#here is my humble application into the sk8 fandom. i hope you all enjoy

[zukkaoru]

thinking about how all the long-time skaters in sk8 definitely have scars - it's just part of the game. skating is dangerous and skating at ‘s’ is even more risky. thinking about how they all probably have little scars on their arms and legs that are only visible up close.

thinking about reki having scars on his head from his races against adam. thinking about those scars being langa’s favorite place to kiss him. thinking about reki looking at those scars when they’re fresh and letting them represent failure. thinking about those scars coming to be a reminder that he skates because it’s fun, he skates for his friends, he skates for langa. he skates and he’s a moron for it and he has the scars to prove it, but they actually look pretty cool now that he thinks about it. and when langa catches reki staring at the scars his hairline doesn’t quite cover, he just brushes reki’s hair back and kisses them, soft and gentle, and wraps his arms around reki. he doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t have to. reki hears the i’m here for you and i love you loud and clear.

thinking about langa realizing that some of the cuts he got while first learning with reki aren’t fading away, and reki telling him “that’s a rite of skating passage! your first scars!” they’re barely visible, and really, they could still fade with a bit more time, but langa smiles down at them anyway, and every new scar he gets after that doesn’t feel like a failure - it just reminds him of reki. when he walks away from his final race against adam with a nasty scar, reki seems worried, but langa just tells him “it’s a rite of skating passage, isn’t it?” and reki beams at him.

thinking about shadow having to learn to use makeup to cover his scars so no one asks about them, and because scarred arms aren’t a great look for a flower shop employee. thinking about him spending hours alone, painstakingly trying to match his skin tone. thinking about him coming to love makeup the more he uses it, and that leading him to the clown makeup look he always wears to ‘s’. thinking about him waking up early before work in the mornings to cover the scars on his arms and face, and maybe it started because he wanted to hide them to save his reputation as a nice flower shop attendant. but now he finds makeup calming, he likes his hands having something to do and he likes the feeling of accomplishment when he’a finished and he steps back to admire his work in the mirror.

thinking about miya scraping up their knees and elbows all the time and how eventually, there’s no one there to help patch them up when they fall. thinking about them doing the bare minimum to care for those injuries because no one ever taught them how, and them always picking at the scabs until the scrapes turn to scars. thinking about them not even caring about the scars crisscrossing their arms and legs. thinking about how instead of learning to properly care for their injuries, they just learn to stop falling. thinking about how, the first time they fall when reki and langa are there, the older boys don’t laugh. they just offer to help miya clean and bandage the injury, and when it’s clear miya doesn’t really know what all should be done for it, reki realizes just why the younger kid has so many scars. it’s not that he’s always falling - it’s that no one taught him the safest way to get back up.

thinking about joe and cherry having more scars than anyone else at ‘s’, which makes sense - they’ve been skating there longest.

thinking about joe constantly doubting his ‘s’ persona being shirtless, wondering which race will give him that final scar that turns him from sexy scarred to scarred enough that everyone averts his eyes. sometimes, he looks in the mirror, and he thinks he’s there already. he looks in the mirror and he sees the scars from the past decade crisscrossing his back and chest, scratched up and down his arms, digging into his face. he used to wear shorts to skate too - show off as much as his body as possible because he thrived on the attention and claim less clothes made him more aerodynamic. but all it took was one wrong move, one trip to the hospital with cherry breaking all the speed limits, one gruesome looking scar running down his left leg, for him to switch to pants instead. one wrong move is all it takes to end a skater’s career, but depending on the marks left behind, it could end more than that. no one wants to look at someone whose skin has been torn up beyond proper healing.

thinking about cherry, who prides himself on the fact that while he does have a myriad of scars from all his skating over the years, none of them are overly obvious. they’re all easily hidden or easy to cover, and he always does so. everyone at ‘s’ knows, in theory, that cherry has just as many scars as joe. but no one’s ever really gotten close enough to confirm that, and cherry plans to keep it that way.

thinking about cherry’s race against adam. thinking about how his mask offered some protection, but not enough. thinking about cherry ending up with a scar on his face that’s hard to cover and even harder to look at. thinking about cherry waking up at joe’s after sneaking out of the hospital just to see him, and joe finds him staring in the mirror. he doesn’t have to ask to know cherry is trying to stare through the bandages on his face to see how bad the scar will be. thinking about, once the injury has healed enough, cherry asking joe to take the bandages off for him so he doesn’t have to see right away. thinking about cherry preparing to see disgust in joe’s eyes, but it never comes. thinking about cherry asking how bad it is, his voice hardly audible, and joe telling him he’s still as beautiful as ever.

thinking about cherry trying to cover up the scar while he’s kaoru because he has a reputation to keep, but not succeeding in making it look like a natural cover. thinking about the kids and shadow hearing through the grapevine that kaoru is taking a lot longer to recover than cherry did, and going to see him unannounced. thinking about cherry telling them not to come in because he’s not in his cherry mask that’s been altered to cover the scar and he still hasn’t figured how to cover it up right, but of course he isn’t listened to. and cherry prepares for the disgust and empty pity at the scar, but they’re all just briefly shocked instead. and then miya says “oh. that’s why you changed your mask.”

thinking about shadow offering to try to help cover it, though it’s worse than any of the scars he’s covered on himself before. thinking about reki pestering him about whether or not he’s been caring for it properly. thinking about miya saying they think it looks pretty cool - that it makes them look like a mysterious vigilante. thinking about langa talking about his dad getting a scar from snowboarding once - a real bad one on the back of his hand after his glove flew off - and how his dad always said that scars just mean you were hurt and you survived. scars are like memories, like reminders that you got hurt and you were probably scared, but you were strong enough to make it through and you’re going to be stronger on the other side because of it.

thinking about joe showing up, expecting cherry to be alone and sulking, and instead finding him laughing with his face half covered in makeup from shadow and half covered in a bandage from reki, while miya and langa tell a story about the time langa helped them sneak out while they were grounded. thinking about cherry looking up when he hears the door shut and meeting joe's eyes, and joe is just smiling because he's been so worried and cherry hasn't really been himself ever since the race against adam, but in this moment, joe can see that all of them are going to be okay. and no matter what happens, they've all got this weird little skating family they formed to fall back on.

just. thinking about the sk8ers with scars.

#here is my humble application into the sk8 fandom. i hope you all enjoy #it wasn't supposed to get this long but um. i couldn't shut up #also nonbinary miya bc i can't write them any other way #sk8 #sk8 the infinity #renga #matchablossom #headcanons #sk8 headcanons #sk8 cherry #kojiro nanjo #sk8 langa #sk8 reki #sk8 shadow #sk8 miya #hello grace here #grace's writing tag