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The first time Nanase Haruka stands on the starting block at an Olympic freestyle swimming event, he is elated.
There’s something about standing there, with that wide blue expanse of water stretching out before him for what feels like miles, sparkling and clean underneath the high lights of the stadium. There’s something about standing there, waiting for the buzzer, the tension of anticipation stringing up his body tighter than a violin. There’s something about knowing that if he turned his head to the right, Rin would be standing there, itching to jump and ready to dive into Australia’s lane with the fire and force of a thousand stars. There’s something about knowing that if he tilted his head up, maybe half an inch, that out of the corner of his eye, he’d be able to see Makoto up in the stands.
There’s something about knowing Makoto is there. The love of his life. Makoto standing there, supporting him, guiding him, and he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’ll swim now better than the world has ever seen him swim before. The opposite end of the pool is solid and so reachable. It’s so within his grasp.
I’ll win, he thinks. I’ll win and I’ll look up and he’ll be there.
The buzzer sounds, and he kicks off the starting block, and he cuts through the water like a sharpened knife through thin air.
--
The buzzer of Haruka’s alarm is jarring, and he reflexively snaps his wrist out from under the covers to silence it. He groans at the red numbers that glare back at him through the darkness, hates himself for getting up so damn early every morning, but throws off his covers to face the chilly air like an adult.
He starts every morning like this. He wakes up before the crack of dawn, showers, brushes his teeth, and starts his short trek downtown to open up the café. Not much has changed in the last four years, not since he started his business straight out of culinary school with a loan and a prayer, and his routine is ingrained in his nerves and his senses to the point that he barely thinks about it anymore.
Haruka thinks about it, today. Very passingly, but he does.
He steps into his cramped little shower (he hates the shower, the hot water in his apartment smells funny and leaves his skin feeling barely cleaner than it was when he got in) and starts to remember bits and pieces of something as the water drives down on the back of his neck. It doesn’t even feel like a memory, or even a dream, but more snippets of a movie he saw a long time ago, something that isn’t his, not completely. Green eyes, cool air, but the hot water pushes those thoughts away, invades his head with steam and heat, and he shuts off the tap, eager to get away from the smell of mold and the same boring soap he uses every day.
The walk to Future Fish is a pleasant one, especially when Haruka knows it better than the backs of his own hands. There’s a bit of a curve through an alleyway, down two main roads, a shortcut that crosses the train tracks, turn the corner, and bam, Future Fish Café, specializing in coffee, tea, and baked goods. The sun is just starting to lift itself above the horizon as Haruka pulls out his keys mechanically, unlocking the front door and flipping the CLOSED sign to OPEN.
Future Fish is his baby, really, it’s his piece of the world right on the corner of the street. If you walk about five minutes away from it, you get to the ocean, and on either side, there are the trendy teenage hangout spots, the record shops and comic books stores, the bustling neighborhood always alight with activity on any given day. Future Fish is Haruka’s cornerstone, and he’s not entirely sure what he’d do without it.
So he sets up for the day, starts wiping down the tables and setting out the chairs, turns on all the display lights, arranges all the pre-made doughnuts and tarts and brownies and biscuits, refills the sugar holders, and he waits as the world yawns awake outside for his day to begin, just as it always does.
--
But it’s different this time around. Very negligibly, but it is, because he’s got regulars that he’s starting to recognize. Not that he doesn’t typically recognize them – they are regulars, after all – but he means recognize them, from places that he shouldn’t be recognizing them from. The front door bell rings at 9:30 every other morning, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Haruka instinctively knows to get out two coffees – one black and the other with cream and sugar – and two identical slices of cinnamon coffee cake. Those two.
“Mornin’, Nanase!” Matsuoka Rin drops himself on one of the barstools like it’s rightfully his and anybody who even considers sitting in it is a sinner. He takes off his cap and sets it down on the counter, shakes out his locks of red hair, and his partner comes up to lean against it the counter beside him. “The usual, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all.” Haruka says, already sliding the piping-hot beverages toward them.
They’re police from the kiosk about two blocks away, Officers Matsuoka Rin and Yamazaki Sousuke, friendly local faces and perpetual married couple by association. The two of them probably frequent Future Fish the most, as the cinnamon coffee cake is abundant and their duties less so, and they liven up the room like a harsh ray of sun through a window whenever they meander in.
“You put anymore sugar in Rin’s drink and he’s gonna start getting cavities.” Sousuke jeers as he takes his own drink and breakfast before Rin can swipe it away from him. Sousuke’s not as hot-tempered as Rin, but he’s a huge guy, which is most of the reason why he refuses to sit when he comes in. Rin insists on sitting at the counter and Sousuke insists that it cramps his legs. Unsurprisingly, Rin wins out on that debate, because as determined as they both are, Sousuke is less determined to eat alone when he can eat with a friend.
“Just because a man likes to put cream and sugar in his coffee doesn’t make his coffee order less legitimate!” Rin huffs, stuffing a large forkful of coffee cake in his face. “Your breakfast is bitter like your soul.”
Sousuke’s grin is lopsided and familiar. “That one’s new, I’ll have to file it away.”
Haruka likes the two of them a lot, even if they can get a little rowdy for how early in the morning it is. They’re good cops, and they clearly like each other in a way that makes it okay to rag on each other constantly, so Haruka feels kind of proud that they decide to spend their time together at his café. “Anything interesting happen lately?” he asks as a way of making small talk, and he knows he’s in for a good story when Rin and Sousuke groan simultaneously.
“I swear, if we get one more old lady with a cat problem.” Sousuke says, glancing at Rin for some sort of support, and Rin just widens his eyes and nods understandingly.
“This one’s gonna kill you, Nanase, I promise.” He says, and Haruka listens.
--
He showers at night, too. Being clean is worth more than the awful heat smell in his bathroom, he figures, but it’s only worth slightly more. He stands under the spray of the shower and tries to resist the urge to rest his head against the shower’s side, because he’s not entirely sure how clean nor how comfortable it is. He settles for shutting his eyes and trying to wash away the sore kinks in his back through willpower alone.
Behind the darkness of his eyelids, though, he starts seeing things, pulling up images from thin air, recovered from some memory bank that he’s pretty sure isn’t his. There’s water, water everywhere around him, water in front of him and below him, and to his side, nothing but red, stark red, bleeding red, intense red, and then –
Rin.
His eyes pop open on their own, because he’s not supposed to be thinking about the nice police officer from down the street in the shower, but he realizes, suddenly, that it wasn’t really a weird thing, just… that Rin had been there. That Haruka had been somewhere entirely unnatural, and for some reason, the cop guy had been there too. Tufts of red hair popping out from underneath some sort of… was it a hairnet? No, no, it was… a cap?
A swimming cap.
“Why am I thinking about swimming with a police officer?” he mumbles to himself, and he shuts off the tap, one part frustrated and nine parts exhausted. He towels off his hair and shuts off the television in his bedroom, opting to crawl into bed early and try to push as much from his mind as he can. The kitchen light is still on, but he falls asleep anyway, and he’ll wake up in the morning to the same damn thing.
--
But in between this and that, he dreams. He dreams of red hair, fiery red hair, a fiery soul and cherry blossoms and teal. Teal? He dreams of teal.
He’s standing in an airport in Australia, and he’s standing outside of a school. He’s standing in the middle of the night, and the stark light of day, standing in front of a sea of pink and white that isn’t even describable, that he can’t seem to put into words. So he dives into it, and so does that fiery red light.
It’s a pool, he realizes. The pinks and the whites and the beautiful wafting layers of light are gone, replaced by the calm ebb and flow of a blue, crystal clear, blue, blue pool. Floating on his back while that red, that burning red light, that Matsuoka Rin, freestyle and butterfly swimmer for the Australian Olympic team and childhood friend of Haruka’s, climbs out, dripping wet and eager to meet teal eyes, dark hair, standing near the edge of the room, a tall man, a dark man, a man whose legs cramp easily and whose eyes betray a content sadness. Rin leans up and kisses him, or the man leans down and kisses Rin.
There is a love there that Haruka doesn’t question, but he doesn’t know anyone with teal eyes like that.
He wakes up and smacks his buzzer, and already the details of the dream are starting to allude him, but the color red sticks in his mind, as does a greenish-blue, but he doesn’t think too deeply about it. That Wednesday, Rin and Sousuke come in again with raring stories, a group of teenagers throwing empty cans against a fence in the middle of the night, and Haruka loses his focus, just a little, when Sousuke stares at Rin with deep, teal eyes.
--
Every once in a while, after the noontime lunch rush dies down some and only a few stragglers are left behind finishing off their brownies and cold teas, a mop of blond hair, a tight ball of energy likes to poke its head through Future Fish’s door and call, “Haru-chan!”
“Welcome back, Hazuki-san.” Haruka calls from the back of the bakery. “I told you to stop calling me that.”
He emerges, wiping flour off of his hands, just as Nagisa approaches the counter and leans himself as far over as he can, grinning like he won the lottery or adopted an entire kennel full of puppies. “Don’t you think it’s cute, though?” he asks teasingly, and winks. “And I told you to call me Nagisa. Or Nagi-chan, or Nagi-kun… or Na-Na! That’d be cute. Call me what you want, I don’t mind.”
“I will, Hazuki-san.” Haruka says, mostly as a joke, but his deadpan delivery makes Nagisa pout. “What are you bouncing around for, anyway? I mean, you’re energetic typically, but this is a whole new ballpark. Raspberry tea?”
“Please!” Nagisa pipes up, and he stretches his arms over the counter while Haruka turns away to make his tea. “I actually came in today just so I could tell you! It’s super, super exciting, okay, you’re gonna totally lose your mind when you hear what it – oh my gosh, did you start making strawberry shortcake?”
Haruka adds a packet or two of sweetener to Nagisa tea and glances over his shoulder to where the blond is practically plastered against the glass of the display case, eyeing the new desserts with childlike wonder. He hums. “I figured I should start. It’s been popular lately, a lot of people seem to like it.” He slides the tea across the counter, and Nagisa doesn’t even tear his eyes from the cake as he takes it. “I’ll strike you a deal. If your story is as interesting as you say, I’ll give you a slice on the house.”
“Ooh, Haru-chan, that’s a bet that you’re destined to lose then!” Nagisa finally drags his attention away from the cake and grins. “You know how I went all around town a couple of weeks ago doing cast calls? Got up at four in the morning and wasn’t able to come in here for a while? Do you remember that?”
“Yeah, kind of.” He kind of doesn’t.
“Well,” Nagisa starts, dragging out the vowel like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do, before taking a careful and long sip of his tea. Haruka quirks his eyebrow, completely unsurprised at Nagisa’s dramatic antics (he is an actor, after all.) Nagisa gently places the teacup back into the saucer before exploding, “I got the part! Or, uh, one of the parts, but I got a part! Isn’t that exciting? I got the lead in a new TV show!” He grins from ear to ear. “How awesome is that, Haru-chan?”
To be honest, it is pretty awesome, and Haruka isn’t the kind of man to belittle the accomplishments of others. “That’s cool.” He says flatly, and Nagisa all but deflates, resting his head on the surface of the counter like a dejected puppy. “Hey, c’mon, it’s very cool. I’m sorry, enthusiasm and I mix like oil and water.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” Nagisa huffs.
While Nagisa’s distracted, he starts pulling out one of the slices of strawberry cake out of the display case. “Do you know who you’ll be playing? What does the part entail?”
“I guess I’m playing an astronaut or something, but it’s no big deal.” Nagisa sighs, and he doesn’t even look up again until Haruka nudges the plate of cake against his head.
“It’s on the house.” Haruka tells him, and he perks up, grabbing the fork Haruka offers him.
“I know, it is pretty awesome, isn’t it?” he chirps.
--
He dreams that night of pink.
It’s a bouncy sort of pink, a pink brimming with energy and love and so much spark that it’s almost hard for Haruka to look at. It’s the kind of pink that sometimes dims, but never goes out completely, that always comes roaring back to life with the right amount of poking and prodding.
“I want to swim like you do.” Blond hair, big smile. Haruka floats underwater, and he hears laughter from the surface.
There are numbers, too, numbers and equations and books and calculations. A long and arduous, determined, beautiful purple. It’s the most beautiful of all the colors he’s seen so far, Haruka thinks, regal and gentle and it mingles with the pink light with an air of familiarity and grace and warmth. “I want to swim like you do,” he hears again, but quieter, more subdued, more private.
Twice, “I want to swim like you do.”
At the edge of the pool, there’s Rin and Sousuke again, and they wave to him as he breaches the surface like they’ve known each other for ages. Haruka blinks as he stares at them, shakes the water out of his hair, and turns around.
“Haru-chan!” Nagisa calls to him from the edge of the pool. “You’ll catch a cold if you stay in there any longer, come on!” There’s a man standing next to him, a strangely familiar man, with red glasses and dark hair, standing close to Nagisa.
His alarm goes off and he feels frustrated.
--
On Friday, Rin and Sousuke are already sitting at the counter when another of Haruka’s regulars strides on in, quietly takes a stool a space away from them, and Haruka’s throat goes dry. In the back of the mind, there is a burning, vibrant purple curling around the man, his red glasses, his serious expression.
“The usual, please, Nanase-san.” The young man says, carefully removing a notebook from his bag. He opens it up and Haruka can see numbers, equations, logic that he couldn’t even begin to understand, no matter how long he studied in school, so he just goes about making the same tea and tart that the man always orders. Ryugazaki Rei comes in every Friday, always on Friday, and he writes in his notebook and he frowns and he’s silent.
“How’s your dissertation thing coming along, Ryugazaki?” Rin asks as he sips at his coffee, staring at Rei’s notebook like it’s in an entirely different language. Rei scribbles notes into the margins of the pages in handwriting so small it’s a wonder he can decode it at all.
“Fine, officer.” He says curtly. “Slowly but fine. How are things at the kiosk?”
Sousuke leans over. “Slow as shit,” which earns him a sharp jab in the side from Rin’s elbow, and he snickers and returns to his coffee cake. Rei’s writing pauses for barely a millisecond at the vulgarity before continuing, and he doesn’t speak again until the bell rings from the front door.
“Good moooorning!”
“Oh, no,” is what Rei says – or mumbles, that is.
Nagisa’s quick to claim the last available barstool between Rei and Rin. He plops himself down and leans over Rei’s shoulder almost immediately, and Haruka kind of finds it funny how Rei’s expression implies distaste, but how his body language doesn’t seem to mind the intrusion of his space at all. “Still working on your paper thing, Rei-chan? Wow,” he picks the notebook up and completely ignores Rei’s indignant spluttering (and Rin’s snickering, but that’s beside the point,) “I don’t even know what half of this stuff means! Does this stuff even mean anything?”
“They’re complex biochemical equations, Hazuki-kun –”
“Nagisa!” Nagisa chimes, and Rei rolls his eyes.
“Like I said, Nagisa-kun,” Rei continues, “they involve many years of study to understand and I don’t have time to explain them, so can you give my notebook back.” Nagisa holds the notebook out and lets Rei snatch it back just as his tea and cake arrives, and he finds himself otherwise occupied from that point onward.
“Hard to understand, huh?” Haruka mumbles, letting his mouth move for him in a way that he’s not used to, and he says, “I like simpler things, I guess. Like, uh… like swimming.”
There’s a lull in the conversation suddenly as Rei focuses on his notebook and Nagisa focuses on his cake, but Rin and Sousuke seem to seriously consider the thought for a moment. Haruka wonders if maybe they’ll surprise him, say they were on their high school swim team, anything that could justify these weird dreams, but when Rin does speak up –
“I never was big on swimming.” He says, shrugging one shoulder. Sousuke nods in agreement, and Rin waves his hand noncommittally. “Yeah, it never seemed like one of the cool sports in school or anything? I jumped back and forth between sports teams a lot, but I was never on the swim team.”
“Yeah, my high school didn’t even have a swim team.” Nagisa says through mouthfuls of strawberry and frosting. “There wasn’t enough funding, or petitioning, or something like that? No skin off my nose, I guess, I had the drama club.”
“I can’t even imagine having enough time for something as frivolous as swimming.” Rei grumbles.
Haruka is silent for a second, and then says, “Yeah, I… yeah. Me neither.”
He’s not sure he can admit to himself that he’s a little bit disappointed.
--
But still, he dreams about it. He dreams about swimming, and he doesn’t know why, but he’s happy about it.
It’s not the swimming part that makes him so happy, he’s pretty sure – it’s like that bit’s a vehicle, a suspension of his real life through which he enjoys this new one. This new, foreign, alien… familiar life, where Officer Matsuoka is Matsuoka Rin, Australian gold medalist, and his husband, Yamazaki Sousuke, or is it Officer Yamazaki? And now, his dreams are expanding, and suddenly Hazuki Nagisa, struggling actor and sugar addict, is a master of the breaststroke and… still a sugar addict, to be honest, but he’s swimming. And the sour-faced boy writing his dissertation, he’s passionate and driven and swims butterfly and is attached to Nagisa at the hip, and –
Haruka is swimming. He is suspended, and he is swimming. There’s something missing here, and he’s not sure what it is, but there’s a piece of this picture that’s missing. They’re lined up on the edge of the pool like they’re waiting for him to join them for the walk home, but there’s a… there’s a hole. There’s a hole. Haruka stares at it, and he wonders what should be there, what is meant to –
Then his world is green. It is a vibrant, loving, incredible, all-encompassing green, everything he sees and hears and tastes and feels, suddenly, all of it is –
He wakes up, and he can’t remember.
--
He takes cold showers in the morning, and he wakes up feeling angry. Angry at himself, angry at his business, angry at his customers, angry at his life. What is he doing to himself? He knows he’s not some Olympic swimmer, that he’s not a nationally-acclaimed athlete, but why is he beating himself up over that? He owns the most popular café in town, baking is everything he is, everything he’s ever wanted to be, so why this sudden notion of swimming?
He wakes up, now, with a void in his heart. There’s a groove, like a piece is missing, like a hole, like a giant, gaping hole, like he should be waking up warm, like he should be taking baths and not showers, like there should be arms around him. There’s a hole and he’s not sure what’s supposed to fill it.
Each night, his dreams seem hazier and hazier, and the answer seems to elude him more and more with each passing day. Nagisa leaves to start shooting the pilot for his TV show, Rei stops coming in as the deadline for his paper approaches, there’s a sudden influx of old ladies getting their cats stuck in trees with keeps Rin and Sousuke occupied, for the most part, and Haruka stares at unfamiliar patrons with a burning desire to know.
One night, he dreams about the green again. When he wakes up, his body is hot, and he can’t explain why. It’s like he’s on fire, and he needs to desperately put the futile, confusing, unrelenting flame to rest, so he takes cold showers in the morning, and he goes to work bitter.
The fire department gets involved in the weird cat thing. Haruka’s reading a magazine behind the counter on a particularly slow day, and he looks up as someone politely clears their throat, and he swallows hard as he looks into the greenest eyes he’s ever seen in his life.
“Um,” the man starts timidly, which seems out of character for his large build and broad shoulders, but his eyes droop at the sides and his smile is so genuine and Haruka is ready to hear whatever he has to say, “can I get a green tea? And, uh,” he points through the display case at a slice of chocolate cake, “one of those, but maybe a little smaller?”
Haruka stares for a minute or two more, because something tells him that that warm light, that pervading green that’s been haunting him, something about this guy is the answer to his problems, and he smiles sheepishly, and Haruka just knows. “Sure.” He says, as coolly as ever, and grabs a mug to start on the tea. “What’s your name? I haven’t seen you around before.”
The man seems a bit surprised to be asked for his name. “Uh, Tachibana Makoto. I’m with the fire department.” He looks down and realizes he’s still wearing yellow-striped black uniform pants and a shirt emblazoned with the fire department's insignia, and he laughs quietly. “You probably gathered that, though, didn’t you?”
Haruka had been distracted, to be honest, but he still says, “Yeah, kinda.”
He slides the slice of chocolate cake out of the display case and takes a knife to it, carefully cutting it in half while still keeping its aesthetic integrity intact. “Is it about all those cats getting stuck in trees? I have a couple of cops who are regulars, they keep mentioning it.”
Makoto laughs, and he takes the slice of cake graciously. “Actually, it’s only one cat that seems to really dislike its owner, poor lady. She keeps calling the police to help her with it, but that’s not really their department, so they started forwarding her calls to me.” He looks around the shop with a small smile on his face. “I’ve never had the chance to be around this neighborhood, but I like it. You have a nice business here.”
“Thanks. I’m trying to get my PR team to come up with better advertising than using an old woman and a cat to lure people in, but hey, it’s working so far.” That earns him a laugh from the cute firefighter, and he considers it a success. He slides the green tea across the counter, tries his best not to stare at Makoto’s arms (because wow, suddenly everything makes so much sense) and decides to make up stuff on the spot. “Newcomers get their first order on the house. Thanks for coming by, Tachibana-san.”
“Thank you for your service!” Makoto insists, and he takes the tea and cake and says, “And you can call me Makoto, I don’t mind.”
Haruka smiles, only a little bit, and says, “Okay, Makoto.”
--
When he dreams that night, it’s much sharper and more vivid, it’s that same shade of green but only clearer, and he finds himself back on the starting block, staring into the blue waters of that open, expansive pool.
He’s not listening for the buzzer anymore. He turns his head to the right, and he sees Rin, the flashes of red from underneath his cap, tense and excited and ready, and not far away from him in the stands, Sousuke is there to support him. In the stands straight ahead of him, Nagisa and Rei are together, and they’re jumping and yelling his name, and Rin’s name, and basically just yelling nonsensically, but they look so excited and so happy.
And he turns his head to the left. And there he is.
When he sees Makoto, the pool seems to leave him. He’s not on the starting block anymore, but he’s standing in the middle of an empty apartment, with a tall, green-eyed man standing in the doorway. Makoto is smiling, and Haruka feels a swelling in his heart, because there’s so much space and he knows there’s enough room for two.
Makoto passes him, and the room goes dark. Haruka isn’t frightened, but he knows something is different, even without seeing it, knows that something is new and… yes. He rubs his thumb over it once, twice, but he knows, even without looking at it, the distinct curve and weight of a wedding band on his finger, and it’s so oddly comforting, even if this doesn’t technically feel like his life. He brings it up to his mouth on instinct, and suddenly he’s on his back, and there are lips against his, and he knows who’s pressing him into the mattress and he likes it, likes it more than he likes anything else in the world, and this weight and frame above him doesn’t feel foreign at all. He loops his arms around the shoulders of a man he barely knows, subconsciously adores, Makoto makes love to him and it’s sweet and it’s sincere and it’s his and he wants this.
He wakes up in a cold sweat a half hour before his alarm is set to go off. His shower is freezing, but clean, sharp, and for once it doesn’t smell like mold and he wishes he could jump into a pool and let himself sink to the bottom because of this happiness weighing his heart down.
He looks at his life, looks at the unoccupied space, and imagines what it could be like. And suddenly, he sees the world in bursts of new color.
--
Makoto comes in every day that week. He always gets a green tea, and a slightly smaller slice of chocolate cake, and he makes small talk with Haruka, and the way he smiles crinkles the corners of those droopy eyes of his. Those arms would feel nice around me, Haruka thinks. That chest would feel nice against my back.
“I won’t be working tomorrow, so I don’t think I’ll be in.” Makoto tells him as the week is nearing its close, and Haruka tries his best not to panic as he slices the cake that he’s become used to serving this man that his subconscious has decided is his, this man who may not even like him at all, he doesn’t know. “Looks like my weekend’s going to be pretty boring.”
“Me too.” Haruka says, handing over the cake. “I spend so much of my time here, it’s almost like I forgot how to spend time away from the place. I normally just watch TV and clean or something boring like that.”
Makoto nods as he listens, and he takes his tea, tight-lipped for some reason and staring at his hands. Haruka hesitates as he rings up Makoto’s order, punches in the numbers and takes his money, the same amount of money he always uses to pay, and the cash register spits out his receipt unceremoniously.
Haruka grabs a pen from the mug under the counter and rips off the receipt.
“Here’s your change.” He says, handing the money over to Makoto like he always does. “And… and your receipt.”
Makoto blinks, like he’s been awoken from a trance. “You didn’t need to do that. I don’t really like receipts…” he eyes the receipt and sees the number scrawled on the bottom, and finishes with a weak, “…anyway.”
Haruka urges it toward him, and he takes it, staring at the number like he’s unbelievably lucky, incapable of comprehending what just happened to him, and Haruka clears his throat awkwardly. “There’s, uh. There’s a two for one special at the movies tomorrow, if you… if you want to come.”
Makoto stares at the phone number and brings his eyes up to Haruka slowly, still surprised, but Haruka knows he’s in when his face breaks out into a grin and he says, “I’d love to.”
--
Haruka doesn’t dream about the Olympics anymore.
They were nice dreams, but they’re not him. Or maybe they are him, but not the him he knows. The him he knows loves baking, and hates his shower, and gets up way too early but knows it’s worth it in the end to do what he loves. He’s proud of the him that goes to the Olympics, if he really exists, but swimming for Haruka was just a suspension through which to understand the life in front of him better.
He feels like he owes the Haruka at the Olympics, a little bit, for showing him a path, but then figures that’s crazy, and leaves it be.
The buzzer of his alarm goes off at 3:30, and he groans, his arm slower than usual to leave the warm blanket cocoon around him and tap the snooze button. He feels like an idiot, because it’s Sunday and Future Fish doesn’t open on Sundays, so now it’s just 3:30 in the morning and he’s awake for no reason.
It’s been a year, now, a year since Nagisa went to film his astronaut pilot, and now he’s got a movie deal, and all he ever does is tell his celebrity friends about the great café in his neighborhood, and suddenly Haruka’s got too much business to deal with. Ryugazaki Rei has his doctorate, and is a respected member in his field of science whatever, Haruka’s too tired to care at the moment, but he’s proud of the purple-eyed boy with the red glasses, and he knows that he’s still in touch with Nagisa, too, so there’s something a little extra sweet on the side.
Rin and Sousuke still come in, but they don’t bicker as much. They still do, no doubt about it, but they hold their own quiet conversations, and they smile more. Sousuke’s eyes aren’t so sad, Rin’s fire is still bright but less wild.
And Haruka is still awake at 3:30 in the morning on a Sunday, so for all that sentimentality, he figures it really doesn’t mean all that much in the end. There’s a grunt from behind him and the arm around his middle pulls him closer to the warm chest behind him, and he revels in the feeling of it, the feeling of soft lips pressing against the back of his neck, the low rumble of a voice in his ears.
“Did you set your alarm on a Sunday, Haru?”
“Yeah,” he mumbles, laying his arm over Makoto’s, lacing their fingers together, and Makoto nuzzles the back of neck, “sorry.”
“S’fine.” Makoto tells him warmly, and he kisses the side of his jaw. “Go back to sleep though.” He heaves a giant yawn, before mumbling, “I’ll make breakfast in a couple of hours. Get your rest.”
Haruka smiles to himself, to the red numbers of his alarm clock, and his dumb little cramped shower, to his business and his friends and his regulars, to the colors of his life, and he says, “Okay, Makoto,” and he drifts off again, content.