#but anyways bitty is like a country to pop superstar who took a hiatus

[wetwellie]

Hey have you ever wanted an AU where Bitty didn’t play hockey and instead decided to become an international country/pop star like Hannah Montana? 

No? Just me? Well. Let me elaborate and win you over

(Best quotes: “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on”  “If I discovered the identity of Richard Coach I would close my eyes and carry him to safety like the train passengers did in Spiderman 2″ )

Bitty has always been a performer. There is a whole mess of VHS tapes from his formative years where he’d perform for his family. The video of Bitty wearing a christmas garland around his neck like a festive Boa, his father’s shades, and performing for a group of stuffed animals had become a staple of the Bittle’s Christmas. 

Bitty would never be ashamed of those VHS tapes. No matter how embarrassing he thought they were, if it weren’t for his mother uploading them onto Youtube for easier online sharing, he wouldn’t have become a hit. He wouldn’t have gotten to perform on Ellen at 11, win his first Grammy at 14, and all in all be given the wonderful life he’d been given.

Except Eric Bittle does not get the credit for any of it. That’s all Richard Coach--Country turned Pop superstar. 

The connection between Bittle and Coach was made for a multitude of reasons: 

          1. His mother was incredibly weary of posting private information onto a public website like Youtube, 

          2. Most of the 480p videos were of a baby Bitty dressed up in “costumes”, and his mother always called him “Dicky” in them. 

          3. Richard Coach has black hair, dreamy green eyes, and is the American Everyman. According to literally everyone in Madison, Bittle is blond and funny. 

Regardless. This was his life. Despite the constant stress, Bittle had grown to appreciate the distinct separation between his two lives. 

And this is how he finds himself sitting in an interview promoting his final album before going on an extended hiatus for school. For something so final, it was fairly casual. 

“So Richard, sources say that you’re a soon-to-be college man, but those sources said nothing about which one” Bitty, who is comfortably nestled into his Richard persona, laughs, “I’m kinda proud to beat the researchers. I was worried about that” “So I guess this means you won’t be hinting at which one you are going to” He nods “Unfortunately that is true. I put a lot of thought into this decision--going to college that is. And as much as I love my fans and my life, I want to focus on being a more or less normal kid at college for a while.” “Well, that is certainly a good dream to have but...”The woman pauses, trying to think of a good way to put it, “You are already one of the most famous faces and biggest names in the world. What steps are you taking to obtaining that ‘normal’ experience?” “I’m sorry? I don’t know what you mean” “Let me give an example. How can you be sure that your peers --or professors-- won’t freak out when they see Richard Coach is on the class roster for Math 101?”

“For starters, if you think I’m taking any kind of math course you are mistaken. Fans won’t have to worry about seeing me there.” They both laugh before he continues. “And secondly, I’m not going to be using my stage name while at school. I never have, so why would I now?” Bitty knows he’s made a mistake the second it slips out of his mouth. The woman’s eyes widen with shock briefly for a moment before she regains her composure and grins like a shark that had smelled blood. 

She leans in, “Richard Coach is a stage name?” 

“Um” is all Bitty can say. He grips the sides of his jeans until his fists are white with tension. “I thought that you all knew that already?”

She shakes her head. He looks around to the crew briefly. They shake their head. Even his manager (slash mother) in the corner, shakes her head. 

“Oh” he sighs. “Well it is.” “So what you’re saying is that nobody in your private life knows who you are? There is a high school full of students who don’t know they just graduated with, well, you? How is that possible?” He shrugs his shoulders “No one was looking, I guess.”

“Kudos to you for keeping the lid on that secret for so long” is what she says. But all Bitty can hear is her saying scoop of the year. “But I worry that your fans will take this information and turn it into a scavenger hunt” At this point, Bitty is full of rage. He wants to say I don’t see you offering to cut this part of the interview, or people who deliberately try to out people’s secrets for personal gain are not, and never will be, my fans, or even just fuck you and the horse you rode in on. 

Instead, he politely smiles and continues to talk about how he hopes the deal he made with his record company will satiate any need to know about his personal life. In any other world, it should have.

The deal with the record company is that Richard does a few remote talk show appearances during the semester.  He is also encouraged to keep up with a blog where he talks about his life and posts at least one video of him singing monthly. 

It should have been more than enough to keep the fans interested during his time away, instead Bitty found that they fueled the flames. 

Three days after the interview, Bitty sits hunched over his laptop on the floor of a half unpacked dorm room. It’s like a car crash, the way he can’t stop himself from constantly refreshing and switching from tab to tab of every social media and news site that is talking about his interview, his secret life, and the video he posted to youtube literally an hour ago. 

He looked up to the bed, where Senor Bun wearing his Richard wig is sitting--judging him. Seven years is a long time to keep a secret more or less unintentionally, but it only takes a moment for it to all bite you in the ass. 

At least they don’t know that it’s a wig, Bitty thinks as he runs his hand through his naturally sandy blond hair. That had been able to divert a lot of the attention from him to the plethora of copycats and lookalikes claiming to be him. 

“If I discovered the identity of Richard Coach I would close my eyes and carry him to safety like the train passengers did in Spiderman 2″

“Dude, everyone on that train in saw Spiderman’s face” “Wh--That’s not the point! The point is that the folks on the train weren’t dicks to Spiderman. We can’t be dicks to Coachie”

“Aight. That’s fair, but irrelevant because there’s no way that Coacher is here at Samwell” “We could see him on an away game” 

“Holtzy I don’t think that a boy born that deep in the south has ever even set foot in an ice rink” The voice says. It sounds like they’re right outside of his dorm. There’s a knock on the door.  Bitty jumps. “Open up bro!” Shit. Bitty scurries off of the floor,grabs his wig and senor bun and (gently) hurls them across the room into the closet. He slams the closet door shut, grabs his tote full of pies, and opens the door.  “Hey fellas!”