Work Text:
Campbell was no stranger to disappointment. Well. Being a disappointment was probably more accurate, to his parents at least. His Dad never failed to make him feel like shit after every test he failed, every exam he ran out of, every time he was called into the headmaster's office and screamed at like a child. He couldn't help it, not really, but no amount of explaining to his Dad as best he could ever got the message across.
After all, who would believe their "loony child"? The one that manages to turn every opportunity into nothing.
And Campbell couldn't really blame him. For hating the disappointment child, the idiot that cost them the family's good reputation. But it didn't stop him from feeling like shit every time the words cut into the stale air of the council house they lived in. The sort of words that seemed to scald right into his skin, and brand him like one of those cows that he saw in a field once on holiday to Yorkshire. That 'holiday' had ended badly too. That was the last one they went on before it all got too much. According to his Dad anyway - because Campbell always used to have fun, and his Ma often had a smile for him. So Campbell didn't know why the holidays stopped, but perhaps it was something to do with the looks from the other residents in the holiday park when he'd do cartwheels that ended up crashing into their caravans. And when he got...too much.
But Yeah. It was probably that. His Dad had screamed for a while after that last time. "Never again, Campbell!! Inside these bloody walls is where you'll be stayin' until term starts!!" And he'd been true to his word.
He'd said a lot of other...not so nice words...too, that had cut in to Campbell's mind like the cuts that went through the inside of his arm. The physical scars had mostly healed now. Isobel had done her best when he arrived in a state that one night, smashing through the doors of his home for the next three or four years.
It was probably quite a depressing fact that loony asylum a mental health ward was a better home than the dingy house back at the council estate in Glasgow that he'd left with no looking back.
The best thing about St Jude's though, was the people. With fond looks and soft smiles - and sure, the more than occasional screaming session from a previously catatonic patient over at the next ward, and frosty glare from Stuart. But it was nothing compared to his father's stares of disappointment when he rambled about his latest interest at the dinner table. As if excited rambles were paramount to committing a crime. They were much the same in his father's mind.
Eddie was nothing like his father, in personality at least. Even when he shouted at him for messing with a radio track, or accidentally talking into the mic for a while too long, he always apologised after. And there was never any disappointed undertone, no hidden annoyance. Mainly support instead, like taking the time to teach him how to work all the radio controls just right, explaining stuff to Campbell like he was actually worth something. Not just an irritation no one could get rid of. Now that was a proper dad.
Maybe he'd tell Eddie that, one day.