“Your guy?” Blake asks.
“What would you like me to call you?”
It’s a loaded question. Elliot clearly knows what he’s asking here and this should probably be its own conversation, about what they want to be for each other and where this is going.
Elliot blinks at him, waiting.
“I…”
“Yes?” Elliot says, lips twitching. “You wanna be my mistress? My comrade? My partner in crime?”
“All of that sounds better than your guy.”
Elliot grins.
“Can he keep a secret?” Blake asks. He doesn’t like the thought, someone else knowing. Mainly because he doesn’t know Adam Ishida. Or, he should say, he only knows him as a player, not as a person.
Elliot nods. “Absolutely.”
“You trust him?”
“I trusted him when I told him about me.”
“Yeah,” Blake says. That should be enough for him.
“We don’t have to do this. I can go meet him for lunch and then you and I can hang out after.” Elliot leans closer and touches the tip of his nose against Blake’s temple. “Think about it. You don’t have to decide right now.”
“If we… did that…” Blake trails off when Elliot kisses his cheek.
“Yeah?”
“Mattie said…”
“Mattie from your team?”
“Yeah. He said I could bring my boyfriend over for dinner.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Well, if I ever had a boyfriend, he said I could bring him.” Blake turns his head to look at Elliot, who’s very close, his eyes warm and brown, green flecks in them. Blake could count every single freckle on Elliot’s nose right now. “You know, hypothetically.”
“And I’m the boyfriend in this hypothetical scenario?”
Blake hums.
“Yeah?” Elliot asks.
“Yeah.”
#
Elliot has never been this scared in his entire life.
Not a joke. Jake Matthews isn’t the most intimidating guy in the league, generally kind and good-natured, but when Blake pulls into his driveway, Elliot is sweating and not just because it’s a particularly hot day.
He wishes that they were doing the lunch with Adam first, but that’s not until the day after tomorrow. He’s in enemy territory. Jake Matthews has never liked him, because the Knights just don’t like the Ravens, and he probably won’t like him now. They’re having dinner at his house, and maybe Elliot would have also felt better if they were doing this at Blake’s, but Blake has assured him that it’ll only be Matthews and his wife, no kids. “But the dogs will probably be there,” Blake added.
He was trying to cheer Elliot up, but it didn’t help.
When Blake rings the Matthews’ doorbell, Elliot is still thinking up reasons why he needs to leave immediately. The worst thing is knowing that Blake would literally let him hide in the car if Elliot asked. If Elliot had said something five minutes ago, Blake would have turned the car around and canceled dinner.
It’s too late now, though.
Because the door is swinging open and there’s Jake Matthews, who looks so different so far away from hockey. Just… like a normal person. He announced his retirement a few days ago, but to Elliot he’s still Blake’s teammate.
“Mattie, hey,” Blake says and hugs him.
“Hey, kid. Hey, Elliot, come on in.”
“Here, we brought dessert,” Blake says and hands over the cookies he made with Elliot. Well, Elliot made them. Blake handed him ingredients. He did a great job.
“Thank you,” Mattie says and ushers them inside.
There’s a bunch of stuff lying around that indicates that children live in this house, but, like Blake said, there’s no sign of the kids anywhere.
“I didn’t tell the girls that you were coming over tonight,” Mattie says when he catches Elliot looking around. “They’re having a sleepover at a friend’s house.”
“I’ll come by and take them out for ice cream some other time,” Blake says.
“Please don’t, they already like you better than me.”
Elliot laughs.
“I’m not kidding,” Mattie grumbles. “Follow me, you two.”
He leads them through the house and out onto the terrace. The grill is on and a woman, Mattie’s wife, is putting down plates with steaks and burger patties.
“Elliot, that’s my wife, Katie,” Mattie says.
Elliot shoots Blake a look, like that’ll stop him being jittery all over. Another person who knows about them now. Elliot hasn’t even told his parents yet. Blake gives him the smallest of smiles in return, a quick one before Elliot turns back to Mattie’s wife. “Nice to meet you,” he says.
“Hey,” Mattie says, voice low, “we can keep a secret, both of us. We’re pretty good at it.”
Elliot nods and goes over to shake Katie’s hand. She asks him what he likes to eat and two minutes later they’re talking about the best steak marinades and Elliot tells her about what he’s been cooking with his mom and for the next ten minutes they’re swapping recipes. There’s no way that Elliot will remember them, but talking about cooking calms him down, because he actually knows what he’s talking about and really has something to say.
When he turns around to see what Blake is doing, he find shim sitting at the table, eating potato salad, him and Mattie both looking at them.
Elliot clears his throat. He probably should spend some time talking to Mattie, too.
“Oh, go ahead and try the potato salad,” Katie says and nudges him towards the table. “Mattie and I fight about it all the time, because he hates it and I don’t, and I have Blake on my side already and I could use some more support.”
Elliot sits down and helps himself to a spoonful of potato salad.
It’s amazing.
“Oh no,” Mattie says. “He likes it. You do, don’t you?”
“It’s really good.”
Mattie turns to Blake. “Of course you had to go find someone who likes the damn potato salad.”
Katie laughs. “Yeah, so he doesn’t care that you’re on the Ravens,” she says, making a face that
