Chapter Text
Move-out day might as well be Christmas: the streets of Oakland are adorned with gifts, ripe for the picking by whoever cares enough to intercept garbage collection. And Jack Zimmermann cares more than enough: he’s already procured some unique models and is now back to braving the parallel frenzy of Forbes and Fifth Avenues to hunt down some more, practically reeling with excitement as he thinks about taking photos of these finds this afternoon. He heads down Bouquet for the student housing down there, and it’s better than he could have even imagined: desks, chairs, and bookshelves are all over the place, students and their parents bringing out more by the minute. Jack decides to find a parking spot so he can get out and actually examine this stuff and eventually finds one not too far away. As he’s heading back over, he spots a real gem: a gray filing cabinet. He’s never taken a photo of a filing cabinet before. And this isn’t some dinged up thing that’s been sitting in someone’s basement for thirty years – it looks like it could just as well be sitting in Office Depot. If it weren’t for the broken bookshelf and a red desk chair here as well, Jack would think someone put it out accidentally. But no, it’s definitely trash, his treasure now. He hoists the thing up and takes it back to his truck, hoping it will fit, though he’s not unwilling to discard some lesser finds should it not. Fortunately, however, it does fit, and perfectly so.
It’s a brilliant feeling, how well things work out sometimes, and this filing cabinet is only a small part of how things have worked out generally here, in the end. But it is hardly the end; rather, it is the beginning of a new chapter – even a whole new book – its pages splayed open for the person he is going home to, none missing, none stuck together. And while despite Jack’s greatest efforts, the letters may still be smudged in places, needing the conjecture of a careful reader, Jack relinquishes transparency gladly now, relieved and grateful for it. There is lucidity to life now, and when he takes his sunglasses off before entering the house, the cloudless sky seems only to punctuate this.
Expectantly, Bitty is in the kitchen, tapping away at the screen on the refrigerator.
“I’m home,” Jack says, which is what he says when he comes home.
Bitty looks up and says, “Oh, hey. Wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”
The clock on the wall – a sleek square without numbers – reads 11:25. Jack asks, “What time were you expecting me back?”
Bitty, sounding distracted as he takes things out of the refrigerator, replies, “Oh, umm, closer to noon.”
Noon was the time Bitty told him to be back. “Should I leave and come back?” Jack asks him.
Bitty looks at him with an expression of confusion or incredulity or something similar. “What? No, of course not,” he says, and it strikes Jack just how absurd his question was. “Lunch just isn’t ready yet, that’s all.”
“Oh.”
Jack sits down at the kitchen table and watches Bitty as he makes lunch. While he is indeed listening to Bitty go on about the flan he’s going to make for dessert tomorrow, he keeps thinking about that filing cabinet – among other great things – still in the back of his truck. Is there time to go back and unload everything, he wonders? The clock now reads 11:27 or 28, and maybe if they had a garage and he were able to unload his finds directly into the basement, he could get it all done in a half hour, but their house was built decades before automobiles were around, longer still before garages were put in houses, so it isn’t that simple: Jack will have to drag the furniture around the back of the house, through the back door and then down the hall to his studio. Thirty minutes would be cutting it close; Bitty hates when Jack is late for a meal, finds it intolerable when the cause is within his control. So Jack stays put. The thought of his filing cabinet out there makes him anxious though. He plans to unload everything immediately after lunch, but as soon as they’re done eating, Bitty says, “Don’t go anywhere. I have to talk to you about something.”
The aftertaste of sun-dried tomatoes in Jack’s mouth is suddenly intolerable. He looks Bitty in the eye, searching for an answer he knows he won’t be able to find. ”About what?” he finally manages to croak out.
Bitty lets out a long breath and says, “I want to move.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll go anywhere,” Bitty says. He’s almost pleading; it’s strange. “I just need to get out of here. I can’t deal with this place anymore! I hate it! Absolutely hate it!”
Needlessly, Jack asks, “Do you really hate it that much?”
“Yes!” Bitty exclaims. “This isn’t even a real city! There’s nothing here! It’s all”—he flings his hand around in front of him—“college students and old people!”
Jack could contend this – there are many more things here – but he knows what Bitty means. Pittsburgh is not alive, not modern, not up-to-date. These are things Jack likes about it, though. Bitty, not so much. Not at all, apparently. This is the first time Bitty is really spelling it out. “So you want us to move,” Jack states.
Bitty frowns. “Yeah,” he says, then follows it up with, “I’m not saying tomorrow or even next month, but I can’t stay here forever being miserable just because you’re doing okay now. And if you’re doing well here, then you can do well anywhere.”
Jack thinks to ask about his job, but if they were to move, the answer to that is obvious, and he doesn’t want to hear it from Bitty’s mouth. Instead, he asks, “So where do you want us to go?”
“Anywhere!”
“Yes, but where?”
“I don’t care! I just need to get out of here!” More calmly, he adds, “Maybe Los Angeles. Or one of those sideways houses in San Francisco.”
Jack is gripping the edge of his seat, as if doing so will keep him here forever, in this house he loves, in this city that has transformed for him from a grueling wasteland into a bastion of history. Evidently, though, it is still a grueling wasteland for Bitty, which Jack doesn’t entirely understand but now has no choice but to acknowledge. “So what are you saying here?” Jack asks. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I want you to think about moving as, like, a serious possibility,” Bitty replies. “And stop looking at me like that! Good grief, Jack, you act like I’m tellin’ you we’re leaving tomorrow!”
“But is it really just a possibility? Because you’re making it sound like it’s already decided.”
Frowning still, Bitty replies, “It’s not already decided. I’m not gonna put the house on the market behind your back, for Pete’s sake. I’m not that kind of… husband.” The noun may be an awkward stand-in for something less conventional, more grotesque. “But you can’t”—again, he flings his hand around—“hold me hostage here!”
The reversal is jarring. “Is that what I’m doing?”
“Kind of!”
He can’t be serious, Jack thinks. And if he is, well, is it really Jack’s fault? At this point, possibly. But then, Bitty could have just opened his mouth and said something, which he has no qualms about doing. So why didn’t he? Maybe Jack should have inferred more from all Bitty’s griping about Pittsburgh; maybe every time Bitty said something like, “I hate having to order everything online!” that meant, “I want to get the heck out of this place!” and therefore, Jack has only himself to blame.
“What are you feeling?” Bitty asks him, looking at him.
Terrified. “Concerned.”
“Don’t be!” Bitty says, brightening. “If you’re happy here, then just think of how happy you’ll be where I’m happy, too!” There’s a glint of something in his eyes, something like: “You want me to be happy, don’t you? Don’t you??”
Bitty gets up and kisses Jack on the side of the head as he collects his plate. On the way to the counter, his back to Jack now, he says, “Come on now, don’t you miss the sun?”
The sun is shining right on Bitty, through the window. Jack notices the irony here, but answers in the affirmative regardless.
It’s true that these are rare days in the Burgh.
This must have been how de Lignery felt, Jack thinks.
Ohio Country is everything, the Forks of the Ohio its very heart, and Captain François-Marie Le Marchand de Lignery, commandant of the region, has had his claws sunk in it since 1756. Two years later, the cracks are suddenly unavoidable: their provisions are devastatingly low, nearly all of the Indians have abandoned them, and the British, six-thousand strong, are encroaching on Fort Duquesne. Leaving the fort at the Forks of the Ohio could mean losing everything: the western frontier, control of the Ohio River, France’s dominion in this crucial area. Doom hangs on every periphery, and the taste of horse meat, harsh and metallic, only catalyzes this.
Does he really have any choice but to leave?
How can he possibly stay here when Bitty is so unhappy? But how can he leave when he’s finally okay here, and when being okay depends upon being here? The possibility necessarily festers: Bitty deserves to be happy, and, frankly, Jack is horrified with himself for deterring that. He owes Bitty this – and so much more. Jack would give it to him – he wants to – but the threat of everything falling apart feels so brutally probable. This wouldn’t be like leaving Providence or Montreal; this would be leaving the place where things are finally permanent and sensible. And where even would they go? How would Jack fill his days, what therapist would he see, what familiarity would he have beyond Bitty?
But is there any other option, now that he knows what he knows?
So de Lignery leaves, and Fort Duquesne goes up in flames.
Jack stares at the lamp, replaying the conversation in his head:
“Of course,” he had said to the boy. “Do you have a pen?”
They were downtown, on the corner of Liberty and Stanwix, having just left Eddie Merlot’s and heading towards the car.
“I can’t believe it’s really you!” the boy said.
Cringing again now, Jack remembers how he said, “Well, I live here.” He didn’t know what else to say.
The boy then asked him if he would ever go back to playing for the Pens, which was also terrible, and Jack then had to explain that he was retired now but worked for the Pens as a Player Development Assistant, assisting the Player Development Coach with the development of prospects in the minor leagues as well as in junior and college hockey, during which Bitty interjected to say, “Just say you work for the team, Jack,” which was odd, because that was what he was doing. Then, finally, the boy’s mother found a pen and notepad, and Jack signed it, saying, customarily, with a forced smile, “It’s always nice to meet fans.”
In the car, Bitty said, “You wouldn’t get that anywhere near as much in L.A.!”
“I don’t mind it.”
Bitty swatted his shoulder. “You can’t lie to me, mister!” he said cheerily. He was drunk – three glasses of wine with dinner drunk, which wasn’t terribly drunk, but drunk enough for lewd things to be spilling from his mouth, one on top of another, ceaselessly and redundantly: “I’m gonna let you come tonight – you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Me draining you of a whole week’s worth of cum? A whole week! You didn’t cheat, did you? Ooh, I know you didn’t – you wouldn’t dream of it. ‘Cuz you’re so good Jack, that’s why. You’re sooo good for me. I can’t wait to get home ‘n milk you like – like a cow at the county fair! Ooh, you must be soo full, must be just dyin’ for somebody to come around and milk ya. Right? Right?? You want me to milk you, don’t you?”
The cow thing was awful: tremendously depraved and tremendously arousing, which was exactly what Bitty was going for. He looked at Jack expectantly, excitedly, waiting for his “yes.”
That had all been before they were even out of downtown.
When they got home, Bitty was clawing at him, and Jack worried the routine would be forgotten, but then Bitty suddenly stopped and said, “Oh! You’d better go upstairs and wait for me!” It was a relief.
It’s even more of a relief now, to be kneeling and waiting on the carpeted floor of their sex room. This room is a burgundy alcove of drapes and feathers and endless paraphernalia, Victorian in a sense that is completely at odds with the house itself. “It’s going to be burlesque-themed,” Bitty had said, “like that Lady Marmalade video.” Jack had said, “Right,” because otherwise, Bitty would’ve made him watch the video, and Jack watches enough pop star videos as it is.
Maybe ten minutes have passed, and Bitty has yet to come in. This would not otherwise be unusual; Bitty has made Jack wait up to an hour before, which is fine – he usually has to clean up dinner, after all – but today, Jack wonders if he should be concerned. It seems strange that Bitty would be all over him one minute and then tell him to go upstairs the next. Has he ever done that? Jack can’t remember. He tells himself Bitty must have just wanted to “freshen up,” as he would say, usually meaning to shave his legs and ass, but sometimes meaning to apply stick-on rhinestones to the corners of his eyes. The latter is more likely, since Jack didn’t hear the water running.
Not long after, Bitty comes into the room, wearing the same thing as before – a sweater, a sports jacket, slacks, all of it tight – and smiling hugely. He has something in his hand. “Look what I found!” he says, holding it up by a long red ribbon.
It’s a gold bell, about the size of a plum.
“What’s that for?” Jack asks.
“It’s for you! See, look – I put a ribbon on it so I can tie it onto your collar,” he says, traversing the room now. “Now, I know it’s not a cowbell, but it’ll still be really cute.”
“Oh, God, Bitty, no. No.”
Bitty’s face falls instantly. “What? Why not?”
“Because, just – no.”
“It’s just a bell…”
Quietly, Jack says, “You said you wouldn’t spring things on me.”
“Well – ! I’m sorry! I just didn’t think it would be a big deal!” he stammers, flustered. He’s standing about three feet away from Jack, clutching the bell tightly in his hand, the red ribbon spilling out from between his fingers.
Jack swallows, thinking that maybe he should just say yes – it’s just a bell, after all – but he really, really doesn’t want to.
“So no bell?” Bitty asks, again.
“No.”
Bitty presses his lips together and tosses the bell into the trunk at the foot of the bed. Then he comes over and sits on the floor, right next to Jack, and puts his face in his hands. “I just thought it would be cute,” he says, then mumbles, “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Jack says, wishing that that would be enough to snap everything back into Saturday night normalcy. Bitty still has his face his in hands, and Jack is all too familiar with what he must be feeling.
Again, Jack says, “It’s okay.” He thinks to take his arm from behind his back and lay it across Bitty’s shoulders, but that would be against protocol. He decides to do it anyway; it seems like that’s something Bitty needs right now.
“Do you think I’m a bad Dom?” Bitty asks, and hearing that word makes Jack die a little on the inside, but he says, “No, of course not. I think you’re great.”
Bitty finally looks up at him. He’s not crying, thankfully. “Yes, but do you think I’m a great Dom?”
There are so many ways Jack could answer that. The easiest one would be “yes,” but he has to tell the truth – he’s required to. The thing is, though, that Bitty usually doesn’t like the truth. So Jack just prays the answer he gives succeeds in balancing kindness and truth: “I think you care about me very much, and that matters more than whether or not you can fulfill some sort of role.”
This isn’t the answer Bitty wanted: he immediately opens his mouth to speak, but, drunk as he is, he stops himself and seems to consider Jack’s words. “I do care about you very much,” he says. “That’s why I didn’t put the bell on you.”
Jack doesn’t know how he might possibly respond to that.
“Actually… I’m gonna be right back,” Bitty says. Then, miserably, he adds, “Please don’t give me that look. I’m just going down to get something to drink.”
Translation: “Don’t look at me like I’m going to go fetch some other wacky sex thing; I’m just going downstairs to make myself another drink.”
When Bitty returns, he’s back to how he was in the car earlier, and maybe it’s bad – really bad, actually – that he felt he had to go swallow his pride in a martini glass, but Jack is mostly just relieved that the prior situation has been buried under the deluge of Bitty’s salacious abandon. Bitty has glued himself to the side of Jack’s body, his lips to Jack’s throat, his hand to Jack’s cock. Jack’s head begins to swim, his thoughts loosening. Distantly, he thinks of Bitty’s cock pressing into his side as the Old Man of the Lake, the hemlock anchor floating upright and stationary since 1896, its permanency reliable and resilient, a staple on a lake of crashing waters and other uncertainties.
“I’m gonna get it allll outta you, baby,” Bitty says, licking Jack’s ear, thumbing the underside of Jack’s cockhead. “I’m gonna wring you dry and then scoop you up and hold you in my arms.”
Jack exhales. “Please,” he says, and Bitty hums, giving Jack’s cock a squeeze: it sends Jack for the wildest loop, grounding him at the same time.
“Let’s get you up on the bed,” Bitty says. He lets go of Jack’s dick and grabs his cuffed wrists, steadying him as he hoists him up. Jack’s legs are wobbly, asleep and useless, and in the short distance to the bed, he always feels that he might topple over, worries that maybe Bitty is too small to really manage him in this floppy state. But Jack is always wrong.
“There you go,” Bitty says. He looks wonderful: his hair is a mess; his lavender shirt disordered; his face flushed, expression delighted. He rolls off the bed to dig through the nightstand. Jack just lies there, flat on his back and naked, impossibly hard. Bitty’s going to let him come tonight. Jack wants it, terribly – it’s been seven days of fucking and forced masturbation and edging and, ultimately, self-control. Not self-control when Jack is alone – the mere thought of surreptitiously jerking off is repulsive – but in the immediate aftermath, when he’s so riled up that all he can do is lie there and breathe and try not to think about badly he wants to orgasm.
On the cherry nightstand, beneath the yellow bloom of the lamp, Bitty places the bottle of coconut oil and a double end snap hook. Now he is stripping, slowly, making a performance of it, as he does. Jack can only watch him as he exposes more skin and discards more clothing. He wants, badly, to see Bitty’s cock, and he can’t look away when he does see it: half-hard and heavy, the foreskin is pulling back to show the rosy head. A small, shiny bead of precum is just about to spill from the tip. Jack is salivating for it.
Bitty grabs the snap hook and crawls back onto the bed, now humming “Jingle Bells.” He draws Jack’s arms over his head and uses the snap hook to connect the O-rings of Jack’s wrist cuffs, then he reaches over to grab the bottle on the nightstand and dumps oil into his palm. Then, finally, he wedges himself up against Jack and pushes him onto his side, pressing his cock against Jack’s ass and proceeding to grind against him. Before Jack can even fully recall the sex they had this morning, Bitty’s hand wraps firmly around his cock, slathering it in the oil, which makes everything so warm that Jack feels like he’s already getting close.
Breathing hotly on Jack’s back, Bitty says, “I’m thinking four times.”
Jack manages to say, “Okay,” and Bitty promptly starts jerking him off.
“Oh, honey, you sound so good,” Bitty says. He starts pumping faster. “I wanna hear you make those sounds you make when you can hardly stand it.”
Jack hears his pants turn into whines – not whimpers, yet. It’s taking everything he has to remain perfectly still, to not grind his ass against Bitty’s cock or thrust up into his slick fingers. He’s close, past the threshold and on another level now, but the point of no return is still ahead, some spiraling heights away.
Now he is whimpering.
“You tell me when you get there, baby,” Bitty says. “You tell me when you can’t hold back anymore, alright?”
The word is a struggle to get out: “Yes.”
Jack is shaking; he’s unimaginably worked up; it’s like TV static, frenzied and hopeless and senseless, and Bitty is only taking him further, getting him closer, until –
“There,” Jack says, just before. Bitty lets go, and Jack is broken for it: he’s sobbing, thrusting into the air, reeling and aching; he’s only cursorily aware of the praise that’s dripping from Bitty’s mouth like honey: “Ooh, you did so good, Jack. So, so good,” he says, kissing him all over his back. “You’re so good – I know how bad you wanted that. I know how bad you wanted to come all over my hand, baby. I know, I know, baby. Oh, you poor thing. You poor, poor thing.”
The second time, Bitty gets brings to the same point, but the ascent is steeper now, rockier, and the denial is so much worse for it. The third time trumps even that, and afterward, Jack is an absolute mess, drooling and panting and absolutely gone; he’s shuddering against Bitty’s body, breathing in staccato, his heart thundering on the lifeblood of Bitty telling him he’s good.
The state Jack’s in has broken down the scrutiny words pass through: “Hold onto me when I come,” he says, quickly adding, “Please.”
“Oh, don’t you worry ‘bout that,” Bitty says assuredly. “I’m not lettin’ you go anywhere.”
By now, everything is sticky, and Jack doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t care; he just wants to come. He’s still trying to calm down before the final round, trying to breathe like he’s supposed to, trying to think of anything else besides how much he wants to come. But it’s impossible when Bitty’s cock is still up against his ass. God, he wants to be fucked. He squeezes his eyes shut and thinks about how – about how he’s not supposed to be thinking about sex.
“Are you calm yet?” Bitty asks in his ear, rubbing himself against Jack’s lower back.
“One moment,” Jack says, feeling guilty. He tries to focus on anything, anything else: the indecipherable pattern of the white ceiling, the ache in his arms, the history of this house. It works. “Okay,” he says, and Bitty gets right back to work, fast and slick and somehow even more excessive: “You’ve been sooo good this week, baby,” Bitty says. “I know how bad you wanted it this morning; I know how much you love it when I’m inside you, filling you up with my cock. Don’t you, baby? Don’t you love that?”
Jack makes a tiny sound. His real response is so weak, teetering on a ledge: “Yes.”
“Mmhmm.”
It’s going so fast, everything so acute, and Jack isn’t holding the reigns. What is he supposed to do now, what should he be saying? “Bitty, Bitty,” he begs, though he’s not sure what for; he just needs him.
“What’s wrong, baby? You close?”
Jack is breathless; the word is hardly there: “Yes.”
“Mm, I’m gonna make you come,” Bitty says. “Gonna get it all out of you, gonna make you come all over yourself.”
Bitty keeps going, and the moment comes so quickly: Jack is pushed over the edge, soaring into nothingness as he is wrecked by euphoria, bludgeoned by it over and over and over, again and again, without end. It is so much, so good, and Bitty hasn’t let him go.
On Wednesday, when Jack is eating lunch in the Cambria hotel bistro as usual, he receives a text from Shitty: “ROUND THREE, KA-CHING!!!!”
“Wow, really? Congratulations. I’m so happy for you guys,” Jack writes back, wondering how to appropriately ask how far along she is. He can’t figure it out, so he just hits send.
A moment later, Shitty responds, “thanks man. this has been fucking brutal on her. i’m so relieved it’s over. i mean yeah i’m excited about the kid and all & i know pregnancy is no picnic, but i’m just so fucking relieved the ivf is done w/.”
“I didn’t realize it was that bad,” Jack admits in his response, feeling naive – but how could he have known? Shitty had been vague and general about it in the past, saying it was rough on Lardo physically but not extrapolating beyond that.
“oh yeah it was hell. but now it’s over & we’re having a baby!!!! what if we named it Lardshit, LOL”
“Please don’t name your kid Lardshit.”
“can’t make any promises LOL”
Jack really is happy for them. He says so again, and they text back and forth for a little while, catching up. Afterwards, as he’s leaving the Cambria hotel and heading back to the Consol Energy Center, he thinks to text Bitty about the news but immediately realizes it would not be a good idea.
Bitty brings it up himself over dinner: “So… I’m guessing you heard about Shitty and Lardo.”
“Oh, uh, yes. I did,” Jack says. “Good for them, you know? That IVF stuff is really hard.”
Bitty is quiet for a moment. Then he just says, “Yeah. Good for them.” After a beat, he adds, “They’ll be really cool parents.”
An ambulance wails by outside. Bitty tells Jack to eat some mashed potatoes. His tone is sweet, nearly normal. Jack exhales, not having realized he was holding his breath. He puts a lot of mashed potatoes on his plate.
After dinner, when Jack is upstairs waiting, old conversations leak through his mind: Bitty saying, “What’s the problem? You won’t even have to do anything!” as if it would be okay for Jack to not have to do anything; Jack’s deflections never being enough; Bitty spouting outright lies like, “You’d be a wonderful father.”
More haunting is that question from that therapist years ago, spoken with a look that made the spotlight even harsher: “Are you saying he doesn’t respect your no?” That was about Bitty sharing too much online and his response to Jack’s asking him not to. The thing was, Jack understood that there were things Bitty just couldn’t keep himself from doing – baking, rambling, documenting his life online – and though Jack was occasionally frustrated with some of these things, Bitty never did anything out of malice towards Jack; he just did them because that was who he was. So Jack felt he should be forgiving of Bitty as Bitty was forgiving of him, for Bitty had so much more to be forgiving of, a fact that had only become truer since that uncomfortable session.
That question stuck in Jack’s mind, though, hard and prickly like a dead root, and he unearthed it every time Bitty so much as alluded to the baby ordeal. This was the case even in the beginning, before Jack had clearly vociferated his objection. But, if anything, that just induced Bitty to convince Jack, and the ordeal went on, cropping up every once in a while like a bad haircut – something terrible you have to endure until it subsides. And Jack had thought it finally subsided for good – Bitty hasn’t said a word about having kids in more than two years.
But —
If the sun got a little less bright every day, would you even notice? When your husband comes into the room looking as grim as young George Washington with two failures under his belt and nothing else, would you not panic and want to do anything in your power to restore the optimism of his surveyor days, aching that you cannot undo The Bloody Morning Scout or Fort Necessity? And what if you were General Braddock, the very perpetrator of his misery and misfortune, for which he doesn’t condemn you, in fact loves you regardless, keeps your pistol and sash at Mount Vernon as his most precious items?
How would you feel?
It’s not so often that Jack thinks, “I need a Klonopin,” but it still happens, and this is one of those times. Suzanne is here for four more days, and everything’s off-kilter because of it, but the absolute worst is when Jack decides to go back downstairs and overhears the following conversation:
“Ooh, what about this one, Dicky?”
“Does it have a pool?”
“Yeah, look! Isn’t that lovely, with the little waterfall?”
“Mmm, yeah,” Bitty agrees. A beat later he adds, “Ugh, but that kitchen! I’ve never seen such ugly granite! I’d have to tear it all out.”
Jack is frozen in the foyer, wanting to run back upstairs but needing to hear more.
“I still can’t believe he talked me into buying this place,” Bitty says. “Lord, I really dropped the ball on that one. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s a beautiful house, though. It really has its own charm, you know?”
“There’s nothing charming about not having a garage in the winter,” Bitty says sourly.
“Don’t you usually park your car under that… overhang thing?”
“It’s not the same! It’s just not, trust me. You know how cold it gets here in the winter. And snow can still get under there. When I tell Jack about this he starts going on about how they didn’t have cars back when this place was built, and I’m just like, what the heck does that have to do with my car bein’ frozen shut?” After this, Bitty says, “He just doesn’t get it sometimes.”
This is when Jack is finally able to will himself to go back up the marble staircase. Whatever Bitty is going to say next, he doesn’t want to hear it.
This is so bad. So, so bad. Jack goes to the closet in the master bathroom and contorts his body to fit under the bottom shelf. Due to the cold tile, it’s a poor substitute for the closet in the guest bedroom, but Suzanne is staying in there now, and what if she comes up and starts getting changed and then opens the door and sees Jack in there curled up in a ball and starts screaming? Horrible, horrible! Don’t even think about it! “Just take deep breaths,” some therapist or nurse would tell him, which always comes across to Jack as so obnoxious and trite, as if deep breaths can fix everything.
Shoving as much of his fist into his mouth as possible and then biting down works a lot better. It just looks fucking crazy, is all. He continues to resist it now, even though no one can see him in here; the echo of his dad saying, “What the hell is he doing, Al?” rings hard in his head two decades later.
God, Bitty is going to make them move.
It shouldn’t be such a big deal – why is it such a big deal? Well, Jack knows why, but, still, what the hell is wrong with him? He’s moved a number of times; it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t like this. He’s going to have to bear it, though, otherwise Bitty will get more and more miserable, and it will be all Jack’s fault, and then Bitty will leave him, and Jack simply won’t be able to survive. It’s just true; Jack can’t function without Bitty; he knows this. Jack can hardly conceive the possibly of life without Bitty, and fuck, he’s not even going to try to; he’s just going to sit here and hold his knees to his chest and shake, anticipating the hurt of being uprooted from this place alongside the doom of knowing it’s inevitable.
In the end, he puts his fist in his mouth. It’s something, but it’s not as good as Klonopin: those old yellow circles, sleepy moons in his palm, later with blue ovals. This sloppy eclipse worked for a while: the Penguins won the Stanley Cup, and that summer sang the highest of notes, lolling into a new season on the coattails of a legacy poorly actualized. But as the leaves changed colors, green charged in at full force: Jack clawed for a repeat, but a loss against the Stars on a dismal All Saint’s Day was finalized by a huge full moon: long afterwards, Jack’s pulse in his ears per the icy blue of Kent’s triumphant gaze, the salt in the wound of the score.
It was a balancing act, and Jack told himself he was in control, as much as he didn’t feel it when his heart was pounding out of his chest during a game, or when the only thing to cross his mind when Bitty tried to initiate sex was, “Shoot me, just shoot me.” The thought of Bitty finding out was another thing that could fill Jack with instant dread, and so he gave excuses on jagged plates, that way, maybe Bitty wouldn’t know how flimsy they were, or at least wouldn’t prod at them too much. But Bitty did prod, and there were fights, and Jack often found himself driving off in the middle of the night, his head ringing as he hung on at the very edge of the world, falling into and over himself as he peered into mausoleums at Allegheny Cemetery. To the faces of moonlit gravestones, Jack promised he would apologize and tell Bitty everything, but he only ever did the former, and never with enough heart.
When he finally did tell Bitty, it was because he didn’t know what else to do. The Pens had been eliminated from the playoffs, and it felt like the end of days. It was June, the air stiff and choking, and Jack was sinking in a bed of yellow-green duckweed, two or three or however many yellow moons overhead, so desperately swallowed. The thought of confession made Jack want to rip out his esophagus and strangle himself with it, for here was Bitty, hugging him sweetly from behind despite everything. Bitty would be furious, might hate him, might even divorce him, in which case, Jack would take it, perhaps crumble and die for it, thereby settling the score. But Bitty was only heartbroken, terribly hurt and terribly sad. Jack ached to be punished for this somehow, yet rehab, though excruciating, was a sleepy, broken limbo, lots of gray agony and silver torment, but no flames, no damnation.
There, time melted down into a waxy gray substance, slick, intolerable, and immeasurable, and Jack felt it all over him. The second time around was so much worse: everything hurt, all the time: he was drowned under tide after tide of black water; trapped in a machine, the gears screeching and contorting him; dropped from the sky but never, ever reaching the ground. He slept on and on, bitter that he always woke up. His mouth tasted terrible, and the entirety of his failure was never not caught in his throat. It was thickened by his mother’s bloodshot eyes, his father’s silence, Bitty’s face, perpetually grave, and by awareness, needling his brain either idly or hungrily: his father saying, “Look, we’ll figure something out”; Mario saying, “I didn’t know you were dealing with this, Jack”; Bitty crying and so, so sad. Jack knew now, indubitably, that he was a failure, an addict, repugnant, reprehensible, repulsive, the absolute worst. He knew these things, and the doctor telling him he was on the road to recovery felt cruel, nearly irresponsible. The only thing Jack could think was, “If only you knew.”
Everything was steel-plated, all harsh nobs in Jack’s skull. Today Bitty was wearing white shorts and a blue and white striped shirt, dressed for sailing, the most despondent aura about him. The Florida sunshine, oblivious and annoying, bled through the thin curtains. Jack covered his face and pressed his eyes in, wanting to bang his head against something, to put himself through the shredder, evaporate, disintegrate, be nothing, not exist. Failure – here it was, in full. He should have known, should have done a million things differently. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Bitty had asked, and Jack was bludgeoned by his tearfulness, rendered mute by it. Speaking was torture still, and he neither knew nor cared what he was saying. He didn’t feel like a person; he just suffered, his body aching for an end he wasn’t sure existed. He wasn’t strong, and he didn’t care.
The burden of his consciousness weighed harder once the physical agony subsided somewhat. The hours took on boredom then, sifting into unwashed doldrums, gray sand and black grease, the accumulation of sleepless afternoons, too many thoughts, and so much guilt. His mother sat in the armchair in his room reading French Vogue and looking tired, the echo of her old glamour shots impossible to detect. She had told him to do something, read a book, anything, and when he said he had nothing to read, she suggested he order some books, which was a good idea, but he only did it when she continued to press him.
The books arrived after Jack’s parents had gone home. Receiving them was nice, a little reprieve, but then it wasn’t so nice when Bitty saw him reading one.
His voice was harsh, packed with judgment and outrage: “Oh my God, are you seriously reading that?”
Jack literally had the book in his hands. “Um. Yes?”
“Really, Jack? Really?” he said, his volume rising to a nearly painful point.
“Well, I’ve been meaning to read it for years, and—”
Shaking his head quickly and sharply, Bitty said, “No. No, no, no. You’re not reading that here, oh my God. Just – really, Jack? Really?”
“It’s just a book!” Jack shot back weakly, increasingly embarrassed.
“Yeah! A book by Hitler!” Bitty nearly shouted.
“Yes, Bittle, I’m aware!”
Bitty didn’t say anything in response; he just kept staring at Jack like he had committed a felony. Then he walked over to the side of the bed, put his hand out, and said, tiredly, “Give it to me.” And though Jack detested him in that moment and wanted to argue that it was just a book, that his grandfather was Jewish so it wasn’t like anyone was going to think he was a Nazi or something, Jack did end up relinquishing the book, because Bitty looked so miserable and Jack didn’t have it in him to make him any more so.
“I’ll give it back when we get home,” Bitty said, as if speaking to a child, which was maddening, and then even more so months later, at home, when Bitty said he must have left the book at the rehab center.
When Jack called and asked, they said they couldn’t find it.
In his therapist’s office, Jack sinks into the suede couch and tells Arthur about this whole moving ordeal: “I realize I owe this to him,” Jack says, “but that doesn’t make it any easier. I can’t even think about it too much. It’s just – it’s too upsetting, and, well. I feel like a failure.”
“For what, not wanting to move?” Arthur asks.
“No, for…” How to explain? “…for wanting to but not wanting to. Or, I mean, for knowing I should but it being hard.” What a stupid answer; he’s always giving stupid answers here.
“But why do you think you ‘should’ do it? Just because he wants to?”
“Well, he hates it here. I mean, I knew that before, but I didn’t know the extent of it. So I feel a bit, ah, blindsided,” Jack says, but then, to defend Bitty, he adds: “He just said for me to think about the idea of moving. He didn’t say we were definitely moving.”
“Is that something he would say?” Arthur asks. The tone of his voice is strange, confusing.
Real answer: possibly; suitable answer: “No, of course not.”
“How much have you guys talked about this?”
“Just once,” Jack admits. “But I overheard him talking about houses with his mother the other day.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
“Did that upset you?”
“Yes,” Jack admits.
“You need to talk to him about it then.”
“I don’t want him to know I was eavesdropping.”
“I meant about moving generally.”
“I know I do,” Jack agrees, but he fails to ask for advice on how to do so.
In the ensuing weeks, Jack spends a lot of time mulling over how he might articulate his concerns to Bitty, but in the end, he never vociferates anything, too drawn to his original conclusion that maybe it’s best he just keep his mouth shut and let Bitty get what he wants. Bitty is unhappy here, and Bitty deserves to be happy. Clinging to this house and this city and the Pens is just like abusing drugs or refusing to sign off on the parenting thing or not wearing a cowbell – all things Jack did or didn’t do that made Bitty unhappy. In Jack’s defense, some of these things were justified – the bell was too reminiscent of someone else’s kitty roleplay – but others weren’t at all, and at the end of the day, if it’s not going to completely destroy Jack to do something for Bitty, well, he should just do it.
So Jack suffers in silence through the rest of May, Bitty’s L.A. comments reaching intensity comparable to his Pittsburgh complaints. It’s like nails being pounded into Jack’s stomach, and he dwells, desperately, on small solaces, like going to Mahla Office Furniture in the Strip and getting a table and chairs, the photo of which ends up getting a decent amount of downloads. He also convinces Bitty to not let him come one Saturday, that way he can go two weeks instead of one, which he easily accomplishes, though he realizes a large part of it is that he’s desperate not to feel like he’s failing Bitty, because he is, and it is excruciating.
Jack sort of wishes Bitty would just come out and say, “We’re moving, deal with it.” That seems like it would be preferable. Maybe Jack should tell him so. But if he has to ask Bitty to demand something of him, then it’s a lot like Jack asking him if he can go another week without an orgasm – he’s really just doing it for himself, which is sort of selfish, isn’t it? Well, maybe it is, but maybe Bitty should find a way to circumvent that so Jack doesn’t have another thing to agonize over.
What’s Jack supposed to do here? The question is as pertinent as ever on the gray and humid first of June, when, over dinner, Bitty says, “I’d like to put the house up.”
Every drop of dread that has accumulated over the past month is dumped over Jack’s head, drenching him to the bone.
“Good Lord, Jack,” Bitty says, his voice pungent with disappointment.
“What?”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Bitty says, eyeing him from across the table.
“I didn’t,” Jack contends.
“Alright, well. Don’t look so freaked out. Lord, you make me feel bad.”
It’s a knife in Jack’s skull. The only thing he can say is, “Yeah, let’s put the house up.”
Then the knife is being wedged all the way in.
It’s not comfortable, but it’s comforting: Jack is locked in place, his wrists and ankles chained by their cuffs to the spreader bar. He thinks about how he wishes he were chained here, to this house’s 157 years and to jogging along Ellsworth at the cusp of dawn. As it stands now, Jack is only chained to himself, which is how it is anyway.
Bitty pulls out the butt plug. The loss is tremendous, and Jack flexes for it despite himself, as if he could take it back, which is embarrassing – arousing – and then even worse – better – when Bitty kneads his ass and coos, “Ohh, I know, sweetheart, I know. Gimme one sec here, and I’m gonna give you the real thing.”
“Please,” Jack says, the word utterly wet. He can hear the sound of Bitty jerking himself to a full erection, and God, fuck, Jack wants it; he wants it so bad, every day, all the time, and it means everything that Bitty also wants it, wants him: Bitty touches the head of his cock to Jack’s entrance and begins pushing in, saying, “Mmmm, here you go, baby. Told you I was gonna give you what you need tonight.”
It’s true; Jack does need this. He just – needs to feel that it’s not only him. He needs to know that the glass wall between himself and everybody else can be breached, that he really can connect with someone, this one person. So although Jack might say, “Please fuck me” and mean it, or “Please use me” and mean that, too, what he’s really always saying is something like, “Please get inside my head and do something, anything, because I am my own psychic integrity, and I don’t want that with you.” There’s that – a lofty line, the deepest thing – and then there’s the cruder one running parallel, far below, upon which Jack’s eyes are rolling back into his head as Bitty hits his prostate and says, panting, “I’m gonna fill you up, baby – you want that, right? Tell me how – much you – want it.”
When those lines intersect, the paradox is a sloppy mess: “I want it, I want it so much,” Jack says, “more than anything. Please, Bitty, please.”
Bitty hums and says, “I know, baby, I know. I’m gonna give it to you,” then he gives Jack’s balls a squeeze, which is nearly intolerable – it takes everything in Jack’s constitution to not sink down and start rubbing himself against the bed. He buries his face in the sheets and just whimpers, holding back, having to hold back even harder when Bitty’s hand reaches around to squeeze his cock, giving it a few jerks before tracing his fingertips over the head, collecting what’s there and then spreading it over the small of Jack’s back like lacquer. Anything, Jack thinks mindlessly, do anything to me: paint signs on me like the walls of Lascaux, roll me flat like dough and cut me into shapes that make sense, or just – take me as the weird, strange person I am and love me anyway.
“You ready?” Bitty asks, his voice hot.
In Jack’s throat, the words vie for escape so fast that they get all caught up, bursting out choppily, with throaty tatters: “Y-yeah, yeah – yeah.”
Bitty grabs Jack’s hip and thrusts into him with those jagged, senseless movements he makes when he unloads, the ones Jack lives for and could die for. Jack can hear Bitty breathing hard and follows the sound of it, waiting.
When Bitty speaks, his speech his hazy: “Good, Jack. Good.” He unlatches the eye hooks, and Jack is free again, limbs liberated and trembling as his body spreads out, gigantic and uncertain. Everything is so much: his heart in his head, the tinnitus, his cock twitching, the full expansion of his lungs.
Bitty cups his face and kisses him full on the mouth, turning the volume down with an effortless turn.