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1.
In the spring, two miracles happen in the span of three hours.
For the first time in years, the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team makes the playoffs.
And Jack Zimmermann comes to a kegster.
Shitty is fucking thrilled, a feeling that he's mostly alone in. The upperclassmen seem to be torn between being excited to have finally made it and pissed that it took Bob Zimmermann-lite to get them here.
Shitty blocks out the bullshit as much as he can, because Jack’s here. After a year of begging him to come to a kegster, he’s pressed against the wall, nursing his second beer. Second!
Shitty’s not one for peer pressure. He doesn’t understand why anyone would be. His dad cuts him off every other week basically, so every cent he has goes toward weed. He’s more than fine having a best friend who doesn’t partake and keeping more to himself.
But kegsters are different. No matter how little he drinks, Jack needs to be here. He’s getting the C next year. Even the upperclassmen who begrudge him for it know it’s for the best.
He needs to be part of the team to be a good captain. It was this argument, combined with their win tonight, that got Shitty to finally, finally drag Jack to the haus.
Stupidly, he hadn’t really thought through what it would be like, actually attending a party with Jack. Or not Jack—but Jack Zimmermann. After nearly a year, Shitty’s starting to understand the difference.
Jack Zimmermann has been asked for cocaine twice, by people who are absolutely convinced he has it and is being a greedy asshole for not sharing.
He’s been pulled into selfies by three girls, one of whom offers him fifty bucks if he’ll send a picture of her tits to his dad.
“Jesus Christ,” Shitty says after Jack’s turned down the offer three times and she finally gives up. “This is why you don’t come, huh?”
“Kinda.” He shrugs. “The novelty will fade, I think.”
“So that means you’ll come to another?” Shitty asks, already grinning.
“Only if we keep winning like that.”
“We will with you on the team, man.” He pulls Jack into a headlock-turned-noogie-sandwich and Jack barely puts up a fight. Man. He must be in a good mood.
“I think I’m gonna go smoke with Schulz on the porch,” Shitty says. “You wanna come?”
Jack shakes his head, sighing at Shitty’s very pointed eyebrow raise. “I know. But he’ll be gone next year. No point trying to wear him down, eh?”
“Yeah, okay.” It’s fair enough, considering he once heard Schulz whine about Jack’s ‘daddy buying his spot on the team’. The amount of goals Jack’s scored since hasn’t seemed to win him over. “I can smoke later then.”
“Shitty. You don’t need to babysit me. I’ll be fine on my own.”
“You sure?”
Jack’s eyes narrow. “Just because I haven’t been to a kegster doesn’t mean I haven’t been to a party before.”
“Right.” Shitty nods, still hesitating. He remembers the tabloids his dad had once slammed onto the kitchen table, photos of Jack gripping red solo cups sold to the highest bidder.
Freshly eighteen and a month out of high school, Jack wasn’t his best friend yet. He was still just that guy on ESPN whose fall from grace was nearly as famous as his dad.
‘They shouldn’t let this kid on the team,’ his dad had said, fists clenched. ‘He’s a liability. I’m gonna make some calls.’
Shitty begged him not to, because fuck that’s embarrassing, but he had anyway. Thankfully, it didn’t matter in the end. The Knights’ money and pull may be strong, but it’s, like, peasant level when compared to the Zimmermanns’.
He’d befriended Jack two days in, kind of to spite his dad, and kind of because he felt bad that everyone else was being such a dick to the guy.
He’d really had no clue back then how hard he’d fall for Jack. He’s, like, his best bro for life, and for the next one. Shitty stares at him now, terrified that if he leaves, Jack will slip and drink too much, go so overboard that Shitty will have to play without him next year. That would majorly suck.
“I’m capping out at three beers. I’m fine. Go.” Jack all but pushes him to the door and damn, if he isn’t a strong fucker.
Shitty makes his way to the porch finally, and bums a joint from Schulz. It’ll be weak shit, knowing him, but free is free.
“Can’t believe you got Zimmermann to come, man,” Schulz says, and Shitty all but winces. The team’s in the habit of talking about Jack behind his back, the elephant perpetually just outside of the room.
“He played a good game tonight,” Shitty replies, with a glare that dares him to say otherwise. Factually, this can’t be challenged. Two assists and a fucking beauty of a game winning goal. No matter how much Schulz hates it, Jack’s a treasure, on and off the ice. “He deserves to celebrate.”
He takes two hits big enough to tide him over, then ambles his way to the front yard before Schulz can respond.
Man, he can’t believe freshman year is winding down. Samwell is simultaneously everything and nothing he expected. Andover was so…rigid. Stuffy. A lax bro of a school.
He’d thought Samwell would be different and it is, mostly. The guys fuck around a lot. They play a shitton of Mario Kart and throw killer parties and one of the guys got him a date to winter screw that made him wonder if what he was doing in high school even qualified as sex.
But the way they talk about Jack always grates on him. It’s not everyone, obviously. Johnson is as sweet as he is weird, and Fridge managed to lift Jack into the air during a cellie tonight.
Some of the guys like him because he makes their team better, and some like him because they’ve gotten to meet Bad Bob a few times.
But a handful of the guys…it’s like they think Jack being here takes something from them. As if any of the rest of these fuckers actually have a shot in hell at going pro.
Shitty takes a deep breath and heads inside. The weed’s starting to settle in his chest, enough to calm him the fuck down. He should find his way back to Jack, maybe see about getting him laid with a chick who’s not using him to get to his dad.
He searches the crowd of packed bodies, but he’s not where he left him. He’s not anywhere in the living room. That ass would be easy to pick out of a crowd.
In the end, he finds him in the kitchen of all places. Though, it’s barely a kitchen, he muses. More like a room to store beer and sriracha.
It’s not too busy in here, with most of the drinks on the porch or in the bathtub upstairs (his own stroke of genius). Jack’s not alone though. Some blonde dude is pressed close, whispering to him.
Jack’s leaning against the wall, an ear angled down to listen. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t look quite right. There’s something weird about it that Shitty’s brain is too fuzzy to place. Maybe his press smile?
The dude on the other hand has this smirk on his lips and heavy lids. God, he wants something from Jack, doesn’t he? Shitty’s not sure what, but it can’t be good.
Luckily, that’s what best bros are for. He charges up, throws an arm around Jack’s shoulder, and all but pushes the guy away. “Heyyyy, there you are handsome! I was looking all over for you.”
“Oh.” The guy blinks. “I didn’t realize you had…sorry.”
“No, it’s—” Jack starts, but the guy’s already gone, retreating into the crowd.
Beaming, Shitty turns to Jack, who looks vaguely constipated. Good. Back to his default expression. “What did that fucker want? More drugs? A quote for TMZ?”
“Something like that,” Jack mutters. “I’m, uh, gonna go home.”
“Noooo!” Shitty all but yells. “I haven’t gotten you laid yet!”
Jack laughs harshly, which isn’t the reaction he expected, but he still doesn’t always get Jack. His love for him was instant, but his understanding is still growing, new data constantly being recalibrated. In his defense, the dude sure is moody.
“I’m…” Jack swallows, looks into the thick of the crowd. “I’m good. This was fun though. Thanks, Shits.”
He gives him a hug and walks toward the front door. He stops halfway there, turns his head a few times as if searching for something, and then he’s gone.
Oh well. There’s always next weekend.
2.
Mac requests a bedtime story, of all things. Ransom and Holster are frothing at the mouth for his dibs, and he’s taken to gleefully asking for just about anything under the sun.
“Ooh, I have just the thing,” Ransom says. Shitty smiles from his place on the arm of the couch.
He hopes their hard work pays off. It would be cool to have them in the haus. They’re legit dudes, solid bros to everyone on the team, even Jack.
Ransom clears his throat, phone open in his lap. “Jack never planned to fall for Kent Parson. Granted, Jack didn’t plan for most things in life.”
Mac howls laughing, asks before Shitty has the chance, “What the fuck is this shit?”
“It’s fanfiction about Jack and Kent Parson,” Holster says matter-of-factly, like this is a perfectly logical explanation. “You haven’t read any? Surely you have, Shitty.”
“Uh, no,” he says. He’s learned not to google things about Jack, unless it’s his baby pictures. The shit they say about him gets Shitty too heated.
“Okay, I need to hear more, come on,” Mac says.
“Jack didn’t plan for most things in life. He didn’t stick to a schedule, unless one was laid out for him,” Ransom reads. They all can’t help but laugh at this, because seriously, in what universe? “He didn’t plan to go into The Ace Place for ice cream after a particularly grueling run.”
“Ice cream? After a run?” Holster scoffs. “Is he itching to throw up or something?”
“And he certainly didn’t plan on the cute blonde working behind the counter wearing a tight T-shirt, soaking wet.”
“He’s soaking wet?” Shitty says. “At work?”
“I dunno. He takes off the T-shirt in like two more paragraphs. Here, I’ll skip ahead to the good stuff. ‘Oh Kent,’ Jack says, ‘Won’t someone catch us back here?’ ‘That’s half the fun,’ Kent growls. Hey, how does a person growl, anyways? Like grrr?”
“Nah,” Holster says. “More like rarrrrr.”
“What are you doing?” Jack’s voice comes from the stairs. They all whip around. Jack's face is rigid, jaw pulled so tight it looks painful.
“Nothing,” Ransom squeaks.
“Reading fanfiction about you,” Shitty says, leveling Jack a hard stare, because he’s sick of this. Jack’s been moping nonstop since Kent Parson stopped by that kegster last week. He’s angling for a laugh out of him or even just a shocked expression, anything but this endlessly serious look on his face. “It’s homoerotic and terrible. Join us. Maybe we’ll let you read Jack’s lines if you nail your audition.”
All Shitty gets in response is a barely perceptible eye twitch, followed by a grunt. “I’m going on a run.”
“Now? It’s 10 P.M.”
Jack doesn’t answer, just slides on his hideous yellow running shoes and slams the door shut behind him.
“Shiiiit,” Holster whispers. “We pissed him off.”
“It’s fine. The heterosexual male is just a fragile being,” Shitty says, already hopping to his feet and wrangling some pants on.
“I wonder if he’s gonna get ice cream after,” Ransom jokes, and Shitty hears their laughter behind him as he hurries out the door.
He assumes he’s gonna have to scramble to catch up with Jack, but he’s standing on the porch, just…staring at nothing.
It’s eerie. Shitty claps a hand on his back. Jack says nothing and Shitty wants to say so much.
He wants to say, quite bluntly, dude, stop being a fucking asshole. None of this is as big as you’re convinced it is.
He wants to say, slightly more sympathetically, I get it. He got everything you lost. But it’s just some shiny hardware, man, you can’t pout about it forever.
He wants to say, with unfettered desperation, just this once, can we talk about it? Just this once, tell me what it felt like to watch him play from a hospital room. And let me tell you how it feels when your parents come to town and your mom leans close and says, in a thick voice, ‘thank you for taking care of him’.
Instead, he says simply, “You know you’ll get one, right?”
“What?”
“A cup,” he says. Jack stares at him blankly. “A Stanley Cup, Jesus. What other cup is there for you?”
Jack’s whole body tenses, which is only surprising because Shitty thought it was already at max tense capacity. “You can’t…I might not.”
Shitty laughs. “Jack. I’m not just, like, saying that to be nice. I wouldn’t coddle you, not with how much of a dick you’ve been lately.”
Jack visibly startles at the words. This is, Shitty has finally realized, the crux of Jack Zimmermann’s relationship issues.
He hurts everyone around him because he can’t quite grasp the concept that there are people who love him enough to care what he does.
“Lardo is destined to always win beer pong and Holster is destined to win some dumbass sitcom trivia contest and you’re destined to win the cup,” he says. “So you need to chill out. It’ll happen.”
“It already happened,” he says gruffly. “For Kent. For my dad, when he was my age.”
“Oh boo fucking hoo!” Shitty throws his arms in the air. “With love and respect, who fucking cares, man? You’re about to turn twenty-three, not eighty-three. Your life isn’t about to end.”
Jack laughs at that, a hollow sound, and fuck. Terrible choice of wording. Shitty knows better than to stammer over an apology though.
“What is it with you and Parson, though? Really?” he asks. That bit still isn’t adding up for him.
Like okay, Jack’s a jealous fucker, but he looked murderous when Kent showed up. It wasn’t that typical closed off way he gets when people fawn over Bob. It was…well, he doesn’t know what the fuck it was.
That’s why he asks—but unsurprisingly, Jack doesn’t answer. “Man, if only those teenagers writing fanfiction knew,” Shitty says, mostly to fill the silence.
“What?”
“That you hate him. They’d be fucking devastated that you don’t, in fact, spend your free time feeling each other up in supply closets.”
Shitty expected a laugh for his efforts, at least a soft chuckle, but instead Jack’s silent for a solid fifteen seconds. “I’m gonna run now. Thanks, though, Shits. And…sorry.”
Without waiting for a reply, Jack runs off into the night.
Man, his best friend is weird.
3.
Shitty comes home after class to quite possibly the most disturbing sight he’s ever seen in his life.
One Eric Richard Bittle, sitting on the front porch, head in his hands, sobbing. It’s like seeing a kitten cry. His whole heart fucking wrenches at the sight.
“Bitty?” he whispers.
Instantly, Bitty’s head pops up. He plasters on the fakest smile in the history of fake smiles. It’s kind of spooky.
“Shitty! Hey, I was just thinking about you. I was gonna make pie, do you want some? Strawberries were on sale at murder Stop and Shop. They're a little soft, but they'll get the job done.”
Shitty puts a firm hand on his shoulder when he moves to stand. “Bitty. No. You’re not allowed to bake til you tell me what the fuck is wrong.”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. I’m fine, really.” It was hard enough seeing him all nervous when he came out to Shitty last week, but this…
He swallows hard as realization hits him. “Did someone say something to you? About you being gay? Because I swear, Bits, I’ll fucking kill them.”
Bitty shakes his head. “No, no, I’ve told basically the whole team and everyone’s been great. Maybe too great. Ransom’s making spreadsheet of guys who can take me to screw.”
Shitty cracks a small smile. He loves this fucking team. “So what’s up then?”
Bitty’s voice gets so, so small as he says, “It’s just hard sometimes. You know, with Jack.”
“Jack?”
Bitty blinks, stares at him like it’s obvious. “I mean, he hates me.”
“Aww, no he doesn’t, itty Bitty. He’s just…like that,” he says weakly.
Bitty shrugs. “It’s different with me though. Worse. You really haven’t noticed?”
Shitty feels like an asshole. Because no, honestly, he hadn’t noticed it’d gotten this bad. But he also hadn’t noticed Bitty was gay until he said something, which in hindsight is really fucking stupid. Lardo did once tell him that his gaydar desperately needs to be recalibrated.
“He’ll warm up to you, I promise. It just takes time with him. A lot of time.”
He helps Bitty to his feet and inside. He keeps him company, sits at the table chopping strawberries while Bitty rolls out dough. They talk about Ransom’s screw date prospects, how most of them suck ass.
He pesters Bitty about his type, only gets a very coy, “Oh, I don’t know. I just want someone sweet. A real gentleman.”
“You’re too good for this world, man,” he tells him. Once the pie’s safely in the oven, he charges upstairs, throws Jack’s door open without knocking.
“What, Shits?” Jack says flatly, not looking up from his book. He knows it’s him, because the other guys are too chickenshit to burst in like this.
“Roof. Now.” He opens Jack’s window, crawls through it. It’s getting too cold for this, but he’s too pissed to care.
A second later, Jack crawls through after him. He brings a blanket along, tosses it to Shitty. Shitty wishes, not for the first time, that Jack would let the rest of the team see him like this.
“What’s up?” Jack asks, nudging Shitty’s shoulder. “Missing Lardo?”
He is. Fuck, he is. For starters, she’d be able to get Jack in check in thirty seconds flat. He inhales a breath, resents the fact that he sees the exhale linger in the air.
“Why do you hate Bitty?” he asks.
“What? I don’t hate him.”
“Well he sure as shit thinks you do.” Shitty levels a glare at him. Jack, surprisingly, doesn’t return it. It’s weird. He’s usually not one to back down from a challenge.
“I’m sure he doesn’t—”
“He literally just told me that you hate him,” he says. “He was crying, Jack.”
Jack inhales sharply. Good. He needs to feel the weight of this. “I…” Jack says. Such a profound defense, really.
Shitty shouldn’t say what he does next. Maybe he wouldn’t, at least not so bluntly, if Lardo were here instead of halfway across the world. “Is it because he’s gay?”
Jack’s head whips up so fast, Shitty’s pretty sure it’s going to snap off. “What? Did he tell you that?”
“Oh. I thought you knew by now.” Did he just out him? No, Bitty had said he’d told basically everyone…but of course that didn’t include Jack, who he thinks is his sworn enemy. Fuck. “Maybe on some level, you did.”
“What?”
“I mean, the dude figure skates. He brings pies everywhere he goes, which you’ve hated since day one.” He leans back on his palms, stares up at the depressingly gray sky. “I’m just saying, homophobia runs deep, man. Sometimes, it’s unconscious.”
He flicks his gaze to Jack to find him staring out too. He inhales deeper this time, deliberately, like he's relearning how to breathe. “It’s…not that.”
“Are you sure though?” There have been some drunk make outs at parties and he’s pretty sure Ransom and Holster have sucked each other’s dicks at least once, but they’ve never had a guy on the team quite like Bitty. It sucks, knowing that this is how Jack handles it. It really fucking sucks.
“He can’t take a check,” Jack says. “He plays D1 hockey and he can’t take a check. I’m not supposed to be frustrated by that?”
“It’s deeper than that though, isn’t it?” Shitty hedges. “He’s under your fucking skin.” He can tell by the way Jack looks like he wants to risk jumping off the roof to avoid this conversation.
“He…I’m…” Jack shakes his head, like he’s in an argument with himself. “He makes it seem so easy, I guess. It took three hours for the team to fall in love with him. It took them three years to tolerate me.”
“Jack Zimmermann,” Shitty whispers softly. He takes the blanket and wraps it around Jack, because as much as he likes to pretend otherwise, Canadians still get fucking cold. “I loved you three minutes after I met you.”
“Do you ever regret it?” he asks. “Being my friend, I mean.”
Shitty had come into this conversation with a strong resolve to take no excuses, yell if he had to, until Jack stopped being an asshole. Now, he kind of just wants to wrap his arms around him, hold on tight until his carefully constructed walls crumble once and for all.
“First of all, I’m not your friend. I’m your best friend. Second of all, fuck no.”
He knows that basically no one, including Jack himself, understands why they’re friends. But he doesn’t care. He loves him anyway. He’ll always love him anyway.
“I’ll try to lay off Bittle,” Jack says. “I’ll try to be…”
“Less of an asshole?” Shitty suggests. Jack nods.
“Thanks, Shits.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.” Jack shrugs. “For never thinking I’m too fragile to take it.”
Shitty smiles at that. Jack heads in not long after, but he leaves the blanket behind. Shitty snuggles beneath it, wonders distantly why Jack can never seem to bring himself to just call him Bitty.
4.
“Okay, I give up.”
Shitty’s been blocking out Bitty and Jack’s mindless chatter for the past half hour in order to finish his damn thesis, but this grabs his attention.
He’s known Jack for nearly four years now and he can count on zero hands the amount of times he’s said that phrase. Even jokingly.
“Nooo.” Bitty pouts. “You still have a body part left.”
“Only because you gave it elbows,” Jack says. “This literally makes no sense. I still don’t see how it’s not ‘I Love You Like No’. Or So? Go? It has to be go.”
Bitty cackles, earning a few glares from nearby tables. It’s nothing new, the hockey team being too loud for the general population of Samwell, especially during finals seasons in the damn library.
Usually though, Jack’s the one apologizing for it, not causing it.
“What are you guys doing?” Shitty asks finally. They both startle, like they forgot he was there, which…ouch.
“Bittle’s torturing me,” Jack says flatly.
“We’re playing Beyoncé hangman,” Bitty explains with an overexcited tone that would better suit the phrase, ‘We just won the lottery and we’re paying for a private Beyoncé concert’.
Shitty blinks at Jack, genuinely wondering if he’s hallucinating. It’s a strong possibility, considering he hasn’t slept in nearly thirty-six hours. Or forty-eight?
“You’re not working?” Shitty asks.
“We’re taking a break,” Jack says. “Well, I’m taking a break. I’m not sure Bittle can call it one since he was never actually working.”
“Hey!” Bitty slaps his arm lightly. “I wrote that bibliography earlier.”
“Typing ‘works cited’ doesn’t count as writing it.”
They keep bantering and Shitty’s eyes bounce back and forth between them like he’s watching the world’s first interesting tennis match.
The Jack of a year ago wouldn’t play ‘Beyoncé hangman’ at all, let alone blow off schoolwork for it in the heart of finals season.
What the fuck is happening? He’s trying to get his bearings when he notices that Bitty and Jack are both standing up now. Bitty’s staring at him expectantly.
“...I…what?”
“We’re leaving?” Bitty replies, and Shitty realizes this probably isn’t the first time it’s been said. “I don’t think the library is for me. Laugh all you want Mr. Zimmermann, but I just can’t get any work done without an oven nearby.”
Shitty looks to Jack for an explanation as to why he’s leaving too, but Jack’s too busy chirping a reply and smiling down at Bitty. Smiling!
“You coming?” Bitty asks.
“I…” He should say no. This table has an outlet and he can practically feel people nearby circling, ready to pounce.
But he’s pretty sure he’s been here since yesterday. Maybe. So he stands, shoves his shit haphazardly in his bag, and follows Bitty and Jack out.
He does mean follow. They walk a few paces ahead of him, bumping shoulders, laughing about something he can’t understand.
He can hear them just fine, they’re not leaving him in the dust or anything. But he can’t understand their conversation. Something about Britney Spears maybe? Or a cupcake?
He’s starting to think maybe he’s become fully delirious, when it hits him. It’s an inside joke.
Fuck. When did this happen? It feels like two seconds ago, Jack grit his teeth around Bitty’s name, and now…
Now they’re best friends. Apparently. Obviously he’d known they’d grown closer this year, but he thought they were friends. Maybe even good friends. Not best friends. The realization is heavy enough to stop Shitty in his tracks.
He literally stops walking, right there, in the middle of the sidewalk.
After a few more paces, Jack realizes, jogs back. “Hey,” he says softly in a voice that kind of sounds like his own when he’s talking Jack down from a panic attack. “You okay?”
Shitty doesn’t respond. “When’s the last time you slept, buddy?” Jack slings an arm over his shoulder, pulls him forward a few steps. Shitty’s reply is garbled even to his own ears. “Let’s get you home, huh?”
He makes some sort of gesture to Bitty that Shitty can’t comprehend. Bitty seems to though. He nods, waves, and starts walking faster.
They have a secret language? When the hell did that happen? It took, like, three and a half years for Jack to be able to communicate silently with Shitty.
“I know it’s scary,” Jack says.
“...what?”
“Graduation.” Fuck. The G-word. That’s literally the last thing he needs to hear right now. “I can’t believe it’s really happening.”
“I know the feeling.” Shitty means it to sound commiserative, but it comes out harsh, pricks his mouth on the way out so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t draw blood.
“No, I mean…part of me thought I wouldn’t last more than two years here.”
“Wait, really?” This is the first he’s heard of this. With far too much petulance, he wonders if Jack has told Bitty, kicking their socked feet at a damn slumber party.
“I thought if I played one or two really strong seasons, teams would come knocking,” he says. Shitty can’t help the pained noise that escapes him.
“Well, I guess it’s lucky for us that you suck,” he jokes.
He starts walking on his own again, slowly but surely. Jack doesn’t loosen his grip. “They did, you know.”
“What?”
“Come knocking,” Jack says. Shitty can’t stop his jaw from dropping in time. “I got an offer or two sophomore year. Nothing fancy, but…farm teams. Decent contracts. Promises that I could work my way up.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I had a paper due,” Jack says flatly. Shitty bursts out laughing. “And I…”
“What?” Shitty asks, because they’re getting to that typical dip in the conversation where he has to tug if he wants Jack to keep talking.
“I was mulling it over and then you came in. You asked if I wanted to watch ‘Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen’. I asked what that was and you said it was the title of my future autobiography.” Jack rolls his eyes.
Shitty remembers that night, actually. Jack had answered that he wasn’t up for the chaos of the living room, and Shitty had gleefully said that that wouldn’t be a problem.
For one night only, he got to take down that stupid ‘be better’ poster, set up the projector Lardo was stowing in his room for some sort of art project.
He’d smoked a bowl, snuggled up with Jack in his bed, and ate a whole box of Cheez-Itz while they watched the movie. Jack had even laughed once or twice.
“I had my agent turn them down the next day,” Jack says. “Well, I mean, we told them to come back closer to graduation. I just…I don’t know. That night, I felt like I was where I needed to be.”
“Jack Fucking Zimmermann,” Shitty whispers. “Are you telling me we’re only standing here right now because of a Lindsay Lohan movie?”
“I guess.” Jack smiles, ducks his head. “Ironic, eh?”
“What? How is that ironic?” Shitty had kind of assumed that despite watching the movie, Jack didn’t know who she was.
“Oh. I mean, because people used to compare me to her.” Jack shrugs. He walks a bit quicker then, like he always does after talking about—or around—the overdose.
Fuck. He’s being a fucking asshole. He’s sleep deprived and scared so he’s, what? Jealous that Jack has another close friend?
The thing is, Shitty’s not one to dwell in the past much. Maybe it makes him a terrible friend, or maybe it makes him a great one, but from time to time, he forgets.
He forgets that Jack had a life before him and that, for a few minutes, that life ended. He forgets that every time Jack opens his heart for someone now, even just a little, it’s a fucking miracle.
It’s good, this thing he has with Bitty. Weird, since less than a year ago he was pretty sure Jack was going to smother him in his sleep, but good nonetheless.
Friendships are like pie, anyway. Bitty’s pie, specifically. There’s always slices to go around, and when there’s not, he makes another one.
“It’s I Love You Like XO,” Shitty says as they approach the haus.
“What?”
“The Beyoncé lyric. For hangman.”
“Huh.” Jack’s eyebrows furrow. “What could that possibly mean?”
“Honestly, I have no fucking clue. We could ask, but Bitty would probably give us an endless lecture.” He groans.
Jack lights up, like the prospect actually excites him.
Yeah, Shitty decides. This friendship is good for him.
+1
Shitty knows he’s reached his breaking point when he starts googling ‘Jack Zimmermann girlfriend’.
He searches it a few times a week now and every time, his heart sort of…clenches while the results load. He’s simultaneously desperate to find out the truth and terrified that he’ll learn it like this.
It’s just that he can still remember the thud of that sinking feeling. Walking out of class, absentmindedly thumbing through apps, and stumbling on the headline: Prodigal Son Jack Zimmermann Signs with Providence Falconers.
He’d asked Jack with a smirk on his face in hopes of hiding the tears welling up in his throat. It felt like right then and there, their lives were diverging.
Like soon, he’d no longer hear everything about Jack’s life while naked in his bed, Jack sitting ramrod straight at his desk.
Soon, he’d only learn about his life through headlines, relegated to the life of a stranger—or worse, a fan.
Jack had told him once that graduation wouldn’t change him, wouldn’t change them, but he started acting weird as fuck basically the second it happened.
He’s hiding something. He’s hiding someone.
Ransom and Holster think he’s an idiot. Lardo thinks he needs to calm down. Bitty…actually, it’s unclear what Bitty thinks, but he probably thinks Shitty’s crazy.
They all do—but, fuck, he knows Jack. This is like the time that he tried to hide the fact that Camilla was walk-of-shaming out of his room times a thousand.
It’s a relief when Jack asks him to stay the weekend finally. He’s dodged Shitty’s six attempts to invite himself over (yes, he’s counted) and he was starting to think it would never happen.
Shitty resolves to spend the whole weekend breaking Jack down, little by little, beer by beer, until he cracks and tells him everything.
He didn’t expect to figure it out within five minutes. He grazes a thumb over the sticky notes papering the fridge, wonders if he’s losing his mind.
But…no. They’re Bitty’s. They have to be. He’s gotten a few care packages from Bitty since he graduated, and every tupperware has a little sticky note attached, scrawled with some sweet message, exactly like this. Except the ones he gets are much more…platonic.
He stumbles into the counter hard, ignores it pressing into his back as he stares at them. Jack’s not…he thought that he…oh God.
“I was thinking we could do Thai for dinner?” Jack walks into the kitchen holding a menu, of all things. A paper takeout menu. Like it’s 2005.
The absurdity of it is almost enough to break Shitty out of his stupor. Almost. The notes are still there. He has to work very hard not to look at them.
“Sure!” Shitty says, trying and failing to get his breathing under control because fuck, how did he miss this? How long has he been missing this?
“You okay?” Jack asks, because apparently, he never stopped noticing him, which only makes Shitty feel worse.
“Fine!” Shitty manages. “Do you have somewhere…I can call my dad? It’s…you don’t wanna hear the shit I’m about to say to him, man.”
Jack frowns, probably because he’s taken a thousand and one phone calls with his dad in front of Jack over the years. A lot of them end in screaming, but that’s never stopped Shitty. After all, Jack Zimmermann of all people understands daddy issues.
“Euh, sure,” Jack says finally. “I have a…call to make too actually.”
To Bitty, Shitty fills in the blank. His boyfriend. Wow. Fuck.
He stumbles onto the balcony Jack points him to and immediately calls Lardo. Under his breath, he whispers, “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”
It only takes three rings, in the end. He’s not sure it’s ever taken longer. “Hey,” she answers.
“I’m an idiot,” he blurts out. Then, he wishes he could take the words back completely because he can’t talk about this without outing Jack, can he?
Outing Jack. Because he’s gay. Or bi? Maybe? He remembers the night Jack spent with Camilla, hearing moans and whispered French through two doors, and amends that to probably, definitely bi. He shouldn’t assume though. Isn’t that what got them here in the first place? Again: fuck.
“Generally, yes,” Lardo says. “What is it this time, though?”
“I…can’t say.”
Shitty can hear her thinking. He gives it about two minutes til she pieces it all together. “You’re at Jack’s, right?” Okay, make that thirty seconds.
“Yes.”
“Is this about the girlfriend thing?”
“Maybe…not so much a girlfriend?”
“So you know,” Lardo says.
Shitty gasps. “He told you?”
“No. I figured it out, like, a week ago.” They’re both silent for a second. Shitty settles into the little loveseat Jack has out here.
It’s nice. The whole apartment’s nicer than he expected. It’s Bitty’s handiwork, he realizes now. There’s traces of him everywhere, from the fridge stuffed with butter to the fucking welcome mat at the front door. “It’s serious,” he processes the words as he says them.
“I’d say so.” He can practically hear Lardo shrugging it off. “It’s Jack. Isn’t he serious about everything?”
Not about this. Four and a half years and he’s never dated anyone, not really. Shitty always wondered why he didn’t at least get laid more, considering how fucking hot he is, and how many girls were knocking down his door.
Girls. “I thought he was…” He can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. If he does, he might spew chunks over the side of the balcony.
“Wait. Were you gonna say straight?” Lardo asks. He doesn’t bother answering. “You, Shitty Knight, assumed someone’s sexuality?”
“I didn’t assume,” he says. Except he did, didn’t he? He can’t remember a single time Jack actually said he was straight. He just…acted like it. Because he had to. Of course he had to.
It knocks the wind out of him. There are zero out NHL players. Shitty rants about this fact literally all the time. To be the first would be like…well, it would be like spotting a loaded gun a few miles out and gleefully running toward it until you were in range.
It would be the overdose all over again. Jack would make headlines. The only thing Jack hates more than losing is making headlines.
“Fuck,” he says, so grateful that he’s talking to Lardo, the only person who can keep up with the hundred different directions his mind is turning. “What are they gonna do?”
“I don’t know,” Lardo says, sounding almost as scared as he is.
“Oh my God, Lards. It must be more than serious. If he’s risking everything…” If he’s risking hockey, he means. To Jack, that’s everything. He wouldn’t put that on the line, unless…
“Yeah,” Lardo says. “They’re it for each other.”
She’s right. They are. If they can figure out a way to make this work, they’re gonna get married. They’re gonna have six kids, three brunettes, three blondes. They’re gonna have a stupidly big vacation home on Cape Cod and he’ll visit in the summer, excitedly reunite with those kids who call him ‘Uncle Crappy’.
He can see it now, so clearly he’s not sure how he hasn’t before. “He didn’t tell me,” he blurts out before he has the chance to stop it.
“You don’t get to be upset about that,” Lardo’s quick to respond. “If you lord that over him—”
“I won’t,” Shitty says. “You know I won’t.”
The whole point of this phone call is to get it all out of his system, so he doesn’t run back in there and shout and scream and laugh and congratulate him and call up Bitty and spend the rest of the night drawing up a game plan, working together to figure out what it will take to make his boys happy and safe.
He knows why Jack didn’t tell him. But that doesn’t stop it from killing him that he’s so scared he can’t trust his best friend of all people.
Sophomore year, he’d bragged to Jack that people kept coming out to him. ‘So if you wanna tell me something, please, by all means, keep my hot streak going,’ he’d joked. Jack had thrown a pencil at him in response, if he remembers correctly.
Over the years, he’s probably accidentally given Jack a thousand openings. Every time, without fail, Jack sealed them shut. And Shitty never noticed. Not once.
“Am I a bad friend?” he asks now. It’s a selfish question, really, but if he can’t ask Lardo, who can he?
“No,” she says. “You’re just straight. I know you pride yourself on being this, like, perfect ally, but there’s no such thing, Shits. You of all people should know that.”
“I know,” he says. She’d told him pretty much the same thing when she’d come out to him as bi sophomore year. Lucky number four. “Did you know? That he was…well, whatever he is. I’m done assuming, I swear.”
“I’m not a weirdo like you, so I don’t spend that much time thinking about my friends’ sex lives,” Lardo says flatly. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, Kent Parson…”
“Shit. You think that’s true, too?”
“I dunno. I kinda got a vibe when he crashed that kegster last year. Epikegster,” she adds before he has the chance to correct her. Fuck, he loves her. “And…Jack asked me to look at his photos, to help him assemble his portfolio…”
“What about it?” He has one where he and Lardo are feeding a goose while Bitty shakes his head framed above his desk—a graduation present from Jack.
“They were all of him,” Lardo’s voice goes soft around the edges in a way she never really lets anyone hear. Anyone but him. “Bitty was the focus of every last one.”
“Fuck. Really?”
“Yeah. Like, even the pictures of the team…he was the focal point. You have to understand, Jack’s stuff, it’s so specific to his perspective. I like his photos because it’s like looking at the world through his eyes. So I guess you could say his world is…”
“Bitty,” Shitty exhales. He remembers finding them laughing in the kitchen, flour speckling their rosy cheeks. Jack lending him his flannel after they kissed the ice, Bitty falling asleep heavy on his shoulder. Bitty offering him a headphone and a tentative smile on roadies, Jack leaning in to listen every damn time. “His world is Bitty.”
“Yeah,” she says. “How did we not see it sooner? He bought him an oven.”
“He bought him an oven,” Shitty repeats. “Oh my fucking God. He’s done for.”
For a second, he manages to look past it all. Past how much harder he’s made this on Jack, past the parts of Jack still carefully concealed after all this time.
For a second, he stares out at the sunset and feels it. Jack Zimmermann is alive. He’s happy. He’s in love.
And with Bitty, of all people. Two people he loves love each other. It’s such a beautiful realization.
Hell, Jack loves him so much that he couldn’t even bear to take those sticky notes off his fridge for one damn weekend.
“Are you crying?” Lardo asks.
“No,” Shitty spits out, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m just really fucking happy for them. God, how am I gonna go back in there and act cool?”
“Jack spends most of his life pretending,” Lardo reminds him. “I think you can manage for a few days.”
“Fuck. I love you, you know that? You always keep me in line.”
“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t keep falling out of it,” Lardo mumbles. She’s blushing. In the same way she knew he was silently crying, he knows this.
“You’re right though. I’ll be fine. When do you think they’ll, like, tell us though? Before spring break?”
“Sooner,” she says. “I think before winter break.”
After a few more minutes, bets are placed and goodbyes are said. He tucks his phone in his pocket, takes the world’s deepest breath, and heads back in.
Jack’s on the couch, smiling at his phone. It takes an insurmountable amount of strength to pretend not to notice.
But Lardo’s right. This is only a fraction of the pretending Jack has to do everyday. He’ll manage. For Jack, he’ll do just about anything.
“You good?” Jack asks.
“Yup. All good.” He drops on the couch beside him, shoves his feet in his lap. “Thai food?”
“Thai food.”
Shitty buries his face in a throw pillow to hide his smile.
+2.
Shitty doesn’t get overwhelmed by parties often.
Okay, that’s a lie. He doesn’t get overwhelmed by parties ever.
But the Bittle-Zimmermann engagement party is a different beast. He’s pretty sure the Haus has never had this much love in it since the hockey team took over.
It’s meant to be a place of glorious debauchery, not this. Not Alicia Zimmermann and Suzanne Bittle describing their own wedding dresses to each other, swapping venue ideas.
Not him and Tater battling it out for the role of best man (Shitty will riot if he doesn’t win). Not a drunk Bob Zimmermann telling four starry-eyed frogs that he’s the reason Jack kissed Bitty in the first place.
Not Jack, locked in a conversation with three Falcs, making mushy eyes across the room. Shitty doesn’t have to follow his gaze to know where it’s pointed.
Suddenly, Shitty needs a minute or ten. He heads upstairs and instinctively pushes open his old room. It gives easily, because of course Nursey didn’t lock it for the summer.
He crosses through the bathroom into Jack—Chowder’s room.
It’s weird, but it almost makes him more nostalgic than his own room does. This is where he held Jack tight after a panic attack sophomore year, one so bad that he could hear him hyperventilating through the bathroom.
This is where he lounged naked while Jack pretended to resent him for it. This is where Jack slept, muttering French nonsense, probably dreaming of pies and the blondes who make them.
Jack and Bitty had their first kiss here, he remembers now. Jack fell in love here, little by little, and Shitty somehow thought that dopey look on his face was because he was finally gonna play for the NHL soon. He’d thought it was a natural reaction to his dream coming true. In a way, he was right.
Now though, it’s all Sharks memorabilia, half packed away for the summer. A framed picture of Farmer still hangs on the wall, like Chowder couldn’t bear to take it down. In a year, even that will be gone, and some kid Shitty hardly knows will move in.
He crawls through the window, onto the reading room, because at least that will never change.
He settles, breathes in the summer air. It had been his idea to throw the engagement party at the haus. He hadn’t realized how…raw it would leave him.
It’s not a bad feeling though, not necessarily. It’s kind of like when he wakes up early and finds Lardo still asleep and just stares at her for awhile.
He fumbles for the joint in his pocket, lights it up. He’s taking his first hit when a sound comes from the window.
Somehow, he’s surprised that it’s Jack who crawls through. God, it’s so weird seeing him here. He’s so, so far from that grumpy twenty-one-year-old who perpetually had a hockey stick up his ass.
Shitty runs a hand through his hair, feels the distinct lack of flow, and supposes the sentiment is probably mutual.
“Blowing off your own party?” Shitty asks.
“Checking why you are,” Jack answers, settling in beside him. “I saw you head upstairs.”
Shitty raises his eyebrows. “What if I was just taking a piss?”
“You looked…off. I knew you were headed here before you went up.”
Shitty can’t help the way he gets all choked up at that. He has two years of law school under his belt and a clerkship with a public defender lined up. Jack has a Stanley Cup, a Calder, and as of today, a fiancé. Somehow, they still manage to know each other, through and through.
“You know it’s gonna be you, right?” Jack asks. Shitty blinks, trying to figure out what the hell he means. “I love Tater, but…of course you’ll be my best man.”
“Really?” he manages. He has to admit, he was kind of offended that a dude Jack met two years ago was in the running. He loves Tater, but shit.
“Obviously. I mean, Tater will be up there with me, but…I wouldn’t be here without you. I don’t know if I would have been able to love Bitty if I hadn’t loved you first.”
The tears are fucking instant. They pour down his face and Jack’s such a decent bro that he doesn’t even laugh. He just sits there quietly, looking up at the sky, waiting for the worst of it to stop.
“I promise I won’t let you down, man,” Shitty says finally. “God, I can’t believe when we lived here, I thought you were straight.”
“I know.” Jack smiles. “Remember when you dragged me out here to yell at me for being homophobic to Bits?”
Shitty slaps a hand over his mouth. “Dude, I forgot about that. In my defense, I was just trying to be a good bro.” He shakes his head. “Besides, that’s not as bad as the time I tried to get you to use your ‘no homo pass’ to make out with me.”
“I still don’t understand what a no homo pass even is.”
“That’s because you don’t need one!”
Jack laughs. “Well, none of those are as bad as the time you stopped me from getting laid.”
“...What?” Shitty’s aware that his memory sucks. You don’t smoke as much weed as he does without a bunch of tiny gaps and a few gaping holes. But Jack’s sentence jogs literally nothing. Surely he would remember that.
“Freshman year? My first kegster?” Jack stares at him, waiting expectantly. Shitty stares back blankly. “Wow. I kind of assumed you’d have pieced that one together by now. I guess it was awhile ago though…”
“What?!” Shitty cries. “You have to tell me whatever the hell you’re talking about. It’s, like, a law now that I’m your best man.”
“You dragged me to a kegster after we made the playoffs,” Jack says slowly, like he’s talking to an idiot. Shitty's two thirds of the way to a fucking law degree from Harvard and he still knows that’s more than fair.
“I remember,” he says, because of course he does. It was the first college party Jack had gone to. It was such a momentous occasion that he’d kind of wanted to throw another kegster just to celebrate it.
“I didn’t like…I didn’t hook up with guys in college much. Or at all, really. It felt like too much of a risk, I think. I was finally getting my life on track and it seemed stupid to derail it.”
“Okay…” Shitty says, because he knows it’s not worth mentioning that hearing that physically pains him.
“But things felt different that night. I dunno. We’d made the playoffs. My dad managed to congratulate me without making it weird. I felt like, at least for a second, I could breathe. For the first time in awhile, I had a few drinks…”
“Yeah, and clearly you have tonight too,” Shitty says through a chuckle. Jack only talks this much consecutively about non-hockey, non-history, and non-Bitty related subjects when he’s a few beers deep.
Jack knocks his shoulder into Shitty's. “And I met this guy. Don’t ask me who he was, I have no clue. It’s not like it matters now. I just remember he was blonde, stocky, and definitely into me.”
“Holy shit do you have a type.”
Jack doesn’t dignify this with a response, just keeps barreling on. “And then you came over…you seriously don’t remember this?”
Shitty shakes his head. All he remembers from that night is helping Jack dodge all the assholes who wanted something from him…
“Oh my GOD.”
“Yeah.” Jack flashes him a shit-eating grin.
“You were trying to hit that? And I…Oh my God. That’s evil, man. That’s actually evil of me.”
Jack shrugs, looking almost guilty. “You didn’t know.”
“Jack. That’s literally the exact fucking opposite of what a bro should do. I know I did a lot of shit I shouldn’t have because I was so damn oblivious—”
“You were doing your best with what you knew,” Jack offers far too generously.
“—but that’s next level. That’s like…that’s despicable. Oh Jack. Jacky boy.” He looks Jack dead in the eye. “I swear to you, I will make up for this. I will get you laid.”
“I…don’t think I need help in that department anymore, Shits,” Jack says, drunk enough that it sounds almost coy. God, he’s adorable.
“Oh, but you do. You’ve been engaged to Bitty for hours now, right?”
“...yes?”
“And you haven’t had a second alone with him.” He remembers that mushy look Jack shot Bitty from across the room.
Except it wasn’t mushy, he realizes now. His grin was all sappy and lopsided, but his eyes…that was the look Jack gets when he’s made four shots on a goal and they’ve all bounced. That was desperation.
“No,” Jack says lowly and, oh yeah. This is happening. He’s six years late but he’s fucking doing this.
“Wait right here.” Shitty crawls over him, vaults himself through the window. He hustles downstairs, finds Bitty trapped in a conversation with his future in-laws.
“I don’t know,” Bitty’s saying, all southern hospitality. This poor, sweet, sexually frustrated man. “Spring sounds nice. As long as it’s not in the winter, I’d freeze half to death!”
“So you want the ceremony to be outside then?” Bob asks, like he’s taking notes. Shitty loves the guy, but now is so not the time.
“I guess. I haven’t really thought about anything besides the cake and music. Ooh, but a garden could be pretty!”
“BITTAAAY!” Shitty throws an arm over his shoulder. “Can you come upstairs with me? Like, right now?”
Two elder Zimmermanns and one future Zimmermann stare at him. Fuck. He wishes he hadn’t smoked before this. He’s a wee bit too foggy to formulate a decent plan. “What? Why? Is everything okay?” Bitty asks, looking around.
He’s looking for Jack, Shitty realizes. Fuck. He can’t let Bob and Alicia notice he’s gone, or they’ll start looking too. “Everything’s fine!” he shrieks loud enough to get his attention again. “I need you to come to the bathroom with me. It’s for a private matter.”
“Oh? Oh.” He blanches. Bob visibly winces, gives him a look like ‘tough break, kid’. He has no idea what either of them are imagining, but he wishes he could somehow make them un-imagine it. “Maybe you should ask Ransom? He’s, like, basically a doctor.”
“No! I need you,” he says, or rather, flails. “This requires…small hands?”
“Good lord,” Bitty whispers.
“Honey.” Alicia places a soft hand on his shoulder. She leans in close, whispers, “do you need me to take you to the emergency room?”
“I…I don’t know if I can…I’d be too…embarrassed? And it’s just that I…you know—”
“Okay, fine,” Bitty interjects before he can make even more of an ass of himself. “Come on. If you didn’t know how much I love you Shitty Knight, you do now.”
“Wow,” he hears Bob whistle as they walk away. “We have one saint of a son-in-law.”
Bitty wraps his arm around Shitty, heads upstairs with him. Shitty fends off anyone who tries to catch him along the way. It’s a hell of a lot of people, but he’d fight off a whole army and let Jack’s parents think he ? stuck something ?? in his ass? if it means rectifying this six-year-old-mistake.
“Oh shit,” Bitty says once they’re upstairs. “I should stop by Jack’s car.”
“What? Why?”
Bitty’s whole body clenches. “To get…you know…”
“What?” Shitty repeats.
Bitty huffs, gives him a look like he desperately hopes Shitty will figure it out on his own. When he doesn’t, Bitty folds his arms and seems to physically force out the single syllable: “Lube.”
Shitty can’t decide if he’s delighted or horrified. “Jack has lube in his car? Do you guys, like, fuck on the side of the road a lot?”
“We were in a long distance relationship! He was driving back and forth all the time.”
“You don’t keep any in your room?” Shitty realizes belatedly that the condom in his pocket isn’t going to cut it here. Fuck, it’s honestly laughable that he ever thought he was an amazing ally.
“It’s not my room anymore! Everything’s in the moving van already.” Bitty sighs, leans against the wall, looking very, very pale. “Shitty…are you sure you don’t want Lardo to do this? Her hands are small too and surely she’s more familiar with your um…anatomy?”
“Oh Jesus Christ.” Shitty grabs Bitty by the hand, pulls him hard into Nursey’s room, through the bathroom, into Chowder’s.
Once he’s deposited him there, he pokes his head out the window. “Cacaw! Cacaw!” Jack doesn’t respond. “Jack! I’m doing our secret signal.”
“Jack?” he hears Bitty whisper, followed by Jack’s voice asking, “We have a secret signal?”
“We made it up freshman year! Ugh, whatever, just get in here.”
“Pretty sure you made it up,” Jack grumbles, pulling himself inside the window. His face goes all soft the second his eyes land on Bitty. It’s too fucking cute. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi.” Bitty smiles, before his eyes quickly widen in something that looks more like terror. “Why is Jack here? Shitty, what the hell did you lodge in there that’s gonna be a two man operation?”
“I…what?”
“Oh my God!” Shitty all but shouts. “There’s nothing up my ass, I made that up to get you up here.”
Bitty’s jaw drops, closes, then drops again. “Are you serious? That was the best you could come up with? What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you? You were gonna spend your engagement party digging an unidentified object out of my asshole? You’re a good bro, but I think you need to learn some boundaries, Bits.”
Jack, no longer rambly apparently, manages one syllable: “What.”
“My question exactly!” Bitty throws his hands in the air. “If you’re not having a medical emergency, what am I doing up here?” His head whips to Jack. “Are you okay, honey?”
“I’m fine.” Jack laughs. He moves closer, places a steady hand on Bitty’s waist. “I think Shitty’s just trying to get me laid.”
“What?” Bitty shrieks.
“Look, I’m sorry there’s no lube. Or sheets. And there’s a photo of Farmer looming over you. But you need this.” He points between the two of them. “Everyone’s too excited to see the fuck-me eyes you’re giving each other, but a good bro notices.”
Jack does him the massive decency of not pointing out that for years, Shitty did not, in fact, notice.
“We don’t…” Bitty splutters. “It’s not—”
“Besides,” Shitty says, “I’m sure you guys have always wanted to bone in Jack’s room.”
Bitty’s so red, he practically blends into the Samwell pennant half hung on the wall. “It’s…but Chowder…”
“Chowder won’t live here for a few months.” Jack holds him tighter, crowds him enough that in a matter of five seconds, Shitty feels like he’s intruding. “We just got engaged, bud. I think Chowder will forgive us taking some…time alone. And if he doesn’t, I’ll pay to have the place deep cleaned.”
Jesus. Deep cleaned? What the hell do they get up to? He makes a mental note to start hounding Jack for deets again.
Bitty pauses, considering. He looks from Jack, to Shitty, to the band on his finger. “Gosh, we did, didn’t we? We’re engaged. How is that possible?”
“Well, I got a ring and you said yes,” Jack chirps.
“Ha ha. It just…it feels like yesterday you were running in here in those graduation gowns,” he says softly, moving a hand up to tug on Jack’s shirt. “And then you just…kissed me. Sometimes I still can’t believe you did that.”
Jack leans down and kisses him then, as if to prove that it’s real. That it happened. That he woke the hell up and chose him, and he hasn’t stopped since.
Slowly, Shitty drops the condom on the floor and backs out of the room. He heads downstairs, ready to make excuses to anyone who asks.
It’s Lardo who asks first. “Where are Jack and Bits?” she says. “Bitty’s mom wants even more pictures.”
He leans in close, relishes the way she giggles lightly when his stache tickles her ear. “They’re upstairs boning. Help me cover for them?”
She pulls back, a serious look in her eyes. She nods, salutes him, and without another word, they divide and conquer.
In an instant, Shitty’s not overwhelmed by the sheer amount of love pulsing through the Haus anymore. Not by Georgia on my Mind blasting from the kitchen, Jack and Bitty doing God knows what above their heads, Lardo tossing him a smile over her shoulder.
After all, it was always here. He just had to know where to look.