Chapter Text
Upon entering the bathroom, Jack eases the door behind him with his foot until it’s barely cracked open— he doesn’t close it, knowing that the door handle creaks and his hand-eye coordination is not at the top of its game right now. And besides, his hands are full.
He's got a bottle in one hand and a cup in the other. Jack sets both down on the counter with a thunk before looking at himself in the mirror. In their quiet way, bathrooms always seem to make jack realize just how fucked up he is: how anxious, how drunk, how high, how depressed, how socially awkward… the list goes on.
Tonight, it’s the alcohol/anxiety double spiral. The two don’t come hand in hand often; usually enough booze flushes out Jack's social anxiety for the better, cooler, more sociable version of himself, but tonight’s a special case.
Jack makes a face at himself in the mirror before opening the medicine cabinet and taking out the bottle of pills he stores there. The dizziness hits hard, and he closes his eyes, swaying into the countertop, gripping the plastic orange bottle tightly.
He could trip and fall right now and crack his head on the tile floor. Blood would seep into the sandy grout. It would stain.
Jack lifts his eyebrows and blinks his eyes open. Better go sit on the toilet seat, then. His brain’s doing what he likes the least for it to do: making the little things seem big and the big things seem even bigger. Making Jack feel small and stressed; scared and distressed; uncertain and self-flagellating and fucking possessed.
The toilet seat is cold when his legs meet the closed lid. With the practice of muscle memory, Jack unscrews the lid of the pill bottle without looking and taps a few into his hand.
The pills will calm him down. They'll make everything seem smaller again, calm down his loopy, wired brain. It's a prescription. He needs them.
The taps of the bottle feel nice against his palm, the sensation of the hard plastic ridges and the smooth texture of the pills. He taps out a few more. A few more. A few—
The door creaks open. Jack freezes.
A shocked noise comes from the doorway, and it’s Kenny. Of course it’s Kenny. Jack thought Kent had been asleep when he’d slipped out of bed, but it makes sense that he’d woken up. Kent always was a light sleeper.
He blinks and Kent’s slapping his hand, pills are scattering on the floor, and Kent’s letting out a steady stream of, “What the fuck Jack, what the fuck Jack, what the fuck,” like he doesn’t know what else to do.
Still feeling shaky, Jack forgoes the cup and reaches straight for the bottle of… whatever hard alcohol he’d carried with him into the bathroom, he isn’t quite sure what kind. Maybe not knowing that is a problem, but Jack can’t help but feel a little bit removed from reality right now.
“Jack, what the fuck,” Kent says again, and rips the glass bottle out of Jack’s hands before he can take a sip.
“Kenny,” he slurs. “Need it.”
Kent reaches around him and up-ends the bottle, dumping it into the bathtub unceremoniously. “Jack. No." His eyes are wide and his tone is shaking, and oh. That’s not good. Jack frowns.
“You had a handful of pills. Why did you have a handful of your pills in your palm?”
Jack blinks slowly. Why is Kent so upset? Does he not feel like the room is closing in on him? Because Jack could swear that it is right now. “I needed everything to be quiet for a second. It's so loud in here.”
Kent's mouth trembles in fear. “Jack, it’s silent here. You're scaring me.”
Jack flops back against the toilet tank and groans. “My head, Kenny, crisse. It's loud in here.” He waves at his face, and that’s when Kent seems to get it.
“Oh.” Kent kneels down in front of him and looks up beseechingly. “How… How long has it been so loud?”
Jack shrugs miserably. He's not sure it’s ever been entirely quiet.
“Fuck,” Kent says softly. “Shit, Zimms.”
“‘S why I needed the pills,” he reiterates. “C’n I have just one?”
Parse's eyes narrow, and he juts out his chin. That's his fighting face. Shit. Jack needs an argument. There's a reason why tonight has been worse than usual; maybe that will help him make his point.
It’s something… Oh. Yes, that’s right. “Kenny,” Jack says wisely, “’s just ‘cause the draft is tomorrow.”
“I don't give a shit about the draft right now Jack,” Kent says, his voice low and serious. “You were about to kill yourself.”
And that seems a little too harsh to Jack. He didn’t want to die, right? He'd just wanted a break. Just for a minute.
He must make an expression of distaste, because Kent blows right past anger into an expression so thunderously pissed off that Jack's only seen it on his face one other time.
“What the fuck else do you call taking how many pills you had in your hand after how much you’ve had to drink tonight Jack. What else would you call that?”
“I just wanted a break,” he tries to explain, tongue clumsy. “I just wanted it all to stop.”
“It can stop! We can make it stop!”
That doesn’t sound right to Jack. He shakes his head sluggishly, blinking slow. “Kenny, we can’t. It's just like… more and more an’ more. Forever! ‘Til we all die.”
“Don’t— don’t say that. We can make it stop. I can tell—” his throat bobs as he swallows, cutting himself off. Jack's eyes are slow to trace up to his face until he notices the shake at the corner of Kenny's mouth: he looks scared again. Jack wants to reach for him, but he feels too far away, his arms too heavy.
“No, no,” Kent says. He pushes a hand through his hair, making it even messier than it already had been. “Can’t do that, can’t fucking tell anyone this close— y’know what?” Something shifts. Jack feels himself perk up in response to the determination he sees in Kent's eyes. “Fuck it all, we can just leave right now.”
“Right now? Kenny, the draft—”
“I don’t give a fuck.” Kent stands up, grabs the cup Jack had brought in with him and fills it with tap water before shoving it in Jack's face. “You drink that and sit here, I'll pack our bags. We're going.”
If there's one thing Jack knows, it’s hockey. If they drive away now… That won’t look good. That won’t be good.
Jack has a suit hanging on his closet door that he’s supposed to wear in about five hours. Kent does too; his is hanging right next to Jack’s. He should be excited, but Jack's stomach turns at the thought. His next breath is jerky, like his lungs are fighting against their natural order of expansion.
Kent grabs his hands and curls them around the cup, his own smaller hands framing the outside. “Drink,” he says more gently.
Jack sips his water and blinks.
“What matters right now is you, and you are dying here. If we stay, I don’t think they’ll fix it, Zimms. So drink your water, I'll pack, and then we’ll blow this popsicle stand, okay?”
There are no words with which to respond. Jack loves hockey. Jack is dying. Jack needs to leave. So he just nods and does as he’s told while Parse gathers up all the pills on the floor and puts them in the trash before taking the bag out with him when he goes to pack.
Jack uses every trick in the book to disconnect his mind from his body, forcing dissociation to stave off the panic, becoming blank and waiting, hoping for something good to come of all this somehow.
The night is liminal. They pass under streetlight after streetlight. Kent has only driven Jack's BMW twice and the first time he got a huge scrape on the side from a pillar that Jack had to lie through his teeth and say that was his fault to his parents even though he’s pretty sure his dad knows the truth.
But Kent now drives like he normally plays hockey: focused and with a fire in his eyes. Jack doesn’t ask where they’re going. He doesn’t want to know.
He wants to take a pill. He tells himself he’s stupid for letting Parse convince him it'd be better to leave his extra prescription bottle behind on the bathroom counter, pulling out of his trip duffel from the front pocket where he always keeps it.
They drive until they can’t drive anymore. It’s not far, because Jack only had a quarter tank. Parse pulls into a gas station. Jack hands him forty dollars without Kent even needing to say anything, and Kenny refuels the tank. Then they’re back on the road once more.
Jack freezes up when he recognizes the scenery of the road, eyes finally focusing and brain sobering up enough to put two and two together.
“You're taking us across the border?”
Parse levels a glare at him, eyes red and brows set. “Where the fuck else would we go? At least in the states we can disappear.”
Jack knows he’s right. As juniors hockey stars Jack Zimmermann and Kent Parson on the morning of and right after the draft, they’d have to find somewhere remote in Canada to hunker down where they wouldn’t be recognized, and even then they’d have to eat some time. It would be a nightmare. America is much more well-equipped for them to vanish for a while.
The suddenness washes over Jack once more. He looks at the clock, which reads 5:28 am. His breath starts to speed up, his mind racing. The draft is at eleven. If they turn around now, they can still make it back in time; his parents none the wiser to this little mishap.
But Jack should have felt excited. Instead, all he feels is panic continuing to rise and nausea swirling in his gut.
“Kenny,” he blurts, “what are we doing?” His hands clasp at themselves in his lap, knuckles going white immediately.
Jack feels like a child, shaking hands after coming away from a practice with his dad on which he’d missed more shots than he’d made on goal, had sloppy fucking edges on his turns, slow and useless. Foolish. At the mercy of Kent Parson in the driver’s seat, whose whole face is still staring out at the road, mouth thin.
As if he knows that Jack is looking, his eyes flick over to make contact for just a second, blue meeting blue. Kent clears his throat. His words are wobbly when he says: “We’re giving you a break.”
But it’s not just Jack that will be missing the draft. It’s Parse. It’s Kent, who Jack knows in his heart was going to go first— is going to go first? Still can go first? He knows Kent deserves it with how phenomenal of a season he’s had, and even though Jack has performed similarly well, Kent’s precision with the puck and the key moments in which he’s scored, their no look one timer off Jack’s stick and slapped right into the goal from Kent’s intervention like a god— it’s unparalleled.
Jack getting a break doesn’t have to mean that Kent does. He gets it, the bone-deep warmth that sparks within him sometimes when he’s around Kent, high and laughing and on top of the world off a win; in the midst of video games at Kent’s billet family’s house; at an early practice with only the two of them at the rink; whispering in their hotel room during roadies— there’s a lot he would do for Kent.
But give hockey up?
Jack doesn’t even want to give hockey up for himself. Hockey is his life.
“Kenny.” He keeps his voice low and pleading. “Kenny, you’ve gotta turn the car around.”
Jack reaches out a hand, wavering and tentative to clasp over Kent’s on the gear shift. His car’s an automatic, but Kent learned to drive on his mom’s shitty stick, and his hand always drifts there when he’s driving, no matter how many times Jack has told him to keep both hands on the wheel.
“Fuck you,” Parse spits back, ripping his hand out from underneath Jack’s. “Fuck you, Jack.”
“We can still make it back in time,” Jack carries on with his plea. “Nobody will even have to know we were gone, we could have just been out on a run, or— or—”
“No.” The word is hard. “What happens if we go back, Jack? Huh? They won't get it. They'll make us go. And when the draft comes, you go first and I go second. We'll be in Vegas and New fucking York. That’s basically the whole country apart with you in Vegas. Jack. You and I, we. We’ve maybe been going a little hard. But you? you just tried— you just attempted—”
Anger runs through Jack, blisteringly hot. “So what? You think that if I go to Vegas I’ll fucking kill myself?”
The car swerves. Kent pulls over on the highway to the median, shoves the car into park and glares at him.
“Yes! Alright, is that what you fucking wanted me to say? Yes, I’m worried that you might try to kill yourself again in fucking Vegas and I won’t be there to stop it this time! Holy fucking shit Jack, I know we don’t say it but I love you! I love you and I don’t want you to fucking die and I— I don’t think that’s too much to ask!”
Kent loves him? All of this and Kent fucking loves him? The words do not soften Jack but instead stir up his anger even further, making him reach for cruelty.
“You can’t give up everything you’ve worked so hard for! C’mon Kent.” The words come out savagely. “I’m not fucking worth that. And if our positions were reversed? Do you really think I would do the same?”
Kent’s breathing is loud in the car, controlled and tight. The quiet extends into a long minute, and Jack cannot make himself regret his callous words.
But— “Yes,” Kenny whispers. “Yeah, you would Zimms. I have to— I don’t care if it makes me stupid, but I think you would do the same for me.” His voice builds, more confident as he goes on, and Jack’s anger is pushed over, becoming awash with something, some feeling he can’t name.
“So we’re doing this. Because– well, I should have asked questions earlier but I didn’t and that’s my fault but now I am, okay? We’re going to make sure you live. So don’t fucking fight me. And don’t accuse me of throwing everything away, because I don’t want to do any of it without you. So fuck you for insinuating that.”
Kent turns on the blinker like punctuation, then shifts the car into drive, eases off the break and pulls back out onto the freeway without another word. Jack crosses his arms, heart beating so loud he can feel it in his ears.
“If we did turn around, I'd have to tell someone,” Kent says a minute later, quiet and harsh against the rumbling of the engine. “I know you don’t want me to do that. I don’t want to do that. It's be... it'd be a nightmare if we did, no matter how it went. So we either leave, or I can tell your parents—”
“No. Merde, Kenny— Fuck no. Fine. Whatever. Fine. Just drive.” Jack hates everything about this, but doesn't know what else to do. He follows directions and doesn't argue.
When they finally get to the border, Kent hands over both of their passports with a plastic smile and the last vestiges of hope Jack had snuff out. Of course, he readied Jack’s US one and not the Canadian one, so they don’t even get any comments besides a bored, “You boys have a good day now” from the woman working the booth.
And then they’re in the US. Driving away from their future, their careers, Jack’s family… everything. All because of selfish fucking disappointment Jack Laurent Zimmermann.
Jack doesn’t mean to. He really doesn’t. But it’s been a shit day and a shit night and he'd been awake for almost 24 hours straight. So, when tiredness hits him in upstate New York like he’d been high-sticked with it, it takes less than a minute for the rumble of the engine to guide him to sleep.
When he wakes up, the car has stopped. Jack blinks and looks outside to see another gas pump and notes how high in the sky the sun is. His blood runs cold.
The draft. Fuck. The draft.
He scrambles for his Nokia for a minute until he remembers that Parse fucking made him leave it at his parents’ house. Then he looks for the car key, but doesn’t see that either; of course Kent took it with him when he went wherever the fuck he went.
Jack flings himself out of the car and starts looking for a clock, any clock. Fuck. Any fucking clock will do, he just needs the fucking time—
There!
It's 1:37 pm.
1:37. 1:37 pm and the draft started at 11. Oh, fuck. Oh fuck, he’s fucked he’s fucked he’s—
A hand lands on his upper arm, pulling at him. “Zimms, c’mon!”
But Jack can’t move he can’t breathe he’s missed the draft and Kenny’s missed the draft and fuck fuck fuck damn it all his entire life has just been flushed down the drain Kent was supposed to go first and now he hasn’t and Jack can’t even go second now, he can’t get them back in time today unless they want to get drafted in fucking round four or something, but that’s if they’ll even let them in the building god knows what his parents are thinking—
“Jack, wake the fuck up! People are looking," Kent hisses. “Please. Come back to the car with me. I know you’re freaking out but this is not the time or place, dude.”
Okay. Sure. Yeah. Okay, Kenny. He tries to say something, but nothing comes out, so he just nods. Then, he takes a shaky deep breath to release his locked up muscles so he can lean into Kent and turn around to go back to his car.
He wishes that they were in a nice bathroom and he could climb into the bathtub like he did on roadies sometimes with a pillow and the comforter from the other bed the two of them wouldn’t be using anyway. He wishes that he had a glass of cool lemonade that his parents’ housekeeper used to make when he was a child on muggy summer afternoons. He wishes he had his motherfucking pills because right now he needs one and he needs one bad because this is the worst anxiety he’s felt in a long time and the noise in his head is roaring at such a volume that it feels like being at a house party where the music is so loud that it’s impossible to think. He wishes Parse didn’t stop him last night. He wishes he were at the draft in a New Islanders jersey wearing a big fucking smile, except that vision isn’t right and none of these visions are right because all Jack has is his helplessness.
Parse opens the passenger side door for him. It’s pathetic that Jack doesn’t do it for himself, but whatever. He doesn’t give a fuck about that right now.
Jack collapses back into the seat and Kent closes the door softly. The sound of it, that little muted bang, somehow makes Jack want to cry, but the feeling gets stuck on the way up his throat and he chokes on it instead, gagging until the car door on the opposite side is thrown open.
“Fuck,” Parse bites out, “don’t throw up.” He empties the plastic bag he’s carrying onto the backseat that Jack hadn’t even noticed before and then Kent shoves it at Jack. “But if you gotta, do it in there.”
The plastic crinkles under his hands. Jack breathes idly into the bag, and maybe he actually does feel like he’s going to throw up.
Then Parser begins to talk.
“I know what you’re thinking, because I’m thinking it too: this is fucked, we’re never going to be able to succeed after this and our careers are over before they even started.”
Well, Parse sure isn’t pulling any punches. Fuck. Jack's breath speeds up, and he always thought the bag breathing thing was stupid because it never worked for him before and it’s not working now either.
“But your career would also be over if you killed yourself. And so would mine, because I would definitely play like utter shit if you were dead and they’d send me down to the AHL and I'd never come back up.”
Nausea rolls in Jack's stomach. Usually Kent is better than this at getting him to calm down, but Jack really doesn't want to be staring reality in the face right now.
“Kenny—” he tries, mumbling, but Parse doesn’t hear him and instead keeps going.
“So maybe this sucks right now. Maybe we’ve fucked ourselves a bit. But Jack, at least we’re fucking alive, okay? I’d pick being here with you and the draft behind us and fucking Tavares getting picked first because if it wasn’t going to be us, you know it would be him— but better him first and you alive with me than me first and you dead, okay?”
For the first time, Jack lets himself imagine it. He didn't think he’d wanted to die— and he still doesn’t— but what if, without meaning to, he had? What if Parse— what if Kenny had found him on the bathroom floor, not breathing and cold to the touch the morning of the draft?
The bag in Jack's hands smells like plastic, some monomer vapor chemical scent that burns in Jack's nose and he chokes on it, feeling his stomach lurch.
Oh. Oh. Jack could have died last night. He could have—
Jack throws up into the bag. Once.
“Shit,” Kent says.
Then twice. There's not much to throw up, and it doesn’t make him feel any better to have done it. In fact, he only feels worse, reality sinking into his bones in a way that makes Jack want to shake out of his skin.
Kenny places a hand on Jack's back, just one. He swipes his thumb over Jack's t-shirt, and the subtle movement makes Jack want to cry. It's too gentle, too caring for how brittle Jack feels right now.
He could have died last night, and the reality of the situation makes Jack feel small in his skin. He can’t imagine what his parents would have said, but he can picture the scene: his mom and dad, still in their pajamas, clutching at each other in shock. His dad’s face going stony and hands digging into his mom’s shoulder and waist too tight, knuckles white while his mom closes her eyes to breathe in deep and hide the way her eyes well up.
It's awful. Jack almost wishes he’d throw up a third time, just as a punishment.
“I'm sorry,” Kent whispered. “I'm sorry, Zimms, shit, I'm sorry. I should just shut up, huh? Not fucking helping in the slightest. I'm sorry. I'm dumb as all hell sometimes, but I know you know that. I hope you can forgive me again. I didn't know that would happen. I'm sorry. I'm—” he breaks off for a sniffle, and Jack heaves one more time before he looks up.
Kent looks like a mess: tiredness pulling down on every edge of his face, eyebrows drawn in, usually-sure hands catching on each other like they’re desperate for something to hold.
He's just another person Jack would have disappointed, if he’d died. Or, well, he supposes that he’s disappointing everyone anyway, by running away like this. Hell, he probably would disappoint everyone even if he’d gone first in the draft, eventually. With how shit things have been Jack can only surmise that he would have proven to everyone within a year that he’s a no-talent nepo baby when he inevitably fucks up and plays like shit.
“Jack, breathe. Shit, I’m so fucking— stop, Kent. Okay, Just take a sec, Zimms. We gotta slow down your brain some, okay?”
Jack knows what would slow his brain down. “Pill,” he wheezes.
Kent freezes. “What?” He asks, even though Jack knows he’d heard just fine.
But his mind is racing and spiralling and he can feel his heart beating in his chest so loudly it’s a miracle that Kent hasn’t mentioned being able to hear it. Vomit is stinking up his nostrils, and he’s almost gagging on the smell beyond what little of his airway is working.
When Jack’s like this, he’s fucking useless without a pill. He needs one or two to calm down; kent can chill because he doesn’t want to take a whole handful and fucking die right now, but this is important and he needs to have one or two or maybe even three pills because he feels really panicked and three has been the best for getting him to that hazy wonderland where everything is okay, recently.
“Pill,” Jack says again, but this time with more force, like he’s telling one of their teammates they should have passed to him sooner when they’re back at the bench after a shit play.
“I— you know we didn’t bring any.” Kent says after a moment, his voice sounding kind of shaky.
For just a second, Jack seizes. His fists crunch the top of the plastic bag and his jaw tightens, his chest trembling with the force of how much he wants to punch the motherfucking lights out of Kent Parson’s face.
He snarls, “And tell me whose bright fucking idea—” then makes the mistake of looking up again, eyes burning bright, only to see Kent shrinking back, away from him into the driver’s side door. There's something sniveling about the expression on his face that makes Jack pause.
What the fuck is Parse doing? He blinks and leans forward, still annoyed.
“What?” Jack demands.
Parse’s eyes squeeze for a moment before he opens them, drawing back towards Jack. “Yeah, it was my bright fucking idea to leave all your pills behind, because i knew you were going to do this,” he says, finally with some fire again. “Jack, this is a serious fucking problem, don’t you see that?”
It always feels weird, being anxious and mad at the same time. When the emotions are warring in him, it only makes the maelstrom in his head worse.
“This entire situation is a shitshow, Kent," Jack says, putting special, mocking emphasis on his name.
Parse stares at him. “Yeah. It is. And you are an addict going through fucking withdrawal right now, Zimms, so fucking sue me if I’m not handling this shit well on top of everything fucking else going on right now.”
And Jack's toppling over the edge again. Addict. Addict? What the fuck is Kent talking about? Jack’s medication is prescription. He has a fucking anxiety disorder. He takes the medication to manage it— and sure, last night had been fucked, but he isn’t—
He isn't a fucking—!
The panic is ratcheting up again, and to combat it, Jack closes his eyes and breathes, slowly. This is fucking stupid, but since Kent apparently thinks that Jack’s an addict who he’s made go cold turkey, he’s left with little choice but to breathe the rest of this out.
The whole reason he got the pills is because Jack sucked ass at bringing himself out of anxiety attacks, with how loud his head could get. Now, in possibly the most distressing situation Jack has ever been in, he’s supposed to finally figure out how this works?
Unlikely.
His hands come up to clench at his hair and tug, giving him something else to focus on.
“Fuck,” Kent says, and Jack swears he’s said that already too many times since he woke up. It's getting annoying, at this point.
Tuning him out, Jack thinks of the one thing that has a chance of working: himself, skating on fresh ice, alone at his home rink. He imagines the soft sound of the blades hissing against the ice, carving lines over the surface. Just Jack and the cold. Quiet. At home.
There's a whole slew of thoughts that are so present in Jack's brain about hockey right now, about skating and the ice that he feels them like water against a bulging retaining wall. But he pushes them aside as fiercely as he can until he feels like his head isn’t a cacophony of noise, but instead a more normal buzz.
Not quiet, of course— it’s not quiet unless he has his meds, but what the fuck ever. It’s better than he thought he’d get.
When he opens his eyes to look at Parse again, the other boy is staring right at him, chewing his bottom lip in contemplation. Jack scowls at him. He hates it when Kent stares at him like that, and he’s been doing it all the fucking time recently for no apparent reason.
Jack gestures to the wheel. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”
Parse's eyes narrow, but Jack doesn’t want to fight anymore. He's still tired.
“Fine,” he says, and then starts the car back up, pulling out of the gas station and back onto the road. Great. Jack can’t wait for more of this stupid road trip to nowhere.
He crosses his arms and stares out the window, ready to sit in silence.
Unfortunately for him, Parser only lasts for about five minutes of oppressive quiet before caving. He presses the button to turn the music on and they are immediately hit with “Party All The Time” off the new Black Eyed Peas album.
Parse makes a noise of distaste. “I have heard this shit nonstop since it came out.” In Jack's opinion he’s trying a little bit too hard to be normal. “Can you grab my copy of Blackout from the glovebox? I think I put it in there last week and forgot to take it back.”
Jack doesn’t really feel like listening to fucking Britney Spears right now, but he isn’t the one driving the car and the past twelve hours have showed that a) he isn’t in charge and b) Parser does not trust him with making decisions anyway.
He would be petty and put in a different CD, but he doesn’t want to have another argument just yet, because he’s barely staving off his anxiety as it is.
So, Jack grabs the CD, switches out his copy of The E.N.D. for fucking Blackout and, because he does not care anymore, shoves that CD back in the Britney case and shoves it back in the glovebox. Whatever.
“Thanks,” Parse says.
Not wanting to engage, Jack turns his head back to look out the window at the scenery around him.
Jack just wants him to shut the fuck up.
…Then Britney starts singing. And Jack doesn’t usually pay attention to the music Kent to puts on besides nodding his head to the beat, but right now he’s doing everything he can to stay out of his own head and that includes focusing on his surroundings— which means listening to Britney fucking Spears sing about giving the audience what they want, more and more and more.
And like, yeah Jack was listening that time Kent went ranting about the shitty treatment of Britney Spears in the media with her shaving off all her hair and getting divorced and losing custody of her kids. It sounded like a shitty time, and Jack knows how vicious the media can be with his parents and the various elite hockey players that he grew up calling “uncle” spending their fair share of time in the headlines.
So it’s not unreasonable when the song makes Jack think of how the media are likely speculating about what the fuck has happened with him and Kent. They didn’t formally withdraw their names— he wonders if some team has drafted them anyway, despite them being conspicuously absent. He wonders what his parents have said, if they’ve asked Kent's mom for a statement, if the handful of their teammates from the Océanic that were up have had mics shoved in their faces after donning their new jerseys, asking for their opinions.
The thoughts are extremely unwelcome. They do nothing for pushing away the anxiety roiling through Jack, the distorted vocals warping as his thoughts spiral; his short nails digging into his palms, fingers curled into fists and his teeth pressing against each other as his jaw clenches.
God, this music is fucking awful.
A breath of relief flows out of Jack's mouth when the first song finally ends. He's ready for some mindless dance song now, that much is certain.
Outside is the highway and mountains and trees and rocks, overwhelming in their scale. Jack lets the foliage flash by, praying over the beat and the oh yeah of the next song for something tolerable to take him away.
Britney only says she’s Miss American Dream before Jack hears a thud against the console. He whips his head around to see Kent, thin-lipped and white knuckling the wheel with his left hand, scrabbling at the dials.
What the actual fuck is wrong with him? This shitty music had been his own choice; jack would have been fine with The E.N.D.
“Change it,” he snarls, but Jack is in no mood to help him.
“You know where the radio presets are.” He gestures to the buttons.
Kent jabs slot six harder than he has any right to right as Britney asks if you want a piece of me? Like Kent is telling her absolutely the fuck not. It's weird. And, as some other random inoffensive song begins to play, Jack thinks that he has been having the worst day of his life right here, but he begins to also consider the fact that this day has been pretty shitty for Kent, too.
From Kent's perspective… Jack winces just a little bit. He still thinks that Parse's stupid theories about Jack being an addict are out of line, but he did have a point about having too many pills in his palm earlier. And Jack thinks he would have taken all of them.
His stomach churns. Kent… Kenny saved him. He bundled Jack’s drunk ass into a car and drove them the fuck away from everything hanging over Jack’s head like the sword of Damocles. The draft has been this large inevitability for years on Jack's shoulders, and it just being gone doesn’t feel real.
The consequences of their actions have yet to fall and Jack has no idea what they could be. He doesn’t even know where they’re going; stuck in the middle of nowhere in some American state Jack doesn’t even know.
What's going to happen to them? Will the police come looking? Crossing the border will give them some time probably, but Jack’s parents have to be freaking the fuck out.
His maman, his papa… Jack has spent his whole life trying to live up to what they want him to be and now he’s gone. No word, no note, nothing. And the night before the draft. Fuck. What are they thinking? How are they coping?
He can’t hold the thought in.
“My parents are probably freaking the fuck out,” Jack blurts. He looks at Kent voluntarily, now, and the other boy is holding an energy drink in his hand, sunglasses on and frown etched into his face.
He glances over. “I did leave them a note.”
“You did?”
Kent nods. “I told them we just needed to leave. It wasn't very long. I didn't want to say too much.”
Jack is flooded with relief at the news. The fact that Parse found Jack in the bathroom like that already is so overwhelming. With how Parse has fucking pushed him into the addict box already, Jack knows he’s going to want to talk about everything more, and Jack has no idea how he’s going to respond. Besides, he doesn’t really have a clear grasp on it now himself, all twisted up and half-there and sick to his stomach even remembering it within not twelve hours and hundreds of kilometers of distance.
If Kent had gone to his parents instead… Fuck. Jack would rather be a runaway than a disappointing druggie, if he had to choose between the two.
But Parse has really put them between a rock and a fucking hard place here. There isn’t any winning left for them to do, now.
If fucking Britney Spears can’t escape— how did Kent put it?— bad media karma from two years ago, then Jack and Kent won’t be able to step foot in the hockey world without Deadspin bringing up this missing the draft shit.
Jack can already see the Draft Dodgers! headlines in his mind. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
“What the fuck are we doing?” He asks into the canned car air.
And Kent fucking Parson, man of the hour, sips his drink and says nothing.