Prince with Benefits

A Prince's Point of View

The proposal

Scott's POV

The air was extremely hot. The faint air from the dessert wasn't enough. Even though I was parched in the shadows in between ruins, I had too much heat. Sweat streamed down my face as I kept still and waited for Matt's signal.

Damn it's hot! This is Afghanistan, what did you expect?

I sighed. I did ask to be here in between ruins on a soldier uniform. Mostly, I had literally pushed my team to be here on Christmas Eve. Not that they were suffering or anything. The guys I'd been camping with were keen on doing this. There were six of them and were the best long-range shooters. I wanted to do one last practice before everyone else resumed activities and the celebrations started.

When I first had to come to Afghanistan, I was assigned to them. They treated me as an equal. I had to endure a lot of pranks and exhaustive exercise. I liked it in a sadistic kind of way. There was no royal baggage other than the fact that they always made me serve them tea for a day on the first day of my stay. And when I mean all day I'm talking about waking me up every couple of hours at night because one of them were feeling thirsty.

It felt like I was just Scott when I was around them.

Just like Emily.

I shook my head as I tried to concentrate on the task. I asked to come here because I needed to get away from all the media, pictures and rumors.

Suddenly, there was a scream and a gun shot.

I turned behind me and watched as Josh, one of my teammates, gestured me to wait. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were narrowed. He stepped in front of me and signaled me to follow him. My heart was beating really fast and it downed on me that this was not just an exercise anymore. My shoulders were tense as we stepped as quietly as we could through the ruins.

Slowly, most of the squad members were around us walking in the same tense manner as we. Finally, we reached the place of the shooting and heard Matt's rugged breath. He was the newest addition to the group. He had replaced me as the official team butler. We all assumed positions and entered the ruined house at the same time while clasping tightly our machine gun.

Matt was sprawled on the floor. His breath was uneven and he looked at us with wide perplexed eyes. He raised his palms in surrender. His weapon was on the floor next to what appeared to be a rattlesnake. There were pieces of it everywhere. We lowered the weapons.

I took a breath relieved. The adrenaline effect wasn't wearing off but my shoulders sagged relaxed as I rubbed my face and chuckled nervously at the situation.

"What the fuck, Matt?" Josh glared at Matt who was laughing with me.

"I'm sorry! I have this thing for snakes and the thing was about to bite me!" Everyone laughed at him except for Josh...

"Well you screwed up the whole exercise!" Josh growled at him. He was the leader of the team. "See? We won't be able to do it again! And someone run to the General and inform him this was a false alarm!" The rest of the guys walked away laughing amongst themselves as Matt got up. I was sure he was never going to live it down. Someone had grabbed a few pieces of the snake and I could bet that they would reappear on Matt's bed tonight.

I left them arguing and followed the rest of the team back to our camp. We were not far and already a lot of people had gotten ready to fight. Sam, another squad member had run to let everyone know that it had been a false alarm.

Living in a war place made everyone jumpy at the first noise especially when it was a shot gun. This made you appreciate your normal, yet fucked up, life...