A/N: me: tries to decide if rin's hair should canonically be that red or if he dyes it. me: what the hell i'm pretty sure i described him as having red eyes in chapter 1.
More seriously, thanks for being patient, I know this chapter took a while. I'm Busy with a capital B. I also want to say thanks to EVERYONE that commented last chapter. I've been really agonizing over making this decision, but I'm going to have to make a disclaimer that from now on (well, from the last chapter really) I may not get back to your comments every time you leave one. I feel really guilty about this - I love reading what you guys have to say, even if it's a short thing saying you enjoyed the chapter, and I LOVE communicating with you guys and have done my best to respond to each and every comment I've gotten. But I've gotten to the point where (luckily - and I'm super grateful for this) there are a lot of people reading this story, and quite a fair number of you are actually giving feedback, and sometimes that feedback is really in depth! My way of working used to be to answer all comments before starting the next chapter, but it got to the point where I'd stress over giving everyone an adequate reply (I don't want to half-ass talking to you!) and it just slowed me down and I got really down on myself. I don't know if it's normal for fanfic authors to reply to comments often, but I wanted to be able to, and I don't think I can. So please know I read each of your comments, and I truly gain so much motivation from them - they are so heartwarming and can legitimately make me super emotional. I'm not saying I won't reply EVER AGAIN, but that my replies will probably be more scattered. I hope you understand!
Chapter Thirteen: Red (Summer - part 3)
"Haru-chan, Coach Zaki is the coolest girl ever," Hiro says on Monday morning. He's sitting with Haruka at the corner of the pool nearest the bleachers, kicking his feet in the water and waiting for Ishikawa-san to get out of the shallow end so they can leave.
"What about your mom?" Haruka asks.
Hiro gives him an incredulous look, made comical by the goggle imprints around his eyes. "She's not a girl. She's my mom."
"Oh. You're right," Haruka says, nodding seriously.
"She's so strong. I want muscles like her someday," Hiro says, clearly back to talking about Zaki. "Haru-chan, your muscles are cool too, but Coach Zaki's are cooler 'cause she's a girl and mostly girls don't want muscles."
Not sure if there was a compliment hidden in there or not, Haruka decides to go for the simple response. "Zaki really likes swimming."
"Yeah, she's so good! Classes are so fun, I can't wait for Saturday again. I still like swimming with you, too," Hiro adds, like he doesn't want to hurt Haruka's feelings.
"Thanks," Haruka says.
"You're welcome." Hiro scrambles to his feet once Ishikawa-san is out of the pool. "Okay, I'm going now. My grandma's gonna take me to look at video games today!" He grins widely, showing off another missing tooth, and snatches up his towel.
Haruka waves him off – waves at Ishikawa-san as well – then pulls down his goggles and slips back into the pool. He's been here since early morning, doing laps long before Hiro and Ishikawa-san showed up. He has to work on his times, has to polish off some of that rust. He has no one to help him, which makes him miss Gou – not just for her stopwatch but her no-nonsense honesty (she never would have let him get so rusty). He does his best to track the time on the seconds hand of the massive clock mounted above the visitor's entrance, which has given him some idea of where he stands.
Slow. Too slow.
Of course it had been inevitable that he'd fall off his form, but all the time that has passed since he's last seen competition seems to have happened in the blink of an eye, now that he's on the other side of that blink, and not completely without regret.
He's been swimming, but he'd been tired. Tired of school, tired of wondering what to do. He still doesn't know what comes after this summer, but he has a purpose for now, a genuine good use for himself. Now that he has the energy to spare, it feels like it's time to focus on swimming again. He's ready to get better.
He's about done for this morning, though. His skin has pruned, his limbs are filled with the satisfied burn of muscles well-used, and he could use something to eat. He unwinds with one more leisurely lap, and then leaves the pool room empty behind him.
In the locker room, he heads quickly to his corner, and once he's changed he heads quickly to the exit, glancing down each aisle he passes. He told Rin he'd be here Tuesday morning, but managed to forget about all the mornings he comes not for work, but just for himself and to see Hiro. He's prepared to see Rin tomorrow (he tells himself so, at least), but not today, and as cowardly as it is he kind of wants to avoid any chance encounters.
On his way to the station, he spots Amano and Zaki heading his way.
"Yo, Nanase!" Zaki calls from three storefronts away, waving an arm high over her head while Amano continues looking broody with his hands in his pockets, though Haruka knows better by now than to write him off as such. "What's this, like, three days in a row I've seen you?"
Haruka wonders if the two of them have made a conscious effort to match. Sleeveless shirts, jeans, caps with the brims at an upward slant. It's a style Rin would approve of, Haruka's sure. Amano even has his hair loose, though it's much longer than Zaki's.
"By yourself today?" Zaki asks when they come together on the sidewalk, in front of a clothing boutique that has wheeled its sale racks outside – fluttery looking dresses and blouses in soft shades that are all almost white.
Haruka nods. "The pool was empty when I left."
"Perfect," Zaki says. She thumps Amano on the chest with the back of her hand (he turns a slight frown on her, but she doesn't see). "We're gonna go train some. I'd offer you an invite but it looks like I'm too late today. Sometime, though." She starts to pass him by, clearly eager to get swimming, and says over her shoulder, "The offer's still open. Reiji, come on."
"She's tiring," Amano says in an undertone to Haruka, like he has to salvage some pride at being ordered around, though he shows very little indication of actually minding. He nods his goodbye to Haruka, and sets off after Zaki (having to hurry, which is funny to see, his long legs giving him little advantage over her quick stride) and their two groups are separate once again.
There's something in the air; Haruka notices it now, as he finishes the walk to the station. Cool and beachy today, possibly signaling something blowing in over the ocean that hasn't quite touched land yet. It makes his step feel lighter.
Though maybe he's just happy to have run into friends, because how nice it is to know he can still make them, that there are people he met on his very own who see him and would be happy to see more of him.
He's tidying up the living room when the vacuum bumps into something beneath the table. He shuts it off, and as the whir dies down he kneels down to retrieve whatever forgotten thing he'd shoved there who knows when. Only when he finds it, he's surprised he'd forgotten it.
It's the notepad he'd drawn in. Or scribbled in, more like. The pencil he'd refilled with the rainbow lead Makoto gave him sits in the spiral rings, though he never ended up using it. The open page is hectic with gray lines. It's like looking at a picture representation of what his mindset was at the time. Ugly, unhappy, desperate for something.
What would it be now? He has a whole long afternoon ahead of him, with nothing to do.
He shakes the pencil free, flips to a new page, crosses his legs into a comfortable position, and realizes he has zero ideas. So he just touches the pencil down at the corner of the page, then drags one blunt line diagonally to the opposite corner. It comes out green, but with the slightest edge of red. From the end of this line he draws another straight up - it's perfectly two-toned, half blue and half red.
He goes on and on, each new line coming from the end of the previous one. He doesn't know what he's doing. He isn't drawing anything, it's just a bunch of lines, it's just crosshatching colors. A child could do something more impressive. (He's not going to tell Makoto how much fun the rainbow pencil is – the strokes go from green to blue to red to any mix of the three, and maybe he should be worried that he finds it so hypnotic.)
The lead wears down rapidly, and the page fills up just as quickly. He hears the sound of children racing each other up the steps through his open patio door, the slapping of their sandals against their heels and against the cement – and what could be a better sound to sum up summer? A dog barks in someone's yard, sounding both near and far away. If he really listens, he can actually hear the ocean; a white noise his brain is so used to it computes as nothing, and he wonders if this happens to the sound of roads in big cities, though he doesn't think it ever would for him.
He starts lightly filling in the shapes made by his criss-crossing lines, three- and four- and five-sided things that make him think of geometry lessons. He's pretty sure he had a coloring book like this when he was in first or second grade, with abstract mosaics printed on thin paper meant to end up looking like stained glass once they were colored in. His mother used to put them in the top panels of the kitchen windows, and when the light came in in the morning the counters would be spotted with jewels.
He uses a color per space, one-third side of the lead. There's something satisfying in watching the blank spaces slowly turn to jewels of their own – rubies, emeralds, sapphires, or generic shades of them anyway, Red and Green and Blue. He works with his elbow on the table and his cheek on his fist, the pencil quietly scritch-scratching away. He finishes, and sits back, and looks at what he's done.
It isn't very pretty, but he feels oddly proud of it. Accomplished, maybe. He's been sitting for a long time, and has completed something, which is a simple pleasure.
It strikes him that the color that appears most is red – it fills up more spaces than the other two colors combined.
Red like Rin's hair.
He gets to his feet, rolls his shoulders. His neck has gone stiff. He hesitates, then shuts the notepad and slides it back under the table, before unplugging the vacuum and putting it away.
Makoto answers the door before Haruka's knuckles can hit it a third time.
"Ready to run?" he says to Haruka, smiling the way he does when he's really tired or really stressed – extra wattage, too bright.
Haruka hears the twins come thundering up. They squeeze their way into the doorway, and Ran says, grabbing onto Makoto's arm, "Can we come too?"
"You wouldn't be able to keep up for long," Makoto says gently, though Haruka still hears the refusal there. The twins pout and grumble and slink away. Haruka hears Ran snap something at her brother.
"They've been arguing ever since they got back from school," Makoto says, stepping out and shutting the door behind him.
"How are you?" Haruka asks. Mondays are often the toughest for Makoto, and today seems to be one of those days.
"Oh, you know." Makoto makes an airy gesture with his hand, and they start down the stairs. "Oh! I'm going to apply for a home-stay, for when I'm abroad. I spoke to Rin about it."
"When did you talk to Rin?" Haruka says, a bit more insistently than he intended.
"He was over for a bit earlier. I get out of class earlier this week because of exams. We studied English."
"Hm," Haruka says. He's maybe just a bit disappointed that Rin didn't think to stop by, and maybe just a bit relieved.
They run along the sand today instead of going through town, both relishing the extra challenge, heels sinking low. There are clouds over the ocean, but they're a pale gray, not very thick, and they sit stagnant. The air still smells that extra bit fresh though; maybe just a drizzle out over the water. Their shoes fill quickly, and they empty little sand piles onto the rocks before coming back to the main road.
"Oh yeah, Mom went grocery shopping today, so you're invited for dinner," Makoto says on the way back. "Actually, Ran said that we should invite you for dinner. Actually, Ran said we should invite you and Rin for dinner, but Rin said he couldn't stay that late." He smiles at Haruka. "So if you don't come, Ran will be sad."
"Sure," Haruka says, impervious to the guilt trip but happy for a family meal nonetheless.
Makoto seems happier too. The run has left him in good spirits, windswept and invigorated. "I had this weird dream the other night," he says as they head back up the stairs. He starts to laugh, holds up a hand to signal that he has more to say, and Haruka waits for his giggles to subside. "I had this dream that you, me, and Rin were trying to catch this giant balloon elephant before it popped, and the longer we took the more it inflated."
"Oh," Haruka says. It sounds like one of the stories Ran likes to make up and have him draw sometimes. "Did it pop?"
"Haru, have some faith in us! And no, it didn't. Rin tried to build a net out of his shoelaces, but they were too short and he somehow accidentally tied his shoes together. I don't know what you ended up doing, but I chased the balloon to Tokyo and woke up right when it was about to float into Rei's dorm building."
"Maybe you shouldn't study so hard," Haruka says after a few moments.
Makoto laughs loudly, head tipping back. "Maybe that's it. It was a stressful dream, Haru."
"You really don't remember what I did?" Haruka asks, because truthfully he's quite curious.
"Hm… Actually, maybe you were the one who tied Rin's shoelaces together."
Haruka doesn't find this particularly amusing, but Makoto laughs so hard that he staggers on the steps and Haruka has to grip his arm to keep him from tumbling all the way back down.
The next morning Haruka and Zaki are put to work setting up one of the conference rooms for a meeting scheduled for the afternoon. They have to clear the entire floor, then there's vacuuming, then there's pulling the desks back in through the double doors and arranging them according to the hastily-drawn diagram on the whiteboard.
("Someone had time to plan this and draw it out, but not to actually do any of it?" Zaki grumbles with a dirty look at the board when they first start working.)
And then there's the matter of chairs, and the matter than many of the chairs already used in the room are wobbly, which apparently won't cut it for this meeting. So Haruka and Zaki take a trolley from empty room to empty room, collecting suitable chairs and wheeling them back in stacks.
"What kinda meeting do you think this is?" Zaki asks, taking a break from the manual labor to doodle flowers on the whiteboard.
Haruka straightens the last of a row of chairs. "I don't know, but they probably won't want any of their markers to be out of ink."
Zaki makes a hmph sounds and caps the pen. They begin relocating the unsuitable chairs to the rooms they've borrowed better ones from, starting with the conference room next door and then the odd small meeting room here and there, being careful not to run down rec center members in the process.
"Oh. Hiro thinks you're really cool," Haruka tells Zaki (just remembering it himself) as they wheel the last cluster of chairs out of the room and shut the doors.
Zaki grins at him over the stack of chairs. "Really? He talks about you all the time. Haru-chan this, Haru-chan that, Haru-chan could pick his nose in front of me and I'd think it was the most awesome thing in the world." Haruka gives her a blank stare and she laughs. Then, more seriously, she says, "He's a real good swimmer for his age. Like, real good."
"He is," Haruka agrees, flattening himself against the wall and pulling the trolley closer to make way for the aerobics class spilling out the door across the hall.
"He could be great for a team if he's still interested in a few years," Zaki says offhandedly, focusing more on the people passing by. Once the hall is clear, she pulls the trolley back to the center and gets them moving again.
Haruka wonders if Hiro will want to join the club here year-round like Ishikawa-san said he could a while ago. If he does, the next question would be whether he grows out of his love for swimming by the time he's old enough to compete, or just grows to love it more. Haruka won't lie to himself – of course he's curious about the latter.
But Hiro's young and just wants to have fun, and he swims because he likes it. That's most important. That's all that matters, really.
They round the corner for the main hallway, and Kaji-san calls, "Chiburi, man the desk for a moment, will ya? Nanase, you can help too."
"Oh man," Zaki sighs. They settle the trolley beside a drinking fountain and head over. Kaji-san gives Zaki the chair behind the desk, and gives Haruka a file full of papers and asks him to "just see if you can make sure they're chronological, we've got to be real organized to get all this stuff onto the new digital database doohickey and it's tedious work, I'm tellin' you."
"What do I do if it rings?" Zaki asks, looking at the phone as though it might animate and try to bite her.
"Well, you answer, and then you ask them real polite to please hold, and I'll likely be back before you even get a single one."
"I hate phone calls," Zaki says moodily once Kaji-san has left them. "Especially when there's no caller ID."
But the minutes pass and there are no phone calls, just a few patrons dropping off forms or picking them up. Zaki leans her face against her hand and spins her chair idly side to side, sitting up straight each time someone approaches, slumping again once they pass by. Haruka flips through the file – some sort of record of memberships dated three years ago.
"Oh hey, I saw your friend yesterday," Zaki says suddenly, spinning right around to face Haruka. "Matsuoka. He came in right after Reiji and I got here."
"Oh," Haruka says, putting a form dated August the second after one dated August the first. "Okay."
"So, you guys have known each other for a while or what?"
"Yeah," Haruka says, eyes on the papers and not on her. "Since elementary school."
Zaki laughs under her breath, though Haruka doesn't know what's funny. "Speak of the devil," she says, and Haruka looks up.
Rin is inside, in the hallway, coming their way; the front door clatters shut behind him.
"Yo, Matsuoka," Zaki says when he's close. "Training again?"
"Every day," Rin says, stopping at the desk and leaning his elbows on it. He wears his cap turned backwards, and a backpack on one shoulder. He looks past Zaki at Haruka. "Hey, Haru. How's work?"
"Fine," Haruka says. He has a sudden acute awareness of the shape of the folder in his hand, a sudden lack of trust in his motor capabilities, and the growing worry that he's going to drop the papers all over the floor.
And then Rin smiles at him, and his heart races.
"All right, well, I'll see you later. Gotta hit the weights."
In the same smile Rin is off, down the hall with the backpack swinging idly off his shoulder. Haruka feels distinctly wrong-footed – there was definitely a step missed between Rin being here and Rin being there and his heart is still going erratically, struggling to adjust.
The phone rings.
"Oh, shit," Zaki says, jerking away from it. It rings again, then a third time.
"You should answer that," Haruka says, once Rin has disappeared into the locker room. He finds his place in the paperwork – August third – and concentrates very hard on the fact that four comes after five, and then there's six.
"Iwatobi Recreation Center," Zaki says, with a burst of pep Haruka would never have fathomed her capable of, "Will you hold, please?"
He spends the last hours of work determinedly not looking into the weight room each time he passes, and though he'd planned to take his swim bag home today to clean it out, once his shift ends he clocks out and instead goes straight for the exit.
He's halfway down the block when he hears Rin call after him ("Haru! Hold up!"), and he stops so suddenly he almost falls forward.
Rin is just coming out of the parking lot, is running, cap sitting precariously backward on his head, backpack flying off one shoulder. Haruka remembers Makoto's dream and hopes Rin's shoelaces stay tied.
"Hi," Rin says breathlessly when he catches up. He hitches his backpack up. "Are you going home?"
"Yeah," Haruka says. And then he forgets how to speak completely.
"Me too," Rin says. His shirt is soaked at the neckline; the knot of his hair drips onto it. He must have really rushed to catch up.
"Okay," Haruka says, and, fearing awkward eye contact and immobility, he turns and says, "Let's go."
The walk to the station feels so much longer than it is. Haruka tries to look straight ahead, but his peripherals betray him and it takes a great deal of willpower to keep his gaze forward. He wants to look at Rin to see if the awkwardness he feels is visible on Rin also, but if it's there he doesn't actually want to see it. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat, like he's tried to swallow something he hasn't chewed enough.
"Nice weather today," Rin says, as they head up the steps onto the platform.
"Yeah," Haruka says. "The sky's blue."
Rin lets a laugh out through his nose. "Are you being serious or are you making fun of me?"
"I'm being serious," Haruka says, because it's true, which makes his comment all the more tragic. The sky is blue, the grass is green, Rin's hair is red, his brain is unequipped for this.
"It's supposed to rain soon," Rin says.
"Oh."
"Anyway, it's your birthday soon too."
Haruka looks over. They stop beneath the awning; the station isn't very busy, though a couple of birds twitter around on the power lines up above. Rin leans against a support beam, hands in his pockets. The tumult in Haruka's chest makes him want to teleport away, as usual, though there is a streak of defiance in there, a fledgling desire to see how much tumult he can handle.
"Yeah, I guess," he says.
"In two weeks," Rin says. "On the dot. You gonna do anything?"
Haruka thinks for a moment. "I have work."
Rin shakes his head, smiling. "That's all? No birthday party?"
Haruka shrugs, and Rin says, "Yeah, I know, you don't care about parties. Still, it's a big birthday, isn't it?"
"Is it?" Haruka says.
"Well, yeah. Your first birthday in the real adult world."
"What does that even mean?" He really is having a hard time following the trail of this conversation – Rain? His birthday? Why had Rin run so hard to catch up to him?
"You're out doing your own thing. Not in school anymore like the rest of us where you have professors and coaches and grades and stuff to give you direction." Rin seems to finally realize the growing water stain at his neck, because he takes off his cap and squeezes out his hair. Several fat droplets splatter to the concrete, and then he shakes out the collar of his shirt and replaces the cap and says like nothing happened, "I dunno, it's just kind of impressive."
Unexpectedly, Haruka finds himself snorting on a laugh. "I don't feel any different."
"It makes you adult-er, probably," Rin says, pushing off the beam, looking encouraged by Haruka's almost-laugh. "Then again, you've always kind of been ahead of us there."
Haruka hasn't heard from his parents in a little over a week, though he hasn't tried to contact them in that long either. Which means one end will reach out soon, which is how it's been for a while, which is fine. "I have a job. That gives me –" he tries to remember the word Rin used "– direction."
"Yeah, well, anyway," Rin says. "My point is, you should do something for your birthday."
"Do you have any ideas?" Haruka says.
Rin's eyebrows go up, and his smile gets a little wider. "I could think of some, if you want."
The smile is inviting, invites Haruka's own, though his feels like the smile of someone who doesn't know if they should be smiling or not. "I don't know if I'd trust any ideas you came up with."
"What, why?" Rin says, pretending to be offended. "What's wrong with my party ideas?"
"They would probably be too extravagant."
"Are you saying I'd pull out all the stops for you?"
"Would you?" Haruka says. He feels like he's asked something daring. There's a thrill, and a renewed shot of nerves.
Rin laughs. The way he holds Haruka's eyes feels daring too – the way he holds them with so much light in his own. "I might."
Bells, a distant train horn. Haruka is glad for the distraction, because his own daring quickly crumbles under Rin's gaze. Rin can make an I might sound so much like a Yes.
The train is on the other side of the tracks, which makes Rin on the wrong side to catch it, so they just watch in silence as it stops, and waits a minute, and sets off again. The backpack hanging off of Rin's shoulder touches Haruka's arm.
"I guess I should get over to the other side," Rin says, but he makes no move to leave. A moment later, he says, "Or I guess I'll just go after you've left. Would be awkward otherwise."
Haruka imagines staring across the tracks at each other, too far to talk, to close to pretend the other isn't there.
"Thirsty?" Rin says. He nods toward the vending machine.
Haruka has a vague memory of hot coffee at a cold station, and of Rin's arm around him, but he can hardly place it. Was it before he knew about Rin's feelings, or after? And maybe that contact was something he made up after the fact. He isn't sure when the last time he felt Rin's arm hanging off his shoulders was.
"I'm fine," he says.
His train is early. When it speeds in, Rin says, "I'll see you soon," and when it's stopped Haruka misses the feeling of Rin's backpack against his arm, but he's already said goodbye also and Rin is walking away toward the crossing.
He gets on the train, but doesn't want to go home yet. He wants to see Rin more.
He agonizes over that more than he'd like to the next day. And agonizing mostly means coming to a standstill in the middle of whatever he's doing – brushing his teeth, heading down the aisle in the supermarket, going up the stairs to his bedroom with a basket of laundry in his arms – and staring blankly ahead and thinking, with an underlying tinge of worry, I want to see Rin more?
The jittery feeling truly scares him. It's like some kind of runaway creature in his chest that he doesn't know how to calm down, like a racing heart except those can be slowed with even breathing, whereas breathing does nothing for this.
He sets the basket of clean sheets down in his room and tries to make his bed, but somewhere along the line he ends up lying on his side on top of the mattress, his pillow in his arms, feeling lifeless and overwhelmed. "This is annoying," he says, and then he feels stupid for talking to himself.
He's knocking on Makoto's door five minutes later, hoping that this is a day that Makoto is home early, and if so, if Makoto won't mind putting any studying to the side for a little bit. Any distraction will do to take Haruka's mind off of Rin, who right now is too big of a thought to handle.
When Rin opens the door, he feels for a moment like Makoto's playing a cruel trick on him.
"Hey Haru," Rin says, a juice box in each hand, sounding not at all surprised to be seeing him. He calls back into the house, "Makoto, it's Haru! We're studying English," he says to Haruka, as though Haruka had asked for an explanation. He opens the door a little wider, says, "C'mon, you can help," and heads back in, leaving Haru on the doorstep.
This has happened a few times in the last couple of days, Haruka thinks, following Rin inside. Rin detaches suddenly – there's nothing cold about it, but Haruka is collecting missed steps now, and they're adding up quickly. At work, a quick hi followed by a see you; then when the train had arrived, another abrupt goodbye; and right now, a welcome but with a back quickly turned.
He'd say it was nothing, except it's something he's noticed, and he's not good at noticing things. Something starts to sink slowly toward his stomach.
Makoto waves from the living room, pencil in hand, reading glasses on his nose. There's a workbook open at his feet, and a worn orange dictionary beside his knee; the feel is very study session-esque. Rin tosses one of the juice boxes at Makoto, who shoots out his free hand to catch it.
"Thank you," Makoto says in English, and then in disheartened Japanese: "Can't I just ask someone to draw me a map if I have to ask them for directions instead of learning all these prepositions?"
"If you have a map you can ask them to draw on it," Rin says, joining him on the floor, and Haruka feels kind of like an afterthought. "But that's if you want to carry maps everywhere and if they even know how to read them. Oh, Haru, do you want a juice too?" he asks, stabbing his straw into his juice box.
Haruka hasn't sat down yet, so Rin cranes his head back to look at him.
"I'm fine," he says, but Rin says, "Here, have mine, I'll get another," and pushes his juice box into Haruka's hand and gets back to his feet. He passes around Haruka, and Haruka gets a whiff of something pleasant.
Chemical ocean. Rin smells nice.
"Haru, you should've made me work harder in English class," Makoto complains, dropping his pencil into his workbook.
Haruka takes a seat, then takes a sip of juice – orange. There's a trend happening, oranges and Rin; the universe seems to be playing games with him. He hears Rin open the fridge in the kitchen, and focuses instead on Makoto's glum look.
"You already worked harder than I did," he says.
Makoto tries to punch his straw into his juice box but ends up bending the straw. He makes such a pitiful face that Haruka takes the juice box from and works the straw in himself, and hands it back so Makoto can take a mopey sip.
"How are exams?"
Makoto sighs. "I'm alive."
Rin returns then, folding himself down with a new juice box (Haruka wonders if they're depleting the twins' lunch supply) and turning Makoto's workbook around to take a look. His knee is inches from Haruka's own; Haruka tries not to tense up. He smells Rin's cologne – not too much, not so much that it's suffocating, but enough that he finds himself breathing just a bit deeper (trying to breathe it in?)
"You know, you're doing this right," Rin says to Makoto, tapping the pages. He turns the book back around. "Have a little more confidence in yourself."
Makoto looks dubious. "Really?"
"Definitely. Now find your eraser."
"What?" Makoto says blankly.
"Find your eraser," Rin says, grinning. Then he says something in English – all Haruka catches is his own name.
"What are you saying?" he says to Rin, because Makoto has just given him a very nonplussed look.
"Nothing, it's fine," Rin says with a flap of his hand, before repeating whatever he'd said to Makoto.
Still looking miffed, Makoto gets to his feet. "How far past Haru is it?" he says.
"What? I can't understand you," Rin says, pretending ignorance that Haruka feels full throttle.
Makoto heaves another massive sigh, and asks in English. Rin says something else, and Makoto starts walking slowly away, stopping at the dining table. At the next thing Rin says, he turns and goes toward the kitchen entrance. Rin calls a few more things; Makoto – soon inside the kitchen – calls back "Okay" each time.
Rin's giving directions, but they're more than just Go straight and Turn now. Prepositions, Haruka thinks. He remembers the sound of Rin opening the refrigerator.
"Is it in the fridge?" he asks, quietly enough that Makoto won't hear, but Rin still looks at him with wide eyes and says, "Shh, Haru!" as though Haruka's just threatened to reveal his darkest secrets. "But no, it's not," he adds, and he finally quirks Haruka a grin.
So Haruka listens to Rin's directions and Makoto's answers without really listening. His eyes wander to Makoto's workbook – fill in the blank exercises that he remembers not being too enthralled by during English classes at Iwatobi – and then surreptitiously (he hopes) to Rin's knee, still very close to his own.
Rin is wearing shorts, and his legs are covered with fine red stubble – not very long at all but still longer than he'd ever let it grow in high school, the obsessive shaver that he was (and still is, Haruka thought, but maybe the hair on his head isn't the only thing Rin has gotten lax with).
Makoto comes back with the eraser in hand and a bemused expression on his face. "You hid it behind the vinegar in the bottom shelf in the cabinet above the sink. When did you even manage that?"
"Just now," Rin says smugly. "Good understanding. Haru, you better work on your English too. Soon Makoto and I will be able to talk about you behind your back, in front of your back."
Makoto laughs. "Hardly!"
They run early, before the twins get home from school and make leaving all the more difficult. Having Rin run with them feels like rediscovering something Haruka hadn't realized he'd forgotten about – just the ease of the three of them together, the way that while he has a dynamic with Makoto and he had one, is rediscovering one with Rin, the three of them together have their very own way of being.
He missed them, the feeling of the both of them with him together, the way his lungs fill with each exhale with a fullness that is more than just air, that is maybe relief and maybe joy and maybe some unfettered thing with no name. It's comforting the way the smell of home is, if you've been away for a while.
"How long do you guys keep this up for?" Rin asks after they've been running for a good half hour. The town is alive, friends walking home from school, siblings with younger siblings, ducking into shops for snacks, getting sidetracked chatting on street corners.
Rin doesn't sound the least bit tired. He's smiling like he feels the same unfettered thing Haruka does, windswept and full of brightness. Haruka's heart goes faster.
Back up the stairs toward his and Makoto's house afterwards, Haruka's breathing is heavy and his forehead is damp with sweat and clammy hair. Makoto is breathless also, but he's telling Rin the dream about the elephant balloon.
("And then Haru tied your shoelaces together so I had to run all the way to Tokyo to save Rei by myself!")
Rin bursts out laughing. "Haru, what the hell? Why does your dream self have no chill?" Some of his hair has fallen out of his ponytail, but he doesn't seem to have noticed. It hangs right in front of his ear, fluttered by each step he takes.
Back at the door, Makoto enters first and calls to announce their return. The twins come stampeding down the stairs, Ran calling, "Is Haru-chan with you?" When she sees Rin she lets out a shout of glee and – Haruka already forgotten – takes his arm and pulls him inside.
"Competition," Makoto mutters to Haruka, closing the door behind them.
"Shut up," Haruka mutters back.
Makoto helps Rin extricate himself from the twins before too long, and when Rin is heading out the door Haruka is too – Makoto has another exam to study for, and Haruka feels guilty for taking so much of his time.
Outside the front gate, Rin starts saying, "Guess I'll go catch a train –"
"I'll walk you to the station," Haruka says, startling himself with the offer.
Rin is startled too, eyebrows up, but he regains himself. "Wow, how chivalrous," he says, sarcastic but also a clear invitation for Haruka to join him.
Rin talks to him about his flight home, and Haruka is glad for it because it wards away any silences – he's sure Rin is doing it for the both of them. "I don't know what it was about them, but this airline had good pretzels," Rin says, or, "You'd think a plane full of sleeping people would be contagious, but there's always that one screaming kid," or, "D'you think if there was an emergency and you sat in the emergency exit row, you'd be able to get the doors open?"
He's very good at getting Haruka talking – very good at putting Haruka at ease even when Haruka isn't very at ease at all.
Because Rin had been just about to leave again, another quick detach. It's so different – different from their texting exchanges, different from their one long phone call, different from the Rin of just a few days ago, asking Haruka to spend more time with him. Haruka wonders what brought the change on, and so suddenly, if it was something he did…
What if Rin doesn't like him anymore?
For a second everything grinds to a halt, at least inwardly, because his legs are still moving and Rin keeps moving beside him but there is a kind of freeze taking over his brain. All he feels is a kind of stifling, looming dread.
And then the gears start turning again, and he dismisses that idea. He knows Rin still likes him. He knows. He knows because of the cologne. He knows because the smiles Rin sends him are different from the ones he sends everyone else.
His heart is still racing, but he's feeling competitive with himself, wants to handle the feeling longer and wants to see how much more of it he can handle.
"This feels familiar," Rin says, once they're at the station. There's a vending machine near the route map, and Rin jerks his head in its direction and says, "Thirsty?"
"Chivalrous," Haruka says. "I'm fine."
Rin looks at him appraisingly.
"What?" Haruka says.
"Nothing," Rin says. He looks away, just barely smiling. "That was funny.
"You have some hair loose," Haruka says. And then, before he knows what he's doing, he has it between his thumb and forefinger.
His heart slams into his ribcage, a single thump he feels physically, and he's aware in a kind of panicked way that he has a second to decide what to do. But his mind is clear also, like he already knows what he will do, and so he tucks the hair behind Rin's ear and manages – by some stroke of composure he didn't know he possessed – to say, "There," and not feel his face turn hot.
The fates are on his side again, because the warning lights begin to toll and the crossing gates lower, and it's something he can focus on instead of the slack-jawed look on Rin's face.
His thoughts start racing then to catch up to his heart – mostly things like That wasn't like me and What was I doing? Also he kind of remembers the feeling of Rin's ear against his finger (it was very warm), and the backs of his fingers against Rin's hair (soft-ish, but also that brittle feeling that comes from chlorine), so he's only half-aware of the way they say their goodbyes. He doesn't think either of them is very eloquent. Rin really does look like he's been hit in the face.
He gets home, takes off his shoes, and heads up the stairs, all in a haze. It's only when his head hits the pillow that he realizes he's pitched himself onto his bed, the second time today. He feels restless, and giddy, and afraid, as well as an antsy need to hold something in his hands. He grabs his pillow and smothers his face in it.
Oh god, he thinks, wanting very much to disappear from the typhoon his heartbeat has become, but also disappear into it, just let go and let it consume him. I like Rin.
And then, denial: No. I don't. It's just the situation. Whatever that means. He's grasping at straws now. The inevitable is too heavy, too laced with implications, with change.
He lies in bed, pillow over his face, trying not to agonize but remembering the feeling of Rin's red, red hair in his fingers, and feeling a red, red burn in his chest. And so comes a terrified, relieved acceptance: Oh god. I like Rin.