Blake grins.
Charlie grins back at him, then gets serious again. “That’s why I wanted to leave. The guys here aren’t like that. They wouldn’t… I don’t know. Like, I don’t have a gay sister, but I have a gay uncle and he couldn’t give less a shit about hockey, but what I’m saying is, I wouldn’t be scared of introducing him to you guys, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I get it,” Blake says. He doesn’t know why he’s so eager to change the topic. Maybe because it’s hitting a little too close to home.
He still hasn’t told anyone on the team, even though the guys probably know. They have to know. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, never had one, not a single one of them ever saw him flirt with a woman. They used to chirp him, especially when he still used to disappear after games to meet Noah, jokingly and loudly whispering about Blake’s secret girlfriend, but no one’s said anything in a while.
Sometimes he wants to ask Mattie. If he knows. If he’s figured it out. Sometimes he wants to find out if Mattie will look at him differently if Blake actually tells him. To his face.
Blake gives Charlie’s leg a flick. “Glad you came to the Knights.”
“Me too,” Charlie says. He chews on his bottom lip and looks around Blake’s apartment, at Angus, who’s sitting on top of the cat tree, glaring in their general direction. “You wanna hang out tonight?”
Blake was pretty sure that that was what they were already doing. He laughs. “Sure.”
#
It’s a supremely bad idea to get wasted after a game, even when you have the following day off. Because they don’t get a lot of days off. And Elliot doesn’t want to spend the entire day in his bed, convinced that he’ll throw up all over his entire life if he moves even just an inch. He’s been there. He should know better.
He still lets the guys drag him to a club after the game.
It was a good one, an 8-2 victory over the Mariners. They fucking hate the Mariners. The guys are overjoyed, the media is less nasty than usual and Elliot doesn’t even dread talking to them after the game. The boys want to go out after, Elliot promises to buy all the goal scorers a beer, but then they decide that a bar is too boring, and then suddenly Andreas and Crab are talking about this club they like, and Crab’s not even twenty-one yet, so what business does he have, having favorite clubs?
Elliot tries to talk his way out of going with them, but it looks like half the team is going, pretty much everyone who doesn’t have kids at home, even one guy who does have kids at home, so Elliot’s feeble protests are ignored and he’s going with them after all.
He doesn’t mind clubs so much, except it’s loud and he hates dancing, so he stays at a table with Adam, who also doesn’t like dancing, and Moby, who tells them that he has to get drunk before he goes dancing.
He orders three rounds of shots to start with and Elliot hasn’t even moved on to the second one when he starts to regret that he agreed to any of this, especially because the Elliot who’s had three shots doesn’t protest when Moby drags him on the dance floor with him.
Elliot does not dance.
He can’t.
He sways back and forth awkwardly in a gaggle of his teammates and… a bunch of other people. He recognizes a wife and two girlfriends, but doesn’t know any of the other people. It’s not until someone’s hands land on his ass with keen interest that he makes an escape, finding Adam exactly where he and Moby left him, somehow not drunk enough to give in to Moby.
“Had enough already?” Adam asks when Elliot scoots back into the booth.
“Someone touched my ass. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an accident.”
Adam cackles and pats his shoulder. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
Elliot does not need another drink right now, but he doesn’t tell Adam that, so he can’t exactly blame Adam for getting him one anyway.
While Adam is gone, Elliot fiddles with his phone and pulls up his latest text conversation, which was just him telling Blake that he can’t wait to wipe the floor with the Mariners. He could tell Blake something like hey, we actually did that, but ends up sending, help they dragged me to a club :(
Blake replies within the next minute, says, not coming to ny to rescue you, which is honestly just mean.
Elliot tells him exactly that. they made me dance, he adds, so Blake will see how terrible of a time he’s having right now.
Then Adam returns, hands him a drink and Elliot forgets about his phone for a bit.
Elliot isn’t very good at getting drunk. He doesn’t drink a lot, and if he does, it’s a beer, on some occasions two, but that’s usually it. He gets clingy when he’s drunk, always wants to lean not against something but someone, because people are generally more comfortable than things.
He’s also a lightweight.
“You okay, buddy?” Adam asks, with the shit-eating grin of a best friend who knows that Elliot is currently having at least a dozen regrets.
“Fine,” Elliot says. “Where’s Lou?”
“Asleep on the couch,” Adam replies. “Can’t wait to be asleep on the couch with her, to be honest. But she thinks it’s important that I do stuff with the team. Like I didn’t want to stab every single one of these fuckers after our last roadie.”
Elliot snorts. He gets it. The guys can be… a lot. Moby was calling everyone mon cher by the end of it and Chris and Dima kept stealing each other clothes. Elliot nearly lost his shit when Dima tried
