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The pitter patter of the rain as it swarmed past the empty streets were something to get used, as it seemed to have happened all the time. Never ceasing to part and show the sun.
The last time the warmth of the sun smudged across your face was coincidentally around the same time you got swept up into all this mess.
"Swept into" was better translated as dragged.
It wasn't your choice.
In the wrong place at the wrong time.
The first time you ran into him, he looked to be a fairly aged person, of course you couldn't pinpoint his exact age (and didn't dare to outloud when he was in earshot), but he was roughly, 40, maybe 50.
The mask clung tight to his face, rounding his more jagged features like his cheek bones and jaw. Which were more noticable now that it had been burnt off.
Which happened to be the second time you saw him, charred. You almost didn't recognize him at first.
The way he revealed himself out of the shadows, light catching on his face and digging it's way into all the new holes that laid up on his picture.
His lips cut and sealed, eye bags sunken in, the skin on his jaw shrunk and stuck like a splattered bug to his bone.
You were shaken out of your thoughts by his coughing. Normal at this point, you'd gotten used to it. Didn't blame him, for it.
You and him have been standing under the awning to escape from the rain, but the wind had picked up and tilted the oncoming rain at an angle. Summing the awning to be useless.
At a sickly grumble, he unbuttoned his trenchcoat. The fabric sopping wet at the tails and flapping water on his ankles.
Once he had unbuttoned all the way to the last one. He snaked his arm out from the sleeve and pulled you into his coat, then pulled the rest of the coat over you.
Your head barely peaking above the fabric as you were only as tall as the nape from his shoulders.
The closeness pressed you against the start of his chest.
You cant only hear his ragged breathing but feel it.
Long inhale in.
A pause.
Long exhale out.
Over and over.
If you focused really hard, you could barely make out the faint pulse of a beating heart. ( If he had any left. )
His breaths started and finished just above your hairline, which was where his head was hovering.
He was lighting a cigarette with one hand with not much success. The zippo he'd been using was soaked and only emitted weak sparks not ample enough to light a cigarette, let alone anything dry or flammable. ( Or drenched head to toe in gasoline)
You watched him struggle a bit, most of his weight on his good leg, leading him to leaning a quarter of his weight on you. He was using you as support.
Without knowing, your hand had reached up and grabbed the zippo out of his hand.
He stopped and observed what you were doing, before his lips being lit up by the faint glow of his cigarette. Freshly burning with an ember.
He stopped chewing on the cig and let it hang in his mouth loosely.
Hot coals dropped in his stomach when he felt your hand place the lighter in his, with gentleness.
Without a momentary pause he slipped it back into his inside pocket.