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“Jack likes Bitty,” Shitty says as he sits down at the library table reserved for studying. Already a number of his fellow students were glaring at him – he always had been too noisy for libraries.
“No kidding,” Lardo deadpans not looking up from her textbook, she has some poetry paper due in a couple weeks and decided for once she was going to be proactive about her schoolwork. Though, it seemed like Shitty wasn’t going to allow that to happen.
“No, but Jack knows that Jack likes Bitty,” Shitty clarifies.
“Did he tell you?” Lardo asks.
Shitty looks affronted at the question, “As the resident best friend I just know.”
“So, as my resident best friend, you’d know if I had a crush on Bitty?”
“Lardo, we all know you have a crush on Bitty.”
Lardo chuckles and rolls her eyes, “I’ll try and be less obvious about it next time.”
**
It wasn’t that Jack knew he didn’t like guys, he had gone through the cliché bisexual crisis when he was fourteen (though a part of him wishes it had happened at Samwell – Shitty would have been a much better support system than Parse or his dad. Not that his dad actually knows). It’s just that figuring out he liked Bitty. That had been a bit of a shock.
It wasn’t like Bitty wasn’t handsome, and it wasn’t like Bitty wasn’t great; but when Jack looks back on his very, very brief romantic history there’s nothing even kind of Bitty-like in there.
It starts with that Women, Food & American Culture course – it probably starts before that, but that’s when he becomes aware of it. Before that he had only really spent time with Bitty at checking practice which wasn’t the same, Jack kept feelings off the ice (mostly), but now they were getting coffee and studying and chirping each other. It was different. It was nice.
Except it was too different and Jack had no idea what to do. So, he did what Jack Zimmermann does best. Bury his feelings deep inside and pretend they don’t exist. (And, most importantly, don’t tell Shitty anything).
As if on cue Shitty walks through the front door, he announces his presence by slamming it shut and walking over to the kitchen where Jack is currently ignoring his feelings, “What’s up, bro?”
“I thought you were with Lardo all day?” Jack asks as way of answering.
“She kicked me out for being distracting or something,” Shitty shrugs reaching into the fridge to grab a beer. “If she didn’t the librarian would have.”
“How are you not banned from there yet anyway?” Jack asks as Shitty sits across from him at the kitchen table.
“My charm, obviously,” Shitty answers and Jack snorts a little. “Hey, do we have pie?”
“We always have pie.”
“Right, of course,” Shitty replies. “Thank god for Bitty.”
“Yeah,” Jack’s voice is terser than he wanted only to prevent it from being moonier than he wanted. Shitty gives him a look, and it’s such a Shitty look. “What?”
“Nothing,” Shitty purses his lips like he’s about to say something. “No, nothing.”
“That means something, come on what is it?” Jack asks. Shitty never keeps stuff from him, in fact Shitty over shares if Jack’s being honest.
“It’s none of my business,” Shitty answers.
“What does that mean?”
Before Shitty can give him a non-answer the door slams open, “Oh, sorry about that, I always forget how easily that slams.” Bitty’s home. “I must say, how is it already chilly? It is October.”
“Bitty it’s not at all cold,” Shitty replies. “How did you survive actual winter here?”
“I don’t think I did,” Bitty says walking into the kitchen and giving them both a smile. As soon as he enters Jack stands up in one awkward motion. Bitty gives Shitty a look in hopes of an explanation but Shitty just shrugs, he may know what’s up but it’s not as if he can blurt out ‘Jack has a really awkward crush on you’. Though it’s tempting. “How are you two?”
Before Shitty can say something Jack walks out of the room just a bit too fast to seem even sort of natural, he mumbles some vague excuse about homework and by the time he’s on the stairs he’s racing. “What in the world was that about?” Bitty asks.
“Just give him time,” Shitty says sagely. “He’s not used to this.” Bitty furrows his brows but decides it’s probably best not to ask.
**
There’s early morning practice the next day, because there’s early morning practice almost every day. Keeps the team on their toes, or some shit like that, Shitty’s never actually retained the reason they do the early morning practice thing even if Jack’s explained it. (He retains pretty much everything else Jack says – even the shit about World War Two military strategy – so he figures it balances out of the best friend scale).
While some of the team does drills Shitty skates over to where Lardo is watching, she’s got her eyes on Jack and Bitty, which he sort of expected. “He’s playing the same,” Lardo observes. “Better even.”
Admittedly, Shitty had expected this whole feelings thing to fuck with Jack’s head. After all, Jack had finely tuned himself to block out everything that wasn’t hockey, the occasional bonding time with Shitty and Lardo, and maybe a documentary. All of a sudden Bitty had wormed his way in there and, naturally, Jack floundered.
On the ice though Jack was in his element, even more so than usual. Maybe it was because it was the only element he had left, maybe it was the fact he was in such close proximity to Bitty. Shitty wasn’t one to over-analyze.
“Bitty’s doing great too,” Lardo adds.
Shitty nods, “They’re better than usual, more, in sync. Which I didn’t think was an option.” Whole crush things paying off, Shitty thinks before skating off to do his own drills as Lardo watches from the sidelines.
By the time it’s over everyone is tired and sore but they all know that was one of their best practices in a long time. They trickle into the change rooms to take off their skates and take much needed showers. Lingering, just slightly, is Jack. It’s the norm, Jack likes to make sure everyone’s set before he takes care of himself, except he also likes to hide he does so he pretends to preoccupy himself with ‘captain duties’ while keeping a watchful eye out. Shitty’s pretty sure he’s the only one who’s away Jack does this – Jack included.
“Bittle,” Jack says a little gruff. Bitty turns, potentially concerned. “You were good out there.”
“Oh,” Bitty replies eyes widening a little. “Thank you, Jack, you were too.” He scurries off into the change room, ears tinged a little red, but he’ll pretend it’s the cold anyway.
“The courtship process in action,” Shitty mutters to Lardo who stifles a giggle.
**
“Do not get involved,” Lardo says. Again.
“I wasn’t going to get involved,” Shitty argues. “More like a gentle nudging in the right direction.”
“Shouldn’t you be saying something about how healthy relationships form on their own?” Lardo asks. They’re cuddling on the (not toxic) couch watching some bad romantic comedy that’s playing on the TV while they smoke weed. It’s not a bad Tuesday evening.
“Probably,” Shitty admits. “It’s just Lardo they so desperately need a gentle nudge.”
“Yeah but that’s true of every budding romance or whatever,” Lardo counters gesturing to the TV. “Just look at this Mila Kunis still isn’t telling Justin Timberlake her feelings even though the narrative is clearly telling us they’re meant to be.”
“Yeah, but every good romantic comedy has a set of meddling best friends – that could be us!”
“I thought we were the side couple that has their shit together?”
“Oh, please we don’t have anything together.”
“Compared to Jack and Bitty we just might,” Lardo tells him, though she’s not sure what exactly they’re supposed to have together anyways.
“Which is why you should let me meddle,” Shitty whines.
“See it is meddling,” Lardo says victorious.
“Yeah, and it’s gonna be great,” Shitty grins. “So, here’s my plan –”
“No.”
**
Shitty meddles. Which shocks a total of zero people (though to be fair the only person it could potential shock is Lardo since she’s the only one who knows it could happen – and she isn’t shocked by anything he does). It’s not a big deal, he just engineers a couple situations that force Jack and Bitty to hang out.
The thing is if Jack didn’t freeze up every time he saw Bitty (which in turn caused Bitty to freeze up) then they would be hanging out this much anyway. Before Jack found about these dreaded feelings he and Bitty were on the way to be being pretty good bros. If anything Shitty is just putting them back to where they were (if they become bros who make out and hold hands and fall in love and shit, well, that’s great, the Haus is the best place for those kind of bros).
It starts simple, he makes it so Bitty and Jack have to sit next to each other at dinner or ducks out of grocery shopping at the last minute so it’s just Jack and Bitty. Really they’re just manufactured ‘coincidences’.
It’s perfect. Potentially.
**
Jack’s spending a lot more time with Bitty lately. Which is a direct contrast to his plan of desperate avoidance. Jack doesn’t pretend to be good at the romance stuff. He’s not, he’s not used to it. His dating experience is limited to Camilla Collins and a couple of blind dates thanks to the ‘help’ of Ransom and Holster. He doesn’t get romance. He doesn’t like romance. He likes Bitty though. Which is the problem.
Well, that and the fact that he has to keep spending time with Bitty – though that’s a direct result of the first problem, because if Jack didn’t like Bitty then he wouldn’t care about spending time with Bitty and he could get back to only caring about hockey. He liked only caring about hockey.
The thing is it’s not any actual extra time with Bitty, he’s just now hyper aware of how much time he spends with Bitty and how much of it is just the two of them. Since when are they always alone? He thought the other guys would be there, after all, more often than not someone’s around and willing to hang out. All of a sudden though it’s just him and Bitty. Always alone.
He’s fucked basically.
It’s not like he can just purge Bittle from his life, he’s a major part of the team. Besides, there’s not a single world in which Jack wants to do that. It’s also not like he can just blurt out his feelings and hope for the best, because that would compromise everything, and Jack is sure there’s no way Bitty feels the same way anyway.
That’s why keeping a casual distance was perfect.
Except it wasn’t because that isn’t what was happening. What was happening was extra checking practice with Bittle and having to clean up after dinner with Bittle (because apparently that chore wheel hated him too considering that was the only chore he’d gotten in a week. He almost missed washing Holster’s gross socks). It’s the worst.
Except it’s not, because spending time with Bittle is great and they have a lot of fun and really if it wasn’t for the giant pit in his stomach this would be ideal.
He’s so fucked.
And so, Jack does what he usually does when he’s fucked, he goes and talks to Shitty. If nothing else he figures Shitty can spew off something that sounds comforting, and Jack is content with just pseudo-comfort at this point.
He knocks out of habit but enters before Shitty can say anything. It’s not it matters even if he’s not decent (which he isn’t – he’s lounging in his favourite pair of Wonder Woman underwear half as asleep, potentially just stoned) because Shitty would beckon him in anyways. Jack sits down at Shitty’s desk and looks at him somewhat expectantly despite the fact that he came into Shitty’s room. Shitty raises an eyebrow, “What’s up?”
Jack falters a little, in the back of his mind he did have something he wanted to say to Shitty, or at least he figured he’d be able to even say the words ‘I like Bittle’, but now that the opportunity has arose he falls flat. It’s all too familiar.
Some kind of doubt must be playing on his face because Shitty says, “You know you can tell me whatever, man. But if you just wanna hang out that’s fine too.”
“No, I have to tell you something, just give me a second,” Jack replies.
“Of course, you know I’m always here for you.”
“Last year’s made you all sentimental,” Jack grins even though he does feel the same way, just in a more reserved, Jack-like way. Shitty chucks a pillow at him and it hits him perfect. “Alright, okay, so, here’s the thing.” Jack doesn’t stumble over his words like this, ‘eh’ aside he’s never one for anything not necessary. After four years of constantly being around him Shitty is aware of this, so it isn’t surprising when he sits up a little knowing this is a conversation of a serious nature. “You know I don’t do the whole dating thing – and before you say anything yes, I know that’s fine, and yes, I did read that pamphlet you gave me on aromanticism and asexuality. It was actually pretty interesting.” Shitty shoots him a surprised but proud look that says very clearly they’ll be talking about that at a time when Jack doesn’t have any pressing concerns. “That’s always been a non-issue though, but, uh, now there is an issue.” He pauses to consider his phrasing. “So I do want to do the whole dating thing, which is different in and of itself, but it’s really different because, well, I want to do it with Bittle.” Jack stops abruptly and looks down at the ground, when he does look up he sees Shitty carefully looking him over.
“Alright, Jack, you’re talking about your feelings, I’m proud,” Shitty laughs, under different circumstances he may have offered words of comfort or immediate advice, but he figures a little chirping might do Jack some good. Now it’s Jack’s turn to throw the pillow at Shitty, who, to Jack’s chagrin, catches it with ease. “No, I’m serious, this is good. Now, you just have to do this with Bitty.”
Jack pales, “That’s not an option.”
“Kind of the only one, bro,” Shitty replies. “It’s like kindergarten, you just gotta ‘use your words’. Otherwise you’re going to be awkward around Bitty forever.”
“You noticed that?” Jack asks.
“It’s really obvious, dude, I’m pretty sure the frogs have a pool on when you’re going to get together,” Shitty tells him.
“Wait,” Jack freezes. “Does Bitty know?”
“That you wanna marry him? Nah. That you’re a weirdo? Yeah, he’s noticed.”
Jack puts his head in his hands, “Shit, alright, I’m going to talk to him.”
“Now, you’re going to talk to him now.”
“What? No.”
“Hell yeah you are, bro,” Shitty says standing up, he’s officially thrown his no meddling rule out the window now, but Jack needs a forceful push at this point, no more gentle nudging. He moves to push Jack out of his chair and into the hallway, it’s not easy because it’s Jack but he pushes and pulls all the way to Bitty’s room without much trouble and raps against the door. Before Jack can say anything Shitty bolts just as Bittle opens the door.
“Jack! Can I help you with something?”
Jack glares over at Shitty’s retreating figure – he’s gone to hide in the attic with Ransom and Holster for a while, possibly forever – before running a hand through his hair, “Are you busy? Could I talk to you?”
“Oh, yeah, do you wanna come in?”
“Or we could get coffee?” Jack asks, he doesn’t like the idea of doing this where they could get interrupted, the Haus has a rather open-door policy regardless of whether he likes it. “I’ll buy you one of those too sweet lattes you like.”
Bitty smiles, shy, “That would be nice.”
**
Shitty and Lardo are in the living room, watching some space movie that isn’t Star Wars so it doesn’t really matter, when Jack and Bitty walk in. Holding hands and looking a little red in the face.
“You meddled didn’t you?” Lardo asks.
“It’s not meddling if it works.”
“Yes it is.”