In the morning, Noah will make him breakfast, he’s good at that, and then Noah will send Blake on his way.
It’s good enough.
#
The playoffs aren’t going well for the Ravens. They only barely managed to get into their wildcard spot, ended up playing against the Grizzlies, and they absolutely destroyed them in their first game.
Shutout for the Grizzlies, the final score 3-0.
The second one didn’t go much better, again, they played in Boston, again, they lost, this time 5-2.
The third one was a little closer, but they still didn’t manage a win, walked down the tunnel after a 4-3 loss, quiet, knowing that they had to win the next one or it’d be over. After three losses, the faces in the locker room are stony. They’re missing Jacob, one of their D-men is injured and the guys the Ravens traded for before the deadline don’t really fit into the lineup. It’s a fucking disaster. Elliot goes and talks to Andreas, who looks like he’s given up on life, not sure afterwards if it helped or if he made everything worse.
They need to win four times, and it’s not impossible, but it’s not exactly realistic either. Natalie looked up the stats for him when he told her exactly that over breakfast yesterday, to see if any team had ever pulled this off before, and the answer was yes, it’s happened before, but Elliot didn’t ask how often, only kissed the top of her head and left to contemplate whether drowning himself in the shower would be preferable to playing another game against the Grizzles.
They’re on home ice for Game 4, but it’s worth little when the crowd goes dead silent after the Grizzlies’ first goal early in the first. Elliot manages to tie it up, but only halfway through the third.
They go into overtime.
They lose the game and Elliot wants to lie down on the ice and never get up again, but he doesn’t get to.
He hugs Swanson, even though they usually only bump helmets. He tries to ignore the Grizzlies who are celebrating at the other end of the ice. They all want to get the fuck off the ice and lick their wounds, but Jacob isn’t here and someone’s going to have to start the handshake line. Andreas is standing next to him, still looking totally defeated, and Elliot can’t look at him anymore, so he goes, on autopilot, and skates to the middle of the ice.
The Grizzlies’ captain, Nikolai Ivanov, doesn’t keep him waiting, detaches himself from his teammates, who are a little slower to follow, and comes to shake Elliot’s hand.
“Good game,” Elliot says. He remembers that part from last year.
Ivanov nods, serious, pulls him in a little, pats his back. “Well done,” he says and Elliot isn’t sure if they did anything well, but this is not the time to correct Ivanov on that. “Was hard without Desjardins.”
Elliot nods, keeps going when Ivanov lets him go, and somehow makes it through that handshake line. He waits until everyone’s done and they all follow him to the middle of the ice and they raise their sticks for whoever stuck around until the very end.
On the way off the ice, Elliot hands his stick to a kid who’s wearing his jersey, because maybe today doesn’t have to be total disappointment for everyone.
Jacob is waiting for them in the locker room and he pats Elliot’s back as he passes, says, “Well done,” and once again Elliot isn’t sure which playoff series Jacob has been watching, but they didn’t do a single fucking thing well.
Elliot’s face must be telling Jacob exactly what he was thinking, because Jacob smiles a little.
“You,” Jacob says. “You did well.”
Elliot isn’t too convinced, but shuffles away to his stall in silence.
It’s late when he leaves the arena that night. Thankfully he’s not too far away from home. He takes a cab, because he can’t bring himself to go on the Subway. He shares it with Adam, drops him off at his girlfriend’s apartment, and then heads home. He told Natalie to come over, because he wants to sleep in his own bed tonight.
“I’m so sorry you lost,” Natalie says when he gets home. She must have looked up the score. She isn’t really turning into much of a hockey fan, but Elliot won’t hold it against her. He’s not interested in law either.
But she stayed up for him, which is nice of her, although he almost wishes she hadn’t so he could just curl up next to her in bed without saying a word. He talked to the media after the game and now he’s done talking for the night.
“It’s fine,” Elliot mutters and tries, and almost succeeds, to put a smile on his face. “It happens. There’s always next year.”
“Do you need anything?”
Elliot is too tired to figure out if he needs anything, so he shakes his head, because it’s easier. “No, just… bed.”
“Okay,” she says and leads the way.
He kisses her and they stumble a little and she laughs. He tells her that he loves her and she blushes, like he said it for the first time. It’s still a new thing for him say, it’s not like he’s ever said it to anyone else before, but it never seemed hard to him.
Natalie tucks him into bed, kisses his forehead and runs her fingers through his hair until he starts to drift off. “Oh, and Elliot?” she says.
“Huh?”
“I love you, too.”
He smiles into his pillow.
The loss still stings, because losses like that always sting. He’ll carry it around with him for a while, will be reminded almost daily until June, when someone will finally lift the Cup and they’ll slide into the oblivion of summer for a while.
Chapter Seven
Blake can tell that his phone keeps buzzing in his jeans. He had it out when he left the rink, but then stumbled across a horde of fans in the parking lot and quickly stuffed it into his pocket so he wouldn’t accidentally drop it while he was signing stuff.
They’re playing their first preseason game tomorrow and he sort of wants to get home and make dinner, but he’s been signing stuff all throughout training camp, so what’s one more day, really? When fans ask him for photos, he suffers through those as well, well aware that people always say that he looks like he’s waiting for the ground to swallow him up in every picture that’s taken of him. He’d rather sign jerseys for half an hour than take even just one selfie. He eventually manages to detach himself and walks back to his apartment.
He moved out of Mattie’s basement during the summer and found a pretty nice place about a 10-minute walk away from the rink, bought the largest bed and the largest couch he could find and then found out that the couch is more comfortable to sleep on than the bed. No, he’s exaggerating, but when he falls asleep on the couch, he actually stays on the couch.
As he walks away, he finally manages to check his phone. Noah has been texting him.
did you forget about me?
shit wait i’m like 30 mins early
i’m getting food u want anything?
Blake replies that no, he hasn’t forgotten about him and that he’s on his way home, and he also says yes to the food, hoping that Noah will pick something that wouldn’t make every NHL team’s nutritionist cry.
He makes it to his place before Noah does, but Noah is close behind, since he was already in the area and got food at the Thai place down the street. They eat in front of the TV, Noah chirps him because he still doesn’t have any video games, and then plucks Blake’s takeout box from his fingers and gets his hands in Blake’s pants so fast that Blake’s mind doesn’t even have time to catch up.
They eventually end up in Blake’s bed, maybe two hours later, Blake eating the rest of his now cold takeout, Noah upside down on the bed in nothing but his briefs, eyes half-lidded, lips red.
“Is your mom a model?” Blake asks, because, honestly, she has to be.
Noah laughs. “She was. Not anymore, though. She does tons of charity stuff now.”
“Yeah?”
“Human Rights Campaign,” Noah only says.
Blake looks back at him, wondering if it’s too personal if he asks Noah if his parents know. He had Noah’s dick in his mo
uth about twenty minutes ago, so maybe personal isn’t the right word, but–
“They know,” Noah asks. “I’m assuming that’s the question you were chewing on?”
“Yeah.”
“I told my mom pretty early on. When I was fifteen maybe? She helped me tell my dad. He was, uh… He has some issues with it.”
Blake doesn’t like the present tense there. “Oh.”
“We don’t talk about it.”
“Sorry.”
“It was a bit awkward when they were still together, but now it’s…” Noah shrugs half-heartedly. “Don’t look like that. This isn’t, like, tragic or anything. He cheated on her. A couple of times. She forgave him the first few, but…”
“That sucks.”
“Well…” Noah stretches. “You know, it’s okay to ask me stuff. I literally spent an entire week in your bed when you got this place, we’re at a point where we can swap life stories, I think.”
Blake laughs, finishes his veggies.
“You ever tell anyone?” Noah asks.
“Not really.”
“Seriously? No one?”
Blake shakes his head.
When his parents died, he didn’t have anything to tell them yet. He was eleven. He doesn’t remember when he started to realize that he wasn’t as into girls as he was apparently supposed to be. He kissed a girl when he was thirteen and it was… underwhelming. He thought maybe he was just bad at it.
It dawned on him eventually.
He didn’t say a fucking word. Not to anyone.
He never told his brother, never told his grandma. He has no idea how Evan would react; they didn’t spend enough time together during the last couple of years for Blake to have him all figured out. His grandma would be okay with it, she has friends who are lesbians and makes them pride flag cookies for their birthdays, and Blake has nearly told her so many times that he’s lost count but he can never bring himself to say it. Sometimes he works up to it for days and when the time comes, he never manages to say the words, even though he knows that it would be fine.
“It’s hard,” Blake says.
“I know.”
Blake puts down his takeout container. “Well, I guess you know now.”
Noah’s grin is blinding. He nudges Blake’s ankle with his foot and says, “Guess I do. I’m, like, your gay buddy, Noah.”
Blake shakes his head at him.
“Well,” Noah says, “I guess Elliot knows, too.”
Right, Elliot knows, too.
“I mean,” Noah goes on when Blake doesn’t say anything, “I do suppose he noticed that you had your tongue down his throat and your hands on his ass? Or at least he did that one time I saw you guys together.”
Blake groans and throws a pillow in Noah’s direction. He misses and it slides off the bed.
“How did that even happen?” Noah says. “I mean, I almost didn’t figure out that I was gay, and, like, I never would have figured out that you are gay, so how did you…”
Well, Elliot told him, for starters. And then Blake told him, too. And then nothing happened for a while. And then one night, on the road, Elliot kissed him, in their room, after a game and Blake kissed him back and it was everything. For a month, maybe even two, it was just that, just kisses, and then suddenly it was more, and after that Blake didn’t know how to stop. Not that he had to, because Elliot clearly didn’t want to stop either.
Not until the Draft.
“It just happened,” Blake says.
“Got it, you don’t wanna talk about it.”
“There’s not really a lot to talk about.” Blake shrugs. “We weren’t together or anything. We were a thing… and then we weren’t.”
“He’s literally…” Noah waves in the vague direction of Manhattan.
“I know.”
“But?”
“But… that didn’t happen.”
“Well, his loss, I guess,” Noah says.
Blake doubts that it was that much of a loss for Elliot. He didn’t have any problems walking away from this.
Noah makes a face. “He really broke your fucking heart, huh?”
“No, it wasn’t like that.”
“Yeah, I can hear you saying that, but your face is like… in pain.”
“I’m not in pain,” Blake says gruffly.
He’s not.
“Sure.” Noah rolls onto his side, watching Blake. “Are you still in love with him? It’s okay if you are, I won’t be, like, offended or anything.”
“I wasn’t in love with him,” Blake mutters.
“Okay.”
Blake huffs at him.
“It’s okay to have feelings, you know?” Noah says. “Like, even if they’re… mushy, or whatever.”
“Mushy?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Noah says.
Blake shrugs it off.
“No, not about the chirping,” Noah says. “I’m sorry that he hurt you. You’re a good guy and good guys don’t deserve that.”
Blake glares at the ceiling. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure,” Noah says. “You think Desjardins is gonna retire?”
Blake can deal with that extreme shift in topic, even though they’re technically talking about Elliot’s team. “I don’t know, he’s kinda young to hang up the skates, but…” Blake shrugs. Desjardins is turning 35 later this year and he obviously doesn’t know him, but they’ve all heard the rumors. That his recovery isn’t going as well as the Ravens were hoping, that he probably won’t ever get back to where he used to be. “They haven’t really said anything about him in a while, so…”
“Yeah, can’t help but wonder what’s going on behind closed doors there,” Noah says. “Sucks. I really liked him as, you know, a person.”
“Evan was scared of him, but, like… just because he grew up watching him and then he was suddenly on the same team as him and apparently he hung around the locker room a lot even when he was on IR.”
Noah laughs. “Wow, okay. I mean, I guess Desjardins is kinda intimidating with the beard and the scowl and everything, but, like, your brother grew up with you, so he should at least be used to the scowling.”
Blake hurls another pillow at him. Misses again.
“You’ll run out of pillows if you keep that up.”
“Ugh,” Blake says and flops down.
Noah considers him for a moment, then he gives him a poke. “Nap?” he asks.
“Yeah, sounds good.”
“Cool if I stay for a bit?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Noah still doesn’t cuddle, but it’s nice not to be alone.
#
“Dumplings?” Elliot asks when he picks up Natalie at the Subway.
She told him not to, said he really didn’t have to about five times, and he does it anyway, because he knows it’ll make her smile and the next season – his fifth, if you can believe it – is just around the corner. He’s not going to have too much time for stuff like this.
“Yay, dumplings,” Natalie says.
He wraps his arm around her and she tells him about what she’s working on for law school, the reading she has to do, and he tries really hard to follow, but some of it goes way over his head. He tries to ask questions, so it doesn’t seem like he completely clocked out and Natalie answers with enthusiasm. It’s the least he can do. She does the same for him when he’s overcome with the need to spew hockey stats for half an hour.
Elliot kisses the top of her head as they walk and she smiles as she talks and it’s all good. He made the right choice when he asked her to move in with him.
It’s not that Adam kicked him out, he just very quietly mentioned that he’s been thinking about asking Lou to move in with him, which was basically Elliot’s cue to vacate the premises. Permanently. Adam helped him move, into an apartment two blocks away, a place that Elliot can afford easily with his contract. Natalie insists on chippin
g in. He tried to argue with her about it, but it didn’t end well and he eventually came to the conclusion that it means a lot to her. He was trying to be nice and it took him a few days to stop being sulky about it, as much as he hates to admit it.
Their favorite Chinese place is packed when they get in line, Elliot’s eyes on the menu, loudly wondering if getting twenty dumplings is a bit overkill, Natalie poking him in the side, laughing into his shirt.
He almost doesn’t notice how she suddenly goes still, almost doesn’t hear the unfamiliar voice that says, “Hey, Nat.”
“Hey,” Natalie says, voice strained.
Elliot tears his eyes off the menu board to look at the guy she’s talking to. Tall, blond, scruffy. Looks like he belongs on a beach.
“Hey,” Elliot says.
Natalie clears her throat. “Elliot, this is Cody. Cody, this is Elliot.”
“Nice to meet you,” Elliot says.
“Yeah,” Cody only says, eyes back on Natalie. “How have you been, Nat? Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Good, how about you?”
“All right.”
The line moves up and Natalie nods at him, then at the line. “Sorry, we need to…”
“Sure,” Cody says, gives Elliot an appraising look and wanders away.
“Cody, huh?” Elliot says. “How do you know him?”
“He’s my ex,” Natalie grits out.
“Ah.”
That’s it for that conversation, at least for now, because they order, and Natalie keeps Elliot from getting twenty dumplings, but he gets twelve, because that way he can maybe have two for breakfast tomorrow morning. They get veggies and fried noodles and too many spring rolls and then wander home, in a silence that seems strange to Elliot until he remembers Cody.
“So, is Cody a douchebag or…?”
Three Is The Luckiest Number Page 9