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Hehhey, everyone! Welcome back to the Hockey Hunk and its impressive third season, which has gotten into a strong start with long chapters, and a great number of comments! Thank you, everyone!

That said, I'd also like to point out the awesome piece of fan art kensukethecat has made about the series - go check it out if you haven't yet, and leave him a big thanks and a comment!

http://www.sofurry.com/view/364152

Hope you enjoy this 6k chapter, y'all, there's some interesting stuff going on here, I think!

Have a good time reading y'all, don't forget to comment!

Cheers!

*

"HEY RORY!"

Cobb was by my bed in a matter of two striding steps from his seat over to where I lay on my bed on wheels, and I almost cringed at the thought of the huge Dobie colliding with the bed and sending me tumbling down to the floor and probably to land on my lame leg. That, thankfully, did not come to happen as he somehow managed to stop without as much as a bump of his knee against the bedframe, and with a huge paw that was practically slammed over my arm. His paw seemed so big that it probably could have caught my whole arm in a simple grip, but for now, Cobb was content with simply having it there while looking down to me with passionately curious eyes.

"Oh thank God, Rory..." the Dobie breathed out. "I was so worried!"

I simply stared up to him, wordless and unable to say a thing. There was one breathlessly smiling Holden muzzle right above, while a pained-looking one remained very near, though now obscured from view by the broad bulk of Cobb's form. Cobb looked at me as if I was a Super Soaker he had just unraveled from a Christmas present, and judging from the eager flicking of his ears, he was probably even wagging his short tail, too.

Heat covered my cheeks. How could I do this to him...how could I ever do this to either of them...to Victor...Victor...

I heard Peter clear his throat somewhere behind me.

"He really wanted to come and see your brother, Jacob," Peter spoke in his familiar low rumble.

Cobb's eyes and ears turned towards the cougar, and an appearance of astonishment grew upon his boyish features.

"So it was you who was at the door a minute ago!" the Dobie was still smiling ever so broadly. "I was wondering what that was all about, I thought something was wrong!"

"Yeah, that was me," Peter spoke, and from my current vantage point, I could only see his chin, complete with the folded surgical mask, and the wobble of his whiskers on each side of his muzzle.

"Wow..." Cobb breathed.

I heard another cough from behind Cobb, and that sent my heart racing again. My palms tingled and my tail began to jump restlessly under the covers, between my outstretched footpaws. My bad leg throbbed painfully.

Cobb's attentive eyes turned before the rest of him did, in a slow curve that left me with an eyeful of some Holden rump while he hurried back over towards his brother who lay on the bed still. He looked so...vulnerable there, covered in blankets, surrounded by tubes and hanging IV bags and with his face covered in that strange bandage that barely left his muzzle and eyes visible.

"Are you okay?" Cobb spoke to his brother, looking at him with a concerned frown over his brow. "Does your chest still hurt? Need the nurse?"

The eyes looked briefly at Cobb, now by the bed, before turning at the predictable direction that was me lying on my slab. They looked very bright, like I noticed before, somehow...wrong, even if I couldn't really name the exact reason why. It was just the feeling I got when looking over to him across the ten feet or so between us. It made me feel sick in my stomach.

Victor coughed once more.

"No," the single syllable fell from his lips.

Even that was enough to make my stomach clench even more painfully. His voice sounded raspy, almost as if it was painful for him to speak at all. Or maybe it simply was an effort, considering that I was here, and that in reality he didn't want to speak a word in my presence. Maybe that was it. Or maybe he'd damaged his throat in the accident somehow. What if he'd always sound like that from now on? I didn't see any bandages around his throat.

"Do you want some water or juice?" Cobb looked even more worried as he waved his paw over the double pitchers on the small bedside table, complete with a big plastic cup that had a lid and a straw on it, as if it was for little cubs and not for big, handsome Dobies.

Victor made a sound and rumbled.

"No thanks," now he whispered, barely audible.

Oh, God.

"Alright," Cobb smiled a little, before he turned to look at me on my bed, and Peter, standing near me. "I thought it'd help a bit with his throat, it's been a bit sore ever since they took that breathing tube out, and I've been trying to tell him to drink some more."

Victor's face remained impassive, and I couldn't really tell what he was thinking about the fact that his brother was talking about him as if he wasn't even in the room even though he was only a foot away from Cobb. To me it sounded awful. I was barely able to swallow without pain myself, too, and I knew what Victor had to be going through at the moment. I wished I could comfort him, somehow, just to be there for him and tell him that everything was going to be alright, and I goddamn wished that I could do it without knowing that right before we were almost turned into a can of SPAM by that car crash, I had crashed into Victor's heart with my own awful words.

"Okay," Cobb replied with an eager nod. "Just tell me if you want it, and I'll give you some right up!"

I wished I could give that kind of love to him, I really did.

Cobb slapped his paws together and grinned enthusiastically.

"But at least Rory's here and looking alright, eh!" the Dobie looked eager again, as if he was planning to start bounding on his two paws like a bunny on a pogo stick. "And Peter too! Victor, you remember I told you about Rory's friend Peter and how we met while waiting for you to come out of surgery?"

Peter stepped forward, bravely approaching the Mighty Cobb so that he was standing by the bed, still dressed in his full medical garb that had probably enabled him to pull the outrageous stunt of getting me here in the first place. I couldn't see his face and couldn't know what he looked like while he approached Victor, but Victor seemed...impassive.

"Hello," Peter murmured. "I am Peter Sinclair, and I had the...pleasure to meet your brother before. I have heard a lot about you from Jacob and from Rory, of course."

I could see Victor nod, just an inch, up and down.

"Hello..." he still sounded like he'd just learned to speak in the first place.

"I do wish we could have met under different circumstances," Peter continued, still speaking softly and politely, "But perhaps we will have that pleasure at some later opportunity.

Victor breathed out audibly.

"Perhaps..." he rumbled.

A strange silence fell over the room for a moment, with nobody speaking, and not a sound coming even from the medical equipment around Victor's large bed. The Dobie's eyes were mostly fixed at the ceiling, though they wandered around the room, meeting every other occupant briefly before falling back to the neutral status. I still couldn't know what he was thinking.

"Hey," I opened my muzzle cautiously and let out the only word I could think of, with my breath wavering as I did.

A seemingly extraordinary amount of time passed before Victor replied, though it can't have been more than a few seconds, I suspected.

"Rory..." he whispered my name and it made my ears burn with heat.

Despite the weight in my chest and the pain in my throat, I tried again.

"How...how're you doing, Victor?" I spoke quietly, trying to make proper eye contact with him across the space between up.

"He's just really tired after his operation still, they had to give him a lot of medication, but he's really coming along well, the doctor said earlier," the brother Dobie cut in before Victor had a chance to make his own case.

Victor's eyes flared at the direction of his brother, but he remained quiet.

Peter cleared his throat.

"Jacob," he said, looking at the bouncy Dobie, "why don't you and I go and have a cup of coffee and something to eat, and we could leave Victor and Rory to speak privately?"

My eyes widened in newborn terror despite the generally lingering aura of unease that clouded my mind. Offering coffee to Cobb was like giving matches to a pyromaniac, and that idea failed to amuse me even less now than it had done the first time I'd seen Cobb under the influence, so to speak.

If only Peter knew what kind of powers he was playing with by speaking those very words.

Cobb's eyes took a worried turn and flicked directly between his brother and Peter, apparently trying to decide whether it would be safe to leave Victor alone with me while he went out with the relative stranger Peter.

"Well, I could have something to eat for breakfast...I...haven't really eaten much lately..." the Dobie looked a bit sour, and rubbed his belly as if to indicate that his tummy was all empty.

I could see that Peter was smiling.

"Come on then, I'll buy you a nice sandwich," he said, grinning a little still. "Trust me, I know which ones to take and which ones not to take unless you want to get even sicker than you are."

Cobb still looked a bit dubious, but after a small pause, his great head slung up and down, and he turned to face his brother again.

"Victor, is it okay if I go out for a little while? Half an hour?" he spoke in a low hospital voice that sounded so strange coming out of someone who was Cobb.

Victor nodded softy.

"Yep," he rumbled, and coughed afterwards.

Cobb looked alarmed for a brief moment, but then he nodded, too, made some adjustments to invisible wrinkles on Victor's covers, and turned to Peter.

"Okay, we can go," he rumbled.

Peter stepped over to my bed and picked up his crutch from where he had shoved it before, from by my side. The cold aluminum brushed against my arm and made me shiver, briefly. It sent an unpleasant jolt through into my belly, too. I could see that Peter's tail was swaying.

"Good luck," Peter whispered close to my ear when he was slightly hunched over to retrieve his crutch.

I shuddered to myself. Even Peter must've been thinking that this was going to end up getting dirty, somehow. It wasn't doing anything good for my confidence, either. I knew that Peter only meant the best he could, and that he was genuinely worried for me and cared for me, and he was simply trying to make me feel better. It was me doing myself harm by analyzing everything against myself in that sense. Maybe we could have a civil talk and see where were standing on this and then decide how we should proceed from this point onwards. We had a long way to go in many sense. The drama surrounding our relationship was something small and petty in comparison to the fact that we had just barely survived a life threatening accident that had almost put an end not only to our relationship but our very existence.

"We'll be right back, "Cobb spoke to Victor before he stepped closer to me and smiled again. "You guys have a really good talk, and then we'll be back and you can tell me all about how you're doing, Rory!"

I tried to smile to him, I really did, but I ended up feeling like an utter failure when only the very corners of my maw twitched a little.

"Yeah, sure," I said, feeling lame and deceptive. "I'm okay for now."

"That's great to hear!" Cobb declared before he made one more quick visual check of his brother, me and Peter, and then proceeded to saunter out of the hospital room followed by the limping cougar and his crutch.

Each and every tap of the anti-slip rubber paw on the end of the crutch made a loud sound that made my ears flutter, and the door closing automatically behind them sounded like a loud bang.

My heart raced. I was staring at Victor on the other side of the room, on his bed, looking up to the ceiling at the moment and breathing slowly. I could hear his breaths, flowing through his muzzle and making a sound that shouldn't have been there. Worry gripped me. I wondered whether he was more badly injured than I understood from earlier. I hadn't had a doctor tell me what happened to him exactly, and whatever little Cobb had told to Peter and the cougar had told me hadn't really been all that conclusive. I didn't know how he was doing, physically, and even less I knew about what was going on inside Victor's head. All I knew that probably his last thought before the accident had been the sense of disappointment at me and my behavior, and then again, just generally being angry and hurt and disappointed with me. I didn't feel proud at all.

I took a deep breath and tried to let the slow flow of air calm me down a bit, but I didn't feel any better once I was done and had to draw another breath. My ears tried to flatten themselves for my nerves, but I forced them to stay upright and steady, for I didn't want to appear even more upset in the face of Victor. I never wanted to hurt him again. I couldn't.

"I dislocated my hip," I said, thinking that maybe he'd be encouraged to speak if I started first, and kept it...relevant. "They managed to put it back."

No answer.

I lifted my splinted paw a little, carefully, to show it to him.

"I broke a couple of fingers too," I said quietly. "Don't think I'll be walking or buttoning my shirt on my own for a while but I'll be alright, I think."

He looked at me. He was staring at me with those eyes that were widen and very bright, but still, something wasn't quite there. It was as if he had a trouble concentrating on anything he saw in front of him. I wondered whether he was on more medication than I thought. Maybe it was the morphine, clouding both his mind and his eyes. Maybe he had fever. I wouldn't know.

"Okay," he rumbled.

My heart thumped. Why wasn't saying more? Did speaking hurt so much that he was discouraged to even try to talk with me? Did he simply not WANT to talk to me. I could understand that. Maybe this was his worst nightmare...battered and broken and now trapped in this room with me, the last fur in the world he wanted to see now. Maybe this felt like a punishment to him, having to stare at me while he could not do much short of calling a nurse to eject me from this room.

I hated that everything was such big maybe for the moment.

"Yeah," I breathed. "So...and you?"

I braced for a silence as much as I did for a potential answer.

Victor coughed again. I could see his paw pressing down on the left side of his chest, as if to indicate that it hurt there when he coughed. I felt alarmed. Why was he doing that? Had he hurt himself there as well? I wondered whether I should just ask him to call the nurse to check him out, just in case. I felt so helpless because I didn't know what to do. Peter would have known, of course he did, he'd practically lived in a hospital at some point. He would have known how to stay calm and how to act and what to do. That was because he was Peter.

I was Rory and I was a miserable excuse of a lion, unable to give any help to Victor, when he obviously looked like he needed some.

"Victor?" I said tentatively.

"The car door buckled," he said, suddenly, the longest sentence I'd heard him produce ever since I entered the room. "I think it did...I can't remember so well...it was...it was the..."

He stopped for a moment, as if to gather his thoughts, or maybe to give himself a quick rest, before he was speaking again.

"...I broke a rib...they...they had to put a tube in there...here..."

He patted the bulge of a thick bandage on his side. I felt a twinge of unease at that very same area on my own person. I'd seen enough TV to know what that looked like, and the idea made me shudder.

"Shit," I grunted, spontaneously.

Victor's one visible ear flicked against the pillow his head rested upon, and nodded.

"They saw it's...it's healing on its own...no surgery..."

I felt a twinge of relief. Victor hadn't been in surgery for the purse of sawing his chest in half. Anything to do with the chest sounded life threatening, and even though he'd needed that tube down there, it didn't sound so bad anymore. It was under control and even healing itself, without the need for surgery. That was encouraging and promising. Maybe Victor wasn't so badly off...simply tired and in shock still from having such a close call with the old man with the scythe. I could very well understand that feeling.

It didn't change the fact that his whole head was covered in those bandages. That prompted further questioning from me.

"How about your head?" I asked cautiously.

Victor's single visible ear flicked again. I could hear him hiss in discomfort. I felt worried again.

"Something...something cut my head," he said, "maybe the door came apart, I'm not sure what it was..."

"Was it serious?" I asked quickly, too quickly with my tongue once again.

Victor snorted, despite the tubes in his nostrils, and I wondered whether they were in the danger of being propelled away by that sudden rush of air.

"Almost...almost tore my ear off..." the Dobie rumbled.

I shuddered again, hard enough to send a wave of throbbing pain through my leg as the involuntary movement took me. So that was why the huge bandage that covered his head also enclosed his left ear. I felt mournful. Canines communicated with their ears as much as us cats did, and to even be threatened by the loss of one half of your eat capacity must've been immensely stressful, let alone hugely painful.

"But they fixed up, right?" I said, wondering if that was what the surgery had been for.

Victor nodded.

"...they...the doctor says that the...the nerves survived...it'll...it'll probably heal right back."

I felt a rush of relief now. I knew that it might not have been a life threatening injury, but to lose an ear or have a drooping one would still be a very great change in his appearance...in his very identity, perhaps. I felt happy that he had not lost his ear, because I liked how they always told you what mood Victor was in, and how he could use them for all sorts of fun things, and communicating with me, and even pointing at things without a word or a paw. The loss of one such a proud ear would certainly been something to mourn.

"That's great," I breathed out.

"...the...the doctor says that they'll try...leeches on it...after...uh...after the swelling goes down a little...something to do with the...uh...circulation, I think..."

My own fully intact ears flicked rapidly with the surprising statement.

"Really?" I rumbled.

"Yeah..." Victor replied.

Well, it made sense, as odd as it sounded. I had a vague recollection about an article I'd seen about it ages go, while I worked for General Interest and tried to write interesting pitches for each edition. I bet there was an article about some violinist or something who lost a finger in an accident, but they sewed it back in and then put leeches on it to make it heal faster and better. I couldn't remember how I tried to make that sound life-affirming and heartwarming, and the thought of dismemberment certainly wasn't a cheerful to begin with, but you had to work with whatever you got.

"Talk about modern medicine," I rumbled.

"Yeah," Victor rumbled, still sounding tired, and distant.

"Are you...are you in any pain?" I asked tentatively.

Victor lifted one IV-tubed arm and paw and pointed at the bank of medical equipment nearby.

"They've pumped me full of this stuff," he said. "It makes me feel like I'm hung over...but no pain."

I nodded carefully.

"Must be the fentanyl," I said hollowly.

"Whatever it is, it's...okay," the Dobie said.

I breathed out slowly. Seeing him hurting and disheartened like this was awful. He was the same Dobie I'd seen zooming on ice, full of energy and mischief and strength. He was the very same man I'd been to bed with, where he was much like he was on ice, I supposed...hunky, and full of stamina, and playfulness. Now he looked broken and worn out, and oddly small, despite still being so very tall and broad a man.

"Well at least you didn't break any limbs," I spoke quickly, hoping to encourage, at least somehow, and feeling inspired by my thoughts, "you'll be back on ice in no time!"

I smiled, hoping that he'd catch at least a marginal feeling of cheerfulness and would feel at least a little bit better among all this misery, but I did not see movement in his muzzle. He was quiet.

"Is...is Cobb alright?" I spoke the next thing that came to mind...to have something to say, anything that at least somehow resembled something normal to say, and didn't have anything to do with...with...yeah.

Victor cleared out his throat with a single rumbling cough.

"Worried sick and...and acting like the nurse...telling that he'd donate me all of his blood if I needed it...fussing around...reading magazines aloud to me..."

I wished I could be there to do those things to him. I wished he'd let me. I wished that I wouldn't be currently in the need of similar services. I was probably a horrible patient.

"Sounds like Cobb alright, " I mused, again hoping that the relative, if made up, lightness in my voiced could cheer up the Dobie trapped in his very own chamber of drugs and misery.

"Yeah."

"Any other family visited?" I asked, wondering whether the Holden clan would've made a similar excursion to the one my own family did, complete with fussing mothers, a quiet dad and an unruly brother.

"No," Victor answered after a small pause. "I told...Cobb to tell mother and father that I'm fine and they shouldn't stress themselves with travelling all...the way from Cleveland."

"Oh...ok," I replied quietly. "Uh...mine came over...heheh."

"Are they...worried?"

"Yeah," I snuffled. "Rushed here as soon as they could. They'll probably show up again later today. They stayed the night in a hotel."

"Yeah," Victor breathed.

Silence fell again, in an unnerving quality, once we had traded this exchange about our prospective families. My smile had already disappeared from my lips, too, and I could only lay there, and try to keep up eye contact with Victor, while we rested, it seemed...trying to think of a possible next step to take. I felt hesitant. Victor hadn't mentioned THAT yet...he was so tired...maybe I should just let it be for now...let him recover his strength and then approach the issue...talk it through and sort everything out. Maybe I'd find the right occasion, so that we could handle it properly and in the full control of our faculties. We both had narcotic drugs in our system, we probably weren't in our right mind to begin with.

"The..." he began, making me tense again.

"Yeah?" I spoke quickly.

Victor's lips stopped moving. I had interrupted him, obviously, and felt bad for doing that. I fell silent.

"The police came by earlier, "he said.

The tension in my body grew even more. Of course. There'd been an accident that endangered everyone on the roads. They had to investigate who did what and who was guilty to doing what exactly, and what was everyone's role in what happened. Probably a real CSI business going on, surrounding this incident we had been involved in.

"Yeah?" I questioned.

Victor nodded slightly.

"Yeah...wanted to...ask questions," he said.

"I see," I said. "Did they...uh...did they tell you what exactly happened?"

"Yeah," Victor said. "Some...bear in a pickup went right past the stop sign and...and...was driving 60..."

"Oh shit," I shook my head.

"...apparently he had some alcohol in his blood..."

I snarled. Some goddamn fucking lowlife had done this to us. To me, and to Victor, who had never done any harm to anyone, and now he had to suffer the consequences of some fucking bear's boozy driving. What a sick world it was.

"What happened to him?" I asked, wanting to feel every spiteful detail.

"...I know that the bear made it alive," Victor replied. "But that's all the police told me."

I bristled and snorted.

"...there was a third car, too..." Victor carried on.

That was news to me.

"There was?" I asked.

"Yeah. To...to my left...when the...the bear crashed to us, my car slammed onto the side of another car on the other lane."

I shuddered at the thought of Victor's car becoming sandwiched between two crumpled cars, with us trapped within, bleeding and with our limbs twisted into unnatural angles while we struggled for our lives. I felt angry, I felt fearful, and I also felt glad that we had made it, despite what sounded like bad odds.

"What happened to those in the third car?" I asked.

"...nothing bad...a few bruises and a broken wrist...they're alright."

I felt a moderate sense of relief upon hearing this. At least we hadn't killed anyone while acting as an unwilling battering ram for the drunk driver's car.

"That's good to hear," I said.

Just a little bit less on our conscience for now.

"Yeah," Victor expressed tiredly.

Maybe I should've let him rest. He sounded like he could really use a good nap and then maybe something nice to eat, and a lot of distractions from a caring brother...or a lion. I knew that I was not capable of doing any of that, even if I wanted to. It hurt, it hurt that I was there, so close and yet unable to offer any real comfort to him. I could only speak to him, and whether that carried any comforting value, I wasn't sure about. I felt so helpless.

"Do you...do you know how long you have to stay here?" I tried.

"I don't know..." he replied. "Maybe...maybe a few more days...as long as they get this out..."

He pointed at his chest briefly before putting his paw down to rest against his belly again.

"Of course" I said, not wanting to think more about obtrusive tubes protruding out of body parts.

"You?" he rumbled.

"The doctor says that I can be out in a couple of days once they see that my leg behaves."

"Sounds...alright," Victor rumbled.

He didn't sound alright at all. It was unnerving to listen to the weak, tired voice coming from his usually animated muzzle. The words were halting, there were pauses, and the usual...sexy...rumble was gone and replaced with something that sounded like wheezing with every breath.

"Yeah," I whispered, rubbing my jaw with my good paw.

"That...that guy Peter...taking care of you?"

I shivered. Victor was looking directly at me now, meeting my eyes properly and seemingly boring right through into my mind. I couldn't tell what his tone was, though. Was he glad that I had someone with me, or jealous? I didn't know.

"Yeah," I spoke quickly. "He is my best friend."

Saying that made me feel like even worse a friend to Victor.

"It's not...good to be alone..." Victor noted.

I nodded, and let my breath flow out of my lungs in an attempt to calm my nerves down. The pain throbbed in my chest and in my leg.

"Especially in times like this, no," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "Not good at all."

"You told him yet?" Victor asked after a pause.

My ears perked.

"About what?" I wondered, genuinely, about what I might have disclosed to Peter.

Victor's eyes seemed so bright.

"To that man, about the accident," he grunted.

Victor's voice tapered into a growl once he was done with the final word, and then he was quiet, although still breathing obviously heavily.

My furs bristled instantly, and my own breath caught in my throat.

Fuck.

This was it.

No hope that the crash would've wiped his memory about what happened moments before we were slammed upon. Yes, Victor remembered the other kind of slamming that took place, of me saying the bad word and spilling out the bilious words that had churned inside me and threatened to drive me out of my very mind. Victor knew, remembered, and obviously he was also angry enough...or resigned enough...that he'd even been waiting for the right moment to bring it all out into the open again.

He had me.

He was good.

Fuck he was good.

It made me want to cry again. I couldn't imagine just how angry I had to make Victor for him to speak like this. He must've been furious with me. Maybe he'd even punched me if I he was able to get out of the bed. He didn't seem like the violent type, never had, but I wondered whether it would have been...justified to simply deck me with a well-directed flick of that paw. I briefly thought about Mason ravaging Haakon's muzzle with that huge smack and felt even worse for it.

"Victor..." I tried to turn more to my side on the bed, so that I could better face him, but the immobilization of my leg made it difficult to rotate myself more than a few inches to the side I wanted to be on.

Victor bared his teeth.

"I don't want excuses!" he growled.

I hissed.

"I don't have any!" I said hotly.

Victor grunted.

I felt exasperated and horrible. I was agitating him when all Victor was supposed to do was to rest and try to recover from his terrible injuries. I was probably causing a setback with every moment I was in the room. I had to sort this out.

"Nothing happened," I started, "there was only one kiss, I swear..."

"Don't you fucking swear," Victor snapped, and coughed.

I felt a sense of alarm push through the general feeling of distress that gripped me tightly from all directions. What if Victor got really agitated and tried to get up or something? What if he tore his stitches and his ear would fall off? What if he'd start coughing up blood? Oh God...

"Victor..."

"How long has it been going on?" the Dobie snorted. "Two weeks? Three? Ever since you met? "

"No," I breathed and made another attempt at turning over to my side. The bandages wouldn't budge. "No, it's nothing like that, Victor..."

Victor waved his paw sharply, surprisingly so, even.

"I told you, no excuses."

"We kissed once!" I yelped. "He was hitting on me!"

"Did he have a reason to?" Victor snorted.

"What?" I asked, unable to understand what he was getting at.

Victor shrugged.

"Why did he make a pass at you?" he grunted. "You told me you met that guy at work. You're not out at work. How did he even know to make a pass at you?"

I squeezed my good paw into a fist as the tension rose in me.

"We met at a restaurant, I guess he got the idea from that!" I replied truthfully.

Victor looked resigned.

"You went out with him."

My eyes widened as I realized what it must've sounded like to Victor, me telling about my meeting with...Colin...at The Lefties. 'Met at a restaurant' ...oh fuck...oh my fucking Christ....shit...

"I ran into him" I said quickly. "Honestly. He just happened to be there and he wanted someone to talk to and and..."

"And then you kissed," Victor pronounced.

"No!" I said. "No, we did not."

Victor chuffed.

"Then what?"

I knew that I had to tell him the truth. It was the only thing I could do to ever have any chance of sorting this out with him. Otherwise I knew I was going to be even more badly off, and totally fucked, besides already being completely fucked to begin with.

"I met him again last Tuesday," I said. "He called me and asked if we could meet, and I said yes, because I didn't have anything better to do, and I was bored because I couldn't hang out with you so I thought, what the hell, and I said yes."

Fuck that sounded bad.

Victor didn't even answer.

"He had gotten my address from the bookshop office, and he sent me chocolates and a card with his phone number, and I called him, and he asked if we could meet, and then we met at the library last Tuesday."

"And you kissed."

It sounded almost like a mantra by now.

"We met at the library, but then my workmate Mason shows up with his friend Haakon, and those two guys are mad fans of...his books, and I didn't want him to be jumped by them and we went off to the side and...and he just...he just came onto me and kissed me."

Victor snorted.

"And you didn't say no?"

"I did!" I said breathlessly. "I told him no as soon as I managed to get him off me!"

The Dobie shook his head.

"But not before you got what you wanted from it, did you?"

The kiss and the embrace had felt fantastic. I couldn't deny that.

"I told him no, Victor."

"Did you tell him that you were involved?" he demanded. "Did you tell him that you're seeing someone? Did you tell him about me?"

Fuck.

"No," I whispered. "I just told him I wasn't interested and he...he stormed out on me."

Victor looked hurt. He looked more hurt than I'd seen him before, even after the Haakon incident. He just looked...tired and disappointment. If I thought that he looked bad at the car before the crash...this...it made my poor heart ache.

"Why didn't you tell him that you were involved?"

I grunted.

"Look, Victor, I panicked, I...I didn't know what to do, I didn't..."

"Or maybe you're simply not sure," Victor grunted.

"Sure about what?" I yelped.

"Anything" the Dobie growled darkly.

I frowned. My eyes burned. My throat burned. I knew I was busted. I knew that I should say the right thing and somehow suggest how we'd make this better, but I knew that I was at a loss of words. Victor wasn't. He had many words, and they were for me, and they made me feel awful. They felt even worse because I knew that he was right, with every single accusation he launched at me. He knew that I was fucked up, and he told me as much.

"He just caught me unaware, Victor, I didn't know..."

"It sounds like there's a lot you don't know," he said, "and a lot you don't want to tell me."

"Victor..."

Victor waved his paw again.

"Rory," he said, "I don't want to argue."

"Neither do I," I almost panted.

"I don't know what to think about it now, Rory," Victor said, "I've been trying to, but my mind isn't clear."

"It's the drugs," I hurried to try, latching onto that life line, "It's the drugs, maybe you're not in your right mind at all, maybe..."

"Maybe I'm not," Victor said, "but I know it hurts to think that things are going on behind my back. I don't like that."

"Victor, I -"

"I think we both need to get sorted out for this to work," Victor continued, looking at me with those clear, hard eyes. "We both need to get sorted our, Rory, and before...before that, I don't think we can be anything to each other."

"What do you mean?" I snapped.

Victor's paws curled into fists and caught some of his covers with them.

"I'm saying that before we come clean of ourselves, we can't come clean to one another," he said, "and that's why we should concentrate on ourselves, and not have the extra strain of trying to sort out the other one out as well."

What was he saying? What did he mean by what? What could he be saying?

"Victor..."

"I don't think we should see each other for a while, Rory."

There we go. Stabbed in the heart.

"Victor..."

"Not until we can think about ourselves clearly, and decide what to do," he said. "But before that, I don't think I can look you in the eye, Rory."

If only I could've stopped the tears.

*

Wowza, another gruffhanger! What do you think, y'all?

Don't forget to stay tuned for another exciting chapter on Monday, folks!

Cheerio!