Work Text:
I love Reigen-san.
Reigen jolted in his chair, as though struck by epiphany. No doubt another moment of “genius” that would lead to yet another misadventure. Serizawa allowed himself a small private smile, keeping it to the right side of his mouth, where Reigen was less likely to see it.
I’m not sure when I started to feel this way for him, but it’s possible I’ve loved him from the start.
Serizawa indulged in a bittersweet memory: his very last day serving in Claw. It was a memory of smoke, of crumbling and burning buildings, of an attack from the preside- Suzuki, barely deflected. A memory of the man he’d rescued from the wrath of his boss: a dishevelled and very surprised salaryman. Reigen's sandy blond hair, riddled with debris and swept about his flushed face, framed big brown eyes, blown wide and filled with terror, amazement, relief. Amongst the other psychics and the chaos wrought by their powers, Reigen in his ill-fitting grey suit looked entirely out of place. And, to Serizawa, startlingly attractive.
Not only had Reigen offered him a job on the spot, and become his next boss, he'd shown him more kindness than Serizawa had ever known. From the moment Reigen had handed him his business card, Serizawa knew he’d be in good hands. After all, if Kageyama-senpai considered him a friend, then he must have been a good person.
Though he never would have predicted that Reigen would come to mean this much to him.
Serizawa was still smiling. It felt nice to admit his feelings to himself, every once in a while. Even if it was highly unlikely those feelings would ever be requited, by Serizawa’s estimations.
He stopped moving his pencil. His concentration was gone now, as was his absent-minded smile.
Reigen-san is very image-conscious , he thought. After that unfortunate incident on TV, I can hardly blame him for being careful. He had to work so hard to repair his public image. Reigen-san wouldn’t put his business at risk with another scandal. So, to live openly as a gay man, when people nowadays are still so unaccepting of us…
Serizawa glanced to the poster hanging on the wall to his right. He had to wonder why Reigen, in his hard-fought battle to regain public trust, hadn’t thought to redesign the Spirits & Such poster. Or at least take a better photo. The current one did his handsome features no favours whatsoever. Or was that the point? To keep the focus on selling his business, not himself?
It would make sense, considering the way Reigen seemed to make himself so… romantically unavailable.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it. I still have no idea what his preferences are, even after all this time. He doesn't so much as flirt with our lady customers, and they have no problem letting him know how much they're interested.
He cringed at himself.
Yikes, I sound so jealous. Ahh, maybe I am.
He scratched his head, sheepish. For Serizawa, this problem was as difficult to solve as question 2.4B. He'd not quite gotten the hang of trigonometry yet. He erased his incorrect answer and moved on to the next, intending to come back to it later.
I should just keep it to myself, for his sake. Besides, it’s not like he has to know.
Reigen stood, the sudden sound of his chair scraping across the floor surprising his coworker.
“I’m goin’ to the conbini,” he said, stiffly rising from his desk. “Serizawa, you want anything?”
Reigen’s kind offer pulled Serizawa from his thoughts. Reigen never left for the corner store without asking if Serizawa wanted anything; it was practically a scripted part of their day at this point. However, Serizawa had brought his own lunch, as he usually did. He may not live with his mother anymore, but he still couldn’t leave the apartment without imagining her doting voice calling after him: Don’t forget your lunch!
“Mn, no thank you.” Serizawa looked to the mounting piles of papers on Reigen’s desk. They had been pretty busy lately. “I can go for you, if you’d like?”
“Nah, I’ll do it. I need to move around for a bit.” He stretched his arms above him, and let out a contented sigh when his back popped in just the right way. "My shoulders are all stiff…"
Serizawa couldn't resist a smile this time. That was so like Reigen. Dedicated, hard-working Reigen.
“Sure.” Serizawa nodded and went back to his homework.
He scribbled down his answer for question 2.5A. Reigen slipped on his jacket. Serizawa tried not to think about what a shame it was that Reigen would insist on hiding his slim waist. Focus, focus...
“Hm. By the way.” Reigen stopped by the door. “I’m going to tell you this because I don’t think you’ve realised: you said that out loud.”
Serizawa blinked, looking a little gormless. He wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Said wha-”
Oh.
OH .
“A-aahh…!” Serizawa felt his panic rise, along with the blood rushing to his cheeks. “R-Reigen-san, I-! I didn’t-! I’m so- I’m so sorr-”
“Well, then…”
He smiled with a confident ease that was so comforting, so beyond Serizawa’s capabilities, so completely Reigen .
“I love you, too.”
Serizawa’s pencil clattered to the floor.
“Huh?”
Reigen stepped out the door, still grinning.
“ Huh?! ”
--
Twenty minutes later, Reigen still hadn’t returned from the conbini. Serizawa, meanwhile, was going out of his mind.
How the hell had he managed that?! He'd just said it . Out loud! Without realising! Of all the plans he'd devised for how he'd confess his feelings to Reigen, all those daydreams and fantasies he'd let carry him away to a fictional world where he had the courage to come out, this had to be the dumbest way he could have done it. He laid his dumb head on his desk and kept it there, scratching at it like he might pry an answer out of his scalp.
What the hell? What the hell?!
His face felt like it might catch fire. So many thoughts and emotions were coursing through him at once he didn’t know where to begin sorting through them all. Humiliation, shock, confusion, panic - joy? Reigen had said- He’d said-
“I love you, too.”
Serizawa tried as hard as he could to bury his face into the hard surface of his desk, to no avail. It was doing a good job of muffling his cries of bewildered happiness, but he deeply wished it would give way to a hole in the ground beneath him and swallow him whole.
“I love you too”- What did that mean?! Serizawa knew what he’d meant by “love” when he said he loved him, but what did Reigen mean? “Love” was far too versatile a word, it could mean anything; Reigen could have meant he loved him as a friend, or as a brother, or just a - god forbid - coworker .
Wait. Did people love their coworkers? They did in sitcoms. God he’d been a hikikomori for too long.
And that was another thing! Not once had Serizawa ever developed a habit of talking to himself, not even during his hikikomori days. Why the hell would he start now? It just didn't make sense; it was too convenient that he'd suddenly start talking to himself, apropos of nothing, just when he was mulling over such pertinent information as his raging crush on his boss -
And speaking of his boss, where the hell did Reigen get off waltzing out of the office like nothing happened and leaving Serizawa to run himself ragged like this?! Was he teasing him again? He was teasing him again, wasn’t he? He always said he was easy to tease, and he did it far too often. Like that one time he said it was a shame Serizawa was trying so hard to become confident around customers because his shy side can be kind of cute and oh my god had Reigen flirted with him he’d flirted with him hadn’t he-
Well, he’d better get back here to tease-flirt with him some more pretty quickly, because if Serizawa’s powers got hold of any more objects in the room the entire office would be airborne by the end of lunchtime-
“I’m back.”
Serizawa gasped, righting himself so rapidly he sent several papers fluttering to the floor. The pencil that had become stuck to his forehead rolled down his nose and fell onto the desk with a clatter.
“Rei-! Reigen-san!”
“Yo,” he said, far too casually, plucking a folder out of the air and setting it back down in its place like this happened every day. It happened far too often for Serizawa’s liking, sure, but not every day. “Everything okay in here?”
NO?!
“Uuuuhh!” Serizawa was vaguely aware that he was getting to his feet, and very aware that he had dragged out that vowel for far too long. “Yes. No? Kind of. Um.”
“I got takoyaki. You want one?”
“ I’m so sorry! ”
Caught off-guard, Reigen blinked. “Huh?”
Serizawa had bowed so quickly and at such a dramatic angle he’d almost smashed his head on his desk again. “I’m so, so sorry! I-I have no idea how that happened; I had no intention of disrupting our working relationship, s-so if you’d rather continue like you didn’t hear anything then I’d be absolutely fine with that-”
“Serizawa, it’s okay,” Reigen said, expression softening. “You don’t have to pretend like it didn’t happen-”
“That’s not what I mean!” Serizawa righted his back, and a potted plant floated back to its place on the shelf. “I didn’t say it out loud! I mean, I didn’t speak !”
“What do you mean? I definitely heard you.”
“A-are you sure ?” he asked, trying to be delicate. “Not that I’m saying I doubt you, Reigen-san, of course not, I just mean that I-I’m certain I didn’t say anything.”
Reigen’s brows drew together. “Really?”
Serizawa nodded emphatically. “Yes. I’m 99% sure I didn’t say…” He stammered. “ THAT out loud.”
He turned his eyes down, too nervous to watch Reigen’s reaction. However, his peripheral vision betrayed him, and he caught a glimpse of Reigen cocking his hips to one side, the way he often did when he was deep in thought and god damn it this was no time to be thinking about those hips -
“Could it be…?”
He had to look. Reigen had put his hand to his chin, eyes squinting in deep thought. Then they popped wide with excitement. “I’ve reached a new level in my psychic potential?”
Serizawa didn’t follow. “What?”
“If you’re 99% sure you didn’t speak, and I’m 100% sure I heard your voice…” With the beginnings of a grin on his lips, Reigen snapped his fingers. “That’s the only explanation!”
“What is?”
“Telepathy!”
Serizawa blinked. “Huh?” He was getting deja-vu.
“Think about it!” The blond leapt into one of his elaborate speeches, coupled with his signature hand gestures. “You didn’t speak, but I’m certain heard something, and it was definitely your voice. However, when you need to speak to me, you typically address me first, or at least look me in the eye. And you’ve never had a habit of talking to yourself-”
“Exactly!”
“So! The only explanation is that I heard your voice in my head, because - full disclosure - I was thinking about you at the time and how well you handled our last client - and that’s what created a psychic link between us, because my powers have increased and I am now telepathic!”
Reigen punctuated his 100% full-proof explanation with a broad gesture and an upward tilt of his jaw, an expression of complete confidence that dared anyone to prove him wrong. Or maybe he was just trying to cheer Serizawa up.
It was working. Not only had his breathing calmed, all of the objects in the office had settled back down in their rightful places. At times like these, Reigen reminded Serizawa of the main character of an anime he’d watched a few years ago, about a self-proclaimed mad scientist who accidentally discovered how to time travel with a microwave. He had to wrestle the grin off his face, to resist indulging in his endearment for him.
Wait. Reigen had been thinking about him? Serizawa tried not to get flustered.
“I’m not so sure, Reigen-san…”
“Why not?” he asked, jumping into another pose: one hand to his forehead, the other outstretched. “I can already see spirits; who’s to say I won’t develop more powers? Surely I'm bound to pick up something from being around you psychics all the time. It just makes sense!”
In his head, maybe.
“I’m not sure that’s how that works.”
“Oh ye of little faith. You’ve never been a cynic, Serizawa, don’t start now.”
“I don’t doubt you, Reigen-san,” he laughed. “I’m just a little unsure if that’s the answer.”
“Hmmm. All right, then.” Reigen clapped his hands together, startling his coworker. “Let’s put our theories to the test.”
“T-test?” Serizawa dumbly repeated.
“Right! It’ll go like this: we’ll both take turns trying to project our thoughts to one another. Whoever hears the voice is the receiver, which makes the other person the telepath. Make sense?”
“Um. But wouldn’t that mean that I’d be the telepath, since you heard my voice before-”
“Semantics!” Reigen waved Serizawa’s theory away. “That was a fluke; this is the only way to know for sure. I’ll go first. Ready?”
Serizawa couldn’t say no to him. Not because he was his boss; Reigen was hardly the lead-by-fear type of employer, and never made Serizawa feel like he couldn’t approach him. In that sense, Reigen was the complete opposite of his previous boss.
No. Reigen was having fun, and Serizawa wouldn’t ruin that.
“Understood,” he said, nodding. “I’ll do my best to hear your voice.”
Was that a hint of shyness in Reigen’s smile? Now Serizawa was definitely imagining things. Reigen was anything but shy.
As though to prove his point, Reigen jumped into the first of several over-the-top dramatic poses, grimacing deeply and making a slew of effort sounds in his best mimicry of psychic concentration. Serizawa wondered if Reigen intended to add “telepathy” to his collection of Special Moves. Would he break out one of these poses to show off to future customers? He was making it very difficult for Serizawa to concentrate on listening out for his psychically projected voice, since he had to try so desperately not to laugh.
However, no amount of facial gymnastics could change the truth.
He shook his head. “No. Sorry.”
Reigen, letting his arms drop, gave him a patient smile, not the disappointed scowl Serizawa had expected. “What have I told you about apologising so much,” he said. “It’s not your fault, so don’t feel guilty.”
“Ah- yes!” Serizawa said, flushing. “Sor- uh- I won’t!”
That was just like Reigen. Kind, caring Reigen.
“All right.” Reigen stood straight, hands in his pockets. “Now you try.”
The tension in Serizawa’s shoulders dissipated, replaced by reluctance. He wasn’t sure this would lead to anything conclusive, certainly nothing good , but he knew Reigen wouldn’t take no for an answer. Best to just get it over with.
He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and thought about projecting his thoughts to Reigen.
I’m not sure what to say. Think. Um. Gosh I hope he can’t hear this. What if I think something weird? Aahh, I have to concentrate. Just, don’t think anything dumb again, and definitely don’t let him hear another accidental confession-
“Nothing you say is dumb; stop beating yourself up like that-”
“AAAH!” They both screamed, pointing at one another as they realised what had happened.
“You heard me again!” Serizawa shouted.
“I heard you again!” Reigen confirmed.
“Oh my God!”
“Oh my God!!”
Serizawa gripped his head. “I’ve developed telepathy…” he mumbled.
“You’ve developed telepathy!” Reigen said with much more enthusiasm. “This is great!”
“This is terrifying !” Serizawa disagreed. “Wh-what if I start hearing voices all the time? A-and what if I accidentally read your mind when you don’t want me to?”
“Details, details!” Reigen swatted away Serizawa’s worries with one of his characteristic hand gestures. “We’ll worry about those later. Think of the benefits! And we figured out how I heard your confe-”
He cut himself off. They were both blushing.
“Um.”
For once, they were both left speechless. Serizawa felt his gut sink. He knew Reigen would collect his words faster than he could; if he wanted to be heard, he’d have to step in quick.
“I’m sorry.”
It was his typical go-to phrase, but it worked. Reigen heard him. Serizawa took a breath.
“I’m sorry, Reigen-san. I realise I’ve created a… an awkward atmosphere between us.” He gripped his hands together. His palms were sweaty and unpleasant; he gripped the back of his hand instead. “Intentionally or not, saying something like that during office hours was… unprofessional of me, to say the least. You… don’t have to say anything. If you would rather we didn’t speak of it, ever, so we can keep the status quo, then… Then I’d be fine with that.”
Serizawa hated the sound of his own voice. He hated the silence more. He longed for Reigen’s voice, though he dreaded what it might say next.
“Hm," was all Reigen said. His lack of reaction was doing nothing too soothe Serizawa’s poor heart. He flipped back his sleeve to check his watch - that didn't help either. “We have an appointment in fifteen.”
“Oh.” Serizawa remembered where they were, and what time it was: they were still at work, and lunch would end soon. “That’s right.”
“It’s gonna be a long one, too,” Reigen sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “The client has convinced herself that her house is haunted by seventeen different spirits. Seventeen! No idea how she’s managed to differentiate them all. We may be able to learn something from this one.”
Serizawa’s heart stuttered, throbbed, sank. “R-right…”
“We can talk about it later.”
Reigen turned on his heel, hands in his pockets. Serizawa took this to mean they were back on the clock, and it was business as usual. He was expected to remain professional and get back to work. The conversation was over.
“Maybe,” Reigen said, “over ramen?”
Serizawa’s gaze lifted from the floor. Reigen was looking at him over his shoulder, eyes gentle, cheeks pink: an expression Serizawa thought he’d only ever see in his daydreams.
His heart soared. His text books were floating too.
“I’d like that!”