Archive of Our Own ^beta

The team's group chat has Jack feeling depressed. Everyone's doing their own thing; Bittle's working through cookbooks and documenting the results on instagram like it's his job, Ransom and Holster are crossing the border so frequently to see one another that they deserve a membership rewards card, and Shitty's snap stories are their own special category of art. The only thing Jack's done are dead lifts in the gym his dad built for him in their basement. Every night he'll go for a spin on the rink in their backyard, but before he can get his legs truly warmed up his dad will call him in, and that's the end of that. His life is basically on hold until the Habs camp starts up, the one thing that truly marks the beginning of his summer.

His parents don't walk around on eggshells around him anymore, but there's always a tinge of something in their interactions with him. His dad never talks about what happened, but Jack knows that it's always in the back of his dad's mind. Every ounce of criticism that he lobs Jack's way has a pregnant pause at the end, like he wants to tack on, and you better not cry about it or do anything stupid just because I called you out on this, but he never actually gives voice to the words.

It makes for a tense mood around their house, and has Jack longing for the days when he was actually trusted around his anxiety meds. Eventually he can't take it anymore and packs his bags a few days before camp is set to start. There isn't any real reason to show up early; they're holding it in Brossard, which is a short trip on the Autoroute 10 from them, but Jack knows for a fact that all the prospects' hotel rooms are booked and waiting for them.

His dad helps carry his gear to the car, tells him that it's a good idea for Jack to take the initiative on this and show up early, prove that he's eager. After all, he has so much to make up for, has so many doubters that he has to silence.

Luck of the draw has him rooming with a Russian kid who reminds him a little bit of Bittle: young, excitable, smiles a lot. His accent's thick but his English is good and Jack's happy to help him out with the French guide menu on their tv. He's visibly disappointed when Jack tells him that he's from the area, so they can't share a sense of foreignness. The disappointment morphs into an awkward mix of awed fear when he learns from some of the other prospects during dinner that Jack is the Bob Zimmermann's son.

When they're climbing into bed that night, he asks Jack, "What's it like?"

Jack doesn't bother to ask him to clarify what he's asking about. It's been asked of him more than a few times in his life, and he's never managed to pin down an answer that really translates his feelings. There's the line he tells the media, the one he shares with his classmates and fans, the one he has for teammates, the one he has for guys like Shitty, who actually know him; there's even the one he tells himself, which changes depending on what kind of mood he's in.

Finally he settles on, "Unfortunate," and his roomie doesn't ask for any more explanation beyond that, the silence stretching between them until they finally crash into sleep.

There's a handful of texts waiting for Jack when he wakes up, Bittle and the rest of the guys having gone wild while he was asleep. Every type of well wishes imaginable have been lauded his way and they help to carry him through his morning routines. He steps on the ice feeling like his Samwell lineys and teammates are right there in the stands with the actual hundreds of Montréal faithfuls.

He puts up a good showing during the morning's practice, and his group manages to squeak out a win during the scrimmage that marks the end of practice. Jack has maybe a minute to catch his breath before media swarms into the locker room. He's still got most of his gear on, so he awkwardly shrugs out of his pads and sticks a baseball cap on his head, brim pulled down low to shadow his eyes against the harsh glare of the camera lights.

Jack answers what feels like the exact same question worded fifteen different ways, so he makes sure to give them the same exact answer just as many times. Yes, it's amazing to try out for the same team his dad played on. No, he's here to prove that he belongs on his own merits, not just because of his dad. They never bring up his fall from grace, because ragging on a kid who nearly killed himself with his anxiety meds is too shitty even for them, apparently, but Jack can tell that they're gnawing at the bit for it to come up, waiting for him to slip up and mention it so that they can talk about it too. Joke's on them, because Jack's been media trained since he was in mites, and that shit just isn't going to happen.

When media availability is finally up and the reporters are herded out, it feels like all the air inside the room has finally been let back in. Jack looks around and sees that everyone basically looks as freaked out as he feels. Someone laughs and it helps to break the ice; before long they're all chuckling a little bit as they get undressed and head in and out of the showers.

After they’re all dressed, a member of the PR team comes in with a pair of camera men following behind him. "All right, guys," he says, clapping his hands a few times to get their collective attention. "I hope you're excited for bonding exercises. Today's gonna be a crash course in nutrition, grocery shopping, and cooking for idiots."

Nutrition isn't overly hard. Jack's good with numbers, and from that point on it's easy to figure out his minimum caloric intake based on his body factors and the amount of energy hockey takes. It's basically what the team’s nutritionist at Samwell has been yelling at them all about since his freshman year.

Grocery shopping is a little harder, but not by much. The store they take them to has basically every type of grain known to man. Jack is so unexpectedly amused that he actually remembers to pull out his phone and take a picture. His first thought is to drop it into the team's group conversation, but he thinks the better of it just before it's too late. He doesn't need to give the whole team an excuse to chirp him.

Instead, he pulls open Snapchat and snaps it just to Bittle. Feeling accomplished, Jack stuffs his phone back into his pocket and grabs a few bags of rice with different grain lengths, and a box of funky colored pasta too.

When they get back to the kitchen at the rink and are waiting for ovens to preheat and water to come to a boil, Jack checks his phone and sees that Bittle's replied to the snap with a quick video of himself spazzing out, asking Jack a million questions that Jack can't actually hear, because he always keeps his phone on silent with the volume turned all the way down. Inexplicably, it makes Jack smile — a small piece of normalcy around all the new things that he's been learning, unexpected but welcome all the same. A couple of the guys standing nearest to him try to peak over Jack's shoulder to see what he's smirking about, so Jack thumbs off the screen of his phone and tucks it back into his pocket.

His cooking attempt is a disaster, but Bittle's never been an asshole about stuff like that — or anything, really, not even when Jack's given him cause to — and Jack's still feeling good from Bittle's excited reply earlier, so he sends a picture of his failed pot-pie and subpar fried rice Bittle's way.

The rest of the camp is more of the same. Every morning they do drills, practice, and wrap things up with a scrimmage. Then he does media shit, followed up with whatever life lesson is on the docket for the day, stuff with official names that Jack doesn't bother to remember, but that basically boil down to An Introduction to Not Spending All Your Money in One Place, Kid, or, How Not to Be an Asshole To Any Minority Teammates or Fans 101. They even have one afternoon of team bonding, where they shoot the fuck out of each other with paintball guns, leaving more than a few angry welts in the places their protective gear doesn’t cover, stinging souvenirs for them to take home with them.

Whenever he actually remembers, Jack will pull out his phone and texts the guys about the things he finds cool. More often than not though, he finds himself doing something lame, which means that the only person he can send it to is Bittle.

By the time camp is done, Jack's actually realizing he's gonna miss some of the rag-tag group of guys that have attached themselves to him. They exchange numbers, and his Russian roomie actually hugs him once they've finished packing up and are about to check out of the hotel.

It's strange, because Jack's summer has only just begun, so it doesn't feel all that sad to him. He has two more camps to go to, but most of these kids are headed back home to relax and work on their conditioning until the Habs have their development camp in the early fall. Jack doesn't know if it's the fact that he isn't signed with the team, or if it's his age, or if it's because he knows he'll be playing with Samwell next season no matter how good or bad he does at these camps, but he kinda feels like he's just going through the motions.

The thought scares him a little, reminds him too much of how he felt right before he fucked up and nearly got himself killed.

He hugs his roommate closer to his chest and makes a silent promise to himself that he won't let the summer go to waste, that he'll actually make use of being in cities where nobody knows or cares about him, to actually do something selfish for once.

It's less than a two hour flight from Montréal to Boston, with an hourlong Uber ride up to Wilmington after he lands tacked on to that, so Jack winds up checking out and in to two different hotels on the same day. He's early again, Bruins camp not starting for another two days, but Jack wasn't overly inclined to check in with his parents before shipping out again.

He drops his bags at the foot of the bed furthest from the door, claiming it as his own, and passes out, sleeping for a solid sixteen hours. It's dark out when he wakes up, disoriented and hungrier than shit. Jack glances at the clock and chews on his lip for a while before picking up the hotel phone and ringing up room service and ordering a late, late dinner — or an early, heavy breakfast; Jack isn't sure what it counts as, exactly.

When the food arrives, Jack eats it slowly and stares at his phone. Finally, he reaches for it and pulls open the App Store. He installs Grindr before he can really think about what it is he's doing.

It takes another three hours of flopping back and forth in bed and half-watching bad, late-night tv, but Jack eventually talks himself into opening up the app and setting up a profile. There's no way in hell he's using a picture with his face in it, so he goes into the hotel bathroom and feels like an idiot as he reaches behind himself to take off his t-shirt and tries to find the best way to take a picture of his torso without looking like a tryhard.

It only gets worse from there. There's so many fucking questions and he doesn't have any idea how to fill any of them out. He gets irrationally upset that Apple hasn't made a hockey stick emoji yet, because it's the only thing that he can think of to use as a headline. He wastes five minutes of his life staring at it forlornly before deciding to type in Be Better, because he can't think of anything else. After all the stress that caused, Jack decides to skip the about me section all together.

Filling in his age, height, weight, ethnicity, and body type are easier, since all he has to do is input actual facts. Relationship status is also depressingly easy, but he stalls out once he has to specify what he's looking for. Picking right now feels so sketchy, but it's the actual truth, so he taps that and hits done before he can change his mind.

A grid of all the guys closest to him pops up, little square pictures of bare chests and smiling faces. Smack dab in the middle is a picture of a guy laying down in bed, shirtless; he's pretty built, and has his arm up by his face so that his eyes and nose are shadowed. Jack is so suddenly, intensely aroused that he hits the home button in shock, exiting out of the app. He turns off the screen and plugs it back into the charger and tosses it face down onto the hotel night stand, face burning, dick thickening up in his sweats embarrassingly.

Jack tells himself that he has all week, that downloading the damn thing and setting up a profile is accomplishment enough for one day.

His roommate shows up the next morning, a kid the Bruins drafted in the second round earlier in the summer. Jack can't help but wonder if the team's management are trying to tell him something, pairing him up with all these high draft picks, but he tells himself that he's being paranoid and to let it go before he drives himself crazy.

He's serious and quiet, which Jack can appreciate, but just shy enough that the captain in Jack takes pity on him, has Jack asking questions so that they can get to know each other a little better. The conversation finally starts coming naturally when he learns that the kid is slated to go to Harvard. Jack talks shit about the Crimson and gives him tips about how to juggle classes and college hockey, and by the end of the day they're more comfortable in each others space.

Hockey wise, things go okay. The benefit of going to more than one camp means that Jack has an idea of how the routines of it work now. His attempt at cooking is leaps above what anyone else makes; which isn't to say that it's good, but it's better — is the best, and that's all Jack cares about. He feels smug enough about it all to snap Bittle a video of his plate, deciding at the last minute to swing the camera at his face so that Bittle can see his pleased expression.

He balances his fake checkbook and picks out decent stocks that don't bankrupt him. He still keeps his mouth shut during the anti-discrimination seminar, but he actually considers speaking up during the Q&A portion, something he hadn't even felt comfortable thinking about during the Habs' camp, so he's counting that as progress.

The Bruins are more into promoting than the Habs had been, too. One day they mic him up on the ice and by the end of the day the video is edited and posted online. Jack's always known that Shitty had google alerts set up for all their names, but he never really considered what that meant until Shitty sends a snap to the entire team; he's already cut up the Bruins' official video into one of his stupid snap stories. Jack hates that it actually makes him laugh, but it does.

He opens Grindr a few more times, but he can never actually bring himself to talk to anyone on it. He's half-worried that he's still too close to home, that someone from Samwell will be able to identify the mole on his pec or something, and then he'll be outed. It's a stupid, baseless fear, but he can't seem to toss it aside.

His silence hasn't stopped guys from hitting on him, though; a big red badge on the corner of the app tells him that he has fourteen messages waiting for him. He stares at it all day, but doesn't have a chance to check out what they say until later that night, when his roomie is in the shower.

The first two turn out to be simple messages, just guys saying hi and asking him how his day went. It's so normal, so nice, that Jack lets his guard down, and as a result it comes at a shock when the third guy’s message turns out to be a picture of the guys dick, no words attached. Jack stares at it with his mouth open slightly, even though shit like this was what he'd been expecting when he first signed up. Jack's way too nervous to say hi back to the guys who actually seem to want to talk to him, isn’t ready for how real that would make everything feel. Just sending pictures — communicating like that feels like a means to an end, and Jack thinks he’s ready for that, at least.

For a long time he felt like he couldn't be himself and a hockey player at the same time. As a kid, that meant comparing and moulding himself according to what his dad said, meant that he didn't have as much free time to play as all the other kids in his neighborhood did. When he was a teenager, he had to accept that liking guys made him different to most other players, meant he had to give any hopes he’d ever have of dating so that he could focus on his career. All those contrasting things inside of him kept building up and up, until he didn't know who he was anymore, felt like the weight of the world was constantly crushing him down, until he just couldn’t take it anymore. The whole world knows how that turned out.

When it's his turn to shower, Jack sneaks his phone into the bathroom with him. He stares at himself in the mirror, fist clenched on the counter, mentally psyching himself up. He shoves down his boxers and turns to the side, so that his dick isn't visible in the reflection of the mirror, but the meat of his thigh is, along with a hint of his ass. His thighs are ridiculously huge, just like all hockey player's are. The profile of guy who sent him the picture of his dick says that he likes jocks, and Jack figures that he'll appreciate a shot of them enough that it'll make up for Jack not sending him back a picture of his own dick.

Once he's got it framed right, Jack picks up his phone and takes the picture, sending it right away so that he can't chicken out. The guy replies back right away, even though it's been hours since he first sent his picture to Jack. holy shit, he says, and then follows that up with, I'd fuck the shit out of your thighs. You like that?

Embarrassingly enough, Jack does. He likes it enough to scroll up and take one last quick look at the guy's dick, even though he's already stared at it hard enough to burn it into his memory, and then he hops into the shower and rubs one out, thinking about someone thrusting their dick along the skin of his thigh, pushing into the defined muscles until they come all over him. He comes way too quickly, but it's so intense that he doesn't mind, a rolling orgasm that he can feel all the way down to his toes.

He doesn't know if he'll ever be able to combine his romantic life with a pro career, but this feels like a step in the right direction, even if it is slow going. He makes another promise to himself, since he's been so good at actually keeping them this summer, and vows to actually go out and meet real guys when he's in Chicago.

Jack gets really good at taking nudes that don't really show anything important over the course of the rest of the week. It's all impersonal enough that he doesn't feel overly stressed about being found out, but at the same time it's so much hotter than porn, because the pictures he gets back for him and him alone. He kind of feels like he's settling, staying in his room and sexting with nons instead of having actual conversations or meeting up with anyone. It's a confusing feeling, so close to what he actually wants, yet not even close at all.

Jack's left feeling keyed up and out of sorts, like he's teetering on the edge of something, skin too tight. He starts texting Bittle more, actually talking to him and asking about his day instead of just sending pictures here and there, like he had been doing. It helps to settle him, reminds him that even though he's doing things that he'd never had the courage to do before, he's still the same guy, that the rest of his life hasn’t been turned upside down.

That transitions into him getting into the routine of texting Bitty just before he goes to bed, and for some reason it only feels natural to text him once he's woken up too. Bitty uses emojis like a second language, one that Jack's slowly starting to become fluent in. On the first day of camp in Chicago his roommate is nowhere to be found, and the silence of the morning makes Jack feel settled enough that instead of his usual good morning, he pulls up the emoji keyboard and sends a couple smileys and hand emoji's back Bitty's way.

The Blackhawks are really, really into social media; Jack's got a microphone shoved in his face more times than he can keep track of. He can only imagine how bad it must be for the kids they actually drafted, if they care about an invitee this much.

After their first practice he gets pounced on by their in-house TV crew and has to answer a bunch of questions their twitter followers sent in while he was on the ice. He's pretty sure that he looks like a deer in headlights; he can't even imagine how bad he would’ve been on-camera if he hadn't had the Habs and Bruins as a warmup for this. He has to watch the finished result through his fingers, cringing at how stiff he comes off as, but when Bitty tells him that he thinks Jack looked very handsome and sounded smart throughout, Jack actually starts to feel good about it.

Bitty feeds him some cooking tips, and some of them actually stick. His cooking attempt this time around actually veers into decent territory, instead of just being edible. He snaps some pictures for the entire team, bragging without actually putting in any actual lip service. They all make fun of him, hollering that Jack must have cheated.

After the Hawks team building stuff he goes back to his room and finally catches sight of his roommate. He apparently has a couple friends at camp, and would rather spend time with them than spend time with Jack.

Jack doesn't mind at all. He's still too jittery to go out and meet any of the guys who hit him up on Grindr, so to make up for that he decides to lock himself in their room and step up his sexting game.

He starts talking to a guy who's a little bit older than him, out of college and working at a design firm a few blocks over from the hotel the Hawks have them set up in. He's working late, all alone in the office, and he's practically begging for pictures of Jack's dick. Jack really likes the thought of it, that there's some guy who wants nothing more in that moment than to see a picture of Jack so he can tug one out in his fucking office.

Jack has no idea how technology works, but he does know enough about Snapchat that he feels more comfortable sending actual nudes of himself through it than the Grindr app, so he asks the guy for his handle. Once he has it, he switches apps and tries to figure out the best way to take a picture of his dick.

It looks weird soft, so he jacks himself a few times until it's propped up thick and stiff against his thigh. He twists his phone this way and that, searching for the best angle. Once he finally finds it, he takes the picture and scrolls through his contact list, quickly selecting the guy's username and hitting send before he can second guess just how smart this whole thing is.

Jack's used to quick responses, and after he doesn't hear back from the guy within a minute he starts to wonder if he did something wrong, if his dick looks weird or something horrible like that. He reopens Snapchat to see if they guy's looked at it or not, and that's when Jack notices that he didn't send it to that guy at all — he fucking sent it to Bitty.

His heart feels like it's about to beat out of his chest as he scrambles to delete the stupid thing, but it's too late; a quick tap to Bitty's username reveals that he's already opened and seen Jack's fucking dick. He has no idea what to do, if he should text Bitty right away and apologize, or if he should pretend that it never happened. It's not like Bitty's never seen his dick before, but he definitely has no idea what it’s supposed to look like hard, so maybe Jack can pretend that his roommate stole his phone and sent a picture of his own dick as a prank.

He sits there, frozen on his bed, unsure of what to do — his stupid, traitorous dick now soft and still hanging out of his pants — until his phone chimes, letting him know that he's got a snap waiting for him. The only thing that makes Jack open it up is the fear of not knowing. No matter how badly Bitty reacts, there's no way that it could compare to the things Jack's mind would come up with, so facing the truth is the lesser of those two evils.

Jack almost doesn't believe what he sees.

The picture Bitty's sent back is of the lower half of his face, cheeks tinged red with a flush that goes all the way down to the dips of his collarbones, dusting the upper half of his chest. He hasn't got a shirt on, but that's something Jack registers as secondary. His eyes keep catching on the blush of Bitty’s chest, how his stomach is flat and firm, abs just barely pushing up against his skin.

Before he really registers what he's doing, Jack has a hand wrapped around his dick, beating himself off. He keeps his eyes trained on the phone, lip bitten between his teeth, gaze flitting across the span of Bitty's chest, up to his lips, which looks wet, like he'd licked them nervously before taking the picture, and then down to his groin, where Jack tells himself that he can see some of Bitty's pubes. He comes to the thought of Bitty's dick — hard and aching because of Jack's unexpected picture — just hidden out of the camera's view.

He comes all over his chest. In a fit of bravery spurred on by his post-orgasmic haze, he actually convinces himself that it's a good idea to a take a photo of his heaving, sweat-damp, come splattered chest and snap that to Bitty too.

So he does.

The wait for Bitty to look at it feels like an eternity. Once Jack sees the confirmation, he thumbs his phone screen off and plugs it into the charger, setting it on the bed face down, so he isn't tempted to check his notifications a million times while he waits for Bitty to respond.

He grabs a few tissues from the box on the hotel nightstand and wipes himself off lazily, pulling off his sleep pants completely and tossing them on the top of his suitcase. He walks into the bathroom and hops into the shower, going over some of the structured plays he learned today in his mind to keep it busy.

Bitty still hasn't replied by the time that he's out and dry, so Jack rolls over and resigns himself to a night of fitful sleep.

There's a text from Bitty waiting for him in the morning, a simple Have a great day at camp! punctuated with five blushing smiley faces. Jack's not the best at social things, but he's good enough to read these tea leaves; Bitty obviously doesn't want to talk about what happened last night, and that's all right with Jack. If it was only going to be a one-time thing, Jack would rather they pretend it never happened then have it mess up their friendship.

Except, it turns out not to be that way at all.

When Jack gets back to the hotel from camp that day, his phone lights up with a snap from Bitty. It turns out to be a picture of his dick, hard and flushed and slick, jesus, ramrod straight against the stomach that Jack stared at yesterday until he came.

Jack is instantly, achingly hard in his jeans. He drops his gear right in the middle of the entryway to his hotel room and hastily undoes his pants, back pressed to the door, and begins to jerk off with absolutely no shame.

He wonders if Bitty had been planning this all day. They've been texting non stop; Bitty asking questions about how camp went, wondering what Jack was doing, if he was feeling burnt out from playing so much and learning the same things over and over again. Was Bitty thinking about this — about getting himself hard and showing Jack — the entire time they'd been having innocuous conversation? Had it been in the back of his mind each and every time he hit send?

Jack doesn't bother to muffle his groans when he comes, making sure to catch all of it in his hand so it doesn't stain the hotel carpet and traumatize the poor cleaning staff. He keeps stroking himself even once his orgasm has passed, drawing it out for as long as he can. His phone is still clutched in his other hand, so it's easy for Jack to take a quick five second video of his hand working over his now come-slickened dick and snap that to Bitty, overlaying a winky faced emoji at the last second, just because he knows it'll make Bitty smile, if nothing else.

He kicks his pants off the rest of the way, thighs still twitching slightly from the lingering aftershocks. Making it over to the bed feels like a miracle. Jack drops down onto the blankets face first, and he stays that way until his phone vibrates a few minutes later.

Holy shit, Bitty’s text reads, followed up by four sets of big, red double exclamation point emojis. Jack huffs out a laugh, because, well — yeah. Just because.

He's still smiling at Bitty's message when a notification drops down. He switches over to Snapchat and sees that it's a video from Bitty, five seconds long, just like the one Jack sent him, except Bitty's is of his face, cheeks red and his hand covering his lips, his palm open and facing the camera, so Jack can see the way it's damp and shiny with Bitty's come.

It's enough to make Jack's dick twitch, even though it hasn't been more than five minutes since he came, if that, and there's no way he can get hard again. He goes back to their texting conversation and sends back, Jesus, because what else is there for him to even say?

Bitty sends fair's fair in reply, which just might be the best thing Jack's heard all month.

After camp the next day, a couple of the guys invite Jack out to go drinking with them, but Jack begs off. The good thing about doing three camps back-to-back-to-back means that he's able to use fatigue as an excuse for pretty much anything and not have it held against him. The downside is that it's usually not all that much of a lie. All he wants to do is climb into bed and hopefully jack off to a new picture from Bitty before he passes out.

He’s texting Bitty to let him know that he's back in his room the moment he gets through the door, and Bitty's response comes back quickly: can you talk?. It's not what Jack was expecting, and that makes him nervous. He's been telling himself that it's just a buddies thing, and that he shouldn't be weird about it since Bitty isn't being weird. Talking on the phone makes him feel like it's something more, especially since Jack hasn't sexted with any other guys since he and Bitty started this thing up a few days ago. He's all but forgotten about the promise he made to himself; there’s no longer this pressing need for him to try to hook up with a guy in real life, to prove to himself that he can, because this thing with Bitty doesn't even feel remotely like settling, not like how sexting with all those other guys had.

So, he sends back, okay, and his phone's ringing a few seconds after that. Jack takes a deep breath before answers.

"Uh, hey," Jack says, words running together a bit.

"Hey," Bitty parrots, sounding cheerful. "How was camp today?"

Jack's grateful for the prompt, not overly sure that he would've been able to carry the conversation on his own. He tells Bitty about morning skate and recounts how drills went. His group is full of some pretty high skilled guys, so it's fun to push themselves as they compete against one another.

"Today was the social media and inter-team training thing," Jack recounts, figuring that if there's anything he can brag about without sounding like a tool, it’s this. "They talked about not saying homophobic shit and one of the guys said that he didn't know how to talk to gay people. I, uh—" Jack stutters a bit, mind stalling out because he isn't used to talking about gay people period, let alone to someone who knows the adjective applies to him — or even to another guy that Jack knows would apply the term to themselves.

"I raised my hand, which was kind of, I dunno. Anyway, I told him that odds are he probably knew a few gay guys in his life, and that he wasn't able to tell them apart from the straight ones meant there's no reason for him to change the way he interacts with teammates. Just that he should cut out any homophobic shit," he says it all in a rush, probably the most that he's ever said, all at once, to Bitty since they met, but he feels like he has to tell someone, the weight of what he did finally loosening up in his chest.

"Holy crap, Jack, that's great!" Bitty tells him. Jack can practically hear his smile through the phone, and it makes his face heat up.

"It wasn't a big deal," he says. "I don't think anybody knew I was gay. Probably just thought I was an enlightened old guy who was too mature for that kind of bullshit. Or that I'm a robot — it's usually one or the other."

"Really, Jack," his smile sounds even louder, if that's even possible. "That was really great of you. Can't even turn off captain mode in the summer, huh?"

"Shut up," Jack dismisses. "Anyway, what'd you do today?" He listens as Bitty tells him about all the errands he ran that morning, picking up groceries and making an impromptu stop by the mall, since an UrbanOutfitters had apparently opened up while he was away at school and he wanted to check out their flannel shirt selection. "What, you trying to turn into me?" Jack interrupts, joking.

Bitty honest to god sputters, taking Jack way more seriously than he intended, so Jack saves him from himself by saying, "You know you can always borrow some from me. They'll be a little big, I guess, but that's kinda nice in the winter anyway."

"Oh," Bitty breathes. Silence stretches between them, but Bitty breaks it by asking, "So, uh. What—what're you wearing?"

Jack laughs, his nervous one that sounds about five shades too breathy. "Uh, way too much right now, but ask me again in about a minute. What about you?"

"I've got my middle school PE shorts on," Bitty laughs. "They're kinda tight, but they still fit. I've been putting off doing laundry all week." Thing is, Jack can imagine them perfectly, mesh fabric just barely brushing the tops of Bitty's thighs, fitted snugly around the curve of his ass, elastic digging into the skin of his waist a little bit, leaving an imprint that'll turn red once he takes them off. Jack really, really wants Bitty to take them off.

He gets himself naked and says, low, and soft, "Ask me what I'm wearing now?"

"What're you wearing now?" Bitty mumbles back.

"Nothing," Jack rubs his hand up and down his thigh, scratching at the wiry hairs there. "Anything change on your end?"

There's rustling on the other end of the line for a few seconds and then Bitty says, "Wow, how crazy is that? I'm totally not wearing anything either."

"Must be some weird, line-y thing," Jack agrees.

The rest of camp goes by really quickly. The Hawks are a good organization, and they make him feel welcome. They've got a good group of guys in their system too; Jack doesn't spend much time with them outside of the rink, but they all get along well. After all the shit that went down during his draft year, Jack's really glad that he's gotten along with all his different groups of teammates over the past month. Even if teams don't extend him a PTO or offer him a contact once he graduates from Samwell, Jack knows that management and the guys he trained with will spread word around that Jack Zimmermann isn't a total head case, and that makes the whole experience worth it.

He talks to Bitty almost every minute that isn't taken up by hockey, their new sex thing meshing seamlessly into the more mundane conversations and picture exchanges they'd been having before the whole sex thing started.

It's easy to keep it up even after he returns back home to Montréal. They still have phone sex nearly every night, switching between sexting, actual conversations, and sometimes even FaceTime sessions, although their faces don't get all that much screen time, at first. It's starting to feel like second nature for Jack to send Bitty a picture or video of what he's doing that day, no longer feeling awkward or embarrassing for him to document the lame things that take up his time when he's at home, or even the one aspect that sets him apart from the rest of the guys — the thing nobody brings up — when he's doing the stuff he gets to do because his dad’s a millionaire.

Those are the things that lead to them slowly starting to keep the camera on their faces when they're jacking off together, gazes locked. It's enough to get him off, the faces and noises that Bitty makes while he's stroking himself, the way he reacts to the noises and faces that Jack can't help but make too.

His dad comments that Jack seems a lot more settled and sure of himself; says that he knew being at a real, NHL-level camp would be what he needed to sort himself out. Jack knows that his dad hated him taking that year off after his incident, that he lost a whole year to rehab in addition to that. He also didn't care for Jack deciding to go the university route instead of signing with a major junior team, even though there was no other option for Jack, since he was too old to play in the Q or any of the other leagues.

Thing is, Jack feels exactly the same about his hockey, and the camps didn't do anything beyond reinforcing his certainty that he loves the sport enough to put up with all the media and travel and lack of social life bullshit that comes along with it. The only thing that's changed is this thing he has with Bitty, where they now give each other amazing orgasms without having to be in the same room, and that he's started to think about Bitty all the time, and that he's so fucking ready for the semester to start, so that he can get back to campus and actually see Bitty and —

Oh.

Bitty lets him know that he's heading back to the Haus early, so that he can clean up and stock the fridge before everyone arrives for the start of training camp. Jack says that it's a good idea, and distractedly tries to keep the conversation going as he snags his laptop off his bedroom floor and changes his flight reservations, lying when Bitty asks what he's doing. Once he's got the confirmation email, Jack switches topics and they embarrassingly try to talk dirty to each other for an hour before saying goodnight and hanging up.

He's anxious the entire plane ride back to the States. The drive into town feels like it takes forever, yet at the same time he feels like he's pulling up to the front of the Haus way sooner than he's prepared for.

Jack finds Bitty in the kitchen, grocery bags stacked on the counters and littering the floor, Bitty slowly sorting food into the fridge and cabinets. Jack watches him, until Bitty finally catches sight of him and startles.

"Jack!" Bitty says, excited, smiling, with a flush dusting his nose. "You're here." He tacks on, "Camp doesn't start for like, another week and half." It isn’t phrased like as a question, but Jack can read into what he's really saying anyway.

"You said you were gonna be here, so," Jack trails off, shrugging his shoulders.

The conversation stalls out and Bitty bites his lip, Jack's eyes instantly zeroing in on the movement, Bitty just as accustomed to picking up on what Jack's eyes are looking at. Bitty says, "I really want to — I mean, can I —"

"Yeah," Jack cuts him off. "God, yeah." He drags his eyes back up Bitty's face so that they're really looking at one another when he says, "I mean, technically we skipped a couple steps there, but — it should be fine right?"

Bitty's still looking at him with huge, wide-open eyes, head bouncing up and down quickly a few times before he launches himself across the room. Jack has to drop both of his bags in a hurry so that his hands are free to actually catch Bitty. The momentum has them falling back into the main hallway, and thanks to some stroke of luck they fall on top of the duffle that has Jack's clothes, and not his gear bag, meaning that their crash landing is somewhat cushioned.

"So," Jack groans, shifting them so that Bitty's weight isn't so concentrated on the soft parts of his stomach, "You've been working on the whole checking thing?" Jack asks to the ceiling. Bitty jabs him right in the ribs, where he has to know that Jack still has a bruise from when his dad got a little too enthusiastic during their end-of-the-summer, two-man hockey tourney the weekend prior, because Jack basically spent the entire weekend leading up to today bitching about it and sending Bitty pictures, documenting all the strange colors it turned.

Jack lets out a pained huff, but he's smiling, and he can feel the warm heat of Bitty's smile pressing into his neck. Bitty wiggles and twists until his face is hovering over Jack's, the two of them grinning at one another like idiots. Jack leans up while Bitty leans down, and just like that, they're kissing.

He lets his eyes fall shut, his heart pounding like he’s just pulled a double shift on back-to-back power plays — both of which he scored on, with Bitty getting the primary assists. He’s way over his head, but he’s known that since the start. His whole life, Jack’s never let himself want anything, but what he has with Bitty — what they’ve started together? He wants it, wants to work at it, is willing to fight for it, just like he’s had to do for everything else in his life, except this time he’s not doing it alone.