Chapter Text
Even though Eric had been the one to raise the question of the Bittle family annual 4th of July cookout -- the one to express a preference for taking Jack not just as the family guest, as a friend from college, but as his boyfriend -- it doesn’t actually hit him until they’re halfway to Aunt Josie’s that Jack actually said yes. And that they’re going to get out of the van on the other end of this drive as a couple.
It’s climbing toward a real feel of 103℉ outside and still Eric feels a cold sweat break out across his skin.
Jack reaches over from where he’s sitting behind Suzanne and squeezes Eric’s knee. “You okay?”
Suzanne takes her eyes off the road to spare a glance over her shoulder. “You need to drive honey? Or need me to pull over?” As a child Eric had been prone to getting carsick and even now sometimes if he’s not in the front seat he starts feeling queasy. But this time, it’s not his stomach that’s the problem.
“No, Mama, I’m fine. Just nervous.” He puts a hand over Jack’s where it still rests on his knee and interlaces their fingers.
“I talked to Josie this morning,” Coach says. “She and Tim know you and Jack will be there and everyone else'll follow their lead. Doug and Tracy will probably be uncomfortable, but they say anything directly to you and you just tell them to take it up with your mama and me.”
Eric sighs.
“We can always turn around and drive straight home,” Suzanne reminds him. “They’re family but that doesn’t mean they have permission to speak their mind without consequence. I’ve unfriended cousins on Facebook before now and I will do so again if necessary.”
“Thanks,” Eric bites his lip. It’s one thing to be bold in front of strangers or parents who may frustrate him sometimes but who he knows, now, love him and are ready to fold Jack into the family. It’s another thing to take Jack out onto a lawn full of maybe fifty Bittle relatives and feel the eyes of his grandpa and his great-grandma and his aunts and uncles and cousins all watching him.
“Breathe, Bits.” Jack murmurs. “We got your back, eh?”
When they pull into the drive twenty minutes later, the circular drive is already filled with half a dozen vehicles and the barbeque is in full swing on the long, sloping lawn that leads down to the apple orchard. Someone’s set up the croquet set and a couple of the older cousins are wrangling the littluns in a game while the burgers and bratwursts and ears of corn roast on the long grilles set up on the deck by the pool.
“You boys help me take this food into the kitchen, why don’t you,” Suzanne says, popping the trunk and pushing it all the way up to reveal the hampers and stacked Tupperware of cupcakes in red, white, and blue, blueberry and strawberry-rhubarb pies, the heavy cream for whipping, and the mason jars of chocolate-dipped pretzel sticks with their patriotic sprinkles. Jack and Eric had spent much of the morning helping Suzanne with the production-line baking that will end up providing dessert for the clan.
Arms laden with food, Jack and Eric enter the house through the sliding glass doors that lead directly to the kitchen, and Eric realizes his mother’s genius as soon as he sets foot inside. Because this is familiar ground. Ever since he was as young as the cousins out playing croquet he’s been more comfortable in here with the womenfolk than he has been with the men in the den watching Wimbledon or tending the meat on the grille. Here there’s something to do with his hands, and if he makes himself useful scooping watermelon or whipping cream or mixing the shortcake batter he doesn’t have to talk about what he’s doing these days in school or skirt the awkward silences that surround the parts of his life he doesn’t really want to share.
“Oh, Suzanne! Eric!” Aunt Josie comes bustling over from the sink. “You can just put those -- doesn’t anything need to be refrigerated? There’s space left on the second shelf. And you must be Jack.” She wipes her hands on the towel tucked into her belt loop and sticks out a hand as Jack sets down the hamper and the tray of pies he’s been carrying.
“Thank you for having me,” he says, accepting the hand she proffers in greeting.
“This is your first visit to Georgia, Suzanne tells me?”
“I’ve been to Atlanta before, for --” Jack catches himself, “-- for conferences. But this is my first visit to Madison. It’s beautiful. Those are your apple trees?” He gestures toward the edge of the orchard, where someone has strung a couple of hammocks between the trees. Doug and Tracy’s three kids are taking turns climbing into and dumping themselves out of them.
“They are. Feel free to go for a wander,” Aunt Josie nods. “Eric can show you down to the river.”
“Just let me get this cream whipped for the --” getting to the orchard requires crossing the lawn full of people and Eric would rather stay here in the house for now, where his mother and Aunt Josie are already busy comparing shortbread recipes.
“Go on, son,” Coach says, coming into the kitchen with the last two hampers of food. “You’ve been helping your mother all day. Take Jack down to the river. Tim says the pool’s nice and deep this year, and they put up a new rope for swinging.”
They skirt the edge of the party hand in hand, managing to wave to a handful of people without actually stopping to chat. Eric breathes a sigh of relief as they make it past the first two rows of trees and the chatter and whack of balls and mallets. If they’re gone for half an hour his parents will field the first round of curious questions before he and Jack have to make polite conversation over burgers and beer.
“I should have brought my camera,” Jack says, ducking under a low-hanging branch. “This is beautiful.”
“When I was a kid, I used to imagine being a farmer when I grew up,” Eric confesses. “Or, actually,” he laughs, “I think I wanted to be a farmer’s wife. Every time we came to visit Aunt Josie she was in the kitchen preparing food and I thought what an amazing job that would be -- to grow and cook up delicious food to feed people.”
“You’re good at that,” Jack says. He’s quiet for a few minutes while they follow a row of Jonagolds down the rolling hillside to the riverbank. They stop once or twice so Jack can pull his phone out of his pocket and take a few pictures of the fruit heavy on the branches, the late-afternoon sun slanting through the humid air, Eric as he reaches to swing himself up onto a branch.
“Do you still want to?” Jack asks, his face turned up to look at Eric where he’s balanced on his belly along the twisting branch.
“Want to what?” Eric rests his chin on the back of his hand and reaches down to drag his thumb across Jack’s bottom lip. “Oh, be a farmer’s wife?”
“Mmm.” Jack turns his head to follow the path of Eric’s hand along his jaw, pressing his lips to the pad of Eric’s thumb. As he turns, the stretch of his neck reveals the edge of a bruise Eric left the night before in the meat of Jack’s shoulder. Eric feels his stomach clench at the sight, at the knowledge that he’s left marks on Jack’s body. Mine he thinks. He’s mine mine mine.
He gives Jack’s question a moment or two of serious thought while enjoying the advantage of height the tree branch gives him over Jack.
“I don’t think so?” he says, finally. “Running a family farm is being a small business owner except you’re entirely dependent on things outside of your control like the weather. One hail storm and -- pfft.” He pulls his hand back from Jack’s cheek and rolls back off the branch, dropping softly to the ground so they can continue their walk.
“What about you? Did you always want to play hockey?” He’s ashamed to realize he’s always assumed this to be the case.
Jack captures Eric’s hand again, interlacing their fingers and pulling Eric into his side as the walk. Eric is growing used to this, to moving through the world attached to this other person who always seems to be less than an arm’s length away. The touching is new, but it feels like the natural extension of the assured proximity he and Jack have had since last August. Eric is starting to feel entitled to having Jack as accessible to him as rolling over in the night. He’s already dreading next Saturday morning when he has to drop Jack at the airport and let him fly back to Pawtucket alone.
Jack, like Eric, considers the question before responding.
“I’ve always loved playing hockey,” he says, finally. “It’s -- there’s nothing else like it. And the one time I stopped playing, for nearly a year after the overdose, I never stopped missing it. Even when I wanted to hate it, I couldn’t.” He sighs. “But I’m also ... “
Eric holds his tongue.
“I don’t know how to say this any way that doesn’t make me sound like an asshole,” Jack admits, as they approach the water. Eric slips out of his sneakers and sits down on the bank so he can let his feet down into the comparatively cool water of the spring. Jack drops to the ground beside him and does the same.
“So just be an asshole about it,” Eric says, bumping Jack’s shoulder with his own. “I promise I’ll laugh at you and then we’ll figure out a better way to say it next time.”
“What I’ve been thinking is,” Jack says, leaning back into Eric’s shoulder so they’re supporting each other as they paddle their feet in an effort to cool down. “I’m good at hockey. Really good at hockey. But just because I’m good at hockey … everyone assumes because I’m good at hockey that’s what I should do with my life. And I don’t want to stop playing. I don’t mean -- but sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice. To make it my job.”
“What would you do if you weren’t a professional hockey player?” Eric asks, after it becomes clear Jack is done with his thought. Eric himself has no idea what he wants to do with his life beyond the relatively-new certainty that he wants to spend it with Jack. Wherever and however that will be possible. So he doesn’t feel like he has much room to judge here.
Jack shrugs against Eric’s arm. “I’ve...never actually thought about that. At least...not for a really long time. I mean. Coaching was the other option, the fallback option. But sometimes I wonder..." he gestures around them, the sweep of his arm taking in the orchard behind them. “I’ve been wondering what it would be like to make a life in one place. And do what you could to stay there, you know?”
As the fireflies are coming out, Eric finds Jack sitting in a quiet corner of the yard with a sleeping infant on his lap, talking to the infant’s parents -- Eric’s cousin Caleb and his fiancée Kallista -- as the three of them bend over Jack’s phone.
“Eric, have you seen these?” Kallista says when she sees him. “You didn’t tell us your boy here was such an amazing a photographer!”
Eric leans over the adirondack chair Jack’s sitting in, sliding his forearms over Jack’s shoulders so he can lay his cheek against Jack’s head and see what they’re looking at. Jack thumbs through a handful of photographs of the orchard, of Eric -- Eric buries his face in Jack’s hair out of embarrassment because every single snapshot positively telegraphs Eric’s joy at being the subject of Jack’s gaze --, of the morning food preparation that morning, the pancake breakfast and parade the day before.
“You say you’re working professionally, now?” Kallista asks, turning to Caleb. “Honey, we should hire him for the wedding!”
“I --” Jack starts, then stops. “When are you getting married?”
“Next summer,” Kallista says. “June 18th.”
“I’d be honored,” Jack says, shifting the listing baby in his lap as he juggles the phone and finally hands it up to Eric so he can resettle himself. “It would be an honor to -- I mean,” he glances up at Eric. “Would it be okay with you if we --?”
“Yeah, of course,” Eric says, feeling a little dazed. It’s been a long evening, not entirely free of furtive discussions and pointed glances. His aunt Tracy and her husband Doug had, as his dad had predicted, kept their distance and left early with the kids -- a departure, Eric feels, that was hastened by the fact that Jack had proven especially popular with the youngest in attendance. His mind flicks back through the sequence of events and realizes that it probably isn’t an accident that just as Tracy and Doug were herding their offspring toward the car, Kallista had planted herself in front of Jack and dumped a giggling Caroline into his accepting hands.
Well, Eric thinks. His cousin Caleb -- whom until now he’d remembered as a vaguely domineering playmate several years his senior -- has suddenly risen in Eric’s estimation if this is the sort of woman Caleb has chosen to marry.
“Do you have a card? Or - if you have a website we can show your portfolio to the wedding planner!” Kallista is digging in the nearby diaper bag and re-emerges with her phone.
“I, uh -- I didn’t bring any business cards with me,” Jack says, floundering slightly. “And, I --”
“-- we’re in the middle of re-designing his website,” Eric says, feeling Jack’s pulse climbing under his thumb. “How about we email you when it’s back up with all his most recent work? Here,” he straightens and thumbs through the screens of Jack’s phone until he calls up the contacts directory. “Give me your email and phone and I’ll set a reminder in his phone. When’s your next meeting with the wedding planner? I’ve been tinkering with some of the stylesheets but if we have a deadline...”
It’s nearing midnight when Suzanne turns the van back into their drive and presses the garage door opener so she can pull straight into the garage before killing the engine. They all pile wearily out of the van and troop into the house.
“You boys go on up,” Suzanne says. “I need to go out and water the garden before going to bed.”
“And I’m gonna watch the weather,” Coach says. “Sounds like we might get some turbulent storms day after tomorrow -- we’ll need to decide whether or not the tomatoes need covering.”
Eric and Jack drag themselves upstairs without talking and go through the motions of brushing their teeth and washing up before falling into bed. Jack strips off and steps into the shower while Eric is standing there rinsing with mouthwash. Without even asking in so many words, Eric spits, strips, and steps in after him. He’s so tired it doesn’t feel sexual so much as necessary: he just wants to be where Jack is, and Jack’s in the shower. So that’s where Eric goes.
Jack’s standing in the dim -- neither one of them bothered to turn on the overhead light -- with the cool water running down over his dark hair and bare shoulders. He’s been wearing his glasses all evening -- his Clark Kent disguise, he’d said with a smirk -- and now he looks strangely vulnerable without them. Eric reaches up to wipe the water droplets from Jack’s eyelashes, then wraps himself around Jack's front and lets the water wash over them both.
It’s both sexual and not, pressing his ear to Jack’s chest and listening to Jack’s heartbeat underneath the white noise of the shower. He slides his palms down the small of Jack’s back and over the swell of his ass, feeling the way the cool water is warming as it passes across over-warm skin. He can feel Jack’s dick soft against his belly and the part of his body that isn’t beyond exhausted clenches with the memory of what Eric’s now allowed to do with that intimate part of Jack -- the sounds Jack makes when Eric touches him, mouths at him, settles his weight just so.
On the other side of the bathroom door, he hears his mom or dad climb up the stair and make their way along the hall to the master bedroom. Eric sighs and steps back from Jack, who catches his elbow with a wet hand as if loathe to let him go.
“We should -- my parents will need the bathroom,” Eric says, apologetically. “We should finish up in here.”
So they get out and dry off and duck across the hall to the privacy of Eric’s bedroom wrapped in damp towels.
Jack moves to dig out a fresh pair of boxers from his suitcase but Eric says, “Sweetheart, could we --? I just want you naked.” So they sink down onto Eric’s mattress and Eric wraps himself back around Jack, slinging a leg over his thighs and draping an arm across Jack's chest so that the tips of his fingers just graze the purpling hickey he left at the base of Jack’s throat.
Jack turns his head to nuzzle at Eric’s temple, pressing a sleepy kiss, then another, against Eric’s heavy eyelids.
“Mmm.” Eric manages, pursing his lips in the ghost of a return kiss.
“Rechargeable batteries,” he murmurs half to himself.
“Hmm?” Jack’s nearly asleep himself, hand slipping off the back of Eric’s shoulder where he’s folded Eric close.
“Touching you,” Eric elaborate, patting Jack’s chest with a sleep-heavy hand. “ ‘s like recharging batteries. ‘f I did this every night, probably wouldn’t need coffee ever again.”
“Every night is good,” Jack murmurs. “Promise?”
“Promise,” Eric says, and drifts off to sleep.