The Kitty Cat's Mates (ManxMen)

35 | Let's Get Lost

King had not seen Yusef since what had happened the other day ago. It was a weekend, and yesterday, Zachary had requested for him to come over to his room at nine, or whenever he was already available for today. He didn't know why, and he was a bit freaked out when the word room was mentioned again, but Zach reassured him without King even raising the point out to him. And he naturally trusted Zach.

King, on the other hand, decided to go see him on time. He didn't really have anything to do, and he wasn't letting his curiosity dig deeper unnecessarily to annoy the living trinket inside of him.

He knocked on Zachary's door.

There were a series of soft footsteps against the other side of the room before the lock clicked and the mahogany door swung open.

King's eyes widened when he saw Zach. He was... wearing a headband, all sweaty, with a duster in his hand. The werewolf's eyes also grew wide when he saw him. Zachary snapped his head at the large live clock attached to his wall like a gigantic sticker.

"You're early."

The hands struck at 9:00.

"I think I'm just on time," King immediately retorted, trying to conceal the reason to his earliness.

Zachary smiled at him, opening the door wide and gesturing for him to follow him inside. "I thought you'd take a bit more time. My apologies."

"No problem," King said as he slowly followed behind. "What... were you doing?" His head swiped around, greeted by Zachary's familiar and awfully sterile, pristine, and gleaming bedroom. It smelt good though, and it was comfortable to the eyes. Someone needed to ease up on cleaning, though.

"I was just cleaning my room," Zach said, throwing the duster to the pile of the other cleaning equipment.

King's eyes, laced with a tinge of disbelief, followed him as he moved towards his closet. "You're the alpha, you got men in your hands, you got a company, lives in a freaking castle... Where's the maid?"

Zach chuckled at him. "I'm just picky when it comes to cleaning."

King already knew it.

"Anyway, can you wait for me? I'll be quick." Zachary said while heading towards the bathroom.

"Wait!"

The man stopped from where he stood to look at King, who had just screeched out unnecessarily loud.

"Um," the werecat rubbed his nape, "what... exactly..." King couldn't grasp how to finish the sentence. He just repeatedly flexed a finger from Zach and back at him as a much easier substitute to the whole explanation thing.

"Oh." Zachary closed his eyes when he discerned the question. "I have free time... and it's weekend, so I thought I'd take you for a stroll to..." he paused.

King raised his brows.

"My bad." Zachary shook his head. "I should have told and asked for your consent first."

Zachary huffed a small laugh, and continued to the bathroom, looking over his shoulder and at King, before he flashed a gentle smile. "If you have any plans for today, it's all right, you can go."

Yes, say you have a frickin' plan and get the frick out of here, King motherfucking Stefan.

King stared at Zach for a moment, before puffing out, "No. N-not really... I don't really have any plan for today."

The smile that Zachary made after his statement caused King's heart to leap a little.

... Just a little.

"All right then," replied Zachary, before he continued to the bathroom.

———

"Turn right... Turn right."

"... Where the hell is right?" King stared at the GPS's screen in the car's dashboard. It showed a road to the right, but strangely, there wasn't any, just a continuously advancing dirt ground that stemmed from another intersection before, which was also borne by the main gravel path back to and from the Lykaios threshold.

Zachary furrowed his brows. "I'm pretty sure it was the third intersection," he mumbled.

"Turn right," repeated the GPS again. "Turn right now—" Zach finally decided to close it for now.

King stared at the endless straight path in front of them. They couldn't turn. It was a one-way road due to the overgrown clutter of weeds, exotic plants, and trees. And if they tried to reverse, it'd be a bitch to get back to the beginning. They'd been following the same straight line for over fifteen minutes now.

"... Are we lost?" King finally asked, despite being a hundred and one percent sure that they were.

"... No," replied Zach.

King snapped his head to the driver's seat and narrowed his eyes on the alpha. "You suspiciously took long to answer."

"I was caught in my thoughts."

"Cause we're lost?" King pried.

"... Yeah," finally confessed the straight-faced man.

King narrowed his eyes further. "How do you even reach the city like this?"

"I have a chauffeur," Zach said, smiling like it was a trophy.

"And you didn't even check the road to where you guys were going?"

"I did," the latter replied, both brows raised a bit. "... It slips out of my mind at times."

King snorted. "You're just bad at directions."

"Hey." Zach chuckled at him.

"Well, adventuring isn't that bad," King said as he drilled his eyes straight down the seemingly endless road. And as if his eyes worked magic, a path on the right popped up like some sort of a portal to an unknown dimension. "Hey, there's an intersection!" King excitedly pointed a finger at it.

Zachary decided to stop the car, eyes inspecting both foreign paths that screamed out scenes from horror movies. He sighed. "... We should go back. We never know where these paths will lead us."

King scrunched his face. "Come on," he insisted, "we're lost already. Getting more lost won't change a thing."

"... That's one of the worst solutions I've ever heard."

"Hey!"

Zachary chuckled at his reaction.

"Really, come on," King persisted.

"... No."

"Come on."

"Really, no. We don't know where this will lead us—"

"Please?"

Zachary stared at the committed face of the werecat, whose eyes beamed with enthusiasm. There was excitement and thrill in King's voice that the werewolf couldn't utterly hold himself back from accepting one of the worst solutions he had ever heard in his life.

"I want to see where we'd reach," King added.

Zachary heaved out a deep sigh, defeated, before he put the handbrake down. "As you wish," he said, before pushing through the new intersection.