Chapter Text
Rin has hated routines all his life. As a kid, and, admittedly, as a teenager too, he’s been so impatient. Even in the swim club, he has never been good at being patient with the training regimes - he’d wanted the results and he’d wanted them pronto. Doing the same thing, practice, so much before he reached a next level, was tiresome, unchallenging and absolutely boring.
Now, when he gets home, he can’t believe he’s once thought like that about all types of routines. It’s quiet, as always, and Rin undresses unhurriedly, as always, and then finds Makoto and Haru chilling on the couch, not even watching anything on TV, just sitting side by side. Makoto is reading a book, his absolutely adorable reading glasses on, and Haru is resting his head on Makoto’s shoulder, eyes closed but definitely not sleeping.
It looks so peaceful that Rin almost doesn’t want to disturb that picture. Almost.
He joins them on the other side of Makoto, who greets him with a smile and Rin can’t help but plant a kiss on it before settling against Makoto’s yet unoccupied shoulder. He doesn’t mean to, but his eyes land on the letters in the book and he automatically begins reading it. It seems to be a classic - a typical Makoto kind of book - and it makes Rin smile, but not as much as the fact that Makoto waits for him to finish the page before turning to the next.
He gradually loses focus and his eyes droop shut. The last thing he remembers is that Makoto kisses him on the side of his head. He doesn’t know if that’s real or a dream, but he isn’t too worried if it isn’t real. It has been real many times already, after all, and it would still happen in the future. Rin is glad that he can expect and predict what is going to happen, for once. It is a routine they fell into, after all.
Haru was afraid of change. Still is, if he’s honest. Especially when he can feel that change is about to happen. He’s never been able to deal with it very well, also because he isn’t very good at expressing himself. He does realize that he is very lucky to have met Makoto when he met him. Makoto has been able to understand Haru even when he thought he wasn’t expressing anything to the outside world, and it has made him less lonely, even if he’s never been able to admit it back then.
He also realizes now that ignoring change is not a healthy way of dealing with something that is inevitable. Rin, back then, has been the inevitable, stormy change that had blasted into Haru and Makoto’s life like a whirlwind. When Rin left for Australia, he left so many words unsaid and relationships undeveloped in his wake, it had felt like something was missing all the time.
Now, Haru also realizes why he has feared change so much. Because as paradox as it sounds - with how solitary he always is - he fears ending up all alone. It had started with his parents always leaving, then never really coming back; then his grandma died - the only one he truly considers family out of all his blood relatives. And then Rin seemingly came back just to steal Makoto from him so both could leave him alone.
Proper communication would probably have spared them all a lot of pain, but in the end, they still got there. They got here, and here is damn nice place to be.
Haru knows, and feels, that this change isn’t bad at all, much like how the water had accepted and invited him with even less resistance than before he had realized that competitive swimming doesn’t take all the fun out of it. Just like that, his relationship with Rin and Makoto is the least rocky it has ever been. Smoothly flowing like a river. It has definitely changed for the better, even if it has become a lot less quiet and calm than it used to be.
“Haru, I can hear your loud thinking from here,” Rin says, his back to Haru and trying to find something in the fridge. He lets out a victorious noise when he finally fishes out a small bottle of water.
“Which means both you and Makoto are joining me for a run now, as punishment.”
Haru raises a brow at him and Makoto, who’s been reading the newspaper at the kitchen table, looks up at him, startled to be addressed suddenly. “What?”
“Ye hear me, up up, no buts, we’re all running now.”
“Why am I being punished too?” Makoto asks with an amused smile, but already puts the now neatly folded newspaper back on the table and gets up.
“Because I say so,” Rin replies, bumping their shoulders together, before he walks over to Haru and ruffles his hair. Haru shakes it out of spite.
“No need for that much thinking, Haru.”
“Aw, Haru’s smiling,” Makoto says, smiling innocently himself, the betrayer.
“Am not.”
“Is he? I can never tell, you have to tell me the secret!” Rin starts bothering Makoto, who just teases right back.
And Haru… still gets how change and all the fear of being alone can be paralyzing. But Rin and Makoto have proved to him that he’s less alone now than ever. Apparently, he isn’t even alone for runs anymore. But he finds that he doesn’t terribly mind.
Makoto feels sick to the stomach and he’s pretty sure it’s showing on his face.
After telling their friends about their three-way relationship and getting such a unanimously positive response, Makoto had actually forgotten that such a response still isn’t the norm.
“How can you live like that and not feel guilty?” his friend from university asks him suddenly, tone accusing and expression of shocked disbelief. After the almost five minute lecture about the immorality of not getting your soulmark, it comes so sudden that Makoto is left speechless. Also because he’s been feeling sick to his stomach since at least the halfway point of the lecture, and because he’s overwhelmed and his brain has thought itself into a dead-end because he knows nothing he says will convince the guy.
Someone suddenly pushes the guy two steps away from Makoto, who belatedly recognizes it’s Rin.
“Oi, stupidhead, what bullshit are you saying to my boyfriend, huh?” Rin bares his sharp teeth, and Makoto’s not gonna lie, it is scary to have those teeth flashed at you in a menacing way. He himself hid behind Haru once when Rin was only joking (and had apologized five times after for scaring Makoto).
Haru appears beside Makoto and puts a hand on his shoulder, and inexplicably, he feels himself immediately calm down. Haru’s glare, however, is anything but calm; it’s very dark and murderous, and it makes Makoto shudder, even though it’s directed at Makoto’s friend.
“The hell is your problem?” said friend asks, though it sounds half-affronted and half-scared.
Rin just grabs him by the collar of his shirt, and Makoto knows that’s where he had better step in before they’re all thrown out of the café by the staff. He knows Haru won’t stop Rin - they are both too over-protective for their own good, though secretly, Makoto is very pleased and overflowing with all sorts of warm, fuzzy feelings for his boyfriends.
“Rin, that’s enough,” he says and steps in, putting his hand on Rin’s arm. “I’m fine and he’s scared enough, okay?”
Rin does finally turn to Makoto, and after a brief moment of contemplation, lets go and takes a step back. He still sends the guy a death-glare for good measure.
“You’re all mad,” the guy mutters.
“No,” Makoto says, surprising even himself, “We’re happy the way we are. And if you won’t understand that, I can’t help you.”
With that, he turns away and just leaves, knowing Rin and Haru will follow him.
“You were cool in there, Makoto, kind of really hot,” Rin tells him, grinning. Haru grunts in agreement.
Makoto laughs. “Don’t make fun of me.”
Rin stops him. “I’m not. I swear!”
Makoto looks at him, expression unchanging.
“Okay, maybe a little bit, but I still wanna make out with you now.”
Makoto can feel his cheeks getting red. “We’re in public.”
He sees Haru roll his eyes and Rin’s disbelieving look. “Do you see all these fucks I don’t give?”
And that’s all the warning he gets before Rin’s hands are in his hair and his lips are on Makoto’s. It’s fast and heady and Makoto goes week in the knees because Rin’s so good at what he does with his tongue. It’s over way too soon and Makoto feels dazed. He almost realizes too late when Haru latches onto his throat, leaving a mark and causing Makoto to let slip a little moan.
Which makes him take a step back and flail his arms a little. “Okay, okay, that’s enough, both of you!” His cheeks feel like they’re on fire now, but all Rin and Haru are doing is snickering.
“People are watching,” he complains half-heartedly.
“Of course they are - it’s hot!”
“Rin.”
“Makoto.”
Makoto rolls his eyes in exasperation. Sometimes, his boyfriends are unbelievable. “Let’s go.”
He walks ahead only because he doesn’t want them to see how he’s smiling. It would defeat the whole point of trying to teach them some decency - there could be kids watching, after all.
Rin and Haru catch up, and each of them takes one of Makoto’s hands. Somehow, Makoto doesn’t feel embarrassed. Instead, he feels more reassured than ever before that this is right and he doesn’t need a soulmark to be in love and happy with the right person. And if that person turns out to be two, then that’s what it is.
Maybe, he thinks, it’s time to get a much more voluntary kind of mark.
“How do you feel about a tattoo?”