The Selection (Troyler AU)

♔Part XV♔

Tyler POV

"Okay," he agreed, a light-hearted gleam in his eyes. He waved a hand in the air, grasping the renewed schedule for me to see, and continued,"I'll just leave this in my room, then we can go."

"Sounds good," I told him.

He nodded in a rush as he hurried to the door in a scramble as he searched for his keys, only to accidentally let one of his poor floppy excuses of a pancakes slide off of his plate, smacking into the ground with an obnoxious noise. Troye groaned in frustration, bending down to pick it up, but instead of helping his mediocre cause, he just ended up letting the entire stack of flapjacks ( that's what someone Ancient Americans called them, anyways ) slap onto the ground in a messy heap of syrup and butter and overlooked dough. Troye hisses out a string of obscenities, causing me to snicker at his apparent clumsiness.

Before he could try to fix the situation again, I held up a hand, saying,"I got it."

He blushed a crimson red, completely embarrassed by the predicament, but let me take care of the mess while he moved to finally unlock his door. Once he was inside, I knelt on the ground and scooped the disarray of "food" back into the plate, getting my fingers sticky in the process. I didn't mind, since I always carried disinfectant wipes in the inside pocket of my coat. Weird of me, I know, but it was another thing my father drilled into my head from a young age, though at least in this case it didn't harm me in any ways, physically or emotionally.

There was a few faint stains on the blood red carpeted floor, but there was no way I could get that out right now, so I'll just let one of the staff know so that they could clean it up later. As for the plate, I simply brought it down the hall to the designated trash chute, which was located in the walls of every corridor in the palace. It seemed like a lot, but believe me when I say it's pretty handy at times.

Just as I was walking back, Troye was shutting the door behind him, twisting the key into the lock to secure the bolt. Turning back to me with an apologetic look, he mumbled,"Sorry about that."

I waved his concerns away with the flourish of a hand, motioning for him to follow me down the hall to the kitchen. "It's not a problem, Troye," I insisted,"That little scene back there definitely made my day, if I'm being honest."

He scoffed. "I'm glad my failure at being a functioning human being amused you, Your Highness," he said, sarcasm pouring into his voice at the title. One glance at his face told me that he wasn't actually mad, though; just self-conscious.

My lips curved sideways into a half smile, hoping to console him that he has no reason to be abashed by the situation - I've seen Hannah do worse before. I wanted to reach out and touch him, like placing a gentle hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but I wasn't sure if he would exactly be okay with that at this point. Sure, he definitely seemed at ease around me, and I was oddly glad with that, but I didn't want to push the limits too fast. "Hey, seriously, don't worry about it. Believe it or not, it's not the first time I've ever actually had to clean up a mess, Sivan."

His humiliated expression turned into a baffled one then. "What do you mean? Cant you just call a Servant or Maid to clean something for you?"

I could, I thought. But when it comes to blood stains on the carpet, I'd rather do that myself. I didn't dare voice the thought aloud, though. Instead, I just shrugged, and remarked,"I guess I could. But I'm a grown man. I can do things for myself, sometimes."

He looked at me curiously, then, studying me as if I was a hypothesis he was trying to deduce, but I made an unexpected result that threw off the rest of his work. His intense gaze burned into me, but I didn't once consider looking away. Something about the complexity of his eyes drew my line of sight towards them, welcoming me for a rare occasion, instead of guarding themselves from me. But that wasn't what surprised me.