prince–elliot:
Elliot pulled up his pants and stepped down from the tailor’s stand, shaking his head and reaching for his shirt that was hung nearby. He was stopped by the sound of a familiar voice, making him cock his head to the side and think for a moment.
“Uncle.” He said simply, in a completely emotionless voice. Elliot cleared his throat and put his shirt back on. An awkward moment of silence passed as he finished getting dressed. “I was out of line. Probably shouldn’t have spoken that way to the man.” Elliot said thoughtfully as he adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves.
The prince turned around and walked over to his uncle. Elliot was grown now, twice the size of any man he usually encountered. But even now, looking down at Evgeny after so many years, there was something that made him uneasy still.
“Is there something I can do for you?”
Evgeny hummed as he watched his nephew dress, eyes rolling over the lines of hard muscle. It seemed he’d bulked up considerably. Interesting. His first thought was to peel back the skin and see just how dense the muscles really were. However, his brother would kill him for laying a hand on the prince so he was forced to discard the idea. Perhaps he could find a similarly muscular commoner and get the same result.
The duke almost laughed at how cold Elliot was toward him. Had he really hated his suggestion that much? It looked as though it had done the boy some good. Shrugging, he settled against one wall, leaning into it. “He’s not an important person,” he replied, “and I doubt that’s the worst that’s been said about him behind his back or to his face.” Honestly, what was the point in worrying about what a tailor thought?
He met his nephew’s eyes with a look usually reserved for ugly furniture one didn’t know where to put. Being smaller was an annoyance, but Evgeny had never been a particularly muscular man. “I came to see what you were doing,” he answered simply, “there was so much noise I could have sworn you’d gotten drunk and found a whore. Hardly becoming of a prince.”
Elliot scoffed and kept his back turned, popping open another bottle and drinking. “Hardly becoming of a prince.” He repeatedly sarcastically. The boy looked over his shoulder. “You seem to have many ideas concerning what a prince should be like.”
He was clearly bitter about the decisions in his life that Evgeny had influenced. It was because of his uncle that he found himself away from home for so long. The man standing in his doorway was a manifestation of a time in his life when everyone wanted him to be different. Elliot casually opened one of his drawers searching for another one of his hangover remedies, but couldn’t seem to find it. “Do you intend on sending me anywhere else now that I’ve been back home for a whole ten minutes?”











