He sends Elliot his room number instead.
Then he pulls on a shirt. He doesn’t usually sleep in one when it’s just him, but it seems like a good idea. Because they’re really only hanging out. Nothing else. Blake will stick with that, anything else will make things more complicated.
Elliot knocks on his door five minutes later, looking much less polished than he did earlier, wearing sweatpants and an All Star Game shirt, his hair messy. Soft.
Blake steps back to let him in without a word, pushes the door shut, and then Elliot is hovering there and it would be so easy to reach out, to pull him in, kiss him until they’re both breathless and then splay him out on his bed, get those sweatpants off, press his lips against the soft skin of Elliot’s thighs…
“I swear I’m not here to…” Elliot shrugs. “I really just wanted to see you.”
“Yeah,” Blake says. Yeah, because that’s exactly what he asked for. “You wanna watch a movie or something?”
Elliot nods and, with some reluctance, makes himself comfortable on Blake’s bed, Blake next to him, making sure there’s some space between them. He lets Elliot pick the movie. They don’t say much, only mumbling to each other now and again to comment on how terrible the movie is.
Blake isn’t really expecting Elliot’s finger to land on his arm.
“Did those hurt?” Elliot asks, tracing a line of waves on Blake’s forearm.
“Yeah,” Blake says, because they really did. Took a long time, too. He didn’t get them all at the same time.
Elliot hums, fingers curled around Blake’s wrist, turning over his arm. “I like them a lot.” He nods at the sleeve of Blake’s shirt. “Can you…”
Blake pulls it up as far as it’ll go. This isn’t the first time that someone’s looking at his tattoos; he’s used to it. Brammer lost his shit the first time he saw the full sleeve, kept turning Blake’s arm over until Blake told him to knock it off, grabbing Mattie’s stick to poke him until he escaped across the room. Loads of people have asked to see it. But when it’s Elliot’s fingers on his skin, it’s different. His cheeks turn hot with Elliot’s eyes on him.
“What about the other side?” Elliot asks.
“You want me to turn over?”
Elliot shrugs. “You don’t have to.”
Blake shifts, lies on his side so Elliot can see the other arm, his fingers quickly finding Connecticut, the line of trees above it.
“Your parents birthdates?” Elliot asks when the tip of his finger stops on the line of numbers that is hiding in the feathers on Blake’s forearm.
Blake nods and turns his arms so Elliot can see the others.
“And your grandma’s?”
Blake hums.
“And… Evan’s?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s nice,” Elliot says. His fingers linger on Blake’s arm for a moment, then he pulls them away, lies down on his side as well, facing Blake, and says, “I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
“About… this,” Elliot says.
Ah. Yeah. This.
“I shouldn’t even have to make a decision,” Elliot says. “It shouldn’t be… How can you even still want to be with me when I can’t say, ‘Yes, Blake, I want to be with you,’ right now?”
“Because it’s not that easy. I know it’s not that easy.”
“Aren’t you scared?” Elliot asks. “That someone could find out? And then…”
Blake has to think about it for a moment, because the thought of someone finding out doesn’t sit well with him at all, but is he really scared of it? “I think the chances of someone finding out are relatively slim,” Blake says. “And I think that our teams would probably mind their own business if they knew…” He bites his lip, another thought about to slip out. He’s not sure if he wants to put it out there. “Half my team probably knows that I’m gay.”
Elliot frowns. “How?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend. I’ve never had one. And they stopped asking after a while and they stopped trying to set me up and all that. So the guys that have been around long enough… They probably know.”
“But they haven’t said anything.”
“No.”
“And you haven’t said anything.”
“No,” Blake says. “I was thinking about telling Charlie. And Mattie. I just… never did.”
“I don’t know how I managed to tell you,” Elliot mumbles.
“Was it because of the lesbians?” Blake asks. His grandma was friends with two lesbians who frequently dropped by. One of them still lives across the street. Elliot met them the first time he was at Blake’s house, a little taken aback when his grandma told them that the lesbians were coming over for dinner.
Elliot laughs. “Yeah, it was probably because of the lesbians. What happened to them?”
“One of them died a few years ago. Martha,” Blake says. “I think she was eighty-seven. And Gladys is still alive and Evan said she came by when he was home during the summer and brought him a casserole.”
“That’s nice of her,” Elliot says. He yawns and curls in on himself a little.
“Yeah.”
“That was a good summer.” Elliot is starting to sound sleepy, eyelids fluttering. “When I was there… and we were…” He smiles.
Blake should kick him out before he falls asleep, because he knows he won’t if Elliot falls asleep in his bed. “Have you been to Iceland yet?” Blake asks.
“No,” Elliot says.
“Seriously? Why not?”
“I don’t know.” Elliot’s eyes are definitely closed now. “You should go with me.”
“I…” Blake sighs. “Elliot?”
“Hmmm.”
“Elliot.”
“Hm.”
“You’re fucking killing me,” Blake says. “Go back to your room.”
This time he doesn’t even get the vaguest of sounds in reply.
#
When Elliot wakes up, it’s three in the morning and he’s still in Blake’s bed.
He knew he was starting to get tired and could have left, and then didn’t. And Blake clearly didn’t wake him up. Elliot
