Blake spends the next fifteen minutes discussing his favorite food with the girls and they hug him when he admits that he doesn’t like kale. Afterwards, Katie sends them upstairs to clean their rooms and Mattie tells Blake to go downstairs and take a nap.
“You kids and your parties,” Mattie mumbles good-naturedly as he sends Blake on his way.
Blake flops onto his bed, but doesn’t close his eyes right away. He grabs his phone and saves Noah’s number, then he scrolls around on Twitter for a few minutes before he goes back to his messages and sends one to Noah – I’m not driving back to LI today.
understandable, Noah replies about a minute later, and adds, dinner in the city? i live in brooklyn, meet u halfway?
Blake almost wants to ask him if that’s it, wants to ask and then what? It didn’t sound like Noah just wanted to have dinner when they talked last night, but maybe Blake is getting ahead of himself. He agrees to meeting Noah in the city at a place Noah suggests, because it’s not like Blake has spent too much time in the area.
He gets there thirty minutes early, because he must have misread the train schedule or he miscalculated something along the way, so he walks around for a bit and eventually returns to the restaurant, still five minutes early, but Noah is now waiting for him outside the door. Blake doesn’t know how to greet him, dismisses a handshake, then dismisses a hug almost as quickly, and then ends up waving, which is even worse than anything else he could have done.
Noah grins, throws an arm around him and steers him into the restaurant. They have a booth in the back, which gives them some privacy and Noah’s legs brush against Blake’s under the table as they sit down. Blake doesn’t move for a moment, keeps his eyes on Noah, who’s looking back at him, the features of his pirate Disney prince face soft in the low light.
“Order whatever you want, my treat,” Noah says. “I have recommendations if you need any.”
Blake raises his eyebrows at him. “Why are you paying?”
“Because this was my idea.”
Blake hums, because he can’t really argue with that and picks up his menu. “They have chicken parmesan.”
“A classic,” Noah says, nodding approvingly. “Best I’ve ever had, honestly.”
They both end up ordering it, talking about the upcoming season while they wait, like they’re old friends and are catching up before training camp starts for both of them. Blake was afraid that things would be awkward, that their conversation would be stilted, that he’d run out of things to say, because he always runs out of things to say, but Noah comes to his rescue every time, always has another question to ask, and so they make it through dinner without any drawn-out silences.
Noah tries to talk him into getting dessert, but Blake declines, and so Noah waves their waiter over for the check.
“So,” Noah says when they head out into the street, “that wasn’t as awkward as I thought it was gonna be.”
Blake lets out a huff that’s maybe also a laugh, relieved that he wasn’t the only one who had second thoughts.
“Listen, I don’t usually do stuff like this,” Noah says, “but you seem like a nice guy and, like, I’m about to ask you if you want to come home with me and if the answer to that is no, it’d still be cool if we could hang out again.”
Blake stares at him, wondering how he can just say stuff like that without tripping over the words.
“Too forward?”
“No, no, I mean, we were talking about this yesterday,” Blake says. Or at least Noah was talking about it. Blake was quietly freaking out as he listened.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to. My ego will only be a little bit bruised and life will go on and… we’re all good.”
“Okay,” Blake says.
“Okay as in okay you want to come with me or–”
“Yeah.”
“Shit, all right, I didn’t think you were actually gonna agree to this,” Noah says. “Let’s get a cab, I’ll pay. I’ll make you breakfast in the morning, too.”
Noah holds up his fist and it takes Blake a very long moment to understand that he’s supposed to bump it. Not exactly a fist bump kind of situation, but Noah grins and hails them a cab.
#
Blake doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.
They don’t touch in the cab, they don’t touch until Noah has led him into his apartment, until the door is closed and Noah turns to him with a smile. “Can I get you anything? Glass of wine? Coffee? A snack?”
“I’m good,” Blake says.
“Okay, then, I guess we’re getting straight down to business?” Noah says and shrugs off his jacket, takes Blake’s in passing and throws them on a chair by the door. He’s back in Blake’s space a moment later, eyes on Blake, expectant. “You still okay with this?”
“Still good,” Blake says and hopes it comes out confident and not terrified. It’s been a while since he last did this and he’s scared that he’ll fuck it up somehow and then Noah Andersson, that handsome pirate Disney prince, will laugh at him. Except Noah is probably not the kind of guy who’d laugh at someone else because of that. He’s this good-looking guy who probably has people all over the league groveling at his feet just because of his last name and he’s loud and outgoing, but also surprisingly polite and generous.
When Blake leans a little closer, Noah suddenly snorts. “I’m sorry,” he says, still with a smile on his face.
Blake takes a step back. “What?”
“You…” Noah says and reaches out to reel him back in. “You have glitter on your face.”
“Oh…
