Prince Of Stone - A Captive Prince Fanfiction

I. Gods with Steady Voices

It had all began with letting Kastor check over his grad school application. Damen had been applying to Akielos university, Kastor's own alma mater.

But somewhere between submitting his application and receiving the acceptance letter months later, something went wrong. Instead of applying to Akielos, Damen had gotten into L'Université de Vere. But before he could protest, Kastor was paying for the plane tickets and rushing him out the door.

Which was how Damen had ended up on a métro train in the Paris underground on the way to a grad program Kastor had forced him into.

At least he spoke French.

The métro car was packed, filled with businesswomen wielding briefcases and men carrying paper bags of flowers. All the seats were occupied, and there was so little standing room Damen almost felt had to stand on tiptoe. The car lurched, and Damen was thrown forward. He was relieved to find a handhold in the form of a strong, suit-clad arm.

He righted himself immediately, with a muttered, "Je m'excuse." But then the train lurched again, and he was thrown against the suit's owner.

They stood uncomfortably close. Damen looked down into the face of the most beautiful person he'd seen all morning.

The man had fine blond hair slicked precisely back in a way that suggested a need for order in all things. Incongruous against the dark suit he wore, a single long earring dangled from his left ear, the blue gemstones offsetting his limpid blue eyes.

Eyes which were currently narrowed at Damen and blazing with anger.

"Enlevez vos mains de moi," the man ground out from between clenched teeth.

Caught off guard by the man's hostility, Damen said, "What?" the English escaping him before he could remember he was in Paris, now.

As if in reminder, the car rattled once more. Somewhere in the crowded space, a baby began to cry.

"Les Anglais." The man rolled his eyes at Damen. Then, in careful English that bore a faint accent, he said disdainfully, "Take your hands off me, sweetheart."

When Damen hesitated, still staring at the man's impossibly fair golden hair, he said, "Move, you giant animal." He threw Damen's hand off his arm where it had lain.

Thrown off by the rapid language shift, Damen said the first thing that came to his mind. "I speak your language better than you speak mine, sweetheart."

He made to pull away, put distance between their bodies, but the man's dangling earring had caught in Damen's knit scarf. Damen's hand-knit scarf which he had made himself. Parisian autumns were chilly, he'd found, and knitting was a good stress reliever. Which, as an incredibly stressed Military History grad student, Damen needed.

"What are you, a savage?" The man seethed. "Stop pulling, you'll only make it worse!"

Damen paused in the middle of trying to untangle his scarf. "Just take it out." When the man stared at him as if he were crazy, Damen mimed removing a piece of jewelry. "Your earring. Take it out."

"What, so you can have my priceless sapphire earring? How stupid do you think I am?"

The loudspeaker crackled, a disjointed voice announcing nous approchons de la station université.

Making a split second decision, Damen plucked the man's phone from the hand not clamped determinedly to his entangled earring.

"What do you think you're-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Damen had punched his number into the man's unlocked phone then returned it to his waiting hand.

"No time to stay and chat, my stop's next," Damen said, flashing the stranger a dazzling grin before snatching the earring-still entrapped in his scarf, but mercifully free from the man's earlobe-and made towards the doors of the métro car. "If you want your earring back, you'll text me!"

The doors chimed and Damen was forced out of the car alongside the crush of bodies of other passengers. Stepping onto the platform, he turned around to see the fuming blond man regarding him from the other side of the glass of the métro car.

~

As the train pulled out of the station, Laurent glanced down at the contact that giant animal had entered into his phone. The new contact entry read: Damianos Vasileus.

Laurent's heart nearly skipped a beat. He recognized that name.

It was one that had burned itself into his mind time and time again.