Chapter Text
“I want to tell you something.”
Kent can feel all of his muscles contract, the beat of his heart quickening. He rotates his ankles out in front of him, paying special attention to the left one that’s felt a little tight in the pre- pre-season training he’s just started in the arid late June heat. On the obnoxiously large television hanging on his wall, set on mute, a Real Housewife flips a table and sends pasta flying. Kit is curled up on a white throw pillow in the center of his room. Her bright white fur blends in so perfectly that she just looks like a giant mass with perky ears. It’s admittedly adorable. If he wasn’t on the phone, he probably would have got a picture to post for his adoring fans on Instagram.
This is his house, he reminds himself. He’s safe. There’s nothing to worry about.
Except that there is. There is always something to worry about when Jack Zimmermann interrupts your nightly phone call to say that he has to tell you something.
Either Jack is about to tell him that his slapshot is looking weak, his muscle tone is down, and that he really should consider adding at least an additional 100 to 200 milligrams of high-quality lean protein to his diet daily;
Or Jack is about to tell him that he’s been thinking a lot lately and he is pretty sure that his parents never actually loved him and would probably have been happier if his chronic childhood asthma attacks took him out at pee-wee practice back in 2001.
“Sure, Jack, shoot,” Kent says as nonplussed as he can.
“I, eugh, I was thinking,” Jack sounds uncharacteristically nervous.
Not that it was out of the ordinary for Jack to be nervous. It was probably his default state. Water is wet. Jack is anxious. It was just that Jack hadn’t sounded this anxious in the months that they had been talking regularly. In fact, for perhaps the first time in their lives, Kent and Jack had fallen into a true and easy rhythm.
“You tend to do a lot of that.” He bites his lip. He winces.
There was a bit of sunburn there from a hike he had gone on with Swoops in an absolutely stunning and largely isolated part of Utah a few days ago. Swoops had insisted that he take a tube of ridiculously overpriced SPF chapstick with them. It wasn’t a bad idea, even if Kent was nearly reduced to tears seeing Swoops of all people toting a tiny black and white Sephora bag in his giant calloused hand through the streets of Las Vegas to their parking garage. It was just that they had forgotten it in the glove compartment. The tube melted. Their lips burned. Swoops was out of fifty bucks.
But Kent did manage to take some photos, birds mostly, the sun setting, that he had sent to Jack. He texted back that they had looked exceptionally well-balanced. Kent grinned all the way home, even if his lips felt like they were going to completely peel off.
Swoops spent most of the ride hunched over his phone, scouring the internet for the Sephora return policy.
“I was thinking,” there’s a pause where Jack exhales, the kind that rattles your whole chest, “that I should take you out on a date.”
“A date?” Kent’s heart speeds up a little faster and he can’t help but feel the corner of his mouth tug up a bit. Kit almost on cue raises her head to peer at him intently.
“Yeah, a date. It’s this thing where two people who are romantically interested in one another set up a social appointment at a predetermined time and place. You ever heard of it?”
“I obviously know what a date is. I certainly got asked on more of them than you did.” Kent laughs. Kit blinks slowly. On the TV, one of Kent’s Nike ads plays, and he has to admit - he will never get used to watching his own press. He does however admire how great his calves look in those shorts. “Jesus Christ, a social appointment. You sound like you’re an octogenarian.”
“Oh boy, it’s #90, Captain Kent Parson, coming in hot with the Scrabble word.” The anxious edge is gone from Jack’s voice, and it’s replaced with a light chirping tone. Kent can hear the affection through the phone, imagining the fond expression on his face. He can, if he closes his eyes, feel the warm weight of Jack’s hand on his shoulder, his cheek, his thigh. Something in the core of his stomach goes warm and liquid.
A box of Scrabble does sit on his bookshelf. The cardboard box is crumbling and stained from the last time they had played, and Kent had accidentally spilled half a bottle of $250 Argentinian Malbec on it.
It’s one of the many traces of Jack that are littered around his house. There’s a box of unflavored bone broth protein in the pantry and decaf pods near the coffee maker. In his dresser, there’s a worn and threadbare Samwell quarter-zip. In his garage, hung on the wall is an extra stick, designed for someone a few inches taller than Kent.
There is the brief thought of the fact that all the way across the vast expanse of the American midwest, on the other side of the country, was Jack’s apartment. In that apartment, there is a four-pack of sugar-free Red Bulls in the fridge, a limited edition Kent Parson x Nike collab lounge set sitting in the laundry hamper, his toothbrush, long forgotten, still near the sink, and a framed picture of two eighteen-year-olds, thin, bright-eyed, tangled up, and soaking wet grinning from the edge of the lake, canoe overturned a few feet away from them that sits on Jack’s bedside table. It’s enough to slow the hammering in Kent’s chest.
“Just because I didn’t go to college doesn’t mean I haven’t expanded my literary horizons.” He tries not to look at a few of the books his sisters had gifted him through the year, mostly sports biographies and a few true crime mysteries Kylie thought he might enjoy, that are snuggled into the bookshelf near his television. If he didn’t look at them, maybe he could forget that he had finished a book since he was in high school. The Real Housewives continued to scream on mute on his television. Andy Cohen looks utterly bewildered, and Kent chuckles.
“So,” the word hangs heavy between the two of them. The sunburn was starting to peel. Kent had a strong urge to rip the flakes off, to press on the tender skin beneath, to feel a sharp point of pain. A totally normal thought. “Is that a yes or a no about the date?”
“Jack, what do you think we’ve been doing this whole time?” He doesn’t mean to sound so exasperated.
“Kenny, eating thirty wings each and watching tape is not a date. Neither was sitting in your car eating a takeout container of Raising Cane’s chicken fingers, no matter how good they were. Neither was getting Timbits at 1 AM in the middle of a snowstorm in Rimouski.”
A rolladeck of nights like those flickers through Kent’s mind. There was the night, both of them were kicked out of the playoff run, sat on Kent’s couch for what seemed like hours reviewing their games from earlier in the season. Jack had looked impossibly at home in Kent’s sweats, socks half off his feet that still looked bruised and worse for wear, and a smear of buffalo sauce on his cheek that he only discovered when they had finally crawled to get ready to bed hours later. Jack had wanted Korean BBQ, but as a proud son of Buffalo, Kent had insisted that there was only one wing flavor that actually mattered. There had been countless roadies where they had shared two overflowing plates of chicken tenders and watched as many pay-per-view movies as they could find on the hotel television, all on Bad Bob’s tab. This past winter, there had been hours and hours of walks as the light streamed off the icicles attached to the ancient maples near the Zimmermann family home, gloved hand discreetly in gloved hand.
They were special, Kent reasoned. So special that there was no need to put a name to it. Everyone around them could see it. Kent and Jack had a bond, a connection, something more, that just couldn’t be put into words. Or at least that’s what Kent had always told himself.
“I didn’t expect you to be so resistant to this.” Jack sounds exasperated. In far-off Rhode Island, Kent can hear the sound of an ambulance zipping through downtown Providence through the open windows. His toes curl despite himself. “I thought you’d be excited.”
“I’m an unreadable figure, an international man of mystery.” Kit plods from her spot and jumps up next to him on the couch. Kent tries to keep his tone purposely light and fails miserably. He pushes his thumb along his cheekbone, the area that took the brunt of the desert sun. Pain blooms sharply. Without thinking, he blurts out - “Or do you just assume that because you said jump that I should be thrilled to ask how high?”
A pregnant pause. Kent pushes his thumb down even harder.
“Kent, don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything.” It’s the same voice of mock outrage he’s used with coaches and refs. Of course, I didn’t rush the goalie. He did. Of course, I didn’t start that fight. He had. Of course, you’re giving the Aces another penalty. Most of his penalties were honestly well-earned. “I guess I just don’t understand why you’re being so weirdly serious about this right now."
“Weirdly serious?” Jack asks, quietly.
Something pulls at Kent’s heart and his resolve crumbles a bit. He moves his hand from the side of his face and holds it open. Kit puts her head against it, her fur soft against him. His explanation comes out wetter and more pathetic than he had anticipated. “Yeah, Jack, we’ve hung out literally hundreds, if not thousands of times before. We’ve hung out for years. I know where we stand. We don’t have to make it so weird and serious and formal all of a sudden.”
“What if I want it to be serious?”
“What?”
“I want it to be serious. I am serious about you, Kenny, and I want this, our relationship, to be serious.” Jack says slowly and deliberately. There is intention behind every word, and it makes Kent want to crawl out of his skin.
“I hate it when you communicate so healthily. It’s so obnoxious. ‘Look at me. I’m Jack Zimmermann. I went to therapy. My relationships are so positive now. I can communicate all my wants and needs.’ ” His French-Canadian accent clearly needs a lot of work, but Kent truly believes he’s nailed Jack’s captainly monotone.
“What are you afraid of?”
Jack’s question stops him in his tracks. He can’t help but grab the remote and flicker off the television. There are no streetlights in his neighborhood, just the warm lighting from the custom installation that illuminates the path to his front door. It bathes his whole living room in an appropriately golden light. Kit’s eyes, peering up at him soulfully, look otherworldly.
“Needles.The inevitability that my career will come to an end and that I’ll have to find a new purpose for living. Oddly, butterflies.”
“You’re deflecting,” deadpans Jack.
“I learned from the master.” Kent’s tone is just as biting.
There’s another long pause.
Kent’s not particularly good at feelings. Granted Jack was probably worse. No, he was definitely worse. Still, Kent wasn’t exactly far behind him.
He remembers vividly a time as a child, when he has father had disappeared and no one had known where had gone off to on his latest bender, he had been sitting at the dinner table. His sisters had been moody and distant, picking at their leftovers with disinterest. A permanent cloud of sadness seemed to always followed Karly no matter where she had gone those days. Kylie had hardly spoken a word in a week. His mother looked hair-brained and overwhelmed and restless. The weather outside in upstate New York that year seemed to be a permanent gray slush.
Then there had been Kent. Kent who always tried to look on the bright side. Kent who could just keep going. Kent who was determined not to let anything bother him. Kent who could make a joke out of anything. Kent who had just been trying to tell a story about how Chad from his Science class had thrown a frog across the room at school today, something that was supposed to be funny, supposed to make his family laugh. Kent opens his mouth to laugh and ends up sobbing, at age thirteen, practically facedown in his leftover Kraft mac and cheese.
Kent tried to bend and not break. Most of the time it worked. Most of the time.
“This is what I wanted, you know. And it feels like I shouldn’t have it. No, I know that I shouldn’t have it. Because honestly, who can say that they get everything that they’ve ever wanted? That’s insane” Kit kneads his upper thigh and buries herself into his lap. Her weight was soothing and grounding as he wove his fingers through her fur. She purrs softly and her whole body vibrates. “And if this isn’t serious, then maybe I can convince myself that it isn’t going to hurt as much when it ends.”
“I can’t predict the future -.” Jack starts. The tears that had been welling up in his eyes finally spilled over. Anger flares up in Kent’s gut and he can’t help but shout
“You have this nasty habit where you think your honesty is being helpful and I’m here to remind you that usually it’s not.” He cuts him off.
“You didn’t let me finish.” The steel in Jack’s voice mellows out. “I can’t predict the future, but it’s you, Kent. It’s always been you. Since I met you years ago, I kind of always knew that it was going to be you. Even when I went and fucked it all up, the only person that I wanted was you. It was only ever going to be you.”
The tears running down his cheeks sting the peeled sunburn. Kent hardly notices.
“You know that was really beautiful for a hockey robot.”
Jack snorts on the other end of the line.
For a while, there is nothing but the sound of Kent’s sniffling and Jack’s even breathing. Kent adjusts himself on his sofa and wishes for nothing more than to feel Jack's weight next to him.
“So I’ll see you for dinner in Vegas next Saturday at 8 PM. I have reservations.”
“A man with confidence.” Kent laughs wetly.
“I try.” Kent can sense the smile on his face.
“Yeah, Zimms, I guess it’s a date.”
-
A week from now, at that Saturday night dinner date, Kent Parson will be wearing more of his meal than he ate, surrounded by broken glass, and thoroughly on the worst first date known to man. He’ll also be absurdly in love.
He just doesn’t know it yet.