Love for the Cold-Blooded (8 page)

Pat barely restrained himself from fistpumping in victory, and instead cleared his throat and made sure he was gripping his shopping bag tightly. “Help! Save m—”

Another hero shot into sight from the opposite direction, wrapped in a metallic haze of force fields.

Silver Paladin. It was Silver Paladin, and for no reason at all, Pat’s cry for help dried up in his throat, becoming nothing more than an undignified croak.

Everybody and their grandmother knew that Silver Paladin was built. It wasn’t a secret, seeing as the man’s quantum armor fit like a second skin. So yeah, Pat had known that before; he’d just never particularly cared. But now… well.

By the time Pat managed to tear his attention away from the square below, where Silver Paladin was rounding up the gathering thrill-seekers, reporters and other idiots and herding them to safety, Ariadne had unraveled an expanding coil of red string. It hovered around her in readiness as she circled for position, sandaled feet treading lightly over the steep roof.

“Doctor Destiny.” Ariadne’s voice rang with the natural resonance and authority of a born orator. “I should have known it would be you. Give up your wickedness and surrender, foul villain, or prepare to suffer my wrath.”

“Your wrath?” Doctor Destiny’s grin had grown wicked and sly, eyes narrowing to slits of cyan malice as crackling energy gathered around her raised hands. “As though you could stand against me, you laughable excuse for a —”

A net of yarn rose up around Doc, as quick as thought. Pat hadn’t even caught on to what was happening when a blinding flare of energy flashed outward from the yarn-obscured form. The force of the blast caught Pat unprepared and dislodged him from his tenuous position. He rolled across the roof in panicked slow motion, scrabbling for purchase on tiles that loosened beneath his desperate grasp. What the fuck, they were supposed to rescue him first!

“Poor little orphan girl!” Doctor Destiny was booming, “Cast out by your own father! Never good enough —”

“Look who’s talking!” Pat had never heard the dignified, collected Ariadne’s tone turn so venomous before. “What is this but a pathetic, misguided cry for attention?”

Under different circumstances, Pat might have been intrigued by how quickly Doc and Ariadne had escalated to personal low blows, but right now he was a little busy trying not to fall off a roof. He’d stopped sliding at the last moment and was perched precariously on the tiny ledge just before the gutter, crouched on his hands and knees. If he raised his gaze from where his fingers were curled white-knuckled into the bronze rainpipe — which he was trying very, very hard not to do — he could look straight down on the stairs leading up to City Hall’s entrance.

Fuck. City Hall had never seemed so immensely high from below. Pat’s stomach lurched with vertigo, and he had to swallow down bile. He felt sick and terrified. He hadn’t even known he was afraid of heights before.

A hazy flash of silver appeared in his peripheral vision. Pat caught a confused glimpse of a familiar frown below a mirrored visor, and then large, silver-gloved hands reached out and he found himself picked up and tossed over Silver Paladin’s shoulder.

Force fields buzzed against his chest and stomach and legs, scrambling Pat’s brains and making his teeth ache. It took him a moment to register that he was now airborne; correction, that
they
were airborne, City Hall and the fighting challenger and hero retreating until all Pat could see was Silver Paladin’s legs and ass. It was a weird angle, and Pat could have done without the obscuring force fields and the armor in the way, but even so it was a pretty spectacular view.

By the time they touched down, Pat was giggling uncontrollably.

Pat found himself set back on his feet with surprising gentleness. A quick look around revealed that they were in front of the small chocolatier Hell liked, right in the middle of the picturesquely ivy-adorned side street leading to the temple square.

With his visor down and the force fields on, there really wasn’t much of Silver Paladin’s face to see. Even so, Pat imagined he could read surprise in the blurry line of his jaw. “
You?
What are you doing —”

Pat waved a hand to indicate this wasn’t an ideal time to bombard him with dumb questions, seeing as he was still choking back giggles and wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. It wasn’t even that anything about this was funny, exactly. It was just all so absurd. All of it, from the ridiculous companion misunderstanding to having to be rescued by a superhero in complete earnest.

Once he’d managed to get himself back under control, he discovered Silver Paladin had flipped up his visor, the better to give Pat a narrow-eyed look that seemed set to burn right through to his bones. Not hostile, precisely; more heroically stern, or whatever.

“Are you injured?” And there was the heroic voice to match, all no-nonsense firmness and authority.

“Nah, I’m fine.” It was true enough. “No worries, it’s all good. Thanks for the ride, dude. Or the carry, whatever.”

Even without the visor covering most of his face, Silver Paladin didn’t look nearly as much as Nicholas as you’d think. Weird. Not that they weren’t clearly the same person — there was just something different about the man in superhero mode. It must have been the addition of the stereotypically heroic bearing… the steely jaw and heroic profile and whatnot.

Pat cleared his throat and shifted a little, trying not to let on how gut-meltingly hot he found the heroic whatnot. It didn’t seem like the right moment.

“What were you doing on that roof?” Silver Paladin barked, a stern horizontal crease forming between his forbidding brows. He looked like a schoolmaster who’d caught one of his charges out after curfew.

What was with the tone — did he think Pat had been hanging out on top of City Hall for fun, just waiting to be caught up in a passing superpowered grudge-fest? “Trying not to fall off, for the most part. Look, buddy —”

And that was when it hit him: his album. His album! “
Mad Bad and Dangerous to Ho
!” Pat shouted.

He barely had time to register that Silver Paladin’s face now had a definitely shocked thing going on (if there was a prize for disconcerting an unflappable superhero, Pat had just won the gold) before turning to run back to the market square. Or trying to, at least. He’d only managed a few steps when an arm as immovable as a steel bar wrapped around his chest from behind.

“Civilians are expected to expend every effort in order to stay out of the range of supervillain conflicts,” Silver Paladin growled into his ear. Pat couldn’t help but notice that his back was now pressed tightly to the hero’s body, the hum of force fields beginning to seep through him again. “Civilians who recklessly endanger themselves or others, or who deliberately hinder superhero operations in any fashion, can and will be prosecuted.”

“Are you seriously throwing the book at me?” Pat squirmed in the Paladin’s grip until he could look up at him, even if all he could see from this angle was a slice of sternly set cast-iron jaw and heroic glare. “This is not the time for that, you loser! Aren’t you supposed to be good at saving people?”

“I am
excellent
at saving people,” barked Silver Paladin, glaring. His force field hum was making Pat’s fillings ache, and his stupid face and stupid body and stupid hotness grew more and more annoying the longer Pat was exposed to them.

“You are so not! I give you two out of ten, you suck so bad. I lost my limited edition album thanks to you, dude!
Mad Bad and Dangerous to Ho
, the most —”

“Companion,” said Silver Paladin, his tone somehow both completely flat and utterly disapproving at the same time.

Pat blinked, thrown. “What?”

Considering the way the conversation was going, it might have been a good thing that at that point, a furiously loud series of thudding crashes followed by a deeply ominous rumbling interrupted it. The noise came from the direction of the market square and sounded pretty much exactly what Pat assumed a building taking major structural damage would sound like.

An instant later, a cloud of stone and concrete dust rose against the sky, and Silver Paladin was nothing but a fast-moving haze of glowing force fields, streaking off towards the commotion.

Pat’s back was still warm from being pressed against him. He felt oddly unsteady for a moment before he got himself sorted.

Back in the market square, Doctor Destiny was balancing atop the sagging, smoking ruins of Taliesin Books’ roof, laughing maniacally (her projection was amazing, as Pat noted with admiration). The building looked to be held together pretty much exclusively by masses of red string. Pat hadn’t gotten to the more advanced structural engineering classes yet, but if he was any judge, the place was a complete loss.

Ariadne’s aircycle was sitting in the middle of the square, but she herself was nowhere in sight. Her string, by contrast, was everywhere. Silver Paladin was whipping by so fast he was no more than a metallic blur, extracting book lovers with no taste in shopping venues from the ruined building.

Pat considered the chaos at Taliesin, the City Hall’s roof, Ariadne’s abandoned aircycle, and the awesomeness of BadMadRad, and came up with ‘what the hell, go for it’.

If wishes were serpents, we’d all rule the world,
as Pat’s mom used to say.

Turned out hoagie aircycles were fitted with personalized locks, ensuring that nobody but their owner could get them off the ground. It was super inconvenient, even if Pat supposed it did make sense. Also turned out the built-in alarm on hoagie aircycles sounded like some kind of air raid siren.

Pat was stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew when it was time to beat a retreat. He’d only wanted to borrow the stupid aircycle — he would totally have put it back when he was done. But there was no justice in the world, and the last thing he needed was to be arrested on a trumped-up hoagie-related charge.

This must be what people meant when they spoke of the need for painful sacrifice in the service of a greater good.

~~~~~

L
ife still sucked that afternoon, when Pat was too sad, frustrated and wired to nap. He liked to stick to his weekday sleep schedule even on weekends; one two-hour nap in the morning, one in the afternoon, and he was golden. Pat didn’t need a lot of sleep as long as he kept warm. It was a genetic thing. His mom and sisters were the same.

Napping just wasn’t happening today, though. Pat lay around in increasing boredom for a while, thinking dark thoughts about incompetent hoagies. Eventually, one thing led to another, and he ended up sliding a hand down his boxers.

At least jerking off did not suck. In fact, it was pretty great, because Pat was good at it. Practice made perfect, as they said.

He was still sad, frustrated and wired, though, so his motors were slow to get revving. Pat went through all of his usual fantasies of wanton sorority girls having their way with him at parties and horny swim meet guys sucking him off in locker rooms. None of it was really working for him today.

Then he thought about Nicholas heavy on top of him, pushing him into the mattress, staring at him with his stupid dark eyes. What his touch on Pat’s cock had felt like — what he’d felt like pressing inside of Pat, panting hot and harsh into his ear. And then, Pat thought about the warmth of Silver Paladin’s armored body against his… the hum of his force fields.

If Pat had been the one in a cool black uniform, wearing a billowing cape like a slice of endless night. If it had been Pat who’d been bent on world domination (or bookstore destruction or whatever), and Silver Paladin had responded to the call. If the hero hadn’t been able to stand against Pat’s might; if Pat had gotten him alone and helpless, pressed him up against a half-crumbled wall… to discover that he was flushed and panting from more than exertion and fear. That underneath his skin-tight armor, he was hard. Rendered helpless by wild, uncontrollable desire.

Pat moaned and gripped himself tighter, his dick finally taking a real interest.

“You have vanquished me in a fair fight, Patrick,” gasped the imaginary Paladin, throwing back his head to expose his long, beautiful throat in surrender. “Take me as is your right.”

But — no. No, that wasn’t right. Nicholas would never say something like that, so neither would Silver Paladin.

Alright then, how about…

“Damn you,” gasped Silver Paladin, body arching into Pat with a lustful urgency stoked to a fever pitch by the anger blazing in his eyes. “Fuck me hard, you little slut.”

Yes. Much better. Much better, even though it was the kind of awful line that should never ever be uttered outside of porn.

The black-clad fantasy version of Pat pushed Silver Paladin down on a convenient bit of masonry, ripped off his suit, and pushed his legs up and apart until he was spread open, ready for Pat’s cock. The hero was glaring at Pat as though trying to murder him with his mind, but when Pat stroked possessive gloved hands all over him, he moaned and trembled; when Pat expertly handled his cock and balls, he threw back his head and keened helplessly.

“Do it,” spat the Paladin, lost to raging, consuming lust. “Take me hard. Make me give it up to you. Split me open with your enormous cock and fuck me deep. Fuck me until I beg, and then fuck me harder.”

Pat pushed inside Silver Paladin with a single merciless thrust and took him hard and deep. In no time at all, the hero was choking out pleas that sounded like sobs, begging Pat to go harder, deeper, oh gods
Patrick.
And back on his creaky bed in his tiny apartment on the wrong side of town, Pat whimpered and came all over himself.

~~~~~

P
at was in the middle of sorting the laundry when it occurred to him that he had made a terrible mistake. He froze in horror, heedlessly dangling his second-favorite t-shirt above the ‘worn but non-smelly and probably fine for another day’ heap.

When he’d gotten his smartphone, Pat had given the old non-smart one to one of the guys on the swim team, who was forever dropping, sitting on and otherwise destroying his phones. Pat had taken the prepaid card out beforehand, and — mindful of Boadicea’s tales of the many splendors of phone jacking — had cut it into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet.