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Finally, Mal’ik shook his head. “That’s not true.”
Patrick stared at him blankly. “Speaking for myself, Mal’ik, I’m pretty sure it is.”
“No, there was that sapper in my Gat’Raph unit.” Mal’ik shook his head again and leaned forward on his elbows. “In the early days of the occupation.” He spoke as though he were trying to remind Patrick of something he might have forgotten. And Patrick had not forgotten that sapper.
“Sapper?” Oliver’s brow furrowed.
“Combat engineer,” Patrick supplied in a light tone. “Places mines, blows up buildings, builds roads, that sort of thing.”
“You two were obsessed with each other.” Mal’ik snorted, and the corners of his eyes crinkled in a nostalgic smile. “The night before he got reassigned, Lar’a and I covered for you while you snuck into the Gat’Raph camp and into his tent. You were gone half the night.”
Patrick remembered. He’d spent that night running himself around the track they’d put up through some bombed-out buildings. Running and running and running until he was too worn out and disgusting for Mal’ik or Lar’a to tell that anything was wrong with him. “We were just friends. We didn’t do anything.”
Mal’ik frowned hard. “You’d wanted to do something.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t. He…” Patrick had never told Mal’ik any of this. He’d never told anyone any of this. Lar’a and Mal’ik had thought they were covering for him so he could get lucky. They’d ribbed him about it, and he’d taken it with laughs and coyly sealed lips and let them assume it had all gone according to plan because that had been easier. And because he’d been young and mortified and hadn’t been able to bear letting them see the hurt. He was older now, and he still wasn’t sure he could bear it.
“He what, Patrick?” Mal’ik’s voice had an edge of protectiveness in it now. Patrick clenched his jaw. He didn’t need Mal’ik to protect him. He was a capable, grown man and he could deal with some disappointment and hard realities.
Patrick let out a deep exhale and sat up and back against his chair. He met Mal’ik’s eyes and shrugged one shoulder. “He laughed.”
“He what?” Mal’ik surged to his feet and Patrick tensed with a sudden fight instinct. “He—” Mal’ik’s fists opened and closed, and Oliver put a hand on his arm. “He—”
“Laughed at me, yes,” Patrick bit out, refusing to let himself jump out of his chair. He focused on the cool leather under his fingers and the sharp angles of the crystal glass in his hand. He didn’t think about how that sapper had stepped away from him with disgusted confusion when Patrick had propositioned him or the deep belly laugh he’d given when he realized what Patrick was asking. “He’d never been interested in me like that. It was all in my head.”
Mal’ik's face fell. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and let Oliver sit him back in his chair. “I’m sorry.”
Patrick shrugged again and took a sip of his drink. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have been surprised.”
“Why do you say that?” Oliver snapped his gaze to him and Patrick started at the severity of it.
“Because I’m human—”
“I’m human.” Oliver lifted his chin.
“Yeah, but—” Patrick tapped his finger on the glass, trying to figure out how to articulate why pretty, dainty, perfect little Oliver was a rather different proposition than he was. “Look, I’m not saying I couldn’t get fucked—” he blushed as he said the word but powered on “—if that’s what I wanted, but it’s not.”
Oliver turned on his perch on Mal’ik’s arm rest to face him more fully. “What do you want?”
“To be taken seriously.” Patrick swallowed down half his glass and sat the rest of it on the small table beside Mal’ik. “To be treated like an equal instead of some weak, silly, little human playing at being a klah’eel.”
“I never thought about that about you.” Mal’ik’s brows pulled down low.
Oliver shot him a biting scowl. “You say that, but if I follow, when you got even a whiff of insubordination from one of his men today, you decided it was your job to spring to the defense of Patrick’s honor. Didn’t you?”
Patrick would have never said it in so many words or with that tone, but he didn’t suppress a small smirk of vindication when Mal’ik winced under Oliver’s hard, hazel eyes. “You know what, Turner, you’re alright.”
“Not that you’re off the hook.” Oliver swept Patrick’s discarded glass from the table with a sniff, but Patrick still saw the way his eyes had brightened at Patrick’s words. He raised the glass up between his thumb and forefinger and sloshed the liquid around in it. “You barely had anything tonight.”
Patrick made a face. “So?”
Mal’ik put a hand on Oliver’s knee. “He’s never been a big drinker.”
“So you’ve told me.” Oliver tilted his chin and Patrick recognized the ruthless gesture from back when he’d been Oliver’s second bodyguard. He braced himself. “You don’t drink. You go to bed early. You wake up early. You polish your boots. You think if you do everything right, then they’ll finally love you.”
Patrick’s back went up as Oliver’s words slid between his ribs.
“And then you’ll finally be happy.” Oliver lifted his glass in a parody of a toast. “Well, trust me—” He downed the rest of Patrick’s glass and slid off Mal’ik’s arm rest. “It doesn’t work that way.”
