Chapter Text
It’s way too early for this.
Eric Bittle sits on a bench outside the rink, lacing up his skates. To his left, the iconic Faber windows open onto North Quad. Morning light streams in, glinting off the ice and plexiglas partitions. Stray dust particles glitter in the air, caught in rays of sun. Bitty, however, is too tired to appreciate any of this.
“Alright, I’m going out,” says Jack Zimmermann, standing up from a bench near Bitty and shuffling onto the ice. Bitty nods absentmindedly and continues to double-knot the dirty white laces. Once he’s done, he straightens up, taking a deep breath. It’s 6:00, which is not the earliest Jack’s ever woken Bitty up, but it’s certainly not preferable to sleeping in. It’s Tuesday, Jack, what in the world.
Bitty stifles a yawn, and he’s just about to stand up when, sitting on top of his jacket beside him, his phone vibrates. He checks the screen - it’s a Twitter notification.
Mentioned by @youtuber88: @EricBittle15 omg but what if jack likes u??
Bitty stares at the text for a minute. And then some more. And then he locks his phone and sets it face down on the bench. And then he takes a long, deep breath and closes his eyes. It was a hallucination, he thinks. You’ve done too many kegsters. Your brain cells are gone. Hesitantly, Bitty cracks open his eyes again and picks up his phone, clicking it on. The notification still sits there, burning itself into Bitty’s retinas, and he purses his lips and turns the brightness down before swiping into the app.
The tweeter in question seems to be one of his fans (he has fans?) from YouTube, with a string of dancing lady emojis as their name. Bitty stares at the tweet some more, and then scrolls up to see his own tweets that started the thread - something about dates and the Winter Screw, and then another about dates and Jack. A slow feeling of horror pooling in his stomach, Bitty goes back to look at the tweet, which has 23 favorites.
“Bittle?”
Bitty jerks and looks up, fumbling to hide his phone as he sees Jack standing at the rink entrance, leaning on the wall. “Coming?” he asks.
“Um,” Bitty says. He can feel his face turning red, and he buries his phone under his coat. “Um, yeah, I - Yeah.” He gets up hurriedly and follows Jack back onto the ice. Before starting to skate, though, he pauses by the door and glares halfheartedly at Jack, who’s skating backwards towards the right-hand goal line.
It’s way too early for this.
It wasn’t always like this, Bitty thinks as he sits in his WGSS class, worrying away at the yellow coating on his pencil. There was a time when this class was fun.
Next to him, leaning back in his chair, is Jack. “You okay?” he asks under his breath while the professor talks. “You’re kinda shredding that pencil.”
Bitty pauses to brush the pile of yellow chips to the floor. “Fine,” he says shortly, marking down a bullet point in his notebook by way of stabbing. When he sees Jack’s skeptical expression, he backpedals. “Sorry,” he says, “just a little stressed. Finals, and all.”
Jack shrugs. “If you say so.” He doesn’t look too convinced, but he doesn’t press. Bitty is eternally grateful. Every word he has to exchange with Jack Laurent Zimmermann is another round of Russian Roulette, and sooner or later the bullet’s going to come around and Bitty’s going to blurt out something he really shouldn’t.
He hasn’t acknowledged the tweet yet - he’s been within too close a range of Jack since this morning. Also, he has no idea what he’d even say. He knows he talks about the boys a lot on his vlog, and he knows a couple of his subscribers double as hockey fans, so there’s always been a certain amount of speculation in the replies section of his tweets, but this is a whole new ball game.
Biting his tongue, Bitty pulls out his phone under the table and, discreetly as possible with Jack right next to him, pulls up the offending tweet and types in a reply: @youtuber88 y’all are crazy.
Stowing his phone in his pocket again, Bitty glances quickly at Jack, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed. Whew.
In all honesty, Bitty’s not really sure how he feels about the situation. On one hand, that claim just makes no sense. They had no basis - all Bitty had said was that he wondered why Jack and his date never went out, as they’d gone to the dance together the past two years. So Jack isn’t into that particular girl, and that means he likes Bitty?
On the other hand, Bitty’s not going to pretend Jack isn’t, well, a fucking beaut, as Shitty would put it. Bitty’s had lots of practice drawing the line between platonic and romantic feelings, and he thought he had this figured out as well - the boys are like family. But now he’s second-guessing himself. Youtuber88, he thinks sullenly, you have ruined me.
The class lasts another half hour, during which his phone vibrates twice, but he makes a decided effort not to check it. At 11:30, the students get up and start filing out of the room, and Bitty hurries to beat the bottleneck.
Outside, Jack catches up with him. “Got somewhere important to be?” he jokes, and Bitty can’t even look at him.
“Er, I was just going to go pick up some more sugar, we’re running low-”
Jack catches Bitty’s arm as he goes to leave. “Bittle,” he says, tone serious. “You can’t stress-bake your way through the school year.” His face lightens a bit as he adds, “You’ve got to find a less expensive hobby.”
Bitty gingerly pulls away from Jack’s hand (It’s warm. Are hands always that warm? Does that mean Jack is warm? If Jack’s warm, then - no.) and smiles nervously. “You’re right. No sugar, then, but I want to grab a different coat from the Haus, this one isn’t warm enough.”
Jack rolls his eyes, but he nods and steps back. “Alright, then. See you later.” He gives a small wave as Bitty nods quickly and dashes away.
Bitty lets out a long breath once he’s out of sight. He checks his phone as he weaves his way outside. He’s free for another couple hours, so he walks slowly around the edge of the Lake Quad while reading his Twitter notifications. There’s two replies to his tweet:
@pksubbban: @EricBittle15 nah man you’ve totally got a chance, why would a senior hockey legend still be single unless he was holding out for someone?
@youtuber88: @EricBittle15 no no i can totally see that being a thing, u guys are perfect!
Bitty grimaces and shoves his phone in his pocket as he walks. To his right, the Pond’s gentle waves are methodical and calm, and Bitty focuses on them for a moment, before almost smacking into a burly football player and resolving to watch where he’s walking.
It takes him another couple minutes to reach the Haus, and by that point he’s come to a conclusion. He has to tell someone about this, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to go insane.
Sitting on the couch downstairs is an only slightly stoned Shitty. He looks up as Bitty walks in, waving lazily.
“Eyy, Bits. Bro, you look stressed. What gives?”
Bitty, stone-faced, sits down abruptly next to Shitty and wordlessly hands him his phone.
A moment later, Shitty says, “Okay.”
Bitty turns to look at him, dreading the reaction, but Shits seems nonplussed. “Okay?” he asks.
“Someone on Twitter thinks you and Jack would make a beautiful lovechild,” Shitty shrugs. “And?”
Bitty blushes, and flops back against the green couch (ew). “I... My whole worldview is crumbling.”
Shitty swings his feet around to lay over Bitty’s lap. “Bro, do you...?”
With a furtive glance, Bitty groans. “Lord, Shits, I don’t know.”
“Well,” Shitty says carefully, “I don’t want to force anything on you, but if I asked you yesterday if you liked Jack, you’d have said no, right?”
“Yes,” Bitty says slowly.
“So, just, I don’t know, but it seems to me like if you’re going from no to I don’t know, the next logical jump is to yes.”
Bitty covers his face with his hands. “Ughh. So you think I like him?”
“I dunno, I think you could.”
“But...” Bitty struggles for a moment for words. “But if - I mean, if I did, that would totally wreck the team.”
Shitty sounds mildly amused. “Bits, I know you and Jack make a killer team on-ice, but we got by just fine before you got here, too.”
“No, I mean, friendships. As soon as romantic feelings get involved, everyone starts picking sides.” Bitty’s face grows sour. “And y’all have known Jack longer than me, so...”
“So we’d side against you?” Shitty asks, sounding offended. “Bitty, you’re a Wellie. You’re part of the team. No one’s picking sides. There’s not even sides to pick yet.”
Bitty shrugs, frowning. “I guess.”
“So what do you want to do about this?”
“I don’t know. What do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime,” says Shitty, stretching languidly. “Hey, look, why don’t you sleep on it tonight? Maybe you’ll feel better tomorrow.”
With a sigh, Bitty says, “Sure, I guess.” What he doesn’t say is that means he still has to sit through dinner.
At dinner, Jack and Bitty don’t talk, except for once, wherein Jack remarks that Bitty is still wearing the same coat, and Bitty responds by blushing slightly and shrugging. Bitty goes to bed and spends a couple minutes glaring through the wall at Jack’s room before his early morning catches up to him and he drifts to sleep. So far, so good.