Chapter Text
“Sorry I’m late!” Reki skidded to a stop in front of Langa, just shy of bowling them both over.
Langa wouldn’t have minded.
Reki’s board was tucked under his arm, but now he set it down and put one foot on it experimentally. “Not sure why I ran,” he said, in between gasping breaths. “Instead of skating.”
“I was wondering,” Langa replied, but the thought of Reki running to meet him, so worried about being late that he forgot to skate, made Langa feel the same way he did when he pulled off a flawless jump. Kind of weightless, reckless, special. It probably didn’t mean anything. It was just Reki being Reki.
But lately, everything felt like it meant something. The way Reki’s hand lingered just a little too long when they high fived. The way he would always give Langa the bigger portion when they split food.
Langa noticed something shimmering in Reki’s hair and plucked it out without thinking. He held the ribbon between his fingers and looked at Reki curiously. “Where were you?”
Reki ran a hand through his hair. “Chihiro and Nanaka got new bikes for their birthday. They have these rainbow ribbon tassel things on the handles and they get everywhere. I got caught up trying to teach them how to ride. Their old bikes had training wheels and these ones don’t so they’re totally freaked out. Chihiro cries when the bike moves and Nanaka got her foot stuck in the pedal so now she’s scared and it’s…yeah, it’s a whole thing.” He paused to take a breath and stretched, arms above his head. Langa tried not to stare. “Well, you know how it is. You learn how to ride a bike when you’re little and then you never forget so trying to teach somebody else is really hard ‘cause you don’t actually remember how you’re doing it.”
“I…right,” Langa said.
Reki tipped his head to the side. “Uh, Langa, you do know how to ride a bike, right? ‘Cause it kinda sounds like you don’t.”
How had he gotten that from two words? If Langa was that easy to read, what else had Reki figured out? “I know how to ride a bike,” he lied.
Reki scratched his head. “Do you? It’s okay if you don’t. They don’t teach that stuff in Canada, right? Must be hard to ride a bike in the snow. I’m sure you’re great at…skiing? Snowshoes? Can you snowboard to school?”
To anyone else, Reki’s wild conjectures about Canada probably sounded stupid, but Langa found them endearing. Sure, they were completely inaccurate, but he liked how Reki tried his best to understand Langa by making up stories about his childhood. “There are bikes in Canada,” he said. “I just…you know how I broke my leg when I was little?”
Reki nodded gravely, as if he’d been there. “Snowboarding accident.”
“Right. I guess that was around the time I would have learned. So I just never did.”
“D’you wanna learn?”
“Huh?”
“I’ll teach you,” Reki said. “How to ride a bike. I taught you how to skateboard! And it’ll be good practice for my sisters. ‘Cause I’m sure you’ll be much easier to teach. You know how to balance.”
“Teach…me,” Langa said slowly, as the thought took hold. Something else for Reki to teach him. Ever since he’d mastered skateboarding, he’d worried that Reki would leave him, convinced that Langa didn’t need him anymore. Move on to someone else who needed help. That hadn’t happened, and it didn’t seem likely to, but why say no, just in case? “Okay. I want to learn.”
“Sweet!” Reki lightly punched his shoulder. “This will be a piece of cake. You’re gonna be in the Turtle France before you know it!”
“The…you mean the Tour de France?”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said—never mind.” Langa smiled and held out his hand for a high five. He tried not to linger on how it felt when Reki’s hand touched his.
Langa was not easier to teach than Nanaka and Chihiro. Reki’s bike was too small, sized for a fifteen-year-old Reki, and not well-suited to Langa, who was taller than seventeen-year-old Reki. Undeterred, Reki adjusted the seat to its highest height, so Langa perched above the handlebars, hunched over at an odd angle just to reach them.
That aside, riding a bike was hard. Langa had thought it was tricky to stay upright on a skateboard, but at least that had four wheels and a flat surface to stand on. A bike was just two wheels and a prayer, as far as Langa could tell. When he pressed his feet to the ground on either side of him, he was fine, but lifting his feet to prop them on two tiny pedals that spun, apparently of their own accord?
“Langa,” Reki said, in a voice he usually reserved for his sisters. “Dude, you have to actually put your feet on the pedals.”
“But then I’ll fall,” Langa protested, lifting his heels, toes still on the ground.
“Not if you pedal,” Reki reminded him. “The bike is supposed to move, remember?”
“I know that,” Langa said, unable to keep the frustration from his voice. He would have liked to say he was pretending to be bad so that Reki would continue teaching him, but that would have been a lie. He tried picking his feet up again. They didn’t budge.
“All right, here,” Reki said, moving to stand behind Langa. “I’ll help.” His hands landed suddenly, unexpectedly, on Langa’s waist, and Langa was so shocked that his feet jumped up and found the pedals. “Yeah, there you go!” Reki said. “I’ll keep you steady while you pedal and…I guess I’ll just kinda shuffle along back here.”
Langa tentatively pushed down on the higher pedal. The other one lifted under his foot and he tried again. Reki didn’t let go. After a few turns of the pedals, he said, “You can let go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Reki's hands left his waist and Langa didn’t have time to process the loss before he promptly toppled over, the pavement came up to meet him and the bike landed on top of him. But not for long, because Reki quickly lifted it, nudged the kickstand into place, and sat down next to Langa, who had curled into a ball more out of embarrassment than pain. “Langa? Dude? You okay?”
Langa groaned. His hand hurt, and he could feel gravel embedded in his knee, but it was mild compared to the injuries he’d gotten in his first days of skateboarding. Somehow, though, this was way more embarrassing. Everybody knew how to ride a bike. “I’m fine,” he said again, even though he obviously wasn’t, and Reki knew that.
“You were getting the hang of it,” Reki said. “It’s tricky!” He extended a hand. “C’mon, let’s try again.”
Langa rolled onto his back and shook his head. The asphalt tugged at his hair. “Let’s just skate,” he said.
“Uh uh,” Reki said, wagging a finger at Langa. “You’re not tempting me with skateboards. What if someday you have an emergency and your board breaks and there are no cars and you haven’t learned how to ride a hoverboard yet and the only transportation option is a bike?”
“Is that really likely?”
“Which part? Hoverboards? I hope so. But you’ll need a license for those and I know you wouldn’t study for the test so you’d probably fail a bunch of times. At like, parallel hoverparking or something.”
“Huh?”
Reki sighed, and Langa couldn’t tell if he was disappointed that hoverboards didn’t exist yet, or if he was preemptively exasperated at Langa’s failed hoverparking. “Point is, you need to learn how to ride a bike.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so, that’s why.”
Langa crossed his arms. “I’m not one of your sisters.”
Reki laughed and stood up. “No, but you are my best friend, and that means it’s my job to call you on your bullshit.”
“You said it was okay I couldn’t ride a bike,” Langa said, but he was stuck on you’re my best friend, the words carved into his mind like a heart in the bark of a tree.
“It is! And if you didn’t want to learn it would be fine. But you do want to learn, you’re just quitting ‘cause it’s harder than you thought it’d be. That’s the bullshit I’m calling you on.” Again, he extended his hand. This time, Langa took it and let Reki pull him up. “Now get back on the bike.”
So Langa got back on the bike.
And fell off four more times. Reki helped him up each time and steadied the bike for him to climb back on. Langa was sweaty and hot all over, a side effect of the heat and the constant embarrassment of failing at something that children could do. A few kids zoomed by on their bikes and scooters, gawking at the teenager struggling on a too-small bike, but Langa kept his eyes firmly on the handlebars and Reki.
Mostly Reki.
Reki was right about why Langa wanted to give up. He’d gotten this far without being able to ride a bike, he could probably get through the rest of his life. Especially since he could skate. Although there were places that banned skateboards but not bikes, because apparently skating made you a delinquent but biking was for upstanding citizens. But none of that mattered. Langa didn’t like failing at things. So he avoided them. Problem solved.
Another thing he was avoiding because he expected to fail? His feelings for Reki.
He hated how that sounded. Feelings for Reki. That didn’t encompass it at all. Barely scratched the surface. He owed everything to Reki. His skill at skateboarding. His extensive knowledge of the best and cheapest restaurants in Okinawa. His sense of belonging. But he didn’t love Reki because of all that; he loved Reki because Reki was intensely amazing and his best friend and probably the kindest person he’d ever met.
Oh, right. He loved Reki. That was the scarier word for feelings.
“Langa?” Reki’s voice broke through his thoughts. “You good? You’ve been sitting there squeezing the brakes for like five minutes.”
“Huh? Oh. I’m fine. Can we take a break? My shoulders hurt. Actually, everything hurts.” He climbed off the bike before Reki could protest, only to find that Reki was already beside him, passing an open water bottle.
“’Course we can take a break,” Reki said. “We can go somewhere else. Change of scenery. That’s what you need.” He left Langa with the water and the bike and walked to where they’d dropped their stuff. “Bring the bike over!”
Langa planted his hands on the handlebars and walked the bike over to Reki like it was a disobedient dog. Slinging his backpack over his shoulders, Reki flashed Langa a smile and swung his leg over the bike seat. “Oh, crap, that’s too high.” He got off, lowered the seat a bit, and climbed back on. “Ready?”
Langa gave him a blank look. “Are you…going to ride next to me while I walk?” He wasn’t entirely sure how fast bikes went, but he was pretty sure they were faster than people, even lanky teenagers with too-long legs.
“Oh! You can ride my board. Didn’t I say that?”
“No.” Reki’s mind moved so fast that he often forgot to say things and proceeded as if he had. “Are you sure?”
“Totally. I trust you.”
Langa stepped on Reki’s board. It wasn’t a big deal, really, but it felt like one. The same way it did when Reki let Langa borrow his hoodies, or store stuff in his backpack. Intimate, like they shared a life, except they didn’t, of course they didn’t, Reki didn’t—
“What are you waiting for?” Reki looked back at him from the bike with an inviting, lopsided smile, and Langa stopped thinking and started skating.
Langa went slowly, staying behind Reki. He watched the wind ruffle Reki’s hair and the way Reki moved his legs, his knees pumping up and down, a constant steady motion, only leaning to the side when he needed to turn. He made it look so easy. How did he do it? Langa glanced down at his own feet, angled on his—Reki’s—board, and bent his knees. He remembered when he couldn’t stay upright on a board either. He probably never would have, if Reki hadn’t made those clips for his feet.
They turned a corner and Reki stopped so abruptly that Langa passed him. He pulled a 180 turn and skated back to Reki. Drawing up beside Reki, Langa followed his gaze to the building in front of them.
“Look!” Reki said, pointing to something almost concealed in the shadow of an awning. Langa squinted in the bright light and saw just as Reki said, “It’s a bike!”
Langa shaded his eyes. “Someone probably left it while they went inside.”
“No, no, look!” Reki said again. This time he pointed to a sign. “It’s a thrift store.”
“Still could belong to someone,” Langa said, but Reki wasn’t listening. He wheeled his own bike over to the awning and waved Langa over. Langa stepped on the skateboard, flipping it up so he could grab it. It wasn’t that different from his own, but it felt strange in his hands, like sleeping in someone else’s bed.
No, okay, maybe not that.
Langa followed Reki and stood beside him as he crouched by the bike. He pinched something between his fingers and showed Langa. “Price tag,” Reki said. He stood and grinned. “Try it.”
“Try what?”
“The bike, silly.” Reki pushed him towards the bike, as if they were at a dance and the bike was a girl Langa was too shy to approach.
But like, not a girl. Did Reki know that?
Langa placed one hand on the handlebar and swung his leg over the seat. His toes grazed the ground and he didn’t have to hunch to reach the handlebars. “Is this how it’s supposed to be?” he asked Reki.
“Hmm, almost. Hold on. Get off.” Langa did, and Reki adjusted the seat. “Now try.”
Langa got on the bike. His feet reached the ground. “Better.”
“Okay, stay here.”
“Where are you going?”
Reki was already halfway in the door. “To buy this bike.”
“I can—” Langa started to say, but Reki only winked at him and ducked into the store, leaving Langa outside, sitting awkwardly on the bike and wondering, not for the first time, what he’d done to deserve Reki.
Reki returned a few minutes later and poked a key into the lock on the bike. It fell off, and he handed lock and key to Langa. “All yours,” he said. His smile faltered as he looked at the two bikes and skateboard. “I guess we have to get this all home now, huh?”
“I’ll walk the—my—bike and carry your board,” Langa offered.
“Are you sure?”
Langa nodded. “But Reki?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you…make training wheels for me?”
Reki slung an arm around Langa’s shoulders and said, “Yeah, dude. I’ll make you training wheels. I’d make anything for you. You know that.”
Langa did know. It should have been enough.
Langa tucked the skateboard under his arm and awkwardly steered the bike while Reki rode slowly beside him and hypothesized about hoverboard mechanics.
It would have to be enough.
At least for now.