Work Text:
When Jack got back from his morning class, there was something laying on his desk. A handmade note on red paper with two crossed hockey sticks at the top, it read, “Happy Valentine’s Day! Love, Bitty!”
...
Jack cornered Lardo by the doorway. He may have been watching for her out his window.
“You’re a girl, right?” he demanded. She looked a little alarmed.
“How much coffee have you had today, Jack?”
“I need advice,” he said urgently.
“About what?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
“Giving a present to someone. For Valentine’s Day,” he explained.
Her face did a complicated thing that he assumed meant she was holding back laughter, before it smoothed out.
“Ask Shitty or your mother. I don’t do romantic gestures,” she said and then muscled past him. How someone so tiny could do that he wasn't sure.
...
Shitty was out of the question. The few times Jack had asked Shitty his opinion all involved too high a ratio of smugness to actual helpful advice.
His mother picked up after three rings.
Usually he called on a schedule, once a week on Sunday evenings. This was a Wednesday afternoon and she sounded concerned when she answered with, “Jack, baby. How are you?”
“Fine,” he said.
“Everything at school okay?” she prompted.
“Yes. It’s fine,” he repeated.
“The team’s doing well?”
“Yeah, mom. Uh,” he paused. His mom waited patiently.
He forced himself to continue. “If I had a friend who I wanted to get something for Valentine’s Day, what would you suggest?”
His mom made a thoughtful noise. “A ‘friend’ or someone you wanted to date?” she asked.
Jack bit his lip. When he didn’t reply, his mom sighed.
“Well,” she said, “you can never go wrong with food. You’re always talking about how your teammate, Eric, is making pie. Maybe he could help.”
“Um,” he said.
“Or,” his mom continued brightly, “you could make a batch of cookies. That’s easy enough.” Jack blinked. That could work.
....
There was one two-hour stretch where Jack was fairly sure he could be alone in the Haus kitchen. Friday from ten to noon everyone was in class or at least out of the house doing things. Jack didn’t ask.
Everything he could possibly need for baking was likely already in the kitchen, but raiding Bitty’s supplies seemed wrong. That was why he was at the grocery store at 10 o’clock on a Thursday night. This was his last stop on the list of ingredients.
M&M cookies had been his mom’s suggestion. “You can buy the Valentine’s version, with the red and pink candy coating,” she said.
The holiday section of the store was aggressively red. Another college-age male stood in the aisle, holding two heart-shaped boxes of chocolate, one in each hand. After a period of serious consideration, he left with both.
Jack grabbed the bag of candy and bolted.
When he got back to the Haus, Shitty was playing a video game in the living room. Rans and Holster were making noise in the kitchen.
“Urgent need for more Gatorade?” Shitty asked, taking in Jack’s bags with a considering look. He didn’t seem to be concerned that his avatar was simultaneously being obliterated.
Jack nodded, not stopping as he made his way to the stairs. He could hear Bitty in the kitchen as well and he needed to get to his room. He didn’t know if Bitty could recognize the shape of baking supplies through a bag.
He hid the ingredients in his room like illicit drugs. Eggs and butter replaced sports drinks in the mini fridge.
...
The next morning Jack moved around the kitchen cautiously. With the Haus empty, the room was oddly silent, only the hum of the fridge breaking the quiet.
The day he and Bitty had worked on the food class project Bitty had played music on his mp3 player. When Bitty cooked alone, he frequently sang along to whatever was blasting from the speakers.
Jack measured the ingredients carefully, checking the instructions frequently to be sure he was following each step. Why the recipe needed two kinds of sugar, granulated and brown, was not his place to question.
The assembled cookie dough went in the fridge to chill, while he cleaned up the kitchen. He worried about misplacing something that Bitty would notice and somehow tipping his hand a day early.
The oven had been sitting at 325F for a while by the time Jack put the trays in. For ten minutes, Jack watched through the glass window as the cookies puffed up and eventually started to brown at the edges.
Jack pulled the trays out of the oven and transferred all the cookies to a few plates. It was closing in on noon and the cookies would have to cool in his room while he went to his afternoon classes. He didn’t think he could get away with borrowing Bitty’s cooling racks. Bitty sometimes baked Friday nights.
Coming back from class, Jack caught up with Bitty, also on his way home.
Bitty was chatting about a paper he was writing when he stopped abruptly in the entryway and visibly sniffed the air with a perplexed look on his face.
“Does the Haus smell... different?” Bitty asked. Jack hid a smile.
“Not sure what you mean,” he said. Bitty frowned.
Ranson and Holster had already gotten back from class and were sitting in the living room. Bitty asked them if they had noticed anything.
“Dude, I fucking told you it smelled,” Rans crowed.
“Yeah, and I fucking told you my noise is all messed up. I can’t smell anything,” Holster shouted back. He did sound stuffy. There was a reminder to get out his disinfectant spray. Jack didn’t want whatever plague Holster was spreading around.
Jack went up to his room to put his books down. The sounds of Ran and Holster shouting over each other and Bitty laughing at them followed him up the stars.
When Bitty finally came up as well, Jack heard him say, “So weird. It smells even stronger here.”
...
Later, it occurred to Jack to think about how he was going to actually give the cookies to Bitty tomorrow. Should he have bought a box or something fancy to put them in? It was too late for that now. He would just have to use one of the nicer plates from their mismatched collection and some plastic wrap.
The door to Shitty’s room was open and Jack could hear him playing something that sounded like club music, which was different than the weird mishmash of classic rock and pop that he preferred.
Jack looked in and the source of the music was clearer when he saw Lardo was sitting on his floor. The chirp he’d been preparing never left his mouth when he noticed something behind Shitty’s head.
Tacked to his bulletin board between a crumpled sketch of a hockey play that looked vaguely sexual and his spring class schedule was an exact copy of Jack’s Valentine from Bitty.
For a moment, Jack couldn’t move. Luckily neither Shitty nor Lardo noticed him while he struggled to keep it together.
Jack bit his lip. Of course the card hadn’t just been for him. It had been a team thing.
Eventually he went back to his room, grabbed the cookies, and brought them down the stairs.
Ranson and Holster were in the kitchen, chatting while they made what looked like triple decker sandwiches. Jack saw them exchange a look when he came in, but neither of them said anything.
Jack set the plate of cookies on the counter, code to Haus that they were fair game, and walked out.
“What’s up with?” Jack heard Holster ask. He assumed Holster followed that question with a gesture referring to himself.
“I don’t know,” Rans said, the words muffled around a mouthful, “but if it means he’s baking like Bitty now, I think we’re in luck.”
....
There was no game Saturday so as usual the coaches pushed a little harder in morning practice. Jack had a theory that it was meant to discourage too much fun on Friday nights. Fortunately, it did mean that Jack didn’t have to talk too much to anyone.
It was a different story in the locker room afterwards. Jack’s hope that he wouldn’t hear anything about his surprise baked goods from the night before was almost immediately shattered.
“Your cookies were delicious, man,” Chowder told him.
“Did you even have one?” Dex asked.
“No, but from what Rans and Holster said, they sounded amazing, bro, Jack’s a great baker,” he said loyally. Dex gave him a disgusted look.
“They were surprisingly good,” Shitty agreed, raising his eyebrows up and down at Jack. Jack ignored him.
Jack surmised that the majority of the cookies had been eaten by the defensive duo and the remaining few consumed by Shitty and Lardo. Bitty hadn’t gotten one. Most of the evening he had been working on something in his room.
“Bitty, Jack’ll be giving you a run for your money, bro,” Holster shouted across the locker room. Whatever sickness he had didn’t seem to make him any quieter.
“Yeah, he already one-upped your Valentine’s Day cards to the team with those cookies,” Rans told him. Jack flushed. He couldn’t hear what Bitty said over the sound of blood rushing in his ears.
“But do they count as a team gift if only three people got them?” Nursey asked.
“Too bad if you missed out. Holiday comes once a year,” Shitty said. That seemed more pointed than necessary to Jack.
He could handle the clueless words of his teammates. Shitty’s shrewd looks were a little harder to shrug off. Lardo had probably told Shitty about his frantic questions for her earlier that week.
“But it’s Valentine’s Day today, right? Maybe we’ve got a shot,” Chowder said hopefully.
Jack shook his head. “That was all the baking I had in me,” he told Chowder.
Shitty rolled his eyes.
“I might make something for ya’ll today. Not like I have anything else going on,” Bitty chimed in, while the team started filtering out.
“'Swawesome!” Chowder cheered. Jack forced a smile.
...
Coming back from practice, Jack was quiet. When the group got back to the Haus, he headed up to his room.
Other than Shitty’s shouted “No one likes a sulker” through their shared bathroom, which Jack didn’t want to think about, he had mostly been left alone through the afternoon. It wasn’t until evening when there was a knock at his door.
Someone actually bothering to knock in the Haus was rare enough that Jack rewarded the gesture by getting up to open the door. It was Bitty with a slice of pie.
“Not sure how impressed you’ll be now that you’ve picked up baking as a hobby,” Bitty teased. Jack stood back, enough of an invitation for Bitty to come in.
“I just know how hard it is now that I tried it alone,” Jack told him. It was hard not to smile at Bitty.
“It was sweet of you to bake those,” Bitty said. “I heard they were really tasty. Just wish I could’ve have tried one.” Jack gritted his teeth.
“That one project we did together for class got you hooked, huh?” Bitty continued.
Jack couldn’t take it anymore. “They were meant for you.” he admitted.
“What was?” Bitty asked absently. He had set the pie on Jack’s desk and was kind of smiling at the Valentine’s Day card laying on top. Jack had put in in a drawer so he could ignore it after he had realized the card hadn’t meant what he had thought (hoped), but he had pulled it out again after practice.
“The cookies I baked.”
Bitty turned suddenly. “You baked cookies for me?” He sounded confused.
“I wanted to give them to you. For Valentine’s Day,” Jack forced out.
Bitty tilted his head. “But you put them out in the kitchen and -”
Jack interrupted, “Yeah, I thought you gave me a valentine.”
“I did.” Bitty was looking more confused than ever.
“No,” Jack shook his head, “you gave them to the team. I thought you gave one to me.”
Bitty’s eyes widened. “And you wanted to bake me cookies,” he said softly. It wasn’t a question.
Jack nodded stiffly.
“Oh,” Bitty exhaled. He looked down for a moment and then back up at Jack, his face brightening.
“Let me know if I’m wrong here but,” Bitty was suddenly in front of Jack. His face was very close.
Bitty paused for just a moment, eyes flicking from Jack’s mouth to his eyes, before he kissed him.
It started out tentative. Jack didn’t know if that was for his sake or Bitty’s but he quickly leaned in to deepen the kiss. He felt Bitty smile against his mouth and he huffed out a laugh.
Bitty looped his arms behind Jack’s neck, bringing their bodies flush. Jack ran his hands up and down Bitty’s back, settling them low on his hips.
Jack didn’t know how long they had been kissing when Bitty leaned back to take a breath. Their eyes met and Jack’s face hurt from smiling.
“I can’t believe you baked me cookies,” Bittu said with a breathless laugh.
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. He couldn’t believe it either. “This was better, eh?”
“Better than your cookies? I don’t know, I didn’t try them,” Bitty joked.
“If you’re interested, I could make them again. Later,” Jack said.
“Later,” Bitty agreed and pulled him close again.