Chapter Text
It was an ordinary late Monday morning in Autumn. Serizawa had a house call to make to a client who claimed their lavatory was being haunted. Surprisingly, Mob and Teru had shown up together, and Teru had decided to accompany Serizawa under the pretext of work experience.
Well, if Teru wanted experience with plumbing, he was welcome to it. Mob didn’t seen particularly infused by the idea, plopping himself down in the visitor’s chair in front of the desk as Serizawa and Teru bid them farewell.
Really, Reigen thought, there was nothing about today that could turn into a disaster.
“Shishou,” Mob said as the door to the office closed behind them. “How did you and Serizawa get together?”
Really, Reigen reflected as he mopped up the tea he’d sprayed all over himself, he should have known.
“Mob.” He steepled his fingers together and looked directly at his pupil. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Perhaps there was a time when that would have intimidated Mob into silence, or a muttered apology. If there was, Reigen couldn’t remember it. Still, it was worth a try.
“I’m asking about yours and Serizawa’s relationship.”
“As coworkers?”
“As boyfriends.”
He could feel beads of sweat gathering on his forehead. “We aren’t dating.”
Mob blinked. “Really?”
“What do you mean, really?” Reigen tried for indignant, but it came out weak and weedy.
“You act like it.” Mob said.
“Don’t be stupid.” He dismissed Mob with a wave of his hand and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Mob was still there.
Damn.
The sweat was starting to drip into his eyes. It stinged.
Mob eyed him, unimpressed.
He exhaled with a sigh that rattled his bones. “Alright. Explain what you mean.”
“You have a crush on him.”
“I do not. Crushes are for teenagers.”
“But--”
“And besides, I treat Serizawa the same as I do everyone else, as his boss. We are friendly. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“You act like more than friends.”
“I assure you, anything you may have read as of my emotions towards Serizawa is entirely platonic.” Reigen said, lying through his teeth.
“But you’re always so touchy with him, shishou.”
“That’s just--!” Reigen stared at Mob, speechless and horrified.
No, it wasn’t just normal, was it?
Oh god, what else was he doing to make a fool of himself in front of Serizawa?
Mob also looked at Reigen with growing horror. “All this time, you weren’t dating? You’ve never confessed to him?”
“There’s nothing to confess!” Reigen yelled. “And don’t use such childish terms, we’re in our thirties!”
“We’re back!” Teru called from outside and both Mob and Reigen jumped. The office door burst open, revealing the tall and broad profile of Serizawa. Reigen grimaced, but then he noticed the state Serizawa was in.
“What happened?” He stood up, alarmed. Serizawa was dripping wet, suit sodden and ruined. He strode over, and his hands were halfway to Serizawa’s jacket before he remembered what Mob had said.
‘You’re always so touchy with him, shishou.’
Teru poked his head out from behind Serizawa. He looked comparatively dry.
“The toilet was haunted.”
Reigen paused. “It was ?”
“Yes.” Serizawa said. “Some poor bastard died on the toilet and decided to take it out on everyone else.”
'Everyone else' apparently being Serizawa, who shook his head in defeat, and began taking off his sodden outer layers.
“Wait, you can’t take off your clothes here!” Said Reigen, flustered, Mob’s words still echoing in his mind.
Serizawa paused in peeling off his jacket. “Oh.” He glanced confusedly at Reigen. “Right…?”
A faint blush of embarrassment covered Serizawa’s cheeks. Why did Reigen have to open his mouth?
Serizawa turned his head to Mob and Teru for guidance, but the boys were staring at Reigen with identical expressions of amusement and pity.
Oh shit. Now he’d really done it.
“Go clean up in the bathroom, Serizawa!” He waved his hands for emphasis. “There’s towels and hot water.”
No one was convinced.
Serizawa walked to the bathroom and the door swung shut behind him. Silence filled the room in his absence. Reigen stared at the damp footprints Serizawa had left on the carpet and tried to ignore the presence of the two boys in the room.
“Kageyama--”
“Hanazawa--”
The silence came back.
Reigen prayed the floor would swallow him up before he could hear one of them say something about what had just happened.
“Let’s go to that cafe you were going to show me.” Mob said, and Reigen thanked the heavens..
Teru mumbled his assent, and the two boys left with a wave that dimly registered in the corner of his eye.
Reigen was too busy hoping for imminent death to notice Serizawa coming back in the room, dripping and damp but at least smelling of hand soap now, in a spare set of clothes they kept for emergencies such as this.
“Reigen?” Serizawa sounded uncertain. “Are you alright?”
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and rotated the world back onto its axis.
“Absolutely.”
Mob was being ridiculous. He had misinterpreted the situation. I mean really, what was there to misinterpret?
He sat back down on his office chair. Everything was fine. He picked up his mug. A normal Monday afternoon.
“By the way, Teruki asked me if we were dating,” Serizawa said casually, and Reigen found himself covered with tea for the second time that day.
At least this time it was cold.
“He did what now?” He spluttered and coughed, and Serizawa passed him a tissue out of pity.
“Well that’s not entirely right.” Serizawa said pensively. “He assumed we were dating.” He furrowed his brows in confusion. “Why the hell would he think that?”
Reigen groaned in embarrassment. “Mob did the same.”
Serizawa chuckled apprehensively and eyed Reigen like one would a tree branch that looked like a sleeping panther.
“What did he say?”
‘What did he say?’ Not why, Mob of all people, would think that?
Perhaps he could figure his way out of the situation he was desperately trying to avoid.
Of Serizawa becoming aware of Reigen’s terrible, awful, great big unrequited gay crush on him.
Because Serizawa was kind enough to never mention it.
To never fully reject him.
He laughed, perhaps a little to loudly, but the nerves sounded enough like embarrassment to work.
“Something about being too casual with one another. I don’t know why they’re so wound up about it. Just getting over excited I suppose.”
Serizawa smiled, his eyebrows creased together. Did he fully buy it? “Right.”
Reigen smiled, perhaps with a little too much teeth. “Anyway, tell me about this morning? Was the client satisfied?”
Serizawa opened his mouth to reply, and the world carried on as usual. Turning on its axis.
A normal Monday afternoon.
“Hanazawa.” Kageyama said. “We have to get Serizawa and Reigen to go out.”
Teru paused in the the stirring of his cappuccino. “What?”
Kageyama finished adding milk to his hot chocolate and looked him in the eye. “We have to get them to admit their feelings to each other.”
Somewhere in the busy cafe, a plate clinked loudly.
Teru felt himself blink. “You’re sure about those?”
Kageyama chewed his lip and looked down at his hands. “Yes.” He said, looking back up to Teru. “They’re even more obvious than I was. Am. With--”
“Your childhood crush,” Teru supplied, apparently feeling generous today. Or maybe he just didn’t want to hear Kageyama talk about his feelings for Tsubomi.
“Yes,” said Kageyama, looking relieved. “But this time, I’m sure it’s mutual.”
Teru placed both hands around his cup and soaked up the warmth. “How come?”
Even though Teru was hopelessly, head over heels for Kageyama, he could admit his faults.
It must be pretty bad if even Kageyama could pick up on the epic romantic tension going on between Serizawa and Reigen.
“Auras.” Kageyama said opaquely.
“Huh? But Reigen doesn’t have one.”
Kageyama flapped a hand dismissively and Teru watched the movement openly. For someone so economical with their gestures usually, it was surprising. He wondered what it meant.
“His is with words.”
“Like a charisma?” Teru sipped his cappuccino. Something about the atmosphere in this cafe was making him calm and sleepy, and Kageyama more talkative. Distantly, he wondered if the owner was a psychic with the power to make everyone content.
“Yes!” Kageyama exclaimed. “He fills the air with his presence and it can disarm people. But not Serizawa.”
He nodded for Kageyama to continue. Perhaps it was something about the warmth, the soft glow of the lights and the hum of background noise that promised both anonymity and that they weren’t alone, a pair adrift in the crowd.
“Serizawa and Reigen… they orbit each other in a way… It’s strange…” Kageyama frowned thoughtfully into the distance.
“And Serizawa’s energy, it reaches out for Reigen but it doesn’t touch him, you must have noticed that…”
Teru hadn’t, he’d have to look out for that...
“And Serizawa isn’t affected by Reigen’s charisma, yet he still appreciates it…”
That was one way of saying Serizawa was charmed by Reigen’s ability to never shut up. He smiled.
“I think I would like to be the kind of adult they are.” Kageyama said, and Teru felt himself abruptly pinned beneath Kageyama’s intense gaze, jolted from his dreamy thoughts. “Wouldn’t you, Hanazawa?”
“I--” His mouth suddenly felt dry. “I mean-- well, what do you mean by that?”
Kageyama blinked and the moment, whatever the moment was, was over. “Nothing.”
His face lost its animation, and returned to that characteristic blankness.
Teru missed it keenly.
Kageyama took a sip of his cooling drink. Teru watched him add more milk, pouring and stirring with practised care. A loud laugh ripped through the table behind them and Kageyama flinched.
“Want to get out of here?” Teru said quietly.
Kageyama shook his head with a small smile. “I’m enjoying being here with you.”
A critical blow. Teru smiled weakly and changed the subject.
Kageyama was bad for his health.
Later, when they could no longer pretend to be sipping their empty mugs and the sky was starting to turn a deep indigo blue above the yellow glow of the street lamps, Teru and Kageyama parted ways, with the promise to meet up again soon.
Teru wanted to offer to walk Kageyama home, but he was afraid that would be overstepping the fine line he walked between friend and romantic pursuer.
Sure, he could call Kageyama up and ask him out to cafes, or text each other late into the night, or invite him over to watch movies. They were all things friends did with each other, and, well, if he pretended it meant something more at times that was his own indulgence. It didn’t hurt Kageyama if Teru got giddy when he dialed Kageyama’s number, or that his heart skipped a beat when Kageyama’s fingers accidentally brushed his as they walked along the street.
And if Teru got hurt by the object of his affections being utterly unaware of his feelings, that was his own fault.
His fault for falling for him in the first place, when Kageyama could never like him back.
He looked up at the sky. Through the bright lights of the city, he could just about see a few stars quietly glinting. It made him think of Kageyama though, and he looked back down at the pavement ahead of him.
He cast his mind back to his earlier conversation with Serizawa.
Now, that had been a surprise.
He had gone to Serizawa for advice, seeing as he was the only gay man he knew with his life remotely together (Reigen didn’t count) to find… Well. Maybe he didn’t.
“You’re asking me for advice?” Serizawa had looked so surprised and touched. Surely it wasn’t that unusual for one of them to ask Serizawa for help.
“Well, yes. It’s not like Reigen made the first move, right?”
Serizawa gaped at him. The bus rattled abruptly as they went over a pothole.
“What?”
It was Teru’s turn for his jaw to drop. “You mean he did ?”
Serizawa blinked. “Made the first move of what ?”
“Your relationship with him.” Teru rolled his eyes. Jeez, did he need to spell everything out?
“We aren’t going out.” Serizawa coughed and faced forward in his seat.
All it did was make the red darkening his cheeks more obvious.
Teru had laughed. “Yeah right. I get it, you don’t want to seem unprofessional or irresponsible or whatever, I understand. I’m not going to rat you out to clients or something. I just want advice.”
Serizawa turned his head back around to frown at Teru. “Teruki. Reigen and I are not dating.”
“But I know you’re dating him. Look, just tell me how you asked him out and how you knew he’d say yes and I won’t mention it again.”
Serizawa looked at him like a deer caught in headlights and Teru felt an awful, awful feeling creep over him.
“You… you really aren’t dating him?”
Serizawa shook his head.
“Oh... Oh wow…” Teru murmured, trying to wrap his head around this news. “But the way you act around him… so head over heels… and--”
“Please don’t tell Reigen!” Serizawa burst out loudly. An old lady behind them shushed them disapprovingly.
“Tell him what?” Teru said. He had a pretty good idea what Serizawa was talking about.
“Oh. Oh hell.” Serizawa rolled his head back and it hit his seat with a thunk.
“Serizawa,” Teru said magnanimously. “I will not tell Reigen about your big fat crush on him.”
Serizawa let out a great big sigh. “Thanks Teru.”
He had not sounded particularly thankful at all.
Teru unlocked his front door and went inside, still pondering the strange events of the day.
Finding out that Reigen and Serizawa were not, in fact, dating, bringing his slim list of “gay couples who successfully got together” down to precisely zero, certainly was a shock.
Now who was he supposed to ask about Kageyama? He refused to ask any of Kageyama’s other friends, all would be likely to run to him immediately, and none of them could keep a secret in the first place. He certainly would not ask Ritsu. That would just be asking for death.
As he turned on the stove to reheat yesterday’s stew, his mind returned to Kageyama’s behaviour in the cafe once more.
Kageyama was a mystery so often. The moments when he let his emotions bubble to the surface were the moments Teru found himself hyper aware of. He recalled that wave of Kageyama’s arm.
It was nice to be Kageyama’s friend, to be accepted and confided in by such a person. To be entrusted with his thoughts, to offer him advice when he asked for it. But he found himself longing for the moments when Kageyama would throw back his head and laugh even more. The moments when his happiness was writ across his face for all to see.
He hoped that they weren’t the only moments Kageyama was happy.
Lately things were different. Those moments came more frequently. They’d also gotten closer, surely, after everything that had happened.
Kageyama had changed, after that day he’d had his heart broken.
Kageyama cared greatly for Reigen and Serizawa, even if he didn’t especially show it. And if he thought the two were pining away in vain, that might agitate him enough to want to intervene.
Kageyama would have his work cut out for him. Serizawa may be stubborn about hiding his crush, but Reigen would be a downright nightmare.
Teru chewed his lip. As amusing as it might be to watch Reigen and Serizawa flounder around each other for the next few years, he supposed they did deserve happiness. If Kageyama was really certain he wanted to interfere, Teru didn’t want him to struggle on alone with it.
Well. He pulled out a notebook from the draw, leaving the stew bubbling, and sat down at his kitchen table.
He tapped the pen against his chin. They’d have to start somewhere.