Chapter Text
It’s a testament to how tired Bitty must be feeling when they reach Chicago, because he doesn’t even bother trying to argue to pay for his own share of the room. They’re taking a single, because it’s all the hotel has left—but it’s fine. Jack will take the floor.
Bitty’s halfway through unpacking when he says, “Jack. There’s only one bed.” The air conditioner whirs quietly on top of them, and Jack takes off his shirt, still feeling heated.
“I’ll take the floor.”
Bitty glances at him, gaze lingering, before he looks away. “We could share. Which side of the bed do you sleep on?”
“Not much of a preference,” Jack says. Bitty’s got his back to him, busy with playing fridge tetris with the containers he’s brought. “You sure?”
Bitty turns around. There’s a hint of anger to his expression but it dies down into something else. What happened, he thinks. Jack used to be able to read him much more easily than this.
“Jack—”
He interrupts Bitty. “I’m going to shower.” Jack walks into the bathroom. There’s a thump outside. It goes silent; Bitty’s not moving anymore.
Jack stands under the hottest water they can provide.
They both end up in the same bed. Jack pretends to sleep when Bitty slides under the covers next to him, falling under the moment his head touches the pillow. Jack sees his eyelashes fluttering slightly, the bedside lamp casting shadows. He has half an idea to reach for his camera but he doesn’t. This seems too intimate to capture.
“I’m sorry,” Jack whispers. It’s practice for when he’s brave enough to say it louder.
The sun rises just as Jack wakes up. Bitty’s eyes are still closed. Chicago looms over them in her entirety.
“Good morning,” Jack says, a bit emptily. Even in his sleep Bitty looks like he’s missing something.
Bitty blinks himself awake. “Hello,” he says, voice slightly rough as he blinks up at Jack. He’s grabbing at the bedside table for something.
“You left your phone back at the Haus,” Jack tells him.
Bitty stares at him blankly before catching up, his eyes crinkling up with laughter. “I actually forgot.”
Jack ruffles his hair. “Trying to tweet?”
“Ha ha,” Bitty squints his eyes at him, deadpan.
There was this time when he was younger, about a decade or so—though everyone has their moments. Shut your eyes and dream about wrapping your arms around another boy’s waist so tightly that you left bruises, imprints of your trembling fingers stark against their skin as you kissed them away. It feels something like an aching wound begging to let heal. Jack feels like it’ll never scab when he sees Kent around, now, looking as haunted as Jack is by his anxiety.
Zimms, Kent used to laugh, the engines rumbling beneath the both of them. He was fearless then but it’s an easy mistake when you’re young. He used to shout above the wind as if they were the only one for miles. It’s easy to lose your grip. Jack never wore a helmet when they rode together, but Kent never really tried entertaining the possibility in the first place.
“Come on, Jack, tag along and stop being grumpy,” Bitty says, pulling him into a bookstore after breakfast. His hand curls around Jack’s wrist, grip tight. “I just wanna look around real quick and see if they have any notebooks.”
“I’m not grumpy,” Jack says, but follows him in anyway. “Notebooks?”
“’m thinking of keeping a journal,” Bitty mutters, ducking down low to go through the bottom shelf.
Jack smiles. “Your finals are over, Bittle.”
He gets a glare for his trouble. “I’m buying this to write down all the stuff we do for my vlog, silly.”
“And your Twitter?”
Bitty laughs. “Guess I won’t have to worry about the 140 character limit.”
Jack holds up a postcard. “You should get some of these for the team.”
“Good idea.” Bitty surveys it for a minute. “Tango would like them,” he says, and picks out several more. Leaves Jack feeling inexplicably content.
Jack keeps his cap down low. Bitty seems to notice but doesn’t say anything about it; is content to let Jack shield his gaze from curious onlookers as much as he wants to. Bitty is standing in front of him, talking in hushed tones—quiet enough for Jack to have an excuse to lean in, hiding his face as if he’s ashamed.
He’s not. He just feels like he’s just on the edge of being overwhelmed; Jack’s hearing plenty of himself on the news as it is.
At a Starbucks, Bitty says, “we should leave.”
Jack steals the cup out of his hands. Bitty lets him. “Do you want to?”
“Sure,” Bitty says, folding his arms. Something about him is quieter when he doesn’t have his phone in his hands. Jack supposes that it’s his fault. “Or we could stay.”
“Okay,” Jack says. He finishes the cup as slowly as he wants to.
Bitty’s finished with writing down notes in his journal when they leave. He smiles at Jack occasionally, the kind that he’d have gotten after he promises to try one of his pies. Brighter. Jack supposes that he’s making progress.
“What are you planning to tell your viewers?” Jack asks, watching Bitty lick away his ice cream. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “That Jack Zimmermann popped up one day and asked you to go on a road trip with him, and you said yes?”
Bitty laughs. His head’s thrown back, and Jack would’ve raised his camera if it weren’t in his bag and a hassle to take out. “No, silly. I’m not going to mention you at all.”
Jack hums. “Why?”
“Why what?” Bitty asks in return, biting into the cone. There’s a smudge of ice cream on his cheek and Jack wants to wipe it away. Just for the excuse of getting close—but he thinks, what the hell, and steps closer. Presses his thumb lightly against his cheek to wipe it away. It’s not like he hasn’t done this before. Back in the car.
“Why wouldn’t you,” Jack says, hands hovering mid-air. Bitty’s looking at him as if he knows. He must; Jack might be clueless but he’s aware of how transparent he is. He’s already stripped away the layers of his privacy out to the public. One more person couldn’t hurt.
Jack clears his throat. Picks up the pace, but slow enough that Bitty walks at his normal speed. He doesn’t move away. “Good publicity, right?” He adds, after a moment’s thought.
“Sure,” Bitty shrugs. “But do you want me to?”
Jack bites his lips. He does. He wants the people applauding and shaming him to know that his heart hasn’t been in his own hands for a long, long time. It just took him too long to realise.
He settles on an answer. “I wouldn’t mind.” It’s true.
They’ve been walking for a distance when Jack speaks. “Let’s go see SUE.”
Bitty grins at him. “Field Museum, right? Of course you’d wanna go.”
“Are you going to chirp me for that?” Jack laughs. “For wanting to see a T-rex?”
“No,” Bitty says, knocking their shoulders together. “I’m going to chirp you for spending the rest of our day looking at ancient Egyptian artifacts, or something.”
Jack raises an eyebrow. “Maybe we should go to a hockey museum instead.”
Bitty sends him a withering glare, but it doesn’t quite take hold. Jack slings an arm over his shoulder, and they’re standing, waiting for the traffic light to turn green.
“It’s slightly frightening,” Bitty tells him, looking up at the skeleton. “You know. How big it is. Forty feet tall and it was still alive all these years ago—how amazing is that?”
Jack could go for several chirps, right now, but he honestly doesn’t feel like it. “We have scale, too,” he says, shifting to the side so that the family to their left could get a better view. “It’s not the same, obviously, but it’s still the same planet. Just the fact that we dug her up from the ground is…”
“Amazing?” Bitty looks up at him, eyes warm.
“Sure,” Jack says, and lets Bitty tug him by the arm into another exhibition.
In the middle of looking at the terracotta warriors, Bitty says, “I don’t think we let ourselves wonder about it too much, y’know?” He lets out a sigh. “That it was all real. You’ve got the name up there, and you’re supposed to judge them for what’s happened. Maybe even blame them for what we’re going through now.”
Jack breathes in. Qin Shi Huang burned away six other languages after he conquered China. You’ve got people lost in there, scrolls hidden under mud and dust and the heavy concrete that the country stands as now. Hard to believe a different kind of world.
“People still make an impact,” Jack says, when they’re out of the museum, and Bitty turns mid-step to look at him. The heat is too much to keep a cap on for Jack, so he takes it off. “It’s always in a subtle way, so you can’t exactly tell what’s going on—but just because you don’t know about it doesn’t mean it’s not there. In history there’s always the gaps that people aren’t looking to fill. But we all have ourselves in there. Someone that’s just trying to get along. Maybe SUE was an ordinary dinosaur.”
Bitty inclines his head. “An ordinary dinosaur,” he says. “Is there such a thing?”
Jack shrugs. “Depends on what kind of kid you were.”
Bitty reaches over for his cap. Tugs it down his own face. “What kind of kid were you?”
“Ugly. Fat.”
Bitty raises an eyebrow. “So the puberty genie granted you a wish, then?”
Jack feels his face heat up. “I don’t know about that.”
“Really?” Bitty looks genuinely surprised, for an instant. “Professional hockey player, Jack Zimmermann, greatest ass in the world, ugly?”
“Eh,” he says. “There are better-looking people out there.”
“Hard to imagine,” Bitty says, and raising his chin a little. Like a challenge.
Jack hums. He says, “I can think of a few.”