Chapter Text
You liked it.
The words played over and over in Langa’s head—fast, then slow, but always brokenly and always painfully. Reki’s voice. His eyes, looking away.
How had Langa been so foolish?
The two had been dating ever since their final semester of high school, and now that they were second years in university who spent more time together than the ordinary couple (partially because they always desired one another’s company and partially because they shared a dorm suite), Langa was growing concerned with Reki’s continued inability to tell him what he wanted within their relationship.
Langa remembered how he had first taken notice of the issue back in high school when they used to go to restaurants together. It was something Langa initially insisted they do, believing a candlelit dinner to be the epitome of romance, and he wanted only the best for Reki, who gleamed like a candle himself. But whenever he saw Reki squirming around in the nice chair before him, scratching at the back of his neck and then plucking awkwardly at a scab on his knuckle, Langa’s thoughts would turn in a broken somersault.
“I’m doing something wrong,” he had said back then, watching how Reki’s face bloomed one hundred different shades of red in a matter of seconds.
“No, no, it’s all good, Langa.” Reki waved his arms everywhere. He looked out of place in a fancy setting, dressed up. But a good out of place, like he outshone everyone else in the room. “Really good, like, perfect. Don’t worry. I guess I just never went somewhere so fancy before.”
“You’re unhappy here,” Langa said back and Reki’s surrendering face gave him away, his hands falling limply to his sides.
Once they were back outside on the dark pavement, headed to Reki’s house for dinner instead, Langa watched the passing profile of Reki beside him, trying to decipher his feelings. “Why didn’t you tell me you hated going out to restaurants? We’ve gone like four or five times. We didn’t have to.”
“It’s not like that!” Reki protested, but Langa could see from every relaxed slope of his body that he practically was overflowing with relief over having left the restaurant. His entire posture screamed thank God. “Besides, you liked it, so.”
You liked it. That was becoming a consistent issue with Reki, Langa realized sometime in the summer between high school and college. Reki had let Langa choose the layout of their dorm room, although Langa insisted it would be best for them to settle it out together. “Yeah, but I want you to get what you want,” Reki said in his simple, sweet way, the way that made Langa’s head spin. “I want you to be happy, man.”
In the end, Langa had picked an arrangement he thought would accommodate them both. He could imagine Reki leaping from the top bunk so easily—he was always like fire, spinning from room to room even when only on his own two feet rather than a board—but within three weeks, Langa came back from class to find Reki looking wistfully at Langa’s messy bottom bunk.
“Do you want it?” Langa had asked without thinking, which brought the usual ferocious red back to Reki’s face, the kind that matched his hair and made all of him look so ridiculous and yet, to Langa, so endearing.
“I-I mean, it’s your bed,” insisted Reki. “It’s just . . . I get up to use the bathroom a lot in the night and the climb up and down can be kinda annoying. But I mean like. You chose it this way, so please don’t worry about it. Seriously, man. It’s nothing. You liked it.”
The next morning while Reki was in class, Langa had switched their comforters and pillows.
Restaurants and beds were one thing, but Langa couldn’t help but feel steam of panic leave his ears the first time Reki and he had had sex and he wasn’t sure what Reki wanted out of it the most, which position and what things to say. The whole affair was hopelessly awkward and mostly uncomfortable, happening on the floor of their dorm room because both agreed for once that the college-provided mattresses were just about as soft as the floor anyway, just smaller, and harder to maneuver.
“I-It’s all good,” Reki had mumbled nervously, his bushy-haired head buried somewhere into the curve of Langa’s shoulder. “I like whatever you do,” he kept saying when Langa paused to ask him if every little motion and whisper was okay, what he wanted. “Just do . . . do what you like,” Reki finally said, his voice shaking.
Now Langa was sitting vacant-eyed at his laptop in the dining hall, remembering that first time with both horror and fondness. Fondness, because it had been with Reki, and the first time he had been so intimate and close with his strong, perfect body, but horror because what if he had hurt Reki and Reki had never told him? What if the placement had been all wrong like the restaurant and the bed and Reki wasn’t really happy, but too shy to tell him? God knew Reki wasn’t shy about anything else, but for some reason with Langa he could go from bold to bashful in a matter of seconds, hardly able to initiate anything on his own.
Langa’s throat tightened. Did that mean Reki hated holding hands with him or kissing him? Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember the last time Reki had started a kiss himself, and the last time Langa had reached for his hand, Reki had clumsily pulled his own way, pretending to mess with his hair.
The panic-steam became a full-out fog of anxiety in Langa’s mind now. In all his efforts to be the perfect boyfriend, had he accidentally messed up so irrevocably and horribly that Reki wasn’t happy and simply wasn’t telling him for some reason? Was he too embarrassed? And if so, why?
When he came back to their dorm room a few hours later, he had completed exactly zero pages of homework and Reki appeared to be in a similar state, flopped across the floor with his feet propped onto the bed, holding his phone over his head. Langa could hear the sounds of a skating video playing from the phone, and several discarded notebooks were piled next to Reki.
“Hey,” he said, glancing up when Langa came in. Langa’s throat twisted up in a funny way and he sat down next to Reki, cross-legged.
“What’re you watching?” he asked.
“Wipeout compilations. You wanna watch with?” He adjusted his body to make room, but Langa knew he couldn’t focus on skating right now, not when he was worried maybe Reki wasn’t happy in their relationship. Was he not romantic enough? No, Reki hated that gushy crap.
“Reki,” he said carefully. “Do you want me to kiss you?” he asked. “Like when I get back to our room after classes?”
“Huh?” Reki said, nearly dropping the phone, his voice rising an octave. His face went red again. “I-I mean, if you like that—” he started, scrambling.
“Do you like that?” Langa insisted, searching Reki’s face for signs of some kind of reaction other than humiliation. Why was he humiliated? They had kissed each other plenty of times. Or have I been kissing him and he doesn’t even want it? Langa’s mind added with fear.
“I mean,” Reki floundered, his thumb sliding all over his phone in search of the pause button to the video. Fitting that people should be wiping out so brutally on Reki’s screen while Langa felt like his heart was wiping out all over the place right now. “I mean, like.” Reki couldn’t seem to push the words further. “I mean.”
“Do you like it when I kiss you?” Langa asked more boldly, watching Reki go through all the different stages of despair or something in a matter of seconds.
“O-Of course, Langa! What the hell?” He looked up at him finally, his eyes huge and confused. “Why would I be with you if I hated that? Why’re you being weird all of a sudden?” When Reki got nervous, he spoke too quickly, sometimes too quickly for even Langa to follow. That was happening now, even worse than when he had been uncomfortable in the restaurant. Langa felt the steam starting up again.
“Do you want me to kiss you when I get back to our room, or before I leave it?” he asked. “Or should I not do either of those things? When are the best times for me to kiss you?” He put a gentle hand forward, touching the tip of his finger to Reki’s top lip, which sent Reki spiraling into a sitting position, so red he barely looked human anymore.
Langa found it indescribably cute how Reki could stay as flustered now as he had been when they were in high school, but it was also worrisome, in ways. “I want to do what you like,” Langa said.
“I-I like whatever you do, man. Man, why’re you being so weird?” Reki got up and stuffed his phone in his pocket, looking like he’d rather be just about anywhere else on Earth than in this dorm room with Langa. He shook his hair out and looked everywhere except Langa’s face. “Wanna go skate for a while?”
Langa sighed. Was it really so weird to want to improve their communication? He knew neither of them was the best at it, but at least he was trying. “You go on,” he said. “I have homework to finish.”
Reki nodded, seemingly thankful for the opportunity to get the hell out of there. Langa watched him grab up his board and sprint out of the room like the floor literally was lava.
Langa made no moves to get out of his homework, but stayed on his spot on the floor, thinking. Maybe he had been going about this all wrong, trying to work out things in the way he wanted, without taking Reki’s needs into consideration. In one way, he ruled just about everything in their relationship, he realized with somber terror.
Langa chose where they went for dates. Langa chose when to kiss, when to have sex.
Langa. Langa Langa.
He dropped his head into his hands, shame clogging every pore of his body and holding his mind in a headlock. How could he have been so foolish? Had he been taking advantage of Reki this entire time? Reki would have said something, right?
“I’ll let him decide from now on,” he murmured to himself. He adored Reki, and had ever since he had met him, glowing and radiant and brimming with so many shades of crimson and amber that Langa could never count them all or keep up.
Maybe if he let Reki take control of their relationship for a while—maybe, if instead of reaching for Reki’s fumbling fingers during their long walks across the campus quads, he kept his touches to himself, waiting for Reki to reach for him, then he would learn what it was Reki wanted from him, and when. Yes, this was a good plan.
No more You liked it. Langa shuddered, remembering those words.
From now on, the focus would go to Reki and what he wanted.