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It’s a seemingly normal Tuesday afternoon when Patrick’s life as he knows it changes. He’s sitting in his math class, absent-mindedly doodling some monsters in his notebook and thinking up scenarios for the next time he gets to be DM in his weekly campaign, when a shadow falls across his desk.
It’s Mr. Sharp, who insists all his students call him Sharpy or the Sharp Shooter. Sharpy is ridiculously hot and has no business teaching hormonal teenagers, because all the girls--and Patrick--spend most of class drooling over him. “Patrick, stay for a bit after class?”
Patrick scrunches his face and tries to think of anything he could have screwed up in the last twenty minutes. Nope, he’s still kicking ass and ruining the curve, so it can’t be his grades; he hasn’t insulted anyone, so it can’t be his behaviour; and it’s not Mathletes season yet, so it probably isn’t about that. He nods slowly and Sharpy looks satisfied, turning away to remind the rest of the class that, no, their upcoming exam is not open book, and seems to take unholy glee in their subsequent groans.
When the bell rings, Patrick gathers his books slowly, waiting for the last girl to toss their hair back and forth to get Sharpy’s attention before heading up to his desk. “You wanted to see me?”
“Patrick, my man! Got a bit of a situation. Quenneville and I have been chatting, and it looks like some of his players need a little extra help if they want to maintain their grade point average for the hockey team. I thought, hey, why not offer my best and brightest for the job.”
Patrick’s confused. “What job?” he asks hesitantly, hoping that Sharpy isn’t saying what Patrick thinks he might be.
Sharpy smiles benevolently down at Patrick like he is a puppy who just knocked over the milk. “Tutoring! The captain in particular needs a bit of help in Calc and English.”
The captain. Of the hockey team. The biggest douche Kaner’s ever seen.
“Aaah, is it okay if I pass? I mean, I gotta focus on college apps and everything--” he starts, eyeing the way out.
“Think of how good it’ll look to schools to have some experience teaching. It’s like community service!”
Patrick would much rather ladle soup for homeless people. At least they know how to smile.
“Anyway, I’ve already said yes on your behalf, so you better get moving. You have an appointment in 10 minutes in the library. Have fun!” With that, Sharpy gives Kaner a gentle nudge towards the door, and Kaner blinks. What just happened?
Oh, right. Patrick’s going to spend his afternoons with the jockiest jock to ever jock.
Said jock is glaring the moment Patrick walks through the door. “You’re late,” Jonathan Toews snaps.
The thing that Kaner always forgets, he thinks sadly, is that Jonathan Toews also happens to be the one jock whose jockstrap Kaner has the misfortune of wanting to get into.
“So,” Kaner says, after a moment of awkward staring, “Calc?”
Toews inhales slowly. “And English,” he adds, and Kaner can’t help but make a face to himself as he gingerly seats himself next to the six feet of muscle coiled in a chair that, frankly, seems way too small for him.
Okay, if Patrick’s being real here, this whole room is a bit too small.
“Uh, so how far are you in Calc right now?” he asks, grabbing the textbook from Jonny’s pile. Patrick took it two years ago, and though it’s not like he needs any review, having the familiar text in his hands relieves him a little.
“U-substitution of derivatives,” Toews says, sounding slightly furious, and Patrick is starting to realise that this might be his default mode of communication. Either that or the guy really doesn’t like calculus. Patrick’s not totally sure how Toews learns, but if he’s going to be this angry about it all the time, Patrick might need to take up yoga or something. Or maybe Toews should take up yoga, since his crazy intense sport that Patrick doesn’t really understand--though he does know a little about it, everybody does--is not violent enough for him. Which, seriously. Can’t Toews punch people out there? That’s totally a thing in hockey. Patrick can’t help but wonder if if Toews taking more time to hit other people on ice wouldn’t, you know, make him a little more bearable in everyday life.
Toews isn’t a bad learner, actually, and he tries really hard. Patrick won’t ever admit it to anyone--okay, Patrick is the Captain of Mathletes and he’ll admit it to everyone--but there’s an elegance to calculus that he loves. He gets lost in teaching, able to mostly ignore the heavy breathing and flared nostrils next to him, indicating that Toews obviously don’t understand the true beauty of mathematics well enough to love it properly. Sucks to suck, loser. The first time Patrick lets himself sigh out loud over a particularly lovely cosine derivation, though, Toews’ eyebrows shoot up and Patrick feels himself turning a little red.
“Uhm, but look at how cleanly this cancels out here, and it’s...nice.” Nice? he asks himself after the words leave his mouth. Nice? Is that the best he can think of for this work of art? This function that defines the universe?
Patrick looks up to see Toews looking almost like he wants to laugh, though Patrick’s not sure he could if he tried. Even with an almost-confused-smirk at Patrick’s love of math, the guy still looks a little constipated. And almost condescending.
Well, you know what? Patrick doesn’t need some jockey dickwad smirking at him. But just as he’s steeling himself for some not-so-friendly teasing, Toews manages to pull his face into an actual smile and shakes his head. “Whatever floats your boat, man.”
Patrick’s shocked. “Yeah,” he says dumbly.
“I mean, it’s like goalies, right?” Toews continues, and Patrick was not aware that the guy ever strung this many words together at once. You learn something new every day, he thinks, before being drawn back in by Toews’ low rumble. “I wouldn’t want to sit in net and have pucks shot at me for hours, but my friend Corey loves it. I guess that’s how it goes. You like math. It’s cool you that think it’s...nice,” he trails off, glancing at Patrick’s open-mouthed expression before turning back to the textbook.
“Yeah, yeah,” Patrick pulls himself back together. “Totally. Being a goalie looks really scary.”
“It really is, dude. You know how fast we shoot pucks?” Toews says, obviously more comfortable talking about hockey than math.
“Really fast?” Patrick has no idea.
Toews rolls his eyes. “Sure.”
“Okay. That’s awesome. Glad you shoot pucks fast. Yeah.” Patrick’s totally out of his league here, but he does know something about speed, direction, and calculus. He points to a graph on the page and asks, “Speaking of speed, what’s the velocity of this curve?”
“The line isn’t moving.” Toews says flatly, and Patrick’s pretty fine with that. He’s got this.
“It’s the derivative of the slope,” he tells Toews, and proceeds to embark on a discussion of velocity, acceleration, and jerk and their associated derivative levels in a way he thinks even an unwilling hockey player can understand.
So tutoring Toews isn’t as bad as he thought it would be, and they get Jonny through a fair amount of calculus and, though Jonny always tries to pretend that he doesn’t need help, English. There’s still an extreme number of vaguely hostile, unimpressed looks levied at Patrick every time he tries to crack a joke, but that’s just how he rolls. Smoothing over an awkward situation with badly-punned math jokes totally got him made out with at summer camp two years ago. Not that he desires the same thing this time around. Definitely not.
It’s just that Toews wears a disgusting number of of henleys. Tight, warm-looking henleys that hug his body in all the right ways and are completely distracting on every level. And he flexes his arms when he clenches his pencil too tight. Which is often, ‘cause the beautiful idiot can’t get chain rule to save his life.
“It’s not like I’ll even need math,” he grumbles to Patrick after a particularly grueling session.
“What about geometry? To calculate the trajectory of your shot?”
Toews rolls his eyes. “That’s instinct and practice. I can’t stop to do an equation on the ice.”
“Maybe if you did it would improve your game,” Patrick says lightly, and instead of the fond eyeroll he was hoping for, Toews frowns, his jaw setting stiffly.
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Have you ever even skated?” he shoots, and Patrick blinks.
“Um, yeah, I mean, I’m from Buffalo. Everyone learns how to skate up there.” Patrick doesn’t like the look in Toews’ eye. It looks smug, and a little bit crafty.
“Alright. Come down to the rink then. Let’s see how well you skate.”
“What? Now?”
Toews sniffs imperiously, “What, you aren’t tired out from math, are you?”
And no one can claim that, for all his nerdtastic abilities, Patrick isn’t a bit of an idiot himself. So when he opens his mouth and, “Bring it on, you non,” falls out, he really isn’t that surprised. But Toews certainly looks it, only for a second, before looking all hot and determined and nodding his head towards the exit, where the school’s newly renovated rink stands down the lane past the gym.
As it turns out, he can skate, pretty damn well by the way Toews’ jaw is locked in grudging admittance as Patrick glides around him, feeling oddly at ease with the ice underneath him and breathing in the cold, vaguely synthetic air of the school’s rink.
“Alright then, so you can skate.” Toews admits, grudgingly, “But can you shoot?” He gestures towards the goal post at the end of the rink and nudges a puck against Patrick’s skate.
Patrick grabs a stick and tests the weight. It’s light and not too long--good for his height. He eyes the net and thinks about the momentum he could generate, how the ice looks from a long days of use, and the exertion it would take to get the puck in the air.
The way Toews is looking at him, he probably expects Patrick to just shuffle it along and slip it in like a wuss. That’s not him. Not the Patrick Kane who beat the Mass Effect trilogy eight times, who organized the successful D&D campaign against the Dark Mage Balphaeus, who won their school a state title in last year’s quiz bowl after answering correctly a question about how Jupiter is the fastest rotating planet. So yeah, he can shoot the puck like a boss if he has to.
Like most things in life, Patrick approaches the task before him with a little bit of competence and a whole lot of bravado. But hey, it’s worked well so far. So he lets himself go for it, moving his stick to touch the puck in staccato bursts of left and right motion, generating some speed and pulling off a sharp turn as he gets to the net, angling his stick so that the puck flies up into the top right corner. He crows, as if this was a real goal in front of a screaming arena of fans. It’s a nice feeling, and he lets himself revel in the moment before turning to face Toews, who is looking back at him with this weirdly unreadable expression.
“Dude, I run this joint,” Patrick proclaims, barely stopping himself from stopping so that he sprays Toews with ice. Toews is now looking at Patrick like he’s some some sort of fascinating specimen under the microscope, which isn’t an analogy Patrick likes.
“Have you played before?” Toews asks, though it sounds like a demand.
“Um, no, not really,” Patrick admits.
“Do it again.” Okay, now that was definitely a demand.
“What? Why?”
“Just do it.” Tazer gives him another puck, but this time follows it up with, “Aim for the upper left this time. Shoot from two yards away.”
Well, fine, Patrick thinks, skating off in a huff. If Toews wants to get his feathers rumpled ‘cause Patrick is awesome at everything he does, then let him be a grouch. After a quick second of calculation, Patrick is able to nail the shot perfectly. After this, Toews’ face takes on this furious-looking hue and the guy snarls for Patrick to stay the fuck there while he gathers some water bottles from behind the boards and stands them up along the top of the net. He escorts Patrick to about six feet away from the net and instructs him to knock the bottles off the top.
“Are you serious, man?” he whines.
Toews does not look like he’s ever joked in his life.
So Patrick sighs and does the math. He’s able to knock down two and misses the third by a hair. But all in all he’s pretty impressed with himself. Toews looks impressed despite himself, and gives Patrick this inscrutable look as they head back to the bench.
“Dude, what?” Patrick asks, tired of having his face melted off with the force of Toews’ stare.
“Join the hockey team,” is the only reply.
Obviously Patrick turns him down flat. Because, seriously? So he’s good at aiming and shooting. How is that going to get him through a doctoral program so he can be a badass engineer and make robots?
Toews hadn’t taken it very well. At least, Patrick thinks that’s the case. The guy hadn’t said anything, just stared at him for a while before stalking into the locker room. Patrick hadn’t known whether to follow him or not, and decided to take the coward’s way out by unlacing his skates and leaving them on the ledge before beating a hasty retreat.
He relays the whole thing to Sharpy the next day after their Mathletes meeting, hoping to elicit some shocked sympathy.
Instead, he gets a considering look and then a stupid, sly smile. “You know, it’s actually not a bad idea.”
“What? Why?” Patrick is shocked and outraged.
Sharpy, staring at him over the rim of his enormous mug, which is covered in pictures of his adorable daughters and says #1 Dad in terrifyingly pink bubble letters, remarks, “I always thought you needed some more extracurriculars. This will diversify your CV. Schools eat that crap up.”
“Yeah, ‘cause MIT definitely considers hockey to be the thinking man’s sport.”
“They’re all Bruins fans,” Sharpy waves a hand around dismissively. “Also, I'm sick of looking at your sad face every afternoon. It’s abundantly clear that Mathletes can no longer handle you.”
"But Sharpy!" Patrick whines.
“I think you’d benefit from another hobby that doesn't include talking to elves. It’ll get some meat on your bones, kid."
“Doesn’t matter if I’m still the smallest guy on the team,” Patrick grumbles, because, seriously, he drinks milk and everything.
Sharpy looks Kaner in the eye and says slowly, seriously, “Patrick, listen. You have it within you to one day be a babe. Like me. The potential is there. Seize the day.”
Patrick thinks about his hair, which is edging dangerously towards mullet territory, his wasabi stained T shirt, and his One Ring necklace, and raises his eyebrows in doubt.
“I said potential,” Sharpy reminds him, sighing.
Patrick gives him the dirtiest look he can get away with giving an esteemed teacher, and Sharpy has the gall to laugh, tossing his beautiful head back.
“Now skedaddle, the Sharp Shooter needs to get home and see his beautiful blonde family.”
He whistles a jaunty tune as he leaves, and Kaner fumes as he stalks towards his locker.
Where Jonathan Toews happens to be standing.
“Ugh,” is all Patrick can say in response. Toews looks up, face set in grim determination.
“Kane.” he states, and waits. What, is Patrick supposed to reply or something?
No way. Patrick folds his arms and raises an eyebrow.
Toews looks like someone thrust a hockey stick up his ass, and long moments go by. Finally, he clenches his jaw and says, “Join the team.”
Patrick opens his mouth to deliver a beautiful, soul-crushing rebuttal, but then pauses. He sees the line of Toews’s biceps underneath his dark brown henley, and thinks about the hours and hours he’ll be spending watching his ass move across the ice, hearing him pant after an exerting practice, shower alongside him....
No one ever said Patrick Kane wasn’t a generous man.
“Fine,” he replies and takes vicious glee in the look of surprise that flashes over Toews’ face.
“Seriously?” He asks.
“Yeah,” Patrick aims for nonchalant, “You guys must be truly desperate to seek out my help.” So what if he had watched Thor 2 last night? Loki’s the one with all the brains. He has a quick moment of dizzying realization that Toews would look super hot wielding a hammer.
Toews scowls, “We’re not desperate. You’re good with your hands and we need people who can shoot.”
“Great, so what do I have to do?” Patrick asks, fighting back a blush.
At this, Toews grins smugly. “I already talked to Coach. Practice is in ten. Get your ass to the locker room and suit up.”
Seriously? Kaner groans and quickly texts his crew that he’ll be missing D&D tonight. Apparently he’s now a hockey player. He frowns at his phone, then sends the guys another text: fml.
Hockey, for all its connotations of violence, brutality, and bad hair choices, is not the worst thing in the world. Coach Q is gruff and suspicious at first, but once he sees Patrick’s trick with the water bottles he comes around pretty easily. It’s the rest of the team who are harder to impress, especially once they realize that their new member is 5’10’’, 160 pounds of guess-who-can’t-skate-backwards?
It’s clear, though, that Toews is in charge. While the team runs through drills, he works one on one with Patrick, testing his agility and teaching him how to take a check. Which involves Toews ramming him into the boards repeatedly. There is pain, of course. Patrick will have some spectacular bruising tomorrow. But mostly, he’s kind of liking the bulk of Toews--"Call me Jonny, you idiot.”--Jonny's mass against him.
Practice follows like that for the next couple of days. They’re currently playing games, but Patrick isn’t allowed near one until he can actually handle the D of his own team. But they’ll be playing in a couple of weeks against some local rivals, and Jonny means it when he says he’ll get Patrick into top shape. What this also involves is a new routine of biking and weight lifting, closely supervised by Jonny. Patrick’s previous exercise had been playing tennis against his sisters on the Wii, so it’s soon apparent how much of a weakling he is.
Jonny shows encouragement in the form of barked demands and patient unsympathy.
Even Sharpy, the traitor, can’t hold back a laugh when Patrick trudges into class twitching and wincing. “Soon, my son, you’ll be a man,” he says sincerely, after Patrick’s lengthy complaining session is interrupted by a glaring Jonny at the door. Jonny proceeds to drag Patrick back to the gym, which really only proves his point.
It’s not Jonny alone who acts as Patrick’s ambassador into the world of hockey. Jonny comes as a package deal with his very own Crabbe and Goyle, Duncs and Seabs. Both are weirdly zen dudes, held back a year together, apparently from too many absences, and both seem to enjoy the bickering between Patrick and Jonny. Where they go, Hammer and Oduya (also named Jonny, but apparently Toews dominated the name and couldn’t share) follow. And trailing behind them is the weirdly huge freshman trio of Shawzy, Saad, and Bollig.
The first time Jonny invites Patrick to sit with him at lunch, Patrick manages to spill half his pea soup all over Hjalmarsson, who looks disgusted and Swedish. He’s roughly the size of a Patrick and a half, and Patrick cowers, only to stop at the sound of Tazer chuckling, as rare a sound as the Harps of Minar in his MMORPG.
Jock-talk, as it turns out, is a lot like nerd-talk in that nothing ever makes sense.
“Listen, bro, I’m not saying anything, but wasabi totally loses its spiciness when you breathe with your mouth open.” Seabs says; he’d snuck in some contraband sushi from the co-op down the street. Jonny eyes it disgustedly, even though Bicks had claimed that it did wonders for your game. Duncs, who has an arm comfortably behind his back, snorts and steals a piece of ginger.
“Bet you can’t hold it in your mouth for a full minute,” Shawzy dares, the little brat.
“Fucking bring it on,” Seabs shoots back, and the table erupts into cheers of SEA-BIS-CUIT.
Patrick rolls his eyes at the juvenile behavior, but ends up oddly fascinated by the way Seabs’ face is turning purple. Once the timer runs out, he swallows, tears streaming down his face, and accepts a bottle of water lovingly offered by Duncs.
Things get a little weird when Patrick pulls out his flashcards, but hey, he has a quiz--and so does Jonny. He elbows Jonny in the side and shifts his flashcards towards him with a meaningful look, and Jonny makes a face that Patrick knows by now: it’s the I really should but I really don’t want to look. As Jonny’s tutor, Patrick doesn’t mind this one, because he knows how it ends: with Jonny giving in and doing it, looking furious and absolutely not sexy at all, no. After Patrick said the f-word once (not fuck, no, Jonny says that one just as much as Patrick does; but fail) Jonny had become a fucking machine at that day’s calc and they’d gotten almost an hour more to skate than usual.
Shawzy takes a moment to comment when Jonny sighs and leans over to read the first card. “Damn, Kaner. You’ve got him obeying you with just a touch? Captain Seriously-needs-to-relax?”
Patrick makes a face. “We have a quiz,” he replies, taking the chance to lean into Jonny and not have it be weird.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say.” Bollig says dismissively. “Look at them cuddling! It’s like Duncs and Seabs, but younger, and, somehow, I feel like their combined IQ is higher.”
Patrick looks up in time to see Seabs reach over from where he’s hunched close to Duncs over a tiny phone screen and slap Bollig upside his head, and he grins. “Thanks,” Jonny adds, and Seabs throws them a conspiratory wink before turning back to Duncs.
But when Patrick asks, “What does hegemony mean?” and Jonny sighs audibly, Patrick nudges him a little and adds, “We did this one yesterday, you know it,” it seems that Shawzy can’t resist.
“Whipped,” he stage-whispers to Saader, and this time it’s Jonny who retaliates, standing up in the cafeteria and dumping the last of his chili on the freshman.
After that afternoon, he spends most of his lunches with Jonny & Co. The school finds this unusual, if the stares and whispers are anything to go by. It’s not like Patrick was a loser or anything like that. He wasn’t bullied, but he had always kind of kept to himself. Most people saw the evidence of a nerddom in his style, his hobbies, and, informed by decades of pop-culture, assumed he was off-limits as a friend.
Patrick hadn’t ever really minded, to be honest. He had math, and books and his games and his internet and D&D friends to keep him happy. It’s just that, finally being a part of a group, being included in inside jokes and ribbing--that sense of camaraderie is new and unexpectedly warms something inside Patrick.
And Jonny, who is still a condescending dickbag, isn’t the worst thing ever anymore.
In fact, with Patrick first game looming in front of them, he’s doubled his efforts to get Patrick ready, skating with him in the evenings even when they don’t have tutoring and early in the mornings before class. Patrick doesn’t tell him how much he likes these times, when he sees a different side of Jonny. Cold, polite, and removed Toews is replaced by a fierce, sarcastic, and dynamic Jonny, who skates circles around Patrick but never gives up on teaching him. Patrick approaches the task with the ferocity of a difficult integral in his AP Calculus class. He finds that he’s not just doing this to impress Jonny, and though being able to elicit a rare smile or a word of praise is pretty damn nice, he genuinely wants to see this thing through. Wants to prove to himself that he deserves to be apart of this team.
And Patrick is enchanted by hockey despite himself. He loves learning the plays, the instantaneous analysis of the situation, how there’s no reaction time but what you have between the moment you see what happens and how long it takes you to get there, the intensity that he now understands because he, too, feels it out on the ice.
Though if Tazer could feel the way that his heart thrums when he grabs Patrick’s hips to guide his backward skating, he's sure this whole thing would fall apart.
“This is a good song,” Patrick tells Jonny sincerely, skating up to him at the edge of the rink. It’s late, and they’ve been there for a few hours, so Jonny had decided to allow some chilling out before they left and turned on some music.
“Yeah,” Jonny says. “Jack Johnson is rad.”
“Rad?” Patrick chokes out through his laughter, because, really, rad? “What are you from, the seventies?” Jonny flushes, and Patrick has to hold onto the side of the rink to keep from falling over on his skates.
The next day, when he sits down at lunch, he can’t help but crack up at Jonny’s flush when he tells Jonny, very sincerely, that the cheesecake is rad and he really should give some a try.
It sort of becomes a thing. Sometimes it’s their vocab words, or maybe it’s just words that they hear that hit them right--or, in the loser’s case, wrong. They find words, ones that make the other twitch, and bring them up at unexpected moments. It is, if Patrick is honest with himself, almost as much fun as storming a castle in WoW, because finding weaknesses is Patrick’s specialty.
At lunch, Jonny mentions that Patrick is abetting Shawzy’s illegal activities by discussing the physiological impacts of meth and the dangers to the makers, and Patrick wrinkles his nose on impulse. Abet sounds an awful lot like a bed, which is really where he wishes Jonny would take him. So of course he reacts, and Jonny’s an observant fucker who takes every chance he can for the next week to use the word, even when it totally shouldn’t be used. Patrick did not abet Sharpy in giving homework; point one that abet is not used that way, and point two that Patrick so did not. Patrick may be good at it, but even he doesn’t like homework.
Patrick finds out that superfluous really bothers Jonny, and then, well, obviously many things are truly superfluous, and who is Patrick to deny the world a reminder? He’s really doing everyone a good deed by informing them how superfluous their extra bagels for breakfast are. Patrick’s still in shock at how much hockey players eat.
Sometimes Patrick can work the ones that particularly bother Jonny in when they’re around other people, and that’s some of Patrick’s favourite. Jonny doesn’t really want anyone else to notice that he’s reacting, but Patrick thinks he might be able to read Jonny better than almost anyone else by now. He can always tell.
Patrick gets a little lost in the rhythm of the days, then. Classes, lunches, classes, mathletes or hockey practice, tutoring and skating with Jonny, and then eating his own weight in pasta and crashing.
But then the moment of truth is upon them.
“Game day, bitches!” Crawford shouts at Patrick in the hallway, wearing the douchiest pair of aviators Patrick has ever seen and a huge grin.
Oduya high-fives him in Chem, assuring Patrick that he’ll rock it tonight. And the thing is, Patrick actually feels ready. Nervous, too, of course, but Jonny had taught him well over the past few weeks. His skating’s improved, his shot is more fluid, and he just feels more confident on the ice.
Jonny even gave him the nod of approval the other day. It felt fucking awesome.
So when they board the bus after school to take them across the county, he’s a little off-put by the deadly serious expression on Jonny’s face.
Everyone falls silent when he gets up and faces them from the front of the bus.
“Listen up,” he says, looking kind of wild. Patrick likes the slightly crazy, serial-killer look in his eye. “We’re facing those fuckers who got the drop on us last season during playoffs. And that is not happening this time.”
“We’re playing the Hurricanes, right?” Patrick whispers to Bickell, who nods sagely and replies, “Not just the Hurricanes, but a pair of brothers that Tazer hates with the fire of a thousand burning suns.”
"Those fucking Staals," Jonny snarls from the front, and Bollig actually lets out a growl.
Patrick doesn’t know what he’s supposed to expect when they arrive. A hulking, seething goon with fangs that drip acid?
“Hey guys!” yells a guy as they walk to the visitor’s locker room. Jonny whips his head around and glares. Patrick blinks, because this is Eric Staal? Tall, blonde, the face of a J. Crew christmas catalog?
The Hurricanes’ captain comes up to them with a wide, open smile. “Nice you see you guys again! Looking forward to a good game tonight, eh?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Duncs agrees blandly, because Jonny can’t seem to unclench his jaw.
Behind Eric is an equally beautiful blonde guy, who must be Jordan. Tagging along is a young kid, probably a sophomore, with dimples that flash when he grins and waves. The three of them smile at the ‘Hawks like total dopes.
When they head off to their locker room, Patrick can practically feel Jonny’s intense energy.
“That fucking Viking is not going to win another title,” he fumes, and most of the guys kind of laugh, which Patrick is not sure is the wisest move right now.
Duncs bumps his shoulder and says, “You should have heard him when Zetterberg scored a hat trick while Jonny was in the box.”
Seabs grins and ruffles Jonny’s hair, ignoring his glare. "No worries, Captain. Kaner is our secret weapon."
Patrick makes a face in an attempt to smile, though he’s pretty sure he fails utterly. But it doesn’t bother him much when the guys laugh, because a glance at Jonny reveals that Jonny has that awkwardly constipated look he gets when he looks at Patrick too long. Duncs pats him on the head-- Patrick hates when he does that-- saying, "You'll do great, kid."
The Hurricanes are a good team for a reason, and they compensate for their lack of defense with a hell of a lot of offensive effort. Eric, his brother, and the sophomore are on a line together and seem to skate circles around Patrick. Jonny, by the color of his face, is not happy. He screams at them on the bench and tells Patrick to fucking pass him the puck. Which, he would if he could catch up with the intensity of the game. It’s so much more than practice. The adrenaline, the heart-pounding rush when Patrick spies a chance for a breakaway. The pang of anger when he gets forechecked. It’s more visceral than anything Patrick feels at a Mathletic competition, and he realizes with a jolt that he really, really wants to win this thing. Not just for Jonny, but for him.
So on their next shift he focuses, identifying weaknesses in Semin’s play as he dekes around Oduya, and rushes as he tries to pass to Eric, intercepting the puck and throwing everything he has into a burst of speed that takes him down the length of the ice towards the Hurricane’s goalie. And it’s almost like time slows down, just Patrick’s breaths and the sound of his skates across the ice as he aims and shoots the puck. He watches as it sails past Ward, and hits the back of the net. Sound returns abruptly after that, the roar of the crowd and Patrick has only a moment to take it in before he’s hit by three eager teammates.
“Fuck yeah!” he hears someone scream in his ear.
Patrick feels a rush of happiness, such unadulterated joy as he looks up and sees Jonny beaming down at him. Oh boy, Patrick thinks, accepting the hugs and skating back to the bench. Oh boy.
After that first goal, Patrick doesn’t score any more. The Hurricanes quickly tie up the game and it stays like that for the rest of the first and second period. Fortunately, Shaw manages to get one past Ward late in the third, which proves to be the game-winning goal. Patrick joins his teammates as they spill out onto the ice, knocking helmets with Crow and slapping guys on the shoulder.
"Hey guys! Good game!" Eric Staal yells, and Patrick waves back with a thumbs up until he sees the look on Tazer’s face. Jonny projects smugness so hard Patrick is surprised flames don't shoot out and incinerate Eric, who seems incredibly blithe and unfazed.
Patrick will reflect, later that night in his bed, that it had been the most fun he can remember having in forever.
It’s like the dam has broken and things are infinitely easier between him and Jonny, and by extension, the team. They play more games, winning and losing, but Patrick feels like he’s getting better, really developing a style of play that suits his smaller stature. And he feels more comfortable around the guys, joking and participating in pranks.
But as much as Patrick loves hockey, and loves what it’s brought him, he can’t forget his long term goals. His tutor sessions with Jonny become SAT prep sessions, as deadlines for college applications approach. Jonny, who has remarkably become better at math under Patrick’s careful guidance, displays a casual nonchalance on the topic of his academic future, maintaining that he’s spoken to some scouts and is looking out for a hockey scholarship.
“Why would my grades count if I’m just going to be drafted after a couple of years, anyway?” he tells Patrick after they finish for the day.
“Dude, you don’t know what could happen. You could break every bone in your leg or something! And it’s not like you could live off your body after that, not with a face like yours,” he teases, and then yelps when Jonny hipchecks him into the shelves.
“I’m not worrying about that,” Jonny says. “But, Kaner, you’re actually talented at hockey. You could take a chance and try to play too. Instead of all this,” he waves at Patrick’s pile of SAT prep books. Which, yeah, it’s his third try. He got a 2380 last time, but, you know, perfection is so close. Why not? Patrick grins when he remembers Jonny’s expression when he had told him, the most stone-faced he’s ever appeared.
“You know, you’re not so bad at math yourself, Tazer. Ever thought about joining the Mathletes?”
“When hell freezes over,” is the cool reply, and Kaner snorts.
The fact of the matter is that Patrick knows this friendship with Jonny is weird, and strangely right, but shouldn’t even be happening by the laws of high school and pop culture. It’s because they seem to understand each other so well--their dedication, and passion for what they do--that it complicates Kaner’s feelings, because he knows they’re meant for different things. Once they graduate, what are the chances that hockey superstar (and he knows that Jonny will succeed) Jonathan Toews would want to hang out with MIT super-nerd Patrick Kane?
Patrick puts it out of his mind; instead, he plays hockey, teaches calculus, tries not to stress out about applications, and, most of all, tries (and fails) to ignore the tingles Jonny gives him.
They’re on the bus one day, Patrick sitting comfortably next to Jonny and reading, for once, a book for fun (not for class! Patrick is so excited), and he can’t help but reread his favourite. He really should be using this time to read some Dostoyevsky or something, but he’s been itching for a little romance, okay? Especially what with this big manly idiot who’s been sticking his hands all over Patrick and leaning on him, who checks him into the walls but doesn’t skate away, just holds himself there, pressing Patrick into the wall as he struggles to get free. It’s not like the guy has these big hands that are always warm, even when they’ve been on the ice. All Patrick really wanted to do, he thinks sadly, is do some calculus. And now look at him! On the varsity hockey team!
Patrick’s gotten out of touch with his truly geeky nature, and he knows just the fix.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the main character of this beautiful, artistic novel is stoic and manly, which, wow, that sounds familiar. Apparently Edward is super-skilled physically (check), emotionally disconnected (check), plays the tease by getting his girlfriend horny and failing to capitalise on it (check, though Patrick is not Jonny’s girlfriend, as much as his sisters might disagree), has a crew of intense blood suckers (hockey bros, which are basically the same thing), and runs around taking over everyone else’s lives (it concerns Patrick, really, just how much time he spends with Jonny these days).
Patrick looks up from his book to find Shawzy, Duncs, Seabs, and Bollig all staring at him, faces ranging from wry amusement (Duncs) to concern (Shawzy) to sheer disbelief (Bollig). He frowns. “What?”
Seabs opens his mouth, eyebrows halfway to his hairline, then closes it and shakes his head.
“Kaner, are you actually reading Twilight?”
“Yes,” Patrick sighs. “I do things other than study, you know.”
Bollig still doesn’t seem to believe it. “But Twilight. Are you secretly thirteen?” Patrick feels Jonny shake with a suppressed laugh, and no way. He knows exactly how to impress them with this.
He leans back in his seat, takes a deep breath, and says, “Gentlemen, you do not understand. This book is not a trivial, flighty concern. Instead, this is a literary phenomenon; a sample of religious ideals working their way into the mainstream; spawning the genesis of a worldview and a subculture. This book is filled with the wonders of love and core universal truths that shake readers to their souls. Its juxtaposition of danger and the unholy with the pale goodness of its wan heroine and her equally pallid love interest, who by all rights should be the demon of the story, infuse early-twentieth century superhuman pretentiousness with the indelible, oxymoronic humanity of its Mary Sue-esque narrator.” He takes a moment to breathe and feel smug at Shawzy’s dazed expression; but Patrick’s not done yet. “A story of love that echoes across centuries, continents, and even species. Romanticism, idealism, realism, eroticism.” Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick sees Jonny twitch, and he smirks to himself. “This has it all.”
The guys stare at him for a moment, and Patrick thinks, success. Duncs clears his throat. “Thanks for that, Kaner.” Seabs nods mutely next to him, and as they turn back to their own seats, Seabs buries his face in Duncs’ hood, muttering something about being duped.
“So,” Patrick asks Jonny slyly, “Eroticism?” Jonny’s face contorts before going carefully blank, and Patrick grins. This is gonna be excellent.
Over the next three hours, he manages to work eroticism into their conversation no fewer than eight times. It turns out that even baked potatoes are representative of the true eroticism of the kitchen--they’re very vaginal, Patrick tells Jonny sincerely, as Jonny chokes on his glass of water and kicks him under the table.
Eventually, they get sent up to their rooms, and though it’s a little less scandalous when Jonny doesn’t have to try and hide his reaction from the rest of the guys. It’s not like Jonny’s good at hiding his reactions anyway, because Patrick can always tell, though that may be more because Patrick is really good at reading Jonny by now--but Patrick doesn’t even have to work the word into a sentence anymore.
“Eroticism,” he murmurs, unzipping his bag, and Jonny’s sigh is audible from across the room. He says it again, on his way into the bathroom, and then on the way out. When Jonny brushes past him, in the middle of chirping Jonny about his upcoming math test, when Jonny opens his computer--that one’s actually erotic, sort of. Opening a computer is sexy to some people Patrick knows, though those guys are actually a little weird. Patrick walked in on them testing the manual dexterity of their new robot for the school’s pre-engineering class, and, well.
It was a very skilled robot.
Anyway, eroticism.
Jonny’s a showoff, and likes embarrassing Patrick with his look how hot I am while I walk around the hotel room naked attitude, which is ridiculous for two reasons: one, Patrick really actually does want to look and see how hot Jonny is, and two, let’s be real here, Patrick has been looking pretty studly lately himself. Like, damn. Sharpy may have been right about something, for basically the first time ever.
The point is, Jonny’s walking around in his boxers showing off his abs, and once Patrick gets over the requisite shock over how hot his roommate is, he realises that this is a prime moment to say sexy words about sex around a sexy half-naked dude. Specifically, one word.
Jonny’s brushing his teeth in the bathroom, glaring at his reflection in the mirror like he could see his own soul in his eyes if he stared hard enough, when Patrick casually ambles in behind him and strikes on a sneak attack. “Erot-” he whispers in Jonny’s left ear, then leans over to the right one, “icism.”
Of course, Patrick didn’t count on the reflexes of a hockey player, so he didn’t really expect to be pressed into the counter a half second after finishing the word, Jonny’s hands on his wrists, arms holding Kaner exactly in place.
Jonny huffs out an angry breath, right into Patrick’s face, and he grimaces. “You don’t smell minty fresh just yet,” he tells Jonny. “Should probably brush a little more.”
“Patrick,” Jonny says tightly, and Patrick shuts up and looks at Jonny, hard. He’s flushed, more than he should be from just holding Patrick down--since Patrick is, sadly, not the biggest guy--and Patrick’s almost concerned.
“You okay, dude?” he asks hesitantly, holding Jonny’s thousand volt gaze. It had taken him a while to manage to handle the damn thing; looking into Jonny’s eyes used to make him feel like he was getting tazed. But he’s been working on his stamina--almost up to five minutes now, without popping a boner. He’s been keeping track of it in an spreadsheet on his phone, which is why none of his sisters will ever get through his password.
Jonny shakes his head. “I just can’t deal with that word,” he blurts out, and Patrick is seriously confused.
“I can stop, if you need me to…” he trails off, as Jonny’s breathing gets heavier, and, fuck, he’s right in Patrick’s face, and Jonny shakes his head again, so Patrick opens his mouth to ask Jonny what the hell is going on, because he’s still pressed into the counter, and-
Jonny kisses him.
Patrick nearly falls over, which is pretty impressive given the sheer amount of muscle mass holding him exactly where he is.
Then he kisses back.
It takes a little while, but they decide to move to something that’s not the bathroom so they can make out properly, because the bathroom is, admittedly, not the sexiest of places, and the process of detaching their mouths to do so gives them a moment to talk.
“Well, this is certainly a more erotic ending to my night than I expected,” Patrick muses out loud, falling backwards onto the hotel bed.
“Fucking christ,” Jonny growls from above him. “Did it have to be eroticism? All fucking night?”
Patrick grins. “Yeah. The way you squirm? Fuck yeah.”
Jonny sighs, but it’s not his angry one; more his exasperated but also a little embarrassed sigh. “I had to adjust so many boners, Kaner,” he says and, well, if Patrick wasn’t already so turned on he couldn’t think straight, the thought of that would have knocked him out of the ballpark. Off the ice. Whatever.
Jonny is sucking on his collarbone when Patrick has a moment of inspired truth. Jonny kisses like a train, he realises, and Kaner is Wolverine, claws digging in, just trying to hold on. Kaner likes that metaphor, because Wolverine is pretty fucking cool, and he tells Jonny so.
Jonny is not amused.
After the kiss, things don’t really change that much after all. If Patrick had been worried about Jonny suddenly No-Homo-ing out after the road trip, all of that disappears once they’re back at school, when Jonny winds an arm around Patrick when he sees him at his locker and presses close for a second. “You good?” he asks in that low voice, which, Patrick is such a loser, totally makes him shiver.
“Yeah,” he replies and bumps his hip affectionately.
It’s not like they make out or anything, though Patrick’s pretty secure in his sexuality, figuring that being a hockey-playing mathlete would be pretty hard to top on its own. And for all that Jonny just doesn’t give a fuck about what anything thinks, he’s a pretty private person and the whole school doesn’t need to see their business. So they leave their kissing for those in-between moments: right before lunch ends, when Jonny will drag Patrick under the stairwell near the gym and press him against the wall; that ten minute window before practice starts, when Patrick will make an admirable attempt to give Jonny a hickey; and of course, whenever they decide to take a study break during SAT prep. Jonny’s lips, his hands, his everything proves to be a distraction for Patrick, enough so that the idea of ever not doing anything with Jonny seems abhorrent.
As much as he doesn’t want to think about it, the deadline for applications loom in their midst, screaming for attention in between midterms, mathletes, hockey games and Jonny-time. His parents comment on it a couple of times; how Patrick has so much on his plate.
And here’s the thing: Patrick’s always had a clear idea of what he wanted to do, and where he wanted to be. Senior year was supposed to be simple, just keeping his head down and getting his shit done, and he figured that no one would remember him once he left. But Jonny, and the team, they make him feel like he counts here, in a way he’s never expected. He puts up points, helps the Hawks win, and Q even mentions once that Patrick should consider going for a hockey scholarship. The thought stops him in his tracks, because hockey? This thing that he happens to be good at, this thing that brought him Jonny?
Jonny doesn’t talk about it a lot, but hockey is his future. It’s his dream, and sometimes he seems confused that Patrick’s skill doesn’t automatically translate into him wanting it as his dream too. It’s not like they fight about it or anything, but Jonny gets a little quiet whenever Patrick mentions a college he was looking at, or wants to get his opinion on an edit to his personal statement.
They’re in Patrick’s bedroom, about a week before apps are due, and they’re both still flushed and sweaty from an earlier game that had gone into overtime, which they had won, and then a vigorous makeout session, which they had also won. Jonny’s laying back on Patrick’s bed, toying with his phone while Patrick deliberates out loud whether his essay on Plato’s Republic would make a good writing sample, when Jonny says, out of the blue, “Have you ever thought about sticking around with hockey?”
“What?” Patrick turns to face him, brow furrowed, but Jonny doesn’t look up from his phone, his face fixed into nonchalance. “Like, as a career?”
“Yeah,” continues Jonny, “Q said one of the scouts at the game the other night was asking about you. You could get a scholarship or something. Keep playing.”
“Jonny,” Patrick doesn’t know how to even begin this conversation, but it feels long overdue, for all that they’ve been doing this thing for only a month.
Finally, Jonny looks up and he looks serious, and earnest. “What happens after this summer, Kaner?”
Patrick feels stupid, thinking he was the only one who had considered that this relationship had a clock ticking over it. “I don’t know, man. I guess, we...” He doesn’t know how to end it. Because, really, what does happen? Do they take this thing that’s grown between them and just stamp it out, like it never existed? Does Patrick go from touching, knowing, playing next to this boy, who picked him out from the crowd and saw something inside him that was just waiting to be acknowledged, to never seeing him again apart from the occasional holiday back home? The thought sits sour in his mind.
So he says, “I don’t want this to end,” and lets it hang there, and when he hears, “Me neither,” he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
“So we don’t.” he says, decisively, and really, what do you expect between two eighteen year old bros who have trouble emoting? Patrick definitely feels like he has a soliloquy inside him, in which he rhapsodizes about Jonny’s virtues, his hotness, how he never wants to stop playing hockey with him, even if it’s on weekends when he doesn’t have classes, and how he wants to see Jonny go and kick ass and know that he’ll be in the bleachers cheering, or maybe in the VIP box, whatever, though he refuses to be a WAG and will be bringing home equal bacon, thank you very much...except Patrick’s saying all this out loud and Jonny’s looking stunned, then vaguely cheerful, and then all-out grinning.
“Sounds good, Kaner,” is his only reply, as he drags Patrick out of his chair and into his bed and shows him just how good it does sound.
So Jonny’s there a week later when Patrick presses send on his Common App and watches the screen change to reflect his new status as a college applicant. They’re silent for a moment, and Patrick breathes deep and sees the expanding possibilities in front of him. The East Coast, Boston, and a career in a lab somewhere or teaching math to aspiring scholars. Or, maybe something else. Maybe somewhere closer to where Jonny ends up playing, where he can learn and maybe watch Jonny on the weekends, and track his success into the big leagues.
But who knows, it’s only December. They have a game tomorrow, and one next week, and then it’s winter break. And Jonny, with characteristic imperiousness, announced that they were “definitely going to do it” sometime around then. Which, Patrick is totally down for. Or up for.
So he turns to Jonny and says, “That’s that.” And Jonny grins, ‘cause he’s proud of Patrick, wants to see his success just as much. Whatever happens, they both know they have this year, and all summer to be together. After, that, Kaner’s pretty sure they’ll always be linked.
Next semester, Kaner finally convinces Jonny to join Mathletes.
Given that he’s dating the captain of the team, Jonny really shouldn’t be this nervous about the Mathletic club. Personally, Kaner is looking forward to the role reversal, though he’s not sure how long Jonny’s going to let his authority dominate. But it still takes a superhuman (heh) effort to drag Jonny down into the basement of the math building, and he nearly bolts when Sharpy cackles madly, “Fresh meat!”
A muscle in Jonny's jaw ticks and Kaner takes his hand. Jonny groans. “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” he says.
“Don’t worry, babe,” Kaner grins. “Your reputation as the most masculine dude at this school is secure. ” It's going to be a long semester, but Kaner can't wait.
The End.