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It wasn't until he couldn't breathe in anything but searing saltwater that he learned to fear.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. The night had been so calm only minutes ago, so he couldn't understand why things had come to this point.
Everything was blurs, cold, pain, and terror.
His voice was coarse with salt and panic as he called out for help. He was so far away from the shore that his heart feared no one would be able to hear him over the torrential downpour.
Rei thought he saw Makoto swimming toward him. Since he didn't have his glasses on, it was hard to tell. But then, the faraway figure froze, and he could barely make out what he could only interpret as a look of pure fright before the waves crashed down on him again.
He swallowed another mouthful of bitter saltiness, nose, throat, and lungs burning along with the limbs which no longer seemed his. No matter how furiously he kicked or pulled, his body refused to stay buoyant without the aid of his kickboard, which had long ago been snatched away by the ocean waves.
Somehow, he managed to suck in a useless breath before everything went dark around him. Rei was acutely aware of a million pointless things at that point in time.
He remembered that humans could only survive up to three minutes without air. He understood that his accelerated heart-rate and frazzled nerves were only cutting the time limit on his oxygen supply shorter. All the articles and books he read on undercurrents flooded his muddled mind but nothing helped him. In this moment of unforgiving cold, everything was useless to him.
Suddenly, something wrapped firmly around his wrist and pulled him up. His face broke through the turbulent surface of the water, and he started to cough violently, lungs trying to scrape in every particle of oxygen they could but only filling with water again. When the wave passed over him and his savior, he wheezed one more time.
"—chan!"
Rei didn't understand what was happening until the voice, strident in alarm and urgency, repeated itself.
"Rei-chan! Are you okay?"
He sputtered, voice coming through only as a broken croak. Nagisa didn't really seem to want an answer anyway, because he was already pulling both of them steadfastly toward the direction of the shore.
"Let's go!"
For a frightening second, Rei felt the hand around him slip away, and a wave swallowed both of them. It was so cold.
Nagisa found him again, despite the waves hell-bent on keeping them apart. The blonde's hand overshot and dragged down across his neck and shoulder, but the pain of blunt nails was more welcome than the cutting of the angry sea. He held onto Nagisa as well, careful not to drag them both down in sheer panic. Supported by the smaller boy, he was able to swim again.
It was all churning waves and getting pulled back and pushed forward in the dark. Rather than them trying to go somewhere, it was more like they were being played with by the erratic currents. Somehow, they were able to go toward the right direction.
Rei's heart was beating so fast, and he hurt all over. The end of this nightmare was in sight, but he didn't feel safe yet. There was just a little bit left to go.
But then a large wave crashed over them. Water went into his nose, and his fingers were pried apart from Nagisa when strong jets of water poured between them. Bubbles whirled around him as he groped around blindly. His legs kicked, trying in vain to find sand.
He burst through the surface of the water and looked around wildly.
"Nagisa-ku—!" he managed to rasp out before his voice broke off hoarsely. Rei hacked violently to rid his lungs of water. "Nagisa—…"
It shouldn't have been hard to find the blonde. His hair was so bright—always so bright—so even in the unpredictable waves and with his poor eyesight, he should have been able to see. But he couldn't, and Rei was frightened to death. He tried and failed to put his prescription goggles on, only managing to fill them with water.
The surface of the sea was angry and inconstant. With every swell of the waves, a new stretch of ocean was obscured. White foam and debris swept into his face and pressed salt onto his tongue. It was impossible to see anything floating above the water.
Then, he gave up and dove beneath the waves. He didn't know how to swim underneath the water, but he hoped to at least be able to glimpse where Nagisa was.
He found him.
He was only a blurry blob suspended in the water, unmoving and still. Rei did his best to swim over to him, tired muscles and blindness not helping at all. Somehow, he managed to reach Nagisa. He hooked an arm around him and started to kick toward the surface. Nagisa was only dead weight in his arms, completely unresponsive.
Water resistance held both of them down far longer than they should have been without oxygen, and Rei's head spun from the lack of it. He nearly blacked out but persisted in going upwards.
Miraculously, he made it. He only took one hasty breath before pulling Nagisa up as well, hoping that the blonde would awaken and breathe, but there was only the sound of breaking waves and rain around him.
"Nagisa-kun? Nagisa-kun!" His own voice sounded foreign to him. The blonde was definitely not waking up.
Rei swallowed hard past the burning in his throat and tried to remember what to do. He had done so much research on this already. He knew all the safety measures and procedures for every type of medical emergency, so he didn't understand why he was still panicking. He should have been calm and level-headed, but in a real-life situation, he found that he was not prepared at all.
The waves pushed the two of them forward impatiently, making Rei realize just how little time he had left. He couldn't afford to waste it with staying still.
He knew he should be administering rescue breaths to Nagisa while pulling him to shore, but he could barely stay afloat as it was, so he just focused on swimming.
Rei continued for the beach until he managed to hit soft sand. Then he gritted his teeth and pushed on. Once he was able to engage in some messy form of walking, he pulled Nagisa's limp arm around his shoulder and dragged them both far away from the waves. His body felt so, so heavy, but this was not the end of it yet. The blonde's feet were scraping against the wet sand as Rei hauled him out.
He still didn't respond when Rei carefully placed him on his back, hands shaking from cold and fear.
Immediately, all the information he had read about in his textbooks flooded him. He went to work right away and checked for a pulse and breathing from the blonde. His heart dropped and head spun when he found that Nagisa's heart and lungs were completely still.
Sparing no time at all, he gently opened Nagisa's mouth to check for anything blocking his airway. There was nothing, but he stuck a finger in and swept his mouth clean just to be sure.
His fingers pinched the blonde's nostrils firmly as his other hand tilted back Nagisa's chin. Rei pressed his lips over Nagisa's and pushed air into the smaller boy's mouth. He did this twice, each breath a second-long.
Bidden by Rei's forcefulness, Nagisa's chest rose and fell but went still immediately after.
Rei laced his left hand's fingers between his right hand's as he pressed it flat over Nagisa's sternum. He kept his elbows locked as he pushed down rapidly, his own breaths coming out in short huffs. It was all he could do to keep count of the compressions.
"C'mon," he said, voice bordering on desperation. "Nagisa-kun, come on, come on!"
He applied another two breaths and waited for a split second, his own heart pounding wildly. The only thing he wanted right now was for Nagisa's to start up again. When there was still no response, he tried the compressions once more.
Thirty of them passed, and he tried more rescue breaths.
There was nothing, just nothing.
Nagisa was cold, but he couldn't tell if it was because of the rain and ocean water or because he was dying. He didn't want to think of it.
He was quickly becoming unraveled by bitter fear with every failed cycle of breathing and compressions he went through. Rei was so getting so tired and scared. He didn't know what to do anymore. There was no one around them, and Nagisa wasn't stirring at all.
If he squinted hard and pretended, Nagisa was just sleeping.
"Wake up!" he cried, desperately breathing into the blonde again. "Nagisa-kun, wake up!" Rei bit his lip hard but forced himself to carry through with the second breath as well.
One, two three, four, five, six—
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen—
This wasn't supposed to happen.
Twenty-two, twenty-three—
"Rei! Nagisa!"
In a wild fever, Rei looked up and tried to pinpoint where the voice had come from.
"Makoto-senpai!" he called out hoarsely. "Makoto-senpai, over here!"
Relief flooded in him as he recognized Makoto's voice through the sheer rain. He squinted hard, barely able to make out two blobs which he rightly assumed were Makoto and Haruka.
The two of them quickly assessed the situation while Rei blabbered senselessly, his usually well-articulated sentences falling into shambles.
"Nagisa-kun came for me—I don't know what happened. He didn't come up for air for a long time. I found him like this—" he swallowed. "CPR isn't working," he said, voice splintering finely.
"Haru," Makoto's strong voice broke through firmly. His face was calm and collected.
At the beckoning of his voice, Haruka's shocked and silent expression turned determined. Seeing their captain and vice-captain so sure, Rei's fears subsided slightly.
"You administer the breaths. I'll take care of the compressions. Rei, how long has he been unconscious?"
Still a little stunned, Rei dazedly stood and got out of their way. The two second-years quickly took their respective roles. Haruka was already breathing into Nagisa's mouth before he was able to answer.
"T-Three or four minutes," he said, hoping that he wasn't lying.
He didn't know how much time had passed since he first pulled Nagisa out of the water. It might have only been three or four minutes, but Nagisa could have been unconscious for longer than that. How long had he taken to find the blonde underwater? Rei didn't want to think about that either.
He watched as Makoto and Haruka worked together in synchronized tandem, pausing only briefly between the breaths and compressions to revive Nagisa.
God, Rei thought. This wasn't supposed to happen.
The rain continued to fall on them.
He breathed in deeply. The sky was so clear and warm as it cooled down into night. It was already pretty late, but the summer days here were always pleasantly long. Unlike the unbearable heat which came with the afternoon, the blending evening was much better.
The ice cream bar he held in his hand helped stave off the heat as well. It was slowly melting onto the floor.
"Rei-chan," Nagisa's voice beckoned, sticky and muffled with strawberry-flavored ice cream. "If you don't finish that, I'm gonna eat it too!" He swallowed and grinned.
Rei looked at him with a mildly disgusted expression. "You've got ice cream here," he replied, tapping the side of own mouth in demonstration. His expression contorted even more as Nagisa gracelessly stuck his tongue out to lick it up. "I meant for you to wipe it off with a handkerchief, Nagisa-kun."
The blonde giggled and swung his legs back and forth from where he had elevated them off the floor. "So are you gonna eat that or not?"
The taller boy sighed and took an unenthusiastic bite from his ice cream. "If you eat mine too, you'll undoubtedly ruin your appetite for dinner."
"Maybe," Nagisa mused playfully. He began to sway left and right in his seat and bumped his shoulder up against Rei. The other boy let himself get jostled around without resistance.
Quietly, they ate. Somehow or another, Rei had been wrangled into buying ice cream for the two of them after practice on the way home. It wasn't a rare occurrence, but Rei was still unsure how he felt about the whole arrangement. He supposed he didn't mind it too much, since Nagisa occasionally bought snacks for him too, even if he didn't really want them.
Of course, Nagisa finished first. He licked the wooden stick clean and stuck it in between his teeth to nibble on. After a while, he grew bored and leaned forward to peer into Rei's face. He grinned with the stick clamped in his teeth.
"Rei-chan, you look too serious."
At that, Rei huffed. "What is it to you, how I look?" When Nagisa's expression fell for a split-second, he immediately regretted snapping at the smaller boy. He hadn't meant to, but he just wasn't in that good a mood.
The blonde took it all in stride though and didn't seem to hold it against him. "Well, you're always fussing about what's beautiful or not, and I think you looking so serious is definitely not very beautiful!" Before Rei could get offended again, he placed his palms on the back of the bench and leaned backwards. "It's one thing when you're doing crazy calculations or whatever, but right now, you just look really angry!"
The bespectacled boy's mouth fell open a little as he watched Nagisa slowly bend and warp his ice cream stick by biting on it. He didn't realize that Nagisa noticed things like that about him. His eyebrows immediately relaxed.
Clear, pink eyes glanced at him quickly. "See? That's better!" he smiled.
Rei felt a little ashamed. "Sorry," he said in a quiet voice. Even though he was just letting his ice cream melt and drip into the space between his knees, the blonde no longer bothered him about it. "I just feel like I'm such a burden to everyone."
Nagisa stopped playing with the ice cream stick and listened without speaking.
"Everyone's so patient with me and never blames me for anything, but I still want to do more. It's not enough... I'm not enough," he said, eyebrows pinching together again. Rei sighed. "All I can do is swim butterfly, and I'm not even very good at that..."
"Well," Nagisa replied, his voice uncharacteristically calm and even, "I guess you can look at it that way." He started to kick his feet again. "But if you think about it, without you, Rei-chan, we wouldn't even have a chance to swim together, right?"
Rei's expression darkened. "It doesn't have to be me. Anyone else who joins the swim club would work just as well. Maybe they'd be even better than me."
All Nagisa ever said was that if it wasn't Rei, then it'd be no good, but he couldn't have actually expected Rei to believe that. The swim club had an entire high school to pick and choose members from. Surely, even if it wasn't him, they would be fine.
"Do you really think that?"
There was a pause. Then, very firmly and self-spitefully, Rei answered. "Yes."
Nagisa didn't say anything for a long time, and the heavy atmosphere persisted.
"You know," the shorter boy started after a moment, "I might not be as good as Mako-chan is but I have faith in myself when it comes to reading people!" His eyes were half-shut as he spoke, and his feet scuffed at the floor thoughtfully. Unlike the usually over-exuberant boy Rei was used to, Nagisa was much more subdued and serious.
"And I think Rei-chan is a perfect addition to our team! I told you that I wanted to see Rei-chan use theory and logic to swim as beautifully as possible, right? Well, I'm positive you can do it. We all know that you're doing your best, after all." The blonde's hair fell a little into his eyes as he tilted his head and glanced at Rei.
The taller boy opened his mouth to speak, but he was cut off by Nagisa right away. "Nuh-uh! I know exactly what you're going to say! 'Please forgive me for my rudeness and for being an idiot!' or something, right?"
Rei didn't have the chance to correct Nagisa's choice of words but only smiled helplessly.
"Well, I can't do that, Rei-chan!" he said huffily, crossing his arms. Rei almost had a panic attack, but then he noticed the sly side glance he was getting from the blonde. "Because I can't forgive you for something I wasn't even angry at you for." He unfolded his arms and smiled cheekily.
"Nagisa-kun!" Rei cried out indignantly. The blonde was always playing him for a fool.
Without apology, Nagisa laughed. "No one's gonna blame you for working hard, Rei-chan," he said, "Least of all me. So don't worry about it, okay? If Rei-chan is trying his best, then that's all that matters! Just work at your own pace and you'll be okay. I'm sure of it!"
The taller boy chuckled a little under his breath. "Thank you, Nagisa-kun."
He nodded briefly. "Yep! No problem." A second later, he added, "You just wasted all of your ice cream, Rei-chan," and laughed.
It was warm when he woke up. Judging from how orange the sunlight coming through his window was, it was probably sometime in the late afternoon.
Rei breathed out and closed his eyes again. It felt so nice just to lie in bed.
His throat still hurt from the cold that he was very slowly recovering from and every breath he drew burned a little. He nuzzled his head deeper into his pillow and let the blanket he had wrapped around his head pull tighter.
The dredges of summer were dragging its languid fingers through the room, making it borderline unbearably hot, but Rei couldn't care less about how sweaty and sticky and suffocating he was getting underneath his blankets. He just wanted to stay there for a long time, preferably forever.
He breathed in deeply again, until something caught in the back of his throat, started tickling, and sent him into a violent coughing fit. His coughing didn't subside until tears formed at the corners of his eyes and he had curled up a little. Without bothering to wipe the moisture away from his flushed face, he lay there listlessly.
A few minutes passed in silence as Rei blinked slowly, eyes not really looking at anything. Everything was too blurry for him to see without his glasses anyway, and he was simply too exhausted to exert any energy on focusing.
The door to his room opened, and his mother's voice trickled in quietly.
"Rei-kun?"
He didn't answer or react.
Slowly, she drew up next to his bed and sat down on the edge. She set a bottle of sports drink onto his nightstand and turned to look at Rei. Her hand was cool and comforting as she brushed back his hair from his face and felt his forehead. She had long ago stopped trying to convince him to unravel the blankets around him but only checked once in a while to make sure he wasn't making his fever worse.
"It's been a while since you drank anything. Come on, sit up," she said in a soft, cajoling voice.
Still, Rei didn't move. He closed his eyes.
His mother waited for a second. "Rei-kun," she said. Her voice betrayed nothing of exasperation or impatience.
Very slowly, she began to stroke the back of his head, which was covered by his blanket.
There was a long moment of hesitation before she started to speak again. "It's been a few weeks already." Her hand stopped for a second as she tried to choose her words carefully. "He'd be terribly sad if he saw you like this…."
And then, the barriers and walls and apathy and stillness that Rei had surrounded himself with broke down.
All of it, everything, the sadness and self-loathing and frustration and guilt and pain and hate and
Everything.
He opened his mouth for a split-second, letting a strangled noise come from his throat before hot tears began to drip from his puffy eyes and onto his damp pillow. He was incoherent to the world and himself.
Rei had read so many books on coping with grief and depression before, just to prepare for the worst. He had, at the time, thought that he would be able to quell such frivolous emotions of sadness and grief with a firm mind and logical thinking, but he had been wrong. So very wrong.
The books never said it was easy to get over such feelings, but he had always assumed it would be. After all, Rei had so much faith in his own ability as a rational thinker.
But now, lying in bed with a persistent on-and-off cold, blankets upon blankets piled and wrapped around him, hair greasy from not having showered for days, and face streaked with fresh and old tears, he was absolutely pathetic.
His voice wasn't his own as he sobbed and shook, coarse yells filling his room in sharp, hitching crescendos and abrupt rests which cut off at the next sudden accent. His mother embraced him the best she could, reassuring him with accepting silence and mutual grief.
Every day, Rei thought about how things shouldn't have ended up like this, and every day, he cried and grieved and wished that they hadn't come to this conclusion.
Sometimes, when he drifted off into feverish dreams, he dreamt that he did get a second chance and things didn't turn out this way.
He dreamt always of that one person, his subconscious trying very hard to fill in the days and time that his conscious couldn't. Reality couldn't provide him with those moments anymore.
No one would pull at his ankle during kicking drills in swim practice. Class time would pass without him getting hit in the head with little balls of wadded paper. He could eat lunch minus the fear of having his favorite morsels getting picked out and eaten.
And Nagisa would never force him to buy him ice cream or candy after practice.
The blonde would no longer burst into his room and flop onto his bed like he owned it.
His name wouldn't be littered with affectionate "chan"s attached to it and practically shoved into his face as Nagisa leaned in too close.
There wouldn't be any more moments where he would look over and see the smaller boy smiling at him with bright and curious eyes.
Nobody would cling onto his arm or back or hand while he tried to walk somewhere.
The world was so quiet now.
The familiar warmth, which Rei never even realized he had gotten so used to, was gone, and he missed it so, so much. He missed it with all his heart and body, and he ached all over, because a part of him was missing, and it was all his fault.
It was his fault.
His fault for being so insecure, his fault for going out that night, his fault for putting everyone in danger, his fault that Nagisa was gone.
It was his fault and it was his fault and it was HIS FAULT, but nobody would blame him or scold him or get angry at him.
Because
No one's gonna blame you for working hard, Rei-chan. Least of all me.
Because
If Rei-chan is trying his best, then that's all that matters!
Because
You'll be okay.
Because
I'm sure of it!
And Rei wished it was him who died and not Nagisa.
A/N: Written for the drabble prompt: "When saving Rei, Nagisa stops breathing. Rei fails to perform CPR successfully and is found by Makoto and Haruka. A little drama is always loved~"