Chapter 1 #2
He locked eyes with Luka next, his gaze pinning Luka in place on the folding chair.
Luka had one leg up on the edge of the folding chair and felt so, so very small.
Reno tilted his head slightly, glanced down Luka’s body and then back up, before drawing his focus back to Maria.
“Thank you, I like yours.” He gestured loosely at her nails, which had been prominently on display.
They were cheap decora press-ons, but no one needed to know that. “Who are you?”
Maria answered for them both again. “I’m Maria, this is my friend Luka. They’re a big fan, but shy.”
He would kill her later.
“Oh, did you like the show?” Reno tucked his hair behind his ear and showed how the earring there dangled nearly low enough to brush his shoulder.
When he took a bite of his food, Luka realized it was the only time he’d seen Reno without his makeup and contacts in.
His eyes were so dark without the blue contacts that Luka looked at the ground instead, before he turned bright red.
“Of course, we’ve been following your career since you put out your first single. Y’all have such an interesting blend of sounds. Must be due to you all being from different countries, yeah? It was super fun to see it live.”
“I didn’t expect to have fans out here. It’s such a small town.”
“Eh.” Jake shrugged. “People turn up in these dinky towns better for the small bands, for some reason. It's the big cities where we have no fans. The crowd at least seems more into it in the boonies.”
“I think the bigger cities sometimes don’t know what to do with you.
” Sammy reached over and flicked the belly button piercing dangling from Reno’s stomach and got a glare in response.
“No one expects to go to a regular metal show and get a bunch of queers on stage pushing out the heaviest sound ever. People who come to our shows in places like this are signing up for this on purpose.”
“That's not very nice," Dominic said. “Don’t call people that.”
Sammy shrugged and took another swig of her drink. “Is it mean if it’s true? It was a compliment anyway.”
Luka watched all this with a sense of mounting dread. What if they could tell what he was, too? Would Sammy turn her attention to him? He wasn’t popular or strong like Reno, and when Luka glanced at Reno to see how he’d reacted to the comment, Reno seemed more confused than anything.
The bus door snapped open. Immediately, Reno turned, waving, a smile cracking back over his features.
Without another word, he floated away—like some sort of magical creature in pursuit of T-yan, Voltage’s drummer, with half his hot dog held out as a gift.
With Reno gone, the conversation at the grill shifted back to the group.
“Nice one, Sammy.”
“What did I do? He knows I’m a dyke, it’s fine.”
Dominic sighed. “He’s not from here. I don’t think he gets it.”
“He’s foreign, not stupid," Sammy snapped back, then handed her drink to Jake. “I’m gonna get some shut-eye. Hey, you two” —she pointed at Luka and Maria— “thanks for comin’ out, have a safe trip home.
” She flipped her fringe out of her face and left, waving over her shoulder as she headed towards the other bus.
“Maria, yeah?” Dominic said, leaning forward to get in her line of sight. “Can I get you a drink or anything?”
“I’ll take a hot dog, thanks.” She smiled at Dominic and Luka wondered how she could be so effortlessly charming.
“I’m gonna go smoke this.” Luka held the cigarette up for her to see as she got up and started busying herself putting ketchup on a bun. “I’ll be back in ten.”
Luka hopped out of the chair before she could turn away from the grill to reply.
He darted around the group of musicians and headed towards the only open space free from cars and people loitering.
He had to get away from the group, the grill, the conversation.
The spot he picked—while mercifully devoid of people— was unfortunately, close to the tour buses.
He could hear laughter from the buses. A speaker somewhere was playing a song he didn’t know.
The venue was still pumping with the headliner’s set, muffled as it carried over to the parking lot.
He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and sparked it, watched it sputter, die, then tried again with no success. Only sparks.
“Need help?”
Luka turned and gasped, cigarette falling from his fingers.
Reno was only about an inch taller than him without his boots on—He had swapped them out for tennis shoes and taken out his earrings in the brief time they’d been apart—which was surprisingly short for how large he seemed on stage and in music videos.
Reno bent down to reach for the fallen cigarette, leaning so close that his hair brushed Luka’s exposed stomach. When he handed it back, his fingers slid against Luka’s, and it was all Luka could do not to drop it a second time.
Rummaging around in his pockets, Reno swore under his breath then said, “I’ll b.r.b. Stay here.”
“Okay," Luka said in a hushed voice as Reno jogged back towards the bus and pulled the door open.
When he returned, Luka had not budged, hand still half up to his mouth with the cigarette dangling between his fingers.
Reno smiled at him, and it was blinding in the streetlamp light.
When he sparked a Zippo in front of his face joyfully, the reflective ribbons wound into the braid behind his ear flashed like fireworks.
Luka stopped staring long enough to put the cigarette in his mouth and let Reno light it, feeling mildly dizzy with how close they were.
He took a drag, tried not to cough, and leaned against the chain link fence behind him.
Reno put the lighter back into his pocket and joined him, letting his head fall back against the fence, tilted to the sky.
Luka tried not to stare at the line of Reno’s throat, his pronounced adam’s apple, the curve of his collarbone under multiple soft straps of studded fabric and glittering buckles.
Luka let his head tilt back too, trying to pretend he wasn’t sweating in a crop top in fifty-degree weather, and looked at the three stars he could spot through the light pollution.
“Do you live here?” Reno asked, quietly. “What’s it like?”
“I live a few hours from here. It’s pretty much the same, though," Luka replied, pausing only to take another drag. “Conservative assholes, nothing to do, suburbia.”
“My hometown’s full of that, too. Assholes.
” Reno huffed a little laugh then held out his fingers for the cigarette.
Luka handed it over and watched in a daze as Reno put his lips where Luka’s had been only seconds before.
“It’s nice being in the U.S. People don’t stare as much. They don’t know what I am, though.”
“What do you mean?” Luka choked out, unable to hide his curiosity.
“Well, a man. For one.” Reno shrugged and handed the cigarette back to Luka, who considered never throwing it away. “What’s the word she used… Queer. Kind of an ugly slur, don’t you think? Faggot has a more fun ring to it.”
Luka coughed, trying not to choke on nothing. “Oh, so you…”
“Like men, yeah. Disappointed?”
Luka squirmed, not sure what to say. “No. I mean, I like guys, too.”
“That's normal though, ne? Don’t worry, I like girls too.” Reno waved his fingers to ask for the cigarette back and didn’t bother waiting for a response. “You coming to the next show? Would be fun to see you around.”
“I can’t, I have to get back to school.” Luka swallowed, trying not to watch the way the cigarette’s ember glowed in Reno’s dark eyes and made his skin look like a sunset.
“What are you studying?” Reno asked, his attention on Luka overwhelming.
“What? Oh.” Luka had to do something about his stomach. If it kept dropping like this, he wouldn’t make it until tomorrow. “No, I’m in high school.”
Reno’s smile faltered. “You shouldn’t be smoking.” He dropped the cigarette to the ground and stepped on it, ruining Luka’s fantasy of keeping it forever. “Have a good night, be safe.”
And just like that, Reno left. The bus door closed behind him and Luka stared at it, his hand hovering as if he could still take the smashed cigarette back from Reno’s fingers. He let out a long breath, let reality sink back in, then left to find Maria.
Maria
Oh honey.
Luka groaned, pushing his roommate’s cat, Michael, away to pull his laptop out from under the bed.
The clunker took a moment to boot up, and once it did, it took another moment for it to realize that Luka always paid the wifi bill on time and did indeed have internet.
He refused to get a new laptop, however, giving up having a CD drive on the side was out of the question.
He pulled up Chrome and opened Twitter first, which was apparently where he was needed.
He had over five thousand notifications.
“What the fuck?”
His account only had a few hundred followers; he barely posted other than the occasional sketch, a selfie, or a photo of his clingy, fluffy maine coon cat.
The notification count jumped another hundred and the laptop started to whirr as the fans kicked on.
He could feel his palms sticking against the laptop as he started to sweat.
He clicked on the notifications tab and didn’t know what he was looking at, at first.
JAY
what the hell is this
bro Reno posted…
for YOU
Like, he's trying to find you?
fucking why? that makes no sense.
His computer sounded like it would explode at any moment but still he clicked onto Reno’s account. Reno had posted the photo at seven a.m. and in only three hours it’d gained two hundred and seventy something thousand likes. And, Luka’s bright pink hair was clearly visible in the crowd.