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He likes the expanse of Jack’s stomach, the way it curves near his hips, but then dips down near his ribs. His hips are wide, rounded, full, stretchmarks like a tiger cascading down to mid-thigh. Bitty likes to drag his fingers along the lines, to trace them, feel the differences under the pads of his fingers.
He likes the way Jack’s belly is hairy, but his chest is mostly bare. He likes the way Jack’s nipples harden under the brush of a thumb.
Bitty worships at the altar of Jack, he thinks. It’s not serious, he doesn’t think this sort of affection for Jack is unhealthy. And maybe it’s because Jack is his first and only boyfriend—so far, and if Bitty can help it—for always. Or maybe it’s because Jack and Bitty have both suffered enough and they deserve each other. But it’s okay. At least, Bitty thinks it is. He feels okay, and the way Jack smiles at him, all sleepy eyes and soft around the mouth, he thinks Jack feels okay too.
They lay in bed sometimes, touching, skin-to-skin but not really taking it anywhere. Jack enjoys the heavy press of Bitty’s body on him—like a weighted, heated blanket. Bitty’s always so warm, and Jack is so big beneath him and Jack wants this.
They lock eyes and talk about things. Sometimes talking nonsense, which sometimes feels deeper than just nonsense.
“Sometimes I love the idea of a big spring wedding,” Bitty says. “Like one of those back-yard, southern types with everything white, and everything in bloom.” He buries his face against the side of Jack’s chest, fingers tracing over a bruise from his last game. “Sometimes I just wanna run away, marry you in some Vegas chapel…” He stops, because he knows what Vegas implies and that wasn’t what he meant, but the panic of Jack thinking of him during talk like this…
“Maybe in Montreal,” Jack says, voice heavy, sleepy, wonderful. “Near a lake, in the spring. You’d…you’d love it in the spring,” then punctuates the sentence with a yawn, and Bitty smiles and nestles against him tighter as though maybe if he holds on tight enough, long enough, he won’t ever have to let go.
It’s a silly thought, but it doesn’t make him feel suffocated or afraid like it might have if Jack were anyone else.
Jack’s fingers brush through Bitty’s hair and they’re quiet for a while until Jack says, “I really do wanna marry you some day, Bits.”
Bitty blinks, his eyes feeling a little hot and a little wet because at no point in his life—not when he was younger, not when he left Georgia, not when he met Captain Jack Zimmermann—did he ever think he’d get something like this. “When you ask, I’m going to say yes.”
Jack laughs and playfully nudges him as he chirps, “I’m the one asking, eh?”
“Maybe I’ll surprise you,” Bitty says, and turns over, propping up on his elbow to look at Jack, to take in his relaxed jaw and sleepy eyes. “How do you feel about that?”
“I feel like it’ll be right, however it happens,” Jack says. Bitty sighs at that, and lays back down, and Jack pulls him in close so he can push his face against the side of Bitty’s neck, then he says, “What if we don’t.”
Bitty blinks, but doesn’t move away. He’s in an awkward position, draped across Jack’s chest, his face up high near Jack’s hairline, buried in a sea of pillows Jack sleeps with. “What if we don’t what?” Bitty asks.
“Plan, propose, any of that. What if we…what if we decide now that we just want to do it. Some day. Any day. When it feels right. And we don’t…have a moment where we propose. We just…” He stops and Bitty can hear the anxiety in his voice making it tremble a little, so this time he does pull back.
He cups Jack’s face. “I like that.”
Jack blinks, then relaxes, and lets out a breath as his mouth curves into a grin. “You do?”
“Yes. Jack, if you want to be…be engaged,” he trips over the word a little because lord he did not ever think he’d say that in reference to himself. Or at the very least in reference to himself and Jack, “I want nothing more than that. If you say that I can tell myself every morning, and every night, that I’m going to marry you some day and we’re committed, I’m going to be much happier than waiting around for one of us to feel like it’s right, and get down on one knee, and ask a question we already know the answer to.”
Jack reaches up, his face stoic and serious, but Bitty knows now that it’s his in love look. It’s the look Jack gets when he’s overwhelmed by something—and it’s not always bad, and right now it’s everything good. He’s looking at Bitty like Bitty takes up the entire world. His fingers trace along Bitty’s jaw, soft but with enough pressure to remind Bitty that he’s here. “Okay,” he breathes.
Bitty smiles back, bright as the sun. “Okay.”
***
And it is okay. And it stays okay.
And Bitty sometimes waits for the other shoe to drop, but he supposes he’s so used to every ending for people like him—small, southern gay boys—to end in tragedy. It’s in most books and most movies, so it must be representative of something, right?
Only it isn’t. At least not now. Not when Bitty breaks and feels like the world is caving in on him and he’s so alone, so Jack drives across state lines, runs through the rain to Bitty’s door. He’s drenched and shaking and holding Bitty so tight as Bitty sobs into his front, “You fool,” and so much more, tumbling from his lip out of shock and love and wonder because in any other circumstance Jack would have just written this whole thing off as Too Much.
They tell the team after that—the ones Bitty loves and trusts.
And the Falconers come next.
And Bob and Alicia.
It takes Bitty so much longer to tell his parents because even though he can’t believe they don’t at least suspect—and have at least had a chance to talk amongst themselves and come to terms with it, he knows it isn’t going to end well.
Not the way it ended with Jack’s parents, or the boys.
And it doesn’t. His parents aren’t cruel. No one shouts at him.
But it’s the little hurts. “We still love you,” as though he should be thankful that in spite of being a raging queer, they find it in their hearts to overcome it. “It would be better though, if you don’t tell a lot of the family,” they add, and in spite of Bitty having the expectation that no one in his family would be marching in any Pride parades, being shoved back into any sort of closet just hurts.
But Jack’s there to hold him and listen, and assure him he’s worth loving and wanting and it isn’t in spite of anything, but because he is who he is.
It’s enough to ease the sting, and make talking to his momma and Coach a little less painful.
Most days, anyway.
***
And they’re still engaged. They don’t bring it up much, but occasionally Jack says things like, “When we’re married, I want to spend at least a few days camping somewhere. For our honeymoon.”
And Bitty says things like, “If you think I’m going to be roughing it in some stretch’a woods when my husband has an NHL salary and can pay for an all-inclusive resort in Cabo, you’ve got another thing comin’ mister.”
Sometimes they shop, and Jack lets Bitty outfit the kitchen seasonally, with sunflower printed towels, and yellow-handled stirring spoons for summer, and blue and silver and white prints for winter. And the duvet on Jack’s bed was one Bitty found online, and Jack picked out all the throw pillows because he found ones with texture which he could stim with when they’re lying in bed with Jack reading, and Bitty tweeting.
The place is slowly becoming theirs, and when Bitty moves in after graduation, it’s expected and there’s never really a question. Jack never asks, because some day they’re going to get married and everything fits together like a puzzle piece fresh out of the box. Nowhere in their lives are any of the pieces warped by water, or cut wrong at the edges.
***
It happens in summer, after Jack’s out, and things are settled down. Even though Providence is a hockey town, and even though Jack is kind of hockey royalty, it’s one of the less publicised sports out there. They don’t have paparazzi following them, and the only real rude ones are on twitter comments, and occasionally people at games holding signs.
But they can still shop at Whole Foods without being bothered, and it’s only every so often someone bothers Jack for an autograph when they’re out to dinner.
“I think I’d like a ring,” Bitty says. He’s staring at his stretched hand the way he examines his nails sometimes, and he sighs. “Can I have a ring?”
“Engagement or wedding?” Jack says, like both are on the table. Like if Bitty said wedding, they’d head down to the courthouse tomorrow and get the process started.
“Engagement,” Bitty replies. “Can we pick rings out?”
Jack nods. “Yes. But…I think I’d like you to pick mine for me.”
That’s something Bitty can do. But the next day they browse a few shops, and Bitty falls for a simple platinum band with a little bit of texture to it. It needs sizing, because his fingers are small, but his knuckles are larger, so they order it and Jack promises to pick it up the moment it’s ready.
They offer engraving, but Bitty likes things simple, and anything they might say inside, he’d rather Jack just say to him in a whisper right before he’s kissed. Strangely, it feels more permanent that way.
When Jack’s at work, Bitty finds the ring online. It’s silicone and Jack has a necklace similar to that he chews on, but he doesn’t like it because it’s bulky and square. And if Bitty put this ring on a chain instead of Jack’s finger…he might like it more.
He orders another, made of stainless steel that has a centre that spins, in case Jack wants something to wear.
***
Bitty’s in the office at the computer when Jack comes in. And he notices Jack’s a little pale, and his fingers are shaking, but before he can even ask, Jack’s in front of him and on one knee. Bitty’s throat gets tight, and Jack stares at him.
“Will you marry me?” he asks. He holds out the finished ring, and it’s a perfect fit.
Bitty laughs, and kisses him, and they tumble to the floor and make out lazily for several minutes. When it’s over, Jack isn’t shaking anymore, and he’s got his fingers in Bitty’s hair as Bitty holds his hand out and stares at the ring in the soft afternoon light.
“I was nervous,” Jack confesses.
“What? That I’d say no?” Bitty asks.
Jack shrugs. “I didn’t think I would be. I knew you wanted to marry me. But there was a moment where I thought, ‘he could have changed his mind.’”
Bitty laughs and turns on his side to kiss this silly man on the tip of his nose, then on his chin, then on each corner of his mouth. “We picked out the ring ten days ago.”
“I can’t explain it,” Jack says. “I didn’t think I would be, then I was down on one knee and suddenly I doubted myself and doubted…everything. It was only a split second, but I’m glad you said yes.”
Bitty just laughs and kisses him again, and again, and again.
***
He fully understands two weeks later. Jack’s rings arrive just in time for his birthday, but Bitty has to wait because training is a bitch, and pre-season is making Jack grouchy, and he’s not sure a proposal is going to cheer him up.
But he gets an idea he saw on pinterest, and when Jack’s at the practise facility, he spends hours and hours cutting small hearts out of coloured paper and writes their entire story down in little quotes like, “Eat more protein,” and “Bits…” and “Oh you fool,” and “this boy,” and every single thing he can find which defined them, and their journey.
Then he cuts three white hearts and on them he writes.
Marry
Me
Jack
He tucks them into the ring box and he knows when Jack opens it, it’s going to shower like confetti. And knowing Jack, after the shock, he’ll sit and read every single note written in Bitty’s terrible hand-writing. And he’ll probably keep them all.
It’s worth it.
The larger box with two rings, and every word Bitty could think of that reminds him how much he loves this man.
It happens on a Thursday. Jack’s had a good work out and his team is working better together now, and he’s got his chemistry back on the ice with Tater and Marty. He’s whistling when he comes through the door and Bitty’s suddenly overwhelmed with the need to not wait any longer.
So he runs to the bedroom and accosts Jack in the lounge, and he shoves the box at him.
He doesn’t get on one knee.
But he is suddenly overcome with nerves, to the point he can barely breathe, and he watches and waits for the other shoe to drop, for Jack to change his mind as the box opens and the hearts rain out.
It only takes Jack a minute to find the three white ones. They’re obvious, after all.
He reads them, then looks at the rings, then throws his arms round Bitty and kisses him until neither of them can breathe.
Later, in bed, Jack studies them and asks Bitty, “Is it okay if I go back and forth?”
Bitty laughs and says, “Baby, you can wear either, both, or neither. I know you love me, and I know you wanna marry me. These are for you. Whatever you want.”
Jack smiles at him, and sets them aside for now, and holds Bitty close.
***
Jack often wears neither, but on roadies he takes both, and on TV Bitty can see Jack kiss the silicone ring just after the anthem, before every game. His heart is fit to burst out of his chest.
They set a date for spring, and when he tells his momma, it’s the first time he’s seen a genuine smile on her face when it comes to Jack.
“I think she’s finally accepted it,” Bitty tells Jack later. “That I am who I am. And I’m her son and I think she finally realised just how much you love me. And how much I love you.”
Jack drags his fingers through Bitty’s hair and breathes him in. “I do love you.”
Bitty laughs and kisses the tip of Jack’s nose. “Oh sweetpea, I know.”