Soaked Through, a slightly angsty USUK-ish human au drabble
(repost cuz oops) It’s USUK-ish because it’s a human AU and Alfred is 16 and Arthur is 20 and already gone off to college. I hope it’s clear that Arthur isn’t actually thinking anything romantic/sexual/untoward about Alfred, it’s all just pinpricks of light on the horizon, a subconscious realization of really nothing more than potential.
Btw, this is NOT the fill for the request of teenage Alfred pining after Arthur, it’s just… kinda similar. That one is going to be a lot more light-hearted.
Rating: T+
Warnings: Alfred’s underage but see above. No romantic or sexual content.
Word count: 1150ish
Summary: Arthur is home in Portland from his second year of university. As usual, it’s raining. As usual, Alfred is being Alfred. As usual, Arthur is very out of touch with his own emotions.
Laughter bounces off the sound of raindrops and floats in through the slightly open window on the musty smell of wet cement. Twenty year old Arthur Kirkland would know the sound of that laughter anywhere. He knows it almost as well as he knows his own. The sound thrills him the way it has since he and his family moved to Portland when he was eleven, but at the same time it makes him regret coming home from university for the summer.
Because it’s odd, isn’t it? It’s odd that the annoying little boy across the street, the little boy who ran to greet the Kirklands as soon as he saw the moving truck pull up, the little boy who tagged along after Arthur like a hopeful puppy for all of their adolescence, the little boy Arthur left behind at the end of the summer before last, is now a young man. It’s odd that he’s taller than Arthur now, even though he’s only sixteen. It’s odd that his jaw and shoulders have filled out. It’s that Alfred F. Jones grew up almost entirely when Arthur hadn’t been looking, like a bean spout, Arthur’s mother had said. It’s odd that his laugh sparkles the same even though his voice broke awhile ago.
And more than anything, the way it makes Arthur feel is odd. It’s a feeling that shifts gently and just out of reach underneath the glow of nostalgia and warm affection for a childhood friend.
Surely it’s only because seeing Alfred so grown up means that Arthur can no longer convincingly call himself a child anymore either. That’s what Arthur tells himself.
Yet Alfred is not yet that grown up if the way he’s whirling about in the street is any indication. Alfred loves the rain, which Arthur supposes is lucky considering they live in the Pacific Northwest, but which he has always thought to be rather out of character since Alfred is essentially sunshine personified.
It’s pouring now, so Arthur has to shut the window. The gutters along the sidewalk fill up and Arthur dares to look up from his book and down to the street where Alfred is barefoot, kicking water out of the gutters, and laughing at the splash. His jeans are rolled up around his calves, but that’s all Arthur can make out.
Arthur realizes that he hasn’t really spent much time with Alfred since he went off to university. They used to spend all summer together, but eighteen year old Arthur had wanted nothing to do with an “immature child” like fourteen year old Alfred before he left for his first year and he had spent last summer abroad.
That undercurrent of emotion shifts again, still out of reach, but it washes up briefly against Arthur’s heart like a stray wave from a tide that hasn’t come in yet and before he can even think, he throws down his book, tugs off his socks and runs down the stairs and out the front door.
The door closes a little too hard behind him and Alfred stops splashing and turns to Arthur with the same beaming grin that seven year old Alfred had greeted the moving truck with. He waves and says something, but it’s hard to hear over the torrential downpour, so Arthur moves toward him, cold water sloshing around his feet as if to sweep him away.
“Hey, stranger!” Alfred says brightly and now Arthur can see that he’s only wearing a blue t-shirt with his jeans. He can also see that with Alfred’s usual hoodie absent, the boy is still really very gangly. His shoulders have come in, but not the rest of his torso and his jawline is there, but his cheeks are still just a little bit pudgy.
In the next second, Arthur throws his arms around Alfred and it surprises them both.
Alfred laughs again, awkwardly this time, and Arthur feels it more than hears it as Alfred’s arms loosely, tentatively drape around him. “D’ya actually miss me while you were at school this time?”
“Apparently,” Arthur says because it seems like the most neutral way to answer.
“And here I thought I’d been demoted from best friend to ‘that annoying neighbor kid.’”
“You have been,” Arthur mumbles in a deadpan tone that Alfred knows well enough by now means it’s a joke, even if Arthur almost wishes it could be true. No one at school makes him smile or feel at ease like Alfred does, but it’s nothing more than the comfort of someone familiar, right?
“Hey! That is totally not fair. I just got my driver’s license last month and everything!”
“Is that supposed to disprove my point? You don’t even have your own car.”
“Low blow!“ Alfred pouts, but rather than pull back from Arthur, he hugs him more tightly. "I’ve got one in the garage, it just doesn’t work yet, which you’d know if you ever came outside. I’m fixing it myself. I told Moms that I don’t want them to just give me one.”
Arthur can’t help but smile a little at that one. “Liar. Your mothers told you they weren’t going to give you one. You’re not fooling anyone by trying to seem like an upstanding son. You forget I already know what hell you’ve put them through.”
Alfred laughs, but lower now, and it rumbles through Arthur’s body rather than glistening in his ears. “Hey, just checking.” He rests his forehead on Arthur’s shoulder, holds him even tighter. “It’s boring here without you, you know.”
“Tosh,” Arthur scoffs, even as his fingers cling to Alfred’s t-shirt. “There’s not a single doubt in my mind that you are the most popular person at school and I’m certain you’re involved in all sorts of extracurriculars.”
Alfred sighs. “Yeah, but… they don’t know me. Not like you do.”
Arthur freezes on the realization that Alfred shares his odd bereft feeling, but he chuckles and shakes his head. “You’re only sixteen, Alfred, how much is there to know?”
Arthur then feels Alfred’s brow furrow against his shoulder. The rain is the only sound in the entire world even as the rest of time suspends around them. Alfred answers so softly that Arthur almost can’t hear him, “More than you think, okay?” There’s another pause, but it’s less loaded. “And anyway, you’re only twenty.”
Arthur swallows as he thinks of Alfred walking through the hallways of the same high school from which Arthur has already graduated and how his own life is already so much… wider than Alfred’s. The four years between them seem so much longer than they ever have before. “Even so,” he murmurs, but doesn’t finish the thought.
As he stands there, in the middle of the street he spent half of his childhood on, soaked and entangled in a drenched embrace with his best childhood friend, Arthur feels warm despite the rain. He feels anchored, solid and content; there’s no danger of being swept away. It’s just very odd. He wonders if that endless four year gap will shrink in two years when Alfred turns eighteen.
The feeling that accompanies that thought is the oddest of all.
I hope that you liked it! Likes are love. Reblogs are life
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