Work Text:
On his children’s first day at hockey camp, Bitty stayed faithfully rinkside, vigilant for the slightest sign that he should start his camera recording. He was there to wave back every time they looked over at him uncertainly, there to soothe injuries or upsets that happened. Chris had been in Kindergarten a year and was used to being apart from Bitty for hours at a stretch, but Will and Derek, a year younger, were still eyeing the drop-off with uncertainty. Derek had a lot more separation anxiety than the other two, much as he tried to deny it, and whenever Derek made a move for Bitty, Will was right behind him, not above competing jealously for his father’s attention.
Their second day was easier. Chris’s waves were entirely sunny; he didn’t worry about Bitty catching him on camera, since he’d spent fifteen minutes before bed last night endlessly replaying the five-second loop of video where the Falconers’ goalie gave him a high five. Chris had what he wanted. Derek had found one of the camp staff to bond with, and Will and a little girl in battered hockey gear had formed an impromptu friendship/rivalry. They skated over to him sometimes just to talk, but when Will got frustrated with a drill Bitty hadn’t even reached the rink door before Chris had reached out to put a hand on his cousin’s arm and Will’s jerky movements had slowed. His face stayed red and crumpled as Bitty caught his breath, but by the time a staffer had skated over to check in, Will was all right and ready to jump back in line behind Derek. Bitty retreated to the second row of the arena’s bleachers.
The kids only spent one hour of the day on the ice with Falconers; aside from an earlier hour in the day focused on skating and basic hockey, most of the camp was the kind of song-game-snack summer camp routine meant to fill time before parents got back from work. Bitty knew it well. Three boys all asked to stay later instead of going home as soon as they were changed out of their gear, to give them time to play with their new friends. Consequently, when the 8-and-under kids streamed off the ice, Bitty stayed in the arena bleachers. He had an hour to kill before they'd want to go home.
He looked up from Twitter when he heard skates on the ice again. The only other adult around the rink seemed to be a middle-aged woman who was using the bleacher seats as an impromptu napping spot. The skater was a boy in track pants, a t-shirt, and hockey gloves, noodling around the rink with a stick and a puck. He was years older than the camp kids, maybe ten or twelve; Bitty saw him earlier in the day, sitting in the bleachers with headphones in and what looked like a school textbook. He skated with indifferent ease, looking a little bored as he dabbled in stick-handling drills, before ignoring the puck altogether and doing improvisations in footwork. Forwards, backwards, quick turns, swizzles, weird lopsided lame-duck impressions. It was all done with the body language of an apathetic slump-shouldered preteen, which meant Bitty spent a lot longer than he might’ve to recognize it. “Are you trying to do a spin?” he called.
Well, he might’ve known that would get him a guilty start and an end to all efforts; he had kids of his own. Damn. “Was just saying,” he continued, getting up and coming to the side of the rink so he could call more softly, keeping his words from echoing off the walls of the arena, “If you wanted I could show you, but you have to change how you’re holding your upper body.”
“Yeah?” The boy had turned from looking over his shoulder at Bitty suspiciously to slowly turning around, letting him see him a bit more face-on; instead of clutched to his chest, the hand holding his stick dangled down. “You know how?”
“Yeah, I used to figure skate.” Bitty lifted his hands to begin a demonstration, then paused and said, “How about I go get my skates. That way I can actually show you.”
“Okay,” the boy said, grudging and cautious, but Bitty didn’t take those as necessarily a no.
“Be right back,” he said, and jogged into a locker room.
Bitty’s equipment bag was in the corner of the locker room, Will, Chris, and Derek’s equipment all spilling out of it. Bitty rooted through it carefully, replacing a loose blade guard and encountering a wet apple core, before he located his own skates at the very bottom. Once he got them free of the mess, he slung the lace over his shoulder and loped back out to the rink.
The boy was still there, skating aimless circles, and when he saw Bitty coming back he skated to the corner nearest his books and things on the bleachers, to prop his stick against the outside of the rink and drop his gloves onto the floor outside.
“‘Course,” he said cheerfully as he laced his skates on, ignoring the vague suspicion in the boy’s pale eyes, “I haven’t figure skated in years. I am not an expert, although I did win the Georgia Junior State Championship in my day. Gave it up for hockey years ago and played it up through college. And that’s what my boys play, of course. Too young to enjoy figure skatin’. They like hockey, you get to chase around after a puck. Ain’t got the focus and determination they’d need.” His laces were done, and he swung himself upright.
“You played hockey in college?” the boy asked cautiously.
“NCAA,” Bitty answered back, clopping to the door in the rink. He could’ve been more thoughtful, and put his skates on closer to it.
“What division?”
“I will have you know,” he informed the child as he stepped onto the ice, “that I played for Samwell in Division I, and was captain of my team. Okay.” He gently glided to a stop ten feet from the boy, and held his arms out in first position. “If you wanna spin, you gotta keep your spine really straight, your core really firm. Knees bent. So you put your arms out like you got a big beach ball in front of you, and you don’t wanna squeeze or drop it. Yeah, like that. So watch me first. I’m gonna go down to one side like this—I’m all splayed out—and then you’re gonna see me pull myself out, and I’m gonna go from this bent-legged posture to pulling my heels together, knees together, beach ball disappears, arms in tight to my chest. Okay, watch me.”
Still, after all that time, after all that hockey, figure skating came back to him like a first language, like a lover. On creaking joints and unsteady hockey skates, Bitty held fast to the spin, feeling gravity caress him, until it was time to draw away. When he came out of it, he was chagrined to find dizziness waiting for him, and he had to put his arms out to compensate for his wobble. “Sorry,” he said, smiling a little ruefully. “Haven’t done that in a while. Okay. Notice how when I wanted to slow down I just let my knees bend, put my arms out? Yeah. See if you can just go around just the once.”
He went through the motions mirror-wise, letting the boy copy him so he could launch into the actual spin. The first time he got a little over a quarter-way around; the next, he was halfway before he almost overbalanced and had to catch himself.
“That’s why you only go around the once, to start with,” Bitty said encouragingly. “And why you shouldn’t really practice spins without a helmet, in my opinion. Which, look at us here, but it’s no less true for saying it. You’ve gotta do it a lot before your inner ear stops getting so het up about it and making you so dizzy, but even still, it’s real easy to come out of a spin and end up cracking your head on the ice before you know it. Okay. Ready to try again?”
Once they mastered the elementary spin Bitty found himself prevailed upon to demonstrate simple jumps, but he had to prevent his young trainee from copying him too far. “You’ve got your arms tucked in. That’s not gonna help you at this phase.”
“But the arms look stupid,” the boy said sullenly.
“Look,’’ Bitty said, skating backwards, “I know they do. They look darned silly and the hockey boys make fun of you for it. Problem is, port-de-bras is pretty essential. That’s, uh, French for ‘how you carry your arms’.”
“J’sais,” the boy mumbled.
Bitty took a minute to remember what je sais meant. “Well then, you probably speak better French than I do. But look at it this way. When you’re playing hockey, you’re tryin’ to keep your body stable against all these forces of gravity comin’ at you. People pushing and shoving.” He moved his body and shoulders back and forth to demonstrate. “So you tuck in and you skate with a really square stance. But you want to figure skate, that’s a whole different business. Because now you’re the one subjectin’ your body to all these weird gravitational forces.” He skated to the side of the rink, using the boards as a barre. “If I just stick my leg out, I can get it out this much—more if I condition my leg. But I’m not gonna do anything, I’m just gonna put my arm out in front of me, and look—all of a sudden it’s a lot smoother and steadier. Yeah, and see, just rotate your palm—just turn it upwards so it’s facing the ceiling. Feel that difference? Your body’s all gotta work as a unit. You can’t just forget about some of it.”
“Huh,” the kid said, and began experimenting.
He’d gotten Bitty halfway through a demonstration of ballet arm positions when a man walked into the arena. “Kenny,” he called. “I’m done here. Are you ready to go…?”
Bitty found his glance pingponging back and forth between man and boy, because:
A little bit of apprehension, maybe guilt, in the boy’s shoulders, though his head stayed up when he turned and said, “Dad!”
Jack Zimmermann at the side of the rink, in a soft-looking grey t-shirt under a supple leather jacket.
The boy saying, “Look—” and turning on his skates to face Zimmermann, holding his arms out in front of him, then dipping to the side and executing a very creditable first-day spin with almost a full rotation.
(Oh god this child was a hockey player’s son and Bitty was indoctrinating him to disobey his training)
“Very nice,” Zimmermann said levelly. “Can you come get your skates off now so we can head home for dinner? And have you thanked Mr—?”
“Bittle,” Bitty said, a bit nervously. He held a hand out to the boy, but said for both of them, “Eric Bittle.”
“KentZimmermannthankyou,” the boy said, shaking Bitty’s hand without meeting his eyes, and then turned and jetted out of the rink.
“Will Bittle’s father?” Zimmermann asked, leaning against the rink with what seemed like no hostility.
“Yeah,” Bitty agreed. “And—Chris Chow and Derek Nurse. I'm their dad.”
He wasn’t ashamed of his boys, and if he weren’t a bit rattled he’d be happy, proud, defiant. But right now his boys idolized this man so his opinion meant a lot to them, and Bitty dreaded seeing That Expression on the face of a hockey player who might not be pleased with him—that disbelief, that prurient curiosity. Really? You call yourselves a family?
But Zimmermann just nodded while his eyebrows knit a tiny bit, like he was trying to commit the names to memory. “Okay, makes sense. See you tomorrow, then.”
“All right, um.” Bitty smiled bravely. “Goodbye, Kenny. Mr. Zimmermann.”
The next day the Falconers came in while the kids were eating lunch and Derek got up the nerve to ask Jack Zimmermann for a selfie. After taking it with him the player smiled nervously and said, “Are those, um, your brothers? Do you want one with all of you?”
Oh yes, Eric Bittle could pinpoint the exact second he first fell in love with the man.
And then, during practice, Kenny Zimmermann sought him out in the bleachers again. He got the last two arm positions out of Bitty, and foot positions as well.