So many things mattered about Kim. The way his deep brown eyes lit when he smiled, the intense concentration he brought to work or to bed. How he had made undrinkably weak tea for Will just once, watched him make his own with catlike attention, and got it spoon-dissolvingly perfect ever since. There were so many tiny wisping moments of trust and truth and vulnerability that had slowly become something real and solid between them, and Will didn't want it to slip through his fingers. Not again.

"So beautiful," he whispered. "Perfect. When you give yourself up to me."
"All yours. Every bit."

"A future. You know the concept? The shape you want the rest of your life to take? I want mine with you, all of it. A future, a forever. I love you." He said it quite calmly, as if it was an established fact. "People say I love you to madness, but I love you to sanity, because loving you is the sanest thing I have ever done. You are everything to me, Will, and I cannot lose you to my miserable family and an accident of birth."

"You treated me, against all the evidence, as if I were something resembling the man I ought to be, with such pertinacious obstinacy I have all but started to believe it myself."

Maybe all he could do was be the port in Kim's storm, but that was what he'd do, for as long as it took.

Kim was a bloody twisting slippery weasel liar, and Will had to hold back a savage grin of pride.

"I didn't do anything."
"You stayed," Kim said. "You loved me. You watched me, which obliged me to behave as the man I'd like to be, rather than the less impressive one I often am. I don't like it when you're not there either, Will. I'm better with you."
"Good thing I'm not going anywhere." He grabbed Kim's hand, not caring if anyone saw. "And you are exactly the man I want you to be. You always have been. The last knight."