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Jack juggled the box of cookies and his phone into one hand as he keyed in the code to Kent’s apartment, fumbling to keep from dropping both. He slipped off his shoes and made his way to Kent’s bedroom.
The room was empty, but he listened at the closed bathroom door and heard Carly Rae Jepsen singing about her boy problems, which meant Kent had been in the bathroom for about 20 minutes, if he had already made it through half the album.
Kent’s hygiene routine normally took five minutes, tops, and Jack mentally congratulated himself for knowing Kent well enough to anticipate this.
“Hey, I’m here,” he called through the door.
There was a thump and a curse, and Carly Rae’s enumerations of her boy problems were cut off suddenly. “There is no fucking way it’s six already!” Kent said.
“It’s not,” Jack said, trying not to let his smile lilt in his voice too much. Kent was so cute. “But I thought you might be a bit anxious so I came over early to offer tie advice and Bitty cookies.”
Kent opened the door a crack and eyed him warily through it. “Show me the cookies,” he said.
Jack lifted the box.
Kent opened the door all the way and took it from him. “I’m not anxious, and even if I were, it’d be fucking rich of you to be laughing at me about it, dickbag. I just have a healthy sense of aesthetic value and it would be a shame not to, uh…” He stuffed a cookie in his mouth to hide the fact that he was having trouble coming up with an ending to the sentence.
“Hey,” Jack said. “My parents love you, alright? They have never not loved you. This is going to be fine.”
“Condescension negates cookie privileges,” Kent said, and shut the door in his face.
“Hey!” Jack said. “I brought you those!”
“Should have thought of that earlier,” Kent said, voice muffled by crumbs. “If you wanna be helpful, find me a tie that conveys a sense of confidence tempered by sensitivity, topped off with a healthy appreciation of fine arts and culture.”
“You hate fine arts and culture,” Jack said, laughing.
“Fuck off.”
“Also, I think your dickbutt tie -”
“Fuck off!”
Jack sat down on the edge of the bed. “Seriously, though, Kenny, I promise my parents don’t care if your pubes are trimmed.” Or whatever Kent did in there for hours before any stressful appointment. Jack wasn’t really sure. He had some theories, some likelier than others, ranging from home manicures to doing lines off the counter.
“I’m not - ugh, go away,” Kent said. “You’re throwing off my groove.”
Chuckling, Jack stood to go look through Kent’s tie collection for something that would satisfy him. He loved Kent in black with that metallic silver tie, but it might have been too stark. Better to go with something softer.
“Blue shirt with pink tie, or pink shirt with blue tie?” he asked, finding both shirts hanging up.
“Blue shirt, pink tie - I think I have a pocket square somewhere that matches,” Kent called back. “Thanks, babes.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, allowing himself to smile like a doofus since Kent wasn’t there to see and mock him. ‘Babes,’ much like ‘Mr. and Mrs. Zimms’ in reference to Jack's parents, was so dorky and so Kent that Jack could barely contain himself when he heard them.
He laid out the shirt and tie on the bed, setting out dark blue slacks to match. Kent had a closet organizer that he always forgot to use, but Jack couldn’t find any pink pocket squares inside it, so he delved deeper into the expansive walk-in closet in search.
A flicker of deep red caught his eye - Kent didn’t wear a lot of red - and Jack instinctively turned his head towards it. Then, jaw going slack with surprise, he lifted the hanger off the rack and held the article of clothing up to the light.
It was a jersey - his jersey, from Samwell. The away jersey from his senior year, he could tell by the wider stripes at the elbows. He lifted a wondering hand to trace the C and noticed in a distant way that it trembled.
He walked in a fugue back to the bed, sitting down and staring unseeingly at the jersey in his hands. When had Kent even…? He checked the back and, yes, the Zimmermann nameplate was there, professionally stitched, not like any knockoff he’d ever seen.
NCAA didn’t allow jerseys with player names to be sold, because it fucked with their brand, made it obvious that individual players generated more commercial revenue than the school itself and highlighted the hypocrisy of making money off student talent without paying them for their labors. This jersey couldn’t have come from anywhere but within the Samwell men’s hockey team.
The only time Kent had been to Samwell in Jack’s senior year - but Kent hadn’t had the time to snag one of Jack’s jerseys on the way out, and none of them had been missing, anyway. Actually, the only time Jack had lost a jersey was…
Oh, shit.
Jack was still staring down in a daze when Kent opened the bathroom door. “Regretting stuffing my face with Bitty cookies right before gourmet French dinner, but I admit, they work almost as well as Shitty cookies at calming the nerves. You -” His voice faltered when he saw Jack, and he went silent.
Jack looked up. Kent’s face was as blank as a black phone screen. “You were at the game,” he said, not a question. “The Frozen Four…”
Kent shrugged, and said nothing.
“You were there,” Jack said, mind struggling to make sense of this new information. “At the - the loading dock, you saw… you saw me?”
“With Bittle,” Kent said lowly.
“With Bitty,” Jack echoed, mind reeling off in new directions of bewildered scrutiny. “Why didn’t you say something?”
Kent gave a stifled laugh that seemed to surprise him as much as Jack. “You’re kidding, right?”
Jack shook his head.
“Shit, isn’t it obvious?” Kent said, and gestured to the half empty box of cookies on the bathroom counter. “I mean, come on.”
Jack, brow furrowed, shook his head again.
“Jesus,” Kent said, and he started to get dressed - to have something to do with his hands, Jack knew. He was trying to get over his tells. Work in progress. “The last time I saw you, I said something so fucked up I had to pull over on the way back to Boston to throw up on the side of the highway. Bet you hard cash you threw up that night too.”
Jack nodded.
“And Bittle, I mean, he was… holding you,” Kent fumbled at the buttons of his shirt. “And the way you were smiling at him at that party, and the emotional sensitivity, and the cookies, and the - the fucking niceness. He’s got this nurturing shit down. And me, fuck. My therapist recommended I get a cat just so I could show myself I have the capacity to care for another living creature without, like, ruining them.”
I did this to you, Jack thought, watching Kent’s hands shake. Those pills hadn’t only stripped something vital away from Jack, that night.
“So what was I supposed to do? Fuck up your chance with someone who could actually take care of you?” Kent laughed again, even more grimly. “Nah, son. Not here for that.”
Jack had to swallow back the lump in his throat. His chest felt tighter than it had in awhile. “Does he have something to do with why you’re so nervous about dinner with my parents?” he asked.
Kent’s laugh was more like a choke, this time. “I know your parents like me, okay? They liked me when we were 16 also. But they know as well as I do that I’m boyfriend material, not - husband material. Not like him.” He was shaking badly enough that he couldn’t knot his tie - after the fourth try, he cursed and flung it onto the bed, burying his face in his hands. His shoulders were drawn up, taut as a bowstring.
Jack looked down at the jersey he still held. Then he set it to the side and stood up, walking up behind Kent and wrapping his arms around him to envelop him against his chest.
Kent immediately struggled - he so hated to be vulnerable, Jack’s boy - and Jack tightened his arms. “Listen to me, okay?” Jack said. “And if you accuse me of making this up to make you feel better, that’s a shitty thing to do to me, because I’m opening up here, alright?”
Kent nodded after a moment, still so tense.
Jack pressed his mouth to Kent’s hair, breathing in, steadying himself. “Bitty’s not husband material - or, I mean, obviously he is, but he’s not my husband material. You are, okay?”
Kent scoffed.
“You know how I know you are? Because I fucking asked you to marry me,” Jack said. “QED, husband material.”
Kent scuffed his foot on the ground. “Yeah, you think that now.”
Jack shrugged. “What’s the worst case, that we get divorced in ten years? Five? Doesn’t mean I’m any less in love with you now.”
Kent didn’t say anything, but his shoulders loosened up against Jack’s chest. Jack spun him around, gratified to see his brows furrowed in deep thought.
“Bitty was a really good boyfriend, you’re right,” Jack said. “Made a lot of cookies. But…” He shrugged. “That much sugar isn’t right for my diet, you know?”
Even someone as clueless about literary analysis as Kent had to realize that was a metaphor, right? Sure, he thought of The Da Vinci Code as high-brow lit, but come on.
“Yeah,” Kent said. “I guess.”
“Hey,” Jack said gently, recognizing the uncertain way Kent’s voice lifted at the end of his sentences. “Sit down.” He picked up the discarded tie and wound it around Kent’s neck, knotting it with a practiced touch, as comfortable with Kent’s body as he was with his own.
“You have to stop thinking about it that way,” Jack said. “My well-being is not a problem for either you or Bitty to solve. There’s no amount of nurturing that could fix me, and it’s - frankly, really condescending and unfair to me for you to frame it that way. Okay?”
Kent chewed his lip, gaze darting from Jack’s hands to his face. Once his tie was knotted, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead to Jack’s abdomen, hiding his face. Jack could tell that it would take him time to come around to the idea. That was okay - they had a lifetime of it together.
Jack stroked over his hair with one hand, tugging lightly at the cowlick. “In sickness and in health works both ways,” he said.
“I get it,” Kent said, muffled.
“Probably not, but I’ll remind you,” Jack said. “Ready to go?”
Kent stood up and checked himself in the mirror. He still looked like he was walking to his execution, but slightly less than before. “Oh, right,” he said, and dug around in his dresser until he found the pocket square, arranging it at his breast.
“You look good,” Jack said. “Maman’s going to call you a handsome young man at least three times.”
“Good taste,” Kent said. He pulled on his jacket. “Kay, let’s go.”
“Hey…” Jack said. He wanted to offer that they could cancel, but Kent already knew that and would never go for it. “Never mind.”
But Kent’s expression softened all the same. “You know how it is,” he said. “Academically, I know you’re right about everything you said, but…” He grimaced.
“I know,” Jack said. He kissed Kent’s forehead. “Just think about how you’re only going to have to endure this once. Does that help?”
“Not really,” Kent said glumly.
Jack quirked his lips. “Then think about - how happy you’re making them, even if you have trouble believing it. That help?”
“Again, not really,” Kent said.
Jack shrugged, glancing around for inspiration, smiling when he found it. “Then, I don’t know, think about how I’m going to take you back here and fuck you brainless after while you’re wearing nothing but my Samwell jersey.”
“Yeah, that helps,” Kent agreed, eyes going dark. “Fuck, what are we waiting for?” He grabbed one last cookie and headed out the door.
Jack laughed and made to follow him when his phone buzzed with a text from his mother - We’re headed to the restaurant now. See you soon! :)
We’ll be there in 10, Jack texted back, and followed Kent out.