Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
“I’m sorry,” Cillian gasped, clapping a hand over his mouth, but giggles kept spurting through his fingers. “I’m sorry, it’s just the grumpy face, I—”
Brendan’s sullen scowl abruptly disappeared behind that glassy mask again. “If you’re trying to provoke me into wanting to hurt you,” he said, silken and cold, “it’s working.”
Cillian froze. His bloodstream tried to crystallize. “Eep.”
A smirk broke across Brendan’s face. “I’m joking.”
“How am I supposed to tell? You’re glaring at me!”
“Context clues,” Brendan deadpanned, and then rolled off him.
Muttering, Cillian sat up, while Brendan settled on the sofa at his feet. “I guess I’m not the only one who needs an acting coach.”
“You can go fuck yourself, Cillian Tell,” Brendan grumbled, and Cillian grinned, hugging his knees to his chest.
Brendan was such a grouch.
And he was kind of cute when he was sulking.
“Hey. I suck at one thing, you suck at something else.” He reached out to poke Brendan’s thigh with his foot. “So we’ll both get better.” He peeked at Brendan shyly over the tops of his knees. “I’m…new at this, too. Before I left home I only got to figure out what I liked over the internet, and I wasn’t even sure until I tried it. And I’ve only done it with strangers, so…I still don’t know what it’s fully like.”
Brendan lifted his head, eyeing him sourly, but there was a touch of curiosity there, too—and even humor. Cillian had a feeling Brendan groused more on principle than out of any real annoyance.
…still cute.
“What it’s fully like…?” Brendan asked.
Cillian cleared his throat and glanced to the side. “…with someone you love. It’s…supposed to be really different. When there’s that feeling, that trust.”
Instead of a bad case of hero worship, and lust on first sight.
Is it even hero worship if my idol turned out to be a blunt, sarcastic dick?
But there was nothing sarcastic in Brendan’s voice when he murmured, “I hope you find that one day, Cillian.”
“Mm.” Admitting that out loud had somehow felt more intimate, more naked, than anything else, and Cillian curled his toes in his socks and deflected, “What about you? When we were reading, you asked me how I would want to feel loved…what does that mean for you?”
“I don’t know if it means anything,” Brendan answered after several long moments of consideration. He sprawled back against the sofa, drumming his fingers to his thigh. “I don’t think about it very much. Love isn’t really part of my landscape.”
Cillian’s eyes widened; he watched Brendan curiously. “You’re the Prince of Romance…and you don’t believe in love?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe in it,” Brendan said. “I just stopped looking for it.” The high, smooth plane of his brow furrowed, almost more puzzled than anything, as if he didn’t quite understand himself. “I spent a long time in the closet, Cillian. A long time fighting for the security and safety to come out. The men I met during that time…they weren’t looking to be out. And it was always a short term thing, always knowing there’d be a day when it just didn’t work anymore because there was too much risk. So I learned not to fall for them. And by the time people got more comfortable with me and others being out, well…” He gestured briefly. “I’d gotten used to it. Stopped thinking about it. It’s just not something that’s an ingrained part of my life. It’s impossible, anyway. How could I meet someone who doesn’t already think they know me just from my work? How could I meet someone…and believe they actually saw me?”
Inwardly, Cillian crumpled a little.
Hadn’t he done just that?
Wasn’t he still doing it a little, as he tried to reconcile the impressions in his head of the Prince of Romance with the very real glimpses he’d gained of Brendan Lau?
“Isn’t that lonely…?”
“Only if you mind being alone with yourself.” Brendan glanced toward him. “I don’t.”
“…oh.” Cillian frowned, chewing on that for a moment. “What do you tap into, then? When you’re looking for something to draw on to give the roles life, when you’re playing all these heroes.”
“Wanting to reach people,” Brendan said. “I may not think about love…but when I’m on camera, I think about all the people I could be reaching. What they’re feeling. What emotion I want to share with them. This collective thing, all of us together, creating this common bond through something that isn’t real, but feels real to us. And everything else just…comes from there.” He smiled slightly, just a whisper of amusement, warmth, before it was gone. “I don’t need to want the same things to imagine giving them their dreams. That’s part of acting. Any more than I need to actually want to hurt you to be able to play out your fantasies.”
Cillian couldn’t help a grin. “Say that when you actually make me believe you could hurt me.”