Chapter Track: Sober Up (ft. Rivers Cuomo) – AJR
Help Me Feel Something Again
Craig stared, disbelieving, at his father. Thomas Tucker was a towering barrel of a man, whose stature and fiery hair lent him presence. Craig inherited very little from his father – only his height and his blue eyes reflected the Tucker line. Otherwise, Craig faded into the background like a motel room painting, and was more than happy to keep it that way.
Still, this was a shock to the system.
"What?" Craig managed. (Dumbfounded – though his voice fell flat. Few people could read him.)
His father folded his arms across his broad chest and widened his stance as though gearing up for a fight. He repeated, "You're fired."
"I'm your son," Craig intoned.
Thomas exhaled a long, tired sigh. He said, "Craig, I've allowed this to go on for far too long. If you were any other employee, you would have lost your position years ago."
"So you're firing me," Craig said, "Because I…'lack enthusiasm'?"
"Yes," his father said, firm, "The position is simply suited to somebody more – extroverted."
"Extroverted," echoed Craig, "but I've worked here for ten years."
Craig bled for this stupid goddamn gas station. He woke up at five in the morning for shifts, sacrificed his beloved hat in the name of the dress code, wore an apron day in and day out, suffered minimum wage and mopped the sticky floors for ten actual years.
"You have, and I think it's time for a change."
"A change?" A knot of anger clogged Craig's throat, but he couldn't swallow it away. "This is what I'm good at." His voice dipped low and dangerous, but his dad didn't appear fazed.
"You're not that good at it, kiddo."
"I'm – don't 'kiddo' me, you jackass," Craig snapped, "I'm not fired – I quit. You can take your job and shove it up your ass." With that, Craig ripped the gas station apron off his torso and threw it in Thomas Tucker's face. At the swinging glass door, Craig brandished a middle finger and held it behind him all the way outside and across the gas station lot.
His mother was going to kill him for missing weekly family dinner.
Whatever. His dad fired him from his own joint. Thomas owned the fucking place – he could've kept Craig employed even if he'd been getting nailed in the back room.
Not that he had a lot of opportunity for that, but still – the place belonged to his father.
In 2007, Craig's dad purchased the gas station. Craig was sixteen. The gas station was the only one in town, and the only place for fuel for dozens of miles in every direction. Craig's dad put him to work behind the counter at seventeen, because, as his father put it, he "needed some responsibility."
Craig never left because – well, what was the point? He wasn't good at anything, was average in every regard. Clyde could play football and Jimmy had comedy and Token excelled at goddamn everything because he was smarter than anyone should be. Craig had been an average student and never attended college. Everyone else had a thing, but not Craig. Never Craig. He liked cigarettes and cars and long ago, as a teenager, he liked his boyfriend.
But Tweek was gone. He left small-town Colorado and made it big. He had a website (That Kyle Broflovski designed, Christ) where Tweek sold books of his web comic Crazy Boy Cartoons, and merchandise printed with his art.
Craig owned all three volumes of Crazy Boy Cartoons. The creased spines were a testament to how many times he'd read them cover to cover, time and time again.
He didn't like thinking about what that might mean.
As Craig trudged along Main Street, his thunderous mood melted to a dull throb of frustration. None of this mattered, he comforted himself. The universe didn't care that his own father fired him. The universe was impartial to his suffering. The universe didn't give half a shit.
He passed Tweak's on his walk to and from work – today, Richard Tweak stood behind the counter with bags under his eyes, customer flow stagnant and expression bored. Craig almost felt bad for him, except he knew exactly how much of an asshole Richard was behind closed doors, and recalling the staggering douchebaggery he associated with the guy dried up any empathy Craig might have experienced.
Craig shook his head and shoved his hands into the pockets of his torn-up jeans.
What was he going to do about rent? He didn't pay much, but Craig couldn't save for shit and blew all his extra cash on cigarettes and car parts.
"Fuck," Craig muttered under his breath.
He was, God help him, going to have to brave a conversation with his landlords.
Christ, he hated thinking of them like that – even if it was true.
For better or worse, Craig rented out the renovated basement apartment beneath a house that belonged to three of the most annoying people in South Park – Kenny McCormick, Butters Stotch, and Bebe Stevens – and that didn't even count their shrieking bastard spawn. Somehow, all three of those dipshits had their lives more together than Craig did.
McCormick opened up South Park's first and only tattoo parlor at the tender age of twenty-one and shocked everyone by being actually good at what he did. Bebe ran the shop's finances and hawked jewelry on Etsy fashioned from animal bones she picked up on local hikes. Butters stayed home with the spawn – an unruly blond toddler named Booker (Craig pinned that unfortunate moniker on either Butters or Bebe). Booker's hair existed in a constant state of bedhead and his only volume was MAXIMUM.
On top of stay-at-home daddery, Butters was a sought-out interior designer. Before Craig moved into the basement apartment, it looked like the cover of a trendy catalogue.
All three of them were terrible. Worst of all, when Craig told them about being fired, they would probably understand.
Craig was right, of course. Instead of slogging down to his apartment, he knocked on the front door of the house. It was a gold rush-era structure, small and Victorian looking. The second that the door opened, Booker battle-cried, "UNCLE CRAIG!" and slammed into him with all the force his three-year-old body could muster.
Butters smiled his stupid gooey smile and welcomed Craig inside their stupid quirky home, offering coffee or tea or "chocolate milk, if that's your deal."
Craig probably wasn't the only grown man that liked chocolate milk as a comfort beverage, right?
And so Craig swirled his chocolate milk around in his glass and confessed the loss of his cashier gig at his dad's gas station to Butters while the throuple's child ran pantsless through the house. Butters gasped in all the appropriate places in the story and patted Craig's hand consolingly, fussing far too much.
"Don't you worry about rent," Butters assured him, "We don't need the money."
Logically, Craig knew they took his rent money out of pity, but hearing as much out loud stung nonetheless. He was supposed to be a fucking adult, but here he was in the same town he'd been born in, fired from his job at the gas station by his own father, living in a converted basement that belonged to people he went to high school with and didn't even like all that much.
Craig put his face in his hands, which Butters took as a sign that he needed comforting. He rubbed Craig's back and cooed appreciatively at the irritable grunt this elicited.
Ugh. Gross.
It occurred to Craig then that these people might actually be his friends. Jimmy texted him memes from time to time and Token checked up on him like it was a chore. Clyde never texted or called any of them anymore – he left South Park with a football scholarship in hand and played now for the Kansas City Chiefs. He was dating a cheerleader last time Craig worked up the nerve to Google him.
None of the friends he used to have lived nearby.
His friends now were – Craig shuddered – Kenny and Bebe and Butters, for fuck's sake. When had that happened? He couldn't put his finger on when the shift occurred.
To Craig's ever-increasing horror, long after he extracted himself from Butters' embrace and retreated to his apartment to sulk, Kenny showed up on the doorstep of the basement with a six pack of cheap beer and a bag of weed. Even worse – Craig was happy to see him.
"Heard about what happened," Kenny said, and lifted his offerings, "Wanna get fucked up? We don't even have to talk."
Exasperated, Craig agreed. "I hate that I like you," he said.
Kenny grinned, all teeth, and said, "Yeah? Feeling's mutual, asshole."
Craig withheld a sigh. He knew if he slammed the door in Kenny's face that he'd fucking knock again until Craig gave up and played beer therapy with him.
"Fine," he bit out, and Kenny's grin grew.
They slouched together in the cheap plastic lawn furniture Craig bought for a handful of change from the Marsh's yard sale three summers before. Craig cracked open a beer, while Kenny rolled a joint with impressive speed between his tattooed fingers. His titanium wedding ring glinted on his hand and – how did Craig even know the ring was titanium? He spent way too much time with these people.
Kenny lit the joint with a lighter he had, in all likelihood, purchased from Craig's dad's gas station. He exhaled a fragrant cloud before he passed it along to Craig, who breathed in gratefully. Smoke burned its way into his probably already-black lungs. For a long time, neither he nor Kenny spoke, only nursed their beers and sucked on the end of the joint.
When warmth suffused Craig from his ears to his toes, head pleasantly fuzzy, he dared to at last complain.
"I can't believe my dad fired me," Craig said.
Kenny choked on the joint. Weed smoke puffed out of his lungs in strangled little clouds, and he thumped his hand against his chest as he hacked and coughed. Kenny squeezed out, "Your dad did what?"
"He fired me," Craig slowly answered. "You didn't know? Then what the hell is all this about?"
"Your boyfriend," Kenny said, incredulous.
Craig furrowed his brow. He replied, "I don't have a boyfriend."
Kenny rolled his eyes and stubbed out the smoking end of the joint in the novelty ashtray Craig should have cleaned out weeks ago. He lifted one cocky, pierced brow and said, "Your ex-boyfriend. The only ex you have. You know. The famous one?"
"He's not – that famous," protested Craig.
"Buddy, come on. Let's be real. He's an internet sweetheart. Bebe follows his Instagram."
"Okay. Fuck. Fine. He's famous. What about him?" asked Craig, pissed as hell at the way his heart beat faster at the mention of Tweek Tweak.
"Damn, I really thought you already knew."
"Don't keep me in suspense then, you fuckin' piece of–"
"I don't want to be the one to tell you," Kenny said, sucking in his teeth. He broke their gaze to throw a half-smoked pack of cigarettes on the table between them, an offering.
Craig pushed the cigarettes back, and then stood to his full six-foot-two, pointing an accusing finger at Kenny's face. "Well boo hoo. What the hell happened to Tweek?"
Kenny held his palms out in defense. His voice came out soft and plying, as though Craig were an angry animal to be tamed. "Whoa. Hey. It's okay. It's nothing bad. He's just coming back to South Park for a little. Like a week. That's barely any time at all."
For the second time that day, Craig found himself wordless. He fumbled for something – anything – to say, but no matter how many times he opened his mouth, no sound came out. The fight drained out of him all at once, and he sunk back into the faded lawn chair. Mute, he knocked back what remained of his second beer.
"What's – where's he staying?" Craig finally asked.
Kenny shrugged. "Dunno. His folks, I guess."
Well, fuck.
Craig probably made a face, but he didn't share with Kenny that Tweek's dad was a colossal piece of shit, or that Tweek staying with his folks could be actually dangerous. That wasn't Kenny's business. Truth be told – it wasn't Craig's business either. Not anymore.
Silence stretched between the two of them, pulled too taut to be comfortable.
The single word that Craig uttered dropped between them like a hot stone: "Why?"
"He's doing some book signings and shit at Tweak's. Seems like a publicity stunt. For the shop, I mean, not Tweek. He doesn't need publicity."
"No. He doesn't," Craig agreed. Everywhere he turned on the internet, he ran into a repost of Crazy Boy Cartoons. Apparently Tweek was full of #relatablecontent, or whatever.
Some unnamable feeling writhed in Craig's gut and coiled there like a snake. All the times he wished he could talk to Tweek, or just see him again, crossed Craig's mind. There were so many. Too many.
Which was dumb.
It was over.
The fiery relationship between Tweek and Craig had burned like kindling, quick and hot and out of control – they were seventeen at the time, and Craig's memories of it all were a jumble of fights and sex and crazy dumbass stunts. What burned between them blazed, and then it burned out. Ten years ago, when Tweek left South Park. They'd been over for a decade.
As much as some traitorous piece of Craig longed to see Tweek again, he knew that was unwise.
That part of his life was in the past. Better to keep Tweek there, where he belonged.
HEY EVERYONE! So apparently I'm back. This is the only chapter that will be cross-posted on FF NET. The rest will only be posted on Ao3, under scarlettshazam/thepinupchemist.