Omission by Silence
#15 of Hockey Hunk Season 3
Rory wonders whether silence is golden or should his heart still weep.
Hehhey, everyone!
I'm sorry that this chapter is so badly late - I really became extremely dissatisfied with what I had written down for this chapter, and I had to do it from the scratch before I felt happy with my writing again. *chuckle* Sorry, sometimes it happens.
But, here we go, the Wednesday chapter that was given to us all from the successful LURKER CHALLENGE...and that's not all... I am most glad to announce the THURSDAY CHAPTER - that's right, we're getting another update TOMORROW , so don't forget to check out SF tomorrow at the usual HH time for another update on the story. I think we all deserve that, especially after the postponement of this one.
Don't forget to keep commenting, y' all!
Have a fun read!
G
*
I'm not going to try to make it sound any prettier than it was. There's no need to. It was a raw situation, and my response was raw to it, and I might as well tell what it was.
I put my face in my paw and sobbed.
Yeah.
Just right that, in front of my parents who were probably feeling a great deal of mixed up feeling over my sudden outburst at their faces for apparently 'mocking' me via speaking those things to my outraged young brother. I had my face covered by my palm and I couldn't see their faces while I just sat there and let the pain flop through my body in the familiar waves.
It's like a rubber ball, in a way, I could think afterwards, on a much more calmer moment, that pain. It starts on your belly and then it jumps up through your guts and lodges itself into your throat, so that you want to snarl and sob, even if it hurts there, horribly, and makes you feel like you want to throw up. Then the imaginary ball of pain falls down, slowly making its way into the pinching confines of the pit of my belly. It seemed to be gaining momentum from the clenching of my paws and toes and the sharp slap of my tail against the floor, while I just kept on blabbering against my paw like a cub who got a booboo.
I was beyond feeling shame for it, the crying I mean. I had bitten the paw the that had been trying to help me, after all, the gentle, softly furred paws of my mother and my dad, too, though you wouldn't want him to hear that you called his paws soft. I practically told them to fuck off while they simply had been trying to be good parents to Justin, and to me too, in a way, too, by reacting like they did to my outburst at them. They didn't shout, they didn't cry, or bare their teeth.
They knew that my biggest fear was guilt, and they knew that I didn't need much before I was at it. I deserved it. I deserved to be told off for my horrible behavior, and they knew how to do it. It didn't take violence and cursing and extreme ends of the emotional scale.
Funny that a disapproving look was all it took from them to reduce me into this state.
Yeah. I knew that it was long time coming. I hadn't cried since the hospital, after Peter had to wheel me out of Victor's room and hold my paw in his own rubber glove-covered one until I had no more tears and barely had the energy left to tell the doctors that I wasn't having another freak out attack due to the anesthetic or whatever other drugs I was on at the moment.
I cried for much the same reasons then that I did now, too.
Me.
It's fucking scary to see myself reflecting in the pained eyes of those who had gotten to the worst end of things, when it came to their dealings with me.
There was Colin, with his face turning from lust to hopeful, to disappointed, to plain angry. There was Victor's face frozen into a permanent frown in that memory fragment I had left of the moment before the massive crash that had almost been enough to end it all. And now...dad telling me what he thought I ought to know about him and mom and...and...
Yeah.
I cried for a long time on my perched, slumped position on that chair, letting it all come out.
At some point they moved, though, probably unable to watch it any much longer. I couldn't see anything because I had my paw over my face, and most of what I could hear was the rushing of blood inside my ears. I still knew they were there, how could I not known, when the paws came over me?
Dad was on the left, as indicated by the soft rumble and the size of the big, warm paws rubbing over my chest and my shoulder. Mom's smaller, equally gentle paws moved over the right side and lingered for as long as they were needed. They didn't even say anything. I wasn't sure whether they could have said anything that could have comforted me at the moment, and I wondered whether they even thought they were supposed to try when faced with the sight of their adult son going to mental pieces in front of their very eyes.
It took me a while before my breaths dared to move as something that wasn't a painful gasp or a snarl. The light from the gentle bulbs on the ceiling seemed awfully bright to me once I managed to part my fingers a crack to see what lay beyond my eyes. There were no parents in sight, of course, considering that they were standing behind and to either side of me, but I did catch the sight of the abandoned meal, the paneled wall, and the window with the pink curtains drawn over it.
Normal sights, even if seen through tear-watery eyes that belonged to a miserable excuse of a lion that was yours truly.
I might've sat there in a state of catatonia if it hadn't been for dad, squeezing my shoulder.
"You okay, Rory?" dad's voice sounded oddly quiet, and with a deep tremble to it.
I breathed out deeply. I let him do it. There was no point in going all lion on him for being kind. I didn't bare my teeth, snarl, puff out my chest for intimidation, show my claws or bat the floor with my tail. I let them comfort me in the ways they knew, and I took whatever I could from that.
What an unfair question to make, at that moment.
I swallowed through the raspy feeling in my throat and nodded my head a little.
"I'll be," I said quietly. "I'm sorry."
Now it was mom's turn to squeeze her gentle paws over my shoulder. Dad made an odd sound, before he too cleared his throat.
"Oh Rory..." mom murmured.
I still daren't look up to her, neither to dad, who spoke again, then.
"Sorry that this had to happen, Rory," dad rumbled.
I felt a mild bristling in my neck furs, both from the words and the tone. Now they were feeling guilty, about reducing me into this state. Now they'd start feeling bad, beyond the immediate discomfort of the spectacle that just unfolded in front of their eyes.
The ball tried to jump again, inside me.
"No," my voice rose a pitch.
Dad's fingers squeezed briefly over my shoulder, as if to indicate surprise at my snappish tone. Mom's paw remained stationary, though still very warm and...there.
"No," I swallowed again, and licked my lips to make them feel less numb. I remembered to blink, too, to try and restore at least a little amount of my masculine pride now jarred by dissolving into a crying fit. "It's not you...not you."
"What is it then, Rory?" mom asked quietly.
What wasn't?
I sighed.
"Everything," I rumbled.
Dad patted my shoulder.
"Come on now," dad spoke, and thankfully did not sound too patronizing, at least to my worn out ears.
"I'm sorry," I grunted.
"Everything's fine," mom stroked my shoulder, slowly, just like mothers were supposed to do when their cub was hurting. "You just let it all out...as you should."
"I'm pathetic," I made a face at how true that word sounded when it came to describing my sorry ass.
Dad grumbled.
"No, son," dad said. "Pathetic's the one who lets it all bottle up and just stews on it."
Not like I hadn't been doing that for the past weeks...but of course dad was right. They were being damn right again, as far as moms and dads went when it came to their difficult sons with...issues.
"That's what we are here for, Rory," mom whispered. "To listen."
Dad cleared his throat and patted my other parented shoulder.
"Even if you feel you gotta shout at us a bit before you do speak," dad said. "And maybe blame us, too."
I snorted.
"Oh fuck..." I shook my flat-eared head in shame.
Mom snuffled.
"Be glad your brother's not here to hear that, Rory," she said, "otherwise he might be wondering what the fuck's going on."
I almost opened my muzzle to retort something at the sudden F-bomb attack on my mother's part, but dad decided for the three of us that he had the next turn in speaking wise things to me, and that's what he did.
"You weren't completely wrong, though, Rory," dad said in a low, husked voice. "Must've sounded weird to you, somehow."
Of course it did. Why would've they ever needed to say something like that when I was that age? Straight until proven guilty. No need to assume otherwise, or brace for the impact.
I shrugged a little and decided it best not to answer.
"And I guess..." dad continued, "...I guess for you we never said it was bad but I don't think we ever said it was okay either....so I can see where you were coming from...why it seemed strange to you."
"And we're sorry for that," mom continued.
Damn. Since when did my small town mom and dad become this...clarified in their thinking? Where did that come from? It made immense sense to me, amidst the cloud of murky gloominess that was threatening to overtake me at any moment. They were right, of course. When you were ever so used to either hearing HELL NO and omission by silence, someone actually saying "It's cool", just like that and outright, was almost an alien experience.
What a fucked up world we lived in.
"Thanks," I rumbled, not sure what else I could say.
"You're welcome." mom whispered.
Dad simply squeezed my shoulder.
"Do you think you can manage with Justin when we go out or do you prefer we'd stay in with you?" dad asked.
I wanted to sigh and frown at the suggestion. It meant that now they thought that I was even more fragile than I really was, and possible required observation by them so that I wouldn't fall even deeper into a sulk. How wonderful. And my own fault, too, of course, for being such a whacked up case at the moment.
"Of course," I swallowed to clear my throat. "Of course I am."
I received doubtful looks from mom and dad, complete with frowns and some chin-rubbing on dad's part, and mom's little twitch of whiskers that told me that she was certainly feeling like she was on the edge with having to watch me go through this all.
I admit, I used the happyhappysmile.
I placed it carefully over my lips and nodded enthusiastically.
"Of course I am," I repeated. "I was supposed to go upstairs, too, remember?"
"How're you going to get down then if you need to, while we're out?" mom frowned. "I don't think Justin can help you down on his own."
I shrugged and kept smiling.
"I'll roll down the stairs if I need to," I mused.
Dad chuffed, and so did mom, after a small pause to process my retort.
"Speaking of which," dad said and clapped his paws together, "I think I'll go upstairs to see if Justin would agree to come down to finish the desert before we leave. Hopefully he's calmed down now."
And he didn't need to see me in the state I was in a few minutes back.
I pushed myself back into my dining spot with my wheelchair and grabbed my fork.
"I bet he can't resist the desert," I tried to enthuse the two, and flashed my teeth as I proposed the idea of the treats that awaited us.
Dad patted my shoulder once more before he sauntered out of the dining room.
*
It felt strange to be sitting there, all told, in that small room I had called my homemost home for what still amount to more than a half of my whole life. Everything I could see from my perch on the old desk chair I was sitting on was familiar to a great degree. It started from the curtains that were dark and plain, my teenaged curtains that had replaced the old pirate themed ones I treasured until I was 13, and continued to the bookshelf, filled with colorful tomes I so much enjoyed when I was about that age. That was before the ubiquitous internet access modern kids enjoyed, you know. There were some college course books there, too, sprawled around perhaps during a nostalgia fit in my part to try to find something that'd spark a memory or two. Heck, even the creaking of the plastic wheels on my desk chair could probably be classified as one. Or the desk lamp that now mostly served there to gather dust. There was my old bed, which had a couple of boxes on top of it - judging by the amount of dust they held, they too were of college vintage, rather than the older layers of patina covering the other objects.
It was a veritable mausoleum of Roryhood, all around me, and I wasn't sure what to think about it that particular moment. I felt a bit raw still, and there was a throbbing pain right under my chestbone as a reminder of the earlier incident, but I was...sort of coping with it for the moment. I had insulted my parents accidentally but they had been awesome and just told me to grow up. I had let some of the tension out of me without causing total embarrassment to fall upon me. Some of the bad blood was out, and what persisted I could live with, for the time.
I was hanging on.
And apparently trapped here until my parents would come back from shopping. Any jokings aside, I wasn't about to brave the stairs without dad or mom propping me up, unless it was a major emergency, so I knew that I would most likely spend the next couple of hours quite happily with my room and what it could offer...or at least that was expected of me.
I had asked to be taken here, anyway, out of an impulse I had earlier today, when I once again realized that I hadn't been up there in such a long time.
It hadn't really changed. Maybe the curtains had been moved a few times, maybe a couple of objects had shifted with a half-hearted attempt to clean up the place a little. There had been some talk of a guest room, occasionally, but it seemed that no progress had been made on that respect.
Maybe we didn't have enough guests to warrant the disturbance of the pharaoh's tomb.
I kicked the floor with my good paw and moved myself a couple of inches. The wheels squeaked and caught onto the fluffy rug that covered the wooden floor. I let my tail snap against the side of the desk and yawned. I felt tired despite the fact that I had slept...alright, I guess. Yawning progressed into scratching my chest, too, through my shirt. It felt good, almost nice enough for a gentle purr, though the mood wasn't quite there just yet after my crying game.
I carefully rotated myself around on the chair so that I was facing the desk. It seemed almost bare, now that my old computer hadn't been there for years, but rather probably hid in the room behind the garage, I suspected. I usually had my laptop there when I visited, though now of course my computer remained in dad's den. I glanced at the lamp and the couple of old folders stacked over a pile of old magazines which looked like they belonged to mom rather than me - probably brought in to join the rest of the junk in my time capsule of a room rather than be thrown away, and I scanned the little plastic box that held office supplies. Typical student, schoolkid stuff, I supposed, age old and worn out.
My eyes caught the sight of something green that was lodged between the pile of magazines and the lamp. My ears jumped a little at the sight of the object, and my tail reacted equally. My good paw soon snatched the object into my paw and placed it over onto its flat side on the desk.
"Well I wondered where this was," I mused aloud, quite so.
It was one of my old photo albums, plastic, with the surface of the covers treated to look a bit like leather, though the ugly green color was a bit of a giveaway. Golden curly letters declared it to contain "GOLDEN MEMORIES". I snorted and chuffed a little. I wondered why the photo album was there, on the desk and not in one of the boxes. I gave a glance at a cardboard box on the floor by the bed out of which a similar photo album protruded even now.
Strange.
*KNOCK-KNOCK*
My ears jumped at the sudden sound.
"Rory?" a soft voice spoke.
I turned to look over my shoulder and saw Justin standing on the doorway of the open door into the hallway outside, with one paw resting against the doorframe which he had no doubt just knocked to rouse my attention. The young lion looked shy as he peered into the room. I could see his tailtip flicking against the floor, occasionally.
"Hey, Justin," I rumbled and smiled a little.
Justin flicked an ear in greeting.
"So they left, huh?" he said.
"Yeah," I nodded.
"Cool," my brother rumbled.
"We left some desert for you, and there's leftovers in a Tupperware in the fridge," I said. "You can microwave it if you like."
My brother scratched his neck.
"Uhh...thanks..."
"Are you alright?" I rumbled.
My brother shrugged.
"Okay," I said.
"Uhh..." Justin said.
"Yeah?"
"Can we...uhh..talk a bit?"
*
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