Summary: Haru and Makoto fought. They never fought, yet they had been different. And Haru... Haru didn't know what to do about that. Everything just seemed to come apart at the seams and he couldn't patch it back together. Unravelling, tangling, sagging apart - and Rin seems to be the only one to realise just how badly. The only one to take the lunging step towards him to ensure he doesn't tear apart completely.

How a trip to Australia has anything to do with that is anyone's guess.

~Written for the RinHaruRin Exchange 2016 ~

Rating: M

Tags: Haru/Rin, Canon Era - Free! Eternal Summer (Ep 12), Suicidal Themes, Depression, Not really recovery-fic, Song References: Hang On by Plumb


Chapter 1: So Stubborn

I'm so stubborn.

It's how I got here.


Haru ran.

He wasn't a runner. He wasn't didn't like running, wasn't good at it and certainly wasn't fast, but he ran as though hellhounds nipped at his heels and he practically flew. Anything to chase the echo of Makoto's words, and the overwhelming numbness that followed it.

Numb. It was always that numbness that arose, the weight that dragged on his shoulders, crushing him like a crashing wave. He'd been angry but moments before, an anger that felt only emphasised by the fierce, vibrant explosion of fireworks right after Makoto's words.

"I'm going to university in Tokyo."

Anger. It had been anger up until that moment, anger and frustration because this was Makoto and Makoto wasn't supposed to stick his nose into Haru's business. He wasn't supposed to ask the 'bad' questions, to ask about Haru's thoughts and demand an answer. He never did, never had, and that was how their friendship worked.

Why had he asked? Why?

"It's because we all love you… all care about you…"

Haru ran faster. He ran so fast that his legs burned, his breath heaving in pants that tore in dry rakes at his throat but he wouldn't stop. He would avoid and run because Makoto – it wasn't his business and Haru would be damned before he would bend before such prodding, such so called encouragement and demanding requests. Makoto should learn to butt out of it. He was never the one to ask Haru questions and now…

The anger had faded long ago. After the beach disappeared behind him, the echoes of the fireworks in celebration of the Obon Festival muffled, the anger left him too. The questions, the demands, the frustration hadn't evaporated, hadn't entirely disappeared, but it was shunted to the side. In its place was…

The numbness.

Haru was all too familiar with that numbness. He knew what it was even as he ignored the meaning of what it meant, the cause of that heavy weight that dragged him down and fizzled any meaning from his thoughts. He knew, understood, but it wasn't like he could do anything about it. Not really. Haru could only live with it, plough through it, ignore it and swim. To swim was the only way to escape it. Swimming was his release, an exchange of the numbness for the freeing feeling of immersion and the silence of water flooding his ears.

It replaced the muffling emotionless with something… other. No one understood that. No one quite knew how much Haru not only wanted but needed to swim.

Was it a dream? No, Haru didn't think so. A future? He didn't know about that either and simply swimming didn't match the requisite for such a vast concept. But Haru didn't care.

He didn't care.

Or at least that was what the numbness told him. The smothering that dampened everything and dragged.

Even as he ran, Haru could feel that weight. He felt it drag at his steps like lead injected into his shoes, eventually stumbling him to a halt to bend nearly double and pant in rapid gasps. Hands on his knees, Haru squeezed his eyes shut, his heartbeat pounding in loud, rapid thumps in his ears.

A dream… a future…

He didn't want to think about that because when he did the detached numbness would descend even more completely. Did he care? Haru wasn't sure, found it difficult to determine even though he told himself as much enough times. He wanted to swim but more than that? He wanted to swim and escape that listless wave that overwhelmed him whenever feelings got too hard, when thoughts grew confusing. That was what they didn't understand, what none of them understood; Makoto, Nagisa, Rei…

Even Rin. Rin would probably understand the most, but even he would be other. It would always be 'not really' and 'not entirely'. The overwhelming wave of obliteration that wiped everything clean – Rin wouldn't understand that.

Swallowing convulsively, his throat twinging for its dryness, Haru finally lifted his gaze from the ground, struggling to straighten from his fold. He didn't know where his feet had taken him, hadn't paid any mind to the direction he ran but to ensure it was away from Makoto and his questions.

Makoto asking questions. That was something knew. Makoto never asked.

Damn him.

Even so, Haru could almost have expected where he would find himself. His subconsciousness sought the release even as his conscious mind was overcome by struggling against the blanket that rapidly smothering his emotions. It was no surprise when he looked up that he found himself at his school. Or, more correctly, at the poolside.

It was closed, locked for the night. Of course it was; the hour was late and not even the evening cleaners would be about the grounds. Not that Haru cared. Still struggling to regain his breath, he started towards the perimeter and, ignoring protocol and legalities both, he slipped his shoes off and clambered the wire fence. It was an easy climb, the barrier practically redundant. Haru's feet touched the rough deck nearly silently on the other side.

There was barely a sound. The crackle of fireworks had long been outrun but even had they not been they likely would have finished for the night already. Little more than a whisper of noise trickled into Haru's ears as he stepped slowly towards the edge of the pool, the faint hiss of wind tugging the trees lining the road with shallow puffs of movement.

It was peaceful. Quite. Almost as still as the rumbling wave that washed through Haru and drowned the last of his anger before freezing into icy hardness. He couldn't… he almost couldn't remember what he'd been angry about.

The numbness was always like that.

Swimming was Haru's escape. It was what he lived for. The kiss of water against his skin, the barrier of sound, the weightlessness and the freedom. He could lose himself in that and only that, stubbornly held onto swimming as his only release. It was something Makoto didn't understand, something different to what Nagisa knew and Rei strove for. Haru didn't need a dream when he had that liberation. It was enough for him.

Rin… Rin knew. Or at least he knew a little bit. It was one of the reasons that Haru felt most comfortable with him at times, that they shared at least that love for the water, for swimming. His other friends simply didn't have that. But then, Haru had never matched Rin's competitiveness, had never stretched to beat and win as Rin had. Maybe he didn't understand that well after all.

Haru didn't need that. He didn't need that goal, stubbornly refused to cave to that function of what he so savoured.

He didn't need…

He didn't…

Haru wasn't sure how long he stood on the edge of the pool simply staring and inhaling the scent of chlorine. He could lose himself in the simple sight of water, the transparency pooling beneath the slightest caress of a breeze, the sound of the nearly inaudible lapping against tiles. Haru wasn't even sure if he blinked, and as he stared he could feel his heartbeat slow, his breathing steady.

It was calm. Peaceful. Tranquil but unlike the unmovable, icy numbness within him.

At some point he sat down. Haru was hardly aware doing it. He only detachedly knew that his legs protested from his run across town. The water was soothing. Calming. He didn't want to think about anything else and couldn't really even had he wanted to.

And he wanted to swim. That thought registered to Haru at some point, really registered as something more immediate than the constant, unerring desire he always had to do so. The anger had disappeared without a trace, the frustration along with it. The urge to sleep was non-existent, that to climb to his feet and take himself from the poolside absented entirely, but the desire to swim stayed strong.

It grew compulsive as the sun rose. The only thing tangible, the only feeling that could pervade the rising waves that swept through him and left its trail of numbness in its wake. When the first scattering of light splayed across the surface of the pool Haru rose to his feet once more.

A voice in the back of his mind muttered that he didn't have a swimsuit on, not even beneath his clothes as he often wore it. That hardly mattered, however. It didn't matter in the whole scheme of things. He wanted to swim, to chase that escape and the freedom from the numbness and that… that anger or whatever it had been. The anger that he couldn't feel anymore, couldn't even remember what it felt like, but he didn't want to know. Haru thought he would be quite content to simply lose himself beneath the surface of the water forever.

With barely more than a step, nothing but a shrug to discard the waterless world, Haru let himself roll from the edge of the pool into submersion. The splash was nothing but a distant gurgle as he slipped beneath the surface. He let himself sink and simply let go.

Haru didn't want to think about the future. He didn't want to consider his lack of 'dreams' and chasing their non-existence. Haru didn't want to think about Makoto and his university, about his friends and their caring; the notion barely pervaded the numbness settled upon him, was something distinctly other. With all the stubbornness he'd always maintained, he turned aside from it.

Beneath the water where his lungs had no place, no function at all, it felt like Haru could finally breathe.


Have you heard from Haru at all?

Rin squinted at his phone as he lifted it overhead, slumping back into his pillow. He was a light sleeper as it was and even the buzzing of a message would rouse him from slumber. Not that anyone should be messaging at… yes, it was only five o'clock in the morning. The sun hadn't even begun to rise properly yet.

Sighing, grumbling to himself and with barely the wakefulness to consider the meaning behind Makoto's words, Rin rolled over and tapped a reply. No. Why would I have heard from him? Of all people, Haru wasn't likely to contact Rin, especially given that he lived half a town away from his house. Rin's frustration towards him from his last race had died as quickly as it had sparked, but they hadn't spoken since their fight.

Haru wasn't one to take the step back towards reconciliation. He was stubborn like that.

Rin hadn't even had the chance to close his eyes once more – really, he had at least another hour of sleep left in him, he could feel it – before Makoto buzzed a reply. I can't get a hold of him and he's not at home either.

It was a short message, and emotion was difficult to discern through written words, but that Makoto replied with them at all was confusing. Frowning, Rin propped himself up on an elbow. It wasn't really his business to get involved, but Makoto seemed to be prodding at something and Rin couldn't help but wonder what. What's wrong? Did something happen?

Makoto's reply was instantaneous. We kind of had a bit of a fight.

Rin blinked, surprised. Makoto didn't fight. Not with anyone and especially not Haru. Why? What happened?

I told him I was going to university next year. And I might have asked him about what he was doing.

There was weight behind those words and Rin didn't need to extensive perceptive skills to discern what it was. That Makoto was going to university for one was news but not altogether surprising. Rin wasn't as close to his old friends as he had been and didn't see them nearly as much as he might even like to. Not enough to know of their schedules or to ask regularly of their plans. Haru was an exceptional case because he was Haru. Their relationship was complicated and confusing but a single argument and weeks apart – hell, even years apart – didn't change that. It just made it a different kind of complicated.

Rin hadn't known about Makoto's plans but he knew Haru well enough to know that Makoto's question wouldn't have gone down well. He probably should have guessed as much even before his own outburst of much the same nature.

Rin heard the tentative explanation behind Makoto's words without having to guess to far. It wasn't even so much Makoto's suggestion that niggled at him, however; he was reminded only too bluntly of what he and Haru had argued about days before. Haru had been far from receptive to talking about 'that'. In fact, in Rin's opinion, though he'd been angry and almost raging, it had seemed like something else. Something confused and maybe even a little lost.

Haru really was stubborn, though. He would resist any kind of assistance or support simply for the hell of it. For some reason he seemed to find himself better off alone.

The idiot.

That was kind of stupid of you. Especially after what happened with me before, Rin couldn't help but reply to Makoto's words.

He could practically feel Makoto's wince when he buzzed back at him. I know. And I wanted to talk to him about it but I don't know where he is.

Rin felt his frown deepen. Makoto must be really worried if he'd thought to ask Rin. For whatever reason, though Rin knew and acknowledged that Makoto was Haru's best friend, just as Sousuke was his own, he seemed to believe that Rin had more on Haru that he did. Or perhaps in a different way. He was clearly worried and the underlying request for help didn't pass unheard.

You want my help? Rin asked.

There was a pause before Makoto replied. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to annoy you so early.

And yet you did, Rin thought, though he didn't tap the words into his phone. Why Makoto was still awake at five-thirty in the morning… had he been looking for Haru all night? Surely not. But if he had been, then he must be very worried.

Rin was swinging his legs out of his bed before he even realised what he was doing. Shucking his shirt off and fumbling in through the dark for something vaguely acceptable to wear in public, he tapped out a reply. I'll find him. I'm pretty sure I'd know where to look. Really, it was fairly obvious. Makoto wasn't exactly oblivious, but Rin had to question his perceptive skills that he hadn't thought to look at every available water source already.

Rin could almost hear Makoto's relieved sigh in his reply. Thank you! I'm really sorry again. I swear I'll make it up to you.

Shaking his head, Rin slipped into the discarded pair of shoes waiting alongside the door. He spared a glance over his shoulder for Ai, the huddled bundle atop his bed a disproportionately large mound that hadn't budged since he'd woken, and stepped through the door. He started from the dormitory.

Haru wouldn't go to too many places. Not when he was upset – which he always resolutely refused to admit he was – or if he was bored. Upset and bored usually ended in the same place anyway: one pool or another, or the beach if it was warm enough or the pools unavailable. Rin headed for the school because that would have been his own first choice had he been in such a situation. When Rin was angry or frustrated he would always work it off with a swim or a run too. It was often the only way he could escape the violent flurry of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him.

Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Most of the time it did. Mostly.

Makoto likely hadn't considered the school because it was out of school hours and, being the upstanding pupil that he was, he would be unlikely to consider breaking into said school proper conduct. That disinclination had just as likely rubbed off onto his consideration of where Haru was; his hope that Haru would stick by the rules too made him believe as much.

Rin was under no such illusions. Less than an hour later, the sun just beginning to creep above the horizon and flood the sky with colour, he found himself crossing the last road towards the school, hands stuffed into his pockets and barely bothering to glance for potential traffic. It wasn't like anyone was about anyway. Most people weren't harassed by over-protective friends about their other friend's whereabouts at the crack of dawn.

Rin approached the school. And there was Haru.

It wasn't surprising. It wasn't surprising in the slightest, Rin considered, and nor was it unexpected to find Haru seated at the very edge of the pool and simply staring into the water as though it revealed the answer to life itself. Rin stepped up to the fence surrounding the pool, opened his mouth to speak, to call out, to grumble that Haru really should have replied to what was likely to be Makoto's thousand and one phone calls and messages, but he paused. His mouth slowly closed as a frown resettled itself on his forehead.

There was something wrong. That much was apparent. Something that Rin wasn't quite sure of but made Haru, legs crossed and bowed over himself as he stared fixedly forwards, look somehow wrong.

Rin and Haru had always shared a complicated relationship. Sousuke was Rin's best friend, just as Rin knew Makoto was Haru's, and yet they two had always been something else to one another. More than teammates, more than friends, more than rivals. Something… other. Rin didn't know what it was exactly, but he knew that he saw Haru in a way different to how Makoto or Nagisa perceived him. He understood, at least to a degree, the adoration for the simple act of swimming that he lost himself in. Rin understood how he needed it, if in a different way to how Rin did himself.

As such, it wasn't unexpected that Rin found himself watching Haru as he sat silent and utterly still at the poolside and saw something was wrong. It wasn't in his expression, which was by and large blank as it almost always was. It wasn't in any subtle tension of his shoulders, for there wasn't any apparent. There wasn't a hint of mournfulness or upset in his unwavering gaze, a stare that hardly seemed to blink.

And yet Rin felt it was wrong. Something was wrong, more so even than had been the last time he'd seen Haru.

The sun slowly slunk into the sky and in gradually stretching rays it beamed a golden glow onto the scene. The dancing of sunlight across the water surface was not bright enough to be blinding, yet as Rin watched, his frown still settled deeply and torn between calling out to draw Haru's attention and waiting him out, Haru seemed to start from his stupor. Not remarkably and barely noticeably, but as though blinking awake he eased into motion.

Rising to his feet, Haru stood for a bare moment with his constant stare at the glassy surface of the pool. Rin opened his mouth once more to speak, to break his silence as Haru had clearly shaken from his thoughts, but he didn't get the chance.

In what wasn't quite a dive but in more of a roll from his feet into the water Haru stepped from the deck and splashed beneath the surface of the pool.

Rin could have rolled his eyes, which he did after a moment. Shaking his head, he hooked his fingers in the fence and gave an exasperated tug of tight wiring. Really, he knew Haru was obsessed with swimming, probably more than Rin was himself, but to dive fully clothed into the water? That was somewhat ridiculous. Didn't he not have any sense?

Shaking his head once more, Rin shifted to lean a shoulder against the fence and wait. Haru was always better after a good dunking. The water actually seemed to clear his head some, which was something that Rin never quite understood. When Rin swum it was always to clamber dripping wet from the pool with blood pumping fast with adrenaline. Regardless of the importance swimming was for the both of them, that was just one thing that they differed in. One thing that Rin doubted he would never understand of Haru.

He stared at the pool as the surface spluttered and lapped, roiling for the sudden interruption to its steady serenity. He stared as the chuckling waves eased, sinking into shrinking undulations until there was little more than a ripple to tell of Haru's passage. He stared as even those ripples still and…

Pushing himself from the fence, Rin felt his frown deepen, stare sharpening. Haru hadn't resurfaced, and though Rin largely considered him at least part fish, he shouldn't stay submerged for so long. Even in clothes surely he wouldn't have difficulty pulling himself to the surface. Rin stared at the absence of his friend, could see nothing of him beneath the water for the angle that he stood. His fingers locked unconsciously into the fence once more, tightening the longer that he waited and stared and –

In a split second decision, barely a decision at all, Rin was scrambling over the fence. He slipped once, yet his feet were slowed none in an attempt to gain purchase. It hardly mattered. He almost could have cleared the fence in one leap for his sudden panic.

What?

What was Haru doing?

Why wasn't swimming? Where had he gone?

And chasing on the tail of the abruptly frantic thoughts, Had he hit his head? Had he passed out?

Rin didn't pause to consider. He didn't slow as he flung himself over the top of the fence and collapsed to his knees on the other side for the speed of his descent. Only for a second, however, before he sprung to his feet once more. He didn't let himself think for a second of the impossible, the inconceivable notion of drowning. Not Haru. Surely not. Rin barely slowed to kick his shoes off, to fling his jacket from his shoulders and to catch a glimpse of a dark shadow at the bottom of the pool before he was leaping in a flying dive.

The slap of freezing water, scalding and sharply cold, was barely noticed.

Rin didn't think as he ploughed in grasping strokes through the water. He couldn't. The only thought that tore through his head wasn't really a thought at all. Panic. Sheer and nearly debilitating panic. And desperate need.

He wasn't thinking as he pulled himself to the bottom of the pool. Thought didn't have a place in the watery haze crushing upon him as Rin curled reaching fingers around a limp wrist and cling fiercely. He had only the passing instinct to kick from the bottom of the pool at all in a break for the surface, socks skating on slick tiles. The drag of a second person, as heavily clad as Rin was himself in sodden clothes, was a dead weight that made the struggle twice as hard.

Not that Rin noticed. He barely noticed anything but to be sure he kept his hand locked around Haru's wrist and pulled.

Breaking the surface, Rin's gasp was more for his roaring panic than for any breathlessness. Utter and persisting panic, unlike any he'd ever conceived before, unlike any he'd thought himself capable of feeling. He spared only a glance towards where he dragged Haru behind him, a glance that only flooded him with renewed terror because he was face down, he wasn't moving. In a mad scramble, Rin dragged the limp weight of him to the poolside and, in a heave that must have been partially supernaturally induced, flung him onto the pool deck.

Rin was clambering just as swiftly after him, nearly slipping on the sudden mess of water coating the ground as it rained in torrents from every pocket of clothing and strand of his own hair. Rin noticed only in a very small, detached corner of his mind. In a second he was at Haru's side, rolling him limply from his awkward sprawl onto his back. He went easily enough. Too easily even. Haru never did anything easily. He was too bloody stubborn. That thought was terrifying in itself.

His eyes were closed. The matted flop of hair across his forehead was stuck as though glued to his skin, half obscuring his face. Every inch of him was a bedraggled mess, thin jumper and trousers stained darkly for the sea of water weighing them down. He didn't move, as limp as a doll and a single arm flinging loosely when Rin rolled him. He wasn't moving at all, even to breathe.

It was familiar. So familiar, a scene from a time that felt so long ago, when Rin had barely known Makoto and Haru at all. This time… this time was even worse.

Rin catalogued it all, registering the familiarity entirely, through only increasing horror settling upon him. He registered the lack of breath as he froze for a split second longer, before in a reflex that he would always thank his swim-safety instructors for, Rin lurched forward and pressed an ear nearly into Haru's lips.

Nothing. There was nothing. The absence of sound, of the faint puff of breath, was terrifying all over again.

Following that same instinct, even as his mind seemed to short for the confusion, and horror, and what the hell do I do?! Rin shifted immediately towards his chest, a hand reaching blindly and unconsciously for a wrist to press fingers in search of a pulse. There was a long second, a heart-stopping second in which Rin found he couldn't breathe himself. The he heard – he felt – the faint twitch of a thump, a stutter and a hitch.

The relief was so overwhelming Rin heard himself gasp. Only for an instant, however, because the logical part of his mind that was still screaming in fear reminded him that Haru still wasn't breathing. In an instant he was reaching for Haru's head, tipping his chin back and pinching his nose in the firmly ingrained motions for resuscitation. Rin didn't have time to pause, no time for embarrassment that would have been entirely foolish, not a second to even think about the proper response that would have been to call for help. One rescue breath was followed seconds later by a second, then a third, little more than gasping pants on Rin's part.

On the fourth, Haru spluttered.

Rin jerked himself out of the way for the sudden unexpectedness, but a split-second later was reaching for Haru once more and with a heaving roll shifted him back onto his side. The sound of retching, of gurgling chokes and the subsequent splatter of ingested water followed as, in a shudder, Haru attempted to cough up his lungs. Rin could only hold him on his side, a hand on his shoulder to ensure that he didn't choke on whatever he was heaving up, and pant with awkward strokes of his shaking hand. Spasms still rippled through him, fear only diverted slightly by the flood of relief that swept through him alongside it.

He'd stopped breathing. Haru had gone under, had been under for a long time, and he'd stopped breathing.

Rin had never been so scared in his entire life. This was far different even from the last time that he'd seen him collapsed on the side of the river when he was a kid and for all appearances seemed a corpse. This time was so much worse because… because he was his friend and… and…

Fuck, I'm actually terrified, Rin thought a little detachedly, finally admitting the emotion running rampant through him. His fingers curled into Haru's shoulder as it shook with his gasps and a final surge of coughs. It was a novel feeling for him, more profound than he'd every felt, and yet within seconds a familiar upwelling of anger suffused him. All it needed was a match to spark it alight, and when Haru blinked hazily, rocking his head sideways to glance up at where Rin leaned over him, it did just that.

"What the hell was that?" Rin all but spat. He could feel his lip curl in a snarl, fear evolving into rage for Haru's utter stupidity. Haru didn't reply, simply stared up at him with glassy eyes that barely seemed capable of focusing. "Were you trying to kill yourself of something?"

Haru didn't reply; Rin wasn't sure if he could have spoken even had he tried. And yet he didn't need to. Rin didn't need him to, because a moment later his gaze sharpened just slightly and Rin saw. He saw what he hadn't seen in a long time, what, upon realising what it meant, he'd hoped to never see again.

Suddenly Rin's own words about death and dying didn't seem so offhanded and spontaneously accusing anymore. Horrifyingly, it felt like a very real possibility.

It struck him hard, and as Haru slid his eyes from Rin's, his head turning to fall back onto the ground, Rin drew back onto his haunches. He stared for a long moment, could feel his fingers curling more tightly into Haru's shoulder in what might have even been painful, but he couldn't bring himself to unclench them. He couldn't let go, not after seeing that.

How hadn't he noticed it before now? Had he just not been looking enough?

There was a long pause, a long moment of silence in which Rin couldn't bring himself to speak. He could only stare as Haru seemed to slump more heavily upon the ground, closing his eyes briefly almost as if he was struggling against sleep. It was only when he cracked an eye open once more, shooting a sidelong glance towards Rin, that Rin found his voice once more.

"Haru," he said, and his voice had somehow become little more than a croak. He swallowed in a fruitless attempt to clear its sudden dryness. "How long has it been that you stopped taking your medication?"


A/N: Okay, so I'm not trying to be a preacher here, but I feel this must be said. For the function in this story, no, Haru did not/does not go to hospital. Just as in the anime with, he wakes up, appears fine, so they don't pursue the subject further.

However. IF THIS EVER HAPPENS, it doesn't matter if the potential victim of drowning appears awake and alright when they regain consciousness, ALWAYS go to a hospital. It's impossible for people who don't know what they're doing to realise if there really is something wrong. It's always better to be safe than sorry, even if they seem fine.

Sorry for the reality flooding here, but it felt wrong to so use this feature without highlighting the proper actions that should be taken. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the first chapter. Thanks for reading!