Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts nor any of the characters featured therein. I just borrow them for my personal recreation and, hopefully, yours. Now, if I did own them, I'd be a very happy fangirl. But no, I don't even own a copy of the game. Tsk.
Warnings: Slight yaoi. Short one-shot. Written in second person. Mindless fluff. Lots of rain and random encounters.
Notes: This is a continuation of my other short story, A Moment in the Sun, so you might want to read that one first to make sense of this one.
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There must be nothing more annoying on this world as a rainy day in the dead of the winter. It doesn't quite snow here, like it does back home, but this icy drizzle is ten times as upsetting; specially so when you step out of the library and find that a perfectly grey, winter day has become your own cold and wet version of hell, in barely two hours. You think it can't get any worse, really, but then you discover that you're one umbrella short and have one bad mood too many. Your normally cheerful disposition is getting itself a plane ticket to Hawaii and it's not coming back anytime soon.
You look around in utter defeat; the library is closing down and there's nowhere to go but out, to make your splashy way through the maze of trees and people going to and fro across the park. You curse the weather for a few more minutes, enough to realize that you're standing some ten feet away from that spot where you stopped to fix the borrowed bike, a few days ago. Why can't every day be like that one? The sun, the wind, the guy…
You're standing atop the library stairs now, just close to where that guy had been sitting. There's still a roof blessedly over your head, so you dawdle for a bit longer, thinking back on that perfect winter day, not for the first time in the two and a half weeks that have gone by. It's become something of a compulsion to you, to lazily consider the 'what-ifs' in relation to that stranger who gave you a hand with the bike; at lest, you think, it keeps you distracted and brings a smile to your face. Not that that's an achievement for you—people say you grin all time, risking your face to split down the middle—but it's a different smile, you can feel it without even seeing it.
And this guy… he had a perfect smile, or it seemed to, from the short glimpse you caught of it, just after he kissed you and fled, the jerk. You don't even know his name, but you remember the exact colour of his eyes in the sunlight.
Without really thinking about it, you step into the rain and join the exodus of dripping wet rats that used to be well groomed humans, just a couple of hours ago. Your hair starts to droop soon, soaked, falling annoyingly over your eyes, and since you can't really see where you're going you step into a large puddle and there go your still-dry feet. This sucks, sucks, sucks! You can't wait to get home and in your eagerness, you come up with a shiningly bright idea: running! The faster you move, the faster you'll be home. So you run, avoiding low tree branches, stragglers, mud and the large puddles. Yes, there's the street, the bus stop and—
--you take your eyes off the path and run smack into someone. Hard.
"Watch it!"
"Sorry, I—" You turn your head sharply to the right, from where the voice came, just in time to see your infamous stranger flinch away from the spatter of raindrops that flew from your hair.
Waitaminute! You do a dazzled double take. Your stranger? That means he's here! Standing close to you! Whoa, much too close, there. You take an hesitant step back and give the other guy a quick once-over; he seems to be as drenched as you're getting—was his hair that long, or it just seems longer wet?—the sneer-smirk and the cocksure attitude don't wash away with a little rain, it seems. For a moment, you concentrate only on the water dripping from the guy's bangs—it looks as if his hair was liquefying, the raindrops are the same colour as his long strands.
"Oh, it's you," he says, straightening up and re-hoisting his backpack, expression unreadable. "You could use an umbrella," he says, giving you his own up-and-down look, and now the smirk you remember is back, curling around his lips.
"So could you," you grin back at him, because his eyes on you feel great.
He shrugs one shoulder, casually, hands buried deep into his coat pockets. "Don't mind the rain," he offers easily, and you get reacquainted with the drawl of his voice.
"Well, I do. It's freezing cold, it gets everywhere and I could catch death from this!" You carry on with your rain-rant and the deadly dangers of getting a bad cold in the middle of the winter, but your eyes never leave him as you commit to memory every little detail about him. You half expect him to yawn and move on, leaving you mid-rant, but he listens to you, and interrupts you just when you were getting to the part about how a steaming cup of coffee can prevent one from being too cold and catch death, and why don't you and I—
"So," he says, before you get to drop your anvil-sized hint. "Were you looking for me?" His eyes are narrowed and the smirk is broad on his face, and all you would like right now is to kiss the smugness out of him for good.
"I—ah, hmm, of course not!" You're forced to say, "I came to the library!"
"The library is the other way around."
Smug bastard. Of course you know which way the library is; why does he have to make it so difficult? "I know that, I just left—"
"Oh, I was going there, myself. See you, then." And he moves past you, so abruptly that you feel what was left of your cheerfulness and excitement seep away into the puddle you're standing on.
"It was closing when I left!" You call to his back, as a last resource; and will that knot closing around your windpipe please go elsewhere? To close around his throat, maybe? He doesn't stop walking, doesn't start choking on the spot, so you suppose you'll be keeping the knot and the hollow feeling in your stomach. Oh, but that reminds you…
"Hey, wait a minute, okay?" Yeah, if this is really going to be the last time you see him—you can feel your regular grin stretching your face at the idea—then, you're going to give him one hell of a send off. He stops, turns and waits for you; you come to a halt when you're close enough to him as to see clearly into his eyes. It's much too close and his eyes are still too green.
"What?" he asks, without giving an inch, but looking mildly curious anyway.
A large raindrop falls on your nose then, makes you twitch, but covers up nicely the fact that you're suddenly a bundle of nerves and energy. "I owe you," you say, carefully. Your eyes slide away from his, on to his wet cheeks, on to his pale lips.
"You don't—" he starts and that's as far as he gets, before he has your lips on his, pressing down and making swallow whatever he was going to say. For a split second, your brain freezes as a result from that bolt of sensation you get from kissing someone—or kissing him, particularly. It feels like nothing you can describe and everything you ever felt, all rolled into the simplest touch.
You stay like that for a moment—or an eternity—standing on your toes and hoping, hoping but knowing it's not going to happen. The rain is still so very cold, sliding down your neck and making you shiver. You will get sick, you know it. Sighing mentally, you start to draw back, reluctant, but in the face of his lack of response, what can you do—all you know, is that you've never felt sadder as you do right now.
He sighs, too, physically, his breath on your face, but he doesn't move back. Instead, feeling you shiver again, he brings his arms up and around you. All you can do is stare back at him, puzzled, and stammer.
"Ah, you, I—" you want to ask, afraid he's only teasing you like last time, on the park bench, but he must be a man of few words—fewer than you, anyway. His lips simply seek out yours again and his arms tighten their hold on you, silencing you effectively.
As you get lost in the kiss and the embrace, it occurs to you that it must've stopped raining at last, because here, standing flush next to him within the circle of his arms, you feel dry and safe. Cold can't touch you and you know you can't possibly get sick now; not now that you've found him. And it's funny, isn't it, how you don't even know his name.
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Comments, criticism and nitpicks welcome!
