“Luca, come on, we fell asleep,” I say, poking him. He doesn’t budge, but I know he’s awake. Luca is forever falling asleep while I’m doing work, and he always sleeps with his mouth open. But right now? His face is perfectly serene except for his lips, which are puckered for a kiss. He’s faking it.
“Luca,” I say.
Nothing. I can see the muscles of his mouth twitching, trying not to smile. I groan and finally give in, kissing him. But because this is Luca and everything has to be dramatic, he’s not waiting for just a kiss.
Smiling, I exhale onto his lips gently, and all at once, he comes alive.
“THE BREATH OF LIFE!” He surges upward, throwing the blanket over his shoulder like a cape. Then he kneels before me. “My master, you have breathed life into me, and now I serve you as your loyal totem.”
It’s a line from another anime—I never can remember the name—that we finished last week during another “work” session. And now, anytime we fall asleep watching something, Luca insists on me waking him up this way. Sometimes he’ll wake me up with a poke and then fake sleep until I give him the breath of life.
“For the hundredth time, it’s golem,” I say. “Sirastros creates golems from clay before giving them the breath of life. Not totems.”
“The subtitles said totem.”
“The subtitles are wrong. Golems are from Jewish lore. Read the manga, Luca.”
“You know I’m not allowed to have that in my house.”
I give him my best pitiful boo-hoo face, and he returns it with a sleepy grin, asking, “What time is it?”
Using the light of the TV, I spot my phone at the edge of the couch.
“Midnight thirty.”
Luca pulls the blanket over his head and lets out a scream. I muffle him as best I can, not wanting my mom to hear. She’s seen Luca coming and going but hasn’t really asked questions. However, if she knew we were still in here, she might check on us, and all my supplies are still out from the work I was doing before Luca busted in and demanded we order pad thai and watch cartoons.
Luca’s yells turn into laughter as his arms encircle me.
“Can I stay?” he asked.
“You’ve got soccer in the morning, and you know your mom would flip out if you didn’t come home.”
“She thinks I’m at Calvin’s with the boys.”
Luca and I are both hiding what we’re up to. I’m hiding my projects from my mom, and he’s hiding me, a whole-ass person.
“The boys,” I say, mocking the name he has for his group of guy friends. “Why don’t you hang out with them anymore?”
“I do. At practice. And at school. But that’s not what you’re asking, is it?”
It’s my turn to grin, but I don’t yell or anything. Luca is good at guessing what’s going on in my head.
“You’re really asking, why does Luca come here all the time and watch anime with me?”
“It’s ’cause they’d make fun of you for watching anime,” I deflect.
“I could watch anime at home on my phone.”
“So then why?”
Luca does this thing where every time I finally corner him into almost revealing something unspoken, he pulls me into a kiss. I’m not sure when I’ll stop being stunned or when the edge of excitement will wear off, but for now it’s a welcome distraction, and it works on me every time.
More screams from the TV pull us back down to earth.
“We have to start this one over,” he says, feeling around for the remote.
“No, no,” I say, pulling myself off the couch. Luca blinks up at me from beneath the blanket. He looks like a dejected nun.
“You need to go home and not act totally suspicious. And every time you’re late to soccer, you find a way to blame it on me.”
Anyone observing would see my point, but Luca knows I’m leaving something out. He raises an eyebrow.
“And,” I grumble, “I want to finish what I was working on before you showed up.”
“Work!” Luca flaps his hands at the ceiling. “Always with the work! Why can’t you ever just relax? Go with the flow?”
I feel my heart tighten a little bit.
“I’ve been going with the flow since you showed up. You are the flow. And now the flow is going home.”
While Luca finds his shoes, I descend from the loft and sit back down at my table. I’ve got the whole weekend ahead of me, but I’m not sure it’s enough time. Plasma Siren is looking pretty messy, which is how a cosplay always looks right before you put it all together, but I’m still anxious as heck. The fins are done, as is the bulk of the sewing. But the armor needs a ton of work. What makes her hard is the clustered barnacles and spiral seashells that appear to grow right out of her shoulders and hips. I could have used actual seashells, but that would have weighed a ton, and so I elected to sculpt them all out of foam. And it’s taking me five hundred years. Six hundred, now that Luca has derailed me for a few hours.
Still draped in the blanket, Luca drops down next to me. I expect him to hug me from behind, which he’s taken to doing when I’m set up at my station, but he waits until I’ve put down the foam clay I was kneading. He hooks his chin over my shoulder, slinks his arms beneath mine, and picks up the foam seashell I was working on.
“You haven’t done a stream recently,” he says.
“I know. I’m so bad.”
“You’re not bad. Tell me what you’re doing.”
I snort. I know he’s lingering here, and while it’s a little annoying, I also love it. “Like I’m streaming?”
He nods on my shoulder.
Jokingly, I begin with my intro.
“Hey, guys, it’s me, Raffy, and you’re watching Crafty Rafty. I’m back, working on Plasma Siren, and as you can see, today I’m joined by a special guest. Would you like to introduce yourself?”
After a beat, Luca says simply, “I am the flow.”
“And where do you hail from, Mr. Flow?”
Another beat, and Luca supplies, “I am from the beyond, the space between space, the world beneath the world. I am from the abyss.”
I throw a cheery smile at my—our—invisible audience.
“Great! So glad to have you on the stream, Mr. Flow. It’s not often that I’m joined by an interdimensional horror, but wow, am I glad you’re a hot one! Does every eternal creature from your dimension have dimples?”