Chapter Text
I say, here stand I
I can't do otherwise
But is it enough?
And why'd you look so tough?
Back at Patrick Park
We stood in the dark
In my beer-stained mind
I said "please won't you be mine?"
There's something dark hangin' over my head
I'm seventeen, don't hold your breath
There's something dark hangin' over my head
I'm seventeen, don't hold your breath
Seventeen - Peach Pit
As the bright sun peeked its way into Langa’s room all he could think of was his best friend’s smile which seemed to glow brighter than the sun. It hadn’t been long since they had their first fight but Langa was focusing on the fact that they had made up. And that they had promised to skate together for infinity. He couldn't wait until the next time they’d get to skateboard together but that could wait until he got a little more sleep. So Langa rolled over in bed planning to get up in a half-hour that was until he saw the clock. It read 8:17 leaving him with under thirty minutes to get ready and skateboard to school. With no time to spare Langa jumped out of bed throwing on a random sweatshirt and pants before running out of his room and nearly knocking his mother over. “Sorry Mom I’m going to be late,” he said, not stopping for a second to check on her.
“Be careful Langa,” Nanako said while shaking her head. Lang was too busy grabbing his shoes to listen to his mother's worries but she continued anyway. “You don’t want to be late for school. And eat something!”
“Can’t I have to meet up with Reki!” With that Langa was out the door and too far away to hear his mother warning him not to oversleep again.
Oliver, what am I going to do with him, Hanako said silently knowing her deceased husband would be thinking the same thing if he was still here.
Like usual Reki was up until two and had slept through his multiple alarms. When he finally woke up it was because his two youngest sisters Chirhiro and Nanaka were jumping on him and yelling. “Wake up! Wake up! You're going to be late!”
He could also hear the sound of his other sister Koyomi’s devilish laugh, they both knew she could have stopped the two youngest sisters from barging in, but instead chose not to.“Chirhiro and Nanaka get off, I'm up,” mumbled Reki. He was still very much half asleep but he’d do anything to get his younger sisters off of him. Even in his dazed state, he managed to shoo them away.
“Don’t be mad big brother, this was the deal we made with Mum, if you oversleep we get to wake you up.” Koyomi taunted.
She would have continued to make fun of her older brother if he didn’t interrupt, “I’m late?” He’d finally processed what his sister had been yelling, before it had all been loud noises flooding his ears now they'd become actual words.
Koyomi laughed in response as Reki flung himself out of bed and rushed to pick up his clothes that were kept in messy piles all over his room. He picked up the cleanest looking ones hoping that they smelt decent. “Did you stay up working on a new skateboard?”
Of course, that was exactly what Reki had been doing but he couldn’t let his younger sister make fun of him too much in one morning so he just rolled his eyes and kicked all three of them out of his room.
Once he got dressed he went into the kitchen. His sisters were eating their breakfast and Reki’s mother Masae handed him a piece of toast and a kiss on his forehead. “Have a good day honey.”
“Bye guys,” Reki yelled while leaving the house and jumping on his skateboard to go and meet up with Langa. He didn't say anything about his Mom kissing him or she'd take his food back.
Hopefully I don’t make him wait too long, Reki thought.
Langa was out of breath by the time he reached the corner where he and Reki would meet up every day. He had to skateboard like he was in a race at S to get there on time. So once he got there he was still red in the face. Which made him somewhat embarrassed when he saw Reki skateboarding down the other street at a leisurely pace. Langa had always been a little oblivious so he didn’t realize that Reki was also red in the face which is something that wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t also rushing to get there on time. “Hey, dude did you wait long?” Reki called out as he got closer to where Langa was standing.
“No not really,” Langa said while cringing.
He’d never liked when people called him dude, bro, or man. But lately he had noticed himself getting more and more uncomfortable when people used those words when talking about him. And no matter how much he thought about it he couldn’t figure out why. After answering Langa was distracted by his thoughts and once he got out of his head he saw that Reki was already at the other end of the street.
He’d kept skating while Langa wasn’t paying attention and the only reason Langa looked over was that Reki had yelled. “Hurry up or I’ll leave you behind.”
Langa jumped on his board and Reki sped off towards school with Langa closely behind. The two of them loved to playfully race on their way to school in the morning neither trying too hard to beat the other but also not going easy either. When they were a few streets away from school they started to slow down so that it was easier for the two of them to talk. “Dude last night I was working on another skateboard,” Reki said and Langa cringed again.
While Reki was talking about the new skateboard he was making and all of the new features he was going to add to it, Langa was trying his best to listen but his thoughts kept distracting him. It's weird that I’m overthinking this so much. I shouldn't be so bothered by a few words that aren’t even meant to upset me, right?
It wasn’t until they were outside of their school that Langa finally managed to put his worries to the side and be able to draw all of his attention to his best friend. Once they got to the front entrance of the school Reki stopped talking about his skateboards and started to look a little upset and nervous.
“I’m going to talk to one of our teachers before class so I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
“Okay, Reki, I'll see you in class then.”
The two of them went their separate ways, but Langa was still worried about Reki. He doesn’t usually get in trouble, Langa thought while walking into class, unless he was caught skateboarding but if that was the case I would have been called in as well. When Langa got to his seat he decided that he wasn’t going to just wonder what was going on he was going to find out. Since he couldn’t think of a reason and Reki wasn’t here to answer, he had to do the next best thing, ask one of Reki’s friends. “Hey, do you know why Reki would have to talk to a teacher,” Langa questioned.
At first, the boy looked at him like he was the biggest idiot in the world but Langa just tilted his head slightly to the right in confusion. When the boy realized that he was serious it took him a minute for his laughter to die down enough to answer. “I can’t believe you didn’t know this,” the boy said, taking breaks to laugh before finishing, “he’s practically failing all of his classes.”
The boy turned to the girl next to him to continue laughing and soon enough multiple other people were also joking around and saying how everyone knows that Reki’s failing, he’s even said it himself. This puzzled Langa, I always thought Reki was smart. He never said anything about failing or not being confident in his school work. But after he thought about it for a while he came to realize that outside of Reki’s love for skateboarding he didn’t know much else about him. And he’d never told Reki himself either. Does that mean we were not as close as I thought we were? Langa wondered before quickly shoving his doubts down. No school work just hasn’t come up in our conversations.
Langa was waiting impatiently for Reki to come back to class so he could make sure everything was alright. But he still wasn’t back by the time that the teacher started class. When he finally did come back a few minutes into their first lesson. Langa wasn’t able to ask what had happened both because of the teacher who had noticed that he kept looking over at Reki. And because Reki had walked in like nothing had happened and Langa didn't want to make a big deal out of it in case it was nothing. Especially not in front of the whole class.
For the rest of the day, Langa struggled with bringing up the events from that morning. They had been busy with school work in each class which left them almost no time to talk during the day. And at lunch, Reki had done his best to carry the conversation and steer it away from school work.
Finally, after school had ended and the two boys were on their way home from school Langa was able to talk to him. “Hey Reki, there's something I want to ask you.”
“What is it?” Reki asked. He was laughing a little, probably thinking that Langa was being too serious but he also seemed a little nervous.
“At school,” Langa paused, unsure if this was the best way to approach Rek, “I heard people talking about grades…your grades in particular. Well, I was wondering if they were as bad as our classmates made them sound?”
Judging by Reki’s face, Langa knew that he had messed up and how he had asked Reki made him completely shut him out. “They like to exaggerate.”
He’s laughing, there's no way that I’ll get a better answer out of him now. Thought Langa.
He had never been good at picking up on cues and knowing when people act a certain way it means a certain thing. But one thing he has learned through being friends with Reki is that when he wants to get out of an uncomfortable conversation he’ll laugh and joke his way out of it. And once he starts doing that the only thing you can do is drop the conversation.
After a few too many moments of silence, Reki asked,” Do you want to go to the skate park before going home?”
Of course, Langa had said yes and within minutes they were both doing tricks and no longer worrying about grades and unanswered questions. To them, skateboarding had always been a way to connect without worrying about any of their problems, similar to how at S you could be whoever you wanted and problems from your outside life can be forgotten.
Before long Langa had stopped going all out on the tricks he was doing and instead did simpler ones so that his eyes could linger on Reki skateboarding without him worrying about falling on his face because he was distracted. From the moment Reki had first skateboarded in front of him Langa loved to admire what he was doing. No matter how easy or hard the move was in Langa’s eyes it was always the coolest. Langa wasn’t sure if Reki had noticed his habit or not but Langa noticed that he would do the same. And when he could feel Reki’s eyes on him he always tried to push himself to skate a little better so he could show off to the boy who taught him everything he knew about skateboarding.
After Langa did a few more tricks Reki finally said something. “You know you look pretty cool.”
Langa wasn’t expecting this, he thought that Reki would only look over at him to see how he was skating and not say anything. He could handle that and easily hide the small blush that would appear on his face, but hearing Reki compliment him was too much and his face turned red. He knew that it was obvious but he was hoping to pass it off as getting too hot from skateboarding but unfortunately Reki knew better than that.
“Hey Langa, is that a blush I see?” Reki said. He was a little surprised that Langa would blush that easily.
“Of course not,” Langa replied but his argument was very unconvincing especially since his face had turned a brighter shade of red.
Reki started to laugh harder after Langa denied blushing which made him wonder if Reki had just been joking around before and because Langa had been so defensive it made it obvious that he was right. Regardless of when Reki found out he was blushing he now knew which was a huge problem, because friends don’t blush when one gets a compliment from the other. Or at least most of them don’t.
Trying to find a way to forget about embarrassing himself, Langa quickly used the only excuse he could think of to getaway. “I’ll go and get us drinks,” he said.
Reki continued to laugh even as Langa was walking away, not that he was surprised he hadn’t used the best excuse to getaway. And anyone could see that but in his defense, he was panicking which didn’t leave him much space in his brain to come up with a good solution.
Once he made it to the vending machine a block over he finally felt his face cool down. But his thumping heart still refused to go down to a normal pace. But Langa was used to that, every time he skated with Reki his heart would always beat fast in a way that wouldn’t happen if he was with anyone else.
While choosing a drink for the two of them Langa’s rush from skating and being with Reki wore off all of Langa’s thoughts came back to him. Causing him to remember his worries about them not knowing enough about each other. Luckily Langa knew that Reki would be a lot more open about random facts about himself than he was about his problems. So all he had to do was ask. Which was exactly what he did once he made his way back to the skate park and handed Reki his drink. “I’ve been thinking about this lately, there’s a lot we don’t know about each other.”
After a moment of thinking over what Langa had said he gave a suggestion. “Yeah, you're right. We should learn random things about each other.”
“Okay,” Langa replied,” you first say a random fact about yourself.”
While they finished their drinks the two boys spit things about themselves back and forth. And before long they'd finished their drinks but we’re too invested in what the other was saying to go back to skateboarding. And it wasn’t until a light rain started coming down and they realized it had gotten late that they finally got up and made their way back to their homes.
They skateboarded to the street corner they’d meet up every morning in comfortable silence after sharing so much about themselves. Langa kept thinking back to all the new things about Reki that he now knew and made mental notes to remember all the little things he loves and hates. It wasn’t until he laid down in his bed later that night that he realized Reki never gave him an answer about school. He’s successfully avoided the question and made Langa forget he’d even tried to ask him anything.