Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And you can’t close your eyes anymore
And you can’t dream
Just because you fucked up doesn’t mean it’s okay
To stand around tearing down the roof with your hands
hoping nobody notices
And if you guffaw, I will fill your mouth with the sour taste…

 - Harvey Danger, “Underground”

Jack Zimmermann’s Boyfriend Puts Kent Parson on Blast at Aces-Falcs Game

TMZSports.com -- We all know that NHL crowds love to get loud and nasty during games...but why get loud when you can get personal?

That seems to be the philosophy of Eric Bittle, boyfriend of Falconers center Jack Zimmermann. Multiple sources at last night’s Falcs-Aces game overheard Bittle yelling, “Kent Parson, you are a BAD FRIEND!” when the Aces captain took the ice.

Do we detect a hint of jealousy?

In their youth, Parson and Zimmermann were poised for a legendary hockey bromance of Ovi-Backstrom proportions before Zimmermann’s public flameout -- just days before Parson went first in the NHL draft, heading to Vegas for all the hookers and blow he could handle, while Zimmermann began the season in an inpatient treatment facility.

When Zimmermann became the first openly gay NHL player at the end of last season, everyone wanted to know...were he and Parson practicing more than just trick plays back in the Q?! Neither player will respond to rumors that they were performing extracurricular stick checks...but there certainly seems to be no love lost between Parson and Bittle, Zimmermann’s main squeeze (and co-star of that legendary center ice makeout).

Parson’s and Zimmermann’s reps both declined comment, but we’re willing to bet there’s more to this story than anyone’s saying...

~*~

Jack comes home from his morning run to find Bitty curled up on the couch, wide-eyed, one hand covering his mouth while the other scrolls rapidly through his phone.

“You OK, Bittle?” he asks slowly, putting some kale and protein powder in the blender.

“Oh honey, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry this happened, I never should have said anything, I was just caught up in the moment, you know? And now TMZ won’t stop calling me, I don’t even know how they got my number, and Lord, you should see my Twitter mentions, they are a dumpster fire…”

Abandoning his smoothie, Jack crosses to plop down on the couch, firmly peels Bitty’s phone out of his hand, and draws Bitty into his lap. He knows from long experience that the best way to deal with Bitty’s stress-babbles is to just let them run their course, so he sits patiently as Bitty talks himself through embarrassment (“It was so rude of me, what would my MooMaw say?”), anger (“Considering some of the things I could say about Mister Kent Parson, I don’t see why everybody’s making such a big deal about it”), and a play-by-play of various reactions he’s seen on Twitter (“I’m just saying, if you’re going to call a total stranger a jealous bitch maybe take a look in the mirror, honey”). Eventually, Bitty’s monologue peters out, and he deflates against Jack with a sigh.

“Maybe it’s time to take a break from your phone for a couple of hours,” Jack suggests gently. “Go...take a walk, or something.”

“I’m sorry I made this a Thing,” Bitty says into Jack’s shoulder, his voice muffled and miserable.

“It’s not a Thing,” Jack replies.

Bitty raises his head and gives him a Look.

“OK, maybe it’s a little bit of a Thing,” Jack admits. Bitty groans and buries his face back in Jack’s shoulder. “Remember what Georgia said,” Jack adds, “all we have to do is sit tight and it will all blow over in a couple of days.”

Bitty sighs. “I know. I guess I’m still not used to people knowing about us, I honestly did not think anyone would be paying attention to me during the game. And I saw him, and I remembered what you said the other night, and I just got so mad at him…”

“I know. It’s OK. A week from now, nobody will even remember this happened.” Jack tries to keep his words and his voice soothing, but a bitter taste is creeping into the back of his throat.

~*~

Jack is seventeen years old, and stepping outside means walking into an ambush.

“Jack! How does it feel to be the presumptive #1 draft pick?”

“Jack! How do you respond to rumors that your father has taken personal phone calls with the Aces front office?”

«Jacques! Pensez-vous que la perte d’hier soir aura une incidence sur vos chances de repêchage?»

It doesn't happen every day, but it’s just often enough that he can never take for granted they won’t be there when he opens the door. He tries to take the noise like he would a check on the ice - brace for it, take the impact, shake it off, keep going - but it turns out engaging your core just isn’t that effective against a verbal assault.

His billet family is delighted with his prospects (“I know it’s a lot, son, but the media attention just means they know you’re good”), which means he has to watch his giant, awkward, blushing face murmuring inanities like we’re all just trying to do our best for the team on the local news with them every night, too.

He gets a hat trick in a game against the Sea Dogs, and the next day there’s a gauntlet of reporters between him and his car. He stumbles into the locker room to find Kenny already there, early for once.

Kenny says “Hey,” smiling that warm bright real smile he has just for Jack, the one that usually causes a wave of heat to rise in Jack’s belly, but Jack is numb, shaking, his tongue is too big for his mouth, he feels like he can barely see.

“Hey,” Kenny says again, his face darkening with concern, and then “hey,” again, pulling Jack close to him. He lets Jack grab big fistfuls of the back of his T-shirt, stands there while Jack breathes him in, warm and solid and there.

“I can’t,” Jack whispers. It’s humiliating, to let anyone see him like this, but he’s past caring. “It’s too much.”

He’s half expecting Kenny to chirp him or call him ungrateful for not wanting the attention, but he doesn’t; if anyone in the world knows what he’s going through right now, it’s Kent Parson. “It’s OK, hey, it’s OK,” he murmurs, his hand reassuring between Jack’s shoulder blades. “Take a deep breath.” Jack does. “You can do this. Those assholes don’t matter, it’s all bullshit anyway. It’s just hockey, right? It’s you and me playing hockey.”

Jack nods, his hands starting to relax in Kenny’s shirt.

“You know how to play hockey, right?” Kenny continues.

Jack snorts. “Yeah.”

“Then fuck those vultures.” Kenny’s breath is hot on his ear. “Let’s play some motherfucking hockey.”

After that it’s better. Not great, but better, because Kenny is there with him.

“Kent! How does it feel to be competing with your teammate for that number-one draft spot?”

Kenny has about eighty different smiles that Jack’s seen so far, and this one is the knife’s-edge grin that means Kenny’s boiling with fury inside. “Getting picked first or second, it doesn’t really matter to me,” he says with a dangerous glitter to his eyes. “As long as I get to keep playing hockey and looking good doing it.”

But of course it does matter; it matters so much it’s like it’s become a third person in the room with them.

On weekends when they don’t have road games, they drive up into the woods where it’s quiet, and sit in the bed of Kenny’s truck. They read, make out, talk about whatever. They do not talk about the draft.

Jack looks at the way the afternoon sun lights up Kenny’s hair, throwing sharp shadows on his face, and wishes he could draw. His hands don’t shake out here, just like they don’t shake on the ice. Away from all the noise, he feels almost like a normal person, like someone who could just dick around in the woods with his best friend and not have any consequences to worry about.

Gagnon, one of their D-men, throws a party when his billet family is out of town. “Do you want to go?” asks Jack, and Kenny shrugs, but doesn’t make fun of the idea, which means he wants to go.

Kenny puts on a nice t-shirt (Jack’s not sure how a t-shirt gets to be “nice,” but he can tell the difference on Kenny) and his customary backwards cap, and Jack puts on one of his newer flannels and takes two anti-anxiety pills and they walk to Gagnon’s house. Kenny has swiped a bottle of Fireball from somewhere and they pass it back and forth as they walk. Jack’s already starting to feel a little soft and dreamy around the edges when they get there.

The party is, predictably, terrible; it’s loud and reeks of beer and is full of a bunch of townies Jack’s never met before. When they open the door a wall of noise slaps him and for a moment his brain shuts off completely. He turns to look at Kenny, but Kenny’s not looking at him; he’s looking straight ahead into the party and smiling that long slow sexy give-me-what-I-want smile, and their teammates are greeting them with raucous shouts, so there’s no way they’re leaving. Jack takes another swig of the whiskey and trails in Kenny’s wake.

Kenny is a star. Kenny is the life of the party. Even though Jack is becoming increasingly detached from reality as the night wears on, he can appreciate the way Kenny works the room, flirting with the girls, wrestling with the guys, holding court around the keg.

Jack finds an easy chair in the corner and flops into it, the party encroaching and receding around him like the tide. After many years, at a great distance, he hears someone say “Check out Zimmermann.”

“Man, how fucked up are you?” Gagnon is leaning into his face, looking amused rather than concerned. He takes a cup Jack didn’t know he was holding out of Jack’s hand. “You gotta pace yourself, mon capitan.”

Jack pretends he’s Kenny: he smiles, raises his eyebrows. “It’s all good,” he slurs. Somehow the party has gotten smaller; it’s mostly guys from the team now, sprawled on the furniture around the basement. He tries his new Kent Parson everything’s-fine smile on them, too.

“Parse, your boy over here is wasted,” Gagnon calls out.

Kenny wanders over and dramatically flops into Jack’s lap; the guys laugh and chirp him but it’s good-natured, just Parse being Parse. Jack concentrates very hard on not petting Kenny’s hair. Kenny gives him an anxious frown for the tiniest of flashes, but then it’s gone. “Let he among us who is not wasted throw the first stone,” Kenny announces, gesturing grandly, and the other guys laugh and toast him with their red plastic cups.

Later, stumbling home, the cold air piercing through the fog in Jack’s brain, he hears Kenny say, “Thanks for letting me drag you to that.”

Jack drapes an arm around him, enjoying the way Kenny is the perfect height to fit under his arm. “It was fun,” he lies.

The further they get into the season, the bigger the hype about the draft gets. It starts getting too cold to hang out in the woods. Jack starts wearing headphones everywhere to shut out the noise.

It’s Kenny who points out that the press isn’t allowed on arena property except during official team events. They start getting to the arena early and staying late into the night, together, running plays and watching tape and doing homework and fooling around in the showers and sometimes honest-to-God just sitting there until some of the ravening horde goes home to their dinners and it feels safe to leave the arena. The coaches praise their dedication and leave them to it, unable or unwilling to see anything that looks like a problem with their star duo.

Once the sun goes down, Kenny produces a flask (powered by his billet father’s robust, unmonitored, boys-will-be-boys liquor cabinet) and the two of them spend some time passing it back and forth, until their nerves feel blunted enough to head back into the breach. On nights when it’s been particularly bad for Jack, he pops a Xanax and Kenny is extra outrageous to the media so no one notices Jack shuffling like a zombie to his car.

When Jack thinks of this time in his life, later on, he will associate it with the smell of whiskey on Kenny’s breath, the taste of the arena’s harsh institutional soap on Kenny’s skin, the slow sick release of tension behind his eyes as the pills and liquor take hold.

Chapter Text

You collapse
The pressure of this life is so
You can't be held accountable
If you go, you go
If you go, you go
- Tegan and Sara, “Are You Ten Years Ago”

“...I don’t get why people are so upset by this, people at hockey games yell stuff -”

“You can’t just act like this -”

“- people at hockey games yell stuff all the time.”

“Yes they do! But you can’t -”

“All the time. Doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yes they do, but - can I finish? - you can’t just act like this is some random fan, here. This is the partner of one of the NHL’s star players -”

“That’s another thing -”

“- Calling out another one of the NHL’s top players. Jack Zimmermann - I see you shaking your head, I’m going to finish my thought, Jack Zimmermann and Kent Parson have a documented history together! They’re on the same team together in the Q, Parson goes first in the draft that year, Zimmermann has a - a troubled youth, we don’t hear much about him for a while. And now they’re both in the NHL, and I gotta ask: is there some ongoing beef there?”

“I’m glad you’re bringing up the fact that this Bittle kid is Zimmermann’s partner. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to bother the wives and the girlfriends, and the, you know, partners, what have you, during a game! Let the hockey players focus on hockey, and save the drama for reality TV.”

“OK, but this Bittle guy isn’t sitting up in the Falcs box with the players’ families, he’s down in the stands.”

“I mean, it’s not like he’s in the cheap seats.”

“Yeah, he’s got great seats, but he’s still down there in the crowd, he has to know, you yell something like that, someone’s gonna hear it.”

“We’re going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll be hearing your thoughts - should players’ wives and girlfriends, and now boyfriends, be under the same scrutiny as the players themselves? You’re listening to the Ice Kings, on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio.”

~*~

The post-game presser has never bothered Kent the way it does some guys. Public speaking comes naturally to him, and over time he’s been able to build a rapport with some of the press room regulars. It’s part of what makes him a good captain - he knows how to talk to people, knows how to give them what they want, to say exactly what he wants to say without accidentally saying anything he doesn’t want to say.

Of course, it’s easier on days when they win.

Kent is more than happy to discuss, at length, the hard work and cooperation that went into the Aces’ victory over the Sharks tonight; he’s downright thrilled to relive his two goals, and the totally slick assist from Scraps that made the second one possible.

He’s been braced for the question - the same question he’s been dodging for a week - but as the presser wears on, he’s starting to think the media might have found a new bone to chew on. Which is, of course, when he gets asked the question.

“Kent, what was your reaction to being called a ‘bad friend’ by Jack Zimmermann’s boyfriend last week?”

He bares his teeth in what will pass for a genial smile, pushing down the burst of annoyance that fireworks through him, something he’s mastered through long practice. “I thought it was kind of sweet, actually.”

There are a few extra flashbulb bursts for that. “Sweet?” the reporter presses, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Fuck you, too, Taryn, he thinks, but says, “Compared to the things most people yell at me when I’m beating the home team, yeah.” He chuckles, and bets not even his own mother would think it sounds forced (not that she’d be watching hockey, let alone the postgame coverage). “Look, I’ve met Eric Bittle,” Kent says easily. “He’s a good dude. If that’s the worst heckling I get from him, I’ll take it.”

“So there isn’t any bad blood between you and Jack Zimmermann?”

Kent really wants to smoke a pretend cigarette and say Zimmermann...I haven’t heard that name in years, but there’s no point in doing it for the Vine if Vine doesn’t exist anymore. Instead, he keeps his Press Room Smile going. “Absolutely not. Zimmermann and I aren’t teammates anymore, but I respect him completely, as a player and as a fellow captain.” Deliberately, he lets his smile take on a flirtatious aspect and gives the reporter a wink. “And for the record, Taryn, I am an excellent friend.”

The assembled reporters laugh, his teammates roll their eyes affectionately, and that’s the end of it.

~*~

Kent is seventeen years old, and for the first time he’s spending Christmas in a goddamn winter wonderland.

His mom and step-dad hate cold weather in general and Christmas in particular, so by December 25th he’s usually poolside somewhere, bored out of his mind and shitfaced on umbrella drinks. This year, though, they’re in Thailand, and with games starting back up on the 28th, he and his coaches agreed that the time change would mess him up too much to be worth it.

“You could come home with me, if you want,” Jack had mumbled, peering at him under those thick tangled eyelashes, and his smile was so sweet and shy, how could Kent say no? Christmas with your boyfriend’s family, that’s something people do. More importantly, Christmas with your completely platonic best friend’s family is also something people do, lending the entire affair the nice veneer of plausible deniability that is ever Kent’s watchword. So he buys himself an alpaca wool scarf and a hat with a jaunty pom-pom on it and prepares himself for a Wholesome Quebecois Family Christmas.

Since the plans were set in motion, though, Jack’s been getting squirrelier and squirrelier about the whole thing. Now, in the passenger seat of Kent’s truck on the way to Montreal, Jack is gazing out at the scenery without really seeming to see it. He’s fidgeting so much that it’s distracting; Kent waits until he can’t stand it anymore and then puts his hand on Jack’s knee. “Sorry,” Jack says softly.

“You OK over there?” Kent asks, glancing at him.

“Mm.” Jack nods, staring back out the window.

“Oh, very convincing, I’m very convinced right now, I have no follow-up questions,” Kent says sardonically.

“I should warn you, my dad can be...kind of intense,” Jack says, not looking at him.

Kent smirks. “Zimms, I’ve met your dad. And your smoking-hot mom.” Jack punches him in the shoulder, but Kent can see out of the corner of his eye that the edges of Jack’s mouth are twitching upward, so he presses on. “Your parents like me. Everyone’s parents like me. I am great with parents. I am charming as fuck, and you know it.”

Jack sighs. “My dad’s going to want to watch our game tape from the season so far. He’ll probably have some, euh, constructive criticism.”

“God, I hope so, if this vacation doesn’t turn into a free hockey clinic with Bad Bob Zimmermann then what’s the point of it?” He’s going for a laugh, but Jack just falls silent, staring out the window again.

Kent clears his throat, trying to change tactics. “Honestly, I don’t really care what we do. Your dad wants to talk hockey, I’m more than happy to talk hockey. Your family wants to make maple sugar candy and put popcorn on strings and sing Christmas carols by the fire, I will do my level best to have a wholesome good time.” Jack snorts, and Kent knows he’s found the right approach. He reaches over and puts his hand on Jack’s leg again, higher up this time. “As long as I get to sneak into your room afterward and do some entirely unwholesome things.”

Jack takes his hand and twines their fingers together. “They know,” he says, “about us.”

Kent goes absolutely still for a moment. His free hand is gripping the steering wheel so hard it hurts.

“I trust them,” Jack says simply. “It felt wrong, inviting you there without them knowing...what’s going on.”

Kent has to marvel at the balls on this kid, to just blithely inform his NHL legend father that he’s bringing a boyfriend home for Christmas. He takes a breath, not wanting to ruin this fragile good mood he’s coaxed Jack into, and does not say how could you tell someone our potentially career-ruining secret without even running it by me first? This doesn’t have to be a breach of trust between them, right? This can just be...a funny story.

“You mean in two hours I’m going to have to look your mom in the eye and say ‘Hi, I’m the guy who’s been sucking your son’s dick, when’s dinner?’”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I can see why everyone’s parents like you.”

Kent was expecting Christmas With the Zimmermanns(™) to be like something out of a magazine, just a bunch of really good-looking people being nice to each other, but he’s still blown away by how out-of-a-magazine the whole thing feels. Their house is massive, decorated for the holidays in a way that feels festive without being garish. Alicia Zimmermann has created an exquisitely tasteful tablescape for the dining room table that features a cotton ball snowman Jack made when he was 7. There’s a frozen pond out back to skate on. There are pictures of Jack on every available surface. It’s a lot.

Alicia enfolds Kent in a hug when he arrives. She spends the next couple of hours asking Kent thoughtful questions about his interests and activities while she and Jack bake Christmas cookies in their sunlit Nancy Myers kitchen. He watches her watch Jack as he moves around the kitchen, watches her hands move restlessly whenever Jack enters her orbit. Several times, she can’t keep herself from reaching out and touching Jack, smoothing his hair, patting his shoulder, brushing flour off his cheek.

Bad Bob gets home a few hours later, and Kent watches him hold Jack tight, tight, has to look away from Bob closing his eyes as he hugs his son. Bob ends the hug with a hearty clap on the back and says something in French that makes Jack laugh, then turns and offers a hand to Kent. “Parson, good to see you again.”

Kent lets his hand be crushed in the traditional meeting-your-boyfriend’s-dad handshake, and tries not to think about how the hand currently grinding his bones together has hoisted the Stanley Cup on four different occasions. “It’s good to see you as well, Mr. Zimmermann, thank you for having me.”

“Please, call me Bob!” he booms, like someone who’s never been on a Wheaties box. “I’ve been watching your footage, seems like the team is really coming together, eh?” Bad Bob’s accent makes the word together sound like it’s fifteen letters long. “That no-look pass you two do is quite the play.”

“Thank you, um, Bob, we’ve been practicing hard.” He glances at Jack, whose smile has gone hollow.

“Now don’t forget,” Bob continues, raising an admonishing finger, “in the NHL you won’t be able to rely on trick plays. There’s no substitute for strong fundamentals.”

Gulp. “Yes sir.” Jack shoots him a beseeching, hunted look. What is he supposed to say? “We’ll...uh...keep working on that.”

Bob gives him a twinkly-eyed grin. “Of course, it’s always nice to find someone you have chemistry with on the ice, eh?” He elbows Jack and oh God, was that a sex joke?

“Bob, leave the boys alone,” Alicia scolds him with fond exasperation. Jack is bright red. Definitely a sex joke. What is this family.

That night, as promised, Kent sneaks into Jack’s (enormous, plaid, stuffed-with-hockey-memorabilia) bedroom. Jack is reading, bathed in golden light from the lamp on his bedside table, and Kent’s heart does something complicated. Don’t want this too much, he tells himself.

“Sorry my parents are so weird,” Jack says as Kent settles himself on the bed next to him.

“Everyone’s parents are weird,” Kent replies. “Besides, I think they’re nice. They’re clearly beyond stoked to have you home.”

Jack shrugs. “I guess.”

“Believe it, dude, this house is like a shrine to you. My mom maybe has my school pictures in, like, an envelope somewhere, but that’s it. I think there is at least one picture of you in every room of this place. The guest bathroom has a picture of Guy fucking LaPointe giving you a goddamn piggyback ride.”

The look Jack turns on him is maybe not a full thousand-yard stare, but it’s easily 500 yards and gaining. “Yeah. Try to count how many of those pictures are hockey-related in some way.”

There’s nothing to say to that. He wants Jack’s face not to look like that, not here, where he should be safe. He wants to grab Jack by the shoulders and say Don’t be an asshole, your parents obviously love you. But you can’t tell someone their parents love them, that’s like, weird to say. Especially to someone whose parents love them.

Instead, he tells himself what this boy needs is a distraction. He slides into Jack’s lap, straddling his hips, and rests his forehead against Jack’s; Jack makes an interested sound, finally sets his fucking book down, and rests his hands lightly on Kent’s thighs.

“You know what I was just thinking about?” Kent says, dropping his voice into the husky register he knows Jack likes.

“What?”

“We’ve never actually had sex in a bed.”

“Really?” Jack blinks. “Huh, I guess not.”

“Unless you count the bed of my truck.”

Jack laughs, blushes, shakes his head. “You’re unbelievable.”

Kent leans in to kiss him. “Baby, you have no idea.”

Just as Jack predicted, they spend much of the next day watching hockey tape with Bob. Kent knows that Jack gets stressed out by his dad, but it’s kind of hilarious how they review hockey tape in the same way - Kent can basically predict where they’re going to want to pause, rewind, and watch again.

Bob gives good feedback: it’s constructive, never harsh or over-critical, and he sticks to English so Kent can understand what he’s saying. Kent’s glad he grabbed a notebook to jot down some of the things Bob says; he was mostly joking about the vacation being a hockey clinic, but he’s not about to look this gift horse in the mouth.

They’re several hours into the tape when they come to a moment Kent’s been looking forward to. He can still remember the way it felt, everything meshing perfectly together and he and Jack had been so good, that night, he could feel Jack without even needing to look at him, and when he passed the puck to Jack he was 100% sure Jack would be there. When Jack slapped the puck into the goal it was like magic, like he wasn’t even trying. Even just watching the tape, Kent feels that same elation.

Bad Bob says, “Nice play.”

Jack grunts. The tape keeps playing.

Kent looks back and forth between the two of them, disbelieving. He considers casually saying That play was on the SportsCenter Top 10, you know, but he can see it would be pointless. Soon, father and son are once again in animated discussion, dissecting a move by the Screaming Eagles’ defense and how they could have better addressed it.

That night he sneaks into Jack’s room again, but he snags a bottle from the Zimmermanns’ well-stocked wine cellar on his way.

The week passes quickly. They skate; they watch hockey tape and Christmas movies; they go snowshoeing in the ridiculously picturesque forest; at night, they get drunk and fool around and Kent tries to ignore Wayne Gretzky’s smiling visage staring down from Jack’s bedroom wall.

Kent does run into Bad Bob in the hallway at 3 a.m. once while trying to sneak back into the guest room. Bob raises an unamused eyebrow, taking in Kent’s wine-purple teeth, his tousled hair, his unsteady gait. Kent braces himself for a lecture, but Bob simply says “Good night, Kent,” in pointed tones, and that’s the end of it.

On Christmas morning, they open gifts in front of the fire and when Jack opens his gift from Kent (a copy of Devil in the White City; Jack is going through a big World’s Fair phase), he kisses Kent warmly in full view of his parents, who just go “aww” and keep drinking hot chocolate. Everyone is smiling, Jack’s face is soft and open and happy, and Kent is half-expecting some Victorian moppet to pop out and say, “God bless us, every one!”

Later, when Bob has gone to bed and Jack has passed out in front of White Christmas in the living room, Alicia says, “I’m going to have just the tiniest slice of pie. Do you want some?”

They sit in the kitchen eating pie and drinking milk, and Kent feels like he’s in a sitcom or a commercial for life insurance or something. “We’re so glad you could visit for Christmas, Kenny,” Alicia is saying. “Jack talks about you all the time, it’s been so nice getting to know you a bit.” Her warm blue eyes - Jack’s eyes - are crinkled at the edges, and he realizes she’s not being polite - she actually is glad he’s here.

“I’m...I’m really glad I came, too,” he says slowly, for once not turning on the Parson parent-pleasing charm. “Thanks for, I don’t know, being so...nice, I guess, about everything. About Jack and me.”

“Oh sweetheart, of course! We’re just happy that Jack’s happy,” she says, patting his hand. “It’s tough, you know, sending him out there to play hockey on his own. It’s good to know you’re there with him, that someone’s there to have his back.”

Something about her smile, and the pie, and the twinkling lights, almost sinks him. He almost blurts out, I’m worried about Jack. He wants to rest his head on her shoulder and cry into her pink velvet bathrobe, tell her about the pills and the panic attacks, tell her I’m scared, I don’t know what to do. He knows he could do it, and that Alicia would listen, and maybe even know how to fix it.

But Jack would never forgive him, not now, with the draft so close. So he just smiles and finishes his pie. Six more months, he thinks, the draft is in six months. I can get us through six months.

Chapter Text

Somebody put me back in school
I forget everything I used to know
How to leave the boy behind
Without having to watch him go…

- Metric, “The Twist”

Ransom:
Bitty
You BEAST

Holster:
U TELL EM BITS

Shitty:
Can you imagine being called a bad friend by Eric R. Bittle

Lardo:
I would die

Shitty:
Right? DEVASTATING

Nursey:
What’s cooler than being cool? ICE COLD!

Bitty:
Oh shush y’all

Holster:
You can’t expect to put Kent Parson on life support in the burn unit and not have the group chat blow up

Nursey:
Speaking of which we need the deets

Ransom:
Yeah what did Parson do? Eat a slice of pie without finishing the crust?

Holster:
Try to get Jack on a low-carb diet?

Dex:
Did he tweet something mean about Beyoncé?

Holster:
Ooo or Britney? I saw on Insta he went to her show last week

Nursey shared a file: leave-britney-alone.gif

Chowder:
Bitty are you doing OK?

Lardo:
F’reals Bitty if you need us to slash a reporter’s tires say the word

Shitty:
You’ve seen what we did to the lax house, you know what we’re capable of
Just because Kent Parson probably lives in like a penthouse apartment doesn’t mean we can’t TP it, just let us know

Bitty:
Thanks that’s sweet, please do not slash anybody’s tires

Nursey:
You have officially inspired me to be more creative with my heckling
Next time I go to a game I’m gonna be like “You have terrible taste in music!”

Shitty:
“Your Facebook posts lack sincerity!”

Dex:
“I hope next time you order fajitas, they bring you the wrong kind of tortillas!”

Holster:
Damn Dex

Lardo:
Savage

~*~

Bitty finally takes Jack’s advice and puts down his phone, and by the time Jack has to leave, Bitty has a lemon chiffon pie all ready in the carrier for him to take to practice (Jack tries to point out that it’s the middle of the season and the team nutritionists have already had a word with him about pie’s place in a healthy diet, but Bitty just sends him out the door with a kiss, saying, “Make sure the communications staff gets some of that, now, they’ve had some extra work because of me this week!”).

He’s just rolling out the crust for his second stress-pie of the evening - he’s thinking buttermilk pie with a blackberry-bourbon drizzle on top - when someone knocks on the door. Bitty feels his hands go cold. The building staff knows not to let anyone up without Jack’s express permission, but times are tough and Bitty’s sure that TMZ isn’t above bribing a doorman or two in pursuit of an exclusive. Go away, he thinks at the door.

The knock comes again. “Bitty!” he can hear from the other side of the door. “Open up, bro, I gotta pee!”

The tension in Bitty’s gut immediately melts away; laughing, he opens the door to get swept off the ground in a ferocious Shitty Knight hug.

“Bitty, you gorgeous southern firecracker!” Shitty exclaims over the top of Bitty’s head. He breezes into the kitchen, deposits a six-pack of beer into the fridge, and proceeds briskly to the bathroom, emerging a minute later looking much more relaxed.

“It smells amazing in here, Bits! How many pies have you baked today?”

“This is only my second one,” Bitty says, whisking eggs and buttermilk together.

“Uh-huh,” Shitty says, cocking a skeptical eyebrow. “And what have you had to eat today besides pastry?”

“I...had a piece of toast for breakfast?”

“As I suspected.” Shitty pulls out his phone. “I am ordering us some Thai food, and you and I are going to take a well-deserved break from sports media and contracts law, respectively.”

“You didn’t have to come all the way out here from Boston just to check up on me, Shitty. I’m happy to see you, of course, but really, I’m fine.”

Shitty slings an arm around him. “I know you are. But bros don’t let bros undergo media crises alone, and also if I spend one more night studying I am going to burn down the entire town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, so here I am.”

An hour later, once the pie is baked and cooling and their food has arrived, Shitty finally broaches the subject. “So, how are you doing with this whole Kent Parson thing?”

“Okay,” Bitty says around a mouthful of noodles. Shitty nods, waiting, giving him space to talk. Bitty swallows. “I guess I’m...frustrated? That people are flipping out over it. Like, I have been at games where people are yelling at Jack that they hope he’ll die. Literally die. But I call someone a bad friend and that’s news?”

“I get that.” Shitty snags another spring roll from the box. “It seems like the kind of thing that shouldn’t be news.”

“And like,” Bitty adds, warming to the topic, “you should hear some of the things the other Falconers’ wives and girlfriends say at games - I love Gabby St. Martin to death but the mouth on that woman, good Lord - and nobody’s calling them out on it.”

“OK, but like, no offense, bro, but this isn’t exactly the same as that,” Shitty says, slurping his curry.

BItty hangs his head. “I know, I know, because Jack is the first out NHL player, and people view us as an example, and that means we’re held to a higher standard -”

“No, dude,” Shitty interrupts. “I mean yes, that, that too, and that’s gotta be really hard for you both -”

“It is,” Bitty says softly.

Shitty puts a hand on his shoulder. “I know.” He sighs. “But calling Kent Parson a bad friend - it’s not the same as just saying, like, ‘eat shit and die.’ Everybody knows that Kent Parson should eat shit and die. Calling him a bad friend is just so...specific.”

Bitty doesn’t respond. His heart is a leaden lump in his stomach.

“Bitty…” Shitty peers at him with concern. “Did Kent Parson do something, or say something to you? I didn’t even know you’d seen him, not since Epikegster a couple years ago, anyway.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then - and you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to, but - where is this all coming from? You’re heckling people, which you never do; you’re sitting there right now looking like a little black rain cloud just from having this conversation. Parson seems pretty full of himself, I’ll grant you, but he didn’t strike me as that bad of a guy.”

Bitty draws his lips together in a thin line, feeling that same flare of anger he feels whenever he thinks about Kent Parson’s smug fucking face. “I’m sorry, Shitty, it’s not my story to tell you - but if you knew the whole story, you’d feel differently. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but I’m not wrong. Kent Parson is a bad friend, and he should feel bad.”

~*~

Jack is eighteen years old, and his life is burning down.

It’s kind of a relief, actually, that the worst thing has finally happened. He’s not entering the NHL draft. The meticulously-planned trajectory he’s been on since he was three years old is gone now; in its place is nothing. His parents know, his coaches know, everybody knows. Being a failure feels oddly relaxing.

In the hospital, nobody talks to him about hockey. They ask him how he’s feeling, whether he’s eaten, they check machines and write things down, they give him medicine and then ask him to show them the underside of his tongue to prove he’s taken it. He can sense the enormity of what has happened, lurking outside the hospital doors, in the lines around his mother’s mouth.

Periodically he thinks I should probably be freaking out, but he just feels like someone’s scraped out his insides with a spoon. His eyes are so dry they sting.

A bouquet of “Get Well Soon” balloons sits in the corner of the room; they arrived with a card signed by his entire team. Some of the guys have written surprisingly heartfelt messages of support; others, perhaps at a loss as to what to say, have just signed their names. In neither case is it the people Jack would have expected. In one corner there’s the message Get well soon, Zimms! - Parse.

Which, what does Jack really expect, from a group card? It’s not like Kenny is going to write Hugs and kisses from your secret boyfriend, Kent Parson. Jack doesn’t have his phone - everyone appears to have agreed, on his behalf, that he shouldn’t have it right now - so for all he knows Kenny is blowing up his texts right now. Jack hopes he’s not too worried.

“Have you talked to Kenny? Has he been here?” he asks his mom when they’re alone together. Alicia’s nose is red; her famous porcelain skin is blotchy. She looks like hell.

She hesitates. “I spoke to him the first night, the doctors wanted to ask him about what you might have…” her voice goes a bit wobbly. “...Taken.”

“But not since then.” It’s not really a question.

She takes his hand. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I think...I think that might be for the best, though,” she says carefully. “It sounds like maybe you weren’t...so good for each other.”

He thinks about Kenny laughing in the sunlight, mugging for reporters, tying Jack’s skates when his hands were shaking too badly to do it himself. He thinks about Kenny looking away when he takes a pill, handing him a flask, driving him home half-drunk. Kenny letting him cry, holding onto him, whispering no matter what happens, we’ll still be us. He doesn’t say anything.

His parents release a statement, thanking the media in advance for “respecting our family’s privacy during a difficult time.” His mom brings him some brochures for treatment facilities in Montreal. The whole thing is absurd; he’s not a drug addict. He tries to explain this to his doctors, and they very kindly and patiently point out that that is, in fact, exactly what he is.

The hospital’s basic cable doesn’t have the expanded sports package, so he can’t watch the draft live. He reads about it in the paper, though; he sees the picture of Kent hoisting his Aces jersey and smiling his most infuriating, don’t-hate-me-because-I’m-beautiful smile.

Jack is honestly surprised that he’s not happy for Kenny. He looks for a shred of affectionate pride for this boy he has confided in, leaned on, loved; the only thing there is a deep, seething well of acid. But Jack is a good person, and his father has always taught him that being a gracious loser is important. He deserves it, he tells himself firmly. If Kenny can stand there holding a jersey mere days after Jack’s parents have scraped him off the floor of their bathroom, like nothing fucking happened, good for him. At least I don’t have to worry about how he’d feel if I went first anymore, he thinks bitterly.

The drive back to the house is quiet. Alicia tries valiantly to start conversations, but with both the past and the future off limits as topics, she’s limited to the scenery. After neither Bob nor Jack react to her story about her friend Jeanne finding a bear in her hot tub, she sighs and gives up. Bob is concentrating so hard on not looking disappointed that his face is a mask. He doesn’t even sing along when “Sudbury Saturday Night” comes on the radio.

Jack finally has his phone back. He sits in the back seat scrolling through get-well-soon texts (and “dude, what happened?” texts masquerading as get-well-soon texts) from people he barely knows. A couple of very enterprising reporters have gotten his number and texted as well. Delete, delete, delete.

He has one text from Kenny: I get in on Friday afternoon if you want to hang out. It’s from 7:45 pm the night of the overdose. After that, nothing. No texts, no emails, no missed calls. No fucking Facebook notifications.

He remembers thinking the world had somehow turned sideways, and then realizing he was lying on the floor. He remembers that the floor was cold, and that it felt good. He remembers being wet, and thinking someone threw up in here. He remembers his father’s voice saying “Jacques?”

He spends weeks typing and deleting texts.

Congratulations.

I miss you.

Are you going to fucking call me, or what?

There’s a guy in my group therapy who looks exactly like Major Bedhead from The Big Comfy Couch.

He doesn’t send any of them.

He finds out later that his parents and coaches worked together, and worked hard, to keep Kent’s name out of the press regarding the imploding disaster that is Jack’s life now. He finds out later that when a reporter asked him about Jack at an Aces press conference, Kent said, “Jack is a good friend and a great hockey player, and I know we’re all wishing him a speedy recovery,” with a bullshit look of pious concern.

Every happy memory has an angry one attached to it now, and Jack just can’t. So he puts Kent in a box, and he locks the box and buries it. And that’s better, because now he doesn’t even miss Kent, now that he’s not allowing himself to have any feelings about Kent at all.

Jack goes to rehab. He goes to therapy. He goes to college. He does not see or hear from Kent again until Kent shows up at Samwell fresh off his Stanley Cup win. Jack does not punch his smug beautiful face, which nobody seems to recognize as the act of heroism it truly is. He goes to more therapy. He tries very hard to forgive Kent, mostly because he’s trying very hard to forgive himself. After almost a decade he’s finally in a place where he can be in the same room as Kent Parson without it somehow making him seventeen years old again.

But last week, when Bitty read in the paper that the Aces were going to be volunteering at the children’s hospital while they were in Providence, Jack couldn’t help scoffing at the idea of Kent visiting anyone in the hospital. He couldn’t help pouring the whole story out to Bitty’s sympathetic, indignant-on-his-behalf listening ear.

And now, when people ask him why his boyfriend called the captain of the Aces a bad friend, he has to quell the impulse to say, well, he is.

Chapter Text

You said it was not inside my heart
It was
You said it should tear a kid apart
It does

 - The National, “Anyone’s Ghost”

“Jack Zimmermann: Inside the (Very) Private Life of the NHL’s First Out Player”
Sports Illustrated, February 2017

PROVIDENCE, RI - When the Falconers won the NHL playoff last season, everyone thought they knew Jack Zimmermann’s story. It was a classic redemption tale: the son of hockey royalty, washing out of the NHL draft at 18, overcoming struggles with anxiety and addiction to lead a formerly middling expansion team all the way to Sir Stanley’s Cup.

About 5 minutes into the Falcs’ victory celebration, the world realized: we don’t know Jack Zimmermann at all.

“It wasn’t a planned thing,” Zimmermann, 27, says of his well-documented celebratory kiss. “We were just really happy. We wanted to kiss.”

That kiss (with longtime partner Eric Bittle) skyrocketed Zimmermann from the elite echelons of Stanley Cup winners into even more rarified air: one of only a handful of openly LGBT professional athletes in the United States (Zimmermann identifies as bisexual), and the first out player in the NHL. But if hockey fans thought that coming out would mean a new era of transparency for the 6’1” Falconers center, they’ve been sorely disappointed: the taciturn nature that’s led him to receive the nickname “Hockey Robot” from his teammates has also led him to be famously closed-mouthed with the media (this is only the third interview Zimmermann has granted since the Stanley Cup).

When I sat down with Zimmermann in his spacious Providence apartment earlier this year, I wanted to know: what is the real Jack Zimmermann like?

“Boring,” he laughs, in a voice that’s never quite lost its Quebec accent. “Hockey doesn’t really leave me a lot of time for other activities. I’m really a pretty boring person.”

Zimmermann makes frequent trips back to Samwell, where Bittle, 21, is a senior. Fans who have been following Zimmermann’s career may recognize Bittle as part of the Samwell men’s hockey team, which Zimmermann led to the Frozen Four in 2014 and again in 2015.

When he’s not traveling or working out with the Falconers, Zimmermann dabbles in amateur photography. “It keeps me grounded,” he says. “When I was younger, I always wished I could draw. I like the feeling of being able to capture something beautiful when I see it.”

Mention of his youth brings a serious look to Zimmermann’s face. While his rookie year could not have gone better, culminating in the Stanley Cup, that rookie season came six years later than most people thought it would, thanks to an overdose of anti-anxiety medication that left Zimmermann hospitalized just days before the 2009 draft.

“I don’t regret [the time spent in college hockey],” Zimmermann says. Does he wish things had happened differently? “Of course. But the truth is, I wasn’t ready to go into the NHL at 18. And if I had, I wouldn’t have the life I have now. I wouldn’t have the friends I have now, I wouldn’t play for the Falconers. I wouldn’t have met my boyfriend.” Of playing in the QMJHL, he adds, “The pressure can be really intense. It’s easy to forget that you’re still just a kid. I’m not proud of how I handled it, but I was 17, 18 years old, you know?”

Zimmermann wants young athletes to know that it’s okay to seek help. “If you’re in a position where it feels like too much, there are so many resources out there to help you. That’s what I wish I had understood, at that age. Help is available, but nobody can help you if they don’t know there’s a problem.”

Events from Zimmermann’s time in the QMJHL recently came under renewed scrutiny, when Bittle was overheard heckling Zimmermann’s former teammate, Kent Parson, at a Falcs-Aces game, calling him a “bad friend.”

“If people knew [Bittle], they’d know he didn’t mean anything by it,” Zimmermann explains, adding that Bittle enjoys coming up with creative heckling that doesn’t get too mean or profane. “It was probably the worst thing he could think of to call someone, that he’d actually say out loud.”

So is Parson a bad friend? Zimmermann can only shake his head. “I have no idea. I’ve seen him maybe a handful of times in the last several years. I mean, how often do you talk to your best friend from high school?”

~*~

Jack closes the door after the interviewer, feeling pretty good. Okay, feeling totally exhausted, but like that maybe wasn’t a complete shitshow?

He texts Bitty, Interview over. I think it went OK.

The “typing” dots stay on his screen for a long moment, before the text from Bitty finally pops up: Of course it went OK! You are the sweetest boy in the world and if Sports Illustrated can’t see that they don’t deserve to talk to you. I bet you sounded great!

Thanks for practicing with me, Jack replies. Bitty had spent most of the weekend in Providence, lobbing practice questions at Jack and working with him on his responses. Jack had been terrified that he’d be asked something that he and Bitty hadn’t rehearsed, but the reporter was a friend of George’s and had apparently agreed to go easy on him, in exchange for Jack agreeing to do the interview at all.

Did they ask about me? Bitty asks.

Yes they did. I told them you’re a winger and you make pie, he texts back, smiling.

Everybody knows that, silly.

Knowing the answer already, Jack asks, Did you finish your paper? Bitty’s response is just a string of frowning faces and angry faces, with what appears to be some vomiting faces thrown in.

He’s about to admonish Bitty for neglecting his studies when his phone starts ringing, an unknown number. Ordinarily Jack would just ignore a call from a number he didn’t recognize, but he remembers that the guy from Sports Illustrated said he might be calling to follow up on a couple of things. Jack frowns at his phone - he really, really hates talking on the phone - but answers it anyway. “Hello?”

“So I’m a bad friend, huh?”

Jack is momentarily too startled to speak. “Kent,” he finally says, feeling asinine.

“Hey, Zimms,” Kent says softly. His voice knocks the breath from Jack’s lungs.

“How did you get this number?”

Kent chuckles. “From a friend. This may come as a surprise, but we do know several of the same people.”

“Who.”

“Would you believe...Sid Crosby?”

Jack feels the irritation building in him, prickling just under his skin. “Sidney Crosby gave you my number.”

“No, but how cool would that be?”

“What do you want, Parson?”

“I want to know what the hell you’re telling that kid about me, for starters.” Kent’s voice is dry and cold.

“Nothing that wasn’t true,” Jack retorts. Without realizing it, he’s begun to pace rapidly back and forth across his living room. He starts tidying up, not that the place is that dirty to begin with, but he suddenly needs something to do with his hands.

“I - Zimms - Jack,” Kent says, a hint of frustration breaking through his cool. “Listen. We’re playing the Bruins next week. You guys don’t have a game that night. Come to Boston, have a drink with me after the game.”

“Why would I do that?” Jack asks, fruitlessly plumping his throw pillows for the second time.

Kent’s voice is smooth again. “Because between your Stanley Cup stunt last spring, and Bitty’s little outburst the other night, I have now spent two entire news cycles answering questions about your boyfriend - and being very cool about the whole thing, I might add. Or if that’s not enough, how about because whatever you might think about me now, there was a time when I was - when I was your best friend, and considering that, I think you can have one fucking drink with me.”

Jack doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t say anything.

“Look, bring the kid if you want. Bring whoever.” He can hear Kent sigh. “I just...I just want to see you. I just want to talk to you. OK?”

Jack thinks about the year he spent waiting for this exact phone call, and considers saying you’re too late. He thinks about the therapist he had in college, who told him it’s pretty hard to keep someone in your life, if what you really want is to never see or talk to them again.

He opens his mouth to say no, and somehow says “OK,” instead.

~*~

Kent is eighteen years old, and his life is blowing up.

He doesn’t recognize the number, but it’s Canadian - maybe it’s someone in Montreal calling to coordinate some draft-related event after he gets there later in the week. He answers, “This is Parse.”

“Kent,” the voice on the phone is raspy, like the person is a smoker or has a terrible cold, “it’s Alicia Zimmermann.” He honestly doesn’t recognize her voice until that moment.

“Oh, hi!” he says, startled. “Is everything OK?”

Alicia heaves in a ragged breath. “No...honey, no, everything’s not OK.”

She tells him what she knows: they’re at the hospital. Jack’s had some kind of overdose.

Kent leans heavily against the door to his bedroom. “Is he all right? Is he…” he can’t ask Jack’s mother is he going to die. “What happened?”

She speaks in a tight, clipped cadence, as though trying to keep any more emotion from bleeding through. “His father found him unconscious. They’re pumping his stomach now. They want to kn-know…” the last word comes out as a whisper. He hears her swallow with an audible click, and she tries again. “They want to know i-if you know anything about what he might have taken.”

The urge to deny everything is strong, so strong he almost doesn’t tell her.

“Sweetheart, please.” She’s starting to cry. “Nobody will get in trouble, I promise, but if you know, I need you to tell me now.”

So he does. He tells her about the panic attacks, and the reporters, and the pills, and the booze. He tells her about how Jack has gone from taking one pill every so often, when he needs it, to one pill every day and sometimes more when he needs them. He doesn’t tell her about the time Jack passed out in their hotel room and Kent tried to wake him up and his breath hitched up all funny and Kent momentarily thought he was dying, because Kent is not a monster, but he tells her the rest of it.

He talks, and she cries softly and doesn’t say anything, and the more she cries the more he just can’t stop talking, because maybe now that he’s telling her, she’ll know how to fix it, and Jack will go first in the draft and Jack’s dad will be so proud and Kent can put this whole year back, somehow.

“How long has this been going on,” she asks hollowly, when he finally runs out of words.

“...Most of this season?” Stunned silence on the other end of the line. “...But it’s only really been bad these last couple of months.”

She’s sobbing now, so hard she can barely force the words out. “And you - you knew? Wh-wh-why didn’t...didn’t you tell us?”

His body goes cold. There’s nothing to say to that, because as soon as she asks, he knows that’s what he should have done. Why didn’t he tell them, they could have helped, what the fuck does he think he’s been doing this whole time? “I...I’m sorry,” he croaks. A tear slips down his cheek before he even realizes he’s crying. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“Well,” Alicia says, gulping, seeming to get a hold of herself. “Thank you for that information. I’ll let Jack’s doctors know.”

“I’m coming to Montreal,” he blurts out. “I’ll move my flight up, I’ll see if they can move it to tomorrow. I’ll come see him. Just let me know where he is, and I’ll be there.”

“I don’t...I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says slowly. “Jack will need to rest. I’m sure he’ll call you when he’s ready to talk.”

He knows he shouldn’t ask, but he can’t help himself. “Will he - he’ll still be able to go into the draft, right?”

She gives a bitter little laugh. It sounds utterly foreign in her mouth. It’s that sound, more than anything, that lets him know that everything’s over now. “No. He won’t be entering the draft. Good night, Kent.”

Kent’s mom and step-dad go to the draft with him, more, he suspects, because if how it would look if they weren’t there than any particular interest in whether he goes first in the draft. Strangely enough, Kent has also completely lost interest in whether he goes first - now that he knows he will, it suddenly seems ridiculous to care about at all.

He takes the Aces jersey with hands that don’t shake at all, babbles in the microphone about what an honor is, accepts a stiff hug and kiss from his mother. He turns up the wattage on his parent-pleasing charm and tries to make it nation-pleasing charm instead. It’s easy, because none of it’s real. He’s jumped the track into some sort of alternate timeline where he’s the golden boy and Jack is the fuckup, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to jump back. He gives a quick interview to ESPN following the draft and seriously considers explaining, none of this is supposed to be happening. I blame The Flash.

Part of the alternate timeline is the story his parents and his coaches and agent have cooked up - the one where he and Jack were good friends and teammates, sure, but I guess you never know what a person’s going through, and of course it’s a tragedy but Kent had no way of knowing, we wish him all the best, etc. It’s a much better story than yes, I definitely knew, but I thought I could make it OK, through, I don’t know, wishing?

They still ask, though. Did you know? Did you suspect? Did Jack ever seem...any indication that he was…you really had no idea?

No. No, of course not. If he’d known, he would have done something. What kind of person sees their best friend going through something like that and doesn’t get help?

Jack doesn’t call. Doesn’t text, doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that Kent has been drafted. Kent moves to Las Vegas, and the coaching staff try to pretend that they hadn’t been planning around a 6’1” center with a golden pedigree instead of a 5’10” winger with an attitude problem. His teammates mostly ignore him - he’s too young to go to bars and it turns out Las Vegas doesn’t offer that many activities that are 18-and-up. He’s gone from being the hottest shit in the Q to a rookie on a struggling expansion team that nobody gives a shit about.

So he does what he always does: he works twice as hard as everyone else, he’s outrageous to his teammates and devil-may-care with the media, and he is the first one at the arena every day and the last one to leave. In his least charitable moments, he thinks bitterly how much easier it is, only carrying one person’s career prospects on his shoulders.

They play the Canadiens, and Bad Bob is a guest commentator. After the game, he shakes Kent’s hand with an impassive expression. Like a stranger.

You knew? Why didn’t you tell us?

He waits for Jack to call. He tells himself he’s giving Jack space, and tries to ignore the fact that he’s fucking terrified to talk to Jack. By the time he realizes Jack isn’t going to call, it’s been too long, and now he really can’t call Jack. He waits until he has a suitable offering to lay at Jack’s feet - nothing less than the Stanley Cup will do - but it’s not enough, and Kent can see that it probably never will be.

The protective part of his mind, the part that lashes out instead of in, says he could at least be happy for me, and he lets that part of him hate Jack. Just a little. Just enough to drown out Alicia’s voice, enough to let him survive losing Jack again, and again.

You knew? Why didn’t you tell us?

You were a child, his therapist (once he finally starts going to therapy) tells him. He knows that, and he knows that Jack is responsible for his own choices.

But he also knows that Jack trusted him, and Kent let him down. He wanted Jack to enter the draft, and he wanted Jack not to hate him. And all that happened was that Jack wound up in the hospital, and he washed out of the draft anyway, and he hates Kent anyway, and he almost died, and Kent didn’t stop it.

Chapter Text

I'm gonna tell you what you need to hear
And I'm a little too late
By three or four years
And it may not make much sense
Now that we are apart
But I'm going to stop pretending
That I didn't break your heart

 - Eels, “I’m Going to Stop Pretending That I Didn’t Break Your Heart”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come?” Bitty is lying on his back, staring at the Samwell pennant above his closet. He can hear rustling over the phone. Jack must be packing for Boston.

“I’ll be OK,” Jack says.

“Because I could totally come.”

“Your paper will still be due on Monday whether you come to Boston with me or not,” Jack says with mock severity.

Bitty flops over onto his stomach with a huff. “That’s not what this is about, and you know it, Jack Zimmermann. I want to be there for moral support!”

“I know you do, Bits.” Jack’s been calling him Bits for a while now, but every time he does, a part of Bitty still swoons. “I’ll be OK, though. It’s one drink.”

“You don’t have to go, you know. You don’t owe him anything.” Bitty can’t help the fear that grips his stomach at the thought of Jack facing Kent Parson alone. What if he says more of the things he said to Jack at the Epikegster? What if he hurts Jack?

He can hear Jack sigh. “I know. But...I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about him recently. He was my best friend, in the whole world, and now we’re just...I don’t know,” he says again. “I’d like to see him.”

Bitty picks up Señor Bun and gives him a little cuddle, wishing he could do the same to Jack. “Be careful,” he says.

~*~

When Kent walks into the bar, Jack is startled by the intensity of his reaction to him. For just a moment, his heart leaps; he always forgets just how good-looking Kent is until he sees him in person again. Even just in jeans and a t-shirt, with a baseball cap covering his pale hair, Kent moves with his customary leonine grace.

Of course, after that fleeting moment the same wall of anger and terror slams down in his chest like it always does. He betrayed us once, his heart whispers. Don’t believe a single word he says. Looks like he still can’t have one feeling about Kent without having all the feelings.

“Kent,” he says, standing up. He awkwardly offers his hand, and Kent just as awkwardly shakes it.

“Thanks for coming,” Kent says, hopping up onto the bar stool opposite him.

“Apparently, it was the least I could do,” Jack sneers, and is startled by the acid in his voice.

Kent flinches, but the snarky comeback Jack is expecting doesn’t come. Instead, he smiles a smile Jack has never seen before. It’s weary and rueful and a little sad, and something in it drains most of the anger out of Jack.

“Sorry,” Jack mutters. Kent waves his apology away and flags down a server. She takes their beer orders with indifferent politeness - not a hockey fan, then. Good. The last thing Jack needs right now is someone tweeting out his location while he’s having a beer with Kent fucking Parson.

They sit in awkward silence, neither of them wanting to start a conversation before the server gets back with their beers. Jack studies Kent’s face, aiming for the dispassionate assessment he usually reserves for opponents on the ice. Kent’s thinner than he was the last time Jack saw him, and tanner. He’s wearing a gray linen shirt that brings out the blue in his pale eyes. Jack notes with surprise the first hints of fine lines at Kent’s mouth, the corners of his eyes. Fuck, he thinks, we’re getting old. He catches Kent’s eye, and Kent gives him a caught-you-looking smirk, but then the server sets down their beers and Kent’s face takes on a vulnerable cast. Just for a moment, Jack sees the boy he knew peeking out at him.

“So...how are you?” Kent says, looking down at his beer.

Jack blinks. “I’m...fine. I’m good.”

“Good, that’s...good,” Kent nods. “You staying with that guy Shitty while you’re out here?”

“Yeah.”

“He always seemed cool.”

“He is cool,” Jack says. “He’s my best friend.” He doesn’t know he’s saying it to hurt Kent, but Kent’s eyes fly up to his, startled, and he realizes that’s exactly why he said it.

Kent inhales sharply and opens his mouth to speak, his eyebrows creasing, but stops. He holds the breath for a moment, and then lets it out shakily, glancing away. Jack is begrudgingly impressed - he knows stress management techniques when he sees them. A Kent Parson who’s willing to work on himself is an entirely new phenomenon.

“I went stargazing in the desert last week.” Kent says suddenly. “It takes some driving to get outside the light pollution, but once you’re out there you can see a ton of stars. It reminded me of the time we watched the meteor shower, do you remember that?”

Jack doesn’t, and then it’s like his brain is loading an old file, and suddenly the whole memory is there. “Yeah, that was fun.”

“It was so cold, and you wouldn’t let anyone build a fire until after the meteor shower went over.”

Jack nods. “Because of the light.”

“It’s a good thing the meteors were actually cool, because I think Gagnon was ready to straight-up murder you.”

“He almost did murder us all, building that fire,” Jack recalls. “I remember the way he looked without eyebrows.”

Kent’s laughing now. “Oh my God, yeah, that was a surprisingly good look for him.”

“I haven’t thought about that in a long time,” Jack admits. He doesn’t add because I try not to think about you, but it’s in the air between them anyway. Kent smiles his new sad smile again.

Jack thinks about that night, about the way they’d all huddled up in a pile for warmth, about Kenny laughing in the firelight. He’d really loved that boy. He smiles a sad smile back.

“You know,” Jack says hesitantly, after a moment. “There are nights like that one that I don’t remember. Stuff I know happened, because someone mentioned it later, but I just…” he makes a poof! gesture with his hands. “It’s just gone.”

“Fuck,” Kent mutters. He makes an abortive movement and for a horrified moment Jack thinks Kent is going to try to hold his hand, but instead Kent just takes another swig of his beer and then starts babbling. “Fuck, Zimms, I don’t think I’ve ever actually said it to you, which is so fucked up when you think about it, but fuck, dude, I’m so sorry I didn’t help you, I didn’t know what to do, and I should have done something, but...I...didn’t, and you wound up in the hospital, and, Christ, I’m so sorry. You’re right, I was a bad friend.”

Jack is too taken aback by Kent’s rapid-fire apology to feel anything but confusion. “Wait, what? What are you talking about?”

Kent takes a deep breath, and - holy shit, is Kent Parson on the verge of tears in this random cocktail lounge? “I knew,” he says, in a tone that indicates that this is a Statement of Great Portent, and not, you know, indecipherable rambling. “I knew you were using, and I didn’t stop you.”

Jack laughs a little bit. He can’t help it. Kent has come 2700 miles to tell him, Jack, that his overdose almost 10 years ago is somehow his, Kent’s, fault. It’s melodramatic and self-aggrandizing and oddly touching. It’s classic Kent.

The good news is, this is a conversation that a lot of people feel like they need to have with you when you get out of rehab, for some reason, and it’s one Jack’s used to having. This is familiar ground, although it’s been a while.

“Kent, I’m a drug addict.” Jack lowers his voice over the key phrase - not that anyone could overhear them in this noisy bar, but it’s force of habit by now. “If you had tried to stop me, I would have just hid it from you, too.” 17-year-old Kent is looking at him out of 27-year-old Kent’s face again, and it’s unnerving, but Jack keeps talking. “The only person who could have stopped it was me.”

“I should have done something, though. I could have done something.”

Jack wags his hand back and forth in an equivocal gesture. “Maybe. But maybe not.”

Kent stares at him in total bewilderment. “But...you told Bittle I was a bad friend.”

Jack snorts and looks away.

“OK...look, I know you’re not good at talking,” says Kent acerbically, sounding more like his usual self, “but I just poured my fucking heart out here, do you think you could, like...try to talk to me about this?”

Trying to collect his thoughts, Jack takes a sip of his untouched beer. Kent is just staring at him, waiting. He fidgets and feels a flash of annoyance. “I don’t know why you even want to try to fix this, you’re the one who went to the NHL and never talked to me again.”

“You never talked to me again, either,” Kent points out, frowning.

“I was in the hospital!”

“I know. I was giving you space.”

“I had plenty of space. I wanted you.” Okay, he says to himself, apparently we’re just going to keep doing that thing where we don’t know what we’re going to say until we say it? Okay, cool.

“You did?” Kent shifts uncomfortably on his stool. “Your mom said…”

“Wait, my mom? When did you talk to my mom?”

“The night you went to the hospital, she called me.” Kent’s eyes are darkening from blue to gray at the memory.

“And you didn’t - you didn’t think maybe to check back in sometime after that single conversation?”

Kent's voice is almost a whisper. “I didn’t know what to say to you.”

“Yeah,” Jack shoots back tartly. “I got that a lot, back then.”

“I felt like you would hate me...you know, for going first in the draft.”

“Well.” Jack meets his eyes. “I did hate you.”

“I know,” Kent scowls.

“But...I don’t hate you now,” Jack says with a sigh. It’s true. He’s finding Kent infuriating and impossible and, even after all this time, somewhat endearing. But he doesn’t hate him, not anymore.

Kent’s eyes are wide. “You don’t?”

“No.” He can see that Kent wants him to say more, so he dredges up the words. “It was a long time ago. We were kids. I’m in a good place, now. I think you acted like a dick, but I don’t hate you.”

“But your boyfriend said…”

Jack chuckles. “Bitty’s another story.” He pictures Bitty’s face, hot with righteous indignation, and laughs again. It would take a lot for Bitty to forgive someone who hurt Jack. Thinking about that makes him feel warm all over, and the last hard kernel of anger in his chest starts to melt. “My dad says it’s easier to forgive the people who hurt us than it is to forgive the people who hurt the people we love.”

“Your dad hates me,” Kent grimaces.

“Yup.”

Kent breathes out, a long exhalation that seems like it blows away the last of the tension between them. They sip their beers in silence, but not an uncomfortable one. Abruptly, Kent leans forward, his eyes flashing with interest. “Soooo, the people we love, huh?”

“I’m not talking about this with you,” Jack says, rolling his eyes. Kent is still an incorrigible gossip; some things never change.

“Fair enough,” Kent replies, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck. He looks like a cat shaking itself off after getting caught in the rain. “Do you want to get some food?”

~*~

Truce! Kent Parson Spotted with Jack Zimmermann at Back Bay Hotspot

TMZSports.com -- After weeks of rumors of bad blood between the two former QMJHL teammates, Kent Parson and Jack Zimmermann were spotted sharing burgers at a popular Boston nightspot.

We’re told that the two had a conversation that at times looked serious, but ultimately parted friends...even sharing a hug, as these TMZ-exclusive photos show.

Not present was Zimmermann’s smoking-hot boyfriend, Eric Bittle - based on Bittle’s comments earlier this season, we’re guess that’s a hatchet that won’t be buried anytime soon.

~*~

Kent:
Did you see the photos of us

Jack:
Yes

Kent:
I’m so pissed
They got a shot of me eating french fries
I got bawled out by the nutritionist as soon as I got in today

Jack:
Nobody made you eat fries

Kent:
Burgers demand fries
We should have held hands, give them something to take pictures of besides me stuffing my face

Jack:
Haha
B would kill me

Kent:
Tell him I’ll hold his hand too
I’m an equal opportunity hand holder

~*~

NHL Star Jack Zimmermann Hangs with Hockey Greats at 28th Birthday Bash

PEOPLE.com -- Hockey stars of the past, present, and future came together on Friday to celebrate Jack Zimmerman’s birthday.

A source tells PEOPLE that the Falconers center rang in his 28th year at a private event held at the spacious Providence home of teammate Sebastien St. Martin.

Jack’s father, four-time Stanley Cup winner “Bad” Bob Zimmermann, held court on the patio, while wife Alicia manned the margarita bar with a little help from Paulina Gretzky (daughter of hockey legend Wayne) and Jack’s college roommate, B.S. Knight, a current Harvard law student.

Pittsburgh Penguins owner Mario Lemieux was seen poolside, chatting with Penguins center Sidney Crosby. Kent Parson, captain for the Las Vegas Aces, arrived late with a gal pal on each arm, and could later be seen imparting hockey wisdom to some of the current members of the Samwell Men’s Hockey team.

As for the man of the hour, sources tell us he was seen blowing out the candles on an apple “birthday pie” while pals toasted his birthday. The pie, of course, was baked by Jack’s longtime partner Eric Bittle, whose cookbook Baking with Bitty was just published by Clarkson and Potter.

It’s an exciting time for Zimmermann, who, with one Stanley Cup already under his belt, is on track for a hockey career to rival even his famous dad's.

~*~

The party is winding down before Kent has a chance to do more than say hi to Jack. Every time Kent’s looked over at him, Jack’s been surrounded by people, and most of the time he’s had Bitty tucked up under his arm. Things between Kent and Jack have been slowly improving, but based on the stink-eye Bitty gave him when he arrived, he’s got a ways to go with the boyfriend.

Finally, Bitty is tending to some pie-related task in the kitchen and Kent can slink over to Jack. “Happy birthday.”

“Hey!” Jack looks relaxed and happy, and Kent thinks for the hundredth time how far he’s come. The Jack he knew in the Q would have imploded, being the center of this much attention - especially with his dad here. “I’m glad you could make it,” Jack is saying.

“Well, how could I miss the social event of the hockey season?”

“Have you been here long?”

“For a little while,” Kent prevaricates. “I didn’t want to intrude while you were...talking to other people.”

Jack makes a face at him. “You’re so full of shit.”

“What?” Kent says, batting his eyes innocently. Jack doesn’t respond; he just grabs Kent firmly by the upper arm and begins marching him toward the house. “What are you doing?”

“If you’re going to be my friend, you’re going to have to get to know him,” Jack replies, and the relaxed happy-fun-time Jack of a moment ago is gone, replaced by scary hockey captain I’m-gonna-make-you-run-4-am-drills Jack.

“But he hates me,” hisses Kent, frantically trying to backpedal against Jack’s inexorable march.

Jack deposits him in front of the kitchen door. “Figure it out.”

Bitty is loading individual mini pies out of a stacking organizer and placing them on tiny saucers when Kent stumbles into the kitchen. “Oh! Hi Kent.”

“Hi,” Kent says awkwardly. Bitty returns to his task as though Kent’s not standing there at all. “Do you...need some help in here?”

“Oh, no, that’s okay, you don’t need to trouble yourself. Thanks, though.”

“It’s no trouble,” Kent says smoothly, falling in beside him and starting to plate.

“I’m sure your dates will be missing you,” Bitty says, cold and sweet as butter.

“Agnieszka wasn’t my date, she was Tater’s. I just gave her a ride here. I’m pretty sure Sonia got a ride back with her and Tater.”

Bitty shakes his head affectionately. “That man. He is like a giant golden retriever puppy, and women just seem to eat him up with a spoon.”

“Hell, I’d eat him up with a spoon, if I thought he’d be into it,” Kent says without thinking.

Bitty purses his lips and starts putting plates on a tray to bring outside.

Kent frantically grasps for a change of subject. “So...do you...um. Think birthday pie is going to be the new birthday cake?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so! Jack asked for pie, so we’re having pie, but I think there’s still something so...birthdayish about cake.”

“Yeah, I doubt Rihanna’s ever going to write a song called ‘Birthday Pie,’” Kent muses, and he’s pretty sure he sees a ghost of a smile on Bitty’s lips. Kent keeps putting pies on plates, but starts humming quietly, “Cake, cake, cake, I know you wanna bite this…”

Bitty sighs. “So did Jack send you in here to compliment my pie and sing Rihanna at me?”

“Not exactly. He said I should get to know you.”

“Look, Kent.” Bitty has his hands on his hips, the pie server still clutched in one hand. “I don’t like you, and you don’t like me.”

“What?” Kent blinks. “I like you just fine.”

Bitty is momentarily distracted by this, but shakes it off. “The point is, if you’re going to be friends with Jack, then I accept that. Maybe...who knows. Maybe in time, we can learn to be friends too. But I remember the things you said to him. I remember the way you hurt him.”

“He hurt me, too,” Kent says quietly.

“I know that." Bitty sighs. "Are y’all done hurting each other now?”

Kent gulps, nods.

“Okay then,” Bitty says, returning to his plates. “I’ll give you a chance, if only because I know Jack is too stubborn to let it go until I do. But if you hurt him again, I know a whole passel of hockey bros who would be more than happy to make sure no one ever found your body.”

“Okay. That sounds fair.” Kent laughs. “Of course, if I did hurt Jack again, I’m pretty sure Bad Bob would get a posse together to murder me himself. Which would be cool, then I could finally meet Wayne Gretzky. But I promise,” he hastens to add, “you will otherwise have first dibs on murdering me.”

Bitty raises his chin. “Deal.”

~*~

“...and a highlight from tonight’s Falcs-Caps game, some celebrity fans in the crowd tonight. Seth MacFarlane, he’s been a Falconers fan since their very first season...NBA superstar Lamar Odom in the crowd...and here we can see the Falcs getting support from a fellow hockey player, Kent Parson of the Las Vegas Aces, sitting in the crowd with Jack Zimmerman’s boyfriend Eric.”

“Man, if I were a hockey player, I would not want to go to a hockey game on my night off. Get me out on the golf course, you know?”

“Still, it’s nice to see these players coming out to support each other. Here’s a clip from later in the game, just after Zimmermann scored his second goal of the evening...skating up to high-five his boyfriend through the glass, a high-five for Parson as well, quite the celebration there. A terrific game for Zimmermann and the Falconers tonight.”

“That’s gonna do it for sports this evening! After the break: are these common household toxins lurking in your home? The answer may surprise you. We’ll have that, plus your up-to-the-minute weather forecast, after this.”