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When the AC unit emits a rattling death knell before unceremoniously breaking down, Reigen is the middle of a thought.
I’ve known you for so long, and—
That’s when the room swells with oppressive heat, and Reigen shelves the thought. He isn’t sure how it would’ve ended.
There’s no one at Spirits and Such except for him and Mob. It’s a Sunday. Serizawa called in sick, Tome was at the beach with her family, and Mob should’ve been anywhere else but here. Reigen can imagine Ritsu saying the same thing, but with more ire.
Reigen shelves that thought, too. Mob is here, and that’s the immutable reality.
“Fuck,” he sighs. Reigen had been doing crossword puzzles on his computer for the past hour and a half, and it would be cruel to keep either of them inside when their scant and only source of protection from the sweltering heat was now defunct. “Mob, let’s close up early today. I guess no one can bother to get out of their house in these conditions, let alone get rid of their evil spirits.”
Mob makes a noise of affirmation from where he’s sitting and painstakingly poring over flashcards. Even as an adult, he’s obedient.
Reigen shrugs off his jacket as he plods to the door, draping it over one arm. He wants a cigarette, but he’ll have to wait until Mob is well on his way home. At some point between Mob’s first and second year in university, he picked the habit up again, like a feral animal that he knew would tear his throat out. It’s a secret.
His hand is already slick with sweat against the smooth doorknob. The door refuses to move, no matter how many times he wipes his hands against his pants.
“Mob, could you try the door? It’s not opening for me.”
“The door…?”
Mob tries once, twice, wiping his hands on his pants just like Reigen did. It’s strange to see Mob in jeans and a button-up instead of a gakuran fastened all the way to his throat, even though he’s been in university for a few years now. Reigen has been seeing less and less of him, like he’s weaning himself off a drug.
It’s for the better. Mob’s old bonds are meant to cool and settle as he forms new ones. Reigen is just happy to see him grow.
Mob’s fringe lifts an infinitesimal amount as he tries to psychically fix the door, but he gives up as soon as he starts. He frowns. “I don’t know enough about locks to know where to move what. I think… I think Dimple did this, somehow.”
Reigen had been thinking the same thing, though it feels worse to have his doubt confirmed out loud. He and Mob had exchanged bemused glances when Dimple left earlier in the day, seeing as he chose to slither through the keyhole instead of the gap between the wall and the open door, but they’d thought nothing of it.
Reigen sighs. Dimple was a Class-A meddler, if nothing else. He had taken to zipping around Reigen at closing time, lobbing pointed comments his way.
Shigeo knows something’s up with you, ya know.
You’ll have to talk to him soon, Reigen!
Reigen had waved off Dimple with his own retorts, but he didn’t know that Dimple was threatening him with the things he would go through with.
Reigen collapses onto the couch. “Next time you see Dimple, do us all a favor and just exorcize him.” They both knew Mob would do no such thing.
Mob settles onto the seat in front of him as Reigen pulls out his phone. Reigen has a friend of a friend of a friend who knows locks and owes him a favor, though it would be a few hours before he could tear himself away from the lull of the weekend to help them.
Reigen closes his eyes and readies himself for the wait.
Pink tie on the floor, red shirt folded neatly and placed on the table. Mob is back to his flashcards. He wears only a thin white shirt on top of his jeans, like an old movie star.
Mob isn’t traditionally handsome, but there’s something elegant about the way age carved his face, leaving some baby fat to soften to edges. His brow scrunches as he flips over a card. Reigen closes his eyes again.
He had been taking in Mob’s presence morsel by morsel over the years. Indulgences. This felt like gorging on a feast that never left him sated. He’d be hurtling down to hell for gluttony sooner rather than later.
“Shishou.”
Mob speaks like he keeps words trapped in his mouth, in the curve of his cheeks like a little animal, ready to release at the perfect moment. He says shishou like it escaped from his chest before he could do anything about it.
Another wave of heat rolls through the room. Reigen’s shirt is clinging to his back with sweat. Still, he shivers. Refuses to open his eyes and see whatever expression Mob bears. His stomach twists with something nebulous.
“Hm?”
“After today, do you want me to come here anymore?”
I’ve known you for so long, and we’re both so different now, but I—
“Of course I do. What makes you think otherwise?”
Both the response and Reigen are weak against Mob’s unflinching earnestness.
Mob stacks his flashcards neatly, deftly, the susurrus drowned by the noises of the building. He worries his lip. It’s a new habit. Reigen observing Mob’s mouth is also a new habit.
When he lifts his head up, his face is void of anything. His hair is sticking to his forehead. The heat will make them go crazy. “Shishou, I feel like you’ve been avoiding me. Which is fine, but if I did something wrong or you just want to see me less, please tell me. I don’t like guessing.”
Reigen feels another violent twist near his stomach, at the bottom of his chest cavity. Mob probably knows what that part of his body is called. Reigen sits up, rolls his sleeves as far as they can go. Puts on his serious voice.
“Mob, I want you to see me as much as you want to see me. The thing is, I’m sure you’ve made so many more friends in college, and you’re not going to need me all the time anymore. I just want to… accommodate for that.”
Mob leans forward, and the table does a strange wriggle against the floor before Mob takes back iron-fisted control of his powers. “Shishou, I’ll always need you. I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t even be going to university and making friends if not for you.”
“Yes,” Reigen says, not unkindly. “And now that I’ve taught you everything I can about how to brave the world, why would you want the dead weight of this old man on your back? You could get a girlfriend, Mob. Or a boyfriend, whatever.”
Reigen isn’t the paragon of moral excellence, never will be. Still, he knows better than to latch onto Mob for so long, to hold him down.
(Reigen, starting from some corner of his subconscious, began to see his life as before Mob and after Mob. Some part of himself is shaped around Mob, an outline that grasps at empty air when Mob isn’t around. He can’t be so arrogant to think that Mob feels the same way.)
“I don’t—shishou.” Mob’s fingers are gripping onto his jeans. He’s so sincere, Reigen’s heart hurts. “You don’t get to decide how I feel and how I want to spend my time. I wouldn’t be who I am without you, of course I want to spend time with you. You’re my, my—” Mob seems to search for the right word. “You’re my anchor. You’re one of my best friends.”
If Reigen was glutting himself on Mob’s presence before, then this is a biblical level of excess. Reigen can feel it clouding his mind, his judgment. If only he could sweat out every ounce of desire from his body.
Desire. He was always too scared to put a name to it, though now is as good a time as any.
Somewhere along the line, a year ago, two years, Reigen’s definition of love slowly metamorphosed from putting up with me to listening to me, caring for me, eating ramen with me, exorcizing with me.
Maybe Reigen altered his view of love to fit around Mob, the one who changed his life so drastically. Maybe Mob was always meant to fit in that spot. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, not when Reigen was adamant on ignoring his feelings until they dissipated into the air.
“Thank you. You’re one of my closest friends as well.” There’s some weight that Reigen puts on the words that he doesn’t mean to. He thinks it's inevitable.
Mob relaxes, but not completely. There’s a fissure that Reigen has yet to mend. “I’m glad.”
When Reigen fans himself with a stack of files, he only moves around hot air. Doing anything but lying down feels like a monumental waste of energy. Even Mob, who gave up on being studious, has his eyes closed across from Reigen.
He takes a moment to observe his—ex-disciple? Occasional employee? Something. The soft and gentle slope of his nose, the rivulets of sweat staining his shirt.
Mob’s face is calm, seemingly impervious to the waves of heat periodically flooding the room. Reigen doesn’t know if Mob ascribes to any religion, but he has the mien of a monk ascended to nirvana.
There’s a lot Reigen doesn’t know about Mob. There are a lot of things to learn.
“Mob, do you have any fun stories from university recently?” Reigen asks, voice muffled by the way he’s lying face down on the sofa. “Besides the ducklings on the road.”
Reigen can’t see it, but he imagines Mob’s frown. Not quite petulant, but a few shades from it. “Shishou, you know I don’t go to parties or anything.”
“Then tell me about your classes.”
Mob is studying exercise science to become a physical therapist. Reigen feels a full-bodied sense of pride anytime he thinks about it.
Mob thinks. “Well, my summer class is about motor learning. Figuring out how to use your body to do certain things. I have a test next week.” That’s what the flashcards were all about.
Silence ensues for a moment that seems to stretch on in the syrupy air. “And,” Mob says haltingly. “I’ve had to take a lot of anatomy classes. You taught me a lot, shishou, which made it easier.”
Reigen is bewildered. “Did I?”
“Mhm. With your massages.”
There’s some shuffling, and Reigen doesn’t feel Mob’s presence until it’s too late. There’s a finger barely touching his back. Reigen is glad his face is hidden.
“Upper trapezius.” A feather-light touch by his shoulder before moving down. “Lower trapezius.” Lower still, where Reigen’s waist begins to curve. “The spinal erectors.”
Reigen tries to laugh off how much he wants to curve up into the touch, but his ha-ha-ha sounds like the noise the AC made when it died. “I didn’t know you listened that closely whenever I rambled about that sort of thing, Mob.”
“I listen to everything you say. Even the unimportant things.” There’s something sparking in Mob’s voice.
How Mob can say such things with ease is beyond Reigen. His stomach squirms, and he twists around to meet Mob’s eyes. Mob is very close. He’s trembling minutely. They both are.
“Mob,” Reigen says. His voice is faint compared to the pounding of his heart, the desire being sweated out of him only to be replaced anew, an infinite well. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” Mob replies, though he quickly shakes his head. “No, I’m… I…”
Reigen sits up, and Mob retreats. His heart doesn’t slow. “I think the heat is getting to you. I don’t think we have any water bottles, but—”
“No! No. It’s not that. I’m fine. It’s just that. I wanted to see.”
Mob, Reigen despairs. “See what?” He’s scared of the answer.
“I don’t know.” Mob’s voice is thick with all he’s feeling, close to igniting in the open air. Reigen wants to ignore it, but he’s never been good at ignoring Mob.
Maybe Reigen should’ve seen this coming. Mob admired him, looked up to him in his formative years, so a crush is something Reigen can understand the progression of. Still, understanding and seeing are two different things.
There are dust motes drifting lazily around Mob’s face, visible only because of the harsh bars of sunlight peeking through the half-closed blinds. Reigen feels like he’ll crumble into ash if he doesn’t move, burst into a blaze if he does. In the end, there’s only one clear choice when Mob looks like this—doubt dancing in his doe eyes.
“C’mere.”
Mob crushes into Reigen’s space, and Reigen runs a hand through his hair, soot-black and thick.
If he thinks hard enough, Reigen can imagine the sweat on their bodies sticking them together, fusing them along the lines of their bodies into one cohesive being.
“I don’t want a girlfriend, shishou.”
“I gathered,” Reigen mutters, trying to inject dryness into his voice so as not to betray how affected he is. “Your flirting could use some work. But not—not with me.”
“I don’t want anyone but you.”
Gentle, unhurried. “That’s what you think. And then you’ll change.”
“I’ve loved you for years, shishou. That’s the one thing that hasn’t changed. And you can’t try and keep me away. Not if you love me back.”
Reigen didn’t know they were saying love out loud. The parts of his body that are in contact with Mob’s are starting to overheat. His neck is warm.
There’s no point in lying. “I do, of course I do, but what is there I can give you, Mob? A relationship? A boyfriend? Above anything else,” Reigen forces out a laugh, “I’m too old for you. And you can say that you don’t care as much as you want, and that might even be true, but there are plenty of people outside this room that definitely do care.”
“My relationships are no one’s business but my own.”
Damn him, but it sounds like something Reigen would’ve said as well, when Reigen was twenty-one and still learning the world. Mob lifts his face from Reigen’s neck. His dark eyes are flitting from Reigen’s eyes to mouth to eyes again, a gleam on his face from sweat and something Reigen has only ever seen flashes of on other people.
“Outside of this room, there are things we need to worry about.” Coming from Mob’s mouth, it sounds less like an honest concession and more like a way to placate Reigen. “But we’re not outside of this room. Right now.”
“That’s true.” When did Reigen’s hands move to Mob’s waist? Why does it feel so natural? When did Mob get so tall?
“So, right now, can I…”
Reigen shouldn’t. He should think about Mob’s parents, and Ritsu, and Mob himself. He’s so, so hot. He nods.
Mob lets his teeth skim across where Reigen’s pulse hammers in his throat, and it already feels too vulnerable, but being vulnerable with Mob feels like the right way to be vulnerable. Could Mob taste the salt on his skin, the remnants of cheap soap?
“Don’t be a heathen,” he exhales.
“Sorry,” Mob says, not sorry at all, before kissing Reigen.
Mob either had been kissing someone in university or he was a born expert. Amongst it all, Reigen feels a spark of jealousy in his stomach that he fights to stamp out. Mob, as if sensing this, deepens the kiss, and all Reigen can think about is holding on to Mob’s firm waist. Tighter and tighter, so that he doesn’t collapse.
They separate for a split second before meeting again, again, again. Mob murmurs things into his mouth—shishou, mostly, but a notable I love you and you don’t know how long. Reigen doesn’t even know what comes out of his own mouth. He’s sure he’ll regret it.
When they pull apart for longer than just a moment, their chests move in tandem to breathe the thick air in harsh inhales, effortful exhales.
They both say a tangled word, caught on their tongues, but a heavy knock on the door sends them flying apart.
It’s Reigen’s friend of a friend of a friend. He’s sorry for the delay, and he’ll be sure to get them out in no time.
Reigen picks up his tie from the floor and avoids looking at Mob’s reddened mouth, his tousled hair, his strong arms.
They’ll be standing outside, outside of this room, soon. A quick shower will wipe him free of all his sweat, his grime, and any evidence of Mob’s body so close to his own.
Reigen will work his way through a pack of cigarettes. His lungs will fill with smoke, and he’ll pretend that’s why his chest aches.
I’ve known you for so long, and we’re both so different now, but I still can’t help but hurt when I see you and when I miss you. Maybe that hurt is love too.