Behind Golden Bars {Solangelo Neko/Royalty AU}

1: I Passive Aggressively Knead Bread

I am not the only traveler
Who has not repaid his debt
I've been searching for a trail to follow again
Take me back to the night we met...

When the night was full of terrors
And your eyes were filled with tears
When you had not touched me yet
Oh, take me back to the night we met

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NPOV
Track: The Night We Met, Lord Huron

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How It Began...

I don't think either of us really know how long this has been happening. I've long lost track of the long nights spent in the kitchen, working in solitary silence, when he shows up like an angel to watch over me.

At first, it hadn't felt like an angel—more like a demon. Or perhaps more like God himself—watching over and judging endlessly.

We never exchange any words. Instead, every night goes like this:

As one of few nekos in the castle, I am assigned ridiculously long shifts—there are no labor laws to protect my kind, and there is no better work for me to take. So I work long into the night, cleaning up the castle's many rooms and, most often, doing the prep work that is necessary for the royal family's meals the next day. By the time he shows up, I am exhausted but not even close to done with my shift.

Normally, when he appears, the moon is high in the sky, and silvery light shines into the kitchens just as if the universe wants to add an extra layer of magic to these nights.

And then the prince shows up, without fail, looking nearly as tired as I do.

His hair could practically be made of gold—it makes me wish I could see it in the daylight. His eyes are a bright blue, and his face is usually tear-stained when I see him. It's strange because no one else would ever describe the prince as crying a lot, which can only lead me to the conclusion that he reserves his mental breakdowns for approximately three in the morning on his way to the kitchens to see me.

And, like I said, I worried for those first few weeks that he was there to judge my work; he is the prince, after all. Perhaps his father has sent him to weed out the lazy workers in the castle, and they were hoping to rid themselves of the nekos if possible. So for those first few weeks, I worked faster and harder than ever before, fear spurring me along and waking me up. The kingdom is—to say the least—unfriendly to my kind, and if I lose this job, there will not be other work. I thought, at the time, that this was the best I was ever going to get—I couldn't bring myself to give it up.

After those first few weeks, when the initial fear faded, I realized that the prince was not here as a threat to me or my survival. Instead, he seemed to simply be using this room as a place to collect himself. A safe haven away from the rest of the castle. I supposed that made sense—most of the other rooms on the upper floors face the risk of running into someone more elite than I am, someone who could destroy his reputation if they caught him looking so upset.

But no one in the kitchens is highly ranked enough to touch his reputation, and certainly not a lonely neko who is barely scraping by in this harsh world on his own.

After this realization, I found myself relaxing around him a little bit more. He likely wasn't going to get me fired or punished if he relies on my presence here rather than someone who might have the bold personality it requires to tattle on the prince.