Chapter Text
It's school.
That's like, the hardest part of school. When it's like this, and the breeze is hot and damp, and the noises outside just don't god damn stop - when it's like this, there's a vibrating discord between that and the noise in Reki's head. There's only one thing (historically speaking) that's cut through the haze, and that's skating. Everything to do with it. From the genesis of the boards to the verb, the doing itself.
But he's not skating. He's at school.
And as the lecture goes on, slower than he can handle, his foot is tapping in a fruitless effort to express the boundless energy welling up within him.
"Reki?"
A gentle nudge to the side.
When it's like this, he can barely sleep. And all day he focuses on the minute the final bell rings, and he can ride out.
"Reki..!"
A less than gentle nudge. It's Langa.
Reki grins.
"What's up?"
"...What, um."
A silence, with extreme exertion on Reki's part. He wants to gibber about skate stuff, to blurt in and interrupt. He knows better, but only in this moment.
"How do you read this kanji?" Langa asks. A trust moment, in its own quiet way.
"Oh, that's..."
And Reki is explaining, and over-explaining, and then on a brief but related tangent about the ball bearing rating scale (and how it's bullshit) when he realises how long the teacher has been standing at his desk.
"Are you done interrupting me?"
And, Reki thinks at the post-class lecture - fleeting but there nonetheless - that everyone gets like this. That summer is just like this. It hasn't always been, but to Reki it feels like it's been forever.
Langa always noticed something.
His unintentional first impression is, it's uh, what's the word... It's bifurcated into two fairly strict schools of thought. As in, they think he's either deadpan joking, or that he's deadly serious.
He really can't help it, truth be told. He doesn't like that phrase, as it implies that truth wasn't being told prior, as an aside, but some language features are just there and there's nothing he can do about it.
Reki told him once, "You don't talk much."
Langa agreed, in the silence of his heart but an agreement is an agreement.
Reki then said, "I like that about you." And he proceeded to talk his damn ear off. It could be about anything, and it would be welcome to have summer's droning buzz interrupted. But it's about skating. His new thing. And a dude who, for some reason, when they met -- this all is jumbled, he thinks, his thoughts aren't quite straight but he's getting there -- when they met, his other-than became something different.
Reki had no concept of what Langa was thinking, he found. And he also found that Reki didn't care, and seemed to accept whatever Langa was. Is. Or maybe he was too wrapped up to notice the lack-thereof that Langa felt everyone else thought of him.
Either way. It's welcome.
And when Reki rides in front of him, calling out for Langa to catch up after waiting for Reki's brief non-detentional after school lecture to end, y'know.. He feels something.
Something he's never felt before. As usual he doesn't have the words for it.