Chapter Text
Reki flicks the lighter on. It takes a few tries before it's lit into an unsteady flame, and he cups his hand close around it so it doesn't go out.
It's early in the morning, so there's no light seeping through the curtains in his room yet. The only light is the flame.
Pretty, he thinks. He stares at it, admiring the bright blaze flickering in the dark. For a little while, he takes comfort in the warmth it gives his palm before he lifts it to his wrist, and lets the flame touch his skin.
~🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁~
Reki thinks he's burning, not with resolve or determination, nor strength and willpower. Not with love or passion. He's not burning with emotion or blazing with ambition and whatnot. He's not burning with any of those things, because that would mean he's burning with life, and wouldn't that show? Wouldn't that radiate in waves? Wouldn't someone notice it like they would notice sunshine and rainbows and rain? So how come no one did?
If he isn't burning with life, then why does he feel like he's scorching with every step he takes when he walks?
Why does it look like there's clouds of ash blowing every time the wind blows? Why does it always smell like smoke?
Why do his eyes sting whenever he closes his eyelids?
Why does his body feel hot to the touch, even for him?
Why does he always feel sick? Is it because his throat burns with every breath?
Why is there always the taste of asphalt on his tongue no matter how much he rinses it?
It hurts to move. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to speak. It hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts. It hinders him.
No, Reki's not burning with life. Instead, he thinks he's burning from the inside out.
~🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁~
It's like chronic pain. Throbbing. Aching. Never going away. Flaring up so much it's like he's been set on fire.
When Reki walks, it feels like he’s standing on hot metal. When he falls off his board, his body engulfs in white-hot pain the second his skin touches the ground.
He finds that it only happens when he feels like he's burning the most.
He also finds that when he's hanging around Langa, the pain subdues, if ever so slightly. Maybe because the handsome blue-haired boy had grown up in Canada. Maybe he brought that coldness with him from there to here. Maybe that's what cooled Reki down, and made the pain a little less heavy. It feels so fresh for Reki. It's like Langa is a personal cooler.
Langa feels like Reki’s solace.
~🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁~
He was still fairly new to skating, Langa, that is. Reki's been at this for a while. A long while, full of unpleasant falls and a bit too much ecstasy over small achievements, like his first ollie.
Langa's getting it really quickly though, and Reki's happy for him. Really he is.
~🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁~
Sometimes, in the summer, when most of the locals stay inside, and when the concrete is sweltering under the sun and hot to the touch, Reki walks barefoot, shoes in hand. Sometimes he'll head to the skate park purely for that purpose, instead of skating like he usually does. He makes his walks deliberately slow, each step taking at least a second. His little walks are when he can usually smell the asphalt, faint but sharp, pungent and kinda earthy, wafting in the air from the heat.
He hasn't done that for a while though, because Langa came around and kept him busy through skating, and by being Reki's best friends in general. It made Reki happy, and normal. Langa didn't make Reki want to burn until he was nothing. Reki had felt okay, calm, though still burning.
But when he witnessed Langa complete his first race in /S/ (with fricken Shadow!), he thinks that this time he's burning with a little more emotion. He feels it seep into his bones. He feels it bloom in his chest, like a single flower that somehow hadn't caught on fire. At least, not yet. And that meant he was burning with a little bit more life this time around, thanks to Langa.
~🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁~
Reki’s solace had left him behind in the dust.
Come back! His mind screams. Stay!
Why'd you go?
Reki knows why.
Langa had grown so fast in these last few months, and Reki simply couldn't keep up. Langa was brimming with talent, and he still had plenty of potential in skateboarding. Reki wasn't good enough to match that talent, and some small, miniscule part of him whispers that he may have already hit his peak with the sport.
And after his best friend versed the founder of /S/, Langa had left mediocre Reki for someone better. Adam.
Reki had nothing left to give Langa. He didn't have any new tricks to teach his friend. He was no longer of Langa's caliber. They were no longer compatible. Because Reki’s a normal, talentless nobody, and Langa’s so amazing and talented, it’s no wonder Langa left him in smoldering dust.
He knows that if Langa had stayed with the likes of him, Reki would just be leeching off of him, hindering him, slowing him down and holding him back. Langa doesn't deserve that, he deserves the world, so Reki won’t force him to stay, as much as that hurts him.
He felt the tendrils of smoke spread in his bones and chest. It seeped in like poison, intruding in on the emotions that Langa had sparked, and blackened them out.
~🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁~
Reki likes burning himself. He finds it's a nicer contradiction to the burning from inside his body. Calming even.
He doesn't feel the pain from harming himself, just a light sting of heat. It's good enough, he supposes.
Sprawled in his room, on the floor, lighter in hand, arms singed and bleeding.
Why am I burning so much?
Is it because Langa left him and now he's flaring up again? No, he was burning long before Langa came to Okinawa. So then, what was the cause? He tries to think back in his life. When was he not burning? When did this start? He can't remeber, it's felt like this forever.
So he lays there, fingers twitching, skin prickling, blood seeping out of the burns.
~🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁~
Some part of Reki wants to burn everything down until it's nothing. But he can't do that, because he wouldn't, and mostly because it's impossible. Besides, even if he could, he'd have to burn Langa away too.
God, he was so selfish to think he could keep Langa as his friend when there were people so much more better than Reki, like Miya, and Shadow, Cherry and Joe too. And Adam, worst of all.
He knows he's already hit his peak. He knows it, but it still hurts. He loves skateboarding, but passion and hard work mean nothing in the face of true talent.
Reki thinks he'll die from the fire in him. It's eating him out from his gut, spreading to his heart, suffocating his lungs in black smoke, and trying to burn it’s way through his ribcage and to his ribs. Something has to give.
Reki knows it'll kill him. He doesn’t find it in himself to care.