This Love-Hate Relationship

Chapter 1: Shut Up and Kiss Me

                                   This Love-Hate Relationship

                                         Shut Up and Kiss Me

Roman was positive that he was going to lose his voice. Did he care? Not one heckity heck. He was in his element. The bespectacled man beside him, however, looked like he was about to have an aneurysm or completely lose it. Or both. Most likely both.

Roman turned to Logan and smiled apologetically, his bright white teeth flashing in the dark of the concert hall. The other rolled his eyes and shook his head as he lifted his hand to adjust his designer glasses. Roman grinned more brightly at the motion. Once again, he was forgiven, and with that knowledge, he turned back to the stage and the band that played with the energy that only a world-renowned alternative/punk band could.

The Witching Hour had been Roman's favorite band since he discovered them his junior year of high school. Most of the band members were his age and most of his friends loved them too. Everyone except Logan, who found their sound annoying and juvenile. Of course, Logan's favorite "band" were podcasts and he was more into science and math and student council than silly bands. He had no time to be concerned with music of any kind.

Roman snorted as he recalled the time his best friend mispronounced the name of the band that performed their graduating class song. Logan hadn't even noticed and considering the fact that he was not only student council president, but Valedictorian, no one bothered to correct him. Many of Roman's friends had voiced their surprise at the fact that Logan was his best friend, but Roman had been popular in his own right. Popular people tended to gravitate toward one another and their friendship had a strange way of working out.

Roman had helped Logan get the votes of his crowd – been the voice and face of the Student Council president at parties, for the sports team and for the theater kids. Likewise, Logan was there to listen as Roman rambled about this or that and helped him with subjects he was struggling in. Besides that, their parents had been best friends throughout college and ended up living in the same neighborhood, so it only made sense that the two would grow up alongside each other. Logan was much more than a best friend. He was more like a brother who sometimes went home with his secondary set of parents.

It helped that Roman was a very open sort of friend. He didn't care what group a person belonged to; if they were cool and nice and generally awesome people, Roman wanted to be friends. Unfailingly. It also helped that the students with high GPA's who were part of the student government and other major organizations were just as popular, if not more so, as those on the sports teams. It was an odd sort of setup, Roman had to agree, but he liked how it had worked out. He would have hated to have to beat people up for messing with Logan. Not that he didn't think Logan couldn't hold his own; in fact, he was sure he could. Logan had a way of beating someone down and tearing them apart without ever resorting to becoming physical.

Though they were now in college, the dynamic hadn't changed much, aside from the fact that there was no longer a popularity hierarchy. It was much more of a collective clusterheck of people all trying to make it through secondary education without getting into too much debt and have a fun time while juggling full time college and part time jobs. The madness and change that college brought was why The Witching Hour had come to be such an important part of Roman's life.

Well, that, and one other reason.

Roman blushed as his eyes locked on the main singer, who was currently tugging his lower lip into his mouth with his teeth. Damn him. Virgil Armitage; a.k.a. the bane of Roman's very existence. They had met once before and it had been everything he had dreamed of... and a whole lot more.