Chapter Text
i. fifteen
Stan is toying with the picture frame on Grant’s bedside table while he showers. The picture shows Grant with his wife and two kids on their vacation last year in Barcelona; Grant’s wife is very pretty, with long, sun-kissed curls that frame a heart-shaped face. Their kids look just like them, one nine, and one six, both girls.
Do people really have pictures of their families on their nightstands? He wonders, feeling removed from what he’s holding. Both of Stan’s homes, his place in Los Angeles, and his place in South Park, came pre-furnished. He doesn’t have any family portraits, any real pictures of anyone that he can think of at all.
He hears the shower stop, Grant stepping out and toweling himself off. When he comes back into the bedroom he’s completely naked. Stan doesn’t put down the picture frame, just wiggles it at Grant a little.
“Do you feel like she’s watching you when we fuck?” he asks, because Grant once told him he liked how blunt Stan could be, how adult that made him seem. Stan knows he’s an adult. He wasn’t a virgin before Grant took him, and he’s still proud about that.
Grant is quiet for a moment, before he drops himself to the bed and rolls over to Stan, gently taking the picture out of his hands and putting it face-down back on the nightstand. “When I’m with you,” he admits, pressing a kiss into Stan’s shoulder, “I can’t think about anyone else. Even if she were in the room, I wouldn’t see her.”
“What about when you’re fucking her?” Stan asks, raising his eyebrows.
“What about it?”
“Do you think about me?” Stan asks, and he kicks the sheets away that have been tangled with his legs so he can pose brazenly like an old Hollywood starlet even though his thighs and dick are still crusty, spent. “Where’s my picture?”
“You don’t wanna be a picture on someone’s nightstand,” Grant tells him. He’s looking at Stan’s chest, and brings up a thumb to rub against Stan’s nipple, which is enough to make Stan arch his back a little, gasp, pull Grant in for a kiss. He likes how big Grant is, muscular arms, thick neck, barrel chest with wispy, blond hairs. They’re such physical opposites, such a completion of one another, not some Stepford fucking photograph.
“I want you to remember me,” Stan says breathlessly into his mouth, “I want you to think about me all the time.”
Grant laughs. “Baby,” he says, kissing Stan’s eyelids shut. “You always get so jealous and mean on the comedown.”
“Maybe you should buy more than three grams next time, genius,” Stan replies, shoving him away. “Now come on, we have a meeting in an hour. I want you to get a picture of this. I don’t want you to forget how good it was.”
“I’ll never forget you,” Grant promises, but he grabs his phone off the other nightstand. It’s a new iPhone, and Stan can see on the large screen before Grant slides his thumb across to open the camera app: seven missed calls, nine new messages.
Grant towers over him on his knees to take the photo, his dick hanging thick and heavy between his legs. He turns the screen to face Stan when it’s finished. Stan looks fucked out, legs spread and arms folded behind his head, finger-sized bruises forming on his inner thighs. The trail of dark hair up his stomach is matted. His mouth is swollen and pink. He looks confident against the thousand-count sheets he’s on, spread out on someone’s side of the bed that isn’t his. He likes it. It makes him feel perfect, untouchable.
ii. sixteen
Craig hates that the world is going to see him, that the world is going to see pictures of him doing absolutely trivial things and pick him apart until there’s nothing left. He hates it, but he’s willing to do it for Stan, and he wonders what that says about him.
There are about thirty people with cameras gathered around the entrance to the Harbucks, and they’ve been trying to get pictures of Stan for the past ten minutes, ever since Craig texted Cartman their location. Craig wants to vomit. Stan doesn’t offer him a gentle hand on his shoulder, doesn’t kiss him on the temple, or any of the other comforting things that he does in private now, when they’re alone in Stan’s room or in the dark backseat of Stan’s car at the lookout over Hell’s Pass. He does look concerned at the black eye that Craig’s sporting, courtesy of Kenny finding out about Cartman’s stupid blackmail scheme, and takes the sunglasses off the top of his head to give them to Craig.
“Wear these,” he says. “Or the internet will think you’re a bad person.”
Craig fumbles with them. Stan continues, “They’re going to shout a lot of stupid questions at you, don’t answer any of them--”
“You’ve already said,” Craig replies, begrudgingly putting the glasses on and taking another nervous sip of his coffee. His hands are shaking, and he thinks, Jesus, I probably look like Tweek.
“They’re not gonna be nice,” Stan says.
“I don’t care, can we just,” Craig stutters, taps his fingers against his coffee cup. He wants to hold Stan’s hand, which is a scarier revelation than realizing he wanted Stan to fuck him. He wants to be Stan’s boyfriend. “Can we just go.”
“Okay, fine, just wanted to make sure you were--ready,” Stan says, slipping over the last word. Craig grins a little at that, elbows him in the stomach, and it feels comfortable, it feels good.
Walking into a throng of paparazzi for the first time is like jumping in Stark’s Pond at the beginning of summer when the snowmelt from the mountains makes the water icy cold and needle sharp; the first few seconds he’s submerged in it he feels ready to drown. It’s noisy and bright even behind Stan’s shades, an overwhelming ocean of people. He instinctively reaches out for Stan, but Stan is charging through them confident and unafraid, his posture casual and practiced like his laughter in polite company. Craig is in awe all over again, at how untouchable Stan suddenly seems, and he challenges himself to keep up and look as equally assured.
It’s hard not to be shaken by the shouting. How was rehab, Stan? Are you sober, Stan? Did you hear what you ex-girlfriend tweeted about you, Stan? Who is your friend, Stan? How did you meet, Stan? Do you miss cocaine, Stan? Where are you going, Stan? Are you going to go back to work, Stan? A lot of people are boycotting your music, Stan, how does this make you feel, Stan, how do you deal with your critics, Stan, especially now that you’re sober, Stan? Why won’t you talk to us, Stan?
Craig feels like the barrier between them, the shock of their words rattling his bones every time one of them asks a new stupid question. It’s hard not to think about the hundred or so pictures that will be online tomorrow, him following Stan across a parking lot, hands in his pockets and absolutely glowering. Stan’s Jag is only fifty feet away, but it feels like a thousand miles. The crowd starts to follow them as they pick up the pace, and then one of the paps yells something like, “Did you hear what Grant Walker said about you in People Magazine, Stan?” and Stan stops walking so fast that Craig runs into him.
“Dude, what are you doing?” Craig says as Stan starts turning around. He’s pushing on Stan’s chest to keep him walking backwards towards the car. “No, what are you doing, no, no.”
“Fuck Grant Walker!” Stan screams over his shoulder. “I don’t care what he says, he can go fuck himself!”
“Hey, no, we’re getting out of here,” Craig says, shoving him harder. The last ten feet to the car is a fight the entire way. Craig coerces Stan over to the passenger side of the car and holds out his hand. “Give me your keys.”
“Do you even have your license?” Stan asks meanly, looking ready to push past Craig and brawl with the paparazzi.
“No, but no one here knows that, so give me the fucking car keys,” Craig says, impatiently shaking his hand. “Listen, I hate crowds, I hate having my picture taken, I hate everything about this, but I care about you, and I want you to get out of here without getting in more trouble, so. Give me your keys.”
Stan’s back hits the passenger door, and he looks at Craig a little lost, before staring over at the crowd that’s closing in on them. They’re still shouting, more pointed questions about Grant Walker now, whoever the fuck that is. Still facing the crowd, he asks, “You care about me?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Craig says. “Can we just get out of here?”
Stan nods and hands over the keys finally, and Craig stomps over to the driver’s side and slides in. He’s been wanting to drive this car for awhile, because it moves like a goddamn force of nature and has an angry-sounding engine that he loves. When he turns the car over, the hoard of paparazzi jump back by about five feet.
“Grant Walker,” Craig says slowly. “Was that the guy? The producer?”
Stan looks uncomfortable as he buckles himself in. “Yeah.”
“What an asshole,” Craig says. “All of these people, too. Jesus. You think if you open your door, and I open mine, we could take them all out in one go?”
Stan actually laughs. It sounds like it hurts him. “Hey,” he says.
“What?” Craig asks as he puts his foot on the gas. The car lurches forward a little too fast, and the crowd parts like the red sea, with the exception of one or two paparazzi that Craig flips off.
“I’m happy you’re in this with me,” Stan says, and he puts his hand over Craig’s, which is shaking on the stick shift.
“You wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for me,” Craig replies, thinking of his black eye hiding behind the sunglasses Stan lent him.
“No,” Stan admits, and Craig’s stomach sinks, but then he says, “I was already here. I couldn’t fucking run from them forever. Something had to give.”
It makes something thick and heavy roll up Craig’s throat, something protective and new, and he feels like he’s choking on it.
Is this what love is? He wonders.
The next day he gets a text message from Stan during fourth period american history. It’s a link to a gossip site, an article titled Stan Marsh: Not Out of the Woods Yet? and the accompanying photograph is one of him and Stan sitting in the Jaguar, Stan smiling shy and soft through tinted windows at Craig, who has his finger raised at whoever is taking the photo. “Although the teen idol has returned to his native South Park for an indefinite period of time to work on maintaining a sober lifestyle, we have to question whether he’s eliminated all the bad influences in his life.”
That’s right, Stan’s text says, my boyfriend the bad influence.
Craig thinks, oh. He thinks, huh.
(interlude) seventeen
Craig shows up two hours late to Wendy’s, because he was busy editing another homecoming video. She’s hosting a low-key function while her parents away at a conference for the weekend, so he doesn’t feel overwhelmingly guilty showing up too late. He almost hopes it’s going to be over early so he can just pick up Stan, who texted him two hours ago, so they can go make out with him somewhere dark and quiet and away from everyone else.
Clyde bumps into him him on the front porch, leaving the house in a hurry. Craig can hear the sounds of EDM already, the house vibrating with bass, someone’s laughter.
“Well you’re just on time,” Clyde says sarcastically, pushing past him to get to his beater of a car, keys clutched tightly in his fist.
“What do you mean?” Craig asks, but Clyde is already retreating too quick.
“You tell me!” he shouts as he gets to the sidewalk. “You fucking tell me. See you later.”
Craig opens the front door with sudden trepidation. He doesn’t like what he sees when he walks inside; Wendy is stretched out on her parent’s worn sofa in only her underwear, an expensive looking pink lace bra with a small black bow in the middle, panties to match. She’s got the soles of her feet pressed against Stan’s, who is reclined against the other arm of the couch in only his boxers and a t-shirt. They’re talking loudly at a thousand words a minute. Token is on the floor between them, drinking out of a water bottle that he’s holding too tight and crushing. Jimmy is in the corner fucking with an iPod, playing some inoffensive rap mashup while Bebe gives him a footrub. No one is fully dressed, and it all feels uncomfortably cozy.
“Uh,” he says, trying to take it all in, but something in his brain seems to be short circuiting.
“Babe!” Stan shouts when he sees him, which is embarrassing. Craig hates pet names, especially the ones that seem to infantilize him. Stan kicks himself away from Wendy, who rolls onto her side to whisper something to Token, and Craig finds himself being pulled aggressively out of the living room into the unoccupied study.
“What the fuck,” Craig says, wishing he was still alone in his bedroom editing his stupid school video. Stan grabs him by the wrists and kisses him, and he sinks into it almost resigned, until Stan licks into his mouth. There is something on his tongue. Craig sputters and pushes Stan away.
“What the fuck?” he repeats. Stan smiles a little too big and lets his tongue hang out. There’s a blue pill on the tip with a little dolphin etched into it. “What is that?”
“Ecthtathy,” Stan replies with his tongue still lolled out of his mouth. “Want thome?”
“No,” Craig says quickly.
“If you don’t take it I will,” Stan tells him. It sounds like a joke, but Craig knows it’s a threat, and suddenly the bass out in the living room, the sound of Token’s laughter at something Jimmy is saying, all the noise in the house feels distant, the study rendered quiet by the weight of Stan’s words.
He wanted to see a movie tonight. There’s a new Von Trier playing at the indie theatre up north and he had asked Stan earlier in the week if he’d go see it with him, and Stan had replied, yeah, of course, while laying kisses into the nape of his neck, behind his ear. It makes something sink deep and thick in his stomach knowing that Stan probably hadn’t meant it.
“Becauth--” Stan takes the pill off his tongue, pinches it between his index finger and thumb delicately. “Because, it makes me feel good. Because I want to feel good with you.”
“You don’t already feel good with me?” Craig asks, hating himself for sounding bored about it. He still hasn’t learned how to raise his voice, use inflection, show Stan that he cares with his words.
“I do, I do,” Stan says quickly, and he pulls Craig into him again, rests them both back against an old roll-top desk. “Of course I do, fuck.”
“Okay,” Craig says. “So I don’t see why we have to roll together for you to enjoy my company.”
Stan presses a kiss to the back of his head. “Because,” he says, his teeth grinding together painfully. “Because it’s fun and adventurous and different. Like, I like just hanging out with you, I love that we can just be together and not have to fucking try, you know?”
Craig always feels like he’s trying.
“But sometimes I want to try new stuff with you, I want to do everything with you. Don’t you want that?”
“How many pills have you taken?” Craig asks, because he’s not willing to answer Stan. Craig hates new things, hates adventures, has never liked that side of Stan and thought it had been stamped out with age.
“Uh,” Stan says, pauses, swallows around nothing. “Like, two maybe? No, shit, three.”
“Fuck,” Craig says.
“Please,” Stan pleads into the back of his neck. “Please, I just want to try something new and different with you. It’ll be fun. It’s not like--it’s not an addictive thing, it’s not something that’s gonna happen all the time. Everyone’s doing it, but it’s chill. Hey, please?”
Craig feels guilty, and then he feels angry. He’s starting to wonder why Stan makes him feel angrily resigned most of the time. When they’re alone together, Stan is the person he wants Stan to be--unaffected, strong, with a quiet, mean sense of humor that speaks to the very bones of Craig. But when they’re with other people, when they’re with friends, Stan is the person that those friends want him to be too, and it’s scary to think that Stan might be neither of the people that Craig assumes him to be.
“Sure,” he says, feeling weary. He takes the pill from Stan’s fingers. “Fine.”
His mouth curls around the bitterness. He’s always stayed away from the harder things, preferring to get high by himself in his room the months before Stan, or drunk on the fringe of parties until he passed out on a couch alone. He’s never been explicitly against other substances, but he’s never had any sort of drive to seek them out. And he wants-- he wants Stan to want to be with him, despite everything.
“Let me get you water.” Stan laughs when he sees the grimace on Craig’s face, pushing one more kiss to Craig’s forehead, and letting his hand slide possessively along his shoulders as he makes his way out of the study.
It takes almost two hours for the pill to hit. Craig is at the point where he can’t stand Stan and Wendy anymore, even when they’re protesting that “boko maru is a very Real Thing, Craig, don’t you even read Vonnegut?” He’s near ready to leave with an angry text to Clyde about how shitty their friends are, when suddenly:
It’s rolling, right, because it feels like pleasure is rolling up your throat, from your chest to the tips of your fingers. Craig’s got his hand over his heart the first time he breathes out and it feels like he’s coming in his pants even when he’s not hard, even when it feels like he couldn’t get hard if he tried. The euphoria is almost frightening, and he reaches out for Stan, whose hand is sweaty and too-warm, and he instantly lets go after grabbing it.
“Oh,” Stan says, twisting around on the couch to face him. This time their pupils are a reflection, blown to sin. “Babe. How you feeling?”
“I feel like I’m being crushed to death by happiness,” Craig admits, because he can’t stop himself. It’s like he can feel every cell of himself moving, thriving, doing their best to stay alive. It’s terrifying, and it makes him feel exposed in front of the few people in the living room, but also fills him with a sense of completion. A smile spreads across his face, and it feels unnatural, he wants it to stop.
“Dark,” Stan says, rolling over and kissing him, dry mouth with too much tongue. It feels amazing anyway. “So fucking dark always, I love it.”
“Do you?” Craig asks weakly, because the small, fragile part of himself that wants to have this conversation is rapidly taking control.
“Yeah,” Stan says, slipping off the couch, the soles of his feet leaving Wendy’s immediately so he can pin Craig against the floor. “Of course I do, God, I love you so much.”
“Oh,” Craig says, startled and overwhelmed with hearing it for the first time. “I love you too.”
They start making out, their movements slow like they’re wading through molasses to reach each other. Craig lets Stan take off his shirt and writhes against the soft carpet of Wendy’s parents’ living room without care, doesn’t listen to the hush of whispers or light laughter that reverberates around them. The noise seems to get louder in the room, but it feels good against his skin, Craig thinks, he welcomes it as long as he can wear Stan like a shield over him, their mouths connected and bodies rediscovering each other. Craig feels like he’s lost in the ether with Stan as his guide when they kiss, like he’s next to fading away into oblivion.
When Stan eventually stops kissing him to go get more water, Craig looks around the room from his place on the floor to see the party has grown by at least twenty people. He feels self-conscious suddenly, groping around next to him for where Stan discarded his shirt and pulling it back over his head.
“Where did all these people come from?” Craig asks Stan when he gets back, opening and closing his jaw dramatically. He needs gum or something, fuck, his teeth are gonna be dust tomorrow. Stan shrugs, sitting down next to him, both of their backs against the couch.
“I dunno,” he says, slyly. “I’ve been uh, distracted.”
Craig smiles and tries to lean in to continue where they left off before Stan so rudely stopped to hydrate himself, but Stan turns away to look around.
“Hey,” he says eventually, “why doesn’t Kenny ever come to these things?”
Craig’s never been entirely sold on Kenny, and is sure that everyone they know feels similarly. In middle school he got more aggressive, and in what was probably some misguided attempt to look cool, talked about dying and other morbid shit all the time. He was briefly cool again when he was selling weed for his brother, but he stopped a year and a half ago suddenly, and no one really saw any reason to keep inviting him to parties if he was just going to be some sober downer. Craig tells him this in one breath, and watches Stan’s face go from vaguely impressed to sad.
“A year and a half ago?” he repeats.
“Yeah,” Craig says, rubbing at his face, his hair. Stan brings up two hands to start scratching his fingers from Craig’s temple to the nape of his neck, and it feels incredible. “Just, ohfuck, just stopped one day, was a total asshole to anyone who asked him for an eighth, uh.”
He trails off, overwhelmed with the feeling of Stan’s hands on him again.
“This was what, last May?” Stan asks.
“Yeah, I mean, exactly,” Craig says. “How did you know?”
“Last May,” Stan says firmly, his hands tracing circles now, “was when I got out of rehab. Kenny knew. We never stopped talking when I moved away. Fuck, he always does this shit.”
“Oh,” Craig says. It feels like something in his chest is crumbling at the revelation, like, of course. Of fucking course.
“Yeah,” Stan says. “Do you think he could come sometime? To something like this? I think he’s lonely. His only friend is Butters.”
Craig finds himself nodding, too content with the feeling of Stan against him, moving in soothing circles. “He’s gonna babysit you though,” he tries anyway, somehow. His eyes are closed. “You won’t be able to get away with shit like this.”
“Sure I will,” Stan says, and when Craig opens his eyes there’s a confident look on his face that rattles Craig at his core.
A majority of the party moves away from the living room when a game of beer pong starts going in the basement. Token finds a guitar somewhere and starts playing simple nonsense chords on Wendy’s loveseat. Eventually Stan starts freestyling along, beat box rhythms that feel good when Craig turns around and leans into his body to collect the vibrations. Even still, he says, “this is so embarrassing, I can’t believe I’m dating you.”
“You don’t like my sick beats?” Stan asks, completely genuine.
“They are terrible,” Craig tells him, but then pulls him down for a kiss, their mouths slipping together in an unnatural way, all upside-down and turned over. It feels great though, any contact at this point does, and Craig is so happy with the sounds that he feels distantly concerned with it, like pleasure is this untouchable, inescapable thing.
The party gets louder, then quieter in waves, the periods between basement games evident. Despite the comfort of having Stan wrapped around him and the steady noise of Token’s guitar, Craig can feel himself start to freak out after the third game ends and the room crowds over again with drunken teenagers and their conversations, their enthusiasm. It is the exact wrong time for Stan to ask him, “do you think we could, you know, tell people?”
“Tell people?” Craig repeats, gesturing at the few dozen people around them who just bore witness to their excessive making out. “Like they don’t already know?”
“I mean, officially, you know,” Stan says slowly. “I just like, wanna shout from the rooftops about you. That I’m with you.”
It doesn’t escape Craig what Stan is asking. The paparazzi have trickled down in numbers to the point where they are no longer a presence in South Park at all, and if they are, it’s usually for some visiting public figure removed from Stan. No one wants their pictures anymore, they aren’t worth anything. Craig knows that after a few months of boring candids of him and Stan walking places, him and Stan getting coffee, Stan really began to slip into irrelevance, and in a final act of desperate manipulation, Cartman tried to sell the video. No one would buy it, though there were a few people willing to take it off his hands for free. The rumors about Stan are out there, because people know it exists, there were certainly enough things said about them when they were constantly seen together, worse than Stan and Kenny. Stan hasn’t shown any sign of caring though, and has started to hint at maybe a desire for people to know, a desire to show Craig off as an important person.
Still, something pushes Craig to say, “That’s just the E talking.”
“It’s not,” Stan says, but Craig brings a hand up to the side of his face to quiet him. Stan kisses the soft of his palm. “It’s not.”
“Okay,” Craig says.
“I promise,” Stay replies. “I swear.”
“I know,” Craig tells him, hoping it comes off as confident, but it probably doesn’t. Between the party blowing up and Stan trying to have a serotonin-fueled relationship chat, Craig is really starting to freak the fuck out. “Hey, I’m uh. I think I need some fresh air, so I’m gonna go out back for a bit, okay.”
Stan looks at him, really stares him down for longer than necessary. “Okay,” he says eventually.
The chill outside feels perfect against his skin. There are a few kids smoking on the patio that he sidesteps so he can lay down in the grass. It’s already starting to get cold, not even October, and it rained a few times this week, so the ground is wet and seeps into his clothes quickly. It still feels good though, his own skin suffocating and warm. His mind is racing; there are thoughts about him and Stan as their own entity, their own island, as something permanent and enduring, and there are thoughts about Kenny, his protective streak, the angry fondness that Stan seems to have reserved for him, the fact that Kenny is probably a better person than he is, because he’s willing to tell Stan the things Stan doesn’t want to hear, is willing to be the person that Stan needs instead of the one that Stan wants. Craig isn’t sure if he could ever be any of those things, if he could be anything other than himself even for the sake of someone he loves.
Stan finds him like this half an hour later. He’s still laying on his back, and probably muddy with it by now. The notion of getting up right now makes him feel sick.
“You okay?” Stan asks. He’s standing, and he seems so tall; he seems a million miles away.
“No,” Craig says weakly. He can hear Stan breathe out sad and slow, a resigned little huff. Stan sits down in the wet grass next to him, even though it will probably ruin his hundred-something-dollar jeans.
“I’m sorry,” Stan tells him earnestly. He does not touch Craig. “I didn’t realize it would be like this for you. I should have thought it through.”
“It’s okay,” Craig says, because now he feels bad, which. He shouldn’t, he knows distantly that he shouldn’t, but that doesn’t help him now. “I don’t want you to think I don’t want to be with you.”
“I know you do,” Stan says, and now he’s lying down too, spreading his body parallel to Craig’s on the grass, unmoved by the wet and the mud. “You don’t have to be explicit, because I know you. I know you tell me in small ways. I’m sorry, I’m a selfish asshole for wanting this.”
Craig wants to respond, but as he opens his mouth he sees the flash of red and blue lights over Stan’s shoulder.
“Shit,” he says instead, and Stan looks briefly hurt before rolling over to see the lights as well.
“Fuck,” he agrees, and they both scramble to help each other up and instinctively run for the back fence.
Stan’s got mud all over his right side just from the brief second of laying next to Craig, so Craig is sure he’s ten times worse. His pants are tight from being soaked through, and rip when he jumps the first fence into the neighbor’s backyard after Stan. If Stan notices, he still doesn’t care, just keeps going for the next fence. Craig follows, blood pounding too loud in his ears. They jump a few more fences before they hit a patch of woods. Stan hesitates for a second, looking at Craig for his approval, and then he’s running forward again.
They don’t stop for what feels like a half hour, though it’s probably been five minutes. Stan finally biffs it tripping over the root of some tree in the dark and goes face first into a bush.
“Fuck!” he cries again, and Craig worriedly stumbles over to help him up, but trips after him instead. Craig tries to push himself off of Stan, but Stan pulls him back down laughing.
“What are you doing?” he asks, writhing in Stan’s possessive hold, trying to listen for the sound of others running in their direction. He can distantly hear sirens.
“Having my way with you,” Stan replies, kissing at his jaw, his neck.
“Here?” Craig asks, looking over his shoulder. He can’t see shit, can barely see Stan a half foot in front of him.
“You’re so paranoid, babe, like people are gonna fucking find us. Like people are gonna fucking care,” Stan says, one hand already slipping between Craig’s thighs, fingering at the tear where his jeans split.
“I would care,” Craig tells him, even though he likes the way Stan’s thumbnail scratches against the soft skin too close to his crotch.
“Yeah, if someone actually caught us, which they won’t,” Stan says. “Come on, where’s your sense of danger?”
“Nonexistant,” Craig says darkly, but he thrusts into Stan’s hand a little when Stan squeezes.
“Not true,” Stan replies, “I know you.”
At times like this Craig wants to say, no you don’t. You know who you want me to be, maybe, you know the void you want me to fill like some surrogate lover, some surrogate best friend that you lost. Stan goes to unbutton his jeans and Craig’s mind is going a thousand words a minute wondering, did you ever try to get to know me? Did you ever really want to know me at all?
He gasps when Stan works his pants down around his thighs, the cool night air kissing his flaccid, oversensitive dick. Stan works a hand underneath his balls to find his hole with greedy, wanting fingers.
“Let me fuck you,” Stan asks, breathy and tender.
“I don’t know,” Craig says. He feels like there’s some disconnect happening between his top and bottom half tonight, and he doubts his ability to perform.
“It feels so good,” Stan says, “even if you can’t get it up, babe, I’d make you feel so good, you’d be so full of me.”
“Could you even get it up right now?” Craig retorts, palming at the crotch of Stan’s jeans and feeling mean about it until, of course, Stan is half-chub and twitching underneath him.
“Practice,” Stan tells him shamelessly, before gripping him by the meat of his arms and kissing him again, hips rolling up so the rough of Stan’s denim is rubbing against Craig’s bare ass. It feels oddly exquisite, in a way that Craig knows it’s going to chafe and hurt like a bitch tomorrow, like grinding his teeth or scratching an itch for too long. “Please?”
“Fine,” Craig relents, and allows himself to be rolled onto his back so Stan can climb over him and roll his pants down even more. Craig’s stomach flips a little with the noise of wet soil squelching underneath him, the sudden paranoia of a bug crawling into his open mouth while Stan fucks the air out of him. He doesn’t say anything, just passively lets Stan crawl under his legs, where his jeans are now stuck around his ankles, lets Stan push against his thighs so he can get a taste of Craig’s ass.
Stan was right about it feeling good. Stan’s tongue against his asshole feels like a match striking against him again and again, and he feels absolutely lit up, burning and hungry for more of the too-loud moans that Stan presses inside him. Craig forgets his body completely, just drowns in the hot rhythm of Stan licking at him in steady, earnest strokes, dipping his tongue inside like it’s a question he wants Craig to answer.
“Fuck,” Craig moans, throwing his head back and covering his face with his arm. “Just, fucking fuck me, Stan, Jesus.”
“Can’t,” Stan says into his ass, and just the way his words feel like they’re reverberating inside him makes Craig think his brain is about to leak out of his ears. Stan pulls away to talk to him, and Craig aches with his absence. “Mouth too dry, so. Ass also too dry. You could like, choke me with your dick maybe?”
Craig looks at his dick from under his arm, which is still woefully soft. He looks up to Stan then, who is staring down at his crotch like a challenge.
“I got this,” Stan says, ducking back down and breathing hot against Craig’s shaft. He kisses at the soft patch of skin at the base where his dick and balls meet, and Craig’s toes curl in his sneakers. “Let me.”
The blowjob is excruciating, and it feels like it goes on for at least a few millenia. Craig never gets fully hard, and Stan seems to take it personally, even though Craig is breathless otherwise, writhing in the dirt and fucking up into Stan’s mouth.
“It’s okay,” he says, pulling Stan up by his hair. “You don’t--you can fuck me anyway, it’s fine, just fuck me.”
Stan looks down at himself like he’s not sure anymore. He rubs at his own dick through his pants and sucks in a harsh breath through his teeth. “You sure?”
“Yeah, just--everything feels good right now, just fucking do it, I’ll be fine,” Craig tells him, and Stan nods like it’s an order before pulling his own dick out.
It hurts like hell. Stan gets a few inches in and Craig already feels like he’s being torn apart, and worse, like he has to take a huge shit. Stan makes little ‘huh’ noises while shallowly thrusting into him, and usually it would drive Craig crazy with need, make Craig pull Stan deeper into him, but now all he can think about is how he’s going to shit all over Stan’s dick in the woods, and how it’s going to be the worst thing to ever happen to him.
“Please stop,” he cries, hating himself for it. “Please, please, please stop oh God.”
Stan does, immediately, pulling out and holding his dick protectively in his hand. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
“No,” Craig says. “I just--it feels too weird. I don’t trust my body.”
“You’re not gonna shit on my dick,” Stan says, reading his mind, or maybe coming from a place of experience, but Craig can never be too sure.
“You don’t know that,” Craig protests. “I don’t know that. Fuck. Can we go home?”
“Yeah,” Stan says. He sounds disappointed. “Yeah, of course. Jesus, I’m so sorry.”
Craig can feel he’s coming down on the walk back to his parent’s house, because he no longer wants to talk a mile a minute, which thank God. He was really beginning to feel betrayed by his body. Both he and Stan are covered in thick patches of mud that will make Craig’s mom scream if she sees them, and he almost feels like throwing away his clothes completely. Stan doesn’t seem to notice though, wraps an arm around Craig’s neck and doesn’t let go, presses a kiss into Craig’s matted, dirty hair that lingers a little too long.
The lights are out at his house when they get there, so Craig lets Stan sneak inside with him. They take a shower together, and Craig feels like he could stay forever between Stan massaging shampoo into his hair and watching the dirty water swirl down the drain.
“I’m sorry,” Stan says again, soapy thumbs at Craig’s temples, rubbing circles. He’s apologized about twenty times since they started walking home and said little else.
“It’s okay,” Craig says, grabbing him by the wrist and squeezing gently. He feels so tired all of a sudden. “It’s fine.”
He lends Stan a pair of boxers and a t-shirt when they get out. Stan has half of his wardrobe by now, a drawer in his own dresser that Craig tries to steal a few things back from every time he’s over. He will never let Stan know how much he likes seeing Stan in his clothes, stretching out the shoulders and stomach until they’re see-through.
“You sure?” Stan asks as they crawl together under Craig’s cool sheets in the dark, his arms instinctively wrapping around Craig’s waist.
“Yeah,” Craig says, because despite everything, he couldn’t imagine this with anyone else. Years ago, he could never imagine being with anyone like this at all. For all their problems, they’re okay. He closes his eyes and exhales. “Yeah.”
iii. eighteen
Moving in together sounds like a great idea when Stan asks him on his eighteenth birthday. They’re at some steak place, haven’t been there for even ten minutes and Stan asks without being able to look him in the eye, chasing olive oil on a plate with a slice of warm bread. Craig makes him clarify, and when Stan starts to recite a well-rehearsed speech about test runs and college, Craig kicks him under the table and tells him yes, of course he’ll move in with Stan. He likes to think that they don’t need reasons to want to see each other anymore, they don’t need excuses to fall asleep in each other’s arms every night.
Sharon’s been moved out for almost six months, and when they pull up to the house after dinner Craig expects there to be some sort of loud, obnoxious party that Stan pretends to be fond of, but instead the house is as dark and quiet as it is big. “Welcome home,” Stan says, looking at Craig with some mixture of awe and pride.
Moving in together still seems like a good idea when they’re curled up together in the reclaimed master, naked except for the throw that Stan’s wrapped around their shoulders as they smoke a joint and eat cake off of paper plates. Stan had convinced his sister to spring for an expensive bottle of champagne as a birthday gift, but Craig can’t tell the difference when Stan pours him a glass, and they inevitably just start drinking straight from the bottle. Craig isn’t sure if he’s supposed to be overwhelmed by the luxury of it, and he figures he’s become accustomed to it in small doses having dated Stan for the better part of two years. However, he can’t help but think if he were at home--his parent’s home right now, his mom would scold him for trying to bring food upstairs, would try to set a curfew and make him keep his door open if he was on the phone with Stan so she could listen in on the conversation. Some small thrill manages to burst out of him anyway, and he finds himself high and deliriously happy sucking frosting off of Stan’s fingers at two in the morning on a school night thinking, home, here, I’m home.
Moving in together still seems like a good idea when Craig tells his parents the next day, because they both become incredibly upset, and Craig feels like he’s winning although he’s not sure what.
Moving in together still seems like it was the best decision after a month when they’re making it work. Stan hires a maid to clean the house three days a week, and orders takeout for them every night. Stan studies for the GRE while Craig is at school, and they make rules about parties and Stan quietly converts a spare bedroom into a studio for Craig so he can finish the college portfolio he feels like he’s been working on for the past four years. Sometimes Stan comes in while Craig is working and plays nonsense songs on his guitar for hours, and Craig feels like they’re building something together. Stan starts sneaking his sketches out to the kitchen to pin them to the fridge like a proud father with alphabet magnets, but then he starts coming up behind Craig when he’s working, arms around his waist, teeth on his ear, asking if he can put this up in the living room? The foyer? Their house becomes a home, a collection of them; there’s a picture that Wendy took of the two of them last summer when they were innertubing part of the San Juan river half-drunk on boxed wine and holding hands. They’re both smiling, a sunburn crawling across both of their noses, running up their chests. The sunburn had lasted two weeks after for Craig, faded into a nice tan for Stan, but Craig hadn’t even complained with Stan there to rub aloe into it every night, had felt so goddamn content that entire day, would relive it forever if he could. He thinks Stan probably feels the same, because Stan actually buys a frame for the picture and puts in on the nightstand next to their bed, and sometimes Craig will catch him staring at it with an undefinable reverence, touching the frame gently.
Moving in together still seems like a great idea when Craig gets the acceptance letter he was trying not to be too stressed about, and Stan looks so genuinely happy for him, and then asks how Craig feels about selling the house, maybe? Stan following Craig, maybe? There’s the whole “college experience,” he knows, you probably want a dorm room and a roommate who isn’t trying to fuck you all the time, and, uh-- Craig shuts him up with a kiss, says, “let’s fucking do it,” and means it because they have a good thing going.
Moving in together still seems like a great idea even when Stan gets a bad sinus infection that spring, and he is constantly miserable and sniffling and Craig surprises both Stan and himself by making the chicken soup his mom always made when he was sick. Stan sips at the broth and looks at Craig admiringly through glassy eyes, and if Stan hasn’t figured out how uncool Craig really is at this point he never will, so Craig leans over and kisses him gently, the rough, red around his nose, and says, “stop acting so pathetic, loser.”
Moving in together still seems like a great idea when it’s summer and Craig has graduated and Stan has passed the GRE, and they spend too many days by the pool drinking cheap swill beer, sitting around the living room with Token and Kenny, Stan writing music while Craig sits against the wall trying to track the movement of their hands with charcoal. He’s got all of Stan’s curves and angles memorized at this point, could trace Stan’s outline with his eyes closed.
Moving in together seems like a great idea until it’s halfway through July and Craig finds Stan’s pills.
They aren’t Stan’s pills though. They belong to a woman named Gertrude, who is--or was--in a lot of pain. Enough pain to need a script for oxycontin. Craig stares at them and three other bottles with labels he doesn’t recognize laying under some old magazines in the bathroom no one ever uses.
Stan is in the kitchen downstairs when Craig finds him, eating leftover cold pizza for breakfast at the island and drinking what smells like a screwdriver. He beams at Craig, mid-chew, his hair cowlicked in five different places. He looks sweet, Craig thinks. He is the love of my life, Craig thinks. I’m about to lose the love of my life, Craig thinks.
“Wanna take a shower with me?” Stan asks while swallowing around a big bite of crust. “I reek for some reason--”
Opiate sweats, Craig thinks.
“--and a couple is coming by in an hour to take a tour of the house, and also I want to see how long you can last with your dick in my mouth in the shower. I’m gonna say ten minutes, max. Jesus, I’m gonna miss the water pressure when we move.”
Craig puts the pill bottles on the counter with more force than he intended to, and Stan’s dopey morning smile fades fast.
“Just,” Craig bites out, because he’s not sure what to say, “just don’t lie to me, okay. Don’t try to tell me these aren’t yours.”
Stan leans away from the counter, his gaze drifting back and forth between Craig and the pills, assessing. He chews on the side of his cheek like it’s a lie he’s trying to keep down. Finally he says, quietly, “yeah. Those are mine.”
“Okay,” Craig says. He feels hysterical. “Okay.”
The kitchen goes still and quiet, with the exception of Craig’s heavy breathing and Stan’s nails slowly tapping against the counter.
“Are you going to ask me what I was doing with them?” Stan asks eventually. He sounds bored.
“Of course I’m not fucking--that’s such a stupid question. ‘What were you doing with them?’” He mimics, before pounding his fist on the counter and looking away. “I’m not a fucking dumbass, Stan, I’m not your dad, I’m your fucking boyfriend and I know what the fuck you do with a bunch of painkillers.”
“Okay,” Stan replies, raising his hands like he’s the offended party. “Don’t take it personally.”
“How am I supposed to take it?” Craig asks, and he’s even more frustrated by how calm he sounds. Stan probably thinks he sounds bored too. “You’re just-- taking pills now? I’m living in the same house as you and I don’t know you’re high all the goddamn time, I don’t notice my boyfriend relapsed? How the fuck am I supposed to take it?”
Stan shrugs. “I’m not--it’s not all the time. Just sometimes. You say ‘relapsed’ and I’m not sure you know what that means.”
“It means you’re an addict,” Craig says, and Stan flinches like he’s been punched, his hand instinctively tightening into a fist. “It means I have trusted you from day one to have self control, and I shouldn’t have.”
“Why the fuck would you trust me?” Stan asks. He’s smiling, and it looks as mean as Craig has ever seen him. “I never told you to trust me. I think I explicitly asked you to do the opposite.”
“I trusted you because you’re my boyfriend!” Craig yells, out of nowhere, yells. Stan looks almost frightened by it.
“Well,” Stan says after a few beats. He doesn’t look at Craig, picks up one of the bottles and turns it over and over in his hands. “If I knew this is what it would take for you to actually show some fucking emotion I would have relapsed forever ago.”
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Craig asks.
“It means what you fucking think it means. Shit, Craig, I give you the goddamn world and you couldn’t care less. You hate people, you hate our friends, you get lost in your stupid art projects and film studies that focus on the things you hate the most, and I’m so tired of it,” Stan says.
“You hate those things too,” Craig says like it’s been ground out of him. “You just convince yourself that you like them, because you are literally fucked up all the time, Stan. It’s just like when we were kids, and you would go on stupid adventures all the time, you’re just trying to escape. And now you’re trying to escape me too.”
Stan sucks in a breath and shudders. He throws the pill bottle back to the counter and lets it roll to the floor while he scrubs his face in his hands. “Fuck,” he says.
“I think we should break up,” Craig says. It is something he isn’t sure that he wants until he says it out loud. “Just for awhile. I think we should spend some time apart.”
Stan is quiet. He can’t look at Craig.
“What about all of our plans,” he says eventually. “We were gonna find a place together. We were gonna sell this place, make our own.”
“Yeah,” Craig says. “You should probably cancel that showing today.”
“Fuck you, Craig,” Stan spits out. “God, you insensitive asshole.”
“You’re right,” Craig says. He knows he is. He wishes he wasn’t. He doesn’t know how to fix this. “I am. And I love you. But you can’t expect me to commit to this, you can’t expect me to commit to you if you’re using. Fuck, Stan, you’re so fucking selfish. I’m starting school in a month. What am I supposed to do?”
“Help me,” Stan says, reaching across the counter for his Craig’s hands. He grabs one with both, squeezes. Craig doesn’t react. “Stay.”
“I can’t,” he replies. “I don’t know how. I don’t know how to get past this if I don’t trust you. I don’t know how I’m supposed to live with you if you’re not even fucking here.”
“Because I’ll tell you the truth, please,” Stan is begging. “Please.”
Craig hesitates, and Stan is holding onto him so desperately, like some sort of plea.
“I never stopped using,” Stan admits. “I never even tried to get better. I haven’t been sober since the second I got out, and I mean, you know that, Craig. You fucking know that. You’ve been with me the entire time, you’ve seen me.”
“If you’re trying to say that I enabled you--”
“No, fuck, it was me. I’ve been trying to make it look like I’m in control. I know I’m not.” Stan gulps, turns away. He can’t look Craig in the eye anymore, but not because he’s lying. He seems ashamed. “Recently, it’s been harder, you know, the pressure of moving, the thought of you going to college, meeting people. Yeah, I slipped a little harder these past few months. I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t know how to tell you how I feel, and sometimes it seems a little easier to just get away.”
“Jesus,” Craig says.
“But I can’t lose you completely,” Stan tells him, leans forward and presses his forehead to their hands entwined, where Craig has started to squeeze back. His entire body is shaking. “I’d do whatever it takes to keep you. I can stop, I swear, now that you know, I can stop.”
“I need to go,” Craig hears himself saying, despite what he wants to say, which is yes, of course, despite what he wants to do, which is stay forever, curl against Stan and close his eyes and fuck the world, fuck every last one of them.
“No,” Stan says.
“I want to be with you,” Craig says. “But I need to know that you aren’t--I need to know that you’re here with me too. I need to know that I’m not just an excuse for you, either way. I need time to think about this.”
“No,” Stan says again. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Craig tells him, swallowing hard over the last word. “I love you so much.”
And then he leaves.
x
Craig doesn’t see Stan for the rest of the summer, hidden back in his old bedroom at his parent’s house. He has nightmares about Stan dying every night in August, only made more jarring when he wakes up alone. It is a suffocating, hot, lonely month.
Leaving South Park is a relief, like a boot that’s been pressing his chest into the ground finally stepping off. He lives in a dorm with some kid he hates. His bed is too small, and the mattress hurts his back, but no one sees him and recognizes him for the mistakes he’s made, no one knows him in relation to Stan Marsh, no one blames him for leaving Stan behind.
He almost doesn’t go home for Fall Break, but his parents beg, and when he talks to his sister on the phone it sounds like she wouldn’t completely object to having him around for a weekend, which is the closest she’ll ever admit to missing anyone.
He comes home on a Thursday. Stan doesn’t show up on his doorstep until Saturday.
“I deserve some credit,” he says, leaning against the door frame and taking Craig’s passive face into consideration. “Not showing up immediately. I wanted to.”
A big part of Craig wanted him to as well, has wanted to catch Stan watching him from across the quad while he walks to class, has been waiting for Stan to pull up a chair next to him in the library, surprise him at any moment and ask for him back. He doesn’t dare admit to this out loud.
“What do you want?” Craig asks instead.
“Well,” Stan says, hands casually in his pockets, “My house is still for sale. I’d like to get out of here, but I don’t know where to go. I’m still really hung up on this guy.”
“Stan,” Craig says, a little desperately, meaning to tell him to stop.
“He was my entire world,” Stan continues. “Just, completely. The last three months have been so hard without him.”
“Please,” Craig tries again.
“I threw them away,” Stan says suddenly. He shoves his hands even deeper into his pockets, his body going rigid as if it takes every ounce of his control to not reach out for Craig. “All of them. There were stashes you didn’t know about, and I threw those away too. I haven’t--I haven’t even had a drink, or anything since you left. I can do this, Craig. Please, please let me show you that I can commit to you.”
He looks good, Craig will grant him that. Stan’s never had much mass to him before, has been on the side of too-skinny mostly with random pockets of fat awkwardly distributed around his middle, but now he looks like he’s been trying to get in shape, the sleeves of his shirt a little more taut, his neck a little thicker. Craig wants to see him in motion, wants to see him naked, wants to see the shape his muscles take when he’s holding Craig down.
“Fine,” Craig says. He feels exhausted from running and needing so much. Being away from Stan has been like those first few months when they were constantly being pursued by the paparazzi, like being chased by nightmares. He’s felt haunted by all the not knowing.
Stan takes him out on a date that night, already has tickets to go see the indie movie that Craig has been wanting to see. When it’s over, Stan doesn’t ask Craig to come back to the house, instead suggests they go out for coffee so Craig can tell Stan all about college; Stan won’t be jealous, he promises, but there’s a glimmer of fear in his eyes. Craig realizes he’s never seen Stan so open, so vulnerable.
Stan drives them to Tweak Bros., suggesting it because it’s open later than Harbucks. When they walk in, Craig feels like the wind has been knocked out of him.
The walls are covered in his paintings.
“Stan,” he says, reaching for Stan’s arm. He can’t take his eyes off of the walls, the familiar canvases that used to hang over the fireplace, line the hallways when they shared a living space.
“I couldn’t look at them anymore,” Stan says. “It was so fucking hard, that first month especially. I, uh, if you didn’t come back, I was just going to send you a check. A few of them have already sold.”
Craig walks up to one, an abstract nightmare in acrylic that had felt like his heart on paper when he was laying it down. Underneath it says his name on a white, cardstock triangle in a small, bold font: Craig Tucker, untitled #23 (2011). $150.
“One-fifty?” he says, blanching a little bit.
“You gotta pay for college somehow in this economy, right?” Stan suggests, walking up behind him. He rests his chin on Craig’s shoulder, and it feels familiar, it feels good. Craig laughs, unbelieving, his heart painful and swollen in his chest.
They end up sitting down eventually, coffee mugs warm against their palms. Craig tells Stan about his college experience so far in concise, angry stories; how he hates his roommates, the stupid debates they have in class, the kids who play devil’s advocates and make loud, inappropriate jokes in his eight a.m. statistics course when it’s too early for that shit. Stan gives him a sad, deep look at one point and Craig says no, there hasn’t been anyone else, don’t be a fucking idiot, and Stan smiles shyly into his mug and turns away.
Stan attempts to drop him off afterwards. It’s already late, past midnight, and he walks Craig to the door like a gentleman.
“I had a delightful evening, thank you,” Stan says, a caricature of some fifties boyfriend, holding his hand and swinging their arms together sweetly.
Craig can’t take it anymore and grabs him under his jaw to kiss him. It’s supposed to be chaste, but Stan gets with the program before he pulls away and ends up pinning Craig to the front door. His hands are everywhere, his tongue licking into Craig’s mouth needily. The taste of him is achingly familiar, is the sum of things that Craig has missed the past few months, sweet and tender and his.
“Please,” Stan says into his mouth, punctuating his words with closed-mouth kisses, “please, come home.”
“Okay,” Craig says, and lets Stan pull him back toward the car.
Before they even get back to the mansion, Stan is palming Craig through his jeans from the driver’s seat, pulling him in for hungry kisses at every red light. Stan legitimately carries him into the house when they do get there, dumps him on the stairs and proceeds to blow him right there. Craig hasn’t gone so long without sex since he started having it, and blows his load fast in the slick, warm familiarity of Stan’s mouth. Stan swallows all of him, staring up at him through the dark with big, wondrous eyes like Craig is a prize he’s just won.
“Bed?” he suggests, his mouth slipping off of Craig’s spent dick
“Yeah,” Craig agrees breathlessly, allowing Stan to grab him underneath the armpits and nudge him further upstairs.
Stan fucks him for an hour or more, to such an intense degree that Craig wonders if the fight, if the break-up was just some sort of fever dream he had, if he’s been here forever, Stan inside of him, touching every inch of him until he’s just one raw, exposed nerve. The reality of it only washes over him when Stan kisses him at the temple and rolls away from him to saunter off to take a shower, and Craig turns away on his side toward the nightstand where their picture used to sit to find it suspiciously empty.
He mentions it when Stan re-emerges, smelling sharp and clean from the shower.
“Oh,” Stan says, looking past him at the empty space. “Yeah. It’s--I still have the picture.”
“Are you gonna put it back up?” Craig asks. What he means is, will you take me back?
“I don’t know,” Stan says, and Craig’s heart sinks with it. “The break has been hard for me. But I realized--”
“Yeah?” Craig prompts, uncomfortable, picking at his own skin.
“Babe,” Stan says, “you don’t want to be that. You are so much more to me than a picture on my nightstand.”