Disclaimer: Degrassi isn't mine.
Summary: 'Craig had never felt like a son.' This is the story of how that changed. short missing and a.u. scenes revolving around Craig and Joey.
Author's Note: This is the Degrassi story I always wanted to read, so finally, I decided to write it myself. I hope you enjoy reading this.
Enough
By Potterworm
Craig had never felt like a son. His dad bought him nice things and kept a roof over his head and gave him rules and discipline and called him son, but since his mother had died, Craig had never really felt like someone's son.
It was sad, he realized. So when his dad offered him money to buy a camera - and Craig felt sick to his stomach because my God he wasn't stupid, and he knew exactly why his father was giving him this money - he took it, because fathers gave their sons things.
He was trying to be a son, but sometimes, just sometimes, Craig felt like his father knew what an imposter he felt like, and maybe he was hurt by that, and maybe that was why…
(Why he….no, Craig couldn't even think it. Not then.)
/
That first night at Joey's, Craig slept in the guest room. It wasn't pretty, and the sheets smelt like they hadn't been used in months (and since Joey had dug them out of the bottom of a laundry basket in the hall closet, Craig figured that wasn't an exaggeration), but it was a room with a bed and a door with a lock.
Craig tried to feel grateful, but all he could think was that he was sleeping in the guest room. He was a guest in a bedroom, and when he closed his eyes and fell asleep that would only mean morning was coming, and that would mean he would have to leave.
Guests couldn't stay forever.
/
He got sick, two weeks into his stay at Joey's. Not seriously sick, just some dumb stomach virus. But Craig wasn't Joey's son, and he knew that Joey wasn't rich, and it was just a stupid stomach bug so it wasn't like he needed a doctor, and Craig told himself all this, and it never even occurred to him to stay home from school.
(It had always been all or nothing. Craig had never understood in betweens.)
He came home from school all hot and sweaty like he had just run a mile, and when Joey asked him if he had just left a P.E. class, Craig nodded and said yeah, yeah of course he had just left P.E.
He went upstairs to the guest room and looked at his camera. He didn't have a dark room here, but he had kept taking pictures. Craig knew he could just ask Joey for a room that he could make his own dark room for, but Craig wasn't even sure how to do that. It had been his dad who had set the whole thing up, as some guilt present years back.
Craig looked at his camera, and God, he didn't want to even look at his camera right now. He fell asleep with his head on his desk and woke up three and a half hours later to Joey calling him downstairs.
He tried to bound down the stairs like an energetic teenager, but he forgot that Joey had never really seen him act like a cliché before, so that instantly made his behavior unusual.
"Craig?" Joey asked a few seconds after he walked in the room. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," he said.
Craig ate dinner with the family like a good, little guest, and (don't rock the boat. It's nice here.) when Joey caught him throwing up in the bathroom later, he didn't even bothering denying he was sick anymore.
Joey gave him a water to kill the taste in his mouth and a Tylenol to get rid of the fever he hadn't realized he had. Before Craig knew it, he was being led into his (guest) room, and he was lying in bed having his shoes taken off when Joey asked him, "Why didn't you tell me you were sick?"
"I don't know," Craig slurred, the day of hidden sickness catching up with him in one big wave.
Joey didn't say anything to that, just looked at him like little boy lost and sat in the corner of the room until Craig fell asleep.
(Craig knew why, but the thing was - Joey knew too.)
/
Craig knew when it got out at school that his father had beaten him, because Sean looked at him with this face that just said sorry, man. Craig glared at Sean but went back to talking to him by lunch period that day, partially because he knew Sean would never have told anyone, and partially because who cared if he had? - Craig didn't have a lot of friends, and it was bound to get out eventually anyway.
People looked at him like they were sorry all day. Mr. Simpson, Manny, even Paige.
Some people looked hurt that he hadn't told them himself, and some people looked hurt on his behalf. It was a lot of hurt all around, but the only thing that made it better for Craig was that when he got back home (no, not home, to Joey's house), he knew there wouldn't be any more hurt.
/
Craig stole (borrowed) a car and all Joey did was rip up some tickets and ground him. When Joey went to leave the room, Craig stopped his indignant grumblings (because that was what a normal teenager would do) and nearly sank to the floor. God, he felt weak in the knees, only not in some cutesy damsel-in-distress kind of way, but in an I'm going to pass out way.
Ten minutes later, Joey came in the living room to find Craig with his back to the living room wall and his eyes closed, almost like he had sunk straight down.
"Craig, I know that you're … upset," Joey said trailing off. "Craig?"
Craig's eyes blinked open and just for an instant he felt completely exposed before he smiled lazily, like he hadn't a care in the world, and said, "Yeah, Joey?"
Joey stood there for a long moment, and Craig figured he should probably stand up now, but he was just so goddamned relieved that he couldn't move. Finally, Joey walked over to where Craig was and sank down the wall so he was sitting right next to him.
"You know you stole a car, right?" Joey said, and there was a hint of a smile in his voice, even though the situation wasn't exactly happy and it certainly wasn't funny.
Craig felt like he should open his mouth, but he couldn't, so he just nodded. Slowly.
"Craig," Joey started to say and then stopped. He didn't know how to touch the subject, because despite a few rough and tough conversations, they had never really said it. "I'm not going to…" he tried again. "You know that I'm not…"
Joey was awkward and uncomfortable and for a man who had searched a town high and low for Craig months ago and had held him while he cried, he sure as hell had no idea what he was doing.
(Somehow, that was enough.)
"Joey," Craig said, and for some stupid reason, he could tell him voice was raspy, like he was going to cry. "I know."
Joey didn't say anything more, but he sat there with Craig until he was ready to move.
That night, Craig went to his room, and mentally, he didn't add the guest part.
/
Craig didn't cry at the funeral, because he was glad his dad was dead. He was glad, just like he told Joey. He didn't have to worry anymore, and those sleepless nights with visions of his father calling the police and making him come home were finally going to be over.
Except his father being dead didn't mean Craig didn't dream, and that night, one of his nightmares took his breath away. He wandered downstairs for a midnight snack and only jumped slightly when Joey walked in the room.
"Joey," Craig said, looking down at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the cutting board. He cut it in half, grabbed two plates, and sat down at the table with Joey.
"I know you're not sorry he's dead right now, Craig, but I'm still sorry for your loss. I don't think I've said that to you yet," was what Joey said, and even though it was hardly eloquent, it was the deepest thing Craig had ever heard him say. It was almost comical coming from Joey, and Craig nearly laughed, because he was so tired, and God, his dad was dead, and he still couldn't get a good night's sleep.
Craig didn't know where it came from, but he said, low and helpless with confusion, "Joey, he beat me."
"I know."
And then - Craig was crying, and the peanut butter was like ash in his mouth, like ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and his dad was really, really dead.
Joey pat him on his back awkwardly, and it was just like the first few minutes in the graveyard when Craig confessed the truth to Joey, and the next part was the same too, with Joey holding onto him, and someone was finally, finally holding him.
When Craig lost it at the school dance, a while later, it wasn't because he hadn't mourned yet. It was because he was in the middle of mourning for a man he didn't miss and crying for a home he had just realized he had.
/
Craig knew it was stupid, but sometimes, he was surprised that Joey didn't just kick him out in the months following his father's funeral. Joey had only let him crash at the house because his father was beating him and now that his father was dead, there wasn't a problem, so why should Craig be Joey's anymore?
But Joey wasn't heartless, and Craig wasn't just crashing there, and once upon a time, Joey's wife had her son over to visit and a little boy had smiled at Joey, and even though Joey figured now that nothing had been going on back then, he still had nightmares now about his wife and his daughter and their happy-go-lucky life on the opposite side of town, while Craig lived with his father.
It felt like penance some of the times, like the right thing to do. Other times, Joey realized it was the only thing to do, and even though he spat the word father in his head when he thought about it in relation to Craig, maybe the word could mean something else for Craig, and maybe Joey was the one who could change things.
/
Craig realized one day when the band was practicing that this was something he would never have been able to do when he lived with his father. He had never been able to have friends over and certainly not friends like Spinner and Ashley.
This was a better place.
/
Sometimes, Craig sat and watched hockey with Joey, and Angie would run in the room and sit Indian-style on the floor and watch with them.
It was like a family.
(It was one.)
/
Craig didn't remember much from that time right before he was diagnosed as bipolar, (it was mainly just a big blur of rage and sadness and Ashley and the wedding and his fists pounding on Joey's face) but his first night back home (at Joey's? No, home. What, was Joey going to kick him out, just because he was bipolar?), he couldn't sleep.
All he could think of was his fist on Joey's face and his father's fist on his own face, and the cycle of abuse, and children of abuse often become abusers, and God, did this mean he was becoming his father?
Joey looked terrified upon seeing him sitting in the dark kitchen at two in the morning. He flipped the light switch on and approached. "Craig, are you alright? Do you need to go to the hospital?" He was near Craig then, looking at him closely, like he would be able to tell instantly if Craig was relapsing right there, in spite of the drugs coursing through his veins.
"God, Joey," Craig said, pulling back. Joey stopped for a minute then, because Craig wasn't rambling and he sounded normal, but he wasn't even sure what normal was anymore, so he sat down next to Craig and waited. "I…" Craig paused for a moment, not quite sure how to broach the topic, because money was a sensitive topic, but this was bothering him, and if therapy had taught him anything, it was that he should tell someone when something was bugging him. "I still have some of my dad's money, and it's enough to pay you back for the hotel room and some of the medical bills."
Joey skipped right over the hotel part and latched onto the mention of medical bills. He looked horrified and slightly sick to his stomach. "Craig, I'm not going to make you pay me for your medical bills. You're my son, and I can take care of them fine. The car lot's so much better than it was and …"
There was a roaring in Craig's ears. Joey was still babbling about the car lot, and Craig hadn't even been talking about his own medical bills, he had been talking about Joey's. He knew Joey had been checked out at the E.R. when they brought Craig in, and he knew there had been a scan or two, but that was besides the point - Joey had called him his son.
Craig didn't mean to say it out loud, because in spite of everything, they were guys first, and they just didn't talk about things like this, but it slipped out. "I'm your son?" Craig's voice sounded oddly young, like a child's.
Joey stopped and looked at Craig closely. Joey swallowed and then: "Yeah, Craig. You're my son. Alright? So don't worry about the bills. I've got it under control, and you just need to focus on your health."
They were both silent for a few more minutes.
"I was so worried," Joey said carefully. "And you have no idea how happy I am that you're okay. So if you've been worrying about the hotel room and …" Joey paused and didn't say beating me up but just sort of continued with "… all of that, then don't. Okay, Craig?"
Craig nodded.
/
Craig had never felt like a son, and Joey had never been his father. But Joey was learning that a father wasn't always there from birth, and Craig was learning that being a son was more than anxiety and rules and heavy expectations to live up to.
Craig had never felt like a son, and Joey had never been his father. In the end, neither of those things mattered.
The rest of it was enough.