Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the beginning, everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong.

It comes sudden, but not unexpected, like an April shower, or brilliant lightning during a summer storm.

When things start falling apart, they start with Jack. A stream of texts, the screen on Bitty’s phone the only light in their bedroom, casting blue-purple shadows across the room. More often than not Bitty isn’t even awake when they come. Sometimes he wakes up, and squints at the shape of his phone on the bedside table. With time, he learns to ignore the buzz of it against the polished wood surface. He rolls over and faces the cold, empty side of the bed to his right. He reaches for Señor Bun under his pillow and gets back to sleep in no time.

Every time, Bitty wakes up in the early hours for his shift at the bakery, texts back “Good morning <3” and promptly shoves his feelings about whatever Jack said the night before so far down his list of worries he forgets about them.

As time goes on, the texts turn into voice notes, and that’s somehow harder, if only because hearing Jack’s voice is harder, especially when he’s clearly had a few drinks.

Bitty hates clicking play, hand shaking as he listens to Jack’s slurred voice.

“I hate this. The time difference is killing me. I know you’re asleep but PR is pressing me to bring a date to an event next month. A… a girl. They said they’d arrange it all. Fuck. I’m sorry, Bittle. I don’t know what to do. God, what is wrong with me? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have sent this. Call me in the morning, please? I miss you.”

“Hi bud, the guys say hi! Thank you for your messages, it was a good game. I’m really proud of the work everyone has put in. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Hey… just wanted to say hello. Good luck with the writing tomorrow. I’ll be home for dinner, if all goes well. G’night.”

It’s normal. It’s routine. Bitty works, makes time to hang out with Shitty and Lardo when their free time aligns, catches up with the other boys. He works on his recipes, though only half-heartedly. Mostly Bitty bakes, does his best to avoid the press, and waits for Jack to come home.

He starts to resent the routine. Bitty longs for the early days, when he was still back at Samwell, or for a future he once thought was near, but now he’s not so sure of anymore. If anything, the thought of ever holding Jack’s hand out in public seems more distant than ever.

He only realises that it is happening when other people start pointing it out.

They don’t argue. Because that would require caring, and Bitty realises they’re both resigned to this being their life. Jack apologises, brings Bitty’s gifts in the form of flowers, or chocolates, or baking equipment. Bitty sighs and bakes about it. Months pass. Life goes on.

To add insult to injury, Kent Parson comes out, becoming the first openly out player in the NHL. It happens in the middle of summer, with Jack complaining about it being sweltering hot, and Bitty arguing it’s actually quite pleasant. It could have been good, is what Bitty thinks, after, when Jack disappears through the front door. It could have been what they needed, the push they’d been waiting for.

It isn’t.

One minute Jack is complaining about the heat, and the next he drops his phone and freezes. Bitty grimaces at the sound of the screen cracking on the marble tile.

“Sweetpea?”

Jack just stands there, eyes unseeing. Bitty washes the dough off his hands as quickly as he can manage and stands in front of him, holding his arms gently.

After a while, he finally says, “Kenny.”

It feels like the longest few seconds of Bitty’s life, scrambling for his own phone on the counter on the other side of the kitchen, unlocking it and trying to find out if Kent Parson is dead or injured or has committed some despicable crime, anything that would warrant a reaction like this.

“Oh, my. Well. Damn,” he says, when he finally opens Twitter and sees why Kent Parson is trending.

It could have been good. It could have been him first, and then us, Bitty would think, hours later, the bed still empty next to him.

But it’s not good. It’s anything but good, because the conversation starts off quiet, with Bitty trying to coax whatever feelings are swimming around in Jack’s brain out, but it blows up in his face monumentally.

It takes no time for Bitty to realise Jack doesn’t think this is good. And every feeling of resentment, of bitterness, of sadness, and loneliness he has swallowed down the past year or so comes to a boil.

After nearly six months of watching their relationship slowly disintegrate in front of their very eyes, comes the argument that puts the final nail in the coffin.

“Crisse. What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know! I hate this. I can’t deal with this right now.”

“What do you mean you can’t deal with it, we’ve gone over this a hundred times. We agreed.”

“I’m so tired, Jack.”

“Tired of what? This isn’t about you! Do you understand the situation he’s put me in? After all these years of fighting rumours about us?”

“Jesus, Jack. Can you seriously not see how this may be a little bit about me?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothin’.”

“Fuck. Stop acting like this. It makes me feel like you’d rather be dating Kenny.”

“Maybe I would.”

“What!?”

“Jack, honey… I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I— I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Oh, fuck you, Bittle. This is a joke.”

When the door slams — the frosted glass shaking with the force of it — Bitty knows there’s no coming back from this argument. Not this time.

What happens after is awful, and unexpected (way more than Jack, anyway), and it’s what ultimately turns Bitty’s life upside down.

At the end of that week, Bitty hasn’t seen Jack yet. He’s wondering if calling Tater would be a good idea when he gets an email explaining how the center where he coaches little league hockey on the weekends is closing.

…really sorry to let you go like this…

…you have been amazing for these kids and they look up to you so much…

…we still can’t believe you got Jack Zimmerman to come and skate with them…

…there’s really nothing we can do…

…they’ve been cutting the funding year after year and it’s just not viable anymore…

The week after that, on his (ridiculously hockey-free) weekend, Bitty misses the call while he’s in the shower and drops a frying pan full of scrambled eggs on the kitchen floor when he listens to the voicemail.

“Hey Eric… Oh god, I thought this would be easier. I was almost glad you didn’t pick up the phone. Umm… the bakery got broken into last night. We’re working with the police and the insurance company but… well, you know Jackie and I have been thinking about closing or selling so we can retire, and we think maybe this is the universe telling us it’s time to pack up. Either way, it would be a while until we could reopen, it’s… they’ve completely gutted us. Give me a call when you can. I’m sorry, my boy. You’ve been the greatest baker we’ve ever had and we’re sorry it’s ending this way. Come for dinner sometime. Bring that friend of yours.”

Bitty’s stomach churns and he doesn’t know if it’s the way his boss says “friend” or the news.

Everything goes really, really wrong really, really quickly.

Within the month, Bitty has had the most difficult conversation he’s ever had with Jack and packed all his belongings — realising, stupidly, that he doesn’t own that many things. A twenty-nine-year-old should, by all accounts, own enough things to fill a whole U-haul truck. But he doesn’t, because the furniture is all Jack’s. So he packs up his car as soon as he accepts the job offer from a bakery in Las Vegas, and he drives down to stay with Shitty and Lardo for a week while he gets his life in order.

Saying goodbye to Jack is hard, leaving the house behind is hard. It’s somehow made harder because he’d always thought he’d be more upset. He should be more upset. But he isn’t.

The house in Providence had been a source of joy for years. But it’s also where Bitty learned to hide, and to lie, and to be almost as lonely as he’d been back in Georgia.

The week he spends with Shitty and Lardo is a blessing, because the twins are so small and so beautiful, and a balm for his broken soul. But it’s obvious Shitty and Lardo don’t know what to do with the breakup, because Jack-and-Bitty had been almost as certain in everyone’s minds as Shitty-and-Lardo. They’d been a constant. A fact. Except they weren’t. Not anymore.

When Bitty gets in his car to start his cross-country drive, Shitty cries harder than Bitty’s mama had when he left for Samwell. Lardo hugs him and asks, a final time, “You know you don’t have to go, right?”

You don’t have to run away, is what she means. His breakfast sours inside him.

Bitty knows he doesn’t have to. But he’s going to, anyway. He’s going to do something for himself, for the first time in years. He has to learn to fend for himself, to pay his own rent, to do his own taxes, to worry about small mundane things like living alone, and fixing his own car, and changing a goddamn lightbulb.

Shitty continues to cry, quieter now. Lardo closes the door of Bitty’s car with a gentle slam and blows him a kiss as he reverses out of their driveway.

Bitty only lets himself cry once he’s been on the road for nearly an hour. He cries for a very long time, and realises that skipping more than three Beyoncé songs in a row is his very specific version of a cry for help.

He’s never driven anywhere that far, not on his own. He takes it as the first challenge of this new life he’s building. He’ll figure it out. He always does.

‘I have become a parody of myself’, he thinks, standing outside the ridiculously garish window of Love Buns Bakery. The silly, southern, tiny gay baker making silly, overly decorated, tiny cakes in the City of Sin. With a pang to his chest, Bitty is grateful his Moomaw is no longer around to see him stoop this low.

Gosh, he misses Lardo. She’d cut that line of thought right then and there, if she knew.

She’s only just a phone call away, but it’s hard. It’s hard because Lardo and Shitty are both working hard to remain impartial when it comes to the Zimmerman-Bittle breakup, and Bitty doesn’t want to make it harder for either of them. Sometimes he needs someone who knows it’s Jack, though. He wants to complain about it without being vague about his idiot ex who took him for granted. And wasn’t that the crux of the matter to start with? The hiding and the lying. Bitty wants to leave it behind.

The shop is cute. And the pay is really good. Bitty knew what he was getting into when he accepted the job. He did. Love Buns had emailed him once every six months for nearly four years to offer him a job. They wanted his expertise, they wanted his pies, they wanted his passion. Love Buns, he says to himself, and sighs. A bakery that specialises in mini pies, cupcakes, doughnuts and two-tiered mini cakes. Two-tiered mini wedding cakes.

Christ alive. Vegas.

It is fine, though. In the end, it really is fine.

Everyone is lovely, the coffee is excellent, and Bitty gets to bake. He has access to a kitchen three times the size of the one back in Providence, and some of the most beautiful ovens he has ever laid eyes upon.

It’s good.

Even if Bitty has to decorate tiny cakes for weddings that have divorce written all over them before anyone has the chance to ever say “I do.” Even if the idea of love makes him feel a little sick these days.

And Bitty’s apartment is small, which suits him just fine. He doesn’t need a big house when it’s just him. And he knows that being a baker is lonely work. He buys proper shutters and blackout curtains for his bedroom, his kitchen has a decent oven, and his living room has two pull-out couches and plenty of space to host the Samwell guys, if they ever visit.

It’s a blank canvas that he gets to decorate for himself. The first thing he does is shove his two pairs of skates in the very back of the hallway closet. He’s ready for a life that doesn’t revolve around hockey. He wants to bake, he wants to develop new recipes, he wants to get excited about small things.

Most of all, he wants not to have to lie anymore.

The first morning he leaves his apartment, he realises no one knows where he lives now. Not Jack, not his friends, not his parents. Most importantly, not the press and Jack’s wild fans.

He’s free. He puts an old pre-game playlist on in the car and he drives to work, looking forward to enjoying his blank slate.

It is good.

Las Vegas is… well, it’s weird. It doesn’t feel like a real place, not to Bitty anyway. Which is why it suits him so well in his current state. He doesn’t really feel like a real person. Bitty takes to it, and lets himself be charmed by the combination of infinite strip malls, neverending desert and ridiculously shaped buildings topped by bright lights. He drives around a lot, gets a feel for it, and decides that it’s weird, and he’ll make the most of it.

Things are good. Bitty has always been good at adapting. Adapting is key to survival, and he’s made it this far.

He’s three weeks into his new job when Grace, the manager, pops her head into his kitchen at nine in the morning and asks, “I know you finish at midday, but is there any way I could get you to stay an extra hour, hour and a half at the most? Betty’s off sick and I told Larry yesterday he could come in later because he’s got something at his kid’s school. I’ll owe you big time.”

All Bitty was going to do was go home, eat a plateful of pie and nap. He shrugs and smiles at her.

“I’ll be on the register and orders and stuff, I’ll just need you to handle boxing up cakes and making coffees.”

“I got it,” he says, with a smile. “I can stay until Larry gets back.”

“I’ll pay you double,” Grace says, with a smile. He won’t argue with that.

Bitty is more than used to boxing up cakes and making coffees, from the bakery back in Providence, and he kind of likes it. He loves his kitchen and his oven, but it does get lonely at times. He misses seeing people bite into cupcakes and squeeze their eyes together, or hum contently at the first bite of a slice of pie. Or just the pleasant back and forth of handing someone their coffee and wishing them a good day.

Bitty is a people person. Kitchens can be lonely, and he’s had enough of lonely.

He grabs his dough blender from the shelf above him and gets to work on a frankly ridiculously high pile of butter sticks, for the time being.

Hours later, when he finally comes out of the kitchen, leaving his jacket, apron and hairnet behind, the bakery is abuzz with movement.

It feels a little bit like stepping into a hot shower after a long day in the cold.

Bitty is in an amazing mood by the time Larry runs through the front door and throws him a smile. “You’re a hero, Eric,” he says, as he walks past the counter and through to the back to change.

“It was my pleasure to help, sir,” Bitty says, and realises he means it.

He really had missed seeing people point at the cakes behind the glass display, with big curious eyes, and hearing the “wow that one looks gorgeous,” and the “that’s making my mouth water, I’ll take two.” There’s a light ball of pride bursting inside his chest. A mighty force that keeps saying, quietly, just to himself, ‘I made those.’

Grace passes him a to-go cup with a smile and says, “You really saved us today, it’s just that drink and one of the carrot cupcakes and then you can go.”

“Thanks, Grace,” he says and grabs the proffered cup.

It’s a silly thing, really.

Oat milk latte, no frills. Something he has done a million times. And yet, Bitty stares at the name on the cup, frozen in place.

Obviously, he had thought of Kent Parson. He knew he had. There was no point denying it. He thought of Kent Parson when he accepted the job here, and when he told Jack he was moving here, and every day on his way into work, when he drives past the exit that leads to the Aces stadium, past the billboard with Kent Parson himself lifting the Stanley Cup high in the air, surrounded by the team he captains.

That last argument with Jack rings out in his head.

“Stop acting like this. It makes me feel like you’d rather be dating Kenny.”

“Maybe I would.”

Bitty nearly drops the paper cup.

‘Get a grip, Bittle’, he tells himself.

Kent is a popular enough name… right?

Bitty packs the cupcake into a small box, takes his time sealing the lid on with one of their stickers, and wills his hands to stop shaking as he pops the lid onto the piping hot coffee cup.

His voice only quivers slightly when he approaches the front counter and announces, “Oat milk latte and a carrot cupcake for Kent?”

The snapback should have been Bitty’s first clue, but he is still trying to convince himself that this is all a silly coincidence.

Plenty of people are called Kent. Plenty of people wear hats.

“Holy shit. Bittle!? What in the hell are you doing here?”

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh, hell no.

Chapter Text

Eric Bittle is not friends with Kent Parson.

He isn’t.

Which is hard to explain if Bitty ever admits they do have coffee together once a week, ever since the day he made Parse that oat latte. Or when he’s getting the last of the cinnamon rolls out of the oven before he’s finished for the day and one of his coworkers pops their head into the kitchen to announce, “Your VIP friend is back.” Or when Parse is indeed waiting for him when he finally emerges from the kitchen, dead on his feet.

It is true, though. They’re not friends.

It’s just that Parse is hard to say no to. He’s charming, and brilliant, and surprisingly kind. Seeing Parse again had been a shock to the system, but — no matter how much Bitty doesn’t want to admit it — it felt nice, to see a familiar face every once in a while.

And it has been a very long time since the name Kent Parson brought a bad taste to Bitty’s mouth, even if some days it’s still hard to look at Parse and not think of Jack. In his mind, Parse and Jack are as entangled as he is entangled with Jack.

Parse had been someone — a memory? a ghost? — from Jack’s past. Looking at him makes Bitty wonder when he’ll become that, too. If he is that, already. Does the house in Providence feel his absence? Has the oven been on for more than chicken tenders? Has Jack taken over his side of the closet with his running shoes and gym pants?

It’s not his fault that Parse makes him think of Jack. But Bitty is learning to fight that instinct anyway.

Week after week, Bitty sits with Kent Parson at the end of his shift.

Slowly, despite not being one hundred percent sure how he’s been pulled into this scheme, Bitty learns about Parse. He doesn’t ask anything. Ever. He listens, and Parse just talks, tells him things. Babbles away about things Bitty doesn’t think he should know. Not really.

“I’ve always stopped here after therapy. It’s just ‘round the corner, and I like the idea of getting a treat for getting through it, you know? It’s better now, though. I mean, the baking is better since you’ve come. And it’s nice to sit with you instead of sitting alone in my car, replaying therapy in my head.”

“Oh yeah, retirement is coming for me. Pretty soon, actually. I’ve got a bad knee. Not that that’s really public knowledge yet. But it’s kind of… really bad. They think I’ve got like three years in me, maybe, if I don’t fuck it up further.”

“I mean, fuck, Bittle. I get it. Vegas is… I don’t know. It must be different. I was eighteen, and enchanted by the lights and getting to play hockey. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I hated it. That’s a shitty feeling. But I don’t think it matters how old you are. It can get really lonely here.”

“I knew I’d stay with the Aces as long as they’d have me. The Bruins wanted me. Even the Rangers, too. I was tempted. Closer to home, you know? But I don’t know what home means anymore. It’s not like my parents care. They… well, they kind of don’t talk to me since I came out to them like… eight years ago? And my sisters aren’t in New York either, so that would suck. At the end of the day, I knew I wanted to come out publicly, and the Aces were the only team I’d feel safe doing it with.”

“It would be nice to settle down, but it’s hard. The worst consequence of coming out has been keeping things on the DL. Some people just want to hook up because I’m famous, which it’s nice, I guess. It makes things easier. But also, even when I like someone and think it could be more than a hookup… most people aren’t ready for the attention they are going to get. And, you know, it’s only hockey. I’m not that famous. I get why Hollywood actors always date each other. Not that I expect anyone else in the NHL to come out any time soon.”

Every week, a new truth. Some hurt more than others.

Bitty never gives much of himself — or at least not as much as Parse. Every time they sit down together it’s like that night, many years ago now, when Parse came to the Haus to apologise to Bitty about what had happened at the Kegster, the first time they’d met. Bitty remembers feeding him cherry pie and talking about Jack. Keeping it a secret, even with the suspicion that Parse knew they were together. Jack had just won his first Stanley Cup, and Bitty was still convinced they’d come out publicly soon. Things were very, very different back then. But Parse is just as chatty, and pleasant.

Despite how hard Bitty tries, Jack is a subject that comes up often. It’s not until the third time they have coffee together that Parse drops the puck and says, seriously but kindly, “You could stop pretending, if you wanted. I know you were together. And I know if you’re here now it must mean you’re no longer together. It kind of sucks seeing you skirt around the subject.”

Jack Zimmermann: the subject. Bitty nearly laughs.

Instead, he shoves the last bite of his lemon poppyseed slice into his mouth unceremoniously and takes a very long time to chew through it. Then he says, “Well. There’s nothing to say about it. I don’t want to talk about J— about him. But… you’re not wrong.”

And that’s that.

Despite her (loud and clear) dislike for hockey (“Team sports in general, Bitty. They just suck!”), Portia is quickly becoming Bitty’s favourite person to work the kitchen with. She’s only part-time, still at college, and there’s something about her that reminds him of himself from years ago. She loves baking, for one. But she does it quietly, she doesn’t fill his kitchen with mindless chatter. She enjoys spending time with the dough, and her mood always lifts as time passes, too.

Bitty can relate.

Plus, she’s an amazing cake decorator. Bitty can bake, but don’t ask him to make things prettier than they need to be. He doesn’t have the time, the patience or, quite frankly, the desire to do it. What is wrong with a good old classic lattice?

He likes Portia. And they’re a well-oiled machine, after a month and a half of working together.

Portia hums, shifting trays around at the cramped opening of the walk-in refrigerator. It’s an old country song Bitty recognises faintly, but he wouldn’t be able to name it.

He probably only knows it because of Jack and that turns his stomach a little. He washes the flour off his hands and reaches for his coffee cup.

Sleep has been evading him. The OG SMH group chat had been wild last night, in anticipation of the Falconers game during the weekend, which they are all (all minus Bitty, that is) attending. That certainly hadn’t helped. He really needs to remember to set his Do Not Disturb on when he goes to bed early.

The morning feels cold, cruel and sad, even with Portia’s joyful humming. Bitty kneads infinite amounts of dough, rolls infinite amounts of pastries, and brushes infinite amounts of pies before shoving them in the oven, doing it all on autopilot.

Portia is across the kitchen, putting cooling cupcakes onto trays, and taking them out onto the bakery.

It’s a morning like any other, he tells himself. And that’s fine.

Bitty is fine. He is fine. And he is baking.

His movements are tired though, sluggish. His eyes don’t follow his motions as quickly as they should. He needs sleep and he needs it really badly. But things get done, and by eleven-ish he’s very nearly done for the day.

“Pistachio cream buns are done, Bitty,” Portia says, from the other side of the kitchen. She’s the only person in the bakery that uses his nickname. He is usually Eric, here, but hearing Portia call him Bitty always makes him smile.

“Brushed with syrup and all?” he asks.

“Of course. When I say done, I mean done, boss.”

“Sassy,” he says, but he washes his hands again, and takes the tray to the front so that someone can display the buns on the case outside. Pistachio creams usually sell out quickly, especially if they’re warm.

He is only outside for a minute, but Parse catches his eye and waves cheerfully from the table he usually grabs in the corner. Bitty glances at the clock on the wall. Fifteen minutes to go.

Sighing to himself as he ducks back into the kitchen, Bitty thinks he may have to tell Parse no, this time. No matter how agreeable and persuasive he is, Bitty needs a nap and he needs it like three hours ago, ideally.

Back in the kitchen, he does his final checks. He peeks into proofing drawers, stacks empty trays, counts the cakes in the fridge, updates the inventory on the wall by the back door.

He’s meticulous about it, as always. Portia will be on her own for half an hour before the afternoon shift comes in, and he doesn’t like leaving anything out of place. Bitty takes pride in his work, and he knows he can’t disappoint here. Not when they’ve wanted him to come and work here for so long, not after he moved across the country for the job.

“Hey Bitty, can you get me the walnuts from the walk-in, when you go in there?” Portia asks, once he’s finished with the inventory.

“Sure!”

One step closer to seeing his bed again, Bitty opens the door to the walk-in fridge to check on the trays still resting in there.

As he does, he ponders the pros and cons of sneaking out through the back door at the end of his shift, even though Parse has already seen him. He decides it’s not worth the effort.

The bakery back in Providence didn’t have a walk-in — it wasn’t big enough a place to warrant such an expense. The large fridge and the small chest freezer were enough for their needs. Here though, Bitty goes in the walk-in what feels like a thousand times every morning.

It’s awful. There’s mild claustrophobia, of course — the space at the very opening of it, with shelving on one side covered in oven trays, and the piled boxes of ingredients on the other. But also, something that fills his body with the nostalgic fear of stepping onto the ice at the start of a game, body warm from kneading or standing near the oven, the temperature around him dropping but his body not reacting at all.

It’s silly, and he’d never be able to explain exactly what it is, but he feels it, every time he has to grab something from the walk-in. Every time he carries a tray covered in pastries out and to the warm, welcoming mouth of the oven.

Ridiculous, he mumbles to himself.

He pulls the little step stool from under the last shelf and gets to work, giving all the resting pastry and dough a once-over, and then turning to grab the container of chopped walnuts Portia had asked for.

Except that his foot catches on the metal edge of the stool, and he loses balance. Grabbing the shelving unit isn’t his best move either, because a large box of fresh pears and pomegranates he was hoping to turn into tarts comes toppling down, trapping him.

He feels weak, and he only has a brief moment to call out Portia’s name before he sees the topmost oven tray starting to slide off its shelf towards him and then the world goes dark.

The unpleasant combination of disinfectant, antiseptic and slightly-too-sharp floor cleaner is what Bitty recognises first, even before he opens his eyes. The uncomfortable ebbing-and-flowing of an ache across the front of his head is what he notices next. Finally, although it’s a bit of a struggle, he slowly forces his eyes to unstick and open.

He has one second to realise he is in a hospital.

Another one to wonder why.

On the third second, the big, worried eyes of one Kent Parson are right in front of him.

“Bittle?”

The sound that comes out of Bitty’s mouth is a groan, when he’s pretty sure it was meant to be a question.

“Hey, hi. Good to see you! How are you feeling?” Parse asks.

“… Hurt?”

“Yeah. You would. Do you remember what happened?”

Bitty doesn’t. He tries but it only makes his head hurt more.

“Am I okay?”

“It’s not as bad as it probably looks. The kid that works in the kitchen with you… uh… tall one, very skinny?”

“Portia.”

“Yeah. She came into the bakery screaming that you’d fallen and gotten an oven tray to the head. Your boss wanted to call an ambulance but… uh… I just figured it would be quicker if I drove you? Plus ambulances are a lot of money.”

Bitty scoffs. Or he tries to. He doesn’t think it comes out quite as a scoff. “You’re rich.”

Parse grimaces.

“Well, yeah. Are you?”

From anyone else, Bitty would have been offended. But he’s learned to read Parse’s tone enough that he knows he only ever meant to be kind. Bitty would be in debt until the end of his days.

Bitty shrugs in response, and discovers that even a movement that simply makes his head hurt.

“So you brought me here. What’s wrong with me?”

“Like I said, not as bad as it looks. Bit of a nasty concussion. They want you to rest for a week before you go back to work, if you can. But you’ll be fine… uh, should I get a nurse in here?”

“Parse.”

“Yeah?”

“What happened?”

“You… you fell, had a bit of a panic, got hit on the head with a tray, at least that’s what Portia said. You were in and out of it for a bit. Like… you just kept fainting?”

That makes Bitty feel worse, somehow.

“Fainting?” he asks, slowly.

“Yeah.”

Bitty doesn’t really remember any of that. He remembers the step stool now, and then the box of fruit, and the way the shelf leaned forward, crowding him in, followed by the door of the walk-in. He vaguely remembers an oven tray starting to fall. Mostly, he remembers the claustrophobia: not the mild case of getting in an elevator or driving through a tunnel. The actual bad stuff, the stuff he thought he’d left in the past: the closet they shoved him in, the tackling during football, the full-body checks against the boards. He remembers the panic.

Lord.

He’d been checked by a box, a shelf, and a fridge door. His stomach churns with embarrassment.

He’d fainted. The way he used to faint back at Faber, as a freshman. God.

“Did I… did I say anythin’?”

Parse looks away.

“I should get a nurse. You’re fine. You don’t have to worry.”

It’s not that Bitty doesn’t trust Kent Parson. Maybe it’s that he trusts Kent Parson too much, knowing the poison he is capable of. There is just something… something about the way Parse is acting that doesn’t feel right.

Parse exits the room and Bitty lets himself sink back into the bed, uncomfortable as it is. He’s probably just being paranoid. He is concussed, after all.

A nurse does come. Just like Parse said, nothing to worry about. A concussion, which is nothing he hasn’t experienced before. It’s not until the nurse smiles kindly, hands Bitty his paperwork to sign and says, “I’m glad you’ve got your friend to look after you, Mr. Bittle. Try to keep any activity to a minimum for the first three days, but you should come see us if any of the symptoms get worse instead of better. You should be able to be unsupervised after a week,” that Bitty realises just how much trouble he is in.

They don’t share more than one-word sentences until they’re in Parse’s car.

“So,” Parse says.

“So,” Bitty repeats. Because Lord, he injured himself badly, but this is awkward as hell.

“You don’t have to come home with me if this makes you uncomfortable in any way, but I’d feel better if you did.”

Bitty is so, so tired, but somehow anger wins out.

“Why!?” he cries, “Why did you even bring me here, why do you care, why do you insist on having coffee with me every week, why did you just offer your house up to me, why— ow,” he says, at the sudden pain to the side of his head. “We’re not friends,” he finishes.

They’re in the hospital parking lot, still. In the distance, an overhead light flickers ominously. Bitty decides right there that he hates Vegas. None of it is good. He hates it, hates it all, hates the heat and the lights and the desert and he hates goddamn Kent Parson being goddamn everywhere.

“Bittle.”

The light flickers to life again — a small explosion of fluorescence — just in time for Bitty to blow up, too.

“It’s Eric!” He shouts. “Or Bitty, or Bits, or… I don’t know! Dicky, if you really have to! Something! Anything! Just… not Bittle. Don’t…” his head is pounding and he pretends his voice doesn’t crack. “… just don’t call me that.”

He’d not known he was that close to flying off the handle before it happened. There’s no fixing it now, either. He should be embarrassed, but he’s only very, very tired.

Parse is quiet for a long time. He turns the key in the ignition, bringing the car to life, and the AC blasting against Bitty’s hospital-sweaty skin is so welcome he sighs.

“Did he… he still called you Bittle!?”

Bitty should have known. He should have guessed that if anyone knew, if anyone would get it, it would be Kent Parson.

“Oh, god,” he groans, miserably. He closes his eyes and sinks into the leather of the passenger seat. “Can we please pick up some stuff from my place? I don’t think I can bear to sleep in Aces merch for a whole week.”

That, finally, replaces the worry on Parse’s face with a big, bright grin.

“Sure. For the record, you’d look real good in black, Bits.”

Bitty is too tired to argue, so he just types his address into the fancy GPS on Kent Parson’s car and closes his eyes. Once Parse pulls up in front of Bitty’s apartment and helps him inside, he makes quick work of shoving things into a duffle bag, and instructs Parse to empty his fridge of anything that will go bad within the week.

“Do you have a stand mixer at your place?”

“… Yes?”

“Pie tins?”

“.. No?”

“Okay, open the cabinet to your right. No, no, the top one. Yes. Grab the two at the very top? Great, thanks.”

“… But you’re supposed to be resting.”

Bitty wakes up to the hot desert air on his face and his shoulder getting gently shaken.

“Hi,” Parse says. A shy something dances on his features, bright across his eyes, lifting the corners of his mouth just slightly. “Sorry. We’re here.”

Bitty barely looks at the garage. He’ll have time to explore Parse’s house soon, he’s sure. For now, he really, really wants to be horizontal.

“What do you need? I’ve been concussed before…” he pauses, and Bitty thinks that’s kind of funny. A professional hockey player telling him he’s been concussed before. What a wonder. Bitty does nearly laugh, but his thoughts get interrupted by a furry… something appearing out of nowhere and jumping on him.

“Baby, no, he’s hurt!”

The biggest grey cat Bitty has ever seen has launched itself at his legs, and he loses his balance just slightly, taking several steps back.

“Bad kitty,” Parse says, and holds out a hand to keep Bitty steady. “Sorry,” he says again, turning to Bitty.

“Shit, Purrs. What an entrance. Get the fuck down.”

The cat is on the floor now, big curious eyes looking up at him.

“Eric, this is Purrs. Purrs, this is Eric. He’s hurt, and he’s our guest, and you are a terrible, terrible girl.”

“Hi,” Bitty says, because it feels like that’s what the cat is waiting for.

She meows, turns away and walks slowly down the hallway.

Parse’s hand is still right in the middle of Bitty’s back, warm against his spine.

It makes him feel… something. Bitty steps away from Parse’s touch.

“Where to?”

“After her, actually.”

Bitty follows the cat down the hallway, until Parse stops them. “Here,” he says, pointing to the door to Bitty’s right.

It’s… well. It’s a bedroom just smaller than Bitty’s entire apartment. A part of him wishes he would care, the other one — the tired, aching part — is stuck on how large and comfortable the bed looks.

“This is you. I’ll leave you to it. Towels are in the bathroom, through there, if you want to shower. Do you want something to eat?”

“A small something would be good, maybe? I’m not hungry, but I feel like I should eat something, you know?”

“Uh… I have cereal? Cookies? I can make you like… a bowl of yogurt with granola and fruit? Or a PB&J?”

Bitty can’t believe the next words that come out of his mouth. It’s been a while.

“A PB&J would be great.”

Kent smiles, and Bitty thinks he knows.

Of course he knows.

“Shout if you need anything,” he says, and shuts the door behind him.

If someone had told him only twelve hours ago, that tonight would find Bitty sitting on the most comfortable bed he’s ever had under him, freshly showered, eating a peanut butter (“It’s actually a mixed nut one,” Parse had said) and jelly (“I don’t like the grape stuff, I hope strawberry is okay?”) sandwich, with Kent Parson sitting crossed-legged at the end of the aforementioned bed, he would laugh right in their face.

That is exactly what’s happening though.

Bitty is too tired to find it weird.

Parse collects his plate when he’s done and places it on the side table by the door, then he comes back and takes his place again at Bitty’s feet.

“You haven’t been on your phone, have you?” Parse asks.

“No screens. Been good, I promise.”

“Good…” Parse let’s that syllable drag, and takes a deep breath. “Anyone you want me to get in touch with?”

A pang of loneliness hits him right in the chest. He’ll tell his friends later. No one needs to know right now. He’s safe, and he’s being looked after, there’s no point worrying anyone.

“Not really. Oh no,” he realises, suddenly. “Work.”

“I’ve called them. They said they’re glad you’re okay, and not to worry about coming back until you’re all good. They said, uh… Charles?”

“Charlie.”

“He’s good to do your shifts while you’re away.”

Oh.

Oh, thank the lord.

“Bits,” Parse says. “I did something kind of stupid.”

Bitty’s heart hasn’t yet recovered from thinking about missing work, and now he has this feeling that whatever Parse is going to say, is going to ruin this day even further.

“Okay…”

“Earlier, when you asked if you’d said anything when you were fainting and panicking on the way to the hospital? You… you asked for Jack.”

Bitty’s blood goes cold.

“And… I am really, really sorry. I feel really bad. But I panicked. And you were unconscious for actual ages. Just… limp. It was really fucking scary and I couldn’t bear to wait for an ambulance so I just shoved you in my car.”

“Gently, I hope,” he interrupts, because if he doesn’t attempt to diffuse the tension with a weak chirp he thinks his heart will actually leap out of his chest.

“Gently,” Parse repeats, awkwardly. “And you were in and out, and I was trying to keep you awake, but I think you were having some kind of… I don’t know, man. A bit like a panic attack, but you just kept passing out? And you asked for him, and…”

Parse runs his hand over his head, and his cowlick sticks out even more than usual. Bitty doesn’t like that he finds it kind of endearing.

“And I knew they were gonna ask me stuff at the hospital… and I had no clue how to answer, and you were not able to put two words together and… I didn’t know how else I was supposed to get your medical record.”

The pause nearly does Bitty in, but he waits for it.

“Bitty, I am so sorry.”

He knows. He knows what Parse is going to say next. He doesn’t want it to be true, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

But Parse doesn’t say it.

For what it’s worth, Parse looks genuinely sorry when Bitty lifts his eyes to look at him.

“I was so scared.”

“What did he say?” Bitty finally brings himself to ask.

“Uh… fainting spells, claustrophobia, not good with body checks, and you had a mild reaction to anticonvulsants once.”

That’s… well. That’s correct, if not entirely what Bitty meant. Despite everything, Bitty wants to know what Jack said to Parse calling him. To Parse calling him about Bitty.

He’s too tired, though. He wants to be angry, but he doesn’t have it in him. He’d used up all his energy on the hissy fit he’d thrown in Kent’s car, earlier. He wants to be mad at Kent, for not even being able to say it. For leaving it like that, in the air, the knowledge clear between them, but never put into words. But he can’t do it.

He wants to make him say it. Force the words “I called Jack about you,” out of his mouth. But he can’t. Not with Parse’s face looking so sad and open and vulnerable, or the way he’d said ‘I was so scared’.

“Chowder,” he says, finally, though his voice comes out quiet and pained.

“Uh?”

“Christopher Chow.” Having to correct himself will never not be weird. That’s his kid. He’ll always be Chowder to Bitty. “He plays with the Kings. Goalie? You know him?”

“I mean, yeah. He’s great.”

Bitty can’t fight the smile, the pride blooming in his chest.

“He is. I’ll get you his number, if you don’t have it. You need anything, you call him. Or you call Lardo, do you remember her?”

“Yeah. Tiny, really good at beer pong, yeah?” Bitty nods, and Kent’s expression turns serious before he says, “Okay.”

“Don’t call Jack again. Not about me.”

“I’m so—“

“Don’t. It’s done now. I just… I need Jack to stay in the past. I need you to understand that.”

“Yeah,” Parse says. “I hear you.”

When Bitty is aware of existing next, he’s rolling over to look at the clock on the bedside table: 3:47 AM. He stretches deeply, his body aching all over, the bruise on his side making itself felt. Then he kicks something solid and warm that definitely isn’t meant to be there, and Kent Parson’s sleepy green-grey eyes meet his.

“Sorry, fell asleep” Parse whispers, lifting himself off the spot where he’d curled himself up at Bitty’s feet. He turns the lamp off on the bedside table and whispers, just before stepping out into the hallway and shutting the door, “Feel better soon, Bits.”

“Night, Kent.”

Sleep takes him under its heavy blanket again, and Bitty sleeps the whole night through.

Kent Parson’s house is the biggest, most ridiculous thing Bitty has ever seen. Bitty is afraid he loves it a little. Every day he finds a new thing to grill Parse about when he comes back from practice.

“What do you need five cars for? You’re single! You’re a cat dad! You have five cars!” (The answer to that one is, apparently, “They gave me too much money when I was basically still a teenager and cars seemed like the coolest splurge to make.”)

“Do you even cook? Do you bake? Does someone bake in this kitchen? It’s a crime to have a kitchen this good and not make anything in it. Eggs don’t count.” (“Bitty, I’m vegan, I don’t even eat eggs.”)

“Your cat thinks she’s people, you are aware of this, right? And aren’t cats supposed to hate water? She tried to get in the shower with me. I was scared for my life.” (“She is people. Just close the door better next time.”)

“Do you ever swim in that pool or is that just… for show?” (“You’re welcome to take a dip, if that’s what you’re getting at.” “No! That’s n— I mean. Well. Lord, that sure sounds better than swimming in the one in my apartment complex, it’s always full of kids.”)

“I always thought rich people had perfectly manicured lawns. Like, you know, lots and lots of grass. I like this. The rocks and the cacti and the trees.” (“It’s too much work and water to keep grass from going yellow here. Plus, I hate the grass thing. It’s soulless.”)

And like that, Bitty’s week passes. His head stops constantly hurting on the fourth day, and he feels almost normal by the time his last night comes around.

He’s sinking into the pillows behind him, scrolling down Instagram on his phone when Parse knocks on his door.

“Hey,” he says, as he opens the door. He doesn’t come in, just leans against the frame, casual as all things.

“Hi,” Bitty says.

Bitty has been thinking.

About survival. About how he accidentally made survival his… mission. That and the fact that maybe it was foolish to think he had his life all planned and sorted out by the time he left college. Which really, is where survival comes in, again. It was foolish to think he was done surviving.

He had thought this too, was another thing to survive. Another unfortunate challenge to push through.

Looking at Kent Parson (soft looking, hair still wet from his shower, bare feet on the carpet) now, makes him wonder why he ever questioned this. The kindness, the support Parse has offered him since day one.

Bitty has had much worse experiences in his life than staying at Parse’s really, really nice house. From the unexpected challenge of making a pie crust with Kent’s vegan butter (A professional athlete! Vegan! Ludicrous!), to winning the heart of Purrs the Cat, to falling asleep to Kent Parson’s low-voiced retelling of his day, Bitty actually has a really good time.

“So,” Parse starts, just like he had in his car, after they left the hospital.

“So,” Bitty mimics.

“Zimms texted me.”

The way Bitty sucks air into his mouth unexpectedly makes him choke a little.

What does Parse want him to say to that?

“He texted me, too.”

It isn’t a lie. Jack had texted him three times since the accident. The first was worried, asking if he was okay. Bitty didn’t answer because he wasn’t sure yet. Two days after that, Jack started asking about Parse. Bitty thought he’d appreciate the jealousy, the protectiveness. In the end, it only makes him angry.

“Apparently I’m supposed to stay away from you.” Parse says.

He’s impossible to read, like this. It’s not the only reason why Bitty has avoided talking about Jack, but he’s starting to think it was part of it. The way Parse’s usually open and honest face closes off when he mentions Jack, the way his jaw tenses. Bitty hates it.

“Since when do you do what Jack tells you to?”

That pulls a smile out of Parse.

“I don’t.”

Bitty can’t help but smile back. “Good.”

“Can I drive you home tomorrow before practice?”

“That’d be nice.”

“Leaving at around ten okay with you?”

“Perfect.”

The silence that comes after is tense. Bitty wants to say something, feels like Parse is thinking exactly the same. In the end, he simply sinks further into the bed and says, “Goodnight, Kent.”

“Sleep well, Bits.”

And he does, when he finally falls asleep. It does take him a long time to get there though, amongst thoughts of playful bright green-grey eyes and the texts on his phone he doesn’t want to reply to.

Chapter Text

Maybe Eric Bittle and Kent Parson weren’t friends when this whole thing started.

Bitty thinks maybe they are, now.

Parse is still a pushy idiot, though. A very stubborn one, to make matters worse.

“I can get an Uber,” Bitty insists, picking up his phone from the arm of the couch, to drive his point further.

“Bittle. Fucking hell. Please. I’ll be late if I have to. We can wait for your stupid pies.”

“Did you just call my pies stupid?”

“Just please let me drive you, you stubborn dick.”

If that ain’t the pot calling the kettle black.

If Bitty laughs at the insult, that’s between him and God (and Kent, and the cat, too). It’s been a while since someone felt comfortable enough with him to insult him out of frustration. He likes it.

“Okay. Okay. Whatever. It’ll be another twenty minutes, though. And you’ll have to text me what the team says about the pies. In great detail. Make up great detail if they’re all just chomping on it and saying eloquent hockey-player things like ‘It’s soooooooo good.’ Deal?”

Parse laughs.

“Deal.”

Thirty-five minutes later, Bitty grabs his things — which now include a lot of Aces merch — and heads out to the garage. The pies are boxed up and carefully placed on the back seat. Parse has put the seatbelt around them, and Bitty is smiling when he opens the passenger door to get in.

“Tell me again what the pies are? I won’t be having you tell people they’re eating the wrong thing.”

He settles on the passenger seat and watches Parse point at the pie boxes, top to bottom as he says, “Blueberry crumble, apple with a cinnamon crust, classic cherry because that’s my favourite.”

“Now don’t go telling everyone I made it because it’s your favourite. Think of my reputation, Mister Parson,” Bitty says.

“You’re a lunatic, did you know that?” Parse asks, sliding into the front seat and buckling himself in.

“Yep,” Bitty says, popping the P.

“Wait, did you just say you made it because it’s my favourite?”

“Kent,” Bitty practically snarls. “Please drive and hush your mouth.”

The car roars to life satisfyingly, and the garage door starts rising slowly. Parse slides his sunglasses on, and turns to Bitty, with a smug grin. “You made it because it’s my favourite.”

Bitty looks away, and Parse finally, finally, gets the car to move.

It’s weird. A week ago he wouldn’t have dreamt of getting into Kent Parson’s car, of being this comfortable in it. Now, Bitty kicks his sneakers off and brings his feet up onto the seat, before leaning forward to turn the radio on.

“Am I dropping you off at the bakery, then?”

“Yes, please. I need to get my car back, and check with Grace that I’m good to come back tomorrow.”

And just like that, life goes back to normal, except Vegas feels a little less lonely.

Being back at work helps, and it only takes Bitty another three days to finally answer Jack’s ‘Hey, are you ok?’ text with a ‘Yeah, sorry. Small kitchen accident. Concussed but otherwise, all good :)’

He hopes that’s that but a couple of hours later Jack replies with a ‘What are you doing with Parse?’

Bitty throws his phone into the very bottom of his bag, and decides Jack can wait. He can wait two whole weeks this time, instead of one, for all Bitty cares.

What is he doing with Parse?

Nothing, for one.

Like it would be any of Jack’s business, even if he was.

He isn’t, though.

The hockey season starts in earnest, which Bitty had assumed would mean seeing a lot less of Parse, except Kent Parson always finds a way. Unless the Aces are away on a roadie, Kent still stops by. And Bitty has no way to prove it, but he knows it was Portia who taught Kent to knock on the backdoor instead of waiting for Bitty in the bakery. So the routine changes, but there is one.

Every couple of days, at about 8:30 in the morning, Kent Parson in workout gear goes into the bakery, orders two coffees, tips generously, and then comes and knocks on the back door to Bitty’s kitchen. He always waits until Bitty has the time to take a little break, and then they sit together on the step looking over the parking lot.

Bitty is starting to learn that routine doesn’t have to be boring or lonely. Routine can be a really good thing.

“A vegan strawberry and nut butter swirl,” Bitty presents, passing the plate over to Kent, and dropping down to the sidewalk with a sigh. The slight breeze outside is welcome, after pulling hundreds of pastries out of the oven for a good twenty minutes.

“Very seasonal,” Kent remarks, but bites into it anyway, with a soft hum.

“Be like that, Mister Parson. Good luck trying to find someone in this city to make vegan baked goods just for you.”

“Just for me?” Kent bats his eyelashes at him.

The breeze doesn’t stop, but Bitty’s face gets hotter.

“Oh. You know what I mean.”

“Sure do,” Kent teases. “Just for me.” He finishes his pastry and licks his fingers one by one. Bitty focuses very hard on his coffee.

“Thoughts?”

“The best ever. Please never stop baking just for me.”

Bitty scoffs, because he’s not gonna give Kent the delight of knowing he doesn’t intend to. The list of flavour combinations and textures that Kent likes most that he has hidden his notes app is getting embarrassingly long. But Bitty is really enjoying the challenge of vegan baking, not that he’d ever admit it, especially not to Kent.

Kent joins him on the sidewalk, legs tucked against his chest.

“Have you got plans for Thanksgiving?” he asks, eventually.

Everyone’s favourite question these days, it seems.

“Don’t be silly.”

“Wanna come to Scraps’ with me?”

“Kent Parson. Do not be silly.”

“It’s like… a month away, anyway. You don’t have to decide yet. Just thought it’d be nice.”

“Lord, I hate it when you invite me to things out of pity.”

“I invite you to things because you’re my friend, but sure.” Pushing himself up on the palms of his hands, Kent gets back on his feet. He usually stays longer and Bitty’s stomach turns, realising he may have upset him. “I’ll let you get back to work, even though you’re an idiot and I should make sure you get fired.”

He pulls something out of the pocket of his jacket and throws it at Bitty, who nearly knocks his coffee cup trying to reach for it.

“Thanksgiving is negotiable. This isn’t. I’ll see you then.”

Tickets.

Aces tickets for next Friday’s game.

“What if I don’t have the day off after?”

“I checked with Grace!”

“I hate that you’re friends with my boss!” Bitty shouts back, but Kent is already jogging away, towards his car.

Bitty stays a little longer, watches Kent reverse out of his parking spot and slide into the main road until he’s too far for Bitty’s eyes to follow. He stares at the cars driving past in the distance for a while, then gathers the empty coffee cups and gets back to work.

On the Friday, the first he hears of Kent is in the afternoon, just after he gets home.

The number 90 jersey was hanging in the very back of Bitty’s closet, behind all his shirts, and all his jeans. Truth be told, the whole thing had felt like a rock in his shoe ever since he took it home. Bitty had looked at it many times, stared at the stark white Parson against the shiny black of the fabric, at the grey-ish ace in the middle of it. Something in Bitty really wanted to wear it. Maybe not even to the game — after wearing a Zimmermann jersey to every game in the last five years, the idea made him feel nauseous — but Bitty wanted to put it on. He wasn’t going to, though. Not in his house, not to the game. He wasn’t quite ready to even think about why putting a damn jersey on felt like this big of a deal.

He looks away from the doors of his closet, and texts Kent back.

Being inside a hockey stadium never gets old. The atmosphere makes Bitty’s stomach feel like he’s on a rollercoaster, stomach tight and tense in the best of ways. He finds his seat and squeezes his knees around his plastic cup so he can have both hands free to pull his hoodie tighter around himself — he knows it’s not that cold, but all the anxiety crawling over his skin makes him feel like it’s 10 degrees colder than it actually is. Even after wrapping his arms around himself, he can’t help the shiver that goes through him. When he finally sits, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and texts Kent.

He doesn’t expect Kent to text back, not this close to the game, but he pulls Twitter open and takes a picture, instead. He’s been too quiet since the move. It’s not like he tweets the way he did back in college, but it’s his main form of social media. He still appreciates the safety of shouting into the void. A text comes through just after he tweets the picture, captioning it with his earlier thought about hockey games: “Never gets old.”

It’s been a while since Bitty got to watch hockey just for the sake of it. It’s been even longer since he’d seen Kent Parson on the ice. He had almost forgotten, now that he’s more familiar with Kent, how vicious he could be.

There was a reason Kent had been picked first during the draft, years ago. A reason he was made captain of the Aces so early in his career. A reason he was quite possibly the best hockey player alive, with his stats absolutely off the charts. Kent Parson is a murderous, beautiful hockey machine.

Bitty cheers loudly and unashamedly when the match ends with an Aces win, and when he gets stuck in the crowds trying to leave his seat, he pulls his phone out and tweets something true, that recent circumstances had made him forget, “I love hockey.”

Tommy The Security Guard does indeed let Bitty through without a second thought and walks Bitty down the unfamiliar tunnels and corridors. Just before he leaves him in a comfortable seat in a waiting room, he says, “You made those pies, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I sure did.”

“The blueberry crumble was amazing. If I ever wanted something like that to take home to my family, how would I go about that?”

“Oh, you could call my work about it? Or just get my number from Parse and I’ll happily make you one.”

“Great. Thank you. He’ll be out in a second, I’m sure. Have fun!”

“Thanks, Tommy.”

Kent is indeed out in a second, half of the Aces not far behind him.

“Bits,” he says, still breathless, damp hair sticking to his forehead, and pulls Bitty in for a hug.

He doesn’t remember ever having hugged Kent before. He’s warm and smells incredible.

“Hi. You were awesome. Really thought you had that hatty down.”

Kent throws him the confusing combination of a sad smile and a wink. “Wear the jersey next time and I’ll get you a hat trick.”

Bitty doesn’t have time to dwell on the way Kent’s words make his face burn or his stomach twist, with the rest of the team coming over, trying to introduce themselves to Bitty. He’s grateful for the distraction, but the butterflies keep fluttering around in his stomach.

Jeff Troy trails at the end of the group trying to shake Bitty’s hand and thanking him for the pies. Troy is one of Kent’s As, and most importantly, one of Kent’s best friends.

Bitty wishes he could pretend he isn’t intimidated, and desperate to make a good impression, which is probably why everything goes south incredibly quickly.

“Holy shit,” Troy says, stopping in front of Bitty. “Aren’t you Zimmermann’s…”

Without thinking, Bitty retracts the hand he’d extended for a handshake, just as Kent clips Troy on the back of his head.

The words get stuck inside Bitty’s mouth like his teeth are glued by taffy. He glares at Jeff Troy with a rage he didn’t know he was still capable of, not after the joy of witnessing a beautiful game of hockey.

“Fuck, man, I’m so sor—”

He bites his tongue before a stray ‘Bless your heart’ has any chance to come out of his mouth.

“Eric Bittle,” he cuts in eventually, exhausted of hearing the word “sorry” always come after the subject of Jack. He shakes Troy’s hand firmly. “Not a good idea to insult a professional baker who could probably outskate you, or that at the very least, would have managed that assist and got Kent the hat trick. But what do I know, really?”

There are a couple of gasps around the room, and an honest to god giggle from Bitty’s right, which he believes to be Kent.

“Fuck me,” breathes Troy. “You’re like Paddington with that stare. That was my bad. Let me not get on your bad side ever again.”

That’s better, Bitty thinks.

“Probably for the best. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Troy.”

And maybe because he’s had a couple of beers at the game, or maybe because he’s just so tired of Jack ruining everything, he looks straight at Kent, remembering a conversation they’d had at the bakery, a long time ago, about the nature of secret relationships, and says, “I should make you pay me for that bet we never fully agreed on. Best kept secret in the NHL, you said. Makes me scared to think of all the secrets that aren’t well kept. Good Lord.”

Even through the fabric of his hoodie, he can feel how warm Kent’s hands are when he slaps them down on his shoulders with a smile and says, “Let’s get going and get some drinks in you. You’re a menace. Please don’t insult any more of my teammates tonight, if you can.”

“Sure. I’ll be good.”

No one else gives Bitty reason to be insulted, so he keeps his promise. Kent makes good on his too, and buys Bitty every drink under the sun, which many hours later, under the flashing lights of the club, start to feel like a really, really bad idea.

Bitty is drunk.

Bitty isn’t used to being drunk anymore, not since Samwell. Drunkenness and secret keeping didn’t go together, apparently. But Bitty is definitely drunk when Kent puts a glass of water in front of him and urges him to drink it.

He can’t tell what’s brought this on. Was it the hockey? Was it witnessing a game and enjoying it for the sake of it, for the joy of it, for the thrill of it? Was it meeting the Aces, was it Troy’s comment? Was it getting to come out with them all, like he belongs — all of it true, and happy and in the open? Was it Kent Parson’s warm hands on his hips as they danced and Bitty’s urgent, nervous, ‘If someone recognises you this will be all over the internet before this song is over,’ and Kent’s ‘So what? I’m dancing! And you’re allowed to, too. Let go.’?

Bitty doesn’t think he’ll ever know. Maybe it was all that, maybe it wasn’t any of it. Maybe it was homesickness and heartbreak. Whatever it was, had made him go to the bar again and again and again, and accept numerous drinks from numerous Aces players.

Bitty is exceptionally drunk.

“You guys staying?” Kent shouts to their group, over the loud thumping of the bass.

There is a chorus of yeses.

“Cool. We’re going now, if anyone wants a lift.”

No one does, so Kent pushes Bitty through the crowd, out of the door, and into his car.

“Come on, you can crash at mine and I’ll drive you home in the morning. I don’t trust you not to die if I leave you alone and I don’t need that sort of guilt.”

It’s no use trying not to think of Jack. Trying not to think of Kent finding Jack half-dead, all those years ago. Trying not to think of the way Kent’s voice wavers on the word guilt. Bitty nods, and ignores all the arguments against going home with Kent Parson floating around in his head.

“Okay,” he says.

It’s less than a half hour drive to Kent’s place, although in the opposite direction of Bitty’s apartment. In the rich people’s direction, Bitty thinks. Towards the mountains. It’s funny, because Bitty has spent a whole week at Kent’s but that doesn’t count. He doesn’t remember the drive, doesn’t remember anything. Just roaming the halls, laughing at Kent’s too many sports cars in his oversized garage, petting the cat, and the comfortable bed.

Oh. He gets to sleep in that again. Thank God.

Even tonight, Bitty barely registers going through the heavily secured gated-off area, or the enormous mansions they drive past, until they stop, Kent waits for the garage door to rise, parks up and drags Bitty out of the car.

“Gently does it, Mr. Parson. I ain’t one of your hockey bros. I’m very fragile.”

Kent laughs and shakes his head.

“Fragile, my ass. You told Swoops you’d outskate him,” he says, and unlocks the door, opening it so Bitty can slip inside. “You need water. A lot of it. As soon as possible.”

Kent fills two tall glasses from the water dispenser on his fridge, and passes one to Bitty. “Drink,” he says. “I need to check on the cat, or she’s gonna kill me.”

Bitty pulls his phone out and notices the notifications from the group chat. Of course, Ransom had seen his picture on Twitter.

Without thinking, Bitty texts back.

Then he opens his separate chat with Lardo and types.

Bitty puts his phone down as soon as Kent reenters the room, with Purrs right behind him.

“All right?” Kent asks.

“Eh. ‘m not throwing up in your nice house or anythin’, but I do feel… woozy.”

Kent’s laughter is loud and bright and echoes a little against the sparsely decorated room.

“You’re an idiot.”

Well. Bitty has to agree.

“I had a good time, though”

Kent snorts, this time. A quiet, amused thing. In the low light of his living room, his eyes sparkle.

“Did you now?”

“I did. I think I missed… hockey.” He pauses. Is that all? “And going out, too. People.” That’s not it, still. “Being…”

“Free?” Kent asks.

“Mhmm. Somethin’ like that.”

Kent leaves the room again, only to shout from across the house.

“Do you want a grilled cheese?”

Bitty shouts back, “With real cheese?”

“No!”

Ugh.

“Yeah, whatever.”

Despite Bitty’s drunken state and Kent’s insistence that it’s fine, Bitty refuses to eat the greasy stuff on Kent’s beautiful white couches, so they sit on the rug by the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city lights blinking in the distance, across from a small golf course and endless amounts of long roads.

They eat in silence, Kent balancing his plate on top of his knees, Bitty picking at his sandwich in small bites, plate on the floor next to his feet.

Kent is the first to speak, once he finishes his food.

“Bits?”

Through a mouthful of slightly coconut-y cheese and good bread, Bitty hums.

“Are you okay?”

Is he okay?

What a question. He swallows his last bite down and wipes his hand on his jeans, flopping back onto the floor. He stares at the copper lampshade on Kent’s ceiling, the big bulb in the middle of it, the lights from the outside reflecting off the shiny surface.

“I don’t know. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Me. Being here. In your house.”

“I don’t know. I invite friends to my house.”

Bitty rolls his head to look at Kent, but regrets it immediately. Those big worried eyes staring at him. Why does Kent Parson have to be so damn intense, all the time?

“I don’t like when you pretend you’re dumb. It’s not nearly as endearing as you think it is. I mean…” Can he even say it? “I mean because you’re you. Because of Jack.”

Kent shrugs, and Bitty hates him for how much he doesn’t care. “I guess.”

His long sigh is the only sound in the room. He feels like the whole world is holding its breath for what he needs to say next. Maybe it is.

“How do you… how do you not resent hockey? How did you make it your career, knowing it took him from you?”

“Eric…”

Kent sighs, too and the sound goes straight through Bitty’s heart.

“Hockey didn’t take me from Zi— from Jack. Jack did that. The earlier you realise that, the earlier you’ll start feeling better.”

It had been easier to blame himself, and his expectations, than to blame Jack. For all purposes, Jack had been it. Bitty’s be-all and end-all. He had always thought he’d found his miracle, his fairytale, his perfect happily ever after.

“I thought he was the love of my life,” Bitty confesses, quietly, looking away from Kent. Looking through the window, but not at much at all. His eyes fall in the general direction of the pool in Kent’s backyard, but he lets his vision go blurry.

“Yeah,” Kent says. “Me too.”

He really doesn’t mean for it to happen. He isn’t really sure how it happens, or how long he’s been crying by the time it turns into horrible, ugly sobs, and Kent is moving, his plate clattering loudly against Bitty’s on the floor, and he’s pulling Bitty up and close, against his chest, the two of them ridiculously entangled on the floor, legs and arms and hands and feet. And Kent is rocking him, just slightly, petting his hair as Bitty weeps and hiccups violently against his chest.

“Shhh,” he says, and Bitty just cries harder, a crescendo of sobs echoing in the emptiness of the room, against the high ceilings. “I got you, baby, it’s okay. You’re okay. I got you.”

It feels like years before Bitty’s breathing returns to normal, and he can wipe his face without more tears threatening to fall. He wants to be embarrassed, to apologise, but Kent holds him tight through all of it, his hands in Bitty’s hair, soothing, grounding him.

He forces himself to take a deep breath, and lets himself shudder against the warmth and comfort of Kent’s body.

“Let’s get you to bed,” Kent says, eventually.

Disentangling is less awkward than Bitty anticipated, mostly because Kent winces as he gets himself off the floor, and Bitty remembers his bad knee, and that he played a whole game earlier that day. Jesus. What a terrible time to have a complete breakdown.

“Let’s go,” Kent repeats, his hand on the small of Bitty’s back, pushing him towards the hallway.

In the bedroom Bitty had slept in before, Kent starts pulling the quilt off and piling all the extra pillows on the armchair in the corner.

“Brush your teeth. There are spare brushes in one of those drawers. I’m getting you another glass of water.”

Bitty brushes his teeth and washes his face and pees, and rummages through the closet until he finds a soft cotton t-shirt that looks big enough to sleep in. He’s getting into bed when Kent comes back, glass of water in hand.

“I don’t think you’re gonna remember any of that in the morning, but for what it’s worth, I think you’ve been needing to let that go for a very long time.”

Bitty accepts the glass of water and chugs half of it at once.

“Thank you.” What else can he say to that?

“Do you need anything else?” Kent asks, taking a couple of steps back.

“Uh…”

He almost doesn’t say it. He almost says no. But maybe Kent is right. Maybe there is something lighter about Bitty now, about letting go.

“Will you stay? ’til I fall asleep?”

Kent curls up next to Bitty, his body over the comforter, knees pulled up and nearly touching Bitty’s own, though separated by the thick fabric.

Bitty’s eyes are heavy and he’s got a headache threatening to come, brewing on the very back of his skull — whether that’s from the booze or the crying fit, he’s not sure — and he wraps a hand around the fabric of Kent’s t-shirt and lets his body relax against the heavenly soft bed.

His heartbeat takes the hint as he relaxes, and matches the peaceful pounding of Kent’s own he can feel against the palm of his hand.

Much like when he was crying, wrapped up in Kent, time trickles like molasses, slow and uneven, with Bitty dozing, sleep coming in short bursts, with him waking up to Kent’s worried face every time his eyes fly open again.

Kent doesn’t speak, but Bitty knows what those big eyes ask every single time, “Are you okay?”

And Bitty doesn’t know the answer to that, so he doesn’t speak either.

Not until the time he jerks awake and his face is impossibly close to Kent’s own, their breaths undistinguishable when he gulps for air desperately. Kent’s hand comes to his hair again, like it had earlier — grounding, calming.

“It’s okay, baby.” He says, again.

Baby.

That’d gotten lost during Bitty’s crying fit, but he remembers it now that it’s been said twice. Baby.

And it’s so intimate, but not tense. There’s nothing desperate or impatient about the way they lie, facing each other. It’s comfortable, it’s good.

When he speaks, Bitty doesn’t recognise his own voice, raspy with sleep and high-pitched with the weight of his words.

“Are we going to kiss?”

He can tell Kent tries to fight his smile but he doesn’t quite manage. The corner of his mouth lifts, making his chin dimple pop. Bitty fights the urge to poke it with his finger, still caught balancing himself on the tightrope of his question, on the flying trapeze of waiting for a reply.

Bitty is nearly asleep again when Kent answers him, rolling onto his back and away from Bitty.

“Not yet.”

Chapter Text

Bitty is not, in fact, in some dude’s bed. Well, technically it is Kent’s bed. But not like Kent’s bed that he sleeps in. Just… a bed… owned by Kent.

Well. There is a chance that Kent fell asleep in this bed last night, but Bitty didn’t stay awake for long enough to know whether or not he did. The last thing he remembers is his (stupid, dumb, ridiculous) question, and Kent’s (stupid, dumb, ominous) reply. Whether Kent left immediately after that, or early this morning, Bitty doesn’t know. He knows he wakes up alone, feeling slightly worse for wear.

God.

What even is his life?

Bitty just lies in bed, wishing his headache would go away, and praying for clarity. Eventually, he admits to himself he’s just stalling and he can’t hide forever, so he gets in the shower and hopes that can wash some of his shame away. (It doesn’t.)

He ought to ask Kent. He must. He must say how sorry he is for being a mess, and ask what Kent meant. Bitty doesn’t know how to keep going, how to exist, with those two words plaguing him constantly. The low, honest, sleepy voice:

Not yet.

Not yet.

Not yet.

Not.

Yet.

He’s only slightly disgusted after his shower to put his jeans on from the night before.

If not yet, then… when?

Purrs is waiting outside his door when he finally makes it out of the bedroom. Bitty tries not to think of it as some kind of omen as he pads quietly down the hall, practising what he is going to say to Kent under his breath.

And he is going to ask about it. He really is. Bitty is no coward. He can do this, because it’s important. He’s friends with Kent, he can do this.

Except—

Bitty opens his mouth, with his words ready, and turns the corner.

He closes his mouth.

He opens it again, but nothing comes out.

Kent is in the kitchen, hip cocked against the island, a whisk (goodness gracious, a whisk!) in his hand. Kent is in the kitchen, and he is wearing a pair of sweatpants and… well. And nothing else, it seems, apart from the thin silver chain he always wears around his neck.

Bitty is too young to be having a heart attack, right?

Right?

And yet, all of his carefully rehearsed questions seem to swiftly exit his brain to make room for the very loud fire engine siren noise currently occupying all his thoughts.

“There he is! How’s your head?” Kent asks, just slightly too cheerful for Bitty’s current fragile state.

Bitty is frozen in place, still, but he manages to collect his thoughts enough that he can mumble a quick “Fine.”

“Wow, grouchy. Okay. Noted. Think you can handle some breakfast? I thought you might appreciate something sweet.”

Bitty, not knowing what else to do, pulls a stool away from the island and sits, facing Kent.

“I’ll take that as a yes to something sweet. It’s not anything elaborate. But, you know, I just figured you’d be a sweet breakfast kind of guy.” Kent smiles, but Bitty is a little too focused slightly lower down on his body. He registers the smile as an afterthought. Kent is being friendly. Because he’s always friendly. And he’s probably overdoing it because he wants Bitty to know that the whole crying fit is fine, that things don’t have to be awkward. That’s all fine and dandy, but Bitty is too busy cataloguing the softly defined pecs on his chest, the little tuft of light hair there. The way his sternum dips into the lower half of his torso.

“Don’t know where I got that idea from, of course,” Kent keeps going, chuckling to himself. He stops when Bitty doesn’t respond at all. “Shit, Bits, you’re on a different planet this morning. Do you want coffee?”

Bitty forces his eyes away from the waistband of Kent’s sweatpants.

Jesus Christ.

“Yeah. Coffee,” he grunts.

Bitty drinks his coffee and tries (and fails) to gather his thoughts, and tries (and fails) not to look at Kent’s chest, and stomach, and back, and shoulders, and the bulge in his sweatpants, and his ass when he bends over to put their breakfast in the oven.

It’s a morning of trying (and failing).

All in all, he realises, halfway through his coffee cup, maybe it’s best he doesn’t say anything. Maybe it’s best he has some time to dissect whatever the hell is going on with himself. Because, if pressed, only a day ago, he would have happily said ‘yes, of course Kent Parson is attractive, everyone knows that, but he’s also just some guy who somehow made his way into my life and now is my friend.’

He’s starting to realise his attraction to Kent Parson may go a little beyond that. Loving big, bold and loud has always been Bitty’s thing. Going around asking his friends to kiss him is a new one, though.

Kent makes them a giant Dutch baby pancake. He handles the large cast iron pan and the oven with the familiarity of someone who’s done it several times, and maybe — maybe — that’s what Bitty is suddenly finding so very attractive. He appreciates a man that knows his way around an oven.

“Are you always this grumpy when hungover?” Kent finally asks, breaking the silence between them as he clears up their plates after breakfast.

“I guess,” Bitty says.

“I guess,” Kent mimics, in a terrible impression of Bitty’s voice and accent. “Did you have a good time last night?”

Oh.

No.

“Oh, Kent, hon. I— of course I did. I’m sorry if you thought I didn’t because I’ve been quiet. I told you, it had been a while since I’d enjoyed hockey so much.”

Kent lifts his hand, palm facing Bitty, telling him to stop right there.

“Christ, dude. Breathe. I didn’t think that, at all. I was just hoping that… I don’t know. Thought you might feel a little better after last night? Not the game, but…” he grimaces, a sheepish expression crossing his face. “After. Here,” he adds.

“Ah. I do. I think? I don’t know.”

Kent chuckles.

“I wasn’t expecting to cure your heartbreak all in one evening. That was only step one.”

Cure your heartbreak.

“Gettin’ me drunk and makin’ me eat horrible cheese sandwiches is your cure to heartbreak?”

“Bitty.” Kent says, face solemn. “Don’t ask stupid questions if you don’t want me to answer them.”

“You started it,” Bitty throws back.

“There you are,” Kent says, filling the sink with hot water. “I was starting to miss you. Not sure I’m a fan of grumpy you.”

Bitty balls up his napkin and throws it at Kent’s head.

“Yep. Bitchy you is good. I like him. Do you want to borrow clean clothes?”

“Uh… I was gonna wait until I got home?”

“Oh, but I have a day filled with fun activities for us.”

“Uh? Why?”

“I have a free day, you have a free day, you’re not dying from this hangover like I thought you might be. Why not?”

Why not?

Because Bitty’s emotional compass is apparently shattered into a million pieces and he feels like he’s being torn apart and pulled in every direction at the same time.

“I really thought I’d just go home.”

Kent drops the dish sponge into the sink and stares him down again.

“You want to go home and do what? Lie on your bed, stare at the ceiling while thinking about Jack Zimmermann and feeling sorry for yourself all afternoon?”

The chair Bitty sits on makes a horrible noise against the floor as he pulls back against the island and stands up.

“You really can be an asshole, sometimes,” Bitty says.

“Bitty, come on. Let me show you what Vegas has to offer.”

Bitty doesn’t say ‘Didn’t you do enough of that, last night?’ or ‘Well, I can see plenty Vegas has to offer, but I don’t know if it’s available to me, or if I should take it, even if it were.’

He turns down the corridor and ignores Kent, afraid words he doesn’t want to say just come flying out of his mouth.

Instead, he says, “I’m raiding your closet.”

“Uh?”

“For clothes. For your day filled with fun activities.”

“Oh. Good.”

Bitty tries to ignore how pleased Kent sounds and how that makes him feel.

“And I wasn’t gonna!” Bitty shouts, as he reaches the door to Kent’s bedroom. Stalling, because he’s never gone inside without Kent.

“Gonna what?” Kent asks.

“Lie in bed and think about him!”

“Good.”

Bitty goes into Kent’s bedroom and straight to the closet, and bites his tongue hard so the words “I think maybe I was going to think about you” never ever leave his mouth.

Despite Bitty’s reluctance, it turns out Kent was right to convince him to go on this adventure, whatever that might mean: getting out of the house makes him feel ten times more alive, and ten times less stupid.

For the first half hour of the drive, they roll down the windows and sit in the quiet (or as quiet as possible, with Purrs screaming her head off from the backseat, unhappy with being strapped to the car), watching the city slowly disappear behind them, and the great expanse of rocky desert swallow them as they go.

Questions and stories are peppered here and there, but, much like in their early weekly coffees, Kent seems quite content to fill the time with words of his own, not needing Bitty to participate in the conversation with anything other than a hum here and there.

“Can you go in my backpack and get Kit a couple of treats? She should calm down soon.”

Bitty has already unzipped the backpack when his brain catches up with the words Kent has said.

“...Kit?”

“Err… yes?”

“What do you mean Kit?”

“Oh no. Oh my god. You’ve only known her by her hockey nickname this whole time!”

Kent is laughing, his eyes crinkling behind his sunglasses.

“Your cat has a hockey nickname?” Bitty’s voice gets higher and higher with each question.

“Hell yeah she does.”

“And her name is Kit?”

“Mmm. Kit Purrson.”

A laugh rips out of Bitty’s mouth, unbidden.

“You named your cat after yourself?”

“It’s been me and Kit against the world for a very long time, Bitty. I’ll hear no judgement from you, thank you very much.”

“My goodness. Kit Purrson.”

Bitty feeds Kit some treats, and as predicted, she does calm down.

“Speaking of hockey nicknames…” Kent starts again, a bit after they cross into Arizona.

“What?”

“Do you remember yours?”

“Err… it’s Bitty?”

“No, no, not your subpar Samwell hockey nickname.” Kent scoffs, for full effect. “Your Aces nickname.”

“I have an Aces nickname!?”

“Yeah, I thought you might have some memory gaps about that part of the night. It was before I started making you drink water.”

He’d weaved and torn and weaved again all of his memories, all of his feelings, bonded them up together so tightly in his head that he’d convinced himself he hadn’t been quite that drunk. Not drunk enough to forget anything. God. At least he can use that as an excuse for asking that stupid question. Maybe it’s an excuse for how he feels about Kent standing shirtless in the kitchen, too.

“You’re lucky Swoops managed to steer them away from Barbie, because that would have stuck forever.”

“Barbie?”

The way Kent grins should tell him that what he’s about to say is going to be embarrassing, but Bitty is not prepared for the weight of the words until Kent says them.

“You wouldn’t stop calling me Ken Doll.”

Bitty groans, and reaches for the car door. Memories come back to him in broken, loose flashes.

“I am jumping out of your car and I want you to just keep driving and leave me here.”

The car doors lock with a quick clicking sound, but by the time Bitty looks at Kent, his hands are already back on the steering wheel.

“The good news is that you’re Peach now.”

“Peach?” he asks, dumbfounded.

“Peach. You know, from Georgia?”

Bitty buries his face in his hands in despair.

“Thank you,” he says, finally. He’s been meaning to say it all morning. “For making sure I didn’t embarrass myself too much. And for bringing me to your place.” He pauses. “For taking care of me.”

Kent shrugs, but smiles in a way that tells Bitty he doesn’t take it as lightly as a shrug should imply. The thought comes back to him: Not yet. Is Kent saying something more in that shrug than it seems? But of course not.

Silence comes again, and Bitty shifts in his seat, uncomfortably. He should have said no. He should have gone home, instead of agreeing to being stuck with Kent for Lord knows how long…

“Hey, where are you even taking me?”

“The Grand Canyon. Just for a little look around. We don’t have time for a big hike or anything. But you said a while ago you hadn’t seen it yet. And I thought that would make for a nice day out. We can get you to the edge and you can scream ‘I hate Jack Zimmermann’ and let it echo against the rocks for catharsis and whatnot. Might make you feel better.”

Who had known Kent Parson could be this considerate? Before Bitty can even say, “Thank you” or laugh at Kent’s ridiculous idea, Kent speaks again.

“Which reminds me! Let’s work on that heartbreak!” Kent announces, proudly, and reaches for the radio display between them. Cher’s Believe starts playing. Kent shimmies around on the driver’s seat.

“Let’s goooooooooooo,” he shouts, rolling the windows all the way down, speeding up a little and raising the volume on the radio.

Bitty’s eyes fall on the radio display and he giggles.

“You made me a playlist?” he shouts, above the music and the wind in their ears.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Kent shouts back.

The stubborn little wisp of hair that usually escapes the confines of the snapbacks Kent wears dances in the wind. Kent is smiling. The air outside is hot but the wind feels good, and Bitty can’t help but smile at the ridiculousness of everything around him. His life, his month, his week, his today.

“It’s literally there!” Bitty points at the top of the screen, where it reads Bitty’s Breakup Bangers.

“Shush. You have to sing along!” Kent says. “Otherwise it won’t work.”

And what’s Bitty to say to that, except open his mouth and scream along to Cher? He simply has to.

The playlist, it turns out, is a work of art, even when Kent realises the wind is probably making Kit even more upset about being in the car, and maybe they should roll the windows up and “enjoy the music like civilized people.” Apparently, that still involves dramatic renditions of plenty of songs, lots of steering wheel drumming, two instances of Kent using a pen he finds in the cup holder as a microphone, and one of him shouting ‘let’s go, let it out, Bittle!’ and pushing the pen-mic towards Bitty so he can sing into it.

When Kent finally parks and says “Here we are,” Bitty feels lighter, even if not less confused than before.

Kent carries Kit around in a backpack, her large fluffy head poking out at the top of the pouch she’s stuck in and her big eyes watching the world around her with curiosity.

It’s clear from the moment they park up and start walking that Kent has done this more than a few times. If he told Bitty right there and then he works part-time as a canyon tour guide, Bitty wouldn’t question it.

Bitty barely registers Kent’s words, too taken by the enormity of the canyon itself. Jack had driven him to Niagara Falls, once. This felt much like that. Like something you’ve known exists your entire life, but you can’t really ever understand how breathtaking it is until you see it for yourself.

“I know,” Kent says, looking at Bitty, as if he knows exactly what he’s thinking. “And this is only a little corner of it. I’ll bring you to the middle rims, one day. Just didn’t think we had time for that kind of drive today.”

Bitty doesn’t ask how far it is, the weight of Kent’s words weighing inside him. I’ll bring you. One day. Not yet. There has been so much of that recently. Promise. Prospects of things to happen in the future.

The idea that Kent wants to bring Bitty here again makes him slightly dizzy.

“Let me take your picture,” Kent says, pulling his phone out.

“We should take one together,” Bitty finds himself saying, and he can’t stop the memory from coming, the first time he’d ever heard Kent Parson’s voice, all those years ago, when everything was so different.

Whether Kent remembers it too, he can’t be sure, but the fact is he doesn’t stop for a selfie, and instead, asks a lady from a nearby group if she doesn’t mind taking a picture of them.

They pose at the edge with the red-brown-pink range as their backdrop. Kent angles his body towards Bitty’s, making sure Purrs is in the picture too.

“That’s very kind of you, thank you, ma’am,” Bitty says, accepting Kent’s phone back from the lady when she finishes.

“No worries,” she says, smiling. “You two make a beautiful couple.”

He can’t be sure if it’s better or worse for whatever he’s feeling right now that neither Kent nor him correct her.

Time flies by, between walking around, letting several tourists approach them to tell them how lovely Kit is, taking hundreds of photos, and sharing a pile of sandwiches that he doesn’t ask when Kent had time to make.

Bitty doesn’t remember the last time he did something like this, when he had a day where he didn’t worry about work, or about what to do next. It’s slightly overwhelming. His feet are heavy with exhaustion but his heart feels light as he walks back to Kent’s car, now carrying the cat carrier on his back.

“Early bedtime for you tonight?”

“Yeah. Back to it tomorrow, unfortunately.”

“I don’t know how you do it. Waking up in the middle of the night to go to work.”

“You get used to it,” Bitty says. “I don’t want to do it forever, I don’t think. But… it’s good for now.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I wish I’d taken recipe development more seriously after I graduated. Got myself a book deal.”

“Do you still want to do that? Write a book?”

“Yeah,” Bitty confesses. It had been a long time since he’d told someone. The book dreams were something he’d brushed under a rug long ago.

“You’ve got time. We’ll make it work.”

Bitty doesn’t miss the “we” Kent uses, but he doesn’t point it out, just keeps up with Kent’s steps as he walks them back to the car.

Falling asleep in Kent’s car is becoming a bit of a thing. Night has fully fallen when Bitty jerks awake at the brightness of the gas station. The radio is on low, a quiet beat humming through the speakers, and Kit is curled up in the backseat.

Kent is outside, a flannel thrown over the t-shirt he was wearing earlier, and his snapback still in place. He only notices Bitty is awake when he gets back into the car.

“Hey, sleeping beauty.”

“Hey. I’m making a bit of a habit of falling asleep in the car with you.”

Kent laughs, softly.

“That’s what I’m driving for. If you need to sleep, you need to sleep. It’s been a long few days. And we… we keep weird hours, I guess. I got you a drink.” He waves at the cupholder between them, both slots filled with coffee cups.

Bitty picks it up and sniffs at it, suspicious, hopeful. “PSL?”

“Decaf. So you can return to your nap, if you wish.”

“Thank you,” Bitty says.

“We’ll be home in like forty minutes, anyway.”

Silences had been awkward at times, earlier. Kent is often honest with what he says, but he’s unreadable when quiet. And there’s been more quiet than usual today. Bitty doesn’t know what to make of it.

The music keeps playing softly — it’s definitely not Bitty’s Breakup Bangers, but there’s only so much Sabrina Carpenter and Adele a guy can handle in one day. Bitty sips his drink and lets his head loll back against the window, as the roads start looking brighter and brighter, and eventually, even familiar.

Kent pulls up near his, on the same spot he had taken the day of Bitty’s concussion.

“Thanks for adventuring out with me and Kit,” Kent says, as Bitty fiddles with the seatbelt, and twists his body so he can pet Kit (Kit! Not Purrs!) one more time.

He stands out in the breeze, the light from the inside Kent’s car the brightest thing on his street.

“Kent.” Bitty doesn’t like the way his heart lurches inside him, heavy with the many things he could say right now. “Thank you, again. For… today, yesterday. Everything.”

“It’s what I’m here for. I had a good time.”

Bitty doesn’t know what to say to that. “Yeah. You didn’t sign up for me crying on you, though.”

Kent is very serious when he speaks next.

“I signed up for everything you come with.”

He knows what to say to that even less.

“Goodnight, Kit,” he says, to the sleeping cat on the backseat. “Night, Ken.”

“Sleep well, Peach.”

Bitty falls into bed and tries very hard not to think about why it feels weird to get dropped off at home instead of going to Kent’s.

Bitty brings five pies to Thanksgiving dinner. Only one is pumpkin, and made specifically for the event by him, in his house. The rest are an assortment of flavours from the bakery, the leftovers Grace insisted everyone should take back for their families. He did technically make those too, but he doesn’t think it should count. They’re work pies, not Bitty pies.

One of the Aces rookies opens the door when Bitty rings the doorbell, and simply says, “Oh, hi, Peach. Parser’s in here somewhere, come on in,” leaving Bitty to walk into the house and find his way to the kitchen by himself.

Luckily, there are plenty of people to point him in the right direction, seemingly delighted to see him — but not surprised, which is something Bitty is still getting used to. He gets the pie dropped off in the kitchen with only a mild telling-off from Scraps’ wife, Miriam. A glass of wine is thrust into his hand, and he’s shooed out into the living room.

Kent is nearly horizontal on the sofa, taking up most of it, with a giggling baby sitting on his chest. Aces players he recognises from their night out, and others he only recognises from the ice, are scattered around the room. He says hello and waves awkwardly as he crosses the room to reach the arm of the sofa.

“Bitty!” he says, looking up from the baby and over the enormous bow decorating her mostly bald head. “How many pies did you bring?”

“One pumpkin pie, as promised!” Bitty lies.

“He brought five pies,” someone shouts from the next room over. He thinks that’s Scraps. Shit.

“But only one is pumpkin?” He tries, shrugging.

Kent laughs. “We knew he was gonna do that, didn’t we, sweetheart? Yes, we did,” he says to the baby, in a cooing voice. “The bad man doesn’t know how to keep his promises.”

“Hey, now!” Bitty says.

“Come sit and meet Ava. She’s seven months old and she’s my best friend.”

Bitty sits on the sofa next to Kent and Ava.

“Hello, Ava. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says. “You are a very cute baby.”

“She is. I’m trying to convince Miriam to make me godfather, so I really gotta work on winning this little one’s heart.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be that hard, Mister Parson,” he says, and only realises after how that sounds. Nothing like putting his foot in his mouth as soon as he arrives.

Kent keeps bouncing the baby on his chest, to her apparent delight. “How was work?” he asks Bitty.

“Chaotic. So much pie. So many buns. A couple of wedding cakes, because there are maniacs out there getting married on Thanksgiving, apparently, like it’s not busy enough as is.”

“Aww,” Kent says. “That’s cute.”

“Yeah, you’d think that,” Bitty bites back.

Bitty isn’t surprised to see so many of the Aces present. It’s the first year in a good three or four that they’re not playing on Thanksgiving or the day before. The Falconers, however, are, which Bitty is only reminded of when someone turns the tv on and a closeup of Jack’s face is the first thing they see.

He’s not sure who reaches for whom, but he ends up holding Kent’s hand for a minute or two, as they listen to Jack’s familiar monotone interview speech.

Kent squeezes Bitty’s fingers between his, and Bitty wonders vaguely if he’s as visibly hot in the face as he feels.

Luckily, Ava steals everyone’s attention, and soon enough Jack becomes another guy dressed in blue on the screen.

When Troy comes over offering everyone a top-up, Bitty raises his glass of wine, though he is trying to be responsible this time, unlike the last time he saw the Aces.

Realising how good Kent Parson is with kids is a bit of a shock to the system, and by the time they’re called to the dining room for dinner, they have accidentally set up a bit of a daycare area on their corner of the sofa. The little ones are all enamoured by Kent’s stories, his silly faces, and goofy voices, while Bitty brings out his best camp counselor for the primary and middle school-aged kids, complimenting drawings and asking about favourite subjects in school.

For his sins, Bitty ends up sandwiched between the hostess and Jeff Troy, who insists on calling him Peach with every sentence he says.

Dinner is gorgeous, and it’s only when he realises there’s no cornbread dressing that the pang of homesickness for Georgia — for his Mama — really hits him.

That doesn’t last long.

“So. I was telling Parser here we should make sure to get you on skates one of these days,” says Scraps from the other side of the table.

Bitty catches Kent’s eyes in a panic.

“Beg your pardon?”

“We wanna see if you can actually outskate Swoops.”

Oh, Lord. Eric Richard Bittle, how are you getting yourself out of this one?

“I haven’t actually skated in over a year.”

“But you know how to?” someone pipes up.

Kent beats him to his line. “Bitty was the last captain of the Samwell Men’s Hockey to captain their team to an NCAA championship win. And the first openly gay captain in the NCAA, at that.”

Bitty doesn’t doubt he is blushing all the way from head to toe, now.

Someone lets out a low whistle.

“First openly gay captain in the NCAA, first openly queer captain in the NHL. That’s some power couple bullshit right there.”

Bitty knew when he lifted his glass of wine to his lips that he was making a mistake. He chokes on his wine a little, and Swoops pats his back a couple of times before he’s breathing normally again.

“I’ll drink to that,” Miriam says. Kent catches Bitty’s eye when everyone raises their glasses and the goddamn asshole has the nerve to wink at him.

Luckily for Bitty’s poor heart, the rest of dinner goes without a hitch, even if he gets chirped to hell and back when his pies get brought out for dessert.

He never feels out of place, or like he doesn’t belong, which is a feeling he’s not sure how to deal with yet. It shouldn’t feel this new, or this rare, but it does. And when everyone goes around the table and says what they’re grateful for, Bitty doesn’t feel cliché or even embarrassed to say he is grateful for new beginnings.

Most couples with kids leave shortly after dinner, leaving behind a handful of people. The Falconers vs. Bruins gets forgotten (he doesn’t ask if Kent has anything to do with the cable that has mysteriously disappeared from the tv), and Bitty only knows the score (a Falcs loss) when he opens the SMH group chat to wish everyone a happy one.

Bitty helps out in the kitchen, and gets to know Miriam a little better. She’s a teacher, and has a ton of questions about baking, which Bitty is delighted to answer.

Kent is nowhere to be seen when Bitty returns to the living room, and he bravely endures a drunken challenge from Swoops for a race around the ice, before he is dragged away by his girlfriend.

Bitty can’t find Kent anywhere after that.

“Outside on the back porch,” Scraps says, when he finds Bitty standing awkwardly in the living room. “He tends to get a little… sore. Thanksgiving is always harder than Christmas on him. I’m not sure I’m meant to know this, but he said you understood. Missing home. Not… not going back home to see your family.”

Ah.

“I… thanks. I’ll— check on him,” Bitty says. He accepts the glass of whiskey he’s offered — even though he hates the stuff — and finds his way to the back porch without dwelling too much on Scraps’ words.

“Hey,” he says, announcing himself before he steps onto the porch.

Kent is sitting directly on the decking, legs folded against himself, hugging his knees.

“Hey, Peach.”

“Oh, not you too.” Bitty puts as much teasing into his words as he can.

Kent throws him a smile that doesn’t sparkle quite as much as his usual.

“You okay?”

“Dunno. It’s hard, sometimes.”

It is.

“Yeah,” Bitty says, giving Kent space to say more, if he wants to. He kneels next to Kent, right by his feet.

“I wanted to say something to you,” Kent says.

Oh.

“Okay. I’m here.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot.”

Nothing has sounded more like the opening to a breakup before. Not even Bitty’s actual, recent breakup. His breath catches.

“I… I don’t know what you think about me, Eric Bittle. You can’t have thought good things about me before that day I caught you at the bakery and forced myself into your life. And whatever you thought… well. I don’t think you were very wrong. You heard what I said to Jack that night, at that party. And I know this is weird, like you said a few weeks ago. It’s weird that we found each other and we’re friends and we’re spending all this time together. With me being who I am, to Jack. And you…”

Kent pauses, and avoids Bitty’s eyes. Every word Bitty has ever known gets stuck in his throat. On his knees, he shuffles closer to Kent and places his glass on the floor by the railing. Kent stares at the floor between them, and Bitty looks at him, trying to get to read his mood, trying to understand why this, why tonight, why…

“I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me, because I don’t think you’re talking about him to anyone. And then, the other night… you did, and I realised I never talked to you about Jack.”

“And I just… I don’t want you to think I am a victim in this, just because I was once just as heartbroken as you are. Jack and I… it took me a long time to realise this, but we were never good for each other. We were a spiral of inevitable destruction. The fact that I still held onto hope after… after what happened was… delusional.”

“What you and Jack had was real, and that doesn’t make any of what you’re feeling easier, but I know it was, even if he… couldn’t see it for what it was, or respect it enough. And… yeah. That. I keep joking, trying to cheer you up, comparing my situation all those years ago to yours, and it’s… it’s not comparable.”

The bourbon tastes foul but Lord, he needs it. He’d planned on pouring it out into the closest unsuspecting plant or on the grass when he’d come out here, but he needs it so, so badly.

“Ken, honey, I… it’s okay. You don’t have to explain anything to me. I loved Jack very much. God, I think I love Jack very much, still. As, as a person. But. I… I haven’t been in love with Jack for a very long time.”

It isn’t something Bitty had ever admitted to himself, but he knows it to be true the moment the words come out of his mouth.

The planter where Bitty was going to pour his whiskey ends up coming in handy, if only as a place for him to hold onto as he kneels, and leans into Kent.

“That night,” he says, body warm in the places where his touch Kent’s — warm because of how nervous he is, warm because of the whiskey. “I asked you if we were going to kiss. Are we? Is it now?”

It’s a shock to the heart when Kent finally looks at him, their faces so desperately close, their breaths mingling. Bitty’s heart hammers away in his chest so loudly he thinks the entire city can hear him.

Kent pulls back.

Bitty’s heart sinks. Another not yet. A no. Maybe even a not ever.

“Eric. I can’t handle losing you. I… I looked at you that day at the bakery, the way you looked at me — lost, broken — and I wanted you in my life so much, I didn’t know what else to do. But, I can’t. Bitty, I’m sorry. I can’t be a rebound for you, I can’t be someone you… you hook up with to get over Jack. I need this to mean the same to you that it does to me.”

“But—“ Bitty starts.

It does! Can’t you see that it does?, he wants to scream, but he stops himself. Kent had told him, weeks back, about boundaries. Bitty didn’t want to cross one that was so clearly put up, so blatantly and cleanly built right between them.

Bitty rises back up onto his feet, and leans on the planter behind him.

“I’ll see you in the week, yeah?” Kent says, eyes on the floor again.

“Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving, Ken.”

I’m thankful for you.

“Happy Thanksgiving.”

By the time Bitty hangs up, his phone shows him the call was one hour, twenty-seven minutes and forty-three seconds long. He feels a little silly, not only about Kent, but about having avoided Lardo for so long that he’d forgotten how much he needs her in his life, how much brighter life is with Lardo around, even if only virtually.

Chapter Text

So, it turns out that there’s a difference between being chatty and being good at communication. That is the first lesson Bitty learns after Thanksgiving.

He’d expected them to ignore what had happened on Scraps’ porch. Bitty wakes up thinking it had been one thing to ask Kent for a kiss that other night, when he was drunk. He had no excuse for doing it last night.

When he is finally brave enough to grab his phone from under his pillow he has three texts from Lardo, a few in the SMH group chat, and one from Kent. Thumb trembling over the touch screen, he opens that last one first.

You have my truth, he says.

Kent should have his truth too. Bitty only needs to figure out what exactly that is, first.

The issue is that Bitty doesn’t have that much free time in his life. And when he does, he’s too tired to use his brain. (He’s fully given up on his body, for the time being. His body is a vessel for kneading dough and not much else.)

The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is busy (verging on chaotic) for bakeries. Bitty knew this, of course. He just didn’t know how busy it could get. Bitty wasn’t quite ready for the carnage. That is the second lesson he learns after Thanksgiving.

Orders start getting called in the day after Thanksgiving, and by the time they’re two weeks away from Christmas, it’s all hands on deck. The phone rings constantly and Grace despairs every time she has to tell someone they can’t take any more orders. One morning she shows Bitty they have over a hundred unopened Instagram messages. Bitty throws himself into it with all his passion, but even Eric Bittle has to accept that there’s only so much cake a man can make in a day.

Bitty’s job title of Head Baker comes into play for real. He has five other people in his kitchen, and it falls to him to make sure that they can work quickly and seamlessly, and get everything they need to do done.

When he complains about it to Kent in a series of exhausted and increasingly desperate texts, he says, “You’ve captained a hockey team, you got this.” And when he puts it like that, it’s much easier to face.

Still, he drags himself out of bed hours before the sun is up, and even though he has a lot of help in the kitchen to handle the load, he climbs into bed as soon as he gets home and lets exhaustion take him under for as long as possible. He does very little but grocery shopping and house cleaning on his days off. All the days blur into weeks, and Bitty doesn’t remember his body resenting him this much since checking clinic during his freshman year. Every night when he lies in bed it feels like he’s got mini pies, cakes and yule logs coming out of his eyeballs and earholes.

The Aces are away a lot this month, and when they aren’t, Kent has press commitments and events and a million other things on top of practice and games.

They’re both so busy that finding time to meet, even just to share cake or coffee by the back door of the bakery, becomes impossible. Bitty is confronted with the reality of how much he’s gotten used to that little bit of his routine, and how much seeing Kent had brightened his days.

He still takes his ten minutes outside the backdoor, sitting on the stoop drinking his coffee, just like he would if Kent was there. It’s his favorite part of the day.

And at least Kent texts. Boy, does he text. The message notification doesn’t make Bitty nervous anymore. He gets one random message from Jack once in a blue moon, and it’s easy enough to ignore under the pictures of Ransom and Holster’s new dog, Lardo and Shitty’s twins, updates on Ford’s pregnancy, Chowder’s antics in L.A., Dex’s new house, Nursey’s new job, and what Bitty can only describe as Kent’s Tales of the Day.

Those latter ones go a little like this:

Bitty doesn’t ever feel like he has to reply. He doesn’t have to tell Kent about his day. But his phone is a source of joy again, instead of his personal deliverer of bad news. He is grateful for that.

He doesn’t look for Kent everywhere, not on purpose anyway. But he finds him even without trying. Kent’s in the vegan bake of the day, when Bitty puts a little extra care into it, when he makes sure the pastry flakes just as beautifully as it would if they were using dairy butter. Kent’s in every Lana del Rey song that comes on the radio on his way home, making Bitty smile and think about their road trip, about the playlist Kent had made just for him. Kent is in every oat latte, and every grilled cheese (even if Bitty makes his with real, normal, delicious cheese).

And that’s the third lesson Bitty learns after Thanksgiving: he is, for better or for worse, a little bit in love with the Las Vegas Aces Captain and star forward Kent Parson. It’s not as scary as it should be.

He tries not to think too much about it, and he texts Lardo if he ever gets too overwhelmed about his feelings. He’s grateful his drunk, sad texting has brought Lardo back into his life. Even if she doesn’t shy away from texting him the hard truth, when it comes down to it:

Truth is Bitty can see where she’s coming from, but he bakes four pies about it anyway. He delivers two to the Aces stadium just in time for their practice, but Kent isn’t around and Bitty doesn’t have the time to wait.

Kent texts him and asks him to come to his next home game, but Bitty is too tired to sit through a whole hockey match, with the screaming, bright lights and the excitement. He compromises by sending Kent a picture of some cupcakes with neatly piped black aces on them with his ‘good luck’ text. They win, and Kent requests Aces themed baked goods before every game in the future.

Bitty spends all of his time baking. He bakes at work, he naps, he bakes at home because he literally does not know what else to do with himself. He texts Kent, and Lardo, and he makes an effort to be more active in the SMH group chat again. He’s too tired to accept invitations for drinks, but he looks up a film to watch that Portia told him is her favorite, and he buys a book Grace recommended to him. At work, he coos at baby pictures and listens to family tales and Christmas plans.

Missing Kent is… something. He’d be lying if he said he doesn’t miss their morning coffees, or their late-night chats. But he knows better than putting all his eggs in one basket now.

He realizes just how small his world was, all wrapped up around the idea of a Jack Zimmermann that only existed in the real world for a very short period of time. It feels freeing, in a way, to be not-dating Kent. It feels good — if a little confusing — to be able to text Lardo about it, to nearly get nicknamed Barbie — in relation to Ken, to hear things like ‘power couple bullshit’ even if they aren’t a couple.

Bitty decides all of it is fine, even if they never become a couple. It’s exciting… to feel so much and not be scared.

Telling people openly that he has a crush, that maybe he wants a relationship isn’t something that Bitty ever experienced before. He likes it a lot, even when he feels like a fourteen-year-old girl in a crappy coming-of-age movie.

He grabs onto that feeling to get him through the week before Christmas, he focuses on the possibilities, on everything he has ahead of him, should he survive this work week.

It’s very early in the working day, they’ve barely had time to open the bakery doors when someone comes into the kitchen and shouts, “Eric, one of your hockey boys is here to see you!” making Bitty’s heart rate speed up so rapidly he gets dizzy.

He washes his hands and throws an “I’ll be just a second” at everyone in the kitchen before just about running out of the door.

“Oh,” is all he says, when he finally steps out into the bakery, shoving his hair net into his pocket.

“I know, I know! Not who you were expecting, and I’m sorry,” Swoops says. Then, lowering his voice just slightly: “He wanted to come, but stuff came up. You’ll hear about it later, I’m sure, but there are a couple of tricky injuries we’re working around. He’ll have more white hairs next time you see him, I’m sure.”

Bitty’s heart sinks. Not Kent’s knee, he prays to a God he doesn’t believe in. It can’t be. Kent would have said something.

“Gosh, are y’all okay?” He asks, sounding a little more frantic than he wishes he would.

“Everyone’s okay. I just came to buy you all out of mini pies. For morale, or something.”

“Oh. Did you get any of the chocolate praline? Those are the only vegan ones we have today. And the spiced buttermilk is—”

“Gluten-free. I got it, Peach.”

Swoops smiles, and Bitty relaxes.

“Anyway. I just wanted to say hi. Parser really wanted to come, but it’s been a rough few days. Also… well. I needed an excuse to see you without the rest of the team. I know I was a dick when we first met. He was… well, he’s my rookie. He’s my captain now, but…”

“You’re protective of him. And… you knew who I was.”

“Yeah.” Sheepish isn’t a look Bitty has ever seen on Jeff Troy. It’s slightly funny, but mostly endearing. He can’t blame him, either way.

“I get it.”

“It wasn’t personal. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re around.”

The weather may be colder than Bitty ever imagined it could get in the desert, his body may be screaming at him with exhaustion every day, and he is still spending Christmas all alone, but here it is: Bitty’s personal Christmas miracle.

“Thank you… Jeff.”

“No problem. Let’s make plans for the new year, yeah? Get you on some skates, see if you’re as fast as you claim to be.”

A spark of competitiveness lights up inside Bitty. Something furious and joyful he hasn’t felt for a very long time. He thrusts his hand at Swoops for a handshake.

“Yeah,” Bitty says, shaking his hand firmly. “Let’s do that.”

“See you after Christmas, Bittle.”

“Have a good one, Troy.”

Bitty can’t help but think that the last time he felt this much relief was after telling his mother he’d been using Judy’s jam recipe.

Bitty hopes he is right in the way he reads that last text. He hopes that when Kent typed ‘I missed your pies’ he really meant ‘I miss you.’ Feeling brave, he texts back.

It had been foolish to think he could spend another holiday with Kent. Bitty had been trying to convince himself that one Christmas alone wouldn’t be so bad, that he could handle it. But finally having the confirmation that Kent won’t be in Vegas at all tells him he was holding out hope where there shouldn’t have been any in the first place.

Kent had been straightforward with him about family, and about how hard holidays are now that he doesn’t speak with his parents. If Bitty had a sibling to spend Christmas with, he would take that chance, too.

Because that isn’t a horribly ominous thing to say, Bitty thinks. He can make it to Friday though. To pass the time, he adds seven new items to the neverending list of things he wants to try to make vegan and bake for Kent one day. He might not have the excuse of seeing Kent to work on his high-protein, low-sugar, vegan recipes, but somehow the list gets longer and longer every single week.

A lot of the options he is most looking forward to baking are very summery, but he sends them to Kent anyway, and writes down his thoughts and comments for future reference. The top of the list includes:

- pecan cream danish (Kent said it sounds gross but he’ll try it)

- berry praline tart (Kent prefers raspberries to blueberries and blackberries, but said mixed was good too: raspberry only OR mix but raspberry-heavy?)

- rhubarb and custard filled éclair (Kent said ‘yes please’)

- bourbon caramelized peach pie (‘lol that sounds very southern, Bittle’)

- pistachio beignet (‘giving that a 11/10 before I even try it because holy fuck’)

His newer additions are more weather appropriate, and from that list he picks a salted caramel tart to make for Kent on Friday, as well as two cranberry and ginger pies — one for the Parsons, one for the Chows for Kent to take to L.A. with him.

He perfects the vegan salted caramel recipe before his bedtime on Tuesday night, and texts Kent goodnight before he gets into bed.

That is, of course, when the fear hits.

The thought of seeing Kent again fills his stomach with butterflies. The fact that they’d not seen each other since Thanksgiving — since Kent all but told him he likes him — makes the butterflies go positively wild.

Eventually, with Senõr Bun in a strong chokehold under his arms, sleep comes, taking him under and keeping his thoughts from running through his head like a mad hamster on a spinning wheel.

When his alarm goes off, he forces himself through three minutes of deep breaths and gets on with his morning routine.

It’s just Kent, he tells himself. He tells it to the first batch of dough he sets to rise in the morning, to the first tub of syrup he brings out to get to room temperature, to the first scattering of chopped nuts over a finished lattice. It’s just Kent.

And it is. Kent knocks on the back door of the bakery shortly after 9 am, and Bitty sheds his jacket, replaces it with a grey fleece-lined windbreaker Lardo had gotten him last Christmas, and swaps his hair net out for a beanie. It’s not as cold as Massachusetts (or Rhode Island) would be this time of the year, but it still feels nice to wrap his hands around the coffee that Kent passes to him when he steps down from the door.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hello,” Bitty replies.

He’s not surprised by the hug, but he’s surprised by how long it lasts. How comfortable it is, to have his face pressed against the familiar slightly-floral laundry detergent smell of Kent Parson, against the soft cotton of his pink-and-lavender pretty sweatshirt. He’s surprised by the way Kent nuzzles his nose against the top of Bitty’s head. And most of all, he’s surprised by how easily Kent whispers, against his hair, “I missed you.”

Bitty had been thinking exactly the same thing, but he would never have dared say it out loud.

A sudden feeling of inadequacy shadows this bright moment for Bitty. What had he been so scared about? It really is just Kent.

Kent who drove him to the hospital, who took him in, who babysat his too-drunk self and let him cry on his shoulder.

Bitty’s worries from the day before melt away, and he remembers this is just a coffee, like so many they’d had before since that first day in the bakery. It is just coffee, and it is just Kent.

When they finally let go, Bitty wipes the doorstep with the palm of his hand, and sits, waiting for Kent to sit next to him.

“I’ve got your pies.”

“What did you make me?”

“It’s a surprise,” he says, beaming in response to Kent’s beautiful, happy face. He feels almost as if he’d forgotten how much Kent smiles, how open he is with his expressions.

Bitty had spent years schooling his own facial reactions, his phrasing, his body language. Anything that would make the press react, or Jack recoil and step away from him.

It feels like a completely different life, to be able to smile openly, just because he is happy. Happiness isn’t for behind closed doors, for when no one is looking. Not anymore.

“I know you don’t have a long break, and I don’t have long before I have to go to the airport, so I’m just gonna cut to the chase,” Kent says.

He shimmies a little, lifting his butt off the step so he can find something in the pocket of his jeans, and he deposits a keyring with several sets of keys in Bitty’s hand.

“Stay at mine.”

Bitty’s brain struggles to follow.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Stay at mine. Kit needs the company. And… you do too. Unless you’ve got plans for Christmas now?”

Despite the biting wind, Bitty feels the heat rise to his cheeks.

“I… I don’t.”

“Then just stay at mine. I’m leaving the Porsche parked at the arena, so you’ve got a spot in the garage for your car. And you were complaining about your place not having a tub… you can have a bath every day. I don’t care. Use all my bath bombs, all the bath salts. Take three baths a day, if you want to.”

“Ken, I… I can’t.”

“Please? You’d be doing me a favor, looking after Purrs.”

Bitty sighs.

That sounds so, so good. The big house, the big kitchen, the bathtub, the comfy bed…

“Bitty, say yes.”

“I don’t think I have any other choice.”

“I’m not going to make you, if you really don’t want to. I just, I wish I could stay with you. It sucks that you have to work and you can’t go see your friends, and I can’t stay and… I don’t know.” He shrugs. “It would make me really happy if you stayed at my place.”

“Okay,” Bitty says, after a quick pause, mostly so Kent will stop looking at him with that desperate, pleading expression of his.

“Okay?”

“I’ll stay.”

He puts the keys into the front pocket of his windbreaker. They’re heavy and he can feel the cold of the metal against his stomach, even through his t-shirt.

Then Kent leans in, and there’s a moment of scrambling, of tension. Bitty moves, but all Kent does is gently press a loose strand of hair back under Bitty’s beanie.

Their eye contact goes on for a little too long, is a little too intense, it’s a little much for everything that Bitty is feeling.

“Thank you,” Kent says, pulling his hand back.

Bitty is thinking about kissing Kent again, so he pulls back, too. Kent had made it clear where he stood. Bitty didn’t want to cross that line.

But Lord—

Bitty wants.

“I’ll… let me get you your pies.”

He slides back into the kitchen and picks up the three boxes he’d left on the side. Next to them, there’s a Tupperware full of the leftover vegan salted caramel he’d made the night before, and in a panic, Bitty grabs a spoon, and shoves a whole spoonful of salted caramel sauce into his mouth, making it sticky and sweet and taking the edge off. The sugar grounds him, as he tells himself off for thinking about kissing Kent, again, and makes his way out, carrying the boxes.

“So the two bottom ones are yours and Chowder’s, for Christmas. Cranberry Ginger. Vegan, of course, with just a hint of ginger because I figured your little nieces might not like it if it was too spicy.”

“Oh,” Kent smiles softly. “That’s nice of you, thank you. What’s the top one?”

Placing the pie boxes between them seems like the right thing to do. Forcing them apart, making Bitty stop thinking silly things — like how much he wants to touch Kent — so he does that, before he sits back down on the stoop.

He flips the lid off, and revels in Kent’s small ‘oh wow’.

Bitty’s proud of the tart, proud enough that he would admit that he’d made several versions until the caramel layer was perfect and just runny enough and the chocolate on top of it was silky smooth.

“Chocolate and salted caramel tart,” he says.

Kent’s smile makes his stomach flip.

This should be normal, he thinks.

This should feel right, he tells himself.

And it does, except Bitty is burning all over with how much he wants to reach over. How did they touch so casually before? Why was it so much easier when Bitty wasn’t aware of the magnitude of his feelings?

“Let me know what you think when you try it. And…” Kent looks down at his hands, and pulls his phone out. Twenty minutes gone, which means he has to go back to the kitchen. “Uh… Merry Christmas, Ken.”

Kent wraps his hand around the back of Bitty’s neck, and pulls him in, as close as he can with the boxes between them.

Their foreheads touch — Kent’s skin cold against Bitty’s — and Bitty doesn’t know how much self control he can manage anymore.

“You smell sweet,” Kent says, still soft, still smiling.

Bitty laughs, feels the heat rise to his cheeks again.

“It’s the… the salted caramel. From your tart.”

“Ah,” Kent says. And they’re so, so close. “Maybe I could try it? Before I go?”

Bitty’s stomach flips upside down.

“The… salted caramel?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhmm.”

“Okay.”

There isn’t much time to figure out whether or not he knows what he’s just agreed to, because Kent leans in properly, and then their lips touch.

It’s gentle, it’s sweet, all caramel and coffee.

Bitty has played it in his head hundreds of times. Hundreds of scenarios, hundreds of different situations, hundreds of answers for the question ‘How would Kent Parson kiss?’

This is somehow better than every single one of those imagined moments, better than all of them put together, even. Losing himself in how Kent works his mouth open — softly, slowly — and swipes his tongue against Bitty’s own, Bitty reaches for him, wrapping a hand on the soft fabric of his sweatshirt by his shoulder, the other cupping the side of his face, his jaw, his chin.

The pointy corner of the pie box on top pokes him in the ribs, but he’s not willing to let go.

Not until Kent attempts to pull back, whispering against his lips. “Bits,” he says. And Bitty kisses him again. “Bits,” and again. “Bitty.” More urgent. “Fuck, Eric. You’re gonna squash the goddamn pies.”

Oh.

Bitty pulls back, a little embarrassed, but Kent is still smiling.

“Good salted caramel,” he says, with a wink. “A million out of ten, at least.”

“Oh, you.” Bitty sighs, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“That… well. I didn’t mean to do that.”

Well. That isn’t something you wanna hear from a boy you’ve just kissed, is it?

Bitty doesn’t say it, but he’s pretty sure his face does it all for him, based on the way Kent panic-reaches for his hand, and says, very quickly, “No. I mean. I don’t regret it. It’s just… you have to go back to work, and I have to go to the airport and… I would have liked to have more time, I should have planned that better.”

“That being…” Bitty presses.

“Our first kiss.”

There’s something magical in the way Kent looks at him, the way he says those words. The hopeless romantic in Bitty is tempted to call it devotion. Our first kiss. Like it is, for Kent too, something inevitable and yet the most incredible thing to ever have happened.

Bitty’s heart skips in his chest.

Our first kiss.

(Patient name: Eric Richard Bittle.

Time of death: 09:37 AM.

Cause of death: Kent Parson’s dopey, infectious, lopsided smile and the molasses-thick sweetness of his voice when he says ‘first kiss'.)

“Honey.” Bitty reaches over the pie boxes to grab Kent’s other hand. “That’s okay. We can… we can talk about it after Christmas.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Kent squeezes Bitty’s fingers before letting go of his hands, and stands up.

“Merry Christmas, Peach.”

It turns out, Peach is a good nickname.

“Merry Christmas, Ken. Text me when you land.”

“I will.”

Bitty stands too, and they’re just there, standing, awkwardly.

“I…”

“Yeah.”

“I’m gonna go now, before I kiss you again and then accidentally get you fired and throw my entire career in the trash for missing a game.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Bitty chirps.

“Well. That’s debatable.”

He can’t help but laugh. “Bye, Ken.”

“Bye for now.”

For now.

Another promise.

Not yet suddenly becomes for now.

Kent carries the pies to his car as Bitty gets back into his kitchen to splash cold water on his face and try to get back to work, knowing he has just kissed Kent Parson and he really, really wants to do it again.

Packing is awful.

What do you pack for a long weekend at your friend-that-you-kissed-once-and-want-to-kiss-again’s place knowing said friend isn’t there and you’re just there to catsit?

Bitty throws a few pairs of jeans into a bag, a selection of t-shirts to wear to work, and one good shirt, in case he feels like making an effort for the cat on Christmas day. Mostly, he packs soft well-worn t-shirts and shorts, the toiletries that he needs, his phone charger, and he pretends it’s very normal for him to go and stay at Kent’s (a person he has kissed) without Kent (a person he has kissed!) even being there.

It feels weird, yet familiar. He doesn’t have to put Kent’s address on his phone because he knows the way now. The gate opens for him with the little fob on the keyring Kent gave him. The garage door opens automatically as he approaches the driveway. The cat doesn’t jump on him at all, only bumps his sneakers gently with her pink nose and meows as if to say ‘hi’. It all goes seamlessly. The feeling that something isn’t quite right never leaves him though. He looks for Kent in the passenger seat as he drives, He expects him to be waiting by the front door, or inside on the sofa. Kent isn’t there though.

Letting himself in feels weird, but he does it anyway because he remembers how Kent sounded when he asked Bitty to stay here.

It would make me really happy if you stayed at my place.

It occurs to Bitty that he really, really wants that. He wants to make Kent happy. He leaves his bag by the garage door and walks into the kitchen.

The first thing he notices is the little note on top of the kitchen counter.

‘I figured you’d make it to the kitchen sooner or later so it was the perfect place to leave you a note that you’d definitely find. Thank you for indulging me and coming to stay. Have a good xmas, Bitty. I’ll see you very very soon : )

Yours,

Ken

P.S. Text me when you get there!!’

The sudden swirling in his stomach is enough to make Bitty lose balance slightly. He picks up the note, and lets his thumb stroke the paper where the most damning ink is, staring him right in the face.

Yours.

Ken.

That man doesn’t do anything halfheartedly, does he?

Regaining control of his legs, Bitty remembers Kent should be landing in LA soon, so he texts him a picture of Kit and nothing else. He doesn’t know what else to say. He locks his phone again and looks at the time. It’s been about five hours since they kissed, and Bitty doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He plows on, the promise of a bath and an early night keeping him moving. He’d missed his nap trying to pack and not panic about the kiss and staying at Kent’s, but he knows he wouldn’t have managed a real nap anyway.

Not with the vivid memory of Kent’s soft lips against his.

God.

The bed in the guest room is stripped bare, with only a quilt covering the mattress. Bitty looks in the closet in there, then in the hallway storage, and then in Kent’s bedroom, but he can’t find bedding anywhere.

Bitty brings his bag into Kent’s room. He stands at the foot of the bed. The bedsheets, pillows and duvet are all white, like a hotel. The bed looks as comfy as the one he’s slept in just down the hallway, but bigger. Kit jumps on the armchair next to the bed and curls up.

Her presence is comforting, and Bitty starts to think that maybe he’ll be keeping Kit company just as much as she’ll be keeping him company. She should be used to missing Kent, but it’s obvious it still makes a difference to her.

He only texts Kent back when he’s in the bath (enough room for three of him to stretch out), steaming hot water the pastel yellows and pinks of melted ice cream and perfuming the whole room with fruity and floral scents.

He sinks all the way down to his chin, then wipes his hands on the towel he’d left on the side, and grabs his phone, feeling fierce and brave, somehow renewed by the first bath he’s had in months.

Despite the flirting — which turns out to be pretty much constant and leaves Bitty feeling equal amounts of giddy and antsy — Christmas is still the worst.

It starts with work, because if Bitty thought the first two weeks of December were bad, he had no idea what was coming for him the few days coming up to Christmas. His body is sore and he’s pretty sure he’s kneading dough in his sleep, instead of letting his muscles rest.

Everything is made even worse by Chowder posting a picture of the cranberry and ginger pie on the SMH group chat, which results in multiple complaints from everyone else that they didn’t get any Christmas pie, two questions as to how Bitty got pie to Chowder, and one long harrowing message from Jack — who guessed exactly how the pie got to Chowder way before Chowder dropped the truth in the group chat.

Bitty ignores Jack’s message and when everyone is busy asking about Kent Parson in the chat, he simply writes, “It’s always helpful to have friends in high places ;)” which shuts the chattering down for a little while.

Grace shuts the bakery early on Christmas day. Every cake, pie, cupcake, and yule log is picked up before eleven and the staff stays another hour for cleanup and a celebratory toast.

Bitty can’t believe he’s finally got two days to rest, knowing the pace at work will slowly return to normal as soon as the new year starts.

He drives slowly, too aware of his own exhaustion, and runs himself a bath as soon as he gets to Kent’s.

He has become best friends with the bathtub in the master bathroom in only four days, and he definitely wants to make the most of it before he goes home to his cramped little shower with a tendency to cut his hot water off after only ten minutes.

It’s definitely become a routine he could get used to. Drive home, get in the bath, watch Purrs sneak into the bathroom and curl up on the bath mat, text Kent.

Today, when he finally has the energy to pick up his phone, he has texts from numerous people wishing him a Merry Christmas, including one from Jack and one from his Mama, who asks him to call her later.

Bitty cuts himself a generous slice of pie and eats it in the bath.

Loneliness sinks its sharp claws straight into his heart, and he misses home (wherever that is), he misses Georgia (despite it never missing him), he misses the Haus (that no doubt has plenty of fresh drama and could never miss him), he misses Jack and Jack’s house and the café down the road and the park in Providence, he misses Lardo and Shitty and Ransom and Holster and his frogs and mostly he misses that things seemed so much easier not so long ago.

He misses Kent, but he does not text him, because Kent is rightfully surrounded by family and joy, and Bitty is sobbing in the bath through a mouthful of pie he isn’t even sure is one of his best.

By the time he makes it out of the bath, the water is tepid at best, his fingers are pruny and his eyes are red.

He’s got a pair of boxers and a shirt on when Kent rings.

Kent doesn’t usually call, and Bitty’s heart leaps in his chest at the thought of his voice.

“Hello?” He says a silent prayer that his voice doesn’t sound as nasal as it does in his own head.

“Hey.” Kent’s voice is as lovely as Bitty remembers it. “Merry Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas, Ken. How’s your day?”

“Good. Early start… well, shit, sorry. I guess not as early as yours. But the girls were ready for presents before six A.M. and apparently my sister had instructed them to wake up Uncle Kenny first.”

“Ha.”

Remembering how good Kent was with Ava brings a small smile to Bitty’s lips. He’s sure his nieces adore him.

“Yeah, she’s clever like that. You good?” Kent asks, fake-casual. Bitty can tell just how much worry Kent is hiding in that question.

“Yeah? What have you had to eat?”

“Er…” Three cups of coffee at work, a chocolate hazelnut bun, and a third of a pecan pie.

“Eric.”

“Yeah?”

“One second. I just need to check my texts.” Kent says, suddenly serious.

A minute passes.

“All right. Can you go to the door?”

Bitty gasps.

“It’s not me. I promise I’m still very much in L.A., although…”

The pause makes Bitty nervous, but he moves down the hallway towards Kent’s front door.

“I do wish I was there.”

“Should I open the door?” Bitty asks, feeling stupid.

“Yes, please.”

Right on the doormat is a giant basket and inside it is what looks like a perfectly plated Christmas dinner.

Bitty squats and looks at the weird delivery.

Three thick slices of glazed ham, mashed potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts, something sweet potatoes and something white and cheesy Bitty discovers is a cauliflower gratin upon closer inspection. Among the crinkle-cut paper stuffing, there’s also a bottle of red wine, two dinner rolls, and a slice of cake.

He almost forgets he’s still on the phone with Kent until he asks, “Have you got it figured out or do you need the menu?”

“Ken— what? How?”

“I believe it’s Jeff’s mom’s cooking, but I think Jeff and Emma delivered.”

“Kent…”

“I had a feeling you’d just be eating pie and feeling sorry for yourself.”

The sound that comes out of Bitty’s mouth is half sob, half laugh.

“There are some dinner rolls, and I’ve been told some kind of chocolate cake? I’ve done Christmas with the Troys and if it’s the same I’ve had before it’s fucking good. Not Bittle-good, but still good.”

“Oh, honey. You flatter me.”

“Enjoy your dinner, Bits. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Yeah.”

There is a moment of tension, both of them listening to each other’s breathing, complete silence around them.

“Kent…”

“Mmm?”

“Thank you.”

“Any time, baby.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Bitty only brings the basket inside when the line goes dead.

Dinner is delicious, and Bitty is decidedly less lonely, even if it’s still just him and Purrs in Kent’s big house. After dinner, he bravely stomachs a ten-minute phone call with his Mama, and even shares a couple of words with Coach. Draining half the bottle of wine is easy enough after that, and he pairs the chocolate cake with another tiny slice of his own pecan pie.

And almost as if Kent had planned for that too, Purrs jumps on the bed with Bitty for the first time since he came to stay, and curls against his chest until he falls asleep.

Bitty goes back to work — and his own home — a couple of days after Christmas. Kent’s flight is delayed. Bitty works the next day, and is still so tired he naps in his car before driving home. Kent has a game the day after that, and Bitty has to endure a staff dinner the night after, despite how ragged they all are. Bitty pushes through work blindly and automatically, the promise of a week off at the start of the year keeping him alive.

They text.

A lot.

A constant stream of chirp-flirting (flirt-chirping?) has Bitty desperate to see Kent, wondering when they’ll kiss again, wondering what it all means, and most importantly, where it could go.

Does Bitty want that? Yes.

Does Bitty want a chance at kissing Kent at midnight? God, yes.

But you can’t always get what you want, and he tells himself that he’ll see Kent on his week off, and treat himself to some well-deserved good sleep to start the year off right.

He makes a good dinner, showers and moisturizes, does a face mask. He puts fresh linen on his bed, pulls his favorite softest shorts on, watches some crappy television and puts himself to bed at 9:30 P.M.

By some sort of miracle, he even remembers to turn off all alarms before he gets to bed, and actually falls asleep pretty soon after —probably thanks to a combination of pure exhaustion and how much he wants to avoid the celebrations.

He doesn’t know what time it is when the knocking starts.

It’s a firm, insistent thumping and it takes him a few minutes to realize it is, indeed, against his front door. Bitty instinctively reaches for Señor Bun. Did someone set fire to the building with their ridiculous fireworks? Does he have to flee? God, what would he even take with him?

Fear running through his body like a storm, he gets up, paying no mind to the fact that he is currently only in his sleeping shorts with a teddy safely tucked under his arm. Bitty runs down the corridor and throws the door open, just as whoever is on the other side starts rapping at it again.

“Oh.”

Bitty looks at Kent head to toe — once, twice, three times. Simply to make sure he isn’t dreaming. Kent is smiling, wearing a pair of short shorts, and a teal hoodie that swallows his whole torso. For once, he isn’t wearing a hat and his hair looks soft and slightly mussed up, the little wisp at the front as out of control as always. Ridiculously, he’s wearing white socks and a pair of slides.

That’s when Bitty knows he’s not dreaming — he would never dream something quite that atrocious.

“I’m sorry—“ Kent says, breathless yet fierce, somehow. “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t… I couldn’t take it. I just… Can we please pretend I’m not like three hours late?”

Bitty stands there, confused.

Wondering.

Hoping.

“I should have come, I should have been clearer about why I wanted you to come, I wasn’t sure— it got to midnight and I just wanted you to be there and then I went to bed and I tried. Bitty, I swear I tried but I couldn’t go to sleep because I didn’t want this year to start without kissing you again.”

Inside his chest (which he suddenly realizes, is very much bare), Bitty’s heart is beating so rapidly he feels like the floor underneath his bare toes is shaking.

“Eric Bittle, tell me I’m not completely off the mark here. Jesus Christ.”

Kent’s voice doesn’t quite waver, but the way it breaks on the last syllable betrays him. No longer frozen to the spot, Bitty moves.

He throws his arms around Kent’s neck and pulls him down into a searing kiss. Señor Bun gets flung somewhere in the general direction of the kitchen but Bitty silently promises himself he’ll pick him up later. The poor thing has gotten much worse, all these years.

“Thank you. God,” Kent says, between kisses. “God.”

He pulls Bitty against him by the waist and Bitty never, ever wants to stop kissing him.

It’s entirely different from the soft, gentle kiss they’d shared behind the bakery. This is hot, needy, desperate, hungry, fueled by more than a week of flirty texting, hoping and missing each other.

Realizing this, Bitty presses his mouth against Kent’s harder, barely containing a moan when Kent’s tongue touches his own.

Kent pulls back, for a second, just long enough for him to say, “Jesus. Let me in, you fucking heathen.”

A giggle escapes Bitty’s mouth when he realizes they’re still in the doorway.

He pulls Kent into his apartment and slams the door shut with more force than was really necessary.

“Hi,” he says, pretending he doesn’t suddenly feel self-conscious, standing in the little space between the kitchen and living room in only a pair of shorts, probably looking like he was pulled out of bed in the middle of the night (because he was, not that he’d complain).

“Hello, Peach. Happy New Year.” Kent’s grin seems to light up the whole room, bright and inviting and warm.

“Yeah,” Bitty says. “Pretty happy so far.”

“So,” Kent starts, then stops to clear his throat, swaying on his feet slightly awkwardly.

Bitty looks down and then back at Kent’s face with intense determination when he notices the very obvious bulge in Kent’s shorts.

Good lord.

“So?” he asks.

“There was that talk we said we’d have.”

Oh. The talk. About the kissing and the liking each other. The very adult talk they have been texting each other about every day, for days.

“There was, yes.”

“But I don’t know…” Kent trails off. Bitty knows exactly what he’s saying.

“I reckon it’s not a talk for the middle of the night, and…” He says, and takes a step forward towards Kent, again.

“And?”

“And I think we can wait to chat tomorrow, honey,” he says.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Kent says, and grabs Bitty by the waist again.

Despite being slightly smaller than Kent, Bitty manages to maneuver them away from the door, and through an impressive exchange of one-word sentences and noises, they disconnect their bodies for long enough for Kent to lose his hoodie not too far from where Señor Bun is spending the night, revealing an expanse of tanned skin Bitty can’t wait to put his mouth on.

Kent’s skin is cold against his — Kent’s nose against his cheek, his lips against his jaw, his hands against the small of his back, his knees against Bitty’s thighs.

It’s a blessing because Bitty’s whole body is burning. He can’t get enough.

He didn’t know he could want this much.

There is no knowing where he ends and where Kent begins, their limbs tangled as Bitty pulls them towards the bedroom — feet stumbling, knees knocking, teeth colliding.

There is no hiding how hard Bitty is, straining against the soft cotton of his shorts, the old elastic around his hips a weak prison for all his need.

There is no language with enough words to describe how glorious, how stunning, how breathtakingly golden Kent Parson looks when his calves finally hit the cheap wood of Bitty’s bed frame and he lets Bitty push him, when he falls back against the softness of the duvet, when he lets out a sound that goes straight through Bitty’s soul, half laugh, half moan.

“Ken,” Bitty says, climbing over him, desperate to kiss him again. And kiss him he does. “Darling,” he says, deciding that he likes that. He doesn’t use darling nearly as casually and as often as he does honey, or sweetie, or sugar. And Kent is darling. “Darling,” he says again. “Can I touch you?”

It’s all a blur, with Bitty giggling, rolling off so Kent can take his socks off, followed by his shorts.

They’re on more even footing now, and Kent raises on his elbows, giving Bitty enough room to clamber back onto his lap, nipping on Kent’s collarbones as he does.

Looking up to meet Kent’s eyes, Bitty can’t help but shudder at the way Kent looks at him — he’d been too scared to call it devotion only a couple of weeks ago, but he doesn’t know any other words for it. It makes him giddy with joy.

He touches, hands roaming desperately all over Kent, not sure where to go next, wanting it all at once, wanting it all a little too much.

It’s only when Kent presses up against him, tentative but firm, and grabs his ass so Bitty meets him in the middle, that Bitty unravels completely.

“Bits.”

The waver in Kent’s voice makes his knees weak. Bitty attaches his lips to the pulse point on Kent’s neck and sucks.

“Bits. Please. I’m going to die if I don’t get to touch you.”

“You’re touching me,” Bitty says, looking down as Kent’s tanned hands gently scratch against his chest, around his waist, down his stomach.

Slowly, Kent raises his index finger and brings it to Bitty’s lips. Acting on instinct, Bitty opens his mouth, but Kent doesn’t linger, tracing a line down Bitty’s chin, and then his neck, over his Adam’s apple, between his collarbones, down his sternum, over his navel, all the way down to the waistband of his shorts, where he stops to look back up at Bitty, a clear question in his eyes.

Bitty nods, having lost all words somewhere between his vocal cords and his mouth.

Kent pulls Bitty out of his shorts, and every clear thought Bitty had in his head dissipates immediately, his whole body a supernova of pleasure and wanting Kent’s body as close to his own.

He’s too busy biting on Kent’s ears, on his neck, on his chest, too focused on the feeling of the circle of Kent’s fist around his dick to notice Kent pushing his boxers down his legs just enough to wrap his hand around both of them and then the world is dissolving into pure pleasure, Bitty panting into Kent’s neck, Kent’s head thrown back against the headboard.

“Ken— shit— darling— fucking— oh! — what… Kent, what do you want?”

It is a revelation to see that Kent is as wrecked as he is, shiny plump lips parted, rosy cheeks, heart thumping under Bitty’s hands where he is supporting himself against Kent’s chest.

“This,” he says, pulling Bitty against himself again, creating more friction. “Just this. I—” he stutters. “Keep moving? I’m so close.”

Bitty could never say no.

The rhythm is slightly off — desperate, clumsy. Bitty brings his mouth to Kent’s, though he’s not sure it could really be called a kiss when they’re just panting into each other’s mouths, Bitty drinking in the delicious, raspy ‘God, god, oh god, oh my god, Bitty, oh my god’ litany Kent keeps repeating.

He’s quiet when he comes though, shooting over his own hand and stomach.

It’s the way his mouth falls open, and his eyes shine, the grey of them darker and deeper than ever that pushes Bitty over the edge right after, with a small shout and a desperate, broken, “Oh, fu-uck.”

“Fuck,” Bitty says again, rolling over onto his back.

Next to him, Kent slides down the bed until he is practically starfished, body limp and flat against the top of Bitty’s comforter.

“I’d never heard you swear that much before.”

“I’d never heard you use the name of god in vain as much as you did tonight,” Bitty chirps back.

Kent laughs, soft and quiet. His eyes are closed, his face red, his mouth open in a lazy smile, and his hair sweaty and flat against his forehead.

“Something something that was heavenly, something something a holy experience.”

Bitty bats at his shoulder carefully with his clean hand.

“Bet you say that to all the boys.”

Kent’s laugh is quickly becoming one of Bitty’s favorite sounds.

“Clean up?” Kent asks.

“Guests first.”

Kent argues, but Bitty doesn’t relent. They take turns in Bitty’s bathroom, and return to bed, sliding under the comforter without question. Easily, casually.

“Hey,” Kent starts.

“Hi.”

“I meant it. When I said it was heavenly.”

Bitty didn’t think he could blush again, not after… that. Apparently, he can.

“Stop it now.”

“I did though. Even if I lasted like thirty seconds.”

Bitty giggles.

“Wait.” He says, with sudden clarity. “Is this a post-game analysis, Mister Captain?”

“Jesus. Do not call me Captain right now, or we’ll end up finding things about me we really don’t have to.”

It takes him a minute, but Bitty gets exactly what he’s saying just a second after.

“Oh.”

Kent looks away from him, hides his face in his pillow.

“Does that do it for you? O Captain, my Captain?”

“Hell. Behave, Bittle. Let’s not have that conversation right now.”

“You can tell me,” he coos. “I ain’t exactly a virgin, Parser. I suppose it’s been a while, as you can imagine, but still.”

“I mean, I didn’t. Imagine, that is. That would have been a weird thing to assume. You’re young and gorgeous and—”

“Spend all of my spare time with you?”

“Ah. I suppose there’s that.” Kent’s tone is flat but his smug smile betrays how pleased he is to hear Bitty’s words.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not exactly a virgin either. You know exactly who took mine.”

Lord.

“Well,” Bitty says, with a half laugh, half grimace. “Ain’t that another fun thing to have in common.”

He watches Kent do the math in his head, realize what he means. It takes him a couple of seconds, and then he looks at Bitty with his mouth slightly open, slight surprise in his eyes. Then he blinks and shakes his head as if trying to clear his thoughts.

“No, this is bullshit. Let’s do that. Properly.”

He turns to face Bitty fully, pulling the quilt up to his shoulders. He twists, propping himself up on his elbow. Bitty tilts his head, questioning.

“Tell me about yourself. I want to know everything we have in common that’s actually fun.”

Bitty laughs, but rolls over too, to face Kent in bed.

“What? Do you want me to do the whole ‘Hello there, my name is Eric Richard Bittle, I was born in Georgia, I love baking and my favorite color is red’ thing?”

“Yes, I do. I’ll go first: I’m Kent Parson, I am thirty-three, I was born and raised in New York City and I am a professional hockey player, but I wanted to be a firefighter when I was little. Before I got into hockey.”

“A firefighter?”

“A firefighter. What about you?”

Bitty has to think about that one.

“Hmmm. Probably baker, at first. Then figure skater, then baker again.”

“Did you ever consider hockey?”

“Oh, I was never good enough for that.”

“Peach, I’ve seen you play. I looked at your stats when you were at Samwell. You’re plenty good.”

“Hush your silly mouth. You never told me what your favorite color is.”

They stay up all night, learning all the things they have in common that have nothing to do with Jack.

Chapter Text

If December was a whirlwind of baking and trying to stop time from barreling on without a moment for Bitty to catch his breath, January is the calm after the storm, a cold near-waveless ocean — quiet and gentle, without so much as a breeze to get things moving.

Somehow, time keeps passing. Fast, or slow, it just keeps on going.

The bakery returns to normal, reminding Bitty just how much he loves baking. He loves the kitchen, he loves the creative control he has now the holiday chaos has passed, he even loves his ridiculous, frilly wedding cakes.

January is cold. It calls for crumble toppings on pies and deep bowls of cobbler topped with sweet, thick custard. Kent is as busy as always, and the Aces are doing really well. Now that he’s caught up on sleep, Bitty makes sure to watch every game.

He has time, and for the first time in forever, he likes having time. It would have been hell only a handful of months ago. Having so much free time would have been lonely and confusing.

And it’s not to say he doesn’t think of Jack, or of Providence, or of a different life he once thought was what the rest of his days would look like. He’s simply realizing it is okay that things look different. That he is shaping things as he goes, like putting a lattice on a pie, strip of dough by strip of dough, folding back what he’s already laid down so he can put another piece in place.

Even if he finds himself thinking of the past, every once in a while, he thinks of the future way more often.

He thinks of Kent.

It’s scary and exciting, all at once.

They resume their morning meetings by the bakery's back door, with Kent managing to make an appearance at least once a week. It’s not the place to have the conversation they keep insisting they need to have, though. But it isn’t much different than before: they drink their coffees, Bitty feeds Kent baked goods, and it’s all quiet whispers, linked pinkies, and promises of kisses to come later, behind closed doors.

It surprises Bitty how much he doesn’t mind. He likes having Kent all to himself, for now. It’s different. It’s exciting.

And they meet on Bitty’s days off, or on nights Kent is free. They drive into the desert, not really aiming for anywhere specific. They cuddle up and watch a movie at Bitty’s place. Bitty comes over to Kent’s and works on recipe notes while Kent watches tape. He makes them dinner and pie while Kent looks through emails and takes phone calls.

It’s not that they’re avoiding talking about the nature of their relationship, but more than they have other priorities.

It’s too easy to forget, to get distracted. Easier even with Kent crowding Bitty against the kitchen counter when he is cooking, or Bitty climbing on Kent’s lap when he’s watching tape, Kent enthusiastically pushing Bitty against his front door as soon as he gets in the house and kneeling by Bitty’s feet, or Bitty returning the favor after pushing Kent down onto the backseat of his vintage Cadillac.

So what? Kent is hot as all get-out and Bitty is only human.

They’ll find time to talk, eventually.

No matter how much they need to establish boundaries and figure out what they both want out of this, it’s way too easy not to when Kent’s mouth is so darn kissable, and his body so very touchable.

Neither of them is pretending it’s only physical. It’s well beyond that now. But Bitty is aware that talking about it will make it real.

He’s not sure he’s ready for it to be real.

Bitty is lying on his stomach, pulling on the fraying end of his hoodie strings. He propped his phone against the flower vase he keeps on his coffee table, and Lardo is chattering away about the painting she’s working on, her words stopping and starting again every time one of the babies starts babbling or crying.

She’s bobbing in and out of frame, a baby on her hip, a bottle or a blanket or a toy in hand.

Talking with Lardo more often has been good for Bitty. It’s still weird — and on bad days he’d even call it a sore reminder of how much other people have their lives together — to see Lardo, of all people, as a mom. The kids are incredible though, small and funny with all the best parts of Lardo and Shitty shining through now that they’re crawling and babbling and showing a bit of personality.

He’s thinking about how awful it is not to be close by anymore and not to see his friends’ babies grow up, when Lardo interrupts that depressing train of thought with a loud “Oh!”

“I know you’re not in the group chat as much, but did you see the news about Samwell? Shits doesn’t know if he’s gonna take it, but it looks like it may fall around the twins’ birthday… good excuse to get together.”

Bitty doesn’t mean to sigh as loud as he does. He burrows his face into a throw cushion but she’s already speaking again, and it’s obvious she’s heard him.

“You don’t have to come, Bits. I don’t know if… if Jack would come. He’s got the worst schedule out of all of us. Shits just thinks it’s funny. Out of everyone, he’s the one who gets invited to come back and talk to students. Like that school’s idea of success is a white cishet lawyer with generational wealth.”

Lardo laughs.

“I love him, but it’s true.”

“I don’t even know if I’d have the money,” Bitty says, just so he has something to say. He’s saved a little. He could probably afford a flight to Boston. He’s just not sure a trip like that is worth dipping into his savings for.

“We could—”

“No.”

If Bitty is coming back to Samwell, possibly to face Jack again for the first time since the breakup, he is paying for it with his own money.

“Okay,” she says. He turns his head back to the screen just in time to see her shrug. “You can’t avoid everything forever though, Bitty.”

“You know I called you to see my precious nieces and not to get free therapy, right?” He says, making sure it sounds teasing, and not mean.

“Two in one, baby!” Lardo says, smiling. The smile goes from kind to a little devious and then she drops out of the frame to coo at the babies. “I see you’re actually at your place tonight.”

“You’re so nosy. I am, thanks for noticing.”

“Have you guys talked yet?”

Bitty answers but he does it with his face buried in the pillow again.

“What was that?”

“No!”

“Bro.”

“I know! I know. But I don’t know what to tell him!”

Lardo kneels down next to the sofa where one of the girls is trying to sit, wobbling a little as she does. Lardo brings the camera closer to her, her eyes worried but kind.

“What are you worried about?”

“Well, it’s a bit messed up, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“This!” He cries, rolling over on the sofa so he can look at Lardo. “Shouldn’t I be… I don’t know, slutting it up? Sleeping around, making the most of being single? I just got out of a relationship and I’m fixin’ to get into another. With my ex’s ex, of all people.”

Lardo blinks rapidly, taking in the information Bitty has just thrown at her.

“Bits. Do you want to be slutting it up?”

“No.” It’s an honest answer.

“Is a serious relationship what you want with Parse?”

He groans, the truth stark and clear in his mind but terrifying to speak out loud.

“… I think so.”

“Not everyone is made for casual dating. If that’s what you want, you should tell him. When you talk.”

Bitty groans, again.

“No more therapy. I promise.”

“Good,” he says. “I should go eat something.”

“I was hoping Shits would be home soon so I can shower, but I’ll just have to wait until the morning. I should see if they’ll sleep again soon, so I really should go, too.”

“Thank you for making me listen, even when I don’t want to.”

Lardo grins.

“Got your back, bro,” she says, with a mock salute. It makes him laugh.

“Love ya!”

“I love you, Bits. Be good.”

He flops onto his back and allows himself a minute or two of staring at the ceiling. Lord. This whole dating thing seemed so much easier when he wasn’t doing it. He picks up his phone, still propped up on the table, and notices that Kent texted him while he was on the phone.

Unsure of what it could possibly mean, Bitty texts back with only an emoji, leaving the messages open, hoping for some clarity.

He brings the phone over to the kitchen, and starts pulling ingredients out of the fridge. However, when Kent texts back, it derails the entire dinner process. Damn that boy and his ridiculous sixth sense.

Bitty opens his calendar app to add this very important dinner, and stands, in complete shock, when he realizes that Thursday is February already. They’ve spent a whole month messing around and avoiding talking.

God.

Lardo was right. He needs to do this.

Kent is outside on the front lawn when Bitty arrives. Bitty rolls down his window but leaves the engine on, slowly pulling right next to him.

“Howdy, partner,” Kent says, tipping his head and tapping two fingers against the bill of his snapback.

Bitty snorts.

“Hello, yourself.”

“There’s a spot for you in the garage, if you want it.”

“Sure, thanks.”

Bitty doesn’t ask if Kent left a space for him on purpose, if he did it with the expectation that Bitty would spend the night. His stomach flips on itself anyway.

He jumps out of his car — self-conscious, as always, to have his old car that barely survived the trip from Boston parked next to Kent’s fancy cars — and smiles, tilting his head up for a kiss when Kent approaches.

There is a certain tension in the air, slightly different to the sexual tension of their recent encounters. Sharper, colder. The knowledge that they’re talking tonight hangs in the air between them.

It doesn’t stop there.

Kent trips out of the garage and into the house, only managing to stay upright by supporting himself on a hockey stick leaning against the wall.

Not even three minutes after, Bitty nearly drops the dessert boxes as he steps into the kitchen. Once he’s got their dessert put away safely, he turns, and lets himself inspect what Kent has prepared for dinner.

The kitchen smells of tomato and basil, garlic and olive oil. Bitty ribs Kent for the pasta maker still on the counter, a little dusting of flour still on it. The butterflies in his stomach are right to be impressed at the effort Kent has put into this dinner.

The nervous clumsiness and chaos fed by dread continues.

The pocket of Kent’s shorts snags on a cabinet handle and he spills soda water all over the counter when he tries to pour Bitty a glass.

To make matters worse, Bitty is stressed about the dessert he brought. He’d shoved one of the boxes into the fridge and told Kent it’s a surprise, but he’s considering just pretending the pie in the other box is the only thing he’s brought and hoping Kent doesn’t ask questions.

When Kent told him he was making Italian food for dinner, the idea lodged itself into Bitty’s brain immediately.

He’d spent hours figuring out every component, making it perfect. The crispy, flaky shell, the vegan ricotta, the chocolate chips.

Now he’s getting cold feet.

Everything Bitty has learned about Kent’s family he’s learned by accident. By putting together little tidbits of information Kent reveals here and there.

Bitty pays attention, though. Drinks Kent’s words in like they’re the only thing that matters. Kent’s life before the draft seems like an impossible reality. Obviously, the one bit that sticks out to Bitty is about food. Kent had told him about the bakery where his mom stopped every Sunday after church to buy him and his sisters cannoli.

He knew exactly what to do once Kent had texted him he was making Italian food for dinner.

It was a big gesture, in the first place. And secondly, what if he was crossing a line? Touching an untouchable memory of a happy childhood, poking his fingers in the sore wound of Kent’s relationship with his parents.

Bitty sits at the breakfast bar, much like he had the morning he was hungover and trying to decipher his sudden attraction to Kent. It’s weird to think almost four months have passed since.

“So,” Kent says, turning back to Bitty after stirring the sauce. “You were probably thinking we’d wait until after dinner, but I— there’s something I have to say.”

“Kent—”

“No. It’s just… it’s making me feel a little tense and I just want to put it out there. Whatever you want from this, I am down. You always think I am joking when I say I know all there is to know about being lonely and heartbroken in Vegas but, I really do. And… the last few months, hanging out with you, even before…” He trails off, and looks away. “Shit. I’m messing this all up. One second.”

He turns the stove off and runs down the corridor and into his bedroom. Bitty is more confused than ever.

When Kent comes back, he is holding a bouquet of small white daisies with bright yellow centers, and pink rosebuds. Bitty’s heart melts inside his chest.

“Those,” Kent says, passing the bouquet to Bitty. “Are for you. Thank you for coming on a date with me, even if it is in my house, where we already hang out all the time.”

Bitty laughs. “Thank you. They’re lovely.”

He hugs the flowers against himself, smiling.

“Now,” Kent starts. Bitty had only noticed the flowers when Kent came back into the room, but he’s holding something else.

It takes his brain a little moment to catch up, but when he realizes what he’s looking at, the words come running out of his mouth before he can stop them.

“You prepared cue cards!?”

“I was nervous!” Kent cries, waving the cards at Bitty, looking slightly exasperated. He then adds, in a whisper, “My therapist helped.”

“Ken. Darling. Come here?” Bitty says.

Luckily, Kent does.

Bitty twists his body around on the stool, and Kent steps right in between his legs. Bitty reaches for Kent’s face with both hands, cradling his head between them.

“It’s just me. You brought me here when I got myself into some silly mischief at work, and you made me the worst grilled cheese sandwich on god’s green earth and let me cry on you, you drove me out to a national park because I said I’d never seen it, and you bought me flowers for a date that isn’t even technically our first. It’s just me. Let’s eat, and go over your cue cards over some dessert after, okay?”

Kent’s breath comes out in a long, sudden whoosh, like he had been holding it all day long.

“Okay.”

“Good. Now feed me some pasta, Mister Parson.”

Dinner is quiet. The tension hasn’t fully melted away but it’s easier, calmer. Bitty asks Kent about practice, the team, the injuries, his knee. He tells Kent about the wedding cake consultations, the extra mini pies he’s making for an event the following week, all the drama going down in the SMH group chat since Shitty was invited to speak at Samwell.

But Bitty keeps glancing at the cue cards on the counter, heart rabbitting away in his chest.

Goodness.

Cue cards.

Bitty didn’t come that prepared. Bitty didn’t come prepared at all.

But dinner passes with no more hiccups. It is delicious, and every other sentence out of Bitty’s mouth is a compliment on Kent Parson’s hidden cooking skills.

“Do I get my surprise now?” Kent asks, when he clears the table by shoving all the dirty plates and cutlery into the sink.

Kent bought him flowers.

Kent prepared cue cards.

Bitty can do this.

He joins Kent in the kitchen and opens the fridge, taking the box out.

Kent slides right next to him, their elbows knocking. “What did you make me this time?” he asks. Bitty is still staring at the box but he can hear the smile in his voice.

“Hmm. If you don’t want them, that’s fine. I brought a pear and hazelnut pie, too, but… Well, I thought these would go with dinner.”

He flips the lid open, and looks at Kent, waiting.

“These… You…” His face is serious, but not unhappy when he glances from the cannoli to Bitty and back at the small treat. “You made them for me.”

“Mhmm.”

“Bitty.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but Kent slides his hands over the back of his head, fingers tangling in his hair, and kisses him. Sweet as sin, and a little desperate.

“You made them for me,” he says again, but the tone is different. Low, heavy with emotion. “Eric… thank you.” He whispers the words against Bitty’s lips and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him.

It’s too easy to get lost in it, the cannoli forgotten on the counter, Kent’s lips moving along Bitty’s jaw, all the way up to his ear, and then down his neck. Every kiss punctuated with a whispered ‘thank you.’ And Bitty thinks he could let it happen, he could just let himself be kissed into tomorrow and ignore that conversation again.

“Ken,” he says. “Kent. You haven’t tried them yet.”

“All right. Let’s go,” Kent lets go of Bitty, picks up the box carefully, and moves back to the table. Bitty grabs small plates out of the cabinet, and pretends he doesn’t notice when Kent retrieves his cue cards and puts them right in front of his glass.

There’s a moment of tension, but Bitty grabs a cannolo and puts it on Kent’s plate, pushing it across the tablecloth, until Kent’s face lights up again, all bright in wonder and excitement.

Bitty bites into one, although he tried them when he made them. He knows what they’re like. Bitty doesn’t have a special childhood memory to compare them to, either.

But when Kent eats his, his eyes go big and bright — all greys and blues and greens at the same time — and he grins, happy as anything. “Holy fuck,” he says. “You are magic, Eric Bittle. Those are so good.”

Bitty relaxes. He can do this. He makes things that make people happy. He can say what he means.

“Kent…”

“Should I go first?”

“If you’d like.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Kent wipes his hands on his napkin and picks up his cue cards.

“Okay,” he says again.

“I— I am going to retire at the end of the season.”

Bitty doesn’t mean to gasp.

“Yeah,” Kent continues. “My plan was to wait. Maybe see if, y’know, if I could get one more cup and make a decision after. But it’s time. My knee is fucked. I had a good time, and I want to end on a high note. And there’s… there are things I want to do, after. I don’t know what you want from this. And it’s okay if it’s not the same. But, if you wanted…” He pauses, and Bitty notices the way his hands tremble when he moves the cue card he’s reading from to the back of the pile. “I’d like to do them together.”

Bitty might cry.

“I’m going to retire. I don’t want to hide you, ever. I don’t want to wait to retire, either. I’m not proposing or asking you to move in or anything. I am saying I am happy to just see where this goes. But I want you to know that I am in, all the way. If that works for you, I feel… very serious about you. Romantically.”

Bitty doesn’t mean to do it, but he laughs. It’s a wet, emotional, broken sound, but a laugh nonetheless.

“We’ve been very silly about this, haven’t we?” he asks, suddenly wishing Kent wasn’t across the table from him, all the way where Bitty can’t quite reach him.

“I don’t know! I don’t know what you want! I have been alone this entire time, convinced myself I couldn’t have what I wanted until I came out and then somehow things only got harder after that and… it’s fine if you don’t want to be, like, monogamous or serious. I know you and Jack just broke up and… I don’t expect you to want the same things as me. But I wanted you to know. That I do. I want everything with you. And I’ll… I don’t want to put pressure on you. But, I’m happy to wait. If you’re not there yet.”

Bitty gets up, rounds the table and puts Kent’s face between his hands just like he had earlier. Only earlier it was to calm him down, now it is to make sure he has Kent’s full attention.

“It’s always going to be hard, having Jack in common, in our past. But I want to do this with you, too. I can’t promise it will be perfect, or forever, but I want it. My only request is that you never ask me to hide, or to lie.”

There’s so much. So much that Bitty could say, and yet… Kent has said it all. They’re on the same page about this.

“I don’t hate Jack. The way it ended… it wasn’t right…”

He doesn’t say: it wasn’t right by me, it wasn’t fair to me. But he knows Kent understands.

“That was my whole life, for years. And all the friends I had were Jack’s friends, too. And then I come here and you take me under your wing.”

Kent makes a coughing sound, and looks incredibly pleased with himself. Bitty keeps going.

“You and your Aces and your families… y’all did more for me than I could ever say. I just wanted to leave the past behind, and never think about hockey again.” Kent laughs. “But I like hockey! And that didn’t mean I had to find myself another hockey player, I know. But it happened. And I like you. And it’s… terrifying that I want you this much. That I want to go with it this much and just see what happens. But it’s even more terrifying to think of not having you anymore.”

“I keep thinking that I could still be there. And how much I don’t want that. Maybe if that last argument hadn’t happened, I’d still be in Providence, working a job I was only doing because the owner of the bakery was lovely, pretending I was Jack’s roommate, being harassed by the press and having to lie to everyone, feeling miserable and sorry for myself every day. And that’s not right. I—”

love you a little already. Bitty bites the words back, gets himself to the edge and then steps back, too afraid to say the word. Too scared to say too much, too early.

“I don’t know how I would have survived if you didn’t come in for that cupcake.”

“I’m glad I did,” Kent says, finally smiling again, the tension melting from his shoulders.

Bitty is still standing, right in front of Kent, whose body is now turning slightly towards him and away from the table. He leans down, brushes Kent’s nose with his own.

“Tell me again, sugar.”

“I want everything with you.”

Bitty smiles. “You askin’ me to go steady with you, Mister Parson?”

Kent Parson’s laugh is the force that keeps the sun hot and the earth turning.

“Yeah, I guess I am. You want that?”

“Sure do.”

It gets easier, after that.

Once they’ve crossed that line, everything else comes naturally, with very little fear.

Kent is away on a roadie, lying in a huge hotel bed, face lit only by his phone when Bitty asks, “Hey, so what happens if we get photographed together?” They decide they’ll cross that bridge if they ever come to it.

Bitty hosts on Valentine’s day but, without the tension of their important conversation in the way, they revert to old habits, and Bitty has Kent pinned against his sofa within ten minutes of Kent coming in and by the time they’re done they have to shower thoroughly before Bitty allows them back in his kitchen.

The week after that, Bitty is whipping up some cream for their french toast when Kent asks, “So you really weren’t sleeping with half of Vegas when I first saw you in the bakery?” which takes Bitty by surprise so immensely that his mouthful of coffee nearly comes out of his nose. When he explains that he really, really wasn’t, Kent says, earnest as all things, “I just assumed. You looked so fucking hot I thought guys would be lining up outside the bakery for a chance to take you out.”

They’re texting (Kent’s in an airport somewhere, Bitty is on a break from work) when Kent asks, casual as all things, “How do you feel about kids?” and only a few days after that Bitty asks Kent if he’d ever want to get married and when Kent says yes, he boldly asks if he has any specific proposal wishes. It makes him dizzy how easy these conversations are, how they’re gauging where they both stand without expectations or plans.

Shortly after that, there’s the new pair of hockey skates that get delivered to the bakery alongside a bright red rose, which brings Grace into the kitchen looking like the cat that got the canary before she says, “I have something out in the café for one of you, but only after someone tells me all they know about Eric’s boyfriend, because I didn’t even know that was a person that exists but that’s who the delivery guy said it was from.”

Bitty is equal parts delighted and mortified.

And there’s the time Bitty is on FaceTime with Lardo and Shitty and doesn’t notice Kent is home until Lardo is giggling herself nearly sick because Kent is standing right behind Bitty while he babbles on about how good his last game was. “I was that good, baby?” Shitty laughs so loud he wakes up the babies from their nap, and Bitty jumps nearly a whole foot up, his soul practically leaving his body.

It’s… a little bit domestic, but Bitty still has his own space, his job which he got himself, his apartment that he pays rent for. He has things that he got for himself, with his own hard work. That’s gotta count for something. It’s weird how not so long ago he lived with Jack, shared not only a life but a home with him, and he was so much lonelier than he is now.

It takes one sleepless night, one panicked phone call with Chowder, and a small crying session in the shower for Bitty to agree to putting his new skates on and getting on the ice with the Aces.

Of course, he realizes after that it’s the most fun he’s had in a very, very long time. He’s slow to warm up, but it’s much like riding a bike (or so they say… Bitty couldn’t ride a bike to save his life).

Every rink he ever walks into gets inevitably compared to Faber. Doesn’t matter how big, bright, and well-kept it is. Faber is home. Nothing ever compares.

But he doesn’t need the early morning light filtering in through the windows at Faber. Not with a pretty-as-a-peach, Aces-black-clad Kent Parson smiling at him like the sun comes up just to look at Bitty.

Kent had let him play his pre-game playlist in the car on the way to the stadium, and Bitty has Crazy in Love playing on a loop inside his head, the tempo keeping him going, keeping him steady as he finds his balance.

Kent skates up to him, the team chirping happily around them.

“Can you still do any cool figure skating shit?” he asks.

Kent Parson should probably know better than to ask stuff like that, to challenge him. Bitty immediately skates around Kent in a wide circle, and throws a simple toe loop jump into it. Kent claps.

“You hockey boys are so easy to impress. You could do that if you tried hard enough,” he says. Then he gains the speed he needs and pulls off a pretty neat lutz, landing with a smug smile on his face. There are a few cheers behind him and Bitty bows dramatically.

“There you go, sugar,” he says, skating towards Kent again. He doesn’t say he doesn’t think he can manage anything more impressive than that, even if he had the right skates for it.

Kent wraps his arms around Bitty’s middle and lets his helmet rest against the one he’d let Bitty borrow. It’s a kiss, Bitty knows. It makes him smile.

When it comes to the actual race he’s here for, Bitty does outskate most of the team, including Kent, who fights tooth and nail for it. Bitty knows Kent isn’t afraid of pulling nasty plays but he’s not scared when he goes for an obvious check, coming at Bitty at full speed, only to soften the blow by slowing down right before they hit, and pulling Bitty flush against him.

“That was dirty,” Bitty says. “And I still won.”

“I’ll show you dirty,” Kent chirps back. Bitty’s stomach lands a double axel. Bitty skates away backwards, face heating up inside his helmet.

He leaves the team to practice, and gets an Uber home, his body sore in places he’d forgotten could feel sore.

Bitty can feel his face getting hot at the words. Kent compliments his baking every day. But Bitty knows he can bake — it never gives him butterflies like this. Getting complimented on something Kent is so good at makes him feel like he’s floating. The flirting isn’t new… but there’s a weight to it that makes Bitty really look forward to the end of the day.

He floats through cleaning the apartment, through doing his laundry, through grocery shopping, through organising his meal plan for the week (even though recently he ends up eating at Kent’s at least twice every week and his plans don’t count for much). He showers, puts a t-shirt and some jeans on, and still makes it across the city to Kent’s place just before Kent.

He’s scrolling through Instagram when Kent comes in, his hair still that now-familiar dark shade of wet from his shower, and his face tired but bright. He leaves his bag by the door, and brings the plastic bags full of food to the kitchen island, before walking over to the living room.

“Hi,”

“Hello. I like this,” Kent says, crossing the room to where Bitty is sitting on his couch. “I like coming home to you.”

Bitty has learned to take Kent’s words at face value. To appreciate how earnest Kent can be. The words don’t shock him, but make him feel all warm inside. He turns his face upwards to where Kent is standing, behind the couch.

“I like this t-shirt on you,” Kent says, bending down to give Bitty a quick peck, before he moves lower still to nip at his neck.

“Yeah?”

He’s wearing an old Samwell Hockey t-shirt, and his thoughts go a little stray before he reins it all back in. Kent in a Samwell t-shirt, though? Maybe Bitty will make the trip to Boston, if only to grab some merch.

“Mhmm. You look good in red. And it makes your arms look so good.” He grabs both of Bitty’s wrists and then runs his hands over Bitty’s forearms, all the way up to his biceps. He squeezes softly, then leans in to bite at one of Bitty’s arms, teeth sinking hard into the muscle there.

“Ow. You vicious brute.” He says, batting him away. “I think my Samwell hat is still in the guest room closet, you know? You can have it, I don’t think the t-shirt will fit you.”

“I could make it work. Crop it a little. I’d rock that,” Kent says with a wink.

“Mmmm,” Bitty says, half from the feeling of Kent’s fingers finding the hem of his shirt, sliding under it and slowly trailing up, half from the idea of Kent in a cropped top.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve here, but we shouldn’t let dinner go cold.”

“We can heat it up later,” Kent says, still bent over the back of the sofa to reach Bitty. Bitty shakes his head in disapproval but Kent’s lips find his. “You know how pent-up I’ve been? For actual hours? You know how fucking hot you are when you skate?”

“Hush. It’s dinner time,” Bitty insists.

“Bitty, please—”

“Ken. Dinner.”

Without moving his hands from under Bitty’s t-shirt, Kent pouts.

“All right. Okay. Cut me a deal? I’ve been thinking about these thighs,” he moves his hands down Bitty’s chest, slowly, until he reaches his legs, hands gripping Bitty’s thighs, “wrapped around me all fucking day.”

Bitty can’t help the shiver.

“A deal?” he asks, failing to hide the interest in his voice.

“If I make it through dinner you’ll grant me three wishes.”

“Three? That’s awfully generous.”

“I brought a ton of food, Bits.”

“The buns I like?”

“Mhmm, and the crispy tofu.”

“Okay. You get three wishes… if you make it all the way to dessert. A wish per course.”

“You’re infuriating. Okay. I hate you. But okay. Let’s eat before I throw you on that table and have my way with you, instead.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, princess.”

The blush that rises to Kent’s cheeks is nearly enough to make Bitty cave, deal be damned.

Instead, they set the table together, and open all the small boxes full of beautiful, fragrant food. Bitty has taken to sitting next to Kent at the table, rather than all the way across. It proves to be a mistake, tonight, on both their parts.

For Bitty, because he can feel the tension in Kent’s body, this close. He can see how his pupils are slightly dilated, how the flush on his cheeks never disappears completely.

For Kent, because Bitty can’t resist but press his thigh alongside Kent’s, rub his foot against the skin of Kent’s ankle, place his free hand just above Kent’s knee, revelling in the shiver that goes through Kent’s body.

The food is incredible, he has no doubt, but Bitty is thoroughly distracted.

He always forgets that the process of teasing someone else has a certain degree of self-teasing. He loves it, but patience is not Bitty’s forte.

And there’s so much they still have to learn about each other. It leaves Bitty itching to get Kent naked again — literally and figuratively. Kent pouts and Bitty slides his hand up higher on Kent’s thigh.

Kent swallows a whine. Bitty can tell he’s all but begging at this point.

He can’t get enough.

Dinner is all lingering touches and desperate eye contact, and the pleasant burning in his stomach, knowing where it’s all headed. Kent gathers their plates before dessert, piles the empty containers and all the leftovers by the fridge, and bats Bitty’s hand away when he tries to grab the brown paper bags with their desserts.

“No,” he says.

“No?” Bitty asks, almost a whisper.

“I’ve had enough. Two wishes will do.” Before Bitty can react, Kent wraps his arms around Bitty’s waist and hoists him up. Bitty would be embarrassed about the squeak he lets out if he wasn’t too focused on the way Kent is holding onto him.

“Put your arms around my neck and hold on for a sec,”

“What?” he asks, but Kent frees one of his hands from under his ass, just to throw the tablecloth off the table, before lowering Bitty down on the table itself. Bitty had not even seen Kent clear everything off the table.

Jesus.

“Kent Parson, what on Earth are you doing?”

“Getting my first wish.”

Bitty is desperately trying to get the upper hand here, to push back — not only because he wants to, but because he knows by now how much that gets Kent going.

Kent is pulling the laces off his sneakers, and pulling them off completely, then pulling Bitty’s socks off, and moving to the button of his jeans.

Bitty rises up on his elbows against the wood of the table, looking at Kent — at the hunger in Kent’s eyes as he looks at Bitty, pulling and pulling until Bitty is left on the table with only his t-shirt and boxers on.

“What do you—”

“Bits. Holy fuck. Look at you. Been thinking about you all day,” he says, voice wavering. Bitty whimpers as Kent lowers his head down, nuzzling against the shape of his hard dick straining against the fabric of his underwear, then biting the meat of his left thigh. “Look at these,” he says. “So strong.”

“Shush,” Bitty says. “What’s your wish then? Unless you just want me here, half naked on the dining table? Are you gonna sprinkle a little icing sugar on me?”

He’s either said something very wrong or very right because Kent’s smile has got mischief written all over.

“You’re perfect. No extra sugar needed. Good enough to eat as you are.”

Bitty gasps softly at his words. His eyes meet Kent’s.

“Would you let me?” Kent asks.

“Wish granted,” Bitty says, trying for a smug tone and failing completely.

Kent wastes no time flipping Bitty over on the table.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” Kent says, strong calloused fingers going straight for Bitty’s ass.

They’ve not done this before. They’ve not done much other than getting each other off with their mouths and hands, or by desperately rutting against each other.

“Was it the hockey gear?” Bitty asks, his last syllable turning into a gasp when Kent swipes his thumb over Bitty’s hole.

“You didn’t even give me a stick! I’ll tell ya, Mister Parson, I know my way around a sti— aaaah. Oh, fuck.”

Bitty doesn’t have the strength to lift his neck, just letting his forehead rest against the table, his breath steam up the surface as he pants. Kent is spreading him apart now, running his tongue up from Bitty’s balls, stopping just before his hole, making Bitty’s body shake with need.

“Were you saying something?” Kent asks, voice cocky and teasing.

“Nothin’,” Bitty squeaks.

“For what it’s worth. It wasn’t the gear. I’d just never seen you skate in person.” Kent pauses to kiss the swell of his ass, and then softly bite lower down, just where it meets his thigh. “You’re hot. It’s hot how fast you are. And that cute jump you did.”

“So it’s a competency thing? Is that it, Captain?”

Kent uses both hands to lift Bitty’s t-shirt, leaving the lower part of his back bare. Bitty can’t help but imagine what a sight they make. Bitty splayed on the table, legs wide open, t-shirt bunched up around his middle. Kent between his legs, face right in his ass. How is Bitty going to survive having any more meals at this table?

“Bitty?” Kent says, voice strained all over again. “Shut the fuck up.”

Bitty does, partially. Because the teasing is over. When Kent lowers himself between Bitty’s legs next, it’s to lap at his hole wetly and open-mouthed, and all the words die in Bitty’s throat.

Kent licks and licks and licks, and Bitty’s dick aches where it’s trapped under him. He is far too gone to worry about the sounds he is making, but a responsible part of him is grateful there aren’t any neighbors that close to them.

The whole world is reduced to where Kent’s mouth meets his body, the drag of his tongue, the way it presses over him and then pushes in — wet, hot, maddeningly good.

Bitty is trembling, moaning, hands trying to find purchase against the slick surface of the table, wanting, trying, and failing to push back against the pleasure of Kent’s tongue against him, in him.

“Ken, darlin’—” he doesn’t finish his sentence, because Kent is pulling back, and kissing just between Bitty’s back dimples, up his spine, pressing his still pant-clad hard dick against Bitty’s ass.

“Good?” he asks, lips over Bitty’s ear.

“S’good.”

“I could do that all night,” Kent says, and Bitty finds himself annoyed at how composed he still sounds. Not unaffected, no. Kent’s voice is low, and his accent comes out a little. “But I’d like to request my second wish.”

It’s only with Kent’s help that Bitty manages to get off the table.

His knees are weak and brain fuzzy. His dick is red and angry, but he feels almost like he’s come already — boneless and good.

“Bed?” Kent asks.

“Is that your second wish?”

“Smartass. Please take your t-shirt off, and go lie on the bed for me?”

“Is that your wish?”

“Oh my god, Eric,” Kent says, and presses against him, hands going straight for Bitty’s hair, like they do when Bitty blows him. Kent pulls gently, forcing Bitty to look up and meet his eyes. “You are insufferable. If you’re agreeable to this plan — you can say no — my wish is for you to lie on the bed and look pretty. That’s all you have to do. And then I’m gonna get myself ready, climb on you, and ride you until we both come. Sound good?”

Bitty’s vision whites out for a second, and then he’s escaping Kent’s grasp and all but running to the bedroom, leaving his t-shirt somewhere down the hallway.

“You coming?”

Kent laughs, but the sound follows Bitty down the hallway.

It always steals Bitty’s breath away, the casual confidence that Kent exudes all the time. He would have called it cockiness, years ago. But it’s more than that. Kent is just so… happy. So sure. So comfortable in his skin. Bitty hopes he can be that, one day.

The first thing Kent does when he comes into the bedroom is take his shirt off. Bitty says a grateful prayer to whoever let him get this damn lucky. Then Kent’s hands turn to his pants, unbuckling and unbuttoning and unzipping — Bitty’s favourite part, every single time.

Bitty makes good use of his time, pulling the bottle of lube and a condom out of the bedside table. He strokes himself loosely, slowly, still watching as Kent sheds his clothes, grateful for this interlude — he’d been teetering way too close to the edge with Kent between his legs, and he wants to savor this.

“God, you’re so perfect,” he says, when Kent finally kneels at the bottom of the bed and shuffles forward.

He is. Bitty always thinks of Kent as golden — a ray of sunshine personified, an arresting smile, a cocksure attitude, a wink that makes his insides melt, a slapshot that can bring an entire stadium to their knees. But he’s never as golden as when he’s naked, all fine blonde hair and what looks like miles of tanned muscle.

“Can I kiss you?” Kent asks, settling on his knees between Bitty’s legs.

“Since when do you ask?”

“Since I had my mouth on your ass?”

“Oh,” Bitty says. He pulls Kent down by the back of his neck anyway.

Kissing Kent is always a full-body experience. Bitty could spend hours just kissing him, bodies pressed together, without needing anything else. Bitty loves it. But he needs more, now.

Bitty pulls Kent down with all his strength, moaning into his mouth.

“Chill. What did I say? You just lie back and look pretty,” Kent says, pushing him back onto the bed by the shoulders.

“What’s gotten into you?” Bitty says. “So bossy.”

“I know, I know,” Kent says, straddling Bitty’s thighs and bending to suck at his collarbone. “That’s usually you. I like you bossy. But it turns out I also really, really like you on skates. And I had to survive morning skate and practice and a surprise PR thing, and a meeting, and then you made me sit through dinner, so sorry if I’m a little impatient.”

Bitty has mostly regained his senses from being rimmed into another dimension, so he can actually push back now. He raises up on his forearms, his face as close to Kent’s as he can without them bumping noses, and asks, “Did you really like it?” He brushes his lips against Kent’s, just a tease. “Do you like knowing I’m faster than you? Did it make you hard losing to me?”

The wounded noise that comes out of Kent is immediately engraved in Bitty’s brain. God.

“I could do it again, darling. You weren’t that hard to beat.”

“Shut up,” Kent bites, reaching for the lube. “Hands above your head.”

Bitty actually laughs, then. “You should be so lucky.”

“Bitty, please.”

“Well, aren’t you precious, sugar? You wanna be in charge, you want me to do what you say, and yet, you’re the one beggin’.”

“Impossible,” Kent says. “Put on this planet specifically to torture me.”

“Mhmm.”

This back and forth could go on forever, Bitty could do it in his sleep. The moment Kent covers his fingers in lube and reaches behind himself though, the world tilts a little to the side and all they do for several minutes is stare at each other, mouths open and flushed cheeks.

It’s the hottest thing Bitty has ever seen.

Kent preps himself carefully, but quickly. This isn’t for his pleasure, it’s clear he’s got a goal and he’s working for it. Bitty’s own blood roars in his ears, blocking out nearly every other sound in the room — but he doesn’t miss the way Kent’s breath hitches, and the squelch of the lube. He can’t stop looking, either. The ceiling light behind Kent’s hair gives him a halo, the hair on Kent’s chest starts gathering a little sweat sheen that Bitty isn’t too embarrassed to admit he kind of wants to lick, and through it all, Kent pays no mind to his own cock, hard and dark pink, bouncing gently as Kent moves his fingers.

It doesn’t take long for Kent to pull his fingers out and scoot forward, leaning to let his cock drag against Bitty’s just once.

“Ready?” he asks.

Not wanting to look away from Kent, Bitty paws the bed blindly next to him, finally landing on the smooth condom packet. He picks it up and offers it to Kent.

Kent does not take it. Instead, he says, “I— uh, only if you want— I thought we wouldn’t?”

They’d discussed it a while ago, it’s true. Their test results, expectations, what they did and didn’t like. But it still made Bitty’s stomach swoop, now that they’re here. He hadn’t wanted to assume.

“Are you sure?” he whispers. “The mess—”

“Baby. I want the mess.”

And then Bitty is moaning, Kent is throwing the condom across the room, and kneeling above Bitty, lining them up.

“Ah— Kent!”

“Oh, fuck.”

Bitty doesn’t know what to do, where to look. There’s Kent’s face, of course — a gorgeous frown between his brows, his lips parted, so pink and so wet. Bitty can’t help but glance down too, at where their bodies meet, watching his cock disappear inside Kent inch by inch as Kent sinks, and sinks, and sinks.

His body makes the decision for him, because it feels so, so good he has to close his eyes, he has to take a deep breath, he has to focus so he doesn’t blow his load in three seconds flat once Kent bottoms out, ass resting against the top of Bitty’s thighs.

“Jesus Christ,” Kent breathes.

Bitty finds that he agrees completely, but can’t find the words to voice it.

Kent is a vision, hands gripping Bitty’s waist, slowly — punishingly slowly — lifting himself off Bitty’s dick and then sliding back down. Bitty grabs Kent’s hands and brings them up closer to Bitty’s own shoulders, lets Kent lace their fingers together after he regains balance.

The angle doesn’t help with Kent moving any faster, but Bitty raises his own hips just a touch and Kent moans, loud and wanton, and Bitty knows he got it right.

“There?” he asks.

“You,” Kent says, breathless. “I said to lie down and look pretty.”

“You sayin’ I don’t look pretty right now?”

“Just— oh God— let me.”

Bitty lets him.

Kent lets go of Bitty’s hands, propping himself on Bitty’s chest instead — not without a quick flick of Bitty’s right nipple, which makes him squirm under Kent’s body. Bitty has no choice but to let him do whatever he wants once he starts moving.

All of Bitty’s focus is on the heat of Kent’s grip around him, and the feeling of his ever-impending orgasm, closer and closer with each slide of Kent’s body down his dick.

Kent’s not far behind him, Bitty can tell. He sets a pace properly, no longer teasing — Bitty isn’t sure any of this is for his benefit anymore, Kent is just taking his pleasure now, and if that isn’t the hottest thing he’s ever seen he doesn’t know what is.

Kent groans above him, and Bitty can’t hold on much longer.

“Fuck, Kent. Kent. I’m not gonna last.”

Kent stills.

“Fuck, Kent.”

It takes all of Bitty’s might not to thrust up into Kent again, not to continue reaching for that feeling. Kent leans in and kisses Bitty, returning to his slower pace of earlier, the drag and the friction nearly making Bitty go mad.

“So fucking good, baby,” Kent says, lips barely leaving Bitty’s. “God.”

Bitty’s sense returns just enough to make him sneak a hand between them and grab Kent’s cock.

After that, it’s over in an instant.

“Baby, yes. Yes. Oh my god, fuck me.”

Bitty raises his hips slightly, and lifts his knees behind Kent. “Like that?”

“Yes.”

Bitty is fucking up into Kent, the angle of his hand awkward on Kent’s dick and Kent goes boneless, pressing his forehead against Bitty’s. It isn’t… familiar. Not yet. But it’s easy. It’s good. Bitty has started to learn all the tells, what gets Kent going and what gets him off. So when Kent loses his rhythm and just lets Bitty press into him desperately, again and again and again, until his thighs are sore and his wrist is aching, trapped between their bodies, Bitty chases his orgasm.

In the end, it’s Kent biting Bitty’s lip, and it’s Kent wrapping his hand around Bitty’s hand on his cock, and it’s Kent repeating “god, yeah, baby, baby, baby, baby,” and Kent not really riding him anymore but still shifting backwards every once in a while — not quite meeting him halfway, but desperate to. In the end, if Bitty’s honest, it’s Kent keeping eye contact with him as he comes, panting into Bitty’s open mouth.

Bitty comes so hard his mind goes completely blank for a few minutes, stars floating around behind his eyelids.

And when he opens his eyes again, Kent is on him — hair pointing in every possible direction, skin clammy and warm, but with a soft and sated expression on his face. He looks gorgeous, impossibly so.

Bitty’s heart is attempting to pound its way out of his chest.

“It turns out patience pays off,” Kent says, wincing slightly as he slides off of Bitty’s body, still panting, his palm flat against his own chest as if to stop his heart from beating wildly. Bitty assumes so because his own right hand has been pressed against his chest for the past thirty seconds.

Bitty laughs. “Ken, we never even had dessert.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Bitty likes him so, so much.

Chapter Text

Bitty’s eyes are sticky with sleep when he hears Kent shuffling around in the room. “Ken?” His voice comes out scratchy and unrecognisable.

“Gym,” Kent says, bending down to kiss his head. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Bitty doesn’t. He sleeps in and only gets out of bed when Kent lures him out from under the covers with the promise of breakfast.

Kent fidgets all the way through their banana pancakes. His knee has been bothering him, and the Falconers are in town in only a few days.

Bitty isn’t feeling great about it either. Jack hasn’t messaged much since Christmas, but Bitty knew Providence would have to play Vegas at some point. It’s the text from Tater asking if he’s coming to the game that makes it feel real, though.

“I got you something. I know you don’t want it. But I want you to have it, in case you change your mind,” Kent says, as soon as he swallows the last bite of his breakfast.

“Mmm?” Bitty asks, distracted.

“A ticket. For the weekend.”

Bitty looks up immediately.

“Kent… what exactly do you think I’m going to change my mind about?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. It’s going to be shitty for everyone. I’m trying to go out on the ice and do what I always do, but… we both know it’s different, now.”

Different.

Bitty sighs, but doesn’t say anything.

“I’m not asking you to come. Do whatever you feel is right. But I don’t want to worry about you having to find a ticket, if you change your mind last minute.”

The coffee has gone past its ideal temperature, but Bitty drinks it all, trying to get a hold of his emotions, trying to make sense of all the feelings pent up in his chest.

“Thank you,” he says finally. “I’m gonna stay here, hang out with Purrs and wait for you, if that’s all right? I thought I might spend the night. I think I’d like to be with you.”

Kent smiles.

Bitty has been sleeping over a lot. He’s not ready to let go of Kent if he doesn’t have to. Bitty wasn’t made to be alone.

They kiss in the garage, with the door still down, and Bitty says, again. “Thank you. For the ticket. I won’t regret staying home, but I appreciate it.”

“Any time, baby.”

Bitty drives home with his heart in his throat, a feeling of dread crawling under his skin.

He doesn’t look at his phone, really, until he’s had a shower, made lunch and sat down on his couch. At that point, the pictures are everywhere.

He could have seen them on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, on Tiktok, on Reddit, even. Instead, he finds out through the SMH group chat, where Ransom drops the picture of Kent just outside the Aces stadium, in black shorts and a grey muscle tee, the burgundy Samwell hat over his hair.

Just as he’s holding his phone, gaping at the picture, a separate text from Chowder comes through, reading only, ‘OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’

Bitty’s soul sinks through his body, through the floor, all the way to the center of the earth. Of course, when he calls, Kent doesn’t pick up.

Lord.

The thing is, Kent does look good. So good it makes Bitty even angrier.

And Bitty can’t argue with him, he’d given him the go-ahead, only weeks ago.

“I think my Samwell hat is still in the guest room closet, you know? You can have it, I don’t think the t-shirt will fit you.”

He didn’t think Kent would take it that seriously.

And of course, the internet has to make it about Jack. It’s everywhere.

Is Kent Parson taunting Jack Zimermman ahead of their game? Kent Parson is testing Eric Bittle’s patience, is what he’s doing. Bitty spends the next three hours reading every tweet, every article, every inane opinion on the internet about the whole thing.

Bitty himself is mentioned a couple of times here and there. He hadn’t quite managed to stay out of the spotlight when he was with Jack. Some people had put two and two together, but not enough for it to be a worry. His move to Vegas wasn’t a secret, either.

As luck would have it, it’s when the fear has really started to settle that the text from Jack comes.

Kent still doesn’t pick up, and Bitty’s heart starts racing and his hands start sweating, so he grabs the phone and ends up calling Shitty. Lardo would help him look at things from a more logical point of view, but Bitty doesn’t need that. Bitty needs comfort. Bitty needs Shitty to tell him everything is going to be okay.

Shitty does. Bitty still doesn’t know what he can do about this whole shambles of a situation, but he feels lighter for it.

Knowing Kent won’t be available for at least a couple more hours, he texts him.

It’s three hours, two pies and a crying session later that Bitty’s phone rings, and he picks up immediately, as soon as he sees the name on the screen.

Kent is talking before he can say as much as ‘hello’.

“Eric, I’m so sorry. It was on my dresser and I did not think what it would mean to wear it this week. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

His breathing is hard and his words fast, all over the place.

“Hey. Kent, hey. You’re okay.”

“This is awful. Why does he have to ruin every fucking thing?”

Bitty has been asking himself that very question for a few months now. The realization that Kent works hard to be okay but is not yet untouchable by Jack is both depressing and comforting.

“Kent, it’s fine. It’s… whatever. I was a little mad, I thought you did it to upset him on purpose.”

“I wish I did. I wouldn’t do that to you, though. Like… listen. You’re allowed to be angry. I’m not gonna lie and say I didn’t enjoy the texts he’s sent me all afternoon. I like that I’ve made him mad.”

Bitty grits his teeth.

“Kent.”

“But I didn’t want this for you!”

What a mess, Bitty thinks.

“I know, darlin’. I know.”

“Are we okay?”

It hurts his chest how scared Kent sounds.

“We’re okay. It’s probably best I’ve had a little time to cool off. But we’re okay.”

“Is he still texting you?”

For some reason, Bitty almost lies.

“Er… I didn’t reply, so he’s stopped, I think. He wasn’t very nice, though.”

“I bet. Listen. I’ll come to yours tonight. We’ll figure something out. Or we can wait until the weekend. It’s a damn hat. People will forget about it.”

Bitty doubts it, but agrees anyway. “Okay.”

It’s so different from everything he knows. Kent’s insistence on talking everything through, on figuring things out, instead of just sweeping it under the rug and pretending all is well. It’s new and feels reassuring. Kent’s unabashed honesty is the glue that holds them together, Bitty knows this.

“I’ll see you later, baby,” Kent says, after a few seconds of silence.

“See you later, honey.”

Bitty almost drops a whole tray full of cardamom milk buns when he comes out of the kitchen and immediately makes eye contact with Alexei Mashkov, sitting at the corner table Kent always used to take.

“Grace?” he asks, eyes still on Tater, voice betraying him with a quiver.

“I know. He’s been waiting for like twenty minutes, and had two mini pies in that time. Insisted we shouldn’t pull you from your work.”

“Charlie and Portia have the kitchen under control… I won’t be long anyway.”

“You take your time, Eric.”

Grace is the best boss ever, Bitty decides.

Bitty approaches the table with a genuine smile. He’s scared, but he likes Tater. He’s always liked Tater.

“Hi,” Bitty says.

“Hey, lil’ B.”

Bitty chuckles.

“How did you know where to find me?”

“I have you on Twitter still.”

Ah. Yes. Remember to be safe on the internet, kids.

Tater is as friendly as ever. Chatty, loud. He only mentions Jack by the time he’s about to leave, a box of pies balanced on his large hand as he half-hugs Bitty with his free arm.

The ‘I miss you’ hits him like a ton of bricks but Bitty doesn’t back down.

“I missed you, Tater. Even if I don’t wear blue and yellow anymore.”

Bold. Clear.

Lardo would call it setting boundaries.

Kent would say it’s growth.

Bitty thinks it’s only-slightly-dressed-up Southern passive-aggression.

“Black now, yes? Little traitor.”

There’s no bite to Tater’s words though, and when he finally waves goodbye, he says, “It’s okay. If you are happy,” and leaves.

Only then it dawns on Bitty that Tater’s visit wasn’t because of Jack, but about Tater making sure Bitty is okay despite Jack.

There is an empty spot in Kent’s garage for Bitty’s car. Bitty lets himself in, drops his packed bag by the door, and goes on to find the cat.

His stomach is in knots, but he’s keeping it together. He turns the tv on before he loses his nerve, but leaves the pre-game analysis muted while he finds whatever leftovers Kent has in his fridge that he can steal.

After he’s eaten and cleaned up after himself, he takes a deep breath, pulls his t-shirt over his head, unzips his bag, brings his Parson jersey out and puts it on before he changes his mind.

It takes a dozen mirror selfies in Kent’s bedroom before he’s sure he’s got a good one, and he sends it to Kent without a caption.

Kent doesn’t text back but Bitty sees the message was read only four minutes after he sent it. Content, Bitty curls up on the couch.

It’s not easy, though it’s a pretty standard Aces v Falconers game. At least in the first and second period.

Seeing Jack’s face makes him think of all the angry texts he got during the week, and it only makes him happier that he didn’t end up going to the match in the end. He’s not ready to face Jack, to see him on the ice.

It angers him, most of all, that Jack has suddenly found all this passion, all this anger. Where was it when he left the house mid-argument and didn’t contact Bitty for nearly two weeks, back in July? Where was it when their relationship was falling apart and Bitty was doing everything he could to patch it up?

The breakup was always going to happen, he knows this now. It still hurts that it ended the way it did, when he knows there was once so much love between them.

He snuggles Purrs harder, lets his drink go warm and sweat a ring through the coaster, and he prays that the Aces maintain their unyielding defense, as third period starts.

It was dumb not to see it coming. Not to know it would happen. After all, the texts hadn’t stopped coming since those pictures dropped. At one point, Bitty considered actually blocking Jack’s number, if only to keep himself sane.

He must be vibrating out of his skin only five minutes into third period, because Kit is looking at him with big, worried eyes. He’s seen her do this before, on days Kent is particularly anxious. It’s silly how happy it makes him that she worries about him, too.

“I know he tells you all the time,” he says, stroking her gently behind the ears, “but you really are a good girl.”

She acknowledges his words with a quiet chirp, and presses herself against him again.

The hat trick comes first, Bitty’s heart pounding in his chest when he realizes Kent is about to score for a third time. It goes in, and the stadium goes wild. He still feels sick every time Jack and Kent are close on the ice, but he finds it in him to cheer at the TV while Purrs merely watches on.

The fight comes later, toward the end of the game. The Falconers are desperate for a goal, while the Aces tighten their defense up like their lives depend on it.

It goes like this: out of nowhere, Jack slams Kent against the boards. It looks purposeful as hell. Jack tries to make it look casual but there’s nothing casual about the way he throws his whole body weight into Kent. Bitty is frozen in place by the time that Kent grabs the front of Jack’s jersey. When their helmets inevitably come off, Kent spits out his mouth guard just to snarl something vicious and mean in Jack’s face.

Bitty feels like he has stopped breathing altogether. He twitches and gasps, panicked, and Purrs gets thrown off his lap just as Jack lands his first punch.

What comes after gets replayed in flashes in Bitty’s memory.

His phone is blowing up with texts, vibrating loudly against the glass table. He can’t bring himself to move, not even to pick his phone up, his eyes glued to the TV.

It was a little pushing here, a little pulling there, punches landing wherever they manage. Bitty had seen Kent do much more damage on the ice before. He knows he’s holding back.

At least until Jack hits Kent when he’s bent over, punches him right in his face, his arm coming all the way back and hitting Kent again and again and again. The whole arena holds its breath and then gasps, much like Bitty — though he’s alone in Kent’s living room, Kit’s concerned eyes still on him.

No one had known Jack Zimmermann could punch like that. No one had seen Jack Zimermann start a fight before, not like this.

Bitty feels numb by the time they get pulled apart. The Aces manage a last goal while the Falconers scramble in the shock of Jack’s actions. To their merit, the Aces seem delighted by their captain’s fight and subsequent broken nose. When the Aces win, Bitty doesn’t even notice the game has ended.

His breathing returns to normal a good thirty-five minutes later, thanks to a selfie Kent texts him. His nose has swollen to twice its usual size, and there’s still a ring of blood around his right nostril, but he’s grinning, looking incredibly pleased with himself.

It’s enough to lower his frenzied heartbeat. It’s enough to get him off the sofa, for his hands to stop shaking. Kent is fine. Kent didn’t even mention the fight. Kent is fine.

But Bitty can’t stop seeing it, every time he closes his eyes, even if it’s only to blink, even if it takes less than a second. He sees it all.

Jack’s smug face.

He gets a bowl down from the cabinet.

Kent’s hand around Jack’s collar.

He preheats the oven, and sets to mashing some bananas in the bowl.

Jack pushing Kent against the boards.

Flour, baking powder, sugar. Vegan butter, coconut milk, oil, apple cider vinegar.

Kent’s helmet flying off, hitting the ice behind him.

Mix. Whisk. Stir. Fold.

Jack punching Kent.

It takes him five minutes to rifle through Kent’s cupboards until he finds the cupcake pans he knows Kent bought a few weeks back.

The whole stadium recoiling in shock.

He scoops the batter into each greased compartment.

Jack punching Kent. Again.

Scoop.

Again.

Scoop.

And again.

Shove into the oven.

Until they’re on the ice.

His hands shake again. He starts on the buttercream.

And Jack is still punching Kent.

The texting never stops, and Bitty is too scared to see what the groupchat makes of it. To see his friends take Jack’s side. He would have cursed Kent too, not long ago.

And they’re being pulled apart.

He pipes the cupcakes, drizzles the sauce on top, sticks a couple of banana chips into each buttercream swirl.

And Kent still finds something to shout at Jack, apparently. Even then, with blood running down his face. He’d smiled, teeth painted red, and shook off the teammates holding him just long enough to push at Jack one more time.

Bitty does the dishes, he plates the cupcakes and puts them away. He wipes the entire kitchen down.

He’s done it twice over by the time he hears the car outside, the key in the door. Bitty doesn’t give him time to breathe. As soon as Kent crosses the threshold and shuts the door behind him, Bitty is on him.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Now Kent seems almost regretful standing in front of Bitty.

“I wasn’t,” Kent mumbles. “Thinking, I mean. I wasn’t thinking. Not really.”

Bitty crosses his arms in front of him, but steps back, giving Kent space.

“Yeah, I could tell.”

He didn’t know he was angry. Was he angry? Why was he angry?

Kent shrugs, and walks past Bitty and into the kitchen. He gets to the fridge, and fills a tall glass with cold water, and drinks it all at once.

“There’s nothing to say about it. It happened. It’s not that bad, even though it probably looked awful. It was a nasty punch, but I’ve had worse breaks.”

It was a nasty punch. Several punches. Bitty wishes his brain would stop replaying it.

“Kent, we both know Jack. He has never, in his entire career, decided to strike first.”

The laughter that comes out of Kent is self-deprecating, almost sad. He pushes himself away from the kitchen island and puts his empty glass in the sink. When he talks, he doesn’t look at Bitty, but out of the window instead.

“We’ll call it character growth and move on with our lives. Are there cupcakes?”

“Oh, yes! Of course, darlin’, I made twelve pecan and twelve… Kent Parson. You just tried to distract me!”

Kent winces slightly when he smiles, but he smiles anyway.

“And it nearly worked.”

Bitty sighs, and pulls the tray of cupcakes — pecan and banofee — down, offering it to Kent.

“Ken, please. I’ll… I’ll just think the worst if you don’t tell me.”

Kent picks up a banoffee cupcake, breaks it in half and leans against the fridge.

“Still warm,” he says happily, and pops a half into his mouth. “I don’t know, he asked me about the hat when he checked me.”

Bitty doesn’t say anything. He’d said all he had to say about Kent’s decision to walk around in a Samwell Men’s Hockey cap, and he is not going to turn this into an ‘I told you so’ moment, despite how much he wants to.

“I said it looked good on me.”

A scoff escapes Bitty’s mouth before he can stop it. “And…” he prompts.

“And then he made this nasty comment about my form. And it just got to me a bit?” He phrases it like a question, a hint of insecurity coming through. Bitty knows his knee has been an issue for him, that Kent just wants to finish the season, make it to the end.

“What did he say?” Bitty asks, though he isn’t sure he wants to know.

Kent’s attempt on Jack’s accent is actually pretty decent. If the words that come out of Kent’s mouth didn’t make his breath stop completely, Bitty would be tempted to laugh. “Getting old, Kenny? Have you been following your nutritionist’s plans? Pie weighs you down, you know?”

Bitty’s heart is threatening to leave his chest, most likely via his gaping mouth. He didn’t want to be hurt by Jack ever again, didn’t want these words to mean anything, but to bring his pies into it? How dare he? Too afraid to open his mouth, Bitty nods at Kent to keep going.

“So I might have said something… and then he punched me.”

“What did you say?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Kent.”

Bitty squares his jaw and stares at Kent.

“God, you’re scary. Stop that.”

For good measure, Bitty stares at him harder. “Tell me.”

“Bitty, I’m so sorry. You know how he is, how I get. He just made me so mad, bringing pie into it.”

Bitty can relate. “God. What did you say?”

“I said… myfavouritepieisafirmandjuicygeorgiapeach.”

Confused, Bitty blinks. Waits for the words to make sense. They don’t. “I’m sorry hon, were those words?”

Kent takes a deep breath and looks at the cupcake half in his hand.

“I said... I said that my favourite pie is a firm and juicy Georgia peach.”

It takes Bitty a few seconds but when it hits him, it hits hard and he is laughing uncontrollably, bowled over, laughing and laughing until there are tears in his eyes.

When he finally catches his breath enough, he asks, “You said that?”

“I’m sorry…”

“And he punched you?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, you’re a silly man.”

Bitty throws his arms around Kent’s neck and buries his face in the freshly-out-of-the-shower smell of him.

“Thank you,” he says. And he isn’t sure what he’s thanking Kent for. Making Jack mad? Baiting him on purpose? Flirting with him when he feels miserable, just because it makes him laugh? “Don’t do it again. Your nose is too pretty.”

“You think I’m pretty?” Kent says, then laughs.

“Sure do, princess.”

Kent chuckles, but it turns into a yawn halfway through.

“Right to bed with you, I think. Y’all just kicked the Falconers’ asses to hell and back.”

“We did, didn’t we?”

“Yes, doll. Broken nose and all.”

Kent smiles. Bitty doesn’t miss the way he clenches his fist closed and winces slightly. Smiling is obviously painful for him, but the grin stays until he turns his back to Bitty and walks down the hallway to the bedroom.

“Are you coming with?”

“Just tidying up the kitchen. I’ll join you in a second.”

“Don’t take too long.”

The kitchen does not need cleaning a third time, but Bitty needs a little time to put himself back together. When he finally sneaks into the bedroom, the vaguely Kent-shaped lump on the bed is snoring faintly, clearly passed out. Bitty fishes Señor Bun out of his bag in the corner and snuggles deep into the covers, trying not to think of Jack, or the punch, but he only falls asleep when Kent rolls over and wraps his arm around his waist, pulling him closer.

Kent sleeps in on post-game mornings, which is why Bitty worries when he wakes up alone, the bed cold next to him, and the cat purring contently at his feet.

The house is quiet, the kitchen is still clean and tidy, the water in the pool rippling slightly as the wind blows. Kent is nowhere to be seen. Bitty worries, but he doesn’t text.

A cupcake and two cups of coffee later, an ominous text comes through.

Bitty does, careful not to get his reflection on the picture frame glass. His stomach twists at the odd request, but he trusts Kent.

Instead of anxiously scrolling Twitter for all the hot takes about The Fight, or waiting for another text from Kent, Bitty gets in the shower and takes his time, enjoying how the hot water never runs out at Kent’s.

When he’s clean and dressed in fresh clothes, he picks up his phone to a couple of texts from Chowder, one of them a link to an Instagram post.

Bitty guesses what it is before he even clicks the link, but he’s somehow still surprised to see the picture he had taken just before his shower, a young Kent and Jack smiling at the camera, arms around each other’s shoulders. His eyes get drawn to the caption, long enough that he has to tap the ‘more’ to read it all.

He sits back on Kent’s bed by the time he’s halfway through the second paragraph, legs weak with emotion.

Hockey is a violent sport. Broken noses and lost teeth are practically routine, and that’s before we even bring fights into the conversation.

I’ve gotten into way worse fights than last night’s. Yet, all I’ve heard all morning is how it was a huge disappointment that I didn’t show my face for press after. I’d apologize but I needed my nose fixed ASAP. We all know this pretty face is all I’ll have once I retire.

I think it’s time I say this though, once and for all. That fight was a long time coming.

Jack Zimmermann and I were friends a long time ago. There are no sordid details to this.

People grow apart.

The pressure, the rumors, and the invasion of privacy we both experienced (and continue to experience) from such a young age and specifically regarding our friendship may have had a lot to do with that. Either way, Zimmermann and I were shaped around the belief that we could take on the world — and hell, we probably could have. But after the fallout of that summer, we both had to learn how to keep going, separately. I can only speak for myself but I believe neither of us was ready for that. I definitely wasn’t.

When I was young, my mother had a picture of her best friend from high school on the wall. Her name was Helen. I grew up thinking Helen died, that something terrible happened to her. She was important enough to have a picture up on our wall, but I’d never met her.

It took years for me to find out Helen was alive and well. She just wasn’t friends with my mom anymore.

Jack Zimmermann has always been an incredible hockey player. Jack IS hockey. Whatever personal feelings I have about him, and about a friendship that has long died have never stopped me from seeing that. I don’t want to beat Jack’s team more than I want to beat any other team, and I know he will always put up a good fight.

The only thing I ever want to bring on the ice with me is the will to bring my Aces another win. Sometimes that means getting punched in the face. Sometimes that punch comes from someone who was once my friend.

It’s really no deeper than that.

I have a framed picture of Jack and I on my wall. It’s a ten year old picture, and maybe one day my children will ask about it. I hope I can be brave enough to tell them Jack Zimmermann is someone who was once part of my life. Jack Zimmermann was once my best friend, and Jack Zimmermann is one of the most skilled and dedicated hockey players I have ever had the pleasure to meet and play against.

He will always be that. The press will shape it into whatever they need to, like they have everything we have said on the subject before.

If you take nothing else from this, have this for a quote: It’s really fun, for a change, to fight someone who isn’t Mashkov when facing Providence. (@amashkov i’ll see you next time tho 😉)

Bitty is a little embarrassed to be crying by the time he reaches the end of the caption, and scrolls back up to look at the picture.

He’d known this before, from the little Jack had shared with him. Kent had never put it into this many words, either. Bitty aches with what he’s known for a very long time: they were just teenagers with the weight of the world on their shoulders.

Wiping the tears threatening to fall off the tip of his nose with the back of his hand, and then his hand against the denim of his jeans, he closes Instagram, takes a deep breath and texts Kent.

Bitty ignores how the word ‘home’ make him feel. He has no time to deal with that kind of feeling right now.

Madison was quiet and easy to drive around, and the Boston-Providence traffic hadn’t been a kind teacher, but it had at least prepared him for Vegas. Bitty is a careful driver, especially on his way home from the bakery, knowing how tired the middle-of-the-day sun makes him.

He rarely looks at his phone, but music is blaring from it and he’s been moving so slowly he’d be faster getting home if he could walk. So when the text notification pops up on the screen, he looks.

It’s a good thing he’s got his foot firmly on the brake, because the name makes him jump a little.

He just wanted to check who it was, but the message is short enough that he reads it. It makes his stomach turn enough that he grabs the phone and turns it facedown on the passenger seat.

Bitty can’t deal with that right now.

He keeps going until the traffic clears, wanting to get home with his groceries as soon as possible.

He should have blocked Jack’s number. The phone pings once more, twice, three times.

Anxious, Bitty pulls onto a small side road, parks and takes a deep breath. He can’t take long — not with all the butter in the backseat.

Bitty’s finger is on the call button before he knows what he’s doing.

Jack’s voice is soft, with an edge of surprise.

“Bitty.”

“What is wrong with you!?”

Bitty didn’t mean to raise his voice.

“Eric…”

“No! No, Jack. Listen to me. I don’t know where this is coming from, but you can’t do this.”

“I am only warning you…”

“I don’t want your warnings! If you were worried about me, you would have listened six months ago, a year ago, two years ago!”

“But—”

He doesn’t let Jack get a word in.

“It was never going to work, Jack!”

There’s a shuffling sound on Jack’s side. Bitty himself is panting, shaking, a hand gripping the steering wheel, knuckles going white.

The truth is heavy and loud, across the cell towers, across the country, across everything that separates Jack and Bitty.

“That’s not fair.”

Bitty hates this particular tone of voice of Jack’s. The dull, hurt, low timbre of it. He knows it too well.

“Fair? You want to talk about fair? Is leaving the house after an argument and not speaking to me for weeks fair? Is only telling me you love me when you’re away or drunk or both fair? Is the constant ‘I’ll come out after the cup,’ ‘after this season,’ ‘after I get the A,’ ‘after Guy retires,’ fair?”

“I—”

“I don’t think you understand how hard I was trying. It wasn’t going to work but I…”

Bitty swallows back his tears.

“I loved you. I wanted it to work! But we don’t want the same things. I pray whoever you decide to make miserable next, even if they’re someone you can bring places, and hold their hand… I hope they find it fair that no matter how much you love them, it will never be enough. I hope they know hockey will always come first.”

“You’re being—”

“I don’t want to hear it! You wanted my attention, didn’t you? With all the texts, and the calls. And when you didn’t get it you had to go after Kent who has nothing to do with this. You’ve had your tantrum and you have my attention now. So now that you have it, listen carefully: stop texting, stop calling, and don’t ever bring Kent into this again.”

“You think he wants the same things as you?”

“Oh, bless your heart, Zimmermann. I sincerely hope you get your head out of your ass one of these days. Good luck.”

The end-of-call tone is too loud. Eventually, Bitty remembers his butter and turns the car around. He cries the whole drive to Kent’s house. And when Kent looks up from his laptop as Bitty lets himself in, Bitty lets himself be boxed in Kent’s arms for what feels like hours.

He’s miles away from real closure, but the catharsis feels better than he thought it ever could.

“It’s just gonna happen one of these games. I know it is,” Kent says over the phone, voice tired and sad.

Bitty can just picture it. A big hotel bed, all fluffy white pillows and too-thick duvet, the curtains drawn to keep out the city lights. Kent’s bag by the door, his shoes strewn over the carpet, his hoodie hanging from the back of a chair.

Bitty wishes Kent was home. He could do this in person. Hold him, reassure him. Instead he sighs, and says, “Honey. You don’t know that. You’re so close.”

“I’m surprised the fight with Zimms didn’t do it. That would be poetic justice or something.”

Jesus. Bitty would go all the way to Providence and smash Jack’s knee himself.

“Kent. You just gotta keep going, darlin’. You have so far. Are you in pain?”

“I’m not… Like, I’m fine. I just can feel it, you know? It feels weak… I don’t know.”

“That’s just because you’re an old man,” Bitty teases.

Kent ignores it altogether. It’s not like Kent not to take a joke. Bitty is worried, and helpless, half a country away.

“A hit is all it would take now. The PT described my knee as a mess. It’s not very reassuring.”

“Maybe it’s all that time you spend on your knees at home.”

“Eric Richard Bittle.”

He sounds stern, but there’s a layer of amusement underneath it. Thank god. It’s exactly what Bitty wanted.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just so stressed. The boys have been so great about it but we need this game.”

Bitty wishes there was something he could say, he could do. But there isn’t. He’s just gotta hope, pray, that Kent’s knee lets him get as far as he wants to go.

“You got this, doll.”

Kent never makes it to the game the next day.

The call comes from Swoops, at ten in the morning and Bitty’s heart sinks when he sees who’s calling.

“It’s happened,” Troy says. Clear, tense.

“His knee?” Bitty asks, like they’re talking in some kind of secret code.

“It’s… the PT thinks he only needs to rest it a couple of games, but he’s freaking out.”

“Fuck.”

“They’re still looking at him but call him in like ten minutes if you can?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Jeff?”

“Mmm?”

“Thanks for callin’.”

“Of course, Eric.”

Kent is benched for the next four games. The Aces make it to the playoffs, which doesn’t surprise anyone, but it’s hard for the fans, it’s hard on the team, and it’s hard on both Bitty and Kent, to have him despairing, sitting on that bench for entire games. Bitty can’t imagine how insufferable he is during practice and is secretly glad he doesn’t have to witness it.

They’ve only just started recovering from the match against the Falconers, and Bitty is grateful to be blond because he’s sure that he’s getting three new grey hairs per hour.

Bitty just isn’t equipped to deal with a panicked, half-desperate Kent Parson.

He’d spent years wrapping himself and learning to deal with Jack’s closed-off, quiet disappointment and anger — against himself, against the world, against hockey itself. Compared to that, Kent is a hurricane.

Kent is half-drank protein shakes, and half-eaten slices of pie, he’s a book open face down on the sofa on the same page for the seventh day in a row. Kent is the same film playing on a loop, and long showers. Kent is, most of all, non-stop chattering.

That, out of everything, is the most jarring to Bitty. Kent just goes off, all the time. He’s not angry, or mad, or sad — not really. But he certainly works through all his feelings out loud.

It’s exhausting — emotionally and physically, but Bitty is there. He knows how much Kent wants this, and he’s with him every step of the way.

He even manages to swap a shift so that he can drive Kent to the stadium and be at the game for his first match back on the ice.

Bitty wears his jersey. Kent smiles the whole drive there, and he’s still smiling when he scores his first goal of the night, skating like nothing happened.

Pride doesn’t even begin to define what Bitty is feeling. It’s no surprise that Kent Parson is a resilient son of a bitch, but it still fills Bitty’s stomach with butterflies.

It’s an accident when it happens, though Bitty knows it to be the truth. He pulls Kent into the bedroom by the tie, and somewhere among the “No kneeling for you tonight, no sir!” and the “It should be a crime that you look this good in a suit,” and the “No no, mister, you just let me take care of you, and then between the “Oh god, honey— oh my god, right there” and the “Don’t you dare stop right now”, comes the heated, desperate, whispered, “I love you. So much.”

Kent says it right back. Every time.

Chapter Text

Everything was down to chance, Kent always believed. Maybe it was being raised Catholic in a city where kindness felt like a sin. Maybe it was that he’d always known his family’s love was conditional. He wasn’t the daughter they’d wanted, he wasn’t the scholar they needed him to be, and if he really had to be into sports, did it really have to be hockey, of all things?

It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t even fate. It was all chance. It was meeting the right people at the right time, hitting the puck just right at the last second.

It was walking into a bakery after therapy and finding your ex’s ex behind the counter, looking not only gorgeous but completely at home. Kent could have died right there.

Instead, he extended a hand. He made himself useful. He burrowed himself into Eric’s life because he was so damn loveable.

Kent remembered the few times they’d met before. Bitty — smiling, bubbly, full of life, desperately and obviously in love with Jack. The man behind that counter had been him, no doubt — more attractive even, a little wider in the face, a little beefier in the body. But he’d lost that shine. Kent knew what losing Jack Zimmermann’s full-time attention could do to someone’s heart. He couldn’t let it go.

It was the best fucking decision Kent had ever made.

Kent hates having to untangle himself out of Bitty’s grip first thing in the morning. He’s grabbing his phone from the bedside table, as quietly as possible, when Bitty’s hand reaches out and wraps around his wrist, trying to pull him back into bed.

“I’ve half a mind to tie you to this bed and not let you go ever again.”

It’s early, and Kent is stressed to hell and back, desperate for that last win — the last possible win for him, not even letting himself ever say the word Cup out loud lest he jinx it. The little spark of joy, of arousal that Bitty’s words send through him are very welcome.

“Spicy.” He laughs. “Save that for later, though. Some of us have jobs.”

“I have a job! I have two jobs, in fact! And you’re literally retiring.”

Bitty’s accent is always the thickest when he’s sleepy, all syrupy sweet long vowels and round nasal consonants. Kent lives for it.

“Not too soon, if I have any say in it.”

The weight of the Cup looms over their heads again. Bitty blinks his eyes open — serious now, losing some of the soft sleepiness and replacing it with worry. Kent falls all over again at the big brown eyes, sweet with sleep, and his face, still relaxed in a way that’s reserved for the mornings.

“Ugh, okay,” Bitty says, rolling his eyes and letting go of Kent’s wrist. Kent misses that warmth immediately. “Bring yourself and that gorgeous beard back home soon.”

“Ah!” Kent says, pleased as punch, unconsciously reaching for his own face, to run his fingers through the hair there, top of the jaw to chin. “I knew you liked it.”

Bitty had insisted it was terrible. The worst thing that had ever happened to Kent’s face, after that punch. The beard burn between his thighs claimed otherwise.

Kent kisses Bitty’s head. “I love you.”

“I love you too, sugar.”

It’s a good day.

Once Kent is back on the ice every game, everything changes.

It starts because when Bitty said he’d half given up on writing a book, Kent didn’t realize he had been hoarding hundreds of recipes he wasn’t doing anything with.

Kent isn’t ashamed to say he knows people in high places. It turns out, there is a lot of interest for an Eric Bittle recipe book.

Convincing Bitty is harder, but they get there. The book deal happens in a blink of an eye, and before they know it, Bitty is only at the bakery twice a week to train Charlie to take over as Head Baker.

They meet for dinner the day Bitty signs the contract. Bitty is flying so high, beaming with such bright joy he could power all of Vegas with his smile. He tells Kent how lovely his agent is, how much they liked his ideas. Then he slides the thick wad of papers with the proposal over to Kent and Kent’s whole world stops in its tracks.

The moment Kent realizes Bitty is putting together an entire book of vegan baking? Screw the playoffs, it takes every bit of self-control not to drag Bitty down to the closest chapel faster than you can say Elvis, no ring nor suit required.

It’s the day after that Bitty says, “Hey, Ken?” He’s standing in the kitchen, meticulously piping icing onto a sheet of cookies. “I’m thinkin’… maybe movin’ in is not as bad an idea as I said before. I was… I am scared. Of making the same mistakes again, diving head-first into everythin’. But I spend most nights here anyway. And… I’m going to need your kitchen for this book thing.”

Kent laughs, kisses him, and promises him a very willing mouth to try all his bakes — the good tries, the failed ones, and the final versions, without discriminating.

It’s terrible timing for both their jobs, but there’s nothing like having a whole bakery and an entire NHL team worth of friends to make a move seem like a breeze.

“I’m gonna jinx it,” Kent says, after game one of the second round. He pulls on his tie to release the knot, undoes the first three buttons on his shirt because he’s happy, and he couldn’t stop thinking about telling Bitty this the entire game. He has to say it now before it gets stuck in his head.

Bitty doesn’t take his eyes off the road. He still doesn’t like driving any of Kent’s cars. And he really doesn’t like driving in the city. Kent is grateful he offers, though, after games.

“What do you mean, doll?”

“I’m— you can say no.”

“But if—” fuck, he can’t even say it. “If it happened, I’d want to kiss you after. I wouldn’t want it to be a big deal, a surprise, or a statement. I want to kiss you and I want it to be as normal as Swoops and Emma, or Scraps and Miriam, or, any of the boys. And if it doesn’t happen, I don’t know, I don’t know, Bits, I may… I may need you to hold me, you know?”

The traffic brings them to a near stop, and Bitty throws a glance at him, finally. He reaches over the gear stick to hold Kent’s hand.

“What do you want to do?”

“Do you want to come out? Like officially? Like… realistically, people know. People have been talking about it since before the Falconers match. But I thought… we could do it, you know? Something simple, on social media, or whatever? So it’s less of a… thing, if I want to romantic slow-mo skate across the ice to you or something?”

Kent wishes his brain filtered the shit that comes out of his mouth, sometimes. Bitty’s expression softens, and brightens, though. So he thinks it’s all okay, in the end.

“Sure. Let’s make a plan when we get home”

They don’t. They don’t because Kent is scared to have pushed, and kisses Bitty breathless against the driver’s door of the Hummer. Bitty says, “Lord, do you always have to look so good in a suit,” and there’s no stopping them then, not until Bitty’s warm hands are on his hips, and Kent’s are in his hair, and Bitty drops to his knees, and slaps his ass hard when he makes a stupid joke about hummers.

They do talk about it the next morning though — a ridiculous series of multitasking on Kent’s part as he sips on his shake, and moves his knee the way the physical therapist told him to, and tries to come up with what exactly he’d say on a tweet that encompasses all of his feelings, while remaining as professional as possible.

“You know this is more than official enough, right? You’re not doing this for me, are you?” Bitty asks, as he pulls a breakfast casserole out of the oven.

“No!”

“I’m just sayin’. All I’ve ever asked of you is to not hide me, to not drop my hand, to not push me away like being caught with me is the worst sin on earth.”

Kent moves across the room to turn Bitty around and settle his hands on his hips.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s the… thing, and the knee, and retiring, and… I’m all over the place. I— I am sure about you. I want this. I want this for us. I want you to sit with everyone else’s families because you’re my family. I want everyone to know who you are to me. The team has our backs. If you want this, I am one hundred percent in.”

It’s on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday three weeks into the playoffs, that Kent Parson posts on his official Instagram account, just as Eric Bittle tweets on his.

@omgcheckplease: I always said that if I dated a hockey player y’all would know ;) I am nothing if not a man of my word. @kentparson90

The picture attached to Bitty’s tweet is a mirror selfie Kent took months previously, where they’re hugging. Kent is holding his phone behind Bitty’s back, facing the mirror. Kent has his signature snapback on and his face half hidden against Bitty’s neck. If you look closely enough, you can see Bitty smiling against the side of Kent’s face.

Kent keeps his mouth shut about Bitty’s caption, but something a little mean settles inside him. It feels really fucking good.

In turn, Kent posts a picture Larissa took when she visited a few weeks earlier on his Instagram. He is sitting on a chair outside by the pool, and Bitty is sitting on his lap, his arms around Kent’s neck as they kiss. It’s been Kent’s phone background ever since that day. His caption reads “I once paid nine thousand US dollars for one of his pies, now he sleeps in my bed every night. Never give up on your dreams, xoxo ❤️🥧🏳️🌈”

Bitty giggles once the notification comes through on his phone, likes the photo, and comments only with a black heart emoji — Kent’s go-to.

“That’s funny,” he says against Kent’s hair.

“Funnier even to think it wasn’t even cherry. It was blueberry. Imagine how much I’d have paid for a cherry pie.”

Bitty’s mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. He’s looking at Kent with an expression Kent can’t quite decipher.

“Uh…”

“What?” Kent asks, Bitty still pressed against him on the couch.

“What do you mean? That’s not… that’s not a real thing that happened.”

“Oh, it happened all right.”

“WHAT!? When— why— what— who the fuck sold you a pie for 9 grand!?”

“I swore I’d take that information to my grave, sorry.”

“Like hell you will!”

Bitty is still sputtering when Kent kisses him. He’s sure Bitty will ask about that pie later. For now, Kent makes sure he drops his phone, and lets himself be kissed.

Jack calls a week after the Aces bring home the Cup. Kent is exhausted, and driving home from therapy when the call pops up on the car display.

Jack Zimmermann.

Kent spent so much of his life hoping that every call on every phone he’s had across the years was from him. Now, he doesn’t feel much like picking up.

He does it anyway.

“Zimms.”

“Hi… euh… hello.”

“What can I do for you?” It’s harsh, maybe. Kent doesn’t feel like Jack deserves better than that.

“I… just wanted to say congratulations on, err… the Cup. You did good.”

“Thanks,” Kent says dryly.

“I watched it.”

Kent hears all that he’s not saying with incredible clarity: I watched you kiss him, and I wished it was me. Well. Get fucked, Zimmermann.

“So did like other 3 million people, Zimms.”

Jack coughs, and then clears his throat.

“Listen, Kenny.”

Fuck.

“Don’t,” Kent growls.

“Kent.”

Better.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think you deserve him.”

Kent’s thumb hovers over the call button on the steering wheel.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Please, wait.” Jack says. Kent waits. “But I can see you make him happier than I… than I could. You’re not my business, and… Bittle isn’t either. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Kent doesn’t laugh, but he’s grateful to be pulling up at the house now. The words I’m sorry from Jack? They’re only a decade and a half too late.

Silence stretches, and Kent watches the garage door rise slowly. What does Jack want? A damn medal?

Kent breathes slowly out of his mouth, drives into the garage, puts the car in park and waits for Jack to say something. Jack doesn’t.

“I don’t know if you’re calling me to clear your conscience, but if you want to do that, it’s not me you should be calling. We settled our problems long ago, Zimms. I was a dick, you were a dick. I… I never said sorry for what I said when I came to Samwell. But I don’t think this phone call is about us, and you know that.”

“Uh uh,” Jack says, half assent, half question.

Kent is done with this.

Well.

Almost done.

“Hey, Jack. Do you know Beyoncè?” he asks.

Jack makes a confused sound, mutters some bullshit or other in French.

“I lived with Bittle for years, yes.”

“Well, then. You know how it goes. If you liked it…”

It takes a few seconds, and then Jack groans, clearly finishing the lyrics in his head.

“Tabarnak,” Jack mutters. “Are you going to?”

“Zimmermann. I entertained this call. I’m not saying we can never be civil again or anything. But look, even if I was going to, you would not be the first person I’d tell.”

“Right. Of course.”

“Thanks for calling. And good luck next year. Heard it through the grapevine you might be getting a C.”

“Yeah… yeah. Euh… Thanks, Kent. And I’m sorry.”

“Bye now, Jack.”

Kent sits in the car for long enough trying to make sense of the call that Bitty comes to the garage to check on him.

It doesn’t quite feel like closure, but it feels like maybe Bitty can unblock Jack’s number and not have to worry about Jack’s angry texts at all hours of the day. As victories go, it’s a pretty sweet one.

He’ll tell Bitty about it later, but Kent has a beautiful boyfriend padding out into the garage in his bare feet and a pair of tiny, incredibly snug shorts. So Kent does what he does best, and pulls Bitty back into the house, and throws him on the bed, flips his snapback back so it doesn’t get in the way, and shows Bitty just how happy he makes him.

Kent’s Player’s Tribune feature comes out on a Friday. His video interview for Out Magazine drops the week after.

He scrolls the internet, ignoring all the homophobic bullshit. They’re not always this easy to ignore but it’s both endearing and mortifying to see his lovesick face that clearly on a screen. And — fuck — it really is everywhere.

There’s a lot of love for the interview, among the abuse. He remembers he can do whatever he wants now and likes a tweet that says, ‘Parson said the word Eric a total of 37 times in a forty-minute interview. You can practically see the hearts in his eyes. If god hates gays then why do we keep winning?’

He scrolls back five minutes later just to retweet it.

A quarter of the tweets in response to the interview are direct quotes from his interview. There are a lot of those. The first thing he does after he watches the whole thing is text the Aces GM to say thank you for arranging the interview. He’d mentioned only in passing that he hoped to do something more open, more sincere, and less hockey-focused than his Player’s Tribune article. He got a text only days after, saying, “Not sure what we can do You Can Play related, but in the meantime how do you feel about an interview with Out Magazine?”

Kent had to.

“Eric was the first out NCAA Captain, and he brought Samwell University the cup that year, too. That was years before I ever seriously considered coming out myself, but it would be a lie to say it isn’t inspiring. The fact that we’re together now is just… I don’t know, the world works in mysterious ways.”

“He’s incredible. It’s funny because everyone assumes Eric is the hockey fanboy, right? I was definitely pursuing him in the first place. I tried one of his pies once and knew I wanted that for the rest of my life, really. I’m Eric Bittle’s biggest fan. I don’t think I even make his top three favorite hockey players.”

“Oh, Jack? I have no doubt he’ll be going for years, still. He’s got a lot of work to do if he wants to catch up with my stats. But I feel like I’ve said everything there is to say about Jack. He’s a good player. Dedicated. Very hockey-focused. He was close friends with Eric, in college, too. They were roommates for years. So even outside of hockey, it seems we can’t escape each other.”

“Now? I don’t know. I’ve worked really hard for so many years, I just want to sit back and relax, you know? I have no set plans. A vacation, at some point. After that? Who knows, really?”

“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. I think… well, at one point in my life I definitely hoped I’d die on the ice. Not in a dramatic way, just— well, that was all I knew, that was all I wanted. I don’t love hockey any less, and I’d still be doing it if it wasn’t for my knee, but I’m allowed this. No career should be all you have, you know? Mine brought me so much, but I’m glad it’s not the center of my world… What is? You know the answer already. My cat, obviously. She’s always been the center of my world. I think I may even get another cat, now I have time to stay home. Purrs is an old girl, she’d like the company.”

“It’s scary to be a role model. I never wanted to be one, but there’s a layer of responsibility to what I’ve done. I wouldn’t want anyone to take my advice, though. I got lucky in a lot of aspects in my life so far, but really? Be who you are, loud and proud. There’ll always be people out there that love you for that, even if they’re hard to find. Better to wait for them than to settle with people you have to hide from. I’ll never regret coming out, with all the good and all the bad that came from it. I didn’t rush it, but I’m glad I did it. And it got me the boy, in the end. I can’t complain.”

It’s both weird and flattering to see his own words repeated like that. He’s never been a words kind of guy.

It’s well received though, as well as it can be. He’s glad to have spent three hours under bright lights discussing the toxic masculinity still prevalent in hockey culture, his love for the Aces, his knee injury, and his eventual decision to retire. He gets asked about the moment where he lowered the Cup for Bitty to kiss and got caught by way too many cameras saying, “This was all you,” his newfound love for baking, his rivalry with Jack Zimmermann, and his plans for retirement (baking, traveling, babysitting, spending time with his boyfriend). It feels like finishing on a high, which is all he’s ever asked for.

In the end, despite all the quotes going viral, the one moment of his interview that’s been giffed, made into thousands of TikToks and played millions of times on Twitter is a blooper they added at the end, where Kent picks up his phone, shows the camera it’s Bitty calling and picks up with a smile, saying “Hey, baby. I was just telling three different cameras how my lemon bars are better than yours.”

He didn’t think that would make the final cut.

Bitty is in New York meeting with his publisher and agent that week, so Kent gets his reactions via text, mostly every quote where he mentions Bitty and never-ending emojis.

Retirement is busier than Kent expected it to be. It’s not a surprise that the Aces offer him a coaching position, but it still floors him when it actually happens. Then come the offers from everyone else — other teams want him to coach, want him to manage; every sports channel under the sun wants him to commentate, to join their analysis team, to host his own show.

It’s… exhausting.

There is no rest. Kent dreams of sitting at home, going out for dinner with Bitty, traveling without having to worry about how much he’s exercising or what he’s eating or when he has to go back home.

But Bitty is busier than ever, too. What was once one small laptop and a high pile of recipes on Kent’s counter, is now a solid, nearly ready and fully edited book. Bitty is a hurricane, in and out of the house, glued to his phone. Meetings, calls, interviews. Bitty is shut away in the guest room recording and rerecording, editing and reediting a video in the style of his vlogs from college to the point that Kent can recite the whole thing, word for word, y’alls included.

About four months into the madness, Bitty comes home with a kitten in his arms and a proof copy of his book tucked under his armpit.

She’s much smaller than Kit — and not just because she’s a baby. Kent loves her instantly, and it only takes Kit a couple of weeks to warm up to her, too. That’s about the same time it takes Bitty and Kent to agree on a name.

In the end, they just call her Princess, despite Kent’s arguments that he likes when Bitty calls him that. Bitty shrugs and says in a no-argument tone, “Well, now you’ve got two cats named after yourself. Congratulations.”

The cat is a distraction technique. A good one, at that. Kent loves her immediately. But he doesn’t forget that Bitty doesn’t let him look at the book. Bitty shows him what the cover looks like, leafs through it briefly, but doesn’t let Kent touch or look inside.

Kent doesn’t ask.

It takes Larissa and Shitty coming to visit, followed by Chris Chow coming for dinner before a game against the Aces to convince Bitty to take a couple of weeks off. Kent doesn’t know how publishing works, but he’s certain Bitty has done all the hard work. They can handle the rest without him for a couple of weeks.

If it wasn’t for the guests, he’d plan something, he’d make sure to take Bitty away. A beach with crystalline water, or an old villa with endless gardens, the bright lights of a small city. Kent would settle for a week at Disney World, really.

But as long as Bitty isn’t glued to his phone, Kent is happy.

Kent loves Bitty’s friends. Loves how obviously they care for him. There’s a glimpse of the Bitty he met once, too, when they’re together. A ghost of a younger, bubblier version of him. Kent finds he wants Bitty loved at all times, but he loves the Bitty he knows. Eric got himself out of a house he shared with Jack and drove across the country to build the life he’s always wanted. Kent knows he would have never had that strength.

Kent loves Bitty’s friends, but his favorite morning is when they wake up together the day after everyone’s left. Princess purrs softly on the bench at the end of the bed, and Purrs perches on the cat tree, surveying the room.

The sun is bright, and Bitty’s hair shines under the soft rays poking in through the curtains. Part of Kent doesn’t want to ruin the perfection of that moment. The other part of him must reach out and brush the hair falling over Bitty’s eyes.

“Hi,” Bitty says, squinting in the sunlight.

“Morning, Peach.”

It’s easy.

Too easy, too simple, too good.

More than Kent deserves.

It’s Bitty’s sleep-warm limbs around his body, and his sweet accent making his chest ache in the best of ways when he mumbles how much he needs to kiss Kent.

It’s Bitty pressing his hard-on firmly against Kent’s, his lips never leaving Kent’s neck.

And it’s Bitty leading Kent’s hand down, and down, and down, to where he’s still open from the night before.

It’s the way they gasp in tandem when Kent fucks into him first, and the way Bitty says, no longer sleepy, voice high with need, “Come on, Kent, come on— oh. Fuck.”

Easy, simple, good.

Bitty laughs when he comes — a gasp followed by a short giggle. Kent knew the first time he heard it that he was well past the point of no return.

It’s a slow morning. Kent is in love. His knee doesn’t hurt. His gorgeous boyfriend washes his hair for him. The sun is shining.

Their hair is still wet from the shower when they step into the living room, Princess right on their heels.

“I’ll make breakfast, you just sit outside, honey.” Bitty says, rising on his tiptoes to kiss Kent’s cheek.

Kent does as he’s told and sits outside — sunglasses on, iced coffee in hand. If he focuses hard enough, it’s almost a vacation.

When Bitty brings Kent’s slice of cherry pie (his favorite) out he’s not surprised. Pie for breakfast is not unusual now. He is surprised though, that Bitty brings his book, too.

The plate goes forgotten, but Kent holds the book in his hands and looks at Bitty, waiting.

“Go on, then.”

Kent flips the cover open.

To Kent,

who taught me there was more to baking than butter and eggs, and more to life than surviving.

And if the words weren’t enough to make Kent’s heart beat faster, there’s Eric, scared brown eyes boring into his, as if Kent could ever be upset about the dedication. About the enormity of such a stupidly romantic public declaration.

Kent never doubts Bitty’s affection. He never doubts that the love he feels is reciprocated. But this is… all of this is more than he ever thought he could have. For years, he’d told himself he’d never have anything like it, he’d never be allowed a safe relationship, someone to share his life with.

He can’t help but think about how different everything could have been if he decided not to go to the bakery that one morning. If he’d decided it was dumb to want Bitty as much as he did, knowing who he was. If he’d decided that it was too much, to bring Jack’s attention back to him in this way.

Bitty is worth it. He’s worth every decision Kent has ever made that brought him to this moment.

Kent Parson’s life was a series of decisions — most of them with regrettable consequences.

Not this, though. Never this.

Kissing Bitty behind the bakery that one morning had been a promise.

Kissing Bitty on New Year’s Eve, desperate and heart-sore — hoping, wanting, needing — had been a resolution.

Kissing Bitty on the ice, heavy cup propped against his hip, his hair still sweaty, his skin hot, both of them in matching jerseys had been a wax seal on the back of a heavy love letter he’d been waiting to write his whole life.

But kissing Bitty now is Kent’s favorite decision so far. Kissing Bitty with the dedication of his book still open on the sun lounger by his knees, under the bright sunshine, pulling his face against Kent’s own and pressing against him? This was the first page of a sequel, and for the first time in ages Kent is excited to figure out what comes next.