hey hey hey hey Sada! After all that heartbreak and stuff today, can I have some Kane/Toews what do I know--something maybe a bit heart-achy my ultimately with happy ending, since I've written so much for you today? Something for my vulnerable!Jonny kind? Thaaaaaank you! <3
yessss <333333 anything for you!! <3
Jonny has been learning Russian.
He and Patrick didn’t talk about the lockout all through the summer, not even in the very last few weeks, and Patrick hasn’t let himself think about it. He thought Jonny wasn’t either, but to think that, he realises too late, is to forget everything he knows about Jonny. Patrick doesn’t realise it, though, doesn’t even think of it. They practice in their inside-out jerseys and Patrick doesn’t think about the upcoming year, and then they’re over at Jonny’s apartment, and then Shawsy picks up a notebook up off the coffeetable.
“Dude,” he laughs, “the hell is this? Can you read this?”
“Duh,” Jonny says, “I did write it.”
“Yeah, what’s that say?” Hayes challenges, reading over Shawsy’s shoulder. Patrick finally looks over, something like – dread, maybe? – suddenly weighing in his chest.
“Здравствуйте,” Jonny reads, and Patrick suddenly can’t breathe.
He stays behind after everyone else has already gone home, and he helps clean in the kitchen and kind of just stalls and stalls until Jonny says “so… going home or guest room?” and Patrick finally cracks.
“How come you’re learning Russian?” Patrick challenges, but his voice betrays that he’s about to break.
He doesn’t expect the way Jonny goes quiet and kind of sad. “No reason,” he says, and Patrick is not buying that, not even a little.
“Patrick,” Jonny says, like a plea, but Patrick shakes his head no and waits. “I just - you wanna play on a team,” Jonny says, kind of desperate, helpless, like there’s something here that Patrick needs to understand, “and there’s no reason for you to - to ask me to come with you. So I thought - maybe I’d get lucky and you’d go to the KHL, and you’d - you’d need me to translate.”
“You… you’re learning an entire language, just to have an excuse to come with me, on the off chance I go to Russia?” Patrick repeats, incredulous. Jonny’s shoulders slump, but he nods.
“Please don’t call it pathetic,” he all-but whispers.
Patrick almost says you could have just asked to come, but - but he can see it was never that easy. Jonny’s tackling an indecipherable alphabet and difficult messes of words, just because it might make Patrick need him-
“I’d need you even if I was going to - I don’t know, fucking New Zealand, or something,” Patrick says, “I just - that’s what I do. I need you.”
The relieved look on Jonny’s face says he didn’t know this, and Patrick goes over to hug him, clings as tight as he’s never let himself before; he never thought Jonny would want to be needed this much.
“You tried to learn Russian for me,” Patrick mumbles against Jonny’s chest.
“I do love you,” Jonny says, all soft and a tiny bit sad, and that’s heartbreaking, but at least there’s nothing sad left when Patrick looks up and kisses him.
“I didn’t learn any languages for you, but I love you too,” Patrick says.
He kind of thinks he did, though, to be honest; he learned this, the language of Jonny’s tightly-wound determination and his anxious neediness, he learned the unspoken and the implied, and in his opinion, that’s harder than any written language he’s ever seen.
