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In the world full of tricks and mysteries there were always work for the most cunning and dexterous ones. If knowledge is power and power is turning a single word into your ultimate weapon — having an esper by your side, loyal and trusting, is almost like challenging the creator himself. Agitating, isn't it? When you can reach out and take that creator's challenger by a hand and lead him whenever you want, what would you do? Reigen Arataka, the twenty eight year old fraud and adventurer knew the answer. Or, well, he thought like he did.
Eventually, they always end up at some open spaces — farmer fields in the middle of nowhere, morning winter beaches, some oblivion edge of the forest. Like the space itself around them was trying to separate the two from the whole world. This time they started this journey about six bus stops from the city. All six of them went along with little to no dialogue, kept in thoughts tied up to the dustiest parts of their minds. Their shoulders pressing onto one another, thighs touching whenever the vehicle took a turn. Nobody moved apart even slightly. Mob found Reigen's eyes in the window's reflection so they kept the eye-contact just like so. Intimate. Just like the talks they're usually having, which made no sense without any context to strangers, but felt like home between them two, always being onto something.
They've met the client, dealt with millennials spirits that lived in the fields near the village and were about to head back to the office, or maybe straight to Kageyama's household since it's getting late. 7:45. Well, there's still some time. A gasoline lighter met the paper of a cigarette swaying from Reigen's mouth with a spark. Mob always wondered how it feels to be burned, scalded, hurt. Does it feel warm inside your mouth when you breathe in a smoke? Does it make your mind shut down immediately? Does it taste like something you'd like to highlight all the memories with? Reigen arched his back and blew out the smoke, getting trapped in the electricity wires like a fish in the net. They carried on, slowly shifting from the concrete road to a beaten path leading through the forest. Reigen moved a cig by his tongue to the right corner of his mouth.
— Wanna take a shortcut here? I know a great view spot!
Eyes shining, reflecting boy's gaze.
— I'd like to, yeah.
The Seasoning City hummed somewhere its almost midnight tune, trees were echoing in a slight dissonance. You could see the tallest buildings from here, advertising signs glowing of all colors, leaving clouds above the roof tops slightly pink, green, yellow. The red ellipse just above the skyline was slowly turning into a red circle of the moon. It was so big, just like in the movies you'd see on the TV. Mob couldn't hold a gasp when he noticed it.
— Looks rad, yeah? I don't think I ever saw moon being that big to be honest.
It was so silly yet so human-like to see Mob being impressed by such things as cosmic bodies in the sky and all that... When that exact boy is more than capable of twisting all the universes bonds and smash them into his fist, is it really possible to take his breath away by just staring at the twilight sky? It stroked Reigen's ego to watch his esper boy stunned and silent. Mob had very soft features, especially in profile. Reigen wanted to place a finger on top of his forehead and trace it down to the tip of the nose, down to the hollow between the nose and the upper lip, and stop between those lips. Wanted to steal a kiss, craved it. He knew he could. Mob interrupted Reigen's inner monologue, like he felt his face being scanned and traced all over, by saying:
— It's turning yellow as it rises.
— Oh, you're right. Reigen took a squat position, making cracking sounds while sitting on his heals, muttering something about getting old and all that stuff. He heard a couple of muffled footsteps through the grass on his right and a small palm resting on top of his head. Gripping. Slightly.
— I wanna stay here for a moment.
The voice was distant, like Mob wasn't just standing above Reigen, but levitating up in the sky.
— Ok, just a moment.
Sooner, man stood up and distanced himself to stretch his arms and back. Reigen felt the brizzy bumps rising in a wavy rhythm under the ash gray suit jacket. The tidal wave of change. 8:15 on the digital clock. Shit. He leaned on his right leg with a hand in pocket, breathing in, glazing behind himself. The boy he stared at was the darkest yet the most contrasted spot of the view — inky black hair, white face like a ghost (which he saw about a thousand times on a daily basis to this moment), and a heavy gakuran jacket with a set of shiny buttons blinking like the stars above. Mob stood there facing the trickiest conman of the 21st century. Hazy-eyed. Blank. Staring. The man was about to meet another universe's birth and death on the horizon as he kept the eye contact just to break it to say:
— Oi, Mob. We might need to hurry up until your parents start to worry about you, wouldn't want that.
Reigen lingered on the last phrase with a smirk, performatively playful, gesturing his way out while slowly turning his head once again to face the ongoing map of the world he lived in all this years, but barely even knew, growing pixel by pixel, step by step. Field flowers glowing on the emerald grass like neon, mixing up with tall, semi-dry grass.
And so they hurried up. Boy's subtle touch on the waist-high grass turned into the strock, loud, like he was trying to brush all the seeds out of stems. He felt dazed, head spinning, he felt like giving into self indulgence. The spontaneous urge to run across the field. To make Reigen fall with his body. The obsessive thought of that. So his body moved on the auto-pilot by the whisper of the heart and that newborn impulse.
A couple of steps later Reigen was pinned to the ground with his student hovering him over like a dog on a haunt catching its prey. Head hurting from the back making it hard to process the image before the older man's eyes slowly getting more and more sharp. His student's pupils wide as the sky above their bodies, hair swaying on the wind radiating almost invisible light of the psychic powers taking control over the boy, the crimson of his cheeks burning flames underneath the soft skin.
— S-sorry, — a slightly hoarse voice came out of his mouth, saliva collecting in the corners of his lips, — I just felt like it...
— Somebody's having too much of a fresh air today, huh?
— I'm not...sure, shishou...
— C'mon Mob, it's a known thing! Haven't they taught you that in school? Too much oxygen often leads to feeling dizzy!
Reigen's heartbeat went wild, like his heart had its own plan of escaping the ribcage captivity. Mob was sorta unpredictable lately. Handsome. Fascinating.
— You always make me feel dizzy, shishou.
With the last syllables on his lips Mob closed his eyes and moved his face to meet Reigen's mouth, kissing him. The outburst of potential energy turning into kinetic in between their lips. Reigen could swear he saw the clouds move underneath the shaky stars for the first time ever. Like really saw.
Huh, you know, it's so silly how we all tend to believe when people talk about how they watched clouds moving the other day or a meteor shower in mid-August and we just... believe them? Seriously, have you ever seen stars falling down from the sky, leaving shiny tails and all that jazz? Have you seen that heart that's rushing all the blood underneath your skin or you simply believed the doctors taking your cardiogram? How can you be 100% sure that the brains they're talking about are actually inside your skull?
Well, if there were anything inside Reigen's skull it must have went completely silent.
Arms spread on both sides of his head, palms and fingers, that were gripping his wrists, tightened harder, shaking. Mob's pressed thin line of a mouth felt a supple kiss from older man's lips with almost inaudible "mmm" sound.
Fondly. Caring.
Mob wasn't a guy to abuse his powers, pretty much the opposite of that, but god, how much he wanted to manipulate this moment just a bit, to trick the time itself, to press the "replay" button and feel it for real. Again, again and ag— It's too fast, too soft, too bittersweet to take, when you desperately want more.
The glimmer of hope for a continuation gradually faded away as Reigen pushed him away before Mob could learn how to subjugate time by the brush with the back of his wrist on Mob's slightly fuzzy cheek. From his earlobe — back to lips, on and on. Mob felt like he's about to cry, the gentleness of that touch was too much. No lust, no desire in it. Just understanding, acceptance, ataraxia.
— Back to Earth, Mob. We gotta get you home until 10:30
The boy lowered his head, hiding his trembling eyelashes underneath the silky black bangs. Weak shoulders, buckling arms, yet still squeezing Reigen's wrists. They were too wide — man's face too calm. Mob crushed on shishou's chest and whined, trying to catch the air. Breathtaking, throat-squeezing, agonizing. That was worse than getting face slapped, worse than getting scolded, yelled at. You can demonize the person pushing you away however you want, but Mob couldn't do that, not when it's as fleetingly as a whisper, not when it's Reigen.
Man placed an open palm on boy's small of a back and brushed it, saying some soothing nonsense. He felt guilty. He felt like he made the worst mistake ever and now all the energy within Mob's body will have no release and detonate under his skin in radioactive heat waves.
— C'mon, I can't even kiss your forehead with you laying on my chest like that.
Mob lifted his face, eyes swollen and red, cheeks wet and unkissed. Reigen took his head in his palms that could easily hide the whole face underneath them and placed a kiss on his forehead through the tousled black bangs.
— Get up, kid, it must have been too much for you today.
Later they escaped that place that felt like the edge of the world, going side by side, with no touch on the shoulder, no brush of the other person's thigh. Mob whispered apologies — Reigen ignored. Man couldn't collect himself to explain a thing about how he felt, a traitor, a coward. Mob looked so pretty when he wiped his face with his sleeve and couldn't dare to lift his head to face the road, trusting that man to lead them to the bus stop. Reigen turned his head and looked at him. Beautiful in the way you would describe the building collapse, first leaf falling at the end of summer, the heartbreaking calamity. And Reigen handled it like he always does — smiling with fright.