Cheerlead some smut?

[staranise]

Hi people, can I get some encouragment? I'm working on a Bittyparse thing. Well, Bitty/Parse kegster hookup in context of pining unrequited Bitty/Jack. A fair summary might be, "Bob didn't say anything at graduation. Jack moved to Providence. Bitty's moving on. And Kent Parson, unexpectedly is a foodie." Warnings for Kent Parson being his usual self-sabotaging trash baby self.

---

Graduation is not the last time he ever sees Jack Zimmermann in person and all the words he never got to say don’t actually burn his throat to ash. Bitty copes. Jack actually comes down to the Georgia for the Fourth of July and Bitty will never tell anyone how he almost passed out from heatstroke his first full day. He cooks with Bitty’s mom and talks football with Bitty’s dad and it’s not all the things it could have been but–

Sometimes he wants to chase Jack down and pound on his chest and say, Do you not realize all the things you’re passing up in me? I love you, I get it, I’m not going to ask you to choose me over hockey. I could be there to Skype with after the game when you’re on a roadie and I could make your fucking high-protein meals for lunch when you get home after morning practice and I can still skate circles around you and do you just realize how good I could be for you?

He doesn’t, because you know what? Eric R Bittle is a gosh-darned grownup, and he’s not going to whine when he doesn’t get what he wants. He sends Jack off with six frozen meat pies in his luggage, their condensation beading the plastic bag that holds them in the Georgia morning, and a little box of thumbprint cookies, and he smiles bright and wide in public and licks his wounds behind closed doors.

He’s thought it over very carefully and gotten a lot of advice from his Youtube commenters and he knows what he’s going to do, which is stop acting like Jack was his only shot at love, some big doomed unrequited romance that will scar him forever. He’s going back to Samwell without Jack and Samwell, let it be remembered, is one of the most LGBTQ-friendly campuses in the nation, so this year, he tells himself, he’ll make friends outside the hockey team, go to mixers, meet other gay men who haven’t been thoroughly and disastrously vetted already by the duo of Ransom and Holster.

It hurts, of course, when Jack comes up before training camp to see them all, turning down the beer and the pie on the front stoop because he’s got a limited diet for carbs. It hurts when the team goes down to Providence for the Falconers’ first preseason game and celebrates with Jack in a bar near his apartment. It hurts whenever his heart goes twang at the sight of Jack’s face, at the smiling gentleness he uses to rib Bitty, at everything about him. But he lets it hurt and reminds himself: This is not the end. He is not everything. There are other people in the world than him.

And the hockey team, thanks for asking, is doing fine without their old captain. It would be easier to miss Jack this much if people, from Coach to the frogs to the Swallow, would stop fretting about how rough this season is gonna be with their star player gone, even after they win three out of their first four games.

For the Halloween party Lardo, Ransom, and Holster sit Bitty down with spreadsheets and slice off an even bigger portion of the team’s beer money than usual to spend on more wholesome things; it’s a continuation of last year’s policy, when Jack insisted on reimbursing Bitty for the flats of water bottles he laid in beforehand, and the food everyone used to soak up the alcohol. After much careful thought Bitty temporarily acquires a water cooler from Faber, and more legitimately acquires twenty refill jugs and stores them in a nearby closet, because the thousand people they’re inviting may be strangers but they are still guests; he spends three weeks preparing cookies that probably should have been dedicated to midterms instead.

He doesn’t actually get out much, but the kitchen and the authority he wields within it is a bulwark against heartache. The new frogs spend the Wednesday night before the party helping him grease medicine cups to hold Jello shots, since Lardo talked him into helping with them by proposing that they be tricolour orange-black-orange. He misses Shitty fiercely, but since the people he can really talk to about it are Jack and Lardo he stays mum on the subject, except to his vlog when he shows off the Jello shots. Jack has texted the group to beg off coming up for the party, citing some special NHL business even though Providence isn’t playing that weekend. The party day itself finds him stalking through the Haus in a skimpy bunny jumpsuit, a sturdy apron, rubber gloves, and a surly expression, and Chowder helps him put baby locks on the kitchen cupboards and a polyurethane sheet on the couch.

“I will give you anything you want,” Ransom says, pressing a beer on him after dinner, “if you just fucking relax, Bittles.”

College is supposed to be fun, he reminds himself, drinking it. You’re supposed to get out and meet new people. Do fun things. Expand your horizons.

After his third beer he’s leaning against a wall with the party swirling around him, keeping an eye on the water cooler levels, when somebody says, “It’s Check Please man!” and a figure in a Samwell jersey who turns out to be Kent Parson leans against the wall next to him. "Hey, bro,” he says, tilting his Solo cup at Bitty.

"I… beg pardon?” Bitty asks, badly shaken to hear his name from another universe in the mouth of a hockey player at a Haus party. He instinctively wants to dislike this guy, for no other reason than that he had a fight with Jack once. He's found a lot of those things this semester: little opinions and preferences and attitudes he's picked up from Jack by osmosis that he's started questioning and picking apart. If he doesn't watch it he'll be the guy who's 24/7 with Jack says and Jack thinks and Jack's of the opinion that. Not to mention, on this subject in particular: Jack was spotted having a very amicable lunch with Kent Parson in Las Vegas two weeks ago, the day after their game there.

“Found your vlog a while back, brah,” Kent says. "Was looking for tutorials on Youtube and I saw the thing you did on cake mixes? Like, don’t tell the world, but my teammate’s baby girl had this first birthday party? I brought cupcakes. The melted butter trick was a godsend, they’ve been trying to make me give up my source ever since.”

Bitty’s actually gawking at him, trying to put all the thoughts together in his head. A defense of Betty Crocker and Kent Parson?  That is, it makes sense in a certain way; hockey players, the odd robot aside, do have lives outside of hockey and do eat things on a non-nutritionist-approved diet plan, and that video was more of a hands-on tutorial than most. "I’m–I’m glad it helped,” he stammers.

“Seriously, have you thought of going into hospitality or advertising or something?” Kent asks, and then somebody stops him for a selfie, which gives Bitty time to re-engage his jaw and finish off the beer he’s holding. The jersey, he’s relieved to see, is Ransom’s; in the beginning he’d had the deeply unnerving conviction that it was Jack’s.

“Samwell doesn’t have Hospitality or Domestic Sciences or anything,” he explains, and Parson actually leans down to hear him over the din of the party. "Too practical and vocational for them. I’m doing American Studies and focusing on food and culture in the South.”

"Like foodways and stuff,” Parson suggests, at a low bellow in Bitty's ear. He doesn't have Bitty's theatre trick of speaking from his diaphragm. But Bitty gets it, and he grins up at Kent, since not even everyone on the Samwell team wants to hear him talk about the social implications of processed food.

“My god, yeah! Absolutely. If you could get a degree for being a foodie, I’d want it. You’re into this stuff?”

“Oh, yeah!” Parson rummages under the jersey, as though in a kangaroo pocket, and pulls out a plastic bag. Bitty eyes it suspiciously, but the Ziploc is actually full of–cookies?

“Brought these from home,” Parson says, opening the bag and proffering its mouth to Bitty. "I made them. Try one, tell me what you think?”

Bitty gapes at him, then leans in. "You made these?" He looks down at the bag dubiously. "Anything special in them?”

“Butter. Brown sugar.” Someone has brought a keg out in the corner of the room and Parson has to lean in close, his breath hot on Bitty’s neck and ear. "These grapes from the Mojave that are sun-ripened and dried on the vine, it makes them really moist. They’re awesome, if I do say so myself."

Bitty still hesitates with his hand reaching out to the bag. "I'll take one, but I'm not sure you want the whole foodie clinic on them."

Parson shrugs, the bag still on offer, so Bitty takes one. Parson hollers, "Wanna move to the back porch? I can’t hear myself think in here.”

"Yeah, one sec,” Bitty hollers back, and pops the cookie in his mouth almost just to free up his hands while he opens the cupboard behind him.

The cookie’s startling, though, moist and crumbly and meltingly sweet, oatmeal and just a hint of nutmeg, and he’s so startled by the flavour that Parson totally beats him to the cupboard contents, hauling out one of the big Culligan jugs. "Just change this, yeah?” he yells, and Bitty nods, a little dazed.

The raisins are plump and juicy and amazing, so perfect he just wants to roll them around on his tongue. He takes the empty jug when Parson hands it to him, tries to shove it onto the cupboard’s top shelf, and blushes a little when Parson takes it back so he can use his extra couple inches of height to slot it in. 5'7” is not short by any usual measure, dammit.

They’re only a couple steps towards the back porch when a new wave of sound hits them and Bitty stops and turns around again with a repressed sigh. "Flip cup on the back porch,” he half-shouts into Parson’s ear. "Come with me.” He leads the way up the stairs, reaching back pre-emptorily for another cookie before he ducks under the CAUTION tape at their head. Parson doesn’t comment on their destination, though he glances curiously at what used to be Jack’s door, which is now covered with San Jose sharks.

The party noise is a bit muffled when Bitty’s door is locked behind them and Bitty takes another thoughtful bite of the cookie. Parson grabs a seat on the rolling computer chair and Bitty sits on the bed. "Am I tasting almond in this?” he asks.

"Yeah.” Parson tilts his head a little. He’s sitting on the chair backwards, his arms crossed across the top of the backrest. "I didn’t want to mess with the texture too much, but there’s a bit of almond essence in there.”

Bitty chuckles ruefully. "You’re lucky I’m not allergic.”

“Nobody on your team is. I know that from your vlog, brah.”

With that finger pointed at him Bitty feels exposed and vulnerable, so he finishes off the cookie. Parson wheels forward enough to extend the bag again, so he takes another. Before he tries it he looks at Parson and asks, “Is this about Jack?”

Parson laughs. "Has he got anything to do with your baking?”

"Not much at all anymore,” Bitty confirms.

“Then how the fuck does he matter?”

Bitty shrugs, accedes the point, takes a bite.

“Pretty good,” he says around it as he chews. "Kind of thing I’d serve with lemonade, or–” And he kind of pauses on the or, because while he was being thoughtful and trying to come up with an actual critique that chair wheeled closer and Kent Parson’s head is hanging way into his personal space.

"Or?” Parson says softly.

Eric summons up saliva, swallows the cookie down. His heart’s beating fast, and he feels like a frightened rabbit before he remembers he’s in that stupid bunny jumpsuit with the briefest shorts and the vee opening down his chest and Kent Parson is looking at him like a watchful and hungry coyote.

“They’re good,” he whispers, absolutely paralyzed for the moment it takes for Parson to lean forward and kiss him.

It is a slow, meticulous, and thorough kiss, and when Parson breaks it a noise comes out from between Bitty’s parted lips after him, almost like a moan, and he grabs a fistful of red Samwell jersey from off Parson’s shoulder.

You construct intricate rituals that allow you to touch the skin of other men, he remembers something saying, because there’s an electrifying difference between the casual physical contact of hockey players, simultaneously the most homophobic and most homoerotic sports subculture out there according to B. “Shitty” Knight, and being touched with intent. Parson’s hands on the sides of his head are brushing his cheekbones and temples, pushing against the bunny suit’s hood, burying their fingers in the short sides of Bitty’s Samwell crop, and he is ghosting his face against Bitty’s, nose and forehead almost touching. Bitty breathes into their shared space, the music of the party more a vibration through his bones than an actual noise, his bedroom lit by the soft glow of little LEDs and reflected flood lighting outside, and when the hands on his head tilt his face up his open mouth fits itself exactly to Parson’s.

He's catching little edges of sensation; as their lips brush and nestle he finds little places that electrify and tingle on contact, places his tongue wants to explore, places he is sure he wants to be kissed again. He loops an arm around Kent's neck to help bridge a bit of the difficulty of the height difference between the bed and the computer chair. Kent grins at him when he gasps air in, rubbing his thumb against Bitty's jaw.

"It's really true you still don't have a boyfriend?"

"Nobody's submitted an application thus far," Bitty says.

"How," Kent asks, lustful and fond, playfully cradling Bitty's head in his hands, "did anybody pass you by? I mean, I'm just here for the night but if I went to this stupid school I'd be here for way more than that."

Bitty wants to swallow, and answer, and disclaim, and look away, and what actually happens is that a blush erupts on his face with incredible, helpless violence. The thought that actually curls words around his tongue is that old cliche: Take me now. But after he stutters out a noiseless breath what he actually says, voice shaking, is, "So what are you gonna do tonight?"

Kent grins, swinging off the chair and shedding the jersey and the hat and shirt inside it onto the floor. He and his marvellous torso step in and swing up and launch over so that he lands on the bed behind Bitty, his arms stretched out as though saying, "Behold!" He cocks a leg up for good measure.

"Shoes off my bed," Bitty chides, laughing while he does so and toeing his own shoes off. He turns and scoots and maneuvers himself, on all fours, above Kent, who reaches out for him gladly.

Comments

[cadenzamuse]

Noooooo but what do they do AFTER the sex? Obvs Bitty thinks nothing is every going to happen again, like w00t, 'swawesome sex with Kent Parson, fuck yes, but what throws them together again? Or does Kent already have a big old crush and attempt to woo him with odd and perfect cookies?

And like THAT KISS THO, seriously, my stomach lurched because SO HOT DEAR LORD

Also, yes: Bitty trying to change but wow is it hard to get out there when you're a college athlete. And how disorienting it is when Kent calls him "Check Please man". And how aware Bitty is of how he's taken in so many of Jack's opinions without context.

There is a huge part of me that has always thought maybe Bitty needs someone less private/more extraverted than Jack, and OH MAN HELLO KENT

*chinhands while I wait patiently (but only because I'm about to go to bed) for more*

[kaberett]

Gosh I would much rather Just Dislike Kent Parson but you are doing a thoroughly good job of making him a HUMAN who gets to be FLAWED and have FIGHTS WITH PEOPLE and say AWFUL THINGS without them being THE END OF THE WORLD or EVERYTHING OVER FOREVER.

And yesssssss to Bitty carefully picking himself apart, and up, and putting himself back together into a human he wants to be, and choosing to be alive, and guh the body language and, yes, THAT KISS.

RIDICULOUS TYPO-FLAVOURED NITPICKS, PLEASE FEEL ENTIRELY FREE TO IGNORE:
- "Jack actually comes down to the Georgia for the Fourth of July" has an extra "the" before Georgia I think?
- I susect you want peremptorily not pre-emptorily?

[staranise]

BACKTRAACKING to how it all started:

Finding Bitty's vlog honestly was random happenstance. If there was anything non-random about it, it was Google's fault, not Kent's. He had the lazy, off-season thought that he wanted to make cupcakes for his teammate's daughter's first birthday, which their whole team was invited to. It was Google's fault because when he was searching for "cupcake recipe", "easy cupcake recipe", "quick cupcakes", "cupcake tutorial", and "easy cupcake tutorial" a Check Please video showed up more than once, despite its seemingly non-relevant title (Cake Mixes are Not the Devil!). It probably showed up for him when it wouldn't have for most people because its video description included the phrase, "Cupcakes so easy, even a hockey bro can make them," and some algorithm at Google knew, just knew, that this was exactly what Kent Parson was looking for.

"Here's my argument for cake mixes," a guy in a T-shirt with a bowtie printed on it said. "They lower the threshold for baking so that anyone, even people who basically never bake at all, can be personally involved in making the food they eat

"For this episode," the guy said, "I'm gonna introduce you to the epitome of non-bakers." In a sudden cut of video a tall, shy-looking Asian guy was standing next to him. He waved. "Chowder here is an amazing human being and a swawesome goaltender, and we are waiting for his first N-C-double-A shutout any day now." Chowder raised nervous, celebratory fists. "But he will be the first to admit that he really cannot cook."

Chowder cast his face down and mumbled, "I'm bad at cooking."

"But we're cooking today!" Bowtie said. "And it's not going to be anything like the pie I showed you in Episode 52." A small video annotation offered a link to "see the pie Chowder ruined for me :)" and the vlog's title flashed by.

"Today we're making cupcakes, and to show you just how easy it is we're out of the house and back in the freshman student dorms where you remember me being last year." Little boxes for different little videos, all featuring the same guy talking, showed up around the edges of the screen, but before Kent could see more than that they had the same white-and-red cupboards, they disappeared again. "Look Ma no spatulas, we're using the absolute minimum of equipment. Chowder, what've we got?"

"A fork," the goalie said, bringing it up to his chest and looking studiously fierce. The focus changed and he brought his hand up again, with another piece of silverware. "A knife." His fierceness sharpened. "And a spoon." His face was suddenly closer to the camera, adorably ferocious. "This is a tablespoon, but you can use a different type."

"And for equipment you can't steal out of a college dining hall," Bowtie guy said, "we've got a mixing bowl, a muffin tin, and cupcake liners." The items appeared behind him as he talked.

"You could steal a bowl from the dining hall," Chowder murmured, suddenly like an outtake. "You'd just have to empty the salad out of it."

"The hockey team would probably just eat all the salad out of it," Bowtie said thoughtfully.

"Yeah," Chowder agreed.

Kent watched it all through, the recipe just an added bonus, grinning. He favorited the video and bought cake mix on his next trip out.

When he was bored a week later he searched the guy's videos for muffin recipes and watched all the way through a grated apple and cinnamon oatmeal muffin recipe that looked like way too much work but was really funny anyway, because the entire time the guy (his name was Eric?) kept up a running commentary on what happened when rowdy football players tried to enter the kitchen at the same time as his great-aunt's extremely proper elderly Southern friends.

There was an actual suggested playlist of all the guy's videos in order, but Kent ignored them and clicked through the suggestions on the right-hand side. He spent an afternoon looking through a lot of different cooking videos, weaving between fitness-and-nutrition channels and fluffy cooking shows, wondering if MyHarto would think he was cool enough to do an episode with her, but he kept coming back to OMGCheckPlease.

One of the ones he watched, naturally, was "How Much Is Enough Pasta for a Hockey Team?" which began with Eric brandishing a sheaf of papers and saying, "As part of my attempts to reconcile with our team's nutritionists, I've actually obtained a copy of our recommended dietary intake," and ended with him slumped on the desk with exhaustion and despair, boxes of pasta piled into a wall behind him and bags of dried kidney beans sliding off his shoulders. When it was done Kent went down to the comment box and had already typed, "Protein shakes rnt rly that gross tho" when he looked at his own username and avatar above them, Kent Parson, and decided he didn't actually want to invoke the Internet hordes today. And it was too much work to switch to an anonymous account. He watched another video.

Some of it was pretty incredible and worth watching just to see the artistry happen, like oh holy fuck, soufflé. Some of it was funny. Some of it mentioned his hockey team. He was on a Division I team, go figure, though he was smaller than Kent. Some of it talked about figure skating, and at one point Eric fell over trying to prove he could still stretch his leg out on the counter.

And then "How To Make An Omlet Without Really Crying" opened and it was dim, with a bright patch of sunlight on the wall behind him throwing Eric into even deeper shadow, but he still looked really tired, propping his face up on his hands. "Reason number seventeen to hate Jack," he said, sounding gravelly. "He woke me up. At 4am. To skate at Faber. On a Sunday." He sighed and squeezed his eyes shut against his tiredness. "Because Jack Zimmermann works harder than God."

The bottom dropped out of Kent's stomach. He hit his spacebar to stop the video and took it off fullscreen and scrolled down to see the video description, which said nothing about Jack. The comments were LOLing about something in the video or sharing ham and cheese omelette recipes and Kent was almost about to swear he'd misheard it, or that it was some other Jack Zimmermann, when he saw a commenter with a Red Wings av: but ur sooooo lucky to get to practice with zimms!!! that guy should be in the nhl right now, unlike some people! its worth missing a lil sleep!

"Fuuuuck," Kent whispered, scrolling back up. He'd kind of got the impression that this guy went to Harvard, a "fancy Northern college" where he could get "New England apples" where the school colours included lots of red. But... no, the pennant in the background, when Kent squinted, definitely said SAMWELL.

He looked at Eric's tired face and remembered something from one of the videos he watched before that struck him now with new significance: Jack hates my guts. He just does.

"Poor buddy," Kent said. "I know that feel."

Then he pressed Play.

[liriel]

Oh. My.

I'm a cat and this is cat nip. *rolls around*

[dangercupcake]

This whole thing is so A+

i love this

[peachville]

I absolutely love this & really, really, really want to see it fleshed out. I mean, I'd love a full-on story about this, but it's just so great getting bits & pieces of this awesome head-cannon.

[labelleizzy]

how the holy hell did I miss this? omg i need 10K more words for real!!