I've been working on this between some other projects, and since the story is almost done I figured I should post it here as well. This story is cross posted on my tumblr and my AO3.
1.
Ah, that girl… she looks like Rin.
Makoto wasn't sure how she had caught his eye. He had been talking to Haruka about the relay, and he was still staring at the pool as if he hadn't noticed the lapse into silence. She was so tiny she hadn't really been in his line of vision, so given that he had been preoccupied he really shouldn't have noticed her at all. Maybe her bright red hair was what he had noticed, since it was in a ponytail high on her head.
He turned his head to watch her go; she was carrying a small grocery bag in her hands, and wearing a pink dress, so she probably wasn't part of any of the swim clubs. It seemed like she was heading to the bleachers.
Actually, didn't Rin mention he had a sister?
"Hey, Haru."
His friend's eyes widened for a moment, flicking up to his face. "What?"
Makoto hesitated, glancing over his shoulder, but he saw no sign of red hair or a dress. He smiled, looking back at Haruka, who seemed to be mustering all of his energy to keep his eyes away from the pool. "Our turn for the relay is coming up. Maybe we should go stretch."
He looked uninterested, surely thinking he didn't need to stretch, but nodded all the same. Stretching would take Haruka further from the water, but it would get Makoto closer to Rin. He wasn't at all surprised to see him stretching, his expression serious and his eyes hard; a lot of his concentration seemed to be going into ignoring Nagisa's chatter.
For some reason he felt nervous about bringing up the subject, and so he spent a long time nodding absently and slowly moving closer to Rin, as if it would make it easier to ask. Finally he felt there was no reason to put it off, and smiled as he took a breath. "Hey, Rin."
Rin raised his eyebrows, stretching his arms above his head. "Yeah?"
"You have a sister, right?"
"Yeah. Gou." He frowned, his arms falling to his sides and swinging. "She's probably here with my mom."
Gou…
Makoto didn't mention he had seen her.
The story follows canon pretty closely until about chapter 4. After that point I take advantage of all the empty space in the show to present points where Gou and Makoto could have been interacting off screen. This was started long before the season was even close to being finished, and before I had read High Speed!
