Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The night his boyfriend of twenty-three years died is burned into Craig’s memory, its recall gut-wrenching to the point of nausea.

He remembers waking up to his alarm, set for six-thirty A.M., on a cool Thursday morning and being confused but not displeased that Tweek was still in bed with him, since he usually woke up an hour before Craig to squeeze in a morning run and complementary shower.

He remembers prodding Tweek’s shoulder to find his usually too-hot body lukewarm, remembers the realization that he wasn’t breathing like being dunked into a bucket of sleet, acrid and dirty and so scorching cold that he stopped breathing himself.

He doesn’t remember calling 911 and gritting through his teeth that his boyfriend is unresponsive, doesn’t remember the faces of the paramedics who informed Craig it was likely some sort of stroke as they lifted Tweek’s stiff, dead body out of the bed, never to enter the house again.

He was gone.

Just like that, he’d died in his sleep and left Craig all alone.

There was no opportunity for a struggle, no chance to change the outcome. Tweek had simply left and taken Craig’s heart with him, years upon years of love suddenly redefined as a thing of the past, nothing more than memories.

Never again would Craig get to stare into Tweek’s angular face, picking out various constellations from his freckles, their shared favorite being Leo, Tweek’s star sign. Never again would Craig be able to run his hands through Tweek’s wild blond hair, forever amazed that their first proper conversation was all the way back in their sophomore year of college, Tweek barking at Craig to shut the fuck up about how bad his English 101 essay was before he punched Craig’s lights out, right in the middle of the writing lab and loud enough for everyone to hear (that was at least two decades ago—they’ve both mellowed out with age). Never again would Craig hear Tweek singing along to The Cure in his uneven, raspy voice while making dinner alongside Craig, chopping vegetables at light speed and volunteering random details about his day at work during the songs’ long, dreamy bridges.

What in the hell was he even supposed to do? He had no fucking clue. None.

With his father, whose miraculous recovery from pancreatic cancer had drawn Craig to Christianity in the first place, Craig had had time to pray and hope for things to get better. He’d been able to offer his hopes up to God that the person he cared for would be alright, and he’d been answered, gifted a tantalizingly slow but still-full recovery. He was lucky; in his forty-three years of living, he’d never suffered a truly major loss, only those of guinea pigs and non-immediate family members and friends’ loved ones who he obviously felt bad for but not wrecked over—until now.

What would prayer do for Tweek, a dead man? What would prayer do for himself, a living man?

Time flowed around Craig like a river around a rock, leaving him helplessly frozen in time as the world kept turning around him. He felt like a stranger in the cage of his body, only eating when his stomach growled like a feral dog, only drinking when his mouth felt like sandpaper. He didn’t know what to do about half his heart suddenly being away from his chest; he became a yes-man to the rules of polite society as he floated through Tweek’s funeral mass like an unwashed ghost, nodding and mumbling thanks as he barely smelt parishioners' and fellow pastors’ steel trays of amateurish vegetarian food, barely heard their lengthy anecdotes about grief, their insistences that Tweek was happy in Heaven and that they were here for him if he ever needed it.

His little sister was the only one who’d managed to rip him from his stupor, all blonde disdain and ginger temper during their first full-family reunion in months as she snarled at Craig that he needed to get his head out of his ass and get back to acting like a human being even if it hurt. She wasn’t so much as glared at by either of their parents throughout her entire soapbox rant because, despite her harsh delivery, she was correct. It wasn’t Tucker fashion to be warm and sentimental, which was probably why all the condolences and gentle apologies of everyone else hadn’t gotten through to Craig, only…that.

He’d looked up from his bare feet, meeting Tricia’s pale blue eyes, a storm flown in all the way from her lofty professor job out in the heart of Massachusetts, and sighed his defeat. “You’re right.”

She hadn’t even hesitated, her sharp voice the loudest sound the apartment had heard in over two weeks. “I know. You need to get better. For Tweek, for the parish, for Stripe, for Mom and Dad, for me, for whoever the fuck, who even cares! You just need to get better, okay? Living like this isn’t… sustainable.”

Tricia had then left to check on Stripe, causing their father to hover awkwardly for a moment before deciding he’d rather go tidy up in the kitchen than talk in the aftermath of Tricia’s outburst. Which left Craig with their mother. She spoke to him softly, too quiet for anyone to eavesdrop on them, and let Craig know that while, yes, he did need to start going to work and taking care of himself again, it was still alright to take time to heal because grief was real and vicious and a loss like that would take a long time to truly recover from.

While the words were pretty, Craig had already made up his mind: he’d get on with it. Not in the sense that he’d move on from Tweek—that would never happen, he already knew—but in the sense that he’d stop rotting in his house and start acting like a human being again, just like Tricia had demanded. Hell, if he tried hard enough, he could probably go ahead and shut the pain out entirely. True Tucker fashion.

His mother had given him a warning look when he’d shrugged her off, but Craig had ignored it, petulance at having been shouted down by his little sister only catching up to him five minutes after the fact.

And so Craig started to piece himself back together, a little duller than but just as functional as before. A shell, but a good shell. Tough. Durable. Unlikely to break again.

He gave sermons, appeared at all the various parish events, and did his best to keep the advice he gave parishioners from sounding too jaded. He succeeded—most of the time.

He was doing well, all in all. He was moving on in the ways that mattered, just clinging on in little ways no one could notice and call him out on unless they really paid attention. He’d be normal. He’d wake up at six-thirty and drink cheap decaf at the empty kitchen table; read the Gospel out to the congregation in his famous deadpan at nine-thirty; and eat lunch outside at noon in just his cassock, no damns given about the Colorado cold. He’d be abnormal. He’d wake up in the dead of night wishing he had it in him to cry as he stared at the empty expanse of the queen bed on his right; open the bottom dresser drawer that still had some of Tweek’s sweaters, trying to recall the scent of his cologne; and stare at the green gleam of Tweek’s ceramic urn perched above the fireplace when he couldn’t bring himself to do anything else. Part of him knew he hadn’t properly gotten over anything, but most of him knew that this was as good as it was going to get, so he let it be. A band-aid over a bullet hole, a tablet of ibuprofen for a malignant tumor, it was healing all the same.

He’d been doing well.

And then he’d seen the writing on the ceiling of the chapel, and all the brittle scar tissue he’d been using to fix up his heart had sloughed right off, leaving it as raw and bleeding as the morning he realized he couldn’t hear Tweek breathe.

Like a shark smelling blood, he’d waited almost manically for another sign, nearly leaping out of his skin when he heard the chime of an achingly familiar voice ask about Stripe, the ongoing confession reduced to rabble in his ears.

“I want to see you too, Tiger… and there’s a way. You’re gonna need the book…”

He’d missed that voice so much, his heart feeling ready to explode and paint his withered insides red with longing.

A book, a book, a book… if all he needed was a book to bring him back, God, he’d cram the entire library into his arms.

Looking into Tweek’s smiling face, Craig feels his resolve break into a million pieces. Oh, how he’s missed this face.

He could flawlessly copy the curving lines beneath Tweek’s eyes with even his opposite hand, could list off all the places Tweek’s freckles cluster as if handed a script. He could pick Tweek’s exact shade of blonde out of a hundred near-identical paint swatches from the home repair store, could point out precisely where on his own hands Tweek’s fingertips would reach if they pressed their hands together.

It’s as if no time has passed at all.

Craig leans forward, ignoring the red in Tweek’s usually coffee-brown irises, ignoring the too-harsh lines of his usually gentle face. He lets a message unspoken linger in the air, lids falling shut as he presses his cheek against the icy palm of the demon before him. I can live like this.

It’s not even that he can live like this—the dull ache of his half-dead heart whispers that he can only live like this, that there is no future he can live in without the other half of his heart coming back to him, with no care for whether it’s fully intact or completely rotten.