Chapter Text
The ceiling of the bus terminal is higher than Skeppy had expected it to be, all metal sheets broken up by corrugated plastic windows. The rain thuds against it, fierce and loud.
Bad is late.
Skeppy's eyes are heavy. After nearly a full day of travel and a week of bad sleep, he's so exhausted he can barely see colours - if this is some kind of payback, then he really wishes Bad had chosen a different day.
But the café he's in is a kind of commercialised cosy, books lining the walls, fake candles swaying merrily in strategic points, like nobody will notice they're not real if they can't see the top properly. Everything's clad in the same wood-print laminate, the same weird alien face repeating itself on tables and shelves and the countertop in front of the poor barista Skeppy had ordered from.
He looks around, trying to stay awake. He's awash in a sea of too-similar faces, all miserable and bleary, fingers clutching at their coffee mugs like the caffeine will clear up the weather if only they wish hard enough.
Bad is still late. Skeppy blinks hard once and checks his phone again.
Bad had given him an ETA of ten minutes about ten minutes ago, and there's no sign of him. It's not like he wouldn't stand out, either - it seems like everyone here is old or young, teenagers coming home, older relatives coming to greet them.
The chair he's on is this weird curvy stool thing that makes his back hurt.
Someone comes in from the car park entrance, but it's some mid-40s soccer mom with a rainbow scarf. Skeppy doesn't like to assume, but he doesn't think that's Bad. He's photoshopped him bald too many times to be fooled.
(He eyes her anyway.)
Above him, the rain hurls itself against the corrugated plastic. Skeppy has been listening to it for long enough that it's started to warp into a song, like some kind of Faster remix - the sound of the rain the drums, the hiss of the bus brakes the cymbals. People chattering the vocals.
He taps his fingers along the side of the phone, stringing it all together into some stupid tune.
Three minutes late. Not that he's watching the clock.
Skeppy gets up and orders another coffee, feeling dead inside. He's barely even passed two minutes by the time he gets back, which is such an awful revelation that he flicks his phone off and just lets himself slump into his drink, groaning dramatically.
Laughter.
Laughter he knows.
His head snaps up, and there he is.
Skeppy isn't too ashamed to admit he freaks out some. He'd banked on, y'know, seeing Bad from across the terminal, having a minute to get his act together, but no. Of course Bad has defied all expectations Skeppy had had of him - it's practically his unknowing hobby.
Bad looks differently than he'd expected, mostly in dumb ways Skeppy will never admit to aloud: for one, he associates Bad with his Minecraft skin, since he sees it all the time in-game and in fanart, and he's stupidly caught off-guard when he realises that Bad's just wearing a hoodie and jeans.
For another, Bad is older than the thumbnails Skeppy edits of him.
(Yes, he knows he's an idiot. Shut up.)
"Sorry," Bad is saying, and when he smiles Skeppy is pretty sure he has dimples. Skeppy is also pretty sure that he's going to die. "I had a hard time finding a parking spot."
"It's fine," Skeppy says automatically. He leans hard on one foot, trying to get himself to focus. "No worries. Hi. Hello."
"Hi!"
They look at each other.
Bad knows what he looks like, is the thing - he tends to stream with facecam on, whereas Bad tends to not. In all honesty, he's not sure what Bad's looking at.
He stares back at the glasses and the hair and the maybe extra inch Bad has on him, and then his mouth opens and out comes:
"Wow."
Bad's forehead pinches in a slight frown. His hands twitch and retreat into his hoodie pocket. "What?"
"Nothing," Skeppy says, feigning over-casual. "I just can't believe you didn't shave your head for the occasion."
Bad half-laughs, surprised, and gives the same, "Oh, you did not," that Skeppy has heard so many times over the years.
It's accompanied by a wry twist of the mouth, a narrowing of the eyes: Skeppy grins back at him, feeling like someone's turned on a light inside of him. This is already different in so many ways, so many good fucking ways - he can feel them piling up in the back of his mind, somewhere behind the excited chant of Bad is here Bad is here he's right in front of you that just won't stop.
Bad lifts his arms and says, "Hugboyhalo?"
Skeppy laughs, a little overwhelmed. "Yeah, okay."
He slips off the stool and into Bad's arms. Bad tucks him in close: he smells faintly of rain and dog. He's still warm from being in the car, which bodes well because Skeppy is freezing.
After a moment or two, Bad's shoulders start shaking. Skeppy frowns, suspicious.
"What?"
"Nothing," Bad says, like a liar.
"Bad, what?"
"It's just -" He starts to snicker in earnest: Skeppy pulls away, already braced. "You got off the chair and you're so short."
He can barely even finish the sentence. Skeppy hates the fact that he's laughing too.
"No - dude, shut up, come on." Bad is laughing harder, eyes screwing shut. "Don't do this to me - Bad!"
He whacks Bad lightly on the arm and turns away to swing his backpack on, huffing. By the time he's picked up his coffee as well, Bad has recovered enough to steal his suitcase.
Skeppy looks at it. "I can carry that," he says, uncertain.
"I know that, you muffin." Bad bumps shoulders with him, smiling. "I'm just being a good friend, that's all."
Skeppy hides a broad smile in his coffee.
Bad leads them both to the entrance, then stops. Skeppy walks straight into his back, having successfully zoned out in the full two seconds of not being spoken to: Bad looks back and laughs at his dazed face a little, then takes him by the elbow and draws him around to his side.
"What do you think are our chances in that?"
Skeppy looks out, eyes wide.
The rain has worsened since his bus had pulled in: he's been listening to it fall on the roof, but the sound can't hold a candle to the actual thing. The car park tarmac is one big puddle, almost shaking with the force of the rain coming down - the splashes overlap and interrupt each other, spattering further into the terminal than should really be logical.
Visibility is so bad that he's not sure if he can see more than fifteen cars away. As close as they are, the sound is incredible.
Skeppy is awake enough to say, "Holy shit."
"I - language!" Bad is flustered enough by the swear that he misses his hoodie pocket three times. "Oh, for - there we go." He pulls out a collapsible umbrella and waves it. "Luckily for us, I planned for this kind of weather!"
Skeppy eyes the crappy, weak-jointed umbrella. Looks out at the nearly-apocalyptic weather outside.
He hadn't intended to say anything, but Bad rolls his eyes like he'd read his mind anyway. "Oh, come on. It's, like, three feet to my car."
Skeppy scans the cars closest to them in hope.
"Well, maybe that was an exaggeration," Bad mutters. His gaze is resigned, set on something that's far away enough to put dread in Skeppy's stomach. Sure enough, he points out into the downpour and says, "It's that red one, the Nissan."
He follows Bad's finger. Slowly, like a horror movie, his eyes fall on a car they can barely see, being steadily pelted with rain with the air of a tired dog who doesn't have the energy to shake any more.
"Please tell me you're kidding."
"I'm not."
Skeppy lets his head fall back and groans. "We're going to die."
Bad scoffs. "We're not going to die," he says, waving the umbrella around again. "I have Mister Umbrella here, after all."
Skeppy swivels his head to look again, hoping that Mister Umbrella will have miraculously transformed into something actually practical.
It hasn't. "We can't call him Mister Umbrella."
Bad frowns. "Why not?"
"Because that's a terrible name." Skeppy straightens up, makes gimme hands at it. "Like, come on. Even you have to admit that's not your best."
"It -" Bad makes the pff noise Skeppy has heard him make when lying so many times. It looks a little ridiculous: all badly-concealed smile and shifty eyes over the top. "It is. One of my best."
"No, it's not," Skeppy says easily, giving him a warm smile to curb any offense. Bad smiles back, eyes bright. Skeppy looks down at the umbrella, suddenly overcome again. This is ridiculous.
"I'd like to see you do better," Bad challenges.
"A better name would be, uh. . ."
"Uh-huh?"
"Um. . ."
"Stop stalling," Bad sing-songs.
Skeppy glares at him. "You suck," he says.
"That's a terrible name for an umbrella, Skeppy."
It's a stupid enough joke to surprise a laugh out of him, as much as he resists it. Bad's got a delighted grin on his dumb face: Skeppy shoves the umbrella back into his hands and covers his face so he doesn't have to deal with it.
"You name the umbrella," he tells his palms.
"You're the one who didn't like my name in the first place." There's a pause. Bad hums, thinking. "What about Splashy?"
"Splashy?"
"What? It's not like you can complain, Mister Couldn't-Think-Of-Anything."
"Wh-" He wheezes a little. "Don't be mean!"
"I'm not being mean," Bad says in full know-it-all voice. "I'm being realistic. Now are we going to make a mad dash for my car, or not?"
"My coffee," Skeppy says weakly, still kind of hoping for a miracle let-up in the weather.
"It's got a lid," Bad reminds, raising an eyebrow. He opens Splashy the Umbrella with a flourish and takes a pointed step forwards, outside. "Let's go?"
Skeppy squares his shoulders and sticks his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, willing one last degree of warmth into them. He nods once. "Let's go."
They run for it.
Bad's got longer legs than he has, as loathe as he is to admit it, and Skeppy can feel raindrops on his shoulders where Splashy keeps swaying out of line; at their feet, the water rears up in waves and determinedly begins to soak the tops of his socks.
They don't so much stop at the car as on the car - Bad manages to stop himself with just a hand on the boot, but Skeppy runs full-tilt into it and sprawls there, panting dramatically, until he realises that his entire front is now wet.
He jumps back, screeching. Bad is already giggling, Splashy the Umbrella shaking wildly as he does.
"Shut up," Skeppy groans. He can feel his lips tugging up into a smile. "Bad, shut up."
"Skeppy, you're soaked," Bad squeaks.
"Nothing even happened," he denies. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about you running into my car," Bad drawls, a gleeful twinkle in his eyes. "How grippy are your shoes? You looked like you were on ice."
Skeppy thinks about making a joke about Minecraft physics, or Fundy's mod, but he can't make it work. What his mouth says instead is: "I'm aquaplaning, dude."
"Aquaplaning?"
"Yeah." He can barely get the word out around his laugh: it's such a dumb joke, but Bad is smiling from ear to ear. He picks his suitcase up and walks around him, trying to get to the boot. "Can you open this?"
"Yeah, hang on."
Bad holds the umbrella over Skeppy's head while the boot opens, then steps neatly away while Skeppy's lifting it.
The rain soaks him through in seconds.
"Bad!"
It's a scream. Skeppy doesn't care.
Bad is cackling into one hand, but he comes back and puts the umbrella back over the both of them; Skeppy slides his case in and straightens up, glaring at him through dripping hair.
"I hate you," he says, acid. He's decided it. "You're not funny."
Bad tries to say something, but all that comes out is a string of nonsense giggle-words.
Skeppy shakes his head, unable to deny the fondness written all over his face. He's even colder than before, somehow wetter than if he'd just walked to the car in the first place, but -
Bad is here. They're officially moving in together.
Rain or not, it's a pretty good place to be.