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1.
Patrick hadn't realized Jonny was going to tell the team, but maybe he shouldn't be surprised. Jonny's pretty much the dictionary definition of a straight-shooter.
Straight-shooter. Heh. Not that Patrick will ever think that about Jonny again, not without a smirk on his face.
But. The point is, Patrick wasn't expecting the post-morning-skate Captain Serious Pep Talk to end like this, even if he probably should have.
"Also, on a. Um. Personal note. Kaner – Patrick – and I are together. Dating. Not that I expect that to impact us as a team, or on the ice. But. If anyone has an issue with that, feel free to talk to me about it." Jonny's eyebrows say, Feel free to fuck off and die. Then again, that's pretty much their normal state.
"Or me, if you'd rather!" Patrick adds, just to be helpful. Jonny's great at some things – OK, he's great at lots of things – but sometimes he's not the most approachable guy ever. It's probably those eyebrows.
Jonny gives him the "you're not helping" look, which Patrick ignores as a matter of course. Before he can say anything else, though, Sharpy breaks in.
"So our fearless leader worked up the nerve to ask? Good for you guys!" He winks broadly at Jonny while wrapping an arm around Patrick's neck. Patrick makes gagging noises, while Jonny shifts his glare to Sharpy. Sharpy continues, undaunted. "C'mon, Peekaboo. Details! Did he sweep you off your feet with wine and roses? Did he hold your hand at the movies? Did he get on his knees and declare his undying loooooove?" He grins down at Patrick, then adds, "Whatever you do, don't put out before the third date. You don't want him to think you're easy."
The entire locker room is laughing now. Patrick doesn't know why he likes these assholes.
The thing is, they're not completely wrong. Well, they're wrong about the wine and roses, thank God, and about the movies, although that might change someday. But the sit-down-and-declare strategy is Jonny through and through, and Patrick can admit that's probably a good thing. His own "ignore your inconvenient crush even as it grows into something bigger and scarier" approach had lacked a few key elements.
So on top of the stupidly bubbling joy he's still feeling about all this, Patrick's also kind of grateful that Jonny had the balls to make a move. Not that he'll ever say so, of course. But to put it all out there, to put everything on the line like that….
"Kaner – Patrick. Pat. I wanna talk about something." Jonny sat at the end of Patrick's bed, just out of arm's reach, as determinedly calm as Patrick had ever seen him.
Patrick turned the TV off, then set the remote down and leaned back against the headboard. It was the last night of a road trip, and he couldn't think of anything that had happened to make Jonny so… focused. He waved a hand, trying to look encouraging, and Jonny took a deep breath and stared carefully down at his own knees.
"So. I don't know if you already know this, but I'm bisexual," he started. Patrick felt his mouth drop open, knew he was gaping at Jonny like an idiot but couldn't seem to do anything else. Jonny, still talking in a carefully detached tone, refused to look up.
By the time he finished, Jonny's voice was a little less steady, his words a little more rushed. "If you aren't interested, that's fine. Of course. And we can just – stay like we are, or I can back off, if you want. I just wanted to say something. Because I do like you. Like I said, I guess. A lot."
Patrick was sure he was wearing the world's most incredulous, idiotic smile when Jonny finally looked up. But Jonny didn't seem to mind.
2.
It's fucking freezing. In fucking Dallas.
Patrick huddles next to Jonny as they all head back to the hotel. It's only about four blocks from the bar, so nobody drove. And it wasn't so bad earlier – chilly, OK, but Patrick wore a hoodie, and he's from Buffalo. What Texas considers cold is probably still beach weather.
Patrick can see his breath now. Texas fucking sucks.
He tries to walk a little faster, but the guys are taking their time, chatting and laughing. Patrick stuffs his hands in his pockets, and absolutely refuses to cross his arms or hunch his back. Next to him Jonny pauses, then shrugs his leather jacket off and drops it over Patrick's shoulders.
"Shut up." Patrick hasn't even opened his mouth to protest yet, has barely had time to look back up at Jonny, but Jonny's already got his I'm-not-arguing-this face on. Well, OK, if he wants to be Mr. Self-Sacrificing then Patrick's not going to fight it. He pushes his arms through the sleeves, which are just long enough that they also cover his freezing knuckles. He absolutely does not lean into the collar where it's warm from Jonny's breath.
Crow, walking on Patrick's other side, chuckles. Jonny raises an eyebrow at him, half question, half challenge. Crow elbows Patrick with a grin. "So things must be getting serious, huh? Or is that just if he gives you his letter jacket?"
Patrick tries to bat his eyes, then gives it up for a lost cause and settles for just using a high, fluttery voice. "Ooh, maybe it'll be his fraternity pin next. I hear that's, like, engaged-to-be-engaged, right?"
Crow snorts, and elbows Patrick again. Jonny is silent, though; Patrick sees that his jaw is even more tightly clenched than usual and a flush is creeping up the back of his neck. He decides to let the subject drop, at least for now.
Back at the hotel, Patrick turns on Jonny as soon as they're alone. "Hey – did that shit really bother you?" He's careful to keep his face open, his tone non-confrontational. If Jonny's already got a stick up his (very fine) ass about this, there's no reason to make it worse.
But Jonny mutters, "No. It's fine." His ears are still red, his eyes bright as they skip away from Patrick's, then back, then away again.
Patrick snuggles deeper into the coat, thinking. It's warm enough in the hotel room, but Jonny's coat is fucking awesome. It smells good, it feels good, and Patrick may just steal it despite the too-long sleeves. But – he frowns up at Jonny, still puzzled. "Crow was just fucking with us a little bit. That's all."
"Dammit, Pat, I'm not mad about it!" Jonny's eyes snap back to Patrick's and hold them, dark and fierce, even as his cheeks get redder. He takes a half-step forward, and suddenly Patrick gets it.
"You like it, don't you?" He pushes up against Jonny's chest, grins smugly against Jonny's clenched jaw. "It turns you on, seeing me wear your stuff. Maybe even having people notice it, huh? Territorial much?" Jonny's actually growling now, which – hot damn.
Patrick pushes up on his toes so he's whispering warm against Jonny's ear. "You know what? I like it too. I love that it was warm from your body, and just a bit too big, and that it smelled like that stupid body spray you use." He lets his lips brush the edges of Jonny's ear, and feels Jonny's entire body quiver against his. "But right now, I think I'd really like you to take your coat off me. If that's all right with you, Mr. Caveman Instincts." He rocks back on his heels and waggles his eyebrows helpfully, and Jonny growls again. Score.
3.
They're all chilling at someone's apartment, and for whatever reason it's taken Patrick an hour to talk Duncs into playing Mario Kart. So it's utterly, infuriatingly wrong that Patrick now seems to be losing. He grits his teeth, curses as he somehow falls further behind, and then leans over to strategically jostle an elbow.
"You little asshole! That's cheating!"
Patrick dodges a halfhearted return swipe, and justifies his actions. "Nuh-uhh, fuckface!"
"Cocksucker." Duncan rolls his eyes.
Patrick's barely opened his mouth to rebut when he hears one of the rookies squeak from behind them. He turns around, not bothering to pause the game, and sees the kid staring wide-eyed at Duncs.
"Did you just… I mean… you can't say that!" Okay, hardly the most coherent objection ever, but Patrick actually does follow it. Appreciates it, even, although in this case it's unnecessary.
"Hang on a sec," he says to Duncan, and then turns all the way around to face the kid fully. "I get your point, and in general it's a good point. But this…. This is like when Sharpy called me a shit-for-brains little whiner, earlier. If he'd actually meant it – "
"Fuck you, I meant every word of it!"
"Whatever. If he'd meant it in a bad way, that would be different. But he didn't. And he knew that, and I knew that, and everyone here knew that, so it was cool. Same goes here."
The rookie still looks skeptical, though, so Patrick takes a breath and tries to explain it better. "Duncs is the first guy on the team I came out to, okay? I trust him." That's true, although it's also an oversimplification; Patrick hadn't meant to come out yet at all. But Patrick had been drunk, the kind of drunk that either ends in soul-baring or in tears. And Duncan has a way of just sitting still and listening, when he wants to. It's super-intense. In hindsight, Patrick suspects that whole evening may have been a setup. "Do you know what he said?"
The kid shakes his head, cautious now.
"He gave me a hug and said, 'That's cool, Peeks. You're going to be OK.' And then he made me drink enough water that I wouldn't be too hung over the next day. And a week later he came up to me after practice and said, 'And let me know if I ever need to break someone's face.' And that was that." Patrick has actually never been sure if that last part was a serious offer; he figures he's lucky that he's never had to consider it.
"So when he calls me a cocksucker, I figure it's a compliment." Patrick half-turns back towards Duncs, and wiggles his eyebrows as obnoxiously as he can. "Because it's true – I suck a fine cock." He can practically hear Jonny blushing judgmentally in the kitchen, which should not even be possible. "And I do a damn fine job of it, if I do say so myself."
Sharpy rolls his eyes. "We're sure you do, Peekaboo. Thanks for that."
"But if we're going to be fair," Patrick says, because this opportunity is too good to pass up, "I don't know why I'm the one who always gets the credit here. I mean, I'm good, of course. I'm real good. But Captain Serious over there has no gag reflex whatsoever, I am very happy to tell you."
Jonny, just to prove him wrong, immediately chokes on his kale chips.
4.
It was a stupid argument.
No, it wasn't even an argument. It was a stupid freakout. It was his own stupid freakout, his own overreaction, and Patrick knows it.
It isn't even like he doesn't want to move in. He sleeps at Jonny's practically all the time now, has a toothbrush and clothes and his own kind of shampoo and everything. And it's good, has been good for months, and it's still getting better.
So of course this morning Jonny had looked at Patrick across the kitchen table and said, "You should move in. Like, for real." And Patrick had lost his shit.
He hadn't even known what was wrong at first – just that his breath felt caught in his lungs, his mind stuck in frozen panic. Whenever that had happened before in relationships, it had meant get out. So he stammered out something unconvincing, grabbed his keys, left his phone and everything else on the table, and drove back to his own place in a daze.
He had tried really hard not to think about the look on Jonny's face.
Now, hours later, the knot in his chest is an entirely different kind. He knows why he ran, he knows he's fine now, but he also knows it was a shitty thing to do to Jonny. All he can do is suck it up and apologize, and hope Jonny can forgive him. Except he doesn't even know how to apologize, not for real, not for something big. Patrick hasn't had much practice with functional relationships, which is possibly the root of today's epic fuckup.
So he's sneaking in early, well before practice, so he can be here when Jonny arrives at his usual way-too-early time. This is neutral territory, and maybe that will help. He's halfway back to the locker room when he hears voices, realizes one of them is Jonny's.
"…don't know what I did! Maybe I pushed too hard? I didn't mean to push." Jonny sounds halfway between confused and miserable, and Patrick hates that he caused that. He shouldn't be listening, but he can't make his feet move yet.
"Tazer – Jonny. Calm down." It's Seabrook, and Patrick relaxes a little bit. Of all the people to talk to, Seabrook's a good choice. "Boyfriend lesson number one: apologize. Seriously, it doesn't matter if you think you did anything wrong or not – start by apologizing. You were wrong, they were right. Work out the details later, but if you want to talk, that's your best bet."
Patrick takes it back. Seabrook's heart is in the right place, but his advice is for shit. Patrick's offended on Jonny's behalf, and he's halfway into the room before he even realizes he's decided to move. Seabs's eyebrows are raised, and Patrick can't even describe the look on Jonny's face. He starts in before either of them can open their mouths again.
"Fuck that shit." They both start to talk, and Patrick keeps right on going. "No, seriously. Fuck. That. Shit. It's not Jonny's fault that I panicked, and he doesn't have to apologize for the fact that I ran away and hid like a two-year-old having a temper tantrum." Seabrook looks thoughtful, now, but Patrick ignores him to watch Jonny, whose face is turning tentatively hopeful.
"I'm sorry I bolted. Everything sort of came together at once – it was real, and huge, and whenever that's happened before it's always meant that I was in over my head. So that's why I – yeah. But this is different." He makes himself pause, breathe, and look Jonny in the eye as he continues. This is about explaining, not making excuses.
"I got to my place, and I paced around like an idiot until the adrenaline spike wore off." Patrick shrugs wryly. "And then I thought about it without panicking, and… we're good. You and me. We're great together. So, this is serious, this is big, but that's a good thing. I mean, if I haven't fucked it all up now." Jonny opens his mouth again, but Patrick keeps going. "And I mean it – I really thought for a while, about everything. We're important, this is important. I'm sorry I didn't take my phone, though, and didn't tell you where I was going or anything. I know that's not cool. But I got a bunch of my stuff boxed up while I was thinking, and I can start moving some of it over after practice. Um, if the offer still stands."
Seabs, in the background, says, "I stand corrected. And I'm getting out of here while the lovefest is still G-rated." Patrick ignores him, though; he's too busy watching the smile that's stretching across Jonny's face.
5.
Patrick's expecting some chirping from the guys after he and Jonny send the wedding invitations out. So it's no surprise when Shawzy takes the bait, calling across the locker room as they all finish changing after a game.
"It's too bad you guys are going for casual – I was looking forward to seeing Kaner in a poofy white dress!" The accompanying leer is as cheerfully lecherous as Shawzy knows how to be, which is plenty.
Patrick gives a shake of his hips as he gets his belt on and buckles it. "Better me than you, jerkface. This smoking hot bod looks great in anything." He smirks in response to Shawzy's eyeroll, and jumps in before Shawzy can voice his skepticism. "Or nothing at all, amirite?" He waggles his eyebrows suggestively and turns toward Jonny's stall as he says it. Jonny's talking seriously to Crow, though, and is no help at all. But Shawzy's pretending to gag now, so Patrick still counts this as a win.
Later, at home, Jonny turns to him while they're finishing dinner. "Does it bother you?"
"…does what bother me? Come on, I know you know how to talk like a real person."
Jonny's Serious Look switches to his Disapproving Look, and then back. Patrick's proud of himself for being able to follow all that. He grins, waiting.
"Does it bother you that the guys sometimes act like you're… I don't know. The girl, or something? Or girly, I guess. In terms of our relationship."
And Patrick does know what he means, but this isn't a simple yes-or-no question. He hums, taking a minute to get his thoughts together.
"Not really, but kind of? Or maybe yes, a little bit, but probably not in the way you mean." Jonny nods slightly, waiting for more. "They mostly don't mean it, of course. And the last thing I want to do is look like I'm defensive about us being together, because I'm not. Plus, it seems kind of wrong to get butt-hurt about it – like, what, the woman is automatically the weak one in a relationship or something? If someone tried that bullshit on any of my sisters, I'd want to rip him a new one, but I don't think I'd need to once the girls were through with him."
That's not all, and it's not the best explanation ever, but Jonny nods like he gets it. Which is good, since Patrick doesn't know what else to say.
"But at the same time..." Jonny starts.
"Yeah," Patrick says with a shrug.
"They're our friends and they're good guys, but they can be a bunch of juvenile idiots sometimes. And I wouldn't mind a chance to shake up their narrow little worldview a bit." Jonny nods decisively, like the matter is now settled.
"Well, if you find a chance, I'll follow your lead." Patrick grins at him. "After all, everyone knows you wear the pants around here."
+1
"So, do you both plan to keep your names?" JoEllen, the wedding planner, marks something off on her tablet and sits back to look at Patrick and Jonny. "Or were you thinking of hyphenating, or something different?"
Even casual weddings, it turns out, require a fuckton of planning. JoEllen is Patrick's new favorite person, because she takes care of all the details he and Jonny would never have thought of. This is just the latest example, and by now she's very familiar with their "uh, what?" faces.
"I… guess so? I mean, we hadn't actually talked about it, but – " Patrick looks over at Jonny, who looks a lot more interested in this question than Patrick would have expected. "Jonny?"
"We haven't decided yet, not for sure. Does it change anything?"
JoEllen is already shaking her head reassuringly. "Not at all, not unless you'd like your married names included in the ceremony. Some couples do – 'I now present to you Jonathan and Patrick Kane-Toews,' for instance. But it's less and less common."
"Good." Jonny nods absently, looking thoughtful. "We'll let you know if that's the case. What's next?"
Patrick hopes whatever's next involves food. Breakfast was a long time ago.
After JoEllen leaves, Jonny goes for a run and then talks to his parents on the phone, while Patrick spends some time lifting and then orders dinner. He and Jonny end up on the sofa together, talking over the earlier meeting as they eat. Eventually the subject makes its way to name changes, or lack-of-name-changes, and –
At first, Patrick thinks Jonny's joking. But Jonny's gaze is as steady as ever, with just a hint of gleeful challenge behind those laser-beam eyes.
"No, seriously. I mean it, Pat. No matter what we do, it's not like either one of us is going to have to fight for name recognition. So that's not a factor." For a moment he almost looks shy, then he adds, "And I kind of like the idea of both of us having the same name. I don't really care which name it is, I just like that we'd both have it."
Patrick reaches down and twines the fingers of their free hands together, squeezes fiercely. He wants to say something, but everything he can think of is stupidly, nauseatingly sweet.
"And also." Jonny's eyes are still intense, but they're starting to crinkle at the corners with a suppressed grin. "Just think of the looks on the guys' faces, if we don't tell them ahead of time, and they see the jerseys – "
God, Patrick loves this man so much.
It's surprisingly easy to keep it out of the press.
Not the wedding, of course. But that was a lost cause from the start, and everyone involved pretty much has to deal with it. Patrick's ready to nominate at least three members of the PR team for sainthood, although there's one he'd also like to strangle some days.
But the name thing – that's the part they hardly have to try to play down. All of the paperwork, from the license to the invitations to the certificate itself, is filled out using their existing legal names. Jonny's going to have to file lots of other paperwork afterwards, of course, to get a new passport and driver's license and everything – but that takes time, and goes through mostly confidential channels.
It's not like they're even trying to keep it quiet; the wedding is taking place during the season, so everyone will know when the roster is posted for the first game after they're married. That still gives them about two days, though, to quietly tell anyone they'd like to know first.
Or not tell, in some cases.
They have to get the equipment guys in on it, and of course management gets told ahead of time. Jonny talks seriously about his brother versus Patrick's sisters, the importance of carrying on family names, the concept of legacy. Patrick listens and tries not to crack a smile. Jonny finishes by explaining that he and Patrick are happy with their decision, but that they'd appreciate the chance to tell the team in their own way, after the wedding takes place.
Jonny's Serious Business expression is a thing of wonder and beauty, and Patrick wants to kiss it off of his freakishly handsome face.
For some reason, Patrick just assumed that someone would notice Jonny's sweater first.
They're all changing for morning skate, and as Patrick shrugs the new practice jersey over his head he hears a startled Huh behind him. He turns around to see Shawzy, frowning thoughtfully .
"I thought you weren't changing your name, Kaner." Patrick can practically see the wheels turning, but it's clear that Shawzy hasn't yet come to any conclusion, much less the correct one. Patrick shrugs, as casually as possible.
"Nope, I didn't." He turns back to his stall, although it almost feels like the "P. KANE" on his back is glowing now. Next someone's going to ask – but his train of thought is derailed by a bark of laughter from next to Jonny's stall.
"Seriously? Seriously?!"
"Jesus christ, are you shitting me?"
"Tazer, you didn't."
Jonny pauses, still facing his stall, back to the team. Then he deliberately stretches his arms out to either side, clearly showing off the "J. KANE" written across his shoulders. Patrick is unprepared for the rush of emotion that washes over him, and he's suddenly glad that nobody in the room is looking at him right now.
When Jonny's sure he has everyone's undivided attention, he turns around to face the team. His chin is up and his posture is proud, and his smiling face is as smug as Patrick has ever seen it. "What's the big deal? I'm just trying to do you idiots a favor – this is a name even Sharpy can't mispronounce!"
The ensuing chaos is the best wedding present Patrick could ever have imagined.