"Watch yourself out there, eh?"

Eric Bittle's head popped up at Jack Zimmerman's voice falling upon him. He'd just finished lacing up his skates and as he took to his feet his crown nearly knocked the underside of his captain's chin. He laughed prettily, remembering to grab his helmet as the rest of the team begins to shuffle out to the tunnel.

"Sure thing!" he enthused, donning his helmet with a smile, "No fainting during a check for me, no sir!"

Jack looks sceptical, huffing out through his nose as he watches his smallest teammate flounce from the locker room, quickly finding a safe spot snug under the arms of Holster and Ransom as they wax poetic about the glorious victory they are no doubt heading to. He frowns, rolling his shoulders back as he catches the eye of his best friend and right-winger, Shitty Knight. He motions him over with a subtle incline of the head and the young man's flow is there in an instant.

"What's up, Jacky Boy?"

"Watch Bittle while you're out there," he requests as they too start heading for the ice. "Don't let any of these guys check him; they're huge."

It wasn't really a smart or fair request to make as a captain and they both knew it. Players got checked every game and Bitty would hopefully be on the opposite side of the ice from Shitty watching Jack's left. Still the mustachioed player nodded resolutely, shooting a wink to his Haus mate as they reached the bench.

"Eyes on Itty Bitty, got it!"

"Boys! This is not the last play of the season - come on!"

Things weren't going well. The other team had been using them as battering rams in attempts to get the boards down and coach was not having it in the huddle up. Bitty felt especially set upon as he'd managed to miss every opportunity that came his way. Jack's comment about his first game winning goal being a lucky shot swam to the forefront of his mind as the the huddle dissolved. Aforementioned captain slid up to his side just then.

"Bitty - If you get the puck, wheel around back door and send it to me between the dots. You can get past that D-man."

The tiny blonde gaped.

"But that's the same guy that knocked the wind out of Holster 2nd period," he reasoned. Honestly, did his captain want him to get demolished? "He's...he's huge! Jack, I don't think i should-"

"Bittle." The captain's voice managed to center the southern peach and he looked up into those big blue eyes awestruck as he always was. "I got your back."

Bitty believed him.

"...O-Okay..."

The moment came just like Jack somehow magically knew it would and Bitty did exactly as his captain had told him, wheeling around and sending the puck sliding up the ice to Jack who was waiting with a no doubt game winning slap shot to send it home. The left-winger whooshed out a huge breath of relief knowing his job was done just as he saw the absolute mountain of a man approaching, head and shoulders already angled down to deliver a physical check to the body. Bitty was quick and perhaps could have slid out of range, but his legs locked up like mule's and he watched dumbstruck as his first contact came rushing towards him.

Shitty of course had been waiting for this moment. The moment some big lug thought they could mess with his tiny teammate and would get a first hand look at what 'not on my fuckin' watch' looked like from one tough right-winger with a wicked flow. He'd been racing across the ice as soon as the puck had head in that direction, getting an encouraging nod from Jack as he went. There was no real way he could disrupt the guys path -he had 50 on Shitty easy- but Bittle was another story. He just had to get him out of the way which would be easy as one of those pies the little blonde was always baking up.

He knew better than to full on shove Itty Bitty. A not-so-particularly-hard push could send the boy sprawling and so he gave him his side, delivering him a harmless, soft body check that slid him out of that neanderthal's path. Shitty had taken several checks on his own and in the name of teammates and so was already braced for the impact.

Unfortunately the opposing player had been prepared to wreck someone much smaller than the man he was barreling towards. He was dipped low, shoulder to the level of what would have been the square center of Eric's chest. Instead he collided with the solid bone of Shitty's hip and sent him airborne, Bitty careening just off to the left.

Bitty jumped in surprise as Shitty moved him out of the line of fire and was grateful before being immediately repentant as the yellow jersey absolutely slammed into his teammate. Bitty, the crowd, and Shitty all gasped as Shitty went up, heels tumbling over head in the same direction he had been moving. Eric tried to move out of the way but it was too fast and before he even saw what was coming there was a sharp pain below his helmet strap and he was knocked away. One of Shitty's flailing limbs had hit him.

Off on the ice Jack slapped the puck into the net.

Bitty felt a dull ache across his neck.

The left-winger grimaced, managing to stay upright as a very sluggish feeling suddenly overtook him, his stick still clutched in his hands. He could hear the crowd screaming and figured Jack had just won the game, but he was worried about Shitty. Or at least he thought he was. Distantly. In the back of his mind. He was having trouble thinking.

He skated slowly over to his teammate who was on his back against the boards and looked down at him wondering why he was seeing two of those mustaches.

"Shitty, you okay?"

The words that came out of Eric's mouth sounded nothing like what he wanted to say. They were slurred and garbled even to him and it hurt to get them out. And Shitty? Shitty was looking at him was a face of absolute horror. Bitty leaned over him to ask again if he was alright and noticed a dark liquid splattering down on and around his teammate.

He blinked at it. Once. Twice. Before remembering the hit he had taken under his helmet and the dull ache in his throat that was now turning into a burning feeling all the way down his body. He stripped his gloves numbly, reaching up with trembling hands to feel his neck only to come back with a hot slickness across his fingers.

"SOMEBODY CALL A FUCKING AMBULANCE!"

"CLEAR THE ICE!"

"Bitty..."

The captain's voice managed to center the southern peach and he looked up into those big blue eyes awestruck as he always was. Jack had tossed his helmet, stick, and gloves in his approach and so there was no covering how absolutely broken he looked as Bitty turned to him. Blood had soaked through the front of his jersey, pouring from his neck, his clutching fingers unable to stanch the flow.

"Jack?"

It's a gasping, wet sound and the last he makes before he goes crumbling to the ice, the crowd still screaming in panic in the stands. His stick splashed down into the puddle around him.

"Oh my god! Oh my FUCKING god! I can't believe that just happened!"

"Did you see all the blood!?"

"Shut up! You're gonna make Chowder throw-up again!"

"We have to get to the hospital, where the fuck is Lardo!?"

"Itty Bitty just got fucking Malarchuked!"

"I'm gonna be sick! I'm gonna-!"

"EVERYONE SHUT UP!"

"...Who's going to call his mom?"

Jack Zimmerman sat with his head in his hands in the hospital waiting room, his legs constantly thumping as the whole team waited for news on Bittle. The site of his long, bony fingers raking his hair had sent Chowder running for a trash can to hurl in again since the digits were still coated thick and rusty with the left-winger's blood. So were the sleeves and knees of his uniform. Bitty's had probably already found its way into a medical waste bin.

Once the little guy had crashed to the ice, everything had simultaneously sped up and slowed down. At least for Jack. He could hear and see everyone moving around him. The spectators rushing to exit the stadium, queasy at the site of so much blood. The on ice players trying to crowd around while simultaneously attempting to keep their distance from the growing pool of red. In all that fast paced chaos it felt like the coaches and medical team had taken an eon to reach them. Jack had known Bitty didn't have an eon.

He'd slid down beside the younger boy, hands shaking as they unstrapped his helmet and immediately wrapped a firm hand around an impossibly slender neck. He'd worried for half a moment that he'd end up strangling the little baker, but any move to remove his hand or loosen his grip from that time on was met with another outward flow of blood that had more than just Chowder's stomach turning over. The med team had found them like that and had made the quick decision that switching out now would only endanger Bittle's life more. There was so much blood and they had no idea where it was coming from yet so they lifted Jack and Bitty both onto a gurney, the captain straddling his teammate, a knee pressed down into his fragile collar bone.

"Don't worry," Coach Hall had said, "It'll keep his heart rate and breathing low so there's not as much blood flow."

The worst part of the whole ordeal had been the fact Bitty was awake through all of it, staring up at Jack with the most petrified eyes he'd ever seen. Eyes he never wanted to see again. Tears were streaming down the side of the boy's face into his hair. Jack wasn't the comforting type, and even if he were he figured he'd never be any good at it, so it never occurred to him to say anything especially reassuring to Bittle. He couldn't muster an 'Everything will be okay' or 'You're going to be fine' for the college freshman.

Instead all he'd managed was a firm "I've got you" just as they got off the ice. Bitty's eyes had flashed, but other than that he remained as still as ever, skin growing pale and clammy the longer they sat there.

EMTs arriving on the scene had had to nearly pry him from his teammate. Lardo had lead him numb and unresponsive to the car and they'd all ridden to the hospital in stunned silence. The thick smell of blood in the car made Chowder turn almost green.

Bitty's surgery felt like it took another eon off Jack Zimmerman's life, but at least the blonde baker's mother showed up as they were waiting. The hug she pulled Jack into restored some of the years he had lost.

"How could this happen?!"

"Ma'am, hockey...is a contact sport-"

"My baby got his throat slit! Don't you tell me that's a regular contact in this sport!"

"..."

"Take me to see my son."

"Ma'am, he's not awake ye-"

"Take me. To see him."

"...Yes, ma'am."

"He's lucky to be alive," Mrs. Bittle whispered, hands flittering over her son's prone form wanting to fix his hair and fluff his pillows like when he was a baby but not wanting to wake him. "Doctor said that skate severed his carotid artery and almost his jugular too."

Jack and Shitty visibly flinched, the only two teammates allowed to be in the room with the woman and her son. Bitty had managed to survive through a two hour surgery and was now sleeping through the little visit on what his teammates assumed were some top grade pain meds. Mrs. Bittle fussed over everything that wasn't lying in the bed recovering, not knowing what to do with herself. She'd been distracted well enough for a time ordering the team around as she waited for Eric to be moved to a post-op room. She'd forced Dex and Nursey to take Chowder home with strict instructions to lay him down with some gatorade well within reach to regain his electrolytes and she'd sent Ransom and Holster to gather some of Bitty's personal effects including clothes, his stuffed bunny, and his phone which was still buzzing all alone in the locker room waiting for it's owner to pick it up and tweet something interesting. For reasons unknown to the players she refused to be in the presence of the coaches and had politely, but firmly told them to leave once they'd been assured Bitty was going to be alright. Lardo had went with them, not seeing a place for herself to be.

That had left Jack and Shitty.

"I just don't know how this happened," she breathed, manic in her unfulfillable need to hold her child as tight as she could and push away the unimaginable. "Don't y'all wear protective gear?"

"It's my fault, ma'am," Shitty said bravely. Sadley. "I moved Bitty out of the way of a check and it was my skate that caught him when I took it instead."

The woman and Jack both looked at Shitty curiously, Mrs. Bittle still not sure if she understood how her son had been injured and Jack unbelieving that Shitty was going to throw himself under the bus for something that had been Jack's call. She was the first to recover, eyelids fluttering with wet lashes as she came through with a genuine smile.

"Well, I appreciate you tryin' to protect my baby here."

"If I wouldn't have pushed him out the way-"

"If Eve hadn't bit the apple we'd all be walking around naked."

The two college men stared. She shrugged.

"I know it's not a popular opinion, but sometimes you do the wrong thing because you think it's the right thing and then something right comes out of the wrong thing and that actually makes it the right thing."

Jack noticed then just how much like his mother Bitty was at that moment. They both made absolutely no sense.

"Please, mama," came a tiny voice from the bed that had them all turning. Happy brown eyes looked up at all of them and suddenly Jack felt something lodged deep in his throat. "No more roundabout talk 'bout Eve in the garden. You know the pastor don't like when you say those things."

"Oh, baby!"

Mrs. Bittles tears could have filled a bucket and then that bucket would have been dumped on Jack Zimmerman as he seized up and watched the woman cry and pepper kisses all over her baby's face. She explained how Coach Bittle had needed to stay behind to settle some things but would be there before the sun went down. Bitty looked tired and a bit confused, every tweak of his head bringing forth a wince, but 300 stitches in the neck would likely do that to anyone.

"Hey, Shitty, you're alright," the blonde noticed next, breath leaving in a heavy sigh as the older boy reached down to card a hand through his blonde locks. Jack tensed at that for reasons he couldn't name. "Thank God."

"Bittle," The senior said seriously, "I am so goddamn sorry about-"

"Language!"

"'Scuse me -about what happened out on that ice. It's entirely my fault you were hurt." The right-winger looked damn near tears and Bitty smiled up at him in that soft comforting way only Bitty could, reaching a limp hand up to grasp at his fingers which had come to rest on his stomach.

"You kept me from gettin' checked, Shitty, I know you meant well."

"Yeah, but-"

"Hush now, all this foolishness makes my head ache."

His words, friendly and light as ever, shut Shitty down and the whole room sighed in contentment. Suzanne explained to her son that the rest of his team were on mom-sent missions and would be around soon. He grouched a bit at people fussing over him before settling after a light head bump from Shitty telling him he deserved to be fawned over a little bit after what he'd been through. He chuckled lowly, his throat obviously paining him, but nodded none the less.

Jack watched all this from his place frozen beside the door. From where he stood he could just barely see the crown of Bits' head, the rest of him blocked by a looming Shitty who still had an arm across the other man to grasp his hand. He itched to touch that hand. Suzanne stayed near the foot of the bed, rattling off things the doctor had told her about his injury and where they would be going from there. None of them took any notice of Jack and he was glad for it since he was stuck in the awe of imagining Bitty with his eyes open, talking and smiling like Jack hadn't been literally holding his life in his hands earlier that day.

The Samwell hockey team captain felt sick.

He thought he'd never get a chance to see anything so beautiful again.

The only thing that brought him back to the conversation was the sudden unhappy tone of his left-winger's voice. Bitty cross was not something any of the team had ever seen, but he could tell from the way the boys Southern drawl dipped and his words came sharp and grated rather than melodic and friendly that he was not pleased with the direction the conversation had taken.

"Mama, I'm not quittin' hockey and comin' home."

"Eric be reasonable!" Suzanne hissed at her only child, propped up by pillows across from her, Shitty still hovering at his side. "I just had to get a call that you'd someone how gotten your neck cut on the ice! Now, you can't expect me to go through that again!"

"I can and I do." A shiver went down Jack's spine hearing the usually sweet as pie boy sounding so harsh and demanding. "I love hockey and I love Samwell. I don't want to leave."

"Baby-"

"Coach wouldn't expect me to leave."

Mrs. Bittle looked at her wits end as she sputtered and steamed, finally turning to Shitty with an exasperated huff and expectant eyes. The college junior looked set upon and scratched the back of his scruffy neck.

"Bits...maybe you should-"

"Oh good Lord, don't let her bully you, Shits!" Eric chided, eyebrow up in a non-verbal chirp. "Besides you know Jack would have my hide if I quit now."

"Nuh-uh!" Suzanne insisted, definitely not sounding like the adult in the room. "Jack has been here this whole time lookin' absolutely miserable about your injury; I'm sure hee doesn't want you to keep playin'! Tell 'im Jack!"

The young man in the bloody hockey uniform could have killed his teammate's mother with a look if he hadn't been raised with inherent Canadian politeness in his veins. As it were, his cover was blown and he sucked in a sharp breath as Bittle sat forward in his bed to look around Shitty. He looked stunned that his captain had been there the whole time and not called attention to himself and Shitty looked like he'd forgotten Jack all together as he dropped Eric's hand and made a space for his best friend to step in.

Jack eased Bitty back onto his pillow with a clean hand on his shoulder. Suzanne hadn't been able to convince him to leave and change his clothes, but she'd absolutely demanded that he wash the blood off his hands before getting a chance to see Eric. He was glad he did. Seeing the boy awake would have been tainted by seeing his blood still smeared across his fingers.

Bitty looked up at him searchingly. It was clear from the way his eyes went in and out of focus that he was remembering the last time he'd seen Jack; the last time he'd been awake. Right after the cut when he'd been lain out on the ice thinking he would die. He grabbed his captain's hand on his shoulder, squeezing it so tight Jack had no choice but to squeeze back.

"Jack," he breathed at last, nothing like the desperate garble he had uttered in the rink, "Jack, you don't think I should quit right? Wellies never quit."

Jack took a knee by the smaller boy's bed, wanting to see him at eye level as he never had before. Wanting to be close to him. Bitty looked tired; dark circles around his eyes accentuated by the fact he had lost 1.5 liters of blood. He looked pale and tiny and fragile and not at all like a Wellie, but Jack knew he was bigger than this body he inhabited. Bigger probably even than Jack who since seeing his teammate bleeding out on the ice felt about two inches tall. The shame and guilt he felt over making the request that had almost cost Bitty his life was something he didn't think he'd ever shake. He couldn't stand the idea of adding more to it.

"Maybe it's time you take a break, Bits," he informed lowly, voice like gravel in the quiet room. He hadn't noticed the thing before, but he swore the monitor keeping track of Eric's heart rate skipped a beat as the blonde's face scrunched in an obvious attempt not to cry. Tears welled in his beautiful eyes.

"But I love hockey."

But I love you.

It was the first time Jack had admitted it, possibly the first time he had realized it. He loved Bittle and seeing him hurt during the game had all but stopped his own heart. He didn't want him to leave the ice forever; he wouldn't wish that on his worst enemy. But he didn't want him anywhere near a skate until he was back to the Bittle he'd fallen for and not hold up in a bed with wires coming out every which way and thick bandages keeping his head on his shoulders. He wanted to keep him safe. For as long as he could.

Eric looked equal parts shocked, betrayed, angry, and downright crushed. He clucked his tongue once, his Adam's apple bobbing under the bandages as he turned his head away, refusing to look at his captain any longer and let the older boy see him cry. Jack went to run a hand down the back of his head and sighed when Bittle didn't respond to the touch. Suzanne was chattering again from the foot of the bed about how the best place he could recover was back in Georgia and how he'd be able to get all his Samwell work extended until he was ready to return.

Hockey would be on ice for now.

Jack feels thoroughly dismissed as Bitty continues to refuse to look at him and motions to Shitty that they should go. He gets up off his knees. Coach Bittle would be there soon enough. Shitty follows after another affectionate push to Bitty's head to which he responds with a genuine smile. He doesn't bid Jack farewell, merely glances at him before locking eyes on his mother again. The captain tries not to let it hurt him too much as he leans down so his breath is just ghosting over Bitty's ear. The younger boy shivers.

"Adieu, mon bonheur."

The kiss he lands to Bitty's cheek is quick, innocent. Imperceptible to the others in the room unless they'd been leaning over Bitty's chest to get a better angle. Jack pulls away all too soon and Eric's eyes are finally on him, following him as he flees the room, Shitty right on his heels.

He feels bad that Bitty will miss the end of the year banquet where they choose the new captain and won't be around before they all split up for summer, but he knows he'll be back. Not even the word of Jack Zimmerman could keep Eric Bittle off the ice and he knows he'll see him again in the fall. He just can't stop his heart from hurting thinking about how far away that is.