I know. I know. I have Seiya stuff to do BUT THIS WAS CUUUUUTE!
Disclaimer: if I owned Free! it would be much much longer.
::.::.::
Makoto took care of Haru. It was something that everyone who knew them just understood implicitly without mentioning. Even Makoto really had no idea how it happened.
Well actually that was half-true.
Makoto-chan and Haruka-chan had both grown up in the same neighborhood, one of the oldest ones in Iwatobi that to this day housed families that have been fishermen for generations. They were the only two children their age in the immediate area. It was inevitable that they found each other just by sheer process of elimination.
But that didn't explain that special touch that Makoto seemed to have for taking care of things. That didn't explain Haru's knack for stumbling to trouble through no fault nor intention of his own.
All Makoto really knew was that he'd been running after Haru since they were small, apologizing for the smaller boy when need be, and coddling him as he wanted. Growing older, that didn't stop. What Haru wanted, Makoto would support. What Haru did wrong Makoto would softly scold him for before apologizing appropriately. In that way, Haru was both his best friend and his child.
He had other 'children'. Reiko-chan from class 2-B who was always tripping over her untied shoelaces, that year he and Haru were in different classes. Kouji-chan from piano class who always forgot his pactice book in the cubby next to Makoto's. But they all grew up and drifted away. Only Haru stayed silly from day to day, year to year, and kept needing Makoto to take care of him.
Then they met Rin-chan, and right away Makoto kind of knew, in a small corner of his heart, that Rin-chan needed taking care of too. So take care he did as gently as always, right up until Rin-chan left for Australia. Even after Rin-chan had long stopped replying to his letters, every year, Makoto dutifully sent (and made Haru send) him a New Year's card.
Then there was Nagisa.
When they first met, it was in the swim club, and the little blonde was just another classmate. He was enthusiastic and bright, and Makoto never found himself bored around the perpetually happy boy. It was really through Rin and Haru that he got to know Nagisa any better, and swimming with him was fun. At first he was sure Nagisa would also become one of his 'children', and maybe he would stay that way. After all, there was just something about the younger child that begged people to coddle him. He was wide-eyed and curious and a little bit clumsy, and it tugged at Makoto's natural protectiveness.
But Nagisa never really did become his, and Makoto was even more confused when, although the little blonde hadn't changed or outgrown him, Nagisa drifted away.
...at least he still replied to Makoto's New Year's cards.
Time came and went and by high school he was a different person, stronger, wiser, more mature. Haru had changed too, and if anything, after junior high, he needed Makoto all more. That was fine. In a way Makoto needed him more too, just to be his blunt awkward Haru-esque self.
And of course, Makoto took care of Haru. That was a given.
In their second year, they met Nagisa again, the same as ever. If possible he looked even smaller than he had before, naïve, wide-eyed, and innocent, the perfect picture of a freshman. It was so easy to reestablish the old routine. Take care of Haru, take care of Nagisa.
Only it simply wasn't possible to take care of Nagisa.
Unlike Haru, whose only real problem was his passive complacency, Nagisa was the most enthusiastic person Makoto had ever met and perhaps (so he suspected) would ever meet. These past four years had done nothing to change that, only if anything, he resisted Makoto's motherly attempts even more stubbornly than before. To be honest, in a deep dark place Makoto refused to acknowledge...he was kind of hurt. Yet still, he followed the overexcited Nagisa to the old swim club.
But then they met Rin and he had no time left to be hurt, as shell shocked as he was at how predatory Rin had become. To his shame he retreated half a step, torn between whether to be angry, or to be sad, finally being overwhelmed by both. Now more than ever, Rin needed someone to take care of him. At he same time, Makoto couldn't quite forgive the redhead for hurting Haru in the way Makoto knew he had. Just like he knew that it was for Rin's sake Haru had quit swimming club three years ago.
Only Nagisa, brilliant unperturbed Nagisa surged on forward and stoked the fire.
For half a second Makoto panicked, still reeling over how quickly what should have been a happy occasion disintegrated and how he was goign to run damage control. It took another half a second for him to realize that he didn't have tod do anything. In Nagisa's own cheerfully unconventional way, he had already effectively diffused the situation and redirected much of the tension elsewhere.
At the time Makoto was too relieved to be impressed. When he mused over the memory much later, he would be much more appropriately awed.
They started a swim club...somehow. In fact he wasn't even sure that their ragtag group of four actually constituted as a club...by all rights it really shouldn't be, but somehow Nagisa pressed it through, the second of his incredible achievements.
And then there was Rei.
If nothing else could be said about Nagisa, he had a knack for finding people. Makoto would have never looked in the track and field club to find a swim team member. He also would have never persisted for a week and a half to nag said person into joining, and he certainly wouldn't have kept up after it was abundantly clear that said member didn't know how to swim at all.
But then Makoto wasn't Nagisa.
Nagisa's reason was that Rei's name made his addition to their group inevitable...there were no words to describe his thoughts on the matter.
Well he had never been one to refuse a friend, and Rei seemed willing enough, even if training him was a bit hard-wearing.
Makoto could not believe his eyes when he saw that butterfly stroke. Oh it was nowhere near as beautiful as Rin's. Even if his form was perfect to a T Rei was still as clumsy in the water, but it wasn't bad by any means. Still, their newest member had, all on his own, managed to figure out the butterfly stroke, the most difficult style a swimmer could choose.
Rei was either so ingenious he was beyond human comprehension. Or he was so bad it turned right back around and became unexpected genius. Either way he had to hand it to Nagisa and whatever strange divination magic the younger boy had on his side.
It was thanks to Rei, actually that he finally understood why he could never take care of the happy blonde.
At first Makoto's instinct had been to take care of Rei too, because gods know the younger boy needed it...badly. So he toed the middle line, still fussing after Haru but making sure to be always be within reach and with a word of encouragement should Rei ever need to call.
But the one time Rei did call Makoto freaked and they both nearly drowned. Makoto had never felt more like a failure.
And he'd never felt more relieved in his life when Rei and Nagisa came running up to him through the rain. He would have hugged them only it's been too long that Nagisa's been away and Rei might have been weirded out if he'd acted so carelessly. So he made up for it by not letting them out of his sight for the rest of the night. He was nothing but grateful that Haru just went along with it. To his surprise, Rei didn't need him. Nagisa was one thing, but Rei wasn't scared or hurt, just sad and regretful... a good deal more comfortable than Makoto himself. And that was when he realized.
It was Nagisa.
It was always Nagisa, sweet, brilliant, clumsy Nagisa, who as it turned out was nowhere near as clumsy as he pretended to be. It was Nagisa who surrounded and soothed Rei. It was Nagisa who kept them all preoccupied enough that no one had time to laspe into crippling doubt. By playing the clumsy one, by looking as if he needed to be cared for, Nagisa was already taking care of them all.
No wonder Makoto couldn't ever help him. In this field, Nagisa was an old pro too.
And if Mako's child was the obstinate dolphin. Then Nagisa's child was the resident genius boy.
The hurt he held in his chest evaporated and while they lay teetering between waking and sleep stretched out on the sand. He weakly brushed a single hand against Nagisa's pale, scratched shoulder.
"Thank you Nagisa." He muttered beneath his breath. "For everything."
Nagisa shushed him quietly and then pretended to be fast asleep.