#bitty's relationship to football is my favorite thought experiment and if i was going to make this like a thing it would be so Coach heavy

[loveintvworlds]

Eric Bittle ends up at UGA despite his best wishes because Samwell is expensive, and sure, UGA is too but. Not so much when your daddy is the football coach. Eric at UGA is a little rougher around the edges, a little more short tempered. He’s still friendly, still outgoing, still an athlete, (he runs track) he’s still him but he spent all of high school holding on to the idea of getting out of Georgia at the end of it, and losing that little bit of hope would take a toll on anyone.

Campus is bigger than the whole of Madison, and more accepting too. Not by much, it’s not like how he built Samwell up to be in his head (Eric still has dreams about “1 in 4, maybe more”) but he sees more out gay people in his first few weeks on campus than he’s ever seen in his entire life. But, he also sees his daddy’s football boys, his daddy’s friends and colleagues, his daddy himself. And he — maybe irrationally — feels like they see him too, like they’re always watching. So he stays closeted, and it hurts like hell.

Jack Zimmermann ended up playing college football nearly on a whim. After the overdose hockey was too painful, it wasn’t worth his life, but he couldn’t live as anything other than an athlete. One night, while blindly hitting buttons on the remote after turning the tv on to a hockey game, and he landed on a football game instead. He saw cleats instead of skates, soft turf instead of hard ice, a game just rough enough to make his skin buzz pleasantly but not enough for anyone to compare him to Bad Bob, enforcer extraordinaire.

So he spent the year learning football. When he started applying to colleges he applied to schools in warm climates, and meticulously avoided cities with hockey teams. Without a high school football career to get him scouted, Jack played at a D2 school his freshman year. But Jack Zimmermann would be D1 material at any sport he put even a fraction of his energy into, so he transfers to UGA, spends sophomore year benched (the NCAA compliance officer was very apologetic to the football coaching staff but no, they couldn’t make an exception for Jack) and his junior year is his first real year on the team.

It’s also the year the coach’s son gets to UGA.

Plenty of people on the staff and the team know Eric, have been eating his and his mother’s baked goods at team events for years, but Jack must have been too busy glaring at his red vest and sulking near the benches to notice. Then he was too busy acclimating to actually being on the team.

About halfway through his fall semester junior year, Jack notices.

He sees Eric on the side of the field one day, arms crossed and sunglasses on as he talks to his father. He’s got on a UGA windbreaker and duffel bag, and Jack doesn’t know what sport he plays but he knows an athletes when he sees one. The guys on the field with Jack mess up a passing drill that Jack himself was hardly paying attention to, and the ball rolls to Eric’s feet. Coach barks out a reprimand to Johnson for the fumbled throw, and Johnson — bizarrely — winks at Jack as soon as Coach looks away. Jack looks back at coach, brows furrowed, just in time to hear him say, “Junior, why don’t you show these boys how a football’s meant to be thrown.”

Eric frowns, he hems and haws, but eventually submits, like he always does with Coach. He shifts his stance, conscious of the teams eyes on him, of his daddy’s eyes, and takes a deep breath before launching the ball across the field back towards the players. He watches with more relief than pride when it flies beautifully, and manages to smile more than grimace when a few of the guys who know him hoot and holler good-naturedly.

Jack watches the whole thing and his mouth goes dry.

He thinks about that pass, about Eric, for days afterward. He sees Eric on campus one day, saying goodbye to a bunch of guys from the track and field team who were spending one of their few free days lounging in the shade of a tree. Jack watches Eric spilt from the group and start in his direction and makes a split second decision to try and catch his attention.

Jack stammers out a hello and manages to say his own name without much trouble and Eric graces him with one of his kind smiles in return, laughingly telling him that he’s well aware of who his daddy’s new favorite player is. Jack is too starry eyed to catch the edge in his voice when he says it. So he — harmlessly, unknowingly, more as an attempt at a friendly joke than anything — mentions the pass from the other day, asks him why he’s not on the team with an arm like that. And Eric (short tempered, rough around the edges, hurt, hurt, hurt, Eric) ices him out. He drops his smile, he walks away without a word.

Eric doesn’t know yet that Jack Zimmermann is a former hockey wunderkind, that Jack switched to football to get away from hockey the same way Eric switched to track to get away from football. He doesn’t know that Jack would understand the way he has to push his body to quiet his mind. That Jack understands so well because at one point things got too quiet. Eric doesn’t know yet that Jack Zimmermann isn’t just another one of his daddy’s boys waiting and watching for him to crumble. But he’ll find out soon.

[justlookfrightened]

Houston Chronicles, Part 13

Read the beginning here. Read the last installment here.

Jack breathed easier after the lunch with Bitty and his teammates. Keeping secrets wasn’t good for him -- that was a lesson he learned a long time ago. Even if he hadn’t said he and Bitty were dating -- because they weren’t, not really (not yet?) -- he made it clear that Bitty was someone who was important to him.

He had no idea whether Marcus knew he and Bitty had once been in a serious relationship. He kind of assumed everyone knew, since the events of the summer of 2016 had been so public, but Marcus never mentioned it. Fox also seemed less suspicious of Bitty’s motives, or maybe just his effect on Jack.

Jack had never seen why anyone would think Bitty would want to disrupt the team; when he and Bitty came out to the Falconers, Bitty had become an integral part of the team’s social circles, popular with the wives and partners and with the players themselves.

When Bitty left, Jack’s teammates had been as confused as he was. They knew Jack hadn’t cheated on Bitty, and they seemed as mystified as Jack when he said Bitty hadn’t taken up with anyone else. That made some of them wonder if Jack had done something awful.

“Are you sure you didn’t have a big fight?” Thirdy asked.

“Did you compare him to your ex?” Tater asked. Right, like he would have compared Bitty to Kent, knowing Bitty would never trust Parse. But Tater didn’t know that Jack and Parse had a history.

The wives and partners -- well, Jack didn’t spend as much time with them, but Marty said Gabby said she wasn’t totally shocked.

“She said Eric was really having a hard time with not being able to find a steady job,” Marty told him. “And he felt kind of invisible.”

Which never made any sense to Jack, because all his life, he would have given anything to be invisible. Except when he was on the ice.

So Jack had increased his cleaning lady’s hours, sent his laundry out, even had a personal chef deliver meals -- although he wasn’t sure he’d ever admit that to Bitty. He’d increased the frequency of sessions with his therapist for a time. He’d had his agent find an assistant to handle the sale of the car Bitty drove and clean up all those little details. He’d had to fight not roll his eyes when they asked if he wanted to change the locks on the condo or even his Netflix password.

What he couldn’t replace was the warm feeling of coming home to Bitty, sprawled on the couch or bopping around the kitchen or sleeping in his bed. The comfort of Bitty’s touch when his thoughts started to spiral, the sparks that he’d feel when Bitty looked at him a certain way, or when he kissed him.

Those sparks sprang back to life the moment BItty kissed him in the park. If Bitty had invited him home that night, Jack would have gone willingly.

It would have been a bad idea. How much of a bad idea became clear the night he had dinner at Bitty’s apartment, when he realized that Bitty was right: He was still angry. The more time he spent with Bitty, the more the anger dissipated, especially when he realized how different Bitty’s life was here from what it had been in Providence.

Here, Bitty relied on himself. He had friends who didn’t know or care who any hockey players were, and he had a whole staff who depended on him. And he was thriving.

Bitty had come to one of the two home games since they had lunch with Marcus and Foxy, but he hadn’t come to see Jack in the dressing room of the corridor afterward. He seemed to want to keep his distance from the team.

But he’d given Jack the fixings for PBJs, he kept texting Jack, invited Jack over on one of his days off. They had taken Bitty’s truck and explored Brazos Bend State Park for a couple of hours. Bitty had clearly been there before, which surprised Jack. Bitty had liked being outside well enough, but he’d never been much of an outdoorsman in Jack’s experience.

“Aww, you didn’t know me when I was a kid,” Bitty said. “Some of my best times were in the spring, when Coach didn’t have football, and we could take the boat out or hike. No hunting then, either.”

Jack had gotten lots of pictures, mostly of the plant and animal life they saw along the nature trail, but some of Bitty, too. His favorite was one of Bitty standing on the path in the foreground, an alligator sunning itself at the edge of the river behind him.

They’d left for the park as soon as Jack finished practice that day, eating the lunch Bitty packed as soon as they arrived and then spending almost two hours strolling along the nature trail at an easy pace.

It had been a minor miracle that Jack’s light practice day coincided with Bitty’s day off. Jack probably wouldn’t be free to take so much time again for a few weeks; they were leaving to play in Vegas to start the last week of the regular season, and nothing would get easier.

Kent would no doubt try to get under his skin -- that never changed -- but at least it would be a chance to see Georgia.

Jack texted Bitty before he got on the plane.

Heading to Vegas, he wrote. We’ll be back late tomorrow night after the game.

Bitty was probably finishing up at the bakery, or maybe just home, getting ready for a late afternoon run.

Good luck! Bitty texted back. Mandy And Jeni are coming over to watch with me. I’m making the appetizers — they’re making the margaritas

Jack was glad Bitty had friends like that close by. Bitty and his next-door neighbors spent at least an evening or two a week together, watching TV or playing games or going to eat at local hole-in-the-wall places. Jack had seen them in passing several times now, but he’d never been invited to join them.

Because Bitty didn’t think he’d want to? Because they didn’t want him to?

He couldn’t tell if Mandy and Jeni were queer or straight, or friends or girlfriends. It wasn’t any of his business, anyway. The way they always came as a pair reminded him of Ransom and Holster.

Do they even like hockey? Jack asked

Let’s just say they’ve seen some things they like, Bitty texted back, with a peach emoji at the end.

Before boarding, Jack texted Georgia Martin

Still on for dinner tonight?

I wouldn’t miss it, Georgia texted back. You’re still my favorite get.

*******************

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