Snippet/Not!Fic: Center of the Tylers househusband story (2200 words, Teen)
This is what would have been the center of the Tylers househusband story, and part of the reason I never wrote it is because once I wrote this, I knew what it was about and I wasn't as interested in it anymore. Note that real life Stars wives and girlfriends appear in this story.
The thing that happens before this that I never wrote is one of the women essentially yelling at Tyler about how (a) he could at least pretend not to look down on the rest of them and (b) they could be a support system for him if they would just let them.
They only stop fighting because Segs has to get ready to leave.
Tyler stays downstairs, sitting on the couch and trying not to fume, trying to chill out at least a little, while Segs goes upstairs to change and throw whatever else he wants to take with him into the always at least half packed suitcase.
Segs comes down in his suit, puts his suitcase and shoes by the door.
Tyler looks up at him from the couch when Segs comes into the living room. He should get up and go kiss Segs, but he stays where he is.
Segs looks at him for a moment, mouth turned down. "Do you want to leave?"
Tyler's heart drops into his stomach. "Do you want me to leave?"
"No." Segs rubs his hand over his face. "I don't want you to, but you're not happy here, and it's making us both miserable."
Tyler does get up then, walking over to Segs and putting his arms around him. It doesn't quite work to shut down his utter terror at the idea of losing Segs, but at least Segs hugs him back.
"I love you," Tyler says.
Segs sighs and hugs him tighter for a moment. "I'll see you in a couple of days, okay?"
It's not like those first few roadtrips of the season when they were so glad to be together, no matter what the circumstances, that they made out in front of the door until Segs was almost late.
*
Tyler shows up late to the Stars Families meeting, so when Cindy lets him in and takes him to the living room where the rest of the women are spread out on couches and chairs, everyone looks at him.
"Can I get you a glass of wine, or a beer?" Cindy asks.
Tyler says, "No," too forcefully, and then everyone looks at him again. "Uh," he says, and Cindy gives him an encouraging look. "If I start drinking I might not stop."
Some of the other women look at each other, but Cindy isn't even fazed, just pats his shoulder. "I'll get you some water."
"You look like you already went on a bender," Emily says.
It's probably true; he didn't sleep well last night. Tyler just shrugs, thanks Cindy for the bottle of water, and sits down in a chair, hoping that'll take everyone's attention off of him.
It doesn't work.
"What's up with you?" Jessica asks, and at least she's pretty friendly toward Tyler with how much he and Segs hang out with her and the Benns.
"Uh," Tyler says, and they all look at him, a couple of them like sharks scenting blood in the water, but mostly interested in a nice way. This is probably what Kristy was talking about when she said they could be a support for him. He takes a deep breath and then says, "We had a fight before he left. Or we've been having a fight. I don't know. He didn't kiss me goodbye." That makes most of them give him sympathetic looks.
"We've all been there," Cindy says. She always seems so put together and like she and Shawn have their shit together. Tyler almost can't believe it.
Most of the other women nod.
"That one's tough," Chrissy says. "You gotta learn not to fight right before he leaves."
"I don't know how," Tyler admits. "It seems like we're always fighting." He swallows hard. "He asked me if I wanted to leave."
They all sit back a little at that, like it might be catching, and Marie-Eve lets out a low whistle.
"Did he sound like he wanted you to leave?" Jessica asks.
"No," Tyler says. "He said he didn't want me to but that I'm not happy here and we're not happy."
"What do you fight about?" Chrissy asks. "Not the little leaving the cap off the toothpaste things, but the big things."
"A lot of little things," Tyler says. "Being out. And money."
"Does he think you spend too much?" Paige asks. "We've been through that one." A couple of the other women are nodding along with her.
"No," Tyler says. He starts to explain, but then he looks around at the women, and thinks about Kristy's angry, low voice telling him to stop looking down on them and thinks better of it. He just shakes his head instead.
"Have you thought about counseling?" Cindy asks. It's a very gentle question, but it still stings.
Tyler tightens his grip on his water bottle. "For me or for us?"
"Whichever you think needs it," Cindy says, still gentle. "Shawn and I went through a really rough patch a few years ago. Talking to someone else about it helped us." She smiles briefly at him. "I'd give you a name, but it was in Edmonton."
"You could call Michelle in the front office," Kristy says with a nod at Tyler, like she approves of him having problems, or talking to the women about them. "She works with us a lot. If you tell her who you are and what you're looking for, she'll get the list they have for the guys to you, and she's good about not blabbing other people's business all over the place."
That last one is a consideration Tyler appreciates, and he nods at Kristy, then twists open his water bottle for something to do with his hands.
Kristy gives him a warm smile, and then she changes the subject and takes the attention away from him.
*
Tyler wants to stay up until Segs gets home, or at least wake up when he does, but his knee is killing him, so much so that he almost sleeps on the couch instead of dealing with the stairs. He hauls himself upstairs, though, because he knows how it would look if Segs came home to him sleeping on the couch, and takes a pain pill that knocks him out so hard that he doesn't wake up until morning, when Segs is still asleep next to him. At least he came to bed when he came home.
Tyler presses a kiss to Segs' hair before he gets out of bed.
It's getting closer to lunch by the time Segs comes downstairs, in pajama pants and a white v-neck that stretches tightly across his shoulders.
"Hi," Tyler says, closing his laptop and putting it down on the coffee table.
"Hi."
When Segs doesn't come to him, Tyler gets up and goes over to Segs. Segs at least doesn't stop Tyler from kissing him, but it's awkward, nothing like how easy their relationship has been for so many years. Tyler hates it.
"Do you want breakfast or lunch?"
"Breakfast," Segs says after a moment, "but I can make it."
"I'll do it," Tyler says.
"I can-" Segs starts, and he stops when Tyler puts a hand on his cheek.
"I'll do it," Tyler says, and then, when Segs looks like he's going to protest again, "Please."
Segs' mouth is a tight, unhappy line, but he nods and lets Tyler make him breakfast. It's part of their ongoing fight about money, who does what and what Tyler does to contribute to their household.
"You going to the rink today?" Tyler asks while he keeps an eye on the eggs.
"Later," Segs says. "Afternoon practice."
Tyler nods, and takes a breath before he says. "I'll be back to make dinner, but I might not be here when you get home. I have an appointment to go see a therapist."
Segs frowns. "Your knee getting worse?"
"Not that kind of therapist," Tyler says.
"Oh," Segs says after a minute.
"Yeah," Tyler says. He makes up two plates - he's used to eating on a strange schedule and doesn't mind having breakfast for lunch - and walks around the counter to sit down with Segs. "Cindy actually suggested it, for me or for us. Things aren't getting better, with us," it hurts to say that, and it's also a relief to have it out there, "and I'm the one who's fucked up, so."
"You're not fucked up," Segs says firmly. "You're just-" He trails off without finishing the sentence.
"Fucked up," Tyler says.
"Going through a tough time," Segs settles on. He scoops eggs up onto his fork.
"Whatever," Tyler says. "I love you, and I don't want to ruin us."
Segs turns toward Tyler, putting his hands on him, one on his shoulders, one on his knee. "I love you too, and I want us to be okay." He leans forward and kisses Tyler's cheek. It's the most normal kiss they've shared in days, at least. "I want you to be okay." He turns back to his breakfast. "And if this doesn't work," he says, with the same determination that was there when he used to say he was going to get drafted first round and go on to the NHL, "we'll try going together."
*
Therapy is hard. Twice a week Tyler's therapist - "Call me Mark" - asks him questions, listens to him talk, dispenses small bits of advice when Tyler looks at him like he's supposed to do something. Mark asks him about everything, about Segs, about hockey, about the accident, about his sex life, about their fights, about the wives and girlfriends. And he keeps asking and asking and asking and making Tyler dig in deeper and deeper.
Tyler starts keeping a gym bag in his car, for days when he can't go straight home after that and needs to go do something else first. He can't run or ride the bike the way he used to, but he can swim laps, using his arms more than his legs and letting the water take the pressure off his knee. Sometimes he takes a yoga class, not his usual gentle one, but one of the harder ones where he can alternate between concentrating on his breath and remembering how to modify poses for what he can do.
Sometimes he goes and gets coffee, sits in a cafe somewhere and watches other people. Sometimes he just drives. Once he goes over to Cindy's, and she pours them each glasses of iced tea that they drink on the back porch while the kids run around the yard and she tells him easy, uncomplicated stories about her life and the other women.
It's not all bad. He gets better at not picking fights with Segs, learns to use the tricks Mark teaches him to calm down instead, and that makes their day-to-day life easier. It's also therapy where he makes his real breakthrough on both of their big fights.
"I don't want to be a freak," Tyler says for the umpteenth time when Mark gets him talking about why he doesn't want them to be out. "I'm a fucking failed hockey player who doesn't have anything going for him. I don't have a job. I'm not even, like, raising kids or doing something useful. I'm just some unemployed freeloader no one cares about except that I'm attached to Segs. I want to be something other than Segs' boytoy. I need my own identity." He's gotten pretty loud by the end of it.
"Ah," Mark says, smiling and so quiet in the wake of what Tyler just said. He closes his notebook, sets it to the side, and leans forward. "There it is. You know that's what you haven't been saying."
Tyler blinks at him, because he thought he's been saying all of that all along.
"You need your own identity," Mark says. "You've never said that before." Mark smiles at him. "Now you get to figure out what you're going to do about it."
So that brings up a whole bunch of other stuff, but Tyler finds he can breathe easier after that session.
*
Tyler restarts the discussion with Segs over lunch on a day when Segs had practice but doesn't have a game.
"I'm still not ready to be totally out," Tyler says, and they've had enough therapy-influenced conversations by now that he can say it calmly and Segs can wait for him to keep going. "It freaks me out because I want you and I want to be with you, but I don't want to just be your boyfriend. I need to be my own person." He makes a face. "If that even makes sense."
"Kind of," Segs says. "I mean, I get it that you want that, but you are your own person."
Tyler sighs and sits back in his chair. "It doesn't look that way for people who don't know me. And I'm not sure I really know who I am, but I'm working on that in therapy." He pauses, and then can't contain his snickers at how that sounds.
Segs joins in after a second, and they both laugh about it for a minute. It helps dissolve the tension that comes with these conversations.
"Anyway," Tyler says, "I don't want to do the whole being out to the world thing. I'm working on it," he adds to forestall Segs trying to make his case for it. "But I'm going to do more of the charity and other public stuff with the Stars Families."
Segs takes another bite of his sandwich before he says, hesitantly, "People are going to figure it out if you're doing the public stuff."
"I know," Tyler says with an uncomfortable shrug. "But it's not as big a deal as having to actually, you know, come out." He shrugs again. "Eventually we can probably do that, but right now I can do this, okay?"
Segs reaches across the table and squeezes Tyler's hand. "Okay."
The thing that happens before this that I never wrote is one of the women essentially yelling at Tyler about how (a) he could at least pretend not to look down on the rest of them and (b) they could be a support system for him if they would just let them.
They only stop fighting because Segs has to get ready to leave.
Tyler stays downstairs, sitting on the couch and trying not to fume, trying to chill out at least a little, while Segs goes upstairs to change and throw whatever else he wants to take with him into the always at least half packed suitcase.
Segs comes down in his suit, puts his suitcase and shoes by the door.
Tyler looks up at him from the couch when Segs comes into the living room. He should get up and go kiss Segs, but he stays where he is.
Segs looks at him for a moment, mouth turned down. "Do you want to leave?"
Tyler's heart drops into his stomach. "Do you want me to leave?"
"No." Segs rubs his hand over his face. "I don't want you to, but you're not happy here, and it's making us both miserable."
Tyler does get up then, walking over to Segs and putting his arms around him. It doesn't quite work to shut down his utter terror at the idea of losing Segs, but at least Segs hugs him back.
"I love you," Tyler says.
Segs sighs and hugs him tighter for a moment. "I'll see you in a couple of days, okay?"
It's not like those first few roadtrips of the season when they were so glad to be together, no matter what the circumstances, that they made out in front of the door until Segs was almost late.
*
Tyler shows up late to the Stars Families meeting, so when Cindy lets him in and takes him to the living room where the rest of the women are spread out on couches and chairs, everyone looks at him.
"Can I get you a glass of wine, or a beer?" Cindy asks.
Tyler says, "No," too forcefully, and then everyone looks at him again. "Uh," he says, and Cindy gives him an encouraging look. "If I start drinking I might not stop."
Some of the other women look at each other, but Cindy isn't even fazed, just pats his shoulder. "I'll get you some water."
"You look like you already went on a bender," Emily says.
It's probably true; he didn't sleep well last night. Tyler just shrugs, thanks Cindy for the bottle of water, and sits down in a chair, hoping that'll take everyone's attention off of him.
It doesn't work.
"What's up with you?" Jessica asks, and at least she's pretty friendly toward Tyler with how much he and Segs hang out with her and the Benns.
"Uh," Tyler says, and they all look at him, a couple of them like sharks scenting blood in the water, but mostly interested in a nice way. This is probably what Kristy was talking about when she said they could be a support for him. He takes a deep breath and then says, "We had a fight before he left. Or we've been having a fight. I don't know. He didn't kiss me goodbye." That makes most of them give him sympathetic looks.
"We've all been there," Cindy says. She always seems so put together and like she and Shawn have their shit together. Tyler almost can't believe it.
Most of the other women nod.
"That one's tough," Chrissy says. "You gotta learn not to fight right before he leaves."
"I don't know how," Tyler admits. "It seems like we're always fighting." He swallows hard. "He asked me if I wanted to leave."
They all sit back a little at that, like it might be catching, and Marie-Eve lets out a low whistle.
"Did he sound like he wanted you to leave?" Jessica asks.
"No," Tyler says. "He said he didn't want me to but that I'm not happy here and we're not happy."
"What do you fight about?" Chrissy asks. "Not the little leaving the cap off the toothpaste things, but the big things."
"A lot of little things," Tyler says. "Being out. And money."
"Does he think you spend too much?" Paige asks. "We've been through that one." A couple of the other women are nodding along with her.
"No," Tyler says. He starts to explain, but then he looks around at the women, and thinks about Kristy's angry, low voice telling him to stop looking down on them and thinks better of it. He just shakes his head instead.
"Have you thought about counseling?" Cindy asks. It's a very gentle question, but it still stings.
Tyler tightens his grip on his water bottle. "For me or for us?"
"Whichever you think needs it," Cindy says, still gentle. "Shawn and I went through a really rough patch a few years ago. Talking to someone else about it helped us." She smiles briefly at him. "I'd give you a name, but it was in Edmonton."
"You could call Michelle in the front office," Kristy says with a nod at Tyler, like she approves of him having problems, or talking to the women about them. "She works with us a lot. If you tell her who you are and what you're looking for, she'll get the list they have for the guys to you, and she's good about not blabbing other people's business all over the place."
That last one is a consideration Tyler appreciates, and he nods at Kristy, then twists open his water bottle for something to do with his hands.
Kristy gives him a warm smile, and then she changes the subject and takes the attention away from him.
*
Tyler wants to stay up until Segs gets home, or at least wake up when he does, but his knee is killing him, so much so that he almost sleeps on the couch instead of dealing with the stairs. He hauls himself upstairs, though, because he knows how it would look if Segs came home to him sleeping on the couch, and takes a pain pill that knocks him out so hard that he doesn't wake up until morning, when Segs is still asleep next to him. At least he came to bed when he came home.
Tyler presses a kiss to Segs' hair before he gets out of bed.
It's getting closer to lunch by the time Segs comes downstairs, in pajama pants and a white v-neck that stretches tightly across his shoulders.
"Hi," Tyler says, closing his laptop and putting it down on the coffee table.
"Hi."
When Segs doesn't come to him, Tyler gets up and goes over to Segs. Segs at least doesn't stop Tyler from kissing him, but it's awkward, nothing like how easy their relationship has been for so many years. Tyler hates it.
"Do you want breakfast or lunch?"
"Breakfast," Segs says after a moment, "but I can make it."
"I'll do it," Tyler says.
"I can-" Segs starts, and he stops when Tyler puts a hand on his cheek.
"I'll do it," Tyler says, and then, when Segs looks like he's going to protest again, "Please."
Segs' mouth is a tight, unhappy line, but he nods and lets Tyler make him breakfast. It's part of their ongoing fight about money, who does what and what Tyler does to contribute to their household.
"You going to the rink today?" Tyler asks while he keeps an eye on the eggs.
"Later," Segs says. "Afternoon practice."
Tyler nods, and takes a breath before he says. "I'll be back to make dinner, but I might not be here when you get home. I have an appointment to go see a therapist."
Segs frowns. "Your knee getting worse?"
"Not that kind of therapist," Tyler says.
"Oh," Segs says after a minute.
"Yeah," Tyler says. He makes up two plates - he's used to eating on a strange schedule and doesn't mind having breakfast for lunch - and walks around the counter to sit down with Segs. "Cindy actually suggested it, for me or for us. Things aren't getting better, with us," it hurts to say that, and it's also a relief to have it out there, "and I'm the one who's fucked up, so."
"You're not fucked up," Segs says firmly. "You're just-" He trails off without finishing the sentence.
"Fucked up," Tyler says.
"Going through a tough time," Segs settles on. He scoops eggs up onto his fork.
"Whatever," Tyler says. "I love you, and I don't want to ruin us."
Segs turns toward Tyler, putting his hands on him, one on his shoulders, one on his knee. "I love you too, and I want us to be okay." He leans forward and kisses Tyler's cheek. It's the most normal kiss they've shared in days, at least. "I want you to be okay." He turns back to his breakfast. "And if this doesn't work," he says, with the same determination that was there when he used to say he was going to get drafted first round and go on to the NHL, "we'll try going together."
*
Therapy is hard. Twice a week Tyler's therapist - "Call me Mark" - asks him questions, listens to him talk, dispenses small bits of advice when Tyler looks at him like he's supposed to do something. Mark asks him about everything, about Segs, about hockey, about the accident, about his sex life, about their fights, about the wives and girlfriends. And he keeps asking and asking and asking and making Tyler dig in deeper and deeper.
Tyler starts keeping a gym bag in his car, for days when he can't go straight home after that and needs to go do something else first. He can't run or ride the bike the way he used to, but he can swim laps, using his arms more than his legs and letting the water take the pressure off his knee. Sometimes he takes a yoga class, not his usual gentle one, but one of the harder ones where he can alternate between concentrating on his breath and remembering how to modify poses for what he can do.
Sometimes he goes and gets coffee, sits in a cafe somewhere and watches other people. Sometimes he just drives. Once he goes over to Cindy's, and she pours them each glasses of iced tea that they drink on the back porch while the kids run around the yard and she tells him easy, uncomplicated stories about her life and the other women.
It's not all bad. He gets better at not picking fights with Segs, learns to use the tricks Mark teaches him to calm down instead, and that makes their day-to-day life easier. It's also therapy where he makes his real breakthrough on both of their big fights.
"I don't want to be a freak," Tyler says for the umpteenth time when Mark gets him talking about why he doesn't want them to be out. "I'm a fucking failed hockey player who doesn't have anything going for him. I don't have a job. I'm not even, like, raising kids or doing something useful. I'm just some unemployed freeloader no one cares about except that I'm attached to Segs. I want to be something other than Segs' boytoy. I need my own identity." He's gotten pretty loud by the end of it.
"Ah," Mark says, smiling and so quiet in the wake of what Tyler just said. He closes his notebook, sets it to the side, and leans forward. "There it is. You know that's what you haven't been saying."
Tyler blinks at him, because he thought he's been saying all of that all along.
"You need your own identity," Mark says. "You've never said that before." Mark smiles at him. "Now you get to figure out what you're going to do about it."
So that brings up a whole bunch of other stuff, but Tyler finds he can breathe easier after that session.
*
Tyler restarts the discussion with Segs over lunch on a day when Segs had practice but doesn't have a game.
"I'm still not ready to be totally out," Tyler says, and they've had enough therapy-influenced conversations by now that he can say it calmly and Segs can wait for him to keep going. "It freaks me out because I want you and I want to be with you, but I don't want to just be your boyfriend. I need to be my own person." He makes a face. "If that even makes sense."
"Kind of," Segs says. "I mean, I get it that you want that, but you are your own person."
Tyler sighs and sits back in his chair. "It doesn't look that way for people who don't know me. And I'm not sure I really know who I am, but I'm working on that in therapy." He pauses, and then can't contain his snickers at how that sounds.
Segs joins in after a second, and they both laugh about it for a minute. It helps dissolve the tension that comes with these conversations.
"Anyway," Tyler says, "I don't want to do the whole being out to the world thing. I'm working on it," he adds to forestall Segs trying to make his case for it. "But I'm going to do more of the charity and other public stuff with the Stars Families."
Segs takes another bite of his sandwich before he says, hesitantly, "People are going to figure it out if you're doing the public stuff."
"I know," Tyler says with an uncomfortable shrug. "But it's not as big a deal as having to actually, you know, come out." He shrugs again. "Eventually we can probably do that, but right now I can do this, okay?"
Segs reaches across the table and squeezes Tyler's hand. "Okay."