Love for the Cold-Blooded. Or

by Alex Gabriel

  No go; looked like the man was dead set on being indignant. “Jaguar is one of the most notorious villains of our time!”

  “He’s also, like, seriously built, ever notice that?” This did not appear to help, and Pat rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Chill, dude, it’s a damn couch cover. I’d offer to take it off, but trust me, you don’t want that. Just sit, I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  Pat had always had a soft spot for Jaguar, but the couch cover was cool even from a non-fannish point of view — soft, comfy and slashed with a print of the Jaguar’s awesome trademark claw marks. Pat had almost gotten the cover in blue-black (the shade of the Jaguar’s fur when he shifted), but had settled on a pleasant shade of beige in the end. The color brought out the tastefully shadowed hints of Jaguar’s chest and abs.

  By the time Pat had put on the album and adjusted the bass, Nick was once again perched on the couch, though looking vaguely rebellious. Pat didn’t worry about it. And then the wicked, smooth beats of BadMadRad filled the room and Pat flopped down on his back, closed his eyes and submerged.

  Not for nearly as long as he’d expected, though. He’d definitely been expecting more than two minutes; they weren’t even past the first song.

  “Patrick? Patrick. I think — I should probably —”

  When Pat opened his eyes, the hoagie on his couch had once again transformed into a hoagie hovering on his feet, obviously feeling every bit as painfully out of place as he looked. From this angle, he seemed even taller, which didn’t help.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. Seriously, you don’t like it?” The first track was the title track — Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Ho itself. How could anyone fail to appreciate something so awesome?

  “It’s not that.” The helpless, awkward look on Nick’s face spoke volumes, though: the man had no appreciation for musical genius. Well, his favorite band was Ghost Matter. What had Pat expected?

  Pat heaved a heavy, put-upon sigh and regretfully sat up to turn off the music. Nick looked no more comfortable with the silence, though. He was now pulling himself into a weirdly official pose, chin firmed into a jutting heroic line. “I will take my leave of you. In fact, I should apologize for — uhm, lingering as long as I have. I hope you do not feel that I have put you into an awkward position.”

  “What? No, dude, why would I feel that?” Where was all this stiffness and formality coming from? “I’m glad to have my album back. Nothing awkward about that position, believe me.”

  Nick blushed, a faint flush of color rising up his throat.

  Pat could feel his frown beginning to settle in for the long haul. “Okay, I don’t get it. We’re good here. Aren’t we?”

  “Absolutely. It is important to me that you know I do not — and never will — expect… bonuses of any kind. Including, needless to say, your time.” Nick seemed almost flustered, in a stiff and officious way. The flush showed no inclination to subside, but was instead spreading splotchily to his cheeks. “As I have not presently engaged your services, it would be unfitting for me to take up any more of your day. We should not allow any lines to be blurred, considering our good business relationship is —”

  “No way, are you serious?” Pat couldn’t help but laugh. Nick didn’t think it was appropriate to hang out with a hooker because he felt like he was making Pat work overtime without pay?

  He only laughed a little bit, though. The way Nick stared at him made him feel weird about it, like he was kicking a really formal puppy or something.

  A second later, Pat realized there was an easy way to get past Nick’s unease. If the problem was that nobody was being paid for their time and it was making him feel like he was taking advantage, or uncomfortably altering their business relationship or whatever…

  Pat’s wallet was in his jacket, over by the door. He pulled out one of the larger bills, waving it in front of Nick’s blank face. “Here you go, big guy. For you.”

  Nick made no move to take the money, so Pat tucked it into his breast pocket. He got it out immediately, handling it much the same way he might have handled a dead rat. “Twenty thalers?”

  Pat gave him his biggest, most obnoxious grin. “Should be plenty for a few hours of your company, right?”

  Nick blinked. Then he blinked again, face still entirely blank. It was pretty hilarious, actually. Pat should have thought to have his phone ready to record this… though really, considering Cea hacked Pat’s phone at least twice a month, maybe it was just as well.

  “I, well,” Nick said at long last, almost hesitantly. “I suppose… yes. That should be… sufficient.”

  “Cool.” Pat’s smile threatened to split his face. Man, but he was good — he’d reduced Silver Paladin’s civilian alter ego to stammering, and the evening hadn’t even started yet. “That’s settled then. And guess what? Tonight is party night!” Pat hadn’t been completely decided on going to the Beta Centauri party; strictly speaking, he should be reading up on zoning regulations. But with Nick around he wouldn’t be doing that anyway, so the choice had been taken from his hands, right? “We’re gonna have to do something about your clothes, though, because dude. That suit does not say ‘fun’. That suit does not even speak a language in which fun is a word. But no worries, I’ll get you sorted.”

  Ten minutes later, the contents of Pat’s closet were spread out over his bed, and Pat was trying to decide between a Rise of the Serpent and an €linore t-shirt he’d bought just a few weeks ago. Given how he’d reacted to Pat’s couch cover, Nick would probably refuse to wear the serpent shirt on principle, even though it referred to the classic movie based on Serpentissima, rather than Serpentissima herself. And as for €linore — Nick voluntarily wore Ghost Matter sweatshirts. He wasn’t cool enough to wear €linore on his lame hoagie chest.

  “Patrick…?” Nick was still in the living room. Pat would have placed bets that he was still standing in exactly the same spot Pat had left him in.

  “Yeah, hang on, I’m thinking,” Pat yelled back through the open door.

  “So it’ll be a while, then?”

  Pat snorted and shrugged into the €linore t-shirt himself before checking his hair (awesome, and now just the right length to curl attractively over his forehead without looking messy). Then he grabbed a slightly too-large flannel shirt and a baseball cap and headed back out into the living room.

  Contrary to expectations, Nick had abandoned his vigil in front of the couch in favor of crossing over to the bookcase by the window, browsing the titles with every sign of intense interest. As Pat watched, he stepped from the supernatural romance section of Pat’s library over to the stack of books on the windowsill, which was mostly composed of Principles of Urban Architecture and some super cool monographs on cityscapes Pat had recently sent everyone on his contact list a bunch of enthusiastic emoticons about.

  “You’re interested in architecture?” Nick ghosted an careful hand over the cover of Principles, as though afraid opening it would constitute an invasion of privacy.

  “Duh.” Pat joined Nick by the window, flipping open the book to the table of contents. “I’m gonna be an urban planner, it’d be pretty sad if I thought architecture was a bore.”

  Nick froze for a barely noticeable instant, flicking Pat a glance from the very corner of his eye. He said nothing, though, preferring to page through the book with evident interest. Pat pointed out several cool bits, like Maurat’s analysis of historical principles of urban planning (complete with the underlying norms, philosophies, requirements and functional priorities) — and, even better, her awesome essay on how designed urban space impacted the human mind and influenced thought and behavior. That shit was sheer brilliance.

  Thing was, Nick seemed genuinely interested. He didn’t say anything, but he inspected the book and then Pat with an intensity of focus that suggested he was trying to burn the details out of them by sheer strength of concentration.

  Anyone who’d known Pat for longer than an hour or so could have told Nick it was d
angerous to pay that much attention to him. It encouraged him. “Okay, imagine you have a time machine — and all the money and power in the world, obviously, which you’d be able to acquire without much trouble if you had a time machine. So you have this time machine and you’re going back to the past to change the configuration of public space.” It was one of Pat’s favorite things to imagine, pretty much the pinnacle of extreme coolness. “You start out with really basic things, like, I don’t know, go from a simple rectangular grid based on the burgage system to a centered, structured plan with a more sophisticated curvilinear, axial base. And then you jump forward a couple years at a time and check how people live and think, and what the philosophers and mathematicians and politicians and stuff are doing. And there will be all these differences, see? And then you go back again and keep the rectangular grid but change smaller things instead. And you check on how those changes impact people’s lives, and you keep doing it until you figure out exactly how and why —”

  At which point Pat gestured a little too expansively, and hit Nick on the nose with a flannel shirt. Nick recoiled blindingly quickly, half-raising one hand as though about to deflect further shirt attacks with a quickly projected force field.

  “Oh, hey, sorry.” Though really, the man needed to get out more if he reacted like this to every unexpected bop on the nose. “Anyway. Didn’t mean to talk your ear off. It’s just really fascinating, you know?”

  After a moment, Nick relaxed and nodded, lips quirking slightly. “Should I ever happen across a time machine, I will get back to you.”

  A joke! He’d made an actual, bona fide joke! Wow, that was one for the books. Pat grinned delightedly; he felt weirdly proud of himself, and also as though he should be congratulating Nick for being such a functional human being. “Cool, I’m holding you to that. And now strip, this shirt isn’t going to wear itself.”

  Usually when Pat got talking a mile a minute, people’s faces froze like they were wondering what planet Pat was from, and how they could escape his freaky alien clutches most quickly. Just went to show, freaks were way more fun to hang out with. Especially hot freaks like the one taking off his jacket and tie in front of Pat this very instant.

  Nick had really nice shoulders. This was old news — Pat had seen them before; had touched them, too. Even so, he found himself staring at the way creamy white fabric drew tight against the broadness of muscle and bone when Nick unbuttoned his shirt, as fascinated as though the man had been doing the kind of striptease that came with pole, lascivious come-hither gaze and optional lap dance.

  Nick slid his arms free of the sleeves with a smooth shrug. The way the sculpted planes of his chest and stomach flexed as he carefully folded his shirt made Pat’s mouth go dry. The curve where his neck met his shoulder called out to Pat as the perfect place to put his lips. And the man’s arms were gorgeous, all the way down to the strong wrists and surprisingly long, elegant fingers.

  Pat looked up — straight into Nick’s too-intense gaze. He was watching Pat again. Maybe he’d never stopped. And… no way. Was that a gleam of satisfaction in his eye?

  “Dude, you suck,” Pat said, delightedly. “I should get a commendation for corrupting you. Put on my damn shirt, you show-off.”

  Nick looked horribly smug as he put on the damn shirt with a notable lack of hurry. Paying the dude for his time had done wonders in terms of relaxing him. Pat would have to remember this technique; he could think of so many other possible applications.

  Once the shirt was on, Pat jammed the baseball cap on Nick’s head and adjusted it carefully. Nick fidgeted a bit as Pat tugged at it to find the perfect look, so Pat stepped all over his toes with socked feet as a reminder to hold still and let Pat do his thing.

  “Patrick, I don’t think —”

  “Excellent, keep that up. Also, shut it, I’m a genius. Aha! There we go, that’s perfect.”

  The shirt fit Nick better than it ever had Pat, and the hat was great with the brim pulled down low in the back. Without the rest of the fancy outfit, Nick’s suit pants were pretty unremarkable. The shoes would do, too, once Pat scuffed them up a bit so they didn’t look so ridiculously shiny. No sooner said than done: A little bit of potting soil from Pat’s spider fern…

  (“Hey!” Nick protested, but Pat gave him a look and he shut up.)

  …and it was done.

  Pat stepped back to admire his work and gave out a low whistle. He was a genius, no joke. He’d expected Nick would look uncomfortable or out of place, but no — he actually seemed more at ease than before, for whatever reason. He was even slouching a little, head ducked with one corner of his mouth quirked up into a shy smile as he peered at Pat. A lighter version of the earlier blush was warming his cheekbones, not as splotchy and vaguely attractive.

  He could totally pass as an ordinary student — or, okay, a more than ordinarily attractive one, and definitely a jock, with that kind of definition to his chest and arms. An ordinary attractive jock with a definite resemblance to Nicholas Andersen. Whatever, it wasn’t like anyone would be looking for a reclusive billionaire genius at a frat party. Or a hoagie, either. Besides which, as far as Silver Paladin went, the costume with its mirrored visor, the dramatic posing and the heroic jawline made up about 90% of that dude’s looks. And that wasn’t even counting the fact that on film, the obscuring haze of the force fields was even stronger than live.

  “I’m brilliant. Simple fact.” Pat nodded admiringly. “We are going to rock the club so hard tonight.”

  “The club? Are we — where are we going?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out, babe.” Pat had always wanted to use that line, so maybe the mysterious smile that went with it turned out a little more gleeful than it ought to have been. How often did you get to say something so cool, though? This was the autumn of amazing firsts.

  Of course Nick did not seem impressed, but it was Nick. What could you expect? Might as well try to get poison from a stone.

  ~~~~~

  “Hey there, stranger,” said the douche by the door (otherwise known as Mark the Moderately Good Soccer Forward). “Your lips look lonely. Bet they’d like to meet mine!”

  Nick was stiff as a plank when Pat slung an arm around his waist. “Might wanna dust off some new lines, bro. That one was old when your team won their last championship. Like a really long time ago, get it?”

  That got him a squint, and a belated glint of recognition. “Patsy! Whoa, man, this guy is so out of your league.” Great — now Mark was laughing, turning to Nick with a grin. “How’d you run into little Patsy? Well, your luck’s changed now! Come on, I’m getting you a drink.”

  Pat bared his teeth at the douche in something that was definitely not a smile. “Fuck off.”

  Even if Mark had been inclined to oblige Pat, he never got the chance. Nick moved with the speed of a striking snake, giving no warning whatsoever. One moment he was just standing there, all awkward and wooden; the next, he was slamming the heels of both hands into Mark’s chest and the douche was stumbling back, barely managing to catch himself before smacking into the wall.

  There was a second or two there where Pat was pretty sure his own expression was no more intelligent than Mark the Douche’s.

  “No, thank you,” Nick said politely, and grabbed Pat’s arm to pull him on.

  Pat was laughing in sheer delight when they reached the common room. “Dude! That was so —” Words were inadequate for the greatness of the moment, so Pat spun to walk backwards in front of Nick, holding up one hand. “Gimme five, come on.”

  Nick frowned at Pat’s raised palm for a moment, but then reached out to slap it gently. It was the most pitiful effort ever, and Pat stopped in his tracks. “No way, man, that’s just sad. Put your body into it! And look, you spread your fingers and move your hand like this.” He demonstrated the correct movement twice before holding out his hand again. Nick’s mouth quirked, but he reacted gamely enough; he even ducked down a little, gathering himself. When
he uncoiled into the movement, it was like a star athlete lunging at the goal, ball at the tips of his fingers.

  Their palms smacked together with a loud slap, the force of it knocking Pat’s entire arm back. He was grinning pretty much uncontrollably, and several bystanders broke into a short round of spontaneous applause.

  Pat suspected the smile on Nick’s face was his equivalent of a face-splitting grin. Somehow, even the smug way he raised his eyebrows was charming, in context. “What’s his problem, anyway?”

  “Oh, you know.” Pat shrugged as casually as possible, indicating that the subject was completely uninteresting and should be closed soonest. “He doesn’t like me. Whatever, I don’t like him either, no loss there.”

  Truth was, he’d struck out kinda badly with Mark early on in their acquaintance, when all Pat had known about the guy was that he had long legs and a nice jawline, but not that he was a giant douche. But that was neither here nor there, and certainly not relevant to the current situation.

  Nick shook his head, visibly dismissing both the subject and the guy. “He’s an idiot.”

  When Pat gave him a sharp look, no smile or teasing glint were in evidence anywhere. Nick had sounded utterly matter-of-fact, too… not like he was teasing at all.

  Fortunately they ran into a horde of Pat’s swim team buddies then, sparing Pat the attempt of coming up with a response. Pat spent a few happy minutes slapping backs and bumping fists; Nick hung back, but shy was a good look on him, so they were golden.

  “Pat, who’s your friend?” Andrea grinned a little bit too widely, a speculative gleam coming into her eye.

  “This is Nick,” Pat said proudly. “Hands off, he’s with me. Find your own smart and athletic, adorably awkward hot dude.”

  “Uhm,” said Nick. He sounded slightly strangled. Must have been the hot woman unabashedly ogling him. Pat could relate. Not that the ogling happened to Pat a lot… but in the light of recent events, that circumstance had lost a lot of its sting. Nick was way hotter than nine tenths of the people Pat had previously not been ogled by.