🔑 for your muse to tell my muse that they overheard a guest has gone missing. (olivia)
Aleksey laid back on his bed with his laptop propped up on his stomach. His expression crinkled as his Counterstrike game glitched and then froze, and his character was dead when the game finally loaded. The team chat exploded with jeers about his failure. Aleksey pulled off his headphones and shut the laptop, consulting his phone connection to see new messages from Olivia. The WiFi blip was troublesome, but he wouldn’t be surprised if someone at the palace decided to throttle his connection. Whatever.He texted Olivia See you in five minutes. Aleksey left his jacket behind and found a pair of slip on sneakers. He hadn’t completely gotten out of his suit yet, perhaps hoping to meet up with Olivia before it got too late. She must have been worried about her brother hovering around earlier. Midnight wasn’t that late for the princess or Aleksey.One of the Russian guards stopped him before he could leave the suite, saying something about a missing princess. Aleksey shrugged at him. He wasn’t a detective, but he could ask around (or not).“Hi, Ollie,” said Aleksey in a low voice. She beat him to their meeting spot. He glanced around for any spying eyes and grinned at her. “Can we kiss?”
@olivia-herzog
Five minutes stretched into ten. Olivia checked her phone repeatedly which only served to make each passing minute feel like an eternity. Maybe he wasn’t coming. Maybe he’d forgotten the place they’d agreed to meet. Maybe she’d forgotten, and was in the wrong place. She let out a deep breath, and shoved the phone into her pocket. Then she heard his voice. Her head snapped up.
What she meant to say was yes. What she actually said was,
“Wait.”
Her black dress blended in with the shadows. If she’d had sleeves and a mask, she could have crept around unseen like some kind of common criminal. Which, in a sense, perhaps she was since seeing him went against every rule that had been laid out for her. Olivia held up her hand as if to say stop. Several glasses of wine had made her mind fuzzy, and it took a few seconds to gather her thoughts, to remember the question that took precedence over kissing. Which she did want to do. Eventually.
“Would you - ” She hiccupped.
“Would you name a horse after me?” she inquired.
Aleksey paused mid-lean and put a bit of distance in between himself and the princess with a lazy grin. Not deterred by rejection so much as appreciative of Ollie’s control over the situation. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to kiss out in the open like this, even if it seemed like nobody else was around. Versailles was a busy place and it wasn’t as if every single guest had retired for the night. Even after a stuffy awards ceremony, the royals were cutting loose now that the clock struck midnight.
“I don’t have horse,” Aleksey replied with a little questioning squint. “But if I did... Your name would not make for good horse name. You are not a horse.” This had to be a trick question. Horses were large and, to him, ungraceful and stinky. They spent time in little dark stalls with their own droppings and had to wear weird metal shoes. None of these things were fitting for Ollie.
“You are more like... swan. Very pretty, although swan can be mean.” He shook his head a little, his face turned red. “Not swan, uhm... I’m not so sure. Why is it you’re asking for a horse name?”
