Arc II, Part II
"I can't believe the others wanted to wait! I mean, it's a perfect time for ice cream, it's hot and stuff."
Spring made a non-committed hum of agreement, his hands twitching slightly as he walked. He wasn't used to not having a sketchbook or pencil with him. The bear had managed to convince him to relinquish the sketchbook over to the van, and now the two were walking- alone- to the ice cream shop. For some reason the others decided they weren't ready for ice cream and sent the two golden creatures along by themselves. Admittedly, the rabbit didn't mind, but Goldie was talking as though they'd been thrown under a bus. It was amusing... for the first minute or so.
"Oh well, at least I don't have to pay for Alfred's ice cream. He likes the worst flavors, you know? He likes tapioca. Tapioca!"
The rabbit's gaze wandered to the buildings around them. It wasn't the first or even the second time he'd walked down that street, and it certainly wouldn't be his last. During the school year, downtown was one of his favourite weekend haunts. Specifically the dessert cafe, though he wouldn't mention that; he didn't want to be known as the "easter bunny" again.
"Foxy wants rum flavoured ice cream, but nowhere around here sells it so he's always disappointed, so eh, whatever on him, but geez... Spring, are you even listening? Spring?"
A snapping sound caught the rabbit's attention, and he looked back at Goldie. "Hm?"
"You weren't even listening to me," Goldie pouted.
"I was listening. Something about tapioca?"
"That was ages ago, Spring."
Spring just shrugged. "Sorry. Your ranting sort of lost me along the way." He turned his attention to the dessert cafe and headed inside, Goldie following him. "I mean, I think tapioca is fine-"
"Durrell!" a voice interrupted, and Spring silently cursed his luck. The man behind the counter gave him a grin. "Let me guess, chocomint ice cream cone, two scoops?"
The rabbit pointedly ignored Goldie's amused stare. "Yeah... And really, please don't call me Durrell..."
"Coming right up, Durrell! What's your friend there want?"
Spring's ear twitched and flattened in aggravation at being ignored. "Um," Goldie started, "Just a strawberry cone I guess. Two scoops," he added with a grin at Spring, who glared briefly back. There was no anger in the glare, though, and his twitching ear ruined the effect. Seriously, how could anyone take a twitching ear seriously?
After a few seconds, Spring sighed and sat down in a chair to wait for the ice cream cones to be made. Goldie glanced around, noticing the place was surprisingly empty for a hot summer day when classes at the local college were cancelled. There were a few tables scattered here and there, a few booths, a shelf full of knick knacks against one wall, and a clear wall was painted with a mural of farm fields. It was surprisingly homely. After making note of everything in the dessert cafe, he turned his attention to Spring. "So... he calls you Durrell?"
"I wish he wouldn't," Spring muttered, lightly tugging on his longer ear as he glanced away from the bear. He added, "He's a lot like you, actually. Loud, stubborn, overbearing and refuses to call me by my preferred name."
"To be fair your preferred name sounds a hell of a lot meaner than the nickname my classmates gave me," Goldie pointed out, ignoring the most-likely unintentional pun.
"Yet you still kept half of it."
"And I call you half of your preferred name." He paused and frowned slightly in thought. "Now that I think about it... where exactly did the "Spring" in that come from anyway?"
Spring's face immediately flushed red and he mumbled something under his breath, turning his gaze away slightly. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that," Goldie told him, leaning in slightly and twitching his ears, trying his best to hear the rabbit.
"Spring is my middle name," Spring repeated a bit louder, face heating up a little more. "Durrell Spring Franks. D-don't ask, my mom, um, she... well... yeah... apparently people started calling me by my middle name and it stuck..."
"But then they stuck the word "trap" on there," Goldie surmised. Spring just gave a noncommittal shrug in response. "Therefore, I'm perfectly within my right to call you Spring. Besides, you gave me permission when I asked yesterday."
Before the rabbit could respond, the man behind the counter called, "Chocomint and strawberry!" Spring took advantage of this to leap up from his seat and went to the counter, where he pulled his wallet out and handed the money over to the guy behind the counter, before Goldie could even register the fact that the ice cream was ready. He watched, rather startled at how fast the rabbit had moved. The rabbit muttered something to the man behind the counter before taking the cones from him, going over to Goldie and holding his strawberry cone out to him.
Goldie looked at his new friend and took the cone from him with a "thanks," but he was thinking about what he had just seen. It wasn't a big establishment, so it wasn't too hard to see the rabbit had handed a ten over the counter, and Goldie knew for certain two ice cream cones did not equal ten dollars.
He also noticed Spring didn't take his change.
However, he didn't mention this observation out loud, instead following Spring back outside. "So, uh, chocomint?"
"I like it," Spring defended lamely. Goldie chuckled a bit.
"Hey, I'm not criticizing. I enjoy chocomint too, just usually not in a cone," Goldie told him, licking his own strawberry ice cream.
"Then you're missing out," Spring shot back with a small, almost unsure smile. He clearly wasn't used to interacting with people on a friendly level.
Had it been one of his brothers or even Bonnie or Foxy, Goldie would have teasingly asked for a bite and then kept up the teasing. But this wasn't one of his brothers or close friends; this was someone he hardly knew, someone who didn't know him well enough to even actually have regular physical contact.
Instead, he just said, "I'll just have to get it next time then."
"I'll keep that in mind."
The golden duo fell into silence as they walked down the sidewalk. It wasn't difficult, keeping pace with the rabbit, seeing as the rabbit wasn't actually as tall as he looked the first time Goldie saw him. That, though, brought another thought to mind.
"Your ears tricked me the first time I saw you, you know."
Spring blinked and looked over at him, his brow scrunching up in confusion. "Huh?"
"You have really tall ears," Goldie elaborated, gesturing with his hands towards said ears. "They make you look taller than you actually are."
"Are you calling me short?"
"Huh? Nah," Goldie laughed, taking another lick of his melting ice cream. "You're still tall. Just I thought you were taller when I first saw you. But not including your ears, I'm like an entire two inches taller..."
"The first time you saw me I was sitting." Goldie winced slightly at that. He had forgotten that.
"Er… well… outside of that…" he tried, but the look on Spring's face showed he didn't buy it.
Spring rolled his eyes slightly after a moment or two, and Goldie had a feeling he had just failed some kind of test. "I might not seem like it but I'm rather observant when I want to be. I know you saw me at the bookstore the day before classes started, you can stop beating around that bush."
The bear's face flushed, embarrassed to have been so easily caught. Yeah… he totally failed that test. "Wait, so you knew before finding out that I was your roommate that-"
"You were scared of me?" Spring finished with a slight shrug, glancing aside. He either didn't notice or completely ignored Goldie wincing again. "It's not rare, you know. I know at first glance I'm a bit… intimidating." The rabbit seemed to be choosing his words carefully, as though he wasn't wanting to sound too self-deprecating. "It took the other art students a few days before even acknowledging me, last year. Appearance is… it means a lot in this society. I've known that for as long as I can remember."
Goldie frowned a bit. "So you do have other friends, right? The other art students?"
"I have a few, but I don't really spend time with them outside of class. They have their other friends, after all," he answered with another shrug, and when Goldie actually looked at him he could see that the rabbit honestly didn't care about it. He could only assume the rabbit wasn't close to his art friends. "The only people I really talk to are the people working on the backdrops with me, and that's normally only when we're, well, working."
"Who are they?" he asked curiously, wondering who actually knew the rabbit and if he knew him.
"The guy in the other room- not your brother, obviously, but Marion Strings," the rabbit told him. "He's on one of the backdrops, we work on it in a room connected to the auditorium around eight every Tuesday and Thursday evening…"
"After the sun's set?"
"It works best with his schedule and I don't mind. I like night. There are others, too… a girl named Sarah, she's a human, works on that backdrop with us and on another with me and a dog named Dug… yeah… and I work on the third with two of the art teachers and Sally-Anne, it's the biggest backdrop so needs more people…"
"I literally recognized none of those names, you know, except my brother's roommate's."
"I know. But you're a music student, that's the be expected."
Goldie glanced up at the sky, frowning slightly in thought. "We totally got off topic, you know."
"Oh yes, we were talking about my ears. And that they somehow make me seem taller, which I don't quite understand considering…" Goldie looked over at the rabbit in time to see his hand brush against the ear with the severed top. Goldie continued frowning, watching as the rabbit's green eyes flicked to the road and back in front of him.
"Hey, uh… do you.. nevermind," Goldie mumbled, looking ahead again to avoid the look the rabbit gave him. He could practically feel the deadpan expression on the face's rabbit as the insensitive question hung in the air between them, despite his attempt to backtrack it.
"You were about to ask if I mind if you ask what happened, weren't you." It wasn't a question. Apparently he got the question a lot, and Goldie winced at how normal it sounded.
"Sorry, I don't want to be insensitive or anything. You don't need to answer that, that was just me being stupid." The two continued on in a relatively uncomfortable silence. Neither spoke again until the park was in sight.
"It's not a sensitive topic for me," Spring finally told him. "The simplest answer is I don't know what happened. Not really, anyway."
"What do you mean you don't remember?" Goldie looked at him, brows scrunching together and absentmindedly licking his ice cream.
"It's just a blank space," the rabbit explained, staring at his own ice cream. He paused to lick away melted ice cream trying to escape over the edge of the cone. "I just… don't know. My parents told me it was a car wreck when my godfather was driving my brother and I to something like… I don't even know, I think it was a concert. Or some festival." He shrugged, as if saying he didn't really care about the details. For some reason, despite the fact that the rabbit honestly didn't seem to care about his lack of real friends, Goldie got the impression that not knowing what happened to him… that was bothering him. Goldie was sure of it. "All I know is one day I was fine, and the next I wasn't. I don't know the details."
Goldie frowned in thought, noting that meant his parents weren't killed in the accident that gave him his scars. But what about his brother and godfather? "What about the people in the car with you? Are they alright?"
"They survived, if that's what you mean. I got the worst of it, and my godfather came out relatively unscathed. Apparently, anyway."
"Were you wearing a seatbelt?" Spring gave him the most confused look that Goldie had ever seen on his face. "Well, it's just, when I was going to put the car in reverse you just looked like you would hate me forever if I dared to start driving without a seatbelt on."
"I don't know any details," Spring repeated, a little slower this time and enunciating each word. "If I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, I don't remember. All I know is it's stupid to drive somewhere without a seatbelt on."
Goldie couldn't help but flush a bit in embarrassment, and he gave the golden rabbit a sheepish grin. "Sorry."
"It's fine."
The two stopped talking as they reached the park again and walked over to the group of friends, all messing around by the river. Foxy spotted them first and gave a wide grin. "Strawberry, really? So boring!"
The bear pouted and stuck his tongue out. "Sorry, they don't have rum flavor," he remarked snidely. "But hey, I found out Spring has a sweet tooth."
"I do not…!" Spring immediately protested. "I just know how to enjoy desserts, unlike someone whose ice cream is getting all over their hand."
The others laughed as Goldie looked down at his ice cream cone to see it melting all over his right hand. He briefly wondered just how long Spring had waited to tell him about that. "Agh! Dammit!" he cursed, switching the cone to his left hand as if it would help. "This is when having thick fur is so uncool."
"Please tell me you didn't say that on purpose…"
Goldie blinked and looked at the golden rabbit, ignoring the snickers (and a guffaw) from the others. "Say what on purpose?"
"Oh thank god," Bonnie laughed. "That woulda been so lame if you said that on purpose."
"Said what?"
"And then we'd never let him live it down," Bonsai added with a grin towards his brother.
"Guys, what did I say?!"
The others continued ignoring Goldie, instead teasing him with his confusion. Finally, Goldie turned to his fellow golden creature, who was surprisingly still standing beside him with a small, amused smile on his face. "What did I say?"
"Uncool," was all the rabbit said, and after a few moments Goldie smacked his hand to his face.
That was a mistake. He yelped as the melted ice cream on his hand immediately clung to the fur on his forehead, which in turn caused the others to completely break down into laughter; Foxy, of course, had to do the whole point, laugh, and fall on the ground schtick, the dramatic vulpine… Goldie pouted and said, "It's not funny, guys," as his cheeks flushed red in embarrassment.
When Goldie caught sight of Spring's expression, though, he decided the embarrassment was well worth it.
The rabbit was actually laughing- not nearly as loudly as the others, but his mouth was turned up in a smile and his lips were parted, just barely showing the pearly-whites underneath. There was a crinkle at the edges of his eyes that, with enough time, would leave a noticeable "laugh line," and just barely noticeable below the louder laughter of Goldie's long-time friends was the softer, quieter laugh that the rabbit produce.
It was a nice expression and a nice laugh, Goldie decided, and it felt nice that he had elicited such a soft, almost adorable reaction from the rabbit. He wanted to see it more often, even.
"By the way, switching hands doesn't change the fact your ice cream is melting."
"Oh for the love of…!"
When they arrived back at campus an hour later, Alfred followed Goldie and Spring to their room in order to grab his bookbag from Goldie's bed. Spring didn't really complain, although Goldie got the impression that he didn't like the thought of someone else in the room.
Spring sat down at his desk, opening one of the drawers as he did and pulling out a table-top easel, and Goldie dropped down on his bed and leered at Alfred, leaning against his youngest brother's bag.
"I claim this bag now," he said with a laugh, watching Alfred huff.
"We're not twelve, Goldie, hand me the bag or I'm stealing that sheet music you left in the commons yesterday."
"Woah, I left sheet music in the common room?" Goldie immediately sat up, frowning.
"Yeah, I found it this morning on the coffee table," Alfred told him. "Something about birds-?"
A sudden squeak interrupted the brothers, and Goldie looked over at Spring as the rabbit sat up from in his chair, turning around to look at the bears.
"Th-that's mine…!" the rabbit stuttered, looking both embarrassed and horrified. "I-is it still in the common room?"
Alfred stared at Spring, his brows raised in surprise. "Um, yeah, it's on the coffee table." The rabbit leapt up and went to the common room, and Alfred turned to Goldie. He quietly asked, "Why is a studio art student working on sheet music?"
Goldie glanced at the door and saw the rabbit through the crack, ruffling through the papers that had been carelessly left there- either by Spring or by Marion Strings, Alfred wasn't sure, but he knew it wasn't his or Alfred's mess. He gestured for Alfred to come closer, not wanting the rabbit's sharp hearing to pick up their words.
When Alfred was close enough that Goldie felt it was safe, he told him, "I found out yesterday that he's from a family of musicians. Granted, I didn't know that until I talked to him, but he probably knows how to read and write music. Maybe it's a hobby."
He didn't feel right revealing that the rabbit had a guitar. It was one thing sharing something the rabbit had actually told him, but revealing something he knew because he was snooping around? Goldie wasn't that kind of person.
Then the rabbit entered the room, wincing a bit as his shin smacked against Goldie's music stand. 'Note to self; move that before the rabbit gets himself killed.'
Spring was holding several pages in his hand, much like he had his sketchbooks. He went back to his desk and dropped the pages there, refusing to look at the brothers as he dropped down into his seat. Goldie noticed him subtly rub shin where the music stand hit him. Alfred noticed, too.
"Goldie," Alfred growled. "You're still leaving your stand in front of the door?"
"It's not in front of the door, it's beside the door," Goldie retorted, although it wasn't a very good argument. It was in the doorway, and anyone moving too fast without paying attention would hit it.
Alfred sighed and shook his head. Then he reached around Goldie, snagged his bookbag, and gave a triumphant grin as he ran out the door, narrowly avoiding the music stand. Goldie blinked owlishly at the place Alfred has been standing. Since when had the bear been able to move so fast?
"He's right, you know, you really should move that stand," Spring spoke up from his desk, though he didn't turn his gaze towards the bear. Instead he focused on the empty sketchbook page, his pencil poised to draw. However, he made no move to actually draw.
"I know," he admitted sheepishly. "It just keeps slipping my mind after I finish practicing. It's like… well… you have sketchbooks literally everywhere on your side of the room."
"But no one's going to trip over my sketchbooks," he pointed out, finally glancing over from the still empty page. "And I'm the only one over here."
Goldie raised a brow before standing up and walking over to Spring's side of the room. "And now you aren't."
The rabbit turned to face him, looking both confused and amused. "Brat." Goldie grinned. He was tempted to flop down on the other's bed, but he knew better than that. That was definitely crossing that invisible boundary.
Well, as if he hadn't already crossed it. But still.
Something caught Goldie's eye and he just stared at it. He was silent for a moment as Spring gave him a confused look, and then he said, "Did you really stack sketchbooks up under your desk?"
"You just noticed?" Goldie stared at Spring. "You're not very observant, huh? Those have been there for two weeks."
"What if you kick them? Like I said earlier, you're not exactly short. Hell, you're not even average height, don't you need that leg room?"
The rabbit looked highly amused as Goldie tried to figure him out. The rabbit just watched him expectantly, as though waiting for something, and didn't say a word in response to Goldie's question. It took Goldie a moment more to notice Spring's legs were actually crossed at the ankles, underneath his chair, looping around the swivel chair's single leg.
"... Oh."
"I find this more comfortable," Spring told him, looking back at his sketchbook.
"How many sketchbooks do you have?" Goldie asked curiously, more to change the subject than wanting to know, and peered over Spring's shoulder. "And how long have you been drawing anyway?"
"I don't know and since I was sixteen," Spring answered the questions respectively. "I have a lot of sketchbooks… I have more at home, though… most of them are filled with incomplete sketches and general ideas, though."
"Since you were sixteen?" Goldie blinked, wondering just how long that had been. He did remember Spring mentioning that he had waited a few years before starting college… "How old are you now?"
"Twenty-one. I graduated high school when I was seventeen, if you're wondering."
"Huh. You don't look twenty-one."
"Thanks, I guess. Unless guys are supposed to look older, then oh darn, I can't really bring myself to care." Goldie snorted a bit at that response, watching as Spring began randomly sketching something. He wasn't sure what it was, since it was only just started, but he was definitely curious. Spring didn't tell him to back off, so he stayed there, watching over the rabbit's shoulder.
"I don't really care either. You're old enough to buy alcohol."
"Your point?"
"No point, just saying. All of my friends are around the same age as me. That is, we're all eighteen or nineteen."
"You went to school together," Spring pointed out. "I didn't even attend the same school as you, less go to school with you."
Goldie shrugged. "How do you know we didn't attend the same school?"
"Your van's tag says Cayden, that's two hours away." Goldie blinked, surprised that Spring had noticed such a small detail. He dismissed it, though; as an artist it was his job to watch for details, after all.
"Alright, point. So where are you from?" Goldie considered this for a moment. "Actually, how do you get here? Do you have a car?"
"Of course I have a car," Spring laughed a bit, as though the question was ridiculous. "You just haven't seen it, it's in the norther campus parking lot. And I'm from Harper."
Goldie raised a brow. "Harper? That's across the southern border by… what, forty, fifty miles?"
"Thirty three. Wrong side of forty there."
"So you live at least four hours away. And you're paying out of state tuition then."
"So?"
"Um…" Goldie trailed off, staring at the rabbit. The sketch seemed to be turning into a person, though Goldie didn't recognize the person. It was a rabbit, though, that much was clear from the ears being sketched out. "Only that that is a long way to drive every holiday, and this school is really expensive even for in-state."
"This is the school my parents attended," Spring told him. "When I was born they had set up a college fund. They did the same with my brother. It's only natural I go to the school they wanted me to, right?"
Goldie frowned a bit. "It's natural for you to go to the school you want, not the school your parents want."
Spring fell silent for a few moments, his hand stilling above the page. He seemed to be thinking over something, though Goldie wasn't sure whether or not he was thinking over his words.
"Well," Spring began, a bit slowly, as though thinking about how to word his thoughts. "I've wanted to come here for as long as I can remember… but the original plan was going to be music, not art," he admitted, still just staring at the sketch in front of him.
"You were going to go into the music program?" Goldie asked him, brow raised in surprise. Of course he knew the rabbit had a guitar and knew how to play, but that didn't mean the rabbit was originally going to be a musician. "I wasn't expecting that. Why'd you change your mind?"
There was another short silence before Spring softly told him, "I gave up on music years ago and found myself in art. That's all there is to it."
The bear stared at the rabbit silently for a few moments, his eyes flicking over to the guitar case buried under sketchbooks for a split second. The rabbit, eyes still trained on the page in front of him, didn't notice, much to the bear's relief.
"I don't believe that," Goldie finally said, keeping his own voice gentle and quiet. "I think music meant too much for you to just give it up, and I think it still does. So there's a different reason you went for art instead. But it's okay, you don't need to tell me. It's not exactly any of my business. The sketch looks really good, by the way. You're really talented."
Spring stayed silent for a moment or two before glancing over his shoulder, but the bear was already on his own bed pulling papers out of his bag. Spring wasn't sure how to respond to the bear, and the silence simply dragged on until it would be awkward to answer. It was a few moments before he turned back to the picture, letting his hand fall away from the easel. Then, hesitantly, he turned his gaze down to the covered guitar case, lying oh so innocently at the foot of his bed beside the desk. That guitar, which had been given to him so many years ago when he was still too small to properly play it… That guitar that he just couldn't leave at home...
Didn't given up music, indeed.
-END ARC II-
And this also marks the end of what I'm writing for this. This will not be continued in this story. The rewrite is going to be posted separately and it will differ drastically from what has happened thus far in this story. It will still be titled "Silent Songbird, Sing for Me." The pairings will remain the same, though I've decided I'm not interested in a Phone Guy/Non-murderous Purple Guy arc so I may drop them. We'll see.