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Johnny’s had girlfriends, a couple of them. They don’t last long. He’s too focused on hockey and on improving himself, trying to be the best captain that ever was, or some nonsense like that. Johnny’s not into hookups or one-nighters though. Too much effort, he claims. He doesn’t really try to pick up in bars. Just as well, because Patrick doesn’t want to think about what his game would look like. A lot of ums and uhs and awkward laughter probably. He gets second-hand embarrassment just picturing it. Lack of game or no though, Johnny’s still managed to have a couple of girlfriends, nobody that Kaner has ever really paid attention to.
Then the new bottle girl from Paris waltzes into their lives. She’s tall, blonde, and stacked. Anybody with a pulse would be dying to get a ride on that.
“Jesus,” Bur says, bottle of beer hovering just at his lips, like he was about to take a sip and then completely forgot what he was doing.
“What?” Patrick asks, following the direction of Bur’s gaze, and then he sees her. Jesus is right. She’s perfection, dressed up with long-legs and a mischievous grin. Johnny’s talking to her at the bar and he looks totally bowled over, like he was hit blind and then tumbled into the boards.
“Je-sus,” Bur repeats, drawing the syllables out. “Tazer’s going to flame out on that one.”
Patrick laughs. It’s already happening right before their eyes—the blonde girl turning to the next high-paying customer, not dismissing Johnny, but clearly moving on.
When Johnny returns to their table, sucker-punched and clearly amazed by it. As he sits down, he just shakes his head and says, “She is something else.”
Her name is Lindsey, and over the next couple of years, pretty much every unmarried Blackhawk takes a swing at her. Even Patrick. He’s not into exercises in futility, but there’s something about her that just inspires everybody to try, and he’s no different. He doesn’t even manage one flirtatious word before she’s sidestepping the whole conversation altogether. She makes it so friendly, like she has absolutely no idea what he was about to do. She’s an unconquerable object, an Everest. When they inevitably strike out, not one of them is even mad about it - that girl is looking for something in specific, and it isn’t hockey players.
But Johnny doesn’t see it that way. It’s not that he keeps going back for more, because Johnny doesn’t fight unwinnable battles anymore than Patrick does. Somewhere along the way, Johnny got bitten, and bitten bad. He talks about her all the time, about how she’s apprenticing in a hair salon, and how she likes football, and plays piano. They listen to some of the same bands and share an equally snobbish passion for good French food. She probably has no idea just how much an entire hockey team and it’s AHL affiliate knows about her business, because Johnny just can’t shut up about her.
And it goes on like this for years. Johnny occasionally dates other girls and every time, Sharpy jokes, finally, finally, he might get over his stupid crush. But every time whatever thing Johnny has going on fizzles out and whatever he has for Lindsey never does.
The thing is, Patrick genuinely can’t understand why Lindsey resists him so hard. Johnny’s a great guy. He’s good looking, makes better than decent money, he’s funny and dry, and when he’s not being a hyper-competitive asshole who knocks over little children on the ice, he’s kind. Johnny’s his friend obviously, he knows he’s biased, but he’s not sure what the hold out is. Could be she’s into skinny hipster nerds or something, in which case, Johnny’s got less than no chance.
One night, they go to Paris, after a hard fought win, in high spirits. Patrick doesn’t know what it is—maybe it’s Johnny’s exuberant grin or his uncharacteristically easy demeanor, but Johnny wanders back to the table Patrick’s sharing with Sharpy and Seabs, a little bit dazed, a little bit drunk.
“What’s up?” Patrick asks, amused, hand on his pint glass. His beer’s gone a little warm and he’s considering getting another one, if he can be bothered to get up.
Johnny pulls up a chair, spins it backwards and collapses into it like his legs just won’t hold him up anymore. “She asked me out.”
“Who did?” Kaner asks, not getting it at first.
“Lindsey,” Johnny says like he can’t quite believe it. “Lindsey did.”
“What?” Patrick says at the same time that Seabs whoops and claps Johnny on the shoulder. He can’t quite get this straight. “Like on a date?”
Sharpy snorts, amused, and Johnny glares at both him and Patrick. “Yeah, on a date—dinner and a movie.”
“Whoa,” Patrick says, “that’s...that’s excellent, man.”
He’s not sure why, but he feels hollow, queasy even, a line of cold going down his spine. All interest in getting another beer evaporates. Johnny talks excitedly, how he can’t believe it, that Lindsey finally came around. He jokingly asks somebody to punch him and then accepts the shot Sharpy takes at his shoulder with a smile and a fond “thanks, asshole,” without the usual panties-in-a-bunch pissed off fanfare such a thing would ordinarily merit.
“Okay.” Patrick clears his throat and pushes his chair back to stand up. “I’m calling it a night.”
“What?” Sharpy asks, eyes dropping to his watch. “But it’s only been dark for six whole hours. So much time left for you to embarrass yourself in here. You going soft on me, Peeks?”
Patrick rolls his eyes.
Johnny looks up at him and then at his half-finished beer. “You good?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Patrick says, “just one of those nights I want to go home and crash in my bed, maybe watch a few episodes of Arrested Development and then pass out.”
He thinks about it on the cab ride back home. What the fuck is wrong with him? It’s not like he thought he had a shot with Lindsey or anything. He’s barely spoken to her in the last two years, even if Johnny is like, a walking encyclopedia of all things Lindsey. He should be happy for Johnny, who, after so long and so much angst, is finally getting what he wants. Either Johnny gets with this girl, and all is perfect, or shit goes south, and Johnny can finally move on. That’s what he needs.
It hits him as he’s trying to open up the door to his apartment. His keys drop from nerveless fingers. He’s not fucking jealous of Johnny. Oh no. He’s jealous of Lindsey. What the hell does that even mean? What does that make him?
He sinks to the ground, back to his his door, unsure what to do with himself. He’s never had a single thought that made him question himself in his entire life. Back when he was playing for the Knights, Gags had confessed to having some mixed up moments about his best friend, Tavares. But now Gags has got his girlfriend in medical school. As far as he knows, Gags and Tavares had never done anything. It was just feelings, getting twisted up. But Patrick has never had anything like that. Not really. He's only ever had thoughts about girls. Everybody looks, but he has about 400 sex-related random thoughts about girls all day, even with the ladies in the front office. But maybe that’s what this is. Nobody plays hockey with him like Johnny does. Nobody fits him on the ice like that. Maybe it’s just feelings getting twisted up.
“Hey, are you all right?” His neighbor asks, stepping off the elevator and pausing when she sees him. She’s one half of a power couple. He thinks they’re both lawyers.
Patrick shakes himself. “Yeah, yeah, sorry...just having a moment.”
She side-eyes him as she unlocks her own door. “Okay, well, if you need anything…” she says in the tone of voice that suggests, if he needs anything, he can fucking well ask someone else.
Patrick picks himself up, lets himself inside, and resolves to put it out of his head.
A week later, Johnny drives his car into a support beam, and out of his mind with worry, he has to face it. Johnny is his first thought when he wakes up and his last thought when he goes to bed. When Patrick’s not with him, he thinks of what to say to him and funny things he wants to share just to make Johnny laugh. It’s not just twisted feelings—he’s in love with Johnny. It’s terrifying and he can’t parse it out. When he thinks about sex with Johnny, he should run into a complete roadblock. It should, he thinks, be like this entire blank space in his mind of ‘nope, nope, not into it,’ the same way he’d feel about a chick he doesn’t particularly like.
It doesn’t make any sense, it’s got no place in his life, so he refuses to let himself think about it. He does his best to just focus on the fact that Johnny isn’t well and to step up his game on the ice so that Johnny doesn’t return to an actual mess. Easier said than done when it feels like Johnny is the heart of this team, and without him they’re just wandering lost.
Lindsey is great during Johnny’s concussion. She keeps him company when she’s not at work, apparently they play endless rounds of cards and board games, and just talk when Johnny gets too dizzy to do anything else. Johnny’s fucking miserable, but somehow, when Lindsey’s around, it’s doesn’t seem to trouble him quite as much. If Patrick ever worried about her being everything Johnny hoped she would be, he’s not worried now, as much as the thought pains him. Before long, even though they’ve really only been on one date, Johnny’s calling her his girlfriend.
Patrick tries not to dwell on it. What else can he do? Johnny was not something he was ever going to be able to have anyway. He’s in love with the straightest straight dude to ever straight. It shouldn’t even be possible to feel the way that Patrick feels about Johnny. Somehow he managed to find the perfect best friend and in so doing, got so tangled up in him, that friendship was no longer enough.
He has imagined fucking Johnny in any every conceivable position, on every available surface. His shoulders, his ass, his arms—not things that Patrick would’ve ever paid attention to on anybody else and now Patrick can’t stop looking. Johnny’s rewriting the book on what Patrick finds sexy. He’d have called himself a legs man once upon a time. Even now, looking at a hot chick, he still would. While Johnny’s got some thighs on him, they weren’t exactly the long-legged stems Patrick’s pictured wrapped around his waist in pretty much every jerkoff fantasy since he was 15.
He thinks about it occasionally, when he’s hanging out with Johnny. How weird and disjointed it is in his head, that he is so fucking turned on by every single part of Johnny, and still feels so resoundingly straight. And then Johnny looks down at his hands in the middle of a conversation, the crescents of his eyelashes sweep against his cheeks. It hit’s Patrick like a sock to the gut, the same way he would feel if some perfect ten in too short shorts bent over in front of him. God, when and where does it stop?
The lockout happens and it comes, in some way, as a relief. Patrick didn’t do so well after that messy playoff exit in the wake of realizing he’s in utter hopeless love with somebody he’s probably going to have to see nearly every day for the foreseeable future. Cinco De Mayo can attest to that. He needs the space.
When his agent offers him the contract with EHC Biel, he calls his mother up and tells her first, because he's already sure she’s not going to like it.
“It’ll be pretty neat, I think,” he says, trying to defend the choice he’s made. “I mean, I haven’t spent a lot of time in Europe, but you know, might be good to broaden my horizons or whatever?”
He knows he sounds like a tentative mess. It’s just hard for him. How does he explain that he just can’t be around Johnny right now, now that things are going so well with Lindsey. He’s got too great a sense of self-preservation and far too much pride to do that to himself.
His mother surprises him.
“Switzerland,” she says, like she’s savoring the word, “that’s very exciting.”
“Yeah?” he says, “I’m glad you think so.”
“Pat, can I ask you something?”
He goes still on the line, barely taking a breath. She can’t possibly know about Johnny. It’s too horrifying of a thought for words.
“Your sisters are all out of the house now, and your dad is so busy with the dealership…” she trails off. “I just feel like there’s not a whole lot for me to do these days. Maybe, I could come visit you? While you’re there?”
It pains him, to hear his mom sound so fragile and unsure. She’s been an unflinching rock in their household, the anchor they needed, when Patrick’s schedule and requirements made everything that much harder. Patrick knows they all took it for granted.
“Come with me,” he replies, startling even himself, “just come with, I’ll get an apartment with two rooms. We’ll tear it up. Just you and me.”
So maybe he isn’t the only one who needs a change of pace.
Johnny doesn’t like it of course. He doesn’t fight it, but his mouth tightens and he says, dully, “Yeah yeah, that’ll be great,” when Patrick starts talking about all the cool stuff there is to do in Biel. Patrick’s having lunch with him and Lindsey. These days they’re together more often than not. When Johnny gets up to go the bathroom, Lindsey leans over and squeezes his shoulder.
“He’s too stubborn to say he’s gonna miss you,” she says, a fond smile quirking at the corner of her mouth.
Patrick stares at her. He’s never resented her so hard as he does in this moment. Like she knows Jonathan Toews better than he does, even though Patrick’s been playing on a line with him off and on since he was 13. Even though he had to learn, trial by fire, that first year as rookies, how to read Johnny, who was irascible and pigheaded and could always throw them for a loop by having a compliment at the ready whenever somebody made a beautiful play. If Lindsey thinks Johnny’s difficult to decode now, she can’t even imagine what he was like those first few years.
“Yeah,” he says, trying to keep the bitter edge out of his voice. He likes to think he mostly succeeds, but he’s also got the worst poker face in the history of the 52 card deck.
Lindsey smoothly changes the subject to movies. She goes to them a lot and she always despairs of Johnny who only ever wants to see big budget comedies or action films. She’s telling Patrick a funny story of how Johnny fought so hard not to go see Beasts of the Southern Wild with her when it came out, but then at the end, when the credits rolled, she looked over to find him with his hand over his mouth, tears streaming out of the corners of his eyes.
“Whatever, had something in my eye,” Johnny says when he returns, refusing to concede an inch. “I still think that movie was pointless.”
‘He loved it,’ she mouths over Johnny’s shoulder where he can’t see it.
Patrick really wishes he could hate her—that she wasn’t funny or cool, or so goddamn beautiful.
He moves on. He goes to Switzerland. He plays great hockey. He spends more time with his mom then he has since he was 15, and he finally meets a girl of his own. His life goes on. Some mornings, when he wakes up, he doesn’t think about Johnny at all. It’s easy when the season is flying by like magic. They’re on fire, and it doesn’t look like anybody is going to be able to stop them.
Bolly scores that fucking improbable goal and the Stanley cup is theirs. When Johnny skates up to him, after they hand Patrick the Conn-Smythe, his heart only rocks in his chest a little. The days go by, so do the celebrations, by the time they finally stop, Patrick feels half-dead, both from the playoffs and the constant wash of alcohol. He’s just having a chill day at home—the first time in far too long—when Johnny calls him up.
“Whattup?” he asks.
“Just bored,” Johnny says, “wanna do something?”
“I mean, I’m not looking to do anything wild. I was kind of enjoying hanging out in my apartment,” he says with a laugh. “I know that’s lame, but you wanna stop by?”
He hopes it doesn’t come at as hopeful as it sounds in his head.
Johnny chuckles. “Yeah, I guess I could manage that.”
He swings by a little after 3 in the afternoon, the disc of Madden 13 in his hand and burritos he picked up at Azteca De Oro in a takeout container in the other.
“You have no idea what I went through for these,” Johnny says, voice severe as Patrick gets clean plates out of his dishwasher. “I got mobbed. I definitely don’t remember it being this insane after the last cup win.”
“Suffering is good for the soul,” Patrick says and makes a face, “or some shit like that.”
Patrick ignores the six pack he still has in his fridge and pours water out of the Brita filter for both him and Johnny.
“What would you know about suffering, eh?” Johnny laughs. “I’m hand delivering you burritos.”
“You gotta give me something here. I have to endure your company,” Patrick replies, flicking a towel at him.
Johnny pushes over Patrick’s burrito. Steak, with black beans, sour cream, hot sauce, extra rice, and guacamole. Perfect.
“Yeah yeah,” Johnny replies, “it’s okay, Kaner, I know you love me best.”
Patrick gives him the finger. It doesn’t hurt so much anymore when Johnny says shit like that.
“Coming?” Johnny asks over his shoulder, as he takes his plate to the sofa in front of Patrick’s TV.
They play video games for a few hours. Johnny gets all riled up, because as per usual, he’s a competitive lunatic who has to be better at everything. Patrick has learned to live with it by now. His mother says it’s good for him, that Johnny taught him humility without even meaning to.
“You were always the star in our household, the center of attention. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but I always laugh whenever I see you going along with what Johnny wants,” she told him once.
“I wasn’t bossy,” Patrick had protested.
“No,” she said, “but you liked having your way.”
Back then, Patrick wasn’t even really aware that he was doing it. It just seemed natural, trying to coax Johnny out of his funks, and calm him down after Sharpy’s endless teasing got too much. He hadn’t thought much about it, because Johnny is so selfless with himself the rest of the time.
He looks over at Johnny as he’s paging through menu options on the screen. It’s almost dinner time, and the evening summer sun is lighting him up so that the fine downy hairs on his skin appear gold.
Patrick doesn’t know what comes over him—why it is in that moment, he suddenly loses the will to stop himself from doing what he pretty much always wants to do in Johnny’s presence. Patrick leans over and kisses him.
As soon as their mouths touch, panic starts to set in. What the fuck is Johnny going to do? He braces for Johnny to shove him off and for the explanations he’ll have to give afterwards. But Johnny doesn’t pull away. He kisses Patrick back, lips parting under Patrick’s so that he can flick their tongues together.
Good lord.
Patrick doesn’t even know what to do with himself. It’s so good. Johnny’s mouth against his, the perfect cheekbones Patrick can’t help smoothing with his thumbs, the way he accepts Patrick’s weight to sink back into the couch. Johnny shifts a little and it sort of rolls Patrick into him, chests pressed together—and just like that it’s over.
Johnny jerks back, setting Patrick away from him with hands on his shoulders that are surprisingly gentle, and practically tumbles off the couch in his urge to put distance between them.
He stares at Patrick, horrified, and Patrick feels like a marionette whose strings have been cut. He can barely keep his head up.
“What the fuck was that?”
“Don’t—” Patrick starts and then stops, “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Johnny brings his fingertips to his mouth, brushing over his lower lip, his expression going dark and unreadable in way Patrick doesn’t recognize.
“I have a girlfriend,” Johnny says, sounding vaguely hysterical. “You have a girlfriend.”
“I know, I know,” Kaner says, putting his head in his hands. “Believe me, I know.”
“I’m gonna—” Johnny breaks off and points at the door, discombobulated. He slings his keys and wallet off the table, nearly dropping the keys twice, and then walks right into Patrick’s end table with a muttered curse. Patrick doesn’t watch him as he makes his way down the hall and leaves.
Patrick lies frozen on the couch, eyes on the ceiling. Hours he lays there as the sun moves across the sky and begins to set. He thinks he understands that stupid Natalie Imbruglia song his sisters loved so much growing up. This is certainly not how he would’ve picked for this to go. He still feels that kiss, that fucking kiss, lighting up his nerve-endings, like it happened just moments ago.
They don’t speak to each other. Not a word. Patrick feels like something needs to be said, but he’s got no idea what. He wouldn’t even know where to start. Eventually Patrick goes back to Buffalo to visit with his friends and family and to start his off-season training again. Pictures surface on the internet of Johnny in Europe with Lindsey, and Patrick can’t get mad. They look happy, Johnny smiling softly at the camera with her fit into the curve of his arm. It was just one kiss, and Patrick would be throwing some pretty heavy stones in a great glass house to get mad about how blithely Johnny stands next to her like nothing ever happened. After all, he hasn’t said a word to Amanda.
Confronted with that thought, he finally admits that he’s got to break up with her. It takes three days for him to figure out how best to do it. He doesn’t want to break up with her over the phone, but she’s supposed to visit in a few weeks. He can’t imagine telling her it’s over, just like that, after she’s flown all the way out to upstate New York.
On the third morning he gives up trying to come up with the easiest best way to do this and rips off the bandaid. He calls her up and she picks up on the first ring, startling him.
“I can’t,” isn’t the most auspicious way to start things, but it’s what comes out of his mouth anyway.
Of course she doesn’t know what he’s talking about and the entire story comes tumbling out of him. He hadn’t planned to tell her all of it. Just that there was somebody else and he just couldn’t lie to himself about it anymore. She deserved better than that. Somehow, he winds up crying on the phone to his girlfriend—ex he supposes now—as he tries to tell her it’s over.
“Patty, it’s okay,” she says, stopping the onslaught of words out of his mouth.
“What?” he says.
She laughs. It sounds a little congested, like she’s been crying too, and then she says, “I think I kinda always knew.”
“I am so sorry,” he says and he has never meant anything so much in his entire life.
She starts crying in earnest then and Patrick wonders if this is what his life is going to look like. Shoddy attempts at love, because he will never ever get over Johnny. Thinking about getting traded or signing somewhere else when his contract is up is anathema. He wouldn’t do it, not even to fix his love life. But he thinks, maybe, someday, if he needs the option, that’ll be the only one left to him.
Patrick doesn’t see Johnny again until the convention. They’ve exchanged one or two texts, polite cursory things, mere formalities really. He’s not trying to avoid Johnny exactly, but he makes sure to catch up with all the other guys first, just to get the lay of the land. If Johnny snubs him, at least he’ll know how he’s supposed to act. It pains him, because if he’s ruined his friendship with Johnny, he may have also ruined hockey with Johnny. The price of this thing between them is starting to get too high.
It turns out he worried for nothing, because Johnny smiles warmly at him when he sees him—that slowly resolving smile that kneecaps Patrick every time.
“Hey,” Johnny says, knocking their shoulders together, when they’re up on stage and everybody’s cheering, as if he didn’t run out of Patrick’s apartment a few months ago like Patrick had lit him on fire.
And then the dreaded words come.
“We have to talk,” Johnny tells him, catching Patrick’s gaze and then holding it until Patrick nods in acquiescence.
He forgets for a while, as they go through the whole rigmarole over the next couple of days, doing panels, signing autographs, laughing with the guys, that anything is wrong between them. It feels easy enough on stage, trading insults, Johnny dancing his horrifying moonwalk, Patrick doing his shuffle. Of course, it doesn’t last. When Johnny catches his attention as they’re all leaving on that last day, it comes flooding right back.
They took separate cars that day, so Johnny tells him to meet him at his place. Patrick briefly considers not going. That would probably be easier. He’s not quite ready to hear what Johnny inevitably has to say. He doesn’t know why it would be the last stake through the heart, this summer hardly let him preserve any illusions. But, his mama raised him better than that and he probably owes Johnny better than that too. Even if it’s nobody’s fault but Johnny’s that Patrick’s so in love with him.
Johnny left his door unlocked, so Patrick let’s himself in. He finds Johnny in the kitchen, sitting at his kitchen island, swirling a glass of wine ponderously in front of him.
“So, I pursued Lindsey for years,” Johnny says without preamble.
“Yeah?” Patrick says, confused as to where this is going. Patrick had been there, witnessing the whole thing, he doesn’t need a refresher.
“I just gotta say this.” Johnny tells him, setting the wineglass down with a thunk. “My girlfriend is fucking beautiful. She’s funny. She’s smart. She gives the best head of anybody I’ve ever met…”
Patrick swallows. He’s not sure he can listen to this. He gets a wineglass from Johnny’s cupboard and pours himself a generous glass. He doesn’t even like wine, but right now, to get through the next few minutes, it seems entirely necessary.
“...so please explain to me why the fuck I just dumped her!” Johnny finishes.
Patrick jerks and nearly spills wine all down his front. “What?”
“I don’t know, Patrick, that kiss—” Johnny says, breaking off to shake his head. He takes a generous swallow from his wine glass. “You kissed me, and every single moment after that, with her—it wasn’t fucking enough.”
The air is silent but for their breathing. Patrick struggles to digest that. Out of every scenario he imagined for this confrontation, he had not planned for this.
“You better not have been fucking around,” Johnny says, looking slightly dangerous.
That’s the kick in the pants Patrick needs. He laughs and comes around the kitchen counter to kiss Johnny. With Johnny sitting on the bar stool, Patrick’s taller, and he takes full advantage of it, tipping Johnny’s head back, hand at the nape of his neck, cradling his skull. He tastes strongly of wine. Patrick hadn’t even managed a sip from his glass-he's getting it now. He kisses the taste out of Johnny’s mouth, until Johnny’s lips taste like Patrick.
He backs off, and Johnny stares at him, eyes slightly glazed, like he just took a really big hit off of some good weed. Patrick runs his fingers along Johnny’s jaw, marveling at the fact that he can actually do this, that he can touch Johnny like this. “I love you, dicksmack, I fucking love you. You think I go around just making out with random dudes?”
Johnny shrugs at that, but his eyes are fond. “I have no idea what you do, Kaner.”
Patrick smiles down at him, increasing the pressure of his fingers at the base of Johnny’s skull in a way that makes Johnny’s eyes flutter. “Yeah, I think you do.”
And then Patrick’s kissing him again, putting everything he’s got into it. Johnny rotates a little in his chair, widening his thighs so that Patrick can step between them.
“Boy, is that weird,” Johnny says, breathlessly, closing his legs a little on Patrick’s hips.
“You’re fucking stupid, you know?” Patrick says, mouth skating over his cheek to the soft skin below Johnny’s ear. “You're never going to get with somebody that hot again.”
Johnny laughs. “Do you know how many times in the last few weeks I’ve jerked off thinking about you?”
That makes the breath seize in Patrick’s chest. “Yeah?” he manages after a moment.
“Mmhm,” Johnny replies and kisses him again, nibbling on his lower lip in a way that makes Patrick hiss.
Somehow they stumble back to Johnny’s bedroom, although Johnny seems to have a thing about pinning him up against every single wall between here and there. Not that Patrick minds. Although god, who knew that would be a thing he’d be into.
At last Patrick manages to trip Johnny back onto his bed.
“This is crazy,” Johnny says, blinking up at him. His eyes are so dark, they seem almost black, irises subsumed by pupil. Patrick swallows. He holds Patrick's gaze, sweeping his hands down over Patrick’s sides, fingertips digging in just enough so that it isn’t ticklish. Patrick licks a line down the taut muscle on the right side of his throat. Johnny moans, arching into it, breaths coming fast.
Johnny draws his hands up to the caps of Patrick’s shoulders and squeezes, briefly. “Your shoulders are too wide.”
“And you’re still into it,” Patrick says pointedly, raising his head enough to meet Johnny’s eyes.
“Yeah I’m into it,” Johnny replies, pushing down at the small of Patrick’s back so that their hips grind together. They both exhale as the pressure on their cocks increases. “I don't—I didn't realize—you were right here—”
Johnny cranes his neck upwards to meet Patrick’s mouth again, kissing him deep and hard.
Patrick reluctantly pulls away, hot all over, so turned on he can barely see with it. “We gotta do something or I’m gonna die.”
“I feel you,” Johnny says, equally ragged, and then laughs at the unintended pun. Patrick rolls off of Johnny to lie next to him, and together they fumble with each other’s pants, trying to navigate buttons and flies with adrenaline-induced trembling fingers. When Johnny’s hand finally closes around his cock, Patrick has to close his eyes and bite at his lip to stop himself from making a truly embarrassing moan of gratification.
“God, you look…” Johnny says and then breaks off.
They kiss sloppily through it, jerking each other off, hands knocking into each other, fingers sticky with precome, barely enough room to navigate because they couldn’t even be bothered to get their pants all the way off. Johnny does this thing with his thumb at the crown of Patrick’s dick that nearly makes him cry out.
“Like that, eh?” Johnny says.
Patrick leans in to close his teeth around Johnny’s lower lip and when that makes him shiver, he runs his tongue over the abused flesh, before delving deep to fuck Johnny’s mouth. It’s too difficult to focus on kissing him though.
“Is that what you do for yourself?” he asks, trying the same move out on Johnny, reveling in the way it makes Johnny freeze up and forget himself for a moment. His hand even stills on Patrick’s dick. Patrick can’t help mocking him a little for it.
Johnny’s eyes snap open, and it’s the same look he gets on his face when he’s sees a lane open up on the ice and he’s going to take it. With a jolt, Patrick comes right then in there, all over Johnny’s hand.
“Oh fuck,” he says, shuddering in Johnny’s grip.
It takes him a moment to figure his shit out after that, but when he gets himself back together and sees the vague amused look on Johnny’s face, he knows it’s on now. If Johnny wants to making coming into a competition, Patrick can roll with that.
He shoves Johnny flat onto his back and then leans over him, kissing him hard and deep and drawing him off slow, so slow. The same way he likes it when he wants it to last. He didn’t really think about it before, but Johnny’s got a pretty dick, in so far as one thought about these things in porn. It was a nice, well proportioned cock. Only the slightest furring of pubic hair. Heat suffuses him all over again at the thought. Yeah, he’s epically gone on this man, if his fucking dick is turning Patrick on. He draws his hand carefully up and down, fingers a loose circle, like he’s just trying to learn the feel of it, before tightening again to give Johnny what he needs.
Johnny comes nearly silently, breathing out in harsh gasps, squeezing Patrick’s hand tightly. It isn’t until that moment that Patrick even realizes he was holding Johnny’s hand, but he has been, caught between their bodies, long enough that it’s starting to go a little numb.
They lie like that, Patrick collapsed half on top of Johnny, his head resting on Johnny’s collarbone, their pants undone, jizz everywhere.
“I didn’t say it earlier,” Johnny says after a long moment, when Patrick on the edge of passing out.
“What?” he asks.
“I didn’t say it back, but,” Johnny says, and Patrick feels the deep, bracing exhale Johnny takes under his cheek, before he mumbles in a rush, “I love you too.”
“Fucking gay, man,” Patrick tells him sleepily.
“Yeah, whatever,” Johnny says with a laugh, easygoing and carefree.
Patrick’s going to have to remember this. Give him an orgasm, and Johnny will take the mockery with good grace. Johnny rolls out from underneath him and coaxes him out of his clothes and into the shower. Watching the water sluice down over Johnny’s muscles, running in rivulets over the sharp cut of his abdomen, Patrick can’t believe he actually gets to have this.
He guesses if you’re a dude who’s dumb enough to fall in love with your best friend, it just might turn out, he’s dumb enough to do the same thing back.