Fakir tries to mind his business. He really does.

There's nothing he likes less than getting caught up in other people's drama. If he had it his way, he'd never leave the house, writing all day and lamenting over Mytho and lost love and other disgusting things like that. It's therapeutic, he thinks, to mourn and process in his own time, and so all he really wants is for this late bus to hurry and show up already, so that he can put distance between the teary-eyed Ahiru and himself.

His jaw sets as he turns the page of his novel. He tries to focus on the words before him, or maybe even the sound of the rain hitting the pavement, but there's something so pitiful about the way she sniffles. What's even more pitiful is the way she's got her legs hugged up to her chest and curled herself into a ball, like a tiny, abandoned kitten in a cardboard box, and dammit, it's hard to pay attention to anything else but her.

He sighs. Shuts his book and then leans his head back. Fakir closes his eyes and asks, "What?"

She sniffles. He hears her shuffle, hears the old plastic of the seat creek beneath her. "W-what?"

"You've been crying for twenty minutes," Fakir says slowly. "And I've been trying to ignore it, but-"

"Oh! O-Oh, I thought- sorry, I was trying to be quiet-"

If whimpering is Ahiru trying to be quiet, Fakir doesn't want to know what an actual full-blown cry session sounds like. He sighs again and rubs a hand over his face, dragging it down over his eyes. "Okay."

"Sorry! Um, I just-"

She is the most long winded person he knows. If he lets her, Fakir knows she'll dither on it until this bus actually shows up - if it ever actually arrives. It's been twenty minutes of sitting in the rain under the tiny roof of this bus stop, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Mytho's ex girlfriend, and he would give almost anything, at this point, to just go to bed. Fakir doesn't do feelings. Not publically, anyway. And certainly not like this. Not with her.

But patience is a virtue. And though he's tired he's not cruel. There is some sympathy in him, believe it or not; he's not purposefully mean, just sort of short, sometimes, and he can't say he doesn't understand what she's going through. He'd been there once, left behind by prince charming, and even if Fakir had taken it just as hard (if not more, if he's being honest) he'd just done it in secret.

Alone. In the privacy of his own home. Where nobody could hear him cry.

So he gives her the time to collect her thoughts. It's not like he has anywhere to be anyway. Who knows when this bus will put them both out of their misery.

"... Sorry," she says finally, and he feels her knee press against his thigh, as she scoots back in the seat and sets her feet on the ground. "This is, um, this is kind of insensitive of me, right?"

He snorts and lets his head fall back and rest against the wall of the bus stop. No, this is just his own personal purgatory. This is what he gets for having feelings. Fakir should know better. "It's been years, Ahiru."

"But it still happened!"

Lots of things have happened in the past three years. He's graduated college. Mytho's found a new girlfriend. It wasn't like Fakir expected him to just say single forever; Mytho's magnetic, in a weird sort of way, and draws people to him with his kindness like moths to a flame. It would be wrong, Fakir thinks, to hold that attraction against anyone. Because he gets it, perhaps better than anyone else does, and more than anything else, he still wants Mytho to be happy. That'd always been the goal, after all. Mytho's happiness. Mytho's wellness.

Christ. Fakir lets his eyes open and watches the rain hit the street. "... It's been years, Ahiru."

"I never meant to steal him from you, you know," she mewls, scrubbing at her eyes. Something in Fakir's stomach sinks. "That's never what I wanted! I just- I wanted him to smile, you know, and he was so nice to the baby birds in the park, a-and we'd just hang out together sometimes feeding them, and it wasn't anything weird or malicious, it just happened, and-"

"Ahiru." He digs his fingers into the fabric of his pants. "It's fine. You don't have to talk about that."

"But I should." She pivots on the bench, sliding, skirt shifting up her bare thighs, and Fakir closes his eyes again. He can't have this conversation with her, not while she's looking at him with those big blue eyes. "We should! We never did, and I never- I didn't want to hurt you, you know. I asked him not to."

"Ahiru."

"I know you loved him just as much as I do." He can feel her stare on him, hot like a laser, cutting clean through him. He swallows, and Ahiru keeps barrelling on, in that stubborn, frustrating way of hers. "And I never even apologized to you."

"You did. You wrote me a letter, if you don't recall-"

She leans forward and shakes his shoulder, and fuck it all, it's impossible to ignore her. Ahiru demands his attention in ways she never has before and tugs on his sweater insistently. "You deserved a face-to-face apology. I stole your boyfriend!"

This wasn't supposed to be about him. This was supposed to be about her and her broken heart, now that Mytho's found a new girlfriend again. Leave it to Ahiru to pour her energy into apologizing to him instead of nursing her own broken heart, even when he gives her the space to vent and talk about her feelings. Does she know she has a heart? Does she know she's allowed to acknowledge it?

She must. It's bigger than his. Bigger than anyone he's ever met. Perhaps even Mytho's.

"You did not steal my boyfriend," Fakir says slowly.

Her lower lip wobbles. She blinks back tears from her ocean eyes. "But!"

"Mytho broke up with me and then asked you out, if I'm not mistaken." And he's not, because he's run it through his brain a thousand times. It would hurt less, he thinks, if the relationship had fallen apart due to Ahiru's meddling - but to pin that on her would be unfair, considering Mytho hadn't loved him enough to resist the glow of this tiny pixie of a girl. "So quit the blubbering. I'm not upset with you."

She exhales. He tries not to notice, but it's admittedly hard. This tiny pixie of a girl does sort of have a magnetic glow, now that he's seated so close to her, now that he can count the constellations of freckles stretching over her nose, along the pink of her cheeks.

Ahiru wipes wet bangs from her face. "I'm still sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I feel terrible about it."

"You should be feeling terrible for yourself." It's out before he can stop himself. "Stop thinking about me, idiot."

Her mouth opens and closes. It's hard to say what are tears and what are raindrops drenching her face. "... But he has Rue now," she says after a pause, and there's something like resolution in her stare, now. Like she's almost at peace with it for that brief moment in time - Mytho had left her for Rue.

"... Yes," Fakir says.

"Rue's like." Ahiru blinks and smears mascara on her cheeks. She's cute, even with raccoon eyes, and Fakir gets it, why Mytho would find himself attracted to her, even if she's sort of a mess and a clutz. "She's the best? And she's beautiful, and she's older, and taller, and she's got- she's got a body, and-"

"And she's known him since we were kids."

Ahiru nods, still clutching his shoulder. "I never stood much of a chance anyway! I was living on borrowed time, s-so, um, being upset about it is hard. I would break up with me too!"

But she's still crying. He knows she's still crying. Ahiru's not slick, and she's still sniffling every few minutes, clearly attempting to keep her shit together without alerting him to her plight. It's as brave as it is stupid, for her to try and hide the fact that she's crying in front of him - he's already called her out on it once. Obviously he can still tell. He's perceptive, whether she likes it or not.

Fakir looks down the street. Still no sign of their bus. Right. Of course.

"Sorry," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say in this situation.

What else can he tell her? Is he supposed to sugarcoat it for her, to soften the blow? That would be doing her a disservice.

She lets out a long breath through her nose and crumbles back onto the bench, a pathetic pile of girl and far too much hair, tied up in a drenched braid, dripping onto her lap. He thinks perhaps her storm has passed and the clouds have begun to part; her breathing settles eventually, finally, and he watches Ahiru close her eyes, watches her features soften as she breathes in and out, slowly, slowly.

The streetlight flickers above them. He prays it won't go out. The buzzing overhead and the white noise of the rain are the only things keeping him sane.

"... He loved you, you know," she mutters, almost serenely. "He'd talk about you all the time. About the treehouse you built him when you were kids, because you knew he liked the birds and wanted a way to be closer to them."

The something that'd dropped into his gut burns hot. He wishes she'd stop. "Idiot."

"Sometimes I think his heart is just too big for his own good," she continues, and her eyes are open now, staring distantly across the street, at the emptiness of the night surrounding them. "There's too much space for everyone there. How is he ever supposed to settle, when there's always going to be somebody else he wants to protect?"

Idiot. She should stop talking. Putting those feelings and thoughts into words - that's dangerous.

"Rue's the one, though," she says pensively. The yellow light of the street lamp overhead casts shadows on her face, and her eyelashes flutter as she sucks in a deep breath. "I can tell, you know? When he looks at her, and she looks at him, and it's like… they love each other. They get each other."

He does know. He'd watched it happen when he was fourteen and they thirteen, watched the way Rue's whole world had lit up whenever Mytho would quietly ask her to explain something to him. He'd seen the way Mytho would gravitate towards her, the pretty brunette from down the street, and it would've been impossible to miss the way he'd hold her tiny wrists in his hands and graze his fingers over every bruise along her arms.

They didn't call him prince charming for nothing.

Fakir stops staring at her and instead looks to the night, too. He's sort of tired of knowing everything.

"So now what," he says, after a beat.

Ahiru sniffles and rubs her nose. "We get on this bus."

"I don't think this bus is ever coming."

She laughs, a sad, twinkling sort of noise, and Fakir doesn't have the capacity to address the way his chest lightens at the sound right now. "We walk home?"

"In the rain."

"... In the rain," she repeats mournfully.

There's no sign of it clearing up. And unless Ahiru's hiding an umbrella up that miniskirt of hers, neither of them have anything to protect themselves from the rain. Hell, Ahiru's not even wearing a jacket - she's shivering, still soaked to the bone from her sprint to the bus stop.

Guess they just have the same rotten luck. Fakir shakes his head and then puts his face in his hands, face down in his lap. The only thing separating the two of them is his discarded novel, and if that's the last hope they have to keep them out of the rain during the walk home, well, they're screwed. The only solution is to wait it out.

Fakir isn't convinced Ahiru will last the night. With the way she's yawning now, he's willing to bet money within the hour she'll be snoozing on his shoulder.

"Stupid bus," she mutters, squirming.

Indeed. He picks his book back up and cracks it open to the bookmarked page. If this is his life now, he's not going to just sit by idly and allow himself to overthink. Ahiru settles next to him, thigh pressed against his, and he doesn't need to look to know that she's blushing over the whole ordeal. As if they have a choice in the matter - it's either they sit close enough to touch or get drenched in the downpour around them. There's nothing to be embarrassed about because there's nothing intimate about it.

A lesser man might find it cute. Fakir doesn't think on it. He flips the page instead and continues reading his collection of poems.

"Hey," she mumbles, bumping her knee against his. "Would you read me something?"

"Are you that bored?"

"There's nothing else to do," she says, and he can hear the pout in her voice. Childish. "You seem like you're done talking to me now, so- so I don't know how else to pass the time. Read to me?"

Not even a please. Fakir raises a brow and turns to the page before. "No complaining if you don't like poetry."

"You're reading poetry?"

He's not sure he likes that tone she's taken. He hesitates. Finally, he settles with asking, "Why the suspicion?"

"You-" she pauses. "... That's. Flowery of you?"

"Flowery."

"Hopeless romantics read poetry."

That's a polite way of implying he's dry and uninteresting. Well, whatever. It's not like he's not used to the assumption. And it's not like he doesn't give her good reason to believe otherwise. "I had a boyfriend, you know. I can be romantic. We dated for two years."

"I know! But!" Fakir turns the page as she squirms next to him. Finally, she settles again, unwinding her damp hair from its long, tangled braid. "... I didn't think you'd read them for fun."

"So you don't want me to read to you then."

She sits up straight. "That's not what I said!"

A lesser man might find her cute. Fakir, again, doesn't allow himself to consider it. No matter how alike she is to Mytho in her core values, she's still so expressive, and loud about it, too - and it feels a little alien to him, the way she feels so openly. The way she throws her long, damp hair over her shoulder and accidentally whacks him in the face with it. The way she frets and gasps and apologizes and tries to take his face in her hands - it's alien. It's like she's an open book, and the bibliophile in him trembles at the urge to turn the page and see what comes next.

He shouldn't. He doesn't. Fakir slaps her hands away and tries not to think about the way the back of his neck feels hot. "I'm fine, but be careful, would you?"

"Sorry! Sorry! I didn't mean to, I was just trying to get it out of the way so it'd dry-! Oh, it left a mark, oh my god, I'm so sorry-!"

"It's! Fine! Stop touching me, you weirdo-"

"SORRY."

.

The bus never comes.