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It hits Reigen immediately when he wakes up that day. A tightness in his throat, the taste of dread thick on his tongue. There's a kind of heaviness weighing on his chest, keeping his limbs pinned down onto the mattress.
Reigen heaves a heavy sigh. He catches movement to his side, the sound of rustling sheets. He turns to look.
Serizawa's shuffled closer, chest rising and falling in steady breaths as he continues to sleep. Reigen feels his lips tug in a fond smile at the sight—he could get used to waking up with a warm body pressed to his side like this. He turns back over, however, not wanting to disturb the man.
The clock on his nightstand reads a blinking 6:07. Of course, his inner alarm clock has decided to wake him up bright and early on a weekend of all days. It doesn't help that he's already feeling the start of a headache building tension in his temples.
He rises to sit upright slowly, movements deliberate as he tries making as minimal sound as possible, eyeing Serizawa all the while to make sure he doesn't accidentally wake him up. They've had a rough week; Serizawa deserves the rest.
The cold of the floorboards shake off the rest of his drowsiness away when his feet swing gently off the bed to meet it. The blanket slips away from his—now that he's realised—completely bare torso and the springs of the old mattress creaks at him as he lifts his weight off of it to trudge quietly into the bathroom.
He makes quick business emptying his bladder, and less quicker business washing his hands. And then he takes a moment to just stand there, staring at his reflection. Sandy blonde hair ruffled in every direction, darker roots beginning to show. He hopes the pallor has to do with the unflattering lighting of the bathroom's fluorescents; he knows, at least, that the shadows are. The dark rings under his eyes, though, are unmistakable.
He scowls at it.
His eyes trail down to his torso. They fix themselves on the two, crescent marks under his chest. He lifts a finger, drags a nail lightly over the skin. It sends a twinge of nothing up his nerves.
He looks further down, to the slight pudge around his stomach, pokes it a bit.
The light above him buzzes horribly, adding to the steady pounding in his head. It hums its way down around his nape, settles there heavily.
He picks up his toothbrush, squeezes some paste onto it, scrubs it against his teeth mechanically.
The buzzing overhead only grows louder.
—
Days like this don't come as often as they used to. He’s used to dealing with them on his own, really. Most days they’re easy to ignore; shoving the build of something tense in his chest by forcing his best customer service grin on his face, blaming the slight quiver of his fingers on too much coffee, chalking up the slight shortness of breath on years of habitual smoking finally catching up to him.
Reigen knows how to handle himself well.
But it’s on days like this, where there aren’t any clients to perform for or stacks of paperwork to fill or walls of text in his email inbox taking up his screen begging to be answered, that Reigen lets himself slip between the cracks. It’s in moments like this, as he takes another drag out of his cigarette, feeling the sun kissing the bits of skin not covered by Serizawa’s shirt he snagged from the closet as he stands in the balcony, that he lets himself unfurl; lays himself bare to pick at the delicate parts.
The nicotine doesn’t give him the right kind of rush it did in the past, dulled into the numbness that it is, but it takes some of the edge off.
He watches the smoke disperse into the steadily brightening sky. The clouds roll ahead to a destination only they know. He leans forward on the railing, watches the city as it wakes up, the hustle and bustle beginning to sound itself into the air. The tinkle of a bell from the bakery a couple blocks down, their employee arriving for opening time. The absent swoosh of tires from the cars passing along the street. The distant rumbling of a train from the nearest station, which he knows is filled with bleary-eyed people commuting god-knows-where on a weekend like this.
And him, standing uselessly on his balcony overlooking the view of life unfolding before him as the sun greets the sky a good morning, as if mocking his sour mood.
He turns to the steaming coffee he let cool on the small table he keeps at the corner, an ashtray resting beside it with dry flakes of cigarette residue marking the clear, glass base a darkening grey. He lifts the cup, ignores the slight tremble, takes a sip. He places it back down with a clink.
He hears the sound of the balcony door sliding open just as he turns back to watch the streets below. He hears more than sees Serizawa shuffling quietly forward, slumping onto his back to hook a chin over his shoulder. His arms reach to wrap securely around his waist.
Reigen lets Serizawa’s heat—he naturally runs warm, is a fact he’s come to find delight in—seep into his bones. He closes his eyes, letting the morning air finally wrap around him when he had been too occupied by his own thoughts.
"You're smoking," Serizawa points out after a while, voice gruff with the lingering bits of sleep. Reigen can feel the way it vibrates against his shoulder, down his back. He flicks the dust off his cigarette, watches it fall from a height.
He hums. "Yeah," he says, "I am."
Serizawa's head shifts where he lays it on his shoulder; probably to avoid the hard jut of his bone there.
"You said you quit."
Reigen leans his weight back into Serizawa, who somehow still holds himself steady on his feet. "Yeah," he says, and his voice feels a little far away. He looks down at the cigarette, held between his index and middle fingers. "I did, did I?"
They lapse into silence at that. Usually silence doesn't work well with Reigen—he always needs some sort of stimuli, something to keep him talking, moving, doing. Silence compels him to fill it. To keep himself from being left with his own devices that are his thoughts.
Now, though, Reigen lets the silence settle over them, broken only by the occasional swoosh of tires or chirps of birdsong.
It's Serizawa who eventually speaks up again.
"Something on your mind?" he asks conversationally. Something about the way he says it reminds Reigen of himself—he wonders if Serizawa picked that up from him. Sometimes he indulges and thinks Serizawa picked up plenty of things from him.
"You know. Just..." He takes another drag, just to have something to do with himself, blows it out slowly. "stuff."
"Stuff?"
He hums. "Stuff."
"Ah." Serizawa's hold around him tightens minutely before relaxing again. It feels firmer than it did before, though. "It's one of those days, huh?"
Reigen finds himself cracking a small, private smile at that. How is it that Serizawa knows him so well?
He hums again. What more is there to say to that?
The silence stretches a little longer this time.
"We should make breakfast," Serizawa suggests, being the breaker of the silence once again.
"I thought you said you weren't the breakfast kind of guy?" And it's true—Serizawa mentioned once about not being able to eat immediately after waking up. He'd need a couple hours before being able to consume anything.
"Well..." He feels Serizawa's head loll slightly to the side, "you are," he says, simply. "And, um, this—" He gestures at the health hazard concoction and equivalent of a death wish that is his coffee and cigarette, "doesn't exactly count as breakfast, Reigen." His hand returns in its spot on his waist. And then lower, "and I know you don't like eating without company." And as if that isn't enough to make his heart swell... "Let me make you breakfast. I want to.”
He presses back, closer. Greedy. The late November air that previously bit into his skin melts away.
“I think we still have some eggs in the fridge,” Serizawa muses, “I can have tea, first."
Reigen turns his head slightly to meet Serizawa's eyes. He wants to say thank you, maybe I don't deserve you, and if he were a little more daring, maybe even an I love you, you know that? but as it stands, Reigen Arataka is a right, darn coward. Instead he settles for, "We... really need to go grocery shopping, huh?"
Serizawa chuckles at that, low and reverberating and slightly surprised. “Yeah, probably,” and then a grimace. “Definitely. We do.”
Reigen chuckles back, and some of that tension in his head ebbs away.
“Let’s get back inside?” Serizawa tilts it up at the end in his delivery to make it sound more like a question.
“Sure. But let me just finish this—”
His cigarette floats out of his fingers, leaving a gentle static buzz on his skin that he easily identifies as Serizawa’s aura, and the butt is quickly stubbed onto the ashtray.
“Hey!” Reigen says, with no real bite. Serizawa gives him an apologetic smile, but there’s a hint of playfulness to it.
“Sorry. Shall we go back inside now?”
Reigen knows he isn’t really sorry. He rolls his eyes, but smiles back anyway. “Fine. Let’s.”
—
Reigen watches as Serizawa patters about the kitchen. It’s not usual that they bother to cook on the weekends, usually relying on their usual takeout orders, but Reigen can never refuse a homemade meal. Even if said meal seemed to be plain eggs.
He doesn’t have much of an appetite currently, but he knows Serizawa wouldn’t have that. So Reigen sits, waits, watches. He feels a little useless.
It doesn’t take long for the restlessness to push him to his feet. He sidles up Serizawa’s side, not really knowing what to do with himself. Serizawa flashes him a quick smile before turning back to seasoning the sizzling eggs.
He hooks a chin over Serizawa’s shoulder. When he doesn’t say anything, Reigen deliberately drapes himself over his back, wrapping him in a hug from behind like Serizawa gave him in the balcony.
He’s probably being less helpful now than he was before, but Serizawa doesn’t seem to complain. So he stays.
Serizawa hums for a moment, using the spatula to check if the eggs’ undersides are cooked so he can flip them over. They aren’t.
He sets the spatula on a clean surface, tries to find Reigen’s hand that rests on his hip. He lays a palm above his hand, holding gently.
“So,” Serizawa says, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles. “Do you… need to talk?”
Reigen considers it for a moment, stares ahead at nothing in particular. Something about this angle—the way it conceals his face—makes him feel… brave.
“What is there to talk about?” he mutters, “I… wake up. I feel—” he gestures vaguely at himself with a free hand, “like this. That’s all there is to it, you know?”
Serizawa, ever eternally patient, just hums.
“Does this… happen often?”
Reigen bites the inside of his cheek, feels the sting. He releases it. It turns into a dull ache. “Usually when winter rolls around,” he says, and it’s the truth. Winter meant the days would blur together, time would lose meaning, that haze would settle into his head to cloud his days over with something dull and empty. “It’s…” He sucks in a breath. “It’s ridiculous, you know? I didn’t even— nothing could have triggered this. I…”
“Hey,” Serizawa admonishes him softly, “Hey, now. Arataka,” His thumb swipes softly again, halting to squeeze his hand. “none of that. It’s not ridiculous. Everybody has bad days.”
“I know,” he says, “I know. It’s just that I…”
There he goes, going all wistful again.
“I just…” he shrugs, looks down at the floor. He huffs at himself. “I have you now, ‘Tsuya. And all the others. The kids, the office, hell, even Dimple. Everything’s— everything’s going well,” he says, “So, so well.” So well he doesn’t know what he’d done to ever deserve all this, if he ever did. He pulls away from the hug for a moment, eyes still on the floor. “So I don’t know why I still… I—” Serizawa squeezes his hand tighter, turns around to face him, and when Reigen sends him an appreciative look, he catches a glance at the soft gaze in his eyes. It’s almost too much for him. “I… should be more grateful, you know? For all this.” For you, goes unspoken, like many things he keeps behind clenched teeth, behind lips sealed from truth and vulnerability, too accustomed to the poison of deception.
His shoulders slump. Something like exhaustion bleeds into him. He hasn’t even done anything.
“I think it would help…” Serizawa says, gently, “if you maybe try counseling.”
Reigen tilts his head with a frown. “...Me?”
Reigen doesn’t seem like the type of person to need counseling. Serizawa, on the other hand, has been through rough patches in his life that take time to heal. It makes sense that he takes counseling. But him?
Reigen’s just an average man. He has no tragic backstory to claim, no childhood trauma to justify himself with. He’s not the kind of man to need that sort of thing.
“It helps to have someone… detached, to listen. Someone who isn’t, um, invested in your life. Or something like that,” he explains, “Someone impartial. Especially if they happen to be a professional who has all the tools to help you.” Serizawa seems to take a moment to arrange his words at this. “I… It helped me, anyway. Counseling. I have you, of course, and everyone else, and it’s… nice to have a support circle, but— you know. It helps. And— and I just…” Serizawa fixes him with a look so sincere it makes Reigen’s throat feel constricted. “I want to be there for you, ‘Taka. You just have to let me in. But I understand if you need… space. Not everyone’s ready for that sort of thing.”
Reigen searches his face. And then he feels a smile bloom from his lips, even if it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispers, not daring to speak any louder. “I’ll— I’ll uh, consider it. Counseling, I mean.”
Serizawa gives him one of those small, soft smiles he adores. Reigen feels his own wobble slightly, before stretching into something genuine.
Days like this don't come as often as they used to. He’s used to dealing with them on his own, really.
But, as he takes one look at Serizawa—
“Uh, wait. I think the eggs are burning.”
—he realises, maybe, he doesn’t always have to deal with them alone.