The tingling feeling reached the base of his spine, and as he and Mal moved to the preheated oven to slide the pizzas inside, Vincent understood why he felt the way he did.
Love.
He was in love with Mal.
The tingling reached the tips of his fingers. He closed the oven door.
“Do you want to go sit with Nikki while we wait for the pizza to be ready?” Mal asked.
“Yes,” Vincent replied.
As long as it meant they’d do it together.
31
Mal
That night, after learning everything there was to know about Haraleah, the demon who wanted to know what Heaven was like, Mal curled up on the couch next to Vincent and let the events of the day unfurl in his mind. Nikki had been put to bed half an hour prior, and at this point, Mal assumed there was little risk she’d wake up and accidentally overhear anything he’d say to Vincent—or that Vincent would say to him.
Mal prepared himself to speak when Vincent beat him to the chase. “Mal?”
“Yes?”
“I want to thank you for today.” The way they sat wasn’t conducive to reading each other’s faces, but Mal heard the gratefulness in Vincent’s voice, and he knew Vincent’s expression had to be both serious and light. “Sometimes it can be hard to tell, since Nikki loves everyone she meets, but I know that she liked having you around. Tomorrow, she’s not going to be able to stop talking about how you swooped out of nowhere and saved her from falling when she was in midair.”
“Like Michael, the angel boy, who saved Leah after she was pushed off a cliff in Tartarus in the second season,” Mal suggested, grinning.
“Don’t even joke,” Vincent said with a laugh. He pressed a kiss to the top of Mal’s head and spoke against his hair. “That’s all I’m going to hear for the next week. That, and how excited she is for you to come back so you can teach her about making pizza with the topping on top of the cheese.”
“That’s why they’re called toppings.” Mal grinned and turned around so that his chest was against Vincent’s side. He ran a hand down Vincent’s thigh. “Is there a reason you’re not already doing it that way, or do I have to educate you, too?”
“No, there’s a reason.” Mal felt Vincent’s smirk. “We started pizza night once a month after Nikki turned five so she could feel helpful in the kitchen, but back then, she insisted that the cheese went on last. It wasn’t worth the tears to tell her otherwise when it’s such a small thing, you know? But I think she likes to listen to you… for now.”
“New person syndrome,” Mal said wisely. “They’re perfectly behaved angels around strangers, but once they start to get to know you…”
“Yep.” Another kiss. Mal closed his eyes and let its warmth wash through him. “You handled her so well today.”
“It’s not hard. Nikki is a sweetheart.”
“So are you, and that’s what makes the difference.” Vincent shifted around, wedging his way beneath Mal’s body so that he stretched out on the couch. Mal adjusted his position so their bodies were parallel, Mal’s head rested on the swell of Vincent’s chest. “Tonight, seeing you with her…”
The sentence trailed off into a beat of silence that gripped Mal and focused his attention. Unspoken meaning hovered in the air between them. It changed the chemistry he shared with Vincent, charging it to a point of overflow. Then, it drove Vincent to speak.
“It made me realize that I love you.”
The confession was simple. It didn’t complicate itself or attempt to explain itself away. There were no hemming moments, no hawing hesitations. Vincent spoke with conviction, and although Mal so often felt himself unworthy of love, he didn’t doubt what Vincent said.
He closed his eyes and let the moment take him.
Vincent loved him. For Vincent, he was enough.
“I feel like all my life, I’ve lived with uncertainty,” Mal said after a short pause. He spoke with care, selecting his words as best he could so Vincent wouldn’t confuse their meaning. “When I was younger, that uncertainty held me back. It stopped me from trying to escape the abusive situation I’d found myself in, because I was afraid of what would happen if I broke from the mold. What would my life be like without structure? Could I survive? I had no money and no prospects. Without someone there making sure I was clothed and fed, my future was this frightening, incalculable thing beyond my control. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my present—my reality—made me just as helpless.”
In those days, under the watchful eye of the man who’d seduced him into service, Baylor had controlled his body, and Mal had been too timid to think that he could find another way. The White Lotus brothel had been his prison, but its walls hadn’t just brought Mal confinement—they’d brought him comfort. Why risk slipping through the bars of his cage into the unknown? It hadn’t made sense.
But now, on the other side of his prison door, it did.
“For a long time, I carried that belief with me, even after I’d been freed from the situation I was in. I went to work as a gardener for a well-to-do family who offered me room, board, and a salary. I spent a decade of my life working there, not entirely happy, but not unhappy enough to try to fix what I thought wasn’t broken. I only left when the man I was working for came into my room one night, drunk, and forced me to reconsider my choices. But by then, even after I got out, and even after he paid me to bite my tongue and never see him again, I lived with that same feeling. Why risk being unhappy when what you have is good enough? Not good, not great, but tolerable.”
