Title: Red
Fandom: Free!
Pairing: RinHaru
Author: Sieppeli/Snidged
Genre: Drama, Romance, Fluff
Rating: S
A/N I’m joining the large group of: “I’m inspired by Halsey’s Colors” with this fic. And I should be doing everything else, but I’m not going to get things like studying done if I don’t get this story out of my head. Warning: Doesn’t actually contain anything new. I bet that you’ve read similar things like 102 times already.
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Haru was afraid of the color red.
Everyone had their own colors: Makoto was green, Nagisa was yellow, but it all changed when Rin came to their lives. Suddenly everything started turning red. First Haru’s friends, then the pool, then the world, everything was red. It was like Rin sucked all the colors out of the world, chancing everything in that bright, suffocating red.
The color didn’t leave Haru alone even when Rin left to Australia. For the longest time, everything was still red. But finally, everything started returning to their normal colors. Makoto was green again, the water blue, the world was the same as it has always been.
The world was boring again.
Nothing was red. There was no point to keep going, no point for the future, no point in swimming. Haru was too scared to move on, to live on, because nothing was red. Even with all the other colors, he knew he was missing that one color which couldn’t be replaced with Makoto’s green, nor Nagisa’s yellow. Without red, he lost his own color too. What had he been, had he ever been anything? Now there was only gray. Nothing was red, and without red he was without colors.
When he himself turned grey, so did the world. The water was grey, he didn’t want to swim. Makoto was grey, Haru didn’t want to laugh with him. Food was grey, he didn’t want to eat it. The world was boring to him, all grey.
But Rin came back, but even he was as grey as the rest of the world, yet Haru saw a sparkle of that red he used to wear. The color of his hair, the redness of Rin’s eyes, they were still there, and when their eyes met there was a fire in those eyes. Yet it was small, almost like the last fire of the night at the campfire, when the stories where told and the sun had already settled down. There was no more warmness to light up to whole room, but you could still start of a new fire from that small flame.
So did happen to Rin too. Little by little, his color returned, slowly, too slowly. His fire was so small, so ready to leave the world forever, never to be ignited again and so was his color. For the first time, Haru wasn’t afraid of the color red, but he was afraid that it would leave the world. He wanted redness to return, and it did. Finally, when they swam the relay together, the world was full of colors again. Makoto was green again, Nagisa was yellow, and Rei, the new teammate, Haru finally saw his color too, which was beautiful purple, the most beautiful purple Haru had ever seen. But the color he liked the most was the red, which had finally returned to Rin as he laughed with the team and pulled Makoto and Haru to the warmest of wet hugs he could give.
Finally, thought Haru, as he leaned to the hug with his team. Finally the world was as it was supposed to be.
Soon the world started turning red again, just like years later. Everything Haru touched seemed to already be red, but this time it didn’t bother him that much. Even the air was red if Rin was there, and Haru kind of got used to it, used to swim with Rin, used to have him around him, used to have Rin’s arm on his shoulder. It was kind of like it was meant to be. The world was totally consumed by the red color, and as he finally allowed himself too to be totally consumed by the color, he finally felt happy. There had been no reason to be afraid of the redness, he thought, as he fell asleep watching the person sleeping next to him. It was all fine. Haru liked the fact that his whole world had turned red.
It was warm sleeping next to Rin. In Australia things had been different as they had lacked the physical contact but now when even Haru’s dreams had turned red, it was cozy and Haru didn’t like the fact that he woke up alone in the bed.
“Rin?” His voice was still soft as he hadn’t evenr really woken up yet. Haru was somewhere between his red dreams and the red reality. The only thing he knew was the fact that the other person wasn’t there next to him. His hand just touched the empty mattress, which was still warm next to him.
“Oi. You’re awake too?” The person who was not where he should have been said and as Haru turned around on the bed he saw Rin standing just few steps away from him. His red hair was a mess, red eyes were focused on Haru, lips still red from all those kisses they shared just few hours before, but the shirt on him wasn’t red. Haru didn’t know that color. He stared for the longest time, while Rin just sat on the bed, staring back at him. Finally there was a familiar grin on those lips of his.
“What are you looking at? Is there something on my face? Oh, don’t tell me. There is a hickey on my neck isn’t there?” He grinned.
“What shirt is that?” Haru asked him and Rin looked down.
“Yours? Silly,” He laughed, taking the shirt to his hands, sniffing it, “it was the closest thing that was on the hand so I took it. And it smelled like you.”
“Smelled like me?” Haru repeated the words like they meant nothing to him. As he watched, Rin’s grin widened as he let go of the shirt and leaned on Haru.
“Everything here seems to smell like you”, he said as their foreheads met and those red eyes were so close to Haru, “the room, the bed, all you. Like my world is all about you.”
But it’s blue.
The shirt was blue, the shirt that Rin was wearing was definitely blue. Blue on top of the redness that was Rin.
My color, Haru realized, as his hand touched the shirt and the body under it. The color he thought he had lost, forgotten. Rin was wearing his color.
“It looks good on you”, he said, while his voice was almost nothing but a whisper.
“Yet you look great without it”, Rin leaned the smallest of kisses on Haru’s lips and for a moment Haru felt purple.
He didn’t have to be afraid of the color red anymore. For now on, red was part of Haru just as blue was part of Rin and together, their world was full of colors.
And that’s when they really knew they were alive.
