Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kent’s startled by the doorbell. It’s unusual that Swoops is early, and even more unusual that he rings the doorbell, but Kent gets up to answer it, feeling sick.

He pauses, turns back to his living room, trying to see it with fresh eyes, the way Swoops is going to see it. He takes in the magazines on his coffee table, fanned out in a neat arc. Nice magazines, he imagines Swoops saying. Impeccably spaced, man.

It’s dumb. Swoops probably spends like twelve hours a week here. He’s slept on this couch plenty of times, too drunk or that time Kent needed to be monitored for a concussion. He knows what Kent's house looks like.

The doorbell rings again. Kent frowns at the magazines. Are they too evenly spaced? Does it look like he’s trying too hard? Overthinking?

And, like, of course he has. Maybe Swoops really is just coming over here to watch his brother’s game like they planned and they’ll pretend it never even happened.

Kent is smart enough to know they’re probably going to pretend it never happened. He’s not stupid anymore, not like he used to be.

He stops for a minute to check out his appearance in the mirror, fix his hair. There's a sharp knock at the door. Maybe it's a neighbor or something.

"Jesus, I'm coming," he calls, finishes smoothing down his eyebrows with his fingers.

He opens the door, and steps back like he’s been burned. 

“Jack?”

Jack is hunched over on his doorstep, wearing an oversized Rimouski hoodie and a pair of truly heinous Ed Hardy jeans that Kent remembers coveting in the fall of 2008. They have an embroidered tiger arching across the front pocket that Kent palmed at, once, under a blanket on an endless bus ride back from New Brunswick to Rimouski during a blizzard.

Bittle is standing at the bottom of Kent’s front steps, biting his lip.

“Kent,” Jack says, careening through the front door. Kent staggers backwards. “I don’t understand. I didn’t know where to—”

He hasn’t called Kent by his first name since that humiliating fucking night at Samwell in 2014, which makes Kent involuntarily remember the party—how he acted, what he said—and feel a sickening wave of shame.

They’ve been in countless face-offs and NHL awards ceremonies and one unremarkable dinner at a steakhouse with Tater in Providence since then, and it’s always always been Parson. Parse, once, at the 2017 All Star Game—It’s been a long time since I’ve had Parse on my line—which Kent, and a good portion of the Internet, overthought for months.

“Are you—” Kent starts. Stops. He looks over Jack’s shoulder to Eric. “What are you doing here?”

“He—” Eric looks at a loss for words. That hardly ever happens. It kind of feels awesome. “He says he needs you.”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Jack says. His eyes are brimming with tears, and he takes another step towards Kent. Or away from Eric. Same difference. “Nothing—I went to sleep at the Macauleys’ and I don’t know how I—what I—”

“The Macauleys?” Kent repeats. “Jack, are you—did you take something?”

“He didn’t take anything,” Bittle says from behind Jack. “I was with him all afternoon.”

“Are you having, like, a—a nervous breakdown?” Jack’s chin wobbles.

“He doesn’t remember college,” Bittle says. His face is white, and his mouth is a thin line. “Any of it.”

“I’m not going to college,” Jack insists. “Stop saying that. I went to bed in Rimouski and it was 2009, and I woke up with him—” He jerks his head back at Bittle, who flinches like Jack has hit him. “—in a house I own, apparently, and I’m in the future.”

Kent hears a hysterical laugh bubbling from his own lips.

“Shut the fuck up,” he whispers. “Don’t—” He looks past Jack to Bittle, who looks miserable. “Why are you fucking with me like this?”

“I didn’t know what to do, and you—you—”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Kent asks. “You just showed up here—”

“I have called you eleven times,” Bittle snaps.

Kent reaches into his pocket to check his phone and realizes it’s not there. 

Jack stays close to Kent’s side, occasionally darting little glances at Bittle like he’s going to attack him or something.

“He thinks it’s 2009,” Bittle says. He sounds close to tears. “I asked him who the president was, and he told me the PM was Stephen Harper. And he started yelling at me, and asking me where you were.”

“Jesus,” Kent says. His stomach turns. “Yeah, um, the Macauleys were his billet in Rimouski.”

Kent looks closer at Jack, who’s standing awkwardly in the entryway. He’s pudgier than Kent has seen him in a long time. He scans Jack’s face: his cheeks aren’t chiseled hollow, they have more baby fat and freckles than Kent has seen since—

Since—

“He needs to go to the hospital,” Bittle says. “If it’s a concussion, he—I mean, he was fine when we woke up this morning, and he hasn’t had anything big happen to his head this season, but there must be something wrong.” Bittle lets out a little sob. “He—he wouldn’t go, I couldn’t make him.”

Kent gestures for Jack to step towards him, squints into Jack’s teary eyes at his pupils. They’re blown-out, but at least they're the same size. “How the fuck did you get here?”

“He kept asking for you. And I told him you were in Las Vegas, and he said then he was going to Las Vegas, and he kept—he kept yelling at me. He wouldn’t stop until I—so I drove him to the airport and bought us both tickets.”

Kent motions for Jack to step even closer to him, so they’re chin to chest. He can smell the clinical-strength Degree Jack used in the Q, on top of the scent of him that hasn’t gone away. 

“Kenny, what’s going on?” Jack whispers. "I don't—this guy is saying he's my husband..."

Kent doesn’t answer. He reaches a hand up to Jack’s chin and manipulates his head down, so he can see the top of it. His forehead doesn’t have the creases that Kent can admit, okay, are becoming permanent on his own face and—

“Holy shit,” Kent whispers. He drops Jack’s face like he’s been burned.

“What?” Bittle asks. He moves closer to where Kent is motioning, reaches out to touch Jack’s forehead. Jack jerks away from his hand.

Jack’s right eyebrow is intact, missing that little scarred gap from he got from eating shit on the concrete on Rue St. Germaine. 

That must have been 2009, Easter break of their draft year, because that was right about when Jack’s drinking slid from ‘concerning’ to ‘scary’ and he started doing things like taking a swing at Poulie’s older brother, slipping on ice, and busting his head open on the sidewalk. 

“I think he’s—” Kent takes three wild steps backward. “I think he fucking time traveled.”

Kent backs slowly away from the ghost in his living room. 

“I’m going to, uh,” he calls to Jack, and then jerks his head to motion Bittle into the kitchen. “Get us some coffee.”

In his pantry, he explains the story of the eyebrow gap in a whisper to Bittle, how it was in April of ‘09.

“He didn’t tell me that was how he got it,” Bittle says, his voice small. 

Kent rubs his temple, where a headache is starting to build.  

Jack swinging at Claude and slipping is the most technicolor of about a dozen moments Kent remembers from that spring: eighteen years old, Rimouski, 2009.

Sometimes in his dreams, Kent is still compressing a flannel shirt to someone’s forehead in a freezing parking lot. It’s not always Jack; sometimes it’s Swoops, or his mom, or the nutritionist he hooked up with his first couple years in the league. But in the dreams, the head wound doesn’t stop bleeding and Kent yells for help but no one standing around them can hear him, no one notices they’re there, and then the concrete dissolves into bathroom tile and—

Kent shakes his head like he can flick the memory out one of his ears. He gets as far as naming five things he can see when Bittle lets out a shaky breath.

“You really think he’s—he’s young again?”

“I—” Kent grinds one of his thumb knuckles deep into the muscles of his jaw. He hates these situations—these weirdly frequent situations—where he has to admit to Bittle how much he used to be in hopeless unrequited love with Bittle's husband. “I know what he looked like, I know how he acted. I really think so.”

Bittle lets out a hysterical laugh.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says. “I mean, I can’t take him back to Providence like this. He can barely look at me.”

“I mean, he’s also...” Kent swallows. “He’s high? So, like, I feel like any public space with, like, cell phone cameras probably isn’t a good call.”

“He’s high?” Bittle says in a small voice. 

“Yes, Bittle, he’s high,” Kent says, exasperated. He tries to remind himself that he and Bittle know entirely different Jacks. “I mean he’s not, like. Blasted, or anything, but he’s eighteen, so. That was kind of how it was.”

“He’s taking more than his prescribed dose, though?” Bittle asks. "I knew he packed meds, but I didn't think—"

“I mean, yeah,” Kent says, and Bittle lets out this sad little exhale, slumping back against Kent’s kitchen island. “The normal amount, as far as I know, which is still more than what they used to prescribe him but not, like, terrible.”
Bittle makes a worried noise.

“When he overdosed, it was because he mixed them with booze,” Kent explains. “I don’t keep any alcohol in my house. He was legal in Canada, so his ID says he’s 18. No one’s going to sell him anything.”

Bittle is quiet for a minute.

“But can’t we just take them away?” he finally asks in a small voice that makes Kent feel ancient.

“I mean.” Kent purses his lips. “He can’t just stop taking them. He’d—he’d go into withdrawals. He’d have to go to the hospital.”

“It was that bad?” Bittle asks.

“Yes,” Kent says, not even bothering to hide his mystification. What does Bittle think people go to rehab for?

“But they’d know what to do—”

“Think about the press. When he changes back, he’d have this media shitstorm to deal with. And since he has enough pills to last us a couple of days, it just seems like keeping him comfortable is the best way to handle it until he comes back.”

Bittle rubs his eyes. It makes him look like a child, here, standing in Kent’s kitchen. Finally, he lets out a shaky breath. “How am I supposed to do that?”

Kent gears up for a not my problem when he makes the mistake of looking into Bittle’s frantic, teary eyes. Fuck.

“It’s fine,” Kent says. “I know how this works. He can stay here and we can just…I don’t know. You can stay here. We’ll monitor the situation.”

Bittle’s relief is short-lived. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

It’s—you can say a lot about Kent, okay? There’s a lot there to criticize. But if there’s one thing he knows how to do in the entire world, it’s take care of an eighteen-year-old Jack Zimmermann.

Kent shows Bittle to his guest room, takes his time explaining where to find towels and linens. He hides for a minute in the bathroom, just breathing, until his heart rate returns to normal.

From the hallway, where Jack can’t see him, Kent pauses and watches Jack take in his condo. It’s muscle memory, even now, to feel defensive about his house and his space and the way Prince Hockey perceives it. Jack does a full 360 of the room, pausing to stare at Kent’s framed Team USA sweater, the blown-up canvas of the team picture with the Cup, Kent’s arm wrapped around it.

Kent steps out of the shadow of the hallway. He—Kent is proud of himself, okay. He’s built a whole life for himself and he did it without Jack. There’s no reason for him to feel like he needs Jack’s approval, because he doesn’t need it.

Also, he’s not going to get it. He’s tried.

“It’s nice,” Jack says when he catches Kent watching him, which is exactly what he said when they drove through Lovejoy in 2008.

“How old do you, uh. Remember being?” Kent drums his fingers on the counter. “Like what day did you go to sleep?”

“I’m eighteen,” Jack says. “April, like, seventh or eighth or something. 2009.”

“Shit,” Kent says. Jack’s a week or two away from getting that eyebrow scar.

“I woke up in the future, right?” Jack says. “‘Cause you’re old.” 

Kent raises his eyebrows. 

“Or, like. Sorry. This is the future.”

“It’s 2019,” Kent says.

“That’s crazy,” Jack says, for probably the fifteenth time. His knee is bouncing, loud, on the footrest of the island bar stool.

Before Kent can think harder about it, a key turns in the lock and Kent’s front door opens behind them and it’s Swoops, of course it’s Swoops, holding two large coffees in one hand, a breakfast sandwich in the other, and Kent’s spare key in his mouth. He sets down the breakfast sandwich on the side table where Kent usually throws his workout bag, and then takes the keys out of his mouth and puts them on the nook by the door. 

Kent tries very, very hard not to stare at his lips, or the keys that are probably a little wet with his spit.

“Hi,” Swoops says.

“Hi,” Kent says. He hopes it sounds normal. Swoops extends a hand to Kent with his cold brew in it and Kent sort of staggers backward, moving aside without taking it. Swoops spots Jack behind him, perched on one of the stools.

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry, dude, I didn’t know you had company. You—we did say today, right?”

“No, yeah, we said today,” Kent says, exasperated. “He—he’s just.” Here. Eighteen. “Going through something, and he showed up and he didn’t—” He makes eye contact with Jack. “Tell me in advance.”

It’s probably for the best that Swoops is reminded that Kent’s life is rarely—if ever—easy, a reality that circles back over and over and over to Jack fucking Zimmermann.

Swoops has a perma-grin, one of those mouths that just turns upright on its own, so he just looks bemused, not upset, eyes darting back and forth between him and Jack. “Sorry for just barging in. Rude of me,” he says. “Hey, Zimmermann.”

“Hi,” Jack says, flat.

Swoops toes his sneakers off in the entryway. “Sorry, man, if I knew you were gonna be here I’d’ve grabbed you coffee too.”

“It’s okay,” Jack says, like Swoops should have anticipated that Jack would show up at Kent’s house via time-travel and want an americano.

“You on IR?” Swoops asks.

“Oh. Uh. Yeah,” Jack says. Shitty fucking liar. Swoops blinks but doesn’t say anything. They all just stand there a second.

“We were just gonna watch my brother play your old team, actually,” Swoops says then. His eyes are flickering between Kent and Jack, and Kent offers him a weak smile. “But I can get out of your hair.”

“No, don’t leave,” Kent says, taking a step closer.

“I don’t wanna impose,” Swoops says, glancing at Jack. “And I really should watch Andy’s game, I told him I would.”

You can hardly tell because of the perma-smile, but Kent knows him well and his eyes have just a hint of hurt confusion.

This was not at all the day off that Kent was supposed to have.

“Okay,” Kent says. “I’m sorry. I want to watch, this just—”

“You’re good,” Swoops says. He elbows Kent in his side, puts the coffee on the counter. He looks like he’s going to say something, then stops. “Uh, call me, I guess. If you need anything.”

Swoops might not know everything about him and Jack. Kent’s never quite had the words for it, for himself or what they were or what it meant to him, and it didn’t really feel like just his secret to tell. But it was Swoops’ hotel room door Kent knocked on in Boston after he went to Samwell, Swoops who was sitting on the couch with him after Providence won the cup and Jack kissed Bittle, and in fact, Swoops has been reminded quite recently that Kent is—

Well.

“Will do,” Kent says, dazed.

Chapter Text

Kent wakes up to the sun streaming in his curtains, and feels, for a second, like he’s forgetting something, until he comes downstairs, rubbing his eyes, and accidentally steps on Eric fucking Bittle where he’s sitting on the landing between the two guest rooms, laptop balanced on his knees.

“Jesus Christ,” Kent says.

Bittle looks up at him, owlish.

“Morning,” he says, staring fixedly up at Kent’s shoulder as Kent becomes acutely aware that he’s only wearing boxer briefs.

“Morning,” Kent mutters, crossing his arms.

“What are you doing?”

Bittle shrugs. “Watching over him, I guess. Doing research. I couldn’t sleep.”

Kent looks past him into the room, where Jack is snoring into a pillow. “Research?”

“On benzo dependency,” Bittle says.

“Oh,” Kent says.

“I think one of us should be in the house with him at all times,” Bittle says. “I don’t—I just don’t feel right about it.”

“I’ll do what I can," Kent says. "But we play the Kings in a couple of days, so I'll be kind of focused on that.”

“Of course,” Bittle says quickly. “I—thank you again, Kent, for. I just don’t—I haven’t really had to deal with this.”

Kent looks at the ceiling and tries hard not to roll his eyes. He doesn't need to be reminded that Bittle got a clean, dependable, selfless Jack, and all Kent got was permanent awareness of the signs of benzodiazepine withdrawals. 

Bittle bites his lip, seems to realize he's misspoken.

“I have practice,” Kent says, and steps gingerly over him to go mix up his protein shake.

Kent heads to practice on the same route he has for years, and puts on his pads in the locker room with robotic focus.

Kobey runs right up to his stall and talks his ear off about his evening and how he and Kovek played Chel and Kobey won playing as Malkin.

Kent nods, absent, can feel himself subconsciously looking for Swoops, listening for his voice.

He’s keenly aware of the way he’s holding himself, and he swears he can sense when Swoops enters the locker room, running late, like usual, and hurrying to change into his pads.

“Got any stick tape?” Swoops asks him, like Kent knew he was going to, and Kent holds it out. “Thanks.”

Kent nods and busies himself with tying his skates.

“Coach tell you what we’re doing today?”

“Usual stuff. Special teams is probably getting called for an extra practice on Thursday,” Kent says. “Arsenault and I already talked a little bit about Calgary last week.”

Swoops huffs a laugh. “Disaster.”

Disaster is too generous; it was a shitshow.

Calgary put together a set of plays bespoke to the Aces’ problems around depth on the bench and unraveled them, systematically, over the course of 60 minutes. Shutout, 4-0. It was the kind of thing that the Aces used to do, the kind of psychological game Kent was used to playing. 

“Shitshow,” Kent mutters, can’t help the way his eyes drift to Kobey, and Swoops gives him a little smile as he finishes taping up his stick.

Two Aprils ago, they missed the playoffs for the first time in Kent’s career. Management was pissed, the owners were pissed, and the fans wrote things so nasty that Kent had to limit comments on his socials. 

Kobey was supposed to dig them out of this, eighth overall that he was. He was drafted to center for Kent, to get pucks deep, to get Vegas winning again, as quickly as possible. Last year, it had worked fine. They’d gotten to the second round; it wasn’t great or anything, but it was respectable. 

This year, Kobey’s sophomore slumping: he isn’t where Kent needs him on the ice, every puck he shoots seems to bounce off the post. They officially tipped into a losing streak two games ago, and people keep looking at Kent like he’s supposed to know what to do about it.

Kent still has no idea how you captain a losing team. He knows how to give a “step it up” speech, a “this is it boys” speech, but he has no idea what to say after four straight losses. It sounds shitty, but Kent came up in a dynasty. And all it took was a couple retirements, a cap space problem, and Kolya’s whole saga with the KHL, and the dynasty’s gone.  

“We’ll work on it,” Swoops says.

“He’s just got the yips.” He jostles Kent’s side. “We’re still in this, Parse.”

They…technically, they’re still in this. They still have a shot, mathematically, at least, at qualifying for the playoffs without a wild card. If Kent were a betting man, though, he probably wouldn’t go for them.

Kent jostles him back.

“How’s Zimmermann?” Swoops asks. Kent pointedly does not dwell on whether or not Swoops sounds jealous.

“Fine,” Kent says. “Sorry about yesterday. It’s a long story, he and his husband are, like. Staying with me for a couple days. It was pretty last-minute.”

“They can’t get a hotel?” Swoops asks. If Kent is thinking wishfully—stupidly—he thinks Swoops might relax slightly at the mention of Bittle.

“No,” Kent says. He looked it up this morning, and the Falconers have Jack on day-to-day. He kept expecting some Falcs exec to show up on his doorstep last night, but nothing happened. He’s not sure what yarn Bitty spun them, but it must be believable enough. “Uh. Like I said, long story.”

Swoops looks at him for a long moment.

Kent looks back, even though he knows. He knows, okay, what a bad idea it is to hope like this.

“Just...careful there, Parse, yeah?” Swoops says.

“I’m being careful.”

After practice, Kent gets his hip flexor worked on, then grits his teeth through an ice bath. He’s just walking back to the lockers when he hears the sound of stick on stick and pads over to the bench in his slides in time to watch Kobey pull the puck from under Swoops and break away.

“You’re back!” Kobey says, when he sees Kent. He skates over. “Get dressed and we can all go one more round?”

He does a graceful circle, looking relatively unfazed, even though they all just did the same punishing series of drills and Kent can see how red and sweaty his face is.  “No,” Swoops says, showering him with powder as he skids to a stop.

“Some of us are old, superstar.”

“I just want to try two more—”

“Hit the shower,” Kent says. “You’ve been here for like five hours. You stink.”

Kobey frowns. “I’m worried about the Kings,” he says. “You’ve seen their power play. I don’t want to fuck up again.”

“We’ll work on it later this week,” Kent says. “How are you gonna practice the penalty kill without the rest of special teams?”

“And faceoffs,” Kobey says mulishly, ignoring the question. “I should work on that, too.”

“Maybe later.”

“Please—”

Oh, to be nineteen and in a goal drought again, Kent thinks. To think you can just practice yourself out of any problem you’re having.

“Not happening,” he says. “Shower up, dude.”

Kobey heads to the locker room, and Kent turns back to see Swoops with his helmet off, getting off the ice with a slight limp.

“Are you going to ask the trainers about that?” Kent asks.

Swoops nods, cheeks warm and pink.

“You don’t have to say yes to him every time he asks for extra practice,” Kent says. 

“I know,” Swoops says. “I do it ‘cause I want to.”

“Pushover.”

“Look at him.” Swoops motions to the hallway where Kobey’s disappeared. “He’s all sad.”

He elbows Kent. “I did it for you, remember?”

Kent remembers.

It was Swoops’ first year on the team, shipped in from San Jose, and Kent bullied him into staying an hour late, sometimes, determined to win every face-off. It was a bad room, when they started losing the year after the first Cup.

Kent and Swoops would stay and work. They were both convinced that if they ran drills enough times, they could shut everyone up: vengeful Sharks fans, the signs about Jack at every fucking game. Their own coaches, their own teammates, their own fans.

Kobey’s team is losing, but his coach and captain aren’t giving him the silent treatment whenever he flubs a play, so. Forgive Kent if he’s gotten old and soft and wants to conserve Swoops’ energy a little.

When Kent gets home, Eric stands up and heads to his room without a word.

“Hey,” Kent says to Jack, who stays sitting on the couch in the living room, completely unbothered.

“Thanks for the babysitter,” Jack says, not turning to look at Kent.

“Well, you're the one who married him,” Kent says. Jack is quiet.

“What’d you do?”

Jack shrugs. “Told him to quit hovering.”

“Bet that went great,” Kent says. Jack doesn’t answer.

Kent turns and heads to the kitchen, is surprised to hear Jack follow him in there. He perches on one of the barstools. “

So you’re, like, from the future,” Jack says as he watches Kent put two meal plan omelets in the microwave.

“I mean, not really, man,” Kent says. “You came here, I think you’re from the past.”

“So, if we’re in the future, and you’re in Vegas, you went first, right? In the draft?” Jack’s forcing himself to sound casual and doing a pretty bad job.

“Yeah,” Kent says. “I went first.”

“Congratulations,” Jack says. 

“Thanks,” Kent says, guarded. He’s surprised to find he doesn’t miss the way Jack is staring at his throat as he swallows. It’s been a long time since Kent felt like Jack was paying any real attention to him. He used to want it so badly. Now he has it, and it just makes him feel kind of nauseous.

“I always thought it’d be you. Everyone did.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“There were articles about it,” Jack says.

Kent’s phone buzzes.

“There were articles that said you were going to go first, too,” Kent says absently. “It isn’t a big deal.”

He checks his phone: two texts from Swoops, a link to a tweet followed by a string of seemingly-unrelated emojis. He taps it, thinks about hearting it and settles for a like.

“What I can’t figure out is how I got to Rhode Island,” Jack says. “They traded their first-round pick for Marmont that year. Did Buffalo sell me off?”

Kent freezes.

Jack is technologically illiterate at the best of times, and this version of him has never held a smartphone. There’s arguably very little chance that he could find out about the overdose. Kent knows the high-strung kid Jack was; he's not in a huge hurry to tell him that his entire life plan is off the track he’d planned for.

“Something like that,” he says, and doesn’t miss the way Jack’s shoulders cave in. “Hey, listen, let’s watch some TV or something.”

When Kent gets up the next morning, he’s surprised to see Jack already up, sitting antsily at one of the kitchen island barstools. Bittle is tapping at his laptop at the dining room table, mouth folded in a thin line.

“So. I saw on your calendar you don’t have practice or anything,” Jack says, eager, as Kent puts another pot of coffee on. “

Yeah, it’s a rest day.”

“I was thinking we could skate today.”

Bittle’s typing gets louder.

“I don’t know if that’s a great idea,” Kent says, ignoring the small part of him that thrills at the idea of playing with Jack again. “I think we’re trying to keep it quiet that you’re here, right?”

Jack shrugs. “Thought it could be fun,” he says, deflating a little.

Fuck it. Kent looks at the practice rink schedule on his phone—there’s a girls’ homeschool league practice that finishes up at 11:30, and then nothing until open skate at 5. Rink should be empty, they’re not holding open practices this time of year. Kent shouldn’t go super hard, but it couldn’t hurt anything, probably, to get on the ice for a little bit.

“Fine,” he says. “Just for a little bit, though, I have a game tomorrow.”

Jack pumps his fist.

“I can get you some clothes.” They’re a little closer in size, now that Jack’s eighteen again, but Kent is still going to have to dig out underarmor and a pair of shorts from the pile of spare clothes Swoops has left here over the years. He’ll raid the equipment room for pads. B

ittle stares, harder, at his laptop screen, dark cloud practically visible from space. Kent has an errant feeling of pity for him, suddenly.

“You want to come, Bittle?” he asks, and ignores the incredulous look Jack shoots him. “You could borrow stuff from me.”

Bittle looks up, surprised.

“Uh—” He glances between them. “No, that’s alright, I have some sponsor stuff to take care of. Y’all go on without me.”

Jack lines Kent up for another shot, and Kent dunks it in, easy as anything.

“Yo, Parse!” Kent hears from behind him, and he turns to see Kobey leaning over the bench, waving. Kobey squints, then says, “Is that Jack Zimmermann?”

Shit.

Kent skates over to the bench. Kobey’s already got his skates on, waves cheerfully to Kent.

“What are you doing here?” Kent asks.

“I’m tight with one of the equipment guys,” Kobey says. “He texted me that you were here with Zimmermann, and I thought I’d stop by.”

Ballsy. Kent has got to start being less approachable to his guys—never in a million years would he have crashed Ogbona’s private skate session.

Kobey cranes his neck over Kent’s shoulder.

Jack’s skating in the circle, batting a puck around, oblivious.

“Get your pads on,” Kent says.

“Fuckin’ filthy, Parse,” Kobey croons, when Kent catches Jack’s puck on his stick without even looking.

Kent ducks his head. It’s—this might be, after all the dust has settled, the one setting where Kent can still think of him and Jack fondly. They were meant to be together on the ice, the fluid motion of the puck between them. Dream come true, coaches had said in the Q, fucking fortunate sons, and Kent had believed that with his whole heart, carried it with him all the way to the NHL combine, the night before the draft.

To his own detriment, he believed in it, a stupid amount of faithful. At the very least, it’s comforting to remember why that faith ran so deep.

Jack shoots Kent a grin that Kent can’t help but return. Kent doesn’t really have it in him to put a ton of effort into a goofy half-practice like this, but Kobey and Jack get more and more competitive, start faking each other out, skating at full effort.

“Cool it,” he says, when Jack checks Kobey into the boards. Jack shifts, guilty.

Kobey doesn’t seem to clock that he’s playing with a totally different Jack Zimmermann, yammers at him about the Falconers’ penalty kill and the All Star Game while they change and return Jack’s borrowed pads. Jack gives vague “mm”s and “oh yeah”s, and shoots Kent a pleading look.

“Kob, we’re gonna head out,” Kent says, interrupting some question Kobey has about Mashkov. “Ice up and get some rest, alright?”

Maybe: Eric Bittle (2:37 PM)

How is he doing?

 

Kent Parson (2:49 PM)

fine

 

Maybe: Eric Bittle (2:49 PM)

I took an Uber to get some groceries

 

Maybe: Eric Bittle (2:50 PM)

I’ll be home in an hour

 

Kent Parson (3:17 PM)

👍

“How’d it go?” Bittle asks.

He returned home in a better mood, although Kent’s not sure what he thinks he’s planning on doing with brown sugar, refined white flour, and butter. Probably baking something that’s going to fuck with Kent’s diet.

“It was fun,” Kent said. “Skated, a little.”

Bittle’s mouth curls, involuntary.

“Is he doing alright?”

“He’s fine,” Kent repeats, barely restraining his eye roll. He steps back so that Eric can see Jack in the living room, where Jack is watching a documentary about the space race.

“You’re keeping an eye on him?”

“He’s been on the couch since we got home,” Kent says. Bittle frowns. “I showed him Netflix, and he’s from 2009, so. That’s been big for him.”

Bittle gives him a thin smile. “If you’ve got him, I thought I could, uh. Cook us some dinner.”

“I ate already,” Kent says, automatic. He’ll have to sneak a snack later, but it’s better than eating whatever artery-clogging meal Bittle’s probably going to make.

“Okay,” Bittle says. “Has Jack eaten anything?”

“Why would I know that?” Kent asks.

Bittle looks at him, withering. He probably monitors Jack’s daily fluid intake like he’s a sick infant.

Kent looks at his sink, where there’s a plate with crumbs on it and a dirty knife. Jack’s left his plate right next to the dishwasher. 

How hard is it to take the extra step, put it directly into the dishwasher?

“Here, it looks he had a peanut butter sandwich,” he says. “He’s eighteen, he can forage.”

Bittle closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. “So everybody ate already,” he says.

Kent shrugs. “Sorry. Didn’t know you were planning on cooking.”

“Great,” Bittle mutters. He piles up the sugar and flour and puts them in Kent’s protein powder cabinet. “Just—great. Fine. I’m going to turn in.”

He grabs himself a Larabar from the cabinet—limited-edition Kent Pearson flavor from Kent's brand deal with them—and stomps down the hall.

Kent pads back into the living room, watches Jack watching Bittle slam the door to his room. On the screen, Sputnik takes off.

“Hey,” Jack says, when he notices Kent behind him. “God, I thought he’d never leave.”

The petty part of Kent can’t entirely stifle his smile as he sits down at the other end of the couch. “He’s a trip, that’s for sure.”

They watch, idle, as NASA starts prepping Apollo, but when Kent tears himself away from it to make some chirp about U.S. supremacy, he looks over and Jack has scooted closer.

“Hi,” Jack says. He has on his get-away-with-murder face, equal parts sweet and smirk. He leans over, close enough that Kent can smell him, his old shampoo, the kind that still makes Kent anxious when he smells someone else in the locker room using it.

He puts a hand on Kent’s thigh, which was always his move. It’s Pavlovian, the way Kent’s heart starts to hammer.

“No,” Kent says. Jack’s face falters. He takes his hand back.

“Why?” he asks, hurt.

“I’m thirty. You’re barely eighteen.”

“I’m literally older than you,” Jack says, reproachful.

“Nothing’s happening,” Kent says. “Period.”

“You did it with me before.”

“I know I did,” Kent says. He pulls his knees in front of him, self-protective like he’s ten on a trampoline, playing popcorn. “Now I can’t. Simple.”

“I’m an adult,” Jack wheedles.

He and Kent are two very different kinds of only children, Kent is remembering, now that he’s up close again. Prince Hockey.

“It’s not illegal, I’m not—”

“I’m not doing anything,” Kent repeats. He uses his captain’s voice, puts just a little oomph behind it.

Jack scoffs. Kent shoves him back to his side of the couch.

“Your husband is down the hall,” Kent says.

"What would I want with him?" Jack asks. 

"I have no idea,” Kent says. He stands up and moves to a chair closer to the TV. "You never told me."

Coach calls a last-minute separate practice for special teams the day of their game against the Avalanche.

Kent barely makes it to practice in time. He’s the last one on the ice, and Gueron gives him a sidelong glance. He doesn’t say anything, though, which Kent takes as a win.

They play an elaborate game of keepaway, Kent passing to Marcel, to Emmett, back to Kent, then—Kent glances down the ice—Kobey, who locks eyes with him, and Kent flicks the puck and Kobey tips it in, gentle as anything.

“Okay, so we just have to do that for a game,” Gueron says. Kent can see that his face looks a little lighter. He gives Kent a significant look. Kent chooses to ignore it.

“That was great!” Kobey says. He has a skip in his step. Hard to do when you’re skating.

Kent gives him an affectionate punch on the arm.

He packs up his stuff and is headed out to his car when he runs into Swoops near the players' lot.

“What are you still doing here?” Kent asks.

“Massage,” Swoops says. “My knee’s been bugging me.”

Involuntarily, Kent remembers the groan Swoops made last week when he got up from where he’d been sucking Kent off off the side of the bed. Knee’s been bugging me, he’d said, then, too, and Kent had motioned for him to come lay next to him, rolled him over on his stomach. He’d kissed down his back and then pressed a kiss to the back of Swoops’ knee, then his asscheek, then—

“Good to get it checked out,” Kent says, probably too loud. He can feel his cheeks burning.

Swoops looks at his feet. 

“Rick said he saw you skating with Zimmermann yesterday,” he says.

Swoops always makes small talk with the equipment managers and Zamboni when he sees them, remembers kids’ names and work anniversaries, various holidays they celebrate and the culturally appropriate greetings for them.

“Oh. Yeah.” Kent suddenly feels caught, even though he wasn’t lying. “Yeah, we stopped by the rink yesterday morning.”

Swoops has this flicker of something on his face for a second, this tic of annoyance, an expression that almost never graces his features. 

“Kob was there,” Kent adds. “They practiced face-offs. It was fun.”

Swoops is quiet for a minute. Kent can almost hear him thinking.

“Is something, like. Going on between you two?”

“No,” Kent says quickly. “I—that would be really fucked up.”

"Okay," Swoops says. “So, what, he and his husband are just staying with you? In the middle of the season?"

“Can I tell you something, and will you promise not to think I’m crazy?” Kent asks.

“Try me,” Swoops says, even though Kent can see a tightness in his jaw.

“He time traveled. He’s eighteen.”

Swoops inhales, sharp, then lets it out slowly.

“Okay,” he says. “He time-traveled.” He’s smirking like he’s in on a joke, but when he sees Kent’s face, the grin fades. 

“Oh,” Swoops says. Then, “Oh, Parse.”

Chapter Text

On the ride home from the rink, Swoops keeps giving Kent nervous glances.

“I believe you,” he’d said, when Kent told him, but then Kent had pulled out his car keys and Swoops had said, hurried, “No, let me give you a lift.”

Kent had pulled up Jack’s headshot on the Falcs’ website, zoomed in on the scar in Jack’s eyebrow. Swoops had nodded, wincing as Kent told him about how it happened, but the crease between his eyebrows and his dubious expression is still there when he parks in Kent’s driveway.

“Come see for yourself,” Kent says, motioning for Swoops to come in.

Swoops hesitates before he gets out of the car. “Parse, you’re not—you would tell me, right? If you were concussed?”

“Yes,” Kent says. “I did last time, remember?”

When Kent and Swoops come in through the front door, Bittle and two of Kent’s counters are covered in flour.

“Hey, Kent,” Bittle says. He must have packed an apron. Then, he turns and notices Swoops. “Oh! Hi there. I’m Eric.”

Swoops looks surprised. “Jeff,” he says, gives a dorky little wave. “Uh. Everyone calls me Swoops, though.”

“What’s going on in here?” Kent asks, suspicious. Upon closer inspection, he sees a pie crust. It’s a true testament to Jack’s training that he hasn’t gone full dad bod yet, eating laminated pastry at every meal. 

“I thought I could make one of Jack’s favorites for dinner,” Bittle says. “I got all the stuff for chicken pot pie.” He beams up at Swoops. “We’ll have plenty enough for you, too.”

“Jeff and I have to stick to the meal plan,” Kent says, at the same time Swoops says, “That sounds delicious,” bright and friendly as ever. 

Bittle looks relieved to be in the room with someone agreeable. They both turn to look at him.

“I can make us a salad to eat with it,” Kent says, eventually, and Bittle smiles, nods, victorious.

Jack’s apparently been sulking for most of the day. When he finally stumbles out of his room at Bittle’s insistence, he sees Swoops and scowls. “What’s he doing here?”

“He’s staying for dinner,” Bittle says. “C’mon, wash up. I made your favorite.” 

Jack rolls his eyes, mutters, Yes mom. 

Bittle’s nostrils flare.

As Jack washes his hands, Kent makes significant eye contact with Swoops, taps his eyebrow. Swoops peers closer at Jack, then looks back at Kent, eyes wide.

See? Kent mouths.

Bittle looks between them. “Y’all gonna wash your hands, too?”

Kent steams a bag of kale, and brings the pan to the table, ignoring the way Bittle unsubtly turns up his nose. Kent ignores him, fills his plate with kale and a tiny spoonful of pot pie. Jack glances at Kent’s plate and copies him. Bittle appears crestfallen as he looks at the tiny serving on Jack’s plate.

Swoops ladles a huge helping of the pot pie over his greens and mixes them together.

“This is incredible,” he tells Bittle, mouth full of his first bite. Bittle gives him a grateful smile. 

“Aw, thanks, Troy,” Bittle says. Kent shovels another forkful of kale in his mouth, nerves grating over the way Bittle’s wormed his way to first-name basis with Swoops. 

Across the table, Jack catches Kent’s eye and rolls his eyes. He’s following Kent bite for bite on greens, only wincing slightly. Jack reaches of the tongs to take seconds, pot pie untouched on his plate.

“This your recipe?”

Bittle nods. “It’s based on a family recipe, but I did some tweaking for my first cookbook.” 

“Pretty time-intensive?”

Bittle shrugs. “Couple hours.”

Swoops whistles. “Just that, huh?”

Across the table, Jack finally tries a bite of pot pie and stops mid-chew, his eyes widening. 

Kent rolls his eyes. Indulgent fucker. He tries his own bite—it’s good, if a little heavy. He’s going to have to sneak a protein shake in later. 

“Worth every second,” Bittle says. He glances over at Jack. “I love cooking for the people I love.”

Jack stares at Kent, like, Can you believe this lunatic?

Kent’s run out of ways to say, Someday, this will be your ideal life partner with his eyes. He settles for a shrug.

“You’re a lucky man, Zimmermann,” Swoops says. Jack glares at his plate, cheeks reddening.

Kent grits his teeth, forces a smile.

“So,” Jack says, nailing Swoops with a look after 20 minutes of ignoring his existence. Kent feels a wave of anxiety. “When were you drafted?”

“’07,” Swoops says. He sounds wary.

“To Vegas?”

“What were you drafted at?”

“Don’t ask people that,” Kent snaps. “It’s rude.”

“Late second,” Swoops says. “Somewhere in the fifties, I think.”

Jack smirks. 

Kent remembers him being more timid and polite than this kid. Shyer, more afraid that what people would say about him would bite him in the ass later, if he was rude.

Of course, back then they spent most of their waking hours with a pack of vicious nineteen-year-olds with bruised egos, who made a game of trying to knock Jack off his.

This kid with the narrowed eyes seems like those mean teenagers. God knows, Kent wasn’t exactly a saint at 17, either. He didn’t think Jack was ever this bad.

Maybe Kent just isn’t in love with him anymore, he realizes. Maybe Jack was always a sucky, elitist shithead. Maybe they bring out the worst in each other.

“You don’t even remember?”

If it were anyone else, Kent would assume they were deflecting, but Swoops is never big on numbers, or the things they represent. 

Swoops shrugs. “It was, like, 18 years and two teams ago,” he says. He gives Jack the practiced, unbothered smile he usually reserved for answering the media’s million dumb questions. “Doesn’t matter all that much to me anymore.”

“Vegas didn’t draft you?”

“Chicago,” Swoops says. “I was up and down, mostly in Rockford, the first couple of years. Got dealt to San Jose, then traded here.” 

Jack, whose lip curled when Swoops mentioned playing for the Hawks’ farm team, raises his eyebrows imperiously at Kent. Kent rolls his eyes, stares at his plate. 

Swoops and Bittle keep the small talk up, a fierce battle between Midwestern politeness and Southern hospitality. Swoops asks about Bittle’s blog, what kind of daily upkeep it takes and all the ideas he has for the next year, as Kent and Jack eat in silence.

“Since Jack and I met playing hockey, you know, that was a huge part of our wedding decor, and those posts will still blow up sometimes—”

“We met playing hockey?” Jack interrupts, fork hovering halfway to his mouth.

Bittle looks across the expanse of the table at him. “Yep.” He gives a small smile. “We were teammates.”

“You played hockey,” Jack says, incredulous.

“Sure did,” Bittle says, his face imperceptibly steeling. 

Kent feels a pang in his stomach. 

Color rises high in Bittle’s cheeks. “Why, that surprise you?”

Jack shrugs and looks down at his plate, cheeks pink. “Just didn’t expect it,” he mumbles, clearly wanting to move on.

“Yeah? How come?” Bittle says. Jack doesn’t say anything. “Huh, Zimmermann? How come that surprised you?”

“Sorry, just. Nothing about you screams hockey player to me. Alright?”

Bittle opens his mouth, then closes it. 

“‘Scuse me, y’all,” he mutters. He stands up, throws his napkin onto his chair. They hear the patio door slide open, then shut.

“Nice one, Zimms,” Kent says. 

“Well, he’s not exactly…” Jack trails off, giving Kent a significant look.

Kent feels a flame of protective anger flare to life in his chest—more for the little boy he himself was than Bittle—and takes a deep breath, lets it out slow.

“Don’t talk like that,” he says, sharper than he means to. “Not in my house.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Well, don’t,” Kent says. Jack fidgets in his chair.

“I just mean, he’s a little—”

“So are you,” Kent says, suddenly feeling a little defensive of Bittle, and some child deep inside himself.

“Yeahhh, but, I mean, I’m not running around in an apron or anything,” Jack says. He smirks, like Kent is supposed to smile back, find that funny. 

There’s a hot coal of anger burning right below Kent's chest, thinking back on how small Jack made him feel sometimes, with this exact brand of bullshit. 

Swoops looks between them. “Sorry, what does the apron have to do with anything?” he asks. 

Kent loves him. Kent loves him because he came up in the NTDP and he knows exactly what the apron has to do with it, and he still asks the question, eyebrows raised in a captainly arch, arms crossed in front of him. Jack looks like he wants to dissolve into the floor.

“Nothing, I just. Never mind,” Jack mutters. “Sorry.”

“Someone should check on Eric,” Swoops says. He looks at Kent.

Kent gives him a pleading look.

“I barely know him,” Swoops says gently. “Kinda seems like your arena, bud.”

“Hey,” Kent says, hovering at the back door. He can see Bittle with his feet in Kent’s pool, hunched over with his head in his hands. “I, uh. Brought you some pie.”

“It’s hot out,” Bittle says, petulant.

“Okay, then I can toss it—”

“Bring it here,” Bittle snaps. Kent steps gingerly across the hot concrete of his pool deck and hands Bittle the plate.

Kent drinks his protein shake and watches, warily, as Bittle tears into the pie.

“What?” Bittle says when he’s put away the whole piece and is scraping the plate with his fork.

“Are you, like. Good?”

“I’m fine,” Bittle snaps.

“Okay,” Kent says.

“I’m fine,” Bittle repeats. He crumples up the paper napkin and sets the plate down.

“Okay.”

“It’s—” 

Kent glances over. 

Bittle folds his lips into a thin line and puffs air out his nose. “I don’t know. I’m just—I just don’t get it.”

“Get what?” Kent asks. 

“I’m—I don’t know him. At all,” Bittle says. His voice is dry, flat. “I don’t recognize him. He isn’t…he didn’t tell me he was on drugs when he was eighteen. He didn’t tell me

anything.”

“He didn’t tell you about the drugs?”

“No,” Bittle says. His voice is strangled. “He—I knew he overdosed. I guess I never thought it was anything like—like this. He never said it was this bad.”

You never asked? Kent wants to ask. You never even talked about it?

“I’m so mad at him,” Bittle says. “I know it isn’t fair. I know he’s not trying to—to do this, but I just…I didn’t expect him to be like this.”

“How’d you expect him to be?” Kent asks. 

“I don’t know,” Bittle says. “Um. Kind, I guess. Not nice, but, you know. Polite. Decent. Considerate of my feelings. Not a homophobic prick.”

Kent is quiet.

“I know he has no idea who I am,” Eric says. “He doesn’t know our history, he doesn’t remember—and it wasn’t exactly love at first sight, for us. But he—” He takes a deep breath in. “I don’t know. He came out of the bedroom and I was just wearing my pink apron, like always, because it’s my goddamn house and I can wear whatever I want, and he saw me and he just looked so…disgusted.” He looks up at the ceiling. “Like I was this, like, gay little freak. It felt like high school.”

Kent doesn’t say anything.

“I worked so hard,” Eric adds. “Not to feel that way.”

“Well,” Kent says. “If it makes you feel any better, he was like that with everyone. We all were, kind of.”

“How did y’all even get together?” Eric asks. “I can’t imagine him, like. Doing anything with a man.”

Kent shrugs. “Drunk at parties a couple times,” he says. It was eight, actually, but it seems pathetic to still remember that. “Romantic, right?”

He can feel Eric’s pitying moon eyes on him and he wants to take a shower. How much fucking humiliation does he have to endure before the universe ends this little thought experiment? 

“I don’t know. We just spent all our time together, ‘cause of school and hockey,” Kent says. He feels this terrible ache in his chest about it, the kind he used to have thinking about the times Jack would deposit an absent kiss on Kent’s arm or forehead. Now, though, the ache is coming from picturing himself, eighteen, looking across the gulf between their hotel beds. 

“It was more than that, wasn’t it,” Eric says. He looks at Kent for a confirmation.

Kent sighs. “Yeah,” he admits. “For me. I’m not—there’s not even a story. We weren’t together for real. He was my best friend and we had sex for six months. I just got too attached.”

“He told me it was physical between you,” Eric says. “Like—just sex.”

“Oh,” Kent says, feeling out the humiliating gut punch of that. It goes down his throat, sharp and jagged, and then he feels it in his chest, scraping down his esophagus.

“It’s not, though. I see it. How he looks at you,” Eric says. “Insisted on flying across the country ‘cause you’d be there.” He looks so sad, saying it.

“I mean,” Kent says. “If it makes you feel any better. He did marry you.”

Eric sighs. “He did indeed marry me.”

Chapter Text

He stays outside for a while longer with Eric, as the sun sets and the sky turns dramatic shades of orange and pink. The warm flush of embarrassment stays with Kent even as the air cools. He told me it was just physical between you two.

Eric lays back on the concrete pool deck, staring up at the sky and the emerging moon.

“I should head in,” Kent says, after it’s properly dark. “Uh. The stove over there is gas, there’s a lighter next to the grill. If you get cold.”

“Cool,” Eric says, without taking his eyes off the plane that’s flying across the night sky.

“Uh.” Kent scratches behind his ear. “Dinner was good. Thank you. For making it.”

That gets Eric’s attention.“Thanks, Parse,” he says, sounding touched.

Not Parse. “Yeah,” Kent mutters, already regretting saying something.

Inside the house, most of the lights are off, and all Kent hears is the faint rumble of his fridge making ice. He pokes his head into the media room and jumps when he sees Swoops sitting on the couch, tapping something on his phone.

“Hey,” he says, coming to sit next to Swoops on the couch.

“Hey,” Swoops says, turning off his phone and stowing it in his pocket. “He alright?”

“I think so,” Kent says.

“Well,” Swoops says, giving Kent a rueful smile. “Uh. You convinced me.”

“Yeah?” Kent says. “You thought I was nuts.”

“Yeah, no shade, I thought you’d lost your mind.”

“Sorry he was such a psycho,” Kent says.

Swoops shrugs. “Not your fault.”

He’s not normally so quiet. Kent and Marcy have a joke that if you listen close, you can hear a fan coming from Swoops’ head when he’s thinking hard.

“Everything okay?” Kent asks.

“Yeah.” Swoops wipes a hand over his face. “I’m beat. Might head out.”

“Need a ride?” Kent asks. “Your car’s still at the rink.”

“Nah, I’ll Uber,” Swoops says. “Want to pick me up before the game tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Kent says, ignoring the way his stomach thrills. "2:45?"

"Three," Swoops says.

Kent follows him outside when his phone buzzes with a driver match. They sit down on Kent’s front steps, staring out at the driveway.

“You’re quiet,” Kent says.

Swoops shrugs. “Big night. Just, like, processing.”

“Did something happen? Did he say something to you?”

Swoops stares at their feet, shrugs again. “Not really. I just—” He turns to look at Kent, and Kent notices for the first time how close they’re sitting together. “I want things to be easy for you, Parse.”

Kent doesn’t know what to say. He swallows. It sounds loud in the silence.

“And I guess I think it’s, like, admirable, that you’re letting them stay here, but. It’s hard on you.” Swoops knocks their feet together. “Wish it wasn't. You got your own shit to focus on.”

Kent shakes his head, the ache in his chest threatening to swallow him. “I just. I know how he was, you know? I know how to take care of him. I can't—I don't want anything to happen to him.”

Swoops’ face goes soft, mouth curling into a sympathetic shape somewhere between a smile and a frown. He nods, crosses his arms over his chest and puts them on top of his knees. His phone begins to pulse, and Kent hears his Uber coming up the driveway. Swoops stands up, brushes the sand from Kent’s cactus garden off his pants, and opens his arms, wraps Kent in a hug. 

“Night,” Swoops says. “See you tomorrow?”

His breath flutters Kent's hair, and he shivers. 

“Yeah,” Kent says into his pec. “Night.”

“That Jeff is a keeper,” Eric says, when Kent walks back into the house. He’s flitting around the kitchen, tidying up like his husband didn’t just ruin his evening. “Such a nice guy.”

Kent doesn’t answer. He reaches into the fridge and grabs a coconut water, cracks the top and drinks half of it in one go.

“Are y’all…” Eric asks, then trails off, raising an eyebrow.

Kent vastly prefers him heartbroken. “No,” he mutters. 

“Well, I think he might have a bit of a crush,” Eric says. He glances over at Kent. “You really haven’t—?”

“I’m going to go check on Jack,” Kent interrupts, draining the rest of the coconut water and tossing the carton in the recycling.

“Did you say something to Swoops?” Kent asks, entering the guest room Jack’s staying in without knocking. Jack scrambles to sit up in bed.

“What are you talking about?” Jack asks.

“Did you say something to him,” Kent repeats, louder.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Bullshit,” Kent says. “He was upset when I came back inside. What did you do?”

Jack glares at him. “Why do you care so much?”

“He’s my friend,” Kent snaps.

Jack raises his eyebrows, imperious. “Oh, your friend, huh?"

"What does that mean?"

"'Swoops brings so much to the room,'" Jack trills. "'Swoops and I spent the Olympic break in Cabo last winter. it was just what we needed.' It's so obvious you're into him."

“Shut up,” Kent says, wracking his brain to think if he'd actually said we. “God, why are you here?”

“We took a plane—” Jack starts.

“No, why are you here?” Kent asks. “Why are you eighteen in my house? How the fuck do we get you to turn back?”

“I’d love to know,” Jack snaps. “Like I want to be here, either, getting bossed around and force fed by a gay guy while you moon over some other guy right in front of me. No fuckin’ thanks.”

Kent pinches the skin between his eyebrows. “I was not—”

“I don't even know why I came to you,” Jack says. “You don't even care about me anymore”

“I don’t care?” Kent asks. “My team’s about to be eliminated from playoff contention and I’m spending my week with your husband—by the way, one of my least favorite people in the world—taking care of you. You think that’s what I want?”

“If I’m such a fucking burden—”

“Well, you are, so there goes that guilt trip—”

"—you'd all be better off—"

“You used to like me,” Jack says. It breaks halfway out of his mouth. “You—why don’t you like me anymore?”

Jack’s tears spill over, and Kent realizes he’s standing over Jack, chest heaving.

It doesn’t actually feel that good to lash out at an anxious teenager wearing Ed Hardy jeans. He’s imagined this conversation so many times, and he realizes, too late, that this isn’t the Jack he wants to have it with.

“I like you fine,” Kent says.

“Bullshit,” Jack says through his tears. He swipes at his face, glares at the floor. “You can hardly stand to look at me. What did I do?”

“Nothing,” Kent says.

“I’m—you told me I’m your favorite person, a couple months ago,” Jack says, choked.

Kent remembers exactly where they were, when he said that, actually—half off his face, walking home from somebody’s billet’s basement, still laughing at some stupid joke Jack had muttered under his breath when Duber had made some comment about Kent being too short to go first. It had sent a bolt through Kent, saying it, seeing the happy glow light up Jack's face. The amber street lights of Rimouski had lit up the previous day's snowfall, snow glittering as it tumbled in little snake trails across the sidewalks.

“I lose you,” Jack says. He hugs his arms around his knees, suddenly looking to tiny and young that Kent can imagine what he must have looked like at eight years old. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and I still manage to fucking—” He winds up and punches his own leg, hard.

Kent forgot about him hitting himself. Kent forgot about a lot, actually. Kind of can't believe this was the normal he tried so hard to get them back to.

“Stop,” he says, when Jack goes to do it again. He catches Jack’s fist in his hand. “Hey. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Jack says, his eyes wild. “What did I do? Why can’t I make anyone stay to save my fucking life?”

Kent thinks about walking into Samwell in 2014, seeing Jack surrounded by people. That by itself wasn’t that unusual—Jack was famous and handsome and an athlete. But they stayed put, stuck by Jack’s side. Shitty looked between them like they knew the whole story.

“It just happened,” Kent says gently. He squeezes Jack’s hand, hands it back to him. “You didn’t do anything. People grow apart. We weren’t—I wasn’t very good for you, in the end.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Jack says. “Kenny—you’re the only person I can—”

“I’m not,” Kent says. He never gets that far away from who he was. He doesn’t get to forget it. "Very good for you. I'm not."

“Whatever I did to make you think that, I’m sorry,” Jack says, hunching in on himself. “I’m sorry. I—” He swipes at his face again. “Sorry, I shouldn’t cry.”

Kent shakes his head, sits down next to Jack on the bed. He puts an arm around Jack’s shoulder, ignores the shame curling in his gut.

He remembers how viscerally uncomfortable he used to get when Jack would cry. Disgust would rise in his throat when Jack’s red, pudgy face would screw up.

“It’s okay,” Kent says. He pulls Jack tighter. “You can—”

Jack lets out a little sob into Kent’s shoulder, a pitiful sound, and Kent’s whole chest aches. The fuck was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he have just done this for Jack, back in the day? Where would they be, if Kent had been able to stomach Jack’s sadness, his fear?

“It’s okay,” he soothes again, patting Jack’s arm. Jack goes quiet, still, and his body starts to relax, like whatever was passing through him has been wrung out.

“Sorry,” Jack mutters, several minutes later, and Kent whispers, “Don’t be,” and they sit there for a minute, just breathing.

Finally, Jack pulls away, searching Kent’s face for the judgment Kent knows he’s used to seeing. Kent just looks back, wishing there was a way to tell every version of Jack how sorry he is, for ever making him bottle this up.

Kent has a version of the dream again that night, wakes up in a cold sweat with his hand clutched in what he thinks is Mearsy's jersey, but turns out to just be his blanket.

When he comes downstairs, Eric’s humming at the stove, Jack shoveling berries and greek yogurt into his mouth.

“Coffee?” Eric asks Kent, when Kent takes a seat at the table.

“I’m alright,” Kent says.

“So, I need to get out of this fucking house today,” Eric says, when Jack has left his dirty bowl and spoon at the table and gone into the living room to watch TV. He picks up the container of yogurt Jack left out on the counter and puts it back in the fridge. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Kent says.

“There’s a coworking space a couple miles from here with an office open today.” Eric wipes the counter down. “I have a meeting with my agent at 2:30. Might go to the gym.”

“I have to pick Swoops up at 3,” Kent says. Eric raises his eyebrows, doing a piss-poor job of hiding his smug little smile. "For a game."

“Hmm,” Eric says. “Well, I guess I could take my meeting from here.” He looks wistfully outside. This whole act must get him what he wants, with Jack. Kent ignores the bait.

“He’s eighteen,” he says. “We can’t leave him alone for an hour?”

Eric frowns. “I’d rather we didn’t.”

“How much trouble do you think he could get into? I don't drink, there’s nothing here for him to get into."

“I just don’t want to gamble on something going wrong,” Eric says.

“Fine,” Kent says. “Take your meeting here, then.”

Eric glances at the living room, then turns to Kent. “I’ll be back here around four,” he says.

Kent checks his hair in the bathroom mirror, tugs a little at the frown lines on his forehead. Nothing to be done about it, he tells himself. Swoops knows what you look like.

“Hey, Jack,” he calls into the living room. “I’m gonna head out. Eric said he’ll be back around four.”

“‘Kay,” Jack says.

Kent makes it halfway down the block before he realizes he’s forgot his entire fucking hockey bag because he was too busy worrying if his hair looked okay.

He turns around, heads back into the house, unlocks the front door, grabs his bag, and locks eyes with Jack right as he lunges to hide the bottle of cough syrup on the counter.

Kent’s stomach sinks.

“You have to be careful with that!” His voice comes out shrill and shaky. "Did you drink any?"

“Just a little, I was just feeling under the weather—” Jack starts, with the closed-off face he only puts on when he’s lying.

“The fuck you were,” Kent says. "Give it to me. Where'd you even—"

He stops, knows, instinctively, from the guilty slip of Jack’s face that he got it from one of the drawers in Kent’s ensuite bathroom. If Kent knows him, which he does, he probably went through all of Kent’s drawers looking for anything to take the edge off. He dug right past Kent’s PreP and dildos and his fucking douche to find the only mind-altering substance Kent has in his whole house.

“Found it,” Jack says, monotone. He looks Kent right in the face as he says it. Motherfucker.

This happens, sure, but it isn’t supposed to be this bad yet. That was when it got concerning; not until May, at least.

“Give it,” Kent says.

Reluctantly, Jack hands over the bottle. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s not a big—”

“It is a big deal.” Kent can hear his voice shake. He checks it over—it's only a quarter empty. He opens it, pours it down the drain. “This could kill you, Jack.”

Jack won’t meet his eyes. “I just needed to take the edge off,” he mumbles.

“You can’t just—” Kent’s been operating on the assumption that this Jack was Kent’s Jack. That he had a handle on things like Jack had a handle on things, which is to say, not very much, but more than this. “You’re scaring me, man.”

“S’fine,” Jack says. “It’s just been a stressful week.”

He’s slumped back on the couch, his voice slurred, slightly, and Kent’s heard the words before and he just—he can’t believe this happens no matter what. That even if Kent had kept a better eye on him and loved him in a healthier way than he was capable of at seventeen, it still would’ve turned out this way.

“I have a game,” Kent says. He looks at his watch. “I can’t—I can’t leave you here alone, can I.”

“I’m okay,” Jack says. “I’m just—”

Bittle can’t seem to take in the sight of Jack snoring on the couch.

“Is he okay?” he asks, still sounding as frantic as he did on the phone, calling Kent back after four missed calls, already in the back of the Uber.

“He’ll be fine,” Kent says. “Watch a movie with him, don’t let him out of your sight. I poured it down the drain, just—yeah. Don’t leave him alone.”

Bittle looks panicked, his eyes huge and wet. “What’s going to happen?”

“He should be fine,” Kent says firmly. “Nothing. Just keep an eye on him.”

“Are you—”

“I’m sure,” Kent says. “He’ll just be drowsy. If you hear something wrong with his breathing, call 911, but he should—he’ll be okay.”

When Kent gets in his car, he opens his phone to see five messages from Swoops. Fuck, he was supposed to give him a ride in. He checks the clock—4:23.

He drives to the rink in a fugue state. His face feels numb, and Kent can see himself from below, going through the motions. He can’t believe he fucking handled this as an eighteen-year-old, he thinks to himself for the sixty-seventh time this week. He can’t believe he put himself through this.

Kent’s still early enough that he stops for the crush of fans that hang out right outside the parking garage, signs things in a daze. Hands clutch towards him, eager for an autograph, and Kent says his usual platitudes, nothing he’s saying really registering. 

“Sorry,” he says weakly, after a few minutes. His eyes aren’t focusing on anything, any one person. “Sorry, guys, got a game to play.”

Swoops is laser-focused on taping his stick when Kent gets to the locker room, just 20 minutes to spare before puck drop. He doesn't look up when Kent drops his bag in the stall.

What if—what if he hadn't gone back for it? The bag. The towel. Why is it always him, getting Jack's worst?

“Hey,” Kent says, as he rips off his suit and gets to dressing. “I’m sorry, about the ride thing—”

“It’s alright,” Swoops says, but he’s quiet all through warmups, sticks to Marcy's side.

Kent knows during the anthems, just knows, that this is going to be a bad game. The Kings look bloodthirsty, even though the Aces beat them in the final nearly eight seasons ago and are just, like, objectively bad now. The lights of the stadium are over-bright, contributing to the headache that’s been building at the base of Kent’s skull all evening.

Butcher gets two minutes for holding, five minutes before the end of the second period. They’re only a point ahead of the Kings, and Kent climbs over the boards to join the PK squad, dread building in his gut.

Almost immediately, Kent’s cornered by the D-men, looks to pass wide, but Kobey isn’t looking his way. It’s the fucking play they’ve rehearsed over and over and Kobey’s not in the right spot. Kent sends it to him, willing him to see it, but he’s watching Kirby. Reilly intercepts the puck and makes the breakaway. Someone checks Kent into the boards and he feels a sharp pain in his ribs. Hopefully a bruise, not a break, but Kent didn’t win three Cups pausing to check.

The goal horn sounds, and the digitized boards flash KINGS GOAL.

When the buzzer goes off, Kent hops over the boards and stalks into the dressing room. He gives Marcy a look that says “I’m too pissed off for an inspiring speech” and, thankfully, Marcy gets the message, instructs them all to take five collective deep breaths and then rattles off something about teamwork and staying loose. Actually, it’s pretty good, Kent’s just too mad to hear it.

The Kings go up two more in the third, and they lose the game in regulation. They need to win three of the next four, or that’s their season. Media have requested him and Kobey for postgame.

Kent bows his head, showers, changes into sweats and sits down at the PR table. Kobey slides in next to him, seemingly impervious. Kent nods back.

Kent takes the lead on most of the questions, until Rick from Sportsnet asks, “Jakob, can you comment on the penalty kill in the second at all?”

“Uh, yeah,” Kobey says. He fidgets in his seat. “I mean, the puck got away from us. We were outplayed for sure. Just. Didn’t go our way. But, um. Got some celly inspiration from the Kings for sure, so. Wasn’t all bad.”

The reporters offer muted laughter. They teach the kids to be charming, now, at the USNTDP. Lively.

Kent waits for more—an acknowledgment of his blind spot, maybe, or a comment about what they need to do instead. Instead, Kobey blinks at the reporter, expectant.

“Kent, any comments on the penalty kill?”

“Yeah,” Kent says. “Uh. A lot to work on for sure. I don’t think the puck got away from us, I think we failed to control play. And I’d love to see Kobey take some accountability for that.”

Kobey’s mouth snaps shut. Jin from The Athletic blinks, stunned. Sarah from PR is glaring in their direction.

“I think that’s all we have time for, folks,” she says, and claps her hands together.

Chapter Text

Kent ignores his teammates staring at him as he comes back into the locker room and pulls his pads back on, grabs his skates. The stands are almost empty, and the ice sucks, all pitted and mushy, but he lines up at the goal line and sprints to the other end, skidding to a stop. Repeats it, again and again, even though his hip starts to protest.

In the end, it isn't until Henry, one of the Zamboni drivers, skates and asks, meek, if he might consider calling it a day so the maintenance team can head home, that Kent stops. He nods, looks up—the maintenance guys are all shifting on their feet at the glass.

“Sorry, guys,” he mutters, checking the time and realizing he’s kept them nearly another half hour. “My bad. Have a great night.”

When he finally trudges into the locker room, hoping it’s empty, Swoops is still there, already dressed in his game day suit, sitting in his stall.

“Hey,” Swoops says.

“Hey,” Kent says shortly, refusing to look at him.

“Wanna tell me what Kobey ever did to you?”

Kent huffs out a laugh, ignoring the lump in his throat. He looks up at the ceiling. “I can’t do this right now,” he says. He means it to be businesslike, but it comes out too small. He drops all his shit in his locker—he’ll pick it up tomorrow. “I can’t—” He hears his voice break. “I can’t fight with you right now. I can’t do this.”

“So don’t fight with me,” Swoops says. He doesn’t reach out for Kent, probably wisely, but he keeps his voice low. “Hey.”

“What,” Kent grits out. His shirt is soaked through with a second layer of sweat and he yanks it off, grimaces: it’s dripping. He leans down to untie his skates.

“Let me do ‘em,” Swoops says.

“No, don’t—” Kent protests, but Swoops is already backing him into his stall. “Don’t. You don’t have to.”

“Sit,” Swoops says, authoritative, so Kent sits.

Swoops drops to his knees.

“Don’t fuck up your knee,” Kent says, as he very pointedly does not think about the last time they were in this position. Swoops adjusts so he’s sitting cross-legged in front of him, thousand-dollar suit on the carpeted floor.

“You really did a number on these,” he says, examining Kent’s right skate.

“I’m a quadruple knotter,” Kent admits. Swoops huffs a laugh, starts picking at the laces.

“So,” he says to Kent’s skate, and Kent knows he’s about to get the closest to a thrashing as Swoops gives off the ice. “I know you’re having a weird week. But you can’t talk about the guys like that to the media.”

“He wasn’t where I needed him once tonight,” Kent mutters. “Zero fucking accountability in the presser—”

“It happens,” Swoops says. He pulls off Kent’s skate. “Doesn’t mean you get to shit-talk him to reporters. Gimme the other foot.”

Kent thrusts his other foot into Swoops’ lap, petulant.

“He’s still joking around, running his mouth. Like it’s okay to play like shit,” he says, even though he knows he’s doing the thing where he can see himself outside of his body being just a complete asshole. Swoops raises his eyebrows, visibly unimpressed, and unties another knot.

“He’s not playing like shit, he got unlucky a couple times and now he’s rattled,” Swoops says. “He’s still the first one to get to practice and the last one to leave.”

“He doesn’t have to—”

“You and me and Marcel worked so hard to get the room where it is,” Swoops interrupts. His voice is careful, like Kent is a quadruple-knotted bomb to be carefully defused, as he pulls on Kent’s left skate. “And we promised ourselves that it wouldn’t go back to how it was when we got here. We all promised each other as a team. Nothing behind anybody’s back, nothing below the belt. No mind games. We support each other and we play our game.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did,” Swoops says. His voice is placid. “To your linemate, in a soundbite. You need to apologize.” He raps his knuckles on Kent’s shin pad. “All done.” 

Kent can feel heat behind his eyes, a lump in his throat. He can’t look at Swoops sitting cross-legged in front of him with Kent’s feet in his lap or he’ll combust.

As a kid, he trained himself very carefully not to watch as his teammates’ dads or older brothers put their feet in their lap and untied their skates, trained himself to ignore the black hole inside of him asking why his dad wasn’t there—why his dad chose not to be there. He’d keep his eyes fixed on the ground as he bent down and untied them himself.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters. He looks up at the ceiling. 

“I know you’re sorry,” Swoops says. He squeezes Kent’s right foot. “But I’m not the one who needs to hear it.”

Kent nods, not trusting himself to speak.

Swoops offers to drive him home, but Kent says he’s alright, mostly means it. He’s relieved that the crowd of fans wanting autographs has dissipated. Then he remembers the one or two Sabres games a year his grandparents would get tickets for, the thrill at the possibility that Peca might sign his jersey, and he feels like an asshole.

He drives home on the Strip, anxiety churning in his gut. Same route he always takes home from the rink in downtown Vegas, but the people reveling on the Strip feel more ghoulish and ghostly than usual, shrieks and cackles coming in the open window. He rolls up the windows, adjusts the knob on his music so it’s loud enough to drown out his thoughts.

Well, almost loud enough.

Kent’s mind wanders anyway—A lot to work on for sure. Swoops’ face drawn as he tapes his stick, Swoops turning toward him across the backseat of the cab home from the Saddledome, eyes searching Kent’s face. Kent nodding, slow, defying his heartbeat jackrabbiting in his chest. Zimms, stop thinking for once in your life and listen to me. Parking lot, flannel shirt, bathroom tile. Always the fucking bathroom tile.

Kent parks his car in his driveway, tips his head back, and looks at the sky through his moon roof.

He never learns his lesson. He tries to force all his bullshit down, put the lid on it, even though time and time again it bursts out, usually gets on someone who doesn’t deserve it.

He takes a breath, lets it out slowly. Thinks of Kit, wherever she is, holding her up for the Aces’ charity cat calendar his third year in the league. How she’d clawed all the way up his head while Kent and Marcel laughed themselves sick. How much lighter the C felt that third year, after the leadership turnover.

He thinks about how much brighter the locker room felt, with Marcel and Swoops there, all three of them jumping headfirst into remaking the room. Promising each other it wasn’t going to feel like the floor could fall out from under you at any time.

When Kent trudges into the house, it’s quiet. Empty. Dread builds in Kent’s stomach, but he sees light filtering from upstairs, and he climbs them, legs groaning in protest, and finds Eric in a chair at the foot of Jack’s bed, frowning at his laptop. Kent leans in the threshold.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Eric says.

“Is he okay?” Kent asks, the question that’s been gnawing at him all night.

“He’s fine,” Eric says. “He just slept all afternoon.”

“I’m sorry,” Kent says. “I never wanted—I would never do anything to hurt him. I swear.”

Eric looks up from the screen. “I know,” he says.

“Seriously, I fucked up. I thought he had a better handle on it,” Kent says. “He seemed like he’d be fine to leave alone.”

“It’s okay, Kent,” Eric says. He bites his lip. “He’s a good liar.”

Yeah, he lies to you, maybe, Kent thinks, but he doesn’t—and then he realizes what he’s saying. He’s exhausted, he realizes, the lactic acid building up in his legs so they feel like stone.

“I told him about the overdose,” Eric says. “As much as I know, which is nothing, basically.”

“How’d he take it?”

“Called me a liar for 20 minutes until I pulled up Bad Bob’s press conference,” Eric says. He tips his head back, rubs his eyes.

“Sounds about right,” Kent says.

“I—” Eric takes a deep breath. “First thing tomorrow, I’m gonna call our insurance and see if there’s a rehab that can admit him.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Eric says. “And his legacy’s going to be ‘first bisexual drug addict in the NHL,’ and he’s probably going to hate me, but. I can’t handle this by myself anymore, and neither can you.”

“Makes sense,” Kent says.

Eric looks up at him. "Was this what it was like, for you?"

Honestly, it was worse—surrounded by guys gunning for Jack, ready to capitalize on any weakness, no adults that weren't neck-deep in QMJHL politics. Kent has no idea what would've happened, if he'd told someone. Nothing, if he had to guess.

“I’ll stay with him, if you want to go to bed," Kent says, instead of answering the question. Eric seems to take that as a kind of answer himself, nods and stands up, stretches. Jack's probably slept off the cough syrup by now, but Kent will sleep better, hearing Jack's breath. 

It’s going to be hell on Kent's body to hunch over in this armchair after playing 20 minutes tonight, but he still wants to. He lets Eric press the pill bottle into his hand. Something in Kent loosens, ever so slightly. He pulls his knees up, hugs them to his chest, matches his breath to the steady rise and fall of Jack’s chest, and lets the sound of Jack’s light snoring lull him to sleep.

“Kenny,” Jack says. Kent jerks awake and sees Jack staring at him.

“Are you okay?” Kent asks, bleary.

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Come here.” He pats the blanket next to him.

“Jack, I can’t—”

“I won’t try anything,” Jack says. “Just—you don’t look comfortable.”

Kent tips his head, left to right, experimental, and winces.

“Fine,” he says. “Put those pillows between us, though.”

When Kent is settled in bed, a buffer of pillows between them, they both stare at the ceiling, not saying anything.

“Eric told me about the overdose,” Jack says.

“Oh,” Kent says. “Um. Yeah. He told me.”

Jack is still.

“I mean, yeah, it happens, if that’s what you’re asking,” Kent says.

Jack exhales, heavy.

“How are you, like, feeling about it?”

Jack shrugs. “Scared,” he says.

“Yeah,” Kent says. “That makes sense.”

Jack huffs a laugh.

“You’re fine now,” Kent says. “But I know that doesn’t make it less scary.”

“I lose hockey,” Jack mumbles. “I—and everyone knows that about me now.”

“You don’t lose hockey,” Kent says. 

“I lose the draft,” Jack says. “I have to go to rehab. I’m a fuckup.”

“No, you aren’t,” Kent says. He rolls over, looks at Jack’s face over the pillow barrier between them. “You have a problem and you get help for it. That’s the complete opposite of fucking up.”

Jack’s eyes well up. “We don’t talk anymore. You left me behind.”

Kent sighs. “It’s complicated.”

“I mean, if we don’t talk,” Jack says, “It’s clearly because you decided to stop talking to me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You’re my best friend in the whole world,” Jack says, like it’s simple. “I’d never want to stop talking to you.”

Kent’s chest aches. You will, he thinks, but there’s no use in telling him that. In three months, you'll block my fucking number.

Jack shrugs again. His hands are looking a little shaky and he notices Kent notice. Kent grabs the pill bottle Eric had given him, shakes one into his hand.

“Take two,” Kent says. “It’s worse now if you stop.”

Jack frowns. He looks at his hands for another minute, then reaches over and swallows the pills dry.

Then, he sighs. “I don’t understand who I turned into. Like, how did I marry that guy?"

"No idea, babe."

"He’s nothing like you.” Jack scrunches up his face. “I mean, I guess you look alike.”

Kent stifles a smile. If nothing else, he knows now that Jack sees it, that he married a guy who looks just like Kent.

In some ways it’s gratifying, to get confirmation that he did understand the version of Jack he knew. That his Jack did want to win at any cost, was self-absorbed and beautiful and needy and insecure, that he wasn’t some fucked-up daydream Kent made up because he was lonely.

And then it’s shitty. Because at some point Jack gets soft: sign-with-the-Falcs-to-stay-near-Samwell, kiss-at-center-ice, cut-Kent-out soft. And Kent doesn’t know when or how or fully why, and he’s probably just never going to.

Kent sighs. “He—I think it’s good for you? That he’s so, um. Different. From me.”

Jack rolls onto his side, face cradled in a pillow. Kent can feel his eyes on him.

“Like, he’s nice,” Kent says. “He doesn’t yell at you, probably. Or say mean things.”

“You’re nice,” Jack says.

“I’m really not,” Kent says. “It’s, like, concerning to me that you think that.”

Jack smiles, then bites his lip.

“I have to—I need to remember,” Jack says. “To scale back and stop using so I can go back and not. I—my dad and mom look so, um. Just, devastated. In that press conference. Like, I just can’t do that to them.” Jack swallows. “And, God. You.”

“Me?” Kent can hear his pulse in his ears.

“You—” Jack turns his head on the pillow to look at him. It’s fucking stupid, childish, but Kent wants to hear him say it. I can’t do that to you. Even though he has to. “I hate that I lose you.”

He looks at Kent. Kent takes in the naked grief on Jack’s face, and he imagines that his own probably looks similar.

“I think it has to happen this way,” Kent says, finally, instead of I hate that I lose you, too. He lets the words well in his chest, thinks about how painful they would have been for twenty-three-year-old him to even think, let alone say. “It’s for the better. And you’re not gonna understand it for a long time. But you—you and your dad talk, like, weekly now. You’re sober. And you have all these nerdy college friends, and they love you, Jack.”

“I have friends?”

“You—” Kent feels his lip quiver. “You have lots of friends. Like, really really good friends.”

Jack’s eyes are wide, when Kent chances a look at him.

“And you have a husband,” Kent barrels on, looking back down at his hands. “And, don’t get me wrong, I find that husband incredibly fucking grating. But you love him, apparently, so.” Kent clears his throat, ignores the hot lump that’s swelled in his throat. “And I find you in time, okay, when it happens. You don’t have any brain problems, you don’t die. You’re–you’re just fine. I’ll…I find you in time, okay?” Kent’s voice breaks and he reaches for Jack’s wrist and squeezes. “I promise. I’ll find you in time.”

Jack exhales, shaky.

“It takes a while. But you’re so happy.” He squeezes Jack’s hand again, once, hard. “You’re so happy,” he repeats, ignoring the crack in his voice.

It hangs in the air. Kent doesn’t actually know if Jack is happy. He has all the raw ingredients that could make someone happy: enormous wealth, good friends, two houses and a cabin. 

A dog, a cat, a husband.

A dad. 

Jack has things Kent will never, ever have, things Kent would’ve killed for, easy, when they were younger. But most of that was true when they were eighteen, too, and back then Jack was the most supremely unhappy person Kent had ever met.

“You probably won’t remember any of this. It probably won’t matter. But if you do, uh,” Kent inhales sharp. “Eat a big meal, the night of the draft. And go easy on the alcohol. You—they said you got really lucky.”

“Okay,” Jack says.

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” Jack says.

He’ll never forget the scene he walked into in that hotel bathroom, the version of himself who’d just doubled back to their room to grab a towel on his way to the hot tub. 

The person he was in that moment is locked in there forever, now, hovering between Child and Adult. Forever forgetting the name of the hotel on the phone with the 9-1-1 operator, forever begging Jack to keep breathing, hearing the gasps go shallower and shallower. This is real life, Kent remembers thinking to himself as he sat there, the way minutes felt like hours. This is real life.

There’s no way to break that kid out of there. Sometimes Kent will see a picture of himself from 2009 and it boggles his mind, that they let that kid move countries and thrust a franchise on his shoulders.

He listens to Jack’s breath slowly even out.

“Promise me something else?” Kent asks into the dark, when he's not even sure Jack is still awake. Beside him, he feels Jack nod. “I’m going to say really mean things to you in the future. And I just want you to ignore them. Okay? Don’t think about it at all. I don’t mean a word I say. I’m full of shit.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Jack says, yawning. “I’m not that good at ignoring stuff.”

Kent smiles, sad. “I know. Promise you’ll try.”

Chapter Text

Kent wakes up alone. He sits up, scrubbing at his face. Jack’s side of the covers are peeled back, and the wall-sized window’s blackout shades have been drawn open, early morning light streaming into the bedroom. It’s 7:30 on his phone. Kent can hear voices outside, maybe in the kitchen, and he stumbles out into the living room.

Jack is hunched over on the couch, on the phone, speaking French. He’s in an old Aces shirt that fits him and a pair of Kelowna Rockets sweatpants, both of which have to be Swoops’. He looks over as Kent enters the room and his scar is back, he’s broader and more muscled and has a hint of 5 o’clock shadow. Kent hesitates at the threshold.

Jack looks over at him, says, “Ouai. Bientôt, maman. J’taime,” and hangs up the phone.

“Hey,” says Kent.

“Hey,” says Jack. He runs a hand through his hair.

“I—you, like, time-traveled,” Kent blurts. “That’s why you’re here.”

“I know,” Jack says. “I remember, kind of.”

“Oh,” Kent says. His cheeks burn.

The distance between them is weird now, only because it didn’t exist for the past day or so. Kent blinks, steps further into the room.

“That was my parents. Eric’s upstairs buying plane tickets, he’ll be down in a minute.”

“Cool.”

“Um,” Jack says. He glances at Kent, then back down at the carpet. “Thank you. For taking care of me, and for—for helping Eric.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kent says. He wants to jam his hands in his pockets but he’s in leggings. He settles for crossing his arms over his chest and looking to the side, away. You’d’ve done the same for me. No, Jack probably wouldn’t have. Kent would have been shit out of luck if he woke up eighteen and went to find Jack. He would be out on the street in a heartbeat, showing up at his place in Providence. It was easy for me. I used to do it all the time.

“I don’t know if he knew what a fuckup I was at eighteen,” Jack says. He lets out a humorless little laugh.

“He’ll probably understand,” Kent says, because they both know that Kent knew. “Not like it was your fault this happened.”

Then it’s quiet, for a second. There’s a dog barking down the street.

“I just—I don’t like to be someone who hurts people,” Jack mumbles. “I worked so hard not to be that person. I hate that I still do.”

“I mean.” Kent looks down at his feet, bony against the hardwood floor. “Everyone does that. Sometimes you hurt people.”

Jack stands up, then, posture always so weird, like he’s trying to be smaller, less seen. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re good,” Kent says. “You really weren’t too much trouble.”

“No,” Jack says. “Or, that too, but I meant, uh. I guess I, like, I knew you found me.”

“Oh,” Kent says. “No, don’t—you don’t have to—”

“I didn’t really think about, um. What that was like for you,” Jack continues. “And I’m sorry. It’s—” He looks down. “I mean, it’s because of you that I. You know. Lived. But I’m sorry I never realized that I—that you were there, too.”

“Thanks,” Kent mumbles. The drywall is fascinating, he thinks, ignoring the tears blurring his vision. “It was. Um. I’m just.” He swallows. “I’m just, like. So glad you’re okay.”

Kent is crying, there’s no real point in hiding it, and when he looks over, Jack is, too. They stand there for a minute, too far apart, both of them looking at the ceiling. 

“We were really young,” Jack says finally. He sniffs. “For us to have been, like. All alone. In Rimouski. I, uh. I’ve been talking about it more in therapy. We were really young.”

“We were really young,” Kent echoes. You had your parents, Kent thinks, but doesn’t say. You had a safety net, you had a backup plan, I had no one close by who didn’t care about you more.

When he looks up, Eric’s standing at the threshold at the top of the stairs, arms crossed and a tight smile on his face. Jack’s whole demeanor changes—he straightens up and gives Eric this look, this smile that represents a thousand little intimacies that Kent wanted so badly, when he was eighteen. Never got ‘em. Kent feels a hollow pang in his stomach, even still.

“Hey, Bits,” Jack says, in a soft voice Kent never got.

“Flight’s at 11,” Eric says, not looking at Jack, jaw set tight. “Straighten up Kent's guest room.”

Jack nods, reaches to help Eric with his suitcase, and Eric shakes his head, brushes past Jack on the stairs. He rolls the suitcase over to the door, glares at it like it’s personally offended him.

“Morning,” he says, not looking at Kent.

“Morning,” Kent says, shifting his weight. Eric’s face is harder than he’s ever seen it, shadows harsher. “You alright?”

“I’ll be fine.” Eric looks up, then. It’s an old look, in his eyes, faraway heaviness. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Kent says. He realizes what it looks like, his eyes still a little misty. “Yeah. It’s gonna be fine.”

Jack comes downstairs, still in Aces gear, and puts a hand on Eric’s shoulder. Eric tenses, walks past him into the kitchen. He grabs the bowl and spoon Jack left out after dinner last night and puts them in the dishwasher while Jack watches, wrong-footed and wide-eyed.

“Sorry again, to be so much trouble,” Eric says, when they’re standing on the stoop, waiting for their cab. He gives Kent a wide, overbright smile. “We’d love to have you and Jeff over for dinner next season, when you play the Falcs.”

“Yeah,” Kent says. He has no idea if Eric means it.

Eric gives him a hug when the cab pulls up, mutters another “thank you, sorry,” that Kent just nods at.

He looks at Jack. Jack looks back at him, holds his hand out like Kent’s going to breeze past every scab Jack has ripped open this week and dap him up. Kent pats his shoulder twice.

“I’ll text you, about next season,” Jack says. Kent’s heard that one before.

Maybe he’ll arrive home in Providence and go back to pretending. It doesn’t really matter all that much to Kent, he’s surprised to find. He takes a deep breath and heads back into the air conditioning. 

He heads upstairs, passes the open door to the guest bedroom Jack stayed in. The sheets are stripped, piled on the floor—nice, Zimms—and there’s a bundle of clothes on the bed. Kent walks over, picks up the Rimouski hoodie. He picks it up, holds it up—it still smells like clinical-strength Degree and mouthwash.

He goes into the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror, and when his chest starts to rise and fall, he imagines his body is filling itself up with cool blue liquid like the sports psych said to do. Then he brushes his teeth.

Probably the world is just going to keep ripping open and repairing itself in new ways, and he’s just going to have to get used to it.

Kent’s finally brave enough to check his phone an hour later, powers it on to at least a hundred notifications. He starts with his favorites: a reprimand from Coach, a “You okay?” from his mother. 

Marcel Bougainville (6:48 a.m.)

Fix this, Parse

Wild card, indeed: Aces’ Parson calls for “accountability” from Lundgren, special teams.

Dread pools in Kent’s gut; he responds to Coach with an apology for the soundbite, gives Marcy a thumbs up. Ignores the other texts and emails, ignores the urge to run.

He's an adult. It's his job to make it right.

When he gets to the practice rink, Kobey’s on the ice already, hitting one-timers into the empty net. Kent pulls on the mess he left in his locker last night, a jumble of pads smell a little riper than they would have, if he’d taken the time to put them away. Oh well. He grabs a clean practice jersey, skates out to where Kobey’s still whipping pucks into the net.

“Hey,” he says. Kobey looks over his shoulder and his eyes widen.

“I asked Garly to get here early to get in goal,” he says quickly. “I know one-timers aren’t—”

“It’s all good, Kob,” Kent says. “Um.”

Kobey looks at him, then away.

“What I did last night was fucked up,” Kent says. He shifts on his skates. "I'm sorry."

“I mean, you were right,” Kobey says. He looks at his feet, and Kent feels a horrible wave of guilt. “I’ve been playing bad. The turnover was all my fault.”

“Yeah,” Kent agrees. “But that conversation should’ve happened in the room, not in front of the press.”

Kobey hangs his head. “I know it doesn’t seem like I take stuff serious always,” Kobey says. “But I swear, I’m trying.”

“I know you’re trying,” Kent says. “We all know. And I’m sorry, that I called you out in front of the press. That isn’t how we do things here.”

“I know I can do more,” Kobey says, frustrated. “But I’m not—I just can’t make it work right now. I’m supposed to help you, not drag you down.”

He’s nineteen, Kent thinks. He wants to go shake Gary Bettman’s shoulders, rough him up a little while he yells it. He’s fucking nineteen. We were all nineteen.

“You’re not dragging us down,” Kent says. “You’re our teammate.” He reaches out, taps Kobey’s skate with his stick. “I had a gnarly sophomore slump, too. It’s normal.”

Kobey is quiet.

“You keep getting overwhelmed,” Kent says finally. If he wants to practice out of his slump, that’s something Kent can help with. “It’s hard to find you out there. I’ll tell Bagger and the others to stay late tomorrow and we’ll work on it.”

“Thanks, Parse,” Kobey mumbles.

“‘Course,” Kent says.

Kobey nods.

Guys still give Kent a little side-eye in practice, but Kobey’s face is brighter, and he’s more focused than he's been in weeks. By the end, the vibe is almost normal, or as normal as it can be when they have three games left in their season, barring a miracle.

Kent puts his pads away, keeps his eyes down in the shower, and dresses quick, ignoring the group of younger guys hanging out on the other side of the room.

“I talked to him,” he says to Swoops, quiet, when the young guns have left to get breakfast.

“Good job,” Swoops says.

“Yeah,” Kent says, hoarse. He stands there, staring around the locker room like it’s foreign. Everything feels out of place.

“How’s Jack?” Swoops asks. He sits down in his stall next to Kent.

“He went home,” Kent says. He sinks to join him.

“You two get stuff straightened out?”

“Not really,” Kent says.

“I’m sorry.”

Kent shrugs. In a moment of weakness, he leans his head to rest on Swoops’ shoulder. Swoops reaches up and wraps an arm around him, brings his knuckles to Kent’s temple. He’s quiet, waiting.

Kent rubs his eyes. “I just—” He pauses. “I don’t know. I keep thinking I’m starting to be less fucked up and then I—” He lets out a long breath. 

“You made it right,” Swoops points out. “When you fuck things up, you fix them. That’s all you can do.”

“I just always know what the worst thing I could say would be,” Kent says. “And sometimes I know it’s the worst thing to say and I still say it.”

Swoops smiles, crooked. “I know.”

“I’m the worst.”

“You’re not the worst,” Swoops says. He strokes a thumb across the knob of Kent’s shoulder.

Kent manages a small smile.

Last week, in the moments after Kent had pulled out, sweaty and sated, but before he’d come to his senses and made Swoops go back to his own room, Swoops had reached up and run his fingertips all over Kent’s face, over the bump of his nose and his eyebrows and his mouth. And he’d looked at Kent with this expression, like—well. Kent had shut the thought out immediately. He’d learned that lesson a long time ago.

If this is all I ever get of you it could be enough. He tests the thought in his head. If they never fuck again, if Swoops shows up at the bar after their next home game with another tiny model under his arm. If they finally talk and Swoops says I don’t love you, or, somehow worse, I love you, just not like that. Kent could take the coffee runs and the image of Swoops sitting cross-legged with Kent’s skate in his lap and the way that Swoops never, ever gives up on him, and he could build himself something with that. It could be enough.

He’s made do with less.

“Hey,” Kent says without really knowing he’s going to say it. “You’ve got a couple seasons in you, still. You know that, right?”

Swoops’s knuckles pause the tight circles they’re making on Kent’s scalp.

“You don’t have to say that,” Swoops says. “I mean—the points aren’t coming. My knee...like, I know at some point, you gotta just. Call it.”

“No,” Kent says. “You’re not allowed to call it yet.”

“Oh, yeah?” Swoops asks. Kent can hear the smile in his voice. “How come?”

“We need you. I—I need you.”

Swoops inhales, sharp.

“I don’t—I don’t know how I would do any of this without you,” Kent adds, because he’s in for a pound, now. “The kids, the press, the losing streak, I just...I couldn’t. I can’t do it. Honest.”

“Oh,” Swoops says. “Well, thanks. I’ll try.”

“Andy plays Yale at 4,” Swoops says, when they’re walking out of the practice facility into the blistering sunshine. “You want to come over?”

Kent thinks of the ghost in his house.

Then, he thinks of the night after the Cup final, when Jack and Eric kissed at center ice, how Kent had gripped his beer, untethered in his body, fully unsure of what to do next. How Swoops had noticed and called them a ride and, when he’d given the driver Kent’s address, Kent had said, voice desperate, “Please don’t leave.” Swoops had stared at him, nodded, and took them back to his house, gave Kent the bed and slept on the couch that night.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll follow you.”

On that same couch, Kent can hear Swoops’ intake of breath every few minutes, like he’s working up the nerve to say something and he keeps losing it.

“Whatever you’re gonna say, say it,” Kent says finally. They started watching Swoops' brother’s game when it was afternoon still, and now there’s a different NCAA game on and it’s dusk, shadows crawling across the room. They should turn on a lamp, probably.

“Oh,” Swoops says. “No, we don’t have to—I know you’ve had, like, an intense week.”

“Just go ahead,” Kent says.

“We really don’t have to—”

“Say it.”

“Okay. So.” Swoops runs a hand through his hair. “Okay. Um. When I came over the other day, I was kind of planning to talk to you about, uh. Calgary.”

“Oh,” Kent says. He exhales, looks down at his lap. “Yeah.”

“And I kind of still want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

“Do you still want to talk about it?”

“We can talk about it.”

“But do you want to?”

“Sure,” Kent says, exasperated. “Let’s talk about it.”

“Now?”

“Yeah,” Kent says. He runs over the words that’ll hurt the worst—One-time thing, casual. Mistake.

“Okay,” Swoops says, and then neither of them say anything. Kent can hear them both breathing, in the stillness of his living room.

“So talk,” Kent prods, bracing himself, invoking that media training he was always so good at. Poker face.

“I liked it,” Swoops says. He’s staring at the pillow in his lap.

“Yeah.” Swoops inhales. “I—fuck.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “We—it was good. Or. I know I’m not, like. I haven’t really had sex like that before, so maybe my opinion doesn’t count for much, but. I still thought it was, um. Good.”

It was excellent sex, is the thing. Hot and effortless, mostly, except little awkward moments when it wasn’t, and they laughed about those and it was just. It was so fucking much, and there’s no going back to a time before Kent knew what it felt like, having sex with Swoops.

They’re quiet for a minute, and Kent looks carefully down at his feet—he can feel Swoops’ eyes on him and the heat of his own cheeks reddening. Swoops breathes in, sharp.

Kent looks up.

“Parse,” Swoops says. He reaches out, leans in. “You gotta give me, like. Something here.”

His finger ghosts over the hair on Kent’s arm, sending goosebumps up to his clavicle. Their eyes meet and the air, like. Crackles.

“Um,” Kent says, and leans slightly back.

Swoops pulls his hand away like he’s been scorched. “Sorry,” he says. He scrambles back on the couch. “I’m sorry. I—Fuck.”

“No,” Kent says. “I didn’t, like—”

“You don’t have to—”

“It was good, I just—”

“No, yeah, I get it,” Swoops says quickly. His cheeks are bright pink, and he’s staring hard at the carpet. “I just—Forget it. Sorry.”

“No,” Kent buries his face in his hands. “You’re not—it was good. It was great.”

“Yeah?”

“Great,” Kent says, for emphasis.

“Best you ever had?” Swoops asks, sly.

“It was an impressive rookie performance.”

Swoops grins. “Well, great,” he says, reaching out for Kent again. “Let’s fuckin’ do this.”

“No,” Kent says. “It was good, but. The whole, like, friends who have sex thing. I’ve done it before and it was just, like. A complete disaster.”

“With Zimmermann,” Swoops says. Not a question.

“Yeah. And like. I’ve done it and I just can’t—” Kent hears his voice waver. “I can’t do it again, you know? I can’t be responsible for—if we stop being friends. If you’re not in my life.”

“I mean,” Swoops starts, then hesitates. “Not everything is like something else, y’know? Some things are just themselves.”

“Mm,” Kent says, instead of saying he doesn’t understand, because sometimes Swoops doesn’t say things good and then if you ask for clarification he gets embarrassed.

“Like, I’m not Jack Zimmermann. I’m American, and my dad is, like, so boring. He owns a used car dealership. I’ve only met Mario Lemieux once, and I don’t call him Uncle Mario.” He meets Kent’s eye.

“Well, I only fuck people who call Mario Lemieux ‘Uncle Mario,’” Kent says. Good, Parson, keep it light. Redirect.

“Don’t—” Swoops smiles in spite of himself, then frowns. “No, but I’m serious. And it’s different, too, because—okay, I should have led with this.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t just want sex with you. I want to, to date you, I guess. If you’ll let me.”

“Oh,” Kent says.

“Like. I want to be with you.”

“Oh,” Kent says again.

Then he gets up off the couch and fucking bolts. 

He doesn’t put his shoes on, he just makes a run for it. He yanks open the side door and takes off down Swoops’ driveway, the fastest he can run, which is still pretty fucking fast.

“Parse, what the fuck,” Swoops says behind him, yanking open the door. He's in mismatched flip-flops. Kent worries, for a second, about his knee.

“Will you come back here?” Swoops’ voice behind him is growing closer and it’s angry, like it only gets when the ref makes a bad call. He stops at the end of Kent’s walkway. "Reject me to my face like a fucking adult."

Kent’s feet are burning on the blacktop of his too-long, fuck-you money driveway. He stops anyway, grits his teeth at the pain.

“I just wish you would let me, like—I’m not stupid, Parse, okay. I know that I like you and I know you like me too. And I want to try.” Swoops takes a shaky breath. “Can we try?”

“I want to try!” Kent yells. He can’t take the burning heat of the blacktop anymore, and he pads gingerly over to a dry patch of grass. He turns around. “I like you so much. I want to try so bad. But I’ve done this before and it sucked. I sucked. I—I always—”

I always ruin it. No matter how hard I try, I always always always wind up on my own.

“Kent,” Swoops says. He softens, takes a careful step towards him.

“You want me now, but like—” Kent’s breath hitches. He loved horse movies as a kid, the kind where the girl tames a wild pony, because before anyone told him that it would get in the way of hockey, Kent was a happy, gay little boy. Right now he feels like the wild pony. “I can’t, like, do stuff. The way normal people do stuff.”

“Maybe I don’t want to do stuff like normal people do stuff,” Swoops says. He takes another step towards Kent.

“The way a girl could do stuff,” Kent says. Pleads, really. He can hear his voice shaking. “Could date you. In public. I–I can’t do that.”

“You don’t have to. I don’t—None of that matters to me.”

“But it will,” Kent says, and everything from the past week is swelling up inside of him. “It will. Hiding, it’s hard.”

“Let me decide what’s too hard for me,” Swoops says, quiet.

He takes the last step towards Kent. His stupid lovely chest is right in front of Kent’s face.

“I can’t make you do anything,” Swoops says. He looks down to look Kent in the eye and Kent can’t sustain the eye contact. He looks away, bitter, achy. “If you really don’t want to, we won’t. But I think I know you. Better than Zimmermann, uh, knew you.” 

Kent doesn’t say anything.

Swoops looks down at his feet. “And I—we take care of each other. That’s how it’s different between you and me,” he says. “I would be so good to you, if you let me.”

“I know you would,” Kent says quietly. “That isn’t the issue.”

“I think you’d be good to me, too, if that’s what you mean,” Swoops says. 

Kent shakes his head, thinks of the cough syrup and the tile and his sharp tongue, the anvil of responsibility he’s carried for so long he doesn’t know how to put it down. “I wouldn’t be.”

“Parse,” Swoops says again. Soft. Wild ponies and all that. “You would. I know you." He steps onto the grass, reaches out for Kent and Kent just. Goes. Strings cut, buries his face in Swoops’ t-shirt, even though he’s going to get snot all over it. Swoops wraps his arms around his shoulders. "You would.”

“I’m serious,” Kent mumbles. “I’m just warning you, I’m. You’re not going to like everything you find out.”

Swoops snorts. “You think I don’t know that?”

"I'm cutthroat, and I'm mean, and I—I want things. Way more than I should.”

“What kinds of things?” Swoops asks. He looks down at Kent, his face open. “Come back inside and tell me.”

Kent—the bravest thing he might do in his whole stupid life is follow Swoops home.