Chapter Text
It starts with numbness on his left shoulder blade, about a week after the incident at the Seventh Branch. Reigen, of course, shrugs it off. He’s given enough massages to know tension pains when he feels them. He makes a mental note to try a few exercises for that arm later, to help the muscles loosen up.
They don’t. Weeks pass, and the numbness only grows, sweeping down his back towards his right hip. This, however, gets quickly shoved aside or at least included with the damage incurred in his stand off against Mogami Keiji in the body of a 14-year-old girl. He’d managed to protect his head, for the most part, but given the force of impact it was no surprise that his back should have suffered too.
(There was no damage, the paramedics told him. He’d been very lucky.)
Eventually, the pain in his concussed skull subsides. But even though he patiently waits, the numbness does not.
By New Year’s the numbness has turned to tingling, and Reigen curses himself for pushing his own training too fast. He’s out of shape, and he’d expected the soreness and the pain in his knees, but he hadn’t bargained for the way that the skin of his back is constantly tender to the touch.
The tingling is so much harder to tune out than the numbness, with just the feeling of his cotton shirt rubbing across his back sending a sensation of pins and needles crawling over his skin. Sometimes he looks in the mirror, and swears he can see something there, out of the corner of his eye, but there never is.
It’s starting to distract him from his work, makes it difficult for him to easily maneuver around the massage table and his client. Makes it difficult to misdirect people when he wants to limit the motion of his hands and arms, to keep it from irritating his back.
The moment that Mob notices something is wrong, Reigen knows it’s finally time to bite the bullet and see his physician. The man is a little too pleased to see him, after so many years of avoiding a visit, but Reigen can’t even be bothered, so long as he figures out what is wrong and fixes it.
But in the end, he gets the same response the paramedics had given him that day at the Asgiri mansion—there was no damage. In fact, he seems to be in good shape overall, and his regular workout routine is beginning to show off its results.
It must be clear from his face that this isn’t the answer that Reigen wanted, and his physician offers him a list of additional scans and tests that they could perform. But Reigen can tell from the man’s tone of voice that all the examinations in the world will yield the same result.
At most, it would put his mind at rest. But he has two employees to look after now; he can’t waste money on something as frivolous as pointless medical tests.
In the end, Reigen thanks the doctor and tries not to wince as he pulls his shirt back on.
Reigen is unsure whether external events have any effect on the creeping pain in his back. He does, however, know that something changed that day in the maelstrom, as he was swept from end to end in a desperate attempt to reach his student.
The pins and needles vanish almost overnight, leaving only a rawness running across his skin. It feels like he’s slowly being peeled away, one layer at a time, and the skin has finally been torn away, leaving nothing but raw, flayed muscle.
Sleep becomes scarcer, with hardly a position that can be considered comfortable in the wake of the ever present pain. Mornings are the worst, because of the way that his skin pulls tight as he sits up in bed. He half expects to leave blood behind on his sheets, but as usual there is nothing to be seen. No matter how he checks, the mirror shows no sign of an injury just under his skin.
Soon, he knows he’ll have to cave and return to the physician and all his tests. He’s been saving for it for months now, so that the bill does not draw Serizawa’s attention.
It’s both a blessing and a curse, this newfound efficiency that the man has found. It’s kept Spirits and Such afloat, as Reigen struggles to remain charismatic against the constant, unwavering pain.
Struggles not to flinch the first time he feels Serizawa’s arm wrap around his shoulders, the first time that he lets himself be kissed. He almost forgets the pain, then, when he kisses the other man back, letting other senses overpower him for the first time in months.
And it’s a cruel, cruel thing he’s doing, Reigen knows. Because Serizawa has been teetering on this confession for months, but he’d been so, so, tired that he waited until the other made the first move. And even now, he knows that it won’t last, because this problem isn’t going away, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before the hurt sinks so deep that the invisible damage will be permanent.
But he’s nothing, if not selfish, so he buries himself in the feeling of Serizawa’s arms around him. In the safety and the feeling that for once in his life, somebody else is watching his back. That maybe, when the time comes, he won’t have to die alone.
Their relationship takes up most of the free space in his mind, the parts not allocated to work or mob or the pain. And despite all that, Reigen can’t help but feel like this is the happiest he’s been since….ever, perhaps. So he lets himself drown in Serizawa’s gravity, allows himself for once to be pulled along by another. Lets himself be folded into the gentle kisses trailing up his neck, the hands buried in his hair. Lets himself be guided to that worn office couch, familiar in every dip and lump, as hands gently remove his coat and begin unbuttoning his shirt.
And then he’s aware, very suddenly, that everything has stopped. That Serizawa is looking at him with such a strange expression that the panic returns almost immediately, and Reigen tries to recall everything that’s happened in the last few minutes in an attempt to find what he’s done wrong. But there is nothing, and he can only assume that he himself is somehow the error, and he’s about to say something that he’ll likely regret and then…
“Arataka,” Serizawa breathes, the concern in his voice totally unexpected, “What’s on your back?”
Serizawa is staring at his left shoulder blade, visible where his half-unbuttoned shirt has slipped. There is nothing there, Reigen knows this. There is never anything there. And so he says nothing.
Very gently, Serizawa reaches out, fingers pressed gently to the skin there, exactly where the numbness began months ago. Reigen can’t stop himself from flinching, letting out a long, low hiss as Serizawa’s fingertips attempt to trace the spot, but he manages to not pull away, hoping that the other man will not see this as a rejection.
Instead, the strange look has only deepened into what Reigen can now recognize as concern.
“Arataka,” he says again, and yes, there is the concern, but there is also anger. “Who did this to you.”
“It’s nothing.” Reigen tries to stutter a reply, but is cut short by Serizawa gently, gently, pulling him up from their tangled position on the couch. Warm hands finish unbuttoning his cotton shirt, carefully removing it while avoiding the core of the invisible injury, as though he can actually see it, as though it’s actually there, and not some imaginary hurt that has consumed Reigen over the past couple months.
Reigen risks a glance over his shoulder at Serizawa’s face, and is dumbstruck to see that he looks ready to cry.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Serizawa breaths, and Reigen swears he can see his hands trembling.
“Sorry,” Reigen mumbles. He doesn’t know what else to say. Doesn’t know what Serizawa sees, or why it’s upset him this much. “I’m going to the doctor again, I just need to set up the appointment, it’s…I’ll figure out what it is, don’t concern yourself…”
“A doctor couldn’t help lift a curse.” There’s so much sadness in the words, but Reigen’s mind flies back, suddenly, to Sakurai and the fateful encounter with his blade. He had survived the attack, and caught up in the powers borrowed from Mob, he had forgotten about it entirely. The thought that he hadn’t escaped the cursed blade at all had never occurred to him.
All these things, his mind recognizes in a moment, but there is no way for him to put them into words. No way to vocalize anything against the waves of relief crashing about him.
He stiffens suddenly at the feeling of warm breath against his neck, a half second before warm lips press down against his left shoulder blade. A cry of surprise dislodges itself, not of pain but surprise, because after so many, many months it actually feels...good. Not just an absence of pain, but something warm and gentle and safe.
“Katsuya,” he croaks out, choked up by tears of relief welling in his throat. Another kiss, this one just below the other, and Reigen’s frame shudders involuntarily. Serizawa pauses, breath warm against Reigen’s shivering skin, followed by another sensation. It takes Reigen a second too long to realize that they’re tears.
“Sorry,” he finally manages to say, the only word he can properly form against the intoxicating effects of overwhelming relief. He doesn’t turn to look at Serizawa, who makes a strangled sound, as if choking back a sob.
“It’s okay, Arataka,” he whispers in return, “You’re safe now. It’s okay.”
And of all the miracles, the greatest of all is that Reigen actually believes him.