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You can only trudge so slowly to your doom.
“Sit,” his dad says when they get inside, pointing at the couch, and goes upstairs to talk to his mom and presumably brief her on exactly whose dick their kid just had his hand around.
On the bright side, Jared came out to his parents last year, so there’s only one super awkward topic of conversation to handle right now rather than two.
On the less bright side, Jared would still like to die now.
The minutes drag. Jared doesn’t think it should actually take this long to brief her: hey, Susan, I just caught Jared jerking off a Calgary Flame in a car parked right outside our house, because apparently our son’s a moron. That’s it, that’s all he’s got to say.
And yet it’s fifteen minutes before Jared hears footsteps coming down the stairs and hastily shoves his phone in his pocket in case they’re planning on punishing him. He figures they’ll go for it if they are, so it’s better not to have it out in the open. Not that he’s explicitly not allowed to do anything he did, but he doesn’t know if that’ll stop them from grounding him anyway.
“So,” his mom says. “Want to tell me what happened?”
“Not really?” Jared says, rather than ‘I would rather die’. “I mean, I’m sure dad told you the important details.”
There’s still a tiny part of him that hopes somehow he didn’t see where Jared’s hand was, but he knows better than to depend on that hope, and Jared’s got a hard time meeting either of them in the eye, knowing what they know.
“You know we trust your judgment, Jared,” his mom says, with this tone that adds an unspoken ‘except right now, we totally don’t trust your judgment right now’.
His phone buzzes against his leg, and as much as he wants to check it, see if it’s a text from Bryce, he knows he can’t.
“I mean, I didn’t do anything I’m not allowed to do,” Jared says, which is true, and, “So I don’t know why we’re talking about this,”, which is absolutely not.
Because they do trust his judgment, but only so far: that’s why he has a curfew, why he’s expected home earlier the night before a game, why their grocery list is heavily influenced by the team nutritionist, and he’ll get a look if he eats the pop-tarts that are practically stamped with ‘For Erin, who is Not Trying To Be a Pro Athlete’ on them.
There are explicit rules — ones he didn’t break — but beyond that, they aren’t strict precisely because they know they don’t have to be: Jared tells them where he is and if he’s going to be late, Jared has barely ever drunk a thing in his life and when he has he nursed the same thing all night and made sure he had a designated driver, Jared hasn’t dated.
And he’s never been told he can’t date — got a ‘be careful’ when he came out, which admittedly he absolutely wasn’t today. His sex talk was limited to ‘be careful’ again, along with ‘be responsible’, ‘always use protection’, and a mortifying exchange of said protection. The box of condoms is still sitting in his bedside drawer, probably expired by now. But there was definitely no ‘no sex until you’re eighteen/married/whatever the fuck’, so that wasn’t breaking any rules either.
They’re not strict because Jared’s a good kid, a responsible kid, and this may not be against the rules, but that’s probably because they never expected it would have to be. Not so much the sex thing, and not the guy thing, but the Bryce Marcus specifically thing? Yeah, that one he’s pretty sure they’re not okay with.
“We’re worried about you,” his mom says, which is up there with ‘I’m not mad I’m disappointed’, and Jared hates it, because it means he can’t get mad right back.
“You don’t have to be,” he says. “Seriously, this is—”
“Frankly tonight has me questioning your judgment entirely,” his dad interrupts. “Because if you don’t have the intelligence to understand that it is not acceptable to get involved with someone like that, who is not only in a position of authority —”
Jared snorts, because Evanson babysits Bryce more than the rest of them, and Jared doesn’t even think he has an assistant coach title or anything, he’s just ‘dude here to debatably offer help’ and also ‘constant distraction from training’, at least for Jared.
His dad goes from loud talking to yelling at him, so maybe Jared shouldn’t have snorted. “—but who is also four goddamn years—”
“There is no fucking way you’d be yelling at me like this if Bryce was a girl,” Jared snaps.
“Watch your language,” his dad says.
“Oh come on, you’re the one who kept saying ‘fucking around’,” Jared says. “Don’t be a fucking hypocrite.”
“It’s not that Bryce is a guy,” his mom says, before his dad inevitably says he’s the parent so he can do whatever the fuck he wants. “It’s really about his age, Jared.”
Jared snorts. “Right,” he says, because if his dad caught him messing around with a member of the Calgary Inferno, he would shake his fucking hand, twenty or not, helping coach his camp or not.
“He’s a lot older than you,” she says.
“Four years is not a lot,” he argues. “Dad’s six years older than you.”
“It’s a lot when you’re not even eighteen yet, honey,” she says. “That’s a pretty big gap in maturity.”
“I mean, I’m honestly more mature than him,” Jared says, and instantly feels like a traitor, even though it’s very likely true.
“That’s the other thing,” she says, and he realises he’s not only a traitor, but he also just set up a point for her. Wonderful. Great work, Jared. “There’ve been a lot of stories about him —”
“I know, okay?” Jared says. “I know the stories. You know I know the stories.”
“You have to understand why they concern us,” she says. “His behaviour in the past — and that’s his public behaviour, not even what we might not know about. I’m not comfortable —”
“So what, are you banning me from seeing him or something?” Jared asks. “Because—”
“Would it work?” his mom asks.
“No,” Jared snaps.
“This really isn’t the time to get distracted,” his dad interjects. “You’ve got one more season to show what you can do, this is not when you let someone sidetrack you from your goals. Hockey’s more important than —”
“Yeah, because the guy who was drafted as the Flames’ next big hope definitely wouldn’t understand that his boyfriend needs to focus on hockey before the draft.” Jared says. “Oh right, wait. The opposite of that.”
“If you seriously think that guy considers you his boyfriend, you’re definitely not mature enough to be having sex yet,” his dad snaps back, and Jared flinches.
“Don,” his mom says. “That’s not helpful.”
“Oh, come on,” his dad says, “We’re not going to pretend that little prick —”
Jared bites back a hysterical, terrifying urge to state that isn’t an accurate summation of Bryce just in time.
“—isn’t just in for the easiest—”
“So I’m easy now,” Jared says flatly. “Okay, wow, so —”
“Don!” his mom says over him. “Jared, he didn’t—”
“Yeah, okay,” Jared says. “If you’re going to ground me for something you never told me wasn’t allowed, you let me know, but I’m going to be in my room while you figure that out.”
He can hear them arguing all the way up the stairs, hear it through his door too. He doesn’t know if Erin’s asleep or not, but he really hopes she wasn’t listening to that, because she’ll be fucking gleeful that he’s the one in trouble for once.
He tries to get his breathing back to even, not sure when it started getting shaky, when his hands did, evident as he fumbles his phone out of his pocket.
im so so so sorry, Bryce has texted, followed, ten minutes later, with, r u ok????
It’s not your fault, Jared texts back. They’re pissed but I’m not grounded or anything. At least, not officially. Jury’s out on that one, honestly. Can you pick me up he starts to type, then deletes it, because as much as he doesn’t want to be here, he’s not stupid enough to test them by leaving right now. And even if he was, he doesn’t want to ask and have Bryce say no.
There’s a knock on his door, and his mom opens it before he says anything. He doesn’t want to talk to her, but least it’s not Erin coming to gloat. Or dad. Jared’s really glad it’s not dad.
“What?” Jared asks.
“Was that Bryce you were texting?” his mom asks.
“That’s not really any of your business,” Jared says, squeezing his hand around his phone when it buzzes at him, but resisting the urge to look.
She sighs. “Jared,” she says, then, “Your dad didn’t mean—”
“He can tell me that himself, then,” Jared says.
“Can I come in?” she asks.
Jared shrugs, pulling his legs up when she comes to sit at the edge of the bed. “You know we’re just worried. You’ve always been so responsible, it’s just a bit of a surprise that you’re—”
“Not?” Jared says.
“We just don’t want you to get hurt,” she says.
“I mean,” Jared says. “Me neither, so. Maybe don’t just assume that I’m going to be?”
“Boys like that — men like that,” she says, “Aren’t generally looking for—”
“Are you about to call me easy too?” Jared asks.
“No!” she says. “I’m just concerned you think this is something it isn’t, Jared.”
“All I’m hearing when you guys say stuff like that is ‘we think you’re too stupid to know when someone’s using you’,” Jared says.
“It’s not about you being stupid,” she says. “We know you’re not stupid, Jared, but you’re young and you’re inexperienced, and I’m suspicious of the motives of someone at his age who’s interested in that.”
“Is it really that hard to believe he just likes me?” Jared asks. “I have spent literally every minute for the last week when I’m not at home with him, do you really think he’d hang out with me every single day just so he could hook up? Or maybe he spends time with me because he actually likes me, like, as an actual person, not whatever you guys seem to think he sees me as.”
Jared’s voice cracks, mortifyingly, at the end, and he wants to slap a hand over his mouth.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. Your dad wants to call the camp organizers about this.”
Jared springs up. “Mom, you can’t, I—”
“I may have mentioned that it would more likely roll off him just like everything else has and mess your chances up if teams caught wind about you before you were drafted,” she says. “Which it could, Jared. I know we’ve talked about this, but just because a few players are out now doesn’t mean the organization as a whole isn’t homophob—”
“I know,” Jared says. “Can you just — don’t let dad call them. Please.”
“I don’t think he will now,” she says.
“Thanks,” Jared mumbles, sitting back down. “Am I grounded, or—”
“You’re not,” she says, pats his foot. “But we need to talk about this more.”
“Can it wait until tomorrow?” Jared asks, then, when she looks like she’s about to say no, “I really can’t deal with dad right now.”
It’s true, but he also knows it’s the only thing that will get her to agree. And she does, saying something about talking to his dad, and finally leaving Jared alone so he can check his phone.
can i c u tmrw?, Bryce has texted, then, a few minutes after that, no pressure obvs i get it if u dont want to
Jared rubs his thumb over a smudge on his screen, before texting Yeah, of course, because Bryce is apparently the only person who doesn’t know how deep in this Jared is. What did you mean you weren’t fucking around? he texts after that, because it’s been bugging him whenever he thought about it, probably would have been bugging him more if he hadn’t been sidetracked by about a million other issues since they got caught
what i said, Bryce says, which is useless, then on the heels of it, i didnt want ur dad to think u werent important to me. this definetly isnt just a hookup u know?
Jared doesn’t have a chance to respond before Bryce follows up with, unless it is to u haha.
I wouldn’t have spent a week not hooking up with you if I just wanted a hook up, Jared texts, then in another moment of temporary insanity in a day full of them, his heart in his throat, texts, I told my parents I was your boyfriend.
u r if u want to be, comes less than a minute later, though it feels a lot longer. thats cool w me.
Cool, Jared texts back, and then rolls onto his stomach to yell into his pillow.