Chapter Text
Going back to the Montreal apartment is a statement. Jack just isn’t sure what of. Seven years since he overdosed and died on the floor of the left hallway bathroom. Seven years since he woke up with a sore chest, cracked sternum, and fractured ribs from two frantic hockey players drumming a heartbeat back into him until professionals arrived and took over. Seven years of getting his life back on track until he can finally be comfortable in his skin.
Maman and Papa have ceded the city apartment to him, Bitty, Lardo, and Shitty for the week. They’ve been talking about selling the place. Making noises about a little house in a nice area. Even with the regular cleaning service, Jack sees the untouched patina over everything, can smell the still mustiness of unused rooms. He knows that they’ve preferred to stay in Le St-James when they overnight in the city ever since their only child died here, never mind that Maman has remodeled that bathroom half a dozen times over the years.
That’s why it’s such a surprise when someone unlocks and opens the door, taking a half-step in before freezing under the four sets of eyes turned his way.
“Kent?”
*****
Jack had spent one summer with Bitty, seeing Georgia, watching his boyfriend in the town he grew up in. This year, Bitty had pronounced it Jack’s turn. They’d flown into Montreal a few days ago after the NHL awards, meeting Shitty and Lardo and just taking some time to decompress.
The 2016 draft is wrapping up. All this season, people had been drawing parallels between the 2009 and 2015 drafts, asking Jack about the latest Canadian hockey savior, some prodigy out of Ontario, and the second overall pick, a blond American kid, the two of them generational talents. It was a little too much like before. But really, maybe it had been the best way to exorcise everything, to watch two different-yet-so-similar young men go to two different teams, neither the Falconers nor the Aces, and let life and hockey go on. This year they were able to watch the Draft without the old specters hanging over them.
Which is why seeing Kent Parson here is such a shock. He’d been at the NHL awards, of course, but kept his distance. Bitty had seen him once, staring at Jack, looking exhausted and resigned--even his acceptance speech was more subdued than his normal barely-contained gloating. But for someone who made being the center of attention an art form, Kent was certainly good at melting into the crowd whenever he saw Jack or Bitty coming near.
“Z—Jack, uh, I wasn’t expecting you here. And now, or ever, really.” Kent fumbles a set of key from the doorknob, starts unconsciously passing them from hand to hand as he stares.
“You have a key?” Bitty keeps his voice completely level, calm and politely inquisitive, as he comes up behind a dumbstruck Jack with a fresh bowl of popcorn from the kitchen.
“Um, yeah, Bad Dad—uh, Bob and Alicia said I could stay here when I’m in the city, and they, well.” Kent’s eyes dart toward the living room, Lardo and Shitty drawing closer. “You guys are full up, I’ll just head over to Henri-Dominique’s place in Laval for the week, open invitation there, too. His girls love their Oncle Kent. See you around maybe, huh Jack?” The shock that painted over his features is quickly melting away to his usual grinning mask, not leaving room for anyone to get a word in edgewise as he backs out.
When the door closes, the spell breaks. “Did that seem…odd to any of y’all?”
“Yeah, but to be honest, most of our interactions with Kent fucking Parson have not been what I would consider typical human contact.”
“No, something was just off.” Bitty’s brow crinkles for a moment before he realizes. “Where were his bags?”
“What?”
“You don’t travel two thousand miles for a week in a foreign city without at least a carry on. Not if you’re really planning on staying.” Jack meets his eyes as he feels something cold seep through him. Bitty may be seeing things, but tonight, of all nights, and this place, of all places... “Something’s wrong.”
Before the bowl hits the floor, Bitty is already throwing open the door and running out into the hall. “Parse! Wait!”
The apartment is at the far end of the corridor, as far from the elevators as possible. He sees Kent, about to step into an elevator, pause and give him a wave and a grin.
It’s not his usual smirk. It’s a rictus of bared teeth, eyes too wide above in a pale face, and Bitty knows, knows, they’ll never see Kent again. Then Kent’s gone, Bitty skidding to a stop in front of a closed door, pushing the button but he can hear the car moving down, knows that the stairs are the only way to catch him.
“Jack, stairs!” He’s flying down, hearing Jack and Shitty and Lardo clattering behind him, round and round the flights, bursting dizzily out into the empty side lobby. There’s something lazily rocking back and forth on the floor, and Bitty pauses for a moment to scoop it up. An Aces snapback, smelling of Parse’s hair gel and cologne. He has a sudden mental image of Parse running out the door, the wind blowing his hat off of his head, but not stopping him for a moment.
They race outside and stop. Le Chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges stretches to their left and right, but at this time of night, there are no taxis, no way for Parse to make a quick getaway by auto. The road was cut into the hillside of Mont Royal, and even someone as athletic as Parse wouldn’t be able to scale the opposite rock face so quickly. Where the sheer drop tapers off, a fence stands tall, presenting the same problem.
“Shitty, Lardo, you head east, Bitty and I go west, call if you see—“
“Wait! There!” A gap between the fence and drop-off. Enough for a person to squeeze through, and Bitty sees it in his head again, Parse running across the road, running into the park. Sure enough, when he crosses the road, the streetlamps show a little path trampled down. Bitty pulls out his phone as they move deeper into the trees; it won’t be a lot of light, but he remembers nature trips with his father and cousins, remembers the tracking lessons.
“Call him, Jack. If his phone isn’t silent—“
“Right.” Jack doesn’t even protest that he doesn’t have the number, just pulls up the KVP contact and calls.
“Look, bro, are we sure that this is necessary? I mean, the Aces didn’t have the best season, but chasing him into Mont Royal park?”
“Shh.” Bitty can hear—something, further down the trail. He moves faster, the ringtone grows louder, until his light reveals a phone thrown to the side of the trail, ZIMMS blinking an incoming call.
Shitty’s face looks even paler in the wash of screen light. “Never mind.”
“His face, Shitty. He just looked like, like…like every light in the world was goin’ out.”
They come to a fork in the trail. Lardo has her phone out, map app up. “Right, we meet up with an established park path. Left, we go further into the wooded area.”
Before Jack can suggest splitting up again, Bitty feels a breeze across his face from the left. It’s cold, musty, the smell of old snow and ice. Not the scent of a park in June. “Left.”
They move faster now, feeling something cold and unnatural hanging in the air. In a few moments, they break through to a tiny glen formed by a downed tree. Parse is there, sitting on the rotting log, eyes wide and face slack and empty. Opposite him is a woman, quite literally carved from ice.
Maybe not so literally. Bitty finds himself clutching Jack’s arm as the ice woman turns toward them.