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It’s because of an email Patrick sends Jonny while he was in Switzerland.
It’s two pictures of him and Tyler Seguin pointing at some building. The pictures are blurry and Patrick’s eyes are closed in both of them, but what really makes it click in Jonny's head is the caption.
“Wish you were here with me so you could tell me the history of this building and scoff at me like it’s common knowledge to know about some weird Swiss building that the Swiss probably don’t even know about.”
And Jonny realizes, literally, at the moment he finishes reading that - somewhat rude - sentence, that he's probably loved Patrick Kane for about as long as he's known him.
God. This is just great.
If you wanted him to, Jonny could list off ten things quick that he hates about Patrick Kane.
One, Patrick sings along to songs in the car constantly, but he always gets the words wrong. Because he listens to things terribly, Jonny's voice being a prime example.
Another recent, prime example: Pompeii by Bastille.
Patrick will sing the words wrong while he's in the car, the shower, the bathroom, while he’s making coffee, while he’s getting dressed, while he's walking, while he's talking to people, even.
He usually sings it when he's around Jonny, but Jonny's not really ready to admit that the two have any correlation - yet.
Patrick’s tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel to the beat and then belts, “How am I gonna be an octopus about this?” with a very huge (and very ridiculous) smile plastered on his face whenever the chorus comes up. He turns his smile over to Jonny occasionally - who is huddled into the corner of Patrick's car, staring at him. This is the fifth song he's sang along to during this ride. Insisting on listening to "Royals" for two of those. He at least gets those words right.
It takes about twenty seconds into this song for Jonny to snap.
“Kaner -” Jonny slams his hand down on Patrick’s thigh in an attempt to get him to stop before he can sing again. “It’s: How am I gonna be an optimist about this? He sings it perfectly fucking clear -”
“What? No, Jonny. It’s ‘octopus’. Clearly. Clearly.” He scoffs at him, like Jonny’s the biggest idiot he’s ever encountered. He goes back to tapping out the beat and bobbing his head.
It's funny, because even when Jonny shoves his phone in Patrick’s face with the correct lyrics up, he’ll still push Jonny's hand down and sing the song the wrong way.
(Jonny thinks Patrick sings the wrong lyrics louder after he does this, but.
But he’s not paying that close attention to Patrick’s lips.)
(He totally is.)
(He totally loves him - wait. Loves it, it.)
/
Patrick can’t crack an egg to save his life. He always ends up getting at least two pieces of the shell in the mixture? Which, like - come on. It’s not that hard. Cracking an egg? God, how does Patrick survive on his own?
(He doesn’t really, but that’s another reason entirely, honestly.)
Jonny watches Patrick carefully move the egg around from one hand to the other. He’s stalling before he has to do it. Maybe he has performance anxiety right now, but the evidence of his professional hockey career shows that he's never really been one of those kinds of people.
Maybe it's Jonny.
Who groans loudly from his perch on the countertop. “Patrick. It’s not that hard.”
“It’s not that hard,” Patrick parrots back. “I can do it. I can do it. It’s just.” He pauses and looks to Jonny with big, round eyes.
Jonny rolls his own back at him, whatever he’s thinking in his head, whatever he's about to tell Jonny, will be good.
“Don’t you ever think that this could have been a little baby bird? And we’re gonna eat it now? What if he was gonna be, like, President Chicken and lower chicken taxes.” He cups the egg in both of his hands and frowns at Jonny.
Jonny snorts. “You realize chickens can lay unfertilized eggs? As in, they just lay them to lay them, with no babies inside,” he says this as he hops off the counter, walking to stand behind Patrick who is still holding the eggs out. He lowers his hands, though, when Jonny approaches.
"Turn around," Jonny orders him as he manhandles Patrick's hips to face the counter, in a good enough position where he can reach around Patrick’s “not small, aerodynamic” torso and put Patrick’s “not small, skilled” hands in his own “big and bearlike paws”.
“Just watch,” Jonny says quietly as he moves Patrick's fingers around the egg correctly, he knocks it twice on the counter, pauses before he breaks the egg - dramatic effect - then cracks it perfectly into the bowl and says, “Voila,” in Patrick’s ear.
“Show off.” Patrick elbows him in the stomach, but he’s smiling at the bowl nonetheless.
(So is Jonny. But his smile is aimed more at the back of his head.)
He lets go of Patrick’s hands and only blushes later about it when they’re eating the cupcakes on Patrick’s couch watching reruns of Top Chef.
(Truthfully, and don’t tell anyone this, Jonny really hadn’t stopped smiling and occasionally blushing since he got to Patrick’s house four hours earlier and Patrick announced they were going to the store so they could make cupcakes because he was watching Cake Boss and they had made, “The most freakin’ awesome looking ones, Jonny.”)
\
Third thing on Jonny's list is that Patrick isn’t really good at remembering to wash his socks. Or any clothes in general? And you’d think, that someone who has lived on his own for a very big portion of his life, that by now at twenty-five, he would have remembering to do his laundry down.
But, no. You would be wrong.
Maybe you were only wrong because you assumed that adults, you know, bill-paying, career-having, living alone grown-up humans, had some sort of idea of when to do their laundry.
Then again, there’s a very big part of the human population, Jonny assumes, that don’t have specialized laundry days during the week. (What a scary thought.)
“I don’t get it,” Jonny says, trying to suss out this sock situation. They’re standing in Patrick’s bedroom - well, Jonny’s standing, Patrick’s sitting on the edge of his bed with one black sock on his right foot and three mismatched ones surrounding him. “You don’t have any matching socks?”
“It’s not that.” Sounding quite petulant, Patrick tries to explain further, “It’s like, I just lose them? And yeah, this is all I have currently. Currently. That’s not to say that there aren’t many matching socks around here. It’s just, at this exact moment, I have no other socks matching this one in particular.”
Jonny's hmm sounds super patronizing. “Maybe if you actually did your laundry, you wouldn’t have this problem. Especially thirty minutes before dinner.”
Patrick ignores Jonny’s comment and tilts his head to the left. “You... You wouldn’t happen to have an extra pair of socks? Like, hidden somewhere in my apartment that I don’t know about? That I can borrow?”
He sounds… actually hopeful about this ludicrous proposal, which makes Jonny feel just that much better about shooting it down.
“No. And you’re ridiculous.” He crosses his arms and leans his head on the doorframe - maybe he’s smiling at the idiot sitting in front of him struggling to put on one of the white socks. So what.
Patrick stands up and puts his hands on his hips. “Yeah, but you still love me either way.”
Jonny doesn't correct him, which is mistake number one, and mistake number two is almost telling him that no one’s going to be looking at his feet when for whatever reason Patrick actually looks better than decent tonight - but he keeps his mouth shut.
Because a bigheaded Patrick is the last thing anyone needs.
(Maybe Patrick leans over into Jonny’s face-space later at dinner to whisper a little too close to Jonny’s ear that, “You’re the only one who knows my socks don’t match,” and for some reason the hand Patrick's got on his thigh, the way his lips smile after he finishes those words make Jonny’s cheeks flush red like the Canadian flag.)
\
Four, Patrick loves pickles.
Which is just gross in general. So obviously that’s on the list.
\
The fifth thing on Jonny’s list about Patrick (that is starting to sound a lot like a list of things he likes about Patrick) is that he hogs the covers.
Jonny shouldn’t really be bothered as much by this as he is, (because he actually isn’t bothered by this at all) but, alas, here it is on the list.
Patrick does this thing where if he spends the night at Jonny’s place, he’ll ask for as many blankets as he can before Jonny yells at him or gives him what he wants - which turns out to be the most obvious thing in the world: Sleeping in Jonny’s bed.
“You have four, Pat. Four blankets.” Jonny points out to Patrick as he picks up some of the pillowcases Pat threw on the ground in his toddler-like attempt of scouring through Jonny’s linen closet for “that one blanket with the hockey pucks on it, Jonny” that doesn’t actually exist in Jonny’s possession.
Anymore.
Because he gave it to Patrick two years ago.
“Yeah, but,” Pat crosses his arms and mumbles almost to himself, “it’s cold in your guest bedroom.”
He has a point, but four blankets should be - a pillow falls back onto Jonny’s head from trying to cram everything back in and, in frustration, he just blurts, “Why don’t you just sleep in my room?”
Patrick drops one of his blankets and blinks up at Jonny. “Your… Your room?”
Jonny goes quiet for a moment and stares back at him.
“Yeah, my room.”
“Okay,” he says in a small voice, not looking directly at Jonny’s face. But Jonny can’t help but crack a smile at him, then automatically Patrick’s face breaks in two when he sees Jonny’s smile and, honestly, Patrick beams back at him.
Jonny’s never seen a smile quite as perfect as Patrick’s - it’s all lopsided, lazy, goofy and pure happiness all at the same time. Like, he’s happy, really happy that he gets to smile at you.
(Jonny’s also never seen Patrick smile at anyone else the way he does at him, so. So.)
They lay down in Jonny’s bed a little bit later. After Jonny’s convinced Patrick to drop all but one of the blankets, after they’re done bumping elbows as they brushed their teeth in Jonny’s bathroom, and after Patrick’s explained to Jonny how weird it is to sleep with socks on.
“You okay?” Jonny asks when he turns off his bedside lamp and settles back into his spot.
They’re close to each other - like, Jonny isn’t actually touching Patrick at all, but knowing that he’s next to him is making his stomach feel light and his cheeks are flushed out.
He’s really thankful it’s pitch black in his room.
Patrick hums, warm and content next to him. “Perfect.”
/
Jonny wakes up later that night.
Freezing. Fucking. Cold.
He pats around his sides for his blanket, thinking in his half-asleep brain that he must’ve just pushed them off himself? But when his hand hits a hard, breathing lump an inch from him, aka Patrick’s stomach, he remembers that he actually invited Patrick to sleep in his bed.
And though that would be a good idea.
He silently freaks out for a second. Because, uh, shit? He told Patrick to sleep in the same bed as him. Why… Why did he think that was okay?
What’s Patrick gonna do when he wakes up? Oh, god, what if Patrick blinks awake, smiles up at Jonny with even more half-lidded eyes than usual, and says, “Goodmorning,” to him, but it’s all groggy and hoarse and - Jesus. Jonny won’t be able to resist that.
Not that he’s gonna do anything - just -
Just he hasn't fully come to terms with the fact that he loves Patrick. Jonny thinks admitting to loving him is different from whatever this is - "this" being thinking about Patrick a lot of the time he's conscious, wondering what he's up to when he's not texting Jonny, you know, wondering if he's happy and smiling and who is making him smile if it's not Jonny. It's really complicated in Jonny's head right now.
A moment later, Patrick stirs in his sleep and slings an arm around Jonny’s waist, quickly buries his head into Jonny’s ribs and takes a very long deep breath in. He sounds content and happy sleeping and it pisses Jonny off - but in the way that you get pissed at a bunny for eating your flowers? In that, this is really cute, why am I even mad? way. Like, the bunny's just doing it to eat and Patrick's just doing it to sleep... comfortably?
He’s got Jonny’s comforter wrapped around his torso and the blanket he kept with him covering the top half of his body - except the arm he has on Jonny, he’s all bundled up. His stupid, blonde hair is a little matted down in the back, similar to how it looks when he takes his helmet off.
He’s also got a little drool dried on his left cheek.
Basically, he looks about six years old when he’s asleep.
Fuck.
It’s not cute. It really isn’t. It’s not endearing or anything, like the way Patrick actually hums in his sleep when Jonny rests his hand down on Patrick’s arm isn’t making Jonny blush, okay. It really isn’t.
Like, Patrick’s loud and gross most of the time he’s conscious? Why does he have to be quiet and soft when he’s sleeping? It’s really rude, honestly. He’s gonna hear about it when he wakes up.
Jonny strains his neck to see the clock to determine when that will be, but it’s only 4 am. Which means they have about… four hours more to sleep before they have to be awake and getting ready for practice. Luckily, four hours is enough time for Jonny to prepare his speech about how annoying Patrick is when he’s asleep.
Patrick lifts his head up from Jonny’s chest and croaks out, “Jonny? You awake?”
“No,” Jonny replies quickly, then he can feel Patrick’s body vibrate from him laughing.
“Okay. G’night.”
He doesn’t say anything when Patrick wakes up.
Probably because Patrick wakes up before him (because he fell asleep pretty quickly after everything - Pat’s really warm and cuddly, and yeah, whatever) and makes them coffee and eggs. Maybe also because Pat smiles really, really big when Jonny walks into his kitchen and sits down.
“Hey.”
Jonny smiles down at the counter. “You sleep like a little kid,” slips out in a pretty soft tone, which he maybe was going for?
So Patrick takes it in the good way and sets Jonny’s plate down in front of him.
“Eat up, buttercup.”
/
Six, Patrick hates bugs.
That’s not the bad thing, many people hate bugs. Patrick’s problem is a little more deep and psychological.
He hates them, but won’t kill them.
“Jonny - it’s. It’s the size of your head.”
Jonny ignores that comment and sighs into his phone. “Patrick, just kill it. It won’t hate you.”
“What? Kill it? Are you kidding me? What if its little bug family is missing it right now? And they send a search party out and find its dead body, its dead body, Jonny, on my kitchen floor. They’re gonna be, like, so sad. I can’t be held accountable for that type of family devastation. Not at my age.” The sound of a chair falling down comes over the line, a squawk a second later and Jonny sighs again.
“Jonny, I’m on the counter. Save me.”
“Jesus. I’ll be over in five minutes.” He wipes a hand down his face and presses the elevator down button. Because, you know, as soon as Patrick called and said there was a bug in his condo, Jonny was walking out his front door.
He gets to Patrick’s place and the door is open.
“Kaner, do you want someone to rob you?” Jonny calls as he walks in.
Patrick screams, “I’m the only one on this floor! Except this bug. The bug is somewhere on my floor. And you now.”
Jonny walks into the kitchen and sees Patrick perched on his counter kicking his heels against the cabinets, grin plastered on his stupid face.
Somehow, he grins bigger at Jonny when he walks in. “Hi. He’s over there. It’s only been three minutes.”
“Four. You counting?” Jonny grabs the paper towel and looks over his shoulder to Pat. "What if it's a girl bug?"
Patrick bites at his lip, smiling from behind it. “Every second.”
The head-sized bug turns out to be a ladybug.
“Really, it looked bigger when I walked by it.” Patrick crosses his arms from behind Jonny as he flushes the paper down the toilet. (He had named it "Crosby" after Jonny killed it.)
“Yeah? This wasn’t just an excuse for me to come over?” Jonny turns around and puts a hand on his hip.
Patrick huffs. “Like I need one. You’d come over anyway.”
Jonny really wants to dispute it - has enough energy to fight about it with Patrick until they both fall asleep on the couch a few hours later, but for some reason he just lets his arm drop, shakes his head and smiles to him.
He says, finally defeated, after all these years, “What if I would? Come over anyway. What if I would.”
Patrick sucks in a breath, then exhales slowly through every word, “I’d say… I wish you’d never leave.”
Jonny groans. “That was so cheesy, Kaner. That the best you got?” He crosses his arms and taps his foot on the bathroom floor.
Patrick giggles like a teenager. “You surprised me. Give me a few minutes. I’ll think of something better.”
“You mean worse,” Jonny corrects.
Patrick’s laugh sounds purely fake offended. “You’re no better. What if I would?” He mocks him back, then they're laugh together in Patrick's bathroom.
“You know I like you, right?” Jonny kicks his toes against the tile and thinks about everything that makes this the worst possible place to confess his feelings.
Patrick nods his head. “Duh.”
Jonny scoffs, just as fake offended as Patrick was. “Don’t give me that. You like me, too.”
“Duh,” Patrick repeats himself.
“Duh.” Jonny parrots. “Duh.”
Patrick grabs Jonny’s wrist and pulls him out of the bathroom.
He says, “You chose my bathroom to tell me you loved me. After you flushed a bug I named Crosby down the toilet. I want you to remember this.” He leads them walking backwards out of the bathroom and to his couch.
And really, first of all, how is Jonny gonna ever forget, and second of all, when the moment presents itself, blah blah blah - he was going with the flow, so Patrick can shut up.
“Where would you rather me have said it? Here on your couch? Did you want Radiohead playing in the background?”
“Preferably, after you hand me a beer, or a taco, you look into my eyes, just as the beginning chords of High and Dry by Radiohead start to play somewhere in the background, and you just say, ‘Patrick… I,’” he waves his hands around in the air and clutches them together onto his chest, "'like you enough to kill bugs for you whenever you ask.'"
“Oh, shut up.” Jonny leans into his space and grabs his jaw in one hand, commanding Patricks attention. He really does look into his eyes though, which makes, “I don't just like you, I think I like-love you, you little shit,” just the right amount of perfect and cheesy.
“I know.” Pat manages to keep smiling even with Jonny squeezing his cheeks. “I like-love you, too.”
“I know you do." Jonny smirks and licks his lips.
“I used to hate when you did that.” Patrick says suddenly, in reference to Jonny licking his lips. “Then I realized you did it when you looked at me, so now I love it.”
Jonny does it again. “Weird. I still hate when you talk right before I’m gonna kiss you.”
“I’ll shut up.” Patrick’s eyes flick down to Jonny’s lips. “I promise.”
“Good.”
/
Jonny thinks he can hear Patrick calling his name. Well, actually he can hear Patrick calling him, but he's really comfy on the couch right now, so until -
"Jonnnnnnnnnnnny," Patrick's voice echos down the hall, "I know you can hear me, so come here."
He throws one leg off the couch onto the ground and yells back, "Why do I have to?"
It's silent for a second. "Because I have a surprise for you. It's not anything USA related," he adds quickly.
Jonny stands up and walks to the bathroom where Pat's voice is coming from and knocks on the door.
He hears a muttered shit and then Patrick calls, "I'm not ready yet. I didn't think you'd come this quickly." There's a noise of something hard falling onto the floor, another shit, and then Patrick creaks the door open. "You love me, so. You're not allowed to get mad."
Jonny puts his hand on the door and presses, "Kaner, what are you -"
The door swings open and Patrick's shirtless, which isn't new or anything, but his hand is held over one place on his torso and he's blushing like crazy.
"Remember two days ago, when I went out with Segs and then last night when you wanted to do it, but I wouldn't let you, uh, take my clothes off?" Jonny's brows furrow and he can't stop thinking the worse thing possible right now - "Okay, well. He was talking about Boston and then said something about his... tattoo. And. Well, I was drunk, Jonny -"
Jonny's heart stops sinking and he sighs in relief. "Pat, I know you got a tattoo."
"What?" Patrick squawks. "How?"
"We took a shower together yesterday."
Patrick laughs awkwardly and lets his hand drop and uncover the tattoo on his abdomen. The tattoo isn't really anything special, just the dates of their cup wins printed out in neat lettering and a little graphic of the cup underneath them.
Or at least, that's all Jonny thought it was.
"Pat, what's that part?" He points to underneath the cup, where there's "JT PK" in little letters and the numbers 19 and 88 laid out in black ink on Patrick's skin.
"That's us, Jonny," Pat mutters, rubbing his finger around on the counter top, avoiding eye contact.
Jonny stares at the letters for a few more seconds - before he's barreling into Patrick and Patrick's lips.
"I'm not getting a tattoo of your face," Jonny mumbles when they pull apart a minute later.
Patrick giggles and bites his lip. "No. No tattoos for you, you're too clean."
Too clean. "Too clean?"
"Too pure."
Jonny rolls his eyes (and his hips) at Patrick, whose own eyes lull back for a second. "Funny. You didn't say I was too clean last Monday."
Patrick doesn't even respond, just goes half-limp in Jonny's hands and pushes back at Jonny's lips.
The tattoo is nice. Even if Seguin inspired it.