Volya rode the elevator down to the lobby right away but regretted his haste as soon as he'd spotted Liam. One glance at the singer, leaning against the marble wall—and Volya was conscious of every crease he'd worked into his T-shirt.
Some sorcery made Liam look super-elegant, even though they wore exactly the same stuff. Jeans, t-shirt and sneakers. Correction: Liam had an additional item, a hoodie thrown over his shoulders with its sleeves tied across the chest. On Liam it looked like an effing cape and his attire hinted at the price tag of a few hundred bucks a pop.
Volya's ensemble hollered it was passed down God knows how many times before ending on his body. The best that could be said about it was that his stretched-at-the-knees jeans complimented his slept-in shirt... a motif of sorts.
"Aren't you worried we'll get chased by your fans down Gorky Street, Liam?" Volya asked, after a glance at Liam's phone to ensure he wasn't idly churning air in Russian.
Liam listened to the interpreter app, winked and balanced sunglasses on his nose. "Nope."
Volya ignored the app's curt 'nyet'. The welcome they had received in the Domodedovo Airport still unnerved him. He cocked his brow. "You think we, who gave KGB to the world, would never recognize a pop-star in this masterful popstar-in-disguise disguise?"
Liam took him by the elbow and led them away from the elevators, toward one of the side-exits from the hotel. Once in the street, he assumed a hasty, businesslike pace.
"Walk like you're late for a meeting, and nobody would give you a second look," he instructed.
"I bow to your expertise."
The pedestrians 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 t-shirt over their rim. "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 fashions from Paris.
"To clear my head and stuff?" Liam replied as lightly as he did everything. "If you don't want to, maybe we can snap a few pictures with that ice-cream-cones church, what's-it-called?"
Uh-huh, there it was, the typical behavior of a sinister mastermind. Riiight.
"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'd just dreamed about going places like this with Toshka. "I'm... 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 in two languages about some pointless trivia.
"No, we don't want that. But, ah... speaking of Marina..." Liam looked relaxed, so 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 the mechanical voice. It was a hit and miss, but his gut clenched 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 board the plane unless you answer my questions? Or run to the cops..." Volya jerked his thumb at the closest law-and-order rep, one of many patrolling downtown, "and tell them you've kidnapped me?"
Liam's face pinched. "Then you'd never know the truth about yourself. Or help someone very dear to me. And she... she really needs your help."
"Your girlfriend?" Why did he blurt that and in English?
A smile fleeted over Liam's full lips. "FYI, I don't have a girlfriend."
Volya felt ridiculously pleased, despite his quibbles. "Okay, not a girlfriend, then who?"
"Family," Liam said simply.
The word resonated with Volya so much that he almost didn't want to ask anything else. He did, however. "Anything else you can tell me right now?"
"What?" And here he thought they were having a serious heart-to-heart. Liam was just mocking him now.
Liam flinched. "Look, I understand your skepticism. I was the same way once."
"But no more?" Volya studied Liam's face. It was either collected or deadpan. Between English being not his first language and the strangeness of the whole situation, Volya couldn't tell if 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. Perhaps, it's better that way. Humans resists the unfamiliar. It seems that you do as well."
Volya's hands clenched into fists and flew to his chest. "I'm Russian, not inhuman!"
"That's not what I meant." Liam sighed. "God, I'm making such a mess of things. Could we, please, just wait a couple of days? It would all become clear then."
The pop-star looked so upset that Volya had forgiven the maybe-insult on the spot. He even had a ridiculous impulse to hug him—and just imagining it made him dizzy. He cleared his throat, hoping that the bio-electric reaction didn't follow. "Just promise me that your weirdo scientists won't cut into my brain."
The request sounded stupid, but the scenes from superhero movies flashed through Volya's mind. The ones where the actors thrashed to convey unbearable pain while corrupt scientists did the unthinkable. And Liam's scientists frankly sounded like they were borderline.
Liam jerked his shades off, his eyes crinkling against the afternoon sunshine into the future laugh lines. "Nobody would as much as take your temperature, if you don't want them to. I 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 wariness, even an inkling of trust should have been disconcerting. More disconcerting than a voice in his head even. 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 along, until the asphalt changed to the hard, 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 prickled Volya between his shoulder blades. Did the person who left the chocolates on his pillow follow him? He surveyed his surroundings clandestinely.
The Red Square was huge. It rippled with constant motion of people who didn't seem to be interested in him at all. The fir-trees stood like sentinels, but if the trees triggered him, it was already too late. He was beyond saving.
Volya studied the throngs again and nearly slapped his forehead. He switched to urgent whispering. "Liam, everyone's staring at you. They've recognized you."
"Relax. When they do, you can't miss it."
Volya glowered at some guy photographing his bouncing offspring. "Let's just get out of here, okay? I'm getting a headache from all 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 unafraid to draw attention. "You got that one right! Once we're in the States, I'll give you a crash-course, so you're on a passable level."
"Ouch!"
"Pardon me for saying it, but in the samples I'd heard, you were enthusiastic with no clue."
Volya scoffed. "Scratch enthusiasm. I did it for Toshka."
"The red-head kisser?"
Yup, Liam would describe Toshka this way, since that's what Toshka was doing during the entire two minutes of their acquaintance. He lowered his head to hide his eyes from Liam's merry gaze. "Uh-huh."
"Are you still mad at him for that send-off?"
"Nah. Yesterday just was..." he shrugged, because the words were too weak-sauce to describe yesterday. What was he to do? Share his first-kiss blues with Liam or confess that he'd decided it didn't count 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 trying to get used to all this." Volya swept his hand through the air, trying to point out the Kremlin, skyscraper-dotted skyline, million strangers walking next to them, and the sheer scale of Moscow. "I've never been anywhere like this."
"Could have fooled me," Liam replied generously. His chuckle with the jerk of the chin practically begged to become a meme.
Volya gave himself a shake to dislodge the electric charge circling his heart like a rogue electron. Its buzzing intensified whenever Liam got closer to him.
It's not the same as with Toshka, Volya reminded himself sternly. Hopefully, Liam and Toshka were it for this bond thing, or he'd spend the rest of his life sweating hot and cold, statically charged, and torn by doubts.
In the meantime, Liam led the way under the boughs of the Alexandrovskiy Garden. Rubber mulch squelched underfoot. The tourists flowed in from the Red Square to spread out in the shade. The blooming linden trees perfumed the air until it smelled like honey.
Volya pulled in a lungful of it and tasted Liam's scent on his tongue along with the flowers. His worries receded in this blissful environment. The voice in his head was just his stress talking. Once they got to Montana, Liam would explain everything, the scientists would take their swabs, and then he'd just have to sing.
"Toshka said I have a pretty face that got us the YouTube clicks," Volya said, breaking 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... Toshka said looking good is more important than singing. With the pitch correction software and all that."
"Important, yes." Liam's fingers caught Volya's chin, and 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 of dirt.
"Not bad," Liam concluded upon his inspection with an impish grin, oblivious of the fact that Volya's heart had just set a new speed record for internal organs. "Another selfie?"
"Okay."
Volya stepped out of Liam's reach and lifted his iPad. A linden flower—three yellow blossoms pinned together—helicoptered past, just as Volya snapped his selfie. Their fluffy petals flicking Liam's famous nose now belonged to posterity.
The warm afternoon, full stomach, and the superstar sniffing linden flowers with him... it was so far removed from reality that he could never have dreamt it all up. Hence, it must be real. Happy and real. How lovely it was to take it in, unhurriedly. To forget everything unpleasant that came before. Stop agonizing over betraying Toshka.
This spring was bliss. Liam was bliss. His life was bliss.
"I see that you can smile, Volya Wolkov." Liam sounded pleased, even though the interpretation spoiled it. "Practice it often."
The way Liam butchered his name... Volya snorted.
"What?"
"You're one of the few people who'd never messed up my first name, but the way you'd just said my last name..." Volya cut himself off. Why ruin the perfect moment? "It sounded funny, that's all."
"What?" Liam insisted.
Volya sighed. Explaining it via the gadget was going to be such a pain in the ass!
"Okay. You're not saying my last name the right way. Marina did the same thing yesterday. You both put emphasis on the wrong syllable."
Geez, he sounded petty.
"Sorry."
Volya waved the apology away. "Eh, no biggie. On the bright side, the way you've said it, believe it or not, my name means Freedom of the Wolves."
Liam's brows jumped up. "Oh?"
"Or, maybe, Will of the Wolves." Volya shrugged. Could the app even get that? He replaced the names with the synonyms, svoboda and nakaz, and sighed in relief when the app dug up two different English equivalents for that. "Volya means both of these things in Russian."
Gosh, it was cheesy. Even cheesier than having cool genes. But Liam didn't roll his eyes. He walked in silence for a bit. His full lips moved before stretching into another radiant smile. "It should be WOlkov, right? Not WolkOV."
Apart from sounding like Hermione in Harry Potter during her wingardium leviosa moment, Liam got it.
"Yup, that's correct." Volya patted Liam on the back. "Want a sticker?"
Liam lifted his eyes and hands to the sky in a mock prayer of gratitude. Then he muttered 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 much that she was right! Unit 5 for all its drawbacks, was his ticket to better banter. He promised himself to attack it like he meant it tonight.
For now, he darted a glance at Liam's phone, but the text version was also rubbish.
"I said, it's going to rain. We better return to the hotel," Liam said slowly. Said, but not repeated, because this wasn't what was said before, not even close.
This little white lie didn't make the forecast update any less relevant. The sky between the lacework of the leaves darkened to violet in two seconds.
"Race you!" Volya took off under the disapproving stare of a cop guarding the tulips. At least the man didn't yell at them for bumping up the threat level to the flower beds.
"We'll have to shop tomorrow after you're done at the embassy," Liam shouted from behind Volya's back.
"No problem!" His body filled with buoyant energy, as if some weight had been lifted from his heart.
Learning English? No problem.
Singing? For Liam, he could be a nightingale.
Keeping secrets hidden? Sod off!
Years of pent-up joy burst out of Volya so hard that he got a stitch in his side. And yet, he hated the idea of stopping. Laughing while running was what he never knew he needed.
The first fat droplets of rain pelted his head. The smell of wetted asphalt freshened the city.
He finally skidded to a stop smack in the middle of the bridge crossing the Moscow River. The storm wrung the skies out till the slanting lines of water blinded him. Volya was soaked to the bone, but the joy made him so hot he was he wasn't steaming.
Next to him, Liam dropped the cowl of his hoodie and yanked the sunglasses off, lifting his face to the downpour, slurping the rain.
Unlike Volya's curls, Liam's hair hugged his skull tightly. It looked shinier than ever, so beautiful, that Volya itched to touch those ringlets.
A lightning bolt zigzagged overhead, splitting into three.
Volya jerk his reaching hand back, saw Liam's profile in the flash of lightning. It didn't matter that he'd regained his power of speech. His yell to haul ass got drowned out in the blast of thunder anyway.
He didn't mind being caught out in the deluge for a second. The electricity in the sky matched the one coursing through his veins, but it didn't hurt any more.
Maybe he was adapting to his inner thunderstorm.