#i imagine ritsu just walked out after this and mob stared at the ceiling

[sumismss]

I like them a lot

[goodlucktai]

They say that the world was built for two

MP100 Valentines Week  Day 7; Flowers pairing: terumob

Story tag

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To Reigen's credit, when he opens his front door late on a Tuesday night, to be met with a disheveled and mildly-hysterical teenage esper – whose brilliant idea of a polite greeting is “Please I need your help I am losing my mind” – he doesn’t so much as bat an eye.

“It was only a matter of time at this point,” he says blandly, and stands back to let Teruki inside.

And now they're sitting on the sofa and the armchair respectively; Teruki curls his fingers around his usual mug, breathing in the steam and the scent of sweet cocoa as it drifts up to him (and it’s amazing, he’s never had a usual anything at someone else’s home before). It's calming, more calming than a warm drink and familiar cup have any right to be, and after he's managed a few sips and a few deep breaths, Teruki no longer feels like he's on the verge of drowning. 

Reigen is waiting patiently for him to sort himself out, but surely that won’t last much longer. “I’m very sorry for showing up like this,” he begins with, hesitantly lifting his eyes. 

Reigen raises a brow and gestures with his own mug for Teruki to get on with it already. Okay. Fair enough. He’s danced around the subject long enough.

Carefully setting his hot chocolate on the coffee table, Teruki folds his hands together on top of carefully crossed knees, and says, as painstakingly as he had rehearsed a hundred times, “I have feelings for -- for your student. For Shigeo.”

The words take a weight off his chest as he parts with them.

It feels better than he thought it would. To say it out loud, where someone else can hear. 

And he’s braced for just about anything, but what he gets is actually -- nothing. No response, no spark of reaction. Not so much as a flicker of surprise. After a beat of mutual silence, Reigen says, “Did you only just realize? I took you as slightly more self-aware than that.”

Teruki can’t help the way his mouth drops open. “You already know?”

“My dear boy,” comes the perfect deadpan, “everyone already knows.”

The sound of keys in the door stalls whatever Teruki might have said -- if he could have said anything through the curious sensation of his brain melting -- and a tall, broad man steps into the entry way. He pauses to trade large loafers for large house slippers, and a plastic shopping bag crinkles as he ventures further inside. 

“Cigarettes and ice cream,” the man is saying as he joins them. “Guess there’s no accounting for taste.” 

“That was a joke,” Reigen remarks. He’s sitting just a bit taller. “Katsuya, what’s happened to you?”

"Too much time spent in poor company,” comes the reply, and at that point the man notices Teruki in the armchair and freezes midstep. Nerves overcome him, and as he shuffles his feet and bows under an anxiety that looks long-lived Teruki is abruptly taken in by the sight of an older, more world-weary Shigeo. “Oh. I- I didn’t know we had company, I’m -- “

Reigen cuts him off at that point with a short sweep of his hand. “Hanazawa Teruki, Serizawa Katsuya. He's an esper, like yourself, and my colleague.” 

And with that, introductions are apparently over. Reigen leans forward, fixing Teruki with a gaze that leans the focus of the room in his direction -- taking the weight of their combined attention off of Serizawa, and Teruki watches the large man wilt in relief. 

“So?”

“So,” Teruki parrots uselessly, grasping at that starting line. He takes Reigen’s lead and ignores Serizawa completely, as rude as that makes him feel. “I -- think I might have -- messed things up. With Shigeo. Earlier today.”

Reigen’s mouth twitches. He says, “Go on.”

“We were -- the four of us, Shigeo, Ritsu, Shou and I -- thought it would be fun to go somewhere where there wouldn’t be any civilians around, and -- “ He searches for the right word, hands flexing where they’re folded together. “Stretch our legs?”

It was Shou’s idea, that fiery little juggernaut of a human being. Teruki spent close to an hour sparring with him, long distance as well as close quarters. They ripped up half the field there at the edge of town, toppled trees, tore open the sky with sparks and fire, and it left Teruki feeling spent, muscles burning, like the end of a satisfying workout.

The brothers played referee, though Shigeo’s eyes kept wandering to follow a flock of startled birds or a bolting deer and Ritsu looked like he couldn’t truly be bothered. When Shou called over for their final score, Shigeo jolted guiltily, and said, “Um. You both did a very good job.”

Shou blinked, looking taken aback -- then he tossed his head back and laughed. There was no cruelty to it, and Ritsu was directing an amused smile at the ground rather than at his flustered sibling, so Teruki sat back in the burnt grass and breathed in pure content. 

Shou was like him, in small ways. For all that they certainly started on the wrong foot, Teruki found that the two of them had similar interests now; similar in that Shou spends half his time circling Ritsu like an enamored puppy, and Teruki is wrapped heart and soul around Shigeo’s little finger. 

“Good luck,” Teruki said, meaning it, when he noticed Shou’s gaze catch on Ritsu for the third time in as many minutes. Shou rubbed a hand through his hair, hitching up a crooked grin.

“Hah, pretty obvious, huh? Well, thanks. I’m gonna need it. I mean, we can’t all have it as easy as you.”

Teruki frowned. He wasn’t sure how to take that. “Come again?”

Shou widened pale blue eyes at him, grin stretching in amused disbelief. “Oh, wow. Ritsu told me, but I didn’t believe him.” He rose to his feet, dusting off his jeans, and then leaned down to clap Teruki on the shoulder. “I just meant you’re a lucky guy. That’s all.”

After that, he wandered over to the brothers, throwing himself bodily at Ritsu’s person and demanding a spar with him -- and how he always managed to escape Ritsu’s wrath unscathed was a wonder, Teruki decided privately. The fact that he seemed to delight in poking at the younger Kageyama’s temper in itself was a little mind-boggling, when anyone in their right mind would do anything to avoid exactly that. 

Ritsu let himself be talked into a duel, throwing his book down and coming up on his feet with a glower. Shou whooped in glee, and barely had time to dodge a violent curl of telekinesis that stripped the bark off a nearby tree. 

And Teruki found himself sitting with Shigeo, playing the spectators. Shigeo was a warm presence by his side, heavy-lidded eyes following the spar without difficulty, and Teruki watched the side of his face more than he did anything else. 

“Your hair’s getting long,” he remarked thoughtfully after some time. Shigeo blinked, and glanced at him through a fringe that fell just a few inches farther than it usually did. It curtained his eyes a bit, and that was certainly a shame.

So Teruki reached out, unthinking. As though his body was on autopilot. Cradled the side of Shigeo’s face in one hand, and pushed his bangs aside with the other. Fingers trailing across his forehead and combing through fine dark hair.

“There you are,” he said tenderly. 

And the world burst into bloom. 

“Everything,” he stresses in Reigen’s warm living room, staring into his cocoa where he set it down on the table as though it holds all the answers. “We had really done a number on the area, and all of the grass came shooting back up -- whole saplings, new green bark on the trees we had damaged, and wildflowers in every color. Within moments, Master Reigen. And they just kept growing, taller and brighter -- all these blossoms popping open, petals unfurling, it was incredible.”

And he’ll never forget the look in Shigeo’s eyes when he hit the ceiling on that internal counter and those warm, lovely feelings spilled out into his expression and the atmosphere. His full cheeks dusted pink, eyes crinkled from the force of his affectionate smile, one hand coming up to cover the fingers curled around his cheek. He’ll never forget it, never. 

He puts his face in his hands, thoroughly miserable.

"And you panicked,” Reigen supplies, totally without inflection. 

“I panicked,” Teruki reaffirms, muffled. “I -- teleported. Miles. By accident. I’ve never done anything like that before, I didn’t even know I could. It took me nearly two hours to get back to town. My phone and my wallet were both in my bag so I had to walk the whole way here, and I still feel a little sick from that massive jump.”

“You still feel sick?” And that’s the way he sounds when he’s trying not to sound concerned, that neutral air he had adopted that made this conversation even possible for Teruki to stomach disintegrating in favor of a furrowed brow and a frown -- but Teruki hasn’t even gotten to the worst part yet.

“So if Shigeo tried to call me, there’s no way I could have answered him. He showed me something amazing, and I just disappeared. And now he probably thinks I’m avoiding him on purpose. What he did was so -- and I -- and now he probably hates me.”

Serizawa sits next to Reigen on the sofa at that point, and Teruki notices fresh mugs of hot tea where lukewarm cocoa had been. He lifts his eyes and manages a pale smile, a thanks for the effort the shy man had made, and leans over to pick up the cup carefully. 

Reigen’s thanks is an absent touch to the back of Serizawa’s hand, a move he doesn’t need to look to make, and the tight, tense lines of Serizawa’s nervous shoulders relax. 

“Are we talking about the same kid?” Reigen says. “Because Mob doesn’t hate easily. One of his closest friends is an evil spirit. And I’m sure you remember how you met him.”

It’s not often that words fail him, but in this case Teruki can’t think of a thing to say. Of course he remembers. 

The day he met Shigeo feels like a memory from another life, years ago and far removed, because the person he was back then is practically another species. He looks down at his hands, unable to imagine touching Shigeo now with the intention of hurting him in even the smallest way. He can’t imagine doing anything to him that isn’t soft or sweet or kind, cupping his face and combing fingers through his hair, tilting their foreheads together on a stormy night, holding his hand on a long walk home, coming up with half a dozen ways to make him smile while he puzzles over his homework -- 

“He doesn’t hate me,” Teruki says quietly, digging nervous fingers into the knees of his grass-stained pants. “That was a stupid thing to say.”

“Glad you agree.” Reigen probably has better things to do with his evening than deal with Teruki, would be well within his rights to push him out the door, but instead he leans forward, resting his weight on his elbows where they’re propped up on his thighs and giving Teruki even more of his precious advice and undivided attention. “It all boils down to you, being afraid to take a chance. You don’t want to get this thing wrong, ‘cause it’s important to you. You don’t want to ruin it. I get that. But that’s everybody, kiddo. Everybody’s scared.” He lifts a brow, something not quite a smirk quirking his mouth up on one side. “The only difference between you and everybody is that you have it easy.”

“That’s what Shou said,” Teruki says, realization dawning. “Everyone -- everyone does know already, don’t they?”

“You’ve been fairly obvious with your affections, Teru. Anyone with a functional pair of eyes would have cottoned on sooner or later.”

Reigen snatches up his mug to take an impulsive gulp of tea that’s much too hot, but Serizawa’s hand drifts over before he has the chance to scald himself; covering the rim of the cup with the flats of his fingers and cooling the drink with a faint twist of energy.

And Reigen looks down at the mug for a few seconds, and then his eyes move slowly over to Serizawa, calculative without being cold. Like there’s a bright light going on upstairs. 

The moment stretches. Teruki and Serizawa both jump when Reigen abruptly claps his free hand on his knee with a loud exhalation, the weight of the conversation disintegrating into something that’s easier to breathe through. 

“So,” he says matter-of-factly, “now you have to decide if what you’re doing is dodging a bullet, or missing one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to have something better than you deserve.” His ticks out a finger importantly, jabbing it in Teruki’s direction. “And I think you know which one this is.”

“Yes,” Teruki replies, sotto voce. “I think I do, too.”