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He’s walking away.
Reki’s walking away and Langa wants to reach out, keep him from going or at the very least go with him, but his feet are stuck to the ground, he can’t even lift up his legs and frustration builds on his throat as he’s forced to watch because his eyes won’t even obey the command of closing. And so he cries.
Reki’s name comes out of his mouth, choked out, just barely. His best friend turns around, he opens his mouth to speak but the sound of pouring rain is louder than his voice. Langa yells at him to repeat and he begins to but-
What brings him back to reality is someone’s voice calling his name.
Langa flungs open his eyes and the lump in his throat that he thought was from his dream had made home in his throat in real life too. He blinks repeatedly until his sighs rest on a person, a face hovering over him, a face he knows to be Reki’s because that warm touch couldn’t ever belong to anyone else.
“Langa.” He puts a hand on Langa’s cheek. “What’s wrong? You were tossing and turning, whimpering too. Was it a nightmare?”
His throat relaxes yet his breathing picks up a pace. He squeezes his eyes shut, his hand instinctively petting the matress to look for Reki’s legs or arms or hands. Reki finds his fingers first, intertwining his own with Langa’s and he holds on tight; it’s as if he’s saying I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.
They lock stares as Langa tries to find the words. None come to them. Because he doesn’t know how to say yes, hey, you’re so impossibly important to me, losing you might be just the worst thing I can ever imagine happening to me and I just had a nightmare about it.
So instead he says, “Hold me.”
Reki takes his plea and makes sure Langa doesn’t have to ask twice. There are no questions, no interrogations, no prodding into something Langa clearly didn’t want to talk about just yet. There’s only embracing and the loving energy Reki exudes, the light squeeze he gives and the peppered kisses on the top of Langa’s hair as well as his forehead. He can hear Reki’s heartbeat, ear pressed against the boy’s chest, arms around his waist, and it’s the most calming sound he knows then.
Bump Bump.
It goes twice and Langa eyelids close, taking in the rhythm.
Bump.
Another makes his own heartbeat start to sync up.
Bump Bump Bump.
Yet another brings his mind a little bit of peace.
He slowly pulls away, trying to take a look at Reki’s face. It’s then when he realizes it’s the middle of the night, because the room is dark and he can only see the faint outline of a person he can recognize.
“The lights-”
“Gimme a sec.” Reki pulls himself up and turns them on, returning to his spot a few seconds later. He leans in and smiles, “Better?”
Langa nods with a hum. His hands hold his arms against his own body, he thinks he’d been shaking still but now he is just… drained. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted for more than twenty minutes but he feels as though he’d watched the world end and was left alone to deal with the aftermath. Dramatic, but not any less true.
“What do you want now?”
Langa glances up at Reki, sitting cross legged in front of him. “What we were doing before.”
“Yes!” The redhead shifts his position after sending him a mini-salute, putting himself beside Langa to pull him into an embrace again. “Like this?”
Langa nuzzles his neck as he slithers his arms around Reki’s torso. “Just like this, yeah.”
With the right hand on Langa’s back, Reki’s left one begins streaking Langa’s hair, the fingers caught in the strands as he pulls them down gently. The feeling Langa gets from it is so good, he could melt into a puddle right then and there. Instead he just spends some good half an hour in that position, asking for Reki to ramble on about anything he wanted - which of course defaulted to skateboarding - and listening to every word as though he wanted to remember them for a future in which he’d, for whatever reason, be quizzed on the subject.
When he looks at the bedside clock, it’s marking four in the morning.
“Reki, aren’t you tired?” He asks, sitting up on the mattress.
“Nah.” His best friend replies, stretching his back and finishing the motion by holding his arms behind his head for a few extra seconds. Then he releases, smiling at Langa again. “Think you can go back to sleep now?”
“Yeah…” Langa nods, “Yeah… Can you just, stay here though?”
“Don’t you think the mattress is a little too small for the two of us?” Reki cocks his head to the side.
“No.”
He laughs, bending forward. “Alright then.”
The two lie down, face to face, Langa has a hand under the pillow, watching Reki slide his whole arm under the same one. They fall into a comfortable silence. They are looking at each other and neither averts their gaze and it makes the two break into a smile, the corners of their lips moving together.
There are no words Langa could say to describe how much he adores Kyan Reki.
“Good night, Langa.” The redhead says eventually.
Langa breathes in deep and replies, “Night, Reki.”
His mind doesn’t create any new scenarios for him the rest of the night. It’s a soundless and deep sleep he really needed after the nightmare and when he wakes up the next day, Reki’s leg is over his, their arms are linked together in the space between and Langa’s cheeks hurt as if the smile he fell asleep with had never left his face
It’s ridiculously how these simple things make his chest swell with so much happiness it feels like it can burst out and infect everyone else in his vicinity but he takes it. He takes it because he’d take anything Reki could ever give him.