Family Meeting
Family Meeting
“You wanna know what the problem with drinking is?”
Huck stood on his hind legs leaning against the brick and mortar wall of The Great Ball of Fire. He held himself in his hoof, peeing with wanton regard and puffing casually on a cigarette hanging off of his right lip.
He blew a small cloud of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, sucked in some more cancer and waited for one of the ponies to his left to crack a grin or chuckle.
They didn’t.
Ignorant inbred hayseeds.
Huck grabbed a firmer hold of himself and readjusted his stream so that it splashed against the red and white wall. The smell in the alley was foul and rotten, a potent mix of fresh piss, stale beer, rotting trash and shit. It stung Huck’s nostrils each time he took in a breath. He could only fear the smell the alley would have if he were sober.
“The problem with drinking,” he repeated, cracking his neck left, then right, “Is that you never really buy the booze. You just rent it.”
This was met with a moment of absolute silence from his audience.
“I don’t get it.”
He turned to see Saddlesore — a grey coated earth pony with a slightly darker hide and built the size and shape of a marble statue. He stood between two other taller and strongly built ponies —Tucker and Spiral — and stared at Huck with a dull look on his face and big saucer shaped eyes.
“What?” posed Huck, cocking his head to the side and raising a single brow, curiously.
“Well, you can’t really rent drinks, Huck.” Saddlesore stated boastfully, “I mean, at least, not that I know about… Unless I’ve been doing it wrong or something?”
Saddlesore looked to Spiral, who shrugged his shoulders in discontent.
The lack of appreciation for the most basic form of humor within the workforce of Dodge Junction both scared and frightened Huck.
“Are you daft?” Huck grunted, “It’s a joke, ‘Sore. You know: A pun? Word-play?”
“Yeah, but, it doesn’t make much sense is all.” sighed Spiral, “I’ve been comin’ to Tapper’s since I was fifteen and I ain’t never once heard him say we could rent beer from him, Huck. You just buy it.”
Huck’s left eye twitched.
“Let’s back pedal a few paces there, Spiral?” Huck sighed, running a hoof across his face, “You’re not actually renting the beer at the bar, you’re buying it, and-”
“Yeah, but if you’re buying it then why’d you say you rent it?”
Huck licked his lips slowly and sighed.
“Your parents weren’t related before they met, were they, Spiral?”
Spiral blinked.
Beside him Saddlesore scratched his head.
“Y’know what?” Huck sighed, “Just forget I said anything, alright?”
Saddlesore, smiled then nodded his head. “Done, and done.”
“Now, where were we?”
Huck spun his head away from Saddlesore, Tucker and Spiral, cracked his neck until it snapped and then stared down at the broken little body laying against the wall.
Stormy.
He was curled around himself, hugging his lower legs with his upper ones, mumbling and whimpering. The grey coat of his chest, well up to the side of his face was black and wet. Matted down, the wet spots in his coat glistened in the pale moonlight. His eyes were shut tight. Huck could only imagine that Stormy could only imagine not being right there, right then. And yet, he was, and so was Huck.
He smiled, shook his rear flamboyantly and watched the last few drops of his stream drip out of him and into Stormy’s mane. The pony gave a pitiful whimper.
Huck grinned.
They’d run a train on him that night, one that transcended physical abuse and waded into the realm of the psychological. Beyond the kicking, the stomping and the thrashing. Beyond all the violence they’d done onto him, Huck had made sure to let it be known that Stormy was a pony beaten. He’d poured a beer out on his head, spit in his face and dragged him out by the scruff of his neck into the alley. They’d stomped him there. Huck, Tucker, Saddlesore and Spiral. All four of them stomping the younger defenseless pony with all they had. He’d screamed. Huck hadn’t pegged him for a screamer, but every pony had a breaking point and Stormy had been pushed well past his. He’d screamed, and he’d shouted, moaned and groaned, but he never cried. Not once.
Huck had to give a colt credit where credit was due. To take a beating like the kind that Dodge Junction was proud to give loud mouthed outsiders, and to not cry about it. That was something honorable — or, at the very least, as close to ‘honorable’ as a queer could earn for himself.
Stormy was a tough one, but in the end every pony broke. Stormy was past that point now.
Pride lifted Huck’s smile. Stormy could shower until light bounced off of his coat. He could scrub every inch of himself until he bled, and wash out all the stains, and the smell and the foulness, but he couldn’t wash out the hurt or the shame. For the rest of Stormy’s life, he would have to live knowing he’d once spent an evening being the personal urinal to a legion of hate-mongers.
Knowing this made Huck feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.
“Are we done here?”
Huck snapped his head towards Tucker, who leaned against the side of The Great Ball of Fire and stared at him with a face neutral of any emotion.
“No we ain’t done here.”
“Well, hurry it up.” grunted Tucker, “Drought’s probably already halfway to Sheriff Steel’s, or worse, your little faggot cousin’s place.”
There was a sardonic emphasis put on the words ‘faggot’ and ‘cousin’ in Tucker’s sentence, as if, somehow and in someway, Tucker actually believed the words that Stormy had said at the bar to be true.
It made Huck sick to think about. True or not true, he wouldn’t stand to have any pony make claims about his family that were unfounded. Without evidence in the way of sworn testimony in the form of a confession from mouth of the accused himself, Gentle Strokes was still straight and the only word against him came from the mouth of a yippy little faggot who lay half dead in a gutter.
The evidence piled against his cousin wasn’t very condemning.
Huck turned towards Tucker and offered up his single most sincere, understanding glance.
“Listen,” he said in a tone soft and approachable, “I don’t think you know what you’re implying, Tucker, so, why don’t you just drop it?”
“I know what I said, Huck.” Tucker snorted and pushed himself off of the The Great Ball of Fire. Tucker dusted his hooves off and he popped his shoulders forwards. He craned his neck backwards so that it snapped, then brought his head back down and met Huck with a snarl on his face that bared his fangs.
“We’re friends, Tucker,” Huck reminded, tilting his head to Stormy’s form, “We have been since we were six, and I aim to keep it that way. Ain’t no sense in scuffling over a few choice words” He ran a hoof down the wall, “I think enough blood has been spilled already.”
“Oh, yeah,” Tucker laughed, though his imposing posture stayed strong. “You sure did real good keeping that colt in check, Huck.”
Stormy grunted.
“Hey, don’t act like this was something I had to convince y’all to do,” Huck groaned. “Y’all knew the second you walked into that bar what was going down, and now you’re bitchin’ worse than a mare on the rag.”
“All I remember you saying when you grabbed us was that there was a pony who needed a stern lecture about his place in the world. And, yeah, we stuck with you while you two got into it. We even kicked him to the curb when it looked like you were getting too many licks, but, this-”
He waved his hoof over to Stormy.
“-Taking a piss on the guy?” Tucker shook his head. “That’s shameful no matter who you are.”
“So what?” Huck snorted and licked the sweat off his upper lip, “Since when did kicking the shit eating grin off some pompous little faggot’s face become a problem for you?”
“Fag or not, any pony who takes a look at this colt is going to want our heads on pikes.” He stopped to snort through his nostrils. Vapour trails lifted in the air. “And, pissing on him ain’t gonna win you any favors with Sheriff Steel either.”
“You sayin’ I went too far?”
“Look at that colt and tell me anyone in town isn’t going to want us hanging from a noose, Huck.”
He did. He stared at Stormy, all bundled up into himself, shivering, panting, making noises like a wing-back with a bad case of the feather flu.
He looked pathetic.
“Even if that’s true, and I ain’t saying it is, what would it matter any?”
“Why don’t I tell you what happens now?”
“Please do.”
“Well, firstly we all gotta take a nice long sabbatical.” Tucker took a pace forwards and leered at Huck. “We’ve got to get out of Dodge Junction. Tonight.”
“And why would we do that?”
“Because the only thing that’s going to keep us out of the gallows is if we aren’t here to answer for any of this.”
“Oh, right,” Huck was laughing as he spoke, shaking his head side to side and slapping the ground with his hooves. “We should all just leave home, right?”
“Yeah,”
Saddlesore, Tucker and Spiral all stood and silently glared at Huck, who found he was quickly losing whatever hold he’d had over them during the night. Fortunately for him, Huck was an avid gambler and always kept an ace up his sleeve.
What good was having a plan if you couldn’t see it through?
“You got a pretty girl back at your place, right, Tucker?” He asked and danced his tongue across his cut and calloused upper lip, then his lower one. “Yeah… She’s a darling little thing.”
Tucker took a step forward. The colts behind him stayed in place.
Huck was unphased.
“I reckon she’ll be awful heartbroken once you run off tonight.” he said, “I might just have to pop in and visit? Only makes sense that someone will have to offer a shoulder for her to cry on and tell her everything’s gonna be okay?”
Tucker took another two steps forward.
Huck took one of his own.
“Watch your mouth, Huck.”
“How long do you think it’ll be after you leave here before I’m giving her the wood?” he asked, “A month? A couple weeks? Hells, I bet I’ll be snorkel deep between her thighs the first night you’re not around.”
Tucker snarled and spat at the ground. When he lifted his hoof to move forwards, Huck had already figured out how to take him down and the colts behind him. A kick to the throat for Tucker, jabs to the temples of the other two. Quick and swift, all three would be on the ground before they even knew they’d just got their asses handed to them.
“You know what, Huck?” Tucker put his hoof down gently and sighed, “Do whatever you want.”
Tucker’s shoulders dropped. He bit his lower lip, shook his head and stepped backwards. He didn’t snarl, or spit, after that. He spun himself around and turned his back on Huck.
“If you were smart you’d split,” he said without ever looking back, “You’d get on the next train to Neighbraska, or, Canterlot, or wherever. But, if you want to stay here and get yourself killed over this bullshit, so be it.”
That was the last thing Tucker said to Huck that night.
It was quiet in the alley now and Huck’s head filled itself with worries, fears and doubts. Leaving Dodge Junction was never something he had planned to do, at least, not that night. He knew it was a consequence of his actions, just the same as he knew that staying meant facing a firing squad. Still, it seemed almost surreal to imagine himself stepping onto a train that night and facing the wild unknown of Equestria without somewhere to land safely.
A noise, half a whimper and half a cough from the throat of the pony who really was to blame for all of this brought him back to reality and Huck spun around to face the personification of his problems. Stormy had managed to flip himself onto his stomach in the time that nopony had spent paying him any attention, and from the way his hoof grabbed at the dirt paces before him, looked to be trying to make a getaway.
Huck had to laugh. Watching the colt try so hard and fail so much worse brought him right back up again. He skipped a few paces ahead of Stormy, raised his hoof and kicked it into his cheek.
“Stormy, Stormy, Stormy,” Huck giggled, pressing his hoof to Stormy’s side and flipping him onto his back, “I sure made a freak out of you.”
He took his hoof, touched it to Stormy’s cheek and tilted his head sideways, studying with a curious eye all the pain and suffering he’d done to him; the flesh around his left eye was peeled back and his right cheek — from the corner of his smile to just past his nose — was split open so badly that the pink of his gums and the white of his molars showed.
Huck’s smile fell, “You sure ain’t gonna be very handsome when they patch you up.”
For the faintest moment in time and space Hucklebuck stood and stared at Stormy. He didn’t speak, or even move his body. Huck did little more than look on at the colt, and all the damage done to him that night, and filled his mind with thoughts of what Stormy’s life was going to look like in the coming days/weeks/months/years. He would never recover. Not fully. Nothing about that colt who traded barbs and stood his ground against Huck would remain. An emergence would happen after tonight, in which Stormy would come out either stronger or weaker, but never as he was.
Hucklebuck almost felt bad for him.
Then he ran a hoof through his mane and stopped when he felt a nub that once had been his ear. Through virtue of being a farmer, Huck had suffered more than enough injuries working in fields and earned the experience of field dressing his wounds. First, he’d stopped the bleeding with pressure, then, he’d sterilized with whiskey to prevent infection. Tapper kept a mandatory first aid kid he’d used to wrap the wound. It wasn’t pretty. Then again, nothing about that night was either.
If he had any lingering sympathies for Stormy in him they left with the wad of spit he hacked from the back of his throat and onto the crown of Stormy’s head. His empathy died with the mad fit of giggles he got watching his saliva roll down Stormy’s face.
“I should go,” he said. Rhetoric as it was a one sided statement was, he prodded Stormy once more with the intention of unsettling the pony. “But, maybe we could do this again sometime?”
Huck left the alley the same way that Tucker had only with a skip in his step and his laughter bouncing off the wall of The Great Ball of Fire and into the ears of the colt he left laying in the dirt.
***
Time was a concept which Huck was more than familiar with. He understood that at certain points in his life he was expected at places, and that this meant he had to align his schedule with another’s using it. He understood that time flew with or without him and no one save for Celestia herself could do much to control it (and even that he doubted in private).
He understood time, and, he understood that it took more time to walk the long way back from The Great Ball of Fire, through the forest, past the train station and back around into town, than it did to just walk back the way he came in. This was a good thing. It meant he avoided running into Sheriff Steel, his deputy, or, even more likely, his cousin. By now it would be impossible for one of the three parties who he sought to avoid not to know what he’d done and avoidance seemed like his best option to deal with that knowledge.
It wasn’t his first choice, but it far outweighed the alternatives.
The sun was due in a matter of hours by the time Huck finally stepped foot into town again, and by then, all the lights in all the windows in Dodge Junction were long dead.
As a frontier town in a world filled with majestic emporiums like Canterlot, The Crystal Kingdom and even Manehattan, Dodge Junction was every bit as simple as it came and at night this feeling was hard to avoid. Not a lamp or candle was still alive in any Dodge Junction window by the time his hooves touch past the inviting arches into the town.
He moved slowly through town, taking sideways glances at homes and imagining the bodies sleeping inside. He passed the Turner place where he’d spent the summer of his fifteenth birthday babysitting the triplets for petty cash while he saved up a measurable fortune to buy a two year subscription of Filly Fanny Fun.
Better times were those.
He was a half block from Tucker’s home, cursing the name under his breath, when he noticed the last pale light in the western town. It flickered in the windowsill of his parents home, the place where he hung his hat and took his rest. Shadows cast against the blinds showed three ponies standing inside. A stetson rested on the hat-rack built into the support beams of the porch told him that his visitors that night were among Dodge Junction’s long-leg of the law. More specifically, Sheriff Steel and his deputy Nashville.
He passed by the house slowly, taking a sideways glance as he did. He caught an angry look from his father as he passed an open window, but he knew that the old bastard wouldn’t dare say a word about it. Along with being bitter and violent, his father was a boisterous drunk and Huck knew all the skeletons in his closet because of it. He knew where the metaphorical bodies were buried, he could see the bruises on his mother’s face every second or third day and he knew who was responsible for the broken windows of Mr. Plinkett’s Soda Shoppe.
He knew his father would keep his mouth shut. There was only one place left in Dodge Junction he could safely rest his head, and so Huck kept walking into the night.
***
“Gent?”
He felt a nudge to his shoulder and he turned to look at Clementine. They were both still on the steps outside of Doctor Toboggan’s and had been for nearly an hour. He’d been quiet and calm in that time, taken up with leaning against the railing and watching big black clouds float across the sky.
It almost made him feel better, but not really.
“I think,” She said, softly, “I think we should go home now”
“I can’t,” he grunted, “Huck’s still out there, so are the rest of them! Sheriff Steel hasn’t come back to make sure Stormy’s safe, and…”
She touched his shoulder again.
“You’re not in any shape to do much else for him or anyone else tonight, Gent,” she said, nuzzling her face against his side, “I promise you he’ll be okay.”
“How can you say that?” the older stallion sighed. “How am I supposed to go to my safe little home, hop into my warm bed, curl up in a blanket and just call it a night after everything that’s happened tonight? Huck, and whoever else he was with, are still out there, Clem...”
“And Sheriff Steel is going to find them, Gent.” insisted his sister, “That’s his job.”
“What if he doesn’t?” Gentle Strokes grunted, “I’m not going to give any of them a chance to get away with this, Clem.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What?”
“Gent… I know how much this hurts, but you’re not going to be any help to anyone getting in the sheriff’s way.”
“I’m not just going to leave him, Clem!”
She saw the hurt on her brother’s face again.
“I know you want to help, but…”
“But what, Clem?”
“There’s nothing else you can do for him tonight.”
“No,” Gentle Strokes squeaked, “It’s not right! I’m not going to walk away again…”
He groaned and dropped his body against the railing.
“This is my fault,” he sighed, “If I’d been there… If I’d found Duke sooner… if I’d just been there, I could have talked some sense into Huck. I could have stopped this from happening...”
“Gentle Strokes!”
It was damn near unheard of for his sister to take anything higher than a soft tone with her brother, which was why hearing her shout his name made him all the more aware that she did.
“This is not your fault! This is…” she pulled a hoof across her face, “This is the worst thing to happen in this town in a long, long time, but it is not your fault!”
“But,”
“No ‘buts’, Gent.” She snapped, “If you want to rant, and rage, and vent I won’t stop you. I know you have that in you, and I want you to let it all out. I do. But I won’t let you kill yourself over something you had nothing to do with! This is Huck’s fault. All of it! You didn’t do anything wrong and neither did Stormy.”
She took his face into her hooves and turned it towards her, “Do you understand me, Gent?”
Turning his eyes away from his sister’s, he nodded his head.
“I’m going to take you home now, okay?” She said, “We’re going to go home, you’re going to wake up tomorrow and everything will make sense again…”
“It won’t be like it was,” he huffed, “Even if they find Huck, even if they hang him by his throat for this, it won’t make any difference. And, Stormy… how am I supposed to look him the eye again after tonight?”
“I don’t know,” His sister sighed, “I don’t know him as well as you do, but he’d be wrong if he blamed you for any of this.”
“Why shouldn’t he?” Gentle Strokes snapped, “It’s my fault he’s here in the first place. It’s my fault I didn’t write back to him. It’s my fault that he ditched Camden to come here. It’s my fault that-”
She punched him on the shoulder. Hard.
“What did I just say?” She snapped, “You are not, repeat, not going to get sucked into that black hole. Do you understand!?”
He blinked his eyes, grumbled and then she punched him again.
“Gentle Strokes!” shouted Clementine, “What would Stormy want you to do? Huh? Do really think he’d want you to run around all night, half tired, half blood-thirsty, trying to find a pony who we both know isn’t stupid enough to let himself be found? Or, would he want to know that at least you were safe and sound and ready to see him in the morning when he woke up?”
“I…”
“I think you know what he’d want you to do?”
He didn’t like admitting it, but she was absolutely right. It didn’t make him happy thinking about abandoning Stormy for a second time that night. It wasn’t confidence inspiring to leave Stormy behind, either. Yet, he knew that Clementine wasn’t going to let up and that, if anything else, being home, with the family he had who weren’t responsible might help him take his mind off things.
Begrudgingly, he lifted himself off the railing and followed behind Clementine as she led the way back home.
***
Halfway between the dirt trail path he walked, and the steps to his home, Gentle Strokes stopped dead in his track and stared with squinted eyes at the figure restlessly pacing across the length of his front porch. She was a smaller pony -- thin in the way that mares were -- and though he couldn’t see her coat, he had no doubt in his mind it was his mother. What she was doing on the porch, and why she was smoking a cigarette (a hobby she hadn’t found only when distressed or, more rarely, soused) was what troubled him.
He carried himself forward, Clementine paces behind him, until he reached the steps and made out that the figure was indeed his mother, who was indeed smoking nervously. Her grip on the cigarette slipped more than once and her pacing was manic.
His hoof touched a loose floorboard (how were there so many of them around the house?) and her head snapped towards him.
“Gent,”
He couldn’t recall another time in his life when so many ponies had used the shortened version of his name as many times as had been that night, and, following the trend of a pony borderline whispering the first two syllables of his name, he braced himself for the follow up dump of information.
“Huck’s inside,” she said, taking a drag from the cigarette, “He’s... Goddess! He’s missing an ear, Gent!”
Good.
“He’s drunk as I’ve ever seen him and he said he wouldn’t leave until you got back. Your father tried to talk some sense into him, get him to turn himself in but he plopped down in the kitchen and started pouring himself a drink and…”
She took another drag from her cigarette.
“I’m scared and I don’t know what to do?”
“Go get Sheriff Steel,” Gentle Strokes said, “He’s either at Uncle Barrel’s place, or he’s at Doctor Toboggan’s. Bring him here.”
His mother stayed silent for a few seconds, then she nodded her head. “I don’t understand any of this,”
“Yeah,” was all Gentle Strokes said.
She stomped the cigarette out on the porch, lifted her head and made it down the stairs.
“Gent, please, promise me something?” she asked him when she approached, “Whatever you do, whatever Huck says… please don’t do anything about it until I bring Sheriff Steel back?”
Gentle Strokes stared at Clementine, his nostrils flared and his mouth turned upside down with a frown. “Take Clem with you,” he insisted.
“I mean it,” She said “I don’t know what’s been going on, all I know is what I’ve heard from you, and Drought, and just now from Huck, but you promise me right now that you won’t lift a hoof to hurt him?”
He said nothing.
“He’s still part of this family, Gent.”
Gentle Strokes pushed past her and walked through the front door. The lights had all been dimmed, though a bright light shone from the doorway to the living room. He could hear the clinking of glass on glass from the dining room.
He trotted into the room to find his cousin, seated at the head of the dinner table, half bottle of whiskey before him with a glass half empty clutched in his hoof. An empty glass and an ashtray with a lit cigarettes and half a dozen crushed ones sat beside the whiskey. His father sat beside him and when Gentle Strokes entered he stood up, gave him a soft look, said nothing and left the room.
Curious as it was, it was probably for the best.
“Gent,” Huck cheered, grinning and raising his glass, “We’ve got a lot to talk about, you and me. Why don’t you have a seat?”
Gentle Strokes did as he was told, telling himself that his non-committal half-promise to his mother was what was keeping Huck alive.
Huck tensed, his muscled flared and he raised his hoof to lift the bottle of Vagrant’s Choice. He poured brown liquor into the empty glass, set the bottle down then slid the glass to Gentle Strokes.
“Let’s talk,” he said.
Gentle Strokes lifted the glass and took a sip of whiskey.
“I’m sure it’s taking everythin’ that you got in you not to kick my teeth in right now, ain’t it?”
Gentle Strokes stared at the down at the floor, then up at the ceiling, then the walls, everywhere he could that wasn’t making eye contact with his cousin.
“I appreciate the restraint. Trust me.” Huck said.
He smiled, poured himself a glass and took a sip. All the while, Gentle Strokes watched his movements.
“Why?”
Huck raised his face from the table and stared, stupidly, towards Gentle Strokes. He was still smiling, though he did look confused on top of sedated and calm, “Huh?”
“I just want to know why you did it, Huck?” Gentle Strokes sighed, “I mean… you knew, right? I could see it all over your face at dinner, and I thought… Celestia, I thought we could talk about it. Just the two of us, and maybe you’d understand. But-”
“Shut your mouth!” Huck snapped, slamming his hoof on the table hard enough to shake the glasses on the walls around them. “I don’t want to hear you say one more word about this, you hear? If you say another word to the defense of that… that… repulsive little faggot!” his black, cracked lips drew up his face and showed off two rows of yellow stained teeth, “He got what was comin’ to him. Plain and simple.”
“You put him in the hospital, Huck!” Gentle Strokes screamed at his cousin, “What the hells is wrong with you?”
“With me?”
The look on Huck’s face was so dumbfounded that Gentle Strokes genuinely believed that he was confused. That none of this was part of an act, or the lead up to some kind of show of false sympathy for the sake of moving forwards.
Huck really didn’t get it.
Gentle Strokes didn’t know what exactly to do with that information.
“You’re the one who dragged that cock-sucker to our dinner table and tried to make it seem normal for him to be there, Gent,” Huck sighed and rubbed his temples, “Look ‘ere. I… know you think you’re this way, Gent. I really believe that you do. But, you’re not! You’re nothing like that… That...”
“Queer?”
“Yes!” Huck sighed, “This ain’t you, Gent! Can’t you see? He messed up your head! That whole school messed you up! B-b-but, we can fix this! We can fix you, Gent!”
Huck’s tone was panicked, wry and jittery. His eyes were wide and darted nervously around the room, looking, perhaps, for anyone in the room who would overhear their conversation.
“Fix…? Huck, you don’t get it! I like him! I chose to like him! I want to-”
“Shut. Up.” Huck screamed, “Shut up about it! I don’t want to hear it! Do you have any idea what I did for you tonight? The shit I put up with to keep that piece of shit’s mouth shut about you? You should be thanking me. Gent!”
“Thanking you?” Gent spat out, "You took the only thing I care about… the colt that I love, and broke him! And for what? What in the Seven Hells is wrong with you, you… psychopath!”
“Aww, poor little you!” Huck groaned, rolling his eyes, “Do you think any of this was easy for me?”
“For you!? Stormy!”
“Oh, he’s an asshole, Gent!” Huck grunted, “Truth is, I probably woulda put the boots to him even if he wasn’t a queeny little fag.”
“What?”
“Yeah, you heard me! He’s a spoiled little bitch. Do you think that… fruitcake is special? I mean, come on, Gent! You know him better than any of us and we could all see it; this faggy little spoiled brat from Manehattan, comin’ here to make us all look like a buncha backwood retards!”
“That’s… that doesn’t even make any sense, Huck!”
“Listen, you really don’t know what you’re talking about, Gent. Alright?” Huck paused and ran a hoof through his sweaty mane, “You need to hear my side of the story too.”
“Your side?”
“Yeah, my side,” Huck said, “This whole thing is all just a big misunderstanding-”
“-What, like, Stormy slipped and fell down a couple flights of stairs? You're gonna try and sell me that?”
“Don’t make me sound like an asshole, Gent,” Huck snapped, “Yeah we got into a little kerfuffle, and yeah he lost, but there ain’t no reason in Tartarus anyone else has to get hurt because of it.”
“A kerfuffle?” Gentle Strokes cocked his head sideways “He’s laying in a hospital bed right now and you want to call that a ‘kerfuffle’!? You stupid bastard!”
“Whoa, language!” Huck laughed, slapping the table with his hoof, rattling glasses and bottles “Let’s keep this civil, huh?”
“This is funny to you?”
“There’s a bit of humor in it, yeah,” Huck nodded. “Look on the bright side, Gent. At least that queer lives to suck another cock.”
Gentle Strokes snarled and his hooves struck the table hard enough to send splinters past the flesh and into his hooves. “Shut. Up. Now.”
“Let’s not turn this into something it doesn’t have to be, Gent.” Huck said, “I did what I did and I can own that, but now you have a choice to make. You can hate me for the rest of your life, and grow bitter about it, or you can accept it and move on.”
“You can’t seriously be asking me this?” Gentle Strokes gawked, “You really think I’d just let this fly?”
“Look, you don’t know shit about what happened, alright! He pushed me! He knew exactly what he was doing, throwing accusations around about you. Making me... us all look like a bunch of inbred hicks!”
“Oh, bullshit you did this for anyone else but yourself!”
“Hey, I gave him a chance! I told him he could get a free pass! I would have bought him a ticket, too!” Gent sighed, “Everything that happened, happened because of him running his filthy mouth about something he had no idea about.”
Gentle Strokes fidgeted in his seat.
“I know you… think you’re this way.” Huck’s eyes softened, “But, you’re not. You’re not gay, Gent. I know you’re confused…” he stared down at the floor, “But this isn’t who you are.”
Gentle Strokes opened his mouth to speak only to find nothing but a pitiful squeak come out.
“I had to do it, Gent, and you know why...” Huck cried, “I know you want to hate me now. I can see it on your face, but I did it for all the right reasons.”
The statement lingered in the air. Gentle Strokes cupped his glass of whiskey with both hooves and stared into the cup. He saw himself reflected in the glass; saw the way the sweat had turned his gold mane dirty blonde and slicked it to the left side of his head. He saw the coldness in his white irises and purple pupils.
“No,” he said, staring up at Huck, “No. I won’t accept that…”
“What?”
“You don’t get to do what you did… not for free.” He arched his shoulders forward and sat upright in the chair, “You don’t get to do walk away from this!”
Huck’s eyes fell into a slanted squint and a grin filled with malice and menace spread up his cheeks. “Oh?”
He leaned forward in the seat and poured himself another drink.
“Let me remind you of something, Gent,” He said, “Right now there aren’t too many ponies in this town who know about your little rainbow flag fetish. Three of them are heading to Celestia-Knows-Where around the nation and you’ll never see them again, so we can rule them out. There’s Drought, who’s too stupid to know his ass from his face, so he gets a pass-”
Huck’s grin spread higher.
“-There’s Stormy, who’ll most likely end up spending the rest of his life as a stuttering retard. So we can scratch him off the list. And then there’s you and me, Gent.”
“So?”
“Well, if you seem so gung-ho to defend the kid why don’t you tell your family why it is you want too? Huh? Why don’t we wake up the twins, grab your ma and pa, Clem too, and call a little family meeting? You can share all the intimate details of your friendship with Stormy? Tell ‘em how close you guys got to be?”
“Huck,”
“Nah, don’t ‘Huck’, me, Gent!” he snapped, “You can’t have it both ways! If you want to pretend to be a queer for the rest of your life, you can learn to live with the consequences! If you want to shit all over what this family means, turn us all into jokes because of your mistakes, then at least have the balls to follow through. Otherwise, shut up, get over it and don’t ever bring this up again.”
When Gentle Strokes said nothing Huck laughed at his face.
“You pissed on him,” Gentle Strokes said, mumbling the words, “You… took your dick out… aimed it at his face and… you peed on him.”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t be the first time,” Huck mused, smiling not maliciously but with a playfulness. “Hells, I bet out of all this foulness that’s the one thing he’ll look back on fondly.”
Gentle Strokes stared his cousin in his eyes; there was no mean spiritedness to him anymore, just a sincere jovial sense of joy that played across all his features. He was grinning, smiling, and his eyes were wide like saucers. He popped his shoulders out, stood up in the chair and…
...Gentle Strokes was halfway across the table, before he realized he was lunging at his cousin. Red. All he was seeing was a dim red that made him want to break everything Huck had left. Tear his other ear off, rip out his eyes, strangle him, kick, claw, bite, rip, slice and hurt him.
He knocked Huck over in the chair and the two fell to the floor in a clump. His hooves were wrapped tight around Huck’s chest, his teeth biting hard on the stump that had been and ear while he kicked his legs at everything soft, furry and fleshy on Huck that he could.
Huck was laughing like a maniac.
They rolled across the floor, stuck a chair which toppled over them and broke when it hit the ground. The house shook. Gentle Strokes wedged his lower legs between Huck’s upper ones, pressed his hooves into his chest and kicked hard. Huck became forcefully unattached from his cousin, slid across the ground and struck the wall with his back hard enough to crack the drywall.
He opened his eyes just in time to see Gentle Strokes barreling towards him, and with no time to do much to defend himself. Gentle Strokes’s kicked and his hoof struck his cheek. Huck’s head hit the wall and things in the room started to get hazy.
When Huck snapped his head back, he was still laughing. Cackling. His nose, flattened, bled down his face and into his mouth. His teeth -- which he flared at Gentle Strokes -- were stained red. He spit and a mouthful of his blood stained the white tiles of the checkerboard linoleum flooring.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” Gentle Strokes cursed, standing upright and shaking his limbs loose. “You didn’t have to do anything! You didn’t have to do any of this!”
“That’s enough!”
It was his father, roaring loud enough to shake the finer wine glasses and good cutlery on the shelves.
Gentle Strokes felt hooves grip him by the shoulders. He spun, twisting his body to escape while spitting curses at his cousin. There was nothing he could do. He was pulled away from Huck, spun around and then he was looking into the sad, scared faces of his family. His mom, Clementine, both of the twins, they all looked at him with puppy dog eyes, quivering jaws. One of the twins sniffed and wiped wetness out of his eyes.
Gentle Strokes fell onto his knees. He didn’t want to break, or moan, or whine, or make any noises to betray how he felt. Not in front of them. Not in front of his family. It took more strength than it did to sit across from Huck and not lift a hoof to stay calm, but he managed to keep his calm...
Huck sniffed and fresh blood rolled off his muzzle onto the floor.
“I’m sorry.” He said quietly.
All eyes in the room fell onto him. He sniffed again.
“I’m sorry for what I did. I… I can’t help myself sometimes, I have a lot of anger, and hatred, and… I’m just so sorry that I hurt your special little friend-”
“-Huck-” Clementine hissed,
“-No, no, let me finish.” He raised a hoof and grabbed his nose, trying to stop the bleeding, “If I only knew how much Stormy and Gent here care about each other, and how much Stormy means to Gent-”
Gentle Strokes glared at Huck.
His mother stared silently at him.
The twins stared at their mother.
“-Huck!-”
“-Lemme finish, Clem!” Huck snapped, “I know now that I shouldn’t have hurt anypony, especially one who means so much to you, Gent-”
Now his father was staring at him too.
“-See, what I didn’t know about Stormy until tonight was that he’s really fond of Gent, and, well, they’re both really, really close-”
His father’s eyes narrowed.
His mother bit her lower lip.
Gentle Strokes felt dead inside.
“That’s enough, Huck,” His father sighed, “I don’t think I want to hear what you have to say.”
“What!?” Huck grinned, “All I’m saying is that I’m sorry that Gent and Stormy are real close with each other.”
All eyes in the room fell onto him and he swallowed.
He knew from the moment he considered that maybe, just maybe, he could enjoy spending time with a colt the same way he did with mares, that this moment was coming and now that it seemed like it was here he suddenly wished he could trade places with Stormy.
Then he realized how much of an asshole that made him sound like.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Huck answered, “You ponies look at me like I’m Discord himself for what I did to that colt, only the thing is, he ain’t so innocent. He’s a stallion stuffing, cock sucking, faggot. Just ask Gent, he knows all about it!”
“I said that’s enough!” Gentle Strokes’ father roared and his hoof flew backwards across Huck’s face. “You watch your tongue and tone when you’re in my house talking to my family!”
“I’m your family too!” Huck shrieked, “I did this all for you ponies! Now you wanna play pin the blame on the martyr? Well, I did what I did and I ain’t ashamed of it!”
“He was our guest,” his father muttered, “And what you did was shameful worse than anything you’re accusing him of being.”
“Oh, boo-hoo!” Huck sneered, “Like y’all couldn’t tell that colt was a proper stallion stuffer.”
“What’s a stallion stu-” one of the twins began only to be cut off from a sharp look from the patriarch of the family. He shut his mouth and bowed his head to the ground.
“I said that’s enough, Huck.”
Gentle Strokes’s father stared down at the stallion and a frown creased his lips.
“You always were especially stupid,” he said, “You strut around like you’re Celestia’s gift to Equestria when all you really are is a little bit more clever than the ponies you keep company-”
“-You better check your tone, old timer-”
“-No.” He shook his head, “No, you know it and we always knew it. Your father — my wife’s sister’s husband — was nothin’ more than the town drunk, and he still is. You’re all a shameful lot, Huck. You, your father, his father-”
“-Shut up!-”
“-But even they wouldn’t have sunk so low.” He sighed, “You can try to run, to hide, the same way your father’s brother did when he killed a wing-back in a bar brawl. But Sheriff Steel will find you, or the Royal Guards, or you’ll end up dead in an alleyway, same as your uncle. I’m not gonna stop you walking out of that door, but whatever you do, don’t come back here.”
Huck stared around the room. He lifted himself off the ground, blew a snot bubble of mucus and blood onto the floor then spit on the ground.
“Buncha queers,” he muttered.
Gentle Strokes wanted to stop him but he knew his father was right. Self exile seemed his best option, carving a path through the forest in search of the next town over, and if he made it there would be no doubt a poster of his face in black and white would be hanging up in the sheriff’s office by then.
There were no trains to catch at this time of night. No friends to lean on. No family to support him.
Huck had nothing left.
It still didn’t feel right.
“You’re just gonna let him walk away?” he gawked to the entire room, hoping someone would stop Huck, or that he could will the energy to do so himself.
“It’s late, Gent,” His mother said “Sheriff Steel’s just down the way… He won’t leave Dodge Junction.”
She trailed off and something must have caught in her eye because she spent a few minutes wiping them, then sniffed, and nudged the twins on the shoulder.
“I think…”
She didn’t finish her thought. Instead, she led the twins out of the room and up the stairs to their beds. The lights to the master bedroom flicked on, then off, and just as quickly a door shut.
“Go to bed, Clem.” Her father insisted, “It’s late.”
“But,”
“Now.”
She nodded dufily and carried herself off the same route her mother had taken.
“Dad,”
Gentle Strokes reached a hoof to touch his father, but the older stallion brushed it away and shook his head.
“It’s late,” he mumbled, “And this has been a very long day.”
“I have to talk to you,” Gentle Strokes pleaded, “About what Huck said… about Stormy and I…”
His father shot him a look. One without any clear identifiable emotion. His brows were furrowed, his ears held back and his mouth shut tight.
“I’m going to bed.” His father announced, “I’d suggest you do the same. Or don’t…”
“But, dad…”
His father didn’t bother to answer, or even stare back, he picked himself up and when he left the room he flicked off the lights.
Gentle Strokes sat on the floor, alone, in a room without lights for a good long time, until he too picked up and carried himself up the stairs, down the hallway and through the door to his room. He flopped onto his bed on his back, stared up at the ceiling and in the dark tried to count the holes in the tiles on his ceiling until sleep would come.
Tomorrow was going to be a long day. He could feel it.
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Man, that was fucked up of Huck. Can't wait for the next chapter
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ily, bby.
Great chapter! Now what I want to know is when can we expect the next one?
Chapter 8931: Stormy Recovers.
Good chapter. Just try to update a bit more. =P
Ok... Huck. I hate Huck so unbelievably much. I am still thinking about what I would find appropriate as a punishment for someone who did something like this and I can't think of anything even though what I have in mind would put the inquisition to shame... And yes I still want to write something about him and it is going to be gruesome.
And now I'm done ruining everything.
3993493
Mmm, that validation. Tasty
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Nicely done, Guy. It'll still be thorny how things shake out on Huck in the end, but this is an excellent 'part two' to the last chapter's 'part one'.
Also:
Stormy.
Oh god I'm so angry.
Don't get me wrong, the story's great and I can't wait for the next chapter, but grah...
I think I need to break something.
For some reason, as Huck runs through in terror of the hooves about to be broken in his ass, I hear this song
[youtube=w6vKG0p7Jts]
Okay, I followed through with my decision to read this and I have to say. This story is captivating. I love the chemistry between Gent and Stormy, they are just too cute. Jag is pretty cool too. I hate Huck's guts, mostly because I know hundreds of guys just like him.
I can't wait until the next chapter, until then I'll be reading There's something about White Mane.
Dayum, reading this entire story up until here in a two-day stretch was totally worth it... Excellent work, good sir.
4181359
Thank you. Binge reading is the bees knees, I'm glad you chose this instead of something tasteless and shameful (like all my other work)
4181396
Tasteless is the best taste, if that makes any sense.
Honestly, I want Strokes to kill Huck.
Not even because of how much I hate Huck. (Entirely.)
I legitimately think that is the best path I can see for this story to take.
For Strokes to crack, and for Huck to die.
Ahhh... There it is.