Chapter Text
Eric is having a shit day.
He woke up at five after roughly six hours of restless, nightmare-filled sleep feeling like he hasn’t slept at all. The temperature’s forecast to climb into the nineties and he’s got a longer “to-do” list at work than he’d like to considering the kids are arriving starting at ten the following morning.
Jack had been asleep when Eric got home from Dave’s, the dive bar where he’d gone with Skye and Will to play pool. Skye’s the only one of the three of them who’s technically old enough to order alcohol but the staff at Dave’s never give a shit who’s drinking once you’ve ordered. Eric had only had half of Skye’s second beer, but it had given him a headache anyway and he’d gotten home tired and frustrated and sad with his parents already in bed and Jack asleep in his hipster loft apartment. He’d lain awake staring at the shadowed cracks in his ceiling and felt muddled thoughts chase fruitlessly around his tired brain.
He’s angry at Jack. Has been, since the phone call on Wednesday. And he feels terrible about it, because he knows he should be happy, right? He should be thrilled. He’d assumed -- once they’d established that The Kiss had, in fact, actually happened and that they both, in fact, wanted to do more kissing sooner rather than later -- that Jack would want to keep everything quiet for at least a little while. Maybe a year. Maybe more. He’s scared to even imagine them staying together that long, for fear of jinxing it, but -- To the extent he’d had a chance to imagine what a future with Jack would be like he’s imagined privacy. And maybe eventual, careful disclosure.
What he and Jack have together still feels fragile and Eric’s not stupid. Maybe his middle school tormentors had been suspended but he’d bet good money that today those guys are the ones who yell fucking faggots! from the stands, leave bigoted comments on YouTube clips of presser footage, and Tweet rape threats at female hockey fans and writers from accounts that also proudly sport photos from their latest networking event. Guys like that, they know there will be no serious consequences.
So oh my god Eric does not want Jack facing any of that -- even though he knows Jack has probably been the subject of all that and worse already. He also doesn’t feel at all prepared to cope with being Jack Zimmermann’s Boyfriend!!
He just wants … Jack for a while. Wants to be Jack-and-Bitty and do stupid Jack-and-Bitty things like watch a whole season of something on Netflix while cuddling on the couch and find all the cool brunch places in Pawtucket and maybe play hookey from classes and take a long weekend to go leaf peeping in Vermont. Eric’s never been leaf-peeping in Vermont.
But suddenly it feels like he can’t have that first, because Jack’s talking about telling George and even if, rationally, Eric knows that Jack means it about not coming out until Eric’s ready it also feels like he can’t really say no. Because he’s not going to ask Jack to stay in the closet, not after what happened with Kent, and even without Kent he’s clear in his own mind that it’s never okay to ask someone to hide who they are that way.
And Eric doesn’t want to stay closeted. That's not what he wants at all. Hell, he applied to Samwell and two other schools out of state -- even if his parents made him apply to UGA as a safety school -- specifically so that he could find a way to come out. And he has … at Samwell.
Being out at Samwell had been so easy this year, in fact, that the exhaustion of being closeted in Madison had faded from memory. When Jack kissed him at the Haus on graduation day, it hadn’t even hit Eric until he was somewhere over Pennsylvania that he was going back to a world where he had no one to share his news with.
He’s dragging stock pots out of the corner cupboard in the camp kitchen when he realizes that he’s angry at Jack because he’s sweet baby Jesus jealous of Jack. Jack, who’s been able to tell his parents and share his news with his gay-married uncles. Jack, who gets to hang out with Shitty and Lardo and tell them a week from now. Jack, who works somewhere that doesn’t hold coffee-break Bible study (optional) and reserve a few moments for silent prayer at the start of every meal.
He slams a stock pot a little too forcefully onto the linoleum-covered concrete of the kitchen floor and hears Steph behind him say, “Jesus, Eric!” under her breath.
“Sorry -- sorry.” He mutters.
He feels trapped, is how he feels. And a part of him wishes Jack were trapped right there with him instead of calling him up in the middle of his workday, his voice steady and certain and so grown up, making terrifying promises to Eric while all Eric can feel is rising panic that if Jack tells one more person that Eric is Jack’s boyfriend then he’s going to wake up the next morning to headlines scrolling across the morning news at the gas station … NHL ROOKIE JACK ZIMMERMANN GAY!! DATING COLLEGE JUNIOR ERIC “BITTY” BITTLE OF MADISON, GEORGIA!!...
(By Friday morning he’d had that nightmare already, two nights running.)
So he’s angry. And he’s jealous. And scared. And exhausted. And of course he can’t tell Jack any of this because Jack is trying so hard and so earnestly to be a good boyfriend -- as good a boyfriend as he can be from up in Rhode Island. Eric knows Jack wants him to be excited to tell Shitty and Lardo they’re dating, and he knows that Jack meant the promise never to lie about their relationship as a promise not a threat.
Which is why he’s now feeling miserable about wishing he could take back the permission he gave Jack to tell Shitty, and Lardo, and especially George. He wants to rewind the tape to Wednesday morning and find words to say Please, can we wait and Jack, we’ve only kissed once … could we maybe wait until you’ve come down to see me before telling anyone else?
It feels ungrateful. And cowardly. And wrong. Everything feels wrong. His skin feels wrong. His hair hurts. His eyes are gritty like he’s developing an allergic reaction to the entire state of Georgia and his life sucks and he doesn’t want it to suck, it’s not supposed to suck, damn it, because this past year at the Haus was amazingly wonderful and he’s got plans for his vlog and for his junior year, and he’s looking forward to playing hockey with Ransom and Holster and Chowder and Nursey and Dex, and living with Lardo, and seeing Jack … seeing lots and lots of Jack …
But right now, everything feels really shitty.
Which is why he’s up at 11pm baking a tart.
The fourth tart.
Because the first three didn’t turn out the way he wanted them to and if he doesn’t get the fourth one right he’s going to murder --
“So kiddo,” his mother says, appearing suddenly at his side, leaning back against the kitchen counter so she can look at him sideways, her arms crossed. “You gonna tell me what’s up?”
“This apricot tartine isn’t working, Mama, and I don’t know what --”
“Dickey.”
Eric sighs and wipes the sweat of his forehead with the back of his wrist.
“The tartine isn’t working.”
“Mmm-hm. Be that as it may, it’s after eleven on a Friday night and you’ve been in the kitchen baking since we finished supper five hours ago. Your father and I are about to head to bed and my mother’s intuition tells me that there’s something keeping you up that’ll keep keeping you up if you don’t spill.”
Eric stares down at half-filled tart pan under his hands, the little half-moons of ripe, sugared apricot lined up in concentric circles from center out towards the crimped edge.
“I just --” he stops and tries again for something a little closer to the truth.
“I just miss everyone,” he says, truthfully. “I don’t feel like I fit here, anymore. My skin feels all tight and itchy, and I keep looking around for the guys on the team even though I know none of ‘em is closer than Wilmington. And then I hate myself for hating it here because it’s not you and Coach that I --” he trails off.
It is hard being here with them right now. But not because he doesn’t love them, or enjoy spending time with them.
“Mmm.” Suzanne says thoughtfully, unfolding her arms and going over to the table to inspect the rejected tartine lined up on cooling racks where Eric can glare at them. “May I try--?” She gestures to the first attempt and when Eric nods goes to get a fork from the silverware drawer.
“Sweetpea, I think that’s just part of growing up and finding your own place in the world,” she says. “Oh, I think this one has just a bit too much … did you use the wildflower honey?” She holds out a forkful for him to taste.
“Sometimes you have to go away for while before you can come home again and … hold on to who you’ve become in the meantime,” she says while he chews. “It takes practice. I remember the summer I moved back in with MooMaw and Pop-Pop after graduation, when I was looking for a teaching job -- Lord! The fights we used to have. Pop-Pop never did stop insisting that as long as I lived under his roof I’d respect a 10pm curfew!” She laughs. “Your poor father had to sneak into my room through the window after they’d gone to bed.”
Eric sighs. “Yeah … I guess.” It’s so much more complicated than that, though.
“I used to say to your daddy, ‘Rich, remember this when we have kids of our own -- they’re gonna find a way to do what they want to, whether we let them or not! Laying down the law isn’t going to help in the slightest” She takes a bite of the second delinquent tart. “Mm -- lemon? Maybe if you cut it with some brown sugar?”
“That’s what I tried with the third one,” Eric gestures, distracted. He’s thinks about his mother and father sneaking around behind his grandparents’ back the summer they were dating. His grandparents had rules about unmarried cohabitation and they couldn’t afford their own place until both of them found work. He’s heard the story so many times before -- the weekend drives they’d take up into the Blue Ridge Mountains to go camping, cold nights spent with their sleeping bags zipped together, so they could enjoy what his mother liked to call “a kiss and a cuddle” away from the watchful eyes of her parents.
It was on a camping trip just like that, a few years later, that Eric himself had been conceived.
“At least Jack is coming down for the 4th of July.” Suzanne is saying. “You’ll get a chance to show him how the American South goes all out on Independence Day! What a sweet boy, taking time out from his training to come down and visit. --Oh, honey, I think this one is much better. You’ve got the balance of citrus and sweet just right to bring out the flavor of the apricots. What didn’t you like about this one?”
“Jack-and-I-are-dating, Mama,” Eric hears himself blurt out, in a rush, hands shaking so much he has to flatten them against the kitchen counter, apricot juice and all, to steady himself. “Jack -- he’s my -- he’s my boyfriend.”
Then, to his own eternal mortification, he says distinctly, “Oh, fuck it,” and bursts into tears just as Coach walks into the kitchen.
There’s a horrible moment when all Eric can hear over the sound of his own slightly-hysterical sobs is utter silence of his parents’ shock. He’s always hated being a crier, the tears just welling up whenever the emotions get too overwhelming to hold inside, and the kids who taunted him at school exploited that mercilessly. He hates more than anything to cry in front of other people, his parents included. He can’t even really parse out what he’s crying about right now -- is he relieved that it’s finally done? Scared about what his parents might say? Irrationally angry at Jack like somehow it’s Jack’s fault Eric had to do this alone? Once he starts crying he can’t stop because it’s all of those things and none of them all tangled up together and his body refuses to cooperate with his angry internal self-instruction to fucking pull yourself together and --
“Baby, baby, oh, oh,” Suzanne’s there at his side, now, pulling him away from the counter and folding him in an enveloping hug that only makes him cry harder, in against her shoulder, as the tension he’s been carrying with him for the past three days tumbles out in a torrent of tears. “Dickey, honey, what is it? Why all these tears? Sweetheart -- you weren’t worried about telling us were you?”
With his face still buried in his mother’s shoulder, all Eric can do is nod damply into her smock.
“Oh, darling,” Suzanne rocks him like he’s a fussy toddler. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Honey, you must know we already knew?”
“Already knew?” Eric asks, thickly, groping for one of the kitchen chairs and dropping into the seat, wiping his face on the hem of his floury t-shirt.
Coach, who hasn’t said a word, reaches for the box of tissues by the phone and hands them to Suzanne who hands them to Eric.
Eric blows his nose.
“That you liked boys?” Suzanne’s voice is worried, now. “I mean, we weren’t sure -- your daddy reminded me more than once it’s not my place to slap a label on anyone without their permission, and there’s nothing that says a child who knows his way around the kitchen and has a taste for flowery curtains is going to grow up to be gay. We didn’t want to --”
Eric is pretty sure he’s lost the plot of this conversation entirely.
“Wait -- what? You -- you thought I was gay but --”
“I’m sorry, son,” Coach says, sitting down in the chair next to Eric, elbows on his knees, fiddling with his wedding ring like he does when things get serious. “Maybe we should have said something, your mama and me. But we didn’t want you to think --”
Eric’s brain is doing a rapid recapitulation of his childhood memories, sorting through every available shred of evidence that his parents -- he’d known they disapproved of the pastors at church who condemned homosexuality, he’d known they’d voted the Democratic ticket in every election he could remember, supported the campaign against Amendment 1 in 2004 -- but he’d known other people who talked gay rights in the abstract but still reacted badly when confronted by the reality when someone in their own family or circle of friends came out. He’s always assumed that part of the awkwardness he and Coach have lived with since Eric’s middle school years has to do with Coach’s fear that Eric is gay.
“I --” he starts, and then stops because he mind is absolutely blank.
Suzanne and Coach exchange a look, and Coach clears his throat. “You should know,” he says, haltingly, “you should know that I understand a bit about liking men, myself.”
Suzanne squeezes Eric’s shoulder. “I met your father when he was with my boyfriend’s roommate Alex,” she says. “It was the early nineties, you understand, and to most people homosexuality was all about AIDS and bisexuality didn’t even exist.”
Eric carefully pulls another tissue out of the box, folds it neatly into quarters, and blows his nose a second time. He notes that his hands have stopped shaking and he actually feels perfectly calm. Beyond calm. He’s possibly the calmest he’s ever been in his life because he cannot even begin to understand what is happening here.
“So, wait --” he finally says. “You’re telling me that somehow you just forgot to mention that you’re bisexual. To a son you thought was probably gay.”
“Or bisexual,” Suzanne adds.
“Oh. My. God.” is all Eric can say, staring at his father.
“We couldn’t tell you when you were younger,” Coach says. “I mean -- I was, I am, with your mother. That’s what you needed to know, as a child. And I work with kids. I would have lost my job if the school board had found out that I --”
“I--” Eric says again. “I can’t even --” Part of him is furious that his parents somehow didn’t think this was relevant to him. How dare they assume he would just know that they -- what do they think he is, fucking psychic?
But the tide of relief that he feels over having said it, finally, and to have the world not come crashing down but somehow stabilize under his feet just --
They have so much to talk about, but right now he needs to -- “I think -- I think I’d like to go call Jack?” he says. “Is that alright? And then maybe … maybe we could do waffles in the morning?”