Here's Chapter 7! Hope you enjoy reading about Kai and Tala's "date" :P

When the Stars cease to shine

Coffee and a Conversation

The week seemed to crawl by at a snail's pace for Tala, who was acting fidgety and flighty and messing up everything he was doing. His boss had resorted to throwing things at him in an attempt to get him to concentrate, which only worked because she nearly poked his eye out with a projectile-pen, and he was too scared to risk his beautiful face again.

Even his colleagues were worried about him because he was more distracted than usual, even though half of them were sure that it shouldn't have been possible. Tala never ceased to amaze, that was sure.

Friday finally dawned, bright and cheery, and Tala marked it off on his calendar. Tomorrow was the big day! Tomorrow he would go on a date with Kai, the prince of his dreams, the angel ruling his heart!

But for that, he'd need to get permission to take tomorrow off. He could just skip going to office without prior information, but his boss would spit and roast him if he did that. He set about imagining different scenarios and different excuses that he could use as he went about his morning routine.

When he was pulling into the parking lot, he was thinking if a sister in labour would be more effective than a dying uncle. He would have said dying mother or father, but he'd already used those excuses before, and he was sure his boss would remember. Dead maternal and paternal grandparents were also out of the question, each of them being sacrificed for various purposes in the past year.

He supposed it was a good thing they all died before he joined this job, or he wouldn't have known what to do when they really did die and he had to attend their funerals.

The minute he walked into his boss's office, she said "Your uncle had better not be dying tomorrow, Ivanov. We have a lot of work to do because of your stupidity all of last week."

Tala just stared at her.

Maybe his theories about her being some sort of protegee or relative of Satan weren't just theories after all?

"Well, what did you want, Ivanov?"

He took a moment to steel himself before he replied. "My sister just had her first child. As her only brother, I need to go visit her."

"And why is that?"

The redhead sputtered. He'd just said there was a baby! The first one at that! Who would refuse to let a doting uncle have his first look at his beloved niece/nephew! A cohort of Satan, that's who. "I just said why! It's my first nephew! I need to go and visit the family! I'm his only family on his mother's side, seeing as all his grandparents and grandparents are dead! And my I promised my sister I'd visit! She'll kill me if I don't go!"

His boss finally looked up at him from the file she was browsing through, pen stopped mid-scratch and hovering just slightly above paper. "Then you should have done your goddamned work this past week! Do you take me for a fool? Why should I accommodate you when you've done nothing but slack off and burden others with your work? It's only because your colleagues are such sweet people that they didn't say a word about anything. I'd have complained a week ago if I was in their place."

Tala made a mental note to take all his friends drinking tomorrow evening.

"But boss... Please... I really need to go... My nephew... He needs me..." He employed the best 'But Pwetty Pweeeasee?' expression he had in his arsenal.

His boss looked at him, let out an exasperated sigh, and nodded curtly.

Tala was struck speechless. His boss had... accepted?

That had been too easy. He thought for sure he was going to have to grovel at her feet and offer an animal sacrifice or maybe something worse like take her out to dinner.

"Go before I change my mind."

"Right! Thank you so much, boss! I'll ask my sister to name her kid after you! At least the middle name. Not your name exactly, but a male versio-"

"Ivanov!"

Tala hauled ass away from the room and didn't utter a peep after that, pleased with his success.

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Saturday at last.

Tala spent his entire morning in a whirlwind of frenzied cursing. He couldn't find anything nice to wear to his date/not-a-date. He couldn't find any good shoes. He couldn't find his hair gel. He cut himself while shaving. He ran out of shampoo.

When he managed to slip in the shower and narrowly miss hitting his head on the stainless steel tap, he was shocked into calmness.

He sat cross legged in his shower, enjoying how the cool water sluiced off his hair and ran down his shoulders and back, down his arms and legs. He raised his face to the spray, eyes closed in an attempt at calming himself.

He didn't need hair gel, he decided. He would go natural. The clothes he had were fine, he'd just have to match them up well. He could buy a new pair of Converse on his way to the cafe. And he'd just have to apply some cream on his cut and hope Kai wouldn't notice.

Okay. Now he had a plan. He got up, Turned off the water, and wrapped a towel around his hips and opened the door, shivering slightly when a cool breeze wafted in. Walking over to his messy clothes shelf, he dug around until he excavated a pair of faded blue skinny jeans with a triumphant "Yes!" He pulled on underwear before he wore the jeans, smiling at the way the soft fabric hugged his skin. He dug around a little more before pulling out a black button up which had neon green on the buttons and on the inside of the shirt, so when he rolled up the shirt, the green showed.

He took a hairbrush to his still slightly damp hair, blow-drying it till it was satisfactory to his fastidious tastes.

He smeared sun-protective lip balm on his lips, found a bracelet made of black wooden beads to go with the shirt, and his look was complete. He wore flip-flops, a hideous pair he didn't remember buying, but it would have to do till he got to the store to buy a pair of black Converse.

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Tala fidgeted in his seat in the cafe, looking at the door every few seconds, expecting to see a head of dual-toned hair, and deflating every time he didn't. It had been ten minutes since he'd told a waitress that he was waiting for someone, and now she was giving him pitying glances.

He turned back to his glass of water, scowling at his reflection.

'One last time', he decided. 'I'll look at the door one last time.' With that, he turned to look at the door, and there came a wide eyed young man dressed in swanky clothes, looking anxiously around, searcing for something.

Kai.

Tala stood up, waving to catch the blunette's attention. The smile that bloomed on Kai's face when he saw Tala made the redhead's heart explode.

"Tala!" Kai exclaimed as he came closer, adjusting the white scarf around his neck. "I'm sorry I'm late. My schedule got disrupted at the last minute. I came here straight from a photo shoot. Do I stand out too much?" He looked at Tala through purple eyes, the shark fin like marking prominent on his face. People were looking at him curiously, admiringly, some a little lustfully. Some were even looking at Tala with a hint of jealousy.

Tala's ego was puffing up like nobody's business. He smiled, attempting to assuage Kai's doubts. "You do stand out, but not in the way you think. Your identity is safe, but you're going to get a bunch of admirers anyway. You look absolutely stunning."

Kai looked at him for a moment before he asked, "Are you hitting on me?"

Tala sputtered. "What!? No! Why would I do that?" Smooth Tala. Reeaally smooth.

Kai smiled slightly. "That's alright. I was just teasing."

"It wasn't very funny."

"Sorry."

The waitress from before arrived, giving a bright smile to both of them before taking their orders and leaving.

The two of them sit in a silence that's progressively turning awkward.

A few minutes later, the waitress returned with their coffees, and she placed Kai's coffee with a smile on her face, but when she looked at Tala, she made a worried face. "I'm rooting for you." She whispered, and walks away.

"What was that?" Kai asked, curiosity clearly visible on his face.

"Nothing. I didn't exactly catch what she said either," Tala lied, hating it, but not really having a choice to tell him the truth. He picked up his cup of coffee and added a liberal amount of creamer and sugar.

Kai watched him with a crooked brow. "I hope you don't always drink your coffee like that. You'll get diabetes in no time."

Tala huffed. "Yeah, well, I'll atleast die happy."

Then there wasn't any conversation again.

"So..." The redhead starts, unsure. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Ah." Kai set down his coffee. "I... don't really know."

Tala looked at the blunette. The doubt and misery that hung around his form was practically an aura. "That's ok. Then I guess you won't mind if start some topic?"

"Yeah, why not."

"So. Tell me a little about yourself."

"Like what?"

"You know, hobbies, interests, favourite food?"

"That's nothing you can't read in the mags."

"Ha. Then there's pretty much nothing you can tell me that a million other people don't know as well? That's kinda sad."

"That's not true!" Kai bristled. "There are plenty of things I could tell you that millions of people don't know."

Tala grinned. "Like what?"

Kai backtracked for a moment, just realising what he'd gotten himself into. Tala was a tricky guy. Well, he couldn't go back now, so might as well plough ahead. "My favourite breakfast cereal is Kelogg's honey cornflakes. I don't like skinny jeans, that's just something they made up to make me look cool. I much prefer cargos or other loose fitting things. I like corn on a cob, and my favourite author is actually Chekhov, not Dickens. And I absolutely hate vampires. I hate it when they make me dress up like one, and I hate anything to do with them. My favourite mythological beast is the phoenix. My favourite colour is red, and white. Black is pretty ok, and so is green, but I hate yellow. I like snow, I don't like rain. I think literature nowadays is mostly shit," He paused, taking a sip of his coffee into which he'd poured only one sugar. "but I read it anyways because I don't have much else to do."

Tala just sat there a moment, processing all the information that had just been dumped on him. "That... contradicts most of the information on the interviews."

"Yeah."

"Then how could you tell me to read the magazines to know your interests? You were trying to feed me wrong information!"

Kai smirked slightly, amusement in his eyes as he watched Tala's antics. "Yeah."

Tala huffed again, crossing his arms. "Okay, now it's my turn."

"But I didn't even ask you anything."

"That's why I'm taking the initiative myself." He stuck his tongue out, and Kai snorted a little laugh. Tala thought it was adorable. "I like cheerios in the mornings, and strawberry cornflakes in the night. I like blue, red and black. White's okay. I like neon colours, except neon pink, that's just a crime against nature. I love form-fitting clothes and flip-flops. I don't read much, I prefer to watch movies, mostly rom-coms or action thrillers. I like Bollywood music, pop and hip-hop. I like Beyonce and Shakira. I thought 'Beautiful Liar' was the best thing to happen to man kind, after fire, indoor plumbing and cheese-puffs. I like sunny weather, and I love snow because when it snows heally bad then they close the office and I get a day off. I think Vampires are really cool, but glittering ones are not. I'd like to have a pet wolf, or a boa constrictor, but pets aren't allowed in my apartment."

Kai's smirk was still on his face, in fact, it had widened a little. It had been quite a while since he'd been with someone as... refreshing as Tala. It was like a breath of fresh air to interact with someone who was opinionated but not a douche. He could get used to this. "Where do you work?"

"Hm? It's a software firm. Ever heard of Safeway Computech?"

Kai shook his head.

"Hm, I'm not surprised. We mostly do jobs that the bigger firms give us, so we're not that popular. I don't care, anyway. I like my work environment, and I love my colleages, and that's more than most people have. My boss scares the crap out of me, though. I'm sure she has something to do with the underworld."

"You mean, like the mafia?" Kai asked, eyes wide.

"What?! No! I meant like Hell and Satan and eternal damnation and stuff."

"Oh."

"But now that you mention it, maybe she does have some connections like that... Hm... I'll have to look into it."

Kai laughed. "You're weird."

Tala laughed back. "Oi, all great pople are!"

"I'm not."

"Hah, you are, you just don't know it yet!"

"How can you be so sure?"

"Well, you're friends with me, aren't you!"

Kai froze a second. That word again. Friends. How many people could he honestly call friends?

Not many.

And here was Tala, making jokes and teasing like they'd known each other forever, telling him he could call if he ever needed anything, calling him a friend.

And he barely knew the man.

"What? What is it?" Tala asked, noticing the blank look in Kai's eyes.

"Uh? Nothing. I was just thinking."

"'Bout what?"

"Well, you don't know anything about me. We've never met before, but you let me stay in your house the other day. And you made time in your schedule when I asked to talk to you in person without so much as a moment of consideration. And you call me your friend so easily..." Kai trailed off when Tala held up a hand with a serious expression on his face.

"I don't know where you got these weird ideas from. First of all, I'd never have left anyone in that situation, even if it were my boss. And like I said, it really wasn't a problem. I wanted to talk to you, so I accepter your offer to meet. I call you my friend because I consider you to be one, and the time passed has nothing to do with it. Like I said, if you want to talk, or you need anything I can help you out with, I'll be here. Why do you analyze things so much? It's no good, I tell you."

There was a beeping noise, and Kai reached into his pocket to pull out his flashing phone.

"Oh crap."

"Is something wrong?"

"I'm late for my next shoot. I need to leave."

"When are you free next?"

"I should ask my secretary. I'll text you when I know?"

"Sure."

"Thanks for coffee. I had fun today, even though it was really awkward and we didn't talk much."

"Hey, maybe next time'll be better. Third time's a charm, or so they say."

"Let's hope these people know what they're talking about, then!"

Tala laughed, and watched as Kai walked out the door, turning once to wave just before he stepped out of the cafe, before calling his waitress.

He payed the bill and tipped her generously, before he stood to leave. "Than you for the luck you sent my way. I needed it."

"Anytime," she said, smiling. "you looked cute together."

And that comment was enough to carry Tala all the way till his next message from Kai.

**********continues...

This is a long chapter! How did you think it was? Was it too boring? Was it stupid? Were some of the parts unnecessary?

Please tell me what you think! Reviews make my world go round.