Work Text:
Reki had been skateboarding for a long time. It was his happiness, something he poured every spare hour into in one way or another.
Whether it was making boards, watching skating videos, playing skating video games, actually skating himself, he was so damn in love with everything about the sport.
He never really had a goal besides just having fun. He could pride himself on being a pretty decent skater, he could do many advanced tricks decently, and had a couple of S wins under his belt. His face was one that appeared in the crowd regularly, and he didn’t mind that.
When Langa came along, Reki was fascinated, completely and utterly enamoured by the way he skated. It was funny at first, to watch him fall flat on his ass, but that only lasted a short time.
Because Langa had pulled perfect casper slides out a mere two weeks after an ollie.
It took Reki longer than it should have to notice. Notice how differently he was treated after Langa made it big in the community.
The sudden attention from Miya, Cherry, Joe, Adam, it was all because of Langa.
Adam only saw Reki as a stepping stone to get to him in the first place.
Cherry and Joe both shunned Reki off with an obscure warning before his beef with Adam. Yet when they heard Langa was the one to be skating against him next, they gave him lessons and instructions, true help.
Even Langa himself. After the beef had finished, the lack of eye contact he made with Reki and the way his vision was dazed said all it needed to. At the time, Reki didn’t want to see it to the point he didn’t.
The people he had been surrounded with since Langa’s arrival were amazing. They were known to the community with big and bold names.
SNOW, MIYA, SHADOW, CHERRY BLOSSOM, JOE,
yet he was still just reki.
Mediocre at skating and completely in the shadows of his friends. No one paid attention to him like they did the other’s because he wasn’t as good and that was just the fact of the matter.
Reki’s insane board design being one of the only reasons Langa could skate at all in the first place? It didn’t mean anything to anyone else, Langa hadn’t really mentioned it, it was swept under the rug.
Reki was replaceable. Putting any skating ameuter with a big smile in his place wouldn’t cause for disruption in the balance of the people around him.
And this would be fine, since he was only skating for fun anyway, but it...
Falling time and time again into the dust of tricks his friends learned much faster than he could ever comprehend?
It wasn’t fun.
Skating with all of that in mind wasn’t fun and he couldn’t forget any of it.