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College is a bewildering array of numbers. Seconds, reps, calories — there's always something to count, always room for improvement. His coach is impressed with his potential and not much else; apparently his technique is flawed, he doesn't eat nearly enough, and the fact that he's managed to get where he is with little to no dryland training aside from the occasional jog is nothing short of miraculous.
“Just to be clear, this is as far as you could half-ass this thing,” the man tells him with a frown after Haru's first practice, thoroughly disapproving of everything Haru is and does. “You wanna splash around for a couple hours every day for fun, I suggest you go find yourself a nice family-friendly swimming pool right now, 'cause only the big kids get to play in this one.”
“I don't want to have fun,” Haru tells him, even though that's not quite true like that. None of what they just did was fun. Difficult, repetitive, boring, humiliating, challenging, intriguing, painful — yes to all of those. But fun? “I want to compete. I want to win.”
“You're starting to get what this whole thing is about, eh?” Coach says, and all of a sudden he doesn't sound so scary anymore. “We'll see, kid. Get your act together first, then we can start talking about meets.”
And so Haru does just that. He swims, runs, stretches, lifts, eats — even when he doesn't feel like it, even when sleeping an extra hour in the morning or falling into bed without dinner would be so much easier than keeping himself to his schedule.
Some days it feels like it's all he can do to remember his own name; it's hardly surprising he sort of forgets about Yamazaki Sousuke's existence until he receives a cryptic text message a few days before he's set to swim in the Olympic Trials.
Don't screw up.
“Who's this?” Haru asks, showing the text and the unfamiliar kanji signature to Makoto.
Makoto abandons his homework to squint at the phone over the top of his glasses, and then he gives Haru this part fond, part exasperated look.
“I guess that's Yamazaki-kun's way of wishing you good luck.”
“Yamazaki?”
“Yamazaki Sousuke, Haru, honestly.”
“Oh, that guy,” Haru mutters. “Huh.”
“I actually ran into him a few months ago. You remember Araki's housewarming party? Well, I guess you wouldn't, you weren't there. But anyway, Yamazaki-kun was,” Makoto volunteers, apparently under the impression Haru is just bursting with curiosity. “He goes to Hitotsudai now.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“It's only the best business school in the country.”
“Business,” Haru repeats, wrinkling his nose. “Why is he texting me?”
“I don't know, Haru-chan, maybe he's trying to be nice?”
“Nice.”
Makoto sighs. “Are you a parrot? You've been texted good luck by practically everyone you've ever known, what's one more person? Just be polite and say thanks.”
Haru shrugs and saves the number, types:
i won't
Just to get Makoto off his back.
Yamazaki never replies.
Five Olympic and seven World Championships medals, three phone changes, two house moves, a handful of one night stands, and one ill-fated sort-of-relationship later, Haru still has Yamazaki's number when they run into each other at Narita.
“Nanase,” Yamazaki says, nodding at him casually, as if they saw each other every other day and not on a once-per-decade basis.
“You look different,” Haru blurts.
“Were you expecting an eighteen-year-old in a school uniform?” Yamazaki drawls, and if nothing else, the vaguely judgmental tilt of his eyebrows is exactly the same as Haru remembers.
“I wasn't expecting you at all.”
In his mind's eye, Yamazaki Sousuke is a larger than life shadow looming between him and Rin. He's everything Haru isn't, everything a swimmer should be; more of a concept than a real, flesh-and-blood person.
The man in front of him is wearing an expensive dark suit to match the dark circles of sleep-deprivation under his eyes. He smells faintly of cigarette smoke and not at all of chlorine, and Haru feels — strange. He doesn't know people who wear hundred-thousand-yen suits and take international business trips. Yamazaki looks like he could be twenty-five or fifty-five or anything in-between; anyone at all, really, and yet he isn't. He's not just anyone. Something about his dark eyes, the way he's looking at Haru is strongly, achingly familiar.
“Nice job at the Worlds,” Yamazaki says. It sounds sincere enough, but he's clearly just saying it for the sake of saying something.
Haru can't stand small talk.
“Look, my flight's been delayed.”
“That's unfortunate,” Yamazaki says noncommittally.
Haru thinks, screw this, and he's about to turn and leave Yamazaki standing there in the middle of the airport with his designer briefcase and his sensible haircut, but then Yamazaki shakes his head and smirks, the asshole.
“Come on, Little Prince, you can do better than that.”
Haru rolls his eyes — at the embarrassing press nickname; at Yamazaki's stupid, smug face; at the joke that is his life.
“I'm not going to beg.”
“Oh,” Yamazaki murmurs, “I wouldn't be so sure about that.”
Yamazaki's fit, by regular-people standards. He's nowhere near as cut as he was in high school; not like Haru is, not like the last two guys Haru's been with.
“I work twelve to sixteen hours a day,” Yamazaki explains, making a face as Haru runs a hand over his flat, winter-pale stomach; the coarse dark hair under his navel. “Take it or leave it.”
His insecurity, frank and sardonic as it is, is strangely endearing.
“I don't care,” Haru tells him honestly, and draws him down, down — onto the crisp hotel sheets, into a languid kiss which seems to go on forever.
“I've always, always wanted to do this,” Yamazaki admits, barely audible, into the damp skin of Haru's shoulder.
They're not in water, yet Yamazaki still looks at him like he's a miracle.
Yamazaki snorts. “Are you kidding? Of course I knew you were gay.”
“Oh,” Haru says. “I had no idea.”
“Because you're a socially inept weirdo,” Yamazaki explains. “Like Rin. I knew you were and I knew he wasn't.”
“And yet...” Haru trails off, unable and sort of reluctant to finish that sentence.
Yamazaki frowns. It's late; later than they were meaning to stay. Haru feels sated and lazy down to the marrow of his bones; the sort of exhaustion only a good workout or good sex provides.
“I didn't transfer because I thought I had a chance with him,” Yamazaki says thoughtfully. “I knew he was all about finding a nice girl, marrying young, having kids; the whole shebang. I actually liked that about him. That naïve country boy wholesomeness under all his bad boy bullshit. By the way, have you met Manami yet?”
“Only if Skype counts. My English is terrible, though.”
“It can't be worse than her Japanese. I'm sure you guys will hit it off at the wedding, she's cool.”
“I don't want to talk about Rin's wedding,” Haru says, sliding a leg between Yamazaki's longer ones.
Yamazaki's eyes are tide pools of night ocean in the near darkness of the room, his large hand hot and heavy in the small of Haru's back.
“Don't be that guy, Nanase.”
“I won't. I'm not,” Haru insists, because he usually isn't. He loves Rin like a brother these days; the way he should, the same way Rin loves him.
But that doesn't mean it isn't painful to take the occasional trip down memory lane; to remember how foolish he once was, how hopeful.
“You should fuck me again,” he tells Yamazaki, tasting the salt in the hollow of his throat.
“Because Rin won't?” Yamazaki asks carefully.
“No. Because I want you to.”
Two World Championships, a vacation, and a wedding later, he still has Yamazaki's number. He also has an office phone number, an e-mail address, and a spare key — the only item on the list he uses with any sort of regularity.
“See, socially adept people just call or text if they want something,” Yamazaki tells him from the couch as he watches Haru kick off his sneakers by the door. He says this whenever Haru shows up out of the blue, which is just about every time he shows up at all.
“Socially adept people must not have enough sex,” Haru replies solemnly — he also has lines in this play.
They don't talk about the edible things in Yamazaki's fridge, or the recently revived cactus on his kitchen table, because talking about them would inevitably result in talking about the perpetually growing collection of too-small jeans and t-shirts in Yamazaki's bedroom drawers.
“I suppose you'll never change.” Yamazaki sighs at him, shaking his head sadly.
“I'm beyond hope,” Haru agrees, settling into his lap. “Completely incapable of change. Too set in my ways.”
“Damn right.”
They make out on the couch until two in the morning, when Yamazaki starts making noises about having to get up in four hours and being 'too old for this adolescent dry humping crap.'
It's a good life.