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Reigen Arataka is no stranger to envy.
He's a normal man with a mostly normal life and he hates it, hates being just another face in the crowd, wants to be someone, someone like Mob maybe, but less for his own lack of psychic ability and more for Mob's drive to become… better. To change. The kid is seemingly wholly unremarkable–and perhaps that was what Reigen had told him really mattered because being unremarkable allows you to really take control of your own life–but is extremely set on his interests and goals and actually makes an effort to achieve them. He knows who he is and who he wants to be.
Reigen does not.
He's never known, really, he supposes. He's well-adjusted, no hikikomori like Serizawa had been, but his only goal in youth was to become somebody–a vague and ill-formed notion, the motivation of a high schooler who didn't have a good grasp on the real world and simply needed a topic for an essay, but a notion that stuck with him nonetheless because it was the only one he had. It had fueled him through a failed attempt at college and his short time at the water cooler company and all throughout his years running Spirits and Such. It still fuels him in… some fashion, but subdued now, in a resigned way, like this is all Reigen will ever be.
A relatively low-income conman whose only companions are children, a ghost, and a reformed shut-in who, for all intents and purposes, seems to be doing a lot better than he is.
He envies that. He's happy for Serizawa, really, at his core, but he can't help the stomach-twisting want for change, for the ability to better himself. He's become someone , alright, but that someone is an everyman, and he's stagnated as one, and Serizawa has gone from shut-in to terrorist to normal, functioning member of society who has his life in his hands and actual friends and–
And a boyfriend.
God, the boyfriend.
Reigen Arataka is no stranger to envy. He feels it when Mob says he's hanging out with his friends, he feels it when Serizawa turns him down in favor of a party with his classmates, he feels it whenever his sister mentions how well her work is going.
But jealousy, for being such a close relative, is a new one.
Serizawa had first eased it into the normal conversation topics around the office a good couple months ago, approaching Reigen with more reticence than he'd displayed in a long while, asking him how one really knew if they were in love with someone. The question had immediately sent Reigen's gut crashing into the cradle of his pelvis and contorting over itself, unable to stop an unwelcome heat in his ears. But he'd schooled himself and given the best answer he could manage at the time.
"I guess you just know. It's like… you feel it's supposed to happen, deep down. You want to be with them all the time and learn every part of them. You want to be the only one for them and spend your whole life with them." It was fluff, it was an answer anyone could have given, it was experience based off the only real romantic love Reigen had felt for anyone ever, and Serizawa soaked it up and drank it in with wide, thoughtful eyes, and a determined set to his mouth.
"I see," he'd said with a nod. "That's… specific. But helpful, in my case. Have you felt that way before?"
"Yes."
"Do you… have anyone you love like that now?"
There was the clincher, wasn't it. The Big Ask. The innocuous question laden with if you've loved someone like that, why are you single?
Reigen had swallowed hard. Bit the inside of his cheek. Felt the sudden need to excuse himself.
"No," he'd told Serizawa, and to this day it's the worst, most twisted lie he's ever told him.
The topic had come up again a couple weeks later, Serizawa beaming and lively and excited to announce that he was no longer a bachelor. Tome had congratulated him with some sarcasm about keeping that shit to himself. Mob had given him a pleasant congratulations himself, genuinely happy for him, but his eyes had become soft and worried as he'd looked at Reigen behind Serizawa's back, and frowned.
Reigen just gave Mob a bitter grin in return and shook his head before coming around his desk to give Serizawa a good-natured jab.
And so it continues. Mob drops by every now and then. Delivers pleasantries. Asks how Serizawa and his boyfriend are doing. Engages in small talk with Tome. And turns his gaze on Reigen, each time more concerned than the last, and asks him, much more implied behind his words than with Serizawa, "How are you, shishou?"
Reigen appreciates the worry, but it feels invasive and grating at the same time, and he always waves the boy off with a "Never been better!"
Mob never looks convinced, and Reigen realizes his jealousy and loneliness are becoming a problem when the kid specifically calls him and asks to talk over ramen one night.
Reigen finds he doesn't have much of an appetite once the bowl is set in front of him.
"Shishou, I think you're letting this get to you too much," Mob tells him, earnest, worried. "You look really depressed."
"I'm sorry, Mob, I'm workin on it."
Mob frowns and fiddles with the edge of his bowl. "You don't need to keep lying to me." It's strained. "I'm not a little kid anymore. I know you don't like to talk about feelings but don't feel like you have to lie to me about them for my sake. Especially when you seem so sad."
Reigen swallows thickly. He wishes he had half a lemon sour in him right now, maybe it'd be easier to be lectured by his sixteen year old former student. "Sorry," he says again, staring into his broth. "It's just. New, still. I don't… I mean, cmon, you know me, you're… the only person I've ever been this open with. It feels unnatural."
Mob is staring at him. He can feel it. The kid's gaze has always been intense. "You helped me open up," he points out, softly. "I want to help you."
Reigen says nothing and picks at a limp mushroom in his ramen. Not because he's ignoring Mob, it's just–the back of his throat is burning and tight and he's afraid if he says something now he won't be able to control the inevitable pathetic tears. But Mob seems to understand.
"You told me to just be myself, no matter what happened with Tsubomi," he continues. "And I did. She appreciated the honesty. But she still rejected me. And I was really really sad for a long time. But I had to accept her feelings and move on because that wasn't my choice to make. I think you need to do that with Serizawa-san."
Reigen clenches his jaw in a determined effort to keep the tears at bay. Mob is patient and waits for him to get himself under control.
"I'm… happy for him, Mob," he manages, clammy hands fiddling with his shirt. "I really am, more than anything. He deserves this. But I haven't… I've never found anyone I… that I want around like this. I thought I did, years ago, but looking back I just. Liked the companionship. And really I don't wanna ruin things with him, I'd rather have him forever as my friend than tell him how I feel and lose him, but it won't change that he's the only–" Reigen's voice gives out and he stubbornly clenches his jaw again, hot shame in his cheeks, blinking back tears.
"It might not ever go away," Mob tells him, with an odd sort of wisdom. "But you have to be at peace with it. I think it'd get it off your chest to tell him at some point, especially because you're… so strained and he doesn't know why, but I think that doing what you can to stay friends is a good idea."
Reigen mashes the heels of his palms into his eyes and grimaces painfully. His ramen below him ploops distinctly as a fully formed tear escapes the blockade of his hands and deposits extra salt into the broth.
"I still don't know a lot, shishou," Mob murmurs, "I'm just a teenager. Most of what I'm saying is just… rewording what you've told me. But if you were anyone else I'd tell you to break it off and try to distance yourself."
Reigen gives a surprised half gasp, half laugh at that. "Yeah? Why not, kid?"
"I don't… mean to, um, rub salt in the wound," Mob says now with nerves fraying the ends of his words, "but he's your only friend your age. If you cut him off I think you would feel very very bad."
Reigen's head spins. It's not like Mob's wrong, he's actually really very right, but hearing it from someone else's mouth really solidifies that Reigen's social life is shit and he's doomed to keep his silent anguish to himself while continuing a friendship with Serizawa. He's doomed to Serizawa gushing about his man, he's doomed to Serizawa maybe even getting married and inviting him to the wedding, all while loving him so much that he can't say anything about it.
What's that quote? If I loved you less I'd be able to talk about it more? Yeah, that's the one. Reigen supposes its intended meaning of loving someone so much it becomes too intimate to really talk about it still applies to him, but now it just means: I love you too much to ruin what we have and your relationship by ever admitting it to you.
Reigen never ends up finishing his ramen. And he gets sick from the turmoil of it all when he gets home.
But Mob's words do succeed in calming Reigen's thoughts down over time, and he begins to flinch less at mentions of the boyfriend, begins to tamp down the feelings boiling just behind his tongue, another part of him hidden, another truth unaccounted for.
It sort of comes back to bite him in the ass on a rare night where Serizawa is free and able to grab drinks with him. It had been intended to be a fun night, two work friends laughing over pretty weak alcohol, but they're both lightweights, and they both have problems they don't talk about, and it's devolved into a sort of miserable telling of secrets, Serizawa opening up about his time as a hikikomori, and Reigen diving into the favoritism of his sister by his parents and the discontent towards his own life.
"You've got your own place, you have a stable job, you don't… have anything about yourself that you're really afraid of," Serizawa observes, not rudely or inaccurately. "M just… confused. Curious. What makes you dissatisfied with your life?"
Reigen's tie is fastened around his head and he's leaning on the bar. "Dunno who I'm 'sposed to be," he grumbles. "M a compulsive liar. M a bad friend. M bad at loving people and then when I do they don't love me back."
Serizawa nods slowly, swirling the ice in his glass. "That why you don't love anyone right now?"
Reigen turns away. He's a teary drunk when he's already upset, and he doesn't want Serizawa to see. "No. I do love someone. M sorry I lied to you about it before. But it really… really hurts. Every day. Even though m tryin to move on."
Serizawa is agonizingly quiet after this. Reigen can feel him thinking for a long time. It makes him anxious.
"I'm sorry," he finally murmurs. "I think I'm… re-learning what love is. What it feels like."
"Your boyfriend helping with that?"
"Not in the way you'd think," Serizawa sighs. "I don't… I don't know if what I feel for him is that kinda love anymore." He sounds deeply guilty and sad. Reigen pulls his head off the bar, takes a good long look at him, and reaches to give him a fortifying pat on the shoulder.
"Hey, s okay. Most people go through multiple partners."
"What about you?"
"Had one in college," Reigen admits. "Same deal. I can't… I can't fall in love with someone unless I've known them a long time an m really close to them. An that seems like a normal thing but everyone I knew was just. Falling in love with people on sight an asking em out. Getting to know them by dating. And when I don't find anyone attractive unless I know em well it makes me the odd one out. Especially since no one really wants to be my friend."
Serizawa thinks about this. "I wanna be your friend."
"You are my friend. But. You're the only one. I don't know what I'd do without you."
Whoa there. Where'd that come from?
"I dunno what I'd do without you either."
He's holding Reigen's gaze in… a troubling way. Reigen swallows and breaks contact. "The truth is no matter how much you love a person sometimes they just don't want you an you have to move on about it."
"Who do you want?"
That gaze again. Searching. Like he's figured out Reigen's secret and is trying to pry it out of him. Reigen feels more sober suddenly.
"Serizawa, don't do anything that'd be unfair to your boyfriend," he warns, and Serizawa leans back with a miserable groan.
"I already have by dating him. I don't know how to break it off and tell him I didn't know what I really wanted."
"Do you know now?"
"I think I do."
There's a long and heavy stretch of silence between the two of them. Reigen's stomach is in knots. He can feel the history of the night pressing against the valve of his throat–cheap sake, faint lemon, roasted peanuts. He really doesn't like or understand the turn this conversation has taken and he really wants to go home.
"Reigen."
"Yeah."
"Can you help me with this?"
Reigen finally makes eye contact again. Serizawa looks resolute, if still extremely guilty. The flush of inebriation has faded on his cheeks somewhat.
He hasn't actually asked for Reigen's help in a long time. The pride of being needed inflates some ugly thing in him that he has to rein in– wrong place, wrong time , he tells it, feel good about yourself later.
"With what, specifically?"
Serizawa sighs and pushes his drink away from himself. "I've been trying to be self sufficient but I don't think I know how to let him down on my own," he admits, softly. "I want… you to help me practice telling him. Tell me what I should say."
Reigen doesn't have any experience rejecting anyone. He's been rejected, he's been dumped, but he's never straight up told someone no. Not in this context. The clients who flirt with him he smoothly deflects, always making himself blatantly unavailable without having to tell someone I'm not interested.
Did he perhaps do that to Serizawa? Did he shut himself away too early in the game as someone who didn't believe he could be loved the same way he loved others? The notion seizes his heart for a moment, and then Serizawa is leaning in, close, terrifyingly close, and–
"Please, Reigen. I wanna do this right."
Reigen swallows, heart hammering against his ribcage. Maybe he's still too drunk for this, flip-flopping between the sobriety of feeling for him genuinely and warning Serizawa not to do anything he'll regret in the morning, and the alcoholic haze that makes him want to kiss Serizawa, makes him want Serizawa to kiss him right back, to kiss him first, to kiss him last, to ignore the consequences and give in to him, to be selfish, wholly and unapologetically.
But that would be unhealthy for both of them. Serizawa is probably not interested. Maybe Reigen's been reading into it. The intense gaze, the closeness, the illusion of a chance he could have with him now that the boyfriend is moving out of the picture. It's sirensong. It's a deadly lure. It's a snare Serizawa probably doesn't even know he's set out, drawing Reigen into a turmoil he'd thought he'd begun to escape.
"Yeah, man. I'll help. But remember, in the end this is something only you can do."
Maybe he already knows what Serizawa wants, though, difficult as it is to believe. Reigen hasn't necessarily been hard to read himself.
Somehow the mood lightens. They walk each other home. Both hold on to each other a little tighter than necessary, hoping the other won't notice.
Serizawa takes a very long time to figure himself out, it seems. If not that it takes him a long time to voice it, lingering in the office after hours with something just out of reach of his ability to communicate trapped on his tongue. Reigen's afraid of what it'll be when he gets it, afraid of a possibility he's never allowed himself to entertain in sobriety.
But he confounds Serizawa just as much, ignorant as he is of this fact. He himself lingers, gives Serizawa heavy looks, constantly vies for his attention with the same kind of lonely desperation Serizawa had felt with Claw. Reigen always knows what to say but with Serizawa he becomes tongue tied and fidgety and can't make eye contact. And he doesn't even seem to realize.
Everything he's learned, about the world, about himself, about others, about Reigen, tells him he's attracted to him. There's no way around it. Reigen had even told him that night at the bar that he could only fall in love with people he was close friends with, and it's blatant that he has no close friends his age besides Serizawa. It may as well have been an admission. An invitation, should Serizawa choose to take it.
He just needs to figure out when, and how, and it's hard when logically he knows how Reigen feels but his stunted interpersonal growth and Reigen's own reluctance to broach the topic give him pause.
It starts with small talk, as it often does between the two of them. A lull in the busyness of the work day, an early afternoon break spent sweating and angling the fans for optimal airflow, and Reigen's found comfort in both the breeze and the not-quite of whatever is happening between him and Serizawa, afraid of things never happening but afraid of them happening all the same, terrified of the unknown that is a kind of love he's never shared with someone before. He's content never knowing, he's content having Serizawa closer than a friend but still at arm's length, he's content never taking risks.
Fool that he is. His whole business has been built on taking risks.
"Who was your first crush?" Serizawa pants into the flow of the fan. He's taken off his tie, his jacket, undone the first few buttons. His face is flushed and sticky. His eyes are closed, lashes fluttering, curls bouncing.
It's an innocuous question. Friends ask each other these things all the time.
"Kid in my econ class in college," Reigen answers easily, standing directly in front of his own fan. "Same guy I dated. It was more of a friend crush than anything." Serizawa hums acknowledgement.
They both fall silent. Reigen's throat feels dry, suddenly.
There's a follow-up to this, there always is.
"What about you?"
It's a gamble. It shouldn't put his heart in his mouth and tie his gut into knots. But again the not-quite has gotten too comfortable and again Reigen's afraid of the answer even though he thinks he knows.
"My first crush was you, Reigen."
Oh.
"Been meaning to tell you for a while now." He sounds at ease. Reigen most certainly isn't.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Reigen blurts, and then cringes at himself–that was supposed to stay in his head.
"Cause I still barely knew you," Serizawa hums. Reigen spares a glance. His eyes are still closed. "It felt inappropriate. And you weren't… emotionally available."
"Ouch," Reigen tells him flatly, but it comes out… easily. Like they're supposed to talk like this. Especially because Serizawa laughs.
"I think you've opened up more though,"
"Have I?"
"Yeah." He cracks open an eye, catching Reigen's eager gaze, and smiling more as Reigen hastily looks away. "Physically, at least. You're not as hard to read as you think anymore."
"Tch."
"Reigen. You're thirty-one, do you really wanna keep dancing around this?"
Reigen swallows, adjusting his tie. "It's easier to."
"Why?"
The fabric of his sleeves bunches under his hands as his arms squeeze around himself. Serizawa is too calm, too collected, he knows Reigen inside and out now, and it's not fair , because not even Reigen knows himself inside and out. It would be nice if Serizawa could tell him how he was, who he was, because then maybe he could figure himself out and work around it, but he can't, because it's not his job to do that. Reigen doesn't know the shape of himself, the texture, the nuance, only knows the thumbnail, the silhouette, the easy route of plastering an image of a version of himself that never really existed on billboards and signage and fliers and the backs of his clientele's eyelids. Reigen Arataka, the man, and Reigen Arataka, the 21st century's greatest psychic, are very different people, and he only knows one of them. Hell, he knows Reigen-kun, the campus disaster, and Taka-chan, the cute younger son, and Arataka, the family disappointment, better than himself. Each is a different mask, a different face, a different man, or boy, perhaps, a boy that had not yet figured out that he was a boy but did know that everyone thought there was something wrong with him. Is this the man? Is Reigen Arataka ultimately the cumulative fleeting identities he's adopted and discarded? Is he an entirely new and different man with new and different thoughts and dreams and experiences and desires? Is he a man who knows what he wants and why he wants it and why wanting it scares him? Is he a thirty-one year old businessman leaning his ass on the back of a chair with his arms folded across a rumpled and undone white cotton shirt stained through with sweat and finally, finally making eye contact with an equally sweaty and rumpled and reclined businessman who looks like he has all the time in the world for the former to answer him?
Reigen swallows. He will never be more than whoever he is in any given moment. He's Reigen Arataka, CEO of Spirits and Such Consultation Office, surrogate parent/older sibling to several near-adults, and best friend to Serizawa Katsuya, the only man who's ever mattered to him and who will continue to matter to him.
"It's easy because I'm afraid of any of the outcomes," Reigen finally murmurs. "I'm afraid of it pushing you away, or if it doesn't, I'm afraid that once it's real you'll learn that I'm not all I'm cracked up to be and maybe I'm not what you want. Or, even worse, I'm afraid that… you'll… you'll stay. I'm afraid that to you there's nothing wrong with me and I'll–I'll have to unlearn and relearn myself and the world and that intimidates me."
"How is that worse?"
"It makes me look like a clown."
Serizawa laughs, then, and Reigen shoots him a glare.
"I'm serious."
"It all comes back to your image," Serizawa continues, smiling, like he's just solved some great cosmic puzzle. "You say that like I don't already know and like who you really are. Realistically, what would change if we got together, right now?"
The answer is easy. For a man who's always worked smarter and not harder (but also frequently smarter and harder), Reigen is awfully miffed by the simplicity of it. "Nothing…?"
"The only thing that would change is the status of our relationship, and the little things that come with it, like intimacy," Serizawa explains easily. "Do you expect to create a whole new you once we start dating, when the you I've fallen for is the one right in front of me?"
Reigen scoffs, and looks away, but he's burning up, and his eyes feel wet. "When did you get so good at the talking part, jackass?" he grumbles. "Fuckin–what if this me isn't the real one?"
"But it is though. I've known you for three years. I've learned every version of you. Do you really not know yourself?"
A pause. Reigen feels stripped bare.
"It's not a bad thing if you don't. But I can help you learn. You already did that for me."
Reigen scrubs a wrist against his nose. "You still want me, knowing everything about me? Really?"
"Are you questioning my judgement?"
Reigen would never. Serizawa's input has always mattered to him above most other things. But this isn't fair. "I… well, no–"
"Then yes," Serizawa smiles. "I've been thinking about it for almost a year. I still have a crush on you, Reigen, and I know exactly who you are, and what I want. The way this concludes is up to you."
Reigen's hesitant. Scared. He feels like a deer caught out in the open with nowhere to hide, vulnerable, obvious. Serizawa's good with words when he needs to be and when he knows what he wants out of a conversation. And if he's known Reigen this long and hasn't been pushed away…
Reigen tugs off his tie and approaches the familiar unknown that is Serizawa, purposefully, confidently, before he loses his gumption, and he leans into the breeze of the fan and kisses Serizawa on the mouth. Large, warm hands snake around his waist and pull him into Serizawa's lap, and like this, Reigen can feel the other's heart rabbiting in his chest. It makes him smile against his mouth.
"You fucking conman, you were nervous this whole time!" Reigen accuses with glee when they break apart. Serizawa at least has the grace to look a little sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Look who's talking. But, yeah, well, I was pretty confident, but also a little worried that I might be misinterpreting everything. "
Reigen rolls his eyes. "I'm a bad influence on you."
"And yet also the best influence."
Reigen wants to fire something back, but he stops himself, and lets himself sink into the new normal of Serizawa's easily obtainable boyfriend hugs. "Thank you."
"And thank you . I love you."
"Y-you can't just say that–"
"I've waited three years to, I think I can."
And he does, over and over, till Reigen's cheeks are warm and sore from his own smile, till his heart flutters in his chest and he refuses to get off Serizawa to let him cool down.
When he finally tells a now seventeen year old Mob the news, Mob smiles, genuinely, and then happily receives 500 yen slapped into his palm by a very annoyed Tome.