"Find Me." (Hockey RPF) PG
Title: Find Me. (On Archive Of Our Own)
Author:
lannamichaels
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Pairing: Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Rating: PG
A/N: Patrick's quest key comes at the absolute worst time.
Summary: For my AU: Magic square in Trope Bingo Round 4. Much thanks to #yuletide chat.
1.
Patrick's quest key comes at the absolute worst time. He's boarding the plane to Sochi and there it is in his pocket next to his wallet. At first he wonders if he's encountered the world's weirdest reverse pick-pocket and then he gets a better look at the key. It's a pretty normal key, but it's ice cold in his hand and has the words 'find me' written across the top. Great, a magical quest, just what he needed right now.
He squints and then tries closing one eye and then the other. The key stays the same. Ugh. If he were going to get a magical key, he'd've hoped for something ornate, maybe one of those wrought iron keys people in movies keep finding, or something simple and homemade, like the one his cousin has that's made mostly out of bended paperclips. But lucky lucky Patrick got something that probably just fits a filing cabinet somewhere, not a magical box of treasures or a music box that plays only Aerosmith backwards.
All right, Patrick sighs terribly, if this is to be his fate, his fate is gonna have to wait. The plane hasn't taken off yet, so he texts his mom to ask if she's lost anything in a filing cabinet or if there are any secret family filing cabinet mysteries, and then he puts his phone away. Whatever his super awesome mysterious magical quest is, it can wait until after the Olympics.
2.
Yeah, it doesn't wait until after the Olympics. He's hanging out with Kessel and mentions that he picked up some extra hardware of the magical variety at the airport, and by dinner time, it's all over the hockey side of the village. Patrick should've seen this one coming. He has random Russian players taking him to the side to give him inscrutable advice (something about a Firebird?????? Patrick doesn't want to know, he flunked this class at school for a reason, okay), and half the American team shuts up whenever Patrick walks into a room. Real inconspicuous, guys.
Johnny just shows up. "Let me see it," he demands.
"What? No!" Patrick clutches the key hard in his pocket. It may not be the greatest key in the world and, shut up, he knows these things can survive fucking atmospheric re-entry, Johnny touching it isn't going to do anything to it, but it's Patrick's key and he's going to protect the little dude. It's the principle of the thing.
"Come on," Johnny says.
Patrick glares at Johnny. "Nope," he says, popping the 'p'. "Talk to me when we get home and then okay."
Johnny's look softens somewhat. "I'm not the enemy, Kaner," he points out sensibly.
Patrick would break the news to him kindly, but Johnny's being stupid. "You kinda are," he says. "Sorry, gotta get to practice!" And he runs out the door.
3.
Some Canadian conferencing must happen, because the next day, Sharpy sits down next to Patrick at the cafeteria.
"Ugh, fine," Patrick says before Sharpy can say anything. He takes the key out of his pocket and puts it on the table. Sharpy moves like he's gonna touch it, but Patrick glares at him. No touching. "Something lost wants to be found. It's probably ten years of tax returns, though."
Sharpy's bending his head to get a good look at the key without touching it. He spends a long time looking at the inscription. Dude, it looks like it was written by a type-writer. It's totally tax returns.
"It's too long to be a filing cabinet," Sharpy replies, much to Patrick's indignation.
"What, do you have a filing cabinet?" Patrick asks.
Sharpy looks at Patrick like Patrick is an idiot. "Yes, because I'm an adult," Sharpy says. He fishes his keys out of his pocket and shows Patrick a small key. "That's a filing cabinet key." Why is Sharpy carrying that in Sochi? He could lose it. That's just irresponsible. You don't see Patrick waving around the key to his parents' house. Sharpy is the one being a bad adult here.
"You're gonna lose that," Patrick says.
"We have spares," Sharpy shrugs, and, yeah, totally a bad adult. "But, hey, your key is interesting. It's a weird size. You look at it and you think it'll fit something small and portable, and it says right there 'find me', so something's lost, right? But it's too big for any small safes, and these days they're all combination locks or other things that won't take a key, so some asshole on the street can't just walk in and get all your cool stuff just because he happened to find a key. And it's not a safe deposit key, they're totally different, my mom found one of those when I was ten. Your key is a mystery. Not handmade, so you can't try to track down the artisan. If it didn't have your quest on it, I'd say someone left their room key in your drink."
"I found it at the airport," Patrick insists. "It magically appeared."
"It definitely magically appeared," Sharpy assures him. "Watch." And then he suddenly grabs the key and throws it against the wall. Patrick is half out of the chair to chase after it when Sharpy grabs him by the sleeve. "Check your pocket."
Patrick checks his pocket.
He pulls the key out from beneath some crumbled bills.
"Fuck," Patrick says.
"Congratulations, you have a quest," Sharpy says.
4.
Dude, look, Patrick'd known he had a quest. It's called Olympic gold and the Stanley Cup. He does not have room in his life for more quests.
Patrick does his best to put it out of his mind and just focus on hockey, but it feels like the key is burning a hole in his pocket. It keeps itching at the back of his mind. His mom's assured him that there are no family stories involving filing cabinets, but that's not much of a help now that Sharpy's made it sound like it's definitely not a filing cabinet that Patrick needs to find.
The best Patrick can come up with is that it might be a key to an old room that was painted over or somehow closed off during renovations and never reopened. It doesn't look like it could fit much else.
He gets so desperate, he talks to Oshie about it. "So it might contain horrors beyond imagining?" Oshie asks.
"Or someone's lost teddy bear," Patrick offers glumly. "And they've made a solemn vow not to get hitched unless Mr. Snuffles can be there with them. Sure, they made that vow when they were five, but now they're twenty-five and kinda need that bear back."
Oshie ponders this. "That would actually be kinda cool."
Patrick considers that they might be too drunk to have this conversation. "Or maybe it's the corpses of all of Johnny's murdered ex-boyfriends and then he'll murder me for opening the door, and then he'll, I don't know, take the key and lose it again to start the cycle over," Patrick says.
Oshie snickers. That probably means Johnny has no such room. It's not that much of a relief. At least if it was a murder room, the mystery would be solved and Patrick could sleep better at night.
5.
So Patrick just tells himself that it goes to Johnny's secret serial killer room and that works for a couple days and then it abruptly stops working. It stops working right when Patrick is in a room with Johnny, because Patrick has snuck into Johnny's room for some boyfriend time, because Johnny's the enemy, but, hey, they say to keep your friends closer and your enemies closer. Patrick is applying that aphorism directly to his dick.
But anyway, Johnny's trying to find his pants and then the key is being really itchy, so Patrick blurts out, "wait." And he fishes out the key and hands it to Johnny. "You have any idea?"
And as soon as Johnny touches the key, there's this horrible noise, a low throbbing vibrating sound, like a headache, and Patrick grabs his head and then when it passes, Johnny looks seriously fucking worried.
"You didn't hear that?" Patrick asks.
"Kaner, I need to ask you about concussions," Johnny starts, and Patrick shakes his head.
"Shut up," Patrick says quickly, "that was the key, that was the key! Touch it again." Johnny looks like he's going to protest this strongly, so Patrick folds Johnny's hand over the key. There's the noise again!
"Fuck, this better not be the key to learning how to love or some sentimental bullshit," Patrick says.
"I think you should lie down," Johnny says, worried.
"No, no, it's okay," Patrick says and shakes Johnny's hands off him. "I'm fine. The key reacts to you!"
"Yeah, Kaner, I can tell. You should still sit down." Johnny has terrible lines on his face right now, so Patrick humors him and sits on the bed. Johnny commences pacing the room.
"Do you know what this means?" Patrick asks. "We need to check who else it reacts to. It didn't to Sharpy, but fuck him, he doesn't count." This is the first actual information Patrick's had about the key and he's gonna grab hold of this and milk it for all its worth. "So what do you think it is? Current thinking is that it's a key to some room somewhere, don't know where."
That distracts Johnny from pacing a hole in the floor. "What?" Johnny scoffs. "You ever seen a room key? This is not a room key."
Oh, excuse him. It could be. There are a lot of nonstandard room keys; it's the most varied key type in the major types, specifically because of how often they come up in quests. Patrick's looked this shit up, okay? He's done research. He knows. "So what is it then, o captain my captain?"
"It goes to a trunk," Johnny says like it's obvious. It is not obvious. "The luggage kind, not the kind you have in your car."
Huh, is it? Patrick thinks about that. Yeah, huh, he can see that. Plus, that explanation feels right in his head the way none of the others have. "But what trunk?" He asks. "Where is it? What's in it? What am I supposed to be finding?"
"Dunno," Johnny says. "But we've got the first part done." He looks determined. "Come with me. We'll pass it around the Canadian locker room and see who pings your radar."
6.
It's the Olympics. There is no way they are sneaking Patrick into the Canadian locker room right after a practice-- okay, they just snuck Patrick into the Canadian locker room right after a practice. Patrick probably underestimated just how much hockey people enjoy a bit of drama and excitement in their lives that does not involve checking someone into the boards.
Patrick shakes his head as everyone touches the key until it gets to Crosby and then Patrick has to lie down because of how pounding the noise is.
All right. So first step on this scavenger hunt was Johnny. Second one is Crosby. Seriously, if this quest had to go through Canadians, why didn't the key appear to one of them instead? Patrick has so many questions and so few answers.
When Patrick can open his eyes again, he demands, "Crosby, think about any trunks you've come in contact with."
Crosby looks like he's considering it carefully. "I have to check with a few people," he says slowly, "but then I'll get back to you."
7.
And then they lose.
Crosby's sent Patrick a text, but Patrick doesn't give a fuck about the key right now, doesn't care that a quest is probably more important in the long run. This is the short run and, yeah, Patrick's not dealing with this right now. The key can go fuck itself. Whatever.
They lose again. They go home. Patrick starts finding the key everywhere. He'll leave it in his jeans and then find it on the kitchen counter. It'll be at the top of a shelf when he's reaching for the blender. He'll fucking step on it coming out of the shower, ow.
Okay, something wants to be found. Patrick cares less than zero unless it's the Stanley Cup, and you can't just find that thing. If it were lost, they'd know it. It would've been a huge thing.
Hang on. That-- that tingled.
Oh, fuck. Is the Cup missing?
Um.
Patrick picks up his phone. He calls Johnny. "I think it's the Cup!" he says, very self-controlled and not shouting at all.
"Bullshit," Johnny says. "The Cup has a tracking chip, they always know where it's flown off to."
WHAT?
8.
"You can't tell anyone about this," says Sidney Crosby from his tiny Skype window. "No, seriously, you can't."
"I won't," Patrick says. Johnny is sitting next to him and squeezes his thigh hard. "I won't! I pinky promise."
Johnny sighs. "You're lucky I like you, and that I hate when you're distracted. There's two of us here, we can tell him."
Crosby still looks like he's not sure he's signing off on that decision, but then he nods. "The Cup likes to go see the world. No big deal, right? It always comes back when it needs to."
"They tell the captains of Cup-winning teams just in case, but the Cup's really good about it, real conscientious." Johnny fiddles with his phone. "But after Patrick said it might be the Cup, I got in touch with its people. And they've, um." He holds the phone up to the laptop screen. Crosby leans forward to try to read it.
"Fuck," Crosby says.
"Yeah," Johnny agrees. He turns to Patrick. "They've lost the key to the old traveling trunk where the Cup writes down where it's going. And the Cup must've gone swimming or something, because the tracking chip's shorted out. They're getting really worried."
9.
The next morning, two blank-faced women in black suits are at Patrick's door. They're here for the key or, if Patrick will not surrender the key, they're here for Patrick.
Patrick's kinda busy with his day job, so going with them is out of the question, except that the key won't stay in their hands when Patrick hands it over. It keeps showing up in Patrick's pockets. Patrick doesn't know what to do.
"It's your quest," Johnny says helplessly.
"Yeah, I guess it's my quest," Patrick says. "Um. I gotta call my coach. I'm sure he'll understand."
10.
It's a bit anti-climactic. Patrick turns the key in the lock. The Cup keepers take out the sheet of paper inside. Someone conducts Patrick outside lest he see more than he should. Patrick goes home.
It feels really weird, like something's missing. Patrick's gotten so used to the key itching at him that the absence almost hurts. He's not sure what to do with himself.
They lose to the Kings in the playoffs.
Next morning, Patrick opens a box of cereal. At the top is a tiny golden key, 'trust me' written in swirling script circling the keyhole.
Patrick grins.
This entry was originally posted at http://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/855355.html.