Pictures of Me
#68 of Hockey Hunk Season 4
Interesting Holden Bros fan art is the courtesies of Frosted_Fur thank you for the lovely surprise! And look, I can make your clickable icon now! *woots*
Hehhey, and welcome to the Hockey Hunk - sadly postponed by terrible weather last week, briefly, but now all is back in order, I hope, and ready to rumble!!! We'll be seeing them on Wednesday, too, as a small token of compensation, so don't you worry!
Yay!!!
And we've got a lot of fun to be had before the season finale, too, so don't go anywhere, you!
As always, remember that all your feedback is most appreciated, and not only that it fuels the creative process, all your feedback in the form of comments, votes and faves will help others to find these stories to enjoy as well!
Have a fun read!
*
"...FINAL COUNTDOWN...TA-DA-DAAAA-DAAAAH....DAH-DAH-DAAH-DAH-DAAAAAH..."
I snuffled as my ears flicked, floppy one and all, upon hearing the off-key beer-induced singing booming from the guest room formerly known as my office now known as Cobb's bedroom. I rubbed my arm idly and smiled to the fox sitting nearby, looking quiet.
"Hasn't changed a bit huh?" I smiled.
Tate's tall, pointy ears jumped up and down while my brother's bellowing singing continued from afar. The fox smiled a little.
"Maybe a bit," his tail brushed against his ankles, the ones I tried not to look at and try to guess which was...which, "but a lot's the same...a lot..."
"Still loud, though," I mused, "and all rah rah rah..."
"...WEEEEE'RE LEEEEEEAVING TOOOOGEEETHEEER..."
Tate let out another small, shy chuckle. Everything about him seemed rather small, which was odd, considering that he wasn't a small man by any means. He was almost as tall as me and Cobb, thin, yes, but he used to be all muscle...looking at his arms, he didn't seem to be too badly off even now. All in shape, like you'd expect a soldier to be...though his emails made me understand that there was no going back to that life now, not with that leg. The cropped headfurs instead of the old carefully gel-arranged fashionable wave Cobb used to wear too and claim to be a great...hmm...pussy magnet. At least I never wore boy band hair...
"Still remembers our song, too," Tate commented.
"Oh don't mention it," I chortled, "ever since I told him that you're coming, he's been practically reliving high school. I had to stop him from buying Solo cups to serve the beer from. It's Chargers this, Chargers, that, rah rah rah hurrah!"
My mock bored tone must've amused him, because that made the smile widen on his thin black lips.
"Would you have preferred him to go on about The Ramblers instead?" the fox proposed that perhaps I would have liked it more if Cobb had been over the moon excited about reminiscing about my old high school hockey team back in Cleveland.
The rivalry between my team and Cobb and Tate's football team was...kinda compulsory, I suppose, since the lacrosse was just a joke in comparison to what we would do. Not that we were the kind of cool team that you make TV movies out of to teach kids some lessons. We were just a bunch of guys playing hockey, just like Tate and Cobb and their team was a bunch of guys goofing off and playing football. I wasn't sure if good life lessons were learnt.
Except maybe to avoid showering when Randy Millet was there...damn...what a time to realize your sexual leanings...
I waved a dismissive paw.
"Naah," I chuckled. "nobody bothers with that stuff anymore...except Cobb, maybe."
I shrugged.
"It's been so long, and it's not like it matters much to me anymore. I do still play, though. Although I've been forced to take a bit of a break because of the car crash I told you about," I patted my side, gently, to indicate the still-healing injuries, "got a bit banged up."
The fox nodded slowly.
"I remember...how are you doing now?"
"Slowly getting there," I said, "I feel all flabby after not doing proper exercise for a while...besides the rehab they signed me up for...guess I just have to take on it again. And get back on ice. Haven't skated since...can't have risked my ribs..."
I touched my chest again, to indicate the injured area.
"They had to tube me here," I said, "guess I got some blood there during the crash."
"A chest tube, yeah," Tate nodded. "I think that's probably the only one I didn't have when...well...when this happened..."
He patted his knee, quickly, and I hurried to nod, too.
"But everything else, you name it, I got it," he spoke.
"You don't look bad now," I replied.
"They patched me up pretty well, yeah..." the fox scratched one of his ears.
"HERE WE GOOOOO!"
Cobb stormed into the room, carrying his iPad in in his paws and with his ears flicking madly, and his smile was to match, as he crashed to the couch, next to me.
"Come on, Tate!" he grinned and patted the leather next to him, "come and sit here so that I'll be in the middle and you can see what's going on the screen! You don't wanna miss these hot shots!"
I wondered whether it was a good idea to tell Tate to move places, but to my relief, the fox simply smiled and walked over, without the crutch, even, and then sat down on whatever space was left on the couch after Cobb took over most of it with his overtly widespread seat. My brother was practically purring while he played with the iPad settled onto his lap, with the photo gallery poised under his fingertips.
"What do you got there old man?" the fox questioned.
"Who do you call old huh?" the Cobb elbowed the fox and grinned as broadly as ever. "I'm still young and perky!"
He smiled like he was on stage during Miss USA pageant, and flicked up a first picture. I cringed a bit at it. It was me and Cobb, photographed against a rather impressionistic background of a garden in a studio, obviously, with the two of us standing side by side, wearing black pants, white shirts and black bow ties, and staring blandly at the camera. We were probably something like ten years old, just young enough to still submit to horror of the sort.
"Awww look..." Cobb grinned, the iPad tilted in my direction and then to Tate's to make sure that both of us got an awful of the pup Holdens.
"Why on earth do you have that there, Cobb?" I asked. I thought I'd seen everything he had on that iPad, but seems that I had been proven wrong "It looks like The Little House on the Prairie."
Cobb elbowed me now, not caring for my still healing ribs. I grumbled.
"We used to love that show, too, don't you go denying that," Cobb said, "we always watched it after school...and Matlock too, even if that one was supposed to be too scary for us!"
"Bah," I tried to sound indignant.
"They don't make TV like they used to," Cobb sniffled.
"Hurry up," I tapped the edge of the tablet, "I don't want you to end up bawling."
"When was that taken, anyway?" Tate asked.
"For our tenth birthday, to be sent out to grandparents, uncles, aunts..." Cobb giggled.
"Anyone with a mailbox..." I mused.
"HEHEHE!" Cobb bellowed out.
"And now that it's on the computer..."I let the words hang in the air.
"Mom sent it to everyone on Facebook," Cobb grinned. "Dad had scanned it up from an old album!"
"That's pretty handy," Tate nodded.
"Well that's dad," Cobb stated as he flicked over the next photo, which was thankfully not as old as the first one, but certainly even more embarrassing, because this Fourth of July barbeque included lots of rarely seen family and me trying my long head furs...well...not really long...a bit longer...okay, so long enough to call it long-ish, right? Nothing like my usual very short do...I could barely see my ears in this one. I wasn't even looking at the camera, really...Cobb was waving, of course. He was always waving in old photos. Those who had trouble telling me and Cobb apart in them would know that the one with the bigger grin and the paw held high in the air was surely going to be Jacob Holden.
"Heheh, look at this!"
"Well I'm looking..." Tate mused.
"Uncle Earl looks so big in this one...no wonder he keeled over so young..." Cobb shook his head, "even a quadruple bypass couldn't save that heart..."
"Do we have to go there, Cobb?" I asked, not too keen to reminiscent on dead relatives while trying to have a fun evening with a friend.
"You're gonna love the next one, Tate!" Cobb smiled to the fox as he flicked over the following picture, which was a snap of my brother and our dad throwing ball on the backyard of our house at the time. Cobb didn't look any older than fifteen, or sixteen, maybe.
"Practicing for my first game with the Chargers!" Cobb beamed. "With Pa!"
"Well that's you..." Tate observed dryly.
"And still couldn't throw shit," I observed.
Cobb gave me a dirty look.
"Puckhead," he snorted before taking out the next photo, which was, of course, of himself, this time in full Chargers uniform, holding his helmet under his arm like an astronaut posing before a mission, though this time the background was the drab wall of the school. He'd tried to put on a stern expression, but it didn't work very well. It more looked like he was going to break out in schoolgirl giggles.
"Well I know that uniform!" Tate grinned.
Cobb patted the fix's arm and grinned widely.
"Taken just before the big 1998 spring game against Buffalo!"
"Oh I remember that game!" Tate returned the smile almost as broadly as my brother did, "we kicked their asses, didn't we?"
"Hell yeah!" Cobb grinned.
Flick. Another photo. Now it was the whole team, back in our senior year, I could tell by the fact that the rather small Cobb on row of young men in red uniforms was now sporting his pussy-attracting hairdo. A couple of heads along the way, a confident-looking fox was staring at the camera with a similarly ridiculous jellied hair, and with his furs almost blending in, considering the color of the football gear. That identity could not be mistaken either, for sure.
"And there's you!" Cobb's fingers smashed down on the screen and quickly stroked it to create a somewhat grainy close-up of the very one Tate Michaels.
I watched him, looking at his own picture...not sure what I was going to see...but he was just...looking...I don't know...scratching an ear and looking at that mugshot-like image of himself and...whatever he was thinking.
"That's me..."
"And the whole team..." Cobb shook his head slowly as he pulled the picture back again, to show the rest of the guys in line, "we've gone on to do so many different things..."
Oh, dear, nostalgic Cobb...
"And this is what I do!"
Flick. Now it was showing a grey corrugated iron wall, with Cobb standing in the front, wearing an oversized T-shirt and sunglasses and looking smugly at the camera while he posed in front of the ugly warehouse that contained his online business empire.
"Holden & Holden Cyberlogistics!" Cobb beamed.
"Cobb..."I groaned.
Flick. Now the interior, rows of shelves too tall to reach with anything but the forklift Cobb was sitting on in the picture.
"These are promos from our website, the idea is to show that we're a really easily approachable, friendly company," Cobb stated in his PR voice as he put forward the next picture, which was again of Cobb, but this time sitting behind a desk in an office adorned by band posters, "I think these are so damn awesome!"
Facepalm moment. What a brother. At least Tate looked politely interested...then a bit frownish, when Cobb brought up the next photo...
"And here's Evelyn, of course, looking great as always, heheh!"
Now Tate was certainly frowning. His ears had lost much of their earlier perkiness.
"She really is the brains, I'm the paws, she does all the good thinking and hard coding, but sometimes I do pitch in with my ideas, like the miniature GPS to track the stuff in the warehouse..."
Tate grabbed the armrest.
"I..."
Cobb's paw froze over the iPad as he turned to look at the fox.
"...Victor...could you pass me my crutch, I..."
He looked like he was in pain. He sounded like it. I started to get up, just as he was clearly struggling to do so.
"Are you alright, man?" Cobb moaned.
Tate was now standing up, leaning heavily against the armrest, one paw clutching his stomach.
"I just need to go to the bathroom...real quick..."
I grabbed the crutch from where he'd left it, on the big armchair, and handed it over to the fox. He took it quickly.
"Where - "
"The first door on the right!" I called out, watching him make a run for it, tail tense and lashing out behind him.
"Th...ahhhshit...ANKS!"
Slam!
"Wow..." Cobb breathed. "Hope the mayo wasn't bad or we'll be all doing that soon!"
I folded my arms over my chest and looked at my brother with worry.
*
Thank you for reading my story! Hope you had a good time, and hopefully I'll see your comments, too, telling how this made you think! Also remember that all votes, faves and watches will help others to find these stories to enjoy as well!
See you on Wednesday!