“Caaane,"Reno whined over the brim of his plastic cup. It was hour five of his flight and Reno had been allowed exactly two alcoholic drinks. Cane refused to have him to show up in the London airport drunk, no matter how stir crazy Reno got. “How much longer?”
Cane tapped the screen in front of Reno, switching it from the movie Reno hadn’t been watching to the flight path. Reno pouted and finished his drink. Trips from the U.S. to London were the second-worst ones he had to regularly take. Passing through U.S. customs sucked, and flying over the Atlantic made him nervous. The only flights he hated more were the ones that lasted over ten hours in the air.
Because usually, Reno could sleep for exactly seven hours. After that, he’d spring awake, brimming with too much energy to sit still in the airplane for very long.
This flight was worse than usual, however, because he’d not slept a wink.
His mind was a steady spiral ofLuka. If he wasn’tReno,he might have been embarrassed by his obsessive tendency to latch on to someone else, but Reno was very good at rationalizing his own feelings. He was excited. Nervous. In ecstasy. Who was heto deny himself from feeling so strongly? He figured the reason people felt fear when pursuing a relationship was for one of two reasons:
One: rejection. But Reno had proven through marathon hotel sex that he wasvery muchnot rejected.
Two: eventual heartbreak.
Now that one was a little harder to cope with, as his experience had shown. But, even with Joy, even with the mess he was for a year after their breakup, Reno did not regret his relationship with her.
Once, it had brought him comfort. For a time, it had helped him have a home and a family in a new place where he felt out of his depth. She had taken his hand and showed him how to live away from everything he’d ever known, and by the time they separated, Reno was, at the very least, familiar enough with London and its people to resist the temptation to move back home and quit music altogether.
Even still, it had been close, and in the end, he’d had Sebastian to thank for keeping him here.
Sebastian had held Reno together in the year after Joy and he broke up. Arnaud and Jaewon, even Sage, had helped. But, without Sebastian as a rock—getting Reno to throw himself back on stage instead of moping, sitting Reno down and putting a guitar back in his hands and forcing him to write, pushing him relentlessly to study more, to listen to more genres, to play everything he could—Reno would have lost himself.
Once he started to forget Joy, his feelings for Sebastian became… misplaced. He was spending every day with Sebastian on tour in a new country, writing music in a kind of religious frenzy, until Reno eventually snapped and jumped him.
Sebastian, the gentle, wonderful person he was, put a stop to it only two weeks in. He confessed that Reno’s heart simply burned too hot for him to hold. He wasn’t built for Reno’sintensity; he knew himself, and he knew he would fail to give Reno what he needed in a relationship—that he could hold Reno’s fire for music, butnotforlove.
Reno thanked him for it.
Then, he split his heart between everyone he loved, giving a piece of himself to each of his friends and family to hold and protect.
Sebastian kept his music like he’d promised, and together they brought the band to fame. Jaewon kept his sanity, always pulling him back to earth when he dreamed too big. Arnaud kept his affections, playing as an outlet for Reno’s adoration, and in return, protecting him with every fiber of his being.
Sage kept him normal. Well, as normal as he could be. Everyone needed that friend who humanized them when their life got too insane.
Reno felt like the luckiest person alive to have the people he did taking care of him.
“Cane!" Even Cane held a small piece of Reno—his trust to keep crazy fans and paparazzi far, far, away from him. “Justonemore.”
Cane sighed and pressed the attendant button.
“Arigato gozaimasu?1," Reno drew it out, because he knew it annoyed Cane when he didn’t use English. British people were funny like that. Maybe he shouldn’t annoy Cane when he was the giver of alcohol on this unbearable flight, but he liked making the large man roll his eyes. And, when Cane caught Reno grinning at him now, he did roll his eyes, which made the flight slightly better.
Once his drink was in his hands, he still couldn’t help but circle around to Luka. Again, and again,Luka. Reno wasn’t sure how he was going to survive the next however long until they could see each other again.
He wondered if Luka would be able to handle him. He hadn’t tried since his fling with Sebastian to give this much of himself to any one person.
Dividing himself was for other people’s sanity; he knew he was a lot to handle. He had a relentless energy and endless drive, and once he fixated on something, it was nearly impossible to tear it away from him. He could bow out gracefully when asked, but until he was told to leave he would stubbornly throw himself at whatever, or whoever, no matter how badly it hurt.
He knew the look on someone’s face when Reno was wearing them thin. He’d seen it first at home, from his mother, despite how much they loved each other. He drove her insane with his obsessions, and he’d jumped at the chance to leave home to spare her. To some, that special look might have passed for tired fondness. But Reno knew better, knew the tension in a jaw, the coolness of a gaze, the sudden lack of warmth that meant he was fraying some final nerve. Now, Reno knew exactly what that look meant.Stop being you—or I will leave.
Even Arnaud had given him that look.
The one and only time it happened, Reno didn’t talk to him for three weeks, which was longer than they had gone without communicating since Arnaud had first cold-emailed Reno about music. They never stayed angry like that again, because it made them both miserable to be away from the other for more than a few days.
Arnaud had asked what he’d done, Reno explained, and Arnaud confirmed that Reno had been right. He’d been overwhelmed by Reno, had needed some space to breathe, and hadn’t known how to say it. They sorted out a system quickly so they could communicate what they needed, and it thankfully never happened again.
So, Reno knew. Heunderstood.
He tried to be better at dividing his attention between everything he loved and checked himself when he noticed he was spending too long doing or thinking about only one thing.
