He won’t lie, he’s still worried about him, because concussions are brain injuries and even if the symptoms go away, the long-term effects can be… Elliot won’t even think about that. Blake will be okay.
Elliot goes home and his apartment is quiet – Natalie’s still out – and he curls up on the couch, because it’s high time for a nap, except his eyes keep fluttering open. Elliot is not someone who has trouble sleeping. Ever. Maybe when he has a cold. But for him it’s usually a lie down, close eyes, fall asleep kind of affair.
He thinks about the game last night.
Thinks about Blake.
About the way he sounded on the phone, exhausted, but mostly all right. And he has someone there with him, the guy who answered the phone. Whoever that might have been. Probably one of his teammates, except the Knights likely had practice this morning, just like the Ravens, so it must have been someone else.
Elliot almost wants to reach for his phone to look up the Knights’ practice schedule.
Which is ridiculous.
Maybe Blake has a boyfriend. Doesn’t have to be another player. It could be some guy. Some guy Blake met somewhere far away from the rink. Maybe at the movies, Blake always liked going to movies. Or maybe when he was playing golf. Does Blake even like golf? He likes baseball. Or at least he used to. Maybe he met a guy at that Chinese restaurant that he was telling Elliot about.
“We’ll go sometime, but not on a game day. It’s too close to the arena,” he said to Elliot when they met up in January. Elliot, in return, told him that he’d take him to a place that as the best dumplings in the world.
He squints at his phone. He’s been lying on the couch for twenty minutes and he still isn’t asleep.
Elliot groans, rolls over, and presses his face into a pillow.
It shouldn’t matter to him whether or not Blake is seeing someone, but it seems weird that Blake never mentioned it. They’ve been talking constantly for the past two months and it should have come up in a conversation. If it was serious. Maybe it’s not serious. Elliot has mentioned Natalie plenty of times and Blake said he’d love to meet her, which seemed strange to Elliot, although he didn’t say so. Blake can meet Natalie if he wants to.
His nap is shorter than usual that afternoon.
The rest of the regular season passes in the blink of an eye, like it always does in the end. They don’t end up facing each other in the first round, with the Knights staying in the second seed and the Ravens slipping into a wildcard spot.
The Ravens exit the playoffs after seven hard-fought games. The Knights play thirteen before they lose in the second round. Blake was back on the ice for the Knights, looking rock solid, but good goaltending isn’t everything. There’s so much that plays into a playoff success, circumstances beyond anyone’s control. Injuries. Luck.
Blake takes him to that Chinese restaurant after the playoffs are over for them. Elliot is still in town, because Natalie’s here. They’re going to her parents’ beach house for two weeks in the summer, but for now they’re in the city and Elliot has been trawling through children’s hospitals, handing out Ravens gear, because he needs to do something with the time he has on his hands. Other than going to the gym with Adam. He does a few things that Ravens PR asks him to do, a few signings, a few appearances at events for charities the Ravens support and Elliot is happy to do it, but he’s glad to have a few off days in between, too.
Getting food with Blake turns into a sightseeing tour, because Blake tells him that he’s never gone to Manhattan to look at… pretty much anything. So Elliot takes him to the top of the Empire State Building and they stand next to each other and look out at the city, neither of them saying a word as the sun sets in the distance.
Elliot has been up here with his parents and they loved it. Maybe that’s why his eyes keep darting over to Blake, trying to figure out if he likes it or if he’s torturing him with tourist crap. He paid for Blake’s ticket, in case he ended up hating it. The expression on Blake’s face is, as usual, a mystery, but at least it’s not the murder eyes, so Elliot will consider it a success.
Elliot loves coming up here. It reminds him just how small he is, just how many people are out there, and how lucky he is that he ended up here, of all places.
“What do you think?” Elliot whispers.
“I think…” Blake is still staring out at the city. He doesn’t finish the sentence.
Maybe Blake feels small, too.
“You wanna go?” Elliot asks, just in case.
Blake shakes his head. “Not yet.”
“Okay,” Elliot says, and watches the smallest of smiles work its way onto Blake’s face.
Once they’re back in the street, they wander to Penn Station, which is where Blake will catch a train back to Newark, but they walk slowly, neither of them in a rush, the night air pleasant.
It’s then that Elliot can’t keep his traitorous brain from saying, “Are you seeing anyone?”
“Uh…”
“It’s just… when I called–”
“Yeah,” Blake says. “That was… yeah.”
“Oh. Good for you,” Elliot says and doesn’t pause to examine whether or not he actually means that. He might not like himself very much if he let himself reach the end of that train of thought.
“It’s not… a relationship or anything,” Blake mumbles. “Not like… I don’t know.”
“But you have someone.”
