Lawli: Free! Just gave me major feels, okay? I just HAD to write something for it.

Gou's first day at Iwatobi Swim Club is a rush of giddiness and new faces. Everyone wants to know who she is, where her family came from, if this is her first time swimming. It's not. Her family lived in Australia before moving to Japan, so she's spent a fair enough amount of time in the water to be comfortable, even if she's not the best, form-wise. But all the attention makes her nervous, so she hovers by the steps in the shallow end for a majority of practice, letting everyone assume what they want, until parents begin to arrive for their children.

When the crowd has fizzled, Gou catches the attention of the one person who's ignored her all afternoon. He doesn't say anything, only passes his blue eyes over her as he pulls himself out of the pool.

"Are you Haruka Nanase?" She asks. So far he's the only one who's impressed her enough for her to even consider as the prodigious young swimmer Iwatobi SC is known for. The boy grunts in recognition. Gou smiles. "You're as fast as they say!"

He positions himself back on the starting block. Before he can leap off, Gou calls out to him again.

"Can I swim with you?"

"Do whatever you want."

The simple answer is such a refreshing change from all the pleas to swim and show off she's received from the other club goers that she excitedly on the ledge beside him. She tests the strap of her goggles by tugging and letting it snap back into place.

"Let's go, Haru-chan!"

He spares her a quick glance. "Don't call me that," he says, and before she can even get into position he dives.

' ' '

Haruka Nanase is a quiet boy. He draws attention only in the way he silently commands it, but just as soon as he catches the eye he slips out of focus, like water escaping through the gaps in one's fingers despite their desperate attempts to hold it in place. Water cannot be contained or controlled, and Haruka Nanase is much the same way. A willful child with a mind constantly lost to far-off daydreams. He does not let others in, but that's okay, because it is usually enough to just watch him.

He is beautiful, never more so than when he dives into the pool, forging a path through the water with his fingertips.

"The water is alive," he likes to say, and while the other kids giggle and call him 'water boy' once his back is turned, Gou believes him. How can anyone watch Haruka swim and think anything other than the water is alive, yearning to become one with him? The way he moves through water is so graceful, so natural.

"Haru-chan is like a dolphin," she says one day after practice. The tips of his ears turn pink and he quickly turns his head to the side.

"Drop the -chan."

He sounds annoyed. Gou worries her bottom lip and attempts to make amends. "Haruka then?" It's girly either way. Gou can relate to his embarrassment, having a boyish name herself, but she's never been ashamed or asked someone to call her by anything else when they attached '-kun' to her name.

Haruka's features sharpen into a glare. "If you call me that, I'll never speak to you again."

Gou hides her disappointment with a smile. It's always like this with him. Gou has long accepted that Haruka has only one friend, one person he lets see passed the barriers he's constructed for whatever reasons. Gou has never met him, but Haruka occasionally mentions him in passing.

Makoto. A boy with a girly name, just like him. He doesn't go to the swim club, which is too bad, because Gou thinks if he did maybe Haruka would smile more, and maybe the older boys wouldn't pick on him so much. Haruka needs someone to protect him, even if he'd never admit it.

When practice is finished for the day, Gou's mother picks her up. All the other children leave with their families or friends.

Haruka rides his bicycle home alone.

' ' '

Gou is passing by the boy's changing rooms when she hears it.

"What's wrong, Haru-chan?"

They usually hang up on him like this, in private when the coaches aren't around to overhear. A group of three or four older boys, fueled by jealousy. Typically Haruka acts like the bigger person by ignoring them, but Gou can tell it bothers him. Not enough to make him quit swimming – she doesn't think anything has the power to keep him out of the water – but enough to make him distrustful of others.

"Lay off the -chan."

Gou hesitates by the entrance, unable to move on now that Haruka is defending himself verbally for once.

"Why's that? Haruka is a girl's name, so it's only fitting, Haru-Chan."

"I have a girly name, but I'm definitely a boy," Haruka snaps.

"That so?" A boy laughs. "You don't really look like one."

"Yeah," another chimes in. "You're way too small."

"And scrawny," adds a third.

"And look, he's got such pretty, soft hair."

Gou peeks around the corner to see one of the boys holding Haruka's arms in place and another petting Haruka's hair. The third gives a mocking bow.

"Maybe we'll call you princess Haru-chan!"

Haruka glares at the floor. His eyes are glassy but he doesn't cry, not even when one of the boys pushes him down.

"Water princess, water princess!"

Gou balls her hands into fists. She wants to burst in there, to yell at the boys to stop, but Haruka would never forgive her. He's already being teased because of his name; it'll only make it worse if a girl comes running to his rescue. Gou wishes she was a boy so that she could protect him. If she was a boy, she could beat the others up; she could make sure no one ever hurt Haruka again.

But she's not a boy, and Haruka will have to learn to take care of himself.

She wonders why, if they're friends, Makoto is never there when Haruka needs him.

' ' '

"H-Haru-chan, here!" Closing her eyes, she thrusts the gift into his hands.

"I told you not to call me that," he grumbles, but she soon hears the crinkling of paper and cracks open her eyes to watch him lift the stuffed animal out of the bag. "It's a shark."

"Well..." Gou flushes, trying to explain the gift without revealing too much. "Haru-chan's swimming reminds me of a dolphin. But dolphins are very gentle and can't always fight off other predators, so...so-" she gestured emphatically to the shark. "Sharks are the toughest animals around, right? It will definitely protect you!"

Haruka's eyes widen, and Gou swears she catches a blush creep into his cheeks before he turns his head away. "Don't sharks eat dolphins?"

Gou gasps. "This one wouldn't," she promises, hoping that will make up for her stupid lapse in judgment. How could she forget that? "A-anyways... I got it from the Real Iwatobi Nature Center. Have you ever been there?" Haruka shakes his head. "It's really cool, they have a big aquarium. Um.. If you don't like it, you can return it at the gift shop there."

Haruka looks down at the small great white shark. His fingers curl possessively around the tail and dorsal fin. "No, I like it."

For the first time Gou watches a smile bloom across his lips. It's beautiful.

' ' '

She stays in Iwatobi just long enough to compete in the end-of-summer competition. Her parents see potential in her and so have enrolled her in a special swimming academy back in Australia. One day they hope she can compete in the Olympics. In the competition she swims butterfly and comes in second place. She could have done better, but she spent most of the race thinking about how much she would rather stay in Iwatobi with Haruka. She wants to get to know him better. She wants to meet Makoto.

Haruka swims 100m freestyle and sets a new first-place record for his age group. No one helps him out of the pool, and no one is there to take him home when the competition ends. She sees him walking to the bike rack with the stuffed shark tucked under his arm.

"I'm leaving," she says. He stops and tilts his head in her direction. "My parents are sending me back Australia for school."

Haruka slowly unlocks his bike from the rack. He sets the shark gently in the front basket, where Gou spots a plush orca already resides.

"Haru-chan..."

He pedals away without saying a word.

She doe doesn't get a chance to see him again before leaving.

Lawli: Co-created by WinterierLionheart.

This whole story was based on a late-night conversation between WinterierLionheart and me, which started off somewhere along the lines of, "Haruka is such a weirdo, how does he have actual friends?" and evolved into this.

Can't promise how frequent updates will be. We'll write as we're inspired. ^_^