A Spine-Tingling Story - TDG Fanfic

How I Met Your Father

Around the moment Ryan had decided to leave the previous day, he remembered feeling like the very air around him was dense with awkwardness and discomfort, and the not-so-subtle rumours he'd overheard being exchanged by the others in the kitchen had done nothing to help this.

The instant he stepped back into the house, he found that absolutely nothing had changed. Well, the others were mostly minding their own business at first, but all eyes were on him the second they noticed he was back. The feeling that gathered around his defective spine was disturbingly similar to that one that lingered around him through his time at school since revealing his illness, when the other kids would still occasionally whisper behind his back and even the teachers would give him pitying looks when they thought he wouldn't notice. The thought of punching them was sorely tempting - or at least, it would've been if he still had the function and energy to do so.

He felt the small, cold weight of the spoon theory necklace Finley had given him resting on his chest. The chain and charm were both currently hidden under his crimson shirt collar, but with the thought of the other boy in mind, Ryan pressed forward through the smog of tension, feeling like a knife cutting through cold butter.

"Your father, he was ... where do even I start?" Karen's voice reached his ears from just off to the side.

"Tell me how you met," Chloe's voice replied.

With that, Ryan sharply turned and made his way towards Chloe's room, where he could detect their voices were coming from.

"Ryan, don't-" Mike tried to protest but Ryan had reached the door and invited himself in before he could stop him. His mother and sister immediately stopped talking and turned their stares to him as he entered.

All this staring was getting on his nerves. So what better than to give them a taste of their own medicine? Ryan stared intensely back at them, unblinking, as he walked as steadily as was possible for a paraparetic with chronic fatigue and sat down firmly on Chloe's bed, where the two of them currently were. "Go on," he said simply, not breaking his gaze and making it clear he wasn't leaving. Mike took the moment as his own cue to leave.

"A-alright," Karen said, unsurely, before turning her attention back to Chloe, effectively blanking Ryan. "We met at uni, many years ago, when we were both on the same architecture course. I didn't think much of him at first. He didn't really seem to stand out - he was quiet, preferring to keep to himself a lot of the time. But then by chance, we ended up sat next to each other in class, we started talking and ... he really was something," she said, with a small smile. "It was like he had so much to say, so many stories to tell, and he just needed an outlet for all that. He told me about everything from his cousins to his cats to how he preferred being called Connor over Constantine."

"Wait, you two did architecture? You told me yesterday that he was a policeman," Chloe pointed out.

"Ah, now there's a story I do remember," Karen continued. "He was helping me back home after we'd stayed out late and I'd had just one glass too many" - Ryan had to physically bite his tongue to keep himself from making a callous remark regarding her soon-to-be even worse drinking habits - "when we came across an incident in the alleyway involving two very rough-looking men intimidating a teenage boy. Lord knows what they were planning to do to him," she shuddered, "but for Connor, there was no two ways about it. He made sure I was safe leaning against the wall and stepped in to help that kid before I or those men knew what was going on. Within minutes, he had them both subdued and was calling the police on the nearest pay phone faster than I've ever seen anyone else operate a pay phone. I was still too out of sorts to be of much use, but he still took it upon himself to comfort that poor terrified kid until the police arrived. Apparently one officer said that he'd make a fine copper, and that was that for him. Within a month, he'd dropped architecture, applied to the local police force and was patrolling around in uniform*."