Elliot kisses him then, slowly, and only stops to get Blake out of the shirt he let him borrow last night, trails his fingers down, letting them get caught in the small patch of hair on Blake’s chest and bends down to kiss the soft skin of his stomach, follows the trail of coarse hair down, gets Blake’s boxers out of the way and gets his mouth on Blake without any further ado.
Blake groans like he wasn’t expecting that. Maybe Elliot should have taken it a little slower, given the fact that he hasn’t done this in years, but it seems that Blake cares very little for Elliot’s technique. Elliot is happy to find that Blake still makes those soft little noises as Elliot gets him off.
There wasn’t much finesse to it, but Blake looks wrecked anyway.
“Fuck,” Blake whispers.
Elliot grins and flops down next to Blake, who’s flushed from head to toe, breathing heavily, and Elliot can’t help but be a little proud of himself. He kisses the top of Blake’s shoulder, going easily when Blake reaches for him, kisses him, tugging at Elliot’s briefs, getting a hand around him.
He does last longer than five seconds, but Blake pulls at his hair again, which is not something Elliot even knew he liked, and it does something for him, makes him gasp against Blake’s mouth, and Elliot doesn’t manage to hold on much longer, just gives in to it and ends up tucked against Blake, nose pressed against the side of his neck, trying to catch his breath.
Blake’s fingers are back in his hair, much gentler now, carefully untangling knotted curls while Elliot gets his breathing back to normal. “You okay?” Blake eventually asks, hand coming to a rest on the back of Elliot’s neck.
“Yeah,” Elliot says, but that’s all he manages right now. He nudges Blake with his nose. “Cold.”
Blake huffs, then sits up to tug at the sheets, his arm trapped under Elliot. “Hey…”
“Hm?”
“Let me up, I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Ugh,” Elliot says, but lets him go. He’ll come back. Always does. Blake is secretly really into cuddling. Or at least he used to be. Blake tugs at the sheets to make sure Elliot is tucked in.
Something in Elliot feels heavy again as he watches Blake shuffle away.
He doesn’t know why he’s worried. Maybe because this was a mistake. Maybe because they play for different teams whose schedules never line up. Maybe because they can’t be what Elliot wants them to be, because that’s not the kind of life they chose when they decided to stick with hockey.
Whatever they will be when Blake walks out his door later, it’ll be a compromise.
Blake returns to him quickly, entirely unbothered by how naked he is, and slips back into bed. He doesn’t complain when Elliot fits himself back against him.
“I’ll make breakfast in a bit,” Elliot mumbles. Then they’ll talk.
Blake hums.
“Before we have breakfast, though…” Elliot reaches up, drags his thumb over Blake’s stubble. “Will you do something for me?”
There’s a smile on Blake’s face when he says, “Of course.”
#
Blake is fiddling with Elliot’s coffeemaker, hair wet, dripping on the shirt he slept in. He’s pretty sure that Elliot has a hairdryer somewhere, but he didn’t want to ask. Honestly, he doesn’t care so much. It usually dries a little wavy, which is fine. He’s thinking about his hair and coffee, so he doesn’t have to think about anything else.
Like Elliot, who slipped into the bathroom when Blake was done, still naked, hand finding the small of Blake’s back in passing before he stepped into the shower. Blake left, picked up yesterday’s clothes, and then, for some ridiculous reason, decided to put on the shirt that Elliot gave him last night. It’s even a size too big on Blake and it’s old and worn, a souvenir from Nashville, Tennessee, by the looks of it.
So, yes, he’s wearing that shirt for a reason he can’t explain to himself, trying to make coffee. He’s close to figuring it out. Elliot said he’d make breakfast, so there isn’t much else Blake can do, other than wait for him. And his coffee.
He goes through whatever he missed last night, teammates – the ones who were still capable – sending everyone Happy New Year messages, a text from Evan that’s just emojis, a text from Charlie from this morning, thanking him for his sacrifice, promising he’ll pay Blake back for the cab he presumably took back to Newark last night. Blake does not tell him that he’s an idiot who didn’t take a cab back to Newark last night like he fucking should have.
Every decision he made after he agreed to coming home with Elliot last night was objectively a bad one. Because what the fuck are they going to do now? Be boyfriends? Yeah, right.
There’s no way they can pull this off.
There’s no way he can be for Elliot what Noah was to him. Blake would always want more than that. And he can’t ask Elliot to give him more than that, because he could go out there and find himself a nice girlfriend and be happy and not fucking hide from everyone.
Elliot comes into the kitchen in a Ravens shirt and sweatpants and comes straight over to Blake, plasters himself against him, dripping on him, too.
“I was scared you’d leave,” Elliot mumbles.
“Come on.”
“Okay, maybe not really, but… I’m… not scared, but…”
“Yeah,” Blake says, “me, too.”
“We’re talking now?” Elliot asks.
Blake isn’t good at talking, never was. Noah made him, even though it turned out that Noah hid, like, a whole fucking bucket of feelings from him. Sometimes he wonders if he should have noticed. They talked a lot, curled
