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Neither one of them had said anything about it, but lately, they were going home later and later after leaving Crazy Rock. Without fail, one of them would suggest a detour of some sort before parting ways. Some nights they would go to the skate park, re-enacting tricks they had observed or already performed, or haunt the aisles of supermarkets buying snacks they didn’t need.
The reasoning behind these detours tended to be flimsy, like the time Reki had remarked that he left one of his textbooks for school at Dope Sketch and asked if Langa wanted to keep him company while he swung by to get it. And Langa did want to keep him company, so he didn’t point out that he could just get it the next day when he went in for his shift, or question when he had become so studious in the first place. It wasn’t about the textbook, just like it wasn’t about convenience store food (although that part was pretty fun, and Langa still had a lot to learn about Japanese snack food); it was about not wanting the night to end.
That part just went unspoken, like a lot of things between them.
Still, Reki was a little confused when Langa guided him down a series of unremarkable residential streets saying he wanted to show him something. It was quiet, except for the sound of cicadas and the wheels of their skateboards rolling against the pavement, and that barely counted as a noise anymore - Reki heard that in his sleep. “Are you sure you’re not lost?”
“I’m not lost,” Langa said, unflappable as usual. “It’s this way.”
“There’s nothing around here, though,” Reki said, trailing obligingly behind Langa and looking around the empty streets. It was just a nondescript neighborhood, without even any particularly enticing railings or much of anything to work with, as far as doing tricks. “Isn’t this backwards, anyway? This is my hometown and you’re taking me to some cool place you found?”
“I only found it because my mom asked me to go to the post office for her yesterday and I got lost.”
Reki snickered. “We gotta work on you and maps, dude. And you’re sure you’re not lost again? Like right now?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Langa said, stopping at a three way intersection and turning to look at the intersecting street. “It’s here.”
Reki stopped beside him and followed his gaze down the road in front of them. They were at the top of a hill, a very long one, with a gentle grade, and tall retaining walls taking up most of the space on either side. “It’s just... a hill?”
The dangerous glint in Langa’s smiling eyes dazzled Reki like it always did and lowered his defenses - which is why he was totally unprepared for Langa to grab his hand at the same as he pushed off the pavement, dragging Reki rolling down the hill behind him. “I’ll show you.”
“Langa!” Reki said, flailing his free arm to get his balance back. “Warn a guy first, I almost faceplanted!”
“It’s okay, I had you.”
Reki’s further objections evaporate at that. He sounded almost comically sure of himself, matter-of-fact, and rather... protective. The butterflies in Reki’s stomach were only ever sleeping, the slightest provocation away from fluttering to life, and they had taken flight rapidly at that. It almost felt like they were going to generate lift, like they were going to pull him up off the ground just like Langa had pulled him down this road.
“It just goes on and on like this,” Langa says by way of explanation. “You can just coast the whole way down. It’s nice, isn’t it?”
And it... was. It was a far cry from the high stakes, adrenaline, and occasional violence of S, but it was nice. The night air was humid as always but pleasantly cool, especially with the wind blowing their hair back, and the empty, quiet street was peaceful. Most importantly, Langa was still holding his hand, his grip minutely tightening every time the trajectory of their skateboards threatened to break them apart.
Going to “the hill” became a regular occurrence. What made it even better was that it led to another convenience store, which meant they could justify two detours as easily as one, and wait even longer to go home.
They always held hands going down the hill. Only ever there - it went unspoken that it was part of the fun, to try and stay tethered to one another as imperfections in the pavement and their slightly different terminal velocities tried to separate them.
It went unspoken that they both knew it was excuse.
The only problem was that even though they held hands every time, Langa was always still wearing his gloves, which made Reki feel like it didn’t quite count, somehow. Or at the very least, it wasn’t nearly as good as it could be.
This had already happened several times, enough times that Reki had lost hope that anything would ever change unless he took action. So one night, when they were almost to the hill and Langa was still wearing those damn gloves, Reki tried... making an observation.
“D’you really still need those?” Reki asked, indicating the gloves, trying to seem like he hadn’t mentally rehearsed this line in his mind a dozen times to sound sufficiently non-chalant. “You never do tricks out here.”
“Hm, I guess not.”
Reki’s heart skips a beat. Maybe there’s hope. “Don’t your hands get sweaty?”
“I never really noticed,” Langa said, looking at his palm. For a moment, Reki thinks he’ll get what he wants, but then he just shrugs, and they end up going down the hill the same way as always.
Reki is grumpy by the time they get to the convenience store at the bottom of the hill and follows Langa down the aisles on autopilot. He hadn’t thought about it before, but now that he’s watching, now that he’s fixated, he notices that Langa doesn’t take them off even to hand money to the cashier.
“Isn’t that hard to do with those on?” Reki asks as he watches Langa pull bills from his wallet.
Langa shrugs again. “Never really thought about it.”
They step outside with their purchases and sit on a parking space divider, busying themselves with the opening of drinks and chip packets. With the weather as muggy as it is, the drink bottles start sweating almost immediately, leaving ring-shaped puddles darkening the pavement.
“You’re gonna get your gloves wet,” Reki says as Langa picks up his drink. “It’s probably not good for them.”
Langa blinks at his palm before wiping the condensation that collected there onto the knee of his pants. He shrugs.
“They’re leather, right? They’re definitely not supposed to get wet.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
Reki holds back a scream. Why couldn’t he have fallen for someone who could take a hint? A better question, how and why had he fallen so hard that he was this irritated by something so ridiculous, fallen so hard that Langa’s bare palm had become some kind of white whale to him? “I’m just saying...”
“Why are you so worried about my gloves all of the sudden?”
Reki groans and rakes a hand through his hair. “You are so...!” To say that the words won’t come out would be an understatement - the words don’t even form in his mind to attempt to be said. Instead, he reaches over and grabs Langa’s wrist, pulling the snaps of the glove undone and yanking it off his hand before taking it in his own, properly palm-to-palm, finally, and lacing their fingers together between them, resting against the concrete divider. Before he ducks his head away in embarrassment, he sees Langa’s mouth part slightly in surprise as he finally understands the situation. The expression is not unlike the one he wore the day they met, when Reki went flying over him.
All is quiet for a moment, and then Langa says, “Oh, so that’s what you wanted.”
Reki grunts. “Ya think?” His cheeks are burning; he’s gotten what he wanted, but is mortified at what he had to go through to get it. His resentment towards Langa for putting him into this situation, however, is fading fast. They have, in the most technical sense, held hands plenty of times before, like during their ordeal in Miyakojima, or to help one another up off the ground, but never without context, never without pretense, and Reki is not at all let down.
“You could have just said something.”
“I did.”
“I meant you could have asked.”
Reki’s mouth opens, then shuts. He’s not sure what words were trying to come out - “No, I couldn’t,” maybe, or, “I could have?!” or even “what else is it okay to ask for?” Maybe that’s why none of them made a sound, all of them are tangled up together, bottlenecked in his brain. He feels dazed, anyway, a bit out-of-body; Langa’s hand is soft, how is it so soft?
“Hey, Reki?”
Reki grunts in response, taking a drink of grape soda without tasting it.
“You wanna take the long way home?”
Their fingers are still slotted tightly together, and it seems that they will remain so. Reki’s imagination was a blessing and a curse; his mind had subjected him to myriad visions of Langa reacting negatively to what he’d just done. That none of them had come to pass was a relief that would take the rest of the night, at least, to absorb.
“Yeah. Sounds good.”