#my first reimob requeeeest (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)

[grimalkinmessor]

reimob, fluff, and feathers 🩷🩷

WING FIC TIME!!!!!! (⁠ﾉ⁠◕⁠ヮ⁠◕⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠*⁠.⁠✧

Reimob/Fluff/Feathers

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"Sit still, Mob."

Shigeo stilled in his squirming, chastised but not embarrassed—not anymore. The way his wings fluttered around his shishou's fingers had once made him red in the face, mortified by the obvious pleasure he took from Reigen's fingers sifting through his feathers.

Now, they'd both been at this too long to feel ashamed about it.

Reigen huffed when Shigeo's wings shivered again, stopping his preening to swat Shigeo upside the head. "Still, I said! You keep jostling everything back out of place."

He sat behind Shigeo on the back of the couch, shoes off so his socked feet could rest on the seat cushion, bracketing Shigeo's hips. Reigen's deft hands carded through inky feathers and plucked and straightened and smoothed down anything out of place, occasionally dropping a few feathers in the small pile on the arm of the couch. Shigeo was getting big enough that soon the couch wouldn't be a good place for this, the tips of his primaries brushing against the edges of the seat even without being fully extended.

He wondered if Reigen would stop preening him, then. He hoped he wouldn't.

Reigen had been preening him for years at this point—ever since he was twelve, his newly grown feathers replacing old baby fuzz and making him so uncomfortable he couldn't keep it hidden. His parents preened him, of course; it was typically a family activity, shining up someone's wings before they left the house. Like helping a child brush their hair until they could do it themselves, and even then still sometimes after, just to keep close. To bond.

But by the time Shigeo had first stepped timidly into Reigen's office, his parents had all but ceased to preen his wings. His mother'd had to take double shifts at work to cover Ritsu's hospital bills, while his father had been playing diplomat to the angry parents of the other, older boys Shigeo had cracked against the pavement. Neither of them had time to do more than a few cursory cards over Shigeo's wings before ushering him out the door to school.

And Ritsu...

Ritsu had been another matter entirely.

Almost a year had passed like that, until the fullness of Shigeo's wings and they're subsequent twitchiness had caught his shishou's attention. When Reigen had offered, Shigeo hadn't had the will nor the want to say no.

Reigen's hands always felt like heaven in his feathers, quick but not painful, firm but not rough, gentle but not ticklish. He shines up the back of Shigeo's wings with an exactness that no one else could match.

"Shishou is too good with his hands," Shigeo said in faux-complaint, eyes closing.

A beat, blink-and-you'll-miss-it pause. Then Reigen was humming in amusement, seemingly unphased by the comment. "Get one of your little school friends to help you, then."

Shigeo frowned, almost a pout. "...My friends are too bad with their hands."

Reigen barked out a laugh, his hands resuming their work once more. "What's that supposed to mean, huh? Kids are supposed to be bad at this, you know. Practicing on each other is how you learn."

"I'm not saying they have to be great at it," Shigeo grumbled, slitting his eyes open to peer at the floor. "But I don't really want to be their test dummy either."

"It's good experience, Mob," Reigen dismissed, scraping his fingers down the seam of Shigeo's wing where it met the skin of his back, sending shivers racing up his spine. His wings gave another flutter, and Reigen huffed. "Still."

Shigeo obeyed, forcibly quieting his overexcited wings and bringing that old conversation to an end. Anything to keep Reigen's hands on him.

He closed his eyes again. "I like it when you do it."

Reigen didn't pause this time, but he also didn't respond to Shigeo's admission either.

Shigeo felt a bit miffed. Not wanting to let Reigen worm his way out of it, he asked, "Do you like it, Reigen-shishou?"

"...Yes," Reigen said after a moment. "I like preening you, Mob."

Head tipping back, Shigeo said, "I meant when I preen you, Shishou. Do you like it when I preen you?"

Reigen stared at him, eyes widened—deer in the headlights.

His own wings were tucked against his back, closed, as they usually were in public, the ends of them hooked down behind the back of the couch where Shigeo couldn't see. He knew that Reigen wasn't ashamed of his wings—they were beautiful, a lovely shade of tawny that almost looked gold in the right light—but Reigen also had very little people in his life that he was close to. Reigen was used to hiding his wings away because, for a long time, he'd had no one to help him preen them, so they always looked a bit messy, no matter how much he tried to do it himself.

Shigeo had asked to reciprocate after their first encounter with Claw, when Reigen had instinctively flashed open his wings to shield them both.

"When things go South, it's okay to run away!"

Moonlight haloed behind him, his expression open and earnest, his wings spread open and curled around them...

That had been the first time that he'd ever thought, 'Oh. Shishou is beautiful.'

The first, but certainly not the last. He was beautiful now, caught off-guard and striped with evening sun coming in from the blinds. He might even be remembering the first time that Shigeo had preened him, after that very same encounter. Sat in the office, Hanazawa gone home, Ritsu asleep on the couch as Reigen called their parents to let them know where they were, coming up with another another another lie to keep them from worrying. Shigeo had seen how out of sorts he'd been, his wings twitching, and had remembered how ruffled his feathers had looked. And, feeling grateful and guilty all at once, Shigeo had asked to preen him.

Reigen had frozen, hemmed and hawed and hesitated, but he'd ultimately given in, dragging Shigeo's desk chair around so he could sit on it backwards, allowing a smaller Mob to put inexperienced fingers to his wings. Straightening, plucking, brushing; feeling Reigen reluctantly shiver and croon beneath his touch and not yet knowing what the warm, hot feeling in his gut meant.

"Yes, Mob," Reigen said now, forcibly nonchalant. "I appreciate you helping me with it. Now, for the last time, be still would you?"

Shigeo obeyed, though he wasn't quite yet appeased. He let Reigen finish him up, then turned, wings still flared, and pushed up into Reigen's space. His gaze was focused, bright.

Insistent.

"Your turn, Shishou."

"Alright—alright, you pushy brat, give me a second to get situated!" Reigen barked, shoving at Shigeo's face in annoyance when his black wings crowded around him, hemming him in and herding him down.

Huffing, Reigen slid down onto the couch itself and sat crisscross, while Shigeo settled into Reigen's place on the back of the couch. He wasn't quite as tall as Reigen, not yet, but that just gave him a better vantage point to see what needed to be fixed. Shigeo buried his fingers in his shishou's pretty feathers, taking time to brush them through slowly. And, like always, Reigen relaxed instantly at his touch, his wings falling open wider, flexing.

A few feathers were loose, pulled out from between the others in Shigeo's hands, but unlike Reigen, he didn't pile them up to be disposed of later. Shigeo set every feather carefully beside him in a line a little disappointed that there weren't more. He supposed being a fully matured adult meant your wings shed less.

Reigen's wings weren't technically bigger than Shigeo's, not in height at least, but they were thicker. Longer. Sturdy, strong—capable of getting him places and getting him there fast.

Shigeo's wings resembled cormorants; fishing birds. Water birds. Built for diving, strength, weathering storms... Not for speed.

If Reigen ever decided to fly off without him, Shigeo wasn't sure he could catch him.

But he hadn't.

Many birds were sedentary. Many birds mated for life.

Shigeo hoped that, in that, he and Reigen were the same.

When he was finished, Reigen's wings gleamed like fools gold, straight and sleek. Shigeo felt pleased with himself, even more so when Reigen visibly had to wake himself up, lulled into a sleepy sort of contentment by Shigeo's ministrations. As he moved about the office, his wings fluttered and fluffed ever so slightly, as they always did when he was freshly preened and immensely pleased about it.

Hiding his smile by ducking his head, Shigeo tucked the few stray feathers he'd collected into his pocket. Then, as Reigen began to corral them both out the door for dinner, Shigeo slipped one of his own sleek primaries onto Reigen's desk. Center fold, unmistakable.

Reigen would find it in the morning. Shigeo hoped that he would tuck it away with the others Reigen pretended he didn't save in his desk drawer.

Then, when the time came, Shigeo hoped he'd wear them, as Shigeo wanted to wear his.

A symbol to the world that they belonged to each other.