Work Text:
“Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe, and tune in next week! I’ll have a special surprise guest here to help me make something Absolutely Scrumptious! I hope you all have a great week and eat something that makes your tum do the smiley emote. Bye!”
Bitty yawned as he clicked out of the video and scrolled down his youtube feed. He glanced at the clock. Nearly two in the morning and he hadn’t started his paper outline yet. He clicked on another video anyway.
His phone buzzed face-down on the desk, and the light from the screen peeked out of the edges of his phone case. He paused the video just as it started playing, and the host was just a blur as she popped up from below the frame.
It was Jack. “Are you busy?”
He weighed his options. He could do the responsible thing and say yes, he had homework to do, or he could blow off the outline, as was more characteristic of him anyway, and say no, he was completely free. It’s not like the outline would be graded, anyway.
He deliberated for another few seconds, then typed out, “nope. what’s up? thought you’d be asleep by now.”
They were taking it slow. After the kiss at graduation, they’d gone their separate ways. Jack had moving things to do and a team to get to know and practices to attend. Bitty had… Georgia.
They’d done their own thing for the first month of summer, flirting over text and skype and phone calls but not putting a name to anything. Neither of them had told anyone else from the team, so naturally they all knew and wouldn’t shut up about it. Shitty insisted it had all been his doing. Bitty wouldn’t have put it past him.
Bitty waited a minute or so for an answer, then put his phone down and resumed the video.
Even though the volume was low, it seemed loud in his dark bedroom. The rest of the Haus was quiet, though few were asleep yet. After moving back in over the summer, Bitty had discovered that the worst offender in noise levels in the middle of the night was Shitty. Without him living there, the rest of his Hausmates were relatively conscientious at night. Lardo watched Netflix alone in her room with headphones on. Chowder, bless his heart, was asleep by eleven on most nights. Even Ransom and Holster were quieter without Shitty around to egg them on.
Bitty watched the video, jotting down notes every now and then with ideas for his next vlog. He didn’t ever think his vlog would be as popular as My Drunk Kitchen, or that he would be as popular as Hannah Hart, but it was always nice to try new things, keep it fresh. He did think that baking while sloshed was probably a bad idea (even though all the times he’d done it it had been fine), and filming it would be a worse idea, so he went back and scratched out “BOOZE” in his notes.
As the video ended he thought he heard a scuffling coming from outside. Probably the big tree in the front yard. Its branches brushed the roof of the porch and when the wind blew hard it sometimes took big scrapes out of the paint.
He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. He needed to go to bed soon. He scrolled down his video feed again, but paused and looked up, thinking he’d heard a tapping sound coming from somewhere. When it didn’t come again he shrugged and kept scrolling, writing it off as someone in the Haus dropping a book or phone or something.
Then it came again, louder and clearer, and definitely from his window.
His heart flew into his throat as he saw a face at the window, and he almost screamed.
Then the window slid open and a familiar head of hair and a pair of sad eyes appeared.
“Jack!” Bitty exclaimed when he could breathe again. “Good lord, you almost gave me a heart attack!”
Jack put a finger to his lips. “Most of the lights in the Haus are off,” he whispered. “Can I come in?”
Bitty nodded as he stepped over to the window and offered him a hand while he climbed inside. The autumn chill rushed in after him and filled the room with the faint smell of wood fires and dust and Jack slid the window closed. The chill clung to him, and Bitty shivered as Jack hugged him close. It wasn’t the usual upright-but-warm Zimmermann hug; Jack seemed to be clinging to Bitty, and was slumped over almost on top of him.
Bitty pulled back. “What are you doing here?” he asked. Jack looked away, and Bitty was struck with how... tired he looked. “What’s wrong?”
Jack shrugged, not meeting Bitty’s eye. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Bitty abruptly remembered walking past the living room on his way to the cafeteria earlier that day. Ransom and Chowder had been watching tv, slumped on the couch and trying to study at the same time.
“Falconer’s game is on in fifteen,” Ransom had called out to Bitty as he passed.
“I’ll catch the highlights later,” Bitty had replied, lost in thought. His father had called half an hour prior, and phone calls with him were never easy.
He’d been so distracted that he’d completely forgotten to look up the results of the game and had instead tried to get his mind off his home life with youtube and Beyonce.
He hadn’t watched the game, but the outcome was clear on Jack’s face. A bad loss.
“Oh,” he said, and Jack nodded.
Jack hesitated. “My apartment in Providence is… nice, I guess. But it’s lonely.”
Bitty smiled softly. “So you drove up in the middle of the night?”
Jack returned the smile, looking almost sheepish. “Yeah. I wanted to see you.”
Bitty blushed. “That’s gay,” he said, trying not to look as touched as he felt.
“You’re gay,” Jack replied, and kissed him.
“Right, and I’m the only gay one here,” Bitty teased.
Jack grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Then he sighed, and the smile dropped off his face. “I don’t know. It’s just been a rough couple of weeks.”
Bitty’s nurturing instincts kicked in and he unzipped Jack’s coat and tugged it off him. Jack looked at him, puzzled but wanting to see what he’d do. Bitty dropped the coat onto his desk chair, closed his laptop, and pulled him to his bed. Jack hesitated, eyes wide.
“I don’t--ah, really feel like this is the best time to--” he stammered.
Bitty rolled his eyes. “My intentions are pure, Mr. Zimmermann.”
Jack relaxed some and sat on the edge of the bed. Bitty kicked ineffectually at his feet until he took the hint and toed off his shoes. While he did that, Bitty straightened out his blankets and grabbed his extra pillow from the chair under the far window. He slipped out of his jeans and quickly climbed into bed; the Haus’s heater was subpar unless they set the thermostat to boiling, and it wasn’t quite cold enough for that yet, so they had been suffering through a slight chill for the past few weeks.
Jack looked at Bitty with an unreadable expression until he patted the bed next to him.
Jack stood and quickly followed Bitty’s lead, pulling off his jeans and socks, and climbing over Bitty to slip under the covers next to the wall wearing only a faded Samwell Men’s Hockey tshirt and boxers. The bed was really too small for both of them, but Bitty was determined to make it work.
They lay on their sides facing each other, their foreheads almost touching, and Jack reached out and pulled Bitty closer, wrapping his strong arms around him until Bitty could hear Jack’s heartbeat.
After Bitty returned to Samwell and the Haus in mid-July to start practices, he’d taken a short trip to Providence to see Jack. He had a new apartment, modest in size and location but well furnished. Bitty had stayed the weekend, Shitty had come over and hung out as well, and one evening they’d managed to escape Shitty’s constant wingman routine and went on a walk through a nearby park. During a short break while making out on a bench Jack had asked him to be his boyfriend officially, and later that night Bitty had discovered that Jack mumbled in his sleep.
Now, holding Bitty close, Jack sighed contentedly, and Bitty chuckled.
“If you wanted to snuggle you could’ve just said so in the first place,” he teased.
“I wanted to snuggle,” Jack replied, and kissed the top of Bitty’s head.
They lay in silence for a little while. Bitty thought Jack had fallen asleep until he heard a sniffle. He raised his head in alarm and through the dark he could just barely see Jack’s eyes squeezed shut.
He didn’t know what to say, so he just kissed Jack softly. Jack sniffled again and wiped at his eyes.
“Sorry, I didn’t want--”
“Shh, it’s okay. I get it,” Bitty interrupted gently. He reached over Jack, as difficult as it was (the man had shoulders like a lumberjack), and rubbed his back comfortingly.
After a few minutes, Jack scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Ugh, I’m a mess,” he groaned.
“No you’re not. Not that much,” Bitty said, and Jack huffed out a laugh without removing his hand from his face.
“You’re so good to me,” he replied sarcastically.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Bitty asked, his voice gentle.
“Not really.”
“Do you want to be little spoon?”
“....Yeah.”
Bitty wasn’t sure when he’d fallen asleep, too preoccupied with the sad Canadian in his bed to remember to set an alarm to wake him up in time for class, but luckily Ransom had his back. On days without morning practice they often went to the coffee shop together and got froufy coffee drinks that everyone else on the team made fun of them for. And on those mornings, Ransom liked to wake Bitty up himself. Loudly.
And Bitty had also forgotten to lock his door before shooing Jack into bed.
At 7:50 Ransom practically kicked the door in, music playing loud over a portable speaker plugged into his phone. The door hit the wall hard and Bitty jolted awake. Jack rolled over, grumbling incoherently and grimacing up at the ceiling.
“ And I would walk five hundred miles and I would walk five hundred more,” Rans sang at the top of his lungs, apparently dancing too hard to notice Bitty and his house guest.
“ Just to bE the man who walked a thousAND MILES to-- OH MY GOD,” Ransom yelled.
Bitty rolled over, squinting up at Ransom in annoyance. The song continued to play, and Ransom reached up to tilt down his stunna shades, his mouth hanging open. Slowly, a grin spread over his face and he paused the music.
“Heeeyyyyyyyyyyy Bits, good morning,” he said loudly, maintaining eye contact with Bitty but shouting out the open door into the hallway. “WHAAAT? And WHO is THIS?” he asked dramatically.
Bitty rolled his eyes. Jack sat up behind him, outright glaring at Ransom, who grinned back.
“Rans, what the fuck is your problem?” came a voice from elsewhere in the Haus.
They heard footsteps, and Lardo, squinty-eyed and hair messy, poked her head into the room. When she saw Jack, though, her eyes widened and she snickered. She stepped all the way into the room and pulled her phone out of the pocket of her black hoodie.
“Well, good morning,” she said. She snapped a picture and snickered again as she typed, probably sending it to Shitty.
Bitty was just waiting for everyone to get it out of their systems before he said anything, and he leaned back against Jack’s chest, who was in turn leaning back against the wall, evidently also waiting. Jack snaked a muscular arm around him as Ransom and Lardo started giggling to each other.
“WHAT WHAT IS IT WHAT AM I MISSING,” Holster shouted down the hallway, and they heard running footsteps. He popped his head in and barked out a laugh, then leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, grinning.
Ransom scrolled through something on his phone and hit play, and a loud song Bitty didn't recognise started to play. Ransom and Holster started dancing intensely to the pop song, and Lardo, barely awake as she was, bobbed her head to the music.
“They fucked! They fucked! They fucked! They fucked!” Rans and Holster started chanting to the beat of the song, continuing to dance. Holster looked like he was about to start twerking at any second.
Bitty heard one last door open and quiet footsteps cross the hall. And then Chowder, sweet, innocent Chowder, poked his head into the room. His eyes widened. His hand, drowning in the sleeve of an oversized teal sweater, clapped to his mouth, and his face had just started to turn pink when he left, his bedroom door closing quickly. The others stopped chanting to laugh uproariously.
Bitty waited another couple of seconds.
“Is everyone done?” he asked. Holster made eye contact and winked, and Bitty rolled his eyes.
“YOU TOTALLY FUCKED,” Ransom blurted, and Jack huffed.
“Y’all knew we were dating. I told you months ago,” Bitty reminded them, and Lardo raised her eyebrows.
“Dating is one thing, Bits,” she said. “Your Hausmates finding your boyfriend in your bed in the middle of the week when he lives forty minutes away and none of us have seen him in weeks? That’s...something else entirely, bro.”
Holster snickered and Rans elbowed him. They exchanged a suggestive glance, and Bitty’s phone buzzed on his desk.
Bitty shrugged Jack’s arm off and climbed out of bed.
“Fine, whatever. Now if you’re done , kindly leave so I can get ready for class,” he said as he picked up his phone.
"Yo, Jack, when did you get here?" Holster asked. "I was in the living room until like... like four at least and didn't see you come in."
Jack mumbled unintelligibly. Holster cupped a hand around his ear cheekily and raised an eyebrow, wordlessly asking him to repeat himself.
"He climbed up to the reading room and in my window," Bitty informed them, and Ransom, Holster, and Lardo doubled over in laughter.
When they had recovered, more or less, Bitty shooed them out of his room, and with a final, “nice one, Zimms,” from Ransom, he closed the door and leaned his head against it.
“That was annoying,” Jack mumbled. Bitty looked at him sideways, his head still pressed to the door, and saw that Jack was still half asleep. He was blinking to clear the sleep from his eyes, and as Bitty smiled at him he yawned hugely and slumped back down into the pillows.
Bitty went over to the bed and sat on the edge, scratching Jack’s back gently through his shirt. He leaned down and kissed Jack’s temple, and though his face was pressed into the pillow Bitty could see the corner of his mouth twitch up.
“Haven’t been getting much sleep lately, have you?” Bitty asked, and Jack mumbled wordlessly.
“I can pretend those were words if you want.”
Jack huffed out a laugh and Bitty patted his back.
“What time do you have to be back in Providence?” Bitty asked, and Jack rolled to face him.
“Probably like… noon? I have a two o’clock practice,” he mumbled, squinting up at Bitty.
Bitty checked the time. “Well, it’s almost eight now, and I’ll be out of class at eleven. If you want you can sleep a little while longer and I’ll wake you up when I get back from class,” he offered, and Jack smiled at him sleepily.
“You’re the best,” Jack mumbled.
Bitty was struck by how beautiful he looked, hair messy, the faintest bit of stubble showing on his jaw, the morning light from the window falling across his chest and illuminating dust motes around his head. He felt a soft ache in his chest, and smiled.
“Yeah, I know,” he teased. Jack chuckled and pulled the covers up to his chin.
Bitty’s phone buzzed again, and he looked down. Two unread messages.
The most recent was from Ransom. “ Okay but in all seriousness do u want to get coffee before class or are u too busy doing whatever it is ur doing w Jack or maybe to him?”
Bitty swiped a hand down his face and quickly sent off an affirmative before checking the other.
It was from Shitty.
“ YEAH BITTLE GET SOME FINE ZIMMERMANN BOOTY AWW YEAH”
Bitty almost chucked his phone against the wall.