Gailen sat in the plush chair, dressed in fine silk and trousers that fit too well to be anything but commissioned just for him to wear by the Prince's tailor. How he got those measurements, Gailen didn't like to wonder about. The fabric, an ivory white that shimmered, felt wrong against his skin. A contrast to the practical attire he preferred in his day to day. He shifted, the stiff collar of his silken shirt an unwelcome restraint. He could feel the prince's gaze, a silent, possessive pressure that weighed him down.
The Prince approached unhurried, his own attire a study in predatory elegance on red velvet robes. He stopped before Gailen, his eyes sweeping over the fledgling. A faint smile of someone who knew they owned everything in this building touched his lips. "Stay still, Gailen," the prince's voice was a low murmur, laced with authority. "We must capture this moment, this… essence of you. If you were to ruin it with your shifting, well, you'll just have to stay longer."
Gailen remained motionless, brows furrowed. His gaze fixed on a point somewhere on the wall. The silence stretched, punctuated only by the movements of the prince and the brushstrokes of the painter before him.
The prince gestured towards the ornate mirror leaning against the wall. "Look at yourself. How well you wear silk. How it makes you belong right here." A pause. The prince's expression shifted. Just enough to reveal a coldness in his eyes. Looking at Gailen like there was suddenly dirt on him. "It's a shame your beauty is so often wasted on mere utility. You are a masterpiece, Gailen, and masterpieces deserve to be admired, to be immortalized. Your sire had the right of it." The Prince stepped closer, his fingers reaching out to gently adjust a hair on Gailen's cheek, a touch that was both an affirmation and threat.
Gailen flinched inwardly. His hands itched for the familiar comfort of his tools, sitting a world away from this suffocating opulence and the prince's relentless world. He was not a subject for idle contemplation, he was a healer, his hands trained for precision, for mending, not for being admired like a statue. The prince's possessive gaze felt like a dissection, cutting away his hard work for the prince's perverse pleasure. Surrounded by velvet and the suffocating attention, he felt like a specimen pinned under glass. The perfumed air, thick and cloying, made him want to douse the place in antiseptic and light a match.
"Immortalized," Gailen echoed, his voice low and rasping. His mind, quick and analytical, sought an escape route, a surgical incision through this gilded cage. The prince's pursuit of 'capturing his essence' felt less like art and more like an attempt to cage a wild thing. To remind Gailen that he was under his thumb.
He risked a glance at the mirror, not to admire the reflected image the prince wished him to see, but to gauge the depth of the prince’s fixation. The ivory silk, though beautiful, felt like a costume. His own thoughts, usually his sharpest weapons, felt useless in the golden surroundings and under the prince's unnerving calm.
He was trapped, not by bars, but by a web of wealth and desire, and the prince was the spider, patiently waiting for Gailen to fall.
pixelskylines
snowghoul
gracieabrams