Sometimes, Rin brushes his teeth and yawns his way into bed, pillow over his face to block the light because workaholic Yukio is still at his desk, tail wrapped up around himself, eyes drifting shut in that nice kind of very relaxed exhaustion characterized by being unable to tell exactly when you're asleep and when you're awake.
He just goes to sleep like that, all soft True Cross sheets and comforting scritch-scratch of Yukio's pencil, Kuro curled up at the foot of his bed or sometimes in the curve of his neck and then sometimes, not always but sometimes – Rin dreams.
Of: his father dying and it's all his fault and his father laughing maniacally, making the Gehenna Gate and sending him through and dying all the while, killing himself, and he's furious, he is going to kill his father for this if it takes the rest of his life, his father is dead because of him.
Of: soft lips and shy blushes and a true, real date promised for the future, an attractive uniform and first friendship and Shiemi, sweet and happy and simple and warm.
Of: a kindergarten classroom all akimbo, desks upside down and children ushered out of the room, bullies with broken limbs and teachers pleading in his direction, and Yukio with a bloody lip and teary eyes, and whispers later of how Rin's just a demon child, he's got problems and oh look they were right.
Of: the clip in his hair and papers with low grades on the desk in front of him, demons and bible verses and summoning circles and studying and never quite doing it right except when he rips the Kurikara out from its sheath and there's that wonderful feeling he gets when his strength explodes outwards with his ears and the flame that never burns him but is evil, right, but it sure doesn't feel that way, it feels natural but it's not enough, they tell him, not enough and he's weak and probably evil and not good enough at all, he has to study much much harder.
Of: quiet, measuring and stirring and dicing and frying, cooking and not thinking but just humming happily to himself, a full meal for a table full of people, cram school students and a full set of clergymen, the best of both worlds with his tail wagging happily behind him.
Of: dying.
Of: Yukio the exorcist, Yukio the teacher, Yukio who he's always protected, Yukio who's known everything for all of their lives and never told, Yukio who blames him, Yukio who pointed a gun at him, Yukio laughing, Yukio never crying anymore, Yukio his little brother and the only family he's got left.
Of: trying, really trying, with his heart aching and the world despising him for what he is, and failing anyway because he's never going to make it, never going to be good enough to kill Satan, and not caring because even if he's not good enough he'll do it anyway, beat Bon to the punch and brag about it afterwards if he has to die to make it happen.
Of: Mephisto and Amaimon and brothers and demons and what's on the other side of the Gehenna Gate anyway.
Of: never meeting that boy who liked to shoot pigeons, no, never getting fired from that store in the first place, living on quietly and not hurting anyone and doing things right and never knowing as his father and brother fought and bled to save him, and really kind of enjoying it, thinking he was proving himself to them by simply not attacking anyone.
Of: that shivery, warm, spoiled feeling in the cram class when he's there and thinking these people might maybe be his friends, before he doubts himself.
And sometimes Rin wakes up in the morning, tangled up in his sheets or backwards with his feet on the pillow or hanging half-off the bed, even, and Yukio will be gone with his bed made neat like he never even slept, the freak, and Rin yawns and stretches, clambers or falls out of bed and if he isn't late and rushing, sometimes he closes his eyes for a moment more, and takes a deep breath and lets it out and gets the dreams out of his head, because Rin's not the type to dwell on dreams when he can be eating breakfast instead.
Though – sometimes – he washes his face first, to clear up any tears that have tracked down his cheeks, and kind of avoids Yukio's eyes a bit at the table, and has a bit of a lump in his throat behind his laughter, and sort of wants nothing more than to go back to bed and curl up into a ball and have the world disappear, but he eats breakfast instead because he knows better than that, and Rin's not the whiny one, that's the job of the little brother even if he isn't doing that anymore.
And Rin moves on with the day, with school, with training, with demons and exorcists and homework and his soul cracking a bit closer to shattered every time someone he cares about is hurt because of him, and Rin goes with a smile on his face because that's who he is, and when he gets home in the evenings he'll brush his teeth and yawn his way into bed, too-comfortable and exhausted, Kuro and Yukio's pencil, and fade away into sleep – and then, sometimes, he will dream.