Reed & Roden

1 / drown

It comes at him like a tidal wave.

He's moving with pristine precision, each stroke as powerful and as rhythmic as the one before. Every muscle in his body moves with organic fluidity as the ripples of water make way for him. It's only then that he's noticed—the mosaic tiles are white but they're stained with fragments of color, little pieces from each side chipped with neglect. His mind is quiet but his thoughts are loud in this alarmingly silent haven, and his chest feels like it's going to explode.

This used to be his safe place.

He used to like the fact that in the water, there's no getting in slowly. He used to like the way the coldness surrounds him once he dives, the sound of the splashing, the feeling of being able to escape the dull drag of his days. Here, he used to feel like he could breathe.

Now, Roden Olivers feels like he's drowning.

He's suffocating. The silence every time he holds his breath is too loud that it's become deafening. The blueness used to be a calm and serene blue, but now it's blinding.

He's racing against his own time, and now he's losing.

When Roden finally comes up for air, he doesn't feel victory. He doesn't feel anything at all but the need to get out, get out, get out.

And so he does. He musters all the strength he has left to lift himself up on the gutter and rip the goggles off his face. He claws at his chest, aching to breathe and fuck, why does it hurt so much? He hears the person closest to him ask him something, but he isn't listening. His eyes search frantically among the crowd where she's sitting, and when he finally spots her through his blurry vision, she's already running towards him, leaving the poster she was holding earlier behind.

Roden's waiting for her, but he's grasping for anything, anything to hold on to. And then he feels the warmth, the familiarity of the touch, the comfort of the tightness of her fingers. Roden looks up, hysterical sea-greens boring into worried dark ones, and he thinks, in the midst of the suffocation and the drowning, that he's never seen eyes so dark with so much light in them.

"Roden, hey, it's me, it's me," she says in a sweet and gentle voice, pulling him closer to her. She's rubbing soothing circles onto the bare planes of his back and caressing the wet strands of his hair, not caring if her knees scratch up against the rough surface or if the new shoes she bought with her own money last week are now drenched and tinged with dirt. He starts to calm in her embrace, clutching and digging his fingernails onto her forearm as she struggles to hold him up against her small body. It still fucking hurts—just a little lesser than before.

When he's calm enough to be able to stand on his own with Reed's help, he goes to receive the gold medal for the individual medley, making sure to keep his eyes on her just so he can breathe properly. The crowd is whispering about, talking of the scene that just occurred, and maybe that should bother Roden. Maybe he should be worried about the way his teammates and the audience are staring at him and what they would say about him after this, but maybe he just doesn't care. Not when Reed is looking at him, eyes vast and wondrous and genuine, smile gorgeous and wide and all for him. Reed is looking at him. Nothing else matters.

He's ushered to the locker room after the awarding ceremony by the rest of the Tankers. Reed is waiting for him outside, so he hurries with his shower and dresses quickly.

It's in the van going home when the tidal wave comes.

They get settled in by the far back. His teammates steer clear of that row because they're aware that the two occupy it every time Reed comes to his competitions—it was an unspoken rule that Roden doesn't sit with anybody else and vice versa. Roden is glad that his team knows him so well.

"Are you sure you're fine?" Reed asks softly, looking up at him.

"Yes," he answers. No. His gaze is focused on the poster she made for him the night before. Roden Olivers is my lane line is written in big cursive letters, and there are drawings of gold medals plastered all over the the board. He resists the urge to laugh. "Lane line?"

Reed shifts and readjusts her position so that she's lying across the seats and drops her head onto Roden's lap. "It's cheesy."

"Let's hear it."

Reed exhales heavily. "You're my lane line because I'm lost without you. Or even though you're my lane line, you can't keep me away. Something like that, I don't know, it was cheesy and the only thing I could think of."

They fall into silence, but again Roden's thoughts are loud—his heart is beating so fucking loud he's sure Reed can hear it, and he's mesmerized when her lips turn up at the corners, innocent eyes crinkling the way they always do when she smiles. He wants to tell her to stop smiling at him like that because it's making him want to rub at his chest, to rip it out, yank it and tear it apart.

And then he knows. Just...knows.

"You did great today," she says gently, reaching up to trace his cheekbone with the pad of her thumb. Her touch elicits shivers from the nape of Roden's neck and down to his spine. "I'm proud of you."

And a few minutes later, when she's fast asleep with her head on his lap, comes the destructive ocean wave that drowns him without warning.

Roden coughs. It's a small one, but he's panting for air and wheezing afterwards. He feels something climbing against his throat.

A beautiful purple petal falls from his lips and onto his hands.