Last Supper

The stink is unholy, and in the thin red light of the banked coals that’s the first herald of where Juan finds himself after too many corridors and turns. The door falls heavily shut, he can hear that, and the mad prince gives a sharp tug on his sleeve. Juan gets his first breath of the smell – it’s not fresh corpse, or punctured bowels, he really has smelled worse, but it hits the back of his throat dry and hot and he nearly retches. Not like a charnel house but like badly tanned hides. Roasted leather, after a fortnight in front of a merrily blazing fireplace–

A trill of mad laughter rings out in the dark. “You recognize this, of course, don’t you, Borgia?”

Juan stumbles back, trying to orient himself in the dark, and finds himself fast in Alfonso’s grip.

He sincerely believes he is going to be slain, right here, and the hot-tempered Borgia gallant cannot even raise a hand to defend himself. Strong drink has not fired him up like it usually does but left his head aching, pulse throbbing in the palms of his hands, sight swimming with white flecks even in the dark. And he drank quite a lot…

He’s poisoned you, the giggling Neapolitan prick, Juan thinks, that pretty grinning face looming in his view. His throat is burning and palace hospitality sits like lead in his stomach. But why in hell the Prince would do that, instead of send one of his father’s mignons to do the job, or slit his throat? To make him like the other showpieces of his collection. “You bastard,” he means to say, but all that comes out is a wet groan. Naples has him cornered between two walls and that fucking table –

Fucking table indeed. Juan’s stomach turns at the memory.

It’s quite close range, and Alfonso’s hips press into his. If he were concealing a dagger in his clothing – of course Juan wore no sword to a damned banquet, Cesare made it explicit not to, and he left his belt knife at the table – one might feel it. The codpiece currently digging into him painfully, while also of note, means nothing.

The prince’s sickly-sweet breath caresses his cheek.

“Fond memories, perhaps? Hmm? I do hope they are fond, for sis’ sake.”

“Let me go, damn you–”

“Out of all the things to do in here, hoisting the skirts of the king’s daughter… even if she is a bastard.” His voice turns hard. “I can see your eyes starting to glass over. Look at me.”

Juan curses through gritted teeth and throws off the prince’s grip, but the struggle only tightens their clinch. Alfonso forces a leg between his thighs, making it even tighter. The Prince is even of slighter stature, lightly muscled under his fine clothes, and it adds insult to injury that he should even think of physical intimidation. A spoiled brat like him, pale and beardless, against a soldier? A fly alights for a brief moment on Juan’s cheek – he can feel its little legs rubbing together – and Alfonso whisks it off with a slap.

“Don’t mind those,” he drawls in nasal Neapolitan fashion, and kisses him on the mouth.

Juan lashes out blindly with a kick, like an idiot, and strikes something heavy with his foot. The scent of sawdust fills the air. Delightful.

“You know, I much prefer your sister,” he snarls uselessly.

What the Prince lacks in Sancia’s coy, dark charm he makes up for by biting quite hard.