"You should run now," Mark advised him seriously.
Walker sighed and picked up his coffee. He'd thought the same thing many times. By now his coffee had cooled rapidly. He drank it back without enthusiasm.
"There's more hot coffee if you want." Mark pointed at the coffee machine with his spatula.
Walker headed over, diverting to give Mark a shy kiss on the cheek. Mark turned his chin to deepen the kiss. They were both panting when Walker stepped back, giving his lips a nervous lick.
"You taste good."
"Maybe you'll find out later." Mark dropped a wink and went back to flipping a pancake.
Walker choked as he went to fill his mug and top off Mark's cup. The first thing he thought of was himself at Mark's feet, Mark's full cock in his mouth. He poured the coffees with an unsteady hand. This time he was going to be sure to drink his before it got cold.
"Almost done," Mark said, obviously amused.
That man was too cocksure for his own good. An agency trait, he admitted. Somehow it had bypassed him. He was just there for the muscle.
"What's wrong?" Mark asked as he put two plates on the table.
"Huh?"
"You're frowning."
Walker sat down where Mark pointed. "I'm not really like most of the guys in the agency."
"Oh?" Mark sat opposite him; an eyebrow raised.
"I ticked asshole on the application form, but I'm not really that guy." He drowned his pancakes in syrup.
"Oh? Jake might say different."
Walker gave him a steady look. "No, he won't. He'll tell you I'm a steady guy who does as I'm told, and yeah, maybe I'm easily led, but I'll have your back at all costs."
Mark looked at him over a pancake dripping with syrup. “Well then.”
Walker grunted. He might not have been leader material, but he knew his fucking strengths. He looked up to see Mark grinning at him.
"What?"
"Feeling less inadequate now?"
"Is this therapy?"
Mark snorted. "I'm more of a hands-on kinda therapist."
Walker’s heart stuttered at the thought of Mark touching other men, but he could hardly throw his weight around when it was the guy's job to get his hands on his clients.
"The answer's no."
Now Walker was confused. "What was the question?"
"I've never fucked any of my clients. I've never gone out with a client. I'm strictly professional."
"Including Barratt?" Walker muttered, embarrassed he'd been read so easily.
"Especially not Barratt," Mark said. "I'm not sure how his wife would feel about that."
"He's married?"
"Twenty years, and he's got six kids."
Walker shuddered at the thought. He liked kids in the abstract, and he adored his twin six-year-old nieces, but he'd no desire for kids of his own.
"You don't want kids?" Mark asked.
"Not really. Is that a deal-breaker?" Even in the closet, Walker had met plenty of gay men who wanted kids. He breathed a sigh of relief when Mark shook his head.
"I'd rather be a guncle than a dad."
"You have nieces and nephews?"
"One of each," Mark said. "My brother's kids. You?"
"Six-year-old twin girls. My sister's in New York. I don't see them nearly enough but they're amazing. They've gotten their own language and everything."
Walker found his nieces fascinating. He thought they were a whole new species of human being, although his sister had been singularly unimpressed when he'd mentioned it to her.
"How often do you see them?"
"About every six months, but I Facetime them every week."
"Does your sister know…?"
"That I'm gay? No. No one knows." Walker took a deep breath. "No one knew. God, what am I gonna tell them?"
Mark leaned forward and placed his hand over Walker's. It was floury and a bit sticky, but it grounded him and kept the panic that threatened at bay.
"You say nothing until you're ready. Just take a deep breath and discover yourself first."
Walker looked at their hands, Mark's on his, and nodded. "I can do that. And thanks."
"Nothing to say thank you for."
Mark squeezed his hand and went back to eating. Walker missed his warmth.
"Do you have any appointments today?" he asked.
"I don't work at the weekends if I can help it."
"What do you usually do on a Saturday morning?" Walker asked.
"I don't usually see Saturday morning. I sleep in late, then get breakfast and go back to bed to watch ESPN," Mark confessed. "Later on I go to J.T.'s for food because Greg cooks better than I do. That's kinda it most weeks."
Walker grinned. "Sounds like an ideal Saturday."
"What about you?"
"Same, although Tyler is an asshole and always schedules PT on Saturday morning."
Mark chuckled. "Our trainers did the same thing. And one of them used to insist on five am ten-mile runs."
Walker winced at the thought. At least their trainers had started at a reasonable hour. Maybe Jake had gone easy on them. "What was it like?"
Mark tilted his head. "What do you mean what was it like?"
"When you were in the agency."
"You mean way-way back many centuries ago."
"Well it was a long time ago," Walker said, trying to hide a grin at Mark’s huffy expression.
"Thanks, son," Mark said dryly.
Walker opened his mouth, and then shut it again. He really didn't think of Mark as his father. Just the thought made him shudder.
"You don't have a daddy kink then?" Mark asked.
"I don't even know what a daddy kink is," Walker admitted.
"We'll leave that piece of education until another day. But in answer to your question, probably much like it is today. My first section leader was a hard ass like Mitch. My second was even scarier."
Walker frowned. Wasn't that…?
Mark nodded at him. "Yeah, that was Lukas."
"He doesn't look scary."
"And that's the mistake people always made. Lukas would gut you where you stood. At least Mitch and Todd would tell you why they were gutting you before they did it."
Walker tried to reconcile the good-looking androgynous catwalk model that Lukas looked like with a hard ass killer. He knew Lukas had been a sniper, but it was still hard to picture it.
"You’ve got your first mission on Monday?" Mark said as he went to the fridge and pulled out a juice carton.
Walker had been trying not to think about it. He was nervous about it, although he knew Mitch hadn't assigned them to anything too complicated first time out. "They think we’re ready now."
Mark raised an eyebrow. "You don't think you are?"
“I think we’re as prepared as were going to be. We've got to get our feet wet sometime. They held us back until we gelled with Doyle."
"Would you have preferred Collins?"
Walker shook his head. He’d thought about it a lot since Mitch made the announcement. They had made the right choice. Doyle was a much steadier influence. Until Collins could get over his hatred of Jake, he wasn't going anywhere. But he still had loyalty to his teammate, so he said, "Doyle's the right pick for now. Collins might be a good leader one day."