#however for those with unanswered questions don't worry! there is a sequel in the works

[psychicdinneranon-blog]

Five Times Shou Eats Something He Shouldn’t (And 1 Time He Doesn’t)

This is part 6 of a series based off the MiB AU! From bakanohealthy and qcatter Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

(And the one time he didn’t)

The door swung open and Reigen greeted the two cheerfully and ushered Serizawa and Shou into his apartment.

“Come in, come in. You two know where the ice is.” And Reigen was so very thankful that bottomless pits like starchildren liked cheap plain old ice as a snack.

Serizawa smiled and looked around, noting the curious lack of other apartment dwellers. “Are we the first to arrive for movie night?”

“Yep, Mob and his brother are doing something and they said that they won’t be here for another hour at least. And Hanazawa is probably seeing if he can manage to buy some snacks before we start.” Reigen’s smug grin made the edges of Serizawa’s lips twitch upwards as he tried to hide a chuckle behind his hand.

“Did you buy more rechargeable batteries?” Serizawa gave up trying to hide his mirth and smiled widely at Reigen.

“Yep, along with a few other precautions to keep his thieving hands away from my stuff.” The words were harsh but Reigen said this jovially. So Serizawa continued to chuckle as Shou broke off from his side and shifted into his starform.

Reigen suddenly turned his gaze toward Shou, a slight smile still playing on his lips.

“Hey Shou,” he waited calmly for Shou to turn his three eyes toward him, then Shou’s body twisted to face him as well. Shou cocked his head like a curious bird. Reigen handed the Starchild a box of four florescent lightbulbs. “Do you want to go around and doublecheck the ceiling lights for me? I thought I got them all, but I don’t want to have to deal with getting the stepladder out again. I’ll even let you eat the extra lightbulbs that you bring back.” Reigen offered to sweeten the deal.

After using the test lamp with Hanazawa and hearing how he yelped and left the next lightbulb alone instead of scarfing down the lightbulb and the rest of the pack; Reigen happily bought enough to replace his entire apartment with them.

It was worth it if not to lose another lightbulb.

Even if he did have to give up the rest of his normal lightbulbs to the second bottomless pit that had so recently graced his home.

“Cool!” Shou chirped happily, his bird whistles trailing off as he floated down the hallway to check all of the lights.

Reigen glanced over to Serizawa before clapping his hand to his shoulder. “Don’t worry Serizawa I’ve got some ice cubes for you in the freezer. I’ll go grab them.” He smiled, figuring that Shou would take a bit of time hunting down all the light fixtures in his apartment. He decided to snag some pre-movie popcorn as well. “And popcorn.”

Serizawa had no desire to stand in the kitchen while the microwave was going so he decided to tail after Shou. He was certain that Shou would double-check every single socket in order to get some of what he claimed were treats, however Serizawa knew that Reigen wouldn’t say no to a third set of eyes.

Shou had a headstart and so he meandered from room to room noting the new lightbulbs in every fixture and waited for Reigen to finish dumping the ice out of the trays.

Shou laughed as he found a third lightbulb that Reigen had missed and quickly substituted the old one for the florescent, eagerly tossing the older lightbulb into his mouth and crunching on the glass and filament.

Then he floated down towards Serizawa, grinning wildly. “Well I think that’s all of them!” He chirped and again the sound of whistling birds filled the room.

“Good, I’m sure Reigen will be happy to have kept Hanazawa from eating his lightbulbs. Let’s go back to the living room and we can set up camp there.”

Serizawa had turned and was about to leave when he noticed Shou was still holding the last florescent lightbulb. “Oh and you can give that to Reigen, I’m sure he’d appreciate the spare.”

“What? No way, he said that I could have the extras. So I’m gonna eat it.” Shou squeaked like a guinea pig in his mirth, not seeing Serizawa’s puzzled frown.

“But Shou-!“ Serizawa cut himself off, reaching up to grab the lightbulb from the Starchild. Shou hovered confused and surprised. He had never seen Serizawa grab anything from him before.

“Don’t eat this it-“ Serizawa began before he was cut off by the weight of Shou’s starform pushing against him. The high pitched squeaks and whistling from earlier suddenly replaced by a much deeper growl. Serizawa reacted to the obvious demand in Shou’s noise.

His gentle waves began to become louder, rivaling Shou’s growling, as he struggled to keep the florescent lightbulb away from Shou.

Shou had tackled him to the ground but in the blink of an eye Serizawa had flipped their positions and used his smaller form’s density to his advantage. Serizawa sat on Shou’s back as the Starchild under him squirmed desperately, trying to find some sort of grip to get Serizawa off of him.

Meanwhile Serizawa psychically propelled the florescent lightbulb to the far end of the room.

Reigen walked into the room. He was greeted with the sight of a sunset colored struggling Shou pinned by Serizawa’s density.

He decided to glean the facts of the situation before he did anything more than lean against the doorframe. Because this was his life now. And if he going to walk in on two tussling starchildren he ought to know just why they were fighting.

Though it was more common to see Teruki and Shou fighting. Seeing Serizawa deciding to stand his ground made a thread of worry run through him.

“Okay, what happened in here?”

Shou answered with the growl of a pissed off house cat, squirming and writhing under Serizawa’s dense starform.

Then came Serizawa’s flustered reply. “Erm, Shou was going to eat a florescent lightbulb and I know from experience that those hurt!”

Reigen was about to say that Serizawa’s answer didn’t explain why the two were currently in their starforms, nor why Shou was trapped against his floor. But Shou’s voice snarled out a reply to Serizawa before he could even get the words to come together.

“What right do you have to tell me not to eat something? You get sick off a pack of batteries! I’ve eaten worse and been fine.”

Shou dug his clawed fingers into the wooden floor of the apartment. He was tired of being pinned to the floor. And Reigen cared about the state of his apartment so maybe he would tell Serizawa to get off of him.

However Serizawa merely shifted and tucked Shou’s arm underneath him before he could do any real damage.  

“I remember being sick for two days!” Serizawa curled his tail around Shou protectively suddenly worried. “What do you mean you’ve had worse?”  

“Exactly what I said. The florescent lightbulb just has a nice crunch with a lingering afterburn. Nothing like the microwaves.” Shou squeaked a little as tried to wiggle out from under the other starchild.

Even though Serizawa had three eyes, paws for hands and feet and very little to go off of for fascial expressions Reigen could see the look of utter disbelief that had overcome his friend.

“Microwaves?” Serizawa choked out. “What possessed you to try eating a microwave?”

Even without his delicate stomach Serizawa knew full well that microwaves just screamed bad news. Even standing in front of a leaky one could be enough for their fuzzy clingy energy to rub off on you. Eating one was unthinkable.

“Try?” Came Shou’s insulted scoff. “Excuse you I ate two microwaves! We can eat anything. Sure it wasn’t all that great at first,” Shou paused looking down at the floor for a moment before he looked back up, grinning fiercely like he had just won a race. “But I figured out how to eat the second one!”  

“Shou that’s- How are you- What I mean is-” Serizawa’s questions overlapped as he tried to spit all of them out from the jumbled mess inside of his head.

Reigen decided that as of the only other guardian of a starchild, that they knew of anyways, he would help his friend. And maybe get a few answers for himself too.

He knelt down so that he a little closer to Shou’s eye level and looked him in his three glowing eyes.

“Shou why did you decide to eat a microwave?” Even Hanazawa the least picky being Reigen had ever met had balked at the idea of even thinking of eating Reigen’s microwave.

Shou glanced downwards, suddenly interested of the grain and the slight indent his hand had made on the floor. “It was there. I found it. And then I ate it.”

“You found it? What do you mean by that?” Reigen took a deep breath trying not to guess at what exactly Shou had meant by “found” not until he had heard the boy out first. Even if he could imagine in horrifying clarity Shou eating things he had simply found tossed away on the curb.

Even stuck under Serizawa Shou squared his shoulders. “Look I didn’t eat anything important, okay? Nobody wanted it. And we can eat anything.”

Reigen felt a shiver run down his spine as he heard the same four words that Shou had repeated to anyone who knew what he was. The first few times anyone caught him eating dirt covered rocks or pens empty of ink, he would always cackle with laughter and say “We can eat anything!” Looking back now the once playful words were tinged with the new horror and sickening flop of his stomach.

Because Shou really did mean that he would eat anything.

Serizawa made a low pained noise, almost like a wave crashing over you while you were underwater.

“Shou…” He trailed off, unsure of what to say. He settled for just curled his tail more over Shou’s as if he were attempting to protect Shou from the memories of things that he had eaten.

And the worst part of it all was that he couldn’t bring himself to scold Shou for eating such things- except for the microwave of course, no starchild in their right might would look at that tangled mess of energy and think it was a good idea. But eating things no one wanted?

Serizawa had worked for Touichirou for almost three years. He knew full well that the man did not like to share his food.

But he had fed Shou. Serizawa had seen it. So what drove Shou to such desperate measures?

The sounds of crashing waves filled the room as Shou squirmed again from underneath Serizawa.

“Listen Shou, you don’t have to eat things like microwaves anymore. Or whatever you find that people don’t want.” Reigen said. And his voice was even and level, like he was around a skittish horse.

Shou frowned and all of his eyes got big and wide. Then he glanced down and away from Reigen’s gaze and spoke in a quiet hesitant voice. “Then what should I eat?”

And Reigen’s heart broke in his chest because if he was telling Shou that he didn’t have to eat the scraps of things that no one cared about and Shou couldn’t think of anything else to eat… It painted quite the picture that Reigen wished had never been dreamed up in the first place.

Serizawa made the sound of waves crashing under the water again and entwined his tail with Shou’s. Shou made no move to resist or push into Serizawa and that forced him to speak with one word almost blurring into the next with how quickly he spoke.

“Shou we’ll buy you a cartful of groceries or you can have some of my food or you can raid the kitchen like Hanazawa does with Reigen you don’t need to eat garbage.”

Reigen nodded. “We can feed you when you’re hungry, I mean look at me and Hanazawa. Surely you know that we can give you food, right?” If that last word was had a little bit more desperation in it than he wanted well no one had called him out on it.

“Yeah, I know.” Shou said this with as much certainty as he had when he said that he could eat anything.

So why did Reigen’s stomach give an uneasy twist as he said those words?

“So you’ll come to us if you’re hungry?” Serizawa said hopefully, and Shou gave a wide practiced smile at the words.

“Of course.”

And so it seemed like that was that. But Reigen knew that he would be making sure the kid ate a lot more in the future. Even if he had to hand Shou the food plate by plate.

Then he looked at Shou again and resisted the urge to smack his forehead. “Serizawa.” He said, getting the other’s attention immediately. Reigen made a small shooing motion with his hand as he pointed down to Shou.

“Oh! Sorry Shou, here let me help you up.” He quickly jumped off of Shou and detwined their tails. Shou declined Serizawa’s offered hand and floated back into his upright position.

“Now, I know I have a bowl of ice in the kitchen, do you wanna go get that Shou and start snacking?” Reigen smiled brightly and Shou raced off towards the kitchen.

As he did so Reigen stepped closer to Serizawa, who had shifted back into human form and had a very morose expression on his face.

“I-I’m sorry I didn’t know I didn’t realize I didn’t, didn’t think- And Shou he looked fine I-“ Serizawa’s voice broke and Reigen slung an arm across his shoulders.

“Hey, listen, I know. You didn’t know. I know you want to go back and change the past, but what’s done is done now.” Reigen gave his friend a gentle squeeze on the shoulder and smiled softly. “But we can shape the future. Together. We can feed him ice and other better things on hand. And he knows that we’ll feed him if he asks now.”

Serizawa smiled and reached up to hold the hand that was on his shoulder, squeezing Reigen’s fingers tightly. “Thanks Reigen. I’ll remember that.”

Reigen smiled widely, and pulled the other into a hug. “We’ll figure this out, you and me both.”

Then Reigen heard the tell-tale sound of a piece of ice splattering onto the floor and he pulled away from Serizawa a half smile playing across his lips. “Come on, let’s go make sure Shou leaves enough ice for you too.”

Serizawa laughed quietly and followed Reigen into the kitchen.