Blake wakes up at some point halfway through the flight and decides to finally eat something, the plane less quiet now. At least Bram is still asleep, which means he probably hasn’t made another attempt to lick the Cup.
Blake goes and sits with the guys that are awake, somehow ending up getting shoved into Kells’s lap. Kells doesn’t seem to mind as long as Blake lets him steal food off his plate, grumbling about being an old man and then sending Blake back to the buffet to get more food. Charlie is still sitting next to Kells, at first asleep, then avoiding Blake’s eyes.
By the time they land in Newark, the boys are all awake and back to partying – as much as they can on a plane. There’ll be a lot of that, interviews with the local media, too, and the parade, and then their Cup days in the summer. They’re all going to head out again tonight, to celebrate at home. They do all head back to their respective houses and apartments first, though, which means that Charlie has to stop avoiding Blake, because Blake gave him a ride to the airport and they live in the same building, so if Charlie asks someone else for a ride, they’ll know that something’s up. After they’ve greeted the fans that are around, probably carefully picked by the organization, Charlie follows him off the plane and to his car, completely silent.
The drive home isn’t that long. Neither of them is saying a word. It’s not that Blake is expecting an apology or anything, but he’s pretty sure that Charlie hasn’t forgotten what happened last night, considering that he’s been avoiding him all day.
“Charlie,” Blake says when he’s parked the car.
Charlie takes a deep breath. “I’m so sorry, Blake, I honestly don’t know why I did that, I swear I won’t do it again. I was just drunk. I don’t know… But I’m really sorry. And I won’t… Please don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t,” Blake says. “It’s okay, honestly.”
Charlie nods. “Thank you. And I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Eyes on his knees, hands clenched in his lap, Charlie says, “I’m not gay.”
“Okay.”
“I swear. And, like, I don’t mind gay guys. You know I don’t. But I’m not. I like girls.”
“Okay,” Blake says again, because this is not the conversation he thought they’d be having, but it’s clearly something Charlie needs to say.
“I just…”
“What?”
“I’m not gay,” Charlie says again.
And maybe he isn’t, and Blake absolutely believes him when he says that he has nothing against gay guys, because he has proven on many occasions that he doesn’t, but there’s something going on here, Blake can tell. You don’t go and kiss a guy just because you’re drunk. “Okay, but, Charlie?” Blake says. “I am.” Maybe Charlie needs someone who’s definitely on his side right now.
“You’re what?”
“I’m gay. And–” Blake stops talking when Charlie looks up. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. He has no clue why he thought that might help.
“You are?” Charlie asks.
Well, he probably can’t take it back now. “Yeah.”
“But… Really?”
“Charlie.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie says. “But isn’t it… In juniors it was…” He shakes his head. “Everyone said… all that stuff. You know what they were saying, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” Blake says. He hasn’t forgotten. He wasn’t usually the one all that stuff was directed at, and often the other guys were just joking around, but he heard it. He somehow made it out on the other side.
“And I’m not gay,” Charlie says, “but…”
Blake waits. He’s had a conversation like this with Elliot, once upon a time.
“I had a crush on a guy when I was fifteen,” Charlie mumbles. “But I… wasn’t supposed to. And I like girls. So…” He looks at Blake. “But now…”
Blake is trying really hard to fill in the blanks and maybe he understands what Charlie is trying so hard to say, but in the end all he can do is guess. “Charlie,” Blake says, “it’s okay if you like men and women.”
“Is it, though?” Charlie asks, red in the face. He glances at Blake. “And you like guys?”
Blake nods.
Charlie blinks at him. “So when I kissed you…”
“I…” Blake takes a deep breath. This is the really awkward bit. “I’m seeing someone. So now I sort of have to explain to him that I kissed another guy.” Not that he really kissed Charlie, but Blake still isn’t looking forward to it. Elliot will be mad. He’ll say it’s fine, but he’ll be mad.
“Oh no, I’m so sorry, you can tell him that it’s totally my fault, I did it and you didn’t, and it’s… I’m so sorry.” Charlie has tears in his eyes now. “I fucked everything up, I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” Blake reaches over to put an arm around him. “It’s all gonna be fine.”
Charlie hiccups. “I’m not fine.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m gonna stop having a crush on you right now, I promise.”
Blake has to bite down a smile. It’s not really funny.
“You’re just so nice,” Charlie whispers.
“I’m sorry,” Blake says again.
“It’s like you’re Canadian,” Charlie mumbles and pulls away, wiping his eyes. “Please, can we forget that all of this happened?
“If you want to.”
Charlie nods.
“You wanna sit in the car for a few more minutes?” Blake asks.
Charlie wipes his eyes again. “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
#
Blake doesn’t call him the day after he won the Cup, which Elliot didn’t think he’d have time for anyway, considering that the Knights have to fly all the way back from California. He’s seen some pictures from the Knights’ night with the Cup, has seen pictures of them on the plane, one of Blake with his head on Jake Matthews’s shoulder, fast asleep. It seems that the team went out to party again once they’d safely landed in Newark.
In the meantime, Blake has sent him a picture of his entire head in the Cup, hair hanging over the rim. I swear I won’t keep sending cup pics, he said after.
Elliot is actually mostly okay with the Cup pics, even though part of him is insanely jealous, but he’s also proud of Blake, so he tells him to send as many pictures as he wants. Elliot will see them on Twitter eventually anyway.
Blake calls him the day before the Knights have their parade, while Elliot is having dinner with his parents. He excuses himself, his mom looking slightly annoyed until Elliot says, “It’s Blake.”
There are some calls that are allowed to interrupt dinner. Calls from Elliot’s agent. Calls from the team. And calls from Stanley Cup champions.
“Hey,” Elliot says. He decides to take his phone all the way up to his bedroom, because he has no idea how long this call is going to take. Even though he wasn’t quite awake, he does remember Blake calling him in the middle of the night, asking him to come back to New York and that’s not something he wants to talk about with his parents listening in.
He hopes Blake remembers that part.
“Hi,” Blake says. His voice is low, sounding rough. He’s probably been screaming his lungs out. “How are you?”
“I’m okay,” Elliot says. “How are you?”
“I’m so fucking tired,” Blake groans.
Elliot laughs. “Go to bed.”
“No, I have to talk to you first.”
“Okay. I’m all yours.”
“This is not gonna be fun,” Blake says. “And I’m sorry. And, for the record, I’m not lying when I say that I didn’t want any of this to happen.”
Elliot doesn’t like the sound of that at all. His brain tries to be super helpful and immediately supplies him with the thought of Blake hooking up with some guy after he won the Cup. And now he doesn’t really want to be with Elliot anymore, because Elliot is taking too long to make up his mind about what the hell he wants and that
’s it for them. It’s not like Blake cheated on him, they’re not even together and Blake doesn’t owe him anything. He did say that he won’t be seeing anyone else, but–
“You still there?” Blake asks.
“Yeah,” Elliot says. Swallows hard. “What happened?”
“Um, so, the night we won the Cup, there were several very drunk people, and one of those very drunk people kissed me. And–”
“One of your teammates?”
“Elliot.”
Elliot knows that Blake is too good of a person to say yes to that, but he doesn’t really have to anyway. If it wasn’t a teammate, Blake would have said no. “Okay, so someone kissed you?”
“Yeah.”
“And then?”
“And then I told him to go to bed and I talked to him about it the next day and I told him that I’m not available for any more kissing and he was really embarrassed about it all. It wasn’t… It was really just a kiss, Elliot. Nothing else happened.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
Elliot hates all of this. He hates that someone went and kissed his… Shit, Blake’s not his boyfriend. He hates that he’s jealous. He hates that he’s angry, because Blake obviously wasn’t walking around begging other dudes to kiss him. It’s not his fault.
“Elliot,” Blake says, soft. “Are you mad?”
“No, it’s f–”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’m mad,” Elliot says. “But not at you. I’m just… mad. I wanna be your boyfriend and not worry about it and I want people to know you’re my boyfriend, so no one’s gonna go and fucking kiss you.”
Blake is quiet for a moment, then he says, “Come to New York.”
“You meant that, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you mean the other thing, too?” Elliot asks.
“What other thing?”
“You know what thing.”
“Tell me what thing,” Blake grumbles, but he has to know that Elliot is talking about the I miss you thing. It’s just that the sober version of Blake can’t bring himself to say it and it’s a little bit funny. He’s said it before, though. When Elliot was at Worlds.
“You said you missed me,” Elliot tells him.
“Oh. That.” Blake clears his throat. “I meant that, too.”
“When do you want me to come?”
“Whenever you– I mean, I sort of have to go to Vegas for the Awards and then there’s the Draft and free agency, but… We’re not free agents and we’re not getting drafted, so…”
“I should spend some time around a phone during the Draft,” Elliot says. “I have to call all the new kids.”
“Right. Captain.”
“I’ll come after?”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” Elliot echoes. “I’ll book a flight.”
“Good.”
“Go to sleep now, okay? Otherwise you’ll die during the parade.”
“Your mistake is that you’re assuming that I’m still alive,” Blake says.
Elliot laughs. “Good night, Blake.”
“Good night.”
The line goes dead. Elliot forgot to tell him something and he calls Blake back before he even remembers what it was.
Blake answers a second later. “Was that an accident or…?”
“No, I…” Elliot shakes his head at himself. “I don’t know. It suddenly felt like I wasn’t done talking to you.”
“You’re weird,” Blake mumbles, then he says, louder, “Hey, stop it, you little shit.”
“Angus?”
“He bit my toe,” Blake says, betrayed. “What the hell. Prepare to be eaten alive when you come here.”
“When I… So am I gonna come hang out at your place?” Elliot asks. He was sort of assuming that he’d go to his own place and that they’d meet in the middle like they always do. Only now they don’t have any other obligations, so they can hang out somewhere together without one of them having to run off.
“I don’t know,” Blake says. “If you want.”
“I thought we’re not…” They’re not together. Blake didn’t want this unless Elliot was sure that he could deal with the possibility of them getting outed somehow, doesn’t want him to change his mind a few months later.
Once Elliot lets himself have this, though, he’ll stick with Blake no matter what. He wants him and no one else. Never again.
Blake sighs. “I don’t care.”
“But…”
“We’ll figure it out somehow. Just come, okay? And we’ll talk when you’re here. We said we’d talk in the summer.”
“Right, we did say that.”
“Okay,” Blake says.
“I’ll hang up in a minute.”
“Sounds great.”
Elliot is quiet for a few seconds, then he says, “Are you asleep yet?”
“No, not yet,” Blake mutters.
“You have to tell me about the Cup when I get there,” Elliot says, even though he doesn’t like the jealousy that creeps in when he thinks about Blake and the Cup and the fact that Elliot’s team is not the one that won it.
“It’s heavy. And silver.”
“And it’s gonna have your name on it,” Elliot says. His heart clenches when he thinks about it.
“Shit.”
“What?”
“I kinda… forgot that they’re gonna put our names on it.”
“It’s time to stop drinking,” Elliot says drily. “You clearly only have, like, two functioning brain cells left.”
“Fuck, it for sure is time to stop.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You called me because it felt like we weren’t done talking. You’re ridiculous.”
Elliot rolls his eyes. “I think I’m done now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Would you answer if I called you again after this?”
“Yeah,” Blake says and he clearly means it.
Something’s tight in Elliot’s chest, but in a good way. “I’ll see you soon,” he says.
“Can’t wait. Bring me a moose from Canada.”
“Sure,” Elliot says.
Blake laughs, so soft that Elliot barely hears it.
Elliot doesn’t call him again after he’s hung up the phone, but he stays in his room for another minute or two to school his expression into something more neutral and something less besotted.
Chapter Nineteen
Adam gets traded the day before the Awards.
Elliot is in his parents’ backyard, having an existential crisis about whether or not he’s too old to spend half his summer at his parents’ house and if he should find himself an apartment in Toronto. Because he could. He has the money. But then shouldn’t he be careful with his money? He doesn’t need an apartment in Toronto.
He tries to distract himself by going on Twitter, even though he knows that’ll make him mad about something, especially if he stumbles across another article about the “ever mediocre” Ravens.
It’s not that the article he was fuming about the other day didn’t have a point, that was probably why it stung so much, but Elliot disagreed with what they had to say about his teammates. That Adam was a deadweight. That Andreas wasn’t worth his money. That Swanson, thirty-two years old, is past his prime. That not a single D-man on the roster deserves to be in the NHL. That Elliot was too positive about their abysmal last season in his exit interview.
The team has already been torn to shreds, Kenny traded for another player, Darren traded for a player and picks, three free agents in contract talks, two of which likely don’t want to stay. Elliot suspects that Moby will re-sign with the Ravens before free agency starts, but he’s in no way certain.
Their coach got fired. The Ravens haven’t announced who’ll be the new one, have only said that they’re taking their time with the decision to ensure that it’s the right one.
Their GM is on thin fucking ice. Has been for a year or two.
It’s not even that they’re tanking every season, it’s just that they can’t seem to make it far in the playoffs. Even getting into a wildcard spot is a struggle year after year. Ever mediocre.
Moves are being made before the Draft, before free agency, a trade from Tampa Bay to Toronto here, a trade from DC to Seattle there, and then, from one of the New York reporters, Adam Ishida to the Scorpions for two draft picks, one of them a first rounder.
Elliot fights the urge to throw his phone across the lawn.
It’s a business.
They don’t care if a player is the captain’s best friend, they don’t care if he has a family, they don’t care about any of them, in the end, if they aren’t worth their money. Elliot doesn’t try to think of their next season, him and Andreas, probably still together on the first line, and someone else, someone they might not even know yet, someone new, someone who’s not Adam.
Since all they’re getting for Adam is draft picks, Elliot doesn’t need to call any new players to welcome them to the team. It’s a blessing, because he has no idea how anyone could expect him to sound genuinely excited about someone getting traded to the Ravens right now. He can’t be, not if they’re losing Adam in the process.
He doesn’t know if Adam even knows yet, if they had a chance to call him before someone broke the news on Twitter. He texts Adam and asks him to call him when he gets a chance.
It takes half an hour, Elliot still in the backyard, flat on his back in the shade of a tree, somehow unable to convince himself to move and do something productive. Blake has texted him a sad face that Elliot hasn’t even replied to yet, knowing that Blake has his own shit going on with the NHL Awards. If he heard Blake’s voice right now, if Blake said a single kind word to him, about a guy that isn’t even Blake’s teammate, Elliot would probably burst into tears.
“Hi,” Adam says when Elliot picks up the phone, “I only have, like, ten seconds, because Lou is losing her shit.”
“I’m sorry,” Elliot says. He let him down.
Adam sighs. “I mean… at least it’s not Edmonton, right?”
“Right,” Elliot says.
“I’ll give you another call later, but I really need to talk to Lou about this. Because the universe is like, here, on top of having to move to Satan’s asshole, you can have a freaked-out pregnant wife as well. Yay.”
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