Chapter Text
“Dude. That looks bad.”
Craig grunted, shooting a look at Clyde that would incinerate a sensible person on impact. Clyde being Clyde, he didn't so much as flinch.
He’d flip him off, but one hand was busy gripping his left arm, which had decided it no longer wanted one of its bones to stay inside it.
“What’s going on?” The Equipment-based hero, Toolshed/Magma/Dissever or whatever moniker the guy was using at the moment, stopped in his tracks and looked downright queasy at the sight of Craig’s arm.
“He broke his arm,” Clyde told him, which is totally unfair because that made it sound like it was Craig’s fault to begin with.
He was sweating now, and clammy, and his head hurt from where he smacked it on a parked car.
“That wasn’t my fault,” He snapped, feeling dizzy from just speaking. “Guy kicked me off the truck.”
He wasn’t sure they were listening. Dissever was staring down at Craig’s arm in morbid fascination. “That’s disgusting.”
“Well, fuck you for being an unhelpful dick,” Craig tried to launch himself up to a sitting position and look a bit more dignified, but ended up immediately heaving instead.
Dissever and Clyde winced. Clyde twisted his hat in his hands.
“We need to go to a hospital,” Clyde said slowly, unconvinced.
“Can’t,” Craig managed, spitting on the sidewalk. “They’ll ask what I was doing.”
“Skateboarding?” Dissever suggested.
“He’s too much of a nerd for sports,” Clyde said, very unfairly.
“I was on the swim team!” He reminded his idiot of a best friend, who shrugged.
“For like a summer, sure.”
“Say you got into a fight,” Terabyte, the technological Girl Wonder and Kicker of Ass was cruising up now, surveying the situation. “You’re young, dumb, and a boy. They’ll think it was some kind of schoolyard fight.”
“Saying you got into a fight is already code for ‘I’m practicing vigilantism, please arrest me!’” Craig argued. “That happened with Kite.”
Dissever did not look happy at the mention of his regular superhero partner. “Whatever. That wasn’t his fault.”
“And it’s not mine either!” Craig protested. “Forget it. I’ll go home and…figure some shit out.”
“Yeah, your bones are literally poking out of your skin right now,” Terabyte surveyed the wound with intrigued disgust. “Don’t worry. With Kite laying low for now, I have another contact I can put you in touch with.”
Clyde perked up. Craig narrowed his eyes.
Not that Tera was known for stabbing people in the back, but he hardly ever worked with her. Or Dissever, but these two assholes showed up unannounced and- well-
“Here.”
The Electronic hero apparently wasn’t averse to using old school technology, because she handed Clyde a physical piece of paper.
“Go to this address,” She said, gently moving Stan away from the two boys. “It’s a coffee shop…go around back, knock on the door, if it’s a grown man make up something and go-”
“What’s with all these-”
“-You want to talk to the guy. Our age, blond. He's cute in a different kind of way. Blue eyes, one’s colored half brown. You can tell him you’re a friend of mine, but…” Tera winces at Craig’s arm. “I doubt you’ll need to.”
Getting up and walking was a chore, but the shop wasn’t far.
Clyde was able to turn his sweater inside out, ditch his hat, but Craig didn’t want to think about attempting to take his shirt off.
“I’m going to fucking die,” He told Clyde, pale and sweating. “She’s set us up to die.”
“Just hang in there,” Clyde encouraged nervously. “Dude. I wish Tolkien wasn’t out of town, he would’ve totally had someone we could go to-”
“I need to sit down,” Craig said, and moved to do so, but Clyde grabbed his other arm roughly and gave him a little shake.
“Don’t!” He demanded, fingers clawing into Craig’s shirt. “It’s just around the corner, don’t give up yet!”
“I need to sit down,” Craig couldn’t see straight anymore, and everything was fuzzy at the edges. His mouth was dry and he was fucking freezing. He needed a rest. “Give me five minutes.”
“No.” Clyde’s grip hurt, now, and while the boy was far shorter than Craig he was also a lot stockier. He began bullying Craig down the street, heeding no attention to his (admittedly pathetic) whining.
Craig’s legs were shaking by the time they got to the back of the building.
It was still somewhat daylight and hot as balls. He knew it was hot as balls but he still couldn’t stop shivering, sagging against a dumpster and trying desperately not to throw up again as a wrecked Clyde began banging on the door.
Craig stared at him, beginning to slide down the rust-roughened surface onto the asphalt. He needed a drink of water. And a nap. And to find the assholes they beat up today and beat them up again for making him suffer this much. And then to go home and feed his children. They were probably waiting for their evening kale.
“What the fuck!”
The shrill squawk wasn’t the endearing noise of his beloved guinea pigs, but it was sharp enough to startle him out of his daze.
Craig stared up at the blond guy, Clyde twisting his hands behind him.
“What the fuck happened to your arm?!” The blond asked, stooping next to Craig among the garbage and debris. “Oh my god, that’s disgusting.”
He was really starting to get offended now. It was his fucking arm, he didn’t go around wearing it like this normally.
“Hey, fuck you too,” Craig managed. “Everyone lay off my arm.”
Oddly enough, the boy snorted.
He was interesting looking. Bit too fuzzy at the edges to look at his weird eyes, but he was weird.
He had nice, sharp, masculine features, but also long blond hair in absolute disarray. He might have freckles, his eyesight was getting a bit too bleary to notice, and was worrying his lip in his crooked teeth.
Blearily, Craig ran his tongue over his own teeth, permanently fucked up after his braces were taken off too early.
“You weren’t kidding,” The guy was saying to Clyde. “Jesus. Hold still.”
Craig, even in his delirious state, knew when a healer said ‘hold still’ you were in for a world of hurt.
The pain helped, though. He groaned, body tensing against the shock, and as he stared up at the sky he could feel his mind clear slightly.
“Who the hell are you?” He asked, trying to focus really hard on the nearest electric post.
“Tweek,” The blond said, voice trembling slightly with effort. “Mosquito said you fell off a truck.”
He did?! How fucking dare he.
“I was kicked off a truck,” He said, shooting a nasty look at Clyde. “I was trying to stop it from slamming into an intersection.”
“Well…” Tweek was holding his arm, he realized, but his other hand hovered oddly over his broken bones. “Did you stop it?”
Craig stared into his face, boney and dark eyebags and a definite sprinkle of freckles.
“Yeah,” He said, and got the strangest urge to talk himself up a little. Maybe to compensate for Clyde’s inaccurate commentary. “Jumped on the back of it as it passed. It’s how the bone busted through the skin- broke into the cab, stopped the car with one hand.”
Tweek’s eyes flit from his arm up to Craig’s, a grin showing off those crooked, ugly teeth. “Oh yeah?”
Heat fluttered in Craig’s stomach. “Yeah.”
“Nice.” His eyes really were two different colors. Prettier than what Tera made it sound, though. “How’d you hurt your head?”
Oh yeah.
“Hit it on a car when I fell off the truck,” He said.
Tweek grunted and made no further comments, to his great disappointment.
The pain was getting worse. Craig cringed against the dumpster, away from Tweek’s hand, which he realized was dripping water on his arm.
“Are you sweating on me?” He said, disgusted, and rather unfairly for someone who was currently sweating buckets.
“That’s freaking cool,” Clyde said, peering over Tweek to see.
“It’s not sweat, it’s condensation,” The blond said, offended. “It’s rain. And hold still, the worst is coming.”
“Great,” Craig lightly smacked his head against the dumpster to keep from screaming. “Love this. Love healing. Getting my bones snapped and snapped back into place makes me so happy.”
“Just keep your voice down when it does,” Tweek warned him. “My parents can’t know you’re here.”
What? Craig was panting, staring up at the blond as he tried to work the words through the haze. He lived at home with his parents? Maybe he was younger than eighteen. He looked Craig’s age, though. Maybe not. Maybe he just lived at home, and liked it, unlike Craig who was loving living away from home even if he had to share the apartment with Clyde for now. Weird, though. Some kind of…illegal drug dealer healer. Dealer healer.
“You need to breathe, dude,” Tweek told him. “Stop holding your breath.”
He wasn’t doing this on purpose. And he was good at holding his breath.
“I was on the swim team,” He blurted, that conversation still at the front of his mind.
“Yeah?” Tweek’s eyes flit back to him again, briefly, a confused but small smile on his face.
“In high school,” Craig said through gritted teeth. “So was my sister. On the girl’s team.”
“Cool,” The Healer said. “I thought you looked like you did sports.”
“He does?”
Craig was going to kick Clyde when he got up.
“Is your sister into hero work, too?”
“No,” Craig panted, “Just me. Little asshole wants to go to college instead.”
Tweek made a scratchy, grating sound that he realized with a flood of warmth was a chuckle. He got him to laugh.
“Honestly I want to go for astrophysics,” Craig blurted, “But I want to have fun and shit first before I get tied down.”
“What’s that?” Tweek asked. “Planes? Flight?”
“No”, said Craig derisively. “It’s space. Planets, stars, galaxies. Reading radio waves and shit.”
“Oh. That’s actually pretty cool.”
“Yeah, I think so,” He managed. “Like there’s all kinds of cool shit you don’t get to learn just in school or anything, there’s so much we don’t know and haven’t explored-”
“Like alien life,” Clyde supplied helpfully.
“Alien life. Black holes, odd signals coming from the depths of space. It’s fucking awesome.”
“You believe in aliens?”
He didn’t look like he was making fun of Craig, but you never knew. He stared into the guy’s face, ignoring the sharp burn happening around his broken elbow.
“Yeah.” He stared all the harder, but Tweek didn’t even look at him. “But you like…have to be really good at like math and physics and shit. To be an astrophysicist.”
Tweek grunted wordlessly, then looked him right in the eyes.
“This is going to hurt,” He said calmly, right before Craig’s vision went white.
He didn’t know if he passed out or if his brain just decided to jump offline for a couple seconds, but the next thing he knew, Clyde was sitting next to him holding his good hand while Tweek sat back on his heels and surveyed him with frantic eyes.
“Oh, good,” Relief flooded pretty, mismatched eyes. “I didn’t kill you.”
Craig stared at him. “Was that a fucking worry?”
Tweek shrugged.
Craig checked his arm. He still had blood and tears in his sweater, but pulling up the sleeve his skin was now healing-raw-red and sealed over. He could move it with minimal soreness.
“You definitely need to be careful for a couple days,” Tweek said, taking his arm again. Without the pain, Craig could feel how firm but careful his grip was. “Bone’s set and healed, but there’s always nerve damage and shit to worry about. If it’s not better in a couple days, better see a real healer.”
Even if it fell off, he definitely wouldn’t.
“Sure.”
Tweek smiled at him like he knew. His nose wrinkled slightly, a childish sort of charm in his peach-fuzz, angled face. He had freckles all over his nose. Craig couldn’t stop looking at him.
“Thanks,” Clyde said when Craig proved to be useless. “Seriously, that was terrifying.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Tweek stood, stretching.
He wasn’t even winded. Not many people could heal like that and even stay on their feet…this guy was tough shit.
Craig stood up as well, finding he towered over this guy as well. Not as bad as Clyde, but Tweek still had to tilt up his head to look at him.
He was so skinny, he made Craig look well built. He had nice shoulders, though. Broad. Really bushy, heavy eyebrows. One raised at him, and he realized he had been staring for a pretty long time at this point.
“Craig,” He said. Clyde’s jaw dropped. “Thanks.”
Tweek’s other brow shot up to join the other, and he twitched oddly. Whatever surprise he had at first died down, however, and he slid a boney, long-fingered hand into a firm handshake.
“Tweek Tweak,” He said. “Don’t comment on it, I didn’t get to choose.”
A stupid grin fought its way on Craig’s face. “That’s so dumb.”
“The guy who’s falling off cars in the middle of hero fights shouldn’t call other people dumb,” Tweek threw back. “I saved your ass just now. You owe me.”
“Oh.” Clyde’s gaze connected with Craig’s and both realized the same thing at the same time.
Healing wasn’t cheap. Cheaper than the American Healthcare system, sure, and that was probably why it was outlawed, but it definitely cost more than the eight dollars Craig had in his pocket right now.
“I…” Craig stared down at Tweek. “I’m broke. I don’t get paid until next Friday.”
“I have like…five dollars,” Clyde said mournfully.
The blond rolled his eyes, a twitchy smile on his face. “Yeah, I’m not really surprised.”
“Hey!” Craig said.
“Easy,” Tweek poked him, hard, in the arm he just healed. “You do owe me. If I need a favor.”
Really? That was it?
Craig squinted at him, but Tweek didn’t look suspicious. Or annoyed. In fact, he looked strangely pleased.
“Okay,” he said slowly.
“Right now, I need to get back to work. My parents will literally kill me.”
Only then did it register that Tweek was in uniform. An apron was draped over the back steps, of course, and the guy was dressed in nice slacks and rolled-up sleeves that exposed strong forearms.
“Well,” Craig blurted as Tweek stooped to pick up his apron. “Good thing you're such an insane, crazy-good healer.”
It sounded dumb, even to his ears, but Tweek shot a look over his shoulder that seemed fairly approving.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” The boy waved him off. “I get that you’re broke, Craig, you can cut that shit out.”
His insides squirmed pleasantly, and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything else dumb.
“Thanks for helping us out,” Clyde spoke up as Tweek passed, offering a sheepish grin. “Sorry for freaking out on you.”
Tweek offered the guy a nice kind of smile, waving him off as he opened the back door back up. “Sure. Bye, guys.”
And he closed the door behind him.
Craig surveyed his sweater again. He was definitely going to have to throw this into the garbage. All the bleach in the world wasn’t taking these stains out.
Clyde took a deep breath, then walked over to Craig, grinning broadly.
And punched him in the arm.
“Hey, what the fuck!” Craig shoved him, cradling his newly-healed arm. “I just got this fixed. Don’t make me have to call that guy back out to sweat on me.”
“What do you mean ‘that guy’?” Clyde’s dark blue eyes sparkled with glee. “Dude. You two practically know each other’s entire history, you didn’t forget his name already.”
Craig jolted, sending a wary look towards the door and hastily steering Clyde back down the street.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” He said gruffly. “I hate when you go to healers and you just sit there, staring at nothing, total silence-”
“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit,” Clyde looked back over his shoulder at the alley. “You literally could not stop flirting with him the whole time.”
“That was not flirting”
“Sure,” Clyde’s look was so smarmy Craig could’ve smacked him back. “You just told him your name, that you were into sports, that you’re so smart and into physics and space and that you’re good at math and you got soooo hurt being a Good Guy Hero stopping cars with one hand with your big muscles and shit-”
“Hey!” Craig’s heart thudded in his chest. “Shut up! I don’t even remember that, I was busy fucking bleeding out.”
Clyde didn’t look like he was buying that for a second.
“Right, dude, sure.”
Dammit. He was definitely spreading this around their group, and now Jimmy and Tolkien were definitely going to be reaching out and heckling him about the healer kid.
Listen, it wasn’t even a big deal. It all could be explained away by him being in intense pain and needing something to focus on. Really, he should be lucky he hadn’t shared his address and social security. He hadn’t blabbed Clyde’s identity all over the place, so honestly he did pretty great all things considered.
He was definitely also not thinking about how good-looking the guy was, how he jumped into action despite being freaked out at a bleeding kid laying all over the concrete, and definitely wasn’t thinking about how if he got hurt again, he was definitely going back.
Because that would be super pathetic and embarrassing.
“I’ll say though,” Clyde said, startling Craig, “That was scary as shit, dude. I thought you were really going to die on me.”
“You wish,” Craig said lightly, but Clyde’s lips twisted.
“Nah,” The brunet scratched the back of his neck. “Seriously. I literally grabbed the poor guy and began crying at him.”
Craig snorted.
“You looked bad, though. Can’t believe he healed you and walked off like that.”
“Yeah,” Craig shoved his hands in his pockets. “Must be a decent healer or something.”
“Mm.” Clyde didn’t seem ready to tease him again, too lost in thought.
“Reminded me of mom,” He said, dropping that bomb between them with no warning, “The way your face looked. When I was telling you to keep walking.”
Craig froze, staring at the back of Clyde’s head as they continued walking.
Ever since his mom died- and she’d died, like…ages ago- he’d maybe heard Clyde mention her a dozen times or so. Like, total. It was a subject that Clyde still struggled with, Craig wasn’t so detached that he didn’t understand that.
He didn’t know what to say. ‘Sorry’ sounded off, he didn’t exactly get hurt on purpose. He didn’t know what else to say, though.
He settled for clapping Clyde on the back, roughly, and letting his hand linger there longer than necessary. Touch was easier than words.
The pinched look in his face eased, so maybe that was the right thing to do. He hoped so. He was one of Craig’s oldest friends, and he definitely owed Clyde something for making sure they got to the healing house without Craig collapsing in the middle of the street.
He’d try not to get too irritated at him when the text messages came slamming in later tonight, anyway. Good start.