Knight was cold. Freezing cold.
In his leopard form, he walked across an icy tundra, stumbling over the ice that got in between his paws, cutting him. He was in pain all over, muscles and bones aching at each step. He wasn’t made for this cold, cold place. His yellow spotted coat was as out of place here as the gazelle that he would have hunted.
He stopped, looked around. Ice and snow, wind and cold, all around him. He saw something moving, or thought he saw something moving, in the distance. Maybe it was prey. But he hurt so much. He didn’t think he could catch prey if he wanted to.
It was moving faster, toward him. Maybe it thought he was prey. However, on the cold wind, he caught a scent, and his heart jumped. Could it be –
Mal came to him, running at top speed, and skidded to a stop before him. Knight took two steps and collapsed. Mal let out a sound like a whine, and came over to him, nuzzling him, rubbing his whole body against him. Knight could only lie there, whimpering, while the bigger cat circled around him, touching every part of him with his head and face. Then Mal wrapped his body and tail around Knight. It started to get warm. He whined and cried as his aches became more prominent, but the snow cat’s body soothed him with licks and holding him tight.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard beeping.
He tried to struggle up, but the big cat kept him down, and as he lay there, he became distant to the scene, now watching the two cats, now floating away to a dim blackness, a sense of gray as the beeping grew louder and the pain filled his being.
“Stop,” he tried to say, but something was in his throat.
He forced himself out of the grayness, and fluttered open his eyes. Mal stood at the side of the bed, his hands on Knight, the preternatural chill washing over him, freezing the bedrail that he stood next to. Mal had his eyes closed, and was standing rock solid, pouring his chill and healing energy into him.
“Stop,” he said again, but it came out as a cough. Something was definitely in his throat, but he had other things down his throat before and had not gagged. Someone, mercifully, removed the tube that was down his throat and he coughed again.
Mal opened his eyes, blue cat-slitted, the beautiful blue that he had fallen in love with – tinged with worry and relief at the same time.
“Len!” he almost cried, and hugged Knight tightly, though all Knight could do was grunt through the pain.
“I hurt.”
“Miraculous,” said a voice at the foot of the bed. A man in a white coat stood there, a cadre of others in white coats surrounding him.
“I’m his king,” Mal said, as if that explained everything. He looked down at Knight, smiling. The doctors filed out, shaking their heads.
Knight reached up, painfully slowly, and took Mal’s hand, gripping it as tight as he could. “Asprin?” Knight grunted out.
“We can do better than that,” said a nurse coming over to him and checking his IV. “I’ll check if we can give you some morphine.” The nurse smiled at him, patting his arm. Even that hurt.
Mal hooked a chair toward him with his foot and finally sat down, not releasing Knight’s hand. “What were you doing?”
“Goin’ for a ride.”
“Going 80 miles an hour down a dark road in the mountains?”
Knight asked, “What happened?”
Mal stopped short for a minute and said, “I see what you did there. We’ll get back to that question, then. You hit a car. Good thing the car was only going 25, or there would have been nothing left of you.”
“Kitty?”
Mal took Knight’s hand in both of his. “She got wrapped around a tree. It’s at the city yard.”
“Get her out,” Knight grunted. “I’ll fix her.”
The nurse came back with a needle. “We have some morphine, Mr. Knight. The pain will go away soon.”
“No sleep.”
Mal ran his hands through his beloved’s hair and gazed into his eyes. “Rest would be good for you, Knight.”
“No sleep. Go home.”
“Soon, my love.”
The nurse gave him the morphine through the IV. It didn’t hit him immediately. “What happened to driver?”
“You almost gave her a heart attack. She thought you were dead.” Mal again ran his hand through his hair, “I knew you weren’t, but I knew you were hurt.”
“Bond,” said Knight, his eyes fluttering again. The morphine was starting to kick in – already? “Sorry,” he murmured, and his head lolled to the side, into Mal’s hand, as a blackness fell over him, a sweet, dreamless sleep.