Chapter Text
Neither Mob nor Serizawa had ever snorkeled before. Reigen hadn’t either, but Reigen wasn’t going to admit that.
He’d bought special mask cleaning gel and a waterproof handbook on local fish species and flippers and everything. The waterproofness of the handbook was starting to look like false advertising, however, in the choppy little waves washing up to their shins. Reigen squawked and fumbled with the soggy booklet, his mask already on but too foggy to even see his eyes through, the snorkel hanging against his chin. You could tell he wanted to swear, but he was being careful not to because Mob wasn’t the only preteen in their care today: they’d invited Ritsu and Hanazawa as well. So instead Reigen let out a string of weird noises like “Aa! Hargh! Gargha hah!” like language itself had failed him in his misery.
Mob and Serizawa, meanwhile, seemed to be naturals.
Mob had opted not to clean his mask beforehand, since it was brand new (a gift from Reigen) and didn’t need it. Serizawa was just in swimming goggles. Nevertheless, they were both immediately enraptured by the sea and all its little details, the tickle of the sand between their toes and up behind their heels, and the benign scrape of little clam shells before their inhabitants buried into the sand again in the undertow. Both espers quickly made their way deeper out into the water, leaving Reigen to get knocked over by an unexpectedly high wave that slapped him in the back of the thighs just right for a faceplant. His booklet was carried away by the water and Reigen coughed and scrambled for it. Hanazawa and Ritsu, sitting up on the beach with the towels, watched without mercy.
Serizawa and Mob were already in their own little world. Or worlds, rather. They were, after all, both very solitary people and so their companionship was more the companionship of two solitudes existing comfortably beside each other.
When the water was up to his middle, Mob ducked his face into it, taking a tentative breath through the blue plastic of his (cheap) snorkel. The mouthpiece made a quiet rattle, but the air came easily, and that bolstered his confidence enough to crouch, letting his shoulders into the water, pulling himself along the sandy floor with his hands until he was deep enough to be swimming.
He and Ritsu had both learned to swim as children, so it came naturally enough. At first there was not much to see, the sand and gray water murky and tumultuous from the bodies of the other beachgoers, but as he swam further out it gradually cleared into rocks and muted corals. The skin of a maroon sea fan brushed his knee and his mouth quirked a little reflexively, half smile half shiver, letting some water and the taste of salt in at the corner. He didn’t panic. Instead he used all the air in his lungs to give a big spit and blew the excess water out the top of his snorkel. His mouthpiece rattled back to its usual rattle and he breathed easily.
And then he saw the fish.
First was the dusty shuffle of a medium-sized fish darting its way between the rocks, the light catching iridescent blue stripes on its sides before it was gone again. Then a school of tiny silver ones swam right past Mob’s face, his eyes widening behind his mask as he whipped around to watch them. Another striped fish like the one he’d seen on the floor swam past closer to eye level, and below it the lazy propulsion of a pipefish.
He swam on, and the coral grew more colorful beneath him. The squirming maze of a brain coral; an antler of pinkish branches; plump clusters of white, like globs of crystallized sugar. The black spines of a sea urchin were hiding in a rock crevice, which he avoided. Best not to touch the rocks, he thought. But the flowery swaying of tube worms were very tempting, begging for a poke. He reached for one with a tendril of psychic aura and it shlupped back into its tube just before he touched its feathers.
A couple of flat fish with black stripes and a buttery yellow stomach scooted by. Then a big fish, as big as his torso, and peacock green with clownlike markings all over its face. It was crunching at the coral and he could hear it through the water. Crunch, crack. It was cool water, but the heat of the sun on his bare back made it refreshing.
Then he sensed something big approaching from his side. He was alarmed for a split second, remembering the existence of sharks, but when he turned his head, he saw Serizawa there beside him, giving a little wave. Serizawa had cleverly decided to make a bubble of psychic aura around his head before dunking underwater, effectively crafting himself a psychic dive helmet. He looked funny in his bright orange swim goggles and the baggy t-shirt over his trunks that billowed somewhat around him in the water. He was even still wearing his crocs. But he seemed comfortable, in a way Mob had rarely seen him comfortable on land, and his presence made Mob feel an extra level of safety.
They followed the little reef as it expanded, Serizawa pointing out an eel sticking its head out of a grotto, its toothy grin and the rippling of the fleshy muscle of its neck as it breathed through its gills. To Mob’s amusement, Serizawa also had an instinct to send his aura after tube worms. He made a whole swath of them hide across the rocks, their red and purple and orange plumes thwipping out of sight in one big wave. The fish must have felt his presence too, because just then a larger school of snapper came wheeling out from under a coral arch, cresting like a wave in front of the two espers, their silver bellies almost blinding in the watery sunlight. They swam straight at Mob and Serizawa but parted around them easily, like water around rocks, and somehow passed around and through them at the same time. It left Mob’s chest feeling buoyant and breathless. Serizawa, in his bubble, had the luxury of going slack-jawed in wonder.
They lost themselves for ages there, underwater.
When they finally raised their heads to see how far they’d strayed from shore, they were still a reasonable distance from the beach, and Reigen actually wasn’t far away.
He wasn’t snorkeling but instead was floating on his back like an otter, having only managed to wrestle one flipper onto a foot, the other splayed across his stomach like the innards of his otter lunch.
“Hey, this isn’t fun at all,” he announced to anyone who would listen, which was mostly no one. But Serizawa dutifully dog-paddled in his direction. He came to bob at Reigen’s side, saying something that Mob couldn’t hear. Then Reigen pulled out his wet fish handbook and opened it, Serizawa pointing out specific illustrations over Reigen’s shoulder. The two became engrossed in their own quiet conversation.
Mob pressed his face into the water again, until the water was over his ears, all sound closing off into the hooded silence and vague pops of the underwater world. Instead of watching the fish, he let his eyes slide closed, and just floated there, lulled by the gentle motion of the waves. He imagined he could let it all carry him away, out to some middle sea where there was no land at all, only water cradling him coolly. No people, no worries, not even any emotions. He would be alone, but in that special way where you never wound up lonely.
He breathed in deep and slow, hearing his own breaths in his head, the quiet rattle of the snorkel.
Alone but not lonely. Peaceful.
He knocked his knee against something and in his startle he pulled his head out of the water again. It was just a rock. And now he found himself looking out over the water, over Reigen and Serizawa and their intimate grins, to the sandy shore where Hanazawa-kun was waving at him and Ritsu was watching, his eyes always on his older brother and yet more content than worried for the time being.
Ah. This was nice too, Mob decided.
He started swimming back toward the people he loved.