“Okay,” Blake says. It sounds small. He feels small.
“What do you need? You need to go back in next game or do you need a break?”
“I don’t think that’s really my choice.”
“No, it’s not really your choice, but we have Tanner on our side and if we tell him that you’ll fucking drop dead if they don’t put you in net the day after tomorrow, he’ll talk to Coach.”
Blake doubts that Tanner has that much say in the final lineup, only being the goalie coach, but Mattie has been around longer than him.
“So, what do you need?” Mattie asks.
“Go back in.”
“I thought you’d say that. You’re a tough kid.”
Tough is just about the last word he’d use to describe himself right now, but if he gets benched for a few more games, he’ll get more and more scared of the next time they’ll put him in net, to a point where he’ll believe that losing is the only option. He’s been there before. He wishes he was over it.
There’s no way of telling if it’s really Tanner who talks to Coach Franklin, or if Coach Franklin sees that Blake is working his ass off at practice the next day, but Blake is between the pipes again for their next game, on the road, in Hartford.
They win 4-1 and when the guys line up to pat his head after the game, Brammer hugs him so hard that he nearly lifts him off his feet.
#
For Elliot, the new season begins with an ankle sprain.
He gets injured in their last preseason game against the Foxes. It’s nobody’s fault, just an accident. It’s not as bad as it could be, but he would have preferred to be on the ice for their first regular season game instead of watching it from the press box.
It’s unfortunate that it happened at the beginning of the season, because they have a bunch of new guys on the roster that Elliot wants to get to know better and it’s hard when he’s not practicing with them. He tries to spend as much time with the team as possible, travels with them, hangs out at the rink, gets there early, has lunch with the team. Through it all, Andreas Wagner still follows him like a duckling, much like last season. He cracked the regular season roster this time and Elliot suspects that he’s a little scared of Jacob and that’s why he comes to Elliot with all his questions.
He misses their first game of the season, a road game against the Knights. Elliot gets on the bus with the rest of the guys, even though they’re literally going one city over and will all sleep in their own beds tonight. Blake is on the bench, stone-faced, glaring at the puck as he follows it around the ice with his eyes. He saves one of the trainers from taking a puck in the head during the second, still stone-faced. He throws the puck to a little girl behind the bench and she straight-up kisses the glass, which finally tickles a smile out of him.
Elliot tries not to look his way too much, even though Blake probably doesn’t even know where he’s sitting. The fight they had a few weeks ago still doesn’t sit well with him and the only thing Elliot currently wants to tell Blake is to go fuck himself, so maybe it’s not the best time for a conversation. It still hurts, and Elliot can’t tell what hurts worse – what Blake said to him, or that it was Blake who said it.
He goes down to the locker room after the game to make sure the rookies are okay, because after an evenly-paced first period, the Knights snatched the game from them in the second, outshot them, outscored them and eventually won the game, 5-2.
“Come back soon,” Adam says when they’re on their way home.
“As soon as I can,” Elliot promises.
When it’s time for Elliot to return and he starts skating again, first on his own, then with the team, he often stays after the official end of practice, usually with at least a few other guys, amongst them Adam and Andreas, often with Riley still in goal, swearing at them loudly every time they score on him.
The night Elliot returns to the lineup, he leaves the ice without a single point, and he’s not exactly disappointed, but he was hoping for at least an assist and even wouldn’t have cared if it was secondary. Natalie is waiting for him at home, hugs him and tucks him into bed, holding on to him like she knows that it’s exactly what he needs.
It’s not like she’s ever seen him during the season. He’d hate for her to realize that this isn’t what she wants after all, now that everything’s changing after the summer. Elliot will be gone for roadies, sometimes for nearly two weeks at a time. It’s a tough schedule, even when they’re at home. It takes him ages to fall asleep that night and he grumbles at his alarm in the morning.
The next game goes better. A goal, only an empty-netter, but it’s better than nothing.
After that, they’re on the road for two games and it’s another two games without a point. Elliot is starting to get frustrated, but not quite as frustrated as Riley, who hasn’t won a single game this season and, being their backup, also doesn’t get too many starts, and also not quite as frustrated as Andreas, who hasn’t scored a single goal, despite being in the lineup since the beginning of the season.
“They’re going to scratch me soon,” Andreas mutters. He was on the third line at the beginning of the season, now he’s on the fourth, slowly slipping down the ranks.
Elliot is still centering the second,
