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"Masks" (HH)

THE HOCKEY HUNK HHS07E03

by

Gruffy

2017

*

Hello, and welcome to the Hockey Hunk!

I have been very happy to read so many of your comments and your feedback on the chapters so far - it pleases me to see that the story still has its readers, and that it continues to interest you. I still have many things to tell with these characters, and I truly hope that they shall continue to amuse you. The story may be evolving, but it shall remain true to its core values.

I hope you'll have a good read, and I shall look forward to your comments!

Cheers!

*

Marker and I stayed behind to help Sergeant Simpson with cleaning up the meeting room after the session. It was somewhat natural for us to do it while the other members filed out. For starters, it was much easier to clean when you had legs and at least one working paw to use, like me and Marker did. The others were busier, too, like Christina who had to get her kids from daycare where she'd taken them so that she could pop by the meeting. Harris slung somewhere, but he was a kid himself, so that was probably understandable. Nobody expected Dwayne to clean because he had a personal assistant who took him out of the room once the meeting was over, and would get him back to where he lived. That would have left Alyssa, but she too had disappeared in the general mayhem that always involved the meeting adjourning.

And Sergeant Simpson...we deferred to him, whatever his real rank or service status was at the moment. It was hard not to respect someone who had managed to rebuild his life after having both his legs blown off during the Desert Storm. He'd raised a family, become a licensed psychotherapist with a college degree, and he had had arms the thickness of my thighs, or so it looked to me. He liked wearing short-sleeved or even sleeveless shirts to show off that he could bench-press his own weight and then some.

Of course I didn't look much.

The arms were meant for the enjoyment of the ladies, and the envy of the guys, and I knew that everyone had ogled them, to my knowledge. I'd taken a quick look at times and then made sure not to look at them. Long looks caused you to be suspected as a fag, whether you liked dicks or not. That would be risky in this setting, where I had to go regularly, and people would have opinions of me.

"Thank you guys for staying in," Sergeant Simpson noted from his perch, "it's a big help."

"No problem," I said. "We can do this easy enough."

It was really just moving the chairs out to the side because the room was usually used as a gym for physiotherapy or something. We wanted to leave a good impression so that we could keep coming.

"Even I can do it good," Marker said. He didn't seem to have any problems balancing a couple of chairs on his one good and one artificial limb.

Sergeant Simpson was smiling on his own little wheelchair. It made him look smaller than he really was since he was seated so close to the floor at all times that one really had to look down when talking to him. It gave him power, too, because he forced you to do that before you even exchanged words.

"Yes you do!" the dog barked out with his grin.

Marker smiled a quick, shy smile in return, and I was happy for that too. He didn't smile very much. Sergeant Simpson could draw them even out of Marker.

I did my own bit and that was that. Sergeant Simpson was busy with gathering his papers. We'd been doing mind maps and he had ours in a pile in his paws. It'd been a bit pointless to me but I played along like a good boy for today. Usually we did much less superfluous things, and I was glad for that. I supposed that he had to do some of this psychology shit to keep the VA happy.

"It helps me out a lot," Sergeant Simpson said. "Saves me some time, since I have to go to the supermarket."

I wanted to laugh, and I wondered where he put the basket when he went shopping. I imagined Sergeant Simpson on his chair and staring at a box of cereals on a high shelf he couldn't reach. The guy's willpower might've been strong but even he couldn't make things move with mind power alone.

"The wife sent you a shopping list?" I pointed out towards his phone that had beeped a few times during the meeting.

He chuckled, too.

"I haven't actually checked yet."

He rolled over to fetch his phone and he did, but he didn't tell us what the messages were about.

"No shopping list," he did say. "Thank you, guys."

"No problem at all," I said. Marker said something too, but it was very quiet.

"I'll see you next week!" the Sergeant told us.

"See ya."

*

The others were long gone by the time we were out, even Dwayne who needed the most help. We walked out into the hallway, past doors to rooms much like the one we had left. I was happy to note that Marker even got past the waiting area without pulling his hood on. I thought he was too distracted after the nice support meeting that he didn't even think about it, the eyes that always followed him because he looked like Arnold on Terminator 2 after he'd had half of his face chopped off by the liquid metal guy.

Not that I'd ever tell Marker that he looked like that. And he wasn't quite that bad, but that was he reaction people go to his poor face. We got to the lobby without trouble and got a cab. We could've taken the stairs and get some training for my leg, but I felt tired and decided that the elevator would be a better idea.

A wolverine nurse slipped into the elevator with us. She smiled to both of us and that made Marker look away from her. Maybe that kind of attention was too much to handle for now. He pulled his hood up on, too, by the time we reached the ground floor. Judging by the clock on the wall, we'd have to wait a little bit for the next bus to come that'd take us back to our place. We had to walk through another hallway and the downstairs cafeteria, and got out near the walk-in door to the ER. They were mostly parents with sick-looking little kids and the elderly supporting each other, some with walking frames and the like. Even me and Marker were probably well off compared to most of them heading into this free clinic.

It was only a little walk to the hospital bus stop. There was a wolf with his arm in a sling there, a bear who looked like a wino, and even more parents with their sick kids and even sick parents with their healthy kids, by the looks of them. Marker and me stuck to the side to keep a healthy space between us and the sneezing kids. Didn't need a cold on top of everything else.

Someone else had taken protecting against it to a whole new level. There was someone standing nearby, phone to one ear and wearing a white mask like the doctors did. I only saw the fur's profile first and when he turned about while still talking on the phone and with his tail swishing behind him when I realized who it was.

Damn it. That was the weird gay cougar who Victor knew and who Cobb had tried to pair off with me during that party. Peter, that was his name.

Shit!

I doubted there was any way for me to be not recognized by the cougar. He was still talking on the phone in a quiet hiss that I couldn't make the words out of, but then he stopped the call and put his phone out and he was just looking at me.

My tail went very still behind me and I was still looking his way, and I realized I maybe should have looked away to signal that I didn't want to talk to him now, not NOW when I was out here in public and worst of all, Marker was standing next to me and sulking with his head immersed in his hoodie so that nobody would see his scars and burns. There was a possibility that Marker hadn't seen me looking at the cougar yet because of that but -

"Unbelievable!"

He was talking to me, and he had approached so that we were at what was a polite speaking distance although he didn't exactly crowd me. I saw that besides the mask, he also wore white gloves, medical ones. He had a backpack. It was really hard to tell what he was thinking about me because I couldn't see his expressions, just his ears and his eyes. He was looking at me quite firmly.

"I was supposed to have a cab waiting here and I was here early, actually, and it's been ten minutes now," he explained again. "Some sort of a mess-up they say."

His ears were flattening, showing his discomfort.

"That's...not nice," I said. I didn't want to use any bad language with the kids and their parents within earshot.

"I use them because I know them from the past, they used to..." he spoke up, "...they do a good work keeping the vehicles clean..."

His ears looked as uncomfortable as I felt in general. I heard some shuffling from my side and a glance told me that Marker was looking at us now, talking there.

Shit.

His mutterings were weird and they kind of made sense to me because I knew about his fear of germs, but I couldn't even imagine what Marker would think about this encounter. Maybe he might just think that he was just a stranger who wanted to vent to the nearest bystander -

"How are you, Tate?" he suddenly said, and my cover was blown just like that. "It has been a while."

I could hear Marker's ears shuffle under his hoodie when he perked them to listen more carefully at our exchange, me and the masked weirdo.

"Ah, just working," I said. "A lot."

I didn't know what else to say. My relationship to him was dubious at best.

He just looked at me, over that weird mask. I was feeling more and more uncomfortable. What if he'd say something stupid and Marker would start asking questions that I would be unable to answer without saying things that I couldn't say aloud, and could barely even think about?

"That is good, very good," the cougar said. "I hope your business wasn't anything too unpleasant. I was here for a rather routine checkup myself, and tested clear, apparently...I hope the same goes for you as well."

I remembered that he had health problems, so he probably was in a good mood after getting some good news. As for me...what could I say?

"Nothing serious," I said. "Just a...this army thing."

"Support group," Marker said.

My ears flicked in his direction, and my tail snapped too, almost hit him. Peter's eyes moved over to the hooded figure. He could probably only see half of Marker's face like that, covered by the blue hood. I really had hoped I could keep Marker out of this, but no...the cougar had him now.

"Oh?" came his polite reply.

Marker was looking at me for guidance in the conversation, and I cleared my throat.

"Injury stuff," I said. "Amputees and the like. Talking."

He was looking at Marker then, and gave him another once-over. Maybe he wondered which part of him wasn't quite real. Then he looked at me again.

"Oh, I see," he said. "You're not walking with your cane today."

What did he care about that?

"I don't always do," I said.

"So it must be a good day then," he said. "That is good news."

"Yeah," I said quickly. I just hoped that the bus would come soon, or that the cougar's cab would finally show up and he would get the fuck off my face before everything went to hell even more than it had already done.

"Then that means good news for both of us," he said and sounded a bit happier. "Life goes on for both of us."

He didn't sound happy when he said that.

"Yeah," I said. "Just keeping busy...y'know?"

"I think I do," he glanced at Marker again, and Marker looked at his toes, and I think Peter realized that he was making Marker uncomfortable with looking, even on top of the discomfort he felt being surrounded by strangers and many of them were kids, his special weakness.

"I guess," I said.

It couldn't have been more awkward - unless something completely insane would have happened, like Cobb stepping out of the hospital door and greeting us all in his loud way - and I suspected that maybe Peter knew that too. There was hardly time to exchange any pleasantries before a city bus finally arrived around the bend in the street and began to slow down for the stop.

"That's us," I said a bit more loud than I needed to, "I...hope your cab is here soon."

"I do hope so," the cougar's ears flicked at me. "I do indeed."

"Nice chatting with ya," I told him halfheartedly before we really had to obviously join the crowd of people wanting to board the bus.

"Bye bye!" the cougar called. He stepped a bit further away to avoid being swept among us dirty people, I thought.

*

I felt odd even when we'd gotten our seats around the middle of the bus and it was heading down towards downtown Kirk City to pick up more people before taking us closer to home.

"So what was the thing with that mask guy?"

Marker wasn't about to let it go, I realized, and my ears flickered briefly while I looked at him, and he gave me a single eye while the rest of his face was shadowed by his posture and the hood.

"Yeah?" I stalled.

"He sounded like he knew you pretty well," Marker said.

Jesus Almighty.

"Oh, not really," I said. "I met him once at...ah...VIctor's party, you remember me telling you about that?"

"Sure," he nodded.

"Yeah, that's him, I think Victor and Cobb know him a bit, and he was there and I guess he remembered me," I said. "We chatted a little bit there, he asked about my leg and all..."

I tried to make our acquaintance sound as vague as it really was in my mind, and definitely hoped that the conversation would soon end or at least switch to another topic.

"Makes sense," he said.

"Oh, yeah, I guess he just felt like talking a bit to someone he'd met before and not just ramble on to someone even more random than me," I said. "I don't really know him at all besides that one party I went to. And we didn't talk all that much."

I wondered if I was making it sound much less than it was, but Marker seemed to accept the answer for now.

"Yeah, he sounded a bit odd," he said.

I gave him a half-smile.

"Odder than the people we usually meet?" I suggested.

"Maybe," he said, though thinking back to the support group, it was probably a stretch.

We kept on driving in silence. I bent my leg up so that my artificial sole didn't rest on the floor of the bus. Every time we drove over a bump, the leg would hit my stump and feel uncomfortable. I'd been staying upright too much again, probably.

"Your buddy Victor sounds pretty cool, though, from what you've said," Marker said and made me almost jump off my seat when his words broke into my temporarily blank mind.

"Oh?" I asked quickly. I wondered just what I'd said that now made Marker say such a thing.

Marker nodded.

"You said he's all cool about you and all," he said, and I knew that he meant the fact that I had no leg, and that I'd almost ruined Victor's nice couch with my runs when his sandwiches were too much for my guts to handle and he'd understood that too, and all in all my assurances to Marker that meeting Victor would be a good thing and that it would not be _that_awkward. I knew that Marker had had some bad experiences with extended family members and old acquaintances, soon after he'd returned to the States, and that had made him even more withdrawn and careful about who he talked to or met with.

"Yeah, he is," I said. I didn't have any reason to lie about that. My injuries had seemed like a non-issue for Victor, that much was true. I'd had to admit that it had felt good. I even had to admit that his lion hadn't really paid any attention to my physical shortcomings either. He'd seemed to have been more upset with Cobb, more than anything else.

"Guess it makes sense if he knows people like that cougar guy," Marker rumbled.

I laughed a bit, but it was a nervous laugh.

"Yeah, talk about it."

We exchanged a few more words over the strange appearance of Peter, but by the time we got to our place, he didn't want to talk about it anymore. I almost felt like I'd dodged another IED when Marker started to ask me for help with his homework. It made me feel relieved, but not exactly better.

*

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