Chapter Text
Advertise what makes you crazy
So I can second guess my focus
Are you gonna hire me?
I let you in
Somehow I sit down
Revoke the time and space for you to just
Feel it in your name
Now I'm the ref and a phone call cutting out
Back on the bench I fall into the month I think about
How I sold seven doves when I was lying on your back
I'll meet you in the morning
Figure out what gets me past
A second in the shade
Fucking up a useful place
Purgatory please me
I let it live like a payday of mine
I can't let it be
I'm high scoring memory
~Hire, Girlpool
Jack gets off a plane in Montréal–Trudeau and collects his baggage before he makes himself look around for his parents.
It’s not that hard. His father is tall, like Jack himself, even if he is wearing a New York Yankees cap as a disguise, and his mother’s blonde hair is distinctive next to him. Like him and Kenny, Jack thinks for some reason. If Kenny had been a girl, like Jack thought when they met, they’d look an awful lot like his parents.
He shakes away the errant thought and makes himself walk toward them, powering through the shaking in his hands. His mother catches sight of him a few metres away and darts toward him, pushing through passerby and flinging herself on Jack in a hug. Abruptly a lump forms in his throat as he hugs her back.
“We were so worried, baby,” she says. “We’re so glad you’re home.”
His father catches up to them and draws them both into a hug.
“It’s good to see you, son,” he says gruffly.
“Je suis désolé, Papa,” says Jack thickly.
“Je t'aime, Jack,” his father says simply, and Jack knows he’s forgiven.
They tread on tiptoe around each other for the first two days, but Jack rather suspects his parents had enough of that after the overdose, and soon it’s as though none of it had ever happened, as though Kenny never entered their lives like a tornado. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. Sometimes, it makes Jack feel as lost as he did right after the overdose.
“I liked getting to teach the kids,” Jack says apropos of nothing to his father, who stops reading his book and nods. “I think I want hockey in my life. But I don’t want to go to the draft.”
“You could look for a full-time coaching job,” his father suggests. “For an Atom team or something.”
Jack appreciates his father more than he has words for, and he impulsively sits down next to him and hugs him. Papa puts down his book and hugs him back.
“I could play in a rec league,” he says.
“You could,” agrees Papa.
“Or I could do NCAA.”
“That’s a little higher-stakes than rec league hockey,” remarks his father wryly.
Jack smiles, amused.
“College might be good for me. To have something in my life that isn’t hockey, something structured.”
Papa just watches him, free of judgment or opinion.
Kenny texts him.
Can we skype
Jack doesn’t answer him for half a day, debating with himself.
“Do you think he was bad for me?” he asks his mother while helping with the dishes.
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” she answers. “You were in a vulnerable place, and you clearly had an intense relationship. I think only you can say how much of the problem was Kent and how much was the situation, or the fact that you were in a relationship at all.”
Jack thinks about it. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, but he knows that when he thinks of seeing Kenny’s face, it fills him with longing. So he texts back.
Yes
Kenny looks small on the screen, withdrawn, less somehow.
“I miss you,” is the first thing he says.
“I miss you too,” says Jack, because he knows that, at least, is true.
“I’m not sure I’m sorry for kicking you out, though.”
That stings, but Jack nods. It’s fair.
“How are you?”
“I’m okay, actually? Mom and I talked some. She’s not going to change her whole personality or anything, but she’s kind of accepted that I’m not who she wants me to be, and she has to deal if she wants to have me in her life. I guess vanishing for five months has that effect.” He smiles that one-sided smile. “Anyway, I have an appointment with a therapist next month. So hopefully I can get started on HRT soon.”
Jack smiles. “I’m glad,” he says, heartfelt.
“You? Your parents kill you for jetting off?”
“No, actually. They probably should have been madder at me.”
“Do they blame me for corrupting their goody-two-shoes son?”
“Amazingly, my mother is giving you all the credit she possibly can, given that from her perspective it kind of does look like that.”
Kent shrugs. “Well, that’s good, I guess. Wouldn’t have blamed them, after I sent you home like that.”
“We weren’t in a good place,” Jack says. Kenny laughs and shakes his head.
“Nope.” He sobers. “That wasn’t okay, the shit you said to me, Zimms. Or the shit I said back. So I’m sorry for that.”
“I’m sorry too,” says Jack instantly.
“It turns out that you get me more than anyone. And that also means you know exactly how to make me hurt.”
“And vice versa.”
“Yeah.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Fuck, this feels like a breakup.”
“Is it…not being a breakup…on the table?” asks Jack hesitantly. Kenny rests his chin on his hands.
“Well, yeah, if you want. I still fucking love you, even if you’re a bastard sometimes.”
A little blanket of warmth wraps around Jack’s heart.
“I love you, too.”
Kenny smiles sadly at him. “Maybe we were just going too fast. Too deep, too soon.”
“So can we start over? Do this again, slowly?”
“How? I don’t know about you, Zimms, but I want more than long-distance Skype for the foreseeable future. And moving to be together kind of wrecked the going slow part already.”
The answer is already forming in Jack’s mind.
“Come to college with me.”
Kenny blinks. “…Huh,” he says. “That might actually work.”
“We can’t room together,” says Jack.
“Jumping ahead of yourself a little, there, bud. Where would we go?”
“Anywhere with a hockey team.”
Kent laughs. “You’re very predictable sometimes.”
Jack shrugs. Kent will have to get used to how much space hockey is capable of taking up in Jack’s brain if they want to make this work.
“We’ll apply to a bunch so we can have a good chance of getting into the same one.”
“Somewhere where we can be out, I don’t want to hide when there’s a million queer-friendly colleges out there.”
They start making plans.
There are six colleges that have division I hockey teams and make the 50 most LGBT-friendly schools list Kent finds somewhere. They throw out Princeton on the basis that it only takes five percent of applicants or something ridiculous, because it does in fact cost money to apply to college, and apply to the other five.
Ohio State doesn’t take Kent. University of Wisconsin waitlists Jack.
Jack isn’t in high school anymore, so he’s not going to get recruited the normal way, but Papa reached out to the coaches of the three schools and now he’s got interviews with all of them. Jack tries not to feel guilty about that.
“I just want to keep my head down and play hockey again, but not have to make a living off of it, necessarily,” he says.
“And you think you’re ready to play at a competitive level again?” says Coach Hall, head coach for Samwell. Jack reminds himself that they have to think of what’s best for the team.
“I do,” he says instead of snapping. “I’ve put a lot of work into taking better care of my mental health and knowing when things are going badly, and how to handle it. And the pressure of the NHL is much worse than the NCAA. No offense.”
“None taken,” says the assistant coach, Murray. “Contrary to popular belief, we do want our players to have some life outside of hockey. Major juniors…doesn’t, really.”
“Right,” says Jack, relieved. “And, uh, my dad didn’t…”
“Set every NCAA record in the last ten years?”
“Yeah.”
“And even if he had, a quarter of the people would know his name as do now, because NCAA, like juniors, is much less in the public eye.”
Jack nods. They get it.
“So, we have UMass, UVM, and Samwell,” says Kenny over Skype. “How do we decide?”
“Visit?”
“Yeah, all right.”
They go to the admitted students day at UMass, and the only good thing about it is getting to see each other, because the dean’s speech is basically “We have everything so if you can’t find it it’s your own fault,” and Jack knows that he’d have a reasonable amount of support as a student athlete, but he still nopes out with a vengeance. Any school that’s managing to trigger his anxiety from the admitted students day is not someplace he wants to spend four years.
But it can’t take away the fact that Kent flung himself into Jack’s arms when they laid eyes on each other for the first time in two months, and Jack felt like he could breathe again and had never noticed that he couldn’t before. He and Kenny share a hotel room and spend hours touching and kissing, able at last to put the remains of their fight behind them in the apology of a gentle touch.
There’s nothing bad about UVM’s admitted students tour, but it isn’t that memorable. At Samwell, on the other hand, an exuberant dude flings an arm around Jack’s shoulders and talks his ear off for twenty minutes before Jack finally learns his name. And then must make a face, because the guy says, “I know, dude, it’s totally shitty.”
Which makes some other potential teammate say, “What is?”
To which the first guy says, “My name.”
And the second dude says, “Your name’s Shitty? Hey, hey losers! Meet Shitty!”
The arena is called Faber, and it has giant windows letting the natural light in. They let him do a faceoff during practice, and the whole thing feels right.
“So, preference?” says Kent.
“I like Samwell,” says Jack self-consciously.
“Samwell gave me the better aid package, so I’m down,” says Kenny, and they send in their acceptance that night.
“I had to give them my legal name for records, but they’re putting me in the system as Kent! My username and my email and whatever will be kparson instead of mparson.”
“That’s amazing,” says Jack warmly. “And they’re putting you with a male roommate?”
“Yep. And they won’t tell him I’m trans, they’re going to let me decide if I want to do that? But they’ll put me with someone who checked the ‘doesn’t mind a trans roommate’ box on the roommate questionnaire.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“I got put in Pembroke West.”
“I got put in Brecon.”
A pause as they stare at the campus map on their respective computers.
“Those aren’t really close.”
“That’s okay, I guess.”
And Brecon is really close to the rink, so. There’s that.
“My roommate’s name is Aaron, and he likes Against Me! and theatre. I think we’ll get along.”
“Cool. Mine hasn’t emailed me back yet.”
Jack moves into the dorms a week before everybody else because of hockey. He brings in his boxes, unpacks his skates, and heads out to Faber. He couldn’t have explained why he needed to do it, before he even meets up with the team, but he sweet-talks the equipment manager (once he finds him—he does end up having to turn back and try again later) into unlocking the door, laces up his skates, and steps out onto the ice.
Hello, the ice seems to sing. We’ve been waiting for you.
Jack takes wide, slow laps and breathes in the cold air.
He meets the guy from the tour again, who has apparently decided to lean into his new nickname, and his other teammates seem nice enough. There’s a little staring and whispering, but he’d expected that, and mostly they treat him like any other guy. The hockey house is a run-down dump, but Jack wasn’t really expecting anything else, going by every locker room he’s ever been in for his whole life. What kind of house did he expect hockey players to keep?
He’d hoped to see Kenny earlier, but non-athletes can’t move in for another week and the distance is too great for Kenny to just pop in. And there’s no classes yet of course, so Jack is basically unpacked and chomping at the bit by the time he gets the text, sitting on a nasty green couch in the Haus.
I’m here
His chest seizes with joy and he smiles uncontrollably down at his phone.
“Oh, look at that smile!” chirps L-man, one of his new teammates and a junior. “Someone got Zimmerboy’s number!”
“Huh?” says Jack, momentarily distracted. “Don’t you give your phone number to anyone?”
“It’s an expression, dude,” sighs L-man. “Like, your girlfriend got your number? Knows how you tick? Capable of pulling a smile out of serious-as-shit Jack Zimmermann? Does nobody know this?”
“Bro, that’s not a thing,” someone says. “And even if it was, it doesn’t make sense talking to somebody who’s literally on their phone.”
The group devolves into linguistics discussion and chirping, and Jack goes back to his phone, unnoticed.
Where?
Pulled up in front of Pembroke
Jack sticks his phone in his pocket and heads out the door.
He gets to Pembroke maybe ten minutes later. Campus is crawling with arriving students, and he scans the street, searching for a familiar thatch of blonde hair.
A door shuts, and there he is, walking out of the building. Jack turns toward the noise, and he’s moving, calling, “Kenny!” as he goes, and Kent turns at the sound of his name. He lights up like the sunrise when he spots Jack, and later Jack will think that was a damn meadow run but all he’s thinking in the moment is I need to hold him and oh good, he’s running too, I’ll get to hold him faster, and then Kenny’s in his arms and Jack is squeezing him tightly.
Jack helps Kent and Gina unpack the car. Kent’s roommate has left a note on one of the beds asking politely to have that one if Kent doesn’t mind too much, so they pile the boxes around the other bed. Gina leaves, and suddenly Jack’s palms start sweating. His heart pounds. So when Kent opens up a box and pulls out sheets, Jack takes another and starts unpacking clothes into the captain’s bed. Kent gives him a weird look, and Jack knows he probably wasn’t planning on unpacking everything right this second, but he needs a task, needs something to do with his hands, something between him and Kent right now.
“Hey,” says a tall, blond, lanky kid with glasses, standing in the doorway. “Are you Kent?”
“That’s me,” says Kent, standing from where he’s stuffing socks into a drawer.
“Cool,” says Aaron, and offers Kent a fistbump.
“This is Jack,” says Kent, and meets Jack’s eyes, face unsure.
Jack wants to say “his boyfriend,” but his throat is full and he doesn’t. Aaron nods. “Nice to meet you,” he says, and starts making his own bed. Jack calms down a little. They have a buffer now.
“I’m going to head out,” Jack says eventually.
“You want company?” says Kent, voice careful.
“Not right now,” says Jack. “Catch you tomorrow?”
Kent nods, looking unsure.
Jack paces his room, trying to think. He wants this. It was his idea. So why is he freaking out about being here all of a sudden? About Kent being in his life long-term again? It feels different from the tours, when they were only together for a day or two. This is something permanent.
They’d hurt each other so badly. They were so underneath each other’s skin that it was only too easy to do. And Jack doesn’t want to do that anymore.
He texts Kent the next day.
come over
Kent turns up a quarter of an hour later, complaining about the hill and the stairs, and Jack’s worry takes a backseat. He wraps his arms around Kent and pulls him in, cradling him against his chest. Kent stretches up and kisses him. Jack kisses back.
“Hey,” he says, grinning uncontrollably.
“Hey,” says Kent back, and he’s so gorgeous, eyes crinkled at the corners—they’re pale green today—and that one-sided smile. Jack knows he’s on testosterone now, and he imagines he can see some difference. It hasn’t been very long, though, he’s probably imagining it. Or maybe just being on the hormones makes Kenny more himself somehow.
They kiss lazily for a few minutes, Jack alternating between ‘I have to kiss him’ and ‘I can’t kiss him because I’m smiling too hard.’
Finally, Kent snuggles into Jack’s chest, burying his head under Jack’s chin. Jack squeezes him.
“We need some boundaries,” says Kent.
Jack hums in agreement. “We need to not try to hurt each other.”
“Right,” says Kent. “I talked to my therapist about it. He said something that I think might help.”
“Yeah?”
“D’you think we could, when we’re mad and we think we might say something like that, we could just walk away? And agree not to follow each other?”
“We can try,” says Jack. “And then reconnect after we calm down?”
“Yeah.”
“I also think we need a certain amount of time not together, at least at first. Like, what if we said not to spend more than half our awake time together?”
Kent wrinkles his nose. “Even on weekends?”
“I’ll have games,” Jack points out. “I don’t think it’ll be that difficult. And we can always agree to relax it. Just…” He fiddles with Kent’s sleeve, trying to put it into words. “I feel like, at the end there, we’d kind of forgotten how to be separate people.”
Kent nods into his chest.
“Okay. Sounds good.”
They fuck it up, of course. But they’re better. Jack drops by Kent’s room between classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays when he doesn’t feel like going back to his dorm and he knows Kent’s free. Kent comes and lounges on Jack’s bed to do homework in the evenings.
“How can you possibly work like that?” Jack asks him once from his place at the desk.
“Never learned how to do work at a desk,” says Kent absentmindedly, twirling his pencil. “Homeschooled, remember? Did it in the car, on the sofa, sprawled out on my stomach in the exercise room. Never had a desk.”
“Did you like it?” asks Jack’s roommate, Toby, from his own desk.
Kent shrugs. “Yeah? What’s so great about school? Never really thought about it, ‘s not like I could go to class with my schedule.”
“Why not?”
Kent looks up, seeming to register who he’s talking to. “I was a competitive figure skater, dude.” His lips press together, daring Toby to comment.
“Neat,” says Toby, and goes back to his reading.
“Aaron asked me if we’re together,” says Kent one day as they’re walking through the quad. Jack stiffens and makes himself relax. Kent lives as a boy here, and accordingly, it makes Jack’s heart pound just to take his hand in public. Not that he looks much different than he did in Montréal and Syracuse, but then, Jack knows that people usually assumed Kent was a girl with short hair when they saw them together, and fucked as it is, that meant Jack was safe. Here, they run into people who know Kent, and know he’s a guy, and if Jack gets caught with him he gets outed.
But…it’s Samwell. One in four. The only thing he has to be afraid of here is it becoming public record, reaching the NHL, and then only if he does well and has a chance at signing after graduation. And Jack’s a big guy. He has a lot less to fear than some other guys.
Jack still has to see a psychiatrist occasionally to get his anxiety meds, and she talks sometimes about acceptable risks.
“It’s okay if you told him. Or if you didn’t, and you want to.”
Kent relaxes.
“Come skate with me,” Jack says. Kent grins up at him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They take the ice, just the two of them, early enough before practice that none of Jack’s teammates are there yet, and just skate, racing, skating circles around each other, and laughing.
“Hey, Jack!” It’s Shitty. “Who’s your friend?”
Jack checks his watch. They still have thirty minutes until afternoon practice. Shitty’s just. Extremely early.
“I’m Kent,” says Kent, skating over to shake hands. His voice is pitched low, and Jack wonders why it’s important to him that Shitty read him as male. Extra dysphoria today? Or is it just that he’s figure skating?
“Cool. I’m Shitty.”
“You’re Shitty? I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Can’t say the same, brah,” says Shitty, frowning.
Kent shrugs, but Jack imagines that he can feel hurt welling up in him.
“You’re mad fast,” continues Shitty.
Kent grins, sudden and blinding even at an angle.
“Yep. Wanna race?”
”Ch’yeah.”
Kent skates back to Jack while Shitty laces his skates up.
“We don’t have to tell him,” he says quietly. “I know he’s your teammate.”
Jack grabs his hand and pulls Kent into a twirl. Kent laughs, clear and joyful and easy, and takes Jack’s other hand. And then he’s off, leading Jack through something that looks like swing dancing on ice. All Jack has to do is stay on his feet. “Put your hands on my waist,” Kenny says at one point. Jack does, and Kent leaps lightly into the air, making it look like Jack lifted him.
Shitty claps. Kent lets go of one of Jack’s hands and bows elaborately.
“I didn’t know you did figure skating, Jacky Z,” says Shitty.
“I don’t,” says Jack, grinning. “Kent just makes me look good.”
“C’mon,” says Kent. “Race. I’ll even let you have the inside loop.”
They do three laps of the rink. Kent kicks Shitty’s ass.
“You win, brah,” says Shitty, panting. “Well, that’s me warmed up. Do you skate competitively?”
“Used to,” says Kent. “Wanna see a jump?”
“Uh, yeah,” says Shitty.
Kent’s warm this time, unlike the jump he did for the rink in Montréal, and Jack’s learning to tell the difference between them. This time, when he flings himself into the air, he’s going faster, and higher, and Jack’s pretty sure he does more turns. Shitty applauds again.
“What’s that one called?” he asks excitedly.
“Triple toe,” says Kent, doing a sit spin, apparently just for the hell of it. “So whatcha doing here, Shitty?”
“Got here early for practice,” says Shitty. “Doors are usually open by now.”
“So the rest of the team will be here soon?” asks Kent.
“Soon enough.”
“Cool, cool. I should head out,” says Kent, already moving toward the door. Jack’s heart aches, but he makes no move to stop him.
“Cool dude,” says Shitty. “Where’d you meet him?”
“Uh, at the Olympics,” says Jack.
“Oh yeah? Neat,” says Shitty. “Wait, you weren’t playing, right?”
“Just watching,” says Jack. He wants to say Kent was, though, but he knows that will only lead to more questions and probably end up outing Kent. “C’mon, let’s practice slapshots.”
“Jackie boy, you’re going to be captain of this team before you leave,” says Shitty solemnly, “cause literally no one else gives quite as many fucks about how good we are as you.”
Jack isn’t sure if that’s a compliment.
October begins, and Jack is very aware that it’s hockey season. It’s harder to ignore than it was last year, because he’s in the constant company of an entire hockey team who are invested in the games.
“Jager is a Flyers fan,” he tells Kent. “I can’t decide if that’s a terrible thing for the obvious reason, or a good thing because he absolutely does not idolize my dad, and therefore, me.”
“You realize I have absolutely no idea what the obvious reason is or what the Flyers have to do with idolizing you,” says Kent, not looking up from his book.
Jack laughs, suddenly so grateful that Kent isn’t a hockey fan. “I love you,” he says, and leans over to kiss him. Kent kisses back.
“You should watch games sometimes,” he tells Jack when they break apart.
Jack tries and fails to figure out why Kent would think that. It’s always good to watch the games, of course, it’s good for them a little like watching tape is, except they’re not studying how to beat a given team in particular.
“Why?” he asks eventually.
Kent smiles crookedly. “You love hockey,” he says simply.
Jack kisses him again, smoothing one hand over Kent’s cheek and cupping his face tenderly.
“Watch with me?”
Kent raises an eyebrow. “You better make it worth my time.”
Kent turns out to enjoy watching the games, though, and Jack can almost forget about how it’s been over a year since he last watched an NHL game. Kent remembers enough from hockey camp that he follows the game without much trouble, only needing Jack to explain things like the difference between a major and minor penalty.
“Aaron’s wearing nail polish,” he says apropos of absolutely nothing at the second intermission.
“…Okay?” says Jack.
“I used to love wearing nail polish when I was a kid,” says Kent, staring at the Liberty commercial. “But boys don’t like wearing nail polish.”
Jack understands now, or thinks he does. “But Aaron does.”
“And it’s okay for him, because he’s a real boy,” says Kent, bitterness dripping from the words. He’s peeling one of his thumbnails off, and Jack grabs his hand and squeezes it.
“You’re a real boy,” he says quietly. “If you wanna wear nail polish, you should do it.”
Kent holds his hand tightly and doesn’t let go until the third period starts. Jack’s fingers tingle when he lets go, but it’s okay.
The next game they watch together, Kent brings a bottle of red nail polish and doesn’t do anything with it for fifteen minutes, which is how long it takes Jack to figure out what he wants to say.
“Hey.” He nudges Kent, who glances at him. “You’re helping me take NHL hockey back. Let me help you take this back.”
Kent screws up his face like he’s going to cry. Then, with a sudden movement, he lunges for the bottle and shoves it into Jack’s hands.
Jack has -2 ideas about how to paint nails, but he’s going to try.
By the time he’s done, there’s polish on Kent’s fingers, Jack’s fingers, and also Jack’s jeans, but Kent is giggling uncontrollably, so Jack is proud of himself anyway.
“I love this song,” Kent says suddenly one day while they’re eating lunch. Jack listens for a few seconds. It’s some female pop artist.
“Yeah?” he says.
“I convinced myself I don’t like pop music,” says Kenny, leaning into his shoulder. “But I don’t want to do that anymore.”
October turns into November. Kent comes to all the home games that he can. Jack tells Toby that Kent’s his boyfriend, and Toby says, “I figured,” and nothing changes.
Practice schedule changes, and Jack and Kent have to stop turning up for practice forty to sixty minutes early and having Kent duck out before the whole team gets there. (Or. They could still do it for morning practice, but Kent flatly refuses to get up to skate at four AM. Jack pouts, but gives in.)
“Come after practice,” Jack suggests instead.
“Okay…” says Kent. “How long does it take for the rest of your teammates to clear out?”
Jack sighs. He’s tired of living like this. “Come when it’s over. Meet the team.”
Kent whips around to stare at him.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
So Kent turns up as practice is ending the next day, and ties on his skates as the rest of the team are clearing out. Jack bribed the equipment manager to drive the Zamboni through an hour later. When Kent stands up, Jack skates over to the door to gesture him in.
“Hey guys,” he says to the remaining teammates. “This is Kent.”
“Yo,” says Kent. “Christ, you hockey players do ruin the ice, don’t you?”
Lasky, one of the boys, mutters something in Spanish, and Kent laughs, clear as a bell, and says, “Claro, pero puedes hacer esto?”, loops the ice twice, and launches straight into part of one of his routines. Jack recognizes it by now, sees how Kent is using fancy-looking footwork to warm up and prepare to launch into a jump—a double, because he’s still not that warm.
“Fuuuuck,” Lasky says when he lands the jump. “Está chiste, dude, todo respeto.”
Kent grins like he won the lottery.
It’s not perfect. Already hyped up on finals stress, they fight about where they’re spending winter break—Jack doesn’t want to spend it with Kent’s mom, and he thinks Kent shouldn’t want to spend it with Kent’s mom either, but Kent hadn’t been expecting anything other than ‘we go back to our own houses.’ Jack finds himself wanting to say something ugly, and he says, “I have to go,” and walks out before he can. When he’s calmer, he texts Kent back, just a simple hey.
Kent texts back I’m not ready to talk to you yet, and, almost before Jack finishes forming the worry, we’re good followed by or we’re gonna be good anyway just give me a little more time.
When Kent’s ready, they talk it out, and they are good.
They come back from winter break. Or, Kent does, and Jack’s plane gets delayed due to weather and it takes him so long to get back to Samwell that he has to go straight to bed and get up five hours later for practice. (Because of course there’s practice. Even if it is snowing. It never would have occurred to Jack that it might be cancelled.)
But after practice, there he is, same as always, waving at Jack through the glass with that cocky grin. Jack skates to the door and tugs him onto the ice.
“Hold on, Christ, let me take my skate guards off,” says Kent, and then they’re gliding gently backwards, Kent’s hands in Jack’s. Jack has missed him, in a way that hasn’t really hit until now.
It has always been Jack’s anxiety in the way of them being out. Kent lives out at Samwell, has made clear when the subject came up that he’s happy to go at Jack’s speed, but that he’s ready to be out as a couple when Jack is.
So there’s no reason, not when Jack wants it so badly, not to tug Kent to his chest and kiss him.
He does.
Kent smiles into the kiss, and so does Jack, and then they can’t kiss anymore, can only stand there with their foreheads pressed together while Jack’s teammates hoot and holler and make noises about fines.
“Hi,” says Jack under the noise.
“Hi,” replies Kent.
They break apart eventually, and Jack looks around at his teammates’ faces with some trepidation, but they’re all smiling, still chirping.
Kent catches Lasky before he leaves and says, “Perdoneme que no te decía antes.”
“Tío,” says Lasky, clapping him on the shoulder, “no pasa nada, we're good, bro, vale?”
“Vale,” says Kent, smiling with relief.
“You have to do that shit on your own time.” Lasky gives the shoulder a squeeze and skates off.
“I didn’t realize you and Lasky were friends,” says Jack later, as they walk back to main campus through the snow. Kent shrugs.
“I guess, yeah. It’s nice to have somebody to talk to in my language, you know?”
Jack does know, he thinks. It must be similar to the relief of being able to speak French at home.
He reaches out and takes Kent’s hand as they walk.