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Mob’s hand feels like lead in his.
Weighted, magnetic, and blanketed with a light seer of film like a glove that always leaves his nerves buzzing and his heart giving starts like his wiring is off.
The first time they touched, his mouth had fallen open on a silent gasp as the hairs on his arms lifted, the grass at his feet pulled upward like a bed of nails; the sky had grayed, and the afternoon went quiet like the sudden drape of cotton over the ears.
Every touch after that felt different.
Sometimes Mob’s aura would be so off-kilter that Teruki’s balance would forsake him, vertigo hitting him in waves that left him dizzy and fumbling (and during those times, Mob’s hand offered a steady anchor).
Sometimes it was feathered and soft, like velvet in that Mob bristled like a cat when brushed the wrong way, but a sure stroke down his wrist and fingers nestling into a palm would have him sighing. Then his aura would loosen and melt into something much more forgiving.
Other times it was explosive, from zero to one-hundred leaving no slack for touch. Misleading, it was, when Mob would light from within and his lack of aura would leave him so tangible, and Teruki, he wouldn’t resist a chance to run his knuckles over Mob’s shoulder just to watch him shiver.
Even if it meant nearby destruction; trees uprooted with branches interlocked in a perfect weave, the rumble of the ground causing his teeth to chatter and his heart to patter a pulse that deadened his hearing.
But Mob, in those moments, was the most beautiful Mob there was.
It was selfish, because Teruki knew firsthand that slight pinched look his face would take on at the resulting calamity, the way his breath would hitch, the way he’d use Teruki’s fingers like a lifeline against the guilt.
Teruki liked to think no one was hurt.
That Mob displaying his power was simply a spill of beauty incarnate.
That feeling the esper’s power through touch was like harboring a lick of the potency for himself.
But that wasn’t quite right, not when the power rush came from the feel of the power itself. After all, the elation he felt came from Mob’s reaction, didn’t it?
A touch from a commoner like him could cause such a chaotic force in the deific boy.
Teruki liked to think if he were to kiss him, the world would very well crumble, and Mob’s hands would seek his and he would still feel like static and dust, like moonlight and ink, like the vacuum of space, that he could feel like that too, all swallowed up in Mob with combined disastrous, earth-shattering potential.
That’s what holding Mob’s hand was like.
But as he watched Mob’s eyes turn starry at one look from the pretty girl with the light pink barrette, he felt like much, much less than that.
Mob made holding Teruki’s hand seem a lot less devastating.