Leander set the whisky glass down with a clink. The ice jostled within the crystal - another casual flexing of his privilege, ice and endless imbibement.
He was leaning back on a large, leather seat - one leg propped over his knee, a hand resting lazily against his temple. A bedraggled man knelt beside him in handcuffs. The last time such a person found themselves in this position inside the King's apartment, it was in Leo's bedroom, and they wore lace and a lascivious smile. In contrast, this man was far from the throes of pleasure and play, dried blood crusted in the corner of his split lip, an air of defeat mixed with that slowly waning defiance as the stars wheeled across the sky and his so-called nephew was no where to be seem.
Next to the man was the Diamond's Queen, Remus. The claw marks decorating the man's cheeks and arms bore Remus' distinct sigil.
The blonde may have found delight in looking at a man kneel before him in display of weakness. Leo could never tell, not with the smirk that constantly lurked at the corner of his lips. Leo himself may have looked like a conqueror himself - dress in a crisp gray suit, blue eyes staring off, past the man, past Remus, perhaps even looking through the walls themselves
But this scene only made him pity the man. Once, it may have even saddened him, for this was a position he saw his own mother in numerous times in his youth - her soul drunk and beaten and weighing her down to her knees.
But his youth was as distant to him as the stars themselves. Sometimes, it felt as if his history belonged to another person, a man lacking the same success and wealth as he.
The elevator chimed as its doors slid open and revealed a man younger and cleaner than the one kneeled beside the King and Queen. Leo planted his shoes on the floor and stood, smoothing down the front of his jacket as he stuck his hand out to greet the man.
"Hello. You must be the nephew."
It was a needless observation. His very presence here meant that his ID had been verified and he had been let through by numerous lines of security.