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Rin brushes a strand of hair away from his eyes.
Tucks it behind his ear gracefully.
“Haru...I just...”
He pauses to purse his lips.
Looks away.
Haruka knows where this is going. He’s seen it coming for ages, but he’s somehow missed his chance to step out of the way. He regrets it now because he knows how this will end. He knows what those words will mean, should Rin manage to say them: Goodbye.
Rin fidgets with the zipper on his backpack. He shuffles his feet and the gravel crunches beneath his sneakers. “I mean, I—”
“Rin. How’s Kou?” Haruka interrupts him and, god, please just let it sound less forced to Rin’s ears because to Haruka’s it’s tinny and false.
“Huh? Haru, why are you…” He runs a slender hand through his hair. He sucks his lip in between his teeth and lets it slip out again.
(Haruka follows each movement like a predator. He pretends not to notice his own breath hitch softly.)
“Rin. How’s your mom?” Haruka tries again at this thing called small talk. And he’s terrible, he knows it, but he has to do something — anything — because Rin is going to say something even worse and Haruka must delay those words. Just a few more minutes. Just a few more awkward sentences. The bus will arrive and it will take Rin away, and he won’t get to say it.
(He won’t get to break Haruka’s heart.)
“Are you doing this on purpose?” Rin demands, and he’s obviously getting a little annoyed now. He steps forward and they’re suddenly chest-to-chest and this is not how Haruka thought this would go. But he should have known that Rin wouldn’t make it easy. Nothing is ever easy between them. He thinks that’s what makes it work, this friendship of theirs, but anything more would break under the pressure of constantly failing to understand one another. They’re barely nineteen, they’re hardly adults, and two kids fumbling around trying to construct some kind of healthy relationship out of the obsession they each harbor for the other is a sweet dream. It’s a nice wish.
Rin takes a deep breath and his chest presses against him more fully and Haruka can swear he feels Rin’s heart beating through the thin layers of t-shirt and hoodie that separate them. “You are, aren’t you?” His arm drapes loosely over Haruka’s left shoulder, deceptively relaxed, as if it didn’t harbor a latent reservoir of strength that Rin can call up at any moment to pull him dangerously closer.
He’s probably considering it right then, Haruka thinks. In case I try to escape.
He tries it anyway. Haruka pulls away. He steps back. He twists to one side.
But Rin is still right there.
“Why?” Rin asks.
Haruka’s brows rise and his eyes go a little wide. His heart stutters, just once, tripping over the fear congealing in his arteries, freezing the blood in his veins. Because Rin’s voice is trembling. The edges are ragged with emotion. And Haruka is sure, so sure, that the dam Rin has erected to hold back his tears until he’s safely on the bus and out of sight is beginning to develop the smallest of fractures. Soon enough, it will begin to leak and the first trickle of tears will slip down Rin’s cheeks.
Haruka doesn’t want that. Especially not now, when he’s so close to getting through this whole farewell scene unscathed. Still free, heart still mostly intact...
“Haru, just...just let me tell you, before I lose my nerve, okay? I’ve...I’ve always...”
“...cried at the weirdest times,” Haruka retorts and the pain that flashes through Rin’s eyes hits him full in the chest. It hurts. Rin is always doing this to him. He hurts him in ways he'll never guess.
The bus pulls into the circle drive behind Rin, and it’s too loud and big and casts a shadow over them both. The other passengers are already lining up to board when the doors open with a whine.
But Rin doesn’t move.
His arm is still over Haruka’s shoulder and his eyes are shining with tears on the verge of tumbling past his lashes and Haruka’s breath is quite literally caught in his chest. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, but it’s not nearly as painful as letting Rin say those words out loud and making them real. He knows from experience. He’s too familiar with that ache. This sharp pain burrowing deeper between his lungs and ribs is much more immediate, but also tolerable.
“You’ll miss the bus,” someone says between them, and it’s Haruka, but he isn’t even sure his lips have moved.
“Yeah.” Rin’s looking at him like he’s searching for something. Desperately.
But he won’t find it; Haruka’s made sure of that. He’s practiced for this. For years he’s trained his features to betray nothing. They’ll only reflect Rin’s questions back at him. He’s worked tirelessly to piece together the shield that stands between them at this crucial moment.
He’s been waiting, patiently biding his time. Every person before--every precious person who forced him to open his heart, and then said those words and disappeared from his life--has been a dress rehearsal for this. For Rin.
He made it through each episode of abandonment, one by one, and all of his scars are hidden on the inside, safely tucked away for him to take out on a rainy day when he’s alone in the house or his apartment in Tokyo, and he can curl up under the blankets and wallow in self-pity for as long as he likes.
This is different, though. It’s finally time.
“Rin. Go. Your plane...” He’s so close to getting away.
“Mhm...” Rin hums, but his feet aren’t moving.
The bus driver closes the doors.
Rin shrugs his backpack off and drops it onto the ground beside their feet.
No!
Haruka tries to scream at Rin.
Get on the bus!
His mouth is dry. His blood pumps loudly in his ears.
Go away! Rin, go back to Australia!
Wh-where you can’t hurt me!
No...
He watches it all unfold in slow motion —
Rin’s fingers brush against Haruka’s jaw. The arm draped over his shoulder tugs him closer. Rin’s eyes are impossibly wide and bright, and Haruka can see himself reflected there, except it must be some kind of mistake because the person in the reflection is crying. There are tears streaming down his cheeks and his lips are parted slightly and he looks so very needy and hopeful and —
NO!
Rin is too close with his forehead resting against Haruka’s. Their lips are barely an inch apart when he asks “What’re you crying for?” in between his own sniffles. “Haru...” He tries to speak, but he doesn’t seem able to, not yet, and that’s okay.
Haruka’s heart thrums unsteadily against his ribs, and it’s soft and fluttery like the a small bird caged and beating its wings against the bars. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to watch the round drops of Rin’s tears hitting the gravel below them.
“Haru...” Rin whispers again, and it brushes against Haruka’s cheek along with his breath. “Haruka...” he says again, and their noses bump gently. It should be awkward, but it’s not.
“Hm...?” Haruka’s fingers have somehow become twisted into the hem of Rin’s shirt on one side. He notices only peripherally — the sensation is muffled beneath layers of panic and warmth and dread and a hundred other emotions he’s spent years trying to suppress. They aren’t things he’s accustomed to feeling — acknowledging, anyway — so he can’t be too sure what else is lurking there.
When Rin’s hand slides down from Haruka’s shoulder to palm across the small of his back, he wants to push him away, but he can’t convince his body to cooperate. When Rin’s lips settle into place, too naturally, against his own, he wants to shove Rin onto the bus that’s already long gone by now.
He wants to tell Rin that he needs to stop, that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, that he’s making a mistake and he’ll ruin everything and what gives Rin the right to...to... What he ends up saying instead is Rin’s name. It’s soft and breezy as it passes between their lips moments before Haruka moves forward and deliberately presses his mouth more firmly against Rin’s.
At first, neither of them reacts, both equally in shock, but then Rin comes to his sense and his mouth move against Haruka’s. It’s still tentative, with only the occasional soft tug at Haruka’s lip in between Rin’s own and Rin’s fingers gripping either side of Haruka’s hips to hold him place.
But it’s not enough. And Haruka — stubborn, frustratingly obstinate, willfully contrary — Haruka gives up. He gives in. He surrenders. It’s too easy and it feels too good. His resistance crumbles under Rin’s desperation, his need, and Haruka loses several minutes completely to the heat and taste of Rin’s mouth and the hopeless longing he’s denied for far too long.
No dress rehearsal could have prepared him for this self-orchestrated betrayal. And as much as his body relishes the contact, he knows, he knows that this is the worst possible outcome.
Rin has missed his bus, and consequently, his flights to Narita and Australia. He will spend the night again — Rin will insist, he won’t even ask, it will be a working assumption. And when Haruka’s guard is down, when he’s warm and satisfied and wrapped up in Rin’s closeness, that’s when it will happen: Rin will find the courage to say those words and shatter his newfound happiness.
And in the process, he will shatter Haruka.
These thoughts fill up Haruka’s head and pull them apart in the end. His hands are shaking, so he clutches them tightly at his side and behind his back and shuffles his feet in the gravel. When he looks up, Rin is grinning stupidly, and what is he, twelve? Haruka’s sure he’s never seen him quite this happy, even back then.
“The bus is gone,” Haruka says a bit dumbly because he doesn’t want to give Rin the chance to pick the subject of conversation. Not yet.
“Ah, well, I’ll just call the airline from your house. I can leave tomorrow and—” He’s already hoisting his backpack over his shoulder. “Let’s go?” As if it were an actual question, but Haruka knows better and he partly wonders if Rin had planned this whole thing out. Perhaps Rin had been lying awake all night and thinking about today, the same as Haruka. Perhaps he, too, had been nervous about his departure. Yet Haruka doesn’t think either of them had really thought...well, it’s just that...I kissed him.
Haruka realizes this fact as he follows Rin blindly back home. His feet move on autopilot as his brain gradually grinds to a hault. He could have stopped it all; instead, he had leaned forward and...
His mind is all white light and heat until he steps into the house. The familiar silence rouses him enough to watch as Rin removes his shoes and leaves them neatly by the door. Haruka mumbles, “Tadaima” in greeting as he kicks his own shoes off. He wonders faintly if his grandmother can hear it. Or his parents wherever they are right now. Or Makoto in Tokyo; they don’t see each other nearly enough anymore and Haruka’s having trouble...adjusting.
“Okaeri.” Rin is standing in slippers, one step up from Haruka and he’s still smiling.
Haruka scowls. Who does Rin think he is? He doesn’t have the right to say that here, he thinks. But maybe he’s wrong. Rin probably has every right. He’ll be joining the ranks of people who have loved Haruka and abandoned him soon enough, won’t he? Rin will find a way to say it, because he’s Rin, and he won’t be able to stop himself now, and...and.
(Haruka should be preparing for the inevitable. Instead...)
He mutters, “You’re stupid,” and goes to make dinner.
He keeps his distance from Rin as much as he can and they limp their way through the meal to the cadence of clinking chopsticks and loud sighs. Rin doesn’t berate him for cooking mackerel, and Haruka knows he’s in trouble.
Rin doesn’t get nostalgic before bed. He doesn’t complain about the futon or the lack of a pillow, and Haruka’s panic returns ten fold.
But he’s ready, he tells himself. He knows what he’ll do. He has a plan. So they go to bed in awkward silence, and he misses the sound of Rin’s voice and the way they usually banter when they’re alone, but Haruka thinks it’s okay. He thinks, I survived today... before dozing off.
“Hey, Haru...?”
Haruka awakens to his name being whispered in the darkness against his ear. Rin’s lips brush against the shell as they form the sounds of his name and it sends a shiver down his spine, but he manages to hold completely still.
Go back to sleep, he thinks loudly at Rin.
But he must have been satisfied that Haruka is still asleep because Rin continues to whisper. “This is dumb, but, well, I gotta practice before I say it for real and fuck it up tomorrow, and I can’t sleep, so...Haruka, I...”
No, no, no, no! Go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep...
“...I want to swim with you forever.”
And Haruka’s mad denial is interrupted midway by a new thought— “Me, too.”
His lips slide around the syllables and it’s too intimate for such a simple phrase, but it means so much, it means everything to him.
And it’s nothing like he’d expected. His chest heaves as he struggles to name this feeling. It’s called “relief.”
He rolls over in time to catch Rin’s astonished expression. He’s pale in the slight moonlight and his lips are right there in front of Haruka’s, so for the second time today he leans forward and kisses him. He tangles his fingers into the back of Rin’s hair and pulls him forward and it’s all he can do to hold back enough not to devour Rin on the spot.
Because he didn’t say it and nothing is ruined and nothing has to change.
Except everything has. But they’ll deal with that later. Probably. Maybe.
Or more likely, they’ll stay in bed until noon, arms wrapped around one another, drenched in sweat and tears (mostly Rin’s) and happy beyond all hope because they never knew that they were missing this. The feel of each other’s bodies, the slide of skin against skin, all the things they never knew they needed.
Except this isn’t conjecture. This isn’t fantasy. It’s exactly what happens, and then Rin’s laughing and hugging Haruka and he’s making him promise to visit Australia as soon as he has a break from his studies. And Haruka presses his face into Rin’s neck and he nods hard enough that Rin can feel it.
And Rin laughs again.
And Haruka commits that sound to memory.
Rin could still walk out of his life as easily as he walked into it (again), and if Haruka is going to be abandoned by yet another person who supposedly cares about him, he at least wants something beautiful to hold onto.
It’s reassurance.
That one day, like always, Rin will find his way back to him.
.end