Roman
The car came to a stop in front of the hotel LeVeque, and Roman couldn’t stop himself from staring. The building was hundreds of feet tall, with an awning over the entrance that read “LeVeque Tower: Hotel LeVeque”. The decoration was gold and so wonderfully Art Deco and Roman waited with anticipation to see what was inside.
The interior was just as luxurious, even more so. Rich burgundy sofas matched the columns of off-burgundy, white, and grey marbled stone with light built into them. A rectangular balcony stretched around the edges of the walls and overlooked the lobby. Linear art made up the chandelier and adorned the furniture. Roman turned, slowly, taking it all in. This was where he was going to have his wedding? He couldn’t lie, he was impressed at the character the hotel displayed. (He was expecting something… colder. Sterile white and leather and metal, like the last hotel. Unwelcoming and aloof.)
“Close your mouth, Roman,” his mother instructed.
Roman did, but kept looking over the lobby. It was nearly empty. A few other rich-looking balding men were occupying a sofa a ways away. The receptionist was good-looking. One singular person, who looked to be the same age as himself, approached from the second floor and leaned over the golden artistic balcony, but turned on their heel upon seeing an upturned face looking back.
“The Prince family, we have the King Suite and the Junior Suite,” he heard his father say. Roman turned.
The receptionist’s spine was ramrod straight now, and she was staring at Roman’s father with barely concealed- what? Respect? Disgust? She snapped her mouth shut and nodded curtly. “One moment,” she said, and turned into a back room, emerging with two keys.
Roman scanned the balcony once or twice, but didn’t see the person return. In no time, the family was on the elevator (which was curiously embossed with the word “happiness”). Roman’s father offered him his key and Roman took it wordlessly. “206.”
Roman nodded.
The room was just as beautiful as the lobby, with its modern gold and black scheme, and Roman flopped on one of the two beds. It had the same hotel smell as the last one. It was pleasant, but Roman found himself missing the smells of home. Not necessarily the smell of their overlarge house they had now, but of the house they had lived in two houses ago until 6th grade, before Roman’s father had become rich.
A knock sounded on the door, snapping him out of his reverie. He barely had time to register who it was before a slightly unpleasant hug was pressed into his arms, and he laughed and spun Remus around. “Dude!” Roman whisper-shouted. “How did you even get in here?” He pretended to be half-concerned, but the wide smile on his face wasn’t fooling anybody. Remus spread his arms and grinned.
“I fed Mom some bullshit about how you need me there for emotional support or whatever, and she booked a room for both of us! Did you not see the two beds?” Roman shrugged, and Remus continued undeterred. “I guess they’re still surprised you’re actually going along with their plans, so they let me come as an allowance or something. Maybe they actually feel bad for kicking me out,” he joked sarcastically.
He snorted. “Right,” he drew out the word. “Well get in here!”
Remus, he quickly found, hadn’t brought a suitcase, opting instead for a backpack and two trash bags. The two of them spent an hour or two just messing around in the room, trying on the stupidly fluffy robes, examining the knickknacks on the shelves.
Roman turned to Remus. “Do you want to look around downstairs?”
He agreed emphatically, and they went to the bar upstairs, apparently called “The Keep”. It was nice, perhaps nicer than most of the bars Roman had found himself at. Like the lobby, it was mostly deserted, due mostly in part to the fact that it was only late afternoon. They slid into their seats at the bar.
Feeling eyes on him, Roman turned to see Remus giving him a mischievous smile. Roman’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Doesn’t this place… remind you of something?”
Roman gasped. “The minibar in the house!”
Back when they had just moved into the house they lived in now, they had spent a day just exploring all the nooks and crannies of the house and trying to memorise its layout for later debauchery and mischief. They were about 19 at the time. Roman had found a secret room in the basement: a bar, as it were, that the previous owners had accidentally left a bottle of vodka in. They snuck upstairs to get a bottle of orange juice. Needless to say, they got shitfaced, and they woke up in their beds without a single clue as to how it had happened.
“Exactly. Ahh, the nostalgia,” Remus sighed. “You know, I never did know how Dad never figured it out. Or how we ended up in our rooms afterwards.”
The bartender had filled up their glasses, so Roman snatched his off the bar and held it up. “To never telling our parents.”
“To never telling our parents.” Roman raised his glass a bit higher, but a flash of purple caught his eye in the reflection of the glass. He turned around. It was the person from before, the one he had seen over the railing. He recognised the dark hair.
He hadn’t seen that they were insanely, indescribably hot.
It was like someone had taken his type and shoved everything he liked into a person. They had black hair with purple highlights, a purple patchwork jacket, and two piercings on their bottom lips that matched the silver chain that adorned their ripped black jeans. He was built in a slight way, the tank top under his jacket showing that he wasn’t scrawny, but rather lean. Roman nearly passed out when he saw the fishnets peeking through the holes in the jeans that stretched all the way down to the Doc Martens he was wearing.
“Roman,” Remus hissed. “You’re staring.”
Roman whipped around.
Remus’ words were pissed, but he was smirking. “So.”
“What?”
“You’re getting engaged in just a bit, but you’re still looking at dudes?”
“Oh, shut up Remus. Look at him.”
Remus’ eyes moved over him appreciatively. “Mmm. I see. So you’re still looking at dudes who are… Jesus, he’s the definition of your type, isn’t he? Well, go talk to him!”
Roman whisper-shouted, “I can’t do that! Besides, whatever happened to the whole ‘you’re getting married in barely two days’ thing?”
In response, Remus looked at him like a particularly stupid child and waved his hands in a barely-muted gesture, like, Are you seeing this?
“God, I know, but…”
“Look at it this way.” Roman met Remus’ eyes to find that he was gazing at Roman with a steady, serious look. “If you hit it off, so be it. Besides, there isn’t a guarantee that you guys will hit it off. But you never know if you don’t try. And if you don’t try, you will regret never engaging with that hot piece of ass. Trust me.”
Roman looked over at him again, at the mysterious stranger who was slouching at the other end of the bar. To his surprise, the stranger looked back. He seemed to give Roman a quick once-over, straightening, opening up his posture. Remus shoved at Roman’s shoulder.
“Okay, I see it now. But what do I say?!” Roman was frankly agonising over it.
“Use a stupid pick up line, I don’t care!” Remus said. “Now, shoo!”
__________
Roman approached carefully, and gestured at the open seat next to them. “Is this seat taken?”
The stranger startled a bit, then shook his head. “Go ahead,” he mumbled.
Roman slid into the seat, then fell silent for a moment, tension defining the moment. He settled on what he was going to say. He turned to the stranger. “Hey, can I ask your advice?”
The stranger turned to him, brown eyes wide. “Me? But you don’t know me…”
“That’s why I want to ask you.”
His brows furrowed beneath his purple bangs and he worried his piercings with his teeth. Roman followed the movement with his eyes. “Uh, sure?”
“So hypothetically, if you were at a bar in the Hotel LeVeque and you saw this really cute guy sitting alone and he let you sit next to him, would you ask for his name or his number first? Or would you just introduce yourself to start?” Roman rambled, the words spilling out of him quickly.
“Woah,” he laughed a bit sheepishly. “That’s specific.”
Roman smiled a bit. “Asking for a friend.” He paused. “So, what would you do?”
“I guess I would introduce myself first?”
“Then… Hello.” He smiled wider. “I’m Roman.”