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“Dude…you’re so fucking gorgeous.”
Craig grimaced, but his eyes were more lax than annoyed. He sighed and readjusted himself on the cool tile of the Marsh’s upstairs bathroom, where Stan was currently in the process of vomiting up probably everything he’d consumed within the last day.
“I just--I gotta let you--just let you know--"
He promptly whipped his head around to hurl some more into the pristine porcelain, and when he lifted his head, gasping for air as his knuckles tightened around the stark-white rim, he turned to Craig, whose head and chest throbbed with irritated exasperation as he narrowed his eyes across his face.
Stan’s deep brown eyes, effortlessly gorgeous whenever they caught the sun, were clouded with an insane amount of blood shot, and his messy black locks were slick with sweat against his more-pale-than-usual face. Spit and saliva hung from his lower lip, and his entire frame was hunched over the toilet with an air of exhaustion, as though he were a second away from passing out with vomit-stained clothes. The puke made him smell horrible, the entire bathroom was thick with the putrid scent of sweat and grime, yet Craig knew he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Stan almost looked as though he were about to start speaking again, but when he opened his mouth, he snapped back to the toilet instead.
As he was emptying out seemingly everything he’d ever placed into his stomach, Craig leaned back against the bathtub and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. He was at an utter, complete loss, and for one of the very few instances in his life, he had no idea what to do. There was really no other word to describe what he felt, no other word but heartache to correctly articulate how his chest lurched whenever he saw Stan like this, which was occurring far too often for his liking.
He loved Stan with more certainty and caution than he’d ever done with anything or anyone before, he loved Stan so much that it scared him. But now, though he knew he could never voice it aloud, it was Stan himself, him and his stupid fucking habits that were scaring Craig. It was nearly an every day occurrence at this point; Stan would call him in the dead of night, incoherent and loopy and just freaking wasted , and of course he could never truly understand what he was saying, but no matter what time it was, Craig would always find himself at his door, and he’d always find the spare key Randy thought was so clever to hide underneath their doormat.
And they’d always end up like this, empty bottles of stolen liquor lining the path from his bedroom to the toilet, the haunting sound of Stan’s copious vomiting that made him want to scream, and his silent worry.
A long while passed before Stan lifted his head again, the only sound in the suffocatingly bright room being his shaky breaths and incomprehensible murmurs as his painful groans were echoed from the toilet bowl.
His eyes were still fixated upon the noisy whirl of the toilet as his quivering hands tentatively flushed it, and Craig could see the rigidity of his body, but he also knew how exhausted he was, how exhausted they both were. He reached out and snaked his hands underneath Stan’s shirt, sensing the other boy’s immediate calm as Craig’s cool touch seeped into his burning skin. Carefully, he pulled him in from the disgusting toilet, a mess they’d worry about later, and let him sink back against his chest.
Stan reeked, he reeked like puke and nausea and anxiety and agony, but Craig honestly didn’t care. He knew there were chunks of sick on his shirt, and he knew that Stan was a sweaty mess, but he pulled him in tighter, holding him against his chest as if he could squeeze everything that was so tainted right out of him.
“Fuck. I--fuck--I’m so sorry, Craig.” Stan’s words were barely above a pained whisper, and Craig simply hummed as he danced his fingers across his back; he could feel Stan’s frown against his chest. “I smell so bad.” His watery eyes flickered up to meet Craig’s. “It’s late. You can’t--you shouldn’t stay.”
Craig scoffed. “Tough shit. And trust me, I’ve smelled far worse.” He pressed a kiss to Stan’s sweat-slicked hair and brushed it out of his eyes.
And I love you far more than I’d ever care to admit.
“But that doesn’t mean you can keep doing this crap.” Craig focused in on their popcorn ceiling as he tried to grit his voice. “You’re gonna get better, okay?”
Stan was silent, and Craig took that as his cue to swallow his nerve and keep talking, but when he parted his lips, he just sighed and blissfully closed his eyes.
“And I’m going to kill your dad one day.”
He heard a lifeless snort from underneath him, but he furrowed his brows and continued, tightening his grip around the boy on his chest. Stan only got absolutely wasted whenever something had blown up between him and Randy, with both of their tempers constantly colliding and causing screaming matches that could be heard throughout the neighborhood nearly every night.
“He is a piece of shit, but he’s also like--my dad, I guess. So you can’t exactly do that.”
“I can give Cartman twenty bucks and a soda and Randy would in a wood chipper in a minute.”
Stan giggled, but it felt foreign. Craig knew what his true laugh sounded like, it was loud, guttural, and somewhat harmonious. Now, he was giggling like dazed toddler on a sugar high, but instead of something sweet, his breath lingered with whiskey and vomit. His fingers trickled up Craig’s throat, and he gently tilted his jawline to face him, Stan’s eyes desperate and searching.
Whenever he was truly gone, Stan could easily slip from one extreme to the next, go from morose and exhausted to horny and needy, but Craig never indulged him when he was in that state. It didn’t feel right, even though they were dating, to do something like that when Stan wouldn’t even remember it come morning. Besides, staring down at his face now, Craig honestly couldn’t even recognize him. Drunk Stan was an entirely different person, and Craig had no interest in screwing him.
He couldn’t ask Stan what had happened this time, not now at least, when it was so obvious that he’d drunken himself stupid in an attempt to wipe it from his mind. He lurched forward in an attempt to place his lips upon Craig’s, but he reeled back. Lip kissing when Stan was drunk was where he drew the line, in matters both moral and hygienic. Stan flopped his head back and groaned in response, narrowing his watery eyes at Craig, who remained stoic.
“Fuck you, you fucking piece of shit, go fuck yourself and go fucking die and I fucking--"
He promptly retched all over Craig’s front, to which the latter responded with a simple sigh, pulling off his shirt and tossing it into the sink as he rose to his feet.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Stan mumbled words of protest, but made no real effort to fight as Craig lifted him up and helped him stumble into the bathtub, watching as his head lolled into his knees, pushed up against his chest.
Craig was quiet as he worked, delicately pulling his shirt over his head and helping him unbutton his jeans, both articles of clothing caked in sweat and stained with chunks of puke. He still felt apprehensive about the whole seeing-his-boyfriend-naked-while-he-was-absolutely-wasted thing, so he kept his boxers on and then rummaged in the towel cabinet for a rag.
“I’m sorry,” Stan murmured again as Craig lathered up the small towel with a peachy-scented soap and began to scrub his torso, words to which Craig set his jaw, before quickly relaxing it.
He wasn’t angry.
He wanted to be, he wanted so badly to lash out at Stan, to scream and yell at him and plead him to stop trying to put himself into a grave, smash every single bottle of alcohol in this narrow house that felt like it was suffocating him every time he stepped inside. He wanted to stomp downstairs where he had drunkenly passed out on the floor and beat Randy’s stupid, stupid face until it was a bloody, unrecognizable pulp. Craig didn’t like a lot of people, but he didn’t hate a lot of them either.
But he hated Randall Marsh.
He hated him, he loathed and despised him with almost as much passion as he loved Stan with. A hatred surged within him, one that had been consistently mounting with every time Stan would stumble to his doorstep with a blackened eye and bloodied lip, every time Stan would spend the night at his place because he just couldn’t go back there, every time Stan would jolt awake after he had been sleeping in Craig’s arms, gasping and clawing at his throat before rushing to the bathroom for another spew of vomit mixed with tears.
Craig’s own hardened eyes brimmed with ire and a sense of unjust as he tried not to let his rage show while he wiped the puke from Stan, but he couldn’t stop himself from blurting out the one question he already knew the answer to.
“Why can’t you just come live with me?” He hated the way his voice sounded as the words spilled out, boyish and confused, a desperate plea with the words caught in his throat, his eyes scanning Stan as if he could find the answer written somewhere upon his skin. “My parents love you, you know they wouldn’t give a shit.”
Stan lifted his head just so, glazing his eyes upon Craig’s with probably all the focus he could muster at the moment before he lightly shut them and tilted his head back, letting the warm water pressed against his skin lull him into a state of bliss. His quiet whisper, soaked with fatigue and bleakness, cut into the grim silence of the early morning.
“You know I can’t leave her here. Not with him.”
Craig bit his lip to stop himself from saying something he’d undeniably regret, because he knew this was the one subject Stan was unshakable on. He hadn’t been speaking about Shelley, she’d booked it out of their town as soon as she graduated; he had been referring to his mother. His eyes flickered to Craig’s, and they wrinkled with something unknown as he sighed, reaching over to shut off the water and rise to his feet, gently shoving Craig’s hand away.
He wished he could’ve done something, anything to sway Stan’s perspective, to open his eyes and tell him that he wasn’t responsible for being the sole pair of strings holding his cracking, crooked household together; his body and mind shouldn’t be the collateral damage of his father’s rage towards him, or towards Sharon, for Craig knew that many of the lashings Stan’d received had been because he’d stepped in when Randy started to act dangerously violent towards his mother. But Craig knew Stan better than anyone in this shitty town ever bothered to, and he knew him well enough to know that there was nothing he could say to truly change anything, not for now at least.
At least not for one more year.
Just one more year in this hellhole of a town, and they’d be free , and Craig would swoop Stan up into his arms and take him far, far away from here. Every single college they’d applied to had been together, and when the acceptance letters came, they were choosing whichever one was furthest away. And once they were gone, truly gone for good, Craig would make sure that nobody ever laid a fucking hand on Stan Marsh again.
Stan stumbled as he stepped out of the tub, and Craig jumped to his feet to steady him, suddenly jerked back to the reality that Stan was still very much heavily intoxicated.
“You’re so good to me.”
It was a breathy whisper, Stan’s shivering frame limp against Craig as his voice sent chills down the taller boy’s spine, and Craig responded by pressing a chaste kiss to his neck, lifting him so that his hands were fixed underneath his thighs, with Stan’s arms lazily wrapped around his neck and his head drooped down onto his shoulder.
Craig was mindful of the silent home as he cautiously carried a now-unconscious Stan towards his cracked bedroom door, gently depositing him onto his twin-size mattress as he delicately covered his body with the single blanket he found. His chest ached and raced all at once as he stared down at him, but he was just grateful that he was finally able to somewhat rest. The bed creaked as he sat down on it to shoot a quick text to his parents, letting them know that he’d be spending the night at Stan’s, though at this point, the notice was just for the principle more so than anything else.
They knew.
And they understood.
If Craig disappeared in the middle of the night and didn’t come back until sunset the next day, his parents never had to yell at him and demand where he’d been, because 99% of the time, he found himself to be heading towards the same place every time he left.
As he closed his phone, he glanced at the clock, feeling his eyes blur with faint exhaustion as he read the numbers staring back at him, teasing his tired eyes that it was now half past four in the morning. He rubbed his eyes and sighed, hopping off the bed back towards the hellish-looking bathroom in desperate need of a cleaning.
It was near six when Craig had finished scrubbing, washing, and picking up after Stan’s latest alcohol-induced drunken destruction of the Marsh’s upstairs bathroom, but despite it all, he couldn’t find a single ounce of resentment within himself. He’d cleaned up after Stan made himself black out more times than he cared to count at this point, but as he quietly climbed back upstairs after putting the puke-coated clothes and rags to wash, he really, truly hoped that this would be the last time.
Stan just had to stay in this shit hole house for one more year, and it was all Craig could do to hope that he could.
He’d taken a shower himself before he crept back into Stan’s room, one of Sharon’s nice towels wrapped around his waist that he felt slightly bad for using for a split second, before he remembered why he was here and then wondered why he hadn’t used it earlier to mop up the vomit. He wrung out his damp black hair as he leafed through Stan’s closet for something to wear. Craig had a good couple of inches on his boyfriend, but luckily, he found his suspiciously missing NASA hoodie, and a baggy pair of gray sleeping shorts.
He climbed in next to Stan on top of his bed, grateful that the rickety springs seemed to do absolutely nothing to disturb him from his sleep. He lay motionless next to Stan for a while before he huffed and propped himself up on his elbow, observing Stan’s sleeping form as pale streams of light, swirling washes of golds, pinks, and purples, seeped in through his ajar window, painting his body as though he were a Sistine Madonna. He felt a lurch in his chest at that moment, a sudden knowing and a sudden urge that no matter what, no matter where or who or what they were, he would do absolutely anything for Stan; a disturbing realization that if he ever wanted him dead, he’d gladly blow out his brains in a second just to prove his devotion.
“I love you.”
His voice was a low rasp, a delicate whisper as it swayed throughout the small room, and as his eyes traveled Stan’s unconscious frame, he wanted to say it a thousand times more, he wanted to say it again and again and again until those words no longer held any meaning, yet were worth more than anything Craig had ever owned.
Stan stirred slightly as the sunrise’s beams began to glow upon his eyes, his brows furrowed as he shifted in bed, slowly casting his breath upon Craig’s neck. Like it was second-nature, Craig wrapped his arms around Stan’s body and let his head fall into the crook of his neck. Their legs tangled together, and he could feel Stan’s shallow heartbeat thumping against his own chest, his light snores easing all the tension from Craig’s body.
It was well into the morning now, and Craig should probably fall asleep soon if he actually cared about his sleep schedule for the week, but right here, in this moment, he didn’t want to move an inch. He loved Stan beyond all reasonable measure, but he knew he had to make him realize one day that there were simply some things he really just couldn’t fix. He also knew the other boy’d undeniably have a hellish headache when he woke, and would probably spend most the day cycling between the freshly cleaned toilet and his bed, groaning all the while, but Craig had no intentions of leaving him alone. Not now, not ever.
The faint sound of birds chirping filtered in through the slightly open window, and Craig relented to the fact that he probably wasn’t going to be getting any real sleep anytime soon. He tightened his grip around Stan, and pressed a long, slow kiss to his burning forehead.
Stan Marsh was an inescapable aspect of his life, a probably-supernatural force that affected all facets of his life, and in all honestly, he was the reason he did everything he did, and he would never have it any other way.
“I’m gonna marry you one day,” he softly mumbled into Stan’s tousled locks, idly twisting them here and there. “A nighttime ceremony, maybe. Just us and our friends, and we’d exchange vows under the stars. I have some of mine written already, you know. Kind of cringe, I know, but you’re literally passed out right now, so.”
Stan rustled a bit, but his shallow breaths, the steady rise and fall of his chest betrayed that he was still in a deep sleep. Craig could hear movement downstairs, but he assumed that was Sharon waking since there was absolutely no way the wasted Randy he’d stepped over earlier would be awake so soon. Still, he instinctively pulled Stan closer. His mind was a whirlwind of mild fear and surges of anger, but he took a shaky breath and forced himself to keep talking, for his sake if not Stan’s.
“We would dance until the sun rose, to whatever kind of music you wanted, and we’d have one of those corny ass cars to drive away in the morning. ‘Just Married’ and shit, you know.” Stan mumbled a bit, something incomprehensible, but he didn’t wake. “I would take you to Seoul--no, actually--I would take you all across East Asia afterwards, just like you’ve always wanted. We’d visit Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul--I could introduce you to my family there--Beijing, Taipei, we would go anywhere you wanted. I would take so many freaking photos man, I’d be worse than my mom.”
He let a soft grin spread across his face as his mind pictured it all.
“I know you don’t really believe it, and I think you’re absolutely fucking insane for that, but you’re--you’re really just beautiful, Stan. I think I’ve thought that since the moment I met you. That’s actually kind of scary to think about.
“And I promise you, I will do everything in my power to love you the best that I can for the rest of our lives. I’m actually sort of glad you’re asleep right now, because I don’t know if I’d have the balls to say this if you were looking at me with those stupidly big, brown, foal-like eyes which are actually so unfair because how am I possibly expected to focus on anything when your eyes constantly look like a fucking lost puppy and I--" he sighed and rolled his eyes. “--am losing the point.
“I--I love you in ways that I can’t even bring myself to understand. I think I’m in love with every single part of you, and I don’t ever want to even fathom a life where I’m not always by your side.
“We’re gonna leave this shitty town one day, one day soon , I promise you that, Stan.”
He wrapped his arms deeper around the sleeping boy in front of him, inhaling his scent, memorizing the intoxicating sensation of skin on skin, knowing that he would never again find someone whose soul fit with his so perfectly, no one other than him.
“And I am going to love you, I am going to be nothing but yours for the rest of our lives. I swear by it.”
There was the sound of a muffled yawn and a familiar groan.
“You’re actually making me more nauseous than I already am.” Stan dropped his head against Craig’s chest, his voice airy and thick with sleep as he grit his teeth. “And my head is already fucking throbbing.”
Craig didn’t make an effort to stop the small grin spreading across his face, humming as Stan slowly came back to full consciousness.
“In that case, I was actually lying. You mean nothing to me and I’m breaking up with you. Forever.”
“Forever’s a long time for someone who was just talking about being nothing but mine for the rest of our lives.” Stan gently tilted Craig’s jaw so that they were searching each other’s eyes with equal bouts of longing and pure, disgusting love.
“Was that true? Do I really get to have the Craig Tucker all to myself forever and ever and ever?”
Craig wanted to bite back with something equally coy, but his one weakness, the one person who always managed to see past his stoic facade and essentially see him as the whiny, insecure nerd he’d truthfully always been, and decided to fall in love with that nerd anyways, had always been Stan. And if he got a little bit too sappy while talking about it, he honest-to-God did not give a shit.
“Yeah.” He entwined his hand with Stan’s as his breath ghosted over his face; Stan’s warm hand was a glowing ember he held with caution and admiration in his own frigid palm. “You’re kind of stuck with me.”
“Forever?"
“And ever.”
Stan reached up and pulled him down into a long, hazy kiss. Craig felt his mind go blissfully blank as Stan ever-so-slightly bit down on his lip, his hands wandering towards his still-damp locks as Craig’s hands slid down to grip Stan’s pale waist. He wasn’t entirely sure what their future would hold, especially with Stan’s screwed up life in this house, but he was certain that wherever they ended up, if he could stay like this with Stan, if he could hold him like this and call him his for the rest of his life, then, well--
Everything would be just fine.