Love for the Cold-Blooded (16 page)

This was his version of a prank — and he looked ridiculously proud of himself.

“Oh my gods, you are the worst,” Pat laughed. Also, wow, the man was as predictable as clockwork. Pat didn’t even have to check his watch to know with absolute certainty that it was between 2 and 3 in the morning — the time Nick always called down to the kitchen.

Thing was. Thing was, this — whatever this was — was totally beyond Pat’s previous range of experience. Pat didn’t really know what he was doing. It wasn’t even the entire pretend hooker thing, at least not right now. It was more… well, all the rest of it.
Nick
, in all his freakishly intense Nickness.

“Sure, let’s grab a bite to eat,” Pat said, feeling oddly daring. “We’ve basically squeezed in the entire frat party experience now, anyway. You know, drinking, dancing, beer pong, making out in random corners…”

If you’d asked him before, Pat would have said he’d hate getting so worked up and then having to stop and go for a pizza, of all things. But the thing was, it was fine. There’d be a better time and place, where they could do this properly with nobody leering and giving color commentary. And joining Nick for one of his late-night meals seemed like a pretty great offer right now.

He only realized he was biting his lower lip by the way Nick’s gaze seemed intent on burning his mouth to ash.

For the first time, Pat caught a glimmer of the notion that he might maybe, possibly, be getting in over his head. Maybe, possibly, he ought to cut this evening short now and just not answer the phone when Nick next requested Padraig the non-underwear model hooker. He’d had awesome sex (several times, go him), he had his album back, he had a good job as night manager, and his unexpected financial windfall had allowed him to buy some awesome stuff and even put a bit of money aside for future luxuries, like an €linore concert or two. Maybe he should quit while he was ahead. Maybe…

“Smoked duck and velvet pioppinis,” Nick mused, opening the front door and waving Pat through. “Nashi pear. Gorgonzola and shaved white truffles.”

Pat made a retching sound and helpfully illustrated his point by miming sticking a finger down his throat. Of all the absurd pizza topping combinations Nick had come up with, this was a top contender in terms of ridiculous pretentiousness.

What had Pat been thinking? Really, he had nothing to worry about.

Chapter Six

Follow your heart (unless your heart is stupid).

P
at had never actually been to Pizza Pirates before, but he’d passed the place a bunch of times and had always thought it seemed cool. Its sign featured a skull and crossbones, after all. How much cooler could you get?

Service was quick this time of night. Pat considered it another point in the joint’s favor that the woman who took their order was wearing a nautically blue-and-white striped shirt, with a red kerchief tied around her head. (She was also not bad-looking and seemed willing to flirt with Pat, but of course Pat wasn’t doing that; not with Nick right there. He was a classy guy, yo.)

Surprise (not): There were no pioppinis, chanterelles or mu-ehrs. As far as the Pizza Pirates were concerned, the mushroom question had a yes or no answer. They didn’t have wagyu beef or smoked duck, either, although they did offer two varieties of ham, which was one more than Pat had expected. Nick was getting a little stormy around the brows at that point, though, so Pat simply elbowed him aside and ordered without his input.

“This is entirely unacceptable,” Nick said stiffly, shouldering back in. “Your selection of toppings is sadly subpar, and furthermore —”

“Invisibility or x-ray vision?” Pat burst out, somewhat desperately.

Admittedly, it was a very transparent ploy, and Nick did give Pat a stare suggesting he was the least evolved form of life on the planet. But hey — it worked. Nick gave up hassling the pizza pirate and instead spent the entire time their pizza was baking lecturing Pat on the advantages of x-ray vision. Sad, really, considering everyone with any sense knew that invisibility was the coolest superpower… at least next to flying (which Pat was not going to admit in the presence of a dude who’d built himself a flying suit), and maybe beer sense.

Once their pizza was done, Pat snatched up the box and herded Nick to the door. He only paused to give a quick wave to the pirate gal, complete with apologetic grin that hopefully conveyed something like “sorry about him, he’s a freaky weirdo who doesn’t get out much”. The pirate grinned back and waggled her hand in a complicated gesture Pat read as “no problemo, I can see that he’s a freaky weirdo, but I also see that he has a cute butt, so more power to you, my friend”.

Nick’s butt did make up for a multitude of sins. As did his everything, really.

They settled down to eat right at the bus stop, balancing the box on the bench between them. It was a nice bus stop, so Pat felt he was doing okay on the date class meter as laid out by the West Sister Dating Rules. Hey, Pat had even thought to grab a fistful of the traditionally non-absorbent napkins.

“The toppings are unevenly distributed,” Nick said the second the box’s lid cleared the event horizon.

Pat stared at him. Nick glared at the offending pizza, completely ignorant of what a loser he was being.

They’d ended up with a family-sized pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms and ham, as well as extra cheese the baking pirate hadn’t charged for (Pat’s charm was legendary). In deference to Nick’s pampered palate, Pat had splurged and ordered the so-called ‘tomato treasure’ sauce, which was two thalers more and featured extra herbs and garlic as well as fresh tomatoes.

The end result was a pretty yummy pizza that Pat was in the perfect mood for. He ignored Nick’s typically weird-ass objection and dug in, losing himself happily in a haze of cheese and crispy crust. He’d been right — the Pizza Pirates had been an excellent choice.

He’d already devoured two slices by the time he noticed Nick wasn’t eating, and was instead trying to set the box on fire with his mind. “Dude. What the fuck?”

Nick dropped the slice in his hand back into the box as though it were a dead rat. “This is an extremely bad pizza,” he announced in a carrying, sonorous manner. The frown he levelled at Pat was accusing, as though he suspected Pat of being in collusion with a horde of pizza pirates trying to poison him.

It was five kinds of hilarious, actually, and Pat almost choked on a no-name mushroom before he could answer. “Oh my gods, you are such a dick, Nicholas. You can’t go to an all-night delivery service and demand the kind of fancy-schmancy gourmet fare you’re used to being hand-fed by your five-star chefs. This is a perfectly good pizza. You don’t want to let it touch your exalted tastebuds, fine. I like it, so shut up and let me eat it in peace.”

“I get my pizza delivered!” The indignation in Nick’s tone gave Pat pause; he froze with his latest slice halfway to his open mouth, transfixed by the unpretty splotches of red rising into Nick’s cheeks. “I don’t expect special gourmet pizza, merely something reasonably edible. Which this pirate pizza is —”

“Your pizza comes straight from your kitchen, where your personal on-duty cook assembles it from the gourmet ingredients prepared by your five-star chef.” Pat snorted in disbelief. “Nobody in the entire city delivers pizza with shaved truffles, nashi pear and smoked duck in under fifteen minutes, Nick. No pizza pirate would pander to your neurotic topping distribution requirements. You do not get your pizza delivered, what the fuck.”

Nick opened his mouth to deliver a heated rejoinder, but closed it again without uttering a word. The glare he cast down at the partially eaten pirate pizza was accusatory, as though it had personally betrayed him.

Belatedly, Pat realized that he’d probably betrayed too much insider knowledge. He could still save it, though. “Dude, you’re
loaded
. You live in a huge-ass mansion with your own helicopter landing pad and private dock at the river. Trust me, your staff does not order your dinner from Pizza Pirates. They don’t pick up your underwear model clones on the street corner behind the train station either, do they?”

Okay, why had he brought those stupid model clones into this? Pat grimaced and put down his pizza, grabbing several non-absorbent napkins to wipe his fingers on instead.

Nick had stopped mutely accusing their late-night snack of crimes against humanity and was now frowning at Pat in clear incomprehension. “Underwear model clones? What are you talking —”

Pat waved his handful of balled-up greasy napkins to shut him up. “Whatever, not the point. The point is, when you want something, you just tell your staff, right? And they’re paid to make sure you get it, and that it’s the best money can buy. They’re not gonna order their billionaire employer’s pizza at the same place a bunch of drunken fratboys do.”

“I don’t tell my staff, I tell my AI,” Nick protested. “I don’t even have — I mean, of course I have a staff, including a cook. But mostly I order pizza in the middle of the night, and — obviously, my AI simply knows a much better restaurant.”

Pat was through arguing about this; he never should have started in the first place. So he just shrugged and poked at another slice of the inferior pizza, maneuvering it into position to be picked up and devoured with minimum mess and slippage. It was more than good enough for him, even if the cheese was rapidly congealing in the cold night air.

The magnitude of Nick’s ignorance about what went on in his own household was a little surprising. But then again, when Pat thought about it some more…

Rule Number One of being the perfect servant: Make it happen. Rule Number Two: Never question. And Rule Number Three: Be invisible.

That was it, right there. Part of the entire serving heart philosophy was to stay unobtrusively out of sight. Everything in the principal’s life should run smoothly and be just the way he wanted it, and he should never be made aware of the effort that went into ensuring his every whim was well and truly whimmed. It didn’t make a lot of sense to Pat, but maybe rich people didn’t want to have to say thank you and please all the time or something. Not that this applied in the case of Nick, who was free of the yoke of normal social graces anyway.

Obviously, hookers — pardon Pat’s language, companions — didn’t have the option of invisibility, but night managers certainly did. Pat should probably high-five himself for a job well done, considering Nick wasn’t even aware he had one.

“Whatever,” Pat said when the silence grew too long. He shrugged at nothing in particular, mentally closing the subject. “I haven’t exactly eaten a lot of pizza at the kind of restaurant with tablecloths and candlesticks. What do I know, right?”

“They come in take-out boxes just like this one,” Nick said, tightly. His tone wasn’t accusatory anymore; he’d come around to defensive now. “Most of the time they’re still in the plastic bag.”

Okay, that really was weird. Pat had assumed the love for take-out trappings was just another weird rich guy thing, but obviously something else was going on there. “Did they always?”

“Not always, no, but… I wanted to order pizza the way people do on TV.” Nick was hunching forward a bit, fiddling with his barely nibbled-on slice. “It seemed cool. I don’t know why.” A vaguely belligerent undertone swung in his voice, as though he were daring Pat — or maybe the pizza he was still glaring at — to make something of it.

“You’re ten dozen kinds of weird, bro,” Pat told him, because it had to be said.

It came out oddly fond, and Nick snorted and threw him a crooked grin. “Says the adult man with the Jaguar couch cover. Anyway, the first time I wanted to order a pizza was before the AI was fully functional. I called the front gate and told security to have a pizza delivered. They did, but it was awful. Worse than this one, even.”

Pat chewed a mouthful of congealing cheese and herbs while he considered this revelation. What would Assistant House Manager Suze do if her principal wanted the authentic experience of having pizza delivered like a normal person, but didn’t like the plebeian taste of the product? What if, in fact, her principal was a crazy freak who wanted ridiculous shit like mu-ehrs, caviar and six kinds of extinct whatevers on it?

Not a big mystery, all told. “Alright, lemme guess. Next time, the pizza was still in a box, but hot and fresh and delicious, not to mention featuring all the weird-ass toppings you wanted. And after that, every time you mentioned that you liked the slices larger or the toppings more evenly distributed, the pizza magically adjusted to your whims.”

“I don’t see,” Nick started, and then didn’t say anything at all for a while. Clearly, he hadn’t just been clueless about astronauts and x-ray vision, but about pretty much everything that went on outside of his ivory tower of tech, heroism and gourmet midnight pizza.

“It’s like you’re the alien and not Star Knight,” Pat muttered on a deep, heart-felt sigh.

“Star Knight doesn’t eat pizza,” Nick muttered resentfully. He wasn’t even looking at Pat, still lost in contemplating the amazing revelation that not all pizza was created equal.

Pat blinked. “What?”

“He’s allergic to tomatoes, and he gets drunk on the salt. Last time he accidentally had salt, he told Cassiopeia she looked like a thundercloud that needed to lightning up. Then he left her to her schemes in favor of trying to dance the tango with a weather balloon.”

“Trying to…?”

Nick shrugged distractedly. “Apparently it fought him for the lead. At least that’s the reason he gave when we asked him how he’d managed to crash into the Ace Tower.”

Pat opened his mouth, and then closed it again when he discovered he had no idea of what to say. Wow. Cassie hadn’t mentioned the thundercloud or tango parts — just that Star Knight was an embarrassment who’d once again destroyed half the city because he couldn’t fly straight. It made for a far better story with the salt included.

“Patrick?” Nick had surfaced from whatever thoughts had been occupying him and was now searching Pat’s face with the wrinkled brow of a particularly worried bulldog. “I probably shouldn’t have talked to you about that. Not that I think — it’s merely…”