It’s Elliot.
Blake wonders briefly if Elliot is calling the wrong Samuels brother.
He almost doesn’t answer but changes his mind when it’s nearly too late. Fuck knows why. “Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” Elliot replies. “I’m sorry. Is this… I was about to ask if this is a bad time and, like, of course it’s a bad time… I…”
“It’s okay,” Blake mutters. He glances at Evan, whose eyes are fixed on the TV. “Let me… Give me a second to go upstairs.”
Blake gives Evan’s foot a gentle pat, then he sneaks out of the room. He doesn’t want to have this conversation with Evan listening in.
#
Elliot thinks about calling Blake all day.
After Evan leaves, Elliot is distracted in the meeting he has in the afternoon, is distracted when he drives home, is distracted when he lies down for a nap and can’t even convince his eyes to stay closed. He should have said something to Blake. Anything. Even if it was just the standard my condolences. He wanted to hug him so badly. He doesn’t know why he didn’t do it.
The fight they had aside, he behaved like a soulless asshole.
So he keeps fiddling with his phone all day. He gets distracted when he makes dinner, burns his chicken, and then eats the charred chicken because it’s his own damn fault. Natalie isn’t home yet to judge him for it, so he suffers in silence. He’s actually become pretty good at cooking, except when he tries new recipes. There’s still a fifty-fifty chance of him hurtling towards a major disaster when he tries something new, but there are some dishes he’s made so many times that he’s perfected them.
He keeps thinking about Blake.
Eventually, he can’t deal with himself anymore, grabs his phone and calls him. He likely has more important stuff to do and won’t answer anyway, so Elliot will leave a message and tell him that he’s sorry for his loss, because then he at least said something. Blake probably doesn’t even want to talk to Elliot, which is confirmed a moment later when Blake doesn’t answer his phone.
Except then he does.
“Hey,” Blake says.
“Hey,” Elliot says. For a moment, he can’t remember what he called to say. “I’m sorry. Is this… I was about to ask if this is a bad time and, like, of course it’s a bad time… I…”
He’s an idiot. He shouldn’t have called.
“It’s okay,” Blake says, voice low. “Let me… Give me a second to go upstairs.” Elliot can almost see him stomping up that narrow staircase. He hears a door creak, then Blake says, “Okay.”
“I’m so sorry, Blake,” Elliot says.
Blake takes a deep breath on the other end of the line.
And then Elliot’s mouth just runs away with all the thoughts he’s had all day for some reason. “I wanted to hug you so much when I saw you earlier and… I should have. Blake… I…” Elliot pinches the bridge of his nose, because he can’t cry right now, this is not about him. “And I’m so sorry I called, I just wanted to check on you… and on Evan… and… I’ll hang up now, but I’m sorry and I hope you’re okay.”
Which is ridiculous, because of course Blake isn’t fucking okay.
All he gets from the other end of the line is a shuddering breath and a very quiet, “Don’t hang up.”
“Okay… Okay, I won’t.”
“It’s…” Blake trails off. “She had a stroke, she wasn’t… She just went to sleep last night and… Yeah. That’s good, I guess? It didn’t hurt, I don’t think. And the funeral is the day after tomorrow and…” His voice cracks. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Elliot still wants to hug him. He does entertain the absolutely insane idea of driving to Norwalk to give Blake a hug. He knows Blake is crying on the other end of the line, can hear him sniffle. Fuck, he’d drive to Norwalk to bring him a tissue right now. “Blake?” Elliot says.
“Can you… talk to me? About… whatever?”
“Sure. You wanna hear about… I don’t know.” All he does is play hockey. Blake probably doesn’t want to hear about his personal life and Elliot doesn’t have much else going on. “I can tell you about my teammates.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” Elliot says.
And so he tells Blake about Andreas’s ridiculous pregame ritual that involves a lot of muttering in German, and about Moby, who keeps taping dicks on people’s jerseys, even though he’s way too fucking old for that kind of shit, and Swan, who lost a bet and had to get a tattoo of an actual swan, and their rookie, baby-faced Keith Taylor who keeps getting pranked by Dima and gets so red every single time that the guys have started calling him Crab.
Natalie gets home, peers into the bedroom, where Elliot is sitting at the foot of their bed. He points at his phone, gets up and closes the door. It’s not something he’d usually do, he doesn’t hide his phone calls from her, but this is different.
He talks about the Ravens’ latest road trip, about a restaurant he found in Nashville that he liked. He can’t remember the name, knows he has a napkin somewhere, but he gives Blake directions on how to get there from the arena.
He tells Blake about Adam and picking a ring for his girlfriend. He tells Blake how much he misses Magnus, who’s a Comet now.
He keeps talking. He doesn’t know for how long, slipping from one story into another, trying not to think about how Blake is probably all by himself in his old room, crying quietly while Elliot prattles on and on about nothing in particular. Somehow, he doesn’t run out of things to say.
Eventually, Blake says, “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
“I’m not supposed to like any of
