Knight knew Mal was going to be gone for a little while, but it was all right. Knight felt comfortable with it, busy with O’Keefe’s. He could stay with Scott, visit Valko, maybe go to Caprice to stare at the lights and try to meet new people.
Today, though, he was alone. The day off from O’Keefe’s, a day of puttering around the house and cleaning up, changing the sheets, dusting, doing laundry, and lining up Mal’s g-strings in the nightstand.
He sat on the bed, holding a red one up to the light, a smile playing along his face. “Y’ll wear these f’r me,” he said quietly, and placed it back in the drawer.
He decided to go to Brixl’s, to see how Kitty was coming along, and decided to walk it, all the way to Westside.
As he walked, he thought about the night he went for a ride with Valko. “Just be my friend,” Valko had said the first night he went over his house. He had still had Valko’s key. He remembered when Valko had told him to come over when he was alone. But in between the time when Mal was angry at him and when Valko presented his apology, Knight didn’t dare.
Knight missed Valko, that was true, when Mal accused him of it. It wasn’t the sex that he missed. Mal, as Eros, probably wouldn’t have understood. It was the company. The conversation, the hanging about, the camaraderie. The friendship. Just staying up nights and being in each other’s arms and talking. Not teasing, not looking for sex, but talking. Mal was starting to understand. Mal was looking for him to be slow, to take his time, to talk and touch and build up to the intensity.
He chuckled to himself as he walked, Unless we both get boners and then it’s gloves off. He also thought of all the straps in Mal’s play pen and was afraid he would have to come up with a safe word before Mal got home.
Valko was different. It was simple with him. Just be caring and together. Yet Knight still wondered if Valko harbored something more than just caring, and that made him sad. He couldn’t return that love. He just didn’t feel that way. He cared about Valko like a good friend, a close little brother, a precious ally, all rolled into one. Valko said he wouldn’t be a homewrecker. He wasn’t. Knight was.
Mal – and it always brought a smile to his face – a lover, a king, his soldier at arms, a brilliant engaging man that Knight actually aspired to be. If I could only be that smart. If I could only be that confident.
The only place he was confident in was the kitchen, and Mal knew this. He knew this when he had brought Kaiden over and had Knight cook for them. Mal knew this whenever he would bring people over, and he would ask Knight to make something. Knight knew he was a magician there, and he glorified in it.
He approached Brixl’s place. “Kitty,” he whispered, “purr f’r me again.”
He believed with all his heart that she would.