[ 間違い。]

[carcharhinidae]

They'd lost.

It doesn't feel like that great a loss to Rin, perhaps in part because he is satisfied that they gave it everything they had and were all there because they wanted to and that was enough. Even if they'd come last it would've been enough, but the feeling of his hand slapping the tile at the last stretch at the same time as Haru had been incredible. It left his palms and fingertips pink and throbbing even after hauling himself from the pool and consoling his team.

They lost. That was good enough.

Except even with two personal qualifications to the nationals under his belt, now that the relay is done his mind swirls back to the previous night when Haru's fist slammed into the locker and turned the whole world silent.

That's your dream, not mine! Dreams and future, I don't have anything like that!

The words that had left Haru's mouth continue to float around in Rin's mind as he bustled around the locker room, the smell of chlorine still clinging to his skin and hair mixed with the faint scent of his shampoo and bodywash. Haru had never wanted to swim competitively, but Rin had been sure that with high school graduation fast approaching all of them that Haru would have come to some choice about his future already. He'd put the question forward in the springtime, at the start of the school year, to draw attention to the point, and then given Haru space.

Except, unlike what Rin thought, that was all he did. He never spoke to Haru about it again, never asked what he was feeling or what he was thinking, never extended a hand to find a way toward any future. Rin spoke of Haru often, worried about him, let his mind and fondness wander to him, but not directly to Haru. The sense of Haru being ever-present in his mind ceased to be about Haru the person and became more about Haru the concept; the idea of this friend and dear rival he had that he presumed was going forward with him but never engaged Haru.

It's an illusion of friendship that Rin has created for him, thinking he's been directly involved in Haru while in fact having very little direct contact with him since that day when the setting sun danced on the surface of the water and made the cherry blossom shine like tiny rubies.

He'd thought of Haru often, and yet forgotten about Haru entirely.

Rin doesn't realise that yet, which is why Haru's response--that frustration and rage burning in his eyes in a way Rin has never seen before--weighs on him; taking for granted that they were both walking the same path and then finding how off the mark he is plays over and over in Rin's head.

The races over with, Rin hoists his bag over his shoulder and heads back to the hotel. There's several hours before they all have to leave and as he stands in the lobby, staring at the plush carpet beneath his feet, Rin starts to wonder about what to do. It can't be left this way.

When he heads to the elevator, the button he presses isn't for his floor, but the one the Iwatobi swim team are staying on. The ascending numbers lighting up catch in his flame-coloured eyes and he starts to feel his heart thump harder in his chest the closer he gets to Haru's floor. What is he supposed to say? How can he pull Haru out of this stupid course of non-action? There has to be something, but even as he knocks against the door and then shoves both hands into the pocket of his jacket, Rin can already feel the frustration and uncertainty building in his stomach. What the hell does Haru think he's doing, honestly.

Comments

[delphinidae]

It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop when Rin starts speaking. Haru wishes it wasn't, but after what's happened, he can't believe that "fun" will be the start and end of this talk that Rin needs to have with him.

Still, he'd liked to have felt something when it came to the two of them talking this way. Something besides this resignation: no, of course Rin doesn't understand. Him and all the rest, all chiming the same single note like they expect Haru to have something to say back. It's almost predictable by now. But what do you say to an E♭? It's not a question...so how is he supposed to answer?

This is just the same imperative he's hearing constantly on all sides, now coming from Rin who has, it seems, come here just to say it, confirm himself in chorus with all the rest. It leaves Haru feeling a little more isolated each time, and it sort of hurts. He knows the feeling without being able to quite identify its precise justification. Rin is Rin. He's always known what he wants, always known where he was going, and he's still going there. Every part of him has always been heading towards it, and Haru is just, over the past few months, coming to see that he was only ever a speedbump along the way. It's his own fault for having thought he was something else.

Even in the years when Rin seemed so stuck and the whole pivot of Haru's world sometimes seemed to turn on him--on what he needed to do not to stand across Rin's path--Haru had never really thought of himself as just an obstacle to be cleared away.

He's supposed to say something here, Haru knows. Instead, he finds that he's discovered a shadow on the wall to his left which conveniently demands his attention. Maybe if he doesn't answer, Rin will get frustrated and give up and just go.

[carcharhinidae]

The continued silence is deafening and though it tells Rin he's not hitting the right chord he can't tell how off he is or how to reorientate himself. And of course he's getting zero indication from Haru, which has been, to Rin's mind, the problem here. He can't tell what's going through Haru's head, what he's feeling, whether he's blanking him as a further means of shoving his head in the sand or some passive-aggressive unwillingness to engage with Rin full stop.

It gives Rin an icy feeling in his stomach and at the same time makes his fiddling fingers in his pocket clench into a fist out of irritation. He's never had a soft-touch when it comes to Haru, not like Makoto who knows Haru inside and out with apparent ease, but he's also never thought of himself as being cruel to Haru either. Even coming back from Australia, he was cold and lost, but not overtly harsh. He's always rolled with his instinct when it came to Haru in the past, but now he feels like the rug is being pulled out from under him with every non-reaction he gets from the other boy, or like they were once connected somehow but the tie got severed at some unseen moment. While he hadn't noticed they've started drifting on different currants.

At least that's how it's starting to feel as the gulf of silence stretches on without Haru responding. Rin even lets his eyes drift from the other boy's face toward the wall on the off-chance there's legitimately something there that warrants the diverted attention, but he finds himself entirely unsurprised to find there's nothing there at all.

Shifting his eyes back toward Haru once more, Rin slowly runs his tongue over his teeth behind his lip in one direction and then back again, a kind of count-to-ten gesture which is less about tapering his anger than it is about finding words to say to nothing that aren't expressly aggressive because he's not angry per se.

Sighing, Rin holds his hands up, palms forward, signally a sort of defeat.

"All right, all right. I get it. It's not what you want. But..."

He finds himself hesitating again, the ground feeling unsteady and unmapped again.

"... You can't keep pretending there's nothing to decide on and that you can just avoid everything, Haru. People are worried, you know."

Withdrawing a hand from his pocket at last, Rin pushes his fingers into his hair at the side of his head, eyes averted.

"I came to talk to you before, actually. You weren't here, Makoto was. He said you were probably thinking about everything in your own way. And maybe you are, but no-one can read your mind. Not really. Are you just going to wait until graduation morning to decide what you're going to do?"

[delphinidae]

"I don't want to talk about that anymore," Haru deflects, though he at least looks at Rin when he does so. Of course the irony is that he's never really talked to Rin about it to begin with. But that hardly feels like it matters when Rin, like everyone else, seems to be just another voice in the same unified din.

"If you had fun then that's enough."

Obviously it's not, but Haru says it anyway. The words are at least not completely hollow--it does matter very much to Haru that his friends are able to have the things that they want. He still cares about them, after all, and he doesn't want to make them unhappy. Their worry, though, and Rin's (if he shares it) just feels bothersome. An answer is what they need from him, not what he needs.

It's true that Haru felt a certain fire enter into him as the race was swum, as he stood on the starting block and then as he flew through the water with Rin in the next lane. There was the determination he felt at the beginning, the electrifying spark of being in the water with Rin right there beside him, and then like a dormant geyser, the surface had gone perfectly still again. Only moments after his hand had touched the wall it had begun to subside.

Haru remembers the warmth of Nagisa's arms around his neck, the press of his bare chest. He hadn't complained at all when the smaller boy jumped on him this time. He cared for his teammates. He truly wanted them to be happy, wanted the relay to bring them happiness. He'd wanted them to win--to beat Samezuka, perhaps especially to beat Yamazaki...to beat Yamazaki and Rin, though Haru did not think about these particulars too closely--and he was gratified that they had. But the moment they were out of the water, Rin was already gone.

Even standing right there poolside, one team next to the other, each embracing and congratulating, Rin was still gone. And Haru felt the muted numbness settling again like a shroud. It wasn't that he felt nothing. It was just that he didn't feel much--like he was living inside a fish bowl, looking out at the world but only touching it from across a pane of glass.

Last year, the whole world seemed to tilt back from its axis when they won the relay. There had been this pounding, burning, ardent need, a keening inside Haru's whole body. This year, a pale copy had taken its place, the colors all faded and washed out, his own body repeating gestures but hollowed out from the emotion behind them. Maybe that wouldn't matter so much if Haru didn't know how it could--how it should--feel.

But telling him that people are worried isn't going to change that. He's sorry they're worried, but he can't do anything about it--he would have to have been another person, and he can't go back in time and make himself someone other than he is, make himself Yamazaki or whoever Rin is wishing he would be more like.

He's not angry though, and his words don't sound angry or resentful. He means it: if Rin and the others had fun, then good; they should just leave well enough alone and enjoy that while they all can.

[carcharhinidae]

It's true when Rin leaves the pool, he stepped away from Haru and the energy they shared got transferred elsewhere. It wasn't even a conscious thing for Rin because to his mind he was still there even though in realistic terms the connection is entirely diverted. If he thought about it closely he'd probably be able to come up with an excuse to do with needing to be the rival team Iwatobi deserved and without envisioning himself as part of the team--part of Haru's team. But even if he were at that point of self-awareness, Rin would only be able to hold that excuse for so long. He'd process himself out of it, realise that such a clean-cut divide between rival team and friend doesn't need to exist, and certainly not to such an exclusionary level.

Rin doesn't see the extent to which turning away from Haru and orientating himself toward something else--the Samezuka team and Sousuke's serious attitudes around professional swimming--actively takes him away form Haru and from the connections they had woven back together so desperately and shakily a year earlier. In short, he doesn't see how when he pulls himself out the pool and immediately, unwaveringly, turns toward his team he made a gesture of closing a door on the light Haru provided him.

In time, he'll see all this and how poorly he's treated the relationship he and Haru share, but right now he's confused and starting to feel his patience being chipped away at as his eyebrows furrow as he frowns at the other boy in the hallway. They feel like strangers and it causes Rin a kind of discomfort he's not felt for quite sometime. Now more than before though the stakes and pressure around his and Haru's missed connections feels far more pressing to Rin.

"Don't want to--? Haru, you haven't said anything!"

He can at least recognise that much as he takes a step forward, but the approach is still all wrong.

"You haven't spoken to anyone and you're acting like all you've done is talk about this. You haven't! No-one knows what you're thinking because you don't say anything! Makoto can say whatever he wants, but if you're not actually talking to anyone people just have to guess what you're thinking! That's what's happening right now!"