AN: Almost gave up and called this "angsty swimmer babies"... Which is a pretty good description of it, to be honest. Title from Imogen Heap's song "You Know Where To Find Me".
Disclaimer: If I owned it, we'd be getting a season 2... oh wait, we are. (I still don't own it.)
Haru is not dead. This is something Makoto has to remember on the bad days.
He feeds the stray kitten that hangs around Haru's house all the time, makes sure to smile up at Haru as he does it. Haru is still for a moment; then he reaches down to pet the little fluffy thing. Today might be a good day, Makoto thinks, watching the tension ease out of Haru just for that moment as the kitten arches into the touch: some days Haru would just look blank and wait for Makoto to be finished.
Makoto would still do it, though, and not for any reason he can put into words. All these small actions. It feels like building something, weaving something around Haru, to keep him warm. Like knitting a scarf around him stitch by stitch. That's probably a terrible analogy. Makoto has never knitted anything in his life.
When Makoto thinks Haru isn't dead he doesn't mean Haru is still breathing. (Although of course he's grateful for that, of course, and he tries not to think of Haru so small in that great swallowing sea, thinks instead of the tension between Haru's eyebrows fading the moment the water touches his skin.) He means… he scarcely knows what he means.
He means you could be forgiven for thinking Haru's a computer that's shut down.
It's not that Haru's behaviour's changed so much from what it was before. When Makoto tries to put his finger on the change he just ends up with parallel after parallel: Haru is quiet and reticent now, where before… he was quiet and reticent. Haru doesn't volunteer for anything now – Haru never volunteered for anything then. No teacher would notice any difference in his class participation. Every definable quality is the same, and yet Makoto's sure he's not imagining things.
"It's getting warmer," he says. "I think in a few weeks we'll be able to swim in the ocean again." Something flickers in Haru's eyes, his lips twitch. Makoto can feel his own smile grow warmer in answer, Haru's response putting a little fire into what was previously just central heating. Everything's worth it for this: the quiet reminder that the Haru Makoto wholeheartedly adored as a child – the Haru he still loves, now, if a little differently – is still there. The flicker of life.
Haru is a computer on standby, all non-essential functions suspended, Makoto thinks, keeping up a stream of easy safe chatter to insulate them both. Haru is an animal and this is the winter of his life and he is hibernating. The Haru of before is sleeping beneath the surface, safe and sound. Makoto has read about hermits who remove themselves from the world and take refuge in remote caves to think about life, there was a movie on the TV last night with a character like that, and it was a terrible movie but Makoto cried at the sad moments anyway.
Haru has withdrawn from the world, but not into a cave: into himself. And Haru knows how to keep himself more remote than any cave Makoto has ever seen in a movie. People used to think, when they were both little, that because Haru was quiet he was an easy target. Haru never fought back: he just went ahead and did his own thing anyway, and he looked at them with those eyes and they knew they couldn't ever touch him. When Makoto hears the phrase passive resistance he doesn't think of saintly old men, he thinks of those cool silent eyes and the way Haru made his way so quietly and so resolutely through the world, water through stone. Now all of that quiet strength is turned inward. Makoto sighs inwardly, casting around for a new topic to fill Haru's ears with, and thinks he'd make a very bad poet. Too melodramatic.
He can pinpoint roughly when it took place; he can't begin to guess what it was. Something happened, something had to. Some event that did something to Haru, made it so he never felt safe, so he had to detach, detach, detach from the world and go to ground, get under cover, walk numb or half-asleep through a distant untouchable world – something that shook Haru's world apart. The Big Bang in reverse, and Haru contracts, folding in on himself…
Makoto is the very opposite of a violent person, but if he ever finds out who was involved in that event, he will do – something terrible. Something violent so they can understand exactly the scope of their atrocity, the scope of what they did, because whatever they did to Haru, whatever form it took, that was an act of violence.
He loves Haru – he can admit it when it doesn't have to be out loud and in words, when it's safe and quiet in his own head – and he would choose being around Haru on the worst day of his life over being around anyone else on the best. (Which is probably weird and almost certainly inappropriate and this is why he doesn't say these things out loud, because out of the two of them Makoto's the one who got the ability to judge a social situation.) And heaven knows there are days when they're in the water and Haru's eyes are alight and it feels like nothing could ever be better. But there are also nights when Makoto lies awake and tells himself he's not crying into his pillow and just – And just. Misses Haru. Lies there missing him like someone cut out a chunk of Makoto and he can't find it, and weeps silently and helplessly into the pillow, and where did Haru go? Where did he go and why couldn't Makoto stop it?
They've reached school. "You've got Art today, right, Haru?" Makoto says, and is rewarded with a slight smile. Art is a little like water for Haru, if only a little. When Haru's in water – it's fascinating – you can see the weight come off his shoulders and the strength flood back into him, you can see this self-assurance he never has anywhere else. Like the water is home. The only place he can breathe. But art classes work well enough as a temporary fix: they lend Haru a little strength, enough to keep him going until the next time he can immerse himself in water.
Haru isn't dead, Makoto thinks, and there's a little more hope in the thought today. He's just sleeping his way through the winter. And Makoto will keep building this fragile springtime around him until the pale sunlight grows rich and golden,
and the thaw comes.