Archive of Our Own

It starts with a Kegster.

Well, it probably starts before that. But later, when Jack will think back to how it begins, he’ll think of the Kegster.

Epikegster 2014 is too loud, too crowded, and not where Jack would be under any other circumstances. Bitty had looked disappointed when he said he wasn’t going though, so he’s downstairs, planning to at least make an appearance. He can handle 30 minutes if it will make Bitty happy. Jack makes his way through the crowd, carefully avoiding eye contact with anyone who might try to talk to him. He grabs a Solo cup full of juice, so no one tries to hand him a drink, and looks for Bitty. It only takes a minute because apparently Bitty was also trying to find him.

“Jack!” 

His face lights up when he sees Jack, breaking into a grin. Jack smiles back. He can admit he feels a little bit victorious about playing this right. 

He heads over to Bitty, and they find themselves standing against a wall in the main room. The wall is usually where Jack finds himself at parties, but it feels a lot better when he’s not alone. Bitty exclaims over the fact that Jack was planning to sit this one out, hands waving wildly. Jack wonders if he’s hit the tub juice already or if he’s just excited. It’s hard to tell.

Jack gets to tell his story about the last Epikegster he went to and how he kicked the football team out using a fire extinguisher. It’s pretty much the only good story he has, and he’s perfected the art of telling it. Bitty steps a little closer to hear him better and does that thing he always does when he’s particularly delighted, gasping with a hand to his heart like he’s a delicate Southern Belle and not a men’s hockey player. The reaction only serves to make Jack embellish a little bit more.

When Bitty remarks on the fact that he hasn’t chirped him for having his phone out it’s all too easy to take the opening. He asks Bitty if they should take a selfie, placing emphasis on the word like he doesn’t know what it means. He does it partly because playing up his technology related incompetence always makes Bitty laugh. But he also does it because he genuinely wouldn’t mind taking a selfie right now. As a general rule, Jack prefers to be behind the camera, but Bitty is smiling and he feels comfortable, and he wouldn’t mind photo evidence that he managed to have fun at one college party.

They take dozens of pictures on Bitty’s phone and then Bitty demands that Jack take some on his phone too.

“You need to practice your selfie technique,” Bitty insists, “I’m sure it could use some help!”

And well, Jack’s just going with the flow. He’s feeling good that his plan to cheer Bitty up is working so well, and he’s willing to take 100 dumb selfies if that means it will keep working. So, he takes his phone out, and presses the little button to take a picture over and over while Bitty directs him. Jack doubts the pictures are any good, but it doesn’t seem to matter. He makes a joke that really isn’t funny, but Bitty laughs anyways and Jack laughs along with him. He feels great. Almost the way he used to feel when he was drinking too much and taking too many pills, like everything is fun and easy. But it’s better now, because there’s nothing making him feel this way— he’s just happy. Bitty looks happy too, and Jack thinks that Epikegster might not be a disaster he was expecting it to be.

And then he hears the last voice he wants to hear.

“Jack Zimmermann. At a party. Taking a selfie.” 

Whatever warm feeling he’d been holding onto before is swept away by an icy wave washing over him, stealing the air from his lungs. He’s tries to convince himself that he’s imagining it, the atmosphere of the party reminding him of parties from his teens. But when he forces himself to finally turn around, Kent is standing there, a sly smirk plastered on his face.

“Didja miss me?”

Jack manages to escape up to his room while Kent’s distracted by a flurry of selfie requests. He sits on his bed and tries to calm himself down, tries to reclaim the feeling he had at the beginning of the night. It’s been years since they we’re anything more than ex-somethings, but every time Jack talks to him, he can’t help feeling like he’s 17 and drowning again. Like Kent is the only one who can drag him out of the water.

So, he lets Kent find him, lets him ask about Vegas, lets him push when Jack says he isn’t sure. He even lets Kent kiss him because he’s never been good at saying no to him even when he wants to. But then Kent makes a mistake. He reminds Jack that he’s not 17 anymore.

“You can be done with this shitty team,” Kent says, and Jack remembers.

He’s not 17 and he doesn’t need Kent to pull him up for air because that “shitty team” pulled him out of the water and gave him a safe space on dry land. So, Jack finally pushes back.

He pushes knowing that it will end in a fight because that’s always how it goes. He tells Kent to get out with shaking hands, and tries not to listen when Kent says all the things he knows will hurt Jack the most.

Jack thinks, distantly, through the panic building in his chest that he was right before when he thought Epikegster was a recipe for disaster. He finally manages to get Kent out of his room, and he thinks it at least it can’t get any worse.

And then he steps into the hallway to find Bitty kneeling on the ground, picking his room key up off the floor. He barely registers the rest of what Kent flings at him, his mind focused on the way he can’t breathe and a single thought:

How much does Bitty know?

That question tortures him through his last two days at Samwell where he avoids Bitty as much as he can. It tortures him through a flight to Montreal. It tortures him through finding the cookies Bitty snuck into his bag, leaving him wondering what they mean.

Are they an apology for overhearing things he wasn’t supposed to hear?

Are they an apology for knowing something he wasn’t supposed to know?

Are they just Bitty’s way of saying “I hope you’re ok”?

He thinks himself in circles about it for days. Then, three days into Winter Break he comes to the abrupt realization that he could just ask.

Jack works up the courage to call him, but as the phone is ringing, he realizes it’s a stupid idea. Bitty is exactly the type of person who would pretend he didn’t hear anything even if he did. And if he didn’t hear anything but Jack asks about it then he’ll know there was something to be heard. Jack is so busy thinking that he should never have dialed the phone at all that he almost misses it when Bitty answers the call.

He scrambles to make up some lie about it being a butt dial and immediately hangs up the phone. His heart still feels like it’s racing. What was he thinking trying to talk to Bitty about the whole mess that was that night?

His phone buzzes with a new text and he has to take a deep breath before he can force himself to look at it. Jack’s not sure he wants to know what Bitty has to say about his undeniably weird behavior. Relief floods through him when he sees the text. It’s sent to the group chat instead of just him and reads “Jack just butt dialed me who let him have a phone.” As expected, the chirps pour in, but Jack doesn’t mind. If Bitty is chirping him about it, that means he believed the lie.

He’s relieved, but the nagging feeling of something doesn’t go away. His parents clearly know that something is up but neither of them ask. It’s their way of saying that they trust him again, that they think he’s ok enough to ask for help when he needs it instead of ruining his life again. Jack can’t decide if he appreciates it now or not.

Right as he’s going to sleep, that nagging feeling translates itself into a bizarre thought. Maybe he wants Bitty to know.

That doesn’t make any sense. The whole point is that he doesn’t want anyone to know. His parents finding out was bad enough, so the plan has always been to never tell anyone else. Three people know and he’d prefer it stay that way.

Even if he did want to tell someone, wouldn’t he tell Shitty? Shitty is, without a doubt, his best friend. But the few times he’s thought about telling him about Kent, or even just about himself, his heart seizes in his chest, and it feels like his lungs are squeezing all the air out. How could he tell Bitty if even thinking about telling Shitty makes him feel that way?

Except. He wouldn’t be telling Bitty anything, just confirming what he might already know. It might be easier. And maybe he doesn’t want his parents to ask what’s wrong but wants someone who isn’t his therapist to know.  

First, he needs to find out what Bitty actually heard.

Jack finally gets a chance to ask Bitty what he heard when they’re getting ready for a shinny game on the Pond. Bitty’s just gotten done doing an impressive figure skating jump for the Daily when he comes over. 

He says something about the end of the semester not being very epic for Jack and apologizes if he’s overstepping.

It doesn’t feel like overstepping at all. It feels like the opening Jack’s been waiting for. An opportunity ask the question he’s been trying to ask for a month, without giving too much away.

Jack pauses for a moment, taking the time to finish wrapping his stick, before asking, “How much did you hear?”

“I didn’t—” Bitty starts. He ducks his head. “I promise I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop,”

Oh. The idea that Bitty had been deliberately eavesdropping hadn’t even crossed his mind. “I didn’t think you were,” Jack says, “I was just curious.” 

“Oh. Well.” He pauses, eyes darting away then back. “Um. Just the very end really, when he said all those horrible things to you. You know none of that’s true right?” 

Jack shakes his head a little. “We owe each other a lot of apologies. For… pretty much everything that’s happened between us since the Draft.” 

Bitty frowns. “That doesn’t mean he gets to threaten you.” 

“He would never have actually told you,” Jack replies. He might not know Kent as well as he used to, but he knows him well enough to know that it was an empty threat. He couldn’t tell them about Jack without revealing something about himself.

“Told us what?” Bitty asks, before immediately backtracking. “You don’t— You don’t have to answer that, Jack. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Jack looks at Bitty, who’s watching him with an open, earnest expression on his face. He can’t explain it, but something in that moment makes him tell Bitty the truth. He’s been given an easy out. He knows that Bitty doesn’t expect him to say anything. There’s no good reason for him to share the secret he’s been keeping for years on some random day in January when he’s sitting by a pond in the snow. But he does anyways.

Maybe it’s that he trusts Bitty, knows he would never share this secret with anyone else. Maybe it’s that he knows that of all the friends he has Bitty’s the only one who would would actually understand. Or maybe it’s that he realizes that there’s one way to know exactly what Bitty knows, and that’s to tell him everything.  

Jack casts his gaze out at the Pond. The rest of their teammates are goofing off, far enough away that no one will hear him, so he quietly says, “He was threatening to tell you about me. Us. What we used to be to each other.” 

He drags his gaze back to Bitty, just in time to see the moment he understands what Jack is telling him. His eyes widen, his mouth dropping open slightly.

“Oh,” he says softly, breathless. “Um—” he looks towards the rest of the team, then back to Jack. “Thank you for trusting me with that.” 

Jack wants to say that it’s easy to trust Bitty. That he earned Jack’s trust before they were actually friends. But it feels like too much for an already heavy moment, so he doesn’t. 

“Is that what Shitty said to you when you came out to him?” he says instead. 

Jack hopes it’s enough to confirm that yes, this is him coming out, without actually having to say the words. It must be, because Bitty blinks a few times, then laughs a little hesitantly and replies.

“It is.” He smiles faintly, “I think it’s a good thing to say.”

Jack nods. “It is.”

They fall into silence for a moment, both looking out at the Pond. It’s beautiful this time of year, frozen over and glittering with snow. Jack loves it here, especially in winter. 

“Huh. You know I should really take that photography class,” he says, breaking the silence.

“Oh my goodness! You? Photography?”

“Hey,” Jack protests, “Art isn’t just for Lardo.”

Bitty snorts but doesn’t argue with him.

“Come on, Bittle,” he says, getting up to grab the rest of his stuff, but not before pausing for a fist bump. “I have a good feeling about this semester.”

Bitty grins, knocks his gloved hand against Jack’s. “Me too.” 

And so, the semester begins. Jack doesn’t want to say that things necessarily change between them after that, but there is a definite shift. He starts his classes and settles into a routine. Early checking practice with Bitty some mornings and Annie’s afterwards. Walking with teammates on the way to the food class they’re all in. Running with Bitty on the days when they have afternoon practice, and it isn’t too icy. Doing homework in the kitchen while Bitty bakes and listening to Shitty complain about law school applications. Taking picture after picture trying to figure out composition and lighting while his friends indulge him.  

It’s not that different from last semester, but between him and Bitty there is something new. They don’t talk about it, what Bitty knows, or this thing they have in common. Bitty never says anything direct, and Jack wouldn’t even know how to bring it up. There is, however, a sort of closeness that comes from having something in common. A sort of openness that comes from knowing the other person will understand what you’re trying to say. Topics that never came up between them before sometimes find their way into conversation.

It happens for the first time early in the semester. “You know,” Bitty says with a laugh one day, when it’s just the two of them at Annie’s after another checking practice. “It’s kind of funny how worried I was about you finding out I was gay.”

“You were worried?” Jack asks. It’s the sort of thing that never occurred to him before, but in hindsight probably makes sense. Just because it never crossed his mind that Bitty being gay would be a problem, doesn’t mean Bitty wouldn’t think that it did.

Bitty nods a little, looking out the window. “I didn’t think you were gonna be homophobic or something. Well. Not really. But I thought you’d just see it as another mark against me you know? Another reason I didn’t belong on your team.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack says, and he genuinely means it. He hates thinking back to how he acted at the beginning of last year, how blinded he was by his own selfish goals, how he lashed out at Bitty for things that had nothing to do with him.

“It’s ok,” Bitty says seriously, turning back towards Jack. Then his face brightens. “I mean, look at us now!”

He smiles at him all big and warm and knocks his foot against Jack’s. He’s been doing that a lot lately, giving Jack these smiles and touching him. A hip check in the kitchen, knocking their shoulders together on the way to class. It fills Jack with this funny sort of mixture of pride and guilt. Pride that he’s managed to fix things between them so Bitty feels comfortable around him like this, and guilt that he ever gave Bitty a reason not to be.

Right now, though, in their little corner in Annie’s he mostly just feels happy. He smiles back. “Who’d have thought?”

Bitty laughs. “Maybe Hall. Putting us on the same line seemed to work out.”

That’s definitely true. If they were good together last year, this year they’re electric. It’s like this new understanding between them is bleeding onto the ice. Bitty knows exactly when to pass to get Jack the goal, and Jack knows exactly where Bitty will be before he even gets there. He doesn’t dare voice the thought out loud, but he thinks that if they keep it up, they could actually win this year.

It happens again in mid- February. He pops into Shitty’s room while he’s brushing his teeth, planning to ask him something about their plans for tomorrow. Instead, he’s met with Bitty who turns around, the “Yo Marry Me Jack Zimmermann” sign in his hands. They stare at each other for a moment blankly, frozen in place.

“C’mon Bittle, I think I deserve a more romantic proposal than that, eh?”

It’s a stupid joke and he regrets it the second it comes out of his mouth. The implications are way too intense even for a joke. Bitty turns red and stammers out something before dropping the sign and fleeing. Jack heads back to the bathroom, and resolutely finishes brushing his teeth, trying to ignore how red his own face is in the mirror.

Later though, when the acute embarrassment has faded, he takes a moment to acknowledge how much has changed. It was a stupid joke, but it’s a joke he wouldn’t have dared to make a few months ago.

It happens again when they go to Lardo’s art show. He’s looking at a photoset that’s supposedly about conceptualizing queer sexuality through still life images. The concept isn’t bad, but the execution does leave something to be desired.

He staring at them intently when he feels a hand on his arm. He startles a little, heart rate picking up, breath catching in his throat, like he’s gotten caught doing something wrong. When he sees it’s just Bitty he relaxes, breathes out.

“I bet you could do a better job,” Bitty says.

Jack shrugs. Compositionally maybe. He knows how to take pictures, but complex themes and meanings have always eluded him. This sort of intangible subject is something he would never have thought you conceptualize in photos.

“I don’t think I understand it well enough to take pictures of it,” he says quietly.

Bitty hums, contemplative. “Do you need to understand it to know what it looks like, how it feels?”

Jack doesn’t think he knows what it feels like— if he even feels it at all. It’s something he tries to avoid thinking about, except in the moments where Bitty brings it up.

“I don’t know what it looks like,” he admits.

Bitty glances up at him. “Maybe it looks like this.”

Jack looks at the photos on the wall. He looks at Bitty standing close to him. Bitty shrugs, offers him an encouraging smile. Jack smiles back.

He doesn’t know what he’s experiencing right now, but something is there. A word on the tip of his tongue, something slipping past his peripheral vision. A connection between the two of them that Jack wasn’t expecting. The moment stretches between them, and he feels it.

When Holster comes up to tell them about the open bar Jack feels his face heat for no reason and he quickly looks away from Bitty who does the same. As it happens, he gets the sense that something significant has just slipped through his grasp. He casts one last furtive look at the photos behind him and wonders how the artist knew what to feel.

And then it happens after they lose.

Bitty had found him after the game, pulled him into a hug, and let Jack cry. He usually hates when people see him cry, but it hadn’t felt so bad with Bitty. It had been a nice reminder that just because he lost the game, he didn’t lose everything.

The season is over, but two days later Jack finds himself waking up and getting ready to go skate at Faber. He doesn’t get to stop training just because the season is done. When he gets downstairs, he finds Bitty already in the kitchen, hockey bag on the floor beside him.

“Faber?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer is yes. It’s like their early practices are so much part of their routine at this point that neither of them is willing to let it go. Privately, Jack is grateful for the company.

They walk over together, the same way they have for months. Bitty chirps him about working harder than God. Jack just grins and says he’s glad his habits are rubbing off on Bitty. He apparently doesn’t have a good comeback, so he just knocks into Jack and says “You wish! The second you’re not here to wake me up it’s over.”

Jack likes it when Bitty gets like this, all chirpy and tactile in a way he isn’t normally. He likes that he’s one of the few people who gets to see this side of Bitty.

Jack’s technically at Faber to train, but really, they’ve just been making lazy loops around the ice for a while, talking about the future. They’re discussing Jack making a final decision on where to sign when Bitty brings it up.

“I know you’ve been ranking team feel pretty high, I guess I was wondering if that... Um. If that includes, you know?”

It’s still not something they’ve ever talked about directly, but they’ve talked around it enough times for Jack to know what he means.

“Yes,” he says, a little surprised at how easily the answer comes.

Bitty’s eyes widen. “Does that mean you think you’d—”

Jack doesn’t let him finish that question before he’s shaking his head.

“No. I—I couldn’t. But…”

He tries to find a way to explain that even though no one will ever know that it matters, it still does. That even though he’s never going to say anything, he’d like to be on a team where he felt like he could.

He finally settles on saying, “I like it here at Samwell, if I could find this sort of experience somewhere else… That’s what I’d want.”

Bitty is silent for a second, looking out at the ice. Jack might almost say he looks disappointed. Then he nods, “I hope you get that Jack. You deserve to be somewhere you feel comfortable.”

A heavy sort of silence lingers in the air. Jack feels like he needs to say something to Bitty, but he’s not sure what he’s supposed to say. It doesn’t seem to matter though. Seconds later Bitty is flinging himself into a spin and things feel normal after that.

Or it feels normal until Bitty changes as quickly as he can when they get back to the locker room. Jack asks, like he does every time, if Bitty wants coffee. But unlike every time, Bitty says no.

“I can’t today, I have homework I need to get done,” he says and offers up a little smile before rushing out the door.

Jack watches him leave and wonders where exactly he went wrong. Bitty has never once said no to coffee and has never once prioritized his homework over anything. He thinks about the moment earlier on the ice when he felt like he was missing something. No matter how hard he tries he can’t figure out what it was.

For the most part, things aren’t that different. He’s busy for sure— studying for finals, making his final decision on where to sign, trying to put together two photo sets for his last critique—but they’re still spending time together and his routine doesn’t really change. It’s just that every so often something feels off. He’ll be certain that Bitty will respond a certain way—a chirp, a hip check, a smile—and he won’t.

Like when Jack signs with Providence and Bitty hugs him and says, “I’m happy for you,” but doesn’t sound happy at all. Or when he buys Bitty frozen yogurt the next day as a little celebration and instead of a chirp or an eye roll with a smile, he gets a conflicted little frown and a quiet “Oh. Thank you.” Or when Chowder tells Bitty that the oven was Jack’s idea and he gets a tight, teary hug, but then Bitty doesn’t talk to him the rest of the day.

To anyone else it wouldn’t look like anything had changed, but there are all these little things that don’t make sense to Jack anymore.

And then he has his final photography critique, which can only be described as weird. He goes into it not expecting much at all. His two subjects are geese and the team because he took the most photos of them this semester. Neither are particularly deep or evocative subjects so he’s anticipating comments that are mostly about technique. He prefers that way. His classmates’ comments about meaning and symbolism always seem like they’re trying too hard to see something that isn’t there. It’s not like his photos are like the ones he saw at Lardo’s show.

For reasons Jack can’t grasp, his classmates seem to think they are. They all seem convinced that Bitty was the subject of his second photo set, even though other team members are in most of the shots. When he tries to explain that Bitty is just the team member who’s around the most, they respond with comments about longing, and warmth, and significance of lighting. He leaves class confused, unable to get what they think they’re seeing.

He doesn’t get it, until all at once, he does.  

It happens in the last rush between the end of classes and final exams.

Jack opens up the photo app on his phone to send Shitty the picture he took of him with a goose yesterday. He’s hardly taken any pictures on it this semester since he started taking photos with an actual camera. But Shitty had demanded a photo with “Jack’s” geese and his phone was all he had on him.

There are so few recent pictures on his phone that when he opens the app, he sees the selfies he and Bitty took at that party. Without thinking he starts to swipe through the photos. He hasn’t looked through them before. In the haze of everything that followed, he’d sort of forgotten that for the first part of the kegster he’d been having fun.

It starts with one where he and Bitty are smiling at the camera. They look genuinely happy. Without thinking he swipes to the next one, then the next one. There’s are several that are blurry, several where one of them is mostly cut out of the frame. There’s one of him mid-laugh at Bitty sticking out his tongue. There’s one of him saying something and Bitty laughing. There’s one of him laughing too.

And then there are the ones that makes something catch in Jack’s chest. The last two photos they took that night.  

In the first one, Jack is smiling at the camera. He’s smiling the way you do when your laughter has just subsided, but you can still feel it in your face. Bitty isn’t looking at the camera at all. Instead, he’s looking at Jack, his smile from the previous photos softened into something gentler. Affectionate almost.

And then there’s the second photo.

Jack actually remembers this moment. It was taken in the half second between him being glad he came to the party and hearing Kent’s voice— the moment before the night went to hell.

In the photo he’s not looking at the camera either, he’s looking down at Bitty. The soft smile on his face is a perfect match for the one on Bitty’s. They don’t just look happy; they look happy together.

His breath catches in his throat, and he remembers what his classmates said.

It’s like you’re saying that he’s an important part of your team.

It’s like you equate him with warmth and light.

It’s like he’s looking at the camera with a longing for something.

Except Bitty was never looking at the camera, he was looking at Jack.

Jack rushes to his computer to pull up the photos he took this semester. He flips through them and almost laughs at what he sees. There are a bunch of geese, a bunch of the cool buildings on campus, and bunch of his friends. But in between all that it’s just Bitty, Bitty, Bitty.

Bitty glowing in the sun. Bitty baking in the kitchen. Bitty outside Annie’s. Bitty on the ice. Bitty by the Pond. Bitty in the snow.

Even in the group photos Bitty is the focus.

All at once it’s like a million little things make sense. His classmates’ comments. The way he kept up early morning skates with Bitty even when he didn’t need them anymore. The reason he was always finding excuses to have coffee with Bitty. The reason he wanted Bitty to know he wasn’t straight. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is Bitty’s behavior.

And then Jack finds himself with the same question he was asking when the semester started: How much does Bitty know?

The questions plagues Jack like it did before, but this time there’s a sense of urgency. Because he’s leaving, and he’s leaving soon. If he doesn’t figure this out now, he probably never will.

He spends his time in between final exams trying to figure it out. Is Bitty pulling away because he doesn’t know how Jack feels, doesn’t think Jack wants the same thing? Or is he pulling away because he does know how Jack feels and it’s not something he wants?

Finals come to an end, the things in his room get packed into boxes, George confirms her plans to come to graduation, and he’s running out of time. It feels like one moment he’s looking at a picture and realizing he’s in love with someone who maybe loves him back, and the next he’s walking to Faber one last time.

Jack does his best to stay in the moment. He walks with Shitty the whole way there and lets him reminisce about their time at Samwell. Against all odds, Samwell has been good to him. He doesn’t want to be so preoccupied with questions he’s not sure how to answer that he lets this moment slip away.

He presses his lips to the cool surface of the ice, and with it a message. It’s partly a thank you. For giving him the best friends he’s ever had, for giving him a place to heal, for letting him fall in love with hockey again. But it’s also a promise. That he won’t leave the friends or the healing or the love behind when he goes.

He chirps Shitty about crying, but when Shitty tackles him into a hug he feels his own eyes burn a little. He’s not terrified of the future the way he was at 17, but goodbyes are hard and he’s always a little scared of losing what he has. Jack doesn’t think he could lose Shitty or Lardo or even Ransom and Holster if he tried. But Bitty… he isn’t sure anymore.

They make their way up to the roof, arguments about the merits of safety versus tradition being thrown around. Jack’s not really listening. He takes a moment with his camera to capture a few final pictures of campus at night. Then he turns back towards the group. Without even thinking about it the lens is focused on Bitty. Drawn to him the same way Jack is, only know he finally understands what he’s supposed to see. He takes the picture.

Then he’s settling next to Bitty who’s shivering in the colder night air.  
Without even thinking about it, Jack takes off his jacket and drapes it over Bitty’s shoulders. Bitty turns to him, brow furrowed but cheeks turning pink. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, maybe comment on the all too obvious implications of what Jack is doing. But instead, he snaps his mouth shut, offers Jack the barest of smiles, and shifts slightly away.

It’s the same sort of thing he’s been doing for weeks. Jack wants to beg him not to go, to tell him what it means. He wants to say that he’s finally figured out what Bitty might have figured out months ago. But he can’t do that here on the roof with everyone sitting right there. All he can do is wonder if he figured it out too late.

They do the truth circle, and Jack shares all kinds of things he’s never told the group before. He feels compelled to share things he’s never shared before, like leaving little pieces of himself with his friends will make sure they stay.

The draft and Kent come up because of course they do. It’s always been this big blank space in what they know about Jack. He tells them the truth, wants to fill in that space before he goes. He can’t make himself tell them everything though.

There’s a moment where he thinks about it. Thinks about spilling everything out into the night sky. But it takes too long. He can’t manage to breathe past the sudden tightness in his chest and the moment passes. As the conversation moves on, he dares to glance at Bitty, who’s already watching him. Bitty immediately looks away, his mouth pressed into a tight line. It’s a look Jack’s seen before.

It’s the same look he gave Jack when he said he didn’t think he could ever come out. Shouldn’t Bitty get it though? Jack can’t come out right now, he can’t. He never thought Bitty, of all people, would expect him to. But it’s the only explanation he can find for it.

Eventually everyone drifts off to sleep. It’s late and they’d been drinking. Bitty had moved closer at some point and is resting against him. It should be nice, comforting, but Jack can’t fall asleep. All he can do is think about Bitty and photos and unanswered questions and the feeling that something important is slipping through his fingers. On a dark roof in front of a dying fire he finally realizes that the answer to the question is the same as it was before: the only way to know, is to tell Bitty everything.

He has to do it now.

“Bittle, hey, are you awake?” 

Bitty lifts his head a little and blinks a few times. He looks at Jack with narrowed eyes. An overwhelming fondness at Bitty’s sleepy face floods him and he almost laughs at himself because that isn’t a new feeling. He just didn’t know what to call it before. 

“Do you want to go to the Pond?” 

He asks it quietly so as not to wake anyone else. He doesn’t want an audience for this. 

Bitty looks confused, cocking his head to look at him. Jack smiles a little. 

“Fine, I guess this is your last chance to wake me up and drag me somewhere, let’s go,” Bitty whispers with an eye roll. “But I’m keeping your coat.” 

Jack grins. “That’s fine, you know I can handle the cold.” 

Bitty looks like he’s trying to glare at the implication that he can’t, but this is a well-worn bit for the two of them and Jack can see the smile on his face. They sit there for a moment just smiling at each other and Jack takes it as a sign that it’s not too late.  

“I believe you said we were going to the Pond, Mr. Zimmermann?” Bitty finally asks. 

Jack nods. 

The two of them make their way to the Pond in silence. It’s almost strange. Usually, Bitty has no problem filling the silence. But it’s somewhere between very late and very early so maybe he doesn’t mind the quiet right now. When they get there, Jack takes a seat on the shore and Bitty sits next to him. They both look at the water and Jack tries to figure out how to say everything he needs to say. 

“Bitty I—“ he starts, then snaps his mouth shut when he realizes the next words that are about to come out are “I love you.” Even if he’s right about how Bitty feels, even if he knows how he feels, it is way too early to say that.

Bitty turns to look at him. 

“You never call me that,” he says quietly. 

Jack frowns. “What? Bitty?” 

Bitty nods slowly.  

“Maybe I should start.” 

Bitty laughs a little, but it cracks in the middle like he’d maybe rather cry.

“You finally use my nickname right as you’re leaving?” 

Jack tries to smile but it gets caught behind a wave of anxiety. 

He’s leaving. He’s leaving and this thing that’s been building between them might break. It will for sure if he doesn’t do something now. Jack tries to figure out how to explain what’s going on. That he’s leaving but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be gone. That he doesn’t want this thing between them to get left behind just because he’s graduating.

All that comes out is a desperate, “I don’t want to leave.” 

Bitty gives him a sympathetic look. “Jack,” he says gently, placing a hand on his knee, “You’ll be just fine. The NHL is your dream. You’re gonna do great out there.” 

Jack bites back a frustrated noise because that’s not what he meant. He isn’t thinking about hockey right now. He’s hardly thought about hockey all night. He’s got to make Bitty understand.  

Jack reaches out a hand to cover the one on his knee and looks him in the eyes. 

“Bitty. I don’t want to leave you.” 

Bitty blinks at him. His eyes dart away and then back. He looks conflicted, like he’s not quite sure if he’s understanding what Jack is saying. 

Jack’s always been better with actions than words, so he flips his hand to twine his fingers with Bitty’s.

“Oh,” Bitty whispers, barely audible. 

In the low light of the moon Jack can’t tell if he’s cold or blushing but he likes it either way. Moving slowly, so Bitty can back away if he’s somehow managed to read all of this wrong, he reaches out with his free hand. He gently tips Bitty’s chin up and he brings their lips together. 

Jack kisses him softly at first, because he’s pretty sure Bitty’s never kissed anyone before, and he deserves to have a good first kiss. But when Bitty melts into him, it’s easy to dip forward a little bit more to deepen the kiss. His lips slide against Bitty’s, one hand moving to cup his cheek, the other still linked with Bitty’s own.  

Jack kisses him until he’s breathing hard enough to feel like they should stop, even if he doesn’t want to. It takes a minute for Bitty to open his eyes. When he finally does his eyes look wet.

“Jack.” 

Bitty sounds as breathless as he feels. 

“I think that was a long time coming,” Jack says, thinking about how many times he probably wanted to do that but didn’t realize it. How many times Bitty probably wanted him to.

“I—I guess,” Bitty says softly, his voice wavering a little. “I didn’t know you felt that way too.” 

Jack shrugs a little awkwardly, suddenly embarrassed that it took him so long to figure out.

“I didn’t either. Not until tonight.” 

“Really?”

He sounds legitimately surprised, like it’s not the response he was expecting.

“Did you think I did?” Because that’s what it comes down to. Something was settled in that kiss, but the rest comes from making sure they’re finally on the same page.

Bitty looks out at the Pond blinking fast a couple of times, like he’s trying to get rid of the tears in his eyes, before he nods. Then he shrugs, shaking his head. 

“Yes, or I don’t know. You always—” He breathes out slowly, then turns back to look at Jack. When he speaks again his voice is a little steadier. “You always paid for my coffee when it was just us, and you took so many photos of me, and there were those moments between us, like at the art show when I thought…” he trails of a little, like he’s not sure how to say the rest. “If you hadn’t told me about. Um. About Parson. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it but— but you did. So.” 

Bitty shrugs again. Jack’s never seen him this uncertain before, not even before a check. He wants to say something— apologize maybe, but it seems like Bitty has more to say, so he waits.

“I thought there was no way you didn’t know what you were doing. But then when I asked about the future, you said it was something you couldn’t do. So, I guess I thought you felt the way I did but didn’t want this.” He gestures between them, where their hands are still interlocked.  “I mean. You’re leaving. You’re going to the NHL. This isn’t…”

He trails off and looks out at Pond again. There are still unshed tears, shining in his eyes. The way he’s pulled in on himself makes him look smaller than he actually is. Jack’s heart twists in his chest and he reaches for something to say. Something to convince Bitty that he’s not going to break his heart.

“It— It would have to be a secret…” He starts.  

Bitty deserves better than that, but it’s the best Jack can give him right now. As the thought passes through his head, it’s like the last pieces of the puzzle snap into place and he finally understands exactly what Bitty thought was going on between them. It was never about him coming out, it was about him taking a risk. He thought that Jack reciprocated his feelings but wasn’t willing to ever do something about it. That he liked Bitty but didn't think he was worth it. Jack needs to make him understand how far that is from the truth. 

“Providence isn’t that far,” he says. “I think we could make it work.” 

Even thinking about the barest of logistics now, Jack knows it will be hard. They’ve spent basically every day for a year together, and now they’ll be in different states. They’ll have to lie about it, keep it hidden. But he wants this. Possibly more than he wants hockey. It’s a startling revelation, but somehow it doesn’t scare him.

“I want this,” he says earnestly, “I want to try. If that’s something you want too.”

Bitty leans toward him, placing his free hand on Jack’s arm.

“Jack. Of course, I want this.” 

That brings a little smile to his face. 

“Oh. Good.”

They look at each other for a moment while Jack’s response registers. Then Bitty bursts into giggles and Jack follows. His response really wasn’t funny, but he feels so intensely awkward, and uncertain, and full of affection all of a sudden that his emotions are overflowing into laughter. Bitty tips his head forward to rest against Jack’s bicep and he can feel his smile pressing into his arm. Jack thinks it’s the best thing he’s ever felt. 

Eventually Bitty’s laughter subsides, and Jack is able to stop grinning long enough to ask, “So, we’re doing this?”

Bitty pulls back, his face serious but soft. He nods. “We’re doing this. For real.” Then his face breaks into a smile. “Guess you’re stuck with me, Mr. Zimmermann.” 

Jack can’t think of anything better than that.

They end up sitting out by the Pond for a while, hands intertwined, Bitty’s head resting on his shoulder. At some point, Bitty dozes off, but Jack still can’t sleep. Not when it might be months before he gets something like this again. Instead, he looks at Bitty while he sleeps.

Jack watches how the moonlight turns his hair almost white and highlights the planes of his face. Jack spent a lot of time taking pictures of Bitty this semester, but never in the light of the moon. He wishes he hadn’t left his camera on the roof. It would have been nice to get a picture of this. Of how this starts.

But then he thinks of the selfies on his phone and realizes he might already have one. Because this feels too big and important for something so new. Because maybe it isn’t new at all. Rather the inevitable conclusion of the way things have grown between them. Jack doesn’t think he could feel another way even if he tried.

Eventually the sky starts to lighten, and he gently shakes Bitty awake. 

“Hey,” he says softly, “We should head back to the roof before everyone else wakes up.” 

Bitty nods and they stand to head back. As they start to walk, Jack offers up his hand for Bitty to take. He looks surprised, wary, his eyes darting around to see if they’re still alone. Jack lets his face lift into a half-smile.

“It’s early, no one’s around. I think we can have this.”

The truth is, the second his season starts, when his name and face are even more well-known than they already are, moments like this will be hard to come by. Bitty looks hesitant, but he reaches out and grabs Jack’s hand. 

They walk to Faber in silence, the sky slowly getting brighter, the reality of their future becoming more real. Bitty’s pace slows as they climb the stairs to the roof, like he wants this bubble they’re in to last a little longer. Jack wants it too. 

Right before they open the door to the roof Bitty stops him. Jack pauses with his hand on the door and turns to face him. Bitty’s expression is nervous but determined, almost the same face he makes before a check. 

“Kiss me again before we go out there?”

It’s a request Jack’s happy to fill. When they step through the door onto the roof, this thing between them has to go back to what it was. A closeness and openness that only exists when it’s just the two of them, a truth that no one else knows. They deserve one more moment before that happens. 

So Jack leans down, cradling Bitty’s face gently in his hands. He kisses him hard, like a promise. That he means it. That he wants this. That he will put in the effort to make it work. 

One moment turns into five turns into ten. Eventually Jack makes himself pull away. 

They stare at each other for a silent moment before Bitty breaks into flustered giggles. 

“Ok. Ok,” he says, gripping Jack’s hand one last time before he lets go. “Let’s go wake them up. I’m making one last breakfast for everyone.” 

Jack smiles at him. “Whatever you want.” He thinks that’s a phrase he’ll end up saying a lot. 

They step out onto the roof, just as the sun breaks over the horizon. Jack takes a moment to look at his friends, huddled together asleep on the roof. He looks at Bitty who’s smiling at him gently, his face painted golden in the early morning sunlight. 

Jack thinks about the promise he made to the ice. It might not be an easy one to keep. The important promises in life never are. But in this moment, he knows he’ll do it anyways, and it will be good.