Work Text:
"Ah- Ah, Sousuke!" Rin shouts, running after the boy in front of him. The puddles scatter at his feet, droplets splattering everywhere.
One of them that he lands in ends up all over an old lady's dress and he barely even pauses to say sorry before he's running again.
"Sousuke, you idiot, come back!" He shrieks, a very slight hint of desperation at the edge of his tone. It's not that Sousuke is running away from him that's the problem, of course not. He's old enough to be able to be alone without getting scared.
Still, the storm clouds above them are getting rather heavy, and there's an unmistakable chill running up his spine. It wouldn't be so bad, he thinks, if it weren't for the fact that Sousuke is running away from the fair, away from the safety of the flood lights.
Rin doesn't know how long it is before Sousuke stops. Even when he does, he doesn't stop himself until he's caught up with him. Bending over almost completely, he presses his hands to his knees and squeezes his eyes shut, hoping that his hair hides the tear running down his cheek.
"Look at the sea," Sousuke nods towards the ocean, and Rin tries to straighten himself up a bit, looking out in the direction Sousuke's looking at.
He's not as tall as his friend, so he's only just tall enough to see over the wall that stands between them and certain death if they tumbled down this cliff. He pushes himself onto tiptoes to give himself a better view of the ocean, placing his small hands on the edge of the wall to help keep himself still.
The awe that Sousuke's voice was dripping with wasn't for no reason. Though Rin isn't a hundred percent sure that it was worth running all that way for, it's sure as hell absolutely beautiful. He'd say pretty if it weren't for how petrifying it looks as the waves roll and crash onto the beach, dragging away with it anything that might have been trying to cling to life on the sand. The water is grey, much different from the chlorine stained blue of the pool at school, and he finds himself pushing himself up a little higher on his toes, pushing a little further against the wall.
"It's most dangerous like this," Sousuke says absently, and something twinges in the pit of Rin's stomach.
"We shouldn't be here," Rin says, much more adamant all of a sudden. He pulls himself away from the wall, his arms throbbing with the residue of the enticement that the sight had given him.
"Ah, are you scared of the sea? Is 'I'm going to be an Olympic swimmer one day!' Rin Matsuoka scared of the sea as well as the dark?"
Rin punches him, but doesn't put too much into it. It's that that tells Sousuke perhaps the teasing needs to come to an end, so he doesn't say any more, and just nods to himself more than Rin.
He's turning around before Rin realises, but he doesn't run away this time. The redhead quickly follows after his friend, keeping his hands bunched into fists as they walk back towards the fair. The sky's getting darker, he thinks.
"Oi, Rin," Sousuke says, nudging Rin's arm with his elbow, "Are you alright?"
"It's cold," Rin says without too much thought, mostly because it is cold. Maybe it's not exactly what's on his mind right now, but it isn't a lie.
"It's gonna rain in a minute, we should probably head back and find the coach soon," it's the longest sentence Rin thinks Sousuke has said all day and it almost takes him by surprise; Sousuke isn't exactly the talkative type, of course.
Still, it's not like it's Sousuke revealing some deep, dark secret about himself only to Rin. Sousuke could probably say enough to fill three whole novels and still not reveal a single thing about himself.
There's probably not much to know, Rin usually tells himself.
Still, it bothers him somewhat that his best friend doesn't talk to him. He watches Gou and her friends all the time and sure, maybe they're younger than him, and maybe they are just silly girls that like to gossip all the time about everything, but the number of times his little sister has leant forward and had her hair bounce over her shoulders so that a friend could whisper into her ear is endless. They share so many secrets, so many inner thoughts, he figures. And honestly, he doesn't know if Sousuke prefers soda or tea.
Something rumbles in the sky above. Rin doesn't catch the small whimper before it's already out of his mouth, and there's a snigger from Sousuke beside him. Red flushes his cheeks and he murmurs under his breath something about how Sousuke is an idiot, but then there's another sound from above which has even Sousuke looking up at the sky and biting his lip with worry.
"S'gonna rain."
"No shit," Rin grumbles, and Sousuke gasps.
"Your mum told you not to say that,"
"Whatcha gonna do about it?" Rin hisses, scrunching up his fists tighter to stop them from shaking. Once he gets back to the area of the flood lights, he thinks, it'll be okay. "Come on, you won the race here, it's my turn,"
Then he's off, running back down the seafront towards the fair. He can hear Sousuke's footsteps behind him, accompanied by a ringing laugh, and Rin forces a smile onto his own face, even if Sousuke can't see it. Maybe he disregards his mother's advice regarding his 'colourful' vocabulary, but her telling him to wear the biggest smiles when he was sad was the only thing that got him through the first couple of months.
Just as Rin reaches the edge of the fair, the first few droplets of rain fall. It rained earlier too, but they'd managed to escape it by hiding under a stall. Now they're out in the open and of course, neither brought an umbrella.
Rin tugs his jacket off his shoulders and holds it over his head, turning back to look at Sousuke. He's still panting, having made sure to run quickly so his friend wouldn't be able to catch up (and also so he'd get back to the light faster), and his chest sears as he watches Sousuke approach almost leisurely, seemingly not at all bothered by the rain.
"Take your jacket off and you'll get a cold," Sousuke says disapprovingly, and Rin tuts.
"You're turning into my mother."
It's not meant maliciously.
They dart between people as they look for some sort of shelter, but the stalls that haven't already packed up are already crowded with parents trying to keep themselves and their kids out of the rain, which only seems to be getting heavier. Rin can feel his arms starting to ache from holding his jacket above his head and he groans, stopping in his tracks.
"It's no use," he whines, and Sousuke simply shrugs.
The dark haired boy goes to open his mouth to say something, but he's cut off by a voice from behind them. They both turn right on their heels, hearts skipping a beat as they hear an unmistakable "Excuse me,".
"Huh?" Rin grunts tactlessly, and the boy in front of him stutters a bit. He looks slightly younger than them, and his face is mostly hidden by a pair of glasses, the rims red at the bottom.
"I was just, uhm, wondering if you needed an umbrella?"
The boy is, sure enough, holding an umbrella in his hands. Rin looks up over the kid's head to find two parents, the mother almost identical to the child, holding a large umbrella over themselves, a soft smile on their face.
"Eh, uhm," Rin stutters, knowing he can't rely on Sousuke to deal with this one. "We couldn't take that-"
"If you don't then you'll get wet, and then you'll get colds and then you'll have to have time off school," the bespectacled kid talks with confidence for someone far above his age and it almost makes him seem taller than Rin for a moment, practically intimidating Rin into taking it off him. As he does, he does it hesitantly, always giving the kid opportunity to jump away and laugh it off as a prank.
That doesn't happen though, and sure enough Rin is soon opening the umbrella. He startles when Sousuke is at his side almost immediately, too close for comfort, trying to get under the shelter of the umbrella. Rin would be lying if he said it didn't make him feel a bit smug.
“Thank you,” Rin mumbles as he looks away from Sousuke and back at the boy, who seems smaller than him again when he smiles widely. The kid nods with a noise of approval and runs away back to his parents, leaving Rin simply staring after him as he walks away.
“There you two are!” A loud voice proclaims from behind them. It’s only to Rin’s amusement that he isn’t the only one that jumps a little bit.
“Coach!” Sousuke squeaks as he turns around to face the adult towering over the pair of them from behind. Rin would have laughed if it weren’t for the way that their Coach’s lips are pursed and his eyebrows furrowed, a look that they both know from when they try to skip a warm up or mess about during a practise.
Rin glances down at his watch, and if his Coach wasn’t in front of him then one of the words his mother keeps telling him not to say would have slipped out of his mouth. The Coach makes a knowing noise at Rin’s obvious shock.
“You were meant to be back an hour ago, I was about to have to call the police. You two need to be more careful,”
“We’re sorry!” They both say in unison, although Sousuke does add a mumble under his breath of “It wouldn’t have happened if Rin wasn’t so slow at running,”
“Yamazaki, you’re both in trouble for this. Come on, we’re going back to the centre.”
They trail after their coach, Rin still clinging onto the umbrella so tightly that he can see the skin over his knuckles fading into white. He throws a glance back over his shoulder, searching for the boy that gave it to them, but all he finds is the ocean that had fascinated him and then terrified him within a matter of minutes, and he can’t help but turn back around.
**
He dodges back behind the wall. Rin keeps his hand clamped over his mouth, trying not to make a sound. His chest heaves up and down as he drags air from around him into his lungs through his nose as quietly as his can, and he can feel his legs wobbling a little from the effort of so much running.
His lips are curved up into a smile beneath his hand.
“Rin! Rin!” The unmistakable sound of his friend calling his name makes him giggle a little bit from adrenaline. He allows himself to poke his head around the corner of the wall to see Sousuke searching, almost desperately, for him, and the way Sousuke’s face is all scrunched up makes him frown.
That’s not usually what Sousuke looks like when they’re playing hide and seek. Usually, in fact, he looks rather passive (probably because he knows that he’ll find Rin easily), and Rin knows his hiding place isn’t good enough to make Sousuke look like that.
He rolls his eyes at himself. He is too much of a worrier.
“Sousuke? What’s wrong-”
“The kid from the fair. I found him, he’s in the grade below,”
Rin can’t help but laugh. Sousuke looks so serious about that, and Rin thinks that he’s the too serious one at times. The boy’s green eyes, however, falter at the way Rin laughs, so he stops, shrugging. “So?”
“We sent the umbrella he gave us back with Coach to the fair, they still have it. We stole it, Rin,”
Rin comes out fully from behind his wall, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow.
“No we didn’t, Coach told them to give it back to him if he came back-”
“Rin.” Sousuke says, crossing his arms too to mimic Rin.
Rin sighs. Looking up at the sky, he squints as he thinks. It’s clearly bothering Sousuke, but then if Sousuke was going to do something about it, then he would have just talked to the boy himself and not come running after Rin. Unless-
“Hey, Sousuke,” Rin says with a sly grin, shifting his weight onto only one foot. “Are you scared of talking to him?”
Sousuke makes a dignified huffing sound, but Rin knows he’s right. The redhead grins, walking towards Sousuke whilst stretching his arms behind his back, confidence etched all over him. “You are, aren’t you?”
Rin knows it is Sousuke’s one weakness. Rin might be scared of the dark and he might be scared of the ocean sometimes, but at least he can talk to people (most of the time, at least). Sousuke has a tendency to hide behind him a bit whenever actual human interaction is involved, and whilst it gives Rin endless teasing material at times, it’s also kind of irritating in situations like this.
“Rock paper scissors?” Sousuke suggests desperately, and Rin rolls his eyes. He nods regardless, as he doesn’t exactly mind doing it himself, he just really doesn’t think it’s necessary.
Of course, Rin wins. Sousuke’s too desperate for his technique to be up to scratch, and Rin can predict him faster than he can predict himself when he’s like this. It takes about five minutes of head shaking on Rin’s part and mumbling on Sousuke’s before Sousuke finally concedes that it was a fair game and that they’re not doing best out of three.
“Come with me,” Sousuke asks (or, rather, pleads).
Rin finds himself being tugged along behind Sousuke. Sousuke has a firm grip on his wrist as he drags him along and Rin doesn’t make it easy for him, whispering things about what if this kid is going to shout at Sousuke or what if he hits Sousuke for stealing his umbrella or what if he just cries because it was his favourite umbrella and Sousuke lost it-
“Uh, do you need something?”
It’s typical that Sousuke manages to run straight into the kid he’s terrified of speaking to because he’s too busy scolding Rin for being mean.
“Ah- Ah,” Sousuke starts, but he looks completely stunned. Rin knows that he’s scared, embarrassed even; he can tell by the way that his free hand is scrunched up into a fist at his side, the same way that Rin does when he gets scared.
“I’m-” Rin starts, clearing his throat, “I’m Rin Matsuoka and this is Sousuke Yamazaki. You gave us an umbrella when we were at a fair the other day and we never gave it back to you, and-”
“We’re sorry, because we basically stole it and we never said thank you and now we don’t actually know where it is and-”
“And what Sousuke is trying to say is that we wanted to tell you thank you for giving it to us, but we asked our Coach to take it back to the fair and we aren’t sure if you ever got it back,”
Sousuke stands stiff next to Rin, waiting for the boy’s reply.
What they don’t expect is the laugh. It’s loud, brash almost, and it’s definitely not the laugh you’d associate with this kid. He brings a hand up to his face and pushes his glasses further up his nose, closing his eyes for a moment as he does before smiling back up at the two of them.
“It’s okay,” Rin notices Sousuke visibly relaxing, “It was my older brother’s, but he doesn’t like it anymore. We have plenty of other umbrellas, so it’s fine. It was only polite to give it to you,”
“Ah, well, thank you!” Rin says with a grin, nudging Sousuke with his elbow as if to convey told you it’d be fine, dummy. “What’s your name?” He adds as an afterthought.
“Ah, Ryuga-”
“Ryugazaki-kun, come and help me!” A teacher calls from across the hall. Rin watches as the glasses boy blushes red and turns around to face his teacher. He waves at Rin and Sousuke before running away, leaving no time to say goodbye properly.
“He’s only a kid, see? He wasn’t gonna bite you,”
“Nah, I wasn’t afraid of that,” Sousuke says, rather laidback considering that he was half-shaking five minutes ago. “The only person around here I’m scared of biting me is you with your weird shark tooth,”
“Oi, take that back!” Rin leans up to smack Sousuke across the head.
**
“Hey, Rin,” Sousuke says absently from the top bunk.
Rin stops what he’s doing but doesn’t put his pen down, instead just turning around and craning his neck upwards. Sousuke is draped over the top bunk, his arm hanging off and swinging through the air.
“If you do that, you’re gonna fall, and I’m gonna sit here and laugh at you rather than get first aid,” Rin scoffs, turning back to his page of equations. He bites the inside of his cheek as he puts his pencil back and scribbles down numbers without much thought.
“That Ryugazaki kid that hangs around with Nanase and the others,” Sousuke continues, taking no note of what Rin said. “Don’t you think he’s familiar?”
“Rei?” Rin asks, copying out the next question.
“Yeah, the glasses one. I swear I’ve met him before.”
“When?”
“Hmph, I don’t know.” Sousuke rolls onto his back, throwing an arm over his face. “At Sano maybe?”
“Hmm, nah, I don’t think so, Sou,” Rin dismisses Sousuke with a wave of his free hand. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember meeting someone like Rei, he’s not exactly subtle,”
“Maybe,” Sousuke says doubtfully, and Rin puts his pencil down.
Sousuke’s about to turn around and ask another question when he finds Rin in front of his face. He yelps, scrambling backwards, the sudden shaking off the bunk almost knocking Rin’s feet off where they’re perched on the edge of his own mattress.
“Are you jealous of me hanging out with Rei, Sousuke?” Rin teases, showing a full row of teeth.
The pounding of Sousuke’s heart subsides a little as he rolls back onto his side leisurely and shrugs. “How did you get that from me thinking we’ve met him before?”
“Maybe you were going to make up some story about how Rei was some scary kid and I should beware of being friends with him in case he eats me,” Rin jibes, gripping the side of Sousuke’s bed tighter so that he doesn’t fall off.
“If anyone is eating anyone it’s you eating Ryugazaki with your weird shark teeth.” Sousuke grunts, and Rin’s jaw drops open with fake shock.
“I’m hurt, there’s no need to be an asshole, Yamazaki,” Rin grunts, taking one hand off the bunk in order to poke Sousuke’s face.
Sousuke laughs, shaking his head and turning away. “I wasn’t kidding though, I’m pretty sure we’ve met him before.”
“Sure, Sousuke, sure,” Rin laughs, trying to haul his leg over the side of Sousuke’s bed so he can get up onto the top bunk without having to use the ladder.
“You know, I’m sure I remember something about an umbrella-”
“Shut up, idiot, and help me,” Rin whines, nearly tumbling off the bed.