Chapter Text
Uncle Billy is the third person with whom Jack shares his news about Eric.
His uncles arrive on the Cape Sunday afternoon. Yannick has already been splitting his time between Boston and Dennis for the past two months as he juggles the end of the semester with preparations for the opening of the season at the Playhouse. But now they’ve both turned in their final grades and they can pack Fergus and Angus into the back of the car, sublease their South End apartment for the summer, and relocate to the Cape for the season.
“Jack!” Yannick greets him through the Prius’ open window when they pull up to the house just as Bob is coaxing the coals in the chimney starter into flame. “The mighty college graduate!”
One of the things that used to irritate Jack about Yannick, although it doesn’t bother him now, is Yannick’s utter indifference to professional sport of any kind. Even hockey. Despite being Québécois (though he’s lived in Boston now for nearly a decade) and Bob Zimmermann’s brother-in-law, Yannick is resistant to all forms of hockey-related information. Of course Yannick would think of Jack as the family’s “college graduate” not a soon-to-be rookie Falconer.
The two Irish Setters tumble out of the back seat of the car onto the gravel drive as soon as Uncle Billy kills the engine and steps out of the driver’s seat to open the back door. Their back ends are wriggling madly as they race around to every human in sight, offering ecstatic greetings.
Jack waves and pulls his earbuds out of his ears, hitting pause on the tape he’s been watching on his laptop. He can hear Bitty rolling his eyes all the way from Georgia, but even though this is his vacation he starts his new job a week from Tuesday and the only way to keep the anxiety at bay is to keep his body distracted through workouts and his mind distracted through analyzing every Falconer’s game from the current season -- and of course Bitty. Always Bitty, close by somewhere, somehow, even from a thousand miles away.
He glances down at his phone and types out, My uncles are here. Talk to you later?
Pics or it didn’t happen! ;-) Bitty texts back.
Jack feels his lips twitch in a private smile as he pockets his phone and goes into the house to let Alicia know that her brother and his husband have arrived.
He’s still in the kitchen, trying to decipher Bitty’s latest burst of emoji-laden text, when Uncle Billy comes inside with a cardboard box that turns out to contain a variety of local brews.
“We came bearing gifts,” Uncle Billy says by way of greeting. “And by gifts I mean beer. I’ve been saving all the best ale for when I finished grading the last of those damnable senior portfolios.”
Jack snaps a photo of the inside of the box with his phone before helping Uncle Billy unload; Think Shitty would be jealous? He asks queries Bitty, attaching the photo and hitting send.
A string of five little yellow chicks appear, which Jack has learned to translate as the visual verb form of chirping.
“These all need to go in the fridge?” he asks -- this stuff is fancier than pretty much anything that’s passed through his hands in the past four years.
“Leave out two of the Blind Faith IPAs and those Mostly Cloudys from Long Trail -- I brought those for your parents because they’ve developed a taste for the Belgian Witbeir lately. And whatever you want, of course. No pressure. I know sometimes you’re not--”
Jack considers the array before him. “Yeah, I got out of the habit during college,” he says, and it still feels weird to talk about Samwell in the past tense. “Someone had to stay sober enough to make sure no one drowned in the toilet bowl.”
Uncle Billy laughs, “Ah, the good old days.” He leans over the island and plucks a porter labeled Jack’s Abby out of the jumble of bottles that Jack’s starting to stack carefully in the bottom shelf of the fridge. “Try this baby.” He turns to rummage around in the cupboards for a tray and then the bottle opener.
“So,” Jack hears his uncle say behind him, in a deceptively-casual tone of voice that makes him pause in his fridge-stocking. “Just between the two of us, you understand. Alicia hinted heavily last night that you might have some news to share.” He hears the pop and hiss of one of the bottle caps being pried off.
Jack snorts, torn between gratitude toward his mother and exasperation that she’s toeing ever so skillfully inside the line of letting him do this at his own (and Bitty’s) pace.
“I put this out there,” Uncle Billy continues, while Jack returns to his task, “not because I particularly wish to pry but because I want you to know Yannick and I are both --” he nudges Jack on the shoulder with the open bottle of beer. “--you know we want you to be happy, Jack. And we’re right up the road in Boston whenever you and -- whenever you need us.”
“His name’s Eric.” Jack hears himself say, smiling around the shape of Bitty’s name. “Eric Bittle.”
“That sophomore on your line? The speedy little fucker who got checked last year?” Yannick may not follow hockey, but Uncle Billy -- also a Samwell graduate -- has kept abreast of Jack’s career as a college athlete as well as a student.
“Yeah,” Jack takes a sip of his beer and rolls the taste around on the back of his tongue. “Yeah, we’re -- it’s pretty new. In some ways. He’s back in Georgia for the summer but--” he nods, half to himself, picking at the label on the Jack’s Abby bottle with his thumbnail. “But yeah. It’s good. We’re good.”
He looks shyly up at his uncle, who’s leaning back next to him on the island, his own IPA in hand. “Sometimes you just know, eh?”
“Sometimes you do,” his uncle agrees, bumping him gently in the shoulder again.