Note: So, I'm trying my hand at a short story anthology of rain-themed, shonen-ai KH stories. I'm not too sure how it'll work, but I have this one pretty much thought through, and a fuzzy idea for the next one. Aie… Please leave me with your thoughts when you're finished with each little story, as I probably won't put notes at the beginning of each one unless I have something to say about the story itself. This isn't something that will have regular updates, so expect sporadic updates whenever my muses strike me with another idea. Thanks!
Universal Disclaimer for all stories to follow: I do not own this fandom! Don't sue me, because I'm saving for my trip to London and I'd really like to go!
Story One: Rainy Day Blues
I wish the rain would stop, Riku thought miserably, listening to the sound of rain pounding onto the roof just over his head. It's so depressing.
He swung his legs over the side of his bed, glad to feel the soft comfort of his carpet on his toes. He scrunched them into the softness and peered out the window. The sun wasn't even going to try to break out that day, and this depressed him even more than ever. What was that old children's rhyme? Oh, yes.
Rain, rain, go away. Please come back another day.
Was there more to it? He didn't remember but padded out of the room and onto the stairs. There was bustling downstairs from his parents, and Riku stopped dead at the top of the stairs. Did he want to face his parents when they so obviously regretted whatever choice had brought him forth?
He dared to take a step down, an iron fist clamping down over his heart with certain uneasiness.
"Have a good day, dear." Those words. Those empty, meaningless words that bored into his head like thumbscrews. Riku hated them with such a passion.
Rain, rain, go away.
The banging of the door told him that his father was gone into the bleak depths of the pouring rain. He took another careful step, waiting another few moments while his mother bustled around the house. She paused at the bottom of the stairs, peering into her purse.
"Hi, Mom."
She jumped and stared at him with a flash of fury in her eyes for only an instant. Riku wasn't entirely sure that he'd seen it, but…
And so the mask goes back on, He thought bitterly."Riku! What are you doing there?" She cried, placing a pale hand over her heart that he knew was bumping around her ribcage.
He started down the stairs moodily. "I was just going downstairs," He brushed past her. "I was going to…" He trailed off, uncertain as to where he really was going. "Go out," He finished lamely.
His mother stared at him and shook her head. "Then go, Riku." Riku had long accepted that his mother had little love for him.
"Bye," He muttered airily and started out the door, not bothering to grab an umbrella. The glass door clattered closed behind him, and a moment later he heard the heavy thud of the huge, wooden door being shoved shut by his mother.
The moment the torrents of rain dropped onto his head, Riku regretted being too stubborn to take an umbrella into the rain. He tipped his head up to the heavens, daring them to send their worst to him in utter defiance.
Rain, rain, go away.
Oh, Riku despised the rain, but he shoved his hands into his pockets and started down the street with the rain streaming in rivers down his face. I hate the rain. I hate it.
The words crashed around in his head and he closed his eyes to keep the water out of them. He brushed a hand over them to brush the water that had already accumulated on his eyelids. It was a painful day, though it had only just begun.
Please come back another day.
He peered out into the gloom, where he could barely see the crashing waves on the shore. The day was miserable enough with the rain, but to be unable to escape this island to go to the play island? Riku could think of little more to torture him.
He bit his lip, thinking of his parents. His mother was leaving for an extended business trip that morning, and his father would be leaving for a couple days that afternoon. Riku did not mind that he rarely saw his parents.
The rain pounded on his skull, plastering down his silvery locks. The teen wondered what had possessed him to leave the dry safety of his house to go on some unknown excursion over this accursed island. What would he do on such a day? There was no reason to go to the island for all the risks that accompanied the journey. It stung that Riku would not be able to spend a day in the company of his dearest friends.
Even deeper, in the darkest shadows of his heart, there was a dangerous feeling that possessed a tiny, somewhat irrational voice in the back of his mind that too often concerned a certain brunet. Riku usually did not let these thoughts bear any weight, but on such depressing days…
Rain, rain, go away.
Riku started toward the docks, rain soaking through his clothes all the way to his bones. He shivered in cold, but looked down at the meaningless ground, also soaked in the rain. The whole day was looking gloomier than it had when Riku initially woke to the sound of rain pattering on his window.
Please come back another day.
In the distance of the murk, a mushroom-shaped shadow moved toward the soaked boy at a slow pace. Riku exhaled slowly, watching the steam from his breath rise into the air around him before dissipating with the falling rain. He felt cold and annoyed, but mostly frustrated with everything about himself. His bull-headedness, cowardice, and all the other unsavory attributes to his personality simply drove him insane.
The dim, gray outline drew closer and closer through the rain, and Riku contemplated simply abandoning his path in order to avoid contact with the rest of the world. Days like these were the ones that made it hard for him to continue with a happy charade.
Rain, rain, go away.
The gray began to give way to color, which appeared to be bright hues of…
Red…?The top of the mushroom was even more brilliantly colored than the rest of the shadow, and Riku stopped himself from leaving out of sheer curiosity. A familiar feeling engulfed him, and he watched the shadow as it stepped closer to him. Slowly, features on the approaching boy became more defined as he came closer and closer.
Brown spikes were carefully concealed under an oversized, highly annoyingly colored, umbrella that tipped itself farther up so that two eyes, resembling the sky on any other day but rainy days like these, could peer at him with their owner's soul bared fully within them.
"Riku?"
The older boy continued staring at his dear friend and pushed his sopping locks away from his face with a lopsided smile. "Hi, Sora."
Performing a quick once-over, Sora's brow creased together in an adorable pout. "What are you doing out here? Don't you have an umbrella?"
Riku shrugged. "I don't need one," He lied casually.
The line on Sora's forehead deepened and he covered his friend in the umbrella. "That's silly, Riku. You'll get sick if you keep going on this way."
He gave another half-hearted shrug. "No one's gonna really care," He murmured.
Sora nearly dropped his pink-and-orange, polka-dotted umbrella in shock.
"Don't say things like that, Riku!"
A melancholy sigh produced another puff of steam in the air. "Well? I can't very well lie about it."
Sora's eyes were sharp on his. "Well, you are," He asserted. "I'd be worried about you. And I'd be the one who'd have to take care of you, because your parents are gone again, aren't they?"
Riku dropped his head, where sodden hair fell into his face and he brushed it aside impatiently. "Yeah," He mumbled through his curtain of dripping hair. He was still reeling from Sora's outburst and ensuing scolding. This wouldn't have happened if it weren't raining.
Rain, rain, go away.
The seriousness in Sora's eyes broke with a brilliant smile that made the whole day that much better. "Why did you come out here?" Sora prodded gently. "I know you don't like the rain."
Riku shrugged, looking up at him through the long tresses that kept falling into his eyes and plastering themselves to his forehead.
"Riku?"
Silence.
"Riku?"
The older boy looked away; starting away from the cover of the odd umbrella and back into the cold, awful rain.
Rain, rain, go away.
He hated to leave his friend there, standing stricken dumb in the cold, pounding, lonely rain, but… he pushed the thought away. Such was not the time for resentment at himself for falling so deeply into those blue eyes and giving in to infatuation.
The rains streamed down his face, dripping onto his already frozen hands. There was a soft clatter from behind him, and he slowly turned around…
And Sora collided with him, the ugly umbrella abandoned on the concrete. The brunet was a yelling mess that appeared to be near tears.
"What's wrong with you, Riku?" He cried; his arms firmly attached around the platinum-haired boy's midsection.
Riku stared—dumbfounded—at the younger boy before tentatively hugging him back. "Sora?" He mumbled, eyes puzzling over the sight of his dear, dear friend growing more and more wet with each passing instant. "Sora, you're going to get soaked, and then you'll get a cold."
"You don't care about that," Sora argued, staring up at him with those emotional eyes. "No one would care about you, right? Why should I care?"
"Sora!" Riku scolded, staring at the forsaken umbrella, gathering small puddles in the folds of its fabric. "Don't talk like that! There are a lot of people who'd get upset if something were to happen to you!"
"I could say the same about you!" He argued, arms now limp at his sides
Riku looked away. "Whatever," He muttered, starting away again.
Sora gave a small growl of frustration and took off after his friend after seizing the umbrella off of the ground. When he caught up to him, he seized the older boy's shoulder with a rare aggression. "Now look, Riku--" He started, but stopped suddenly at the pained look on Riku's face.
"I'm just going to go home, Sora," He started to turn away, but found that Sora's grasp was better than he had thought.
"Riku, I'm not done," Sora's voice was oddly rational, as though concealing something deep within its mystery.
"I am."
Sora smarted from the cold remark, but his grip did not lax. "Riku…"
His silver hair stuck to his neck in a most uncomfortable way as Sora unnerved the older boy by voicing his name. He did not mean to say things to hurt Sora—or anyone, for that matter—but they just seemed to come out on their own.
Open mouth. Insert foot. Way to go, Riku, He thought sardonically.
It was then that Sora's fingers loosened and he seized the taller boy's wrists and yanked him close.
Riku's heart thumped painfully as he felt a warm feeling spread from the pit of his stomach. The odd euphoria swelled with the closeness as he took in the world with a completely new perspective. The cold rain wasn't as bad as it had been, and reminded him of feather-light kisses all over him. The colors of the world were sharper. He didn't feel quite so heavy with the water that streamed off of him.
All because of a single hug.
"Sora?" He breathed slowly. "What are you doing?"
Sora looked up at him for a moment with a small grin. "Riku?"
He blinked, bewildered. "Yeah?"
"Shut the hell up."
Riku stared at him for another moment before pulling the short boy into a tight embrace. "God, I hate the rain," He laughed, laying his head on his shoulder.
Rain, rain, go away.
Sora laughed with him. "I just…" He laughed and held up a hand over Riku's head. "I make the most of it."
Neither were entirely sure when the line had been crossed where deep friendship morphed into something different, but both were certain it came with the rain. Neither really needed to say the words that echoed through their heads and in the little bubble of a world they'd created, for the gentle conversation and teasing spoke volumes of them.
"It's… not so bad," Sora murmured, leaning over to whisper the words into Riku's ear. The elder shivered.
"You're only making me colder."
Sora leaned over to him, his lips a hairsbreadth from Riku's. "Don't… complain," He whispered, laying a very small kiss on his lips.
Riku stared at him for a moment, a smile ghosting his lips with the rain tumbling between them as an unnoticed barrier, before pulling the littler boy even closer. The tiny boy leaned up on his toes and kissed him.
Neither noticed the stares that the people passing by gave them, utterly lost in a world where shocked adults and cold rain did not exist, and therefore did not affect them in the slightest.
Rain, rain, you're going away. Won't you come back another day?
End