I was super excited to be able to make this gift, I love your fics and it always makes me happy to read your writing. It was so fun to make this mini-comic and I hope you enjoy!
Three Times Jack Zimmermann Saw Eric Bittle Without Meeting Him (Plus One Time Jack Didn't See Him but They Met Anyway)
From: @missweber
To: @n3rdyl4cy
Pairing: Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Tags: eventual meet cute, slow burn before ever meeting, implied homophobia, references to unsupportive parents, coming out, cameo appearance by Zdeno Chara, AU because real life NCAA rules apply, Jack didn't go to college, Bitty gets scouted by the Falconers
Summary: Jack saw Eric Bittle for the first time over a year before they actually met, but it was still as if someone had set a match to a fuse that would burn slowly but inevitably until it reached its end.
The first time Jack saw Eric Bittle was the February of his third year with the Falconers. It wasn't in person, but it was enough for Jack to have a flash of he's cute that was harder to shove back down than it should have been, especially since the photo Tater texted him was kind of hilarious.
Tater was at the Beanpot tournament with Thirdy and some pals from the Bruins and kept texting Jack updates and photos of the game.
Jack could have asked him to stop, but that would involve explaining why thinking about college hockey inevitably set him off balance and got him lost in a world of what ifs.
But then a photo came through that triggered three reactions in swift succession:
What the hell?
Ha ha, that's pretty funny.
Huh. He's cute.
The picture was of two people. One was a Samwell player, flushed and grinning even though his team had just lost the championship round to Boston College in overtime. The other was Zdeno Chara.
The Samwell player barely came up to Chara's shoulder even though he was on skates and Chara wasn't. According to Tater, the player (#15, Eric Bittle, Junior) was only five foot six to Chara's six foot nine and was 'quick like bunny!'
Jack tried to focus on what kind of speed a player like that would have to have play Division I hockey and not end as a smear against the boards, but he kept getting drawn to the sunny smile and the dark eyes that were unusually striking paired with honey blond hair.
Cute. And he kind of looked like Kenny.
But Kenny had never smiled like that.
An ex-girlfriend used to send him borderline explicit selfies when he was on the road. Those pictures had made him smile, but Jack had never found himself staring at them like this.
Jack put the phone down and forced himself to count breaths until he stopped shaking.
Once he could trust himself, he responded to Tater with a haha.
Then he deleted the photo and the entire text thread along with it.
* * *
The second time Jack saw Eric Bittle was a little over half a year later, right in the middle of training camp. Like before, it was a photograph. This time, though, it came via his news feed.
Samwell University Selects First Openly Gay NCAA Division I Team Captain
The photo was obviously a headshot from the team's site, but the brilliant smile and warm brown eyes were as lively as if it had been a candid shot.
Jack didn't get to the article itself for ten minutes.
When he did, it wasn't what he was expecting. It was as bland and banal and calculated as any item that came from a team's PR shop. Generic sounding quotes, no sign of anything resembling a controversial opinion (other than the fact that a gay player merely existing was controversial in and of itself), no personality, no depth.
There were only two startling revelations in the article, neither of which was more than a mention with no further explanation.
One was that Bittle came from Georgia. That was definitely unusual, and Jack wondered how someone who was not only short and gay but Southern ever managed to get into hockey in the first place.
The other was that Bittle's team knew he was gay before they had voted him captain and had voted him in unanimously - which was the only time that had ever happened in the history of the team.
Jack figured the article was only the opening salvo. There would be follow-up interviews, no doubt. You Can Play would be all over it, and so would Sports Illustrated and ESPN.
All that happened though, as training camp ended and pre-season began, was that several opinion pieces came out and Jack added more names to his list of which reporters could and could not be trusted.
(The one article that went viral did so for the wrong reasons: it was a passionate, pompous, and self-important screed about gay rights in international sports that might have had more impact and less unintentional hilarity if the author had not been operating under the assumption that Bittle was from Georgia-the-country and not Georgia-the-state.)
Also, Kent texted Jack.
did u see the news?
Jack didn't reply and didn't read the other texts that followed. But he did tell George he needed to talk with her. Alone.
"I'm still not planning on coming out," he informed her right out of the gate.
"This is about the Samwell thing, isn't it?"
He nodded. He wished she hadn't put it quite that way. If NCAA hockey had been an option for him, Samwell would have been his top choice.
In retrospect, going to the Q had been a mistake in more ways than one. Thank God the Falconers had been willing to take a chance on him after rehab.
"Jack, I'm glad you trusted me all those years ago, but it honestly doesn't matter to me one way or the other if you come out now, or later, or never."
"I just..." He kept his eyes focused on the corner of her desk. "There are" - he circled his hand - "rumors."
Rumors. Gossip. A few photos he wished he could wipe from existence. Fanfic.
"You know I don't care about that, Jack."
He nodded, eyes still cut down and away. By never denying the rumors about him and Kent, he'd confirmed them for her, and he didn't know what to do about that. At least she was willing to maintain the polite fiction that she had no idea who Jack had dated back in the Q.
"Just... If You Can Play comes around and wants me to do another clip..." He blinked away the stinging in his eyes and why was this rattling him so much? "I don't feel like I can say no."
But what would he say if he said 'yes?' He couldn't offer other queer athletes any kind of advice that wasn't about hockey. But just existing would say so much in and of itself...
"I'm not ready but I should be ready, shouldn't I? Especially now."
"Jack. There's no should about it."
"But somehow this kid can be brave enough to come out, while I - "
George held up a hand to cut him off. She shook her head sadly. "I don't think he had a choice. This," she said, pointing to a copy of the article on her monitor, "is a pre-emptive strike. From what Martin Hall tells me, Bittle was out to his classmates and before he was on anyone's radar as a top prospect. And apparently, his online presence wasn't at all discreet and he has a sizable following. Hall said Bittle decided it was better to get the story out on his own terms before someone put two and two together and made a call to Deadspin or worse."
Jack understood. It would only take one picture from 2009, one recollection from a team-mate, to get the story out of his hands or Kent's. He should think about getting ahead of things, but...
... he wasn't ready. He wasn't sure he ever would be.
* * *
The only reason Jack didn't see Bittle again until March was because he had his own hockey to focus on. Then finally, the annual nightmare of the trade deadline finally passed and speculation started churning about what might happen after the playoffs.
Free agent frenzy technically didn't start until July, but there was a lot of early buzz about the young men who would be coming out of the NCAA and where in the NHL they might go.
One of these young men was Eric Bittle. There was more talk about whether Bittle was too small for the NHL than whether he was too gay for the NHL, but Jack still avoided watching the video clips Tater kept trying to show him.
(He couldn't explain why he avoided watching them any more than he could explain why he only sometimes responded to Kent's texts, but he suspected it came from the same dark place in his mind.)
And then Samwell made it to the Frozen Four. Jack didn't watch, but he felt a thrill of vindication when he heard that the Wellies (and Bittle) won.
Maybe Bittle would sign with an NHL team or maybe he wouldn't, but the short, gay, Southern kid had scored the game-winning goal in the NCAA championships, and it felt like something in the world had shifted and wasn't going to shift back.
Jack was still mulling it over when he arrived at the practice facility that morning, and George had to shout at him twice to get his attention.
"Jack, can you come in here a moment?"
The request brought the usual spike of anxiety even though he knew nothing awful was likely to happen. He followed George into her office.
"I thought you would want to hear this from me before you heard it from anyone else."
Jack's breath froze halfway up his throat. He had no idea what his face must have looked like, but George patted the air in front of her as if the soothing motion would reach him. "It's okay, it's okay, it's nothing bad, but I didn't want you caught unprepared. Did you watch the NCAA finals yesterday?"
Jack shook his head. George didn't seem surprised, and he wondered what she'd put together about him when he started looking into online degrees.
"I want you to take a look at this." She turned her monitor so he could see it. A video clip played. In it, a small player with the number 15 on his back zipped between opposing players like a destroyer through a fleet of battleships.
The third time Jack saw Eric Bittle was the first time he actually saw him play hockey.
"Play it again," he rasped once the clip was done. This time, he watched while knowing what to watch for. The way Bittle read the ice. The way he sent the puck unerringly not to where his liney was but to where his liney would be. The way he was obviously reluctant to take a hit, but had turned that avoidance into a weapon, with one feint in particular sending one Denver player crashing into the boards and his teammate plowing into him a half-second later.
The soft hands. Eyes that were as full of determination as they were of fear.
"He might need a year in the AHL first - trust me, you'll plotz when you hear how much hockey he didn't play before college - but can you imagine having that on your line?"
He could. Very much so. "And you're telling me first because..."
She sighed. "Because you're my friend as much as you are one of my players, and I keep thinking about that first conversation we had about Bittle, and about what it would mean to come out. When or if you decide to be out is one hundred percent up to you. I know you're out to a few people on the team, but I wanted to make damned sure you know that if we sign Bittle, it does not mean I'm expecting anything from you except to play damned good hockey and live the best life you know how to live. Got it?"
Jack nodded, swallowing hard and blinking the brightness from his eyes.
"Good. And if we sign Bittle and that brings any attention back to you that you don't want, we'll deal with it, okay?"
"Okay." His attention went back to the monitor, which was frozen on the moment when Bittle was hoisted into the air by two D-men who were each half again as big as he was. His expression was caught somewhere between joy, indignation, surprise, and... sadness?
He looked more closely. There were lots of other people on the ice. Parents, siblings. The goalie was openly sobbing on an older woman's shoulder. One of the two D-men holding Bittle had a woman in a hijab smiling up at him. The other had a gaggle of redheads crowding in around him.
It took him a moment, but he finally registered what he wasn't seeing. He thought about the 'pre-emptive strike' article, and how there had been so little press and no interviews or profile pieces that he could recall.
Jack may have had any number of issues with his own parents over the years, but they had always, always, always been there for him.
And in many ways, they had been there for Kent as well, even during the dark times when he and Kent hadn't been talking at all.
"George?"
"Hm?"
"There's something I want to do, when you go meet with Bittle."
* * *
The first time Jack actually met Eric Bittle was at Samwell.
Maman and Papa would meet him at dinner, after Jack and George had finished talking business. Meanwhile, they were taking a nostalgia tour of campus.
"We're meeting Bittle at the hockey team's house," George explained. "I'm also hoping to talk to a couple of his teammates." She must have studied a map before they arrived because she set off like she knew exactly where she was going.
They crossed a quad that was bordered on one side by a pond. Jack wondered if it ever froze over hard enough to skate on. Knots of students were scattered on the grass, some studying, some napping. A lively pickup game of soccer ended abruptly when someone kicked the ball into the pond.
Jack could imagine himself in a place like this, but the imagining didn't hurt as much he expected.
Maybe it was because he had figured out somewhere along the line that not being able to play college hockey didn't mean he couldn't go to college one day.
Or maybe it was because something about this place, even though he had never been here before, felt like home.
George turned right just past the quad, but Jack missed it because he was watching the soccer players trying to retrieve their ball without getting in the pond.
And, of course, he plowed right into someone.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! Are you okay?"
A slender (but still solid - Jack felt like he'd been checked) young man had landed on his ass. He had a phone in one hand, and a miraculously unspilled latte in the other.
The man tucked his phone into the back of some (very short) red shorts and reached out to take the hand Jack offered.
"I'm sorry! I wasn't looking where I was going - I've got this meeting I've got to get to and then I got a text so I thought..."
The honey-smooth drawl trailed off as the young man looked up to see who had knocked him over.
"Jack Zimmermann??"
Jack could feel the flush rise to his cheeks and was glad he couldn't see how red he must have been turning.
"Haha. Yeah. And you're Eric Bittle, eh?"
He was even cuter in person.
"Um..." Bittle seemed reluctant to let go of his hand. Jack could sympathize.
"Hello, Eric. I'm Georgia Martin - it's nice to finally meet you in person." George must have realized that Jack wasn't right behind her. "I hope you don't mind I brought company along. Did you still want to meet back at your house?"
"Oh! Yes!" Bittle reclaimed his hand, and headed off the same direction George had been going. "I made a pie for you - there should be enough for us all, even if Chowder - that's our goalie - comes home early."
George nodded in approval. If Chowder was Chris Chow, Jack knew she was hoping to speak with him, too.
"Pie, huh?" Jack asked.
Bittle nodded emphatically. "Yes, sir! I hope y'all like pecan pie," he said, pronouncing 'pecan' completely incorrectly.
Jack couldn't help teasing. "Bittle. You need to eat more protein if you're going to be in the NHL."
Bittle gasped in exaggerated shock. "You did not just say that to my face!"
"I said it to all of you," Jack deadpanned. "Not that there's a lot to say it to, eh?"
Bittle's eyes narrowed, but the corner of his mouth twitched. "Why do I get the idea that you're going to be a whole lot of trouble, Mr. Zimmermann?"
"If you want trouble, wait until you meet my parents. They're joining us for dinner tonight."
It wasn't often that he started this kind of back-and-forth with someone so quickly. But something about it didn't feel quick.
It felt like a long, slow burning fuse that was first lit back when Tater sent that ridiculous picture had finally reached its end.
Meanwhile, Bittle started rambling on about how he really should make a second pie if he was going to meet someone's parents.
Jack fought back a smile. Tater was going to be so pissed he wasn't invited along.
"Sorry I'm babbling on like this, but this is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me!"
"I know what you mean, um, I mean, I remember what it was like when George came and talked to me."
George was a few feet ahead of them, but he could hear her roll her eyes.
"I don't know if you ever heard the story of how I joined the Falconers, but... well, I was in a rough spot. And I knew I would be safe with them. That I would feel safe with them."
"I'd love to hear that story sometime," Bittle said gently, reaching out to touch Jack's arm, then jerking his hand away quickly.
"I'd love to tell it to you." He didn't quite reach out to Bittle, but it was easy enough to let the back of his hand knock against Bittle's as they walked along.
It would have been nice to do more, to promise more, or just say more, but he wasn't ready for that.
"I wasn't expecting to meet you today, but I'm sure glad I did." Bittle smiled let his hand brush tentatively against Jack's in return.
Some other time, Jack might have said out loud what he was thinking, that it felt like he knew Bittle, like he knew this place, knew what it was like to walk side by side with him. Like part of him already knew what it was like not to walk hand in hand, but half embracing as they walked back to Bittle's house.
No, he wasn't ready for anything like that, not yet, but for the first time it was easy to imagine a time when he would be.
