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Like all good starts to a semester, Ollie and Bitty were sitting next to each other in an 8 am lecture, reflecting on all the bad decisions they made to end up there.
Bitty, being a morning person, was convinced that a lecture this early in the morning wouldn’t be too bad, he had of course gotten up before sunrise to do checking practice with Jack in his freshman year but maybe the incentive wasn’t good enough this time. Jack was undoubtedly a much more appealing teacher to look at than the old professor at the front of the classroom.
Ollie, on the other hand, was faring a bit better than Bitty even though he and Wicks had just gotten back from their winter vacation last night. He was at least looking at the professor and nodding whenever the prof said anything mildly important while going over the syllabus (which wasn't that often).
Eventually, the class became intolerable for Bitty, so he started scrolling through Twitter (on his laptop because even though he had no intention of actually paying attention, he was polite enough to at least look like he was). Nothing really exciting happened since he last checked–aka no new Beyoncé posts for him to retweet–so it was mostly turned into lurking on the Falcs tag to see if there were any new posts about his boyfriend.
There wasn't anything that he hadn't seen before, except for a reposted tiktok video featuring some of Jack’s most shameful outfits he chose to wear on roadies. Bitty made sure to save the video to show Jack later because maybe it would inspire Jack to take his advice to start dressing in a way that makes him look like he can at least afford a new outfit more often than the rare occasion Bitty’s in Providence and brings him to the mall.
The last time they had gone shopping together, it ended up taking up an entire afternoon, and the only thing Jack ended up getting for himself were two t-shirts. To make it even worse, Bitty was convinced they were the same shirt. Jack denied this of course by pointing out the fact that one of them was a v-neck and the other one was a crew neck. This didn’t really matter much to Bitty because the most glaring similarity was that they were both a plain, dark grey.
At least Jack was happy he supposed. There are worse things than an unstylish hockey player boyfriend. (although he never thought that a son of an actress would have such a bleak sense of style, but he’s accepted that there's nothing Alicia could have done to help Jack).
“Hey Cap, you could at least try to pay attention you know,” Ollie whispered, interrupting Bitty’s musings. “You look like you care a bit too much about what the profs saying.” Ollie ended that though with a smirk.
He was right of course, Bitty’s thoughts were slowly drifting to thoughts he would only ever have about his boyfriend, and certainly not about their professor who, although not entirely unpleasant, wasn't exactly Bitty’s type.
“Oh hush you, I know exactly what's going on, and I’ll just look over the syllabus again once we get back to the Haus.” This really didn’t convince Ollie because he had absolutely no faith that Bitty was actually able to multitask that well.
“Ok then. Do you want to do the assignment with me and Sarah? Ollie gestured toward the girl sitting next to him. She was pretty, he supposed, but what he really noticed about her was how, like Ollie, she actually looked prepared for class unlike him, meaning that Bitty was about to feel really stupid asking his groupmates what the assignment was about.
“What exactly do we have to do here,” Bitty asked, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck.
Ollie gave him a look that showed he wasn't at all surprised that Bitty had to ask, but there was no malice behind it at all. Ollie was one of the nicest members of SMH, and since he was also one of the most academically inclined, he’d gotten pretty used to helping out his teammates.
“We basically just have to discuss what we expect from this course and things we learned in other classes that we think will be useful, then write it down.”
“Okay, sounds easy enough. I’ll take notes.”
“Thanks, bro”
Ollie and Sarah began discussing the topics assigned by the prof which Bitty was grateful for, as he didn't really have any opinions on the class yet. He was just taking it because it was one of the last classes he had to take before graduation.
After a few minutes of writing down whatever his group mates were saying, Ollie began asking about the stickers Sarah had on their stuff, so Bitty took this as an opportunity to keep scrolling through Twitter while half paying attention to what the others were saying. He was listening in case they started talking about something he’d have to write down but Bitty figured he had some time left because they seemed to be getting along well.
Out of the corner of his eye, Bitty saw Sarah point at the drawing of a cat on the cover of Ollie’s notebook.
“Oh my gosh, it’s so cute! Did you draw it?”
“No, my fiancé did,” Ollie said, putting extra emphasis on the word 'fiancé' like it was his favourite word to say. “It’s my family’s cat, she was such a good model.”
Bitty’s mind went absolutely blank. There was no way he heard him say that right. He didn't even know Ollie was even dating anyone! He had just gone to the Winter Screw alone, no way Ollie’s been dating anyone long enough to get engaged. He must have misheard him. It was way too early for him to listen properly anyways.
Just to confirm that he misheard him, Bitty subtly looked over at his teammate to see if he was wearing a ring. Even though guys didn’t typically wear one, it was worth a shot to check anyways.
Bitty did a double take. On Ollie’s hand, there was a silver band sitting on his left ring finger that was unmistakably, one hundred percent, an engagement ring.
Bitty could no longer pay attention to his group mates or his Twitter feed on his laptop. At this point, Beyoncé herself could release a surprise music video and he would even notice because he was so caught up in the news he had just learned. (Ok maybe that’s going too far. Nothing, could ever distract Bitty from a new Beyoncé song).
Was he a bad friend? How could he not know that his fellow frog, his teammate of four years now, was in love enough to get engaged. Was it a secret? Was it a really quick engagement? Or worse, did Ollie not see himself close enough with Bitty to tell each other things like this?
That last thought wouldn’t leave his mind because yea the two of them didn’t spend much time together but Ollie seemed to always have plans with Wicks, so it wasn’t like he was ignoring him.
Nonetheless, Ollie didn't seem like the kind of guy that would make a quick decision like that or keep his relationship a secret. He took forever to make a decision. One time at a team breakfast he saw him spend fifteen minutes trying to decide what he wanted from Annie’s for goodness sake!
He supposed it could be a secret relationship like him and Jack, but what are the odds of there being two members of SMH in a relationship they can’t tell other people about? Bitty figured that being in a relationship with another man who recently began playing in the NHL was a fairly unique situation. Plus, Ollie just told a girl he met an hour ago that he was engaged while sitting right next to Bitty, so there was no way Ollie was a good secret keeper if that was the case.
Before he could spiral more into the thought that Ollie just simply didn't see him as enough of a friend to not even mention that he was dating anyone, Bitty decided that he should just rip off the bandaid and ask. Class isn't over yet so if Ollie really didn't want to answer Bitty’s questions, he could easily make the excuse that they had to work on their assignment.
“When did this happen?” Bitty asked, looking pointedly at Ollie’s ring.
“Oh! We got engaged on Christmas,” Ollie said in a tone of surprise that suggested Bitty should have already known this.
This answered none of Bitty’s questions. He figured Ollie had recently gotten engaged, and who is the other part of we? This wasn’t helpful at all for Bitty’s recon mission because he didn’t have the slightest clue who Ollie was dating!
It was time to be more forward.
“Do you have any pictures?”
“Yea bro, my phone died so I can’t show you right now, but I sent them to the group chat if you wanna look.”
Finally! Bitty pulled out his phone to start searching for the photos because he was desperate to find out who this mystery person Ollie was engaged to. It took a while for Bitty to reach the texts from Christmas. The SMH group chat had a constant influx of memes and hockey talk that Bitty tended to ignore. It wasn't that he disliked the groupchat, there was just too much going on for him to want to keep himself updated. He figured that if something really important happened, someone would just tell him.
Evidently, this wasn't the case because he had seemingly missed Ollie’s entire relationship and engagement.
Once he finally made it to the photos Ollie sent to the groupchat, he was in for his second surprise of the day–which was fairly surprising considering it was about half past nine.
In the pictures with Ollie, Wicks was standing there with a ring of his own; both of them showing off their hand to the camera and looking happier than Bitty ever remembers seeing them.
How could he have missed this!?
Bitty’s shock over his realization that Ollie and Wicks were dating grew even more as he realized, after reading the texts sent by the others, that no one else seemed to be as surprised as he was about the engagement. Did they already know that they were together?
He was about to text Jack if he’d known about this, but got interrupted before he could open their conversation.
“Dude, you okay,” Ollie asked, concerned for Bitty’s well-being as the blond was sitting there frozen, not knowing that Bitty was currently re-evaluating every single interaction Ollie and Wicks had ever had.
“Yea sorry, y’all look cute! I’m just surprised I missed the photos you sent, that’s it.” He tried to keep an air of support and nonchalance but it all came out a bit more rambled than he intended.
Before they could say anything else, they heard the professor ask for the answers to the assignment before dismissing the class. Bitty was grateful for this because it meant he had a moment to process his thoughts before walking back to the Haus with Ollie.
—
For the average New Englander, it was a nice day outside; the sun was shining and there wasn't too much snow on the ground. This didn't stop Bitty from complaining about it.
“I don't get how y’all deal with this every darn year,” Bitty told Ollie through his chattering teeth.
“It’s really not even that bad out today man.”
“Shut up, it’s my God-given right to complain. I just got back from Georgia the other day.”
They continued walking with a comfortable silence between them. Ollie began collecting snow from the tall snow banks lining the sidewalk and began throwing them at the street signs on their path.
"Hey, Ollie," Bitty said suddenly, interrupting Ollie’s one-sided snowball fight.
Ollie looked over at Bitty, letting him know he was listening.
“Well, umm…” Bitty started, a bit unsure about how he was going to ask. He didn't want to sound completely oblivious to the fact he was dating–now engaged?!–to Wicks until this morning. “When did y’all start dating?”
Bitty internally facepalmed. No way that was the best thing he could have asked. Now he felt like it was now painfully obvious that he didn't have the slightest clue about his teammates' relationship.
Yep, Bitty could tell he was completely obvious to Ollie because he looked at him like he could read his mind.
“Freshman year,” he answered with amusement written on his face. “We never kept it a secret you know. If it makes you feel better, I think it took most people a second to realize because whatever Rans and Holster had going on managed to look even gayer than Pace and I.”
That was another thing Bitty was completely clueless about: he had no idea Ollie and Wicks were even gay!
This whole time he was so hung up about his relationship with Jack, he managed not to notice his teammates that have been dating for almost four years now and apparently, it wasn't even a secret.
“Honestly man, don’t stress, I get it, you and Jack have been sneaking around so much it must’ve been hard to notice,” Ollie said, giving Bitty a friendly nudge with his elbow as he opened the door to the Haus.
Bitty gave Ollie a quick sideways glance because he was now convinced that he was actually a mind reader.
As Ollie’s words fully caught up to him, it was too late to ask about how he possibly could have known that he and Jack were together, because Ollie started heading up to the attic and Nursey and Dex called out for Bitty to sort out whatever disagreement they managed to get into.
—
Wicks: pray for me
i’m at annies with chow and its way to fcking early
how was class?
Ollie: Tbh I was worried when I saw you werent still asleep. I didnt know you could wake up before 10.
Wicks: dont patronize me
Ollie: Also class was fine. Bitty saw the engagement pics and im honestly convinced he thought we were just bors
*bros
Wicks: 😟
were not!?
Ollie: stfu