Work Text:
Tweek’s bedroom had one window.
The curtains were drawn, but the moon hung overhead in a cloudless sky, so slivers of light made their way into the bedroom anyways. Tweek was fumbling with the window blinds in an attempt to figure out which angle blocked the most amount of light, in case some pervert or serial killer tried to peek into his second-story window while he was sleeping.
A knock at his door startled him so bad that he fell forward. His head bounced off the window with a dull thump, the sound muffled somewhat by his hair.
“Hello?” Tweek squeezed out, blinking hard and pressing his palm against his head. It was well past the time that he was expected to be in his room and quiet; his parents usually didn’t seek him out at night so long as he was unbothersome. He thought he had been unbothersome.
“Tweek, can we come in?”
That was Tweek’s mother’s voice. Tweek whirled away from his window, brows furrowing.
“Uh- yeah!”
The door was gingerly pushed open. Tweek’s mother was there, of course, with his father standing just behind her. She had her phone pinned against her ear by a shoulder.
“Craig isn’t here, is he?” Tweek’s mother asked, maneuvering the phone to press against her chest.
“N-no, why?” Tweek was growing increasingly concerned. His shoulders jumped with a particularly violent twitch.
“Craig’s mom just called. She’s saying that Craig never came home from school.”
Tweek’s heart dropped to his feet. He immediately pulled out his phone and navigated to Craig’s icon.
[ 12:52 a.m. ]
Tweek:
> CRAIG??
> WJERE R U
Tweek’s parents were still talking at him, even though he had tuned them out in favor of frantically typing. Craig, predictably, did not immediately respond.
[ 12:52 a.m. ]
Tweek:
> Plz answer
> Ur moms callign people
If Craig’s mom was worried, Tweek was worried.
Craig’s mom was one of the only members of the Tucker family that didn’t scare Tweek. She was, decidedly, the most normal of all of them. The Tuckers usually gave Tweek heart palpitations- they were weirdly fond of being around each other despite seeming to all have hatred in their eyes and murder in their hearts. Craig’s family spent time together, but they played violent games like Spoons, or Uno, or Truth or Dare except you had to pick dare or else you’d get called a pussy. Craig’s mom was a beacon of reason in a family of stupid, misanthropic assholes.
Most of the time, at least. She was still a Tucker.
Once, the Tuckers had invited Tweek to go sledding with them. Tweek had agreed, but it turned out that none of them had sleds, and Tweek watched in horror as they shoved each other down the hill on tote box lids until Craig fell into a fence post and busted his face up.
Craig’s mom had immediately darted to help a winded Craig off the ground. She had gently brushed the debris from his scraped and bloodied face, but Craig flipped her off instead of crying or acting hurt, so she let go of him and joined Tricia in laughing at the fall. Tweek remembered feeling like his heart was going to explode from the stress of watching Craig pinch his own bleeding nose at the bottom of that hill, with his mom right there laughing at him and not doing much to help.
After the incident, the kids at school had hardly batted an eye at Craig’s hairline laceration and newly crooked nose. He’d already had a reputation for getting into trouble.
The next year, his younger sister Tricia moved into high school with him, and Tweek quickly learned that the fencepost incident had been nothing for the Tucker household and real trouble came in sibling pairs. Craig had a voice of reason only up until his younger sister started whispering schemes in his ear.
Tricia had fractured her wrist last summer after she and Craig stole dirtbikes and they tried to joust on them. Craig had a scar on his forearm from the time Tricia caught a wild snake, threw it at Craig, and Craig raised his arm to try and block it instead of running from it. There were a million stories of them doing horrible, dumb sibling things together that Tweek could never understand. Even Jimmy couldn’t convince Craig to do half the shit that Tricia did.
Tweek wondered if Tricia had been the cause of whatever trouble Craig was in now. Craig still hadn’t responded to his texts, so he tried the next best person.
[ 12:55 a.m. ]
Tweek:
> TRCIA
> Where craig ?!
Tricia:
> idk
> we thought he was at yours
Tweek:
> WHAT HAPPENED TO UR FAMILY LIFE360
Tricia:
> we all hated it so we deleted it
> mom would yell at us any time she saw us speeding lol
Tweek:
> WHERE IS MY BOYFRIEND
Tricia:
> dont u guys share location with each other? why are u asking me
Tweek:
> O yea
Tricia:
> 🖕
Tweek had forgotten that he had Craig’s location without Craig there to remind him of such things. Tricia had helped him in Craig’s stead, though, and he wasn’t about to aggravate her further by looking a gift horse in the mouth. He didn’t even like horses.
Tweek’s mother had pulled the phone back up to her ear and was talking to Craig’s mom. Tweek’s father was peering over her shoulder into the room like he didn’t quite believe that Craig wasn’t there hiding somewhere in the mess of it. Tweek continued ignoring his parents as he searched for the app he had Craig’s location on. He’d forgotten the name of it.
He found it and pulled it up, breathing a sigh of relief as Craig’s little dot showed up instead of a ‘Location not found’ error.
Tweek’s relief was short-lived; the location was pinging on a dilapidated part of town that was mostly old buildings, not something Tweek could make sense of like a store or a friend’s house.
Tweek immediately started fretting. What if Craig had gotten stuck, or kidnapped, or murdered? What if someone had jumped him and ran off with his phone? What if-
What was Craig doing?
Tweek snatched his keys off his desk and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, shrugging it on while he shot out the door. He shouldered past his parents.
“I’m going to go look for Craig!” Tweek shouted in their direction, though he was already halfway down the hall by the time he thought to explain himself.
Tweek vaulted down the stairs and out the door to where his car was sitting in the driveway. He rarely ever drove- he was piss-ass terrified of it, and Craig was more than willing to chauffeur him around instead. Tweek had learned how to drive just in case, though, and now protective instincts he didn’t even know he had were smothering the bulk of his fear.
His car was a little red 2008 Honda Civic that his mother had sold him for cheap. The doors were dinged and the seats stained with cigarette smoke, and usually Tweek loved complaining about it but now he was just thankful he had a car.
Tweek dropped into the driver’s seat and plugged Craig’s location into the GPS. His aux didn’t work so he had to turn his phone volume all the way up to be able to hear the navigation instructions over the background noise of an old car.
Tweek peeled out of the driveway and down the main road into town. It was a relatively straight shot, but also a decently long one, and Tweek kept stealing little glances at his phone to make sure Craig’s dot didn’t move.
It didn’t. Tweek didn’t know if that made him feel better or worse.
Tweek wasn’t able to pay much attention to anything over the sound of his own blood rumbling in his ears, even as the newer buildings turned to old and the streetlights became more and more sparse.
He’d officially entered the ancient, almost abandoned part of town where teenagers went on dares to get stabbed.
Craig’s dot still hadn’t moved. Tweek mumbled prayers under his breath to a god he didn’t believe in and pulled to a stop outside what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse.
The building was outlined in gray on the map on Tweek’s phone. Craig’s dot was inside.
Tweek wished he’d thought to grab a knife, or pepper spray, or anything else that would be useful when walking into such a building. It looked like the kind of place that would be featured in a Saw movie- the windows were boarded up but plenty of the planks had been pulled loose, and frayed tarp blew out from the gaps and fluttered like ghosts trying to escape. The door was ajar, rendering the rotting boards in the windows useless.
Tweek got out of the car and locked it behind him. He crept up to the door, heart hammering in his throat. This was exactly the kind of place that he would usually never go, but Craig had always been braver than he was so now Tweek had to be brave, too.
Tweek nudged open the door with an elbow, unwilling to touch the handle with his hands lest he get his fingerprints all over a possible crime scene. The hinges were rusted so the door was hard to open, and the whole building seemed to groan as the door creaked on its hinges.
Tweek swallowed hard and stepped into the building, blinking against the darkness.
“Craig?” He called out timidly. His hands were wringing tightly around each other in an attempt to calm their shaking. “Are you in here?”
There was a faint, distant shuffle. Tweek’s heart kicked nervously in his chest. He flitted closer despite his fear.
“Craig?” Tweek tried again. Glass crunched beneath his shoes as he moved forward. He tried his best not to look down at the mess on the ground. A voice in the back of Tweek’s head that sounded suspiciously like his boyfriend reassured him that the noise had probably either been Craig or something harmless like an opossum.
“…Tweek?” A voice asked distantly. It was nasally, deep, and quieter than usual, but unmistakably Craig.
The sound had come from behind a cement pillar. Tweek jumped forward when he heard it, anxiety eating at him as he threw himself around the corner his boyfriend was behind.
Craig was on his back on the ground beneath one of the broken windows. He was bathed in moonlight, and the broken glass and rubble had been pushed back in an arc around him so it looked like he had used a foot to sweep clear a place to lay. He had an arm slung over his forehead and another wrapped around his torso, and he squinted up at Tweek and blinked like he’d just been woken up.
Craig’s hat was slipping from his head, revealing dark wisps of black hair that looked almost silver under the moonlight. His hair was flattened towards the back from the hat, but it flared out towards the end and framed Craig’s face like a halo.
Tweek dropped to his knees beside Craig, taking his boyfriend’s face in his hands and turning to examine him. Craig let him, his eyes cast to the side as Tweek gently tilted his face up to reveal a black eye.
“Craig, wh- what are you doing out here?” Tweek stammered out, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth as Craig finally dragged his gaze over to meet Tweek’s eyes.
Craig wasn’t a very expressive person. He usually wore a stoic expression or sometimes a frown, but over the years, Tweek had learned something; Craig showed more emotion on his face than most people seemed to realize.
It was subtle enough that Tweek seemed to be the only one to notice, excluding Craig’s gang of friends and the Tuckers themselves. There one second, gone the next, Craig displayed minute shifts in his features that were so small it was like nothing was changing at all.
It was happening now. There was a tiny flash in Craig’s eyes- it wasn’t like the look he got when he was lying, which made Tweek feel better, but it was similarly raw. Like Tweek’s question had sliced open his chest and pulled him apart by the ribs.
“Oh.” Craig said flatly. “I got in a fight.”
“Out here?!” Tweek exclaimed. He risked a glance around the old, dingy warehouse, then back to his boyfriend. “Why not in the schoolyard?”
Fights with Craig weren’t exactly unheard of, but they were typically a consequence of poorly managed stress, and they’d never before resulted in Craig disappearing for hours. Every other time had been just a quick scrap after school.
Craig propped himself up on his elbow, grimacing like the motion was painful. “Mr. Mackey said that if I get in another fight this semester, I’ll get suspended.”
“Suspension is safer than fighting in this place.” Tweek snapped, bitter with worry. “You’re going to catch a disease.”
Craig just blinked at him. No logical explanation, no excuse, no apology- nothing. His stare was vacant. Somehow that was worse, and Tweek wilted under his gaze.
“Why didn’t you come home?” Tweek asked, gentler this time. He reached forward and grabbed Craig’s hand in his own so that he could intertwine their fingers. “Your mom’s worried about you. I was worried about you.”
“She called you?” Craig’s voice sounded shot, likely from yelling during his apparent scuffle. His free hand darted to his pocket, patting around until he produced his phone with a fumble.
Anyone other than Craig probably would’ve had all the blood drain from their face upon realizing just how many worried texts had been missed. Since Craig was Craig, though, the only thing that happened was a jump in the muscle of his jaw. Tweek held his hand tighter.
“I’m telling her not to worry.” Craig was squinting at his phone as he typed out a one-handed message, presumably informing his mother that he was fine and that Tweek was now with him. “Sorry I didn’t see any of your texts. I didn’t think my phone was on silent.”
“How long have you been here?” Tweek asked. Craig scowled as he thought.
“A few hours.”
Tweek didn’t say anything. Craig checked the time on his phone and then corrected himself.
“A lot of hours.”
“Why didn’t you go home?” Tweek asked, lifting Craig’s hand to his lips. He would’ve kissed his knuckles, but they were split and bloody and Tweek thought that touching them would do more harm than good.
Craig lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “I dunno.”
Tweek’s eyes widened in realization. “You’re hurt.”
“No I’m not.”
“Don’t lie to me, Craig!” Tweek’s tone turned sharp again. “You would’ve checked your phone if you were feeling alright! You couldn’t walk home!”
Craig’s eyes glazed over a second time. He opened his mouth a little, but there was blood in his teeth. “I only meant to nap for a little bit before going home. I didn’t think I’d pass out like that.”
Tweek dragged his hands down his face to prevent himself from pulling at his hair. “Where are you hurt?”
“I’ll show you, but first you have to promise not to freak out.”
“I’m already freaking out.” Tweek informed Craig, his voice dripping with sarcastic kindness like honey off a blade. Craig swallowed and started rolling up his pant leg.
When Tweek’s attention was drawn to the area, he noticed the rip in the fabric right around Craig’s ankle. That hadn’t been there before.
Once Tweek caught sight of the injury, his breath caught in his throat. It looked like someone had gone for Craig’s achilles tendon and missed, leaving a jagged, deep cut right in the muscle of his lower calf.
He wanted to point at it and scream, but Craig was staring into him. Tweek swallowed his fear and managed to tone himself down.
“Oh, god, you’re bleeding.” He commented uselessly. “You’re bleeding a lot.”
“Yeah, I know.” Craig’s reply was spoken cooly. “I can’t really walk on it.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Tweek managed to pry his gaze from the wound. Craig was already looking right at him. “Call anyone?”
“I was going to, but I wasn’t thinking straight. The guy left and I just needed to sit down. I fell asleep on accident and just woke up when I heard you calling me.”
The honesty in Craig’s voice burned Tweek from the inside out. It was suffocating- it felt like a fire had been lit in Tweek’s chest, and the smoke had nowhere else to go so it started rising into his throat and clogging up his lungs.
But Craig was always there for Tweek, so Tweek wanted to provide the same comfort. He swallowed down the smoke and managed to speak.
“It’s okay,” Tweek reassured with a tensely offered smile. Craig’s expression loosened, relaxed somewhat.
Craig only let his emotions get the better of him when something was really bugging him. There must’ve been signs, something to point to Craig reaching some sort of mental breaking point, but Tweek must have missed them in their subtlety.
It didn’t help that Craig seemed to always keep his emotions held close to his chest. Tweek thought that he could read Craig pretty well, but that was mostly only when Craig wasn’t watching himself. Tweek’s bad mental health days were characterised by wild, lung-crushing anxiety- Craig’s bad days resulted in him gutting himself of all expression, which was a habit that made it extraordinarily hard to tell when he needed any form of emotional support.
Tweek lifted his head to glance around. Before he could focus on helping Craig emotionally, he needed to tend to the physical. He decided that the best thing to do would be to get them both out of here and back home so that Craig’s mom could decide if she wanted to take Craig to get stitches or just patch it up herself.
First, though, he had to make sure that the leg injury really was the worst of it.
“Did that guy get you anywhere else?” Tweek asked, tilting his head down to stare hard into Craig’s face. His panic had mostly been replaced by steely determination, the fear chased out by adrenaline and the fact that Craig was actually here, alive, talking to him now.
“Yeah. Not as bad, though.” Craig rolled onto his side and propped himself up with an arm so that he could cough onto the ground instead of on Tweek. Tweek recoiled only for a brief moment before leaning forward once more, offering quiet support in the form of a gentle hand on Craig’s shoulder.
“Where?” Tweek coaxed. Craig pushed himself up when he was done coughing and drew a sleeve across his face.
“Here.” Craig slid off his jacket and abandoned it on the ground- he must have taken it off to fight and put it back on before passing out. Sure enough, there was a rip in his white undershirt just around his ribs, which was surrounded by a wet red stain and otherwise filthy from the grit and rubble he’d presumably been rolling around in.
“Can I?” Tweek asked as his hands found the hem of Craig’s shirt. Craig nodded.
Tweek pushed up the shirt as gently as he could but Craig still reacted. His eyebrows twitched like he was trying not to furrow them, and his lips pressed into a thin line in that way they did whenever he was hurting. He blinked hard.
Craig tended to hide his pain worse than a cat, though, so that was the only indicator that the motion had caused any discomfort, even as Tweek disturbed the wound. Blood had wet the shirt and then clotted there, drying the fabric to the injury so that when it was lifted, the edges of skin tried to lift with it. Craig didn’t utter a single noise as Tweek peeled away the shirt plastered to his body.
Tweek cringed and murmured an apology as the wound started spotting blood again, but Craig raised a hand like he was waving the words away.
The injury wasn’t as deep as the one on Craig’s leg, but it was long, and quite a large blotch of Craig’s shirt was stained a ruddy shade of reddish brown. There was a large friction burn on the other side of Craig’s chest, scraped along his ribs beneath his right arm, and the area around it was already starting to bruise.
Tweek couldn’t help the stressed yips that forced their way out of his chest, strangled in his throat before they could become a full scream.
“Bad, huh?” Craig tried to joke, but his tone was flat. Tweek realized that his own brows had drawn together and he’d started pinching his lower lip between his teeth in a look of protective concern. He shook his head to clear the expression before he worried Craig.
“Well, it’s- it’s not good.” Tweek gritted out, resisting the urge to scream and shout about just how upset the sight of the injury made him. When he looked down at Craig, his boyfriend was looking up at him with an open expression, and Tweek realized just how labored Craig’s breathing looked.
Craig’s ribs were pretty badly bruised, left with open wounds that surely stung any time his lungs expanded, and he was already perpetually congested. Tweek had no idea how he wasn’t wheezing with every exhale. The fact that he wasn’t at least provided Tweek with some much-needed comfort.
“Do I need to carry you?” Tweek asked. It was a genuine question, but Craig’s expression soured and his lips quirked up like he was amused.
“No.” Craig sat up with his hands braced behind him. “Just help me up.”
Tweek was more than happy to get up off the floor, if not a little miffed that Craig wouldn’t let himself be carried the short distance to Tweek’s car. He grabbed Craig’s abandoned jacket as he got up and extended both his hands for Craig to take a hold of.
Tweek was prepared to do most of the work in lifting Craig off the ground, so he didn’t waver even as his boyfriend used him as a crutch for his whole body weight. He pulled Craig up and wedged himself beneath the other boy’s arm, careful to not irritate the injuries already there while still providing support for Craig’s wounded leg.
He didn’t try to press any more into Craig’s situation even as they limped to the car. Craig’s breathing sounded like it was staggering in his chest, and his eyes were fixed firmly on his feet to keep himself from tripping. It was clearly taking conscious effort to keep air in his lungs, so Tweek figured that making him talk now would probably be counterintuitive to the goal of getting him back home alive.
Craig was the one to break the silence.
“I can’t believe you’re going to let me bleed all over your car.” Craig complained, and of course those were the first words out of his mouth. Tweek rolled his eyes. Craig had tried before to convince Tweek to let him clean the lingering smoke smell from the seats, but Tweek had never let him; he figured that tonight would only make Craig more insufferable about his insistence.
“I can’t believe you’re bleeding at all.” Tweek griped back. It hadn’t been spoken with much bite, but it clearly humbled Craig anyway, because the latter fell into a chilly silence.
That made Tweek’s skin crawl. He looked back at Craig, his eyebrows pinched together with worry.
“…You know I’m not mad at you, right?” Tweek’s words were genuine and gentle. Craig was staring at his shoes and looking doleful, but in that quiet, muted way that he seemed to be about most things. Like his expressions were watered down. Tweek knew better- whatever Craig was feeling was probably ripping him apart at the chest if it was spilling out onto his features at all.
“You’re not?” Craig echoed. He sounded surprisingly small in that moment. Tweek’s chest ached.
They reached the car. He propped Craig up against his side and opened the door from him, letting Craig deposit himself into the passenger seat. Once he was seated, Tweek leaned forward to push his hair out of the way so he could press a kiss to his forehead.
“I’m not.” He confirmed. Craig’s shoulders released some of the tension that had coiled up there.
Tweek shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side. He tossed Craig’s jacket into the back and fell into his seat, but he didn’t even have time to buckle before Craig was talking again.
“I don’t want to go back to my place.” He said. His tone was firm, but there was the slightest tremor right at the end of his sentence. Tweek’s head swiveled to owlishly and incredulously stare at his boyfriend.
“What?” He gaped. “Why!?”
Craig’s expression had started out as resolved, but at Tweek’s words, he seemed to shrink in on himself somewhat. His hands came to tug at his sleeves and he cast his gaze sidelong.
“Nevermind.” Craig immediately backtracked. There had been a brief moment where he had looked vulnerable, scared even, but now he was frantically trying to piece his walls back together. He had started to pull back on that carefully blank expression and was staring out the window like he could will away whatever interaction was about to happen.
Tweek had to jam his foot into the rapidly shutting door.
“No, Craig, talk to me.” He said quickly, because no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t understand. He didn’t get why Craig didn’t want to go home to his own bed and his pet and his family that loved him. “Where do you want to go?”
“It’s silly,” Craig tried, but Tweek was pinning him to the car door with his stare, flaying him open with an intense look. Craig grimaced but relented.
“I wanted to go to your place instead.” Craig’s words were quiet. His fingers twitched.
Tweek was squinting hard at Craig, struggling to make sense of this new information. He fumbled with his words for a minute before finally managing to speak. When he did, it was in one long, panicked burst.
“My place? I can’t take you back to my place! You need medical attention, and your family misses you, and my room’s a mess, and my parents, and I move in my sleep so I might hurt you if we try to share a bed while you’re all hurt-“
“Clear me a space in the closet,” Craig interjected. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“GAH! No!” Tweek howled. That second rejection made Craig’s shoulders creep up to his jaw.
“No, okay. You’re right. Take me back to my place.”
The words were spoken with a level of resignation that Tweek had never heard from Craig before. It chased all the fear out of his chest and replaced it with a cold stone of worry that planted deep in his stomach.
“Craig?” Tweek asked quietly, softly. “What’s going on?”
“It’s n-” Craig paused. He’d clearly been about to say ‘nothing’, but he realized mid-sentence that a non-answer would just freak Tweek out more. He stayed silent for a few moments as he worked through verbalizing what he wanted to say.
“It’s not anything serious.” Craig managed finally. “It’s just- a bunch of little stuff, I guess. I don’t want to go home tonight.”
Tweek’s hand fell away from the steering wheel as he twisted in his seat to better face Craig. There had been a brief, horrible moment where he’d worried that he had misjudged the Tuckers, and Craig’s parents were hitting him or something awful like that, but Craig’s words reassured him somewhat and rerouted his theories in a different direction. He frowned.
“Little stuff? Like what?” Tweek asked. Craig reached a hand out across the center console, a silent request for comfort, and Tweek granted it by slotting their fingers together. Craig stared down at his lap and sighed.
Craig made it very obvious to Tweek that he liked his family, whether he meant to or not. When Tweek had been cast in the school play, his own parents never made time to go see him perform, so Craig’s family came to see Tweek in every show even though Craig himself was working on set and not acting. At some point, Craig had flipped off his mom from the sound booth, and she had returned the favor by raising a defiant middle finger back at him from the crowd- much to the horror of the other parents- and Craig had laughed and given her a glowing smile.
Another time, Tweek had accidentally walked in on Craig’s mom scolding Tricia, and he caught her using the exact same words that Craig always did when getting onto Clyde. Craig helped his mom with the laundry without being asked. He made his eggs the same way she did and braided his sister’s hair when she was gone. There were lots of little habits of Craig’s that were clearly gleaned from his mother, and every time they came up it made Tweek wonder what it would be like to have a parent who treated him like a son.
“It’s- my dad.” Craig admitted quietly, and Tweek was ripped out of his thoughts with the reminder that Craig’s mom and sister were not his only family.
Craig’s dad was uncharted territory for Tweek. Craig usually steered Tweek away from him unless they were being accompanied by his mom and sister. When they were younger, Craig had explained that it was because his dad could be insensitive and he didn’t want him to say anything that might accidentally hurt Tweek’s feelings, but now Tweek was wondering if there was something more to the avoidance.
“Your dad?” Tweek pushed gently for elaboration. Craig was giving him a bit of an odd look- he’d drawn his feet into the seat so that he could pull his knees into his chest, which must have been uncomfortable given his current state. His arms were folded over his knees to simultaneously cradle and hide his face, and he peered sideways at Tweek through his hair.
Craig was eyeing Tweek like he expected his boyfriend to bite him. It was a backwards situation, Tweek being the one to comfort an oddly perturbed Craig, but it wasn’t that Tweek taking on the supporting role was totally unwelcomed. Tweek wanted so badly to fix whatever was hurting Craig now, but it was hard to help Craig when Craig didn’t let anyone know that he needed it.
Tonight, Craig was letting someone know that he needed it, but he was doing so in smoke signals and morse code. Smoke signals that involved getting himself knifed in the back of a dingy warehouse.
This was not the first time Tweek had ever comforted Craig, but it was the most severe. He’d never seen Craig look so on-edge before. Really, he’d never seen Craig look on-edge at all.
Craig swallowed hard. Tweek blinked at him and waited patiently for him to find his words.
“I don’t want to be having this conversation in a car.” Craig finally decided. Tweek wondered if that decision would be different if he had let Craig bring his mom’s upholstery cleaner to his filthy car seats when the offer was first proposed.
“Okay, Craig.” Tweek agreed instead of voicing that thought. He pulled his hand away and started the car.
Against his better judgment, he found himself driving towards his own house instead of to Craig’s. They lived pretty close to each other, but there was a little rat-path backroad connecting this part of town to Craig’s neighborhood, and the road didn’t extend to Tweek’s. As a consequence, it was faster to get to Craig’s house by backroads and to Tweek’s from the main road. Craig must have noticed because he slumped against the car door with something akin to relief.
The quiet was eating at Tweek but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. Craig’s eyes were usually squinted like he was silently judging everything, but now he was staring out the window at the full moon with an open and almost peaceful expression. His cheek was pressed up against the cold glass in a way that made the window fog up around his face. It framed him in cloudy shades of silvery gray.
It took a lot of effort for Tweek to keep his eyes on the road, and even more effort to keep himself from asking Craig any troubling questions that might disturb his moment of calm. He managed it, though, and minutes later they arrived back at Tweek’s house.
He could tell from the lack of light in the windows that his parents had already gone to bed. They liked Craig, but they didn’t particularly care about him, and Tweek always felt that they supported his relationship out of a desire to be progressive rather than out of any genuine fondness for Craig specifically. It made sense that they weren’t losing sleep over Craig’s disappearance, even if that thought made his chest ache.
“Stay here,” Tweek instructed as he shut off the engine and slid out of the car. Craig blinked tiredly at him, barely sparing the energy to look confused even as Tweek walked up to the front door without bringing Craig with him.
There was a pot with a dead stick in it next to the front porch, and Tweek pushed it to the side to reveal the house key. The pot made a ghastly sound as it scraped against the ground, and Tweek winced, but there was no stirring from within the house.
Tweek jammed the key in the lock to undo the deadbolt. He wouldn’t have been able to lock the door while holding up an injured Craig at the same time. He put the key back in its spot and loped back to fetch Craig from the car.
Craig was dozing against the window. Tweek knocked on it twice so that Craig wouldn’t collapse out whenever he opened the door. Craig stirred enough to push himself upright, and Tweek pulled the door open to offer an arm with a flourish.
“Sir.” Tweek teased, holding out his elbow for Craig. Craig rolled his eyes and flipped him off, but he was smiling faintly, and he grabbed Tweek’s offered arm and used it to pull himself out of the car.
Tweek situated himself firmly against Craig’s side and beneath his shoulder to support his weight. He shut the car door, made sure to lock it behind him, and led Craig to the threshold of the house.
“Don’t say anything until we’re to the stairs,” Tweek whispered, his hand lingering on the doorknob. “My parents are light sleepers.”
Of course, Craig knew that; it was a reminder, not new information, given because Craig was clearly not in the best shape and about to fall asleep again. Tweek and Craig had slept over at each other’s houses plenty of times before- they were in their last year of high school and had been dating since middle school. Craig was usually plenty familiar with the nuances of Tweek’s house.
Tweek’s parents didn’t mind Craig’s presence, which is why they’d never had to sneak around Tweek’s own house before. They did, however, mind being woken up, and Tweek didn’t want them to fuss over him bringing home an injured Craig when he was already struggling with the fact that he’d made that decision in the first place.
Tweek locked the front door behind him and guided Craig to the stairs. Craig was loyally quiet the whole time, but he stopped moving his feet when Tweek tried to take the first step up the stairs.
Tweek gave his boyfriend a confused look when he ragdolled. Craig was looking up the stairs with half-lidded eyes and a blank face.
“I can’t go up those.” Craig whispered matter-of-factly. If Tweek’s hands weren’t already occupied, he was sure that one would have found its way into his own hair by now.
“You’re the one who wanted to come here,” Tweek anguished, “And now you’re telling me you can’t get up the stairs?”
Tweek regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. They were unnecessarily mean, a fact that registered with him when, instead of quipping back, Craig furrowed his eyebrows together and lifted his uninjured leg to take the first step. As soon as Craig made to move, Tweek was hoisting up his full weight, and Tweek grunted and pulled him back off the steps.
“Wait,” Tweek whispered. “I’m sorry. I got you.”
Craig had the audacity to look confused as Tweek propped him up on the stair railing. Tweek moved away from Craig’s side to step in front of him, and he turned away from Craig to crouch down low to the ground.
“Jump on my back,” Tweek whispered. He couldn’t see Craig’s face, but his own was heating up, and he could feel the eye-rolling that he was sure was happening.
“I can’t jump on anything right now,” Craig sneered back, and Tweek felt a rush of frustration, fondness, frustration again at Craig’s stubbornness.
“You know what I meant!” Tweek hissed. “Now quit arguing with me before you wake up my parents!”
It was an empty threat mostly meant to stop Craig from quarreling with him further. The stairs were on the opposite side of the house from Tweek’s parents, whose shut bedroom door would block out the sound of Tweek and Craig’s heated bickering so long as they whispered, but the threat worked anyways. Craig shut his mouth. He wrapped his arms around Tweek’s neck and leaned forward with a small hop.
Tweek caught the junction of Craig’s knees in his arms and hoisted him up piggy-back style. Craig’s chin fell against Tweek’s left shoulder where it remained as a comforting weight. His breath tickled Tweek’s hair, and Tweek turned his head to give him a quick peck on the cheek.
“Thank you.” Tweek whispered, adjusting his hold on Craig’s gangly legs before he started his creep up the stairs.
Usually, Tweek would skip the fourth step because it always creaked loudly, but he was unable to take the stairs two at a time now with a whole other human on his back. Tweek paused on the fifth step to make sure his parents didn’t wake, but they didn’t, and he was able to safely continue his jaunt upstairs.
He didn’t try to put Craig down at the top of the steps, even though Craig squirmed a bit in silent protest. Upstairs was Tweek’s domain and that meant there were too many things littering the floor for him to feel safe letting Craig navigate it on one leg. Plus, he’d take any excuse to carry Craig a little farther.
He brought Craig into the bathroom and deposited him safely on his feet, making sure to drop the uninjured leg first so Craig had a solid foot to stand on.
Once Tweek was no longer carrying Craig, he pushed down the lid on the toilet seat and motioned for Craig to sit. The latter did, and Tweek was free to rummage through his cabinets without feeling like Craig was about to keel over.
“Text your mom and tell her that you’re here and you’re staying the night.” Tweek instructed Craig without looking at him. Craig made a grunt of acknowledgement, and there was a shuffle as he presumably fished his phone out of his pocket. It was followed by the faint tapping sounds of thumbs on a phone screen.
Tweek wanted to text Craig’s mom, too, but not right now. He felt the need to check that he was taking care of Craig to her standards, as well as not making her upset by keeping him.
She wouldn’t be mad at Tweek, especially not if he kept her in the loop and there was trouble with Craig’s dad at home. At least, Tweek hoped she wouldn’t be mad- she was usually the understanding and lenient type, often leaving Craig to his own devices so long as he told her where he’d be each night and she didn’t think he was being axe murdered. She cared about Craig, but she didn’t really monitor him, especially since he was now eighteen years old and technically a fully adult human.
Tweek didn’t feel very adult. He didn’t think Craig did, either, especially considering the scrunched-up expression he wore as he sat bloodied on a toilet seat while texting his mom.
Tweek fished the first aid kit out of its place in the back of the cabinet and set it on the countertop. Craig dragged his gaze over, watching as Tweek popped it open and sorted through the supplies.
When Tweek found and set out the things he needed, he looked up at Craig and found that the latter was already looking at him. When they made eye contact, Craig lifted his phone in one hand and pointed at it with the other.
“She wants to know if I’m hurt.” Craig rumbled flatly. “What do I say?”
Tweek blinked incredulously. His chin jerked in a harsh tic. “Uh, yes?!”
Craig nodded resolutely like that really was all the answer he’d been looking for and went back to tapping away at his phone.
Tweek was washing his hands when Craig spoke again.
“Now she’s asking how bad. What do I say?”
“Ngh, Craig, you should’ve told her in the last message. You’re gonna make her think that you lost an arm.”
Craig’s expression soured. “All you told me to say was ‘yes’.”
Tweek took in a deep breath. He wasn’t as good as the whole patience thing as Craig was.
Instead of reprimanding Craig for not knowing how to text his own mother, Tweek dried his hands and grabbed a washcloth. “Right. Tell her what happened. I was gonna send her a picture after I patched it up anyways, so don’t lie.”
“You are so mean to me.” Craig answered, but his lips twitched up in a smile to betray the fact that he was being sarcastic. Tweek shook his head, lovesick and amused and exhausted.
“Uh-huh.” Tweek responded. “Rest your bad leg on the edge of the tub so I can clean it.”
Craig did, remaining seated on the toilet as he swung his gangly leg to rest his heel on the edge of the nearby tub. The top of his socks were stained with dark blotches where blood had dripped down and been soaked up by them. Gross.
Tweek ran the washcloth under the warm sink water, digging out the antibacterial soap from its place in the box. Craig was already cringing even though Tweek hadn’t even touched him yet.
“So,” Tweek said slowly as he crouched down on the floor in front of Craig. “Your dad?”
Craig blinked and looked away, his face screwing up in pain as Tweek began cleaning blood off his wounds with a damp washcloth. He let out a pinched breath from between gritted teeth.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Craig muttered.
Tweek shrugged. His eyes remained fixed on the gash he was gently trying to wash.
“How about the beginning?” Tweek suggested finally, after a long moment of tense silence. “You’ve hardly told me anything about him. The beginning would be a good place to start.”
“Shit- okay.” Craig’s voice was tight in his throat like his words were having to fight to be spoken. Tweek couldn’t exactly blame him.
It was quiet for a long moment as Craig picked out what words he wanted to use. Tweek just kept diligently dabbing at Craig’s leg, wiping flakes of grime and dried blood away from the skin of his calf.
“When I was real little, I cried when I got stressed.” Craig’s voice was quiet when he finally spoke. “My dad didn’t know how to handle it, so he yelled, and he would keep yelling until I stopped.”
Tweek’s eyes darted up to Craig’s face to acknowledge what had been said. He didn’t contribute anything just yet, though, no matter how much he wanted to.
Craig never cried, at least not anymore. He hadn’t cried when his last guinea pig had died. He hadn’t cried when Clyde’s mom had died, despite the fact that he’d known her. He hadn’t even cried the time Tweek had been hospitalized; Tolkien had said he’d gotten close, but then Clyde had started crying, and Craig immediately blinked away the wetness from his eyes and took charge of the situation.
“I overreacted to stuff that didn’t bother the other kids.” Craig continued, not looking at Tweek. “That always upset Dad, I think- he wanted me to be tough and not care about that shit. He’s always- I don’t know. He doesn’t know how to handle his own emotions so he didn’t know how to handle mine either. I learned quick that it was much easier to be around him if I acted like I didn’t feel anything at all.”
Tweek was scowling. He got up to rinse the bloodied rag under the sink and took the time to really look at Craig.
Craig was scowling, too, and he was leaned forward so that he was hunched over himself. His shoulders had drawn up to his jaw and he sat tensely with his hands balled into fists.
Tweek knew Craig was much closer to his mom than his dad. It had always confused him, because Thomas Tucker seemed just fine from a distance, but Tweek had always sort of assumed that Craig and his dad were just both the distant type. This was the first time Craig was admitting that his relationship with his dad wasn’t distant, but rather rocky, something much worse in this case because at least distance meant avoidance.
Tweek’s opinion of Craig’s dad had been neutral before. The Tuckers had always been a bit of an odd family, and Tweek had never really committed to any one opinion of them, but he was finally reaching some sort of a solid conclusion.
Laura Tucker had never been the type to reprimand her children when they got hurt, unlike Tweek’s parents. If Tweek called her right now and told her what had happened to Craig, she’d probably just tut about how it had been a small-dick move for the other kid to bring a knife to a fistfight. She’d probably reassure Craig that he wasn’t in any trouble because he wasn’t dead even though the other person hadn’t been fighting fair. She’d probably tell both boys that she loved them, and they should come over as soon as they got around the next morning so that she could look at Craig’s injuries.
Tweek was pretty sure he’d once heard her talking about the sanctity of fistfights, about how no blades meant no danger, and that Craig could get into as many fistfights as he wanted so long as he didn’t get arrested or hospitalized.
Tweek had thought she was fucking crazy at the time. He still sort of did, but there was some increment of understanding now. Raising a kid in South Park was hard.
Thomas Tucker would get excited upon hearing Craig had gotten into a fight and irritated upon hearing he walked away from it genuinely injured. He’d get angry, and Craig would shut down- and as soon as that happened, nobody would ever be able to pry from Craig his reasoning for getting into a fight in the first place.
Tweek wondered how much he had contributed to Craig's tendency to shut down, like just earlier when Craig had implied that he needed help getting up the stairs and Tweek’s immediate response had been to scold.
Laura Tucker’s attitude had confused Tweek before. It had felt to him like she didn’t do very much parenting- letting Craig get into trouble instead of making any attempt to stop it, and afterwards she would extend an offer to help him but not put any force or insistence behind it.
Tweek wasn’t used to her fast-and-loose parenting style. His own parents would rather point a loaded gun at him than let him make any decisions for himself. It was different, but Tweek was now realizing the artistry behind it.
Craig was like a cat. You had to let him come to you.
Craig’s dad just yelled until Craig stopped reacting. Craig’s mom never yelled. She was lenient- sometimes too lenient, maybe, but she acted that way to balance out her husband.
Tweek was a little glad that his parents treated him the same. He felt he’d be torn in two if they each had different expectations of him.
With a sigh, Tweek grabbed the disinfectant and made his way back over to Craig. He folded his legs beneath himself to sit on the floor.
“Yeah?” Tweek pressed when the silence continued to lapse on, even after he had returned to his spot in front of Craig. “So you can’t talk to your dad about what happened?”
“It’s not just that.” Craig said flatly. “I mean, that’s part of it, but- I don’t know. I feel like he messed me up.”
Tweek frowned and pulled off Craig’s shirt to clean the injuries on his ribs. He focused on that for a moment, letting Craig’s words linger before they were addressed.
“You’re not messed up.” Tweek replied firmly, once he finally spoke. “That shit hurt you, but that doesn’t make you less- less valuable or anything.”
That was a sentiment Tweek had heard from Craig plenty, although Craig was usually able to word it a bit more eloquently. Craig sighed.
“I know, but-” His hands waved as he searched for the words. Tweek put down the bloodied rag, grabbing a clean one and a bottle of disinfectant.
“This will hurt,” Tweek warned, wetting the rag before going to dab at the wound.
Craig’s expression contorted as Tweek pressed the rag to the gash on his leg. His fingers curled into a white-knuckled grip on the toilet seat, and words spilled from his mouth unfiltered as he tried to focus on talking instead of the burning of his calf muscle.
“It’s like I can’t put away my emotions just when I’m around my dad,” Craig rambled, his cheek dropping to bump against his shoulder. “I bottled them up and they got stuck like that. I don’t react like normal people do, I just sit there and watch things happen.”
“I think you react to things.” Tweek replied, his eyes drifting up to glance at Craig. Craig wasn’t looking at him. Instead, his head had fallen back to turn his face to the ceiling.
Craig scoffed. Tweek went back to wetting Craig’s wounds with disinfectant, trying to quickly get it over with because Craig was clearly hurting.
“You do!” Tweek insisted. “You didn’t want to go home because you were worried. You got into a fight because you were upset. You wanted to come to my house because you were sad. Those are emotions, Craig.”
“Not normal ones.” Craig hissed. “Most people do shit like write poetry when they get upset. I went and let myself get stabbed.”
No matter how much Tweek wished his boyfriend would write poetry instead of getting into fights when he was upset, Craig just wasn’t the type for words- flowery or otherwise. He would never be. Besides, Tweek only wanted to help Craig find a healthier outlet, not fundamentally change who he was as a person.
Tweek also felt that he had signed up for the version of Craig who gets stabbed as a coping mechanism, back when he agreed to date him. The version of Craig who writes poetry like a normal person had never really been a part of the equation.
Tweek wanted to teach Craig how to talk about his feelings instead of going and getting into a fight whenever he was feeling emotional. Getting upset with Craig now would be hypocritical and counterintuitive- it was people getting upset with Craig for handling things poorly that had caused this whole mess in the first place.
While Tweek was mulling over his next reply, he finished wiping down Craig’s cuts and scrapes and moved onto bandaging them. He was winding the soft cotton around Craig’s torso when he spoke next.
“You weren’t taught how to cope with your emotions properly, so you don’t. That doesn’t mean you’re ‘messed up’, you just got some shit to work through.”
Craig grunted quiet acknowledgment. Tweek wasn’t done having this conversation, though, so he pressed further.
“Craig,” Tweek said slowly, tying off the bandage once Craig’s chest was wrapped up so that he could take his boyfriend’s hands in his own. “Why did you get in that fight?”
Craig’s mouth was downturned. He was scowling, but not angrily like he usually was; he was sad, blinking hard like he was trying not to cry, and Tweek was sure he’d never seen the other boy look so upset in his life.
“I wanted- I wanted someone to notice that I wasn’t okay.” Craig managed, voice quiet and hurt.
There hadn’t been some long pause before Craig spoke, the kind he took when he was figuring out the ‘correct’ thing to say; the answer was real, spoken because it had crossed his mind and not because it was the reply expected of him.
It wasn’t the answer that Tweek had been anticipating at all. He had been expecting a literal recount of whatever had pissed Craig off enough to want to brawl over it. Maybe that was just the problem, though- Craig probably hadn’t even cared to find a reason to fight in the first place, had just gone and squared up with the first kid angry enough to punch back.
Tweek didn’t really know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. He lurched forward and wrapped his arms around Craig.
Immediately, Craig’s shoulders started shaking. Tweek couldn’t help but notice that Craig was a quiet crier- he didn’t hiccup or wail like Tweek did, he just clutched the back of Tweek’s shirt with an iron grip and trembled against him.
It was an awkward position. Craig was still sitting on the toilet seat, with one leg kicked up to rest on the tub; Tweek was on his knees on the floor in front of him, trying to stretch more than his body would allow so that he could hold Craig.
Carefully, Tweek maneuvered himself to sit properly on the ground and pulled Craig into his lap. The new position wasn’t any less awkward. Craig was bigger than Tweek, with long legs that fought to be contained in the small space they were occupying, and they were still sitting on the bathroom floor.
Craig’s injured leg knocked awkwardly against the ground as he moved. Tweek couldn’t see Craig’s expression since the latter’s face was pressed into his shoulder, but it felt like Craig winced.
“S-orry,” Tweek keened mournfully, but Craig didn’t seem to care. He held onto Tweek and sniffed and carried on crying.
There wasn’t much else Tweek could do except hold Craig. At least, not anything that Craig would appreciate- Tweek could have babbled fake comforts, but Craig would probably just get overwhelmed and frustrated in response.
Still, one question was itching incessantly at the back of Tweek’s mind. He bumped his cheek against Craig’s hair and winced.
“Why didn’t you just- talk to me about it, man?”
Tweek knew the answer. He asked anyways.
“…I was scared of what I’d say if we spoke.” That was more the type of response that Tweek had come to expect from Craig; a literal excuse, somehow explaining both everything and nothing at all, spoken short and to-the-point with little room to paint a full picture. It was still a bit more emotionally honest than usual despite not really telling Tweek anything that he didn’t already know, but his shoulder was still wet with Craig fucking Tucker’s tears so he was willing to let it go.
“Nothing you can say can make me love you any less.” Tweek answered. He pushed his fingers into Craig’s hair. It was dirty and honestly a little gross from wallowing around in the grime of an abandoned building, but Tweek couldn’t bring himself to mind. They could wash it in the morning.
“Get off me,” Tweek murmured, and despite his words and the push he gave Craig’s shoulder, his tone was kind. “Let me help you to my room so we can get you a shirt to sleep in. I’m not letting you bleed all over my sheets.”
And Tweek helped Craig up. He’d forgotten to take a picture for Laura Tucker, but he sent her an apologetic text explaining what had happened, and she responded by calling him a ‘beautiful nurse for her baby’ and reassured him that he’d probably done a fine job on his own.
Tweek ended up sleeping in the bed with Craig, despite Craig reintroducing the idea that he sleep on the closet floor while Tweek took the bed. By the time they both finally fell asleep, it was late enough in the night to be considered early morning, but Tweek slept harder than he ever had- with Craig’s head on his chest and arm slung over his stomach.