Work Text:
Halfway through Rhode Island, the gaff tape on Bitty shoes finally gives out. The soles peel off with an unceremonious squelch when he’s dragging an amp out of the Airstream. He stumbles over the curb, swearing and throwing an arm down to catch himself and keep the equipment from shattering across the Providence sidewalk.
He’s tired after driving from Vermont, from the side-of-the-road bar Samwell played last night to tonight’s off-alley venue. He needs to fix the mic that kept giving feedback last night. His last pair of work shoes have disintegrated into fine dust. And worst of all, the grocery store he swung by this morning was all out of unsalted butter, which means he can’t even make cookies when they crash at Lardo’s friend’s apartment tonight.
The pavement blinks back at him, laughing silently.
Bitty hauls himself up, setting the speaker down carefully, and examines the damage. The sole dangles like a sad tongue, lolling off his heel, just as languid as the heat of the summer on the sidewalk.
Living the dream, Bitty reminds himself as he unties the laces with a grunt and swaps his busted Adidas for a pair of Crocs that Shitty stashed in the Airstream a few weeks ago.
In the end, the amp makes it in, even if Bitty almost drop sit on his toes like, 4 times. Bitty sets up the stage and does the soundcheck in Shitty's camouflage rubber shoes. When the band finishes warming up and arguing over the setlist, they hop out to help him, and by the Lardo takes the stage, hands firm around the sticks, Shitty on vocals, voice hard and sharp and melodic all at once, Ransom with his hands flying across keys, and Holster on bass – and all the magic starts again. All the bad luck doesn't seem to matter.
This is what he always wanted.
As a kid, Bitty was always into music. Baking and music - the two constants in Bitty's life, through all the years of his dad getting new gigs coaching football teams across the Eastern seaboard. Once Bitty gave up skating, his obsessed slipped into the next closest and most comfortable thing that also happened to fit in his pocket - a yellow iPod Nano. Shania Twain, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Strokes, Bruce Springsteen, Larrikin Love, Beyonce, Be Your Own Pet, Daughtry. His parent's music, his music, music ripped from Rolling Stone and Far Out magazines. He studied LiveJournal posts tucked in the leaves of his geometry textbook and stubbornly wrote English papers analyzing song lyrics as poetry.
Then, in his freshman year of high school, he sat next to a table full of juniors in Art. It was a mandatory elective and Bitty wasn't very good, but he still liked it because their teachers let them keep their headphones in and listen to music while they worked. One day, the guy with long hair beside him leaned over to glance at Bitty’s screen.
“Walk the Moon? Good taste,” he said, as Bitty pulled out a headphone. “Do you want to join a band?”
"I can't play any instruments," Bitty says slowly, an unfortunate and honest confession. To his 14-year-old chagrin, puberty hadn't come with any more ability to hear pitch. Beyonce still sounded strangled in the voice notes Bitty recorded in his family's garage when no one else was home, checking to see if the impossibly wonderful had happened and he'd become a singer overnight.
"Plenty to do that isn't music," the guy said, completely unfazed, and that was that.
So here he is - broke, twenty, and in dire need of a new pair of shoes. Something sturdy. Something that won't crap out on him when he's changing a trailer tire in the middle of god-knows-where USA in a few weeks. He picks up his phone and skims through the local listings on Facebook, trawling for something that could work.
Miscategorized women's shoes.
A $700 pair of rare Jordans.
An ad for feet pics.
And then! Finally, a nice photo of a pair of near-new hiking boots on the stained concrete of someone’s garage.
Bitty clicks on the ad.
Just-used hiking boots. Size 8. Pickup pvd off Atwells ave.
He scrolls through the photos – and yeah, actually these look perfect. Bitty hovers over the message button, feeling for a moment like this is too good to be true before he thinks well, might as well try, and types something out.
Bitty pockets his phone, and watches Shitty swing his legs off the stage casually, wrapping soundcheck and chatting with Lardo about their set. He pulls out his phone and snaps a photo, uploading it to the band’s Instagram with the caption “ready for u, Providence!” and a series of cheerful emojis. He adds a link to the few remaining tickets and hits post, leaning back against the stage and waiting for the venue doors to open.
Three drinks smuggled to him under the table at the local bar after their first sold-out show later, Bitty unlocks his phone to two new messages on Facebook from the guy selling those boots.
Bitty agrees before he can help himself. He’s one part tipsy, one part high from the show and the beginning of the tour. They played their first sold out show of the tour, thanks to Bitty's collaboration with a local music influencer. Tonight, a guy who said he knew them from Instagram stayed around to buy them a round of drinks. He complimented Bitty's work and the band's brand and sound.
So, it isn’t the first time Bitty’s had a beer, but this one feels special.
He’s with the band, or something, now.
Shitty tucks him under his arm with a soft grin. “Show looked great tonight, Bits.” He says, ruffling his hair.
Bitty grins. “It was good, wasn’t it?” He says, the memory of his shoes melting off and malfunctioning equipment all but forgotten.
“Heard you busted your shoes?” Shitty tilts his head at Bitty which – well, Shitty does follow him, does see all his stories about what it’s like to be a grip on tour. Which includes Bitty posting a sweaty selfie with the pile of unloaded gear and his busted shoe. It’s authentic, what can he say?
He shrugs. “All good. Picking up a new pair tomorrow.”
Shitty levels an eyebrow at him. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
Bitty shrugs off the words. He can handle this. What the guy on Facebook is asking is a steal for those, really. Tomorrow, he’ll be back to the perfect grip-slash-social-media-director-slash-chef. Johnson will drive the next leg of the tour West, and Bitty will see parts of the country he never thought he’d be able to.
Sometimes, Bitty struggles not to feel like the little kid of the group. He knows that Shitty, Lardo, Ransom, Holster, and even their weird relief bus driver, Johnson, don't think of him as an accessory they have to trail along. Still — he's the youngest, with the least to contribute, and the last thing Bitty wants to be known for is getting in the way.
“Right,” Bitty agrees instead of the longer answer, steeling a smile at Shitty, and giving him a fistbump.
Providence is colder in the morning than it was when Bitty stumbled home last night, chaperoned by three beers and a round too many of celebratory shots.
Bitty shivers outside the address the Facebook guy gave him — a mechanic shop ten minutes from where they crashed the night — where his Uber drops him off with a raised brow and a wave. He wraps his arms around himself and starves off a shiver as he approaches the shop.
It dawns on him for the first meaningful time, that going off to meet a stranger alone might be a bad idea.
Despite the surrounding industrial area, the outside of the business is well-kept, with blue and yellow flowers arranged neatly along the walkway up to the front door. The garage is closed and locked, the paint on the corroded steel reading “Falconers Auto Shop.”
The sun peeks beyond the roof, a pale and sharp light that sends Bitty stumbling up the front steps of the stairs of 1501, thirsty, a little nauseous, and exhilarated all at once. Here he is, making it out of bed in the city in the early hours to pick up a new pair of boots. This motor shop guy will be a brief piece of his quest to live out his indie pop band dreams, and the guy totally won’t hold him hostage in a creepy basement.
This – the tour, the boots, all of it – a good enough reason to leave home, and to leave everything else behind him.
He messages boots guy — don't call him that to his face — that he’s out front and opens his phone to scroll through photos the band was tagged in at the show last night.
This is his second time on the road with Samwell. After he befriended Shitty that fateful day in Hall and Murray’s art class, Bitty spent afternoons in his friends' garages, rotating between different parents' houses for practice. They taught him how to set up gear, how to tune guitars, how to run audio—and it was like for the first time, Bitty got to be part of the music he loved so much. He scraped through school, to his parents' chagrin, and by the time his own junior year rolled around, Bitty was sucked fully into the world of small touring artists and the run-ragged pace of the music industry. He helped schedule a mini tour in the greater Boston area when he was 16 and built the band, Samwell, a fanbase in the sweaty basements of New Jersey frat houses Bitty borrowed his mom’s minivan to haul gear for.
A year ago, all they had was an EP and a cover of Walk the Moon's "Shut Up and Dance With Me" — until a video of them covering the song went viral. It was a whirlwind of followers and late-night writing sessions after that as they moved up timelines to get their album out and ride the hype. Their label was breathing down their neck for the first time, a pleasant change from their usual disinterest spurred by unprofitability. But overnight, they became popular and profitable, so Bitty ran the launch from his iPhone and beat-up laptop, keeping fans engaged through the whole writing process.
The album release shattered expectations. The tour schedule was negotiated, Shitty pulled strings and borrowed someone's Airstream, and Bitty kept himself useful with management and social media.
The front door startles open and Bitty jumps, almost dropping his phone in surprise as a figure steps out and jars him from his thoughts.
“Eric?” The guy asks.
And okay. Bitty's nervous, but he isn’t stupid. Before he agreed to meet a random internet stranger, he definitely scrolled through Boot Guy's Facebook profile for a minute to make sure he wasn’t a serial killer. And ‘Jack Z’ had a relatively normal, if sparse profile. A profile photo that was a distant photo of a motorcycle. A few tagged photos. A spattering of routine birthday messages.
Nothing to tip Bitty off about being potentially murdered.
Also, nothing to tip Bitty off this guy is fucking hot.
He fumbles for his words when the guy – Jack – tilts his head, the light catching off the sharp angle of his cheekbones.
Stupid, hot, Prince Charming-with-tattooed-sleeves-and-a-lip-ring guy is saying something that Bitty cannot make his mind focus on. He has never wished to be less hungover than he is right now.
“I, yeah,” Bitty fumbles, trying to catch his breath and appear like anything but a disaster. “I’m Bitty. Eric. For the boots?” He finishes weakly.
“Jack,” the guy says simply, extending the hand that isn’t carrying a pair of brown boots. Bitty takes it and shakes Jack’s grip is strong and sure. Bitty adds it to his mental running list of inexplicably hot things that have happened to him before eight in the morning. “So,” Jack holds the boots out, awkwardly extending them toward Bitty.
“Right!” He says, taking them from Jack’s proffered hands and trying to get his brain back online. Focus, Bittle. “Thanks so much for this, really. Mine broke yesterday when I was unloading for our set. And we’re back on the road today, down to Philadelphia, so I don’t really have time to like, go to the store. Also, I’m broke. And these are so nice.” He examines the boots and yeah – they look just like the photos, a pair of men’s size 8 leather boots, a little scuffed on one side, but the best deal Bitty’s going to get, and the fastest he’s going to get to replace his battered sneakers, which are gaff-taped together.
He gestures to Shitty's Crocs (of course he's wearing camouflage rubber shoes with My Little Pony Charms on them to meet the Mechanic McSteamy) and carries on as he takes a seat on Jack’s stoop and wiggles off his shoes. “Mind if I try ‘em on?”
Jack nods his affirmation, and Bitty’s nerves take over as loosens the laces, suddenly conscious of how much he just rambled to this guy.
“So you’re in a band?” Jack asks, clearing his throat behind him, almost startling Bitty.
“Oh, lord, no.” Bitty laughs. “I can’t carry a tune to save my life, but I love music. I do the social media and some management stuff for my friend’s band.”
“That’s cool,” Jack says, in a tone considerably more interested than his parents had when he told them he’d be taking a semester off college to follow Samwell on tour.
“You work here?” Bitty asks, gesturing to the building behind him.
Jack laughs, a little, and then surprises Bitty by sitting on the porch step next to him. He smells like cinnamon and aftershave, athletic shirt pushed up a quarter of the way up his arms, where Bitty can see careful designs traced onto Jack's arms.
He forces himself to swallow.
“Yeah, would it be a little weird if I invited you to a break-in, eh?” Jack asks, and Bitty can't help but laugh.
“Canadian?” He asks, and Jack gives him a look. “Sorry – my friend in the band – he’s Canadian, and we give him shit for it all the time.” Bitty extends both boots out in front of him. “It’s like a reflex. How do they look?”
The boots fit perfectly on Bitty’s feet, which is shocking, because sitting next to Jack, who is absolutely almost a foot taller than Bitty’s five-foot-six, there’s not a chance in hell this guy could have ever fit into 8s.
“Nice?” Jack replies, almost a question in response. “Do they fit?”
Way to read his mind.
Bitty pops up to his feet and takes a few steps. “Great. Thank you!” He fumbles out a handful of cash in his pocket, pulling two crumpled twenty-dollar bills out of his pockets. There's still some tequila from last night of them, but Jack will just have to handle it. “I’ll take ‘em!”
Jack stares at Bitty for a moment, still sitting on the steps and looking up as Bitty does an experimental hop and bends over to mime picking up an amp. When he looks up, Jack is still staring at him, face indiscernible. He suddenly feels a little self-conscious under the intensity of Jack's gaze, like he's trying to figure something out about Bitty that he doesn't know the question to yet. Bitty rocks on his heels and waves the proffered dollars toward Jack's hand.
“You can have them.” Jack says after a moment, breaking eye contact and waving away the cash. “They were my exes' anyways. You’re doing me a favor by taking them off my hands.”
Bitty blinks. These are men’s boots. That’s– ohmygodhesgaytoo. “You – you can’t just do that?”
“They’re my boots now," Jack says simply. “I can do whatever I want with them. So I don’t need you to pay me for them.”
Bitty looks down at his feet, where the crisp boots shine up back at him. “I wish we weren’t leaving today, or I’d bake you a pie to thank you,” he says. “I feel bad. The Southern hospitality in me won’t let me just take 'em. Next time we come through, I’m leaving you something.”
Jack laughs a little, climbing to his feet. “If it makes you feel better, Eric.”
“Bitty,” he corrects him, “if you’re going to give me a pair of beautiful, expensive boots in exchange for the promise of a pie, then you should at least call me what my friends do.”
“Okay, Bitty,” Jack shrugs, a boyish grin softening his face. “It’s a deal.”
It only seems fair that Bitty send Jack a photo of the boots in Philadelphia, since he’s basically the only reason Bitty is able to move fast enough to unload everything after they’re stuck running two hours late because of traffic on the 95.
Bitty snaps a self-timer photo of his shoes with the Airstream in the background after filming some B-Roll for their social media accounts.
He’s been picking up a followers – the novelty of a band of friends traveling the country on tour in an old Airstream trailer has gotten them in the door to a few venues, but Bitty wants people to appreciate the band for their music too. When he’s not driving, or packing in and out, or working on getting them a record deal, he’s making social media videos and “meet the band” miniseries or “day in the life” features.
So it’s only natural that he fires off a photo of the boots to Jack with the message "these boots were made 4 internet fame.”
Bitty doesn't really expect him to answer. It's more of a fun thing than anything. Sending the person you bought an item from a message from on Facebook is kind of weird.
So he forgets about Jack's stormy blue eyes and the message shortly after sending it – caught up by the preshow rush, flitting around the stage to get everything set, chatting with the venue manager. Then Samwell takes the stage, and lights it up, and Bitty watches a few hundred people bounce around in the small venue hall, laughing and dancing and screaming along, and all the chaos is infinitely worth it.
Bitty pulls his phone out to take a video of the closing song when he sees a new message.
Bitty blinks, confused. He types back:
Samwell comes out from behind the curtain for the encore, so Bitty just sends a thumbs-up react back and closes the app, switches the camera on, and refocuses himself.
It becomes a little bit of a habit after that. As they work their way down the Eastern seaboard, Bitty finds himself snapping pictures of the boots everywhere they go. Sometimes it’s onstage, sometimes, it’s by a cool historic monument, sometimes it’s the whole band piled behind him, sweaty and giddy after a show.
Jack always responds, even if it’s just a “haha” text sent a few hours after Bitty’s photos. Sometimes they talk about where he is. They swap real phone numbers. Sometimes Jack even sends back little history tidbits, like when Bitty sent him a photo outside their show in the DMV, a historic venue called the 9:30 Club, and Jack came back with some Revolutionary War history that happened in the same area.
He doesn’t ask about Bitty’s past, or his parents, or tell him to put his phone down and get some rest like Shitty and the rest of the band are always on his case about.
Jack is just a guy Bitty met on Facebook a week ago, who is hot and kind of fun to talk to.
That’s it.
Bitty blinks and looks down at his phone. It’s the most personal admission that Bitty has gotten out of Jack.
He treads carefully in his response.
He gnaws on his lower lip, trying to decide the next best course of action. The sticky summer Virginia heat settles around his shoulders and causes the cotton of his t-shirt to cling uncomfortably to the back of his shoulders. Obviously, Jack is gay. He already knew this. But this feels like an admission beyond what Jack had been previously willing to offer.
Original boots guy? Bitty finally asks.
A few minutes later, Jack texts back confirmation. Former boots guy.
It isn’t Bitty’s fault that leads him down a rabbit hole of looking up Jack’s race records while riding shotgun on the drive down to Greenboro. He finds out pretty quickly that Jack was a big deal – an Actual Big Deal – on the motocross scene a few years ago. He crashed his bike in the middle of his pro debut, and then basically dropped off the radar. There’s a single article in the local Providence newspaper about the newly opened garage by Junior star Jack Zimmermann, but nothing beyond that.
Bitty taps through a few more articles, and decides to punch in ‘Jack Zimmermann dad.’
And – woah. That’s a photo of baby Jack Zimmermann in a Stanley Cup. In two Stanley Cups. He takes a screenshot of the two photos next to each other and fires it off to Jack.
And Bitty doesn’t know how to answer that, not really. It’s a biting piece of Jack that Bitty teased out and isn’t sure what to do with.
Across the parking lot, Lardo calls for a hand with the audio equipment. Bitty hearts the message and gives him some space.
By the time Bitty finishes filming, shooting photos, and coordinating the VIP section and the merch line, he has a handful of unread messages on his phone from Jack and at least 200 more followers across the band’s pages.
The morning radio spot this morning had gone really well – one of the guys had even mentioned they had a sister station in Austin, and scrawled Bitty a phone number on the back of a napkin to call when they passed through the city in a few weeks. Their newest song just broke a million streams. Bitty can feel the itch rising in the band and every show feels a little more electric.
They’re fighting for it, is what they’re doing. And Bitty is going to do his best work to make sure that dream happens.
He responds to a few DMs and sends an email to procrastinate checking Jack’s messages. Part of him feels like he might have overstepped earlier, in the conversation about the parents. Jack’s final snippy comment left Bitty feeling a little put out, if he was honest. He’d started looking forward to Jack’s messages, his commentary on Bitty’s photos and the seemingly endless piles of mic cords he always finds himself untangling.
Suck it up, Bitty tells himself, closing Twitter and opening his messages.
Bitty's heart tweaks a little in his chest. He knows there's a bigger story here than Jack's telling him - and he can't imagine what the pressure of your dad being a professional hockey player would feel like. Especially if Jack used to play and then ended up doing something else. Someone hip checks Bitty out of frowning at his phone. Lardo raises a brow and peers over his screen, but Bitty isn't fast enough to lock it without her seeing the contact name.
“Still texting that guy from Facebook pictures of his shoes?” She asks with a laugh. “Here, let me take one for you.”
He isn’t sure if he’s really in the mood to send Jack a photo of him in his boots, but Jack apologized, and Bitty's hair turned out good today, and he isn't really mad at Jack, just abruptly reminded how little he knows about him. “Sure,” Bitty concedes, opening his camera and passing it over, striking a pose by kicking one foot out toward the camera as it flashes.
The resulting photo is fun – Bitty has disguised his own melancholy as well as he's always been able to, a grin curling on his cheeks and his blonde hair spilling in every direction after the hype of the show. He sends it to Jack with the caption: “I forgive you hon, sorry I pushed you! Shoes kicking at tonight’s show. Talk later?”
And then, a moment later, he decides the photo is good enough for his parents, too, and sends it to his Mama without a second thought.
Drunk off cheap whiskey in Nashville, Jack sends Bitty a selfie of himself freshly out of the shower after his workout, floppy brown hair just showing the edge of his brow piercing, sharp cut of his traps illuminated in the bathroom light.
Bitty drops his phone and shatters the screen on the sidewalk.
He retaliates in Atlanta, snapping a photo in the bathroom of a Western bar after taking a ride on the electric bull. His shirt is rucked up to show the glimmer of abs he’s gaining from hours of lifting and setting up equipment every day. His face is red, hair flying in every direction, one hand tightly curled around the basin of the sink.
Bitty hesitates before sending it, thinking for a moment, am I really flirting with a guy I met on Facebook marketplace buying a pair of boots? Before deciding that yes – this is his life now.
He sends the photo.
And hour later, the only message on Bitty’s phone he cares about is:
It takes off from there.
The Jack thing, and well, also the band.
Tampa.
Austin.
Fort Worth.
Sold out.
The Houston show has a line around the block after the show finishes, people clamoring for autographs from Lardo, Shitty, Ransom, and Holster. Bitty has to double as security and practically push folks back in line, waving his arms dramatically to catch their attention and corral them so they can get to the Airstream.
Their social media profiles get blue checkmarks. Fan accounts are popping up. The reels Bitty posts – behind the scenes, snippets from shows, Q & A with the band – go from a few thousand views to a few hundred thousand what feels like overnight.
Everything feels supercharged by the time they hit the West Coast.
The crazy thing is, Jack thing hasn’t fallen off in the chaos – quite the opposite. By the time Samwell hits Phoenix, they’re talking nonstop. After the bar photo in Georgia, the number of shirtless selfies sent by both parties has increased exponentially.
Bitty has even taken to opening his phone with one hand cupped around the screen, just in case. If anyone from the band sees, he'll be chirped to death.
Sitting under the stars, smoking a joint on the curb outside the motel and trying to gather the fortitude to get up and sort their gear before they haul out tomorrow, Jack surprises him by calling.
“Jack!” Bitty says with surprise, answering the call and pressing the phone between his ear and shoulder as he stomps out the American Spirit someone tipped him with at the merch table. He doesn't like to smoke, but he also doesn't like to sit on the curb in the middle of the night and do nothing. Johnson is a nice guy, but a weird roommate, who keeps making cracks about needing to chase Bitty out of their shared hotel room for 'narrative purposes,' or whatever that means. “You’re up late.”
Talking with Jack over the last few weeks has given him proclivity into Jack’s habits – including a typically early bedtime. Bitty has never been a morning person and life on the road has only turned him into more of a night owl.
He expects Jack’s voice to be the usual way it is the few times they’ve called – maybe busy working on a car, or bike, or driving somewhere and doesn’t have his hands free to text Bitty back. The calls have always been relatively short, the awkward shyness that comes with wanting to get to know someone better, but still working on finding a way.
But tonight, Jack heaves down the phone line.
“Jack?” Bitty repeats, serious this time, steadying himself and checking to make sure the line is still connected when the breathing ceases. “Are you alright?”
There’s a moment, and then a harried response. “Yeah.” He chokes out. And then, after a self-deprecating laugh, “Eh, probably not, actually.”
“Are you safe?” Bitty asks, wracking his brain for what to do next. He doesn’t know any of Jack’s friends. He doesn’t know who to call to get him help, other than 911, and he doesn’t want to send the cops pounding down Jack’s door.
But he will, if he has to. “Jack?” Bitty repeats, carefully, trying to keep the fear out of his voice and mostly failing. “You’re scaring me, hon.”
Jack rasps out a response that sounds like a somewhat garbled, “yes, please keep talking,” which is something Bitty has always happened to be really good at, so he soldiers on.
“Well,” he starts, trying to slow down his words and distract Jack. “We played in Arizona today, and I don’t know if you know this, but it’s hot as balls in the desert.”
A little sniffle comes down the line, one that could almost be interpreted as a laugh. Bitty doesn’t have a lot of experience talking people down of what he assumes is a panic attack, but he’ll be damned if he won’t try his best.
“So everyone was really sweaty the whole show, right? And by the time Shitty got up there, he’d already smoked like, two bowls, so he was dripping cologne and deodorant and sweat and the beer that Ransom splashed on him, because he smelled like skunk weed.” Another little wheeze.
“By the time they got to the second half of the set, basically the whole stage was drenched in sweat, too. So the whole band basically looks like they’re melting up there, and it’s making the photos turn out horrible.”
Bitty laughs a little, “so I made a really stupid decision and splashed some water onto them – just to like, try and catch the light and make it look like everything was wet, you know? And it made the stage a little too slippery, I guess, because Shitty went to do this stupid jump turn he insists is cool, and slid out, and wiped out on his ass in the middle of his guitar solo. And I totally got it on video.”
Now, Bitty manages to pull a real laugh out of Jack, and the first coherent words of the night.
“Did you post it?”
“Did I post it? Jack Zimmermann, how little do you think of me? Of course I posted it. It’s blowing up on TikTok already.”
“And did you get the shot?”
“With the water? Oh yeah. I’ll send it to you when I finish editing.” Bitty exhales. It’s fun, that one of the things he and Jack have in common is photography. Jack shared an album of some of his work the week prior, and Bitty had to take a minute to peel his jaw off the floor. He likes to think of himself as a happenstance photographer, in the right place at the right time with a lens, but everything Jack shows him is painfully deliberate. “Are you feeling any better?”
“A little,” Jack says, voice syrupy and tired. “Thanks for taking my mind off it.”
“I can keep going, if you want,” Bitty offers. “I’m a walking, talking, vlogging content machine that can’t stop interesting things from happening to him on tour. Oh – did I tell you about the girls Shitty totally made an idiot of himself of trying to explain why he wouldn’t sign their boobs before Lardo came in and signed them with the pen in her teeth? That’s a good one – ”
Bitty keeps going from there, winding together stories about the last few days on the road, embellishing the little details, anything to pull a laugh out of Jack’s chest.
He finds himself half-dozing, half-talking, as the sun starts to peek over the top of desert mountains shimmering in the distance.
“Jack?” Bitty asks, trying to break it to him that he actually needs to sort the Airstream now and get them ready to hit the road for Vegas so he can take a nap.
But Jack doesn’t answer – fast asleep, presumably, from the sound of his soft breathing on the other side of the line.
After that call, everything tilts.
Where Jack was once quiet and stunted with his past, he now hands Bitty with open hands. Two days later, he calls Bitty again to explain the other night’s phone call: diagnosed with severe anxiety at eighteen, which was discovered by doctors alongside the realization he had a tendency to abuse prescription medication to take his mind off it.
He talks about his past, about racing bikes and winning championships, about the overwhelming pressure, about quitting the tour after his accident to go to rehab, about how he learned to fix bikes as a way to keep his hands busy while his body healed, and how he hasn’t been on a track since.
“Do you ever miss it?” Bitty asks over FaceTime, watching the waves crash against the Malibu shoreline.
“Like breathing,” Jack replies.
What does Bitty miss?
Maybe not having constant blisters on his hands, or having a real kitchen to cook out of. He misses his mama’s home-cooked food, and watching University of Georgia games on the couch with his dad. The miles drag on, through Santa Cruz and up the coast of California, brown, sun-choked hills in the dead of summer.
But when he’s there, all he ever wanted was to be here. Driving the Airstream, taking photos, running the social media and management for his best friends’ band and wow – here they are – blowing up.
It’s what he wants. But some part of his heart still throbs for the East, no amount of gold dripping from the perfect sunset enough to make this feel like home.
Bitty takes a photo of them driving, and it gets picked as the cover of their next single. He teases it on a clip online, and it blows up with over two million views overnight.
There’s a line out the front door and around the block when they arrive at the venue in San Francisco. Bitty pulls out his phone to snap a photo, and fires it off to Jack with a few exclamation points.
Jack replies, !!!, a huge expression of texting emotion for him. It makes Bitty feel a little warm and fuzzy inside, to know that something of him has started to become a small part of Jack.
So proud, he sends back, they learn so fast. :’)
And then, inexplicably, Jack dares to reply: Proud of you, Bitty.
So what if he misses Jack the whole drive through Sacramento, the long haul through Weed, California (where Shitty demands they stop at a gas station to buy overpriced, scratchy tie-dye shirts), and into Southern Oregon where they spend the night. Bitty fiddles with his phone, unable to find the motivation to edit, even though he should probably be working through footage from last night’s show.
“How is tour treating you, Bitty?” Holster catches him off-guard on the walk back from dinner.
Bitty kicks at a stray rock and tries to find a way to justify answering "I miss my internet friend who is hot and I may have a giant crush on" as the reason he’s been sulking all afternoon.
“Homesick,” he settles on, because that’s also true. He feels young, suddenly, standing next to a guy who already has a career. Bitty still feels like he’s just hanging on, sometimes. Lacing up his boots and scraping them across the pavement until they’re in a familiar pattern of work. If he can just be enough for the band, he can be enough for everything else.
Holster reaches out and wraps an arm around Bitty’s shoulders. “You know we have your back, right?” He says gently. The guys have always been protective of him – and affectionate. There’s never any shortage of cuddles on the bus, which Bitty often welcomes with open arms.
His hug is stronger, a little more reassuring than usual, though.
Bitty exhales into his chest, squeezing tightly once. “Thank you,” he says. “I know you do.”
“You’ve been smiling at your phone a lot lately,” Holster adds, “and I know you like the internet, but as your best friend, and your bro, I’m going to pry and ask who you’re talking to.”
“Was this all a ploy?” Bitty gasps, mock offended, laughing. “Adam Birkholtz! You just want to know the gossip.”
“I am your bro! I do have your back! That’s why I want to know the deets!” Holster rallies.
Ransom must hear from a few paces away, because he chimes in too.
“Are we talking about Bitty’s hot Facebook guy?”
Lardo whips around, eyes bright with glee, like she's been waiting for this. “You’re still talking to him?” She asks, grinning. “He was cute.”
“You saw pictures?” Shitty gasps, blinking at Lardo. “Et tu, Brute?”
“Insider information,” Lardo says, patting him softly on the top of his head.
“To who?”
“People who like guys. Oogle guys.”
"I do not oogle guys!" Bitty splutters.
“Oh, so the shirtless selfie you accidentally sent to the group chat last week wasn’t for him?” Ransom tilts his head, waving a screenshot of the conversation way, way too fast. Bitty is almost a little stunned at the speed of their ability to chirp him, to bring up evidence, like Bitty is really part of this group and not just the crew member they've been towing along for years.
He tries to formulate a chirp, something witty back, some way to fire off and get back on top, but now he feels rather weepy about the whole group, and the way the big Oregon moon shines over the redwoods and the Cozy Inn blinking in the distance.
“Yeah, okay, that was for him,” Bitty says, honest instead. His tone is softer, and the group reads the room immediately.
“And?” Holster prompts gently, giving Bitty an encouraging smile.
How does he explain Jack? How does he explain talking to this guy every day for the last month and a half, the hardest month and a half of his entire life? What that does to the inside of him, in a way he knows it shouldn’t.
Jack is the first person he texts in the morning and the last person he texts at night It feels crazy to be this enraptured with each other, to see motorcycles speeding alongside the freeway and think, oh, that's a Kawasaki Vulcan 900. Jack just fixed one of those.
“He’s sweet,” Bitty tempers, because he was raised not to kiss and tell.
Well, not that there’s any kissing. Or mention of it. They ghost around the topic of seeing each other or being together. A carefully negotiated, unsaid boundary that Bitty doesn't dare press.
Not that Bitty doesn’t think about kissing him. He thinks about kissing Jack a lot, actually, and also what it might be like to lick his collar bones, or bury his face in the hair on his chest, or scratch his nails down the sharp V muscle (the transversus abdominis, Bitty looked it up for scientific reasons) framing Jack’s hips.
He’s not telling the band that unless he wants to be chirped within an inch of his life. That information could not be pried out of him.
“That’s all? You going to bring him out to a show?” Shitty asks.
Bitty blinks, a little startled at the idea. “What?”
“You should ask,” Shitty raises a brow, “if he wants to come see you.”
“That’s –”
– too forward
– crazy
– Jack wouldn't want to
– they’re not even like that
– are they?
“An excellent idea,” Shitty finishes, using Bitty’s pause as permission to wave a finger in Bitty’s direction. “And if it goes well, you can tell him you like him, and then you guys can have little indie rock social media motorcycle babies and ride off into the sunset, or whatever.”
“Shitty!” He splutters in return. “It’s not–”
“Like that,” Holster and Ransom say in unison.
“Bits,” Lardo says, softer. “We just want you to be happy. And you seem really excited about this guy.”
“And like we said before,” Holster reminds him, gentler now, with a broad hand squeezing the back of Bitty’s shoulders reassuringly, “We have your back.”
It would be nice to see the guy he spends most of his day texting and half his nights chatting with on the phone. It would be cool to see Jack again, without being hungover on the front porch of his office. And so what if he’s getting a supermassive-sized crush on the guy? Bitty can keep it together.
He doesn’t end up having to ask Jack to come to a show out West, after all.
Instead, he gets a call from a major promoter asking if they can come back to the East Coast at the end of their planned tour and play a set of bigger venues in a couple of key markets.
The guy offers a dollar figure that makes Bitty’s head roll before he scrawls down his contact information and promises to give him an answer in the next three business days. Samwell sits around a dive bar in Seattle, makeup dripping off their faces after the show, talking about what the tour extension would mean.
For the band. For the money. For the press. For them.
Bitty sleeps alone in his bunk, staring at the ceiling and trying to ignore Shitty's snoring, texting Jack until the hours turn into single digits.
Bitty’s stomach feels oddly sour for the first time talking to Jack. He doesn't know quite know how to put into words his fear about the band blowing up – about being left behind if they do.
There’s a pause. Bitty locks his phone, feeling petty and icky and mad, but not quite being able to pinpoint why. He closes his eyes and thinks about how nice it will be to sleep in a real bed instead of a cardboard rack strapped to the wall.
His phone buzzes.
Fuck it, Bitty thinks, tired and a little bit giddy from Jack’s praise, three thousand miles away.
Boise. Salt Lake City. Denver.
Their Instagram breaks 100k. Ryan Seacrest announces their song on the radio. Teen Vogue polls readers on the hottest Samwell member (Lardo wins). Bitty spends most afternoons replying to venue, sponsor, and agent requests on his email instead of setting up the show after they pick up three grips in California. Bitty kicks Jack’s boots (he’s started calling them that, in his head) against the speakers in the sweltering Indianapolis heat and types out a professional-enough sounding response to a merch licensing company while smoking a joint and helping Chowder untangle cables.
Jack sends him a photo of a newly restored bike with the text: “finally done :-)”
Bitty sends back a string of exclamation points, and tries not to feel anything about it. And when Jack sends him a selfie of himself an hour later, sweaty and red-faced, giddy after taking his bike for a spin, he tries not to get hard about it.
It’s a delicate dance, a constant stream of contact between the two of them. Jack is the first person Bitty wants to text as soon as something interesting happens on tour, or something bad, or he gets an exciting email, or they get followed by another B-list celebrity.
It’s nice, having someone to talk to, someone who likes talking to him just as much as Bitty was, as impossible as that seems.
Bitty swallows a lump of pride in his throat as he hits the stage lights and watches as the band walks out to a roaring crowd. He types out something meaninglessly cheerful instead of a long, gushy paragraph about how watching the thing he helped create take flight is making him feel like he could do the impossible.
And then, because he remembers Oregon – and the tour is coming to an end in New York in a week – he sends another.
He watches the message bubble go from loading to sent, and for a moment, almost regrets it. What if it’s weird? Him and Jack met once, for a transaction. It would be weird to invite him to a show, right?
Bitty swallows down his nerves and stuffs his phone in his back pocket, pulls out the camera, and starts filming, desperately trying not to wait for the buzzing response in his pocket.
Jack, bless him, responds in the middle of the encore. Bitty misses the shot on the final bow because of it, too transfixed startng at the screen, where Jack has just sent him a screenshot of a confirmation of a ticket purchase to their encore show in New York, and no other caption.
Okay. They’re doing this.
“He’s coming to a show?” Lardo asks, swiveling around in the passenger seat to stare at Bitty when he mentions on the drive the next day.
“New York,” Bitty confirms, allowing a small grin to take over his face.
"It's sold out!"
"I know," Bitty replies shyly, because he's been watching Ticketmaster prices go up and up for his own ego about the band's success. That's how he knows Jack had to spring for a pit ticket, even after Bitty offered him a free in. He's trying not to feel some kind of way about it.
“Dude, that’s huge!” Shitty says from the driver’s seat. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
Lardo lifts her sunglasses and gives Bitty a meaningful look. They’re the only three in the truck, the rest of the band and team riding in the Airstream as they head toward home. “Be real with me, is he your boyfriend?”
Not in so many words.
The selfies have continued to the point of salacious, lowly draped towel photos. Bitty doesn’t know if Jack is seeing other people, or what his coming to see the band in New York means.
“Not really,” Bitty answers carefully, feeling the grin on his face slip a little.
“You seem bummed about that,” she observes, and Bitty keeps himself from firing something back like, no shit, if you’d seen how hot this guy was with no shirt on, you’d want to lick his abs too.
"Guess it feels weird to ask someone out after only meeting them once." Bitty says, which is the real answer as to why he hasn’t pressed Jack for an answer on what their constant talking and texting means.
“You’ve been talking nonstop for a month and a half,” Lardo says, lifting an eyebrow. “And he’s coming up to see you.”
“To see the band.”
“No, Bitty, he’s coming to see you, and you happen to manage a band, and that is a convenient reason to come visit. Although I know we are very good, thank you.” Lardo grins and reaches back to give Bitty a little shove on the leg. “Are you going to kiss him, at least?”
Bitty’s face turns a few shades darker pink. “I - uh, we –” he fumbles, because while he and Jack have both exchanged pleasantries about how excited they are to see each other in a few days, there hasn’t been any, well, explicit mention of what that entails.
“You haven’t talked about it?” Shitty chimes in, and jerks a thumb at his phone. “Just text him and tell him you want to mack on his handsome, perfectly chisled face. That’ll clear it up.”
“Later,” Bitty protests, fiddling with his phone. “He’s at work right now.”
“Oh my god, you know his schedule,” Lardo scoffs and turns back around to face the road. “You’re so into him.”
Bitty groans. “Can we change the subject? To literally anything other than my love life?”
“Fine,” Shitty says. “We can talk about why they chose to make Lightning McQueen so fuckable in the Cars franchise.”
“NO!” Lardo lunges across the center console, pointing a finger into Shitty’s chest, voice raised. “We are not talking about this again.”
“He has a point!” Bitty gasps out between peels of laughter as Shitty starts shouting back at Lardo, the argument immediately reopened.
Bitty’s phone buzzes.
Bitty smiles, incapable of turning down the way Jack makes his chest feel – Jack, who is witty and funny and hot, and gives discounts to grandmas and teenagers when they can’t afford the repairs they need. Jack, who downloaded Instagram just to watch Bitty’s content for Samwell. Jack, who Bitty is going to see in two days.
Bitty bites his lower lip, and stares at the blinking text cursor.
What’s the harm, really, in clarifying what Jack coming to the show means? It’s better he gets his heart broken now and has a couple days to get over it.
He has to take a second to collect himself before responding. Bitty wants to say something more cohesive and meaningful than just a keysmash along the lines of “ASDKUFHALKDFHA!!!!! !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
He lands on:
He hesitates for a long moment before he sends that last message. Text bubbles appear on the screen, and then disappear. Then appear, then disappear. Momentarily, Bitty feels a sick dread spreading across his chest, then Jack makes up his mind and the message appears on the screen.
Bitty lets out a breath and types ‘you couldn’t make it weird if you tried, i want to play tonsil hockey with you asap’ and swiftly erases it.
Last week, they’d been on FaceTime outside a rest stop and Bitty had to resist flinging himself into traffic at the sight of Jack Zimmermann’s bare arms working on the gear shift of a 2002 Toyota. It shouldn’t be that hot. Bitty isn’t even into car guys. It isn’t fair.
It takes every ounce of self-control that Bitty has to not scream and throw his phone into oncoming traffic. Shitty and Lardo are still bickering peacefully, in the middle of their own romantic escapade.
He turns back to his phone, trying to imagine Jack typing that text out onto his phone and sending it, what his fingers looked like, and what his hands might look like around Bitty’s waist.
Deja vu feels like standing outside a theater that holds triple the capacity of the last NYC venue they played at, two months ago. Bitty isn’t alone ripping equipment out of the back of the airstream anymore – more staff are necessary for the equipment upgrades they’re making to play these venues. Bitty snaps a photo and stops to chat with a few fans waiting around the block for their social media accounts.
It’s surreal – watching the crowd shout at Shitty when he hops out of the Airstream, how he stops to sign merch for them (merch! Their merch!) and take selfies. Bitty shoots some behind-the-scenes content, trying not to stare at his notification bar for any notification from Jack.
They FaceTimed two nights ago, after the whole text conversation about kissing, and Jack had made it explicitly clear that he wanted to kiss him. And more. So if Bitty had to take a 5-minute long cold shower after hanging up, that's no one's business but his. And, because of proximity, Johnson's. Who keeps muttering under his breath about main character tendencies.
Bitty sat outside their motel room and stared up at the night sky, startled by the band’s sudden fame, but somehow even more taken that the handsome guy he met buying a pair of shoes getting a hotel room in New York to see him .
“Is this when I ask you for an autograph?” A voice asks from behind Bitty, a little stiff, a little jokey, but familiar.
Bitty whirls around so fast he nearly tosses his phone into the nearby shrubbery.
“Sorry,” Jack says, endearingly awkward in the way Bitty’s become familiar with over the phone. You’re taller than I remember, Bitty wants to say, or I want to climb you like a tree, or worst, your voice is so hot in person I want to quit my job and fuck you on the roof right now.
“Jack!” Bitty gets his tongue unglued from the top of his mouth and replies, nearly tripping over himself to step forward, arms open. Should they kiss? Did the conversation about kissing mean that he’s supposed to lead with that?
Bitty tries to look up to gauge Jack’s reaction, but they stumble together, Jack folding his arms around Bitty’s shoulders and tugging Bitty forward. He ends up with his nose pressed into a strip of fresh, warm, good-smelling skin above Jack’s collarbone as he squeezes back.
Bitty tries really hard not to be weird about how good Jack smells in real life. They pull back, and Jack is smiling, but however nice the hug was, Bitty can’t stop staring at the careful curve of Jack Zimmermann’s lips when he’s smiling. “You made it,” Bitty continues, trying to ignore the way he can tell that Shitty has turned around from signing autographs and is now watching intently.
“All the way from Rhode Island,” Jack says, sounding suddenly – shy?
“Boots guy!” Shitty turns away from the crowd, which of course prompts them all to get their phones out and start filming. Shitty reaches forward and gives Jack a side hug, slapping him on the back. “I’m Shitty. Lead singer.”
“Jack,” Jack says with a soft laugh. “Boots guy, I guess.”
“Bits, call the grips to finish unloading. Go take our VIP guest backstage and treat him to the finest riders in all the land.” Shitty winks at Jack.
“It’s literally just green Peanut M&Ms,” Bitty rolls his eyes.
“It’s unique!” Shitty protests, gesturing back to the fans, who are all beginning to shout again. “We wrote a song about it!”
Bitty can’t believe this is his life, and these are his friends, so he takes the blessing to flee and grabs Jack by the sleeve of his T-shirt to pull him inside the venue.
He doesn’t know what to say to Jack, so he starts rambling, jumping right into an overly detailed tour of the backstage and his day.
“...got here around two, been helping getting cords sorted and gear unloaded. We picked up these grips in LA, three guys, and they’re picking it up so quick! Chowder doesn’t miss a thing, bless him, and Nursey is a really good poet – he’s working on some songwriting stuff now too – and it turns out Dex is really good with computers, so he’s been helping us with some tech.
“Oh, over there is the curtain for backstage – if you want to watch the show from there, it’s only second to being in the pit. I’ll be jumping back and forth doing some social media coverage – did I tell you we hired a photographer? An art student who DMed us on social media.
“That’s the gear room, where all the spare equipment goes, and uh, over here is the green room,” Bitty pushes through a door, Jack following quietly and taking in the bustling atmosphere. They traipse through the Green room, with Shitty’s aforementioned requested Green M&Ms. (“It’s ironic!” he protested at the beginning of the tour, at the time they weren’t really a big enough deal to ever get people to read their rider, so it didn’t matter. Now people are actually picking through packages of candy to make him happy though, so Bitty is working on sneaking that out of the contract.)
“And over here is the costume closet,” he twists open the door, where spare outfits are hung around a dingy room with a single, kind of flickering bulb.
“Oh,” Jack peers inside, and gestures inside the doorway. “Show me the costumes?”
Bitty didn’t know Jack was the kind of guy who particularly cared for their second act costume rotations but he’s happy to oblige Jack with whatever he wants. He steps inside, pointing to the labeled hangars, and winds up giving a dramatic reenactment about the specific fringe jacket Ransom and Holster got in a serious rock paper scissors battle over in Albuquerque.
Jack listens patiently, laughing in all the right places, and reaching out to touch the soft fringe when Bitty offers. His eyes are big, blue, wide, listening carefully the same way he always does when Bitty starts to ramble over the phone.
It shocks him suddenly, that this is the same Jack he’s told all his fears to in late nights at gas stations and camped out beside motel pools at midnight.
Jack has never made him feel inadequate, or silly for chasing the band around the country. He’s a careful listener. And he’s looking at Bitty with a ghost of a smile on his lips, while Bitty rambles away nervously about nothing at all.
He likes Jack looking at him like that.
He wants to kiss him.
He wants to kiss him.
“Close the door,” Bitty says, suddenly brave. His cheeks color as Jack wordlessly reaches behind him and yanks the door shut. “I’m really glad you’re here–” Bitty starts, trying to sike himself up to make a move, because knowing and doing are two different things when you’re standing in front of the hottest guy you’ve ever met.
Which Bitty keeps saying, but really, it’s true. Give him a break.
Jack doesn’t have the same trepidation of spirit. The smile changes into something more determined, jaw set, and he steps forward to close the gap between them.
He curls one hand around Bitty’s lower back and touches the other to his chin, pulling Bitty gently toward him. His eyes flicker down to Bitty’s lips, and then back to his eyes, like he’s asking permission.
Bitty closes the last inch and presses his mouth to Jack’s.
Like most things he does, as Bitty is discovering, Jack is a great kisser. He tilts his head and lowers his hand to curl around Bitty’s jaw, sliding their mouths together, running his tongue along the underside of Bitty’s teeth like he’s trying to memorize the feel of him, nipping softly at his lower lip.
Jack presses him back until Bitty hits the wall, Jack's hand there to keep his spine from hitting the shitty plywood wall behind him. "Such a gentleman," Bitty laughs, but he doesn't get another word out before Jack closes the space around them, kissing Bitty like he’s hungry, starving. “Fuck,” Bitty half hisses, half groans when Jack pulls away to press wet, open-mouthed kisses to Bitty’s neck. He nips at the tender spot where neck meets shoulder, licks along his collarbone, and bites softly at his shoulder, stretching the neck of Bitty’s shirt.
He doesn’t care. Jack can rip it off, for all he cares. He’s never felt so alive, his whole body firing with adrenaline and desire, because lord, if this isn’t everything he’s ever dreamed of. He can't believe he's here, actually making out with Jack in a storage closet backstage.
“Is this okay?” Jack pulls back, lips red, hair sticking up in every direction, face flushed. He looks, impossibly, just as destroyed as Bitty feels.
“Yes, sweetheart, please,” Bitty gasps, which only makes Jack's eyes wilder. Bitty hooks his index finger through the front of Jack’s button-down shirt and crushes their bodies back together. Jack listens, bless him, one hundred percent real and no longer the pixels Bitty’s been dreaming about for months.
Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine the tour would end with Jack pressing him against the wall, kissing him like – well, kissing Bitty like he drove three hours just to see him.
Bitty slides a hand along the top of Jack’s jeans, just high enough to skim the warm expanse of skin above his belt. Jack makes a soft noise into Bitty’s mouth at the feeling, the first noise he’s really made.
He wants to pull a thousand different noises out of Jack in every way possible. He wants to show Jack how much it means that he came all the way up here to see a show. He wants to tease Jack while he tells him how much he likes his leather jacket, his lip piercing, the tattoos that Bitty now knows run straight through from his abdomen to his upper thigh.
“You’re so hot,” Bitty whines, because he’s never been great at being quiet, and that includes this context. Jack doesn’t break stride, just grins and kisses Bitty harder, slowly pulling his hand out from behind Bitty's back.
He places it over Bitty’s own hand, which is still shyly thumbing the same inch of skin, and carefully moves them both. Bitty’s palm now splays across the expanse of Jack’s abs, hot and firm under his skin. He moves almost reflexively, sliding his hand higher now that Jack’s given him permission, touching, feeling, trying to explore every inch of Jack available.
He could stand here all day, feeling up Jack Zimmermann in a supply closet. Bitty is about to suggest something crazy, like let’s skip the show and just go back to your hotel room because suddenly the only thing I care about is taking off all your clothes. Is that cool? When –
BOOM.
The door slams open. Jack jumps backward, but not fast enough.
“Oh shit!” Chowder gasps as Bitty tries to discreetly yank his arm out from under Jack’s shirt and school his face into anything but guilt. “I am so sorry, oh my god, I just came to get the box of props–”
“Chowder, hon, not now!” Bitty blushes.
“Right! Right yeah, so sorry, oh god,” Chowder rambles, turning around.
"CLOSE THE DOOR!" Bitty hollers, face flaming. Chowder spins around, one hand flung dramatically over his eyes as he flicks off the light switch and yanks the door closed behind him.
“I’m so sorry!” Bitty gasps, fumbling in the darkness. Jack pulls him into his chest and laughs softly. “I should have known that would happen.” He apologies.
“You have a show to run,” Jack says gently, pulling back. “You don’t have to apologize. But you should probably get out there.”
Bitty whines and lifts onto the top of his toes to give Jack a slow kiss. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” he confesses. “And I’m scared that if we leave this room, it’s never going to happen again.”
Jack tilts his head softly. “I’d like this to happen again."
"The kissing thing?"
"And also the whole ‘seeing you’ thing.”
“Yeah?” Bitty asks, still breathless.
Jack leans down, kisses Bitty in affirmation, quick and dirty, which makes Bitty want to drag Jack off to the nearest bed all over again.
It’s not his fault that Jack is great with his tongue. It’s not his fault he’s thinking about the connotations of that.
“Oh!” Bitty realizes when he flicks the lights back on, looking at the spare costumes beside them, stuffed in a box on the floor. “I didn’t get to finish showing you these.”
“Bits, I didn’t ask you to show me this room to look at the costumes,” Jack laughs, pressing a closed-mouth kiss to the back of his neck. “I’m not that smooth.”
“Right,” Bitty laughs, flustered and pleased that Jack’s intent all along was to get them alone.
“C’mon,” Jack says, and grabs Bitty’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “I met Shitty, but introduce me to the rest of the band?” He opens the door to the hallway, pulling them back out into society.
Right. Bitty just went AWOL for twenty minutes to make out with Jack in a costume closet. The hallway is empty. They can get away with this. Bitty turns to Jack, ready to usher him back to the Green Room with some kind of lie about a full-venue tour, when he hears a pair of footsteps come around the corner.
“Bits, there you ar–”
Nursey and Dex stare at the two of them, hair flying in all directions, the neck of Bitty’s shirt stretched beyond saving, Jack’s nice collared shirt untucked and slightly rucked from Bitty’s hands.
“Don’t tell me this is what I think it is,” a gleeful voice comes from the other end of the hallway. Ransom has two keyboards tucked under his arms but still stops to leer.
“This is Jack!” Bitty squeaks, “Jack, this is Ransom, our keyboardist. And this is Nursey, and Dex, our two new grips.”
“And Chowder,” Dex says, one eyebrow raised. “Who you already met.”
Bitty blushes and tries his best to hold his poker face. God, Bitty loves that boy, but he can't keep a secret. “Right.” He clears his throat. “Y’all be nice to Jack, alright? And don’t touch the maple apple pie in the fridge, it’s for him.”
A chorus of groans go up at that despite the fact that Bitty already made a half dozen pies and spread them out across the buffet table. He was nervous about today, and if there’s one thing tour life couldn’t shake, it’s that pies have a magical way of appearing when Bitty gets like this.
“You baked me a pie?” Jack asks as Bitty leads him down the hallway.
“Of course I did,” Bitty shrugs. “I told you when I picked up the boots that I would pay you in pie. My mama raised me better than to forget a deal like that. So I baked you a pie.”
“I can’t believe you remember that,” Jack laughs. “I didn’t expect you to follow through.”
“If there’s one thing you have to know about me, Mister, it’s that I never joke about pie.” Bitty warns him, pulling out his phone and swiping through a few messages, including one from the promoter telling him that they’ll have a few A-list celebs in attendance, and a handful of New York’s bigger music critics. Jack laughs, full and real, and the sound makes Bitty’s stomach flip pleasently despite the nerves of the show, heady under the weight of Jack's attention.
“I look forward to learning more,” Jack says softly. He grabs Bitty’s arm, stopping him before he presses the door open. “Before we meet everyone, one thing.” Bitty looks up from his phone, blinking as Jack bends down and kisses him sweetly.
The door swings open – again, seriously, what does this very crowded backstage universe have against Bitty trying to get a private moment – and he hears Shitty gasp.
“Jacky boy!” He crows. And then a little more serious: “Jesus, Bitty was not kidding. You really are hot.”
The band plays like a house on fire. Bitty doesn’t know if it’s because they’re planning one of their biggest shows, or the fans are turning out in droves, or just the fact that the whole band is sneaking glances at Jack Zimmermann between songs, who has spent half the concert swaying along to the music and the other half making “laser heart eyes,” quote Lardo, at Bitty intensely.
Bitty blushes every time they make eye contact, the ghostly warm feeling of Jack’s abs and the promise of later strung between them.
Shitty comes flying off the stage first after the encore, sweaty hair flying in every direction, nearly tackling Bitty to the ground in his exuberance. Ransom and Holster follow, then Lardo tossing sticks to the crowd.
“Holy fuck!” Ransom is chanting, grabbing Bitty and pulling him for a hug and lifting him up. “We did that! We just did that!”
The roar of the crowd outside still makes it hard to hear anything. Bitty yanks Holster in for a hug next, and then kisses Lardo smack on the cheek. He feels it, all of it, the roar of the crowd and the sweat of the band, the glory of being part of something so alive.
They’re offstage for one minute, or maybe ten, Bitty loses track. Someone taps him on the shoulder, and he turns around and –
Jack. Smiling at him in a rare way Bitty knows is special, and it’s like everything clicks into place. He steps forward, reaching to hug him, to touch him, anything. And Jack closes the distance, and then some. He curls one hand around Bitty’s jaw, and then pulls him forward. There’s a moment when their eyes connect, and then it’s all instinct, and he’s parting his lips and meeting Jack Zimmermann halfway to the kiss.
His friends cheer around him, giddy and high. Bitty smiles into the kiss, one hand on Jack’s cheek, barely able to contain his joy.
“Hey,” Jack says quietly, just for the two of them, smiling back. “I haven’t told you yet, but I really like your boots.”