Love for the Cold-Blooded (22 page)

The pheasant was delicious and went quite well with the surprisingly intense taste of the quail eggs. Pat could have done without the truffles, though. Way overrated, in his opinion.

He forced himself to finish the slice, but packed the rest of the pizza up in the traditional take-away box, slid it into a plastic bag, and stuck it into the dumbwaiter. It didn’t go anywhere, of course. The AI had no instructions on where to send it.

It must have been raining outside. AHM Suze was brushing a few stray drops of moisture off the shoulders of her coat when she swept around the corner, face pinched in disapproval. “Mr. West, it is far too late to find a replacement night manager for tonight, and probably tomorrow as well. An employee who cannot be relied upon is an employee who drags down the entire team, and who is not fit to —”

At which point she looked up, caught sight of Pat, and abruptly broke off. She looked taken aback. It was the most unguarded expression Pat had ever seen on her.

“I’m not feeling well,” Pat said hollowly.

“So you have said,” said Suze, less sharply than before. She shrugged out of her coat carefully, folding it over one arm while studying Pat. Pat had already been stared at a lot tonight, but couldn’t find the energy to care overmuch. “You are aware, I presume, that employees are expected to give advance notice of any circumstance that might impact their service, so that alternate arrangements can be made.” Fortunately, she didn’t seem to expect an answer, because Pat doubted anything he had to say would have improved the situation.

“We will talk about this more later.” Suze gave Pat a wide berth as she came further into the room. “Leave now. This is a kitchen, after all.”

Pat didn’t really think about Suze letting him off uncharacteristically easy until he got home. He was mechanically brushing his teeth when he looked in the mirror, and discovered that his face was caught in a delicate pastel shade halfway between corpse white and chartreuse green.

It didn’t occur to him until the next morning to check for scales, but he didn’t find any, not even between his toes. By then his color was back to normal, anyway. He’d never shown any signs of taking after his mother, so it wasn’t a surprise. He’d only checked to be thorough — cover all his bases, like.

He just hadn’t been feeling so good. That was all.

~~~~~

T
he worst thing was: Pat couldn’t even listen to BadMadRad anymore. He was still in the first flush of fannish passion for the album, and by rights should have been listening to it day and night on endless repeat, developing his own little dance routines for his favorite songs. Instead, every note and clever phrase, every snazzy beat and wicked synthesizer riff reminded Pat of Nick.

He didn’t get it — none of the songs featured anyone even remotely similar to the man, not even “Fly Boy”, which was about a kid in the worst part of town dreaming of becoming a hoagie some day. Nick had never been that kid. Nick didn’t even like BadMadRad. All he’d done was get the album back for Pat, like he should have in the first place. What gave?

Yeah, Pat knew exactly what gave, but it would have been nice to pretend.

It was the weekend, so there weren’t even any classes to distract him from the awful hollowness in his gut. Pat tried to distract himself with music, and failed. He tried to study, but couldn’t concentrate; sharp spikes of loss and fear and guilt and grief kept breaking through. He went swimming and hit the gym after, working out until he was dripping with sweat, the harsh rasp of his breath and the burn of his muscles the only things he could remember. That worked, kind of. At least until his trainer sent him home with firm instructions not to come back the next day, and what had gotten into him, Patrick, if he wanted to work on cutting down his times then this was entirely the wrong way to go about it.

Exercise was no more than a temporary fix, anyway. Pat was left trembling and exhausted, but still feeling like he’d hunted down every last puppy in the world and kicked them right in the nose. And now all the metaphorical puppies were terrified of him, and even the kittens thought he was an evil puppy-torturing sadist, and Pat hadn’t meant — it just, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t even his fault. It was all just a stupid misunderstanding.

In the end, Pat booted up his new computer and designed the perfect city to distract himself: his ideal utopia of urban design, as beautiful and lavish as though there were no financial limitations whatsoever, and every resource he could possibly need was readily available. He’d been idly pondering what he would do in that purely hypothetical situation for a long time; every urban planner did, Pat was sure. It was cathartic to put it all down and see how functional and beautiful and wonderful to live in a city could be, in an ideal world.

Midway through Sunday morning, when Pat was so tired the lines of his utopia were blurring together on the monitor, he cleared a space in the center of the city and added a castle, just because. Then he drew up a wall to close it off from the world, high and thick enough to stand fast against all comers.

For the first time, Pat understood why someone might want that… their own safe kingdom governed by their wishes only, where nothing mattered but what they wanted, and everyone had to abide by their rules.

Rules like: Unintentional impersonations don’t count. Also: You can’t be mad at someone for something they never intended to happen the way it did. You can’t be hurt by something that was never meant to hurt you.

Pat caught a couple of hours of sleep, and then went right back to his design. He was laying down the castle’s moat (full of spikes and muddy water to hide them, and also pretty water lilies and some trout, because trout was delicious — but, hang on, there should totally be a functioning ecosystem in the moat) when Cea came in.

“Hey, Patpat,” she said. “I got a note from the Andersen Estate acknowledging receipt of our promotional gift, which made me wonder what — Pat?”

“Yeah,” Pat said absently. He needed to look up models for self-sustaining ecosystems in small bodies of water. Thing was, he didn’t actually have any books on the subject. He’d have to go to the library. But the university’s library wasn’t open during the weekend, and — “There definitely has to be some kind of water exchange, I know that much. And trout are too big, they… wouldn’t they eat too much for such a small system to work in the long term? Probably. Some kind of smaller fish instead, and…”

Cea didn’t comment, and when Pat looked up, she was gone. He blinked at the door in confusion for a moment, but then realized the best solution for his moat would be to integrate it into the existing ecosystem of a natural stream, and got wrapped up in diverting his river.

His sister’s existence reasserted itself an unspecified amount of time later, when she plopped down a plastic bag right on top of Pat’s keyboard. He would have protested, but the heavenly scent of Wok Express’s Broccoli Chicken Noodles stopped all his words in his throat as his stomach woke up and started shouting at him.

“Oh my gods,” Cea said, disgusted. “Wait until I get you a plate and a fork, you barbarian.”

“Mphm,” said Pat indistinctly, muffled by a mouthful of chicken noodles.

Turned out Cea had also brought several pints of ice cream, a romantic comedy, and an album by a very loud and angry person who played the guitar and shouted a lot about men and why she was better off without them.

Zen turned up when they were halfway through the ice cream and the movie (which was better than it had appeared at first — Pat liked the cute awkward android girl way more than the annoying douchey jock she was in love with, though. She was way too good for that jerk). They started up the movie again and lounged around, and eventually Zen got out the vodka and limes she’d brought.

Pat had the best sisters, seriously.

“I should have known,” Pat told his excellent sisters not all that much later, hardly slurring his words at all. “He broke all of the West Sister Dating Rules! It was as clear as the nose on his face. I mean, like, practically the first thing he said to me was if I wanted to have sex with him. And that was after he’d taken off his clothes.”

Cea and Zen exchanged glances.

“I know, I know, but, well. I did. Want to have sex with him. And then he — look, it’s a guy thing. I have low standards and I’m fine with that. But even so I should have known. I mean, he told me to strip and get in bed just like that. That is just not on, right? Though I guess maybe different rules apply with hookers.”

“Companions, Patpat,” said Cea serenely.

Zen frowned at Cea, and then at Pat. Then she poured them all another drink, which proved she really was as smart as everyone always said because clearly that was the most constructive course of action here.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that’s like, what? Three rules broken right there? Before the first date or whatever was even over. Meeting. Yeah, let’s go with meeting. Encounter.”

“Four rules, I’d say,” Zen said, slowly. “After all, this man clearly —”

But Pat couldn’t stop to hear what she had to say, not now that he was gaining momentum. “There needs to be a new rule. I want to submit a new dating rule to the West sibling committee, because it needs to exist. Never date a guy who doesn’t know where his pizza comes from!”

Cea and Zen stared at him for a long moment before Zen shrugged and raised her freshly topped-up glass. “Can’t say I’d have thought of that particular rule, but it sounds like good sense to me. Seconded and approved.”

Cea frowned and drew breath as though to say something, but then only jumped a little and glared over at Zen, for some reason. Whatever. Sisters.

“Also, the cavemen would totally kick the astronauts’ asses, and nobody should date anyone who doesn’t get that. And lastly, never date anyone who thinks you’re a hooker, no matter how hot he is. And how adorably awkward and — surprisingly fun and interesting and sweet. And good in bed…” Pat trailed off morosely, which was probably for the best because he had the vague feeling he’d gotten sidetracked.

“Hear, hear,” Cea said staunchly, nodding in grim agreement. Pat nodded back at her. She knew what was what.

“This guy thought you were a hooker…?”

Cea kicked Zen. She just straight up leaned back into her corner of the couch, braced herself with the hand that wasn’t holding vodka with lime, and kicked Zen in the leg. Mom would not have approved. Not even a little bit. Pat’s shocked “Cea!” was entirely lost in the ensuing scuffle, which was shorter than usual because neither of Pat’s sisters were fool enough to spill their drinks.

As far as Pat could tell, it was a draw, although it ended with Zen still talking, so maybe she’d won after all. “No, but seriously. Stop that, Boadicea, you are behaving like an infant! Patrick, who exactly are we talking about here?”

Cea kicked Zen again, and then the two of them went off to whisper in the corner near the door that Pat liked to think of as the hall. It wasn’t exactly a big secret who the subject of the discussion was, even before they started shooting not-very-surreptitious glances his way.

Whatever. Let them glance at him. He was awesome. Pat took the opportunity to grab the undefended bottle and take another drink.

After that, events turned hazy and blurred. He was pretty sure there was singing involved at some point, though, and that the song of choice was the angry woman’s hymn to independence and kicking bothersome guys in the nuts.

~~~~~

P
at’s sisters appeared to believe that the situation required coddling. In turn, coddling involved giving Pat candy, romantic comedies set in high schools, and alcohol. Also telling Pat that he was sweet (“in a retarded puppy way”, quoth Zen, but she was grinning and ruffling his hair fondly as she said it, meaning she was officially just kidding) and loyal and dedicated, not to mention good-looking and generally super awesome. Even Hell sent Pat some angry music and excellent chocolate, though she was too busy to drop by in person.

None of which Pat was going to object to, obviously. It did seem slightly exaggerated, though, especially when Zen roped Delilah into it, having her turn up mid-afternoon with vegan muffins and tales of how much her loser ex-boyfriend sucked. (Which was not news to anyone, seriously. That dude had been a trainwreck from beginning to end, and Pat was glad Delilah was finally in agreement with the rest of the world.)

Nice as it was to be coddled, Pat wasn’t sure how it was meant to make Nick see that Pat hadn’t done anything wrong by mostly accidentally impersonating a — a
companion
. But hey, free candy and music. He wasn’t about to complain.

“Anyone who doesn’t apprec- appr- any damn idiot who’s too blind to see you’re really fucking great is someone you don’t have to cry for,” Delilah said staunchly.

“Sing it, Lilah,” Pat agreed, and pretended not to notice her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

They had another drink.

If you believed Pat’s sisters, his unnamed low mood did actually have a name: They called it being lovesick. Zen had even said he was heartbroken. Pat didn’t know about that, though. Who’d said anything about love? He and Nick hadn’t even actually been dating, just hanging out and having sex. No hearts, all genitals. And Nick had pretty much been operating under false assumptions the entire time.

Except for that one time, with the party and the making out and the early morning junk food run. Pat paying Nick twenty bucks had been symbolic, a gesture to get the lingering specter of companionship out of the way. They’d both known they were hanging out for no other reason than that they wanted to, that time. And when they’d almost had sex… that had been the same deal.

Had that been a date? Pat hadn’t been on enough dates to be sure — certainly not dates that awesome. That entire evening had been a complete first in Pat’s book. In Nick’s, too, Pat was sure of it.

Even now, he still couldn’t figure out what he might have said to make Nick see he hadn’t meant to do anything wrong, hadn’t meant to deceive or hurt him. He could figure out even less which moment in the chain of events that had led to that confrontation in the kitchen would have been the right one to say, “oh, by the way, I’m not a hooker at all and I will totally do you free of charge”. Had there ever been a moment that wouldn’t have made Nick look at Pat with horrified realization, distant devastation and numb shock?