It has to be at least an hour later that everything has gone still again.

The dingoes have left, but there's a collective understanding that they're not sure how far, and there's no point in trying to wander off again anyway.

Still no Lucas, but Haru by now has stopped waiting for him to return. They're just sitting. They're just sitting in a stuffy, broken-down car in the middle of nowhere and, unsurprisingly, not a single vehicle has come through on the same desolate road. Haru's not surprised. By now he's certain of two things: Lucas most definitely kidnapped them, and, he got himself eaten when he left the car. Serves him right probably. Haru would be more remorseful, except that Lucas left them with no water, so he can't bring himself to care that much about his demise.

It's just after eleven, when Haru asks Sousuke what time it is. It isn't until then that the bonehead has the thought to call Rin, but as luck would have it, he has no service out here anyway. So they just sit. In silence.

For like, a while. Until

"What the hell is that?"

Haru looks back over his shoulder. Sousuke's eyes are trained up at the sunroof. Haru doesn't catch it at first, but then he sees several, thin legs pick at the edge of the open window with slow, searching curls. He tilts his head for a better look, and sees the silhouette of a spider the size of a fat house-cat framed against the sky.

They're silent, eyes watching it with a focus so intense it feels like the smallest shift of sound would shatter the other windows. The spider very ominously inches forward, revealing more of its underside as it perches more and more precariously on the edge of the sunroof, and Haru can feel Sousuke sweating bullets in the back.

He glances at him.

Sousuke has completely blanched, and looks as though he's concentrating very hard on not projectile vomiting across the car as he shakes his head slowly, eyes trained on the creature.

"Don't freak out," Haru mumbles.

"You shut the fuck up right now," he says thickly.

"It's just a spider."

"No the fuck it is not. That is not a spider, and don't you dare try to convince me otherwise. Spiders are bugs. That is a mutation from hell."

"It's going to jump at you."

"Nanase … I will kill you. I'm so serious right now."

A trembling breath is very silently taken, then Haru whispers, "Close the window."

"Fuck you."

"Sousuke ..."

Sousuke shakes his head more vigorously, neither of them have blinked once, nor have they removed their gaze from the thing.

"It's right fucking there. I am not putting my hand near its face."

"It's going to get in the car, if we leave the window open."

"It's already in the car!" he hisses. "You close it."

"I couldn't even get it open."

"Shit," Sousuke growls through his teeth. He doesn't move. Neither does Haru.

The spider is dangerously hovering halfway in the car by now. Even if they had wanted to do something about that, they'd certainly have to sacrifice something. So they just wait, tensing with each passing heartbeat, and the very second that it falls, both of them leap out of the car and slam the doors shut so hard the windows shake.

Haru brushes the crawling chills from his arms, while Sousuke whines and screams quietly through his teeth somewhere out of sight. He appears by the hood of the car on the opposite side, shaking with so many things that Haru can't name them all. He's got his color back just that quickly, and it's all in his face.

"What the fuck is wrong with this place?!" he bellows, his voice echoing out across the plains.

This is answered by an unnamed shift of movement in the grass somewhere close by, and they both immediately jump up onto the hood of the car, crashing against each other with the momentum, though they hardly notice for a moment, because they're both frantically scanning the area for more threats.

"Fuck this shit," Sousuke hisses through his teeth. Haru can feel him trembling against his arm. "God." He shivers and wipes his palms aggressively on his thighs.

"You're working yourself up too much —"

"Shut up. Shut up."

Haru gives him a moment to calm down. It takes a while, but he has nothing else to do other than be patient, so he waits. Nothing else jumps or crawls out of the shadows, but that's not exactly reassuring. It now feels like they're being watched by a litany of things they don't know about.

Sousuke heaves a giant sigh after a long while.

"Maybe you'll get more service if you stand on top of the car," Haru mumbles.

They exchange glances, and then Sousuke looks behind them through the windshield. The corners of his lips set, and he digs his phone out only to slap it in Haru's palm.

"You do it."

"It's your phone."

"So?"

"You're taller than me. You have a better chance."

Haru can practically see the steam spiraling out of Sousuke's ears as he presses his lips tight and closes his eyes. But after that, he snatches the phone back and heavily crawls up to the roof of the car. His feet shift with uncertainty when he's standing, and he stares down through the sunroof warily for a good long while, before he finally holds the phone up above his head and tries to search for a bar.

This takes a while, and Haru spends that time watching him, underwhelmed by this Sousuke that looks just like a regular person furrowing his dark eyebrows and turning in slow circles on top of the car.

He looks young. Haru always forgets that they're around the same age. In fact, Sousuke's a few months younger than him, and that's certainly weird to think about, especially when realizing he actually has Sousuke's birthday memorized, and he can't think of why. Rin or Makoto probably said something about it one time. He's just not sure why it would stick. He usually doesn't remember anyone's birthday except for Makoto's … and Rin's, when he demands that his friends come and visit him for a week to celebrate.

Some birthday this is turning out to be.

Sousuke lets out a tired huff and lets his arm drop back to his side. "It's not happening," he mumbles, stepping heavily on the windshield as he lowers himself back down next to Haru. "We're not getting anything out here."

They're quiet for another moment as they both stare out ahead of them. The tension of mutual thought ripples out like static around them, but for a while yet, neither of them wants to voice anything about what they know they're both thinking. Then Sousuke's glances over his shoulder.

"We're gonna have to walk."

Haru's chest expands. "And if we run into our friends?"

Sousuke thinks for another moment, and then points ahead. "They came from that direction. So … I would imagine that they went back that way too. Maybe they have a den or something. If we go that way," he shifts to point behind them, "back the way we came, we might have better luck keeping away from them. Also, Lucas went that way, so more than likely we'll at least run into him at some point down the road."

"His body you mean."

"He's not dead."

"— or what's left of it."

"He is not dead. God, you are morbid."

Haru shrugs when Sousuke furrows his brow at him. The larger man then shakes his head and rolls his eyes away, letting it pass.

"Alright." He huffs out a large breath. "We should go now. The longer we wait, the more hopeless this is going to get."

Haru doesn't respond, but he follows Sousuke's lead as he slides off of the car. They're both tense at first, moving on high alert with roaming eyes, as they creep slowly around the car and start heading back in the direction from which they originally came.

It takes a good two kilometers of uneventful strolling for them to relax just a bit. And then the journey quickly becomes boring — and a little bit irritating. Maybe even more than a little bit.

Walking, for whatever reason, makes Haru's stomach aware that it's empty, and then he remembers that he's thirsty, and then he remembers that he's hot, and then he remembers that complaining about these things to Sousuke is useless, because he's not Makoto, and he can't fix it.

And then he starts thinking about how all of their stuff is locked in the trunk of the car. And then he remembers that Makoto reminded him he put Rin's birthday present in Haru's book bag.

"Dammit," he whispers.

"What?"

Haru shakes his head. "Rin's birthday present is in the car."

"It'll be fine. We'll get it back eventually."

"We left the car unlocked."

"No one's driven out here in the past two and a half hours. I think it'll be fine."

"You should carry me."

Sousuke makes a face and shoots him with a look. "What?"

Haru stares at the dirt moving slowly beneath their feet. "You're bigger than me, and my feet hurt. You should carry me."

Sousuke looks away again with a scoff. "I'm not carrying you. You're fine. Suck it up."

Haru is quiet about this for a moment, letting it go, because he only brought it up to be annoying to begin with, even though he would have actually accepted a ride on Sousuke's back in real life, had he agreed to it. It's just that he's tired. There's no other reason. He's used to swimming. He's not a land creature. Being on his feet is not a thing he often thinks about, and they're making that clear to him now. It's dry out here.

"Why are you mean?" he finds himself asking, and it's surprising even to him that the tone of the question is actually serious.

Sousuke wrinkles his nose at him this time. "I'm not mean."

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

Sousuke scoffs. "Why are you mean?" he shoots back.

Haru makes a face, but boldly looks up at the larger man. "I'm mean to everybody. It's not on purpose, and it's really not mean. People just don't like it when other people are straightforward with them. You're only mean to me, and I want to know why."

Something compromised skitters across Sousuke's expression, and he turns his face away quickly, even though he's too late to keep it from Haru. Haru doesn't know what it means, but he knows at least that his hunch is correct.

"Makoto says he's never had a problem with you, and I know that's not just because he's Makoto. Rin seems to like you even though you guys fight all the time, but I get it because we fight too. And you're really gentle with Gou, and nice to Nitori and Mikoshiba, and they like you too. Nagisa and Rei even like you, and they talk about you sometimes. I've seen and heard about you being nice to everyone but me, and I want to know why," he reiterates, this time with a tone of demand that he won't accept silence for.

But Sousuke is stubborn, so he doesn't say anything for a good long while, and when he does, his response is a displeasing mutter of "I don't know."

"Yes you do."

Silence.

Haru looks away. He lets the silence stretch for a while, before he adds, "I'm mean to you, because you're mean to me. And I'm not sorry for it either."

Sousuke's tone is itchingly blasé when he responds, "I wouldn't expect you to be."

Haru tches under his breath, and they walk another three kilometers in pure silence.

Then they hit a fork in the road. They stop completely.

"Fuck," Sousuke huffs. "I don't remember this."

He looks to Haru as though to ask if Haru recalls the car ever turning, and he shakes his head. They were both staring out of the windows, but apparently neither of them was paying attention.

"One road that goes in one direction, huh?"

"Shut up."

"Do you have service yet?"

Sousuke checks and immediately shakes his head. "No."

They stand there for a moment, figuratively twiddling their thumbs.

"We'll just have to guess," Sousuke says. "Let's go this way." He heads toward the right, but looks back when Haru doesn't immediately follow. "What?"

"I don't think that's right."

"Why not?"

Haru shrugs. "No particular reason, I just don't trust your sense of direction."

Sousuke dramatically rolls his eyes.

"You get lost on your own school campus. How could you even blame me for that?"

"Fine then, we'll go the other way."

"I don't trust that either."

"Nanase, there are only two options here."

Haru shrugs again, arms crossed.

"God," Sousuke growls through his teeth. "I can't. I can't- This," he says gesturing to Haru with both hands. "You want to know why I'm mean to you? This is why, Nanase. It's because you're ridiculous. I have never met a more sullen, uncaring, non-committal brat in my entire life. You think so highly of yourself that you just cannot be bothered to do anything anyone else's way. And everyone puts you up on a pedestal just because you're attractive to look at when you swim. It's complete bullshit. All you do is screw over everyone you touch. We're going this way."

Sousuke stomps off to the right, without waiting for Haru, who just simply stares at his back for a while with a warm and unpleasant heat filling up the center of his chest. His ears ring for a while, as though they've been struck like a bell, and it's not comfortable.

He really doesn't want to follow this man anywhere, but Sousuke's neither going to pause for him, nor turn around to try something else, and Haru can feel that aloneness spreading again. His gaze drops to the ground as he quietly rolls the inside of his lip between his teeth. Then he curls his fingers into loose fists and follows.