A/N: Hey guys! It's Aquila here again with another Rin Harem fic! This one's just going to be a whole lot of fluff, fun and feels. No dark stuff here. (But is that's your thing, do check out 'Lay Me By Your Side'!)

I don't really know how this fic is going to pan out, I love all these ships on some level...so it's gonna be up to you guys to tell me what ships you want to see sail! I do have a skeletal plot in mind, though.

Hope you enjoy this, and please hit me up in the comments!


Chapter 1: Observations

Ai crept quietly down the corridor, listening intently for any unusual sounds. Most of the doors were closed, a few were a open a crack to let slanting bands of sunlight fall in strips across the floor. Nearly all the rooms were empty, as most of the student populous were out enjoying the surprising spell of good weather before the storms set in.

It was hot, Ai realized. Very hot. Beads of perspiration dripped down his forehead as he skulked in the shadows of the dormitory corridor. He could hear light snores snuffling out of the door next to him. Tiptoeing past the room like a ninja, Ai quickly slipped into his dorm which Momo had forgot to lock again. For once, Ai was thankful.

Once inside his room, he breathed a huge sigh of relief. He locked the door shut behind him before ridding himself of his blazer and tossing it carelessly on his desk chair.

The room was a pigsty, as usual. Ai felt a loom of despair weigh on him. He kept on making promises to clean up, but could never get round to doing it. Momo was even messier that he was; leaving behind a constant trail of sweet wrappers, wet soil, dead flies and the remains of his beastly bug collection.

The entirety of the window sill had been taken up by Momo's creepy crawlies. They were housed in various containers – the water beetles in the old goldfish bowl, the millipedes in the discarded conical flask from the chemistry lab, the stick insects in the chipped mug with its handle missing, the ladybirds and fire ants in several tiny jam jars, Pyuunsuke in his dented biscuit tin and a cracked ornamental vase for the butterfly pupae. Copious amounts of leaf litter and soil were also deposited around the room, encouraging more insects to come in from the garden.

Dirty clothes lay strewn across the floor, creating a patchwork carpet for the many stacks of books, magazines and general clutter that seemed to follow Ai around wherever he went. His desk was a lost cause, overflowing with textbooks, study guides, stationary and loose sheets of paper. Momo's desk was little better. Instead of school books, there were sandwich crusts, glow-in-the-dark bubblegum drops, sticks of charcoal, expensive drawing pencils, empty baby food jars, pretty pebbles collected from the grounds, twigs, dry leaves, disposable chopsticks, interesting articles cut out from newspapers, neon colored ink and piles and piles of manga.

The only serious looking book was a bulging volume bound in dark blue leather titled 'An Introduction to Entomology'. The English title was scary enough, but Ai had been well and truly intimidated when he had tried to go through the first few chapters. The text was tiny and densely packed together with almost no paragraphs. It was full of words that made no sense to him at all, making his eyes water and his head feel dizzy after skimming just 2 pages. The only relief was that there were diagrams in the book too, delicately penciled and labeled with more words that Ai couldn't pronounce or fathom. There was an index at the end with hundreds of columns. Ai couldn't make head or tail of the lists, but it looked like Momo could, seeing that he had made tiny notes in the margins and even bookmarked particular pages with his neon colored post its.

Apparently, there was more to Momo than met the eye.

He hadn't been able to be messy when he had bunked with Rin in their old room. His beloved senpai had been a meticulous germophobe and an absolute clean freak. If Yamazaki senpai's glowers were to believed after encountering him in the laundry den at 2 in the morning on more than one occasion, that particular trait hadn't changed.

A fond smile came to his face when he thought about his old room, along with a pang of loss. He remembered Rin senpai in his blue apron (an apron that Rin constantly argued was Gou's, but Ai knew better) armed with his germ annihilating apparatus. Rin hated things that were unclean or soiled, and claimed that neat surroundings led to a an organized mind. Ai had tried to take the words to heart, but old habits die hard and his senpai usually ended up cleaning his messes after him. Dusting the shelves, sweeping away the crumbs left by Ai's late night cravings for mochi, restacking books in alphabetical order, taking out the dirty laundry and ironing all the bed sheets and pillow cases in the linen cupboard. The cleaning missions always ended with the lemon and orchid house freshener, which Rin sprayed all around the room in liberal quantities. It was a smell that Ai associated with Rin, along with the familiar scents of cherry blossom shower gel, Rose and Tulip Cologne, chlorine water, Darjeeling tea, damp soil and fresh air.

Looking around his present room, Ai found himself acutely missing Rin's presence. Momo was difficult to deal with on the best of days, but downright impossible on most. He was hyperactive and could never sit still, tapping his fingers or knocking his knees while Ai tried to study, and he had the attention span of a flea. He was impulsive and painfully blunt with his ideas and thoughts. He also had no concept of personal space, especially with Rin senpai.

Ai thought he was being paranoid at first, but when he caught Yamazaki senpai's disapproving frown during one of Momo's many flying-tackle-bear-hugs that he reserved specially for Rin, Ai knew that he had been right in his suspicions. Momo was being more touchy-feely with Rin senpai.

And Ai didn't like it.

Not one bit.


A/N: ...And that's Chapter 1. A little shorter than my usual, but I feel it's more effective this way. So, penny for your thoughts? Read and Review!