This boy

The wedding is beautiful. The bride and groom figurines on the cake are little hockey players. Lardo looks amazing. Shitty is wearing an actual suit. Jack is his best man. Bitty brought a thousand of those travel-sized tissue packets, just in case. Bitty has also been practicing his catching skills because he is gonna get that bouquet he will check you if need be. 

Lardo walks down the aisle. Chowder is already sobbing, like, super loud. Shitty has this look on his face, bright and a little crazy like he might start laughing or throwing up or both at any second, because how can one person handle all of this happiness at once? 

They stand in front of the priest. Shitty takes Lardo’s hands. She gives him a quick, sideways smile and quirks an eyebrow, silently asking him if he’s gonna cry at his own wedding like a loser, as if she wasn’t just breathing heavily into a paper bag half an hour ago. 

The priest smiles, and turns to Lardo. 

“Do you, Larissa Duan, take Brian Knight–” 

“Do I take fucking

WHOM

@notenoughgatorade you make an excellent point

The result of this would obviously be fucking PANDEMONIUM

Jack is on the floor in tears of laughter, incapable of saying anything but “Barrington the barrister” for the next hour

Ransom and Holster have completely bluescreened. They are completely frozen and cannot be moved or reasoned with. It’s too much information for their minds to cope with – hundreds and hundreds of jokes all clamoring to be said first. 

“THAT’S NOT A NAME” Dex screams again and again. “THAT’S NOT A REAL FIRST NAME! THAT’S! NOT!! A!!! NAME!!!!!!!!” 

 “Barrington?” Bitty says for the fortieth time. “Barrington?” He looks over at Shitty’s side of the church with an expertly crafted Southern Judgement Glance TM and says “to each their own, I suppose.”

Lardo is loudly announcing that there is no way she is going to be legally bound to someone named Barrington, thank you VERY much; the priest is looking around nervously for any sign of whether or not he’s supposed to believe her. 

ok but imagine 

Bitty comes out to his parents but he doesn’t tell them about Jack, thinks it’s for the best, maybe to ease his parents into things or maybe to keep the pool of People Who Know as small as possible 

and like yeah Ransom and Holster are super oblivious but Suzanne Bittle is not, not when it comes to her son, because she is a certified Nosy Southern Mother and she can see he’s been acting differently, happier but quieter, always on his phone and blushing when she asks about boys

and he talks about the team a LOT 

Jack’s one of his best friends and he’s just started his NHL career, so of course Bitty’s never gonna shut up about Jack

(Same goes for Shitty and law school. And eventually Ransom and med school. Dicky is proud of his friends and wants everyone to know. He gets that trait from Suzanne, she understands)

but he keeps talking about this one Boy, how sweet he is and how his smile is like a sack of puppies and how bitty’s always making this boy do things with him like baking and getting froyo and going shopping and Suzanne is like. Yes. This must be Dicky’s secret boyfriend. 

 the next family weekend or whatever, Suzanne demands to meet this Chowder boy who’s stolen Bitty’s heart

Bitty is both confused and mortified

Jack learns that he is great with kids after coaching them for a little over two years. Moreover, kids are good with Jack. There is no pressure to be anything other than who he is.

It all starts with a local news program doing a fluff piece on Jack Zimmermann’s coaching ability. But then it turned into something completely different when Jack skated onto camera and started to introduce every single one of his kids and what was special about them. He was…really enchanting actually. He didn’t ever really talk down to them. Jack just treated them as a tiny friend.  They ARE his tiny friends, but that’s not the point.  The footage they got of “snack time” was really the best. Imagine a good 16 kids piled around this massive man teaching them the best way to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

 It should have been obvious that a local channel would contact him. It still surprises Jack. They want him to host a show? Why? Everyone always teased him about how impersonable he was during interviews. Is it because he’s Jack Zimmermann’s son? Or Alicia’s?  Jack asks all of these questions to his mother and she just laughs. “You made a PB&J interesting to 16 kids just by being you” Jack figures it wouldn’t hurt to give it a shot. 

Jack. Jack Zimmermann keeps an untitled folder on his desktop. An untitled folder filled with pictures and iMessage screenshots of conversations with Bitty. The pictures are mostly of Bitty, though some group shots of SMH and some others are thrown in as well. He has pictures of Bitty baking in the Haus, of Bitty walking across campus completely oblivious to the camera pointed at him, of Bitty doubled over laughing on Jack’s couch. Very rarely does Bitty seem to be aware that he’s being photographed, and yet the lighting is perfect, a calm sort of happiness seems to be radiating off of him. None of them are dated, none of them are titled. Each photo holds a memory of a person in love.

“and people in hell want ice water. quit complaining.”

“poor girl cant tell her ass from a hole in the ground”

“doohickey”

“aint got the good sense god gave a rock”

“they could start an argument in a empty house”

“if brains were leather, he wouldnt have enough to saddle a june bug”

“youre barking up the wrong tree, sweetheart”

“looks like you got your feathers ruffled”

“shes too big for her own britches”

“ill be done in two shakes of a sheeps tail”

Here’s the first part  ! I recommend you read it before this part, or else it won’t make much sense. Sorry this took like, ten million years. Thanks to everyone who messaged me and said they liked the first part, it always made my day <3 

————

    The relief only lasted so long once he realized that yes, no more old-leopard-print lady (thank god), but still there’s a date with someone. A stranger.

    Jack’s barely held decent conversations with his teammates, how would a date with a stranger work?

    It wouldn’t. No way.

   Feeling like he’d just survived a brutal game, Jack took a few seconds to gather himself. He wiped the condensation from his forehead (he really hoped no one had noticed), slowed his breathing, let his jaw unclench. Once his fingers became steady enough he fixed the cuffs of his uncomfortably hot suit.

   “Fuck it,” He shucked the jacket off entirely. It felt good until he lifted his arms- “Ugh.”

   Pit stains.

   For a moment he struggled with what to do: If I wear the jacket I’m uncomfortable and sweating more, but if I don’t people can see the sweat and thats embarrassing and-

   “Jack!” Someone from management tapped his shoulder, “This way, the kid is waiting on stage right.” She gave him a brief once-over, “Put on the jacket.”

    With a somewhat relieved nod, he slipped the jacket back on and wished for a calmer heart-beat.

     The wish didn’t come true, of course. It rarely did.

    They approached the stairs leading off the stage.

    This kid must like you. They bid on you. They spent money for a date-thing-whatever with you. Just smile. Act like a normal-

   “Hi!”

   -person.

   “Uh, hi.”

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

Jack knows this is part of their “make Jack Zimmermann into an actual-human” plan, that it’s good for press, for the team, and for charities. That doesn’t mean it’s any less intimidating. It sort of helps that Tater and Poots are in the same boat, but only for the weeks leading up to, not when he’s seconds away from standing on a stage and being bid on.  

“You will do good, Zimmbonni!” Tater had clapped his back. Jack took a moment to wince and roll out his shoulder while they filed out of George’s office, the knowledge of this event making Tater grin like a child and Poots blush. “Maybe take off shirt, have girls bid, yes?”

At that, Poots had laughed, “With that face he won’t have to, Tates.”

Tater stopped Jack in his tracks and grabbed his cheeks, “Maybe smile then, ok?”

Jack playfully swatted him away and went, “Okay.”

It’s almost midnight when Dex takes his last load of laundry out of the dryer.

He needed to run it three times and sat in a folding chair in the cold basement to make sure it didn’t start to smoke.

His sweatshirt is still a little damp but his socks and t-shirts are dry and that’s really all he can ask for.

He pats the top of the dryer in thanks for not catching fire and then gives it the finger for all the hell it’s caused him and hoists the laundry basket up on his hip.

They’re only a couple hundred dollars shy from getting a new one and at the rate Jack and Bitty are going….

“Sweetheart, honey.”

Bitty’s voice floats down the stairs and Dex takes them two at a time to get to the top.