Chapter Text
“...and what muffins do you have today?” Eric asks the waiter, handing back the menu.
“Let’s see we have blueberry, bran, cornmeal and --” the young man glances back over his shoulder toward the kitchen, “-- raspberry, I think. Do you want me to check?”
Eric waves the offer away, “No, that’s fine, I’d like a cornmeal muffin buttered and grilled -- with a side of maple syrup. Would y’all be able to do that for me?”
“Grilled...maple syrup. You got it,” he says. Showing off, Jack thinks, because he’s not writing any of this down. “Enjoy your coffee -- food’ll be up in just a few minutes.”
“Mmm,” Eric nods agreeably, collecting Jack’s menu and handing that over too before the server turns on his heel and heads back to the kitchen. Jack tries not to worry about whether or not what he ordered is what he should have ordered. He’d told himself before Bitty arrived that he wouldn’t stop himself from going out just because pre-season training is coming up and the pressure of his first season performance is looming closer every day.
They’ve lucked into a window booth at Modern Diner mostly because it’s a weekday and because Jack had teased and cajoled and kissed and tickled Eric out of bed this morning so they could be at the restaurant by 7am. He’d gotten away with it because Eric’s been excited to eat here since Jack had told him it was the first diner in the United States to be accepted on the National Register of Historic Places. Jack had dug up the NRHP application online and suggested that Bitty could probably count a breakfast visit there as pre-semester research for his American history seminar.
“Do you think they’d let me tour the kitchen?” Eric asks now, tucking his hands around the diner mug of hot pot coffee and craning his neck to look back toward the extension where the kitchen is housed.
“You could call up the owner for an interview?” Jack suggests, nudging Eric’s calf with his foot under the table. He slides his foot out of his sandals and fits the arch of his right foot to the curve of Eric’s gastrocnemius. Eric frowns and wrinkles his nose at Jack, shaking his head ever so slightly over his coffee mug. But at the same time, he also leans into Jack’s foot, momentarily capturing Jack’s toes between his knees before Jack pulls away and puts his foot back on the floor under their table. So Jack counts it a win.
Everyone around them is busy with their food, with conversation, or the morning paper. And they’re not talking about anything that they wouldn’t have talked about at any point last year on a coffee date at Annie’s.
Jack resists the palpable urge to lean forward over the table and kiss Bitty’s censorious nose.
Eric’s been slightly on edge since their meeting with Erin. They’d stopped at the grocery store on the way home from the arena and made it halfway through the store before Eric had uncharacteristically pled tiredness and asked if they could just order something for dinner instead. He’d spent the evening baking cookies -- chocolate chip, white chocolate almond cherry, raisin pecan -- while Jack played Eric a few of his favorite episodes of Vinyl Cafe and fiddled with the manual settings on his Nikon, continuing his experiments in Bittle’s Food Photography.
“You’ll just have to put some in the freezer and feed the team...or something,” Eric had said, as he loaded the dishwasher and set it running while the last sheet of cookies was in the oven. “Do you think Lester or Xavier would like some?” He’d met Xavier when Jack stopped to pick up his mail on their way in from the store.
“Go on,” Jack had said, reaching out to give Bitty’s flour-dusted hip a reassuring squeeze. “It helps you to feed people. Take him a plate.” And then he’d slid off the stool he was sitting on, watching, to dig out the package of still-shrink-wrapped Tupperware from the back of the cupboard so they’d have something to store what was left.
Jack’s pretty sure he knows what’s bothering Eric. But he’s also reluctant to actually ask because he doesn’t want to hear Eric say in so many words how intimidated he is by talk of crafting a narrative and getting out in front of the story and coordinated media strategy. Jack knows how bad it can get and also knows that Erin is one of the best he’s ever worked with. She’d been warm and funny and he thinks genuinely charmed by Eric. (Who wouldn’t be, Jack points out to himself, and then Well, it took you the better part of a year, remember?) But Jack had had his reasons that in retrospect had nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with being scared of making the same mistake twice.
Which is a fear he can no longer reach out and touch, that no longer feels tangible, because it’s so...unsubstantiated by any part of who Eric is in his life. But his brain didn’t know that, at first, and all it was interested in telling him was danger danger Danger Danger DANGER.
The waiter -- Jack’s missed his name, though the guy introduced himself when he came over with the menus -- is back with their plates and ticks off the order as he sets the plates down in front of them: Jack’s leek and redskin potato omelet, Eric’s corn beef hash and eggs with a side of grilled corn muffin and maple syrup, more coffee and cream.
“So what do you want to do today?” Jack asks, as they dig in.
“Would you hate me if I said I wanted to go back h -- back to the loft and spend the day in my pajamas?” Eric asks, with an apologetic tilt of his head.
Not if I get to take you back out of them, Jack thinks but doesn’t say because public spaces.
“Wouldn’t hate you,” Jack says with a laugh. “But there’s a couple of books that came in for me down at the library. Would you mind if we swung by when they open so I can pick them up? If you don’t want to come along, I can drop you off first.”
Eric pokes at his hash before responding, and Jack has to stop himself from reaching out and pulling Eric’s free hand into his own. “Yeah,” he says, finally, “that’s fine.”
“We could stop by Wildflour on the way home?” Jack says. “You haven’t had one of their cinnamon knots yet.”
Eric smiles, though his shoulders are tight with worry. “Are you trying to bribe me with vegan baked goods Mr. Zimmermann?”
“You caught me,” Jack smiles back.
It’s when the waiter brings Jack’s change back to the table and hesitates, noticeably, while Jack’s sorting out $1s and $5s for the tip that Jack realizes a split second before it happens that he’s been identified.
“So...Jack Zimmermann, right?” the waiter asks.
Across the table, Eric freezes with his phone halfway out of the front pocket of his bag.
Jack slides his face into studied politeness and smiles up the server. “Yup,” he says. “That would be me.” He mentally crosses his fingers that his voice isn’t betraying the frustration he feels on Eric’s behalf, because he doesn’t want to alienate the local Falcs fans before he’s even played his first game.
“I read about you signing with the Falcs,” the guy says, approvingly, slightly awkwardly, “so, you know, welcome to Rhode Island?”
Jack feels like his smile is a little more genuine this time around as he folds a generous tip over and holds it up between index and middle finger for the waiter to take. “Thanks,” he says, meaning it, “my mother’s family is from New England so it feels like home.”
“I’m just gonna --” Eric is sliding out of the opposite side of the booth, gesturing in the direction of the restroom. “I’ll meet you at the car?”
Jack nods.
He's waiting next to the car in the rapidly-filling parking lot, flipping through his various updates -- email, text, Facebook, AccuWeather, the headlines from CBC and NPR -- when Eric comes out of the restaurant and crosses to the Honda. Jack unlocks the car and they both get in.
“I’m sorry,” Eric says, dropping his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes.
“For...?” Of all the things Jack has been waiting for Eric to say, I’m sorry isn’t one of them. “I should be the one -- it happens, sometimes. He was actually pretty cool about it.”
“That’s why I’m --” Eric sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers as Jack turns the key and the engine turns over. Out of the corner of his eye, as he checks his mirrors, Jack sees Eric’s hand drop back into his lap. Then he feels the warmth and weight through the cloth of his own cargo shorts as Eric settles his palm against the curve of Jack’s thigh where he likes to rest it as they’re driving.
“I just didn’t -- I wasn’t expecting -- I didn’t think about it being so fucking hard,” Eric tries, stumbling over the words.
“...dating me?” Jack tries, tentatively, just to get the worst possibility out there first.
Eric cuffs him, sharply, behind his right ear.
“You know better than that, Jack Zimmermann. No. Jesus. Not dating you. It's hard not...not being public about it. But also having the only option for being public about it really, really public.”
Jack’s mouth is dry because this is what he’s been worried Bitty is gun-shy about, the public scrutiny. And it’s a part of Jack’s life that isn’t going to go away. It might get better, then worse, then better again, but until he retires -- and after, if his father’s post-NHL career is any guide -- he (and now Eric) will be one of those faces, one of those names.
He reminds himself to breathe.
“I’m --” he tries, but has to lick his lips.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Eric says, reaching up to cup his cheek awkwardly with the palm of his hand -- the angle is all wrong -- “no, Jack, don’t turn this into -- this isn’t your fault. It’s just...I’m just not used to...” he gestures with the hand that isn’t touching Jack, a motion that says all of this. “I was kinda hoping we could be just...Jack and Eric for a little while longer, like we were in Georgia.” He laughs, and Jack can hear the pain and the humor in equal measure. “It just feels ironic, you know? That I was so much less worried about being seen with you in public when we were down in Madison?”
“I’m sorry,” Jack apologizes, sure that he’s responsible for something, somewhere.
“Not your fault, Jack,” Eric repeats, rolling his head in contradiction against the headrest. “It’s not your fault the whole fucking industry is so homophobic no one else has been willing to come out first.”
“No, but…” he bites his lip and falls silent as they roll up to a red light.
“No buts,” Eric admonishes.
They drive the rest of the way to the public library in a silence broken only by the low murmur of the radio that Jack has left on at a nearly inaudible level.
As he pulls into an empty parking space across the street from the library and kills the engine -- they have about twenty minutes to wait before the library opens at nine -- Jack breaks the silence.
“Wanna get out of town for a couple of days?” he offers.
“Really?” Eric twists to look at him. “Where?”
“We could go out to the Cape?” Jack says, the idea taking shape in his mind. “The cottage is being rented out, now, until after Labor Day. But we could stay with Uncle Billy and Yannick? Or I could rent us a place?” It’s not like people in Wellfleet don’t know who he is, but there it’s a different sort of fame...Oh, you’re Ali’s boy, there’s always someone around to remember. Didn’t you end up at Samwell on a hockey scholarship? or, Hey, aren’t you Yannick’s nephew? Tell him Steve says hi!
Eric smiles, and it’s the first fully relaxed smile Jack has seen on him all day. Jack will do anything to ensure that it stays.
“I’d like that,” Eric says, leaning across the gearshift to brush a kiss against Jack’s mouth. “You're sure your uncles wouldn’t mind?”
“Completely, totally sure,” Jack says. “You know they can’t wait to meet you, right?”
“Well, I can’t wait to meet them, either,” Eric says, settling back into his seat. “So I guess that makes us even.”
While they wait for the library to open, Jack pulls out his phone and sends his uncles a text.
Eric and I are thinking about coming out to the Cape tomorrow.
Maybe spend the night.
You free?
The reply comes seconds later.
Yes.
The guest bedroom is available.
You want tickets to the show?
Does Eric have any allergies, dietary needs/preferences?
Apart from beer.
Pick us up some Crooked Current on your way.
He tips the screen so Eric can see.
Eric smiles again, “Hey! Do you think theatre types like cookies?”