Archive of Our Own ^beta

In retrospect, he should have called.

When Brent opened the door, Toews was wearing a t-shirt and blue polka-dot boxers. The shirt read:

while(!(succeed=try()));

in plain white print on a black background. He clearly hadn't showered in at least a day, judging from the growth of stubble across his cheek and the way his hair stood up on one side.

Brent sighed the sigh of the deeply put-upon. When Jonny lived with him, he thought he'd managed to train the kid out of this -- taking him to parties, making sure he talked to at least one person of the female persuasion per week (no, Jonny, interviewers didn't count) -- but since he'd been alone, their dear leader had clearly reverted to his cave-nerd roots. It was a good thing that Brent came over when he did. Otherwise the kid might have buried himself in another Battlestar Galactica marathon and no one would have seen him for the rest of the weekend.

Now, Brent personally thought it was kind of cute in a nerdy way to watch Jonny get all excited about lasers and shit, but other teams were starting to make derogatory comments about their dear leader's masculinity, and while Jonny didn't yet seem to care, Brent still thought it might be a good idea to take him out and make sure he was seen in the right places for a Saturday night.

"Dude, what the fuck does your t-shirt say?" Brent peeled his scarf from around his neck and laid the case of beer he'd brought on the floor. Beer was always useful if he was going to try and convince Jonny to do anything, especially if that something involved going out at night. The kid got a whole lot more suggestible after a couple bottles. It was almost a team joke, actually, how well Jonny didn't hold his liquor, like he'd sacrificed booze-handling ability for puck-handling ability or something.

Jonny ran his fingers through his hair and looked down at the shirt in question. "Oh. It means 'if at first you don't succeed, try again'."

"In geek-speak," Brent said flatly, stripping out of his jacket and stepping into the apartment proper. Jonny rolled his eyes.

"In C++, actually. And it has the semicolon, so it's syntactically correct. You wouldn't believe how hard it is--" Brent blinked at him and Jonny broke off midsentence and shrugged. "Yes, in geek-speak if it will make you happy."

"Thrilled." He pushed the beers at Jonny's chest until the kid had no choice but to take them.

"What's this for?" Jonny stared at the booze, then turned and padded into the kitchen. This was yet another Toews thing: he never drank directly from bottles if he could help it. He'd pour things into a glass first. When they'd first met, Brent would rag him about it, but by now he'd given up and just accepted that Jonny was weird.

"All part of my master plan," he informed the furniture of the living room, speaking loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. "I'm gonna get you drunk, haul you to a party with beer bongs and underaged girls, and take pictures I can sell for tons of cash."

Jonny poked his head back around the corner, wrinkling his nose with disdain. "Lame, man. Plus it's already been done, so no points for creativity."

"In that case, I'll take you to a party with underaged boys and apple bongs instead."

A popping sound from the kitchen and Jonny came back out and handed him a glass and a bottle with the top gone. "I don't do boys. And I think that thing at Sharpie's two weeks ago put me off apples for life."

"I thought we all agreed never to talk about that again."

"Hey, you were the one who brought it up, man."

"True. And you're still coming out to parties with me tonight, so go take a fucking shower or you'll scare off all the chicks."

Jonny squinted narrowly at him. "You always say I scare off all the chicks anyway."

"Because you do." Brent punched him good-naturedly in the shoulder. "It's your sparkling personality." Jonny scowled at him. He'd finished the first beer, so Brent stole his glass and headed for the fridge for more. "And the way you smile so often."

"I do smile at chicks." Jonny had followed him and was leaning against the doorframe watching. "I just can't go out with you tonight."

"Why, you already got a date?"

"Sorta." The kid wasn't meeting his eyes.

"Sorta yes or sorta 'I'm bullshitting Seabs who only has my best interests at heart'?"

"Sorta. I'm -- I'm meeting a group of people."

Something still wasn't right. "Where?"

A trapped look flashed across the kid's face, and he sighed the way he only did when he'd been caught out. Brent had lived with him for a year. He didn't really know why Jonny still tried to hide things from him. It was one of the mysteries of the universe.

"Online."

"Uh huh."

"Look, I promised my Warcraft guild I'd lead an instance for them. I'm the main tank, so there's no one to replace me if I punk out."

And Jonny never punked out if he could help it when he'd promised someone that he'd lead. This was going to take more than booze to solve.

"If I let you off the hook this week, you have to swear you'll come with us next week." He and Sharpie had already planned an epic post-game bender for Saturday night of the next weekend, which the team would be spending in Vegas as they played on the road.

"Deal." Brent decided he could be generous and ignore the lack of enthusiasm in the kid's voice. It was for his own good, after all.

"I'll let you get back to your--" he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the living room, "-- thing, then."

"Alright," said Jonny, and glanced at the fridge with the air of someone who has just signed his own death warrant.

Brent considered this as he pulled his jacket and scarf back on. Jonny clearly needed to relax. Maybe he'd call Kaner later that night and send him over with his own brand of relaxant. Jonny would need someone to distract him from his computer by that time anyway. Too much screentime was bad for his eyes. Brent smiled to himself. He was the best ex-housemate ever.

*

"It's open," the intercom shouted.

Pat Kane smiled and let himself inside, ditching his things in the entryway before heading for the living room. Jonny was right where he'd expected, sacked out on the couch wearing a headset and microphone, with his laptop next to a bag of Doritos and five cans of Red Bull.

"So, I see you don't plan to sleep for the next few days," Pat said, leaning over the back of the couch and clearing a space for himself beside the Doritos.

Jonny laughed. "No," he said, not looking up from the laptop. On the screen, a dwarf wielding a stupidly large sword hacked away at a tall sorcerer amidst a shower of lights. "Give me about three minutes, eh? I need to get done with this guy."

Pat nodded and settled in on the couch, propping his feet up on the coffee table and peering over Jonny's shoulder to watch the battle.

"Somebody needs to grab those adds before they aggro to me,” Jonny said into his headset, frantically mashing keys. Kaner was used to this too: sometimes Jonny spoke to the computer in code, and seemed to get really frustrated about it.

"Heal please," Jonny said. A pause. "Guys, quit fucking around, heal me or we wipe." Another minute of flashing swords, and the screen exploded with light effects.

"You done?" Kaner popped the tab on one of the Red Bulls.

"Yeah. You know, Seabs left beer in the fridge if you want some."

"I'm good. He called me, you know."

"About me?" Since the game was over, Jonny seemed to relax, bleeding back into the cushions of the couch like he no longer had the willpower to remain upright.

"Yeah. Wanted me to get you out of the house or something." They both took a swig of their drinks.

"Well, you tried your best." Jonny cracked a grin and Kaner rolled his eyes.

"Sure I did. You up for guitar hero?"

"I should rat you out to Seabs as a dirty enabler." Jonny got up and switched on the Playstation, tossing a controller in the direction of the couch and keeping the other for himself. "How am I ever supposed to get a social life with you around?"

"Yeah, your life is hard." Kaner picked up his controller and settled it across his lap.

"Indeed. So, best of five, and we tell Seabs we went out and picked up chicks or some shit?"

"No, man. We tell Seabs I tried but couldn't get you smashed enough to comply, and then he supplies us both with more booze the next time he gets bright ideas about your sex life."

"Awesome," and Jonny mashed the button for Dragonforce in the game.

*

Don't get it wrong, Jonathan Toews was one of the future superstars of the game and Dave Bolland spent a lot of time studying him to try and figure out how to improve, but Dave would be the first to admit he didn't understand the man.

"What am I doing wrong here?" he growled, barely managing not to hurl his stick at the damn target. Accuracy drills sucked balls on any number of levels, and while Toews seemed to like them, they were presently the bane of Dave's existence.

Toews looked away from where he and Kaner were practicing passes on their off hands, and promptly got nailed in the back of the shin for his troubles.

"Fuck you, Kaner," he yelled over his shoulder, heading over and slicing to a stop in front of Dave. "Here, show me your shot again?"

Knowing that both Toews and Kane were watching did nothing to improve his accuracy. After his second miss, Kaner turned away to skate his own drills, but Toews nodded understandingly. "It's your torque," he said, imitating the motion of Dave's swing with his own shoulders. "You're getting the power there, but you're getting too much torsion through your middle swing. It translates to lift and too much spin instead of to velocity."

"Thank you Dr. Strangelove," Seabrook said, skating backward as he passed them. "He means relax your shoulders when you follow through, and it'll solve your problems."

"That's what I said." Jonny frowned and Seabs made another pass by them just to butt him in the chest with the end of the stick.

"No, you babbled Klingon or some shit at him, but I distinctly remember you not mentioning shoulders."

Jonny shrugged and turned back to him. "Yeah, relaxing will fix your problem. You could stand to straighten that elbow a bit too, give you less pivot and more control."

Dave's next three swings all landed fairly near the target, so Toews smacked him on the helmet and glided off to steal the puck back from Kaner. Dave wondered, watching them, whether he'd have to figure out Tazer's Klingon or whatever the fuck before he could manage to shoot like the man. Kaner seemed to get by without worrying about that sort of thing, but then, Kaner was currently holding one end of his mouth guard in his teeth and trying to touch his nose with the other, cross-eyed, so maybe Dave didn't want to imitate him too closely either.

"Bolland! Get your head on the ice and quit screwing around," the coach interrupted his thoughts and his staring at Toews.

"It's okay, dude." Havlat swept by and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling Dave around to face away from where the others were practicing. "The crush on Tazer's cute, but you really shouldn't stare so much. Don't want to be too -- ow, hey, okay I'm sorry I, ow, bitch. Okay, that does it, now you're just asking for it."

Practice ended in a brawl, which at least meant that Dave didn't have to shoot any more of the goddamn accuracy targets for a while.

*

"So you guys must make a lot of money, playing professional like?" the girl in the green tank top slurred. Jesus, she had great tits. Tits like that and Maker's Mark whiskey were clearly heaven's gift to horny hockey players, and Niklas wasn't about to turn away from what was obviously God's will.

"Well --"

"No, eh. Not really," Jonny interrupted, Canadian accent thicker than usual. "I mean, not in comparison to wossisname from Ottawa, the one who was Canada Cup in curling. Tosser. Never even gets hit, and they still pay him better than us."

Nik could have socked him. The girl with the tremendous tits looked like she'd smelled something bad and drifted quickly away to attach herself to Sharpie, who raised an eyebrow at Nik over her head, as if to say are you out of your mind to let this one get away, these tits are clearly heaven's gift to horny hockey players, what were you thinking?

Nik glared at Sharpie, then cut his eyes quickly towards Toews, to let Sharpie know exactly who was the crazy one here. Sharpie cracked up, snorting into his Sam Adams and trying to muffle it so the girl didn't think he was laughing at her.

"What the hell, man." It was common knowledge that Tazer was awful with girls, which is why sometimes Seabs picked them up for him and then forbade Jonny to talk to them while they made out, because if anyone could ruin a sure thing it was Tazer. Nik wasn't sure why Tazer was cockblocking him tonight, though. Usually Toews was considerate about the fact that he was girl-kryptonite, and stayed clear enough away when Nik or even Kaner was trying to hook up (okay, sometimes not Kaner, but those two had a weird relationship anyway, and Kaner never seemed to mind when Jonny scared off his latest potential girl).

Toews shrugged. "She was with Avery the last time we were here."

"Dude, I don't care if she was with Santa the last time you were here. I was gonna get laid tonight. Why did you have to fuck with that?" Nik wasn't pouting, not a bit.

Toews frowned at him in the way that usually meant he was being dense. "Avery, eh," he said. "Avery, you know. The one with every disease known to man, and some we haven't got gram stains for yet." He shrugged again, a very particular gesture that Nik was beginning to associate with Canadians, and was beginning to hate. "You can find another girl, you know, and this way we don't have to lose you eight games while you get the clap straightened out."

"You don't care if Sharpie hooks up with her," Nik pointed out. "And what the hell's a gram stain?"

"A gram stain," said Jonny, enunciating carefully with the somber wisdom of the truly sloshed, "Is where you use a day... a d --" Jonny frowned and tilted his head to the side, "-- a coloring agent to make muh... mi-cro-bi-al cell walls appear in a microscope." He pulled a napkin over and began drawing a diagram of what looked like a bunch of circles mating with a bunch of sticks.

"That's nice," said Nik quickly, surreptitiously scoping out the brunette in the corner. "I don't really care."

"This is important," Jonny insisted grandly. "This is the shape of medical progress."

"And that, my friend, is the shape of the hottest piece of ass in this bar."

"But --"

"Oh no. You owe me this. Go bother Kaner with your microbes and shit." He left Tazer looking rather forlorn and staring at his napkin diagram, but he did manage to talk the brunette back to his hotel room, so on the whole Nik counted it a win. She didn't even have Avery gram-whatsits, which Nik came to regard as an added bonus. He was still mad at Tazer, though. Fucking cockblocker.

*

It took Khabby a month of dedicated work to find a comic collector who was also a Blackhawks fan, explain the situation to him, and convince him to help out. It also took a promise of season tickets in a private club-level box for the next five years, and a special skating session for the guy's son with Kaner, who was the kid's favorite player. In the end, though, after extensive negotiations, the Blackhawks were the proud owners of a copy of Captain America, Issue #1, a mint condition comic carefully encased in a clear protective shell.

With that, and $15 worth of archival tape that Buff bought on eBay, the team put together Jonathan Toews's re-signing gift. The tape went onto the hard protective shell, so as not to damage the actual book, and after fifteen minutes of arguments over who had the neatest handwriting, Khabby snatched the marker and did it himself.

They stashed it carefully in his locker while Toews was in the showers, propped up on a stack of fluffy towels.

Jonny emerged and shook the water out of his hair like a dog drying off after running through a sprinkler. He opened the locker to hang up his towel and froze for a moment, then reached for the gift with hands shaking so badly that Khabby was a little worried he might pass out. It would be the Blackhawks' kind of luck, to give their captain a concussion because he was so surprised by a comic book.

"Tazer?" said Kaner, hovering nearby.

"It's. You guys. I -- you got me -- you got me the first -- how did you even find one, this is--." Jonny blinked rapidly and rubbed the back of his hand across his nose, hard.

Kaner grinned, proud of his ingenuity. Captain America had been his idea, though Sharpie was the one who suggested the modifications. "I know, right?" Kaner said. "I mean, when I re-signed they just got me a car. Lucky bastard."

"Thanks," said Tazer in a very small voice, and the locker room went unnaturally quiet as he stared down at the book for a moment, then looked up and met Khabby's smile. "Thanks," he repeated, expression lost somewhere in the rocky territory between grateful and overwhelmed. Khabby took pity on him.

"Well, men," he said, turning to face the rest of the team, "it seems that despite our best efforts we were not successful in getting rid of our captain. Now we have to put up with him for another three years." In the corner of his eye, Kaner slid a hand onto Jonny's shoulder, and he could see the kids grinning at each other, their foreheads so close they were practically touching. Seabs edged closer to them, and Jonny turned a fraction to beam at him.

"Damn," Burrish deadpanned. "However will we survive."

"I think this calls for alcohol," Sharpie declared, echoed by a roar of approval from the team. "There's a beer bong out there with my name on it."

The concrete floors made the riot of noise even louder than normal, but Khabby could hear Tazer's voice, quiet, saying, "The first Captain America, you guys. I don't even -- I don't--," and Seabs saying, "I'm glad you liked it. Thank Khabby when you get a chance, he was the one who convinced the collector guy to give it to us," and Kaner saying, "Come on, the guys'll want to party. Maybe Sharpie'll even find you a girl."

The locker room door closed behind Khabby with Tazer still inside, and the last thing he heard was Jonny just repeating "I can't believe, I mean you guys--", which made all the trouble worth it.

*

She was gorgeous, in that glasses-and-effortlessly-messy-hair way. Too bad Kris had known since he laid eyes on her that she was way out of his league. The t-shirt that said Shirt of Hotness: +2 Cha, -4 Int to opponents right across her tits had been his first clue. Still, he could try. " -- so I was like, Fire proton torpedoes Scotty and get me outta here, and the ref never even knew who'd taken him down."

The girl raised one perfectly-shaped eyebrow above her glasses. "Actually, proton torpedoes come from Star Wars. Photon torpedoes are --"

"-- Star Trek, which is where Scotty comes from," Tazer finished for her. Kris sighed inwardly. He'd known that he hadn't stood a chance, but now that Tazer was here he could practically hear the hammer pounding nails into the coffin of his shot at getting laid tonight.

The girl turned and stared at Jonny like she'd never seen a man before. "Yeah," she said, and blinked like she was wondering what species he was. Kris wondered if it was too late to go get Seabs to rescue them both.

"I like your shirt," said Jonny, shy. "It's clever. And the text is well-placed, I mean, not that I was staring at your chest..." He was turning redder by the syllable.

The hot chick blinked at him some more.

"Do you. Um. Do you play RPGs then?" Tazer could barely get a sentence out, and Kris was embarrassed on his behalf.

"Sorry, he's --" he started, thinking to rescue Jonny from his own social ineptitude, but she interrupted.

"Shadowrun," she said, throwing the word across the conversation like a gauntlet laid down, and it belatedly occurred to Kris that perhaps this was some arcane geek mating ritual that he had failed completely to understand, because Jonny lit up like she'd said the right secret password or something.

"Oh yeah? What character?"

She squinted narrowly, measuring him up. The bartender tapped her on the shoulder, and she ordered a straight Scotch (really? Kris wondered) before turning back to them. "I'm a decker," she said at last, and it sounded like a foreign language to Kris but maybe this meant something to Jonny, because they both started babbling at each other at the same time about wetgear and computers and GMs and rocks falling and people dying and a place or maybe a thing called the Net.

When the barkeep came back with her straight Scotch (which she knocked back with a speed that would do an Irishman proud), Kris went ahead and ordered a stiff drink of his own. He'd been beaten out for a girl by Jonny, Mr. Socially Inept himself. Kill him now and get it over with, Kris was done.

"Hey man," said Kaner, coming over and throwing a commiserating arm over his shoulder, "Don't let it get you down, happens to the best of us sometimes."

"I got beaten out by Tazer," Kris said, trying through the fog of the Scotch to convey the full force of his humiliation.

"It's okay. She's a geek, man. They seek out their own."

"By Tazer." Kaner was failing to properly appreciate the depths of his shame.

"Yes. And for the next three or four weeks, he'll be less hormonal on the ice. Practices will be easy. The media will be magically placated." Kaner was using words like 'placated'. Clearly Jonny had infected him. "He'll be a demon when he plays because he'll be too over the moon to out-think himself like he always does. It's okay, dude." Kaner only just stopped Kris from banging his head against the bar in frustration. "It's okay. Come on, we'll go toke one up outside and it'll all look better in the morning."

Kaner always had the best pot, so that wasn't an invitation Kris was about to turn down. As they headed for the side door of the bar, they passed Jonny and the chick, who was still incredibly hot, even though Kris was now aware of her perfidous liking for weirdos like his captain. "-- then the GM gave the fucking mob a Vorpal Blade, I mean how unfair is that? --" she was saying, hands waving in all directions while Jonny nodded enthusiastically.

"Pot," said Pat, definitive, and Kris diverted his attention from the sad state of his social life to the excellent quality bud that he was about to smoke. Besides, his cannabis-clouded mind reasoned lazily a quarter-hour later, everyone knew Jonny was a freak of nature. Maybe he deserved a girl just this once who seemed to speak his language. Just this once, though. If it became a habit, Kris would have to beat some manners into the little dork.

"Oh my god!" The door burst open to reveal said dork, who ran up to Kaner and shook him by the shirt. "What if she wants me to go home with her? What if I have to figure out whether to go to her house or mine, what do I do?"

"Dude." Kaner knocked the ash off his joint, careful not to set Jonny on fire in the process. "Breathe. What's the first thing you said to her?"

Jonny frowned at him. "That photon torpedoes were from Star Trek?"

"Yes." Kaner seemed to think that this settled the matter, but Jonny was looking increasingly panicked. "Look, you introduced yourself like that, and there's still even a remote chance that she wants to sleep with you. Trust me, it won't matter whose house you go to, she'll be cool. If she can put up with your D&D fixation, you're not going to scare her off by asking where she'd rather go."

"Huh." Kris was pretty sure that this had never occurred to Jonny, which went far towards explaining how often he didn't manage to get laid. "You think so?"

"Yes. Now go back in there and stop worrying."

"Okay," said Tazer meekly and went back inside. Kaner puffed thoughtfully at his joint and knocked the ash off again.

"Come on, man, there are chicks in there for both of us, we just have to find them."

"Indeed," Kris agreed, mellow, and they headed back in together just in time to see Tazer walking toward the front door with his female nerd-clone in tow. Jonny flashed them a hopeful thumbs up, which Kaner returned with rather more enthusiasm than Kris thought necessary.

"Go go gadget geekboy," Kaner muttered, and Kris snorted.

"What would he do without us?"

"He'd be a geek," said Kaner smiling, not bothering to disguise the fondness in his voice. "Just like now. Only he'd get laid less often."

"Teased less often." Kris sipped thoughtfully at his drink.

"Punched less often."

"Drilled into the ice and sat on less often. In short, his life would be one thousand percent more boring." They both winced when Jonny walked into the doorpost because he'd been watching the chick instead of where he was going. "He owes us," Kris decided.

"Yeah," Kaner said gently, and both of them grinned in the direction of the door. "I think he owes us a lot."