Chapter Text
Teru eyed the spirit charging toward him with cool contempt, smothering all trace of his unease. He’d failed to exorcise the thing with brute force, the way Kageyama always could, but all that had bruised was his ego. As usual, he soothed it by channeling his abilities into something more useful – and more clever. He compacted his power into a white-hot sphere, spinning it tighter and tighter as the spirit skittered closer, its mandibles clacking, multi-faceted eyes gleaming…
Teru released his power in burst of psychic flame. Many-jointed legs writhed in agony as the spirit was consumed, far faster than it would by earthly fire. In seconds all that remained was a charred husk, and as even that began to fade, Teru allowed himself the smallest sigh of relief.
“Teruki, look out!”
Teru jerked his head up from the corpse of the first spirit, barely in time to see its twin leaping straight for him.
He’d trained reaction time into instinct. One serrated incisor had barely slashed into his arm before he released a second blast of flame, panic adding fuel that more than made up for the lack of preparation. The second spirit disappeared in a flare of white heat, and Teru slumped to the ground in shaky relief.
It had barely occurred to him to examine his aching arm before Reigen was there, pulling him into a sitting position. He gasped at the sight of Teru’s sluggishly bleeding arm, wrenching his suit jacket off and wrapping it clumsily around the limb. Teru focused bemusedly on Reigen’s trembling fingers, which seemed to be having trouble pulling out his phone.
“Why are you shaking? There wasn’t one I missed that came after you, was there?”
Reigen paused to stare at him, incredulous.
“I was scared to death for you, kid! I’m the one who asked for your help, but I had no idea it would be so bad - I never would have forgiven myself if you’d gotten hurt!”
Oh. Teru found himself thoroughly distracted from the pain, which was far from the worst he’d ever received. So that’s what that’s like. Having someone worry about you.