Chapter Text

When Kaner knocks at his door, Jonny's rummaging in his kitchen for a bottle of Excedrin. He always gets the worst headaches over the summer—because of the weather, or maybe just because he spends too much time out on the lake—and he knows he has painkillers in one of his junk drawers. Actually, maybe Kaner will know where they are; he's better at keeping track of that kind of thing than Jonny. Back when they roomed together on the road, he used to just raid Kaner's suitcase, which was not only better organized but also better stocked.

Kaner knocks again, and Jonny shouts, "It's open!" Which should've been obvious, but Kaner gets weird about letting himself in sometimes, even though he's had a key since Jonny moved in.

The door opens, and he gets his first whiff of Patrick since July: he smells impossibly better than anything else Jonny's smelled in his life despite the medication that flattens his scent and quells it. Jonny's always hit hardest when they haven't seen each other for a while, and today's no exception; half the reason the door's unlocked and he's in the kitchen is to give himself a private moment to react without Kaner in the room.

"Better be glad I'm not a robber!" Kaner calls, and Jonny forces himself to open his eyes and shut his mouth.

"Lock the door!" Jonny calls back. How many wallets does he need? Apparently he still has the old velcro one he used when he was thirteen. He shuts the drawer and moves to the next one.

"I bet you say that to all the robbers," Kaner says. His voice is getting closer.

"Only the ones that are stupid enough to break in during the day when I'm home." Jonny takes a deep breath and looks up; and there Patrick is.

He tries to time the refamiliarization in stages: scent first, and then sight, so he can catalog how Patrick's changed. Jonny is stupidly happy to see him. His hair looks shorter under his hat, and while he isn't tanner, his nose and the tips of his ears are a little pink from the sun. He looks good, healthy—happy, too. He's lit up. In another five or ten minutes, Jonny might be ready to clap him on the shoulder.

"Did you lock the door?" Jonny asks.

"Nice to see you, too, Tazer," Patrick says. "Yeah, I locked the door. How's your mom doing?"

"Better," Jonny says. His mom had come down with a bad summer flu a couple of weeks ago; she hated being trapped in the house, so Jonny had spent the last part of his off-season entertaining her when he wasn't training. "I'm just glad she didn't get the rest of us sick."

"No kidding," Patrick says. He has his hands shoved in his pockets, and he's beaming. His dimples are lethal. "I'm glad she's doing better."

"Me too." This drawer has Tylenol and Aleve, but no Excedrin. "How are the sisters?"

"Are you ever going to learn their names?"

"Come on, I know their names. Is my Excedrin in this drawer?"

"No," Patrick says. "Move. They're good. Jess got an internship with a vet clinic. Why do you have a velcro wallet?"

God, he smells good. "It's not in there."

"Yeah, it is," Patrick says. He stacks four wallets on the counter, picks a red thread off the velcro one, reaches back into the drawer, and extracts a bottle of Excedrin. He slaps it against Jonny's chest; there's a brief moment when Jonny's hand covers Patrick's before Patrick slips away, and then Jonny's left holding a bottle of headache medicine he doesn't even need anymore. Patrick's scent is thick in his mouth.

"Thanks," Jonny says.

Patrick grins and ducks his head. "No problem," he says, and that's when his heat hits.

Jonny's never smelled anything like it, he's never experienced anything like it: he's never smelled that heat scent on Patrick at all. Flash heats are rare, especially in an omega of Patrick's age, and they're never like this, like a cyclone of psycholfactory input that rips into Jonny and tears his sense away and leaves only a roaring bundle of nerves and need behind. That's his rut. It comes out of nowhere. He's never lost himself in it before, but now the last scrap of higher thought left to him is being used to hold himself in check. He wouldn't need that restraint if Patrick didn't feel like every part of him was calling out to Jonny. Rut didn't work like that, didn't compel you towards someone who didn't want you; but the way Patrick smells is past receptive. He smells like he's been Jonny's all along.

Patrick's eyes are blue and blown wide. He's pulsing at the same frequency as Jonny.

"Patrick," he forces out.

"Yes," Patrick says immediately, and he makes it clear: "Jonny. Yes," and then Jonny's on him.

He bears Patrick back out of the kitchen, away from the door, towards a safe corner—towards the bedroom, where there's a bed and also another door. It's hard with Patrick pressed up against him, shoving his face against Jonny's neck, trying to climb Jonny or at least provoke Jonny into fucking him, but Patrick doesn't get a choice in this. He pushes at Patrick, herds him backward, even nips at him once, which earns him a look of such shocked dismay he doesn't do it again; and finally he does end up carrying Patrick the last length of the hall, because once Patrick gets his arms around Jonny's neck, there's nothing to prevent him from hoisting himself up and wrapping his legs around Jonny's waist, too. Jonny grunts and puts an arm under his ass and hauls him the rest of the way to the bedroom, and does his best to ignore the soft sound Patrick makes in favor of kicking the bedroom door shut and locking it.

He starts tugging at Jonny's clothes even before Jonny tosses him on the bed—trying to work the buttons and then getting frustrated and yanking. Jonny strips himself and catches one of Patrick's flailing ankles. He's wrestling with his own clothing now, but Jonny tightens his hand until Patrick goes still on his back except for the trembling he can't control, and then he strips Patrick, too—first his socks and pants and underwear, as fast as Jonny can pull them off, and then he yanks Patrick's shirt off over his head. The hat's long gone. Jonny doesn't care about the hat.

What he cares about is Patrick finally being where Patrick belongs. He smells incredible: sweet and ripe and receptive. He looks more incredible: naked, pale, radiant, his hard flushed cock twitching below his navel, his thighs parted and hands palm-up by his head. Someone should put a baby in him. Jonny should put a baby in him. Jonny's going to fuck him so thoroughly that he won't ever let another alpha this close, so thoroughly that Patrick won't ever want another person in his bed ever again.

Patrick doesn't stay passive for long; he twists around, and at first Jonny thinks he's trying to kick, but then Patrick gets his knees under him and drops his shoulders down so his back makes a perfect lordosis curve and his pert ass is presented to Jonny. His little hole is slick and smooth and just as pink as his cock, so small Jonny can't picture how it'll stretch around his own thick knot. He settles a hand on Patrick and presses into Patrick's hole with the pad of his thumb, and Patrick whines and pushes back against him. Patrick's wet and getting wetter; Jonny's going to taste his slick later, after Patrick's pregnant.

Jonny doesn't want it like this, though. Not at first—if he's going to fuck a baby into Patrick, he's going to watch Patrick's face when he catches no matter how much Jonny's instincts are driving him to breed Patrick right then, to pin him down by the neck and drive into him. Jonny's control is shuttered but not absent; first he's going to have Patrick on his back. He flips Patrick over and flattens him. He grunts and then grumbles and then finally whines as Jonny holds his smaller body in place, and he starts pulling at Jonny, clawing at his back, trying to draw Jonny into him. His legs are bracketing Jonny and his hips are rolling in an attempt to catch the head of Jonny's cock against his hole, but even if he could get the angle right, he's too slick; all he's doing is squirming against Jonny's dick.

And Jonny, all at once, gets his hand under Patrick's thigh and rocks him up and open and positions the tip of his cock against Patrick's soft little hole; and then he pushes inside.

Patrick throws back his head and keens.

He's tight. Jonny's never felt anything so tight around his dick before; there's a particle of light racing up his spine. Once the head of his cock is seated just inside of Patrick, though, Jonny forces himself to stop. Patrick's so slick that Jonny's mattress is going to smell like him forever, and he keeps begging with his body, trying to shove himself downward to take more of Jonny's cock, but Jonny refuses to move even when Patrick whines again high in the back of his throat. He stitches his restraint together enough to keep himself still and make Patrick hold still, too, until Patrick is merely quivering; and then he drops his head and drives in another inch.

In another life, Jonny would've worked Patrick open slowly until he was wet enough and relaxed enough to take Jonny's cock easily. Neither of them have the patience for that. Patrick barely has the patience to stay still when his alpha makes him, but Jonny has one arm under Patrick's knee to control him and the other arm braced beside Patrick's head so he can open his mouth over Patrick's throat in warning. It's an empty threat, one carried out not because Jonny is willing to do harm but because Patrick, even more than he wants Jonny's knot, wants to obey.

Jonny pulls back a hair, making Patrick whimper; and then he pushes in.

This time Patrick lets out a wet little gasp, a noise that Jonny punches out of him, and Jonny halts again as Patrick's body clenches around him. He's hot on the inside, so much so that the top half of Jonny's cock is warmer than the bottom, and Jonny wants to sit back on his heels so he can watch his big cock forcing its way into Patrick's ass, but this view is better: Patrick's eyes are blown so wide open the blue is just a thin ring around the pupil, and his pretty mouth with that cupid's bow over the full lower lip is parted so he can suck down big heaving mouthfuls of air.

He bucks under Jonny and then crosses his ankles at the small of Jonny's back, and his eyes are darting around, so Jonny kisses him until he calms again. He wants to fuck Patrick but this is important, and he needs Patrick to understand that. It must transfer, because when Jonny lifts his head, Patrick's staring up at him like he's never seen Jonny before and he never wants to look away.

Jonny holds them both still until Patrick relaxes beneath him, and then he starts working himself in again with slow short thrusts that turn longer and easier. He wants to shove forward. He's shaking from the difficulty of forcing himself to wait, from how much he wants; his cock is so hard it's throbbing. Patrick still hasn't looked away. Patrick's eyes are locked with his, and then Jonny's in, the base of his cock held snug by Patrick's hole and the swell of his knot inside and his balls pressed up against Patrick's ass. He could stay here until Patrick shook apart around him, he wouldn't even have to move—

Not move? What a fucking joke.

He rocks back and gets his other hand under Patrick's knee and spreads him open so he can see his dick gripped by Patrick's tight little hole. The backs of Patrick's thighs are glistening just like the front of Jonny's thighs, and that's good, that means Patrick's slick enough to do this. Jonny pulls out long and slow and measured and takes in this sight of just the head of his cock holding Patrick's ass open. He tilts his head, considers it, glances up at Patrick, and puts them both out of their misery by driving himself in.

Patrick screams. There's a white fountain of light pouring through Jonny; he understands. He's going to pour that luminosity into Patrick, too. He drives in and draws out and fucks in again, shoving into Patrick so hard he slides up the bed. Patrick's past thinking about bracing himself against the headboard; instead he opens his arms for Jonny, and Jonny catches him by the wrists and slams his arms down and keeps fucking him.

Someone has to put a baby into Patrick. Jonny has to put a baby into Patrick. He can tell how much Patrick wants a baby, Jonny's baby; it's so clear and tangible it sits like a feature on Patrick's face as plain as his nose or his eyes. He wants Jonny to fill him up and keep him full, and he wants the quiet feeling of having a life they made growing in him, sheltered by them both, and he wants a little baby with Jonny's eyes that he can hold and play with and watch grow with Jonny at his side. They've made so many miracles together, but this is something bigger. They aren't going to be the same after this.

And Jonny wants that, too. He wants a little baby with Patrick's eyes who cries at balloons and tries to chase every dog he sees and has a closet full of #88 onesies for her to wear to every home game. He wants two or three of them. He wants as many of them as Patrick wants; he wants to keep Patrick, and Patrick wants so badly to be kept. Jonny's always been greedy for Patrick, has always been possessive of him even though he knows he has no right to be possessive, and right now for the first time ever he's opening up that cage.

Even better is how Patrick rises to meet him: he puts his teeth over the meat of Jonny's shoulder and when Jonny fucks him just right, he clamps down and screams and only when Jonny shifts and the rigid arch of Patrick's back relaxes does he let up and lave the bruise with his tongue and breathe wetly against Jonny's skin. He's staking his claim on Jonny, too. Even if he'd been in heat before, his heat never would've taken him like this with another alpha; and he never has been in heat before. This is a result of Jonny, and of how much Patrick needs him.

The physical sensation might pale in comparison to the knowledge that his cock is inside Patrick, but Jonny's never fucked someone like this. He doesn't have any basis for comparison. If the sex got better, he would unravel at the seams. Alphas and their omega counterparts tend to have high sex drives—not always, but often—and Jonny's never lacked for bed partners or for good sex, but this is to good sex as shinny is to the Olympics. There are superficial similarities, but there's no mistaking the one for the other.

Patrick's clingy little hole is still so fucking tight around Jonny's dick that every time Jonny rolls into him he's not sure Patrick will open up again, and every time he rolls out he isn't sure the grip Patrick has on him will permit him to leave. He snarls and fucks in harder and Patrick tosses his head back again. He's cracking open; he can't believe Jonny's touching his skin. Jonny can feel the white dense star of pressure building at the base of their spines.

He fucks into Patrick's hole and stays there, and then he lets go of Patrick's right wrist. Patrick shoves his hand between their bellies and wraps his hand around his dick. His fingers slide over the crown—

And the star goes supernova—

And Patrick starts to come.

His whole body contracts around Jonny's cock, and that and the sheer cliff of pleasure that Patrick tips over pull Jonny's climax out of him. His vision grays out, and then his knot swells and locks him into place even as he keeps trying to grind deeper into the tight clutch of Patrick's hole. Patrick is sobbing outright as he clings to Jonny's shoulders, and he's losing himself, too; they don't merge into one person, but so much of each of them belongs to the other that finding out for the first time that what he feels is mirrored in their binary system overwhelms him. It overwhelms Patrick, too.

They're shaking together, shuddering in each other's arms, and finally the worst shock passes through him and Jonny collapses even though he's still pumping come into Patrick. He thinks he should—he should move, he's crushing Patrick, but Patrick doesn't want that; he holds Jonny tighter, he doesn't want Jonny to leave, he only ever wants Jonny closer and now Jonny is as close as he can be. Jonny burrows his wet face against Patrick's neck and breathes. The gray goes black. And somewhere in the remnant nebula created by a stellar explosion, a small new light starts to shine.

-

When Jonny wakes up the next morning, Patrick is gone.

Chapter Text

Patrick realizes he's pregnant when he gets cross-checked halfway through the third. It's a solid hit, and as he's flying through the air he finds himself thinking, I hope the baby is okay and then, Oh. I'm pregnant. When he picks himself up off the ice, he isn't paying attention to anything but the cradle of his pelvis, not even how Jonny has Ryan Reaves pinned up against the glass by the throat.

Fuck. At least he's on his feet. Is he okay? He feels okay. Nothing feels like it hurts. And that was a real fucking weird thought to have—he can't be pregnant, he's been on suppressants since he was ten. Admittedly, those were supposed to prevent him from ever having a heat, too, but Patrick would notice if he'd gotten pregnant.

His body has felt strange for the past month, though. He's been attributing that to the lingering consequences of having gone into heat for the first time ever—a heat hangover—but maybe…

"Hey." Sharpy's right up next to him. "You okay?"

Patrick becomes aware that he's bent over, one hand braced on the boards, breathing hard. He straightens up. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'm fine." Jonny's red-faced and yelling at a ref, who is very obviously sending him to the penalty box. He slams his stick against the boards, but he goes.

"Someone pissed in his cereal this morning," Sharpy says.

"It was probably you." He presses his hand against his stomach. It feels like… his stomach. Nothing new there.

"Gross, Peekaboo," Sharpy says, and then he skates off. Patrick is, abruptly, pissed off—not at Sharpy but at Reaves. He's angry and he wants Jonny back and he can't ignore the dumb little voice in the back of his head that's been telling him to make an appointment with Dr. Sievers to discuss his medication, and all of that pours into his ever-present drive to grind the Blues into dust.

When the whistle blows, he doesn't hesitate, he doesn't do anything fancy, he just takes the puck and puts it in the back of the net. No assist, just him. Easy. The crowd jeers at him, but Patrick eats it up; being booed in St. Louis is the next best thing to being cheered in Chicago.

Back on the bench, though, his anger drains out of him, and he's back to that faintly bitter taste of concern. He's distracted, and it shows; his second goal of the evening might have tied the game, but for the next fifteen minutes, he can't even keep track of the puck. Oshie puts one away in overtime, and that's it—game over. Patrick hates Oshie.

There's no way he's pregnant. It was one time (or… a lot of times over one night), and Patrick knows his suppressants haven't stopped working entirely. For one thing, his sense of smell is still shit. And Jonny was probably on some kind of birth control of his own, too. A lot of alphas use pills or shots on top of condoms. Kids aren't in Patrick's five-year plan. They aren't in his ten-year plan, either.

(But what if he is—?)

He steps off to the side while the rest of the guys are straggling onto the bus and sends an email to Dr. Sievers. He used to feel vaguely guilty that he could get an appointment in a matter of days instead of waiting the weeks or months it usually took to see a specialist, but after five years, he's just relieved that she decided to take him on as a pet project. It's probably nothing. She'll adjust his medication for the hundredth time, and he won't have to worry about whether he does or does not feel disappointed, and life will go back to normal.

"Hey."

Patrick almost drops his phone.

"Whoa, Kaner, sorry," Jonny says. He sounds a little contrite and a lot Canadian. "Didn't mean to startle you."

"No, man, it's fine," Patrick says.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, just checking my email. Sisters," he lies, and immediately feels like shit.

"Reaves, uh. He didn't…"

"I'm fine," Patrick says, because nothing about that hit caused him any lasting effects other than what is almost definitely some needless anxiety. "Way to step up, though. Getting Reaves off my back."

"Yeah, no problem." Jonny's jaw is set; he looks weirdly determined. "You know I'd do it for any of the boys." He would, too—to prove he has their backs, to send a message to the other team, or to get the rest of them fired up. Jonny doesn't fight a lot, but he isn't afraid to tussle, and there are times like tonight that he bypasses fighting entirely in favor of putting someone down hard and fast.

"Yeah," Patrick says. "No, yeah, I know."

"Yeah," Jonny says.

And this, this right here—this fucking blows. It's been almost five weeks, and they're still having trouble meeting each other's eyes. Patrick wants to be pissed off at his body for choosing the worst possible moment to flip out, but he's too busy being mad at himself. His body hadn't made him say yes.

He'd apologized awkwardly and inadequately a couple of days later, but Jonny had seemed as eager to brush it off as he was once he'd ascertained that Patrick was unharmed and not mad at him. Since then, they haven't talked about it, they haven't referenced it, they haven't so much as caught each other's eye in a moment of shared recollection. At this point Patrick can't tell if he's following Jonny's lead or Jonny is following his, but from now on, as far as Patrick is concerned, Jonny's a Ken doll below the belt.

He clears his throat and offers, "Sucks that we lost."

"It does," Jonny says. "Next one, though."

"Definitely," Patrick says. They stand there for another couple of moments, and it's painfully clear that they're both trying. Patrick suddenly wishes—he doesn't know. He wants to talk to Jonny about it, but even if Jonny weren't possibly involved, he doesn't talk to Jonny about crap like this. Being an omega isn't some big secret, but he does everything he can to avoid drawing his own or the rest of the world's attention to it. It's just one more piece of trivia like his favorite childhood cartoon or his favorite phone app.

Good thing he isn't pregnant, though. This would really suck if he were pregnant.

"We should probably—"

"Yeah, we should get on the bus," Patrick agrees. Jonny looks as painfully relieved as Patrick feels. They troop onboard together and then separate, thank god; Jonny takes a seat in the front near Seabs and Saader, and Patrick finds an empty row in the middle and immediately puts on his headphones. He tries and fails to avoid checking his phone. It isn't like it matters. He won't hear back about an appointment until tomorrow, anyway.

-

Two days later, he makes his way to the University of Chicago Medical Center. He's missing practice for this even though they're playing the Islanders tonight, but he's learned that all he has to do is claim vague "omega problems" and the training staff will send him on his way, no questions asked. Even Q, who's slightly less squeamish about it than a lot of people are, gives Patrick a hell of a lot of leeway. Patrick and the organization (and even, to a certain extent, the fans) have a mutual agreement: they all want to think about Patrick being an omega as little as possible.

He stops at reception to pay his copay and make sure his insurance is up-to-date (it is; if nothing else, being a star athlete buys you great medical care) and then gets waved through to the waiting area, where his ass barely touches the chair before Dr. Sievers pops her head around the corner. "Patrick?"

"Yeah, hey," he says.

She beams at him. "Come on back," she says, and Patrick trails her down the hall. She's short—actually short, not just hockey short—with the smaller frame that tends to be more typical of omegas. Especially as a kid, Patrick had a hard time packing on weight, and even now he starts to slip downward of 170 if he's not careful. She waves him into a chair, and he sits down, crosses his arms, decides that comes off as too defensive or too self-protective or both, and finally decides on settling his hands in his lap.

"How are you today?"

"Good," he says. "How're you?"

"Also good," she says. There's a wry smile on her face, like she's deliberately letting him settle in. "My wife and I just got back from a trip to Guam."

"Oh, that's nice," Patrick says, and then he gives himself a mental kick. Christ. "You look…" Tan? Happy? "...Good?"

"Thank you," she says. She's definitely amused now. "So what brings you here today? Suppressants giving you trouble again?"

Patrick winces. "Kind of."

"Kind of?"

This is already one of the most excruciating conversations Patrick's ever had, and that's including two separate discussions he had as a teenager where people started giving him the sex talk before realizing halfway through how little they knew about how his body worked. He's just gotta… rip off the band-aid. Grit his teeth and play through the pain. Ease them both into the conversation.

"I went into heat," he blurts.

Judging by the expression on Dr. Sievers' face, that didn't count as easing her into the conversation. "You what?"

"I, uh. Went into heat," Patrick says. "It was… yeah."

"We only put you on this regimen at the beginning of summer. It usually takes longer than that for the side-effects to start showing up. Although the cycling does seem to be accelerating." She shakes her head. Patrick's perplexed, too, or at least he will be once he gets over the kind of stunned that's still leaving him feeling like his breath got punched out of his lungs. "When? What happened?"

He's almost more afraid of when than he is what happened. "Beginning of last month."

"Patrick."

Patrick winces. "I know."

"You need to tell me when something like that happens."

"I know!"

Her expression softens. "Okay," she says. "How did it come on?"

"It was out of nowhere," Patrick says. "Just slammed into me a couple of hours after I got back from Chicago. I was at a buddy's condo, and suddenly…" He smacks one of his hands against the other. "Like that."

"You were at a friend's."

"Yeah," Patrick says, and he steels himself. "And then he, you know. Went into rut."

"He was an alpha—you triggered his rut?"

"I guess so. That's how it works, right? I've never…"

"That's generally how it works, yes," she says, "provided both parties are compatible and willing. Did you—?"

"Uh," Patrick says. "Yeah. A couple—a bunch of times."

Dr. Sievers says something that probably isn't appropriate for the setting, but Patrick feels the same way. "Okay," Dr. Sievers says. "Okay. How are you coping with it? I know it's a new experience for you."

"Fine," Patrick says. "I'm good."

"Oh?"

"It was… really, really… overpowering, maybe? Once he touched me, it was like I lost myself, I just wanted him so bad. I wanted it so much I couldn't even talk. I've never…"

Her eyebrows lift again. "That's strong," she says. "That's a very powerful heat, especially for it to come on so quickly."

"It was a lot more out of control than I expected," Patrick admits. "Once we were into it, we were in deep."

"Usually there are a couple of reasons I'd expect to see that. High scores on the Fox scale—which you have—and high compatibility are the primary biological reasons, and psychosomatic factors can also heighten the experience." Patrick must look even more confused, because she adds, "Strong feelings, generally. Sometimes that can lead to a psycholfactory feedback loop where both partners are heightening each other's emotions."

"Oh," Patrick says.

"You know what I'm going to ask next, right?"

Patrick sighs. "Yes."

"And?"

"Yeah, it was him." He's so sick of that question. It started as "Is there an alpha you're particularly sensitive to?" (yes) before progressing to "Do you spend spend a lot of time around the alpha you're sensitive to?" (yes, obviously) and then to "Do you have any romantic attachment to the alpha you're sensitive to?" (maybe) and "Does the alpha you're sensitive to have any romantic attachment to you?" (no, definitely not). He'd never told her Jonny's name; when they had to talk about him, he was just The Alpha That Patrick Is Sensitive To. It was pretty awkward, both grammatically and literally.

"Okay," Dr. Sievers says. She's carefully neutral, and Patrick appreciates that about her. "We'll need to take that into account, too." She settles back in her chair. "You know, when most omegas have their first heat, and I'm speaking from both professional and personal experience, we spend a few days feeling achy and wanting contact with other people. Sometimes you get low-grade sustained arousal if someone you're interested in is nearby, but most heats are like that—mild, maybe inconvenient in the same way that menstruation is inconvenient for people who menstruate. High-grade sustained arousal isn't typical for first heats. It isn't typical for unpartnered omegas at all, and from what you're telling me, what you experienced went somewhat beyond that."

Patrick doesn't know what to do with that, and it probably shows.

"All I'm saying is that it's okay if you find yourself experiencing a lot of conflicting emotions in the aftermath of an experience like that," she says, "and that's excluding the complication of a one-time sexual encounter with a friend. It's okay if you enjoyed it. It's also okay if it startled you, or you didn't like how it made you feel."

Patrick had liked it. He'd liked it a lot; the problem was that he didn't want to like it, but he doesn't know how and doesn't care to express that. The memory of being held by Jonny—of being pulled closer so Jonny could lay a line of soft kisses behind his ear and down the side of his neck and over his collarbone—is part of him now. Patrick had reacted by lifting his head to nuzzle against Jonny and then tucking his face under Jonny's jaw, closer than he'd ever been. He doesn't know how to put that moment down and move on without it, but he doesn't have a choice.

"Thanks," he says.

"And let me know if you want to talk to someone, and I'll give you a recommendation," she adds. She has a red ribbon pinned to her lapel; Patrick wonders what it means. "Which brings us to nuts-and-bolts time," she continues. "Some of these are going to be uncomfortable, I'm sorry. About how long did it last?"

"About a day and a half."

"And you were with your partner the whole time?"

"No," Patrick says.

Dr. Sievers pauses, and then says, "How long did you spend with him?"

He has to stop and count backwards from the time he staggered into his condo, shaking from loss and still half out of his mind with want. "Sixteen hours, maybe?"

"Okay," she says. "And how long before your partner's rut started? Half an hour, an hour, two hours?"

"...What do you mean?"

"It's fine if you weren't aware of it. Plenty of omegas who share a heat with an alpha aren't aware of the exact onset of their partner's rut."

"No, I mean—does it usually take that long?"

Her eyes snap up from her clipboard, and she says, "Patrick. How long did it take?"

God, if this is one more way that he's abnormal… "Maybe, uh. Ten or fifteen seconds?"

Her eyes go wide. "Ten or fifteen seconds?"

Patrick swallows. "Yeah."

"That's… unusual," she says, and there's another pause before she continues. "How did he react when you left?"

"He was asleep," Patrick says, and he knows he's daring her to say something about it.

"I'm only asking because in rare cases, leaving a partner in the midst of heat or rut can have some detrimental effects," she says, and oh shit—had he hurt Jonny? "There's a specific reaction that resembles shock that can be particularly serious. Did you notice yourself having a hard comedown?"

"Could I have hurt," he blurts out, and then he gets hung up, stuck on how transgressive it feels to say Jonny's name here. "The alpha I'm sensitive to," he finishes.

"You've seen him since?" Dr. Sievers asks. "If you have, then no, I'd say there was no lasting harm. What about you?"

"I got through it," he says, but his mind's still on Jonny; if he'd left Jonny alone to have the same sort of reaction Patrick had, no wonder Jonny's been distant.

"Okay," Dr. Sievers says. "If this happens again, I'd recommend you stay with your partner until your heat ebbs, unless you're uncomfortable doing so. And next time"—Patrck glances at her, and she corrects herself—"if there's a next time, make sure you have plenty of food and water. Dehydration's a real concern, which you probably noticed the next day."

He isn't thinking about it when he says, "No," and then he finds himself having to explain, "He, uh—made sure to feed me."

"His rut broke?"

"No," Patrick says again, and he doesn't know how the hell to tell her that he'd sat in Jonny's lap in the kitchen, grinding down on his knot while being fed bites of food and given sips of water, until Jonny heard a noise from one of his neighbors through the wall and hauled Patrick back to the bedroom.

Fortunately, Dr. Sievers doesn't seem to be expecting more. "All things considered, I'd say that went about as well as could be expected in the situation, then," she says. "What's interesting is that it seemed like the, let me think, what are you on now? Estranephren? You don't usually see multi-inhibitors fail in that way. Usually you'd see a impact not only in heat inhibition but in other areas too—scent suppression, birth control. That sort of thing."

For a minute there, Patrick had forgotten why he'd made an appointment to see her. Of all the times to have a dumbass moment… "Uh," he says, but Dr. Sievers keeps right on rolling.

"There's a drug that recently got FDA approval that I was thinking we'd try when the Estranephren stopped working, but now I'm wondering if we don't need to go back to single-inhibitors so we can really fine-tune your cycle suppression. I'm going to do a full blood panel, but in the meantime, we might be able to keep you on Estranephren if it's been working for you over the past few weeks. Have you noticed any other side-effects?"

"I think I'm pregnant," Patrick says.

He and Dr. Sievers stare at each other for one long moment, and then Patrick spits out, "Fuck," and doubles over. How is this his life now? What if he is pregnant? He hasn't let himself answer that question because…

He feels Dr. Sievers' hand settle on his shoulder, and then she says, "That definitely counts as a side-effect."

Patrick snorts.

"Have you taken a pregnancy test?"

"No," Patrick says. It's muffled by his knees. He reminds himself that he's an adult and a fairly fucking accomplished one and sits up. "No," he says again.

"Our first step will be a urine test," Dr. Sievers says. "If that's positive, I'll do a blood draw. We should have the results from that in two days."

For the hundredth time, Patrick wonders what the hell he would do without her. She had agreed to take him because his case was so unusual; Patrick had been at the end of his rope after a string of referrals, none of whom could figure out what was wrong with him, a problem compounded by very few of them having ever treated a male omega. The older he got, the worse it became, until he only managed to milk two months if he was lucky out of whatever combination of medications and shots and implants he'd been prescribed before he got some horrible side-effect or before he noticed his ability to distinguish smells or read temperaments returning or before some other weird thing that the doctors agreed they'd never seen happen before. It sucked. It hardcore sucked. And then came Dr. Sievers, one of the foremost omega specialists in the country (she hadn't told him that, he'd just googled her to see if she really did work a lot with omega men).

"Think you're ready to pee in a cup?" she asks. "I can set you up in here with a glass of water if not."

"Don't you want to know why I think…?"

The corner of her mouth quirks up. "No," she says. "You know your own body best."

"I drank two bottles of water on the way over," Patrick admits. "Just thinking ahead."

"All right then," she says. "Let me get you a plastic cup." She goes digging through her cabinets and produces a wrapped cup with a screw-on lid and sends him off to the bathroom down the hallway.

"Shouldn't you be asking if I want a Playboy?" Patrick jokes.

"That's a different department," she says, sounding amused. "Go. You'll feel better once you know for sure one way or the other."

She's probably right. As he walks down the hall, he tries to focus on the indignity of being forced to piss in a cup rather than… than anything else. He's used to losing his dignity in locker rooms; this is pretty much the same thing, except the bathroom's cleaner and doesn't smell like a twenty-year-old jock is rotting in the corner. And peeing in the cup is kind of like aiming for a urinal cake, which means this at least kind of resembles an experience he's had before.

He washes his hands, wonders if he should try to disguise that he's carrying a cup of pee, wonders if he gets to wash his hands again after handing off his pee cup, and finally settles on six layers of paper towels between his skin and the pee. Dr. Sievers seems a little amused, but she takes the bundle from him, offers him hand sanitizer, and reassures him when he asks a stilted question about the consequences of Reaves' hit before leaving. Patrick has no idea how long he's going to be waiting here. In the movies when pregnant women pee on sticks, it never seems to take longer than ten or fifteen minutes. Why hasn't he ever watched a movie with a pregnant omega guy? There's gotta be one out there, and he likes romcoms.

He's texting with Jackie about Cappie Pondexter when Dr. Sievers comes back in. She sits down in front of him. Patrick can't get a read on her; she's always come across as upbeat but secure. Steady. Certain of herself. He wishes he could siphon off some of her calm. Maybe he doesn't want to hear the answer; if he doesn't hear the answer, he doesn't have to find out which answer would disappoint him.

"We'll do the blood test to confirm," she says, "but the urine test was positive."

Fuck.

"I'm pregnant?"

"Looking pretty likely," she says.

Fucking fuck. And there it is, dawning in him; he couldn't contain it if he tried. His heart rate's gotta be up to one-seventy or one-eighty, and the breath is gone from his lungs.

"So," Dr. Sievers says, "Let's discuss options—"

"I'm keeping it," he says immediately.

Dr. Sievers looks at him, searching his face; he doesn't know what she finds there, but he hopes it's neither as raw nor as naked as he feels. "Okay," she says. "I have some literature I can send you home with. I'll call you with the blood test results as soon as they're in, and we'll schedule a follow-up appointment next week. In the meantime, keep taking the Estranephren—we'll want to taper you off that, and it won't harm the embryo in the meantime."

"The baby," Patrick corrects.

"The baby," she says. She smiles a little. "We'll bring an OB on board, too. I know a few who'd be happy to coordinate with me."

"But you'll still—"

"I'm not handing you off at this point. You're too interesting." That's their old joke.

"Good," he says. "Yeah, okay, good." And then it immediately occurs to him: "I can't skate."

"Skating should be fine, especially in the first trimester," Dr. Sievers says. "Wait—you mean play."

"Yeah. I can't, I don't want to—"

"No," Dr. Sievers says. "I would advise against it." She makes a note and then says, "Are you playing in the next few days?"

"Tonight and tomorrow." Is he going to have to tell people today? That's such an overwhelming thought that he wishes he were back in Jonny's bed, where he didn't have to think about anything.

"I'll call your team physician and tell him you won't be able to play for the next few days. The bloodwork's more a formality at this point, but once we have that confirmation, you can tell your… captain?"

For a minute he thinks she figured out Jonny's exact role in all of this, but then he realizes she's just demonstrating her ignorance of hockey. He'd seen her for three appointments before he'd had to flat-out tell her he was a professional athlete, and even then it hadn't made any real impression. She talks to the Hawks' medical team when necessary and still doesn't have a clue that the Blackhawks are synonymous with Patrick Kane.

"Coach," he corrects. "And the GM, and—there's a lot of people I have to talk to."

"Are you going to have any problems? I'm willing to pull whatever strings are necessary."

"I don't know. My agent's been around the block a few times, but…" He realizes he's fidgeting and makes himself stop. "You know there's only four other omegas playing in the NHL right now? Four. And I've never heard of one going on LTIR because they were pregnant." Something occurs to him, and he snorts. "Probably because their teams figured out a way to kick them to the curb." Or because they didn't want to put up with the environment any longer. People were weird enough about cross-dynamics, and even though bigots seemed to agree it was more okay for an omega man to have same-sex partners than a beta or alpha man, hockey culture in general was a steaming pile of horseshit.

"Is that a possibility for you?"

"No," Patrick says. His contract's airtight and he's valuable to the organization, and if it becomes a problem, if he has to choose, then there's no choice at all.

"Good," Dr. Sievers says. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you, but there is legal recourse available if it does become an issue." She makes another couple of notes on his chart. "Read over what I'm going to give you and we can talk about any questions you have next week."

"Are you going to call—?"

"As soon as you leave," she promises. "And Patrick?"

"Yeah?"

She smiles at him. "Congratulations."

-

He sits in his car in the parking lot until Q calls him; he isn't sure what Dr. Sievers says, but Q tells him to "stay at home and get some rest," so he's off the hook for going to the game tonight. Normally he'd be there even if he had to drag himself in by his fingernails and watch with a puke bucket in his lap, but for once, he's thankful; he suspects that every feeling he's ever had is written all over his face. And on top of everything, he doesn't have his key in the ignition before Jonny texts him.

Why So Serious

Today 11:35 AM

Jonny

Q says you aren't going to play, everything ok?

Patrick

Yeah I'm fine just not feeling good

Jonny

Keep me updated

Patrick

I know I carry the team but the rest of you aren't totally useless lol

You guys will kill it

Jonny

I'm not worried about winning

But thanks

And feel better Kaner

He doesn't let himself think about it as he drives home. The stack of pamphlets Dr. Sievers gave him is in the backseat behind him, and there's an odd weight to them, as if the space they're taking up anticipates what might soon replace them. They've got a pretty good shot against New York if they can keep Tavares and Okposo in check. If this is their third loss in a row, he's going to kick himself for scratching, even if he can't help it.

He shoves the pamphlets under his arm and doesn't look at them on the elevator. He doesn't look at his phone, either, although when it stops at his floor he becomes aware that he's been gnawing on his thumbnail and yanks his hand away from his mouth. His mom's always on him about chewing his nails (or his gloves, or his mouthguard; he sucked his thumb when he was a kid, too, until his dad told him to knock it off). When he's inside his condo, he takes off his shoes and sets the pamphlets on the counter and puts his keys and wallet away and picks the pamphlets back up and sets them down again. He's breathing hard. A minute passes, and then another, and he finally gives in to the impulse eating at him: he and the pamphlets retreat together to his bedroom.

The first thing Patrick did when he moved in here—before he moved in here—was rip apart the master suite. The end result is a little too stereotypical for his comfort, but it's his favorite room nonetheless; and his favorite part of his favorite room is the alcove bed, mostly walled off and with a heavy floor-length curtain he can pull across the opening. It's a bitch to change the sheets, because the mattress runs straight into the walls, but worth it.

He strips down to his underwear and undershirt and tosses his slacks and shirt into his laundry hamper, and then he takes his stack of literature, pads over to the bed, crawls in, and pulls the curtain closed.

Okay. Okay. He breathes; it's okay. He has his answer. He can let it dawn in him: how he's completely, overwhelmingly, heartwrenchingly, life-ruiningly…

Happy.

Patrick never thought about this. He never let himself think about this, never let himself acknowledge it, and always nursed a quiet, secret belief that it wouldn't happen; but now it is happening, and his entire world is shifting. Has already shifted. It's done. His world has changed. This is going to impact his life, his career, his self image, all of his close relationships—and he doesn't care. He could not care less. He only cares about one thing.

He settles into a cross-legged position and leans back against his mountain of pillows. When he rucks his shirt up, his stomach doesn't look any different than usual—pale skin, defined abs, belly button. He flattens his hand over his belly. He doesn't look different, but there's a difference here nonetheless, a sense of something small and growing.

"Hi, baby," he says. He doesn't try to fight the smile that breaks over his face or the laugh that might be more a sob but is joyous nonetheless. Tomorrow he's going to be terrified, but today he's only happy.

Jonny's baby. He's having Jonny's baby.

Fuck. What is he going to tell Jonny?

Chapter Text

Patrick's in the middle of trying to ignore the outside world when Jonny shows up, because unlike the outside world, he won't stand for being ignored. He knocks first and then lets himself in without waiting; Patrick gave him a key years ago, and Jonny's never been shy about using it, although he almost always texts when he's planning on swinging by. Today he promised sushi, and between his poorly-contained worry over Patrick's nondescript lower-body injury and his square-jawed determination to soldier through the awkward aftermath of fucking Patrick, Patrick isn't going to be able to fend him off forever. So: sushi.

"Hey," he hears Jonny say, a split second before he appears in the hall. "I brought the sushi."

"Cool. Thanks," Patrick says. He glances over, just long enough to take in the sack Jonny's holding and the laser eyes emanating overbearance, and looks back at the TV. "I'm not hungry yet, but you go ahead."

"I'll wait," Jonny says. He vanishes again, this time in the direction of the kitchen, and comes back a couple of minutes later. "Anything you need?"

"I'm fine, thanks," Patrick says, and then he realizes Jonny's still hovering and rolls his eyes. "Sit down, Tazer." Jonny sits. Patrick should really make some kind of overture at being a better host or at least a better friend, but he has Jonny nearby and zero energy to deal with anything else. He isn't even worn out because he's pregnant; he's just worn out.

After the phone call from Dr. Sievers telling him the bloodwork had come back positive, he'd spent an entire day doing the emotional equivalent of high-intensity interval training. He'd sandwiched his parents between the Blackhawks and his sisters, which at least gave him a halfway decent warmup before the part of the workout that required a 110% effort over twenty of the most brutal conversational minutes of Patrick's life. Now his dad isn't talking to him, and his mom is worried about his dad, and Erica is worried about Patrick, and Jess is ready to quit her internship and fly to Chicago, and Jackie's excited about the baby, which makes Jackie his favorite right now.

The information's still need-to-know at the Blackhawks, which had been a mutual agreement between Patrick and the organization, since nobody was particularly eager to admit that Patrick Kane was out for the season because he'd gotten himself knocked up. He'd have to come clean soon enough to at least some of the guys, but right now he needs a break and the Hawks need to rally the PR team.

It's all exhausting and a huge fucking headache and completely, totally worth it.

"Oh, wait," Jonny says, and then he gets up again and comes back with his laptop bag. "Carolina," he said. "Did you tape—"

"Yeah," Patrick says, "I've got it." The team's flying out tomorrow—without Patrick, a reality that has yet to sink in. He digs out the remote, pauses Hook, and pulls up his DVR recordings. "Phoenix or LA?"

"LA," Jonny says. He doesn't always do this; he doesn't watch as much hockey as Patrick, but nobody watches as much hockey as Patrick. Patrick's always kind of dreamed of adopting a rookie who thinks watching every regular season game sounds like a fun goal instead of a good way to burn out. With a jolt, he realizes—hey, he could raise his kid that way—

And then he immediately rejects the idea. If his kid never wants to watch a hockey game in their life, he won't love them any less.

"Have you seen it yet?" Jonny asks. He's rummaging in his bag.

"Yeah, last night," Patrick says. He isn't paying attention. He's going to have a kid, and his kid is going to have preferences.

"Do you mind?"

"Nah, it's fine. Might make you finish watching Hook with me afterwards, though."

Jonny finally drops his bag to the floor. He has one of his dumb notebooks propped on his knee, ready to take notes or update his training plan or write step-by-step goals; Patrick's only gotten a couple of glimpses over the years, but if it helps Jonny stay at the top of his game, Patrick will buy him as many dumb notebooks as he wants.

And then it gets weird, because Jonny looks over at the space between him and Patrick.

What's weird is that Jonny's making it weird. Sometimes they sit at opposite ends of the couch and sometimes they end up right on top of each other, but that's not unusual for friendships in a world where you see your buddies naked on a regular basis. Patrick's more tolerant of Jonny in his space than he is anyone else, but that's one of his own quirks, a result of either his personality or his dynamic or both, and he doubts anyone else has noticed. Jonny, meanwhile, is one of the most physical guys on the team, always wrapping his arm around someone's shoulders, bumping up against them, pulling them in for a hug or sending them on their way with a slap on the ass.

But now Jonny's eying the space between them, and Patrick gets the message without him saying a word: he isn't comfortable sitting that close to Patrick anymore, whether because he's afraid Patrick's going to jump him again, or because last month forced him to see Patrick as… as what Patrick is, or just because he thinks it's too fucking awkward. Patrick can't blame him.

"Here," he says, and he tosses the remote in Tazer's lap. "You drive. Wake me up if I fall asleep." He wiggles down and digs his shoulders into the back of the couch, settling himself into place, and after a minute Jonny relaxes, too. The silence isn't quite comfortable, but it's a hell of a lot better than the tension of the past couple of weeks.

It isn't even correct to say that Patrick's spent years avoiding this exact outcome, because he was never aware that this outcome was a possibility. He didn't need to avoid it; he barely needed to acknowledge it. And now that it has happened… it could've gone worse. He managed to avoid giving anything away, and Jonny was so out of it that he probably didn't notice how desperate Patrick was for him. Not for a warm body or a bed partner, not for an alpha, but for Jonny specifically. One of Patrick's strongest memories from his heat was how he'd constantly been trying to press himself closer to Jonny, which is almost as embarrassing as knowing that he'd been on the verge of weeping when Jonny had tried to leave the bed.

The good news is that Patrick's slept with buddies before. They're going to have a couple more weeks of weirdness, and then Jonny's going to realize Patrick doesn't expect anything of him and he'll forget about it. Patrick may not have that luxury, but he can power through; it is, quite literally, the least he can do if he wants to salvage their friendship.

And then there's the baby.

That's where Patrick keeps getting hung up. He tries to picture himself telling Jonny, but his mind keeps drawing blanks. Jonny didn't ask for any of this, and he certainly didn't ask for Patrick to love the little life in him so ferociously. How could Patrick put that on him?

The baby's going to come out eventually, though. Patrick can't keep it a secret forever, not unless he retires now and moves somewhere isolated.

Fuck. He'd really like to be watching his movie again.

He must've zoned out longer than he thought, because the game's at the end of the second period. Jonny's still watching attentively, pausing every now and then to scratch something in his notebook. Patrick lets himself zone out again until LA takes the game in a shootout, and then he flips back over to Netflix.

"...Okay then," Jonny says. "Hungry yet?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. He keeps his eyes fixed on the screen. He knows he should get up and offer to help or at least show some kind of appreciation that Jonny brought food, but Rufio and the Lost Boys are yelling about killing lawyers, and it's hard to look away from it even though he's seen it forty times before. Jonny comes back a couple of minutes later and hands him a plate; Patrick knows they're adults now because they use plates for their takeout instead of eating directly out of disposable containers.

"Thanks," he says.

"No problem," Jonny says, and then Patrick half-remembers that he shouldn't be eating fish.

Shit. Is that right? What put that thought into his head? He doesn't remember reading it, but he's also been spending a lot of time googling things in the middle of the night. He sets the plate down in his lap and picks up his phone.

"Everything okay?" Jonny asks.

"Yeah," Patrick says, not paying attention, and then, "Yep!" once he actually registers what Jonny asked. The internet is unhelpful. There are certain kinds of fish he should avoid, or he definitely shouldn't eat any raw fish, or he needs to consult with his doctor. Great. Should he just go dump this in the trash? Pretend he isn't hungry? Is the rice still safe if it touched fish?

"So," Jonny says. "Peeks. About the, uh."

There's a California roll. Patrick scarfs that down and digs around for another one. Jonny usually gets four of anything he orders, which means there must be another California roll for him somewhere.

"I know you don't want to talk about it yet," Jonny says.

Oh shit. "Talk about what?"

"Your injury," Jonny says carefully. "Why you're out. I know you're stressed about it—"

Patrick feels sick. Here's Jonny handling him with kid gloves, like Patrick has a legitimate injury, and meanwhile Patrick's trying to figure out how to explain that he can't eat raw fish because Jonny knocked him up.

"I'll tell you soon," he hears himself say. It comes out awkward.

"No, I'm not saying you have to—"

"It's just, you might take it the wrong way." Patrick winces, and then he catches sight of Jonny's face.

"Fuck," Jonny says. He looks rattled. "Fuck, okay. You don't have to tell me, but—it isn't career-ending, is it?"

"What?" Patrick sits upright. Some of the sushi falls off his plate, which at least takes care of one of his problems. "Jonny, no."

"Because if it is, I'm not going to—"

"No," Patrick says again. "It isn't career-ending, I swear, I'd tell you if it were."

"Yeah?" Jonny says. "Okay." His shoulders relax. "Okay," he repeats. "Good."

"We're still just…" Patrick comes up with nothing. What is he supposed to say? He can't tell Jonny about the baby before he has a plan in place. Christ, what if this is one of the last times they ever hang out like this? Patrick was paying more attention to the damn TV than he was to Jonny.

"You don't have to tell me," Jonny says. "I just want you to know I'm here for you, bud."

"I—yeah, I know." It isn't that he doesn't want to tell Jonny. It's more complicated than that. He would wish that the baby wasn't Jonny's so he could talk to Jonny about being pregnant, but the idea of having anyone else's baby makes him ache—makes him feel panicked, if he's being honest. He and Jonny don't really… talk about the omega thing, anyway. It just doesn't come up, other than when Jonny's trying to make it clear that he has Patrick's back.

"Great," Jonny says. His plate is empty and sitting on the coffee table in front of him. "I'm gonna just get out of your hair."

"What?"

"Thanks for the game," Jonny's saying over him. He's standing up and shoving his laptop back into his bag. "We'll see how it goes with the Canes, eh?"

"Jonny—" Patrick starts, but he doesn't know how to finish.

"I'll see you when I get back." Framed in the doorway, he's impossibly tall—handsome, a little sunken around the eyes from tiredness, but still every inch the alpha Patrick knows he is. "Take it easy, Kaner."

"You too," Patrick says, but he says it to an empty room; Jonny's gone before Patrick can figure out how to ask him to stay, and all he's leaving behind is floor sushi. There's something so final about it that Patrick completely shuts down. Whatever. It's not like he's never going to see Jonny again, and if Jonny reacts badly when he finds out—

Patrick really just wants to go to bed, but he makes himself stand up. He throws the sushi out and sticks the plates in the dishwasher. When he checks his phone, he sees a text from Erica asking if he's ready to call her, and another from Jess talking about pregnancy complications for omega men. He puts his phone on silent and leaves it in the kitchen. Back in the living room, he spends so long standing behind the couch and waffling that the TV screen goes dim; it's going to shut off if he doesn't make up his fucking mind.

He snarls at nothing and yanks the blanket off the back of the couch. When he throws himself down in the spot where Jonny had been sitting, he's so angry at himself he's almost shaking. It doesn't even smell all that much like Jonny, not even when he curls up on his side with his face against the cushion. Good, he thinks viciously. Good. How Jonny smells and where his scent lingers aren't Patrick's concerns. They aren't something Patrick gets to notice.

He still stays there, inhaling through his nose, as he tugs the blanket up and rewinds the movie to the point he last remembers watching. His anger wears itself out fast, even if his disappointment doesn't. Can the baby feel if he gets upset? God, that's one more thing to worry about—far more important than floor sushi or texting Erica back or how to break the news to Jonny. He doesn't want the baby growing up thinking he's mad at it.

He has got to figure out how to stop sitting around feeling sorry for himself. Tomorrow. He'll start tomorrow.

On the TV, Dante Basco calls Robin Williams a stupid, stupid man. 'Hey, Rufio,' Robin Williams spits back, 'if I'm a maggot burger, why don't you just EAT ME?' Patrick has a feeling the next eight months are going to be rough.

-

By the end of breakfast the next day, he has a list. It's messy and in handwriting even he has trouble reading, but he's starting to feel like he has a handle on what the next couple of weeks are going to look like.

• Training/diet plan
• Dr. Sievers (ok to skate?)
• PR
• Tell team
• Call family
• Tazer

It's a pretty shitty list, especially considering how little he wants to address the last three items, so he pads it out.

• Baby books

Oh god, he's going to have to think about names.

• Baby books (names & care)

Maybe he doesn't have to worry about the books yet. He has three younger sisters, so he knows his way around a diaper, and he still has a while before he needs to slap a name on the baby. If all else fails, he'll just pick a name from Hook. Which makes him think he needs a reward for all his hard work, or at least a task that feels more attainable, so he adds

• Baby books (names & care)
• Watch Hook

swallows a fistful of prenatal vitamins, and calls it a day.

Patrick's actually tackling the third item on his list first; he has an appointment with someone from the communications department at two to discuss what is apparently so obvious that nobody is bothering to put a name to it. The good news is that at least he isn't going alone. He doesn't go anywhere alone these days; it's an oddly comforting thought, that he and the baby are in this together.

He listens to Frank Ocean on his way to the UC and parks close to the elevators that take him up to the business offices. Will Woodson is waiting for him out in the hall, chatting with the receptionist, and when he sees Patrick he leads them not to the conference room where Patrick expected to be interrogated but instead to his personal office. "Just the two of us," he says, and he shuts the door behind them.

"Yeah?" Patrick asks. "How'd you pull that off?"

"Would you believe that nobody fought me?" he says. He rolls his eyes and sits down behind his desk. There's a case of framed pucks on the wall behind him; Patrick can spot Jonny's signature from where he's sitting.

"So they sent you to tell me the bad news?" he asks lightly.

Will leans back in his chair. He's maybe fifteen years older than Patrick and fifteen times as outgoing and one of the people in the organization Patrick genuinely likes, even if he is blunt to the point of abrasive. And he's open about his husband, which is itself its own kind of forthright.

"I've been instructed to give you two options," Will says. "Trust me when I say it was not put in these terms, but either we're going to bury this story and no-comment our way through the rest of the season, or we're going to trot you out when it suits us to showcase how progressive we are. Make you a token," he clarifies.

"Okay." Patrick hadn't expected anything else. "What do those those look like?"

"You know that whatever you pick, we're going to make it appear like this is all driven by you, right? Either we're respecting your wish for privacy, or we're respecting your choice to be a… what do you say? Mother or father?"

"Father's fine," Patrick says.

"Respecting your choice to be a father. You being single and unmarried isn't the problem it would've been even five years ago—in fact, in a lot of ways, it's actually easier on the organization. The first option is a total lockdown. No interviews or public appearances. You'll probably be asked to keep a low profile in public and on social media, too." He gives Patrick a smile that manages to be both tight and commiserating. "The team will be instructed to deflect. Hopefully media interest will die down once the baby is born. Or at least everyone can pretend you didn't give birth to the kid yourself."

Patrick shifts in his seat and in doing so brushes the side of his hand against his stomach. His kid. His baby.

"Will there be media interest?" he asks.

Will barks out a laugh. "Oh yeah," he says. "Are you kidding? There's, what, less than ten of you in the league? Some people haven't even met an omega, much less a guy omega. Yeah, there's going to be interest. Especially because you never talk about it."

Patrick lifts a shoulder. "Not much to say."

"Not until now," Will counters. "But that's option one. Option two is you get strategically deployed as a poster boy. I'm not going to lie to you, Pat, option two looks a lot like option one, except you're going to spend the rest of your career being trotted out any time Bettman and his crew want to remind everyone that hockey is a diverse and inclusive sport. On the other hand, they're probably going to try to make that happen anyway when it finally occurs to them. At least if they think they can get away with it without pissing off too much of the fanbase."

"It sounds like I have one option," Patrick says, "and I get to decide if I want to do zero interviews or nonzero interviews."

"You got it," Will says. He thumps his hand on the desk and then shoves his chair backwards. "So obviously you don't have a ton of room to steer the ship"—he starts digging through the cabinet behind him—"but I volunteered to coordinate all of this, because I'm going to at least try to take into account what you want, what's best for you and the kid. As much as I can while doing my job, obviously," he adds. He kicks the cabinet shut and swivels back around to Patrick. "The father, excuse me, other father won't be coming back into the picture to make trouble?"

"No," Patrick says. "You, uh… yeah, you definitely don't have to worry about that."

"Great, I'll take your word for it," Will says. "So. What are we going to do? We need a timeline." He opens the manila folder he just retrieved and starts paging through it. "Door number one or door number two?"

"Number one," Patrick says immediately. He's done his homework; he talked to Brisson, spent some time mulling the problem over, and talked to Brisson some more. "No interviews. Everyone stays out of it, and next season I turn up to play hockey again."

"And maybe in a couple of years you can even bring the kid to a family skate?" Will jokes. "I figured you'd say that. Here's the wording of the press release your agent sent over for that contingency, take a look, we just tweaked a couple of things."

"When is it going out?"

"How soon is too soon?" Will asks. "We can't sit on it much longer. We're ready to pull the trigger this afternoon, but I can hold things up another couple of days if you need."

Today's a Tuesday; they're hosting St. Louis on Thursday and Toronto on Saturday. "Next Monday?"

Will's eyebrows go up. "Still have some people to tell?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Yeah—the guys, I want to break the news to them myself, and there's a couple of other…" He clears his throat. "A couple of other people."

"I can make Monday happen," Will says. "That gives us more time to hammer out the details. You know that the more people who know, the more likely this is to get leaked before we can get ahead of it, right?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. "I'll tell—I'll talk to them this weekend."

"Okay. You might want to plan on holing up inside for the first week or two. Gonna stay in Chicago for the duration?"

"Yes," Patrick says. He hasn't thought about it, but yes. The baby's going to be born here. Obviously it's going to be born here; he isn't going back to Buffalo, and he can't go to… he can't go anywhere else. "Yeah," he says again. "Yeah. We're definitely staying in Chicago."

-

He drives straight to Dr. Sievers from the UC without stopping to eat; he's starting to develop a weird aversion to being out in public, and he can grab something as soon as he's home. He hasn't had any of the morning sickness that most of the mommy-to-be blogs he's been combing have promised, at least, which is more than adequate compensation for paying the extra fee to get delivery.

Dr. Sievers is running a couple of minutes behind, so Patrick tugs his hat down over his eyes and takes a seat. Erica keeps texting him, just the same thing over and over: call me, call me, Patrick call me, call me please, I'm worried about you. Instead of responding, he dicks around on the ESPN app until Dr. Sievers retrieves him from the waiting room.

"So," she says, "welcome to your first official prenatal appointment. How are you guys feeling?"

The worst part is that his first assumption when hearing you guys is that she means him and Jonny, and he feels a frisson of disappointment that vanishes when he realizes she means him and his baby. The stress of his stupid list and the meeting with Will lifts, too; he finds himself smiling.

"Good," he says.

"Yeah? I'm happy to hear it," she says. "Oh, hang on, don't let me forget to grab your weight on the way out the door. Would you rather ask questions or answer questions first?"

Patrick really just wants her to mention the baby again. "Answer, I guess," he says.

"Any morning sickness or other symptoms? Nausea, feeling tired, your chest being sore, anything like that?"

"Tired, yeah," Patrick says. "Is that because…?"

"Probably so," Dr. Sievers says. "Although I'm guessing you've had a busy week."

Patrick ducks his head and feels himself grin again. "Yeah, something like that," he says. "None of the other stuff, though. Is that normal?"

"Some parents-to-be are just lucky. You might find it comes and goes, or you might make it all nine months without ever having to run to the toilet once. To throw up, I mean," she says. "You're definitely going to start urinating more frequently, there's no escaping that."

"Oh. Great."

Dr. Sievers cracks a smile at his tone. "How's your sense of smell?"

"Uhh… normal?" Patrick asks.

"If you do have a problem with nausea, that's probably going to be why. Pregnant people are often sensitive to strong odors anyway, and you've been on suppressants for long enough that you aren't used to scents that aren't muted. It might pop up as we wean you off the Estranephren."'

That's going to be weird. Patrick doesn't remember what it was like to have his full range of smell, to be able to scent people and their moods with that weird sensory fusion that involved his mind as much as his nose. Psycholfactory sensitivity tended to manifest more strongly in alphas and omegas, although it showed up in betas, too, usually more weighted towards the 'psy' part than the 'olfactory' part.

"I'm assuming you know the date of conception," she says. She types a note into his chart and then glances up. "August or September, right?"

"September 6th," Patrick says without thinking, and then he's taken aback—he's done his best not to think about that day, but he apparently has the date on the tip of his tongue. But there's a good side to it, a good reason: it's the day they made his baby.

"Okay, that puts your due date sometime around the end of May, let's see… May 30th," she says. "Plus or minus, depending on whether Baby Kane runs early or late."

May 30th. A summer baby. That's almost exactly six months from Patrick's birthday; he can picture having a half-birthday celebration every year on November 19th. Having his own celebration now seems unimportant in comparison to getting to watch his kid tear into a pile of gifts. He remembers his mom giving Jackie a box of tissues alongside her other toys for her first birthday, and the rest of them roaring with laughter when Jackie only cared about the tissues and how fast she could tear them out of the box.

"When do I get to see it?" he blurts out.

"What?" Dr. Sievers says. She looks like she's still trying to count something in her head. "Oh, you mean an ultrasound?"

Patrick nods.

"In another few weeks," she says. "Normally we'd set you up with a monthly appointment at this stage, but I'd like to see you every week and a half or so."

"I figured," Patrick says.

Her mouth quirks. "I didn't think it would come as a surprise. Here, look at this." She hunts around and finally comes up with what turns out to be a fold-out pregnancy timeline. "I'll give this to you to take home, you can fill out the dates if you want, just remember that it's approximate." She jots down the conception and due dates and then draws a line in red ink to show him how far along he is. "So here's your first ultrasound—"

"Will I find out what it is?"

"Good question." She sits back again and lets Patrick take the poster out of her hands so he can study it. "Usually that occurs around the middle of your pregnancy, eighteen or twenty weeks, but what I'm going to recommend for you is a NIPT—a noninvasive prenatal test. We use it to screen for chromosomal disorders, but it's also used to determine the sex and dynamic of the baby."

Patrick stares at her. "Is that a problem?"

"Not unless you're really attached to having a girl and end up with a boy," she says. "Joking. You have a higher chance of having a cross-dynamic baby, though, particularly an omega boy, for some terribly interesting genetics reasons that would probably bore you to tears."

"No, the chromosomal disorders," Patrick says, and then his brain catches up with his mouth. "Wait, what?"

"There's nothing in your family history to suggest it. Although only some chromosomal disorders are inherited, but it's more of a precautionary measure than anything."

He's not worried about that. If the baby has a condition that requires full-time care, he'll just retire; he has enough money to take care of them both and get any help the baby needs. The other thing, though—

"It has a higher chance of being… like me?"

"Not a lot higher," Dr. Sievers says, "but yes, there's an increased likelihood. Runs in the family. Well, sometimes, although it doesn't seem to have run in your family." His family's all betas. Except for Patrick. Except for, maybe, Patrick's baby. "And obviously there's an increased likelihood overall that you'll produce an alpha or omega child, particularly since the baby's other father is an alpha," she adds.

Okay. That's okay.

"I don't mean to pressure you with this," she says, "but I do want you to know that if you want to bring him along and have him in the room with you, you can. Or if you'd like to bring someone else, like a friend, or one of your sisters. I won't ask you anything sensitive in front of—"

"Can it tell if I'm mad?"

His wild-eyed stare must be infectious; now Dr. Sievers is staring back at him. "Can…?" she says.

"The baby," Patrick says. "Can it tell if I'm mad? Will it think I'm—does it matter if I'm upset? Or stressed, or… whatever," he finishes, weakly. He almost makes a joke about not buying rinkside tickets for away games, but it sticks in his mouth.

Dr. Sievers isn't staring at him now so much as studying him. The crow's feet around her eye smooth as she comes to some kind of a conclusion, and then she says, "I'm always going to recommend you avoid unnecessary stress while pregnant."

"Okay," Patrick says.

"What the baby can sense… I won't lie to you and say there's no possibility of mild transferrence. The truth is that we just don't know. There's probably some degree of empathic sensitivity, especially when both carrier and child are capable in that area. But as for it affecting the baby, or the baby feeling targeted—no, there's nothing to worry about on that front."

"Okay," he repeats. "Yeah, okay. That's good."

"You can have sex while you're pregnant, too," she says, probably more to distract him than anything else. It works. Patrick feels his face start flaming, but he laughs, too. She's a good doctor. He's always been aware of how lucky he is to have her, but he's reaching new heights of appreciation. He wonders if it would be appropriate to get her something for Christmas—a fruit basket, maybe. A new car. He'd give her season tickets if he thought she'd appreciate them, but she'd probably refuse them anyway for some kind of ethical reason. Unless her wife's a hockey fan?

They talk a little bit about his diet and training plan, and the kinds of exercises he can and can't do. Patrick's surprised when she suggests he cut out the weightlifting entirely—

"I read that it was okay to lift weights."

"Sure," Dr. Sievers says. She seems amused. "But not like a professional athlete lifts weights. I don't want you overreaching by accident."

—so it sounds like there's going to be a lot of cycling and prenatal yoga in his future. That's okay; he likes yoga, and she said he could still skate around the rink if he gets antsy to be on the ice as long as he takes it easy. Although that came with another warning that she didn't want him playing hockey for the same reason he shouldn't lift weights: "You've spent a lot of years training yourself to be a hockey player," she says, "and only a couple of months training yourself to be a pregnant person. I don't really want to test which set of instincts kicks in faster."

Patrick leaves with his pregnancy timeline poster, an appointment card for October 24th at noon, and a vague feeling that he needs to work on his pregnancy instincts. How does he hone them? It doesn't seem like the kind of thing a training plan can fix.

It's dark when he gets out to his car. He slides behind the wheel and locks the door and lets himself just sit for a minute, lets himself just occupy his body. He's done a lot of dumb things in his life, but this is the only dumb thing he's been dead certain about. The enormity of it is overwhelming. And everything still seems so normal even though this big, life-changing thing has happened to him; his clothes are the same, his car's the same, the same sunglasses are stuck in the same cupholder, the same Giants air freshener is hanging from the same rearview mirror that Shawzy once snapped off while he was clowning around… it's all just. The same.

Maybe that's what makes him dig out his phone and finally call Erica. She picks up almost immediately: "Patty?"

"Yeah, it's me. Hey," he says. "Sorry I haven't… sorry."

There's a pause, and then she says, gently, "It's okay. Seriously. Just… how are you?"

The problem is that Erica knows him too well—knows him maybe better than anyone. He and Jess have the most fun, and Jackie's the most like him, but he and Erica have gone through their entire lives together. He can bullshit her, but he can't bullshit her forever.

"Good," he says. "Overwhelmed. Tired, excited… really sick of going to the doctor, and I've got eight more months of doctors' appointments. Scared." He stops and then admits, "I miss hockey."

"So pretty chill, huh?"

"Oh yeah," he says. "Real chill." He leans forward to look out the windshield; the sky is clear, and he can just pick out Andromeda. The constant glow of the city makes it almost impossible to see stars of even the brightest magnitudes with any regularity.

"How is…" He knows what's coming just from her hesitance: "How's the baby?"

Patrick smiles.

"Good," he says again. "Normal. I'm five weeks along. No ultrasound yet, so I can't send you a picture."

"That far?"

"You know I only figured it out last week, right? Less than a week."

"No," she says. She sounds surprised. "No, I didn't know."

"Yeah," he says. "I'm out the rest of the season, obviously. Guess I'm saving Mom and Dad some gas money."

"Patrick—"

"Erica. Don't."

"Sorry," she says. "It's just a surprise, you know? I didn't know you wanted… I never thought you'd have kids. Especially not like this." Carrying it, she means. She sounds hurt that she didn't realize, but Patrick doesn't know how to explain it to her. He doesn't know how to explain that he isn't going to be having kids, plural, like there were going to be more. He can't tell her that in all those fantasies he never thought would happen his firstborn wasn't an only child for long, not any more than he can tell her how much this one baby is an accidental miracle.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, well, I want this one."

"Jackie's pretty excited."

He smiles to himself. "I know."

"Jess and I are, too," she says.

"You are?"

"Total bimbo, I swear." She used to joke that Patrick was the token blond bimbo of the family; he can hear the smile in her voice now. "Of course we are, idiot. We're so excited, and we're excited that you're excited. The Js are already shopping for baby clothes."

"Oh no," he says.

"Oh yes," she says, totally unrepentant. "Hey. Is everyone being decent about it?"

"Yeah," he says. "I mean, as decent as possible. The Hawks don't want to draw much attention to it, but I don't really wanna be in the spotlight, anyway."

"At least not for this."

"Ha ha," he says. God, he's thirsty. There's nothing to drink in the whole damn car, though.

"Have you told anyone else yet? Other than the people you need to tell to get out of playing."

"Talking to the team later this week," he says. He twists around and inspects the back seat even though he knows he wouldn't leave anything back there. "It'll go public on Monday. Just a press release, I'm not doing any interviews."

"Want me to come stay with you?"

He settles back into his seat. Calling her was the right decision, even though he's not going to drag her away right now; she's an airframe and powerplant mechanic, and he bets she doesn't have enough vacation to cover all the days he wants her here, so he isn't ready to cash that check yet. "No," he says. "Doing okay for now. But thanks. Maybe in a few months if you can get away?"

"Definitely," she says. "I'm glad you have your guys there, though. Jonny and Sharpy and everyone else. At least we know there's someone to watch out for you and the kid when we're not around."

Patrick swallows. "Yeah," he says.

"Do you have morning sickness?"

"No."

"Lucky," she teases. "Hey, listen, I have to run, but you can call me after dinner if you want—"

"We can catch up this weekend," Patrick says. "I just didn't want you… you know."

"Yeah, Pat, I know," she says, a little wry. "I'm glad you're okay, though. You know you can call me any time, right? You don't have to do this alone."

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I do know."

"Good," she says. "Love you."

"Love you too," Patrick says automatically, and then she hangs up and there's only the dial tone to keep him company. He sits there for a second, staring out at the emptying parking lot around him, and then he puts the car into drive.

Baby clothes. He has to laugh to himself. They're already buying baby clothes. His kid is going to be so fucking spoiled.

-

He's beat when he gets home. He's starting to get tired so easily, and it isn't just emotional exhaustion—more like being eighteen and trying to get used to playing an 82-game season on a professional level. That Patrick sure as hell wouldn't have been able to put together a plan to get himself ready for a baby, though. This Patrick has lived through 2012, which means he at least has enough mileage and maturity under his belt to grasp a little of what's going to be coming.

After a couple of minutes of staring blankly into his fridge, he dumps a cold black bean and corn salad into a whole wheat tortilla and eats standing over the sink because he doesn't have the energy to make any complex decisions. Tomorrow he's going to take a long, hot bath in his giant, decadent bathtub, but all he wants to do right now is go to bed. He shoots a text to Sharpy (Go away) and to Jonny (Kind of late, but hope you're murdering them), checks the score (Chicago's up over Carolina by one), and pads back to his bedroom, taking his pregnancy timeline and a roll of masking tape with him.

After he changes into his pajamas, he tapes the timeline up on the wall of his bed next to the thermostat that controls the temperature for the alcove. He'll have to fill in the rest of the dates tomorrow, but in the meantime… at the very top there's a blank line under the poster's title; it's probably meant for his name, but he writes 'Kane' towards the end and leaves the front half blank. One of these days he'll have a full name. Definitely not 'Patrick Timothy Kane III', though—he can do better than that. 'Bryan' is probably a little obvious.

He ends up staring at the ceiling in the dark for thirty minutes thinking about that, and then whether 'Brianna' is a good name, and then he thinks about checking the score again, and then he realizes that even though he's so tired he feels it in every part of his body, he isn't falling asleep. Shit.

Maybe he should put on Hook again. Or something different. Jurassic Park? One night in Ottawa when they were rookies, he and Jonny had stayed up way too late watching The Lost World, which Patrick liked but Jonny thought was 'dumb' even though he'd seen it enough times to be able to argue about the plot. He and Jonny don't room together any more, though. Which is probably good for Patrick's sanity—look what happened the last time they were alone in a bedroom together. They made a baby.

Fuck. Now Patrick's hard. And not just hard, but wet; he can feel the slick gathering between his legs, getting him ready for a partner who isn't here. He's been trying not to think about that night, but the problem is that it slips into his head all the time.

Parts of it are still hazy—what he was thinking, probably because he didn't have a single functioning brain cell—but mostly it's sharp, so much sharper than it should be considering how far gone he was.

Yeah, now he's definitely thinking about it. He slides his hand down, flattens it over his stomach, and then keeps going under his waistband until he can wrap his hand around his cock. He's wet here, too, leaking precome that's probably going to make these pants nasty to sleep in no matter what; he ends up kicking them off so he can reach down with his other hand to pet over his balls.

The first time, Jonny had taken him on his back; they'd stayed knotted so long that Patrick had started to drift into a place that wasn't sleep but definitely wasn't full consciousness, either, which was when Jonny had finally stirred on top of him. One minute he'd been relaxed and wrapped in Patrick, and the next he'd flipped Patrick facedown to put him on his knees.

What Patrick can't stop thinking about is what had happened in the middle of the night, when he'd been woken up by an unimportant pang of hunger and the far more important pang of wanting Jonny. Jonny had carried him—carried him—to the kitchen with an arm under his ass.

By then Patrick's thighs had been painted not only with his own slick but with Jonny's come. He groans when he remembers how it felt, and his hand tightens around his cock. It's not enough. It's really not enough.

Once they'd made it to the kitchen, Jonny had put him down, but he hadn't let Patrick go far; Patrick had stayed pressed up against his side, mouthing lazily at his collarbone, while Jonny had pulled food out of cabinets. Then he'd herded Patrick to the kitchen table and pulled him down into a chair, and eating had taken a backseat to grinding against Jonny's big, thick cock. Jonny had spread his hand over the small of Patrick's back to guide him as he rocked—

Patrick sucks in a sharp breath and then rolls over onto his front. His instinct is to get his knees under him and arch his back, but instead he forces his hips forward so he can rub his cock against the sheets.

Grinding against each other hadn't been enough; Patrick has a vague recollection of being frustrated that Jonny might come anywhere but inside of him. He isn't sure which one of them had gotten impatient first, but Jonny had solved the problem by getting his arm under Patrick's ass again and hiking Patrick up against his front enough that he could fit his cock to Patrick's hole. He'd lowered Patrick down slowly, smoothly, with none of the struggle of the first time he'd put his cock in Patrick, until Patrick was fully seated.

And then, instead of fucking Patrick, he'd popped open a carton of berries and lifted one to Patrick's mouth.

He didn't hold Patrick in place. He didn't have to; Jonny didn't want him to move, so Patrick didn't move except to part his lips and take the blackberry with his teeth and lap gently at Jonny's fingertips. One by one Jonny had fed him the rest of the berries, until by the end of the carton, Patrick was trembling with the effort of keeping still. Next came a sleeve of crackers, shared between them, and then some kind of baked chicken bites, and then they'd both had enough: Jonny's hands dropped to Patrick's hipbones, and he started to let Patrick rock against him.

The memory is more electric than any porn Patrick has ever watched. It sends a shudder down his spine, and he realizes from the strain in his shoulder that he's reaching behind himself. He spreads his legs a little, and then a little more, so he can cant his hips up and trace around his hole. Was that when Jonny got him pregnant? Or was he already pregnant by the time they'd made it to the kitchen?

All he'd done was shift incrementally in Jonny's lap as he clenched around Jonny's dick, but that was more than enough. They had kissed, long heavy devouring kisses, with Patrick licking into Jonny's mouth as Jonny slid his hand up Patrick's spine to cover the back of his neck and pull him even closer; and then Jonny had knotted him.

Patrick slides a finger into himself, and then another, past the tight ring of muscle; his hand's facing the wrong direction for him to press against his prostate with his fingertips, but he pushes down with his knuckles and manages just enough pressure that his hips jerk reflexively forward. Nothing ever gets him off as fast as this, even though it isn't something that happens often, or at least not often with other people. He's had a couple of flings with guys, but none of his girlfriends have been interested in anything beyond slipping him a finger occasionally, and Patrick's never known how to ask for more. He didn't have to worry about it with Jonny, though; Jonny wanted to fuck him. For that one night, Jonny wanted to fuck him.

That's what makes him come—not thinking about the kitchen, but thinking about Jonny wanting him. He grinds down hard against the slick patch of sheet under him and bites at his hand as he comes. When his body relaxes, a wave of exhaustion washes over him, too. He rolls over, glad his bed is big enough that he can sprawl out without worrying about the wet spot, wipes his hand on the sheets, and curls up under a blanket to fall asleep. His last thought is that he should check the score again, and then he's out like a light.

Chapter Text

Patrick wakes up, does an hour of yoga, and eats breakfast. He's aware of his body the entire time in a way that's a complete headtrip—he can't shake it, can't distract himself from it. He's a professional athlete, his sense of proprioception is necessarily fantastic, but this is something completely new. When he swallows, when he arches his back, when he rolls his shoulders, he's aware of every part of every movement. At one point he finds himself sitting on his yoga mat, staring at his feet as he flexes his ankles and spreads his toes. Holy shit. Bodies have so many parts.

He's still thinking about it when he wanders back to start running water for a bath, drops a cedarwood bath bomb in the tub, and wanders off again to strip out of his workout clothes. Why has he never thought about this before? There's so many layers: bones and muscles and skin, all the connective stuff. Organs. A brain. And all the parts that animate a person, too.

The bathtub's sunk into the floor just a couple of steps up from the rest of the room. He knocks his shin against the faucet in the process of lowering himself in, and that sends him down another spiral of thinking about nerves and all the extra-invisible parts that you can't see, which lasts him until he tips his head back and kicks his feet up. He's growing the whole kid from scratch—from nothing. This must be how Dick Klein and Johnny Kerr felt in 1966 when they built the Chicago Bulls.

Well, maybe not from nothing, but not from a hell of a lot, either. He runs a finger down the middle of his stomach; no softness yet, or at least not any that can be attributed to a baby instead of no longer working out for several hours a day on top of playing hockey. Nobody else would even notice, but Patrick knows his body. Or… he thought he did.

He pokes gently just about his navel. "Hey, kid," he says, but that doesn't seem right, not when it's so little and so vulnerable and there's nobody here to hear him, so he adds, "Hi, baby," more softly.

"I have to start thinking of names for you," he tells it. "Eight months seems like a long time when you're a baby, I guess, but it doesn't feel like a lot of time at all to figure out how to be a dad." He pats it. "Plus I've gotta think up a bunch of different names… although that blood test might help narrow it down. If you decide to be a girl," he says, "I have a lot of sisters."

He catches himself staring at his toes again and realizes the baby might not understand the implication. "I meant I think I'd be good with a daughter—you'll have a lot of happy aunts no matter what, you don't have to be a girl. Or a beta, or whatever. You can even… you know. Be like me. We'd figure it out. Although I don't think the name thing is supposed to be a collaborative process, let me take care of that part."

He drops his feet back into the water and pulls his knees up. "I'm kidding, I'll take care of the other thing, too. If you do go in that direction." He clears his throat. "There's nothing wrong with it. The only thing that could possibly be wrong with you is that you're technically half-Canadian." Maybe he shouldn't make that joke, though—he doesn't want to slip up and say it out loud, and definitely not in earshot of an impressionable toddler a couple of years down the road. "Kidding about that, too," he says. "You could be a full Canadian, and you'd still be perfect."

The cedarwood smells so good; he could almost drift off again. Having this much free time almost feels like a waste when he gets tired so easily. "Your dad's pretty great, and he's Canadian," he adds, and then he sinks down until his chin is level with the water. He wants to express something too tangled and nebulous to put into words: that even though his baby isn't being born from the union of two people who are in love, it's a baby born of love nonetheless. Jonny's feelings aren't the same as Patrick's, but he does love Patrick as a friend and as a teammate and as someone who has lived through a lot of the same experiences together. That's nothing to sneer at.

And Patrick may be immature, he may not have a clue what to do with himself when he's not on the ice, he may be selfish and a poor choice for a parent, but he's going to do everything he can to make sure his kid grows up right. Even if it never plays hockey. Even if it is like him. Even if (maybe especially if) it's half-Canadian on its papa's side.

-

He stops for lunch in a quiet little park only a few blocks from home. There are a couple of people standing in line at the bright blue My Banh Mi truck—what constitutes a crowd in the middle of the work week. Patrick's not entirely sure why the truck parks here every Friday at eleven, but it's usually gone before noon to hit one of the more lucrative business districts. He flips his hat around, tugs it down over his eyes, and takes up a place at the end of the line.

It's always a toss-up whether he'll be recognized or not in Chicago. Chicago's a hockey town—in part because Patrick and his teammates made it into a hockey town—but he isn't exactly some A-list actor whose face everyone knows. On the other hand, if one person figures out who he is, then he usually catches other people's attention, in the same way that one person staring up at the sky makes everyone else look up, too.

And then there's this reaction.

The guy in front of him tilts his head to catch a scent, and that's enough, that's it right there: Patrick knows what's coming. The guy twists around to look behind him, and then his eyes widen even further. Patrick looks back at him steadily for a long moment before glancing down at his phone. He doesn't need to see what the guy's expression morphs into.

One of Jonny's old girlfriends had actually clued him in to this place. Vanessa. She'd been a spunky blond and an omega like Patrick himself, which had made him feel both reticent and cautiously curious. They'd managed a couple of roundabout conversations about it whenever Patrick had drifted into Jonny's orbit; she'd been great, never pushing or making Patrick feel weird, but from what he'd managed to gather, she'd never had any of his problems, like her body eventually adapting to every suppressant she tried. He'd always kind of wondered why she and Jonny had never settled down and popped out a couple of cute dark-eyed kids. She was a lot better fit for him than the next girl he'd dated, or the guy after that.

The man in front of him finally gets out of his way, and Patrick orders his banh mi and steps back off the sidewalk. Sharpy keeps texting him. Most of it's nonsense, but Patrick should scrape together the energy to reply, or else Sharpy's going to pull a Toews and show up at his door with sushi or some other food Patrick's not supposed to eat.

Patrick the Lesser

Tuesday 3:40 PM

Sharpy

how are you hurt

did you break your hand jerking off

Abby says that was a low blow

Yesterday 11:53 PM

Sharpy

don't know if you watched or you're trying to learn to jerk off with your left hand but b52 took on half the blue

half the blues

Today 9:21 AM

Sharpy

hey are you ok

Today 11:23 AM

Patrick

Yeah I'm fine

Sharpy

IT'S ALIVE

The cashier calls his name, and Patrick collects his sandwich and heads to a picnic table. It isn't quite chilly yet, but something in the air suggests it will be soon; October in Chicago is fickle. His sandwich is wrapped in white paper tied with a red string, and Patrick's just finished winding the string around his finger and folding the paper back when his phone rings.

He sighs, wipes his fingers on a napkin, picks up, and wedges the phone between his ear and his shoulder. "What?"

"Hello to you, too," Sharpy says, extremely dryly. "How are you today?"

"I'm about to eat lunch," Patrick says, matching his tone.

"Yeah? Where are you?"

"That one Vietnamese food truck that I like. Seriously, I'm like five seconds from stuffing my face—"

"Then put me on speakerphone," Sharpy says cheerfully.

Patrick grumbles under his breath and pats his jacket pockets until he comes up with his earbuds. "You'll have to listen to me chew," he warns.

"I've spent five years sitting next to you at dinner," Sharpy says. "I know what you sound like when you eat."

Patrick takes an obnoxiously large bite just to be contrary and promptly chokes. Through his coughing, he can hear Sharpy laughing.

"You okay?" Sharpy asks.

"Yeah," Patrick says. He's wheezing a little, so he takes a swig of water. "Yeah," he says, his voice a little more normal.

"Learn your lesson?"

Patrick makes a face that nobody can see. "Probably not."

"I know how that feels. Hey, did I tell you about how I almost got a peek inside Tazer's diary?" He didn't and he knows it, but he launches into the story anyway while Patrick methodically works his way through his sandwich. "So we're sitting on the plane and he's reading some dumb book and scribbling in his diary—"

"Start with Why," Patrick says.

"Why what?"

"No, that's the book he's reading. 'Start with Why,'" Patrick says. Subtitle: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. It was a very Toewsian read.

"He's scribbling in his diary," Sharpy says deliberately, "and Shawzy sits down in the seat across from him. What he doesn't know is that I paid Shawzy twenty bucks to come up with a distraction.

"He makes a couple million dollars a year," Patrick says. "And you bribed him with twenty bucks."

"Yeah," Sharpy says. He sounds completely shameless. "So Shawzy comes up to him and says that his overhead compartment is jammed and he can't get into it. And you know that look that Tazer gets, where he thinks that you just aren't doing it right—" Yeah, Patrick knows that look; it's the 'move over, I'll do it myself' look. At least Jonny doesn't actually say any of those thoughts out loud anymore. What a dick. Patrick loves him with every atom of his being.

"So Tazer follows Shawzy back a couple of rows, and Shawzy's trying to convince him that the latch is jammed—"

Patrick swallows. "Did he actually jam it?"

"Wait for it," Sharpy says. "He keeps acting like he's trying to open it, which is… well, it kept Tazer busy. I was in the row in front of him, so I went over the back of the seat—not all the way. It was upside down, too."

"Why didn't you just steal it?"

"He'd know it was me," Sharpy says, "and then he'd murder me."

"Yeah, probably."

"He's so fucking protective over those things, and all he ever writes are training plans and… I don't know. Golf scores. Anyway, I managed to read half a page."

Patrick tries to play it cool, like he hasn't been dying of curiosity since he was eighteen—which is a waste of energy, when Jonny really does seem to use his notebooks mostly to track his training goals. He's insanely secretive about them, though; the only reason Patrick gave up trying to catch a glimpse is that Jonny got really, genuinely worked up over it one night in their hotel room, and Patrick realized he was being a dick. Now he lets Jonny have his privacy.

"And?" he asks. A breeze tries to blow his napkins away, and he pins them down with an elbow.

"He was taking notes on leadership," Sharpy says, and Patrick cracks the fuck up. Which was probably Sharpy's goal all along. Of course Jonny was, though. Of course he was.

"I could've looked through it if Shawzy knew how to act."

"You mean lie."

"I mean lie," Sharpy agrees. "Tazer just popped the sucker open, told Shawzy he'd used up his idiocy allowance for the day, and went back to reading."

"At least you didn't get caught." Patrick folds the wrapper of his sandwich in half, and then in quarters. The alpha from the line is looking at him again. Not in a predatory way, not even in the particular kind of predatory way that some people look at omegas; he's just weirded out. Patrick doesn't blame him.

"Yeah, well. Always next time. What did you think about the Canes?"

"I think nice job, Shooter," Patrick says.

He can hear the grin in Sharpy's voice. "If someone actually gives me the puck—"

"Are you ever going to drop that?"

"Probably not," Sharpy says. "Tell you what, though. We could've used you out there last night."

Something in him lurches to a halt. It's ingrained, reflexive, an instinctive disgust at having let someone down. He should've been out there. He should have—

And then he remembers the hit from Reaves, and why he isn't out on the ice, and his heart lurches back into motion.

"Yeah," he says. "Well. You know."

"I don't," Sharpy says gently, and that's when Patrick almost tells him. It's there, sitting on his tongue; he wants to tell Sharpy, who never leaves Patrick alone and who never passes up an opportunity to give him shit and who always, always has Patrick's back. The only thing that stops him is how transgressive it feels to tell anyone on the team before he tells Jonny.

Maybe there's a world out there in which the first person Patrick told at all was Jonny, and then they decided together who the second and third and fourth and fifth persons should be; but in this world, the first person Patrick told was his agent.

"I'll talk to the guys this weekend," he says.

"Is it bad?" That means: will it require extensive surgery? Will you be out for a week, a month, the rest of the season? Is it a concussion? Will you be back at all?

"No," Patrick says. "No, it isn't bad."

"As long as it's not serious," Sharpy says. Patrick gets hung up for a moment on the difference between bad and serious and almost misses Sharpy saying, "Can't have our Little Peekaboo broken."

Patrick feels his ears start to flush. "Shut up," he grumbles. Why had Jonny passed along that dumb nickname?

"Aw, Peekaboo," Sharpy says. "At least when you're out, the rest of us have the chance to carry the team and then never shut up about it—"

"I'm hanging up," Patrick informs him.

"This weekend," Sharpy says. "Holding you to it."

"Yeah, yeah," Patrick says, and then he hangs up. That's the key with Sharpy: consistent enforcement of the rules. That, and not giving him a big reaction. Jonny's eternally on the cusp of figuring that out. One day he'll get there.

He's feeling surprisingly good as he dumps his trash and heads back to his car. There's a lot of shit ahead of him, and he can't entirely shelve his anxiety, but the weather's nice, he had a good meal, and he has a feeling that Sharpy's going to turn out to be a decent resource on fatherhood. If nothing else, he can learn what not to do by watching Sharpy—which is a joke, something he'd say to Sharpy's face that they'd both know lacked the bite of truth. Patrick could pick a worse role model.

The real reason he's out of the house isn't to patronize food trucks but to pick up a prescription. Theoretically, Patrick could go through the staff pharmacist, but he only ever has his suppressants sent to the CVS a couple of blocks from home. He's cut back from 200mg to 150mg. Dr. Sievers said he'd be off the drug entirely by the end of his fourth month. It's going to be really weird to not be on any kind of medication to manage his dynamic, or dynamic traits, or however Dr. Sievers always puts it; Patrick's been taking pills since he was a kid. For about three months as a teenager, he'd fantasized intensely about hiding his dynamic altogether before giving up on that pipe dream. People already knew he was an omega; all Patrick could do was make that information as trivial as possible.

There's something else he needs to pick up too, though. He snags his prescription, gets briefly sidetracked looking at picture frames, picks out a spare car charger for his phone, and then walks past the refrigerated case and decides he's in the mood for lemonade on his way to the checkout. There's an older black woman in line in front of him sorting through makeup with the help of the cashier; behind him are two white guys a little older than he is. One of them is wearing a Blackhawks hat. The other's in a Cubs sweatshirt. They both clearly recognize him.

"Hey, man," Cubs Hoodie says. "Big fan."

Patrick looks down: between the picture frame, the charger, the prescription, and the lemonade, a handshake is unattainable. Wasn't there something else he was supposed to pick up, too? He settles on saying, "Thanks, man. Appreciate that."

"Great run last season," Cubs Hoodie adds.

"Yeah, the team really clicked, kept our heads down." Patrick is sometimes caught off-guard even now when people approach him in public, but he knows what it's like to be a fan of the game, knows how much three minutes talking with their favorite player can mean to someone. And he's never going to get tired of people praising him or his team, especially when it's deserved—and when you're Patrick Kane, praise is always deserved. "It was a good series. Nice to prove we weren't just one-hit wonders," he jokes.

"Game five." The guy shakes his head. "That was amazing. You carried that."

"We brought our A game," Patrick says, "but I was, uh, pretty happy with that one on my own part, too."

"Bet you were," Cubs Hoodie says. "You're a beauty. Especially for a—"

What happens in the next microsecond comes to Patrick instinctively. He tenses internally. He scrapes out his insides and packs the hollow with cotton, with rubber, with nickel and silver, to absorb the impact. He reminds himself who he is. He reminds himself that a lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of sheep. On the outside he gives nothing. On the outside he shows nothing.

"...for an American," Cubs Hoodie finishes awkwardly. Maybe Patrick gave something away after all.

"Jesus Christ," the friend snaps. "He means that you're a decent player for a seedy little bitch who never should've been drafted in the first place."

"Nick!"

Hawks Hat grumbles something and turns away. His face is red: from shame, maybe, or from anger.

"Sorry about him," Cubs Hoodie says. "He's from Wisconsin. Would you mind signing something?"

Patrick looks at him. He looks at him steadily and says, "Sorry, man. My hands are full."

Hawks Hat grumbles something else. Cubs Hoodie says, "Oh." Patrick doesn't give a shit. He pays for his junk and leaves without deigning to notice them again. He keeps his head up as he walks to the parking lot and climbs into his car and drops his bag on the passenger seat.

He takes a breath.

He reaches out and settles his hands on the steering wheel.

He takes another breath.

Patrick has big hands, especially for his size. Strong, capable. The best hands in the league. He worked hard for these hands, worked hard to get where he is, wouldn't trade it for anything. Wouldn't trade it for almost anything. And at some point over all those years of hard work, he'd had to accept that he was a crier. When he was happy, sad, frustrated—whatever. When he watched a movie. He was just… an emotional guy. A lifetime of being told he needed to toughen up had yet to train that reaction out of him.

Right now he can't even summon tears. There's just this big, empty nothing that sits inside of him. He hopes it isn't in the same place as the baby. He hopes the baby can't feel this. The baby might be like him. Patrick isn't selfless, but he tries hard to be a good person, a good man. There are some days, though, when all he can manage is to make the decisions he can live with, and that's it—when the only choice he can make is the choice that will give him the better chance of sleeping at night.

"Fuck." He smacks his hand against the steering wheel and snarls again: "Fuck." That's all it takes to make him double over to press his forehead against his hands; he sucks in air and then pulls back to scrub his palms over his face before he takes out his phone.

Come over tonight? he texts Jonny.

It only takes a couple of seconds for Jonny to respond. Sure, he says. Dinner? 6?

6 is fine. Don't worry about dinner, Patrick sends back, and then he flings his phone towards the passenger seat. It hits the door panel and bounces to the floor. Patrick doesn't give a shit. He's a fucking millionaire, he'll buy himself another phone if that one breaks. What he wants isn't attainable for him even if it could be purchased with money.

After he starts the engine, he realizes he has to pee. That's what he forgot to buy. The fucking toilet paper.

-

If he were smart, he would've told Jonny to come over for afternoon fucking tea instead of dinner. He has three hours to kill, and his death of choice is the most drawn-out and boring one possible. He orders more toilet paper. He replaces his old pills with his new pills. He reads the side-effects (dizziness, dry mouth, attachment dysfunction) on the old pills even though he has them memorized. He pees, drinks his lemonade, and pees again. He tries to make himself stay in the kitchen or living room, but after ten minutes of restless circuits, he swears and takes his new picture frame back to his bedroom.

The bedroom has an eclectic mix of furniture, pictures, and knickknacks that his magpie instincts have driven him to collect, but the most comfortable place other than the bed is the oversized armchair next to an electric fireplace in one corner. He sits down and pulls his feet up after him; he won't be able to do this in a couple of months, so he might as well enjoy it while it lasts. At some point he might even have trouble getting up out of the chair. If he lies down on the floor, he might be stuck like a turtle on its back until someone comes looking for him and flips him over. He could be trapped there for days. Maybe he needs one of those red emergency buttons his grandpa wears.

He isn't sure where to put the picture frame, or even what to put in it. He has two long, parallel picture ledges on one wall with a curated collection of photographs: lots of his sisters and the rest of his family, his friends from New York, his friends from Chicago. Old teammates, new teammates. Career highlights. And one carefully selected picture of him with Jonny, tucked half behind another team photo where it won't draw attention even though Patrick is the only one who comes in here.

The empty frame gets set aside to think about later. He should probably at least try to do something productive, but his concentration is shot; instead, he puts on Jurassic Park to keep him company while he stews in his own tension and then ends up falling asleep.

He wakes up startled by gentle knocking at the door. Jonny's here.

"Peeks?" Jonny calls softly. "You in there?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. His voice is rough. "Yeah, just a minute!" he calls back, louder this time. Jonny wouldn't come in here anyway, but he badly needs a moment to collect himself, or at least shake the grogginess. He hauls himself to his feet and sheds his blanket. Fuck. He has to do this. He has to do this.

The hall outside is empty. He follows the faint trail of Jonny's scent to the kitchen; Patrick can't smell most people, but he can usually pick out Jonny even in a crowded room thanks to years of familiarity and Jonny being the kind of alpha he is. The sound of Jonny rummaging through the refrigerator helps, too.

Jonny pulls his head out of the freezer a split second before Patrick walks in the room. "Hey," he says. "I was just seeing if you had enough stuff to throw dinner together, but takeout looks like a better option. Unless you want to go out—"

"I'm pregnant," Patrick says.

The words slow down as soon as they leave his mouth. They hit the air and hang there. The instant he hears himself, he knows—he knows—how much he's about to hurt Jonny. It's maybe the first time he's weighed his pain against Jonny's and judged his own more important.

Jonny closes the freezer. His scent does something Patrick can't decipher, and the fine muscles that control his expressions arrange his features in a way that doesn't make sense.

"You're pregnant," he says. He closes his eyes, opens them. Patrick's always loved Jonny's eyes. "That's the—"

"The reason I've been out," Patrick says. "Yeah."

What he asks next is not what Patrick expects. None of this is what Patrick expects. He doesn't think Jonny is breathing; that's how carefully he's holding himself.

"Do you want a baby?"

Patrick imitates him, doesn't move except to say, "I want this baby."

"Yeah?" Jonny says. Something terrible is happening to his face. Patrick doesn't understand. "Peeks, that's—god. That's amazing. How far along are you?" And then he immediately answers his own question: "Six weeks." And then, softly: "Holy shit. Six weeks—"

"No," Patrick says. He says, "No. Jon—"

Jonny looks at him. If he knew, he would thank Patrick for this.

"It isn't yours," Patrick says.

"Yeah, it is," Jonny says. "Of course it is—"

"No."

"Six weeks ago was your heat—"

"Maybe you weren't the only one I was with," Patrick snaps. There's a silence as terrible as Jonny's expression. The worst part is that Patrick can imagine Jonny standing right here in Patrick's kitchen, smelling like he belonged, holding their baby in his big hands like he belonged. No; maybe that isn't the worst part. He can see Jonny drink in the implication that Patrick led him to: I left before my heat was over. The expression on Jonny's face is inconsequential compared to the way his scent bleeds out.

"I didn't," Patrick says, "I didn't mean that—"

"No," Jonny says. "It's—"

"I didn't mean that."

"It's fine," Jonny says.

"The timing is off," Patrick says. He doesn't understand what's happening. "I don't… I'm sorry."

"Nothing to apologize for," Jonny says. "Congratulations, Patrick. I'm happy for you." He smiles, but he doesn't smell happy. He smells like he's dying. He smells like Patrick feels. Patrick doesn't understand. "Maybe dinner another time?" He's already moving towards the door, grabbing his keys off the counter as he goes.

"I'll be back next year," Patrick tries, uncertain. He can't tell if Jonny's angry at him for choosing to miss a whole season. None of this makes sense.

"Right. That's good."

"I promise."

"I'm glad to hear it," Jonny says. "We'll catch up soon, eh? Take care of yourself." He pauses. "And the baby." He leaves Patrick in the kitchen; Patrick doesn't even hear the front door close behind him.

"Yeah," Patrick says to an empty room. He still doesn't—

From Friday, September 6th to today is exactly six weeks. Jonny had that number ready; he didn't have to reach for it. Patrick knows he's being selfish, but he also knows Jonny, and he knows Jonny never expected or planned or asked for anything like this.

Patrick's just…

Hollow. And he hopes the baby is safe, and warm, and not being forced to grow inside that hollowness. It's a poor shelter for anyone, and especially for a child.

He forces himself to eat something before going back to his bedroom and putting on Jurassic Park again. 'Boy do I hate being right all the time,' Jeff Goldblum says. Patrick can't stop thinking about the look on Jonny's face.

Chapter Text

Jonny wakes up and immediately rolls out of bed to run to the bathroom and puke. This is the third morning in a row he’s woken up sick, and he’s still not sure why. The weird part is that other than the nausea, he’s fine; the urge to puke fades within an hour or two, his appetite is normal, and he doesn’t have any other symptoms, to the confusion of the Blackhawks dieticians. It’s bullshit, but everything is bullshit lately.

He winds up pacing around first the bathroom and then the rest of his condo while he brushes his teeth. At some point he realizes he's staring out of the living room window with his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth and goes to the kitchen to spit. Everything is bullshit and he can't shake that restlessness, that sense of being not entirely present. Sitting still is next to impossible. They have back-to-backs next week against the Panthers and the Bolts, and the plane ride to Florida is starting to feel like a death sentence.

Somehow he manages to drag himself together enough to make it out to the door to practice. It's fucking raining, which Jonny fucking hates even though he usually has no bias whatsoever against rainstorms, and he's later than he wants to be—still earlier than everyone else now that… he's still early. He's just not as early as he wanted to be. How much time did he lose while brushing his teeth?

At practice, everyone stays clear of him. Even Q seems content to leave him alone at one end of the rink to work on his stickhandling. It makes him wonder in a distant way what he must be putting off, what his scent must be saying; he usually keeps such scrupulous control of himself that nobody suspects he's exerting any effort at all, but right now he feels like he could slam-dunk every hockey player in Florida into a dumpster without breaking a sweat, and it's possible other people are picking up on his agitation.

It gets worse.

He strips down, showers, pulls on track pants and a t-shirt, shoves his feet into his sandals, and freezes one limb at a time. Patrick's here. He can smell Patrick, and not in a faded way. Patrick is right here right now.

Jonny turns his head first and then his body, and there Patrick is, framed in the open doorway leading into the locker room. He's wearing a gray Gucci sweatshirt that probably cost him a thousand dollars even though Jonny could buy a gray sweatshirt at Canadian Tire for less than fifty, and he looks tired. He looks like shit. He looks gorgeous to Jonny, always, but he also looks like shit.

Sharpy goes up to him immediately, says something, and touches his shoulder. It's enough to tell Jonny that Sharpy knows, or else he'd bump shoulders, ruffle Patrick's hair until Patrick pulled away, maybe slap him on the back in greeting—all the stuff that Jonny would do with David as a hello. The gentle handling says everything that needs to be said.

He sees Patrick swallow. "Hey," he says, and every head in the locker room that wasn't already pointed at him turns.

"I, uh, I've got something to tell you guys," he says. He glances over at Sharpy for reassurance and then ducks his head a little. "I'm going to be out for the rest of the season. Should be back next fall, though." Jonny has no idea why he's leading with that. The most important information here isn't when Patrick's going to be back on the ice. It's coming, though; Jonny's braced for it.

"You okay?" Saader asks. "Is it serious?"

Patrick half-smiles, drawing out the shadow of a dimple on one cheek: self-conscious, shy. He doesn't want to be there. He's sad. He hasn't once made eye contact with Jonny. But underneath it all, Jonny can tell that he's also happy.

About the baby.

"Uh—yeah, I'd say it's serious," Patrick says. "Not bad, though." There's a pause, and then he says, "I'm pregnant."

The entire locker room freezes.

"I'm due next summer," Patrick says. How far along is he? It can't be more than a month. "So should be back by next season, like I said." Nobody says anything, and Jonny can't make himself say anything, so Patrick shifts uncomfortably and adds, "Sorry about this season."

"I think what the guys mean to say is Congrats, Kaner," Sharpy says, even though Jonny is one-hundred-percent certain that Sharpy has not only congratulated Patrick already but teased and fussed over him, too.

Jonny has to say something. He's supposed to say something. He's gotta step up, be supportive. Have his teammate's back. Have Kaner's back. He needs to say something.

"Congrats, Kaner," Shawzy says, and Saader and Duncs chime in, too, and Seabs, sounding genuinely delighted, says, "That's awesome, man, I'm excited for you." And Jonny still can't make himself move. Patrick's scent is hard to pick apart; it's muted, always, flattened by the suppressants Jonny knows he takes, but right now there's… yeah, the same note that Jonny thinks of shyness even though it doesn't always come across that way, and the hint of joy that seems to be associated with the baby itself, but even stronger is something that smells like grief, almost like Patrick is dying.

The rest of the room still smells more like shock than anything else. They aren't reminded that Patrick is an omega on a daily basis, on a weekly basis; they don't think about it at all until some reporter shoves a question in their face about what it's like to play with "someone like Patrick Kane," which usually means a generational talent but sometimes means an omega. Jonny's been told that to most other people, Patrick doesn't smell like an omega at all. So here, now, being reminded that Patrick's an omega in the most fundamental way possible, is shocking. A couple of the guys, including the call-up brought in to replace Kaner, look downright pissed about it.

Jonny has to talk to them, he has to remember… he needs to make himself say something.

"Thanks," Patrick's saying. "And thanks for your time, appreciate it." He glances over at Sharpy again, who says, "Ready?" At Patrick's quick nod, he starts herding Patrick towards the door.

Is that it? Jonny hasn't even had a chance to—

Hossa's giving him a weird look. Jonny doesn't know why. Nobody's standing close to him. Something's stuck in his throat; and just before Patrick passes out of the room, his eyes flick over to Jonny. Jonny takes it square in the chest; he was already braced for it.

"Hey," Seabs says.

He just doesn't know what to do with this… anger, or loss, or whatever you want to call it. He doesn't know where to put it.

"Hey," Seabs says. "Tazer."

He doesn't even know where it came from—where it's coming from. He didn't lose anything. There was never anything to lose. Patrick had obviously been upset, but he'd tried to be kind about it even though Jonny had pushed. He always pushes. He doesn't know how not to push. How far along is Patrick? It can't be more than four or five weeks, unless he was already—

"Jon," Seabs says. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Jonny says. "Sorry."

"Pretty big news," Seabs says. He isn't standing close to Jonny, and he probably doesn't even realize why. "He seemed happy about it."

"Yeah," Jonny says.

"How long have you known?"

"A while," Jonny says automatically. Two days. He's known two days.

"I figured he'd told you and Sharpy already." Seabs is looking at him, looking for something. "Look, I know we're pushing for back-to-back championships, but we could still make that happen without Kaner. You can't hold it against him."

Jonny blinks and forces his eyes to focus. "I wasn't going to," he says, and he can see his own bewilderment reflected in Brent's face.

"Okay," Seabs says. "Okay. That's good."

"Yeah," Jonny says. "I'm not—I wouldn't," he tries. He tries again: "I'm happy for him." That comes out better. He just needs to practice. By next week he'll be able to say it to Kaner's face. By next month he might even mean it.

-

Somewhere deep down, he already does mean it. He's happy for Patrick. Patrick's never talked about wanting kids or even settling down except in a roundabout way to get a journalist off his back, but it's been glaringly obvious to Jonny since they were kids themselves that Patrick was meant to be a parent. He's never passed up the opportunity to hold a baby, never passed up a chance to babysit at a family skate. In an abstract way, Jonny knew that someday he would have to watch Patrick settle down with someone, and he thought he'd come to terms with that.

The four seconds between Patrick saying "I want this baby" and "It isn't yours" had shown him just how wrong he was. Jonny doesn't understand how it's possible to grieve something he only had for four seconds. He's just so fucking angry at himself for the grief, for feeling any sense of loss; he's worked so hard to rid himself of that feeling of entitlement to Patrick, but apparently it's been sleeping just below the surface of his skin the entire time.

The press release goes out the day after Patrick tells the team. It's short, almost curt, and merely says that Patrick Kane will be out the rest of the season, that he's pregnant, and that the Blackhawks are respecting his wish for privacy. God. Brisson must've known already—Patrick would've told him as soon as possible in case the news leaked. How many people had he told before Jonny? Good fucking thing he'd told other people before Jonny, who had no special claim on the news anyway; look how much help he's been.

He's so shaken he doesn't realize how long he's been staring at the article on his laptop until his phone starts ringing. He sat down for dinner at five-thirty. It's eight now, and his mom is calling.

He answers in French. "Hello?"

"Hi, sweetheart," his mom says. "I just saw the news about Patrick."

Jesus fucking christ what a sack of horseshit, now he has to talk about it.

"Yeah," Jonny says. He clears his throat and tries again. "Yeah, big news."

"How's he doing?"

Jonny wishes he had an answer for her. He has nothing to go on but Patrick's tired face yesterday and what he overheard Sharpy telling Hoss today.

"Fine," he says. "We haven't talked much."

"How far along is he?"

"I don't know. Less than six weeks."

"I'm surprised they made the announcement that early. My doctor told me to wait two months, although I suppose it could be different for omega men. I think it's after the first trimester for beta women."

"Why?"

"Omegas tend to get pregnant more easily," she says, "and have more stable pregnancies. I think something like fifteen percent of beta pregnancies end in miscarriage, I might have that wrong, your father would know—" His dad watched a lot of Jeopardy. "But most doctors advise you to wait in case the pregnancy isn't viable."

Oh god. Jonny didn't even know to worry about that. What if Patrick miscarries?

"He probably didn't want the news leaking, though," she's saying. "It's all over the TV. Very ignorant opinions. Don't read the comments online, the last thing Patrick needs right now is to have to talk you down off a ledge."

Oh god, the comments—the media. Patrick's always had a target on his back, but now he just set it on fire.

"I won't," Jonny says. He just spent the past hour staring at a relatively innocuous write-up on the press release and what it means for the Hawks' season. He's really only processing about twelve words a minute. Maybe less, now that he has to worry about Patrick miscarrying or being hurt by some jackoff journalist.

"You might want to warn his partner, too, if he has one," his mom says, which from someone else might be digging for information but from his mom is just a neutral piece of advice. She's always kept an eye out for Patrick, because she knows what Jonny went through as a younger player and that Patrick went through the same struggles compounded by being an omega. Jonny's also vaguely aware that she doesn't always like the way Patrick's parents show their support, although she's tight-lipped about—

Oh. God. Patrick's partner.

Jonny hasn't thought further than It's not yours, but if he isn't the father, that means there's someone else to step into that void. Patrick wasn't seriously seeing anyone that Jonny knew about, but now the baby's father will want to be involved. How could they not want to be involved? Jonny's never felt simultaneously so terrified and so outraged. If the baby's other father is involved, then that's a lifelong tie between Patrick and another person; but if the baby's other father isn't involved, if they gave up Patrick and his baby, there isn't a place on earth they can hide from Jonny.

"Sweetheart?" his maman says. "Are you there?"

"Yes," Jonny says automatically. "I'm sorry. I don't know if he's involved with anyone. He hasn't mentioned the other father."

There's a pause, a long pause, and then his mom says, "Tell him to let me know if there's anything I can do to help. I know he has Donna, but just… tell him, please."

"Of course," Jonny says. He's holding his phone so tightly he can feel his knuckles grind.

"Thank you," his mom says. "And tell him congratulations, too. He has to regret missing the rest of the season. We caught the end of your game versus Toronto on Saturday when we got home from the bar."

"How'd you do?" Jonny asks. He's usually interested in (and amused by) his parents' ongoing battle to wrest the top spot from their trivia rivals, the Three Musquizteers, but he can't summon any genuine enthusiasm. He really wants a nap, or to hit something, or to hit someone, or to get really and truly drunk off his head. That used to be Patrick's coping mechanism; it was never Jonny's, whose nerves didn't need to be settled, but holy shit he wants to get wasted. What if Patrick calls and needs help, though? What if he needs Jonny to drive him to a hospital or sue a journalist or hunt down and murder his baby's deadbeat dad?

His mom's still talking. "But next weekend is all 70s questions, so if we can't win at that, there's no hope for us."

"You've got them," Jonny says. Does Patrick know he can call Jonny? Maybe he doesn't want to see Jonny. It isn't Jonny's place to intrude. And, even worse, he's not sure he can stand to be around Patrick right now without it being obvious that he's having to relearn to walk and talk and exist with a fist-sized hole in his chest.

There's another crisp pause, and then his mom says, "Jonathan. Are you all right?"

He still doesn't want to talk about this, but he's never liked lying to his mom, either. He must take too long to answer, because his maman says, "It's a lot to take in."

Jonny swallows. "Yeah."

"It makes you think."

"Yeah," Jonny says again.

"That's fine, then," she says, and then she changes the subject to Thanksgiving and hosting David's new girlfriend for her first holiday with the family. She owns a landscaping company that she started herself, and Jonny's dad apparently had to be dragged away from her after thirty solid minutes of gardening discussion. She sounds… pretty great, actually. Jonny's looking forward to meeting her. He's never regretted the path he's taken in life, but sometimes he does miss getting to spend holidays with his family.

At the end of the call, his mom tells him to call if he ever needs company—not her usual sign-off, and he wonders what she read into his reaction. If there's anyone who knows, or at least suspects, how he feels about Patrick, it's her. His dad and Seabs are a distant second and third. Patrick's not on the list. One of Jonny's exes had pieced it together, though. She'd been far kinder about it than he deserved, and they'd dated another four months after Jonny, who'd barely been able to confirm her suspicions out loud, had doubled down on his efforts to move on. It was one of those rare times in life when the amount of work he'd put into something hadn't been proportionate to the result.

He plugs in his phone and wanders back over to the table to stare down at his laptop. The article's more or less neutral, but the way the press release is worded makes him wonder whether the request for privacy came from Patrick or from the organization. No, that's not quite right: Patrick would obviously want his privacy, but it smacks of the Blackhawks trying to downplay that their superstar is pregnant.

Jonny's never entirely understood Patrick's relationship with his dynamic, but he knows he's never liked how the Hawks handle it. There were five currently active omega players in the NHL, and that was exceptional; the NFL had only one. Jonny had watched over Patrick's shoulder as he did the math. Five players out of 690 meant that 0.725% of top-tier pro hockey players were omega men. It was something like fifteen times higher than the expected percentage—more, when you considered how shittily they were treated. The other four were all younger than Patrick. He really was a miracle.

All things considered, the conversation with his mom could've gone worse. If he's lucky, that's the last time it'll come up, and Jonny will just muscle through whatever this current feeling is and then live out the rest of his life without ever having to think or talk about having feelings ever again.

-

Maybe he doesn't even have to talk to Patrick.

Sharpy Sharp

Today 8:21 PM

Jonny

Hey how's Kaner doing

Sharpy

???????????

So that doesn't work.

-

The team flies out the day after the press release for a pair of back-to-back games in Florida: against the Panthers on 22nd and the Bolts on the 24th. The plane ride is miserable, Jonny was right, but it's no less miserable than being at home. He's still restless; in the hotel he makes circuits of his room until he finally forces himself to turn off the lights and get into bed. He spends an hour listening to the sounds he can hear through the walls before dropping into a deep sleep. The next morning he wakes up to puke.

Wednesday is the same, and Thursday. By Friday he's home, so he has more room for pacing and a nicer toilet for puking. At dusk he goes for a run; it's pushing dark by six and dropping to the low forties, which is comfortable for Jonny even though he knows that Patrick would be in leggings instead of shorts like Jonny is.

He never really thought of kids as part of his future, not because he didn't like kids but because it wouldn't be fair to… it wouldn't be fair. He always figured he'd eventually settle down with someone who was looking for companionship and live out his retirement working on his charity projects and learning how to surf. Golfing a lot too, probably. Patrick was still in the picture somehow, even if he was out of focus. Jonny knows he can't build his life around Patrick, but he isn't capable of removing him entirely. Patrick is foundational and always has been.

At the riverfront, he picks up his pace. What really makes him want to kick himself is his paralysis. He's never had trouble acting before, but he keeps pulling up his text chain with Patrick and failing to write anything—to reach out, to give support, to apologize for assuming that he was the father. Their personal relationship is easily as intense as their professional one, but Jonny's failing as a friend, too. He's failing all over these days. Except on the power play; their special teams have made a good showing so far this season.

And now Patrick's out to have his baby—

Holy fuck. That thought takes Jonny so hard he trips and stumbles to a halt where he doubles over, panting, with his hands braced on his knees. Patrick's going to have a baby. Not as an abstract, not as a condition: by this time next year, there's going to be a small new person that Patrick grew from scratch. A Patrick-baby.

Jonny tries to imagine Patrick in miniature—his mournful resting face, the quick bloom of the smile that he tries to tuck into his chest like he's trying to hide it. His cocky, crooked smirk. His dimples, his eyes. His humor and fastidiousness and ferocity. When Jonny paints all those traits onto a little boy or little girl and then settles the baby in Patrick's arms…

Someday soon there's going to be a Patrick-baby, and maybe, if Jonny's really lucky, he'll get to meet it. That thought cuts through the ache in a way nothing else has; how can he be anything but glad that Patrick's bringing someone half-him into the world?

Maybe, if Jonny's really lucky, he'll even get to hold it. It takes him less than a heartbeat to sink into that fantasy—playing the fun uncle, watching the kiddo while Patrick's out on a date. Teaching them how to skate. No, Patrick will want to do that; the baby's milestones aren't for Jonny. Jonny might know how to surf by the time the baby's old enough to learn, though. Patrick and his family could come visit Jonny at his beach house, and Jonny can show the kids how to pop up on a surfboard and let them watch PG-13 movies after their parents have gone to bed.

He catches his breath and starts up again, hits a steady stride as he paces the river. It's crowded; in late October, the trees are approaching their most vibrant red riot, and the cooler weather cuts the occasional stink of the river. Patrick doesn't mind how it smells even in the high heat of summer, and Jonny had only belatedly realized it was because Patrick couldn't smell much of anything at all. Jonny's not the biggest fan, but the reek isn't enough to keep him away from the water.

A couple of people usually recognize him when he's out like this, but they're generally pretty good about leaving him alone; most of them don't pay any attention to one more guy running past them and wouldn't unless Jonny drew their attention. He passes an omega woman with long gray hair whose eyes widen when she catches sight of his face. She smacks the arm of the beta guy standing next to her, and he laughs. They remind Jonny of his parents. There are so many dumb misconceptions out there about dynamics, but the idea that omegas prefer alpha partners is one of the dumbest.

And then, just before he turns to head for home, he passes two kids trying unsuccessfully to fling leaves at each other. They can't be older than six. Their parents are standing nearby, and the woman is cracking up as she watches them play; when the little boy hears his mom laughing, he turns around and beams at her. His sister takes advantage of his distraction and sticks a leaf in his hair, and her giggles sound just like her mom's laughter. Maybe Patrick's going to have a baby who sounds just like him when he laughs.

Jonny fixates on it all the way back to his condo. He's heaving by the time he turns onto his street; without realizing it, he was pushing himself harder and harder, up to almost his limit, for the past mile. He didn't need to go for a run. All he was trying to do was clear his head.

What he still doesn't know is how to move forward. He can't wait to meet Patrick's baby, but that anticipation sits alongside all the other horseshit he's struggling to shed. Jonny's always had a temper, but he's also always been in control of himself where it really counts. Not anymore, though. Nobody sat next to him on the plane this week, and nobody sits next to him the next. Jonny wonders if they know why they're avoiding him. He sure as hell doesn't know why he's avoiding Patrick. Patrick doesn't keep snapping sticks over his knee every time he has a bad shift, though. In retrospect, that might have something to do with the team's distance.

-

The worst part is that he has to keep functioning outside of hockey. Hockey isn't automatic, but it's such an integral part of him that he can still give it the attention it requires. When he walks out of practice, though, he just wants to shut down. Turn himself off until the next game. It's completely antithetical to how he's always functioned. Jonny's always thrived on being busy—being around people, devoting time to his projects and his hobbies. Grabbing a drink after work with whoever's around, catching up with his buddies from Winnipeg, calling whichever interesting girl or guy had most recently slipped him their phone number. Gardening, fishing, golfing, hiking. He's not looking forward to retirement, but he's going to be great at it. Sometimes he thinks about buying a house just so he has a house to putter around in.

And in between all of that, he filled in the cracks with Patrick. Maybe that's not even true—maybe he just filled in the gaps when he was waiting to see Patrick with everything else. He keeps trying to focus on what's in front of him, but every fucking distraction ultimately ends with him standing stock-still while he stares down at his hands.

He's making an appearance at a middle school the day after he manages a hat trick against Ottawa, and even those don't burn away the fog following him around. Jonny normally loves going to schools, and he always loves hat tricks, but when he drags himself out of bed all he's thinking about is the text Patrick sent him last night, which only said Great game Tazer but was the most interaction he's had with Parick in the past ten days.

Christ—what if Patrick thinks Jonny's mad at him? Was that why he'd made a point of reassuring Jonny that he'd be back next season? Jonny doesn't give two shits that Patrick's missing games to have a kid. That's Patrick all over, though: always concerned that he isn't pulling his own weight, that he isn't playing to his full potential, that the effort he's making is less than perfect.

He thinks about that all the way to the middle school. Sometimes this kind of outing turns into a circus, complete with a camera crew and a babysitter from the Hawks' communication office, but Jonny's going it alone today, and he likes that better. The press stuff serves a purpose, but it can be too much to the point that he spends more time posing for pictures than he does actually talking to the kids.

Usually he makes appearances like this one to talk about nutrition, often in conjunction with some behind-the-scenes work to funnel money into food deserts that need more resources, but a friend had tipped him off about a teacher who was a massive Blackhawks fan and ran an environmentalism club for her students. Jonny had reached out to her privately and made arrangements to visit for a couple of hours, talk to the kids during her last-period club meeting. She'd been thrilled, but—she promised—not half as thrilled as her kids would be. And she had a free hour at three, which meant he'd actually have time to introduce himself in person before he was swarmed with kids.

He collects his visitor's pass and directions from the front office and then winds his way through the empty halls to classroom 220. He keeps catching glimpses through classroom doors of eleven- and twelve-year-olds bent over their desks or staring out the window or, in one case, talking over each other as a grinning teacher made notes on the whiteboard. Jonny's always wondered what it would've been like to have a more typical school experience, even though he had a bigger dose of normalcy than a lot of pro players. Patrick hadn't even graduated high school.

The door to room 220 is open, and when he sticks his head in, the first thing he sees is a Blackhawks flag hung on the wall. And then a Blackhawks trash can, and two framed jerseys (for Duncs and, of course, Kaner), and a huge poster of the 2010 team. There are Blackhawks magnets on the whiteboard and Blackhawks coffee mugs on the desk, a Blackhawks barstool behind the podium and what must be every Blackhawks bobblehead ever made lined up on the windowsill. The flag says 'Chicago Blackhawks Fan for Life' and, in bigger letters underneath that, 'MRS. FINCH.'

"You must be Mrs. Finch," Jonny says.

The woman at the desk, who can't be that much older than Jonny himself, glances up, and the biggest fucking smile breaks across her face. He's never going to get tired of being able to thrill complete strangers just by showing up somewhere. He's used to thrilling people he knows with his presence, obviously. (Somewhere in Canada, Jonny's dad is rolling his eyes.)

"Jonathan Toews!" bursts out of her mouth, and she doesn't look even a little embarrassed by it.

"Jon or Jonny's fine," he says, and when she goes in for a hug, he lets her. He almost gets a mouthful of red hair; she's an omega, but she smells strongly of another omega, and the scents are mingled with some kind of earthy shampoo and a fourth scent that tells Jonny she's bonded. She hugs like a middle school teacher. Jonny's pretty sure he felt his ribs creak.

"This is the best thing to happen to the kids this year, you don't even know," she says. "Thanks so much for coming by."

"My pleasure. Really. I love getting to do stuff like this, especially when it's unscripted. And"—he grins at her and looks over at the flag on the wall—"I guess you're a little bit of a fan."

She laughs. "Little bit. My wife managed to get us tickets to game five last June. I was so keyed up, I swear I didn't sleep that whole night."

"Me either," Jonny confides. "You picked a good game for that series."

"We were lucky. My wife loves Patrick Kane. That third period, though—we were both worried you were out for good." She pats Jonny once more on the arm and then starts digging around on her desk for notes.

"I just strained my shoulder," Jonny says, "but yeah, I was worried too. Seabs had to talk me into staying on the bench."

"Good thing he did. Shit, where's—here we go. Call me Dory, by the way, only the kids call me Mrs. Finch." Dory flips open a binder. "Are you still okay to do something unstructured? I had the kids read a couple of articles about your activism for a vocabulary project, and they were all assigned to think up one question to ask you. I told them it had to be about environmentalism, but at least a couple of them are serious hockey fans."

"Ah, I'll tell 'em environment questions first, hockey questions after," Jonny says. "Do any of them play?"

He's not surprised she has an immediate answer. "Three," she says. "Anna, Tyrus, Lee. Anna's something of a Patrick Kane fan herself. I apologize in advance if she tries to interrogate you, she's pretty intense about it." Mrs. Finch—Dory—straightens up and takes a moment to study Jonny's face, and then she says bluntly, "Anna's cross-dynamic. Mr. Kane's success means a hell of a lot to her."

Jonny meets her gaze easily and says, "It means a hell of a lot to me, too."

"Good," she says. "I'm glad to hear that." She carries her binder over to the podium and climbs onto the Hawks barstool. Jonny didn't even know they made a barstool. "They're the ones most likely to swarm you, although Jess just started her own tower garden and she's ready to talk your ear off about it. And we've been discussing composting, lately. I'm trying to see if we can get a composting system set up here, but I guess that needs board approval for some reason."

"Sounds frustrating."

"You have no idea," Dory says. "But we have a pretty supportive school board, they just like to take their time getting things done. Hi, Anna," she adds, and Jonny turns around to see a girl standing in the doorway.

"Hi, Mrs. Finch," Anna says, but her eyes are on Jonny the whole time. She's just about at the age where she'll start occasionally chafing at the presence of other alphas, but there's none of that awkward adolescent aggressiveness in her posture. "Hi, Mr. Toews," she adds, more tentatively.

"Call me Jonny. Nice to meet you, Anna," he says, and then he holds out his hand for her to shake.

Jonny's usually pretty casual with kids; in professional settings he'll shake the hand of any person he's being introduced to, not just men, not just alphas, but in settings like this one he sticks to fist bumps (or hugs, if they're from teachers who look like a Blackhawks fan shop threw up inside their classroom). He knows what a handshake means, though, from one alpha to another.

Anna's eyes go wide, and then she stretches out her hand and shakes his. She's got this half-defiant, half-defensive body language Jonny remembers from that age, even if his display was only a tenth as blatant. He wonders how often she's been overlooked for this measure of respect.

"I play right wing," she blurts, and drops his hand.

"Yeah?" Jonny says. He's got her measure now, so he asks, "You any good?"

She grins. "Yeah. I am."

Her classmates start to file in behind her. She's lanky, just starting to broaden in the shoulders, and she steps aside so they can get past her. "Anna, if you grab a seat now, I bet Jonny would have a couple of minutes to talk hockey with you afterwards."

"For sure," Jonny says. "I know a couple of pretty good wingers. Don't think they'd mind if I gave away a couple of their secrets, eh?"

"Definitely not," Anna says. She takes a seat at the front corner closest to the entrance, next to a beta boy nearly as tall as her, and Dory shuts the door and hops back up on her barstool.

"Guys!" she calls; the class quiets down. "Thank you. I don't think I need to introduce our guest today—"

"You're her favorite player!" a kid in the back says, and then another jumps in with, "After Duncan Keith!"

"Duncs?" Jonny says. "Really?"

"Really," says the boy sitting next to Anna.

"What's your name?"

"Tyrus," the boy says. "The other Mrs. Finch likes Patrick Kane, though."

"Eh, he's alright," Jonny says, and fifteen twelve-year-olds start cackling. He glances over at Dory; she doesn't look like she has anything more to add for the moment, so at her nod he says, "I heard you guys were working on setting up a composting system. How's that going?"

One of his favorite things about kids is how eager they are to be listened to—how much they want to share whatever their favorite thing is. Favorite toy, favorite game, favorite cartoon, favorite way someone had died on a roller coaster, favorite song written by an artist who had stopped recording before they were born. He jumps into the conversation every now and then to tell them about his own kitchen compost bin and how weird his mom thinks he is for having earthworms in his condo, or to talk about nuclear versus solar energy and the last time he visited a hydroelectric dam, but mostly he asks questions.

Jess, it turns out, does have a lot of thoughts about aeroponics, and Maria wants to know how many calories he has to eat in a day to keep his weight up and how sustainable his diet is. Taylor has some incredibly well-researched opinions on the topic of climate change. Tyrus and Anna get into a pretty intense debate about whether the composting system or an upcycling fair should take higher priority; Jonny almost steps in, but Dory just watches them with a faintly amused expression. Lynn, Lee, and Kayla spend almost ten minutes quizzing him on whether he thinks the whole concept of carbon offset is legitimate or just corporate propaganda. Jonny's worn-out and happy by the end of the hour. It feels novel.

He sticks around a little longer to talk to Anna and her friends about hockey. Dory finally shoos them out the door after thirty minutes; Anna's clearly ready to dig in her feet, but Tyrus tells her that they have to get to practice, and she sighs and goes—but not before shaking Jonny's hand and thanking him.

"They're a good group," Jonny says when they're gone. "And they're lucky to have a teacher like you."

"Thanks," Dory says, with a quick smile. "I like to think so." She's straightening up her desk. Something about the way she's lining up her file folders seems familiar. There's a couple of picture frames on her desk, too, mostly of the woman who must be her wife and their dogs. "I really can't thank you enough for this. It meant so much to them."

"Yeah, of course." That is… a lot of dogs. "Would you mind emailing me a list of what you guys need for the compost system? I might be able to get something worked out."

"Oh—no, Jon, thank you, you don't have to—"

"It's not a problem," Jonny says, because 'I have more money than I could ever spend on three children' isn't ever not going to sound arrogant. "And, uh, the team Anna plays on, and Lee and Tyrus. How's their equipment?"

"I'm not sure," Dory says. "But I could pass along the coach's contact information. It’s a co-ed league."

"That'd be great," Jonny says. He leans over to look at one of the pictures more closely; there's… seven, eight… nine dogs crammed into it.

At his startled look, Dory chuckles. "I volunteer at a dog shelter," she says. "We take in a lot of fosters that are hard to rehome."

"Why?"

"All kinds of reasons. Medical problems, behavioral issues. Breeds that people don't like. Sometimes their families just don't want to keep them."

"What's the shelter name?" Jonny asks.

"Stray Paws of Chicago," says Dory. "Keep us in mind if you guys ever decide to do a photoshoot. We've got a couple of puppies that would look great on a charity calendar."

"Will do," Jonny says distractedly. A couple of the dogs in the pictures have obvious problems—a missing leg, a missing eye, burn marks over the muzzle—but they all look well-fed and warm and happy.

He finally manages to tear himself away from the picture and straighten up. "I'll get out of your hair," he says, "but thanks again."

"Jonathan Toews," Dory says.

"What?"

"Nothing," Dory says. "Just savoring the moment. Thank you, Jon. Keep an eye on your inbox."

"Will do," Jonny promises. He wonders if they'd let him be an honorary club member. He couldn't be an officer; Anna was the president, and according to her had been since she was in sixth grade. Jonny couldn't run against that kind of experience.

He signs himself out at the front office and steps outside. It's just starting to edge into dusk, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and inhales: brick, exhaust, anticipation from a group of kids clustered around a picnic bench. Cider. Another strong alpha. French fries. Brass. When he glances to his far left, there's a statue of a woman in the courtyard in front of the school.

Jonny caught a cab here, but there's no reason he can't walk to the nearest station and ride the L home. It's a nice day turning into a nice night, and he doesn't have anywhere to be. Most of the kids he passes are talking about Halloween and whether they're too old to dress up. Patrick loves Halloween; Jonny can only imagine how excited he'll be when his baby is old enough to trick-or-treat.

While he's walking, he pulls out his phone and looks up the shelter Dory had mentioned. What kind of a shitty human would adopt a dog and then decide not to keep it? There's no reason the Hawks couldn't do some kind of 2014 charity calendar with proceeds going to the shelter. And Stray Paws has a hell of a lot of dogs that need homes. Jonny flips past a fluffy black mutt and a border collie and a blue-and-brindle pitbull with a ridiculous name and a red bow around her neck.

He tries to figure out how to pull up more information on the shelter, fails, swears at his phone, and finally gives up and calls them. "Hi there," he says, when the receptionist picks up. "I was, uh, just wondering if I need an appointment to come in."

"You can drop by anytime," the receptionist says. "I'd avoid the weekends if you can, though, it gets pretty crowded here. Especially on Saturdays. Is there any dog in particular that caught your eye?"

"Yeah, there is," he says, and then he glances up and realizes he's standing in front of a baby boutique. Displayed in the window is a soft-looking yellow blanket patterned with rabbits.

"Actually," Jonny says, "let me call you back."

Chapter Text

"What," Patrick says.

Jonny didn't really think this one through. "Hi," he says. "I have a dog now."

They look down together at the dog, who's sitting neatly beside Jonny's left knee and also gives the impression of being so excited about life in general that she's about to vibrate into another dimension. She's just as thrilled about Patrick's front door as she was about Patrick's lobby, the parking garage, Jonny's car, the other parking garage, and home.

"I can see that," Patrick says. He spends another minute examining the dog while she stares back with the kind of delirious joy Jonny usually reserves for major life milestones. "Did you, uh, you guys want to come in?"

"Yeah," Jonny says, and then he remembers his manners and that he doesn't actually own all of Patrick's free time, and he adds, "If it's okay."

"It's fine," Patrick says. They're both still staring at Jonny's dog until Patrick gives himself a shake and says, "Come in." He steps aside—the dog, fortunately, minds her manners instead of trying to shove her face into Patrick's crotch to say hello—and Jonny stops long enough to take his shoes off before following Patrick into the kitchen. He keeps the dog on her leash; he was only mostly convinced that showing up with an animal in tow wouldn't result in automatic denial of entry, but better safe than sorry. Patrick says he doesn't like pets.

Jonny smelled mango as soon as he walked in, but the counters still take him by surprise: it looks like a farmer's market offloaded a half-ton of produce in Patrick's kitchen. There are four different workstations, each with progressively less ruinous attempts at what looks like some kind of mango salsa.

Patrick catches him looking and flushes. "I'm working on it," he says.

"Are you trying to cook?"

"I'm trying to chop," Patrick says. "It can't be that hard. Jackie sent me the recipe, she says she makes it all the time and it's super easy and it should only take fifteen minutes."

"Looks like it's taken you about fifteen hours."

"I made a couple of mistakes," Patrick says. "It's fine. I'll get there." He pauses. "I keep eating the mango."

"Yeah, that'd be a problem. You want some help cleaning up?"

"I don't know if mango's good for dogs," Patrick says.

"I mean that I could wipe down your counters, not feed your disaster to her," Jonny says. What he really wants is to order Patrick to sit down, but he knows that isn't his place; instead, he settles onto one of Patrick's barstools with the dog beside his feet while Patrick starts doing dishes. Jonny slides the bag he's been carrying onto another stool. If he sets it on the ground, the dog's going to try to stick her head in it.

Patrick doesn't appear pregnant. A little scruffy, maybe, and clearly well into his homestand—Jonny doubts he's worn anything but sweatpants in the past two weeks—but he doesn't look like he's put on any weight. His face is clear, if a little sad, but that's his resting expression. Mournful. It makes his sudden grins all the more appealing.

They haven't seen each other face-to-face since the afternoon Patrick came to the locker room after practice to break the news to the rest of the team. They'd texted a couple of times, mostly about games, but almost three weeks of near-silence is the longest he's gone without hearing Patrick's voice in... years, probably. At first he'd thought about inviting Patrick out somewhere public, but then he'd wondered if that would be too weird. They didn't meet places. They went to places together. It was one of those small details that made up the difference between friendship and close friendship.

"So, uh," Patrick says. "I'm glad you came by. I know everything's been kind of weird, with me not playing and the pregnancy thing—"

"Sorry, yeah, I had to..." Jonny casts around for an excuse and gives up. "Doing okay?"

"It's an adjustment," Patrick says. He's washing a cutting board by hand. "How's everything?"

"Great," Jonny says. "We went 5-1 against the Jets."

"Yeah, I, uh, caught that," Patrick says. He sets the cutting board by the sink and turns around to retrieve another one. Jesus fucking christ, how awkward is this? He can't even meet Jonny's eye. Maybe Jonny should've stayed away. Maybe he needs to apologize again. There has to be a better way to go about this.

"I got you something," Jonny says.

Patrick twists around. "Oh yeah?" he says, and then he accidentally dumps a tray full of mango on the floor.

The dog goes wild. She lunges—not for Patrick, but for the mess on the floor. Patrick steps back. And Jonny shouts, "Bunny, NO."

To her credit, Bunny freezes; Jonny's only had her for two days, but she's been nothing but obedient and adoring. Her whole body is quivering with how badly she wants to eat floor food, but she's stock still with only her tail flying back and forth. At first Jonny thinks she's whining, or huffing, but then he realizes the noises are coming from Patrick, and then Patrick dissolves into laughter.

"What?" Jonny says. Bunny's tail stops wagging, and she looks over her shoulder at Jonny and then twists the other way to look at Patrick. The tilt of her head suggests confusion, but her tail slowly picks up speed again, and her mouth drops open in a grin. Patrick, meanwhile, has one hand braced against the kitchen counter and the other pressed to his forehead as he laughs.

"Oh man," he says. "Seriously? A pit bull named Bunny?" At the sound of her name, Bunny bounces on her front feet. Jonny's been wondering if there's something to that.

"She's two, Peeks," he says. "That's her name. It'd be weird to call her something else. You wouldn't like it if someone adopted you and then changed your name."

"You did adopt me and then change my name," Patrick points out, but he isn't looking at Jonny; he's looking at Jonny's dog. "Can dogs eat mango?"

"Probably better not to encourage her," Jonny says, and then he gestures Bunny back to his side. She sits down at his feet and gazes at him reverently. Jonny hasn't felt like this much of a hero since 2010, or at least the most recent time he went to the Pony Inn. When he glances back up, Patrick's on one knee scooping up fruit.

"Whoa, hey—hey, you shouldn't be doing that," Jonny says.

"Is there a better way to clean it? I'm not gonna let it get all sticky."

"No," Jonny says. He looks down at Kaner. "No, uh, sorry. I was just wondering if in your condition, you should… you know."

"Bend over to pick up food I spilled?"

"That's probably okay."

"Are you sure?" Patrick says. "Because I don't want to go against your expert advice."

"Fuck off," Jonny grumbles. Patrick's almost laughing at him; seeing that mirth in his eyes is worth every bit of stung pride. God, Jonny missed him. He knows it isn't going to be like it was before, not now that Jonny's finally been forced to admit that his little imaginary future isn't ever going to happen, now that Patrick will soon have a new baby to look after. Their friendship isn't going to be what it once was, and Jonny's allowing himself to mourn that; but he isn't going to lose Patrick entirely, either.

He manages to make it through watching Patrick collect the debris and then locate a container of Clorox wipes in what looks like an entire cabinet of Clorox wipes before asking, "Sure I can't help?"

A flicker passes over Patrick's face, but he says, "Yeah, man, I'm sure." When he's done, he takes a seat at a right angle to Jonny. "How'd you end up with a dog, anyway?"

"You're gonna laugh."

"I figured," Patrick says.

"I went to visit a junior high Environmental Club," Jonny starts. "The teacher was a big fan. Her classroom was wallpapered in merchandise, you'd have loved it."

"Oh yeah?" Patrick says. "You talk about anything in particular?"

"They're trying to get the school to start composting," Jonny says. "I told her to let me know if she needed any money or resources, they're pretty fired up about it. One of the kids was really into hydroponics, too, I wonder if she'd like a tower garden. Not sure if that'd work in a classroom, but I could have one delivered to her house."

"And hydroponics is—"

"Growing plants without soil," Jonny says. "You use a nutrient solution in water instead."

"Oh yeah. Obviously."

Bunny nudges against his knee, and Jonny looks down at her and rubs a hand over her head. "There was this girl there," he says. "An alpha. I think you'd like her. You're her favorite player." Bunny's tail thumps against the bar stool leg a couple of times. "Anyway, the teacher, Dory, she—" Bunny twists her head, opens her mouth, and closes it on the stool leg. Jonny does his best to shove her away without drawing attention to the fact that his new dog is trying to eat Patrick's furniture. They'd had a conversation on the way over about how everyone needed to be on their best behavior if they didn't want to be kicked out of Patrick's condo.

"Did she take you on a date to the dog pound?"

"What?" Jonny says. "No, she volunteers at a dog shelter."

"Ah," Patrick says.

"She had all these pictures on her desk, I think she and her wife must have eighty or so dogs." Something changes in Patrick's scent, but Jonny's too busy trying to push Bunny's giant head away without looking like he's moving to pay his usual obsessive amounts of attention to it. No doubt it has to do with Patrick recoiling at the idea of that many pets crammed into one home. "I'm just joking," he says. "They foster them while they're waiting to be adopted."

"Yeah, Jon, I figured you were kidding, nobody actually has eighty dogs. Everything okay down there?"

Bunny's licking the wall. "She just, uh. Wants her ears rubbed."

"Uh-huh," Patrick says. "So how'd you end up at the shelter?"

"I told Dory I'd look into doing some kind of partnership, maybe a photoshoot or an adoption event. Went to look the place up, and then I decided to stop by." Patrick generously doesn't point out that there's a lot of missing steps between 'looking up a shelter' and 'going home with a dog,' although his eyebrows suggest he's thinking it. His eyes today are a stormy color more gray than blue. Jonny must get a little flustered, because he adds, "I like dogs," and then winces.

Patrick lets it slide. "How did you meet Bunny?"

"I saw her on the website," Jonny says. "Took a look at a couple of other dogs when I got there, but none of them felt right. And then they asked if I wanted to look at her. The shelter worker said she was high-energy but sweet. Good with other pets and kids."

He glances down again. Bunny's licking his leg now, but she isn't trying to chew on anything and she looks happy.

"They made me sign some extra paperwork," he says. "Because she's a pit bull. She came straight over to me as soon as they brought her in the room and then she just… sat down and stayed there. I had to coax her into smelling me. They said that, uh—apparently she'd been with the same family since she was a puppy, but they were moving to a new neighborhood that didn't allow pit bulls, so they dropped her at the shelter." He huffs. "Can you believe that? Her family decided they didn't want her."

When his eyes rise to meet Patrick's again, he finds that Patrick's studying him. "Jonny," Patrick says. "That's—"

"Yeah," Jonny says. "Anyway. She's a sweetheart. I asked them to keep her for forty-eight hours while I interviewed dog sitters. Got a good one. Did you know they have doggy day cares?"

"Is that to get her ready for kindergarten?"

"No, but I did find a disc dog trainer. I figure I can teach her how to play frisbee myself, but no reason we can't get a few lessons, eh?" He pats Bunny on the head, and she stops licking his pants long enough to briefly shut her eyes in appreciation.

Patrick's trying and failing to stifle a smile; the look on his face is wistful, and when Jonny says, "What?" he just shrugs.

"I missed you," he says, and then immediately clamps his mouth shut.

"I," Jonny says, because he's simultaneously feeling like a sack of shit for not being available when Patrick was probably feeling at his most alone and trying to hide his pleasure that nothing between them was ruined or unsalvageable. "Yeah," he says again. "I was—"

"Sorry, yeah," Patrick says. "That was dumb, I know you've been busy."

"Something like that," Jonny agrees.

"And it's not like we haven't gone longer than that without seeing each other," Patrick says, which is precisely why Jonny hates summer even though he's aware that makes him a whacko. A deep playoff run is its own reward, but Jonny is ceaselessly thankful for the extra time it brings with Patrick.

"No," Jonny says, and then, "yeah," which just goes to show he already spends too much time around Patrick. "Sorry. I'm here for you, though, you know that? Anything you need, bud."

"Oh," Patrick says. "Thanks."

"For the baby, too," Jonny says. "Anything."

Patrick's eyes are wide, his scent artificially flat; whatever suppressants he takes must be the size and strength of horse pills. He looks floored, and that just proves that Jonny was failing before, that he's finally doing the right thing now. Not out of obligation, not because he pities Patrick, but just because there is nothing of Jonny that Patrick doesn't own, nothing that Patrick needs that Jonny wouldn't move heaven and earth to give him. And if what Patrick needs is someone to support him while he has another person's baby, Jonny can give him that—Jonny wants to give him that.

The baby's probably going to be pretty hilarious, too. Jonny's heard stories about Patrick when he was little. He was a weird, sweet, funny, fixated, and perfectionistic kid who grew up into a weird, sweet, funny, fixated, and perfectionistic adult. Someone has to be around to make sure Patrick doesn't let the baby teeth on a hockey puck, too. Patrick's more than capable of being brilliant at a variety of things, even aside from his eidetic memory, but the fixation means he isn't exactly what Jonny would call well-rounded.

Jonny also desperately wants to ask about the baby's other parent, but it seems intrusive. Rude, maybe. Anti-Canadian. He has a growing suspicion that the other parent isn't in the picture, and he doesn't really want to rattle his own cautious optimism, either. He shouldn't be happy that Patrick's alone, that he has to raise his baby alone.

Patrick's eyes have narrowed like he's not entirely sure what to do with this conversation. For a guy who cries at every movie he watches, he has a tendency to clam up sporadically. He usually needs time to himself to sort through what he's feeling. There was a period in their early twenties when he appeared to be trying to outdrink that tendency, but he's settled into himself as he's gotten older.

Jonny's not going to let Patrick change the subject before he knows he's gotten through, though. Patrick has a sufficient number of other people around him—Jonny's frankly surprised that Sharpy, Erica, or both haven't already moved into one of the guest bedrooms—but Jonny's high on his own list of most reliable people. "Anything you need," he repeats. "You know that, right? Call me, text me, whatever. Even if you just want some company. Other than, uh." He nods in the direction of Patrick's belly. "Guess you aren't really ever alone now."

"No," Patrick says. "No, not really."

"Good," Jonny says, satisfied.

Patrick's still looking at him, but distantly. For once, Jonny doesn't have a single fucking clue what's going through his head.

"Oh, hang on—your present."

That distracts Patrick. "What is it?"

Jonny grabs the bag off the other chair, holds it briefly over Bunny's head so she can sniff it, and deposits it on the counter in front of Patrick. Being a multimillionaire doesn't seem to have dented Patrick's enthusiasm for presents; he's all but twitching to open it. Jonny hadn't really bothered with wrapping, but the plastic Bass Pro bag does a good job of disguising what's inside while laying a false trail.

"Nothing big," Jonny says. "Just something I saw in a store window. If you don't like it—"

"Can I open it?"

Jonny laughs. "Yeah, babe, go ahead."

Patrick tears into it. It isn't much, Jonny wasn't lying, just the soft-looking yellow baby blanket he saw on his way home and a stuffed rabbit that caught his eye, too, for more or less matching the blanket's pattern. Jonny's been plagued by bunnies of late.

Patrick's back to his previous look of shell-shock.

"It's for the baby," Jonny says, in case Patrick hadn't picked up on that.

He's holding the stuffed rabbit in both hands with a look of—confusion? Amazement? "Nobody's given me anything for it," he says.

"Oh," Jonny says. "Sorry, is that—" Is that significant? Was the first baby gift supposed to come from Patrick's family?

"No!" Patrick says. "No, it's—" He shakes his head, sets the rabbit on top of the blanket, and carefully straightens one of its floppy ears.

"It's perfect," he says. "It's…" He laughs a little. Jonny basks in the sound. "It's so fucking cute. Thanks, Jonny. Thank you."

"Glad you like it," Jonny says. "The shop's not too far from you. Lots of nice baby stuff."

"You'll have to tell me where it is." Patrick pauses. "Or take me sometime. Not that I'm trying to drag you baby shopping—"

"Yeah," Jonny says. "That sounds good. Maybe we could grab lunch."

"I haven't gone out to eat in weeks," Patrick says. "Shit, I've barely left my condo. Lunch sounds great." He pauses again, studying the blanket, smoothing his thumbs over the red ribbon tied in a bow around it. "What are you up to today? I'm in the middle of Mean Girls, if you and your new buddy want to stick around."

"Mean Girls?"

"It's a movie," Patrick says.

"Oh. Yeah, definitely. Sure you don't mind Bunny staying?"

"I have a cleaner come twice a week," Patrick says with absolutely zero self-awareness. "Give me just a second."

He disappears to the back of the condo with his presents (but not the Bass Pro bag—Jonny wads that up and shoves it in his pocket) before joining Jonny in the living room. Bunny lies down at Patrick's feet, and Patrick pretends not to notice, but out of the corner of his eye Jonny catches him looking down at her with a faint smile on his face.

It's a good day. The movie's not bad, either. One of the main girls is convinced she sight-bonded to her crush. Jonny can sympathize. He used to have a similar fantasy.

-

After that, life returns to more or less normal (with the addition of a dog). They have a homestand through the ninth, and Jonny spends a lot of time bonding with Bunny and reassuring Seabs that he isn't having a quarter-life crisis. Maybe adopting a dog was too transparent; Jonny doesn't care.

He learns the hard way that dogs aren't allowed on the CTA unless they're in an enclosed carrier that can fit under a seat, that Bunny wants to meet every dog, person, and squirrel she passes but is thankfully well-mannered when she stops to say hello, and that she doesn't know how to catch a frisbee in her mouth, although they're working on it. She's an enthusiastic learner, if an easily distracted one. Jonny's dogsitter is named George, and he assures Jonny that Bunny will pick it up by the end of the year. If they weren't in the middle of the season, Jonny thinks he'd enjoy sharing a blunt with George.

He texts with Patrick. He texts with Patrick a lot. Patrick appears to be dealing with his confinement by watching every DVD he owns, so Jonny gets plenty of running commentary on movies he hasn't seen (Air Force One, Blade Runner, what he eventually works out are two different versions of Sabrina)—

Patrick Kane

Today 7:32 PM

Patrick

I don't normally like black and white movies but this one's okay

Jonny

What are you watching?

Patrick

Sabrina

Today 8:10 PM

Patrick

Can't decide if nineties fashion is great or painful

Jonny

What are you watching?

Patrick

Sabrina

Jonny

??

Patrick

The best version of this would have Harrison Ford and Audrey Hepburn

Jonny

?????

—and even some he has (Dirty Dancing, Wayne's World).

Patrick Kane

Today 11:03 PM

Patrick

Think I'm more of a Wayne or a Garth?

Jonny

Garth

Patrick

Fuck you

Know what the best part of this movie is?

Jonny

The name of the donut shop

Patrick

You read my mind

Jonny's not sure if Patrick's avoiding going out in public because of the press or because his instincts are revving up. Jonny's mom had said she hadn't liked being out of the house at all when she was pregnant. He eventually asks Patrick, and Patrick says it's a little of both and that he's been trying to thwart the press by wearing the same thing every time he goes out. Patrick's wardrobe is mostly high-end polo shirts and dad slacks or the same expensive black or gray hoodies in rotation, so Jonny's not sure how that's going to thwart anyone, but Patrick seems content with his plan and Jonny doesn't want to burst his bubble.

After beating the Jets again, Jonny sits down with his 2013/2014 journal to rework his training plan and make a couple of notes on how to work with the new call-up. Jonny scored twice in the first period and took two penalties, too; not a bad night, but he felt Patrick's absence.

He's been keeping journals since he was a kid, and eventually he progressed from cheap drugstore composition books to the Leuchtturm1917 he's using now. He still has all of them, too, one for every season. They aren't traditional journals—he doesn't sit down and write entries about his days—but there's a lot of personal information in there all the same. When he was nine or ten, he'd read about how Mark Messier kept logs of all his games and had copied the practice. It's branched out now: he keeps notes on his diet and what foods give him problems, dates of birthdays, quick jotted reminders about the team, pages of goals and a short, focused list of priorities. They're sloppy, scratched-out messes, but they're workhorses. They get the job done.

When they had roomed together, Patrick had been obsessed with sneaking a peek. Sharpy still is, but he's less invested in finding out what Jonny writes than he is in pissing Jonny off. Patrick had stopped the day he realized that Jonny wasn't just displaying his usual territorial temper but was genuinely upset at the idea of someone else reading them. He hasn't asked since—hasn't even made fun of Jonny except for a few obligatory jabs about Jonny writing in a diary like a girl, which dropped off quickly once Patrick had stopped trying to act like a frat bro.

The new call-up really starts to be a problem two days before the team is scheduled to fly out to Dallas. Like Jonny, he played two years of NCAA before landing with the IceHogs. He's a winger, a second-round draft-pick, and stuffed with every ounce of stereotypical arrogance an alpha can possess. His name's Luke Woodring. The boys have been calling him Woody or Woodsy or Toy Story or Boner.

He's a good player, has the potential to be a good guy if he can drop the act. Jonny's been welcoming, has eaten lunch with him in the players' lounge a couple of times, makes sure he's included when any fraction of the team hits up a bar or a steakhouse. The problem is that in the right mood, Woodsy is disrespectful, belligerent—even rude, and Jonny's not going to have that in his locker room. He shuts down a couple of comments and watches the younger guys on the team shut down a couple more.

It comes to a head when Woodsy's complaining about an earlier loss to the Flames after practice. That's another thing that bothers Jonny: Woodring hasn't earned the right to complain. He's talking about how the Flames are a bitch-ass team that plays bitch-ass hockey, and then he says, "Maybe if Kaner wasn't out—"

"Stop," Hoss says.

"I'm just saying," Woodring says.

"You want to stop," Hoss says. His eyes are locked on Jonny's.

Woodring doesn't listen. "What kind of a hockey player gets pregnant—"

Jonny can feel himself go flat, go cold. If a shiver runs through the locker room, he doesn't feel it. His limbs are loose, his muscles warm from a hard but not exhaustive workout; when he steps up to Woodring, he feels good.

He wants to say, You wouldn't be here if not for Patrick Kane. He wants to say, We need you a lot less than we need him. He wants to say, Respect your betters or Get the hell out of my locker room. Instead he makes himself take a deep breath; he can feel his nostrils flare as he scents Woodring's trepidation.

"Don't say that again," he says.

Woodring swallows; Jonny can see his larynx and the ridges of his trachea, all the muscle and tissue in his neck that lets him breathe, work in progression. "I didn't mean it like—"

"You did," Jonny says, "And now you know better."

Woodring looks away, and Jonny has to give him credit for maintaining eye contact as long as he did. "Yeah," he says. "Guess so." He doesn't apologize. Jonny takes himself outside and spends ten minutes breathing in crisp November air and trying not to savor the lingering scent of Woodring's fear before he distracts himself by texting his parents to find out how last week's bar trivia went. The problem of Woodring's attitude is shelved, not solved.

But they're playing good hockey, and that's something. Even if it isn't the same without Patrick.

-

Another problem is that when he's alone, Jonny keeps catching himself rubbing idly at his dick. Now that he's back in Patrick's life, he can't turn off the memory of what Patrick felt like around his cock. He's not proud of it. Over the years, Jonny has done his absolute best to not think about Patrick sexually, whether he's with other people or by himself. He slips up, but he doesn't beat himself up for it anymore, just accepts that he can do better and moves along. Now, though, he feels like he's nineteen and rooming with Patrick again. He took a lot of long showers that year. And also for the subsequent four years.

Jonny's got a lot of other sexual fantasies to fall back on. He hasn't been seeing anyone exclusively in the past year, thank fuck—he's not sure he would've been able to hold himself back after Patrick told him yes, but Jonny's never been unfaithful before and he looks down on anyone who considers it acceptable. None of his top ten hits compare to the one day he had with Patrick, though, and that's saying something. Jonny's top ten sexual experiences are all pretty memorable. Several of them involve multiple people. Several of them involve multiple omegas.

But then there was Patrick. They'd fucked six times in the sixteen or seventeen hours they'd been together: five times in the bedroom and once in the kitchen. The clarity with which Jonny remembers each of those six times runs counter to how out of his mind he'd been with need; they'd both been using something closer to their lizard brains than any of the parts more capable of rational thought.

He's in the kitchen throwing together something for dinner when he starts thinking about it again. The dinner his meal service put together doesn't sound good for no particular reason. Jonny's not exactly what he'd call a great chef, but his parents made sure he knew how to do his own laundry and cook an omelet before they let him leave the house. He also happens to have pork chops and asparagus, which even sounds like it goes together. Maybe he should take a picture of the pork chops in their pan with rosemary and garlic and send it to David, who inherited all of their dad's cooking abilities and always likes to give Jonny shit about burning Kraft mac and cheese one time when he was eleven.

Bunny's sitting by the sink hopefully. She seems equally willing to eat pork or asparagus, whichever Jonny drops first, but he's going to put her out of the room if she tries to beg. Every behavior book he's been reading agrees that dogs shouldn't be allowed to ask for human food no matter how much their humans want to feed them. Those big brown eyes of hers are killer, but she needs to learn that Jonny isn't a pushover.

Thirty seconds after Jonny has that thought, she edges up to him, puts her chin on his thigh, and starts whining.

"We talked about this," Jonny reminds her.

She whines again.

"Remember last night?" Jonny says. "With the salmon?"

Bunny whuffs.

"I know, buddy, but we've gotta be consistent. No exceptions based on how much you want it."

She whines extremely sadly.

"Nice try," Jonny says. "That's still a timeout. We'll talk again after dinner."

The funniest part is that he doesn't even have to take her by the collar; she follows him to his bedroom and lies down immediately in the middle of the room facing the door with her head on her paws. It's a work in progress, and Jonny can't blame her; pork chops smell a hell of a lot better than her canned food. Maybe he needs to read up on other dog food options.

And he's still thinking about Patrick. There are plenty of people Jonny could text if he just wanted a hook-up, a couple of people he could contact if he wanted to go on a date, but the idea is repulsive. Now that he's had Patrick under his hands, he can't fathom touching anyone else.

He plates his food and eats standing up at the counter, which always drives Patrick crazy. The last time they'd been in a kitchen together, they'd talked awkwardly while Patrick cleaned up the remnants of his mango salsa; the time before that, Patrick had been sitting on Jonny's cock while Jonny fed him blackberries. The scent of the blackberries had been far less sweet than the scent of Patrick's slick.

Fuck. He's hard again.

What had come before the kitchen was maybe even better. When Jonny had tried to get out of bed—

He's gotta stop thinking about it. It's like a fucking obsession, but he doesn't have to feed it, to give it fuel. Better to focus on the upcoming game against Dallas, and the one after that against the Oilers. Two cups in four years means every team from Vancouver to Tampa is gunning for them, and they're having to work hard to make up for the loss of Patrick's quick hands and sharp eyes. No one man carries a team, but if one man were capable, it'd be Patrick.

What had come before having Patrick sit on his cock in the kitchen was maybe even better. When Jonny had tried to get out of bed for food and water, Patrick had made a soft noise like some part of him was being ripped out at the prospect of Jonny leaving.

Fuck. Jonny snarls, dumps his plate in the sink, and fumbles at his fly. His dick is thick and so hard it's angry-looking, and the pre-knot at the base is already starting to swell just from the memory of Patrick. He braces a hand against the counter, wraps his other hand around his cock, and starts stroking himself.

Patrick must've been sore by that point. He had to have been. They'd fucked three times already—that first time, which had more in common with an explosion than sex as Jonny knew it, and a second time with Patrick on his knees, and a third time where Patrick had curled over Jonny and ridden him until Jonny lost control and clamped his hands down on Patrick's hipbones to hold him in place while Jonny fucked up into him until he knotted.

Then they'd slept for a fitful few hours; every time Patrick shifted, Jonny stirred and shifted with him, and more than once they'd half-woken to trade slow, urgent kisses while grinding against each other before drifting back to sleep. When they'd woken up fully, Jonny had felt compelled to find Patrick something to drink. He didn't want to leave Patrick alone in bed, but he didn't want to take Patrick to the kitchen with him, either. Whatever part of his brain was running things definitely hadn't liked the idea of Patrick leaving the bedroom. The bedroom had its own additional door that locked, and Jonny had also had a vague idea that if Patrick stayed in Jonny's bedroom long enough, he'd just… decide never to leave, as though twenty additional hours in Jonny's space were what he needed to make him realize he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Jonny.

But when he'd climbed out of bed, Patrick had made that noise: soft and sad in the back of his throat, like he thought Jonny was rejecting him, like he thought Jonny was leaving him permanently and willingly, and righting that wrong was even more important to rut-ridden Jonny than making sure that imaginary intruders couldn't break into Jonny's entirely secure condo and hurt Patrick while he was vulnerable. Jonny had gone to him immediately, pulled Patrick into his arms, and slid a hand down Patrick's back to the indentation between his lower ass and thighs. Patrick's skin was coated in Jonny's come. Jonny had liked the evidence.

The worst part was that Patrick had gone tense, had been on the verge of pulling away before all at once he sighed and relaxed against Jonny. Jonny nuzzled against the side of his face and kissed him and then rolled him, first onto his back and then onto his knees. Patrick sank into the pose immediately, with his arms stretched out in front of him and his face pressed to the mattress and his ass up so Jonny could see his come and Patrick's slick dripping out of his tight little hole to the sheets below. His balls were framed by his thighs, and when Jonny reached between Patrick's legs to milk his cock, he'd found it so hard it was plastered against Patrick's belly.

When Jonny finally sank into Patrick, Patrick had let out a deep moan of relief. Jonny's absence in him had made him ache, and now that Jonny was covering him again, the world had turned rightside-up. Jonny understood. He felt the same. This was better. He wanted to keep Patrick on his cock always.

Once he was in Patrick to the root, he'd curled over Patrick's back and kissed his shoulderblades, kissed his ear, ran a hand down the belly that was only flat for now. Patrick had hummed and stretched and rolled his hips. Jonny's cock fucked into him easily now; Jonny was thick and long and they'd had to work at it before, even when Patrick was so slick and so desperate from that very first instant, but now he was soft and relaxed and dripping. Not a satisfied omega, but a happy one, pleased and well cared for.

Jonny had let Patrick squirm back against him for as long as it took to complete his circuit of kisses, and then he'd planted a hand on Patrick's back to keep him where he belonged and started to fuck him: slow and smooth but hard, so he'd feel it in his bones, so he'd keep the memory of Jonny deep down in every part of him. Jonny wanted to mount Patrick and breed him, but he'd also wanted Patrick to understand that there was more behind it than instinct. Patrick had responded like every part of him belonged to Jonny, and by the end of the night, he'd started to take liberties like he knew every part of Jonny belonged to him, too. Which was good; Jonny was Patrick's alpha, and Patrick deserved to know it.

That Jonny was delusional, lost in a rut that was stronger than he'd known was possible, but he lets himself sink into remembering it anyway. He's curled towards the sink, working his hand faster up and down his dick, pausing only to smear precome down his shaft and massage the swell of his oncoming knot. Finally he gives up moving his hand and just fucks into his fist; his pants are sliding down his thighs and he has to take a step back when the tip of his cock bumps the front of the cabinets and all he can picture is Patrick's wet little omega hole gripping his dick. When he comes, though, it's to the image of Patrick, content and relaxed, smiling up at him.

Nothing about his orgasm is satisfying except the knowledge that that image is a memory rather than a fantasy. Jonny's left with a handful of come and a really dirty cabinet door. He wipes his hand off, hoists his jeans up, and starts cleaning. He's still hungry, too. The next time he urgently needs to jack off to thoughts of Patrick, he's going to put his dinner in the refrigerator first.

-

Jonny even manages to coax Patrick into hanging out. He swings by one morning to drop off some promotional stuff, and they end up playing Call of Duty on Patrick's couch for an hour. Jonny gets frustrated; he hasn't regularly played video games in years and he was never very good, but it still pisses him off that he's losing to Patrick, especially when Patrick's only mediocre himself.

"We should grab lunch," he says, and he drops his controller on the coffee table. "Get you out of the house."

"Tired of getting your ass kicked, Tazer?"

"No," Jonny says. He's aware that he's glaring.

Patrick cackles, and it's almost like they're nineteen again. "You're a liar," he says. "And I can't. I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon."

"What time?" Jonny asks.

"Two," Patrick says. It's noon now. "I have stuff in the kitchen if you're hungry, though."

"Let me drive you."

"What?"

"I'll drive you," Jonny says. "We'll grab lunch somewhere close to your doctor, swing by there, maybe take Bunny for a walk after."

Patrick's eying him. "I'm not bonding with your dog."

"Uh-huh," Jonny says. "You need some fresh air. You're starting to look pale. Paler," he revises.

"Thanks."

Patrick is pale. He has a lot of pale skin. Jonny, having now seen all of that pale skin, is having trouble not making an association. "Just telling the truth," he says. "Come on, put your shoes on."

"You don't want to sit around waiting on me."

Jonny stands up and eyes Patrick, wondering if there's a safe way to manhandle him to his feet. "Gonna be a long appointment?"

"Only a check-up, but—"

"Then I don't mind," Jonny says. He wouldn't mind even if it lasted ten hours, but he's trying to be supportive while keeping firm boundaries. Driving Patrick to his doctor is… probably okay. "Come on." He nudges Patrick's foot with his toes. "Up."

"God, fine," Patrick says. He hoists himself to his feet. "Give me a second."

He comes back a few minutes later carrying a pair of shoes and a jacket that borders on being a coat. All black, obviously. They shove their feet into their shoes and traipse together to the elevator. Jonny parked on the street instead of trying to navigate Patrick's parking garage; he likes to save that for the time of year when the parking meters are buried under a metric ton of snow, which could very well be tomorrow.

"Where are we going to eat?" Patrick asks.

"It's a surprise."

"I don't like surprises," Patrick says.

"Are you shitting me, Peeks? You love surprises."

"No, I like surprise presents. There's a difference"

"Fine," Jonny says. He's trying and mostly failing to contain how pleased he is that they're quibbling just because. "Mexican?"

"Do you even know where my doctor is?"

"Uh," Jonny says.

Patrick grins. "Thought so. There's a Vietnamese place around the corner, you'll like the pho." He gives Jonny directions; the drive isn't bad, although obviously Jonny would prefer Patrick's doctor be closer. Maybe in the condo one floor down. Just for Patrick's convenience so he didn't have to waste his time driving somewhere when he had better things to be doing. Not for any other reason.

The restaurant is mostly empty at twelve-thirty on a Friday, which surprises Jonny. "They only opened a couple of weeks ago," Patrick explains. "I've been meaning to try it out." They're seated at a booth in the front window; the omega server casts a glance that's a little too long but doesn't draw attention to the fact that she obviously knows who they are. Jonny reads faint curiosity from her, but not agitation.

Patrick has a hat jammed backwards over his hair, which he adjusts before snapping open the menu. Jonny follows suit, and then something occurs to him.

"How do you know the pho is good?"

"What?" Patricks asks.

"How do you know I'll like it if you haven't eaten here before?"

"I read a review," Patrick says. "And you like pho anywhere we go, it wasn't that hard a guess."

Jonny's… mostly okay with Patrick finding him predictable. As much as they're falling back into their usual give-and-take, though, there's still some part of Patrick that seems reserved. Remote, maybe—some part of him that Jonny can't access. It could very well have to do with him having his mind on more important things than Jonny, but the way the feeling lingers on the roof of Jonny's mouth is peculiar.

"So is this your… what are baby doctors called?" he asks.

Patrick's eyes stay downcast, but a little smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. "Obstetrician."

"Is this your obstetrician?"

"Uh, kind of," Patrick says. "I've been seeing her a long time, for suppressants and… and shit like that." Shit like that means she's a specialist for omegas, Jonny suspects; Patrick not only dislikes talking about his dynamic, he's usually deeply uncomfortable when it comes up, and Jonny's never been sure if that's an inherent aversion or if it just doesn't matter to him or if the environment he lives in has bred repression in him.

"But she's qualified to handle—?"

Patrick's eyebrows, always expressive, knit together in confusion or surprise. "She's qualified to handle pregnancies," he says slowly. "I wouldn't be going to her otherwise."

"Just checking," Jonny says, because Patrick should have someone to check on him. "Did you tell your family yet? Ah, that's a stupid question. How did they react?"

"My sisters are pretty pumped." Patrick closes his menu and sets it aside. "All of them have tried to convince me more than once to let them fly out and live with me. Jackie even said she'd transfer schools." He pauses briefly while they order and then picks back up. "The kid's not going to be in want of female role models, that's for sure."

Jonny spreads his legs and leans back in his seat. "And your parents?"

"They're not in hysterics like the girls, if that's what you're asking," Patrick says dryly.

Jonny's met Patrick's sisters. The degree to which they dote on him is only exceeded by the degree to which he dotes on them. "Can't say I'm surprised by that. Your sisters are…" Patrick raises his eyebrows. "Nice," Jonny concludes, which is probably a better choice than 'fucking overwhelming.'

"Uh-huh," Patrick says. "Jess is convinced that the kid is going to grow up to be a vet. She has a whole apprenticeship program planned out already. Apparently I'm supposed to be sending my ba—the kid to live with her every summer, which is the only time I'll get to be around it full time." He blows out air through his teeth. "Jesus, you don't want to listen to all this. How do you think things are going to go against Dallas?"

"She wants to take away your baby?" Jonny says, because he's not sure he approves of joking about that.

"She just wants someone else in the family that she can brainwash into liking animals." Patrick rolls his eyes. "She was obsessed with cows as a kid. Who cares about cows?"

The server drops off an order of a deep-fried tofu appetizer, which Patrick does not offer to share. Jonny can hear his own stomach grumble. He went hard at practice this morning—not exactly an uncommon occurrence, but he usually has distracting Patrick to keep him distracted from overworking himself. Poking at Sharpy isn't the same, not least because Sharpy usually retaliates rather than engaging. That's separate from the presence Jonny has as captain on the ice, but it never hurts to show the younger guys that it's okay to blow off steam sometimes, too.

Patrick, very reluctantly, puts down his fork and pushes the dish a quarter of an inch towards Jonny. "Want some?" he asks. Jonny's heard him more enthusiastic about walking through a crowd of people who all want high-fives.

"No, thanks," Jonny says, but Patrick starts shoveling tofu onto another plate. "Peeks, you don't have to—we'll get another order," Jonny revises. Patrick seems to be deliberating over how many pieces he wants to allow Jonny, but when he hears that, he stops counting and goes back to eating. Jonny flags down the waitress and asks for another platter.

"God, this is good," Patrick says. "Do you think they deliver?"

"I think you have enough money to get delivery from anywhere you want," Jonny says. Patrick had mowed through a platter meant for four in as many minutes, and when the server drops off the second round, he starts eying it. Jonny splits it in two; he can make sure Patrick's fed, if nothing else.

"What were your other sisters into as kids?" Jonny's always found childhood obsessions interesting. And also hilarious; if you found the right topic, kids would talk at you endlessly.

"Erica was into airplanes, no surprise," Patrick says. "Sure you don't want any more?" Jonny shakes his head. "She made us watch Top Gun all the time. Jackie likes—liked Barbie dolls and sports. And ancient Egypt. Every time we go on a trip, she makes me look up museums to see which ones have mummies. She seems kind of like… embarrassed, maybe, that she's still into it."

"And you were into astronomy."

"And hockey," Patrick says. Jonny can't help but chuckle.

"And hockey," he agrees. "Did you have a telescope?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. "I did. Just a cheap one my grandpa picked up secondhand, but he showed me how to use it. There's an old TV special on space that we would watch together. He taped it on VHS, I used to have all the commercials memorized."

"Maybe your baby will be into space too, eh?" Jonny says. "Bet your grandad would like that."

Patrick grins to himself. "He would."

"Could be something completely different though. Oceans, maybe," Jonny says. He's thinking of David. "Maybe it'll be into bigfoot."

"Maybe it'll be into dinosaurs," Patrick says, and then he flinches.

"Are you okay?"

Patrick swallows. "Just a chill."

"I was into dinosaurs as a kid," Jonny says. "Wouldn't shut up about 'em."

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Yeah, I know."

They both ordered pho for the main course—chicken for Jonny, beef for Patrick—and this time Jonny finishes well before Patrick, who eats slowly but methodically. Jonny's always wanted to visit Vietnam; he has a buddy who went there last year and fell in love with Ho Chi Minh. That might be a good trip to plan for next summer.

"So," Patrick says while they're waiting for the check. "Dallas?"

"Sure you don't want to talk about dinosaurs?"

Patrick looks pained. "No," he says. "Definitely not." Which doesn't surprise Jonny; for Patrick, hockey always comes first.

-

Patrick's doctor really is right around the corner. Jonny's a little surprised when they pull up to a huge hospital complex, but he isn't sure why; of course Patrick would see a top-tier doctor at a research university. In fact, Jonny suspects that a top-tier doctor at a research university is one of the only options available to Patrick. Doctors who specialize in omega men are thin on the ground, and—however quiet he's been about it—Jonny knows Patrick has always struggled to find suppressants that work on him.

He also seems weirdly reluctant to leave the car.

"Are we early?" Jonny asks.

"No," Patrick says, and then, "A little."

"Do you want to wait out here, or…"

"We should go in," Patrick says, "yeah. You sure you want to do this?"

"What," Jonny says. "Go inside a hospital?"

"It might take a long time."

Jonny looks at him, but Patrick's staring straight ahead. "I brought a book."

"Nerd," Patrick says reflexively, like he isn't secretly the nerdiest guy Jonny's ever met. "Okay, well," he adds, and then he stops.

Jonny waits.

"If you're sure," Patrick says.

Jonny keeps waiting.

"Let's get this thing over with," Patrick concludes, which makes it sound like he's walking into a torture chamber instead of a doctor's office, even though he'd made this sound like a routine check-up. He'd also tried hard to suppress how excited he was, but Jonny can read him better than that; Patrick's over the fucking moon about his baby.

He flips his hat around and climbs out of the car, and Jonny locks it and trails him inside. They go up an elevator and take a left and then another left, and Patrick's shoulders get closer to his ears with every step. He starts to relax when they reach a quieter, carpeted annex; something about carpet in a hospital seems strange, even though the lobby they passed through had been carpeted, too. This just looks like a generic office in a strip mall, if a particularly sunny one. It reminds Jonny of the pediatrician his mom took him and David to when they were kids.

They pass an open door that appears to lead to an actual private office before hitting the waiting room. It's not a big waiting room. Patrick doesn't go over to the counter to check himself in. Instead, he just waves at the receptionist, and that's the first time it really occurs to Jonny how often Patrick must be here: a lot. Often. And predating the baby.

"You, uh, you don't have to stick around," Patrick says. His hands are shoved into his pockets. "There's a cafeteria…"

"We just ate," Jonny says.

"A gift shop," Patrick tries, and then he makes a face at himself. "Some nice benches outside."

"I brought a book, Kaner," Jonny reminds him, and he holds up Everything Is F*cked: A Book about Hope by Mark Manson.

"No, yeah, I remember," Patrick says, and then he apparently runs out of suggestions and drops into a chair. Jonny starts to sit down next to him, decides that'd be weird in an otherwise empty waiting room, and course-corrects to the next chair over before Patrick can notice. He tosses his book on the chair between them and settles in.

Patrick starts screwing around on his phone, probably checking the ESPN app, and Jonny lets himself look around. There's a plethora of scent trails all over the room, and a lot of them are omega in origin. Two are stronger than the others—the doctors? There's another strong beta scent, too, and only one faint lingering alpha trail that Jonny concludes must be from a patient's partner.

One of the strong omega scents gets stronger, and Jonny feels himself tense and then relax when the door opposite them opens. The woman in the white lab coat hauls up short immediately; her head tilts and her eyes fall half-shut before snapping open again and landing on Jonny. Jonny's used to that reaction. He smiles at her, lets her in on the joke, and she relaxes, too.

"Patrick?" she says.

"Yeah," Patrick says. He stands up, starts to turn to Jonny, thinks better of it, and walks over to the doctor. She watches him, but she keeps Jonny in her field of vision. "How are you doing?" he hears her ask Patrick, and then the door shuts behind them.

Jonny's been to a handful of alpha specialists over the years, but he's never been a permanent fixture in an office the way Patrick apparently is. Jonny gets his birth control prescription refilled every six months and that's about it. Patrick had spoken highly of his doctor, at least; Jonny wonders if he likes seeing an omega doctor more than he would an alpha or a beta. His doctor was a strong omega, too, and she was bonded to a strong alpha. Jonny could smell it from across the room.

He knows he's still sorting out how he feels about this situation, knows he's probably pushing too much; Patrick hadn't really needed someone to drive him here, but Jonny had seen an opportunity and taken it. He hadn't wanted to meet Patrick somewhere for lunch, not when they'd once spent entire days from breakfast to practice to dinner together.

And something about Patrick coming here by himself over and over again is indescribably sad to Jonny, and even sadder now that Patrick's pregnant. Maybe Jonny should ask Sharpy if he wants to be on baby doctor duty, or if Abby wanted to be when the team's out of town. Maybe he should coordinate with Erica behind Patrick's back. Patrick probably wouldn't be happy with Jonny if he conspires to completely interrupt Erica's (or Jess's or Jackie's) life, though, even if Erica (or Jess or Jackie) is completely willing.

The person who really should be here is the person who got Patrick pregnant, and while Jonny's deep-down satisfaction that they aren't present remains shamefully buried, his outrage that Patrick has been left alone is nearer to the surface. It fucking pisses him off that some spineless little shit abandoned Patrick. Or maybe Patrick hadn't told the other parent? Maybe he doesn't know who they are. Maybe he doesn't want to be bound for the rest of his life to someone he doesn't love.

Jonny barely gets any reading done, but Patrick comes back out after only twenty minutes; his scent is even fainter and more repressed than usual. Patrick's doctor is with him. They stop together at the receptionist's desk to talk briefly. Patrick keeps tossing glances over his shoulder at Jonny, and Jonny's not sure what to do with that, but he errs on the side of caution, closes the prop of his book, and goes to Patrick.

Which is apparently the wrong interpretation, because Patrick goes even paler.

"Hey," Jonny says. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Yep. Thanks."

There's a pause during which Patrick's doctor tilts her head, and then it apparently occurs to Patrick that he's being rude by not introducing the two of them. "This is my doctor," he says. "Doctor Lynn. I mean Doctor Sievers."

"Nice to meet you," Dr. Sievers says, and she offers her hand. Jonny shakes it gently but firmly. She's a small woman.

"And, uh," Patrick says, "This is Jonny. Jonathan. Toews," he adds, and winces. Jonny sure as hell hopes he hadn't gotten any bad news, but nothing in the doctor's scent suggests upset, and she's easier to read than Patrick even at his most open. Jonny forces his shoulders to square so he isn't focused quite so obviously on Patrick, and Dr. Sievers shifts deeper into the conversational circle automatically.

"Nice to meet you, too," Jonny says.

"Jonny's my friend," Patrick inserts. "He gave me a ride here."

"I'm glad you have some good friends to support you," Dr. Sievers says. "That always makes pregnancy a little easier. Patrick, I'll see you next week?"

And Jonny knows he should sit on this reaction until they're in the car, but he can't help himself. "You have to be here every week?"

"It's fine, it's not a big deal. Dr. Sievers just wants to keep an eye on things."

"You aren't—"

"I'm fine, Tazer," Patrick says. "The ba—the kid is fine." He starts to lean into Jonny like he's trying to push Jonny towards the exit. Jonny doesn't budge.

"No need to worry," Dr. Sievers says. "Next Thursday?"

"Next Thursday," Patrick agrees.

"And you'll consider what we talked about?"

For some reason, that makes Patrich stop trying to shove into Jonny. "I… yeah," he says. "Yeah, I just—I have to figure out what to do about it." He doesn't smell right. He smells sad. He smells like something was ripped away from him, and Jonny bristles instinctively. He abruptly realizes he doesn't like Dr. Sievers, or how she treats Patrick, or the clinical way she's looking at him.

Before Jonny can do anything about it, though, she says, "Great. Stay healthy—and Jonathan, nice to meet you," and slips back through the staff door. Jonny's left pissed off with no outlet.

"I don't like her," he says.

"Jesus Christ," Patrick says. Jonny braces himself, expecting to be shoved towards the door again, but instead Patrick walks around him. It takes him a minute to realize he's supposed to be moving instead of glaring through a wall at a doctor who can't see him, but he's able to catch up to Patrick in the hallway. Patrick has the brim of his hat tugged down over his eyes. Not a good sign.

"Peeks. What the hell was—"

"It was nothing," Patrick says. He jabs the elevator button, and then his hand retreats back to his jacket pocket. "Just normal… you know."

"And the baby's okay?"

Patrick sucks in a sharp breath; he's clearly frustrated by Jonny pestering him, but Jonny isn't going to let this go. "Yes," he says. "It's okay. She's easing me off my suppressants and wants to keep an eye on it. Not a big deal."

Jonny's briefly distracted by the thought of what Patrick might smell like when he isn't medicated, but his thoughts run right back in the same circle. "Is that okay? For you to be taking—"

"Yeah, man, seriously, she knows what she's doing." The elevator doors open, and Patrick steps inside and squares off with the control panel. "Come on, you don't care about this."

"Horseshit, of course I do," Jonny says. Patrick's so fucking infuriating when he shuts down like this, and he's private about his health, but he's always given Jonny something, even if it's the bare minimum, to reassure him.

Patrick jerks, and he ducks his head to stare at Jonny sideways. Jonny looks back at him, confused at the bewilderment on Patrick's face, and at the reluctance he's displaying.

"You don't have to—" Patrick bites out, and then he stops himself. Jonny can feel him pull into himself; the sorrow and frustration bleeds away, washed clean like it was never there.

"You must be on some pretty strong suppressants if you have to taper them off," Jonny says. Patrick doesn't respond. He's staring down at his feet, and his clean perfect jawline is clenched. He has the most arresting arrangement of features—that strong jaw, the chin, the plush contrast of his mouth. A straight nose and long eyelashes. Those eyes. Which currently aren't acknowledging Jonny at all.

They fought a lot when they were younger—just squabbles in their hotel room, not once had anything off the ice escalated to more than obnoxious teasing—but on the ice, they'd torn into each other. It was one of the things that drew Jonny to Patrick. Jonny was used to people backing down from him, but Patrick never backed down. He gave as good as he got, and when he yielded, it was only because he wanted to yield to Jonny.

They're quiet all the way back to the car. Jonny's still pissed off, but now he's shifted some of that anger from Patrick's doctor to Patrick, who probably deserves none of it. When they climb into the car and shut the doors, Jonny doesn't put the keys in the ignition, and Patrick doesn't say anything.

"I'm taking Bunny to the park," Jonny says. "Wanna come?"

"I shouldn't," Patrick says, and that's what Jonny doesn't understand—why not? Why the hell shouldn't Patrick?

"Yeah, you should."

"I can't—"

"I want you to," Jonny says.

The air goes out of Patrick. "Okay," he says. "Yeah."

"Yeah?" Jonny says. Nothing about this feels like a victory, but he'd rather have Patrick nearby and mad at him than distant and not mad.

"Yeah," Patrick repeats, so Jonny finally starts the engine and drives.

Bunny's predictably thrilled when they pick her up; she greets Jonny, greets Patrick, greets Jonny again, greets Patrick again, and finally greets Jonny a third time, at which point he manages to get a leash on her. She bounces a couple of times in front of the door while Jonny fiddles with his keys, and then she trots politely between them down the hall. Once or twice she almost crashes into Jonny's knees because she keeps tipping her head back to grin up at him, but they mostly manage okay.

There's a quiet neighborhood park within walking distance. It isn't big, but it has a couple of fenced-in dog runs. Patrick waits silently by the gate while Jonny unleashes Bunny.

"Go ahead," he tells her.

She bounces and then bows playfully.

"Later," Jonny promises. "Go on, you can run."

She rolls over.

"Seriously," Jonny says, and he tries to shoo her away. After about thirty seconds, she turns in a circle and then finally gets the idea and takes off racing for the other end to roll around in the patch of dirt.

When he turns back around, he finds Patrick wearing a shadow of a grin. "She's pretty cute, isn't she?" Jonny asks.

"Maybe."

"Come on, you like her."

"I sure like something," Patrick says, and then he clams up again.

Jonny hops the fence upwind of Patrick and mirrors him, leaning over with his arms braced on the wooden crossbar. The weather's starting to cool off, but it's far from cold, and something about the crisp quality of the air makes the trees seem even more vivid. There's a few kids playing tag about a hundred yards away, and a couple beyond them sitting at a picnic bench facing each other.

"It's really fucking sad," Patrick says, and at first Jonny thinks he's talking about whatever news made him smell like remorse at the doctor's, but then he continues, "What kind of shitty human would adopt a dog and then decide not to keep it?"

"Yeah," Jonny says. "It is shitty. And she's a sweetheart."

"She is," Patrick says.

They both fall silent again, and Jonny lets the moment breathe. Patrick shifts his weight, one foot to the other, and then reaches up to flip his hat around backwards again.

"Are you okay?"

"...What?"

"Are you okay," Jonny repeats. "This is a lot for you to have to carry. Being pregnant, having a baby. Missing the season, even if that's not half as important. It's a big adjustment."

"Yeah, I'm—" Patrick catches himself. That's okay; Jonny's willing to wait.

"I don't know," Patrick finally says. "It's a lot. There's… I don't know what to tell you." He laughs, and his laughter creaks. "Maybe that's part of the problem."

"You can tell me anything."

The creaky laugh forces its way out again. "Can I?" Patrick says. "No, that's not—it isn't you. I don't know how to talk about it. I don't know what to expect. I keep thinking I'm making the right decisions, but I just… I don't understand. There's so much I don't understand."

Jonny gives him a chance to continue, but when Patrick doesn't take it, he says, "You aren't alone, Peeks. You need to know you're not alone. You have your sisters and your parents, and Sharpy, and the whole team. Stan. Your grandad. And you have me."

Patrick turns his cheek into his shoulder, but at least he's looking at Jonny.

"I'm here to help you, you know. Anything you need," Jonny says. "And that doesn't stop when the baby is born. Not trying to presume, but I thought—I thought maybe I could be a fun uncle. Especially if, uh. The other dad—the other guy isn't around."

The wind changes direction, and carries with it the same remorse and bone-deep grief he smelled on Patrick earlier. Jonny wants to fix it, but he doesn't know how.

"No," Patrick says quietly. "No. There's no other guy." He turns back to face Bunny. The wind picks up, and Jonny gets a dead leaf stuck in his hair. He accidentally crushes it when he goes to pull it out, so he's busy trying to brush dead leaf pieces off his head when Patrick says, "Have you ever thought about bonding?"

"What?" Jonny asks, not in disbelief but because he didn't really hear Patrick.

"Do you want to bond with someone?"

"Yes," Jonny says, this time absolutely in disbelief. Sometimes he wants to shake Patrick. Give him written directions. But Patrick has to know, and he's made it clear that Jonny's interest isn't reciprocated.

"Any time soon?"

"No," Jonny says, because Patrick isn't going to change his mind.

"Okay," Patrick says. "Okay." No further explanation is forthcoming, but eventually he relaxes, and after five or six minutes, his shoulder nudges against Jonny's bicep. Jonny smiles.

"We should go golfing," he says.

"I don't like golfing with you," Patrick says.

"Liar. You're always trying to drag me out to a course."

"You get pissy when you lose."

Jonny glances over at Patrick. "I don't lose that often," he says, "considering I'm not as big a golfer as you."

"I think you're plenty big," Patrick says, and then he flushes violently.

Chapter Text

Fuck. He has to tell Jonny.

It's four in the morning and Patrick can't sleep. He should be sleeping. He has been sleeping, a lot, but sometimes he goes through spells like this. It's worse now than it's ever been except maybe during the period right before his draft, and now's the time he most needs his sleep. The baby needs him to sleep. Patrick has to take care of his baby.

He finally lets himself crawl out of bed and flip on a light. His bedroom isn't exactly cavernous, but the little pool of light produced by the lamp beside his armchair makes it seem bigger and emptier than it is, so Patrick puts Independence Day on and starts cleaning.

Cleaning isn't the right word. He makes circuits of the room, stops to sort through a drawer, straightens a lampshade, picks up a picture frame and puts it down again. Notices that his picture ledges are getting dusty, and goes to retrieve a rag from the closet to wipe it down.

There's a lot of history in the photos displayed here. Him and Erica holding a baby Jackie between them while Jess made bunny ears behind their heads, his grandpa at the drive-in where he'd worked as a teenager, a pack of Patrick's Buffalo friends on a basketball court, Sharpy and Abby on either side of Patrick at some brewery Abby had wanted to try. They're always dragging him along as their third wheel; Abby jokes about it sometimes, and Sharpy gives away what a sap he is by reassuring Patrick that Patrick's never the third wheel. Patrick and Abby always end up trading fondly incredulous looks behind Sharpy's back. Patrick had tried turning down the invitations for a while, but Abby kept asking, and that even more than Sharpy's needling had made Patrick start saying yes again.

The empty frame he'd picked up at the drug store the other day is on the top ledge, right in the middle. He has a vague idea that that's where his first sonogram picture is going to go, but then it hits him that he's not just going to have one picture of his baby, he's going to have lots of pictures of his baby. Fuck. He's going to need more picture frames. He's going to need more space.

He ends up taking all of the pictures off the top ledge other than the empty frame, and in the process of trying to cram them all on the bottom ledge he gets frustrated and piles everything on the ground. It makes dusting the ledges easier, at least. When he's done, he sits down cross-legged on the floor in the middle of his piles and starts sorting.

Some of these he doesn't feel a need to display anymore. He's fallen out of touch with most of the guys from Buffalo, although he does set a picture of his favorite cousin in the stack of stuff to keep, and he probably doesn't need as many pictures of the team as he has. The only unframed photo is stuck between the 2010 and 2013 cup wins; when he gets to it, he picks it up carefully, tries not to look, and ends up pouring over it anyway.

It's the only picture of Jonny he allows himself. He shouldn't let himself have even this much, but it serves as a reminder to be more careful, and he makes himself keep it tucked off to the side in a place of no particular importance. What he really wants to do is put it next to the empty frame. He won't. He can't. What would Jonny think if he saw—?

Stupid. Jonny's never going to see it. Patrick finally drags his eyes away. He should crumple the fucking thing up and throw it in the trash, but the thought of treating any picture of Jonny that callously makes him want to cry, and only mostly because all he does anymore is sleep and cry and watch movies. Sometimes he does two of those at a time. He hasn't managed all three yet, but pregnancy is opening so many new doors that it may very well happen tomorrow.

Patrick's never felt this lost in his life. He's always had something to work towards—one thing to work towards, that came packaged with an entire lifetime of subgoals. Now there's simultaneously a new priority and zero plan for navigating it. What he really needs to do is stop hanging out with Jonny. No, what he really needs to do is tell Jonny the truth. He just has to figure out how.

One thought that keeps occurring to him is to contact a lawyer and have custody paperwork drawn up. Jonny seems so… so startlingly excited about Patrick having a baby, and Patrick's always known Jonny should be a dad. Maybe he'll want the baby. Maybe Patrick should initiate a legal agreement to show Jonny that Jonny can be involved if he wants. As much as he wants. That he can be involved with the baby but not involved with Patrick. He'd ultimately concluded that it wouldn't be a good idea, though, or at least telling Jonny about the paperwork wouldn't be; the last thing Patrick wants is to pressure Jonny, or trap him. There's already a very real risk that Jonny's going to throw himself into being a parent to Patrick's baby just because he thinks it's the right thing to do rather than out of any real desire. So that's a consideration.

And on top of all the other shit, he doesn't even have hockey to fall back on.

The baby's not shit, though. He tries to reassure it as often as he can; it's a good thing he's been spending most of his time alone, because he's taken to talking to his kid the way Jess talks to her cats—the way Jonny talks to his new dog, which is the most fucking hilarious and dorky and endearing sight Patrick has seen in maybe his entire life.

When he's finished sorting his photos, the top ledge is still almost empty, and the bottom has been curated into some semblance of order. He stacks the rest on his dresser to deal with in the morning, or the afternoon, or whenever he feels like it. "We're definitely going to have to get more picture frames," he tells his baby. "Someday I'm going to embarrass you with how many pictures I have up here. And you'll actually get to see them, too. I've never had anyone else in this room before, you know. Although technically you already are in the room, aren't you?" Patrick pats his abs. "These conversations are going to get a lot more interesting once you can talk back."

When he was just a kid himself, he'd been frustrated by his own territorial feelings about his private space; at home in Buffalo, being the only boy meant he'd never had to share his room, but he'd always been unsettled when his friends and even his parents came into his bedroom. He'd crammed the feeling down, uncertain at first of its origin and then ashamed of it. A year or so after he'd started seeing Dr. Sievers, he'd forced himself to ask her about it, and she'd said she wasn't surprised—that some omegas, especially omegas like Patrick, were not just selective about who they allowed into the space where they slept but ferociously so.

He's still trying to figure out what it means to be an omega like him, but that had been when he'd given up denying his instincts. He'd ripped apart the whole back quarter of his condo and reassembled it into his own master suite: the bedroom with its alcove bed and electric fireplace, the bathroom that was counterintuitively cramped, the pair of walk-in closets. One of which, actually, might be the right size for a nursery.

And now the baby's the second person to ever be in here since the construction crew cleared out. Patrick cleans the suite himself, helped solely by a Roomba, and washes his own bedding, because he doesn't want the scent of another person on his sheets. There's a traditional master bedroom down the hall where he'd more or less lived during his handful of relationships, but he's never been able to bring himself to invite any of his previous partners in, which definitely did not endear him to any of his girlfriends or the one quasi-longterm hookup that was the closest he'd ever allowed himself to a boyfriend.

Giving up on fighting himself had led him a lot of weird places, and not just to early relationship death. He's a lot better at laundry than he used to be, for one thing. He also has a pretty impressive collection of impulse purchases, some of which make sense (a pair of Michael Jordan's shoes in a glass case, a little catadioptric telescope, the empty picture frame) and some that don't (an antique music box, three Ikea plant stands, an As Seen On TV roll-up keyboard he'd bought one night while drunk).

What it really boils down to is this: Patrick's sentimental. He's maybe a little too sentimental, a little over-indulgent of his softer side. Telling himself to toughen up hadn't worked, though, and neither had beating himself up over it. He likes to think he's tough enough where it counts, that he has as much grit as the next guy, but Patrick's brand of toughness isn't the right brand, or maybe it just doesn't come from the right source.

None of this solves the problem of how to tell Jonny that Patrick's having his baby. Christ. If he's not happy, that's okay; Patrick is happy enough for both of them, and he'll love the baby enough for two parents. If Jonny is happy, that's better for the baby, whose life could only be enriched by having Jonny in it, but it makes what Patrick did even worse. He still doesn't understand Jonny's reaction that day in the kitchen—still doesn't know if it was hopeful or disappointed, if Jonny was happy for Patrick or angry that he'd taken himself out of the season like this.

And if Jonny is interested, they really will have to figure out a custody arrangement, and that hurts. Not that Patrick would ever deny Jonny, but he'll have far too little time with the baby during the season without surrendering half that time. Thinking about hiring a nanny is hard enough—he's been struggling with that, too, with the idea that someone else would be raising his baby, and while he doesn't feel like he's done with hockey or like hockey's done with him, the idea of just... walking away has crossed his mind.

Being on the road for forty-something games out of the year means a lot of missed hours, a lot of missed days, so he's been working out hypothetical schedules, tracking the team more obsessively than when he was playing. Everything but his family and his career now seems unimportant, and just cutting golf and nights out significantly increases the time he'll have. He'll need someone to stay with the kid when he's out of town and during practice, training, and games. That should be it. Anything else that needs doing he can either do with a baby in tow or pay someone else to do for him.

The other problem is that if Jonny takes the baby half the time, they're still going to need someone to watch it for the same number of days as if he doesn't. It's the closest Patrick's ever come to wishing Jonny had pursued one of his dozen other viable career options instead of fixing his star on hockey. Patrick isn't exactly clear on what all of those other viable career options are, but Jonny's the one who went to college and has post-retirement plans other than 'more hockey, somehow.'

Environmental Lawyer Jonny would presumably have the time and money to quit his job and be with the baby round the clock, which dovetails nicely with Patrick's hindbrain assessment that Jonny should be the only other person allowed around the baby at all. Hindbrain Patrick has been making far too many decisions lately, though, which is why Patrick's going to act like a normal human being and hire a normal human nanny.

He still doesn't have a plan. Should he tell Jonny in public? In private? At Jonny's condo or his own? Over dinner? Should he bring a congratulations card? Flowers? There's no gift that expresses what Patrick wants to express—remorse for having lied, terror at Jonny knowing. Fear of Jonny guessing, or trying to—

And that doesn't even begin to address what Dr. Sievers had told him at his last appointment, which would be reason enough to lose sleep by itself. Patrick's been avoiding thinking about it, especially once he got confirmation that Jonny wasn't thinking about bonding anytime soon. Plenty of people didn't ever bond at all, but Jonny had the kind of presence and sensitivity that makes Patrick fairly certain that Jonny wouldn't want to enter into marriage without bonding to his partner.

Patrick's bought himself some time, but not much; someday Jonny's going to want to settle down and have a couple more kids, give his firstborn some siblings, and what's Patrick supposed to do then?

Dr. Sievers had said, If you want to bond someday, you need to think about your exposure to The Alpha You're Sensitive To.

And Patrick had said, Why, because it was a moot point; he wasn't ever going to bond, so he saw no reason to think about it at all.

And then Dr. Sievers had said, Or if he wants to bond with someone, your proximity could impact his ability to do so.

And Patrick had said, Oh.

He still doesn't understand all the specifics—how his nearness could impact Jonny like that. Jonny may be The Alpha That Patrick Is Sensitive To, but Patrick definitely isn't The Omega That Jonny Is Sensitive To. Which is par for the course; as far as Patrick can tell, all omegas, and plenty of betas and alphas, too, are sensitive to Jonny.

He halfway doesn't believe it, but Dr. Sievers has never steered him wrong before. Maybe it's a function of Patrick's desperation. Maybe he's like a black hole, sucking Jonny's attention to him. The problem is that Patrick, for all the time he spends at the doctor's, has very little idea of how to be an omega. He doesn't know how to relate to alphas as an omega; he doesn't know anything about physiological compatibility or... or whatever it is that makes him an obstruction to Jonny bonding; he knows very little about his own empathic capabilities.

The problem must be related to him tapering off his suppressants, though. It was never an issue before, no matter which medication he was taking. Shit, maybe it's only an issue now that Patrick's pregnant with Jonny's baby. Maybe Patrick will pop the little guy out and things will go back to normal and he won't have to move halfway across the country just to make it so everyone can get on with their lives.

What Patrick really doesn't want to think about is how much his inability to let go of his feelings for Jonny is making this situation massively more complicated. He's tried over the years. He's tried a lot, but a deep down part of him can't shake the feeling that being in love with Jonny is the best part of him.

"This sucks," he tells the baby. The baby doesn't respond, so Patrick puts on Hook to keep both of them company.

-

He manages to escape Jonny driving him to his next appointment solely because the team's flying out for a game against Nashville the next day. It's been ten weeks exactly since the baby was conceived, which means Patrick's on the verge of finding out what the baby is. No, that's a dumb way to put it; the baby's a baby. He's on the verge of finding out the baby's dynamic and sex. It's nerve-wracking enough to make him want to puke.

He's dealing with the anxiety mostly by pretending he doesn't feel it but also by texting with Erica about a jackass colleague who keeps taking credit for her work. Most of the details are beyond his ability to grasp—Erica's a lot smarter than him; all of his sisters are—but he's doing his best to help her strategize. If nothing else, his suggestion to pull a Raiders of the Lost Ark and push the guy into an airplane propeller had briefly distracted her from her frustration.

Regrettably, there's a very large sign that says 'PLEASE DO NOT USE YOUR CELL PHONE' on the wall of the examination room, so when the doorknob turns, Patrick has to temporarily put away Erica's problems to think about his own.

"Hey," Dr. Sievers says. "Ready for this?"

Patrick offers her his arm. "Hit me."

She rolls her eyes, puts a red band around his arm, has him make a fist, wipes the crook of his elbow down with alcohol, removes the band, and sticks him. Patrick watches the little tube fill up with his blood. "You should get your results within two weeks," she says. "Generally it's a lot faster than that, I've had patients get their results in as little as three days, but labs are..." She huffs amusedly. "They're labs."

"Do you get the results?"

"I do," she says, "although I can arrange to have an encrypted copy sent to you directly."

Patrick thinks about that while she fills up a second tube with his blood. "No," he finally decides. "I'll wait for you to tell me." He doesn't want to be alone when he finds out, but he'd feel pathetic admitting that. "Not like I don't see you often enough," he jokes.

"Good thing you're my favorite patient," Dr. Sievers says, and she winks. "Do you want to know the baby's sex and dynamic, or are you waiting until they're born?"

"I want to know," Patrick says. He can't imagine waiting, or not knowing; how's he supposed to figure out a name otherwise? He can't actually name his baby after a character from a nineties movie.

"Excellent." Dr. Sievers withdraws the needle, covers the tiny prick with a cotton ball, and gestures Patrick to take over pressing it down. "I don't mean to harp on this," she says as she yanks off her gloves, "but have you thought more about what we discussed during your last visit?"

"No, yeah, I. Uh, yeah, I have," Patrick says.

"Have you come to any conclusions?"

Patrick clears his throat. Swallows. "How much do I have to restrict my contact?"

"I'm not sure," Dr. Sievers says. "How much of an obstacle will it be?"

"Big. Really big." Patrick laughs dryly; she really has no idea about hockey. "We're around each other a lot. He's—he's a good friend." He remembers that Dr. Sievers has now actually met Jonny, who's a pretty memorable guy, and backpedals. "For a coworker," he says, and then winces. "We're friends outside of work too," he adds in a desperate bid to more accurately portray their relationship without drawing too much attention to it. The attempt sucks. He winces and gives up.

"I'm glad you have a strong support network." Dr. Sievers pulls off her gloves. "That really does help with both psychological and physical health during a pregnancy."

Patrick's glad she doesn't mention single parenthood or continue talking about Jonny. Jonny can only do so much to disguise the kind of alpha he is, and Dr. Sievers, as a specialist, had to have taken note. He's not exactly sure why he doesn't want her thinking about Jonny; he just doesn't.

"Have you started thinking about names yet?" she asks.

"Yeah," Patrick says. "I mean no. Kind of. Not really."

"Well, hopefully you'll be able to narrow it down once we get your test results back," she says, ignoring his word salad with the ease of long practice. "Any other questions for me this week?"

"Nope," Patrick says, and he flees as soon as she lets him. That was excruciating. Fuck all of this. He deserves a break.

His clubs are in his trunk, so he runs away for the rest of the afternoon. It's cold, but the driving range at Lincoln Park has heated stalls, and it's not too early to teach the baby the difference between a wedge and a driver. He'd look like an idiot talking out loud apparently to himself at the range, though, so he keeps notes in his head and waits until the drive home to explain the finer points of golf clubs.

-

Jonny's going to be gone most of the last half of November. The team's in Nashville on the 16th, home for a couple of nights, and then headed out for the seven-game Circus Trip. They'll be gone over Patrick's birthday. Normally he and Jonny and Sharpy and whoever else all go out somewhere together and have as good a time as possible in enemy territory on a game night, but this year Patrick isn't feeling like doing much of anything. Maybe he'll go to the circus.

Jonny turns up the Monday night before he abandons Patrick forever with two pizzas and a six-pack of pacifiers. He mumbles something about his mom when Patrick asks about the latter, and Patrick is too hungry to pursue the line of inquiry further. Anyway, Jonny talks a lot about his mom; Patrick's learned to more or less tune it out, even though he likes Andree.

"I was about to watch Titanic," Patrick says, and he pauses to wait.

"Okay," Jonny says, which is even more suspicious.

Patrick narrows his eyes. "Do you know what Titanic's about?"

"Yes, Peeks, I know what Titanic's about."

"Are you sure?" Patrick asks.

"I've seen it before," Jonny says. "What? I do actually watch movies sometimes." Patrick gives him a look. "Fine," he says. "I saw it with my mom."

"And you're totally okay with me picking the movie?" Patrick asks, because he isn't entirely sure what to do with a Jonny who doesn't put up at least a token fight for control of the remote. They'd had several prolonged battles back when they had roomed together. Patrick, despite lacking Jonny's strength and reach, had even managed to hold his own.

"It's your birthday," Jonny points out. "Or birthday evening, I guess. The pacifiers weren't your gift, by the way. That's coming tomorrow."

"Do I get a clue?"

Jonny drops Patrick's pizza box in his lap. "Just watch your movie."

They only make it to the scene where Fictional Bob Ballard (Patrick can never remember the character's name) comes across the Titanic's wreck when Jonny starts yapping again. Patrick is unsurprised; of the two of them, Jonny's the more talkative. Patrick likes it except when he's trying to concentrate on a movie, which is why he started turning on subtitles, but that opened the door for Jonny to complain about words on the screen taking away from 'his viewing experience,' whatever that meant.

"Are you sure you don't want to do anything else for your birthday?" Jonny says. "Your, uh. Your family's not here, and the team's out of town. We could do something tonight, or when I get back. Or you could fly out and meet me in Denver. Meet us in Denver, I mean. Meet the team in Denver." Patrick isn't entirely sure what's happening here, but Jonny attempts to rescue himself by saying, "I could pay for your plane ticket."

"Yeah, man," Patrick says, "I'm sure." Which underestimates by ten million how happy he'd be to stay right here on this couch with Jonny and his baby for the rest of his life, provided he gets to leave for hockey and Jonny swears not to talk through the scenes with Jack and Rose.

"Okay," Jonny says. He sounds doubtful, but the pizza distracts him—distracts both of them—and the only non-television noises in the room are the two of them chewing. As a kid, Patrick had wanted to be Jack Dawson, but he'd identified with Rose, who fucking hated being put in a box because of her dynamic.

"Think it'll be a boy or a girl?" Jonny asks.

Patrick pauses halfway through Jack stopping Rose from jumping overboard. He wants to be frustrated at the interruption, but it's a good question.

"Girl," he says.

"What dynamic?"

"Beta," Patrick says. "Beta girl."

"You sure?"

"A beta girl or an alpha boy," Patrick revises. "There's a lot of beta girls in my family. Not just my sisters, I mean. My mom has a cousin with five daughters."

"Shit, that's a lot of kids." Jonny takes a swig of his water and swallows. "You want that many?"

"What? No." Six kids would be ridiculous. Patrick's always thought that three was a nice number, but he's still blown away he gets a kid at all. "Just this one."

"Yeah," Jonny says. "Yeah. One's probably easier." He falls silent again and bites into another piece of his pizza—sometimes they share, because Patrick doesn't mind gluten-free crust, but occasionally Jonny will turn up with a pizza for each of them—and Patrick starts the movie again.

One of Patrick's long-held fantasies involves going off his suppressants. Jonny smells incredible all the time, and doubly so in Patrick's space, but Patrick's ability to scent people is profoundly diminished by his medication. He's been taking it for so long he doesn't remember what it's like to have full access to that sense, and since he'd begun a suppressant regimen before he first met Jonny, he only knows an approximation of what Jonny actually smells like. The suppressants have been a huge boon to his career, and he's aware of that, but he still thinks about it: how rich Jonny must smell, and how overwhelming.

Sometimes he even wonders if the reverse would be true, and if by going off his suppressants Patrick himself would finally smell good to Jonny; but he always cuts that line of thought off ruthlessly. The last thing he needs is Jonny being able to scent desire on him.

"You ready for the long haul?" he asks.

Jonny lifts his eyebrows; his expression is totally guileless. "I thought you didn't like talking during a movie."

"Oh, sorry," Patrick says. "I didn't realize you were so involved in it."

He's rewarded when Jonny throws back his head and laughs. "You caught me," he says. "Yeah, babe, I'm ready. It'll be good to see my parents twice in the same month. Still sucks, but most of the guys have their heads on straight. We'll be fine."

"'Most of?'"

"Caught that, eh," Jonny says. He wipes his fingers on a paper napkin and leans forward to toss his pizza box on the coffee table, and Patrick's caught by a brief daydream of somehow wedging himself between Jonny's back and the couch. Being pregnant is doing some weird things to the already weird inside of his head.

"Woodring," Jonny clarifies.

"Boner?" Patrick says, startled, and then he snorts. He's only played with the kid in a couple of practices, and he'd seemed capable, if not dazzling.

Jonny rolls his eyes. "Yeah, Woodsy. He's... I don't like him."

"He's putting up a good effort." Not great, but solid, especially for a player of his experience. "Q's bumping him up to the third line pretty regularly."

Jonny's eyes keep rolling. "Not his hockey, he's fine. I mean I don't like him as a person."

And that's saying something; Jonny dislikes plenty of people, because Jonny is a man of strong opinions, but in the locker room, he's in captain mode. In captain mode, people he would otherwise dislike are just guys who need some extra attention—guys he hasn't figured out how to integrate into the team yet.

"Does he need an attitude adjustment?" Patrick asks.

"What he needs is a personality adjustment," Jonny says. He kicks his feet up on the coffee table; he's in his socks, because it offends his Canadian sensibilities to wear shoes in someone's home. Is it possible to genetically inherit Canadian manners? Or—after Patrick tells Jonny about the baby, Jonny can teach the kiddo the customs of their people. If he decides he wants to be involved with the baby. If he doesn't, Patrick will teach the kiddo not to wear shoes in the house all by himself.

"He's a dick," Jonny says. "No respect. And he runs his mouth."

"There are plenty of guys on the team who run their mouths," Patrick points out. "Like Shawzy, for instance. Or you."

"Hey!"

Patrick looks down and grins to himself. God. If this goes away, goes out of his life, he's going to miss it like he'd miss a limb—like he'd miss a vital part of his body.

"So what are you gonna do about it?" he asks.

Jonny sighs. "I don't know, Peeks," he says. "I want to get him booted off the team, but that's not happening."

"Why not? If you put your foot down—"

"You know I'm not gonna do that," Jonny says. "Even if they did listen to me. The boys aren't putting up with him acting like a jackass, but that's no good either. They're already off-balance with you gone, I don't want them thinking they need to gang up on Woodsy. Especially after… uh."

Patrick shoves himself back into the couch and pulls his knee up. He doesn't normally sit like this in public, but it's fine here. "After what?"

"I kind of, uh. Lost it. A little bit." Jonny winces. "On Woodsy."

"Like you got pissed off and shouted and smacked your stick against the boards a couple of times?"

"No," Jonny says. "The other kind of lost it."

"Oh," Patrick says. "Oh, shit."

Patrick doesn't see the other kind of lost it very often. Jonny has a hell of a temper, but it's a normal kind of temper: hot, flashy. It manifests when a ref makes a bad call or someone wakes him up early, and outside of the rare scrap on the ice, the worst expression of it Patrick's ever seen had been the time Seabs and Duncs (and, of course, Sharpy) had being making a shit ton of noise on purpose when he'd been trying to nap. Jonny had flung a garbage can at Seabs' head. Patrick's not sure he's ever laughed harder in his life.

But there's another side to Jonny's temper, too. That's the cold side. It's the side that reminds everyone in the room who's actually in charge, no matter how things might appear—the side that is not just glacially cold but universally cold. Deep-space cold. Jonny's a giant goofball, a kind, sweet man, the absolutely opposite of an alpha stereotype—Patrick once witnessed him trip backwards into a popcorn stand because he was too busy trying to get his mom's attention to tell her an interesting fact about a fucking tree to pay attention to where he was going—and Patrick has never once in a very long life of knowing Jonny been afraid of him. He's never been afraid of Jonny, but when Jonny loses it the other way, he understands why other people might be.

"Man, Boner must've really fucked up," Patrick says. "What'd he say?" Because that's the thing: Jonny's never out of control when he's like that, either. It's deliberate. He doesn't just snap, and it's not like he's going to lose it and get physical, so Boner must've really put his foot in it.

"He was being disrespectful," Jonny says.

"Like shitting all over the guys, or…?"

"Something like that," Jonny says.

"So what are you gonna do about it?" Patrick asks. "Because, I hate to say it, but Boner's really the best choice we have right now."

"Oh my god," Jonny says. "Will you stop calling him Boner?"

Patrick grins. "Why? Does it bother you when I call Boner Boner?"

"It's a dumb nickname."

"Wow, you're right. How did I not realize that before? I guess I should aspire to be as mature as every other hockey player I've ever met," Patrick says, just to see what kind of reaction he can get out of Jonny.

"Yeah, well, your movie is cheesy."

"It is not!" Patrick fires back, but when he glances over at the screen, Jack is holding Rose at the bow of the ship while Celine Dion sings over the sunset. Nothing wrong with a little cheese.

"You," he says, "once told me you wanted a fall wedding."

"Oh my god," Jonny says again, and he puts his hand over his face. After a second, though, he peeks out sideway from under his palm at Patrick. The corner of his mouth is twitching. "I can't believe you remember that."

"You were blitzed," Patrick says. "It was hilarious. Of course I remember."

"You were blitzed, too," Jonny says, which is a fair accusation; it was after their 2010 Cup win, and sobriety was something that happened to other people.

"Yeah," Patrick says happily. "Good times. Think you guys can pull it off again this year?"

"No," Jonny says.

"What the hell, that's not the right attitude—"

"I'm not saying I won't try." Jonny passes Patrick a napkin. "But I doubt we'll win without you." Patrick's—angry, maybe. Sad. Upset and guilty. Jonny's right that he's letting the team down. Patrick knew that all along, knew that there'd be consequences for taking the season off, and had done his best to express how aware he was of those consequences to Jonny; but he's not going to apologize for his baby, either.

Jonny keeps talking, though. "Wouldn't feel right, anyway. But, uh—definitely sometime in the next few years. Gotta win the Cup when your baby's still small enough to fit in it."

Oh. Oh, no. Maybe he should tell Jonny. Maybe he should tell Jonny right now. It's shitty to spring the news on him like this, but Patrick can't think of a better way to do it, short of sending Jonny a text so he can process the information by himself. Jonny's talking about it, he's being encouraging about Patrick's pregnancy, and they're at Patrick's home, so Jonny can leave if he wants without feeling cornered. Maybe now's the right moment. Maybe Jonny would even want that: a picture with his baby in a little 19 onesie propped up in the Cup.

Patrick can feel tears pricking at his eyes, but he tells himself to keep it pulled together. He has to keep it pulled together. The last thing he needs to do is manipulate Jonny by crying.

"Yeah," he says. His voice comes out rough. He clears his voice and tries again. "Yeah, about that—"

"Come on, seriously?" Jonny says. He's squinting in the direction of the screen. "Now he's drawing her naked?"

All the courage goes out of Patrick in a rush, leaving a vacuum behind. Fuck it; it's almost his birthday.

"I thought you said you'd seen it before," he says.

"Yeah, when I was a kid." Jonny tilts his head a little; he's probably looking at Kate Winslet. "My mom made me cover my eyes during this part. I thought it was romantic then."

"And now you know better?" Patrick's not surprised; Jonny may have ideas about a fall wedding, but the other two hundred and five bones in his body are as unromantic as they come.

"He dies at the end," Jonny says. "That's not romantic."

"He changes her life," Patrick points out. "She lives out her dreams without him, because it's what he wanted. And if he'd lived, they would've run away and been happy together, too."

"He should've fought harder."

"Against hypothermia?" Patrick can't decide if he wants to keep arguing seriously or keep winding Jonny up. Either is sufficient distraction from trying to figure out how to tell Jonny he's doing to be a dad. "You can't fight hypothermia."

"Right, and that's why it isn't romantic," Jonny says. "He dies from hypothermia. That's not romantic, it's fucking depressing. They should've written a different ending. Anyway, it's not realistic. She probably would've married the other guy, and he would've caught the flu and died."

"Jesus. And that's supposed to be romantic?"

"No. There's no romantic way to die." He glances over at Patrick and sighs. "Fine. Maybe they both die of broken hearts."

"You can't die of a broken heart," Patrick says.

"Yeah," Jonny says. "I know."

Patrick pulls his other leg up on the couch. Jonny's right—this movie is sad. It's why he doesn't watch it that often. "Maybe you're right," he says. "It is unrealistic. Not the hypothermia, that's really realistic, but the rest of it. What about the guy she married? Did he know he was just her backup husband? And how did she start a new life without any money?" He's getting pretty into it now. "And did you know they had the wrong starfield over the ship for that time of year?"

Jonny laughs. "No, I definitely did not know."

"And, shit, I don't know much about history, but she was way classier than him," Patrick says. "Plus there was no way they were really in love. Who meets their soulmate at seventeen?"

"Right," Jonny says.

"Seriously. Who falls in love that fast?" Patrick adds; he can't seem to stop himself. "One of them, maybe. But both? It's just hormones."

"I thought you liked this movie."

"I do," Patrick says. "But you're right, it is sad."

"It's really fucking sad," Jonny agrees. "Sorry, though. It's your birthday."

"I always cry at the end. I don't really want to cry on my birthday."

There's a beat, and then Jonny says, "You could put on something else."

"Jurassic Park?"

"That's pretty sad, too," Jonny says, and then he catches Patrick's eye. "What? When I was a kid, I cried at the part where the triceratops died. I don't want to cry on your birthday, either."

"Oh," Patrick says. "Yeah, I guess that part is kind of a downer." He pauses. "How about Hook?"

-

Patrick wakes up the morning of his birthday, pisses, chugs a glass of water, and immediately goes back to bed. When he wakes up the second time, he's horny; he rolls over and takes care of himself, doing his best to avoid soaking through his sheets and mostly failing. 'Taking care of himself' isn't really doing much for him anymore, not with the memory of how Jonny had smelled in rut thick in his mouth. Fuck it; it's his birthday. Before he rolls out of bed, he pulls up a sex toy site on his phone and orders himself a present.

He doesn't have any particular plans today. Tyler and Kendall had both offered to fly out, as had two-thirds of his sisters, but Patrick had turned them down. Not much point in traveling on a Tuesday, and nobody other than Tyler could get more than a day or two off work. Tyler's got the time, but he's still settling into Dallas. Patrick hopes they treat him more kindly than Boston had.

He's got plenty of other standing invitations, though. He has friends in town who don't play on the team (admittedly, most of them are still on the Hawks staff), he could always go bother Abby Sharp; but he doesn't really want to see anyone. No, that's not true—there's one person he wants to see, but that person is in Colorado. Patrick's always valued his solitude as much as he does his time with other people, but pregnancy is really doing a number on that balance. If he's not careful, he's going to bite the head off someone the next time his cleaning service shows up.

Staying at home doesn't sound very fun either, though. He doesn't want to just sit around and watch movies all day again, and every time he starts trying to work on the nursery, he hits a mental block. So what he ends up doing is hopping on the bike for an hour, eating a huge breakfast of pancakes and bacon, and taking himself to the circus.

He's never been in Chicago before, for the obvious reason that he's always out of town on the Circus Trip during the two-week block that Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey sets up camp in the UC, but he'd loved going as a kid. There are a couple of decent seats left in an out-of-the-way block, and Patrick buys two on a whim. "Your great-uncle's a ringmaster," he makes sure to tell the baby, because what baby doesn't like the circus?

It's raining outside, but he parks in his usual spot in the UC next to a giant circus trailer that looks like it could hold three elephants or ten lions. There's no chance he's not going to be recognized, not in this setting, but he's in all black with a hat tugged down over his eyes. Hopefully people will see him and leave him alone. The last thing he wants is someone getting up in his face about missing the season, or being pregnant. They probably won't. It'll be fine. Even if all someone wants is an autograph, it'll be fine.

He's a little late by design, and he stops on his way to get popcorn (which gets given to him for free; three minutes in and someone has already clocked him). By the time he settles into his seat, the lights have dimmed, and there's a single spotlight on the center ring.

The ringmaster's voice enters before the ringmaster. "LAAAAdies and gentlemen," he says. "Children of ALL ages… welcome to the GREATEST show on EARTH!"

There had been a very intense year of Patrick's life when he'd wanted to be a circus ringmaster. It was before he'd started playing hockey, because once he started playing hockey all his other childhood ambitions fell away, and he'd spent a lot of that year peppering his very patient Uncle John with questions and persuading Erica and Jess to be lions or bears or, more disastrously, trapeze artists. It's a happy memory, even if it makes him sad to think that his kid's not going to grow up in a house that full. Patrick will just have to figure out how to fill up the kiddo's life in other ways.

They bring out the fire-eaters, and Patrick claps; and then they bring out the trick riders, and Patrick claps; and then they bring out the clowns, and Patrick doesn't clap, because some deep inner part of him still finds clowns creepy. The elephants come out just after the intermission. They're by far Patrick's favorite, although now that he's older and knows more about circuses, he can't watch them perform without a tinge of sorrow. He'd heard from his uncle that Ringling Bros. is talking about discontinuing its use of elephants sometime in the next few years, and he can't say he's sorry to hear it, even if his uncle had been worried it would mean the end of the circus for good.

Sharpy texts just after the start of the contortionist act. Patrick's not surprised; he's been a pest on and off the whole day, demanding all kinds of updates about everything from the baby to what Patrick was having for breakfast to what he thinks about the Avs' defense. Patrick sets his popcorn on his second seat to free up his thumbs to reply.

Patrick the Lesser

Today 5:03 PM

Sharpy

what are you doing now

Patrick

At the circus

Sharpy

why 🎪

Patrick

Because it's my birthday and I like the circus?

Sharpy

It's a bad environment for babies

What if you give it ideas

What if it runs away and joins the circus

Patrick

I guess I'll buy a circus

I could be the ringmaster

Sharpy

SHOWTIME

Patrick

SHOWTIME BABY

Sharpy

So what time is your appointment tomorrow

Patrick

2

Sharpy

What do you think

Boy, girl, other? Beta or ???

Abby says omega girl

Patrick

I told Jonny beta girl for sure

Or maybe alpha boy

Sharpy

What did Toes say?

Patrick

Nothing

He didn't guess

Sharpy

Huh

He has an opinion about everything

Patrick

Not about this I guess

Shoulder still bothering you?

Sharpy

Getting better 😁👍

Patrick

You should get it looked at again

Sharpy

When we get back

Oh shit gotta go

Happy bday little Peekaboo!!!! 🥳🎉🏌💖💫🐣🎁🧁

He texts Kendall and Erica and a couple of his cousins back while he has his phone out, too. Kendall's got a night off, but he doubts she’s actually taking a night off. Her team had made it to the NCAA Division I finals last year, but their performance has dropped off this year, a problem that she probably thinks she can solve by working twice as hard. Erica, meanwhile, is grocery shopping.

He manages to get out of the building without more than a few turned heads, mostly by cutting through restricted tunnels past a bunch of circus people. The way they're standing around half-dressed and chugging water and coming down from the high of a performance reminds him of the locker room after a game. All in all, he's feeling pretty satisfied with himself. He saw some elephants, ate some popcorn, introduced his kid to a little piece of Kane family history—a successful outing.

And then he gets home and finds two men and a crib waiting outside his door.

"Hi," one of the guys says. "Patrick Kane? Sorry, I know who you are, but we have to ask. Big fan."

"Uh, yeah," Patrick says. "What's up?"

"Delivery for you," the guy says. "I'm Kent. This is Robin." Robin gives a little wave. "If you show us where you want it, we'll bring it right in."

"I don't have the nursery ready yet," Patrick says reflexively.

"We can put it in any room you want," Robin offers. "Living room, bedroom."

"Maybe not the bathroom."

"Yeah, probably not the bathroom, that might be weird."

"But, you know—if you want," Kent says.

Patrick's still so caught off guard all he can do is fumble for his keys. "I guess, uh. The living room's fine." He holds the door open and watches as Kent and Robin carry the crib past him and set it down in front of his bay window. It's all wrapped up, and as Robin removes the mover's pads, Patrick sees there's another layer of protective padding underneath it.

Kent hands him a clipboard. "Mind signing this?" Patrick is so dumbfounded it must take him too long to reach for the pen Kent's holding out, because Kent adds, "It's to acknowledge you received the shipment. Not gonna steal it and auction it online, promise."

"Yeah, no. Sorry, man," Patrick says, and he takes the form and signs it. "Do you want an autograph? I don't mind."

Kent brightens. "Yeah? That's awesome, thanks." Patrick scribbles an autograph on the map printout at the bottom of the clipboard and hands it over. It isn't until Kent and Robin are on the way out the door that he thinks to ask, "Who's it from?"

Kent's admiring his autograph, but Robin says, "Oh, shit, that's right—sorry, we were supposed to tell you. It's from a Jonathan Toews."

Patrick makes an inarticulate noise of shock.

"Did you want to refuse—?" Robin asks.

"No! No, sorry. Just… birthday present," he finally tries to explain.

"Damn, happy birthday!" Robin says.

"Thanks," Patrick says, and he manages to come back to himself. "Thanks, guys." He digs out his wallet and gives them a tip they try to refuse—first because Jonny already tipped them, and then because he's Patrick Kane, and finally because it's his birthday—but he manages to press fifty bucks each into their palms before ushering them out the door.

And then he's left alone with a crib so covered in packaging he can't even tell what it looks like.

The outermost layer seems to be plastic wrap applied with the kind of enthusiastic precision that would make Patrick suspect Jonny was personally responsible for it if he didn't know better. Maybe it's from the boutique where Jonny got the baby blanket, or from some high-end furniture store. Or maybe Crate and Barrel—Jonny's condo more or less looks like a Crate and Barrel showroom.

He retrieves some scissors and starts cutting only to discover that the clear layer is not only plastic wrap but packing tape. It takes him the better part of an hour to first cut the saran wrap away and then gently ease the cardboard and foam free from each individual handrail. What he slowly reveals is at first a dark stained wood, and details that look hand-carved, and then, when he carefully trims the last bit of padding away from the top, a note written in Jonny's chicken-scratch. Figured you could use this, it says, and that's when Patrick steps back and takes in the marks of use and realizes that this must be a family heirloom.

Two weeks ago—November 2nd. The Hawks had an away game in Winnipeg. Or maybe it came from an antique shop. It might've come from an antique shop, but Patrick knows, he knows it didn't.

Denver's an hour behind Chicago. Patrick's hands are shaking as he pulls out his phone. It's late enough that Jonny should be home, back at the hotel—unless they went into overtime. What if they went into overtime? Why wasn't Patrick paying attention—

Jonny picks up. "Hey, Peeks."

"Jonny," Patrick says, and Jonny laughs.

"You got it, then?" he says. "You don't have to use it or anything, but I figured you need it more than I do."

"It belongs to your family," Patrick manages to get out.

Jonny takes it as a question. "Yeah, that one's from the Gilbert side." He sounds tired, rough, but warm. "David's got the Toews family crib, since that's the one he used as a baby."

Patrick's mouth catches on before his brain. "This is your crib."

"Don't the teeth marks give it away?" Jonny jokes.

If Patrick ever had a capacity to understand humor, it's totally abandoned him now. "But don't you want to save it for when—for if you have a family of your own?"

"Nah," Jonny says easily. "I'm not going to have kids. You might as well take it."

"Jon," Patrick says, because he doesn't seem to be able to come up with anything else.

Jonny laughs again, soft and pleased. "I'm glad you like it," he says. "Didn't want to overstep, but I had to get in there before someone else gave you your first crib. Just a sec." Patrick hears muffled voices, and then a thud, before Jonny comes back.

"How was your day?" he asks. "Sharpy said you went to the circus."

"No," Patrick says. "I mean yeah. My uncle's a ringmaster."

"Yeah, babe, I know. Did you have a good time?"

"It was fun. It was raining," Patrick says. "I signed an autograph for a delivery guy, Jonny you gave me a family crib."

"I did," Jonny agrees. "Happy birthday, eh?" There's another muffled noise, and then he says, "Listen, I need to go—can we catch up tomorrow?"

"Yes," Patrick says. "Yeah. Jonny—"

"What is it?"

"Thank you," Patrick says.

"No problem," Jonny says. "Talk to you later. Stay dry and don't eat any mango off the floor."

"Bye, tell the Oilers I said go to hell," Patrick says, and then there's just emptiness. Jonny's gone.

Holy shit. And there it is, in the middle of his living room, surrounded by plastic: the Toews-Gilbert family crib.

Patrick has no idea how to handle this. He has no idea what's going on. Jonny's never going to have kids. He gave Patrick a crib. Does that mean he doesn't want—he wouldn't want—?

Patrick gathers up all the plastic and bundles it up to take to the recycling bin tomorrow. He feels a little bit like he brought the circus home with him; and through the rest of the evening and into the morning, he can't stop thinking about a brown-haired little girl with Jonny's dark eyes lying in the crib and sleeping.

-

He's off-kilter when he wakes up the next morning. The fucking circus song keeps playing in his head, and he's still completely overwhelmed by Jonny's characteristically overwhelming gift, but despite his anxiety, he's excited. He's been putting off looking at baby names the same way he's been putting off the nursery, but maybe this will be the kick in the pants he finally needs. The one clear-cut, unmuddled emotion he's had through all of this is joy about the baby, and it's refreshing to return to that feeling.

He stops for Vietnamese before his two o'clock appointment, and he's glad he did, because he has a longer wait than usual when he arrives. Dr. Sievers is apologetic when she finally shows up. "Sorry about that," she says. "I had a procedure that ran over."

"No problem. Not like I have anywhere else to be," Patrick says. "And it was, you know. Great to finally catch up on Crochet Weekly."

She laughs. "We never know what magazines they're going to bring us. I'm convinced we get whatever the main lobby doesn't want." She takes a seat on her stool and swivels to face him. "So. Excited? Nervous?"

"Both," Patrick admits. "But more excited."

"Ready to find out?"

Patrick takes a deep breath, lets it out. "Yeah, I'm ready."

"Alright." Dr. Sievers smiles at him. "You're having a little omega boy."

"Oh," Patrick says. "Oh shit."

Chapter Text

"When was the last time you shaved?"

"I don't remember," Patrick says.

Jess leans into the screen. She's not exactly in great shape herself; the hair on the right side of her face is shoved up in a knot on the top of her head, but the hair on the left side has made an escape, and Patrick's pretty sure he sees orange Cheeto dust in it. The circles under her eyes are so dark they look like makeup. She's running on caffeine and determination, and Patrick only hopes she's drinking coffee rather than slamming Monsters like she did in undergrad. At least he's not the only one in the family who doesn't sleep anymore.

"Might want to think about it, Buzz," she says.

Patrick rubs his face. He has a little more than a shadow, but not enough growth to call it a beard. "I could have a lucky pregnancy beard," he suggests. "Like for playoffs, except for having a baby."

"I think that only works if you stop shaving as soon as you get pregnant," Jess says. "And if you keep it up, you're gonna scare your baby as soon as it comes out. Nobody wants to see you with nine-month-old mutton chops."

Patrick sighs defeatedly. "Yeah, I guess not."

"Give it another decade and maybe you'll finally be able to grow a mustache."

"I can already grow a mustache!"

"No, you can't."

"You just can't tell because my hair's light," Patrick argues.

Jess rolls her eyes. "Sure," she says. "Whatever you want to believe, I'm not going to fight with the pregnant guy." She eats another Cheeto. "Why are you up so late, anyway?"

"No reason," Patrick says lightly. Jess lets it slide; she glances down and to the right, probably at one of her animals. She has a cat and two dogs, all rescues, and she spoils them shamelessly. Patrick's pretty sure she's going to end up with an animal for every year their parents told her she couldn't have a pet as a kid.

Actually…

"Hey," he says. "Are pit bulls good around kids?"

Jess looks up. "What?"

"Pit bulls," Patrick repeats. "Are they good with kids?"

"Yeah," Jess says. "I mean, generally—it always depends on the dog, but in my opinion a well-trained pit bull isn't any more or less dangerous to a kid than any other dog of that size." She must take in Patrick's raised eyebrows, because she adds, "That's not a comment on family dogs snapping out of nowhere, but dogs like to play, and sometimes they play rough. You have to teach kids how to interact with dogs."

"But they're not, like… inherently dangerous to babies?"

"Okay, I know you aren't thinking about getting a dog," Jess says, "so who do you know that adopted a pit bull recently?"

"Jonny," Patrick admits. "He adopted a rescue a couple of weeks ago."

Predictably, Jess loses it. "Oh my GOD, and you didn't tell me? Do you have a picture? Boy or girl? What's its name? How old? Which shelter? You know, it doesn't surprise me at all that Jonny's a dog person. Not like you, you're so prickly—"

"She's a beta girl," Patrick says, cutting her off before she can malign his character any further. "She's about two, I think? Yes, I have pictures. I don't know which shelter, but her name is Bunny."

"Can I see?" Jess demands. "Have you met her? That's a dumb question."

Patrick pats around for his phone, locates it on the counter behind his laptop, and pulls up his text thread with Jonny. "Here," he says, and holds it up to the webcam.

"I can't see that. All I can see is your arm."

"Oh. Sorry, how's this?" He tilts his phone down.

"Patrick," Jess says. "Don't hold your phone screen up to your computer screen. Text me the pictures."

"Oh," Patrick says again. He wishes he could blame that one on pregnancy brain, but he has a feeling it was just plain ol' Patrick Kane dumbness. "Yeah, okay, hang on."

Fifteen seconds later there's a buzz from Jess's end. "Oh man, she is cute. That one with the frisbee, ha! Jonny should enter her in a contest, I can see why her name is Bunny."

"She's, uh. She's really sweet," Patrick says. Oh no; it's sneaking up on him again. He hangs a hard conversational right. "How's everyone else?"

"Good," Jess says. "You probably talk to them more than I do. Or at least Erica and Jacks. Geoff came through last weekend, actually."

"Oh yeah?" Geoff is one of Patrick's two favorite cousins, although they haven't talked in a couple of weeks. "Is he on a ski trip?"

"Yep." Jess's cat jumps up on her lap and immediately, immediately, points her butt at the camera. Shit like this is why Patrick doesn't like pets. "He wanted to know how the pregnancy's going. He said his parents haven't told him much."

There's a reason for that, which is that Patrick's aunt and uncle don't have much to tell, especially because their usual source of information concerning Patrick is currently shuttered. "I should text him," Patrick says.

"Yeah," Jess says. Her cat finally sits down. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," Patrick says.

"Buzz."

"I'm serious," he says. "No morning sickness—I get tired a lot, but that's apparently pretty normal. No health complications, I had a genetic screening and everything looks good there." He leaves out how often he's been feeling lightheaded. It's probably just a result of his newfound insomnia.

"You're almost at your second trimester, right?"

"Just about," Patrick says. No no no, it's coming into his head again. "So when's your semester over?"

Jess ignores him. "We never thought you'd have kids, you know?" She's using the sisterly 'we.' "It just didn't seem like it was in the cards for you. Or if you did, we thought you'd have a wife who would carry. We didn't even know you were into guys."

"Yeah," Patrick says softly.

"It's just out of the blue for you, you know? To be willing to put hockey on hold. You know your life's not going to be the same after this, right?"

"Yeah," Patrick says again.

"Not that you aren't still going to be a superstar, but your kid has to be the priority now."

"I know," Patrick says. "Jesus Christ, Jess, of course I know. I worked my ass off to not be seen as some seedy omega bitch who's a fucking eyesore in the locker room and can't keep up on the ice, and now I just shoved what I am in everyone's faces—my teammates, the press, the fans, the entire fucking league. So yeah, I know it's going to be fucking different, but I don't give a flying fuck." How much he's wanted this and for how long almost tumbles out of his mouth next, and he can feel the unkind words building behind that, but fortunately he clamps his jaw shut before he can say something he'll really regret.

"Oh," Jess says, "no, Patty, I didn't mean—"

"And if hockey gets in the way," he says, "I'll walk away from hockey."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that, I just… you really have thought about this. You really want it, I mean."

"Yeah," Patrick says.

"I'm sorry," Jess says, and Patrick knows she means it. His sisters know him, in some ways, better than anyone—they're up there with Sharpy, with Jonny, for how well they know him. But there are some things he doesn't share even with them. He always knew that this was one of those things, but it hits him how much he's downplayed that aspect of his identity. The being an omega aspect. It strikes Patrick that how hard he's had to suppress it in the end just reveals how foundational a part of him it is. Maybe, maybe—

He shies away. "Me too," he says. "I, uh. Didn't mean to go off on you like that, sorry."

"No, Patrick, you don't have to apologize."

"You didn't know," he says.

"You never talk about it," Jess says, and then she corrects herself. "Talked about it. I didn't realize… I don't know if we even realized there was anything you weren't saying."

"It's not a big deal." Patrick realizes he has an arm curled around his middle and forces himself to relax. "I should probably let you go."

"No," Jess says, "hey, stop. We don't have to talk about it anymore."

"There's nothing to—"

"Jackie's thinking about changing majors again," Jess blurts. "How are the Hawks doing? I drank so much Monster last week I puked and my puke was green. My car broke and my roommate's moving out. I have tickets for Catching Fire!"

"...What?"

"Unless you want to wait and see it all together."

"No," Patrick says, "just tell me when you're going and I'll see it the same day, I have plenty of time." He'd rather fly out to see it with her, since he has the time, but he's weirdly reluctant to go that far from home. "Your puke was green? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I had an exam and pulled an all-nighter." Jess winces. "Don't give me the procrastination lecture, Erica already did. Got back from the test, vomited… everywhere, and slept eighteen hours straight through. No more energy drinks."

"Good," Patrick says, sounding horrified even to himself. "You okay now?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she says. "And I aced the test, so… worth it, I guess."

"And your roommate…?"

"He's moving in with his girlfriend," Jess says.

"Do you need money for rent?"

"No, Aaron and I have a couple of interviews lined up already," she says. Aaron's her other roommate.

"Do you need money for your car?" Patrick demands. "I'm sending you money for your car. Scratch that, I'm buying you a new car—let me make a note to call my accountant, I keep forgetting stuff if I don't write it down—"

"Whoa," Jess says. "Whoa whoa whoa, you bought me a car like two years ago, I don't need a new car—"

"How much will it cost to fix?"

"I don't know," Jess says. "I only figured out it wouldn't start right this evening."

"Do you have a way to get around?"

"I was thinking I'd hitch a ride with a trucker, but—kidding, god. I'm kidding, calm down. Yes, I have ways to get around safely. It's a pain, but it's not life threatening."

"I'll send you some money," Patrick says.

"I can afford it," Jess argues.

"I'll send you some money anyway," Patrick says, and Jess deflates, but a small smile tugs at her mouth anyway.

"You don't have to," she says. "I really can afford it."

"Yeah, well. So can I."

"All right," she says, and the smile grows fonder. "Thanks, Patrick. Seriously."

Patrick ducks his head. "I'm a hockey superstar," he mumbles. "I can afford to pay to get your car towed or whatever."

"You're gonna be a good dad."

"Oh my god," Patrick says, because he can't take any more of this. "Stop. What time's your movie?"

"Tuesday at eight," Jess says.

"That's way too late for me."

She frowns. "That's only seven for you."

"I'm pregnant," Patrick says. "I'm going in the afternoon. Wait, hang on—Jackie's changing majors again?"

-

The biggest threat to his health isn't something his doctor warned him about at all, and that's Google. Being pregnant is weird enough without having a bunch of information about pregnancy at his disposal. The cravings for fresh fruit, the constant fatigue, the dreams—he keeps having these recurring dreams where he's standing at a lakeshore waiting for… someone. Probably the baby.

Another compounding factor is that he's still coming off the Estranephren. Patrick keeps trying to argue that none of what he's experiencing can be put down to that, because he's been on it for barely a year and his body reacts so strangely to inhibitors anyway, but Dr. Sievers keeps trying to hammer into his head that his body isn't used to functioning without suppressants. Patrick's just waiting for his sense of smell to come back. Eating's going to be amazing when it does.

Anyway, his search history is long and getting longer. He'd dragged out his Xbox in an effort to distract himself, but in practice that just meant that he'd be sitting in front of a Halo pause screen at one in the morning while he searched for shit that somehow left him feeling much worse than the most explicit porn he'd ever watched online.

best food to eat after going off suppressants

stop taking omega suppressants fatigue

do babies have tails

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hockey scores

illinois custody laws

canadian custody laws

where is winnipeg

manitoba custody laws

does baby with canadian parent automatically canadian

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patrick kane

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patrick kane baby

He has six days left until Jonny's back from the road show, and that means he has six days to figure out what to tell Jonny. It's the kind of news you should tell someone in person, presumably. It's probably the kind of news you should tell someone immediately, too, but Patrick already struck out on that one. If Patrick were being nice, he'd wait an extra day, since Jonny's probably going to be beat to all hell after almost two weeks on the road, but he just—he can't. He can't wait. Every atom of every nerve in his body is fixated on December 1st, and if he doesn't get it over with on that date, he'll… explode, maybe. And then Jonny will be left raising a premature (a really premature) baby he doesn't even know is his, and holy shit. Nobody else knows the baby is Jonny's.

When that hits, it rattles him. Patrick's the only person in the entire world who knows that his baby is Jonny's. It's a dangerously small and dangerously incompetent pool of people. Jesus. Would anyone even think to do a DNA test? Maybe he should tell someone else. Maybe he should leave a note—

Obviously nothing is actually going to happen to Patrick, because if something happens to Patrick that means something happens to the baby and that's unthinkable, but maybe he should write it down just in case. In case of—of amnesia, or—it happened in Hook; Peter forgot his kids and had to be reminded he wasn't a Lost Boy anymore.

Once he retrieves a Post-It and a Sharpie, though, he isn't sure what to say. Dear Future Patrick sounds dumb, but not as dumb as Dear Amnesia Patrick does. To Whom It May Concern is a little stiff. Finally, he scribbles down The baby is Jonny's and sticks it to his bathroom mirror. He catches sight of his reflection in the bathroom mirror and realizes he's staring at the note with a stupid half-grin on his face. That he still has the ability to be so happy when he feels like he's currently existing at the bottom of a pit is… something. It's something, all right.

There are six days left to figure out what to say to Jonny, and the baby's an omega.

Jonny won't care about that—probably. No; he won't. He's not the kind of guy who gets hung up on stereotypes, and he's been nothing but supportive of Patrick since the first day they stepped onto the ice together. Patrick remembers playing Jonny for the first time, remembers that Jonny had been just as relentless with Patrick if not more so than he was with Patrick's teammates, remembers that Jonny had grinned at him and shaken his hand firmly rather than sneering or refusing to touch him in the handshake line afterward.

...But for his baby? His firstborn? His son?

Patrick's being stupid.

Patrick's also coming apart at the seams. His joy isn't diminished, but it has been rattled. He never thought he'd have a kid like him. Well—he never thought he'd have a kid at all, but when he let himself fantasize, he had alpha babies, beta babies. Not omega babies, not even omega daughters, much less omega sons with all the difficulties that implied.

How the hell is he supposed to set an example? Downplaying his dynamic has worked out just fine in the world of professional athletics, but it's no way to raise a kid. He doesn't want his son feeling like he has to apologize for what he is, or hide it, or spend twenty years sleeping restlessly because he doesn't understand that the privacy of his bedroom is sacrosanct. What else has Patrick been missing?

He panics and runs back into the arms of Google.

omega babies special

what do omega babies need

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how are omegas different

omega child self esteem

omega empathic abilities

omega touch starvation

omega sleep patterns

hockey scores

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omega male life expectancy

At least it looks like his kiddo's going to outlive all of his classmates. Kind of like time on ice—no son of Patrick Kane is going to let himself be outplayed.

Seven days turned into six so quickly, and six into five; it helps—hurts—that Patrick doesn’t sleep any longer. He tries to sleep, because he’s gotta sleep for himself and for the baby, but the little bit of rest he manages is fitful. He’ll fall asleep and dream that he’s on the shore of a lake but wake before he can say what’s on the tip of his tongue. He knows he needs sleep, though, so he adds it to his list of things to ask Dr. Sievers about.

Maybe what he needs is a baby journal. Kind of like Jonny’s. Patrick’s never had anything he wanted so badly to write down that was too private to tell anyone. He remembers being nineteen and a total shithead, always pestering Jonny about writing in his diary, unsure why he was fixated except that he was constantly fixated on Jonny. In retrospect, he might’ve just been so frustrated to have to live in a cramped hotel room with the alpha he—

That had been an ordeal, too. The Hawks’ management had floated the idea of giving him his own room, but before they’d approached him about it, Patrick had made it clear to Brisson that he was planning on sharing a room like any other player and let his agent deal with the rest of it. During their first preseason away game, Jonny had let Patrick pick up the hotel key and then slid right past Patrick after he’d opened the door to the good bed, the one on the far side of the room, without a hint of hesitation. Patrick had been driven half out of his head rooming with Jonny, but he’d never once regretted it.

He’d sure made Jonny regret it, though. He remembers being nineteen and relentless in giving Jonny shit about his journal, and not just in the usual way he’d been a dick at that age, in the way he could still occasionally be a dick now. The journal had two strikes against it: it caught Patrick’s curiosity, and it took Jonny’s attention away from Patrick. Actually, it won a third strike just for holding what Patrick imagined was every thought that had ever passed through Jonny’s head—hollow though it sometimes was—and Patrick was nothing if not desperate for every single one of Jonny's thoughts.

He’d never sunk as low as conspiring with Sharpy, but that was at least in part because he didn’t see the appeal of having another person around when Jonny sometimes physically wrestled his notebook away from Patrick. There was a lot of full-body contact. Teenage Patrick had been dumber than a box of rocks and blinder than a bat, but his tactics had been pretty effective, even if he hadn’t understood that his goal wasn’t stealing Jonny’s journal but Jonny’s attention.

He’d gone too far one night after a bad loss to the Red Wings, though. Jonny had walked out of the bathroom to find Patrick standing on his mattress. As Jonny had watched, Patrick had flipped open the journal and prepared to start a dramatic reading of what from Patrick’s very brief glimpse had been nothing more exciting than some notes on what foods made Jonny's stomach upset.

He never even got a word out, though. As soon as he’d cracked open the pages, Jonny had turned not the flushed, angry red Patrick was anticipating, but white.

"Whoa," Patrick said.

"Did you—"

"No," Patrick said. "No, I swear, I didn’t—"

"You didn’t read any of it?" Jonny demanded.

Patrick had dropped down from the bed and shoved the notebook at Jonny’s chest like he was shoving color back into Jonny’s body. "No, I didn’t—"

"Good," Jonny had snarled, and he snatched the stupid fucking thing back from Patrick. When he turned away, Patrick remembered swaying after him. He’d never been able to explain the feeling he’d had, seeing Jonny’s face drain of blood like that, but he’d sensed that he was on the edge of a precipice, and one wrong step might have thrown their friendship violently off-course. After that, he’d never tried to look in Jonny’s journal again.

He’s pretty sure they still make baby journals. His mom used to have a little one where she kept his shot records and made a note whenever he hit a milestone or lost a tooth. He’d never been great at keeping up with stuff like that, though. One year in grade school, his teacher had made the whole class keep a journal that she promised she wouldn’t read except to skim to make sure they were writing in it. Patrick’s dad had asked if he could read Patrick’s journal, though, and Patrick had agreed. It wasn’t like it mattered; he mostly wrote about hockey, anyway.

What he really wants is just someone he can talk to. Dr. Sievers is great, and his sisters and even a couple of his friends would be open to listening to all of his weird baby thoughts, but he isn’t looking to bore them all to death. Maybe—

It’s stupid, but he keeps thinking that maybe—maybe, if Jonny doesn’t hate him after finding out the truth—maybe Jonny will want to talk about the baby.

Like the tail thing. Apparently babies don’t have actual tails, or at least most of them don’t, but they have something that kind of looks like a tail right up to the point Patrick’s baby is at now, at around eight or nine weeks. Jonny would probably be interested in that.

-

He goes grocery shopping as day five turns into day four. Sharpy, whose sleep schedule Patrick has never entirely understood even before he and Abby had two kids under three, keeps him company.

"All I'm saying is that you have a tendency to forget about Ottawa," Sharpy says. "It doesn't mean you have Alzheimer's, it just means you have a blind spot."

"I do not forget about the Sens." Patrick's comparing brands of almond butters with his phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear. "My memory's fantastic."

"No pregnancy brain?"

"I didn't say that," Patrick counters. "Just that I've never forgotten about an entire team, even a team as forgettable as Ottawa. I keep finding dumb shit I left, like—standing open. I went to the bathroom the other day and the faucet was still on from earlier. Thank god I have to pee as much as I do."

"Are you tired?"

"Yeah," he says, and he finally dumps both jars in his basket.

"Any reason you're buying groceries in the middle of the night?"

"Had to get out of the house." Patrick wishes he had a better explanation, especially when he's becoming increasingly unwilling to leave home. "Wanted some stuff. It's way less crowded at this time of night."

"Yeah, Kaner, I know," Sharpy says dryly. "That's because the rest of the pregnant NHL players are at home in bed where they belong."

"There's another one?" Patrick jokes. He has a vague idea about spreading almond butter on bananas. He wishes he could blame his fruit cravings on the baby, but he's always loved fresh fruit. It's entirely possible his body's just adjusting to his newfound life of indulgence.

"Don't worry, you're still special," Sharpy says.

"And don't you guys forget it," Patrick says. The truth about the baby's just on the tip of his tongue. He can't tell Sharpy yet, though. He's pretty sure that Sharpy will forgive him for keeping the baby's parentage a secret, less sure what Sharpy will say about Patrick having a baby with Jonny. God, he hadn't even considered that—that people will know he and Jonny had sex together. Jesus.

"Hey," he says. "What do you know about the Fox Scale?"

"Not much," Sharpy says. "Why?"

"I don't know, man. Just—you know."

"It's a pretty broad topic," Sharpy says. "Abby has high scores in some of the categories. Not the instinct ones, the, you know. Whatever the one about empathic-ness is. She's practically a mind-reader."

Patrick wanders out of the Butters (Not That Kind) aisle and drifts towards the dairy cases. "Does it affect your bond?"

"We never got a professional evaluation or anything," Sharpy says. It's kind of an intrusive question, but Sharpy doesn't seem to mind, and there's nothing Patrick would ask his sisters that he wouldn't feel comfortable asking Sharpy, too. "And she only ever had the regular testing they do with school kids."

"Yeah, right, but like—" Patrick sets his basket down and goes digging towards the back of the case for the freshest carton of milk. "Do you think it does?" He bumps his forehead and grunts.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, fine."

"Are you sure? That sounded—"

"Just bumped my head on a shelf."

"Be careful, Kaner. You're already dangerously low on brain cells to be a dad."

Patrick lets that one slide by without comment, partly because he's already at maximum levels of worry over Little Kaner and partly because it just occurred to him that Sharpy's worried. "I'm okay," he says.

"Good," Sharpy says. "And yeah, I guess it does. But how strong your bond with your partner is depends on a lot of factors. Abby's brother Jake, you know Jake—"

"I've met Jake like twelve times, you don't have to remind me who he is every time."

"Jake told me once that empathic ability is responsible for less than half of a bond's strength. It's something like forty percent affection and… I don't actually remember. Something in there about random brain chemistry. I can ask him, if you want."

"Nah, that's okay," Patrick says. A sale sign shaped like a red bow catches his eye. "What's it like for you, though? Can she actually read your mind?"

"I'm pretty sure that's only in movies," Sharpy says. "Or like a one-in-a-million freak accident where you can't separate a bonded couple without them having heart attacks or whatever. I dunno, Peekaboo. It just feels like she's there. It's easier to read her mood, but that might just be what happens when you spend a lot of time with someone. You don't need to be able to scent what they're feeling when you know an REI sale is going to make them lose it."

"What's she into now?"

"Kayaking," Sharpy says. "Yeah. I'm not looking forward to summer." That's such a blatant lie Patrick doesn't bother calling him out on it.

The sale is for containers of fancy sandwich cookies—'macarons,' according to the sign, although Patrick thought those had coconut. "Seabs said you guys have a really strong bond, though."

"Aw, shucks." He's being sarcastic. "Yeah, I guess. It's different for everyone. I can get her attention when she's in another room."

"I bet she loves that," Patrick says. He puts the fancy cookies in his basket.

"She should be paying attention to me all the time anyway," Sharpy says, because there's nothing he loves more than his wife's attention. Patrick's never been able to decide if having Abby along on away games would make Sharpy less likely to pull shit, because he didn't want her disapproval, or more, because he'd have his favorite audience along and because Abby could be pretty twisted, too. "Why are you curious?"

Patrick flushes even though nobody's around to see him. "I dunno," he mumbles. "Just can't imagine what it's like, and I'm never—I'm not planning on. It."

"Not everyone can bond, or even wants to," Sharpy says. He's being gentle by not mentioning that omegas form bonds with long-term partners ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

"Yeah, well, even if I did want to, I'm on some—" Fuck. Fuck. Why did he mention—?

"On some what?"

"Suppressants," Patrick mumbles. "Nothing." Fuck. It's not like alphas don't take suppressants—not like betas don't either, even if they don't have a heat or rut to regulate. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. Sharpy doesn't care.

Sharpy's still talking. "Mess when you break up," he's saying. "Abby's brother Jake, you know Jake—"

"I know who Jake is."

"He and his ex-wife were bonded—"

"I know who Veronica is too, asshole."

"And it was really messy when they split up. Not that either of them were trying to cause drama, but Jake got headaches for months."

"Jake and I had a conversation about that," Patrick says, back on firmer footing now. "In person. A week after the break-up. Jonny tried to give him some weird powder to help with the pain."

"Oh yeah, that sounds like Tazer," Sharpy says. "Anyway, Jake got through it, but it wasn't fun."

"Are his and Abby's parents bonded?"

"Yeah," Sharpy says.

"Are yours?"

"Yep."

"Do you think. You know. Was it better that your parents were bonded? Or do the girls—can they tell you guys are?"

There's a long pause. "I don't know," Sharpy says. "I like to think that they can feel how much Abby and I love each other, but I like to think that'd be true no matter what."

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Yeah. I was just—I just wondered. My parents weren't. Aren't." And it wasn't that Patrick didn't know there was affection between his parents, but they weren't… they weren't like Sharpy and Abby, like Jonny's parents. He has faint memories of how his parents smelled around one another, of that easy familiarity, but it'd been decades since he's been able to pick up on their feelings through scent. Maybe that doesn't have anything to do with being bonded or not bonded, though. Maybe it's just how some people are.

"You know you won't be alone, right?" Sharpy says. "We're gonna have kiddos in the same grade at school."

"I know," Patrick says, and he does. He does know.

"I mean, I'm pretty sure Tazer will take your baby full-time if you decide you want it off your hands," Sharpy says, and Patrick flinches. Sharpy keeps going. "He's such a freak. Watching Boner figure out how to deal with him is hilarious. He jumps every time Tazer walks in the room. It hasn't stopped him from trying to talk shit with some of the younger guys, but Seabs is keeping an eye on it."

"Not Jonny?" Patrick's wandering down the cereal aisle. He doesn't recognize any of the brands. Sometimes he regrets shopping at a store that doesn't have Fruit Loops.

"Tazer too," Sharpy says, "but you know how he is about you."

"…What?"

"He didn't tell you? Hang on." Sharpy puts down his phone, sneezes so loudly Patrick can still hear it, and picks it back up again. "Yeah, you're Boner's favorite target. Seabs is trying to get it handled before he says the wrong thing to Jonny and Jonny straight-up murders him."

"No," Patrick says. "No, he didn't tell me."

"Personally, I wouldn't mind if he did murder the little shit," Sharpy says. He sounds fond of the idea. "I'd help him mop up the blood."

There's a guy at the end of the cereal aisle; he looks up as Patrick approaches, and after he tilts his head and inhales, his expression changes. Patrick keeps right on trucking, cruising down the aisle like the other guy isn't there. It isn't until they're shoulder to shoulder that he catches that the guy's an alpha, but he doesn't let on that he notices that, either. He's taken worse than some rude staring.

Although—fuck, can the guy tell from his scent that he's pregnant?

He's not sure who to ask about that. Dr. Sievers, probably. He'll have to remember to ask her at his appointment this upcoming week.

"Kaner?"

"Sorry," Patrick says automatically. "Just thought of something."

"Pregnancy brain?"

"No," Patrick says, but he doesn't elaborate. "Did you know they don't sell Fruit Loops here? What kind of a grocery store doesn't sell Fruit Loops?"

"Wow, your life is hard."

"Tell me about it," Patrick says, and then he asks how Abby's doing; and that keeps Sharpy talking in Patrick's ear all the way through the checkout line and Patrick's drive home.

-

And then there's only three days left; and then only two.

Despite having spent most of the night before watching TV rather than sleeping, Patrick still has to be up and out the door at eight-thirty. He cycles, showers, and pulls into the UC parking garage at quarter after eight. This doesn't need to be done in person, strictly speaking, but he misses the rhythm of coming here, and he checked ahead with the rink staff: the circus is gone, there are no Bulls games on the schedule, and the ice is already frozen over. He can go skating.

Will Woodson from the Blackhawks communication department is waiting when Patrick gets off the elevator. He's leaning against the receptionist's desk, listening while she tells him a story. Patrick hangs back to let her finish.

"Patrick," Will says. "Good to see you. I hope this wasn't inconvenient, you know it's nothing urgent—"

"Yeah, no," Patrick says. "No problem. I was, uh, wanting to come down anyway, maybe say hi to Stan if he's in."

"Sure," Will says, and he leads Patrick into his office. "That was one of the things I wanted to touch base about."

There's a small conference table in the corner of the room with the expected stack of mail and packages on it. Patrick usually picks up a box or two of letters every couple of weeks; some of the guys let Will and his team go through their mail, but Patrick opens everything himself. He doesn't reply to most of it, because he doesn't have time and as far as he's concerned he gives enough of himself, but he does answer some fans, and he holds on to most of what they send.

There's another reason, too, that he hasn't shared with anyone else, but it's a secondary concern.

"Are you planning on coming to any games?" Will says.

"I don't know." Patrick takes a seat at one of the conference table chairs. "Do I need to?"

"That's up to you," Will says, in a tone of voice that says Please stay home. "But if you are planning on coming, give us a couple days' lead, especially once you—" He smiles a little wryly. "Well, you don't look pregnant now."

"Do I wanna ask why it'd be a problem?"

"Probably not." Will rocks back on his chair's legs; his expression is faintly apologetic. "I'm sorry."

"I probably don't want to ask who'd have a problem with it, either," Patrick concludes. He's getting vertigo just from watching Will balance like that. Oh, no—that's just his usual pregnancy lightheadedness. He takes a slow, even breath in through his nose and lets it out through his mouth, which makes his vision stop swimming around the edges, at least. He tries to concentrate on the corner of the table, but his attention catches on the milk crate full of letters. At home he has a solid-gold letter opener. Jonny found it once. He hadn't known it was a letter opener until Patrick made fun of him for thinking it was—

One of the envelopes is open.

"Not that we won't make it happen," Will's saying. Patrick leans forward cautiously. A lot of the envelopes have been opened. "Personally, I don't understand the reluctance, but the organization—

"Who opened my letters?"

"What?" Will says, but he knows exactly what Patrick means. Patrick doesn't know how he knows, but he knows.

"Who opened these?" Patrick says. This must be how Jonny feels when he loses it: lethal. Except Patrick's choking back a rising flood of fear with his anger—they opened his letters, what if they know, he keeps them to himself for a reason.

"Peg and I did," Will says. He's smooth. He's not that smooth. "I know it's not how you usually like things done, but we thought it couldn't hurt to get a feel for how… how the fans are responding." That's a load of horseshit. Or maybe it isn't; he keeps going. "Listen, I think you'll be glad we took the liberty. There's a stack here that's pretty nasty."

"Did you throw anything away?" Patrick demands.

"No, of course not."

"I've specifically requested—"

"And of course we want to take your wishes into consideration," Will says. "But it's just a one-off in the interest of collecting information on how your fanbase is reacting. And I have to say, there's cause for concern. There's a lot of vitriol there. Lotta ignorance."

Patrick, in spite of his lightheadedness, is on his feet, shoving as many of the larger pieces of mail into the milk crate alongside the stacks of letters as he can. "Don't do that again, or you'll be hearing from a lawyer."

"Whoa, Pat, I'm not sure I understand—"

"Clearly not," Patrick says. "Don't do it again."

"There's threats in there," Will says. "You don't need to be reading that. Let my team handle it, we'll set aside the good ones. You don't need the stress of reading that shit."

Patrick picks up the crate one-handed and starts towards the door.

"Hey," Will says. "Whoa—Patrick, come back—"

"There are always threats," Patrick says. "I have it handled. Don't do it again." He walks down the hall and doesn't look back, doesn't respond to Will, slams the side of a closed fist on the elevator button and walks straight in. When the door slides shut, he closes his eyes and makes himself breathe.

He doesn't get angry.

He doesn't get angry, not like this. He gets even, out on the ice, out where it matters, and he lets it slide off his back off the ice, where it doesn't. He's angry now, though: so angry, defensively angry, the kind of angry that makes him want to storm back home and shut his door and lock it behind him and not emerge again until his baby is old enough to walk and run and bite back. The one thing he's always asked, after years of sitting down and shutting up and minimizing and redirecting and being a good sport, the one thing. The one thing he irrationally didn't want the organization to know about: that he was enough of a liability that fans would say so not only behind the anonymity of a message board but straight to his face with their name signed on the page.

Fuck. Did he burn his bridge with Will? Should he go apologize? He's angry, but he shouldn't have reacted like that. Or fuck it, maybe he should've. Maybe the Hawks can cut him some slack for once instead of the other way around. The crate's packed full of letters. How many of them are about how he's a traitor to the team? How he's irresponsible? Abnormal? Careless? How he never should've gotten pregnant in the first place? How he doesn't deserve to be pregnant at all?

He's in the locker room before he realizes it. His stall's been cleared out for the season, but he still has some equipment stashed here. He dumps the crate in Jonny's stall and sits down to pull his skates on. Nobody else is around. What he should really do is find out if he can slip into Johnny's Ice House in the middle of the night. Maybe that's a bad idea, though; he's only going to skate a couple of slow laps today, just because he misses it, just because he misses feeling like himself. With the odd spikes of lightheadedness, going alone at night would probably be pretty stupid.

He could always take someone with him. Sharpy's busy with his family, but Kendall's in town for Thanksgiving, which Patrick's decided to ignore, and Jonny probably wouldn't mind hanging out for an hour or two. He could bring his dog.

Patrick steps onto the ice.

Jonny could bring his dog. Maybe they could get her some little boots to put on her feet to keep her paws from getting cold. Teach her to fetch a puck. Would that be too hard for her teeth?

He pushes off, and the scrape-slice of his blade cutting almost noiselessly across the surface of the rink settles something in him. This isn't the baby's first time skating—that would've been the season opener against the Capitals, or actually it would've been Patrick's first day at training camp—but it's the first time Patrick has knowingly taken his baby skating.

All those letters. Some of them are going to be kind, are going to be encouraging, are going to be great; and some of them are going to be filled with the kind of hateful shit Patrick would die rather than expose his omega son to.

He wonders if the baby will like skating. If the baby will like dogs. Jonny said Bunny was good with kids—

He passes the penalty box slowly, so slowly, barely coming off his edges.

All those letters. At home, Patrick has a solid gold letter-opener. Jonny had come across it once. He'd thought it was a butter knife. Patrick had given Jonny no end of shit about it even though he only had it because his grandpa had given it to him.

That's what scares Patrick. Not the ire of the fans, not losing face, not his body contorting itself around the new life he's growing, not even the terrifying responsibility of raising his son. What scares him is that he's going to lose Jonny.

There's no way around it; they aren't ever going to be the same after this. Next year they might step out onto the ice together, they might play on the same line and board the plane together and even fly back to Chicago sitting across the aisle from each other while they pick apart their power play, but it's never going to be the same. And that's the best-case scenario. The worst case scenario is… what?

Patrick cuts smoothly across center ice and stops in the middle. Sticks his hands in his pockets. Looks up at the stands. The worst-case scenario is that they wreck everything they've built together. The worst-case scenario is that Jonny can no longer look him in the eye. The worst-case scenario is that they become indifferent out of necessity, passing the baby back and forth as their custody arrangement demands.

No, that's not right.

The worst-case scenario is that Jonny sues for primary custody. Patrick's not sure he wouldn't have the grounds for it. On a dollar-for-dollar level they're evenly matched, but surely the moral high ground goes to the parent that didn't begin by concealing the baby's origin. Patrick might be able to milk a year out of it on the grounds that staying with the birthing parent would be better for a newborn, but he wouldn't have the heart to fight Jonny if Jonny found him an unfit father. Maybe he'd get a weekend here, a holiday there, a month if he's lucky over the summer. If he's really lucky, Jonny will send him pictures.

No.

The real worst-case scenario, the one that Patrick has nightmares about, looks far less alienating on the surface. He can't think about that one, can't look at it directly; taking it out to examine under the sunlight is more than he can stand. Just the prospect of it scorches him.

He's so fucking afraid. Even out here, in the one place on earth he's never felt braver, he is so, so fucking afraid. Patrick's internal compass has never had trouble finding his true north; no matter what was going on around him, what people said about him, what obstacles were in the way—even when he switched off the lights on himself and had to fumble his way through his own mistakes—he never lost that vision of where he's supposed to go. Apparently his clarity flew out the window along with his common sense when his body decided to flip out and go into heat last September.

He's so fucking afraid, but he can't say he regrets what happened, either. One day his son will take his first faltering steps on ice right here, where Patrick won two Stanley Cups, with Jonny or with Patrick himself or with both of them, one on either side, supporting him. How many people get to have their dreams come true three times over?

When he thinks about it that way, PR tampering with his fan mail doesn't seem like such a big deal. Even telling Jonny—he's afraid of Jonny's reaction, but Patrick's lived through a lot, and he can live through that, too. For however long it lasts, he can deal with Jonny's disappointment.

A pang of vertigo hits him, and he skates slowly back to the boards, mindful of his balance and of not jolting his hips. He stashes his spare skates back with Sharpy's gear, picks up his crate of letters, and makes his way home.

-

And then they're down to the final day. 'They' being Patrick and the baby. Patrick doesn't put any blame for this predicament on the kiddo, but at least he's not gonna have to face down Jonny alone.

He'd intended to watch the Dallas game when he got home from the rink yesterday, but after stashing the crate in his closet and showering, he'd fallen asleep on the couch even before the pregame show started. He hadn't slept very well, but at least he'd slept. Today he'd woken up, biked, bathed, tried to nap, and instead mostly just sat around watching TV. Right now he has one of the new Disney movies on. It's pretty good. Jackie had recommended it.

The lightheadedness is getting worse, and he has a note to ask Dr. Sievers about it when he goes in next week. Based on what he's read, it's a pretty typical pregnancy symptom, but Patrick doesn't like the feeling. Maybe it's linked to his insomnia; he should probably ask about that, too. Or maybe it's linked to weaning off his suppressants. He's down to less than half his usual dose now. Either way, he can pass off his evolution into a couch potato as medically understandable instead of just laziness.

He wishes he could say the same about his tendency to tear up during movies. As a kid, before he'd gone on suppressants, he'd always picked up a little too strongly on the emotions of people around him. It had gotten better after the empathic blockers kicked in, but there's this weird remnant where he gets way too emotional over sad stuff. Like this movie. He's half-assedly trying to compose an email to Jonny's mom to thank her for parting with Jonny's childhood crib in an attempt to distract himself, but he can't stop thinking about how sad the main character's parents must've been when she got stolen away as a baby. He should probably just call Andrée anyway, or send her a fruit basket. Flowers? Trivial Pursuit? She and Jonny's dad are both really into trivia games.

God. What if the baby turns out like that? What if Patrick has… a nerd baby?

There's a real genetic risk. All the chromosomal testing had come back negative for serious disorders, but you can't do a blood test for how Toews a baby will turn out. What if it learns to read out of books on leadership and learns to talk by reciting earnest speeches about the inherent human yearning for a connection with Mother Nature? Maybe Patrick should rethink his plan to give up primary custody without a fight if Jonny asks for it. Someone needs to stage an early intervention.

He's trying really, really hard not to think about tomorrow.

The movie helps. He mostly doesn't cry through the end when Rapunzel reunites with her parents, and his timing's perfect as usual; as soon as the credits are over, he flips over to NBC Sports Chicago, where the game against Arizona's just starting. The Yotes take a too many men penalty less than a minute in, which puts Patrick in a better mood even before Hoss scores off a clean pass from Duncs.

In the grand scheme of things, it really would be kinder to Jonny to wait until Monday—give him an extra day to settle in and catch up on his rest before Patrick dumps the baby news on his lap. At least he isn't seeing anyone right now. Patrick's having a hard enough time figuring out how to handle this without having to take a third party into consideration.

Maybe he should wait until it's later in the day, at least? Jonny's an early riser out of necessity, but it takes a while for his brain to come online in the morning. Oh shit. Maybe he should call ahead—text Jonny now, even. After the game's over. There's no practice tomorrow and Jonny hadn't mentioned being busy the last time they'd talked, but Patrick probably shouldn't just assume that Jonny's free. How long is this even going to take? Patrick could get it over with in about five minutes, and that's with four minutes of apologizing, but Jonny's going to have questions. He always has questions.

Shawzy and Hammer both score. The Yotes keep racking up penalties. Between the first and second periods, a red-faced Duncs gives an interview that's about as engaging as watching paint dry.

Patrick doesn't have a plan yet for how to start the conversation. The apologies are a given, but will it be better to just rip the band-aid off? Or lead into it? Ask how Jonny feels about having children? That one's probably not the best idea; it was hard enough hearing him say he wasn't planning on having kids the night of Patrick's birthday. If he confirms he isn't interested in a baby, Patrick's not completely sure he'll have the courage to keep going.

Maybe he should bring a present. Getting a present always makes him feel better.

He zones out through most of the rest of the game, too busy wishing he could just fast-forward to (or through) tomorrow to really pay attention. Arizona scores twice in the second, but the Hawks score twice in the third to settle the score at five-to-three. He doesn't zone back in until he hears his name coming from the TV.

"Tonight certainly proves that Chicago is still a contender," one of the analysts is saying. "The Blackhawks are more than just Patrick Kane."

"They certainly are, Jenna," the other says. "We haven't seen Kaner on ice this whole season, but the defending champions seem determined to hang on to their title. From what I understand, he's going to be out through next summer."

"That's the rumor, Jim, and I can't be the only one wondering how a baby raised by the Blackhawks' wild child will turn out." She doesn't seem to mean anything by it. Her smile is light, easy, brief as she adds, "For more, let's talk to Chicago's captain Jonathan Toews. Jonny, how's it going?"

Jonny looks good. He looks good and a hell of a lot more intense than a three-point win usually dictates. "Good, thanks," he says.

"That was a decisive victory over Arizona and the team's now 20-4-4. How are you feeling about where you're standing?"

"Ah, we're in good shape," Jonny says without a hint of a grin. "It's been a long month but we're playing hard, happy to be back to a full season after last year."

"Shaw just had to make it interesting at the end there, didn't he?"

Patrick half expects Jonny to make a joke about how he told Shawzy that he could only take double minors in the last ten seconds of the game, but instead Jonny just says, "It worked out for us."

The female host is floundering. "It definitely did," she says. There's a pause and then her co-host cuts in with, "Now your next game is against Dallas and you're just coming off a shootout victory against them last night, do you think you're ready to face them again?"

"Dallas gave us a tough fight," Jonny says.

There's another pause. "Twenty-two shots in the shootout, that's a lot," the male host tries.

"Yeah," Jonny agrees.

Another long pause. "How do you think the team's faring without Patrick Kane?"

"Not as well as we'd be faring with him," Jonny says.

"There's been a lot of talk lately about whether players should be allowed to retain a slot on the team throughout a pregnancy," the female host tries in a last, desperate attempt. "Kaner's obviously been a key to Chicago's success in the past—"

"Yes," Jonny says, "he has. It was nice talking to you both." He doesn't sound like he means it. "Thanks again," he adds, and then he walks off frame, still in his gear, with a towel draped around his shoulders and an expression that says he'd be happy to flip off anyone who gets in his way, up to and including Bowman, Bettman, or god himself.

The camera cuts back to the studio hosts, who both look a little dumbfounded.

"…Well, there you go," the woman says. "Straight from the mouth of Jonathan Toews, there's no doubting that Kaner is missed in the locker room."

The male host opens his mouth, shuts it, opens it again, and shuts it. There's another slightly-too-long pause, and then the channel cuts to commercial.

In Patrick's living room, the pause is echoed. At some point he dropped his phone; his hand is still raised from where he was holding it. It buzzes beside him on the couch cushion, and he looks down at the lit-up screen.

Missed you out there tonight, Jonny sent.

Patrick picks it up and answers: Missed being out there with you, too.

-

And then there's no days left.

Patrick doesn't wake up so much as get up. He made himself stay in bed, but if he got any rest, he doesn't remember it. He eats breakfast because he has a growing kid to think about, spends an hour doing yoga because he figures it might calm him down, and shaves carefully because he has a vague and very stupid notion that he needs to make a good impression on Jonny. It's a little late in the game to try to come across as put-together and capable. His pulse probably doesn't drop below one hundred all morning.

After confirming Jonny's free that afternoon, he tries for lunch—that's a wash—and pokes around mindlessly on the internet for Christmas presents. It's December now. He has to think about presents. Except he doesn't actually get anything done. He comes to and realizes he's been staring at his laptop for the past hour and that it's time to leave for Jonny's, shit.

The roads are clear, at least, although they're due for snow soon. He absorbs himself in the drive and the feel of the Hummer's steering wheel under his hands, which are by far the most capable part of him, and parks in Jonny's parking garage just in case it starts storming. That'd suck. Jonny will probably let him sack out on the couch overnight if needed even if he's terminally pissed off from the baby debacle, but Patrick drove the Hummer for a reason.

Jonny's wearing a t-shirt and basketball shorts when he lets Patrick in; for all Patrick knows, he went out running in that this morning like the crazy person he is. "Hey, Kaner," he says. His face is all lit up. "Did you eat?"

"Yeah, I had something before I came over." Patrick strips out of his coat and scarf and greets Bunny, who's lurking politely in the door to the living room. His hands are shaking. "Thanks."

"You sure?" Jonny says. He's already headed into the kitchen. Patrick follows, ducking around one of the tower gardens; the kitchen's as good a place as any to have this conversation. "Wanna watch a game? I got Hook on DVD, we could watch that, too."

Patrick clears his throat. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something." He shoves his hands in his pockets and then has to immediately pull them out again when Jonny shoves a bottle of Perrier at him. He finds himself swaying a little when he takes it, and he rocks forward on his feet to hide how he wavers.

"Oh yeah?" Jonny says. He takes his own bottle of water to one of the kitchen barstools and sits down. A piece of his hair is sticking straight up from the middle of his head. "How crazy was that against Dallas? We really could've used you there. Sharpy wouldn't shut up about how he won the game for us single-handedly."

"No, I mean—" Patrick carefully sets the Perrier down on the counter in front of him. "I wanted to talk to you about something besides hockey."

"Is everything okay?"

"Yes," Patrick says. "Kind of. I don't—it's about the baby."

Jonny freezes. "Is the baby okay?"

"It's yours," Patrick says. "I mean, the baby's fine. But it's yours."

Chapter Text

"But the baby's okay," Jonny echoes.

He hadn't known it was possible to freeze over so fast with worry. Patrick hadn't been clear about why he was seeing a doctor every week, but it definitely wasn't normal—Jonny had confirmed that much with his mom—and he's not sure he's going to be able to make it through the next however many months until Patrick's baby is born without being hyperaware of all the things that could go wrong. For ten seconds, he'd been absolutely certain that the next words out of Patrick's mouth were going to be bad. Patrick's pallid face, his uncertainty, and the faint thread of tension in his scent that had turned, briefly, to panic were all enough to make Jonny brace himself for bad news.

But the baby's okay. Patrick had said so.

He's still talking. "I panicked," he's saying. "And I know—Jonny, I know that's not an excuse. But I didn't know what you'd think, or if you'd want it. You don't have to be involved. Like, at all, we don't—your name doesn't even have to be on the birth certificate, I won't, I wouldn't tell anyone. But if you want to be involved, that's okay too, that's… it'd be good, we can work out custody. I just—it's completely up to you." He shuts his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"What are you talking about," Jonny says.

Patrick inhales. His eyes open; they're so clear Jonny can almost see the bottom. "The," he says, "the baby. Jonny, you're the father. The other father."

"Oh," Jonny says.

"I didn't tell you," Patrick says. "I lied."

"You lied?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. "I lied." He's in pain. Jonny doesn't—

He's still caught up in discovering that there might be news so monumental it can eclipse the importance of the baby's okay. He has to feel out the shape of each word slowly. I lied. Okay. It's yours. That means something titanic. It's almost too big to grasp. Jonny, you're the father.

"I'm the father," Jonny says.

"You are."

"The baby's mine?" Jonny says. He tries it again: "Your baby's mine."

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Jon, I'm—I'm so sorry."

"Why?" Jonny asks.

Patrick frowns, and one of his hands reaches out for the counter. He misses at first. Jonny watches his fingers fumble around until they find the granite. "Are you okay?" he says. "I mean, did you, uh. Do you get what I'm saying?"

Jonny's pitched back to a day a couple of weeks ago when he was running by the Chicago River. It was the height of autumn, and he'd jogged past a little girl playing with her brother in a pile of leaves. When she'd laughed, her mother had echoed her laughter back at her. At the time he'd wondered if Patrick's baby would sound like Patrick. Now there's a chance that Patrick's baby will sound like him.

"Holy shit," Jonny says.

"Yeah."

"Holy shit." Something's cracking and sloughing off him. Like he was in a shell, or trapped in stone, and now he can move again. He hadn't even known he was frozen. "How far along are you?" Jonny asks, except he knows. Now he knows for sure.

"Start of the second trimester," Patrick says.

"The second trimester—Jesus," Jonny says, "Patrick. We're having a baby."

Hearing it out of his own mouth makes it real. He almost can't look at Patrick's face: there's so much fear there, and Jonny can't fathom why, but there's a wonder staring back at him, too—almost like Patrick doesn't understand what he's seeing in Jonny's expression but can't help but mirror it. He's always reflected Jonny's strongest emotions back at him. Determination, sorrow, anger. And, always, joy.

"How did you figure it out?" Jonny hears himself ask.

"Uh, that game against the Blues," Patrick says. "In October. Reaves cross-checked me, remember? And I just… knew."

Jonny definitely remembers wanting to murder Reaves last October. The baby's fine, Patrick had said so, but it makes him sick all over again to imagine what could've been.

"When we got back home, I made an appointment with my doctor, and she made me do a pee test and a blood test to confirm everything. The pee test came back right away. The blood test took a couple of days, but I guess that's more reliable. And—yeah. I don't, I'm not expecting anything," Patrick adds. "You don't have to be involved."

A baby. Patrick's having a baby with Jonny.

"And you want it?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. "That wasn't… it was never a question. I really want it."

Patrick's having Jonny's baby, and he wants it. He wants it so much it was never a question.

"Jesus," Jonny says. "One of these days you're going to give me a heart attack." Patrick's looking away; his lips are pale. He's wearing a gray henley that clings to his chest and shoulders, and normally that would be more than enough to distract Jonny, but now his eyes slip to Patrick's abdomen. His belly's still flat. He's only at the start of his second trimester, and Jonny's tried not to spend too much time googling fetal development, but it's still lodged in his head that now is too early for Patrick to be showing. But there's a baby in there nonetheless, because Patrick's growing a baby.

Holy fucking shit. Jonny's never been so happy in his life.

"Sorry," Patrick says again. Jonny still doesn't have a clue why he's apologizing. "My suppressants are supposed to work as birth control, too, but they—sometimes I have problems. Uh, I wasn't supposed to go into heat. I guess that's obvious."

"Me too." Jonny's not paying attention. Mental math's never been his strongest point, which is why he usually makes Patrick calculate the tip when they go out to eat, but now his mind's flying through the calendar. Nine months from last September is June, but most months are longer than four weeks; does that make a difference? "When are you due?"

"End of May," Patrick says.

"We can't go to the playoffs this year," Jonny says automatically.

"I—what? You're fucking kidding, we've only lost one game out of the last eight—"

"No, I mean I don't want to." Patrick isn't getting it. "I don't want to miss it being born," Jonny explains. At least Patrick's looking at him now. "A summer birthday's great, but what if you go into labor and I'm stuck in Pittsburgh or Boston or fucking Detroit?" Patrick's looking more than a little panicked around the edges, so Jonny jokes, "If I'm going to throw the season, better start now," but Patrick doesn't crack a grin.

"What?" he says faintly.

"I'm just kidding. I wouldn't actually throw the season." Probably. At very worst, he can be a healthy scratch. They can't force him onto a plane. Jonny would like to see them try.

The anticipation alone is almost enough to split Jonny open; he hasn't been so simultaneously excited and afraid since his draft day. There's suddenly so much to do. And it's already been achingly awful to play hockey without Patrick, much less to have to fly out of the city Patrick's in every three or four or five days, but now leaving his side seems unimaginable. Jonny remembers being in Patrick's hotel room during their rookie training camp, trading sips of a stolen beer while Patrick fumbled out a joke that maybe they should be roommates if he managed to make it onto the team. In retrospect, Jonny might've chosen the wrong thing to focus on there. Now he's going to have to convince Patrick that it's totally normal for Jonny to sleep on a cot outside his bedroom door.

"I," Patrick says. He licks his lips. "Jonny. You don't—I mean it. You don't have to be involved."

And that's when it hits Jonny. It hits him slowly, one piece at a time.

"You keep saying that," he says. "That I don't have to be involved."

Patrick must be a broken record, because he repeats, "I mean it. You didn't ask for this." He hides his hands in his pockets. "Zero expectations. We don't have to tell anybody. I won't even put your name on the birth certificate unless you want me to."

"Unless I want you to? Patrick," Jonny says, "of course I want—what kind of a question is that?"

Patrick mumbles something that Jonny doesn't catch; when he lifts a shoulder, it looks less like he's shrugging than trying to crawl into himself. Jonny doesn't understand, and then suddenly he does. The happiness doesn't bleed out of him entirely, because he's never going to be without it again, but something edges it out of the way. It makes him sick. It makes him more sick than he's been in the morning lately, more sick than he used to be when he ate a whole plate of his mom's lasagna and then laid on the floor with his belly aching as a kid, more sick than he was the morning after Patrick's heat when he woke up and Patrick was gone. That's how sick it makes him. It's the kind of sick that makes a concussion look mild.

"If you didn't…" he tries, but the sentence dries up in his throat. He has to swallow it down and start again. "If you didn't think I'd be a good dad," he says, "you didn't have to lie."

"What?"

"I won't push."

"What?" Patrick says again. "Jonny, no."

"If you just let me provide financial support—"

"No," Patrick says. "Shut up. What the hell are you talking about, of course you're going to be a good father. Jesus, Jonny, that isn't what I mean. You're going to be an amazing father." He teeters a little from what appears to be sheer outrage, and now he's so present he might as well be shouting in Jonny's face at the end of a tied period against St. Louis. Jonny really, really wants to touch him.

"Well how the hell am I supposed to know that, when you act like me being involved is the worst thing in the world?" Jonny fires back.

"I didn't say that," Patrick snaps. "What I said is that you don't have to be involved if you don't want to be involved. You'll be an incredible father, but it doesn't have to be to this baby, okay? I'm not trying to trap you."

"What the fuck does that even mean?" All at once he rediscovers his legs and surges to his feet. He isn't even angry at Patrick, he's just… "I know you aren't trying to trap me, that doesn't even make sense!"

"Okay! Good!"

"Good!"

"Fine!"

"Fine!" Jonny says. It's so reminiscent of every screaming match they've ever had down the bench or across the ice that he's thrown back to being nineteen and twenty-two and even thirteen, because even as kids they'd both been opinionated. But this time instead of Seabs and Shawzy between them, there's a kitchen counter and their unborn baby.

Jonny sits down hard. His face is wet; he realizes he's crying. Not sobbing or close to it, but there are tears in his eyes and tear tracks on his cheeks. He drags the back of his hand over his eyes and looks down at the damp patch on his skin.

"Shit," Patrick says. "Jon. What's wrong?" Jonny doesn't get a word out before Patrick launches into apologizing again. "I'm sorry you're angry or disappointed or… I know this was a dumb way to… I should've told you from the start. But, uh, it's gonna be okay. However you decide to go, it's gonna be okay."

"I'm happy, you idiot," Jonny manages to get out.

"Oh," Patrick says, like he doesn't start bawling every time something good happens to him, like he's never heard of someone crying from joy in his life. His lips are still bloodless. He probably needs to eat. "You're happy?" A pause, and he follows that up in a tentative tone with, "About the baby?"

"Yeah, Peeks," Jonny says, "I'm happy about the baby." He shoves the heels of his hands against his eye sockets; his voice is thick and his nose is snotty and all he can think about, all he cares about, is that he and Patrick are going to have a kid together. What a fucking mess. It's insane and incredible and he can't believe it—can't wrap his head around it. He really thought he'd given up all hope, but it turns out there was a little seed of hope left in him yet.

When he drops his hands, Patrick is scooting a box of tissues over the counter.

"Got you some Kleenex," he says.

Jonny plucks one out of the box, folds it in half, and blows his nose. "Thanks," he mumbles into it.

"Sure." Patrick shifts his weight; his hands are back in his pockets.

"Maybe we should—"

"I'm really—"

"Sorry," Jonny says. "You first."

"I'm really—I'm glad you're happy," Patrick says. "I didn't know if you would be, but I'm glad you are."

"Okay, we're starting over," Jonny says. "That was a mess."

"Wait, what?"

"Start over," Jonny orders. "Pretend we're back in the kitchen."

Patrick looks at him like he suspects Jonny's losing his mind. "We are in the kitchen."

"I mean back in your kitchen," Jonny says. He blows his nose again and drops the crumpled tissue on the counter. Patrick's suspicion doubles.

"…Okay," he finally says, and he drags his attention away from the tissue long enough to glance up at Jonny with those devastatingly blue eyes. "Jonny," he says, "I'm pregnant."

Jonny doesn't have to fumble to remember his lines. "That's the reason you've been out."

"Yeah," Patrick says.

"Do you want a baby?"

For some reason that makes Patrick's eyes fall shut. "I want this baby," he says, and Jonny's heart lurches in his chest.

"Good," he says. "So do I." It's such an understatement that it feels like lying.

Patrick sniffs, and when he cracks his eyes open, Jonny realizes there are tears beading in his lashes, too. Jonny scoots the box of tissues back in his direction, but Patrick doesn't move. The sliver of blue disappears. He says, "How far along am I?"

Jonny doesn't get it at first. At first he thinks that Patrick must know; and then his throat clogs with panic and fear and anger, because of what Patrick said the last time they had this conversation; and then he realizes what Patrick's doing. He's flipping the script. He's telling Jonny that Jonny does know.

"Twelve weeks," Jonny says, "and two days."

Patrick goes for a tissue without looking at Jonny. "Yeah," he says. "Twelve weeks and two days. I don't—Jon, there wasn't anyone else. I don't know why I said that. I'm happy to do a paternity test whenever you want, but it's yours. It could only be yours."

That, right there, is everything Jonny has ever wanted to hear. It could only be yours. He has so many fucking questions, he knows he should be angry. He has a right to be angry that Patrick kept this from him. But the baby is his.

"I believe you," he says.

"Yeah, well, you probably shouldn't."

"I don't care," Jonny says. "Why did you leave? Why did you say that maybe I wasn't—"

Patrick lets out a little plosive breath of air that might, under other circumstances, pass for a laugh. "You didn't hear anything I said at the beginning, did you?"

"Probably not. Just a bunch of bullshit about not putting my name on the birth certificate," Jonny says. "What else do you know about the baby? How big is it? Do you have a picture?"

Patrick's still white around the lips, but at least there's a little more color in his cheeks now. "Which one do you want me to answer first?"

What comes out of Jonny's mouth is, "Can I tell my mom?" He refuses to wince.

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Yeah, of course. We'll have to decide… I mean, whatever you want. I'll follow your lead."

"Does anyone else know?" Jonny demands. He has to shelve figuring out how to tell his parents for the time being. When he'd been in Winnipeg a few weeks before Patrick's birthday, his mother had given him a long, long look before telling him the crib was his to give away as he wished. He knew she thought he was making a mistake, but she always let him find his own way, and he hadn't been able to tell her that it was far more important that Patrick's baby slept in that crib than anything else. Maybe she'd understood anyway.

"About the baby?"

Jonny rolls his eyes. "Everyone knows about the baby. I mean, do they know that I'm—"

"No, just—just you and me. Um, my doctor, kind of. She doesn't know it's you, but she might…" Patrick trails off without finishing. "There aren't any pictures yet," he offers. "Still a few weeks out from my first ultrasound."

"Can I go?"

Patrick blinks. "To the ultrasound? If you want, sure. I can schedule it when you'll be in town."

"Yeah," Jonny says. "I definitely want to go."

"I don't know how little it is," Patrick says. "Or how big, I mean. Not very, since I still fit in all of my pants. Probably not for much longer, though." He shifts a little; it's a half-assed joke, but he stops looking quite so mournful. "What else did you want to know?"

"Can I touch it?"

"…What?"

Jonny can feel himself start to flush; his ears are definitely turning red. He hadn't meant to ask that, but like hell is he going to take it back. Patrick's having his baby.

"Can I touch it," he repeats.

"The baby?" Patrick sounds bewildered. Now maybe more than any other time, Jonny wishes he could get a full read on Patrick's scent. He's definitely pregnant—a pregnant omega—but even that defining note is still muted to Jonny's nose.

Jonny tips his head towards Patrick's belly. "Yeah."

"Oh," Patrick says. "I—yeah. Yeah, you can." He steps halfway around the counter, pulls his hands out of his pockets, puts them back in, and then awkwardly arches his back to shove his navel at Jonny. It's clearly an invitation, and Jonny isn't about to turn it down, even if what he really wants to do is lift the hem of Patrick's shirt up to his armpits and lay a line of kisses down the center of Patrick's warm skin. Breathe in his omega scent, mark Patrick with his own alpha signature. Know that cradled safe and growing inside of Patrick is their baby. That's what Jonny wants; but this is more than enough.

He spreads his hand just over the surface of Patrick's shirt, hovering but not touching. "You're sure?"

From this angle he can see Patrick's eyes even though they're downcast. When Patrick swallows, his Adam's apple bobs. "I'm sure," he says, and then he steps forward into Jonny's hand.

Jonny tries to hide the jolt that moves through him when his palm lands on Patrick. At first, he thinks he failed, but then he realizes that—no, that shudder came from Patrick, who's quivering minutely but unmistakably. This close, there's no missing how rigidly he's holding himself in check, but Jonny has a hand on him even if they aren't skin-to-skin. It's the closest they've been since that night twelve weeks ago, and Patrick feels like he's about to shake apart.

"Patrick. Are you…"

"I'm fine," he says, and then, barely more than a murmur: "We're both fine."

Christ. We. It's almost impossible to believe. Jonny looks at his hand spread over the front of Patrick's shirt and wonders if the baby can feel his warmth, wonders if the baby can hear them talking. Can the baby hear his voice? Does it have ears yet? Patrick's so early still. Does he talk to the baby when no one else is around? Jonny bets he does.

Has he told it…? But he said he hadn't told anyone about Jonny.

"Does the baby know?" Jonny asks. "About me."

Patrick shudders almost imperceptibly again, but then he presses forward even more firmly into Jonny's hand. "Yeah," he says. "I told, um. I told it that it's half-Canadian. I told it about you."

"Okay," Jonny says. "Okay." He moves his hand down a fraction. "Tell me why you lied."

"I'm sorry," Patrick says again, immediately.

"No, don't apologize." Jonny shifts and reaches out with his other hand, careful to telegraph what he's doing; when Patrick doesn't move, he settles it on the small of Patrick's back. "Tell me why."

None of the tension goes out of Patrick, but sandwiched between Jonny's hands, his shivering starts to gradually, slowly, fade. He breathes out a slow breath.

"I was afraid," he says.

"Okay." Jonny's being as carefully neutral as possible. "Of being pregnant?"

"No, I wanted to be pregnant," Patrick says, but something about hearing that sentence out of his own mouth seems to catch him off-guard, and he tucks his chin into his chest again. Jonny has to resist the urge to put a finger under his jaw and tip his head up. "I mean, I never thought... but I wanted the baby right away. I never thought I'd get the chance with—" With hockey, Jonny fills in. "I don't know the first fucking thing about being a parent, but I'm gonna figure it out, Jonny. I'm gonna do the best I can."

"I know," Jonny says gently.

"I promise," Patrick insists. "I know I'm not anyone's first choice, but I think, I think I can do a good job. Be a good dad."

"I know," Jonny says again. "I never had any doubt."

Patrick shudders, but this time it seems more out of shock than whatever was making him quiver before. He's more or less standing between Jonny's knees, hands still in his pockets, curls sticking out from under the backwards brim of his hat. His elbows are clamped against his sides, but he hasn't stepped back even an inch from Jonny's hands.

"I swear," he says. He sounds lost. Does he think Jonny's going to—what? Argue with him? Tell him he's not going to be a good parent? Try to fight him for the baby?

"Okay," Jonny says, because he isn't sure what to say, he doesn't understand what Patrick's afraid of. "It's okay. I believe you."

Patrick's lips move noiselessly. He finally stops looking like he's trying to produce words, licks the corner with his pink tongue, and then drags his full lower lip between his teeth to gnaw on it. Maybe Jonny should offer him a mouth guard to chew on. Or one of Bunny's toys.

"But it's not—it wasn't fair," he says. "To you. Just because I want it."

"Tell me what you mean."

"You didn't... when I went into heat, that wasn't—not that it was intentional for me either. But, Jesus, the last thing I want is for you to feel obligated. Like you got cornered into this," Patrick says, and he looks… he looks like he does at the end of a lost game after failing to score when he's taking all his frustration out on himself. "And I know, Jonny—I know how you are. You're so.... It's so much to ask of anyone. Especially when we're in the middle of the season, and you never planned on having kids, and the baby's like me. It wasn't a good decision. No surprises there, I guess, but I knew it was a mistake as soon as it came out of my mouth. I told myself I was letting you off the hook, but really I was just... just scared. And I fucked up by lying to you. But you were so excited anyway, and then you were on the road—" He's starting to breathe harder now, his back and his belly both heaving more noticeably under Jonny's touch. "I still don't understand what—I still don't know what to tell you. But now you know."

"Now I know," Jonny echoes.

"And it never had anything to do with me thinking you wouldn't be a good father. Ever."

"Good," Jonny says.

"You have every right to be angry with me."

"Yeah," Jonny says, "I do."

That makes Patrick shudder invisibly again. Jonny waits a moment, to make sure he isn't about to say anything else, but he seems done for the moment. "But Patrick," Jonny says, "listen to me. I'm not angry with you for getting pregnant, okay? I'm angry that you kept this from me, but I think I get why you did. It was a stupid decision, but I'm going to get over it, and I'm pretty sure you aren't ever going to hide anything about our kid from me like that again." Patrick sucks in a sharp breath, but he nods. "Good," Jonny says. "Thank you for telling me." Patrick nods again. "Look at me," Jonny says, and there's the barest moment of hesitation before Patrick does.

"It's going to be okay," Jonny says.

"I, uh—I think that's what I'm supposed to tell you."

"I already know everything's okay. You're the one who looks like you're about to pass out."

Patrick laughs, and it's shaky and Jonny can hear the thick tangle of tears behind it, but it relieves him all the same. "Sorry. I haven't been sleeping great."

"Me either."

"Jonny," Patrick says. "I'm so sorry."

"I know, Peeks," Jonny says. "I know, and it's all gonna be just fine."

"You really want to raise a baby with me?"

"Yeah," Jonny says, and it's an understatement by an order of magnitude so great he couldn't even begin to explain it. "I really do."

"You're taking this a lot better than I expected," Patrick admits.

That's another thing Jonny doesn't really know how to explain to Patrick. "We're a pretty good team, got a good track record. There's no one else I'd rather have a baby with," he adds, because that seems safe enough; Patrick's one of his best friends—his best friend, really, even if Jonny never calls him that, because how he feels about Dan or Brent or David in no way resembles his feelings for Patrick—and he knows Patrick returns the sentiment.

"Oh," Patrick says. "Me either."

"Have you heard that Abby Sharp's brother and his ex are thinking of having a kid? Without getting back together."

"Jake and Veronica?"

"Yeah," Jonny says. "It doesn't have to be weird."

Patrick rolls his eyes. "Jake and Veronica are already weird." Some echo of Seabs in Jonny's brain tries to point out that Jonny and Patrick are already pretty weird about each other, too, but Jonny sets it aside. He knows there's going to have to be some kind of reckoning in the near future concerning his feelings, but this has been so much for one day. He was already beat from two weeks straight on the road, and he can feel the kind of emotional exhaustion that only fades with sleep and a lot of it starting to settle over him.

"Yeah, they are. Did you know Jake says he's allergic to feverfew?"

"What?" Patrick says.

"It helps with headaches," Jonny says. "I don't think he even tried it. Are you hungry?"

"I—yeah," Parick says. "A little. What else do you want to know, though? You have to have more questions."

Jonny slides his hands around Patrick's sides to his hips and gently rotates Patrick so he's leaning against the countertop. "Yeah. What do you want for lunch?"

"Questions about the baby," Patrick says. He's acting like he isn't amused, but he is. Jonny can tell. There's a piece of red thread stuck to the hem of his shirt; Jonny plucks it off and then forces himself to let his hands fall away from Patrick.

"What does the baby want for lunch?"

"C'mon, Tazer," Patrick says. "Be serious." They might as well be at practice; Jonny's heard that about a million times before in exactly the same tone when he tries to kick the puck away from Patrick or poke him with a stick or belly-flop onto the ice just to see if he can make Patrick laugh. Patrick never seems to realize he's passing over an opportunity to make a Captain Serious joke, even though he usually delivers without missing a beat.

"Okay, okay," Jonny says. He glances over his shoulder to make sure Bunny isn't on the floor and then scoots his stool back and stands. He's never actually needed to ask to know what Patrick wants to eat. "When's your due date?"

"I told you," Patrick says. "Oh, you mean the exact day? May 30th. But, you know, that's just a ballpark." There's a pause, and then Patrick adds, "It's a Friday," and for some reason that right there tells Jonny what Patrick means when he says I want it. He doesn't mean that he's weighed all the possibilities and decided the benefits of this path outweigh the drawbacks. He doesn't mean that the timing is bad but he's making the most of it, or that he never dreamed about this but now that it's here he's happy enough about it. He means he's excited—purely, unequivocally. It's not the best choice of a mixed bag. He wants it. And for some reason he's concealed that.

"What else?" Patrick asks.

"How does a sandwich sound?" Jonny pulls open the fridge; there's some sliced turkey and havarti from the deli, and Patrick's never minded eating Jonny's gluten-free bread before. He's been mowing through fresh fruit and anything high in protein, too.

"I… sure," Patrick says. "Thank you. You don't have to just because I'm—" He seems a little lost again, like, having let Jonny catch a glimpse of the joy hidden between his fingers, he now feels a need to clutch it back to his chest to hide it again.

"I know," Jonny says. "I want to." He takes in the hollows under Patrick's eyes and adds, "How often have I made you lunch before now?" There's a risk that's giving away too much, but Jonny can't find it in himself to care.

"Pretty often," Patrick says, "I guess."

"Exactly." Jonny digs around for the honey mustard. He only buys it because Patrick likes it; Jonny prefers stone-ground dijon.

"I still think you're taking this way too well." In the periphery of Jonny's eye, Patrick shifts against the counter. His hands have finally come out of his pockets, and Jonny feels an absurd urge to tread carefully so he doesn't spook them back into hiding. How long has Patrick been agonizing over this—caught between wanting to tell Jonny, and being afraid of telling him? It's all built up in his head. "If you wake up tomorrow and decide you aren't talking to me, no sweat," Patrick says. "I'd get it."

Jonny makes him wait while he digs out an avocado and a couple of slices of cooked bacon for good measure. He nudges the refrigerator door shut with an elbow and surveys his ingredients; there's no tomato, but it'll have to do, and he can wash a carton of strawberries for dessert while Patrick eats this. The avocado is perfect, ripe but not overly so, and he cuts it in two and uses his knife to bite into the pit and twist it out.

"You're pretty hung up on me being angry at you," he finally says, which at least sounds more measured than proposing.

"Yeah?" Patrick says. "I don't get why you aren't."

Jonny peels the skin back, drops the avocado halves on his cutting board, and then rinses his knife. "Okay, well. Tell me why I should be angry."

Patrick's eyes narrow, but he takes the bait. Sometimes Jonny doesn't have a clue what's going through his head, and sometimes outmaneuvering him like this is laughably easy. He's probably right to be suspicious; Jonny knows he has a temper, and Patrick has more than once been on the other side of a shouting match, giving as good as he got, for slights far less serious than hiding that they were having a baby. What Patrick doesn't understand now is that Jonny can't find it in himself to be pissed off that Patrick was scared and alone—that Jonny's too happy to be mad. So they might as well play this out. Anyway, Jonny always likes making Patrick squirm.

"I went into heat," Patrick starts out.

"Why would I be angry about that?"

Patrick flushes. "I dunno. You wouldn't have slept with me if I hadn't…"

That isn't exactly untrue, but it makes it sound like Patrick thinks he coerced Jonny into bed. "Heat doesn't work like that," Jonny says gently.

"I know."

"Neither does rut."

"I know," Patrick says.

"Good. I wanted it. Did you want it?"

"Yes," Patrick says, with a speed that's gratifying.

"Okay then," Jonny says. "No problem there. Next."

He knows they're making headway because Patrick's voice sinks to a mumble. "I left. After… you know. That morning."

"That was kind of shitty," Jonny agrees.

"Did you—did it. Hurt you?"

"It wasn't a great experience," Jonny says, which is a vast understatement of the hard comedown he had when he woke up and found Patrick gone. He'd gotten through it, but not easily. "Did it hurt you?"

Patrick swallows. "Yeah," he says. "Sorry. I panicked then, too. I've been doing that a lot, I guess. I was… I didn't want it to be weird, or. Ruin anything."

Jonny fishes out two slices of bread and then, after a second of consideration, another four. It's almost as fast to build three sandwiches as one. "It was a little weird anyway," he points out. "But Peeks—it didn't ruin anything."

"I," Patrick says. "Okay."

Jonny wants to linger there for a moment, but he doesn't know what the hell he could say that wouldn't hurt his case; the point here is to prove that he can forgive Patrick, that Jonny's all-in on raising a baby together. Not to make Patrick relive their night together, no matter how much Jonny's dick thinks it's a great idea. He pops the lid off the mustard and asks, "What else?"

Patrick mumbles something Jonny doesn't hear.

"What was that?"

"I said, implying that I slept with someone else. After." The tips of his ears are red. Patrick's always been a little bashful about locker room talk, especially if it catches him off-guard; he used to try to front his way through it in a hilariously painful display of bravado, but now he rarely bothers. "I didn't," he adds.

Jonny breathes in through his nose.

"I shouldn't have—I just went home," Patrick says. "It was four-thirty and you were asleep and holding… you were asleep. Really deeply. And I got—I locked the door behind me and went home so I could… to my bedroom. There hasn't been—there wasn't anyone else."

Jonny breathes out.

"I'm glad," he says, which seems like a fairly level-headed thing to say.

"But like I said, I wouldn't blame you for—"

"Stop," Jonny says. "I believe you. And if you want to get a paternity test, that's fine, but you don't need to bother on my account." If the next word out of Patrick's mouth is custody, Jonny really is going to lose it. He barely knows how to explain to himself how he arrived so quickly at this certainty, much less get it across to Patrick, but Jonny has zero doubts. And Patrick saying there hasn't been anyone else—that's the truth, too. Jonny can… read it, maybe. Smell it on Patrick. He feels it, deep in his gut, echoing behind his ribs, beating out a tattoo with such a deep resonance that there's no need to question it.

"You're unbelievable."

"Yep," Jonny says. "Extra cheese?" He doesn't actually need Patrick to answer. The mustard comes out in a glomp, but he smoothes it over the bread, drops the knife in the sink, and starts arranging a double portion of cheese on two of the three sandwiches.

"And not telling you?" Patrick says. "Even after—even after the crib. Jonny, that was ridiculous. It should stay in your family."

"It is staying in my family," Jonny counters. He piles the turkey on next, then onions for him and avocado for them both.

"You didn't know that at the time."

"Sure, but I know now."

"But you didn't know then."

"I still wanted you to have it," Jonny says, and he injects a little more authority into his voice than he usually uses on Patrick. "And look, it worked out, didn't it?" He glances up from arranging lettuce and catches Patrick staring at him; his expression is open, a little pained, and a lot wondering.

"What?"

"You're unbelievable," Patrick says again.

Jonny isn't sure what to do with that—his first impulse is to say 'No, I'm Jonathan,', but he has a feeling the joke won't land right now—so he tops off the sandwiches and starts closing up ingredients. "Are you done?" he says. "Any other reasons I should kick you to the curb?" He means that as a joke, too, but he catches Patrick flinch out of the corner of his eye.

Patrick, as always, rallies. "Not unless you count missing the season," he jokes back, but there's something nakedly vulnerable about it in a way that Jonny until recently associated with Patrick publicly self-destructing, or at least publicly drinking himself into a stupor.

"I don't," Jonny says.

"It's fine, I know I'm letting—"

"You aren't letting anyone down." Jonny drops the mustard on the counter and swipes a rag to wipe his hands with. The pallor is back in Patrick's cheeks. "Least of all me."

"It's okay—"

"No," Jonny says. "Listen. Brisson even wrote it into your contract. Some things take priority over the team."

"Yeah, but nobody actually expected me to get pregnant," Patrick argues. "It's like when they put in there something about how you're not supposed to go sky-diving, nobody's actually gonna risk their career like that and how many people even want to jump out of planes anyway?"

Something in Jonny's expression must give him away, or maybe Patrick knows him too well.

"Jesus," Patrick says. "Of course you do. Fine, that's a bad example, but you know what I mean."

"No, I don't," Jonny says, or starts to say, because he glances up from scrubbing at his knuckles in time to see Patrick sway and fold in on himself like his strings have been cut. Jonny doesn't think, doesn't finish his syllable, doesn't even drop his dishrag, just lunges—too late to stop Patrick's arm from cracking against the counter, barely in time to get a hand under his skull before it smashes against the floor.

The world goes still. Patrick is still. They're connected somehow, and that one instant hangs suspended. Jonny's never known a fear like this—

And then Patrick's eyelashes flutter open.

"Jonny?" he slurs. He turns his face into Jonny's hand, and then his eyes fly open again and his hand goes to his belly and he goes so white Jonny thinks he's about to pass out again. "FUCK," Patrick spits.

"Patrick," Jonny says. Patrick curls into himself, but Jonny's still cradling his head. "Patrick, what is it." There's no bleeding. Is there? Jonny can't see any bleeding, but—

Patrick grunts and Jonny starts eying the counter, trying to calculate if he can reach his cell phone. Bunny comes creeping around the corner, her head down and her eyes as wide as Patrick's were; she edges closer to Patrick on her belly until her nose is inches from his ankle.

"That's it," Jonny says, "I'm calling 911—"

Patrick grunts again and says something too low and too jumbled for Jonny to make out. Jonny's past giving a shit, though. He goes to ease his hand out from under Patrick's head, and Patrick grabs at him.

"Don't leave," he mumbles.

"I'll be right back, sweetheart, I need my phone."

"'M fine," Patrick says, and then, a little more clearly, "My arm."

"What?"

"I'm fine," he repeats, and he uncurls with a hiss and tries to lever himself upright. Jonny doesn't let him; he gets an arm around Patrick's back and lifts him to a sitting position as gently as possible. "Whoa," Patrick says.

"What happened?" Jonny demands. "What's wrong with your arm? I'm calling 911."

"Don't call 911," Patrick says, but he has about a tenth of his usual spit and vinegar when disagreeing with Jonny.

He's right, though. Jonny can get Patrick to the hospital way faster than an ambulance can get to them. He slides the arm around Patrick's back a little lower and puts his other arm under Patrick's legs and lifts himself to his feet, taking Patrick with him.

"Whoa," Patrick says again, and then, "Fuuuuuuck."

Problem one: Jonny's arms are full of Patrick, but he needs at very least his keys, and Patrick isn't small enough to balance easily. He finally settles on approaching the corner of the kitchen island where all his crap lands at an angle and manages to scoop up his keys and wallet without further injuring Patrick. The hallway's a bit trickier, especially because of problem two: Bunny, who's trying to press herself into Jonny's leg hard enough that he has to lean into her to avoid losing his footing. He tells her to stay and tackles problem three: opening, shutting, and locking the door behind him. They're halfway to Jonny's car when Patrick drags his face back from the juncture of Jonny's shoulder and neck.

"What," he says, "are we…"

"We're going to the hospital," Jonny says. "Hang tight, baby."

"I'm fine."

"I heard you the first two times."

"Hurt my arm."

"You cracked it pretty good," Jonny agrees, and then almost drops his wallet in the process of opening his car. "Watch your head. Thank you, Peeks."

"The baby's okay?"

"You're both okay," Jonny says. "The baby's gonna be fine." He maneuvers Patrick into the passenger seat and then shovels a couple of notebooks out of the way; teach him to put off cleaning out his car after dragging a bunch of old shit from Winnipeg back to Chicago. Problem four is buckling Patrick in. He jars Patrick's wrist when he guides it through the seatbelt, and Patrick flinches again, but it's better than the alternative.

"Careful, closing the door," Jonny warns, and Patrick looks up at him with eyes so clouded they match the sky. He shuts the door gently, tugs to make sure it's really closed, and then jogs around the back to the driver's side. Fuck—shoes. He's barefoot. He stops at the trunk long enough to dig out a pair of flip-flops. Patrick's shoeless, too, but that's alright, he isn't going to be walking anyway.

Patrick's still watching him when he swings into the driver's seat.

"Doing okay?" Jonny says. He shifts into reverse, backs the car out, and pulls onto the street at a perfectly sedate and not at all manic pace. This is fine. Patrick's conscious, he's breathing, he's not bleeding out. He's taken worse hits on the ice. The baby's fine. The baby has to be fine.

Patrick breathes in through his nose and out again. "Yeah," he says. "Okay. Just got lightheaded. Think I fractured something."

"Anything else hurt?" Jonny says, his tone as deliberately level and sedate as his driving.

"Headache," Patrick bites out.

What Jonny wants to do is put a hand on Patrick—his knee, his thigh, his shoulder—but it seems more important to have both hands on the steering wheel. "Okay, Peeks," he says, and he aims the car at the University of Chicago's hospital. Traffic's light, but maybe he should've waited for an ambulance after all. "You're fine, sweetheart," Jonny says. "You two are gonna be just fine."