#gonna kms this is the worst thing i've ever written

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Hoping, praying, crying, trembling, please no one read this please it's so bad please. you're going to have to ignore all the typos literally couldn't bring myself to reread this

Richjake Week prompt 1: Rain!!

Word count: 1.6k

Summary: Rich and Jake have a very important conversation. In the rain.

Rich decided a month ago that he’s going to tell Jake when it’s raining. 

He has the image clearly in his head: the sky opening up, mourning for his soon-to-be lost relationship with raindrops Rich decides to see as metaphorical tears. There’s of course an atmosphere of catastrophe in his mind, upheld by the fire in the background and the SQUIP standing behind him, seething out acids that only marred Rich’s body further.

It’s raining now- a harbinger of his doom- and his body feels like it's on fire again. The world is on fire, all the while it's being simultaneously doused and reinvigorated. Jake’s shadow on the concrete in front of Rich only makes it worse.

“I can’t tell if you want me to cuddle you or go away,” Jake says. He tries to take on a joking edge to his tone, the lilt in his voice alight despite the fact the sun isn’t, and Rich offers up a skeleton of a laugh in response. Jake frowns as he sits, tense and hesitant, on the other end of the bench.

Rich pulls his knees up to his chest. They’re outside in the summer rain (though it’s really only a drizzle), Rich having decided to face his reality head-on rather than hide from it among the walls of their apartment. Their apartment (he doesn't deserve that).

He’s curled up on a small, cushioned bench, his side pressed against the armrests as he tries to broaden the space between him and Jake as much as humanly possible.

“I still can’t tell,” Jake whispers and this time around it’s almost soft, his hesitance audible in the small, shaky breath he takes afterward. Rich watches the rain. 

“I want you to stay," he says as if it's simple.

Jake doesn’t seem reassured in the slightest. He remains in the same position as before: back straight, hands on his knees, eyes following Rich’s every movement with a starved type of desperation that echoes. 

“Okay,” he says, “But what do you want me to do?”

Rich shrugs, the words he knows he needs to say so close to physically manifesting them as a fatal blockage in his throat he has to choose between opening his mouth and having vomit spill out or leaving Jake in pained silence. 

“Can I…fuck, Rich, you’re not giving me much to work with here. I—I want to help. Tell me how.”

Rich watches the rain. He watches and decides he hates it. He hates that it has to ruin what he’s so carefully cultivated. He fought like hell to keep Jake. He’d watched Jake try to leave—he’d watched his expressions as he found out about the SQUIP, about the full extent of Rich’s lies and all the ways Jake had been ruined by them. He’d almost left. Rich fought to keep him, begged and promised, and struggled to keep those promises but succeeded nonetheless. He won. It isn’t fair that now he has to fight all over again, has to pick back up his metaphorical sword, and argue until his tongue is bleeding and his lungs are on the verge of collapse just to convince Jake he’s worth a second chance. A third. 

Though there’s some invisible hand on his throat, squeezing his vocal cords and chest with a borderline sociopathic effervescence, he whispers, “I have a secret.”

He watches the rain and doesn’t watch Jake’s innate radiance dim to barely an ember. Jake's nails dig into his knees, the image of Chloe with another man, Chloe with a girl, flashing in his head. He can't lose Rich too.

“You…" he tries, "Okay. Okay. It’s okay. I’m listening.”

Jake shifts closer. Rich almost falls off the bench in his attempts to get farther away, to stretch the distance, to not let Jake touch him or see him or know him or get angry. He pulls the sleeves of his sweatshirt from his wrists to his knuckles, hiding as much skin from Jake’s view as possible.

“You’re gonna be angry at me.”

Lies. Jake doesn’t get angry. He gets defensive, sure. He’ll build up every possible barrier within a moment, isolating himself from Rich and everyone else before Rich can even finish whatever incriminating sentence he’s trying to say, but he doesn’t get angry. Not like Rich’s dad does.

Jake doesn’t seem as aware of this rule as Rich is. He hesitates before he responds, and when he does, he doesn’t deny Rich. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, and the words are so carefully chosen—cherry-picked from a stockpile, organized just so Rich would be assured without being condoned---that Rich almost falls for the pretty picture Jake paints. He's knocked out of the delusion as he remembers hearing that exact sentence in a romance movie two weeks earlier.

“Yeah, well," Rich says.

Jake inches closer again, this time just close enough so he can brush his knuckles up against Rich's elbow. Rich thinks he might faint, but he keeps his body so completely unresponsive that even someone as clairvoyant as Jake doesn’t notice the deep-rooted discomfort twisting in his stomach. Without a sign to stop, Jake’s touch solidifies into something precious, something golden and rare. He doesn't let go.

“Talk to me, baby, please.”

Baby. He’s so casual with it, so confident in his relationship with Rich that he can slip in pet names and touch Rich without feeling like the entirety of him is imploding.

Rich hates it. Rich hates that he can’t kiss Jake. He hates that he can’t go out to dinner with him without worrying about what the waiter thinks, what the people next to them think, what his father would think if he ever looked at Rich long enough to know what’s going in in the rest of his life. He hates the rain. He hates that every time Jake tries to reach out—to bridge the gap Rich has been meticulously building ever since Jake first whispered I love you—Rich wants to puke. Because if Jake gets too close, if he touches Rich for too long, he’ll be able to feel the femininity in Rich’s hips, in the build of his hands, in the spaces between the cracks in his body. He’ll know and he’ll never look at Rich the same. He’ll know and he’ll treat Rich like the rain. 

Rich clenches his jaw.

“I’m trans.”

Jake’s still holding Rich’s elbow. He’s completely silent, completely still, barely existent beyond the persistent heat of being alive. Then, the words slurring together with quiet confusion, “So… so you’re a girl?”

Rich is going to die. Rich is going to die. Rich is going to die. Rich is going to die. Rich—

“No! No, I mean you’re—you’re a boy? Which… which direction?”

Rich is too disoriented, too scared, to respond. He practically falls off the bench in his attempt to stand—to escape—an action that Jake mimics as he scrambles after him, hands fumbling to grab on again, to touch him, to know him—

Jake’s fingers tangle in Rich’s sweatshirt, gripping onto that rather than his actual forearms. 

“Hey,” he says, louder than the rain. Then, more reassuring, “Hey, baby, I’m sorry, stop, I’m—”

Jake doesn’t get angry. Jake will get defensive and, as Rich learns the moment he finally manages to open his eyes and face the consequences of his prevaricate lifestyle, Jake gets scared. Utterly, simply, wholly, scared. 

“I’m sorry,” Jake says, eyes so wide and desperate Rich is sure he’ll cut himself on Jake’s gaze. The finality of his apology is either the inevitable breakup Rich has been anticipating for the past weeks or a confirmation of every hope he hasn’t dared dream. 

“It’s okay.” It’s not.

“I—I don’t know what to—you—of course, I—I’m not upset.”

Rich’s response comes on instinct. 

“I’m not a girl.”

Jake nods like he’s accepted a command rather than told a fact—determined, focused, ready to die on the words he’d just been told.

“Okay. So your name’s still Rich?”

“Yes.”

“You’re still my boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“So… so nothing’s really gonna change?”

Rich wants to laugh. Nothing’s really gonna change? Does Jake not feel like lightning just struck their home and left the entire thing in ashes? Can he not see how hyper-aware Rich is of every fiber of his being, from the curves he’d skillfully hidden with Jake’s hoodie—too big, purposefully chosen for this conversation so Jake won’t search for the signs he’d missed for so long—to the place where Jake’s thigh presses against his own, so close and warm and knowing?

He swallows either a smile or a sob and whispers, “Not if you don’t want it to.”

Jake makes a sound of frustration. 

“But what do you want? I—I don’t know what I’m supposed to be saying right now, Richie, I’m—I don’t—”

Rich guesses Jake has never seen a movie to base his personality off of for this scenario. 

“Just—” Jake tries, gripping harder to Rich’s arm, this time his fingers pressing into Rich’s veins and muscles. “Just tell me what to say. Or do. I love you. I want you happy. With me. I want you to know I support you and you’re still my boyfriend and this doesn't change anything but you’re kind of looking at me like I’m insane or going to hurt you and I don’t know what to say to prove that isn’t true, and this is clearly important to you, and I honestly don’t know why I’m the one freaking out when you just fucking came out to me but please—”

Rich gets on his tippy toes and kisses the rest of Jake’s panicked rant off of his lips. Jake plunges into it, and Rich isn’t sure if it’s because he’s grateful to be back in familiar territory (Jake can do kissing, Jake can do physical) or if he’s glad to have confirmation that Rich isn’t angry with him. Between the feeling of Jake’s arms creeping around his waist with a careful certainty to squeeze the life out of him and the rain, picking up now that Rich had gotten the hard part over with, he doesn’t get the chance to figure it out.

“That was good enough,” Rich says, lips coated with a disgustingly perfect mix of Jake’s spit and rainwater.

“Oh, thank fucking god. Thank you.”

He wraps himself around Rich, closer than he’s ever been before, pressed into Rich’s space like he’s trying to taste it all before he drowns. Nuzzled against Rich’s shoulder, either shaking from anticipation or shivering through his now soaking-wet clothes, he whispers, “So proud of you baby, really—but did this have to happen in the rain?”

“Yes. You have no fucking idea, Jake. Yes, it did.”