Chapter 11 #3
“Fine,” Luka said and Reno’s confidence grew marginally.
“Hypothetically, if we were, let’s say, living in the same city, how would you feel about being my boyfriend?”
“Are you asking me out?” Luka laughed, sounding in disbelief.
“That depends.” Reno felt himself smiling. “We are in hypothetical right now. Answer the question, please?”
“Okay.” Reno could hear the amusement in Luka’s reply, “Sure. If I lived in the same city as you, I would be happy to date you.”
Reno could soar. He put Luka on speaker and rested his chest on his kitchen counter, the phone near his arms. “Okay, good. Now would you like to come on tour with me, one day?”
Luka replied, “And share a bed with you and Arnaud?”
“Maybe.” Reno winced but asked anyway, “Is it a problem that I am so close to him?”
“Are you two fucking?”
Reno didn’t mean for the conversation to go this way. “We were. We stopped when I found you.”
Luka made a choked noise.
“Promise, nothing’s happened. He’s aro, and my best friend. There’s nothing not-platonic there. It's not like how I am about you.”
“That’s so much to process.” Luka was quiet and Reno wondered what kind of face he was making. “I—”
“You don’t have to worry about me being unfaithful.”
“That’s not what I’m processing!” Luka barked a laugh. “You… do you know," he laughed again, “what the fan clubs would do if they found out?”
“Don’t remind me,” Reno groaned. “So you’re not mad?”
“No,” Luka said quickly. “Your past sexual partners mean nothing to me. It’s what you do now that counts. How did Arnaud take it?”
“He doesn’t care as long as we are the same in all other ways.”
“Sharing a bed,” Luka confirmed. “Being unreasonably dependent on each other.”
Reno took in a long breath. “That obvious?”
“Oh god. You have no idea how easy you are to read, do you? You two spend every moment together. Honestly I just wish—” Luka cut himself off.
“Wish what?” Reno asked, anxiously.
Luka gave an embarrassed groan then admitted, “That I could have seen it.”
“What?” Reno perked up, almost knocking the glass of water over.
“Don’t make me say,” Luka pleaded.
Reno tried to wrap his head around this latest development. “Please clarify before I pass out.”
“You still tired?”
“Not that kind of pass out, more like I’m going to faint if you don’t say exactly what you mean.”
“You’re so dramatic.” Luka was laughing. “I would have paid good money to see you two together before we started talking.”
“Holy shit.” Reno really might pass out. “I need to sit back down.”
“I don’t think I’d want that now, but good lord, I am so ashamed to admit that it’s appealing to my younger self.”
Reno grabbed his water and made his way back to his bedroom, where he sank back down into bed. “So, what does that mean now?”
“That I still don’t want you two doing that kind of stuff if you are trying to be with me.”
“I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to do.”
“And, if you have any photos or videos you should send them to me.”
“You dog," Reno said, amazed. “Those are confidential.”
“Shame.” Luka didn’t sound particularly disappointed, just amused.
“They also are filed away in a secret location,” Reno clarified. “We left no digital trace of our entanglements.”
“Entanglements,” Luka repeated. “My life is so fucking weird. How did I end up on the phone with Reno talking about his secret sexual relationship with Zana?”
“I believe I asked you to go on tour with me," Reno replied. “Hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically, sometimes I would go with you,” Luka answered. “However, my energy levels can be weird and limited so I think being on the road for months at a time would be really difficult for me.”
Reno hummed, fidgeting with the glass in his hand before setting it aside. “Okay, what if I flew you out and you joined for a week or two, then flew you home?”
“That’s so much money," Luka said. “Speaking of, I do have a job. I can’t just dip out for weeks at a time whenever I want.”
“Would you work your job if you didn’t have to pay bills?”
“Absolutely not," Luka said, immediately. “My job drains the life out of me. If I didn’t have to pay rent, I would make art full-time.”
“What keeps you in Missouri?”
“Money," Luka replied and Reno pictured him shrugging. “The cost of living is cheap. I’d miss August, too, but they would survive just fine without me. You’re not asking me to move, are you?”
“No," Reno reassured him. “I’m not crazy enough to think someone I’ve been talking to for a month or so would move to London for me.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am crazy enough to ask you to visit, though.”
Luka didn’t say anything and Reno felt his heart pounding in his chest.
“Hypothetically?” Luka asked.
“No, for real," Reno answered. “Come see me. I miss you. I feel insane without you.”
“How do you expect this to work?” Luka asked instead of giving Reno an answer. “I come visit you, then what?”
“Then I begin my master plan to have you move in and stay with me forever and make you my future husband.”
“Excuse you?”
Reno’s palms were sweating but it didn’t stop him from saying, “I mean it.”
“How?”
“Easy. I told you. I give you everything.”
Luka’s breath came out staggered before he said, “You expect me to believe that?”
“No. But, you did say you’d give me the chance.”
“You are insufferably sincere. How do you live with yourself?”
Reno scoffed. “I know what I want. Is that so bad?”
Luka took his time responding. “When it’s me, yeah.”
Reno felt himself frowning. How could he get Luka to see himself the way Reno did? “Don’t say that. It is never a bad thing to want to be around you. I like talking to you. I enjoy our time together. I look forward to calling you. I want to make this work.”
“I don’t get it,” Luka said after a beat, “I’m not anyone special. Why fly me to see you? Why spend your money on me? Why do you set an alarm for four am just to talk to me when it’s convenient for me and inconvenient for you?”
Reno answered as honestly as he could, “When will you understand that ‘because I want to’ is enough reason to devote myself?”
“Because it’s not. It needs to make sense,” Luka bit back and Reno knew he had misstepped.
“Time.” Reno felt close to begging. “Give me time to show you.”
Reno listened to Luka breathing over the phone for far too long before Luka finally said, “Being away from you is miserable. The time that passes with you so far makes things worse, not better.”
“So…" Reno dared to hope. “You’ll visit?”
“When?”
“As soon as you can! Name the day and you arrive. I have a month off of work starting tomorrow.”
“I’d need to ask for time off of my work,” Luka replied, sounding reserved. “If I can get the time off, then it’s a yes.”
Reno felt all his nerves drop away. “You’re as crazy as me, aren’t you?”
“I already flew across the country to fuck you. What do you think?”
Reno gasped, “I love when you talk like that.”
“Like what?” Luka finally sounded like he wasn’t as nervous either.
“Filthy. Blunt. You’re so attractive to me.”
“Um," Luka made a low noise. “You have no idea how blunt I can be.”
Reno stretched out in bed. “I want to learn. I want to know all parts of you.”
“Christ,” Luka swore. “If you keep talking like that to me, I don’t think I’ll ever leave.”
“My master plan is working,” Reno jested before turning a bit serious. “I won’t stop. Promise.”
“Good, because if you’re just love-bombing me and I end up moving across the world one day for you, then you stop being like this to me, I will make your life hell.”
“We don’t have to worry about that.”
“I will worry, regardless," Luka replied. “I have anxiety, and Reno—”
Reno waited for Luka to finish but he didn’t. “Yes?”
“I. Well. This is big for me. It’s why I pulled away this week.
I thought, maybe if I tried for a moment to pretend like I wasn’t feeling everything that I’m feeling, I’d calm down.
It didn’t work. Stupid of me to try to pretend like my life hasn’t suddenly turned upside down because of you.
You’re teasing this future in front of me, and if I let myself believe I’ll actually be cared for, then what will I do when that ends up not being true? ”
“I will take care of you if you let me.” Reno tried to sound as reassuring as he felt. “Even if you pull away again.”
“You terrify me.”
“I don’t understand.”
Luka sighed. “Your world is so different than mine. Maybe you’re used to getting what you want, but I’m not.”
“You have a point.” Reno knew he was abnormally blessed to consistently get the things he worked for.
“I am coming at this confidently because I know my own capacity to care for you, and I see the way I behave towards the people in my circle and how my sincere feelings are unwavering. I know I am fully able, and willing, to make whatever life you want possible. I shouldn’t expect you to see what I do, even if I wish you did. ”
“So you admit you’re being unreasonable.”
“Sage told me I am, by nature, unreasonable.” Reno didn’t have a problem saying so.
“She said, and I think she’s right, that it's good I’m trying to be more considerate and rational, but if I present myself to you as something I’m not, then it’ll be bad.
I’m stubborn, like a dog with a bone. Once I have what I want, I don’t let it go and I don’t stop wanting it.
It makes me difficult to deal with sometimes, but it does make me trustworthy.
If I say something, I mean it. If I say I’ll do something, I will. ”
“I see,” Luka said. “This is why you asked for time?”
“Yes. I can say things to you but you need to watch.”
“What do you mean?”
Reno scratched his cheek, trying to come up with better words. “If you stick around, you will watch me and see I don’t give up. I can show you, year after year, that these things I am saying are real and true.”
“It is impossible for you to know that,” Luka argued, “No one knows where they will be in five years, or how they will feel then.”
Reno relented, “That’s true. However, I know myself.”
“You’re saying you’re built different.”