives with his dad. His mom died when he was ten, and his older sister is in college.
6. has dated a lot of girls.
7. is best friends with Craig, Tolkien, and Jimmy.
8. doesn’t seem to understand personal space.
9. has a sweet tooth.
10. can tie a cherry stem with his tongue.
11. thinks that makes him a good kisser.
12. thinks that's a scientific fact.
13. has soft looking lips is conventionally attractive.
14. says he only kisses girls.
15. is possibly dating Millie.
16. makes Scott feel warm and mushy.
17. uses cute keyboard faces while typing.
18. just sent Scott a message, correction, multiple messages.

Clyde

Clyde:

It was great seeing you at lunch, you're a cool dude Scott. 😎

Clyde:

If you ever wanted to sit with me and the guys, you're totally welcome to btw. =^~^=

Clyde:

Did you like the cat? I think it's cute, kinda like you... no homo though. It's okay I've got socks on. ;) ;) ;)

Scott:

socks?

Clyde:

Yeah, it's not gay if you have socks on.

Scott:

 I don't think that's how it works.

Clyde: Yeah it is.

Clyde: Science 🧪 

Scott:

That's definitely not science.

Clyde:

Yeah it is.

Clyde:

Trust me, I'm an expert.🤓

Clyde:

I have a phd🧾

Clyde:

You can call me Dr. Donovan, expert in gay sciences.🏳️‍🌈🧬🧪

Scott:

Okay one, that phd you showed me is a receipt for Taco Bell, and two, being an expert in gay science sounds pretty gay to me. I'm calling homo.

Clyde:

Damn Scott, you're really coming for my throat here. :'(

Clyde:

I didn't study gay science because it had anything to do with me, my best friend is gay.

Scott:

Which one?

Clyde:

Craig obviously.

Scott:

I thought he was straight???

Scott:

Wasn't that why he broke up with Tweek?

Clyde:

He's in denial.

Clyde:

He so wants Tweek.

Clyde:

I bet you he brings him as his date to movie night tomorrow.

Clyde:

Wait, you should come!! :0

Scott:

As your date? I'll pass.

Clyde:

I didn't mean it like that :(

Scott:

Suuuure.

Clyde:

I'm serious!! I already asked Millie.

Clyde:

You should ask Sophie.

Scott:

Nah, we'll probably just hang out on our own. Thanks for the invite though.

Clyde:

On your own huh? I see you ;)

Clyde:

Have fun with that. ;) ;)

Clyde:

Just make sure to wrap it up okay.

Chapter Text

The weekend passed by rather uneventfully. Scott watched Sophie's soccer practice after school as usual on Friday, then they walked over to Tweek Bros for coffee. Scott's sugar was a bit low, so he indulged himself in half a brownie from the bakecase. Sophie didn't need the extra sugar, so he bagged up the rest to take home with him for later.

Clyde stopped in for a quick drink before heading over to Tolkien's house, and made several suggestive faces at Scott when he saw him out with Sophie. Scott wasn't sure he liked that Clyde had taken it upon himself to be his personal cheerleader. At least he didn't interrupt them by getting all up in Scott's personal space again, so he supposed that was a win.

On Saturday there was a huge rainstorm that caused Clyde's game to get canceled, so Scott sat at home reading for most of the day instead of taking game pictures like they’d arranged. He and Clyde would need to work out a time to reschedule.

Sunday he spent the day at church. After the service and his confessions, he headed off to the church's food bank to help them organize the canned goods that had been donated that day. Usually it was just him and the adult workers, but this time Dougie O'Connell had stopped by to volunteer as well. Together they finished pretty quickly.

It was a boring weekend, but most weekends were for Scott. He didn't mind being bored. He was comfortable with it. He actually kind of preferred it that way. Boring was predictable, and Scott liked predictable.

Monday, Scott decided to take Clyde up on his offer to eat lunch with his friends, or more accurately, Clyde saw him on the way to lunch and practically dragged him into the cafeteria. The sudden and out of his control change in his usual routine had him on edge, despite his best efforts to tell himself it wasn't a big deal. He could eat lunch in a different place, it wasn't the end of the world.

But then he opened his lunch box and found nothing but Friday's ice pack. Did he seriously forget to pack himself food? Clyde was kind enough to give him half his sandwich, which Scott begrudgingly forced himself to choke down. He wasn't really a fan of peanut butter. He didn't like the way it stuck to the roof of his mouth or the way it coated the inside of his throat when he swallowed. The cafeteria was too loud, there were too many people around. Cartman was very audibly making fun of him.

All these issues were little things themselves, but all piled up like that they felt extremely overwhelming. He brought one hand to his chest, gripping the collar of his shirt in a tight fist and quickly vibrating that fist against his chest to release all the negative energy and calm himself.

"Uh Scott, what are you doing?" asked Tolkien. 

Scott felt Clyde's hand press firmly into his back. "Are you okay dude?" he asked, sounding concerned.

"Um, I think I just need to go out and get some air," Scott replied, getting up from his seat and quickly exiting the cafeteria.

Instead of going out the door to get some air outside, he hooked a right and found himself a spot under the stairwell. This one was partially used to store extra desks and chairs, so Scott wedged himself behind the stacks of chairs, boxing himself into the very back corner. He quietly rocked himself back and forth as he cried, trying his best to stay absolutely silent. He cursed himself for crying over such  minor inconveniences, he didn't even know why any of those things felt like such a big deal to him. Scott was embarrassed that he did.

A few moments later he heard chairs shuffling and Clyde slipped in next to him. "Hey," he whispered. "Are you alright?"

Scott shook his head, hugging his knees to his chest. He felt like someone had his vocal cords in a death grip, and couldn't actually bring himself to speak. Clyde seemed to understand this, and didn't push him to say anything.

Instead he just wrapped his arms around Scott, resting his chin on his shoulder and rocked with him. "Let me know if you want me to stop," he whispered. "If you don't want to speak you can just pinch my arm or something, okay?"

Scott nodded his head, and closed his eyes, focusing on rocking motion and the warm feeling of Clyde's arms. He let it calm him. When the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch, Clyde whispered to Scott, "Are you ready to head to class?"

“Just a bit longer," he whispered. Even though he knew he should go, Scott didn't want to. He was feeling too fragile right now, and Clyde made him feel safe. Clyde nodded, finding one of Scott's hands and giving it a reassuring squeeze. 

Suddenly they weren't the only ones under the stairs. "Damn Craig, I didn't know we were still doing the sneaky make out sessions," a voice said. 

'Not again,' thought Scott. Seriously, was every empty corner of this school a hookup spot? Was there no place he could go to be alone?

"Shit, Kenny and Craig?" Whispered Clyde. Scott quickly turned and pressed a hand over Clyde's mouth to keep him quiet. The last thing he wanted was for the two of them to get caught back here. People might think they were using this spot to hook up.

"No it's not that, I just want to talk, like advice I guess," Craig replied.

"Uh, okay. Go on."

"So uh... there's someone I'm starting to have feelings for, and I guess we kind of had a moment and now they're kinda avoiding me and I'm not sure what I did wrong."

"I'm going to need more details than that Craig. Like what kind of moment are we talking about?"

"Uh... we slept together...?"

"Holy shit..." Scott found himself whispering and Clyde pressed his own hand against Scott's mouth, quieting him.

Luckily, Kenny’s loud reaction of “are you fucking serious?” was sufficient enough to drown out his own auditory reaction.

“Well I mean if you had sex with them, it’s entirely possible that’s something they weren’t ready for.”

”Who the fuck said anything about sex?” Craig asked, sounding dumbfounded.

Scott could feel Clyde laughing through his hand. The two of them still sat in the corner, covering each other’s mouths.

“You did!” Kenny replied, exasperated.

”No I said we slept together, like literally falling asleep next to each other on the couch.”

Scott and Clyde stayed hidden quietly for the remainder of Craig and Kenny’s conversation, and Scott couldn’t help but feel a bit of that same guilt he’d felt when accidentally witnessing Stan and Butters kissing. He definitely wasn’t meant to hear about Craig’s sexuality crisis. It turned out Clyde was right about him and Tweek.

After they had left, Scott felt wetness against his hand as Clyde licked his palm.

"Ew, Clyde!" He protested, his voice muffled by the hand still covering his own mouth, as he wiped his palm against the other boy’s jacket to dry it.

Clyde slid his hand off of Scott's mouth, resting it on his cheek as he turned Scott's face towards his. Scott felt his heart rate pick up significantly. What was happening ? He found himself staring at Clyde's lips, and when he looked up at his eyes, Clyde appeared to be staring at his.

Were they going to do this? Did he want to? He shouldn't. Scott bit his own lip to fight off the urge. Finally Clyde spoke up. "Are you okay now?" he whispered.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

Clyde dropped his hand from Scott's cheek, and he couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed by it. "Hey Clyde? How did you know exactly what to do to calm me down?”

"You can't tell him I told you,” Clyde started, “but sometimes Craig gets like that. He used to melt down a lot when we were kids, like around six or seven, but he kinda grew out of it I guess. I haven't had to do that in a long time. Do you mind if I ask what set you off?"

Scott thought about it for a moment, debating how much he actually trusted Clyde. The reason must sound so ridiculous, what if Clyde made fun of him for it. Letting out a deep breath, Scott decided to take the chance. He was used to getting made fun of anyway, so if Clyde did it wasn’t really a big deal.

“I'm not used to the cafeteria. It was really loud and busy and that set me on edge. Also, when you dragged me in there I kind of lost my sense of control. Then I forgot my lunch, yours wasn't what I really wanted to eat so I kinda felt like I had to choke it down because I knew I needed to eat so I didn't go hypoglycemic, but I also didn't want to because I hate peanut butter and it feels too sticky in my mouth, and every minor thing piled up on top of each other and just felt like too much. I know that probably sounds really pathetic."

Scott expected when he looked up at Clyde, to be met with a look of judgment. Instead, Clyde's expression was sad. He looked like he was almost on the verge of tears himself, a sight that confused Scott.

"I'm sorry," Clyde whispered. "I didn't mean to upset you so much, I just thought you probably got lonely always eating by yourself."

"It is nice to have someone else to eat with, just maybe not the whole school..." Scott replied, awkwardly. He really didn't mind the idea of having lunch with Clyde, he was a nice guy and Scott was starting to feel comfortable with him. It was everyone else who made it overwhelming.

Clyde's face brightened instantly at this news. "Okay. Tomorrow you can pick where we eat. How about that?" He suggested excitedly.

"What?" Scott asked, a bit taken aback. "You mean you want to eat with me again tomorrow?"

"Well yeah, you're cool Scott. I like hanging out with you." Clyde told him, giving his shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

All day long, those words kept playing on repeat in his head. Clyde Donovan thought he was cool. Clyde Donovan wanted to spend more time with him. Clyde Donovan almost looked like he’d wanted to kiss him, and Scott had almost wanted to kiss him back.

Chapter Text

Sure enough, the next day when the lunch bell rang, Scott felt his phone buzzing in his pocket with a text from Clyde.

Clyde

Clyde:

Hey Scott, where should I meet you?

Clyde:

You do still want to meet up, right?

Scott couldn’t help but smile at his phone. Clyde seemed really excited to spend time with him, nobody had ever seemed so genuinely excited to be spending time with Scott. Nobody had ever made him feel so special.

Clyde

Scott:

Meet me in theater hall.

Clyde:

Yes Sir!!! :D

Clyde:

See you soon ^~^ <3

When Scott got to the hall between the auditorium and music classrooms, Clyde was already there waiting for him. "Hi Scott," he greeted with a smile that made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

"Hey," Scott replied, smiling back. He must've imagined it, but he could swear Clyde's cheeks got a little pink.

That couldn't be true though; nobody has ever blushed when they saw Scott Malkinson. Clyde would probably call that statement science. Scott was scientifically uninteresting, but he was okay with that.

"This way," he whispered, slinking through the hall, ducking under the windows of the music classrooms. Clyde followed in suit. At the end of the hall was the side door to the auditorium that led onstage.

"Isn't this a little out in the open?" Clyde asked, staring at the stage. "I thought we weren't supposed to be in here."

"We're not eating on the stage," Scott replied with a sly smile. The place they were going, they really weren't supposed to be in, which made the thought of it even more exciting. Scott would definitely have plenty of material for his confessions this week. "Trust me, we'll be way more well hidden."

Scott climbed the stairs at the side of the stage that led up to the loft where the prop storage area was. At one end of the loft there was a door with a lock on it. Scott twisted in the combination (it was 0000, seriously, the easiest combo ever) and the lock sprung open. Behind the door was a ladder that led up to the catwalk.

"Holy shit, how did you even get access to this?" asked Clyde in awe.

Scott shrugged and said, "tech club privileges," as if it was no big deal. In reality he'd just decided he was going to try every possible combination on the lock from 0000 to 9999 to keep himself busy, and had gotten lucky on the first one. Truthfully that had been a bit disappointing at the time, it would've felt much more rewarding if it had actually been a challenge, but now that he was about to share this place with Clyde who seemed to be thrilled by the idea of sneaking up there, all that disappointment had faded away.

They climbed the ladder and crawled out onto the catwalk. "Look at that view," Scott said, gesturing out at the stage below them. The ceiling of the auditorium dipped down, covering the back wall of the walk, but the front was open with a view of the stage. Anyone who walked in the auditorium from the back would have no chance of seeing them. If they were standing on the stage they'd be able to if they really looked, but Scott doubted they ever would.

"Scott Malkinson," Clyde forced a gasp as he spoke. "Did you take me to a hookup spot?"

"What??? No! I just eat my lunch here sometimes. I've never even thought about hooking up here!!" Scott replied, frantically defending himself.

Clyde giggled as he did so. "I didn't think you were thinking that, but other people have definitely had that idea. Just look at this," Clyde said, pointing at some graffiti on the wall. "Kevin and Shelley did it right here, and then there's a little arrow pointing down to the exact spot. Wait, isn't that Stan's sister? Sick dude. I wonder which Kevin it was, there are like 10 at this school."

Scott burried his face in his hands. "Oh my god, I totally didn't need to know that," he giggled.

They ate their lunch talking and laughing the whole time. Scott was surprised to find that the conversation never dulled, Clyde never got tired of him. When lunch period was about to end Clyde pulled a silver sharpie out of his backpack and handed it to Scott. "Here sign your name on the wall," he told him. Normally, Scott would never even think of defacing school property, but the catwalk was so rarely used by staff and already had so much graffiti that he decided to make an exception and wrote out "Scott" on the wall. Clyde retrieved his sharpie from Scott's hands and wrote his own name, right under Scott's then drew a little heart around them.

"Dude, that's so gay," Scott giggled. "People are gonna think we hooked up here." 

"Well I'm wearing socks right now, so even if we did I'm not gay. Are you wearing socks Scott?" Clyde asked, laughing.

Scott’s cheeks burned at the statement. "Seriously, what do socks have to do with anything?" he asked.

"Socks are magic gay shields, duh,” Clyde replied grinning.

"Last time you said it was science, now it's magic?"

"Magic can be science."

"It's quite literally the opposite of science."

They argued like this the whole way down back onto the stage. No sooner than their feet hit the ground, the bell signaling the end of lunch rang. Clyde pulled Scott into a tight bear hug. "Let's do this again sometime, okay?" he said.

"Okay," Scott agreed, finding that his heart was racing and he was unable to stop smiling. Everything about Clyde was just so intoxicating; Scott couldn’t seem to get enough of him.

"Hold on," Clyde said, turning back around. "I almost forgot something."

Clyde grabbed Scott by the face, planting a big kiss on his lips, making Scott's legs feel weak. "Do you want to be my boyfriend?" he asked once they separated. At least that’s what Scott found himself imagining.

Scott didn't quite know why he had, or why he felt so disappointed when instead of kissing him, Clyde just pressed a small pouch into his hands. Scott opened it, inspecting what was inside.

"They're earplugs," Clyde explained. "You said the cafeteria was too loud for you, so I thought these might help. Craig wears ones like these all the time and they've really seemed to make it easier for him to deal with noisy environments. If you ever feel overwhelmed again, you can try them out."

That was probably the most thoughtful gift anyone had ever given Scott, granted the bar was not set high at all. Last year for Christmas all he'd gotten from his parents were socks and a calendar for the next year.

He tugged Clyde into a tight hug, resting his forehead on Clyde's shoulder. "Thank you," he whispered, as he held on to him. His heart was just about beating out of his chest at this point, and there was no way he could deny it any further: the way he felt about Clyde was definitely romantic, and that made him feel a bit gross.

Scott pulled away. "Well, I should probably head off to class now, I wouldn't want to be late. See you in history!" He called out awkwardly as he rushed away.

Scott began to feel the panic set in. He liked Clyde romantically. Was this okay? The Bible said it was a sin. Then again the Bible only said not to lay with another man, as in sex. So was it okay to just hug? Or even to kiss? Maybe it was okay to have feelings as long as he didn't act on them. Maybe this was just temptation, the devil trying to get him to sin. Or maybe thinking about Clyde at all in this way was a sin and God was already disappointed in him. And what about Sophie? He'd been so convinced he liked her. Was that not true? Did he like both of them? Maybe if he spent more time with Sophie it would help him to stop thinking of Clyde. He sent her a quick text.

Sophie

Scott:

Hey Soph, I was thinking we should hang out more. Did you maybe want to come with me to the tech crew meeting today, then we could hang out on our own after?

Sophie:

Sounds cool Scott, I'd love that. See you later. <3

Scott smiled down at his phone, relieved that she'd agreed. Surely if he just focused all his attention on her he'd forget all about his stupid little crush on Clyde. Right?

He hoped so.

Surely he was just confused and he wasn’t actually gay. This little crush would pass if he just gave it time.

After history, Scott and Clyde walked to theater rehearsal together.

As they walked, Scott found that Clyde was getting a little too close as their hands brushed together. For a brief moment he considered the possibility of slipping his hand into Clyde’s and holding it, but ultimately, he shoved his inside his hoodie pocket to keep himself from being tempted to do so. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Clyde frown, but surely that was his imagination. There was no way Clyde actually liked him back. Even if Clyde had said he was cool, surely Scott didn’t compare to any of the girls Clyde usually went for. Clyde probably wasn’t even into guys, which was for the best.

When they got to the theater hall, Sophie was already waiting there for Scott. "Hey," she greeted him, giving him a hug. He hugged her back happily. "Glad you could make it," Scott told her.

"Hey Sophie," Clyde greeted her, a bit awkwardly.

As the three of them headed further down the hall, they found the goths already there. Pete and Stan were in their usual spot leaned up against the wall, but this time they were accompanied by some new girl. She had a strawberry blonde bob haircut with black streaks dyed through it, as well as a septum piercing and a black ring at the side of each nostril. She wore the same sour expression as Stan and Pete, fitting in just perfectly.

"Dang did everyone bring their girlfriends?" asked Clyde, his voice sounding a bit exasperated. If Scott didn't know any better, he'd think that Clyde was jealous of Sophie. Luckily he knew better.

"You could text Millie and ask her to come," he suggested.

"Yeah I guess," shrugged Clyde, pulling out his phone. Within ten minutes Millie had joined them. Scott thought that would make Clyde happier, but surprisingly he actually looked pretty miserable. That was until Butters asked Scott if he was going to the church's Halloween lock-in on Friday.

"Wait, they're doing that again this year?" Clyde asked excitedly. "Is it true Father Maxi always passes out at like ten leaving everyone totally unsupervised for the rest of the night?"

"Pretty much," answered Butters.

“Sweet," Kenny said. "Stan, we should go to that." 

Stan shrugged. "Yeah, whatever. At least it'll get my mom off my ass to go out and have some fun. You in Pete?"

"The church has a graveyard?"

"Uh yeah," replied Stan.

Pete nodded. "Yeah, I guess that doesn't sound too terrible then. If it gets bad I can just sneak off."

"You had me at Halloween," Makowski put in.

"Nobody asked if you were going Count Fagula," scoffed Pete. 

As always, Scott felt uncomfortable with this choice of language, only this time he knew why. Clyde must've caught on to his discomfort, because he decided to speak up on it. "Hey Pete, can we not use that word please?"

"Whatever," Pete huffed, rolling his eyes. He got up and walked to the back door. "I'm going for a smoke."

Scott felt grateful for Clyde’s stepping in to defend him, but also embarrassed that Clyde was able to notice his inner turmoil. Briefly, he considered the possibility that Clyde had noticed long ago that Scott might not be straight and as the self proclaimed gay science expert, attached himself to him.

He offered Clyde a small smile to say thank you, which Clyde returned. He allowed his gaze to rest upon Clyde for only a moment before turning to Sophie. "You should come too."

"Yeah, sounds fun." She replied.

Chapter Text

South Park Catholic Church's annual Halloween lock-in was probably the time the largest number of teens actually showed up for an event hosted by the church. Even those who weren't particularly religious couldn't pass up a good old barely supervised gathering of teens and tweens. Every year the church held a Halloween party for the children, then once the elementary kids went home the 6th-12th graders had their Halloween party.

Just as expected, at 9:45 Father Maxi passed out, his loud snoring signifying the teens' total freedom.

This years attendees included Scott, Sophie, Butters, Clyde, Millie, Kenny, Stan, Pete, the new girl (apparently her name was Jade), Henrietta, Kevin Stoley, Wendy, Tolkien, Mike Makowski, Katie Gelson, Shelley Marsh, Kevin McCormick (Scott had a feeling this was the Kevin from the catwalk graffiti), Dougie O'Connell, Karen McCormick, Tricia Tucker, Firkle (who was technically a year too young but had snuck in anyway) Aaron Hagen, Bridon Guierrmo, and two eleventh grade girls named Kelly and Stacy who Scott didn't really know but apparently they were friends with Shelley.

They all basically split into three main groups: The older high schoolers (Shelley, Kevin, Kelly and Stacy) the middle schoolers (Karen, Tricia, Dougie, Aaron, and Bridon) and the rest of them. The goths made up their own sub group, occasionally splitting off from the rest but always ending up finding their way back to the younger high schoolers.

The younger high school group had left the meeting hall where their sleeping bags were set up and had migrated to the church's library. Inside there were several sofas and armchairs as well as a large table and chair set. There was also an ancient TV cart hooked up to a combo dvd/vhs player. Kevin Stoley had dug through the movies and found an absolutely horrendous religious knock off of finding Nemo called finding Jesus.

“This movie sucks ass," laughed Clyde. He and Scott were sitting together on one couch with Sophie and Millie at either side. At the table Kevin and Butters were playing go fish. Katie and Mike were sharing an armchair (it was definitely a one person chair and she was practically sitting on his lap), giggling at something on Mike's phone, and goths had gone out for a smoke break with Kenny. Wendy and Tolkien had slipped out of the library a while ago, and if Scott had to guess he'd say they probably found a private spot to make out. The two of them had quickly started going out after her breakup with Stan.

"Yeah it's pretty bad," agreed Scott, giggling. The storyline was boring and repetitive, and the production quality was absolutely horrendous. It was reaching that point of being so bad it was funny, though Scott doubted he'd actually be enjoying himself if he were forced to watch it on his own. Really, it wasn't the movie that was funny, it was Clyde's commentary.

Just then, Kenny and the goths returned to the room. "Yo guys, I found where Maxi keeps the church wine," Kenny announced, holding up a bottle. "Anyone up for truth, dare, or drink?"

"Count me in. I think it could be a pretty interesting game, per se," replied Mike, earning himself a quite obvious eye roll from Pete.

"Say less," Clyde agreed.

"You had me at drink," Stan chimed in.

Within a few minutes the group had turned off the awful movie and gathered in a circle for the game. Only Scott and Butters seemed apprehensive about it, but Scott didn't want to seem like a massive loser by being the only person to not play, and apparently neither did Butters.

"Leo, truth or dare?" asked Kenny.

"Uhh... I guess I'll go for truth," Butters replied.

"What's the most ridiculous thing you've ever gotten grounded for?" Kenny asked him.

Butters thought for a moment. "One time I got grounded because my dad thought my school pictures were ugly." A few people laughed at this, but Kenny just frowned.

"Your dad's a fucking idiot," Kenny replied under their breath.

"Okay, Katie, Truth or Dare?" Butters asked.

"Truth," Katie answered.

"Tell me about the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you at school."

"One time in gym class my pad shifted while I was jogging and of course that moment a blood clot came out, and slithered down my leg and onto the floor. Then the gym teacher found blood on the floor and made us all check ourselves to see who was bleeding and I had to do a total walk of shame out of there to fix my pad."

"Oh my god I think I would have died of embarrassment," Millie piped up.

“If it happened to me I'd bark at anyone who dared say anything about it. I refuse to be embarrassed by what conformist assholes tell me I should be embarrassed of," Henrietta chimed in.

"Hardcore, I like the way you think," put in Jade.

"Alright, well now that I'm thoroughly re-embarrassed, Pete, truth or dare?" Katie asked him, laughing awkwardly.

"Well since you all are truth choosing pussies, I'll take the dare."

Katie and Mike share a glance, smirking at each other. "I dare you to kiss Mike," Katie told him.

Pete's face turned about three shades redder and his eyes widened in shock. "You know what, I think I'll take the drink," he said, grabbing the bottle of wine and taking a long swig.

“Wow Pete, didn't know you were such a pussy, per se." Mike teased.

"I'm not a pussy, I have fucking standards. I don't kiss wannabe poser vampire douchebags." Pete spat back.

"Pigtails," Pete said, looking towards Millie. "Truth or dare?"

"Dare I guess," she replied.

“I dare you to call your mom and tell her she's a bitch."

“Seriously?" Millie complained. "I'm not about to get grounded just for a five second dare. Hand me the bottle." She took a long drink before turning to Scott. "Truth or dare Scott?"

Scott took a moment to weigh his options. Truth could result in being asked very personal questions with answers he was hardly able to admit to himself let alone a whole group of people. Dare somehow seemed safer, so that's what he went with.

“Feeling bold Scott? Okay I dare you to kiss whichever girl you think is the cutest," Millie told him. Scott almost sighed a breath of relief. This was such an easy one. He turned to his left so that he was facing Sophie.

"Hey," he whispered, realizing at that moment that he'd never actually initiated a kiss with anyone and he didn't know how to really go about it. He’d only ever been kissed once, by Sally Darson after handing her five bucks, but he doubted that was applicable here."Do you mind if I kiss you?" He asked.

She looked pretty nervous about it too, and Scott wondered for a moment if he'd made the wrong choice. Should he have gone for some girl he didn't actually care about in case things got awkward? "Go ahead," she replied, and Scott felt his doubts melting away. Kissing Sophie was exactly what he needed to do. Surely it'd be amazing, and then he wouldn't even think of Clyde in that way anymore.

That was the expectation at least. The reality was it was a bit awkward, but not entirely unpleasant. He definitely felt a bit flustered at having done that in front of a whole group of people (Sophie looked a bit flustered too, but he was unsure if it was for the same reason), but there were none of the fireworks he was expecting. Maybe nobody really felt like that when they kissed someone. Maybe it was just something they made up for movies and romance novels.

After a few rounds of truth, dare, or drink most of the group had significantly loosened up. Scott had only ended up taking one sip of wine, so he wasn't even buzzed, unlike some of the others, notably Stan. Turns out he'd actually brought his own alcohol as well, so when the wine bottle ran dry he pulled out his flask and started sipping at whiskey. Stan was totally trashed, giggling as he poked at Butters' face.

Clyde was pretty far gone by this point as well, and laid across the couch with his head in Scott's lap. Sophie had fallen asleep and was leaned up against him with her head on his shoulder. It was around one am at this point, and Scott was getting close to drifting off as well. He absentmindedly ran his fingers through Clyde's hair, every now and then his eyelids drooping as he almost fell asleep.

“You have such a cute sleepy face," Clyde told him, reaching up and attempting to tap Scott on the nose, but completely missing and hitting his cheek. "Oops," he said, giggling.

Somewhere in the room Kenny took a puff of their vape. "Yooo, Kenny, what flavor is that?" Clyde asked, his words slurring together as he spoke.

“Cherry," Kenny replied.

“Shit I love Cherry, pass it over," Clyde told them. Kenny tossed the vape over to him and Clyde let out an oof as he failed to catch it and it landed on his chest. "Bedankt," he replied.

Apparently, sometimes Clyde randomly slipped into speaking Dutch while drunk. He took in a long breath, not even bothering to sit up while he did so, and released a cloud of steam up into the air above him. It billowed around Scott's face, momentarily suffocating him.

"Sorry Scott," Clyde told him, laughing. God he was so cute, especially with that dopey smile. The way he looked up at Scott made him feel weak; there was no way Scott could actually be mad at him.

"Did you want to try?" Clyde asked, holding up the vape, waving it in front of Scott's face a bit as he failed to keep his arm steady.

Scott didn't really think he'd ever be the kind of kid to give into peer pressure when it came to drugs, he'd always firmly believed that doing them was stupid, but he felt an overwhelming need for Clyde to think he was cool. The thought that Clyde might decide he was lame after all and stop hanging out with him made his heart ache. One hit couldn't hurt right? It was just a vape; it wasn't like Clyde was offering him hard drugs or anything. Besides, he had been curious about it hadn't he?

Scott accepted the vape from Clyde's hand and studied it, realizing he didn't actually know how to use it. Clyde seemed to pick up on this and brought his hands up to show him the button. "Press this then breathe in," he instructed. Scott did as he was told, coughing as the steam hit the back of his throat.

“Wow you suck at this," Clyde teased, grabbing it back and taking another hit, once again releasing the steam upwards into Scott's face.

Kenny walked over and plucked the vape out of Clyde's hands. "Keeeennny," Clyde whined.

“Yeah no, that's enough. I'm not being held responsible for you corrupting Scott," they replied, shoving the vape back into their pocket. Scott was a bit thankful they did.

“Jesus Christ, what have you all been up to?"

Scott looked over towards the voice and saw Stan's older sister, Shelley, standing in the doorway of the library. "Have you turds been drinking?" she asked, scowling at her brother.

Stan let out a snort of laughter in response. "Guilty," he replied, drawing out the word to be much longer than necessary.

"Alright, pack it up shitheads. Time for bed," Shelley instructed. Stan's sister was quite intimidating and nobody questioned her on what authority she had to be bossing them around. They were all slightly scared by her.

Scott nudged Sophie awake. "Hey, let's get back to our sleeping bags," he whispered. She nodded, and followed him wordlessly back to the meeting hall. Inside, Father Maxi was still snoring away. Scott couldn't believe he'd slept through all the craziness that had occurred that night.

He crawled into his sleeping bag that was positioned next to Clyde’s, the two of them laying on their sides facing each other.

”Hey Scott,” Clyde whispered, his words slightly slurred. “You’re really great.”

”And you’re really drunk,” Scott replied, holding back giggles.

”You have a cute laugh.”

Scott playfully shoved Clyde’s shoulder. “Whatever, go to sleep.”

”Okay, goodnight Scott.”

”Goodnight.”

Chapter Text

Scott was back on the catwalk with Clyde for lunch, laughing and conversing as usual. Clyde looked so handsome in the dim lighting.

“Hey Scott, can I be honest for a second?” Clyde asked, suddenly becoming serious. The sudden shift in attitude made Scott feel nervous. What did Clyde have to tell him that was so important? Would he admit that he didn’t actually like hanging out with him, that he’d really just been pitying him this whole time? Or maybe he was going to say he knew Scott had a crush on him and that it disgusted him. Scott felt sick to his stomach thinking about it.

“Uh yeah, go for it,” he replied, cautiously, bracing himself for whatever Clyde was about to tell him.

Clyde leaned in close, and Scott can feel himself starting to get jittery as his nerves overwhelm him. “I’m not wearing any socks,” Clyde whispered, a mischievous smile crossing his face.

And then he leaned in further until their lips came together. It started soft and sweet, then gradually intensified. Clyde gently pushed Scott backwards so that he was lying down and positioned himself over top of him. Clyde’s tongue poked at Scott’s lower lip and he willingly let him in.

Scott woke with a start, his eyes wide open as he tried to process the dream he’d just had. Wait, was he hard? A quick pat over that area confirmed his suspicions, luckily, it didn’t appear like anyone else was awake yet. That at least saved him the embarrassment of getting caught with an awkward boner.

He cautiously slipped out of his sleeping bag and tiptoed to the bathroom, locking himself in a stall. Scott wasn’t too fond of the idea of jacking off in a church bathroom, just the thought of it seemed wrong on so many levels, so instead he decided to just sit and wait for his little problem to go away.

Why was he still thinking of kissing Clyde? And why did the thought of it excite him so much? He was supposed to be getting over his silly little crush. Why wasn’t his actual kiss with Sophie exciting him as much as the idea of kissing Clyde?

Maybe this was a problem Scott couldn’t fix on his own. Maybe he should ask Butters about that religious camp he was sent to last summer, the one for confused boys. It hadn’t really helped Butters, but that was probably just because Butters hadn’t really understood why he was there.

Scott was sure that if he put an honest effort into it, did all the exorcizes, gave it everything he had, he could fix himself and be free of his temptation.

The bathroom door opened and then footsteps sounded across the tile floor, leading into the next stall. When Scott looked down he saw two sets of feet. Seriously? He was becoming a witness to another hookup. Why were his classmates all so careless?

”Leave any marks and you’re dead Count Fagula,” a voice beside him said.

”Technically vampires are already dead.”

”Just shut the fuck up already,” the first voice, which definitely belonged to Pete, said.

There was an awkward shuffling between them and then Scott could hear the sounds of heavy breathing and lips smacking together.

Scott wasn’t about to just sit and listen to them make out in the bathroom so he simply flushed the toilet to alert them of his presence then quickly washed his hands and left.

Inside the meeting hall, a few of the other kids were starting to stir. Father Maxi had finally woken up as well and was in the kitchen, mixing up pancake batter.

Scott slipped in through the kitchen doors and walked over to him. “Do you need any help with breakfast?” He asked.  Scott desperately needed at task, some sort of menial activity that could distract him from everything going on with Clyde.

”Sure, why don’t you take over the pancakes while I cook up the sausages?” Father Maxi suggested.

Scott nodded and got to work. There were lots of mouths to feed, so he ended up making a few dozen pancakes. It didn’t quite do much to distract him from his thoughts about Clyde, but the mundane and repetitive action of it did help calm him down.

At breakfast, Scott found himself surprised when Tolkien extended an invite to him to his Halloween party later that night. Scott hadn’t been to a party since the forth grade, even then he only had been so Cartman and his friends could gain popularity points for throwing a party in the honor of some poor loser with diabetes. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d spoken to Tolkien either, which added to the confusion. Was he considered cool now that he had started hanging out with Clyde?

He almost found himself turning the offer down until he saw the excited look on Clyde's face, his big brown eyes practically begging him to say yes. "Uh, sure sounds fun Tolkien," he agreed awkwardly.

"Hey Scott, want to come over and hang out with me today? Later we can head over to Tolkien's party together." Clyde had a very hopeful expression on his face as he asked, giving Scott the biggest puppy dog eyes he could muster up. Scott knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn't bear to disappoint him. Lord knows upsetting Clyde was an easy task, he was a very sensitive guy. Scott was actually a little scared that if he said no Clyde would burst into tears on the spot.

"Yeah, that would be cool," he agreed with a light smile as he distracted himself by cutting his pancakes into tiny little pieces.

"Awesome!" Clyde replied excitedly, as he shoveled pancakes into his mouth.

After breakfast he and Clyde packed up their things, said goodbye to everyone, and headed on the walk towards Clyde's house. "I can't believe we didn't get caught for any of the craziness that went down last night," Scott commented.

“Yeah," Clyde agreed. "I hope they don't notice the missing bottle of wine."

“Kenny refilled it with watered down grape juice from the kitchen. I doubt they'll really notice a difference with how much they dilute it before putting it in the cup for communion."

Clyde laughed and said "yeah," before making an awkward transition to a new topic.

"Soooo, I broke up with Millie," he said.

"What?" Scott asked, confused as to when this could've happened. He'd been with Clyde all last night and he and Millie seemed fine. "When did you do that?"

"This morning, while you were helping Father Maxi make pancakes," Clyde replied. 

It was strange. Scott thought Clyde would be more upset if he and Millie broke up, but he honestly seemed fine. "What happened?" He asked.

Clyde shrugged. "I don't know, I guess I just wasn't that into it. I was at first, but I kinda like someone else now."

That made more sense. Clyde wasn't beat up about this breakup because he had gotten emotionally invested in someone else. 

“So who is this mystery girl?" asked Scott curiously. He saw a flash of a look in Clyde's eyes that he couldn't quite identify the meaning of, but it disappeared as quickly as it arrived leaving Scott to wonder if he’d imagined it.

“No way, I'm keeping that one to myself," Clyde replied, laughing awkwardly.

"Wow, is it really that embarrassing?" Scott didn't think Clyde seemed like the kind of guy to have secret crushes. Clyde always seemed so confident with girls, the kind of guy who was direct and honest about what he wanted. Then again, if you asked him two weeks ago he would have said Clyde wasn't the kind of guy to pay Scott a moment's notice, so maybe he really didn't know as much about Clyde as he thought he did.

"Nah, I just don't wanna jinx it," Clyde told him with a half hearted laugh. "Speaking of girls, are you and Sophie like a thing now?"

“Not officially," Scott answered. "We haven't really talked about it or anything, but I think I might want to."

"Oh, cool,” Clyde replied, quietly.

They walked the rest of the way in silence

Chapter Text

Clyde and Scott played Mario Kart for most of the afternoon. Apparently Tolkien was planning on having a tournament at his party, so Clyde wanted to get in as much practice as possible. He was pretty great at it, and destroyed Scott in nearly every round. The only one Scott even came close in was because he managed to get a bullet bill upgrade, and didn't use it until he'd already naturally caught up to about fifth place, launching him well ahead of everyone else.

At around seven, after having dinner and taking Clyde's dog on a short walk around the neighborhood, Scott and Clyde changed into their Halloween costumes. Scott was a wizard, and Clyde had on one of those inflatable Trex costumes. "Really? That's what you decided to go with?" commented Scott.

“What? What's wrong with it?” Clyde asked defensively. “Dinosaurs are cool."

"Yeah, but that thing is going to really restrict your movement.” Scott pointed out. “Like you'll barely be able to use your arms. I thought you were trying to win the Mario Kart tournament.”

"Fuck, you're right," Clyde replied, turning off the fan and shimmying out of the suit. Then he began frantically digging through his closet for something better to wear. Finally he got an idea and started digging through his pajama drawer and pulled out a panda onesie.

Clyde pulled off his jeans, stripping down to just his T-shirt and boxers before putting on the onsie. Scott blushed and looked away as he did so, not mentally prepared for him to be changing in front of him. 'Get it together Scott. Stop acting like you've never been in a locker room before,' he thought to himself.

“So what do you think?" Clyde asked, posing for Scott.

“You look like you're about to explain sexual harassment laws to me," he joked, poking fun at the weird guest speaker that they'd had in elementary school, the sexual harassment panda. Like seriously, whose idea was it to try to make the topic of sexual harassment fun for kids? It was seriously messed up.

“Who lives in the east 'neath a willer tree? Sexual harassment panda. Who explains sexual harassment to you and me? Sexual harassment panda," Clyde began to sing the sexual harassment panda's theme song.

“Oh my god, stop," Scott laughed, trying to cover Clyde's mouth with his hand in an attempt to shut him up. Clyde wiggled out of his grip and kept singing.

“Don't say that! Don't touch there! Don't be nasty, says the silly bear!" Scott continued wrestling with him, trying to shut him up. Clyde fell backwards onto his bed, pulling Scott down on top of him. "He's gonna tell you what's right and wrong, sexual harassment panda."

As Clyde finished the song, Scott suddenly became aware of the position they were in. Clyde lying on his back in bed, his hands gripping firmly on Scott's wrists while Scott straddled him. Scott saw Clyde's pink tinted cheeks and felt his face heating up as a blush of his own came on.

Scott’s mind couldn’t help but drift to last night’s dream. It would be so easy to lean down and kiss him. Scott's heart skipped in his chest at the thought, though ultimately he didn't have the nerve to act on it.

"Well," he said, clearing his throat as he climbed off of Clyde. "We'd better head out before we're too terribly late. Wouldn't want to miss all the fun of the party."

Clyde didn’t win the tournament. He came really close, but Craig beat him out at the last second. Scott patted a teary eyed Clyde on the back, trying to cheer him up.

He was a bit stiff and awkward in his attempt to in comforting Clyde. Deep down he desperately wanted to wrap Clyde up in his arms and hold him, but he held himself back, only allowing a singular hand to rest on Clyde’s back, moving in a circular motion.

"Clyde you're being a baby," Tolkien scolded him. "It's just a game dude."

Clyde crossed his arms indignantly as he continued to pout. Scott gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "You did a great job, I'm sure you'll beat Craig next time."

"How about a game of Never Have I Ever to get things off your mind?" Tolkien suggested.

Clyde immediately lit up. "Yes!" He agreed enthusiastically and rushed over to Tweek and Craig. "Dude we're about to play Never Have I Ever. Grab your boyfriend and let's go."

They all sat down in a circle and started taking turns saying things they've never done. The rule is if you have done something, you take a drink. Scott had a feeling he wouldn't be drinking much.

“Never have I cried in the middle of math class," Tolkien started them off.

"No fair!" Clyde huffed as he took a sip of his drink. "You're totally targeting me!" He looked so cute with the little scowl he put on as he defended himself.

“Hey, just giving you a reason to start drinking,” Tolkien replied with a smirk.

Bebe said she's never shoplifted.

Tweek said he's never been drunk. Everyone else in the circle drank to that, but Scott didn't. That one sip of wine last night was the most alcohol he'd ever consumed before.

"Never have I ever drank more than five cups of coffee in one day," Craig said, giving Tweek a playful nudge.

"Asshole," he muttered as he took a sip of his drink.

“I'm helping you fix that never getting drunk thing," Craig replied. Scott wondered if Clyde would target him to help him out. The game wasn't exactly fun when he was just watching everyone else drink.

Apparently not.

“Never have I ever gotten a blowjob," Clyde said. Scott had definitely never done that. He'd barely even kissed anyone, and hadn't really ever even thought of sex before. A lot of the guys did drink to that though, Tolkien, Jimmy, Kenny and Craig. Several thoughts entered Scott's brain.

1. He was surprised that Clyde was the only one of his friends who hadn't had that experience. He always seemed like such a ladies man, and was known to have a dirty mind. Scott kind of assumed he would have done that before.
2. Scott was relieved that Clyde hadn't. It made him feel like less of a loser.
3. Given what he witnessed between Kenny and Craig under the stairwell, Scott wondered if they had done that to each other.
4. Scott noticed Tweek got real quiet after that one. Was he jealous of whoever had done that with Craig? 

Scott realized after a pause that it was his turn to say something. "Never have I ever snuck into a movie without paying," he said. A few kids drank to that, including Clyde, who playfully elbowed him and told Scott they'd have to change that.

The game went around the circle a few times. Scott finally got to drink when Butters admitted he'd never vaped, then again when Heidi said she'd never vandalized anything. Both things he was able to thank Clyde for. Had he ever really lived before they started hanging out?

Across the circle Craig poked the sides of Tweek’s face, turning his mouth up to a smile. “Turn that frown upside down Tweekers,” he slurred, obviously pretty wasted at this point.

Tweek scowled back at him, swiping his hand away. Craig didn’t take the hint, and instead, leaned in telling Tweek how cute he was.

Craig leaned forward, whispering something in Tweek’s ear. Whatever it was, Tweek didn’t take it well.

”Oh just stop it already!” He shouted, shoving Craig away and standing up to leave. Craig flopped over into Clyde’s lap before quickly scrambling up to follow.

”Stop what? What did I do?”

”Stop pretending that you like me!” Tweek shouted. “I don’t want to be a part of whatever experiment or dumb little bet with your friends this is. Gah! I know you don’t actually like me that way, so stop rubbing it in and just leave me the fuck alone!”

Tweek turned around and stormed off, and before Craig could follow, Tolkien whisked him away, taking him upstairs to rest.

”Drama alert!” Clyde slurred, flopping over and leaning heavily on Scott. Beneath Clyde, Scott sat straight up, keeping his back rigid, refusing to let himself get comfortable.

When Tolkien returned from putting Craig to bed, he looked at Clyde, rolled his eyes, and helped Scott drag him into the guest room. "Text your dad and tell him you're spending the night," he instructed Clyde, who did so without argument.

"I guess it's a good thing your costume is pajamas," Scott joked. "You don't even have to change for bed, you're all ready to go."

"Can you stay with me Scott?" Clyde asked.

“W-what??" Scott asked, shocked by his request.

Tolkien let out a snort of laughter. "Yeah he gets pretty clingy while drunk. Usually he asks me to stay and sleep with him, but looks like it's your lucky night this time," he said, giving Scott a pat on the head as he walked out.

"Pleeeease Scott," he whined, making those puppy dog eyes he did so well. 'How could I say no?'

"Fine," Scott rolled his eyes and texted his mom that he was staying over at Tolkien's. He took off his hat and cape as well as his earplugs which had been the only thing keeping him sane at this wild and noisy party, then crawled under the covers with Clyde. Sleeping in jeans would be pretty uncomfortable, but he was unwilling to strip down any further with someone else in the bed with him.

Clyde apparently had no such reservations. "It's hot in here," he complained, peeling off the panda onesie and once again stripping down to just a T-shirt and boxers.

"Night Scott," he said as he flicked off the lamp. There were a few moments of silence before Clyde mumbled something in Dutch. "Ik houd van jou." Scott had no idea what his drunken Dutch mumbling meant, if he remembered he'd ask Clyde in the morning.

Chapter Text

"Wow you two look cozy."

Scott blinked his eyes open and found Clyde snuggled into him with his head on his chest. How had that happened? They weren't touching at all when they'd fallen asleep. Scott had slept right through whenever Clyde had decided to cuddle up to him. Embarrassingly enough, it was the best night’s sleep he’d had in a while. At least he hadn’t fallen victim to another arousing dream. That fact brought him at least a little comfort as Craig stood at the foot of the bed with a slight smirk on his face as he looked them over.

"Oops guess I forgot to warn you, he's a sleep cuddler," Tolkien laughed from the doorway. If the tone of his voice was any indication, Scott was fairly certain that Tolkien had purposely decided not to mention it.

Craig picked up a throw pillow off the chair in the corner and smacked Clyde in the side of the head with it to wake him. "Ugghh," Clyde grumbled, lifting an arm to block the pillow from hitting him a second time as he sleepily buried his face further into Scott's chest. Scott simultaneously wanted to wrap his arms around him and pull him in tighter, and push him away as forcefully as he could. If Tolkien and Craig weren't staring them down it probably would've felt nice to wake up with Clyde like this, even though he shouldn’t be allowing himself to feel things like that he might’ve selfishly enjoyed it for a moment, but with Clyde's friends there it was just embarrassing.

"Uh Clyde," Scott said, giving him an awkward nudge.

 Clyde looked up, immediately blushing as he realized what he'd been doing. Quickly, he sat up, scrambling away from Scott. "Sorry," he apologized quietly, his cheeks burning red with embarrassment.

"I swear to god, sometimes I think you're gayer than me, dude," Craig joked, surprising Scott. He wasn't expecting Craig to be so open with that information after spending the last three years trying to convince the whole school he was actually straight.

Apparently Tolkien was surprised by that too. "Are you just being totally open with that now?" he asked, glancing over at Scott as if to remind Craig of his existence in the room.

Craig shrugged. "I might as well be, the whole party watched me get drunk and tell Tweek I wanted to kiss him, then get brutally rejected. If the whole school doesn't know already, they will by tomorrow."

Scott had to admit he felt a bit sorry for Craig. His relationship with Tweek had always been a topic of gossip around the school, but it seemed rather evident that Craig wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of the spotlight. It must’ve been hard for him, having the whole town get invested into his love life from the ripe old age of ten. Scott couldn’t even begin to imagine what it’d be like to be placed in his shoes.

Before heading off their separate ways, Scott, Clyde, and Craig had breakfast at Tolkien's house, at which point Tolkien decided to present Craig with his award for winning the Mario Kart tournament, a bag of weed from his dad's farm.

"Give it to Clyde, I don't really want it," Craig told him, brushing Tolkien off and loosely gesturing to their friend.

"Really?" Clyde asked, lighting up.

"Yeah," Craig shrugged. "My mom would fucking kill me if she smelled it on me."

"Sweet dude, thanks," Clyde replied. He went to shove the bag in his pocket, quickly realizing the panda onesie had none. "Scott I don't have pockets, can I put it in your purse?"

Scott nearly ground his teeth at that, letting out a long frustrated breath as Tolkien and Craig attempted to restrain their chuckles.

"You have a purse?" Craig asked, raising an eyebrow.

“He means the bag I keep my diabetes stuff in. He calls it a purse because he's ANNOYING," Scott replied, rolling his eyes, which earned him an exasperated look from Clyde.

"Wow, I didn't know you were such a bully Scott," he huffed, clearly holding back a smile as he pretended to be mad.

Scott just stuck out his tongue in response.

After Breakfast Scott and Clyde walked back to Clyde's house together. Scott had left his sleep stuff from the lock-in there and needed to retrieve it before heading home. "Hey Clyde, what does ik houd van jou mean?"

"What?" Clyde seemed very surprised by this, and Scott almost thought he saw a blush crawling across his cheeks. Was whatever it was really that embarrassing? Scott had to admit that made him a bit curious.

"You said it last night, just before we went to bed. I don't speak Dutch though," Scott replied.

"Oh, uh. It means I hope you sleep well," Clyde replied.

That was it? Scott wasn't sure why he seemed so embarrassed about that. Maybe Clyde found speaking Dutch a bit embarrassing in general, like how that kid in his math class, Davíd, hated speaking Spanish in front of white people.

Scott didn't want Clyde to be embarrassed of his culture; he thought it was cool that he could speak another language, even if it was only while drunk. "I like it when you speak Dutch, it's cool," he told Clyde.

"Bedankt,” Clyde replied quietly, holding a hand up to his face to hide his blush. 

Chapter Text

When Scott walked into the school Monday morning, Sophie was standing near the main entrance chatting with Jenny and Nichole. As she saw him, Sophie quickly said goodbye to her friends and rushed over to meet him. "Hey Scott," she greeted.

There was something different in the way she spoke to him today. Usually Sophie was pretty relaxed, but there was an excited nervousness in her mannerisms that confused Scott. Was she planning some kind of surprise? At the moment, he couldn't think of any other reason for her odd change in behavior.

"Hey Soph," he returned the greeting. "How was the rest of your weekend?"

"It was good, I finally had time to go to the stables yesterday. I haven't ridden Cider in a few weeks. I really missed her,” she replied. Cider was Sophie's horse. She was actually super into riding, though these days she was so busy with various other activities it was becoming hard to find the time for it. She’d tried to get Scott to try it out once or twice, but it had never worked out since Scott had a bit of a fear of horses. From far away they were cool, but when he got up close and personal with them and realized how huge they really were, it became a totally different story. He was perfectly happy to watch her ride from afar, but had absolutely no interest in doing it himself.

"That sounds fun, I bet she missed you too," Scott replied as they walked towards his locker together. Sophie went on, chatting about how she and Butters had ridden together, and how his horse Melancholy had made some real progress in his training and wasn't attempting to mount other horses nearly as often. Scott listened politely. The topic of conversation didn't particularly interest him, but it was important to Sophie and he liked listening to her speak.

"So..." she started, somewhat awkwardly transitioning to a new topic. "I was wondering if we could have lunch together today," she told him. "I know you've been eating with Clyde recently and that you like to keep a certain routine, so if you don't want to switch it up too much I totally get it, I just kinda wanted to spend some time with you.”

Scott took a moment to consider her proposal. He had been trying to distract himself from his crush on Clyde, and after that dream at the lock in and waking up in bed with him Sunday morning he could definitely use the distraction. Scott kept finding his mind wandering back to that moment with Clyde's face buried into his chest. He looked so adorable, Scott just wanted to hold him there forever, but he wasn't meant to feel that way for another boy. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t right.

"Sure Sophie, I'd love to. I'll just text Clyde and tell him I'm not available today. I'm sure he's been missing eating with the guys anyway,” Scott told her. That much at least was probably true, he’d been taking up nearly all of Clyde’s time lately, he had to be missing eating with Tolkien, Craig, and Jimmy at least a little bit. It wasn’t really fair to ask him to sacrifice his whole social life for him anyway. He reasoned that a day away from each other would do both of them some good.

Sophie pulled him into a hug. "You're the best," she told him. "Well I'd better head off to gym so I have plenty of time to get changed and stretched out. See you later!" Sophie turned around and hurried off to the locker room.

Scott pulled out his phone to let Clyde know the change in plan.

Clyde

Scott:

I can't hang out at lunch today.

Clyde:

What? Why? :(

Scott:

Eating with Sophie.

Clyde:

Oh..

Clyde:

Have fun ;)

Clyde:

Not too much fun though.

Clyde:

I'd better not see 'Scott and Sophie did it here' next time we go to the catwalk.

Scott:

Get your mind out of the gutter Clyde.

Scott:

I don't think I'd even want to do that...

Scott:

Not until marriage at least.

Clyde:

I forgot you were a good little Catholic lad :P

Scott:

Yeah you haven't totally corrupted me yet.

Clyde:

I'll get there eventually. ;)

Something about that text kept Scott’s mind racing all day.

Scott opted to meet Sophie in an empty math classroom. He purposely avoided the catwalk. It felt wrong to take her there, like that spot was sacred, meant only for him and Clyde. The first half of lunch was eaten without any sort of deep conversation. Sophie talked about something funny that happened in her first period class, and Scott brought an interesting scene from the book he was reading. Everything remained casual until she asked, "so do you really think I was the cutest girl at the lock-in?" Sophie was blushing and looking away a bit and it was at that moment that Scott realized that the reason for her previously nervous behavior was likely rooted in some sort of budding romantic interest.

Scott started to feel a bit excited. Sophie was exactly the kind of person he should be with. He was sure that once she was officially his girlfriend then he would finally stop thinking of Clyde so much, all he needed was to seal the deal, then he would have no reason to find his mind drifting towards fantasies of kissing Clyde.

"Of course I do,” Scott answered. “I've always thought you were beautiful Sophie. Right from the moment I met you." Scott remembered how excited he was when he found out another kid with diabetes was going to school with him. He'd convinced himself it was love at first sight. He’d been so fascinated with her then, a fascination that he needed to go back to.

"I think you're really cute too," she replied, her blush deepening. “You’ve always been cute.” Scott placed his hand gently above hers. Her hand was warm and soft, and holding her delicate fingers in his grasp felt nice, comfortable.

Feeling emboldened by her seemingly sudden interest, he decided to make his move. "I know you weren't really interested back then, but would you like to be my girlfriend now?"

"Yeah, I'd like that."

Later that night he got a text from Clyde.

Clyde

Clyde:

So how'd your lunch date with Sophie go? ^~^

Scott:

We made it official.😊

Clyde:

You're not gonna totally ditch me now that you have a girlfriend are you…?

Scott:

What? You jealous? :P

Clyde:

Maybe a little...😵💫

Scott:

You're such a dork.

Scott:

Don't worry, we're still friends.

Clyde:

Alright good, just making sure. <3

Clyde:

See you at lunch tomorrow?

Scott:

Of course!

Chapter Text

"Clyde, stop shoving gummy bears in your mouth, you're gonna choke,” Scott scolded.

Scott and Clyde were up in the catwalk again eating lunch. Scott had decided he'd trade off every other day between lunch with Clyde and lunch with Sophie. She wouldn't mind that he sometimes hung out with Clyde instead. Sophie was mostly glad that he'd expanded his social circle outside of just her and Butters. She wasn't really the jealous type which he was thankful for. He couldn’t imagine how he’d cope if she became possessive over him and told him that he couldn’t hang out with Clyde anymore, his new friend had become far too important to him.

Clyde at some point during their lunch together had started counting how many gummy bears he could fit in his mouth at once. He was now at fourteen and struggling to jam more inside. Evidently his record was sixteen and when Scott had told him he didn’t believe him, he just had to prove it.

"Seriously I don't wanna have to give you the Heimlich," Scott told him as Clyde managed to finagle a fifteenth in.

Clyde said something in response that Scott couldn't decipher through the massive wad of gelatin filling his mouth. "Dude, I can't understand you like that," he said, giggling.

Clyde was well past the point of actually being able to chew and swallow all these bears, so instead he spit them into the empty ziplock bag that had previously contained his sandwich. Scott wrinkled up his nose in disgust as he watched. "I said, what about mouth to mouth?" Clyde was smiling like what he'd just said was the most creative thing in the world. Scott just facepalmed, not at all impressed.

"That's quite literally the opposite of what you'd want me to do if you were choking. If I tried blowing into your mouth it would just force the food down further and get it even more stuck," Scott explained.

"Maybe it would go down far enough to just plop in my stomach and then we're all good," Clyde argued.

"The chances of that happening are slim to none. Why would I ever risk it when the Heimlich is already proven to be effective?"

"I like to live life dangerously," Clyde replied, making finger guns at a very unimpressed Scott.

"I'm going to push you off the catwalk," he deadpanned. 

"Aw I shouldn't have brought you around to hang out with my friends. You're starting to sound like Craig," Clyde whined. He was so cute, like seriously freaking adorable. Scott couldn’t help the smile that worked its way across his lips as they continued their playful banter.

"Don't act like you don't love me," Scott teased, poking at Clyde's side.

It was hard to tell in the dim lighting, but Scott could have sworn Clyde was blushing. The thought of it made his own heart rate pick up a bit. "What? Where'd you get that idea?" Clyde said it a little too quickly, with a bit of nervousness Scott hadn't expected. A nervousness that reminded him of Sophie’s just before asking him to meet her for lunch the day they’d made it official. Scott worked hard to push that thought from his mind.

"Relax, you can admit it,” he teased. “You're wearing socks right? By your logic that means you're protected. Besides, I didn't mean, like, literally in love with me. I know you're not into guys, I'm just joking."

"Oh yeah, definitely." Clyde replied awkwardly, pressing his lips into a thin line. Scott was confused by his reaction. Clyde was always making gay jokes, so why did he seem to take it so poorly when Scott made them back? Did they actually hurt his feelings somehow? But if they did why was he always bringing it up on his own? Trying to work out the answer was starting to make Scott’s brain hurt.

"You okay?" he asked Clyde.

"Yeah I'm fine," Clyde replied. "Just starting to get a headache." He closed his eyes and rested his head against the back wall of the walk. 

Scott’s face softened and he dug in his bag for a moment, sifting through his belongings, until finally producing a bottle of ibuprofen. "Did you want some for your head?" He offered. 

Clyde hesitated for a moment. "Uh sure, thanks," he finally replied, shaking out a pill and swallowing it with a sip of coke.

The next day at school Scott found a piece of notebook paper taped to his locker. His heart skipped at the sight of it, as he imagined Clyde writing him love notes like a secret admirer, though logically he knew that wouldn’t be the case. Clyde was straight. And Scott had a girlfriend, he shouldn’t even be considering Clyde in that way anymore, Sophie was his priority now, and she should be the only one he was wishing to receive love notes from. He needed to get his shit together and get Clyde out of his head before he let it ruin his relationship, and their friendship for that matter. Scott had so few friends already, he really couldn’t afford to lose any over an unfortunate crush.

Scott unfolded the paper, turning it over in his hands. It looked like it had been ripped from a notebook. Whoever had written it had pretty cursive writing, and had doodled hearts and flowers on the edges of the paper in colored pen. It was quite girly. Too girly even to be Sophie. He found that quite puzzling as scanned over the paper, reading its contents.

Dear Diary,

I couldn’t pay attention in math class today. I spent nearly all of it looking at Stan. He’s so cute. Sometimes I wish I was a girl. Maybe then he’d notice me.

Remembering what he’d seen in the science lab, Scott put the pieces together pretty quickly. This was a page from Butters’ diary. But why was it taped to his locker? Looking around, Scott could see a lot of lockers with notes taped to them. A few kids were gathered with their friends around their own pages, laughing as they read them.

“Get this,” one kid said aloud to their friend. “Tonight my father sent me upstairs to my room in the middle of dinner. He told me to stop making silly faces at the table and that I looked like a jackass. I wasn’t making any faces though. That’s just how my face looks naturally. I guess I’ll be going to bed hungry again. Why does this keep happening?”

Scott felt bad for Butters. If his private information were being shared around the school like that, he’d probably just beg his parents to move to another state and never show his face around South Park ever again. He couldn’t imagine having to face the entire school if his crush on Clyde got out like that. Nobody should have to be outed like that, so Scott took it upon himself to remove the pages that still hung from lockers, and shove them in his backpack to return to Butters later. He hoped that would at least help to minimize the damage.

“Dude, did you do this?” Clyde asked him disbelievingly when he saw Scott with his hands full of notebook pages.

“What? Of course not,” Scott replied, a bit hurt that he’d even consider that Scott would possibly pull a stunt like that. Sure Butters had beat him up one time in fourth grade, but this was a whole different level of cruel. “Help me take them down,” he instructed. With both of them working on the task, they managed to retrieve about twenty pages before they were read. Even so, there were still at least thirty that people had read, photographed, and posted online for the world to see.

“YOU FAT PIECE OF SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!” Scott heard someone shout from further down the hall. As he and Clyde made their way over Eric and Kenny came into view, a large crowd of students surrounding them already, pushing each other around trying to get a better view of the fight that was clearly about to break loose. Some kids were even filming it.

“Jesus Kinny, it’s just a prank dude,” Eric replied dismissively, showing absolutely no remorse for the damage he caused. “Butters left his faggy journal in art class Friday. If he didn’t want people reading it he probably shouldn’t have left it around for anyone to find.”

Kenny rushed forward and slammed Cartman into the wall. Scott winced as he watched his head knock loudly against a row of lockers. “Just a prank?” Kenny spat. “Just a fucking prank How would you like it if someone told everyone your most personal thoughts?”

“I’m not dumb enough to write them down Kinny,” replied Eric. “I keep them all up here in my brain.”

Scott could practically see steam coming out of Kenny's ears as they pulled back a fist and connected it with Eric’s jaw.

“Alright, well now I’m officially pissed off,” Eric commented, stomping on Kenny’s foot. As they took a step back, releasing their grip on him, Eric managed to land a few punches of his own. The two went at it for nearly five minutes before the teachers were finally able to pull them apart.

Scott didn’t see Butters all morning. He must’ve been skipping class, not wanting to show his face around school after Cartman’s very cruel “prank.” It’s not like Scott could blame him, if someone told the whole school his most private thoughts about Clyde he’d probably beg his parents to move to another state.

At lunchtime he was meant to eat with Sophie, but instead he told her he was going to look for Butters. She offered to come with him, but he’d declined. Scott ate his sandwich fairly quickly, then he excused himself to search around all the school’s hiding spots for Butters. Apparently Clyde had the same idea; Scott had run into him climbing down out of the catwalk when he’d gone to check it and they’d teamed up, sharing their ideas of where he might be hiding. Eventually they found him in the stairwell behind the mess of chairs and desks, the same place where Scott had hidden only a little over a week prior. It was hard to believe so much had happened in only that short amount of time.

“Go away,” Butters murmured as Scott shimmied behind the stacks of chairs that hid the sad blond. His eyes were red and puffy; it was obvious Butters had been crying a lot, probably all day even. Scott ignored his request and sat down beside him anyway, sympathetically resting a hand on his shoulder for a moment. Moments later Clyde shimmied through and joined them. It was pretty cramped back there with all three of them.

“Clyde and I managed to pull a bunch of these down before they got read,” Scott told him, reaching into his backpack and pulling out a mess of papers. “I thought I’d let you decide what to do with them.”

“Just shred them, or burn them. I don’t care as long as they’re destroyed,” Butters replied, laying his head on his knees.

Scott returned the papers to his backpack and wrapped an arm over Butters’ shoulder. He didn’t say anything, not wanting to lie and say he was sure it would blow over soon or that not as many people had seen them as he thought. Instead he just opted for silent support.

Butters stayed stiff for a moment, then eventually loosened up and leaned over, burying his face into Scott’s shoulder, gripping tightly at his sweater as he soaked it with tears. Apparently, the sheer sight of seeing someone else so worked up was enough to set off Clyde’s fragile emotions and Scott ended up with him crying into his other shoulder. “I’m so sorry that happened to you Butters, that must be so hard,” Clyde sobbed. Scott felt quite awkward caught in between them like that.

Eventually when Clyde and Butters had calmed down enough, they all made plans to hang out that evening. Clyde had suggested they build a bonfire in his backyard and burn the pages, and also make s’mores, claiming that there was nothing that pigging out on marshmallows couldn’t make better. Scott had mentioned to Butters that Kenny fought Cartman earlier and after hearing that Butters insisted they join their gathering.

It was kind of funny. Scott expected Butters to hug and thank Kenny for acting like Prince Charming and defending his honor, however Butters just scolded them for their recklessness. “Look at that, he gave ya a black eye. You didn’t have’ta go and get yourself hurt just because I was sad.”

Butters lightly traced his thumb over the edge of Kenny’s black eye. Scott could see their face reddening, and Kenny attempted to brush it off. “Ah well, you should’ve seen how he looked. Don’t worry Buttercup, I got him worse.”

“If something serious happened to you because of me I’d never forgive myself,” Butters told them.

“Leo, I make my own choices. I fought him because I wanted to. That’s nobody’s fault but mine,” Kenny replied, pulling Butters into a tight hug. Butters immediately curled into their chest.

“Those two are so in love,” Clyde commented quietly, giving Scott a playful nudge. 

“Nope that can’t be it,” Scott replied. “Look, Butters has socks on. I believe that means scientifically that this is a totally platonic moment.”

“Wow, really using my own words against me aren’t you Scott?”

“Yep,” he replied, sticking his tongue out.

“Asshole,” Clyde murmured, leaning his head on Scott’s shoulder. Scott couldn’t help but let his gaze drift down to Clyde’s feet and how they were covered only by a pair of Lightning McQueen crocs, no socks in sight, then filed that bit of information away, deep into the furthest recesses of his brain.

Chapter Text

Over the next few weeks the buzz of Butters’ diary being spread around the school had died down. Butters and Kenny had gotten closer than ever and with them constantly being attached at the hip, people had little opportunity to make fun of him without threat of a beat down. Between that and the young hot English teacher getting fired after Tammy Warner was caught giving him head during his planning period, everyone had pretty much forgotten about it. That’s how it always went with gossip at their school, within a few weeks it’d probably be forgotten and replaced with the next big incident.

Scott had been hanging out with either Sophie or Clyde practically every day. A few times Clyde had even invited him along to hang out with his whole group. Scott had never been more social in his life. It was crazy how something as simple as making one new friend would change everything so much. One new friend who he thought about all the time. One new friend that he really wanted to kiss. One new friend he would never dare to, both in fear of ruining their friendship and betraying not only his faith but his girlfriend.

Since breaking up with Millie, Clyde hadn’t gone out with any other girls, which confused Scott. He’d said they’d broken up because he liked someone else, so why hadn’t he made a move on her yet? Clyde briefly considered that he could be the “someone else,” then immediately pushed the thought from his mind. It was best not to get his hopes up for something so unlikely. Besides, even if Clyde did like him back, they shouldn’t act on it. Scott was with Sophie, and he could seriously see himself building a life with her, settling down, getting married, and having a few kids, living out their lives the way God intended them to. A romantic relationship with Clyde simply didn’t fit into that equation, no matter how often he sat up late at night wishing it did.

The truth of the matter was that beginning a relationship with Sophie had done nothing to erase his feelings for Clyde. He wondered how much longer he could allow himself to entertain them before they’d end up crossing into a territory they couldn’t return from. Scott knew that he should probably start distancing himself from Clyde, but selfishly he couldn’t bring himself to.

He had to admit he felt a little jealous of Tweek and Craig and their newly rekindled relationship. Apparently they’d made up after fighting at the party and ended up getting back together. He was happy for them, and sometimes let himself wonder what it would be like to be in a relationship like that. Ultimately his religious guilt kept winning out and stopping him from pursuing it. At least he could still have it in his dreams. It was damn near every night now that Clyde found his way into them, kissing Scott gently and holding him like there was nobody else in the world. Waking up in the morning was starting to feel like a disappointment.

As the end of the school day rolled around, Scott and Clyde made their way to the theater hall. The musical showed on Friday, so they had dress rehearsals every day this week (lovingly referred to by the drama club as as Hell week).

“Hey fellas,” Butters greeted them. He was back to his usual chipper self now that the gossip had died down. Scott did notice however that some major social shifts had occurred within Butters’ friend group since the incident.

First off, Eric was being shunned by most of their grade. Everyone thought he’d taken the whole messing with Butters thing a little too far. They were all sick of his shit. Scott had also noticed that Stan had pulled away from their friend group as well, no longer splitting his time between them and the goths. Pete and the rest of them seemed to be Stan’s new permanent social group. The rumors about him and Butters must have gotten to him, though from the way he’d been practically hinging off Kenny lately, Butters had pretty clearly gotten over whatever little crush he’d had on Stan.

“Hey Butters, you ready to be tortured with endless rehearsals?” Clyde asked, laughing.

“Aww, it won’t really be that bad, will it?” Butters asked, nervously rubbing his knuckles together.

“Nah only for Clyde,” Scott put in, elbowing the other boy playfully. “The director told me he was gonna be hard on him specifically.”

“I’ll just find a way to make sure you suffer with me,” he teased, winking at Scott and giving him one of those smiles that made him feel like melting into a puddle of goo.

If he wasn’t meant to love Clyde, why did it seem to come so naturally to him? And why wasn’t loving Sophie anywhere near as easy for him? Sure, Scott did love her in a way, but she didn’t excite him in the way Clyde did, talking to her didn’t give him butterflies, and kissing her in real life paled in comparison to the dreams he had of Clyde. He didn’t want these feelings, so why wouldn’t they just go away already, leave him alone and let him get on with his life. He’d heard that God tested people, but surely he didn’t have to be this persistent, right?

Friday rolled around in no time. The musical was a success, and now that it was over, it was time for the real fun: the cast (and crew) party at Tolkien’s house.

Scott and Clyde had already basically made plans to spend the night there after it was over. Since Clyde had started inviting him to more group hangouts, Scott had really made himself a part of Clyde’s social circle. He wasn’t nearly as close to Craig, Tolkien, Jimmy or even Tweek as he was to Clyde, but they got along well enough.

No sooner than he’d gotten in the door, Scott found himself with a drink being thrusted into his hands. “Wow, someone’s a little excited to be handing out booze,” he said, raising an eyebrow at Clyde, who was happily drinking from a cup of his own.

“Dude I wanna see you drunk so bad. I’ve got to know what you’re like,” he replied. As usual he found himself unable to say no to Clyde. It wasn’t until he’d finished the whole cup that the thought had crossed his mind: how much sugar was in this?

“Clyde, what did you give me?” He asked, a bit worriedly. He didn’t want to overdo it on the sugar. Sure he had his insulin, but that didn’t mean he should just be ingesting as much as he wanted whenever he wanted.

“Coke zero with some rum in it. Don’t worry, it’s sugar free. I checked,” Clyde replied. “I made sure Tolkien got it especially for you.” 

He was giving Scott this look that made his heart skip. Clyde Donovan looked at Scott like he was the most interesting person he’d ever seen. It was driving Scott absolutely insane, so in an attempt to clear his mind a bit, he asked Clyde for another drink.

Scott loosened up a lot after his second drink. Having never really drank before, his alcohol tolerance was nonexistent. Clyde was a little more level headed, since he actually had some tolerance built up, and reminded him every so often to check his sugar levels. It made Scott feel warm and fuzzy to know that Clyde cared enough to keep checking up on him.

At some point though, Clyde ended up pretty wasted as well. Tolkien took one look at them stumbling around the party and giggling uncontrollably and shoved them towards the guest room. “Yeah you two are getting cut off, time for bed.”

“Ja mama,” Clyde replied with more giggles. Tolkien rolled his eyes and left the room, shutting the door behind him. Scott and Clyde sat down on the bed.

“Did you just call him mommy in Dutch?” Scott laughed.

“Ja, Tolkien is als een moeder.”

“Dude, I don’t actually speak Dutch. Speak English.”

“Nee ik heb er geen zin in, jij bent niet de baas over mij.”

“Oh my god, shut up.” Scott was halfway between annoyed and really enjoying their conversation, even though it was incredibly one sided considering that he had no idea what Clyde was saying. Regardless of that, Scott just enjoyed talking to him, and he’d been honest when he’d told him he liked hearing him speak Dutch, even if he didn’t really understand it. Maybe one day Clyde would teach him.

“Maak mij,” Clyde replied, a bit indignantly. That sounded similar enough to English that Scott easily translated it to ‘make me.’ Well if he insisted. Scott’s decision making skills were heavily impaired. Had he been sober his chosen method would probably be to smother him with a pillow until he tapped out, but all night drunken Scott could only think about kissing Clyde, so he gave in and finally did.

Clyde’s eyes widened in shock and his body remained stiff while he processed what was occurring. Then once he had, he was kissing back with the same intensity he always had in Scott’s dreams. Scott felt like he was floating. He’d wanted this for so long, and it was finally happening. Or was it? Had he actually fallen asleep already and started dreaming? Oh well, he didn’t really care. Dream or not, kissing Clyde was pretty enjoyable and he wanted to savor every moment of it.

Clyde’s hand made its way up to the back of Scott’s head and he ran his fingers through Scott’s curls. Scott didn’t really know what to do with his own hands. He and Sophie had really only engaged in sweet little innocent pecks, nothing like this. Clyde pulled away, sensing Scott’s shift in mood. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Scott admitted. “Like where do I put my hands?”

Clyde laughed. “Oh my god, you’re so adorable,” he replied, pulling Scott in and kissing his forehead. “We should probably get to bed though.”

“What? But I was enjoying that,” Scott whined.

“I just don’t want to go too far while we’re drunk. If you still want to once we’ve sobered up, then we’ll continue, okay?”

”Okay,” Scott murmured.

”I hope you’ll still want to,” Clyde told him, gently stroking his cheek with his thumb. “I really like you Scott.”

”I’ve been dreaming of doing that for weeks,” Scott mumbled before finally giving in to his heavy eyelids and letting sleep overtake him.

Chapter Text

The next morning Scott woke to the feeling of a throbbing head and fleeting little snippets of memories of Clyde’s lips against his. The other boy was in bed with him, same as last time they’d partied at Tolkien’s, with one hand resting on Scott’s collarbone and his face nestled into his shoulder as he slept. A small smile made its way onto Scott’s face as he took in the sight of Clyde’s thick eyelashes resting contentedly against his cheeks, relishing in the feeling of their bodies pressed together, the rhythmic sound of Clyde’s breathing, and most of all in the fact that the rest of their friends were nowhere to be found. This moment was theirs and theirs alone.

A guilty part of him thought that despite the feeling of his head splitting in half he wouldn’t mind waking up like this every morning if only to feel this close to Clyde. Alas, that was a life of sin that he couldn’t allow himself to live, and regretfully he nudged the other boy awake.

Clyde let out a small groan, wrapping his arm over his eyes to block out the light before finally opening them and letting them rest on Scott’s face. His lips curled up into a smile as he looked him over, sweeping his eyes over him with such fascination that Scott felt like a piece of art placed in front of him. “Morning,” Clyde murmured in a sleepy voice that Scott wished he could capture and replay over and over again. “How are you feeling?”

“Like someone hit me in the head with a baseball bat,” Scott admitted, grimacing a bit.

Clyde let out a light laugh, pushing himself up to a seated position. “Aww baby’s first hangover, I’ll get the camera,” he teased, sticking out a hand and ruffling Scott’s curls.

“Fuck off,” Scott groaned, clumsily swiping his hand away as he scrunched up his face to show his displeasure. Clyde simply laughed it off.

“Damn, someone’s grumpy this morning,” he commented as he threw his legs over the side of the bed and slipped on his jeans. Scott couldn’t exactly remember when they’d come off last night, or anything really that had led them into the room for that matter, though the lack of memories didn’t bother him much. If their last time sleeping in this room was any indication, Clyde had probably gotten hot or uncomfortable and stripped down to his boxers at some point in the night to help him sleep better, and he was a notorious sleep cuddler. Scott doubted anything would’ve happened between them last night. If Scott had made a move in his drunken haze, Clyde probably wouldn’t be behaving so comfortably right now.

The blurry memories of their lips pressed together and Clyde’s hands tangled up in his curls were clearly just another one of Scott’s dreams, no matter how real they might have felt. Clyde was straight, and even though he hadn’t made his move yet, he was crushing on some girl he insisted on keeping secret. Scott wouldn’t allow himself to hope for anything else.

“Stay here,” Clyde told him, affectionately resting a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll get you something to help with that headache.”

Scott could feel his cheeks burning. Clyde was behaving so sweetly this morning, taking care of him and looking at him so affectionately. It made his heart flutter wildly in his chest. 

Clyde returned moments later with a bottle of water and an aspirin. “You’re gonna want to drink all of that, trust me,” he instructed.

Scott listened, chugging nearly the whole bottle in one go before finally coming up for air. “So, was seeing me drunk all that you hoped for?” he asked.

He could have sworn he saw Clyde’s cheeks redden as he considered his answer. “Yeah it was,” he replied. “How much of last night do you remember?”

Scott wracked his brain for any specific details. “You gave me rum and coke, sugar free. We danced together for a bit even though neither of us are good at it. You kept checking up on me, making sure I kept my blood sugar in a healthy range. At some point we ended up in the backyard, but I can’t remember why. It was chilly so you gave me your jacket.”

“Anything else?” Clyde asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Scott replied. He thought he caught Clyde frowning a bit at that. 

“I guess I got a little heavy handed with the drinks,” Clyde murmured. “I didn’t mean for you to black out.”

“It’s okay,” Scott replied. “I had fun, at least what I do remember was fun. Do you remember anything more than that?”

Clyde hesitated for a moment before responding. “Not much. Tolkien made us go to bed after he found us stumbling around and attempting to use the trampoline. He was worried we’d break our necks.”

“That was probably a good call,” Scott replied laughing.

Clyde almost looked like he wanted to add something else, but then Craig appeared in the doorway. “Oh good, you two lovebirds are up,” he teased.

“Fuck off Craig,” Clyde huffed crossing his arms.

Craig simply shrugged and flicked him off in response. “Tolkien’s making waffles if you two wanna eat at all.”

Clyde perked up at the mention of food. “Oh I would kill for some waffles, you coming Scott.”

“Uhh go ahead, I’ve gotta check my blood sugar,” Scott replied. Clyde nodded and followed Craig downstairs.

As Scott went about his sugar checking routine he couldn’t help but think about what Craig had called them: lovebirds. Did Craig know he liked Clyde? Or was the nickname mostly to tease Clyde about how close he and Scott had gotten? And if Craig had noticed Scott’s crush, did that mean others had too? Would Sophie notice? Would it ruin their friendship when she did? Scott chewed anxiously at the inside of his cheek as he mulled over those questions.

Chapter Text

Scott tried his best to distance himself from Clyde in the days after the party. Nothing too drastic, Scott still wanted him to be a part of his life, just maybe not such a big one. He hadn’t mentioned anything to Clyde about that though, instead just making up excuses to ditch their usual hangouts, choosing to spend more time with Sophie instead. If only they didn’t entail going to the stables with her to watch her ride.

Cider was a friendly enough horse, as far as horses go, but Scott still didn’t want to get within a ten foot radius of her. Besides, the whole barn area stunk like shit. He really couldn’t understand why Sophie liked riding so much, but he was trying his best to stomach his distaste and be a supportive boyfriend.

“Isn’t she just gorgeous?” Sophie asked as she ran a brush across Cider’s golden brown body.

“Uh yeah, she’s really pretty Soph,” Scott replied distractedly as he warily focused his attention onto Butters’ horse Melancholy causing a ruckus a few stalls down. “He’s never been able to break out before, has he?”

Sophie followed his gaze to the rowdy cream colored horse banging around the stall. “Nah, he gets antsy when he sees other horses about to be taken out of their stalls, especially mares. Horny little devil,” she commented under her breath. “Never actually managed to get out on his own though, so no need to worry about it.”

Scott watched Sophie ride for a couple hours until both she and Cider needed a break. Luckily it was a slow riding day, and not a lot of people were coming in and out which meant the majority of the horses stayed in their stall the whole time. It was one less thing for Scott to worry about.

All the while Clyde had been texting him, or more so sending him four hundred videos on TikTok to watch with little comments attached to them. Scott did his best not to become too engrossed in them. He seriously needed to work on getting over his little crush, it wasn’t fair to Sophie how much time he spent thinking about kissing Clyde.

The dreams had gotten far too realistic lately, they almost felt like memories. The feeling of Clyde’s fingers running through his curls, his teeth lightly grazing across his bottom lip, he could imagine it all so perfectly. He caught himself replaying the scenes in his mind as he watched Sophie. 

After her riding practice, the two of them headed back to her place.

“I’m gonna go take a shower,” she told him as they got up to her room. “Just make yourself at home, I’ll be out soon.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek before grabbing a change of clothes and heading off to her bathroom.

Scott laid across the bed, scrolling through his phone, finally deciding to look through all the videos Clyde had sent him. They were pretty random for the most part, a cat skateboarding, old vines that were reuploaded to TikTok, TDI clips, SpongeBob AI songs, it was pretty much exactly what Scott expected Clyde’s TikTok feed to look like. He smiled as he scrolled through the videos and read the little comments that Clyde had made about them.

The door to the bathroom opened and out walked Sophie in nothing more than a pair of shorts and a sports bra. Scott felt a blush creeping across his face, his eyes going wide for a moment before finding the decency to avert his gaze. “Oh uh, wow,” was all he could manage as he wondered if she’d done so purposefully at all. Was he supposed to do something more than look away, or had he acted appropriately? Scott had always heard other guys talking about girls playing mind games, though he didn’t think Sophie seemed like that type. 

“Yeah I might have forgotten to grab a shirt,” she replied awkwardly, rubbing the back of her neck before quickly shuffling over to her dresser to cover up.

As they got on with their usual movie night, Scott’s mind kept drifting back to it, wondering if there was something more he should’ve done instead of freezing up like that. Clyde was good with girls, maybe he’d ask him later, though the thought of asking for his advice on a relationship while Scott was hopelessly crushing on him somehow didn’t seem right. 

“Jesus Scott,” Sophie murmured, gently resting a hand on his cheek. “Has anyone ever told you how cute you are?”

“Oh my god, you’re so adorable.” Scott could hear it in his head as clear as day. He couldn’t remember when Clyde had said it to him, or if he’d even said it at all. Maybe it had only happened in Scott’s dreams. Regardless, he blushed at the thought of it.

“You’re really pretty too,” he told Sophie, shifting some of the attention away from himself.

Her hand was still on his cheek, and her thumb lightly traced circles around his skin as she gazed into his eyes. Though she looked at him like he was the eighth wonder of the world, it stirred up no fluttery feelings inside of him, but it was comfortable and warm and there was a part of him that liked the attention regardless.

He felt a tugging feeling in his chest as he remembered how it had felt waking up next to Clyde after the cast party, how Clyde had looked at him in such a similar way and how it had caused an explosion of butterflies to rise into his chest. Scott longed for that feeling again.

He found himself leaning closer to Sophie, hoping it would spark something, anything inside of him. She leaned forward as well, closing the distance between their lips, but still, Scott felt nothing. He moved his lips mechanically against hers, following the movement of her own mouth. Her soft and sweet kisses just weren’t doing anything for him. Frustrated in his lack of feeling he deepened the kiss, hoping for just a sliver of the feeling he got when he dreamed of Clyde.

That feeling didn’t appear until his eyes fluttered shut and he pictured the other boy beside him on the bed. His hand was the one sliding over Scott’s shoulders, it was Clyde’s mouth that Scott’s tongue was eagerly exploring.

Oh god, he was sick in the head for that, for thinking of Clyde, wishing it was him he was kissing instead of his girlfriend. He was sure going to have an interesting confession this week, although the thought of sharing these thoughts with Father Maxi made him feel a little bit sick to his stomach.

He didn’t want anyone to know all the sinful thoughts he’d been having, but maybe the lack of acknowledgement was what was making them worse. Maybe that was God’s way of telling him he needed to seek help from the church.

“Are you okay?” Sophie asked, sensing that something seemed to be bothering him.

“Yeah, just, let’s reel it in a bit. I don’t want to go too far right now,” he told her a bit awkwardly. The statement was technically true, yet not the whole truth. He’d been telling a lot of half truths lately.

Truth: he’d enjoyed kissing Sophie.

More Accurate Truth: he’d only enjoyed it because he’d imagined she was Clyde.

Most Accurate Truth: he was definitely going to Hell for that.

“Of course,” she told him, kissing his cheek. “We can wait as long as you like. You’re worth it.”

Chapter Text

Friday, Clyde slipped into the stands next to Scott as he was sitting at Sophie’s practice. Scott looked up from his book as he noticed someone sitting beside him, a bit surprised when his eyes fell on Clyde. He hadn’t seen him at one of Sophie’s practices since she’d been the exciting new girl in fourth grade who all the guys had wanted. After that phase had ended, Clyde and the other guys had backed off and Scott had been the only guy to show up to her practices for several years.

Clyde looked uncharacteristically nervous, as if he was having trouble bringing himself to speak. Scott had never seen him like this; he had always been so outgoing and noticing this change in demeanor caused a tight squeezing feeling within Scott’s chest.

Clyde finally gathered his words and asked, “Are you mad at me?” The sad, almost betrayed look his friend was giving him with those big brown eyes was almost too much to bear. Scott found himself looking away from them, quickly focusing his gaze back onto Sophie as she moved across the field with the ball.

”No,” he replied, doing his best to keep his tone even so that Clyde couldn’t pick up on any of the thoughts he’d been struggling with recently. “I’ve just been busy with Sophie, y’know, honeymoon phase and all that.”

Clyde let out a long breath of relief. “Thank God,” he murmured. “I was worried I did something to upset you. You’ve barely talked to me all week.”

“Yeah, I know,” Scott replied, a bit of regret present in his voice. “I’m sorry for skipping our lunches.”

Clyde, having perked up a bit, slung an arm casually over his shoulder. “It’s alright dude, I get it. Did you have any plans when you were done with Sophie’s practice? Maybe we could hang out this weekend.”

“We were gonna head over to Tweak Bros after this, did you want to come with?” Scott offered.

“Uh sure,” Clyde replied. He didn’t look too excited though. Did things not work out with that girl he liked? Was that why he was so sad looking? He did look kind of lonely. Or maybe he just didn’t like Sophie that much and wasn’t thrilled about having to share Scott with her, he had admitted to being a little bit jealous, though Scott had taken that as a joke at the time. “After Tweak Bros, you doing anything?”

“I was just gonna walk Sophie home, why?”

Clyde paused and took a deep breath like he was trying to find the courage to say whatever he was about to. His nervous behavior was starting to worry Scott. “Did you want to maybe spend the night at my house? My dad’s gonna be gone all weekend and it gets pretty lonely all by myself.”

As Clyde was speaking, he nervously bounced one leg. He couldn’t seem to sit still, and was avoiding Scott’s eye contact. Was this some sort of cry for help? What kind of bad things was he scared would happen if he was left there alone? Scott briefly wondered if Clyde wasn’t as happy as he let on. Maybe he was struggling in some way that he’d kept hidden. He realized that he had been so focused on his own struggles with how Clyde made him feel that he never even considered that Clyde might have his own issues with his mental health, though after how his mother had died it wasn’t exactly like he had a perfect life. He became aware of the fact that as much as he knew about his classmates through secrets that were unknowingly spilled in his presence, he really didn’t know much about Clyde at all. He briefly wondered if Clyde still felt guilty about the circumstances of his mother’s passing, or if he had ever thought about hurting himself in any way as a result of it. Scott felt a sudden rush of protective energy towards him as he considered it.

“Yeah I can come over,” he replied. If there was any chance that Clyde was struggling with something serious, he wanted to be there for him. Scott found Clyde’s hand and picked it up in his, giving it a reassuring squeeze, pushing down fluttery feeling that began to rise in his chest as he did so. “Are you alright?”

Clyde nodded, giving him a slight smile that didn’t quite hide the troubled look in his eyes. “Yeah I’m alright.”

After Tweak Bros and dropping off Sophie, Scott and Clyde walked towards Scott’s house so he could grab a change of clothes and let his parents know he’d be spending the night at Clyde’s. They were in and out rather quickly, as Scott’s dad was still at work and his mom wasn’t much of a talker; she hadn’t even asked about any of the details, just smiled and said “that sounds nice,” before casually waving him off. Before he even knew it they were on Clyde’s front lawn.

As they approached the door they were immediately greeted with the sound of barking from Clyde’s dog. Once the door had opened, they were nearly tackled by the black and white border collie. “Hey Harper, I missed you,” Clyde told him, scratching between his ears with a smile. Being with his dog did seem to calm him down a bit, and Scott watched as the interacted, a small smile curling across his lips.

Clyde set down his things by the door and started walking towards the kitchen. “Let’s get you some dinner buddy. I bet you’re hungry,” he cooed as Harper excitedly followed, bouncing around and wagging his tail enthusiastically.

Scott wondered if Clyde’s previously nervous demeanor was all in his imagination. He seemed pretty much like his normal self now. There was no sign of the awkwardness or jittering Scott had seen before. Maybe Scott had just misread the situation; he had to admit he wasn’t always the best at reading people. Maybe Clyde’s behavior hadn’t been anything more than the residual nerves of asking Scott if he was angry with him, and now that he was sure that things were okay between them he’d let go of a lot of that stress. Whatever the reason for Clyde’s anxious jittering that afternoon, Scott didn’t like seeing him like that and hoped he was doing better now.

Chapter Text

“Wait, what? You’ve never watched Avatar: The Last Airbender?” Scott asked in shock.

“Nope, never,” Clyde replied, shrugging his shoulders while Scott stared at him with his mouth agape. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I can’t believe it. Dude, you’re missing out on quite possibly the best cartoon of all time.”

“Is it really that good?” Clyde asked, sounding somewhat skeptical.

“Uh, yes!” Scott replied. “Hand me the remote, I’m putting it on. You don’t have a choice by the way.” Clyde let out a snort of laughter and obeyed, handing the remote over to him.

Scott clicked on the Netflix icon and then typed “avatar” into the search bar. Once he’d located the show, he clicked to start it. 

“Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the fire nation attacked. Only the avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them. But when the world needed him the most, he vanished.”

Scott and Clyde got through a few episodes before Scott noticed Clyde’s nervous behavior beginning to return. His leg bounced up and down restlessly, and he appeared to be chewing the inside of his cheek. Clyde’s brow was furrowing as if something had begun to deeply worry him. Scott paused the show and found his hand, giving it a tight reassuring squeeze. 

“What’s bugging you?” he asked gently, letting his eyes sweep over Clyde, taking in every bit of his facial expressions and body language as if the answer would become obvious if he just looked hard enough.

Clyde shut his eyes tightly, taking a few deep breaths. “Sometimes I just get really anxious about my dad leaving,” he admitted. “Ever since my mom died, whenever he goes on a trip and leaves me here I just get these really intense intrusive thoughts telling me he isn’t coming back. I just get caught up in imagining all the ways he could die. It’s pretty fucked up.”

Clyde looked so small and helpless in that moment, staring back at him with those wide brown eyes that always made Scott’s knees feel weak. God, Clyde Donovan was going to be the death of him.

“Clyde, come here,” Scott said, opening his arms for a hug. The other boy immediately latched onto him without argument, burying his face into Scott’s chest and wrapping his arms tightly around his waist. Scott wrapped his arms around Clyde as well, allowing one hand to rest on his back while the other rested on the back of his head, his finger tips massaging gently through his hair. “Does this feel better?” He murmured.

“Mhm,” Clyde nodded into his chest, his voice muffled by the fabric of his sweater. “It does, thank you.”

Scott wasn’t sure if Clyde was particularly religious, but he figured that in that moment, praying couldn’t hurt. It might even help. So he did. “Dear God,” he started, clasping his hands together and resting them lightly between Clyde’s shoulder blades. “Please watch over Clyde’s father on his business trip. We ask you to bless him with safe travels so that he can return home to his son without injury. Amen.”

“Thank you,” Clyde said again. The stayed like that for a moment, with Clyde settled against Scott’s chest before he finally pushed himself up to look Scott in the eye. “Do you want to smoke weed with me?” he asked.

“Huh?” Scott replied, surprised by the sudden topic change.

“I just have so many thoughts just swirling around right now, and I think it might help calm them down. I just want to be out of my own head a bit. You know?”

“Can’t that stuff make you more paranoid though?” Scott asked. “What if it makes things worse?”

“It can for some people, but I’ve never had a reaction like that. You don’t have to do it with me if you don’t want to. I just think I might need it and I wanted to offer.”

“Uh okay,” Scott nodded.

The change in Clyde’s mood wasn’t instant. It wasn’t until he was halfway finished with his joint that the anxious look started to melt off his face. He looked so peaceful. Scott wondered what it was like to have your worries melt away like that, he’d certainly had a lot as of late. Maybe it would be nice to get out of his head for a few hours and forget about his constant emotional turmoil. “Hey Clyde, actually, can I try?” he asked a bit nervously.

Clyde’s lips curled into a smile as he passed him the joint. “Sure thing Scotty Boy, enjoy,” he said, giggling at the absurdity of the words that had just come out of his mouth.

For a moment, Scott just turned over the joint in his fingers, studying it. Then finally he brought it to his lips. He felt his lungs tickle as the smoke hit them and he coughed just like when he’d tried vaping. Clyde looked like he was about to take the joint back when Scott finally regained control of his breathing. “No, hold on. I can do this,” he told Clyde. The second hit was easier. His lungs still tickled, but not as violently as before. He managed it without such intense coughing. The third hit he didn’t even need to cough at all. By this point the joint was nearly burnt out and he passed it back to Clyde to finish it off.

Scott felt weightless, but also uncharacteristically heavy. His legs felt like boulders, but his chest felt light. He almost thought he could feel his soul separating from himself and floating above his body. He sunk down into the couch, lying across it with his legs in Clyde’s lap. Clyde rested one hand on the top of Scott’s thigh, lightly stroking his thumb over the denim covering his leg. Scott’s heart fluttered at the touch. Now this, he knew was temptation, the silent wish for Clyde’s hands to go on an exploration, the silent wish for this contact to not be so PG, the wish for them to reenact all of Scott’s dreams.

“So how’s your first trip? What’s on your mind?” Clyde asked, giving his leg a firm squeeze.

Scott blushed, but found himself unable to keep from asking “Have you ever thought about how, like, it would be to kiss another guy?” Scott immediately felt embarrassed as the words escaped his mouth. “Sorry,” he apologized reflexively.

Clyde looked back at him, a bit of a sheepish smile crossing his face. “I mean, shit Scott, I’ve done more than just wonder…”

Scott sat up quickly, feeling a bit dizzy. He wasn’t sure if it was the weed, the sudden movement, or what Clyde had just revealed. “Wait, you’ve kissed a guy before?” A thousand questions swirled around his head as Scott considered that Clyde might not be as straight as he’d previously thought.

Clyde made an awkward gesture back, some mix of a shrug and a nod. “Uh yeah once. It was a theater thing,” he replied, brushing it off.

“How was it?” Scott asked. “Did it feel different than kissing a girl?”

“Kinda… it was nice I guess. I mean yeah, I enjoyed it a lot actually,” Clyde replied, his cheeks reddening slightly. Scott nodded, then tilted his head up to stare at the ceiling as he processed this information.

“Could I try?” 

There was a moment of silence between them, and Scott felt the realization of what he’d just asked creeping in. He shouldn’t be thinking of kissing Clyde. He really shouldn’t. Just when he was about to take it back, Clyde said “Yeah, you can try,” in a voice that sounded near breathless and all thoughts of why he shouldn’t left his head.

Scott adjusted his position on the couch, kneeling over Clyde’s lap. He bit his lip as he focused on mentally preparing himself for what he was about to to, then when he was ready, he leaned forward, landing a quick peck on his lips. He pulled back, but as he looked Clyde in the eyes afterwards, and saw the way he was looking at him like he was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, he felt a force drawing them together again like magnets. He gave in, pressing their lips together once more.

Clyde’s hands moved up to his waist as they kissed and that simple touch felt like everything in the moment. He thought, a bit regretfully, about how he’d never felt this much with Sophie. He knew this was wrong, that he should stop, but he didn’t, he didn’t want to.

Scott pressed his lips harder against Clyde’s and the other boy responded just like he had in all of Scott’s dreams, dragging his teeth across his lip, burying his hands in his curls, and for a while Scott truly lost himself in that touch. His worries had disappeared and the only thing that mattered was Clyde. It was just the two of them, and nothing else in the world mattered, and if it was just a dream, he hoped that he’d never wake up from it. Scott wanted to bottle this exact moment, this feeling, and keep it forever to revisit whenever he wanted. 

Chapter Text

Scott woke up to the light streaming in through the window, warming the side of his face. Blinking his eyes open he found himself nestled up against Clyde’s chest, listening to the steady sound of his heartbeat. Clyde’s arms were wrapped around him, holding him close.

His mouth curled up into a smile. Now this was something he could get used to, waking up every morning beside Clyde. There was nothing in the world he wanted more.

Memories of the night before slowly started creeping in and Scott thought of lips against lips, the sensation of Clyde’s hands on his waist, and the light tugging they’d done when they’d found their way up into his hair. He thought of lying across the couch with him, their limbs tangled together, the way Clyde kissed him so gently, and the way he looked at him, so full of wonder that Scott knew then and there without any doubt in his mind that Clyde loved him. That look had caused a storm of butterflies in his stomach and had made him feel lighter than a feather, something he’d never felt with Sophie no matter how hard he tried.

She’d given him that same look before, and it hadn’t made him feel anything.

Scott felt a sinking feeling in his chest as he realized it. His little crush on Clyde wasn’t feeling so little anymore, in fact it was only getting worse the more time he spent with him, it wasn’t something that was just going to go away. He thought that maybe he could handle keeping Clyde close without crossing any lines, but last night they’d done just that. He’d cheated on Sophie, and not with another girl, with Clyde. Somehow he thought that was worse, at least in the eyes of God.

Clyde Donovan was going to drag him down to Hell.

Scott wriggled out of Clyde’s arms, sitting up at the end of the couch by his feet and staring off into space as he considered how he could even remedy this. He’d have to confess, that was for sure. But was a confession even really worth anything if he didn’t change the behavior? How could he even change it at this point? He’d tried so hard to keep his thoughts pure, but they just always seemed to go back to Clyde.

He needed serious help; this clearly wasn’t something he could fix himself. He needed to seek help from the church to get better, to change his thoughts and keep Clyde off of his mind. He decided then and there he would confess everything to Father Maxi and do anything he could to change, even if it meant abandoning whatever this relationship he had with Clyde was. It was wrong to lead him on anyway, Scott reasoned that it would probably be much kinder to both of them to end things now and part ways.

Clyde started stirring beside him. He sat up, and leaned in, resting his head on Scott’s shoulder. “Morning,” he said with a voice so full of content that it made Scott’s heart ache thinking of what he had to do.

He scooted away from Clyde, watching as the other boy's face fell. “Is something wrong?” he asked gently, reaching out for Scott’s hand.

Scott felt his own heart breaking as he pulled it back. “Last night, that was a mistake,” he said, his mouth turning down into a deep frown. “We got really carried away and we crossed a line.”

“Okay,” Clyde replied, his voice breaking.

“I don’t think we should hang out anymore.” It was hard for him to force that sentence out, but he somehow found the strength to do so. “I just can’t risk doing that to Sophie again, and I’m not gay, I can’t be. I can’t keep giving into temptation like this. I just can’t do this anymore, I’m sorry.”

Scott got up from the couch before he lost the nerve to do so and grabbed his bag from off of the floor. 

“I’ll call Tolkien and see if he can hang out with you the rest of the weekend, I just can’t. I’m sorry,” and with that he was out the door, tears streaming down his face as he headed home.

Clyde’s eyes followed Scott as he left, and for several moments he waited and watched the door, wishing that Scott would change his mind. When it finally set in that he wouldn’t, Clyde let out a loud frustrated noise and leaned over, folding himself in half and burying his head in his hands.

Why was he always such an idiot? Why did he have to ruin things by getting high? He shouldn’t have even asked, knowing what had happened last time Scott had been intoxicated. Oh but he’d been selfish and he’d taken advantage of the fact that substances seemed to weaken that wall that Scott had built around himself. He didn’t care that Scott had a girlfriend, or that he was clearly struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, Clyde had just tried his best to manipulate the situation so he could feel Scott’s lips against his own again, an action that had stirred up a part of him he hadn’t known existed only a few months ago. He’d been delusional enough to believe that it would end differently this time, that if Scott could just remember kissing him that he’d willingly let down those walls and let Clyde in.

Instead he’d just driven him away.

Clyde stayed in that position a while, contemplating all the wrong turns he’d made and if there was even a perfect situation where he and Scott were happily together and how to get there. Maybe he should just wait it out, let Scott come to the conclusion that Sophie wasn’t right for him himself. Surely he couldn’t keep up the act forever, unless Scott actually truly did like both of them. If that was the case, Clyde couldn’t see how he could possibly compare. Sophie would be able to give Scott everything he could ever want: a loving partner, children, an out to deny the things he so clearly felt for Clyde.

Across the room he heard the front door open, and footsteps made their way towards him. Then the couch dipped beside him as someone sat. He looked up hopefully, his face falling a bit as his eyes rested on Tolkien.

“Are you okay?” his friend asked, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Scott sounded really upset on the phone when he called me, did something happen?”

Clyde let out a long disappointed breath through his nose. “I fucked up T,” he admitted. “We got high together and then we kissed and it was great, until he woke up and remembered his girlfriend. I shouldn’t have let it go that far, I should have controlled myself, but I just wanted to kiss him again so badly.”

“Again?” Tolkien asked, raising an eyebrow. Clyde hadn’t told anyone about what had happened last time, though he was sure his friends suspected it.

“He kissed me at your party,” Clyde admitted a bit sheepishly. “I’ve wanted to kiss him for ages, but I was convinced it would never happen after he started going out with Sophie. But then he kissed me anyway and it was like the best thing to ever happen to me. I wanted to recreate it, but that was so stupid.”

"You really like him, don't you?" Tolkien asked and Clyde thought about Scott, his wavy brown hair, his hazel eyes, his freckles. Clyde thought of the sound of Scott's voice, the way his tongue often poked out of his mouth without him even realizing it. He thought about lunch in the catwalk, and signing their names inside of a heart, about laying with his head in Scott's lap and the feeling of his fingers as they ran through his hair. He thought about waking up with his head resting on Scott's chest and the calmness he felt while listening to his heartbeat. He thought of every moment they'd almost kissed, and the joy he'd felt when they finally did, and then the even greater joy he had felt when it happened a second time. He thought of how he smelled like oranges and how his lips tasted like the butterscotch candies he always kept in his pockets. He thought about every word that Scott had ever said to him, every moment they'd ever shared. "Honestly, I think I'm in love with him,” Clyde admitted.

"Fuck man, are you gonna tell him?" Tolkien asked.

“What difference would it make?” Clyde asked, letting out a heavy sigh. “He’s not ready to accept himself yet. I can’t force that, it’ll only make things worse.”

Chapter Text

Scott sat in the hard plastic chair in Father Maxi’s office, nervously bouncing his leg. His father sat beside him which made this all feel a bit more awkward. He’d been prepared to admit his feelings for Clyde to the priest, but to his father? That seemed like a whole different kind of feat.

Unfortunately a story had popped up on the news that morning of yet another priest being exposed as a child molester, so when Scott had mentioned that he wanted to meet with Father Maxi after church, his father had decided to sit in as a precautionary measure. When Clark Malkinson had his mind made up on something he was about as easy to sway as a concrete pole, so Scott didn’t even bother arguing with him.

Father Maxi slipped into the office, closing the door behind him and taking a seat behind his desk. “You wanted to speak with me?”

Scott nodded, swallowing hard and taking a deep breath, trying to prepare himself for what he had to do.

“I need help,” he said quietly, barely able to force the words out. “I’ve been having impure thoughts that have led to some… actions.” Scott couldn’t find it in himself to be specific. Even vaguely admitting that much seemed like too much to bear.

“I see…” Father Maxi replied, trailing off a bit. “So you and your girlfriend, Sophie right? Has she been tempting you towards premarital relations?”

Scott couldn’t help his blush, his face turning beet red with embarrassment. It should have been a problem with Sophie that he came in here for, plenty of teens dealt with sexual temptation with their appropriately opposite gender partners, but Scott didn’t. It was the lack of temptation there that was presenting itself as a problem.

“It’s not Sophie,” he mumbled. “It’s someone else.”

Scott’s father’s attention snapped to him, his eyes full of judgment. “Don’t tell me you’ve been cheating on that girl,” he said, glaring down at him. “Your mother and I raised you better than that.”

“I-” Scott cut off, his eyes filling with tears. “I think about Clyde when I kiss Sophie,” he blurted out. “And I dream of it. It’s like all I want to do all day long and I just can’t live like this anymore. I don’t want to be gay. I’ve been trying to stop but I can’t.” He couldn’t admit to what he’d actually done with Clyde, not with his father staring at him like that, but admitting the dreams and the temptation he felt whenever Clyde was anywhere near him was a start.

The room went silent, Clyde’s father and the priest glancing back and forth at one another while all Scott wanted to do was curl up into a ball and disappear. After a few moments Father Maxi spoke up. “I know that must feel scary, my child. You feel a way in which the church condemns, but there is hope for salvation and the lord will clear you of your sins. I too had a homosexual phase when I was younger, but I let the lord inside of me and he cured me of my sin.”

“Really?” Scott asked, starting to feel hopeful. “So I can really change?”

“Of course you can,” Father Maxi told him. “I know of a camp for boys like you. They’ll help you change those behaviors and you’ll come out good as new.”

Scott turned to his father, begging him with wide hazel eyes. “Can I go? Please. I want to change.”

His father opened his mouth, and for a moment Scott was sure he’d say no, but then he heard, “Yeah, you can go.”

There was a lot of paperwork involved, but Scott got to spend the second semester of school that year at Camp New Grace. All his assignments were sent over, and he was able to complete them with the help of tutors. It took a long time to rewrite his thoughts, to learn just how horrible the feelings he’d had for Clyde really were. Some of it was painful, and some of the other boys didn’t make it through the program, but by the end of it, Scott could honestly say he didn’t want to kiss another boy. So what if the dreams of Clyde had been replaced with nightmares of torture and trying to stop his accountabilibuddy from launching himself off the roof? It was only a taste of the torture he’d be enduring in Hell if he’d continued down the path he’d previously been on.

For the rest of high school it was Scott and Sophie. There was no room for Clyde in that equation. Scott could hardly even stand to look at him anymore after that camp. The sight of Clyde’s face alone made his insides twist and it caused a rise of panic in his chest.

Eventually, Clyde seemed to move on, getting back to his regularly scheduled rotation of girls, though none seemed serious. On the occasions he could stand to look at Clyde, Scott never saw him give any of those girls the loving look he’d once given him, but he chose not to dwell on that. It was likely he’d imagined the look in the first place. He’d been so delusional then.

A few years after high school, Scott and Sophie got married. They had kids too. It was the perfect life the church had always convinced Scott he wanted, and he ignored the feelings of hollowness convincing himself it was just the devil’s work.

Clyde got married too. He’d gotten whatever girl he’d been with at the time pregnant and had a courthouse wedding, dragging her off with him when he joined the marine corps. Scott didn’t miss him during those eight years of service. Clyde hardly even crossed his mind.

Scott was a liar.

They’d both long since moved on, leaving everything in the past. They were nothing more than a string of childhood mistakes. Over, done, no more. That was the end of it.

Or was it?