Chapter Text
As Vegas steps into the luxurious hotel restaurant, he immediately understands why this place is bleeding money. It has the major family’s tastes written all over it, all sharp minimalistic edges and champagne-colored accents, which might have been fine twenty years ago. But today, with the surrounding neighborhood abandoning sophistication for a faster and dirtier kind of entertainment, that’s not going to fly.
Vegas certainly has his work cut out for him.
He’s seated and given a drink menu to mull over before the server arrives, and he takes the time to sweep his eyes over the floor. There are plenty of empty tables even on a Friday evening, and most of the clientele are on the older end. Even dressed as he is in pressed slacks and a silk shirt, Vegas is underdressed. This is the kind of venue you go to if you want to show off how much money you have to throw around, and it’s out of place as all hell on a road lined with nightclubs and back alley bars.
It needs cheaper food and stronger alcohol. An overly grand ballroom populated by wealthy geriatrics isn’t going to cut it.
Vegas is abruptly brought out of his musings by a bright voice off to his side, introducing themselves and asking what he’d like to start the night off with. When Vegas swings his tired gaze over to the server, he’s met with the sight of a plain man in a plain white button up beneath a plain waistcoat. He's got fluffy dark hair, a little on the shaggy side as it falls in his eyes. A customer-service-ready smile sitting on his lips. There’s a quality of his face that somehow makes him look both older and younger than Vegas – something broad and masculine, but rounded and innocent. Entirely too simple, too bland.
Vegas sighs. He really has his work cut out for him.
“No food, just bring me a bottle of Ave de Presa,” he says, “And take a seat to join me for a little while.”
The man’s smile takes on an awkward sort of desperation. “I’m afraid it’s not that kind of establishment, sir.”
Vegas tilts his head and regards the server carefully. “Not the kind to carry Ave de Presa? Or not the kind that rents out pretty boys for the right price?”
The server’s grin turns into a grimace. “We have a wide selection of red and white wines available. But we’re not a host club, sir.”
Vegas clicks his tongue and glances out across the restaurant floors, at the aging clientele and the empty tables. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
The server seems to see an out, and takes a step back from the table. “I’ll have that bottle in a moment, sir.”
“What was your name, again?” Vegas asks, snapping his fingers at the poor waiter trying to make a break for it.
“Pete, sir.”
“Nice to meet you, Pete,” Vegas says. “I’m your new boss.”
Pete blinks owlishly at him. “My…?”
“Vegas Kornwit Theerapanyakul,” Vegas enunciates slowly, enjoying the way the color bleeds from Pete’s face. “Your old boss was my cousin, but my uncle just handed this place down to me. Didn’t anyone tell you guys about the change in management? As your boss, I think you should join me for a drink.”
It looks like a struggle for Pete to plaster the fake smile back on his face. “Yes, sir.”
“Call me Vegas.”
“Yes, Khun Vegas, sir.”
Whatever. Close enough.
It takes longer than Vegas would expect for Pete to reappear, though Vegas can’t tell if that’s indicative of this place’s usual service or if it’s because Pete was doing everything he could to stall the inevitable. Vegas doesn’t try to veil the perverse sort of appreciation in his eyes as Pete uncorks the bottle and pours the first glass. He’s got nice hands. Capable looking hands, with broad palms and thick fingers. There’s a scabbing split on one of his knuckles, and Vegas can’t help but be curious about it.
“If you change your mind and want anything else,” Pete says, wearing that fake smile again, and it’s starting to piss Vegas off, “Don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll be back to check on you again soon.”
“None of that,” Vegas scolds, and reaches out to grab Pete’s wrist before he can run away.
What he doesn’t expect is for Pete to hiss in pain and jerk his arm away to hold it safely behind his back.
Vegas quirks an eyebrow. He really didn’t squeeze that hard. “Aren’t you a delicate flower? Come on and sit, I told you I want to talk to you.”
“I need to do my job,” Pete insists, and Vegas rolls his eyes.
“This place is dead, get someone else to cover your tables.”
“I really can’t–” Pete continues to protest, but Vegas cuts him off with a wave of the hand as he gets the attention of a different server passing them by.
“Take over Pete’s tables, will you?” he says, smiling with teeth in a way that makes it obvious that he’s not asking so much as telling. “I’m taking over management of this place and I want to survey the employees. Don’t worry, you’ll get your turn, too.”
The waiter and Pete share confused looks, but the nameless man folds far easier than Pete.
“Of course, sir,” he says, and scurries off.
Pete watches him go with the forlorn grimace of a man who's been left to die to a hungry jackal. Vegas leans back with his arms braced on the soft cushion of the single-seat booth and smiles at the nervous mess in front of him.
“Well, Pete,” he nods to the cushion next to him. “Take a seat.”
Pete looks at the empty space like he’d rather gargle nails, but he quickly sits himself on the very edge of the seat – as far away from Vegas as possible. Like this, Vegas can barely touch him even with his arm outstretched.
Too bad. This one’s starting to look a little cute, in a prey animal sort of way.
“Alright, Pete,” Vegas swirls the wine in his glass, leaving one arm flung across the back of the seat so his fingertips can keep teasing their way into Pete’s personal space, “Tell me about this place.”
Pete swallows. “We’re a premium locally-owned and established dining lounge offering seafood and–”
“I didn’t mean to give me a fucking sales pitch,” Vegas barks, making Pete jump. “My uncle says you’ve been losing profit for years, why do you think that is based on what you see here every day?”
Pete nervously scratches at his temple for a moment, keeping his eyes downcast. He’s so twitchy and awkward, Vegas could probably sit here all night and make him sweat.
“Very few people who stay in the hotel are the intended clientele for the restaurant these days,” Pete says. “We stopped requiring reservations a year ago. Most of the advanced booking for rooms are businessmen or tourists, and most of the daily booking is younger people. Or… Older men with younger women. Couples, who don’t want to dine-in, they just want…”
He trails off, and Vegas grins. “They just want to fuck.”
Pete clears his throat and squares his shoulders, looking like a brave little boy scout. “Yep.”
“No overlap in the patrons of the two services,” Vegas nods.
“It’s the neighborhood,” Pete explains, which is about what Vegas figured. “We’re still trying to be an elegant tourist trap, but that’s not what people come out here for anymore.”
“They come out here to get shiftaced and wet their dicks.”
“That’s… One way to put it.”
Vegas taps his fingers restlessly against the stem of his wine glass. “I suppose turning this place into a love hotel would be too much of a 180.”
“I don’t think it's, um, conspicuous enough for that. Sir.”
Vegas shoots Pete a sideways glance, letting a dirty grin play out across his lips. “You know a lot about conspicuous hotels, Pete?”
Pete’s eyes widen a fraction as he refuses to move his gaze away from the wood grain of the wide table. “Not a thing, sir.”
“Shame,” Vegas says softly, and finally caves into the urge to touch.
It’s just a soft thing, the barely there whisper of his index and middle fingers brushing the flushed back of Pete’s neck. But it seems to hit Pete like an electric current, making him jerk and his seat and stiffen his shoulders like he’s fighting the urge to hunch them.
Vegas’s grin practically becomes a leer.
“Then what would you propose?” Vegas asks, letting his fingers fall back against the plush back of the seat.
Pete blinks rapidly a few times, as if he’s trying to collect his thoughts. “I’m… I’m no businessman, I’m not sure…”
Vegas sighs, and bites the bullet. “Pete, how much do you know about my family?”
The heartbeat of hesitation in Pete’s response doesn’t go unnoticed. “Enough. A little more than most people who work here, probably. But your family’s… Activities, they’re understood. Most of us have seen Khun Kinn here on business talks.”
Vegas can practically picture it: Kinn in his ombre suits under the tacky chandelier lighting, sipping white wine and settling deals with patriarchs that are older than both of their fathers. That might work for how the major family conducts business, but it won’t fly in the minor family, and it won’t keep this place alive on a street like this much longer.
“My cousin handles the squeaky clean deals,” Vegas explains, “Compared to what I do, he’s an upstanding citizen. What do you know about me and the kind of work I do?”
“Nothing at all,” Pete admits, and Vegas has to stamp down the annoyed sneer at the reminder that he's nobody next to Kinn. “But I get the feeling you’re interested in more than just updating the menu.”
“My father and I have been brainstorming some pretty extensive renovation ideas,” Vegas says vaguely. “This could become a dangerous place to work.”
To his surprise, Pete snorts softly next to him. “Khun Vegas, sir, I’m frequently roped into moving the boxes in the basement. I know about that side of your family’s business. A little danger is fine.”
The boxes in question being crates full of disassembled firearms. The only explicitly illegal activity this hotel has seen for years has been as a checkpoint for smuggling guns.
“I wasn’t trying to reassure you,” Vegas teases, “But I’m glad the employees here know what they’re getting into.”
“I told you,” Pete says, voice taking a bit of a bolder color even as he continues to avoid Vegas’s wandering eyes, “I know more about your family than most people here. What you do doesn’t bother me, but taking things too deep might scare some other employees away.”
“Then I’ll replace the other employees,” Vegas says. “What makes you so special, though?”
“You… Don’t know?” Pete frowns. “No one bothered to tell you?”
“This place technically hasn’t even been handed over to me yet,” Vegas says dryly. “I don’t know jack or shit about any of you.”
Pete sighs, and by now, the cordial server smile is completely gone from his face. Instead, he looks weary and closed off. Definitely older than Vegas, that much is obvious now.
“Might as well tell you now, then,” Pete says. “I was hired directly by your cousin. My father owes your family a lot of money. So I’m working here to pay off the debt.”
“Sold out by your dad?” Vegas whistles, low and mean. “Tough luck.”
Pete’s a grown ass man, he shouldn’t be beholden to his father’s debts. But then again – so is Vegas. When was the last time he did something that wasn’t sanctioned by dear old dad? That’s why he’s here in the first place. Another impossible task for him to fail at, his own collapsing ivory tower.
“Is what it is,” Pete says with feigned indifference.
“Is that common around here?”
Pete shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Just me.”
“Well, isn’t it lucky you’re my server tonight, then,” Vegas grins, letting his legs fall open wide enough that his knee nearly knocks into Pete’s. “Looks like there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye.”
Pete smiles in bashfulness that seems to mask a deeper unspoken discomfort. “I wouldn’t go that far, sir.”
“I’ll be the judge,” Vegas says with finality, before finally dropping his arm from the back of the seat rest so he can squeeze Pete’s shoulder. A gesture that could be mistaken for friendly, if not for the low tone of Vegas’s voice, or the way Vegas’s eyes burn when they sweep across Pete’s body.
There’s nothing friendly at all in the way his hand drags lower, over the surprisingly solid swell of a bicep beneath the unflattering fit of the shirt, all the way down to the bone of Pete’s wrists. Vegas squeezes again, watching Pete’s face closely, and – ah, his wrist is definitely bruised. Vegas trails his hand lower still, letting his palm envelop Pete’s hand so he can turn it towards him to get another look at the split in his knuckle.
There are markers of violence hiding away in his body, and he expects Vegas to believe he’s just a server paying off a debt? No way it’s that simple.
“You’re so far away, Pete,” Vegas says, rubbing his thumb over the scab. “Why don’t you come a little closer?”
Pete’s face is on fire as he finally works up the nerve to jerk his hand away from Vegas’s invasive touch, pointedly looking away from the other man as he says, “I’m fine over here. What you’re asking for… I’m not offering.”
“Shame,” Vegas shrugs and reaches for the bottle to refill his glass. “How about some wine, then? Not every day you get to drink on the job.”
Pete eyes the bottle warily. “Uh – no thanks.”
The blunt edge to his voice makes Vegas laugh. “Relax, Pete, I’m not going to get you drunk and take advantage. I like my men willing.”
Red wine rolls in a soft wave against the wide curve of the bottom of the glass.
“Limp dead weight, that’s no fun.”
The fumes of the wine are sweet and sharp as Vegas swirls the dark liquid in his glass. When the light shines through onto his fingers gripping the stem, they’re saturated in red.
“I’d rather have you mewling and crying for more,” Vegas says. “Sorry – I mean, a guy like you. I don’t mean to frighten you, Pete.”
By now, Pete looks deeply uncomfortable. Red ears, shifting eyes, tension in his shoulders, and – oh. His legs are crossed, broad hands resting awkwardly over his lap. Vegas smiles like a snake. How cute.
Now, a little test.
“Since you’ve sat down, how many new patrons have arrived?” Vegas asks in a stern voice, entirely unlike the cruel flirting from earlier.
“Four,” Pete says immediately. “To fill two tables. An older couple we see once a month, and an old man with a much younger woman.”
So he doesn’t become entirely useless and unaware under pressure. That’s something, at least.
“Don’t recognize the mismatched couple?”
“No, sir,” Pete says. “He probably hired her. If I had to guess… Escort, not hostess.”
“Is the distinction important?”
“Here? Very,” Pete says. “Hostesses don’t usually sleep with their clients, so we lose room revenue. And on top of that, there are plenty of clients who don't take no for an answer, so we have to deal with whatever problems that arise from that.”
Vegas hums in consideration. “And what’s the typical protocol for problem customers?”
“Avoid calling the cops if we can,” Pete explains, which is what Vegas likes to hear. “I’ve gotten good at getting rid of the rowdier customers, sir.”
“You?” Vegas scoffs. Yeah, Pete’s arms might feel nice and solid under that shirt, but he looks so… So… Harmless.
Pete glances over at Vegas, meeting his eyes in what feels like the first time since he took a seat. Vegas swears Pete’s making his eyes a little rounder, almost batting his lashes.
“You find that hard to believe?”
“Absolutely,” Vegas says. “Does your job description include bouncer duties?”
“No, Khun Vegas, sir,” Pete smiles. “I’m just a server.”
-
Pete is not just a fucking server, Vegas is sure of it.
Over the next two weeks, Vegas is in and out of the hotel dozens of times with a small team of interior designers working out the best way to bring the hotel’s first floor into the current decade. But more importantly, he’s working on transforming the basement level into something that might actually be lucrative. His father thinks the best hope for this property to ever make money again is by installing a gambling den, so that's what he does.
It wouldn’t be the first casino Vegas has helped manage for his family, but it certainly would be the first one he’s built from the ground up in the subterranean level of the world’s shittiest luxury hotel.
“Pete,” Vegas asks in the bustling kitchen one afternoon as Pete gathers elegantly plated seafood dishes on his arm like a particularly talented octopus, “What do you know about gambling?”
“Only that my grandma tried to teach me how to count cards when I was nine, but I still can’t win big at blackjack.”
And then he’s gone, disappearing out onto the ballroom floor, leaving behind nothing but the gentle wisp of lobster-scented steam. Vegas crosses his arms and shakes his head.
“How about you?” he asks one of the senior chefs, an older man who never seems to measure a damn thing but still makes perfect dishes anyway.
“Less than Pete, sir,” is the only reply, and Vegas doesn’t know why he even bothered.
If one thing is for certain, it’s that he’s going to have to bring in an entire new batch of employees to work the casino. Not just for the different skillset, but because everyone who works here now is a stuck-up prick that still seems to hold a level of distrust for Vegas and the minor family management as a whole.
Well. Everyone but Pete.
It was some kind of luck for Pete to be his server that day, because no one else is anywhere near as inclined to speak directly to Vegas as Pete is. Which is saying something, considering Pete still acts like Vegas is the big bad wolf about to gobble him up at any second.
That might be all the leering. Pete is very leer-able, and it’s not Vegas’s fault that he becomes so much more fun when he’s squirming and uncomfortable.
But that’s beside the point. Vegas sat down one-on-one with most of the regular staff, but those conversations barely lasted five minutes. It would seem that most people here know that their jobs are in the hands of some shady characters, but they’re all fairly disengaged from the reality of being indirectly employed by the mafia.
Because this place truly is a massive waste of property to the family.
Whatever sort of front it may have been when it was acquired decades ago by uncle Korn has long since been disbanded. It generates no backroom currency, so the family has invested very little into managing it over the years. And because it’s been so mismanaged, it’s losing legitimate money now.
And Vegas has to turn it around, lest he be branded a failure once again. Great. Fantastic.
The only daily consolation is that he gets a free chew toy out of it.
For being such a bland person, there's a sense of undeniable mystery about Pete. He wears an open smile, but keeps himself closed off tight. He's a model employee, but his work schedule is sporadic and he's frequently seen around the hotel long before his shifts being. Vegas doesn’t know what Pete’s living arrangements are like, and he doesn’t particularly care. But he does know that Pete apparently doesn't shower where he lives, because he shows up early every day so he can shower and change in the small locker room adjoining the hotel’s indoor pool. Vegas follows him there once, catching a glimpse of surprisingly well-defined back muscles when Pete pulls his scruffy t-shirt over his head.
Vegas can’t help letting out a long, low whistle at the sight.
Pete whirls around on his heel with a startled gasp, clutching his shirt to his bare chest like a virginal maiden. “Khun Vegas! What are you doing here?”
“Checking out the pool in my new hotel,” Vegas answers, pushing himself away from the doorway he was leaning against to saunter into Pete’s personal space. “Is that a problem?”
“This is the locker room,” Pete says like an idiot. “The pool is out there.”
“Thanks, Pete,” Vegas deadpans. “You think I need help finding my own balls, too?”
To that, Pete clamps his mouth shut and goes a bit red at the ears. He’s filthy, in a way that’s different from the normal accumulation of sweat and grime on a man. He looks like someone made him filthy. Sweat shining at his temples, hair mussed and a little damp, cheeks red. He smells like copper and salt. Perspiration, and a hint of something else. Blood, maybe.
“You look like you just got jumped in an alleyway,” Vegas says, because telling Pete what he’s really thinking would probably make Pete pass out from the shame.
“I uh,” Pete’s eyes shift uncomfortably for a second before he puts on a strained smile, “I work out before clocking in every day. So I come in here to change and shower.”
Vegas levels him with a hard stare. “And your gym doesn’t have a locker room?”
“No,” Pete says, refusing to elaborate, “It doesn’t.”
“If only daddy wasn’t siphoning your paychecks,” Vegas reaches out to run a hand along the curve of a strong bicep, smiling a little when Pete jerks away, “Maybe you could afford a better place to tune up that body of yours. Enjoy your shower, Pete.”
And then he turns to leave Pete standing like an idiot in the middle of the small locker room, still covering his chest with his shirt as if his modesty is safe from Vegas.
Unfortunately for Pete, every little gesture entices Vegas further. There’s something about him that piques Vegas’s curiosity, something unspoken and unseen beneath his nervous smiles and cordiality. Pressing against the boundaries of Pete’s discomfort is just about the only joy Vegas has managed to get out of this godforsaken failure of a business venture so far.
So forgive him for doing every little thing he can to make Pete squirm.
-
When the renovation plans have been finalized and Vegas announces that the restaurant will be closed for a minimum of four weeks, half the staff cut their losses and leaves. It’ll reopen as a pretty standard hotel bar, and most of the servers won’t have a proper job to return to since they’re trained specifically in luxury hospitality. Vegas has already handed off the task of hiring on a new roster of employees to a manager he plucked from another minor family business. He’s confident that they can bring in some new faces that’ll fit the place better.
But ah, of course, that leaves poor little Pete out in the rain, his daddy’s debts stalling out for at least a month.
“There are other ways you can make money for my family,” Vegas says from behind the mahogany desk he hand transplanted into this room. There’s an ominous sort of vagueness in the statement, and it makes Pet’s face spell out murder.
They’re in the penthouse suite of the hotel, no longer a rentable space now that Vegas has claimed it as his own on-site apartment and office since apparently it rarely gets booked due to the exorbitant pricing. He fell in love with the view of the river as soon as he saw it. It’s nighttime now, and lights from the ferries and cargo ships blink like fireflies. Pete is utterly uninterested in them as he tries to barter for a front desk job for the next month so he can keep up on his earnings.
Vegas doesn’t want to deal with this. While the bar is being renovated on the ground floor, the basement is being renovated into a casino floor. He has most of his bases covered, but they’re struggling to find people to man the tables.
Need stupid muscle that isn’t afraid to fight and die to save a single hair on Vegas’s head? How about pretty girls and boys playing eye candy under the hazy light? Bouncers, dancers, door guards, bodies bodies bodies – the minor family has an endless supply of bodies.
As if Vegas’s annoyance couldn’t mount any further, Pete opens his mouth again. “If I could speak to Khun Kinn–”
“Fucking Kinn,” Vegas heaves a sigh and sends a paperweight flying from the edge of his desk, landing a few feet to Pete’s left. Pete doesn’t jump away, but he does go rigid and wide-eyed. “Even here I can’t get away from fucking Kinn. His hand-me-down jobs, hand-me-down hotel, his hand-me-down whores–”
“I’m not a whore,” Pete grits out, losing his grasp on his perfect employee act.
“I’m not talking about you,” Vegas fires back. “If you were a whore this conversation would be much less of a headache. Wouldn’t that be easier? I could just keep you tied up in here for four weeks, how about that?”
“Khun Kinn gave me this specific job because I told him I wouldn’t earn the money on my back,” Pete says. “No matter how much faster that would pay off the debt.”
“Your integrity is adorable,” Vegas drawls sarcastically, “But I’m not throwing you in some random position you’re not trained for just to keep your daddy out of hot water with my cousin.”
“I can do it,” Pete insists. “Any job you give me here, I can do it.”
Vegas opens his mouth to deride Pete some more – but stops himself short as his brain turns those words around. “Is that so?”
“I’ve worked at this hotel for years,” Pete says. “I started out as a valet and got thrown into the restaurant to fill in during an emergency, and they kept me there even though I have none of the qualifications. I know how things are done around here, and I know how to learn quickly.”
“And what about something completely new?” Vegas asks, standing up from his desk and walking around it to stop in front of Pete. “How quickly can you adapt to totally unfamiliar territory?”
Pete, to his credit, doesn’t take a step back. He’s a bit prideful, almost haughty, as he says, “Whatever job you need me to do, I can figure it out. As long as it’s a normal job.”
Vegas takes great pleasure in watching that pride shrink away with the simple gesture of his hand on Pete’s chin, touching him softly with an intimate threat. “You said you’ve played blackjack before. Know anything about dealing?”
“Not really,” Pete admits, keeping his hard gaze fixed on Vegas’s face even as he tries to tip his chin up and out of Vegas’s grasp. Vegas doesn’t let him, he simply rubs his thumb across the broad plane of Pete’s chin, just barely brushing the slope of his lower lip.
There’s an odd, oily patch of skin there. Vegas rubs his thumb harder against it, and the room is just quiet enough that he hears Pete’s pained inhale right before Pete finally jerks out of his grasp.
Concealer, Vegas notices now that he’s looking, a bit mismatched to his skin tone. Covering a bruise, no doubt. The skin was hot under his touch, but that could have been for any number of reasons.
Pete, Pete, what are you hiding?
“No,” Vegas takes a step back, allowing Pete to breathe a little. “No, I don’t want you at a blackjack table. I’ll pay you the regular rate for the next four weeks, but you’re going to spend that time training to become a croupier.”
Pete’s eyes are a wary as he asks, “A what?”
“Like a dealer, but for roulette,” Vegas explains. “I need to fill a few positions, and I don’t want you working the hotel floor anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Because I plan on spending most of my time on the casino floor,” Vegas says, returning to sit at his desk. The unspoken implication hangs over them – I want to keep an eye on my new favorite chew toy.
“Uh,” Pete’s brain seems to sputter and stall as he processes that. “Okay. So, how am I supposed to learn how to be a… A crappier?”
“Croupier,” Vegas enunciates in the most obnoxiously flat American accent he can. “Be here around noon on Monday. My family runs a number of small gambling houses, I’ll take you out to one so somebody can show you the ropes.”
“Not very formal,” Pete observes.
“It’s illegal,” Vegas reminds him. “There aren’t exactly official courses I can send you to. You just need to learn how to work the table, and let that stupid smile of yours do the rest of the work.”
Pete’s not smiling now, though. If anything, he looks a bit prickly and agitated at the jab. Vegas fights the urge to roll his eyes – as if Pete doesn’t know that goofy grin of his has village idiot written all over it. Vegas is plenty observant, he knows by now that Pete is all bullshit.
He just wants to know why Pete feels the need to play up his harmless stupidity so hard.
“Fine,” Pete says, angling his head down in deference. “Monday at noon. I can do that.”
-
Come Monday at noon, Pete’s singing a different tune.
He looks different, dressed down from his crisp shirt and waistcoat. Instead, he’s wearing a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt beneath a cheap-looking patterned short sleeve shirt. It immediately makes Vegas think that Pete wouldn’t look too out of place back at the minor family compound, if he was just a little rougher around the edges.
So it’s fitting that Vegas is dressed down today, too, in a simple black t-shirt. He’s decided to forgo a leather jacket under the sweltering midday sun, but the look seems to stun Pete into awkward silence anyway.
Or maybe it’s the bike that does that.
“Don’t you own a car?” Pete's eyes roaming warily over the Ducati as he nervously scratches his elbow. “You strike me as the Maserati type.”
“Of course I do, but the place we’re headed to is on a narrow side street,” Vegas explains. “This is much easier. Unless…”
He leans his forearms across the handles and grins with unbridled cruelty.
“Are you afraid of a little bike ride, Pete?”
“No,” Pete says, a little too quickly. And then, “Give me the helmet.”
Vegas does. By jamming it over Pete’s head, pushing his fluffy fringe over his eyes and making him squawk in indignation.
“Jerk,” Pete mutters beneath the helmet, and Vegas laughs at his expense.
“Get on, and hold on tight,” Vegas gestures behind him. “Don’t want you falling off.”
Pete crawls onto the bike like he thinks it’s going to eat him. His body is stiff, angled as far away from Vegas as possible.
“I said, hold on.”
Without a jacket, there’s nothing loose for Pete to grab. He winds up with his fingers hooked in Vegas’s belt loops, and Vegas decides to demonstrate why that’s fucking stupid by accelerating fast enough that poor Pete’s heavy helmeted head probably jerks back hard enough to give him whiplash.
Point made, though: with a startled noise, Pete’s reflexes override his shame, and he grabs Vegas more fully around the waist.
“Is that so bad?” Vegas asks over the hum of the engine.
To his absolute delight, the reply is a muffled, “Oh, fuck you!”
Vegas’s laughter is lost to the wind.
It takes about a half hour to get to their destination, even with all the shortcuts and lane-splitting that makes Pete’s thighs clamp down in anxiety around Vegas every time they get a little too close to hot metal. His reluctance to touch has long-since been abandoned, and now Pete seems content to fuse himself to Vegas’s back like a leech.
“How the hell do you not get hit doing this?” Pete hollers after yet another near-miss with another vehicle.
“Anyone who hits a guy on a Ducati knows they’ll be in worse shape than he is after the lawsuits roll in,” Vegas explains, and swears he can hear a forlorn muttering of fucking hell behind him.
When they roll to a stop outside of the nondescript parlor, Pete wastes no time jumping off the bike and fighting his way out of the helmet. Vegas can’t be blamed for laughing at the sight he makes – anyone would: flushed cheeks and disheveled hair, half flat and half sticking straight up.
“Come here,” he gets his fingers in Pete’s hair, trying to make him less like an idiot. To his surprise, Pete doesn’t jerk away. If anything, he bows his head, letting Vegas make him look presentable.
Pete is the taller one between them, but it somehow feels like he’s looking up at Vegas as Vegas fixes his hair on this dusty little side street. Those eyes of his are pretty when they’re glowing from the adrenaline of a new experience. At least, Vegas assumes it’s a new experience.
“Was that your first bike ride?” he asks.
“I’ve ridden scooters,” Pete says. “But – yeah, I guess. On a bike like that.”
“And how was it?” Vegas asks, tucking a lock of shaggy hair behind Pete’s ear and looping his fingers all the way back down around to nudge Pete’s chin up. “Are your legs still shaking?”
Pete’s mouth falls open in a soft little gape, and for the first time Vegas is blindsided by actual desire for Pete. Not just the urge to prod at him and tease him for the fun of it. For a split second, Vegas wants to cancel the agenda for the afternoon so he can take Pete somewhere else, somewhere that he can break him down into a soft little whimpering mess.
This guy, this random fucking nobody, is going to make Vegas do something stupid one of these days.
“The crappier training,” are the words that slip between those sweet lips, ruining the mood immediately. “I need–”
“Croupier,” Vegas grabs Pete by the upper arm and hauls him through the door. “Come on.”
Vegas didn’t drag Pete all the way out to this particular hole in the wall for no reason. He has his own work to do in this neighborhood, so he dumps Pete off in the hands of an older man who has been handling roulette tables for the last twenty years and wishes him the best of luck. The rest of his day, his entire goddamn day, is spent trying to unfuck a massive logistics issue with a supplier in the area. The sun has painted the horizon pinkish orange by the time he returns to that dusty little gambling parlor to find Pete sitting outside under the setting sun, three old men flanking him in a heated debate.
For a second, Vegas worries he might have to rescue his little croupier-in-training. But then Pete says something that’s met with raucous laughter, and Vegas has to contend with something even more horrifying: Pete is perfectly at home amid a group of sixty-somethings.
“Everything alright?” Vegas asks as he approaches.
“Of course, Khun Vegas,” one of the men greets with a wave. “Your new boy here broke in easy. I might just steal him for myself.”
“If this shitty hotel goes under, then you can have him,” Vegas promises. He shifts his gaze to Pete. “So, you think you can handle roulette, or are you having second thoughts on me?”
Pete smiles. “I told you. If you need me to do something, I can do it.”
A satisfying answer, the kind Vegas wishes he heard more often.
They say their goodbyes to the men and start walking away towards the bike, but Pete tries to insist he can get home just fine on his own. There are plenty of buses still running, and he doesn’t want to trouble Vegas with dropping him off.
“I’m in the mood for a ride anyway,” Vegas says as he swings his leg over the bike and holds the helmet out to Pete. “Come on.”
But Pete hesitates. “Thank you, Khun Vegas, but you really don’t have to.”
Vegas cocks his head to the side in curiosity. “I’m not offering, I’m telling. Where do you want me to drop you off, Pete?”
Pete meets his eyes. He does that much more comfortably nowadays. He’s still twitchy and nervous, but there’s a degree of tamed boldness about him. Vegas wants to unearth more of it.
“Just take me back to the hotel.”
“Pete,” Vegas warns, “You’re starting to piss me off–”
“I’m serious,” Pete says. “I stay at the hotel most nights... Every night, if I can. The single capsule-sized rooms are cheap enough with the employee discount.”
Vegas considers that for a moment. “So… You live in the hotel?"
Pete shrugs. “Basically.”
Huh. Vegas does too at this point, more or less. All those nights Vegas has watched Pete close down the restaurant, tired-eyed and tempting, only for Vegas to go up to the penthouse and pay some pretty thing to fuck out all his frustration on… Pete has been somewhere down below him all this time.
That’s very interesting.
“Alright,” Vegas says, tossing the helmet to Pete. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”
Pete crawls onto the Ducati just as awkwardly as before, and Vegas turns back to shoot him a smirk.
“But we’re going to go for a ride first.”
Pete’s big helmeted head jerks up as he blinks owlishly through the visor. “A ride?”
Vegas doesn’t elaborate, he just drives.
The day is cooling off, and he really should have grabbed his jacket for this. He knows his skin will be a bit dry and chapped, but he doesn’t really give a damn. Not when he takes Pete far from that quiet dingy neighborhood and out onto wider roads, where he can push the bike much faster, tearing across asphalt and straight into the wind. It makes Pete cling to him more tightly than before, arms wound fully around Vegas’s middle as he leans hard into Vegas’s body.
Vegas wishes he could say he can feel the way Pete’s thighs squeeze his body, or the rabbit-thumping of his heartbeat. But he can’t. He can only feel the engine beneath him and the grooves of the road, the chill of the wind standing out in counterpoint to the heat of Pete’s body.
He doesn’t need to feel anything else as he races against the setting sun and drives into the deep inkwell of nightfall.
They’ve been on the road for at least a full hour by the time they hit slower city traffic again, and it almost feels wrong to cut the engine in the quiet VIP parking behind the hotel. Pete wastes no time breaking that silence, though, when he takes his helmet off and immediately releases an echoing shout into the warm night air above them.
Vegas puts the kickstand down with a mean little laugh. “You okay back there, Pete?”
“I’m great, Khun Vegas,” Pete says in the least convincing voice possible. “Never better, Khun Vegas.”
“Give me that, you big baby,” Vegas takes the helmet and offers out his other hand for Pete to take. Pete does, swinging his leg over the bike and standing on solid ground like he doesn’t know how to use his legs.
“I feel like I’m made of rubber,” Pete complains, shifting his weight back and forth from foot to foot.
“You know, most people beg me to make them feel like that.”
“Okay, time for me to get inside,” Pete straightens up and puts on his best Dutiful Employee face. “Thank you for the ride, Khun Vegas.”
Vegas can’t help himself, he really can’t. “It’s always the hardest the first time –”
“Goodnight, Khun Vegas,” Pete blurts out, scurrying away as if they don’t both live here at the moment, and Vegas can’t just follow him back into the building.
But Vegas doesn’t, not immediately. He leans against the bike and watches Pete disappear into the building before heaving out a quiet sigh. There are no stars visible in the city, but Vegas looks up at the dark sky anyway and tries to find some kind of solace in the infinite ceiling of night. He just needs to pull this one thing off. Finish the renovations and manage the casino until he does what Kinn couldn’t do, and turn this old fossil into something worth being attached to the Theerapanyakul name.
And if he poaches himself a skittish little pet in the meantime, then that wouldn’t be so bad.
-
Once inside, Vegas doesn’t head up to his room. Instead, he stops by the front desk and greets the senior receptionist.
“Evening, Chai. Can you tell me what room Pete is staying in?”
“Pete?” she asks in her typical smoker’s rasp, clearly bored out of her mind on a slow Monday evening. “Been in the same room for a year. 203, I think.”
Vegas rubs his chin for a moment. “Has he really been living here for a year?”
“No,” she says. “Longer. But Khun Kinn gave him a discount on tenancy for that room a year ago. I think he felt bad for Pete, having nowhere else to live but with that miserable bastard of a father.”
That makes Vegas narrow his eyes. “What do you know about Pete’s dad?”
“Only that he’s a good-for-nothing deadbeat that throws his son at all his problems and still doesn’t treat him right,” she says. “But Pete doesn’t like talking about that, so that’s all I have to say.”
Always with the fucking interpersonal loyalties, these major family employees. But Vegas knows better than to try to dig deeper into the gossip mill, so he leaves it at that.
“Right. See you."
He turns to leave, but her voice stops him short. “If you’re looking for him, he’s probably not in his room. Pete likes to swim all night as long as the pool is empty.”
Okay, maybe the old woman isn’t so bad after all.
Sticky humidity greets Vegas as soon as he pushes open the glass door leading to the hotel pool. The lights are a bit dim, but the sight of a single body cutting through the water is unmistakably Pete. He swims with the same sort of efficient motions as when he darts through the kitchen during the dinner rush. Quick and clean. He does three laps without showing signs of slowing down before Vegas walks deeper into the room and stands at one end of the pool with his hands in his pockets.
Pete looks surprised to complete another lap and find Vegas lingering over him, but his reaction is far more subdued than the usual twitchy bullshit he plays up. There’s dark hair plastered to his forehead in an awkward wet clump, and when he pushes it back –
“Wow,” Vegas looks down at him, “You’re hiding a pretty face beneath that terrible haircut.”
Pete scowls, but the effect is softened by the way he’s soaking wet and half naked. “Khun Vegas. Do you need something?”
“Am I not allowed to enjoy the view at my own pool?”
Pete averts his eyes and blinks the water out of his heavy lashes before putting on a smile. “I can leave, if you want it to yourself.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Vegas holds out his palm to stop him. “Don’t think about it, Pete.”
And then Vegas gives into the impulse to toe his shoes and socks off before sitting down and dipping his feet into the cool water of the pool.
Pete looks at him like he’s grown an extra head. He opens and closes his mouth a few times before he finally settles on, “Your pants are wet.”
“Yes, Pete,” Vegas says, because that’s obvious. “I know. Now what’s this about you getting a discounted room, hmm? Is that cutting into our profits?”
Pete tries to hide an eye roll, but Vegas catches it anyway. “Is my employee discount gone while I’m in training?”
Vegas leans back on his hands and grins down at Pete. “Finally caught in a little white lie, Pete. Chai told me Kinn hooked you up with a personal discount.”
Pete swears under his breath. “Are you going to make me pay up in full or something?”
“Depends,” Vegas lazily kicks his legs in the water, “Maybe instead of giving it to you gratis, I’ll make you earn it.”
“Forget it,” Pete sighs, and braces his hands on the edge of the pool like he means to get out. “I’ll find somewhere else to stay.”
But Vegas gets a hand on his shoulder and pushes him back down into the water. “I don’t think so. Chai said your only other option is your dad, right?”
Men have died for looking at Vegas the way Pete is looking at him now. Pete gives him an attitude sometimes, but this is different. There’s something like actual hate in his eyes, a sharpness that Vegas can practically feel.
Vegas likes it.
“Did he do this to you?” Vegas asks, gripping Pete’s chin and digging his thumb into the fading bruise that was covered by off-tone concealer days ago. Pete shakes Vegas’s touch off of him with a sneer.
“It’s complicated. Don’t act like you care.”
Complicated? Vegas finds that interesting. His own father hasn’t hit him in quite a while now, but there was never anything complicated about it. Vegas thinks back to the painful reaction when he grabbed Pete’s wrist that first day, the way he carries himself carefully sometimes like his body is tender.
Someone is hurting Pete, that much is obvious. And while Vegas thinks that Pete would look plenty pretty with purpling bruises and welts and rope burns, he finds that he doesn’t much like the idea of anyone else marking him up.
Pete might be paying back a debt to Kinn and Korn, but he’s Vegas’s as long as he works in this hotel. And Vegas likes his things well taken care of.
“Keep the room,” Vegas says. “Hell, stay in it for free, I don’t care.”
Pete frowns up at him. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” Vegas grins. “Call it a gesture of goodwill – the minor family treats their men better than the major family, after all.”
He's stretching the truth, but whatever. Vegas will say just about any bullshit right now to pacify Pete. He doesn’t want to lose him to Kinn or to Korn or to some unseen unnamed father with unkind hands. Because Vegas is…
Vegas realizes abruptly – he’s bored. He’s so fucking bored. In the last month, he’s dumped all of his time and energy into planning to revitalize this dying major family shell of a business. It’s been such a consuming job that he practically lives here in this hotel now. Away from his father, away from his brother. He hasn’t had the time lately to go out for fun, or to chase after Kinn’s whores, or to stew in his own self-loathing. All he’s had time for is this hotel.
And the only thing in this hotel that doesn’t make him want to scratch his eyes out in abject annoyance is Pete.
He’s sure that once he gets this business off the ground and he doesn’t have to spend so much time here, that Pete will fade from his mind like every other lithe and pretty man he’s chased and fucked and thrown away in the past. Pete is nothing, Pete is just a server. A croupier in training. Some guy, that’s all he is.
A guy with a bottomless well of fake smiles, and purple bruises. Owned wholly by his father and by Vegas’s family. Someone who Vegas looks at and feels a strange and binding thread of curiosity tugging at him. Yes, Vegas is bored here, but he’s also… Comfortable. No one breathing down his neck, ready to count all his missteps. The only eyes on him right now are Pete’s. He could relax, if he wanted to.
He wants to.
Before he can think better of it, Vegas grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls it over his head. It’s worth it immediately, for the prudish shock on Pete’s face.
“What the hell?”
“Are you the only one allowed to use my pool?” Vegas asks, standing up and awkwardly peeling his wet trousers off before dropping them in a soaked heap. He considers taking off his boxer briefs too, but, well. This pool is still open to anyone in the hotel. He should probably have some shame.
And then, without another word, he dives straight into the water, letting the cold envelop him as the chlorine stings in his eyes. He dives down deep enough to touch the bottom, looking up at the dark shape of Pete above him, before swimming back to the surface.
The first thing Pete says, while Vegas is pushing his hair out of his face, is, “You left your necklace on.”
He doesn’t say it, but his tone of voice implies that sentence is supposed to end with a muttered idiot.
“Afraid it’s gonna tarnish?” Vegas asks. “I could buy a million more of these. I could buy you one, if you want it.”
“I’d rather you pay off all my debts to your family,” Pete shoots back.
“I could do that,” Vegas says, “But then I’d own you.”
Pete grimaces. “Never mind.”
“What?” Vegas laughs, swimming closer to Pete. “Does that sound like such a bad thing?”
Pete dodges the hands roaming towards him underwater, letting himself float backwards and away from Vegas. “I’d rather not have an owner, thanks.”
“That’s because you’ve never had an owner that treated you right,” Vegas teases, paddling towards Pete and grabbing the hands that reach out to shove him away. “I could take such good care of you.”
“Turn that charm somewhere else,” Pete says, struggling weakly against Vegas's hold. “You think you’re the only one Chai shoots her mouth off to? I know about the boys asking for directions to the penthouse every other night. I’m not interested in being a notch in your bedpost.
“And are any of them here right now?” Vegas asks, just as he manages to successfully back Pete up against the wall of the swimming pool, caging him in with his arms.
Pete scoffs. “So I’m easy and available, is that it?”
“I don’t know about easy,” Vegas says. He lets one hand hold on to the gutter behind Pete as the other grazes fingertips up the side of Pete’s neck. “You sure are playing hard to get.”
Pete has his hands pressed flat against Vegas’s chest. Keeping him at a distance, yes, but also not pushing away. Maybe it’s the heat of Pete body, or the look on his face – somewhere between amused and challenging. It makes Vegas feel like he’s making progress, even as Pete says, “I told you, I don’t do that. I’m not a whore.”
“You’re off the clock,” Vegas reminds him. “Besides, I’m only asking for a little kiss.”
“I only kiss people I like,” Pete says, tipping his chin up in contempt.
“You wound me, Pete,” Vegas grins. “You don’t have to kiss me if you don’t want to. Just let me kiss you.”
He expects another denial, especially when Pete pressed his lips flat into a line. But then, Pete surprises him: “Don’t kiss my mouth.”
That’s an invitation, and Vegas won’t squander it for a second.
He’ll play fair, but only to a certain extent. His lips zero in on that fading bruise on Pete’s chin immediately, kissing it sweet and soft before raking his teeth across it roughly enough to drag a broken little noise out of Pete. Their stubble rasps together as Vegas drags his mouth down further, kissing Pete's jaw. He feels nothing like those rentboys, all waxed and perfumed and perfect. He feels so warm and real that Vegas can practically taste the blood of him when he kisses just under Pete's ear and then down to his neck, sucking a bruise that’ll need to be covered up like all the others.
“Fuck,” Pete breathes into Vega’s ear, and Vegas becomes acutely aware of how tangled up they’ve become in such a short period of time. Pete’s arms have wrapped around Vegas’s body, hands clinging to his shoulders as Vegas does most of the work to keep them afloat. Their legs brush in the gentle currents of water, slipping softly against each other. It takes a moment for Vegas to parse all of the strange low-gravity sensations of their bodies pressed together, but once he feels it, it’s unmistakable.
Pete is getting hard between them.
Maybe he is easy after all.
This is it, Vegas thinks. He has him, he will have him, in whatever way he wants him. Pete is pretty and pliant and soft and sweet in his arms, and Vegas lifts his head from Pete’s neck to finally taste that sloping pink cupid’s bow –
Only for Pete to press three fingers against his mouth, right before their lips can touch.
Vegas has half a mind to bite those fingers.
“Goodnight, Vegas,” Pete says, even though his face is flushed and his eyes are practically black and glassy with arousal. The rejection makes so little sense to Vegas that he hardly reacts when Pete shoves him away, using some actual strength this time, and pulls himself out of the pool with a torrent of water sluicing off his body.
All Vegas can do is watch, dumbfounded, as Pete walks away. The second the locker room door swings shut, Vegas groans in frustration, letting the sound bounce off the high ceiling, and shoves himself away from the wall of the pool with an aggravated kick of his feet.
He probably spends an entire hour like that, floating on his back in the pool, trying to preserve the way Pete’s skin tasted beneath the bitter chemical tang of chlorine. He moves his arms in lazy motions and tries to remember the last time he had someone so clearly gagging for it, only to walk away.
Nothing comes up in his memory. No one has ever walked out on him like that.
It’s not a matter of boredom anymore, it’s a matter of pride. Fuck the casino and fuck this stupid hotel, his priority has officially become some random asshole named Pete.