“He cheated on me,” Natalie says.
“So that’s a yes.”
Natalie hums.
Elliot is supremely uncomfortable about the teammates who have a girlfriend in New York and then screw around on the road, or, even worse, who have a girlfriend in New York and then screw around in New York on top of that. He’s not about that at all.
He’s never talked to Natalie about her exes, they just sort of established that they both had them but that there was nothing really worth mentioning.
Natalie asked him once, if he used to take girls home a lot, and he told her the truth, that sometimes he did when the occasion arose, but that it was never serious, and nothing that happened regularly.
Of course that wasn’t the whole truth.
Sometimes he wonders if he should tell her, that he’s bi, that he’s been with men. Or, one man, he should say. He couldn’t mention any names, but sometimes it sits on the tip of his tongue, until he dismisses it, because it doesn’t matter, does it? Or maybe it does, because it’s part of him, and he’s… well, he’s not hiding it, isn’t actively lying about it, but he won’t mention it either.
He knows it should tell him something, should maybe tell him that he doesn’t trust Natalie enough, but he never gets to the end of that train of thought.
“I’m sorry,” Elliot says. “That he did that.”
“I’m pretty much over it,” Natalie says and squeezes his hand. “Kinda sucks, though. I dated another guy for a while after I broke up with Cody and I had such a hard time trusting him, you know?”
“I’m sorry,” Elliot says again, because what else is he supposed to say?
Natalie leans against him a little, the bag with their takeout bouncing off her legs. “Love you. And, Elliot, don’t… don’t think I don’t trust you, okay? I do. I’m not… permanently scarred by one asshole who decided to cheat on me.”
“Okay,” Elliot says quietly and holds on to her hand until they’re home.
As Natalie unlocks the door, taking her shoes off by the door, which is something Elliot needs to make a habit of but constantly forgets, Natalie says, “Hey, I have this friend from law school who wants to maybe go out on a double date with us, what do you think?”
“Uhh, sure?”
“If it works with your schedule?”
“Yeah,” Elliot says, wandering back to the door to take his shoes off before he goes back into the kitchen.
“Okay, I’ll let her know and she can talk to her girlfriend and… Elliot.”
“Huh?”
“What’s with the face?”
“What face?”
Natalie frowns at him. “Your face.”
“Nothing? It’s just my face.”
“Yeah, and you… Elliot, you don’t mind that she has a girlfriend, right?”
“No, what, of course not,” Elliot says and he basically trips over the words, they come out way too fast and Natalie can definitely tell that something is up. Elliot could tell her now, there’s never been a better moment for this, but Natalie has the angry face on, so maybe it’s safer for him if he talks his way out of this. “It’s just…”
“It’s just that you hate gay people?”
“I don’t hate gay people,” Elliot says. Sounds way too defensive.
“But?”
“Nothing.”
“Uh-huh.”
Natalie shakes his head at him. “Elliot, seriously, like, grow up.”
“I don’t care,” Elliot says. Too whiny. “I swear, I don’t–”
“So you won’t be weird around them? If we go somewhere with them, you’re not gonna act like they have the cooties?”
“Natalie, we’re not five.”
“Then why are you acting like it?” Natalie snaps.
“Hey.” Great defense, really. Hey.
“No, honestly, gay people exist, they’re out there, get with the times. It’s nothing that should make you uncomfortable,” Natalie says. “You know, there’s a good chance that someone on your team likes men.”
Yes, that person would be Elliot. Somehow he still can’t say it, even though Natalie would be on his side. Clearly. How hard can it be? He’s told Blake. Telling Blake, in all honesty, was probably the hardest thing he’d ever done. He almost cried when Blake hugged him after and said, “Okay.” He hugged Elliot for like five minutes and Elliot wasn’t going to tell him to let go. Then Blake said, “I like guys, too. But not just sometimes.” And then Elliot hugged him back, and said, “Okay,” too and Elliot was so relieved that Blake understood, that he still wanted to be his friend, gay or not, that he accepted him, no matter what.
Elliot didn’t tell him that he only noticed because he suddenly found himself daydreaming about kissing Blake. Maybe he’d noticed before, had noticed guys who looked hot, but he’d never noticed anyone as much as he noticed Blake. He didn’t want Blake to think that Elliot only wanted to kiss him because Blake happened to be gay and it was convenient for him.
He fell for Blake when he had that unflattering, really short haircut and pimples all over his face and when he glared at everyone, even Elliot, all the fucking time.
But he can’t tell Natalie any of that. It’s like he’s carrying around half of a secret. He could share his half, obviously, but even just the thought scares the crap out of him. So he stays quiet and starts unpacking their dinner, somehow unable to look up, and he lets Natalie think whatever she’s thinking, because right now it somehow seems better than the alternative.
Natalie doesn’t say much to him for the rest of the evening and he probably deserves it.
Chapter Eight
When the Ravens announce Jacob Desjardins’s retirement before the start of training camp, they call in Elliot for a meeting and tell him that they want to make him captain. This is somehow surprising only to Elliot and nobody else.
Jacob calls him to congratulate him and the first thing he says is, “You’ll be great at this.”
Elliot is freaking the fuck out, but obviously he can’t tell Jacob that. “How do you know?” he asks instead, because that sounds a lot better than, I’m actually really scared that I’ll fuck this up and that the team will suffer because of it and that we’ll be even worse than last season and everything will fall apart.
“Moo,” Jacob says. “You’ve been their captain ever since I got injured.”
But that’s not right, because Jacob was still their captain, was still around, was with them in the locker room. “But–”
“You didn’t have the C on your jersey, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t it. I saw that and everyone else saw it, too. Keep doing what you were doing and you’ll be fine. I trust you to take care of my guys, yeah?”
“Okay,” Elliot says.
“I was scared shitless when they gave me the C.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And I’m sure you’ll fuck up here and there, but everyone fucks up here and there. Try to remember that. You get to fuck up, too, like everyone else.”
“Thank you, Jacob.”
“Sure, kid.”
He catches himself smiling when he hangs up the phone.
He can tell that the guys are sad about Jacob, but he’s also getting more hugs than ever when he shows up for training camp. It’s strange to pull on the jersey with the C on it, PR taking pictures for the announcement, meeting the media after, getting all those questions about how he feels, what it means to him.
The guys take him out that day to celebrate and he lets them buy him way too many drinks. This is probably one of the things he fucked up as a captain. He let them play him. It made them happy, though, so he clearly only fucked himself over.
Natalie is already asleep when he sneaks into their apartment and promptly knocks over something that makes a shitton of noise when it falls. He’s pretty sure that it’s the frame they got for the black-and-white print that Natalie picked. They haven’t managed to hang it up yet, because Elliot doesn’t know how to hang up pictures. He
’s absolutely useless. He turns on the lights and bends down to pick up the frame, makes a little more noise and then has to sit down on the floor to get off his shoes, because apparently untying your laces is really hard after a few drinks and he… wants to lie down.
Which is a terrible idea.
He knows that.
He falls over when he takes his second shoe off, but he’s already sitting on the floor, so he doesn’t fall far.
His phone chimes somewhere.
Elliot should probably check that. Maybe someone’s wondering if he’s dying. Maybe he is dying. He’s on the floor and he can’t get up.
Fingers clumsy, he starts digging for his phone. It’s in his pocket, which isn’t that hard to access, but it still takes him an eternity to dig it out. Elliot squints down at it and finds a text from Blake.
For a second there, he’s pretty sure that he’s hallucinating, but then he reads it and realizes that it couldn’t be from anyone else. Congrats! it says.
Elliot struggles to sit up and stares down at it, phone in his lap, at that one word and suddenly, for some reason that his inebriated brain can’t understand, he wants to call him. He just wants to hear his voice, wants to hear Blake say congrats in person, wants to pretend, only for a moment, that they still have a chance at being friends.
He leans his head against the wall and sighs, phone still in hand, not drunk enough to fucking do it, and to hell with how his sober self will feel about this tomorrow.
He’s about to do… something, when the picture frame behind him falls over again.
The lights come on in their bedroom a few seconds later, and Natalie comes padding into the hallway, feet bare, wearing one of her Columbia University shirts, looking at first confused, then amused. “Elliot, babe, what are you doing?”
Elliot frowns. What is he doing? He points at the shoe he’s still wearing. “I’m taking off my shoe.”
“Okay,” Natalie says and comes over, pulls off his shoe and then gently helps him up and maneuvers him into their bedroom, gets him out of his clothes, and pulls him into bed with her.
The next morning, Elliot stumbles over Blake’s text again.
He doesn’t reply.
#
Blake gets to start in net at their home opener.
Part of him knew this was coming, knew he’d be getting more starts now, but it still takes him by surprise. He did well last season, had a good save percentage, and he knows that Mattie’s contract runs out at the end of this season, and he’s sort of torn about it, because he loves Mattie and he never ever wants him to leave, but being the starting goalie for an NHL team has been his dream for as long as he can remember.
And… he’s getting there.
The boys don’t let him down, they win, and win, and win, holding the top spot in their division until Christmas, then a few lost games put them into the second spot, but they’re still okay, as long as they don’t lose ten in a row.
Everything’s going well.
His grandma adopts a ginormous orange kitten and the next time Blake is on the same ice as Elliot, he almost wants to skate to the center line and wave him over to tell him, but then he remembers that Elliot didn’t reply to his text at the beginning of the season, which either means that Elliot changed his number and didn’t tell Blake, or Elliot saw his text and decided not to reply. Either way, Elliot has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to talk to him.
Okay, so, the hockey part of his life is going well.
Now that Blake has his own place, Noah can actually come over every once in a while, and they still work pretty well together. They don’t fight. They have sex and then go their separate ways. Sometimes they order food. Sometimes they’ll even manage to get halfway through a movie.
Noah still chirps him whenever he sets foot into Blake’s apartment, but Blake can deal.
“You know,” Noah says, wearing a Santa hat he found fuck-knows-where, prancing into Blake’s kitchen, “if I was your boyfriend, I’d judge you for all the dishes in your sink. But I’m not your boyfriend.”
“So you’re not judging me?”
“No, I mean, I am, I’m just not saying it out loud.”
“I think you just did,” Blake says.
Noah shakes his head. “Nah.”
Blake only now realizes that the Santa hat is the only thing Noah is wearing. He wordlessly hands Noah the glass of water he came to the kitchen for and then heads back to his bedroom, Noah at his heels, laughing when Blake pulls the Santa hat off his head.
So the Noah part of his life is going well, too.
He drives to Norwalk for Christmas, picks up Evan on the way and he spends two nights in his childhood bedroom before they get back to work. He spends New Year’s Eve on the road with the team, then it’s back to New York for one game, and then it’s Blake’s least favorite time of the year.
The Knights and their fans love the annual dads’ trip, love the stories that come to the surface, the footage of their dads celebrating on the road. Like last year, Blake’s dad won’t join them on the dads’ trip. Of course not, because Blake’s dad is dead. Maybe it’s a little easier this year, because he knows that this is coming, not like last year, when it felt like running into a brick wall when he was asked if his dad would be joining them for the trip.
The Knights tell him that he can invite an uncle, any mentor, really, they’re kind about it, but Blake says no, he won’t have anyone on the trip. Last year, Michelson’s dad wasn’t on the trip either, so Blake wasn’t on his own, but this year, with Michelson getting traded in the summer, Blake is the only one who doesn’t have his dad on the plane.
After last year, the guys know that Blake’s dad is dead, don’t ask any questions when he gets on the plane on his own and tucks himself away in a seat in the back.
He doesn’t have to speak to the media once during the entire trip, because their media relations guy knows what’s going on and he’s merciful. Even after Blake’s shutout in DC, Blake gets to hit the showers and doesn’t have to say a word to anyone.
Sometimes he gets caught up in how unfair it is that his parents never got to watch him play in an NHL game, that they never got to see how far he made it. It’s so obvious now, with all the dads talking to the Knights’ camera crew, saying how proud they are, sharing stories about taking the boys to hockey practice, about buying them their first skates, their first stick. He wishes the Knights had a moms’ trip, because then he could have at least invited his grandma. She was the one who drove him to practices, who bought his gear, who sat with him until midnight, making him hot cocoa, when he was sad about a loss.
He makes it through the trip, like he did last year, talks to the guys’ dads when they start a conversation, and breathes out a sigh of relief when they’re back in Newark and he can finally go home.
“Hey, kid,” Mattie says, hand on Blake’s shoulder as they head to their cars. “You wanna come over for dinner?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks, though.”
“You sure? Wouldn’t be a problem. The girls would love it.”
“I…” Blake shakes his hands. He knows that Noah is already on his way over, texted him as soon as their plane touched down. “Sorry, I sort of have plans.”
“Oh,” Mattie says, lips twitching. “You have a girlfriend?”
Blake doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with him, maybe he’s tired, or maybe he just had the worst few days of the season, maybe not on the ice, but definitely in his head, but he hesitates. And not in an oh, no, it’s nothing serious kind of way. More in an I’m trying to hide something from you kind of way. So he can’t just give Mattie an extremely delayed and extremely untrue yes.
Maybe Mattie will think that Blake lied about having plans, but Blake’s face is probably several shades of red right now and he’s being cagey and there’s no way Mattie doesn’t at least figure out that there’s something going on here.
Mattie’s lips stop twitching and he grows serious. He wraps an arm
around Blake and gives him a hug. “Dinner tomorrow?”
“Okay,” Blake says.
“Okay,” Mattie echoes.
Dinner the next day is comfortable and the girls pull Blake into their playroom downstairs and put him in their tiny goal and start shooting balls at him with their tiny sticks. Mattie doesn’t talk about the day before, but he insists on walking Blake out to his car later, so Blake already knows what’s coming.
“You know,” Mattie says, “I know when something’s none of my business, so I’m not going to ask. I’ll say, though… that it seemed like there was something you might want to talk about. And… I have ears.”
“Mattie…”
“That’s literally all I wanted to tell you. I’m not gonna ask any questions. All I’m saying is… well, you know what I’m saying.”
“Thank you,” Blake says.
Mattie sends him on his way with a mumbled, “Drive safe,” and then wanders back to the door, giving him a wave before he heads back inside.
Blake drives back to his apartment, parks in his spot, sits in his car for a good ten minutes, staring into space, his thoughts all over the place, until a car door slams shut somewhere and he snaps out of it.
#
Elliot sort of bullies his team into making it to the second round of playoffs. He doesn’t know how else to describe it. The Ravens haven’t made it past the first round in actual years, often didn’t make the playoffs at all, and during a team meeting before the playoffs start, he tells his guys that it’s not going to happen this year.
They’re going to make it past the first round.
No one expects it. Again, they only barely managed to hold on to their wildcard spot. The media is talking about them like they’ve already lost, think they can’t make it past Montreal in a hundred years.
It’s not like Elliot doesn’t have doubts, he just doesn’t allow himself to acknowledge them, because he has to walk into that playoff series like he believes that they can make it to the other end of it with four wins.
They lose the first game, because of course they do.
The guys are a lot quieter than they should be after one loss. Because that’s it. One loss.
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