Chapter Text
A deep, beautiful blue slowly filtered into the jet black, lightless nothingness that could be seen behind Craig's eyelids. He didn't remember opening them, but alas, he found himself, seemingly awake, staring into a sea of navy blue. He laid back with a groan, not noticing the small splash that action caused, and lazily gazed up into the starless night sky.
"So, you're the one that God said would come?" Came a whispered voice, sarcastic but with it a slight undertone of awe and possibly...respect? That last part quickly died out as she came closer and sized him up. He hurried to sit up and rub his eyes but couldn't fight off the yawn that overtook him. "Y'know, I'd thought someone like you would be smarter than to lay down in the star pool, but I guess you never know."
Pool? He quickly stood and looked down to see that neither his clothes nor his tail were wet, it was still just as light and fluffed out as when he was laying in his bed. The second his panic died down, it caught his eye: a star-littered lake, full of stars with colors he's never seen before and new constellations that he for some reason could swear he knew. The figure that the voice came from stood patiently in front of him, giving him a few minutes to admire his environment, before clearing her throat. He turned to look at her.
"Hey there, idiot, thought you'd never noticed me," she teased with a wide grin. Craig didn't hear nor acknowledge her words, and instead opted to examine her.
She was an odd-looking wolf. The color of her fur was that of a Russian Blue cat, with an undercoat of a slightly lighter color and her lower legs, ears, and part of her face being a deep blue. She had a patch of light blue fur between her eyes in the shape of a diamond and a triangle of the darker blue under each eye. She was...majestic, to say the least.
After a minute she flicked her tail with a sigh, "See, now I think you're noticing me a little too much there, pal, can you dial it back down?"
"S-sorry," Craig breathed.
"You better be," she chuckled, "I guess the chosen one's a little pervert, is he?"
Craig closed his eyes and took a breath, then met her leaf green eyes with his own, "Chosen?" he muttered, now in his usual monotone.
"Indeed, chosen! Lucky you, right? Say, how old are ya, kid?"
"Twelve."
"Well shit, you're rather young...Good thing we need 'em around your age, easier to train or something. Are ya down to travel to another universe, fox boy?"
"I'm sorry?" Craig blinked at her, "that is fucking insane. And you are a wolf. A full grown, giant wolf. You could maul the fuck out of me at any second, and that is not even considering how dangerous it probably would be to travel to an entire other universe."
"Don't be a smartass with me, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, kid! No one there will hurt ya unless you catch 'em when they're hungry. And even then, I'll take care of them for you," she urged, taking a step towards him, "and I'm going to be teaching you how you can take care of them yourselves. Imagine how useful it could be to be strong enough, er, well, good enough at fighting to take down something like me. I can assure you, you're going to find yourself in our realm anyway, so you might as well be prepared."
He blinked at her again, "Could I bring weapons? Or my boyfriend?"
"Sure, sure. Anything you want, you can bring. So long as you don't use it harm me or anyone else, we're good, capiche?"
"I'll think about it."
"That's the spirit, fox boy! Now, what's your name? I'm Sapphirine."
"Craig."
"Alright then, Craig. If you decide to come, just meet me again here at the star pool. I'll find you and bring you to my realm the next day whenever it's convenient for you. I'm not always here, though, so you might have to call for me.”
Craig let out an exasperated sigh. "And how might I do that," he said in as sarcastically of a tone as he could muster.
"Just look in the sky and think my name as loud as you can."
"Think loud—? Nope, not worth the conversation. Listen, uh, Sapphirine, can I go back to my room now?"
"Blunt, are we?" She chuckled, looking off to the side. "Sure, sure, whatever." She raised one paw and tapped it to his head.
~・✧★✧・~
Craig opened his eyes to see the fake green glow in the dark stars he put on his ceiling rather than an empty navy-blue expanse or a lake full of stars. Upon checking his phone, he realized with a groan that it was a quite a bit past 4 A.M. Knowing he wouldn't get back to sleep, he rested his phone back on the nightstand by his bed and lazily walked into his bathroom. Upon looking at himself in the mirror, he found a few tufts of blue fur tangled in with his own.
"Shit." He muttered, hurriedly combing out the pieces with his hands and washing where they were. That crazy dream with the weird wolf lady was not real, he told himself, and even if it was, Tweek did not need to know about it. And he especially did not that some else had scented him, consensual or not. Although no one their age—including them—had presented yet, Tweek could already smell pheromones better than both of their parents. Craig knew he would probably smell hers on him no matter what he did, but he was still going to try his hardest to prevent it.
After a lot of scrubbing, he took one look at himself and decided he was probably fine to go to school and went to lay back down before he'd have to get ready in the morning. He found himself thinking about the star pool again and the wolf that inhabited it. Were they real? They felt very real to Craig, as much as they could while not leaving any marks or stains on him to remember it by. (Apart from the wolf’s fur. Which wasn't real!) But even without that, he didn't feel the memory slip away from him like it would a normal dream. It was as if it was just another event in his life. And maybe it was?
Deciding not to think about it (or the fur that was now down his drain) too hard, he splashed some water on his face and wandered back to his room to collect his backpack and head to the bus stop.
“Hi Craig!” Tweek, a blonde caracal, shouted as soon as Craig stepped into his vision, his voice shrill as usual. He let out a shaky breath and continued in his boyfriend’s direction.
“Hey, Tweek.” He gave a small wave and sat down beside him, trying not to let his nervousness show in any way. He wrapped his tail behind Tweek and loosely intertwined their tails. Tweek let out a satisfied purr and leaned into Craig’s shoulder, burying his head into his neck and inhaling.
“Your scent’s so faint today,” Tweek whispered with a faint air of disappointment. “You smell like your hand soap all over.”
Craig hummed, “Sorry, honey. My hair was all greasy, it felt dirty, so I washed it a little.”
“In the sink?” Tweek giggled.
“I did not have time to shower. And I’m sure my scent would have been a lot fainter then.”
“Mm, yeah, probably,” Tweek buried himself further into his boyfriend’s shoulder. “You mind if I take a nap?”
“Not at all,” Craig moved his hand to pet him and adjusted so he’d be comfortable while he slept.
“Thank you kindly,” he purred happily and wrapped his tail around his lap as a makeshift—albeit essentially nonexistent—blanket.
He responded with a small nod and redirected his gaze to the ceiling. He didn’t enjoy lying to the gamma, but small things like this were necessary as to not cause him more stress than he already dealt with by just existing. Normally he felt relieved when this happened, but it felt off this time. Craig was always glad to avoid a pointless argument, especially with his boyfriend, but did Tweek not smelling Sapphirine mean she didn’t exist? He didn’t know how to feel about it if it did. He didn’t want to admit it, but he hoped that beings like her and places like the one they had been in really existed. He had no idea how to feel about the God thing, but if God really wanted someone to find him, then he wanted to know why.
Craig gently shook Tweek awake when the bus arrived at school. The gamma directed several slow blinks at him before he realized where he was and yelped.
“Ack! Oh god! I wasn’t asleep long, was I? Did I take a long time to wake up?! Are we late?!”
Craig chuckled and pressed a light kiss to his forehead, “We are alright, Tweek. You woke up quickly, we are not late.”
Tweek whimpered and turned to see the last of the other students exiting the bus. “Oh.”
“Come on, let’s not hold up the bus driver.”
“Right!” Tweek nuzzled Craig then quickly stood and practically ran out of the bus. Craig blinked and followed at a normal speed.
“Hey, babe, we still have ten minutes until the first bell, let’s go to the library.” Craig urged.
The caracal nodded sheepishly, “Okay.”
With their hand intertwined, they walked to the school library and Craig approached the librarian, a grey-haired rabbit with specks of white at the ends of her hair.
“Do you have any books on wolves? The, like, wild kind? The ones that are on all fours all the time.” Craig requested, his look as neutral as ever. Tweek gave him a wide-eyed look.
“I ain’t sure if you should be askin’ for that kind of thing with your boyfriend around,” the librarian muttered lazily without looking up from her computer.
“What does that mean? Is that a no?”
“Not here, at school, we don’t have most of that kind 'a stuff. Try the town library if that’s what you’re into,” her ear twitched toward the door. Craig led Tweek back out with a sigh.
“Was there something weird about what I asked?”
“A ‘wild wolf on all fours’? I don’t see anything that could be weird about that.” The gamma hissed.
“Oh. Tweek, you know I that is not what I meant.” Tweek shot him a glare, obviously waiting for an explanation. "I had a dream, and there...was some kind of animal. She had wolf ears and a tail. And there was fur covering her whole body. And she stood on all fours. But she was made to be like that. Like how lizards are. It was not anything weird.”
The caracal’s gaze softened, “So you wanted to know if that was like, a thing?”
Craig hummed, “Something like that, yeah.”
“Yeah, that is a thing, it’s really weird you don’t know that. They’re called ferals, and, um, that’s not important, uh…What was the dream about?”
Craig shook his head, “Nothing.” Tweek gave him that look. Craig sighed, “Well, she—the wolf girl—asked if...she asked me something. And she said she had talked to God or something?”
“That’s odd.”
“Yeah.”
“...And there was nothing else from that dream that made you want to know more about it?” Craig shook his head again. Tweek exhaled, doing every relaxing exercise he knew at once in his mind to keep from bursting out. “Y’know what? I don’t care. Let’s just go to class.” He said tightly.
~・✧★✧・~
“Hey guys!” Clyde called from their usual table, standing, waving his hand around like a maniac, and wagging his tail wildly. Whenever lunch rolled around, Craig, Tweek, and their friend tended to all gather at one table of two in the middle of the lunchroom. The other, on one closer to the lunch line, was occupied by Stan and his friends. As they walked past their table, Craig made sure to give Stan the middle finger—and be sure that he saw it.
“Hey, Tolkien,” Craig greeted as he sat across from his friend with a sweep of his tail to be sure he didn’t use it as a cushion. The black labradoodle responded with a curt wave,
“What about me!!” Clyde whimpered, moving his arms to the table as his tail stopped wagging and drooped downwards. Tweek climbed over and into the seat beside Craig with a giggle.
“I do not talk to people who stand in front of benches.” Clyde slumped into his seat with wide eyes directed at Craig. He sighed, “Hello, Clyde.”
The auburn golden retriever perked up, immediately forgetting about his previous predicament, and started to sniff at and examined their food. “Whaddya got there, Craigy?”
“Clyde, for the love of God, this is just a chicken sandwich, stop freaking out over it.”
“But it smells so good! Y’know I heard bread and breading and stuff are bad for canines...”
“And what exactly do you think you are?”
“I-I got a salad, Clyde! You can have a few bites of it if you want,” Tweek interjected.
Clyde sniffed in its direction, “Can ya hand me a few croutons?”
“I thought bread was bad for canines,” the fox droned.
“But croutons aren’t bread? And I’m like, a dog?”
“Words cannot describe how much that sentence makes me want to kill you.”
Clyde whimpered and sunk further into his seat, “Don’t kill me, Craigy, that would be mean.”
Tolkien snorted, Craig sighed and pressed a fist into his head.
Tweek giggled, “Babe, being mean is way too far!”
“I am not going to kill Clyde.”
“Well, it’s fine if you it do it nicely!”
“Yeah!” Clyde perked up. “Wait. No! Don’t kill me!”
“Well, for the record, I think we should do it,” Tolkien grinned. Clyde frantically shook his head.
“I will not. That would be too much work to be worth the struggle. Imagine trying to drag his body to a hiding spot, it would take too long.” He then took a reluctant bite of his sandwich. The group burst out laughing, which left him confused, but without enough care to ask why.
“That wasn’t very nice, Craig,” the golden retriever pouted.
“It could not have been that mean if everyone laughed.”
“It was pretty mean,” Tolkien snickered.
“Whatever. You all act like children.” Craig then decided to let everyone else filter into their own separate conversations, tuning them out so he could eat in peace.
~・✧★✧・~
Craig walked home side-by-side with his boyfriend, trying to conceal his disappointment from his features but not quite succeeding. Tweek seemed in a decent mood but refused to hold his hand. He was nice about it, but Craig still felt oddly hurt by it. They weren't fighting as far as Craig knew, and he didn't think he did anything wrong. After a few minutes of the same, thoughtful silence, Craig finally buckled under the pressure he created in his own mind, turned to face his boyfriend, and stopped walking.
"Hey, Tweek, what's---?"
"Why won't you tell me about your dream? Why did it make you want to know about ferals all of a sudden?" Tweek blurted. He then leaned closer and squinted, "Do you like ferals?”
"Tweek, what?" He took a breath. "I do not like ferals."
"Okay, say I believe you, what about the dream stuff?"
"That shit is just weird. I cannot think of a way to explain it."
"So you admit you didn't tell me everything."
Craig raised his eyebrows; having forgotten about anything he'd said about it before. "No, I suppose I did not."
"Well?" Tweek gave his chin a gentle nuzzle, the soft movement alone almost convincing his boyfriend's eyes to grow heavy. "Can you?"
"I guess..." He glanced around, "Can we head home first?"
~・✧★✧・~
Tweek’s long tail and ears glimmered nicely in the afternoon light of Craig’s bedroom. He could happily spend the rest of his days in this same moment, savoring the view. But alas, life wouldn't allow such a thing.
Tweek not-so-gracefully plopped onto his boyfriend’s bed and looked back at him watching from the doorway. When he noticed why Craig wasn’t moving, he let a mix of a growl and a displeased chirp and moved away from the window. Craig sighed and sat beside his gamma.
“So...What do you want to know, Tweek?” The fox mumbled after a moment, trying not to let his voice sound tight.
“You know what.”
“But what specifically? We have talked about this kind of thing.”
Tweek groaned, “What did the feral say to you?”
“She, um,” Craig shuffled, “She just...she told me ‘God’ wanted to offer me some things. Which I am pretty confident that that is a weird thing to say, so I turned her down for now.”
“I thought she asked you something?”
“W-well yeah, she asked if I wanted-”
“Okay, sure, yeah, so what did she offer you?”
“I don’t know, she said offerings from God. I don’t- I-I do not think we want to know what it was.”
“You're speaking weird,” Tweek leaned closer, his fur once again catching in the light, which served to both distract and overwhelm Craig. “You don’t normally talk like that...Those things, the- the apostrophe words! You don’t normally use them.”
“Well, Tweek, there are some instances in which separating a conjunction into its original parts sounds too unusual to be worth doing—”
“Now you’re speaking too formally! ACK! You’re hiding shit! You are hiding shit from me, aren’t you?”
Craig averted his eyes from Tweek’s figure, trying to let himself focus. He knows it wouldn’t bode over well if Tweek heard he talked to who he assumed was an unmarked omega, assuming her kind had secondary genders at all. His anxiety would most likely flair up if he knew what she had actually offered, and it definitely would if he heard about the fur that covered him. He figured this was something best kept to himself.
“Tweek, you know I do not hide things from you.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. When was the last time I hid something from you?”
“Hrrr. Umm, I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“See? You have nothing to worry about.” Craig reached his hand out to pet the gamma, causing him to flinch back.
“No! Fuck off, I’m still mad!”
“About wha—” Craig sighed. “Tweek, listen, I know it can be hard for you to believe people sometimes.”
“Yeah, I know that too.”
“Tweek, please,” the caracal rolled his eyes, but kept silent and leaned onto the wall with an expectant look. “I only want the best for you. I do not have enough knowledge when it comes to emotions to properly express that to you, but I do. Lying does not, in most cases, have your best interest in mind, and I only wish to do things that do.”
The gamma’s face softened, “Yeah?”
“Mhm.”
Tweek scrunched up his nose at that. “I don’t want to fight, so I’ll let this one go, but do know I am keeping this in mind.”
“Keeping what in mind?”
“You- it’s nothing, Craig. I’m letting it go, isn’t that what you want?”
“That is not what you want.”
“Well, it’s like you said. I do know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me if you can help it. It’s clear you won’t tell me, but I want to believe you wouldn’t keep it if you didn’t think it was necessary. It still bothers me though.”
“Oh.” Craig inched closer and grabbed his hand, “Are you upset?”
Tweek sighed, “No...” and nuzzled into his boyfriend’s chest. “It’s fine. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
“Okay.”
“...Well, what should we do now?”
Craig shuffled and pulled back, “I- um, I think I have homework.”
“Oh. Okay, um,” the caracal stood and shook himself off, “I’ll see you later then.”
~・✧★✧・~
Craig blinked open his eyes to find himself once again sitting in a star-littered pond surrounded by a starless night sky. His breath hitched. He found his doubt of the realness of everything happening to be at a rapid decline. He’d never had two dreams in a row, let alone two in the same setting. There was a first time for everything, however, so he held out hope. Most of which died when Sapphirine bounded towards him.
“Ah, Craig, nice to see ya again!” Sapphirine chirped. “Did ya think about it or did ya just lay around doin’ nothing like a normal teenager?”
“I did. Think about it. ...And I’m still twelve?”
“Oh right, yeah, whatever,” she waved off, “Well? What will it be?”
"Listen, I do want to be part of whatever this thing is you have going on here, assuming it isn't part of my imagination, that is," Craig said, "but I do not want to go to some other realm with a ton of giant animals like you."
"That's really great for you, kid, because I actually had a chat with God yesterday, and he said that we really shouldn't be bringin’ a helpless, untrained child into our universe," Sapphirine said, "So we'll be doing our training here until God thinks you’ll be okay to bring ya over there. A-and that's only if ya wanna go, obviously."
"Okay," Craig nodded, "So... what is this place?"
"The star pool."
"And it serves what purpose, pray tell?"
"It's a pool full of stars, it doesn't need a purpose."
Craig just huffed and kicked a rock in response.
"Okay, c'mere kid, let's start, shall we?" Sapphirine frolicked across the pond until she was behind him and crouched down into a hunting stance. Craig turned and blinked at her. "Humor me, Craig, c'mon."
He sighed, "What exactly is it that are we doing?"
"Let's just start out playin’, hopefully with minimal claws." He shot her a look. "C'mon! Wrestle with me! I'll go easy on you."
"Fine, but you start."
Her tail wagged back and forth as she gave him a wide grin then pounced on him. As his back hit the ground, he was suddenly very grateful they were doing this in a shallow pool on not on any hard dirt or rocks.
"Fuck, ow," He whimpered and struggled against her grasp. "Get off me!"
"Ooh, you're not used to that yet, are you? Sorry," Sapphirine stood and backed away from him. "Should I be gentler?"
"No, sorry, that just hurt like fucking hell." He pushed himself up into a sitting position and crossed his legs. "Let's do it again. Just, lower down. I'll be here."
She nodded quickly, "Yes, yes, alright!" She bounded a couple feet away from him then turned back. "Okay, and...start!"
She once again jumped him, sending them rolling backwards across the pond. He kicked her off him and turned to pin her to the floor, but she sent a splash of water into his eyes and sprinted in the opposite direction. Craig followed after her and once he got close, she circled him and pinned him down from his back. She gave a proud huff and grinned, "Not so bad, was it?"
He gave a wheeze in response that could possibly be interpreted as a laugh, "I need to run more."
She pat him on the back and stepped off to the side, "That's the spirit! Now, why don't you get on that, I gotta scram, so..."
"Right." He propped himself on one arm and looked at her, "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow!" She affirmed with wide eyes. "Now, bye-bye!" She scrambled to his crumpled body on the floor and gave his head a light tap.