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First, there was a boy. He was the son of a great king, and the eyes of the world were watching him from the moment of his birth. He was destined to be a giant.
The boy’s name was Jack, and he was afraid.
The people hungered for his greatness, expected it, knew his destiny; and Jack was afraid because he knew that he was not enough. Because he did not know if he would ever be enough. Because his father’s shadow was long, and he did not know if he would ever escape it. He did not know if he wanted to.
But Jack also knew that if he did not, the people would turn cruel and he would be hurt.
He spent hours on the ice, steadier and more sure-footed on its smooth surface than he ever felt on land. His blades carved furrows in the ice, chipped it, sent it flying in a freezing rainfall as he pushed himself to fly faster, to turn sharper, to be better. And at rare times he even managed to believe, just for a moment, that he could be as great as he was supposed to be.
Still Jack was afraid. He did not want to be hurt. So he took his heart and put it in the ice, deep underneath the cold, unyielding surface, where no one could reach it and so no one could hurt him. His chest fluttered and seized around the empty space left behind, and Jack fought to breathe through the feeling.
You’re safe. You’re fine. Nothing can hurt you anymore.
But logic could not fight the strange sensation and it spread through his body, hollow and tight at the same time, an awful opposition. Tears filled his eyes and he was certain that this breath, no, this one, would be his last.
The ice was cold beneath his hands and knees, and Jack was alive. He pressed his face to the ice, feeling it melt against his fevered cheeks, soothing him. His breath slowed and evened, and eventually the terrible clenching emptiness subsided.
He could feel his heart beat, hidden safely away, and he knew he had done the right thing.
---
Years passed, and Jack pushed himself even harder, mind and blood and bone and sinew striving to fly faster, turn sharper, be better. The people adored him, hailed him as their champion, and reveled in his successes. Though the strange hollowness inside him still sometimes fluttered and seized, still beat against his breast and his brow and drove him to his knees, he had discovered pills that would dull the ache. He did not need them always, but he took them often, for there was no sense enduring an unnecessary discomfort. And so his skill grew and his prowess grew and Jack felt very nearly happy, the ice beneath the blades on his feet, and his heart humming far below where no one could ever touch it.
Then there was a boy. Golden where Jack was dark, bright against Jack’s shadows, bright like the gleam of a blade. His eyes shifted through all the colors of the earth and sky, and Jack wanted. He did not have words for this wanting. He had never felt it before.
The boy’s name was Kent, and he was as sure on the ice as Jack was; faster even than Jack had dreamed of being. He fit into place so effortlessly, worked with Jack so easily that it hardly felt like work at all. And when he smiled at Jack, sly and conspiratorial, as if the two of them shared a private joke the world would never know, Jack believed he felt the wanting, too.
Kent’s skin was hot against his hands, his teeth sharp against Jack’s lips; his laughter tasted like liquor and was just as intoxicating. Jack didn’t know what he wanted, but Kent touched him, and Kent kissed him, and Kent knew what he wanted, and so Jack surrendered.
“Kenny,” he breathed, feeling impossibly full for someone so hollow. He pressed his face into the pillow, overwhelmed and burning alive.
“Easy, Zimms,” said Kent, touching him, touching him, never stopping. “I’ve got you.”
It was like this every time. And there were many times.
Once, Jack nearly told him the secret. He leaned into Kent’s side, looked into his shifting eyes and said, “If you want it, I will give you my heart.”
“What?” Kent asked, voice raised over the loud music that filled the room, beating like a pulse.
“My heart,” Jack repeated. “I’ll show you where it is.”
Kent laughed. “What the fuck are you talking about?” He pressed another drink into Jack’s hand.
“I’ll let you take it,” Jack said, feeling lost.
“Oh...” said Kent, drawing the syllable out. He threw back the rest of his tequila and slid his hand over the curve of Jack’s ass. “I think I’ll let you take it.”
Jack tipped whiskey down his throat and said nothing.
---
The pills made the ache dull and the liquor made him warm and they worked even better together until they stopped; they stopped and the clenching emptiness returned and it beat harder and fluttered and seized and so Jack took more and more and the hollowness yawned wide and dark and pushed against his lungs and his stomach and tears filled his eyes as he was certain that this breath, no, this one, would be his last.
He knew he couldn’t be hurt, with his heart locked safely in the ice.
As his vision grew black, and his body seized and fluttered, he knew that he could die.
---
Jack didn’t die, then. He wasn’t sure if he was grateful for it, as he endured the too gentle voices of the doctors, the too sad eyes of the king and queen. As he learned that however hungry the people were for his success, they were ravenous for his failure; insatiable for his humiliation.
He returned to the ice, building his strength slowly, both his body and his mind shaken and shaking in shame. The ice would not betray him. It would not abandon him nor cease to ground him. Even as he fought his own weakness, he saw how securely the ice guarded his heart, and he devoted himself to it anew. There were other boys, other distractions, other temptations sent to lead him astray, and he did not turn his head for any of them. His heart belonged in the ice.
But Jack knew there were many things he did not know, and out of a desire to know them, and himself, and his place in the world, he left his home to seek an education.
Then there was a young man. His hair was dark, though not as dark as Jack’s, and would have waved softly if it were just a little longer. His brightness was different than Kent’s and his shadows were different than Jack’s, though both were plain to see. His eyes were the green of fresh herbs, and they did not change.
Jack didn’t want, for Jack wanted nothing but to fly faster, turn sharper, be better. But the man stood near him, regardless, and held out his hand, regardless, and offered his friendship with no expectations, which was something Jack had never experienced before. And Jack was here to learn.
“Fuckin’ A,” the man said, slapping Jack on the back in a brotherly way. “Look at you, you gorgeous Snow White-looking motherfucker!”
Jack laughed, and blushed a bit, because there wasn’t really any other response to that. The man chuckled and bumped their shoulders together. He didn’t seem to want anything other than to talk. To be here, in this moment, with Jack. But Jack had seen enough of the world to know that how someone seems is not how they are, and he didn’t want to trust it.
“People giving you shit already, huh?” the man said, cutting close enough to Jack’s thoughts to make him look over, to meet those green eyes again. “Fuck ‘em. Fucking vultures. I’ve got your back, bro.”
“Yeah?” Jack asked, surprised.
“Yeah! Of course!” the man said. “We’re a fuckin’ team.”
And the way he said it, the conviction in his voice, was enough to make Jack believe. He held out his hand to shake, and the man bumped their fists together instead.
“What’s your name?” Jack asked, because it was strange that he should feel so close to a stranger.
The man shrugged and shook his head, embarrassed. “Man, it’s shitty…”
Jack smiled, just faintly, just at the corners of his eyes. “Hi, Shitty. I’m Jack.”
The man’s eyes went wide, and for a moment Jack was worried he’d caused offense, but then Shitty bent over at the waist and laughed so hard he cried.
“You beautiful fuckin’ weirdo,” he gasped. “We are gonna be best friends for life.”
---
Years passed, and that declaration felt true, and Jack learned that if he couldn’t always trust people, he could always trust Shitty. Together they knew triumph and tragedy, shared certain secrets, and when the emptiness in his chest clenched and yawned, his Knight was a solid presence at his side. Not demanding, not asking anything in return. Simply being there, holding him up when nothing else could.
For the first time in ages Jack thought of what lay so far beneath the ice.
“I don’t have a heart,” he said one night, as Shitty lay naked on the rooftop next to him.
“That’s a fuckin’ lie,” Shitty answered immediately, taking another long drag off the joint he held. The glow lit his face briefly, casting half of it into even deeper shadow.
“I locked it away,” Jack continued, unwilling to stop now that he’d begun. “I hid it so no one could hurt me.”
Shitty exhaled a plume of indigo smoke. “You’ve still got a heart, dude. So what if it’s locked up? It still works, right?”
Jack stared into the night sky. He had never thought about it that way. “I could… I could tell you where to find it,” he offered, thrown off kilter. “If you wanted to know.”
“Nah, no thanks,” Shitty said, and offered Jack a hit. “As long as you know where it is. That’s all that matters.”
---
Years passed, and then there was a boy. No. A young man. A man who seemed both impossibly young and vibrant, full of energy and enthusiasm; and yet burdened with sorrows, a secret heaviness that gave him the weight of age. He was golden, even more gold than the Golden Boy Jack had known, and before he even said a word, Jack was pushing him away.
The man’s name was Eric, and he was afraid.
But he was not afraid of anything Jack could understand. He was afraid of being hurt, and it had been so long since Jack had locked his heart away beneath the ice that he told himself he no longer remembered the feeling.
Jack called him “Bittle,” because there was distance in the name. Bittle smiled weakly, as if it didn’t bother him, but he was afraid of disappointing. Afraid of being a disappointment.
He could never , Jack thought, and just as quickly banished the idea. Bittle was a liability. He did not let himself dwell on the many ways in which that was true.
And so he turned cruel, became ice, unyielding and cold.
These are the lies he told himself.
And Bittle did not yield. Bittle did not retreat. Bittle looked at him with eyes the color of sun-warmed earth, of sweet maple syrup, and refused to back down.
“I don’t have a heart,” Jack said, as Bittle panted and sweated, leaning heavy against the boards and refusing to surrender.
“Well,” Bittle said, standing up straight, golden hair and golden skin and maple eyes all defiant. Jack braced himself for the sharp quick pain of hatred; of rejection.
Bittle huffed and put his hands on his hips. “Well, I don’t believe that at all.”
He turned on his heel and left the ice, and Jack had nothing he could say.
---
“Again,” Jack said, as he shoved Bittle out of bed.
“Again,” Jack said, as he shoved Bittle into the boards.
“Again,” Jack said, as Bittle completed a flawless pass, made a perfect shot on goal.
Bittle said nothing but “Yes, Jack,” and did as he was told. But Jack could feel the tension coil in him, could feel the tension coil in himself, and he did not know what the breaking point would be, but he knew that it would come soon.
“Chill, brah,” said Shitty, high and naked and sprawled over Jack’s bed. “Bitty likes you. You don’t have to try so hard.”
Jack had never heard Shitty lie before, but there were two lies in a row. They must be.
Down the stairs, across the hall, Bittle was baking. The Haus never smelled good before he arrived, but now it was redolent of sugar and spice, of tart fruit and browned butter and home.
“He hates me,” Jack said, and felt the truth in his mouth, even as his chest fluttered like butterfly wings, and not at all like the emptiness to which he was accustomed.
Shitty looked at him for a long moment, the haze of smoke clouding his herb-green eyes. When Jack remained unmoving, he laughed and slapped his hand against Jack’s side.
“Stop thinking so much,” he said, and Jack wished it was that easy. He suspected Shitty wished the same.
---
Bittle had baked a pie. Several pies, actually, but one that was specifically made for Jack.
“It’s maple apple,” Bittle said. “Since you’re Canadian, I thought…”
He didn’t complete his thought. The maple sugar melted on Jack’s tongue, and he had never tasted anything so perfect, so sweet. The silence stretched too long, and Bittle shifted his weight back and forth, rubbed a hand against his sternum as if to ease an ache in his chest. As if he, too, had a clenching emptiness inside.
It’s perfect, Jack didn’t say.
I love it, Jack didn’t say.
You terrify me, Jack didn’t say.
He took another bite and said nothing. Bittle twisted a kitchen towel in his hands.
“Well?”
Jack put his plate down. He was ice. He was cold. He was.
“It’s good,” he said.
“Very sweet,” he said.
“You need to eat more protein,” he said.
Bittle’s face fell, and Jack was not moved by it. He wasn’t.
---
Bittle did not yield, and he did not retreat, and he smiled like the sun itself when he earned Jack’s approval. Jack tried to resist, he tried to find fault, but Bittle only pushed himself harder for perfection. To be perfect.
His brightness was not sharp, like Kent’s. It was warm and golden like everything else about him. He wasn’t a blade, he wasn’t mocking, he wasn’t dangerous. His attention felt like slipping into a warm bath, like being wrapped in soft blankets on a cold morning; and his elation fizzed through Jack’s blood like champagne.
And Jack was afraid, and said nothing.
And Bittle grew sad, and still Jack said nothing. (But his thoughts, oh, his thoughts ran wild and ungoverned.)
Years passed, and though Jack could not pinpoint this ache in his chest that was not the hollowness and the absence, his father the king was much more perceptive. He bid Jack follow his heart, and for a moment Jack was confused, for his heart was so far below the ice, where it had always been.
And then the clouds parted, and the sun kissed his face, and he knew what he must do.
The tears on Bittle’s face were more devastating than a summer storm, his sadness overwhelming even in the line of his back, and Jack could not endure it for a second longer. He touched Bittle’s face, and tasted his lips, and felt the phantom beat of his own heart humming yes, you’re alive, yes, yes this…
Jack knew, in the second that Bittle… Eric… Bitty’s tongue touched his lip, that he would never be the same.
“Okay…” Bitty said, and Jack felt the truth of that word for the first time.
---
“I love you,” Bitty said, and Jack kissed him harder, wishing he could say the words.
“I love you,” Bitty said, and Jack took him deeper, trying to please him so well with his mouth and his hands and his body that no words would be needed.
“I love you,” Bitty said, and Jack curled tighter around him, one arm around his waist and the other cradling his head. Jack pressed his nose to Bitty’s golden curls, smelling sweetness and sunshine, ignoring the words for as long as he could.
“I…” he said, a half-broken sigh. He thought of his heart, long-buried, and he wondered if Bitty might be a better custodian than the ice that had served him so well.
“I don’t have a heart,” he said again, and before Bitty could protest he said, “not here, that I could give you.”
“Oh,” Bitty sighed, unconcerned, and tucked his face into Jack’s throat.
Jack swallowed heavily, feeling his skin move against Bitty’s warm weight. He didn’t want to say anything else, he discovered. He wanted to climb out of this bed, and retrieve his frozen heart, and present it to Bitty himself.
And so he went back to the ice, dug deep, and sought to retrieve his buried heart. But it was not there. He reached further and dug deeper, and still he could not find it. His chest seized and fluttered, clenched and cried out, for his heart was missing, and he had nothing to give Bitty in return for his love.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said one night, stretching the vowels, and he did not see how Bitty was charmed by it.
“What is it, hon?”
Jack swallowed heavily, as everything now felt heavy, and closed his eyes, wishing he could better hide his face. “I can’t…” he started, placing his hands on Bitty’s biceps. “I can’t give you my heart.” The words came out all in a rush, and he was powerless to stop them. “I went to retrieve it and it was missing, and I don’t know where it went, but I’m sorry because I wanted you to have it and I’ll find it, Bitty, I swear I will, but…” fingers against his lips stopped his breath.
“You ridiculous man,” Bitty said, smiling, one hand pressed to Jack’s lips and the other opening slowly, revealing a warm light and a familiar pulse that Jack would recognize from even miles away.
His own heart beat in the palm of Bitty’s hand, and Jack was not afraid.
“You thought I didn’t know?” asked Bitty, cradling Jack’s heart in his hand as if it were the most precious thing he would ever touch. Jack’s breath caught in his throat.
“I wanted you to know everything. To have everything,” he said, the simplest truth he had ever spoken, and the most frightening, but Jack was not afraid. “I wanted to give it to you.”
“Jack, sweetheart…” Bitty said, still holding Jack’s heart in his hands. “You already did. How do you think I found it in the first place?” He pressed his hands to his chest, and Jack’s heart sank in, nestling into a hollow place Jack had never seen, which Bitty had never mentioned. But instead of alarmed, Jack felt relieved. Relieved that his heart was so safe, in such a precious location.
“How can you...” Jack said, and it wasn’t a question, for he knew the answer. But he didn’t understand. “Why?”
Bitty smiled, and touched his hand to Jack’s breast. “I gave my heart to you a long time ago.”
And Jack’s chest fluttered and clenched around the fullness within, new and not new, not at all, and he learned the feeling of love.
---
Years passed, and there was a man who became the giant he was destined to be. His name was Jack.
And there was a man who loved him, whose name was Eric, and they needed nothing else to live happily ever after.