We Could Be Heroes

Chapter 20

The Flapper stood teetering over the Birmingham canal like a dipsomaniac who could topple into the water at any time. Dusk had not long fallen, strings of artificial lights twinkled over the water, and Patrick felt this city working on his defenses again. She was letting her hair down, all right.

“I haven’t been here in ages,” Will breathed as he held open the gate for Patrick. “I practically lived here as a teenager.”

Will wore a battered leather jacket with the collar popped and the sleeves rolled up. He looked, frankly, devastating. By comparison, Patrick felt hopelessly square in his gray hoodie, stone-colored khakis, blue baseball cap, and hiking boots. He didn’t want to think about where Will had procured this “straight-man drag,” whether he had a box somewhere filled with detritus from old boyfriends and one-night stands. But if the object of the evening was camouflage, then mission accomplished: Patrick was dressed so unremarkably, he imagined he could walk straight into traffic and the cars would pass right through him.

He allowed Will to lead him across the narrow walkway over the terrace below into the building itself, and downstairs to the small, packed space where the gig would take place. Margo stood near the front of the crowd, chatting with a dark-haired man who could only be Dylan’s father. Will and Patrick found a spot at the back of the room, where they were less likely to be noticed, and squeezed behind a standing table.

“Good for him for showing up,” Patrick said, jerking his head toward the front. From what he had gleaned, Margo and Owen hadn’t been together since not long after Dylan was born.

“Good for him?” Will frowned. “Dylan’s his child. Jesus. The bar for straight men is on the floor.”

Patrick flushed, embarrassed by his own remark and uncertain if Will’s ire was aimed at him or at the man who had once hurt his sister. Eager to change the subject, he glanced around at the stickers and band posters plastered all over the walls and low ceiling. “I wouldn’t picture you as the kind of guy who’d come to a…rock pub? Is that what we’d call this?” he asked.

“You’re adorable,” said Will. “But yeah, I used to knock about here all the time.”

“Aren’t you full of surprises?”

“Margo had a grunge phase. Which meant I had a grunge phase.”

Almost on cue, as if to illustrate his point exactly, an instantly recognizable electric guitar riff broke out across the sound system, and Will’s eyes widened in pleasure. He threw one arm around Patrick’s shoulder and another in the air, singing along to the opening verse. “Oh make me over!” he belted. “I’m all I wanna be!”

“Wow. You’ve got some pipes.”

“Thank you for noticing.” He smiled shyly. “I was in a band once, you know.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yep. A million years ago. I was, like, seventeen maybe, and spending basically all of my time with this boyfriend who was a year older and knew somebody who knew one of the Scissor Sisters. Which, as I say it now, I realize was probably complete bullshit. But yeah. We thought it would be a great idea to start our own band. I sang, he played the guitar. We were like if Alex Turner and Jamie Cook from the Arctic Monkeys were actually sleeping together. We called ourselves the Nine Bob Notes.”

“I don’t get it,” said Patrick, pretending not to feel the rankle of jealousy. He did a pretty good job, he thought. Acting!

“It’s an old saying. ‘As queer as a nine-bob note.’ I don’t even think it meant queer in that way. I think it meant you were like a bent cop or something. Nobody called us on it, though. Mainly because we played exactly one gig, and then we broke up.”

“A short-lived era,” said Patrick. “But wow, to be one of the people who can say they were in the room when the Nine Bob Notes played their one and only show!”

“I know, right?” Will laughed. “We were pretty good, too. Are you hungry? They do Korean fried chicken upstairs. It’s quite good.”

Patrick shook his head. “No thanks,” he said. “How come, if you sound like that, you always lip-sync onstage?”

“You’re going to think it’s silly.”

“I would never.” Beat. “OK, I might, but tell me anyway and I’ll pretend it’s not.”

“I get stage fright.”

“You? You get stage fright.”

“Yep.”

“You literally just told me you used to sing in a band.”

“I was a child. You don’t know to be afraid of anything when you’re that young.”

“And now?”

“It’s different.”

“I thought Grace was like your suit of armor.”

“She is. But even she has her limits.” Will shrugged. “I only started doing drag during the pandemic, you know. I was stuck in my flat for months, nothing to do, all this anxious energy that no amount of running could burn off. I’d always thought that I’d write, given that much free time, or get into painting or something. If only I had the right muse. Turns out, I was she. It was Jordan’s birthday in lockdown, and we threw him a party over Zoom. I knew it was going to be truly one of the most depressing nights of his life if we didn’t do something to make him laugh, so I decided to give him the present of a lifetime.”

“And that was…?”

“A special birthday message from Dolly Parton. Or at least, a close enough approximation.” Will smiled at the memory. “He laughed his absolute arse off at it. I looked so clapped! A twenty-quid wig, some makeup I’d ordered on sale from Superdrug, and chicken cutlets in a chambray shirt. I called myself Dolly Hardon, and Jordan said, ‘Dolly Hardly, more like.’ But that was that. It was the most fun I’d had in, well, maybe ever. I started doing it over Instagram, posting different looks—some truly awful stuff to begin with—and making friends with other queens. And the more I learned, and the better I got, the better I felt. More in control. Like, even when the world outside was going to hell, I was making something beautiful in my tiny bedroom. Creating a strange kind of life from glitter and glue, like a very gay Dr. Frankenstein.”

“I get that,” said Patrick. “When we’re kids, we all love to retreat into a world of make-believe. But grown-ups need the same outlet.”

“It’s very that,” Will said. “But there’s a huge difference between exploring your creativity as a fun COVID hobby and trying to make a living from it.”

“You’re talking to an actor here, baby. I did my fair share of off-off-off-Broadway theater.”

“Right. Where you and a hundred other people exactly like you are all competing for the same gig. That’s what it was like when the bars opened up again. I thought I was pretty good by that point, after Faye helped me fix my busted mug, so I started trying to get work performing. And it was fucking terrifying.”

“Terrifying?”

“Rabbit-in-the-headlights, life-flashing-before-your-eyes terrifying. Because every other queen in this city is an absolute weapon.”

“So you don’t sing live because you’re worried people will compare you to the other girls?”

“It’s not that, exactly. That’s part of it, I suppose. Drag Race definitely made it easier. I mean, your average basic gay who watches that show only wants you to point and twirl while lip-syncing to Ariana in a high pony, so you might as well just give them that and leave the real hard work to the experts. But it’s also. I don’t know. Grace is a fun disguise, and she makes me confident. But when I sing, that’s me, you know? It’s hard to feel like a bad bitch when you’re showing your soft underbelly.”

Patrick tried hard to suppress every piece of advice his old acting teacher had ever given him about how accessing your own vulnerability could only make you stronger as a performer. Will was simply telling him a story. He didn’t need Patrick immediately jumping in with advice and thinking he knew the answer to his problems after knowing him for all of five minutes. Instead he reached out under the table and placed his hand on Will’s knee.

“Well, I think your voice is beautiful,” he said. Then he slid his hand a little further up Will’s thigh and lowered his voice. “Especially when you’re about to—”

“Oh my god, stop.”

“Hey, I’m just appreciating you as a vocalist.”

“Patrick!” Will’s cheeks reddened, and Patrick hardened at the sight.

“And there you went,” he added, smugly. “Saying you weren’t much of a screamer.” His grip on Will’s leg tightened, and even with the music, the sound of Will’s staggered exhalation thrilled him. He was about to suggest they get the hell out of here when an ungodly screech from the PA system announced the beginning of the show. The entire band had taken to the stage without either of them noticing.

Patrick recognized Dylan on bass, standing to the left of the lead singer, a bleached blonde with a guitar slung over her shoulder.

“All right,” she said. “We are Supermarket Sushi.”

Will laughed at the band name, shaking his head as if at some private joke.

“It’s so stupid,” he said when Patrick asked him. “I’ll tell you later.” And then the band began to play.

Will’s eyes shone, and Patrick was confused for a moment, because he wasn’t looking at the stage. He was looking at Margo, who stood stone still, hands clutched so tightly around her glass it might break, her gaze fixed unblinking on the stage, eyes trained so solely and fiercely on her child she didn’t even seem to notice Owen’s hand as it came to rest on her shoulder.

Patrick watched Will as he watched Margo, as she watched Dylan, each unaware they were themselves being observed, and something fell into place for him that he had never realized before, at least not consciously. Love was, fundamentally, an act of perception. I see you. I know you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed and remembered every last thing about you.

He thought it would sting, to find himself on the outside, an occasional chair pulled up to the family table. But then he felt a hand find his, and Will turned those eyes on him.

“You love them so much, don’t you,” Patrick whispered, although he didn’t need to; the music was loud and, as Will had promised, not very good.

“Adore them,” Will said. “Don’t get me wrong, they’re a pair of nightmares. But…I really do. It’s funny, actually. The gays talk about chosen family all the time, and they mean, like, leaving home and finding other people like themselves. But I chose them, too.” He nodded toward Margo and the stage. “And she chose me.”

Patrick squeezed his hand.

“Tell me,” he said.

And so he did.

One Wednesday when Will was nine, his father picked him up after school in his Jaguar. This in itself was unusual, as Will couldn’t remember the last time he had not walked home from school with the childminder. Also, his dad rarely ever let him anywhere near his prized Jag on account of his “sticky handprints.” But now Will was on the cusp of double digits, it seemed Eddie Wright saw him as nearly a man, and worthy of being welcomed into his car—and his confidence.

“Where are we going?” Will asked.

“I just need to see a friend about something,” said his dad, pulling up outside a terrace house Will had never seen before. “Come on!” He flashed his son a wild white grin and practically leaped from the car, keys jangling in his hand. It struck Will as curious, as he followed his father into the house, that he hadn’t knocked.

“Eddie,” said the woman in the living room. “You’re early! Breaking the habit of a lifetime?” Even though Will was just nine, and already wondering why he didn’t seem as fascinated by girls as his male classmates, he knew this woman was beautiful. Her wild black hair and olive skin made her look like she should be dancing flamenco or singing opera in Italian. But when she spoke, it was with a broad Black Country accent.

“Can you blame me?” Dad took her by the hand, leading her out into the hallway and toward the stairs. “Will, why don’t you go in there,” he said, nodding back to the living room, “and watch the telly with Margo.”

Will nodded mutely, unsure of what to do other than simply obey. He knew instinctively what was happening here, but the words for it lay, like the adult world at large, just beyond his reach.

A three-seater sofa and large armchair took up almost the entire living room. At the center of the sofa sat a girl, sixteen or so—he was terrible at guessing people’s ages, especially those of girls whose makeup and perfume and hair straighteners were like warp engines propelling them into adulthood at a speed with which the boys could not follow.

“Margo?” he asked. She didn’t reply. “I’m Will,” he said. Still no response. He glanced over toward the television. “What are you watching?” he asked, moving toward the sofa. Margo instantly flopped down and pulled her legs up so that she was lying lengthways across the entire couch. She didn’t have to speak, it turned out, to get her message across. Queasy now, Will glumly traipsed over to the armchair and took a seat. It’s fine, he thought. It’s like detention. I’ll just keep my head down until it’s time to go home.

On the screen, a group of startlingly thin women were standing in a line, looking for all intents and purposes like they were waiting to be shot.

“It’s America’s Next Top Model,” said Margo, still horizontal. “And I’m about to find out who gets eliminated this week, so no talking.”

“All right,” said Will. She hit him with a pungent glare. Sorry, he mouthed silently.

At nine, he did not yet know the future: that he was gay, that in years to come he would feel more comfortable around women than he did most men. On that day in the mid-2000s, all he knew was that teenage girls fucking terrified him. Maybe even more than the abstract idea he had in his head of what was going on between his father and Margo’s mother upstairs.

It became the closest thing to a father-son activity Will would ever know. Each week, Dad would pick him up at the school gate, and they would make the trip to Carla’s house—that was her name, he soon learned, Carla—under the pretext of Will having some after-school club or other. That Will’s mother never asked for details of any kind, or even seemed to notice that this club never met on the same day from week to week, made the lie easier to uphold, and took up a lot of the afternoons later in life when Will would unpack all of this with his therapist.

The visits blurred together. Each week, he would perch quietly in the corner of the living room and watch whatever reality show Margo had recorded the night before, America’s Next Top Model or The Hills or The Simple Life or Faking It; then his dad would come downstairs, red-faced and smirking even wider than when he went up, and drive him home.

“Your mum wouldn’t understand,” he said the first few times, as they sat in traffic. “Best not to tell her, ey?”

Will said nothing. Had no idea how to articulate the cauldron of anger and shame bubbling away in his guts.

“A man of few words,” his dad said on one such journey. “I like that. I respect that. My guy. My little man.” He reached over to ruffle Will’s hair, something he had never done before, and which felt so awkward to both parties that he never attempted it again.

If this was what it meant to be a man, Will thought, he wanted no part of it.

And then it happened. The day that changed everything.

A couple of months after his father first brought him to the house, Will walked into the living room to find Margo’s dog, an ancient, hideous little thing named Bandit, on the armchair. It growled at him when he approached, and Margo refused to let Will move him, so she reluctantly shifted over and allowed him to take a seat next to her on the sofa. She did, however, still insist on keeping a full cushion between them, and would occasionally glance over at him as if he were the source of a particularly nasty odor. He didn’t blame her, really. He was a symptom of the thing they both continued to pretend was not happening in the room directly above them, the sound of which was blissfully drowned out by Margo’s mother’s record collection. A decade from now, all it would take was a few bars from “Desirée,” by Neil Diamond, to make Will feel vaguely nauseated.

They were back on Top Model this time. By this point, Margo had started to offer up curt context clues so Will could understand an episode even if he had missed the last one. She did this without ever looking at him and in such a way that made it clear follow-up questions were not encouraged. “She did well in the challenge so the other girls don’t like her,” she might say, or “They made her cut off all her hair this week, so she’s obviously going home, they always do that.” One time she whispered, Will suspected more to herself than to him, “Nigel is so fit.”

This week, Tyra was once again lording it over the girls. But something was different. Even through the TV, it was like Will and Margo could both feel a change in the air pressure.

“Be quiet,” Tyra snapped. “Be quiet, Tiffany!”

Margo sat bolt upright, eyes fixed on the screen.

“Is she usually like this?” Will asked quietly.

“Shut up!” Margo hissed. Then, a second later: “No. This is new.”

They sat in rapt silence as what would eventually become one of the most famous moments in reality TV history unfolded before them, and by the time it was over, Margo was wide-eyed and red-faced with excitement. She looked like one of those pictures of girls from the ’60s who are ready to faint at a Beatles concert.

“Did you see that?” she gasped, turning to Will and grasping his arm. “Can you believe that actually happened?”

“Poor Tiffany!” Will said.

“Poor Tiffany? Oh, sure. I mean, yeah. But oh my god, Tyra. Tyra! Learn from this!” Margo dissolved into giggles at her own impersonation, having seemingly forgotten, for the moment at least, that she considered Will an enemy.

“I’m hungry,” she said then. “Come on.” She dragged him by the hand into the kitchen, and ten minutes later they were eating cheese toasties with Marmite and cups of tea. The warmth of Margo’s demeanor faded a little along with the secondhand glow of reality TV exploitation, but she never seemed quite as angry to see him after that. The axis of the world had shifted: Their relationship, such as it was, suddenly had room to grow.

Years later, after Will’s parents divorced and Eddie moved in with Carla, and then after Carla kicked him out, and then finally when Margo was old enough to move out and get a place of her own, she and Will would still drink tea and watch telly together. When his own mum forgot to do any food shopping, he knew that if he dropped in on Margo, she would begrudgingly make him a toastie. When Bandit finally died after spending his final years half blind and peeing on the curtains, Will shoplifted a bottle of tequila and joined a tearful Margo in toasting the mangy mutt’s memory until they both threw up and swore off the stuff. When Margo got together with Owen, and then Owen got her pregnant, she told Will before anyone else. And when Owen left, Will became Margo’s de facto babysitter, reimbursed in dinners and bags of clean washing.

There was no clear point at which Will could say that she became his sister, no event horizon where they transitioned from forced proximity to genuine affection. All he knew was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to his dad, and his mum spent her life pinballing from one spiritual retreat or pyramid scheme to another, and the only remotely stabilizing influence he’d ever had in his life was this mess of tangled dark curls and smoky eye shadow who might have an even shorter temper and fouler mouth than him.

“That’s so sweet,” Patrick said. “I mean, for a story about trauma bonding.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Will rolled his eyes. “Could you be any more LA? Not everything is trauma. Sometimes it’s just a thing that brought two people together. Obviously, it was far from ideal, but I think I am remarkably well-adjusted. You know, for a part-time cross-dresser with a secret lover.”

“Is that what we are?” Patrick asked. “Lovers?”

“Oh god. Pretend I never said that. It sounds so cringe.”

“No. I like it. ‘Lover.’ It’s…Continental.”

Will laughed derisively and then looked away. Patrick knew he had said it offhand, as a joke, the way he said most things, but they were veering close to dangerous territory. For all the legal jargon they had both signed their names to, the NDA had not included an actual definition of what they were to each other. It might have been easier if it had.

Supermarket Sushi finished their short set, and the band they had opened for started playing. They were older, better, more polished. Out of a rapidly growing sense of loyalty, Patrick immediately disliked them.

“So anyway, that’s my origin story,” said Will, and Patrick was grateful to him for bringing the conversation back onto safer ground. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“How does a guy go from South Amboy, New Jersey, to Hollywood?”

Patrick folded his arms. “Well, it sounds like you should know, you’ve clearly been reading up on me.”

Will raised his hands—a tacit admission. “I may have googled you the night we met. But I want to hear it from you.”

“There’s not much more to tell,” said Patrick. “I was an only child, both my parents worked, so they sent me to a lot of after-school clubs at our local church. They weren’t super religious, but it meant somebody else would watch me after school.”

“What are they like? Your parents?”

“My parents are nice people,” he said. “I don’t see them as much as I’d like to because of work.” It was a well-rehearsed line, rolled out so many times in interviews it could have left grooves in the carpet. “But anyway, that’s how I got into plays,” he continued. “Church productions, haunted houses. It was fun, playing pretend. So when I started high school, I joined the drama club. Did every school play. Eventually got into a college theater program on a partial scholarship. Worked in every diner and drugstore in South Amboy to pay for it. Moved to New York, auditioned for some plays. OK, a lot of plays. Salesman, Streetcar, Six Degrees of Separation. I was almost George in Our Town. I understudied for Ricky in Glengarry Glen Ross. I was an admittedly shaky Burrs in The Wild Party.”

“A sexy clown,” Will mused. “Not unlike a drag queen.”

Patrick laughed and nodded. “I guess. Anyway, I got a lot of bad reviews, then a couple of good ones. Moved out West.”

He sounded, he realized, like he was reading his own biography: the last ten years condensed to a PowerPoint presentation.

Got an agent. Did some small walk-on TV roles. A small part in a reboot of a slasher franchise set in a frat house called Pledge Week. Then he met Simone. Started getting better work: a role in an ensemble show on HBO that was critically acclaimed but only ran for one season. A soldier in a war movie, then a gunslinger who fell in love with an Indigenous woman in a sweeping Western that was called “ambitious” and “problematic.” Got the lead in The Bullet Journal, an action movie that caught the attention of a Wonder Studios head, who was on the lookout for the kind of handsome, all-American leading man who could shoulder a reboot of the entire Captain Kismet universe.

“And what about having a life?” asked Will. “Outside of work, I mean.”

“Getting the work was the life,” said Patrick. “I was friends with other actors who’d moved to LA around the same time as me, who were going up for similar roles. We’d go out, drink, complain about always being passed over on parts we’d’ve been perfect for…But then I started booking bigger gigs, and that momentum really took off, and things changed so quickly. They were happy for me, but I kind of felt weird going to drinks with them and hearing about their shitty auditions when everything was going so great. And they felt the same. Once or twice, one of them would ask me if I could pass on their reel to my agent, and I’d give them her number, but nothing ever came of it. Then one of them asked if I could get him a part in the show I was doing, and I felt weird, but I said sure, I’d see what I could do. Connected him with the right people, he came in to read. He wasn’t right for the part, and he blamed me. Seemed to think that I was hoarding all of the success instead of sharing it. After a while, the guys stopped inviting me out to drinks.”

“Must have been lonely.”

“It was.”

“And you never…”

“Never what?”

“Dated?”

“A little. I wasn’t, like, a regular at Micky’s or anything. But yeah, I went out. I dated a bit. I’d hook up from time to time, and every now and then one of them would look at me a certain way, like he was trying to figure out where he knew me from. Which happens all the time in LA. Bump into someone with your shopping cart at the market, there’s a good chance they played a panty-sniffer on an episode of CSI. I once gave head to a guy who was on Netflix’s number one show in Canada.”

Will’s mouth dropped open in pantomime shock. “No!”

“I did! And before you ask, yes, he did tell me that particular fact during.”

“The glamour. It’s almost too much.”

“I know, right?” Patrick paused. “But then I did The Bullet Journal, and I thought at first that I could keep on just having these low-key not-quite-dates, like nothing would really change. Until I met up with a guy from Grindr and the first thing he did when I walked in the door was ask me for a selfie.”

“Wow,” said Will. “Have some chill, gay!”

“I turned right around and got the hell out of there.”

“And nothing since?”

Patrick shrugged. “Nothing since.”

Will gazed into the middle distance for a moment; then his eyes snapped back to Patrick’s.

“That’s four years.”

“What?”

“I may have read your IMDb, don’t worry about it. The Bullet Journal came out four years ago. You really mean to say I’m the first person you’ve…?”

Patrick cringed. “Don’t. It’s so embarrassing when you say it out loud like that.”

“No. No, it’s not.” Will slid his now-empty plastic cup across the table until it nudged against Patrick’s water. “I feel honored.” He glanced around the room, adding: “And also like you have got a lot of catching up to do. Shall we…?”

“Get the fuck out of here?” Patrick replied, lowering his voice until it was barely even a whisper, and uttering bashfully in Will’s ear: “I thought you’d never ask.”

Will grabbed his jacket, and within seconds they were outside, having said good-bye to nobody. Unprompted, Will called an Uber to hail a ride back to his place. Patrick felt a swell of affection and appreciation for Will understanding that there could be no digital evidence of what was about to happen, but something else was happening here, too. Will opened the car door for Patrick when the taxi arrived, steering him in and shutting the door behind him before walking around to his own side. He did the same when they arrived at his apartment.

“I told you I was taking you out tonight,” he said when Patrick questioned him, unlocking his front door and gripping Patrick’s hand. “And now I’m taking you home.”

The self-assuredness with which he said this had an effect on Patrick that he didn’t fully understand. He knew he was gay, that being attracted to men was kind of the whole deal of that, and he had certainly been drawn to confident, commanding types in the past.

Patrick had bottomed before. A long time ago. Had enjoyed it. Wanted to do it again. There were toys in his house back in Studio City to prove it. He had even thought that he might want to with Will, although he had been uncertain how that would work. He had been attracted to Will’s softness, his fey humor. He was a beautiful thing that Patrick wanted to possess, to grip tightly as his own, and that was exactly what he had done the night before. As deeply uncool and heteronormative as it probably was to think so, everything about this fabulous man until now had screamed Fuck me, at least once quite literally. But to see Will taking control like this, to be marched into the flat and then into the bedroom like he was the prey and the prize…Fuck, why did this turn him on even more?

“Will—” he began, unsure even of what he wanted to say.

“Shut up.” Will’s voice was different. Not deeper, exactly, but stronger. Authoritative. Patrick complied, felt like a complete sissy for doing so, and was taken aback even further by how hot that was to him. He went to kiss Will but was pushed back. He stood there dumbly, raising his arms obediently as Will undressed him. There was none of the foreplay here that they had indulged in prior, and yet there was still a romance to Will’s efficient movements, the way he folded each item of Patrick’s clothing before placing them down. At six foot one and 280 pounds, Patrick felt delicate for the first time in his adult life.

“I want you to…” he rasped, voice thick with desire, face hot with the opposite of shame. “I want you to fuck me.”

Will looked him in the eye, and Patrick’s gaze fell to the floor. Will forced his chin up to return his gaze.

“Have you…?” Will asked, his meaning clear.

“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.