Work Text:
January 2018
Back in the Q, the saying was always that Jack thought and Kent did. Kent had a killer response about who Kent was doing and about Jack’s future career as a porn director. It got laughs from the guys, and it turned Jack’s cheeks red, which was basically exactly what Kent was going for.
Still, it isn’t like Kent didn’t know where it was coming from. Jack first got the reputation for being the thinker of the pair because everyone learned early on that he cared way too much about the War of 1812 and thought that “haha” was a significant contribution to a conversation about anything other than hockey. Kent first got his reputation for being the doer when he was the only one ballsy enough to go introduce himself to Jack’s parents, without any sort of plan for what exactly he would say to either of them. Jack didn’t rat Kent out to the team when Kent’s tongue got stuck to the roof of his mouth for a few seconds in there, and a fast friendship was formed, rooted in chirping the shit out of each other and bringing up the forward wings together.
People could always tell when Jack was part of Kent’s prank brainstorming process, because while Kent has a running list in his head of brilliant (if Kent does say so himself) pranks he could pull, Jack was always better about the boring logistical details that made shit actually work. Kent was the one who was best at getting Jack out of his head and actually living a little, though Kent thinks that maybe he might have done that job a little too well. Their coach even told them that he was giving them both the A because of the way that dynamic translated out on the ice. Jack yelled “this isn’t a game of chase the puck, you need a plan” at Kent, and Kent dared Jack to actually do something unpredictable for once in his life.
So yeah, it wasn’t complete bullshit. It wasn’t exactly true. Jack wasn’t Captain Foresight at 16, or 17. Kent got way more shit for not thinking things through than he deserved. But it would be an understatement to say that Kent was a little impulsive, or that Jack was a little bit hesitant about jumping into new situations.
Even if it weren’t entirely true, people said it, and people on their team believed it.
People don’t say it anymore.
The most obvious reason for that, of course, is that Zimms is not Kent’s partner in crime anymore, especially not to the media. The draft and some pretty intense interaction on the ice fucked that to hell. Plus, hilariously enough, Jack doesn’t have the reputation for being so introverted and measured now that he’s in the big leagues. No matter how much the Falconers PR wants to paint Jack as squeaky clean, he has two Gordie Howe hat tricks and some fan photos that got out with Mashkov dragging him around a club.
They probably wouldn’t say what they used to about Kent, either. Kent has a reputation that is perfectly appropriate for the captain of a hockey team in Vegas. He keeps his one night stands away from the flashing lights, but can insinuate nice things about the local tourist trap clubs. He does what it takes to pull out a win, and it isn’t like the rest of his teammates never opt for the risky and barely legal maneuver that lands them a little time in the sin bin. Kent made progress in his realization within a half a season in the NHL that being scrappy in a scrum doesn’t mean he won’t be a bruised Kent Pancake if he picks pointless fights.
Not that that always stops him.
Okay, so maybe Kent is still very occasionally described by his coach as “reckless” and “too fucking thoughtless”. So sue him, whatever. It’s not like he isn’t working on it. He’s calmed down a lot since his rookie year, has gotten better at picking his battles a lot more carefully. He doesn’t put anyone else at risk, and he’s not in this to end his career.
Though if he can’t get his head on straight whenever he plays Jack, it’s only a matter of time. One of Kent’s teammates, one who’s a dipshit, always jokes that Kent’s impulsive ass is going to get in trouble in a really spectacular way when it all comes to a head. Kent always replies that his spectacular ass has gotten into just about every kind of trouble it can get into, plenty of it involving head, and the teammate lets it go, because anal jokes are hilarious.
But Kent doesn’t know how the fuck he’s supposed to get his head on straight when just seeing Jack staring him down from across the ice still makes him want to do… he doesn’t know what. Just. Something. The not knowing what is almost worse than the impulse, the itching under his skin to do something to fix it. That used to be his job, before, fixing things. Back when Zimms trusted him enough with what upset him. When Jack was thinking too much, Kent did what he could to fight off the monsters.
It was the monsters he couldn’t see that fucked things up, in the end.
Kent had never felt like the problem that he had to fix when he was back in the Q with Jack. He does a lot of the time these days. And that tells him that the responsible and mature thing to do is probably give it some space. It’s what Jack’s mom advised after the sixth time Kent called her, frantic and desperate to talk to Jack. Clearly that “giving Jack some space” plan isn’t working too well, though, because Kent is pretty sure that if this goes on much longer, Mashkov will actually murder Kent out on the ice.
Kent doesn’t think picking a fight with Jack would make him feel any better at this point, though he does still feel that urge. He knows from the new layer of snow on Guilt Mountain from the last time he tried that, though, that that would be a horrible idea. It was both intentional and not, last time. Largely uncontrolled, but. He did want to get under Jack’s skin and make him hurt for hurting Kent. He didn’t want the hurt to last, but it was a go big or go home situation, and he was the dumbass who managed to go big and then go home.
He wanted to be able to vent, because it wasn’t like there was any kind of closure, there. It wasn’t like they sailed through the draft, happy and healthy and whole, and split with the understanding that it was because they couldn’t be trekking across the country for booty calls all the time. One day things were fine, and then the next Kent was faking smiles on what should have been the proudest day of his life, while he clung to his phone waiting for a call back from Jack’s dad to confirm that Jack wasn’t dead in the fucking ER. And Kent knows it’s unfair to hold any of that against Jack, he and the therapist the Aces organization strongly recommended he go see have hashed that out until Kent even started to get sick of revisiting it during sessions himself.
But if Kent’s being totally honest, what he wanted most of all was to try to make Jack react. Kent wanted to see Jack feel something, instead of that stone-faced indifference that Kent knows is bullshit, is Jack’s favorite defense mechanism. Kent should have considered that there was a reason Jack needed the defense mechanism in the first place. Kent should have at the very least apologized to Jack after. But the whole thing was a shit show, and Kent hurt Jack because he got angry and couldn’t keep the words inside his mouth.
Kent isn’t doing that again. Kent may be a fuck up, but it’s been a few years, and with some time, he’s usually pretty good at not fucking up in the exact same way more than once. So he tries to keep his mouth shut and he plays hockey, and sometimes he plays a little dirty, but that doesn’t do shit to hurt Jack. The anger he can deal with better. The resentment he’s been working through. He can actually respond to that in a healthier way, now, way more than he used to be able to.
It’s the other impulses that are harder for Kent. It’s when the more painfully earnest, quieter impulses creep in that he remembers he’s fucked. He wants to skate over to the other side of the ice and pull Jack aside and apologize like he should’ve a long time ago. He wants to touch Jack. He wants to touch Jack so much it actually is almost literally painful, because he still has the memories that even tequila in Swoops’ apartment couldn’t wash out. He remembers how easy it was to lean up against Zimms, even before they weren’t anything but friends who were just slightly closer than was normal. He remembers how Zimms would wrap one of those giant space heater arms around him. He remembers the congratulatory high fives and butt slaps and fist bumps and hugs. It’s actually really embarrassing how much he misses hugs from Jack. For someone who acted like he was made of wood sometimes, Jack’s hugs were some really comforting shit.
And then there were all the other times that Jack was at his most human, his most honest, that Kent still remembers in his skin. He remembers how hard it was, when Jack was touching him, to swallow down every single I love you, the taste of the words in his mouth and the feel of them heavy and full down his throat. When the moments faded, he was left empty and sore, like the day or so after giving an enthusiastic deepthroating blowjob.
Except with feelings.
Because if it were just the bjs he missed from Jack, that would be something he could solve. He’s had a lot of sex since things ended with Zimms. He still remembers the way Jack felt under him, and the ridiculous but intensely, addictingly vulnerable way Jack looked when Kent made him come. There was something special about it being Jack, Mr. Hockey Robot, letting Kent touch him where no one else could. He has to remind himself sometimes that it isn’t something he can only get from Jack. He’s pretty amazing at making people feel so good they forget themselves in bed. It’s one of the only things he’s as good at as hockey. If it were just a sex thing, Kent would have that shit on lock.
Kent sees Jack out on the ice, though, and he wants to tear Jack’s helmet with its fucking plastic visor off. He wants to get in Jack’s space and he wants to kiss Jack until his lips are wet and puffy and sore. He wants to remember what it feels like to kiss someone who was his everything, who filled up all the cracks with his glee about the fucking War of 1812 and his giant dorky smile and his ugly neon running shoes and his belief that making PB&J sandwiches counted as quality time together. He wants to make up for all the time they lost when they could have been kissing. He wants to make up for his visit to Samwell and he wants to do what he wanted to when he stood in Jack’s bedroom, his fingers tangled in Jack’s shirt, clinging to whatever scraps of contact he could.
It actually makes Kent mad, sometimes. And then it leaves Kent upset that when the rush of anger fades, that that’s what he’s got. The urge to kiss Jack. The urge to tell Jack he loved him. The urge to dig his fingers in every single part of Jack that’s different until he can say that he loves him still. The urge to make a fucking fool of himself if it would make things work.
It’s the last one, probably, that sends him walking towards the booth in the VIP section of the shitty Vegas club that he finds Jack in.
Literally every single thing about it is a bad idea. He notices Mashkov off to the side as he approaches, and there’s another teammate with too much eyeliner (whose name Kent definitely knows, because it’s Kent’s job to know) that is glaring Kent down from the seat next to Jack. There’s a lot of booze on the table, and a lot of it is mostly empty, which gives Kent a second’s pause, has him staring at the glass in front of Jack with a twinge in his gut and images in the back of his eyes, images of a younger Jack with too-loose shoulders and too-dim eyes.
Kent sometimes forgets it isn’t his job to be concerned, anymore.
But he charges forward anyway, because, apparently, he’s doing this. Kent doesn’t have a plan. Kent doesn’t know what he expects. He only knows what he wants, and that he’s probably not going to get it. He’s probably not going to manage to talk Jack back into his bed, the way he wants to. He’s not going to make a scene in public by pressing his mouth against Jack’s, feeling how familiar and rough Jack’s lips are, feeling how easily Jack and him can slide into each other. He’s not going to make things perfect and right, and smooth over all the ways they’ve hurt each other, no matter how much he wants to.
Jack asks him why he came over, and Kent doesn’t tell him that he came over because he didn’t fucking think, that he came over because Jack is the thinker and Kent is the doer, and Kent still wants to do everything he can with Jack.
“To talk,” Kent says. More words come out of his mouth than that, and he probably sounds desperate as shit, but, well. He sort of is.
Just talking isn’t what he wants. But it’s what Jack will agree to, and when faced with the thrumming need to do something, Kent will take talking over nothing.