#I think it boils down to Jack saw Nico as a Person first and a Teammate second. Snowy saw Nico as a Teammate first

[jankwritten]

How does the parenting and caring for Nico differ for snowy and Jack? Wait if Jack is Percy's dad, does that make them brothers????!

OsiuPOXCASOIDMAPSD

Okay so first thing's first: Jack and Percy are, if anything, closer to brothers than father/son. Percy also has a low key crush on Jack which I feel is important to mention considering LMFAO.

But yes, Percy and Nico can be described as brotherly. In endgame hockey AU they end up in a kind of QPR type thing, bonded for life through some shit that happens near the middle/end of Spotlight :) I think that Nico definitely had a little crush on Percy (well, he'll say it was a little crush) when Nico was like, 16/17 and Percy was just joining the NHL. I think he liked Percy right up until they became teammates at which point he went "oh this dude's a fucking dweeb why did I think he was hot" and then Percy put him in a headlock and the rest is history.

OKAY SO ONTO THE ACTUAL QUESTION LMFAO

So Jack is very. Stoic, I feel. He's kinda stilted and awkward, because he doesn't quite know how to handle Nico, not really. Percy was easy for him to handle, because Percy and Bitty are very similar in a lot of ways, and so Jack was like "ah yes, I've done this before" with mentoring Percy and helping him out in the beginning. Plus, Jack and Percy are far closer in age than Jack and Nico are - I believe Jack is 29 and Percy is 26, where Nico is 19. With Percy, Jack already knew what to expect, he had a baseline for how a guy that age would generally be, etc. etc.

With Nico, however, it was like being thrown a curveball-shaped-mirror. Jack looked at Nico and he saw himself at 19, fresh out of rehab and scared to shit about hockey and being queer (I do think that Jack clocked Nico pretty early, and not just because Nico wasn't super trying to hide it), he saw this kid who's talent was hanging about his head ready to snap and crush him at any point, and he thought, "no, I will not let this happen again."

But he also thought, "if someone had come to ME at that age and tried to demand I listen to them and all this shit, I would've snapped at them and shoved them away", and so he sort of. Didn't know how to approach. Kind of stood in the wings and watched how the rest of the team took to Nico. Jack stared out very much as The Captain - he took his job of watching over Nico as The Rookie very seriously, maybe more seriously than he had with other guys, but Nico wouldn't have known any different so it worked out. But now Jack is kind of stuck as The Captain and not, like. A Friend, not really. Nico thinks of Jack as a teammate first, an emergency contact at best. A last resort. Jack, however, is always there in the background, watching, keeping track, noting if Nico starts behaving strangely, sneaking off, partying more, etc. etc.

SNOWY on the other hand was immediately all-in on the "yeah you're my rookie I'm adopting you you're my child fucking deal with it" shtick. He heard they'd be getting a new backup goalie and was all prepared for that, and then Nico di Angelo rocked up to camp, five foot shit, twig-skinny, baby-faced with a scowl that could freeze even the biggest of d-men, and Snowy said "oh, word?"

Basically, where Jack hesitated because he didn't want to scare Nico off, Snowy didn't give Nico a chance to get scared off. I think there was also a sense, from Nico's end, of relief. The team's goalie was obviously not a dickhead, obviously didn't hate him, obviously wanted to help him. Even though Nico hated the way Snowy babied him, texting him about remembering to eat and sleep and all this shit, he still appreciated it on some level, because, yeah, he probably would've forgotten, otherwise.

Jack is very observant, but largely hands-off when it comes to taking care of Nico. He's always going to step in when he thinks it's necessary, and he's always got Nico's back, but he does it froma distance (such a distance that Nico doesn't even really realize Jack considers him a friend, let alone that Jack is keeping a hawks-eye on him). Snowy is exactly the opposite. He's loud and obnoxious and in-your-face about making sure Nico is alright. He calls Nico kid constantly, he's always the first to check in after a shit game, the first to ask Nico if he wants to go eat somewhere, the first to try and include him, if others have forgotten. Snowy is also sometimes less observant than Jack is, in fact a lot of the time some of Nico's quirks slip past him, because Snowy writes them off as Goalie quirks. Nico's thing about pre-game routine, for example, which we saw Snowy be flippant about. That kind of stuff means more to Nico because of things Snowy doesn't quite see, like Nico's neurodivergences. Snowy does start to catch on that there's something a little Different about it, eventually.