Her hair cut a wide swathe against the water.
He had swam a few laps around the pool without really noticing, but the long strands of it kept at the peripherals of his vision until finally, attention caught, he looked at her.
She was standing next to their teacher by the edges of the pool, turned sideways to talk down to the woman situated in her usual lounging seat and holding a clipboard against her chest. When she huffed a sudden laugh, the soft clear notes of it drifting through the open air to where he was, she hid it behind one of her petite hands (one of her many habitual characteristics), and the errant wind stirred some shining red locks into that smiling mouth. Her other hand reached up to casually brush it back behind an ear - but it fell, stubbornly, back into place.
She was dressed, per usual as during their club activities, in her standard school-issued red tracksuit; the zipper pulled up to the very top and covering more than the short skirt of her school uniform ever did. Despite his usual inattention to things outside of the next pool for him to jump into, he knew of Nagisa and Makoto's ongoing curiosity of her swimming capabilities - and her possible items of swimwear.
They were back on this topic at this moment actually, situated idly at the opposite end of the pool and conversing in lowered voices, as to not catch attention. Haruka, a little way from them, shook his head imperceptibly and readjusted his goggles before falling onto his back with a splash, twisting beneath the water and moving his arms back in a smooth motion. His body cut a graceful arc across the pool.
Even then, he could hear as he passed by again, the water rushing past his ears-
"-bikini, I tell you, she'd wear a bikini!" Nagisa insisted, with that fervent energy he had and a focus of nonsensical things, to the poor probably-coerced Makoto's flustered embarrassment. Who, in true mediating fashion, offered, "o-or, she could just wear a simple tankini-?" to which the other immediately shot down and-
Haruka closed his eyes. Even in the darkness beneath his lids, faint vermilion permeated the edges of his vision. And he thought, more than the paleness of her skin bared from a swimsuit and shining in the afternoon sun, of Kou's smile and the long winding strands of her hair floating across the water, free from her customary hair ribbon -
vivid red against the blue.
AN: Obligatory fic for my newest definite OTP. Because they would be just the best together - and I really wanted to write something of them!