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Langa sees it first.
It is a little green envelope right in the center of Reki's desk. His name is written in thick, red marker, the huge kana taking up all the space on the front of it. It’s larger than life, exuberant, a beacon - just like him.
Reki hasn’t noticed it; his arm is wrapped around Langa’s shoulder as he recaps a cool new move he saw someone pull off on Twitter the night before - he’s rambling about the friction coefficient, the exciting and unique build of the skater’s board. It’s music to Langa’s ears, normally, but it fades away to static as his vision narrows to the card. What could it be? He wonders.
“Eh? Langa?” Reki’s prodding his cheek and that grounds him back in the here and now. Their classroom is mostly empty, some guys gathered near the windows idly chatting about the baseball club’s record, while a few other classmates sit in a cluster of desks near the front going over homework.
Langa points at Reki’s desk. “Did you leave something behind?” But he knows, somehow that’s not what’s happening. As Reki hums and untangles himself from Langa, one of the guys - Kensuke? Kenta? The blond one, he can’t remember - calls out to them.
“Hey Reki!” he says, gesturing at the desk, at it. “You got a confession or something?” One of his friends - a brunette with glasses, laughs.
“A confession? For our resident delinquent? No way,” he says, and Langa half glares at him. Ignoring the insult, Reki laughs as he goes to grab the letter.
He gasps when he flips it over - an almost inaudible change in his breathing, but one of many Langa’s come to know over the months of their friendship. It’s a sound of surprise - a cute sound, Langa often thinks in the quiet moments of the morning before he meets up with Reki. He’s catalogued them. Langa hooks his head over Reki’s shoulder and catches a glimpse of a skateboard sticker sealing the letter shut before Reki shakes him off gently.
“Hey! If it’s a confession it’s private!” He laughs again, then furrows his brows, tapping at the sticker. “It’s probably not though - do you think someone wants to learn to skateboard?”
Langa, rubbing at his chin, shrugs. “Only one way to find out,” he says. Reki nods.
Then he watches as Reki carefully peels around the sticker, preserving the shape of it. The pattern on the board doesn’t look anything like his own, nor does it look like Reki’s - and somehow that makes him feel warm inside, like whoever left this note doesn’t know Reki well enough - but it’s cool, purple with a yellow lightning bolt across it. He lifts up the flap, and pulls out a folded over piece of notepaper in the same pale green shade of the envelope. He flips this one open and this time it’s Langa, still looking over his shoulder, who gasps.
On the top flap of the note there’s some text - the writing is clear and beautiful, so unlike Langa’s chicken scratch, but what’s more eye catching is the sketch on the bottom - a nearly perfect rendering of the gear angel on the bottom of Reki’s board.
Reki, meanwhile, has gone pink in his ears while - Kentaro? Kenji? - and his friends look on, grinning. “Well? What’s the verdict?” he asks.
“Um, well,” Reki replies, faltering. It’s strange - Langa hasn’t known him to be flustered like this, and instead of focusing on the drawing reads the text instead.
Dear Reki,
I wanted you to know that I think you’re very cool!
I think your sketches are very creative, too!
<3 Your Secret Admirer
Langa’s face warms and his ears feel like they’re stuffed with cotton. It’s weird to know that someone else recognizes how amazing Reki is, how talented. He thought - and he knows this is selfish - that Reki’s skill was a secret for him alone to uncover; the rest of his classmates have had years to uncover this. Langa found out within a day.
Reki’s hastily but carefully shoving the note back into its envelope and then into the exterior flap on his backpack, keeping it out of reach of the blond boy who’s weirdly determined to know what it says. “It’s private,” Reki reiterates, sliding into his chair as Langa does the same.
“You let Langa read it!” The classmate - Ken, let’s go with Ken - huffs, leaning back against the windowsill.
The redhead looks at Langa, blushes even more, and then rubs awkwardly at the back of his head. “Well yeah, that’s Langa though. He- He’s different. He’s Canadian! He’s never seen something like this before.”
Ken scoffs. “Didn’t Izumi confess to him last week?”
Langa doesn’t remember this happening at all - he recalls some underclassman girl asking him if he wanted to study together after school last week, but they didn’t actually share any classes and besides, he wanted to skate with Reki. Reki clearly remembers, though, tapping his chin thoughtfully.
“Sorry Kenzo,” - so close! - “But I guess Langa’s just cooler than you!” Reki says, and then pulls out his phone to make Langa watch the video he was discussing earlier.
As they share earbuds, Reki narrates right into his ear and Langa wonders, idly, what Reki’s going to do about this letter.
---
The answer is, apparently, absolutely nothing.
“I’ve got nothing to go on, Langa!” He says emphatically over lunch, trading a slice of egg for a few of Langa’s grapes. “They didn’t leave a name, I don’t know anyone’s handwriting, and what would I even do if I found them?” He shrugs, like the answer is obvious.
“Date them?” Langa offers, and Reki scoffs.
“When do I even have time for dating, between the shop, my sisters, S, and y-” he cuts himself off abruptly, gulps down tea. Langa wonders where that sentence was going to end up.
“And besides,” he starts, gearing himself up for more. “It doesn’t seem like they want to be found, right? Otherwise they’d tell me their name instead of calling themselves a secret admirer.” Reki deflates a little bit, sags against the fence he’s resting against. “I’m keeping the letter though.”
Something sends a jolt down Langa’s spine, and his back straightens out where he’d been slouching, turning his head to look at Reki. “W-why?” he asks, and hopes Reki doesn’t notice how his voice cracked and betrayed him.
“It’s kinda nice? Knowing that someone thinks I’m cool.” Reki chews on a tomato, thinking. There’s an expression on his face that Langa might call wistful, if he were a little more fanciful. He likes it, though, and catalogues it in his mind as one he’d like to see again. “Plus, it’s good art! It feels, I dunno, disrespectful to just throw it away.”
That’s sensible, Langa thinks, and says as much. Internally, though, he’s wondering how he can get Reki to make that face.
As they skate together that night, Langa soaring high and seeking out Reki’s face whenever he lands, he knows that he’s blessed to have that starry, wide-eyed gaze of wonder all to himself.
---
Waiting for Reki that morning, Langa can’t stop thinking about it. The carefully recreated halo of the red creature on Reki’s board, the sticker he carefully peeled so it wouldn’t tear, the perfectly drawn heart closing off the letter. The clear, crisp handwriting. The fat marker that must have been used to label it, the red a match for Reki’s hair.
He’s glad Reki’s planning on ignoring it, and coasts to school with him at his heels, while they talk about the board he’s designing for a regular at the shop. Really, it’s Reki talking and Langa basking, occasionally asking an obvious question, but Reki beams everytime like Langa’s actually helping him.
His bright mood lasts until they get to their classroom - a bit later than yesterday - to find a small box on Reki’s desk, with another green letter resting on top. Reki’s name is written in the same red marker on it. Kenzo and his friends are nearby, and Reki goes to them immediately while Langa scrutinizes the box, crouching at the desk.
“Did you see who left this?” he asks, but the boys look at each other and shrug. Kenzo, at least, looks apologetic, if a little pink in the face.
“They must be getting here really early,” Kenzo says. “We’re the first ones here after morning practice - Hanako’s study group comes in a little later though.” Reki nods, but Langa interrupts.
“They could be leaving it after class. Reki and I leave pretty early, and a lot of people do clubs after.” Kenzo narrows his eyes at Langa.
“Looks like you’ve thought about this a lot,” he says, crossing his arms. His sleeves roll up and Langa catches the edge of a smudge of what looks like black ink as he continues. “Maybe you’re the one leaving them?” The argument is stupid, and Kenzo seems to know it, because he falters at the end, and Reki ignores it - going instead to the letter and the gift.
The box turns out to be chocolate - “Matcha Meltyblend! My favorite!” - and Reki slides both the candy and the unopened card into his bag.
“You’re not going to open it?” Langa asks, weirdly pleased.
Reki nods. “Class is starting soon - I don’t want to rush it.”
Rush what? Langa wants to ask, but can’t bring the words to his throat before Reki starts asking him for his thoughts on wheel sizes.
He’s given Langa so much energy and warmth, handled him with so much care - and the little monster inside of him growls with envy at the thought of Reki extending that same care to some anonymous person.
---
At lunch, Reki shares the chocolates with him. Langa peels the clementine he’s packed, picks the stringy white pith off of the slices, and piles most of them on a napkin for Reki.
“So,” he says. “What’s up with the secrecy over your admirer?” Reki looks skyward for a second, humming.
“Really, I just didn’t want our classmates asking too many questions, you know? It’s a little embarrassing.” He flashes a wide smile at Langa, but not one of the ones that turns his eyes into little crescents.
Langa nods. “But I’m different, right? I’m cooler than them?” he says, parroting Reki’s words from yesterday.
Instead of turning his whole body towards him, Reki looks at Langa through the corners of his half lidded eyes, twisting his travel mug in his hands. “Yeah,” he agrees. “You’re something, alright.”
The warmth in Reki’s maple eyes, beautiful and bright in the afternoon sun, floods into Langa. It’s sugar sweet - syrupy and thick, like maple candy, or blueberries plucked fresh from the bush, grown wholesome and sweet freely in the sun.
With a sigh - one, Langa notes, he never wants to hear Reki make again - the warmth dissipates, and Reki pulls the card out of his bag. He shuffles closer to Langa so they can look at it together.
The sticker sealing it shut this time is another little skateboard. This time it’s yellow with a little flame in the center. Reki opens it just as carefully as he did yesterday, and Langa wishes for a brief and insane moment that he were that sticker somehow, that Reki was scraping under him with the edge of a mostly bitten off nail.
Inside, the letter still matches the envelope, the same pale green. Langa wonders if this person went to the store, looking specifically for a stationery set to write these notes, and landed specifically on this shade of green for Reki, or if they just happened to have it on hand.
Reki’s eyes widen when he unfolds it, but he doesn’t gasp. Langa does it for him. The drawing this time is both more and less elaborate - a little four panel comic, a cute and miniature version of Reki nailing an ollie. Langa can tell the note is a little longer, too.
Dear Reki,
I hope you enjoy this candy! You mentioned liking them once, and I think you deserve something nice, even if it is small.
I see you skating sometimes, and I’m so struck by your passion and drive. I don’t think I could do something so brave.
<3 Your Secret Admirer.
“Huh,” Reki says.
“Huh,” Langa agrees.
“Maybe this means I was right, and they do want skating lessons!” Reki says, but his heart isn’t into it, the usual energy isn’t there in his voice. It worries Langa that something was able to bring him down like this.
Reki looks down at his lap. “The last time I mentioned candy was before you transferred in - it was part of an English exercise.”
“I guess you’re one step closer to figuring out who it is, then.” Langa says. He’s peeling the skin off his own pieces of the clementine, leaving the naked pulp behind. He doesn’t want Reki to figure it out, but at the same time he thinks - Reki deserves love, to be admired.
But of all the things he mentioned yesterday - the things that kept him too busy to be someone’s perfect, doting boyfriend - Langa can’t imagine how or where he’d find the time, without cutting S from his life entirely, or losing hours at work. He can’t imagine Reki with less skating in his life, and, based on this letter, his admirer would agree.
Reki sighs and goes to carefully pocket the letter, but grabs his phone first to take a picture of the comic. “I’m going to send it to Miya. I think I look really cool in it!” He grins widely, the crescent moon smile back on his face.
“Yeah,” Langa agrees, looking down at his knees, soft smile on his face. “You’re really cool.”
---
Another morning, another handshake, another perfect water bottle toss.
That’s what Langa has to look forward to when he wakes up the next day, but right now he’s lying wide awake in bed.
He can hear his mother snoring, faintly, just below the hum of the fan. He wants to sleep, wants to dream, but instead his mind is racing - and for once, he’s not thinking of skateboarding, but instead rolling the tape on Reki.
Although perhaps, at this point, they’re one and the same.
He wonders what it would be like if he were the one leaving the notes. As often as he calls Reki amazing, and smart, and incredible, and talented, as often as he can only watch in awe as he shapes wood and metal into a beautiful, detailed board, and as often as he feels grateful and thankful to the boy who gave him a way to fly again, it doesn’t seem like Reki can hear him.
It doesn’t get through. He brushes them off, minimizes his effort and talent, time and time again, even though Langa - and, apparently, at least one other classmate of theirs - can see the truth. And the truth is that Reki is amazing. Reki is cool. Reki is worthy of admiration.
Reki would be a perfect boyfriend for someone.
And it’s that thought that slams right into Langa like the wall he crashed into before Reki taught him how to stop.
But it’s also that thought that nurses Langa to beautiful dreams - of him and Reki, holding hands while skating side by side; of Reki, bunny hopping in a snowboard at Lake Louise; of the two of them, huddled against each other in a quiet, dark corner at S, trading lazy kisses back and forth, boards lying forgotten at their feet.
When he finally wakes up in the morning, he has two thoughts.
- Reki wouldn’t just be a perfect boyfriend for someone. Reki would be a perfect boyfriend for Langa, specifically, and not some anonymous stranger.
- How do you face someone when you’ve had the best sleep of your life dreaming that the two of you were making out?
---
The answer is very simple, actually: trip off of your skateboard when you’re heading downhill because you’re so distracted by the way their eyes twinkle in the morning sun. Have your face make direct contact with a wall - just enough for it to scratch and bleed a little bit, but not enough to risk a concussion. Have your object of desire kneel in front of you and hold your chin gently, but firmly in place while they carefully disinfect and bandage your wound. Make sure you can feel their warm puffs of breath right where your neck meets your jaw.
It’s a unique form of torture for Langa, but he savors every moment of it, imagining that Reki’s breath beat a tattoo right there - how easy it would be for Reki to close the distance between the two, attack the meat of him and leave a searing, beautiful bruise. His heart beats faster, and he hopes Reki doesn’t notice.
Afterward, they rescue Langa’s board and walk together side by side, because Reki doesn’t trust him not to fall again this morning.
Thanks to all of that, they’re almost late to class. They enter the classroom just before it starts, and, just like yesterday, there’s a green envelope and a small, cardboard tube capped off with a heart sticker resting on Reki’s desk.
Langa can tell that everyone in the class has taken notice of it already - one of the benefits of arriving early the past few days is that only Kenzo and Hanako’s groups have noticed the small problem of Reki’s secret admirer. And as much of a busybody as the boy can be, the study group is more focused on their homework review than on the romantic lives of their classmates.
The same cannot be said for the rest of the class, who are drawn to the drama like bees to flowers.
For the rest of the morning, Langa can hear whispers pass from student to student, and all of them seem to be about the mysterious letter and Reki’s admirer.
“-can kinda see it, I think? He’s pretty cute even if he’s injured all the time-”
“-but isn’t he already-”
“-I thought, with Langa? But I guess not-”
“-wonder if it’s an underclassman-”
A cacophony of sound, but Reki sends Langa a video and they watch it together, hiding their phones behind their notebooks, and all the signal becomes noise.
---
It’s lunchtime, again, and they’re eating more leftover chocolate.
It’s Thursday, and the weekend feels like it’s in their grasp - time to skate, time to crash Joe’s restaurant to see if he’ll feed them, bother Cherry about tactics for S - and the letter in Reki’s bag is burning a hole in it. Or at least, that’s how Langa feels.
There’s still one more weekday to get through - and this letter, this mysterious cardboard tube, to survive.
A new evening of dreams to look forward to, now that he knows how it feels to love Reki.
Reki, who rifles through his backpack and pulls out the card. There’s another skateboard sticker, and it’s purple this time with a yellow smiley face in the center.
“Hey, Langa. Want to come over to mine tonight?” He asks, as he rips under the sticker - still with care.
Langa, focused more on the calloused pads of Reki’s fingers against the envelope, nods. He can tell Reki’s looking at him from under his narrowed eyelids, peaking out at him from the side.
“Good,” Reki nods, and slips the letter out. The note is very short this time.
Dear Reki,
I hope I did you justice. This is how you look through my eyes.
<3 Your Secret Admirer
Langa and Reki look at each other, matching confused faces, before remembering the cardboard tube. Reki pulls it out of his bag too, tears the sticker off - it’s suspiciously light, and the reason why is revealed as a small piece of heavyweight paper rolled into a tube falls into Reki’s lap.
They gasp when he unfurls it.
It’s a portrait, this time, in watercolor marker, of Reki. His bust, more specifically, from the shoulders up. It captures, in vivid yellow, the color of his hoodie and the way it bunches up against his uniform jacket. His face, in the picture, is looking at someone or something in the distance, smiling his welcoming, open mouthed, toothy grin. The artist has captured the particular whirligig of his red hair - and the way it seems to define physics to wrap around his thick headband and frame his boyish face. Somehow, the artist has captured Reki’s searing joy - it’s in the gentle wrinkles around his eyes, his thick eyelashes, the way an inner light shines from his eyes. He’s ethereal.
He’s the Reki in his head - Langa’s head, the way Langa imagines him day in and day out.
And it fills him with first an incandescent burst of rage, then the numbing sting of regret, that he wasn’t the one to show Reki what he looks like through the eyes of love - to get him to really see. Because Reki is staring at the picture in his hands with wide, awed eyes, as if struck by the beauty of it.
“Wow, Langa! Look how crisp their lines are! And how they vary the weight of their strokes in the strands of hair. My secret admirer is super talented!” Reki says.
It strikes Langa that perhaps, despite all of this, Reki can’t see it when other people look at him with the stars of Okinawa reflected in their eyes.
---
Later that night, when they’re curled against each other in Reki’s bed, Langa’s mind wanders.
They’re watching videos of a sport Reki calls ‘Ice Cross’ - it’s some kind of terrifying mix of downhill skiing and ice-skating, and he’s never been more worried that Reki wants to try something. “This is your culture right?” He’d asked. “This is what Canadians do for fun?”
And Langa, a boy who straps himself to a plank made of wood and fiberglass to propel himself down a mountainside at high speeds, had to explain to Reki that most Canadians prefer to not die for extreme sports. It was a little mortifying, but the people competing seem at high risk for concussion, and not death, so he thinks it’s okay.
But his brain is only half on it. Or maybe even a quarter of it; most of Langa’s brain is incredibly distracted by the warmth emanating from Reki’s body despite how much smaller it is, the way the boy is like a furnace for Langa to cuddle against. He’s distracted by the soft sweatshirt Reki’s wearing today, worn and loved, smelling like the jasmine incense that wafts through his house and the musk that’s so uniquely Reki. He thinks about Reki’s oldest younger sister, who slid open the door to the room to steal a set of Reki’s markers, then looked at the two of them, said “cute!” and then gagged before leaving. He’s considering what it would take to curl a little bit more into Reki, press his mouth against the edge of collarbone poking out below the sweatshirt, give him back his warmth, when his eyes catch -
Of course.
Reki’s pinned up the two notes he’s received - they’re both folded over, so only the art is visible, but they’re hanging on the wires alongside his extensive collection of stickers. He must be glaring at them for a while, because eventually even Reki notices that Langa’s been frozen for too long, completely ignoring the ice cross.
He follows Langa’s pointed gaze, and when he laughs Langa can feel it vibrate in his chest. “I know I don’t care to find out who my ‘secret admirer’ is,” he says, the tone of his voice going dark in his self-deprecating way when he stumbles over the phrase ‘secret admirer.’ “But they’re a pretty good artist, and I think art needs to be appreciated. It’s my own way to honor them, even if I can’t date them.”
And Langa, barely a full day into knowing he loves Reki, but has spent the last months - and maybe, honestly, his entire life - knowing Reki deserves to be loved, is suddenly fueled by something resembling rage, something resembling frustration, something hot and searing that makes him want to show Reki just how much he deserves it.
But instead of doing that, he grumbles a little - “like an angry Canadian bear!” Reki notes, delighted - and turns his head up at him.
“Why don’t you think you can date them?” Langa asks. “They care about you, a lot. And I know you don’t think you have free time, but you do - we spend so much time together, even outside of S and the shop, so you could spend that time with your boyfri- your partner,” he corrects. “Your partner if you wanted. You deserve this, Reki. You deserve someone who cares about you.” I deserve you, he thinks. I care about you! He does not say.
By the end - a whole speech, compared to how much Langa usually talks - he can tell his face is flushed by how warm it is, and how Reki is looking down at him - eyes wide and searching, as if trying to see where all that came from. Langa is breathless, and Reki is scarcely breathing as they look at one another, eyes locked together.
Then, suddenly, Reki takes a deep breath in and nods, as if he sees what he needed to see. He pats Langa’s cheeks. “Silly Langa,” he says. “You can’t get rid of me that easily!” And then he forces Langa’s head to turn back to the laptop screen, where some French athlete is poised at the top of the ramp in his silly padded suit, about to risk life and limb for glory. The conversation is over, it seems.
Langa wonders what it means.
---
That morning, that Friday, is just like any other morning, except Langa’s waiting with some kind of dread for what might be resting on Reki’s desk. It’s the end of the week - and sometimes Fridays mean endings, but sometimes they mean beginnings too. A time for something new to happen, a chance for something to change.
The night before, he’d considered texting Joe, or Cherry, or Shadow for advice on this. He realized, after drafting messages for each of them and lingering on the send button, that none of them really had their acts together - romantically, at least.
He thought about asking his mom, finally cracking and reaching out over dinner, but when he dropped a piece of kara-age right onto the table at the thought of admitting to her that he wanted to kiss his best friend, decided against it.
Miya - a kid, who still thinks in video game metaphors and is “clearly,” according to Reki, recovering from some interpersonal drama - wouldn’t understand, and might even use it as ammunition to make fun of the two of them the next time they’re at S together.
So Langa spent the evening adrift, on his own, until he fell asleep and entered his dreams, where he and Reki are mercifully, beautifully together, running a skate shop of their own. They skate endlessly along a beach during an eternal summer, sweat pooling in their clasped hands. It’s a dream he’ll wrap himself in for years to come, until he can recreate it, together, with Reki.
And then, that morning, he knows what he has to do - but he wants to wait; there’s something, and maybe it’s the Canadian in him, or maybe it’s the weakness in him, that makes him want to give this secret admirer one more chance - one more chance to come out and say it, use more than their words.
Because, he realizes, as Reki skates up to him, and they clasp their hands together in their traditional handshake, Reki doesn’t respond to words like that - he can’t be shown things, and expected to understand that someone out there loves him. He can’t be given precious gifts to prove affection, and no matter how often Langa tells him he’s amazing - and he thinks, maybe, he’ll get the chance to tell him for the rest of their lives until he believes it - he refuses to accept it.
But what Reki responds to is the feeling of the ground moving beneath his wheels, a fist thumping against his chest, the blood pumping through his veins when he’s nailing a trick, the ground that rubs rash into his legs when he bails. Reki is a man of action - and Langa has to do something, anything, to make it through.
It can wait, though, until after a pale, green, anonymous envelope gets one more chance.
---
They get there early, somehow, the scratch on Langa’s face scabbed over by now and only a little scary looking. Kenzo is there, but he’s sitting at his desk this time on the other side of the classroom, scribbling something in his notebook. Hanako’s study group is also there, but they’re the ones chatting near the window in a reversal of the usual stakes. She makes eye contact first with Langa, then with Reki, the black waves of her hair a waterfall over her shoulders.
“None of us saw who left that,” she says, gesturing to the thicker than usual envelope placed on Reki’s desk. “Figured you might ask, but it was here when we got in.” She shrugs, and goes back to chatting with her friends - they’re talking about a figure skater, apparently.
Reki picks up the note, feels the weight of it in his hands. It’s hefty, thicker, like the admirer knows somehow it’s their last chance to prove themselves and they wanted to pour everything they had into it. Langa thinks that if everything they can say about their love for Reki can fit into an envelope, well, they don’t have enough to say.
Langa’s love for Reki is infinite.
He definitely considers opening it right there in their classroom, with Langa leaning towards him from his desk, Hanako and friends excitedly chatting about degrees of rotation, of all things, and Kenzo sitting far away from it all, fist clenched around a micron pen. Langa can tell - it’s in the way he fiddles with the seal of the envelope, this time an all black skateboard with wheels outlined in gold, in the way he taps it against the desk a few times, the way he bites his lip and then looks back and forth between Langa and the letter, as if he’s considering something.
But in the end Reki places it carefully into the pocket of his bag, yet again, and turns to Langa. “Hanako’s friends have got me thinking,” he says, all business. “What do you think about adjusting your trucks so you can have a more stable base when you want to spin?”
Something lifts off of Langa’s shoulders - a weight he didn’t even know he was carrying. He doesn’t know the answer yet, but Reki’s going to guide him toward something incredible. He knows it. “Show me what you mean,” he says.
---
At lunch, on the rooftop, Langa really means to use his words when he confesses, to match and surpass all the things his admirer said - all the things he knows are buried in the letter in Reki’s bag.
Instead, when Reki sits down next to him, and he can feel the points where the meat of their biceps and the hard shell of their knees are pressed together - where he and Reki share that warmth, like they're already one whole being, one whole mind - he can't help but turn towards Reki like a sunflower curves toward the sun, rest a hand on one strong and narrow shoulder, and press their lips together.
For a brief, terrifying moment, Reki doesn’t respond - he seems almost frozen beneath him. But Langa pressed on, fisting his left hand into Reki’s sweatshirt and holding on tighter, eyes closed and hoping for the best. He can’t remember the first time he snowboarded, but it’s like skating at S for Reki that first time - taping his feet to the board and soaring downhill, flying, a vision for Reki and Reki only.
It’s a risk, and it’s one that Reki rewards by blooming into the kiss, parting his lips and reaching both hands up at once to carve them into Langa’s hair, cradle his head like something beautiful, press them impossibly closer together.
They kiss until they can’t breathe anymore, parting ways with little kitten pecks that Reki leaves on the corners of Langa’s mouth. When they open their eyes, Langa can see Reki is grinning, like he’s won something - a race at S, a trick competition, a round of beach volleyball, anything.
“Finally,” Reki whispers into his mouth. “You caught up to me.” His thumb rubs against that part of his temple just over Langa’s ear, and he chases the feeling.
“Wait,” Langa says, and abruptly Reki stops. “I just… I want you to know.” And it feels almost impossible to say now, now that he’s straddling Reki, now that he has the full weight of Reki’s eyes on him, knows what he tastes like, how his mouth feels. “You have to know, Reki. I like you a lot. When I said you deserve someone who cares about you last night, I didn’t mean your admirer. I…” and he loses the arc of his words to the gentle petting Reki’s started up again, the insistent massage of his thumbs. He loosens the hand grasping Reki’s sweatshirt and wraps it around him instead, pulling him even closer. He never wants to be apart from him again.
“You meant that I deserve you,” Reki finishes. Reki completes me, Langa thinks, and knows, intuitively, intimately, that they’ll have the rest of their lives for him to prove it to Reki.
Suddenly, Reki flushes, scratches the side of his face thoughtfully. “You know, until that second message… I kinda thought my admirer was you.” Langa had no idea.
“I realized it wasn’t you when it mentioned something from English class, but really the handwriting was too good to be yours all along.” Langa pinches him, and Reki chases the minor insult with a kiss to his cheek, and quickly become insistent kisses, shared between the two of them. But then Langa has a thought.
“Wait, wait,” he says again, and Reki groans.
“You’re killing me, Langa,” he says, but he cuts it with a smile. “What’s up?”
“Your secret admirer,” Langa says. “You should see what they have to say? What if you like them better than me?”
Reki squints at him, concerned. “Do you not get that I like you back? You’re the whole world for me, Langa.”
And really, what can Langa do but blush, and press his head into Reki’s shoulder to hide his embarrassment. How can Reki - who can’t take a compliment without thinking it’s a dig - say something so sappy so easily, when Langa had to spend months gearing up to a stupid kiss.
“I’ll read it if it means that much to you,” Reki says, and pulls the card out of his bag. “Even though I wasn’t really thinking about it, I have a good idea about who it might be now.”
Langa sits back in Reki’s lap, facing him, so he has a perfect view of Reki’s face as he carefully tears open the seal, as he carefully pulls out the sheaf of notepaper. As he reads through the letter, written in that same careful handwriting, his face slowly pinks, then turns red on his tan skin, until his whole head from the tips of his ears, almost down to his chest is brightly flushed. When he finishes, he coughs, and coughs again. Langa hands him his water bottle.
“What did they say?” he asks, when Reki’s calmed down a little. “Did they confess?”
Reki nods around the bottle. “And then some,” he says, flush receding already. “I’m going to have to tell Kenzo that he’s very imaginative, and creative, and talented, but I unfortunately already have a boyfriend.”
Langa nods, proud. And then connects the dots.
The last week flashes through his mind, their mornings in the classroom, the blonde’s fist clenched around the pen, the flashes of ink on the underside of his arm. They way he always seemed to be waiting, and never seemed to catch who dropped off the letters, despite being there the earliest. A skilled, and artful, lovestruck fool who looks at Reki through the same kind of lens Langa does - perhaps the only other person in their school, or in the world, who understands the unvarnished truth. That Reki is amazing.
Langa almost feels bad for him, waiting somewhere in the building for a reciprocated confession that will never come. But when Reki pulls him in for another kiss, let's Langa run his fingers across his eyebrows and down his cheekbones before they card through his hair. When Reki wraps his arms around his waist and Langa settles his lips onto his. When Langa can feel, in their shared breaths, their conjoined future, the endless boardwalk, the infinity they’re sharing - the sunset they’re skating directly into, he can’t feel bad at all.