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sweet-curried-powder · 3 years

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so a couple days ago i was doing a writing warmup thing that i ended up writing into a full-blown fic because i have 0 self control. it's been up on ao3 for like 2 days now but i completely neglected to post this on tumblr until now.

warnings: eating disorderlike behaviors, mentions of death and vomiting, sk8 the infinity spoilers

here's the ao3 link if any of you guys are interested in that!

~~~~

It started when Langa’s dad passed away.

He fell into a spiral, nothing was right anymore, nothing would be the same ever again, his normal was gone, his normal was shattered, his world was over. Nothing he did brought him joy, not even snowboarding, which had been his favorite thing to do ever since he was a toddler. He’d shoved his snowboard to the very back of his closet, covering it up with old winter coats and jackets that he’d long grown out of.

Langa didn’t want to look at it anymore. It reminded him too much of his dad.

He began to eat away the pain, anything he could get his hands on. Leftovers in the fridge packed in plastic containers or wrapped in plastic wrap. Packages of chips and nuts and tiny bite-sized cookies from the vending machines at his school. Random items from the value/dollar menus at local fast-food joints. If he was desperate enough when his mom asked him to clear the table after dinner he’d wait until she was gone and then shovel the leftovers into his mouth with his bare hands, crying silent tears.

This went on for months. He’d eat, and eat, and eat. Sometimes curled up on the cold kitchen floor in the middle of the night, sometimes while hiding in his room or the bathroom, sometimes while sitting at a table in the corner. He wouldn’t stop until he felt sick, or he actually was sick. But in the end, he always threw up, whether he forced himself to or not. There was a small scar on his left hand from purging so much, but it wasn’t all that noticeable unless you looked really, really hard.

Then they moved to Okinawa. Where his mother had grown up, apparently. Langa vaguely remembered that his mom said something about her work and transferring and storage facilities, but he was only really half listening. He’d puked up a large order of poutine not too long before and the burning feeling in his throat and the sharp pangs in his stomach were distracting.

He met Reki. Reki was his first real friend. He didn’t befriend him out of pity, or out of different circumstances. He’d rambled on and on about skateboarding for weeks, and introduced him to S. He taught Langa how to skate, and made him his own board, which had a yeti on it. Reki taught Langa how to read and write Japanese (with some help from Cherry, who blew a fuse when he realized Langa couldn’t read or write Japanese—Joe said he had never seen Cherry that pissed in his whole life), and in exchange Langa helped Reki with his English homework. They did everything together, like two peas in a pod. And along the way, Langa fell head over heels in love.

But then they fought.

The words still echoed loudly and clear as day in Langa’s head. “We aren’t a good match anymore.” His heart was shattered, broken into a million pieces. He had opened his mouth, to say something, anything, to beg or plead his crush, his best friend, to please come back, to not leave him behind, but Reki was already gone. Langa had no other choice but to turn on his heels and run home, his throat tight, his eyes wet.

The feeling in his chest felt like the feeling he had felt when his dad died, but a hundred million times worse. He cried that night. He cried hard, so hard he felt as if he was going to choke. The day after the fight, after school, he went to some sort of buffet-style restaurant and stayed there for hours. He got countless helpings. Tempura, yakitori, onigiris, udon. He left after he had finished what was probably his sixth plateful of tempura fried shrimp, where he ran home to his bathroom and threw up, threw up so much he nearly passed out in front of the toilet bowl.

It hurt so much.

Everything hurt.

He cried again. He cried so hard his throat went hoarse. He missed Reki. He missed skating with him, sharing bento boxes at lunch on the roof, the way he smiled, laughed, and joked around, everything about the red-haired boy. In a way Reki filled the empty, gaping hole inside of him that had opened up when his dad died. Langa still missed his father, of course he did, nobody could replace him, but… Reki completed him. He wanted to be with Reki forever and ever.

Langa stood up, legs trembling slightly as he shuffled to bed and faceplanted onto it, falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Luckily, things worked out. They made up, and they confessed their feelings. They began dating. Langa beat the crap out of Adam at the tournament. Things were good, for the most part.

Well, usually.

Of course, there were still times where he delved back into old habits. Times where’d he’d have to go to extreme lengths to hide it from Reki and the others. It never usually lasted for long, only a week or two, the urges to eat and throw up having disappeared as sudden as it had come.

But not this time.

Langa had met Mr. Kyan for the first time, about three weeks ago, and the memory of that day still felt sharp and clear in his mind, as if he were experiencing it again, and again, and again. It wasn’t because Mr. Kyan was a bad or mean person, no, quite the opposite. He was a wonderful husband, an amazing father, and while he didn’t know anything at all about skateboarding or any of Reki’s hobbies, he let his son talk about it as much as he wanted, and for the most part, he’d stay quiet and listen; maybe ask a question now and again, but that was it.

And oh god, how it hurt for Langa to watch.

He wasn’t jealous, necessarily, but seeing Reki interact with his father made him long for his own. And the feelings were rushing back, almost out of control, like a raging waterfall, and the urges were coming along for the ride.

And he was still at it, still continuing the miserable cycle of eating too much, then throwing up, eating too much and throwing up, eating and puking, eating and puking. Langa was losing weight; this was a normal occurrence during the cycle, but he was dropping them rapidly. He began wearing the hoodies he stole from Reki everywhere now, lying and saying that he was wearing them because he was cold, or that wearing them felt like Reki was hugging him all the time (the latter made Reki turn bright red almost instantly, so that was a win-win, in a way). He was at 48 kilos, and the numbers were only dropping faster.

Langa wasn’t trying to lose weight on purpose, but at the same time he couldn’t be bothered to do anything about his weight loss, really. So he kept going, and nobody suspected anything.

At least, not for a while.

#sk8 the infinity #sk8 #disordered eating tw #vomit tw #death mention tw #sk8 the infinity spoilers #langa hasegawa #reki kyan #sugar's writing #me: there's not enough tags in the hurt hasegawa langa tag on ao3. let's fix that

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