Unexpected Meeting (alver x og cale)

Part 5

It was truly a chance meeting.

Blanketed by the warm summer night air and without a friend in sight. The peace that can only be derived around strangers who don't care who you are or where you're from.

It wasn't a place for a Crown Prince.

It wasn't a place for the first born son of a Count for that matter.

Alberu needed to find a way to protect himself once he entered the Empire from the Holy Twins.

Cale needed a break from the life he'd created for himself.

Curiosity, pure and simple. That was the only reason Alberu had approached him.

Cale Henituse wasn't like how he was when they met in the capital. Even with a bottle of alcohol slowly being drained of all of its contents, Cale showed no signs of being drunk other than his flushed face.

He was quiet and thoughtful, more polite than he needed to be, and he smiled warmly at strangers.

Alberu had known that there was something just off about the trash of the count's family from the first time he'd met him. He'd known that there was more than what met the eye.

But he'd had other priorities.

Alberu was far too cautious a person, normally speaking, than to casually approach a person in his true form when there was any possible chance of being recognized.

But Cale was definitely drunk, considering the amount of empty bottles, Alberu was curious, and most of his face was covered in a veil regardless.

There was absolutely no reason for the encounter to last.

Maybe he was just a bit enchanted with the way Cale laughed, openly and freely. Or the way the world just seemed better when they were together.

The way that Cale expressed himself, the strange but interesting ways he considered things, how quick he was on the uptake, those sharp brown eyes that seemed to see everything Alberu was hiding and found it all to just be an interesting quirk.

He couldn't get enough of it.

Maybe one chance meeting turned into two and then three and by the time he'd returned to his real life and away from the unexpected vacation, they'd shared at least two drunken kisses and Alberu was left wondering how he'd gone from not caring much at all for the lout of the Henituse territory to thinking about him constantly.

Cale's laugh, his temper, his unique ability to escalate a situation with the best of intentions, and his intolerance for injustice.

A particularly memorable scene of Cale throwing a wine bottle at a retreating gangster with a string of curses pouring out of his lips would probably be forever burned into his thoughts. It was crazy and stupid and reckless.

But it was Cale. The part of him that he hid and the part of him that he showed the world. An expression of the side of Cale that most people didn't get to see and the trashy person who drank too much and caused a scene.

It was only a few weeks. Just a few weeks where he had the chance to get to know this ridiculous man and then it was over like it had never happened to begin with.

The responsibilities of his life were too heavy to continue such a transient relationship, no matter how charmed he was.

It was better like this though. A brief tryst in a strange place without any expectations of reuniting.