( CLOSED: Makoto & Rin )

[jawdacity]

Who: cordated & jawdacity
When: 2/11
Where: Outside the gym
What: Reunions! Events! Makoto being the worst liar known to mankind!
Rating/Warning: None

---

[ It's been a long day already. Though the most exciting part of Rin's shift was some asshole pushing his friend into the pool, boredom takes more of a toll on him than activity ever has; to make up for that, he's been coming to the pool several hours before his shift - after his daily wanderings through the city in a methodical and largely fruitless attempt at information-gathering - to tire himself out with his daily training regiment. Even if the world has ended and their CERES overlords had been truthful in that clusterfuck of a Powerpoint they'd thrown in his direction, he's not about to trust the assholes who had welcomed him into this nexus of crazy via an approximation of Silent Hill's creepiest level.

The prospect of meeting Makoto had made the hours of his shift pass by with increasing sluggishness, especially fraught with curiosity as Rin was. Why was Makoto not bring Haru with him? What did he mean when he'd mentioned Rin's appearance two months prior? Why hadn't Haru responded to Rin's own text?

Okay, maybe that last question didn't require much of an answer, Haru being Haru, but you'd think that he'd make an exception now that their entire world was gone and the Olympics might be out of their reach for good. Along with a lot of other things like humanity and progress and the eventuality of utopian peace, but Rin's seventeen, he's allowed to ignore the forest for the trees. Alright? Alright.

He leans against the outside of the gym, fiddling with his phone (a cursory glance through the address book hadn't been as informative as he'd have liked, though maybe it was naive of him to think that he'd have some sixth sense as to which of the entries on the endless list of names held more answers than the next) and trying not to fidget. Despite tiring himself out with his workout routine earlier in the day, he's already a livewire of restlessness, a scowl furrowing his brow -- belonging not to any real sense of irritation or impatience, but rather a general feeling of discontent regarding everything that has tossed up obstacles in his way since he woke up.

It all started with that damn Powerpoint.

He looks up for the fifth time in the past minute, scanning the scatter of people milling about before returning his attention to his phone screen. No Makoto yet. Unless Makoto has been here for two months through some odd refraction of time and space and reality and he's dyed his hair and changed his gait in the meantime -- a thought, stupid or otherwise, which prompts Rin to look back up and examine the crowd with a closer focus.

Nope. Still no Makoto.

It's not that he's late -- Makoto hadn't given a time, which Rin should have remedied. But he was distracted by a hundred other thoughts, not least of which was the prospect of seeing a familiar place in this unfamiliar landscape, and he'd let the moment pass him by.

He wonders idly, in the way that wandering minds do, why he'd chosen the lifeguard option out of the jobs CERES had offered. Why he'd decided that swimming would be the best way to keep in shape. He was good at it, certainly, but there's a reason that most men spend their workout hours in the weight room.

His thumb slides over the volume button on his phone, nail slotting into the groove of the plastic. Because of the Olympics. Because he's a swimmer, that's why.

Rin's scowl deepens. He's never slept well away from his own space -- it's lack of sleep fraying the edges of his mind, that's all. ]

Comments

[cordated]

[ There's no fear within the unknown — only fear of it, rupturing and dislocated, a contraption of incomprehension that shreds the very same qualms Makoto spent three months bolting down depthlessly wide, incapable of maneuvering past with any steady grasp on composure.

For no reason he's willing to examine at length, no section of Rin's admission makes actual sense. Not the rough chronology, not the races, not the talk — especially not the talk about taking swimming to a professional platform, as if that was ever a viable option for Makoto to begin with. Once, maybe — some cast-off, gilded fever dream that he could stand beside his friends in any discrete capacity, drinking in the unbridled acclaim and the exorbitant fanfare, floodlights refracting over lap pools, the voracious, dispassionate panorama of consummate success enlivened within him. The notion crossed his mind more than once on prior occasions; even after their world had allegedly expired, it sank down into him like so many knives, plunging into the core of his shivering irresolution.

But that hadn't been what he wanted, after all.

There was no meaning in implacable prosperity when it was already more than enough to be well and alive, always the intermediary, always the resting point, the neutral party when it came to splitting crossroads. It'd taken months to learn what drove Rin forward toward cycles of self-ruination upon his return, heedless and brazen, change fermenting around him in billowing wakes. Even now, mostly dismantled of the self-seeking volatility that once threatened to capsize him, there wasn't any doubt in Rin's dogma.

So, walking en-route to the gym, Makoto's working on how to improve the plausibility of his stunted vernacular in a matter of minutes — a way to recite, in just the right inflection, a manner for convincing his fellow swim captain that nothing's wrong at all, that he isn't bleeding out falsehoods and a single misstep away from completely desecrating his friendship with Haru, whom he can't even look in the eye without visibly recoiling anymore.

Psychological warfare has taken its toll on him. Makoto doesn't need to be cross-examined in any sizable degree by Rin to know he's in the wrong, that he'll inevitably be caught for tapering down on what misconstrues: the disparity between carefully tending after someone and blatantly ignoring them in the same breath. It's not something he'll bring up of his own volition, but the exoskeleton of it remains; the scintillant remorse, vividly inflamed and treacherously waxing over his face for the duration of the trip. He leaves Rin to be his own envoy, delegating his arrival back into the land of the living on his own terms.

Pitching through the torrential contortions of words built on growing unease, he hasn't caught up on the fact that he's in the same vicinity as Rin until he discerns his figure from across the plaza, staring back at him with a vacant, slightly dislocated awareness. Makoto deduces it as a particularly obscene mirage at first, a trick of the light made out of smoke and mirrors, but he's jogging closer and the image stays numbingly bright: Rin's expression snared brazen and just that side of exasperated given the extended wait, given the corrosion of misunderstanding held between them with just the same consistency of pressurized glass, liable to break under exertion. Impatient as ever.

Language abruptly fails him.

However, it's no time at all until he's remunerating Rin's unfathomable absence by lurching forward. The debilitation of Makoto's complexion abates as sheer momentum carries him forward and he's all but crashed into his companion, which would be singularly awful if they both ended up toppling down in the process, concussed on concrete from his impromptu tackle. But in a notable instance of self-inhibition, Makoto dials down his radius of influence to a mere too-tight hug, laughing and laughing with such a warbling translucence that it hums in his throat, spasmodic and trilling with relief. ]

You're alright! You're really alright, I'm so g-glad. Thank goodness you're safe. I thought I was going to have a heart attack if you weren't here after all.

[ Throttled by his emotions, he blubbers something insensible about keeping an eye out for Rin everyday, which eventually debilitates into loud sniffling while simultaneously refusing to release him for several minutes. But he's consolingly solid to the touch, soothing his frayed nerves, and Makoto eventually slackens in his hold, retreating to give Rin some space. ]

Sorry. Did you wait long?

[ Expelling a breath that clots suspiciously in his throat as a reassured sigh, he raises the backside of one hand to swipe over his misting eyes. There are issues to clarify, predicaments to discount, questions to answer his friend with, but it doesn't stop Makoto from speaking up, even with an oddly uncertain note seeping through his inquiry. ]

... Geez, Rin. You're going to have to explain yourself. What did you mean by being at regionals? I know you were excited about making it past prefecturals, but we didn't even go yet.

[jawdacity]

[ Within the first hour of his arrival, Rin had barreled into a red-eyed man who wore murder like a second skin, and received some approximation of a baptism of blood in the process. Not his own. But the attack had been unnecessary, the resultant conversation with his victim made awkward with his own guilt, and he's made a point to tamp down on any brash instinct towards violence.

Starting, of course, with a strict adherence to the principles of personal space. To someone who makes it a point to destroy the inhibitions of those whose life he inhabits, it's been an exercise in self-control.

That's why his initial reaction to the invasion of his personal space is to tense rather than to relax. For a moment, he thinks again of the flickering of tentacles in the periphery, the smell of blood, the neat rows of scalpels he'd flinched away from. It seems impossible that he should have forgotten the weight and shape of Makoto's body in the span of a few days, but 24 hours spent with muscles locked and thoughts racing may as well have been years.

It's only when he hears Makoto's voice, gentle despite its saturation of emotion, that he relaxes. The world rushes back in: the afternoon setting in striations of color across the horizons, the murmur of voices in the background, Makoto's hands wide and warm between his shoulderblades. He takes in a deep breath, thinking I hope he doesn't notice, he'll probably think this is creepy as hell; but the risk serves its purpose, as Makoto smells of good clean sweat below the unfamiliar detergent of his clothing. The same Makoto, awkward and too-warm.

Rin grins, wide enough to showcase the serrated edge of his teeth. It's an odd jumble of emotions that he feels -- not quite relief, because he doesn't know whether to be glad that Makoto is caught in this spider's web along with him. He's reliable, of course, but of the lot of them he was always the most fearful. Alien invaders, the worst of his nightmares, the subject of many a horror movie that Makoto refused to watch.

--but Rin, perhaps selfishly, still can't help the gladness. He's made tentative connections, his own lack of concern about undue propriety making it easy to forge new bonds here and there and there again, but nothing quite resonates like the knowledge that Haru-and-Makoto, once a unit, still a unit, will be here beside him. ]

Slow down.

[ Rin laughs, slapping at Makoto's shoulder once he's released into his own space. A glimpse of Makoto's face doesn't offer much in the way of answers, though Rin supposes he should be glad for that: whatever this world has done to Makoto and Haru, whatever horrors lie in the beyond, they haven't yet touched the face Rin knows so well. He ignores the question about how long he'd been waiting, deeming it unimportant -- any other day he might have teased Makoto about it, but today he's distracted by the latter half of Makoto's babble. ]

Uh -- what? Makoto, we went to Nationals. You beat us at the relay. Hell, we graduated.

[ The grin slowly fades, leaving behind the restlessness that has plagued Rin since the moment he left reality behind. He peers at Makoto, taking in the sight of him again. This time, he catalogs what he sees: Makoto, the same Makoto he's known for years, solid-edged, sandy-haired, wide smiling mouth. ]

You sure you're feeling alright?

[ It's a question he'd been meaning to ask eventually, noticing the odd way Makoto had brushed aside his mention of Haru. Better sooner than later. ]

[cordated]

[ It's a doomed gamble, ascertaining Rin's presence in virtual limbo. Neither quite alive nor dead now, just indiscernibly tangible, stable in a way Makoto's fingers could remember. Solidity that melted away the lazy, cooling heaviness of dubious memories (fabricated, real, contrived from half-spun abstractions, the triumvirate of unreality). It's the worst for him out of the three of them, in any case; stripped of his prospective future and the burdens he'd undertaken, filled with disenthrallment that came on so strongly that it bracketed the disquiet he couldn't wholly conceal. Single-mindedness incapable of duplication; life like a pulse-point, capricious and shiftless to no end.

Nearly eighteen whole years and Rin hasn't stopped wearing his heart on his sleeve. Even if empathy wasn't coagulating his blood, Makoto can tell nothing sits entirely right with his friend, not the grin perched on his lips or the deeply unsettled lapse of quiet overtaking his frame prior to reanimating with a renewed fervor. None of that matters, though. His left shoulder stings and Makoto smiles all the more for it, the residual ache a sundial raking searing amusement down his skin with about as much predictability as faulted clockwork — the Rin he remembers, a mechanism of incipient motion. But that precarious calm gives way to savage anxiety, because of course it does. Doubt that never stops resurrecting. Spatial displacement.

The floor bottoms out. ]

Kisumi told me the same thing, too. I never got to ask what he meant before he went missing.

[ At a loss, Makoto barely registers the sick apprehension simmering over his features as he glances down, narrowly circumventing confrontation by rummaging through his pockets instead. His palms have been strangely afflicted by chills since that morning, but he hasn't paid that anomaly too much mind, attributing it to a cold sweat. Regardless, only takes him a second longer than usual to retrieve his CereVice, unlocking the interface and holding it out for Rin's inspection on one network post in particular, calling specific attention to its timestamp with a disparate tap. ]

... I'm not really sure how to start explaining, so let me show you.

[ While the video plays, Makoto's given a short reprieve to peripherally gauge his friend's reaction. There's the sheer physicality of him that immediately draws the gaze — sun on his hair, glinting off the unrelieved curve of his hands and his eyes, but it's the Rin's keyed-up disquiet that falls under Makoto's scrutiny. Hyperactivity ensconced in a different form.

Like this, feelings in constant, fluxing disequilibrium, it's hard to tell if Rin genuinely trusts him.

Once the recording ends, he snaps the device shut, fingers sticky-cold with congealing trepidation. ]

Three months ago, you and Kisumi were here. You guys even stayed at the same place. Strung us all along to a dance party, too. We didn't talk much, but ... Haru said you seemed happier.

[ Talking with consternation stuck to the roof of his mouth isn't half as difficult as admitting he hadn't kept tabs on either of them. Something he owed them all. More than anything else, it's the deficiency of the flimsy explanation he can't dredge up correctly that grates at him now. The enormity of his delusion, incorrectly assuming that they'd all stay safe just through passive resignation. Idiocy that knew no bounds. ]

Everything after the prefecturals is a blank to me. I don't even remember graduating.

[ And that was why it mattered taking the risk to confront the suspect name on his CereVice by himself. A kind of proximate contrition, then, like settling the score with digital ghosts of the emotionally compromising variety (without Haru to speak around in elastic conciliation).

Around Rin, there's none of that necessity for modulating artifice. To begin with, they've never been the ones at odds. ]

I believe you, Rin. I do. But when you and Kisumi went missing, I couldn't help expecting the worst.

[jawdacity]

I -- don't remember any of that.

[ which goes without saying. rin takes the cerevice from makoto and plays the video all over again, his expression yoyoing from extreme to extreme. haru, unsurprisingly, had been right: maybe it had been a function of appearing in this place with a friend in tow, maybe he'd been another rin entirely, maybe the concept of a multiverse held some water. maybe there was a rin out there who could smile under duress and mean it.

rin pauses the video mid-play and shoves the device back into makoto's hands, patting awkwardly at the back of his hands as a belated apology. he'd seen kisumi a few weeks ago at a goukon to which he'd been dragged; it had been after graduation, rin stewing in boredom in the lull between graduation and the start of his australian school year. where did kisumi go, once he left the frame of that video? did he return to blissful ignorance, swept again into the tides of everyday life? unknowing of the eventual fate of their world, destruction that would happen yesterday or tomorrow or the day after?

it's been a long time since kisumi was an integral part of his life, but he's still a friend. rin purses his lips, wrestling with the tide; for once, it obeys his demand for quiescence.

a simple video wouldn't normally drag him down from his plinth of untouchability, but tellus has grasped him for a scant few days and already he feels changed by the experience.

in order to keep himself from dissolving into navel-gazing, he shifts his focus to makoto. soft-edged makoto, blurred into an amorphous shape by the rapid flush of rin's lashes. he's sharper and softer all at once, different from the timid friend that rin had left behind. the lack of haru between them isn't so rare as to be odd, but rin feels his absence nonetheless. maybe that's the missing piece. fit haru back into the frayed edge torn out of makoto and all will be as he left it.

how's that for romanticism.

the way that rin lists towards makoto, his body an open curve, should dispel all thoughts of distrust. they have only each other in this foreign land. everyone else might wear truth as a mask over worse and worse and worse horrors, the hospital of death and decay only the beginning of the nightmare. here, in the curve of makoto's open palm, trust is a bygone conclusion. ]

Whatever. None of that matters. [ the effort to reorder himself is external as well as internal: he squares himself, straightens his spine. one-two-three, fingers flexing and relaxing. his smile returning to his face, rubbing away the shadows. ] We're here, we're from different -- time points, I guess -- that's hardly the weirdest part of this whole thing. Maybe Kisumi'll show up one of these days and laugh at you [ a notable choice of words, you instead of us ] for worrying so much.

[ red eyes, red-brown in the sun's setting cast, cutting as a blade. ]

More importantly. Where the hell is Haru?

[cordated]

[ so: the matter of uneasy reconciliation hangs like an unacknowledged stalemate between them.

they've been friends long enough that even their brand of sentimentality is tinged with the urgency of resolve. a crossing of fates, in one sense (something the romanticist in them both could appeal to). misplaced guilt parsed as a profanely bad joke in the other. rin in subjective profile is still rin with mangled bewilderment taking up the entirety of his face in the settling dusk, a geologic chasm of reactionary partially obscured by the shadows, the eclipsing dusk that slants dark and bracing over his features, even as his lips quirk in his best impression of insouciance. jaw set, lips pulled wide, teething incising, a bright fixture of confidence in the midst of the anomaly presented before them.

undoubtedly, he'd trust rin with his life. kisumi, too — years haven't dampened what still manages to invert him — kindness at an extreme disproportion to pragmatism. he's spent the last few weeks avoiding the trajectory of haru's schedule, so that might be an exception to the rule, but even provoking banter doesn't hold water when he's just happy rin's there, close enough to surprise makoto into a flooding smile, a ham-fisted attempt to trample the more demoralizing hypotheticals encouraged by thinly-veiled insinuation: whether kisumi would ever come back, the risk of falsified or dismembered memories dogging at the margins of awareness. ]

... Sheesh. I really missed you, Rin. I kind of already guessed that if you did remember last time, you would've thrown in a few more King Kong references before we met up.

[ forgive him, he's not that knowledgeable when it comes to pop culture references subjected with lacerating wit.

it's not a fix-all method for coping with existential trauma, but it lacks even a shred of acridity, of unjustified emotional collapse stemming from the very first day he'd ascertained that people could go missing without so much as a single word, not even a parting entreaty, whisked into the numerical void, just another casualty of their times.

the atrocity of living on after everyone had supposedly gone and died was that it left makoto stripped down to the nerves of his humanity. any reprieve is a welcome reprieve at this point, and he coaxes rin into walking through the plaza centre with a languid wave, voice thinned to conceal the various shortcomings resonating like an undercurrent through him. there's a weird, jerky lapse of hesitation that momentarily stalls him at just the mention of haru, his eyes dilating, green as chemical dye underneath the expiring light. ]

He's, um, at work, by the way. Arcade mascot. I know. It's weird, but he really wanted to? You should've seen how pleased he was the first week in. Haru will be even more happy to know you're here, though! We're roommates, so you're bound to catch him if you drop by our place.

[ the entire time, makoto keeps his sights pinned like tunnel vision, directed only ahead in a last-ditch measure to mask the artificiality of his voice. it doesn't help that he's speaking in some form of linguistic decay, words catalyzing themselves, the staggering false note melting acidly on his tongue. too breathy. the sentences run on gas fumes like he can't get them out of his mouth fast enough before his mouth goes uncomfortably dry. ]

Do you want to go see him now?

[jawdacity]

[ rin laughs, soft on the inhale, fire-engine loud on the exhale. he's not sure why he feels wrong-footed; around makoto, he's always settled easily into conversation, the ebb and flow of camaraderie never needing external stimuli. with makoto, he never felt the need to flex skill and talent nor potential of either to feel accepted or challenged, here he was rin and rin alone, red and redder, and he didn't need to be anyone else.

(arcade mascot. he's already thinking about photographs. will physical evidence travel back with him to earth reconstituted, if he wills it to be? will the brittleness of makoto's spine fade to its usual elasticity if rin takes that laughter and injects some miniscule fragment of sincerity into it?

dilemma, dilemma.)

it takes him a moment more to realize that he isn't the one stepping around potholes, he isn't the one making every pause between word and word into a minefield. it's makoto, who looks at him with the self same affection that rin has come to accept as his due (after many, many, many days and weeks and months of angry blind rejection), but who looks away with equal frequency. even in a pock-marked landscape, far and away from all they've known, rin knows with singular certainty that there's only one person that could have taken gentle gentle makoto and turned him into this. a leaking pipe. rusting at the bend. rin nudges him with an elbow, just to see the motion ripple through makoto; he half expects something to splinter in the process. ]

Nah, not yet. Shouldn't distract him from his weird hobbies.

[ the laughter lingers in the flash of his teeth, but his gaze is quiet.

because rin has learned what it means to look at a situation and not think of his own emotional response first. after many iterations of trial and error.

he waits, just long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable. not by design or -- not by conscious design -- but sometimes rin's instinct for social situations reigns shrewd. ]

Idiot. What happened between you two?

[ that's it, no needling to tease the truth from makoto, no obstacles set out into their path to see makoto trip, no attempt to trick him out of his secrets. just a bald-faced question. rin knows makoto well enough that any other approach would be meaningless. ]

[cordated]

[ he fucked up.

makoto's subterfuge is altogether too lukewarm for genuine deception — he realizes, belatedly, that he can't twist any distorted version of the truth with convulsing hands when he barely has any grasping motor control over his own temperament. not nearly enough time spent wrenching up lies from their roots and honing the art of self-armoring to virtual faultlessness as he's spent making amends, wording apologies in different iterations. a metaphor for a disconsolate state of mind. makoto can't recall how to bring himself back from the edge when he's attempting to preserve the moral integrity of a claim already proven to be an implacable sham (he isn't fine, he just spent the entirety of the trip fabricating a convincing lie only to have it unravel at his feet by his intended target).

even in stagnation, rin's sincerity doesn't go by unappreciated. hypocritically, it's the lack of artifice that he values in haru as well: bluntness that has never known pretense, unswerving to no end. it only makes too much sense that it's spectacularly backfired on him now, rin's needling brazenness its own kind of siren call, paring off audible excess, leading him to the heart of what he's avoided for weeks now. the clumsy ineptness of makoto's admittance, then, is only rivaled by the apprehension climbing and climbing and climbing up his throat in harried wisps. ]

It's my fault. Haru's never handled change well, but I didn't even notice that he hasn't been sleeping right since you went missing. I never pushed farther than he wanted — if I had, maybe he would've told me how he really felt, what exactly happened to him back home. It was selfish of me.

[ emotional nuance lost to peeling insecurities. it's simple, all too simple how easily he falls into selective blindness, standing so straight that the nudge briefly slantslides him as makoto pulls himself back upright, trepidation scalded like its own stigmata over his features. ]

I just wanted things to stay the same.

[ starvation for normalcy was evidently something makoto faulted himself for. rin can hazard guesses until the end of his lifespan, honest as the day is long, but self-deprecation dwells far longer than idle speculation. ]

I made a mistake, Rin. I ... I can't face him. Not after what I did.

[ noncommittally, his mouth tightens. ]

I ruined everything.

[jawdacity]

[ without thinking, rin moves closer. it's an instinct that has developed over the years from the comfort he derives from physical solidarity: words are fickle things, their definitions many and varied, but makoto won't be able to misinterpret the solid line of warmth against his side, rin offering a shoulder without needing the translation step of any unwieldy metaphor.

that haru hasn't been sleeping well doesn't surprise rin; he imagines that makoto, too, has been worrying himself into insomnia in the days since he too received that damned powerpower presentation. rin doesn't interject to say as much. much of their friendship has been built with haru's name cementing the bricks, and they've had little reason to change that.

still, rin exhales through his teeth, holding his silence for a moment more. it's my fault is likely amongst the top ten in frequently used phrases of makoto's repertoire, and just as likely the least true. maybe if the offense is caring too much. makoto wears his guilt like something shining and studded about his neck -- like he should be wearing it, like it's his duty to do so.

rin hasn't often noticed it, not out of any lack of concern for makoto, but rather because he's always so distracted by haru, by himself, that it's been easier to let makoto demur. ]

What happened to him?

[ and then, rin scowls -- but it's inwardly directed, his own quick tongue making a mess of all of his good intentions. ]

I mean, don't give me that crap about you ruining everything, just tell me what happened. From the beginning, minus all the interjections about how horrible you are.

[ it's an attempt at gentle humor, but rin's wry smile is too sharp with concern to pass. ]

jfc ........

[cordated]

[ hindsight is only 20/20.

despondently enough, makoto's allowed all the vitriol of self-deprecation to live on in him for so long, boring holes through him with the exact size and density of stunted confidence. years and years of compact, blurring helplessness condensing; the prickling euphemism for repressing what he could and internalizing the rest.

festering with residual guilt, he stares dumbly at rin, resting a moment too long to be accidental. under the fierce, swimming dissolve of scrutiny that never required another reason for systematic devastation, makoto's smile is plaintive; a little sheepish, the quirking corners of his mouth coming undone. nothing feigned, nothing false, just exhaustion as overt as his futility because he's always the first to fold under bone-deep pressure.

between the two of them, makoto's the one who can't stand on his own. ]

Rin ... not out here, okay? Back at the apartment. I promise.

[ even beneath strain calcifying his shoulders with exhumed contrivances, rin emanates infectious warmth without a break in stride, controlled and controlling. reassuring, even with the avowal stopped up in makoto's throat. sensation that lingered long after the initial point of contact. leaning loosely against his friend's shoulder, makoto's line of sight dispassionately crawls down to sidewalk concrete as they clamber down the rest of the plaza steps and out on the lengthy way back.

in hindsight, makoto was never a good fit for hostilities. rin never challenged the status quo as much as he's refashioned it to hold the shapeless incongruity of his vehemence — insatiably assertive, never conceding an inch, then and now. side to side, they're polar opposites with vices that ran at variance with the person they disparately formed their nascent relationship around as children who never agreed with prosaic methods of thinking, taking part in swimming in cooperative spirits when it was a primarily independent sport. they never bought entirely into conventions, even then.

along the walkway intersections, makoto doesn't talk about how even his shattered anxiety has developed its own destabilizing neurosis, that over the course of several months he hasn't even begun to wring himself of his weakness, the outline of his remorse ever-present in the inconstancy of his ideology, already trying to apologize for something he couldn't pardon in himself (undermining himself before he so much as gave anyone else the chance to). absence elongates in him as raw, trembling dissatisfaction — with himself, with his deficiencies, with his various and disparate shortcomings.

the apartment is quiet.

without error, the house key clicks into the lock as it disarms the mechanism, a shining point held in makoto's precarious grip. he mutely ushers his companion into the artificial coolness of the foyer, shutting the door behind him and venturing into the recesses of the kitchen. a couple of flickering, lopsided minutes pass as makoto distractedly busies himself with the cupboards and the fridge and shortly returns with two cups of water, one of which he hands off to rin as he takes a seat on the sofa, setting his beverage on one end table. absently, he notes he's forgotten coasters, but makoto makes no further move to retrieve any other household utensils, shoulders hunched in and sinking. for a while, the lack of articulation smolders in him, light and heavy at once, inundating his drawn-up frame.

he isn't sure what to say, only left with the visceral discrepancy, reluctance leaking out of him in a gradual, bleeding rinse. ]

When Haru went sleepwalking, he'd usually wander all the way to the gym. Sometimes I could catch him before he left, but most times I couldn't. One night, he went all the way out to the Pleasure District. It was ... stupid. If I went searching, I could've found him. I know I could've found him, but I kept waiting, thinking he'd just come back. Eventually, he called me back, and I went to go pick him up.

[ distanced from the extraneous, makoto speaks sharply, critical with the inadequacy of his own words. nothing in his voice brokers dissent; he won't let rin soften the conspicuity of his failings in swollen condolences. he's already spent enough weeks dissecting at good intentions until they fell apart, decomposing, in his open hands. ]

He was at a bar. I figured the bartender was watching him, since it'd been so cold that evening. Haru wouldn't drink anything besides water, anyways. At that time, I didn't pay any attention to the drink next to him. I didn't even check.

[ sprinting all throughout the red-light district with panic clawing at his windpipe, the sickness of his disequilibrium only rivaled by the mess of coagulating worry, remorse jumbled in the same breath as his best friend's name.

(haru, haru, haru. please be okay, please, please be okay —)

obsoleteness was his intermediary then, useless and insomniac, lacking a clear translation — he'd been terrified of his inattention, the nascent possibility that he'd misheard him, that he'd been too late to make up for his negligence. bleached in paralysis, makoto continues gazing, unfocused, at anything that isn't rin. ]

His fever was really bad. I thought he'd pass out at first, but we made it back okay, and then he ... kissed me.

[ almost immediately, makoto's voice plummets into a shivering paroxysm, needlelike and broken, staggering him. ]

I backed o-off at first, b-because he obviously wasn't himself! Anyone could see that. He was too t-touchy-feely, and I knew he'd never ... not in a million years, and especially not towards me. I should've just locked him in his room and waited until it passed, but I was scared they'd given him something really bad, and the clinic wasn't open, and I ... I didn't want to leave him alone like that. I already failed him. I couldn't excuse myself for that.

[ depravity in such a tender, choking rush. it doesn't absolve him of the effusive, mutinously yearning ache that gutted him with impunity while he drank in the unnatural affection, haru undimmed and sweltering in his own skin as makoto pulled him under. ]

When he tried again, I ... I let him. I shouldn't have. I don't know what I was thinking. I thought he ... I thought he really ... returned how I ...

[ ... felt.

contemptible, how far he'd gone astray. riddled with compunction, makoto's abjectly conscious of the heat simmering high in his cheeks. incoherently, he debates running. with the upper hand, he could outstrip rin in speed — it'd only been a few days since his (second) arrival, he wouldn't be too familiar with the layout of the district — but there's no escaping the circuitous denial, how quickly he's prone to evade and genuflect instead of facing the matter head-on as soon as tangentially relates to himself. ]

A-After, um, we sl — ... in the morning, he caught a really bad cold. I got a little sick too, but mine wasn't half as bad.

[ softer, now, defeat issuing morosely, his remorse defective and ailing in him. ]

He didn't remember what happened. I don't know why. Afterwards, I went back and checked myself, but I couldn't find the bartender again. The credit card report didn't list a name, and no one would tell me anything.

[ the pooling stillness eviscerates the rest of his qualms. reprehensibly, makoto stands up, glass of water still untouched, eyes shot through with blistering guilt. ]

You shouldn't be around me, Rin. If you find Haru now, I really think you can get through to him in a way I wasn't able to.

[ wretchedness overtakes him. ]

He needs you.

[jawdacity]

So. Let me get this straight.

[ this time there's disbelief in his voice, but there's not enough stridency in him for his volume to be misconstrued as anger. he's noticed the imbalance between makoto and haru in the past, but in fractions, rippled reflections, not enough to make any connections. and maybe rin himself can't blame makoto too much for the tendency to step and step closer to haru until he's less friend and more of an untenable support. inextricable. necessary. ]

Haru takes off on his own, kisses you -- [ his voice falters on the word kiss, but he blusters onwards, not allowing either of them to call attention to it ] -- doesn't remember shit in the morning, and you're blaming yourself for this?

[ sometimes he understands makoto more than he knows to put into words: the two of them of them have a soft spot for haru easily exploitable, but rin's affection for haru has always been defined in opposition to him rather than in... conjunct. if conjunct is even the right word to choose, given everything that makoto has now told him.

surprise isn't paramount. surprise isn't even primary. maybe makoto and haru have been headed towards this collision for years and years, before rin knew either of them, before swimming became a categorical force in their lives. and yet there's still something that irks him, a flicker of insecurity that he's never quite been able to stamp out. being left behind. being unnecessary. it's compounded by all that he's felt since his arrival: a boy with only his hands and his tired eyes, unable to help those in need of help, unable even to defend himself against the horrors presented. and now even haru and makoto are moving away from him.

he bites down on the (selfish, selfish) thoughts, grinding them to dust before he'll let them show on his face. makoto will interpret it as rejection, and rin doesn't have the wherewithal to drag him back from retreat. not when he already has a headstart. ]

Okay, think of this from Haru's perspective. He doesn't remember shit about what happened, but you suddenly pull the rabbit act on him, don't you think he's going to believe that he did something wrong?

[ never mind the fact that haru had been the one to kiss makoto first, of no real note to anyone but makoto himself. the relationship bullshit can come later, now rin just needs them to start talking to one another.

he doesn't wait for makoto's response. rin doesn't want to hear more of makoto beating himself bloody for no apparent reason. he leans forward, elbows on his thighs, edging into makoto's personal space. trying to distract him from his thoughts with physical proximity. ]

You're the one who needs to talk to him. Unless you want me to explain that he kissed you and you're playing chicken because you wish he'd kissed you when he wasn't himself.

[ the look on rin's face is absolute — this is no idle threat. ]

[cordated]

I wouldn't ask you to say it for me. I'd never expect you to.

[ makoto wasn't prepared for any of it: neither the stained incredulity haunting rin's breath nor the slaughtered gravitas that came with conceding to the truth after spending so much time deeply living beneath some bitter, unpardonable trespass. the way makoto made himself less than what he was; self-inflicted subjugation, just as venomous as flat-out derision. he keeps expecting a thin shudder of revulsion to gut rin out, as it righteously should — the framing, refulgent anger he'd seen so many times now familiarly marring his features. it'd only ever been marginally directed at him as a departing remark as it spanned entire continents for haru, seething and brilliant, held by a course of endless, elliptical concentration.

no point in redirecting the excess elsewhere, especially not toward haru's friend, shy and timid, stumbling underneath the weight of someone else's shadow. ]

The only one who did something wrong was me.

[ even now, bleached in weakness, words spilling up against glass-narrow fragility, makoto raises his head with a gaze ringed with peculiar incomprehension. if there's one subject they've always seen eye-to-eye on, it was haru; no clinical, antiseptic disinterest to dissuade them from hurtling onwards, past the point of no return, as people brought together by one naturally infectious commonality. but it's rin who came on his own terms, who cranes forward and winds himself inextricably into his life once more, someone makoto couldn't ignore if he tried. not even haru could impel this in him: discomposure in ceaseless upheaval, the proximity of his distress when it comes to disarming frustration.

contrary to popular belief, makoto's patience isn't eternal. it's joyous and terrible alike, how he can't reconcile missing rin with the notion of reeling away from conflict and the opposition that will inevitably arise as soon as he vocalizes his intent. the lie detector inherent in rin's gaze cuts even sharper than his own, attenuating in seedy, voracious afternoon; the color of blood matching the finer edges of his irises, radiating substantiality down to his bones. credence that won't go idle, even as makoto shrinks back, floundering to hunch in, ducking his head away. even as he tore himself apart to shreds, rin never deviated.

in contrast, makoto's only ever known haru best.

never himself. ]

I've been thinking about it for a while now, and it's better if I pretend it never happened. It's not fair to Haru when it wasn't even him to begin with, just ... whoever I wanted to see that night.

[ it'd been strange, the halting failure of his infatuation with haru — how he wanted with enough severity that he seized at the faintest suggestion of any response in kind, emotions cast awry, bearing down on him. the desire to foster haru's reliance in him had become implacable, a habit formed around what could've been and what could still be if he hadn't stripped it to ribbons, his routine only metamorphosing around his best friend when they were the ones left behind. it's not as if he could forget the jealousy that curdled nauseatingly in him the day of the race from up on the stands, gripped with the end of a terrible understanding. ]

I just need time. I'll go back to the way I was before soon.

[ his fingers mimic moroseness; staggered overexposure, the bleak agony of cut wires, diaphanous and slackening at his sides. ]

Not above threats, huh.

[ dismantled, makoto smiles around the ache. ]

It's okay. I know you'd never want to hurt Haru, either. Can you keep this between us, Rin?

[jawdacity]

No!

[ the syllable torn from him, ragged on the exhale. rin has understood makoto as hallmark of the periphery in the years they have known each other: to rin, who blossoms under the weight of attention, that tendency towards self-attrition has been incomprehensible. makoto has more than broad shoulders to carry, more than wide hands to hold. he has a voice of his own, strong in its placability. it's a strength that rin has relied on, even if his appreciation has always been limited to the aftermoments.

maybe he's been unfair. haru has always taken up the entirety of his attention, the glimmer of a finish-line ribbon at the end of the lane. maybe that's why they're standing here today, makoto hiding underneath the sallow shell of skin and bone, hiding from rin even after he's handed over all his truths.

rin tries again, mirroring makoto's softer tone. he has a year of captaining behind him; he's coaxed skittish juniors and overly-confident seniors. he thinks about the way makoto had looked, that day in the hotel room, his large frame hunched into a seated position.

at the time, rin had been reminded - nonsensically - of a paper crane. all of makoto folded over, again and again, until he was a scrap of colorful origami, meant to be strung up on a string. only one of a thousand, if you wanted your wishes to come true. ]

No. I can't just -- let you do this to yourself, alright? I've known you two since we were all idiot kids, and I don't have to be as perceptive as either of you to know that this is mutual. Between you and Haru, I mean.

[ he runs a hand through his hair, frustrated at his own ineloquence, displacing the elastic that had held his ponytail in place. he doesn't notice. ]

That's not even the point. The point is that this shit is going to sit between you forever, it's going to poison whatever you have already.

[ he's thinking of sousuke. the nights they spent in silence, readying themselves for sleep; rin staring at the bunk above and wondering what secret was so monumental that sousuke couldn't trust him with its weight.

that's the crux of it. a secret upon a pedestal, standing guard over a friendship spidering with cracks. it doesn't go away. it doesn't cement itself over, given enough time. in the end -- it'll only fall to pieces. ]

You don't want things to go back to the way they were. I know you don't, don't try and lie to me.

[cordated]

It'd be easier if they did.

[ and it falls to rin to speak with a voice full of blunted knives, sans compunction, again. not unkind. somehow, that made it worse. it would've been easier to rationalize himself if rin flared up with caustic anger, if he'd wrung makoto up by his collar and demanded he grew a backbone right that very minute. it falls down to day-to-day spontaneity: how he'd gone to rin with the intent of playing catch-up and came away detailing the intricacies of his dispassionate sob-fest with their mutual best friend, how he pathetically clung to apologies even as he shied away.

but along the way, makoto's let rin in by some dismal percentage, and by that margin he couldn't dismiss him any longer. unlike the inviolable synchronism he sustained with haru, talking to rin tended to shove reality under a sobered, disheartening lens. it was the lack of pretense, probably; no ellipses to decipher, nothing to read into that wasn't already splayed out in the open between them, whether devastation or mundanity that sank mouths into repeating the same tired admissions, over and over.

moreover, he's never bothered to ever oppose haru, instead cutting himself on the edge of his trepidation and rescinding his opinion. placation that he never quite grew out of over the years wasn't even the half of it. even if the circumstances would've vastly differed, they were bound to end on opposite sides of discontent that'd been a long time coming. if not reciprocation, or the lack thereof, then the burgeoning future that should've awaited them back home. either way, it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference. not like this, when he can't envision himself making the first move. ]

Alright. I'll tell him.

[ a blatant contradiction.

ever since his return from australia in the second year of high school, it'd become something of a fixture in his relationship with rin to scrutinize him for disenthrallment, talking to him in the interim when they weren't infatuated with their own personal hang-ups. makoto spent long enough in each other's company to make a concentrated effort to support him in his endeavors. they'd never been on equal terms with, but concepts like swimming aptitude or emotional instability were irrelevant when it came reliance that never displaced. equal standing.

and that was all he wanted, really. someone who existed on that middle ground to keep him sensible. makoto liked to think he did the same in turn for rin.

his jaw tightens fractionally. ]

Just not now, okay? It has to be at the right place, the right time. I don't want to say it in a way I'll regret.

[ inexplicably, the matsuoka siblings always had a manner of persuasion when it came to charisma. he could see gou in him, within the neat, concise narrowness of his face, the incendiary keenness they both prided themselves on. they commanded attention, and it grew subservient to them.

instead of being the lever, they were the fulcrum. ]

... Thanks, Rin. Even though things ended up like this, I'm glad you're back.

[ he reaches for the water glass, tilts his head back, and takes one unrelieved draught.

beneath the heavy half-circles of his eyes, the corners of his mouth twist into a tried and true imitation of a grin. it doesn't lack in sincerity, only in believability. something in his complexion that doesn't ascribe to the hope he could ever adequately elucidate the consistency of his guilt. forgiveness he couldn't ask of anyone, much less rin and haru, never himself. ]

You know, I never did get the chance to spend nearly enough time with you the last time around. You could've spared some pity on me. At least Kisumi humored me with a dance.

[jawdacity]

[ there's less to believe than rin would like — makoto is a poor hand at deception, but a truth today can become one swept to the side tomorrow. no matter. now rin is a permanent fixture, even if by conviction alone. he'll be here as guidepost or - if need be - something a little sharper.

for now, he lets the suspicion drain from his face. it takes effort, for suspicion has become an intimate companion in the days that have come to pass, no conversation or acquaintance undeserving of scrutiny. but here makoto wears the weight of the makoto rin has known and known for years, even if they are friends on an axis separate and always separate from that which makoto and haru inhabit. maybe it's for the best: rin has loved them in turn, but never has he thought of putting mouth or heart to either of them.

well -- maybe never is an overstatement, but some things shouldn't have come to light. not like this, when makoto's heart is an empty tin can that he believes will remain so until tellus or the big bad aliens or his own melancholy whisks him away.

ridiculous, rin thinks, and his gaze shifts for a moment. not guilty, not quite, but something uncomfortable passes through the clench of his hands - he's thinking of australia, all the yellow-haired friends and not-friends he had known. none of whom could say rin in the right cadence, consonants all jumbled to chaos in their mouths. maybe that's what sets makoto's love apart from rin's: makoto fears losing haru. rin fears being alone.

but again and again, this isn't about him. he tucks those emotions away, folded neatly into the back of his mind. burns down all the scarecrows such that the birds might tear it all away.

he shoves into makoto's space again, a line of warmth at his side. it's an anchor, if nothing else. a reminder that there is no loneliness when there are two of them in this space. for now, at least; for as long as rin's will allows it. ]

Is that your way of asking me to dance with you, Tachibana?

[ and then, just to show that nothing has changed between them, rin's face splits into a grin. the same grin that he'd worn when he was twelve and utterly unafraid. no edges in that smile, only flame-bright mischief. ]

Well, okay. On one condition. You let me tell Haru about it -- I want to see how jealous he gets when he hears that you let me dip you like a princess.

[cordated]

[ the day rin returned to the old swim center they used to frequent as children, their meeting had been purely accidental. coincidence full of heavy, derelict imprecations, alienation embodied; departure from one line of thinking, divergence into yet another chapter of their lives. rin's expletives were always so heavy. even with nagisa obstinately dogging at his heels, makoto couldn't stop any of them from confrontation that developed its own psychosis over time. rin on the day of the relay, straddled over haru's sprawled form beneath the facsimile of their elementary schoolyard's sakura blossom tree, bitterly sobbing his heart out. tears their own kind of straining absolution.

stumbling upon them with every raw vulnerability laid to waste, he couldn't tamp down the strange, bewildering loneliness selfishly encroaching on his psyche. all those times he'd calling rin and over and over on his cell, listening to the digital echo, the dissonant beep of the voicemail because rin wouldn't answer.

with haru as his own emotional imperative, makoto couldn't blame him.

for so long afterwards, haru couldn't forgive rin for renouncing iwatobi and absconding for australia with even a clumsy, ill-managed goodbye, only closed eyes, already awaiting his return. the wasted interval of smoldering melodrama following the end of their middle school years only occurred because none of them could ever leave well enough alone. the past mottling over the present. corruption under a subjective lens.

but it's decidedly polarizing when rin stares at him with a bright and searching complexion, confidence renewed, outshining him yet again. when he stares aside, all the drum-taut tension in makoto immediately goes slack, heart somewhat erratic.

in haphazard disarray, makoto coughs, and then — some affected grin stretched unfamiliarly over his mouth — he cracks a jaw-splitting smirk. ]

In your dreams. We both know I'd be spinning you, Rinrin. Wouldn't want to see you trip and embarrass yourself too badly.

[ harmless lip service paying an unspoken homage to those sleepless nights he'd spent curled beneath the sheets, plagued by the awareness he hadn't done anything to stop him, or kisumi, or even nitori from being disassembled into jumbled strings of code. ]

... I should get going. I've got an extra shift today and boxes don't unpack themselves.

[ simper immediately dialing back down into his ordinary smile, self-conscious and just shy of sheepish, he palms the bottom of the glass, wiping off the excess condensation. knees idly brushing when he stands, makoto retreats to the kitchen, sets the glass aside on the sink, returning to cursorily swab off the table with a couple of paper towels. ]

You can stay and babysit our cat if you want, but you'll need to touch base with Haru to let yourself back in once you leave. He's got the master keycard. Mine's only a copy. It doesn't duplicate correctly.

[ as if on cue, their calico pads in, wending around the furniture with cybernetic finesse, distinctly artificial by way of cool disaffection to makoto in general as he strides past the two other occupants of the home, tossing the wad of napkins into the garbage bin and striding back into the foyer.

pausing at the threshold of the newly-opened doorway, he turns to address rin with the same guileless amiability, hand lifted in a half-wave. ]

Remember to tell him you're back! Even if he lets you off the hook for it, I won't forgive you if you don't set his mind at ease. Haru's tried harder than anyone else to find you.

[ the ultimatum is innately cheerful despite the spacious, unwieldy expectation, the underlying threat. in one sentence: an insinuating parting shot for taking rin's insults at point-blank range way back when he only had eyes for haru. comparatively benign and pacifistic as makoto is, he's still prone to bouts of immaturity from time to time. ]

See you later, Rin.

[ and then makoto's departed into the enveloping, sunlit warmth of the outside, in such high spirits that he can't stop smiling to himself for a full ten minutes after leaving. ]