Pairing: Jaime/Cassie
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~600
Prompt: elevator, 10:26 PM
For: dikemon

... ...

All she really wants to do right now is go upstairs to their hotel room and sleep, and it's not even because she's really tired or anything. She's just kind of done with this wedding, which sounds horrible, she knows, but it's the only thing she's been allowed to focus on all day since she woke up this morning and had to meet Donna and the rest of the bridal party at the salon to get their hair and makeup done. She supposes that's what happens when you're the little sister of the bride and you get roped into being so involved with the planning that suddenly you feel entirely obligated to make sure everything goes smoothly.

She probably would've felt obligated, anyway, even if she had nothing to do with the planning, because she loves Donna and that's what sisters do, but still.

She's kind of done with weddings until it's her own.

Anyway, she finds Donna's husband's best friend, Wally, stationed at the chocolate fountain with his girlfriend and tells the both of them that she's going to go upstairs now. Eventually one of them will be able to get the word out to her family if they start looking for her, and she doesn't feel like hunting down her parents to tell them herself, so.

She slips out through the side door closest to the dessert table and shivers a little. The hallway is significantly colder than the ballroom and it's kind of really refreshing.

There's only one other person waiting for the elevators when she arrives and he looks almost her age. He's wearing a tuxedo, too, but she's pretty sure she didn't see him in the ballroom at all, so he's obviously not someone coming from their party.

His eyes widen just a little bit when he sees her, his cheeks coloring slightly, and she fights off her own blush. "Are you going up too?" he asks, kind of rushing it all out. She smiles gently, tucks her hair behind her ear. He laughs, embarrassed. "Sorry, of course you're going up. This is the bottom floor."

"You never know," she says. "I could have a room in the basement."

He laughs again and it comes out more relaxed this time. She smiles a little wider. Then the elevator chimes as the doors slide open, and he gestures for her to step in first.

"What floor?" he asks.

"Twelfth," she answers, and then adds on an exhale, "Or anywhere, really. I'm in no rush to go to bed."

"Why is that?"

She doesn't reply, though, because she's distracted. The elevator they're in is entirely glass, so she has a perfect view of the giant pond in the center of the hotel lobby. She didn't really get a good look at it until now because she was busy running from the ballroom to the hotel room anytime she passed by here, but it's beautiful. It's lit with colored lights hidden underneath the rocks all along the edge and decorated with all of these gorgeous plants draping from the overhang. There's a fountain, too, with statues of mermaids lounging on rocks in the very center of the pond, and the water is so clear that she can easily see all of the copper and silver coins glistening at the bottom of the water.

"It's pretty, right?" She nods, turns to look at the boy. He's smiling at her and, for whatever reason, that makes her blush a little more. "It's my favorite part of this hotel."

"You come here a lot?"

He nods, grinning as he shrugs. "I have a big family, so we're always celebrating something."

"Sounds like fun," she says, meaning it. Then she glances at the buttons on the wall. "Um, where are we going?"

His grin gets a little bigger. "To the top floor," he replies. "There's a really nice garden up there with another fountain and seating areas. I figured maybe you'd like to see it since you don't want to go back to your hotel room right away. I mean, we don't have to if you—"

"I'd love to," she interrupts, smiling. "Thank you, uh…"

"Jaime," he supplies.

"Jaime," she echoes. His smile makes her cheeks warm, but she hardly cares about that anymore. "I'm Cassie," she says, and it's stupid, really, that when he slips his hand in hers to shake it, she can't help but wonder if how she feels is the same way Donna feels whenever she holds Dick's hand.