A/N: And it has been exactly one week, I kept my word! /cheers/

A big thank you to guest reviewers No0onat and Guest (I've become a pro at telling which review is yours when there are multiple "Guest"s who review, woot!) And now, let's pick up where we left off, shall we?

Chapter Seven: Clusterfuck (Spring Break - part 4)

"I mean, it's not like I actually planned anything, but I just figured we could do whatever," Rin says quickly.

"What's whatever?" Haruka says. He releases the doorknob and moves more squarely into the doorway, is buffeted by a front of cold air, stinging against his face and in his eyes and making him squint.

Rin hunches in against the gust, and when it's passed he says, "I don't know. Whatever you want it to be. What were you just doing?"

"Taking a bath."

Rin gives a kind-of laugh, a messy puff of breath. "Okay. What're you gonna do now?"

"I don't know," Haruka says, some of his anticipation deflating. They're both going to be disappointed if Rin expects him to come up with the plan of action. "Maybe…make dinner." He realizes he's left Rin standing outside for a while too long, and says with uncertainty, "Want to come in?"

Rin's expression softens, like an exhale, like he's been granted something he wasn't sure he'd be given. "Sure."

In the entranceway, Haruka watches Rin take off his shoes, listens to Rin's jacket rustling, the sound crowding up to the walls, louder now than the wind muffled by the closed door. Suddenly at a loss for words, Haruka feels the silence swarming in thick and fast. He has Rin here, but doesn't know what to do next, doesn't know what they could do, doesn't know what they ever used to do. When Rin straightens up, a grey sock on one foot and a black one on the other, Haruka turns abruptly and heads for the kitchen. A moment later, he hears Rin follow.

"When are you leaving?" he asks, when he's passing through the living room. He winces, feels like hitting himself in the face. "For the airport," he tries to remedy, but that hardly sounds any better.

Rin is either oblivious or pretending to be when he says, from somewhere behind Haruka, "Tomorrow morning. I'm already packed."

"Oh," Haruka says. A frisson of panic bolts up his spine, but all he can do is cross the kitchen and open the fridge, like he's on autopilot and can't find the off switch.

There's some leftover rice on the top shelf, pickled vegetables in a jar beside that, bottles of water in the door. Three more fish filets to cook, on the bottom shelf. Lots of empty space, which is nothing new but right now is a very dismal sight. The vents whir, and the fridge smell seeps slowly over his face – not foul, just some frosty scent, like winter.

"Are these new?" Rin asks. Haruka looks over his shoulder, sees Rin push off of the back wall and cross the kitchen, pointing at the stones on the counter.

"Oh. Yeah. I painted rocks yesterday. With Makoto and the twins."

Rin wrinkles his nose, picks up the one with the wave painted on it and holds it in his palm. "Why?"

"The twins wanted to."

Rin makes a quiet hm sound, sets the stone carefully back down. Works his hands into his jacket pockets and leans his hip against the counter, looking at Haruka expectantly.

"I'm actually not hungry," Haruka says, shutting the refrigerator door, feeling off-kilter and aimless.

"That's fine," Rin says. He hesitates for a moment, then says, "Wanna go for a walk? I mean – weather's not great – I've just been packing all day. Tired of being inside. If you don't want –"

"Okay," Haruka says.

Rin smiles, sheepish again, and Haruka drags some comfort out of it. He follows Rin back to the front door, watches his ponytail swing from side to side – and it's just long enough to swing now instead of just bounce. He wonders if Rin is growing his hair out, or simply hasn't gotten around to getting it cut.

They put their shoes on without a word; Haruka feels like the entranceway has shrunk. A glance at Rin's shoes show that they are old, likely spares while his better pair are at school. The worn black fabric has gone grayish with dirt and dust; one of the shoelaces missing its plastic cap, so Rin's tied it in a knot. Haruka grabs his old Iwatobi jacket from the peg beside the door, while Rin opens the door and steps outside.

"It's getting cold," Rin says, when Haruka joins him. He's looking out over the top of Haruka's fence toward the ocean, eyes squinted a little bit and eyebrows drawn low, like he's searching for something. His jacket is zipped all the way up to his chin, but it's hardly a thick layer of protection.

Haruka makes a vague sound of agreement and closes the door behind them, the latch catching with a slight click. Rin turns his head at the sound, and Haruka starts walking to get them moving, but he lets Rin decide the way they go.

There doesn't seem to be much reason to the pathways Rin chooses – the first few minutes take them down narrow roads between houses, where it feels colder because of all the shadows they have to pass beneath. The clouds overhead are getting thick, a foreboding gray that sits eerily silent and low in the sky. It's raining over the ocean already – the gemstone hues of sunset that would be on the horizon are hidden beneath black clouds. The smell of brine permeates everything, swept up by a breeze that is gaining strength fast, that dries the damp hair against Haruka's neck.

"Looks like it's gonna storm," Rin says, as they pass a doorstep filled with clay pots and a rainbow of glass vases, with a little cardboard sign nestled into the fray stating 'FREE'.

It's the second weather comment in five minutes, in what has otherwise been a void. Haruka feels like he has to save this somehow.

"Have you been to the ocean yet?" he says. "In America. You're close, aren't you?"

He spares a glance in Rin's direction, but doesn't get one in return. Nostalgia creeps into the corners of Rin's expression, and he gives his head a slight shake. "Would've been nice to go when it was warmer, but things were just too busy."

"How's swimming?" Haruka asks. They reach the end of a row of houses, and Rin takes a turn up some steps that lead higher into the mountain.

"It's good," Rin says, after taking a moment too long to answer. He meets Haruka's eyes, gives a thin-lipped smile. "I didn't make it to nationals. It's okay though," he says quickly, but Haruka's stomach has already dropped - once, twice, wave upon wave of shock. "Really, Haru, it's fine."

Haruka feels like someone's kicked him in the stomach, stealing his breath from him. He can hardly believe he's still walking.

Rin looks away, and Haruka helplessly watches the unhappy droop of his mouth, his lowered eyes. They take another turn, down a long, flat stretch of ground edged in by a railing on one side and the rising mountain on the other – not the same place they watched the sunrise, but nearby.

Rin takes in a breath, lets it out, and manages to piece together a melancholic smile. "Really, it's okay," he says. "We kicked ass at regionals. We're still going to nationals. The rest of the team will kick ass there. We're a good team, Haru." He looks at Haruka, expression insistent, like Haruka has to understand the gravity of the statement. "We're really fucking good."

But this isn't about his team, and behind the insistence is a demand for comfort, a plea for it, and Haruka knows right then that Rin has been harboring the weight of this failure silently. It's just like him, to bottle the unbearable up and make it worse, and how in the world does he expect Haruka to know how to ease that?

"Why didn't you make it?" Haruka asks, having a hard time getting the words out. He's afraid that Rin will explode, will start crying, or yelling, something to release the pressure he's let build. "What happened?"

Rin shakes his head, a motion full of disappointment. "I don't even know. I just…I thought I did good enough and I just…didn't. It was a fluke, you know how those things go." He gives a frustrated exhale. "I'll be good enough next year." I have to be good enough.

"You will be," Haruka says. "There's no point beating yourself up about it now."

"Yeah," Rin says, unenthusiastic. And then, so quietly it's practically a mumble: "And I wouldn't've been able to come home if I had made it."

The first thing Haruka thinks, which he doesn't dare say because it floods him with guilt, with a wretched, poisonous feeling, is I'm glad you didn't make it. He doesn't mean it, he can't, and yet he's desperately glad Rin is here instead of across the sea.

"You told me on New Year's that you thought you'd have more time to swim," Rin says suddenly. "What did you mean?"

They leave the path, following the curve of a low wooden fence through the grass toward one of the gazebos that overlooks the bay. If Haruka looks closely, he can just make out the beam of the lighthouse out on the reef, the sky just beginning to darken enough for the light to shine.

"Makoto hasn't told you?" he says, feeling Rin's stare on the side of his face.

Rin gives a short, bitter-sounding laugh. Avoids the curious glance Haruka sends him. "No, he hasn't told me."

"I'm not going to school anymore."

Rin turns his head so fast Haruka's surprised he doesn't crick it.

"You're not? What are you doing?"

Genuinely puzzled, Haruka says, "No one's told you that?"

"Haru, no one's talked to me about you. They were all kind of pissed at me." He gives a restless wave of his hands. "But what are you going to do?"

"They're angry at you?"

"They were, yeah. That doesn't matter, stop avoiding the question."

The fact that anyone other than Kou was mad at Rin is news to Haruka, and he wonders if he was just oblivious or if they were all good at hiding it.

They reach the gazebo, and Haruka stops at the foot of the pavement steps that lead inside. "I'm going to teach summer swimming lessons for a while," he says. "Maybe. I applied, at least."

Rin's eyes go wide, maybe disbelief and maybe just incomprehension. Haruka thinks that if he hadn't actually turned in the paperwork himself, he wouldn't believe it either.

"You mean with kids?" Rin asks.

Haruka nods, expecting something incredulous in response and already feeling defensive. To his surprise, Rin laughs. A warm, pleasant sound that's swept away by the breeze.

"Wow," Rin says, shaking his head. "I never would've guessed, but then again, I remember how much that kid likes you."

"Hiro. He wanted you to come to the pool again."

"Really?" Rin says, looking pleased. "He was a cool kid." He looks away, presses his lips together, smile fading and something pensive taking its place – Haruka can tell he has more to say, so he waits.

A gust cuts right between them and through the gazebo, making a hollow sound as it whips through the concrete-slab seats and the wooden beams. Haruka raises his eyes to the sky, his view blocked by clouds. His cheeks feel a bit like they've been rubbed with sandpaper – a little raw, a little tingly, a little numb. His nose isn't doing much better.

"What made you decide to do this?" Rin asks.

Haruka looks back at him, finds that Rin's expression has gone quiet, carefully watching. For a moment he just holds Rin's eyes, and all bumps in the road aside, this is still the same old Rin, wanting to know him, wanting to understand him. Always wanting to understand him, always claiming not to.

Haruka thinks, though, that Rin understands things he pretends not to. What Rin really wants is confirmation, because he's always hated being wrong, and not knowing if he's right. But this is what makes things so hard, because Haruka doesn't like having to form explanations – sometimes he wishes Rin could just trust in the understanding they both know is there, instead of always asking for more. For words. For Haruka to hammer his thoughts into something complete and precise.

"I don't know," Haruka says, which is a lie. He sighs, wishes that closing his eyes would flash the right words onto the back of his eyelids. "I didn't know where to go with school. It wasn't the right thing for me. Maybe this isn't either, I don't know. I didn't really think about it, I just did it."

"Do your parents know?"

Haruka quirks a wry smile. "Yeah. They aren't too happy, but they're trying to let me make my own choices." He shrugs. Looks at the ocean, the little white crests all over the surface. "They're just worried."

"I think it's a good idea," Rin says softly – he's hardly finished before another burst of wind whips past them.

"Maybe," Haruka says, shaking his hair out of his face. "I'm just trying to figure out what to do next." A water droplet splatters onto his cheek, beneath his right eye.

"Will what's next involve swimming too?"

"Maybe," Haruka says. "I don't know." He can see, in the corner of his eye, Rin shifting his weight, getting antsy.

"I know you don't want to hear this, but shit, Haru. I don't care what you say. You're meant to do something with swimming. Maybe it's not winning medals and getting record times, but something. I know you are."

"Maybe."

"Not 'maybe'! Fuck! Haru! You're a better fucking swimmer than anyone on my team! Maybe they're faster and cleaner because they train every day and they want to win competitions and you don't, but that's practice. They need practice. But you, you just swim. You're a swimmer, Haru. You can't just not do anything with that."

"But I don't love it the same way you do," Haruka says tensely. "You think of it differently than I do. You swim for different reasons than I do. Can we not talk about this, please?"

"Fine, whatever," Rin says. It isn't fine for him, and it clearly isn't a whatever. He clenches his jaw, face turned away, and Haruka wants to know why he cares so much about a future that isn't even his own.

Because that's how much he cares about you.

He already knows this, of course, but like Rin, he can play ignorant. Having recognized it, though, he feels a nervous flutter in his chest, something kicked up by the weight of everything Rin has laid upon him. Friendship. Love. Conviction.

Investment.

Sometimes he wonders if Rin's put too much of himself into him, so much that maybe Rin isn't even aware of the extent of it. But 'too much' implies something negative, and Haruka doesn't think this is the case.

Rin makes him laugh, makes him joke, makes act downright stupid sometimes, so that Haruka will think back on things he's said or done and feel embarrassed later, yet still retain a sense of thrill. The time Rin convinced him to skinny dip in Samezuka's pool at night, one weekend when the two of them had studied all day in Rin's room and Haruka had started suffering from water withdrawal. The time Rin convinced him – to great cheers from Nagisa and Kou – to crossdress with the rest of them for the Halloween festival (Because if I've had to dress as a fucking maid before, Rin had said, you can too.) The time Rin had been over one summer day and had suddenly challenged him to a race – out the door and down to the beach, into the water and to the outcropping of rock housing the lighthouse, then back onto the sand and all the way to the end of the beach, with people staring at them the entire time.

When he's around Rin he can behave so unlike who he thinks he is, and yet being not-himself with Rin is still always genuine. A self that Rin has helped him come to realize – a self that is more light-hearted than usual, that might even fun, sometimes.

He likes the self he is with Rin, likes the free-flow between them. He's been too serious these past months. He feels heavy.

Another droplet lands on his face, and then another. "It's raining," he says.

Rin grunts, stalks up the two steps into the safety of the gazebo's wooden canopy. Haruka follows him to the slab in the center, sits a safe ways away from him.

It's a good thing they make it inside when they do, because soon enough the storm is upon them, chilling the air ever further and streaking the view with gray. Water pelts against the canopy, slants its way into the gazebo, wetting the outer rim of raised concrete seats. Haruka smells the dust, the fresh scent of wet grass. He feels goose bumps along his arms and wishes he had worn a thicker jacket. He's sure Rin is cold too, but is probably too proud to show it. Like the clouds in the sky, a thick gray feeling seems to emanate around Rin, his irritation made palpable. Haruka knows that his best bet is to just wait it out.

As quickly as the deluge comes, it passes on by, leaving only a steady rainfall behind. The downpour lasted all of three minutes at most, and even though it's still raining now, it's as though sound has escaped. A hush settles in, filling the space between clouds and sea, the space between Haruka and Rin's bodies.

"Are you sure you're okay with it?" Rin asks.

"With what?" Haruka asks, working very hard to not sound cold. He doesn't look at Rin and Rin doesn't look at him.

"With me."

Oh. Haruka looks down at his knees. Maybe this is what Rin had been intending the entire time, to drag him outside to talk. Maybe their conversation in the park hadn't been enough for him. Maybe it was too easy then.

"I'm okay with it," Haruka says.

"But?"

He wants to tell Rin to drop this, too, but there's only so much he can afford not to talk about. "It just isn't something I've thought of much. Relationship stuff."

The silence stretches out. Rin sighs. "Yeah, I know."

Haruka looks at him questioningly.

"What?" Rin says, frowning at him. "It's pretty obvious that's not where your head is. Have you ever actually liked anyone?"

"Sure. A little bit."

Rin makes a little snorting laugh, but there's no smile. "Figures," he mutters, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. "Do you always freak out when people say they like you, or is it only with me?"

That's not fair, Haruka wants to say, taken aback by the not-so-subtle hints of accusation in Rin's question. "I never expected it. That's why I reacted how I did."

Rin rests his forehead in his palms. It's a posture that makes him look forlorn and exhausted. "So what, you expect it when other people tell you they like you?"

"What are you trying to get at?" Haruka says, indignation flaring up.

"Should I not have told you?" Rin says, looking like he's talking more to himself or to the ground between his feet than to Haruka. "Should I have made you give me an answer? Should I just pretend like I never said anything?"

"That's stupid. You already told me. You can't pretend it didn't happen."

"I'm just trying to figure out what to do," Rin says. His voice is losing its balance, his composure slipping. "What I should have done."

"Then stop putting the blame on me."

"I'm not blaming you!" Rin says, turns a turbulent expression on Haruka, something regretful and frustrated and insecure all at once. "But this entire time, I could feel it, how uncomfortable you are around me. You're not – I can try to just be normal, but things aren't the same."

"Well, what did you expect?" Haruka says. He tries not to get angry. Tries not to let Rin rile him up. Everything they're feeling is fair; they've both caused this disaster. "Of course things aren't the same. You're my best friend. I never knew you felt any differently until you told me. I had no idea that was coming. And then you left me here to deal with it on my own."

Rin shakes his head quickly. "I didn't just 'leave you here.' You can't blame me, either."

"I'm not," Haruka snaps. "But what kind of person confesses and then leaves right after? Especially you."

"Are you calling me a coward?" Rin snaps back.

"No," Haruka says. He hears himself scoff, and for a moment he goes frigid at the hostility in the sound. But then heat floods through him, bringing forth all the bitterness and hurt he's been letting fester. "Yes. Because you waited to tell me until right before you had to leave, so you could just run away from everything while I was stuck just trying to figure everything out."

"I didn't run away. I had school!"

"You ran away from me the entire time you were back!" Haruka says, voice cracking from the sudden raise in volume. He isn't yelling, but there is only a very fine line to cross to get there. "The others had to abandon you just so I could talk to you!"

"How do you think I felt coming home after over two months of not hearing anything from you at all? Newsflash, Haru! I have a phone! You have a phone!"

"I was thinking!"

"Fuck your thinking!" Rin says, brandishing an arm wildly, as though to slice through the air between them. "I was thinking, too! I was thinking that I had just fucked things up forever, and you never did shit to try to make me think differently!"

Haruka is standing, doesn't even know when he got up. His arms are tense at his sides, hands fisted, like he's ready to either hit Rin or turn around and storm walk away. Rin stares up at him, daring him to do either.

"I've been trying to," Haruka says through gritted teeth. "This whole damn week, I've been trying to make you think differently."

Rin rolls his eyes, a vicious smirk stealing across his face – it's been a long time since Haruka has seen him look so mean. "Yeah, well, you were kinda late."

It's the way Rin says the words – with the undercurrent of a laugh, cold and dismissive, like he doesn't even care, like it's suddenly all a joke, that makes Haruka snap. "Why even tell me if you were just going to avoid me afterwards?!" he yells, the words coming out hoarse.

"Because I was scared!" Rin yells back. "I was too scared to tell you so I waited until the last minute, and then you said nothing and I had over two months to think about it and get even more scared!" His hands curl into fists and he bows his head, yells at his knees. "I was scared, I'm still scared, what the fuck do you want me to say?"

And Haruka realizes that he doesn't know. Neither of them know what to say, because the blame can't be pegged on either of them. He looks away, blood still pounding in his heart, beneath his ears, in his throat. "Nothing. I don't know. Sorry."

Rin lets out a loud, long breath. "It's fine," he says bitterly.

The sky's gone black – the rain has stopped and the clouds have cleared, leaving nighttime stars up above. Water falls out of tree branches onto the grass, a steady pitter-patter off in the dark, beyond the ring of lights shining around the perimeter of the gazebo.

"What were you scared of?" Haruka says, once he's sure he can speak evenly again.

Rin makes an exasperated sound, harsh in his throat. "Wow, I don't know," he says sarcastically. "That you'd react the exact way you reacted? That you wouldn't like me back? That you would hate me? That you'd be disgusted?"

"Why would I be disgusted?" Haruka says. Rin gives him a look that says Stop being a shithead, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

"That's stupid," Haruka says. "It's none of my business who people like. I don't care if you like guys or girls. It doesn't matter."

Rin lets out a lost sound. "Then why didn't you just say something?"

"I thought it was something we had to talk about in person," Haruka says, but it sounds like such a pathetic excuse now. He can see that Rin feels as tired as he does. An emotional sapping of their strength, and soon their pulses will have slowed enough for the feeling of cold to seep back in.

"Two months, Haru," Rin says. His voice is going raspy, and whether it's from the shouting or the cold, Haruka doesn't know for sure. "Don't you get it? It was your turn to say something, and for two months you didn't say anything."

"I'm sorry." It's all he can think of to say. He feels helpless and stupid and selfish. And angry. Still angry, and yet too tired to be angry.

"If it bothered you so much, knowing I like you, how did you deal with it?"

"I tried not to think about you." He sees the hurt flit across Rin's face and feels even more awful. "I didn't mean –"

"Hah! Great! I was thinking every single day of ways I could try to fix things and you were just not thinking of anything at all. So fucking typical."

"I'm sorry! I didn't know how to deal with it! What do you want me to say?"

Rin drops his head, grips his hair. "I don't fucking know, okay?" He lets out a long, closed mouthed groan – like something one would make into a pillow in frustration. "I don't know either."

Haruka throws himself down next to Rin, tensing at the sudden proximity but forcing himself to loosen up. His fingers curl around the edge of the seat, against the rough grains of concrete. "I'm sorry," he says. "For everything I did that hurt you. I didn't – I didn't want to do that."

"I know," Rin says. "I'm sorry, too. For being an ass this past week."

It had been an icy rain; Haruka feels his muscles tensing like he wants to shiver. He'd like to get back inside to the warmth, but he knows he can't leave now. Despite the dampness all around, he hears a cricket start up in the underbrush somewhere.

"It is your business now," Rin says after a while, voice very small. "Who I like."

"I know," Haruka says. He casts Rin a glance, finds Rin with his elbows back on his knees, his posture heavy and his expression gloomy.

"So what is it, then?" Rin says. "If it isn't disgusting, what is it? Because it bothers you."

Haruka looks out toward the ocean. The searchlight sweeps over the water's surface, and for a moment Haruka feels very much like the lighthouse. Sweeping for an answer in the darkness of his mind.

"Confusing," is what he settles on. Rin doesn't say anything. "I don't understand it."

"Don't understand what?"

"Why you like me."

Rin snorts. "Well, fuck, I don't either. It's not like I just sat down one day and decided because of X-Y-Z I'd just start liking you. Shit, if I had a choice, I'd choose anyone but you." He catches Haruka's eye, the wordless question Haruka is throwing him. "You're the biggest pain in the ass to like ever, in case you haven't figured that out yet."

Haruka gives a small smile. "Sorry. I've just never –"

"Thought of these things, yeah, you already said so. God, why can't you just be normal?"

Haruka shrugs. "I'm trying?" he says, but his attempt at humor falls flat.

Rin sighs. Rubs the heels of his palms into his eyes.

"I'm not asking you to feel different," Haruka says, looking down at his hands in his lap. "I'm just asking you to stop avoiding me. I want you around so I can get used to it."

It takes a long time, but finally Rin says, "So, you think I have a chance?"

Haruka knows it's mostly a joke – there's a breathy quality to Rin's voice, like he's trying to laugh but just doesn't have it in him. But there is also a seriousness at the core of the question that Haruka cannot pretend to overlook. A self-depreciating hopefulness that makes Haruka's stomach twist regretfully.

"Don't say stupid things," he says. It's neither a yes or no, because he can't give either and be honest. He really doesn't know what's going to become of them, only that any kind of future without Rin is a future he knows would make him miserable. Just the thought makes his heartbeat pick up, the dread thick and constricting.

"Yeah," Rin says quietly. "I'll try not to."

If Haruka were the hugging type, he would hug Rin. It's the type of comfort Rin needs – the affection he can't find in himself to give, because of fear or just an ingrained sense of self that rejects the very notion. He feels so broken by the despondency in Rin's voice that for a second he almost throws that ingrained self out the window and hugs Rin anyway, but then he thinks that it may not be appropriate with everything else that's on the table, might give the wrong impression, so he stays still.

All he can think is that Rin is leaving tomorrow, and he isn't ready for another goodbye so soon. Doesn't know if they can afford one. Stay longer, Haruka wants to say. Just stay a little bit longer.

"Are you hungry?" he asks, when the silence has left him feeling like he's going to either snap or somehow just fade away into nothingness. He turns his head slightly, holds his breath hopefully.

He feels a burst of elation when Rin smiles at him – a smile that is small and drained, yet so genuinely tinged with warmth behind that that Haruka wants to glue it there permanently.

"I'm fucking starving," Rin says, and together they get up and slosh through the wet grass toward Haruka's house.

"When's your flight?" Haruka asks over dinner. They sit on opposite sides of the table, and for once Rin hasn't filed a single complaint against the mackerel. He devours it like he's starving – two filets are clearly not going to be enough.

"Ten," Rin says through a full mouth. "But I gotta get there a lot early 'cause it's international."

"You should stay tonight," Haruka says. He's been debating on whether or not to say it for the past half hour, worried about the implications it might hold, but he's finally decided screw it and screw implications. He just doesn't want Rin to go home yet. "It's late. The trains aren't coming as often. And it's cold."

Rin pauses, chopsticks reaching for the last piece of fish on his plate. "I have to get up early," he says.

"It's fine. Stay."

Rin quirks a lopsided smile. "Thanks. Are you gonna –"

Haruka is already pushing his plate across the table, and Rin digs in eagerly.

After they eat (after Rin eats the majority of Haruka's dinner, which is fine, Haruka thinks, feeling something affectionate and protective), Rin washes the dishes and Haruka dries them. Outside the window the wind howls – no longer promising rain but not promising warm weather either.

Once they've cleaned up, they push the table back to the wall in the living room and sit down against it. Rin flips on the TV, falling into a rhythm they're used to – hanging around and doing nothing productive, using the TV for background noise.

"What did you do to your fingers?" Haruka asks, noticing the dark purple splotches on Rin's fingernails as Rin sets the remote back down.

Rin looks at his hands, makes a tsk sound. "Gou did it," he says. He shows Haruka one of his hands, tells Haruka that Kou forced him to let her and her friends paint his nails – coerced him into it, he says. As a way to 'make it up to her' – and Rin's never been good at resisting guilt trips. "They were all so fucking giggly, I wanted to die," he says mournfully. "I thought I was gonna die, that stuff smells like poison."

It's obvious that Rin has tried to pick the polish off, but he hasn't made much progress. It looks a bit like he's slammed all his fingernails in a door and the blood is pooling a deep shade of plum beneath the nails, except Haruka can see the jagged edges where some of the paint has chipped off.

"Can't you take it off with something?" Haruka asks.

"She hid the remover stuff from me."

"There are probably other ways to get it off," Haruka says. "Really. You should look it up."

Rin takes out his phone; his pitifully-painted thumbs move over the keypad. "It's not fucking funny," he grumbles, sensing Haruka's growing smile without having to look at it.

"I didn't say it was."

Rin huffs. Pulls his eyebrows together and stares intently down at his phone. Highly amused, Haruka leans over so he can read what's on the screen, and his shoulder bumps into Rin's. They both freeze, Rin's hands going rigid on his phone for a second before he acts like nothing happened and continues to scroll through the web page he's brought up. Haruka doesn't move away, but his mouth is suddenly full of saliva, and he fights the urge to swallow, knowing it would probably be audible.

"Hairspray?" Rin says after a moment, sounding flabbergasted. "What the hell? How would that work? You just spray in on your nails?"

"I don't have hairspray."

"It also says perfume. Cologne. Haru, you don't wear cologne, right?"

"Yeah." He doesn't say that he does own one. Got is as a gift years ago and lost it in his house somewhere, which doesn't do much for them now.

He knows Rin wears cologne sometimes. Never when he's going to work out or swim, but sometimes when all of them get together to hang out he's wearing it. Always the same one, always very light. Fresh-smelling. There isn't really anything natural about the scent, no way Haruka can say that is smells like this thing or that thing, but it isn't too bad. It makes Haruka think of really soft blue. Ocean spray, maybe, if oceans smelled like pleasantly-scented chemicals.

Though Haruka doesn't know why Rin would bother smelling nice when it's just the guys, and there's nobody to impress –

Oh.

He swallows. Wonders if Rin's shoulder is very, very hot, or if he's just getting flustered.

"Oranges," Rin says. "Or other citrus fruits. You have any of those?"

"I have some oranges. They might be kind of old."

Rin shrugs, jostling Haruka only slightly. "Still worth a try. D'you have vinegar?"

"I think so," Haruka says. He gets to his feet, and when he's out of sight in the kitchen he rubs at his shoulder, which still feels hot. It's almost like the feeling he gets when he's had his goggles around his head for so long that even when they're off, he finds himself reaching to adjust them. His body remembering ghost feelings, ghost weights.

He finds two slightly-deflated oranges in the otherwise empty fruit bowl in the corner of the kitchen, brings them back to the living room along with a cutting board and a knife. Leaves Rin cutting the oranges so he can dig through his cupboards for vinegar. He finds the bottle mostly full and covered in a thin layer of dust, which he wipes off on his shirt as he reenters the living room.

"Do you need anything else?" he says, handing the bottle to Rin.

"It says cotton balls," Rin says, squeezing an orange halve to a pulp in his hand to get what dregs of juice it contains to drip into the bowl.

Haruka doesn't think he has cotton balls, so he returns from the bathroom with a roll of toilet paper. He sets it next to the bowl, then sits across from Rin, who's examining the bottle of vinegar as though it's under interrogation.

"What's wrong?" Haruka asks.

"It just says some vinegar," Rin says.

Haruka peers into the bowl, the bottom of which is coated with a very thin layer of juice, pulp, and seeds. He's about to tell Rin they probably don't need too much, but Rin shrugs and pours a generous amount of vinegar into the bowl, probably a few tablespoons.

"Maybe more will make it work better," is Rin's explanation, picking up the bowl to swirl the mixture together. Haruka looks again at his purple fingernails and thinks Okay, maybe, I hope.

Rin rips a few sections of toilet paper off the roll, folds them into a square and dips it into the orange juice. He pulls a face, but starts rubbing the soggy toilet paper against his thumbnail. "This is really gross."

"Don't complain."

"Don't complain," Rin mimics under his breath. He quickly grows bemused, then frustrated. "This – isn't – working," he growls, rubbing at his nail frantically, ripping the toilet paper. "Haru, this toilet paper's crap."

"You need to be more patient," Haruka says. Without thinking, he grabs Rin's wrist and takes the wad of toilet paper out of his hand. He doesn't let himself flinch at the contact, though his mind starts running about a mile a minute with warnings and admonishments and some faint background scream of horror.

The self-consciousness is going to drive him crazy; he can't stop thinking about how each action might look, how everything means something now. He doesn't feel in control of anything he does, but he feels the need to pretend, so he stubbornly takes hold of Rin's thumb and starts rubbing at the nail polish in steady circles. The rest of Rin's fingers rest warmly against the back of his hand, and he has an expanding-contracting feeling going on in his chest – he doesn't think he's ever felt more nervous in his life. Rin seems to have lost the ability to speak, which is fine, Haruka tries to tell himself consolingly. This is all very fine.

Rin has a hangnail above his cuticle and a scab near his first knuckle. His hands are slightly sticky from the orange juice, and they smell like oranges, too – Haruka can make out this scent beneath the more pungent smell of the mixture he's rubbing onto Rin's nail. Rin's arm is prickly with stubble, the hair growing back because he probably hasn't swam in a little while with his wallowing and all. Haruka tries to keep his mind busy with thoughts like these – relatively innocuous things that he can observe objectively.

"It worked," he says after what may have been one minute and may have been five, once Rin's nail is clean and the toilet paper is smeared purple and he's worried that the heat of Rin's hand is going to literally burn through his skin.

"Hm," Rin says.

Haruka risks a glance at Rin, finds Rin's eyes lowered and his face burning much more than his hand is. Haruka wills his own face not to heat up, and takes hold of Rin's index finger. He's determined to remove the polish from all of Rin's nails, feels like it's some kind of trial he needs to go through to show Rin that it's okay, he's not going to run away from every little bit of contact so Rin doesn't have to either. And then one day they'll be able to laugh about this. Remember that time you had to get that nail polish off my hands with that disgusting orange mix stuff? Rin will say, laughing, sometime in the future when the feeling of Rin's hand doesn't make Haruka want to perpetually jump out of his skin.

"She really forced you to let her do this?" Haruka says. The back of his neck is hot; if he was still wearing his jacket he'd take it off. He's irrationally afraid that he's going to accidentally snap one of Rin's fingers, the bones feel so small.

"Don't underestimate sisters," Rin mumbles.

Silence again. Haruka wracks his brain for something he could follow up with.

"What are you studying?"

"At school?"

"Yeah."

"Dunno yet. Haven't decided. Maybe English."

Haruka switches to the ring finger, which only has a tiny chip of paint left on it that disintegrates quickly. "What's the school like?" he asks. "What's the town like?"

"The school's really nice," Rin says, curling up the rest of his hand as he holds his pinky out for Haruka to work on. Slowly but surely, his voice becomes its old animated self. "They have special lanes for bikes, like little roads all over the campus. Makes me wanna get a bike just so I can use them."

Haruka sets the used wad of toilet paper aside, folds up some fresh and dips it into the mixture. Takes Rin's hand more easily this time, is relieved when Rin just keeps on talking, fingers staying relaxed.

"The town's nice too," Rin is saying. "There's a shopping center a few blocks away, and a little bit farther are all the restaurants. Haru, the food. You can find everything you've ever wanted to eat. There's this restaurant, maybe two blocks away from campus. It's all seafood. It's expensive, so you can't go too often, and when I went they didn't have mackerel, but still. I know you'd like it. They make you feel all high class in there. They even cook the carrots with the stems still on."

Haruka chuckles. "That sounds really fancy."

"You have to dress up to get in."

"What did you go for?"

"Went with the team after regionals." Rin holds out his other hand once Haruka finishes his first. "Kind of a celebration, but…"

"You'll make it next year," Haruka says, taking Rin's hand and starting again with his thumb.

Rin makes a psh sound. "I already know that."

Haruka smiles but says nothing. He finds himself left once more in silence, but it's easier to bear now, the tension defused. Rin's fingers bump and brush against his as he works, but instead of sending a spiky feeling through his body every time, the contact is starting to be soothing. It's surprising how well the concoction works, taking a bit of time but still dissolving the polish off of Rin's nails. Probably the acidity. Hopefully the scent isn't going to be something that seeps into his skin and refuses to wash away. He gives Rin another glance when he's almost finished, finds Rin with his chin ducked, his eyes shut.

"Are you tired?"

The corners of Rin's mouth lift. "Kinda."

"Want to sleep in here?"

"Whatever."

"Want to sleep now?"

Rin cracks open his eyes, looks at their hands. Says a bit petulantly, "You're not done yet."

They end up in Haruka's bedroom, Rin flopped face-first on the bed, Haruka sitting on the edge and not feeling very tired at all. The wind has died down slightly, but still billows around the corners of the house.

"If you have stuff to do," Rin says, looking at Haruka with one eye, the other side of his face buried in the pillow, "you can just leave me here. I'm seriously gonna be out in a minute."

"You can change into some of my things to sleep in," Haruka says.

"You still have Loosejaw-kun?" Rin mumbles, eye already shut. He works his arms beneath the pillow, wiggles a bit to get more comfortable.

Haruka feels that warm glow of protectiveness flare up again in his chest. "Yeah. You can wear whatever."

He stands, planning to just watch TV downstairs until he gets tired because he doesn't want to keep Rin awake, but Rin calls his name before he can take more than a few steps.

Rin has turned onto his side, his hair already mussed up all over the pillow. "I'm leaving really early," he says, "and I don't wanna wake you up when I go, and I probably won't wake up when you come to bed, so…"

So then goodbye. It's not even the right time for it – not like Rin's going to up and leave this second – but Haruka already feels the comfort and familiarity of the last half hour slipping away from him. If he leaves the room now, he might not speak to Rin again in person until summer.

"Okay, yeah," Haruka says.

"So bye," Rin says, not looking too happy himself.

Haruka nods.

"Thanks, you know," Rin says. He yawns, the bridge of his nose wrinkling, his eyes squeezing shut. When he opens his eyes again they've gone watery, and his voice is sleep-heavy. "You know."

Haruka nods again. "I know. Put something else on before you go to sleep." He leaves the room, but leaves the light on so Rin will get up and change.

He can't sit still in front of the TV, so he gets up and cleans the kitchen, even though it's already clean. He takes all the rarely-used bottles of condiments out of the cupboard and wipes the dust off of all of them, then rearranges them and closes them back in the dark. Wipes down the counters. Sweeps the spotless floor. Eats a power bar. Opens the fridge and stares at its barren innards, and starts a shopping list on the rarely-used notepad he keeps in one of the drawers.

Mackerel. Oranges. But oranges aren't in season; these past few weren't good anyway. Vegetable. Of some kind. Cat food. He goes out to see if the cats have come around, but they've been absent all day and still are, probably hankered down in some dry spot.

Before he knows it he's back in the living room, trying to work on his list with TV blending into one persistent drone in the background. But nothing appears after 'cat food' – he just stares at the characters, traces over them, his back slowly going sore against the table. Before he knows it again, he's tapping his pen against his knee, staring into a corner of the room and thinking about nothing at all. And then he starts thinking that Rin is leaving, and he slides all the way down onto the floor, spine bumping against the edge of the table as he goes. He props the notepad atop his face, but this blocks out only a little bit of the light, and nothing of his thoughts.

When he lies in bed next to Rin, he feels equal parts longing and unease. Longing for Rin to stay and unease about Rin going. Longing to not feel unease. Unease about going to sleep next to Rin, under the blankets with Rin, Rin who likes him, who finds him attractive, maybe, who is less than a foot away, unease about being so vulnerable? Maybe. Longing for Rin. And if that isn't a packed thought, he doesn't know what is.

He doesn't want to sleep, but every time he thinks this his eyes start to fall shut, the warmth of the blankets burrowing into every part of him and pulling him into a much-needed state of oblivion. But every time he's almost asleep he feels Rin's presence like it's suddenly all around him, and his eyes snap open again, to the gradients of darkness and glossy silver that shade the room.

Rin sleeps so quietly that the only sign of his breathing is the subtle lift and fall of his arms, crossed over his stomach atop the blankets. Haruka watches his face for a little while; what he can see best is the tip of Rin's nose – like the moon and stars have concentrated themselves into a beam aimed specifically there, lighting up like it's a lighthouse. But there are also relaxed eyebrows, relaxed lips, relaxed everything, Rin's face gone neutral.

Haruka remembers the night before Rin left half a year ago, when they had been lying together on top of the covers and he had felt something while looking at Rin – some kind of shift already in motion, something either very fragile or very sturdy, or somehow both, and he wonders if Rin already liked him back then. He must have.

Looking at Rin right now, this Rin who is still, whose breaths barely disturb the air, it isn't that scary of a thought.

Spiraling once more into sleep, Haruka wonders, more and more convolutedly, what Rin sees in him. Why does Rin, larger-than-life Rin, like him?

And what were all the signs he'd missed?

And what is it that actually scares him – Rin liking him, or just knowing about it? Because right now he's torn between wanting Rin to be closer – close enough for their knees to touch, like they had two months ago on top of the covers when Rin liked him but Haruka didn't know yet – and wanting the bed to be larger so he can roll farther away, from change and decisions and life dragging him along behind it.

He's woken by a muffled clattering sound, and thinks at first that he imagined it. Sleep still hangs heavily around him, is ready to pull him right back under, but then he hears Rin mutter a curse, and sleep dissipates a little more.

He rolls over, opens his eyes to darkness and a blurry pinpoint of light near the door. He blinks, and the blur sharpens, becomes the illuminated screen of Rin's cell phone. He can make out Rin standing half-hunched over, watching him intently, like a cat that isn't sure if it's been caught doing something it shouldn't. And Haruka realizes that this is Rin trying to leave quietly, and failing to a stupendous degree.

"What was that?" Haruka croaks.

Rin straightens up. His face is lit from beneath, casting shadows like inky pools all over, but his embarrassed smile is still visible. "Dropped my phone. Sorry."

Haruka sits up. The chill has seeped through the walls; he pulls the blankets up over his shoulders, can't manage to keep his eyes more than a sliver open.

"Are you going right now?" he asks.

"Yeah."

Haruka swings his legs out of bed, dumping a lot of the blankets on the floor in the process. He extricates himself from them, then on second thought snatches up the comforter and wraps it around himself. "I'll walk you to the door," he says.

Rin may or may not look surprised – Haruka is still too tired to really tell – but he says "Okay."

Haruka follows Rin down the hall and then stairs and to the front door, blanket dragging along behind him, a whispery swish of sound. He stands in a stupor while Rin gets his shoes on, and is almost indignantly startled by the cold air that comes wafting in when Rin opens the door. He pulls the blanket tighter, eyes smarting from the cold, and Rin steps out into the yellow glow of the porch light.

"So, I'll see you in a couple months," Rin says, hair sleep-tussled and eyes sporting a droopy look that says he doesn't feel as awake as he pretends to be.

"Okay," Haruka says. He leans into the door frame, toes scrunching up because he hasn't donned slippers or socks. He feels no hurry from either of them – Rin pulls his hood up over his head, crosses his arms, stands there looking tired but otherwise quite relaxed and orange-tinted; Haruka makes no move to go further inside, is weighing the pros and cons of resting his head against the door frame. The porch light gives a false impression of warmth, and though his face is cold, the comforter traps heat around him everywhere else besides his toes.

"Message me about how the job goes," Rin says.

"Okay."

"Go back to sleep."

Haruka cracks a smile. "I will."

Rin is trying to withhold a smile of his own, but his eyes are alight with it.

"Thanks for taking that purple shit off my nails."

"Yeah."

Rin takes a deep breath, lets it out, and blurts, "Can I kiss you?"

Haruka feels himself wake up like a switch has been flicked inside of him – he might even hear the click that precedes all thought function whirring to a start.

"I mean –" Rin starts panicking, hands up, eyes wide. "I mean no. I mean stop. Don't – don't listen to me. I don't know what – I didn't mean –"

"Okay," Haruka blurts out, because 'okay' is an easy word to say, the easiest, a place-filler, a stopper for Rin's babbling.

"Wha – wait, what?" Rin stammers.

Haruka asks himself the same thing. What did he just okay? Is Rin going to kiss him now? Should he close the door?

But Rin just shakes his head vehemently, backs up a few steps. "No, I wasn't – I shouldn't have even said it. I'm an idiot. Just – just forget it, okay?"

"Okay," Haruka says, realizing that he's being anything but helpful, but both his mind and body feel like they've been sucked into a mud pit.

Rin has stopped stammering. He stares at Haruka for a long moment, looking dismayed. Then he bolts forward and kisses him.

There might be a touch of lips, but Haruka doesn't register that bit because it's vastly overshadowed by Rin's nose hitting his, hard. He jerks back, eyes smarting now from the pain instead of the cold, and clutches his nose as Rin dissolves into something near hysterics.

"Fuck. Fuck!" Rin grabs his head, turns completely around so that all Haruka can see is his back and his knuckles in his hair. "I'm so fucking stupid! Shit!"

"People are still asleep," Haruka says numbly.

Quieter now, but still sounding horrified, Rin crouches down and says, "I'm the biggest idiot in the world."

The more Haruka thinks about it – the four-ish seconds when he stares at Rin on the ground and tries to catch up to the present – the more he thinks that Rin didn't kiss him at all, that Rin just fully-intentionally head-butted him in the face.

He crouches down beside Rin, the comforter pooling around him, and says, "Stop being stupid." Which, again, isn't exactly helpful and probably isn't what he wanted to say.

Rin's face is buried in his hands, his ears a deep red – the blush so dark it's visible even in the yellow light. "Haru, I literally don't know how to stop being stupid," he says miserably.

"I said okay," Haruka says, though he's really just grasping for straws. He hadn't actually said Rin could kiss him, but he hadn't actually said he couldn't. He hadn't been thinking of either answer, as far as he can remember.

"But why? Why'd you say it?"

Haruka doesn't know. Decides it's probably best not to tell Rin he didn't particularly feel anything from the kiss, besides the now dull throb in his nose. But he doesn't feel upset or betrayed or anything else especially negative, thinks the last couple minutes have been too big of a train wreck for anything like that.

"You're not going to kill me?" Rin asks, peeking sideways at him.

"Stop being – no, I'm not. Rin, just stand up," Haruka says, starting to feel low on battery, the short sleep he had not enough to keep him running. He takes Rin's arm and pulls him to his feet, then tugs the comforter back tight around himself. "I'm not angry at you. You can't do it again, but I'm not angry."

Rin gives a nervous laugh, but as soon as it's fizzled away his eyes are wide and worried again. "Okay. Thanks. Sorry. Shit, I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Haruka says.

"Okay." Rin nods. Then shakes his head. "Haru, really, if you ever just need to hit me or something –"

"Rin."

"Sorry, sorry," Rin says hastily. He looks down at the ground, posture sagging, mouth a steep downward curve. He lets out a breath, a disheartening sound. Looks back at Haruka, swallows. "I need to go."

Haruka nods. "Have a good flight," he says. Then, the words coming to him in a rare moment of clarity: "Message me when you land." He gives an exhausted inward cheer, would be so much more proud of himself if he didn't feel like he was being weighed down by lead.

Rin only gives a small smile, one that flickers to life and back out just as quickly, but it's enough. "I will," he says. And then, with a reluctant sense of finality, he says, "See you later, Haru."

Haruka watches him head away, and he's already regretting everything he might have done wrong when they were together, everything he might have been able to express better, all the things he might have been able to say if he'd tried harder.

And then Rin turns down the stairs and out of sight, and Haruka shuts the door. Tired everywhere, a sore in his chest he knows will only get worse if he tries to manage it now, he vows to think things through in the morning – the real morning. He goes back up to his room, makes out his clothes that Rin wore to bed folded neatly on top of his desk. Kicks the blankets on the floor back onto the bed and then, the comforter still hugged around himself, he tumbles onto the mattress and back into sleep, with one last thought that at the very end of it all, he and Rin are at least a better-functioning disaster than they were a week ago.