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Hop sticks his head around the side of Victor’s bedroom one afternoon, and he immediately realises why his mum must’ve been calling him. He smells like rain and his socks are damp, and before Victor even pulls out his earbuds to hear the water hitting the window he can tell it’s absolutely pouring, and Hop had ran up the hill in it like an idiot.
Despite the fact that even though he was probably wearing a coat, his jacket’s sticking to him like a jam tart, and Hop grins.
“Hey Victor!”
Victor only smiles in return and stands up to fetch him a dry towel for his hair, which is steadily dripping onto the carpet like a leaky tap. There’s one on the radiator under the shelves, also drying a pair of Victor's trainers, and he blinds Hop with it before sliding over to the counter and flicking the kettle on with one hand and reaching up for a pair of cups with the other.
“It’s tipping it down,” Victor says, as if Hop doesn’t know already, a somewhat scolding tone in his voice. The TV in the living room is playing the news and every so often static breaks through the reception and fuzzes into a lull, where the presenters’ mouths move but no sound comes out. Victor busies himself with making tea while Hop tries his best to dry himself off, trying to pull out one of the chairs from the table by hooking his foot around one of the legs.
“Yeah, and I wanted to see you,” Hop replies, like it’s the most usual thing in the world. And in a way, it is - Hop’s tried to visit Victor at way worse times, like when the farms flooded and when there was a Wooloo blockade after one of the fences broke.
Victor smiles, but Hop doesn’t see, because the kettle goes off and he has to spin around to make sure no boiling water’s spilled over.
After pouring the water, Victor turns around again and leans back against the counter, seeing how Hop’s made an absolute mess of his hair with the towel, making it stick up in all sorts of ways.
“Get that jacket off,” Victor crosses the room and starts tugging at it himself. “You’ll feel much better when it’s not all sticking to you like that, and I don’t want you’ta catch a cold.”
Hop finally peels it off and Victor drapes it over the radiator in place of the towel, tripping over his feet back towards the counter to take out the tea bags and finish their tea, knowing exactly how Hop likes it. While the storm beats against the walls of the house, Victor slides the cup across the table, sitting down himself. Thunder crackles outside, he hears the TV blur entirely to static, his mum’s quiet snoring cutting through the sound, and it’s just him and Hop.
They sip at their tea in silence for a while, Victor standing up once to pull the (honestly lacking) biscuit tin down from one of the cupboards when he realises they’ll be there for a while.
Unsurprisingly, it’s Hop who breaks the silence.
“So how’s your day been?”
“Alright, I guess? I was supposed to nip down to the store today to get some milk, but,” he gestures half-heartedly to the rain outside. “Weather’s far too bad for that.”
Hop fiddles with one of the fraying edges of the towel, now draped around his shoulders as he saps up the very last bit of warmth from it.
“How about you?” Victor asks, taking a long sip of his tea.
“Eh,” he starts, “Everyone at home’s a bit depressed ‘cause’o the rain. There’s nothing to do, and the reception’s bad from the storm.”
“So you came here?”
“So I came here,” Hop finishes, with a smile.
When Hop gets warm, Victor knows, from years of experience, he stays warm. That boy’s body temperature refuses to budge from anything other than slightly below slightly too much once he’s given a game controller and a blanket cosied up in Victor’s bedroom, leaning against his side. His ma’s long since moved from the living room sofa and gone to bed, and yet Hop is still a human heater.
Victor couldn’t ask for anything less, tucked up under the blankets with him, a game neither of them have much interest in hooked up to the TV across the room.
“Tomorrow,” Hop yawns, “If it’s nice, I’ll go to the market with you. Help you carry it back an’ all.”
That would be nice, Victor decides. Days after rain always smell nice, and Victor would never object to another day with Hop.
“I’d like that,” he slurs, his face probably inside of Hop’s shoulder at this point. They slump over, falling on top of each other until they’re properly lying down. “How’re you so comfy?”
“It’s my secret power,” and Victor doesn’t have to be able to see his sleepy smirk to know it’s there. “Who needs…” He trails off.
“G’night, Hop,” Victor whispers, but he’s already asleep.
They wake up the next morning to the sizzling of eggs in the next room over, Victor’s leg still asleep from where it had been pinned beneath Hop’s the entire night, and sunlight streaming in through the window, cottonbud clouds cutting through the light. Both of them eat breakfast only half-conscious, and Victor’s vision is clouded by Hop at the table, framed by morning light and the haziness of sleep.
“Here you go, dears,” Victor’s mum hands them a paper bag before they leave. “Lunch for you.”
Hop loves Victor’s ma, and hugs her on the way out, waving happily as they plod down the path, some of the ivy climbing above Victor’s front door still dripping.
At the market, Hop steals Victor’s knit cap and pulls it down over his ears.
“You look stupid,” Victor laughs into the back of his hand. “Hop, you ain’t wearing it right-”
Hop darts out of Victor’s reach, and he chases him all the way down near the farms, down until Victor’s stopped trying and they settle on one of the rocky stone walls, leaning into each other like the night before, eating the sandwiches Victor’s mum had packed them, their bag of groceries by their feet.
“Vic,” Hop starts, but struggles to find the words in between bites of his sandwich. “Thanks.”
“F’what?”
“Today. Yesterday. I don’t know.”
Victor grins, and turns back to his sandwich. Hop decides that he wouldn’t be anywhere else, not without Victor.
Wooloo pass in waves, and neither of them mention if Victor’s fingers find themselves fitting perfectly laced in with Hop’s.