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Oliver pulled his dart at the last minute at Patrick’s stuttering and glanced back between Patrick and Mal’ik. “Did I miss something?”
Patrick buried his nose in his glass. “No.”
Mal’ik watched him for a moment and Patrick could see the calculations running through his mind behind his bright orange eyes. He lifted the hand with his glass in it and pointed at him. “Patrick here has a soldier that nearly ripped my head off for touching him.”
Oliver raised both eyebrows high into his blond hair.
Patrick scowled. “That’s an exaggeration.”
“You didn’t smell him.”
“And you didn’t deescalate.” Patrick raised his half empty glass to point back at him. “He wouldn’t have gotten so riled up if you hadn’t gone all macho on him like we were twenty-five again.”
Oliver chuckled and abandoned his mark at the dartboard. He perched on the arm of Mal’ik’s chair and reached for his glass again. “Overprotective, much?”
Mal’ik handed it to him. “I was just surprised.”
Patrick fought his wince. That stung, though it shouldn’t have. He wished it wasn’t so surprising that a klah’eel man might want him. Ugh, except Fal’ran didn’t want him. He didn’t. Not really.
Mal’ik took the glass back from Oliver after he’d had a sip and continued. “And I didn’t realize the feelings were mutual.”
“They’re not!” Patrick sat up straight, the denial punching out of his mouth. Mal’ik snorted and Patrick grimaced and slumped forward with his elbows on his knees. Yeah, that denial would have held a lot more water before he’d gushed all over the hallway about Fal’ran’s looks and work ethic.
Even Oliver raised a bitingly skeptical single eyebrow, and he hadn’t even been there.
“Look.” Patrick spread his hands. “Yeah, I care about him. I care about him a lot.”
Mal’ik’s eyes warmed with such sappiness, Patrick winced again. If he knew his friend, Mal’ik was thinking about Patrick getting all the same fuzzy feelings that he must be getting from Oliver and that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“But that’s as far as it goes.” Patrick sliced his fingers through the air, wanting to end this little matchmaking discussion. “He doesn’t have any feelings for me beyond either a cocky little power play or an attachment to the first authority figure to believe in him. Either way, nothing is going to happen.”
Oliver tilted his head, pretty lips pursed. “He’s younger?”
“Yeah.” Patrick snorted a laugh and leaned back in his chair. “A lot younger. Like, half my age younger.”
Oliver exchanged a quick glance with Mal’ik. “Is that why you think his interest isn’t real?”
Patrick shifted in his chair. “That’s part of it.”
“Because as a younger man extremely interested in a man twice my age—” a sly smile spread across Oliver’s features that made Patrick want to bury himself in the cushions of the leather chair. He did not want to think about Mal’ik and Oliver in bed together. He really, really did not. “I can tell you, there’s something to be said for an older man with experience.”
The wiggly embarrassment that had made Patrick want to hide in the cushions collapsed into bone deep shame. His hands shook as he fought the instinct to curl into himself. He felt as tall as the worn-out rubber sole on his left boot and about as attractive.
“Yeah. Well.” He licked his lips and tried to shrug casually, but the twitching way his shoulder lifted and fell was anything but casual.
“Patrick?” Mal’ik inhaled through his nose.
Patrick cringed and swallowed the rest of the herby alcohol. He held his glass out to Oliver. “Could I have another?”
Oliver reached for the glass, he and Mal’ik exchanging another one of those loaded glances. “Of course.”
“Patrick,” Mal’ik repeated more firmly as Oliver got off the arm of his chair to refill Patrick’s glass. “Why do you smell like that?”
Patrick waited until Oliver came back with his drink—twice as much as last time, which was too much—so he had something to wrap his trembling fingers around. He looked down at his hands and dug out some dirt from under his fingernail. “I don’t…have any experience.”
He braced himself against the dumbfounded silence he’d known he was going to get and glued his eyes to his hands and the dirt that had worked its way into his callouses. He scratched at an invisible mark on the crystal, squeezed the glass until he realized he might break it, then laced his fingers around it. Fuck, could they just say something? Anything to move the conversation past that admission.
He looked up to witness Mal’ik and Oliver having some sort of silent conversation with their eyes and Patrick wanted to scream. He was so sick of being on the outside. It was bad enough being surrounded by klah’eel, who seemed to have half their conversations with their noses, but even with his best friend and another human, he still wasn’t privy to all the communication in the room.
