On a different night...
II. Magician
He'd stayed in places like these in the past, hotels with cracked walls and cheap soap bars and clean but worn out bed sheets− yet this felt different. Tonight, he was seeing everything through eyes he never knew he possessed. The walls were crystal mirrors, the ceiling was comprised of graceful arches, and the lamps were silver candlesticks.
Tonight… he'd entered as a magician. He would change the room effortlessly; play with the luminosity and play with the colors and make the illusion perfect. He was an illusionist; he would snap his fingers and the light would be on and off and the shadows would change and they'd hide in the darkness together.
He trailed his fingers along the wooden bar, noticing the small dents for the first time. They looked like carvings… subtle inscriptions he now had the power to interpret, because tonight, he was a magician. He looked down at his hands, and he was wearing gloves, white and spotless and they seemed to be made of silk; he was holding a deck of cards and a wand, and he knew all the tricks− he'd transform the room and claim it, claim the night as his, and claim the world as theirs.
When he looked up, she was standing across the bed near the window, watching him. Her gaze was intimate; a gaze that could only ever be associated with her and this particular room, these particular, private instants. He liked it when she smiled at him like that; when he felt cold and warm at the same time and she ignited feelings inside him that no illusionist could ever have recreated without her.
She watched, fascinated, as he produced two mugs and how, in what felt like seconds, he conjured up two cups of coffee. Strong for him, and dark like his eyes. Foaming, steaming for her; a cappuccino. The smell rose around them, teasing senses. He breathed in the scent and appreciated the flavor and the hot liquid slowly slid down his throat, worked its magic and spread its warmth. The temperature in the room shifted, neither of them surprised. Magicians make things feel warmer; they enter a quiet, gloomy room and transform it with a snap of their fingers; they cast spells on the furniture and spells on the walls and spells on people themselves.
He was making the moment magic− magic like their first kiss, magic like their next, magic like this place. He brushed past her to take off his jacket, leaving it on the back of a seat that had turned into a finely worked armchair. The carpet felt like a thick rug when he walked to her, and the curtains were worthy of those you find in castles. But he wasn't the jester, he was the king. A king and a magician and not the kind of man who calls a girl for the night and asks her to meet him in a room like this one; not the guy who comes here for one reason alone, to use and to be used. He was here to make tonight magical, to enchant the room and turn it into something alive and exceptional.
A flick of the wrist, and their empty mugs vanished into thin air. She'd missed that− the magic acts, the ease with which he exercised control over the room; the intensity in his eyes when he looked at her as if he'd never quite been here before.
The flame that lit the candlestick vacillated, and it was only then that she noticed his silken gloves and the deck of cards in his hands and the décor he'd created so skillfully to fit with her mood. He shuffled the cards in the air and dealt them, making pairs and flushes and straights, imagining a new combination each time. The deck came alive in his hands. Clubs and spades and diamonds and hearts and she watched, hypnotized, as he played a game only she could understand. Diamond ace, diamond queen. A full house. Tonight, he was a magician and an illusionist. A jack. A knight. Four of a kind, another flush, and she knew there was only one card left−
He drew a joker. She looked up at him, surprised and not sure of what it meant until he retrieved two cards she didn't know he'd kept in his sleeve. He handed them to her, a small smirk pulling at the corners of his lips.
A king and a queen. Now she reciprocated his amusement, meeting his eyes and letting him know she appreciated what he'd done. The room was no longer bare; it held tapestries and a canopy bed and carved furniture. This was their kingdom. Tonight he was a magician, a king, an architect.
He had entered a room and built her a castle.