Hey cherished readers! I just want to apologize for how long this update took. Real life really kicked my ass this month. I doubled the total word count of the story to try and make it up to you guys.

Well, enjoy~~

Nitori was too busy trying to keep his anxiety from bubbling into panicky, outraged, doctor-throttling to notice how long he'd been sitting in the plastic abomination that was the waiting room chair of Iwatobi Municipal's ICU. To be honest, it wasn't until Nagisa had gotten up to ask an emerging nurse for news about Rin and Haru and had promptly thrown up on her shoes that he realized they'd been waiting so long Nagisa had gotten hung over.

Needless to say, the nurse hadn't told them anything, but at least it gave Nitori a change of scenery… to the bland hospital bathroom, rubbing Nagisa's back as he dry-heaved pitifully into the only toilet. As anxious and scared as he was over the plane crash, it was nice to be presented with a problem he could actually take care of. Although judging from Nagisa's long string of curses and complaints he didn't share the sentiment.

Nitori shifted into a kneeling position beside his friend so he could keep up his ministrations without twisting awkwardly, and rubbed tiredly at his face with his other hand. He'd checked the clock before hurrying into the bathroom after Nagisa, feeling his ears heating up and apologizing to the nurse at the same time. Right now, it was around 8. He tried to go over the events between seeing the news report and sitting in that horrid waiting room and wasn't surprised to find that there were big, awkward blank spaces in those five hours.

He vaguely remembered screaming like a kid in the midst of a nightmare about particularly hungry-looking clowns, and Rei pushing him onto the couch and trying to get him to calm down. He definitely remembered Nagisa grabbing him, pulling him into a big hug, patting his back and shooshing him, which actually did calm him down. At least enough that they could all watch the rest of the emergency broadcast, which had announced that survivors were being brought to Iwatobi Municipal Hospital since it was the only hospital in the vicinity of the crash that was equipped to handle this sort of large-scale incident. Nitori had practically rocketed out of Nagisa's grip, babbling about getting to the hospital right now, dammit, only to be promptly tossed back on the couch by Rei, who tried to explain, slowly and clearly, that they needed to calm down and think things through before dashing off and running around town in the middle of the night.

While Nagisa told Rei that it was stupid to be calm when your friends might be dying a horrible, flaming, plane-crash-y death, Nitori had clasped his hands together in his lap, taken a deep breath, and, following Rei's advice for once, actually tried to calm himself down. It was obvious that screaming and running around and just generally freaking out wasn't going to help anything. So he had forced himself to take deep, even breaths, feeling like he was preparing for a long race. When he felt like he was in control (except for his shaking hands, those still weren't cooperating, even as he was sitting in the bathroom taking care of Nagisa) he'd clapped a hand over Nagisa's mouth because he was babbling and it really wasn't helping. When Nagisa finally stopped trying to talk through the hand on his face, Nitori had pulled it away and stood up, still forcing himself to take those deep, even breaths. He'd pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes and held one last deep breath before letting it whoosh out and clapping his hands together suddenly. It served to get Rei's and Nagisa's attention, and had helped Nitori focus on the small picture of getting to the hospital, since his mind kept wanting to wander back to the vision of hell he'd been treated to almost ten minutes ago.

The hospital was only a twenty-minute walk from Nitori's house. Rei had pointed out some essential things they would need to bring with them, and Nagisa had vetoed all of the "unnecessary bullshit" except for cell phones and Nitori's charger, deeming water bottles, a change of clothes, and toiletries, really? as superfluous. Nitori had to agree on that point; he wasn't planning on packing luggage for the trip. So he'd headed back upstairs to grab his phone, his charger, and to change back into actual clothes. At the last second he'd grabbed his wallet from the corner of his desk – it wouldn't be good to be stranded without cash, after all. He'd headed back downstairs in time to see Rei helping Nagisa put his shoes on. It should have been funny – Nitori supposed it would have been in any other circumstance – but instead it just seemed sad and frustrating. Rei clearly wasn't in the mood to deal with Inebriated Nagisa anymore, if he'd ever been in the first place.

Finally, five minutes later, the trio had left the house, and arrived at the hospital at three-thirty.

It was an absolute nightmare. There were ambulances everywhere, from three different hospitals, sirens screaming and lights flashing manically. Mingling with the sirens were the sounds of crash victims screaming, or moaning, audible only until they'd been swallowed by the double doors leading to the emergency room and the ICU. Nitori had hoped to burst into the hospital immediately and start asking about Rin, but it was impossible to get near the hospital until an hour later, when the ambulances finally stopped moving. They had had to wait with a small throng of other people who were probably trying to get news of their own loved ones. That had been the most nerve-wracking part – everybody around them crying and shaking and begging to be let inside. It had been enough to start Nagisa crying, and Nitori had wanted to scream at those other people to shut up, whoever they were crying over, they weren't as important as Rin, and besides, watching Nagisa cry was going to make him cry and that wasn't okay because he was supposed to be calm and he was supposed to be composed and how the hell was Rei handling all of this so well. He had an arm around Nagisa, patting him on the head to help him calm down, and his other hand had found Nitori's, holding it and squeezing it to try and give just a bit of comfort. Thank God it was working, because Nitori hadn't noticed just how close he'd been to actually screaming.

Finally a "representative of the hospital" had come outside and led them back through the doors and into the waiting room of the ICU. Where they had proceeded to wait. And watch nurses with clipboards approach every other little group except theirs. Until, finally one just happened to wander over and ask who they were looking for. There was something awful in the careless way she had asked, as if it wasn't important, as if the three of them weren't dying inside, as if they couldn't matter because they were just kids – Nitori could have cheerfully beat her with her stupid plastic clipboard (although thinking back on it, that was probably just his anxiety making everything more horrible than it really was – that nurse wasn't really disinterested, she was probably exhausted. He really hoped that nurse wasn't the one Nagisa had just thrown up on).

After giving the nurse Rin and Haru's full names, and a brief description they'd settled back into what Nitori had thought were some sort of avant garde sculptures but were apparently just waiting room chairs. And they had waited. Nagisa had stopped crying, although his eyes were still puffy and red, and he was still sniffling non-stop. Nitori remembered holding hands with him, off and on, for the unknown period of time between talking to the nurse and learning what was going on with their two friends. He had no idea what Rei had done for that whole time – he supposed it simply hadn't registered. Like most of the waiting, it was a blank when he looked back on it.

Eventually the nurse had come back, looking grim, although that really could have just been how she had looked to Nitori. He was in a grim state of mind, after all, since he couldn't help but conjure up pictures of all of the horrible deaths Rin might have suffered (he wished he could say he'd thought of Haru, even a little, but he hadn't), which, by the time she had approached them, had merged in an amalgamated horror of flying limbs and burning hair and exploding organs that kept looping like a particularly awful GIF plastered to the inside of his eyelids. It just helped to ratchet up his anxiety now that he was, apparently, getting real answers.

Or not.

Rin wasn't in Iwatobi. According to the nurse, Rin's condition had been too critical to be dealt with here, and an emergency helicopter had spirited him away to Tokyo to receive "proper care." So the nurse had no idea what Rin's current condition was, or literally anything at all. She couldn't even really say what "critical condition" meant, because the doctor who had examined him was swamped with all of the other people in "critical conditions." Nitori had started to suspect that "critical condition" didn't really mean anything at all, and the nurse just seriously didn't have a clue. Again, a little ungrateful, but he really wasn't in any rush to be grateful to the person who just seemed to be making the situation more awful.

Thankfully at this point Rei had spoken up about Haru, and Nitori was able to resist yet another urge to get hysterical at a nurse.

Haru was actually in this hospital, so that at least brought some relief. According to the nurse he was having surgery in response to goddammit critical injuries. The nurse didn't know what the injuries were.

It was, in short, a rather shoddy report, or, as Nagisa had exclaimed, exasperatedly, 'it was total bullshit.' Even more frustratingly, when they'd called the hospital Rin had been taken to, the lady who had answered the phone had patched them through to the emergency room where they got a heaping helpful of fuckall. Nobody had even picked up the ringing phone.

Nitori had nearly snapped his phone in half before Rei had suggested calling Makoto. Since he was still in Tokyo for end-of-semester exams, he could go to the hospital in person and find out about Rin. And although neither Makoto nor Sousuke, who was also in Tokyo for university, had picked up their phones, it was reassuring to know that they would be able to be there for Rin. They'd settled for leaving them both (admittedly ominous) messages to call one of their phones when they got them. It would just have to do.

And so they'd settled back for more waiting. He had thought knowing more would make the wait a little less unbearable, but it had the complete opposite effect. The nurse had thrown around so many vague terms and unknowns that he couldn't even take solace in the fact that both of his friends had survived the crash. There were too many things that could happen – what if Haru died on the table, what if Rin died on the table, what if Rin's helicopter crashed. That last option was too horrible to even consider – he was a believer in reality's love of cruel irony, and that scenario seemed to fit the bill just a little too well.

Really. He had to be glad that Nagisa was around if only because it was impossible for things to not happen around him – it wasn't giving Nitori too much time to freak out. This time the distraction came in the fourteen missed calls from Rei's mom on Nagisa's phone. Rei had literally smacked himself in the head, remembering that he had lost his phone and his mom was probably having a mental breakdown since he and Nagisa had been supposed to come straight home after last night's party. He had sheepishly taken the phone and held it gingerly a few inches from his ear as his mother shouted (out of motherly love and worry) that she was going to (lovingly) strangle him when he got home for making her panic.

Rei had hung up after a few more minutes of angry coddling, and reluctantly stood to turn and face his two friends. Apparently it was absolutely imperative that he go home. Immediately. After making both Nagisa and Nitori promise to call him the second anything happened, he had pushed his glasses up with a frustrated huff and left with a small worried glance back at his friends.

And then there had been two, and they just went back to waiting, a little more at ease with the intrusion of something as normal as Rei's crazy, overbearing mother. But still –waiting. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and just when it seemed something would change –

"Ai-chan."

they waited some more, and even after that –

"Ai-chan."

they were still waiting, and maybe, in another minute they wouldn't have to be –

"AI-CHAN!"

Nitori's head snapped up so fast it rapped painfully against the wall behind him. He hissed at the sudden pain, and looked around, a little confused that he was sitting on the floor in a bathroom.

Nagisa was shaking his head, looking as reproachful as he could when his face was tinged an awkward green color. "You were really freaking me out, Ai-chan, staring at the floor all blank-eyed and not moving. I thought you were like, in shock or something, but it's a little late for that, so I thought you were just thinking really hard about stuff, or praying or something, but you weren't even blinking, like I said it was super freaky…" Only Nagisa could be this talkative and this hung over at the same time.

Nitori rubbed carefully at the lump growing on the back of his head and shrugged. "I think I fell asleep thinking about all the stuff we've done. I'm seriously exhausted." He used his other hand to rub at his eyes, which felt all dry and gross. Had he seriously fallen asleep with his eyes open? That was just weird.

Nagisa took advantage of Nitori's raised hands and slumped over so he was practically lying in his lap. Nitori wanted to push him off, but he really just looked so pathetic and worn out and miserable. He had probably been retching into that toilet the entire time he'd been asleep… How long had he been out, anyway? He felt dopey and slow, as if the nap he'd accidentally taken had just added to his exhaustion. Now Nagisa was sighing and rubbing his temples, so Nitori opted to gently run his fingers through his messy, blond hair instead of kicking him to the curb.

"Ai-chan?"

"Hm?"

"Everything's going to be okay, isn't it? They're going to let us see Haru-chan soon, right? And he'll be hurt, obviously, 'cause he was in surgery… but he'll still be okay. The first thing he'll do is complain that the hospital doesn't have a pool. And soon we'll get a call from Mako-chan, and he'll go check on Rin-chan and…"

Nitori snorted. "The first thing Rin will do is bitch about being in the hospital when he should be training. He'll be all 'This is fucked up, man, I'm going to be in the Olympics, I don't have time for this shit.'" Nitori tried to imitate Rin's patented growl and failed hilariously. It was so bad, it actually got the two boys to laugh, if with a lot less enthusiasm than the impression warranted.

Nagisa's laugh trailed off awkwardly, and he suddenly caught Nitori's eyes, a solemn look on his face. "I'm really scared, Ai-chan. What if nothing's okay?"

"Yeah… I don't know. I'm really scared, too. But… I just want to believe that they'll pull through, and… I don't really want to think about losing anybody." Nitori could feel his eyes getting watery. It would be shame to start crying now, since he'd held it together so long already. So he snuffled a few times, wiped his eyes, and pushed Nagisa back up. Then he stood, managing to keep his feet even though his legs were almost completely asleep. "We really need to get out of this bathroom, and find some coffee or something." Yes. That sounded reasonable and in control. Score.

Nagisa looked quizzically up at him from the floor. "Y'know, you don't have to be so calm if you're worried."

He scratched the back of his head awkwardly and sighed. "I know, I should be freaking out. But that's not going to help anything, or make all of this any easier. I just don't want to make anything worse…" He shrugged. "I'll freak out with relief when we hear everyone's alright, huh? But… we won't hear anything if we stay in the bathroom, right?"

"Hmm, okay. You're right." Nagisa nodded and shuffled around on the floor. "Ai-chan?" Nitori looked down, and Nagisa was holding his hands up in the air and giving him a pleading look. He wiggled his fingers. "Help me up, please?"

He rolled his eyes good-naturedly and pulled Nagisa onto his feet. He took the opportunity to check out his friend's condition: Blood-shot eyes, messy hair, and his face was pale-going-on-green. In short, he was a mess. "You should wash your face before we leave, Nagisa-kun."

Nagisa gave him a look, then stuck out his tongue. "You too, Ai-chan, you're all eye-boogery, s'gross."

Nitori crossed his eyes and wrinkled his nose, and when Nagisa laughed he felt a little bit better.

A few minutes later they finally emerged from the bathroom, only to be knocked aside by a guy who looked like he'd been worrying about his bladder bursting like an over-filled water balloon.

Nagisa turned and looked back at the bathroom door. "Man, how long were we in there, anyway?"

Nitori pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I mean, not that long. It's only 8: 45."

"I think forty-five minutes is a long-ass time to be in a bathroom, Ai-chan."

"Okay, yeah, but still. You were the one throwing up on nurses." He started toward the doors of the waiting room. "Where do you think we can fin- "

He was cut off by the sound of Nagisa screaming the word "Ringtone" over and over again. It was, against all odds, his ringtone, courtesy of Nagisa and not caring enough to figure out how to change it.

Nitori flipped his phone open to stop the unholy noise, and stopped in his tracks when he heard Sousuke.

"Nitori. What's the emergency? Where are you? Rin get home okay? He miss his flight or something?"

He started, a little startled that he'd brought up Rin already. Then he bit his lip and huffed through his nose. Explaining was going to be really hard. He knew Sousuke wouldn't take the news well at all. He opened his mouth to start only to be interrupted by Nagisa.

"Ai-chan, is it Mako-chan? Is he calling back? Tell him about the crash."

Nitori pushed Nagisa, who had crowded against him, away. "It's not Tachibana-san, it's Yamaza-"

"Nitori, did he say crash? Hurry up and tell me what's going on." He could hear that Sousuke's urgency had suddenly cranked up. So much for explaining things calmly.

"You should probably turn the news on, Yamazaki-san. But, well…" He walked Sousuke through the abridged version of the last six hours, telling him about the crash, the hospital, the report they'd gotten on Haru and Rin, and ended by telling him the name of the hospital Rin had been flown to. To his credit, he didn't interrupt at all (and unexpectedly, neither did Nagisa), but Nitori could hear him moving through his apartment, turning on the news, and making small worried noises at the worst parts.

"Holy shit, Nitori. This is just… shit this is bad."

"Yeah, I know. Could you –"

Sousuke cut him off. "Yeah, yeah, I'm heading out right now. You guys called Makoto too, right? I'll stop and get him on the way, so you don't have to worry about it… Have you heard from Rin's mom? Or his sister?"

Nitori slapped a hand to his forehead and groaned.

"What, what's wrong?"

"I didn't even think about them. They're still in Australia. They went to watch Rin and Nanase-san and they stayed for an extra day of sightseeing. They probably don't even know anything's going on… I should call them, right?"

"Would you rather I did it? It won't be an easy conversation."

"Well, I can…" He paused. "Actually… yeah, if you don't mind. I don't think I could… hold it together if I had to tell them…" He felt a little cowardly, shoving the responsibility onto Sousuke like that, but… well he'd offered, right? Then again, he'd probably burst into tears the second one of them picked up, so he wouldn't be able to speak anyways.

"Okay, yeah. I can do that. So, I'll call them, get Makoto, go to the hospital… and I'll call you as soon as we have news, alright?" Sousuke huffed suddenly into the phone. It was really the only sign that he was frustrated and panicky and anxious. "This really is just a fucking mess, isn't it?"

"No kidding. Thank you, for taking care of all of that, Yamazaki-san. It's a relief that you guys are there."

"Glad I can at least take a bit of weight off your mind. I'll let you know, alright? And Nitori?"

"Yeah?" He had been about to hang up, but he brought the phone back to his ear.

"Stay strong." And then a beep as Sousuke hung up.

Nitori flipped his phone shut and stood with his eyes closed. He could practically feel Nagisa at his side, impatient to know what was going on in Tokyo, but he was feeling shaky again and he needed a pause to calm himself down.

'Stay strong, huh?'

He could do that.

Right?

There we go. The next updates should be quicker. It'll probably be weekly? Who knows, I'm really flakey. As always, a shout-out my designated First Reader (mm-hmm) who makes sure there isn't a bunch of garbage on your screen when you read the story.

As always, reviews are nice, even if it's just to point out mistakes - you can't get better without criticism, kids!

Welp, it's time for me to Youth Roll right the hell to CompLit, so peace out. (College is the real life thing that kicked my ass, by the way. If you were curious).