Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Their first week of living together, Reigen sleeps better than ever. It surprises him. He’d half expected himself to stay up all night staring in cautious wonder at Mob’s body curled up beside his own in their new semi-double bed, the happiness of that sight acting on him like a stimulant. With Mob tucked in warm and adorable against his side, secure in their shared bedroom, how could he possibly sleep? And the answer is: they fuck every night, and Reigen passes out almost instantly after.

He’s never been so well-rested, so content. The scent of Mob’s satisfied, sex-soaked skin is like a sedative, and for the first time in his life, Reigen sleeps through the entire night, every night. By their second week of living together, he’s almost forgotten what life used to feel like back when the best he could hope for was five or six-ish lonely hours choppily distributed between midnight and 6:30. That manner of living feels very far away to new, stable-relationship, blissful-cohabitation, eight-solid-hours-a-night Reigen.

Sunday night.

Reigen pulls the covers over them both, throws an arm around Mob’s waist, and less than five minutes later, slips willingly into sleep’s velvet oblivion like a fish into a stream.

Something wakes him up.

He’s too tired to open his eyes right away, but the clock of his body and the darkness pressing against his eyelids tell him that it’s still the middle of the night. He grumbles and feels for Mob beside him. Empty mattress, though warm. Probably in the bathroom.

He turns over and goes back to sleep.

And wakes up again.

What the hell?

Why? After two weeks of perfect sleep? There’s nothing he can hear that could possibly account for this, no misset alarm blaring, no shouting neighbors, no one pounding at their door. It’s dead silent in their apartment.

Except, no. No, it’s not. Not in the usual way, at least. There’s a sort of soundless humming in his ears, a strange, slow swelling of atmospheric pressure in his skull.

His eyebrows furrow.

His ears pop.

Grunting, he turns over onto his back.

“Mmob,” he rasps. “What…?”

Groping for his glasses on the bedside table, he lifts his head and squints his eyes open.

A crackling black hole looms over him, the depth of its absolute blackness making every other shadow in the room look gray in comparison.

Eyes of white fire, vivid and vacant, burn into his own.

Reigen shrieks and falls out of bed.

Five minutes later, he’s standing hunched outside the bathroom door, palm pressing quietly against the wood.

He turns his hand over. Knocks softly with one knuckle.

“Mob. I’m sorry. You just surprised me.”

No answer, though Reigen can feel the buzzing, pulsing, sulking presence just beyond the door.

“I was half asleep. I just wasn’t expecting… Look, I’m sorry I screamed. Do you wanna come out now? I’d like you to come out.”

After another minute of silence, he sighs and tries again.

“I promise I’m not afraid of you,” he says clearly.

Still nothing. And yet he knows that Mob is listening.

“I’ve never been afraid of you. I wasn’t afraid of you the day I first saw you like this, and I’m not afraid of you now. I was only surprised. I swear.”

The silence in the bathroom grows darker and more skeptical.

Reigen grimaces. “Okay, yeah,” he admits, “I was afraid that day—but not of you. I was afraid of what might happen if I couldn’t reach you in time. And. Also.” He clears his tightening throat. “I was also afraid—that you’d never look at me the same way again. After what I told you.”

“…”

“But I was never afraid of you. You know that.”

“…”

“Mob.”

“...”

“Mob. Come on.”

Reigen rests his forehead against the coolness of the closed door. The contact sends small snaps and crackles of energy fizzling through the skin of his brow, as if Mob’s unbridled powers have seeped into the walls, infusing them with electricity—and probably they have. Reigen focuses on the sensation, breathing deeply through his nose, and the tiny shocks, which are not unpleasant, wake him up a little; his mind hums to life like an engine, and suddenly he remembers something Mob told him a few years ago about the day he confessed to Tsubomi. The day Reigen first saw him in this form.

”Shigeo,” he tries.

More silence.

Then the click of the lock.

The door opens, and Shigeo brushes past him like a black cloud. Moving with steady, straight-backed precision, he perches on one end of the couch and doesn’t look at Reigen. Instead he aims his bright, blank gaze in the direction of the lifeless TV screen. Even with the rest of his expression concealed in shadow, Reigen can easily tell that he isn’t quite done sulking.

He makes a strange sight, there on the couch. The photo negative of a boy, darkly glowing. Reigen stares at him. Like an electrical storm slowly interfering with the regular broadcast of reality, Shigeo’s presence seems to distort the space around them, giving the room a fisheyed, flickering, ringing quality that messes with Reigen’s head, slows and scrambles his thoughts.

After a moment of unsteady deliberation, Reigen walks over and sits down on the other side of the couch.

Shigeo still doesn’t look at him, and for a few minutes they sit like that together, in silence. Reigen tries to think, but it’s hard. The apartment keeps glitching, and each time, Reigen’s brain glitches along with it. It’s the lateness of the hour; it’s the raw, discordant energy pouring from Shigeo’s body and warping the molecules around it, infecting the atmosphere. The energy forms its densest, darkest layer just above Shigeo’s skin, obscuring the pale softness of his face. He wears it like a shell made of shadow.

Reigen is so tired. He isn’t used to being up at this hour, not anymore. At the same time, the disruptive static hum of Shigeo’s unfiltered powers would make it impossible for him to fall back asleep right now. And more importantly, he could never leave Shigeo alone like this. Not when something is so obviously bothering him. Even as his thoughts hitch and warp along with the world around them, Reigen knows that much.

He clears his throat and leans back against the couch.

“You okay?” he manages to ask.

“…”

“Anything you, uh. Wanna talk about?”

“…”

“No?”

“…”

“Okay.”

Reigen looks vaguely about the room for inspiration but stops when the frondy shadows cast by their houseplants begin to lengthen and writhe on the walls around them. Facing resolutely forward now, his gaze lands on the television.

“Wanna watch a movie?” he asks.

Shigeo’s silence isn’t really a yes. But it isn’t a no either.

“Right.” Reigen nods and grabs the remote. “Let’s…let’s watch a movie.”

It ends up being something about demonic possessions, or evil clones, or evil twins. Reigen isn’t following the plot very closely. Plus the video keeps blurring and lagging and dropping frames, while the audio intermittently un-syncs itself and occasionally cuts out altogether.

The entire time, Shigeo sits beside him at the opposite end of the couch. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t make a sound—although the energy around him maintains its constant prickly buzz. After a while, it becomes background noise to Reigen. In fact, he grows so accustomed to it that he doesn’t notice right away when it stops.

His first clue is that their movie is finally playing smoothly. Then he gradually becomes aware of the light, clear, empty, normal silence surrounding them. It fills the spaces between the film’s shrieking, booming sound effects with pure, blessed mundanity.

With a start, Reigen looks to his left.

Beside him on the couch, Shigeo is asleep, and where there had been a person-shaped shadow before, there is now a flesh-and-blood boy.

Mob. Familiar Mob. His mouth slack with sleep.

Reigen can’t help feeling a little smug when he actually manages to lift him off the couch and into his arms on the first try—although Mob does help him out a little, slinging his arms around his neck and holding on as he mumbles unintelligible, half-sleeping words into Reigen’s neck. So it’s a far cry from hauling dead weight. Even so, Mob’s not quite as small as he used to be, and Reigen’s not quite as young. Therefore he lets himself be proud. Mob would be proud, too. He’s the only reason Reigen’s kept in shape, after all.

Reigen carries him to their bedroom. After some encouragement, Mob unknots his arms from around his neck, sinks into his pillow, and is dead to the world. Good: he should sleep. They should both sleep.

They can talk about this tomorrow.

Normally, Reigen wakes up earlier and more easily than Mob. In fact, he’s taken to bringing Mob tea and toast in bed each morning to help coax him, if not fully awake, then at least awake enough for Reigen to give him a proper goodbye kiss before he has to leave for work. Mob always accepts these gestures—the tea, the toast, the kiss—with simple, bleary gratitude. It makes Reigen smile. If only Mrs. Kageyama knew just how much her son allowed himself to be spoiled on a daily basis now that he and Reigen live together. She would be horrified. In fact, Reigen sometimes thinks that this aspect of his relationship with Mob might appall her more than almost any other. Maybe even more than the sex.

That morning, however, Reigen doesn’t get to spoil him. Because Reigen sleeps through his alarm, his backup alarm, and Mob’s alarm, and only wakes up when Mob’s lips meet his in a hasty, off-centered kiss.

“Sorry, shishou.” He’s out of breath, and fully dressed. “You looked tired, so I let you sleep. I called Serizawa to let him know you’d be late. And sorry, I have to go now or I’ll be late, too—but I’ll see you tonight—”

Quick, shuffling, stumbling footsteps. The squeak of their front door opening, the thud of it closing.

“I love you,” Reigen calls after him hoarsely.

Silence. Then another click. The sound of jogging, a heavy backpack jostling—and Mob’s panting face peers out at him from the hallway. “I love you, too,” he wheezes before dashing off again.

Again the front door closes, and Reigen lies back in bed, blinking.

Should he have tried to tell Mob about what happened?

No. No, it’s probably fine.

Maybe it was a one-time thing. A fluke. And Mob seemed completely normal just now. Rushed, but normal.

And just like that, it’s out of Reigen’s mind, replaced by other concerns.

Namely: is the imagined Mrs. Kageyama in his mind right? Should he stop spoiling Mob so much? He was in such a desperate rush just now, all because Reigen didn’t wake him up. If it’s going to make it that much harder for him to get out the door on time on his own, then maybe Reigen really should stop spoiling him. He doesn’t want to hinder Mob’s independence. And what happens the next time Reigen accidentally sleeps in and fails to wake him? Mob might miss class.

Sighing, he reaches for his glasses on the nightstand.

His hand touches a plate instead. On it lies a thick square of buttered toast. Next to that, a lightly steaming cup of tea.

Reigen stares at it. Then he picks up the mug and takes a sip. It’s hot, but not so hot that it burns his tongue.

After some consideration, he decides that he’ll keep spoiling Mob, actually.

Mob gets back even later than Reigen that night. He’d been studying for a test with some classmates at the college library, and once he’s home, he continues studying late into the evening, stopping only to eat dinner and help do the dishes. After that, he’s back at the low table in their living room, sitting on the ground and flipping through notebooks while Reigen debates whether to tell him about what happened last night.

Finally, around 10 p.m., Reigen nudges him with a foot. “Oi.”

Mob cranes his neck around and peers fuzzily up at him. “Mm?” His face is tense with worry.

Oh. Could Mob’s anxiety over this test have caused what happened last night?

It seems odd for such a small thing to provoke such a strange, extreme reaction. But right now, it’s the only explanation Reigen can think of. And if it’s true, then it would probably be better not to tell Mob about last night’s little incident. Knowing would only compound his stress.

Reigen smiles down at him. Sliding off the couch and onto the ground, he scooches up behind him. His chest touches Mob’s back; his legs bracket Mob’s body; and like that, he hugs him from behind, trapping Mob’s arms beneath his own so that he can’t reach out to flip any more pages.

“You know, Mob,” he says, “you already made it into college. Don’t you think you deserve to slack off a little like everyone else?”

Finding himself trapped, Mob wriggles slightly and makes a small, distracted noise, his eyes still scanning the vast spread of open notebooks before him. “Maybe…” he says absently. “But this is my first test in this class, so I want to do well…”

Smiling, Reigen knocks his head fondly against his. “Aren’t you a good student? But my recommendation stays the same. You should call it a night. Rest is key.”

“But…” Mob’s arms fidget in the bind of Reigen’s embrace, and he tries to lean forward, straining toward a handout that Reigen has seen him read through at least a dozen times this evening. “There’s just one more section I want to…”

Reigen hugs Mob tighter, restraining him. He buries his face in Mob’s nape.

He loves this part of him: how the soft, neat black of his cropped hair gives way to light skin and slim neck. The contrast has always moved him. It’s beautiful.

Reigen kisses him there, just below his hairline.

Mob inhales. His squirming immediately stops, and beneath Reigen’s kissing, licking mouth, his body grows still and expectant, his skin warm and silken. And all at once Reigen wonders how the skin of Mob’s other self—Shigeo’s skin, with its cloak of shifting shadows, its black static and flame—might feel against his lips, against his tongue. Would it shock him? Burn him? Would it hurt?

Mob shivers in his arms, test forgotten.

Reigen mouths his way up to his ear. He presses his lips against it and tells him to come to bed.

Most people have a glow after sex. With Mob, it’s more like a blaze, an incandescence. He looks so radiantly peaceful, so utterly, resplendently spent. Every drop of tension wrung out of him and replaced with bright, blushing light.

Catching his breath, Reigen feels the same light in himself.

A little later, with Mob’s head resting on his chest, he says, “Thanks for the tea this morning, by the way.”

But Mob’s already asleep. Reigen runs his fingers through his bangs, strokes his soft cheek. He looks so serene like this that Reigen simply can’t imagine him metamorphosing into some kind of sinister apocalyptic shadow creature tonight.

An hour or two later, Reigen wakes up to a sinister apocalyptic shadow creature standing beside the bed, staring down at him.

This time, he doesn’t scream.

Instead he groans and sits up.

“You sure you want to be up at this hour?” he asks thickly. “You have a test in the morning, you know.”

Shigeo stares at him, unmoved.

And who knows—maybe there’s no reason for him to worry about sleep and tests. It could be that the rest of Mob stays asleep while Shigeo is out and about. After all, Mob didn’t seem particularly sleep-deprived today, and he’s the type to get a little woozy after losing even one hour of rest.

Reigen mulls this over.

Meanwhile, Shigeo’s stare doesn’t waver.

“Okay,” says Reigen, throwing off the covers. “Fine.”

Satisfied with his seeming compliance, Shigeo drifts out of their bedroom and disappears down the hallway. Reigen follows him into the living room and sits beside him on the couch.

“Right. I’m up. Now what? You ready to talk about whatever’s going on?”

Shigeo stares straight ahead and, once again, offers him nothing.

They watch another movie.

It still glitches periodically in Shigeo’s presence, but Reigen holds up a bit better this time, his thoughts a bit clearer, a bit less scrambled. Maybe he’s adjusting, like how mountain climbers and deep-sea divers and astronauts adjust to the extreme pressure levels of remote environments.

This doesn’t stop him from feeling exhausted by the time the credits roll, however. He may be getting used to Shigeo, but it’s still 3 a.m. on a Tuesday night, and if Shigeo wants to stay up any later, Reigen’s going to need some caffeine.

“Think I’ll make some tea,” he yawns. “You want anything? A snack maybe?” An absurd image materializes in his sleep-deprived mind: that of himself feeding Shigeo nuts and berries out of the palm of his hand, as if Shigeo were a wild animal.

Reigen snorts and leans back against the couch, waiting for Shigeo’s answer. He doesn’t get one. Instead, what he gets is Mob’s temple dropping lightly down onto his shoulder, followed by the smooth tidal sounds of his deep, dozing breaths as they puff softly against Reigen’s arm.

The shadows have fled; Mob is whole again, and he’s asleep.

Reigen picks him up. This time, there’s a twinge of complaint from his lower back, like it’s trying to warn him that while lifting a probably-full-grown adult is fine every once in a while, two days in a row is pushing it. Reigen ignores it and carries Mob to bed. Then he schedules four extra morning alarms—two on his alarm clock, two on his phone. All set to the highest volume.

Mob’s test goes well. It’s the first thing he tells Reigen when he gets home that evening.

Reigen smiles. “That’s great.”

Mob grins back at him, but then their eyes meet, and his expression falls. “Shishou.” He peers into Reigen’s face. “Are you okay? You look a little tired.”

“About that,” says Reigen.

And he finally tells Mob what happened these past two nights.

When he’s done, he asks, “Do you remember…?” But he can already tell by the thoughtful, vaguely concerned look on Mob’s face that he doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Mob says, confirming it. “I don’t.”

Reigen hums, rubbing his chin. Stubble pricks and rasps against his fingers. He’d slept through all but the last of his alarms this morning and hadn’t had time to shave. “That version of you,” he says. “He’s just a part of you, right? And so I’m effectively talking to him right now. Right? Along with the rest of you?”

Mob nods.

“Yeah. Thought so.” Reigen sighs. “But then why don’t you remember? You were there. It was you.”

“Sleepwalking…?” Mob offers tentatively.

“I don’t think so,” says Reigen. “At least, that’s not the sense I got. You seemed aware. You seemed awake.”

Mob thinks quietly for a little longer.

Then, slowly, he says, “You know, years ago, before that day”—and of course Reigen knows what day he’s talking about—“it was like there were two people inside of me. One of them was allowed out into the world, and one of them was hidden away. And then, when we finally merged back into one person, I remembered everything. On both sides. I remembered being out in the world, and I remembered being hidden.” A mixture of confusion, concern, and wonder passes over his face. “So it’s strange that I don’t remember this. But…”

Reigen waits.

“But,” Mob goes on, “if that part of me can still detach from the rest of me like that...and if it wanted to keep something hidden from the rest of me for a change…then I don’t see why that wouldn’t be possible.” He looks down at his hands. “I know how the mind can hide things from itself. And that part of me knows it better than anyone.”

Reigen’s heart rate picks up very slightly as he absorbs this.

Is it fear he’s feeling? Foreboding?

No.

It’s more like interest. Curiosity.

Excitement, even.

Reigen swallows and asks, “What do you think he’s—you’re—trying to hide? And why? What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” says Mob. “But…I can guess. Maybe.”

“Well, what’s your guess?”

Softly, Mob says, “If it’s true, then I think I should let that part of me tell you.”

Later, when they’re lying in bed, Reigen thinks of something.

Into Mob’s sex-tousled hair, he says, “I just realized. When you were in that form last night and the night before, you didn’t speak at all. Not once.” He yawns. “How are you supposed to tell me whatever it is you want me to know if you won’t talk to me when you’re like that? Or if you can’t talk?”

Mob makes a noise and burrows sleepily into his side. “I’m sure there are other ways,” he murmurs.

As Mob falls asleep against him, Reigen thinks. If he really wants to figure out what’s going on with Shigeo, then sitting dumbly with him each night and throwing on a random movie probably isn’t the best course of action. So he comes up with a different plan.

This time, when Shigeo appears, he’ll be ready for him.

Once he’s sure that Mob is sleeping deeply, he creeps out of bed, makes his preparations, and waits.

For a while, nothing happens. Midnight comes and goes, and Mob’s done nothing but dream and drool lightly into his pillow. Maybe Regien’ll manage to get a full night’s sleep tonight after all.

With something like disappointment, he stands up from his desk chair.

Then, like the faint, forbidding drone of a distant hornet’s nest, a low static hum fills the room.

It should be discomfiting, this inescapable, electric, stinging-insect, horror-movie-soundtrack kind of sound. It should make Reigen want to run.

With a mixture of relief and anticipation, he sits back down.

On the bed, Mob’s sleeping body blurs and crepitates beneath a sheen of static, like a figure in a film gradually dissolving into the pixelated fuzz of white noise. Here and there little hairline cracks of lightning twist across his skin and through his hair, which rises tendril-like from his forehead to sway in the waves of psychic energy sloughing off his body. Meanwhile, the diffuse hum of his powers builds to a thick, swarming, hysterical buzz. He’s a high-voltage live wire, ready to electrocute anything stupid enough to reach out a hand and touch him.

Suddenly the buzz of static ceases. Silence rings through the room. And all at once the torch of Mob’s body bursts into black flames.

Hissing and snapping with electricity, they spread across his skin like tongues of ink until he is swallowed by a darkness that is blacker than the night outside their window, blacker than any night Reigen has ever seen.

Shigeo opens his eyes and sits up.

Reigen meets his gaze and smiles.

“Morning,” he says. Then, reaching for the glass of milk on his desk, he approaches the bed.

He remembers his brief daydream about feeding Shigeo treats out of his palm. Now he imagines bringing this glass of milk all the way to Shigeo’s lips, tilting it for him until the liquid spills onto his tongue.

In the end, he stands a respectful distance away and, extending his arm, holds it out to him.

He’s surprised when Shigeo accepts it into his shadowy hands to examine.

He’s even more surprised when, after several seconds, Shigeo drinks.

Reigen stares at the place where the glass touches Shigeo’s lips. It’s hard to pick out the specifics of his mouth through the veil of static and shadow obscuring all his features except for his eyes, which are instead obscured by light. Still, he finds that the longer he looks, the easier it is for him to see it despite the veil: the soft, sweet shape of Mob’s lips latched lightly around the rim of the glass.

After several swallows, Shigeo lowers the cup with both hands. Reigen holds his empty palm out to him.

Shigeo studies those upturned fingers with his flat, white gaze. Then he hands Reigen the half-finished glass.

Warmth blooms in Reigen’s chest.

Ah, he thinks. Mob is cute in this form, too.

Shigeo is cute.

Reigen turns the glass until he can see the wet place where Shigeo’s mouth had been. He puts his own lips over it and takes a sip.

“So,” he says, wiping his smiling mouth with the back of his sleeve, “what should we do today?”

On the low table in their living room, Reigen has laid out five DVDs to choose from, plus four video games, three board games, a deck of cards, and some snacks.

“You choose what we do this time,” he tells Shigeo.

Shigeo inspects these offerings with perfect focus and perfect detachment, like a cat. Slowly, he picks things up in his dark hands, turns them over, puts them back down. When he’s gone through everything, he sits there on his knees, staring down at the spread, an eldritch shadow in blue pajamas.

Maybe these selections have failed to entice him. Maybe he’ll get up and walk away and go sit inscrutably on the couch for the rest of the night, just like the last two nights—but then he reaches out and picks up one of the video games again.

It’s one of Mob’s, actually: some vintage racing game he brought from home along with his old console. It’s probably about as old as Mob himself. Reigen only grabbed it because it’s multiplayer, and because it looked pretty easy.

Shigeo holds up the case. The beams of his eyes fall expectantly on Reigen.

“Oh?” says Reigen. It’s hard to keep the surprise out of his voice. “Oh! A game, huh?” He coughs. “Uh, good choice. Very nice.” Delighted laughter bubbles up in his throat, but he forces it down.

Extending his arm, Shigeo pointedly offers him the case.

“Ah. Shall I, uh, set it up then?”

Shigeo doesn’t move. He stares at Reigen without blinking, holding the game out to him with simple, almost childlike presumptuousness.

“Right.” Reigen takes it from him. “Okay. Let’s play.”

Shigeo defeats him soundly.

It shocks him a little, actually. He’s heard Mob reminisce about playing video games with Ritsu when they were little, but he didn’t think he played them very often anymore. Plus, he and Reigen had played a few rounds of a different game here in their new apartment after they’d first unpacked that console, and while Mob wasn’t quite as bad at it as Reigen thought he might be, Reigen had still more or less wrecked him.

Maybe Shigeo’s just really good at this particular game—which isn’t as easy as Reigen had assumed based on its age and apparent simplicity. Reigen’s a fast learner, though, and he gets the hang of it after a few rounds. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that by the time the controller finally slips from Shigeo’s hands and Mob slumps warm and familiar and asleep against his side, Reigen’s lost to the kid about fifty times.

It’s like this every night.

Shigeo wakes up around midnight, picks something from a heap of assembled activities, and then that’s what they do until Shigeo finally retreats back into sleep, usually around 3 or 4 in the morning.

Sometimes he picks a movie, but usually it’s some kind of game. They play cards; they play Shogi after Reigen teaches Shigeo the basics; they even play marbles, both of them lying on their stomachs in the living room, flicking the colorful glass pieces back and forth across the floor. Most of all, however, they play video games, usually the same one Shigeo picked that first night since he’s by far the best at it, and he seems to enjoy beating Reigen—although Reigen’s improved significantly since that first time and can present more of a challenge now. Which Shigeo also seems to enjoy.

They spend every night together, and every night Reigen listens and watches for some special sign or explanation from Shigeo to account for his continued nocturnal presence. It doesn’t come.

He does, however, learn other things about Shigeo.

Some things surprise him more than others.

The way Shigeo uses his powers, for instance. He’ll use them in ways that would simply never occur to Mob. He’ll use them to pick things up, to put things down. If Reigen’s about to trip over something—which happens more often now that he’s permanently sleep-deprived—Shigeo will use his powers to move that thing out of the way (or, alternatively, to move Reigen out of the way).

He’ll even use them to cheat at their games. He’ll teleport playing cards, jam Reigen’s controller, send Reigen’s marbles careening in impossible directions when they’re mere millimeters away from hitting his own.

This bothers Reigen more than any brief psychic manhandling. Furthermore, it shocks and appalls him. He could never imagine Mob doing such a thing, but now Reigen knows that this instinct does in fact lurk somewhere deep inside his student, in the Shigeo parts of him, and it’s hard to swallow. What’s also hard to swallow is the fact that Shigeo only started doing this after Reigen himself cheated at a few rounds of cards. (He hadn’t even really meant to do it; it’s simply the way he’s always played.)

Maybe, in a way, Shigeo is more impressionable than Mob. Or maybe Shigeo just has fewer compunctions about imitating Reigen’s less principled behaviors.

The first time it happened, Reigen naturally took it upon himself to lecture him about it, but that didn’t help. It made things worse. And now whenever Shigeo cheats, the kid instantly turns his big, blank eyes expectantly on Reigen, watching for his reaction like a child testing a parent.

Reigen’s starting to think he enjoys being lectured.

There’s another thing that surprises him about Shigeo. Maybe more than anything else.

He’s timid.

Not all the time, no, but in certain mundane situations, he seems to hesitate to do things. Writing, for example. One night, when the milk had run out, Reigen had asked him to add it to their grocery list. And Shigeo had stood there, staring down at the pad, pen in hand, for over three minutes without writing anything. In the end, Reigen had written it himself.

Also: cooking. Even simple things. If Reigen asks him to pop some popcorn while he sets up a movie, Shigeo will stand motionless in front of the microwave with the unpopped bag in his hands until Reigen comes to help him. He’ll do the same with anything involving the microwave, or the stove, or the kettle, or sharp knives. And so if either of them wants a drink or a snack, Reigen is usually the one who prepares it.

He wonders if it’s because Shigeo doesn’t trust himself to do certain things on his own without Mob. Even if he’s cooked hundreds of meals as Mob, and written thousands of words as Mob, he isn’t used to doing that stuff as Shigeo.

Reigen also wonders if there’s a part of Shigeo that just likes to be taken care of.

Finally, there’s one last thing that makes his nights with Shigeo markedly different from his days with Mob.

He and Shigeo don’t really touch each other.

Reigen isn’t sure why. He would like to touch Shigeo—in fact, he’s fascinated by the thought of it—but for some reason, he’s come to suspect that Shigeo might not like to be touched. Maybe because almost everything about Shigeo’s appearance seems calculated to warn against touching him. And because Shigeo’s demeanor, while often adorable in its own way, is so much colder and so much more remote than Mob’s. And because Shigeo doesn’t seem to invite touch through any legible sign or gesture, the way Mob does with just the tilt of his head, or the angle of his glance, or the slant of his shoulders.

And it’s because they don’t ever really touch that, when Shigeo’s head lands on his shoulder as they’re sitting on the couch a few nights later, Reigen immediately assumes it’s only because he’s fallen asleep.

But no. He’s still awake, the beam of his gaze still trained on the TV, where a movie about vampires is playing. His ever-swaying hair tickles Reigen’s neck. Sparks jump from his skin to Reigen’s, and Reigen can feel the vibration of his powers between them.

He’s gotten so used to the crepitating hum of Shigeo’s presence that it’s become almost soothing to him, like a meditative, ambient soundscape. Yet in this moment, with Shigeo’s head on his shoulder and his energy all around him, pressing against him, he no longer feels soothed. He feels electrified.

He wants sex.

Not just touch, but sex. He wants sex with Shigeo. Until tonight, he hadn’t realized how badly he’s been wanting it, how much he’s been holding back, thinking Shigeo wasn’t interested.

But now, with Shigeo leaning against his shoulder like a high schooler on a movie theater date, maybe—

His hand rises from his own lap and slowly, cautiously reaches toward Shigeo’s knee.

It doesn’t make it. Shigeo shifts, his head lifts from Reigen’s shoulder, and then he’s standing up and heading for the bathroom.

Reigen sighs.

He knows Mob desires him. But is Shigeo a part of Mob that desires him? Is Shigeo a part of Mob that loves him?

Shigeo takes a while in the bathroom, yet Reigen’s still hard in his pants by the time he hears the toilet flush and the sink run.

He shoots up off the couch the minute Shigeo gets back, brushing past him with a murmured “Sorry–me, too” and hoping the dim lighting in the living room is enough to conceal the bulge in his sweats.

He’s losing more and more sleep. The most he can hope to get is about four and a half hours per night now, and that’s if he manages to both go to bed early and fall back asleep almost instantly upon Shigeo’s departure—and those two circumstances rarely occur in concert.

The weird thing is: he feels fine. Actually, now that he’s accustomed to this new schedule, he’s more focused and energized than he’s been in a while.

Mob, however, is starting to worry. “You look tired tonight, shishou.” He fends off Reigen’s lips with a hand on his chest, though Reigen’s fingers are still working at the buttons of his shirt. “Are you sure…? Maybe we shouldn’t…”

Reigen laughs, and it only sounds slightly unhinged. He mouths at Mob’s ear before whispering into it: “No, Mob. I want to. I really want to.”

After two rounds, Reigen’s still not satisfied.

“Again.” He curls his fingers against Mob’s prostate over and over. “I know you can.”

A shivering puddle on the bed, Mob stares at him in boneless, breathless astonishment. “Shishou,” he pants. “W-why…?”

“What do you mean ‘why’?” Reigen pushes his smirk against Mob’s throat. “Is it weird for me to want to see you come?”

“No, but like this…” Mob shakes his head in disbelief. “Are you… Are you trying to tire me out, or, or something? To see if it, ah”—he cuts off with a gasp—“if it keeps me from waking you up tonight…?”

Reigen laughs again. It sounds a little more unhinged this time. “No, it’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s just that you really turn me on, Mob.” Thrusting his fingers harder now, he stares down into Mob’s face. Fascinated, searching. “Every part of you.”

Chapter Text

After about two weeks of these nightly sleepovers with Shigeo, all the indoor entertainment starts to get old. And as Reigen watches Shigeo gently smoldering away on the couch like a black flame in human shape, he begins to feel sorry for him. Night after night, Shigeo’s cooped up in here like an animal, and although he’s never complained or seemed restless, Reigen wonders if some fresh air might do him some good. And if a change of scenery might somehow bring Reigen closer to figuring out why this has been happening.

At first he might’ve hesitated to take Shigeo outside, given what happened the last time he walked the streets of Seasoning City. But aside from one or two glasses and lightbulbs, Shigeo has very politely refrained from destroying anything in their apartment. So he thinks it’ll be alright.

“Hey,” he says when Shigeo wakes up that night. “Wanna go for a walk?”

It occurs to him after he says it that he sounds like he’s talking to a dog, but Shigeo either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind. Even so, Reigen quickly adds, “I was thinking of swinging by the convenience store. So, if you wanted to come…”

In response, Shigeo just stares at Reigen like he always does, indicating neither agreement nor refusal. But when Reigen turns to leave the room, he does get up and follow, his bare feet padding down the hallway after him.

He pauses and watches as Reigen toes on some crocs at the entrance.

Reigen looks back at him, eyeing him up and down with his hands on his hips. “You’re gonna need shoes, too, you know. You can’t just go barefoot.”

Shigeo stares.

Reigen sighs. Then he bends down and slips Shigeo’s bare feet into the boy’s untied sneakers one by one, encouraging him to lift each foot with a guiding hand just below the bony protrusion of his ankle joint. Then, leaving his hand there even after Shigeo’s shoes are on, Reigen looks up. He strokes the thin skin of Shigeo’s ankle lightly with his thumb and wonders if Shigeo minds being touched this way. “I suppose I’ll have to tie them for you, too?”

Shigeo continues to stare curiously down at him.

“I know you know how to do this. But here. Watch closely.” And Reigen’s head bows down again. His fingers dance into a blur above Shigeo’s right shoe, and a perfect knot emerges. “See? You do this every day.”

Shigeo blinks.

“Okay,” Reigen grumbles. “So maybe that was a little too fast.” And with significant mental effort, he manages to control his movements and tie the other shoe more slowly.

“Next time, you try,” he tells Shigeo firmly. But Shigeo, head down and eyes trained on his laces, doesn’t seem to be listening. Instead he rocks back and forth on his feet, shifts his weight around, picks one foot up and then the other. Testing Reigen’s handiwork.

Reigen snorts and opens the door.

A frigid spring wind blows unseasonably in his face. Shivering and backpedaling, he reaches into the closet, grabs Mob’s jacket, and slings it over Shigeo’s shoulders. “You’ll need that.” Then he pulls on his own.

Together they go outside, Reigen in his sweats, crocs, and overcoat, Shigeo in his pajamas, sneakers, and down jacket. The air is clear and cold, but it carries a fresh, springtime scent. They walk. Watchful and dark, Shigeo is consonant with the night, moving through it like a shadow, his wide eyes bright like two streetlamps, and as they go along his head turns slowly on his neck to aim those white beams at all the different things surrounding them, buildings, trees, cars, stray cats. Reigen wonders if he is remembering the last time he walked outside alone. “Alone” as in “without the rest of him.” Or maybe he’s only pondering the novelty of seeing all these ordinary sights in his extraordinary state.

Suddenly he stops. In the middle of the sidewalk, he turns to Reigen expectantly.

“What’s up?” asks Reigen, surprised. Then he realizes they’ve reached the convenience store. He laughs; so the one lost in thought wasn’t Shigeo after all.

Awash in the cool yellow light pouring out through its windows, Reigen peers into the store. Shigeo stands in the shadows just beyond the glow, watching him with an air of patience. Every few seconds, the lights flicker.

“You know,” says Reigen, “now that we’re here, I can’t remember what it was I wanted to get.” His eyes slide to Shigeo. “You want anything?”

Shigeo’s silence sounds like a no.

“Thought so. Well, then. Shall we keep walking?”

This time, Shigeo’s silence sounds like a yes.

They keep walking. They walk farther than Reigen had intended, but he doesn’t say anything. There’s a pleasurable tension in the air that he doesn’t want to end. It’s a familiar feeling, a young feeling. Like walking home from school with someone you’re secretly infatuated with.

Of course, Reigen is not secretly infatuated with Mob. He is openly infatuated with him, and much more than infatuated. And Shigeo is a part of Mob, and so of course those feelings extend to him; there’s never been a question of that. Only, Reigen wishes he knew for sure which of his feelings Shigeo might want to engage with. If any.

Luckily, this section of the city is fairly quiet, and there aren’t very many people around. Just a few midnight stragglers, mostly men, stumbling home after a late night at the office or the bar. One of these guys sways slowly towards them on the sidewalk, his head bent down, eyes on the ground or on his own clumsy feet. Reigen draws closer to Shigeo, shielding him slightly and doing his best to ensure that, when the man passes them, he’ll pass next to Reigen instead. And it’s a good thing, too, because the guy, oblivious to everything except his own shoes, doesn’t seem to see them at all.

This is further confirmed when he trips about two steps away from them and collides with Reigen’s shoulder.

“Wha…?” Regaining what little balance he had and spinning around to face them, the man looks and sounds as you would expect: very drunk. “Oi! Watch it—”

But he can’t finish this thought because he’s too busy hurtling backward into a telephone poll across the street.

“Hey!” Reigen grabs Shigeo’s wrist and forces his outstretched hand back down to his side. “No! Not necessary!”

Then he turns to the man, cups a hand to his mouth, and shouts across the street: “You okay?”

Thankfully, the answer appears to be yes, because after only a brief pause, the man lurches to his feet and sprints away, suddenly demonstrating a shocking amount of speed and agility for a drunk guy.

Reigen rubs his hand over his face.

“I should take you home right now for that,” he mutters to Shigeo.

Shigeo crackles calmly beside him, waiting to see if he actually will.

Sighing, Reigen says, “Okay. Just…promise me you won’t do that again. Alright? Unless someone’s coming at me with psychic powers, or, I don’t know, a gun or a bomb or something, I’ll take care of it myself. Got it?”

Shigeo’s posture seems agreeable enough.

“Okay. We can go a little farther, then. If you want. I mean, it’s a nice night…so...” Reigen trails off. It is a nice night. Chilly, but clear and refreshing. The moon large and full of light.

After that, they don’t see anyone at all, not even in the distance, not even when they pass the bar that Reigen knows is usually still busy at this time of night. He wonders if Shigeo is somehow keeping other people away from them. If they’re walking at the center of a traveling barrier of his creation.

Reigen doesn’t ask.

In what feels like no time at all, they come to a section of the city that is familiar in an older way.

They pass Mob’s old school. Mob’s childhood home. They cross the bridge that Reigen knows Mob used to cross every day.

They keep walking. And then Shigeo stops.

It takes a moment for Reigen to realize why.

In the low light of the street lamps, he sees a parking lot, then a wide, short set of stairs with a sign at the top, then the silhouette of something like a cage and another of something long and sloping. And beyond all that, the black cloudlike shapes of trees, obscuring the horizon.

“Ah,” he says.

He wonders if Shigeo has been guiding them here on purpose this whole time—all while Reigen thought he himself had been leading the way, making arbitrary turns here and there with no real goal in mind beyond prolonging their walk and the pleasant tension accompanying it.

He steps into the empty parking lot and looks up the stairs toward the park entrance, beyond which its slide and swingset and jungle gym crouch like animals in the dark.

Shigeo comes up and stands beside him.

Reigen nods. Still staring at the park, he reaches out and places a hand on Shigeo’s head.

“This is where I first met you,” he says.

The swaying strands of Shigeo’s hair tickle his palm; static snaps at his fingers. Reigen looks at him and smiles. He can’t quite read his white gaze, but it seems brighter, more intent than usual.

Reigen’s hand slides from the top of his head to his cheek. With his thumb, he strokes Shigeo’s cheekbone. “Isn’t it?”

There’s a pause, and then Shigeo’s fingers close around his wrist. Reigen lets him peel his hand away.

Oh, he thinks. This part of his love—Shigeo doesn’t want it after all.

Reigen can accept that.

Because in the end, he still has Mob’s love, and that will always be enough for him. More than enough. And suddenly, in the light of that indisputable fact, this desire of his to hold and possess every single separate part of Mob, including Shigeo—especially Shigeo—seems unforgivably selfish, appallingly greedy.

And so he will accept it. In fact, he’s already halfway through the process of accepting it—

Only Shigeo still hasn’t let go of him.

His grip on Reigen’s wrist is gentle, electric.

Thoughts arrested, Reigen waits. He can see Shigeo breathing. He can see it in the air as mist in the unseasonable chill of the night, thin clouds puffing from his mouth in time with the rising and falling of his chest beneath the fabric of his collared pajama shirt. Reigen wants to reach out and zip up his jacket for him, but he keeps himself still instead. Inside the ring of Shigeo’s fingers, his wrist tenses with the effort of not moving.

He waits for Shigeo to move instead. And finally, Shigeo does. With great care, he positions Reigen’s hand in the air so that he’s holding it slightly out in front of him and a little higher than shoulder level, with his open palm facing forward. When Shigeo lets go, Reigen holds this position compliantly. It’s the stance of someone about to give or receive a high five. He almost laughs, but then he sees Shigeo hesitating again, so he swallows it and keeps waiting.

Shigeo doesn’t give him a high-five. Instead, after several breaths, he places his palm against Reigen’s and laces their fingers together.

The gesture is shocking, literally and figuratively. Small sparks fizz between their fingers.

Shigeo stares at the knot of their connected hands as if evaluating the picture it presents. Finding it satisfactory, he turns his searching eyes to Reigen’s face.

One corner of Reigen’s mouth lifts into a light, lopsided smile.

“Well,” he says softly. “This is a surprise.”

Shigeo searches his face a little longer. Then he looks down and, with an air of solemnity, holds his other, empty hand out to Reigen.

No. Not his hand. His wrist. He’s offering his wrist.

Reigen circles it with his fingers.

Shigeo’s powers infuse the air with humming energy while the heat from their bodies warms the scant space between them.

Right hand entwined with Shigeo’s left, left hand gripping Shigeo’s right wrist, Reigen says, “I held you just like this, that time.”

There’s agreement in Shigeo’s gaze. And perhaps some satisfaction at having brought them back to this point in the past.

And there’s another emotion, too. One Reigen can’t decode. He wonders if Shigeo is remembering, if his mind right now is a cyclone and a broken city. Reigen thinks he’s gotten better at reading Shigeo over the course of all their nights together, but it is so against Shigeo’s nature to clearly communicate anything beyond his most obvious and immediate likes and dislikes that Reigen can never really be sure of what he’s thinking. Still, he’s learned to track the slow, subtle shifts of Shigeo’s expression beneath the shadows of his powers, and while he may not always know exactly what they mean, he can usually arrive, after a time, at a pretty good guess. And the guess he comes up with now surprises him.

”You like this.” Reigen strokes Shigeo’s wrist with his thumb. “This feels—good for you.”

Without breaking eye contact, Shigeo slowly squeezes his hand, tightening the weave of their interlocked fingers.

“You…” Reigen shakes his head in disbelief, then squeezes Shigeo’s hand in return and meets his eyes.

He says, “Just ask—just show me you want it—and I’ll hold you like this whenever you like.”

He’ll hold Shigeo in other ways, too—in every way—whenever Shigeo likes. And like a spark, the hope that Shigeo might actually be open to other kinds of touches flickers and catches and comes to dazzling life in Reigen’s stomach, charging his insides with the same sensation currently sizzling and purring between their joined palms. At the same time, the acceptance with which he’d faced the prospect of never touching Shigeo beyond a pat on the shoulder shrivels up and dies.

He needs him; he needs to feel him. He needs to touch and love this part of Mob up close, as close as he can get. And suddenly he just can’t take the way Shigeo’s looking at him, so open all of a sudden, so inviting, the velvet-dark shadows of his face so beautifully soft and sharp—

They stand there in the parking lot beside the park together, hand in hand, wrist in hand, looking at each other. And electricity fills Reigen’s lungs just like he’s falling in love, only he’s already in love and has been for years, and so maybe it’s more accurate to say he’s falling suddenly deeper in love, into a hidden trench of his love, where dark things hide and live and eat and feel blindly for one another along an abyssal floor and, when at last they find each other, tangle irreversibly together in a dance of limbs, teeth, eyes—and then a thought strikes him, and he can’t help but laugh.

Shigeo’s stare turns questioning.

“It’s just—” Reigen shakes his head and laughs again. “We look like we’re about to dance.”

Then, as the electric feeling in him surges and giddiness takes over, “Shall we?”

Shigeo’s stare goes from questioning to taken aback.

“Come on. Look at us.” Again Reigen squeezes Shigeo’s hand, his wrist. “We might as well. So what do you say? Shall I teach you?” And leaving their hands interlaced, he drops Shigeo’s wrist and loops an arm around his waist to pull him closer.

Their hips slot together; energy crackles between them.

“Okay,” says Reigen. “So put your free hand on my shoulder—yeah, just like that—I’ll lead, of course. Now, just try to follow along—”

The look on Shigeo’s face makes him laugh more loudly this time. “What? Of course I know how to dance. Haven’t I told you? I was in a ballroom club for three weeks in college.”

Even as Reigen manhandles him into a clumsy box step, Shigeo’s silence remains skeptical.

“I’m being serious. I can waltz, foxtrot…tango, sort of…swing…” He’s rambling. “It was my sophomore year. I joined to impress some girl I thought I liked.”

Shigeo had listened to most of his explanation with a look of exasperated resignation. At this last detail, however, his white eyes narrow to knife-like slits.

“Ah.” Reigen’s eyebrows rise, and his smile widens.

In all the years they’ve known each other, Mob has never betrayed even the slightest hint of jealousy regarding Reigen’s past relationships—not that there’s a whole lot to talk about there, but still. No, when faced with any detail regarding his master’s pre-Mob romantic history, Mob has only ever reacted with placid acceptance and a sort of distant curiosity.

So the quiet, white-hot fury in Shigeo’s face is unexpected.

“Interesting,” Reigen says, with relish. “So there is a part of you that gets jealous.”

Shigeo’s powers rumble. He holds Reigen closer, squeezes his hand tighter, and with his still-narrowed eyes like two livid slits of light looks down at their feet and commits himself with new vigor to following Reigen’s steps. It’s like he actually wants to dance now—like he wants to erase that girl from Reigen’s mind. He doesn’t have to, of course; Reigen can’t even remember her name. All his love belongs to Mob. And to Shigeo.

Reigen smiles down at his bowed head. For every one of his own smooth strides, Shigeo takes several little stuttering steps to keep from stumbling in his uncertainty. Eyes glued to their feet, he’s concentrating very hard.

Reigen’s heart tightens with affection.

“Here, like this,” he says, bringing them to a halt. “Slide your left foot back so it’s parallel with your right but shoulder-width apart from it… Good. And now bring your right foot right next to your left, closing the distance between them. Perfect—” And he directs Shigeo like this for a couple of minutes, stopping once he seems to get the hang of it.

Counting the triple meter in a low voice, Reigen leads them in a very slow, very stiff waltz.

Even so, his breath grows short, and his heart pounds, just as if he were guiding Shigeo through a fluid, fleet-footed choreography, whirling him round and round the parking lot, lifting and dipping and spinning him.

Shigeo, in his arms. Moving with him, unresisting. A perfect contrast to the day they first met, when Reigen chased him down and held him in place and made him hear his confession. Like that day, Shigeo is all static and shadow, the shell of his powers like a hedgehog’s spines, warding off contact—but beneath that layer of energy, beneath the sting and sear of it, there is, of course, a boy. Warm, soft. Reigen can feel him now, just as he felt him then. His skin. His palm, his fingers.

They’ve gotten closer, their bodies and their faces. Reigen’s arm tightens around Shigeo’s waist. He inhales the thunderstorm scent of Shigeo’s swaying hair and, looking down into his face, sees what he has seen a few times now but never recognized: a change in the shadows of Shigeo’s cheeks. There is, somehow, a glow to them. They’re warmer, pinker.

Their feet have stopped stepping; they’re standing in place now; but still they’re moving with each other. Reigen’s fingers running up Shigeo’s waist, his side, his back, his neck, and then down again. Shigeo shivering, sparking, tensing against his touch, unsure. Even with his irises swallowed by the lights of his eyes, Reigen can tell that his gaze has begun to flutter uncertainly from place to place. His left hand still clasps Reigen’s right, but he doesn’t know what to do with the one on Reigen’s shoulder: it lifts as if to find another perch on Reigen’s body, then never descends. It hovers over Reigen’s chest like a hummingbird.

This should be a familiar dance for both of them. But like many things, Shigeo’s never done this without the rest of Mob. And that’s perfectly alright; it’s more than alright. If he isn’t sure what to do, he should just leave it to his shishou.

With his left hand, Reigen lets go of Shigeo’s waist and grabs his wrist again instead. It’s what Shigeo wanted earlier, after all. This mirroring of their first meeting.

There’s a gasp. A small, young, human noise, barely audible beneath the hum of Shigeo’s powers.

The sound of it, so unexpected, electrifies Reigen. He squeezes Shigeo’s wrist even harder, wanting to hear it again.

It’s quieter the second time, but Reigen’s ears are pricked and tuned to it now, and he catches it immediately: one soft, hitching breath.

In response, Reigen makes a low sound in his throat, surprised, approving, aroused.

He thinks for a moment, and then he says, “This has been hard for me, you know. You’ve kept me up every night for two weeks now, and this whole time, I’ve wanted to touch you. Only I wasn’t sure you wanted that. In fact, I was starting to think maybe you didn’t.”

They’re so close. He’s speaking into Shigeo’s hair.

“But that’s not true.” His lips graze Shigeo’s ear. “Is it?”

He kisses Shigeo’s forehead, his temple, his cheek.

He kisses Shigeo’s lips.

Familiar lips, beloved lips. Mob’s lips. Except that isn’t the only part of him he’s kissing; Shigeo keeps his powers on the outside, and so Reigen is kissing them, too. The pure, condensed substance of them, exposed and raw.

Shigeo gasps again, more sharply than before, though it’s stifled by their kiss. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he kisses Reigen shakily back. With his lips, and with his powers.

The warmth of skin, the surge of static. Reigen feels his own hair lift and crackle.

He can’t believe they wasted all those hours playing video games and watching movies and shooting fucking marbles when they could’ve been doing this instead.

“Is this what you wanted?” His mouth moves against Shigeo’s as he forms the words. “Were you waiting for this? Why didn’t you tell me? I wish I’d…” But he trails off, muffling himself against Shigeo’s mouth.

The kiss goes on, slow and addictive. Reigen didn’t mean for it to last this long, not out here in the open, but now he doesn’t care. He wishes it would last forever.

When he finally does pull away, it’s only to fulfill his sudden irrepressible need to see what Shigeo looks like freshly kissed.

At first, Reigen sees about what he expected: Shigeo’s shaded face, adorable, dazed, spellbound, the desire in it obvious even through the shadows shifting over his skin. But then, in an instant, the shadows vanish—or else Reigen is seeing through them—and Shigeo’s expression is suddenly as clear and rosy and shadowless and ordinary as if he were any other boy, as if he were just Mob, Mob with windswept hair raked up and off his pale forehead, cheeks flushed, lips parted, eyes wide, pupils black and blown.

Gently, Reigen tightens his hold on Shigeo’s hand and wrist. Smiles into the softness of Shigeo’s bare face.

The same face he confessed his powerlessness to four years ago.

“I see,” he says. “You’re just shy. Aren’t you?”

Dreamy, pink up to his ears, Shigeo gives a slow, woozy blink. Then understanding abruptly fills his face, and his flush deepens from pink to red.

An angry, embarrassed red.

It happens very suddenly. Expression sharpening, nose wrinkling with indignation, Shigeo tears his wrist away from Reigen in one swift, incontestable motion, and with a whooshing, bursting sound like fire catching, shadows leap back into his face, masking his blush. Though not completely.

Ah.

It never occurred to Reigen that Shigeo’s response to teasing might differ from Mob’s. But just as he’s beginning to worry that maybe they’ve somehow managed to lose all the progress they’ve just made, Shigeo flings his freed arm around his neck and drags him into another kiss.

This time, his powers flare more forcefully between their joined lips. Their kiss vibrates, hums, buzzes, prickles, stings with rising energy.

Reigen groans through tingling lips and pulls Shigeo in by the small of his back. His powers are sharp and strong, but they don’t hurt. No, they don’t hurt at all—

What does hurt, however, is the bite Shigeo gives his bottom lip.

It’s not a nip. Mob has nipped him a few times before, and this is different. This is a bite.

Reigen’s hiss of pain morphs into a peal of shocked, vaguely lunatic laughter.

He breaks their kiss and grabs Shigeo’s face with one hand, fingers digging into his cheeks on either side, giving his lips a slightly distorted, pouting appearance. Staring down at his mouth, Reigen clicks his tongue before gliding it along his own sore lip. He doesn’t think he tastes blood, but he can feel the heat of injury there, the indentation of teeth.

He stares down at Shigeo’s forced pout and smirks.

“Oh?” he says pleasantly. “What’s this? You’re saying you disagree? You don’t think you’re shy?”

Defiant, Shigeo’s bleached, bone-fragment eyes glare out at him from a face full of pink-tinged shadow.

Reigen squeezes his cheeks harder and pecks him quickly on his puckered lips. Shigeo tries to bite him again as soon as their mouths meet, his canines clicking like a snapping dog’s in the wake of Reigen’s kiss, but Reigen’s fast, and his grip on Shigeo’s face keeps him from lunging after him.

“Well, I think you’re shy.” Smile widening, Reigen leans in closer to Shigeo’s face. “I think you’re a very shy little boy. So why don’t you just leave it to me?”

And he sticks his thumbs in Shigeo’s mouth and pries his jaw apart.

“No biting,” he adds. “I want this shy little mouth to stay open.”

And before Shigeo can protest, and before Reigen himself can even begin to worry that he might be taking things too quickly and too far, Reigen kisses him again, slipping his tongue in past Shigeo’s teeth while the wedges of his thumbs keep Shigeo from closing his jaw. Of course, Shigeo could still bite him if he really wanted to; it would hurt like hell; and in fact, Reigen can feel the scrape of teeth against his thumbs right now—but the bite never comes. Instead, Shigeo grips Reigen’s coat with both hands and lets him hook his mouth open even wider, kiss him even deeper. So either Reigen’s shocked him into submission with this, or else Shigeo simply likes it.

Maybe it’s both.

The inside of Shigeo’s mouth is full of static, full of power. Reigen dips his tongue, his fingers into it, starved for the sensation yet at the same time glutted, drugged, buzzing with it. He imagines feeding his cock into that deep well of feeling, reaching even farther into Shigeo that way. How would his powers feel at that greater depth? Do they get purer, stronger, denser the deeper they go?

The thought almost overwhelms him. He moans and finally drags his fingers out of Shigeo’s mouth so that he can fist one hand in his undulant hair and pull him even closer, while his other hand like a magnet again finds one of Shigeo’s and clasps it so tightly that the woven knot of their fingers becomes its own crackling node of electricity.

They kiss for a long time like that, clinging to each other, tasting each other, until Reigen tightens the fist in Shigeo’s hair and pulls, baring his neck.

He puts his mouth just beneath Shigeo’s jaw and kisses along it. Psychic power trembles under his lips.

“Shigeo,” he says.

Mob’s first name. He so rarely says it, even now, even with Shigeo. Because although Shigeo prefers this name, Reigen mostly just addresses him as ‘you.’

It’s exciting to say, yes. But it’s also somehow heavy, the extra syllable an unaccustomed encumbrance compared to Mo-bu’s two easy beats.

With his lips over Shigeo’s pulse, he tries again: “Shigeo. Shigeo.”

Then, without thinking, in a quiet rumble near his ear, “Shige.”

Shigeo—all of him: his body, his breath, his energy—arches and shivers.

“Shige,” Reigen says again.

It feels good in his mouth. Effortless. And—

And it’s what Mob’s parents call him. That alone turns Reigen on more than he could ever admit out loud. It makes him feel unscrupulous, disreputable, possessive. It makes him feel like a thief.

And yet it also feels true. Because he and Mob are family now, and in many ways closer than family. After all, who falls asleep next to Mob every evening? Who wakes up next to Shigeo every night?

Why shouldn’t Reigen call Shigeo what his family calls him?

He says it a third time, whispering it right into the shell of Shigeo’s ear. And Shigeo clings to him, and gasps, and quakes, and pants.

Reigen is mesmerized by him. And as they continue to kiss, he realizes that from certain specific angles, he can once again see the bare-faced, blushing boy beneath the dark-veiled being. Like a trick of the light. An optical illusion.

Reigen needs him. Needs to pierce him further, needs to be inside of him.

There’s no one else around, it’s too late at night, too early in the morning, and besides, he still suspects that Shigeo might somehow be keeping other people away with his powers—and so what would it matter if Reigen fucked him right here, right now? He could lead him by the hand into the park, the park where only four years ago Tsubomi had waited for him through a cyclone, the park where Mob’s heart had broken for the first time—Reigen could take him there right now and fuck him on a swing, or against the jungle gym, or while he clings to the ladder of the slide.

His hand shakes as it comes to rest on Shigeo’s waist.

“Let’s go home,” he says. “Shige. Let’s—go to bed.”

Chapter Text

The walk back is a swift blur, and Reigen gets the impression that, for every step they take, Shigeo is teleporting them an extra ten forward. They encounter no one.

His hand stays on Shigeo’s waist. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do once they’re back. He might not have the patience to wait until they make it to the bed; he might have to spin Shigeo around and slam him up against the closed door the moment they step into the entrance; he might have to fuck him there against the wall, or on the floor. Desire grips him like the hands of a drowning man, dragging him down.

Outside their apartment, Reigen slides the key into the lock with perfect smoothness and efficiency, no fumbling. He opens the door, ushers Shigeo inside—and ah, that’s right: before anything else, he’ll have to help Shigeo with his shoes. He’ll have to kneel in front of him and unlace his sneakers and pull them from his pale feet; and then he’ll have to kiss his slim staticky ankles, and his shins, and the inner side of his knee and thigh, and he’ll have to wrap his arms around his waist, run his hands up the soft arch of his back and then down again to his hips, clutching and clinging, face pressed to Shigeo’s abdomen, inhaling his sweet stormy scent, and then he’ll have to pull him, push him down; he’ll have to have him right there—

But Shigeo’s shoes are already off, no help needed, flung carelessly away along with Reigen’s ugly crocs. And before Reigen can grab him and have him, he finds himself being tugged in the direction of the bedroom.

They shed their jackets on the way.

Shigeo steers him over to the bed and, with a hand on each of his shoulders, pushes Reigen down until he sits obediently on the mattress, heavy-lidded and almost hypnotized by this sudden forwardness. Leaning back, he expects Shigeo to follow, to climb on top of him, to crawl onto his lap and press their hips together so they can finish what they started by the park.

Instead, Shigeo turns to leave the room.

Reigen catches his wrist.

“And where do you think you’re going?” The words come from a deep, jagged part of his voice.

Shigeo stops. He turns to look at Reigen’s hand around wrist, and then at Reigen.

The sight of him makes Reigen loosen his grip. It’s not just his expression, the shape of his shining eyes or the set of his mouth beneath his powers—it’s also his powers themselves. Somehow, their texture has changed. There’s something hesitant about them now, almost humble, almost soft, yet resolved. Reigen can see it in the shadows of Shigeo’s face, feel it in the currents running through Shigeo’s wrist.

Shigeo wants to tell him something.

“What is it?” asks Reigen softly.

Shigeo wavers. He looks at the door and then back at Reigen.

“Okay.” Gently, Reigen brings Shigeo’s hand to his lips, kisses it, and lets it go. “Okay. Go on. I’ll wait here.”

For several minutes, he hears Shigeo rummaging around in their second bedroom.

To anyone who doesn’t know them intimately, that room is Mob’s room. To anyone who does know them intimately (and the list is short), it’s the guest room, because while Mob does keep some of his stuff in there, he’s never spent the night in that bed, not even once.

Pacing footsteps. Drawers opening and closing, papers rustling. Then quiet.

Shigeo comes back into the room and hands Reigen a small photograph.

It’s an old picture of him and Mob: Reigen grinning in his gray suit and pink tie, Mob stiff and blank-faced in his middle school uniform. Reigen has his elbow propped up on Mob’s shoulder in a fond yet almost aggressively platonic gesture. Remembering, Reigen breathes out a laugh. He never could resist touching Mob, but he had rules for it back then, wrapped his touches up in various acceptable packages. He was the proud mentor when he clapped Mob on the back, the goofy older brother when he ruffled his hair, the encouraging father when he gripped his shoulder. Every moment of contact between them brief and perfectly appropriate. God, he’s glad they’re past that now—although he does feel a certain nostalgia for those days when his love still lay concealed in his chest, when the longing swallowed him every night and spat him back out each morning, when the desire to see Mob, just to see him, nothing more, was the only thing that kept him upright and moving through the workday.

And Mob is so cute in this picture, so young, probably only thirteen or fourteen. Though it’s strange: despite the intervening years, his face looks almost exactly the same to Reigen, with the same softness, the same kindness, the same cuteness and handsomeness hidden behind the unassuming veneer of those same plain features.

Only—no. It’s not the same. Not really.

The longer Reigen looks at this younger Mob, the more his chest tightens, and not just with love. Sorrow and regret and self-reproach rise in him, and a sudden sense of wrongness makes him want to reach into the picture, to cup Mob’s face and study it, to ask him what’s bothering him, and to listen carefully to his answer.

Why? Reigen stares at the photo for a long time. And then he sees it.

Mob’s eyes. They’re different from how they are now. Gazing out at Reigen from the photo, they’re flatter, duller. As withdrawn and unreflective as coal.

Reigen was used to that look, back then. It was how Mob usually looked, for the first three years Reigen knew him. No matter what the kid was feeling, there was almost always something anesthetized about his stare.

That’s no longer the case. At eighteen, Mob is calm, yes, and a bit dreamy, and most people would probably still describe his customary affect as somewhat flat—but there’s nothing constrained or blunted about his emotions. Not anymore.

Reigen should’ve known, back then, that something was wrong.

He should’ve known. He was Mob’s master, after all—and his friend—and he was desperately, unalterably in love with him—yes, even then. But still he didn’t know.

He’ll never forgive himself for not knowing.

Staring down at the photograph in his hands, Reigen blinks several times, inhales somewhat wetly through his nose, and clears his throat.

“I see.”

He looks up at Shigeo.

“You’re not in this picture,” he says.

Shigeo is very still. Waiting, probably, for Reigen to go on.

Reigen strokes the photo lightly with his thumb as his thoughts come together.

“For those first few years, I only knew this Mob.” He nods slowly to himself as he speaks. “Back then, I saw this Mob every week, sometimes every day. And that whole time”—his voice catches and grows hoarse, and he has to force the rest of the words out—“I had no idea you existed.”

Shigeo still doesn’t move. Uncertain, expectant, his powers simmer close to his skin. As if they are his skin.

“I’m sorry,” Reigen says. “I’m sorry.”

He places the photo on the nightstand.

Then he pulls Shigeo forward by the hand, grabs him, hauls him onto the bed. Wrapping him in his arms, he tips them both over and sends their bodies sinking into the mattress, and there he holds Shigeo even closer, tightening the band of his arms around him, intertwining their legs, burying his nose into the buoyant strands of his black hair.

Shigeo lies quiet and motionless in this embrace, face pressed to Reigen’s chest, not hugging him back. A statue of warm static.

“You didn’t get to spend that time with us,” Reigen whispers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t fair.”

Shigeo breathes silently into Reigen’s sternum.

“You were lonely,” says Reigen. “Weren’t you?”

Lonely, and jealous.

This is it, he’s sure of it. This is why Shigeo’s been coming out.

Not just to play games, not just to have sex—but because Reigen met Mob when he was eleven, and he didn’t meet Shigeo until Mob was fourteen. Because, for those three intervening years, Shigeo was alone.

What did he do in his loneliness, locked there in the basement of Mob’s mind? He could only wait, and watch. For three years, he watched Reigen take advantage of Mob—but he also watched him bandage Mob’s scraped knees, and carry Mob home after long jobs, and invent games with Mob on slow days in the office, and offer Mob advice, and help Mob with his homework, and comfort Mob when he was hurt. For three years, Shigeo watched their relationship grow.

It’s no wonder he hated Reigen when they finally met. He hated him for using Mob. But he might’ve hated him even more for loving him.

For loving him, and not loving Shigeo. For not even knowing that Shigeo existed.

Reigen thinks about the scar on his temple. He presses it against the top of Shigeo’s head.

No, it’s no wonder Shigeo hated him. What’s a wonder is the fact that he stopped hating him so quickly. He remembers the look on Shigeo’s face when he confessed to him that day in front of the park, how his hostility, detached and resolute, had drained out of him all at once, whisked away along with the dim veil of his powers and leaving behind a wary, shell-shocked look of uncertainty in his dark, clear, young, tired eyes. He’d had no idea what to do with Reigen’s offer of honesty, which had also been an offer of love. Had he stopped hating Reigen in that moment? Maybe. But he hadn’t stopped being jealous, jealous of the three years Reigen and Mob had spent together without him.

And four years later, he’s still jealous. Because although he’s no longer alone, he’s had to share everything in life with Mob. He’s never had anything to himself, apart from a few short bursts of violence when Mob was younger.

A few short bursts of violence, and one long walk through a storm, and Reigen’s hand in his. Reigen’s fingers around his wrist.

And that’s why they’re here tonight, awake together at almost four in the morning.

It’s so simple: Shigeo wants to spend time with him. Alone, one-on-one. Like how Reigen and Mob spent all that time together without him, for those first three years.

“I’m sorry,” Reigen says again, choked with feeling. “You poor kid. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Every night, I’ll make it up to you.”

He squeezes Shigeo tighter, almost as tight as he can.

Shigeo lets him and still doesn’t react, and for a while his breathing simply continues its steady, stoic rhythm, his ribcage expanding and contracting regularly against the snug knot of Reigen’s arms. But then there’s a hitch, and then another. And another. Reigen feels it each time, a subtle twitch in Shigeo’s body as the air flowing in and out of his lungs suddenly snags, and with every new breath, the snags become more frequent, shredding each inhale and exhale into ragged fragments.

Besides this unsteady breathing, Shigeo makes no sound. And so it takes a moment for Reigen to realize that he’s crying.

Crying into Reigen’s chest. The voiceless breaths of his soft, choppy sobbing barely audible above the rising crackle of his powers.

A wet stain blooms on Reigen’s shirt. Beneath it, Reigen’s heart beats, constricts, and accelerates. He clutches Shigeo’s quietly heaving, quietly shivering body even closer to his own, runs shaking fingers through his turbulent hair, kisses his head, whispers his name as psychic powers churn the air around them in time with Shigeo’s sobs.

Reigen loves him. He loves to see, to feel him letting go: it moves him beyond words. “That’s it,” he murmurs mindlessly, tears pricking his own eyes. “That’s it. That’s good, Shige. Shige—”

He curls his body around Shigeo as if he wants to hide him, or absorb him.

There’s something about Mob in the grip of any strong emotion—but maybe especially about Mob’s tears—that’s always transfixed him. The first time he saw Mob cry, really cry, that day Tsubomi rejected him, Reigen knew he would never forget the gift of that sight, although in the moment he could barely let himself look at him. Not just because he didn’t want to embarrass him, but because the sight of Mob crying, and looking almost surprised at the ferociousness of his own tears, like a baby, new to this world, had aroused in him a depth of care and tenderness that overwhelmed him.

It had also aroused his desire.

He feels that same desire now, and that same tenderness. They swirl and simmer in his chest, feeding off each other. He can feel his face and ears and the back of his neck heating up; he can feel his heart racing.

He isn’t proud of the fact that Mob’s tears turn him on even as he’s desperate to comfort him. He shouldn’t want to fuck his crying student. And of course he’s never tried to, not when Mob is really upset. God, no. He’s always waited until Mob’s done crying, until Mob’s recovered, until Mob shows him that he’s ready and makes the first move himself, usually by the next day. Only then does Reigen give in; only then does he let himself make Mob cry again, in a different way.

He’ll do the same again now, tonight, with Shigeo. Stifle his arousal and swallow this unsavory instinct, even as Shigeo’s body trembles against his own, even as his own heart trembles with the knowledge that this part of Mob, this incomprehensibly strong and shadowy part of him, Shigeo, trusts him enough to break down in his arms, probably for the first time in his life—or at least, in the parts of his life that exist separately from Mob’s.

Reigen will take care of him, this boy crying against his chest; he’ll comfort him until he falls asleep. And then he’ll jerk off in the bathroom by himself.

God, he wishes he could see Shigeo’s face right now, watch it crumpling with the force of this release, track the tears leaking from his eyes and then save that image for later, and forever—but Reigen would have to loosen his hold on him to get a proper look. And he isn’t going to do that.

Squeezing his eyes shut, ignoring the arousal burning in his gut, he chants, “I love you. I love you, Shige. I love you so fucking much—”

He repeats it again and again as Shigeo cries. Then finally, after a long time, his sobs soften and begin to ebb away, like the final convulsions of a small storm.

Shigeo’s breathing slows down, evens out. His wild pulse calms.

Reigen’s does not.

Reigen’s pulse runs a lonely race. It’s on fire; he’s on fire. He wants Shigeo, wants to have him, right now, both of them soaked in the agonizing evidence of Shigeo’s old, accustomed loneliness. A loneliness Reigen needs to shatter further.

But he puts that desire away for now, and with an unsteady hand, strokes Shigeo’s back.

“Better?” he asks, short of breath.

Shigeo nods slowly.

“Good.”

Reigen pets his dark, drowsy hair. Then, tentatively, he tries to tilt Shigeo’s face up—just to check on him, he tells himself—but it won’t budge from the wet patch on Reigen’s shirt.

“Hey,” Reigen whispers. “Look at me.”

To his surprise, Shigeo obeys. His powers have dispersed in the exhausted wake of his weeping, and without that mask, his skin is raw, flushed, and wet, his dark eyes dazed and damp, his nose painfully pink. Every endearing feature somehow both freshly clarified and becomingly blurred by his tears.

Reigen swipes his thumbs through their tracks, wipes away the wetness. He’ll remember this. Those dark, bright, naked, wet, swollen eyes staring blearily up at him from below Shigeo’s thin brows, his clear forehead, the undulant tangle of his hair.

Reigen wipes the last of those tears, then removes his hands from his face before they can find their guilty way to Shigeo’s mouth. Draping his arms around Shigeo’s shoulders, he makes himself take a deep breath before attempting a small, encouraging smile.

Shigeo watches him in silence. And when one more straggling tear slips from his eye, he reaches up himself to brush it away with a deliberate, thoughtful motion, as if it hadn’t occurred to him to do this before Reigen had done it for him. Carefully, he studies the thin, wet sheen coating his fingers.

Then, almost as if he can sense exactly how his tears have stirred Reigen, he looks up and touches his damp fingertips to Reigen’s lips.

Reigen’s breath hitches against the contact, and his smile falters. “Oh,” he breathes.

Shigeo’s pale fingers stay where they are.

“What—” Reigen tries, forming the word against the pads of those unwavering fingers, but he cuts himself off. Because he knows what this is. He doesn’t have to pretend.

Only how could Shigeo have realized, when Mob never has?

Unless Mob has realized?

Could it be that Mob realized a long time ago? And that Shigeo is simply more forward than he is? More shameless?

Reigen isn’t shameless, not when it comes to this. Shame scorches his insides. Trapped, he stares hotly, unblinkingly, into Shigeo’s eyes.

Then he presses his tongue against Shigeo’s fingertips and tastes Shigeo’s tears.

He inhales sharply at the flavor, almost a gasp. “Sorry.” His voice comes out strained. “Sorry—” But even as he says it again, he runs his tongue along Shigeo’s fingers to taste him a second time.

Shigeo gazes back at him, also without blinking, and although he isn’t crying anymore, a few more leftover tears break from his lashline and spill down his cheeks. Then his fingers leave Reigen’s lips as he grips Reigen’s face in both hands and steers it closer to his own. Breathing hard, Reigen lets him. He breathes against Shigeo’s wet cheek, then kisses it, then drags his tongue along it, upward, following the clear briny path of his tears to his eye. He kisses his shining eyelid.

Shigeo’s powers snap weakly against Reigen’s lips, as if trying to return. It feels like the sting of arousal, like a sign that Shigeo wants this, too. Wants this now. Reigen kisses him all over his face, drinking him, his tears and his kindling powers, until he finds Shigeo’s lips and gets lost there, and they’re making out again now, and he rolls them over so he’s on top, gets between Shigeo’s legs, kisses Shigeo into the mattress, and he’s so turned on he can’t help but tell him about it, out loud, tell him how beautiful he is, how beautiful he looks when he cries.

“Mob and I never did this back then, you know,” he adds out of nowhere, breathlessly, between kisses, thinking out loud. “Of course you know. We couldn’t. But you and I…we can do a lot of things now that Mob and I couldn’t do when he was in middle school.” He hadn’t planned to say this, but now that he has, he hopes that the thought makes Shigeo happy, maybe even begins to ease the unfairness of those years of jealousy.

And maybe it does, because Shigeo grips his shirt and squirms against him.

“Do you like that idea?” Reigen asks, pleased. “Hm? Or”—he laughs against Shigeo’s neck—“maybe I should pretend you’re fourteen and refuse to kiss you, just like back then?”

There’s a gasp, and a sizzling gush of psychic energy. On top of Shigeo like this, Reigen can feel the surge with his whole body.

“What was that?” Reigen laughs again under his breath, kissing his way back to Shigeo’s lips. “That sound fun to you or something?” Then, in a lower voice against his mouth, he says, “Maybe I’ll pretend you’re fourteen and keep kissing you.”

This is dangerous.

If he keeps this up, Shigeo will end up unearthing every questionable fantasy Reigen’s ever had in a single night. Fantasies he’s never shared with Mob, at least not this explicitly. He assumed he would, someday—Mob is still young, after all; they have time. But somehow Shigeo’s been pulling them out of him tonight like a magician pulling scarves out of a hat, all without even asking, all without even saying a single word to Reigen.

Shigeo still doesn’t say anything now—but his hands clutch Reigen’s shirt convulsively, his back arches, and there’s a crackling burst of power that leaves the ends of Reigen’s hair feeling singed. And that’s as good an answer as any.

Groaning, Reigen trails his lips to Shigeo’s ear and mouths at it, nips it. “Yeah? You like that idea? Should we try it?” His low, teasing voice becomes slightly more thoughtful. “You know, you do seem younger than Mob, sometimes. Somehow.”

Reigen’s thought that for a while now, actually, but he never asked himself why that might be. When did Shigeo come into being? Has he always been with Mob in some way, since birth? Or did he form as a result of Mob suppressing his powers as a kid? And exactly how old was Mob when that started?

And what age would that make Shigeo now?

He might really be younger than Mob. Not physically, but mentally.

Arousal rushes through Reigen like another surge of psychic power.

“How old are you anyway, Shige?” he asks hoarsely.

Shigeo’s face is angled slightly away from him now, showing off the pale expanse of his neck, over which his dark powers ripple in sporadic waves. Reigen can hear him panting; he can feel the rapid puffs of air against his wrist, braced against the mattress by Shigeo’s head. And then Shigeo turns to look at him, and his eyes are wide and intoxicating, flickering between the clear, red-rimmed, dark-irised, large-pupiled gaze of his bare face and the bright, annihilating white of his psychic powers, and without breaking eye contact he reaches up and takes Reigen’s head in his hands and guides their mouths together.

One last electric shock shoots through Reigen’s body, from his lips to his groin, sharp and thrilling, and then Shigeo’s eyes close, and beneath Reigen he goes very still.

“Shige?”

Warm, even breaths wash over Reigen’s lips.

Shigeo is asleep.

Of course. It’s late, later than Shigeo’s usual bedtime by about two hours. And he really wore himself out tonight with walking, and with dancing, and with kissing, and with crying. And then with more kissing.

Limp and dreaming, Mob’s body lolls in Reigen’s arms. Reigen strokes his flushed face, still slightly swollen from crying, and kisses slack lips that don’t kiss him back, tasting only the barest remnant of salt there. Then he groans and rolls over, pinching the skin between his eyes, palming his erection through his sweats.

After a while, he gets up and goes to the bathroom.