The Princess and the Guard - Living on a Prayer
Vexx surveyed the small club as they entered. It was pretty empty, as to be expected so early in the evening. His gaze travelled to the princess beside him, who was taking the scene in, wonder in her eyes.
The smile she cast his way was a little bit smug. “Very.”
Taking her arm, he led her over to one of the booths along the back wall and asked himself when the slight shift in their power dynamic had occurred. Because when she had first asked him to take her out for a drink he had declined. While she was getting bolder, wanting to explore more, live more, she was still super sheltered. Pleading with him to take her, she had even admitted that she had never had alcohol before. And while he was already risking his neck sneaking around with her at all, getting her intoxicated felt like a one-way ticket to getting caught. Yet here they were, and he was still trying to figure out why he had let her sway him.
Aurora slid into the booth and started scrolling through the menu. “What do you suggest?” she asked. “I want something fancy.”
“Of course you do,” he reached across the table and flicked his finger against her nose, gaining a glare for the trouble. She did look fancy herself, her curls gathered back in a high ponytail that she had adorned with an actual bowtie. Like a girl from one of the old movies she enjoyed, cute but clearly not on par with the current fashion of the gold district.
“Come on, who knows when I’ll get the chance for something like this again? I need to make it count,” she flicked to the next section of drinks, reading with a slightly furrowed brow. Her words gave him a twinge of regret. Don’t think of it, he told himself, when maybe he should have told himself to think of the reasons that had gotten him into this whole mess in the first place. Justice. Freedom. Hope for a better world.
He reached across the table, scrolling through the menu until he got to the coladas. “One of those would probably be the right thing for you.”
When their order arrived Aurora delightedly picked the little umbrella out of her strawberry colada, twirling it between her fingers. “Look at this, this is so cute!”
“Yes, super cute garbage.”
“At least my drink doesn’t look bland like yours,” she took a little sip of the colada.
“My drink is for grown-ups, little lady.”
“My drink is good,” she announced, then reached for his. “Let me try yours?”
He pushed over his Jack and Coke, watching her closely as she took the straw in her mouth, and then as her nose crinkled in disgust.
“Ew. Are you sure you can still function after finishing that? Huh,” she fanned her face with her hands, her eyes watering, and he couldn’t help but laugh. Good thing he had told the waiter to make sure there was a bit less rum in her drink than they normally put in.
“You are such a lightweight, princess. I should have been a responsible adult and gotten you a juice. Yes, I am sure that I’ll function just fine,” he accompanied that with a wink, making her blush furiously.
She went back to sipping her cocktail, and then she got a far-off look, and when he started to ask her what was wrong, she raised a finger to silence him. His gaze shifted to the booth behind her and the group that had sat down there. It was a bit hard to make out what they were talking about with the music, so he leaned across the table, keeping an eye on Aurora’s expression as he listened.
“I mean, how many bad calls can a person possibly make? It’s time he fucking dies!”
“Who knows? As lucky as we are, he’ll reign for another couple decades before he finally bites it.”
“Probably. But do you guys really think his daughter will be better? She’s probably just as shitty as he is.”
Vexx reached out, his hand sneaking around the back of Aurora’s neck, pulling her forward until his lips almost grazed her ear and some lose curls tickled his nose. “You don’t have to listen to this, we can go sit somewhere else.”
“No, I… I want to hear it,” she murmured, and for a moment he was awfully tempted to press his lips to hers, distract her, shield her from the world and the ugly truths she hadn’t ever been confronted with. Kiss her until she forgot everything but his name.
Instead he slowly leaned back again, taking a gulp of his drink. Aurora listened to the group drone on about the economy, rising taxes, the dumpster fires that the other planets had become, until they finally switched topics and started speculating if their friend Sharice had STDs or not.
His princess pushed around the remaining ice cubes in her empty glass, a troubled look on her face. “I sometimes forget how much there is to fix,” she admitted.
He shrugged, torn between the need to comfort her and launching into a tirade about how monarchy would fix jack shit.
“And I mean they,” she vaguely gestured towards them, leaning towards him and lowering her voice, “are rich, right? If even they are this discontent…”
“Whiny rich kids,” he agreed. “They think the world ought to be handed to them, but it’s only handed to one certain family and that pisses them off.”
She sighed, bit her lip and tilted her empty glass. “Can I have another?”
“Sure,” he heard himself say, already sensing that it was a mistake.
He was proven right when she tried to drag him onto the dance floor half an hour later. “Come on, it’ll be fun!”
“You’re drunk,” he remarked, taking in her rosy cheeks, “everything will be fun for you right now.” He wished he had drunken more himself. The whole excurse to politics had reminded him that he was losing focus around her way too often and that in turn had soured his mood. It made him wonder if he really was the right person for this job, because someone like Damon wouldn’t have been side-tracked like this.
Another girl bumped into Aurora, steadied herself holding on to her arm, and then took her in with a slow drag of her eyes. “Your dress is so pretty,” she exclaimed, and Vexx rolled his eyes.
“Aw, thank you,” the princess smoothed the short circle skirt down, “you look super pretty, too.”
The girl laughed and cast a quick glance at him, measuring him up. He narrowed his eyes at her. Back off, he thought.
“My song,” the girl shrieked, grabbed Aurora’s hand, and pulled her into the dancing crowd before he could protest.
Vexx sighed. He lingered at the edge of the dancefloor and kept his eyes on his princess as she laughed and danced with the girl and her friends, looking so happy and free that he did not want to stop her.
When the first girl got a bit too close to Aurora he tensed up, but then his princess shook her head and said something, nodding her head in his direction. The girl replied something that made her blush and cast a glance his way. A grin spread across his face as the girl backed up a little. That’s right, princess. Tell them you are my girl.
He probably should have intervened when one of the girls shared her drink with Aurora. At the point they started dancing on one of the tables he definitely should have intervened, but instead he just got closer, just in case.
Aurora looked like a disco queen up on the table, dancing and singing to the song along with her newfound friends, radiating so much energy. And she was clearly drunk at this point, after just two cocktails and a few sips of beer. She spun, little of the gracefulness from her dance classes showing through. And then she stumbled, tilted. He jumped forward, reaching out. Her body crashed against his, her forehead hitting his chin hard, and he stumbled a few steps backwards before steadying them. For a moment he was worried that she was hurt, but then she laughed, her hands roaming over his shoulders as she righted herself. He still held her close, brushing her hair back from her face.
“Sorry,” she slurred, trailing her fingers over his chin.
“It’s fine,” he found himself grinning back at her. Her friends were still sing-shouting along to the music.
“We’ve gotta hold on, to what we’ve got,” she sang along, a bit off key, framing his face with her hands. Her gaze flickered from his eyes to his lips, and then she got up on her tiptoes and kissed him, while his chin was still throbbing from her former impact. It was a short kiss, her lips pressed to his and then already gone again, but it was enough to make his breath hitch. There was a holler from one of the girls on the table, and Aurora’s face was flushed as she stepped back from him, her fingers tangled with his.
“Woaaah, halfway there!” she launched back into the song, jumping up and down, and he couldn’t help but go along with their energy. Allowed himself to forget about his mission and what was to come and just live in the moment, dancing and singing with the girl he liked, allowing his heart to beat faster with the thought of stealing another kiss from her, as the song blasted on.
It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not…
(The lines from the song at the end here are from “Living on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi. Since we don’t know what kind of music they will have in the future I think it’s fair to play pretend with what we have, even though it would be beyond ancient by then^^)