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Give Delight (and Hurt Not): Chapter 1 [Check Please; Patater]
Title: Give Delight (and Hurt Not)
Author: Phnx
Fandom: Check, Please!
Pairings/Character: Patater, Kent Parson, Kit Purrson, Jack Zimmermann, Eric Bittle, Alexei "Tater" Mashkov, Jeff “Swoops” Troy, OCs from the Aces
Rating: T+
Word Count: 3635 (Chapter 1/2) | Read Chapter 2
Summary: Prequel/Sequel to Noises, Sounds, and Sweet Airs. A Patater Sentinel AU. Fic and chapter titles are once again from The Tempest.
"This rough magic I here abjure." — Act 5, Scene 1
The first thing that everyone needs to understand about Kent Parson is that he is not a fucking Guide, okay?
He went through all the mandatory testing in elementary school, and every single time his records were updated as negative, negative, negative.
So what if he showed up ready to play for the Q and had some fainting spell or whatever, and suddenly he knows what Jack Zimmermann is feeling and where he is? That doesn’t negate the decade of scientific classifications of baseline that he’d received.
The second thing that everyone needs to understand about Kent Parson is that he maybe, just maybe, secretly believes in soul mates.
He knows in his head it’s all bullshit, he knows that, but some stupid part of him can’t stop believing in One True Love, and he hates it.
So when the team doctors all announced that he was compatible with Jack, so compatible that meeting him had driven his Guide powers out of latency, well… Maybe a part of him thought compatibility meant something else. Maybe a part of him thought that the way Jack looked at him, touched him, kissed him meant something else.
And then Jack had his melt-down, and everyone was screaming at Kent, because that was exactly what Kent was supposed to be preventing, that was what he was for.
(Kent didn’t even know anything was wrong.)
What Kent learned from all of that was: (1) if he is a Guide, he’s a pretty shitty one, and (2) he may be very compatible with Jack, but Jack definitely isn’t his soul mate.
The third thing everyone needs to understand about Kent Parson is that he is extremely vindictive.
To be fair, most people already seem to have that one down pat.
---
"And what do you think the Falconers’ chances of making the play-offs are this year now that they have Jack Zimmermann?"
This reporter must be new. Early on in his NHL career, Kent had developed a reputation for shutting down whenever Jack's name was mentioned, and most journalists gave up on trying to tease any information out of him a long time ago.
Kent smiles at the reporter, showing more teeth than were strictly necessary. "Oh, I don't think that's very likely, do you?" he asks sweetly.
The reporter seems surprised. "But—" he begins as all around, more experienced journalists turn toward them, scenting blood in the water.
"After all," Kent continues brightly, "for that, they'd have to beat us!"
He doesn't add, Over my dead body, but the expressions on the journalists' faces tell him that they heard it anyway, loud and clear.
"Any other questions?" he asks.
The journalists swarm him.
---
“Parson! Parson, over here!”
Kent skates over to where the assistant coach for the Caps is waving at him. He’s not used to the staff for the opposing team trying to talk to him during pre-game skate, and he suspects he isn’t going to like the reason they are now.
He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can get any words out, the assistant coach grabs him by the arm and drags him off the ice, shoving blade guards at Kent. “He’s in here,” the guy says, barely walking slowly enough for Kent to hobble along beside him.
Kent is really, really not liking where this seems to be going.
They end up in the Caps locker room, where the players are all crowded into one corner. The coach shoves them out of the way and ushers Kent forward. Once he’s through the wall of hockey players, he sees that Kutznetsov is curled up against the wall, eyes blank.
Everyone stares at Kent. He stares back.
“Well?” demands the assistant coach.
“Uh,” says Kent. “Looks like he’s zoned out.”
The assistant coach stares at him like he’s a total moron. Kent’s not sure he isn’t a total moron, but he’s also not sure what he’s supposed to be doing here.
“Yes, yes,” says Ovechkin. “And you fix, yes?”
Kent boggles at him. “What, me? No!”
“You’re a Guide,” says the assistant coach. “It says so on your paperwork!”
Kent gives the coach a sweet smile. “Does it? Please tell me more about myself, I’m just agog.”
“Don’t be a little shit, Parson,” the assistant coach snarls back at him. “Kutzy is in fucking trouble. Are you seriously refusing to help him?”
“No, I’m not refusing,” Kent snaps. “I am explaining to you that I don’t give a fucking shit what my paperwork tells you, if I am a Guide, I’ve never been able to do anything with it! I have a zero success rate with helping anyone out of zones!”
The assistant coach looks at him in disgust. “The fuck good are you, then?”
“That is what I am trying to tell you!” Kent tries very hard not to scream.
“Wait,” says Ovechkin. “Think he wake up?” He says something softly in Russian, and Kutznetsov responds, sounding vague and dizzy, but conscious.
“Great,” says Kent brightly. “I’m heading back to the ice, now.”
Thankfully, everyone is too busy fussing over Kutznetsov to stop him from leaving.
As he stumbles down the hall in his skates, he decides that this is Jack’s fault, too, and he intends to tell him so.
---
The thing is, while Kent’s paperwork does indeed report that he has assisted in exactly 0% successful zone recoveries, that’s not really… accurate.
Zones are usually more common during late adolescence, but Kent and Jack didn’t know that. They just knew that Jack’s were getting worse, but it was probably the stress, right? Once they’d gotten through the draft, everything was going to settle down again. So it was better not to tell anyone, because they didn’t want to ruin Jack’s prospects by having him look unstable to the interested teams. And it didn’t matter, because Kent could pull him out of the zone, every single time.
Kent’s official zone recoveries, the ones at the clinic where serious people with clipboards and white coats took notes and shook their heads disappointedly, those are at 0%. But Kent’s unofficial zone recoveries, the ones where he and Jack were alone together, wrestling on the floor, cuddling on the couch, in bed… with those, Kent is nearly at a 100% success rate.
100%, except for the one that really mattered.
---
Getting lifted up with one arm by a Russian giant and shaken around until his head is spinning isn’t really on his list of goals for the day, but Kent isn’t complaining or anything, because he met his real goal: game, set and match, fuckers.
Things Kent is never going to lose, an exhaustive list:
1.) Any game against the Falconers
2.) Anything else ever
It isn’t until Mashkov has been forced to drop Kent and is dragged away that Kent realises the spinning in his head isn’t all due to the mixology routine.
Mashkov is pulsing.
Well, fuck.
Kent skates up to Jack before he goes through the tunnel after the game and catches his arm to hold him back. Jack stops at his touch, but he doesn’t look at Kent.
Kent keeps his voice low. “Jack, have you noticed—I mean, I noticed a flare-up on the ice. Hearing, I think? You might want to have a Guide check out—”
“I have a Guide, Parse,” says Jack through gritted teeth.
Kent recoils slightly. Jack has never used that tone with him before, not even when things were at their worst, not even when Kent was at his worst.
“I know,” Kent says after a moment. “I just meant—”
“If there’s anything wrong with me, he’ll know. He’ll know better and faster than you, and he won’t use it to his own advantage like a damn rat.” Jack snatches his arm out of Kent’s slack hold and heads into the tunnel, not looking back.
Kent spends an embarrassing amount of time staring at the closed door, too shocked to move.
Well, fine then.
Kent sneaks out as soon as he can, dodging his teammates so he can hide in an anonymous bar. His evening of drunken self-pity lasts all of ten minutes before Jeff slides into the booth across from him and gives him a long look.
“You wanna tell me what happened today?” Jeff asks, mild. “I can make some educated guesses about what happened during the game, even if I don’t like it, but what was that with Zimmermann at the end?”
Kent has a lot of careless phrases he could say, but he bites them all back.
“I thought I felt Mashkov flare up,” he says, trying for nonchalant but probably just looking extremely uncomfortable. “I tried to tell Zimmermann, but he thought I was talking about him and got all defensive and shrugged me off. So whatever, I guess.”
“Yeah,” says Jeff. “I have no idea why he would respond like that to you after you just played the dirtiest game of your life in a desperate attempt to one-up him.”
Kent feels his face turn red. He scowls down into his bright-pink cocktail, not meeting Jeff’s eyes.
Jeff lets the tense moment stand, and then he lets it go. Just like that. Kent does not fucking deserve his team. “But that’s a big deal if you felt a flare, Cap,” he says. “Can’t let that slide under the radar, you know?”
Kent slumps over his drink. “I—”
His phone lights up on the table, and he hesitantly unlocks it to read the message.
Jack Zimmermann: Bitty says my hearing is fine.
Kent shoves his phone away in disgust. “How am I supposed to talk to this idiot?”
Jeff snorts. “That’s on you to figure out, man. But to help out Mashkov, you don’t need to.” He nods at a table in a quiet corner of the bar where a lone woman is drinking a giant beer while she messes with something on her phone. “See her? That’s George, from the Falconers management team. Just drop the news, and it’s all over.”
Kent looks at the woman. He considers asking Jeff to just tell her for him, and the thing is, Jeff would do it, and he would do it smoother and friendlier than Kent ever could.
But it’s not Jeff’s job to do this.
Kent sighs and shoves away from the table. “Watch my drink,” he tells Jeff. “Better yet, buy me a new one.”
The woman looks up as Kent approaches, and she stares him down with calm eyes, neither warm nor cold.
“Hi,” says Kent, flashing his most charming media grin. “I’m Kent Parson, better known as a hockey savant and the world’s shittiest Guide. I hear from my teammate that you work with the Falconers?”
George’s eyebrows go up, and she smiles very slightly. “That’s right.” She doesn’t introduce herself further. “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Parson?” She waves her hand invitingly at the chair across from her.
Kent doesn’t sit.
“No, actually, but there is something I can help you with. Mashkov was flaring up during the game today. His hearing, I think.”
George’s eyes flash, but she hides her surprise very quickly.
“Now, as I already said, I am seriously the worst Guide ever, so maybe I was just imagining it or whatever, but you should probably get him checked out just in case. So I’m telling you, as is my sworn duty as a Guide.”
“I appreciate it,” George tells him seriously. “Tater’s due for a physical anyway—we’ll run him through some standard sensory tests as well, make sure everything checks out.” She quirks a small smile. “I doubt he’ll even notice to complain. You know how Sentinels get when we even touch on the topic of their enhanced senses.” She raises an eyebrow at him, inviting him to share in the joke.
He ducks his head instead. “Yeah…” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I know.”
---
Jack Zimmermann: Wait, was it Tater you were talking about?
Jack Zimmermann: Docs say he checks out too though
Jack Zimmermann: Kent?
Kent scowls down at his phone. I’m not fucking talking to you, he sends back.
Kit slides up against him and settles herself under his chin, purring. He sinks his fingers into her fur and stays curled up with her, watching as his phone lights up over and over again.
---
For the first time in five years, Kent gets a text from Bob Zimmermann.
The Aces have just dropped out of the play-offs, and Bob’s text just reads Sorry about the game.
It doesn’t feel like enough. It feels like too much.
Kent doesn’t respond until he’s watching Jack kiss his little blond boyfriend on national television after the cup finals, a montage of everything Kent had ever wanted.
Kent wonders what it’s like to be a Sentinel, to carry no one’s pain with you but your own.
He texts back, Can’t win them all, and he hopes Bob doesn’t know what loss he’s actually referring to.
Bob doesn’t text him again.
---
The summer promises to stretch on and long and tedious as ever. Kent sees his mom and his sister briefly, but they’ve both planned full summers, and anyway: Kent knows from experience that prolonged visits tend to end in screaming matches and tears. He has that effect on people.
He flips through solo vacation recommendations for a while, but eventually he gives up on that idea. He hates traveling alone, and what if Kit got lonely?
It’s June when he gets a call from Jack that he decides to finally answer, for once.
He makes sure his voice sounds acceptably bored when he says, “Yo.”
“Kent? Kent! Hi!”
“Did you actually have something to say, or are we just exchanging summer greetings?” asks Kent cooly.
”Kenny,” sighs Jack. ”What are we even fighting over anymore?”
“We’re not fighting,” Kent replies. “We’re in total agreement that you’re a terrible person who doesn’t deserve my forgiveness.”
Jack laughs.
Kent wasn’t entirely joking.
After a moment, Jack continues the conversation with, “My dad asked after you.”
“Tell him I died.”
”...Kent.” Jack’s voice is heavy with disappointment.
“What? What does he care, anyway?”
”Of course he cares! You billeted with us all that time, you were like fam—”
“Fuck you,” Kent snarls, and he hangs up. He stares at his phone and watches as the little clock changes from 22:21 to 22:22. He calls Jack back. “I just want to reiterate that you’re a terrible person who doesn’t deserve my forgiveness.”
”I know,” says Jack. He sounds tired. He doesn’t even try to start the argument over which of them is the most terrible and least deserving of forgiveness, and Kent can’t help but be grateful for that. Kent always loses that fight. ”But I miss my friend, man.”
Kent doesn’t answer. He drops back on his couch and stares up at his ceiling.
”Kent?”
“I miss my friend, too,” Kent whispers finally.
“Come stay with me next month before training camp. Bitty will be here, so it won’t get weird.”
“...How is that supposed to make it less weird? If anything, that makes it way weirder!”
”Bitty knows how to defuse a tense situation. He’s like a pro at it.”
“He hates me.”
”Do you blame him? All he knows about you is that you came all the way to Samwell to bitch me out that one time, and also that you bulldozed another hockey player in a shit move just so you could beat me. Oh, and not to mention that we used to date.”
“Used to? Don’t tell me he dumped you already.”
“What? No, I meant—I meant you and me, obviously.”
“When was this? I don’t remember you taking me on a single fucking date.”
”Well, I mean, we couldn’t, could we?”
Kent’s stomach clenches unpleasantly. “I’ll stay with you guys, fine.”
”Kent—”
“Bye, Jack.” Kents dumps his phone, snags Kit from where she’s creeping along the windowsill behind the curtains, and hugs her close as she squirms and meows against him.
He hears the chimes of texts coming in, and he sighs into Kit’s soft fur and finally releases her.
Jack Zimmermann: Did you want to?
Jack Zimmermann: I thought you were even more invested in the closet thing than I was
Kent taps out Good NIGHT, jack and turns his phone on silent.
---
Eric Bittle smiles at Kent with all his teeth and only makes Kent two pies with the air of someone who is bestowing a dire punishment.
Kent has a new philosophical question to pose to the world: Who’s the bigger dumbass—the dumbass who says ‘it won’t be awkward!’ or the dumbass who listens to him?
Still, no matter his anger, Bittle doesn’t seem to have it in him to be cruel, and when Kent forgets to be jealous, he feels charmed instead.
Bitty vanishes one afternoon—for pie ingredients, Kent suspects—and Kent and Jack sit on the sofa and stare blankly at the TV together.
Kent feels it the moment Jack’s attention starts to fixate, and for a moment, he’s not sure what he should do. Should he wait for Bittle to come home and pull Jack out of his zone?
Kent quickly decides that that’s stupid. Most of the ways he used to wake Jack up from a zone were too intimate for friends, but that’s fine. He’d rather use Plan B right now anyway. He punches Jack in the shoulder, none too gently. “Oi, jackass.” He feels Jack’s mind stutter, just a little, and he smirks. “Hey, wanna listen to me practise for open mike?”
He only makes it through two verses of Toxic before Jack is awake enough to try to smother him with a cushion.
For all its awkwardness, the trip passes by quickly and pleasantly enough. The day he’s due to fly back to Vegas, Kent wakes up absurdly early in the morning and creates a massive spread of breakfast scones and muffins and crepes.
“I know it’s not nearly as good as what you can do,” Kent tells Bittle. In this, he is being unfortunately honest, which rankles. He usually considers himself to be a damn good baker and cook, but there’s no competing here. “I just wanted to give you a break on my last day, you know, to thank you for letting me stay here.”
Jack looks pleased. Bittle, of course, has correctly interpreted this as a territory violation, and his smile is stiff with forced politeness.
Bittle looks even more upset when he tries one of Kent’s scones. “It’s very good,” he admits grudgingly.
“Oh, do you like it?” asks Kent sweetly. “Do you want the recipe?”
Bittle’s eye twitches.
---
The preseason finally begins, and Kent can finally, finally play hockey again.
He continues to keep in contact with Jack, and he even makes an effort to keep in touch with Bittle, liking his tweets, sending him congratulations when the Samwell hockey team wins their games, and passing on weird and interesting recipes when he finds them. Bittle responds mostly in kind, though his enthusiasm seems the most genuine when he’s commenting on Kit’s tweets.
He’s laughing with Jack on the phone one day when Jack’s voice is replaced by another. His heart stops and his stomach clenches before he even consciously recognises Mashkov’s voice begging for pie.
He thinks he’s talking to Bittle, Kent realises, and the stab of jealousy is sharper than he’s felt for a long time.
He sets Mashkov straight, and they even manage a little teasing conversation before Jack retrieves his phone.
”Sorry about that, man,” says Jack.
“It’s no problem,” Kent replies, trying to sound nonchalant. “Does Mashkov spend a lot of time around Bittle, then?”
”I guess? I mean, not really, but when Bitty comes up, Tater usually manages to wrangle a few pies under the guise of a friendly visit.”
Jack sounds fond. Not at all like someone who’s concerned that his boyfriend and Guide might be receiving undue attentions from a rival. But then, Jack was always kind of a moron when it came to these things, so he probably wouldn’t even notice.
Bittle would notice, though, and he would put a stop to it. Bittle has eyes for no one but Jack.
”Kent? You still there?”
“Yeah,” says Kent. He hesitates for a moment. “Listen, I know—I know the team specialists didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, but do you think Bittle could keep an eye on Mashkov? It’s just, the doctors didn’t notice anything when you—I mean, they might not be able to catch anything if it’s not in the moment, you know, and—”
”Kent, calm down,” says Jack. He doesn’t sound angry, like Kent is overstepping again. He sounds—warm, maybe. ”I’ll ask Bitty to keep an eye on Tater. I will, too. Thanks, man.”
Kent licks his lips nervously. He doesn’t like the thought of sweet, adorable Eric Bittle looking after Mashkov, which is just so extremely stupid. He’s barely met the guy, and it wasn’t under the best of circumstances when he did meet him. There’s no reason he should be feeling so… possessive, or whatever this was.
“Yeah,” Kent says. “Great.”
”Are we still on to hang out after the game on Saturday? I won’t even rub my win in your face too much.”
“Dream on,” says Kent drily. “Yeah, I’ll see you then.”
And Mashkov, Kent realises as he hangs up. He’ll see Mashkov on Saturday, too, if only at the game.
He reminds himself as he prepares for bed that he’s way too mature to stay up all night looking up how to flirt in Russian.
Chapter 2
Author: Phnx
Fandom: Check, Please!
Pairings/Character: Patater, Kent Parson, Kit Purrson, Jack Zimmermann, Eric Bittle, Alexei "Tater" Mashkov, Jeff “Swoops” Troy, OCs from the Aces
Rating: T+
Word Count: 3635 (Chapter 1/2) | Read Chapter 2
Summary: Prequel/Sequel to Noises, Sounds, and Sweet Airs. A Patater Sentinel AU. Fic and chapter titles are once again from The Tempest.
The first thing that everyone needs to understand about Kent Parson is that he is not a fucking Guide, okay?
He went through all the mandatory testing in elementary school, and every single time his records were updated as negative, negative, negative.
So what if he showed up ready to play for the Q and had some fainting spell or whatever, and suddenly he knows what Jack Zimmermann is feeling and where he is? That doesn’t negate the decade of scientific classifications of baseline that he’d received.
The second thing that everyone needs to understand about Kent Parson is that he maybe, just maybe, secretly believes in soul mates.
He knows in his head it’s all bullshit, he knows that, but some stupid part of him can’t stop believing in One True Love, and he hates it.
So when the team doctors all announced that he was compatible with Jack, so compatible that meeting him had driven his Guide powers out of latency, well… Maybe a part of him thought compatibility meant something else. Maybe a part of him thought that the way Jack looked at him, touched him, kissed him meant something else.
And then Jack had his melt-down, and everyone was screaming at Kent, because that was exactly what Kent was supposed to be preventing, that was what he was for.
(Kent didn’t even know anything was wrong.)
What Kent learned from all of that was: (1) if he is a Guide, he’s a pretty shitty one, and (2) he may be very compatible with Jack, but Jack definitely isn’t his soul mate.
The third thing everyone needs to understand about Kent Parson is that he is extremely vindictive.
To be fair, most people already seem to have that one down pat.
"And what do you think the Falconers’ chances of making the play-offs are this year now that they have Jack Zimmermann?"
This reporter must be new. Early on in his NHL career, Kent had developed a reputation for shutting down whenever Jack's name was mentioned, and most journalists gave up on trying to tease any information out of him a long time ago.
Kent smiles at the reporter, showing more teeth than were strictly necessary. "Oh, I don't think that's very likely, do you?" he asks sweetly.
The reporter seems surprised. "But—" he begins as all around, more experienced journalists turn toward them, scenting blood in the water.
"After all," Kent continues brightly, "for that, they'd have to beat us!"
He doesn't add, Over my dead body, but the expressions on the journalists' faces tell him that they heard it anyway, loud and clear.
"Any other questions?" he asks.
The journalists swarm him.
“Parson! Parson, over here!”
Kent skates over to where the assistant coach for the Caps is waving at him. He’s not used to the staff for the opposing team trying to talk to him during pre-game skate, and he suspects he isn’t going to like the reason they are now.
He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can get any words out, the assistant coach grabs him by the arm and drags him off the ice, shoving blade guards at Kent. “He’s in here,” the guy says, barely walking slowly enough for Kent to hobble along beside him.
Kent is really, really not liking where this seems to be going.
They end up in the Caps locker room, where the players are all crowded into one corner. The coach shoves them out of the way and ushers Kent forward. Once he’s through the wall of hockey players, he sees that Kutznetsov is curled up against the wall, eyes blank.
Everyone stares at Kent. He stares back.
“Well?” demands the assistant coach.
“Uh,” says Kent. “Looks like he’s zoned out.”
The assistant coach stares at him like he’s a total moron. Kent’s not sure he isn’t a total moron, but he’s also not sure what he’s supposed to be doing here.
“Yes, yes,” says Ovechkin. “And you fix, yes?”
Kent boggles at him. “What, me? No!”
“You’re a Guide,” says the assistant coach. “It says so on your paperwork!”
Kent gives the coach a sweet smile. “Does it? Please tell me more about myself, I’m just agog.”
“Don’t be a little shit, Parson,” the assistant coach snarls back at him. “Kutzy is in fucking trouble. Are you seriously refusing to help him?”
“No, I’m not refusing,” Kent snaps. “I am explaining to you that I don’t give a fucking shit what my paperwork tells you, if I am a Guide, I’ve never been able to do anything with it! I have a zero success rate with helping anyone out of zones!”
The assistant coach looks at him in disgust. “The fuck good are you, then?”
“That is what I am trying to tell you!” Kent tries very hard not to scream.
“Wait,” says Ovechkin. “Think he wake up?” He says something softly in Russian, and Kutznetsov responds, sounding vague and dizzy, but conscious.
“Great,” says Kent brightly. “I’m heading back to the ice, now.”
Thankfully, everyone is too busy fussing over Kutznetsov to stop him from leaving.
As he stumbles down the hall in his skates, he decides that this is Jack’s fault, too, and he intends to tell him so.
The thing is, while Kent’s paperwork does indeed report that he has assisted in exactly 0% successful zone recoveries, that’s not really… accurate.
Zones are usually more common during late adolescence, but Kent and Jack didn’t know that. They just knew that Jack’s were getting worse, but it was probably the stress, right? Once they’d gotten through the draft, everything was going to settle down again. So it was better not to tell anyone, because they didn’t want to ruin Jack’s prospects by having him look unstable to the interested teams. And it didn’t matter, because Kent could pull him out of the zone, every single time.
Kent’s official zone recoveries, the ones at the clinic where serious people with clipboards and white coats took notes and shook their heads disappointedly, those are at 0%. But Kent’s unofficial zone recoveries, the ones where he and Jack were alone together, wrestling on the floor, cuddling on the couch, in bed… with those, Kent is nearly at a 100% success rate.
100%, except for the one that really mattered.
Getting lifted up with one arm by a Russian giant and shaken around until his head is spinning isn’t really on his list of goals for the day, but Kent isn’t complaining or anything, because he met his real goal: game, set and match, fuckers.
Things Kent is never going to lose, an exhaustive list:
1.) Any game against the Falconers
2.) Anything else ever
It isn’t until Mashkov has been forced to drop Kent and is dragged away that Kent realises the spinning in his head isn’t all due to the mixology routine.
Mashkov is pulsing.
Well, fuck.
Kent skates up to Jack before he goes through the tunnel after the game and catches his arm to hold him back. Jack stops at his touch, but he doesn’t look at Kent.
Kent keeps his voice low. “Jack, have you noticed—I mean, I noticed a flare-up on the ice. Hearing, I think? You might want to have a Guide check out—”
“I have a Guide, Parse,” says Jack through gritted teeth.
Kent recoils slightly. Jack has never used that tone with him before, not even when things were at their worst, not even when Kent was at his worst.
“I know,” Kent says after a moment. “I just meant—”
“If there’s anything wrong with me, he’ll know. He’ll know better and faster than you, and he won’t use it to his own advantage like a damn rat.” Jack snatches his arm out of Kent’s slack hold and heads into the tunnel, not looking back.
Kent spends an embarrassing amount of time staring at the closed door, too shocked to move.
Well, fine then.
Kent sneaks out as soon as he can, dodging his teammates so he can hide in an anonymous bar. His evening of drunken self-pity lasts all of ten minutes before Jeff slides into the booth across from him and gives him a long look.
“You wanna tell me what happened today?” Jeff asks, mild. “I can make some educated guesses about what happened during the game, even if I don’t like it, but what was that with Zimmermann at the end?”
Kent has a lot of careless phrases he could say, but he bites them all back.
“I thought I felt Mashkov flare up,” he says, trying for nonchalant but probably just looking extremely uncomfortable. “I tried to tell Zimmermann, but he thought I was talking about him and got all defensive and shrugged me off. So whatever, I guess.”
“Yeah,” says Jeff. “I have no idea why he would respond like that to you after you just played the dirtiest game of your life in a desperate attempt to one-up him.”
Kent feels his face turn red. He scowls down into his bright-pink cocktail, not meeting Jeff’s eyes.
Jeff lets the tense moment stand, and then he lets it go. Just like that. Kent does not fucking deserve his team. “But that’s a big deal if you felt a flare, Cap,” he says. “Can’t let that slide under the radar, you know?”
Kent slumps over his drink. “I—”
His phone lights up on the table, and he hesitantly unlocks it to read the message.
Jack Zimmermann: Bitty says my hearing is fine.
Kent shoves his phone away in disgust. “How am I supposed to talk to this idiot?”
Jeff snorts. “That’s on you to figure out, man. But to help out Mashkov, you don’t need to.” He nods at a table in a quiet corner of the bar where a lone woman is drinking a giant beer while she messes with something on her phone. “See her? That’s George, from the Falconers management team. Just drop the news, and it’s all over.”
Kent looks at the woman. He considers asking Jeff to just tell her for him, and the thing is, Jeff would do it, and he would do it smoother and friendlier than Kent ever could.
But it’s not Jeff’s job to do this.
Kent sighs and shoves away from the table. “Watch my drink,” he tells Jeff. “Better yet, buy me a new one.”
The woman looks up as Kent approaches, and she stares him down with calm eyes, neither warm nor cold.
“Hi,” says Kent, flashing his most charming media grin. “I’m Kent Parson, better known as a hockey savant and the world’s shittiest Guide. I hear from my teammate that you work with the Falconers?”
George’s eyebrows go up, and she smiles very slightly. “That’s right.” She doesn’t introduce herself further. “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Parson?” She waves her hand invitingly at the chair across from her.
Kent doesn’t sit.
“No, actually, but there is something I can help you with. Mashkov was flaring up during the game today. His hearing, I think.”
George’s eyes flash, but she hides her surprise very quickly.
“Now, as I already said, I am seriously the worst Guide ever, so maybe I was just imagining it or whatever, but you should probably get him checked out just in case. So I’m telling you, as is my sworn duty as a Guide.”
“I appreciate it,” George tells him seriously. “Tater’s due for a physical anyway—we’ll run him through some standard sensory tests as well, make sure everything checks out.” She quirks a small smile. “I doubt he’ll even notice to complain. You know how Sentinels get when we even touch on the topic of their enhanced senses.” She raises an eyebrow at him, inviting him to share in the joke.
He ducks his head instead. “Yeah…” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I know.”
Jack Zimmermann: Wait, was it Tater you were talking about?
Jack Zimmermann: Docs say he checks out too though
Jack Zimmermann: Kent?
Kent scowls down at his phone. I’m not fucking talking to you, he sends back.
Kit slides up against him and settles herself under his chin, purring. He sinks his fingers into her fur and stays curled up with her, watching as his phone lights up over and over again.
For the first time in five years, Kent gets a text from Bob Zimmermann.
The Aces have just dropped out of the play-offs, and Bob’s text just reads Sorry about the game.
It doesn’t feel like enough. It feels like too much.
Kent doesn’t respond until he’s watching Jack kiss his little blond boyfriend on national television after the cup finals, a montage of everything Kent had ever wanted.
Kent wonders what it’s like to be a Sentinel, to carry no one’s pain with you but your own.
He texts back, Can’t win them all, and he hopes Bob doesn’t know what loss he’s actually referring to.
Bob doesn’t text him again.
The summer promises to stretch on and long and tedious as ever. Kent sees his mom and his sister briefly, but they’ve both planned full summers, and anyway: Kent knows from experience that prolonged visits tend to end in screaming matches and tears. He has that effect on people.
He flips through solo vacation recommendations for a while, but eventually he gives up on that idea. He hates traveling alone, and what if Kit got lonely?
It’s June when he gets a call from Jack that he decides to finally answer, for once.
He makes sure his voice sounds acceptably bored when he says, “Yo.”
“Kent? Kent! Hi!”
“Did you actually have something to say, or are we just exchanging summer greetings?” asks Kent cooly.
”Kenny,” sighs Jack. ”What are we even fighting over anymore?”
“We’re not fighting,” Kent replies. “We’re in total agreement that you’re a terrible person who doesn’t deserve my forgiveness.”
Jack laughs.
Kent wasn’t entirely joking.
After a moment, Jack continues the conversation with, “My dad asked after you.”
“Tell him I died.”
”...Kent.” Jack’s voice is heavy with disappointment.
“What? What does he care, anyway?”
”Of course he cares! You billeted with us all that time, you were like fam—”
“Fuck you,” Kent snarls, and he hangs up. He stares at his phone and watches as the little clock changes from 22:21 to 22:22. He calls Jack back. “I just want to reiterate that you’re a terrible person who doesn’t deserve my forgiveness.”
”I know,” says Jack. He sounds tired. He doesn’t even try to start the argument over which of them is the most terrible and least deserving of forgiveness, and Kent can’t help but be grateful for that. Kent always loses that fight. ”But I miss my friend, man.”
Kent doesn’t answer. He drops back on his couch and stares up at his ceiling.
”Kent?”
“I miss my friend, too,” Kent whispers finally.
“Come stay with me next month before training camp. Bitty will be here, so it won’t get weird.”
“...How is that supposed to make it less weird? If anything, that makes it way weirder!”
”Bitty knows how to defuse a tense situation. He’s like a pro at it.”
“He hates me.”
”Do you blame him? All he knows about you is that you came all the way to Samwell to bitch me out that one time, and also that you bulldozed another hockey player in a shit move just so you could beat me. Oh, and not to mention that we used to date.”
“Used to? Don’t tell me he dumped you already.”
“What? No, I meant—I meant you and me, obviously.”
“When was this? I don’t remember you taking me on a single fucking date.”
”Well, I mean, we couldn’t, could we?”
Kent’s stomach clenches unpleasantly. “I’ll stay with you guys, fine.”
”Kent—”
“Bye, Jack.” Kents dumps his phone, snags Kit from where she’s creeping along the windowsill behind the curtains, and hugs her close as she squirms and meows against him.
He hears the chimes of texts coming in, and he sighs into Kit’s soft fur and finally releases her.
Jack Zimmermann: Did you want to?
Jack Zimmermann: I thought you were even more invested in the closet thing than I was
Kent taps out Good NIGHT, jack and turns his phone on silent.
Eric Bittle smiles at Kent with all his teeth and only makes Kent two pies with the air of someone who is bestowing a dire punishment.
Kent has a new philosophical question to pose to the world: Who’s the bigger dumbass—the dumbass who says ‘it won’t be awkward!’ or the dumbass who listens to him?
Still, no matter his anger, Bittle doesn’t seem to have it in him to be cruel, and when Kent forgets to be jealous, he feels charmed instead.
Bitty vanishes one afternoon—for pie ingredients, Kent suspects—and Kent and Jack sit on the sofa and stare blankly at the TV together.
Kent feels it the moment Jack’s attention starts to fixate, and for a moment, he’s not sure what he should do. Should he wait for Bittle to come home and pull Jack out of his zone?
Kent quickly decides that that’s stupid. Most of the ways he used to wake Jack up from a zone were too intimate for friends, but that’s fine. He’d rather use Plan B right now anyway. He punches Jack in the shoulder, none too gently. “Oi, jackass.” He feels Jack’s mind stutter, just a little, and he smirks. “Hey, wanna listen to me practise for open mike?”
He only makes it through two verses of Toxic before Jack is awake enough to try to smother him with a cushion.
For all its awkwardness, the trip passes by quickly and pleasantly enough. The day he’s due to fly back to Vegas, Kent wakes up absurdly early in the morning and creates a massive spread of breakfast scones and muffins and crepes.
“I know it’s not nearly as good as what you can do,” Kent tells Bittle. In this, he is being unfortunately honest, which rankles. He usually considers himself to be a damn good baker and cook, but there’s no competing here. “I just wanted to give you a break on my last day, you know, to thank you for letting me stay here.”
Jack looks pleased. Bittle, of course, has correctly interpreted this as a territory violation, and his smile is stiff with forced politeness.
Bittle looks even more upset when he tries one of Kent’s scones. “It’s very good,” he admits grudgingly.
“Oh, do you like it?” asks Kent sweetly. “Do you want the recipe?”
Bittle’s eye twitches.
The preseason finally begins, and Kent can finally, finally play hockey again.
He continues to keep in contact with Jack, and he even makes an effort to keep in touch with Bittle, liking his tweets, sending him congratulations when the Samwell hockey team wins their games, and passing on weird and interesting recipes when he finds them. Bittle responds mostly in kind, though his enthusiasm seems the most genuine when he’s commenting on Kit’s tweets.
He’s laughing with Jack on the phone one day when Jack’s voice is replaced by another. His heart stops and his stomach clenches before he even consciously recognises Mashkov’s voice begging for pie.
He thinks he’s talking to Bittle, Kent realises, and the stab of jealousy is sharper than he’s felt for a long time.
He sets Mashkov straight, and they even manage a little teasing conversation before Jack retrieves his phone.
”Sorry about that, man,” says Jack.
“It’s no problem,” Kent replies, trying to sound nonchalant. “Does Mashkov spend a lot of time around Bittle, then?”
”I guess? I mean, not really, but when Bitty comes up, Tater usually manages to wrangle a few pies under the guise of a friendly visit.”
Jack sounds fond. Not at all like someone who’s concerned that his boyfriend and Guide might be receiving undue attentions from a rival. But then, Jack was always kind of a moron when it came to these things, so he probably wouldn’t even notice.
Bittle would notice, though, and he would put a stop to it. Bittle has eyes for no one but Jack.
”Kent? You still there?”
“Yeah,” says Kent. He hesitates for a moment. “Listen, I know—I know the team specialists didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, but do you think Bittle could keep an eye on Mashkov? It’s just, the doctors didn’t notice anything when you—I mean, they might not be able to catch anything if it’s not in the moment, you know, and—”
”Kent, calm down,” says Jack. He doesn’t sound angry, like Kent is overstepping again. He sounds—warm, maybe. ”I’ll ask Bitty to keep an eye on Tater. I will, too. Thanks, man.”
Kent licks his lips nervously. He doesn’t like the thought of sweet, adorable Eric Bittle looking after Mashkov, which is just so extremely stupid. He’s barely met the guy, and it wasn’t under the best of circumstances when he did meet him. There’s no reason he should be feeling so… possessive, or whatever this was.
“Yeah,” Kent says. “Great.”
”Are we still on to hang out after the game on Saturday? I won’t even rub my win in your face too much.”
“Dream on,” says Kent drily. “Yeah, I’ll see you then.”
And Mashkov, Kent realises as he hangs up. He’ll see Mashkov on Saturday, too, if only at the game.
He reminds himself as he prepares for bed that he’s way too mature to stay up all night looking up how to flirt in Russian.
Chapter 2