AN: Like the summary says: AU, therefore please assume Gokudera has no mafia connections, nor does anyone else. Thank you.
Seventy Percent Chance of Rain
It's hot.
The electric fan whirls cool air diligently around the room; shaking its head back and forth, but he's much too tired to follow its path and lies in the direct line of fire. Half-eaten watermelon, having lost its crisp coolness long ago, lies in a much too small bowl next to his head. He lays sprawled, next to a small stack of manga books, all unread. A handmade paper fan covers his face from the sun pouring in through the blinds.
It's been hours since he's moved.
The electric fan passes by and the cool air meets with his skin in puffs before leaving again. As he counts the seconds before the next cold wave comes, he blinks and stares into his fan. The world is of a transparent, fuzzy white, and he closes his eyes once more.
It's really hot.
Taking the fan off of his face (slowly, slowly), he tilts his head to the side to check the clock hanging above his desk.
Four twenty-eight.
He rolls over and clasps his hands together, mumbling to every god in the book and some he made up on the spot. There was only one thing on his mind.
He wished for rain.
After dinner (soba: with the noodles and sauce nicely separated; green tea: unsweetened, cold, from the vending machine downstairs), he opens his sliding door, appreciating the wind that races past trees and scatters fine, green leaves onto his balcony. It's much colder than before, and he automatically shivers for warmth. The weather report on television confirms the storm that's coming.
He steps out onto his balcony—or tries to, as the various points on the bottom of his foot stings. He quickly jumps back and observes the ground.
Pebbles. All over his sandals. All over his plants. All over the balcony.
Something bounces on his banister and onto the floor.
A pebble.
Haya shoves the rocks aside and makes his way barefooted towards the edge and finds his culprit. With one eye red. The other blue. In beach shorts and a standard white t-shirt. Holding a handful of (what else?) pebbles.
"I've been doing this all afternoon," he smiles, tossing another one over, "you didn't notice?"
A pause.
Wordlessly, Haya grabs a dustbin, a broom and meticulously sweeps every tiny fragment, (carefully, slowly, slowly, slowly), walks over and pours the stones onto the ground, three floors up. And yet the man still stands there, still smiling upwards, not at all watching the cascade raining down at his feet.
"Leave." He turns to head inside.
Something hits him in the back. "Have a good night," the voice chirped from and Haya grits his teeth, while swinging the door shut with a tight click, and curling his hand into a fist to punch the glass door. It's all for show, really.
Feeling much better, he moves towards his futon—
Goes back. Locks the door. Locks the front door too. Not to mention the bathroom window.
There. Better.
He lays there, safe and sound, straining his ears for any sign of further vandalism going on, but as the rain falls, he's lulled into a steady, dreamless sleep.
It's not until after noon that he wakes up (because really, how can you ever get up from a wonderful state of unconscious like that?), and another two hours passes by before he's bored enough to finally decide to water his plants that he discovers it: an entire island of pebbles waited for him out on the balcony, arranged so that the empty spaces between them, now filled with water, spelled out:
"Pleased to meet you. My name is Roku."
That, and all of his plants have been watered.
It took him all day and half of the next day to clear out all of the pebbles. It wasn't that it took a lot of effort, only that he sulked for a good portion of the first day before deciding to take any action when the neighbors on either side of him both came up to his door and not-so-subtly told him that a large portion of the rocks in the nearby park have all been taken.
Framed for a crime he didn't commit.
By the time he lugged the last batch of pebbles back to the park, someone was there to greet him.
"Fuck off." Haya clipped, before the other boy could speak, wanting badly to punch the smile off, but shuffled off, dragging the bag behind him. It was much too hot to start a fight.
Something cold meets the back of his neck.
Haya whips around, already in a defensive stance, ready to ward off—
A Coke bottle.
"I thought you might need it." is said, laced with amusement. And when Haya makes no movement to take it, the boy grabs his hand and firmly places the bottle in his palm. He then steps back, waves a goodbye and half-strolls, half-floats away, leaving Haya with an extra sugary drink in his hand, the condensation dripping through his fingers as he stares at his might-as-well-be-unknown benefactor.
Flinging the rest of rocks, he then trudges home, the bottle in hand. (Because although he doesn't like the taste, the way it goes down his throat; it's unopened anyways, and what a waste would it be to leave it.)
They meet again.
This time, Haya almost trips over him. On the way out of his own front door.
"What do you think," Roku asks, as Haya scuttles back, away from the boy who's sitting in the perfect center of his welcome mat as if it's a perfectly normal thing to do, "about a walk?"
"A walk?"
A nod.
"With you?" Haya bites back his impulse to say something rather harsh, and waits for the verdict.
"Then who else?" Another smile.
Without replying, Haya side-steps around Roku and makes his way towards the elevator, taking his umbrella (large, dark green, with a well-made wooden handle and a customary function to automatically open and close at a touch of a button) with him.
And he feels it: the handle is pulled out of his hands with the slightest ease, even though his grip on it was tight. He spins around and finds Roku twirling the umbrella with his pinky, before tossing it behind him as he sidles along side of Haya. "Great, where to?"
He tries to shake Roku off.
He's tried very very hard.
But there he is, toting a milkshake and following Haya around, not at all perturbed when he's had to leap through people's gardens, take tiny, dirty narrow alleyways, and squeezing through several shady establishments (it's not that either one knows the places, just that Haya was horribly lost at the time).
Haya's just about run out of ideas. He doesn't even remember the reason why he ventured out (though he has a sneaking suspicion it's for some grocery trip).
He finally turns around and rounds up on Roku, giving him the meanest glare he could possibly muster.
"Qui—" And it starts raining. Instinctively he ducks his head and darts off to find shelter. If there was any. Umbrella at home, the park's largest trees were only deceptively protective. He pulls himself inwards as he-- unceremoniously gets splashed. There's laughter, as Haya rubs his eyes to get the rain water out and he finds the other boy kicking up a spray of of water from inside the fountain. Haya doesn't move: he can't believe that anyone could be so incredibly stupid but all he gets is another wave of fountain/rain water in his face, as, "cool off! cool off!" is suggested by that idiot.
And when he thinks back, he doesn't know what happened really, just that all of a sudden he's in there too (pulled in?) and splashing just as much water as he can at the other boy, who has a tendency to take refuge behind the statue in the center and it becomes almost a wild chase around the water, movements slow and jerky having to wade in waist deep water, and Roku's barely trying anything offensive as he keeps laughing and laughing and laughing while on the other hand, Haya's developed a walk that by turning sideways and walking like a crab, he can divert the water easier and thereby quickly catching up to the other boy and grabbing onto his shoulders to throw him into the water with a loud splash and it's terribly, terribly funny and even when picked up and thrown, Roku's laughing too and...and...
He's never had so much fun before.
He gets sick.
Of course he gets sick, how could he not get sick, when the two of them finally reach his apartment at one in the morning, absolutely soaked. Haya barely makes it through the door before collapsing onto his futon, unable to move. Roku follows in quietly, softly. But Haya hasn't managed to tell him that the extra futon was in the closet beside him before slipping into unconsciousness.
He hopes that he doesn't mind.
And when wakes up the next morning, he's coughing into Roku's face.
"Good morning to you too," Roku says, handing Haya a tissue. The boy gropes for it, before snatching it and using it to cover his face, groaning as he flops down again. Roku tsks and Haya can hear the padding of his feet and the click and soft bang of the door. He sighs and rolls over to sleep, but only a few minutes later, both sides of his neck are attacked by—
Pocari Sweats.
"I couldn't find any ice." Roku explains, before wrapping a third bottle up into a towel and placing it on Haya's head. "The rest of them are in your refrigerator, I'll change them in an hour or so." He then opens the fourth bottle and tilts Haya's head so he could drink it down, though as unwilling as he was to drink something so sweet this early in the morning without brushing his teeth.
It's only then that Haya notices the half-drank Cola bottle next to him. "Is that…."
"Breakfast." Roku grins as he picks it up and does a little up-down motion with it. "Found it on your counter." A small gesture pointing behind him. "Cheers." He says, and he downs the rest.
Haya groans and turns to curl up on his side. The Pocari Sweats roll away and he's sweating profusely. Behind him, he hear Roku shifting to stand up. "I'll turn down the temperature." But before Haya tells him that he doesn't have central air conditioning, he hears it:
Rain. He sits up immediately and stares around the room.
But Roku's nowhere in sight.
In a few hours, he's feeling well enough to sit up and have a late lunch (an orange popsicle, tako balls drizzled with extra heapings of sweet mayonaise from that stand in the park, and two bottles of pocari sweat, courtesy of Roku). It's still raining out, and Haya feels a little guilty, poking at his food.
"Look, I'll pay for this…" but Roku waves him off.
"Don't have to," he mumbles elegantly (elegantly?) through bites of orange ice, as he shuffles around in his pocket. "You already did," as he pulls out Haya's (horribly empty) wallet.
A pause. Then: "WHAT?"
"And! And!" Roku exclaims, making his way towards the refrigerator and opening it with a flare. "Cake!" He frowns at Haya's expression.
"Can't be so picky, Haya-kun, strawberries are expensive these days." He shuts the refridgerator with a click and 'hmphs', crossing his arms.
"See if I ever do anything for you again."
The rain hasn't stopped.
Roku 'helps' Haya polish off most of the cake, though sometime digging a piece for Haya when he seems a little bit gloomier than usual. Haya winces, feeling the sticky concoction stick to the roof of his mouth. The fact that there's nothing but Pocari Sweats to wash it down with doesn't make things more pleasant. But when Roku spares him a glance from his cake and pats his cheek with the side of his hand, murmuring, "better, better," he guesses there's not much he can do about it, except finish the cake.
When he wakes up the next day, he's almost killed by the sun.
"WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP!!" An overexcited voice screams next to his ear, and blearily he turns, only to be blinded by the sudden 'swish' of his shades opening up to let the morning in.
"YOU NEEEEEEEED SOME VITAMIN DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Shit. It's Ryo.
Haya curls inward, using his blanket to ward off the light, but Ryo's faster and whips it out of his grip and flings it to the side.
"UP! UP! UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!" Ryo hollers as he easily pulls Haya up and shoves the boy all the way to the bathroom. "BRUSH! WASH! COMB! OKAY YOU LOOK GREAT LET'S GO." And as he's pushed and shoved out of the door with an unflattering t-shirt and unwashed shorts, he realizes that Roku's nowhere to be found.
3 AM.
He gets home, tired and sore from….whatever Ryo dragged him off to do, mostly things that dealt with being outside in the sun. He didn't really want to admit it, but Pocari Sweat probably did save his life when it was noon and 41 degrees and above.
He finds Roku on his balcony.
"Hey."
"Hey."
He pauses, but Roku beats him to it. "Nice time?"
He grimaces. "It was hot." It might be subtle, but there's an evident change in Ruko's ever present smile.
"I'm sorry."
Haya shakes his head. "It's fine. Not like you could do anything about either one."
Roku smiles and stares back out into the Milky Way. "He's a very dear friend to you, isn't he?"
"What?"
A pebble collides with his forehead. "Good night, Haya." And he quietly shoos him inside.
The next day, his balcony is once again filled with pebbles.
See you soon.
Haya over the next few days doesn't see Roku at all, with weather reports constantly reporting storms that never seem to reach Tokyo. He pulls out his studies and takes them to the library, bending into a book and taking minute notes on the sides, of Aristotle and Aeanas.
It's terribly boring, he realizes, after ten minutes.
He stares outside, the light pouring in through the windows and out on the streets. Of harsh glares and tired people trudging along in the heat, or of those darting from one cool shade to the next.
The ceiling fan spins slowly, in time with the grandfather clock in the foyer. He can hear cicadas from trees that line the streets and thinks about venturing outside for a glass of iced tea.
Iced Tea. With sugar, please.
And after two weeks, he finds Roku knocking on his balcony sliding door, hair terribly mussed from the blustery winds outside. Haya lets him in quickly and Roku stumbles in, almost colliding into him.
He looks tired.
Haya fixes him a milk tea, dumping three tablespoons of sugar in and stirring thoroughly. Roku smiles gratefully and sips at it. Haya doesn't want to sound desperate, but he voices it anyways:
Where were you?
"Home." Roku says, his concentration wandering around Haya's cluttered room. "My brother gave me a ride."
Haya stares, but Roku only shrugs. "He got lazy." The windowpanes' rattle echos around the room and Roku throws a dirty glare towards the sliding door.
"Was there something he wanted?" Roku hmphs, and swirls his cup around.
"A talk." A pause. "About…being here." A quick glance at Haya and back down to his cup. "Says I'm wasting my time."
"On what?" Now he's curious.
Roku shakes his head and breaks out into a familiar smile. "Do you mind if I stay?"
Haya rolls his eyes and goes to get his second futon, "So long as you don't steal my wallet again."
Haya realizes that (maybe a little belatedly) Roku is not very subtle.
Ever since coming back, Roku has been insisting on taking Haya's hand everywhere when they go out of the apartment. Something about "stupid brothers". But even so, Haya doesn't think that interlacing fingers wasn't a prerequisite to holding hands.
Then there was the rose incident. Followed shortly by the 'breakfast in bed' fiasco. And finally, the 'sleepless nights'.
And he's much too close. Haya tries to shove Roku off, who during the night had rolled to the other side of the room to his futon and half-sleeping on him. He knows that even though Roku's breathing is steady and that he has his eyes peacefully closed, the bastard was up and loving every moment crushing Haya underneath him.
"You can stop it, you know."
Roku chuckles and leans back, putting more pressure on Haya. "But where would the fun in that be?"
But Haya squirms his way out and clamors over Roku so that he's facing him— "Don't you think it's gone on long enough?" he says, keeping his voice as monotonous as possible. "It's already three am, I'm the laughingstock of the neighbors, are you through yet?"
Roku doesn't reply, but interlaces their hands together and tilts his head a little closer, nose brushing with Haya's, smiling.
"Never."
He announces: "I have to leave."
It's between bites of strawberry ice cream that he says this, so Haya doesn't pay him any attention, really. The sky is as yet again clear they're sitting on a bench in the park, having gone through small fits of showers before the sky brightens, only to repeat over and over throughout the course of the day. Haya doesn't really mind, actually, only if it gets his shoes soaked and the next shower comes a bit too soon that he becomes a little miffed.
Until he says it again. Adds that his brother is waiting for him. Something about work, responsibility.
He asks a little later, "Will you miss me?"
Haya doesn't reply to that, and cautiously avoids the topic for the rest of the day (because what else? What else could he do?) hoping that both of them could ignore it.
And it's not until Roku tells him: "I'm leaving today" that he actually looks at him, and as sad as his eyes are, the smile that he graces Haya with never leaves, "and you know, I'll miss you too."
His room is littered with tissue paper. He's run out of rubber bands, so he's using string, stuffing the tissue pieces in to make the head. Wrap the string around the ball twice. Slide one end over and under. Tie a knot. Permanent marker. Two large black dots for eyes. Then hang upside down, using tape to suspend it on the glass. He stands back, surveying his work: a line of teru teru bozus1 along his sliding door.
It kind of looks like an execution of ghosts, he thinks.
Of course, when Ryo enters when he's sleeping, he always turns them right side up, and draws a scraggly line underneath the dots, curving upwards.
And though Haya frantically makes a whole new batch, puts them up, along with a "DON'T TOUCH" sign next to them, the damage's been done.
The weekly forecast: clear, sunny skies.
They're laughing. Ryo. And the others.
And he doesn't know how to laugh along. It's dark. There's candles on the table and yet he can't see the person next to him, much less anyone else.
He folds his hands inwards, fingers interlaced. He keeps his eyes solely on his drink, and watches the condensation drip down. The foam rise and sink. Someone at the other table breaks something. He experimentally takes a sip and blinks out his tiredness.
It's only midnight, and he promised he'd stay for more than an hour. He doesn't know what to do. His first time with alcohol.
And it doesn't taste a thing like Pocari Sweat.
It's cold.
He huddles with two blankets, creating a wall of warmth between himself and the biting cold air around him. He's thinking of getting another one.
The only thing worse is when Ryo comes.
Haya tries to scramble away, but Ryo grabs onto him and tells him to get a water bottle or an electric heater or something you fucking dickhead, you don't pick up your fucking phone, do you know how fucking worried I was what the fuck man what the fuck. But Haya struggles and struggles and struggles and at last he's screaming: Tell me, are you stupid, are you retarded, are you a fucking idiot, are you out of your mind, why the fuck why the fuck why the fuck are you here?
And he gets a punch in the face for it.
They come to an understanding, while taking turns pointing out constellations:
"You miss him?"
He wants to lie. He wants to lie so fucking bad. Laugh it off. Forget it.
Fucking forget it.
"It's okay man," Ryo offers, "you don't have to tell me." A quick look and a quiet grin.
"It's already written on your face."
A corridor. The door next to you has two pairs of shoes, haphazardly thrown next to the welcome mat that's sorely in need of a wash. It's humid, though you can put up with it since it's already been raining for an hour or so and the temperature has dropped considerably since morning. The splattering of raindrops on the roof is deafening, especially since this is the top floor. But if you step closer, off the dingy elevator with its unwashed mirrors; closer, closer towards the door, you can smell curry. Most likely from the convenience store down the street. If you put your ear to the door, you can hear sound effects from a video game. Grunts and roars vibrate in your eardrums and a few seconds later, a winner is declared. Drinks are spilled, meaningless curses are exchanged, and interspersed between the jabs and the punches, is laughter.
It's all he ever dreams about now.
Imagine this: The first day of Spring. And it's raining.
Hard. Haya's outside, sitting on a park bench in khaki shorts and a hoodie sweater. Next to him is an umbrella. Unopened.
Fathom this: he's terribly wet.
It's been raining for hours, and at first sight of darkening clouds, he's been outside, staring up at the sky as if someone will drop down from the heavens soon.
But it's only water.
And so he waits and waits and waits (because what else can he do). He's tired and sleepy and ready to catch a cold.
It's almost 2 in the morning when he decides to trudge home. He sees another person, a boy his age kneeling in the dirt, fully concentrating on a bush and holding onto a string2, but he walks past, numb and quiet.
When he reaches home, there's a message waiting out, written in stone.
Wait for me.
They've been having a dry summer.
Haya's gotten a summer job at a local café, mostly as delivery. The pay isn't terrible, he got to take home the leftovers (he's been rather partial to chocolate mousse lately), and his boss lenient, so it suits him fine. Especially today, as he stumbles into work late, profusely apologizing, something about a horrible neighbor that moved in just yesterday.
His first order: four strawberry infused fruit smoothies, a box of mini cream puffs, and a large black forest cake. He groans, careful not to drop anything. The street was at a horrible distance, not far enough to take a scooter, yet not near enough to escape the overbearing sun. At last, as he climbs the last few steps, he rests, catching his breath and knocks on his neighbor's door.
Footsteps amble towards the door and an amused voice calls out, "You're late, Haya-kun."
The door opens.
He smiles. Roku smiles back.
"Asshole, this is the only job I have; if you get me fired, I'll kill you."
A laugh. "Alright," he says, as he lets him inside, draping himself on Haya as he tries to peek in the boxes while getting shoved off.
Tadaima, Haya-kun, tadaima.
End
1Teru teru bozus are small dolls that are commonly made and placed near windows to wish for good weather. However, if placed upside down, it means that rainy weather is wished for instead.
2Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is Doumeki Shizuka. ;;
I currently have fanart of this fic done by a very, very good friend of mine! Go check it out at my profile!