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Something was bothering Langa.
Reki didn’t know what exactly was, but he could tell, he can always tell. Contrary to popular belief, Langa isn’t a quiet person. Well, okay, he is, but not with Reki. He’ll usually let Reki do the talking but when he gets going, man , he gets going. He once spent a solid thirty minutes talking about some skate moves he wants Reki to teach him, even though Reki’s never been able to pull them off and Langa is much more talented than he is. Okay, no, Langa and Reki are talented in different ways. He has to keep correcting himself when he gets all self-deprecating, it makes people around him worry.
And so maybe Langa is a quiet person, now that he’s thinking about it, but Langa’s always a kind of “peaceful quiet”. Like he just always seems content with everything around him, happy to watch the world pass by.
But lately, he’s been… well, “reki quiet”. Like he’s trying to pretend everything is fine when it’s not. And he’s really bad at pretending he’s okay, maybe even worse than Reki is.
But Reki has no idea how to even bring this up with him. He’s tried distracting him from whatever’s on his mind with videos of skating fails or those cheesy videos of dogs reuniting with their owners. He’s tried skating with him more, but Langa just doesn’t seem to be into it as much. Which, yeah, it kinda hurts, but Reki’s not going to make him do something he doesn’t feel in the mood for. Hell, sometimes he gets in moods where he doesn’t really want to skate. Not often, but he gets it to an extent.
It’s not even just him being quiet that’s concerning (but it’s definitely the most noticeable thing to Reki), but Langa doesn’t seem to be as excited about “S” anymore. Like he’ll still sneak over at midnight, but mostly he just says he doesn’t feel good but he doesn’t want to be alone and please can he stay with Reki for a while?
He’s really worried and doesn’t know what to do. And he can’t ask for help because - because nobody gets Langa the way he does. Just like how nobody gets Reki the way Langa does. It’s just, he’s heard how all sorts of people view Langa, and mostly they’re all wrong. A lot of people at school and “S” think he’s this super mysterious guy but that’s not true, Langa would absolutely talk about his past and his life if someone asked first, it just doesn’t occur to him to say these things without prompt. Some people even say that he’s this really stoic and scary guy with a cool exterior, but just the other week Reki watched him start tearing up at some ducklings following their mom in a pond. And their friends, their close friends, they think he’s kinda ridiculous which, he absolutely is, but they think it for the wrong reasons. They think it’s because he’s always spacing out or randomly just talking about his feelings but that’s not- that’s not ridiculous to Reki. Langa spaces out a lot, sure, but that can’t really be held against him. That’s how he’s always been and he knows this because when he was over at his apartment and looking through some old photo albums, in most of those pictures he had that same lost expression, like he was thinking about what they were going to have for dinner that night instead of focusing on the moment. And Reki maybe thought that being so open about what he was feeling was a bit awkward at first, but it’s just one of the many things he adores about him now. He honestly thinks it’s amazing he’s so shameless with his emotions. Langa always wore his heart on his sleeves.
Which is why watching him struggle is so hard to watch. He doesn’t want to bother Reki, he can tell, and he wants to talk to Reki but every time he opens his mouth to say something, it’s like he remembers that it’s a bad idea and closes it again, and Reki doesn’t understand. They’ve always been able to tell each other everything, but it seems like Lanaga’s pushing him away, and he can’t… he can’t not have Langa in his life, not again.
So that’s why he has to figure out how to talk to him. How to get him to open up.
Reki sighs and looks at the time on his phone. 10 PM. Langa should be here in about two hours, at Midnight on the dot. He’s always stressed the importance of being exactly on time. Reki doesn’t fully understand it because he’s always just a little late to everything, but it makes Lanaga happy so he doesn’t push it.
He’ll probably not want to go to “S” again, so tonight would probably be a good night as any to finally talk. He just doesn’t know how to make it… not tense.
He takes out his phone and starts looking up some ideas but they all kinda suck because he’s limited on what he can do at 10 Pm. Putting music on is out, taking a walk is out, and so is eating.
Well, wait actually. Maybe food would be the way to go. Langa always seems more at ease when he has snacks in front of him. But the only snacks they have in the house are crunchy snacks, but the crunching might get annoying if they’re trying to talk. Reki has his secret candy stash he can bring out, but that doesn’t feel like enough. Besides, he loves Langa with his whole heart, but he doesn’t want all of his candy to be eaten at once. Langa sometimes doesn’t know when he’s hungry or full, so he kind of just ends up eating everything in front of him if it’s there.
Maybe there’s something Reki could make for him? Like a meal maybe? Would that be weird? Or maybe leftovers? Well, no, for some reason Reki kind of wants to actually make something.
What would he be able to make in two hours? Probably a lot, but what will not be loud or make a mess?
He scrolls on his phone a little longer looking at different recipes when he sees a link to making homemade noodles. Vaguely he recalled when Langa was reminiscing about plain old butter and noodles, so maybe this might be the way to go. He pulled up the recipe and skimmed over it, stopping occasionally to read something that’s probably important.
It can be made in like an hour so… why not?
He pulls himself off his bed and quietly makes his way to the kitchen, his phone, and earbuds in his pocket.
It was always weird walking around his house when he was alone or if his family was asleep. They were all loud people so it was strange to walk through the quiet house. When he made it to the kitchen he put his earbuds in and pulled up a playlist called “Songs That Make Me Think Of Langa”. It’s his secret playlist, the one he didn’t send to him, the playlist that makes Reki flushed all over because most of the songs he put on there are maybe cheesy love songs. Okay, they’re definitely cheesy love songs, and a couple of English songs Langa’s mentioned to him, even though Reki doesn’t understand what they’re saying. And it’s totally embarrassing, but it’s also kind of exciting.
When he hears the familiar tune of one of his favorite songs on that list, he pulls that pasta recipe back up and starts taking out the ingredients.
Flour, olive oil (they don’t have that so sesame seed oil should be fine, right?), salt, and eggs. The recipe says it’s for four people, but Langa has an appetite of about three people so it should be fine.
He wipes his hands on his jeans and then taps his fingers on the counter while he tries to focus on reading the recipe.
He puts the flour in a bowl with the salt and oil, and then he cracks the eggs in there too, only getting a little bit of egg on the counter in the process. As he’s reading, he sees the recipe mentioning a food processor which oops, he definitely doesn’t know how that works, and also he’s pretty sure it’s loud. Hopefully, it’ll be okay in the bowl he grabbed. He grabs one of the many wooden spoons and starts to stir. It’s pretty messy, he’s getting flour all over the counter and himself. After a little while, it starts to take some sort of shape. It doesn’t really look like pasta very much, but reading the recipe and it says that it’s time to start kneading it. He dumps the contents on the bare counter and if he’s being super honest, he doesn’t actually know what kneading is. He’s pretty sure it’s kind of like punching it, right? And then it turns into a dough? So he gently tried punching it. Nothing bad happened, so he’s probably doing okay. Maybe. After a couple of minutes, it hasn’t actually changed that much in consistency, so he tries hitting it instead. This also does nothing. Well, now he’s just starting to get frustrated. He’s kneading it perfectly even if he doesn’t actually know what that means, so he doesn’t get why it doesn’t look like the picture. He tries rolling it around on the counter and this kind of does have an effect on it, so he just keeps doing that until he’s formed a lumpy ball. Well, it’ll probably smooth out when he cooks it.
He scrolls down the recipe a little more and oh. He’s supposed to put it through a machine. Well, his family doesn’t have one of those, so it’ll probably be okay to roll it out with a rolling pin, right?
He rummages around the kitchen until he finds one that he’s seen his mom use for cookies. It has these cool dents in it that leave prints on the dough when it’s rolled on top. It has pictures of bees and wildflowers, which would look pretty cool on pasta, right?
He walks back over to the dough and starts rolling it out. As he rolls it out (and picks out any eggshells he sees), he sways back and forth to his music, feeling flushed and a little giddy. This pasta is going to be so good and Langa’s going to think it’s delicious, and then they’ll be able to talk about whatever’s bothering him, and it’s going to be great.
After a couple of minutes, he’s happy with the large square of pasta dough in front of him.
He takes out a knife and expertly cuts the dough into long pieces. They’re a little uneven both in width and thickness of the dough, but if you asked him, they look pretty damn good.
He pulls the recipe up again and frowns. He was supposed to let the dough sit for half an hour before cutting it. Well, it’s not too late to do that, right? It also said to cover it with something, so he grabs some paper towels and throws them on top, setting a timer on his phone for thirty minutes.
While he waits, he walks over to the couch in his living room and plops down, opening up his text messages. He maybe should have asked Langa if he was definitely coming over tonight, but he’s pretty sure he is, but he’s going to double-check anyway.
*Hey!!!!!!! Dude r u still coming over????? ┌(^◡^)┘ ☆ ┌(・.・)ゞ♪♪( ﾉ•̀ω•̀)ﾉﾟ
*yes. is that okay?
*yeah dude!!!!!!!!!!! 12 right?? (〃ω〃)
*yes
*k cool!!!!!! See ya later then dude!!!!!!!!! ⎝(^◡^)⎠
*see you :)
Reki stuffs his phone in the pockets of his hoodie cause he’s kinda antsy but mostly flustered cause talking to him always does that to him, even if it’s just through text. His face always ends up hurting with how much he grins.
He takes his phone out again cause he has to do something while he waits, so he plays some music beat games on his phone ‘til the timer goes off.
When it does, he walks back to the kitchen and throws out the paper towels he put on the pasta. He pokes the noodles with his index fingers. It’s kinda crusty for some reason, but that’s gotta be normal, so he ignores it and takes out a pot, filling it with water. The recipe says to put some salt in the water but that can’t be right since he already used the salt for the dough. Maybe they made a mistake or something.
When the water starts boiling, he puts the noodles in and kind of watches as they boil on top of each other. After two minutes of letting them do their thing, Reki takes out two small bowls and uses tongs to fish the noodles out of the pot. Some of them are kind of sticking to each other, but that’s okay.
When he’s done, he goes to the fridge and grabs a stick of butter, cutting some of it off and plopping it into each bowl. It looks kind of bland, so he sprinkles some sesame seeds on for some pizzazz.
He takes a step back and grins proudly at his work. The noodles are sticking to each other and they look a little weird because of the rolling pin, but otherwise, it looks good!!! But man, making pasta is hard. He’s not sure how Joe does this every single day.
He cleans up the kitchen as quickly as he can before grabbing the bowls and walking back to his room.
He sets the bowls on the dresser and looks around. He wants it to be cozy when Langa gets here, he doesn’t want him stressed when they talk.
He kicks the stuff on his floor out of the way and takes the sheet off his bed, flattening it out on the ground best he can. When that’s done, he takes the heavier blanket off and puts that down too, so he and Langa can wrap themselves up to warm up. It’s not cold out or anything, but there’s something nice about cozying up under a big blanket.
He turns the lights in his room off, but he turns on the LED lights surrounding the top of the walls in his room, so there can be soft lighting.
He can feel himself flushing from his head to his toes cause, it’s kind of romantic, isn’t it? Eating homemade pasta together while snuggled up in a blanket together? Maybe it’s too much, it’s too much, isn’t it? Maybe he should turn the lights back on or- or-
Knock knock.
A gentle tapping at his window interrupts his thoughts. He scrambles over to open it and he almost trips a couple of times which is embarrassing, but he opens the window and Langa is sitting there on the little piece of the roof by his window. He looks kind of flushed and he clears his throat.
“Hi, Reki,” he says, his voice soft and quiet, like he’s afraid to wake anybody up.
Reki grins brightly and grabs his hands, pulling him inside, both of them falling onto Reki’s bed with a soft thud , with Langa on top of him.
Langa is in no rush to move, so Reki has to kind of push him off while stifling his giggles.
Langa sighs and looks over at Reki, that sad look in his eyes.
“Reki, I’m not feeling so good, so I don’t think I can go to “S”. I’m sorry,” He says, and his whole body tenses, like he feels guilty. Reki gently punches his shoulder with a grin.
“I figured, dude. It’s okay,” he says. Langa looks a little relieved, but not by much. His eyes dart down to the bed and he scrunches his nose in confusion (which is NOT adorable no matter how hard Reki’s heart is pounding). He sits up on the bed and looks around before noticing all the blankets on the ground.
“Reki? Why are your bed sheets on the floor?”
Reki sat up and grabbed Langa’s arm, pulling him onto the ground with him.
“Well, I figured you wouldn’t want to go to “S” tonight, so I thought we could do something fun here? I dunno, I made pasta and stuff, but it’s kind of silly, right?” Reki’s face felt like it was burning and Langa just kept looking at him. “Sorry, sorry, it’s- that’s kinda dumb, right? Sorry, we don-”
“Reki,” Langa interrupted.
“You made pasta?” and Reki lets out a breathy laugh because of course Langa would focus on food.
“Yeah, dude. Here, I’ll get it,” He stands up and walks to the dresser to grab the two bowls.
“What kind of pasta is it?”
Reki stood still while he thought about it.
“Uhh, I dunno. Aren’t all pasta’s the same?”
Langa shook his head and Reki shrugged.
“I dunno dude, they all look the same to me.”
“You didn’t read the box? And pasta does not all look the same.”
Reki walked over to him and sat next to him, maybe a little bit closer than usual, and handed him a bowl.
“There wasn’t a box. And it totally does, like have you ever seen ramen noodles next to spaghetti? It’s practically the same thing.”
“Reki, they really don’t. Ramen is more curly- wait,” He looks down at his bowl and moves the noodles around with his chopsticks.
“What do you mean there wasn’t a box? Did you make these? Like homemade?”
Reki reaches over Langa’s lap and pulls the bigger blanket over their laps.
“I mean, kind of, yeah.”
Langa’s eyes go kind of wide and sparkly as he looks from the pasta to Reki.
“Really?”
Reki nods his head and leans against the side of his bed.
“It was easier than I thought. I mean, I didn’t have the fancy pasta machine or whatever, but they’re still good.”
Langa hums and picks up a couple of noodles with his chopsticks, it’s all kind of clumped together, but he looks determined to try it anyway. Reki does the same thing and then they both bite into it.
Reki chews it and tries to savor it but honestly, it kinda sucks. There was an eggshell in his bite and the noodles are too chewy in some places and too crusty in others. There’s practically no flavor at all, aside from the salty butter.
Reki looks over at Langa, who’s making a face, which means he probably doesn’t like it either. But, bless him, he goes to take another bite anyway. Reki laughs and moves the chopsticks away before he can take another bite.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to eat it. It’s pretty bad,” he tells him, even though he’s disappointed and kind of embarrassed.
Langa pouts and stirs the noodles with his chopsticks.
“But you worked hard on this,” he mumbles. Reki feels kinda like he’s floating because Langa still wants to eat his terrible, terrible pasta, if only because Reki worked hard on it.
“Well, yeah, but it’s gross and it’ll maybe make you sicker actually.”
Langa frowns and sets the bowl on the other side of him.
Reki nudges him with his elbow.
“I’ll keep practicing and I’ll let you eat Pasta Reki when it actually tastes good,” he promised.
Langa smiles at that and nudges Reki back.
“I can- I can even make like a homemade sauce too, right? It’ll be so good. Do you think it would taste good with like a cheese?”
Langa nods, seriously.
“Everything is better with cheese. I’m sorry it didn’t turn out.”
Reki sighs.
“Well, maybe that’s what I get for trying to make something from scratch on a whim. I was hoping it would cheer you up, but maybe I should have stuck to the candy.”
Langa goes still and nervously picks at the lint on the blanket.
“What do you mean cheer me up? I’m- I’m fine,” he says.
Reki sighs and moves a little closer to him.
“Dude, I’m not dumb. If you don’t want to talk about whatever it is we don’t have to but- but I’m worried about you, man.”
Langa looks over at him.
“You are?” He asks like he’s genuinely surprised, and Reki kinda wants to shake him by the shoulders for that.
“Yeah, I am. I mean, you’re acting like I was before I walked away, you know? Like, not- not completely like I was, like, I don’t think you’re going to walk away from me or anything, maybe, but I’m still-”
Reki takes in a deep breath and sighs.
“I just wanted to make things comfortable for you so you would talk to me because I didn’t know what else to do. Which is why I made Pasta Reki.”
Langa scooches closer to Reki so their knees are touching. He’s not looking at him.
“I don’t mean to put you on the spot or anything, but you know you don’t have to lie to me, right? It’s going to be okay, you know?”
He squeezes Langa’s arm and Langa-
Langa starts crying.
Langa starts crying and Reki doesn’t know what to do, so he kinda just wraps his arm around Langa’s shoulders. Langa leans into him, resting his head on his shoulder and Reki rubs his back and he silently cries. Reki’s pretty sure his shoulder is gonna be wet with tears, but he doesn’t really care. Langa needs him and even if Reki isn’t really sure if he’s doing okay with comforting him, he’s going to try.
It takes a while before Langa slowly sits back up and sniffs, rubbing the leftover tears with his sleeve. Reki keeps an arm on his back, just in case.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice scratchy.
“It’s okay. It’s okay, Langa, I don’t mind.”
Langa lets out a wet laugh and rests his head on Reki’s shoulder again.
“It’s just kind of stupid,” he admits.
“It’s obviously not if it’s making you this upset, dude.”
Langa is quiet for a little while.
“I don’t think I want to go to “S” anymore,” he whispers.
“Oh,” Reki felt a wave of disappointment hit him. He doesn’t want to be upset, especially since it’s making Langa upset, it’s just. He kind of thought “S” was going to always be theirs? It’s so selfish and he doesn’t want to be selfish. He swallows down his disappointment and squeezes Langa’s shoulders.
“I don’t want to stop skating,” he quickly clarifies and, okay, that does make Reki feel a little bit better.
“It’s just… It’s gotten really hard to be there? I mean, like,” he takes a deep breath “Adam still goes there almost every night. And- and he’s always trying to get me alone and I don’t know it’s just really weird. I never know what to do about it. And there are other people there too, they keep crowding me and trying to talk to me, and I don’t know how to tell them to leave me alone,” he says, his voice starting to waver.
“I still want to be friends with Cherry and Joe and Miya and Shadow, and I still want to skate with them, but I just feel… I don’t it’s like…”
“You don’t… feel safe at “S”?” Reki suggests and Langa nods.
Reki never even noticed. He’s- he’s such a bad friend, all of those people, Adam, getting too close to Langa and Langa’s not good at saying “no” and he can’t believe he didn’t notice sooner. He’d seen people around Langa at “S” before, he’s pretty popular there. Reki just didn’t even assume they were making him feel unsafe or anything.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t even know. It’s okay, we don’t have to go again, it’s okay.”
“You aren’t mad? I know how important “S” is for you. You can keep going without me, you know?”
Reki shook his head.
“I’m not mad. And yeah, “S” is important to me. It was there for me when I was alone and- and when I thought I was never going to make real friends. But… that’s not really true now? Like, like dude, you’re way more important to me than “S”,” it’s really embarrassing to say this out loud to Langa, for Langa to hear, but maybe it’s what he needs right now. Langa needs to know how special and important he is to Reki.
“I don’t want to go where you don’t feel safe, dude. I mean, I might have to go sometimes, for work and stuff, just to drop off a board or something, but I don’t want to go without you, dude.”
Langa’s kind of shaking against him and Reki’s pretty sure his face is beat red but he leans his head on Langa's and says “it’s okay. I really promise, it’s okay. I don’t need “S” anymore, it’s okay. We’ll find something different, somewhere different to go.”
And yeah. Reki’s going to miss it, of course, he is, but he really doesn’t need it anymore. He has people that care about him and people he cares about. “S” might have brought them together, but it’s not the glue in their relationships. “S” has always been about danger, letting yourself skate dirty with no rules and that’s what makes it fun, the danger, but it’s not- it’s not supposed to be the kind of danger Langa is going through. That’s not the “S” Reki wants to support.
It’s not like racing dirty and dangerous will never happen between them and their friends again or anything, it’ll just have to be at a different location. And maybe not as often, but they’ll make it work.
“Maybe we could make our own “S”,” Langa suggests.
“Hey, that would be really cool! What would we call it?”
Langa thinks for a moment before Reki could feel him slightly smiling on his shoulder.
“Reki’s Pasta and Skating Extraordinaire and Other Delights.”
Reki let out a laugh that he had to hide in his arm, or his family might wake up. Langa was laughing on his shoulder, snuggling closer to him.
“Ah man, we could have a pasta stand and everything!”
“But you’d have to make it from scratch with each order.”
“But that took almost two hours to make two lousy bowls of the stuff. What’ll they do while they wait?”
“Skate, probably. What else?”
Reki pulls the blanket up with his free hand so it’s covering both of their shoulders.
“But you said “other delights”, what are the other delights?”
“Oh. I guess I did say that.”
“Maybe… like art or something? Painting maybe?”
Langa snorts a laugh.
“We’ll just have a huge circle of painting easels. They have to bring their own paints though.”
“Aw, but what if they forget?”
His eyes began to droop as Langa answered
“We’ll say that’s just too bad and they’ll have to go-” he yawns and snuggles deeper into Reki (if that’s even possible) “-to go home.”
“But now they’re sad because now they can’t get their pasta and because they won’t be able to skate.”
Langa sleepily chuckles and sighs against him, going quiet again. But it’s a better quiet, lighter.
Reki almost falls asleep when he feels Langa reach over for his hand and gently squeeze.
“Thank you, Reki. You’re- you’re amazing. I like you so much,” he mumbles.
Reki smiles and squeezes back.
“I like you too, Langa.”
He’s not sure if they confessed to each other or not, but maybe it doesn’t really matter right now. Maybe he can just let himself fall asleep on Langa, Langa who’s already breathing steadily against him, and maybe he’ll even dream about Langa and him founding the new underground skating place, Reki’s Pasta and Skating Extraordinaire and Other Delights.
He smiles before drifting off to sleep.