Rin's hand was hot and slick with sweat like the sweet salted ocean. Haruka didn't mind, however - the wet feeling was welcome in his own hand, which had long since gone dry under the sun. He hoped he wouldn't shrivel.
They were looking at the tree from their elementary days, where faintly upon a weather-worn brick the phrase 'for the team' was scrawled in a messy child's manuscript. Rin had since grown quite dexterous and his handwriting had vastly improved, but Haruka found the messiness to be charming, in its own way.
"Hey, Haru," Rin began, eyes still trained upon the tree, as though he desired to avoid looking his boyfriend in the eye, "when did we fall in love?" He felt his dark brows raise slightly as he wondered where the question had come from and then furrow as he sought to pinpoint the moment in which he'd first felt drawn to Rin. He recalled his silly introduction to the class - though Haruka was quieter then than he was now, he'd wanted to talk to Rin from the beginning. But that didn't signify love,did it?
"I think," he said, considering it thoughtfully, "that I first loved you when you came back from Australia. When we met each other by the train. You know, with the weird scarf and all." He hadn't realized how much he had missed Rin's company until he had gone - and as they said, absence makes the heart grew fonder. It was Rin's turn to face him and look disgruntled.
"The scarf? Is that really the only detail you remember?" he scoffed, sitting down on the bricks and tugging Haru with him. The brunette sat close enough so that their thighs would touch. In response to Rin's criticism, he shrugged. "Whatever," Rin replied, rolling his eyes. "Guess I loved you first." He put a hand on either side of Haru's neck and leaned in to kiss him, but his lips met Haruka's hand, of all things. Irritated, he pulled away and opened his mouth to demand what'd gotten into him when Haru cut him off.
"No, you didn't. I liked you first." Rin snorted; was he really going to deal with this?
"I first liked you when I saw you do that perfect dive at the swim club. Remember?" he replied impatiently, squirming closer in order to steal a kiss before practice.
"If we're going by like, then I liked you when you introduced yourself at school," Haruka argued, leaning away from Rin's searching lips. He was right; he knew he'd fallen for the redhead first. Otherwise, he surely wouldn't have been such an asshole when he'd returned from Australia. Rin raised his voice.
"But you never talked to me till the swim club! How did you know that you liked me without even talking to me?" he yelled, having dropped Haru's hand and paused his advances.
"I just knew."
"That's not an answer! If you say that, then I can say I 'just knew' when I saw you at the tournament before I joined the swim club!"
"That doesn't count."
"Does too!"
"If you liked me so much," Haruka retorted, "why were you so mean when you moved back this year?" Rin cut himself off for a moment - being so rude to Haru and his friends was not among his proudest moments. He'd been trying to forget.
"That doesn't matter!" he snapped back. He refused to relent until he'd proven to his boyfriend that he'd loved him first!
"Well," Ms. Amakata began, the unclear echoes of Rin and Haruka's argument reaching the ears of the swim club and Samekuza's team, "as the American author, Ray Bradbury once wrote, 'we cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over.'" The two teams nodded absently at the teacher, giggling at the argument that the former enemies were now having.
"Hey, Rei-chan," Nagisa laughed, hooking his arm's around Rei's neck from behind, "when do you think we first fell in love?" Rei pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and hooked his arms around Nagisa's legs, successfully boosting him into a piggyback.
"When you helped get me out of the ocean from the island," he replied decisively, shifting the smaller boy around so that he could rest comfortably on his back.
"Really? I think it was when I asked you to join the swim team!" Rei never managed to figure out that Nagisa intentionally pushed his buttons to get into an argument of their own.