Author's Note: Re-uploaded and edited to tie a couple of chapters together instead of having several small, individual ones. This is specifically for the Drowning series.

The first lines of dialogue in Part II (after the break), were actually taken straight from E8 of Eternal Summer: "The Locomotive of a Twist". In the series, it is Sousuke running into Ai doing laps at the pool late at night. The rest, well, I suppose it would be a continuation of Drowning.

And it feels like I'm drowning, pulling against the stream, slowly drifting.

"Waves", Mr. Probz

Standing at 6'1ft, Yamazaki Sousuke had never seemed small to Gou, but it was the only thing she could think of now, as he sat on the bench looking at her levelly. She stared back at him, crimson eyes wide as they gathered the purple mark on his right shoulder. As she drew closer he stiffened, eyes narrowing as if he expected her to say or do the wrong thing – as if he somehow expected her to hurt him.

"Sousuke-kun…"

Lips pursed, he shot her a glare. When he did speak, his voice was low and had a sharp quality to it that she was not used to hearing.

"Did Rin put you up to this?"

"He didn't mean to," she was quick to defend her brother. "I overheard him as he talked with Haru-senpai…"

With a movement more befitting of an old, broken man, Sousuke raised his head, looking up at the fluorescent lights of the Samezuka dressing room. He took a slow breath and turned to her with a smile that held absolutely no mirth. Palms wide open, his shoulders rose and fell in a motion so practised, it came like second-nature to him, and she could have cried.

"So the secret's out," he finally croaked. "I'm done for, and you all know it now."

Gou wanted to approach him, offer him a word or touch of comfort but she was floored by the look in his eyes. And again, she couldn't help but shift her gaze towards his torn shoulder and feel the cold, empathetic ache of an injury one does not know how to treat.

"You should have said something," she murmured, and it shocked her to hear the anger in her voice. Because she was angry, because Sousuke had stopped writing, and stopped calling and stopped dropping by and he had been dealing with this all this time by himself. If it hadn't been for Rin, she might never have known. It made her angry because all Gou wanted to do was reach out and touch him, do something besides standing before him.

"Rin was swimming in Australia," he said quietly, deadpan eyes set ahead of him. "We hadn't spoken in years."

"I was here," Gou murmured, "I was right here, Sousuke."

Because Rin hadn't been the only one that left her, and she only just realised how deeply that had hurt.

He looked up at her, teal eyes like impossibly deep pools, and he had the very look of a man drowning.

"I didn't want him to see me like this," he breathed. "Not Rin . . . not you."

She hadn't known she had been moving until she stood before him, eyes turned to steel and fists balled on her sides. And it took everything not to drop to her knees and kiss him until his bruise was no longer purple, claw at him until she replaced his skin, and muscle and bone. There was nothing she wanted more than to melt into Sousuke, hold him in her arms until she was no longer shaking and he was no longer cold and they could both look into each other's eyes without hurting.

She did end up touching him, just once. Just enough to feel the warmth of his protesting flesh beneath scarred tissue, hard enough to make him wince and look at her as if she held his life on the edge of knife.

"I'm sorry," she moaned. "I'm so sorry, Sousuke."

Gou placed her palm on his cheek, trembling with the effort not to break down into tears and closing her eyes when said effort became too much. But Sousuke only turned his face slightly, kissing her open palm like a vengeance, or a prayer; she did not know which.

-x-

All he could hear was the dull sound of water filling his ears. Magnified, it was sonorous, like taking huge gulps of water with one's ears plugged; it surrounded and filled him like a shot of adrenaline straight into his veins. Sousuke pulled his face out of the water, took a deep breath of air, dove back in. He could feel the familiar smarting in his right shoulder but he continued, because he was so close, had come so far...

As expected, his shoulder gave in. Sousuke yelped as pain shot through, feeling as if his very muscles were tearing at the seams, the sound muffled under water. He finally emerged, coughing and shaking into one side of the pool, sputtering chlorine water as he tried to ease the pain in his lungs and his sinus. Frustrated, he threw his swimming goggles in a fury, smacking his fist into the poolside floor.

"Your fatigue is ruining your form."

He tensed, looked up to find her kneeling a few meters away, his discarded goggles in her pretty little hands.

"Were you watching me swim?" he asked, voice raspy and throat aching with the burn of swallowing chlorine water and his own debilitating sobs.

"You won't get better by just swimming recklessly like an idiot," Gou said, drawing closer to the pool and resting one hand on her hip. "Take a break."

Sousuke looked away, pulling himself out of the pool in one lithe movement. He removed his cap and calmly walked over to Gou, watching her through heavy-lidded, obscured teal eyes. It irritated him to see her standing there, ordering him around as if she somehow thought that Rin's authority somehow translated into her, too. Or worse, as if she knew he would not — could not, deny her.

"You shouldn't be here," he said, and there was an edge to his voice that she would be deaf or stupid not to pick up on; and she was neither of those things.

"I came to visit," Gou said calmly, holding out his goggles for him. For a moment he looked like he was going to smile, but then the moment passed and he took them from her without so much as brushing her fingers.

"Visiting hours are over."

Sousuke turned on his heel, disappearing into the showers. He took his time, washing his hair and every taut and offended muscle thoroughly to make sure he got every trace of chlorine out of his skin. He thought about Gou and the last time he'd seen her, the kiss that he had pressed against her palm and how she had held him for endless minutes, until he could no longer bear to touch her. He had left her then and now she was here, watching him swim, having the gall to criticise and chide him and Sousuke couldn't stand it. When he was done and with his damp towel slung across his shoulders, he left the pool building, turning off all lights behind him.

He found her standing outside his door, hands clasped together in front of her.

"Rin isn't here," she said before he could ask why she was still at Samezuka when she ought to have left hours ago.

Sousuke opened his mouth, then grimly closed it. "He left to visit Nanase and the others." It wasn't a question, and so he did not poise it as one. He was already used to Rin's sporadic disappearances to visit his childhood friends and would have probably been roped into going, too, if he hadn't been at the pool since early in the evening. Sighing, he jammed the keys inside the keyhole and held the door open for Gou.

"Come on," he said, "you can't very well stay in the hallway all night.

The room he shared with Rin was very simple and Gou knew her way around it as well as she knew her way around her own home. He watched her sit on the edge of the bottom bunk, her feet crossed at her ankles and fingers deftly dialing her brother's number. He put his things away slowly, hanging his towel on a hook and taking his dirty clothes out of his bag to throw them inside his hamper while she kept getting his voicemail.

"He's not coming tonight," Gou finally said, shutting her phone and laying back on Rin's bed with a sigh. "I can't believe he'd go visit and not tell me."

"Since when has Rin ever told you his plans?" Sousuke absently asked. Gou's ruby eyes narrowed at him and she hitched her chin upwards.

"Whatever," she sighed. "It's too late for me to go home now, so I'll just wait for him to come back."

He wanted to reel and almost did, almost asked her — you're staying? — but only nodded quietly at her. His head was spinning because he hadn't been alone with her in so long and this washisroom, his and Rin's room and it made him nervous, suddenly, that she was taking up so much of his personal, private space. Sousuke focused on opening his drawers to find cool, clean clothes for him to sleep in; a pair of loose dark gray sweats and a wide-collared cotton t-shirt. He hesitated with his hand on his clothes and turned towards Gou with a raised eyebrow.

She was absently curling a lock of her hair around her finger, looking at the spattering of rain that was beginning to pick up outside the window. He cleared his throat, throwing her a hesitant look.

"Do you – er, need anything to sleep in?" he asked, gesturing towards her long skirt and crop top.

Gou blinked, then dropped her hands to her sides. "No, er, I'll borrow something of Rin's for tonight," she said quietly. "But thank you."

Of course, he thought, how stupid of him not to have thought of that.

"I meant—ah, it doesn't matter," he mumbled. "I'll leave you to change."

"You don't have to leave," Gou said and immediately turned two shades darker. "I mean – you can just – just turn around for a bit?"

Sousuke tried not to let it get to him, he really did. He crossed his arms over his chest as he heard Gou shuffle from the bed and open Rin's drawer, pull out clothes and close it with a snap. He heard the shuffle of her clothing, her struggle to get out of something – or into something and he tried so very desperately not to get warm, not to think of her half-naked behind his back. He sighed, pulling on his sweats and shrugging his shirt off, tossing it over his shoulder and into the hamper, where he accidentally turned around.

Gou was already dressed, but not in Rin's clothes. She had picked out a blended gray t-shirt that belonged to him, not to Rin and he had to blink three times really fast to make sure he wasn't imagining her in it. It was enormous on her, fitting like a loose dress and leaving bare an expanse of white, creamy skin on her legs. Gou blushed slightly at his own state of undress, her eyes moving towards his reddened, bruising shoulder and making him grit his teeth in annoyance. Pulling his shirt over his head, Sousuke tsked as he moved to fix everything around the room without having to look at her.

When there was nothing else to do, he finally turned to Gou, who was by now lying comfortably in the bottom bunk and staring into her phone's screen absently. It was awkward, because he and Rin had exchanged beds since his shoulder had worsened and now his sister was lying there and he couldn't bear to tell her to move, ask her to get up because he couldn't hurl his gigantic body into the top bunk without wincing like a huge, useless baby. He stared at her and when she turned to him, he started, panicked and practically ran to turn off the lights.

The light that filtered through the thin curtains gave the room a ghostly feel and he was suddenly feeling the cold of that autumn night running in through the window. He stepped on the ladder, held on the cold iron bars with his hands as he climbed until Gou's tiny hand wrapped around his wrist and he had to lean to one side to see her. Her face was hidden by shadows but the half-light of the moon made her eyes bright, a fierce crimson that stilled him.

"Yes?" he asked, trying not to feel the pressure closing upon his ears.

"You don't have to sleep up there." Her voice was quiet, like a younger, more timid version of herself. Sousuke climbed the two steps he'd managed to before, gently prying himself free of her hold.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "Kou."

Maybe it was his voice, or maybe it was the sound of her name, half-murmured, half-whispered in the glittery light, but Gou shook her head and reached for his wrist again, pulling him down to her level, practically forcing him to his knees. Her touch was light as a feather but he wanted to tell her to stop because it burned wherever she touched him and then he wanted to tell her not to stop, because it burned wherever her touch left him. Her fingers were soft as they reached for his shoulders, gentle but sure as they pressed on the bruises he had given himself, the offended muscle and sinew crying out her name.

"Don't," he said, but it came out like a breathless whimper and she stilled her hands, fingers reaching upwards to cup his high cheekbones.

"Sou-kun" she murmured softly, fingers grazing his ear, knotting into the nape of his neck and pulling at him, bringing him closer until he was on his knees and his forehead touched her thin, fragile collarbone. "I wish you hadn't left, that day."

He didn't know if it was her pulling him onto the bed or if it was him, pushing her towards the wall but he was lying on his back with half-lidded eyes fixed on the iron bars above, his shoulder throbbing painfully under Gou's gentle fingers as she ran them up and down his right arm.

She tugged at his shirt, begging with those big, wet, ruby reds and he shrugged out of his shirt and his eyes never left hers because he wanted her to see, to know exactly what she was doing to him. Gou's gaze softened upon his damaged shoulder and she drew closer, drew figures upon his skin and left blazing trails wherever her fingers touched him for seconds too short to be considered a proper touch. And when finally her lips touched his bruised skin, Sousuke had to suppress a shudder and turn his eyes away so that she would not see how utterly disarming her attentions were.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, and Sousuke let out a shaky breath, tongue between his teeth as he shook his head, eyes closed tight.

"Not when you touch it like that," he whispered, thinking that he shouldn't have said anything at all because now Gou knew just how much he needed that, needed her, and how damned he was for it all.

He felt her move around, figure out a spot between his shoulder and his chest and made herself small but abundant in that little crevice, warm and soft and pliable between his arms. When she spoke, her voice was muffled against his skin and her breath sent shivers into his belly and knots to his throat.

"I'm here," she murmured, "and you don't have to hurt anymore."

The rain picked up outside his window, but he could not hear anything other than the sound of her breath and the clear, thundering echo of her voice.