Chapter Text
Though he’s on vacation, Jack still wakes up around 5am -- even if he’s been up texting Bits until after midnight (like he had been the night before). Something about the light coming through the windows of his room, no matter where he’s sleeping, wakes him up shortly before sunrise unless he’s sick.
This morning, he pulls on his jogging layers and a worn Samwell hoodie then pads in stocking feet out to the porch, while his parents are still sleeping, to go through his warm-up stretches. Then he steals his parents’ keys, leaves a note on the kitchen counter, and goes out to the car with a bottle of water, a banana, and his camera bag in hand.
Out at the end of Chequessett Neck Road is the picnic area off which the Great Island trail runs out into Cape Cod Bay. Jack parks the car and straps his camera case across his chest before taking off as a steady jog out to the overlook at Jeremy Point. It’s a crisp morning -- overnight temperatures having bottomed out around eight degrees Celsius -- and he’s glad for the hoodie before he starts to warm. He’s also glad of the quiet.
Mostly, Jack’s comfortable spending time with his parents. He and his mother have been especially close since the two years he spent living at home and coaching; he and Papa only have a limited range of conversational topics (hockey, the sports profession, hockey, politics, hockey, his dad’s charitable work, hockey, Samwell, and of course hockey) but mostly those get them through.
Since Jack signed with the Falconers he’s noticed a new, tentative openness between them as if now that Jack’s made it into the realm of professional hockey his father feels he’s done right by his son and can stop trying so hard. Their telephone conversations since Christmas have been a little easier, and although he and Papa have gone running every morning and they’ve watched a few games together on streaming, they haven’t talked a lot about Jack’s new job. And he’s surprisingly grateful for that, for the way he can sink into this ten-day vacation and pretend for a little bit longer that his immediate future isn’t so overwhelming and unknowable as it mostly feels.
But he's still grateful this morning for a little time to himself.
He’d told his parents about Bitty on Tuesday evening, over dinner. They had always associated the secret of his relationship with Kent with his overdose, and even though Jack and his psychiatrist and his therapist had all agreed that it was only one of multiple precipitating factors, Jack was determined not to let a cloud of parental concern obscure for even a moment the radiant light that Bitty is in his life.
Kent had felt … slightly dangerous, thrilling, heady. Being with Kent had helped Jack forget how desperate he felt because Kent managed to convince him the desperation was ambition. That the desperation was part and parcel of the life they both wanted, together.
Some part of Jack wonders if Kent still believes that. Some part of Jack still remembers well enough what that headspace is like to fear being pulled back into it when he’s in Kent’s orbit. Which is why he tries as much as possible to keep Kent at a distance. Though he knows Kent and his parents still stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter, and Kent will stop by their house when he’s in Montreal for a game. Jack’s asked his parents not to talk to him about Kent, unless they really think he needs to know, and so far they’ve respected that boundary.
So Jack wants to be really clear right from the start that the energy he and Bitty share -- on the ice and off it -- is a world apart. And he thinks a good way to start is to tell the people who care about him that he and Bitty are dating.
“Mom, Papa, I, um,” he’d said, looking down at his plate of asparagus and scallops. “I want to tell you both something.”
They had waited, not impatiently. His mother had picked up a glass of the sauvignon blanc she and Papa were splitting between them and taken a sip.
“Bittle and I are --” he’d taken a steadying breath. “Bittle’s agreed to be my boyfriend.” He’d been unable to look at their faces but even staring down at his meal he couldn’t help the broad smile that spread across his face just thinking about the fact of what he’s saying. It had been just over twenty-four hours since he’d stood in the Haus and felt Bitty’s pulse racing against the tips of his fingers, heard the tinny sound of Bitty’s music vibrating through the little earbuds he’d pulled out of his ears and let drop, kissed and licked the salty tears off Bitty’s damp skin.
“We’re dating,” he says to his plate, feeling the happiness spreading through his chest like warm maple milk on a bitter winter’s morning.
“Oh, darling, I’m so happy for you both!” His mother had said, sounding more pleased than surprised.
“Well done, son,” his father had said, with a trace of smugness Jack would have begrudged him if it hadn’t been for the fact that Papa was the one who’d prodded him to take this chance in the first place.
There has been a new openness between them, Jack thinks, since he’s signed with the Falconers. It’s finally started to feel like he and his father can stop having the same conversation they’ve been having for six years and start learning who it is they’ve become in the interim.
Jack, for example, has become a son who will be bringing his boyfriend with him (fingers crossed) when they all come out to the Cape next year for the family reunion. He wonders, suddenly, where he and Bitty will sleep -- he’s always just had his old twin bed in the alcove off the living room. He wonders what Bitty will make of Helena and Charlotte, and has no doubt that Bitty will enjoy talking with Yannick about the musical and theatrical productions he works crew for.
The sandy trail is rough going, and Jack is more breathless than he’d like to be when he reaches the overlook. He drops on a fallen tree trunk that, by the look of the worn bark, has seen many hikers’ asses before his, and drinks half the water bottle he’s brought with him, then eats the banana.
He pulls his cell phone out of his bag and texts Bitty Wish you were here with a picture of the view. A few seconds later -- he wonders if he’s woken Bitty up or if the blue jay has returned to the chestnut tree outside Bitty’s window -- his phone vibrates:
OMG why are you sending me pictures of A BEACH when you should be sending me pictures of YOU??
Jack grins and types out:
Because I am all sweaty and horrible looking?
This gets him a string of emoji that Jack thinks probably amount to the visual expression of exasperation if only because they are followed up by:
I think you mean sweaty and MANLY and GORGEOUS Mr. Zimmermann!!
He turns the phone’s camera on himself and snaps a photo of himself trying to frown. It comes out slightly blurry but he sends it anyway, writing:
There’s no accounting for taste I suppose.
To which Bitty responds:
#BestBoyfriend
200/10 would kiss
Jack isn’t sure what to make of the fraction, but feels pretty confident in interpreting the response as a positive one.
Gonna spend some time with my real camera. He types out. Maybe we can FaceTime when I get back to the cottage, over breakfast?
Sure! <3 is Bitty’s reply.
Jack smiles, unaccountably happy, down at the screen for several seconds, before pressing the button to make the screen go black so he can slip the phone back into the zippered pocket of his bag. Then he gets out his Nikon and contemplates his lens options. He’s hoping to carry some of the peace of this place with him when he moves down to Providence for the next chapter of his life. And maybe some good pictures will help him do that.