CHAPTER ONE

It hurt.

Oh God did it hurt.

His vision was clouded, his mind was hazy; he couldn't walk. He couldn't breathe. He had used up all of his power and he was using the last remains of his strength to-

"The number you are calling is currently out of reach. Please check the number and try your call again, or-"

Fuckdammit!

Bloodied, dirtied fingers struggled with the keypad, and a thumb jabbed the redial button, staining the pad with red. His body throbbed with ache and his chest constricted at the voice coming out of the receiver; he is not going to cry, damn it! Not now!

"The number you are calling is currently out of reach. Please-"

This is ridiculous! Why won't he pick up?!

With one press at the pad, the line was cut and the same number was redialed."The number you are calling is currently out of reach. Pl-"

Again.

"The number you are calling is currently out of-"

And again.

Mako, pick up..! Please pick up!

"The number you are calling is currently-"

And again.

It hurts, Makoto! Please pick up! Please! I need you!

"The number you are calling-"

Where are you?!

"The number y-"

I'm sorry, please just-

"The nu-"

Makoto!

"The number you are calling is currently out of reach. Please check the number and try your call again, or leave a message after the beep."

Please...

When Makoto woke up, it was with a pounding headache and strong wave of nausea.

His eyes felt heavy, but his body was awake and urging him to move. The soft, dim light coming from the windows told him that the thick dark-blue curtains were closed and he was slightly thankful for it. He had never woken up with such a bad hangover and he wondered how many shots he had downed last night. Thank the heavens for his strong stomach. He was never much of a drinker due to his awful tolerance to alcohol, but his fights with Rin after these few years were finally taking a toll on him.

Rin.

Speaking of Rin..

Where was he?

It was the weekends – that Makoto could remember, he'd not go out for drinking on a weekday – and from the way the sun was glaring at the closed curtains he'd say it was now somewhere close to noon.

God, was he really that messed up last night? He'd have to guess he was, since he now faintly recalled the main reason why he had that drink; a fight with Rin that turned physical – and almost bloody, if not for Makoto's walking off at the last minute before his anger took the better of him.

But why they fought, was still a vague memory in the back of his mind. A surge of guilt filled him as his chest constricted. He was pretty sure it was about jealousy, now that he thought about it.

And Haru.

Most of their "bloody" fights began because of the "Haruka topic", anyway. Either it was because Rin felt that Makoto was comparing him to the blue-eyed H2Ophiliac, or because Makoto felt that Rin didn't need him as much as Haruka did. Well, those were two out of many a dozen reasons. But somehow, this time... Makoto felt that there was something else.

Ah crap, his head hurt.

Maybe he should just think about this later...

But judging by the coldness beside him and the silence filling the whole of the apartment told him that Rin really didn't come home last night; Rin usually made up his side of the bed when he went out for his morning jogs and usually cranked up the TV or put on some loud music to help him focus on his assignments as soon as he got back.

Makoto started to worry.

The silence was eerily uncomfortable – haunting, perhaps? – and it made Makoto shudder. He didn't like this, this sense of being all alone, and he was quite sure it wasn't just because of his fear towards the unseen.

His mother hen instincts kicked in.

There was something wrong, there just was; but he oddly seemed unable to put his finger on it. He wanted to call Rin and make sure that the Aquarius was okay; but he knew that calling the red-head would most probably lead to more fights since said butterfly swimmer hated being coddled when they were having a fight. Rin saw Makoto's affection and worry as a way of cheating sometimes; a way of taking Rin's heart without really solving the matter at hand (in which Rin was right, sometimes).

And honestly, no matter how worried he was, the thought of another fight simply brought on another headache pounding at Makoto's skull.

Yeah, no.

He'll just wait until Rin had calmed down, came home, and was willing to talk.

Besides, this wasn't the first time this happened, anyway.

"Makoto!"

That voice, accompanied with that excessively loud banging on his front door, was a tell-tale hint to the 23 year old Scorpio regarding of whom his visitor was. Nobody else but his childhood friend would have the gall to bang on his door – ignoring the doorbell sitting right there – but the way Haruka yelled his name, just that once, in that tone of his, made the tall young man somehow feel a bit uncomfortable. He could tell it was urgent; he just hoped there was nothing wrong.

Dropping a towel on top of his wet mop of dirty blonde hair, Tachibana Makoto made his way over to the door in quick steps as he rubbed the towel to his head in an attempt to dry his hair.

"Haru, what's wrong?" he started immediately as he opened up the door, stepping aside to let his raven friend in. The way Haruka nearly barged inside – or, well, as much as one Nanase Haruka could barge – made something in his stomach drop. The glare that Haruka aimed at him as he closed the door behind him wasn't helping much, either.

"Haru, wha-"

"Where's your phone."

There, that question. That question held a tone, a tone that made the question sound more like a testy statement than an actual inquiry. A tone that Haruka only used when he was impatient or angry. And Haru was rarely angry.

And, well, come to think of it, yeah. Where was his phone?

He remembered putting it in his pocket along with his wallet and keys before he left... And he surely didn't put in his jacket pocket since he remembered one of them had a hole in it. He also had his phone with him as he was on the way to the bar since he remembered telling Haruka of his whereabouts. He's quite sure he didn't touch his phone at all while he was at the bar, either.

So, then... Where was it?

The morning just went on so quietly without a single call or mail whatsoever that he didn't even think of his phone! Oh shit. Maybe that's why he had been feeling so uneasy? Or, wait. If Haru came here just to ask him about his phone, did that mean that Haru actually called him about something and he didn't pick up? Or maybe-

"Makoto."

Ah, right. The question.

"I... don't know."

Haruka raised an eyebrow.

"No, really, I can't remember," Makoto frowned, thinking, "I – Hold on. Just, just hold on, I'll be back," and the young man rushed off to find his jeans.

There was something wrong with Makoto, and Haruka could tell just by looking at the young man run from one room to another in the seemingly-futile-search of his phone.

Makoto seemed so disconnected with the world; distracted. And he was quite sure it wasn't just because of the alcohol. Haruka knew about the fight with Rin, of course; he was the first person Makoto had contacted when the tall brunette decided to go out drinking. His childhood friend was never good at holding his liquor and the younger one had called him to come looking for him if he didn't call the next day.

And of course, Makoto never did call, which was one of the reasons why Haruka had rushed all the way from his house to his friend's apartment.

It worried him, this.

Makoto's relationship with Rin wasn't smooth; never was, never had been, even after three and a half or more so years. Fights here and there in all kinds of form; ranging from small arguments to quarrels to real actual fights that involved one of them – or sometimes even both, if Rin had taken it too far – sporting at least one bruise.

They were opposites, these two, and Haruka never could fathom how they had actually ended up getting together. They both hated quarrels, but one dealt with it by acting as if it never happened whereas the other dealt with it by dealing with it; and of course, it would almost always end up in Rin getting even more furious.

Makoto avoided conflict like the plague; he hated it and simply just pretended they never existed, letting problems pile up. Haruka knew this habit way too well but had found his way around it, thank goodness.

Rin, on the other hand, liked his problems solved the instant they were discovered. And their problems were usually discovered in the midst of yelling and arguments. Second guesses why they almost never got anything solved – if not for Haru's mediation, of course, and he honestly felt as if he was a part of their relationship sometimes.

You'd think they'd be a bit more mature at the age of 23 and do something about it. Then again, it seemed that they were too much in love – or at least, Makoto was – and if both his friends were happy with how they were (no matter how destructive this actually seemed to him) then hey, what right did he have to get a say in it? Besides, they've held on for this long. Maybe there was still hope for them.

Maybe.

Which Haruka highly doubted, to be honest, but-

"Haru..."

Ah, Makoto's back.

"...?"

The steps his taller friend took were slow, searching, uncertain, as those emerald orbs focused itself on the screen of the green flip-phone. Makoto's eyes were filled with worry as he was drowned in thought, and Haruka knew he wouldn't like what'd come next as the brunette stood beside him.

"Haru, I..." Makoto's voice suddenly faltered, and with a sigh, the young man offered up his phone for his childhood friend to take.

You have 3 message(s) and 23 missed call(s).

Well, that's interesting. Let's see, then.

From : Haru-chan
I'm coming over.
[12:47, 10/06/2014]

From : Haru-chan
Makoto. Where are you.
[12:15, 10/06/2014]

From : Haru-chan
Pick up the phone.
[12:00, 10/06/2014]

Well, no surprises there. Those were all the messages that Haruka himself had sent when Makoto hadn't called him in the morning before he got worried and decided that he should just come over if he wanted to make sure his big innocent oaf of a mother hen best friend hadn't gotten himself killed during his trip out to get drunk.

"The missed calls, Haru. The calls," came Makoto's forlorn voice from beside him and Haruka exited the menu to switch to the call logs. What he found made it feel as if someone had dropped a brick in his stomach.

Haru-chan (5 missed calls)
Rinrin (18 missed calls)

"Ha...?"

Eighteen? Really?

A click on Rin's highlighted name showed the details of the log, and Haruka's azure orbs widened. The red-head had called Makoto at two-thirty in the morning with each call differing by only a few seconds. Rin had actually managed to try and call his boyfriend eighteen times in the span of five minutes, only to receive the operator, just like Haruka had this morning.

Makoto's fidgeting beside him was a drop-dead obvious tell-tale sign of a soon-to-come-breakdown. Yay.

"Haru, I- He called me. He tried reaching me. Eighteen times! Eighteen, Haru, eighteen times in five minutes! I- He- Oh God-" and Haruka could only watch as the orca slowly sank to the ground, knees bunched in front of his chest as his butt found the floor.

Yep, the breakdown is starting.

"He tried reaching me, and I didn't pick up! My phone was dead and he just...!" Haru could hear him ramble on from beside him on the floor, "Eighteen times! I – Oh God he needed me and I just had to...!"

Haruka had always wondered how a boy with a body as big and strong as Makoto's could look so small and fragile at times like these.

Slowly, the raven crouched beside his friend and hugged him, letting the taller boy bury his face in his shoulder.

"Stop worrying, Mako. Rin's fine," and the dolphin could feel his best friend's iron grip on the back of his shirt as he tried his best to soothe him, "He really is."

"How do you know?" came the dreaded muffled question somewhere there by the crook of his neck and Haru sighed. Thank God his relationship with water wasn't this complicated.

"Calm down, and I'll tell you."

Matsuoka Rin was definitely not a crybaby.

But then again, it was hard for Rin not to cry, really, and the cold night air didn't do his puffy eyes much justice, either.

He knew it was wrong of him to just storm out of the apartment after a fight like that – it wasn't the first time he ran away, though it is in the past two years – but he knew Makoto was as aggravated as he was and that the brunette wouldn't have the thought to worry about him anyway. The fight was stupid, like the rest of all their fights, really, and Rin honestly couldn't figure out how this one actually got to the topic of his best friend Sousuke.

He remembered it starting with Makoto repeating his bad habit of getting himself too worked up about something that was obviously not his fault nor his responsibility, and Rin remembered himself being so tired and cranky because of the dumb-ass assignment he was working on that he just got fed-up with his boyfriend's illogical whining and worrying that he just snapped.

I mean why in the fucking hell would Makoto possibly think he was responsible for his classmate's inability to adapt himself in class and thus fail terribly on tests?! Him not being kind enough does not alter that idiot's decision against lending his notes! Why can't the guy understand that he can't take the blame for everything?! Rin's been repeating the same lecture from since they were in high school, fuck damn it!

"Asshole," the shark mumbled to himself, "Stupid, idiot, dumbass mother hen. Always thinking about other people..."

But then of course Makoto got defensive and worked his martyr-logic on him, which of course got the shark even more aggravated. They then somehow reached the topic of Haru, of how Makoto always mothered and took such a responsibility of Haru that he barely had time for Rin; and suddenly the brunette mentioned Sousuke.

He mentioned of how Rin had been all over his childhood friend since they met each other again and that it's fucking fair for Makoto to mother Haru if Rin was going to be clingy to Sousuke while it's so not fair, not in the slightest bit because it simply wasn't the same-

And then the next thing Rin knew, he was already against the wall with Makoto's lower arm on his throat, pinning him there. He had steeled himself for a blow, but then Makoto had just let go and then Rin just ran. He took his jacket and stormed out into the streets, and now here he was, crying his manly tears as he walked aimlessly through the city.

Rin sighed.

He knew he was wrong.

He knew it was his fault for lashing out.

But really, this tension between them is getting unbearable.

"Makoto..."

Maybe he should go home.

His phone told him he had been walking for an hour or two already anyway, and Rin decided that after he finishes this last walk around the block, he'll go pick up some instant curry by the twenty-four hour supermarket as an apology.

Little did he expect the pair of strong arms hauling him bodily into the nearest alleyway, pinning him to the wall as the reek of alcohol assaulted his nostrils and panic flooded his brain.

He could feel big, unfamiliar hands roaming his body, probably looking for his wallet and phone... Except that his phone wasn't exactly beneath his shirt, and Rin was sure that these guys would at least have half a brain to know that, too.

"Let go of me, you son of a bitch!" Rin yelled into faces he could not quite see, and a sudden stinging pain on his left arm caught him off-guard, allowing one of those big hands to take a handful of his wine-red locks and slam his head into the wall.

"GAH!"

And as his head hit the brick wall, Rin opened his eyes and bolted up on the bed, fingers clenching the sheets as if it were his life line.

Why couldn't he stop replaying last night, even in sleep?

Saying that Makoto was freaking out was an understatement.

"Mako, calm down," came Haruka's voice from beside him, but how in the world could he calm down?! After all, receiving word from your best friend that your boyfriend had been raped in an alleyway the night you had a fight and went off drinking as said boyfriend called for help wasn't exactly something you could digest and get over with in ten minutes.

"How can you say that, Haru?!" Makoto practically wailed as he buried his head in his hands, "He was calling me! He needed my help and I was – I was drinking for fuck's sake!"

Did Makoto just swear?

Huh.

Rin's really rubbing off on him, then.

"There was nothing you coud've done about it," Haru mumbled, and he knew that the raven was just trying to calm him down; but simple-Haru-logic was something Makoto didn't need right now. What he needed was to be able to turn back time!

"I could've stayed home and waited for him to come home! I could have- I could have run after him!"

A small voice in the back of his head mocked him, asking if he actually could have run after the redhead with all of the anger pent up inside of him – which suddenly reminded Makoto of what he had done just before Rin had went off. He had shoved the older one into the wall and nearly punched him – Makoto could feel the guilt literally choke him right now – and the brunette remembered that the only thing holding him back at the time was a small flicker of fear in Rin's eyes.

Oh God.

No wonder Rin ran away.

"He hadn't run off on me in the past two years, Haru! I should have- Oh God this is all my fault! I-"

But before he could finish that sentence, Makoto was already on the floor with a throbbing jaw, Haruka standing above him with his fist still in the air. Yeah, even his best friend has a limit for his antics, it seemed.

"Calm down, or I won't take you to where Rin is."

Sometimes, the Scorpio wondered whom was actually taking care of whom.

Yamazaki Sousuke was a calm man.

Well, maybe not calm calm, but he was as collected as anyone could get, especially now when he is dealing with his traumatized best friend lying in his bed with tears threatening to spill from ruby orbs.

"Rin?"

It was frightening, really, having to predict what was going to happen. Sousuke knew what Rin had to go through when he was in Australia; he also knew of all the sexual harassments the other had to endure because of his small stature and feminine-looking face. It wasn't until he had hit his growth spurt that Rin managed to fight back; and even then it was still hard.

The emotions that flashed by Rin's eyes that day when he spilled his guts out to him was unforgettable; and now Sousuke recognized those exact same – or maybe even other – emotions in those beautiful pair of ruby eyes struggling to keep tears from falling.

"Rin, it's okay."

The red-head merely shook his head, and Sousuke could see how he was trying to grip the sheets even tighter, no matter how white his knuckles already were. If he didn't know any better, the brunette would think that Rin wanted to rip his sheets and blankets apart. Sighing at his close friend's stubbornness, Sousuke moved to sit beside him on the bed and collected the lean body into a tight hug.

"S-Sou-!" Rin protested (of course he would, the prideful idiot), but his attempts at breaking free were weak, and it made Sousuke tighten his embrace even more. Being with Rin sometimes simply meant having to use force, and the tall brunette had luckily found a way to be forceful without harming the older one.

"Rin. It's me," he mumbled, holding his friend close, big hands moving gently across the broad back in an attempt to soothe. It was, of course, met with moot retaliation from the other.

"Let me go-"

Sosuke merely held on tighter.

"It's fine."

"Sousuke..!"

"Just cry."

"No..."

Then, slowly but surely, Sousuke could feel Rin go slack, small sobs slowly wracking the lean, muscled body he was holding in his arms.

What was taking Nanase and Tachibana so long?

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's Note :
Yeah, you could clearly see where I got lazy lol.
Next chapter is already done, and will be uploaded if I hit 5 reviews hehe.
So please review okay guys, I really need input because this is a new style of writing I'm trying and I wanna know where I did bad :3

Thankies all :D