Two Halves Make a Whole (Straight Furry Story)

3.3 - Moving Day

[Skye's POV]

We must've been there in the freezing, light snowfall for hours, never leaving each other's embrace. At some point or another, we had started walking, but my mind was too cluttered to have realized it.

I was leaning against Jax with my muzzle buried in the crook of his neck as tears fell from my eyes and froze on my cheeks. There was no point to be crying; it's not like my home life was worth sulking over. All that place did was make me doubt myself. It taught me that I was wrong and disgusting and that it was fine to abuse people but not fine to like a wolf. Of course I never tried to learn anything from that place, but I wasn't immortal to the slander and hate.

The whole walk was a blur. Jax would ask me something occasionally but I would only shake my head. We'd keep walking like that until we reached the door of his apartment. That's when I snapped out of it.

"Skye," Jax began to speak. He put a paw on my shoulder and the other around my waist, a sort of serious yet intimate treatment that grabbed my attention. His eyes stared deep into mine, as I finally looked up. I raised my eyebrows slightly from their furrowed position as I tried and failed to give a vocal response, only a slight pained crackle emerged from my vocal chords.

"I need you to tell me what happened when you went inside that house." He spoke every word softly with the utmost concern.

"I-I—" I tried to speak but nothing managed to come out.

"Here, let's head inside." He grabbed my hand loosely and guided me into his apartment, sitting me down while taking his extra layers of clothing off and helping me with mine. My cheeks' fur was all matted and distraught from the tears. Just thinking back on my dad and everything that happened made me want to cry again, but I still tried to hold it in. The claw marks over my right cheek and eye must've hurt, but compared to all the stuff I was still struggling to comprehend, I hadn't really given it any thought.

I was sitting on his living room couch as he called me over from the kitchen. "Skye? Can you come here for a minute?" He said, his soothing voice calming me down slightly.

I didn't try to speak and just shakily got up and walked over to him. When he was in view, he had his paw out with a glass of water and some bandages for my eye. "Drink this," he said, "it should calm you down a bit."

I couldn't ignore how much he cared for me in the silence that followed. As I drank that glass of water, I realized I couldn't loathe in my own self-doubt. I couldn't try and hold on to everything that I thought I used to care about when in reality, none of it was true. Jax was the person in my life that I could never let go of. He cared too much for me and was the best person I had ever come across. We matched so perfectly and sometimes I still couldn't believe we were actually together.

"Was that good?" He asked.

"Y-yeah," I said, clearing my somehow dry throat.

He grabbed my paw and said, "Let's sit down while I get this on your cheek."

I nodded as he gently poured the rubbing alcohol on my cheek. I winced as it stung the wound, but kept my composure when he started rubbing my paw with his thumb, my heart rate calming down again. He wiped it off with a paper towel and proceeded to apply a bandage to my cheek, most of the pain going away.

He shifted in my direction and began to speak, "Look, Skye, I'm really sorry—"

"No, please," I cut him off, "you don't have to apologize. It was my fault and I could've handled it better. It's just something that I have to deal with, and I don't want to drag you into it. You've helped me a lot and I don't want you to have to go through any of this."

He paused for a moment in—wait, disbelief?

"Skye, that is completely wrong."

All I could do was furrow my eyebrows, his tone getting a bit rude.

"It's just—" He exhaled and sighed heavily, rubbing his temples with his paw, "I know what it's like to have parents like yours, okay? I blamed their horrible behavior on myself because I thought it was all my fault that I wasn't living up to their expectations. I didn't know that any of what they wanted from me was completely out of line to anybody else, and it felt like whatever I did was wrong. It felt like I was just a bad kid whose parents expected more from him, and I could never meet those expectations because they were beyond reasonable. Whenever I would do something wrong, uh," he scratched the back of his head, avoiding eye contact and giving a small nervous laugh, "t-they would h-hit me...and they would call m-me a bunch of rude and, um, demeaning things."

He paused for at least half a minute, the silence becoming less and less comfortable so I began to speak, "Ja—"

"I always blamed myself for not being perfect. I just didn't know that everyone else didn't live like this. I thought that," he wiped his eyes, "I was worthless to them and I had nobody to blame but myself, and they told me everything wrong in the world was because of people I would grow up to be. And I believed them. For way too long. It's still hard to get that out of my mind to this day."

There was an ever longer silence this time. All I could do was stare at him as he looked down in shame. He laid back on the couch covering his eyes with his paws and groaning.

"Skye," he whispered, "please don't ever think it was your fault. You'll just end up hating yourself and harming yourself and giving your parents the satisfaction they don't deserve. Nothing good will happen from it. I can't fix anything now because of, well, you know why," he paused, "but if you want to, you can at least try. I'm not saying you have to, but it wouldn't hurt to."

I lied back down next to him, cuddling up against his side, his arm wrapping around my shoulders. He pulled me close to him, his other arm hugging me tightly. Our heads were on each other's shoulders as he kissed my cheek. Sadly, he let go and went back to cuddling me from the side.

I laid my head on his lap as he played with my hair. We were there for half an hour until he drifted off to sleep, eventually leaning into me, still on his lap. I could feel myself start to do the same, my eyelids trying to close. I didn't resist it as we both fell asleep there on a Saturday afternoon, not wishing I was anywhere else.

Okay, good news, I'm gonna continue this story, but updates won't be super often. Sorryyyy

~ JaxX