He heard the waves knocking against the cliffside, but they were much more subdued. He heard birds. He heard … the very faint signs of human life, like really distant music, and warming engines, and general movement.

He opened his eyes.

The cave was bright, its shiny walls painted by the morning sun. There was no rain, no thunder, no lightening. When he sat up and looked out of the opening, the sky and ocean alike were blue and calm, unbothered. And out in the distance — maybe a kilometer's swim away — was land. An endless stretch of bright sand, a dock jutting out into the water, green trees and grass, hilly land, and buildings scattered further inland, cropping up between the trees and more buildings.

Haru didn't recognize it. It wasn't part of his island, nor was it anywhere along the shores of Chibu.

A chill ran down his spine even before the sea gave him any answers, and he already knew. It didn't make any sense to him, but nothing else had thus far, so he didn't bother to question it. He just sighed a heavy breath and crawled to the edge of the cave, realizing only then that his legs were back and the rocky floor was scraping at his knees.

He peered over at the configuration of rocks below. The cave was at least twenty feet above sea level, give or take, but the way the rocks were laid, it wouldn't be too difficult to climb down. He glanced out at the water as the bottlenose leapt up with a happy squeal and dove back under. The orca was still hovering, and they both swam in happy circles, looking up in his direction.

He didn't smile, but it was heartwarming, to see that they had stayed close, that they were determined not to leave him or Makoto on their own, and he gratefully absorbed what much-needed comfort he could from that, nodding his gratitude to them, before he turned back around and crawled up to Makoto to shake his shoulder.

"Makoto … Makoto."

Makoto grimaced first, then slowly peeled eyes open and blinked several times, squinting against the sunlight. He held an arm up to shield his eyes, and it seemed to take him effort to sit up. He was quite visibly exhausted still, though Haru had no idea how long they'd slept — and he could already tell that his human was feeling entirely stiff. Makoto dropped his hand to his shoulder as he rolled it back, digging into his muscles with a strained pinch between his eyebrows.

"Where are we?" he mumbled, voice still deep with sleep.

"Iwatobi," Haru said, his own voice small, but Makoto snapped up with wide eyes, exactly the way he would have expected him to.

It wasn't until then that he looked out of the cave, and he stumbled up to his feet to get to the edge, balance wavering for just a moment, but a moment long enough for Haru to get up too and anxiously hover close with his hands already up to catch him. He didn't fall over. In fact, he found his balance pretty quickly, and then just stood there gaping at the beach across from them, the blood already high on his cheeks.

"We … We made it?"

Haru blinked away from him, also to the shore. "Seems so."

A strong, but rather pleasant breeze blew past them, covering their silence. The question of how just kind of rested there without being spoken, because they both inherently already knew the answer.

"Do you recognize it?" Haru asked after a while.

Makoto nodded. "Yeah. That's the boardwalk I always took to get to school. My … My house is only a fifteen-minute walk from the shore."

Haru looked back at him. The spring of tears were already there, but he didn't let them fall. He wiped them away instead, and then glanced down at the rocks below as Haru had done.

"We should be able to climb down," Haru mumbled.

Makoto gave him a glance and frowned a bit as he straightened up taller. "You need something to wear."

Haru looked down at his naked body, not noticing until just now. Truly, he'd have never thought a thing about "nakedness" in his life if his grandmother had never introduced him to clothes.

Makoto pulled his shirt off over his head, and slipped it on Haru's. It was over-sized enough to just cover the important parts, but Haru wasn't so much worried about that.

"I'll find you something else once we get closer to shore," Makoto said, already edging to the corner of the cave to scale his way down.

Haru watched him with a crease on his brow, fists curled around the hem of the shirt. He was waiting for Makoto to slip and fall, already devastated by how he could so clearly see him busting his head open on the point of the rocks, but no such thing happened, and Haru breathed out a breath of relief once he made it knee-deep and turned back with his arms already reaching up.

Haru followed the same path down that he'd taken, limbs shaking a bit, because climbing like this was not so much an activity that he was used to, but he was put at ease when Makoto's hands found his waist, and his arms eased him down the rest of the way, curling securely around him.

They stood chest to chest for a brief moment, just looking at each other, and Haru could feel the weight of Makoto's heartbeat already.

"Are you going to be okay?"

His human nodded, and exhaled a breath. "We're nearly there already."

"It's going to be farther than it looks. Do you have enough to swim it?"

"I'm sore, but I'll be okay. I made it this far. Just … swim close to me?"

Haru nodded, and Makoto dropped his gaze to the water. He looked at it warily for only a second, and then kept Haru braced from behind as he let him slip into the water first. He swam out only far enough to give Makoto room to get in behind him, and they made their way slowly toward land.

The shirt was weird to swim in. It billowed around him, and didn't do much other than cling to his skin and weigh him down, but he supposed it was more so for the getting-to-land part that he needed it.

He glanced constantly over at Makoto, watching the disquieted but resolute look on his face, making sure he didn't go under, very aware of his pace, and his pulse, and his breathing, and his energy.

The bottlenose and orca swam underneath them, looping in circles around each other, and only stopped when they were just off shore. Haru trusted that they'd be fine from there and continued on with Makoto until they crawled up onto the beach.

Makoto rested there for a moment on his hands and knees, catching his breath. It hadn't been much for Haru, so he just waited, and glanced around, trying to ignore the immediate itch in his skin from the unfamiliar territory. There were no humans around that he could see at the moment, but he knew that they were there — just out of sight.

"Wait here for a second," Makoto breathed, pushing himself to his feet to walk up the beach.

Haru's breath caught in his throat and his hand automatically reached out for him, silently begging not to be left alone, but he tempered out a breath and didn't call out to him. He was already too far away for one, and secondly, he was aware that the tables had turned on them. This was now Makoto's territory, and Haru knew nothing about it. His Makoto had so easily trusted him all the while that he'd spent on his island. He knew he needed to do the same. So he sat there and waited as instructed, allowing the brush of the small waves breaking over his lap to keep him appeased, until Makoto returned, minutes later, with a towel in his hands.

Haru let him help him to his feet, and he accepted the towel and wrapped it around his waist.

"Come on," Makoto murmured, grabbing his hand, and he led the way off of the beach and onto the boardwalk he'd mentioned, which led to a path through his town.

It must have been a bit too early for the humans, because they didn't see many on their way, and Haru was relieved by that up until the point that they got to the bottom of an arduous-looking set of stone stairs. He didn't groan about it out loud, but he wondered how far up they'd have to go. Stair climbing was not a regular activity for him either, and strenuous tasks for his legs always seemed extra strenuous, because they were not his natural mode of transportation.

They'd only gotten up to the second landing when he had to stop and prop his hands on his knees, quads quaking.

"Haru?"

"I'm fine," he huffed. "I'm just … not used to stairs."

"Oh. I didn't think about that. Sorry. It's not much further. I can carry you …"

He shook his head, and straightened his back well before he was ready to. He was not going to be a burden — not even a little bit. "No, it's fine."

He kept climbing to prove it, and Makoto continued as well with a small sigh, intentionally slowing down his pace, which Haru didn't complain about.

Makoto eventually stopped on one of the landings, and it was so abrupt that Haru was thrown off at first, but when he glanced up at him, he felt himself frown instantly. They were at the house and he knew it, purely from the way that Makoto was looking at it, purely by the mist in his eyes, and the strain on his lips.

It took him a good long while to gather up the courage to move toward the door, and Haru kept silent and only moved when Makoto did.

His human breathed a heavy breath before pushing the door open and the silence that met them was haunting. The air was stale and hot, trapped in the same four walls with no movement whatsoever for an entire month. Everything was covered with a layer of dust — not terribly thick, but enough that Haru had to pinch his nose to keep from sneezing.

It was a modest-looking home, definitely bigger than his cottage, but something that he would expect a family of five to live in comfortably. There were shoes lined up by the genkan, a jacket that had fallen off of one of the coat hooks and onto the floor, pictures lining the walls of the hallways, but that was all that he could see at the moment, because they didn't move far past the front door.

Makoto was silent for a long while, and then he shivered and gasped and dropped to his knees with his hands cupped around his face. He cried into his palms.

Haru lowered himself down slowly next to him and smoothed a hand up his back.