Rin treats him gently, oh-so-very-gently, because maybe Ai is made of spun sugar and Rin can't bear to break him, too.

—-

It happens over the course of a summer, in fits and starts, and then suddenly Ai is the same height as Rin— and then his ankles are poking pathetically out of the bottoms of his sweatpants— and then Rin has to tilt his head back to look up at him, which is totally not hot, not at all. For all Ai's new growth, though, he is still small-shouldered and thin-limbed, and there are still times when Rin wants to wrap him in his jacket and hide him from the world— but hiding and shadows are Rin's way, and Aiichiro would be found that much faster in the darkness for his light.

(He offers the jacket anyway. Ai takes it.)

It surprises the Iwatobi team, when they meet in the fall for joint practice, and Rin sees Ai tense at Nagisa's tactlessness, but then Makoto thumps him on the back and Nagisa grabs his arm and drags him along, demanding to know his secret so that he can undergo a similar transformation (Gou manages to snap a picture of the resulting expression on Rei's face). It's almost, but not quite, enough to make Ai relax, and so when the other boys are busy dunking each other's heads in the pool Rin walks up beside Ai and coughs.

"Hey," he says, and nudges him with his shoulder, awkward; but Ai understands, his eyes widening and his lips parting in gratitude, and Rin has to turn away and pretend to be tightening the strap of his goggles. "This doesn't mean you get to slack off, you know," he adds. As if Ai would; there is a difference between slacking and lack of confidence, and it is the width of Rin's shoulders and the strength of Ai's arms. So Ai laughs (how clear the sound!) and follows Rin into the pool.

—

Rin can't bear to break him too, and so he holds his hand before he holds him close, carries his bag before carrying him, traces feather-light patterns through his hair with tentative fingertips. It is a struggle, a war of want and need, but it is one that Rin will win because this is Ai and Ai deserves the best of everything.

But tonight they are coming back from the party to celebrate the team's placement in regionals, and maybe it's a little bit late and maybe Rin's a little bit drunk, and when he kisses Ai his mouth opens despite himself, and before he can catch up to himself and tell himself to stop, he takes Ai's lower lip into his mouth and bites.

And Ai gasps.

—

It is not a clean-cut, happily-ever-after, heal-and-now-he's finished; as deep as the thing was that the healing reached, there are still the raggedy edges of the wound, chasms and twistings and bones set a little (or maybe a lot) wrong. And Haru has been awakened, and Haru was the prodigy; Haru has water written in his very blood, but however hard he tries Rin will always be a creature of the earth.

But Ai is always there with smiles and chirping encouragement, and Rin feels the chokehold lessen just a little every time he speaks. Ai cheers him when he beats a personal best, cheers him when he can't improve his speed for weeks, cheers him when his movements grow harsh and choppy in frustration. And at the end of every practice Ai is there to offer him a towel, to remind him that he needs to eat and sleep and study when Rin wants to stay in the water and force it to mark him, sink deep into his skin and stain it a sharp, chlorinated blue because maybe then he'd be more like—

It is Ai who shows him the joy that can be found in another's praise, if you let yourself hear it, brightening to Mikoshiba's words as if a clap on the back was a national trophy. It is Ai who cheerfully makes order out of chaos, ten-page papers from fan-scattered notes, and Rin wonders if he does not have to be strong to start building. It is Ai who sits beside him on the floor mats, bent forward to pull the exercise band tighter around his heel, and lets him know that he is not the only one who must push himself.

It is Ai who reminds him that smiles need not always be mocking.

—-

Ai gasps, and Rin freezes, his hands on Ai's shoulders and his teeth in Ai's mouth. He's afraid to move, though he knows that he should. There's a sick feeling spreading from his chest all down his limbs, and for a fraction-of-a-fraction of this moment he thinks that he might throw up.

Ai has gone as still as he; they are too close to see each other's eyes, but neither moves. The sick feeling intensifies, sharpens into guilt, and Rin's jaw tightens, reflexive, and his teeth bite down again (nonononoNO!), and Ai makes another noise, lower, with less breath in it.

"Please," he says, so softly that Rin feels it more than he hears it, feels it in the press of lips and bodies that holds him together, keeps him from flying apart.

—-

Rin hears the sniffles when he comes in the door, panting from his evening run. He spares a glance for the blanket-covered lump in the upper bunk, but doesn't bother to be concerned; Ai has a tendency to take the fates of fictional characters rather much to heart, so while it isn't common to see him so distraught, it isn't exactly unheard of, either.

He's wiping himself down with the towel he keeps on the back of the door, beginning to shrug out of his shirt, when he hears the unmistakable chirp! of Ai's cell phone. It's an annoyingly cheerful sound, and Rin has lost count of the number of times he's nagged at Ai to change it.

There's another chirp, and another, and another, and Rin swears they're getting louder, like some sort of passive-aggressive nightmare bird. Grumbling, Rin turns to tell Ai to turn it off if he's not going to answer it— and stops, his shirt rucked up past his ribcage, because not only is the thing lying on Ai's desk (which is odd because Rin's half-sure Ai had had it surgically affixed to him somehow), but there's a scratch on the back of it, dark and ugly, rubbed with dirt.

Ai had bought that case not a week ago— bounding into the room with his phone held high and triumphant, chattering at great speed and volume about how it's his favorite color and isn't it the best? Rin remembers blinking rather stupidly (though really, shouldn't Ai have lost the ability to surprise him by now?) because the thing is bright yellow, so bright it even hurts to look at the air around it. It's got an overly stylized drawing of a piglet on the back. A piglet. Why.

So to see it here, like this, means something. Rin looks back up at the bunk, and then back down at the phone, and there's a very quick and somewhat painful realignment of the world around him.

And Rin panics, because he's shit at comforting people, he always has been. But he can't leave Ai like that, now that he knows something is wrong, and wishing fervently that he'd spent just a little longer working his way around the lake does absolutely nothing for anyone.

He stands there for a few moments, clutching the towel against his face; then he snorts, yanks his shirt down, and strides across the floor. He doesn't know why he's let Ai stay on the top bunk now that he's tall, because his feet hang off the end and he always hits his shins on the ladder in the middle of the night, and now Rin's looking down at the knot Ai has made out of his covers, one thin hand holding it all closed, and it would actually be cruel to put this off any longer.

"Hey," he says, and hates himself.

No answer.

A ladder is a terrible place to be talking to somebody from. "You don't have to…I mean. But your phone. So."

Ai stiffens, but makes no other response.

What is he supposed to do now? Pat his back or something? Rin reaches out a hand—more of a jab than a reach, really— and sees that he's still holding the towel. He folds it and drapes it over the rail around Ai's bed, but he misjudges it and it starts to slip off; Rin lunges after it and smacks his forehead into the metal, the resulting clang! loud enough to echo painfully around his skull.

Still no response.

Now Rin is starting to get scared, because— not to be arrogant or anything—all the other times he's gotten hurt (or Ai thinks he's gotten hurt, which happens considerably more often), Ai has been barely short of hysterical. Now is just about the worst time ever to start hyperventilating, though, so Rin rights himself (which, ow) and pokes at the closest bit of blanket-lump. "You okay?" No, he's not okay. God, Rin.

Nothing.

Hell with this. Rin swings himself down the the floor and is nearly at the door (he's not sure where he's going as long as it's anywhere but here) when he hears the "Wait."

It takes all the strength he's ever had for Rin to turn around and walk back to the bunk, and even more to put his hands on the ladder and climb. This time he goes up all the way and slides onto the mattress, crossing his legs because the bed seems horribly small with the both of them in it, even though Ai's curled up and as far from Rin as he can possibly be.

What now? Should he talk? Is Ai expecting him to talk? How— but Ai's the one talking, and this sounds like this is important, so Rin should be paying attention.

"—mom just called me. It was my dog he…there was a car and he…they tried but…" Ai's hand clenches in the sheets, so tightly it must be painful. His voice goes very quiet. "I. I don't have a dog anymore."

Oh.

Oh shit.

This? Rin is not equipped to deal with this. "I…I'm sorry." Great. Real helpful. "What was he like? Your dog." Inspired. You should charge for this sort of therapy.

"Oh, he was…! Wonderful. He liked fetch and jumping and belly rubs and dinner and chasing things— that must have been how he got hit, he must have been chasing the car and then—" Ai's voice hitches, and then there's a great rustling of fabric and Rin has one glimpse of blotchy, tearstained face before Ai has launched himself at Rin's chest and is bawling.

Rin freezes; the last time somebody cried on him it was his sister, and she had been five. He had made fart noises on the top of her head to cheer her up. Somehow he doesn't think that that will be appropriate here. His hands look kind of stupid held out to the sides like they are, an aborted, instinctive attempt to fend off Ai's attack, so he settles for rubbing the back of Ai's head.

It's probably all wrong, and Ai's hair is kind of matted from his blanket-huddle, but it's—hopefully— better than nothing. "Shh," he says after a while, because that's what people say on TV when someone else is crying. He leans down to whisper it in Ai's ear, using his other arm to shift Ai closer so that the other boy doesn't have to stay twisted at an unnatural angle. Ai's nose is poking into Rin's sternum, and he knows he's getting his shirt full of snot, but he isn't about to raise a complaint.

After what is at least a couple of centuries, Ai's sobs start to lose their violence, his whimpers their edge. At some point Rin's hand has moved to stroking Ai's back, and he's rocking Ai back and forth, his cheek pressed against Ai's temple. Ai's gone completely boneless, all his weight resting on Rin, but Rin is strong and this— holding Ai up, keeping him from falling— this much he can do.

It's been a long day, however, and Rin is, after all, human, so Rin shifts— just a little, just to get some feeling back where he's gone numb— and Ai makes a surprised little choking-off sound, and pushes himself back.

"I'm sorry, Rin-senpai," he says, so subdued that it doesn't sound like Ai at all. "I didn't mean to make you sad."

Only then does Rin feel the wetness burning at the corners of his eyes, sliding down to gather in prickling droplets underneath his chin. Swearing, he rubs his eyes on the neck of his shirt. Ai flinches at the harsh word, shrinking back into himself, so Rin growls and jerks him forward into his arms—and ends up ramming Ai's head into his shoulder. "Sorry," Rin says, two beats behind Ai, and it's not enough (it's never enough), but it seems to loosen something in Ai, and he sighs, turning to press his face into the side of Rin's neck. Rin lays his own head down on top of Ai's, and it's almost perfect, except that Rin's stomach chooses that moment to trumpet its emptiness to the world.

"Shit. Um. Have you eaten yet, Ai?" Ai shakes his head, raising it to do so; Rin immediately misses its weight. "Then why don't we go down and see what the dining hall has decided to poison us with today, hey? Um. Unless you don't want to. Because…I get it."

"No, I think I'm hungry. Just let me wash my face, okay?" Ai pulls away and smiles— it's a brittle smile, trying too hard, heartbreakingly fake, but Rin can't keep his own lips from twitching in response— my GOD, could you have SOME sort of a soul, his dog has just DIED— and they go about untangling themselves, which involves a lot of accidental elbows-to-the-gut and one brief, memorable moment when Ai reaches out to steady himself on the wall and winds up with his hand in Rin's crotch. Ai drags half the blankets off the bed with him, leaving them to drip down the ladder until they almost touch the floor. Rin catches his foot on them and slips down the last two rungs, his left knee buckling under the weight of his fall.

If the water runs a little long in the bathroom, Rin doesn't say a word.

The next day there's a brand-new phone case sitting on Ai's desk, the same bright yellow, but instead of a piglet on the back there is a picture of a dog, one paw raised as if in greeting. Impulse purchase, Rin says when Ai finds it, but Ai has learned to tell when Rin is lying, and this time Ai's smile is genuine.

"Please," he says, but it is Ai that moves next, tilting his head and twisting his fingers in the front of Rin's shirt. All their other kisses have been mere flutters, but now Ai's mouth is moving and Rin's is too, and he thinks that he's pushing Ai into the wall but his head is a bit fuzzy just now and anyway whatever he's doing it's obvious that Ai is enjoying it. His teeth come out, again and again, and every time Ai moans a little louder, and it's a good thing they were the first to come home because Rin doesn't want to think about the rest of the team (or anybody else) seeing them like this.

He doesn't really want to think about anything, actually, and someone's breath is coming fast and loud in his ears, and somehow he's finding the edge of Ai's jaw with his mouth, the side of his neck; and he's at Ai's shoulder (which he can reach because Ai didn't put a shirt on under his jacket after the meet today and thank God) and his mouth opens and his teeth sink down. Aiichiro shudders. His hips buck once, hard, against Rin's own.

It surprises them both, even after everything, and they pause again, locked around each other; then, "It's a good thing we share a room," Ai says, the words slow and deliberate, and two pairs of hands fumble for the knob.

—

Later, they lie in Rin's bunk, Ai sprawled over Rin's chest, tapping his fingers one-two-three-four against Rin's heartbeat and humming a tuneless nothing to the rhythm. There's a gleam from the moonlight outlining Ai's face, his arms, the smooth curve from hip to knee to ankle, and Rin thinks that it is moments like these that inspire men to become poets.

"Rin," Ai says, and when he says it like that, low and shivery, as if he's a man starving and Rin is the salvation, can Rin be blamed for trying to pull Ai down for another kiss? But Ai stays him with the hand on his chest. "You're not going to scare me away."

"How can you be sure?" Rin asks, and he can't quite keep the desperation out of his voice. "You don't know what I'll do tomorrow, or next month, or next year."

"No," Ai says. He pushes himself up on his forearms and pokes a finger in the general direction of Rin's nose— he misses and gets the corner of his mouth instead, but this is too important for things like that to matter. "But I know you." He yawns, as if that settles it, and snuggles up under Rin's chin, his hair tickling the hollow of Rin's throat.

Rin wraps his arm tighter around Ai's waist; closes his eyes. He needs a shower. He's going to have a hell of a time sneaking his sheets to the laundry. He does not deserve the boy who lies so sweetly beside him, for he is rough and mean and full of broken glass, but here, with Ai's warmth pressed up against him, Rin can't bring himself to care.

—

The thing about spun sugar is that it doesn't always break; sometimes, it melts.

—

(And then the whole world becomes sweeter.)

—