Rin is reaching the end of his tether.
"I don't want them to be choreographed!" he bellows at the director, and then, for the millionth time, rounds on the group of swimmers. "Why can't you just swim?!"
One of the students is obviously running out of patience too. "Oh, right, just run laps for the entire video?"
"NO, no! I mean, just…" Rin flails his arms. Someone in the water copies, making a splash. "Don't –"
"Just feel the water."
Haru steps up – Rin can feel him behind him, just touching his fingers into the small of his back, and Rin wants so much just to lean all the way into him, but he made such a scene without him yesterday that he's trying to regain at least some dignity.
"Yes," he manages, because really, who even knows what that means but Haru?
Certainly not the kids in the pool, who look at them blankly. There's suddenly a large hand on Rin's shoulder, and a matching one on Haru's.
"Why don't you have Nanase show them, Rin?" Seijuro asks, his tone sort of singing and patronising, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Or better yet –" he pauses, and they both look at Haru, who cocks his head.
Rin knows what he's thinking. Hell, even Haru knows what he's thinking, probably, if he can think past the fact that he's just been told he's allowed to swim. His face has lit up, and those fingers that were in his back that at some point snaked around to hold his waist have dug in, excited and eager and Rin is just melting.
Because this fucking kid is just too cute and he can't even stand it.
"Go on," he says, twitching his arm – unconsciously looped around Haru's hips – into a nudge forwards.
"What?" Haru stares, like he can't quite believe it yet. Rin had fully expected him to take off immediately, but he's sinking into his side like he can't even stand.
"Swim," he whispers into his ear, brushing his nose behind it a few times.
"I only swim free."
Haru practically staggers forwards, Rin close behind, but as he slips into the water Rin can see the excited tension vanish from his body as he takes off… and off… and…
Oh, Haru…
"What is he doing?" someone, Rin can't tell, probably Sei, everyone's just a blur at this point, asks. He's watching Haru, they don't matter.
"Swimming," he says blindly, completely captivated.
"But where is he going?" they ask again.
"Erm…" goooood question. "Just a warm up lap, I guess."
"Or twelve."
"Or twenty," Sousuke snickers, having materialised from yet another wander around where Rin's clocked him doing some highly suspicious texting for the second day in a row.
"Yeah, well, just give him a minute," Rin mumbles defensively.
They have to give him ten, as it turns out, until Haru finally settles into letting the water take over as he dives and twists, ignoring everything above the surface. They have the cast gather around to watch him on the screens were the underwater cameras are picking him up as he passes.
"That's great," an irritated, snarky, camp as Christmas boy begins, "but how are we supposed to do that? We're not all part dolphin or whatever he is."
"Just… you know… try," Rin pleads to the group.
The director has had just about enough of this. "Can we all just get back in the water, please? Band too… just swim around them, like he's doing, or something, alright?"
"Just remember we're filming, Rin," Sei says, firm hand on his wrist. "Keep it PG."
"So… what we're just gonna run the song?" Rin blinks, confused.
"Freestyle."
It takes a moment to get Haru's attention and get still enough to hear Rin out, and make sure, mostly, that he is okay wit this.
"We're going to film now, Haru," he says, capturing his waist, and Haru takes over keeping them both afloat, pulling a face.
"So I have to get out now?" he frowns.
"No… I think the idea is to… uh… have you in it?" Rin braves, struggling for words, "Just give it a whirl… you know?"
For an awful moment, Haru stops paddling, and gravity sucks them under for a few seconds until they both collect themselves. Rin takes over with one hand, the other just holding Haru, waiting for a reaction.
"So I'm… in the video?"
"If you're okay with that? I don't know… you could just do a few takes until the others get the hang of it?"
"Do you want me in the video?"
"Yeah…" Rin sighs, wistfully, because ever since Haru first drew the sketches of all the swimmers twirling around the band underwater, it's all he's wanted for Haru to be one of them.
"So I just…" Haru looks down at the water. "Swim?"
"You drew it. And we both know you know how to work a camera," he winks.
Haru wasn't exactly expecting this, to be totally honest, when he'd allowed Rin to drag him along, but that sparkle in Rin's eye makes him suspect that maybe it was Rin's intention all along. He and the other swimmers disperse between and around the band. There's going to be a ton of breathing breaks and Haru can't even imagine the amount of editing it's going to take to make it run smoothly. And Rin, unfortunately, discovered on Monday he can't actually mime his vocals underwater, so he's just assing around for most of these clips, and he's not even been having fun with it.
There are underwater speakers, but the song is just on loop. Haru doesn't know much about filmography and directing and editing and all that, but he's seriously wondering why they didn't just green-screen all of this, and work some editing layering magic to stick it all together.
He imagines Rin would whine something about it being not the same, and he might just earn a well-deserved elbow to the ribs from Sousuke while he's at it.
Momo's having the time of his life trying to flail his drumsticks against the resistance of the water though.
Haru just goes with the flow. Rin is smiling, at least, and they share a kiss on their first break for air. Rin's pretty much just joining in with the supporting swimmers now, mirroring the passes and dives they're all trying to copy off Haru. It seems like Rin has apparently completely given up on whatever act they were originally trying to pull, trying to keep their relationship a secret, because he's just grabbed Haru and twirled him under his arm, like some clumsy, flailing ball room move.
It's also a lot of work. Everyone's trying to hold their breath for two or three minutes while they dance, because that's what this is, Haru's figured, and in a way it's more exhausting than trying to swim a race, or even what the others were doing before, because there's no real structure or pacing.
They're just winging it.
They take a slightly extended break just half an hour in, and Rin's too tired to even watch back the best of the footage, shrugging Seijuro and the director off to go and collapse at his sun lounger. Haru scoots along behind him and wraps a soft towel around is shoulders when Rin just sits down on the side, hunched over his knees.
"Hey," he says, crouching in front of him, lifting his chin up to see his face with one finger.
Rin makes some kind of noise and flops down, sprawling out in over dramatic exhaustion. Ignoring him, Haru heads over to pick up some drinks for them both, and everyone seems to be in a better mood than they have in days.
Seijuro claps an arm around his shoulders, tugging him towards the little tech tent they've got set up, and plonks him down onto a stool in front of the laptop.
He doesn't say a word as he hits the play button, and Haru is suddenly assaulted with that same song Rin has decided to set as their alarm tone, because he's just hilarious like that. It sounds different, out of water, and Haru's glad the volume is relatively low.
His own face swims into view, but it's not that he's seeing. Rin is right behind him, it's sort of like they're racing, and his smile is just perfect. Sei stops the video.
"More of that, yeah?" he prompts. "And… just let me go speak to Rin. I'll take that?" he gestures for one of the bottles.
"You want us to kiss?" Rin splutters, almost losing half his drink through his nostrils. "What happened to keeping it PG?!"
"Oh please, it's not like I'm asking you to suck him off…" Sei rolls his eyes. "Just… you know… we can get you two up on the beech tomorrow, holding hands and stuff. Some sappy love story to go along with it."
"That has nothing to do with the song," Rin demands, he can already feel a blush, and he hopes it's masked by his exhaustion.
"Rin, your life is a sappy love story. And we can always edit it out."
"I refuse to use him for publicity."
Another eye roll. "It's not for that. It's for the video, Rin. And I'm pretty sure he'll do just about anything for you anyway."
"You spoke to him?"
Sei pauses, and Rin is instantly suspicious. "I implied," he says coolly.
Rin sees him clap a hand on Haru's shoulders as he leaves, and Haru gets up with just this confused look of worry and excitement, and even twenty meters away across the studio, Rin can see this twitch in his arms, just this need to be next to him, and holds out one of his own as a summons. Haru's balled in his lap not a moment later.
"What's wrong?" Haru's asking, even as Rin's still hooking Haru's knees over his thighs.
"Nothing," he muses, because it's not a wrong, it's just a weird. "I love you."
Haru narrows his eyebrows. "Tell me."
"I love you, I love you, I love you?" Rin tries, kissing along his cheek.
Haru snorts. "Idiot."
They sit quietly, Rin just holding and hugging, absently kneading and squeezing at Haru has Sei's suggestion spins over in his mind. It's a little bit embarrassing, but it's not something that's uncommon in videos, and at least it's not a stranger like the one video set in a club where Sousuke's up against the wall with a girl. A kiss to his ear gets Haru's attention back.
"There's been a suggestion… editing the script a bit."
Haru almost laughs. "What script?"
"Oi, you know. Maybe having a bit of a… love interest plot going on."
"Oh," Haru turns his head, a little frown.
"With you."
"Me."
"Kissing… in the video."
"In the water?" Haru tilts his head the opposite way, a thing Rin's picked up on. He has one side for concerned and one side for confused.
"Yes, in the water," he promises, feeling a pang of nerves.
"Okay."
Okay. It's okay.
Which mean they'll definitely need to get a move on with Nagisa's blog when they're back in Iwatobi.