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The scratching of a pencil on paper filled the room. Langa sank down into the mattress, leaning back on his hands and glancing over at Reki.
The other boy’s eyebrows were furrowed, a concentrated look plastered on his face. The position he was sitting in could hardly be comfortable, but Reki sat in such a way so often that he was probably used to it.
A frustrated sigh snapped Langa out of his stupor and brought his attention to his best friend, who was now rubbing his face and groaning.
“Who allowed me to actually care about my siblings?” Reki flopped backwards onto the bed, his pencil flying out of his hand and landing halfway across the bed.
Langa exhaled a quiet chuckle, “I think you did that to yourself, Reki.”
Reki wore a pout on his face now, but Langa could tell it was purely lighthearted. Reaching over, Langa gave Reki a sympathetic pat on the head. “What’s irritating you?”
“Frickin’ hands man, I swear they were never meant to be drawn,” Reki sighed. “I know that it was my idea to draw Koyomi’s favourite characters as a birthday present and all, but why do there have to be so many characters in this group?”
Peeking over at the open sketchbook Reki had been immersed in, Langa gathered that there were indeed a lot of characters. “Anyway, the hands are terrible, and I can’t get them to look decent for the life of me,” Reki pouted.
Langa’s gaze moved to the right, over to where Reki’s own hand lay on the bed, calloused from late nights in his workshop and bailing on the pavement. Rough and worn, maybe, but also warm and familiar. At least, Langa assumed. Not like he had held on a little too long while pulling Reki up from the ground after a nasty bail, or pretended to fall asleep so that when Langa’s hand oh so surreptitiously fell on top of Reki’s, he wouldn’t bat an eye.
Maybe denial wasn’t working so well.
Pulled out of his own head, Langa looked to the side to hear what Reki was saying.
“-might be helpful I suppose.”
Langa tilted his head slightly, grasping for context clues and coming up empty-handed.
Luckily, Reki put him out of his misery after a few seconds. “Were you spacing out again?”
Langa nodded sheepishly and waited for Reki to repeat himself.
“I was saying that having a reference might be helpful,” Reki explained. Langa started to talk but Reki spoke first, sitting up abruptly.
“Could I maybe use your hand?”
Langa faltered, mentally trashing his suggestion of looking up references online, and quickly nodded his head.
“Yeah, of course Reki,” he blurted out, thrusting his hand into the open space between them. “Anything you need.”
“Thanks man,” Reki laughed, scooting to the side, back over to the unfinished drawing that resided in his sketchbook. “Is it cool if I borrow your right hand then?”
“Absolutely,” Langa nodded. Reki reached over, his fingers brushing against Langa’s knuckles.
Reki retracted his hand for a moment. “I’ll probably just move your hand to whatever position I need it in, so once I’m done with that, can I get you to hold your hand there until I’m done drawing it?” He looked to Langa for approval.
After a quick nod, Reki’s hand moved back over to Langa’s, pushing his fingers to the right position, holding his wrist to keep him in place.
After a moment (a moment much too short, in Langa’s opinion), Reki announced that Langa was in the right position and started sketching out the hand.
That feeling of Reki’s thumb brushing over his knuckles still lingered, the ghost of a touch left on the inside of his wrist. Langa was floating, happy of course to be a help to Reki, but also dazed, so much so that his hand began relaxing into its normal position.
A warm touch startled Langa, and a soft chuckle brought his attention to his best friend. “You gotta try and stay still, alright man?” Langa’s chest filled with something he didn’t quite know, and he swallowed hard. “Right,” Langa rasped, cursing his vocal cords.
Reki’s hand remained, returning Langa’s to its previous position, and then all at once that warm sensation was gone. Making a pointed effort to keep his hand in place better this time, Langa focused his attention on Reki, who was now squinting at his sketchbook, drawing and quickly erasing. The redhead’s gaze flickered to Langa’s hand every so often, but he seemed to be focused on his work.
So who could blame Langa for staring a bit? Reki just looked so, so Reki. So immersed in what he was doing, so determined to do it well, so unbelievably beautiful during all of it.
The soft twitch of his jaw as he presumably clenched his teeth, the low hum that Langa could just barely hear above the sounds of Reki’s little siblings complaining through the door about bedtime, the notes scribbled in pen on his arm that Langa couldn’t quite read, it was all so. Just so domestic. Lovely might have been the word to describe it. To describe Reki.
The moment soon ended as Reki leaned back and stretched his arms up over his head. “Alright I’ve got that hand down, thanks for letting me borrow you,” he said. Langa watched Reki lean back towards the drawing, seeing his face become focused once again.
Only now noticing the warmth that had crept up his neck, Langa made the decision not to stare at Reki while he was oblivious. He pulled out his phone and clicked on one of the apps Reki made him download. Endless scrolling seemed a much better use of his time than staring at his ridiculously pretty best friend.
Seconds turned into minutes, and the quiet scratch of Reki’s pencil against the paper seemed to hold the delicate balance between awkward and intimate. The only proof that time had passed at all were the numbers of the clock at the top of Langa’s screen.
Daring to look back at Reki, Langa’s eyes flicked from his phone screen to his best friend, whose eyebrows were once again furrowed.
“Hey Langa?” Reki asked, a note of uncertainty in his voice.
Langa brought his full attention to Reki. “Yes? What do you need?”
“Well, okay so the pose that these characters are in, you see how they’re interacting with each other a bit? And these two on the side, how they’re.. uh, their hands are sort of clasped so,” Langa could have sworn he saw a blush covering Reki’s face.
“What I’m saying is,” Reki continued, “could I use your hand for a reference again and then use my left hand for the other person’s?”
Langa’s hand was offered to Reki before he could think twice about it. “Of course, go right ahead.”
“Cool, cool cool awesome,” Reki rambled as he led Langa’s hand to the small table where the sketchbook was set down. Langa watched intently as Reki’s hand hovered over his own briefly, and then... oh.
Reki’s fingers intertwined with his so easily, like two puzzle pieces. Palms touching, knuckles bumping together, and hands finally settling into place.
It was warm, Reki’s hand. Warm and gentle and slightly wider than Langa’s. His fingers twitched slightly.
Reki cleared his throat. “So, if you could have your fingers flexed out a little more, I think that’ll do it.” Langa obliged, trying his best to contain his stupid emotions.
Langa felt a light squeeze on his hand and Reki let him know that his positioning was good.
And then Reki was back to work. The reality of it hit Langa. That this was why Reki was, not holding his hand, that was too hopeful, but why his hand was clasped with Langa’s like this. He just needed a reference.
And that was fine, really. It was. It was just fine and Langa needed to come to his senses and stop feeling let down when he was reminded yet again that their friendship was purely and wholly platonic.
And Langa could certainly appreciate that. Romantic relationships in general were hardly ever as appealing as platonic ones. Certainly not as fulfilling.
But something about this, about Reki, it was. It was appealing, and it was something he wanted. He had experienced romantic attraction a few times before, sure, but this was different. It was captivating, hypnotizing, nurtured by their established friendship.
The feel of Reki’s palm against his own wasn’t helping those thoughts disappear. In fact, quite the opposite. Langa’s head was filled to the brim with thoughts of Reki, Reki, Reki. Like being enveloped in a warm hug, everything around him was so infused with the essence of his best friend.
The posters stuck haphazardly on the wall with scotch tape, the polaroids hung up around the room, the fairy lights suspended close to the ceiling. Everything was just so Reki.
Bringing his eyes back into focus (and realizing that he had gotten lost in his own head yet again), Langa glanced over at Reki’s drawing.
The hands that Reki had been struggling to draw were on the paper now, sketched out in rough shapes and lines, but Reki’s pencil was nowhere near them.
Instead, it was on the other side of the page, adding details to something else entirely. A little odd, considering Reki had only started the hands he needed the reference for, but Langa wasn’t an artist, so who was he to judge?
Except that as the minutes ticked by, the rest of the drawing was given greater detail while the hands remained untouched. The hands on the page, that is.
Their own hands, however, remained clasped on top of the table. Not that Langa was complaining of course. Who on earth would pass up an opportunity like this? Even if it was only for referential purposes.
Eventually, Reki moved back over to the hands, seemingly the last thing to be drawn out on the page. Reki must have been getting a bit tired, as the pencil strokes were drawn slower than before. That was to be expected though, it had gotten pretty late.
Soon enough, Reki set his pencil down beside his sketchbook and let out a yawn. “Alrighty, the sketch is all done, so I’m good to start lining it now,” he said. “Well, in the morning. I’m too tired to start it now.”
Inevitably, Reki’s hand pulled away from Langa’s, robbing him of the familiar touch. He watched as Reki shook out his hands and flexed his fingers. Langa tried not to let the disappointment show on his face, a pointless effort, considering his distinct lack of awareness of his own facial expression most of the time.
Langa’s stomach cut through the silence, letting out a loud grumble. Reki turned around with a somewhat amused expression. “Late night snack?”
Langa smiled back. “Late night snack.”
The two of them crept down the hallway in their socked feet, bumping into each other and hushing their laughter.
-
Half a box of cereal and a couple pieces of leftover pizza later, Langa shut the bedroom door behind them as quietly as he could.
Reki flopped onto his futon, stretching his arms over his head, and making his shirt-
Oh. Maybe Langa should look away. Sure, it was just Reki’s stomach that was exposed by his shirt riding up, but Langa didn’t trust himself to hide his embarrassment well.
“Well?” Reki asked, “You gonna come over here or what?”
Langa gulped. Why oh why must the universe torture him like this? Giving him just a hint of what he wanted most, and then delivering a cruel reminder of his crushing reality. He and Reki shared a futon all the time, this shouldn’t be any different.
And yet. The earlier hope and despair like a swinging pendulum had tainted this with... something. Embarrassment, maybe? Anxiousness? A sense of impending doom?
How was he to know? But Reki was waiting for him, and he couldn’t bring himself to make his friend wait any longer. Turning off the overhead light and shuffling over to the nest of blankets that Reki wrapped himself in, Langa curled up on the futon.
It was procedure by now, Reki sticking out his hand for their dap before going to sleep. In his wretched desperation, Langa let himself hang on a little longer.
They said good night, and Langa turned to his side, facing away from Reki. Silence hung like a curtain between them, heavy. At least, to Langa.
No more than a few minutes could have passed before Langa heard Reki move in the blankets. He shuffled around a bit, cursing at the blankets for trapping his feet, and then settled. A whisper, “Hey, Langa? You awake?”
“Yeah,” Langa whispered back, turning ever so slightly in Reki’s direction. A moment of silence.
“Hey, uh. When I held your hand earlier.” Reki paused. “Was that okay?” The air between them seemed to change in temperature, warming Langa through to his core and threatening to burn.
Was Reki really worried about that? The darkness of the room disguised Reki’s expression, but then maybe that was why he waited until now to ask. Langa turned onto his side, facing Reki now.
“Yes, totally. More than okay.”
The moment seemed to last an eternity, anticipation taking root in his mind and growing with every second. Langa could hear his heartbeat in his ears.
He heard Reki take in a breath next to him, waiting only a second longer before asking “...can I maybe hold it again?”
And oh. Fuck. This was it; this was how Langa died. Better dig up a grave right now, ‘RIP Langa Hasegawa, beloved son and best friend, died of homosexual.’
His breath was caught in his throat, and he was sure his face was redder than Reki’s hair by now. He was dreaming, right? He must have fallen asleep without knowing it and was now peacefully slumbering away, dreaming of romantic delusions.
Still, no matter how hard he might have tried to convince himself that he was dreaming, he knew it was real. Real improbable, sure. Real heart-stopping, real captivating. But real, nonetheless.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and exhaled,
“Of course, Reki.”
Near immediately, Langa felt a brush against his hand under the blankets. Opening his palm and inching closer to Reki, he felt the familiar touch of Reki’s hand closing over his own.
As if his constancy could be tested further, Langa felt Reki trace over his skin, setting his nerves ablaze. The slow movement of Reki’s thumb back and forth over his hand nearly short circuited Langa’s brain.
At what point did this become something more? Had it already? Was there a line they had crossed? Some rule of the bro code they had broken? Or was Langa just imagining there was actually something there?
If he were any braver, maybe he’d trace over Reki’s hand too. Clasp their hands tighter, press a kiss to those rough knuckles. If he weren’t such a coward, he could just tell Reki what he felt for him.
A car drove past the window. In the brief illumination, Langa could see the faint outline of Reki’s face. As the darkness fell over them again, Langa’s eyes stayed unmoving, and a clear figure made way to blurred shapes.
He was hopeless, wasn’t he? For all the colour Reki brought into his life, Langa couldn’t even begin to express to Reki how much it really was. One second of light shining over his face, and Reki still shone brighter than the sun. All the colours in the world couldn’t compare to his smile alone.
Who knows if it was the odd grasp of reality that hits one so late at night, or the surreal feeling of existing and residing so close to another human being. Maybe it was nothing but his own selfishness, but Langa finally let himself stop thinking so hard.
A pale hand clasped over two intertwined. Palms pressed closer together. Two people drawn closer and closer.
And Langa could have sworn he heard something lovely whispered between them.