Creek - a new beginning

Harm

"Craig. CRAIG!"

Thump

In David's efforts to wake Craig up for school, he had knocked him onto the floor.

"Dude!"

"Sorry man, but we're gonna be late if you don't get up."

Craig checks his phone. "Ugh..."

"I'm gonna go out and talk with Clyde, hurry and get dressed or we will leave you behind."

After David leaves Craig slowly gets up, his elbow has a carpet burn from the fall. Craig throws on a white tee shirt and some black jeans. He grabs the lunch he had made last night and heads out the door.

"Hey, Clyde. Did your group finish the project? We present today."

"Yep! We nailed it, our speech is pretty funny too."

"It isn't supposed to be funny you dunce."

Craig joins David and Clyde. 

Craig is kind of glad David is here, Craig doesn't have to do any talking. Craig doesn't hate talking, he just feels like he doesn't have anything interesting to say. 

-

During lunch, David playfully throws a roll at Craig, who throws an apple back. They continue to throw food items at each other. The food fight between the two goes on until a teacher comes in.

"Boys... You are far too old to be playing like this. You will both have to stay late after school and work until this floor is squeaky clean."

"Aww! Craig look what you did!"

"What did I do?! You stared it! Did you think I wouldn't throw something back?"

"Well, not an apple! That shit hurts!"

"Whatever."

The two bicker for a while until class starts.

-

"Okay class, today we will all be presenting our projects. Remember to be loud and clear."

The teacher calls up each group one by one to the front of the class. When it's the trio's turn, they line up and start speaking. 

Tweek is nervous about his part, he goes first. Tweek starts off strong but starts to stutter about halfway through.

"A-and s-so when the um... when the... C-colonizers came in and- um-"

Craig chimes in, "The colonizers came in and began to 'claim' land. This was problematic because the natives who had been living on this land for decades started to be hunted." Craig picked up where Tweek was struggling, after a few sentences he gestures back to Tweek to finish his part. 

Tweek is able to say the rest of his part with few problems. David and Craig say their parts with no issues. 

Once class was dismissed Tweek walked over to Craig.

"Hey, Craig?"

"Yes?"

"Um... T-thank you. For helping me with my speech..."

Craig is silent for a second, Tweek finally looks up from his shoes and sees Craig covering his mouth with his hand. Once they make eye contact Craig quickly looks away.

"Not a problem. Good job finishing it."

Tweek smiles "Thanks! You did well too! Have a good evening!" Tweek walks out of the classroom.

Craig falls into his chair and puts his head down. "What the fuck..."

"Space boy! We gotta go clean! Remember?"

Craig takes a deep breath and gets up. "Right, let's go then."

-

After cleaning for about an hour they finish up.

"Hey Craig I'm gonna go to the bathroom, might be a few minutes."

"Okay, just meet me outside when you're done."

Craig waits outside the front door for 10 minutes before deciding he should go look for his cousin. 

"The fuck is taking him so long?"

Craig walks up to the second floor, the direction he saw David go, there are 4 bathrooms on the second floor, so it makes sense that he would be up there.

As he walks past the music hall he hears quiet whimpering and sniffling. He would usually ignore things like that, but this was the music hall. He had a gut feeling that he had to go check this out.

As he walks he sees a figure curled up on the floor. He walks closer and sees blonde hair. 

Then he starts to run.

"Tweek!?"

Tweek looks up at Craig, who is out of breath and looking at Tweek with a concerned look. 

Craig sees Tweeks face and almost gasps. 

His left eye was swollen, and his lip busted open. His nose blood mixed in with his lip blood and tears. Craig slowly bends down to Tweeks level, approaching Tweek the same way someone approaches a scared dog. 

"Tweek..." Craig pulls the sleeve of his jacket out a bit and brings it to Tweeks face. Craig starts to wipe up the blood on his face, and his tears. 

"Tweek... Who did this to you..."

Tweek looks up at Craig and falls into his chest, bursting out into a hard sob. 

Craig starts to pet the back of Tweeks head as he cries into his shirt. "It's okay. Everything is okay now. I'm here. Just breathe. You're okay, Tweek."

Tweek continues to cry into Craig's shirt. Craig lifts Tweek up, reverse-piggy back style. Tweek tightens his arms around Craig. Craig starts to walk down the hall toward the nurse's office.

The nurse was gone so Craig set Tweek on the bed. 

When Craig pulled away from Tweek, the injured boy grabbed onto his arm.

"Tweek it's okay. I'll just be right here. I'm not going anywhere. I just want to do something about your injuries." Tweek slowly releases his arm.

Craig grabs some wipes, an ice pack, and some bandaids. He cleans off Tweeks face and hands him the ice pack.

"Hold this against your eye, it will bring the swelling down a bit and it should help with the pain as well. Now hold still, I'm gonna put a bandaid on your lip, the cut is pretty bad."

Tweek follows his instructions, he seemed to have calmed down a bit.

After Craig patches up Tweek, he checks his phone.

David: Hey man, just finished in the bathroom, where are you?

Craig: Something came up, go home without me.

Craig sits with Tweek until he starts breathing normally.

"Are you feeling better?"