"Hooray!" Gou cheered, throwing open the door to their hotel room. She dumped her bags at the door and flung herself at the bed, rolling around happily. "Brother, we're finally here!" she cried, sitting up straight. "Isn't that great?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah…" Rin said, stifling a yawn. He pulled the headphones from around his neck and hung his hoodie up on the wall hook, and rubbed at a red eye. Rin was completely shattered. The combination of a 13 hour flight, carrying heavy bags up three flights of stairs and also having to do all the talking at the airport had left him utterly exhausted and he just wanted to go to sleep.

The Matsuoka family - Rin, Gou and their mother - had come to England for a week to relax and have a holiday. They had arrived past midnight and when they stepped off the plane they were hit with a blast of cold wind and drizzle. Rin was extremely glad he'd packed wet weather clothes - England was colder than he'd expected.

But now they'd gotten through the airport, got a taxi to their hotel, and it was past 3am and now Rin's thoughts were starting to blur together into a big mess of "ugh" and "sleep."

Too tired to even contemplate pyjamas, Rin flopped face-first onto one of the beds and buried his face in the pillow. He let out a low groan, kicking off his shoes and pushing them to the floor. Gou giggled at her brother, before heading into the bathroom.

Rin was pretty sure he was half-asleep when he heard her yelp. In his semi-conscious state it sounded like a scream of agony or terror, or something, and he sat up so fast he was sure he just broke his own back.

"Gou?" he asked, walking briskly to the door and hammering on it. "Are you okay?" He was half expecting to hear that she was being attacked by a crocodile, except this was not Australia.

"I'm fine!" she responded quickly. "I just… have a problem, is all!" she laughed nervously then, and Rin furrowed his eyebrows.

"What sort of problem?" he asked.

"Er… just a… girl's problem," she mumbled. Oh.

"Oh, okay. Uh, do you have any… y'know?" he asked. He could almost hear Gou blushing.

"..."

"Gou?"

"...no" she confessed. Rin thumped his head against the door.
"Do you really need them now?" Rin whined.

"Yes!" Gou said quickly. "Brother, you're going to have to find a shop that sells them, now."
Rin mumbled a curse under his breath.

"Can't mother-" he began.

"Mother can't speak English, dummy. Now go!" she said, opening the door just wide enough to glare at him. Rin sighed, defeated, and went to lace up his shoes.

"I'm stealing your umbrella." he growled.

As it turned out, Gou's umbrella was pink and patterned with cats. Oh, how Rin would've loved to leave it behind. But it was pissing down with rain, and thankfully there was nobody around.

It took him an hour or so, but Rin did eventually find a 24-hour supermarket . It had some ridiculous name - was it Tesco? Rin didn't really care. He just wanted to get the stuff for his sister and leave as soon as he could so he could go back to sleep. That bed had been so comfortable. He yawned at the very thought of it.

The shop was nearly empty, except for two cashiers and about five customers buying various random objects. It being nearly empty, he was extremely conscious of the squeaking of his trainers on the floor and felt incredibly awkward when he knocked some chocolate off a shelf and forgot to apologise in English. He was too tired for this bullshit.

Still, chocolate would be a nice surprise for Gou. He grabbed a decently-sized bar of something called Cadbury's and set off on a hunt to find the "Toiletries" aisle.

It took him forty-five fucking minutes.
Maybe he'd just picked the wrong supermarket, or maybe the English just had REALLY big supermarkets. Either way, it took him way, way too long to find the things he needed.
When he got there, there were about five zillion different types of sanitary product there.

Rin groaned, smacking his forehead. He left his phone in the hotel room so he couldn't ask which ones to get, and besides, all the labeling was in some really difficult to read English font.

Rin sighed and grabbed a random box of tampons, face bright red. He scowled at the ground all the way back to the checkouts, grabbing a packet of sweets for himself and some chocolate for Gou. He could be catching up on so much sleep now. English beds were warm.

Then again, his sister was probably fretting in the bathroom right now. Rin's face softened. Gou was a horrendous weak spot for him, and if Nanase and the Iwatobi Idiot Crew thought he wasn't man enough to go into a shop and buy a box of tampons for someone, then he'd never hear the end of it.
The cashier at the desk pulled him out of his thoughts, however, and Rin fumbled around with his pockets, sorting yen from British pounds.

"You're from Japan?" she asked, staring at the unfamiliar currency and frowning. Rin thought her a bit rude but nodded.

"Yes. Is this enough?" he asked, holding up a £10 note. He wasn't really awake enough for talking to other humans.

"Mm, thanks." she said, taking it from him.

"Cheers, mate."

"You know, for a Japanese kid you sound awfully Australian."

Fuck.
Rin turned bright scarlet and picked up his stuff.

By the time Rin made his way through Tesco, through seven twisted streets, back up the three flights of stairs, found his card key to the hotel room, and let himself in, he was literally dead on his feet.

"I'm back," Rin called wearily. His mother patted his head gratefully and Gou jumped towards him.

"Did you get them?" she asked anxiously. Rin held up the tampons and bar of chocolate and Gou's eyes lit up.

"Thank you, brother! Thank you so much!" she praised, arms flung around him in a crushing hug. Rin wheezed. Gou soon let go and ran into the bathroom and Rin breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'm going to bed," he said. He kicked off his shoes and jacket and crawled under the covers. "Don't even think about waking me up unless someone's literally fucking dying." he snapped, closing his eyes. God, this bed was heaven.

Then the fire alarm went off.
"Mother FUCK!"

(A/N) Hello there!

I'm Mcvitie/Biscuit, and I suppose you lot don't know this, but I write a lot of Free! drabbles in my spare time. They're starting to clog up my Google Docs folders, and I need a place to throw them so that I can stop worrying about accidentally deleting them. I was inspired by my friend Julchen's drabble series called Snowflakes, and so here I am! Hi!

As gay as this anime is, I'm going to try and keep ships and romance out of this because I know that we don't all have the same ships and I don't want any conflict. However, if I do end up writing a shippy drabble and I really want to put it on here, I'll stick a little warning note at the start in case you can't stand the ship.

Ok, thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this first chapter, and please review! Suggestions are welcome!