“Can I buy you a drink?”

Normally, it wouldn’t have taken Roman so long to ask such a simple question. It required an easy yes or no and if Roman took a decline with a soft smile and wish for a good day, he could generally come out of the encounter relatively unscathed.

But normally, Roman wouldn’t be in Wonderland. He wouldn’t be surrounded by strangers in a strange land where he wasn’t sure whether men were allowed to pick up other men in a bar…or tavern, as they call it here. Normally, he wouldn’t be offering a drink with his own meal allowance that he had earned washing dishes and cleaning tables the last few weeks. His money from the normal world was worth nothing here and he’d yet to figure out who the major players were to work out a more reliable income.

That would take care of itself with time. It wasn’t the first time that Roman had to fall from something to nothing. But for the last few weeks, he’d watched this man come in for a drink. Roman had blown it off at first, because it was a tavern. A lot of men came in for a drink. But most drank so much that they quickly became boisterous and for Roman, that was old news. If anything, it made the quiet ice clinks of the man’s glass as he drank more notable. More worthy.