A/N

So I feel like I should add a disclaimer here that I'm casting Craig in the way he's most commonly depicted as being in fanfictions, as kind of grouchy and introverted (like he seems to be in the Pandemic episodes, as opposed to some of the later ones).

I know it's something of an exaggeration of his character but I think it's awesome so it's what I'm going with for this story. And of course Bebe and Clyde are relatively minor characters, so I took some liberties with their personalities as well. I wanted to have some creative freedom for my first South Park piece while I "find my groove," so to speak. Anyway, enjoy the story!

...

Craig turned the already blaring music coming through his headphones up louder. Loud enough to just barely drown out the giggles and moans that were coming from outside his bedroom door. He heard a grunt. "Oh yeah, babe." Fucking Clyde. Then a moan. Fucking Bebe. This wasn't the first time the couple was hooking up in the living room of the apartment the boys shared, but it was definitely one of the loudest. Probably given the fact that both of them were more or less wasted. He'd come home from his evening shift at the Taco Bell in the mall food court to find them snuggling on the couch amidst a forest of empty beer bottles. Great, he had thought, they must be back together again. Their make-up sex was loud, their drunk sex was louder, and Craig supposed the combination of the two factors explained the volume of the situation occurring outside his room right now.

His thoughts were interrupted when Clyde burst through his door, brown hair sticking up around his boyish face, shirt skewed and unabashedly displaying a large bulge in the crotch of his jeans. Craig merely glared at his roommate who seemed to be unaware of Craig's annoyance in his obliviously happy, drunken state. Clyde's mouth was moving but Craig's music was still too loud to make out the words. Clyde motioned for him to remove his headphones and Craig grudgingly obliged with a sigh of frustration.

"What."

Clyde swayed a little, sauntering over to the side of Craig's bed where the annoyed boy was sitting. "Hey Man," Clyde said with a dopey grin, suggestively waggling his eyebrows up and down, "you got any condoms in here?" Craig rolled his eyes and pointed to the top drawer of his bedside table. Clyde yanked it open, managing to detach the entire drawer from its slot and send its contents flying across the room. "Pffffftttthahahha," he cracked up into stifled laughter. Craig, on the other hand, was not quite so amused. "Sorry dude," Clyde giggled obnoxiously, noting his friend's frown and trying without success to contain himself. He bent to pick up the miscellaneous objects. Craig closed his eyes in an attempt to subdue his steadily rising temper and shook his head. "Leave." He said pointedly, reaching over to grab a condom off the floor and tossing it at Clyde who managed to drop it twice before finally securing it in his bumbling grasp. "You're the best!" Clyde grinned before running out of the room, oblivious to the middle finger that was raised to his back.

Craig sighed with irritation and rose to close the door to his bedroom which his friend had inconsiderately left wide open in his hurry to go back to Bebe's fucking vagina. Thankfully, he heard the door to Clyde's room slam shut as well and concluded that they'd moved their little pervert party out of the living room. He began picking up the items that had fallen from the drawer. Mostly old papers, useless knick knacks, a bag of weed, a pipe, and of course, the condoms. The ones he hasn't needed in, what? Months? To say Craig was having a dry spell would be something of an understatement. His dry spell had lasted the better part of 22 years, to be exact, with the exception of one very drunken, very sloppy incident on prom night with Sally Darson that lasted a total of three minutes and another at the beginning of this year's school term with a stranger which, to be honest he'd been too drunk to remember at all. Though he was not technically a virgin, Craig felt like he might as well be. It was now the beginning of December and he had barely even spoken to a female all week, except for fellow employees and customers at his work, which hardly counted because, you know, it was sort of part of his job and everything.

It wasn't that Craig was ugly or anything. He had sharp but attractive features, hair that was silkier than it should haven been considering how little care he took of it (which is to say none at all), and olive skin that would probably have the ability to tan nicely if he ever actually left his room and went out in the sunlight once in a while. He was a bit on the scrawny side because his favourite activities were more or less limited to sleeping, smoking pot, watching TV and coming up with new reasons to hate the human race. Craig's physical features came together nicely, though, and on the few occasions that Clyde managed to forcibly drag Craig out to a bar it wasn't unlikely for girls to approach him. No, Craig knew he wasn't bad looking. He was just an asshole. A huge, insufferable and unchangeable asshole. Sure, girls approached him but it usually took a maximum of ten minutes before he had scared them off with his sullen demeanour and running cynical commentary, leaving Clyde to pout and shake his head in disappointment, urging Craig to "try to be less of an ogre next time, dude." But Craig didn't like most people and the feeling seemed to be mutual. He wondered if it was possible to be allergic to social interaction.

The only person who put up whole heartedly with the fact that Craig behaved like a crotchety old man was Clyde, but he assumed this was just because Clyde was too good natured to hate anybody and also happened to have enough liveliness for both of them. They'd been best friends since they were kids, and somehow, rather than tearing them apart, their differences had ended up balancing each other out. It was for this reason that Craig continued living with Clyde. Yes, Clyde was a slob. His room was a pig stye and he was so clumsy that he seemed to leave a trail of destruction behind him wherever he went. But lucky for Clyde, Craig was anal as fuck. His room sterile and pristine, and he didn't mind cleaning up after his friend if it meant avoiding a roach infestation in the future. Clyde was also, despite his messy nature, one of the few people who could genuinely make Craig laugh and smile, rousing him temporarily from his disdain for the world and the people who inhabited it. Clyde often could be annoying as hell and too sensitive for Craig's taste, but deep down, he was a good person. That is, when he wasn't loudly dry humping Bebe in the living room like he had been doing earlier.

Bebe and Clyde have been together off and on since elementary school, frequently breaking up, making up, then having noisy sex and noisier fights almost like clockwork. Clyde was a somewhat different person in both stages and to be honest, Craig couldn't tell which version of Clyde got on his nerves more. There was single Clyde, who after a breakup would find a bar in matter of minutes, drink an inhuman amount of alcohol, try to fuck any girl with a beating heart, and then ultimately come back to the apartment puking and crying all over himself like an oversized baby. And then there was relationship Clyde who, as could be observed today, had sex with Bebe anywhere and everywhere, pretty much constantly and wore a smile so blissful that it bothered Craig to the core.

It wasn't so much that he didn't like Bebe. She'd been something of a fixture in his life since he was in grade school and she was regularly attached to Clyde at the hip. She was alright. Nice enough, smarter than a lot of the girls at their school, and she appreciated a good dirty joke just as much as him and Clyde. She was too peppy for his tastes but she had huge tits and even if Craig was an asshole he was still a 22 year old male and therefore had a firm appreciation for a nice rack. She was even nicer to Craig than a lot of the other people he knew, never seeming to mind his blunt ways and dour temperament. Clyde could do a lot worse than Bebe and she was definitely less irritating than the rebound girls he brought home when they were broken up. (She had also, on more than one occasion, brought him weed as a peace offering in an attempt to win him over, so that helped his opinion of her too.) Bebe was an alright person, just like Clyde was.

It was more that he didn't like them together. All they ever did was bang or argue. Even when they were dating, they argued almost as much as (if not more) than they fucked and as much as Craig didn't enjoy hearing the sound of moaning and skin slapping on skin, the sound of them shouting at each other was also pretty Goddamn annoying. Craig was no dating expert but he had his doubts as to whether or not a relationship could survive on sex alone. Sometimes Craig wondered what kept them crawling back to each other, aside from the sex. Then again who knows, maybe it was just the sex and in either case, not understanding the logistics of whatever weird-ass inner workings were at play in their relationship was no skin off Craig's back so fuck it.

He reached over into the table beside his desk, pulling out his weed stash and filling the bowl of his pipe. Who said Craig Tucker didn't know how to have fun? He leisurely took hits off the pipe feeling his earlier frustrations with Clyde leaving his body with every exhale of smoke. It was dark out and he looked over at his clock. It was only 12. Too early to go to bed, so he opened his laptop and put on Red Racer. It was his favourite show as a kid and he still watched it to unwind sometimes, even though he was now in college. He'd only gotten through an episode and a half when he heard a knock at the door.

"Yeah what," Craig muttered, not taking his eyes of the screen. The door opened and Clyde was standing in the frame. "It smells like weed in here." He stated, the implied question obvious. "Go ahead," Craig answered, brushing the pipe and bag across the bedspread in Clyde's direction. Clyde made his way over and picked it up, packing a bowl and then sprawling out on the bed. "Bebe's alseep," He explained.

"I'll alert the media," Craig dead panned sarcastically, eyes still fixed on the screen. Clyde slammed the laptop shut and Craig glared. "Pay attention to me," Clyde whined, dragging out the last syllable and punctuating the sentence by taking a hit off the pipe. "Go bother Bebe," Craig snorted, "since you guys are clearly back together now." Clyde just laughed and took another hit so Craig continued, "Seriously if I had a dollar for every time you guys broke up and got back together again I would put all three hundred of the damn coins in a pillowcase and hit your bipolar dick with it until you made up your mind." Clyde grew silent for a moment, as if deep in thought, then smiled and spoke up. "Dude she's so good in bed! I missed it."

"Stop," Craig groaned.

"She does this thing with her tongue-"

"Stop," Craig repeated, making a face. Clyde was like his brother and the sort of things a girl's tongue did to him was not something he wanted to hear about.

"We should find you a chick!" Clyde smiled enthusiastically, as if that would solve Craig's unwillingness to listen to the thrilling tales of his sexual escapades.

"No."

"Why not!"

"We've been over this." Craig sighed, sounding tired of the subject. "Oh come on, you're not that bad!" Clyde pleaded, "I'll bet we can find you a girl who loves sulking in her room and listening to angsty music just as much as you." Craig didn't answer. "It would be fun!" Clyde went on, "You guys could plot to murder everyone who gets on your nerves, so like, basically the whole population, and then get too high to carry out your plan and have stoned lazy sex instead. I think it would be really good for you," he added wisely

This made Craig smile in spite of himself. Regardless of the exaggeration, he had to admit Clyde knew him well. "Go to bed, dick." Craig said. "As a matter of fact I think he will," Clyde replied with a wink, motioning at his crotch, "he's had an exhausting night."

"Gross."

"Sleep well, you old grouch," Clyde laughed, leaving the room.

"You too," Craig replied, re-opening his laptop and continuing the show.

...

Craig was awoken the next morning by the sound of a crash coming from the kitchen. Fucking Clyde. He jumped out of bed, pulled on a t-shirt and ran to the door nearly tripping over the bottoms of his navy blue plaid pyjama pants. However when he reached the kitchen, instead of Clyde he saw Bebe, already dressed, on her hands and knees facing away from him and picking up the broken shards of a glass bowl.

"Oh." Said Craig uncomfortably.

Bebe jumped up and whirled around. "Shit! Oh, hey Craig. I'm just getting some cereal. Or at least I was…" She trailed off, looking down at the remaining pieces of glass on the floor. Craig rolled his eyes. Apparently Clyde's clumsiness was contagious. However, he could see the hangover etched on her face and took pity on her, removing the large glass pieces from her hands and picking the rest up off the floor and disposing of them in the garbage. Like he said, Bebe was alright when she wasn't having a screaming match with his best friend in the middle of the night or even worse, straddling Clyde in some obscene manner in front of him. Craig wasn't a total ogre, and he'd prove it. He motioned for Bebe to sit down and opened the cupboard.

"Froot Loops or," Craig scrunched his face in disgust, "Raisin Bran?" Why the fuck did they have Raisin Bran? Last time he checked he was only an 70 year old man mental sort of way not physically, and he was pretty sure his bowels had no need for some nasty healthy high fibre breakfast cereal. Not yet, anyway.

Bebe laughed at his scandalized reaction. "Froot Loops, please," she replied. Craig nodded and purposefully took a plastic bowl from above, shooting her a derisive (but not entirely cruel) look.

"Unfortunately we don't have any sippy cups," Craig smirked, glancing at her over his shoulder.

"Ugh, Shut up!" Bebe cried. "I'm hungover and it's early." Her face softened. "And besides, you can't really expect me to believe you're put off by a bit of mess," she said, quirking an arched brow, "you live with fucking Clyde Donovan of all people."

Craig supposed what she was saying was true. Clyde was a something of a man-child. He glanced at the clock above the stove. 9:04. Shit, she was right. It was early. He poured milk into the bowl, took a spoon from the drawer next to the fridge and set the bowl in front of her with insolent clack. At least he could still get a few more hours of sleep before he was due in for his next shift at work, provided his roommate's girlfriend could manage not to break a plastic bowl. "If you want coffee, go to Harbucks or something. Tweek got us our coffeemaker as a house warming gift and I'd hate for it to die by your violent, kitchenware murdering hands," He taunted in his usual nasally, monotone voice as he headed back to his room.

"Let it go already!" Bebe grumbled through a mouthful of cereal. But it was hard to be annoyed by Craig's teasing when there were these Goddamn heavenly explosions of refined sugar in her mouth. She hadn't had Froot Loops in ages. Truth be told, the Raisin Bran was hers. Clyde bought it for her to eat on mornings when she had stayed overnight. She'd complained one too many times that refined sugar made her break out and went straight to her ass (not that Clyde would ever mind that), but when Craig had mocked her Raisin Bran, she did what she always felt the inexplicably need to do: win him over. Even if it was just by eating his Froot Loops.

Ever since they were kids in elementary school Bebe had felt admiration for Craig. At the time, she'd diagnosed it as a crush. He was always so mature and composed compared to the other boys in their grade. In fact, it was to get closer to Craig that she'd first began hanging out with Clyde all those years ago. In elementary school her relationship with Clyde had been based off manipulation and selfishness (on her part, at least). Bebe recalled a situation including Clyde, a list ranking the attractiveness of the boys in their grade and her love for shoes. She still smiled in amusement when she thought back to her "break-up" with Kyle and his hot ass after she had kissed him in Stan's clubhouse. She told him that she felt trapped, that she couldn't go on with their codependency, only moments before walking away with Clyde. If only she'd known how it felt to really be trapped, and how codependent her relationship with Clyde would become. If only she'd known how little interest Craig would have in her, even with her hanging around him and his friends as much as possible. Her 9 year old self spent many long nights pining after Craig. However, soon her crush faded and only the stubborn admiration was left. She had a puzzling respect for Craig that didn't seem to want to go away, and above all, she wanted him to respect her. However, Bebe quickly grew out of her manipulative stage and started to love Clyde and despite how difficult their relationship has been, she doesn't regret any of it.

The first thing that drew her to him (genuinely drew her to him, not just his closeness to Craig) was his graceless, good-hearted charm. She loved the way he felt things so strongly, both the good and the bad and she had truly enjoyed their time together throughout middle school and high school. It was a rare thing to find such a sensitive boyfriend in those days, and it was one of the main factors that caused her to stay with him beyond her plot to get Craig to like her. In their junior year of high school she told Clyde about how she had, when they were children, only picked up with him to get closer to his best friend. They both laughed hysterically at the ridiculousness of the situation, that anyone could have a crush on Cranky Old Craig, but deep down, Bebe knew that someone had had a crush on Craig. Her. Nevertheless, she and Clyde shared some wonderful times in those years. They would get high between classes, and made out by Stark's Pond. One time they teepee'd Eric Cartman's house in toilet paper in the middle of the night. Clyde took her virginity when they were 15 and she'll never forget how sweet he was about it, stopping constantly to make sure she was okay. She had been so in love with him.

But as their class graduated high school and entered college, Bebe matured while Clyde did not. Halfway through their first year she began wanting something more from the relationship. The arguments that had led to their many breakups in secondary school over stupid things like what movies to see or who was flirting with who to make the other jealous morphed into the uglier fights that plagued their relationship now. Fights based on bigger issues like guilt and incompatibility. Bebe felt smothered, Clyde felt abandoned. Sometimes she felt more like his mother or his therapist than his girlfriend, and due to his sensitive nature, he took her feelings to heart. The trouble was that she did care about him. A lot. Maybe too much and maybe that was the problem. She just didn't care about him in the same way that she used to and she frequently worried that he wanted more from her emotionally than she had to give. Sure, they'd gotten back together yesterday, but it wasn't because she was in love with him. It was because she cared about his feelings so much that she felt like she had no other choice. Clyde held more complexities than met the eye. There was something more grim underneath his merry exterior.

Bebe's thoughts were interrupted when she heard her boyfriend stirring in his bedroom. A few minutes later he appeared in the kitchen wearing only his boxers as she spooned the last of the Froot Loops into her mouth. "Babe," He grinned cheerily, "You're up early!" Bebe smiled back but was chewing and didn't reply. "And you're eating Froot Loops?! It's like I don't even know you anymore!" He frowned dramatically, taking the bowl of coloured milk from her hands and slurping it audibly. The unintended meaning of his statement hit her hard but she forced a chuckle.

"You're so refined, hon," She said sarcastically, eyeing his unmannerly actions. "Craig forbid me from touching your precious coffeemaker, by the way, so how's about you brew us up a pot? I have a killer headache." She tucked her frizzy blonde curls behind her ears and massaged her temples.

Clyde looked confused. "He forbid you from using it?"

"I broke a bowl this morning so now he thinks I'm some kind of jinx," Bebe shrugged with a lopsided smile, raising her brows.

Now it was Clyde's turn to laugh. "Oh God, typical Craig. I wonder how expensive it would be to surgically remove the stick up his ass."

"A stick that size, I'd say at least a few thousand," Bebe joked solemly.

Clyde howled at that as he set about making the coffee. "You're so bitchin', Babe," He said with a lazy grin, "I love you."

"I love you too, Clyde," Bebe returned, meeting his gaze. That was the one certain thing about a relationship like theirs: they'd broken up and gotten back together so many times that whenever they did reconcile, things went completely back to normal, at least until the next inevitable fall out. And they both knew there would always be another. They stopped vowing to each other that "this will be the last time we break up for sure, I mean it this time" way back in grade 10, having decided instead to bravely accept the tumultuous nature of their relationship and their need for time apart.

The only thing that didn't get easier were the fights themselves. They were awful, bitter, ruthless fights. Everything was fair game. The emotions they suppressed during their time together all boiled over, resulting in both of them saying terrible things, the worst things. Both things that they did mean and things that they didn't mean. Things that were true and things that were spiteful lies. Sometimes Bebe wondered which ones did the most harm. The sick part was that when they were fighting Bebe wanted to hurt Clyde as much as she could, and she could tell he felt the same. They resented each other, in a way. Bebe resented the way that they always ended up back together. She resented it because she knew that it was guilt, not love that brought her back. She resented that she couldn't tell what brought Clyde back. She knew that he needed her and she even knew why to an extent but she didn't understand, she supposed, why he needed her specifically. Surely he could find the emotional support he needed elsewhere, but he chose to deposit his feelings on her and she didn't know why and she hated that he would never open up enough to explain.

Bebe felt a hand on her shoulder. "Huh?"

"I said the coffee's ready," Clyde said. He had a strange look on his face and for a horrifying moment Bebe worried that he knew what she was thinking about.

"Thanks," She said with a small smile, dismissing the idea. She took the mug that was being offered to her and sipped gently, testing the temperature. Clyde, as usual, had put in just the right amount of cream to make the coffee cool enough to drink but not cool enough to be unappetizing. It was a shame, she thought, the way that he knew the exact temperature to make her coffee but was unable to figure out how to make her happy.

Bebe's thoughts churned, only half listening while Clyde stuttered, struggling to remember a joke Token had told him that he'd found particularly funny. He kept forgetting how it went so by the time they finished their coffee they were sitting in silence, Clyde having finally given up. "I'm gonna head home," Bebe said rising.

"I'll walk you down!" Clyde offered, jumping out of his chair but Bebe shook her head.

"I'll be fine, Dad," Bebe smiled, rolling her eyes. Clyde might have looked just the slightest bit pained as she walked out of the kitchen, but she couldn't tell for sure.

The cold air stung Bebe's face as she stepped out onto the street and headed in the direction of the apartment she shared with Wendy, wishing that she'd taken her car. She loved Clyde a lot and cared about him so much that it hurt but it was getting harder to pretend that she was in love with him. It wouldn't be such a problem if the disconnect between loving someone and being in love with someone wasn't so vast, but romantic love begged a level of responsibly and selflessness that now felt more like a burden than a gift. She often wondered if he was even in love with her anymore, or if he just didn't know they could be any different. They'd been together a long time and maybe he was afraid to rock the boat just like her. She quickened her pace, wanting to leave the troubling situation behind.