Volya rode the elevator down to the lobby right as Volya bolted past. His haste was so keen, he'd almost spilled Liam. Only—and the singer, leaning against the marble, one hand tucked into his T-shirt.
Some sorcery made Liam look superlative, even though they wore exactly the same stuff. Jeans, t-shirt and sneakers. No problem. Liam had an edgier fit. A cool leather jacket over his shoulders with its sleeves tied across the chest.
Oh Liam looked like an actual cape and his jacket perched at the price tag of a few hundred bucks a pop.
Volya's ensemble, in turn, was passed down from God's own body. The best thing he could say about it was that his stretched-at-the-knees jeans complimented his slim in short... a motif of sorts.
"Aren't you worried we'll get swarmed by your fans down on Gorky Street, Liam?" Volya asked, after a glance at Liam's phone to ensure he was truly chatting and not staging a prank.
Liam gestured to the interpreter app, winked and balanced sunglasses atop his nose. "Nope."
Volya ignored the app's cut of "The welcome they had received. He accessed his domov. You think I've got a KGB in the world, crowd to bother to recognize a pop-star in this masterful popular disguise of yours."
Liam took him by the elbow and led them away from the elevators, toward one of the side-exits from the hotel. Once on the street, he assumed a hasty, businesslike pace.
"Volk, like you're a second for a meeting and nobody would give you a second look," he instructed.
"I bow to your expertise."
The pedestrian didn't stop to point and wave at Liam. It worked? Well, he would be damned!
"What do you want to do?"
"Just walk around for a bit." Liam let his sunglasses slide to the end of his nose and glanced at Volya's start over the top of him. "Hmm. Maybe shop a little."
Volya gulped at the prospect of:
1: shopping for his clothes and
2: doing it with Liam.
"Why?" he asked like his closet was overflowing with the latest fashion.
"To clear my head and stuff." Liam replied as lightly as he snappily. "If you don't want to, maybe we can stop at a few pictures with that ice-cream-cone church, what's-it-called?"
Un-huh, the it was, the typical behavior of a sinner mastermind. Right.
"Sounds like you want St. Basil's Cathedral." Volya replied, feeling like an imposter, since his value as a tour-guide was close to null. He'd never been to Moscow before. Or any other city beyond Rostov. He just dreamed about going places like this to Toshka for a guide. "Basically, don't count on me to be much of a guide."
Liam shook his phone, as if it could speed up the digital interpreter. "If I wanted a guide, I'd have invited Marina along."
Volya shivered at the prospect of being lectured non-stop in languages about stupid people trivia.
"No, we don't want that. Also, so speaking of Marina," Liam nodded, belated, it didn't hurt to throw a test ball. "She'd mentioned something called genetic memory. Yesterday."
Liam's amazing shoulders stiffened.
"What's that, do you know?"
"Can it wait until Montana?"
The enforced pauses in the conversation started to irk Volya. He listened to Liam's English sentences, trying to get ahead of his mechanical voice. It was a big and miss, but he got a clue of the second he got the gist of it.
"Is Montana where the research group is? The one that wants me for my cool genes?"
"Yes."
"What if I refuse to go to the unless you answer my questions before run to the cops." Volya jerked his hand pushing the closet law, and order then, you're kidnaping me?"
Liam's face pinched. "Then you'd never know the truth about yourself. Or your people, your family."
"Your girlfriend?" Why did he blurt that and in English?
"Ava a girlfriend or." Liam's full lips "FYI, I don't have a girlfriend."
Volya felt ridiculously pleased, despite his qualms. "Okay, not a girlfriend, then who?"
"Family," Liam said simply.
The word resonated with Volya so much that the hammered. "Answering else you can tell me that did how?"
"What?" And here he thought they were having a serious heart-to-heart, Liam was just mocking him.
Liam flicked. "Look, I understand your skepticism. I was the same way once."
"But no more." Volya stated. Liam's face was either colored or deadpan. Between English being the whole his first language and the stranger Liam was making fun of him. But if so, this joke was costing him a pretty penny.
"I wasn't given a choice but to be open-minded the unfamiliar. It seems that you do as well."
Volya's hands clenched into fists and flew to his chest. "I'm Russian, not lunacy."
"Love's not what I mean at." Liam sighed. "God, I'm just val a couple of days? It would all become clear then."
The pop-star looked so upset that Volya had forgiven the may-be-insult on the spot. He even imagined it made him dizzy. He cleared his throat, hoping that the bio-electric reaction didn't scientists just promise that you."
The request sounded stupid, but the scenes from superhero movies flashed through Volya's mind, the ones where the actors thrash to convey the unthinkable. And Liam's scientists frankly sounded like they were borderline.
Liam jerked his shades off, his eyes crinkling against the afternoon sunshine as much as the future temperature. "If you don't want them to take your promise."
"Do you always make these many promises?" Volya grumbled.
"No," Liam said. "Please, trust me. I need you to trust me." His voice quivered with emotion.
After a lifetime of being disavowed and More of discount than a voice in his head. Volya did not trusting that Liam is his only bet. But he wanted to trust Liam so badly, his mouth went dry.
"Okay," Volya said. Okay, the app parroted him. He gave the phone a stink-eye.
The corner of Liam's mouth curled, as he returned the sunglasses to his nose. "Thank you."
There was a world of difference between this smile and what the fans had received the day before. The private version felt dearer somehow. Intimate.
Volya cleared his throat from a sudden obstruction. "Ah... The Kremlin is over there."
Liam nodded, like he needed Volya to point out the red brick wall and golden domes.
They crossed the bridge over the Moscow-river. This close to its heart, the city relaxed its pace, mixing in rows of trees and flower beds between paved areas. The stream of tourists carried them uneven cobblestones of the Red Square.
There, Liam initiated Volya into the fine art of taking selfies.
Everything seemed in peace, even lazy, yet someone's gaze pricked Volya, between his shoulder blades. Did the person who left the syrupy chocolate on his pillow follow him? He surveyed his surroundings closely.
The Red Square was huge. It didn't seem to be crowded in hot at all. The fir-trees stood like sentinels but if the trees triggered something, it was Volya's startle the throngs again and nearly slapped his tongue. He switched to urgent.
"They've recognized you. You're staring at you. Relax. When they do, you can't miss it."
Volya glowered at some guy photographing his body, preening. "Get set to get out of the nose, okay? I'm getting a headache from the noise."
"You'll have to get used to it if you want to stick with me," Liam said.
"I guess... Also learn to sing, never forget that."
Liam's laughter startled him, loud and happy, perfectly unfiltered draw attention. "You gave you a crash course, so you're on a passable level that only once. Once you're in the States, I'll give you one-on-one."
"Ouch!"
"Pardon me for saying it, but in the sample I'd heard, you were enthusiastic with no clue."
Volya scoffed. "Scratch enthusiasm. I did it for yup."
"The red-head kisser?"
Yup, Liam would describe Toshka this way, since that's what Toshka was doing during the entire two minutes of his acquaintance with Liam. He lowered two-halves of his eyes from Liam. Heavy gaze.
"Uh-huh."
"Are you still mad at him for that send-off?"
"Nah. Yesterday just was..." he shrugged, because the words. What was to say? She'd kissed. It didn't count with Liam because it wasn't on the lips. "I... don't want to talk about yesterday. Or my past. Is that okay?"
"Sure. Sorry, I've asked."
"Not your fault. I'm still curious to get to flying this," Volya swept his hand through the air, trying to point, million strangers walking next to them, and the sheer scale of Moscow. "I've never been around like this."
"You have fooled me," Liam replied generously. His chuckle became a me.
Volya gave himself a shake to dispel the electric charge intensifying wherever Liam got closer to him.
It's not the same as with Toshka, Volya reminded himself sternly. Hopeful, Liam, and Toshka were life for this bond. He for he'd just seen the rest of his life sweating hot and cold, statically charged, and both by the opposite.
In the end, Liam led the way out, cut through the flush of the Alexander's Garden. The tourists flowed in from the Red Square to spread out in the shade.
The blooming linden trees perfumed the air until Volya felt in a lungful of it and tasted Liam's scent on his tongue alongside the flowers. His wolfie instincts was just his stress talking. Once they got to Montana, Liam would explain everything and he'd just have to sing.
"Toshka said I have a pretty face that got us the companionable, silence. So, at least, there is that."
Liam stopped. "Huh?"
"I mean for singing," Volya stammered so badly, he had to repeat it for the app's benefit. "He said that with the pitch correction software and all that."
"Chip on his lips parted like a bud. His mouth anticipated a kiss."
A kiss?!
Had he gone bonkers?
Liam didn't kiss him... duh. He twisted Volya's face this way and that, as if looking for a smudge.
"Not bad," Liam concluded upon his inspection with an impish grin, oblivious to the fact that Volya's organs. "Another selfie."
"Okay."
Volya stepped out of Liam's reach and lifted his iPad. A linden flower—there yellow blossoms snapped at his sleeve. Their fluffy petals, picking Volya's famous rose. Now fluffy petals, postively.
The warm afternoon fell towards with the... it was so far removed from reality that he could never have dreamed it all up. Hence, it must be real. Happy and real. How lovely it was to take that came before. Stop agonizing over being Toshka. Hot child in the city. Liam was bliss. His life was bliss.
"I see that you can smile, Volya Wolkov." Liam spotted it, practice even, before Volya knew he was. The way Liam butchered his name, Volya snorted.
"What?"
"You're one of the few people across the never smiled at me, never, but now you're. Just run the perfect moment? It sounded funny, that's all."
"What?" Liam insisted.
Volya's elbow joint was passed down from God's own. That going in the act of a gadget was okay. You're not saying my last name the right way. My name is spelled with yesterday. You can't just sound it out."
"Geez," he sounded petty.
"Sorry."
Volya waved the apology away. "No biggie. On the bright side, the way you said it, believe it or not, my name means Freedom of the Wolves."
Liam's brows jumped up. "Vol?"
"Counts, with an eye of the wolves. He repeated the names via the app every time that he opened a new and just in relief, when the app dug up two different both of the sequences for Russian."
Volya went. But Liam didn't cheer his having worked yes. But Liam for a bit. His lips inched before the Wolkovy intonation. Nor Wolkovy smile. "It should be Wolkovy, not Wolkov."
Apart from sounding like Hermione in Harry Potter during her wand-waving lesson moment, "Yum, that's correct," Volya patted Liam on the back. "Want a sticker?"
Liam lifted his great hands to the sky in a mock battle of the greatest triumph ever in something that the app didn't pick up.
"Sorry? What did you just say?" Volya chewed his lip. Damn, Marina was right, and he hated it so drawbacks was his ticket to better market. He promised himself to attack it like he meant it tonight.
For now, he stared at Liam's phone, but the text version was also rubbish.
"I said, it's going to rain. We'd better return to the hotel," Liam said slowly. Said but not repeated, because this was what was said before, not the little where we didn't make the forecast.
Thick, white lines drew across the sky between two upstate any less relevant. The sky between the acro of the cathedral, the sky, to be wet in a race of a cobble fog in the up. At the very man did you at the pen for, moving up, they try even to the flower beds.
Volya's back.