He’s weirdly okay with it. Things are okay. New York is okay. Adam lets on that he has an unused room, in case Elliot needs one after the preseason. He fits right in. Things are okay.
They’re okay until he plays his first preseason game against the New Jersey Knights and Blake Samuels is in goal, on the other side for the first time in their lives. Elliot doesn’t score on Blake, disgruntled when he heads off the ice, because he should have been able to sneak one past him in his sleep.
He finds Blake after the game, talking to someone in a hallway outside the visitors’ locker room. Once he lays eyes on him, he realizes that he didn’t actually mean to find him, just wanted to take a quick peek to see if Blake grew his hair out like he said he would – he did – and, well, maybe to see if he looked happy – he does. The Knights play in dark blue and it does things to Blake’s eyes that Elliot doesn’t know how to explain, same goes for the suit that Blake is wearing right now, a blue that seems to match his eyes exactly.
Blake freezes when he spots Elliot, excuses himself, and walks over very slowly, like he’s not sure if he even wants to.
“Hey,” Elliot says and smiles.
Blake’s smile is a little slower to appear. Elliot can’t blame him. Blake’s smiles have always been a bit of a rarity and Elliot has figured out that there are probably three types that make the most frequent appearances – a friend just scored a goal is the first, Elliot just said something stupid and Blake can’t help it is the second, and just found a really good burrito is the third. In any case, Elliot has been a terrible friend and probably doesn’t deserve a smile. They didn’t talk much during the summer, and when they did, their conversations fizzled out after a handful of texts. Elliot never knew what to say, felt awkward when he texted Blake to ask how he was doing.
He never has that problem with his teammates, but he also can’t treat Blake like a teammate. That’s not what he is. Not what he was either. Or at least not just that.
“Hey,” Blake replies eventually.
“Great game,” Elliot says. The Knights pretty much wiped the floor with them, but it’s only the preseason. They have time to get up to speed before the regular season starts. Or so Elliot tells himself.
Blake nods. “Yeah, it was okay.” A minuscule shrug and he adds, “They’re sending me upstate. Glad I got to play, though. I guess you’re playing on opening night?”
“I don’t know yet,” Elliot says, even though he’s reasonably sure that the answer is yes. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t just say that. Maybe because he’s sad for Blake, because they’re sending him down, even though Blake must have known from the start that the AHL would be his first stop.
“Well, I gotta go,” Blake says and holds up his fist, “good luck.”
Tentatively, Elliot bumps his fist against Blake’s, and thanks him, and watches him walk away, wondering why he feels like he was talking to a complete stranger.
#
“Ravens again?”
Blake doesn’t reply, because Dennis has eyes and can see that he’s watching the Ravens again, and Dennis also knows that he’s friends with Elliot Cowell – at least hypothetically. It’s not like they talk or anything, because Elliot is busy being a rising star and Blake is busy getting used to being in goal for the Knights’ AHL team. He gets to start often enough, has won more games than he lost, but it’s nothing like the show Elliot is putting on down in the city.
They love him.
Blake, of course, knew that they would love him, because how could they not? After what seems like five minutes in the NHL, Elliot is already so much more grown up than he was last summer. Since Blake loves to torture himself, he also watches Elliot’s interviews and not just his games.
He misses him.
That sunny smile, his laughter that sounded a bit like a goose being strangled, the smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose and his cheeks, the way his eyelids fluttered the tiniest bit whenever Blake touched him, all those little things that Blake barely even noticed when they still saw each other all the time.
“Yikes,” Dennis says when he flops down next to him. The score is 4-0 in favor of the Ravens and they’re only just approaching the end of the first period. Two of those goals are Elliot’s.
“Wanna order pizza tonight?” Dennis asks.
Blake hums something that could be considered a yes to the pizza question, his eyes still on their TV.
He usually keeps himself from wondering if Elliot misses him, too, because the very honest answer to that is that he doesn’t know. He indulges himself today when the broadcast cuts to Elliot during a stoppage in play. A strand of brown hair is sticking out at the front of his bucket and he’s chewing on his mouthguard, eyes darting across the ice until he seems to find what he was looking for and skates over to Nyström, who’s about seven or eight years older than them and also a Swedish god. Elliot smiles at something that Nyström says to him, glove covering half his face so the cameras won’t pick it up.
“So you used to play with him?” Dennis asks after a while.
It takes Blake a moment to tear his eyes off the screen. “Yeah.”
“He’s unreal, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Blake says again.
Elliot, on TV, is getting ready for a face-off.
Deep down, Blake already knows that he’s about to watch Elliot
