A/N: By the time I'm done editing each chapter I've read it over so many times that the magic has left for me, and I'm always so worried you won't find it interesting and yet, even with the months that pass between each chapter, you still find the story interesting. I'm so amazed each time. As always, thanks for your patience, and thanks for your comments!

Chapter Sixteen: Collision (Summer - part 6)

Hiro and Ishikawa-san are back the next morning, though Ishikawa-san is sitting on the bleachers when Haruka comes in, watching with a faint smile as Hiro swims back and forth across the width of the pool. Haruka notices that she looks tired, and though she is in her swim suit, her towel is wrapped around her and it doesn't look like she has gone into the water at all.

"Good morning, Nanase-kun," she says when he sets his towel down on the bleachers. She is definitely worn around the eyes, and her voice lacks energy.

"Good morning," Haruka says. He wonders if it isn't his place to, but asks all the same: "Is everything all right?"

His question seems to cheer her, which he doesn't quite understand.

"Things are all quite all right. How are you, Nanase-kun?"

Her question is quite cheerful, too, but contains an insistence Haruka recognizes well from the times he has been asked similar things by Mrs. Tachibana – her insistence is that of a mother hoping for a genuine answer.

"I'm fine."

There is a loud splash from the pool, and Hiro calls, "Haru-chan!" He waves frantically from the shallow end.

Ishikawa-san chuckles. "Thank goodness he's young and full of energy, and enjoys getting up early. Who knows how things will be down the line." Haruka looks back at her, and she gives him a smile full of wisdom. "Though, of course, it never does anyone well to try to predict the future."

He looks away, self-conscious, wondering how much she has been paying attention.

"Hiro's been looking forward to swimming with you," she says, letting him off the hook. "He missed you yesterday."

Gratefully, Haruka heads to the pool, where Hiro insists that the most important thing is watching him do a variety of underwater handstands. When he comes up from the fourth one, Hiro's face is taken up by a grin so delighted that Haruka doesn't mind for a moment the water clogging his left ear canal. But then Hiro says, "Coach Zaki!" eyes not on Haruka at all.

Haruka turns. Zaki has just come out of the women's locker room, and Hiro rushes up the steps to greet her, sending water everywhere. With a laugh, Zaki opens her arms so he can go bounding into her.

She lets out an exaggerated oomph! at the impact. "Hey, Squirt," she says, ruffling his hair.

"What are you doing here?" he says, neck craned back so he can look up at her.

"I'm here to practice. Even though I'm real good, I gotta practice too."

Hiro looks from her to Haruka, who stands in the shallow end with is head tilted, hoping for his ear to drain.

"Are you two going to practice together?" Hiro asks him.

Zaki looks imploringly at Haruka, and Haruka wonders when he became such a pushover, though he doesn't mind that much.

"Yeah, we are," Haruka says. Zaki flashes him a thankful smile.

"What about Min-chan?" Hiro says. "Mom and I saw him earlier when we were coming in."

Haruka feels a little shiver of anticipation. The only other place Rin would be must be the weight room. "He probably swam before you got here."

Ishikawa-san calls from the bleachers, her tote bag over her shoulder.

"Okay, I gotta go see Grandma," Hiro says. He releases Zaki and says to the both of them, "See you tomorrow, maybe!"

"Min-chan," Zaki says with a snort once Hiro and Ishikawa-san have left.

Haruka works back a smile of his own. "Yeah, there's no real point correcting him."

There is an awkward moment when Zaki shifts her weight, and the water laps gently around Haruka's hips. During work yesterday neither of them mentioned the conversation they'd had at this very pool edge, but things hadn't been awkward then because there had been papers to file, phones to answer, rooms to clean.

Now Haruka can tell that they are both thinking the same thing – how close does it make them, to have learned such private things about each other?

"Is Amano still sick?" he asks. It seems like the right thing, because Zaki makes a face and approaches the edge of the pool.

"Yeah, he sounds like death. I won't even step into the same room as him. Dunno how he's gonna be fit for his lessons on Friday." She takes the stopwatch from around her neck. "Oh well, sucks for him. Here, since you swam first the other day, you can time me first today."

They trade places, Haruka taking the stopwatch from her as they do. And so, they practice.

Haruka exits the locker room a while later, hand still tingling from the high-five Zaki slapped into it when he left her to do some laps on her own. He hopes she hasn't started a new parting ritual for them; a few more slaps like that and she'll knock his hand right off.

The question of where to find Rin is answered as soon as he passes by the front desk. He spots him sitting on the front steps, scooted up against the railing so that people have plenty of room to go up and down.

Rin doesn't turn to check who it is when Haruka opens the door. He's immersed in a game on his phone, so instead of announcing his presence, Haruka sits right beside him.

Rin jumps. "Shit, Haru, you scared me! I thought you were just some random person sitting next to me."

"Why would a random person sit beside you?"

"I dunno, I look really nice or something?"

Blatantly ignoring the invitation for a compliment, Haruka says, "Have you been waiting long?"

"Nah," Rin says, tucking his phone away and getting to his feet. "I kind of figured out your schedule so I knew when you'd be finished." He stuffs his hands into his pockets. "I was gonna go home for lunch. Wanna come?"

"Sure," Haruka says, standing as well.

Rin smiles, looking relieved. "I can't promise we have mackerel. Actually, I can promise we don't."

"Okay."

He woke up beside Rin this morning and went running with him, and then shared breakfast and said goodbye to him (Rin took the train straight to the rec center after breakfast; Haruka followed behind a while later), and now he's passing through the parking lot with Rin beside him again. And in that short time were apart, they'd still been in the same building.

It's a comforting thought, that they can spend so much time together and also that they can be in such close quarters while going about their own routines. It's the kind of ease he hopes for as their relationship moves forward, but then he's thinking of their relationship moving forward and this is both thrilling and daunting, and his ears start to feel hot.

Rin is wearing the running shorts Haruka let him borrow this morning, and one of Haruka's plain gray T-shirts as well. He's personalized the shirt by rolling the sleeves up over his biceps.

Showoff, Haruka thinks, though he stares more than he'd admit.

Rin yawns a lot on the train, and each time he does, Haruka catches it. A few times, the woman laden with shopping bags a few seats down catches it too.

The fifth time, Haruka says, eyes watery, "Didn't you sleep?" and Rin wipes his own eyes and says, "I did. Did you know that just thinking of the word 'yawn' makes you want to yawn, though? That's why I keep yawning, I can't stop thinking of the word."

"Why were you thinking of it in the first place?"

"I don't know, it was just in my head."

"Stop thinking of it."

"Then make me think of something else!"

Haruka has been trying very hard to not think about Rin's sleeve that has unrolled during the train ride. He could just reach over and fix it, and who knows how Rin would respond to that – though probably with a blush.

Instead, he stares at the blurred landscape through the window across the way and says, "Think of the surprise you're coming up with for my birthday."

"Damn," Rin says. "Now I have to do something for you."

Haruka tries very hard not to smile, and by the quiet laugh Rin lets out, he can tell it's a losing battle for the both of them.

"You can put your stuff in my room," Rin says when they reach his house. Nobody is home, Gou off at school for the week and Mrs. Matsuoka at work. The floorboards in the entranceway creak a greeting though, and the homey smell of spices is more than welcoming enough. They pad up the stairs to Rin's room.

"Sorry, it's kind of a mess," Rin says absently, flicking on the light. There is maybe one book turned at a haphazard angle on his desk, and a pair of weights in the middle of the floor. He slings his swim bag onto his bed while Haruka dumps his by the door.

"So, what are you hungry for?" Rin says, rolling his weights beneath his bed with his feet.

"I don't know," Haruka says.

"Wow, you sure make yourself an easy customer, don't you?"

Haruka shrugs. "I don't mind what we eat."

"Hm," Rin says, coming back with a grin. When he's in front of Haruka he says, "Oh, also," and then ducks in and pecks Haruka on the lips. It is very quick; Haruka only has time to blink.

"Been waiting to do that," Rin says. He stands close for a second, gouging Haruka's reaction.

Haruka can't help the tensing of his shoulders. Rin has very, very pretty eyes, and even though they hold his so resolutely, Haruka cannot read them from this close.

But Rin just smiles again, and then goes right around him into the hallway, calling as he goes, "I dunno what we have in the fridge, but there's bound to be something we can make."

In the kitchen, Haruka watches as Rin plucks up a watering pail to water the small cluster of succulents on the window ledge above the sink.

"Gou keeps bringing them back from school," Rin says, sticking his finger into the soil around one of them before deciding not to water that one. "Like, I'm kinda worried she's stealing them from the greenhouse club or something. And then she's counting on me to take care of them, like I really wanna do that. We already have enough plants!"

The succulents are in shades of green and blue, and a single one of them has a small, bright pink bloom soaking up the light that streams through the window. Haruka doubts that Gou actually stolen them, though the image of her sneaking into a greenhouse and stuffing them into her schoolbag is a funny one.

Rin sets down the pail and heads to the fridge. He lets out a dramatic sigh when he sees what's inside. "You're kidding me. We have fish leftovers." He takes out a Tupperware, and Haruka sees the note Mrs. Matsuoka stuck to it – Finish this for lunch.

"Let's have it," Haruka says triumphantly.

"With what? There isn't much, and we're running low on sides."

Haruka nudges him out of the way and takes stock of what is available. He sees tofu, a carrot, a package of bean sprouts.

"Remember my mackerel stir fry, the day we had the picnic in the spring?"

"Not really. That wasn't the best day for me to pay attention to what I was eating."

Haruka risks a glance, but Rin doesn't seem particularly bothered by the memory. He has his arms folded across the top of the door, and looks curiously into the fridge.

"Bring these to the stove," Haruka says, passing him the tofu, carrot, and bean sprouts.

Rin does, letting his fingers brush generously with Haruka's when he takes them from him. Haruka follows with the fish.

"This isn't mackerel, but I can make a stir fry with it."

"You're literally the weirdest, you know?" Rin says, leaning his hip against the counter. "Fish stir fry? I'll let you do it, but still. Who does that?"

"People do."

Rin raises his eyebrows. "Mm-hm? Which people?"

"I do," Haruka says. Rin's smile makes him want to smile, which is exactly what Rin is trying for, so he pulls on the blankest expression he can muster. A wonder that he used to be so talented at them, when they take so much effort now.

"Pay attention," he says, motioning for Rin to get him a pan. "You'll be glad you learned this."

Rin pays very close attention, and Haruka is glad for the heat of the stove because he can use it as an excuse for the redness in his face.

Rin takes him to the beach after lunch. It is only a short walk away, and, according to Rin, "is usually pretty quiet there." It is quiet, but this might be because the clouds have rolled steadily back in, not thick but a thorough blanket of them, dimming the light and the sea.

They walk along the sand, not saying anything. Haruka doesn't feel like they need to. Stomach full from lunch, he is content with being too lazy to even speak. He's watching the water, eyes unfocused so that it's just a pretty shimmering blue-grayness. They left their shoes a ways back, by the stairs up to the road. The sand is soft and still very warm beneath his feet.

"Can't believe it's already almost been two weeks," Rin says eventually.

Haruka turns his head, his eyes sliding back into focus somewhere on the way. Rin's hands are in his pockets, and his sleeve is rolled back up. A small part of Haruka laments the missed opportunity. The thought of his fingers brushing against Rin's arm makes the butterflies perform their acrobatics in his stomach. Thank goodness Rin isn't looking at him.

"Have you done most of the things you wanted to do?" he asks.

"I've done a few," Rin says. He stops walking, then sits right in the sand, a muffled thud punctuating his impact. Haruka hesitates, then sits beside him.

"I haven't started my class readings, though," Rin continues, as though it is completely normal to suddenly take a seat in the middle of a walk.

"You should," Haruka says.

Rin drapes his arms around his knees. "Yeah, but it's hard to fit the time for homework in between everything else I have to do. I have to run in the morning, and then I have to swim in the morning. I have to do the dishes in the sink."

"Wow, that sounds tough."

Rin laughs, tilting his head to look at Haruka. "It's really tough. My family expects too much of me. I also have to do muscle training."

"So is it afternoon by then?"

"Yeah, but I have to run again in the PM. And if I can, swim again. And eat a few times between all of that. Oh yeah, and help Makoto with English." Softer, but with a growing smile, he says, "And I have to see you."

Haruka looks back at the ocean, knowing that the smile on his face will be enough of an answer to that. Though he says anyway, "You still have to do your homework."

He feels Rin's eyes on him for long moment. Then Rin's fingers brush against his cheek, hardly touching at all. He feels a jolt – in his chest but racing to every end of his body as well. Rin's hand is gone quickly.

"You had a thing in your hair," Rin says, just as quickly.

"A thing?" Haruka says, wondering if Rin isn't just making it up, and kind of hoping he is. He risks a glance. Rin's hands are clamped together over his knees.

"A thing," Rin says. He lies back in the sand, hands going behind his head. He can only be feigning his calmness; it wouldn't be fair for Haruka to be the only one whose pulse is going a mile a minute.

"Question," Rin says, eyes on the sky. "I have to pick my major still. Do you think I should do Economics or International Relations?"

Haruka looks at his lips, his cheeks, his forehead bared by the hair falling to both sides. Rin is so pretty. So handsome – he probably wouldn't like 'pretty', would he?

"Why are you asking me?"

"Because," Rin says, sounding very much like he'd like to roll his eyes. A slight frown takes to his face. His mouth. His lips. "I want your opinion."

"Weren't you thinking about English a while ago?"

Rin grins at him. "You remembered?

"I remembered," Haruka said, parroting Rin's words because he is losing thread of the conversation. He makes himself focus. "And I don't know. It's your decision. You should pick what you like best."

Rin sighs. "Well, I like them both. And both could be useful, in case I need a backup plan. I'm gonna swim for a long time, Haru!" he says under Haruka's sudden scrutiny. "I'm just saying, I'm thinking smart from all sides. I'm at a good school, I might as well get a good degree too."

"I didn't like Economics," Haruka says.

"Wow, great," Rin says sarcastically. "Guess I'll just do International Relations then."

"Only do it if you want to."

"You aren't being helpful at all."

There's sand in Rin's hair – or rather, his hair is in the sand. Haruka wants to say it – There's something in your hair – and then touch it, brush what's left on Rin's forehead off.

Instead, he says, "It's your decision. You'll be able to make up your mind. And you'll have to do your homework."

"Do you believe in me, Haru?"

Rin says it jokingly, but Haruka almost loses his composure because yes, he believes in Rin so much it is nearly overwhelming.

Rin sees something in his expression that makes his smile fade a bit. "What?" he says. He starts to reach for Haruka, but his hand stills between them and then falls back into the sand.

"I believe in you," Haruka says.

Rin turns his face away, but Haruka can still see his ear, blushing bright red. Haruka wants to take his hand and press it to his cheek, but instead he curls his fingers into the sand, and bites his lip, and stares out at the water.

Rin makes him run next – or, rather, Rin says, "I'm gonna run some more, you can go home if you want," so casually that Haruka knows he doesn't want him to go home at all.

Haruka doesn't want to go home either. So they backtrack for their shoes, and then reverse again back along the beach. When it starts drizzling Rin says, "Let's keep going, it'll stay light!"

The droplets cling like dew, but the water is warm and the air is too. By the time they make it back to Rin's house their clothes aren't wet, but they are damp, and their shoes squeak as they take them off in the entranceway.

"Nothing like running in the rain," Rin says, breathless and grinning, pushing his hair up off his forehead. He is breathless, but he is breathtaking. Haruka agrees – there is nothing like running in the rain.

It is still raining when Rin walks Haruka to the station. The droplets patter against their umbrellas – Rin gave Haruka the plain black one, and is using the polka-dot one Gou forgot at home – and drip out of the trees and off of roofs.

"I'll get your clothes back to you soon," Rin says when they step onto the platform. He gave Haruka a dry shirt of his to change into ("Thank god I don't have any weird fish on my clothes"), and still has the clothes he borrowed this morning.

"You don't have to rush. I know you'll have a hard time with all those dishes."

Rin jabs an elbow into his arm, and Haruka elbows him right back. And then Rin says "Hey," and slips his hand into Haruka's, stopping him in front of the route map. "Um, before you go…"

Rin glances around. It's obvious what he is asking permission for.

It's risky, maybe. The route map isn't much cover; they are visible. But the station is empty and the surroundings are rain-quiet, and Haruka doesn't feel anxious at all. The water soothes him. Rin soothes him. Either, both, it doesn't matter.

He says, "Okay."

Their umbrellas collide overhead, and Rin glances up, an embarrassed smile taking to his lips. He lowers his umbrella so it hangs over his shoulder, and steps beneath Haruka's. He squeezes Haruka's hand a little bit tighter.

When Rin kisses him, Haruka wishes Rin would hold him halfway between this and how he did the night before, but he doesn't know how to ask for it.

The thing is, he's noticed that Rin is being weird about touching him. It's happened since he pushed Rin away mid-kiss, but it might have happened before then, too. He isn't sure how much he is projecting because of worry or how much he is just mixing days around. Things are moving fast and slow and sometimes he feels like he's been snatched up into a daydream.

Sometimes Rin will touch him with no qualms – things like holding his hand, which Rin can do quite boldly when there is kissing involved too (and when they are falling asleep together, Haruka remembers giddily).

But then sometimes Rin will touch his hand, and jerk back like he didn't mean to. Sometimes he'll reach like he's going to touch Haruka, like he started doing at the beach, but then he'll abort suddenly and Haruka will wonder what's wrong – and wonder if it's him, and wonder if Rin thinks he doesn't want to be touched at all.

He notices it when Rin hands him back his clothes in the locker room the day after they kissed goodbye at the station. When their hands bump, Rin pulls back like he's been burned.

But on the train to his place their thighs touch as they sit side by side.

But when Rin is leaving later and they're kissing goodbye in the entranceway, Rin puts a hand on his hip and Haruka just has time to feel a shiver building in his chest, before Rin pulls away to say, "So, I'll see you tomorrow," not quite meeting his eyes.

That's Thursday. On Friday, Rin drops in for a short while after helping Makoto with English again. Haruka is washing out the pot that Mrs. Tachibana sent leftovers over in, and thinking that he should whip something up someday soon and bring it over as repayment. Rin has finally cracked open his school reading in the living room.

At least this is what Haruka thinks, until he hears the footsteps, the yawn. "So bored," Rin says, coming up behind him. A chin props itself on his shoulder.

"I told you I didn't have anything fun for you to do here," Haruka says, working very hard to sound very calm. Rin smells good today.

Rin hums. "Watching you wash the dishes is more fun than reading that book. You have nice technique."

"What does that mean?"

"I dunno."

Rin's chin shifts a bit, kneading Haruka's shoulder. It tickles, and Haruka's shoulder twitches, and Rin laughs quietly.

And then everything stops – Rin stops moving, Haruka's hands still beneath the faucet. There is a feeling. In a moment of clarity, Haruka is sure that Rin wants to hug him. And Haruka imagines Rin's arms going around him, Rin warm against his back, and is pretty sure he wants that too.

But Rin lifts his chin away and retreats to the living room without another word. The feeling has turned strange. Haruka regrets it as though something passed between them, even though nothing happened at all.

He knows he should just say something, but he also knows that when he does, it will come out all wrong. He can feel it. He dreads it. He understands what's going on as much as he tries to ignore it.

On Saturday afternoon he finally says, "Why do you do that?"

They're in his room. His lesson plan sits ignored on his desk even though Rin said he wanted to look at it.

They'd been kissing and it was lasting longer. Rin had opened his mouth a little bit more and Haruka had too, and it was slow and Haruka was liking it very much, until Rin's hands touched his sides with just enough pressure for Haruka to feel them flinch away.

"What?" Rin says. His arms are still bent between them.

"That," Haruka says, looking at Rin's hands. "You keep almost touching me but not touching me."

Rin lowers his arms the rest of the way. He suddenly dons the downcast expression of someone about to face the inevitable thing they have been dreading. Quietly, he says, "I just didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable."

"What?"

Rin's eyes flit past Haruka toward the door, betraying how little he wants to have this conversation. "Haru…you recoiled from me a few days ago, when we were here, and I was kissing you, remember?" His blunt tone is at odds with the embarrassed flush on his face.

"I remember," Haruka says, feeling his face go just as red. "But that was just because you surprised me. I don't do that every time you touch me."

"Okay, but it's not like I know where the line is that I can't cross," Rin says painstakingly. "I'm trying to be careful, because…because I don't want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable around me, like I said."

"Well, you are. It –" Haruka doesn't want to say it. He feels too vulnerable even thinking it, but he knows he has to be honest. "It makes me feel like you think there's something wrong with me."

Rin's eyes go wide. "I don't think that at all! Haru!"

Haruka doesn't answer.

Rin runs a hand through his hair. "It's just – I know this is new for you, okay? It's new for me too, but I know, like, a relationship isn't something you've thought of before so I…I don't really know how to go about this with you. I don't know what I'm doing."

"I think it's been going fine," Haruka says stubbornly.

"Kind of, until I do something that's not okay with you! I don't have it all predicted in my head. I don't go into this with that much certainty."

"You can ask questions."

"Or you can say things without me having to ask!" Rin snaps back. But his voice loses its edge when he says, "And I do ask. But I don't want this –" He motions at the both of them "– to become a game of twenty questions."

Haruka's arms are crossed tightly, which is probably not the best posture to have when he says, "Well, you can go ahead and touch me more."

"Haru, it's not…" Rin runs his hand through his hair again. "It's not that easy. Things like this aren't that easy, and dealing with you isn't that easy. You… You're not gonna like hearing this, but you do this thing where like, if you don't react to something within a timeframe you set for yourself, you just bottle it all up. It's fucking hard to deal with! I'm over here second-guessing things left and right when you could just tell me what's up and it'd all be cleared up and we wouldn't have to have these –" He waves his arms wildly "– these after-the-fact conversations where we just get mad at each other."

"You're the one getting mad."

"I'm not mad!" Rin says, a messy spill of exasperation. "I'm just frustrated that us getting through something as simple as what this conversation should be is spiraling into this mess. The point is, I'm careful when we're kissing and when I touch you in new ways because I don't want to force anything on you. I don't want to make you do things for me."

Haruka bristles. This is exactly what he hates – that Rin is treating him like something fragile and strange. "What are you talking about?"

Rin gives him a pained look. "Haru, please."

"What are you talking about?" Haruka pushes, words clipped. A dark emotion settles into him, rooting itself deep. He wants to lock himself into his room and be alone and not have to listen to any more of this, but also he's coming dangerously close to wanting to yell.

"Have you heard yourself lately?" Rin says. "When I ask if I can kiss you, when I ask if something's okay, you say things like 'You can' and 'Okay', like you're just letting me do things. But, like, do you want any of it? You've never said you want any of it."

Haruka feels a moment's confusion cutting through the anger, and he wants to scoff. That can't be true. Of course he's said he wants to be with Rin. Of course…he's said it…

"Haru, there are a lot of things I want to do when I'm with you. Like –" Some of the redness has been leaving Rin's cheeks, but they flare up again. "Like hold your hand. Hold you. I just want to hold you, Haru. Be close to you. But I don't want to do something that you don't want."

"How can you know what I want and don't want if you're just going off of one reaction? You never asked how I felt."

"What the hell was I supposed to think, when you pushed me away like that?! I thought, 'Okay, he doesn't like when I get that close to him,' and you didn't tell me a single thing to make me think otherwise!"

"You didn't give me time!" Haruka yells. He doesn't want this. He's so tired of them colliding. So tired of them ending back here.

"God, this is what I'm talking about! What am I supposed to do? Give you a buffer zone each time I do or say something, so you can put together a response, and then we can carry on? That's not real life, Haru! Things are spontaneous and sometimes you have to be able to react and communicate without planning it all out in your head!"

But Haruka is going to hold onto this one. What Rin is saying is true, but this time Haruka knows he isn't completely in the wrong.

"You didn't give me any time to respond! I could have said something if you didn't sweep it aside right away! Don't pretend that you didn't! You didn't want to talk about it either!" He clenches his fists, swallows down the desire to keep shouting. His voice shakes when he continues, but he is able to keep it from rising again. "It was fast, and it surprised me. There, that's my response. Nobody's ever touched me like that. It was a knee-jerk reaction. It doesn't mean I don't want to be close to you."

"How close do you want to be to me?" Rin says quickly. There is a desperate look in his eyes, demanding an answer, some understanding, right now.

"I don't…I don't know," Haruka says, feeling just as desperate. "Closer, but…Rin, I'm not like you, I don't know how to just…be with people. It's not easy for me. This, with you, I want to get better at it but I don't know what I'm doing either."

Rin bites his lip, looks to the side. For several long moments he gathers his thoughts, and Haruka holds his breath.

"Haru, I don't mind going slow. I get to see you so fucking little that I just want to spend time with you in any way that I can. I don't want you to feel like I think there's something wrong with you. That's not what I wanted to do. I want you to be comfortable with me."

He looks at Haruka, brow pinched. His voice is soft and thin. Defeated. "I just don't have a damn clue what you're thinking, so if you would just…tell me things sometimes? Let me know what's on your mind. Tell me what you want. Initiate things. So I'd know where we both stand. I can't do everything first, Haru."

Haruka nods stiffly. "Okay."

"And, I mean, I'm pretty sure I know your answer by now, but you never even told me that you like me back."

What's left of the anger crumbles away, falling into the abyss newly formed in the pit of Haruka's stomach. He's thought it so many times, that he likes Rin so much. He's felt it in wave upon wave. Rin's brightness, his warmth, his humor, his drive.

But he hasn't told Rin any of it.

"I'm sorry." The apology tumbles out. He feels wretched.

And Rin can tell, and crosses the space between them and wraps him in a hug.

Haruka's throat closes up so suddenly it takes everything in him not to let out a whimper of surprise. His arms are pinned tight to his body, so he curls his fingers into the bottom of Rin's shirt, drops his forehead onto Rin's shoulder.

"Sorry," he says. "I'm sorry."

Rin holds on tighter. "Don't say that. It's fine. This isn't getting us anywhere."

Haruka thinks it might be, or it could, but he stops nonetheless. If it will make Rin hurt less.

"I'm not mad," Rin says. "I'm really not." He gives Haruka a little shake. "Okay?"

"Okay."

"It's just –" Rin pulls back, but puts his hands on Haruka's shoulders. He lets out a choked laugh – he looks so sad. "I really, really like you. But I wanna know how you feel too, so from now on, please help me out a bit more."

"I will," Haruka promises.

Rin holds his eyes for a long while, and finally gives him a small smile. "I think I should probably go now, huh?"

"You can stay."

Rin looks down. "I think I should probably go."

And so he gives Haruka's shoulders one last squeeze, and then he leaves.

Haruka listens to him go down the stairs, listens to him getting his shoes on, listens to the front door open and then close. It feels exactly like what happened half a year ago on a cold winter's morning.

"It sounds like you two need to talk again," Makoto says.

They sit on the steps between his and Haruka's houses. Makoto had been the one to spot Haruka on the steps, and came out to sit beside him. Haruka hadn't told him much at all, but it was still enough for Makoto to come to the conclusion that it involved him and Rin, like it usually does. Him and Rin and collisions.

"No we don't," Haruka says shortly. "That's the problem. We try to talk and end up saying all the wrong things. He makes me so angry."

It's an easier word to say than 'sad', which would require some explaining that he doesn't feel up to giving.

But he's had time to think, and has ended up angry again. Though 'frustrated' would be putting it better – everything is so frustrating. Rin frustrates him. He frustrates himself. It's all so new and confusing, and so old and typical.

Makoto chuckles. "I'm sure you two have that in common."

This doesn't alleviate Haruka's bad mood. "We're friends. We shouldn't be doing this to each other," he mumbles at his knees.

"Friends are allowed to get mad at each other, you know," Makoto says pointedly.

Haruka avoids his eyes. It's true that he has rarely gotten mad at Makoto, and never enough to full-on yell at him, but he isn't trying to compare the friendship he has with Makoto to the one he has with Rin. It isn't that simple, and Makoto doesn't know half of what's going on.

"Even though you and Rin butt heads, you have something much stronger than the force of your opposition."

Now Haruka does glance over, frowning bemusedly. "That's really philosophical."

"Yeah." Makoto laughs. "I read something like that in one of my school books, and it just came back to me right now. Which means," he says, cranking his smile up several notches, "that it must be true."

Haruka looks at the ocean. A small procession of boats approaches the docks. Gulls circle something in the water; as he watches, one dives straight down.

"You two butt heads, but you don't let that get in the way of things," Makoto says. "You always find ways around it, instead of letting it stand in the way of your friendship."

"But I'm tired of having to do that. I'm tired of butting heads in the first place. It feels so inevitable, and it's exhausting. Do you really think that's okay in a friendship?"

"You're making it out to be worse than it is, aren't you?" Makoto says easily. "You don't like confrontation so it seems worse to you, but you two never do anything purposely cruel to each other. You never try to hurt each other. Right? You just misunderstand. And that's inevitable, if you spend so much time apart."

Haruka is still reluctant to let Makoto's words make him feel better, because he thinks that's a bit like cheating – he hasn't actually solved anything with Rin. Still, he is glad for Makoto's wisdom, however much of it is borrowed from school books. Haruka knows most of it is genuine perceptiveness, which might spell trouble in the future if he doesn't figure out what he has with Rin, and how much he can reveal to the rest of their friends. When Rin had left, he had still been speaking of a future, so Haruka knows they aren't ruined yet.

"I think you two need to take care of each other," Makoto says, sounding so much like Gou that Haruka is half convinced he must have spoken with her earlier. "You understand things about each other that other people don't. Even me." He laughs again, but he looks so tired. Haruka hopes that when he goes abroad to study, he takes it easy on himself and has fun instead of studying all the time. At least he won't have to try to cheer Haruka up all the time.

And Haruka hopes that he and Rin can learn to take care of each other better, can learn to actually understand each other like Makoto believes they already do. It should be so easy, with Rin liking him and him liking Rin back.

He lets out a breath, which turns into a long yawn. Makoto catches it, and then says, "Want to go running? It might wake us up."

The sky is gray, the clouds are gray, the water is gray. Even the sand, as they run along it, is gray. Haruka's emotions are gray, too.

Before Rin, he never imagined himself in a romantic relationship, never felt any drive to pursue something of the sort. And now that he's found himself in something mutual, the very thought of losing it feels as awful as if he's lost it already.

But this mutual thing is with Rin, and that makes it mutually messy, and so much harder than he ever thought wanting to be with someone could be. Every time something goes right, something goes just as wrong. It's like they are compulsively bad at communicating, like misreading each other is hardwired into them and they cannot be what they are to each other without it.

He is afraid that the more they move forward, the more they will collide, until they have worn each other so thin that there is nothing left worth pursuing.