Title: Rainfall
Fandom/s: Fruits Basket and Gravitation
Pairings: Furuba/Gravi, specific charas read to find out!
Warnings: Fluff, uh, introspectiveness, somber fluff?
Author's Note: My giftie for my friend nnayram, who's had a hella hard time the past few days, and it was just her b-day! She deserved something X3 Feedback is luffed!

-----------------

The rain pitter-pattered erratically against the deck. Little drops splashed into the wood and sent pieces of themselves flying across, creating a nice, sleek surface. It had been going on for hours, in the calm quiet that always came with a gentle shower. The taste of freshness was all around, the freshness of rain.

He sat on that porch, just out of reach of the bouncing water, though his toes were a little damp. Just sitting, sitting, watching that mist fall from the sky, across the yard and into the wilderness that surrounded that place. It was a pleasant haze that he could not quite get into words, though the sharpie marker tapped against the slightly soggy notebook paper.

Normally, Ryuichi would have sighed in frustration of his writer's block. Nittle Grasper had a deadline, but he'd decided to take a little vacation to 'foster his imagination', as he had told his band mates earlier. However, no such songs had come. Ryuichi had a few, but nothing he was in love with and connected to.

He loved the rain. He wanted a song to rain like that water.

"Mm, it's hard to think that just last week it was snowing."

Ryuichi looked over his shoulder to the new voice with child-like eyes. Then he smiled at the man, constantly in that grey yukata, the color he supposedly saw the world in. Ryuichi didn't believe a word of it, but he wasn't one to tell. Ryuichi also thought the outfit was pretty cute too, but he kept that to himself as well.

"Na but the rain is nice too, Shigure-kun," Ryuichi said happily, turning back to the view as he hugged his damp notebook to his chest.

Shigure made a dramatic shivering notion, shaking his head a bit. "It's nice, but it's nicer when you look at it through a window. Close the door, Ryuichi! It's warmer in here and you're letting all the hot air out," but he spoke good-naturedly with the eternal patience one needed when dealing with Sakuma Ryuichi.

To that, Ryuichi just pouted. "But that's no fun…" He kept his gaze to the wet ground, watching the dirt and grass bend down to the mercy of the pounding rain. Suddenly the singer dumped his notebook and sharpie, jumping off the deck and out into the downpour, laughing highly.

Shigure had a moment of panic, "Ryuichi!" He knew very well that the singer could take care of himself, but catching a cold during vacation just plain sucked. "Ryu, you're going to catch a cold if you stay out there!" But Ryuichi just giggled madly.

He ran out in his bare feet, splashing into the puddles that were forming and dancing in the rain. Water went everywhere, soon causing Ryuichi's brown and high-lighted hair to stick to his face, clothes beginning to sag and cling to his body. But he didn't notice one bit of it. He just kept soaking in the feeling of cool, fresh rain falling from the sky and washing him clean of his sins.

For a moment the dark-haired man just watched in the quiet of the winter rain. Then ever so slowly, Shigure stepped off the platform and onto the soft, soggy earth, not seeming to mind that his feet were becoming covered in mud as he walked. Ryuichi paused as he came down from a happy jump, completely soaked as a dryer hand came on his shoulder. He turned around just in time to meet the lips of the taller man, and returned the kiss happily.

After a few minutes they were both soaked to the bone, and chilled. Ryuichi smiled up at Shigure before jumping on him, clinging like a kid wanting to be put in the seat of a shopping cart. He kissed the tip of the other man's nose as he felt arms coming down to support his bum, then sneezed to the side. Shigure sighed.

"I told you"

"Yeah, yeah" Ryuichi said with a pout, before snuggling and pretending he was warm and inside rather than under the mercy of the downpour. He loved rain, but maybe it was time to go inside. Shigure seemed to be reading his mind and walked back the house, walking carefully up the steps with his load before setting it down on its own two feet again.

Ryuichi shuffled his stuff back together, still dripping with rainwater. Shigure chuckled and wrung out some of the moisture from his yukata, though it didn't do too much. They'd probably both have to change.

"Hmmm, do you have any coffee, no da?" the singer asked, standing up straight and looking hopeful. The novelist shook his head, but smiled cheerfully.

"No, but we have some excellent green tea. You change and I'll go make some," Shigure said, making a move to go back inside. But Ryuichi just stood on the porch for a minute, looking out into the wilderness drenched in rain once again.

"Someone once asked...'What does snow become when it melts?'" Shigure asked, giving the other man a side-ways glance. Then he laughed a little, cross his arms as he leaned against the side of the door. "Someone once told me that it becomes spring. That's pretty silly, isn't it? Yes, pretty, very pretty, but naïve," he said more melancholically, though there was still a smile on his face.

Ryuichi turned to look at him for a minute, hair drooping and looking old but young at the same time.

"I was going to say it turns into water, the lakes and ponds and rivers and oceans," he said with a shrug. "But when it runs across the earth in streams, it's like the world's crying." He smiled. "But rain is like crying, right? And rain washes everything away, it makes everything clean and not dirty anymore."

There was silence for a moment as Ryuichi continued smiling. Shigure found himself wondering why that interpretation made much more sense to him…

The singer laughed and bounced inside past the other man, making a trail of wet wherever he went. He was humming loudly to himself, already making his way to the stairs to go change. The novelist stared at the trail of water drops from their path from the door and out of the room, then laughed.

"…Maybe someday, the rain will clean me too. But for now…you'll do."

The tea smelled as sweet as the air did when the storm clouds cleared.