Preference

Reno figures things out.
------------------------

Preference

I got sixteen days

Fifteen of those are nights

Can’t sleep when the bedsheet fights

Its way back to your side—Sixteen Days, Whiskeytown

It was 10:00 AM and Reno sat outside the ShinRa building, puffing absently on a cigarette and well, there being no other word for it, sulking.

It was a pastime better associated with his sort-of boyfriend, but what Reno lacked in experience he made up in intensity. He had just received the unwelcome news that he and Rude would be dispatched to “the field” for two weeks for some bullshit task that his superiors no doubt considered very important.

But to Reno, there was nothing short of the planet’s existence that was important enough to justify a two week absence of a warm bed, a roof over his head, hot meals, cold beer, showers, clean clothes, and recently rediscovered sex on a regular basis.

Put to a test, he wasn’t sure which he would miss the most but he thought beer was pretty close to the top.

The boyfriend thing puzzled him though. There had been no I love yous, no declarations of commitment, no real discussions at all. But Cloud was bringing him lunch today. That said something. Didn’t it? Food, Reno was sure, was a form of love. One of the highest. Next to opening a beer or finding lost smokes. But what was worse, Reno was a total amateur when it came to anything like this, and he’d die if anyone found that out.

And now, with the worst timing ever, he had to take a two week break in the middle of it.

They sat on the wall outside ShinRa and ate their sandwiches in relative silence. Cloud, because he was digesting the unpleasant news that Reno would be gone two weeks, just when they were settling into a pleasant routine that was and yet maybe wasn’t a relationship. He could be an annoying fuck but he couldn’t help smiling at Reno’s hypercheerfulness in the middle of a dull day and damn, the man WAS good in bed. Unexpectedly generous and attentive, taking him up on his flirtations had ended up being one of the better bad ideas Cloud had ever had. Two weeks was gonna be a long time.

Reno was quiet because his mouth was full of roast chicken and tomato sandwich.

Finishing up and tossing the bag in the trash, they spent the rest of their lunch walking around the building in the chilly noon sun. On some joint impulse they held hands. And smiled.

It was…boyfriendy.

“Two weeks is gonna suck, yo.”

I’ll miss you.

“I might go deaf in the silence.”

I’ll miss you too.

“Get one of those yappy ass dogs.”

Gods, I don’t want to leave you.

“No way, at least I don’t have to walk you to keep you from pissing on the bed.”

Come back to me safe.

They kissed, and Cloud walked away while he still could.

At one point Reno had actually tried to figure out the sexual preference thing; whether he found men attractive, or a man. Specifically, one man. A small, deceptively quiet, badass blond with a badder ass sword. Was it the sword? There was that whole phallic thing going on. Better than an Oedipal complex, he guessed.

Eventually, he gave up and decided that drinking was a much more productive waste of brain cells and dedicated himself to that.

Well, that and bagging the badass blond.

After all, it didn’t matter what he preferred if he couldn’t get what he wanted, right?

It had taken months for Reno to win his prize, though some days he wondered if it had been a victory of sheer attrition, this sudden capitulation. It was as if one day Cloud Strife was in his bed when the day before he had not been. One night, instead of giving him the Angstpuppy Glare of Death, Cloud had met his innuendos with a single shoulder shrug and an “OK.”

For once in his short and misspent life, Reno had the sense not to argue.

The next morning Reno had wandered out of his bedroom, scratching his hip, and Cloud was scrambling eggs in a pan Reno didn’t remember owning. Hell, Reno didn’t remember owning dish soap. But it was if a new reality had supplanted the old one, and as the new reality included Reno getting laid on a semi-regular basis, he wasn’t complaining.

Still, it was a little surreal. He wasn’t even sure he was gay. But it seemed bad form to complain, really, when he was in love with the man who had blown him that morning. Reno hadn’t been in love before. Nor had he gotten blowjobs like that before. Cloud Strife’s tongue, he was sure, belonged in a museum for wonders of the modern world.

It’s just that there wasn’t really an entry in the etiquette books for it.

Maybe he’d write one.

When he got home.

But right now he and Rude were on their way to “the field” and he didn’t even have paper. And if he did, he’d probably save it to wipe his ass with later.

Roughing it was for the fucking birds.

Cloud didn’t know what to do with himself. His friend, and more recently his lover, was gone. Two weeks stretched out like a chasm of eternity.

He had never handled subtlety well, so the relationship changed suddenly when reasons dictated. Change had never come gradually and Cloud never found himself good with explanations. Besides, Reno never asked for them. When they became friends, instead of enemies, Reno seemed agreeable. Later, Reno became flirtatious when drunk. Tired, drunk, and horny himself one night, Cloud was tired of fighting both Reno and his own hormones on the subject and followed him home.

And fucked him. It turned out to be a good idea, even if the kitchen was utterly empty (if one did not count questionable takeout leftovers) and prompted a trip to a 24 hour market so they didn’t starve the next morning.

Again, Reno seemed agreeable. Cloud was not sure when it happened, but the world had changed around him, and Reno was a bright fast moving object that made his heart smile and made him want to furnish a kitchen and make lunches.

Two weeks. He downloaded depressing songs onto his iPod and drank Reno’s beer. And sniveled to Tifa who told him to stuff it, she missed Rude and still had a bar to run.

No love.

One week, five days (not that anyone had been counting) into the Great Separation, Tifa ran up to the office with the news that the boys had been recalled due to the impending ice storm and would be arriving any minute, smelly and bearing laundry.

Sure enough, and preceded by the worst body odor Cloud had ever experienced, Reno and Rude bounded through the front door of Seventh Heaven some time later. Reno called out rather unnecessarily “Let us shower before you touch us!” while Rude generously allowed his partner to go first since “his boyfriend is new at the separation shit.”

Everyone was too stunned by the smell to give pause at the boyfriend remark. Well, everyone but Reno who was used to his own BO at this point.

Reno set speed records, jumping from the shower and into clean sweatpants and shirt, not even brushing his precious hair. “Where’s Cloud?” he shouted to an empty bar.

OK, maybe beer got knocked down one the “miss you” list.

“In the basement, with a bucket of cold ones. Cook’s making some sandwiches for you and Rude the minute Rude’s done with his shower.”

Bounding down the basement stairs two at a time, he met Cloud halfway and hugged him until neither could breathe. Cloud opened a beer bottle next to Reno’s ear so he could hear the familiar hiss.

“I love you,” he whispered into a fluff of soft blond hair.

“Was that for me or the beer?”

“Don’t make me choose just now.”

They stood like that for a while. “So, how was it?”

“I have spent the better part of two weeks sleeping in the rain, shitting in the woods, wiping my ass with wet leaves, listening to Rude sigh, drinking water that tastes like iodine pills, and eating ShinRa rations. And missing you. It sucked, yo. Do I smell FOOD?”

Hot roast beef sandwiches and fries, carried by a clean Rude, arrived and the only sounds were of hungry men and small talk between Cloud and Tifa. Reno observed silently that anyone who thought sex was an equal drive to hunger had never been sufficiently hungry.

Fed, however, and in possession of a beer…Cloud was even more beautiful than he remembered.

“When is that ice storm supposed to come through?”

Catching the hint, Rude replied “Um, soon. You two had better get going.”

“Like, now! Your laundry’s done.” Tifa added, anxious to get Rude alone.

“Yeah…we need to beat that weather, don’t we? Why don’t we just hole up at my place? No sense in both of us being iced in alone and bored.” his boyfriend asked, the Best Boyfriend in The World. The warm boyfriend with a warm dry bed and food and beer. Reno decided he was about the happiest man on the planet. And the very second they got back to Cloud’s apartment, he was going to fuck that man’s brains straight into the mattress and neither was getting up until the other passed out from hunger. No questions asked.