Chapter Text
Jack’s phone starts ringing halfway through his Tuesday morning jog. The April dew is just beginning to burn off when he stops to stretch the tightness out of his calf and snap a photo of the sunrise. Lardo’s name comes flying onto his screen with a flurry of notifications.
Lardo: Jack Zimmermann!
Lardo: Do you remember that time that I told you I owed you a super big favor for helping me
Lardo: Like in college.
Lardo: I might like. Need another one.
He blinks sweat out of his eyes, wiping his forehead on the edge of his shirt and studying the messages again. Lardo is one of his best friends – she has been for years. And on top of that, she’s the Boston Bruins’ Media Coordinator. Jack’s watched her spend the last two years climbing the ranks of the organization. She’s run so many successful PR campaigns that the team has practically given her free rein to do what she wants.
Jack: What do you need?
A typing bubble pops up on the screen for the better part of a minute, then disappears–then reappears again.
Lardo: This is a really big ask, so feel free to say no. But I’m in charge of organizing our Pride campaign. Which is great! Except our official photographer just dropped out, which fucking sucks, and I know you and hockey might not be a pairing of choice, but I really need someone. We’d pay you upfront and send you the full contract to review — and I can send it over now, just to consider! But I would love you to be there, and I trust you, and I think you would do a fantastic job. :)
The pit of anxiety Jack woke up with, which had just begun to disappear three miles into his run, drops right back into the middle of his stomach.
He locks his phone and wheels around, heading back toward his apartment, his brain swimming the whole way home. He replays Lardo’s text, the image burnt onto the back of his eyelids, asking him to head back into the hockey world.
-
EXCLUSIVE VENDOR AGREEMENT
This Exclusive Vendor Agreement (the “Agreement” is made and effective APRIL 7, 2019)
BETWEEN: Boston Bruins Media Department (the “Company”), a corporation organized and existing under the laws of Boston, Massachusetts, with its head office located at:
1735 East Flight Way
Boston, MA 02903
AND: Jacques Zimmermann, “the “Vendor”, an individual with his main address located at:
407 Pine St Unit 1
Boston, MA 02903
WHEREAS. The Vendor intends to supply exclusive use photography and videography which are used by the Company in the terms and conditions set forth in this Agreement.
OBLIGATIONS
(a) Vendor will attend, photograph, and provide images for the official Bruins Pride shoot, featuring staged studio photographs of players and assorted kit pieces. Studio and lighting will be provided by the Company. Closed press.
Location: TD Garden
Attire: Sport
Arrival time: 11:30am
Minimum Hours Required: 4
It's an early Wednesday afternoon in May when Jack finally meets the Bruins players.
He pulls into the stadium lot — through the employee gate, no less — with a mixture of anxiety and excitement in his chest; he can’t quite tell which one is winning. It’s been years since he’s been at a rink of this size, even though he’s been doing sport photography professionally for years now. If Lardo hadn’t texted him, Jack thinks he would have kept the door to hockey closed for a few more years.
But a best friend is a best friend.
And a job is a job.
He gives his name to the security guard at the front gate, who heads back inside for a period that feels all-too-long for the lack of traffic around him. Jack fiddles with the radio and tries to talk himself out of feeling like he forgot a piece of gear.
What feels like an eternity later, the guard finds Jack’s paperwork and waves him in. Stepping inside, a deep breath comes from deep in Jack’s lungs, the nervous tension in his shoulders relaxing the smallest percentage. Jack still knows rinks like the back of his hand — even if he or his dad never played at the Bruins stadium. Knowing where the staff entrance is a matter of well-trained instinct, not knowledge.
From the moment Jack parked to his check-in at the gate, the pressure in his chest grows exponentially. He weaves through the hallways carrying a turtle shell-esque backpack and dragging a roller bag stuffed to the brim with stands, mounts, arms, and other rather arcane tools of professional photography — though the team is supposed to provide equipment, he isn’t, and never has been, one to show up unprepared.
He chases faded signs ostensibly guiding him toward the press room Lardo said they’d be in. At one point, he makes a wrong turn, losing track of the signs. Somehow embarrassed to turn back in an empty hallway, he barrels through several more closed doors. A precariously large open door catches Jack’s eye, and he winces at the sudden brightness as he steps straight through. As his eyes begin to adjust to the harsh light, he looks up, right into —
Center Ice.
He’s tucked halfway behind a row of stadium seating, so no one notices the door swing half open. In front of him the Pride of Boston, the glamor of the Bruins stadium, the team team in all its glory, glides across the ice.
It’s off-season, so not all the guys are here. Lardo briefed him on that too – this was an optional series of clinics and events, attended mostly by players who were in the area already, or those select few who truly wanted to attend. The team already held Pride Night during the regular season, but as Lardo explained to Jack during their briefing call, there was, a “vested interest from the team and partners to do a full media campaign for June.”
It’s also cool to see the guys out here, in the middle of off season, wearing half pads and scrimmaging. He watches them flit around each other for a moment, captured by the scrape of the blades on the ice and their shouts and laughter. Jack closes his eyes. Someone blows a whistle.
For a moment, he’s back in the Juniors; waiting to take the ice before practice and doing what he can to calm his anxiety. He knows that when he steps into the zone, for those precious moments, nothing can touch him – not the other team, not the weight of the last name on the back of his jersey, not his own thoughts. Jack’s fists tighten almost imperceptibly.
Now, he’s doing something he loves. Photography is something first, Jack cares about, second, something Jack is good at, third, something that gives his life meaning and, fourth, doesn’t destroy him.
But there’s a part of him that does miss this world.
“Hey!” A familiar voice calls from inside. Jack spins around to see Lardo standing at the end of the hallway, grinning. “Mister Jack Zimmerann. Welcome to The Show.”
“Lardo!” Jack says with a grin, letting the door swing closed behind him. It clicks closed behind him with a resolute thud that feels metaphorical. He swings his arms around Lardo and hugs tightly.
“You look so professional,” she compliments after they separate, giving him a quick once-over. “Let’s drop off your stuff and I’ll give you the tour while the guys finish up.”
They head down the hallway, chatting as they go. Lardo points out the training rooms and different places she recognizes. To Jack, it’s like looking into a portal back to 18, and he fights off a host of complicated feelings, focusing on the job ahead. He drops his bag in the empty press room, which Lardo promises she’ll have set up by the time the shoot actually starts, and then takes him on a tour of some of the staff rooms and the media office. He shakes hands with a dozen people and struggles to find ways to remember their names, too busy berating himself about how he should have brought a third strobe instead of an extra stand.
Jack and Lardo just barely beat the rest of the team to the press room. Halfway through the tour, she peels off to start setting up, leaving Jack to give an impromptu lecture on photography tips to a few interested and well-meaning interns. He’s never minded working with kids, though; so he happily shows them how to adjust their aperture (“Oh, so that’s what the ‘A’ mode is for. Lit.”) and obligingly follow-backs their art accounts on Instagram.
Mercifully, Jack’s tour ends, and the shoot begins, quick enough to squash any building anxiety. He barely steps into the press room before he hears loud voices coming down the hall.
They come charging into the press room in varying states of dishevelment, hardly prepared for a professional photoshoot. Some wore jerseys, others workout gear, and a single guy, a rather sleepy looking fellow, was still in his boxers.
Jack keeps a low profile - hands in his pockets, gear bag swung over his shoulders. He grew up in locker rooms, and knows how not to be seen when he doesn’t want to. There were times in the Juniors where Jack’s anxiety got the best of him, where all he did was take too much of his meds and hide in dark corners of the room. One of the guys comes up to Lardo immediately, chattering about an idea for something he had in the ice. Another guy joins a moment later, adding something to the conversation that finishes with a loud exclamation he recognizes as Russian. A third guy fist bumps Lardo when he passes.
Jack wouldn’t say that he was openly hostile toward the media team when he was a player, but he was certainly never as friendly with reporters as this team is with Lardo. He guesses it could be that Lardo is just that kind of person — she’s always had a way of breaking down the walls of weird hockey boys — but there’s something about the casual attitude of the team rolling in for a Pride themed photoshoot that makes Jack feel like it’s something else, too. He hangs back and away from the crowd, and captures a burst of candids.
It’s a full production – all around them, the press room has been turned into a bona fide photo studio, complete with C-stands that Jack recognizes as Lardo’s own from the paint splotches. She used them in a sculpture back in sophomore year, which Jack remembers because he spent the day driving her around Craigslist Boston listings to haggle with hobby photographers looking to turn a quick buck.
It was the first time they really hung out – the Samwell art program wasn’t large by any means, which meant even though Lardo was in Fine Arts and Jack was in Photography, they crossed over in a few classes they were required to take. It was during their shared Recycling and Art course that Lardo hatched a plan to build a sculpture of a monster out of recycled pieces of other people’s art. Jack was impressed with the idea, the pure banality of art being the monster all along, that he asked if he could photograph the process. And despite Lardo’s protests that she could hold her own against weird internet dudes, Jack had counteroffered that he not only had a car, which meant she wouldn’t have to carry six foot tall light stands on the bus, but also was a photographer and would be able to tell her if they were ‘of merit’ for her piece. She spent the entire drive with her feet on the dash of Jack’s Subaru, playing an obscure Icelandic death metal band and peppering Jack with questions about his life.
Second to Shitty, who he shared a dorm with freshman year, she was one of the first people at Samwell that Jack trusted enough to tell everything. By the time they’d canvassed a two-hour radius of Samwell, Craigslist listings, and black coffee from Dunkin Donuts, Lardo had a backseat of bones for her monster and was googling hockey positions. When they made it back to Lardo’s dorm, she shook his hand and told him that drive was a pleasure, she was glad they were friends now, and that she owed him a major favor.
Jack is now standing in a room full of professional hockey players as a follow-up to that favor.
“You’re the photographer?” A voice says to Jack’s left, startling him from his viewfinder. He starts to turn without fully looking to see who it is, figuring it’s the social media team or one of the admins, but it’s someone else completely.
It’s the NHL’s first openly gay player, Eric Bittle. And he’s grinning at Jack from a few feet away.
A merit on its own, but then he has the audacity to have dark brown eyes and hair perfectly tousled after his morning skate shower. Jack knows what the guy looks like – his dad has brought him up in the last three hockey conversations they have because of his insane stats, and the guy is all over ESPN highlights – but he wasn’t expecting the Southern charm to come through in the curve of his boyish cupid’s bow.
And besides, who walks straight over to the press to start chatting? Certainly not many of the other high profile people Jack’s worked with.
“I’m Eric Bittle! The guys call me Bitty.”
And here he is, reaching up to shake Jack’s hand, while Jack is standing here and panicking.
But Jack knows hockey. He may be a little stunned to be meeting Eric Bittle, but this is the only thing in the world other than photography that Jack knows he can really do. He extends his hand the rest of the way, scrambling to catch his thoughts.
He doesn’t say something normal, like: ‘yes, I’m the photographer.’ Or ‘nice to meet you, I’m Jack.’ Or even, ‘You’re unreasonably gorgeous in real life, we should get dinner.’
He says: “Bittle. Your goal against the Aces in Game 7 was great. If you had a little more protein on your side, you would have been able to muscle through in the 3rd period and score on Parson. You’re faster than him.”
Eric’s eyes widen for a moment as his brows shoot up, captured in a perfect image of shock at Jack’s words.
Jack wants to throw himself into a gear bag and disappear. He can’t believe he just said that – and sure, yeah, he thinks Eric could flatten Kent Parson in a dead heat – but you don’t just meet people and throw something like that at them. Even if you mean it in a compliment-way. He knows that guys in the league, commentators, and coaches have all sat Eric out because he was short. And every time, he’s come back swinging despite their doubts. And now Jack is meeting him for the first fucking time and doing exactly that . He’s trying to form an apology when Eric actually laughs.
“Jack Zimmermann ,” Eric repeats slowly, like he’s tasting the weight of Jack’s name in his mouth. In his periphery, Jack sees a few guys begin to turn in recognition. Then, “Are you actually chirping me?”
Their hands finally connect, and Jack manages to exhale.
Thank god. He totally didn’t just almost fuck that up.
“Zimmermann, no way!” someone else shouts across the room, which means they’re hockey guys, and they overheard Eric, and this is now a situation with a capital S. “When you mentioned finding a photographer at the last minute, you didn’t mention that it would be hockey legend, Canadian wunderkind, Bad Bob Zimmermann’s son .”
Eric has the curtesy to at least roll his eyes as the declaration. “Oh Lord.” He whispers under his breath. “I apologize in advance for their behavior.”
The whole room turns around in near-perfect unison. At least twenty other guys have filtered in while Jack has been setting up and shooting, plus a few staff members, and finally, Lardo emerges from behind a sculpture tower of Pride pucks.
“Oh.” She glares across the room. “Sorry. This is my best friend from college and uber-talented-photographer Jack Zimmermann, who also happens to have some cultural relevance to our jobs. You are absolutely not going to be weird about it.”
-
It’s definitely weird for the first half hour.
Jack gets it. He’s the son of a hockey legend, 3-time cup winner, childhood-aspirational-level superstar, etc: who almost went pro before he dropped off the face of the Earth the night before the draft. There were rumors about the rumors. Kent Parson was drafted first and never said a word on the record about what happened–Jack went to rehab. When photos leaked of where he was, he threw his phone into a nearby pond.
Of course, showing up one day as their staff photographer wasn’t the way these guys probably thought they’d next hear about whatever-the-fuck happened to Jack Zimmermann.
While they’re still finishing some of the setup, Jack programs lights while Lardo and the media team brief the players, and then they’re off.
Jack isn’t sure if it’s a blessing or a curse that Eric offers to go first.
Someone hollers, “Let’s go, Cap!” When Eric pulls off his athletic shirt to put on the jersey. Jack diverts his attention 5 feet to Eric’s left, feeling like he’s violating his privacy by watching him take off a shirt with a camera in hand, but he catches a glimpse of tan skin and strong muscle. Jack isn’t surprised – despite his earlier blunder, he knows that Eric can more than hold his own on the ice.
When he gets in front of the camera, all of the awkwardness in the room melts away. Jack goes to work, and Eric, luckily, seems to be just as serious about his work modeling pride tape and rainbow Bruins snapbacks as he does about running the league ragged on the ice.
They start with a few simple poses, Jack running Eric through some of the standard stuff he does with athletes: “Show me your jersey back. Three quarter turn your body and lean into the stick. Faceoff pose.” After he runs through the standard stuff, things start to relax and they start to get a little more creative. Eric isn’t afraid to try more creative poses, and he glows under the camera. Jack isn’t even sure how much time has passed by the time Eric signals for a break and reaches down to take a swig of his water.
Right. Jack needs to calm the fuck down. So what if Eric is passionate, charming, and good in front of a camera? He has a job to do. He can hold it together.
Eric glides next to Jack and tries to take a sneaky glance at the display. Jack has to bend down to show him the camera – even though Eric is well-build from seasons of NHL hockey, Jack is still a head taller. Eric laughs when he notices how much taller Jack is.
“You don’t have to bend down , that’s just rude.” He chides, but looks much more comfortable holding into the camera now. Jack realizes he probably should have just taken the camera off the strap around his neck and handed the whole thing to Eric, but now he’s standing half-bent over his shoulder, accidentally memorizing the smell of Eric cologne and watching his smile grow as he flips through Jack’s photos.
Jack watches carefully, almost holding his breath. He cares what Eric thinks.
“These are incredible,” Eric says, looking up at Jack with a half-open mouth. “You made me look so good .” Jack feels frozen in the intensity of Eric’s gaze below him.
He shifts under Eric’s sudden praise. He feels the pressure of everyone in the room around him, eyes watching the two of them. “Seriously, y’all,” Eric passes the camera back and pulls back to the larger room. “These are going to come out incredible. Who’s up next?” The rest of the team begins looking at each other rapidly, but the environment has noticeably relaxed now that Eric’s gone first.
Eric turns back to Jack with a shrug. “While they figure that out, do you mind snapping a couple of photos of me with this?” Eric reaches behind Jack, gesturing to a bag rested against a light stand. He pulls – what? A signed Beyonce CD out? With a grin growing over his face.
One of the guys in the wings cheers in laughter at the sight of Eric, in his gear, posing with an album cover that Jack is suddenly embarrassed to say he’s never seen before. When he tells Eric this, he faux-gasps, and points somewhere off to the side. “Who has the speaker?” He shouts across the room. “Where’s the music? This is a shoot!”
A few clicks of the shutter later, music comes from a speaker off to the side of the room. Eric sings along between poses. Jack wouldn’t say he’s good , per se, but his energy is infectious. Every picture Jack takes feels like The One of the shoot. He can’t believe how well this is turning out, and how he doesn’t feel weird about any of this at all.
Thank god Jack’s brain is built for auto-pilot. He keeps his face even, giving Lardo a thumbs-up from the sideline and doing a test flash of the lighting. Eric messes with his gear and then turns around.
“Ready?” Jack asks, lifting his camera and pulling Eric into focus.
Eric schools his face from a loose, goofy grin to something more serious, and off they go again.
-
As the day goes on, the guys loosen up. Jack has never necessarily been the best director during shoots, but Lardo clearly has a vision and keeps directing players into different poses with their sticks, pucks, and in various stages of wrapping their sticks with pride tape. It feels very tongue in-cheek at times, especially when Eric jumps in to offer suggestions on poses or help the guys feel more comfortable.
He has a careful ease around his team that makes Jack realize why he’s earned the A on only his third year with the Bruins. Eric commands the room with respect and wit, and Jack can’t stop staring at him. At one point, when he’s waiting for Mashkov to untangle himself from his tape, Jack turns and snaps a candid of Eric, laughing off the set…
…And then another, when he’s tossing some confetti over Tater’s head when he wraps.
-
The team wraps the shoot in just under three hours – Jack flicks through his camera and sits off to the side while the rest of the guys give him their thanks and start to file out. Lardo exhales and flops into the chair next to him.
“Thanks for doing this on such short notice,” she says, closing her eyes and leaning against the wall. “I thought it went really well.”
“Of course.” Jack nods, starting to pack his gear. “They guys were great subjects. I think we got some great shots.”
“More than just the shots, Jack!” Lardo reaches out to bump Jack’s shoulders. “It was good to work with you again. And you got along good with the guys. Even the ones that were awkward in front of the camera loosened up when you were suggesting poses.”
“Bittle helped a lot,” Jack offers, because it’s true, and also Eric is literally across the room teaching a group of junior staff how to properly wrap AV cables. He was easy to work with, charming, and sure of himself in a way that Jack is both equally attracted to and jealous of. It’s clear how much he cares about the team at every level.
He finishes packing his gear and looks to Lardo to what needs to be done next. “You guys really hit it off,” she continues, looking at him out of the corner of his eye.
“Seems like the kind of guy who gets along with everyone,” Jack replies carefully, trying to hide the way his eyes still feel drawn to Eric, fifteen feet across the room.
Lardo just eyes him and hums. They work in silence for a bit, dismantling the last of the light stands.
“You’d be up for this?” Lardo asks as they begin folding drop tarps. “I didn’t know if it would be weird, with the whole hockey thing.”
Jack blinks and looks up. “I signed the contract. Shitty bragged about writing it and everything.”
“If today made you uncomfortable, of course we wouldn’t make you do this again,” she replies. Jack appreciates the sentiment, but he did have a good time today. He doesn’t feel as uneasy as he thought he would after the shoot.
The Bruins’ logo is painted onto the wall ahead of him. For years, all he could think about was standing in the press room of an NHL team, doing his job.
It seems like the job just may be a little differently than he originally thought, now.
“Yeah,” he says. “I like the job.”
-
Over the next few days, he works through the photos, pulling selects and doing careful edits to lighting and color. Once he sits down to finally start editing, he can’t stop. It’s one click of the mouse after another, photo after photo, until his retinas are seared with the yellow of the Bruins’ uniform.
Jack doesn’t find it ironic at all that his favorite photos are the ones of Eric. He was the best model of the guys by far – even if these were the guys who were the more media-friendly of the bunch and willing to come back during the off-season to do a series of press ops; but Eric blew them out of the water. The staged ones are great – Eric does know his angles, and it shows. Everyone looks happy, and proud, and the first out captain of the NHL is being embraced by an organization that cares about him.
So what if Jack tears through the photos because it’s everything he didn’t dare ask for in life.
However good those are, his favorites are the candid ones. Reliably, Jack likes the photos that people don’t see coming, photos that show who you people are when the don’t think the pressure is on them. There’s one of Eric, blonde hair tousled under the lights, that Jack took when one of the rookies was nervous in front of the lens as Eric was hyping him up to the side. He took the photo with no flash, no second thought. And it’s a fantastic fucking photo!
In the end, Jack makes it the cover of the album when he finishes editing. He sends the link off to Lardo and the rest of the media team, and closes his laptop, and gets up to head to bed and stare at the ceiling until he can fall asleep.
He doesn’t think he’ll hear from anyone until he turns up to the next event, and he certainly doesn’t think he’ll hear from Eric.
He thinks wrong.
-
The next day, Jack gets an email. Well, first he gets an email from Lardo, which just has a bunch of exclamation points. And then, when Jack is out taking photos for a local business, he gets an email from ‘[email protected].’
Jack is between photographing menu items, so he clicks on it. The message reads:
Dear Mr. Zimmermann,
This is Eric Bittle, we met earlier this week at the Bruins Pride photoshoot! It was a pleasure working with you, and Lardo happened to send along the album of photos. I hope you don’t mind me emailing you, I just wanted to reach out and say how impressed I am with your work. Y’all made me look so official! I especially liked the one you chose for the album cover and was hoping to posting it on my personal social medias. What are your social media handles, so I can tag and credit you? I did a search but couldn’t find anything!
Looking forward to working with you,
Bitty
Jack blinks.
He doesn’t have any social media. Being online just felt like too much like being under a microscope again, so Jack communicates does business via email, word of mouth, and a website that he pays the kid of someone his mom knows to update.
He says such.
Bittle.
(Jack isn’t going to call him Bitty. They’re not teammates. They’re not anything at all, and Eric is just a nice guy that Jack met at work, and who happened to be attractive. He isn’t going to cross that line. He won’t.)
Thanks. I don’t use any social media, but feel free to use post the photos as long as you don’t crop out the watermark.
Jack.
He hits send, and tucks his phone back in his pocket, and goes back to work.
There’s another message by the time he gets home.
Jack,
No social media! A real wunderkind these days. I couldn’t imagine my life without Twitter. I posted that photo and everyone is asking who the photographer was! Let me know if you ever need help with your socials.
Bitty
Jack doesn’t respond, because he doesn’t really want to go down the social media route, and he doesn’t know what else to say. He does his nighttime routine, watches a few episodes of the show he told Shitty he’d check out, and still can’t think of someone to say back.
Everything feels too awkward, too early, too raw.
In the end, Jack just says nothing at all.