There were words, none of which Langa listened to. Not fully. There was never a moment where
Reki was out of his focus, edging along his periphery the way the sun danced to the side to avoid
blistering his vision when seen straight on. Canada was sunless, but Langa found a new sun hidden
across an ocean which held a sea of broken memories that hadn't the need to be stitched together
now that he was with Reki.
There was finally color in his life.
The skate park flowed with a shock of a breeze bristling the trees. The flowers and bushes sang a
tune Langa revolved his life around - instrumentals to Reki's vocals. The bright tone caressed his
lips with endless passion that blazed too brightly for Langa to understand, but how could he?
Snowboarding was his passion for his father's presence in the same way skating was his passion for
Reki's presence. Langa was nothing by himself.
But Reki, beautiful, stupid Reki. The boy who hadn't the synapses to understand that his best
friend was hopelessly in love with him. The boy who bailed his board with laughter, incapable of
understanding the pain as anything other than temporary. The same boy who gazed at him with a
look so soft, so affectionate, that the coldest dredges of Langa's memories had its frigid snap thawed.
And Langa refused to tell him. His words were nonsense compared to the feats Reki
unknowingly accomplished for him. Even if Langa found the words, miraculously able to
understand the depths of his own welling emotion, he choked.
There was once Langa found the courage. It was a race where he leapt from his board, wrapping
Reki tightly in an embrace as they tumbled to the ground. His heart soared with the words bubbling
at the bottom of his throat, hitching as he saw the glimmer of gold flecked in Reki's amber eyes. Pins
closed at the bottom of his throat - they always had. The first words of a confession floated from his
lips. Quickly, the crowd surrounding them drowned out the the words Langa screamed in his dreams
and whispered in Reki's sleep. Something passed Reki's eyes that day, but Langa processed
expressions differently. It was nothing.
Even if Reki had heard, Langa's words always clung to his throat, hot wax on sensitive skin. The
world froze over before he had crossed the ocean. The lifeless, frozen environment that surrounded
him comprised of monochromatic ash drying everything in its wake was pierced only one other
time. As the world tightened around him, his father shone with a radiating color that bled further and
further against the world that Langa failed to understand.
He'd soar into the sky on his snowboard seeking out that color made him feel safe. Each trick was
more daring than the last as he witnessed his father's color grow more vibrant until it threatened to
sweep the ash away. He never admired the way the environment bloomed in the shifting snow. Then,
it was gone, and he couldn't admire it.
That admiration for his father transferred to his friends who were bare fractals of simmering
vibrancy in comparison to his father. He admitted his inclination - the way he loved. Then, they left
too.
It threatened to overwhelm him every time he saw Reki. Each time they touched it burned against
his flesh, singing a new memory that Langa begged wouldn't be a cycle repeated, because Reki was
nothing like Canada. Reki dared to be more than what others saw, and Langa dared to dream too.
Reki had ollied over Langa in the street when they first met, and even in the shadow of the boy he
didn't know, there was love. Each day it blossomed and burgeoned into wildfire sparked on the oil of
Langa's desire.
It wasn't his fault. Reki's color bled so far from his body everywhere Langa looked was a color he
never appreciated before. The red of Reki's hair dimensioned in a way that there was always another
orange or red to admire. The blue of his headband was deep and calm against the reckless mop of
hair. The yellow amber of his eyes that made every word that fell from Reki's mouth another
honeyed promise that he'd never betray Langa. A palette for the world to pull from.
Every day those colors bled further and further until they wrapped Langa in a cocoon threatening
him to emerge as something new, to leave the only feelings behind that ever made sense to him. The
feelings that controlled him to fear others, that confused him. The control the scars on his mind
offered him eased Langa into being content with a tragic existence. He supposed the way he pined
for Reki wasn't different than the pain he tried to leave behind. Even if the cycle he grew
accustomed to sliced him into ribbons, there was always another destructive cycle he could ride the
crests and troughs through as colors came in and out of focus.
Right now, the color around them nauseated Langa. The twilight of sun shifted purples and reds
along Reki's glowing face. His words dropped from Langa's focus a while ago, and Reki never
minded. The ocean's refracted illumination scorched beautiful patterns into Reki's eyes, an image
Langa traced into the safest corners of his mind as a memento to urge him out of bed each day and
complicated his sleep.
Langa's breath whispered from his lips as Reki had been watching him, smile quirked and eyes
lowered in a way that was only for Langa. The paleness of Langa's skin contrasted with the streak of
color that Reki gifted his face when he looked at him that way. A mistaken thought, Langa imagined
when Reki gave him that look, he leaned in, faces shadowed by one another. It wasn't imagination,
Langa realized. Reki had always been getting closer to Langa after the race when his confession had
been drowned by a cheering crowd. Their pinkies hooked on one another when they skated, the
nights where Langa stole the spot in Reki's chest where his head slotted perfectly - Langa had
forgotten Reki wasn't his.
He had missed his chance.
Now was a second chance. Langa wanted to break the cycle. If he stole a kiss now, would Reki
be upset? Reki's breath heated the hair on Langa's face. Goosebumps found purchase along his
covered body. He was staring into the sun, and he needed to close his eyes. His momentary
hesitation shattered the decadently crafted illusion that they were lovers.
"You okay, man?" Reki's words kissed Langa's cheeks so sweetly that he wanted to throw up.
"I," Langa's confession stuck itself on the wax in his throat. He turned his head away, but Reki
hadn't spaced their bodies. "I'm hungry."
Reki snickered, something jerking in his throat, and he rested his head on Langa's shoulder as his
pinky sneakily laced its way with Langa's. "'Course you are. Why'd I think any different. Le's go."
The words drifted in the air. A meaning lost itself on Langa as it often did when he struggled to
translate fast enough. Even in English, he struggled. Desire fluttered in his stomach at the possibility
that the words left unspoken, the different thought Reki held, was that he knew what Langa wanted
to say. Reki's expectant eyes, patient but frustratingly nerve wracking, spoke a myriad of ways the
conversation could go. Langa charted the paths in his head, the eventualities, from best to worst until
the worst stitched his lips into silence.
He'd spend the night letting the worst rip his flesh asunder until sleep embraced him. Sleep had
been no kinder. For every inch of flesh squared off his body by the worries he spoke to truth in his
mind, a traced memory bloomed in the raw red of the body that never felt his own. The bobbing of
Reki's body as he filled the room with his laughter. The electric excitement that jolted through his
body when Reki wanted Langa's approval at how well he did a trick. The roughness of Reki's fingers
from days of working on boards being brushed along Langa's face to wake him up.
Gnaw. Gnash. was the wolf prowling at the edges of Langa's me,he
thought,My love won't stop until I'm dead.