In Bed (HH)
#59 of Hockey Hunk Season 6
We are back!
In Bed (HH)
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Hehhhey, folks!
After such a long pause again, here's some more of the good thing - that's right, the Hockey Hunk is to continue again, and with some regularity too, I hope. Sigh
Still working a lot on commissions, but hey, art also needs its time. So I hope to keep this going, and I do hope that my dormant Hockey Hunk fans shall come out of hiding and enjoy this piece, and those to come. Hopefully you are still around!
Without further ado...*ques titles*
Heheh :)
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When I wake up, it takes me a moment to realize where I am, and that everything is fine. I'm in my own bed, surrounded by my own scent, my pillows, my own things, and I'm...fine.
I slumped against the pillow and made sure that my breaths were controlled, deep, my chest rising and falling without an issue. My paws were clenched into fists, and I didn't like the fact that they were clammy.
I huffed.
It was the third night in a row that I'd woken up like this, and I didn't even have to remember the dream this time around to know what it was about. Breaking glass and pain and screeching and masked faces and strange smells and more pain.
I laid still, and tried to get my breathing to calm down properly. It was very quiet, at least, juts my breaths, the ruffle of sheets, and the noise of rain from the outside. It must've started after I'd gone to bed. The clouds seemed a bit suggestive, the last time I saw the sky.
My paw emerged from under the duvet and I grabbed the phone from the bedside table, going by muscle memory to where I knew I usually dropped it, and brought it to my face and tapped the screen to see what the time was.
05:21.
Much too early for comfort, I thought, and my ears went flat and rustled against the pillow. I put the phone back to its place and let my arm flop back onto the bed, over the covers this time around. It felt pleasantly cool against my bare arm.
"Shit."
I knew it would be difficult to float back to sleep. I could have another hour before I'd really have to wake up to get ready for work. I didn't want to waste that valuable shut-eye. I wanted to be sharp, especially since we were reviewing the sales figures today. Mine could have been somewhat better, even when you took my sick leave into account.
Stupid sick leave. Stupid accident.
I couldn't even remember that much. I remembered the screeching sound of the car approaching and how someone else must've been braking too and I remembered a flash of something across my field of vision, before it was all black. There were bits of other things, when they were cutting us out of the car, I think, and I remembered the ambulance certainly, and how uncomfortable all the restraints were they put me on to make sure that if my spine was broken I would now harm myself more. The hospital was clearer, at least the parts between my arrival there and then having surgery, because after that I was on so many drugs that it took me a while before I was sure where I was and what was going on.
I flinched even now, remembering the feeling that was foremost on my mind during those long minutes, the growing sense that I couldn't breathe properly. I wasn't sure if I'd ever felt such a disconcerting physical sensation, how my body was failing to do its most basic function, how every breath brought pain and still I had to keep breathing, and even the somewhat strange-smelling air pouring to my face from the plastic oxygen mask didn't really make it that much easier. It wasn't that I was breathing hard and feeling light-headed, it was that impending knowledge that something was wrong and I just couldn't no longer get enough air into my lungs, no matter how much I tried.
I let out a big huff, as if proving to myself that now everything was working better. It was still a reminder close enough that I pushed my paw over my belly and then rested it on my chest over the spot where they'd had to cut me open to get the blood out of me. There was only a small scar, and it had healed almost completely, barely felt through my short fur that had already grown back to normal.
The dreams...maybe that was my brain trying to figure out what happened during the blank periods. Maybe my mind was subconsciously going through the memories and...doing what? Defragmenting the drive? I snorted. Did the brain work like that, really? I thought I might have to look it up on Wikipedia or something.
Maybe I would have been better off without those particular memories. This whole thing was shitty enough without me waking up every other night reliving the moment when I almost had my face smashed into pieces against the windscreen of my own car because some bear had decided to go and fetch some more beer after already drinking plenty of it. Just why couldn't he have staggered into his closest convenience store, I would never know, and I didn't care to. I just knew that he deserved to have something shoved up his ass while he rotted in jail.
I growled at the very thought. As a guy who liked having things shoved in my butt, hoping that to someone was pushing into some very angry territory for sure. And I didn't feel any mercy for him as I imagined the offending mop handle , on that moment, on my empty bed.
It could be much worse, too, I thought. I could've become so scared of cars that I'd never drive one again, let alone travel in one. I'd successfully done that, even if the first couple times I felt antsy. And if the insurance company would get back to me soon, I might start looking for some new wheels. At least that'd give me a proper chance to push all of this behind me and do my own driving again. Catching the bus might've been convenient enough, but I liked the freedom having my own car gave me. I wasn't about to let some shit ass DUI bear take that away from me.
I harrumphed again. I'd already spent what was probably too much time dwelling on this stupid thing. I flopped my head around on the pillow to try to find a comfortable position and then ended up flipping the pillow so that I could enjoy the cool side for a moment. That did feel nice enough, too.
"Bhuh."
I thought about Rory, and how he was coping with this whole thing. He'd confessed to me that he'd had his own moments, too, possibly as bad as mine, and we had talked about it, and tried to understand one another, help each other with the talking. We both had felt a bit better afterwards, but it was now clear that just talking about it a couple times wasn't enough to get rid of all of it.
It also made me feel a bit bad in a wholly different kind of a thing. Thinking about the accident, my injuries, the real brush with death, it all made me think about Tate a lot. What was my stupid car accident compared to what he had? Comparing levels of pain and suffering was stupid, I knew that much, but Jesus almighty. Blown to bits, leg gone, his mind obviously a bit of a wreck too, judging from everything I had heard and seen of him. And throw in the whole Gay Cobb thing too...did that guy ever get to catch a break?
I knew his life had not been easy as a kid, either. He'd come to school once with a black eye and while he'd never told even Cobb about where he got it, I always knew that it must've been his father.
How did someone go on living like that? How did you live with someone who was supposed to love you but only ended up giving you pain? My own parents had never raised their paw in violence or anger at me - although I did get spanked once, when I broke a window with a football when I was six, but I possibly deserved that particular corporal punishment for being stupid and kicking the ball to the wall repeatedly - although nobody should be hit, I thought. My father hadn't even gotten angry enough to hit me when I came out, although he did get angry and upset, but even then he wouldn't even clench his paw into a fist to threaten me. I'd gotten into worse fights with Cobb for God's sake.
I thought in passing about the likes of Ismail, who went on doing hurtful things behind your back. Even with him, I hadn't wanted to hit him.
Well, maybe I did, but who was the coward and a bastard then, if the best thing you could think of was to knock his teeth out? He'd probably deserved more than the cold, angry words he got from me in the form of 'I don't think I want to see you again' and some other choice statements that told him that we were done.
I probably shouldn't have been thinking about that sort of stuff at 5:30 in the morning but my mind kept dwelling on it. How did you go on when everything kept turning out like that?
Like me, I guess, I thought. You just grit your teeth and got on with it. And Tate was not one to give up. I'd seen that when he was playing football, too, and he'd probably been like that ever since. He'd just clean his muzzle and go on at it, and hey, he'd even survived Cobb's idea of a gay pride party, or something like it.
I growled. My room still smelled a bit of the pad cream from the gift basket he had had sent to me as an apology for grinding to me in his sleep after mistaking my bed for his (just how drunk one had to be, I would never find out, probably, because I'd never want to try if I could get myself into such a state), and I had made the mistake of trying it out because...well, it was an expensive brand and the pads on my feet could use some cream after being stuck in my skates. They might have been baby soft now, but the room smelled like a day spa, and...yeah, that reminded me of my dear brother.
Maybe thinking about Cobb was better than thinking about Tate's various life woes. At least when it came to Cobb it didn't mean I would have to figure out how to help him to get past his angry feelings about trying to do a bit more than just hit on at Cobb. I had no idea how to really do that, and Cobb's party had probably been too gay even for a gay man, let alone introduce him to anyone who would help him get his mind away from Cobb. Having a hot date wasn't probably even a top priority in his mind, with everything going in his life. I didn't even know if he went on dates. I didn't know anything about that part of his life besides the fact that he'd had pretty substantial hots at my brother. I wasn't even sure if he wanted to see me, considering that apparently I was close enough to Cobb in appearance that he could be mistaken for me, which meant that whatever he felt for my brother could theoretically be transferred onto me as well.
Now that was a thought...and one that made my brow furrow, even in my solitude in the safety of my room.
What if his hots were at Cobb because he thought, at least s of late, that Cobb was the brother who was...available? What if Tate was just...I don't know, latched onto the idea of a big, burly Doberman guy to call his own?
I rubbed my muzzle with concern. It was possible, I guess, even if it made me feel a bit big-headed to consider it. If he'd had a crush on Cobb, what stopped him from having one at me now that he knew that I was the gay one? But he knew that I had a boyfriend and, and...
Or maybe it was just one of those strange things, or...or whatever. I've no idea what to think about the whole thing. I had hard time grasping the whole concept that Tate was gay to begin with. That was probably hypocritical of me, being gay myself. Was this what a "but you can't be!" felt like, on the non-receiving end? I'd had that told to me a few times, sure, probably most people heard it at one point, but I had never really been in this position, being the one to question someone's sexual orientation when the facts were laid quite bare in the form of his liplock with Cobb.
I still managed a smile imagining Cobb's reaction to that, but only just.
It was a guilty feeling, too. All those 'what if's made their way into the surface, really. Could an 18-year-old Victor, still trying to get used to his own sexual leanings, been of help to the 18-year-old Tate Michaels, struggling with a sad family life, school, social pressure from his school peers and all his jock buddies...I knew more than enough how it would've been impossible to be an openly gay guy in that environment. There was nobody out in our school at that time...hell, I didn't know if openly gay furs existed in high school even now!
I huffed.
Had times changed that much that young furs could just...be who they were, and they didn't have to go through all that time keeping it hidden? You still heard those idiots on the TV and elsewhere saying that gays should be kept from influencing the kids. There certainly was no danger of that when I was in school, when the closest gay people in existence were the odd ones out you sometimes saw on TV as throwaway jokes on _Friends_or the like, to the effect that my father would turn the TV onto another channel.
There was no changing the past but perhaps there was changing the future. Maybe just talking with him would make things easier for him. Let him see that I was okay with him being gay...
I chortled even at the thought. One gay guy telling another gay guy that it was totally cool that he was a fellow tail enthusiast. But maybe it wasn't that much of a joke. In his long email he'd sounded like he was especially unhappy about bullying me, and maybe the feelings of regret about his old stupid behavior had intensified as of late when he'd found out that the guy he'd been calling a faggot was really a fully blown homosexual.
No, with our history, it certainly was probable that he still felt bad and that I would have to make sure that I didn't think him to be a terrible man for having acted like that. If I had a difficult time with it, even with my family, with Cobb on my side, with all my friends and economical security and all that jazz, how bad was it for someone like Tate? That fox must've been in the shits about it for a long time, and going to the entirely anti-gay army service definitely couldn't have helped.
But he was making a new life for himself now, one where he obviously hoped to include a relationship at some point as well, even if it didn't happen with the man of his dreams.
"Gah."
I couldn't help that my mind wandered back to the idea of Cobb, getting a big old gay smooch and then going OMG OMG OMG as if he'd just caught gay cooties or something. Rory would have probably called it something like 'cosmic justice' or the like. He was smart with words like that, and he would've come up with the perfect way to put it, too. But he did have a degree, too, that must've counted for something.
Poor Cobb, poor Rory for having to survive Cobb, and poor Tate as well.
I'd have to come up with something, I decided. Some beer and food and stuff, letting him take his time and talk if he felt like it, no pressure. Maybe that'd be the way to go, no pomp, nothing too...gay...just regular acquaintances talking about the stuff that happened to pass their minds. That ought to do well. I could even include Rory, if he wasn't busy with anything, and if Tate felt like having extra company. Maybe even Peter...but probably not all of us at the same time, though, otherwise it might end up feeling too much like a rehash of the Gay Party, just with a bit less feather boas this time around. I imagined that any reminders of that party might make Tate's blood pressure reach the boiling point all too soon.
I shuffled on the bed, turned to my side, put my paw under my muzzle, and tried this now position for now. It was nice and warm under the covers, in my own personal little space that kept me comfortable. The weather had been getting a bit cooler later on, too, so it was much appreciated.
Only missing a lion to keep company, I thought, with a little smile. Maybe that'd help me to sleep better, too, a fluffy lion to cuddle with while I fell asleep.
I smiled some more, and clenched my eyes tightly shut, hoping that no dreams would come for the rest of the night. The noise of the rain thrumming the window sills would hopefully help.
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Thank you for reading! I hope you had a good time, and I look forward to your feedback!
See you next time!