Chapter Text
As Tweek tries to knock the teas off the top shelf of Tolkien's kitchen cupboard with a ladle, he hears his friends in the other room lower their voices. He can't make out what they're saying in their hushed tones. Sometimes he's not sure they are his friends anymore. He has other concerns, though.
Chief among them is the horrible stomachache that's plagued him for days. Tolkien noticed he was clutching at his stomach and probably making irritating pained sounds, and pointedly informed him about the ginger tea in the cupboard. He assumes they wanted to get rid of him so they could talk about Craig's situation.
It's not like Tweek wants to hear about it anyway. Maybe a small masochistic part of him does, but mostly he just resents them treating him like a child. Like he isn't one of them. If he's not, that's fine, but why still invite him? To shoo him away when they have important man business to discuss? It's not like Clyde's really one of them either, but he isn't a receptacle. Tweek is, now, and a faulty one at that. No one should even know but it's a small town. People talk.
With a huff Tweek sets down the ladle and climbs up on the counter. He stands up and sees the ginger tea way in the back of the cupboard. He could never have reached it from the floor. A wave of pain hits him hard and his head swims but he manages to grab onto the cupboard door, yelping at that lurch in his gut from having almost fallen.
“You good, dude?” Clyde bellows from the other room.
"Nnnh, yeah!" he yells back.
He boils the water and clenches his jaw when hears them laugh. It might not be about him—nothing is anymore, and that’s fine. When the kettle whistles, he pours the boiling water into the large mug and sets the kettle back down. He breathes in slowly for four counts, holds for four, and releases for four. He keeps at that for a minute, just til the cup doesn't burn too badly for him to touch, and returns to the living room.
When he comes back into the room, Craig is trailing off, “—don’t really wanna talk about it,” and Tolkien flashes Tweek a tight-lipped smile.
Tolkien asks if he’s feeling better and Tweek replies he isn’t. He hasn’t even had any of the tea—how would he be feeling better already? They talk about Clyde’s community college plans around him and he drinks his ginger tea before it’s cooled, spacing out to escape his discomfort. Why do they keep inviting him?
Since that day at the doctor’s, Tweek has gotten quite good at spacing out, thinking about nothing, and finding much time has passed when he comes to. It probably helps that no one cares to even pretend to engage him.
When he snaps out of it this time, Tolkien and Clyde are getting set up on the couch to play video games. Implicitly, Tweek knows he isn’t invited but that’s fine. He has other plans. His bedroom ceiling isn’t going to stare at itself for the next several hours.
"Need a ride?" Craig offers, his tone bored and flat like usual, as they make their way to the front door.
“Mnnh,” Tweek says, with a jerky sort of nod. He really does need one—he’s not allowed to walk home alone after dark anymore. Even though he doesn’t smell, his size is a dead giveaway as to his status. Still, it’s uncomfortable to have to ask, to have to be at Craig’s mercy.
They walk out to his car wordlessly. He forces himself to settle into the passenger’s seat, to unclench his jaw and muscles. It smells like Kyle and that makes Tweek want to throw up, but he doesn't. He's good instead. He can take this reality, the one in which Craig is with Kyle and they're going to move away together soon.
He can't bear to ask how Craig really feels about that. He doesn't want to hear if he's looking forward to it, which makes him feel like a bad friend. He wouldn't know how to deal with it if he's not, which makes him a bad friend.
Eventually Tweek manages to tune out Kyle’s scent. Why can he pick it out so clearly all of a sudden? It doesn’t smell nice to him. It smells like sour milk. Maybe it’s like buttermilk and fresh laundry to Craig. He’s not going to ask. They don’t talk about him. They don’t talk about anything anymore.
Craig’s scent comes through strongly on its own. It just smells like him, the way Craig has always smelled to him—like the comforting familiarity of his bedroom, and all those times he would wrap an arm around Tweek’s shoulders drunk and Tweek would nestle into his armpit. It reminds him of the way Craig would only laugh and smile like that for Tweek. He would look at Tweek like he was something special.
Craig doesn’t look at him at all anymore. Tweek is nothing special after all. It makes him want to cry now, that smell, that reminder of having had something so precious only to lose it before it was truly his. He doesn’t, though. He keeps any confirmation of those feelings safe and locked away. His only remaining source of dignity is that he has never said the words aloud.
Craig chokes on his breath. “Dude, are you okay?”
“Mhm,” Tweek murmurs in a strained voice.
“You don’t smell okay.”
“Hngh, great! Sorry I smell bad.”
He’s acting childish. He can’t smell anything through his shallow breaths, but he’s sure he does smell bad. He’s soaked through with sweat, he notices suddenly, but he’s shivering and his nipples form hard peaks beneath his damp button down. Then in turn he’s much too hot, and dizzy.
“Not bad. You smell distressed.”
“Huh?” Tweek asks, disoriented.
Craig shouldn’t be able to smell his feelings. It doesn’t make any sense. His head is fuzzy.
He focuses on that Craig scent again, allows himself the indulgence of fantasies of their past. They’re too tinged with the bitterness of the present to dwell upon much these days, but he desperately needs an escape. He thinks about that one time he woke up after they’d fallen asleep together on the couch, Craig’s arm wrapped tightly around his chest, throbbing cock pressed flush against his ass. Craig had woken up a few short minutes after Tweek and withdrew with a sleepily mumbled, “Sorry.”
But what if he hadn’t? What if instead he’d pulled down Tweek’s pajama pants and fucked him raw right there on the living room couch, grinding into his ass deep, making him come over and over where the Tuckers watched TV, marking up his neck like he hungered for Tweek as much as Tweek did him?
What if Clyde and Tolkien hadn’t come back in the room the time they were play-wrestling and Craig had him pinned, and he could feel the pulse of his cock, the heat coming off of it? He'd wanted it pressed against him so badly, wanted Craig to rip him open and tear up his insides.
He thinks about Craig fucking him in front of all their friends, bending him over the coffee table at Tolkien's house where they had ignored him, making him take his big cock on the floor of the dining room as the Tuckers and the Broflovskis hammered out the details of the arrangement. He thinks about Craig’s arm across his throat, his teeth in his neck, cock stuffed all the way inside Tweek's virgin ass—being dominated, being marked up, being owned. To hell with decorum and dowries and the dread that mounts within him each and every day.
Suddenly there’s a horrible wetness emanating from between his legs; his pants are sopping wet and uncomfortable and he can feel it seeping into the car seat.
“Something’s wrong, I think—I think I’m bleeding!”
“Not blood,” Craig grits out. He pulls up beside his own house, bringing the car to a stop, and rolls his window down, gulping down the fresh air. Craig does look at him now—he looks at him like he's an unpredictable dog of a friend.
Tweek can’t look down, he refuses—looking will make this real instead of a fucking nightmare from which he might wake. How terrible, to be falling apart like this, gushing at his very seams in front of Craig, who he’d hoped might remember him fondly.
Breath coming shallow now, Tweek runs his fingers through the liquid that's accumulated between his legs and brings his fingers to his face. It's clear and viscous, and he can hear Craig's heavy breathing, see that look in his eye that says, "Don't you fucking dare."
"What, hngh—sweet Jesus—what do I do?!”
“Don’t you have, you know, like, toys?”
Tweek laughs bitterly. “No, of course not—why would they bother buying me toys?”
“You should just be ready.”
Tweek’s bottom lip begins trembling of its own accord and his eyes prickle in that way that precedes tears falling. He rubs his eyes harshly to preempt it.
“They thought I’d never, angh—‘cause of the drugs,” he chokes out.
Then without warning, he’s sobbing and Craig tries to pull his fingers away from his eyes. He’s going to win because he’s bigger and stronger, but Tweek is determined and humiliated by his biology, so he puts up a fight.
“Tweek, for fuck’s sake—” Craig finally manages to pry his fingers up, “I have spare toys you can have, okay?”
“Gah, I don’t want Kyle’s fucking used sex toys!”
“Kyle never—my stupid mom got them for me. Just take them so you don’t hurt yourself!”
“Hah, hurt myself?”
“Yeah, you have to”—Craig sighs—“if you don’t get mated, you’re supposed to use those toys, the ones that," he hesitates, "that inflate like a real knot.”
Tweek gapes at him in horror.
“I don’t want that!” he shrieks, nausea spiking. “Please, ngh—oh God, Craig! Please don’t make me do that!”
“I’m not making you,” he grumbles, but they both know that’s a lie. Craig can’t even look at him.
“I’m just gonna get them. Then I’ll drive you home. Okay?”
Home, where his parents are. They’ll know right away. They’ll probably auction off his virginity and leave him to suffer in his heat til whichever old creep buys it arrives. He’s kept all his feelings of dread and pain and abandonment down for so long but this thought is simply too much to bear, and it all comes pouring out in the form of the stomach bile he now spews down his shirt.
"Oh, fuck," Craig groans. He grabs some fast food napkins from the backseat and presses them to Tweek's chest and stomach to sop it up. They absorb the liquid right away, so it's just Craig's hands on him, and he shivers and whines at his touch. It should be disgusting, Craig getting the contents of Tweek's stomach all over his hands, but he's touching him so gently, so hesitantly, it makes Tweek's whole body burn and pulse with need.
When he looks up, Craig is panting, his pupils fat, staring at Tweek's body, and then Craig looks up too, and seems to consciously pull himself away. He gathers up all the soiled napkins in a wad and opens the car door.
“Craig,” Tweek hisses, and Craig looks back at him.
“You’ll be fine. Just, don’t open your door. Not for anyone. Okay?”
“Ngh,” Tweek groans, thumping his head back on the seat.
Craig’s words don’t reassure him like they used to. Why should they? He’s going to go and forget all about Tweek.
He still can’t believe Craig’s just going to leave him here now, though. He’s hot and shivering, drenched in his own fluids, and Craig abruptly removes his jacket and drapes it over Tweek. The smell makes Tweek’s head swim, and he's startled when the car door slams closed. The doors click locked and Tweek is left alone.
“Tweek.” A knock on the window and Tweek jolts with a screech.
It’s Kenny. He’s staring, his brow furrowed, and Tweek shrinks under his searching gaze.
“Tweek, you’re really sick—where’s Craig?”
Nowadays Kenny speaks low and gravelly like his childhood superhero persona. It’s not an act—his voice truly got deeper—but it freaks Tweek out. It’s like talking to a different person.
“He just—he had to get something!” Tweek squeaks out.
“What’s he getting? He just left you here?” Kenny sounds—and smells— angry.
Tweek feels compelled to obey and tell him everything, but he knows it’s because of pheromones and Kenny’s tone. He blinks up at him owlishly and tugs at his hair. How would he even explain the situation? He has no idea where Kenny stands on any of this.
“Tweek, you can talk to me. This is serious. Your shirt’s soaked. You probably have a high fever.”
“Augh, I’m fine, man, just please—”
“Get the fuck off my car.”
Tweek groans as Craig’s low rumbling voice makes him tremble in fear, and yet also triggers another gush of slick. Tweek’s losing his mind at how stupid and perverse and self-sabotaging his body is. Not yours—he’s not yours!
“What the fuck is that, Craig—toys? You think toys are gonna cut it at this point?”
“It’s none of your business—what are you even doing here anyway?”
“Smelled someone in distress. Why haven't you at least scented him yet? He's sick,” Kenny says gruffly.
"Can't. He's not my mate."
It's not like Tweek wasn't already painfully aware of that fact, but hearing Craig say it so matter-of-fact like that is a gut punch he didn't need.
“You don't have to be his mate—I scent Kyle all the time, and you know full well who his mate is.”
“I'm not gonna argue this shit with you anymore." Tweek can't follow the subtext here but he knows he's missing something. Maybe Kenny wants Kyle as his mate? "Fuckin’ fighting with me is making it worse. So leave.”
“I’m not leaving until you agree to help him. This is fucking serious, Craig.”
“I am helping.”
“With toys?”
Craig says nothing, and Tweek’s heart sinks. That must be the plan, and Kenny thinks he can’t do it. Is Craig right? Is he physically strong enough? Kenny seems so convinced he’s not. He scoffs at Craig.
“At least clean him up before you drop him off at my place if you’re not gonna be a fucking man and take care of him yourself,” Kenny spits disrespectfully, like Craig is a scuff mark on an otherwise pristine shoe.
The moment is so tense, and Tweek watches with wide eyes from his seat. They’re fighting over him.
And in fact after a few moments of tense silence, Craig suddenly decks Kenny, the impact leaving a horrible cracking sound in its wake. Kenny goes down and Tweek scrambles to unlock the car so he can get out and check on him.
Seconds after leaving the car, though, he groans and his legs wobble, and he has to lean back against the car to hold himself upright. They both smell so strongly of aggression and possessiveness. He doesn’t belong to either of them, but Kenny was implying one of them has to mate him and he’ll do it if Craig doesn’t step up.
Like he’s some little fucktoy to be used and tossed aside. Tweek hates himself for how badly he wants even just that. Ideally from Craig, but he needs this pain to stop no matter what. Craig isn’t his, he’s not Craig’s, Craig has someone. He’s so mad at the thought of Kenny having him, though.
He doesn’t want you but he won’t let Kenny have you— he wants you to die.
He tries to breathe through that panic-inducing thought, tries to push it down with everything else. It’s all bubbling up from his stomach, like he might puke again.
Kenny coughs and manages to get back on his feet. “You fucking smell that, right? You have to help him, Craig. Just be a fucking person for once in your life.”
After Kenny’s hobbled off, Craig takes a minute to slowly breathe, til the harsh musk of his anger subsides. Then he heads straight for Tweek, tucking the sex toys' plastic packaging in the back of his pants.
“Ngh, Craig, why did you do that?”
“Not gonna let Kenny turn you into one of his whores,” Craig spits.
When Craig picks him up bridal-style, Tweek melts into his chest, the strong scent of him making his head swim.
“Not a whore," he manages to mumble through his daze, and Craig sighs, carrying him over the threshold and locking the door behind them. “He was trying to help, man. I—I need help.”
“I’m helping you,” Craig says firmly, holding Tweek tighter as he climbs the stairs.
“Urgh, he said those wouldn’t work, Craig!”
“Kenny doesn’t know everything!” he snarls back.
Tweek flinches and drops his gaze, hormonally compelled to follow the implicit order to shut up and accept what Craig has chosen for him, but it hurts because Kenny’s probably right. If he’s too weak to do this to himself properly, then Craig is just tormenting him with his scent for no reason.
They reach the bathroom and Craig lays Tweek down on the bathmat, turns to fiddle with the knobs, and tells him, quietly, “Get undressed. I’ll get the bath ready.” He clears his throat and asks, “You’ll be okay in there alone, right?”
Tweek would love to be able to say yes, because he’s disgusting, his own stomach acid having soaked through his shirt, slick still oozing from between his legs onto the Tuckers’ bathmat, tears and snot adorning his face.
He wipes those at least and mumbles back, “Agh, I’m dizzy.”
“Alright,” Craig says tightly. Tweek wonders if Kenny’s words are the only reason he doesn’t tell Tweek, “Tough shit.”
He doesn’t add to Craig's burden by telling him he’s struggling to take off his clothes because his hands are so shaky, his muscles so weak. He just keeps fumbling with his shirt buttons. He manages to get them all undone and wiggles his shoulders and arms out of soaked button down. His head swims when he stands to undo the button on his jeans. He’s hard and Craig’s going to see him. He's going to see all of him.
Tweek goes to pull down his boxers and loses his balance. Craig catches him from under his armpits, then scoops him up from under his knees with one arm, the other bracing his mid-back. He carries him over to the bath where the water is running.
He places him in the tub and removes his boxers gently from his feet. Tweek can see his own slick glistening on Craig’s right forearm. He watches Craig rinse it off under the running water, breathing slowly and deliberately. Then he turns to Tweek and tells him, “I’m gonna get you water and a cup to rinse you off with. Okay?”
Tweek nods bleary-eyed. Craig looks over Tweek’s huddled, naked form in the empty tub, then averts his gaze and goes. Tweek shakily reaches for the running faucet with arms outstretched, cupping his hands to collect water in them. He rinses his face with it. The temperature is perfect.
Craig knows exactly what he needs, sometimes. Maybe he knows all the time and chooses to deny Tweek. That must be it, but he doesn’t know why. Because he doesn’t want him, because Tweek doesn’t deserve it, because Tweek hadn’t been good enough. They’re all options. He knows he does want him a little, or at least used to.
Craig comes back in, ice water in a large nalgene with a straw in one hand, plastic cup in the other.
“Just gonna rinse you and then I’ll let you soak,” he says huskily, then he clears his throat and kneels beside the tub.
He fills the cup with the running lukewarm water and pours it down Tweek’s chest, then lathers a wet washcloth with soap and starts washing Tweek’s chest. The scrape of the cheap terrycloth over his nipples feels so good he can barely contain his moans. They come out in long, drawn-out Nnnhs. Craig’s big hand controlling the washcloth drifts lower, but Tweek has his knees pulled up tight, and the dirty soapy water is collecting in his lap.
“Tweek,” Craig says flatly.
“Hrngh, what?”
He knows what. Craig doesn’t even have to say it. He just makes a face like he knows Tweek knows.
Tweek lowers his legs a little. He’s so hard, slick essentially pouring down the drain so long as Craig refrains from filling him up. His whole body quivers at the shame of it. It’s humiliating having Craig see him like this.
“Tweek,” Craig says, soft admonishment evident in his voice, and Tweek extends his legs the rest of the way immediately, not wanting to talk about it, covering his face with his hands because he’s crying for some reason. He feels like he might throw up again, and drops his head back on the bathtub rim. It hurts, bouncing against the ceramic to the rhythm of the sobs that wrack his body.
Craig pours a few cups of water down Tweek’s chest, washing all traces the soapy water down the drain. Tweek spaces out, trying to leave his body, until he notices the water level rising around him.
“Tweek,” Craig says, “it’s okay. You’re okay,” and Tweek cries harder because he most certainly is not okay; he is on the verge of puking again, all over himself in the Tuckers’ bathtub.
“C’mere,” Craig murmurs, pulling him up by the back of his head and leaning in to press his lips to his neck. Tweek realizes what’s happening only moments before—Craig is scenting him, just like Kenny said to do.
It feels so right, Craig sucking on that sensitive gland—Tweek keens, loud and desperate, fingers curling into Craig’s hair to hold his head there. But Craig is stronger, and he pulls back after a few moments, teeth scraping the gland as he withdraws, panting.
Craig stares at him intently, the icy gray-blue of his eyes barely visible around his blown pupils. Tweek stares back into them, then at Craig’s parted lips, and before he can even think, Craig’s mouth is on his, hungrily sucking, and Tweek kisses back automatically, an empty vessel waiting to be filled up with his love.
Every nerve in Tweek’s body is on fire, his nipples hardening into tight little buds near-painfully, hard cock straining against his stomach, his slick filling up the tub as Craig licks into his mouth in deliberate strokes. Tweek moans into Craig's back, sucking on his tongue, running his fingers through his thick hair, pulling him in closer.
They kiss like they’re speaking a language they invented together. I want, I want, I want, Tweek’s kisses say. Craig’s say, I know.
As long as they’re kissing, Craig is his. Tweek wants it to last forever, but he runs out of breath too soon and has to part with a gasp, dropping his head on the back rim of the tub again.
With Tweek's chest heaving and heart pounding, Craig braces a hand at his mid-back and kisses down the side of his neck. Tweek shivers and cries out when Craig stops to trace his sensitive gland with his tongue, then he kisses his way down Tweek’s chest til he reaches a nipple. When he sucks it into his mouth, Tweek's whole body attempts to jerk him away from the stimulation but Craig hold him firm in his grip.
The sounds Craig's pulling from Tweek's chest should embarrass Tweek but it feels too good for him to care. Every rough suck shoots straight to his dick, and the electric pleasure shoots through to his fingers and toes. He'd never known his nipples were this sensitive. What's more, Craig chose this—Craig is sucking and biting his left nipple of his own accord. He dips a hand between Tweek's legs, not touching him, but the movement of the water against Tweek's slippery, needy hole stimulates him, and he whines at the tease of it all.
Craig shushes him and brings that hand back up to paint his right nipple with slick-saturated water. He leans in to suck that one too, drinking up Tweek's slick and groaning as if hungry for more. Tweek feels like he could come from the visual alone and certainly from the stimulation of his nipples if Craig keeps this up. He's already leaking pre-cum, and his whole body pulses in time with his cock. As Craig torments the left one between his thumb and finger, he grazes the right with his teeth between torturously slow, teasing sucks.
“Craig,” Tweek breathes out involuntarily, the name pouring out of his mouth like honey.
Somehow this breaks the spell. Craig remembers who he is and what he's supposed to be doing here. His hands jerk away from Tweek's body and he forces himself to unlatch from his nipple; Tweek whines at the loss. It's obvious Craig's been affected by all this—his eyes are glassy, pupils blown wide like he's on something, he's panting heavily. A blush adorns his large roman nose, his ears, his high cheekbones. He's so beautiful and he's not Tweek's.
“I gotta—gonna go get stuff for. Nest,” he sputters out.
Then he pulls the bath stopper, and all but bolts out of the room, leaving Tweek with a throbbing hard-on, slick pouring out of his ass, and overstimulated, saliva-slicked nipples that sting from the cold air.