Archive of Our Own

Todd pours the last of the bottle of wine into Eric's glass while Eric watches, grinning. He's feeling pleasantly tipsy and giggly—not drunk yet, but just enough that he can stare at his boyfriend and just be so happy to be here with him for their six month anniversary. Todd's such a nice guy, and cute, and funny, and they have so much fun together. Eric's not in love with him or anything, but it's been a good six months, and he thinks if things go well they might have a few more months in them.

Eric takes a sip of the wine while Todd places their dessert order. When he sets the glass down again, Todd takes his hand and smiles shyly, which makes Eric smile because Todd has dimples and they're just the most adorable things.

"Happy Anniversary, sweetheart," Eric says, and they've already said it a couple times tonight but it seems like a good time to say it again. Todd beams and squeezes his hand, so it must have been the right thing to say.

"So, I—I had something I wanted to ask you about," Todd says, then bites his lip.

Eric raises his eyebrows and smiles encouragingly. He wonders if this is about spring break. Todd's been sort of hinting that maybe they should go somewhere together, and Eric had kind of been avoiding the topic because that seemed like a little far ahead to plan, but it's only six weeks away now and Eric reckons he's pretty sure they'll still be together in six weeks. So maybe it'd fun to—

"You don't have to say yes or no right now," Todd starts, and it seems like an odd way to talk about taking a trip. "But I was wondering if maybe you'd want to talk about moving in together after graduation?"

Maybe Eric had a little more wine than he realized, because he swears he hears the record scratch in his head, just like on TV.

"Wow." He blinks, stunned but still smiling. "Honey, that's four months away!"

Todd shrugs one shoulder sheepishly. "I know, and I know you work as hard as you can to pretend you don't have to think past it, but if we want to stay in Boston, with the housing market there like it is, we might want to start looking for a place in the next few weeks."

"Wow," Eric says again as his heart races. He tries to sound flattered instead of shocked, and he's pretty sure he manages it.

"It's just—Eric, I love you." Fuck. "The past six months have been the best of my life—" Fuck. "—and I think it'd be awesome to wake up next to you every day, y'know? And I'm assuming Boston because we've both got friends there, but really, we could go just about anywhere—big city, small town, we can look at all the possibilities, y'know? Wherever we can both get jobs."

"Oh my goodness," Eric says. Todd smiles, so Eric must not look too horrified. "Well, you know I love waking up next to you, honey, and these have been a great six months. I just—like you said, I'm freaking out a little about graduating as it is, so I don't know if I'm quite ready to commit to a living situation just yet."

"I figured," Todd said. "I just thought, since you're going to have to start thinking about jobs soon whether you like it or not—" Eric grimaces, because he's allowed to grimace at that, and Todd laughs. "—Right, exactly. Since you're going to have to think about jobs soon, now you can kind of think about this, too, and how it would all fit together. I mean, wouldn't it be kind of nice to know that whatever you wind up doing, wherever we wind up moving to, we'll be there together? Inject a little bit of stability into all that unpredictability?"

Eric laughs. "I guess it would be nice for my future to be a little less up in the air," he admits. "I'll definitely think about it, okay?"

Their dessert arrives right then, so they drop the topic.

By the end of dessert, Eric has realized that there is no way they can have any sort of epic anniversary sex tonight. Not when he's internally panicking. But Todd is definitely expecting that and Eric can't exactly tell him why he's not in the mood. He finally texts Lardo from the bathroom. He feels incredibly guilty when she calls him five minutes later, as they're leaving the restaurant, but not so guilty that he doesn't ham it up a little as he asks her what on earth she and Shitty could have fought about that has her crying this hard.

Todd has never liked Shitty much (a fact which has always mystified Eric, since he can't imagine how anyone who's not a total douchebag could not like Shitty), so he's already angry on Lardo's behalf before Eric even puts his hand over the receiver to apologize profusely.

"No, no, babe, she clearly needs you right now. I'll walk you back to the Haus. I have that stupid early class tomorrow anyhow, so it's probably better we wait 'til this weekend anyway. That way we've got all night." The way he looks at Eric would usually have Eric dragging him toward his bedroom, but now it just makes him a little queasy and even guiltier.

—

"So what was that about?" Lardo asks as soon as he's inside and Todd is gone. "Isn't it you guys' anniversary or some shit?"

"Yes," Eric says with a sigh as he climbs the stairs. "And it was such a nice night, too."

"Until…?"

"Hang on," Eric mutters as he creeps past Dex and Nursey's room. He makes it into his room without anyone accosting him for deets, shockingly enough. "Lardo," he says as he flops down onto his bed, "Todd asked me to move in with him after we graduate!"

"Aaaaand I'm guessing if that required an escape plan, you're not into the idea?"

"He said he loves me and that this has been the best six months of his life!" Eric cries.

"That asshole."

Eric scoffs. "No, of course he's a lovely person. But the best six months of his life? Really? It's been fun, but my goodness. I'm not in love with that boy, and I don't see myself falling any harder anytime soon. I've always thought of moving in together as something you do when you're—well, maybe not only when you know you'll wanna marry a person someday, but when you think things might be heading that way and you wanna test out the waters before you dive in, y'know? What's the point in testing out the waters when you didn't even bring your bathing suit?"

"Living together doesn't have to lead to getting married," Lardo points out. "Some people live together for years and never get married."

"And that's fine for some people, but it would feel kinda pointless to me, if I know up front that's where it's going. And it'd just make breaking up a logistical nightmare, and that'd probably make me hold on longer than I should because I just don't wanna deal with it, and good Lord I'm already exhausted thinking about all this."

"So…" Lardo pauses. "I can't really tell if you want to break up with him or not."

"Not really!" Eric says, throwing a hand up in exasperation. "I had no intention of breaking up with him anytime soon! I figured, y'know, we'd probably keep going like we have been for a few more months. Maybe even longer'n that, if we happened to wind up in the same city after graduation, but I wasn't gonna take where he'll live into account when I'm applying for jobs or anything. If we're in the same city, hey great, if not, well, we've had a good run, we can end it on a high note. I didn't wanna break up with him, but I don't wanna marry him, and I can tell you right now I'm not ever gonna want to marry him. Is it selfish of me to not want to break up with someone even though I know I'll want to break up someday?"

"Of course not," Lardo says. "You're twenty-one, Bits. Most people aren't ready for that kind of commitment yet at that age. Most relationships aren't heading for marriage, or even moving in together. That's normal. If you're happy with him now, though, and you were expecting to stay happy with him for a few more months at least, can you really be that sure you'll never want long-term plans with him?"

Eric squeezes his eyes shut. "Yes," he says firmly. "Just… trust me, I know how I wanna feel when I find the person I wanna spend the rest of my life with, and it's not like this. It's not… Todd's not it, Lardo."

He prays she doesn't ask how he knows, and she doesn't.

"Fair enough. Look, you don't have to dump him, but you need to be honest with him. Tell him you want different things from the relationship and see if he's okay with that. Really okay, not just clinging because he hopes you'll change your mind."

Eric grimaces. Could he even tell the difference?

"Yeah. Of course I gotta be honest with him. Lord, I never thought I'd be breaking someone's heart."

"Maybe you won't be," Lardo says, and he can almost hear her shrug. "Maybe he'll be cool with shifting gears and just taking it all one day at a time. Stranger things have happened."

"They sure have," Eric says with a sigh.

After they hang up, he throws an arm over his face. All that talk of honesty, and he feels like he's lying to Lardo. Because it's not that he's not ready for that kind of commitment. And he knows how he'll feel when he finds the one because he's already felt it. Sure, he's let go of the idea that he could ever have that with Jack, but he's so far from over his best friend that he's not sure he could fall in love with someone else yet, not really.

When Jack had kissed him at graduation over a year and a half ago, he'd been too shocked to really think about what it might mean, long-term. They'd talked constantly over the next six weeks, enough for him to feel confident that Jack felt the same way he did, and to start to imagine what those far-off futures might look like together.

And then Jack came to Madison for the Fourth of July, and Eric made the stupidest mistake of his life: He let himself and Jack talk themselves out of it.

Neither had denied their feelings. They didn't use the word, but they were in love, deeply in love. He knew, without a single doubt, that if the world were a slightly different place he'd spend the rest of his life with Jack Zimmermann. If the world were a slightly different place, one where the NHL wasn't so homophobic, where Jack didn't have so much pressure to shoot to the top of the game in his first season, where the media wouldn't be watching his every move for any hint of scandal.

Eric didn't want Jack to put his career at risk for him. Jack didn't want to make Eric hide when he was finally getting to be himself. The stupidest part was, Eric was fine with hiding. At the time, he couldn't understand why Jack couldn't understand that, why he insisted on being so God damned noble.

Later he understood that he'd been just as bad. He'd stubbornly refused to consider the idea of Jack coming out to his team, let alone publicly, until he had several successful seasons under his belt, minimum. Until nobody anywhere could possibly say that being queer was affecting his playing. Even telling their friends was more of a risk than Eric was willing to consider.

They were both so hell-bent on martyring themselves for the other's benefit. They were also both convinced that when the worst happened, the other would resent them for it, and they'd lose each other entirely. They convinced themselves that it was more important to preserve their friendship.

That weekend was incredible in so many ways, many thanks to the fact that his parents didn't think twice about leaving the two of them alone for hours at a time. If nothing else, Eric is glad he lost his virginity to Jack. He's had good sex and bad sex and great sex since then, but he's never had sex with someone he felt such a deep connection with. It's never felt as intimate as even a rushed handjob when they knew his mama was on her way home from the store did that weekend.

They agreed, after that, not to see each other in person again for a while, though they texted constantly and talked on the phone daily. The next two times he saw Jack in person were after his and their home openers, surrounded by friends so there was no temptation. By the time they started spending time alone together again, after the end of Eric's fall semester, Jack wasn't looking at him with the heat that had been in his eyes that weekend in Madison, and Eric had things under control enough to pretend like he didn't feel that heat, either.

Jack's dated a few women since then, had one actual girlfriend for three or four months last spring. Eric's not stupid; he knows Jack's feelings for those women haven't been as deep as what they felt for each other, but Jack's seemed happy with them all the same. Sometimes it hurts, knowing that Jack has been able to get over him so much more easily than he has Jack, but he can't complain when Jack is still the best friend he's ever had.

He's apparently thinking about Jack so hard that the universe has noticed, because when he goes to check the evening's NHL scores, who should be gracing the top of ESPN's hockey page but the man himself. Apparently, Jack got a hat trick tonight in their game against the Islanders. The photo on the front page is of Jack being squished by Tater in a celly after one of the goals, and he looks so happy it sends a little thrill through Eric's heart.

Inside the article there's video of Jack's postgame interview. Eric bites his lip. He shouldn't click it. Jack looks too good all sweaty and pink-cheeked from exertion. Not that watching a video of his hot best friend is cheating or anything, but he already feels guilty enough about everything with Todd. Then again, if he's already sitting here feeling guilty for wishing he were dating Jack instead of Todd, it's not like watching the video makes him a worse boyfriend.

He finally gives in and clicks the video. As expected, Jack's hair is damp and there's sweat clinging to his forehead and his skin is flushed. He looks stupidly sexy. More than that, he looks happy. Not like most guys would after a hattie, but in that little eye-glimmer twitch-of-a-smile way that Eric knows most people don't even see.

That's what really does him in. He's been attracted to Jack for so long that most of the time it's a dull background hum that's easily ignored. Even seeing him like this would normally just have Eric thinking how unfair it is for him to be this hot. But those tiny changes in Jack's expression, those little tells that Eric knows he can read better than 99.9% of people watching this, better even than most of their friends… those are what send a flurry of bubbles through his stomach like champagne. What make his heart ache all over again for what he missed out on.

They're what make him stop the video halfway through, having no idea what Jack said at all, because he gets enough of this when he's with Jack. He doesn't need it when he's not.

Maybe it would be easier if they weren't best friends. If the deep connection they forged in that short time weren't still there, still obvious every time they talk. If it weren't still giving him something to compare every boyfriend to.

A few times, he's thought he might be getting past the infatuation, especially when he's had a crush on another guy—it always comes rushing back, though, reminding him that it never left entirely. But even when he thinks this just might be the time he gets over it, the most important part never wavers: Jack is the best friend he's ever had, and there's something there, a dimension to their friendship that they'd just been starting to discover way back then, that makes Eric wonder, sometimes even doubt, if he could ever be this close to anyone else.

Sometimes he doesn't think he ever wants to be, but that's no way to think. Jack has moved on. The connection is there, unbreakable, but romantically and physically there's no possible way Jack has clung to what might have been the way Eric has, not for this long.

Instead of mooning over the video, he gets ready for bed. Unfortunately, this involves leaving his room for the bathroom down the hall, which means that the frogs finally notice that he's home. He gives them some excuse about Todd's early class and claims the wine is giving him a headache to finally get them off his back. Which is a little bit true—he should know by now that while a glass of red is fine, he usually regrets more. It's not even that late; normally he'd still be up for watching a movie or baking something at this time of night. But instead, he pops some aspirin and downs a bottle of water when he gets back to his room and decides to call it a night.

He's just getting into bed when his phone buzzes.

- You sure I can't get the questions in advance?

- You get to see them in advance.

Eric smiles fondly at the texts.

No, I don't, as a matter of fact.

Well, sort of, but Lardo chose twenty for us from a list of like a hundred and I've barely glanced at the big list.

It takes Jack a minute to reply.

- Fine. I trust Lardo not to choose anything too embarrassing or personal.

Eric glares at his phone.

Mr. Zimmermann, are you suggesting that, given free rein, *I* would make you answer embarrassing personal questions on camera?

- You'd edit them out of the final video, but yes.

Well, he's not wrong.

—

Eric's last class on Friday gets out at two, and he heads right to the train station. Because Jack's kitchen is so fancy, he's filmed several vlog posts there now, and Jack has even appeared in one. That was sort of accidental, in that Jack forgot he was filming and just wandered in and asked if he could help, but he stayed and helped even after he realized what Eric was doing. Unsurprisingly, having a star NHL player make an appearance did wonders for Eric's subscriber numbers, enough that he's now making a little spending money from his ad revenue.

Today he's not going to Providence to film a baking video, though. A "BFF Questions Tag" has been going around foodie YouTube, and Eric's been tagged enough times that he needs to do it before his commenters riot. Thankfully, Jack agreed to do it with him. He seemed touched that Eric asked him, which was sweet but also a little silly that he worried for one second that Eric might be closer to someone else than to him.

"You… sure you don't want to do it with Todd?" Jack had asked hesitantly.

Eric had scoffed. "First, it's best friends tag, not boyfriend tag, that's a whole separate thing. Second—oh please, Mr. Zimmermann. You know full well that my relationship with Todd is nowhere near serious enough to call him my best friend. If you can't do it, I'll probably ask my Mama despite the chirping that'd earn me, then Lardo, Shitty, Chowder, Dex… I dunno, maybe Todd would make the list after that. Well, no, I've been hanging out with Ollie a lot since he moved into the Haus."

Well, Eric hadn't thought their relationship was anywhere near that serious. It certainly still isn't on his end. He cringes as he stares out the train window—does Todd think of Eric as his best friend? Surely not. Todd's way closer to his friends Nate and Alexandra. And he hadn't looked the least bit disappointed when Eric told him about his plans for this video. But then, maybe that was mostly based on the "boyfriend tag is a different thing" angle.

One thing is for sure: He is not discussing Todd, or last night, or anything remotely related, with Jack today. He's sure that Jack would see right through him, and he's not sure he could take Jack looking at him with pity when he realizes that Eric is still hung up on him.

So when Jack asks how dinner was while Eric is setting the camera up, he puts on a happy face and gushes about the food and doesn't say a word about Todd or anything they may have talked about. Jack doesn't bring up Todd or the anniversary specifically, and Eric can't tell if he just doesn't think to, or if Jack can tell he's deflecting.

Half an hour later, they're perched on Jack's sofa together, answering questions about each other. They have to sit fairly close together to fit in the frame, and Eric pretends that every bump of their knees or brush of their arms doesn't send sparks through him. Jack has been on his mind since last night's fiasco, and it's possible he should've rescheduled this.

"Okay, question fifteen: When you first met, what was your first impression of your best friend?" Eric heaves a melodramatic sigh. "Oh, Lord. Lardo knew exactly what she was doing with this one. Well, okay. You saw me as some scrawny, weak little kid who definitely did not belong on your hockey team. And don't you dare try and tell me your thoughts were one iota more charitable than that, Mr. Zimmermann."

"No, that's pretty accurate," Jack says, deadpan as ever. "I'm assuming your first impression of me was that I was a hardass who didn't care about anything other than hockey?"

"Pretty much," Eric says, then pauses. "Although. You know what my very first thought was, the first time I saw you before our first team meeting?"

Jack blinks at him in surprise. "Euh… that my shoes were ugly?"

"You didn't have those yellow monstrosities yet and you know it," Eric says, hitting him on the shoulder. "No, I thought, 'wow, that guy would be really hot if he didn't look like he wanted to pull the stick out of his ass to kill someone with it.'"

Jack cracks up, which for Jack means his shoulders shake and he almost even makes noise.

"You did not."

Eric holds up one hand in an oath. "Swear on Moomaw's grave."

Two years ago, he wouldn't have dreamed of telling Jack something like that. Admitting that he thought a teammate and friend was hot was just about the last thing he ever wanted to do. This is where that kiss and that one desperate weekend in Madison has left them, able to be open with each other about all sorts of things they'd never tell their other friends. Eric can't regret any of it, for how much closer they've become—it's just a shame he can't be honest with Jack about the most important thing.

After they're done giggling, Eric pulls out the next question card.

"Question sixteen: What is one song that always reminds you of your best friend? Oh." The smile drops off his face. "Um."

He knows the answer for him, and most likely for Jack, too: Halo had been playing when they first kissed, and then in Madison they had slow danced to it under the stars, just before the fireworks began. It's not something they've ever talked about—how it was nearly their song, would have been if they hadn't been so stupid. They don't have to; it's just something they both know.

He glances at Jack, who is looking down at the question card with a faraway look in his eye. Eric would almost say wistful, but that's probably his own wishful thinking seeing things that aren't there.

"Oh," Jack says. He glances at Eric, then quickly away. "Maybe… I don't know…"

"Well." Eric picks up his phone. "I'd say we can just lie, but for the life of me I can't think of a single other song right now, so let's just pick a new question." He pulls up the list he gave Lardo. "Give me a number between one and a hundred."

When he looks up, Jack is studying him. Eric has gotten so good at reading Jack over the years, the fact that his face is indecipherable now throws Eric off a bit. Then Jack's eyes shift to the phone, and Eric follows.

"Um, sure, yeah. Uh… fifteen."

Eric pokes him in the side without looking up from the phone. "You are so predictable." Given the chance, Jack uses hockey numbers for everything.

They get a new question and get back on track, but it's clear that something has shifted. It's a good thing that they've only got a few more to go, because Jack seems distracted. He's doing a good job of pretending to still be into it, but something's just off enough for Eric to tell.

But they get through it. Afterward, Jack wanders around, absentmindedly tidying the living room while Eric puts away his tripod and chatters about letting Jack know when it's edited so he can approve the final cut. As Jack walks past, Eric stops him with a hand on his arm.

"You okay, sweetheart? I'm sorry, I shoulda weeded out any questions Lardo needed to avoid, she could'nt've known—"

"It's fine!" Jack blurts out. "It's just a question. I'm just—it's been a long week. I'm tired, it just surprised me. I'm just tired." He pulls his arm away and goes to carry a couple of water glasses to the kitchen.

Eric watches him go. They hadn't really discussed it, but he'd been planning on staying for dinner. Not spending the night—he never spends the night if it's just the two of them, by unspoken agreement. But he's getting an odd vibe from Jack, like maybe he wants to be left alone.

It strikes Eric finally that Jack seems sad. Maybe wistful hadn't been such a bad word before. His heart picks up a notch as he puts his things into his backpack. If thinking about Halo makes Jack sad, maybe he regrets their not getting together, too. Maybe… well, Eric had better be careful about stringing too many of those maybes together. You can be sad about something but still think it was necessary.

Still. It's something to think about. Maybe something to bring up on a different day—a day when they're both in a good mood, a day closer to Eric graduating and starting a new phase in his life. Oh, goodness, maybe a day when he doesn't already have a damn boyfriend would be good.

He takes the fact that he completely forgot about Todd's existence there for a second as a sign that he definitely should not stay for dinner. It's probably also one more sign that he should break up with Todd, but he doesn't feel like dealing with that tonight.

"Well," he calls into the kitchen as he hefts his bag onto his shoulder, "you're tired and I'm tired, so I should probably head back to campus. Are you still gonna be able to make our game next weekend?"

Jack gives him a genuine smile at that. "Of course. Do you still promise to keep me company at the kegster afterward so I don't have to talk to people?"

Eric rolls his eyes fondly. "Of course." He almost adds that he might owe Todd a dance or two, but realizes at the last minute that by next weekend, who knows if Todd will even be speaking to him.

—

He takes an Uber back to the train station. The entire train ride home, he tries not to think about Jack or Todd, instead finding a new game to play on his phone.

Unfortunately, the game sucks. He checks Twitter and Facebook, but it seems as though nothing interesting happened to anyone today. Even the SMH group chat is quiet, other than Dex yelling at everyone to remember to empty the lint tray on the dryer unless they want the Haus to catch fire.

He's got five minutes left on the train, and he should be able to just sit there and stare out the window, but every time he tries, his stomach starts to twist itself up over what to do about Todd. So finally, in desperation, he opens his email, praying that maybe somebody's sent something interesting to the athletic captains' mailing list.

When his inbox loads, he's so surprised that he actually says, "Huh?" out loud.

He has an email from Jack.

He double-checks that he didn't miss any texts from Jack, but he didn't. He has no clue why Jack would be emailing him, of all things.

Dear Bitty, it starts, and Eric smiles at the overly-formal opening.

I'm emailing you because you never check your email on your phone, so I know you won't get this until you're back home.

Eric laughs. Jack has him pegged—normally, he wouldn't have checked his email until he was getting ready for bed, and then only to see if the coaches had sent him anything related to their game tomorrow. Of course, the one time he checks his email on the train.

That way, you're far away when you read it and then you can delete it and we don't have to talk about it, and hopefully by the time I see you next weekend we'll have gotten past the awkwardness and we can pretend it never happened.

Well, now he's got Eric worried.

That question messed with my mood, but not for the reason you think. Or, well, not just because we can't tell thousands of viewers why Halo makes us think of each other. And even though I didn't say anything, I feel like I'm lying to you about it. I feel like I've been lying to you constantly for months now, and it's wearing on me, because you ARE my best friend and lying to you isn't fair to either of us.

The thing is, Halo wasn't even the first song that came to mind. The one that did was way more depressing, and I couldn't get it out of my head. I didn't know the name or artist, so it took me a little while to find it, but here's a link to it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic1l36GrNOU

Eric clicks on the link without thinking, and only realizes after his phone switches to the YouTube app that he probably should have read the rest of the email first.

But the question of whether to go back and read it first is shoved right out of his head when he hears the first strains of This Town come through his earbuds. He freezes for a second, thinking he must be thinking of the wrong song, but when Niall Horan starts singing he gasps.

The train, of course, pulls into the station right then. He tucks the phone away in his pocket and listens to the song as he gathers his things and gets off the train, tears stinging at his eyes the entire time. He makes it out of the station to sit down on the steps before they finally spill over and he pulls the phone back out. The song is nearly over by then, and he restarts it because apparently he isn't in enough pain yet.

For a second he's crying too much to see the screen clearly, but he finally manages to get back to the email app.

I keep hearing that song everywhere, and everything about it reminds me of you. I could have written almost every line of the lyrics.

"Oh, me too, sweetheart," Eric murmurs.

I've made some pretty serious mistakes in my life, but the only thing I truly regret, that I'd definitely go back and change with no idea how it would change my life today, is deciding not to start a relationship with you. The truth is, I've never gotten over you for one day. It was a year and a half ago and I'm an idiot who can't move on, and I feel like I've been lying about it every day since.

I know it's not fair of me to dump this on you. You have a boyfriend, you're happy, this is my problem, not yours. It's just been bothering me more and more, the lying and pretending, and I don't want it to get to the point where it actually damages our friendship.

I don't expect you to reply to this. I think I might prefer if you didn't. It's not your job to comfort me or pity me or whatever, and I don't know if I could take hearing it from you. And I know this will make things awkward for a little while, but like I said, I hope that if I do this now, as soon as you leave, so we have over a week to get past it, by next weekend we'll be good.

Text me tomorrow so I at least know you're still speaking to me, though. I'm sorry.

Love,

Jack

"Oh, Jack," Eric murmurs to himself. "You idiot. But to be fair, me idiot, too."

He checks the train schedule, then sets off in the direction of campus and Todd's dorm, texting him on the way to make sure he's home.

—

Almost exactly two hours after he left, Eric is back in front of the door to Jack's apartment. He stops for a minute to breathe before knocking on the door.

Jack answers the door with a confused frown on his face, which falls off when he sees who it is.

"What are you—how did you get in?"

Eric rolls his eyes. "I followed someone into the building, Jack, honestly."

"Did you, um… I mean, are you here because, uh—" Jack is blushing a little, his expression guarded. Before Jack can ask him whether he read the email, he takes a deep breath and then pushes past Jack into the apartment.

"You know, I know you asked how dinner went last night," he chatters as he enters uninvited, "and I told you all about the food but I didn't mention the biggest event of the night."

Jack asks a polite "Oh?" as he closes the door, but Eric keeps talking right over him.

"I told you we were going out to dinner for our anniversary, right?" Eric drops his backpack (which now contains a change of clothes, but Jack doesn't need to know that yet) in the entryway, barely pausing on his way to the living room. "Six months. We'd been dating six months, and can you believe it, Todd asked me to move in with him after we graduate!"

He shakes his head, still bewildered by it, as he pauses in the middle of the living room.

"Oh, uh." Eric glances at Jack, who has hung back in the doorway. He's rubbing the back of his neck and trying to smile, but it's not quite working. His real smiles are often barely there in the mouth but all in the eyes; this one is more mouth than it should be while his eyes look miserable. "Congratulations."

Eric knows he didn't say that with a tone of celebration or joy, but under the circumstances, he can forgive Jack for not noticing that. "Don't be ridiculous, Jack, I didn't say yes."

Jack freezes, his eyes widening a little. "You didn't?"

"Of course not!" Eric starts pacing the room, wringing his hands. He planned out everything he wants to say on the train, but as always once he starts talking it's impossible to keep it all straight in his head. He'll just have to hope that whatever comes out is intelligible. "I was shocked, honestly. I didn't think our relationship was near that serious—I thought we were just having fun! Then he said he loved me, and the past six months were the best in his life, and well, I felt just awful, because I'm not in love with him and I really had no idea he felt that way.

"And y'know, I talked to Lardo about it last night, because I didn't know what to do. I hadn't been planning on breakin' up with him, but it didn't seem fair to lead him on when I knew I wasn't gonna ever want that with him, y'know? And she was like, well, how do you know you won't want it eventually? And I couldn't really tell her, because the thing is—"

He stops pacing and turns toward Jack, who is still on the other side of the room looking confused but has at least come into the room proper and no longer looks like he wants to be anywhere but here. Eric takes a breath. His heart is pounding, and for half a second he's not sure he can say what he needs to say. But he thinks of Jack's email, and the song, of what they had for such a brief time and what they could have, right now.

"The thing is…" His voice is shaking a little, but he presses on. "I already know what it feels like to find the person you wanna spend the rest of your life with. And I know I'm never gonna feel that way with Todd."

Jack's face goes slack with surprise, and Eric suddenly can't look at him. Instead, he goes back to pacing and handwringing. "So anyhow, I guess—the reason I'm telling you all this stuff first, is because I don't want you to feel guilty at all, 'cause I was pretty sure I was gonna break up with him even before I got your email."

"You got my email?" Jack looks slightly spooked, and as much as that makes Eric feel guilty for being incapable of getting to the point it also makes him want to laugh because really.

"Of course I got your email!" he says, throwing his hands in the air. "You really think I came all the way back here just because I forgot to tell you I'm not moving in with my boyfriend this summer? Anyhow, so yeah, I just went and broke up with him, and I probably woulda put it off for a few days otherwise but this really was comin' either way. So I just—just so you know. You didn't—you didn't break us up or anything, but let's be real, you could've."

Eric laughs a little, and he's losing the thread here. "You coulda sent me that email anytime in the past six months and I woulda tossed his poor ass to the curb in a minute." He doesn't miss the almost-smile that flickers over Jack's mouth. "But that's not really the point. The point is—" Eric goes to stand in front of Jack, who's starting to look a bit overwhelmed, and puts his hands on his arms. "I think you should say them now."

Jack's face immediately goes back to confusion. "What?"

"That song, it goes, I wanna tell you everything, the words I never got to say the first time around. Whatever it is you didn't get to say to me the first time? Say it now, Jack."

Jack blinks at him for a second, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times. Eric definitely wasn't as coherent as he could've been, but he thinks he got the general message across, so he waits for Jack's brain to catch up with the deluge he just hit it with.

Jack swallows, and his face finally smooths out. He moves his arms until they're hand-in-hand, then opens his mouth again, and pauses. Eric smiles and waits.

"Will you marry me?" he finally says.

Eric's brain trips over its own feet.

"Yes!"

Eric blurts it out before he even realizes he's going to say anything, then he gasps and claps his hands over his mouth.

They stare at each other for a moment, both wide-eyed with shock. There's nothing on Jack's face that suggests he was anything other than serious. He looks as stunned as Eric, but… hopeful. So Eric is hopeful, too. He lowers his hands slowly, a small smile on his lips.

"That is not what I thought you were gonna say."

"That's not what I thought I was gonna say, either," Jack admits. "Wait, what did you think I was gonna say?"

"Well, I was kinda hoping for 'I love you' or something," Eric says, threading his fingers back through Jack's.

Jack narrows his eyes. "You were going to respond to 'I love you' with 'Yes'?"

"What? No, of course not!" Eric rolls his eyes. "I was gonna say 'I love you, too.' That was in response to what you actually said."

"Oh," is all Jack says. He's quiet for a moment, and Eric lets him be. "So you mean it?"

"Did you?" Eric's heart is racing, and while he wants the answer to be yes, the idea also kind of terrifies him.

"Yes," Jack says quietly, eyes never wavering from Eric's. "I didn't mean to say it, it just sort of came out, but I meant it."

Tears sting Eric's eyes. "Me, too."

They stand there, caught in each other's gaze, as what just happens sinks in.

"Oh my God, Jack," Eric finally says. His smile is wide but shaky. "Oh my God!" He throws himself at Jack, burying his face in Jack's neck, and Jack holds him tightly. He's not sure which of them is trembling slightly, but it might be both of them.

He breathes Jack in, and suddenly this is real. He said what he came here to say, and now they're going to spend the rest of their lives together, come hell or high water. And Jack wants it as much as he does. Jack's suffered as much as he has, and they never have to again. This is… it. Everything he's wanted for so long now, all at once.

"I love you," Jack breathes into his hair.

Eric laughs as he pulls back, wiping away some of the tears from his cheeks. "Well, I was kinda hoping that was implied!"

"Haha, yeah." Jack doesn't let him pull too far away; he keeps Eric's torso pinned against his, which is just fine with Eric. "But now I can say it whenever I want."

"Mr. Zimmermann, are those tears in your eyes?"

Jack's laugh is more of a silent explosion of air as he reaches up to swipe at one eye. "Of course they are, Bittle, I just got engaged!"

That sets Eric off, both giggling and crying anew. "Oh my God, Jack, we're really doing this, aren't we? Wait, don't answer that—you already asked me, there's no take backs!"

And that's when Jack finally kisses him.

It's been so long since Eric kissed Jack Zimmermann. He's kissed several boys since then, and a couple were very good kissers. But this. This is like getting in a hot shower after a hard game, when the water pours over his tired, sore muscles and he doesn't know why he ever left the shower to go get all beat up in the first place. It feels good in a way that makes him wonder how he ever managed to give it up.

When they finally pull back, he smirks as Jack nuzzles against him.

"Just think, honey," he says sweetly, "for the rest of our lives, this will be how you proposed to me."

Jack's eyes fly open. "It doesn't have to be," he says quickly. He tries to straighten up, but Eric keeps him bent down close. "I can plan a real one if you want."

"Oh, no! Don't you dare!" Eric digs his fingertips into Jack's shoulders. "I said no take backs, and I meant on the whole thing! This is our story now, like it or not."

Jack relaxes into his embrace. "I don't care, just so we've got a story."

They kiss a bit more, and Eric is just starting to think about prodding Jack in the direction of the bedroom when Jack pulls back.

"So, now that you're not moving in with Todd when you graduate, do you wanna move in here?"

"It's a good thing you asked," Eric chirps, "'cause I was just gonna show up after the graduation ceremony with all my stuff, and good luck gettin' rid of me then."

"Works for me," Jack says, and Eric might just melt at the love in this boy's eyes. Then, suddenly, they change, looking unsure. "This is—you—you're not just—never mind," Jack finally says, shaking his head.

"No," Eric says firmly, thumbs rubbing gentle circles against the back of Jack's neck. "What is it?"

"Even if it makes me sound clingy and insecure?" Jack is half-smiling, trying to sound like he's joking, but his eyes still say he's not.

"Sweetpea, if you can't be clingy and insecure with me, who can you be clingy and insecure with?"

Jack's smile grows a little. "It's just… anxiety brain. This is real? You really do want this? You're not just… taking pity on me?"

Eric's eyes widen. "Jack Zimmermann, I might go on a date with a boy out of pity, but I absolutely would not marry someone!"

"It's just… this… really isn't what I was expecting. I didn't send that email trying to get you back," Jack insists. "I knew—or I thought I knew that wasn't happening. You'd moved on."

Eric shakes his head. "You moved on. I thought you must have."

"Never." Jack runs his fingers down Eric's face so softly it almost tickles. "I'll never leave you. I'll never fuck this up again, I swear."

"We won't," Eric says, putting all the conviction he feels into it. "We both helped mess it up last time, and we know better now. Jack, when I say I'll marry you, that's what I mean." He grabs Jack's hands and holds them against his chest. It's so important that Jack understand this. "I want to promise to put us ahead of everything else. We'll both have to compromise sometimes, and we'll have to negotiate things, and sometimes it'll be hard, but in the end, I promise that any time there's a choice, I'll choose us. Even if I worry that it might cost you something, or might cost me something for that matter—that's life. Even if one of us does fuck up, and I'm sure we will. You're the most important person in my life, and I want to commit to building a future on that. No matter what."

"Me, too," Jack says softly. "All of that, every word of it—you get to write our vows, you're way better at this than me."

Eric laughs, then leans into Jack's chest and lets Jack's hands go so they can wrap around him. "Good Lord, Jack. We're doing this. We're gonna get married. I can't believe we almost missed this," he whispers, and just like that he's crying again.

"But we didn't," Jack says. "That's all that matters. We broke it, and now we've fixed it. I'm going to marry you, and I'm going to work so hard to make you happy, Bits."

Eric laughs and wipes away the fresh tears, then looks up at Jack. "You know what would make me happy right now? Or happier than I already am, at least?"

Jack smiles like he probably knows what Eric is going to say. "What's that?"

"If you took me back to that gorgeous, huge bed of yours so we can properly celebrate—" Eric cuts off with a yelp as Jack scoops him up and carries him off.

—

Eric wakes up the next morning with something heavy on top of him. He blinks his eyes open and is about to shove whatever it is away when he realizes it's Jack's arm, which must weigh at least twice as much as Todd's. So instead he snuggles backwards into the embrace, smiling into the comforter.

The movement causes Jack to stir, and he pulls Eric closer.

"Mmmm, you're here," Jack mumbles into the back of Eric's neck.

Eric snorts. "Where else would I be? Nowhere on earth comfier, I'll tell you that."

Jack grunts and snuggles even closer. "I had a dream you freaked out and ran off in the middle of the night to go back to Todd."

"Oh, sweetheart." Eric turns around in Jack's arms and stares up into sleepy blue eyes. "That'll never happen. Any of it. I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with you and that is that. I've told you, I'm not stupid enough to screw this up twice."

"Me neither," Jack says, and leans in to kiss him. But before it can get too heated, Eric pulls back.

"I do, however, need to pee. I'll be right back."

He pees, washes his hands, and then uses a little mouthwash to stave off the worst of the morning breath. On his way back to the bed, he spots his phone lying on Jack's floor.

"Oh, crap, look at that, I forgot to plug this in last night!" He picks it up and Jack unplugs his own phone. Eric plugs the charger into his as Jack goes to take his turn in the bathroom.

Jack is just sliding back into bed when Eric's phone boots up—and almost immediately starts ringing.

"Huh," Eric says. "It's Lardo." He sits up to answer it as Jack's arms wrap around his waist. "Hey, Lards, what's up? You're not usually up before noon on a Saturday."

"Bro, are you ignoring your texts or what? Why didn't you pick up when Chowder called?"

"What? Sorry, I forgot to plug my phone in last night, I just got it turned on. Did something happen? Is everyone okay?" He absentmindedly plays with Jack's hair with one hand as Jack frowns up at him.

"Yeah, everyone's fine, they just couldn't find you," she says. "Nobody saw you last night, but they all assumed you were with Todd. The frogs were gonna go get brunch this morning so they texted you to go with them, and when you didn't reply they texted Todd since they were gonna invite both of you anyhow. But Todd claimed you dumped him last night, which I think was a shock to everyone but me. And you still weren't replying to texts or picking up when they called. So they called here to see if you were staying with us, and I figured I'd try you one more time before I called Jack to see if you were in Providence."

"Oh, goodness," Eric sighs. "Yes, I'm in Providence. I stayed with Jack last night. I'm fine. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to worry everyone! I shoulda let someone know where I was going, I guess."

"I'm just glad you're okay," Lardo says. "So you finally decided to pull the plug, huh?"

Eric sighs again. Jack relaxes against him now that it's clear there's no emergency at the Haus. "Yeah. We wanted different things, and I didn't wanna lead him on, y'know?"

He and Jack haven't really talked enough about what to tell their friends, or when. What little they did have of that conversation, they were both struggling not to fall back into their previous self-sacrificing positions. They managed to agree that they won't hide it from their friends for long, but that's as far as they've gotten. So Eric has no plans to lie to Lardo about anything, but he probably shouldn't spill the beans before they've talked a little more.

"Fair enough," Lardo says. "How're you doing?"

"Oh, I'm fine," Eric says. "You know it's been coming. I feel a little guilty, I guess—he seemed pretty darn upset—but as far as the actual breakup goes, no regrets."

There's a slight pause. "Bits. You sure? You had a Haus full of friends to go home to, and instead you took a forty minute train ride to hang out with Jack. Without telling anyone either what happened with Todd or that you were heading to Providence for the night. I know he's your best friend, but you don't really go to him about romantic stuff usually."

"Oh, I—" Eric bites back a yelp as Jack suddenly nips at the side of his waist. He covers the phone with one hand as Jack continues to nibble at him. "Jack," he whispers, "what are you—hey—stop it!" Jack looks up at him, grinning. "Behave!"

"Sorry about that. Um. Where was I?" The truth is, he's not even really sure what to say to her. "Right, um. I don't know, I just…"

As he trails off, Jack chuckles and nuzzles at his side. Eric sucks in a sharp breath and preemptively wiggles away a little before Jack can go chewing on him again, but that only prompts more laughter.

"…Bits? Bitty."

"Uh huh?" Eric asks as he shoves Jack away, not near as hard as the boy deserves.

"Just for clarification's sake, are you currently, right at this moment, in Jack Zimmermann's apartment, or in Jack Zimmermann's bed?"

Eric freezes. "Um."

"Bitty."

"Well, I…"

Jack notices his sudden change in demeanor and stops messing around to frown up at him. Eric runs his fingers through Jack's hair as he tries to figure out what, exactly, to tell Lardo. As far as he knew, she didn't even know Jack is bi, so he's not sure how she's guessed that—

"Eric Bittle, please tell me you did not dump your boyfriend and then immediately run off to have a rebound hookup with your best friend."

"Larissa Duan, this is not a rebound hookup," he blurts out as his offense overrides his common sense for a moment. As soon as it comes out, he snaps his mouth shut before anything worse can follow. He looks down at Jack with panicked eyes, hoping that maybe his newly-minted fiancé can help.

Jack just laughs louder, falling away from Eric and back onto his pillow.

At the very least, Eric relaxes a bit at the knowledge that Jack is apparently okay with Lardo knowing and he hasn't just fucked everything up.

"So you fucked Jack." Lardo's voice is completely flat, and Eric can't tell over the phone if she's chirping him or actually pissed off.

"No! I mean. Not. That. Exactly." He cringes. Not the clarification she was looking for. "I—Jack and I are dating now, okay? Yes, we slept together, but it wasn't some random hookup." He huffs. "I mean, give me a little credit here, Lardo."

Jack snuggles back against him, clearly amused with the whole thing but at least not openly laughing anymore.

"Oh sure, not like you'd do something stupid like jump from one serious relationship to another in the span of a few hours," Lardo counters. "Fuck. If I'd known you were going down there I would've stopped you. I knew Jack had a thing for you, but I figured you guys were, like, responsible adults enough to not be each other's rebound relationship."

"Lardo, like I said, it's not a rebound thing—"

"Tell her we're engaged," Jack says, definitely loud enough for Lardo to hear. Eric slaps a hand over his eyes. "She has good taste, she can help us pick out rings."

"Are you enjoying this?" Eric hisses, not bothering to cover the phone. It's clear from the look on his face that Jack is, in fact, enjoying this. "I'm the one getting read the riot act—"

"I definitely did not hear that right," Lardo says. "Jack did not just say what I think he said."

"Lards, it's complicated," Eric whines. "Can we just enjoy this for a little while before everyone starts tryin' to talk sense into us?"

Jack motions for the phone as he sits up, and Eric happily hands it over.

"Lardo, it's fine—No, Jesus, we weren't drunk! …No. Lardo, you know I wouldn't do that." Jack finally heaves a sigh. "Fine, I—" He pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it. "She announced that she and Shitty will be here in an hour or so, and then hung up."

Eric groans and falls over, against Jack's bare chest. "Couldn't we get one day? One damn day before our friends nose their way into our business?"

"They love us, and they don't know the whole story so they think they're trying to keep us from making a huge mistake that could cost us our friendship," Jack replies as he strokes Eric's hair. "I'm pretty sure Lardo thinks that you came here because you were distressed about dumping Todd, so you were all vulnerable and I unintentionally took advantage of that by not stopping you from throwing yourself at me."

"I wasn't distressed," Eric says. "I felt guilty, yeah. I already kinda felt like a heel for wanting to dump him when he wanted to get more serious, and then it turned out I went and dumped him for another guy, of course I felt guilty! But I wasn't upset like I would be if I were in love with him or something. And I've known I'd take you over anyone else, including Todd, for a long time now. It's not like it was a split-second decision!"

"I know," Jack says, his voice low and soothing. "We'll explain the whole story, and I think they'll realize that this isn't a mistake. They'll probably still freak out about the engaged thing, but whatever."

Eric snorts. "Whatever indeed." Then he remembers something Lardo said and sits up to look at Jack properly. "She said she knew you had a thing for me. You didn't mention that, I thought you were pretty much 100% in the closet."

Jack shrugs. "It would've come out if we'd talked about how to tell people for more than a couple minutes." He pulls Eric back toward him, and Eric climbs into his lap to be held close. "It was last summer, that last kegster at Shitty's place before they all moved into Haus 2.0 and school started? And you brought Todd; that was the first time we all got to meet him. I was extra moody, I guess, because we'd both been single for like a month and I'd been thinking about talking to you about it, thinking maybe there was a chance—but you started dating him before I could get up the nerve. I think I put on a happy face enough to fool most people, but Lardo caught me watching you when you weren't looking. So she pulled me outside, and I didn't tell her about our history, just that I'd realized I had feelings for you and I'd been thinking about asking you out and I was happy that you were happy but also bummed that I'd missed my chance. So. I think she knows I'd never intentionally take advantage of you, but she also thinks I've been sitting around waiting for you and Todd to break up so I could swoop in."

Eric laughs at the image of Jack swooping in to scoop him up and carry him away from Todd. "If I'd just broken up with him normally—and I was a few days from doing that, max—you think you would've swooped in?"

"Of course not," Jack says. "I mean, you wouldn't be heartbroken or anything so there wouldn't be that to deal with, but I would've waited until you were clearly past it. Instead, you're the one who swooped in."

"I am not the one who proposed," Eric reminds him. Jack nuzzles his hair.

"Only after you basically told me you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me."

Eric starts kissing Jack's neck. "Well, if Shitty and Lardo are gonna be here in an hour, we better take advantage of what little time we have."

—

Eric is just finishing up some no-rise cinnamon rolls when Jack buzzes Shitty and Lardo up. He's never been so nervous to see two of his best friends, and the cinnamon rolls didn't quite get all the nerves out. He pops them in the oven and wipes off his hands as there's a knock on Jack's door.

By the time he gets out of the kitchen, Shitty is tackling Jack in a hug. As soon as he sees Eric, he somehow manages to drag Jack over under one arm and snag Eric with the other, forcing them into a group hug that's more of a group headlock.

"I don't know whether I should kiss you both or crack your heads together for doing something so fucking ridiculous," he says, sounding choked up.

"I vote for the one that's less likely to give me a concussion," Eric says as he tries to wriggle out of Shitty's grasp. Jack just laughs and grabs Shitty around the waist, prompting Shitty to let go of Eric so he can use both hands on Jack. Within moments, they're down on entryway rug and Eric has to jump over somebody's leg to get out of their way. He goes over to stand with Lardo where she's watching the whole mess in the doorway to the living room.

Lardo sighs. "I'd use this as evidence against you, but I'm dating one of them, too, so I don't really have any room to talk."

"You're dating the one who started it," Eric points out.

"Jack starts it at least a third of the time," she says, bumping his hip with her own. She glances down at the wrestling idiots, then lowers her voice. "Bits, look, I'm happy for you guys, and cards on the table I do think you belong together. But that's exactly why I don't want to see you rush into something when you're still raw from the whole Todd thing."

Eric sighs. "It's a longer story than you realize, Lards. Let's collect our man-children and we'll tell you all about it."

Lardo whistles loudly, prompting Jack and Shitty to stop rolling around on the floor and look up at her. "Time to wrap up your elaborate mating ritual, boys."

"Aw, mom," Shitty whines as he disentangles himself from Jack. They all freeze. "Never mind, that got weird."

"I mean, you're into what you're into, man," Jack says with a shrug as he stands up, which very nearly starts the wrestling match all over again.

They finally make their way into Jack's living room, where Shitty and Lardo plop down messily on the loveseat half in each other's laps, like they usually do. Jack takes a seat on his couch, and a thrill runs through Eric as he realizes that he can sit as close as he wants, touch as much as he wants—though maybe not to the extent of Shitty and Lardo's tangle. Not really his style. He sits down pressed up against Jack's side and blushes when Jack immediately puts an arm around him. His stomach swoops as he settles a hand on Jack's knee—this is real, Shitty and Lardo are right there looking at them while they act like a normal, affectionate couple. Jack smiles down at him and he's sure the smile he gives back makes him look like a lovesick puppy.

"Shit, bro," Lardo says quietly, shaking her head. "I mean, I figured it'd happen eventually, but it's almost weird how not-weird it is to see you two like that."

"I, on the other hand, had no idea that there was any chance of this ever happening," Shitty chimes in. "Yet I must concur with the assessment—weird in its not-weirdness."

Eric isn't sure what to say to that, so he just bites his lip and shrugs. He figures they should just tell their story, but he doesn't know where to start. Thankfully, Shitty is, of course, ready to steer the conversation.

"Okay," he says, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees (which looks difficult with the way Lardo's leg is thrown over his). "So here are the facts as I understand them. Sometime this summer, Jack realizes he has feelings for Bitty, but before he can get his shit together and ask Bitty out, Bitty starts dating Todd, so Jack backs off because he's a fucking gentleman. I'll skip the part where I give you grief for not confiding in me about this because apparently I was too drunk to notice your sad stares until Lardo explained the whole sitch to me this morning, so that's my own fault. Bitty and Todd were going along just fine until the other day when Todd asks Bitty to move in with him, and Bitty panics and calls Lardo about it. As of then, you were considering dumping him, but hadn't made any firm decisions yet. Am I doing okay so far?"

Jack makes a noncommittal noise.

"You're off on at least one thing," Bitty says, "but I wanna hear the full version of what you think happened first."

Lardo's eyebrows lift at the assertion that Shitty is wrong about something, but she doesn't say anything.

"Huh," is all Shitty says in reply before launching back into his own story. "So yesterday, Bitty decides to cut things off with Todd. We know that this wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision, he's been considering it for a couple days, but we don't know why he didn't tell anyone he was about to do it, or that he'd done it, or where he went after he did it. After dumping Todd, he goes to visit his best friend, which is a reasonable thing to do after breaking up with someone, though not what he usually does. Jack must have confessed his feelings at that point, and somewhere in there you two not only decided to jump right into a relationship but from what I hear there's at least some chance you're considering yourselves engaged at this point?"

Jack blushes and glances down at Eric with a slightly sheepish smile.

"Yeah," Eric says, smiling back up at him. "We're engaged." He can feel tears start to sting at his eyes as he says it. He clears his throat and looks back at Shitty. "Okay, first thing you've got wrong is Jack realizing he had feelings for me last summer. He didn't realize it then. That's just when he was thinking about talking to me about it. He was thinking about asking for a second chance."

Shitty immediately sits up straight as Lardo's eyes widen.

"You guys already broke up once?" Lardo asks, frowning. "No offense, but that doesn't make this seem like a better idea."

"No," Jack says. "No breakup. We were never officially together."

They tell the story of the kiss, the weeks afterward when they both thought they were heading toward a relationship, the trip to Madison, and the mistakes they made there.

"We thought we were doing the mature, responsible thing," Jack adds once they've explained. "We were being adults about it."

"I mean, it wasn't exactly immature or irresponsible," Shitty says. "It just fucking sucks."

"So we didn't see each other in person for a few months, and we didn't spend any time alone together for even longer," Jack continues. "And we both just assumed the other got over it."

"But we didn't," Eric says, looking up at Jack. He takes his hand from Jack's knee to reach up and cling to the hand wrapped around his shoulder. "Not for one minute." Jack gazes back down at him, and emotion wells up in him at the thought of what they almost missed. "We've been best friends ever since, closer than we ever were at Samwell, closer'n either of us has been to anyone we've dated. Hopelessly in love and convinced we'd missed our chance."

Jack's other hand comes up to touch Eric's face. They sit there for a moment, lost in each other, before Lardo clears her throat.

"Touching story, bros—and I'm not even being sarcastic—but we're still here, so please don't start making out yet."

Eric levels a look at her. "Let me remind you that you were not invited here. You chose of your own free will to come try to have a conversation with two people who are twelve hours into a new relationship."

"Fair," she says. "But okay. So you two had a history already. You knew there was at least a chance Jack had feelings for you—doesn't that make running here after you dumped Todd an even worse idea? And Jack, this in no way gets you off the hook, either. On the one hand, I'm happy you guys figured your shit out, but I'm still worried that jumping into a relationship just because Bitty isn't dating Todd anymore is gonna blow up in your faces."

"That's not why we—" Eric sighs. "I didn't come here after I dumped Todd looking for comfort. I dumped Todd so that I could come here and tell Jack that I wanted to be with him."

"I thought you dumped Todd because you 'wanted different things,'" Lardo says with a smirk.

"Well, sure. He wanted to move in with me, I wanted to date Jack. Pretty simple."

Eric explains that he'd been over for the video, and how Jack had emailed him after he left. He doesn't mention the song; it feels private, like something just for the two of them.

"And it wasn't a sudden decision for either of us," Jack adds. "It's what we've both wanted for a really long time. It's been at least a year since we both realized how badly we screwed up in Madison, and we've both spent that whole time just wishing the other one felt the same way."

"The truth is, I would've dumped Todd in an instant at any moment since our first date if Jack had said the word," Eric says. "I know that makes me an asshole, but it's true."

"Okay," Shitty says. "I will allow that maybe, under these particular very unique circumstances, getting together immediately after a breakup is understandable. Still not convinced it was the best way to go about things, but it's done now. But what the fuck is up with this jumping right to getting married thing? I love you guys, but that's fucking insane and I think you both know it."

"We're not gonna run off and elope next week," Eric says, rolling his eyes. "Do you know how long it takes to plan a wedding? It has to be in the off-season, and there's no way in hell I'm planning a wedding in six months, so we've got a year and a half, bare minimum, before we actually say any vows. And we can't even start planning in earnest until our families know, and really not until we're ready for it to be public-public, so maybe longer'n that. The last thing we need is for Jack to get outed because a florist talked to a tabloid."

"I don't think we're in any rush to sign the papers," Jack says, "we just know that's what we want, so why pretend it's not?"

"Bits, you literally told me two days ago that you weren't ready for that kind of commitment," Lardo says.

"No," Eric cuts in before she can continue, "you said that. I said I didn't want that with Todd. And I even told you then, I knew how I wanted to feel when I found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. That's cause I'd already felt it. I knew that if I ever got another chance with Jack, it'd be forever."

"If we hadn't screwed up in Madison, this is where we'd be," Jack says. "We're just… putting things back where they should be. If we'd been dating that whole time, I probably wouldn't propose until graduation, but I'd definitely be planning it by now."

Shitty and Lardo just stare at them, lips pursed and eyebrows knit in weirdly similar expressions. Eric leans his head on Jack's shoulder and stares back, not even trying to control his smile.

"So you're not, like, planning to announce this whole engagement thing yet?" Lardo finally asks. "'Cause Jack seemed pretty eager to tell me."

"You're you," Jack says. "Obviously we trust you guys. We still have a lot of people to tell just that we're even dating, and we haven't really gotten a chance to talk about who we'll tell what and when. We'll figure it out as we go along."

"I am not calling up my mother and telling her hey, guess what, I'm engaged to a different boy than I was dating last week!" Eric says. "I don't have a death wish."

Shitty sighs extravagantly. "I gotta admit, if any of our friends were gonna pull this kind of shit, it was you two."

"…Thank you?" Jack says.

"And I guess as long as you promise you're not actually gonna tie the knot anytime soon—"

"We're not," they both interject.

"—I can't be too upset." He abruptly stands up, half knocking Lardo over. "My two best bros are in love! This is fucking awesome!" He bounds over to the couch where they're sitting, and Eric barely has time to brace himself before they both have lapfuls of Shitty and are getting their faces covered in messy kisses.

Thankfully, the timer goes off in the kitchen and Eric has the perfect excuse to extract himself while Shitty continues to ply Jack with cuddles and sappy exclamations.

"Gimme five minutes to get some icing on these," he calls to the living room as he pulls the cinnamon rolls out of the oven, "then you're welcome to eat them—and then go. My fiancé is leaving town in four hours and I won't see him for days. I love you both, but I can hang out with y'all tomorrow."

—

Telling people, as it turns out, is a little more complicated than they'd anticipated in their giddy first few days together. They don't say anything about getting married, but the fact remains that Eric is planning to move in with Jack in less than four months. Somehow it doesn't really occur to them that this is the kind of thing they'd need to announce; it just seems obvious. Their Samwell friends, at least, seem to assume it once they find out the two are dating.

Their parents are another story. They tell both sets of parents they're dating fairly soon after they get together, and both are thrilled for them. Eric had a few rough months with his mama and Coach after he first came out to them last summer, but they'd had some much-needed conversations over Christmas and things have gotten much better. It turns out, they didn't even realize he was still dating Todd; apparently Eric never talks about him, so they just assumed it had flamed out.

A couple of months later is when the shit hits the fan.

"Have you started looking for jobs yet?" his mother asks him over Skype.

"A bit," Eric hedges. "I'm pretty focused on playoffs and my thesis, y'know."

"I know you've got a couple of months left, but you don't have that much saved up and I know you don't want to have to move back in with us."

Eric told his parents back at Christmas that he's planning to stay up north after graduation; he'd braced for a bigger fight than they ever had about his sexuality, but to his shock they'd taken it in stride.

"Son, we knew the moment you got your acceptance letter that you weren't coming back to Madison," Coach had said, leaving Eric speechless.

"I know, Mama," he says now, "but I'm only gonna be paying the utilities at Jack's and that's only because I insisted. But I do have several sites with Providence job listings bookmarked, and I am checking them now and then."

It's not until he finishes talking that he notices his mother's expression, eyebrows raised and an unspoken oh, really? in the set of her mouth.

"Jack's?" she finally asks.

"Well, yeah. I'm… moving to his place. You didn't know that?" Eric wracks his brain. Has he really not mentioned this? Not once?

"When in the two whole months you've been dating did Jack ask you to move in with him?" Mama's eyebrows have not lowered one millimeter.

"Um." Eric may not have anticipated his mother's response like he should have, but he's not that stupid. He knows that "five minutes after we got engaged and thus started dating" is very much not the right answer. "He didn't really have to ask, we both just sort of, y'know. Assumed?" He's pretty sure that's how it would've worked if Jack hadn't asked that night. "I mean, I gotta move somewhere, right?"

Mama sighs, closing her eyes as she shakes her head in a way that Eric knows means Lord give me patience. He cringes a little.

"Dicky, I know you and Jack have known each other for a long time," she says with an even tone of forced patience, "and you know I think he's a lovely boy and I'm so glad you're happy together. But you absolutely cannot move in with a boy you've been dating for two months!"

Eric opens his mouth to point out that it will be four months by the time he graduates, then closes it again because that definitely will not help matters.

"I thought I raised you to be more practical than that!"

It would also not help matters to point out that saving on rent is extremely practical.

"This isn't the kind of thing you should be rushing into! Especially you moving into his place. I know you don't want to think about it, but if the two of you do break up, you're the one who'll be out in the cold! What'll you do then, with a job in Providence and all your other friends up in Boston or at Samwell?"

"That's not going to happen," he starts, but is immediately interrupted.

"That's the problem, Dicky, is that two months isn't long enough for you to know that. And the fact that you think it is worries me."

"Call me optimistic, mother. But if it did, isn't it better that I'll have had the time to save up by only paying a couple hundred in utilities a month? Do you know how expensive rent is here? And if I need to crash with my other friends, it's not like Boston is across the country—lots of people commute between Boston and Providence."

Mama turns her nose up at this defense. "Well, you certainly shouldn't be moving in with your new boyfriend just to save a little on rent money."

"That's not why I'm moving in with him!" Eric says, throwing his hands up in frustration. "It's a useful side effect! I'm moving in with him because I love him and he's my best friend in the world—he was my best friend before we started dating, you know that. And there's nothing I want more than to have my best friend right there with me, when I wake up and when I cook dinner and when bad things happen and when good things happen."

"That's just such a lot to put on a brand new relationship," she says. She looks more worried than annoyed now, which Eric supposes is some kind of improvement. "These first few months, you two shouldn't be thinking about that kind of commitment! You should be enjoying yourselves. Feeling things out, working out what a relationship even means for you. You don't need those kinds of expectations weighing things down."

"If we'd just met when our friends set us up on a date, then of course," Eric says. "How long had you known Coach before your first date?"

"You know how we met," she says. "That math class in college, I'd been tutoring him for half the semester before he asked me out on a proper date."

"So you'd known each other for what, two or three months? I've known Jack for nearly four years, and he's been my closest friend for nearly two of those. And—" He takes a deep breath. "—we've had feelings for each other for a long time, Mama. We've been in love for a long time. We just neither of us quite knew how to say it, or when the time was right."

Mama sighs, but Eric can tell she knows she's losing this fight. "I still don't like it, Dicky," she says, shaking her head.

"I know," he says. "But if it's a mistake, it's our mistake to make, okay? We're adults."

We've already screwed this up once, and we're not going to do it again, he doesn't add. The last thing he needs is Mama realizing what he and Jack got up to during that Fourth of July visit.

When he tells Jack about the conversation later that evening in Providence, the way Jack's face goes slightly slack says it all.

"Oh, sweetpea," Eric says with an amused grin, "you haven't told your parents I'm moving in either, have you?"

"I just… I assumed… I guess I assumed they would assume…"

When Jack tells them the next day, Bob and Alicia take the news much better than Eric's mother had. Jack tells Eric later that their first reaction was still "So soon?", but after that he didn't even have to say much.

"You have been friends for such a long time," Alicia had said.

"He is graduating. It's a good time for big life changes, eh?" Bob had pointed out.

In the end, they'd talked themselves into accepting it more than Jack had. Eric can't help but be jealous sometimes—he loves his parents, he really, truly does, but it sure would be nice if they could be a little less old-fashioned, like the Zimmermanns.

—

- Were you fucking him the whole time?

- You spent so much time with him, I'm such an idiot. I can't believe I didn't see this coming. I fucking bought that he was straight!

Eric blinks at the text messages. He hasn't spoken to Todd in any form since they broke up five months ago. They somehow never bothered to unfriend each other on Facebook, so he has the vague idea that he's working for a marketing firm in the suburbs up in New Hampshire. Eric assumes that's the kind of life Todd imagined for them—a suburban apartment, nine-to-five jobs, hiking on the weekends. It seems to suit Todd well enough, but Eric doesn't exactly feel like he's missing out.

Though at the moment, he has to admit that a secluded hike in Vermont might be a welcome change from the nonstop pace of the past few days. Maybe he and Jack should look for a bed and breakfast once things have calmed down.

Eric pushes the thought aside with a sigh. He can't say he's shocked by Todd's question. He probably should've expected something like this, but it's just about the least of the unintended consequences he and Jack didn't exactly think through carefully before kissing on live television after the Falconers won the Cup four days ago.

Jesus Christ, of course not. Jack and I started dating after you and I broke up.

- Just tell me the truth. It's not like I'm going to run off and tell a tabloid. You guys are the darlings of LGBT media right now anyhow, nobody would believe I wasn't just a bitter ex making shit up.

Eric clenches his jaw and breathes out slowly through his nose before replying.

It's the truth, whether you want to believe it or not. Yes, I had feelings for Jack while I was dating you. No, I never acted on them. Did you notice I never once spent the night in Providence alone? Yes, I'm an asshole for breaking up with you and basically going straight to him, but I'm not a cheater.

He never gets a reply.

"Have you heard from Parse?" he asks Jack later that night, on their way home from yet another celebratory dinner.

"No," Jack says. "Who knows if I will. I'm sure he's had plenty of reporters calling to see if he 'knew about' me, maybe even asking about us, but he hasn't said a word anywhere. My guess is that he's planning to lie low until the season starts and hope everyone's moved on by then. Which will probably work until our first game against the Aces."

"I'm sure he doesn't remember meeting me," Eric muses. "If he does, I bet I'm about the last person he expected to see doing that."

"I don't know about that," Jack mutters. Eric waits for him to say more, waits for his jaw to unclench and his knuckles to relax where they've tightened on the steering wheel. "That was his… this thing he did. Before we even started hooking up, we'd go to parties and as soon as I started dancing or flirting with a girl he'd be all over me, demanding my attention. And then the first two times he visited me at Samwell, there was a party at the Haus—I don't even know how he knew. And both times, he pulled the same shit, didn't talk to me until I was talking to a girl. Some kind of jealous power play. That night I assumed he'd just broken his pattern—didn't have time to wait for that, or whatever. It wasn't until months later that I realized he must have seen something that I didn't even see yet then."

Eric snorts. "Kent Parson knew we were a thing before we knew we were a thing. Lord. Even Todd didn't notice, apparently."

"Oh? Todd?"

"He texted me today asking if I was cheating on him with you. Which I guess I should've seen coming. I still don't know if he believes I didn't. But anyhow, he had no idea we were interested in each other."

Jack shrugs. "I guess Kent just knew me better than Todd knew you. He was my best friend at one point. Todd… didn't even know you well enough to know that you'd freak out if he asked you to move in with him."

Eric has to laugh a little at that. "I guess so. Not like he's the weirdest person from my past to come out of the woodwork in the past few days. Lord, I do not want to look at my Facebook messages. Like, ever."

"Camilla emailed me," Jack says suddenly. "It was… weird. I mean, it's not that weird that she emailed me, but the email was weird. It was long and rambly, which isn't really like her. She said how I couldn't stop talking about you while she and I were dating but she kept telling herself it didn't mean anything because I was straight. Then it kind of veered into how she kept telling herself she was straight, and eventually wandered into the fact that she has a girlfriend now."

"Well, good for her, I suppose."

"And then it went into an apology because apparently she's a lesbian and feels bad for making me think she was into guys when she didn't realize she wasn't. But, like… looking back on our relationship, that explains… all of it, actually. Our relationship looked like if two gay people got together to try to act straight. Except that I wasn't gay and was actually attracted to her, physically, but I wasn't even really romantically into her."

"Wow," Eric says, holding back a laugh at Jack's mystified tone. "That's… a lot."

Jack just shakes his head, smiling.

They're nearly home when Jack speaks again. "So anyhow, now that everyone knows, I guess we can get married."

Eric's head whips around from where he'd been staring off out of the window, lost in his own thoughts.

"What?"

Jack glances at him, surprised by his surprise. "That's… that's what we were talking about, right? We said we could start, like, telling people we're engaged and planning the wedding and everything once we've gone public. And we didn't really expect that to be this soon, but…" He trails off, and he's starting to look worried, like maybe he thinks Eric doesn't want that anymore.

"Oh, goodness," Eric breathes. He puts a hand on Jack's thigh, and Jack immediately covers it with his own. "Everything that's been going on the past few days, I hadn't even thought about that part! You're right! Everyone knows now, we don't have to worry about wedding planning revealing anything. Wow." He leans his head back in his seat as Jack pulls into the parking garage. He squeezes Jack's hand. "Holy crap, honey, we can get married!"

Jack laughs and lifts Eric's hand to kiss it before letting go so he can pull into a parking spot.

—

It takes three days before Eric realizes that this means that he now has to tell his mother that he's marrying the boy he's been dating for five whole months.

"Oh Lord," he says after alerting Jack to this fact. "We have to come up with a fake engagement story!"

"What?" Jack looks puzzled as he takes another gulp of Gatorade. Eric just had to have his realization while Jack was out on his morning run. "Why?"

"Well, I don't know about your parents or anyone else, but we sure as hell can't tell my parents the truth! That we've been engaged since January? Since we'd been dating for zero days? Mama's gonna have a conniption as it is! Knowing the truth it'd be eight times worse—half because we did that, and half because I got engaged and didn't even tell her!"

"You're telling her now," Jack points out, as though that helps at all. "It's not like you got married without telling her. She hasn't even missed any wedding planning."

"Oh, sweetpea, you do not understand anything at all, do you?" Eric regards Jack with pity. "Trust me, if you don't want my mother to spend our entire engagement hating you, we need a better story."

Jack thinks for a minute, frowning. "Oh," he finally says. "Duh. We just tell them I asked you in all the excitement after the Cup. And, like… we were maybe a little drunk and the next day we weren't sure it should really count, but we've thought about it for a few days and we decided yeah, let's do it. Say we knew it was going to happen eventually, so who cares if it's a little sooner than we'd planned?"

Eric gapes at him. "You proposed to me when we were drunk? You really think that'll be any better?"

"When we were drunk because I won the Stanley Cup and we kissed in front of the whole world, Bittle. I'd say we could leave the drunk part out, but we were both a little more than tipsy by the time we got back to my place and everyone we know knows it. And we were all way more high on victory than we were drunk; obviously if I'd done anything like that it would've been more because of that. Just like the kiss was."

Eric gasps. "That's it! That's why we kissed!"

"Yes," Jack says slowly, confused. "We kissed because we were so excited that we weren't thinking it through very well."

"No, Mr. Zimmermann," Eric says playfully, "we kissed because you'd just proposed to me because you were high on victory and not thinking it through very well. And like you said, afterwards we were celebrating and then dealing with the fallout and we didn't really talk about it for a couple days because we weren't sure if it should count, but then we said yeah, this is what we wanted anyhow, it's just a little sooner than we expected!"

Jack thinks for a minute. "It's no less believable than me blurting it out without thinking just because you dumped your boyfriend for me."

"Arguably more romantic," Eric points out, "but only if you're not us and don't know what got us to that blurting."

"And only Shitty and Lardo know the truth," Jack says, clearly warming to the idea, "and they won't tell anyone."

"We should tell Shitty he's allowed to tell the story of what really happened at, like, our 25th anniversary party or something," Eric says. "That way he won't be tempted to put it in his best man speech."

—

When the day finally arrives, two years later (it turns out that when half the guests are low-key celebrities, you need the kind of venues that have to be reserved far more than a year in advance), Shitty and Lardo are as true to their word as they always have been and don't breathe a word of the truth.

But even they realize that they might not know the entire story when there's one question Eric and Jack steadfastly refuse to answer for anyone: Why they insist on using what is unquestionably a break-up song as their first dance.