“Yeah, more or less,” Eliot agreed. “He’s a good guy. It’s taken a while for me to realize that, but I know now that he’s on my side. I trust him. He’s the one who sent me to talk to you in the first place, so he's definitely one of the good guys.”
“I gotta send him flowers or something,” Danny said. “I owe him, too.”
“I think he'd strongly prefer a bottle of single malt scotch.” Eliot smiled wryly. “Also, he'd probably think it was weird. He’s a very reserved man.”
Danny smiled at that. “You sound fond of him.”
He almost expected to be jealous, but he wasn’t. Despite his fears about what getting attached to Eliot meant, he knew he could trust him. He knew that if there was someone else, Eliot wouldn’t be doing this.
“I am,” Eliot admitted. “Like I said, it took me a while, but he’s sweet in his own way. Once you get past the surface.”
“Like you, then,” Danny pointed out. Eliot wasn’t reserved, exactly, but he took some getting to know before you found out what he was really like.
“Yeah, I guess.” Eliot shifted in his seat. “You’re one of very few people I let my guard down around. You’ve never seemed like a threat to me. Which was the point I was trying to make earlier. I feel guilty for ever thinking that you might be.”
“It’s okay,” Danny said softly. “I get it. I was scared of you too. Scared you were gonna say something awful about me, make me look like a total asshole. But you didn’t.”
“Of course not,” Eliot responded. “We’ve gotta stick together, right?”
“Right,” Danny agreed, smiling to himself at the thought. He liked the idea of sticking together with Eliot a lot.
“This is amazing, by the way,” Eliot said after another mouthful. “I’m so glad you can cook.”
“It’s just pasta.” Danny blushed. He really hadn’t gone to a lot of effort, but he had wanted to impress Eliot. Apparently, it had worked.
“It’s a meal you made for me. That… that means a lot. No one but my mom has ever cooked for me before.” Eliot licked his lips. “Like I said, previous relationships… weird. Mostly about sex. Not that I didn’t really enjoy having sex with you, but… that’s not why I’m here.”
Danny nodded, understanding completely what Eliot was getting at. This was apparently all new for both of them, but that was okay. They could figure it out together.
The conversation moved to other things, like the finer points of hockey and facts about how to prevent wrinkles—boring things, things they both thought about every day, but never really got the chance to talk to anyone else about.
It was nice to just sit and eat with someone. Danny had known he was missing out on real relationships, he’d known that the one-night-stands and short flings that had been all he could risk weren’t the same as having someone meaningful in his life, but he hadn’t realized how good it would feel.
How much less alone he’d be, instantly, just because there was another person in the room who wanted to eat dinner and talk about boring, day-to-day things with him.
That seemed dangerous, because he could so easily tell himself he was in love with Eliot just because Eliot made him feel good. But then, wasn’t that what love was?
If it wasn’t, this was definitely enough. Whatever they had, whatever was going on right now, it was exactly what Danny had always wanted. By some miracle, everything had worked out.
It was almost the exact second he finished that thought that Eliot turned to get his phone out of his coat in response to it beeping.
“That’s Ben’s notification tone,” he explained, “he never texts me outside of work hours, so this must be-”
Eliot paused, going pale as he looked down at the notification. He chewed on his lip for a moment, staring down at the phone in silence.
After a few seconds, he pushed the remainder of his meal away and stood. “I have to make a phone call. This text says there’s an emergency, and Ben isn’t the kind of man who gets dramatic for no reason. I’ll be back in a second.”
“Okay,” Danny said, a knot of worry forming in his gut. Maybe it was nothing, maybe it was just a work emergency, or a news emergency that Eliot needed to report on, or any other thing that wouldn’t actually be Eliot’s problem.
But that seemed like it’d be too easy.
