Vampire!Kaner, part 2: my offering to the pagan hockey gods. 4250 words.
So, I’d been working a little bit on this, trying to get out of my disastrous block on the big wip, and then out of the blue I started to get likes and reblogs on the first vampire!kaner, which can be found here.
I think ultimately it’s a 20K fic (or 30 or 40, I’m hopeless at estimating) so this doesn’t have any real resolution, just some seeds planted for further development. Takes place a month after the first part (with the gifs). (Unbeta’d, barely proofread, just trying to get it up tonight. Thx to @toes-eh for enthusiasm and encouragement!)
Jon’s just finished hanging his suit up and is thinking about knocking on the door between their rooms when he hears Patrick through the wall. He frowns; either this hotel sucks (in which case he’s going to request another room because he’s not going to be kept awake by some random guest’s TV on his other side when he’s got to face the fucking Blues tomorrow) or Patrick’s voice is raised.
That’s weird, even alarming; Patrick never yells, other than on the bench during a game. Jon wishes he would, sometimes; the icy quiet when he’s pissed is way worse. One of the things that improved their relationship immeasurably, and Jon wishes it hadn’t taken him so long to figure out, is that Jon lets him be when it’s necessary; lets him stew because often that’s how he’s figuring out what he’s mad about. And then Jon will touch him somehow--sit too close or punch his shoulder then leave his hand there--and say, “You ready to tell me how much I suck yet?”
And Patrick will smile reluctantly, and Jon can see the tension ease out of him.
So to hear him now, if not exactly yelling, then certainly talking to someone with his voice raised in frustration, is unusual. Jon listens at the door for a few seconds to make sure no one else is in there, then knocks.
Patrick pulls it open, face flushed and hair standing up hilariously like he’s been gripping it with a fist. He frowns at Jon, who holds his hands up like ‘don’t mind me, finish what you’re doing.’ He grabs the USAToday sports section and sits in the corner armchair.
“But I can’t guarantee that someone will be there from 8 to 5 to sign for it! It’s a freaking sports arena! Like, there’ll probably be janitors or whoever, but it’s a Sunday, the secretaries aren’t working then!”
Jon can tell that Patrick’s been saying the same thing for awhile. “They’ve said there’s a secure package drop, why can’t you just leave it there? We’ll be there by 3:00 to pick it up, and I know the styro coolant lasts for 12 hours. You fucking advertise that!”
Patrick listens, shaking his head the whole time. “I honestly can’t believe you’re being so--yes, I get that there’s been a policy change, you’ve said that. All right, fine, just cancel the order. Cancel my whole account, I’ll find another company to deal with. Whatever, cancel it.”
He ends the call and throws his phone on the bed. “Motherfucking motherfuckers,” he says bitterly. “It’s all bullshit, it’s all just another way to discriminate but they can hide behind bullshit public health concerns when that’s the most—” Patrick cuts himself off.
“Your next blood delivery?” Jon asks; it’s clear that’s what it’s about, but Jon couldn’t glean what the exact issue was. Patrick’s been dealing with this for over a year, now, and Jon was rarely aware of the mechanisms of supply and delivery. It hadn’t even entered his consciousness, actually, and he supposes now that a lot of work went into being that discreet.
“Yeah, they’re saying that they have to have a contact person’s name when I make the order, and will only deliver it into that person’s hands. It’s like--it’s Sunday at Scottrade, I can’t get a fucking employee’s name and expect them to hang around the loading dock from 8 fucking o’clock in the morning! First of all, that’s fucking ridiculous, and second of all, if we could trust people to keep their mouths shut about this, I’d have it delivered to the fucking hotel.”
“So up to now you’ve been…?” Jon asks. He feels bad that there’s this whole layer of logistics Patrick deals with that he wasn’t even aware of.
“They’ve been okay leaving the cooler at the arena--it’s small, like the size of a shoebox--if no one can sign for it. Stuff comes in for the team all the time--extra compression bandages, another set of blades, whatever--so arena guys working in receiving aren’t going to bat an eye. They just put it aside for us when we arrive. Hotels, though--it’s a lot weirder for a package to come for a guest, and there’s guaranteed to be somebody who’s gonna guess it’s blood.”
Patrick sits on the bed, elbows on knees, and puts his head in his hands. “This is not what I need right now,” he says, muffled.
They’ve got the game tonight in Dallas, then tomorrow night in St Louis. Back-to-back road games are a drag and the schedule this season has been heavy on them. They go back for a homer on Thursday, and then it’s on the the road again for the circus trip, 10 games in 20 days, mostly in the West.
“Are there, uh...a lot of companies? Like, do you have options?”
Patrick doesn’t say anything for a few moments and Jon’s feels a sense of powerlessness rise in him along with a bit of shame at how much Patrick’s been carrying on his own. But...it’s complicated; Erica had told Jon once that he likes people to forget about it. He doesn’t want his need for blood to be central to how he’s perceived, and that’s behind his adamant refusal to go public. The top levels of team and league management know, and the core, but they’ve managed to keep it quiet otherwise.
The pause goes on. Jon can hear a family out in the hallway, the kids racing and making noise despite their mother’s admonitions (which are louder than they are).
Patrick stirs finally. “Yeah, no, don’t worry about it. I got it. Something’ll—”
Jon interrupts. “--Yeah, no, of course I’m worried about it. You can’t just—”
Patrick speaks over him. “--I can, it’s my problem to deal with. I’m not gonna let the team down, if that’s what you’re--I mean, I know it happened that one night, that I wasn’t--that you had to—”
He breaks off, eyes wide from taking a wrong turn into a conversational cul-de-sac. They haven’t talked about it, that game against L.A. when Jon took him in a training room before OT and basically forced him to drink his blood. At first it was just the euphoria of winning and the team celebrating that didn’t allow them a moment of quiet, but then Jon realized Patrick was avoiding him. And then the fact that Patrick was weird about it made Jon feel weird about it, and somehow a month has gone by.
“Hey, it worked then,” Jon says, trying to lighten things up. “Not quite right off the faceoff like you said, but getting it done on our second shift wasn’t too bad.”
Patrick half smiles, and Jon knows he’s remembering that goal, a two on three with Pat streaking down the right wing and Jon barrelling up the middle. He’s sure Doughty was having flashbacks to the 2013 series winning game 5, and he thought for a split second about taking the shot himself. Quick was poised in the middle, ready for either. The Kings were ready, too, already swarming on Patrick before the puck got to him, but then he threaded an impossible pass through six legs, right onto Jon’s stick. It was in the paint by then, a millisecond to being too far, but Patrick had gotten it to him with just enough time to elevate it over Quick’s pad as he frantically slid right.
“Great fucking pass, baby!” he’d screamed into Patrick’s face as Duncs skated up, and Patrick had yelled something back, his face lit up and intense, so alive, the energy thrumming through him.
“Where were you, old man?” he’d said to Duncs, bumping their helmets together.
“Thought I’d give you a chance to end it like you did that other time,” he said.
“I’m just kiddin’, you got it to me from below our blue line, basically.”
“We’re the only 3 who could’ve done that,” Patrick had said. “Makes me almost wish for tied games.”
“Nah,” said Jon as they skated toward the bench, “you’re the only person who could’ve made that pass to me.”
He’d had nine years now of Patrick finding lanes in a shifting chaos of bodies, sending the puck through a minefield of skates and sticks tape to tape, but the sheer brilliance of it could still surprise him. He’d been zoning out in midnight mass this past Christmas Eve when his ears caught the phrase “a miracle like the parting of the Red Sea” and that was exactly it. It was like Patrick had the ability to create these fleeting, ephemeral lanes, like they popped into existence for him at just the right moment for him to send the puck hurtling for a brief stop on a teammate’s stick before hitting the back of the net.
“You’re the only person who would’ve been right where you were supposed to be,” Patrick said before being grabbed by teammates.
Jon looks at him now, sitting on the edge of the bed, the anxiousness relaxed. “Past glories,” Patrick says to him, and Jon replies, “Got a lot of ‘em, you and me.”
He grabs a bottle of water off the minibar, just for something to hold. He knows it’s time to bring it up, to say it, but Patrick’s avoidance makes it hard.
“Look,” he says. “It’s about hockey. It’s about helping each other get it done on ice. If there’s something I can do to make that happen, I’m going to fucking do it, whatever it is. You know that, Pat, you know that’s the most important thing for me. And it’s the same for you, so I don’t get why you—” He stops. “Don’t make it difficult,” he adds after Patrick doesn’t say anything.
That gets a reaction. “Don’t make it difficult?” he says. “Bro, if you think anything about this is easy, then I—”
“--It’s not easy!” Jon interrupts. “It’s not fucking easy, that’s the whole point! We can’t be who we are if there’s anything getting in the way of that. And if you can’t get the...the food you need”--Jon stutters on ‘food’ and wants to kick himself—”then you can’t be the player I need you to be. It’s simple. It’s fucking simple, and if you’d stop—”
“--It’s not fucking simple!” Patrick yells, standing up and getting into Jon’s space.
“I can give 50 ml a day, I looked it up,” Jon shoots back. “A quarter cup. And I don’t know how much you need, but at least it would be something to keep you from looking half dead and fuck you don’t make a joke about that, I get it, all right? I fucking get it. You’re not dead to me, you’re, it’s the same as it always was. It’s the same, Pat. Come on.”
He’s breathing hard, heart pounding. Patrick’s eyes flicker down to his—-neck? and Jon wonders if he can see his pulse.
“How much do you need,” Jon asks quietly. “Just tell me. How much.”
“8 ounces,” Patrick says reluctantly. “Every other day. But—” He hesitates.
“What?” says Jon.
“That’s of the fake stuff. Or the animal, but I--I don’t drink that. I—” He shakes his head.
“So,” Jon says, “it might be less with real--with it from me?”
“I don’t know. There isn’t information out there about that. It’s so--it’s not done, Jon. It’s the first thing they tell you. There’s a movement to make it a federal crime. Probably people do, with their husbands and wives or whatever, but nobody admits to it.” He pauses. “If you’re asking me what I think, though, yeah. I think it’s less with live…”
He cuts himself off and looks away, and Jon hasn’t spent as much time with Patrick as he has since 2007 without learning to read him.
“So, anyway,” Patrick starts, clearly trying to change the subject, but Jon’s not having it.
He finishes Patrick’s sentence. “It’s less with live blood,” he says. “Yeah, that makes sense. It’s why eating an orange is better than drinking orange kool-aid. After you had mine, what was it like? How long before you had to...eat?”
Jon’s uncertainty with the terminology makes it awkward again, but the word he’s heard in movies, ‘feed,’ strikes him as gross, disrespectful.
Patrick turns away and walks to the window. He puts his palms against it, looking out over the Dallas skyline. Jon gives him a few moments; his silence is its own answer. And there’s something—unsettling about that that has Jon’s heartrate increasing again, but in an entirely different way.
Jon watches him, silhouetted in the bright, grey light of an overcast day. His shoulders are hulking, bigger than Jon’s, he thinks. His legs are slim in his tailored suit trousers, but bowed in their characteristic way that’s true even on ice. Jon thinks that’s part of why he’s so hard to knock off the puck, that and his control over his edges, his unpredictability, his insane dexterity with his stick.
His hair in silhouette is...dumb, but that’s as much a part of him as his dimples. Even his sisters don’t bother to harass him about it anymore. Jon once listened to a drunk Jackie tell him that they think he does it on purpose to weed out the girls that only want to hook up with him for superficial reasons. “That’s stupid on so many levels,” Jon had said, more than a little trashed himself, and Jackie had said, “Welcome to life with Patty.”
“It was awhile,” Patrick says, and Jon jolts back to the conversation. Oh, right, how long it lasted, that time with Jon’s blood.
“Awhile, meaning…?” he asks carefully. He has no context for any of this.
“More than two days. And...it felt different, I had more...energy, I guess, or just more…” He shrugs. “After it went on for awhile, I tried to remember how much I’d taken from you. It was, at the time it was—” He stops. “Pretty overwhelming. But I’ve tried to remember and I think it was more than what you said, 50 ml. But less than 100. I don’t know.”
He turns around. “I’m sorry I wouldn’t, like, talk about it. But I’ve wondered, what was the effect on you? I remember you didn’t go to optional skate.”
Jon can’t help it; he flushes in embarrassment as the memory of it crashes over him: the drowning pleasure, his pulse in his ears, his cock filling with blood as if it were called by the siren song of Pat’s warm, sucking mouth.
But he knows that isn’t what Patrick means. “Uh, nothing. I made sure to hydrate more, maybe. But it was like any OT, and the day after was...just normal. That wasn’t why I skipped skate.”
Patrick nods. He’s got the light behind him, so Jon can’t really read his expression, but he’s seeing Jon’s, whatever’s there. Jon locks it all down, everything that happened in what was probably no more than ten seconds. He’s determined that it won’t happen again, that knowing it’s a possibility will allow him to keep control. The last thing he--they--need is another reason to make it weird, and boners would do that more than anything Jon can think of.
Jon clears his throat and projects confidence. “There wasn’t any bad effect, so you can take that off the table as a reason against it. And maybe the fact that it lasted longer means that you can take less from me for the same result. Like, 50 ml. We could try it. We should try it, you owe it to me to try it.”
“I owe it to you,” Patrick repeats, frowning.
“To me as captain, to the team, to the fans, to the game. To hockey. If you can be your best, you should. Our whole lives have been about doing what it took to be the best; how is this any different?”
Jon knows it isn’t that simple, even as he’s saying it, but it’s all true nonetheless. There’s actually nothing more important to him than Patrick being Kaner, number 88, Showtime, Conn Smythe winner, Cup-goal-scorer PKane.
“We could do it tonight, after the game,” Jon says. “Then I’d have the night to, whatever, rejuvenate. And you’d be good for the Blues, and then have four days at home to figure out all the—” He gestures at Patrick’s phone. “Ordering and all that.”
He can see Patrick thinking it through, and takes a few steps to punch his shoulder for extra motivation. Or just to touch him. Jon’s not sure, he’s never sure.
“Maybe,” is all Patrick will give him, but it seems to be more on the positive side than not.
*****
The game’s about 70% a clusterfuck, but they pull it off in OT, a classic Kane-to-Panarin one-timer from the top of the left circle, cool as can be. Jon wonders how many times it’ll have to happen exactly like that for teams to start adjusting their defense.
A few of the core go out for drinks with Sharpy, though not Patrick, and when Jon gets back to his room he can tell he rushed through his post-game cool down. His thighs are stiff, and he can’t afford that with three hours on a plane tomorrow and the certain prospect of being whomped on by the Blues. He’s not going to go up to the hotel’s gym, that’s for sure, so he does half yoga-half pilates, at double intensity to get a sweat up.
He’s almost done when he hears the tap on the adjoining door. “Open,” he calls out, and Patrick comes in.
“Give me five,” he says, pushing through the reps.
Patrick prowls around the room, looking in the closet, moving the ice bucket, closing the drapes. Jon’s about to suggest that he do some yoga, too, if he’s still this wired.
“You’re making me nervous,” he says instead. “Stop.”
“Hurry up,” Patrick says. “Also, this room smells like a gym now.”
“You should be used to it.”
“I know, I lived it for five years. No idea how I didn’t kill you.”
“Fuck off,” Jon pants. “I know what you mean, though.”
“Sometimes I think, if we’re still friends after all that…”
Patrick doesn’t finish the thought, but Jon does in his head. If they’re still friends after all that, there’s nothing that could happen that’s worse. Given what’s about to transpire, Jon hopes that’s true.
He collapses on the towel he laid on the floor; the t-shirt he’d planned to sleep in is stuck to his chest. He overdid it a bit, he thinks, but exercise always relaxes him, and he’d come out of that game more tense than it warranted. “Get me two handtowels,” he orders Patrick. “And a water.”
He’s sitting up when Patrick comes out, and he can see the moment when Pat’s about to throw the towels and then just...freezes. Jon gets to his feet, and he doesn’t know if he makes a move or Patrick does, but suddenly they’re a hand’s-width apart. And there’s this...awareness, or something, Jon doesn’t even know what to call it; there’s this awareness that’s rolling in like a thunderstorm and he can almost feel the ozone in the air, crackling. He’s still breathing fast, and Patrick isn’t breathing at all, but his cheeks are flushed pink.
“Are you—” he starts to say, but Patrick’s “Shut up” cuts him off, and he stands there, motionless, as Pat leans in. He remembers the bite, how it stung before it was overridden with the surge of intense pleasure, and he braces himself for that: both the pain and the even bigger stun of its opposite.
He realizes his hands are on Patrick’s shoulders when he undergoes almost a full-body shudder, and it takes him a few seconds to realize that Patrick’s breath on the skin below his carotid is not a prelude to being pierced. It’s--Patrick’s tongue is--he’s licking Jon, from his collarbone up to the skin behind his ear. He’s lapping at the skin at Jon’s hairline, making little sounds, before pushing him around, unresisting, and tongueing the skin of his neck, slow and luxurious, like Patrick wants to make it last.
“Fuck,” Patrick’s whispering as he slows, “Jesus. Jonny, I don’t—”
“You don’t have to stop,” Jon murmurs. He’s not even thinking about how he has no idea what’s going on; he’s just carried along on whatever this is, content with being carried along. Patrick’s a solid, warm wall against his back, his mouth all Jon wants, just more of it.
He drifts, until “Babe,” he hears. “Jonny. Are you—?”
“‘M’fine,” he slurs. “Do it. Now. Have you done it? Because I want--do it, drink it. Me. Take it.”
And then his back arches against it, the sharp pain that’s almost immediately damped by the rolling waves of pleasure that are like--if your neck could have an orgasm, rippling up the spine and then out to spark the tip of each nerve, that’s what it’s like, Jon thinks crazily. Except it’s lighting up his whole body, and—
It’s over so quickly that Jon’s flooded with want and desperation, bereft. Patrick’s holding him away from his body, taking almost all Jon’s weight because he just wants back where he was.
“Jon,” he’s murmuring, “Jonny. It’s done, it’s over, it’s okay, are you okay? Are you—”
He turns Jon around, zero resistance as if he’s inanimate, and peers fiercely into his face. “You gotta talk to me, Jonny, you gotta tell me if you’re—”
“I’m fine,” Jon says again. “Did you even--is it over?”
“It’s over, babe, it’s over and it was—”
Jon falls into him and Patrick catches him up into a tight hold. It’s then that Jon’s conscious of his erection, swollen hard against Patrick’s abdomen.
Jon knows he should be more worried about that, more embarrassed, but right now all there is are Patrick’s arms and his voice telling him it was good.
“I think—” he hears himself say after awhile, “I think it was better than last time.”
“Yeah?” says Patrick. Jon can hear the smile. “Maybe. They were both good. I’m gonna get you on the bed now, okay? And then you’re gonna drink some water and I don’t want you to fall asleep ‘til you talk to me.” And Jon hears something different in his voice, then, a seriousness, maybe even fear, so he tries to pull himself together.
“I’m okay,” he says, striving as hard as he can to sound normal. His head hits the pillow; Patrick’s busy getting the sheets untucked so he can cover Jon up. Jon catalogs his body: he’s feeling more himself by the second, everything coming back online. It’s only the ache of his cock, still hard, that feels off.
He does deep breathing for the few seconds Patrick’s getting the water bottles from the mini-fridge, and when he takes one he’s back to almost his normal alertness, he thinks.
“I’m fine,” Jon says for the third time. Patrick looks so alive--almost glowing, eyes bright--but that just puts his anxious expression into sharper relief. “I’m good. It just--I guess it just takes me a few minutes to adjust back to--uh. To adjust. But it’s okay, you don’t need to worry.”
He realizes Patrick’s taken one of his hands, and he squeezes it. Pat’s sitting right up next to him, like they’re squished on the bench, and Jon’s glad of it. He’s maybe a little cold, and Patrick drags up the blankets. He hands him a water bottle and says, “Drink it all.”
“So you got it fine?” Jon asks, aware that it’s a dumb question, but it’s not like he has a roadmap for conversations like this. “50 ml or whatever?”
Patrick nods. “Yeah. I mean, thanks, bud.” He knocks Jon’s shoulder, gently, like he’d do to a child. He chews on his lip, and Jon can see that he’s about to say something significant. “What was weird was that—your sweat. I could--smell it, like it was, like it was—” He takes a breath and blows it out. “Like it was something I wanted. Like it was something I had to have. So, I’m sorry for that, how weird it was. I just--I don’t know. I. It was like blood for me, Jon, I don’t know why, but.”
Jon’s thrown back to the feel of it, Patrick’s breath against his skin, cooling in its sweat except for the warm pathways of Pat’s tongue, rough and luxurious. The sense Jon got of Patrick’s hunger, devouring what Jon had to give him--he feels his cock twitch with a surge of arousal and lifts his knees so the sheet isn’t outlining every inch of it. This uneasy mix of sexual connection and the caretaking you’d give to a buddy--that they’ve given to each other countless times over the years--is unsettling and Jon wants to be alone. Maybe to stroke off to ease the ache in his balls, maybe just to go to sleep and let time de-escalate the intensity between them.
“It’ll be okay,” he says. “Like you said, we’ve been through the worst.”
“This is a whole new thing,” Patrick says.
“It’ll be okay. As long as you’re good for the game tomorrow. That’s the main thing, right? That’s the main thing.”
“Right,” Patrick says, and he ruffles Jon’s hair roughly before getting up, but after he’s gone, adjoining door clicked shut, Jon can’t escape the feeling that there’s something Patrick isn’t telling him.
