Work Text:
i.
Langa is busy making a small hill out of snow on the playground when his classmate Hannah approaches him, along with a couple of her friends. He sees her out of the corner of his eye but continues smoothing out his "mountain slope"—his dad has said he's going to take them to an even harder course next weekend, and he's excited for it.
"Hey, Langa," Hannah greets. She's twisting her hands together in front of her while her friends giggle quietly behind her.
"Hey," he says. "What's up?"
She looks back at her friends, who wave their hands at her and whisper Go on! loudly enough that he can hear it, too. She takes a breath when she turns back to him.
"I, uh. I just wanted to say I think you're really cool," she says. Her cheeks are red, and Langa wonders where her scarf is if she's feeling so cold. "And I—I really like you. A lot. And I was wondering if you'd like to be my b-boyfriend."
His brow furrows and he sits back on his feet, absently thinking about how cold his knees are. Boy friend? he wonders, looking at her friends. Both of which are other girls in their class. Oh. Maybe she wants a friend who is a boy.
"Sure, I guess," he tells her with a shrug, and she smiles brightly while her friends Oooh and squeal. He's not sure what the big deal is about having a friend of a different gender, but ten year olds are supposedly at that age where they start getting kind of weird, according to his mom, so he brushes it off.
For the rest of recess, Hannah sits with him while he makes his snow hill, and she talks at him while he half-listens and lets most of her words go in one ear and out the other. He hums at appropriate times and makes noncommittal sounds, and she seems to find that acceptable, and he thinks it's not so terrible to be a girl's boy friend.
She does try to hold his hand on their way back to class when the bell rings, and he gives her a funny look, feeling slightly uncomfortable but allowing it. They don't sit next to each other in class which means she has to let go of his hand to go to her desk, and Langa is glad about that.
At dinner that evening, his mom asks about his day as usual, and he tells her about Hannah and what happened at recess.
"She asked me to be her boy friend," he says through a bite of food. His mom's eyes get this twinkle in them while his dad's eyebrows raise.
"Do you like Hannah?" his mom asks, and he shrugs.
"She's nice, I guess," he says. He frowns. "But she tried to hold my hand, and I didn't know why. It made me uncomfortable. I thought that was just something people in love did, like you guys."
His mom and dad share a look that he doesn't understand, and his stomach does this funny flip. He puts his fork down; he's not sure he's hungry anymore. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No, not at all, sweetheart," his mom says quickly, and she reaches out to squeeze his hand. He squeezes back, the knot in his stomach loosening. "Just—I think you might have misunderstood what Hannah meant when she asked you to be her boyfriend."
He frowns again. "Did she not just want a friend who is a boy? She's got plenty of girl friends, so I thought..."
That makes his dad chuckle and his mom smile. "A boyfriend is a little more than a friend," his dad says. "Usually, people only become boyfriend and girlfriend—or boyfriends, or girlfriends—when they like each other in a romantic way."
Now he's really confused. He's pretty sure he doesn't like Hannah like that, but—"But...How do you know if you like someone in that way?"
His parents share another look. "Well," his mom says, giving his hand another squeeze, "I know it sounds frustrating, but this is one of those things where you just know. It's—hard to explain, because it's different for everyone. But, usually, you know you like them like that when your heart skips a beat just looking at them, and being around them makes you happy, and when you want to do things like hold their hand and be close to them and kiss them, that kind of stuff."
Oh. Langa thinks about how snowboarding with his dad makes his heart race and puts a smile on his face just being out there in the cold on the mountains, and while he can't kiss the idea of snowboarding or hold its hand, he thinks that's probably how being in love with someone must be.
He picks up his fork again, the nervousness in him leaving as fast as it came. "Oh. I don't want to do those things with Hannah. I don't want to do those things with anyone."
They eat quietly for a few moments, and when Langa is finished with his food, his mom speaks again.
"I think you should tell Hannah there was a misunderstanding when you see her again on Monday," she says as he helps her clean up. "It wouldn't be a very nice thing to do to let her think you like her like she likes you when you don't."
He thinks about this as he watches his mom wash their dishes. "Okay. Do I just...say I don't want to be her boyfriend, then?"
"That'll work perfectly," his mom says with a smile, and he smiles back.
On Monday, when Hannah bounces over to him with a smile, Langa pulls his hand away before she can take it.
"I think there was a misunderstanding," he says, like his mom had told him to say to her. "I don't want to be your boyfriend. You're nice, but I don't like you like that."
He's not sure exactly what he's expecting her reaction to be, but watching her face fall and tears spring to her eyes, he almost takes it back out of guilt. Almost.
"Oh," she says, and her voice wobbles as she tries not to cry. "That's—that's okay. I—I have to go."
Langa watches her run back to her friends who send him mean looks as they wrap her up in a hug and head to the other side of the classroom. Away from him.
Hannah doesn't look his way once for the rest of the week.
Langa thinks if this is what he has to look forward to with boyfriends and girlfriends, then maybe he doesn't want one at all.
ii.
When Langa opens his locker between class periods to switch out his books, a note falls out of it and flutters to the floor. He looks around to make sure someone else didn't lose it before bending to pick it up and read it.
Hey, Langa!
I was just wondering if you want to go out this weekend? There's a new movie we could go see together!
Circle YES or NO and leave this note in locker 288 !
<3 Miranda
He bites his lip as he tries to remember who Miranda is. He thinks she's the girl who sits in front of him in English and is constantly tossing her hair over her shoulder when she turns around to partner with him when they have book projects. There's always a piece of gum in her mouth that she's chewing and popping bubbles with too, and it's a bit distracting and annoying.
She's just a little too preppy for him, if he's honest; he's never really liked the jocks and cheerleaders in his classes. They pick on the other kids and he's pretty sure they only talk to him because he's a snowboarder and doesn't do a half bad job on the days when their physical ed class plays football.
Thirteen year olds are even more ruthless than ten year olds, it seems.
Either way, he doesn't know her very well, and what he does know about her doesn't impress him. She definitely doesn't make his heart race or put a smile on his face, either. Plus, he's already seen the movie she's talking about, and it wasn't very good. He and his dad are also hitting the slopes that weekend, anyway, so his answer is obvious.
He pulls a pen out to circle the NO option. On a whim, he scribbles out a Seen that one, it's not good next to it, and then goes to find locker 288 and slip it in the bottom.
The next day, Miranda shoots him a glare with eyes that look a little red-rimmed and doesn't turn around to talk to him in English class. She isn't even chewing gum.
Langa tries not to feel guilty about the note.
When he overhears her and her friends whispering mean things about him at lunch, he succeeds.
iii.
Langa forgets, sometimes, that the craze about romance and boyfriends and girlfriends isn't just an obsession of his girl classmates—many of his boy classmates are part of it, too.
They're not as mushy-gushy about it, sure, but a lot of them are always talking about which girls they find cutest and want to ask out. They're almost worse, really, because they're fourteen year old boys who think Langa is like them and always try to involve him in their locker room talk.
"Hey, Langa," Connor calls out, and Langa looks over to him as he slips his jersey on. His eyes linger on the way Connor's shorts ride a little low on his hips before he brings them up to his face. "Who's hotter: Rachel or Stephanie?"
Langa blinks stupidly at him for a moment. "Uh. Who?"
Connor rolls his eyes. "You know—Rachel and Steph from Algebra? They sit in front of you, man."
Oh. He vaguely recalls that there are in fact two girls who sit in front of him in at least one of his classes, though whether it's Algebra or Science he's not sure. He also isn't sure who's who. "Um. Yeah, I guess. What about them?"
"Who's hotter, man?" Ryan calls out. Langa looks over at him and watches the way his biceps stretch his shirt as he does warm up stretches. "Personally, I think Steph's got something Rachel doesn't. It's those legs, man. They go on for days in that little cheerleader skirt."
"No way, dude. Rachel's got huge tits. She's definitely hotter."
"But Steph has an ass."
"Who do you like more, Langa?" Connor asks again, turning from his debate with Ryan. His eyes are a very warm brown color and he grins a little crooked. It makes his heart do a funny thing when he sees it. "Who's hotter?"
Langa looks between them with wide eyes, trying to figure out how he got roped into this. "Oh. Uh, I don't—I don't really like either of them, I guess?"
"What."
"No way, man! How can you say that!"
"Dude. Just. What?"
He curls in on himself a bit as the locker room explodes in incredulous exclamations at his answer, but he doesn't take it back, because it's true: neither of those girls are particularly attractive to him, even though objectively they're not ugly, either. He's never really found any girl particularly attractive in that way.
Not the way he's recently realized he finds boys attractive, at least.
"I, uh." He swallows the lump forming in his throat and takes a deep breath, squaring his shoulders and looking them all head on. "I don't like girls. Not like that."
"Wait, you're gay?" Connor asks, and he seems surprised—they all do—but not disgusted, or hostile, which is all Langa could ask for at this point.
He manages a shrug that looks more normal and nonchalant than he feels on the inside. "Seems so."
Silence follows his words, but it's not heavy, more thoughtful. They all finish getting ready for their phys ed class, and when they're heading out into the gym, Connor catches his arm and holds him back until most of the other guys are gone.
"Hey, sorry for—you know, pushing you about Rachel and Stephanie," he apologizes, and Langa is surprised into just nodding dumbly. "We didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable or anything."
"It's fine," he says, and it is. "Not like I'd said anything before."
Connor laughs at that, his mouth curling up in that crooked grin that Langa likes to look at. He runs a hand through his hair, pushing the dark curls off his forehead and letting them flop back into place. "C'mon. We're on the same team today, right? Let's go kick their asses out there."
Langa smiles back and agrees, thinking no more of his admission and what it might mean to come.
He really, really should have seen this particular instance coming, though.
It almost hurts to watch Connor scuff his shoe against the ground, his face red as he stares at the air around Langa's knees as he stutters out an offer to go out to the arcade that weekend, just the two of them.
"Like a—like a date, I mean."
A date.
Langa desperately wishes he could just say yes. It would be so much easier—Connor is cute, and funny, and Langa genuinely likes him as a person, as a friend. But that's it: he's just a friend. There's no spark there, his heart doesn't speed up in his chest. There's no excitement. He's not adverse to the thought of holding Connor's hand, but there's no urge to make it happen, either.
It's just like with the girls: he doesn't like Connor like that.
He wishes he did.
"I—" He swallows hard and looks at his sneakers. "I'm sorry. I don't—"
Connor's already looking away, a rueful expression on his face. "It's okay. I get it. You don't have to—It's fine, Langa."
"I'm sorry," he repeats, softer. He really is.
There's a moment of awkward silence between them, then Connor is sucking in a deep breath and putting a friendly hand on his shoulder. "No hard feelings, okay? We can still be friends, right?"
Langa nods, because he doesn't know what else to do, what else to say. He has this weird feeling that they can't just be friends, though. That's never how it goes. But he doesn't want to say that.
Two weeks later, Connor tells him he's moving away—his mom got a new job in another province, so they're moving for that.
Langa tries not to feel petty disappointment at the relief he can see in Connor's brown eyes.
iv.
Life without his dad is...grey. Dull. Empty.
He doesn't remember much of his days beyond the emptiness in his chest. He wakes up and he's empty. He goes to school and he's empty. He comes home and he's just...empty.
It's worse when he gets out his board and heads to the slopes. The cold bites at his cheeks but he can't feel it. Everything around him is colored in shades of grey, from the snow to the trees to the sky. There's no rush in his blood, no speeding of his heart as he flies from the top to the bottom on autopilot, simply going through enough of the motions that he makes it in one piece. It's reflex at this point, but there's no joy in it. It's not fun.
Not anymore.
Everyone at school gives him a wide berth when he heads down the halls. His dad's accident is prominent news around town, and everyone either looks at him with pity or tries to avoid looking at him at all.
He can't see any of them—not his teachers, who treat him with careful concern, or his classmates, who treat him like something that might break or snap at any minute. He wants to hate it, wants to hate being treated like glass, but he can't even muster that much emotion up.
There are a couple of his classmates that make an effort to treat him no differently than usual, and he wishes he could appreciate it more, could feel something other than gnawing, gaping loneliness and loss. They sit with him at lunch and partner with him in class, walk home with him after school, pester him into hanging out on the weekends even when he really doesn't want to—Marcus and Taylor, he thinks their names are—and while their efforts are mostly in vain, it's something, at least.
He doesn't even think for a minute that either of them might have some kind of ulterior motive for it until Taylor tries to kiss him one weekend while they're over at his house to keep him company while his mom works. Marcus had left the room to grab a drink or something.
Langa pushes her away with more strength than he's felt in his bones since his dad died and looks at her with wide eyes. She looks back with a confused and hurt expression, and he feels a strange sort of betrayal.
"I don't like you like that," he manages, his throat tight and the words coming out choked and breathless. "I'm gay."
He adds that last part as some inane form of softening the blow of rejection, even though he's as far from caring about if he hurts her feelings as he can be. He's hurt, and confused, and the emptiness is creeping back up on him—it's always there, always waiting for him to fall, and he thought he had someone to pull him back from that ledge, but apparently not.
The hurt doesn't leave her eyes, but confusion is replaced with something like resignation. "So it's Marcus, then."
He's even more confused. "What's Marcus?"
"The one you like," she says, and it comes out bitter. "We figured it had to be one of us, but we weren't sure if you were into girls or guys." She laughs, and it's not a pretty sound. "Guess that answers that. He'll be happy about that."
"What? I don't—" He shakes his head, trying to breathe through the pressing weight on his chest. "I don't like either of you like that."
Her eyes cut back to him sharply. "What?"
"I thought you were my friends," he says helplessly. A strange sort of calmness comes over him then, and he knows the emptiness has won. "But I guess not."
Something in his tone alarms her, he can tell. "Langa—"
"Please leave," he says, and he can hear how lifeless he sounds. How defeated. "Both of you. I want to be alone."
He doesn't, not really, but he can't do this. Not right now.
"Please," he repeats, voice a whisper, and he falls back onto his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
He hears Taylor's footsteps take her to the door, then low voices in the hall as she tells Marcus what happened and how he reacted. And then their footsteps are retreating down the hall, and they leave.
And he's alone again in the grey, empty loneliness.
A few months later, his mom says she wants to move back to Okinawa, get away from it all and start over in a place she feels comfortable and welcomed in. A place that doesn't have the hanging ghost of his dad everywhere they look, because he wouldn't want them living like this.
He agrees.
No one else tries to ask him out or confess to him for the rest of his time in Canada.
v.
"Hasegawa-kun!"
Langa lets out a groan just loud enough for Reki to hear and tilts his head back to glare up at the ceiling. He turns that glare on Reki when he starts snickering, then heaves a put upon sigh and faces the girl approaching him with a smile.
He has the strangest sense of deja vu.
"Yes?" he says, because he's pulling a blank on her name. Misaki, or something like that.
Maybe-Misaki turns her grin down to her shoes and twirls a strand of her hair around her finger. Her cheeks are red, and Langa gears himself up for what's coming.
"I was wondering," she starts, and finally meets his eyes, "if you were free this weekend, and maybe wanted to go to the mall with me?"
There it is. Langa can feel Reki watching him with rapt attention from his desk while trying to appear uninterested by fiddling with his pencil and sketchbook. He knows his best friend better than that, though, and he kicks out at Reki as subtly as he can in an attempt to communicate Stop boring holes into my head with your eyeballs.
"Sorry," he finally tells Maybe-Misaki. "I've got plans with Reki already."
Her face falls at that, like he knew it would. Just like Naomi's did the week before. And Makoto's the week before that. "O-oh. That's fine! Maybe some other time? Weekend after?"
"Mm, no," he says, shaking his head. With the most apologetic smile he can muster to cover the shit-eating grin he can feel wants to spread on his face at his next thought, he adds, "I've got plans with Reki everyday."
He tries not to smirk at the coughing fit Reki suddenly has beside him, focusing on keeping the aura of I'm Truly Sorry To Turn You Down around him. Maybe-Misaki glances over at Reki and the convulsions he's currently having, before something lights in her eyes. She looks back at Langa and gives him a polite bow.
"Excuse me, Hasegawa-kun," she says, and he watches her head back to her desk and not look in his direction again.
"What the hell, Langa," Reki rasps, finally over his coughing fit. Langa looks over at him and finally lets the smirk he's been feeling curl the corner of his mouth.
"What?" he asks innocently.
Reki rolls his eyes and gives him a playful shove. "What do you mean, 'what'? What the hell was that, man?"
"A confession," Langa says, and he has to suppress a laugh when Reki just groans at him.
"I know that, dipshit." He reaches out to flick Langa between the eyes, and Langa pouts at him. "I mean, why did you turn her down? Mikasa is cool and pretty cute, after all. Lots of guys want to date her."
Ah. Apparently it was Mikasa, not Misaki. Langa just gives him a look. "I'm gay, Reki. I thought I told you that."
The journey of expressions that pass over Reki's face make him think maybe he didn't. Hm. He sits with a weird knot of anxiety in his stomach for three more seconds where he seriously wonders if this is what ends the most important relationship he's ever had in his life since his dad died before Reki just rolls his eyes again and he's able to relax.
"Well, you didn't," he says pointedly, giving Langa his own look back, "but thanks for letting me know now. Guess that explains why you didn't know Nagisa was asking you out the first week you were here."
Langa cringes internally at the reminder. He'd gotten pretty used to people trying to ask him out back in Canada, but those were westerners asking him out. So yeah, it had taken him a bit by surprise when a girl he hadn't met yet had asked to speak with him privately and was suddenly red-faced and stuttering through asking if he wanted to go to the festival with her in the town over.
He hadn't even known her name.
"In my defense," he says finally, and then flounders for something to follow up with, because he actually doesn't have a defense, "...you're a jerk."
"Hey!"
Just then, the bell for the end of lunch rings, and everyone is heading back to class for the rest of the day. Reki just gives him another side eye look that says This isn't over yet and then sends him a link to a video of a trick he wants to try, and they ignore the teacher and the lesson as usual in favor of skateboarding.
The conversation isn't brought up again until they're in Reki's workshop because it had started raining and Langa had too many new bruises from bailing on the new trick to count.
Langa is watching Reki's hands work, his mind wandering from the feeling of flying on a board next to his best friend to the crooked way he grins that makes his heart skip a beat, to the way he bites his lip when he concentrates that makes Langa want to take it between his own and bite it for him, which is new for him, but not unwelcome. He's also fighting the urge to lean against Reki and suck up the warmth he gives off; he wants to wrap his arms around him and bury his face in his neck and leave little kisses there, on the verge of sleep while Reki tinkers with a custom board.
Reki just makes him feel so alive. He's warmth and brightness and exhilaration and fun, and he's given Langa's life meaning and purpose and color again, filled it up with his larger than life presence that he can't help but be pulled along by. He's got friends he can count on to be there and support him now, a small little pseudo-family in the guys from S, and none of it would be that way if not for Reki.
Being with Reki is like nailing a new trick and flying down a slope while the cold bites at his cheeks all wrapped up in a vibrant, loud package that he wants to hold close and open slowly, his heart racing with anticipation and happiness suffused through his blood.
It's a new feeling, yeah, but it's good, and he can't get enough.
Langa doesn't notice how lost he is in his thoughts until Reki breaks the silence that's fallen over them.
"So. You're gay, huh?" Reki squints at the board he's currently tracing a design on. "You like guys?"
"That's what being gay means, yeah," Langa says with a small grin, and Reki snorts softly.
"I know what it means, idiot," he says fondly. "I, uh. I guess you'd say I'm bi? I like girls and guys."
Langa's heart skips in his chest. He likes guys too. "That's cool."
"Yeah." Reki glances over at him. "Does that mean you—have you ever been confessed to by a guy?"
Langa shrugs as best as he can with his arms crossed on the workbench and his head pillowed on them. "A couple. I don't go around announcing I'm gay, though, so it's mostly girls."
They're quiet for a while before Reki speaks again. "What's it like?"
"What's what like?"
Langa watches Reki's throat bob as he swallows. "Being confessed to. I've never—I've never been confessed to, and I'm just wondering if it's like shoujo manga would have you believe."
His brain gets stuck over I've never been confessed to because how could Reki—loud, bright, beautiful, warm Reki—not have people falling all over themselves to have him as their boyfriend? But he pushes that aside for further inspection and answers his friend.
"I wouldn't know if it's like shoujo manga since I've never read a shoujo manga," he says, "but it's. It's not that big a deal, I guess. Mostly it's trying not to feel guilty for turning them down because you don't like them back."
"You haven't liked any of them?" Reki asks, and he sounds surprised, his eyes wide when he looks at Langa. "Not one?"
Langa shrugs again. "I didn't know most of them. We weren't friends or anything. It was always classmates I'd never spoken to. How am I supposed to love someone I don't know?"
"I guess, but...still, man." Reki turns back to the board. "I guess I've always figured you'd accept the confession and then, I don't know, get to know them from there. I thought that's how it worked."
Langa watches the side of Reki's face as he goes back to work. "Maybe for some people it does. Not for me. I want to be friends first."
The corner of Reki's mouth quirks up, and Langa pictures the crooked way his smile looks. "Friends first sounds good, too. I think I'd like to be confessed to by a friend."
His heart flutters, and he really, really wants to feel that smile against his own. He bites his lip and looks away.
Speaking of Reki being confessed to, though. "You seriously haven't ever been confessed to? Or asked out?"
The shine in Reki's eyes dims at that a bit, and Langa hates that he's the cause of it for asking. "Nope. Guess no one finds me pretty enough to ask."
His tone makes it obvious it's a sore subject, so Langa drops it, but it doesn't sit right with him. Reki not being pretty enough for a confession? If that's the case, then people just aren't looking close enough. They see the skateboard and they stop looking, so they don't see the way his eyes light up like amber when he's excited, the flush on his cheeks when he's having fun.
They don't see this: Reki focused on something he's passionate about, his lip curled under his teeth, gaze so intense Langa thinks he'd burn if it was trained on him. He's like the sun, shining light and warmth on everyone around him, and no one bothers to bask in him.
Langa would gladly bask in him for the rest of his life if he could.
I've never been confessed to.
I like girls and guys.
I think I'd like to be confessed to by a friend.
Langa listens to the rain falling outside and watches Reki's hands, and he wonders if maybe—just maybe—he wants a boyfriend after all.
vi.
Langa decides to forgo reading shoujo manga for reference even though there's a moment of weakness where he's sorely tempted to, just to see how Reki will react to that knowledge. But, he figures, Reki will probably prefer—and appreciate—something genuinely Langa, something probably very awkward and straightforward, over something scripted or rehearsed or planned out with too much detail.
He hopes, anyway. He's never been on this end of a confession before.
He asks both Joe and Cherry for advice on how to ask Reki out, since they're adults with some semblance of put-togetherness in their lives, but he's not sure either of their suggestions are really what he's looking for.
"Wine and dine him," is Joe's suggestion, and while Langa thinks a dinner date isn't a bad idea—and comes out with the promise of a reservation whenever he calls it in, should this work out—he doesn't want to have to confess around a mouthful of pasta, either.
"Write him a heartfelt note, that's a timeless classic," is Cherry's suggestion, and Langa would, except his penmanship sucks—especially in Japanese—and he's not quite so desperate as to ask Cherry himself to write the note for him.
Miya is out of the question, because he's thirteen, and Shadow—well, Shadow is in about the same boat he is, really, and not doing a whole lot better, so Langa doesn't ask him, either.
He's too afraid to even broach the subject with Adam, no matter how good of terms they're mostly on now, Matador of Love or not.
So. Love notes and dinner dates are really all the options he was given, and he's honestly not sure he can pull either of them off. Great. Fantastic.
He puts his pillow over his face and groans long and drawn-out into it. "Why is this so hard," he mutters to himself. He pulls the pillow down to glare up at Reki's ceiling. He knows it as well as he knows his own now, maybe even better. "It's just Reki. He's already promised to skate with you for infinity." Which is actually pretty gay, when he thinks about it. That's promising. "Why am I over-complicating this?"
"Why are you over-complicating what?" Reki asks, coming back into the room.
Langa sits up, feeling his face heat up as he watches Reki rub his towel over his hair, his sweatpants slung low and showing off the vee of his hips, the lean muscles he's built up from years of skating, the glow of his skin in the evening light coming in from the window, and suddenly—none of it matters except the fact that he's here with Reki, and Reki is here with him, and they're going to skate together forever, and Langa wants to kiss him so bad it hurts, sometimes.
"Why am I over-complicating asking you out," Langa says, because that's the answer, the long and short of it. Reki freezes where he is, eyes wide, but Langa barrels on, because now that he's letting the words come, they just won't stop.
"I like you a lot—I'm probably in love with you, really—and I've been trying to figure out the perfect way to confess to you, since you said you've never gotten a confession before, and I wanted it to be good for you, because you deserve it, and I even asked Joe and Cherry for suggestions, but none of that felt right for me, and I've just been going in circles in my head about it for so long now, and I just really want to kiss you and hold your hand and call you my boyfriend and be your boyfriend because I've never actually been someone's boyfriend before, and didn't think I ever wanted to be but god, Reki, I want to be your boyfriend so bad, I—"
Fingers press against his mouth, stopping the absolute vomit of words pouring from him, and Langa blinks up into Reki's eyes, now very, very close to his own, and very, very wide, and a very, very warm amber.
His heart is pounding in his chest just like it does when he's skating next to this boy, and he's never felt as anxious or as happy as he does in the moment that Reki gives him a crooked grin full of amusement.
"Oh my god, Langa," Reki breathes, "that was awful. Shut the fuck up and kiss me, you loser."
So he does.
Reki's mouth is warm against his own, soft and pliant as the kiss starts chaste and evolves into something else altogether—something wet and consuming as Reki opens for him and Langa licks inside him, hungry for more in a way he's never been before for anyone else.
It's sloppy and uncoordinated and a little desperate, but it's the best thing Langa's ever felt since he was introduced to skating and even snowboarding, and he never wants to stop. But his lungs are burning and there's heat building in his gut egged on by the way he's got Reki in his lap grinding against him, and he breaks away to suck in a breath, gazing up in awe at the way Reki is flushed almost as red as his hair down to his chest, his amber eyes lidded and hazy as he gazes back at Langa and bites his kiss-swollen lip.
"That," Reki finally says, breathless, mouth starting to curl in a grin, "was fucking awesome. We are definitely doing that more often."
"We are?" Langa asks dumbly. His brain feels fried. He's not sure he's even managing thoughts at this point.
Reki just rolls his eyes and slings his arms around Langa's shoulders, situating himself more comfortably in Langa's lap. Langa's arms instinctively go around his hips to steady him, and the warmth of his skin makes his brain short-circuit again.
"Yeah," Reki says, "we are. You gonna tell me I can't make out with my boyfriend?"
Boyfriend. Oh my god. "Boyfriend?"
"Boyfriend," Reki confirms. He starts looking a little unsure, tensing up beneath Langa's hands. "That is what you wanted, right?"
Langa looks up at him and feels a surge of fondness and love fill his chest. "Yeah. One hundred percent. Boyfriends."
"Good." Reki relaxes, and then smirks down at him. "Now, where were we? Oh, yeah, I was in the middle of kissing my boyfriend stupid. Can we get back to that?"
"Anything you want," Langa says, and it scares him how much he means that.
But this is Reki, and together, they can do anything.
"Awesome," Reki says. He leans in, mouth hovering above Langa's, eyes going soft. "And—hey. I think I love you too. Just so you know."
"Awesome," Langa says back, and he leans in to taste that crooked grin again as his boyfriend laughs at him.
No one bothers to confess to either of them after the day they walk into school holding hands.