Chapter Text
It's one thing for Hiyori to know that he's messed up with Ikuya. He does know that. He's known it for weeks. If he's really being honest with himself, he's known it for years.
It's something else entirely to hear Ikuya say it to someone else, maybe twenty feet away, behind a closed door, and wonder if he would've said something like that last week or not.
He hovers his forehead in front of the door, still careful not to touch in spite of everything, and concentrates on making his breath entirely silent.
And he listens to Ikuya explain that he never wanted Hiyori as a friend, that he was never looking for friendship. That he's been alone up till now, when he's finally opening his heart to his old friends again.
Does it matter, whether or not that argument in the playground was any sort of last straw between them? It probably doesn't. And it's not something for Hiyori to dwell on. This whole conversation, Ikuya connecting with his old friends and realizing how poor a substitute Hiyori was, is hypothetical, as far as Hiyori's concerned. It's his fault for spying in the first place.
This is a thing that people do, Hiyori knows: they change their stories based on what's before them in the moment.
The story that Hiyori knew, that Ikuya told him for years in thought and action and suffering, is that Ikuya's friends betrayed him and messed him up forever.
The story that he and Ikuya had told together was that Hiyori helped Ikuya get through the day, get over his baggage and back on his way to being the best swimmer in the world. That was the story as far as Hiyori had known it, anyway.
But now that Ikuya's friends are back, the story's changing. They aren't a threat that's going to lead him back into the dark; they're the people that are going to pull him forward instead of propping him up. They're the real future and Hiyori was only ever a stopgap.
Stories do that. They change. Truth is...harder. Truth probably doesn't exist, or if it does, it's such a small and quiet thing. Nobody bothers to listen.
So, Hiyori thinks, the new story is this: Hiyori didn't hear this conversation, but he doesn't need to have heard it. He'll continue to give Ikuya space, because it's the least Ikuya deserves from him—and realistically, it's all he can give, all that's wanted from him now.
He's going to...get a life, somehow, because Ikuya has made it abundantly clear that being his support system is no longer a position that's available.
But he's going to make it look easy, make it not look like a big deal. Not make an issue of it, not blame Ikuya, not even blame himself.
He isn't Ikuya. He isn't special. There's no one to support him if he makes it his story that he's been betrayed, that he'll run himself into the ground trying to catch an ideal. There's no fallback story, of true friends lost or forgotten or who've betrayed him only to be welcomed back into the fold.
There's only Ikuya finally getting his life together, and it'd be nice if, after the disaster that their time together has been, at least one of them can have that.
Hiyori buys a drink in the vending machine, winces at the giant thump it makes, and quietly takes it out and sits.
The silence echoes, and he breaks into it, soft and then more confident. It's the story that comes darting into his head, dark and unhelpful and angry.
It's the story of the mermaid with the knife.
It's what she's told to do. It's what she almost does, what she tries at the behest of the sea witch, at the pleading of all her sisters. There's no one to egg Hiyori on, but that just makes it worse that he tries it on for size.
He can't do it, though. He tries to imagine getting even, but there's no way he can think of. Ikuya hasn't even done anything wrong.
...Well. Ikuya got broken up over his friends leaving, but ultimately that was their right. By that logic, Hiyori supposes, he could feel bitter, could get angry and avoid Ikuya.
But honestly, even if he did there's no guarantee Ikuya would notice. And besides, there's nothing left in him but the crashing of waves, white foam dancing before his eyes.
He doesn't even jump when the door creaks open and a kind voice strikes up a conversation with him.
It'd be nice if Ikuya's real friends could just pretend he didn't exist, but apparently they're nice people, and that means that Hiyori can't even have that distance. Of course he needs Tachibana's gaze on him, the world's kindest sandblaster, trying its best to break down the temporary defenses Hiyori has shored up around himself. Gently suggesting that he admit he isn't okay.
He doesn't, and he won't. He's not Tachibana's problem, and they both know it. Getting rebuffed by him would sting, even though he deserves it, even though he knows Tachibana probably thinks that even a little display of sympathy would be helping. It isn't that he doesn't need it; it's that he can't afford it, either way.
Tachibana pushes, and Hiyori pushes back, gets close enough to loom before pulling himself back. He'd made his strike, back when he thought it mattered; he won't let himself do that now, when there's no point anymore. He backs down, albeit gracelessly.
Tachibana eventually gives up trying to convert him to Nanase's cause, and invites him to the poolside instead. He's as graceful in victory as Hiyori isn't in defeat, and thankfully when he looks up a little while later, Tachibana has vanished. Thank goodness for people having better places to be.
He holds his drink, his own tiny, contained sea, and he watches Ikuya race with Nanase. The waves in the bottle are calm; his grip is steady. Nanase's strokes are unpracticed, rough, but hold a great deal of raw power, and when the time comes for freestyle he moves through the water like he's born to it. After the race, Ikuya holds him tight and Hiyori can hear his wail even at this distance.
Hiyori has a bottle of water and a dorm room across the campus that's his. Right now, they seem like the only things he has.
He turns back and walks back the way he came and sits at the table and breathes, eyes pointed towards the wall. It's the room from before; he can still feel sadness in this place, echoing, splashed against the walls. Even that doesn't seem like his anymore.
He's witnessed a miracle, he thinks. He should be grateful to see such a happy ending.
...And then Ikuya comes back for him, and he's racing in a relay.
Stories are changing all over the place today. Hiyori had thought he was facing the end of a story, but the story Ikuya's telling is something else.
It's starting over. It's Ikuya grabbing for everything at once. It's having his old friends and his new friends at the same time, and Hiyori learns that regardless of whether he actually deserves it, he's apparently being dubbed the newest.
It's better to be a new friend than an old enemy. It's another good thing, clean-cut and sharp and shining. Ikuya is letting his old failures slip away and leaving his old efforts unacknowledged, because the story is that if Ikuya ever needed them, he doesn't need them now.
It's a sharp reminder to Hiyori that he has to keep his act together. Nobody wants to see a new acquaintance grieving.
The relay is enough to take his mind off everything else, at least for a little while. It's new, electric, the excitement of his teammates crackling against his skin. He can't ignore them the way he normally would, after all, if they're working together.
He stands behind Ikuya with bated breath as Ikuya's exchange approaches, knowing that no matter what Ikuya might say about having him there, he can only make part of this process easier. He stays quiet, determined not to jinx it, until Ikuya is safely in the water and barrelling forward, at which point he takes up yelling with the others—for a little while, anyway, until his own turn comes close enough.
Then, he steps up to the starting block, the noise in his ears deafening and tiny at once. Watches the rhythm of Ikuya's strokes, the extension of his arms, and calculates the exact moment he'll touch the side.
He's timed his take-offs and watched Ikuya's technique for years and years. Even if it's the first time he's doing those things at the same time, he's confident in his ability.
He forces himself to look away, that last crucial moment, and launches himself into the water, all too aware of the body under him, the chin tilted upward. And then, a moment later, all he can focus on is the other body beside him, already several strokes ahead, churning the water in his own personal maelstrom of movement.
Swimming with Nanase is a revelation, just as Tachibana had said it would be.
Since the seeing that hug between Ikuya and Nanase, he's been numb. Since hearing that he was never Ikuya's friend to start with, he's been hurting. Really, compared to all of that, seeing Nanase like this is a mercy.
After all, it's only when he's next to Nanase—after his last tie to Ikuya has been salvaged entirely through Ikuya's effort, in a moment when all he can focus on is keeping up and making Ikuya proud—when he feels the first literal waves of force coming off Nanase ahead of him, that he finally understands.
He can't even be jealous. He's just in awe.
What must it be like, to be that entirely honest? With yourself, your body, the water, the competition?
It's fundamentally unfair, one of the ironies of existence. Nanase is utterly and totally himself, but he has so many friends.
Hiyori tried so hard to help one person, to keep him safe, to keep him his, to be the right person to justify a place at his side…and of course it was impossible from the very start.
He's a sad, dried-up excuse for a mermaid indeed, but Nanase is one with the water.
It's...inspiring.
So he does let the truth peek through, a little, later. After the congratulations of his teammates, after the noise of the meet finally ends, in honor of what he saw from Nanase in the race, and deferring to the way Ikuya's real friends talk to him and to each other...together with Ikuya in the stands, quiet and empty, he owns up to a little sliver of his past that he's always kept in the dark. He admits to that first, forgotten invitation.
"You were a hero to him, Ikuya."
Safely in the past tense, safely praise, safely distant. Safely something for Ikuya to think over, or leave it back in their childhood with the rest of their history, both choices equally safe and acceptable.
It seems like the best move he can make. After all, Ikuya might expect the truth from him now, occasionally, if his real friends are going to set that standard. Hiyori will have to plan ahead and portion it out carefully, so he has something unthreatening and inoffensive ready whenever Ikuya asks.
The honesty is just coming from all sides today, Hiyori thinks as Natsuya turns away again in favor of some good-hearted bickering with his little brother.
"Don't talk about me like I'm luggage," indeed. Well, Natsuya had gotten his point across, at least.
It hadn't occurred to Hiyori before, in as many words anyway, that Natsuya had done a bad thing with the responsibility he'd presented to Hiyori. Hiyori had thought he wasn't worthy of staying by Ikuya's side, would short in protecting him, wasn't clever or strong or kind enough, but had he ever thought about those things as more than personal failings? He'd tried to live up to the chance he'd been given, certainly, tried to be the best he could be.
It had been his only chance, but the story now is that it's been a weight. Has it stunted his growth? Maybe it looks like that from the outside, and maybe it has.
For him, the story he's always told is that it was a life preserver, tossed out into the empty ocean, and one of the only things he's had to hold onto. It's the reason he's tried as hard as he has all these years.
And yet...he's happy for Ikuya when he tells him to go spend time with his friends. That's a story, but it's a true one, and so he sticks the landing perfectly. Ikuya jogs off to find them in the setting sun without turning to look back once.
Hiyori's still out at sea, but that's fine. He's full-grown and has long since learned how to tread water.
He finds a perch down the stairs a little and catches his breath from nothing at all, looking up at the handful of clouds draped in the early evening sky. He contemplates his bottle—more than half-empty, now, almost ready to be discarded—and tries to hold on to the happiness, the feeling of denouement. Tries to take some of the story and fit it inside himself, to apply it to his own life and find a way to move forward, because he needs to.
Real people have other friends and other hobbies. If Ikuya asks him what he's doing sometime, maybe soon, he wants the stories he tells to be true. So Ikuya doesn't worry. So he's not a weight dragging Ikuya into the depths. So he's never, ever someone Ikuya has cut away to survive.
Real people have no trouble talking to other people. And true enough, talking to Kisumi, when he appears seemingly from nowhere, is easy. He's almost disarmingly friendly, the way Hiyori pretends to be, but if he's got this wide a circle of friends, in Kisumi's case it's probably genuine.
It's an easy opportunity. He'd be a fool not to take it, so he gladly does.
When was the last time he played basketball? Sometime in high school, but he doesn't remember the year. He'll make it work anyway, he's athletic and reasonably tall. It can't be that different.
He manages his farewells without fumbling too badly, for once—Kisumi really must be something—and takes his leave. Luckily, basketball won't happen tonight. Won't happen till early next week, and nothing certain in Hiyori's schedule till then. Well, except classes and swim practice, so actually he's set on structure. He'll work out the bits in between as they come.
He needs a little bit of space and time, anyway, he decides. To process.
And if processing means getting back to his room in a daze, means sitting against the foot of his bed and letting his eyes slide unfocused and feeling time wash over him like waves, well...if no one's there to see it, then it's like it isn't happening at all.
But he's alone, and he can now start the embarrassingly, agonizingly slow process of admitting some things to himself.
For one thing...really, they both needed this. Hiyori knew his relationship with Ikuya had been souring. He knew he'd started to move from supportive to controlling, getting more and more desperate as he'd sensed Ikuya nearing the edge. Now he knows it was actually a breakthrough, his actions look so much like jealousy in hindsight.
They weren't, though. He knows it, even if now he wouldn't try to defend himself against such an accusation. Because truly, deep down, darker down, he just didn't want his friend to die.
He wanted to say to Natsuya today that Ikuya had never been a burden. But even though Ikuya's the most precious person in his life, that would have been...difficult to say, and be honest.
It wasn't Ikuya himself, never. It was the moments when Hiyori thought about what might've happened, if he'd been the tiniest bit less attentive, if he'd turned the other way at the wrong moment. It was the countless times over the years when he'd finally lost himself in the water, only to turn, heart in throat, at the sound of a wheezing breath.
He wanted Ikuya to be okay, because Ikuya okay was Ikuya amazing. But on a dime, that could turn into terror and heartbreak, and knowing that he'd let down the most important people in his world.
And that's...probably gone now. Even mixed up with everything else, it's something to be profoundly grateful for. And Ikuya is talking to him again, even though from now on that will probably happen less and less.
Ikuya is far from the only person in his life. He's being a baby. He's not an orphan, for one thing. He has parents, even if they're still back in America.
He thinks he might call them, on a whim, but as he goes to pull out his phone he remembers that where they're living it's currently painfully early in the morning, and a weekday. Tomorrow, then, maybe.
They can talk about the qualifiers. They'll be pleased to hear he was in a relay. He's been doing very well for himself, keeping up with his studies. His friend is doing well, too.
(They've gotten used to him speaking about Ikuya. He knows it has very little to do with them, so he tries to keep it short, but it's impossible to avoid the topic entirely. He tries to maintain a certain level of honesty with them, when he can, and Ikuya is so much of what he thinks about.)
No, he thinks, he's fine. It's nice to be reminded, drama aside, that he is fine.
The night is dark outside his window, the summer sun long gone. He's had the curtain drawn anyway. It's late. He shucks off his clothes and heaves himself onto the bed, wrapping himself in the covers.
Really, when he thinks about it, he's received nothing but good things. With Ikuya's heart in a better place, he suspects there will be a lot fewer near-drownings. With him making more friends, there will be more people to save him if they happen.
And he has an apology, from Ikuya's brother, and relief from a duty that should never have been his. Those, at least, he's probably been owed.
Ikuya is going to be better. Hiyori, despite his terrible selfishness, wanting Ikuya close and yet tiring of the burden of him, somehow hasn't lost him.
Even Nanase and his posse, who have every right to hate him…don't seem to. Tachibana in particular seemed to understand.
He'd be humiliated if it weren't such a relief.
He'd be relieved if it weren't so quiet in here, alone with the knowledge that if he were to message Ikuya he might disturb something more important.