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Sometimes people ask Haruka if he’s jealous in varying degrees of pity, but he doesn’t understand why he should be.
haru, can we move dinner back by an hour or so? i’m really sorry!
homework?
actually rin is in town! he surprised me! i’m sure he’ll call you soon!
Haruka already knows this. He stowed a jittery, caffeinated Rin away in his apartment for the night to help facilitate the surprise.
“Why would you buy an espresso at 10 PM?”
“Oh shut up. I’m nervous.”
It was a night nothing short of agony.
He’s always been the piece that makes the three of them whole even though everyone assumes he can’t be anything more than a prop. People can see what they want to see when they look at him; Haruka only looks for their smiles.
He finds their smiles tucked around the corners of the dimly lit streets when they attend the festival in the summer. Haruka watches the immovable stars contend with the fleeting fireworks while they watch each other well into the night.
He finds their smiles in the kitchen where Rin guides Makoto’s hands over whisks and knives and spatulas before he spins him around into a slow dance in lieu of correcting him too harshly. Haruka slips in behind them and finishes the meal with a song in the back of his throat to keep rhythm.
He finds their smiles at the airport underneath Rin’s tears of both departure and arrival. Hundreds of them are woven into Makoto’s gentle welcome home, I missed you and I’m proud of you, I’ll see you soon. Haruka lets Rin hug him too tightly, and offers his shoulder to Makoto who never needs to take it.
When they’re apart they smile that much wider into the webcam so the other can feel it over the ocean that separates them. When they’re close, they’re smaller and private and no less a source of amazement for the sheer volume they share.
Haruka looks for their smiles because they’re not always visible, and if anyone knows anything about that, it’s him.
If anyone knows anything about Haruka, it’s them.
They don’t have to include Haruka, as it implies they ever considered exclusion to begin with. Haruka ebbs and flows from them, never quite out of reach and never quite wrapped completely around them. They would always have him there if he asked, though he enjoys the freedom to come and go as he pleases.
They don’t have to look for his smile in the ways he looks for theirs, because Haruka’s is never hiding, not to Rin or Makoto. He lets them see it in his movements, his swimming, his light teasing. They don’t doubt for a moment that he is happy, not like they used to.
They don’t have to worry about Haruka, and perhaps that makes him happiest of all. He’s a part of them; they always know where he is and how he’s feeling. There’s no less room for him now than there was before.
There’s more. More space for him than he could ever hope to fill. Because they love him differently than they love each other, but not any less, and that’s a lot of love to live up to. That’s all there is to them, that’s all they’ve ever considered.
If jealousy is resentment and envy over a foundation of inadequacy, then there just isn’t room for that in a heart made up of three equal parts. No room for it when there’s more love than he knows what to do with already waiting and vying for his attention.
He usually lets himself in, but this time knocks on Makoto’s door for dinner out of respect for their privacy, since he isn’t ignorant to the few things they don’t share. Rin answers with a smile he makes no effort to hide this time.
“Hey jackass, we made your favorite smelly fish,” he greets with a warmth that wraps Haruka up from the soles of his shoes to the top of his head. He smells the offering on the air wafting out to mingle into the cold at his back. “So get in here because we’re starving and you’re late.”
He huffs and lets Rin usher him in with an eager hand at his wrist that soon finds its home across his shoulders, and Makoto lights up like the fireworks of the summer festival at the sight up him. He wonders if their gestures will ever stop feeling like the weightlessness he feels in the water, and supposes it’ll always feel that way so long as they’re all in it together.
So when people ask Haruka if he’s jealous in varying degrees of pity, not only does he not understand why he should be.
He tells them he doesn’t understand how he could be.