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As the rubber of the doorbell dented underneath Reki's finger, its sound roared through the house. Slowly, Reki retreated his shaking hand and stepped back, staying just covered enough by the overhang to not get drenched from the rain even more.
For a moment there was silence aside from the rumble of the skies and droplets of water colliding with the ground, roofs and leaves of trees. The redhead felt in a daze, his ankle and knee burning hot from pain, water dripping down from his clothes making his skinned forearm sting.
There was a click of the lock and then the door opened to a blue haired boy. Confusion made itself ever so slightly evident on his face before turning into worry at the sight of blood. "Reki, are you okay?"
"Yeah! Just a few scrapes, nothing to be worried about! Got caught in the storm and your house was closer so I was hoping I could crash here before it passes?" Reki asked, putting his usual cheer on and moving his arm behind himself in an effort to not make his friend sick from the red.
"Yes, of course," Langa stepped out of the way and opened the door further. The other boy left his weight on his left leg and stepped the other before him. Catching himself on the door frame, he shifted his weight forward but the pain that exploded in his ankle was sharper than he expected, dooming his knee to buckle. He could almost feel himself hitting the harsh floor but a pair of arms caught around his middle before that could happen.
"Just a few scrapes, huh?" Langa noted, pulling one of Reki's arms around his shoulders and carefully catching its scraped wrist in his left hand, wrapping his right around the boy's waist. He helped him inside, kicking the door closed behind them, and went to walk them down the hallway.
"Langa, who was at the doo-" Nanako Hasegawa chimed from the living room, stopping herself when she appeared in the doorway and noticed the redhead slumped at her son's side. "Oh my, what happened? Are you okay?"
"Hello, Mrs. Hasegawa, oh it's nothing, just had a bad fall," Reki smiled, raising his right arm that was clutching his skateboard.
"What hurts? Should I drive you to the hospital?"
"No, it's probably nothing, just twisted my ankle and hit my knee," Reki shrugged to his best abilities, grabbing his skateboard by the trucks to put it down, leaning it on the wall of the entrance.
"Maybe mom should take you? Just in case, make sure it really is nothing."
"I don't really wanna go to the hospital," Reki replied, eyes trained on the ground.
"If you twisted your ankle it would be good to get it-" Langa started again but was interrupted by the redhead now staring up into his eyes.
"I said I don't want to go to the hospital," he nearly barked out, making everyone else in the room flinch, and his eyes widened at the realization. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say it so harshly," he cast his gaze back down, mind fogged up and elsewhere.
He listened to Langa and his mom talking about taking him to the bathroom to patch him up, not contributing with words and rather nodding in agreement. Langa slowly helped him to the other end of the hallway, Nanako already inside prepping the first aid kit.
Reki was dropped off in the middle of the room and ordered to get rid of the wet clothes, being handed a clean and dry tank top and shorts. He reluctantly changed out, the two refusing to leave the room in case something happened, turning around to give him some privacy. Reki's body shivered, he was so cold.
Seated on the side of the bathtub, Reki held is arms out to be washed with a cloth, cleaned with disinfectant, soothed with a healing cream, covered in padding and wrapped up in gauze. Nanako made quick work of his upper limbs, left having a scraped to hell forearm, right only having a scraped palm. She talked to Reki about nothing in particular but seemingly anything that popped into her mind, making the redhead answer with an enthusiasm whenever a question his direction was about art or skateboarding. He chuckled at the little jokes she would make whenever she needed to spray his arm to clean a spot, in the end making him wheeze out in pain from the sting.
Reki barely looked at either Nanako or Langa, keeping his eyes on his body and whatever part of it was being treated. Once in bit, however, he would look up and over to where Langa was sitting on a stool in the corner, staring at him, eyebrows slightly furrowed, scanning his face. Reki would immediately glance away, but inevitable look back to see if he was still the subject of Langa's focus. He was every single time.
"How exactly did you fall? You said you twisted your ankle?" Nanako asked, surveying Reki's knee that was covered in blood, touching to his ankle. Reki hissed in pain when she started moving it in circles.
"Yeah," Nanako had left Reki's ankle alone in favour of grabbing a clean towel to drench in water. She started slowly washing the blood off of his knee. "I was learning a new trick when it started raining. It wasn't that bad so I thought one more try wouldn't hurt but when I did an ollie a pebble got in my way. I tried to stop myself from falling by stepping off the board but my foot slipped on the wet ground instead and I was sent flying. I have no idea how it happened, I just know I twisted my ankle and next thing everything hurt and the rain was pouring down hard."
Nanako hummed in acknowledgement, "I would feel much better If you would let me take you to the hospital, but for now I'll just wrap it for you. You will ice it on and off for 20 minutes each. In a week you will come show yourself to me. If it's still badly bruised and swelled I will be taking you to the hospital for an X-Ray. And I won't take any excuses then. I have a night shift today so you will stay the night and in the morning I'll bring you crutches. No skateboarding for at least four weeks. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am." Reki saluted. In that moment he didn't even care. A part of him never wanted to step foot on a skateboard ever again, he was terrible at it. He was terrible at every trick he had ever learned, and even worse at those he hadn't and probably never would. He should just stop trying and wasting his time with that stupid excuse for a sport.
After his knee had a big plaster and his ankle wrapped tight, Reki was given some pain medication to help with the ankle and inflammation. Langa supported his body and walked them into his room, a bad of ice in one hand. Out of his closet he pulled out warm clothes which Reki eagerly put on before letting himself be helped to the bed where he sat and curled under the covers, ice to his ankle slightly ruining the efforts to get warm.
"You wanna talk to me about what happened?" Langa prompted, sitting down next to the redhead and looking over at him. Reki glanced into his eyes for a fleeting moment before focusing on the desk across the room from him.
"What do you mean?" he chuckled, the awkwardness escaping him.
"Did you hurt yourself on purpose?" Reki felt his body involuntarily flinch at the accusation and he tried to burry himself deeper in the covers and melt into the mattress. He didn't answer.
"Talk to me! Please!" Langa's pleads were oozing desperation as he grabbed Reki's arm through the duvet but the redhead just turned his head further away from him. Shame swallowed him whole.
"Reki," Langa whispered, moving his other hand to cup the boy's jaw on the side further away from him, softly letting it just rest there. "Please."
"It wasn't on purpose," Reki croaked when the silence was getting stretched too long. There wasn't much point making excuses and he trusted Langa, didn't he? He was supposed to trust him with everything, he was supposed to be able to talk to him about anything, so why was it so hard? "But... I didn't stop after the first time I fell."
"How many times did you?" Langa brushed his thumb across Reki's cheek bone before retracting it and bringing into his lap.
"Three, maybe four? I don't remember it enough to tell. I was a bit out of it," his voice grew progressively quieter before being a mere whisper. "I still kind of am."
"Did something happen?" Langa was trying to open him up. "To make you want to hurt yourself again?" Reki hated it.
He hated the way Langa would always try to reach out when all he wanted to do was rot and merge with whatever surface was underneath him. He was supposed to be grateful. Grateful to have a kind best friend that looked out for him, so what was it that made him despise it so much?
"It's not- It wasn't that I wanted to do it. It was more... that I didn't care if i hurt myself too badly. So I just didn't stop until I physically couldn't go on anymore."
"So... You don't care that you sprained your ankle?" out of the corner of his eye Reki saw Langa's eyebrows furrow as he continued looking at his face. "That you won't be able to skate for a month now?" He almost laughed out, it sounded absurd, Reki not caring about skateboarding. It sounded like a joke.
"At the moment I honestly couldn't care less," the redhead said quietly, finally turning his head to properly look back at his friend. Confusion was written all over his face and Reki decided to go on and share his truth for once, "It, um... feels like no matter how hard I try I'll never be good enough, so why should I even try in the first place."
"Because skating is fun."
"Not when I'm like this, it's not," Reki looked back away, the slightly cluttered but not messy desk suddenly really interesting again.
He felt a hand snake around his shoulders as Langa moved up closer next to him. Reki let his head fall on his shoulder and his body lean onto his. He raised up a side of the blanket and Langa brought it over himself, finding one of the redhead's hands to hold and soothe underneath.
"I need you to tell me when you're not feeling well. We've talked about this, letting yourself spiral isn't helping anyone."
"I know, I'm sorry." But he wasn't. Not really. It felt strangely good to wallow in his feelings. To be self destructive and make himself feel even worse.
"It's okay, I love you."
"I know, I'm sorry." And he was. If there would be one regret in his entire life it would be not being able to love Langa back. It would be staying alone for the rest of his life because his heart couldn't feel. Couldn't love.
"I know, it's okay." But Langa wouldn't be mad at him. Wouldn't leave his side despite not being able to show his affections the way he wanted. Despite not being able to love Reki the way he wanted actively hurt him.
Because at the end of the day they had each other in their lives and they wouldn't trade that for the world.
Because as the rain fell outside and played a nature's song, they fell asleep in each other's arms, and maybe tomorrow would be a better day.