author: ferryboatpeak
pairing: jordan martinook/andrei svechnikov
word count: 9.5K
summary: there’s a hawk outside andrei’s window. it sounds strangely familiar.
barzeeks on ao3, y’all. blah blah blah disclaimers, i haven’t figured out hockey nicknames yet, i don’t know anything about mathew barzal, i took the easy way out and quit before the porn, it’s not a new fandom if i don’t break the seal by posting something shitty, &c &c.
thought i’d fuck around with a verse that was entirely @bigbrotherlouis‘s idea. consider this a warm-up, a brief experiment in a new fandom, making some patty/tk shitty pots.
Patty had wandered up to the cabin a few days ago, eyes blue like the lake on the hottest day of August, damp hair hanging like seaweed over the edges of his cheekbones. He was barefoot. He had a towel that said Corona con limão! wrapped around his waist. It seemed like there might not be anything under it.
Travis doubted that serial killers are this pretty, or this naked. Still, he offered Patty a White Claw from a cooler on the porch instead of inviting him inside. You can’t be too careful with potential serial killers.
A few Claws later, Travis told Patty he could crash on the couch for a few days, just until he got his feet under him. Figuratively speaking. Literally speaking, his feet were already there, big and pale. Patty keeps looking down at them whenever they’re drinking beers out in the deck chairs, pointing his toes, rolling his ankles in circles, like he can’t quite believe them.
He’s lying on the couch now, long legs stretching from one end to the other, eyes half-closed, head propped on a cushion with an embroidered sunset that says “Life’s better at the lake.”
Travis grabs a beer from the fridge and knocks it against Patty’s foot. “Move, dumbass.”
Patty rolls his eyes, unfazed by the icy Molson pressed against his instep. He pulls his knees up just long enough for Travis to get settled, and then stretches them back out over Travis’s lap. Motherfucker has a lot of goddamned leg, and the pink jorts aren’t helping the situation any. Travis only had one pair of sweats that came anywhere close to fitting Patty, tight on his ass and leaving his hairy ankles on display. After looking at that for a couple of days he had to drag Patty to Port Stanley’s thrift shop for the sake of his own sanity.
Patty fucked up that plan by digging deep into the racks and finding the jorts, cotton candy pink and trailing threads from a cut-off hem that’s entirely too short, and now it’s all thighs all day long around here.
Travis rests his beer on Patty’s calves, just to be a dick about it. Just in case Patty’s legs can feel the cold. Travis still isn’t quite sure how real they are. Patty doesn’t flinch.
“Hey.” Travis jiggles his knee under the weight of Patty’s legs, jostling him and sending foam fizzing up the neck of his beer bottle.
“What.” Patty’s eyes are all the way closed now, hands folded over his stomach.
“Are you still fish underneath?” Travis runs his thumb along the ridge of muscle stretched along Patty’s shinbone. He bets Patty was a solid kind of fish. Like swordfish, maybe, or tuna. Something you can marinate. Not too flaky.
“What the fuck.” Patty’s eyes aren’t open yet, but Travis is committed to the cause.
“You had a fish tail, right?” He spreads his hand out just below Patty’s knee, over bone and muscle and skin. “So are your legs still fish?”
Patty opens his eyes straight into a withering glare. Amazing how he can do that.
Fortunately, Travis is already immune to it. “Like, if we fileted you, would you be fish or, or, people meat?”
“Look who’s the serial killer now.” Not for the first time, Travis regrets asking Patty if he was sure he wasn’t a serial killer. You can’t be too careful, but to be fair, he could have phrased the question better.
“Still not entirely sure about you, bud.” That’s a lie. Travis is fully 100 percent, sure that Patty’s not a serial killer. (Or if he is, at least Travis has fully accepted that this would be a good way to go.)
“What if I ate you?” Patty smirks. Travis shifts under the warm weight of Patty’s legs in his lap. “How do you know you’re not fish?”
“I’m dark meat, for sure,” Travis says confidently. He’s thought about this. “You know how chicken breast is white, but duck breast is dark because ducks fly, like, they actually use those muscles?” He curls his bicep. “Dark meat, baby.”
Patty pokes at the tattoo spread over his muscle. “Duck breast, eh.” Travis flexes a little bit harder.
Patty’s shifted further down the couch, so the hem of his shorts rides up against the side of Travis’s thigh. Travis doesn’t know what to do with his hand when he stops flexing. Patty’s thighs are in his lap now, his ankles hanging off the far end of the couch. God, his legs are long. What if… “Are you actually a fish, or some kind of, like, eel?” There’s lamprey in Lake Ontario, Travis is pretty sure. He narrows his eyes. “Do you have something do to with the Kraken? Are they sending human eels to fuck with my game?”
“They’re not even in your division.” Patty’s picked up hockey knowledge awfully quick. To be fair, Travis can’t exactly talk fishing with him – it’s not like the ten rods on his porch don’t make it obvious how he spends his time, but he’s a little worried Patty’s going to tell him Travis has been eating his little lake friends -- so he’s been talking a lot about hockey. “If Seattle had eels, they should be siccing them on San Jose, or Vancouver or whatever.”
Which isn’t exactly a denial. But it makes Travis think of the mascots: the shark in San Jose, that weird whale thing in Vancouver with the mouthful of teeth. “Hey, was your tail a mammal?”
“Was. My tail. A mammal,” Patty repeats slowly. With disdain.
It’s not a bad theory. “Like, whales, sharks, they’re not fish but they live in the water,” Travis explains. “They have fins. You could be a marine mammal.”
“I live in a lake, dumbass, not the ocean.” Patty shoves at his ribcage.
Travis sets his beer out of the danger zone, stretching over Patty’s thighs to reach the coffee table. “You’re a mermaid, I don’t know what the rules apply anymore.” No matter how it works, Travis hasn’t had any trouble believing that part. Patty looks too good to be real, and he smells like the lake, something clean and infinite that reminds Travis of jumping out of his parents’ car and running down the sand to fling himself into the vast clear blue.
“So say you’re some kind of freshwater fish, like a big one, a catfish, or a sturgeon.” He’s just bullshitting now, talking to keep his mouth busy so he doesn’t have to explain his hands on Patty’s thighs. They could thrash away like a 15-pound walleye. He’d have a hard time netting Patty, if Patty was ever willing to bite the hook in the first place. “You’d fry up nice, right? Or would you taste better on the grill?”
Patty smiles a tiny devious bit, like Travis is the one who’s been hooked. “If you want to know what I taste like.” His hand drifts down toward the button of his jorts. “I’ve got a better idea.”
