Fic: Scraps from From Our Invincible Heights Part I
I know I promised the world that my JonnyBot fic would happen, but yeah, it doesn't look like it. BUT I do have a couple thousand words of it in various forms of editing (some aren't really edited, seriously) so here, this is the best I can do.
Jonathan Toews is actually a robot. This is part of his story.
From our invincible heights
Prologue.
Each dummy has a sequence of letters and numbers and a Made in Canada seal embedded into the arch of its foot, just below a scannable barcode. Standard procedure. The purpose is inventory-or as the more romantic interns like to say-to individualize them. They make up names out of the nonsense strings as if the dummies are their pets, or children.
The dummies are run of the mill, manufactured alongside robots built to operate heavy machinery and toy dogs. They're stored in even rows in the facility's warehouse until, every morning, the one to be used is driven to the testing area via golf cart. The overeager interns fetch it in the mornings and then, at the end of the day, take it to the lab to get fixed. They usually let the dummy ride shot gun.
No one much likes the interns at the beginning. Sentiment is better reserved for teaching in preschool or working with monkeys in a zoo. The business of safety renders names and faces useless.
Still, by August, the facility is reliably left with a collapsed heap of Optimus Primes and Crash Bandibots to dispose of instead of serial numbers, and the names stick. The senior personnel blame the interns for making them soft.
***
"It was horrific, apparently," Jameson says to Whitaker, swiveling in his chair behind the plexiglass of the observation room. "Kid mangled to bits, just bam! against the steering wheel, windshield blown out, seat crushed. It's a miracle he's even in a coma."
Whitaker takes a sip of coffee and eyes the golf cart speeding towards the false road at the center of the complex. A headless dummy bounces up front. He puts his coffee back down onto the console, a safe distance away from the switches and buttons. "That's too bad. Young?"
"Just about sixteen, I think. But man, you should've seen him play hockey. That kid was going places. From Winnipeg, too, real nice, easy going. Last I heard, he had North Dakota lined up, and then who knows, NHL probably."
"Damn. You hate to see that happen."
"Yeah. Got the call from family this morning. It's not looking good."
"Shit. Close?"
"Nephew of my wife's cousin, but still, what can you do, right? Life goes on." Jameson pushes his hair out of his face. He used to be an intern at the Institute some years before, worked under Whitaker even, but the job became full-time when he got married a year ago. He leans over the console and curves a long microphone towards himself. "Put it in the Mercedes e320, Mike!" echoes throughout the complex, and the intern hops out of the golf cart, lifting the dummy into his arms. During the crashes, a palpable, collective shudder runs like a current through the interns watching from behind their clipboards, but by July, they won't so much as flinch at the squeal of tires and the anguished tear of metal.
The only real cause for excitement is the cars. The interns'll learn that soon enough.
"Hey, you know if the good doctor's in yet?"
"I don't think so."
Jameson breathes a sigh of relief.
"You know how it happened?" Whitaker asks. Jameson has his head down, turning on the computer and the high-speed camera connected to it.
"What?" The screen lights up green before displaying the brick wall at the end of the track.
"The accident."
"Hit from behind I think, on a turn. Oh, for-Mike, the Mercedes! Mer-ce-des. That's a Lexus," he says into the microphone, then back to Whitaker, scoffing: "Engineering majors."
Whitaker lifts the coffee to his mouth again but the smell of it makes his stomach churn. He puts it back down. On the track, Mike is fiddling with the seatbelt. He's still an undergraduate somewhere. When he's finished strapping the dummy in, he firmly closes the door of the car but it catches on his white lab coat and reels him back when he tries to move away.
Dr. Sullivan laughs as she walks past him on the way to the observation room. Mike at least has the decency to look embarassed.
Though she's only been around a week, Dr. Sullivan makes everyone at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety at least a little bit nervous. She's an MIT PhD and just thirty-three, six feet tall without heels, and wears expensive suits that look strangely more comfortable than the t-shirt and jeans wardrobe standard at the Instititute. Jason Whitaker is tempted to think she's an android herself. Along with her equipment and young colleague, Watson, she's on loan from Bauer for the duration of the tests she's running. Designing hockey helmets to reduce concussions at high-velocity impact.
"Good morning, gentlemen," she says, sweeping into the room. A dummy head wearing a black helmet is held securely under her arm, wires jutting from its open neck. "Why the somber mood?"
Whitaker and Jameson move their chairs apart, and she stands between them.
Jameson opens his mouth, but Whitaker interjects, knowing his observation partner and his off-color sense of humor all too well: "Alex's nephew's in a coma. Car accident, just this morning. A real promising hockey player, too."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Her eyes look humanly sad, which means if she were an android, she'd have to be a fairly sophisticated one.
"Is this it?" Whitaker gestures to the head. His own is starting to throb a little-must be the coffee. The head's more realistic than the featureless plastic dummies they usually work with, but then, this one is special, a prototype with a computer inside it built like a human brain, thousands upon thousands of tiny cells wired to mimic actual chemistry. Whitaker's read the manual.
"If by it, you mean five years of research and millions of dollars worth of technology, then yes, this is it." Anita Sullivan's grin betrays her cool tone. She's practically vibrating with excitement. Whitaker imagines this is what he must have looked like to strangers when his wife was giving birth to their first child.
Anita Sullivan places the head in Jameson's lap with the instruction not to touch it more than necessary and spends the next few minutes adjusting the numerous screens on a large, sturdy table next to the console. In the manual, there were pictures of what the brain images would look like when the wireless switch was flipped-like fMRI scans, cross-sections being taken every half-second. It was all very sophisticated and Whitaker only understood about a fifth of what he'd read. Jameson had thrown his manual unopened onto his desk and left it there to gather dust.
"We're embarking on an amazing journey today, gentlemen," Anita says, looking intently into the screen. "I can feel it."
Jameson mimes gagging over the top of her head as he pulls out his phone, but Whitaker ignores him. He likes Dr. Sullivan. She's a decade younger than him and leagues more brilliant which gives her leave to be as strange as she wants as far as he's concerned. Scientists always seem to have a few essential screws loose anyway.
***
Watson appears in the observation room minutes later. On the whole, he's a good deal more likeable than Anita Sullivan-whom the interns have taken to calling Anita Sherlock on account of Watson being somewhat of a sidekick and her being somewhat of a genius. When Watson smiles, he does it with his teeth and it doesn't appear forced.
Anita extends an arm and makes a grabbing motion with her open palm, eyes still on the screens in front of her, nearly hitting Jameson in the face.
"Oy, Doctor," he says. She ignores him.
Watson hands over his clipboard with a sigh, which she promptly signs with a pen she produces from somewhere inside her blouse. Legal things, presumably. Watson waits patiently after she hands it over and makes final adjustments to the computer program that'll record the dummy's reactions to the crash. Jameson pointedly flicks his wrist to look at his watch and resumes his game of Angry Birds, phone resting against the dummy's helmet.
"And there. Done," Anita says after a while. With the light click of a mouse, the dummy's eyes flare to life as the computer inside it begins to hum. Jameson nearly falls off his chair.
"Jesus mother-"
The dummy head jostles in his lap before Watson snatches it up with a polite, "Thank you," and turning to Anita, nods his head once, then opens the door and strides with purpose towards the Mercedes. Whitaker can't help but feel like he's just witnessed an entire conversation spoken in secret code.
Watson puts the dummy head onto the dummy body as the interns gather in the observation room, huddling in a corner, tittering to themselves and looking very conscious of where they are in relation to the equipment and the senior personnel straggling in. Anita had clearly already given them a talking to about touching things which in all likelihood concluded with the words just don't touch anything, okay?
There's a charged feeling in the room, like the thrill of standing too close to a firework's show or diving into deep, murky water. Even Jameson is sitting up straight. The Institute for Highway Safety hasn't known this kind of excitement in recent years, not even when they'd gotten a new shipment of Ferraris to crash.
"All clear on our end?" asks Whitaker because they still do have to test the performance of the vehicle, no matter the passenger.
"Locked and loaded," responds Monica, who's in charge of making the final preps to vehicles on the track. Whitaker turns to Anita and nods and many things begin to happen all at once.
Chapter One.
Somewhere between the time Mr. Serious becomes Captain Serious,
***
For the first two years of his residency in Chicago, Patrick's apartment consists of a couch, a bed, a fridge and microwave in the kitchen, and three different video game consoles connected to his flat screen by a tangle of wires.
***
Reasons why Toews can eat popsicles so quickly: "You're actually a robot, right?" asks Patrick.
Patrick Kane always knew there was a reason why Jonathan was suspiciously good at popsicle eating, he'd just never had the opportunity to put his hypothesis to the test. Jonny was a reclusive, quiet guy by nature, and it's not like there was ever a right time to ask, "So, hey, icy pops deep throating-that's, like, a result of talent or practice?" of practically anyone (except maybe Burish who'd probably put a hand on his shoulder and say mock-seriously, 'Heh, kid, I'd tell you, but you're just too young to know,' with a distant, contemplative look in his eyes. But Burish was weird like that.)
***
"You know nobody's gonna break us up. It's going to be Kane and Toews for the rest of our lives, and even if one of us gets traded like years later, everyone will go, 'Damn, Kane and Toews could have made that play together,' or 'Do you remember what it was like when Kane and Toews ruled Chicago?' Baby, we're not going anywhere."
***
"He'll never be human, Patrick. He's, first and foremost, a machine. One who has learned to adapt, and yes, perhaps even exhibit neurological responses that resemble emotions in humans, but he's something that can be turned on and off with the press of a button, rewired, taken apart. Every memory he has is stored on a chip and can be reproduced on a computer."
"When does he get to come back to me?"
"He doesn't belong to you. He belongs, first, to the Chicago Blackhawks franchise, and second, to the United States Government."
***
Once in a while, Chicago gets caught up in what Patrick likes to call a 'snowblizzard' and what Johnny likes to point out are, "Only flurries, Patrick." But Jonathan is from Canada where, apparently, this is the norm.
The city of Chicago shuts down for what feels like hours, heavy snow sweeping sideways across the downtown high-rises, Lake Michigan choppy with waves, the beaches and streets turning powdery white. It reminds him of Buffalo, at least for a few days, because while New York state maintains a near constant level of snow throughout the winter, Chicago usually just freezes or turns into a large puddle of slush. Living in the city, Patrick takes what he can get. He tries to enjoy it while he can.
And if Jonny complains that Patrick's over at his apartment too much and really should consider chipping into the electricity bill and do the groceries, well, it's not exactly his fault that Johnny has the better view than him. Seventeen floors up and windows facing the lake and Navy Pier-someone has to appreciate that. As it is, Jonny seems intent on spending most of his free time either training in the gym in his building or staring into his laptop.
He doesn't even look up from where he's sitting at the kitchen island when Patrick walks into his apartment on Monday morning-spare keys exchanged back in their rookie year-merely grunts to acknowledge him.
"Have you even looked outside?" asks Patrick incredulously once he's shaken out his coat from the snow and toed off his boots on the mat by the door. From the narrow hallway, he can see Jonny wave a hand in the air as if to indicate he's too busy with whatever he's looking at on his computer to care about the weather.
"Because, dude, it is awesome," Patrick continues as he pads into the kitchen to lean distractingly against the counter. "What are you doing? Mind if I chill here for a bit?" he asks without really expecting an answer to either.
Jonny shrugs his shoulders. He would probably never admit it but he appreciates the company just as much as Patrick does. Something about an empty condo just doesn't feel right to him, doesn't feel like home, despite the fact that he doesn't spend much time in it between travel, games, and practice. Then, there are the days when he's actually around for long enough to take up a project like reviewing old games with a legal pad, a pen, complex scribbles resulting from it at his side. After three hours, he'd actually hoped Patrick would come along to provide him with a short study break, one game of Mario Kart at least.
"I'm-"
"Being lame," Patrick finishes, grimacing. "And asocial."
"Big words, Kaner," Jonny chuckles, watching Patrick push off from the island and make himself at home in his kitchen by taking out two mugs, cocoa, and a bag of marshmallows that has very likely gone stale from the cabinet. He paws through the fridge for milk.
Jonny pauses the video on his screen and caps his pen, sighing. He's surprised when Patrick protests. "Nah, man, it's fine. I'm not gonna distract you from that," he leans across the counter and angles the screen towards him, "Preds game from two years ago. I just came to watch the snow."
If Jonny didn't know any better, he'd have thought that Patrick had blushed a little as if in that moment he had just realized how childish he actually was.
***
JonnyBot gets hurt during the third period of a Blues game.
***
Patrick is the last still on the ice when the buzzer sounds. "Fuck," he yells and kicks his skate against the boards, loud enough that some of the Blues players turn to watch him. Bad sportmanship reflects poorly on his whole team, he knows that, just like he knows that he's potentially making a spectacle of himself on national television. Vision hazy, heart racing, he doesn't exactly care.
It's only when Troy puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him down the corridor that he takes a second to calm down. "You good?" Troy asks him seriously, forcing Patrick's head up to meet his eyes. The rest of his team is already halfway down the hall to the locker rooms. Over the top of Troy's shoulder, Patrick can see Q and Mike Kitchen conferring a couple dozen feet away.
Patrick grunts and shrugs Troy's hand off of him, pacing in a tight circle. He unstraps his helmet and tries to make himself look imposing. Some fierce, primal thing rears in his chest. His palms itch for a fight and for the first time in his life, he doesn't immediately shy away from the thought of one. He wants to take a go at Troy. He wants to hurt something, possibly himself in the process.
"Hey! Walk away and go home, Kaner," Q growls. Troy takes a step back. "You and Tazer aren't the only ones on this team."
"Let me see him at least."
"No. Let the medical staff handle it."
***
Jonathan is ushered into the laboratory in the basement of the United Center before the third period even ends.
"He cares for me," Jonathan says. He understands attachment in a pragmatic sense, as evolutionarily advantageous.
"Cares for you. That's an understatement."
"Why?"
"I don't think you need to ask that question."
"I ask myself that question all the time."
"And what have you computed?"
"I"-Jonthan looks confused-"don't think it's a matter of computing. If it were, I'd have solved the Patrick problem by now."
"Why is it a problem?"
"Because I think I care for him too. I know I do."
***
Jonathan Toews is perhaps the most frightening Captain to ever parade himself around in just underwear and socks. It could be funny-all 206 pounds of him standing in front of his stall with his arms crossed over his chest, illuminating the team on how this game could have wound up 5-0 but didn't. Kaner sits off to his left, blissful, every once in a while readjusting his cap.
"Man, we were so good tonight."
"Kaner, pay attention."
"So good, it was almost magical."
***
Jonathan's immediate response to the question is an incredulous and severe, "No." And then he pretends to think about it, pointedly looking anywhere but Kaner's childishly hopeful expression. "Absolutely not."
"No what? You won't pass the cereal?" asks Patrick, flashing his best faux-hurt expression, perhaps a little too close to the real thing, through a smile.
***
As much as Jonathan tries to deny the credibility of the 'Captain Serious' nickname by making conscious efforts to
There's no question in anyone's mind that a career milestone plus a hard-fought win plus a five day break is a cause for celebration, or at the very least, a few rounds of beer. What many seem to forget-because he's actually making efforts to be normal, game playing face aside-is that Jonathan is not just anyone and that a bar is not the first place his mind jumps to when thinking about having fun. Once he gets dressed, he'll take a second to acknowledge his one hundred and then begin preparing for the next game.
"Okay," he says, pulling down his toque and patting down his coat for his keys, "see you guys on Tuesday for practice. Remember: 10 AM."
The locker room is silent for a few moments because, really, the fact that Jonny thinks he can get away with not going out with the boys after three years is mindboggling.
***
"I'm not an exhibitionist. I just don't care if anyone is looking," Patrick says and Jonathan thinks, you'd care if the people looking could see everything. He thinks, I should tell you.
***
When Patrick plasters himself to Jonathan's body, suggestive, warm, and a little drunk, mumbling into his ear, "Come on. It'll be fun. Wouldn't even have to be a thing," he gathers up the presence of mind to push him gently away. They're in public: a hotel in Raleigh, enjoying a late dinner and drinks at the end of the Skills Competition. A few people give him passing sympathetic glances when Jonathan decides to announce it's a night for Patrick and push him towards the door-teammates, current and former, and coaches, mostly. Those who have to deal with Patrick on a daily basis and know the strength of character it takes to handle him, especially inebriated.
Patrick calls him, "Baby," like it means something the entire way to their room upstairs. He pushes greedy fingers under Jonny's suit, wrinkles the neat, pressed shirt he has tucked into his pants.
They stumble out of the elevator into a hallway thankfully empty except for a dim lamp on a small table in front of a mirror on the wall. The hotel decorator had probably thought it would add atmosphere. But with Patrick's lips uncomfortably close to Jonny's neck, hot puffs of air making his flesh rise in tiny bumps, the mood is more aligned with that of a russett boudoir, cheap and dirty.
"You wanna. I know you-you do. You look at me like-fuck, baby. We make sense. Everyone says so," Patrick slurs against his neck as Jonathan shifts his hold on Patrick's waist to dig in his back pocket for the key card.
"Everyone who?" Jonathan asks before he remembers: "You're drunk. You don't even know what you're saying, Kaner."
The door opens on the second try and for perhaps the first time in a long while, Jonathan wishes he weren't sharing a room with Patrick. It's not that he hasn't thought about suggesting something mutually benefical with him. He suspects many have tried going down the surefire route to messing up team dynamics.
'It makes sense' isn't a very compelling reason to begin a relationship anyway.
***
They spend the entire drive back to Jonny's apartment elated, grinning and pleased and most of all, relieved.
***
"Oy, dipshit!"
"I'm not talking to you," Patrick says, stomping across the locker room, nearly misstepping on one of the Indianhead's feathers before he catches himself at the last minute. He plops himself in his stall and rips at the tape around his thighs with furious fingers.
Jonathan bristles.
"We sit next to each other," he feels the need to point out. If Patrick wants to be petulant about this.
"Then sit somewhere else."
"Ooh, burn."
"Shut up, Sharpie."
***
"Are you close? God, I'm so close."
"Yeah."
"Is this good? Wait-let me just-okay. Yeah, God. Jesus Christ, that's so good."
"Yeah."
"Can you move your leg? I can't-uh. No, no, right there. Yes. Ungh. No, wait, back, like it was. Yeah? Is that good for you?"
"Oh my God, Jonny, shut up."
***
Everyone talks about it. Everyone comments on it. The players chirp, the coaches discuss. Every once in a while during the regular season, a reporter-a staff member, maybe-will incline their head towards them with a knowing secret grin. As if proof is staring them in the face, flamboyant and unrepentant and completely obvious. Patrick tries not to make much of it. He schools his expressions so that they're wider, freer because it's easier if people think he's the locker room's token affectionate and open guy. Sometimes, it's better to play dumb and hope that no one catches on. The announcers, without being able to focus on Crosby and Ovechkin, all turn their attention towards the pseudo-rivalry brewing amongst the Blackhawks.
Toews and Kane.
It all makes Patrick so goddamned hopeful and giddy with the prospect of acceptance-so incredibly aware that this life, his life might actually be possible, has the chance of being
The NHL's in the throes of changing, more open-minded than he's ever remembered it to be, more willing to allow quirks, generally trusting that the players won't embarrass their respective organizations.
***
He gets two rings before, "Hey, Peekaboo. What's up?"
"Put him on, Sharpie."
There's a brief scruffle before Jonny retrieves the phone. "Hey, Kaner," he says without a hint of a smile in his voice. "You saw?"
"Yeah. I am missed."
"You are," Jonny replies.
***
"It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace."
Toews.
START "jonathan"
***
I could tell immediately that it would take an effort to like Patrick Kane.
***
Patrick is touching his bruises when he doesn't think I'm looking. He doesn't have a shirt on. There are two on his ribcage, just below the cartilage. They're sensitive. He winces, but if he disliked the sensation, he would have stopped a while ago.
"What?" he asks. His fingers are paused over his skin.
"Nothing."
"Quit staring then."
"Free country."
His mouth quirks, but he doesn't say anything. I want to touch him. I want to touch him so badly something inside me feels like it's burning and the heat spreads all over my body, all the way up to my hands which want desperately to reach out and do it, just fucking do it already. I get the sense that the people watching me from a room beneath the United Center are laughing because I would like to leave bruises on Patrick's body..
Patrick turns off ESPN and yawns, stretching. The lamp lights skims off his arched back.
I watch him walk to the bathroom, and I feel like I can finally breathe when he closes the door. This is the time for our unspoken code to be consummated. Patrick will take care of himself for the night and he leaves me the room to do so as well.
It only takes a minute and shortly after, I hear the shower running, the cool slide of the glass shower doors. I think about Patrick as I wipe my hand on a tissue and throw it towards the wastebasket.
The white, crumpled ball misses and falls into plain sight on the carpet near the bathroom door. I know what I want it to mean when Patrick notices it, maybe not now, but in the morning when he gets up and it catches his eye.
I turn off the bedside lamp and slip between the sheets as the water shuts off in the bathroom. My body falls heavily into sleep.
***
You settled into Buffalo with ease-like a swimmer who spends so much of his life in the pool that he doesn't remember anymore the difference between air and water-carelessly toeing off your sneakers as you went, bag dumped over the back of the coffee-stained couch, jacket on the white wicker kitchen chair, sound of the fridge opening, wordlessly expecting me to close the door, make myself at home.
"Sweet," you said, flushed in a wedge of flourescent blue visible through the partition separating your kitchen and living room, "my mom made us a pie." Bottles of condiments clinked and rattled together along with the tell-tale shift of tupeware and plastic. "No, wait," you added, "two pies. Man, I love being home." I knew the feeling, the unexpected warmth and contentment that came from going back to a place you once knew so well and were pleased to find that you still remembered. Though I couldn't see it, your homesick grin hung tangibly in the air.
It was a few months ago that I'd begun compiling a running list of all the things that made you smile despite yourself. I often keep lists.
Cake with bright blue and violet frosting and the immature, dirty puns Sharpie and Bur scribbled into your birthday card were the first, followed by an array of vaguely catalogued scraps of memory that I told myself I'd remember for the currently distant but largely inevitable future I'd be spending alone after you found yourself a girlfriend and then a wife. I'd have the trip to the park where you played fetch with a huge golden retriever to tide me over for at least half a year; that and seeing you skate on virgin ice as if marking your territory right before a home game or driving on the I-90 with the windows down. And ferris wheels, that's a big one.
Then there's watching home videos, flipping through childhood pictures, seeing the trophies in your room. Snowball fights, Mario Kart, mouse tracks ice cream with extra sprinkles. Coming home, whether to Buffalo or Chicago, and those unexpected team hugs in the locker room that you try to grimace through and wrestle your way out of but secretly look forward to getting.
And now, pie.
"Come on," you said absently, shutting the door of the fridge, satisfied with your perusal. You padded lightly into the room where I stood with my hands uselesly at my sides staring out the window after I'd straightened your shoes and lined mine up next to them on the welcome mat. I'd done that dozens of times before but never as a Stanley Cup champion, and never with the startling realization that with my track record-the Olympics, the Conn Smythe, and Lord Stanley-I might just maybe be in someone's good graces long enough to have it all. Or maybe there really was some large deity, probably Zeus, maybe the National Hockey League Board of Governors, sitting somewhere on a mountaintop, gleefully rubbing together his thunder bolts, waiting to strike me down at the first hint of forbidden happiness.
Part of me wished I could go back to where Past Johnny was only a few hours ago. Beyond the truncated yard to the next house, and then, after that, past a whole row of houses, maybe a city, the swell of a lake or two, and then some cornfields, flower fields, grassy fields, a couple more houses, a couple more cities, Lake Michigan, high-rises slowly growing in elevation, giving way to skyscrapers, and a narrow stretch of highway curving like a ribbon between the water and the gray slate buildings all the way to our apartment with the hallway lights probably still on and the radio broadcasting a sports station on low.
But here I was, alone with you in your living room; Chicago becoming a distant, transluscent memory. Philadelphia, even dimmer. Only Buffalo existed for me now. Only standing next to the couch, and then remembering with a jolt exactly where I was and that I was there as your friend, your guest, never anything else. I shook myself out of my daze, mumbling a faint, distracted, “Sorry,” while taking a few steps to the left, reaching for the blanket and pillow on the top shelf of the linen closet, above the coats, placed there for overnight visits from friends who were sometimes high school buddies, more often than not hockey players; and mostly me.
You crossed your arms and looked pointedly at the bundle in mine. Somewhere in between the living room and the kitchen, you had rolled up your sleeves and taken off your socks. "Uh, it's not a surprise if they come downstairs and realize we're already here. We'll sleep in my room," you said, jerking your head in the direction of the stairs like that was the simplest solution in the world.
While you took both our bags and hid them out of sight behind the couch, my mind raced along all the likely configurations we could find ourselves in: bed/floor; floor/bed; floor/floor; and the most terrifying: bed/bed with the chance to be close, nestled together under the pretense of sleep, maybe a leg grazing your thigh, maybe a daring brush of my hand against your hip. Considering the possibilities alone was almost enough to make them real, and that was enough to make them impossible. It may have been my imagination, but somewhere, I thought I heard the menacing crackle of lightning.
Finished with the bags, you grabbed my shirt when I didn't move, leaving a white, sticky imprint of the whipped cream you'd probably eaten after dragging a finger through the pie, and the blanket came tumbling out of my hands. I followed blindly when you pulled, mind still caught up in circular thoughts like bed and sleep and you, all three within the same realm of possibility when I’d only ever been used to one or two at a time. The words, working in tandem with others like white and cream and fingers, did nothing to help the situation.
"Kaner," I hissed when we were already half-way up the stairs, looking back mournfully at the jumbled pile of blankets on the couch that meant I wouldn't be sleeping on the floor and neither would you, that we'd be on the bed, the both of us.
You didn’t turn around. "Shh."
"I'm totally fine sleeping downstairs," I whispered. Sneaking around made me feel like a teenager stealing undetected into a girl's bedroom to make-out while her parents were sleeping. An excitedly masochistic part of my brain toyed with the idea, perhaps even constructed a fantasy out of it not entirely unwelcome but definitely inappropriate given the circumstances of the next two or three hours worth of sleeping arrangements. Mostly, I didn’t trust myself, fully aware of how pliant I became when sleep-deprived, but never having been tested myself against it quite like this.
You rolled your eyes, turning back briefly, but never releasing the hold on my shirt, as if afraid that I would dash away if released. "Is it the trophies? They make you uncomfortable?" you said with only the slight lilt of a smug smile. It was no secret that your room was a museum devoted to preserving the accomplishments and shoes of Patrick Timothy Kane the Second for posterity.
"What?"
"The bobble heads then?" you tried. "I can put them in a drawer or something." You were being serious, which should have been funny but only made the situation more disturbing and me more anxious. The prospect of being judged by your mini-Kaner bobble head dolls while I tossed and turned in bed next to you, their oversized heads moving up and down in encouragement or perhaps disgust, plastic necks squeaking, “We knew all along. We knew it. You wanted us,” was too much.
"Oh for-what--no, it's not-"
"Tazer, I'm tired," you whined, tugging on my shirt. "Sleep is our friend." Along the edge of the second floor windowpane, hazy and transparent beams of light spilled over onto the floor and down the stairs. They caught your hair and your face tilted just enough to bring an iridescent shine to your blue eyes. All it took was a moment's distraction, the focus of my gaze downward to your lips and the swipe of your tongue, before you were pulling me along behind you with a renewed vigor, as if determined to be in bed before six.
"What about our stuff?" I asked futiley, to which you responded with an incoherent groan. "Dude, it's not going anywhere."
If you'd have been more awake, you might have asked why I was so concerned about sleeping upstairs with you; having never done it before, there was no expected code of conduct I could use as precedent. I had only the strict, self-imposed hands-off policy coupled with an air-tight no-looking clause and an absolutely-no-thinking-about-it addendum. As long as I followed the rules, there wouldn't be any problems. There shouldn’t have been any problems.
“My toothbrush?” I tried at the top of the stairs, a last ditch effort to slink back to the neutral territory of 'a friend’s couch, the family couch, a seating place for comfortable, wholesome television watching and polite conversing.’
“I’m sure we have something,” you said, leading me down the hall. “Or you can use mine.” Apparently, for you, it wasn’t an issue. Sharing a house with three girls, I guess you were almost guaranteed that things were clean, especially in the personal hygiene department.
Luckily, my toothbrush was still in your bathroom from when I had visited a few weeks back. I plucked it from my spot in the toothbrush holder, wondering when exactly I’d begun refering to it as ‘my spot’ and decided that it was probably around the time when it’d become a permanent fixture on your sink. It felt all too natural, standing there watching our reflections, hip to hip. The thought struck me whether Dunc and Seabs did this too, or Sharpie and Bur, in the privacy of their hotel rooms or their homes. Probably not.
After splashing your face with cold water, you flicked me with the excess on your fingers and wiped the rest off on the hem of my shirt. Definitely not.
Your room looked exactly the same as when I had last seen it-orderly, clean, and just the right side of cluttered. My boxers were mixed in with the clean laundry in your hamper. Your mother must have mistaken them for yours and washed them with all your other clothes. The thought of you absently picking them out of the pile and putting them on sent warm tendrils of pleasure down my spine. It wouldn’t have been the first time that you had worn my clothes-a button-up to dinner when none of yours were clean, a warm jacket when you forgot to pack one, and, once, my jersey when you’d absently grabbed my bag instead of yours-but it would have been the most intimate, or at the very least, a contender for first place with the jersey.
You handed me a shirt that smelled like fabric softener and you, and I hated myself for thinking about how it fit a little too tight, like a second skin, or about knowing what you smelled like in the first place. It’ll be alright, I thought reassuringly, turning my back deliberately while you changed so as not to get the image of your body in my mind right before I slept next to it. I slipped under the covers, careful to keep myself curled tightly towards the edge. Thankfully, I was facing away from the dreaded bobble heads, but I could still feel them mocking me when you plopped down onto the bed, stretching your limbs and sprawling on top of the duvet. The bed sank with the uneven distribution of weight, and before I could help it, I was being pulled towards the well around your body like a dying star to a black hole.
“God, Kaner. Stop moving.”
You yawned. “I’m not.” Then you pulled the covers up around your shoulders and tucked your feet beneath them, body a few marginal inches away from mine. “Whatever,” I said because clearly you were, and I felt the need to point it out as if it was going to absolve me from anything that could potentially happen over the course of the night. Maybe a touch that was a little too intimate or a limb that strayed a little too close. I’d have an excuse. “You moved,” I’d say. “Remember? I told you to stop and you didn’t so here we are.”
It wouldn’t matter that I secretly marveled at the freckles dotting your back or that I wanted to know, first-hand, what sweat licked off your collarbone would taste like. Because you would never, never get to know about any of that. All you would get is a shrug, nonchalant and practiced, and, if it came down to it, a proverbial “It wasn’t me that started it; it was you.”
***
“I always knew he was a cuddler,” someone whispered triumphantly.
“Please, we all did. The real question is what are they doing here? I thought Pat said their flight wasn’t getting in until eight.”
“His car’s out front. They probably drove down.”
“Mom,” another voice hissed, “get up here. Patrick came home early, and he’s passed out in bed with Jonathan.”
A chair scraped along the linoleum floor of the kitchen. “Oh, dear, if he’s been drinking again-”
“Oh, it is so much better than drinking. Trust us. In a good way.”
My mind only registered a warm body, my hand palming the skin of a bare back beneath a t-shirt, and two legs casually tangled with mine. I burrowed my head deeper into the pillow, feeling soft hair beneath my chin, tufts of air evenly hitting my neck.
Footsteps tread loudly up the stairs, and you groaned sleepily at the noise. “What’s going-oh, oh, that is adorable. Oh, boys.” An amused laugh was stifled into a giggle. “Andree would love to see this. She’s always saying how they’re so much like a married couple.”
“Done and done.” A camera clicked. “Picture taken.” Followed by the press of a few buttons. “And text message sent. God, I love cell phones. It’s like they were made for expediting embarassment.” A male voice chuckled in doppler effect fashion as your dad paused briefly before rounding the banister and going down the stairs.
“Breakfast,” your mom reminded, probably shaking her head, voice already fading as she walked after your dad. “Someone should wake them. I’m sure they won’t want to miss it,” she called over hear shoulder.
You groggily came to with a yawn and mumbled a soft, confused, “What the hell?” near my ear. I’d been nearly awake for most of the early morning commotion, trying to ignore your sisters who were peering out at us from behind the doorframe.
A renewed chorus of happy sighs resounded from the hall before you elbowed me in the side. “Tazer, wake up.”
“Hmm?”
“Oh, my God. The love. Like sleeping puppies,” another voice piped in, to which you grumbled irritably, “Shut up, Jackie.”
You sat up, leaving me with a distinct emptiness in my arms that I wanted to follow despite any better judgment. Usually, I’d have been the first one up, but we’d spent the night driving from Chicago to Buffalo in an impromptu road trip that you’d decided was a good idea despite having flight tickets booked for the next day. I was skeptical, but not in a position to deny you anything, ever; thirty minutes and two bags later, we left for Buffalo in your car.
“What time is it?” you asked, seemingly unconcerned that not six inches from you was your teammate and best friend currently curled around your lap.
“8:30.”
You groaned unhappily, flinging yourself back down onto the bed, narrowly missing hitting my head with your arm. “Ten,” you replied. The covers that had since pooled around our thighs were dragged roughly up to our necks.
“Breakfast?” a voice sing-songed.
“Ten.”
Someone sighed a curt, "Fine," and then there was silence except for the sound of retreating footsteps, the muffled clink of plates, and quiet laughter in the kitchen.
We were in the same position as when we had woken up, except that my arm had slipped from around your waist and was now curled protectively against my chest. If I had allowed myself even a glimmer of hope in the two years that I’d known you, this was likely to be that moment. You were voluntarily lying beside me, in a platonic, mindlessly tired kind of way, but lying all the same.
If I waited long enough, I could just imagine myself trailing a fingertip along your cheekbone. Hockey players rarely had the chance or desire to be gentle. Everything about us lent itself to power and force. Usually, our grips were too strong, our muscles too tense, our habits too quick and dirty, but sometimes we had our moments, a smattering of quiet mornings and lazy afternoons in between a career made from brutality and violence.
This was not to be one of those times. Before my fingers came up to your face, I stopped the rash movement. If you noticed or felt it, there would be more explaining to do than a simple, “You moved, and I moved back. I’m sorry.”
Over the years, I’d learned to take the moments as they came and to never ask for anything more. Pushing my luck with the already generous but likely tempermental fates would backfire and soon, a losing streak, missing easy empty net goals, faltering on the ice, could be traced back to this very second where my fingers lay poised over your cheek and my breath was caught in my throat. It was safer to admire, but I didn’t want to fall asleep or else it would be over all too quickly; I wouldn't be able to feel your almost touch through the haze of dreams.
After a few more seconds of fighting the inevitable, staying up through the night on only protein shakes had taken its toll, and soon I was fading into darkness beside you, thinking selfishly that I could get used to the view if only you let me, just as my eyes slipped shut.
Part II
Jonathan Toews is actually a robot. This is part of his story.
From our invincible heights
Prologue.
Each dummy has a sequence of letters and numbers and a Made in Canada seal embedded into the arch of its foot, just below a scannable barcode. Standard procedure. The purpose is inventory-or as the more romantic interns like to say-to individualize them. They make up names out of the nonsense strings as if the dummies are their pets, or children.
The dummies are run of the mill, manufactured alongside robots built to operate heavy machinery and toy dogs. They're stored in even rows in the facility's warehouse until, every morning, the one to be used is driven to the testing area via golf cart. The overeager interns fetch it in the mornings and then, at the end of the day, take it to the lab to get fixed. They usually let the dummy ride shot gun.
No one much likes the interns at the beginning. Sentiment is better reserved for teaching in preschool or working with monkeys in a zoo. The business of safety renders names and faces useless.
Still, by August, the facility is reliably left with a collapsed heap of Optimus Primes and Crash Bandibots to dispose of instead of serial numbers, and the names stick. The senior personnel blame the interns for making them soft.
***
"It was horrific, apparently," Jameson says to Whitaker, swiveling in his chair behind the plexiglass of the observation room. "Kid mangled to bits, just bam! against the steering wheel, windshield blown out, seat crushed. It's a miracle he's even in a coma."
Whitaker takes a sip of coffee and eyes the golf cart speeding towards the false road at the center of the complex. A headless dummy bounces up front. He puts his coffee back down onto the console, a safe distance away from the switches and buttons. "That's too bad. Young?"
"Just about sixteen, I think. But man, you should've seen him play hockey. That kid was going places. From Winnipeg, too, real nice, easy going. Last I heard, he had North Dakota lined up, and then who knows, NHL probably."
"Damn. You hate to see that happen."
"Yeah. Got the call from family this morning. It's not looking good."
"Shit. Close?"
"Nephew of my wife's cousin, but still, what can you do, right? Life goes on." Jameson pushes his hair out of his face. He used to be an intern at the Institute some years before, worked under Whitaker even, but the job became full-time when he got married a year ago. He leans over the console and curves a long microphone towards himself. "Put it in the Mercedes e320, Mike!" echoes throughout the complex, and the intern hops out of the golf cart, lifting the dummy into his arms. During the crashes, a palpable, collective shudder runs like a current through the interns watching from behind their clipboards, but by July, they won't so much as flinch at the squeal of tires and the anguished tear of metal.
The only real cause for excitement is the cars. The interns'll learn that soon enough.
"Hey, you know if the good doctor's in yet?"
"I don't think so."
Jameson breathes a sigh of relief.
"You know how it happened?" Whitaker asks. Jameson has his head down, turning on the computer and the high-speed camera connected to it.
"What?" The screen lights up green before displaying the brick wall at the end of the track.
"The accident."
"Hit from behind I think, on a turn. Oh, for-Mike, the Mercedes! Mer-ce-des. That's a Lexus," he says into the microphone, then back to Whitaker, scoffing: "Engineering majors."
Whitaker lifts the coffee to his mouth again but the smell of it makes his stomach churn. He puts it back down. On the track, Mike is fiddling with the seatbelt. He's still an undergraduate somewhere. When he's finished strapping the dummy in, he firmly closes the door of the car but it catches on his white lab coat and reels him back when he tries to move away.
Dr. Sullivan laughs as she walks past him on the way to the observation room. Mike at least has the decency to look embarassed.
Though she's only been around a week, Dr. Sullivan makes everyone at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety at least a little bit nervous. She's an MIT PhD and just thirty-three, six feet tall without heels, and wears expensive suits that look strangely more comfortable than the t-shirt and jeans wardrobe standard at the Instititute. Jason Whitaker is tempted to think she's an android herself. Along with her equipment and young colleague, Watson, she's on loan from Bauer for the duration of the tests she's running. Designing hockey helmets to reduce concussions at high-velocity impact.
"Good morning, gentlemen," she says, sweeping into the room. A dummy head wearing a black helmet is held securely under her arm, wires jutting from its open neck. "Why the somber mood?"
Whitaker and Jameson move their chairs apart, and she stands between them.
Jameson opens his mouth, but Whitaker interjects, knowing his observation partner and his off-color sense of humor all too well: "Alex's nephew's in a coma. Car accident, just this morning. A real promising hockey player, too."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Her eyes look humanly sad, which means if she were an android, she'd have to be a fairly sophisticated one.
"Is this it?" Whitaker gestures to the head. His own is starting to throb a little-must be the coffee. The head's more realistic than the featureless plastic dummies they usually work with, but then, this one is special, a prototype with a computer inside it built like a human brain, thousands upon thousands of tiny cells wired to mimic actual chemistry. Whitaker's read the manual.
"If by it, you mean five years of research and millions of dollars worth of technology, then yes, this is it." Anita Sullivan's grin betrays her cool tone. She's practically vibrating with excitement. Whitaker imagines this is what he must have looked like to strangers when his wife was giving birth to their first child.
Anita Sullivan places the head in Jameson's lap with the instruction not to touch it more than necessary and spends the next few minutes adjusting the numerous screens on a large, sturdy table next to the console. In the manual, there were pictures of what the brain images would look like when the wireless switch was flipped-like fMRI scans, cross-sections being taken every half-second. It was all very sophisticated and Whitaker only understood about a fifth of what he'd read. Jameson had thrown his manual unopened onto his desk and left it there to gather dust.
"We're embarking on an amazing journey today, gentlemen," Anita says, looking intently into the screen. "I can feel it."
Jameson mimes gagging over the top of her head as he pulls out his phone, but Whitaker ignores him. He likes Dr. Sullivan. She's a decade younger than him and leagues more brilliant which gives her leave to be as strange as she wants as far as he's concerned. Scientists always seem to have a few essential screws loose anyway.
***
Watson appears in the observation room minutes later. On the whole, he's a good deal more likeable than Anita Sullivan-whom the interns have taken to calling Anita Sherlock on account of Watson being somewhat of a sidekick and her being somewhat of a genius. When Watson smiles, he does it with his teeth and it doesn't appear forced.
Anita extends an arm and makes a grabbing motion with her open palm, eyes still on the screens in front of her, nearly hitting Jameson in the face.
"Oy, Doctor," he says. She ignores him.
Watson hands over his clipboard with a sigh, which she promptly signs with a pen she produces from somewhere inside her blouse. Legal things, presumably. Watson waits patiently after she hands it over and makes final adjustments to the computer program that'll record the dummy's reactions to the crash. Jameson pointedly flicks his wrist to look at his watch and resumes his game of Angry Birds, phone resting against the dummy's helmet.
"And there. Done," Anita says after a while. With the light click of a mouse, the dummy's eyes flare to life as the computer inside it begins to hum. Jameson nearly falls off his chair.
"Jesus mother-"
The dummy head jostles in his lap before Watson snatches it up with a polite, "Thank you," and turning to Anita, nods his head once, then opens the door and strides with purpose towards the Mercedes. Whitaker can't help but feel like he's just witnessed an entire conversation spoken in secret code.
Watson puts the dummy head onto the dummy body as the interns gather in the observation room, huddling in a corner, tittering to themselves and looking very conscious of where they are in relation to the equipment and the senior personnel straggling in. Anita had clearly already given them a talking to about touching things which in all likelihood concluded with the words just don't touch anything, okay?
There's a charged feeling in the room, like the thrill of standing too close to a firework's show or diving into deep, murky water. Even Jameson is sitting up straight. The Institute for Highway Safety hasn't known this kind of excitement in recent years, not even when they'd gotten a new shipment of Ferraris to crash.
"All clear on our end?" asks Whitaker because they still do have to test the performance of the vehicle, no matter the passenger.
"Locked and loaded," responds Monica, who's in charge of making the final preps to vehicles on the track. Whitaker turns to Anita and nods and many things begin to happen all at once.
Chapter One.
Somewhere between the time Mr. Serious becomes Captain Serious,
***
For the first two years of his residency in Chicago, Patrick's apartment consists of a couch, a bed, a fridge and microwave in the kitchen, and three different video game consoles connected to his flat screen by a tangle of wires.
***
Reasons why Toews can eat popsicles so quickly: "You're actually a robot, right?" asks Patrick.
Patrick Kane always knew there was a reason why Jonathan was suspiciously good at popsicle eating, he'd just never had the opportunity to put his hypothesis to the test. Jonny was a reclusive, quiet guy by nature, and it's not like there was ever a right time to ask, "So, hey, icy pops deep throating-that's, like, a result of talent or practice?" of practically anyone (except maybe Burish who'd probably put a hand on his shoulder and say mock-seriously, 'Heh, kid, I'd tell you, but you're just too young to know,' with a distant, contemplative look in his eyes. But Burish was weird like that.)
***
"You know nobody's gonna break us up. It's going to be Kane and Toews for the rest of our lives, and even if one of us gets traded like years later, everyone will go, 'Damn, Kane and Toews could have made that play together,' or 'Do you remember what it was like when Kane and Toews ruled Chicago?' Baby, we're not going anywhere."
***
"He'll never be human, Patrick. He's, first and foremost, a machine. One who has learned to adapt, and yes, perhaps even exhibit neurological responses that resemble emotions in humans, but he's something that can be turned on and off with the press of a button, rewired, taken apart. Every memory he has is stored on a chip and can be reproduced on a computer."
"When does he get to come back to me?"
"He doesn't belong to you. He belongs, first, to the Chicago Blackhawks franchise, and second, to the United States Government."
***
Once in a while, Chicago gets caught up in what Patrick likes to call a 'snowblizzard' and what Johnny likes to point out are, "Only flurries, Patrick." But Jonathan is from Canada where, apparently, this is the norm.
The city of Chicago shuts down for what feels like hours, heavy snow sweeping sideways across the downtown high-rises, Lake Michigan choppy with waves, the beaches and streets turning powdery white. It reminds him of Buffalo, at least for a few days, because while New York state maintains a near constant level of snow throughout the winter, Chicago usually just freezes or turns into a large puddle of slush. Living in the city, Patrick takes what he can get. He tries to enjoy it while he can.
And if Jonny complains that Patrick's over at his apartment too much and really should consider chipping into the electricity bill and do the groceries, well, it's not exactly his fault that Johnny has the better view than him. Seventeen floors up and windows facing the lake and Navy Pier-someone has to appreciate that. As it is, Jonny seems intent on spending most of his free time either training in the gym in his building or staring into his laptop.
He doesn't even look up from where he's sitting at the kitchen island when Patrick walks into his apartment on Monday morning-spare keys exchanged back in their rookie year-merely grunts to acknowledge him.
"Have you even looked outside?" asks Patrick incredulously once he's shaken out his coat from the snow and toed off his boots on the mat by the door. From the narrow hallway, he can see Jonny wave a hand in the air as if to indicate he's too busy with whatever he's looking at on his computer to care about the weather.
"Because, dude, it is awesome," Patrick continues as he pads into the kitchen to lean distractingly against the counter. "What are you doing? Mind if I chill here for a bit?" he asks without really expecting an answer to either.
Jonny shrugs his shoulders. He would probably never admit it but he appreciates the company just as much as Patrick does. Something about an empty condo just doesn't feel right to him, doesn't feel like home, despite the fact that he doesn't spend much time in it between travel, games, and practice. Then, there are the days when he's actually around for long enough to take up a project like reviewing old games with a legal pad, a pen, complex scribbles resulting from it at his side. After three hours, he'd actually hoped Patrick would come along to provide him with a short study break, one game of Mario Kart at least.
"I'm-"
"Being lame," Patrick finishes, grimacing. "And asocial."
"Big words, Kaner," Jonny chuckles, watching Patrick push off from the island and make himself at home in his kitchen by taking out two mugs, cocoa, and a bag of marshmallows that has very likely gone stale from the cabinet. He paws through the fridge for milk.
Jonny pauses the video on his screen and caps his pen, sighing. He's surprised when Patrick protests. "Nah, man, it's fine. I'm not gonna distract you from that," he leans across the counter and angles the screen towards him, "Preds game from two years ago. I just came to watch the snow."
If Jonny didn't know any better, he'd have thought that Patrick had blushed a little as if in that moment he had just realized how childish he actually was.
***
JonnyBot gets hurt during the third period of a Blues game.
***
Patrick is the last still on the ice when the buzzer sounds. "Fuck," he yells and kicks his skate against the boards, loud enough that some of the Blues players turn to watch him. Bad sportmanship reflects poorly on his whole team, he knows that, just like he knows that he's potentially making a spectacle of himself on national television. Vision hazy, heart racing, he doesn't exactly care.
It's only when Troy puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him down the corridor that he takes a second to calm down. "You good?" Troy asks him seriously, forcing Patrick's head up to meet his eyes. The rest of his team is already halfway down the hall to the locker rooms. Over the top of Troy's shoulder, Patrick can see Q and Mike Kitchen conferring a couple dozen feet away.
Patrick grunts and shrugs Troy's hand off of him, pacing in a tight circle. He unstraps his helmet and tries to make himself look imposing. Some fierce, primal thing rears in his chest. His palms itch for a fight and for the first time in his life, he doesn't immediately shy away from the thought of one. He wants to take a go at Troy. He wants to hurt something, possibly himself in the process.
"Hey! Walk away and go home, Kaner," Q growls. Troy takes a step back. "You and Tazer aren't the only ones on this team."
"Let me see him at least."
"No. Let the medical staff handle it."
***
Jonathan is ushered into the laboratory in the basement of the United Center before the third period even ends.
"He cares for me," Jonathan says. He understands attachment in a pragmatic sense, as evolutionarily advantageous.
"Cares for you. That's an understatement."
"Why?"
"I don't think you need to ask that question."
"I ask myself that question all the time."
"And what have you computed?"
"I"-Jonthan looks confused-"don't think it's a matter of computing. If it were, I'd have solved the Patrick problem by now."
"Why is it a problem?"
"Because I think I care for him too. I know I do."
***
Jonathan Toews is perhaps the most frightening Captain to ever parade himself around in just underwear and socks. It could be funny-all 206 pounds of him standing in front of his stall with his arms crossed over his chest, illuminating the team on how this game could have wound up 5-0 but didn't. Kaner sits off to his left, blissful, every once in a while readjusting his cap.
"Man, we were so good tonight."
"Kaner, pay attention."
"So good, it was almost magical."
***
Jonathan's immediate response to the question is an incredulous and severe, "No." And then he pretends to think about it, pointedly looking anywhere but Kaner's childishly hopeful expression. "Absolutely not."
"No what? You won't pass the cereal?" asks Patrick, flashing his best faux-hurt expression, perhaps a little too close to the real thing, through a smile.
***
As much as Jonathan tries to deny the credibility of the 'Captain Serious' nickname by making conscious efforts to
There's no question in anyone's mind that a career milestone plus a hard-fought win plus a five day break is a cause for celebration, or at the very least, a few rounds of beer. What many seem to forget-because he's actually making efforts to be normal, game playing face aside-is that Jonathan is not just anyone and that a bar is not the first place his mind jumps to when thinking about having fun. Once he gets dressed, he'll take a second to acknowledge his one hundred and then begin preparing for the next game.
"Okay," he says, pulling down his toque and patting down his coat for his keys, "see you guys on Tuesday for practice. Remember: 10 AM."
The locker room is silent for a few moments because, really, the fact that Jonny thinks he can get away with not going out with the boys after three years is mindboggling.
***
"I'm not an exhibitionist. I just don't care if anyone is looking," Patrick says and Jonathan thinks, you'd care if the people looking could see everything. He thinks, I should tell you.
***
When Patrick plasters himself to Jonathan's body, suggestive, warm, and a little drunk, mumbling into his ear, "Come on. It'll be fun. Wouldn't even have to be a thing," he gathers up the presence of mind to push him gently away. They're in public: a hotel in Raleigh, enjoying a late dinner and drinks at the end of the Skills Competition. A few people give him passing sympathetic glances when Jonathan decides to announce it's a night for Patrick and push him towards the door-teammates, current and former, and coaches, mostly. Those who have to deal with Patrick on a daily basis and know the strength of character it takes to handle him, especially inebriated.
Patrick calls him, "Baby," like it means something the entire way to their room upstairs. He pushes greedy fingers under Jonny's suit, wrinkles the neat, pressed shirt he has tucked into his pants.
They stumble out of the elevator into a hallway thankfully empty except for a dim lamp on a small table in front of a mirror on the wall. The hotel decorator had probably thought it would add atmosphere. But with Patrick's lips uncomfortably close to Jonny's neck, hot puffs of air making his flesh rise in tiny bumps, the mood is more aligned with that of a russett boudoir, cheap and dirty.
"You wanna. I know you-you do. You look at me like-fuck, baby. We make sense. Everyone says so," Patrick slurs against his neck as Jonathan shifts his hold on Patrick's waist to dig in his back pocket for the key card.
"Everyone who?" Jonathan asks before he remembers: "You're drunk. You don't even know what you're saying, Kaner."
The door opens on the second try and for perhaps the first time in a long while, Jonathan wishes he weren't sharing a room with Patrick. It's not that he hasn't thought about suggesting something mutually benefical with him. He suspects many have tried going down the surefire route to messing up team dynamics.
'It makes sense' isn't a very compelling reason to begin a relationship anyway.
***
They spend the entire drive back to Jonny's apartment elated, grinning and pleased and most of all, relieved.
***
"Oy, dipshit!"
"I'm not talking to you," Patrick says, stomping across the locker room, nearly misstepping on one of the Indianhead's feathers before he catches himself at the last minute. He plops himself in his stall and rips at the tape around his thighs with furious fingers.
Jonathan bristles.
"We sit next to each other," he feels the need to point out. If Patrick wants to be petulant about this.
"Then sit somewhere else."
"Ooh, burn."
"Shut up, Sharpie."
***
"Are you close? God, I'm so close."
"Yeah."
"Is this good? Wait-let me just-okay. Yeah, God. Jesus Christ, that's so good."
"Yeah."
"Can you move your leg? I can't-uh. No, no, right there. Yes. Ungh. No, wait, back, like it was. Yeah? Is that good for you?"
"Oh my God, Jonny, shut up."
***
Everyone talks about it. Everyone comments on it. The players chirp, the coaches discuss. Every once in a while during the regular season, a reporter-a staff member, maybe-will incline their head towards them with a knowing secret grin. As if proof is staring them in the face, flamboyant and unrepentant and completely obvious. Patrick tries not to make much of it. He schools his expressions so that they're wider, freer because it's easier if people think he's the locker room's token affectionate and open guy. Sometimes, it's better to play dumb and hope that no one catches on. The announcers, without being able to focus on Crosby and Ovechkin, all turn their attention towards the pseudo-rivalry brewing amongst the Blackhawks.
Toews and Kane.
It all makes Patrick so goddamned hopeful and giddy with the prospect of acceptance-so incredibly aware that this life, his life might actually be possible, has the chance of being
The NHL's in the throes of changing, more open-minded than he's ever remembered it to be, more willing to allow quirks, generally trusting that the players won't embarrass their respective organizations.
***
He gets two rings before, "Hey, Peekaboo. What's up?"
"Put him on, Sharpie."
There's a brief scruffle before Jonny retrieves the phone. "Hey, Kaner," he says without a hint of a smile in his voice. "You saw?"
"Yeah. I am missed."
"You are," Jonny replies.
***
"It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace."
Toews.
START "jonathan"
***
I could tell immediately that it would take an effort to like Patrick Kane.
***
Patrick is touching his bruises when he doesn't think I'm looking. He doesn't have a shirt on. There are two on his ribcage, just below the cartilage. They're sensitive. He winces, but if he disliked the sensation, he would have stopped a while ago.
"What?" he asks. His fingers are paused over his skin.
"Nothing."
"Quit staring then."
"Free country."
His mouth quirks, but he doesn't say anything. I want to touch him. I want to touch him so badly something inside me feels like it's burning and the heat spreads all over my body, all the way up to my hands which want desperately to reach out and do it, just fucking do it already. I get the sense that the people watching me from a room beneath the United Center are laughing because I would like to leave bruises on Patrick's body..
Patrick turns off ESPN and yawns, stretching. The lamp lights skims off his arched back.
I watch him walk to the bathroom, and I feel like I can finally breathe when he closes the door. This is the time for our unspoken code to be consummated. Patrick will take care of himself for the night and he leaves me the room to do so as well.
It only takes a minute and shortly after, I hear the shower running, the cool slide of the glass shower doors. I think about Patrick as I wipe my hand on a tissue and throw it towards the wastebasket.
The white, crumpled ball misses and falls into plain sight on the carpet near the bathroom door. I know what I want it to mean when Patrick notices it, maybe not now, but in the morning when he gets up and it catches his eye.
I turn off the bedside lamp and slip between the sheets as the water shuts off in the bathroom. My body falls heavily into sleep.
***
You settled into Buffalo with ease-like a swimmer who spends so much of his life in the pool that he doesn't remember anymore the difference between air and water-carelessly toeing off your sneakers as you went, bag dumped over the back of the coffee-stained couch, jacket on the white wicker kitchen chair, sound of the fridge opening, wordlessly expecting me to close the door, make myself at home.
"Sweet," you said, flushed in a wedge of flourescent blue visible through the partition separating your kitchen and living room, "my mom made us a pie." Bottles of condiments clinked and rattled together along with the tell-tale shift of tupeware and plastic. "No, wait," you added, "two pies. Man, I love being home." I knew the feeling, the unexpected warmth and contentment that came from going back to a place you once knew so well and were pleased to find that you still remembered. Though I couldn't see it, your homesick grin hung tangibly in the air.
It was a few months ago that I'd begun compiling a running list of all the things that made you smile despite yourself. I often keep lists.
Cake with bright blue and violet frosting and the immature, dirty puns Sharpie and Bur scribbled into your birthday card were the first, followed by an array of vaguely catalogued scraps of memory that I told myself I'd remember for the currently distant but largely inevitable future I'd be spending alone after you found yourself a girlfriend and then a wife. I'd have the trip to the park where you played fetch with a huge golden retriever to tide me over for at least half a year; that and seeing you skate on virgin ice as if marking your territory right before a home game or driving on the I-90 with the windows down. And ferris wheels, that's a big one.
Then there's watching home videos, flipping through childhood pictures, seeing the trophies in your room. Snowball fights, Mario Kart, mouse tracks ice cream with extra sprinkles. Coming home, whether to Buffalo or Chicago, and those unexpected team hugs in the locker room that you try to grimace through and wrestle your way out of but secretly look forward to getting.
And now, pie.
"Come on," you said absently, shutting the door of the fridge, satisfied with your perusal. You padded lightly into the room where I stood with my hands uselesly at my sides staring out the window after I'd straightened your shoes and lined mine up next to them on the welcome mat. I'd done that dozens of times before but never as a Stanley Cup champion, and never with the startling realization that with my track record-the Olympics, the Conn Smythe, and Lord Stanley-I might just maybe be in someone's good graces long enough to have it all. Or maybe there really was some large deity, probably Zeus, maybe the National Hockey League Board of Governors, sitting somewhere on a mountaintop, gleefully rubbing together his thunder bolts, waiting to strike me down at the first hint of forbidden happiness.
Part of me wished I could go back to where Past Johnny was only a few hours ago. Beyond the truncated yard to the next house, and then, after that, past a whole row of houses, maybe a city, the swell of a lake or two, and then some cornfields, flower fields, grassy fields, a couple more houses, a couple more cities, Lake Michigan, high-rises slowly growing in elevation, giving way to skyscrapers, and a narrow stretch of highway curving like a ribbon between the water and the gray slate buildings all the way to our apartment with the hallway lights probably still on and the radio broadcasting a sports station on low.
But here I was, alone with you in your living room; Chicago becoming a distant, transluscent memory. Philadelphia, even dimmer. Only Buffalo existed for me now. Only standing next to the couch, and then remembering with a jolt exactly where I was and that I was there as your friend, your guest, never anything else. I shook myself out of my daze, mumbling a faint, distracted, “Sorry,” while taking a few steps to the left, reaching for the blanket and pillow on the top shelf of the linen closet, above the coats, placed there for overnight visits from friends who were sometimes high school buddies, more often than not hockey players; and mostly me.
You crossed your arms and looked pointedly at the bundle in mine. Somewhere in between the living room and the kitchen, you had rolled up your sleeves and taken off your socks. "Uh, it's not a surprise if they come downstairs and realize we're already here. We'll sleep in my room," you said, jerking your head in the direction of the stairs like that was the simplest solution in the world.
While you took both our bags and hid them out of sight behind the couch, my mind raced along all the likely configurations we could find ourselves in: bed/floor; floor/bed; floor/floor; and the most terrifying: bed/bed with the chance to be close, nestled together under the pretense of sleep, maybe a leg grazing your thigh, maybe a daring brush of my hand against your hip. Considering the possibilities alone was almost enough to make them real, and that was enough to make them impossible. It may have been my imagination, but somewhere, I thought I heard the menacing crackle of lightning.
Finished with the bags, you grabbed my shirt when I didn't move, leaving a white, sticky imprint of the whipped cream you'd probably eaten after dragging a finger through the pie, and the blanket came tumbling out of my hands. I followed blindly when you pulled, mind still caught up in circular thoughts like bed and sleep and you, all three within the same realm of possibility when I’d only ever been used to one or two at a time. The words, working in tandem with others like white and cream and fingers, did nothing to help the situation.
"Kaner," I hissed when we were already half-way up the stairs, looking back mournfully at the jumbled pile of blankets on the couch that meant I wouldn't be sleeping on the floor and neither would you, that we'd be on the bed, the both of us.
You didn’t turn around. "Shh."
"I'm totally fine sleeping downstairs," I whispered. Sneaking around made me feel like a teenager stealing undetected into a girl's bedroom to make-out while her parents were sleeping. An excitedly masochistic part of my brain toyed with the idea, perhaps even constructed a fantasy out of it not entirely unwelcome but definitely inappropriate given the circumstances of the next two or three hours worth of sleeping arrangements. Mostly, I didn’t trust myself, fully aware of how pliant I became when sleep-deprived, but never having been tested myself against it quite like this.
You rolled your eyes, turning back briefly, but never releasing the hold on my shirt, as if afraid that I would dash away if released. "Is it the trophies? They make you uncomfortable?" you said with only the slight lilt of a smug smile. It was no secret that your room was a museum devoted to preserving the accomplishments and shoes of Patrick Timothy Kane the Second for posterity.
"What?"
"The bobble heads then?" you tried. "I can put them in a drawer or something." You were being serious, which should have been funny but only made the situation more disturbing and me more anxious. The prospect of being judged by your mini-Kaner bobble head dolls while I tossed and turned in bed next to you, their oversized heads moving up and down in encouragement or perhaps disgust, plastic necks squeaking, “We knew all along. We knew it. You wanted us,” was too much.
"Oh for-what--no, it's not-"
"Tazer, I'm tired," you whined, tugging on my shirt. "Sleep is our friend." Along the edge of the second floor windowpane, hazy and transparent beams of light spilled over onto the floor and down the stairs. They caught your hair and your face tilted just enough to bring an iridescent shine to your blue eyes. All it took was a moment's distraction, the focus of my gaze downward to your lips and the swipe of your tongue, before you were pulling me along behind you with a renewed vigor, as if determined to be in bed before six.
"What about our stuff?" I asked futiley, to which you responded with an incoherent groan. "Dude, it's not going anywhere."
If you'd have been more awake, you might have asked why I was so concerned about sleeping upstairs with you; having never done it before, there was no expected code of conduct I could use as precedent. I had only the strict, self-imposed hands-off policy coupled with an air-tight no-looking clause and an absolutely-no-thinking-about-it addendum. As long as I followed the rules, there wouldn't be any problems. There shouldn’t have been any problems.
“My toothbrush?” I tried at the top of the stairs, a last ditch effort to slink back to the neutral territory of 'a friend’s couch, the family couch, a seating place for comfortable, wholesome television watching and polite conversing.’
“I’m sure we have something,” you said, leading me down the hall. “Or you can use mine.” Apparently, for you, it wasn’t an issue. Sharing a house with three girls, I guess you were almost guaranteed that things were clean, especially in the personal hygiene department.
Luckily, my toothbrush was still in your bathroom from when I had visited a few weeks back. I plucked it from my spot in the toothbrush holder, wondering when exactly I’d begun refering to it as ‘my spot’ and decided that it was probably around the time when it’d become a permanent fixture on your sink. It felt all too natural, standing there watching our reflections, hip to hip. The thought struck me whether Dunc and Seabs did this too, or Sharpie and Bur, in the privacy of their hotel rooms or their homes. Probably not.
After splashing your face with cold water, you flicked me with the excess on your fingers and wiped the rest off on the hem of my shirt. Definitely not.
Your room looked exactly the same as when I had last seen it-orderly, clean, and just the right side of cluttered. My boxers were mixed in with the clean laundry in your hamper. Your mother must have mistaken them for yours and washed them with all your other clothes. The thought of you absently picking them out of the pile and putting them on sent warm tendrils of pleasure down my spine. It wouldn’t have been the first time that you had worn my clothes-a button-up to dinner when none of yours were clean, a warm jacket when you forgot to pack one, and, once, my jersey when you’d absently grabbed my bag instead of yours-but it would have been the most intimate, or at the very least, a contender for first place with the jersey.
You handed me a shirt that smelled like fabric softener and you, and I hated myself for thinking about how it fit a little too tight, like a second skin, or about knowing what you smelled like in the first place. It’ll be alright, I thought reassuringly, turning my back deliberately while you changed so as not to get the image of your body in my mind right before I slept next to it. I slipped under the covers, careful to keep myself curled tightly towards the edge. Thankfully, I was facing away from the dreaded bobble heads, but I could still feel them mocking me when you plopped down onto the bed, stretching your limbs and sprawling on top of the duvet. The bed sank with the uneven distribution of weight, and before I could help it, I was being pulled towards the well around your body like a dying star to a black hole.
“God, Kaner. Stop moving.”
You yawned. “I’m not.” Then you pulled the covers up around your shoulders and tucked your feet beneath them, body a few marginal inches away from mine. “Whatever,” I said because clearly you were, and I felt the need to point it out as if it was going to absolve me from anything that could potentially happen over the course of the night. Maybe a touch that was a little too intimate or a limb that strayed a little too close. I’d have an excuse. “You moved,” I’d say. “Remember? I told you to stop and you didn’t so here we are.”
It wouldn’t matter that I secretly marveled at the freckles dotting your back or that I wanted to know, first-hand, what sweat licked off your collarbone would taste like. Because you would never, never get to know about any of that. All you would get is a shrug, nonchalant and practiced, and, if it came down to it, a proverbial “It wasn’t me that started it; it was you.”
***
“I always knew he was a cuddler,” someone whispered triumphantly.
“Please, we all did. The real question is what are they doing here? I thought Pat said their flight wasn’t getting in until eight.”
“His car’s out front. They probably drove down.”
“Mom,” another voice hissed, “get up here. Patrick came home early, and he’s passed out in bed with Jonathan.”
A chair scraped along the linoleum floor of the kitchen. “Oh, dear, if he’s been drinking again-”
“Oh, it is so much better than drinking. Trust us. In a good way.”
My mind only registered a warm body, my hand palming the skin of a bare back beneath a t-shirt, and two legs casually tangled with mine. I burrowed my head deeper into the pillow, feeling soft hair beneath my chin, tufts of air evenly hitting my neck.
Footsteps tread loudly up the stairs, and you groaned sleepily at the noise. “What’s going-oh, oh, that is adorable. Oh, boys.” An amused laugh was stifled into a giggle. “Andree would love to see this. She’s always saying how they’re so much like a married couple.”
“Done and done.” A camera clicked. “Picture taken.” Followed by the press of a few buttons. “And text message sent. God, I love cell phones. It’s like they were made for expediting embarassment.” A male voice chuckled in doppler effect fashion as your dad paused briefly before rounding the banister and going down the stairs.
“Breakfast,” your mom reminded, probably shaking her head, voice already fading as she walked after your dad. “Someone should wake them. I’m sure they won’t want to miss it,” she called over hear shoulder.
You groggily came to with a yawn and mumbled a soft, confused, “What the hell?” near my ear. I’d been nearly awake for most of the early morning commotion, trying to ignore your sisters who were peering out at us from behind the doorframe.
A renewed chorus of happy sighs resounded from the hall before you elbowed me in the side. “Tazer, wake up.”
“Hmm?”
“Oh, my God. The love. Like sleeping puppies,” another voice piped in, to which you grumbled irritably, “Shut up, Jackie.”
You sat up, leaving me with a distinct emptiness in my arms that I wanted to follow despite any better judgment. Usually, I’d have been the first one up, but we’d spent the night driving from Chicago to Buffalo in an impromptu road trip that you’d decided was a good idea despite having flight tickets booked for the next day. I was skeptical, but not in a position to deny you anything, ever; thirty minutes and two bags later, we left for Buffalo in your car.
“What time is it?” you asked, seemingly unconcerned that not six inches from you was your teammate and best friend currently curled around your lap.
“8:30.”
You groaned unhappily, flinging yourself back down onto the bed, narrowly missing hitting my head with your arm. “Ten,” you replied. The covers that had since pooled around our thighs were dragged roughly up to our necks.
“Breakfast?” a voice sing-songed.
“Ten.”
Someone sighed a curt, "Fine," and then there was silence except for the sound of retreating footsteps, the muffled clink of plates, and quiet laughter in the kitchen.
We were in the same position as when we had woken up, except that my arm had slipped from around your waist and was now curled protectively against my chest. If I had allowed myself even a glimmer of hope in the two years that I’d known you, this was likely to be that moment. You were voluntarily lying beside me, in a platonic, mindlessly tired kind of way, but lying all the same.
If I waited long enough, I could just imagine myself trailing a fingertip along your cheekbone. Hockey players rarely had the chance or desire to be gentle. Everything about us lent itself to power and force. Usually, our grips were too strong, our muscles too tense, our habits too quick and dirty, but sometimes we had our moments, a smattering of quiet mornings and lazy afternoons in between a career made from brutality and violence.
This was not to be one of those times. Before my fingers came up to your face, I stopped the rash movement. If you noticed or felt it, there would be more explaining to do than a simple, “You moved, and I moved back. I’m sorry.”
Over the years, I’d learned to take the moments as they came and to never ask for anything more. Pushing my luck with the already generous but likely tempermental fates would backfire and soon, a losing streak, missing easy empty net goals, faltering on the ice, could be traced back to this very second where my fingers lay poised over your cheek and my breath was caught in my throat. It was safer to admire, but I didn’t want to fall asleep or else it would be over all too quickly; I wouldn't be able to feel your almost touch through the haze of dreams.
After a few more seconds of fighting the inevitable, staying up through the night on only protein shakes had taken its toll, and soon I was fading into darkness beside you, thinking selfishly that I could get used to the view if only you let me, just as my eyes slipped shut.
Part II