While they eat, Elliot tells him that he’s been trying to cook more and bought a few new cookbooks over the summer, and that he destroyed three pans in the process, because he gets distracted when he cooks, because he doesn’t have the patience to stand next to the stove and watch, so he starts looking at his phone and suddenly stuff is burning.
“How are you still alive?” Blake asks. He’s truly baffled that Elliot hasn’t burned this place down.
Elliot laughs. “Sheer dumb luck, I guess. My food is actually pretty good, though. When it’s not burnt.”
“Crispy,” Blake says.
“Oh, I forgot, you actually like crispy stuff. Although sometimes there’s really too much crisp.”
“No such thing.”
“I’ll cook for you sometime,” Elliot says. “I’ll make it extra crispy. So crispy it’s unrecognizable.”
Blake huffs at him.
“I can cook, though.”
“Didn’t say I didn’t believe you,” Blake says. “I’m sure you’re very talented. Especially when it comes to making things crispy.”
Elliot shakes his head at him. “I bought you dinner and this is how you treat me?”
“Sorry, I totally appreciate the dumplings.”
“You’d better.”
“Hey, tell you what,” Blake says, “whoever ends the regular season with the most points, like our teams’ points in the standings, buys the loser fifty dumplings.”
“Fifty?” Elliot laughs, eyes crinkling. He reaches out to shake Blake’s hand. “I’m in.”
#
The Ravens’ home opener this season is a game against the Knights, because of course it is. They saw a lot of each other during the preseason already, but Elliot has to admit that it’s a good matchup for a home opener.
These games have potential to get nasty, although it’s early in the season, the third game for both teams, so they’re starting with a clean slate.
The Knights have already won two games on home ice, the Ravens have won two on the road, but tonight one of them is going home with their first loss of the season. The Ravens are off to a good start, score five minutes into the period and it goes back and forth from then on out, until they’re tied 3-3 at the beginning of the third.
Elliot said hello to Blake during warmups when Blake was stretching close to the center line, but Elliot hasn’t otherwise interacted with him. He hasn’t scored on him yet, only has an assist on Adam’s goal and another one on Crab’s that they got during a power play. Towards the end of the third, when both of their teams are getting antsy, things start to get a little rougher.
Elliot ends up sliding into Blake’s net – thankfully not into Blake – about forty seconds before the end of regulation and Adam gives Blake a nudge, so Elliot can get back out of the net, which Trainor takes issue with, pulling Adam away by his jersey. Blake, unimpressed by the pushing and shoving, gives Elliot a poke with his stick. Elliot can barely feel it, that’s how gentle of a poke it is.
“Get the fuck out of my net, Moo,” Blake says.
Elliot fights the insane impulse to stick his tongue out at him and crawls out of the net without provoking another fight.
Their game goes into overtime and Elliot so very nearly scores the game winner. He has no idea how Blake gets his stick on it. Elliot thinks he has him, shoots and can practically see it going in, except it doesn’t. He stops after, stares at Blake, who’s staring back at him, unimpressed. Elliot shakes his head and skates off.
The Ravens win in the shootout. After six rounds.
It’s Andreas who finally scores.
Elliot texts Blake after the game, says he’ll buy him a drink.
When Blake meets him outside the arena, he looks a lot happier than Elliot thought he would.
“Why are you so happy?” Elliot asks, even though it’s rude as shit.
Blake actually laughs. “I’m sorry, I know I just lost a game and I should be crying on the floor, but we watched a replay of when you nearly scored on us in OT and your face…”
Elliot rolls his eyes. “How the fuck did you do that?”
“I don’t even know, but it was the highlight of my night. I should be buying you a drink.”
Elliot elbows him in the side.
He takes him to a bar not too far from the arena that’ll have a table for them because he’s a Raven. They won’t have to wait.
“You have curfew?” Elliot asks.
“Nah, we’re practicing in Newark tomorrow and we’re flying out after that. I told them that I’d find my own way home, they’re usually cool with that unless we have a game the next day. I mean, this was practically a home game.”
Some people shoot them looks when they slide into their booth, but no one comes over to talk to them. Maybe no one cares about hockey anyway; maybe no one even recognizes them.
Blake doesn’t really look like he does in the promotional photos the Knights keep using. In those pictures, Blake’s face is clean shaven, his hair pulled into a bun, but the Blake across from Elliot is scruffy, beanie on his head, hair loosely hanging down to this shoulders, the tips still damp.
He looks good with the longer hair. More like himself.
“By the way,” Blake says, “tell Crab he’s back on the shit-list.”
Elliot grins. “Please be nice to the child, Blake.”
“He actually does look like he’s twelve. He’s probably like you, he’s gonna look like he’s twelve until he’s forty.”
“I don’t look like I’m twelve.”
“You do. And right now you also sound like you’re twelve.”
Elliot kicks him under the table.
“Dude, if I walk out of here with an injury, my team’s gonna murder you.”
“I know that was a
