Chapter Text
They head out on Friday after work. Brad fights him for the window seat on the train, Patrice doesn’t back down, and he gets his way when the conductor tells them off.
Apparently a best of seven series of paper-rock-scissors for who gets the window seat is not an appropriate contest to hold in the hallway of a train car.
“I was winning anyway,” Patrice says with glee when Brad pouts from his inferior aisle seat.
“We’d only gone three rounds,” Brad huffs. “It’s not as if you will get anything out of that seat anyway; you fall asleep the moment you step foot in a moving vehicle.”
“I do not.”
Brad looks at him, to ask really? without words and oh- if looks could kill. Patrice feels marginally guilty about the heist he pulled but not enough to give up his superior seat.
Outside New York is sinking into the night, receding in light and movement, this city that never sleeps. Patrice looks at it almost transfixed, the blur of color breaking through the shroud of the blue-gray dusk outside his window. It pulls and pulls like a summer breeze on a warm afternoon and when has his eyelids grown so heavy-
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” someone, Brad, says next to him.
“Not sleeping not even a little bit,” Patrice objects.
Patrice is a liar.
*
“You are a liar and my entire arm is numb because of you,” Brad complains as he flexes his right arm and handles his suitcase with his left.
“I take no blame,” Patrice retorts. “You could have just pushed me to the other side if you were losing feeling in your arm.”
“Next time I will,” Brad says pointedly, knowing full well he won’t.
*
When they make it to their hotel Patrice has a moment of horror as they check in. Brad is quiet in in the softly lit elevator as pleasant music plays softly from the speakers- even he must be tired. But given who was supposed to be the second person on this trip does it mean-
Brad is small in his arms more so than Patrice expected clinging to him like he is the last source of warmth left in the universe he sighs when Patrice pulls him in closer like he knows he is safe he is and Patrice would move mountains-
Brad taps their key on the door. It opens to reveal the harbor in all its glory, grand and dark and choppy as the wind howls in the distance and- two queen beds.
Of course.
Brad makes a beeline to the one by the window and throws himself on it, claiming it as his.
“It’s not as if you will get anything out of that bed anyway; you fall asleep the moment you put your head down,” Patrice deadpans.
Brad looks at him, betrayal lingering on his prominent features.
“You may be perfect but you are not funny, you know.”
Patrice puts his suitcase down by the foot of the other bed with a chuckle. He lets Brad have this after the trials of the train journey and doesn’t point out how the left corner of Brad’s mouth keeps twitching up in the shadow of a smile.
*
It’s barely light outside when Patrice wakes up. Given how deep they are into the winter that doesn’t say much. Outside the water is gray blue, same color as the clouds that blanket the sky, a siren’s song that if you looked and listened for too long you might not be able to ever look away.
“If you need me up, I will get up,” Brad mumbles. It startles Patrice. He turns around and finds Brad lying on his belly with his cheek plastered against the pillows and his eyes a quarter of the way open as he tries to keep them focused on Patrice.
“No,” Patrice tells him, shutting the curtains, “go back to sleep, it’s too early.”
Brad nods, his eyes fall closed, and he is gone in a heartbeat- but not before he tells Patrice this is exactly why he keeps falling asleep the moment he gets on a car or a train.
He has a point, Patrice supposes. He supposes too that if he asked Brad to get up he would do so right away, no questions asked save a half-hearted complaint or two. It’s a scary amount of power to have over someone.
*
The game is- well it is something.
Patrice is a casual Bruins fan at best. He hasn't cared body and soul for a team since Quebec Nordiques broke his heart as a boy but the crowd in TD Garden is on fire, Brad is buzzing for hours in advance, and it's not difficult for Patrice to get swept in alongside.
Brad looks good like this, jersey pulled over a sweater with the hood sticking out, chirping at the Habs players in ever more creative ways as they warm up in front of them. He is alive, the way he gets at work sometimes when they have a project he can't wait to lay his hands on, but it's different too. It's a side of Brad Patrice has only seen in glimpses before- late nights at the office when he would pull a key game on one of his screens, weekend hangouts with coworkers where he would sneak covert looks at his phone and his face would shrink and expand depending on the word from the game, but never like this, never at his proclaimed center of the world.
As the puck drops Patrice wonders what it would be like to be out there on the ice with Brad, whether they would click. Maybe they would be linemates, Patrice at the center, his preferred position back in the day, and Brad at his wing.
Marchand to Bergeron and he scores! he can almost hear the words in Jack Edwards’ voice with that passion all well scored goals inspire.
Brad skating to his arms with the widest grin on his face, buzzing, drunk with the ecstasy of it all.
A nondescript doctor's office, pain radiating from his knee even though it's been weeks now. Words like a death knell hanging in the sanitized air - I'm afraid you will never play professionally son.
“Fuck. I could have fucking made that save.”
Patrice blinks. The arena has fallen dead quiet around them save for the blotches of red here and there, cheering. He looks up at the jumbotron.
Canadiens 1 - 0 Bruins.
Shit.
“A one goal lead in the first means nothing,” he tells Brad, “we have so much time.”
Except, it doesn't help when the team lets in another right in front of their eyes only a couple minutes later and proceed to play like zombies only partially brought back from the dead.
“If we pull this off,” Brad says at the intermission, with that stubborn strand of hope all sports fans cling to in the face of reason and proclaimed indifference, “I’m gonna-” He throws his hands in the air; a little bit of beer splashes out at the motion.
“Admit you are shorter than Torey?”
“I am not shorter than Torey.”
Patrice can see him thinking as they make their way back to their section. They have discussed this before. The way sacrifices to hockey gods work, your offering needs to be personal and inconvenience you in some non-trivial way. You must commit to it, and sometimes, sometimes the gods listen. This game means a lot, so the sacrifice must be to scale.
Brad stops abruptly a few feet from the entrance. Patrice stops with him.
“I know.” Brad says slowly, through gritted teeth, eyes fixed squarely on Patrice, his expression impossible to read.
Keep on a shirt at all instances for a year, even when you are working out? Patrice doesn’t ask, because in the next moment Brad says-
“If they fight their way out of this hole I will confess my feelings to my crush.”
“Oh.”
The word escapes Patrice’s throat against his will. That he did not see coming. “Yeah,” he says when he recovers, “that seems like a worthy offering.”
He did not realize Brad had a crush.
*
“What’s he like?” Patrice asks, having gulped down most of his beer.
The timing is bad, the rules around inter-office dating at their firm are byzantine, he is 90% sure this trip was originally planned as a romantic getaway with Nate, and when Brad first asked him to come Patrice still thought up a goal. Engineered by the first line, a thing of beauty that catches the Habs like deer in headlights. The arena a wildfire.
And Brad-
Brad’s eyes are fixed firmly on the unmitigated disaster on the ice.
His eyes wild with ecstacy, and it’s so easy to throw arms around his neck and draw him in.
“Who?”
The arena is on fire around them and so are Brad’s lips, his essence, as Patrice draws all of it in.
The Bruins goalie makes a last ditch save.
“Your crush.”
Brad nearly jumps out of his skin.
Two forces pulling at each other like gravity, like destiny.
“Ah,” he says a second later, “It doesn’t matter since-” he gestures vaguely at the ice, to say there is no way in hell hockey gods are taking me up on that offer.
Patrice nods.
*
None of it matters in the end.
Bruins have a few good looks and even pull back one with a couple of minutes left in the game but can’t finish the job. Patrice wonders what it would be like if they did, but that doesn’t matter either.
*
The thing is, it’s easy with Brad.
It’s easy to banter and laugh and argue over whether Mike’s is better than Modern only to end up going to both. Almost easy enough to forget the heartache, misplaced and quiet in his chest, wandering through the city that was their home for the blink of an eye, even though they didn’t even know the other existed back then.
He takes Brad to his favorite cafe in Harvard square the next day, after they check out of the hotel. Fairy lights in their multitude bounce off from the mirrors and give the place an otherworldly air. They get a seat in the corner and he buys Brad a slice of their chocolate lemon cake he used to spend money he didn’t have on back in college.
Brad loves the cake - four years of college and Brad has never been here before - they share another joke or two and then it’s time to go.
*
He lets Brad have the window seat on the way back. Or rather, Brad shoulders him out of the way, throws himself in the window seat, and grins sweetly at Patrice with triumph but it’s really because Patrice has chosen to take the high road.
“Least you can do is admit when you are beat,” Brad tells him, still grinning.
“Is that what you do?” Patrice laughs. It really is not. Brad will ask for a rematch and then another the second he knows he can’t cheat his way out of a defeat.
Brad grins at him. “Always,” he says with a wink.
The train pulls out of South Station. Outside the last light of the day is fading out, like summer in September. Boston looks the same as when he first came here years ago and changed, foreign. They haven’t even made it to Back Bay yet and like clockwork Patrice can feel a weight pulling on his eyelids. Maybe Brad had a point yesterday after all.
“Hey,” he says, nudging Brad on the arm and pulling him away from daydreams of his own from the looks of it.
“Thank you for inviting me. I had a lot of fun.”
Brad shrugs. “Well,” he says, “it was to thank you for looking after me and it’s not like I- I would have cancelled this trip had it not been for. I’m glad.”
There are three small stains on the carpeting, three circles forming an uneven triangle. Someone must have spilled their coffee, because they were hurrying out of their seat to not to miss their stop or because they were careless.
What he is going to say next isn’t easy but it’s right and Patrice has never let it stop him before.
“Your crush. I think you should tell him how you feel. I know it didn’t work out with Nate but- any guy would be lucky to have you.”
“Yeah, about that-” Brad says, swallowing thickly. “I was kind of bummed when they didn’t manage a comeback yesterday.”
“What would you have done if they did?”
Brad barks out a laugh at that, harsh and surprised. The sun makes its way down from behind a cloud and washes the train car in violent, dying light. It gives Brad a halo and colors his cheeks crimson, makes him look almost shy when he looks down.
“You would say come on Brad fulfill your promise and give your crush a call, and I would turn around and say well I don’t need to.”
He looks up. He looks gorgeous backlit against the dying light, hopeful, nervous.
Patrice’s heart sings at the sight, at what Brad is saying. His heartache is a physical thing melting away, dissolving into the tracks they leave behind with each passing second.
“And why would you do that?”
“Oh come on!” Brad protests before launching into a rambling monologue. “Look, I know okay. I know the timing is shit and the last thing I want is for this to be a rebound and HR already hates you which means we would have to sneak around and you could do oh so much better than me and do you even- maybe it’s just because you are that good of a person and kind to everyone and don’t even get me-”
Patrice finds his hand resting on his thigh puts his own over it. He wanted to hear Brad say the words but it seems cruel now, Brad is so scared, hurt almost. Brad stops at the touch, almost flinches back in surprise.
“I’m not,” Patrice says, “I am not that kind to everyone. Just to you.”
“Oh,” Brad says, echoing Patrice’s reaction from the day before but it seems light years away.
For once, this time around Patrice gets to lean in and find Brad’s lips with his own, delight in the sound he makes when he deepens the kiss.
He would fight Tracy from HR, and stacked odds, and the entire roster of the Canadiens if he had to for Brad.
He would fight the world.
*
“I can’t believe we just got together and you still fell asleep,” Brad says flexing the arm Patrice used as his personal pillow. Brad really does make a great pillow and it was even better this time as fingers carded through his hair as he was drifting off.
“I was just resting my eyes.”
Brad shakes his head. “A relationship built on lies is doomed to fail from the start,” he says as they are getting off the train.
Relationship.
Patrice decides he could get used to the sound of that.