#1119

Pat's not retired. But he's also not playing. And while he has friends on several teams... There's only one TK. No matter how much that yappy Zegras kid tries to make himself be just as fucking annoying, that doesn't make him anything to Pat.

Not even by slipping into Pat's DMs (seriously, what the fuck?) and sending him some stupid song. Pat's pretty sure Zegras isn't hitting on him, isn't telling Pat that he's the man Zegras needs, but... Pat still sends him the middle finger emoji and tells him to tell it to Drysdale - he may not be playing, but he still watches some games. Flyers games, mostly. Almost exclusively.

Pat then sees some tweet explaining the song and... it doesn't mean anything, him adding it to his playlist even though it's not his kind of song. It doesn't mean what the people on the internet think it means.

Part of him is still a Flyer, sure. But mostly, a large part of him still thinks about TK and his stupid face. Not that he'd admit that. He doesn't even text Teeks - there's no point, TK's phone is rarely on him anyway. And they had their shot. Sort of. Almost. Not quite.

Still, the day after game six, Pat gets on a damn plane. Hat pulled down over his greasy hair, wearing boring clothes. He's unrecognizable. Sleeps through most of the air time, startles awake when he lands on somewhat familiar soil.

Customs sucks more than it did when he still played, but he manages to get through that without insulting anyone too obviously.

The Uber takes too long, and the driver keeps trying to fucking talk to him. Pat mutters something about visiting friends and then tries not to vibrate out of his skin until he steps out of the car.

It's even worse when he rings the doorbell to a place that he barely even recognizes, and it's straight up terrifying when the door starts to open.

"Hi, what..."

When TK goes quiet, Pat smirks.

"Go Flyers."