“Blake,” Coach only says and Mattie comes off the ice, glaring daggers.
Someone needs to score right the fuck now, which Coach is probably shouting about on the bench right as Blake gets settled in the crease. He hates coming into games like this, after sitting on the bench for ages, but when he saves the first shot, which, admittedly, just goes right into his glove and doesn’t require any acrobatics, Blake is more grounded.
The game goes on like nothing happened and the Mariners pepper him with shots and Blake is mad. He’s mad, because they have their playoff spot, but they still need to win this game, and his guys need to get off their asses and the next time he gets his stick on the puck, he hurls it down the ice, and somehow, miraculously, Kells is right there in the back, taking he hell off with that puck. The Mariners’ goalie never stood a chance.
The Knights manage to get another one, and in its execution the goal isn’t pretty, but Blake doesn’t care if it’s pretty as long as it gets them closer to tying up the game. They don’t.
Not in the second.
The third starts with two guys in the box with matching minors. The Knights score on the 4-on-4 and their entire bench is jumping up and down.
The Knights score another one, get it taken away because it’s offside, and with four minutes left in the game, Blake is ready to murder someone. He wants to win this. He can’t go out there and score a goal himself, so one of the guys needs to do him that favor now.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Noah says as he glides past him before a face-off.
Blake gives him the evil eye and the smile drops right off Noah’s face. A strange wave of satisfaction washes over him, but he doesn’t examine it any further, because he needs to focus on the face-off.
Blake doesn’t know how they win the game. Well, objectively he does know. He doesn’t let in any other goals and his team scores four, and it’s that kind of ridiculous comeback that happens maybe once a season. Brammer barrels into him no two seconds after the final horn and Blake lets it wash over him, the taps, the hugs, while the Mariners’ crowd quickly disperses.
As they head down the tunnel, Blake hears that the Mariners gave him second star, and someone pats his back, and Mattie is actually smiling at him in the locker room, despite the murder eyes earlier. “Well done, kid,” Mattie says.
“Hey, Fish!”
Blake turns around just in time to find himself face to face with Paulie, who hands him the knight helmet they’ve been passing around the locker room all season. Blake puts it on because someone will put it on him if he doesn’t, says thank you and good game, boys, but takes it off again quickly, a little embarrassed by all the eyes on him.
Before Blake can get out of his gear, before he can get put on media duty, Mattie comes shuffling back over, already mostly out of his pads, and drops a puck in his hand.
“Wait…”
Blake has had his first win, he has the puck at home on a shelf. He frowns down at the writing on the tape and realizes it says nothing about saves or wins. 1ST NHL POINT, it says.
Because he got a point. When he passed the puck to Kells and Kells scored. He didn’t even notice at the time.
“You didn’t realize, did you,” Mattie says, deadpan.
“No.”
Mattie snorts and walks away, leaving Blake to get eaten alive by the local media. Except they’re not so bad today and one of them congratulates him on his performance and PR takes pictures of him and his first point puck.
He takes his time changing – most of the guys are probably going to hit the city to celebrate, because now their last game of the season is pretty much a formality, but Blake has other plans. A game in Brooklyn isn’t as much of a road game as, say, a game in California, so they don’t have a curfew and if they want to make their own way back to Newark, no one will bat an eye.
Blake does check his phone, because maybe he will go back on the bus with the team. It’s up to Noah.
There’s a text from his brother – shit u have ass many points in the nhl as i hav – and there’s so much to unpack there, starting with the ‘ass’ and ending with the two different ‘haves’, his grandma sent him one as well – So proud of you, Blake! Love, Nana!! – and he smiles about that one a little bit. He keeps scrolling until he finds the text from Noah he’s been looking for.
come 2 mine? pity bj?
Blake tells him that he’s on his way, takes a cab, and finds that Noah is already at home, already out of his suit, waiting for Blake. They don’t do this a lot, only when they both happen to have at least half a day off at the same time, when Blake is in Brooklyn, not when Noah is in Newark, because Blake lives with Mattie, and it’s not like he can bring a guy home and hide him in the basement.
It works well enough, meaning that Blake has someone’s hands on him often enough that he doesn’t have time to think about how fucking lonely he is when he’s sitting in Mattie’s basement on his own. This is pretty much as good as it gets for him. Noah gets him, gets the situation they’re in, and he
