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If he leaned his forehead against the cold metal that formed the dividing line between the full-length windows, he could still see through on either side. Essentially, at least; he could see the hunched gray and plexiglass of the bus stop shelter just outside the building, drizzle of rain blurring its surface. Water dripped from the eaves where the building hung over the stretch of concrete from the windows to the shelter, puddles formed and boiled with the impact of falling drops, and the steady, whirring white noise of rain filled his ears until nothing else seemed to exist. Riku folded his arms, propped against the windows by his forehead, backpack weighing down his toes.
On the sidewalk beyond the shelter outside, people hurried past, pulling hoods tightly over their heads, hunched under newspapers, a pair huddled together under a single umbrella. Beyond that the sky was a gray slate, hovering low over the distant sheen of an equally gray ocean. Someone shouldered in through the glass doors on Riku's left, shoes squeaking on the linoleum as he hurried further into the building, late for a class or a study meeting or to catch a seat in one of the computer labs. Riku shrugged the stiffness out of his shoulders without changing his position, listening to the wet whoosh of tires through water as a car passed by outside.
Finally, something of an anomaly appeared on the sidewalk in the rain. It was kind of short, gangly, toted a yellow backpack, and had hair that spiked in every direction, or would have if it wasn't drenched with rain because its owner didn't have the good sense to dress for the weather. The anomaly appeared from behind the library to the right, ran down the sidewalk past the shelter and disappeared to the left, at first. Then reappeared and ran back to the shelter, pausing there for a few minutes before running all the way around it--clockwise, once, and then counterclockwise about halfway, finally pausing on the concrete and looking around in bewilderment before spotting the two halves of Riku on either side of the window separator. Safely inside the nice, warm building.
Sora stumbled through the glass doors and paused on the mat just long enough to catch his breath, but not long enough to bother wiping his feet or letting himself drip on it. Riku tilted his head just enough that he could see Sora (mostly) with both of his eyes: drenched and bedraggled Sora dripping all over the linoleum, frowning in a way that was more like a pout. Riku smiled, just a little.
"How come you're inside?" he grumbled, chin tilted up in defiance of Riku's height.
"It's cold." Riku said this with carefully practiced nonchalance, shoulders rolling up and back down, and it worked for about five seconds.
After that five seconds, Sora looked up from where he was propped on his own knees, narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, and said, "You forgot your coat too, didn't you?"
"I didn't forget anything. It was sunny two hours ago."
"HAH!" Sora grinned triumphantly, and promptly dropped down to hunch around his knees, staring out the window and watching for the bus.
A few minutes passed in silence. Rainwater dripped from the points of Sora's hair and the corners of his backpack and gathered in puddles around his perimeter. Riku pretended to watch for the bus but was really watching Sora--the top of Sora's head, how his arms wrapped around his knees, the way his skin flushed as it warmed up. Riku's mind had been carefully blank before then, in the silence and waiting, but this silence was different. Sora had disturbed it.
And he did it again a moment later, letting out a long, self-pitying, exasperated sigh. "Didn't I save the universe a couple years ago?"
Riku felt a smirk curling up the corners of his lips, turning his attention to his reflection in the glass. It might have been to check his eye color, just out of habit. "I seem to remember something like that, yeah."
"So why," Sora continued, rocking forward and backward on his heels, dangerously close to tipping over into his own puddles, "does the savior of the universe have to do statistics homework?"
"Because he decided that despite his already active and rewarding career, it would be a great idea to go to college." The smirk kept crawling up Riku's face, and he could see Sora glaring up at him from the corner of his eye, but instead of responding, the hall went quiet again. Silent and a little tense with Sora resting his head sideways on his bent knees.
Just when Riku was going to apologize, without even knowing what exactly for, Sora stood up in one fluid movement and grabbed him by the elbow. "Let's go."
"Where?"
"Outside."
Riku leaned back from the window finally, wrinkling his forehead and tugging his bangs down to hide the red indentation that he probably had just above his nose. "It's wet outside."
Sora's response to this derisive observation of the obvious wasn't to pout or argue or plead, but to abruptly throw himself forward and hug Riku tightly around the waist. Pressed tight against him--with his cold, wet clothes and cold, wet skin and then, as though to emphasize the act, he tilted his head down and rubbed his cold, dripping wet hair all over Riku's shirt. Sora looked up without letting go, chin buried in Riku's chest, lips pursed in a frown, eyes huge and blue and almost too close for comfort. Like falling into the ocean, or the sky. "Now you're wet. Let's go."
And who the hell was Riku to argue with that.
The fountain had been turned off for a week or two and was now mostly a reservoir for rainwater and yellow and orange leaves, too damp for anyone to sit on the edges during the cold, wet space between classes. Sora spread his arms out on either side of himself and ran around it in a huge loop. Riku suspected he might have been making airplane sounds, but couldn't hear over the white noise of rain. He started running around in the opposite direction to meet Sora halfway and dodge some of the water trying to drench him, but Sora balked at the last second and darted off in another direction, laughing. And then they were playing tag.
Sora tried to dodge and weave between the three columns that held up the sky-viewing sculpture, skittering around underneath it and making faces until Riku was on the far side, and cleverly making a break across the square for the overhang of Bond Hall. Riku broke into a sprint after him, skidded when Sora suddenly changed directions, and both of them had to dodge some poor wet soul trudging across the bricks who suggested, rather irritably, that they grow the fuck up. Riku grinned, although no one saw it, and chased Sora up the steps to the art building.
They took a hard left into the grass at the top of the stairs, and Sora almost slipped in it, barely catching himself in time to dart around the building towards the parking lots in back. Riku almost slipped trying to catch him as he slipped, stumbling and almost losing sight of Sora, backpack sliding across his back and dragging him down. One hand touched the grass just long enough to get wet and muddy and then he was upright again, racing to catch up.
Sora hadn't gone much further--Riku suspected he slowed down to wait for him, suspected that Sora had always done things like that since they were kids because he secretly liked to be caught. He picked up speed, and Sora grinned over his shoulder and matched it, yellow backpack bouncing, leading him across the lot and down the service road.
The next time Riku started to gain on him Sora crossed the road suddenly, just barely fast enough to get away, right up into one of the set of steps that lead into the arboretum, almost unnoticeable until you were right on top of them. Riku followed, hair catching in the leaves of a low hanging branch, taking the steps two at a time--something Sora, he grinned as he thought, couldn't do.
Sora was barely on the trail when Riku caught him. Barely off the steps, almost tripping, he reached out and wrapped both arms right around Sora's waist--and sent them both flat onto the muddy ground.
"Caught you," Riku said to the t-shirt covering Sora's hip. "Now you're 'it'."
The air felt quieter, more still in the arboretum, trees reaching up to the gray sky all around them, low bushes blocking out the view of the road and school just below. Sora pushed himself up with a groan, sandy mud clinging to his chest and forearms, shrugging down his backpack from where it had fallen forward over his head. Riku sat back on his knees, less dirty for having fallen on Sora's legs, feeling the cold damp seep through his jeans and the warm strain in his muscles and how there was less rain under the trees. Breathing.
He closed his eyes for only a second, pushing rain-soaked hair back out of his face, but in that second there were suddenly a pair of lips pressing against his, cold and damp as the rain dripping on his cheek.
It didn't matter that Sora was wet, that Sora was muddy, that Sora was cold and clammy as an ice cube under his palms, just that he was there for Riku to grab and tug forward, wrap his arms around tight, hold against his chest and kiss back until everywhere they were touching was warm and tingling, electric.
Sora chuckled and broke the kiss without breaking contact, mouths still pressed together, breath mingling and hot. "Caught you."
Riku felt a smile curling at the corners of his mouth, and shifted so that their foreheads were pressing together, the same place he'd been resting against the windows earlier. "What the hell are we doing here, Sora?" he asked, and sighed like all the tension of the last three months was deflating from all at once. "Why is the savior of worlds doing statistics homework?"
Sora shrugged without breaking contact, head turning from side to side so their skin twisted where their foreheads were pressing. "I decided to go to college because I figured if I went, then you would, too." His smile was soft, maybe a little sad. "I thought it might be nice... being normal."
Riku closed his eyes again, just for a second, and when he opened them Sora's were filling his vision, wide and blue. "It is nice," he murmured, just enough for it to be sincere before he finished, "too bad you're such a weirdo."
"Who's a weirdo, dorkface!" Sora growled, and tackled him.