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Jack didn’t really have time anymore. His time belonged to everyone else. To the point where, on the rare occasion that he wasn’t on the road, was actually home and didn’t have a home game, he was still busy. Whether it was with the Little Falcs program for Falcs TV, painting park benches with a couple teammates for Falcs TV, sitting down to answer questions about how he had eaten M&M’s after his first hat trick and whether it was a ritual he intended to continue for Falcs TV, his time wasn’t his own anymore. Jack would be the first to attest to the importance of keeping busy, of always going 110%. But this was certainly not what he meant, and all the time taken up by the media was time taken away from him and Bitty.
Jack was on his way home from an early morning meeting with the coaches that had ended up taking up half of one of his precious days off. Bitty had texted to tell Jack that he had a test that day and wouldn’t be able to make it to Providence for the third week in a row. Jack was just rounding the corner to the hall in front of his apartment when he noticed a four people loitering outside his door, one with a camera. Several nightmare scenarios flashed through part of Jack’s mind while the other half worked on possible escape routes, before he noticed among the crowd was Kendra from Falcs TV. With a deep breath to steady his still-raging thoughts, he carried on down the hall, waving a hand to catch the crew’s attention.
He was greeted by a bright smile and a flood of words.
“Jack! Hi. We were wondering where you’d gotten to. Are you just getting home? Is everything ready to go? We heard you ended up in a meeting with the coaching staff this morning but we didn’t hear anything about pushing the shoot.” In full on exhausting media mode, Kendra barely took a breath between sentences. “We can give you a few minutes if you need it.”
Jack stared at her blankly, waiting for some semblance of sense to come from her words.
“The shoot, Jack, Falcs TV has been going around to different Falcs houses and doing an MTV Cribs-style tour of the place. We were told that you’d be willing and this was the only time you had for us.” She kept smiling, but lines of worry were etching across her forehead the longer Jack stood there dumbly.
“Um…right. I don’t remember talking about this. I just wouldn’t usually invite people into my place, y’know, and especially not cameras.” His keys jangled in his hand too loud in the increasingly claustrophobic hall. “Do you have anyone else who could do this?”
Kendra was already shaking her head before he’d even finished, “We were featuring Marty’s family’s house, Snowy’s house and your apartment this month, and then depending on how they went over, we’d keep going.” She sighed and ran a hand over the lines in her forehead and lowered her voice, “Listen Jack, I’m new here. I’ve only been working for the Falcs a couple months and this is the first big media project they’ve given me. If it’s not too much trouble, please help me out.”
She could probably see the protest starting because she jumped back into it “You can call all the shots. If you don’t want us in certain rooms or to ask about stuff with sentimental value then just say so.”
Jack had been pretty sure that this was way beyond the line of what he was comfortable with, but thinking about the sparse apartment behind the door, he couldn’t think of anything particularly damning on display. Had Falcs TV showed up after a busy morning in front of his old room at the Haus and demanded entrance, he would have turned them away immediately, shuddering to think of the mementos that had been scattered around the room, mementos that hadn’t yet been unpacked in the 3 months since he’d lived in the apartment. He hadn’t made it a home yet. Thinking of the bare walls of his apartment and the one bookshelf full of his favourite history books and the old textbooks he’d deemed interesting enough to merit keeping, he didn’t feel that same protective ache. Sure, it’d been his and Bitty’s apartment for a week during the summer. Waking up every morning with sunlight peeking through the curtains making Bitty’s skin and hair glow, chopping vegetables in a kitchen he’d chosen specifically for the tiny baker, curling up on the couch and watching the food network or whatever else was on that Bitty liked or thought Jack might like. It had started to feel almost like a home then, but then Bitty had left and Jack had realized Bitty had been the one that filled the apartment. That feeling of comfort and home had followed Bitty back to Samwell, Faber, and the Haus.
Jack realized, as he often did, that he’d been worrying his bottom lip between his teeth while staring off into the distance for longer than was socially acceptable.
“Yeah, okay, um, come in and, uh, what exactly do I need to do?” Jack turned to the door.
“Do you need a minute to tidy?” Kendra asked as they all followed him into the apartment.
“No, I’m not here much, so it’s pretty clean.” He gestured at the monk-like cleanliness of the apartment. Away a lot or not, he knew that his apartment would usually be well-organized. It helped to have everything outside of his head controlled when inside his of his head was a bit of a mess.
“Okay, Jack, that right there is Dan, he’s our makeup artist. We don’t need much - this is supposed to be pretty casual, but just for appearances’ sake.”
With that Kendra bustled about the main area of the apartment, talking excitedly with her camera crew while Jack sat at one of his barstools with Dan in front of him. When he was done, Kendra told him the plan was to have him answer the door and invite the camera in. They would then follow him around his apartment and he could point out aspects of each room.
Jack realized as he answered the door that his segment was going to be the dullest piece of footage ever created by the Falcs media team, but resolved to put in some effort. He pointed out the pool table, the white boards he used for strategizing and keeping notes, and he decided quite impulsively to mention his anxiety and how keeping track on the white boards helped him stay focused. It wasn’t until they got to the kitchen and Kendra asked about the beautiful and expensive mixer on the counter that Jack found himself in a lie.
He answered with a hasty, “I like to bake.” And would have happily moved on, if it weren’t for Kendra’s persistence that these little tidbits of personality were exactly what they were looking for. Something to make the players more approachable.
“What’s your favourite thing to bake Jack?” she looked thoughtfully at Jack through the viewfinder on the camera.
“Um, I make good pie, I guess. I like maple and, um, I put it in this one pie with apples and it’s really good. And I do something with the crust and it tastes like maple, too. It’s my favourite. How about we head back into the living room?” he said terribly unsmoothly, and carefully stepped around the camera which followed him as he walked down the hallway that led to his bedroom.
He took a moment to point to the bathroom, which the camera panned around swiftly, and then focused back on Jack expectantly, whose hand was on his bedroom door. He pushed the door open and walked in, the camera following closely behind him. His bedroom was just slightly less stark than the remainder of the apartment. He’d managed to put up a couple of the blown up pictures he’d taken after his photography class at Samwell. He talked briefly about each of the two pictures one of the pond during a light snowfall and the other of the morning sun coming through the windows and hitting center ice at Faber. He was halfway through explaining the importance of depth of field in landscape photography when a dull thud sounded from his closet.
Everyone in the room looked to the closet, and it was only then that Jack noticed the small duffel bag beside the door to his walk-in. It was unmistakably Bitty’s.
“Um, don’t worry, I think it was just the cat.” Jack’s voice came out oddly higher than usual.
“You have a cat?!” Jack looked over to see a gleam in Kendra’s eye. “What’s she doing in the closet? What’s her name? Can we maybe get her out here for a few shots of her playing?”
One of the other crew members was already making his way over the door.
“No!” Jack surprised himself and everyone else with a shout. “He, I mean, she, uh, they…Yeah, uh, they don’t really like people. And they’re in the closet cause they have a bed in there. There’s a little flap so they can get in and out and everything. It’s great.”
They all looked between Jack and the closet several times, still seemingly skeptical before Kendra took the reigns again.
“Well, alright. You should have told me you have a cat! I love cats! I make my own cat treats for mine. I’ll send you the recipe and you can bake some.” She smiled over her shoulder as she left the room and the remainder of the guests followed her out.
Jack kept casting nervous glances towards the bedroom as they did a little outro to the video in front of the kitchen. Afterwards, the crew thanked him for welcoming them in. Kendra gave him a swift one armed hug and an “I owe you one” before they all retreated through the door.
Jack barely waited for the door to close before tearing off to the bedroom. He stopped in front of the closet door and rapped it with his knuckles.
“They’re gone, Bits.”
He heard a muffled “Oh, thank heavens” from the other side of the door and several more thuds before the door slid open to reveal a blushing Eric Bittle in a just slightly too-big Zimmermann jersey and nothing else. He stretched, joints popping, and ran his fingers through his hair where it had been mussed from hiding under suits.
“Surprise, sweet pea,” he said shrugging with his arms out on either side.
With that they both started cackling. Jack had to hold himself up with the wall as he said, “You were literally hiding in the closet.”
Bitty snorted from his place on the ground, still half-clothed. They finally managed to get both of their breathing even when Bitty said, “You told them I was your cat.” Which set them off laughing all over again. They managed to make it to the bed, and were lying half curled on top the covers.
“So you came down to surprise me, and, what, were in here like,” he gestured at Bitty where he’d curled against him on the bed, “this. You hear me come in followed by a camera crew, and then proceed to hide in the closet for almost an hour without any pants on?”
“My duffle with my pants was just outside the door! I couldn’t risk getting caught.”
“Bitty. You were in a closet. A closet full of clothes.”
Bitty looked at him dumbstruck for a moment before chirping back, “Well, yes, I suppose I realize that now! And what about you, Mr. Zimmermann? Terribly smooth playing the pronoun game over your cat. Someone alert the media! Jack Zimmermann’s cat is a boy!” They both giggled again before turning to face each other. Jack brought his hand up to brush along Bitty’s cheek. Bitty’s hand ghosted up his side and over his shoulder before resting at the back of his neck. He pulled the taller man to him and their lips met.
For the past few weeks, everything had felt rushed. Their conversations over Skype had consisted of run downs of each other’s schedules to see when one another had time for a visit, followed by quick and efficient Skype sex that usually just left them both missing the other more.
This was nothing like that. They took their time until they both ended up lying naked under the covers an hour later, stomachs grumbling for food but both too tired to bother making their way to the kitchen.
Jack looked up at the ceiling and reveled in the feeling of Bitty’s finger tracing up and down his breast bone. A part of Jack knew that today could have been a disaster. Neither of them were ready to go public yet. They were only a few short months into their relationship. But already, he hoped for both of them, it felt long term. Bitty felt like home. He carried that feeling of home with him from the moment he walked in the door, filling the apartment with the smell of baking and the sounds of pop music and the glow that only he could bring, until the moment he walked out the door. And Jack knew that he didn’t want to have to hide this forever. As important as hockey was, and as comfortable as he felt on the ice, a stick in hand and a goal in mind, it wasn’t home anymore.
He looked down as he felt Bitty’s fingers still on his chest.
“What are you thinking?” Bitty asked looking into his eyes.
Jack brought his hand up to cover Bitty’s.
“I’m thinking, I really don’t want to have to get a cat.”