Chapter Text
The sun was starting to set. Orange light sneaked into the office through the slats of the blinds over the windows, laying alternating bars of warm color and cool darkness across the room. Serizawa washed out the used mugs with soap and warm water, taking off his suit jacket and pushing his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. Even though it was a simple job, he took his time scrubbing them out, until his hands were reddened from the heat. He toweled everything dry and replaced the mugs on the shelf where they belonged.
For a moment he paused, his fingertips resting on the somewhat-dusty shelf. Right now, everything within the office seemed so normal: the same assortment of mugs on the same shelf, the same chairs in the same places, the same papers on the same desk. But the same couldn’t be said for the city outside. Even now, it was strangely quiet without the usual traffic sounds echoing in the closed-off streets.
Serizawa knew the sameness in the office wouldn’t last, either. Something in all of them had changed, in Mob and Reigen most of all, who Serizawa thought of as the two cornerstones of Spirits and Such. If Mob decided to quit, after all, everything would be different somehow. Even if he decided to stay, it would probably still be different. Serizawa didn’t know what to make of that. Anxiety grumbled low in his stomach, not quite full blown yet but ready to pounce if he thought about the changes too much.
He took a deep breath and let it whistle out of him as he crashed onto one of the chairs where Reigen talked with clients. Reigen had told him to go ahead and lock up the office if he wasn’t back by now, but for some reason Serizawa couldn’t bring himself to leave just yet, even though his fatigue was catching up to him. Things still looked normal, after all. Maybe if he just stuck around and kept his eye on it, he could somehow carry this familiarity into the future…
He looked at his umbrella, left leaning up against the bookshelf, and had to laugh at himself, not without a touch of bitterness. Hadn’t he learned his lesson about trying to prolong feelings and places past their expiration date? He couldn’t bring the current normalcy of the office with him, no more than he’d been able to bring the safety of his room along.
And maybe it wasn’t meant to be brought along, anyway. Normal didn’t mean good, just predictable.
There was another reason for sticking around, too, one that he was slower to admit to himself but that kept bubbling up all the same. He wanted to see Reigen again. Just one more time that day, just to make sure he really was alive after everything, and then it would be okay…
Serizawa didn’t make a conscious decision to, well, become unconscious. One moment he was trying to enjoy the rare quiet evening in the office, perhaps the last of its kind, and the next thing he knew he was awoken by the sound of someone tramping up the stairs. The sun had progressed a little further down in the sky, elongating the stripes of shadows formed by the blinds. He got his bearings and stood up just as Reigen opened the door.
Like Mrs. Kageyama, Reigen looked in dire need of some rest as he came into the office. It appeared that he still hadn’t gotten the chance to change his shirt, and combined with his stressed expression he looked like he’d just been jumped in an alley somewhere.
Seeing Serizawa, he stopped. The worst of his beleaguered expression was swept under the rug of nonchalance as he resumed his performance for his employee. Serizawa wished he wouldn’t do that, but… maybe things hadn’t changed as much as he thought.
“Ah, seems you’re still here,” Reigen said, his voice controlled and apparently unsurprised. Serizawa, however, could sense that he was in fact surprised. He had gotten rather good at telling when Reigen was taken off guard.
“Seems so,” Serizawa said. “Everything sorted out with Hanazawa?”
“More or less,” Reigen said. “He says he’s fine, but I’m still going to check on him tomorrow.”
“He seemed in good spirits over the phone.”
“Oh, his spirits aren’t damaged at all,” Reigen said. “Everything else is another story.”
“It’s nice of you to look after him while his parents are away,” Serizawa said. “I mean, more than nice. It’s… good.”
Reigen snorted. “Now that’s one I don’t hear too often.”
“Nice?”
“Good.”
“Oh.”
Taking off his suit jacket, Reigen went over to his desk to open his laptop and start typing furiously without even sitting down. Business as usual. Serizawa swallowed a lump in his throat. Now was as good a time as any…
“I’ve been meaning to ask, Reigen-san,” he said. “What, um… what did you say to Kageyama-kun back there? To… stop him?”
Reigen’s fingers paused momentarily over the keys, something like hesitation. Then, he resumed his rapid typing.
“I thought I said I wanted to talk to him in private,” he said bluntly.
Serizawa cringed and offered a quick bow of apology. “Ah— yes, you did. I apologize, Reigen-san, I didn’t mean to pry, I was just—“
“Curious, I get it,” Reigen said.
“No,” Serizawa said. “I was just worried about you.”
Reigen stopped typing once more, but this time he didn’t resume immediately after. He stared at the screen, but his eyes were somewhat unfocused.
“You don’t have to call me that,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“‘Reigen-san.’ I mean.” His gaze wandered up to meet Serizawa’s. “I’m younger than you, and I just call you ‘Serizawa’. So, you could just call me ‘Reigen’, if you wanted to. So it’s, you know.” He made a horizontal slicing motion with his flat hand. “More equal.”
Serizawa was starting to sweat. “But… you’re my boss…?”
Reigen gestured to the darkening room. “Not when the office is closed.”
“O-Okay… Reigen.”
Reigen nodded, almost pensive. “Yeah. Sounds better. Equal.”
Suddenly, he slammed his laptop closed, startling Serizawa a little. “So! You want to know what I said to Mob, eh? Sure, I’ll tell you.”
He straightened up, put his hands on his hips, and smiled. “I told him the truth, and I’ll tell it to you as well. I am not a psychic! In any way, shape, or form. The only ghost I can see is Dimple, and I honestly have no clue why that is. So, yeah.”
With that, he turned out his palms, like he was emptying his pockets. “Ta-da.”
Serizawa cocked his head. “Reigen—“ he had to consciously suppress the honorific—“I don’t mean to, um, invalidate your honesty, but… I kind of already knew that.”
Reigen’s shoulders slumped a little, his grandiose air fading. “You… you did?”
“Mm-hm.”
“But you didn’t say anything.”
“Well, for a bit I thought maybe they were really hard to detect, or that you didn’t like using them or something,” Serizawa said with a shrug. “But after a little while I figured that either you were just pretending for the business, or you were delusional. Either way, it wouldn’t have been good to bring it up.”
To Serizawa’s surprise, Reigen laughed at that. He kicked his chair out of the way and leaned up against the desk, facing the window. It was not lost on Serizawa that he was putting his back to him, hiding his facial expression.
“I think that’s what Mob probably figured, too,” Reigen said. “I don’t know why I ever thought either of you were naive.”
He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He opened it, looked at its contents, sighed, and tossed the whole thing into the trash with a resounding thunk.
“I was the naive one, as it turned out,” he said. “Thinking I could just go on using Mob for his powers forever— what a joke.”
He laughed again, without a trace of real humor. “Me, that is. The joke is me. Now the kid probably wants nothing to do with me, and it’s all my fault.”
“I… don’t think that’s true,” Serizawa said.
“Yeah?” Reigen tipped his head back, but still not enough for Serizawa to see his face. “Nice to think… Hard to believe.”
His stance was supposed to be relaxed, but something about his body language didn’t add up. His shoulders were drawn too tight, his neck angled awkwardly. It was like he wasn’t leaning against the desk at all, but trying to stay steady on his tiptoes despite the fatigue weighing on his body. When he breathed in, Serizawa detected the smallest shudder.
Serizawa made his way around the back of the desk, slowly, hesitantly, until he could glimpse Reigen’s face. He… was crying.
Serizawa shouldn’t have been surprised. He knew Reigen would be upset. But at the same time, he wasn’t used to seeing his boss so vulnerable and— if he was being blunt— honest. So he had changed today, after all.
A second too late, Reigen noticed Serizawa’s glacial movements towards him. He slapped his hand over his face, turning his head away. But he had to know he’d been caught.
“Damn sun’s in my eyes,” he said, but he wasn’t fooling anybody. His voice wobbled like a leaf, and his shoulders had begun to shake in earnest.
“Reigen, it’s okay.” For once, Serizawa found the words came easy. He reached out carefully with one hand towards Reigen’s shoulder. “It’s okay to be upset.”
His fingers brushed Reigen’s upper arm, and Reigen flinched, pulling away like a bristling cat.
“I’m not upset,” he snapped.
Usually, his harsh tone would’ve discouraged Serizawa, even convinced him to let it go. But… something had changed in Serizawa today as well.
“Reigen,” he said sternly. “Look at me.”
Be honest with me, he silently pleaded. That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.
Reigen did— but only for a second. As soon as his wet, reddened eyes met Serizawa’s, he immediately buried his face in his hands again.
“Fuck,” he said. “Why am I like this?”
“Like what?”
“A fucking idiot,” Reigen said. “For so long, Mob was the one good thing in my life— great, even!— and I just had to go on lying to him like— like a piece of shit. Digging a deeper and deeper hole. And for what? Because I wanted money? Because I wanted him to rely on me, to come back when I had nothing real to offer? Because I couldn’t stand to be myself for one second?”
The words poured out of him, not all of them completely intelligible. They were angry, and sad, and painful. “And now he probably fucking hates me! And you know what, he has every right to hate me! For fuck’s sake… Even I hate me! Why should I expect him to feel any different, after the way I’ve used him?”
Things were beginning to finally fall into place for Serizawa. Why Reigen acted the way he did, why he was hurting so much, all of it. It made sense. But at the same time… Reigen had it all wrong.
“Reigen… Kageyama doesn’t hate you,” Serizawa said. “He could never hate you. You risked your life for him today, and you told him something you’d never told anyone. And before that— hell, the very first time we met, you were putting your life on the line for him. Didn’t you see his face when he thought Suzuki had killed you? Because I did. He would go to hell and back for you. I could see it myself, so don’t tell me it’s not true.”
“You don’t understand,” Reigen said miserably.
“Don’t tell me that either,” Serizawa said, shaking his head. “Listen, Reigen… I know what it feels like to be lied to by someone that I trusted. To really be… used by someone. That’s not what you’ve done to Kageyama. Not at all. Sure, you’ve made mistakes. But I truly believe— no, I know you have his best interests at heart. And I think he knows that too.”
Reigen crossed his arms over his chest, dropping his head down. For a little while, he didn’t say anything. Serizawa hoped that his words were sinking in.
Finally, Reigen spoke. The loud, blunt frustration was gone from his voice, replaced by a quiet uncertainty, a smallness that Serizawa was unaccustomed to hearing from him.
“What if he actually decides to quit?” he asked. “I told him that he didn’t have to pretend like I was his master anymore… but what if he really does it? What am I gonna do?”
“If he does, it’ll be for himself,” Serizawa said. He decided not to tell Reigen exactly what Mob had told him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t draw on his knowledge of what Mob was thinking. “It won’t be because he doesn’t care about you anymore. And it won’t be like you won’t ever see him again.”
“You think so?” Reigen said with a sniffle.
Serizawa nodded. “Yeah. He’ll still come around. Like I said, you’re important to him, and I doubt that this is going to change that. If anything… I think your relationship will be better now that everything’s out in the open.”
He dared to gently touch Reigen’s shoulder again. This time, he didn’t pull away. Instead, he sighed and, if Serizawa wasn’t mistaken, leaned into the touch a little.
“It shouldn’t have taken this long,” Reigen said.
“There’s no time like the present.”
“I just… he’s important to me, too, you know.”
“I know.”
“Do you think that he knows it, though?”
Serizawa thought of how concerned Mob was about his master earlier, how confident he was in saying that Reigen cared about him. “Yes. Absolutely.”
He located the tissue box from before and summoned it once more— this time for the master, not the student. Reigen watched as the box levitated over to him, slowly rotating as it offered him a tissue. He exhaled and accepted the tissue, dabbing his eyes and nose.
“You’re probably right,” Reigen said. “You’re getting pretty good at the people thing, Serizawa. And your control over your powers is great. Soon… you won’t have a reason to work here anymore either.”
He said it like it was supposed to be a joke, but neither of them laughed. Serizawa set the tissue box down on Reigen’s desk. What Mob said earlier was echoing in his ears: Master won’t be alone, anyway. He has you. Even if Mob didn’t ‘get’ everything, he sure got what was most important.
“I’m not quitting either, Reigen,” Serizawa said. “I don’t have plans to quit any time soon.”
“But you will leave,” Reigen said. He refused to meet Serizawa’s eyes. “Eventually.”
“I— well…”
Serizawa didn’t want to lie. It was true that he imagined a future beyond Spirits and Such. If he continued his education, who knew what doors might open up to him? He liked working here, liked using his powers to help others… but at the same time he knew he had to find some talent besides psychic powers to use (and building models unfortunately didn’t cut it). He wasn’t totally sure what it was, yet, but he was keeping a lookout.
But at the same time, he didn’t want to leave Spirits and Such forever. His goal wasn’t to put the agency behind him completely. That wasn’t it in the slightest. In fact, when he imagined his future, he imagined, well, maybe… taking lunch off to come by Spirits and Such or something. Maybe even going out to lunch with Reigen… or, like… with Reigen, like, in a… a date way. He didn’t want to leave the office, certainly, but it was more specific than that…
He had to say it.
“Arataka… I don’t want to leave you.”
Something in his chest was swelling uncontrollably, until it felt like he was about to burst. He could hardly control himself as he began to speak. “I— I realized today that… I’m not really working here as part of reintegrating into society anymore. I think I’ve already done that. B-But when you went after Kageyama-kun on your own, and I thought you might’ve died, it occurred to me that I don’t want to… to lose you. But! It’s more than just that! Because, well, obviously I didn’t want to lose Kageyama either, but— that’s totally different.”
Oh, he was so butchering it. Reigen was staring at him, probably trying to figure out where he was going with this. Where was he going with this…? He wanted to slap himself on the forehead to try and recalibrate his racing thoughts through percussive maintenance. Get it together, Katsuya! You’re an adult, you can be honest about your feelings!
“…What I’m trying to say is: I really didn’t want to not say this to you,” he said. “I thought for a second there that I had lost you. I mean. Really lost you, forever. And that made me realize that I had… something to tell you.”
He meant to pause only for a second at the end of that statement, but the second became two, then three.
“Something to tell me?” Reigen asked.
“Yeah. Something really important.”
Silence. Just say it! he screamed at himself. But it wasn’t that easy!
“…are you going to tell me now, or…?”
“I’m getting there!” Serizawa had to close his eyes and take a deep, almost aching breath to prepare himself.
He had gone into fifteen years of isolation and came out the other side. He’d joined a terrorist organization, devoted his whole being to it, and then helped bring it down for the sake of a boy he’d just met. He’d betrayed and been betrayed by the one man he had trusted completely and watched him literally explode. He’d thrown himself back into society, no holds barred, and rebuilt his life. He’d made his way through the ruined city, expecting the worst.
Serizawa was strong. He’d done some really difficult things. But this… this was difficult in an entirely different way.
“I have feelings for you,” he confessed. “If I lost you before I had the chance to tell you, I don’t know what I’d do. That almost happened today, and it made me realize that I can’t risk it anymore. So I’m telling you now.”
As he fell silent, he noticed that some of the furniture in the office was hovering slightly, encased in his aura’s telltale glow. He made a conscious effort to exhale and the glow faded.
Reigen was still staring at him, his mouth slightly open, his expression one of utter confusion.
“Feelings?” he said.
Serizawa wrung his hands, looking down at his shoes. Was he not… clear? “Like, um, romantic ones…?”
The endorphins were fading, and all his anxieties started to crash down on him. Why did he say that? Today, of all days? This was probably the last thing that Reigen needed to hear right now! And what was he supposed to do now? Reigen was his boss! If he didn’t feel the same, was Serizawa going to have to quit? How was he supposed to find another job at this point? He didn’t even have a diploma yet—
He felt Reigen take his hand. Just like that, all of his thoughts came to a screeching halt. He looked up, and his vision was completely filled with Reigen’s face as everything else faded into the background. All he could see was Reigen: his snotty, tear-streaked face, the bags under his bloodshot eyes, his dry lips slightly parted. In Serizawa’s eyes, he was overwhelmingly beautiful.
“Katsuya,” he said, and the sound of Serizawa’s first name in his voice sent a thrill up his spine and, oh, how he hoped that would never get old—
Reigen surged forward and kissed him. It was… way too fast. Their foreheads bonked together and immediately they both recoiled.
“Ow,” Serizawa said, rubbing his head.
“Ah, fuck, I’m sorry!” Reigen said, waving his hands. “Shit— I should’ve asked first, I’m so sorry—“
He was cut off as Serizawa ducked down and kissed him again— a little more careful this time. Reigen’s hands hesitated first on his forearms, uncertain, then snaked up behind his back, pulling him close.
After… well, Serizawa didn’t know how long it was, but after some time they broke apart again, both flushed and a little out of breath.
“It’s okay,” Serizawa whispered. “When I saw you were alive, that’s what I really wanted to do. If Kageyama and Dimple hadn’t been there, I don’t know if I’d have been able to stop myself.”
“Really?” Reigen asked.
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hm.”
Serizawa laughed, and Reigen joined in. He didn’t move away from Serizawa’s chest, laying his head near his heart. Serizawa put his arms around him, somewhat protectively, comfortingly.
He didn’t want anything to interrupt this moment. But he had to ask. “What is this?”
“You mean… you and me?”
“Yeah. I like you, you like me…” Serizawa paused. “You do like me, right?”
Reigen snorted. “I thought it was obvious.”
“You just didn’t say it.”
“It’s… really hard to say,” Reigen said. “I thought if I just kissed you it would be clear. But I wasn’t thinking straight, either.”
He buried his face in Serizawa’s shirt.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice muffled. “I like you. A lot.”
“So, should we, um… be… together? How does that sound?”
“It sounds amazing,” Reigen said, still talking into Serizawa’s chest. “But…”
Serizawa’s heart dropped. “But?”
Reigen groaned, and Serizawa felt it all throughout his ribcage. “I kinda suck.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Katsuya.” Reigen peeled his face up just enough to peer at him with furrowed brows. “I’m a twenty-eight-year-old professional liar and most of my friends are middle schoolers.”
“You think that’s bad?” Serizawa said. “I’m a thirty-year-old former shut-in and my last job was with a terrorist organization. Oh, and I have psychic powers.”
Reigen sighed and lay his head against Serizawa again. His breath tickled Serizawa’s neck, making him shiver a little. “You’re still a good person, though.”
“So are you.”
“I’m… working on it.”
“That’s all you can do.”
Night was beginning to engulf the world as the sun disappeared beyond the horizon. The office was almost dark, the last of the light trickling away with each passing moment. Serizawa didn’t care. He would stand there all night if it meant he could keep holding Reigen in the sweet, gentle quiet that had settled between them.
“I want to be with you,” Reigen whispered. “I want to figure it out together.”
“Me too,” Serizawa said.
“You’ll be my boyfriend?”
“If you’ll be mine.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
With the quiet streets, it felt like the silence extended throughout the whole world, covering the city like a soft blanket. But it was so different than any other silence that Serizawa had ever known. It was warm, and comfortable, and felt right. Inexplicably, Reigen’s presence always made things make sense in the moment.
That was how he knew he was making the right decision. Nobody else made him feel like that, like it didn’t matter where he’d been, or what the future would bring. All that mattered was that he was here now. From now on, after today, that was where Serizawa wanted to be: here, now.
“…feels like there should be some fanfare or something, right?” Reigen quipped. “You know. Fireworks.”
Serizawa tilted his chin up and kissed him again. “How’s that? Any fireworks?”
Reigen sighed contentedly. “Nah. But it was way better.”
“I thought so too.”
“Smooth,” Reigen teased. “Where’d you learn to flirt, anyway? You make it look easy.”
Serizawa laughed. “With you, it is easy,” he said. “Easiest thing in the world.”