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Jonny doesn’t call Patrick the day articles first start springing up all over the blogosphere, and he doesn’t call him the day after, or the day after that. He doesn’t call as soon as he hangs up the phone from talking to their agent, the team’s PR people, and the guys who call him because they can’t get a hold of Patrick. He doesn’t call when he wakes up and finds his phone in his hand, thumb already scrolling past the j’s before he’s even totally awake.
Jonny spends his mornings running and working out, and he fills as many hours through to the evening with fishing trips and rounds of golf as his social circle in Winnipeg will allow. He’s got more than enough family and friends in the area to easily make it through a week of barely having a minute to himself, and he enjoys each day thoroughly.
Summers like this are everything Jonny never thought to dream of when he was a kid.
When he was smaller, all he wanted to do was leave here knowing he’d earned his place somewhere else. Winnipeg was about hard work, and every single effort, and Jonny looks back on it all with hard, fond pride. He did what he needed to do, and he wasn’t lonely as a child, but he was alone in his purpose, solitary and focused in ways that he needed to be, because no-one else was.
As an adult, he’s lonely, and about as far from alone as he could get.
Winnipeg is earned relief, now. The chance to come home and rest. He maintains everything he’s fought to win, but he’s not fighting anymore, not here. He’s surrounded by people who care about him, people happy to see him and grateful for the chance to spend time together, and Jonny revels in that. He returns grins and doles out hearty back slaps, signs every jersey tugged taut for his signature and eats a little more of his mother’s cuisine than he’s strictly allowed to. He spends every hour of daylight that he can outside, setting memories of the sun warm on his skin and the breeze cool against his forearms alongside the cold, heavy days of his childhood. Some days are cooler, and he knows they’re heading into weeks of cold. High winds and rain and maybe even snow, if he’s lucky. Jonny will spend as many hours outdoors as he can, then, too, because that’s what being back here is about. Freedom. Dependence on nothing but what he chooses for himself. The opportunity to completely hide from what he needs in everything he already has - everything he’s always had and always will have.
If Patrick were here, if he were around or if they were speaking regularly, he’d say that Jonny uses his summers to replenish his ‘Canadianness’. He’d say it with a smile in his voice, his teasing tone only half joking, and Jonny would huff a laugh just to hear the stretch of Patrick’s grin across whatever territory Patrick’s scathing commentary of Winnipeg covered next.
Way back before the concussion, before their losing streak, some time just after Christmas, Jonny had asked Patrick to come here, to come home with him when their season ended. At the time, he’d thought about bringing Patrick and the cup back to Winnipeg, and he’d thought that that could be like everything else he’s ever wanted - earned, eventually. Attainable through the hard work and determination the outcome warranted.
Patrick had said yes, Jonny thinks, but he’d been laughing before he finished his sentence and then someone was pulling his attention away from Jonny and what Jonny wanted and asked for, and Jonny doesn’t know if he was ever serious.
He supposes it doesn’t matter all that much. He’s here without Patrick, without the cup, and he’ll get another shot at at least one of those things.
----
It’s not the constant questions that finally make Jonny call. It’s not his anger, or his confusion, or even the niggling suspicion that he shouldn’t be confused at all. He doesn’t call to get everyone off his back about it, or because he wants to give Patrick a piece of his mind. He doesn’t call to lecture, or to extend any kind of offer of support or understanding.
When Jonny calls Patrick at 2am on a Monday morning, knowing it’s an hour later in Buffalo, it’s because he misses the sound of his voice.
----
“I didn’t think you were gonna call,” Patrick says, sounding wide awake and forgoing the preamble of a greeting or small talk.
It shouldn’t take Jonny by surprise, not anymore, but it does after everything that’s happened.
“Uh .. I …. rough week, huh?”
Patrick snorts, and it’s a harsh sound, unusually sharp and loud, but achingly familiar all the same. Jonny rolls onto his side, reaching out to click the lamp on his bedside table off, and then setting his phone on the pillow beside his, switching to speakerphone. Relief and exhaustion flood his body, and he closes his eyes, finally falling boneless in his bed.
“Rough life, Tazer. We can’t all be Captain Jonathan Tayves, Canada’s golden boy, Chicago’s hero, etcetera.”
It stings a little to hear Patrick call him ‘Tazer’, but that’s a thought that Jonny is quick to try and dismiss. Just because there are times when Jonny needs to call Patrick not as his teammate, not as his winger, not as his colleague or his responsibility or even his friend … that doesn’t mean there’s a time when Jonny is anything else to Patrick.
Patrick is silent, then, but he’s not waiting for Jonny to reply because he has to know that Jonny won’t. Not until Patrick actually speaks to him.
They’re both quiet for a moment, Jonny listening to Patrick breathe and Patrick probably dismissing each and every thing it occurs to him to say until he finds something he really doesn’t want to say. Those are the things that he needs Jonny to hear.
“I know I’ve been kind of dumb this summer. Probably for a lot longer than that. But I knew I was doing dumb things. That’s better than not knowing, right?”
Patrick’s voice gets smaller as the sentence continues, quieter as his confidence wanes. Jonny has never known Patrick to doubt himself, and he didn’t think this would be the catalyst for it. This was a dumb way to do things, but Patrick hasn’t done anything wrong. So Jonny can’t understand why Patrick let it appear otherwise.
“It wasn’t dumb, Pat. Poorly executed, maybe,” Patrick huffs a little laugh at that, and Jonny has to squeeze his eyes closed even harder, “but why’d you do it if you knew this is what would happen?”
Patrick is silent again, thinking, and Jonny misses him so much right then that it hurts like a physical thing, like something buried deep inside him instead of missing, far too far away.
“I wasn’t thinking about what would happen after. I was just thinking that I wanted to do some dumb things. It’s not like smart things get me anywhere, so the alternative seemed kind of inviting.”
Jonny is the one to laugh at that. Lying there with his eyes closed, listening to Patrick speak, he laughs like he hasn’t all summer - easily.
“So you were acting out, eh? That’s all it was? Jeez, Pat, buy another mansion or something. You couldn’t have done something that wouldn’t land you in trouble with the team?”
“They’ve signed you up for the long distance lecture series on ‘The Trouble With Kaner’ too, huh?”
It’s supposed to be a joke, and they both know it, but Patrick’s tone turns defensive at the end, bitter even. He hates it when Jonny is dialed in on whatever’s going on with him like it’s automatically Jonny’s problem too. Jonny wishes Patrick would realize that it’s kind of exactly like that. And not because it has to be, but because Jonny wants it to be.
“I’m not worried about you, Pat,” Jonny is able to say and mean, and he’s sure Patrick will appreciate the out, the opportunity to skim right over the week Jonny has had trying to field and fend off questions about this from every angle. The last thing Patrick needs is something else to feel guilty for.
But Patrick doesn’t take the chance to start right in on wherever they’d last left off in their ongoing exploration of Patrick’s stream of consciousness.
Jonny wasn’t really expecting it to be that easy.
“So why did you call?” Patrick asks, and Jonny shifts onto his back, lies looking at the ceiling instead of facing the phone, because he can’t even manage that much.
“Just checking in, bud. Making sure everything’s cool.” Even Jonny winces at the forced nonchalance in his own voice.
When Patrick snorts this time it’s instant and obnoxious and it’s not music to Jonny’s ears or anything, but it does make him smile at his own ceiling like a complete tool.
“Captainly duties run on through the off-season, huh? Tough break, man.”
Jonny is distinctly uncomfortable now. Patrick isn’t hockey, or his family, or the media. He’s not easy or transparent or unconditionally there. Jonny hardly ever knows what Patrick wants him to say, and that would make things hard enough even without the added complication that Jonny has no clue what he wants to say himself. It’s territory he’s navigated time and time again, but the terrain changes on every pass - footpaths get washed away and Jonny has to find his way again, starting over from the beginning each and every time. But he always makes the journey. He never opts to stay away instead.
“I’m not calling you as your captain,” Jonny starts, and isn’t in the least bit surprised when Patrick can’t resist interjecting with, “so this isn’t my captain speaking?” and keeps going as if he hadn’t heard him.
“I’m not calling because I have to, Kaner.”
“So you’re what - calling because you want to?”
Patrick makes it seem easy. He can say whatever it is that it occurs to him to say, whether it’s appropriate or relevant or welcomed. Not everything he says is what he really means, but he means everything he says, and Jonny envies that sometimes.
“Yeah, I wanted to,” Jonny admits, and his voice is rough around the words, sounding like they hurt him to say because maybe they do. Maybe they should.
“Why?” Patrick asks in an instant, and Jonny really doesn’t envy how quickly he can react and respond to everything thrown his way, because Jonny could really use some time to think, here.
“I … I wanted to speak to you. I wanted to hear your voice.”
Patrick doesn’t say anything, and Jonny thinks he’s gone too far. He doesn’t know where the line between ‘too far’ and ‘not far enough’ lies, but even when he works up the courage to shoot for ‘just far enough’ he thinks he’s overshot. Maybe the problem is that nothing he will ever say can ever be enough. Maybe this is one he can’t win. Trying is hard as it is - it’s the hardest thing he ever does. But he won’t stop, even if he’s never really sure that he deserves to find himself holding what he wants as his.
“I just wanted to talk to you, Pat. We haven’t talked all summer.”
“And why is that, do you think?”
Jonny is confused by the question, aggravated by the suggestion.
“It’s not my responsibility to call you, Kaner. You could have called me, you know.”
Patrick’s laugh at that is a wretched, horrible thing.
“Right. Because I get what I want? I get to say and do what I want without repercussion? The onus is on me to lead this team, to lead us?”
“Kaner we’re not talking about hockey right now, this isn’t about the team.”
Patrick sighs.
“We’re always talking about hockey, Tazer. Even when we’re not.”
“What are you saying, Pat? That because I’m the captain out there, I have to be the captain here, too?”
“I’m saying … I’m saying that you don’t know how to not be captain, Jonny. What would have happened if I’d called you a week ago, or a week before that? Don’t try and tell me you’d have taken my calls if you hadn’t felt like it. If it hadn’t been what you wanted.”
The thing is - Jonny knows that’s true. He knows that he’s not quick to give up control, or turn it down when it’s within reach. He’s not proud of it, he didn’t set out to win it, but the ability to lead is something that others have always seen in him. Jonny doesn’t know how to walk away from challenge, or give up opportunities.
So he takes this one as it’s offered.
“I wanted you to come here with me, Patrick. I asked. What else was I supposed to do? What did I fail to do?”
Jonny honestly wants to know, because he wants to be better at this. He wants Kaner to show him how.
Patrick’s silence is one of surprise, this time.
“But you … that was months ago. Before. Before we fucked up, before you fucked up, before I fucked up. Why would you still want that? How could you think I would still think that you wanted that?”
The strange, painful mixture of anger and hurt confusion in Patrick’s voice makes Jonny ache, it makes him sorry for something he doesn’t even know how to put into words or define. He’s so sorry that this is what they’ve become, and that he didn’t see it as it happened.
He sees their mistake now. And he won’t look away again until it’s fixed.
“I still wanted that, Pat. I still want it. I’m always gonna want it.”
“But what are … Jonny. Jonny, wait. I don’t … what are you saying right now?”
Jonny smiles, even though his heart is kicking a pulse against his ribs that’s echoing through every bone in his body. His head is swimming and he feels sick, sad and sorry but so determined to change that. To change this.
“If I’d offered to come to Buffalo with you, would you have let me?”
“Yes. Obviously,” Patrick says, and Jonny wants to laugh, maybe so he doesn’t do something super embarrassing like cry instead.
“What if I wanted to come out there now?”
“Why would you, though? I wouldn’t ask you to do that. Why would you want to?”
“Patrick, why do you think I asked you to come to Winnipeg?”
“I don’t know, because you’re obnoxiously proud of that place? You wanted to try and prove me wrong about how lame it is? I don’t get where you’re going with this, Tazer, what has me going to Winnipeg got to do with you coming to Buffalo and what have either of those things got in common with me being an out of control lout, because I’ve seriously lost the thread of this lecture and I’m not comfortable with being lost during my own scolding, okay.”
“Pat, what they have in common is us. Both of us. In the same place. Any place. Just … together.”
And that has to be over the line. It has to be. Jonny holds his breath, and he almost wishes he could want to take it back, but he can’t. He means it.
“Ah,” is Patrick’s response, and it’s pretty lacklustre if you ask Jonny.
“‘Ah’!? Patrick, do you understand what I’m saying? Are you listening to me?”
Jonny sits up now, terrified that he’s going to have to repeat everything he just tried to say, and maybe in a way that makes what he was trying to say clearer, which he doesn’t know he’s capable of.
“Yeah. I’m kind of pissed that you chose 4am on a Monday when I’m in national disrepute to bust out your declaration of real feelings, but I’m listening.”
Patrick is kind of an asshole, and Jonny is kind of in love with him, but he’s pretty confident they’re going to be okay, anyway.
“Come to Winnipeg, Pat,” Jonny says, not wincing at the way his voice goes soft and sounds so full of emotion, because that’s exactly how he feels and it’s not like he has an easy time making the two correlate.
“Fuck you, you come to Buffalo,” is Patrick’s counter.
“Okay,” Jonny agrees, because he will if Patrick will let him.
“Wait, really?”
Jonny rolls his eyes.
“If that’s what you want,” he says, because he figures he no longer has to try so hard to hide how easy he is for Patrick when that’s basically the only time anything about him is easy.
Patrick laughs, and Jonny misses him, but it’s not so bad now that he knows he’ll get to see him soon.
“Nah, I’ll come there. Buffalo is kinda cramping my style, it’s time to take this show on the road.”
It’s a gesture, buried under a thick and graceless layer of pretense and bravado. So classic Patrick, in other words.
“‘Kay. Call me from the airport so I can come pick you up?”
“You bet your ass I will. Do they even have cars in Winterpeg? If you get held up should I hop on a buggy?”
Patrick really is an asshole, but Jonny loves him anyway.
“Are you always going to be like this?”
“Oh no,” Patrick says gravely, “I hope to eventually become much, much worse. But hey, you’re into that, right?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Jonny says, even though he knows Kaner will hear that he’s smiling.
“Cool. Ditto and whatnot.”
“Goodnight, Patrick. See you soon, yeah?”
“Yeah. ‘Night, Jonny,” Patrick says, and Jonny falls asleep with his phone still on his pillow, Patrick’s entry in his contacts still pulled up on the screen.
----
When he wakes up late the next morning, Jonny has two texts, one telling him that Patrick is due to arrive in two hours, and one that says:
So r u nervous about finally making out after like 5yrs or no?
Jonny rolls his eyes and doesn’t reply, putting his phone in the pocket of the jeans he pulls on and looking for the nearest shirt he can find. The airport is only an hour’s drive in the worst kind of traffic, but he’d rather sit around there than sit around here.
If five years hasn’t killed him, an extra hour won’t.
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