#yes i could call them from a landline but it’s the principle of the fucking thing. just CANCEL IT online. i have sent no fewer than four

[fingertipsmp3]

I feel like a character in a Herman Melville short story. Except that he never writes women so that’s not even accurate

[sassoffrass]

All the Little Things

Thank you @hazel3017  for the inspiration for this! She wrote a lovely, heartbreaking, ficlet that stuck with me. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but I'm 1.1K into the second chapter and going strong! You can also find this on Ao3.

When Sidney is fifteen he takes a year off from hockey to have a baby.

He’s fifteen, boarding at Shattuck and is playing great hockey. Next fall he’ll be playing in the QMJHL, scouts are coming to some his games, a few even from the NHL.  His sophomore season is set to start up in just a few weeks; it’ll be his second season at Shattuck.  He won’t be playing.

He’ll be four and a half months pregnant with swollen ankles and a story for the media about getting mono from one of his summer hockey camps. In December they’ll come up with another story. Maybe he’ll have a concussion, or had broken his ankle. Anything to keep him off the ice, and away from cameras.

The story is enough to keep everyone off his back. He withdrawals from Shattuck after just a month his doctors citing mono, and spends the fall, and winter sequestered in his house.  He’s back at Shattuck in the spring just in time for playoffs. He hasn’t played a game of hockey since September, and still makes first line.

He doesn’t tell anyone about the baby outside of his parents, Taylor, and his doctors.  The other father doesn’t know.

When Sidney is fifteen he goes first in the draft to Rimouski, even though he only played a handful of games all year.

When Sidney is sixteen he is living in Québec playing some of the best hockey the QMJHL has ever seen and doesn’t breathe a word to anyone about the little girl living with his parents.

_/\_ Shattuck - Saint Mary’s, September 2002

He’s been throwing up every day this week. His head aches and his stomach is sore. Sidney curses the cafeteria food that gave him food poisoning. He is never eating their meatloaf again.

His stomach lurches again and he bolts for the ensuite for the second time this morning.

“Dude. Are you okay?” Jack asks from the doorway. Sidney would appreciate his concern a little more if he wasn’t throwing up the little Gatorade that he had sipped on since getting up.

Jack had been surprisingly undisturbed by Sidney’s daily worship of the toilet, but now on day 4 of the pilgrimage he was ready to call their coach and the school nurse.

“I’m fine, just something I ate.”

Jack snorted, “Yeah okay. I’d believe that if it was only one day, but it’s been almost a week. You need to go to the nurse before you get the entire team sick.”

Sidney glares at Jack; he would honestly rather make small talk with the baseball team then go to the nurse right now. He doesn't want to be poked and prodded and be told by the coach that he's scratched from the next few preseason scrimmages. They are so close to the beginning of the season.

Another wave of nausea rolls through him. Fuck it. The nurse sounds amazing.

Sidney honestly feels better by the time he showers, changes into clean sweats, and makes his way to the nurse’s office. Of course, he felt the same way all week but that hadn't stopped him from getting sick each morning.

The nurse gives him a clip board of paperwork to fill out, things like how often he's been sick, rather embarrassing questions about his medical history, and if he's on any medications or has any injuries. By the time he's finished filling it out he's freezing wondering why nurse’s offices are so cold.

"Sidney?" The nurse confirms as she enters the room, "I hear you're feeling a little sick?"

"Um, yeah. I've been throw up every morning this week. I think I ate something bad in the cafeteria. I’ve been really tired too."

The nurse hums, "Well, let me look over your paperwork and see if we can figure out what's going on. Usually food poisoning only lasts 24-48 hours, anything beyond that usually indicates something else is wrong."

Sidney tries not to fidget while he waits, he hates going to the hospital. He's been playing hockey since he was three, injuries are normal, but mostly he just goes to the trainers to get ice packs or finger splints, generally he's been healthy his entire life.

"Sidney, I’m sorry I have to ask this, but are you sexually active?"

He jerks his head up, "I- yes." He can feel his cheeks getting warm.

"Have you been sexually active in the last few months?"

He knows his face is like a tomato, "Yes. Why?"

The nurse is giving him a look that he can't place, a crossover between pity and resignation, "The symptoms that you've described on your paperwork and to me, makes me believe that there is a possibility that you’re pregnant."

The world takes a sharp shift the left. Pregnant. He wants to laugh, to deny, to say that of course that's not a possibility. But…

It is. He's never been tested for the carrier gene, most Catholics opt out, and his parents never thought to get test done. He swallows around the lump in his throat.

"-dey? Sidney?"

"I- it's- it's a possibility. Um."

The look he's getting is definitely pity now, "Let me get you a test. You can take it in the bathroom across the hall. Have you been using protection?"

He had been. The fumbling, messy, secret, desperate sex he's been having had always happened with mouths and hands, and the few they went any further they were careful. Except. Except the condom had broken a little the last time. Not a lot, but enough that it had leaked when they were done and tying it off, tossing it into the trash.

He feels sick again, "It broke. Once."

He's handed a box marked 'pregnancy test' and directed to the single person bathroom across the nurses office. Sidney feels cold all over when he's back in the office, staring at the stick as the little display slowly turns from blank into a plus sign.

"We'll have to call your parents. You're under 18, so we have to inform them about this. We’ll have to talk with the principle as well.”

Sidney doesn't cry. Not when he promises the nurse that he'll call his parents tonight so they don't get the news from the principle. Not when he lies through his teeth to Jack, claiming the stomach flu. Not when he stares at his hockey sticks propped up against his side of the room.

Sidney's hands shake as he dials his parents’ landline from the phone in his and Jack's room.

"Sidney? We weren't expecting you to call today! How have you been honey?" His mom answers.

"Mom-" his voice breaks, "Can you get dad? There's something I need to talk to you about."

"Is everything okay Sidney? Are you hurt?" His dad asks once they've turned the phone to speaker.

Sidney doesn’t cry as he tells them. He doesn’t know what to feel. _/\_ His dad goes with him to the doctor appointment.  Sidney feels numb by then.

Sidney is 13 weeks pregnant, and the doctor wants to know how he didn’t notice that he was gaining weight, didn’t notice his waist thickening. How could he not notice the beginnings of swollen ankles and fully body soreness.  He doesn’t say anything as Troy explains about hockey, how in the summer and pre-season players regularly gain 30-40 pounds in muscle mass.  Weight gain is to be expected, and hockey is a contact sport. Sidney doesn’t remember the last time he wasn’t sore somewhere.

He’s given options and almost chooses the easy way, and probably the smart way. He could get an abortion, go back to school, and keep playing hockey.  At 13 weeks he’s at the end of the legal time frame for an abortion.

He could let the baby grow, and give it up for adoption. That’s another choice. Sidney knows that he could never do that. Spend months with his baby growing and then say goodbye.

His dad holds his hand and tells him that he could keep the baby, that he could take a year off. That his mother and he would help Sidney.  Sidney doesn’t know if he wants a baby, he knows that he definitely doesn’t want to stop playing hockey.

His feet are strapped into stirrups for the abortion when he changes his mind. He looks at the ultrasound however, and even though the doctor says he won’t feel the baby for another few weeks he feels something.  He cries then. _/\_ He goes home. He cries some more. He listens to his parents explain to Taylor that Sidney is pregnant and what that means.

He texts teammates from Shattuck, complaining about being sick, about being out for the first part of the season.

Jack texts him constantly, the first hundred texts lamenting about Sidney missing out on hockey, on how he better not have gotten Jack sick. He complains about his new roommate. Apparently the new roomie is a baseball player.

Sidney doesn’t tell him the truth.

In February, six months after his withdrawal from Shattuck, the longest stretch he has gone without playing hockey since he was a toddler, Sidney goes to the hospital.

He has a baby.