“Pretty much. My first partner—when I had a partner—that was the first time I shot a man. After he switched sides, and I walked into a trap, in that warehouse.” He couldn’t quite meet Patrick’s gaze; he looked at the shape of that pretty mouth, that jawline in the indistinct dust-mote light.
But that jawline tensed; Patrick’s lips parted. After a second, words emerged. “He betrayed you.”
“And the U.S. government, and all his oaths.”
“And he was going to shoot you.”
“For knowing about the shipments, yeah.”
“Well.” All the blue and gold got fiercer. “I should say I’m sorry you had to do it, and I am, because no one should have to do that, but I’m not sorry that you’re here, if that was the choice.”
“Writer. You like a good story.”
“I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t mean what I say.”
Perry breathed in, breathed out. The lacy curtains wafted. The air lay sweet against his skin. And Patrick’s gaze stayed calm, unflinching.
He thought he was decent at reading people, himself; he’d had to be, given the job. He thought that Patrick did mean the words: under the storyteller’s words, and the casual wealth, lay a core of steely choice and practical real-world conviction that matched his own. It shook him: seeing that recognition, deployed on his behalf.
He said, awkward in the face of it, “Thank you.”
Patrick managed to shrug while lying next to him: a gesture of eyebrows, head-tip, small smile, staying quiet.
Perry grumbled, “You’d be a dangerous gang leader, you know that, that face, that mind….”
Patrick laughed, tapping fingers over Perry’s chest, writing laughter in piano-notes there too. “And thank you for that. Can I have a mysterious code name? The Specter. The Mastermind. The Author. You know, controlling the stories.”
Perry captured the tapping fingers and pinned them in place. “Nemesis. Dangerous. Really would have to arrest you, then.”
“Or kiss me,” Patrick suggested, eyes even bigger and hopeful and happy at being captured.
Perry did as requested. After, Patrick made a contented noise, wriggling closer.
“Cold?”
“Wondering how soon you might be up for another round. The Mysterious Mastermind would like to be held down and thoroughly overcome by the strength of your heroic might. By which I mean you should fuck me hard.”
“Oh, should I.”
“Extremely hard.”
“Got that, thanks.” Perry put a hand around Patrick’sslimmer wrist, answering; but he wasn’t in his twenties anymore, either, so yeah, but it’d be a minute. And he’d caught the glint of other emotion, something he couldn’t place, under the pleased reaction. He said, “Shameless, aren’t you?”
Patrick shrugged again, and there it wasagain, a flicker like a makeup-concealed bruise, a Hollywood trick. “I’m young and wealthy and yesterday was my birthday; I think I’m allowed. Anyway, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to arrest me for indecency.”
“Not my job. So I’m your present to yourself?”
“You were…a surprise. Nothing I was looking for.” Patrick turned his hand, slid it out of Perry’s grip; Perry let him go, with an inexplicable sense of loss. “But I saw you, and you looked at me.”
“No parties. No celebrations. For the author P.R. Ellery. Who just had a moving-picture film based on one of his stories.”
“No,” Patrick said. “None of that.”
“You wanted space?”
“I wanted…” Patrick bit a lip, left tiny hard indents in pink plushness. Perry wanted to kiss him, and wanted to know what he was thinking. “I don’t do parties, much. I can, but it never feels…real, I guess. Like me.”
“People would to come, to see you.”
