I chuckled and rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly.
Ben laughed. “Definitely mutual.”
“Okay, okay, time to get you into something… not that,” Alexei gestured at Luca’s comfortable jeans and hoodie he’d chosen to travel in. His expression made it clear that what Luca wore was distasteful.
“Do you still have tea in your nook?” Luca asked him.
“Oh, yes I do. Come!” He looked at Ben and I, then started to march through the large room filled with racks of clothing.
It was almost like what I would’ve expected a theater to have, so I said as much.
“We do our in-house photoshoots and provide a lot of the looks for the artists for their other press and sometimes eventours.” He led us into a little alcove in the back, to a couch, an armchair, and a tiny little kitchenette. “Here. Have some tea.”
There was a weird looking gadget that seemed like a combination of kettle with a smaller tea pot sitting on top of it. There was water in the kettle, and the pot had some sort of tea in it.
“It is called ‘samovar,’” Alexei said. “This is a very modern version of what my grandmother used to have in Leningrad.”
“It looks fun,” Ben said. “Go make Luca even prettier. We’ll figure it out.”
Alexei gave him a little smile and a tilt of his head, then left us with the tea.
Ben poured us mugs of tea and we sat down. The next half an hour was a whirlwind of tea, laughter as we heard Alexei and Luca arguing about clothing, and just… awe.
At one point I got out my phone and googled samovar. “Oh wow, the old ones look really interesting.”
I found that I loved sitting there with Ben, drinking very tasty tea, while on occasion Luca would breeze to us, wearing this or that, asking if it was “too vampire” or “not enough rockstar chic” whatever that meant.
In the end, he ended up wearing black on black on black.
“How do I look?” he asked, stopping in front of the couch.
I swallowed hard. “Uh….”
He had on black slacks, a black corset clearly made for the male body, and a black dress shirt underneath. When he came closer, we could see the subtle silver embroidery all over the corset.
“Holy shit, Luca,” Ben blurted out.
Luca did a little twirl. “These shoes make my ass look amazing, too.”
My throat clicked as I swallowed. “I’d say.”
The black heeled boots changed his posture just enough with the corset that his ass looked incredible.
“Okay, I think this is it. The funeral outfit,” he joked, but I could see there was a sadness in his eyes, too.
Alexei heard him and gave him a sad smile, his eyes filling with tears.
We got off the couch and went to hug Luca close.
“It’s gonna be okay. It might be the end of Kaiju, but we know why we’re here,” I murmured against his hair.
“Once this is done, we’ve visited your grandma, and done whatever else we come up with while we’re in town, we’ll go home,” Ben spoke softly, knowing that he needed to hear the obvious right then.
Luca sniffled. “Home. I… I like that.” He gave us a tremulous smile. “I feel safe there.”
I pecked his lips. “We do, too.”These days.
We could hear steps approaching, and then Willa reappeared.
