Chapter Text
The bell at the top of the door rings, signalling the arrival of a new customer. For Prince this meant finally achieving a successful escape. He ducked into the nearest unavailable booth, though they weren’t especially lacking in this Pizza place, “Everetteroni” he read on the menu. He sits far enough from the entrance to not be recognised in case he was caught fleeing, but close to a window to scope out the one he was hiding from. He’s sitting on the edge of the booth, he picked at his fingers with shacking hands with an equally shaky leg beneath the table.
“Plan on ordering something or should I not disrupt your cover?” A voice spoke up from beside him, he swiftly turned the looked up to find a man, close to his age with a teal streak running through his black hair, head tilted with a curious look on his face. Prince’s face flushed a little, realising how he must look to anyone else in this place. “Right, yes, I’ll just have a chai latte to go” Prince stumbled through his words, remembering what time of day it was and where he was, he realises how absurd his order must seem now. The waiter narrows his gaze at him, head returning to its slightly tilted position, then he smiles, asking no further questions.
Prince watches as he walks away before retuning to looking out the window, he’s shocked he hasn’t been found out now. If anything, not being caught has only caused him greater anxiety, what if Lewis planning on telling his parents? They would kill him if they found out he tried to pull this off. he quickly began to spiral with his own questioning of his actions. Was his sprint off really justified, Lewis is only trying to do his job, it’s unfortunate that it came at the cost of Prince’s freedom. He continued to stare outside the window, watching people go past, the sound of his foot tapping against the floor acted as the most dominate sound in the place to him, his leg quickly growing numb with the movement. Why had he even run away in the first place? Shear adrenaline? The need for a fraction of space after receiving none throughout this moving process? Wait, he didn’t know where he was, this was a completely new place that he knew nothing about. What was he thinking, he could be lost for all he knows. Then in that moment he sees someone resembling the exact person he was trying to get away from.
Prince rushes to get out of site, to go somewhere else , another place he didn’t know about but had to go. Until, the force of his body collides with another, followed by hot liquid flowing down his white button up-shirt. He looks up to see the waiter with the teal streak look equally as shocked as he was apparently by this collision. He looks back down at the mess that just been made. The words of the server getting lost as he thinks about his parents reaction to this mess. “I’m so sorry, I have a shirt just like that that you could borrow?”, that cut through Princes thoughts as he was about to continue down another spiral. The waiter was trying to use some napkins to clean the mess, to no avail,“Quickly, I mean, yes, please”. He follows the waiter as they walk through the place, going upstairs, Prince does keeps looking over his shoulder. Prince follows him to what looks like a bedroom, realising how far he must’ve walked, it felt like a completely different place.
“Right, I guess that makes sense”. The silence accompanied by the ruffling of clothes can be heard as Prince finishes putting on the shirt. As he’s rolling up his sleeves to his elbows, he gets a glimpse at his watch and realises the time. He bursts open the door leaving the man in front of it extremely flustered. “Excuse me, sorry, I’ll find you again to return this too you”. Prince is not sure if he caught a word of what he says but he’s flying down some stairs searching for an exit.
His parents were going to kill him.
Lewis was inside the pizzeria, talking to an older man. Lewis makes eye contact with Prince and he appears less than pleased. Though they were the same age, the grip Lewis had on Prince’s arm would have equal to the amount of an adult. “It’s as if you do it on purpose Prince, honestly” Lewis scoffs pulling the two out the store, feeling rather reluctant now, it didn’t take a large amount of struggle.
“Do you live here?”, Prince says looking around the space, trying to figure out how he got here. “Conveniently, yes” The boy says, reaching into a wardrobe looking for a shirt. “You should be lucky you bumped into the waiter that live just upstairs on the restaurant”. Prince doesn’t say anything in response, still becoming aware of his surroundings. The boy, still searching speaks up “Are you new around here?”. Prince looks back at where the voice comes from, no actual figure to put the voice to, “what is this an interrogation”, he asks cautiously, a large amount of suspicion in his tone. “I like to call it a conversation”, the boy appears from his wardrobe with a similar shirt to Prince’s ruined one in hand, he smiles, seemingly amused by the accusation, “Here try this on, might be a bit small but should do the job.” Prince, now with the shirt in his hands looks perplexed at it, then back at the boy, he nods his head to his bedroom, signalling for him to change in there.
Prince steps inside and begins taking off his shirt, he hears the door close behind him, oh yeah, the door. He looks around the room now, it wasn’t large, especially not by Prince’s standards, there was a bed on the floor, large posters around the room of bands that he’s never heard of, in the corner was a guitar and a keyboard, guess he’s really into music, Prince deduced. “Your accent” the owner of the room spoke through the door, Prince is sure he hears a thud against, maybe leaning against it now, “your accent isn’t one I hear often here in the States”. Prince realises he’s referring to his earlier comment.