Stories by Jennie..Bringing You Hockey Slash since March 23rd, 2006!
TITLE: The Rising AUTHOR: Jennie CHARACTERS: Jeff Carter and Mike Richards of the Philadelphia Flyers (GASP.) SUMMARY: Jeff Carter deals with his harsh beginnings of a career with the Flyers. RATING: R, for angst and self-mutilation. DISCLAIMER: jeff carter and mike richards live in my shed. actually, i don't own them. i only own this story. and i stole the title from a bruce springsteen song, because all born and bred jersey girls love bruce. :-P A/N: the ear fiasco: jeff got hit with a stray puck and needed 50ish stitches to reattach a part of his ear. okay, this deals with self-mutilation. i'd love for you all to read it, but if this kind of angst (which this is) isn't your thing, i totally understand. :) i'm a huuge devils' fan, so this was really hard for me, writing about the flyers. hopefully, that didn't come across! :-/ lastly, congrats to everyone who made it into the playoffs, and we'll see you there! and let me know what you think, good and bad, of the fic. THANKS! :-D
I don�t remember the first time I did it, but I know it never happened in Junior. In Junior, I was confident to the point of cocky, because I knew I was better than everyone else. I could score like no one�s business, I practically owned the league. But coming here, coming here I was a nobody. I was simple another rookie on a team that was never good enough. I was supposed to revive the team. I was supposed to bring us to the cup.
But with every game, with every missed shot and every failed opportunity, I slipped into oblivion a little more. Maybe that was when it started, when I realized I was a failure. At first, Hitch�s comments would cut to the bone. But by December, by the time of the ear fiasco, his words had become numb to my ears. Maybe that was when it started. All I know is that I still do it. I do it after each bad play, after each missed opportunity. I do it after each turnover of the puck, each puck that went wide.
I know it�s wrong, but after things like that, it�s the only thing that makes me feel better, and nothing else works. I tried yoga, and standing on my head only gave me a headache. I tried kickboxing, and the window facing the playground. I even tried chamomile tea, but I burned my tongue when I was trying to lick the stray drops that dribbled down the side of the cup. So I continued down my own path of self destruction for months, unnoticed by my teammates and acting as my own worst enemy, until Mike saw through me.
I had been sitting on the floor under the shower head for fifteen minutes, doing it the hardest I�d ever done. I had taken a bad penalty, hooking, and the Bruins had responded with a goal on the power play. After that, they scored two more goals in the second and won the game 5-2. Sitting on the tile, I couldn�t help but feel the loss was entirely my fault. If I hadn�t taken the penalty, we could have rebounded from the one goal deficit in the first. I led us to a loss, and there was nothing that could help but doing it. �Jeff?�
My heart leaped as my name bounced off the walls around me. I hurried to hide the weapon, laying it beneath my thigh, and managed to make sitting naked on the shower floor with no water running a casual act. Mike�s figure seemed to materialize from the fog that had been left over from twenty other bodies using the showers, and his face matched the concern laced in his voice.
�Jeff, what�re you doing here?� He kept his eyes locked on me as he inched his way towards me, while I struggled to keep the weapon from showing. �Just, you know, meditating.� He continued to inch his way forward, the sound of his dress shoes tapping against the ceramic overpowering all of my thoughts. �You gave up meditating after you fell asleep and woke up with the front page of The Times printed on your forehead.� His voice dropped a level. �What�s going on?�
I continued to shift my thigh around, and didn�t notice how he hiked up his $35 dress pants from Macy�s that we spent hours trying to find, how he rolled up the sleeves of the button down shirt that I gave to him as collateral for doing the dishes one rainy Sunday, how he blinked his long eyelashes hard to keep the tears from falling, and, most of all, how he struggled to maintain a steady voice.
Suddenly, I longed for the secret to come out. I yearned for the day when I wasn�t afraid to wear short sleeve shirts, when band aids wouldn�t be my best friend. Mike combed his fingers through my hair, which had become drenched with sweat, and traced his fingernail across my naked collarbone. Silently, I turned my arms so that he could see the paths, and know my pain.
He let the tears fall freely on the fresh wound, and my arm stung with pain, the first pain I�d felt in months. He let the $35 dress pants brush against the tile and kissed each scar with the tenderness that I�d craved every moment of my life. �You�re worth so much more than you give yourself credit for,� he said in between kisses. I felt his fingers beneath my thigh searching for the weapon, and I saw him slip it into his pants� pocket. Yet, I didn�t feel a need for the weapon anymore. I felt the need to be with Mike, and that was all.
He stood by me through the most difficult times. When I would take a bad penalty, I would run to the bathroom and rub my arm against the edge of the counter. But somehow, Mike would always find me, and I would sink into his arms and let his strength overpower all of my weaknesses. During the next few months, he was my guiding light. We�d be frolicking in the playground outside of our house and for a few moments, I�d forget what happened in the beginning, what brought us together. But then I would lift my arms, see the scars, and remember our bond.
