Twelve

Survivor's Point looked the same as it had when Rin was a kid, but it felt different. It still did feel like he had survived something awful that he was now hiding out from, but there was nothing playful about it.

Bachira had stopped crying. As for the why am I so hard to love thing, they didn't address it. Bachira didn't bring it up, so Rin certainly wasn't planning on it. Because what else was he going to say besides, you're not hard to love. Not at all. Let me show you.

And again, it was not the time.

Rin and Bachira poked around a little and Rim offered up a few childhood stories, leaving Sae out of them for both of their sakes even though he was very much lingering in the memories like a dark cloud for Rin. He wasn't always like this, Rin felt tempted to justify, even to himself. But that hardly mattered.

There was a place to look out over the water. It wasn't a great view or anything, but you could see some stuff and the grass was nice to sit in and it was quiet so that's what they did.

After a while, Bachira leaned his head onto Rin's shoulder. "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

Rin kind of laughed, his version of it anyways, but Bachira didn't seem to find it funny.

"I mean it," he insisted.

"I wasn't offended," Rin said.

"Well, I'm sorry anyways," Bachira said.

"Well, that unnecessary," Rin said. "I'm mean to you almost constantly."

"That's not true," Bachira said. "You've gotten better."

Rin supposed that was true. Back when they'd first met, Rin was mean to everyone, Bachira included. Bachira especially, because of how much time he spent trying to befriend him. But now, Rin was only ever mean to him by accident, and he felt as if that was indeed significant improvement.

"I guess you've grown on me," Rin said.

"I'm going to take that as a compliment," Bachira said, and that was surely a joke, so Rin tried to laugh, even though he didn't especially find it funny.

It was a compliment, after all. It was also the truth.

When they got back, the cabin house was suspiciously empty. Lunch was a peaceful affair, and Rin was almost starting to think it had cleared out entirely until his mother stepped out of her office at the back of the house, taking a sudden jolting step back, like he and Bachira were intruders and not people that she had literally shared a car with on the trip here.

"Oh, hello," she told them both. She cleared her throat. "Where are the rest of you?"

Rin didn't feel especially fond of the fact that the four of them were being lumped together as some group of four when it was hardly the case, but he let it slide since she was probably genuinely none the wiser.

"How the hell should I know?" Rin said. She gave him a slight warning look. "Out, I guess."

"Oh," she said, thinking that over. "Alright."

She then nodded, stepped around them, and headed towards the kitchen. Rin heard her move through her routine like clockwork. The kettle clicking on, the cupboard opening, the mug being placed on the counter, the fridge opening, the container being pulled out, the microwave being opened, closed, turning on. He couldn't help but shake his head at the carelessness of it all. Mom's going to ask. Sae thought Rin was an idiot, and he wasn't even smart about the way he went about it.

"If they're gone," Rin said to Bachira. "We can commandeer the living room."

"Yeah," Bachira said. "Let's do it."

It's not like any living room had a painful amount of options when it came to what to do, so the natural conclusion was to finally watch that movie they'd skipped the night before. They had internet, so the options were really limitless, but Bachira took to poking through the DVD collection that the Itoshi cabin had acquired once out of necessity and that was now hung onto because of nostalgia.

"Let's watch something scary," bachira finally decided.

Rin was taken aback by this. He refused the thought that it might be a sign. "You like scary movies?"

"If it's scary, I won't fall asleep," Bachira said, shrugging. "But it'll have to be really scary. Like, traumatizingly scary."

"Alright," Rin said, basically moving on autopilot. He knew exactly what to pull. The collection was more or less a mishmash, but all the scary movies were his.

They found themselves back on the couch in much the same way they had been the first time they'd ever hung out back in the Itoshi living room that existed back in the city. There was less thrashing around. Or maybe Rin was less annoyed by it. But either way, he let Bachira crawl on top of him and lay on his chest and Rin found himself thinking that laying there in the dark living room might have been one of the best dates he'd ever been on.

Once the movie had finished, Bachira looked up and decided, "That wasn't that scary."

"What I'm hearing is," Rin said, wholly unimpressed. "You fell asleep."

"Did not," Bachira boasted, before proceeding to touch on most of the major plot points and scares. Rin still didn't quite believe him. Not once had he even felt him flinch. "And it wasn't that scary."

"I went easy on you," Rin said. It was half true.

"Well, don't," Bachira said, sitting back up and pointing accusatorily back at the cupboard that held the DVD collection. "Show me something that'll really ruin my life."

Forgive me for thinking you're fragile when Isagi of all people ruined your life, Rin thought about saying, but didn't. And then he was proud that he'd managed to keep that to himself.

They got maybe five minutes into the next movie before the back door swung open. It wasn't especially scary, or anything, but the entire living room had gone dark and filled with an ominous air and Rin was kind of feeling the pressure for his movie choice to hit, so they were both a little on edge. Enough for them to flinch and cry out a bit.

But what the footsteps brought into the room was much less scary and much more dreaded than some murderer or paranormal creature. Sae stood in the doorway to the living room, Isagi lingering behind him. He was looking all unimpressed like they had some claim on the living room, which was kind of the point of them commandeering it.

"Hi," Bachira said to them.

But Rin was feeling significantly less friendly. "What do you want?"

"What are you watching?" Sae asked.

Rin didn't bother answering. It's not like it differed much from what he watched alone when they came up here. Whatever Sae was trying to get out of asking, Rin didn't plan on handing it over.

"Scary stuff," Bachira answered. "You guys can watch with us if you want."

Rin didn't exactly feel the urge to retaliate against that offer, but he didn't really know how he felt about it. Mostly because he didn't know what to make of it. It brought him right back to being calf deep in sea water, drenched in dark, watching Bachira look out into the endless night and say I don't know if that's what I want anymore.

Well, what did he want? What were they doing? Was the point to get a rise out of Isagi and Sae or wasn't it?

Neither of them moved. Sae mostly looked confused. His version of it anyways. Isagi, on the other hand, looked like he was trying to drill a psychic message of no thanks, let's get the fuck out of here right into the back of his stupid boyfriend's thick skull.

Which was either just thick of painfully ignorant, if not both, because Sae went right ahead and said, "Why not?"

How quickly this had gone from the best date he'd ever been on to the worst moment of his life consisting of the worst double date with the two worst people on the planet.

Rin supposed it was halfway funny that those two had to go hole up on the smaller, less comfortable couch to avoiding sitting on the floor, meanwhile the two of them remained sprawled out with the good view on the main couch. But everything else was awful. Sae and Isagi were gross, the way they sat down and curled right into each other, started whispering to each other, the works. But the worst part of it, for Rin anyways, was that he felt like however little progress he'd made with Bachira was right back at that should we fake date to piss them off conversation, and he didn't like how it made him feel.

On screen, there was some couple without names that were about to get slaughtered to demonstrate how big and bad the big bad was, making painfully awkward conversation with each other. Rin never liked these opening scenes, this one being no exception. He found them irritatingly forgettable. You weren't made to care about those characters, and so he never did.

The girl leaned forward at one point and said, "This is awkward, but I guess first dates always are."

"I don't think that's true," Bachira said. It sounded almost mindless. A little tired. Rin felt his hands tense where they were making contact with him.

"Me neither," Rin agreed.

"Uh," Isagi said from across the room. Rin looked over, a warning look in his eyes, that if he was about to say any damn fucking thing, he would regret it, but he continued anyways. "What did you guys do?"

Bachira lifted his head. "Huh?"

"For your first date," Isagi said. It sounded shaky. The barest effort at making this whole thing less awkward and failing spectacularly. "What did you guys do?"

There was a painfully uncomfortable silence that hung in the room. As far as Rin was concerned, this was entirely intentional. He didn't intend on answering. He was about to tell him to fuck off and not to worry about it, but Bachira cleared his throat.

"We went for lunch at this place in the city," he said. This too, was shaky. An effort at matching the effort. The same failure in making things seem normal. Rin held him tighter. "And then we went to the gardens and found flowers that matched each other's eyes."

Sae made a sound that was half laugh, half scoff. "That's what that was?"

As if the double date could go from atrocious to worse. Bachira looked back over at Rin inquisitively. He didn't say anything beyond, "Shut up."

But that wasn't exactly one of Sae's strong suits, especially when Rin was requesting it the other option was an opportunity to mock him. "He hung it on his corkboard like a schoolgirl."

Bachira had never stopped looking at Rin through that explanation. Rin refused to meet his eye. He kind of shrugged and said, "It was either that or throw it out."

"That's kind of sweet," Isagi said.

Rin didn't respond to that either. He hardly needed his approval or praise. The one decent thing about it was that however much Rin didn't like the praise, Sae liked it less. That much was clear by another scoff-laugh.

"I'm worse," Bachira admitted. "My flower was so crumpled from being in my pocket, so I went onto the internet to find out what kind of was."

"You could have just gone back and got a new one," Rin said.

"I was done with the delinquent life," Bachira joked. Rin was embarrassed by how much he liked it. "And I wanted to keep it, so I got my mom to paint it."

Rin looked at him then. He didn't know what his face was doing, but he was taken by surprise and made no effort to alter his expression.

"It's small, but she did a really good job," Bachira didn't say any of this with any shame. Rin quietly wished they were alone, because he had the urge to ask him if he was serious, or if this was just for show, part of faking dating, a ruse designed to strike a nerve. He hoped not. "I keep it on that table by my bed. I like it."

"I really like your mom," Rin said. That was his mindless comment. He hated it as soon as he said it.

But Bachira followed up with, "She really likes you too."

Another few seconds of silence passed, and Rin was getting ready to settle into them, hoping no more words would come and make him feel exposed of seen or stupid or anything else, but his instincts were too good, and he knew that silence wasn't made to last.

"Uh," Bachira said, loud enough to hear across the room. "What did you guys do?"

"Uh," Isagi said. It sounded like he didn't want to answer. Rin certainly didn't care about the answer. "Well."

Sae beat him to it. "We went for tea after the U-20 match."

The entire room seemed to still. Sae's face was so blank, but Rin would know that ice cold defiance anywhere. Isagi looked over at him, some type of barely restrained fury resting over his face. Rin didn't need to know the whole story to know how high the levels of hostility were getting across the room.

What was worlds worse was what was happening right against him. He was the only one who saw the way Bachira's eyes widened with some horrible realization right before he lay back down on Rin.

"Cool," Bachira somehow managed to say, but it was no mystery to anyone that it was hardly how he felt about the matter.