FREE! RinxReader *LEMON*

Don't Forget Me

It is a cool, summer night on the beaches of Australia. The colorful lighting from the summer festival a few blocks away illuminates the sand under your backs, turning each and every granule into a fairy tale glimmer. The breeze is gentle. It's a nice night, but despite the fact, you feel cold-- winter in Russia can not compare. Even when the warm water laps at your exposed, sand-encrusted feet, you still feel out of place and discontent.

"So you're moving back to Japan."

It isn't as much of a question as it is a statement.

"Yeah."

The red-headed youth at your side nods, face a mask of indifference, which causes your frown to deepen twofold. An invisible force claws at the beating organ in your chest, and you bring your hands up slowly, as if it would help the pain. You've been friends with the boy turned man beside you for years now, ever since you met each other at the train station on that one fateful evening. He took the eight o' clock train to his prestigious swimming school, and you took the nine o' clock one to your boring, plain school. You woke up hours earlier than need be because you didn't like being in your house at the same time your parents woke up, who would usually force feed you 'nutritious' meals for your martial arts regimen.

You take a deep breath, try to say nothing. The two of you are not ones for words, even when the situation calls for it.

Your heart continues to feel heavy, a pain pricking at your eyes.

You say, "But you'll be back, right?" and curse it all, you can hear the quiver in your voice. The pain grows because you won't allow yourself to cry in front of him. You, who has never cried even through all your martial arts wounds. The callous that is your emotional state hardens further.

Rin is still, but you can't force yourself to look his way-- but you don't have to, because his head is the first to lull to the side, and you catch the shimmer in his eyes through your peripheral. The trees above you dance under the pressure of the gentle winds wafting off the ocean.

You almost don't hear him when he says, "Probably not." Then you realize, and you realize it too late, that you're in love with your best friend.

"Oh," you say, and then the tears finally fall.

Silence once again reigns, then you feel a warm hand against your cold cheek. The tears slip over his rough skin and he says, "Hey," his arm coaxing your body over his. Your legs straddle just below his midsection, your tight swimsuit straining against your legs at the odd position you've never been in before. "Stop it." You think you hear a 'please' muffled after that, but the tears that you shed clog up your ears.

You remove your hands from his chest, just as a tear falls along his bare collarbone, and bring them to your face, shielding yourself from his gaze. You feel ashamed for crying, embarrassed for the weakness that you've let him see, but his gentleness knows no bounds when his hands pull your arms down and over his shoulders. You know he's holding back, because Rin isn't a gentle person. You want to tell him that you're not a doll, not so weak that you would break if handled roughly, but you're not sure if that's the truth anymore.

His mouth opens a fraction of an inch, and you think he's about to say something, but instead his fingers thread through your soft hair and your face is brought to his. He kisses you with a gentleness that goes beyond the friends-with-benefits relationship you once had. No longer are you two needy teenagers trying to get as much in their mouths as they can before their parents come home, no longer are you touching each other because you need the feeling but not the relationship; instead, you are two people whose actions finally match what their hearts feel.

Your toes curl against the sand as he bites your lip with his shark-like teeth, tugging at your lower lip, before melding his lips to yours once again. The gentle facade breaks in half from that point on, where he no longer feels your tears but instead tastes your sadness and sees you raw and as you truly are. "Rin," you whisper, his name tasting like sin when it breaks the surface of the air.