Elliot kisses him then, slowly, and only stops to get Blake out of the shirt he let him borrow last night, trails his fingers down, letting them get caught in the small patch of hair on Blake’s chest and bends down to kiss the soft skin of his stomach, follows the trail of coarse hair down, gets Blake’s boxers out of the way and gets his mouth on Blake without any further ado.
Blake groans like he wasn’t expecting that. Maybe Elliot should have taken it a little slower, given the fact that he hasn’t done this in years, but it seems that Blake cares very little for Elliot’s technique. Elliot is happy to find that Blake still makes those soft little noises as Elliot gets him off.
There wasn’t much finesse to it, but Blake looks wrecked anyway.
“Fuck,” Blake whispers.
Elliot grins and flops down next to Blake, who’s flushed from head to toe, breathing heavily, and Elliot can’t help but be a little proud of himself. He kisses the top of Blake’s shoulder, going easily when Blake reaches for him, kisses him, tugging at Elliot’s briefs, getting a hand around him.
He does last longer than five seconds, but Blake pulls at his hair again, which is not something Elliot even knew he liked, and it does something for him, makes him gasp against Blake’s mouth, and Elliot doesn’t manage to hold on much longer, just gives in to it and ends up tucked against Blake, nose pressed against the side of his neck, trying to catch his breath.
Blake’s fingers are back in his hair, much gentler now, carefully untangling knotted curls while Elliot gets his breathing back to normal. “You okay?” Blake eventually asks, hand coming to a rest on the back of Elliot’s neck.
“Yeah,” Elliot says, but that’s all he manages right now. He nudges Blake with his nose. “Cold.”
Blake huffs, then sits up to tug at the sheets, his arm trapped under Elliot. “Hey…”
“Hm?”
“Let me up, I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Ugh,” Elliot says, but lets him go. He’ll come back. Always does. Blake is secretly really into cuddling. Or at least he used to be. Blake tugs at the sheets to make sure Elliot is tucked in.
Something in Elliot feels heavy again as he watches Blake shuffle away.
He doesn’t know why he’s worried. Maybe because this was a mistake. Maybe because they play for different teams whose schedules never line up. Maybe because they can’t be what Elliot wants them to be, because that’s not the kind of life they chose when they decided to stick with hockey.
Whatever they will be when Blake walks out his door later, it’ll be a compromise.
Blake returns to him quickly, entirely unbothered by how naked he is, and slips back into bed. He doesn’t complain when Elliot fits himself back against him.
“I’ll make breakfast in a bit,” Elliot mumbles. Then they’ll talk.
Blake hums.
“Before we have breakfast, though…” Elliot reaches up, drags his thumb over Blake’s stubble. “Will you do something for me?”
There’s a smile on Blake’s face when he says, “Of course.”
#
Blake is fiddling with Elliot’s coffeemaker, hair wet, dripping on the shirt he slept in. He’s pretty sure that Elliot has a hairdryer somewhere, but he didn’t want to ask. Honestly, he doesn’t care so much. It usually dries a little wavy, which is fine. He’s thinking about his hair and coffee, so he doesn’t have to think about anything else.
Like Elliot, who slipped into the bathroom when Blake was done, still naked, hand finding the small of Blake’s back in passing before he stepped into the shower. Blake left, picked up yesterday’s clothes, and then, for some ridiculous reason, decided to put on the shirt that Elliot gave him last night. It’s even a size too big on Blake and it’s old and worn, a souvenir from Nashville, Tennessee, by the looks of it.
So, yes, he’s wearing that shirt for a reason he can’t explain to himself, trying to make coffee. He’s close to figuring it out. Elliot said he’d make breakfast, so there isn’t much else Blake can do, other than wait for him. And his coffee.
He goes through whatever he missed last night, teammates – the ones who were still capable – sending everyone Happy New Year messages, a text from Evan that’s just emojis, a text from Charlie from this morning, thanking him for his sacrifice, promising he’ll pay Blake back for the cab he presumably took back to Newark last night. Blake does not tell him that he’s an idiot who didn’t take a cab back to Newark last night like he fucking should have.
Every decision he made after he agreed to coming home with Elliot last night was objectively a bad one. Because what the fuck are they going to do now? Be boyfriends? Yeah, right.
There’s no way they can pull this off.
There’s no way he can be for Elliot what Noah was to him. Blake would always want more than that. And he can’t ask Elliot to give him more than that, because he could go out there and find himself a nice girlfriend and be happy and not fucking hide from everyone.
Elliot comes into the kitchen in a Ravens shirt and sweatpants and comes straight over to Blake, plasters himself against him, dripping on him, too.
“I was scared you’d leave,” Elliot mumbles.
“Come on.”
“Okay, maybe not really, but… I’m… not scared, but…”
“Yeah,” Blake says, “me, too.”
“We’re talking now?” Elliot asks.
Blake isn’t good at talking, never was. Noah made him, even though it turned out that Noah hid, like, a whole fucking bucket of feelings from him. Sometimes he wonders if he should have noticed. They talked a lot, curled up in the same bed, some space between them, because Noah didn’t cuddle, or maybe he just didn’t cuddle with Blake.
“Blake?”
“I don’t know what to say,” Blake says.
Elliot lets out a slow breath. “I’m making breakfast.”
He does. He makes pancakes and eggs and little sausages and they don’t say much to each other, feet pressed together under the table.
Blake does the dishes after, Elliot leaning against the counter, watching him, handing him plates and pans to put into the dishwasher.
“What do you want, Blake?” Elliot asks, all casual, as he hands him an empty mug.
Blake wants Elliot, but it’s not that simple. It never was. He wanted Elliot when they were eighteen, but he couldn’t have him. Nothing changed. He straightens up and looks at Elliot, whose face has gone serious, no trace of a smile.
“I mean,” Elliot goes on, “was this a one-time thing?”
“It should be,” Blake says, and when Elliot’s expression becomes stony, he adds, “And you know that as well as I do.”
Elliot slowly drags his fingers across the counter, pushing crumbs into the sink. “I don’t want this to be the only time.”
“Okay, so let’s say we keep this going somehow and we pull off some sort of friends with benefits thing…” Blake shrugs. “Wouldn’t you rather be with someone you don’t have to hide?”
Elliot stares at him and Blake can basically watch it sink in. “No,” Elliot says, sounding ridiculously offended. “No, I wouldn’t rather… I want you. And I don’t want to be friends with benefits either.”
“What, you want to be boyfriends?” Blake asks, like the thought hasn’t occurred to him, like part of him isn’t hoping that that’s exactly what will happen. But that’s the part of him that wants, not the part of him that thinks.
“You don’t?” Elliot asks.
“That’s not what I said.” Blake wants to reach for him, because he looks lost now, brow furrowed, no trace of a smile.
“So what are you saying?”
This is going to hurt. Blake knew this was going to hurt all along. “What I’m saying is… Remember before the Draft? When we were practically together and then we broke things off, because it was the smart thing to do?”
Elliot ducks his head.
“You didn’t want this because of what it could have done to your career if anyone had fou
nd out,” Blake goes on. “What changed?”
“I wasn’t ready for this back in juniors.”
“This is still your career. You’re right in the middle of it. And you’re ready now?”
Elliot is quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he says eventually.
“Yeah. That’s exactly it,” Blake says. “You don’t know. And it’s okay that you don’t know, but… What if we do this and what if you change your mind? What if you… What if this ends exactly like last time?”
“But you knew–”
“Yes, I knew we weren’t gonna last in juniors, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t fucking hurt,” Blake says.
Elliot’s eyes are back on his feet.
“Elliot…”
“No, you’re right, I don’t… I’m sorry.”
Blake sighs and steps closer, gathers Elliot into his arms and holds him close, fingers in the short hair at the base of Elliot’s skull, scratching lightly. “I don’t want this to be like last time,” Blake says lowly. He can’t do it again. “So you’ll think about what you want. Take your time, okay?”
Elliot nods, fingers tightening in Blake’s shirt. “Can you stay for a bit?”
“I…”
Elliot pushes closer, even though he’s basically as close as possible already.
“Okay,” Blake says. Bad idea, the worst idea.
“You wanna watch the Winter Classic?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I can cook if–”
“Elliot, you don’t have to talk me into staying, I’m not going anywhere,” Blake says. A few more hours, then he’ll go. Fuck knows when they’ll see each other again after he walks out the door.
“Okay,” Elliot says. “This is weird.”
“I’m sorry,” Blake mutters. He just can’t dive into this headfirst. He needs to make sure that he makes it out in one piece.
“No, it’s fine.”
“Elliot, it’s not fine. Stop saying it’s fine. Maybe I should go.”
“Please don’t.”
Blake sighs. “Okay. I’ll stay for a few more hours and then I’ll go home and we’ll give each other a break.”
Elliot pulls back, probably just so he can frown up at Blake. “Can I still talk to you, though?”
“Yeah, you can talk to me. I meant… no sex. No kissing.”
Elliot nods. “If that’s what you want.”
“I– Yeah. Yeah, it’s what I want.” Blake doesn’t want to get used to anything that won’t last. Because if Elliot does realize that this is too much of a risk for him after all, Blake isn’t sure if he can deal with Elliot walking away from him again.
And, sure, last time the walking away from each other was mutual, but maybe, if Elliot had been willing, Blake might have considered giving them a chance. Not that there’s any guarantee that it would have lasted. The point is that maybe, just maybe, Blake was a little bit in love with Elliot back then. And he can’t afford to fall back in love with him now, when Elliot isn’t really sure what he wants out of this.
It’ll fucking break him.
#
Elliot, selfishly, without asking for permission, curls himself around Blake as they watch the Winter Classic.
Blake said he wanted space, something he probably wouldn’t have even told Elliot a couple of years ago. He would have gotten cagey and would have refused to talk about it. And Elliot will do his best to stay away, but for now Blake’s still here and he will make the most of it, because he has no idea what’s going to happen next.
They order pizza, eat it in front of the TV, and Elliot sits with his arm brushing against Blake’s and Blake lets him.
Elliot hates that he hurt Blake. They were just kids back then and he did what he thought was right for them, thought Blake didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks either. He gets why Blake doesn’t want to take this too far now. He gets it. And Elliot would never hurt him, not on purpose.
As much as Elliot would like to say that he can deal with this, the hiding, the lying that would come with being with Blake, as much as he wants to say that he’s already made up his mind, that he wants to try, Blake is right. Elliot isn’t sure. He’s scared of what the repercussions might be if someone found out, he’s scared of even just telling his teammates that the person he’s dating is a man.
Blake is trying to give him an actual choice here, is offering to wait for him to figure out what he wants. But for how long is he going to wait? A month? Two?
“Elliot…”
“Yeah?”
“You’re…” Blake drags his hand up and down Elliot’s back. “Tense.”
“I was just thinking…”
“About?”
“You said you wanted me to think about this.”
“Yeah.”
“You also said we should give each other a break.”
“Yeah.”
“So, are we… basically hitting pause?” Elliot asks. “Or are we… hitting stop?”
“Both?”
Elliot huffs. “No, it’s not the same thing.”
“Then what’s the difference?”
“The difference is that in the first case we’re sort of on hold, but we’re not… I don’t know. Are you gonna see other people?”
“What?”
“While we give each other a break, are you gonna–”
“No,” Blake says.
“What if I still don’t know what I want in a year? Are you willing to wait for that long? Even if I…” Elliot trails off, because he doesn’t want to say, Even if I realize that I can’t do this.
Blake fingers are back in his hair, soothing. “How about we talk about this again at the beginning of summer?”
“Okay,” Elliot says. Time passes fast once the season starts to wind down and then suddenly you only have ten games left to play, and then you’re getting your playoff schedule and then it’s just game after game after game until you’re done, or until you win it all.
He can figure this out for himself before the summer. He has to.
Elliot falls asleep sometime during the third period and when he wakes up, Blake is asleep, too. He doesn’t wake up when Elliot sits up. The game isn’t on TV anymore. Fuck knows who won. Elliot leans down to kiss Blake’s forehead, drags his fingers though his hair. “Hey…”
Blake’s eyelids flutter, lashes dark against his pale skin. “Come here,” he says and reaches for Elliot.
They kiss, lazily, without a care in the world, limbs tangled, Blake’s hand on the small of Elliot’s back, thumb dipping under his shirt, smoothing over his skin and Elliot is clinging to him like he can somehow get closer to him and keep him here.
Blake doesn’t stay for dinner, and maybe Elliot expected as much, but he’s still disappointed when Blake says he needs to go. “Gotta feed the kids,” he says.
“Give Angus a hug from me,” Elliot says.
Blake grabs his sweater, then looks down at the shirt he’s wearing. Elliot tells him to keep it and Blake doesn’t smile when he pulls on his sweater over it, but he also doesn’t not smile. It’s one of those weird Blake things. He somehow manages to look happy without a real smile on his face.
Elliot kisses him before he pulls on his coat, then kisses him again before he buttons it, then kisses him one more time before Blake leaves, gently squeezing Elliot’s hand before he goes. Three kisses, because three has always been his lucky number, and when he was seventeen there was nothing as lucky as kissing Blake Samuels.
When Blake is gone, when the door is closed, and it’s just Elliot and his apartment is suddenly quiet, he stands in the hallway, probably for a few minutes, entertaining the absolutely insane idea to run after Blake and tell him to come back, that they’ll figure it out somehow. Today.
He knows it’s ridiculous.
He still goes hunting for his phone, which he hasn’t looked at in… a very long time. He has five missed calls from Adam and a text. im gonna assume ur hungover but lemme know if ur ded ok?
Elliot calls him back, because he sort of went off the grid and while he doesn’t understand why people should be available to others day and night, it sounds like Adam might have been worried about him.
“Oh, hey, you’re not dead,” Adam says. “Or are you calling from the afterlife?”
“Sorry,” Elliot says. He’s grabbing his charger, because he has seven percent battery left and now is not a good time for Adam to think that Elliot hung up on him.
“Did you leave before midnight?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you leave alone?”
It takes Elliot a second too long to say, “Yes.”
“Are you lying to me right now?” Adam asks. He gasps. “What the fuck?”
“I figured you’d chirp me either way,” Elliot says, which is probably a good enough excuse.
Adam tuts at him. “Sooo, did she just leave? Is that why you didn’t touch your phone all fucking day?”
“Can we not talk about this?”
“So I’m guessing you’re not seeing her again?”
Elliot only sighs in reply.
“I’m just invested in your wellbeing.”
“This has nothing to do with my wellbeing,” Elliot grumbles.
“Moo.”
“What? Stop being overdramatic.”
“I’m not. I want you to be happy. Are you happy?”
Elliot is not happy. He still has memories of Blake tugging at him – Blake in his bed, Blake’s lips on his, Blake’s fingers pulling at his hair, Blake’s stubble rubbing against the skin of his thighs. Maybe you could still see it. Maybe he has a mark where Blake kissed his thigh, a hint of teeth following his lips.
“You’re not happy,” Adam says, interpreting Elliot’s silence as just that. “You got laid and you’re unhappy.”
“Yeah, thanks for the summary.”
“Was it bad?”
“No.”
“Was it… good?”
“Adam.”
“So it was good. Is that the problem? Did she blow your mind and you didn’t ask for her number? If she was at the party, we can probably track her down, you know?”
“It’s not…” Elliot sighs. He could tell Adam that it was a guy, because Adam knows, but they only ever talked about it once and Elliot would rather not bring it up again. “Can we drop it? Please?”
Three Is The Luckiest Number Page 23