“They’re jerks.”
“Yeah, my guys are jerks, too,” Blake says. “I love them a lot.”
Elliot laughs.
“Thanks for calling,” Blake says softly.
“If there’s anything I can do…”
“Thank you.” Blake clears his throat. “I should go check on Evan.”
“How is he?”
“He’ll be okay. You’ll keep an eye out for him when we’re back, yeah?”
“I will,” Elliot promises.
They’re both quiet for a moment. They both have other things to say, but now is not the time. If Elliot makes one wrong move, something will break.
“Blake?” Elliot finally says.
“Yeah?”
“When you’re back, can we… hang out?”
“Yeah,” Blake says. “I’ll…”
“Whenever you have time.” Elliot drags his fingers through his hair. “Take care of yourself.”
Again, Blake says, “Yeah.” Then he says goodnight.
Elliot stays where he’s been sitting for the past hour or so, staring at the floor, trying to piece himself back together into a presentable person.
He resurfaces eventually, because Natalie got home about forty-five minutes ago and the longest Elliot usually spends on the phone is ten minutes. He makes an exception when he’s on a long roadie and calls her, but even then they’re usually done talking after half an hour.
She’s on the couch, watching that TV show with the vampires she likes, munching on a bowl of popcorn. “Hey,” she says and it sounds like a question.
“Sorry,” Elliot mumbles. “Old friend. Got some bad news today.”
“Oh,” Natalie says. She’s looking at him like she’s expecting him to say something else, but he doesn’t really know what else to say, so he asks if he can have some popcorn and then nudges the remote back to her so she can go on watching her vampire show.
#
Blake sits in his old room for a few more minutes. There’s not too much left in his closet and on the shelves, just some old gear, some clothes he left, stuff from when he was a little kid that his grandma apparently didn’t want to throw away.
He rubs his eyes. They’re dry now, after he cried for half an hour while Elliot was talking about stuff that Blake barely even registered. Elliot has always been a talker, even during difficult situations, never tried to wiggle his way out of a conversation, because he could deal. There’s something soothing about the way Elliot talks, now even more than six years ago. He has that captain thing down.
He talks himself into moving, because he really should check on Evan. Looking at it now, Evan’s intermittent crying is probably a much healthier way to deal with this than Blake trying to keep it together until he just couldn’t do it anymore and then letting it go while he was on the phone with his fucking ex.
Evan is still exactly where Blake left him, watching TV. There’s a tear clinging to his eyelashes, like he stopped crying into the pillow he’s hugging to his chest no two minutes ago. He sits up when Blake joins him on the couch, eyes lingering on Blake’s face.
“Who was that?” Evan asks. “Girlfriend?”
The thing with the truth is that in some moments it seems easier to say than in others. Considering the situation they’re in, this should not be one of the easy ones, but Blake will take it. “Ex-boyfriend,” he says. It’s the worst time to say it, but it’s never felt easier.
What Blake isn’t expecting is Evan’s, “Why’d you break up?”
“What?”
“You and the boyfriend? Why’d you break up?”
“Really, I tell you that I’m gay and that’s what you want to know?”
“You didn’t technically say you were gay,” Evan says. “What was I supposed to say?”
“I… don’t know.”
“Did you think I’d pass out because I couldn’t deal or some shit? I’m not a total douchebag, Blake.”
“No, but…”
“Believe it or not, but you’re not the first gay person I’ve met,” Evan says. “Chill.”
“Okay,” Blake says, taken aback.
“So?”
“What?”
Evan pokes at Blake’s knee. “Why’d you break up?”
“It just wasn’t… working. At the time.”
Evan seems to accept that as an answer and then says, “You have a boyfriend now?”
“Not really.”
“Not really is not a no.”
“It’s a thing.”
“A thing.” Evan shakes his head at him, like he’s deeply offended by the term. “Can I meet him?”
“It’s not… no.”
“So you’re saying you have, like, a dirty mistress.”
Blake rolls his eyes at him, even though Noah would probably find this whole conversation hilarious and would in no way object to being called a dirty mistress.
“I’m curious, since we’re talking about your love life for the first time ever. I thought you just hated talking to me about it, you know? I always told you about my girlfriends.”
“You told me too much about your girlfriends.”
Evan cackles. “When things get serious with… your guy… can I meet him?”
“It won’t get serious,” Blake grumbles. “But I guess if there ever is someone serious, you can meet him.”
“I can live with that.”
Evan fiddles with his phone and Blake nearly has a heart attack when Squid jumps into his lap, purring as he makes himself comfortable. Evan changes the channel, then gets up to get himself some water and picks up Angus on the way. He almost disappears against Evan’s black shirt.
Evan hugs Angus to his chest and nods at the orange fur ball on Blake’s lap. “What’s gonna happen to them? Aunt Beth doesn’t really like cats and I don’t want to put them in a shelter, I mean, they don’t deserve that, do you think one of the neighbors–”
“I’ll take them,” Blake says without even thinking about it. They got their first cat when Blake was three, a tabby called Cheese, and since then they’ve always had at least one or two cats,
