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For as many times as Jack had imagined winning the Cup, he’d never actually thought about life afterwards. If he had he’s certain that spending the summer with his boyfriend and being the first out player in the NHL would never have factored into it.
It’s funny, how quickly your expectations can change.
Jack wakes up the day after the Cup parade with late morning sunlight filtering through the curtains. He stretches out trying not to jostle Bitty who is sound asleep with his face on Jack’s chest. He smiles and closes his eyes. He won’t be able to go back to sleep, but he doesn’t mind laying here for a while.
The thing is, Jack has never done well with the off-season. The waiting is the worst. There’s nothing to do but train and think about what went wrong. But this time there’s no analyzing his mistakes and failures. This time they won.
He tries not to think too hard about what happened the last time he won.
It’s different this time though. It’s so different. This win is the beginning of something, not the end. He’s older and smarter and has a way better support system. He’s not abusing substances or lying about how bad things are. Jack doesn’t think he’ll ever like the waiting, but at least this time everything is a lot more certain. He knows his team, and he’s proved that he can play. Right now, he’s more worried about dealing with the fallout.
Jack doesn’t regret it. No matter what happens he won’t regret it. But it wasn’t thought through, it wasn’t planned, and there are going to be consequences. And not just for him. Not just for Bitty.
He’d texted Kent yesterday, but the conversation was brief.
To Kent: I’m sorry I didn’t give you a heads up. It wasn’t something we planned. Say whatever you need to if they ask you about it. If there’s anything you want me to say let me know.
sent 10:25am
From Kent: I think it’s pretty obvious that it wasn’t planned lol
I don’t care what you say so long as it isn’t the truth. I’m not interested in dealing with everything you’ve got coming your way.
But hey congrats on the cup
received 11:45am
To Kent: Thanks
sent 11:47 am
He knows that Kent’s probably pissed, and he understands. He’s just made it harder for Kent to fend off the rumors, and he’s pretty sure Kent’s never coming out. Jack doubts he would have if he were in Kent’s place. He’s always had the luxury of being defined first and foremost, by the hockey that he plays. That’s not something Jack has ever had.
First it was his father, then his overdose, and now this.
For what it’s worth, Jack would rather be known for being the first out player than for overdosing on cocaine. Especially since only the former is actually true.
Eventually Bitty does wake up and they make breakfast together. For the first time since April Jack feels like he can take a full breath. He’s under no illusion that this relaxed feeling will last, but in this moment, he can enjoy it. He can focus on Bitty being here with him for the next two months. It’s the longest amount of time they’ve gotten to spend together since Jack graduated. He’s not going to let this opportunity to have Bitty living with him go to waste.
They’ll probably go for a run later today, and he’ll help Tater with his physical therapy, but other than that they have no plans. It’s the sort of unstructured day that would have stressed him out in the past, but he’s gotten better at taking it easy.
That afternoon he’s sitting in the couch with Bitty, finally responding to the dozens of messages he’s gotten over the past couple of days. Jack is still riding the high of the win a little bit, so he’s not as stressed as he thinks he normally would be.
It’s kind of funny, he notes to Bitty, that almost every person who’s texted him has sent two texts. One clearly sent right as the game ended, congratulating him on the win, and another one sent approximately half an hour later with messages ranging from “what the fuck???” to “I support you (but what the fuck?)”.
Most texts get a cursory “thanks”, some get not response at all. But he pauses when he sees that he has texts from Hall and Murray.
From Coach Hall: Congrats on the win Jack it was well deserved
sent: 10:05pm
I want you to know that I’m proud to have coached you. Let me know if you or Bittle need anything from me.
sent: 10:36pm
The second text makes Jack’s throat tight. He always had a lot of respect for Coach Hall, and he never gave a compliment he didn’t mean. Jack’s proud to have been on the Samwell team and it’s nice to know that this doesn’t change anything.
The messages from Murray are a little less formal
From Coach Murray: Great game Jack, that’s one hell of a way to end your rookie season!
sent: 10:05pm
Hall and I expect invitations to your wedding, we’re taking at least a little bit of credit for this
sent: 10:36pm
The last text makes Jack laugh out loud and he tips his phone to show Bitty who promptly starts to laugh too.
“Do you think he’s right?” Jack asks, “ that if they hadn’t put you on my line that first year we’d still be here?”
“I like to think we would have figured it out anyways, but they at least deserve credit for recruiting me.”
“And they were definitely right when they said you make me better,” Jack muses. “Even if I wasn’t to hear it yet.”
“Lord, can you imagine,” Bitty says, leaning into Jack’s arm, “if we’d told that us that in a few years we’d be kissing on center ice after you won the Stanley Cup?”
“I don’t think I would have believed any part of that.”
“Considering I wasn’t out yet and thought you hated me? I wouldn’t have believed it either. Well,” Bitty considers, “at least the kissing part. I’d have believed you’d won the Cup.”
“Really?”
“Come on Jack.” Bitty smacks his arm gently. “I could resent you for waking me up at 4am to slam me into the boards and still have faith in you future NHL career.”
Jack shakes his head a little at that. “Regardless, I’m glad things worked out the way they did.”
Bitty grins up at him and Jack grins back. He’s really glad things worked out the way they did.
Turning back to his phone, Jack types out two responses.
To Hall: Thank you, I’m proud to have been part of SMH.
To Murray: Thank you.
And you were right when you said he makes me better.
“Is there any chance they haven’t been talking about us?” Jack asks when he notices that their time stamps match.
Bitty laughs. “Not a chance. They probably watched the game together.”
Jack’s not particularly bothered by the thought of his former coaches gossiping about them, but he could do without the hundreds of other people also gossiping about them right now. As he scrolls through more disbelieving texts, he can’t bring himself to care enough to want to take it back though.
No matter what happens, he’s got a Stanley Cup, a boyfriend he loves, and a big group of friends, teammates, coaches, and family who’ve got his back.
They settle into a summer routine of training and Bitty making more food than Jack and Tater can possibly eat and doing all the things they couldn’t do while their relationship was still a secret. It feels a little bit like a dream sometimes, but that doesn’t mean it’s all perfect.
Bitty is at the grocery store when Jack’s phone lights up with the name Suzanne Bittle. He’s not exactly surprised she’s finally calling him, but he is also not at all prepared for whatever this conversation is going to be. He contemplates for a few seconds letting it go to voicemail but decides it’s just going to stress him out more if he waits. So, he picks up the phone and says hello.
“Hi honey!” Suzanne says in a way that sounds so much like Bitty. “Do you have time to talk?”
“Uh, yeah, I have time.”
She asks him about off-season training and his teammates, and he asks about her garden which he saw last summer. It’s not that Jack minds talking to her but it’s so painfully obvious that this isn’t why she called. They both know what they’re not addressing, and it makes an otherwise normal conversation unbearably tense. The line goes silent and Jack wonders if he’s going to have to ask why she’s calling. Eventually she speaks.
“He says he loves you,” Suzanne says quietly, like she’s not quite sure that’s true. “Do you love him?”
He’s caught off guard by the directness of her question but at least it’s an easy one to answer. “Of course, I do.” Jack says, trying to sound firm, make her understand how true it is.
“He knows I love him too, right?” she asks after a moment.
That, Jack thinks, isn’t so easy to answer. As far as Bitty has told him it’s not a matter of whether his mother loves him or not, but a matter of whether she’ll accept him the way she used to. It doesn’t feel like his place to say all that though, so he just answers yes.
“I just don’t understand why he didn’t tell me. Would it have been that hard?” she asks.
Jack can hear the hurt in her voice, and he knows Bitty feels guilty about not telling her first. But he doesn’t think she has any idea just how hard it was. Jack remembers coming home to an abandoned pie and Bitty crying because he wanted to tell her, but he was too scared. And he remembers Bitty crying again when he finally told her. He sees how tired Bitty is after every phone call with her now, how much it weighs on him when she says things like “we’ll figure it out” and “why don’t you just come home?” as though home isn’t a place that’s been hurting him for a long time. He knows she loves him and that she’s hurt too, but it’s hard for Jack to feel sorry for her.
“He said your parents have known for a while,” she continues before Jack can try and explain any of that, and then he understands just why she’s calling him.
“Oh euh, yes. I told them a few months ago, but they already knew, um, about me,” he tries, hoping it might soften the blow. “That made it a lot easier.”
She’s quiet for a moment and Jack has no idea what to say.
“So, you managed to tell them everything before telling the rest of the world, but Dicky couldn’t?” she asks with a tone that Jack can’t quite figure out. Its somewhere between confused, and frustrated, and pleading.
Jack grimaces. He would prefer never to discuss anything related to his overdose with Bitty’s mom, but he thinks knowing that his coming out to his parents was probably worse than Bitty’s might make things better.
“I, euh,” he starts, “I didn’t really tell them. They found out after I overdosed. I stopped keeping secrets from them after that.”
“Oh.”
It’s silent again and Jack is so desperate to be anywhere but on the phone, talking about this with Bitty’s mom, but he waits. If anything in this phone call will make things easier for Bitty he’s willing to do it.
“Did he really think I would just stop loving him?”
Jack thinks this is a better question for Bitty, but he tries to answer anyways.
“I don’t think that’s what he was afraid of exactly. Just. He loves you. And he wants you in his life. I think he was more afraid that it would change things, and that you wouldn’t be close anymore. So, for a while lying to you hurt less than the prospect of losing his relationship with you.”
Suzanne is quiet again and Jack thinks this is the most uncomfortable phone call he’s ever been on, which is saying something. He clenches and unclenches his hand that’s not holding the phone, trying to ease some of the tension in his body.
“Is he happy?”
Jack really isn’t sure anymore. Most of the time he seems to be, but sometimes there are days where he’ll be quiet and withdrawn, or days where he actually lets himself be angry. He doesn’t think telling Suzanne that would help anything.
“Yes. I mean I hope so, I think so,” Jack says instead.
“Well, I’ll let you go, I’m sure you’re busy, but it was lovely talking to you!” Suzanne says after a beat. She sounds so chipper, such a sharp contrast to how upset she’d sounded just a few seconds ago. He can almost picture her forcing a smile and happy tone the same way Bitty does when he’s hurting but desperately trying to pretend he’s fine.
“Oh, well, euh. It was good to hear from you too,” he manages, and with a peppy goodbye Suzanne hangs up.
Jack stands there in the kitchen for a minute, a little bewildered, before settling into one of the chairs at the island. He thinks about the past few weeks and the tension that has underlaid so much of it. He thinks about just a few nights ago, Bitty yelling with tears in his eyes that “She keeps saying it’s fine! But if it’s actually fine then why won’t she fucking say it out loud?” He thinks about the way that Bitty’s dad seems to be pretending like nothing happened at all. He thinks about the way Bitty clenched his jaw and looked away when Jack’s dad told him how proud he was before he and his mom headed back to Montreal.
He’s no stranger to feeling like your father doesn’t love you, or wishes you were a different person. But it’s not the same. For him it was the anxiety, and the media, and a few careless words that had teenage Jack convinced he was a disappointment. Bitty’s dad it seems, managed to make Bitty feel that way every day. It’s that difference that makes him never quite sure how to help. Maybe all he can do is hold Bitty while he cries and hope that someday his parents will give him the acceptance he deserves.
The other less than great part about the summer is that being the first out player in the NHL means he now has even more press obligations. Jack knew it was futile to hope that he might get out of doing any press after coming out, so he didn’t bother. He was also willing to do a lot to get back in PR and management’s good graces. No one had outright said that they were displeased with him not giving anyone a head’s up that he was planning to come out, but he knows he left them scrambling. So here he is on a Tuesday afternoon in late July, sitting down with a reporter to talk about The Cup, his rookie season, winning the Calder, and, obviously, the kiss.
It’s not that Jack doesn’t want to talk about Bitty (he always wants to talk about Bitty). It’s not even that he minds being the face of queer hockey players. He just never really knows what to say. There have been a few times when kids have recognized him and Bitty, and they thank Jack for coming out, sometimes for making it easier for them to come out, and Jack just freezes. Bitty always says something perfect about visibility and things getting better and the kids leave smiling. Jack can’t figure out how to do that.
He doesn’t have a panic attack the day of the interview, but his hands shake the whole time. He’s beyond glad that George thought to only agree to printed interviews.
The interviewer is polite and starts with easy questions.
Yes, Jack is excited to have had such an impressive rookie season.
Yes, he is proud of his team for winning the cup.
No, he isn’t focused on winning awards, but the Calder was an honor.
Yes, he is already looking towards the next season.
“And we can’t really interview you without asking a little bit about what happened after the Falcs won the Stanley Cup,” she says, and Jack braces for impact.
“To start, pretty much every media outlet has been calling you gay. Is that how you identify?”
The question throws Jack for a loop even though he knows he should have expected it.
“Oh. Euh. I’m… bisexual actually?” He doesn’t mean to phrase it like a question, but a deep uncertainty twists in his chest all of a sudden. Like he’s breaking some rule by saying it out loud. Like it’s the wrong thing to say.
The interviewer seems to ignore the question mark at the end of his statement and moves on.
“So, how exactly did your coming out happen? Was this something you had planned?”
Jack thinks it’s a polite question. He has no doubts that the last-minute press conference rescheduling and hastily put together statement made it clear to everyone that it wasn’t planned at all. He does his best to push the uneasy feeling he has aside and focus on trying to say something coherent. At least this is a question he’s been preparing to answer.
“It euh. It wasn’t something that had never been discussed. The team knew, and management knew, and there had been discussions about coming out, but there wasn’t a real plan in place. In the moment we were both really excited about the win, and it seemed ridiculous that I couldn’t kiss my partner like the rest of my teammates.” He sighs. “Of course, it was more complicated than that and there were a lot of unintended consequences for what we did, but in the moment, it didn’t make sense not to kiss him.”
“Can you talk a little more about some of those unintended consequences?”
Jack nods. “Uh. Well. There were some people who should have heard it from us first, but also with the team. I mean. In the press conference we did afterwards a lot of the questions were about what I did, not what the team did.”
He lets out a breath, tries to get his thoughts in line. It’s important to him that he explains this right.
“I never wanted to overshadow the team’s accomplishments. I didn’t win the Cup, our team did. And it wouldn’t have been possible without work done by other people years before I even got there, you know? Everyone in the organization from staff, to management, to my teammates deserve credit for that win. But euh, in the moment I wasn’t really thinking about how coming out would, um, shift the narrative.”
“In a way, didn’t it make the Falconers winning the Cup important for more reasons than being the franchise’s first Cup though?”
Jack shrugs. “I guess. But they all deserve credit for that too. The support I got from the Falcs has been really important to me. I don’t think I could have come out if I didn’t know my team was behind me.”
“Some of your teammates have been pretty active on social media defending you. There’s been a lot of discussion about whether or not the support is legitimate or not, but it sounds like it’s not just a media strategy.”
Jack breathes a little bit easier now because this is something he doesn’t mind talking about. Bitty has shown him some of the more colorful responses his teammates have posted to people online.
“No. All the support has been very real. I think people were surprised when they found out, but everyone was good about treating it like a normal thing, which I think is what everyone really wants. Whatever they’re posting online isn’t just for show.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Jack nods.
The interviewer asks him a couple final fluff questions and thanks him for his time.
Jack shakes her hand and tries to smile before getting out of the building as quickly as possible.
He sits in his car and tries to breathe through the tightness in his chest. He tells himself that the interview went well and that there’s no reason for him to feel like this. That doesn’t change the fact that he feels like he’s said something wrong.
Jack laughs weakly to himself. Unintended consequences. It’s not even like he’s surprised to be feeling this way. There was a reason that the plan was always to find some nice woman and never, ever tell anyone. Logically, he knows that this is better, that he deserves to be able to be open about it. And it is worth it. Getting to be with Bitty is absolutely worth it. In a year, it probably won’t even matter. But right now, in the midst of it, he can’t help the part of him that wants to run, that wants to disappear, every time someone asks about it.
When Bitty asks how the interview went, he says it went well. It did. But Bitty clearly knows that something’s not quite right.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
Jack shrugs.
“I don’t know. It went well, she asked the questions I prepared for, I just…”
He doesn’t even know how to explain what happened. It’s probably just anxiety. But there’s always a source, even if it’s not rational. He just can’t figure out what it is.
“I guess I just never thought I’d have to talk to a reporter about it,” he finishes lamely.
Bitty nods. “That makes sense. I mean, it’s hard to talk about things you’ve spent so long keeping hidden.”
Jack just nods. It’s probably that.
He lies in bed that night, wide awake for long after Bitty’s fallen asleep. The phrases “Bisexual, actually” and “How do you identify?” rattling around his head. The first phrase is the correct answer to the second, but every time he thinks about it, a sense of wrongness twists in his gut. He finally falls into a fitful sleep, hoping that maybe he just wasn’t used to hearing himself say it out loud.
But the article goes to print, and people keep talking about what he’s done for the LGBT community, and it all makes him feel uneasy. Bitty asks him what’s wrong but the truth is, he doesn’t know. How can he say, “I’m bisexual, but I don’t feel that way” when they should be the same thing?
That Saturday, Bitty is babysitting for the Robinsons, Tater is at a doctor’s appointment, and Lardo is visiting family so Jack invites Shitty to Providence.
It takes him all of three minutes to realize something is wrong.
Shitty lays down on his couch, beer in hand, and puts his feet in Jack’s lap.
“You wanna tell me why you’ve got your distressed face on?”
Jack takes a second to be relieved that Shitty is asking, because he doesn’t know if he could have made himself bring it up unprompted. He’s quiet for a minute, trying to figure out how to start this conversation. He comes up empty so, he opts for something that he’s curious about that seems like it might be connected.
“Did I ever tell you, euh, that I was, um bi?” he asks, wincing at the way he stumbles over the words.
Shitty look confused. “Uh yeah brah, you told everyone.”
Jack shakes his head because that not what he’s asking, and he clarifies. “I know that you know, but have I ever actually said the specific word to you?”
Shitty stops and thinks for a minute. His face falls, eyes widening in guilt.
“I guess I just assumed because of Camilla and Kate and then Bitty…”
“It was a correct assumption,” Jack cuts in before Shitty can spiral into guilt. That’s not what he wants, and it’s not why he asked. “I just. An interviewer asked and I thought it was maybe the first time I’d said that word to anyone but Bitty.”
“Really?”
Jack shrugs.
Shitty waits, like he’s expecting Jack to say more but he doesn’t know what else he’d say.
“How did it feel, to say it out loud?” he finally asks.
Jack shrugs again. “Weird I guess.”
“Good weird?”
Jack lets out a breath. “No.” He doesn’t want to admit this, but it’s also the whole reason he invited Shitty over, so he does anyways. “It felt... I felt like I was lying when I said it.”
“You think you’re something else?”
He shakes his head.
“No. It’s the right word. It just… seemed like I shouldn’t be using it.”
Shitty frowns at him at him like he’s trying to figure something out and Jack casts his gaze towards the ceiling. This is how things go for them sometimes. Jack will say things that don’t make sense and Shitty will manage to turn it into something he can actually understand.
“Do you feel like you’re bi?” Shitty asks after a while.
Jack tilts his head to look at him.
“Yes?” he says with an awkward little laugh, “that’s kind of the whole point of this conversation.”
Shitty shakes his head.
“I know you are. I want to know if you feel like you are. Do you feel like bisexual is a word that belongs to you? When people talk about LGBT athletes does it feel like they’re talking about you? When your teammates put pride tape on their sticks, when fans buy the rainbow t-shirts does it feel like they’re doing it for you?”
Jack wants to protest that they’re not doing it for him. Because they aren’t. It’s not about him. Those things are important but they’re for other people. Rainbows and acronyms aren’t for people like Jack. And that’s when he understands what Shitty is getting at.
They sit in silence for a while. Moments like this are why Shitty is Jack’s best friend. For all that he never shuts up, he also knows when to be quiet, when to give Jack the time to figure out how to say the things that are tangled up in his mind.
He lets out a long breath and stares at the ceiling. He thinks if he looked at Shitty, he would look sad, so he resists the urge to turn his head.
“It’s not--“he starts, but he has no idea how to finish that sentence. He has no idea how to explain that it feels like it’s for someone else, that when he calls himself bisexual, he feels like he’s lying. That he has lots of identities—hockey player, Candian, history buff, photographer, even boyfriend—but that his sexuality isn’t one of them.
Eventually he says, “I feel like I’m taking things that don’t belong to me.” It’s not a good explanation. It doesn’t explain the unsettled and twisted up feeling in Jack’s gut when he thinks about it, but he hopes Shitty understands what he’s trying to say.
“If it weren’t for Bitty, would you ever have told me you were bi?” Shitty finally asks.
“No,” he says quietly, guilt settling into his bones, “no one else was ever supposed to know.”
Shitty makes a sad noise in the back of his throat and Jack closes his eyes.
He’s not sure why saying that makes him feels so bad. It was always just the plan. From the minute he realized he liked boys too the plan was always to ignore it and just date women and never say anything. Even with Kent the plan didn’t change. They would get drafted, and go their separate ways, and pretend whatever they had never happened. For some reason when he admits it now, it sounds horrible.
“Jack,” Shitty says gently, “What you’re telling me is that, in a year, you went from intending to remain firmly closeted for your entire life to suddenly being the poster boy for every single LGBTQ athlete? That’s a lot to handle brah.”
Jack shrugs. It’s true, but it feels overwhelming to admit. It’s easier to pretend it isn’t a big deal.
Shitty kicks his leg. “It is. It’s ok if you don’t know how to feel about it or don’t know what to say.”
Jack presses the bottoms of his palms into his eyes and groans.
“It’s not though,” he says, frustration and worry slipping into his voice, “Because they keep asking me about it.”
“Fuck. Yeah I guess that’s true.”
Shitty is quiet for a bit and Jack is too.
“What do you want to say?” he finally asks.
Jack sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t want to say anything. Every time I say anything it just makes it into a bigger and bigger deal. I want everyone to leave me alone and just let me play hockey but we both know that’s not an option.” He cringes a little at how bitter his voice sounds by the end. He knows he’s lucky that he was able to come and that he’ll still get to play hockey. And he knows that he can do some good by saying the right things. But it doesn’t feel fair that he has to come out and answer questions about it and be a role model and—
He feels Shitty’s hand gripping his arm and realizes his breathing has been speeding up. He concentrates on the pressure on his arm and takes a slow breath in and lets it out.
“Good, man. Breathe.”
It takes a couple more tries for his breathing to even out again, but it does. They sit there for a little, Shitty’s hand still a steadying point of connection, and they breathe.
“Ok, wanna tell me what’s stressing you out?” Shitty asks eventually.
Jack focuses on the place where Shitty hand is gripping his arm and tries to tell him.
“I… I was prepared for the backlash. I was prepared for bad reactions. That’s why I was never planning to come out. But I don’t think I was prepared for good reactions. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
He keeps his eyes trained on his hands wanting to try and work through his thoughts without seeing Shitty’s reaction.
“I know how to keep my head down and ignore the news and the things people on social media say. It’s the good reactions, the questions that I don’t know how to handle. I—I don’t know how to talk about it, but there’s so much pressure to say the right thing. If I mess it up, then I’m messing it up for everyone else. If I say the wrong thing and this goes badly for me then I’m proving them right, that I’m just as big of a fuck up now as I was back then.”
He glances up at Shitty and he’s got the same serious face he always gets when they have conversations like this.
“I’m gonna start by saying that none of the reactions you get, good or bad are your fault or your responsibility,” he begins. “You didn’t do anything wrong. The way people react is on them, not you. And it’s ok that the good reactions are harder for you to handle.”
“They aren’t supposed to be the problem though.”
Shitty shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter what should or shouldn’t be hard. And I mean, with the bad reactions you know they were never on your side, and they probably never will be, right? With acceptance there’s actually something to lose.”
Jack doesn’t know that he’s ever thought of it that way. I sort of makes sense though.
“As for feeling like you’re going to mess up? You can’t.”
Jack bites back on the argument already forming that he can mess up and he usually does. He bites back the argument that he has in fact messed his life up in a spectacular fashion before. But Shitty seems to know this because he cuts in before Jack can say any of that.
“I know it feels like you can, and that you’re responsible for all these people but that isn’t true. You’re only responsible for living your life. You can’t mess that up.”
“I guess,” Jack mumbles.
Shitty fixes him with a look, and Jack sighs.
“I just wish it didn’t matter so much.”
“I know,” Shitty says, flopping back down on the couch next to him. “It shouldn’t matter and I’m sorry that it does and that you have to deal with all of this as a result.”
They sit there silently for a while before Shitty asks, “Have you talked to Bitty about any of this? You know I’m always ready to help but he might have some more, relevant experience, so to speak.”
“We don’t not talk about it,” Jack says. And they do. It wouldn’t be possible for them to never discuss it. But they’ve never talked about it like this. It’s always been about experiences, and feelings, never the actual concept of sexuality itself.
“You both grew up not being able to talk about it, so you don’t know how to now?”
“More like it seems like something we shouldn’t talk about.”
“Ah." Shitty says sagely, "The joyous consequences of growing up in homophobic fucking environments.”
Jack tips his head back and closes his eyes.
“I should talk to him about this shouldn’t I?”
“Yep.”
He sighs. He hates that this is so hard when loving Bitty is so easy.
“You gonna be ok?”
Jack rolls his head to look at Shitty. “Yeah. Thank you for talking me through this.”
Shitty tackles him into a headlock and kisses his head. “Anything for my bestest bro, bro.”
Jack laughs and he feels a little lighter.
Jack does end up bringing it up to Bitty. They’re getting ready for bed a few nights later and he accidentally blurts out “Do you feel like you’re gay?”
Bitty frowns at him and tilts his head.
“Uh,” he laughs a little confusedly. “Yes? I mean, obviously?”
Jack lets out a frustrated noise. “No ok, I know. But why?”
“Why do I feel gay?”
Jack nods, then shrugs. “I guess.”
This gives Bitty some pause, and he seems to consider it. “I don’t really know. I just… am?”
Jack forces out a breath and sits down on the edge of the bed. The problem is he doesn’t even know what answer he’s looking for.
“Maybe tell me why you want to know?” Bitty offers. “That might help me give you a better answer.”
“I feel like I’m doing everything wrong,” he admits.
Bitty still looks confused.
“I don’t know how to be… out. People keep asking me question, or thanking me, and it makes me feel like I’m lying-- that I’m not this person they think I am.”
Bitty makes a quiet noise and for some reason that spurs Jack on. He needs Bitty to understand, because if he doesn’t then Jack doesn’t think anyone will.
“I just— for so long it was something I couldn’t talk about that now I don’t know to talk about it at all. And I keep saying the wrong thing. Everyone was making fun of how I answered that question at the press conference, but I don’t know what I was supposed to say instead.”
Bitty comes over to sit next to him, lacing his fingers with Jack’s. He looks at the places where there hands meet and listens to Bitty speak.
“I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. And you don’t have to be perfect.”
“But I feel like I owe it to people to do this right. If I screw it up, then I screw it up for everyone else.”
Bitty gently tilts his face up so he’s looking at him.
“Jack,” he says seriously. “I know you know this but I’m gonna say it anyways. It is not all on you. All you can do is your best. The league being homophobic isn’t your fault. And you can’t fix it all on your own.”
He sighs.
“I know. I just feel like if I can make it easier for other people then I need to.”
Bitty nods.
“Ok. And I get that honey. You know I do. But think about when you were younger, the you before the draft. What would you have wanted to hear? If some hockey player had come out, what would you have needed to see?”
“I just wanted to play. I just wanted to know that it didn’t matter and that I’d be able to play even if people found out.”
Bitty smiles a little.
“See? I wanted the same thing. I just wanted to know that I’d be ok and that it didn’t matter. I just wanted to know that there wasn’t anything wrong with me. So, you don’t have to do anything special.” He laughs a little. “You can play right? All you gotta do is play to make it true. And I know it’s gonna be harder this season but we’re both gonna play anyways and we’re gonna live our life. And that’s the only thing we owe anyone. Ok?”
Jack nods. Bitty smiles and kisses him on the nose. Jack knows he’s doing it because it always makes him smile but it works. He pushes Bitty over to the other side of the bed so he can lie down.
Bitty follows suit, then flips onto his side to face Jack.
“Is this all because of the interviews?”
Jack makes a little shrugging motion.
“Everything kind of. The interviews just forced me to deal with the fact that I’m apparently the new face of queer hockey.”
“Pretty sure you’re the new face of queer athletes sweet pea.”
Jack gives him a look.
“Thanks, Bittle,” he says dryly. “That really takes the pressure off.”
“Hey, I’ve got your back and so do all your friends and teammates. It’ll be ok.”
By the end of his sentence Bitty sounds almost like he’s trying to convince himself, so Jack takes a deep breath and says with as much confidence as he can muster, “Yeah, yeah it will.”
He has more interviews he has to do, but it gets a little easier after that. He still hates talking to reporters and having to talk about his life publicly. But he just keeps thinking about what Bitty said “Were gonna live our life and that’s the only thing we owe anyone” and that makes it a little less overwhelming.
And the next time a reporter asks if he has anything to tell young queer people who might be listening, he knows what to say.
“I’d say that you’re gonna be ok. I know you’ve heard the phrase “you can play.” This season I’m gonna prove that it’s true.”