A/N: For RinTori Week 2016, the first prompt: senpai & kouhai. Rin & Aiichirou are basically the "I hope senpai notices me" trope in a nutshell. I wanted to play around with the theme a bit, without forgetting about the original setting (aka Ai fanboying over Rin and Rin being bad – or at least really slow – with feelings).
I'm not a big fan of fluff, but this kind of a soft crush was relaxing to write. c:
Visit my AO3 (account tayeah) for some Free! of higher rating.
I Hope Kouhai Notices Me
It started out as Matsuoka Rin just enjoying being admired.
He was used to it – people often complimented him on his swimming skills. Sure, he acted like it was nothing and pretended to be annoyed if anything, especially when Nitori Aiichirou fussed over him. Sure, he told Aiichirou to tone down the praise and focus on improving himself. But that wasn't quite the whole truth.
For a long time, he saw Aiichirou as pretty much just a personal portable ego booster to him. It gave him an odd kind of satisfaction to be looked at with such wide, awestruck eyes and to notice the light shade of pink on Aiichirou's cheeks when they stood close to each other.
Later on, he started to actively seek for reactions like that. He secretly loved helping Aiichirou with his English homework – despite all his sighing and eye rolling – because he knew that it was yet another skill of his that the younger boy admired a lot.
Besides, as he soon learned, the way Aiichirou frowned at a particularly difficult phrase and chewed his lower lip was unbelievably cute.
What was even cuter was Aiichirou's expression when Rin sometimes returned his praise. The unexpected words of approval made a deeper kind of blush appear on Aiichirou's face and filled his big cerulean eyes with astonishment and glee. Praising someone was not a thing Rin regularly did, so in its rareness it had the power to almost sweep Aiichirou off his feet. Which pleased Rin to no end.
Then the exceptions started to appear and made Rin find out something about himself. Not only was he pleased when his kouhai was around to gaze at him dreamily; he was also not pleased when Aiichirou wasn't there, which was a whole different thing. Normally, every time Rin finished a lap, the first thing he heard after touching the wall of the pool was Aiichirou's chirpy voice. But then, sometimes, the first-years and second-years practiced separately and Rin felt oddly empty getting up from the pool. His eyes automatically scanned his surroundings, looking for Aiichirou, even though he very well knew the boy wasn't there.
One of those moments, Rin realized that apparently he was quite fond of Aiichirou.
One day, he heard Aiichirou talking to another butterfly swimmer, a tall and toned up third-year. Rin glared at the two from afar. Aiichirou congratulated the guy on his improved time. Some of the words he used were the same ones Rin had gotten used to hearing. It didn't take long before Rin just had to step in and tell Aiichirou to come help him with stretching. Aiichirou's face lit up at the request and he didn't even glance at the other swim club member again. Rin did, though. It wasn't a friendly look.
After a few weeks of icy silence, the poor guy still had no idea what he had done wrong to make Rin suddenly give him the cold shoulder. Rin didn't care to explain, because he was busy explaining it to himself.
Eventually Rin had to admit to himself that he might be just a little bit of the jealous type.
And Aiichirou had a lot of friends. Which was, of course, a good thing. But coming back to the dorm room and finding it empty because his roommate was out with a friend made him feel kind of empty. Not always jealous, just empty.
I'm lonely without him, Rin realized.
On one particularly chilly winter night, there were snowflakes on Aiichirou's hair when he came back from a stroll with a classmate, and for once, Rin didn't even try to pretend he wasn't staring. Something felt different; something changed. Rin couldn't take his eyes off Aiichirou, until Aiichirou nervously asked if there was something on his face.
A few seconds later, Rin found himself still staring into Aiichirou's eyes, now wide with wonder, and trying to come to terms with having just blurted out that the boy was really fucking cute. Judging by Aiichirou's awkward stuttering, they were both as confused about it.
The moment passed, days went by and the amount of attention Aiichirou gave to Rin remained unchanged. Rin became restless. The praise and the pink shade were there like they always were, but he wanted more. And it had been clear for a while now that Aiichirou wanted more, too. So why wasn't anything happening?After the moment with the snowflakes and the stuttering, Rin had expected there to be extra smiles and warmth and secret glances. He felt almost offended by the lack of it.
Maybe Aiichirou had misunderstood him. How frustrating. Rin never gave out any unnecessary praise. Aiichirou should've realized that Rin calling someone cute was practically Rin asking that someone out. How could he not notice?
Eventually Rin got tired of waiting and accepted the fact that Aiichirou was not going to read his mind. If the message needed to be clearer, then so be it. Besides, never having kissed Aiichirou was already a huge problem that needed to be fixed.
Turned out his kouhai was at his cutest when his head was spinning from kissing.
It worked. Neither of them barely noticed anything else but each other for a long, long time.