A/N: I've had ideas for several side stories to Long Distance for quite a while, many of which center around Rin and what's going on with him in moments we don't really get to see from Haru's narrative. Some pieces will cover larger lengths of time (like this one - an entire quarter, so quite a bit of summary) and some will be focused more on a few days, or a few moments. The overall tags for this will likely change as more chapters go up, since it isn't exactly a continuous story the way LD is, but a collection of shorts (and the first one is primarily angst). But my attention is still mainly on writing LD, so I doubt this will have regular updates for a while. I wouldn't recommend reading this if you aren't reading Long Distance!

This first story, Retrograde, takes place during Rin's first winter in America, so between chapters 3 and 4, aka right after The Confession. It's not very happy (and there's a scene where someone makes a forceful move on Rin so if that makes you uncomfortable I'd skip the party scene - nothing too serious happens though) but like my friend Ellie told me a while ago, a great thing about angst is seeing how characters grow from it, and that's really why I decided this piece was worth writing instead of keeping solely in my head. That's my reason for writing these shorts at all - because I've thought a lot about Rin's side of the story and I figured maybe a few people would be curious to see what goes on with him, unhappy and happy, and then see how these developments show up in the main story.

Retrograde

His alarm is only a buzz beneath his pillow, but these mornings the sound is as cutting as someone yelling into his ear. He jolts awake, swipes his hand under the pillow, punches his fingers into his phone screen. He doesn't know if he snoozes the alarm or shuts it off, but it goes silent either way.

His arm is cold, all the way up to his shoulder. So is his left foot. Places his blankets have shifted off. Winter here is nothing compared to winter back home, but cold is still cold and neither he nor Mark can sleep with the heater rattling through the vent.

He pushes himself up, squinting in the half-light, and the blankets slip the rest of the way off and fall to the floor. Mark shifts around in his bed but doesn't wake up, so Rin carefully sets his feet down on the carpet. He can hardly see through his hair, can hardly see through the gap in his eyelids. He feels a little bit sick, and wants to go back to sleep, smothered in blankets, so he doesn't have to look at anything or hear anything or think of anything.

Too late for all of that, and while he changes into his running gear, he thinks something that has become an all-too-present echo in his head.

Haru hates me.

After his run he drags his feet to lecture, chewing on a power bar and still rubbing sleep from the corners of his eyes. The air smells so different here – no salt, no sea, just something smoky, always smoky in the cold even though there's no fire. The birds are waking up in the trees at the center of campus, much more cheerfully than the students treading dejectedly to early morning classes, hoods up and hands stowed away in pockets. Several nights of restless sleep have taken their toll, and Rin feels kind of like he's been sat on.

He feels like even though his body made the trip, the rest of him hasn't made it back here yet, where palm trees add a beach-like feel to the heart of winter, and where winter can feel like summer by mid-day, and where there's always the click of skateboard wheels to be heard carrying someone to class if you listen hard enough.

He feels like he left the biggest part of himself in Haru's bedroom, in the infinite space between the desk and the doorway. He feels like he took that part of himself out and smashed it to the floor and now there's no way to get it back, and Haru's probably swept the pieces away, and without those pieces Rin can't fully wake up.

The lecture hall is heated through. His face thaws immediately, and then his nose starts to run; he scrubs his sleeve across it, hardly conscious enough to care how gross that is. He takes a seat at the edge of a row, pulls up the collapsible desk and swings his backpack onto it. He cushions his head in his arms and thinks of sleep until the crackle of the professor's microphone wrenches him from it once more.

And then it's the beginning of routine all over again. Notebook, pen, chin in palm, notes. The occasional mutter or muttered response to his neighbor – What did he say? Is that a five or an S? No, the top number's the important one.

And then when he's trudging back into the sunlight – higher now, brighter, a misleading lukewarm – he feels a little bit hungry, and texts Mark to see if he's awake enough yet to want to get breakfast.

Haru hates me, he thinks, setting off for the dining hall, along with a hopeful, hopeless, Maybe not, you don't know, he never said anything.

There's a home meet the first Saturday of the quarter, and Rin doesn't dread it, exactly. It's more like he's worried that he's having a hard time being excited, like he's looking at it as something that needs to be done, like homework, like an exam. There are five days until the meet, then three, then it's tomorrow, and it's been a constant weight on his mind.

He doesn't feel ready, and that's terrifying, because he's always ready to swim.

Mark tells him, as he's leaving their room the morning of the meet, to kick some ass – "Or, wait, hold on. Go swim some ass."

Rin's grin is genuine – he can tell because he rolls his eyes without thinking about it, something that happens a lot around Mark, who says really stupid things but always with the intention of keeping everyone happy.

"Yeah, yeah," Rin says, for a moment feeling just a bit lighter. Mark shoots him a thumbs up from within a tangle of blankets.

He meets Duane and Vikram as he's leaving the dorm building. They live one room over, and during their first quarter Rin kept running into them in the dining hall during breakfast, so they became his first friends outside of the team and Mark. Duane is a tall and gangly with a mop of blond hair; he's majoring in biology and has some mysterious frat connections that let him get anybody into any party he wants. Vikram doesn't always say much, often has a closed-off, faraway look about him, but nine times out of ten when he isn't in his room or at class, he's playing his guitar in the common room instead of doing his homework. Shanze from down the hall is often with them on Saturday mornings, but he's downstate for basketball the entire weekend.

(Shanze is one of the tallest people Rin's ever met, and one of the funniest, and one of the most patient. Rin will never forget trying to figure out how to say his name for the first time after seeing it posted on his door, and how Shanze had sounded it out for him. "No, Shawn, like…you know, like Shawn Johnson, the Olympian, what you're trying to be. Then the letter Z. Shawn – zee.")

"Hey bro," Duane says, pointing at Rin over the top of a napkin-wrapped stack of cookies he snuck out of the dining hall. "Go swim some ass."

Rin laughs. "What the hell?" he says, but Duane just backs through the door that Vikram's holding open, fingers still pointing. Vikram shrugs, wishes Rin luck.

The team is rowdy in the locker room, burning off jitters by chasing each other around with towels or giving each other half-shouted pep talks. But when their coach comes in the hoots and hollers die out, and any energy Rin had been absorbing fades. Usually it would be taken over by focus, but today it's just gone.

The smell of chlorine that hits when they leave the locker room makes him think of Haru, of high school, of heartaches for different reasons. The stands are filled well enough; the season's nearing its end, and there's an all-pervasive buzz of waiting people. Steven Watanabe – a first-year, freestyle specialist – is one of the only swimmers on the team who's from the area, and his family has shown up to all their home meets, this one being no exception. They hold up two expansive red banners among them, one with the school logo on it, and the other with 'WATANABE' spelled out in black felt cutouts. Their cheers rise for a moment above the general din as the team files in.

Steven takes a seat on the bench next to Rin, flushed and grinning something that's both exhilarated and embarrassed. "No pressure, right?" he mutters to Rin, who responds with a distracted "Hm."

Rin sits and watches the first few races go by, hoping that his silence can pass for focus. He's waiting for the noise – water, yells, feet drumming against the ground – to catch up to him, to give him a sense of immediacy, because right now he feels like he's miles away even though the pool fills and empties and fills again in front of him. He stands when the 100 free is up, and Steven does too, clapping him on the back.

He can't just pretend anymore once he's on the starting block, so he repeats it to himself – focus, focus – but all that does is fill him with nerves that he's too late to calm. They're cued to take their marks, and then he's in the water.

He's never had to try as hard as he does now to swim strongly, as though his body has lost its power steering and each stroke, each kick, takes a massive amount of muscle power to perform. He thinks, for two awful moments, of Australia and then of finishing last at regionals his first year with Samezuka, and he pushes harder, rasping in air with each turn of his head and then praying his lungs hold out for the final stretch.

He finishes third, which isn't bad at all, which means at least he won't fall apart anymore when he feels like he might.

But he imagines the feeling of Haru swimming beside him – a split-second where he remembers what it's like to feel weightless in the water, with fire at his heels – and knows that he would have done better if Haru had been there now, even just in spirit.

He knows he would have done better if he just hadn't said anything to Haru at all.

He likes listening to Linkin Park, but he also likes listening to really sappy crap that Sousuke would tease him about, and that Mark would tease him about, and than any number of people would tease him about (except maybe Vikram, who plays really sappy crap sometimes, and the girls love it.)

These are the types of songs that involve soft guitar, and crooning, and the inexplicable urge to sway from side to side. Songs that make him think of awkward slow dances, and of Haru, and of how much he likes Haru and wants some kind of croony soft-guitar type thing with him.

After night runs when he's feeling especially self-depreciating, he listens to these sappy songs on his walk home through the campus' outdoor halls and archways, and he'll look up at the stars and let the scenarios flood his mind. In these scenarios there are streetlights and stars and nobody around except the two of them, and not really any words, just some kind of look from Haru that means –

He doesn't know what. They're stupid fantasies and even though he doesn't let himself examine what make-believe Haru is make-believe feeling, he knows it's a fucking joke anyway. He's pining over someone he's never had anything with.

Except he's had everything with Haru. Friendship, rivalry, companionship, inspiration, love. Lots of different kinds of love. The crazy thing is, he knows Haru loves him – loved him? – even though Haru would never say it that way. But Haru feels one less kind of love than he does, and that's where he fucked up, because he might have just lost all of them now.

(Make-believe Haru's face is fuzzy, because the look there is something Rin's never seen on real Haru's face – he mostly imagines Haru's eyes, so blue, full of acceptance, and full of a love that makes Rin's insides hurt because he's only seen it in his imagination.)

Don't fall in love with your best friend, every unhappily-ever-after story has ever warned. He doesn't even know if Haru's his best friend, but Haru's his best something that he wasn't supposed to fall in love with.

Stop, he tells himself, with gritted teeth and gritted fists, whenever the 'in' slips in before the 'love', because that's ridiculous also. He can't be in love with Haru. If it was that serious he thinks he would've fallen apart entirely.

He walks home through an empty campus, beneath shadowy palm trees and past the glowing column of the clock tower, through the darkened cluster of restaurants at the center of campus and toward the sporadically-lit windows of his dorm building. The air is bitter against his cheeks, a sting that tells him there are other things to feel besides a goddamn broken heart. There are meets to race and races to win, and classes to attend, and life goes on.

"Hey, man, y'know… Hey, are you listening?"

Rin lifts his chin out of his palm. He has no clue how long he's been staring at the same page, but the crick in his neck implies too long, and his vision swimming back into focus implies the same.

"What did you say?" he says, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms over his head.

Mark holds a sock in each hand, and for once he isn't grinning. Not a single tooth is on display, no sign of his trademark dimples, which Rin thinks might be a first. He just stands beside Rin's desk and looks like he's facing an internal struggle.

"You know," Mark eventually says, "if there's something up, you can tell me, right? I mean, we're friends and all."

"Oh," Rin says. "Okay, thanks, yeah, I know."

Mark doesn't leave, and Rin starts to feel claustrophobic.

"Something's up," Mark says, and Rin wishes he'd just get back to collecting his laundry and humming whatever he'd been humming under his breath.

"It's fine," Rin says, hunching his shoulders and bending back over his textbook. He tries to shake some hair over his face but has no luck, so he can feel Mark staring at him.

"Did you break up with someone?"

Rin feels his breath form a solid layer in his throat, feels it literally stop traveling to his lungs. And then he laughs, and it sounds kind of like someone has cracked glass.

"Oh, shit," Mark says. He holds up his hands, takes a step back. "Shit, man, I'm sorry. Too soon. My bad." He drops his socks into his laundry basket, backs his way out the room with it and shuts the door quietly. Opens it, sticks his head in, and says, "If you need anything, just let me know," and leaves once again.

Rin stares at the door until his eyes slide out of focus, and then he stares some more. He can't stop thinking of the look on Mark's face – like he thought Rin was going to break apart right in front of him.

He can't stop thinking of the look on Haru's face, and the way the shock had just stayed frozen, hadn't thawed at all, just remained cold and bitter and stinging.

Had he ever entertained the notion that he and Haru could get together? That he had a chance? Is that why he's so sad – because he thought it could actually happen? Had he expected some automatic, glorious, star-crossed romance with Nanase Haruka? The more he wonders what he was thinking, the less he thinks he was thinking anything.

He drops his face into his book and tries to breathe away the awful throbbing that he's pretty sure is his heart trying to find a way to escape his body, because even it is tired enough of his self-pity by now to want to be rid of him.

"This sucks," he says, and hearing it out loud is confirmation that yes, things suck, and this one's on you Rin.

More than anything, he wants to text Haru sorry.

He's waited three weeks now and hasn't heard a word from him – not that Haru usually, ever, texts, but he might have been stupid enough to think that maybe, with something this big, Haru would have reached out.

But it's been three weeks and that's good enough to tell him that Haru isn't going to bother. So it's up to him now, to undo the mess he's made and somehow win back Haru's friendship.

An apology seems like the best way to start; he really doesn't know what else to do. What else can he do? There's a goddamn ocean between them, and a lot more than that figuratively. If he had the ability to go up to Haru in person then maybe he'd have other ideas, but for now all he can think of is to send an apology and hope for the best, and then maybe once they're back on the same continent he can ask for a do-over.

So halfway through pulling on his socks one gray Monday morning, he reaches for his phone and types an apology out, feels the adrenaline shoot through him like it does when he's at the skate park and is about to try something reckless on Duane's borrowed board. But he's too afraid to send it, and the adrenaline rush dies, or kind of thumps disappointingly to an end, his heartbeat slowing as he deletes the message letter by letter. For days he does the same thing each morning.

He wakes up, silences his alarm and types out a text, deletes it before his feet hit the floor. He gets to class early and stares at his phone as he waits for the professor to arrive, and ends up tucking it away before he can write anything. On Thursday he's hit by another adrenaline rush, so when he stands in line for lunch his fingers tap out a message that ends up too long and too soul-baring and that would probably scare Haru off more, but a text from Sousuke arrives and he's secretly relieved to delete everything he's written.

By the end of the week, he's developed a habit of saving the message as a draft on his phone in the morning, and the I'm sorry burns a hole through his pocket all day, and he deletes it somewhere between the doors to the locker room and the doors to the dining hall.

But it's still there Sunday night, and after dinner he sits on his bed with the message on his phone – a simple Sorry that he stares down at, thumb hovering, heart starting to squeeze up into his throat. It was three weeks but now it's been four that Haru hasn't said anything, but flip that around and it's been four weeks that he hasn't said anything either.

Except didn't he say enough? Didn't he say the literal most revealing thing he could have, and so maybe it should be Haru's turn to say something if either of them are going to say anything. It's not selfish of him to wish that Haru would at least have that decency, is it?

No, he doesn't want to be mad at Haru. He doesn't want to be sad at Haru either, but if he had to pick one he'd pick sad because being mad just makes him feel guilty.

He hears Mark jam his key into the lock on the other side of their door, and he punches his thumb into the send button. Except the screen has already gone dark.

The door opens. He shoots Mark a "Hey" and sets his phone aside, planning to erase the apology later, and tells himself to get over it and to get on with life because if that wasn't a sign, then what was.

It's storming outside. A real torrential downpour after a January that was bone dry and – according to those who would know – warmer than usual. The rain hadn't been anything out of hand when he'd arrived at the library earlier, but when Vikram and Shanze showed up about an hour ago they'd been soaked through, and their coats have been dripping steadily off the backs of their chairs ever since. On his way back from the bathroom half an hour ago, Rin had squinted out the library main doors and seen two poor girls swept on by, their umbrellas turned inside out and their hair whipping around. The rain had been a solid gray blur.

The librarian takes pity on all the hungry students too afraid to brave the weather for dinner, and lets them all order takeout. Rin feels sorry for the delivery people, but a little bit less so when the pizza box is open on their table and their napkins grow heavy with grease. Extenuating circumstances call for exceptions to his diet plan.

Steven shows up in time to pull out a chair and grab the last slice, water shining on his face like sweat. He sets up his laptop among the piles of books and papers and gets to work on the English essay Rin's been typing away at for several hours, Across the table, Shanze alternates between scanning his laptop screen and his notebook, and Vikram pores over a textbook, nose inching closer and closer to the pages. Rin's eyes are heavy, his legs are cramped, the drone of the library makes him want to go to sleep.

Vikram sums up the feeling of midterms week perfectly by finally thunking his head down into his book and letting out a groan.

"You pullin' an all-nighter, man?" Shanze asks, giving Vikram a kind of worried look.

"I think I have to," Vikram says, muffled by the book.

Steven nudges Rin in the side, says under his breath, "How many sources do we need? Three?"

"Four," Rin says, pulling his eyes from the sorry sight Vikram makes in front of him. He looks at Steven's computer screen. "That's all you've done?"

"I've been busy, don't worry about it," Steven says, though his grin has a slightly manic edge to it, and he looks like he's gone a few days with only one good night's sleep between them.

Rin feels a bit of that manic energy himself, beneath all the tiredness. Calculus exam tomorrow, and an essay due over the weekend, training to keep up around that, and practice was cancelled today so should he try to make it to the gym later instead, or should he go over his math quizzes again, or should he add another paragraph to his argument on page two of his essay?

"Hey," he says, aiming his chin at his computer screen. "When I'm done with this, could you read it? Just check the English and everything."

"Dude, your English is fine," Steven says distractedly, digging through the loose papers in his backpack. "You write better than I do."

"Still," Rin says. "Could you check it anyway? Please."

"Yeah, fine. If you help me find a fourth source."

"Man, what is that?" Shanze says, suddenly and loudly. Rin looks at him over his laptop, then cranes around to find whatever Shanze is grimacing at.

He spots it – a giant pink paper heart a girl is taping up on the wall above the printing station.

"Valentine grahams," Vikram says. Everyone looks at him; he's raised his head just far enough out of his book to be able to see what they're looking at. "You can send them to people. You have to know where on campus the person you want to send one to lives though, which is kind of creepy I guess. I have a friend working on it," he says, and then he shrugs and faceplants back into his textbook.

"I thought all this stopped after high school," Shanze says, still looking like the idea makes him a little sick. But then he grins at Rin. "I know who's gonna be getting one from Sophia. Man, now I wish I wasn't gonna be in Colorado that weekend."

"I hope not," Rin says. Sophia is a quiet girl that lives one floor up but often hangs around their common room with her friends, and she's really nice, and her crush on him is so obvious it's almost painful. She stares at him from across the room and blushes when he notices and messes up her words when she's talking to him. It's flattering and all but he kind of wishes it'd just go away because catching her at it fills him with the horrible dread that he had been the same with Haru.

"Aw, why not?" Shanze says, still grinning. "What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing's wrong," Rin says, pulling his laptop closer. "But I'm not interested."

He really hopes she doesn't send him a valentine, or wait for him to ask her out, or ask him out herself. Knowing how nice she is, she'd just get sad because he'd have to say something like Sorry, but I don't feel the same way, or I only like you as a friend. Or better yet: Sorry, I'm gay. (Sorry, not sorry?) Not that he'd tell her that; he hasn't told anyone.

(Sorry, but there's this guy back home I can't stop thinking about and all I really care about right now is fixing things with him and getting to be his friend again, so I don't think going on a date with you would be fun for either of us.)

It's a good thing that the lights stutter out right then, because he's pretty sure his heartache is starting to show up on his face.

The emergency lights begin glowing very faintly overhead, and Vikram says in a rush, "Maybe tests are cancelled tomorrow." He's a vague shape sitting bolt upright in the darkness, while the library fills with the muttering of people probably wondering the same thing.

Rin wonders how Haru is doing, how school is, if he's keeping warm. He wonders if Haru will get any valentines – but this thought is like a double punch to his chest and gut and he makes himself think of anything else.

He doesn't want to go to a Valentine's Day party, but Duane and Mark seem to think he does, and somehow he's let himself be dragged along. He'd probably just go to bed early otherwise, to avoid the valentine-making activities going on in the dorm building, and to avoid the possibility of getting a valentine graham from Sophia (nothing's arrived yet; hopefully she didn't bother.)

The frat houses are near the music hall parking lot; they form a line down a narrow lane, one house next to another next to another. The lawns are decked out in lights, and one still in Christmas ornaments – a glowing jumbo candy cane, and a plastic snowman with frilly pink lingerie hanging from its arms. All the windows are lit up, and sound seems to be coming out of all of them – a garble of music, loud and obnoxious with heavy bass and half-hearted lyrics. Maybe the party extends between all the houses; Rin doesn't really know how these things work. Anything with Greek lettering over the doorway makes him mistrustful, but there's a time for everything and apparently tonight is a time to take advantage of Duane's secret frat connections.

But the second Duane gets them into one of the middle buildings, Rin wishes he had chosen to go to bed instead. There are so many people, crowded into doorways, crowded onto couches, red plastic cups in their hands, candy-heart necklaces strung around their necks. The girls wear dresses that ride up their thighs and slip down their chests; the guys wear muscle shirts or deep v-necks or unbuttoned polos. It's hot, the music is too loud, too much body spray makes the air thick.

Somebody he doesn't have a chance to see pushes a plastic cup into his hand and says "Hey, welcome, enjoy yourself man," and is gone the next instant. Duane and Mark know people Rin doesn't, so he slinks his way into a corner of the room when they aren't paying attention.

He peers into his cup, gives it a sniff. Beer. These people can't all be legal – he isn't even legal in Japan yet. He sticks the cup on the table beside him, then tries to fade nonchalantly into the wall, all the while contemplating whether it would be tacky and if anyone would notice if he just left. He has to keep pulling in his feet so they won't get tripped over, or so a stiletto doesn't impale him as people squeeze by into the hallway.

There's a bowl of candy hearts on the table; he gives it a mistrustful glance out of the corner of his eye, then figures what the hell, and plucks one off the top. Orange and powdery, too powdery. He bites into it and regrets it immediately as he inhales orange dust. He tries to cough surreptitiously, but his eyes start watering and his throat feels like it's being sandpapered. He grabs the beer and takes a sip, but the carbonation doesn't give much relief, and the taste is worse than the tacky orange flavor had been.

Once he regains his composure and dried his eyes, he looks around to make sure that nobody noticed him. The party is in full swing and he might as well be a light fixture. Feeling hopeless and beyond lame, he scans around for any nice-looking guys, figures why the hell not, at least then he can say he stayed a little while. Not that he expects much from a scene like this, and sure enough the guys that aren't hitting on girls are clustered together trying not to look out of place, or playing beer pong in the kitchen.

He meets eyes with a guy on the other side of the room for a moment - he's leaning against the wall too, behind a massive couch, nursing a cup in his hand. He gives Rin a little grimace, like he's also been dragged here by friends and then left in a corner, and then he looks away.

Rin eyes the front door, once again contemplates leaving. He's probably the worst party guest there's ever been, but he's pretty sure he already knew that before he made the decision to come.

Would he be allowed to just leave? There are two guys, one on either side of the door, talking to each other across the doorway with cups in hand. As Rin watches, another group of people arrives, and the makeshift bouncers usher them in and gift them with beer. Will they remember that he just got here? Will they ask him for a password out? Are there rules to frat parties?

"Hey."

It takes him a moment to realize he's being spoken to, the voice almost gets lost in the throb of music. He turns his head the other way and sees the guy from across the room standing beside him, eyes on the party.

"Hi," Rin says cautiously.

"This is kind of a lot, isn't it?" the guy says, raising his voice to be heard above the ruckus and motioning his cup around the room.

"Yeah, it's kind of loud," Rin says lamely.

The guy takes a sip of his drink. His watch slips a bit down his arm, but Rin is more keen on the bony knob of his wrist, and his long fingers, and his neatly-kept nails. He has nice hands. A nice face, too – dark eyes, wavy dark hair, conventionally attractive bone structure. Nothing like Haru, but - and Rin feels so shallow - nice enough.

"You in one of the frats?" the guy asks, looking at Rin.

"No, my friend got me in."

The guy lifts his cup as if in a toast, lips hinting at a smile. "Same. Was gonna leave, but it looks like I might have someone to talk to now."

Rin feels himself start to grin against his better judgement. There's no point reading anything into this, but it might be nice while it lasts. A pretty face to look at, a way to stave off boredom. "Looks like it."

"Where are you from?"

"Japan."

"Really?" The guy looks interested. There's something warming about the way he fixes his attention on Rin, like he wants to listen. "Your English sounds kind of…"

Rin chuckles. "Australian." At the guy's look of mingled surprise and question, he says, "Yeah, I lived there for a while."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. I went there to swim, and I went to school and everything."

"You swim?" the guys says. He's turned towards Rin, one shoulder resting against the wall. At Rin's nod, he says, "Are you on the team?"

Rin give a self-conscious smile. "Yeah."

The guy's eyes flit down Rin's arms. "Well, that explains things," he says, before he looks back at Rin's face.

Oh, Rin thinks. Oh god. Okay.

That was getting hit on, wasn't it? Wasn't it? He thinks it was. His heart has started fluttering; nervousness and a touch of thrill.

"So, what do you swim?" the guy asks him, taking another sip from his cup.

"Butterfly and free. Butterfly's my thing, but I have a friend who's really good at free and that's kind of an incentive to keep it up." His chest feels a little bit sore at the mention of Haru, but he mostly feels like he wants to keep blabbering away.

"So, Pac-12 stuff is coming up soon, right?"

Now Rin turns fully. "You know about swimming?"

"My friend's on the team. Jimmy Myer."

Rin laughs loudly. "Yeah, Jimmy! Hey, did you come to any of our home meets?"

"Saw a bit of the last one," the guy says. He taps his fingertips against Rin's shoulder, his smile small, contained, inviting, and Rin feels his heart give a massive lurch. "Now I know who else to look out for."

Rin hopes he isn't blushing. Knows he probably is, because he can't stop grinning and the guy looks more than a little into him.

"It's kind of loud down here," the guy leans in to say, ducking his head so that his forehead comes close to Rin's. "Want to go somewhere where it's easier to talk?"

Things like this happen in movies, which is probably why Rin feels like he's walking a fine line between doing something really stupid and only a little bit smart. He says "Yeah," and the guy tips back the rest of his beer, and leads Rin upstairs. Rin feels kind of like time has stopped moving linearly, like it takes two steps to go up the staircase but one hundred to go down the hall. Outside one of the rooms, the guy touches Rin's elbow, jerks his chin at the open door with a question in his expression. Rin nods, has no clue and every clue what he's getting himself into, and follows him inside.

"So," the guy says, turning to look at Rin from halfway across the room.

Rin gives a jitter-filled laugh. For a second he thinks it won't stop, but then he finds his voice. "So."

"You're cute."

Another laugh full of breath and nerves. "Thanks."

The guy holds out a hand. "Come here?"

Rin has never been this nervous before a meet, wasn't even this nervous when he boarded the plane that took him to Australia. Was he this nervous before he confessed to Haru? He was probably more nervous then, but he doesn't want to think about that. He takes several steps, takes the guy's hand – warm fingers, bony joints, oh god this is dangerous – and lets the guy lead him to the bed and sit them down.

"So?" the guy says. Rin hasn't even asked his name.

He's terrified, but he's also tired of feeling sad. He's excited and he's damn curious, and he's attracted, and he just wants to stop thinking of Haru.

So he lets his eyes flicker down, and he lets the guy kiss him. Lets out a sigh when fingers go into his hair, lets his head tilt when a hand touches his knee.

He hopes it isn't obvious that he's never had a tongue other than his own in his mouth. It's kind of nice, making out, just the emotional release of it, the feeling of being able to push and grab and be pushed back against, knuckles against his scalp.

But then it starts getting slobbery and hard to breathe, and the guy's hand starts to travel up his thigh. Rin had been prepared, but now he wonders what exactly for – there's a lot of intention behind that touch, but how much is this guy really after? How much is he after? How long have they been shoving their tongues together, and did he really think it was that great when they started?

"You're really pretty," the guy says, and from this close Rin can smell the alcohol thick on his breath. It's almost harder to breathe this than it had been not to breathe at all.

Rin doesn't feel as excited when the guy's mouth is on his neck, wet and hot and a scrape of teeth. There's a shiver building beneath his skin, but it's skewed too many ways, enthusiasm that's dampening into reluctance.

"And your voice is nice," the guys says, nose beneath Rin's ear. "Say something else."

The shiver dies, congeals. Rin pushes the guy back by the shoulders, gets a disappointed look in return.

"What's wrong?"

Shit, Rin thinks, and it sounds more disappointed than anything else. I'm making out with a drunk guy.

"Um, sorry," he says, starting to scoot away. The place on his neck where the guy's mouth had been feels damp and cool. "I think I have to go."

"Wait, why?" the guy says, grabbing his wrist.

"I just – I do, okay." Rin tries to pull free, but the guy moves with him, pushes him back so that his elbows end up against the mattress.

"Slow down," the guy says, fingers tightening around Rin's wrist, and Rin panics.

He shoves the guy away, and hears a loud curse follow him as he flees the room.

He rushes down the stairs, almost trips halfway down and has to throw his hand into the wall. He bumps into people on his way to the front door, gets more angry shouts sent his way. He doesn't care, doesn't register anything else until he's out the door and down the lawn, and then he keeps going – across the lane, down the sidewalk, toward the music building, heart pounding erratically, legs feeling like they'll lose consistency at any moment.

Once he's slowed down, once the party is out of sight and the sounds don't reach him anymore, he notices his hands trembling and digs them into the pockets of his jacket. His right hand bumps into his mp3 player, and he's flooded with his stupid fantasies about Haru and the stars and looking at each other beneath streetlights and feeling the same thing.

He swallows painfully, focuses on the cold against his face, tries to let the smell of it clean out all the bad feelings. He makes his way back through campus numb, but a numbness that gives way to feeling with each step he gets closer to the dorms.

The common room is quiet, but not empty; a few people are studying at one of the tables. Head ducked low, he heads straight on past and down the hall, unlocks his room, lets the door slam behind him. He sits on his bed without turning on the lights, and stares down at his knees in the moonlight that comes through the open blinds.

His hands are still shaking, but now the tremors have traveled up his arms. He feels like someone's trying to hollow him out, digging with a spoon, starting at his heart. He feels the guy's mouth on his neck, and he tenses up, shoulder rising toward his ear like he can nudge the feeling away. He can taste the guy in his mouth, feel the guy's hands in his hair and up his leg, and it makes him want to shuck off his own skin.

What a fucking idiot. What was he even trying to do, what was he trying to gain?

Maybe he'd just wanted to have some fun, but maybe he'd been trying in some messed up way to get back at Haru for not liking him. He's been so sad, but so much of that sadness has been anger he'd just been trying to warp into something else. Maybe he'd felt that if he just let this guy do whatever he wanted with him, if he just let this guy treat him like some thing, Haru would know, somehow, at least make-believe Haru would know, and feel as bad as he'd made Rin feel.

Who the hell knows. He has no clue what he was trying to do. All he knows is that he feels spiteful, and gross, covered in this guy's touch, like he's doused himself in something noxious. He wants to forget, wants to go back in time and undo everything – the party, the confession, liking Haru in the first place.

What he wants more than anything is to give Haru a hug. Feel Haru's arms work slowly around him, feel Haru's face against his neck – those hugs Haru would give him once in a blue moon that felt like the gentlest and the strongest things in the world. When Haru hugged him like that, their bodies together in a way that was just them being together – so simple and beautiful and easy – he knew so certainly that Haru loved him so much, and if only he'd been content with that, if only he'd never screwed things up so royally…

He presses a palm to his mouth to try to hold back the sound that comes out. "Fuck," he whispers, and he knows that if the lights were on he'd be able to see his vision blurring.

He fights with his shoelaces, finally gets them undone. Kicks off his shoes. Pulls off his shirt, and scrubs it against his neck before dropping it to the ground. He changes into his pajamas and burrows under his blankets, face pressed into his pillow.

His phone buzzes, a muffled sound from somewhere on the ground. He drags himself back out of bed, feels for his pants, pulls his phone out of the pocket. It's a text from Mark, asking him where he is, if he's left the party. The screen shines too brightly. Rin squints, and buries the phone beneath his pillow without replying. He gets back into bed, turns toward the wall, and huddles up and waits for it all to stop hurting so much.

Later, much later, he's jerked out of a doze by the sound of Mark unlocking the door. He's still facing the wall, but he shuts his eyes anyway. Mark opens the door quietly.

"Hey…Rin?" Mark says, a half-whisper and very tentative. When Rin doesn't make a sound, he asks, "Are you okay?"

Rin stays very still and tries to breathe evenly, and after a few long seconds he hears Mark shuffle past his bed, smells the cologne that Mark is wearing, and then there's a little clatter that's probably Mark dropping his toothbrush onto his desk before he leaves the room for the bathroom.

Rin curls up tighter.

Regionals begin the end of February, and he's focused in a way he's never known before. It's a focus in that, when he's thinking of swimming, he just makes himself dispassionate about everything else, so nothing can interfere. He doesn't know how he does it, just that he does – that when he's training, it's like the edges of his thoughts have all turned gray and dull, so there's no reason to have his focus drawn away.

The team advances to nationals, but he isn't selected for any of the meets. His coach says something about his head not being in it, his heart being elsewhere, it's like sometimes he forgets about the team, is there something going on? Rin doesn't know what to say, so he says "Just some family stuff, it's fine," and his coach nods and looks a little worried.

No harm, Rin thinks, even though the edges of his thoughts pulse red and black for angry and disappointed. No harm, because at least he helped his team qualify – and he did, he's been swimming well, he knows he has. But there's always next year, and he knows he'll qualify next year. Knows he has to, because next year is The Year, and he has to be good enough by then.

No problem, he thinks. I will be. No problem.

He takes his finals, turns in his papers, gives his presentations, knows he's near the top of every class.

His coach suggests he go home for the break instead of accompanying the team to nationals.

"I'm not – I can still swim fine!" Rin says, because even though his coach hadn't said anything along those lines, he's afraid it's implied. He's terrified that he's messing up his chance, terrified that his coach has started to think that bringing him to America wasn't worth the effort. This can't be another Australia, it can't.

"You swim more than fine, Rin," his coach says insistently, hands flat on top of his desk. "Your times are impressive, your form is impressive, your personal training is impressive. You are a necessary part of this team," he says, enunciating each word. "But a swimmer has to be more than those things. I've been a coach for a long time; I know how to look out for my swimmers. What's most important to me is that you're healthy all around, and if a break will help with that then I want you to take that break, and go home, and see if you can get some peace with whatever's been eating at you all quarter. I want to you to be in a good head space when you come back."

Rin looks at his feet, nods. There's no real way say that his coach doesn't understand the half of it, so he just says, "Okay."

"This isn't a punishment for anything, Rin. I want you to know that."

Rin nods, gives a slight bow before he can catch himself. "Thank you."

He wishes the members of his team that are going to nationals luck, and means it, and only wishes he could be supporting them from the water too, but he knows he's the only one holding that against himself and tells himself to stop being stupid.

On the last day of the quarter he says bye to his friends, and takes a shuttle to the airport, and then waits at his terminal watching the planes meander around on the tarmac. It's a sunny day, calm, and the light flooding around him fills him with a sense of peace he hasn't felt for a long time. Two and a half months, and he feels like he can finally rest his eyes. He's accomplished a lot – good grades and good swimming, not crumbling to stress, pulling his emotions together.

Jimmy Myer never mentioned anything about his friend or the party, never looked at Rin funny, which is a relief. Rin never saw the guy again, which isn't as much of a relief because when he thinks about it, that guy was hardly worth getting worked up over at all. He was just some stupid loser with skinny arms that couldn't take Rin in a fight. Not that Rin wants to fight him. He just wants to forget him. Already has started to.

His plane pulls up to the terminal. He can't wait to see his friends back home – Makoto and Nagisa and Rei, those happy nerds (hopefully Rei hasn't baked him any cookies); Ai and Momo, those weirdos, how Ai could have ever named Momo captain is beyond him (though honestly it isn't); Gou, who will probably find something to lecture him about the moment he lands (he hopes she likes the hair ribbons he's bringing home for her.)

And Haru.

Blue-eyed Haru, stoic Haru, prettier than he knows he is Haru. Funnier than he knows he is, more inspiring than he knows he is. Bane of Rin's emotions, bane of his heart.

As scared and sad and tired as he is, he still really wants to see Haru.