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“Yes,” said Patrick. “Earlier tonight.” Will smiled crookedly, realizing now why Patrick had not wanted to eat anything at the gig. Why he had drunk bottled water all evening.
“You little slut,” he whispered, and Patrick’s face grew even hotter as he nodded. Yes, he was. For tonight, he would be anything Will said he was.
He stood there naked and hard as a rock, vulnerable, thrillingly so, awaiting further direction. Allowed himself to be pushed onto the bed and flipped onto his stomach. Heard the lowering of a zipper, the creak of leather as Will positioned himself over him, still fully dressed. Felt the bottle of poppers being pushed into his hand, obliged by taking a deep breath of the chemical that had started all this.
He winced and cried out at the initial bite of hurt and discomfort, but his groans soon became louder, less pained. Soon he was crying out in wordless, unadulterated pleasure while Will stretched and filled him, teeth tugging at his earlobe.
“Pull my hair,” he grunted, wondering where the hell that had come from and then losing the question as Will grabbed a fistful and yanked his head back to kiss him passionately, then pushed him back down onto the pillow. He moaned again, coming alive under Will’s rough care. He spoke in tongues, transcendent and yet at the same time beautifully worthless.
He’d thought he had unleashed all of his desires on Will in the hotel last night, that the weight of all those years of frustration and fear had been lifted. But that loneliness wasn’t just a weight to be removed, he knew now. It was a mark, a stain. And as he lay facedown, hands pinned behind his back, surrendering entirely to the will of the man above him, Patrick finally felt cleansed.
Chapter 21
The first coherent thought to enter Will’s mind as he woke was that this might be the only time he had ever slept in another man’s arms without waking up a sweaty, disoriented goblin. He’d always loved the romance of the idea, but after five minutes of spooning he usually became so hot and irritable that it undercut the purpose. So aside from the very rare occasions when he would wake up with a dreadful hangover being spooned by an unconscious Jordan after crashing at his place, he tended to avoid it. This morning, though, opening his eyes to find himself tucked into the side of Patrick’s body, arm draped over his chest, head nestled under his shoulder, he realized it might have been the best night’s sleep he’d had in a long time.
The second thought arrived quickly on the heels of the first and announced itself far less gently: He had overslept. The sky outside was a bright, warm blue, and the sun had already moved around to this side of the building, which meant it was noon. At least.
“Shit,” he whispered, carefully extracting himself from Patrick’s embrace and leaning over to check his phone on the nightstand. Then, when he saw just how much he had slept in by: “Shit, shit, shit!”
Will scrambled to exit the bed in such a hurry that he became entangled in the covers and nearly went headfirst onto the floor. Feeling Patrick begin to stir next to him, he finally liberated himself from the sheets and tiptoed out into the bathroom to pee, brush his teeth, and hastily scrub the goop from the corners of his eyes and mouth.
When he returned to the bedroom, Patrick was awake.
“Good morning,” he mumbled happily, stretching.
“No, it is not,” Will informed him, tripping over the shoes he had kicked off the night before in what had felt at the time like erotic abandon, and now struck him as an act of sabotage against his future self. Why did he never pick up after himself?
“It’s not a good morning?” Patrick asked, squinting in the direction of the window, where a house sparrow had decided to set down at that very moment, like something out of a Disney movie. Except this particular princess would have to dress herself and would deal with the inevitable bird shit on the windowsill later.
“It’s not morning,” Will said. “We overslept. No. I overslept. It’s story hour in the Rainbow Room in…Jesus, in less than an hour.”
Patrick watched, clearly amused at first, as Will floundered around the room, gathering little containers of eyebrow glue, foundation, highlighter, and a dozen other tools of his craft from various drawers and surfaces. It was a curated chaos that might not make sense to an outsider, but Will knew exactly where everything was. Except for when he finally sat down in front of his mirror, then realized he’d forgotten something, swore, and got back up.
“Are you about to get into so-called ‘quick drag’?” asked Patrick, sitting up in bed. The sheet slid down, revealing enough of his chest—those nipples! God, the sounds Patrick had made when he played with them—that Will was momentarily distracted before remembering the task at hand.
“Pretty much, yes,” he said, checking his phone again. “I need to be ready in, like, twenty minutes. Which is a lot to ask, even for those among us who are already women when they wake up.” He fumbled while trying to open one of the many little tubes in front of him, and he forced himself to take a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just really need to focus. I can’t believe I’ve let this happen.”
A strange look passed over Patrick’s face, and Will realized how he must have sounded. He’d meant, I can’t believe I forgot to set an alarm and I’m late again. Patrick probably heard, This is your fault.
“I should go,” said Patrick, rising and pulling on his boxers and jeans.
“OK,” said Will with his back to him, mouth morphed into an exaggerated O as he concentrated on expediting the metamorphosis that would ordinarily have been conducted with a patient, ritualistic reverence. “I’ll call you later,” he added, guiltily. “I…I had a great time.” Patrick paused before leaving the room to kiss his crown and rest a hand for a second on the back of his neck.
“Break a leg,” he said, his expression in the mirror still odd. Then he grabbed his jacket and let himself out in a hurry, and Will didn’t have the time to linger on the stilted goodbye, or to feel like shit for rushing him out of here, especially after last night had taken such an intense turn.
He ignored several text messages and a missed call from Faye Runaway while rushing through the final stages of his makeup, carefully installed his wig, then called a taxi and squeezed into his outfit and heels while he waited.
Daytime drag was a little like daytime drinking: As fun as it was, Will always had a guilty suspicion in the back of his mind that it was something he probably shouldn’t be doing, and suspected that one of these days it was going to end in an injury. Everybody he knew had a friend who had been beaten up—or worse—for the crime of being too fruity in public: holding hands with their boyfriend, walking with just a little too much sway in their hips or flounce in their wrist. Stepping outside his front door before dark dressed like a conservative Christian’s worst nightmare—or, more specifically, a cutesy interpretation of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, complete with pigtails, gingham pinafore, and sparkly red Mary Janes—was practically a provocation. He’d had taxi drivers refuse to pick him up when they saw him, and he knew that in the wider scheme, that was probably a best-case scenario. But needs must when the devil drives—or, in Will’s case, when the gay never passed his practical test and had to rely on Uber because the only alternative was a bus, and in these shoes? He didn’t think so.
Luckily on this specific day the driver offered Will little more than a bemused glance in the rearview mirror as he scooped up the voluminous tulle of his skirt to prevent it from being trapped in the car door.
“I’ll tell you what, Umar,” Will said, strapping himself in. “There’s a five-star rating and a cash tip in it for you if you can get me to the library in under ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?” Umar considered the proposition as he maneuvered back onto the main road. “Easy-peasy.”
“You’re my hero,” Will told him. “Now let’s fly.”
