Archive of Our Own ^beta

Kent Parson was getting a haircut, which was why Jack couldn’t marry the love of his life.

It was a fact that Jack couldn’t quite wrap his head around. 

Kent’s involvement wasn’t so much related to the love of his life part as it was related to the marriage part, which Jack was still having a hard time accepting as real. A harder time, even, than he was having trying to accept that this conversation was real, too.

“I need a divorce,” Jack said, instead of hello.

Kent had picked up on the fourth ring, and Jack assumed that he had been holding his phone in his hand since the first, but had decided to make Jack wait.

“I can’t do that right now,” Kent said, instead of hello.

“Why not?” 

“I’m getting a haircut.”

The line went quiet for a moment, and Jack could hear it. The background noise of Kent’s end of the call sounded a lot like the tell-tale chatter and hairdryers of a salon. 

Kent was getting a haircut.

“Okay,” Jack said carefully. “Look, I’m getting married. I am planning my wedding, but I can’t get married until I-” he forced the words out, “-stop being married to you. We’re married.”

“I know.” 

“Okay, well. I’m engaged.”

“I know that, too.” 

Jack held his phone against his face and summoned the strength to have this conversation. 

“My lawyer’s already drawn up the papers,” he explained. “I just need you to sign the copies and get them back to me so I can file them. I’ll email them to you. It’ll be quick.”

The line was silent again. “I’ll have to look over them,” Kent said, after a few beats.

“You can do that.”

“Not right now, I can’t. I’m-” 

“Getting a haircut,” Jack repeated. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen Kent in months, and hadn’t exchanged words with him in almost a year and a half. He was rusty in Kent’s… Kentness. “I know. Just do it after.”

“I’ll look at my schedule,” Kent said, and then hung up. 

Jack looked at the dropped call screen on his phone for a few minutes and then hung his head. He was sitting alone on the couch of his empty condo, tired from an afternoon run and tired from the echo of his younger self’s stupidity. Bitty wouldn’t get back from his fitness class for another hour. In an hour, Jack and his fiancé would make dinner. After dinner, Jack and his fiancé would scroll through a Pinterest board together, weaving together the beginning threads of their wedding planning.

Jack was glad Bitty was at the gym right now. It gave him time to despair.

Jack was glad Bitty wanted a long engagement. It gave him time to address the very large, very pressing issue at hand.

Eric Bittle was Jack Zimmermann’s fiancé.

Kent Parson was Jack Zimmermann’s husband.

***

Jack’s marriage went something like this.

When he was eighteen, he won the Memorial Cup. There was a picture of him with his team, piled on top of each other with their trophy. He and Parse had one arm wrapped around each other’s shoulders and they were grinning so wide, and flying so high, and if you looked at that photo of Jack you couldn’t see one trace of all the fear and dread that had been weighing him down for months. All you saw was joy.

The night he and Parse won the Cup, all Jack had was joy.

And beer.

The night Jack and Kent won the Cup was full of happiness and adrenaline and celebration. The team went to one after party. And then another. And then Jack needed to step outside for air, and Kent followed him.

In the night air, Kent didn’t say anything at first, but Jack remembered him whispering in his ear during their hug after they’d won.

“We did it,” Kent had said.

“Yeah,” Jack had smiled. “We did it.”

Spoken between the two of them, the word we was exclusive. Kent hadn’t been talking about the team. He’d been talking about them. Parson and Zimmermann. Zimms and Parse. Jack and Kent. They’d gotten on the ice together and they’d won.

While they stood on the sidewalk in the dark, that feeling of being in it together flooded Jack’s chest.

It occurred to him that he’d left the building alone, but Kent was still standing beside him. It occurred to him that Jack had never had a friend before Kent, had never felt seen before Kent looked at him and kept looking. He’d never felt matched until Kent Parson showed up on his line and changed everything.

It occurred to him that things were changing.

They were going to change. He didn’t want them to. 

“You and me, huh?” Jack said to Kent, softly. “We’re a team.”

“Always,” Kent promised.

Jack liked the sound of that. He liked how permanent it felt.

He wanted it in writing.

So, he asked Kent Parson to marry him.

Kent Parson said yes. 

Their witnesses were two girls from Queen’s University who were drunk enough to think that this idea was “so fun” and sober enough to seem like they just might have enough credibility to sign legal papers.

The four of them left the bar and participated in a very spontaneous, but very legally binding late-night ceremony in Kingston, Ontario, conducted by an officiant who seemed to have a sense of humour. 

Jack’s vows were written on the receipts he had shoved into his back pocket earlier, while Kent had written his on his own arm. They kissed, and the girls cheered. They fistbumped, and the girls cackled. Jack crushed a glass on the floor with his foot, the glass breaking underneath Kent’s hoodie. 

Jack and Kent didn’t get back in time for curfew that night, but they did get married, and it stayed like that for a long time.

***

Jack’s divorce went something like this.

He wanted to be married. 

He’d realised he wanted to marry Bitty while sitting with him in the back of a pickup truck, watching the Fourth of July fireworks light up the sky above Madison, Georgia. It was back in Madison, Georgia, during Christmas, that Jack decided he was going to propose.

Jack knew when he proposed at centre ice that, legally, he couldn’t marry Bitty yet.

With a ring on Bitty’s finger, the specifics seemed so irrelevant. Jack’s heart only saw his future with Bitty, and in comparison, the past seemed unimportant. The fact that Jack would need a divorce was just a setback and an inconvenience. It was a wrench in his plans, but it was something he would sort out, because he needed to, for Bitty.

For Bitty, Jack could deal with a little paperwork.

It was in the middle of the linen section of a home decor store, while picking out new bedsheets with Bitty and chatting idly about the table dressings at their wedding, that all of Jack’s denial had come crashing to a halt.    

He’d held Egyptian cotton between his fingers and panicked, as realization set in.

His marriage to Bitty relied on Kent Parson being cooperative.

***

Kent Parson was not a cooperative person.

Jack had a long list, most of it repressed, of examples. They ranged from stubborn (Kent pushing and prodding Jack until he adapted his plans to Kent’s whims) to unhelpful (Kent getting them lost for two hours while driving, missing every exit because he couldn’t read a map) to hurtful (Kent calling Jack from far-away hotel rooms, just to tell him everything he couldn’t bear to hear without ever understanding Jack’s point of view).

Jack added to the list.

Kent Parson never responded to Jack’s email. The email had laid everything out as clearly, concisely, and fool proof as possible. Print the document. Sign the document beside the X’s. Send the document back.

After three days, Jack sent him a text. 

[Jack]: did you get the papers? 

The message appeared under the last few texts they’d sent each other, dated over a year ago. Their text conversation was a long-running display of sparse and sporadic communication. If Jack scrolled up even an inch, he would find the apology he’d sent after he’d kissed Bitty on TV. The apology had been for the lack of warning he’d given Kent, knowing the media attention it would send his way. He hadn’t apologized for anything else. He didn’t need to. Kent’s reply had been just as brief, though it hadn’t been happy. 

After that, there was nothing. Until now.

Just as Kent had learned to leave Jack alone, Jack needed him to be available.

[Kent]: maybe but i can’t check right now

Jack frowned at his phone. 

[Jack]: don’t tell me you’re still getting a haircut

[Kent]: no ofc not

[Kent]: i’m in sweden

Jack’s frown deepened. 

He held the phone closer to his face and reread the message. Then he took a deep breath. 

[Jack]: you’re in Sweden

[Kent]: yeah

[Jack]: why are you in Sweden

[Kent]: i was invited

[Kent]: ppl get invited to things even if u don’t 

Jack took another deep breath. 

[Jack]: can you check your email? 

[Kent]: i’m out of the country i’ll do it when i get back 

[Jack]: you’re on your phone right now just open your email

[Kent]: no

[Kent]: i’m a guest that’s rude

[Kent]: literally who raised u

[Jack]: I just want to know that it sent

[Kent]: dude i’m in sweden 

[Jack]: okay fine just do it when you get back

He watched his screen, waiting out the three little dots that danced at the bottom of their chat while Kent typed. He counted ten seconds before Kent responded.

[Kent]: k 

Jack groaned and fell backwards against his mattress, running through every curse word he knew in his head until he found one that felt right.

He’d thought that getting this out of the way would be easiest during the offseason, when he and Kent weren't juggling games and roadies and training. He should have known better. If there was something Kent was good at, besides getting under Jack’s skin and shooting pucks into nets, it was avoiding things he didn’t want to do. Trying to pin Kent down was like trying to get Shitty to put on clothes. 

Jack heard the shower turn off and put away his phone, trading the screen for the sight of Bitty wading out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, exposing steam-flushed skin everywhere else.

As they settled in for the night, Jack laid in bed with Bitty's head nestled against his chest and shoulder, awake even as he felt Bitty drop off into sleep. 

Careful not to disturb him, Jack stretched an arm out and grabbed his phone off of his nightstand. He typed out a text one-handed, tilting the glow of the screen away from Bitty's face so that the brightness wouldn’t wake him up.

[Jack]: when do you get back from Sweden 

No response came, and Jack understood belatedly that there was a time difference. Kent was no longer three hours behind him. He was, after a quick Google search confirmed it, six hours ahead. That put him in the early hours of the morning, and unless he was still jet lagged and running on Vegas time, he was probably asleep. 

Well, Jack thought, at least one of them was sleeping. 

Jack’s anxiety had been chasing him for weeks now, making up for lost time, like all those years that he’d ignored the existence of his marriage certificate had come back to confront him at once. They presented him with a single, unmoving fact: legally, he couldn’t marry Bitty. He couldn’t marry Bitty while he was already married. Jack Zimmermann, despite a decade of denial, was married.

And he had definitely denied it.

Well, mostly, he’d forgotten about it. Or tried to.

Out of all of the things that made up his relationship with Kent Parson, their marriage (until now) had never been the most important. 

They’d never really been married, despite what the Canadian government had to say. Jack never called Kent his husband. They never spoke about the wedding. They’d never gone on a honeymoon, unless the long weekend at his cottage after their Cup win counted, and Jack chose to think that it didn’t. His fingers never itched to text Kent on their anniversary. They’d only ever itched like that in weird, unanticipated moments. Like his first day at Samwell, before he met Shitty, when he was lonely and conflicted. Like the day the Haus tv had been playing a show Kent had used to love to hate, and spurred an inside joke in Jack’s mind that could no longer be shared. 

Their marriage had only ever been legal, not emotional. The emotions lied elsewhere.

Being married to Bitty wouldn’t be like that, Jack knew. Being married to Bitty would be real. It would mean something. It meant something already, just being with him and knowing that he got to keep this. 

Once he got his divorce out of the way, Jack would get to keep this, with rings and a party and everything else he wanted. He wouldn’t marry Bitty in secret, with only strangers watching, and the promises he made including that he would never tell another soul. Jack was in love with Bitty. He wanted the world to hear that.

He wanted Kent to sign those papers, so he could stop living in that reality he shared with only one other person. 

The clock on his bedside table read midnight when his phone buzzed and brought him back to the present. 

It was six in the morning on a Saturday for Kent, but Jack’s surprise to see the notification from him faded as easily as it came. Jack knew from experience that Kent woke up early. Jack did, too, but that was the product of years and years of tight schedules and discipline. Jack, since he was a kid, told himself when to go to bed and when to wake up, and followed that routine like scripture. Parse was the kid who naturally woke up first at a sleepover and had breakfast with someone else’s parents.

There had been a time when those parents had been Jack’s. More than once, he had come downstairs in the morning to find Kent Parson sitting on his kitchen counter in sweatpants and a t-shirt, eating Jack’s cereal and talking to Alicia, having already abandoned the guest room. 

Some things didn’t change. Kent still couldn’t sleep in. Jack wondered if the NHL had ever managed to break his habit of burning both ends of the candle. He always did stay up too late-

[Kent]: 2 wks 

Jack read the message and thought about it.

So, Kent wouldn't even check his email for Jack for another two weeks. In a few weeks, they would both have roles to play in training camp, and things would get busier.

Kent would need to courier the original documents to Jack unless his lawyer changed his mind about scanning them in between signatures. That wouldn't take too long, but Jack would need to file them afterwards. 

All of this, and he hadn't even told Bitty. 

That was the source of the guilt and stress keeping him awake. All of this impacted Bitty, and he didn't even know, and Jack didn't want him to.

There were only two people who knew that this situation even existed and Jack wanted to keep it that way. They would bury what they created and Jack could move on with his life. 

In two weeks. Hopefully. 

Jack put his phone down a little too forcefully and tried, and failed, to get comfortable again. His mind and his body wouldn't rest.

This was Jack’s fault.

No. 

This was Kent’s fault, too.

When Jack did fall asleep, he fell asleep annoyed. 

***

Kent got back from Sweden and checked his email. 

After Jack reminded him to. 

He checked his email and told Jack that actually, no, he didn't get the documents, and actually, no, he wasn't sure, because he couldn't get into his email at all. 

[Kent]: u sent it to my old email 

[Kent]: I haven't used that one since like 2010 

[Kent]: i'm locked out lol

[Jack]: password recovery? 

[Kent]: goes to my old landline like that helps 

[Kent]: just mail it to me 

Jack frowned at his phone screen, and in the middle of the produce section of the grocery store, called Kent’s number.

“Hey,” Kent said when he picked up. It was more conversational than the last time they’d spoken on the phone, which somehow made it weirder to hear his voice.

Jack shook it off. “Hey,” he said. “I’m not mailing you those documents. Just give me your email.”

“I thought you already had it,” Kent said.

“I don’t. Apparently.”

“That’s cold, Zimms. You know I’m still getting email blast invites to your frat house parties? And somehow you don’t have my email.”

Jack tilted his head to hold his phone between his shoulder and cheek. He put some apples into a produce bag. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t the one inviting you to those frat house parties, was I?”

“No,” Kent said. “You weren’t.”

Jack switched his phone to the other cheek and grabbed some strawberries. Kent’s tone of voice was dangerously close to his not-a-fight brand of nonchalance. Jack wasn’t arguing with him while sandwiched between the nectarines and oranges in a Whole Foods.

“Your friends have my email,” Kent said. “You can get it from them.”

“I’m not asking Ransom and Holster for your email address.”

“Kay. Don’t then.”

“Just text it to me.”

“I’ll text you my home address. You can mail it to me.”

Kent hung up the phone.

Jack squeezed the nectarine he was holding a little too hard.

At home, he disappointed himself by briefly considering texting Ransom for Kent’s email address. It seemed wrong that he didn’t have it. It seemed wrong that the account Jack had used to contact him for so long didn’t even open anymore. Maybe Kent was lying. Maybe he just didn’t want to see the remnants of their communication in 2010. 

It was a stupid thought.

It was almost as stupid as admitting to Ransom that he needed Kent Parson’s email address. Maybe Rans would be half-decent about it, but he would tell Holster. Jack would never hear the end of that.

Instead, he printed the documents and sealed them away in an envelope with Kent’s name and home address on the front. He dropped it off at the post office in the morning and in the afternoon he packed for his trip to Madison for the Fourth of July.

On July 1st, he texted Kent to tell him to expect mail.

On July 2nd, he got on a flight to Madison, Georgia and listened to his fiancé argue with his mother about sleeping arrangements. 

On July 3rd, he got involved with his fiancé in the back of a pickup truck and didn’t sleep in the guest room.

On July 4th, he pretended otherwise.

Coach Bittle sent him a knowing look over his morning cup of coffee when Jack mentioned that he’d slept well, before quickly changing course into a conversation about golf. Jack considered himself lucky. If he was at home, Bob wouldn’t have let him off the hook that easily. Jack thanked his lucky stars that his father-in-law wanted nothing to do with what Jack and Bitty got up to, and that Bitty and Suzanne thought the silent conversation going on between them right beside him was unnoticeable. 

Jack piled scrambled eggs onto his fork and complimented the breakfast they’d pulled together. 

Suzanne tore her eyes from Bitty and smiled at him. Food was always an acceptable change of topic in this household, so she launched into a story about the peach jam he was eating, relaying the drama Bitty had told Jack about in the car.

Jack liked Suzanne’s peach jam. He liked the way Bitty told the story of how the annual local peach festival brought its fair share of conniptions.

The story was longer this year than the last time he’d been here. 

He thought that next year, there would be even more to tell.

Spending the Fourth of July in Madison with Bitty and his family was becoming a tradition, and Jack liked the thought of future summers with fireworks and peach jam and the Bittles, as a family. That was what today meant for him.

As he spread peach jam across his toast, the back of his mind reminded him that it was Kent’s birthday today, too. 

On July 4th, Jack ran errands with Coach Bittle while Suzanne and Bitty baked.

He didn’t text Kent. 

***

Once he was back in Providence, Jack kept an eye on the tracking information for the package he’d sent to Kent. 

On the day it should have been delivered, Jack texted him.

Kent didn’t respond.

Jack waited a few hours and then typed out a follow-up. By then, the courier system said it had been delivered to Kent’s building, if not to Kent directly.

No response.

Jack was starting to get frustrated. Kent was probably busy, he reasoned with himself. Kent never put down his phone except for when he was on the ice, another part of Jack’s mind countered. Kent was passive aggressive. Maybe, Jack considered, as he rang Kent’s number and was sent to voicemail, he should have messaged Kent on his birthday. He didn’t usually message him, hadn’t in years, but they were in contact recently and Jack wouldn’t put it past Kent to ghost him just because he felt slighted.

But, no. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

And there was no point digging around into why Kent did anything. The only person Kent made sense to was himself. 

Except, Jack felt a little weird trying to get ahold of Kent for the fourth time when he tried calling him later that night, while Bitty was at the gym. Probably because it was weird in general, to be reaching out to Kent at all. But also, well. 

When Jack called Kent, Kent always picked up. 

He looked at the phone history and saw two dropped outgoing calls and something inside him immediately recoiled. He’d left a voicemail the first time. He wasn’t going to… he wasn’t going to be that person. He didn’t call back.

He held firm to that for the rest of the day, giving Kent time to respond.

He held firm for a second day.

On the third day, with no acknowledgement, he called Kent.

Kent picked up on the second ring.

“Hey,” Kent said casually. There was crunching in the background, like he was chewing something.

“Hey,” Jack said, warily. “Did you get my message?” 

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah, I did.”

It’s been three days, Jack didn’t say. He said, “I didn’t hear back from you.”

“I was busy,” Kent said, unbothered.

“Right.”

“What do you mean, right? I had meetings with management.”

“It’s the off-season,” Jack said, after a beat. And it’s been three days. 

“Yeah, and I’m still the captain of a team? I had meetings. I’ve been busy.”

“Okay,” Jack said, trying to rein in whatever that back and forth would inevitably turn into. Calmly, he said, “Okay, just-”

“One sec.”

Jack heard rustling on the other end of the line, the sound of Kent getting up and taking his phone with him. Jack waited quietly, hearing something open and close. A door? Cabinets? A fridge. He heard something being opened.

“Do you drink kombucha?” Kent said. “Because I do, and my grocer isn’t stocking my favourite kind anymore. Ginger lemon? I think they’re discontinuing it, I should-”

“Kent,” Jack cut him off. “Focus.”

“I was just saying, jeez. Like, if you wanna stock up, I’m letting you know-”

“Kent!” Jack snapped. “Did you get the documents or not?”

“Wow, okay. Jesus. I haven’t really checked, to be honest. I’ve been busy.”

Jack rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Could you check?” he asked thinly. “Now? Please?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kent said, nonchalantly. “Damn, I get a please and everything.”

Jack didn’t respond to that, just listened to the sound of more rustling, which he assumed meant that Kent was currently at home and going through his mail. He listened to that long enough to control his breathing in the meantime. And then, Kent spoke.

“It’s not here,” he said. “You sure it got delivered?”

“I couriered it,” Jack said. “Says it was received.”

“Did you need someone to accept it?”

“What?”

“Like, did someone need to sign for it? Because if I wasn’t here, they can’t just put it with my mail.”

“Someone took it.” Jack could see that on the tracking page. “Accepted at door.”

Kent hummed. “Probably Lewis, then.”

“Who’s Lewis?”

“My door guy. He probably put it aside and forgot about it.”

“Can you check with him?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kent said. “He’s around. Lewis is everywhere, I’m telling you. He sees everything. Like Scraps getting stuck in the elevator? Lewis saw the whole thing, but he’s cool about it, you know? Neil, though. Neil’s a-”

“Listen, Kent,” Jack said, stopping his rant. “I gotta go. Just let me know when you find those documents.” 

When Jack ended the call, he hoped that that would be the end of it. It had been, what? Less than 72 hours? Someone had signed for the papers, so they were in Kent’s building, probably sitting at the concierge table, waiting for him. He just had to go down and ask for them.

Jack put his phone down and grabbed himself his lunch out of the fridge, letting his mind focus on something else. He should take tomorrow to meal prep. He and Bitty would probably end up going to the farmer’s market, and what Bitty didn’t need for his channel’s recipes, Jack would use in his meal plan for the following week. 

Jack chewed his salad, coming up with something to do with the chicken breast he’d bought. He hadn’t decided if it was going to be a dinner or a lunch. 

He grabbed his phone again and scrolled through the SMH group chat, sending a quick response to Shitty, who was on a tangent about… manscaping?

When enough time had passed, Jack switched tabs and followed up with Kent.

[Jack]: So?

[Kent]: oh yeah lewis doesn’t have it

[Kent]: you can email it to me

A blue link appeared at the bottom of the chat, spelling out Kent’s email address. It was the exact same username he’d always had, only with a different carrier at the end.

Jack pushed his plate away from himself, annoyed.

***

Jack emailed the document and waited.

He’d already gotten the run around from emailing Kent once. The second time, Kent received it, which he confirmed by sending a single peace sign emoji in response. It did not make Jack feel peaceful. Neither did Kent saying that he’d forward it to his lawyer, who was, of course, unavailable. Something about an injury. 

Jack told himself that Kent could figure that out. Then he forced himself, for a while, to ignore Kent’s general existence.

He and Bitty went over to Haus 2.0. It was good to see his friends. It distracted him from the back and forth he’d been having with Kent, spanning weeks that should only have ever been days.

It felt like for the first night since Jack had decided to get his divorce sorted, he was able to relax. 

He melted into the background of the rowdy conversation happening amongst the group. He watched, amused, as Holster, Shitty and Ransom descended on Bitty’s spinach dip, making obscene sounds that prompted even more obscene commentary from Lardo.

While Ransom was explaining the feud between two of his and Holster’s coworkers, Jack’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

[Kent]: got ur papers back

Jack glanced up, and saw that no one was looking at him. Pulling away from the group, he texted back.

[Jack]: Okay good

[Kent]: can’t print them tho

[Kent]: probably would have been better if the mail worked

[Jack]: What do you mean you can’t print them

[Kent]: no printer

[Jack]: You don’t have a printer?

[Jack]: Everyone has a printer

[Kent]: i don’t 

[Kent]: and not everyone has a printer zimms 

“Jack?” Shitty said, getting his attention. “Everything okay, brah?”

Jack realised he’d been frowning at his phone for too long.

“Uh,” he said, slipping his phone into his back pocket. “Yeah.”

Jack made himself tune back into the conversation, which had taken a turn while he hadn’t been paying attention. Holster was talking about the stock market now, and Jack thought that maybe he was making fun of one of his coworkers. Or maybe he was agreeing with them. It was hard to tell with Holster sometimes.

He’d almost figured out which one it was when his phone buzzed again.

Jack tried to ignore it, but couldn’t.

“Uh,” he said, cutting Holster off. “I’ll be right back.”

He made his way to the bathroom and pulled his phone out, checking for Kent’s text.

[Kent]: u can fax it

[Kent]: got a fax machine in my building

Jack rolled his eyes. So, Kent’s building had a fax machine but not a printer?

He thought about it. Did he even have a fax machine? Maybe their printer had one built in? Or maybe there was one in the office of their condo complex.

[Jack]: What about your lawyer? Can’t she print it?

[Kent]: I told u

[Kent]: carpal tunnel 

[Jack]: How does that stop her from printing

[Kent]: she can’t give them to me she’s at home

[Kent]: recovery idk 

[Jack]: I don’t think carpal tunnel syndrome needs house rest

[Kent]: what are you an expert

[Kent]: https://www.webmd.com/carpal-tunnel-syndrome

[Kent]: just fax me

[Jack]: How the hell am I supposed to do that

[Kent]: idk figure it out

When Jack went back to join the group, he was still thinking it over. If anyone saw the troubled look on his face, they didn’t comment. Jack thought he’d hid it pretty well by the time he wedged himself back onto the couch in time for Shitty to ask him an unexpected question about Jurassic Park.

He got Kent’s text with the fax number right as he pulled into his parking spot at home. Jack glanced at the text as he got out of the car, but it made him feel sour, and he shoved his phone deep into his pocket to get it out of sight. 

He pulled the trunk open so that Bitty could get his dishes and they walked inside.

“I was thinking,” Bitty mused happily, “I might do some cheese spreads. You know I like the dips I made tonight, otherwise I wouldn’t’ve brought them over, but I was watching Shitty dig into that buffalo chicken dip and I just couldn’t get baked brie out of my mind! Now, maybe it’s a little early for seasonal spice mixes but really, who ever complained about brie and jam. What do you think?”

“Uh,” Jack said. “Sounds good. Nobody ever complains about what you make, Bits.”

“I know, but I just want to keep trying new things. Plus, there’s always the book to think about.”

Jack smiled a little. The book. By now, he and all their friends knew that Bitty’s cookbook involved a lot more baking than it did writing.

“Hey,” he said, as they got through the front door. “I’m going to drop by HQ on Monday. I’ve got some stuff I need to get done onsite.”

“Hmm?” Bitty said. “Okay. Have fun!”

“Thanks,” Jack said, even though he doubted he would.

When he showed up at the building first thing after his jog on Monday morning, he just hoped he didn’t run into too many people. His team wasn’t there, and it was early in the day for even the most ambitious Falcs staff. He was able to make his way to the admin area easily, where the giant copy machine was.

Jack had a degree, he reminded himself as he tried to navigate the machine. It didn’t help him.

Faxing. Of course Kent was making him fax divorce papers. Who faxed anything anymore, except old fashioned doctors? 

The copy machine was loud, and Jack kept looking over his shoulder like he might get caught. Even just walking through the dead building he’d felt like he was breaking in, despite his badge giving him access to every hallway. 

Carefully, he scanned every page of the document. It took him two tries to get the thing to actually send.

Jack wondered how long it took for a fax to go through. He also ran through every possible way the fax might not be delivered. The machine might not work, or the number might be wrong, or Jack might have messed up the sending or Kent might just not know how to receive a fax. 

Maybe Lewis would know.

Jack didn’t leave it to chance. He texted Kent, call me when you get the papers, I want you to confirm you have them. 

He prepared himself for Kent to find some way of putting it off again. I’m in Kentucky, I’m at a wedding, my cat has pneumonia. But no, this was the end of it. The papers would be in his building. He would get them. He would sign them. He would send them back.

Once they were out of Kent’s hands with a signature, then Kent would be out of Jack’s hair.

Jack waited for a phone call all day. His fingers tapped the rectangular shape in his pocket while he was in the car, and in the kitchen, and while he answered emails from management about the upcoming year.

And then that evening his phone started ringing.

Alone, in his living room, Jack picked up.

“You got it?” he said immediately.

“Uh,” Kent responded. "Yeah. I did.”

Jack breathed out in relief. “Okay. So everything is marked where you need to sign. You have to use a black or blue pen, no red or anything like that. And don’t write in the margins, just sign on the lines.”

“Yeah, I know how to sign legal papers, Jack.”

“It’ll be quick. You’ve got my address, you can mail them back to me. Everything was in the first email I sent.”

“Yeah, about that….”

A muscle in Jack’s neck twitched. “What now? You said you were going to sign them.”

“I’m not saying no,” Kent said. “I’ll sign the papers. I’ll sign them with the same pen I signed the marriage licence. The circle of life and all that.”

“Great,” said Jack. “You’ve got everything sorted. Just send it back to me when you’re done.”

“I don’t have everything sorted. I need the pen.”

“Then go get it…” Jack didn’t understand the issue.

“I need it back from you.”

“What?” Jack said.

“I gave it to you.”

“What?” 

“What?” Kent repeated in a mocking voice. “The pen.”

“What pen?” 

“My grandfather’s pen. You know the one I’m talking about,” he said, which Jack, in fact, did not. “He gave it to me after that fishing trip? It was the last time I saw him before I left New York? I told you this. And I gave it to you after we got m-”

“Kent, that was ten years ago.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not signing anything without it.”

“That’s stupid. Just use another pen, it doesn’t have to be the same one as before. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means something to me,” Kent said, after an odd silence. 

“I don’t have your pen,” Jack admitted. “I barely even remember it.”

“Then, I’m not signing the papers.”

“Kent-” Jack said through gritted teeth. “Come on, you’re being ridiculous.”

“That pen was special to me. I gave it to you as a gift.”

“I’m sorry, okay? I’ll get you a new one.”

“You can’t just get me a new one. Find it, and we’ll talk, okay?”

“No, that’s fucking bullshit-”

“Bye, Jack.”

And then the call display disappeared from Jack’s screen and he was staring at his phone history, facing the urge to call Kent back, or maybe reach through the phone and strangle him. 

Jack didn’t have time for this.

Jack didn’t have time for Kent to be… sentimental. If Jack could call it that. Kent was being a nuisance. He was putting up an act, though Jack didn’t know why. 

Jack sat down and forced himself to breathe, suddenly overcome. In. Out. In. Out. 

He hadn’t even been sober when they’d signed those papers. Only now, after Kent had brought it up, did Jack recall a hazy add-on to the moment. He wasn’t even sure if it was real, or if his mind was filling in the blanks left by Kent’s words. He’d stepped outside, vows exchanged, papers signed, and Kent had been at his side, because he always had been back then.

Here. Kent’s voice. Take it. I want you to have it. 

Jack had wrapped his fingers around the pen and put it in his pocket.

His mind couldn’t even offer him a visual of what it looked like.

God, just let it be over. 

Try as he might, Jack couldn’t come up with a single memory of what his eighteen year old self had done with the pen.

Whatever. He wasn’t putting up with Kent’s stupid demands anymore. Kent didn’t need a specific, symbolic pen to sign a stack of legal papers. He could use a chewed up pen he found in a parking lot so long as it had ink.

Feeling defiant, Jack searched up the website of an office supply store and added every kind of legally viable pen he could think of to his cart. Black pens and blue pens, cheap pens and fancy pens, of every brand and style. 

Then he punched in Kent’s home address for delivery.

When he checked out, he was barely thinking about whether or not this would end Kent’s moronic back and forth. He was picturing Kent’s face the moment he saw the delivery on his doorstep.

I can push you back, the pens said. Just get it over with. 

And then a week later, a battered cardboard box was delivered to Jack’s condo. It was the pens. Every single one of them. Returned to his billing address. 

There was no note.

There was no acknowledgement, apart from all the packaging having been opened and left to spill its contents loosely inside the box.

That was worse.

Furious, Jack grabbed his phone and dialled Kent’s number. Pick up. Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick-

“Are you really that obsessed with me?” Jack said, unkindly, as soon as the call connected.

“Fuck you,” Kent said, precisely. 

He hung up. 

Jack didn’t wait for the display to change.

He threw his phone. 

The sound of it hitting the wood floor across the living room was loud, but it wasn't enough. Jack kicked the coffee table, hard enough to topple it and push it two feet away. That didn’t help him either, because he was choking.

Jack lowered to the floor, his hands pressing tight against his skull. Somewhere, maybe, was a thread of reason, a way out of this situation, but he couldn't find it. His mind was too full of panic. He hadn’t done what he’d told himself he’d do. He hadn’t fixed it, he hadn’t sorted it out, he hadn’t thought this through. 

He was going to have to tell Bitty.

Behind his eyelids he saw Bitty’s expression. How would he even phrase it? “I can’t marry you.” Bitty would be hurt. Bitty would be angry. “It’s my fault, I fucked it up.” Bitty would see how stupid and careless he’d been, to make promises he couldn’t go through with, not yet. Bitty wouldn’t… He wouldn’t want…

Something was touching his shoulder.

Jack pushed it away, but it didn’t budge. It was firm and warm and Jack leaned into it, and then he realised Bitty was speaking to him.

“Jack?” Bitty’s voice was soft, and worried. “Jack, honey, are you okay?”

Jack looked up at him and blinked until his eyes were clear. Bitty had his hands on both of Jack’s arms and his brown eyes were so wide. Bitty was home. Jack saw the overturned coffee table from Bitty’s point of view, the battered phone, Jack on the floor.

“I fucked up,” he told him.

“What?” Bitty asked. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m married,” Jack groaned. “Legally. So we can’t get married until I fix it and I am trying to fix it but Kent’s being a fucking asshole.”

“Kent,” Bitty said, stupefied. “As in Kent Parson? You’re…married? To Kent Parson?”

“Yes. No. Legally?” Jack felt deranged. “We were drunk and eighteen and we’d just won the Cup, but there’s paperwork. Fuck. Bitty, I’m so sorry. I didn’t tell you because I - thought I could fix it. Before it mattered.”

Jack watched Bitty’s expression, waiting for it to shift into something awful. It was frozen and blank. And then his lips quirked.

“You…” Bitty tried to get the words out from behind pursed lips, “had a drunk Vegas wedding with Kent Parson? At eighteen?”

Jack frowned. “Well. It was in Ontario, but - yes?”

“Oh my god.” Bitty’s expression broke apart. He started cracking up, wiping at his eyes. “Oh my god. You-” He dissolved into a fit of giggles. “Oh my god, Jack!” 

“You’re not mad?” Jack asked, once he eventually calmed down.

“Well,” Bitty owned, “you really should have told me sooner. I mean… Good lord.”

“I know, I know,” Jack said, burying his face in Bitty’s chest. “I’m sorry. I’ve been chasing him for the paperwork, I swear. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, honey,” Bitty said, his arms folding around Jack’s body. “Y’all were just kids. I don’t blame you for doing something silly…” His hold on Jack shifted a little and he leaned back to look at him. “But if Kent Parson becomes the reason why I have to rebook half our wedding arrangements, I am going to blame him for that. There are gift bags on the line here.”

Jack laughed, despite himself. “He won’t, I promise. I’m going to deal with it.”

“I trust you.” Bitty squeezed Jack’s shoulders. “Just…”

“What?”

“He really is a piece of work, isn’t he?”

Jack grinned, feeling a weight slide off of his back, if just for a moment. Bitty knew. Bitty wasn’t mad. Jack could deal with this.

“You have no idea,” he said. “But luckily so am I.”

***

Jack had a long list of examples, most of it repressed, of times where he had been a real piece of work. 

Most of the time, it came down to one thing Jack could say about himself. For better or for worse, he just never knew when to quit. Quitting, when it looked like giving up, wasn’t in Jack’s vocabulary.

Which is how he ended up booking a last-minute flight to Vegas with nothing but an overnight bag, an envelope of legal papers, and the knowledge of where exactly Kent Parson lived.

“Are you at home?” he said, when Kent picked up the phone. 

“Uh, yeah,” Kent said.

“Good,” he told him. “Tell your door guy to let me up.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Tell who to what?”

“Tell Lewis, ” Jack elaborated, “to let me into the elevator. I’m in your lobby.”

“You’re in my what?” 

“I’m-”

“I’ll buzz you up,” Kent said, and the call dropped.

Jack waved the phone in Lewis’s direction, hoping it would make the man at the concierge desk stop staring at him like he was an intruder. Which, of course, Jack was. But he wasn’t the kind of intruder that swanky gold-tone lobbies like this might feel the need to protect against. Jack wasn’t a groupie, seeking out a celebrity’s personal address. He didn’t even want to be here at all. 

Kent didn’t buzz him up, but he did appear when the elevator doors opened a few moments later. He was staring at Jack like he was an alien.

“Zimms?” he said, openly confused.

“Pack a carry-on,” Jack said, “we’re leaving.” 

Kent’s eyes dropped to Jack’s red zip-up bag. “Are you kidnapping me?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, honestly. Lewis’s eyes were on him, his fingers possibly twitching to call security, since Kent’s building looked like the type to have security, but Jack didn’t care.

Kent stared at him for another few moments. Then he said, “Right. Okay.”

Kent took him up the elevator and let him into his apartment, which was big and fancy, and well… It was exactly the kind of apartment that Jack had pictured Kent moving into, back when they were in the Q and fantasizing about the NHL. The place was very clearly professionally decorated, subtly tying together the blacks and whites and reds of the Aces. Jack would have made fun of Kent for living in his team’s colour scheme, but he didn’t really have a leg to stand on. His condo in Providence was, in many places, Falconers blue. 

“I’m guessing I need a passport?” Kent called out from one of the rooms. 

“Yeah,” Jack said.

When they’d come in, he hadn’t followed Kent down the hallway into his bedroom. He refused to snoop around, too. He just hovered in Kent’s living room, waiting. 

In front of him, a fluffy white cat sat comfortably on Kent’s couch, staring at him. Through some vague recollection, Jack remembered her name was Kit. 

I got a cat, a younger Kent’s voice rang out in Jack’s mind. The sound of it was clear, but it hadn’t been when he’d said those words. It had been a passing one-liner in a tinny voicemail, one of the last Kent had sent him before the messages had fizzled out completely. In Kent’s rookie year, Jack remembered, he had lived with one of his team’s vets. After that, he had moved… Was it here? Or had this place come later? 

At some point, he had gotten a cat.

Back then, Jack had imagined a little kitten. The cat staring at him now was fully grown, even getting on in years.

Somehow, this was the cat. 

“You know,” Kent said, padding into the room, now holding a black carry-on bag, “kidnapping people is illegal.”

“You wanna talk to me about legal stuff?” Jack asked. Kent didn’t react. “Because we can be done right now if you just sign the papers. Sign them, and I’ll go.”

“I said what I said,” was Kent’s response.

“Okay,” Jack said, hoisting his own bag. “Then you’re coming with me. Because I am not going to spend any more time chasing you.”

“Where are we going?”

“Montréal.”

“For what?” Kent asked, as if he didn’t already know.

“To find your stupid pen.”

***

Jack made the familiar drive from the airport to his childhood home as if on autopilot. 

On the flight and in the arrivals terminal he had stayed completely silent. He paid for the rental car and didn’t talk to Kent the entire stint that they drove in together out of the city. For once in his life, Kent managed to keep his mouth shut. Jack knew that he had that effect on people when he went into his modes. His attention narrowed down into a laser focus on a single goal, and when people saw the stormy look on his face, they stayed out of his way.

Kent was familiar with that side of Jack. Enough so that he wasn’t fazed by it, but also enough that he knew what kind of reaction he would get if he pushed.

When they arrived at Jack’s parents’ house, Jack didn’t check to make sure Kent was following him when he parked the car and marched up the driveway. He just pulled out his key and let himself in the house. He’d forgotten to let his parents know he was coming.

“Hi,” Jack said, terse. “Kent’s here.”

“Who’s huh?” Alicia said, eyes wide.

Jack’s parents sat on the couch, wearing matching startled expressions, while their TV show played forgotten in the background. They looked as surprised as one might have expected them to be upon seeing their adult son barge through the front door of the house he no longer lived in, in the country he no longer lived in, unannounced, toting his estranged former best friend they hadn’t seen in years. 

“Why are you here?” Bob asked, incredulously. 

“Gotta find a pen.”

“Why is Kent here?”

“It’s his pen.”

Jack started marching up the stairs without another word, while Kent lingered below. 

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Zimms,” he greeted, before following Jack.

Jack stopped the moment he was in his room and turned to face Kent. He spread his arms out at his sides and gestured. Here we are. 

“Find your pen,” he said. 

Kent ignored him. He looked around the room, though it didn’t seem like he was searching for anything in particular. He was fixed in place, his eyes scanning every inch of the space around him. Jack didn’t know what he was expecting to find. Jack’s bedroom hadn’t changed much since the last time Kent had been there. Between when Jack had lived in this room and left for Samwell and moved out officially, the furniture had stayed the same and so had the duvet on his bed and the remaining trinkets from his childhood. It was still Jack’s room, despite his absence. 

Jack realized that that was maybe what Kent found so captivating.

His bedroom had never felt like a relic until Kent made it one.

He broke the spell and started digging around his old desk. “Well?” he said. “It’s your pen. Where did you put it?”

“I didn’t put it anywhere. I gave it to you.”

Jack sent him a withering stare. “What does it even look like?”

Kent rolled his eyes. “It’s wood,” he said, mirroring Jack’s sour mood. “It’s got a brass ring on it. It’s kind of glossy.”

Jack showed him a wire pen holder he had on his desk. “Is it one of these?” he asked, though he couldn’t see one that matched Kent’s description.

“No,” Kent said, peering down at it.

“Can you just use one of these?” Jack demanded. He shook the container of pens.

Kent looked back at him. “No.”

Jack rolled his eyes. Of course. Because Kent wouldn’t use anything else to sign his divorce papers except his stupid fancy pen. It didn’t matter that Jack had already sent him a hundred pens. Those were no good. It wouldn’t matter if Jack bought him another hundred pens, stupid fancy pens, made of wood with brass decoration and a glossy finish. No, Kent accepting another perfectly good writing utensil would be too reasonable, and would make Jack’s life too easy, which was why he was in Montréal right now. Because Kent couldn’t do anything reasonable or easy. He just always had to-

Jack grumbled to himself in his head as he dug around his room. Eventually, Kent got over his fascination with Jack’s bedroom and started helping.

Most of the items left over here were things that Jack’s parents were keeping for him, or things he’d left behind because he hadn’t needed or wanted to bring them to Providence. They saved his place here, proving he’d lived here once, and could come back if he chose to. 

Jack just hoped that those remaining items frozen in time included one very specific pen.

He went through his desk drawers, and the shelves above it, and his dresser, and his night stand, and underneath his furniture. He rifled through his closet while Kent double checked the places he’d searched already.

He was halfway through the boxes sitting at the bottom of his closet and about to suggest they check Bob’s office when Kent said, “Oh.”

Jack removed his head from the depths of his closet. 

“What?” he asked.

Kent stood awkwardly in the middle of the room. “I was just thinking that…”

“What?” Jack asked again.

“I think you did actually give it back to me. The pen.” 

Jack got off the ground and turned to face him fully. “So you have it?” he said. “You’ve had it this whole time?”

“No,” Kent said. “I mean, I forgot that you gave it back to me, but I’m thinking about it now, and didn’t we…” He looked about as sheepish as Kent Parson was capable of looking. Then he straightened up. “Bring it to the cottage?”

Jack blinked at him.

“The cottage,” he parroted.

A single hazy memory gave credibility to Kent’s words. They had gone to the Zimmermanns’ cottage after winning the Memorial Cup, just the two of them. And they had played a card game. It had been endless and they’d kept track of their points using a pen and paper.

It had been ten years. Jack couldn’t remember the pen.

He didn’t know if Kent was fucking with him.

He didn’t know if he was about to strangle Kent, but it felt like a strong possibility.

“I just remember using it to write on the-”

“Tally sheet,” Jack finished for him.

“Yeah,” Kent said. 

All of Jack’s frustrations came bubbling to the surface. It had been months of back and forth. Months of a relay race he had no desire to play, and just when he thought that kidnapping Kent and dragging him to Canada would be enough to put an end to this, Kent came and told him that, no, the finish line had moved. The finish line was a fucking three hour drive away. 

“You’re serious,” Jack said, darkly. 

“Yeah,” Kent said.

“I’m going to kill you.”

“So I guess we’re going for a drive?” 

“I’m going to kill you,” Jack said again, but he meant it like get in the car. 

Kent understood, because he followed when Jack stalked out of the room. He went straight for Bob’s office, and spared a moment to glance around for a potentially stolen fancy pen. He didn’t find it. 

He took the keys to the cottage, instead.

“Bye,” he said to his parents as he passed through the living room again.

“You’re leaving?” Bob asked.

“Yup.”

“Didn’t find the pen?”

“Nope.”

Kent trailed behind him, halfway through a bite of a banana he’d pilfered from the kitchen. “It was nice seeing you again,” he said to Jack’s parents, around his mouthful.

Outside, Jack grabbed Kent’s shoulder and steered him towards his rental car. It gave him the excuse to push him just a little, which made him feel better. 

As Kent got into the passenger seat, Jack glared down at his half-eaten banana. 

“I was hungry,” Kent said, unbothered. “I’m still hungry. If we’re heading up north, can we grab something to eat before we get onto the highway?”

Jack started the car.

He thought about being a teenager, and being pestered into turning into drive-thrus every ten minutes because Kent was always looking for a snack, despite what his frame suggested about his food intake.

“No,” Jack said. 

He turned onto the road. 

***

They did end up getting something to eat, because Jack’s stomach forgot about his annoyance long enough to remember that he was a professional athlete, and off-season or not, he needed to take in a lot of food. 

Kent suggested stopping in somewhere for dinner, but Jack only sent him an angry look. They were not having a sit-down meal together. Kent was already lucky enough that Jack had to pass the sandwich place he liked before he could get onto the highway, and he was lucky that Jack remembered that, and lucky that Jack was willing to pull into the fast order lane instead of driving past it out of spite. 

Kent’s eyes brightened when Jack approached it.

“Shit,” he said, leaning forward in his seat. “This place is still here? I haven’t been here in years.”

“It’s still here,” Jack said. He couldn’t help but notice it every time he was in town and driving in this direction.

Kent ogled the menu board. “Oh shit. The big chicken,” he breathed, referring to his sandwich of choice. “Get that. Get two of those. And a black and white milkshake.”

Jack ordered Kent’s sandwich, tuning out his specialized instructions. When the lady in the window handed Jack their orders, Kent accepted his chicken sandwiches happily. He held the foil wrappers, with their quirky drawings and slogans, religiously.

“I’ve missed you,” he said to the sandwich. 

Jack pulled out of the drive-thru.

On the highway, it didn’t take long for them to leave the city behind, the road transitioning from suburb to industrial buildings to nature. It had been a while since Jack had driven through Québec. When he was in his home province these days, he mostly flew into Montréal and didn’t go further than Laval. If he didn’t think too much about his current situation, he could almost enjoy the drive and the view for what it was. He’d used to enjoy this kind of escape. 

Beside him, Kent fiddled with the radio. He quickly found his way to a local station and rock music began to play through the speakers.

Jack glanced over at him. Kent had devoured his sandwiches and was now keeping himself busy with his milkshake.

“I don’t know where it all goes when you eat like that,” he said, bemused.

Kent lifted a brow. His lips turned upwards into a mischievous smile. “You wanna know where it goes?” he asked.

The joke was not new. Jack supposed his comment hadn’t been either. He frowned.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“I gotta eat,” Kent told him.

“If you’re still trying to grow, I don’t think it’s going to work out for you.”

“I’m bulking, dipshit.”

Jack smirked. It was that part of the season for him, too. Time to pack as much weight on as he could before the exertion of the coming months made it harder for him to keep it up. It had been a while, though, since Jack had witnessed the inner workings of Kent’s season. It had been even longer since he’d seen it while they were running on the same schedule in the same league. 

“Your nutritionist must hate your hollow leg,” Jack said, feeling curious.

“Don’t talk about Jenny like that. She loves me.”

“Nate hates me,” Jack admitted. It was true.

Kent peered over at him. “The fuck did you do to him?”

“I keep bringing pies to our HQ.”

For a split second, Jack regretted saying that. Bringing Bitty up around Kent, as much as he defiantly wanted to, felt like a mistake for a long list of reasons. But Kent’s expression didn’t darken. He started laughing.

“Jesus Christ, Zimms,” he scoffed. “You have a fucking death wish. Jenny loves me now, but if I showed up with seven pounds of butter and sugar on the regular, she would guillotine me. She would use my own skates to do it.”

“So she hasn’t found your candy stash, then,” Jack prodded, assuming it existed.

Kent’s expression quickly shuttered. “Shut up,” he said.

It definitely existed, then. 

“Don’t let Jenny see.”

“Leave Jenny out of this,” Kent grumbled, and then sucked on the straw of his milkshake for good measure.

Jack smirked and turned his attention back to the open stretch of road in front of them. 

***

It was night when Jack’s rental car pulled into the long driveway of the cottage.

He stopped the car and parked in front of the porch. The motion detector lights glowed a hazy orange, creating a beacon calling him towards the comfort indoors. It was the only light amidst the dark surrounding of trees, and further back, the lake. The water and electricity would be working, Jack knew, even if his family hadn’t been here.

He took a breath in. This was the end of the relay race.

“You got your stuff?” he asked Kent. They wouldn’t be driving back tonight. 

Kent nodded.

They both got out of the car, grabbing duffel bags and shutting the doors behind them. Out of his pocket, Jack grabbed the keys to the cottage. The steps up the porch were creaky, and he had to jiggle the key a few times in the lock, but then the door opened and they were inside. 

The entrance to the cottage from this direction was a new addition - a small indoor sitting room, surrounded by mesh and glass windows, with a single overhead light. In the daytime, it was well lit. Alicia liked to read in this room. At night, it was like you were still outdoors, except that the mosquitoes couldn’t get in. 

Jack walked through the sitting room, into the main living room area. The floors in this part of the cottage were older, all rustic wood covered with rugs and cozy furniture. The kitchen was right beside the entrance and further back, the bedrooms.

Jack stopped and put his bag down by the dining table. 

Behind him, Kent entered slowly, reacquainting himself with the space. 

“Here we are,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” Kent agreed.

Jack waited for him to get a move on, disappearing in a straight line to his bedroom, or Jack’s bedroom, or some tucked-away storage spot, and reappearing with his pen. Instead, Kent put his bag down and didn’t do much at all.

Kent stood awkwardly on the faded rug in the center of the room. He looked around aimlessly, like he didn’t know where to start. He hovered for a bit, drifting around to the kitchen and opening a drawer. He looked inside it. He closed the drawer. He looked back over his shoulder and repeated his little search somewhere else.

After a few minutes of nothing, Jack snapped.

“Well, where the fuck is it, Kent?”

“I don’t know! What do you want me to say? I don’t know!”

“No, we’re done with that,” Jack shot back. “You have to know. I have spent months waiting for you to cooperate long enough to sign this one document - to do this one thing for me and then we can be done.”

Anger and frustration and despair bubbled up inside Jack until he couldn’t hold it in anymore. He had been keeping it down for so long. He was too tired now. He was so, so exhausted. Standing in the time-worn living room of his cottage, something inside him cracked.

He pushed past Kent and started digging through the drawers in the kitchen, finding utensils, finding a useless, unhelpful, unwanted Spongebob pen, but not what he was looking for. He stormed away, heading for his bedroom, pulling open the drawers of his dresser one by one in a frenzy. Nothing. On the coffee table, nothing. 

He was about to pull off the couch cushions when Kent’s voice sounded out behind him, telling him to calm down.

“No,” Jack said. He couldn’t stand what he was feeling.

He found his way back to where Kent was fixed in place.

“I have called you, and texted you, and emailed you. I have mailed you this document. I have faxed you this document,” Jack ranted. “I have sent you pens. You wanted this pen. I have gotten on a plane, Kent, I spent three and a half hours in a car with you for this pen, so don’t tell me you don’t know where it is, because I can’t do this anymore. You need to know where it is and you need to go get it.”

“Jack, I don’t-” 

“No. I’m done.” Jack’s eyes burned with unshed tears of desperation. “What do you want from me?” he demanded. “Do you want me to beg? Do you want me to sue you? I will take you to court, Kent, I swear.”

“Jack-”

“Do you really hate me that much?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You tell me!” Jack yelled. “What is this? You’ve been making me jump through hoops for months! How long are you going to make me fight you before you tell me this isn’t about some stupid pen? Do you not want me to get married? Is this - is this some kind of payback? You’re really going to carry a grudge against me forever for the stuff that happened when we were kids? Because I love Bitty, and I want to spend my life with him, and the only person who’s stopping me from being happy with him right now is you, and you know it. Shit, Kent, I know we’ve put each other through a lot but I never thought you could be this cruel.”

“Jack, listen to me,” Kent said. His arms were out at his sides, palms up, like a white flag being raised. It was laughable. Jack would laugh if he wasn’t so close to hyperventilating. 

Kent stood in front of him, a weird expression on his face. Jack couldn’t make it out, but it made him listen. “Jack,” he said again. “I wouldn’t - I swear that’s not what this is. This is the last place I remember having that pen, okay? I promise. I swear to god.”

The worst part was, Jack believed him. It didn’t make anything easier.

He was so tired of trying to understand Kent Parson.

They’d proven years ago that they were no good at it. 

“Look,” Kent said, gesturing behind him. “I’m just gonna - It’s late, okay? We can’t drive back now, so just… We’ll deal with it in the morning. I’m gonna go to bed.”

Jack nodded. 

Kent moved past him, picking up his overnight bag and carrying it towards one of the bedrooms. In the doorway, he stopped and said, “Get some sleep, yeah?”

Jack didn’t acknowledge him.

Kent didn’t seem to expect that he would. He just slowly shut the door to his room and left Jack standing alone in the living room. 

Jack stood there frozen for a few minutes, unable to make his feet move. Eventually, he took back control of himself and picked up his own bag, carrying it quietly into the other spare bedroom. With the chaos of their arrival settling into the cracks between the aged wood, Jack felt the solitude of this place seep in instead. It was the same room he’d always slept in when he’d come here with his parents, but it had been a while since then. 

The last time they’d come had been before Samwell, before his family had put itself back together again. In the middle of fall, Bob had wanted to come here, when they could have packed up and gone to the winter cabin in Mont Tremblant instead. Jack had spent the whole trip watching his mother watch his father watch the lake. He’d spent the weekend in socked feet feeling sorry for himself.

With time and growth between himself and that memory, it seemed like a far-away vision. The time this place had been abandoned showed itself in this room. It was dusty and quiet and untouched. The drawers he’d pulled open had been neglected the last time he’d been here. He’d lived out of his suitcase, waiting to leave. 

Jack had made plans to take Bitty to the winter cabin. Maybe he should get him to come here, too. If anyone could make the cobwebs here fade away, it was Bitty and the sunshine he carried around with him.

Jack couldn’t picture Bitty here, though, not when the memories piled on top of each other and left him feeling weird just standing there.

Jack put his bag down beside the bed and slowly closed each of the drawers of the old wooden dresser. There were no pens in them, anyway. He bunched up the sheet covering the mattress and grabbed new ones from the linen shelf in the closet. As he pulled them down, his hand brushed against the chest he kept in there.

Curiosity grew within him.

This was a wild goose chase, and one that he might never stop feeling bitter about, but he still wondered…

Maybe.

He pulled the chest out of the closet and put it down on his unmade bed. He opened it carefully and sifted through it.

There was no pen to be found. Just various items he’d tucked away over the years, stored so that they wouldn’t collect dust or moisture. A smile ghosted across his lips at the sight of the old trading cards he’d been gifted as a child, each of them signed and sporting pictures of his dad and his uncles, all fuzzy around the edges from years of handling. Nestled underneath them was his old watch. A phone charger. A book he’d been reading in cégep and never finished. Kent’s old aviators. The deck of uno cards Kent had brought up. Kent’s stupid hat.

Jack stared at them. He hesitated before touching them, like an alarm might sound while Kent was in the next room. 

He shouldn’t have been surprised to see them, not when Kent had been here more than once in their teenage years. No, it wasn’t the fact that they were here that made him pause. It had something to do with how casually they were stored, beside Jack’s phone charger and the book he’d always planned on picking up again. They weren’t hidden. If they’d been forgotten it hadn’t been Jack’s intention when he’d put them there. They weren’t abandoned. They were waiting. It was like a memory of something that had never happened.

Kent hadn’t left these things behind on purpose.

They’d meant to come back.

They were supposed to have come back, before everything changed.

Jack’s breath caught in his throat. He thought it was his breath, at least. It might have been his heart, instead. 

He was so far from the boy he had once been that he forgot, sometimes, exactly who that boy was. It was easier to forget. Right now, it felt like everything he used to be was staring him right in the face, forcing him to look at what he’d left behind. It wasn’t just the draft that he’d missed when he’d swerved and face planted. It was the version of himself who would have taken Kent back here to pick up his fucking hat. Like it was nothing. Like it was just… part of his life. That had been his life. Back then, this was what he’d thought his life was going to be. 

It wasn’t. 

He’d known it was going to end, he reminded himself. The permanency in that marriage certificate hadn’t been a promise, it had been an avoidance method. A coping strategy. Jack’s mind had been so tangled up and he’d grabbed on to the nearest sure thing and tried to keep himself afloat.

Looking at this box of old stuff though…

Jack thought that, maybe, for thirty four days, they had been married, in a way that only two eighteen year olds in way too far over their heads could be. 

The idea hit him harder than he expected.

He picked up the box, needing to get it out of this room. There was more stuff in it, envelopes that he assumed were photos. His mom always gave him copies. He wasn’t sure if he had the strength to look at them tonight, but he also knew he might never pick up the momentum if he stopped now. Jack might never come back here again, ever. 

He stepped out of his bedroom door and walked through the darkened living room. His feet carried him out into the addition, the furthest part of the cabin. Jack turned on the warm glow of the overhead light, just bright enough to illuminate his actions. Slowly, Jack started to look through the photos. 

They weren’t all from when he was a teenager. One envelope only had three photos, and Jack couldn’t have been more than ten. He was smiling and holding a fish on a line. 

One photo stood alone, though, and Jack recognized it.

It was a polaroid. Taken after the Memorial Cup, during the party. Jack remembered the girl who had taken it. Their goalie had hit on her and she had worn lipstick as blue as her polaroid camera and she’d said, “Smile, boys,” and Jack had. So had Kent, his arm slung around Jack’s side.

He didn’t remember how the photo had ended up with him.

At some point, Kent padded out into the little room, filling up the space under the hazy lamp light. Jack heard him speak before he realized he was there.

“Hey,” Kent said, quietly. “You’re up.”

It didn’t sound like a question, but it was. If he’d asked, it would be why are you awake? But he didn’t need to ask, because Jack was sitting with the answer in front of him, a box of old things, speaking for him. Kent’s presence spoke for him, too. If he was here, it meant he wasn’t sleeping, and if he wasn’t sleeping, it was because he couldn’t.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Jack said.

“I saw the light on.” 

Meaning, I was up, too. 

Jack pushed the box further out in front of him, offering silent permission, which Kent took. Kent lowered himself onto the floor beside Jack. A few moments later, Kent’s hands were on the wooden frame, exploring inside. Jack watched as he touched the book, and the trading card, and the hat. Kent’s fingers found the picture. They lingered.

It was quiet for a minute. 

“I was in love with you,” Kent said, finally, into the silence.

“I’m sorry.”

Kent laughed humourlessly. “Wow. That bad, huh?”

Jack didn’t say anything, just watched as Kent pushed the box away from himself, though not out of reach. 

“What do you want me to say?”

Kent rearranged his limbs on the floorboard, his expression carefully neutral. “You don’t have to say anything.”

Jack hesitated. “It’s not that I didn’t-”

“Seriously, man, you don’t have to explain.”

But he did, though. Jack had to say something, because they had never talked about… that. Somehow, they had made the unspoken pact to keep each other’s secrets, friends or not, and they’d done it without even once voicing the biggest of them out loud to each other. Kent must have had his own reasons, but for Jack it was because -

“I didn’t know.”

“How I felt?” Kent asked. “I married you, I thought I made it pretty obvious.”

Yes. No. Kent had never said it, then, but he hadn’t stopped it from showing.

“How I did.” He struggled with understanding his own feelings at the best of times, and if he was being honest with himself, he’d never tried to sort through that element of his history with Kent. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t. It had been outside his comprehension in the moment, and it was foreign to him now. “I still don’t,” he said. “Know, I mean. What it meant. There was just so much going on… Looking back, I can’t pick through it.”

Kent didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, he shrugged. “That’s being a teenager, I guess. Your dick doesn’t run things by your brain.”

“It’s not the answer you wanted.”

Kent sent Jack a sideways look. “If I waited around for you to do everything I wanted, I’d be waiting a while, Zimms,” he teased. “And I don’t know about you, but I’ve got better stuff to do.”

“So, you’re not angry at me anymore?” Jack asked.

“I am so angry at you,” Kent said, and he wasn’t joking anymore. “I have been…” he bit back the words and appeared to choke on them, “so angry at you for so long.”

Jack stared at the moths dancing dangerously close to the porch light. “So, nothing’s changed there.”

“It has,” Kent said, and Jack’s eyes snapped to him instead. “Listen. I can be angry at you and never stop. You make being angry at you so fucking easy.” Kent looked out the window, his expression serious. “But I want to stop.”

The words came from deep within Jack. “Me too.”

Kent looked at him. It was an expression that Jack recognized. Kent’s brow was raised and his eyes were defiant and disbelieving, daring Jack to admit to something he hadn’t been planning to. That expression had always made Jack feel something strong at his core. He thought now that maybe that feeling had been dislike. Kent somehow managed to get Jack to pour himself out for him, every time.

This time, Jack made the choice for himself. 

“What?” he said. This was a conversation, after all. 

“You’re just gonna let it go? Just like that?” Kent said, pressing the issue.

“Sure.”

“Come on, Zimmermann,” Kent said. “Don’t hold out on me. You got something to say to me? Don’t tell me you’re not angry.”

“I don’t want to be angry anymore.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Okay,” Jack gritted out. “You wanna know? Yeah. I’m angry at you.”

“Why?”

Jack laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound. “Because you’re…. You fuck me up. You make me fuck up. Every time I’m done with you, you want something from me. Every time I got better, you couldn’t let me have that. Every single time I thought I was on the right track, you just had to swoop in and make me feel like I was fucking up again. The draft. Coaching. My school. My team. And you… Nobody gets under my skin like you do.”

Kent’s mouth was a hard line. “I was only ever trying to help you.”

“Well, you didn’t.”

Kent’s eyes blazed, though his expression stayed grim. “You always have to think the worst of me, don’t you?”

“You make it easy when you call me worthless. And hopeless. And a screw up.”

Jack waited to hear Kent’s response, but it didn’t come. He abandoned his surveillance of the screen door and turned to Kent.

Kent looked stricken. It was rare that he lost control of himself, and if he couldn’t maintain his cool, neutral expression, he usually got it back pretty quickly. It was taking him too long.

“I don’t think that about you,” he said finally, untwisting his features. 

“Then why say it?” 

“Because I’d rather be someone who hurts you than someone you don’t give a shit about.” 

Jack stared at him. He tried to piece it together, but kept losing grip.

“Do you wanna know why I’m angry?” Kent asked.

It should have been a rhetorical question, but the way Kent said it, he built in room for rejection at the end. Like Jack would say his own side and shut down Kent’s. Like he would hear those words and say “no”. 

He thought that maybe he was piecing something together, after all. 

“I would have done anything for you. Anything. I would have gotten on a last minute red eye, or pulled strings, or put my neck out, and that mattered to me, you know? But it didn’t mean shit to you in the end.”

 Kent plucked at a loose string on his pants. 

“I turn into something shitty around you and I know that. I never wanted to be like that. But I can't be good to you, because you won't take it from me. No matter what I do, it’s wrong, and you act like I’m some asshole for even trying. You left me alone, and all I ever did was care about you. I hate you for that."

"You're right," Jack said. "I'm sorry."

Kent turned to him, wide-eyed. After a beat, he said, "What?" 

"I said I'm sorry. I'm not going to act like you didn't give me a reason, but…. I cut you off. I shut you out and you were my best friend and you deserved to know why, at least."

Kent stared at him, watching his face. Jack saw his throat move as he swallowed. 

"I'm sorry, too," he said. "I didn't want to become… this. To you." 

Jack sighed. A decade's worth of emotions sat inside him right now, no heavier than they had been when he'd been carrying them around without dealing with them. He was working on that. He was getting better with that. But it left him tired.

“You’re not who I wanted you to be," Jack admitted.

“Neither are you.”

Jack had known that for years. “I’m not who you think I am,” he said, voicing the words he’d been keeping down since rehab. “I’m never going to be.” 

Kent sat with his arms hugged around his knees. “Give me some credit, Zimms,” he said quietly. “I already figured that out.”

“Not soon enough,” Jack told him. His eyes felt hot with unshed tears.

Kent pursed his lips and shook his head. His eyes seemed wet, too. 

“Not even close,” he breathed.

Kent looked younger than he was in that moment. 

He looked like the boy who had sat down beside Jack on that locker room bench, that first time. He looked like the boy Jack had said goodbye to when he’d gone to rehab. The one with tears in his eyes. The one Jack had never really let back in after that.

Jack saw the boy he'd asked to marry him, when he was young. The boy who had said yes. 

Looking back now, grown up and in a relationship that felt like it was warming him and not burning straight through him, Jack knew that what he had now was what he wanted. He knew what worked and felt good and what didn’t. Jack didn’t regret moving on from Kent or realizing that he had been hurting Jack more than anything else and putting a stop to that. If he regretted the way he’d acted, his own part in the mess they’d made, he didn’t regret the road he had ended up on.

All the years he’d spent in the life he’d built without Kent had been his own choice. 

Jack still thought he was right for it.

But he wasn’t so aloof.

Jack hadn't been so broken as a teenager as to look at his best friend, who he'd spent nearly every minute of every day with for two years, and not have felt love. 

Maybe the wrong kind. Maybe the right kind in the wrong way. Maybe not the kind Kent had wanted him to feel, but he'd given what he had while he could. 

Kent had been his only friend, once. 

He'd been the person he cared about the most. 

Jack didn't know which of the two of them was more stupid for thinking Jack could ever stop caring about someone who meant that much to him. 

In the best and worst of times, Jack had cared. 

It wouldn't have hurt as much if he hadn't. 

"Do you think we would have stayed friends if we never got married?" Kent asked him. 

"No," Jack said honestly. 

Kent swiped at the corner of his eye, and Jack thought he might have been moving through the tail end of a flinch. 

"With the way things were," Jack elaborated, "I don't think there was anything that could have saved us. I don't really think either of us could handle things right." 

After a moment, Jack extended an olive branch he hadn't been expecting. "Even if you'd done everything right," he said carefully, "I still would have shut you out." Kent sat completely still, listening. "I wasn't okay, Kenny." 

Kent nodded. "You were alright," he said, though they were talking about two different things. 

Minutes dragged on where neither of them spoke.

“Do you remember,” Jack said slowly, “that shitty motel out East? The one with the-”

“Spiders?” Kent finished. 

“Yeah,” Jack said. “And that deer's head on the wall? What was up with that?”

“I don’t know, but it was creepy as hell. I didn’t sleep for a week.”

“No, you slept,” Jack said. “I know because you were snoring.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying. I was awake to hear it, because you kicked me. In your sleep.”

“I don’t remember that,” Kent said. “I remember the time you lost your car, though.”

Jack snorted. “I didn’t lose it. It just wasn’t where I put it when I came back for it.”

“Because it got towed. Because you parked it in a no overnight parking zone for three days straight.”

“We were on a roadie!” Jack protested. “We were out of town.”

“Yeah, and meanwhile your BMW was sitting in front of Zippy’s bowling alley. Someone should have keyed it.”

“If it was your car, someone would have.”

Kent’s laughter was wet, and when it didn’t go away, Jack realized he was crying. A tear rolled down his cheek when he said, “Jack?”

“Yeah?” 

“I want a divorce.”

The world froze.

Jack looked at him carefully. “Yeah?”

Kent nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Jack said, standing up, feeling the universe tilt.

“You got those papers with you?”

“Yeah, they’re in my bag,” Jack said, thinking of the manilla envelope he’d been carrying around for too long. “But…”

Kent looked up at him. “But?”

“We never found your pen.” Jack felt stupid even as he said it. 

Kent laughed, the sound of it still teary. “I never cared about that pen,” he confessed softly. 

“Just wanted to put me through the wringer, eh?”

Kent shrugged. “I just… it’s fucking stupid. It's like, if you had to keep chasing me for those papers, then you had to talk to me. If we were still married, then you were still around somehow, and I figured that if I gave in and we got divorced, then that would be it. I'd never hear from you again. And I, uh…. I just wasn't ready. For that." 

The words sunk in under Jack's skin. 

"But that's stupid," Kent continued, "and I'm done. And being married to you sucks anyway, so. Get me a pen."

Jack nodded. It took him a while to move, but when he did, his feet carried him back over to the kitchen. Silently, he opened the top drawer beside the sink and wrapped his fingers around the oversized Spongebob pen that he’d seen in there earlier. 

“This good enough?” he asked Kent, when he was done taking a moment alone to himself and grabbing the envelope of legal papers.

“Yeah,” Kent said. “Works for me.”

Jack sat down cross-legged beside him on the floor. His blood was pounding. He handed Kent the envelope and the pen and let him make sense of the pages.

“They marked all the spots where you need to sign,” Jack told him.

“I know,” Kent said. “I looked it over already. And my lawyers.” He ran his finger along one of the lines of text. “Gotta make sure you’re not screwing me out of my car.”

“I don’t want your car,” Jack promised him.

He just wanted Bitty. 

Kent glanced over at him, one corner of his mouth lifting ruefully. “You’re missing out,” he said, but it sounded like he understood. 

Kent lifted the pen, tested it for ink against the envelope, and then when he was ready, he looped his initials beside the first X. And then the second. As he added the day’s date to the first page, he said, “So, after this, I guess I’ll see you at the All Stars game. If I don’t play you before then.”

He said it simply and casually, like a peace offering. Jack recognized it for what it was. I’ll let you go. I’ll leave you alone. It was what Jack, both broken and healing, had been wishing for for ten years. To cut that final, lingering, festering tie that existed between them, connecting them in their worst moments. He wanted to close the door that Kent had walked through in order to hurt him, and lock the one that Jack kept slamming in his face and hiding behind. There would be none of that. They could be done. They could leave the past behind them the way other, better adjusted people did. When they saw each other, it would be professional.

Jack didn’t have to be that kid in the Q anymore. 

Kent didn’t have to be the boy in the pictures.

And yet, presented with the opportunity to burn this bridge, Jack felt how deep that tie went. The same Kent who had shoved Jack during a game two years ago was the Kent who had stayed for hours with him in the hospital. The Kent who had yelled at him at his own party was the one who had mouthed off at their old teammates in Jack’s defense. He was the first friend Jack had ever had and the first partner to touch him and the only person to make Jack understand what it meant to miss someone and to resent them at the same time.

He was the kid who had held him together and the boy who had broken him and the man who had finally, on this night, apologized.

Jack sighed a long, world-weary, never-ending sigh.

Then he surprised himself.

“Do you want to come to my wedding?” he asked Kent, and he meant it.

Kent’s eyes got very wide.

“You’re inviting me to your wedding?” he asked.

“It’s chicken or fish.”

Kent’s bottom lip quivered just so slightly, and Jack hoped that he wasn’t going to start crying again. He didn’t trust himself not to join in.

“I like chicken,” Kent offered. 

Jack nodded. 

Hesitantly, he reached out and jostled Kent’s arm. 

“I love you, man,” he said.

“I love you, too.” 

In the light of the bug lantern, Kent held the Spongebob pen in his fingers and continued to flip through the pages of the document, reading the text and scrawling his signature where indicated. 

As he did, they talked.

It was the deepest, easiest conversation Jack had had with Kent in a long time. It left his heart feeling more whole than it did broken, which was not the effect Kent had on him recently, though it had been once. It was the closest Jack and Kent had come to friendship in years, and it happened while Kent signed their divorce papers. 

When the morning came, they would no longer be married.

They would no longer hurt each other, either.

Jack trusted that peace enough that he didn’t need it in writing.