𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙏𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙒𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙊𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙐𝙥.

Arboretum.

West woke to the soft, persistent hiss of rain against his bedroom window.

For a few seconds, he stayed where he was. Face half-buried in his pillow, the grey morning pressing dimly through the curtains.
Outside, the wind whipped at the trees lining the streets, stripping loose brown leaves from their branches and skittering them wetly across the pavement below.
He reached blindly across the mattress for his phone before he was even fully awake.

No new messages.

West stared at the screen for a moment, blinking sleep from his eyes. The last text in their thread was still his, delivered but not read. He let out a quiet breath through his nose and dropped the phone back onto the bed beside him.

Whatever. Killian was probably just asleep.

Or busy... It wasn't a big deal.

Still, as West pushed himself upright and scrubbed a hand over his face, the thought lingered.

Killian was always on his phone. Always.

Even when he swore he wasn't, he was. Replying in thirty seconds, sending dumb memes or pictures of himself and what he got up to during the day. It wasn't like him to go quiet for this long.

West was starting to wonder if something was wrong.

Outside, the rain came down a little harder, ticking faster against the glass. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and hissed when his bare feet hit the cold floor. His apartment was never warm enough in the mornings. Maybe it's cause he'd never spent a summer in Michigan before. It had been chilly from the moment he arrived.

West dragged himself into the bathroom, phone still in hand.

He checked it again while brushing his teeth. He checked it while pulling a dark hoodie over his head. He checked it again while tugging on a pair of black jeans and thick socks.

Still nothing.

"Jesus Christ." He muttered to himself, shoving the phone into his pocket.

He wasn't even waiting... He was just checking. There was a difference.

Probably.

By the time he pulled on his coat and laced up his boots, the weather had somehow gotten worse. West grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter, his backpack from where he'd dropped it the night before and paused long enough to glance at his phone one last time before leaving.

Then he stepped outside and immediately regretted being alive. The cold air slapped him across the face so fast it made his eyes water.

The street outside his building looked depressing. The sidewalks gleamed black with rain, slick with flattened leaves that had turned from gold and red to dark, pulpy smears under people's shoes. Cars hissed past on the wet road, tires spraying water at people standing too close to the curb.

West looked at it all and felt his mood drop right along with the temperature.

Perfect.

He shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets and started the short walk toward campus.

He was still thinking about Killian. Thinking maybe he could text again.

He could say you alive? or did you die? or something equally stupid and casual enough to hide the fact that he was checking.
He wanted to think of anything else other than Killian in that moment.

Killian would text when he texted.

West wasn't going to be weird about it. Even if, annoyingly, a part of him already was.