Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The bruises that loiter Brad’s skin are nothing new. They set the rookies’ teeth on edge at first, to see exactly how violent this sport can be. Before you make it into the Big Show, getting checked into the boards is usually (usually) not game threatening. But the Big Show is different, the Big Show can be dirty and violent in ways that they knew they signed up for, but when the proof is written into their teammate’s skin, it’s different. It’s visceral.

Brad always looks happy, looks lighter after a solid game of throwing his body against the boards. He looks like he’s floating, like he’s going to slump over in his locker, incapable of taking his own pads off if it weren’t for Patrice’s big palm on the back of Brad’s neck and the low rumble of Patrice’s voice telling him to undress.

The rookies learn to look away real fast. There are some things they don’t need to see.

---

Love is subjective to people, the science says. All you need is to believe you are truly in love and that belief is different in everyone. All that matters is the moment your brain stops and says “Oh shit, I’m in love.”

Brad gets that feeling a lot.

Brad gets that feeling so much his wrist is emblazoned with a line of red marks so long that he’s had to start a second. Some people are disgusted by it, the red-lined truth that Brad falls in love like he changes his hockey gear. When Brad says he loves you, you should never believe him.

Unless, of course, you’re Patrice Bergeron with the big hands and deep voice and can put Brad on his knees with a glance. Unless you’re Patrice Bergeron who owns the only black mark on Brad’s wrist.

Patrice owns this mark because he sees past Brad’s sharp edges. He owns this mark because he knows how Brad operates, because he knows why Brad falls in love so much. There are red marks on Brad’s wrist that came after Patrice’s turned black, but that’s okay. Patrice also knows he’s the only one who can give Brad what he needs.

---

The first time the idea of pain is burned into Brad's skin he is fifteen years old. He's drunk at a party one of his teammates has thrown at their Billet's house while they're away for the weekend. It's just past midnight and the only thing in Brad's body is two granola bars from after the game and too many shots of cheap vodka. All he can feel is the haze of alcohol across his mind, too warm and unbalanced in a way he only is off the ice.

There's a loud whooshing sound from somewhere, a crash and a burn, and Brad jerks, stumbling down the hallway and into the bathroom. He thinks he might throw up. The door closes behind him loudly, too loudly, and he has just enough thought left to lock it.

His wrist is on fire. It takes too many long moments for Brad to realize the sound he heard was only in his head and he fights with his sweatshirt to get the sleeves up to his forearms. There's a red line on his wrist; the first of many. With unsteady fingers, whether from the vodka or his disbelief, Brad reaches out and touches the mark. His hand jerks back just a quickly, pain lancing up his arm and causing his knees to buckle. He leans against the sink for support and stares at himself in the mirror. His eyes are nearly black the pupils are so wide and there are bright red spots on his cheeks, from the pain or the warmth, Brad has no idea.

The feeling doesn't go away. It gets less sharp, but gains depth. It feels like it's trying to seep into his bones, make it so the pain never goes away. Like it will be there for the rest of his life and all he would have to do is press on the mark to make it fresh again.

But who, is the question, did he trick his mind into falling in love with? Was it Ricky's girlfriend with the pretty blonde hair? Or was it Ricky himself, still high off the two goals he scored several hours earlier? Brad doesn't think he'll ever know. He doesn't feel any different. He doesn't feel in love, or like anything has changed; the red mark on his wrist says otherwise. Maybe it doesn't matter who he fell in love with, maybe all that matters is the pain laced through his arm, making its way to his heart in sharp barbs that will make their home there. Brad can't bring himself to find this a bad thing.

It hurts. It hurts like hell, but maybe it's the pain that he's fallen in love with.

---

The pain greets Brad like an old friend twice more before his draft rolls around in July of 2006.

The first is a girl back home in Halifax. Her name is Michelle and she's everything Brad is not: cute and sweet and kind and gentle. He loses his virginity to her and in the aftermath, with his arms curled around her naked body, Brad thinks he falls in love. He grits his teeth against the pain in his wrist, racing up his arm to brand his heart with another love he won't ever pursue. He goes half chub against her thigh and her head tilts up to look at him beneath a curtain of her black hair.

"Already?" She asks laughing.

Brad shrugs, still wracked with pain and his dick getting steadily harder.

"Well, come on, then." She's still laughing as she rolls onto her back and spreads her legs.

His wrist is still on fire by the time they both come. Or, well, Brad does and Michelle fakes it.

It's the first time he thinks that maybe falling in love is worth it.

The second time is a quick hand job between teammates as they share a hotel room on the road. It's Keith Yandle, who Brad can never resist crushing into the boards on the ice for this reason. Brad falls in love in the few moments before he comes. Honestly, Brad thinks he came because he fell in love, the pain in his wrist moving downward this time, straight to his dick. He doesn't have time to warn Keith before he's coming because suddenly, he just is. Brad is in love and his body is cycling between pain and pleasure so fast he can't pick one from the other. He's not sure he even wants to.

Brad never tells anyone he falls in love with them. He walks around with a line of red tallies on his wrist and people stop and gawk and he never has, and never will, care.

---

The first time Brad gets his ass beaten red he's nineteen and still playing in the QMJHL. He doesn’t know the man's name, but he does know the thrill of the whip in the air as it slices through the empty space before landing on his ass. It hurts. It hurts like hell, but it’s different from the pain he's trying to emulate. It's a sharp pain that builds up rather than sinks in; it adds on and on and on until Brad can't take anymore, until he has no option left but to beg and plea for his release.

He keeps going back, again and again, until everyone at the club knows Brad's name and there is a line of men ready to beat him up for their pleasure and his.

By the time October of 2009 rolls around, Brad has found all the good clubs in Boston. He knows that if he's going to play real hockey, with real men, he's going to have to stay at his best. What he's not expecting is to walk into the locker room on his first day in Boston and nearly straight into Zdeno Chara's chest. When their eyes meet a sharp line of pain rushes through Brad's body and he has to will his dick into order so he can bolster his way through a semi-coherent introduction.

So, yeah, he's half in love with his captain. It's not like he's going to do anything about it.

(It's Zee who's going to do something about it, actually.)

Brad scores his first NHL goal a month later and at the bar that night he's so on edge the rest of the guys are staying clear of his wild energy. He wants to be roughed up and taken down, but he can't do that here; not tonight with these men, not in Boston. So, at the end of the night, when what's left of the team is standing outside and waiting for cabs, Zee puts one hulking hand on Brad's shoulder to make him stop fidgeting.. well, Brad stops. He stops and he melts just a little, enough for Zee to notice and catch his other hand under Brad's elbow and hold him upright.

"Do you need to be put down, Brad?" Zee's voice is cold and deep and it hits Brad almost as good as the pain would.

So, of course, Brad goes with Zee into a cab and they ride to his house. The only part of the house Brad sees is the comforter shoved between his teeth as Zee uses his big hands to lance pain through Brad's entire body.

"This won't happen again," Zee says when they're done. He's rubbing lotion into Brad's ass and thighs, mottled red with the force Zee had put behind each hit. "I will not hit you again, do you understand?"

Brad bites his lip and turns his face into the pillow, angry. He's angry he let himself have this, only to have it snatched away.

"Do you understand, Brad?" Zee asks again, one big hand coming to clamp around the back of Brad's neck.

"Yes," Brad sighs, voice softer than it had ever been around Zee.

"Good."

And that is that.

Zee sticks to his promise and doesn't put another hand on Brad again. In fact, he stays away from Brad, as much as he can get away with.

So Brad goes home with women instead. Sometimes he falls in love and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he fucks them, and on a lucky occasion, they fuck him.

But Brad doesn't really fall in love until 2010 when Tyler Seguin reports for training camp.

(When Brad fell in love before, it was just for fun, just for the pain. Nothing about falling in love with Tyler Seguin is fun; Brad will find this out the hard way much later.)

Tyler Seguin is everything that Brad is. Minus the pain kink. It's easy to take the kid under his wing and show him how to drink with the rest of them. It's easy to teach him how to party, to show him how to hang with the big boys. And, it is quite easy to get him into Brad's bed.

Taking Tyler to bed is like.. nothing and everything Brad has felt before. Brad loves Tyler, that much is obvious with the red line on his wrist. But Brad begins to think that maybe Tyler could be it. Maybe Tyler can change him. Or, not really change him, but be enough, maybe. They have enough sex to make anyone jealous and Brad grins with pride any time Tyler undresses in the locker room with hickies on his shoulders and abs that Brad had burned into his skin with his mouth.

None of the team understand it, how Brad can love Tyler when Tyler never takes his own wrist cover off. Tyler didn’t love Brad and they all knew it. But Brad didn’t care. He's used to being alone in his love. He thinks that he'll be okay, as long as he has Tyler and his team.

The day it all comes crashing down around him is the happiest day of Brad's life, forever tainted with a memory he's spent every day since trying to forget.

"Stanley Cup winners, motherfucker!" Brad hollers and crashes into Tyler.

Zee is talking a lap around the ice with the Cup and Brad has his arms around Tyler and Tyler is smiling and Brad is so in love.

"I fucking love you!" He screams into Tyler's face, glowing and jubilant with it, overflowing.

Tyler's face twitches, barely, but Brad can see it. He can see how much Tyler hates hearing that Brad loves him. Brad pulls his arms away from Tyler and turns, turns to anyone who isn't Tyler, and crashes into Patrice. Nice and gentle Patrice Bergeron who wouldn't hurt a fly. Who wouldn't hurt Brad.

---

Brad doesn't fall in love with Patrice right away.

Instead, Brad falls in love with strangers. Some of them in Halifax and some of them in Boston. Brad's line of red tallies grows longer, long enough they have to take a second lap around Brad’s wrist, but they all stay red. For all that Brad has fallen in love, not one of them has loved Brad back. And that's okay with Brad. He's always known he would be hard to love. He's got a certain kind of personality, one that's too big for most people.

(Honestly, he resigned himself to being alone the day they won the Stanley Cup and Tyler's face had flashed with hurt at the idea that Brad could ever love him.)

Brad loves the pain, and the pain will never not love him back.

It takes two more years, a calendar marked 2013, before Brad dares to look at Patrice with love.

Patrice is there for him when Tyler doesn't love Brad, when Tyler is traded and Brad knows it has nothing to do with him, but it still feels like Tyler is running away from the love Brad tried to offer him. Patrice is there every day after that, with a steady hand and a blue Gatorade and a gentle reminder that Brad is worth it.

Brad knows that it's inevitable, that one day a red mark will burn its way through Brad's skin for Patrice and he knows it will hurt worse than Tyler's ever did. Brad isn't sure he ever wants that day to come.

It does come. It comes hotter and sharper than any pain Brad has ever felt in his life and Brad has spent the last ten years chasing that high. He knows pain. But this is one that's never dared to touch Brad before.

How fitting, he thinks, that the mark that belongs to Patrice would burn him this badly. It was just proof of how idiotic he was to ever dare to love Patrice.

But Brad steels himself and looks down. The mark is black and Brad is in love.

---

There are red marks that come after Patrice's black one. But none of them matter, not like Patrice does.

Chapter Text

No one in Patrice's family wears a wrist cover. There are times when Patrice desperately wants to put one on, but he can't disappoint his maman like that. So, Patrice plays hockey, keeps his head down, tries not to fall in love, and is a good son.

Patrice has three marks: two red marks and one that has faded into a barely there grey.

The first mark comes in when Patrice is only a teenager.

When Patrice is seventeen, he dates a girl named Merie. She's everything Quebec that his mother wants for him, French-speaking and beautiful. They date when he plays in the QMAAA and the QJMHL, but once Patrice is drafted to Boston, she breaks up with him. They aren't destined to be, she says, voice soft as she cries in his arms and Patrice is forced to console the girl who has broken his heart. Patrice loves her, fiercely and protectively, but after two years, she couldn't get there and now she never would.

This hurts Patrice. He tells himself she doesn't matter, that the red mark on his wrist can't hurt him, will never hurt him. But it stings like bees in his chest, aggravated every time he takes a breath. He isn't sure it will ever stop hurting.

In Boston, just eighteen years old, and no wrist cover to hide behind, Patrice sports one lone red mark and no one says a thing about it.

In the six seasons between Patrice being drafted and Brad Marchand showing up on Bruins' ice, Patrice falls in love again. Her name is Stephanie and no matter how hard Patrice fights it, he is destined to love her. She's home: easy to love and easy to please. She shows Patrice what a relationship is supposed to be and how to build a home.

Patrice makes a pact with himself, if the Bruins win the Stanley Cup that year then it was a sign he should ask Stephanie to marry him. When they make the playoffs, Patrice buys a ring. It’s a three-carat diamond monstrosity and costs him a cool $36,000 in American dollars. Patrice can afford it; anything for Stephanie. The box stays in his hockey bag, hidden from anywhere she can find it.

No one knows except Zee and Julien that Patrice plans to propose on center ice if they win. And they do win! Julien hands Patrice the box, a steady and on his shoulder and a nod of his head, and then moves on. But before family can even get on the ice, it's their turn with the cup. He takes his lap with the cup and passes if off to Zee, just in time to see Brad crash into Tyler and scream. Patrice can just make out Brad's lips moving, "I fucking love you!"

Tyler doesn't love Brad. The entire team knows that. They know that Tyler will tear Brad to pieces, bright and jubilant Brad, and smother his flame.

In that moment, ring box clutched tight in his fingers, Patrice wants only to protect Brad from all of the bad things in the world. He will never be good enough for Brad, but the idea is nice.

Patrice doesn't end up proposing to Stephanie on center ice. He isn't sure why, but he can't bring himself to do it. He can't hold onto the goddamn ring any longer either, burning his maman's disappointment into his palm.

"So you decide not to ask?" Zee asks, coming up behind Patrice and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"No I - " But Patrice can't finish. He has nothing to say and no explanation to give his captain.

Something in Zee's eyes flicker, changes into a hard line of disbelief, and he reaches out and takes Patrice's hand in his. With Patrice's wrist facing up, he's left only to pray the new red line on his wrist doesn't mean what he thinks it does.

But it does, and he knows that.

In the weeks after the win, Patrice does everything he can to tell himself he's not in love. He drinks more than he should and he tries not to come home at night. He can't go home; he can't look Stephanie in the eyes and tell her he loves her and let her put her hands on his body when his body doesn't belong to only her anymore.

When the celebrations come to a close and the rest of the team leaves for wherever it is they call home in the off season, Patrice takes Stephanie's hands and sits her down in their Boston dining room.

"I'm sorry." It's all Patrice can say. They're the only words he can string together that mean anything other than his heart cracking open and tears spilling from his eyes. He can't do this to her. He can't stay with her and love Brad. It's not fair to her and it's all Patrice's fault. He hates himself more than he knows she will.

"For what?" she asks, voice soft like she knows anything else will spook him.

There are no words for what Patrice has to say. There is nothing that can rewrite this moment in history into something other than just another tragic love story.

Patrice turns his wrist over and closes his eyes. He can't look at it. He can't look at what he's done, at the man he's become.

"I'm sorry."

"Oh."

That's all she has to say. That's all Patrice deserves.

There is no screaming. There is no crying except his own. Stephanie has always been so strong and she doesn't waver now.

"I'm sorry," Patrice says as Stephanie packs her things that night, leaving to stay with her friend in the city.

Stephanie doesn't answer and Patrice doesn't deserve her forgiveness.

When the season starts up again, Patrice has spent every day in between watching the black mark on his wrist die. He's watched the most important person in his life fall out of love with him and it hurts even more than the realization of what's he's done.

The black mark on his wrist fades and the red mark that came after it stays, and Patrice spends the season close to Brad's side, watching the hurt in his eyes bleed out as Tyler's rejection gets less and less raw. All he can do is be there for Brad and try not to break his own heart any more than it is.

Brad tries to ask him once, in the two years in between, why he broke things off with Stephanie. Patrice skirts around the subject and catches Zee's disapproving eyes in the background.

Brad falls in love again and again, but never with Patrice. And that's okay, really. Patrice deserves the pain that comes to him. But it doesn't stop him from wanting Brad to love him. It doesn't stop him from reading every article on BDSM he can find. It doesn't stop him from trying to be the best Dom he can be. It doesn't stop him from filling his spare bedroom with paddles and whips and floggers. Patrice never uses them, only collects them for Brad and knows he'll never need them.

That's okay. It's what he deserves.

---

Patrice's life changes in 2013. It's a nondescript Tuesday afternoon and he hands Brad a blue Gatorade because that's his favorite, even though Patrice hates them. Brad gets this face, the one Patrice has seen enough by now to know it means Brad has fallen in love.

Patrice wonders who it is this time. Surely, it's not him.

It is him, Patrice learns later that day when they're having lunch at his house.

Brad kisses him out of nowhere and when Patrice pulls back, Brad smiles.

"I love you, too," Brad says, reaching out and turning Patrice's wrist over and then holding his own next to it.

"I love you," Patrice says, and tries very hard not to cry.