Ever since he was little, Hazuki Nagisa had always had an interest in dreams. He couldn't remember what food Dad had made for dinner or all of his multiplication tables, but he could tell you what sort of dream he'd had months ago and where he'd been and what he'd done. He'd then go on to tell you every bit of detail about the food there that eventually, his parents took him out to the stationary store to buy a kitten-print notebook and a rainbow of ink pens to keep him from talking their ears off.

(This was in the first grade, and unfortunately for his family, it didn't work, but there was something to be said for the way that Nagisa wrote down every detail, down to the exact weather, in his journal, even using the dictionary that Mom bought for his oldest sister Nanako).

Nagisa didn't write in it every morning, but there was a certain pattern to it. In the summer, it was almost every day, in the holidays, only once, during the school year, maybe twice or thrice per week, and during exams, virtually never. The dreams always varied. One was about his parents flying out of the country and leaving Naoko in charge of the house (she was the middle sister, did he have to explain further?). Another was about the family cat Maru-chan talking, which was admittedly weird, if only because Maru-chan sounded like Dad and kept making him eat tomatoes.

One of them, probably a dream he had in the middle of January, involved a boy with red hair and sharp teeth, and a swimming pool. Nagisa didn't talk about that dream, because it was the only one he couldn't record properly after second-guessing himself on every detail. All he could remember was the snap of the boy's goggles and the smell of chlorine that overwhelmed Nagisa when the other boy pulled him in. He woke up early in the morning, in the process waking up Naoko until he could fall back asleep again, this time without dreams. It didn't matter, though. Nagisa didn't like swimming anyway, so maybe his brain was just pulling stuff from TV shows instead of real life and it was probably nothing. Not. He was impatient with himself because he couldn't remember a stupid dream and he had nothing to backup the words on the page, the words he had written in a messy scrawl of a second-grader.

So he dreamed more, but he was faced with different situations, different people, dreams he could remember much more clearly than that one, and though he was still frustrated, and maybe a little forelorn, his diary was filling itself quickly. He'd kept the kitten-print notebook until second grade, when girls and boys started teasing him and kittens were for girls, even though Nagisa and Dad were the only ones to feed, wash, and take care of Maru-chan.

Third-grade, he'd stopped writing for a while. The dreams were always about boys and girls, kids who were just mean for the sake of it, bullying and teasing, and making him cry, even as he woke up. He spent the whole day in his room crying, because he couldn't write it down on the page, the mocking and the shame and–

–and his parents had tried everything to get him to move past the bullies, even threatened to take away the journal so he would stop crying, and so he stopped writing. Nagisa didn't want his parents intervening, and his sisters were always so nosy, able to turn anything into a game of embarrassing him. Even a dream about Maru-chan sounded mortifying when Natsuko read it out loud, and Nagisa was sure she'd laugh and join in if she heard that he was being teased for his stupid girly name, both in dreams and in real life.

On their Golden Week vacation, though, that rule of avoiding dream diaries changed. Nagisa woke up in the middle of the night and had to grab the nearest pen and hotel stationary he could find, because he remembered the boy this time, that boy who he swore not to forget the next time he saw him.

Red hair, red eyes like the color of cherries, are the first thing he writes down. Then comes the name "Rin" that comes to him, even though "he" was a boy. A boy named Rin (just like him, just like him) makes Nagisa so happy to see him. Not happy like the time he got a perfect score on a test or the time he ate the last chocolate ice cream bar before Naoko or the time he went to the penguin exhibit at the zoo with Mom.

For one of the first times ever, he felt like he had a friend, he reflects, recollecting the rising feelings in his chest as Rin smiled at him, happy as ever and so cool, Nagisa thought, as Rin waved him over before diving into the water and racing across it. So cool, so fast, and so strong. Nagisa dived in, the familiar smell of chlorine hitting him, but this time, he didn't wake up, but chased after Rin as they raced and raced. It made him so happy…

He falls asleep, without any dreams to follow, though they come each day, each picking off where the previous one ended. He'd remembered "Rin" and his quirks, what he liked and disliked, and he'd shared his own life, once boring, but fascinating to Rin, who was the type of friend he'd never had.

One night is particularly empty, as Nagisa writes down and double-checks his entries, keeping every detail and fact on the paper, as if it were his own secrets being shared. But as he drifts off, the paper slides off the desk and onto the floor…

A high-pitched peal of giggling wakes him up, just to see Nanako grin down at him, holding a phone picture of his smiling, sleeping face covered in her makeup and his bedhead neatly arranged into pigtails. He jumps out of bed wearing one of their nightgowns over his shirt and shorts and yelps as she runs away, snickering and probably off to show her masterpiece to Naoko and Natsuko.

He doesn't cry, but he is embarrassed as Mom coos him and tries to take a picture, ignoring the fact that his sister dressed him up like a girl and made fun of him for it too (and woke him up from his dream).

The last part annoys him the most, but before he can swat Mom away, he notices Nanako reading the stationary, eyes scanning the page as Nagisa's heart races. He feels his cheeks and neck glowing and he lunges at her to get away from the paper. "Who's Rin-chan?" she asks, smirking at him and holding the paper away from his tiny hands. Nagisa turns red, red like Hana-chan from third-grade, who was pretty and gave him pencils when he asked really nicely and gave him a fistful of uprooted dandelions from the schoolyard.

Red as if "ickie Nagisa has a cwush", Natsuko and Naoko mock in a singsong tone a few hours later, when they get permission from Mom to drag him to go shopping with them, and at that moment, Nagisa hates dreaming because they won't stop teasing him for the rest of the week, until on the last day, he snaps and screams at them in the middle of the hotel restaurant, pours soup on their heads, and cries in the bathroom until his dad retrieves him.

He doesn't mention his dreams at all, because he hates swimming in his dreams and he hates Rin for being ruined by his stupid sisters and he hates hates hates that dream from Golden Week. (So he tears that diary entry to shreds when they get home and hides his dream diary in Mom's medical textbooks, where Nanami and Naoko and Natsuko will never find it. The bullying still continues and the dreams do, and Nagisa tries to forget about "Rin", because "he" becomes a source of jokes.)

Dad tells him to join the Iwatobi Swim Club to get stronger, after he comes home at the end of third grade and vents and cries and eats nothing but Dad's soups for a whole week. It'll make him less likely to get bullied, Dad says, firm as ever. So he does.

And he feels as happy as his dreams used to make him. He meets Nanase Haruka, cool and collected, but so kind. Haru-chan doesn't care about what others think of him, as long as he can swim, and he can swim so perfectly that it makes him a bit jealous, but never enough to hate Haru-chan. He meets Tachibana Makoto, Haru-chan's best friend, and Mako-chan looks cool and confident, but is silly and maybe a bit of a scaredy-cat. Mako-chan is the type of friend that Nagisa likes, because he is reliable and happy with everything. But he and Haru-chan are joined at the hip, and whenever one is absent, the other is distant, and perhaps Nagisa is used to being pushed aside, being the only boy in a family of girls. Nevertheless, he likes swimming and he likes swimming with them, although they don't know each other too well.

He likes the breaststroke in particular, but he can swim most of the strokes. He hasn't gone swimming since the Golden Week vacation, but he's fast and the other kids still tease him about his name but then gape when he beats most of them in races (and the glee on his face when he touches the walls first!). And even when he loses, he's happy enough, enough to start dreaming about other things again.

He isn't sure if he wants to start the journal again, though. Then fourth-grade rolls around and Nagisa's made up his mind. He decides no, he won't.

Dreams mean nothing, he finds, when he meets "him" for the third time, because the reality is better than the dream. The cheery, good-natured Matsuoka Rin has Nagisa blindsided for a whole month before he sees him in action and can acknowledge, having already accepted, that this boy is the "Rin" of his dreams. It's a coincidence that makes Nagisa want to watch him in action, to see if he's real or if he's the same, right down to the way he snaps his goggles.

(And he is, although it's a rare habit. The small things are different; Rin-chan is more stubborn that "Rin" and more guarded, but he's as confident and as strong and as cool as Nagisa "remembers" him.

There's one key difference between the two; although "Rin" was associated with embarrassment and maybe something like friendship, Rin-chan was someone who he admired, someone who Nagisa was pulled in by.)

How he felt about Rin-chan was a lot more than he could explain, but it wasn't like he had to explain– just swim. Rin-chan would understand if he put himself into his swimming, because Nagisa would make sure Rin-chan saw him.

Even if it was maybe not all the time–Rin-chan wasn't the type of person who looked at him but looked at Haru-chan, because Haru-chan was amazing and everyone looked at him like that– he'd even called Haru-chan his "rival" and he'd raced against Haru-chan more that anyone else. But Nagisa could always try to catch Rin-chan– to chase him, like he had with "Rin". And Rin-chan wanted to swim in a relay, to swim with the best team, he'd told Mako-chan. Nagisa could be one of them, if he focused, for Rin-chan had said that if he placed first, he could join Haru-chan and Mako-chan.

The hope fluttering in his chest was more than he'd ever felt. There was a race tomorrow, amongst his group. He had a chance for Rin-chan to see him.

(But the dream that night was a nightmare.

Nagisa dreamed of the race, nervous and weaker than he had ever felt. Rin-chan was there, watching, expecting him to make it. He'd felt the worse type of embarrassment as he'd scanned the faces of the other swimmers, all mocking, all stronger and surer than he felt. The pain was hurting him, but he had to swim, had to win for Rin-chan.

The chlorine choked him, the sensation of being pulled in instead of diving took him by shock. He couldn't even swim fast, though he was extending himself with each stroke, reached out across the water to Rin-chan, felt himself being pulled back.

He'd been dead last and Rin-chan's confidence crumbled away; only disappointment was left. Someone else had taken Nagisa's spot, while he kept reached, reaching and–

Nagisa woke up, sweating and nervous, and kicked off his blankets. If he stretched himself, he promised himself, he could reach Rin-chan right now, because he couldn't lose Rin-chan. The dream wasn't real, he told himself. Rin-chan is so close now, he reminded himself. So close.)

When the time came, he didn't feel confident, nor did he have the anxiety from his dreams. He'd swam and came first and he and Rin-chan were equally surprised at the result. But the realization that came after he climbed out of the pool almost sank him to his knees, and the hand that helped him up was real. Rin-chan was real, he thought, with dizzying happiness. He waited to wake up. He didn't. He was part of a relay. Part of Rin-chan's team.

The satisfaction and happiness he felt from the reality was much better than any of his dreams could have ever been.

end

Happy Nagirin Week! Although this could be romantic, I wrote it as sort of a childish first love. It could be also seen as a platonic situation, since this takes place before Free!. There's just a few details which conflict with High Speed! because I rewrote this in a rush after I deleted the text file the first time. I hope you enjoyed this nonetheless.