He hopes Blake remembers that part.
“Hi,” Blake says. His voice is low, sounding rough. He’s probably been screaming his lungs out. “How are you?”
“I’m okay,” Elliot says. “How are you?”
“I’m so fucking tired,” Blake groans.
Elliot laughs. “Go to bed.”
“No, I have to talk to you first.”
“Okay. I’m all yours.”
“This is not gonna be fun,” Blake says. “And I’m sorry. And, for the record, I’m not lying when I say that I didn’t want any of this to happen.”
Elliot doesn’t like the sound of that at all. His brain tries to be super helpful and immediately supplies him with the thought of Blake hooking up with some guy after he won the Cup. And now he doesn’t really want to be with Elliot anymore, because Elliot is taking too long to make up his mind about what the hell he wants and that’s it for them. It’s not like Blake cheated on him, they’re not even together and Blake doesn’t owe him anything. He did say that he won’t be seeing anyone else, but–
“You still there?” Blake asks.
“Yeah,” Elliot says. Swallows hard. “What happened?”
“Um, so, the night we won the Cup, there were several very drunk people, and one of those very drunk people kissed me. And–”
“One of your teammates?”
“Elliot.”
Elliot knows that Blake is too good of a person to say yes to that, but he doesn’t really have to anyway. If it wasn’t a teammate, Blake would have said no. “Okay, so someone kissed you?”
“Yeah.”
“And then?”
“And then I told him to go to bed and I talked to him about it the next day and I told him that I’m not available for any more kissing and he was really embarrassed about it all. It wasn’t… It was really just a kiss, Elliot. Nothing else happened.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
Elliot hates all of this. He hates that someone went and kissed his… Shit, Blake’s not his boyfriend. He hates that he’s jealous. He hates that he’s angry, because Blake obviously wasn’t walking around begging other dudes to kiss him. It’s not his fault.
“Elliot,” Blake says, soft. “Are you mad?”
“No, it’s f–”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’m mad,” Elliot says. “But not at you. I’m just… mad. I wanna be your boyfriend and not worry about it and I want people to know you’re my boyfriend, so no one’s gonna go and fucking kiss you.”
Blake is quiet for a moment, then he says, “Come to New York.”
“You meant that, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you mean the other thing, too?” Elliot asks.
“What other thing?”
“You know what thing.”
“Tell me what thing,” Blake grumbles, but he has to know that Elliot is talking about the I miss you thing. It’s just that the sober version of Blake can’t bring himself to say it and it’s a little bit funny. He’s said it before, though. When Elliot was at Worlds.
“You said you missed me,” Elliot tells him.
“Oh. That.” Blake clears his throat. “I meant that, too.”
“When do you want me to come?”
“Whenever you– I mean, I sort of have to go to Vegas for the Awards and then there’s the Draft and free agency, but… We’re not free agents and we’re not getting drafted, so…”
“I should spend some time around a phone during the Draft,” Elliot says. “I have to call all the new kids.”
“Right. Captain.”
“I’ll come after?”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” Elliot echoes. “I’ll book a flight.”
“Good.”
“Go to sleep now, okay? Otherwise you’ll die during the parade.”
“Your mistake is that you’re assuming that I’m still alive,” Blake says.
Elliot laughs. “Good night, Blake.”
“Good night.”
The line goes dead. Elliot forgot to tell him something and he calls Blake back before he even remembers what it was.
Blake answers a second later. “Was that an accident or…?”
“No, I…” Elliot shakes his head at himself. “I don’t know. It suddenly felt like I wasn’t done talking to you.”
“You’re weird,” Blake mumbles, then he says, louder, “Hey, stop it, you little shit.”
“Angus?”
“He bit my toe,” Blake says, betrayed. “What the hell. Prepare to be eaten alive when you come here.”
“When I… So am I gonna come hang out at your place?” Elliot asks. He was sort of assuming that he’d go to his own place and that they’d meet in the middle like they always do. Only now they don’t have any other obligations, so they can hang out somewhere together without one of them having to run off.
“I don’t know,” Blake says. “If you want.”
“I thought we’re not…” They’re not together. Blake didn’t want this unless Elliot was sure that he could deal with the possibility of them getting outed somehow, doesn’t want him to change his mind a few months later.
Once Elliot lets himself have this, though, he’ll stick with Blake no matter what. He wants him and no one else. Never again.
Blake sighs. “I don’t care.”
“But…”
“We’ll figure it out somehow. Just come, okay? And we’ll talk when you’re here. We said we’d talk in the summer.”
“Right, we did say that.”
“Okay,” Blake says.
“I’ll hang up in a minute.”
“Sounds great.”
Elliot is quiet for a few seconds, then he says, “Are you asleep yet?”
“No, not yet,” Blake mutters.
“You have to tell me about the Cup when I get there,” Elliot says, even though he doesn’t like the jealousy that creeps in when he thinks about Blake and the Cup and the fact that Elliot’s team is not the one that won it.
“It’s heavy. And silver.”
“And it’s gonna have your name on it,” Elliot says. His heart clenches when he thinks about it.
“Shit.”
“What?”
“I kinda… forgot that they’re gonna put our names on it.”
“It’s time to stop drinking,” Elliot says drily. “You clearly only have, like, two functioning brain cells left.”
