Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“It’s just a lot, ya’know?”

Shigeo stares at the vines that corkscrew around the steel frames of bus windows, at the tens of leaves that sit in the absence of a breeze, and he is inclined to agree.

Tome has a foot swinging loosely off the bus steps, old rickety door long since pried open by a mix of Teruki’s powers and Shigeo’s meager weight training. Teruki himself flops over an old seat, unbothered by the dust and crud caked along the hard cushioning that’s been eaten by mice.

The blond nods, crinkling up a leaf he’d found astray on the floorboards of the bus. The stiff pieces fall onto his uniform, flaking away from his outstretched hand and dusting royal purple. “I get it—worrying about grades on top of everything else is… not the most relaxing thing.”

“Have you tried any online tutors? Maybe we’re just not explaining it in a way your brain clicks with,” Ritsu asks from the window, draped over the steel with the soles of his shoes perched along the flat tire outside the bus. He plays with his hoodie sleeves idly, layered over his school uniform even though it’s spring.

“A couple, but…” Tome glowers, and then lets out a breath that’s longer than Shigeo expects. He’d anticipated short, terse frustration, not defeat. “I don’t know. They all make me feel stupid.”

“Well that’s lame of them,” Teruki smiles, rolling away from his back to have his stomach push up against the crusted seats. He sees Ritsu grimace at the sight of the dust spewing off the edges, and Shigeo inwardly grins. “You’re a genius—they should know that just from your vibes.”

“Oh shut up Teru, you’re just—”

“Right?”

Tome grunts out an expletive, raising her hands over her and Shigeo’s heads to lazily slap at Teruki’s general silhouette, and he laughs and fights back with even less effort. Shigeo flops an arm over the space between them, and they both stop wordlessly with grins playing along their lips.

Their quiet chuckles murmur out from the bus windows, and he idly wonders how far their conversations travel into the twiggy woods from here. He sees an ant crawling along the floor in front of his eyes and traces its path. He wonders where its home is, wonders if it feels anything like an old abandoned school bus left to rust in a half-formed junkyard.

“You are smart,” Shigeo swivels his head to look at her, choppy hair mingling with the cold steel patterns etched into the floorboard’s middle aisle. A metal pipe that supports a nearby seat digs into his leg, and he adjusts. “Like Ritsu said, you just haven’t heard it in the right way yet.”

He means it wholeheartedly. Tome is a ticking time bomb of ideas, each one craftier than the last, and he’s seen the way she shines when she’s in her element, like nothing on Earth can stop her. Whatever problem she gets into, she finds a way to worm herself out of it. He always sees it in her eyes the very moment she lands herself in a tricky spot—her gaze promises success.

Tome tuts, juts her lip out a bit into a pout as she stares at the rusted ceiling, arms crossed over her chest. Shigeo watches her watch the leaves sway there, hanging onto vines with skinny stems that the breeze pecks at. “Of course I’m a genius, I know this. It’s just… frustrating. It’s like I don’t even know what I don’t know.”

Shigeo feels something in him pause, and he finds himself understanding those words in a visceral, molecular way, but he feels he’s linking them to unrelated things. Things that have nothing to do with math. He reorients, opens his mouth to offer some sort of empty platitude, because his own grades aren’t doing much better, but his brother beats him to it and he’s kind of relieved.

“Maybe look at it like it’s not math,” he ventures, “maybe pretend it’s something else. Like that occult stuff you’re always blabbering about.”

“First of all, I do not blabber,” Tome glares halfheartedly at Ritsu, who keeps his expression carefully neutral, “Second of all, you’re the kid with supernatural abilities here, not me, so I’m the one who should be bullying you. Third of all, how on Earth do you expect me to pretend that math is the occult?”

“It is quite… mystical,” Shigeo murmurs mostly to himself, “in the crappy way though.”

“You’re not helping, Mob,” Tome says, but she’s grinning, and Shigeo doesn’t even bother to offer her an apology, much less a fake one.

Ritsu sighs quickly. “Okay maybe that wasn’t the best example but—you get what I’m saying, right? Just… link the things you don’t understand about math to things you do.”

Tome is quiet for a long beat, where the rustling of leaves and the creaking of metal overtake the lull in conversation. Shigeo vaguely gets it—it’s like the greater-than symbol being an alligator that wants to eat the bigger number. Kids don’t like math, but they usually like alligators. That metaphor alone confused him for years though; caused a lot of red inked Xs on his homework sheets when he was younger. Seeing which way the symbol pointed to on a number line was always easier. Made more sense than alligators.

This is why he doesn’t like math.

“Ritsu you’re really bad at this,” Teruki speaks up, chin resting on the cruddy cushions and lifting the rest of his head up with every syllable.

Ritsu levels his gaze with a look that would seem dangerous to anybody else—everyone here knows there’s something fond there though, something giving and malleable.

“No no, I think I get it,” Tome prods into their glares, furrowing her brows up at the rusted ceiling of their little school bus hideout. She paws at the air between them all like she’s smoothing down their hackles or batting away worries. “That… sounds doable. Sounds good, actually.”

“Oh thank goodness, I was kinda lost,” Shigeo mumbles, if only to see Ritsu slump pathetically over the window frame. He smiles—it feels good to tease him after so many years of feeling too far away to.

“Tome is the only cool person here, you guys just suck,” Ritsu mumbles halfheartedly into the metal siding, voice bouncing off in the close-quarters and ricocheting in odd curves.

Shigeo lifts his head from the dirty floor. “Even me?” he pours out in one pitiful, wilting tone, eyes wide.

When he meets his brother’s gaze, Ritsu is already propped up on the windowsill of the bus again, chin on a hand that’s covered by long hoodie sleeves. The red eyes they share pierce one another, gazes locked, and then Ritsu meets him with a fond grin and an eye roll.

“Never you,” Ritsu concedes with a smile lilting his tone, Shigeo victorious, and he celebrates with a lazy grin and his head plopping back down onto the middle aisle of the bus floorboards.

“Oh, so I’m just the jackass here,” Teruki tuts, and Shigeo can see Tome’s shoulder jerking in silent chortles as she keeps her eyes on the ceiling carefully.

“Uh…” Ritsu makes a show of thinking on it, and then nods and gives a miraculously good customer-service smile despite the fact that he isn’t yet old enough to work, “Yeah. Yes.”

“You’re sooooo lucky I’m so comfortable right now,” Teruki groans on, and Shigeo moves his eyes up to see that the blond is in perhaps the most perplexing position known to man, “I’d beat you up so bad if I was over there.”

“Would you now.”

An unbothered, untethered sigh. “Mhm. You’d be cryin’ an’ everything.”

“I think you have our roles mixed up.”

“Mmmm nope. Just checked again. I’m right, you’re wrong.” Teruki has the gall to blow a raspberry at him, tongue out as Ritsu watches him with lidded eyes, unimpressed.

Shigeo moves his gaze to see Tome looking at him across the floorboards, her hair splayed out along the metal. There’s a leaf knotted somewhere along the edges, and Shigeo reaches over and carefully picks it out.

Tome grins, mouths boys to him. He still hears Ritsu and Teruki bickering lazily back and forth, no heat in their words, no danger in their gazes, no foul colors in their auras. It feels nice. It feels… freer than he’s ever felt. The air is open and the Earth is breathing softly. Something in Shigeo’s chest sings with it.

“I guess I just have to… figure out what I don’t know, now,” Tome continues to him, hushed under the others’ ceaseless, strange rituals, and for some reason, there is a pang that juts through Shigeo’s middle at the words.

It’s subtle and soft, like a gentle reminder of something he’s forgotten, and he digs through his mind in search of it and is simply left with an odd emptiness at the end. There is something vacant there, something hollow where there should be matter. Something substantial where there is instead stagnant water. It smells like mold, and something metallic that he cannot name.

Shigeo nods, shakes away the sensation and the heaviness that clings to it. “I can help, if you want,” he offers under chittering voices, childish in demeanor as their notes hit the metal walls, “I’m really good at not knowing things.”

Tome smiles, honest and crooked like all her real smiles are. It is the color of moss. “Thank you.”

Chapter Text

The energy in the room coils and bursts out like a water balloon, hard-hitting and sharp. Reigen yelps from behind him over the ear-splitting whine.

Shigeo can feel an odd prickling of static along his skin in little dots, like acid spraying out from the fissures in the spirit’s bloated soulskin. Somehow he tastes every splatter even when none of it reaches his tongue—it’s a motley of sparkling water and freon, cold against his skin until the aftertaste gets uncomfortably warm and sweltering in his joints.

His palms feel like dry ice.

He hears Reigen make an odd noise, something between a whine and a gasp, as the rustling of clothing spells out one of his strange, quick squirms. “Holy hell, Mob—you didn’t have to go that hard!”

One of the cardboard boxes in front of him sizzle and crackle at the edges, some unknown chemical interaction between corrugate and psychic mana. A flap along the top falls off and hits the ground pathetically, smoking from pure heat and making a low crumble sound in his ears that sounds quite alien.

He didn’t. And judging by the ever-so-slight tremor of the building, he’d say he shouldn’t have. He hadn’t even meant to, is the concerning thing.

It’d been a small spirit, just a little humanoid shape with disproportionate limbs and a hollow face. It hadn’t been particularly dangerous, but the clients had wanted it gone due to noise complaints in the apartment complex nearby, and Shigeo could tell the spirit’s mind was long gone and simply running on instincts and perhaps madness. Not powerful in any way; simply making a ruckus at night.

Shigeo lets his eyes trail over the old abandoned office, over the cardboard boxes left behind and the moss growing from the cracks in the tiled floor. He traces the spiderweb of fractures that crawl out from ground zero, where the spirit had been seconds prior; there is a sizeable dent in the floor where his initial spark had ignited everything else, and the off-white walls that are caked in dirt and dust are now split down the middle.

His eyes follow the largest crack in the floor closer, closer, until it tapers off right in between his sneakers. His hand is still outstretched, still poised to exorcise—he flips it over slowly, something like a distant alarm ringing in the back of his head as he examines the creases in his palm.

“Sorry,” is all he thinks to say into the quiet hum of the abandoned office. His vision is still swirling and spotty from all the colors they’d been engulfed in; he feels his equilibrium teeter, and he does his best to stay stock still atop the tiles.

Reigen steps up closer, brushing his suit off needlessly—needlessly to him maybe, but Shigeo can see the spots of vibrant reds and yellows peppering the fabric and his face, still. He wonders if his master can sense something on himself, wonders if it feels the same to him as it does to Shigeo, or if it’s different than the sting of static and fizz.

Ever since Reigen confessed last winter, Shigeo has wondered about a lot of things.

“I think you exorcized that one like eight times over,” Reigen blinks, staring at the crater that used to be a gangly, bony thing that unhinged its many toothless jaws and twisted its arms back at impossible angles, “Wow. You are so lucky this place is abandoned and not… yaknow. Able to land us in court for damage.”

Shigeo is pretty sure they could still get sued for this, but by the look on Reigen’s pinched expression, he feels the man already knows.

“I didn’t mean to make the blast so big,” Shigeo admits, shuffling anxiously and observing the cracks around them. The building creaks. Maybe they should leave.

Reigen quirks a brow up at him, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Really? You usually have such good control,” he says mostly to himself, words quiet and mumbled together as he turns to look at him and really take him in, “What’s goin’ on?”

Shigeo sits in the silence for a moment, pondering. Reigen asks it lightly, like he’s asking what he wants for lunch, like it’s a question about something inconsequential, but the feathery words feel like concrete to him, like something with much higher stakes.

He looks down at his palm again, stares at the creases there in the skin, at the blemishless lines and lack of calluses. At the absence of a tremor there, at how fine everything looks.

“I don’t know,” Shigeo shrugs in the most nonchalant manner he can muster. All of his exorcisms are showy, they always have been. It’s simply how this stuff works. Psychic energy culminates into pure color and light in the real world, and even his most basic exorcisms are usually flashy and bright.

But this one was… over the top, for a spirit so small and so harmless. The walls had been bathed in pure white and Shigeo had felt the way his heart shuddered at the blast, like it had sucked in a metaphorical breath when dipped in the liquid mana. He wonders how much of it Reigen had even felt.

This has never happened before. He’s accidentally floated things, and he’s glitched a few electronics with his staticy fingertips, but he’s never lost control of a blast, even when fighting Toichiro. Even when consumed by that ecstasy that had leaked into Shigeo’s own energy, he hadn’t lost control of his powers. He’d simply lost control of his impulses.

This could be… dangerous.

“Would ya cheer up, Mob? Ya look like your pet turtle just died,” Reigen tuts, rolling a hand out in a motion that doesn’t really match his words. Shigeo thinks sometimes Reigen just moves to move.

“I don’t have a pet turtle,” he replies, lowering his hand absently and fixing his grip around his school bag.

The weight in it reminds him he has homework to get done, and even though he’s only got two worries on his mind right now, he already feels tired from it. Maybe he hasn’t been getting enough sleep. Maybe that’s why his powers went a little loose like that. Maybe.

Oh. Reigen is talking again.

“—about it, kid. Really, you worry too much. I am not having my student get grey hairs before he can drink.” Reigen stalks past him and ruffles his hair in the process, lolly-gagging in long strides to the exit of the building, “Let’s get that ramen!”

Shigeo follows him without much fuss, but even when they step into the harsh sun of the afternoon and feel the breeze against their clothes, he can’t completely shake that feeling. That gnawing, nibbling worry, eating away the bone of his cranium one atom at a time.

His fingers still buzz with static hours after he and Reigen part ways with a side-hug. His palms still tingle with permafrost in between his skin cells, cool and dry and strange. There is something about it that makes him feel small.

+

After a while of trying to wrap his head around it, his English homework almost always looks as though its letters are floating off the page. This time, they quite literally are.

“Uhm. Shigeo?”

Teruki’s voice across the coffee table just barely reaches his ears, but he opts to stare down at his papers instead where tendrils and loops of ink are separating from the loose leaf. They peel off the paper like they’re stickers, every drop of moisture reversed in time and leaving the white dry and spotless. The dim lights of Teruki’s (Reigen’s) apartment reflect in the ink in odd, ever-changing dots, white on black that glares and shines when twisted in the right direction.

He can still make out the characters for a moment before they end up morphed beyond recognition, looking bloated out by a photoshop liquify tool, or shrunken in like they’ve been warped. The page steadily empties itself of letters until they’re all floating aimlessly above their books and pencils.

They both watch the ink in the air in silent awe, neither of them really sure how to continue and, frankly, too preoccupied with watching the patterns the black melds into. In his studying trance Shigeo had let Teruki’s music fade into the back of his mind, but now it comes to the forefront and pours softly from the speakers on the table, the chorus more crackly than usual. Curiously, the ink moves like it’s dancing to the beat.

Shigeo looks down at his now blank paper. Beyond the dreadful crawl of anxiety in his stomach, he sees an opportunity for comedy and takes it. “This new grammar rule is confusing, I think.”

Teruki makes an odd noise in his throat that bubbles out into a laugh near the end, high and abrupt and made of wonderful yellows. Shigeo takes the victory in order to soften the anguish of his entire worksheet being effectively erased. Even though he’s writing in ink. (Why on Earth is he writing in ink?)

“Holy shit,” Teruki gapes at the ink still in the air, “Clean off the page too… oh that—oh…”

“Oh,” Shigeo echoes knowingly in a way that reminds him of a sad, dripping wet dog, and his bangs lift up from the top of his vision as he raises a finger.

The ink follows his command and swirls into itself like a mini whirlpool, coagulating into one blob that wobbles and ripples its own circumference. Shigeo flicks his wrist down in a rare show of frustration and the ink shoots at his paper all at once, the middle of the page soaked through with black that reflects against the lights along the apartment ceiling.

Shigeo crumples the paper up into a ball with his powers so fast the blond across from him jumps at the sudden influx of sound, and then Shigeo tosses the ball of paper into his bag and retrieves a new one from the folder.

He’d wasted a piece of perfectly good paper and he feels vaguely bad about it. Then he realizes he got angry in front of Teruki and feels heat press against his face.

“Maybe we should take a break,” Teruki tries, and Shigeo searches high and low for any tightness in the tone, but he doesn’t find anything and he relaxes back into a position where his joints don’t feel alight with shame.

“We took a break forty-five minutes ago,” he lets out in monotone, staring at his empty paper and mourning his losses, “I was on question two.”

“Of seven!” Teruki points out, like it’s important, like it matters. Shigeo thinks about his English teacher’s stern face and kind of wants to hide in a hole in the Earth’s core. “And hey, you were only on two—that means you didn’t lose too much progress!”

“It took me forty-five minutes to complete two problems,” Shigeo fights back with almost zero gusto, finally leaning back into Reigen’s couch cushions and staring at the ceiling lights until they blind him, “I’m going to die of old age before this is done.”

It’s dramatic and he knows he sounds like a high schooler, but in his defense he is one. The shame comes back and he isn’t exactly sure why—maybe it’s because Teruki Hanazawa is watching him fail, or watching him get frustrated, or watching him sink further into his couch like he thinks the cushions will simply claim him. He considers excusing himself to the bathroom just to have a minute of Not This, but he knows Teruki will see through that.

Weight comes to sink down into the cushions beside him, and Shigeo flicks his eyes over to Teruki, who looks at him without a lick of the disappointment he’d thought might be there. His hair is pulled back into that blue pin he loves to wear—his sweater has bog bones on it. Shigeo spends his remaining energy adoring his partner’s fashion sense.

“Yeah, we’re taking a break,” Teruki smiles easily, heartily, knowingly, and he can’t help but notice that he didn’t say, “You need a break.” Shigeo appreciates that. He appreciates a lot of things Teruki does and says and thinks.

Shigeo moves his head to plop his temple down onto the blond’s shoulder, and Teruki adjusts until their legs are pressed together and palms are sliding against palms. He feels a finger trace the creases there and Shigeo lets him, just like he always does.

He hears a bike bell outside, ringing twice as it passes. There’s a bird on a branch in the window, perched atop the swaying wood and bobbing its tail feathers. Someone’s voice carries through the hallway outside of the apartment, lilting in a question. The music comes back to his attention, soft and drifting from the speaker obediently in little ukulele strums. It’s a happy song. Teruki knows he likes happy songs.

“That was pretty cool, though,” his partner utters, drawing patterns into his palm that Shigeo closes his eyes to and tries to identify through touch alone. He thinks maybe they’re stars. “Looked cool, at least.”

Shigeo hums. “I don’t think, ‘My psychic powers ate my homework,’ is gonna be a good enough excuse.”

He lifts his lids up to look at Teruki because he knows he’ll smile, and he does, and Shigeo is glad he opened his eyes. “Oh, we have until the end of the week, quit your worrying,” he tuts, lilted into something fond as he knocks his knuckles against Shigeo’s palm as if to say stop that.

Silence takes them again, interrupted only by the quiet music and the hum of the air conditioner. Shigeo watches his partner trace the more subtle lines in his palms with a pointer finger, listens to Teruki’s steady breaths. He glances over at the blond’s papers on the other side of the coffee table, sees writing all the way down the page. The number seven is at the bottom. He’d already finished long ago.

He feels the need to apologize.

“I’m sorry,” Shigeo murmurs into Teruki’s shoulder. The fingertips that feather over his palms pause.

“Now, why on Earth,” Teruki begins, one single finger to his chin and mock confusion along his face, and Shigeo knows this spiel, “would somebody apologize… for doing nothing wrong?”

He says it like he’s spelling it out, enunciating the syllables, but he’s being silly about it and Shigeo cannot find it in himself to be very mad. Or even mildly upset at all.

Teruki keeps his finger there on his chin as he waits for a response, wide eyed and perked up as if listening for some grand reveal. He looks goofy. Shigeo resists the urge to shove him off the couch.

“I just mean my powers… I didn’t mean for that to… ya’know,” Shigeo explains, and Teruki’s goofy persona softens into something more genuine, “They’ve been kinda weird recently. I don’t know why.”

His partner hums, sitting in the quiet music for a while. His fingers drum against Shigeo’s knee to the beat. “You have seemed… preoccupied, lately.”

Shigeo cannot help but notice that he says it carefully. Like he’s afraid of using the wrong word. He can’t think of a synonym for preoccupied that could possibly offend him—he’s heard it all before, anyway, from other people. From people who didn’t care nearly as much as Teruki.

No, Teruki isn’t like that. Teruki doesn’t think he’s oblivious. Something ugly pierces his gut there, at the thought, at the idea that Shigeo could think so lowly of his partner like that. Not everyone is out to get you.

“Have I?” he goes with, eyes moving up to trace Teruki’s jawline until he arrives at stark blue, “With what?”

The blond shrugs, puts an elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, and looks at him expectantly. “I don’t know, you tell me,” he says easily in a lazy grin, like it’s a simple task, “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

Shigeo blinks at him, moves his gaze away to stare at the wall, blinks some more. He plays with his own hands, traces Teruki’s knuckles as he ponders. He has to time to think about it, he reassures himself—Teruki always gives him time, even if it’s more than he deserves.

The empty hum of Reigen’s apartment and the happy thrum of the music feel like they don’t go together. Teruki’s warm prodding against his cold innards feels like too much, even if it’s kind and well-meaning. The simple question about complicated things feels impossibly unfair.

Like many other questions about himself, he doesn’t really have an answer for it. 

Shigeo shrugs, in the end. It feels like a safe out. “Nothing, really.”

There is silence where Shigeo expects some sort of answer, and his eyes flicker to Teruki and way the blond simply stares. The grin is still there, but it feels stiffer, like it’s held up by strings. His eyes hold something strained in the way he looks at him, in the way his pupils dart across his face like he’s waiting for a better answer. Shigeo, somehow, feels like he’s done something wrong again.

“Nothin’? At all?” Teruki prods along through his tight grin, and for a moment Shigeo fears he’s forgotten something important.

He mentally shuffles through his limited catalog of knowledge, thinking about anniversaries and birthdays. He comes up empty, considers asking if he’s in trouble, but when he plays the hypothetical of that in his head it doesn’t end well, so he simply blurts whatever comes out first.

“I’ve been craving granola bars,” Shigeo hears himself say, and honestly, it’s not the stupidest answer he’s ever given, “Maybe that’s it.”

Teruki blinks at him, expression short-circuiting and falling to a blank stare, and then he snorts out a laugh through tightly closed lips. The blond shakes his head, eyes rolling, and then he’s twisting away and getting up from the couch.

“We have granola bars,” Teruki assures like he’s calming a wild animal. Shigeo, like the wild animal, feels his stomach growl. “You will suffer no longer.”

Shigeo smiles minutely as Teruki stalks to the kitchen, feeling warm when he watches the refrigerator door open and the blond pull out a carton of strawberry milk, stocked specifically for him. He hears granola bar wrappers as he looks away, back down at his hands, and traces the silhouette of his fingers with his gaze.

Cabinets open and close and caps gets unscrewed from cartons in the kitchen, and Shigeo stares in a silent stew of his own thoughts.

His pen lifts an inch off the table. His eyes snap to it and it’s slammed back onto the wood.

Chapter Text

“You’re gonna die from a vending machine and it’s gonna be really lame.”

Shigeo raps his knuckles against the glass, frowning at the packet of cookies that’s caught in the rolling spring. He gives the machine another tentative prod to rattle its innards—nothing budges inside, and he lets out a sigh that Ritsu chuckles at.

“Here,” his brother says, raises a finger up from the strap of his school bag, and the packet of cookies Shigeo had picked is shaken from the coil and falls to the bottom of the machine, “It’s amazing to me that you forget you have psychic powers sometimes.”

Shigeo smiles, victorious, and he ducks down to retrieve his precious cookies. He hopes their mother won’t be too upset at him for ruining his appetite before dinner. “I wanted to see if I could do it without them.”

Ritsu waits for him to catch up, the voices of other students pouring out of the school overpowering the breeze and the birds along power lines. Shigeo trails after him, pulling and tearing at the wrapper as they match paces. Their shoes thump against the sidewalk in tandem, and he is very aware of how Ritsu watches him struggle with the plastic in his hands with a smirk.

The next twelve seconds are spent pulling at the wrapper in agonizing silence, and Ritsu’s aura only grows more bright and giddy the longer it drags on. Shigeo gets one last tug in before he loses steam and gives up, handing the packet off to his brother as he pointedly looks in the other direction to hide his sloppy smile.

Ritsu takes it knowingly, and Shigeo doesn’t need to look at him to know he’s giving the most obnoxious shit-eating grin possible. His brother says nothing, his satisfaction clear in the deep purples of his aura.

The plastic crinkles loudly as they walk. The murmur of the other students fades away as they disperse out across the schoolyard, laughs and yells distant. He watches a few of them get in cars that pull up in front of the school, engines purring. The birds on the power lines above them take off, the wires swaying minutely until they settle.

Shigeo sees a crow perched on the next utility pole.

He feels something in him stutter, like his very being buffers in and out of existence. It’s subtle but it’s very loud to Shigeo, like a heart palpitation, like a cramp in his middle. Like fur against his fingers and blood in his hair, sticky and dried to his scalp and burning in warmth like it’s the core of the sun. The sepia tones soak into his skin like ink on paper. The voices of students around him are all predators growling, suddenly, stalking him from the brambles.

“Shige?”

Ritsu’s presence next to him is no longer comforting.

Shigeo tears his gaze away from the crow that’s simply preening its wings, eyes settling on the opened cookie wrapper outstretched in Ritsu’s hand. His gaze traces his arm up to his face, eyes bordering that terrible worried look that feels coarse and dry against his soul. It’s a different terrible than the loveless gaze that Ritsu had always given him instead, narrowed in distrust and boredom, like he’d been looking at a bug that crawled into his house. The red here, right now in this moment, shares none of that indifference, and Shigeo tries his hardest not to cling to it desperately.

They’ve stopped walking. Shigeo doesn’t remember when they stopped, or who stopped first. Ritsu opens his mouth. Shigeo blurts out of panic, just to avoid the question he knows is coming.

“Oh—sorry,” he says, takes the cookie packet and grips it just a little too tightly, makes the plastic crinkle just a little too loudly. He has a vague memory of Ritsu speaking, just before this, muffled in Shigeo’s head like it’d been yelled through insulated walls. “What did you say?”

Ritsu stutters through the misdirection. “Wh—oh, I was just… saying that I’ll be at Sho’s tomorrow after school, so I won’t be able to walk with you…”

“Oh, okay,” Shigeo forces out, mechanically unfurling the plastic from the cookies in his hand as he picks their pace back up. He looks at his snack and nothing else. “That’s fine.”

In his periphery, he sees Ritsu looking back at the power lines. Shigeo ignores this. He also ignores the way Ritsu’s aura comes to cocoon him, prodding at his walls hesitantly with dark indigos.

His brother matches his pace again. It takes a beat of thinking on Ritsu’s part, but it finally comes and Shigeo forces himself not to flinch.

“Are you doin’ alright?” Ritsu utters slowly, softly, and Shigeo thinks back to a few weeks ago, on Teruki’s (Reigen’s) couch, and how the answer he’d given to a very similar question had apparently been the wrong one.

Ritsu asks this question a lot, though. And Shigeo never answers with anything but affirmatives.

“Yeah,” he gives, because it feels impossible to say anything else. This feels like a ritual to him—Ritsu asks, Shigeo lies, they part ways. He doesn’t have it in him today to disturb the peace. “I’m fine.”

He lets the answer hang in the air between them for a moment, lets it settle atop their shoulders like it always does, because the answer is light and made of helium and Shigeo wants it to retain that nothingness. It’s a nothing answer. It’s a nothing answer to a question about a nothing problem. Simple, really.

He counts the seconds it takes Ritsu to say it. He makes it to seven and a half before his brother opens his mouth. “If you’re sure… but I’m always h—” — ere if you need me, Shigeo finishes in his head, recites it by heart.

He knows. He knows Ritsu is here if he needs him. He appreciates it, he really does. But it’s a nothing problem, and it therefore needs a nothing solution.

Shigeo gives him a smile that feels just on the edge of empty. “I know, Ritsu,” he says, “Thank you.”

There is something different about this particular ritual, and it’s the way Ritsu’s eyes stay on him even when the conversation is done and gone. It’s the way Ritsu’s aura still pokes at him from behind, like he won’t notice, like Shigeo can’t see the rare, lightened lilacs of his brother’s aura attempting to press against his soul, attempting to comfort.

Shigeo takes a bite of a cookie to distract himself from the feeling. It tastes like static.

+

Tome’s voice crawls over the kitchen island from Shigeo’s (dad’s) borrowed tablet, slightly muffled and grainy. When Ritsu glances over at the screen where his brother has it propped up against a fruit bowl on the counter, he sees the video quality isn’t much better.

Ritsu has his back turned, vaguely included in the conversation while he stashes dishes away into cupboards. They clink quietly over Tome’s enthusiastic ramblings, the blob of pixels that is her face moving around the bottom of the screen with just her forehead showing most of the time. The lines on the ceiling above her move—Ritsu assumes she’s pacing.

Dimple weaves between the fruits in the bowl like sludge and Shigeo occasionally offers him a dry piece of cereal from the mound of it floating in his milk. Ritsu looks away when he smirks—he’s like a pet parrot or something.

“—half-reptile, half-bird! With like a—a metallic beak or something? Sharp teeth; no surprise there, that’s always a feature,” Tome rambles on through the speaker, her voice sudding up in the corners of the room and giving Ritsu something to focus on other than dishes. Her voice is occasionally broken by audio glitches and whines, syllables frozen and stretched out in unnatural lengths. He thinks maybe the tablet is starting to struggle with its age.

“It says the rumors started in America around… Maryland? And guess what’s it called!” she grins at the camera at an unflattering angle, and judging by the movement of the background around her, she just collapsed onto her bed. She rests her chin on a hand, giddy and pixelated. “Just guess. You’ll never get it but just guess anyway.”

The question is directed mostly at Shigeo, but he’s oddly silent, so Ritsu turns around with a bowl in his hands and runs a towel along the ceramic while he thinks. “Uhm. Godzilla.”

Even through the pixelated horror that is Tome’s face, he can still see her jaw slide open, and he smiles ruthlessly. “I hope you drop that bowl,” she glares back at him over Shigeo’s shoulder, and Ritsu unconsciously grips it a little tighter in his hands. This is one of their expensive ones.

“Mom would kill me, I think.”

“Good riddance!” Tome smiles, tapping at the camera like she’s trying to smoosh digital-him with a finger, “Is Dimple listening? Tell him I said to beat you up once you’re in the afterlife.”

“He bullies me enough already,” Ritsu tuts, raising his eyes to look at the burst of green that nods furiously, like he’s very onboard with this plan. He’s sure he’d be hooping and hollering to her about it if electronics could detect spirits. He rolls his eyes playfully while Tome adjusts on the other end, rustling broken up into static and blurts of grain.

“Mob, I don’t think you could get it any more wrong,” she says and waits expectantly, and when Shigeo doesn’t respond Ritsu turns around to peek at him from where he floats the bowl up to a cupboard.

The kitchen hums in silence. The refrigerator changes tunes and sings a low song in the empty beats that follow, and the white noise of Tome’s microphone harmonizes with it in an ugly chant. The only other sound in the room is Shigeo’s slow chewing.

“Mob?” Tome calls. Shigeo finally raises his head, blinking.

“Hm?” he hums out, swallowing and staring at the tablet like he’s just now remembering it’s there, “Oh—sorry, I didn’t… What did you say?”

Ritsu floats a few plates into the cupboard simply to keep a section of his mind busy, something heavy settling into his chest that he is incredibly, intimately familiar with by now. He hears Tome sigh, audibly a bit forced and loud.

“You didn’t hear any of that, did you?” she looks at him, face dropped down into a deadpan, and Shigeo hunches his shoulders a little.

“Sorry…” he offers again, offering the shyest of smiles as he glances away from the screen, “Been kinda spacey lately, I guess.”

“I’ll say,” Tome juts a lip out, narrowing her gaze, and Ritsu suddenly feels like he shouldn’t be in the room, “What’s been goin’ on with you, huh? You’ve been weird. Weirder than your usual weird.”

“I have?” he hears his brother say, and Ritsu mechanically looks to the plates in the drying rack and runs his towel over glass. He wants to personally answer with a firm yes, but he stops himself and watches the light refract through the saucer in his hand instead.

“O—urse you have!” Tome frowns through the speaker, voice cutting in and out. Is their internet really that bad? “I don’t kn—been sorta… oh I don’t know how to describe it—”

“Preoccupied?” Shigeo finishes in an odd tone, one that Ritsu can’t quite identify. It’s a weird way to finish her thoughts, especially since Shigeo hadn’t seemed to know what she was talking about until three seconds ago.

He hears a snap on the other end of the line. “That’s the word! See you know exactly what I’m talking about, you’ve been all…” she trails off, for some reason, and then she picks her voice back up in heightened notes, “What the hell is—? Mob!”

Ritsu snaps his head around, and at first he doesn’t see the issue, but when his eyes dart to his brother’s hands his heart leaps out against his rib cage. “Shige!”

Shigeo blinks, confused with all the yelling, but then he follows their gazes that are stuck to the spoon in his hand. The metal is white-hot, drooping down and melting into his milk that’s started boiling from the sudden influx of heat, and Shigeo yelps and jumps up from his chair when the heat shoots to the handle impossibly fast.

The zing in the air is palpable and it smells like lemon and burning cereal. Dimple zips up from the fruit bowl and barks out a curse, and alarm bells ring in his head when he watches Shigeo bring his hand to his chest, pain evident in the nanoseconds of unguarded expressions he has to work with.

Shigeo’s previous spot at the table is clouded in a plume of steam, and Ritsu barely notices that the ceiling lights overheard flicker in and out. He hears Tome yell something from the speaker but he can’t see the screen beyond the white in the air. Ritsu’s attention falls to his brother’s aura wrapped around the kitchen, deepened into rarer colors he doesn’t like seeing.

“Ah—!” Shigeo yelps when they hear something crack, and milk instantly spills from the cloud of steam and drips from the table to the tiles. Shigeo rushes forward, hands out and hair afloat as he gathers up the milk with his aura and whips his head around, clueless as to where to take the mess.

He deposits it in the sink, ceramic shards of the bowl and all. The pipes gurgle as Shigeo lets the milk run down the drain and Ritsu rushes over to turn on the faucet, cold water running over the semi-solid blob of stainless steel that Shigeo keeps suspended away from the sink edges.

They watch it slowly but surely cool in stunned silence, and Ritsu has no idea how long it actually takes, but it feels like forever and an instant all at once. Dimple floats around the stream of water and marvels at the abomination of the once-spoon, but Ritsu can see the worry there in his gaze.

Ritsu slowly twists the faucet off and carefully pushes against Shigeo’s aura, to lower the blob of metal to the bottom of the sink. His brother follows slowly, blinking at the mess of wet cereal bits and metal before them. The lack of running water makes the kitchen deafening—Ritsu glances behind him at the tablet to see a low-battery symbol displayed against blackness, Tome’s video call long-since ended. It’s dead? It was fully charged before…

In the silence of the kitchen, Ritsu moves his attention back to Shigeo, who looks just as guilty as he assumed he’d be.

“I’m sorry,” Shigeo starts, wide eyes boring down into the sink like he’s looking into a bottomless pit, “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to—”

“Of course you didn’t mean to,” Ritsu cuts in gently as he leans against the counter, surveying the damage. The table looks fine, cleaned of the spill as soon as Shigeo had grabbed every molecule of milk there was. The bowl is definitely a no-go, but it was one of their cheaper ones, so he doubts their parents will be too mad about it.

“Damn, Shigeo, you’ve bent plenty of spoons in your time but you’ve never melted one before!” Dimple whistles, surveying the warped hunk of stainless steel in the sink, “What was all that about?”

Ritsu reads Shigeo carefully in the dead silence of the kitchen, eyes the way his hand is still tucked against pink sweater fabric, like hiding it will heal it. Shigeo doesn’t answer. He holds a hand out. “You hurt yourself—lemme s—”

His vision warps as a burst of energy plows at him, and he yelps and staggers and he’s suddenly against the counter on the other side of the room. He pants, wide eyes looking at his brother as his brother looks back at him like he’s just murdered somebody. Shigeo’s barrier cuts through their gazes, warping the air between them in cotton candy tones.

Something is wrong. The barrier… shifts in size, doubles in width, shrinks down so the top hits Shigeo’s hair, and then blows back up again like a balloon. Like it’s malfunctioning, like it’s unstable and wobbling. Ritsu can feel it in the air, the way his brother’s aura twists and contorts on itself like it doesn’t know what to do, where to go. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.

Shigeo backs himself toward the exit of the kitchen as he stares at it, swipes his hands out into the air to clear the barrier away. It takes several tries, but it finally dissipates and they’re left with a barrier of an entirely different kind between them as they stare.

“I’m sorry,” Shigeo blurts, uneven and shaken. Ritsu feels like it’s all he’s said today. Ritsu also feels that he should stop looking at Shigeo with such wide eyes, lest he misinterpret it. “I’m so sorry—are you okay?!”

Ritsu swallows. Perfectly fine, physically. It’d just been a shove. He feels he’s not the one they should be worried about here. “It’s okay—! I’m fine, I’m totally good—!”

Ritsu reaches a hand out as he shuffles across the kitchen, two steps. Shigeo takes five more toward the exit.

“No, please, you’ll just—!” his brother blurts, and the air in the room turns uncomfortably heavy with the smell of lemon and the deep blues of Shigeo’s colors. Ritsu stares, feeling like they’ve been here before, like they’ve feared these things before.

“You’re hurt,” Ritsu says, because it’s all he can think of. Because what he really wants to say sounds too loaded right now. Trying to lodge his worries into air this thick feels improbable. “Please, Shige, just let me loo—”

“I’m fine,” Shigeo cuts through it, shoots it down, and Ritsu feels it crash in the way his stomach sinks. His brother turns from the room, hand curled against his middle. “I’m fine,” he repeats like it has any more meaning the second time.

Ritsu watches as he turns around the support beam and beelines for the stairs, hurrying up them two at a time with muted little thumps of socked feet against wood. He hears the bathroom door click shut, hears running water through the pipes in the walls. Ritsu is left alone in the kitchen with Dimple who gives him a heavy look, but he knows the guy doesn’t know any more than him. He looks just as lost.

His pocket vibrates, probably questioning texts from Tome. Ritsu plucks the ruined spoon from the sink and tosses it into the trash.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t really know why he’s here, sitting on this hill, soaking wet. He’s not sure why he doesn’t just… go home.

Rain water drips from his bangs, falls to his cheeks in a steady, never-ending stream. Wind rifles at him, burrowing in his clothes and digging into his hair so the rain can soak into the dry spots that are left. The grass prickling his fingers is wet and slippery, mud pooling at the foot of the hill with the rest of the runoff. He feels it trickling around his palms that are planted on the ground, dirt under his nails.

His fingers are cold. His nose and his face is cold too, wet wind rapping at his cheeks like it’s knocking on his skull, calling for a Shigeo that isn’t quite there right now. He listens to the thunder in the distance, the occasional lightning strike blinking him back to reality for a moment before he falls back under again, staring at the river where the runoff and the rapids collide.

Nobody is in the streets behind him—nobody sane, anyway. Everyone had scurried back inside their homes at the sudden news of one of those spring storms rolling in the skies. Shigeo doesn’t really pay attention to the forecast, hasn’t ever; the first he’d heard of it was passing conversation in the hallway at school a few hours ago, mostly by teachers. He hopes Ritsu made it home safely before it hit.

Distantly, he feels himself shivering over the cold rain water and the wind battling along his skin, and he wonders what he’s even doing. His uniform is starting to feel heavy, it’s so soaked, and when he looks behind him he sees a thin layer of rainwater rushing along the road, the drains struggling to take it all in.

His school bag next to him is utterly washed and sopping, wet fabric wilting to the grass. He’s pretty sure zippers aren’t water-tight. His books are probably ruined—his folders, and all the schoolwork in them, too. His pencils, his pens, his markers, probably bleeding onto everything else in the water that he can feel at the bottom when he gives it an experimental lift.

The wind is louder than he thinks wind ought to be. Even when he sees the headlights of a lone car pass behind him, he can’t hear the engine or hear the slosh of tires through water past the wind in his ears. The whisper of rain eeks up into a bark and then a yell, seething against the grass that’s pinned flat to the ground from the winds. Raging at him, shaking his shoulders in the way they shiver, trying to lodge his mind back into his body.

The car behind him does not stop, even if Shigeo senses it hesitate. He’s grateful they didn’t ask him anything, didn’t scold him for sitting out in the rain like this, even when he’s soaked and shivering and overall pretty miserable. He’s not entirely sure why he wants nothing but the storm right now.

He can feel his aura undulate under the weather, weaving between the grass blades and tossing away stray branches that fly toward him. If the forecast hadn’t warned for flooding before, he definitely thinks it should now; the curb of the roads behind him house streams of rainwater that rush and pull at any trash that’s left there, sinking into the sewer ports under sidewalks and flooding the thing until it can’t soak up any more.

Shigeo feels a shiver wrack his body, and he’s suddenly intimately aware of his own teeth chattering. Maybe he really should go home.

He’s not even sure this is helping. His energy coils up in the sky like a spring, like a funnel, and beyond the smell of wet earth and cold air, he thinks he smells citrus. His aura moves in a way he’s not sure how to read—he hasn’t been able to read it at all lately, it’s been so sporadic. So unknowable, so standoffish. It’s like every time he looks at it, it writhes like it wants to get away.

It’s always liked storms—that’s why he’s out here, he guesses, even though he feels it’s something a little deeper than that. It’s always seeped to the windows when the world rages outside, pressed against the glass like it wants out there, even if an aura can’t exactly get wet. Or maybe it can—maybe it’s the soaked clothes on his shoulders or his stiff muscles, but something in him definitely feels heavier. Waterlogged.

Maybe it’s whatever has been bothering him to begin with, bubbling and sloshing to the surface.

“Mob?!”

Shigeo lifts his head, blinking into the wet air and the raging rapids down the hill, and then he twists around and sees grey and pink and red and brown and an umbrella above it all. Dress shoes, two pairs, splashing through the inch or so of water along the road; hands grabbing at ends of clothes to stop them from getting torn at by the wind.

Reigen and Serizawa hurry closer, umbrella admittedly not doing much for either of them as the rain is nearly horizontal in its torrent. They scurry away from their path nonetheless, beelining for his figure that’s simply sitting in the grass, wet and alone.

Reigen raises a hand to shield his eyes from the rain, squinting through the weather and face scrunched up in a worried twist. He opens his mouth, and Shigeo just barely hears him over the thunder. “What the hell are you doin’ out here, kid?!”

Serizawa looks much the same way, wide-eyed while his gaze darts to the most pathetic-looking traits—the plastered hair, the shivering, the soaked school bag, the pale skin. The man’s eyes trail up to the sky where his aura weaves between the raindrops, contorting in ways that Shigeo isn’t too sure could be considered content.

Thunder rages on, and Shigeo’s eyes latch onto the clothes bag held against Reigen’s middle. He’s got the top squished shut with a wet arm, but Shigeo suspects the clothes won’t be dry for too much longer. Guilt washes at him then; if they hurry home, they could probably make it without soaking their new purchases. If they just leave him be, they could both be dry and warm soon.

But they’re both still looking at him, still standing in the rain that pelts at them sideways. Reigen’s suit is dark with moisture and Serizawa’s is near black. Neither of their dress shoes are made for anything except walking around in an office—their feet are probably cold.

He hears something, watches Reigen’s mouth move as the man leans in, eyes wide and fretting. He thinks he says kid?! again, but it’s carried into the wind as soon as it leaves his mouth.

Shigeo blinks, tries to remember his first question because he’s already forgotten. And then he wonders it himself. What the hell is he doing out here?

He’d been on his way home. He’d planned on studying, and then calling Tsubomi after dinner. He’d been beelining for his house because of the forecast, and then the first droplet had hit him. And then next, and the next, and then he’d slowed and then he’d stopped and then he’d stood there, soaking it in.

Lightning cleaves the clouds behind them, painting the edges of their silhouettes with white. Shigeo still hasn’t responded.

They’re both looking at him like he’s some stray, injured, wet puppy left out on the streets, and Shigeo would be offended if he were anybody else, but he’s never been bothered by those looks—he thinks their assessment is fair, honestly. If he could see himself, a stray, injured, wet puppy might also cross his own mind.

Shigeo still doesn’t know how to answer. He hasn’t answered, and he knows that’s weird, and maybe a bit creepy, but it’s also characteristic of him, so maybe he doesn’t need to stress over it. He simply sits there in the heavy rain instead and watches Reigen’s pink tie get dragged by the gales.

And then Serizawa crouches down, lowers his hand out, and shelters Shigeo’s head with the draped fabric of a clear umbrella.

In Shigeo’s world, the rain stops.

It’s funny, how a silent action can become so loud that it drowns out the sounds of a raging lightning storm. It’s awing, how one hand movement can mean the world, the universe, to both parties. It’s sobering, when he realizes for the first time in a long while just how much he needed an action so simple and yet so heavy.

Shigeo blames his wet cheeks on the rain. He gets up slowly, carefully works through the stiffness of his frozen muscles, and Reigen’s slippery hands are already grabbing his arms and helping him up the rest of the way. Serizawa’s face is a cacophony of emotions Shigeo doesn’t even have names for, but he thinks one of them might be understanding.

His mind rests on that, tears at it with its teeth like it’s starving for it.

They get him up from the grass and Reigen grabs his soaked school bag, and then he’s being ushered down the flooded street by two worried maybe-father-figures, both of them transferring wet jackets to his shoulders and holding an umbrella above his head.

The umbrella does nothing to keep them dry, and yet Shigeo still feels sheltered.

+

He doesn’t know why he hadn’t thought about it beforehand, but when he’s gently guided into their apartment, he hears Teruki’s voice greet them from the living room.

Teruki is here. Because of course he is, he lives here. And then he sees a bright teal sweater and orange sweatpants and a smile that drops when it notices a soaked Shigeo being prodded along through the entryway.

He doesn’t exactly understand the rush of dread that pulls at him, when he looks up at that face. He doesn’t want to pin a name to the emotion there, in those bright eyes of his. He doesn’t want to.

Serizawa tells Teruki to go fetch some towels, and the blond nods fast and hurries away, thumping down the hall and opening closet doors. Shigeo shudders uncontrollably, and it only hits him just how cold he is when he’s introduced to the warmth of their apartment; it’s bone-deep. The ends of his fingers are numb and they sting, red and aggravated and stiff. The small burn there from the spoon he’d melted nibbles on the nerve endings.

“Your lips are blue, kid—Jesus—” he hears Reigen hiss out, and Shigeo watches Serizawa move past them and hurry into the kitchen while hands come to undo the buttons along his uniform for him, “Let’s get you outta these wet clothes.”

Shigeo’s not even sure if he nods, he’s shivering so fiercely. He finds the warm hand on his shoulder one of the most grounding things on Earth, right now.

They give him a pair of Teruki’s pajamas to wear. His partner hands them to him in a neat, folded pile without having to be asked, eyes full and worried. Shigeo changes in their bathroom, which is also heated. He notices that the clothes, as he’s pulling them on, are warm like they just came from the dryer. He feels Teruki’s aura linger on them heavily, though, entangled in the fibers, warming them with a gentle pyrokinesis touch.

Shigeo looks into the mirror, sees his blue lips and his paper-white skin and his wet hair and his dark eye bags, and he brings the bright yellow sweater Teruki gave him to his face and sighs into the warmth on it.

Reigen’s apartment is all browns and greens and warm blues, slightly drab but colorful in a different sense, in a way that’s irreplaceable. It’s almost never clean; there’s always stuff strewn about the tables and the counters, there’s always dust on a shelf or two, and there’s always a rug that should’ve been vacuumed last week.

But there’s always people here, at the end of the day. There’s always a family here that watches B movies together and falls asleep in a pile, there’s always dinner being made and treats being baked and dishes being dirtied, washed, and dirtied again. The laundry room is a cacophony of fabric and detergents and stain-removers and it always smells vaguely wet back there. Teruki always has the bathroom counter covered in hair sprays and eyeshadows, hair straightener cord tangled haphazardly around drawer handles.

He’s still shivering when he ventures out of the bathroom and into the browns and greens and warm blues, and before he knows it Reigen is ushering him to the couch as soon as he walks into his line of sight. He’s got a towel around his hand and it comes up to rake through his choppy hair a bit needlessly, but he can tell Reigen is itching to do something with his hands, so he simply endures as he’s sat down on the cushions.

His movements are hurried, but still gentle, still delicate. There’s a touch of desperation there, Shigeo thinks, in the way his hands linger when leaning away, in the way he hovers just a bit too close. In the way Reigen’s mouth keeps opening and closing, like he wants to pelt him with questions, but something is stopping him.

Teruki doesn’t seem to care about whatever barrier is holding Reigen back. “Why the hell were you just sitting out there in the rain for so long?”

They’ve caught him up, then. The words send a pulse through the air, like it’s a command for everyone to still. The blond has his arms crossed, standing a pace or two away from the couch in a careful arm’s length from Shigeo, and for some reason it hurts. The purposeful distance, the irritation that’s replaced the worry in his glare. Shigeo doesn’t like Teruki being worried about him, but he hates Teruki being angry at him.

Reigen works on drying his hair that still drips into his lap, and somewhere off in the kitchen he hears Serizawa clinking together ceramic and metal. The television across the coffee table has been muted, but it still plays through a sitcom he’s heard Teruki talk about once or twice. He notices a few dead pixels in the corner. Shigeo darts his eyes away, lest they think he’s simply watching television in the middle of a conversation.

It’s a good question. It’s a reasonable thing to want to know, and yet Shigeo feels something in him sneer at it, bare his teeth in an animalistic impulse to snap at anything too close. He doesn’t act on it—he’d never snap, he doesn’t do that, he won’t. He thinks about seeing his own hands around two different throats. He won’t snap.

He sits there instead, simply stares through the carpet at a stain there, probably coffee, and traces the blurred edges of it with his gaze.

“I don’t know,” in his answer. He can feel the pulse in the air twist, like nobody quite knows what to do with that information, and then Teruki tsks.

It’s not a mean tsk. He never makes mean tsks at Shigeo anymore, and he recognizes it for what it is—worried, panicked, lost. At a loss, for what to do. For how to fix.

It still stings, though. The sound makes him shrink, just a bit, into the towel around his head.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Teruki gapes, and Shigeo feels the yellows of his aura warp and wobble, “Why didn’t you have your barrier up, at least?”

Shigeo knows the answer to that one. But he can’t explain it in a succinct way, not without sounding jumbled, not without sounding difficult, not without making them worry even more. So he just says it again. “I don’t know.”

Silence takes the stage for a beat, and then two, and then three. He watches Teruki thump the ball of his foot against the carpet anxiously. “... Why didn’t you hurry home when it started raining? Why were you just sitting there?”

Shigeo feels Reigen’s thumb rubbing circles into his shoulder, gently, over and over in little spirals. He’s uncharacteristically quiet—his Master loves to be the one talking, loves to be the one asking questions. He isn’t now. It confuses him.

“I don’t know,” he says a third time, because he really doesn’t. Maybe he thought it would make him feel better, to feel something external. And maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. All he feels is cold right now—at least it distracts him from everything else.

The hum of their apartment is deafening.

“... You don’t know…” Teruki echoes, but it doesn’t have that same frustrated timbre. It’s subdued and swaying, and maybe a little knowing. Shigeo isn’t sure; it feels intentionally flat, but he hears things behind it that he cannot parse.

Teruki drops his hands from where he’d crossed them against his chest, and he seems to no longer be able to not have his hands on Shigeo. He sinks down into the couch cushion next to him, rubs a hand along his back, cards dry fingers through damp hair.

Shigeo melts into it like he hasn’t experienced it in centuries, and presses the side of his temple against his partner’s shoulder. He feels yellows and pinks encase him, swaddle his soul in warm hums. It feels a bit foreign, being this open with their affection in front of Reigen and Serizawa, but they don’t seem to mind.

Reigen opens his mouth. “... Are you okay, Mob?” he speaks, just above a whisper and incredibly solemn. He hears Serizawa stumble over something in the kitchen, over the beginnings of the smell of warm tea in the air. Teruki keeps his fingers running along the shorter hairs just above Shigeo’s neck.

His first instinct is to say yes. Yes, I’m fine. Yes, I just lost track of time. Yes, I just like the rain. Yes, there is nothing wrong with me. Yes. Yes.

He doesn’t. He dips his head down, stares into the stitching of the couch, and he whispers, “I don’t know,” instead.

Oddly, it feels like a victory and a loss all at once.

Chapter Text

Shigeo gasps awake, and he promptly falls from the few feet he’d been hanging in the air back into his futon.

The blankets billow out from the impact, air softly rushing out from the edges of his bedding. He stares up at the ceiling of his bedroom as he quietly gasps his breaths in and out, his singular pillow covering the left side of his vision as it drapes over top of him. His window is closed but he can hear the crickets outside, clicking and chirping their hearts out only to have it beat against the glass harmlessly.

Shigeo moves, slowly, if only to be reassured he still has a physical body. He raises a hand up to wipe at the sweat along his hairline, breaths shaky against stagnant air. He moves his arm away from his head to watch how it shakes, almost imperceptibly, against his well-heated room.

He lets it drop. He doesn’t remember his dream. By the pain in his head, though, and the ghost sensation of a metal grill molding around his skull, he can guess.

Closing his eyes threatens sleep again, so he keeps them open and staring through the drywall of his ceiling. His breaths come out short and quick, and then they smooth out and round their edges until it’s all steady and natural. His lips feel chapped and dry. Shigeo wets them and tastes copper.

His throat feels raw. The hum of electronics in the dead household is far too loud.

Shigeo sits up slowly, like if he goes too fast he’ll be sucked back into the blood and the asphalt and the purr of an engine. He breathes against the still air for a while, untangles his legs from his blankets at a steady pace that seems to crawl. The crickets cheer him on. He’s calmed by the chirps.

He twists around and checks his phone, wincing at the white that blinds him and gives the phantom pain in his head more fuel. Shigeo absently rubs at the old scar there along his temple as he squints at bright pixels. He sees Teruki’s name in his notifications, a text from mere minutes after he’d fallen asleep.

Shigeo texts back in slow motion, thumbs shaking against the screen. He’s talking about some comic he found at the library yesterday. Shigeo welcomes the distraction.

When he finally moves out from his futon and ventures into the hall, he can’t help but notice Ritsu’s door is wide open. Panic pricks at him for a moment until he lets his aura prod along for his brother and it finds him and his lazy blues and purples downstairs. Shigeo forces his shoulders to relax, and he moves down the staircase one step at a time.

As soon as he steps foot at the bottom, he sees one singular light from the kitchen. It illuminates his brother’s blank face in blues, hunched over the counter while he balances on a stool and taps at buttons on his old DS. His bedhead doesn’t look too different from his regular hair, but Shigeo can tell it’s been dragged and flopped around in his messy sleeping habits by the way the spikes stick up in odd sweeping directions.

The last step along the staircase creaks with his arrival. Ritsu’s eyes flit up to meet him, red bathed in little squares of blue. “Oh—hey,” he whispers out across the dead living room between them, shoulders straightening.

Shigeo mumbles out a hi in greeting, stumbling his way around the coffee table and couch until he’s working on a path to the counter. The corners of the house are bathed in grainy shadows that feel potent, somehow. “What are you doing up?”

Ritsu turns his DS around to light up what little it can in Shigeo’s path. It saves him from kneeing their dad’s chair, and he reroutes. “Eh, couldn’t sleep. Sho told me about this game and gave me a copy and now I’m addicted I guess,” he lets out, sounding very accepting of this new routine, “He’s a bad influence.”

His brother says it with a blank look, but Shigeo hears the smile in the tone. As rocky as a first impression of Sho he’d gotten, he’s simply glad his brother has somebody close to him now. He’s realized that, back then, Ritsu never talked about any friends at school, even when asked. Now he rants and raves about Sho every chance he gets, and seeing his brother so happy lately makes him warm.

He should really get in touch with Sho sometime, thank him for everything. Even if the kid did burn down his house.

“What are you doin’ up?” Ritsu prods, flips his DS back around when Shigeo has made it into the kitchen. He carefully keeps his eyes on the cupboards instead of his brother. “Everything okay?”

“Mhm,” Shigeo says automatically, reaching for a glass and inching the cupboard door closed so it doesn’t bang, “Just thirsty.”

Technically not a lie. He moves to the sink and watches the water fill his glass like his life depends on it, because he can sense Ritsu’s gaze in the back of his head and it’s red-hot and piercing. Shigeo wonders if he can see the tremor there still in his muscles, even in the low light. He dimly hopes he doesn’t throw his DS’s screen out onto him again to check.

The crickets overtake them, and when Shigeo shuts the tap off and gulps down cold water, he hears Ritsu turn back around slowly, the stool underneath him creaking. He hears a button tap unpause his game and then sound effects thrash from the speaker, lowered in volume so it doesn’t echo across the kitchen.

Shigeo pours himself another fill. His throat still feels dry and tight, so he gulps down another glass-full and goes for a third. He thinks he hears roars from his brother’s DS, and he ambles over to the counter and hopes Ritsu doesn’t mind the company as he eases down into the stool beside him.

He watches the screen for a while, stares at Ritsu’s thumbs tapping buttons, listens to the chippy music, follows his stylus where he taps the screen to clear away dirt from cartoon dinosaur bones. He uses the wrong tool at some point and damages the fossil, turning it an ugly green as an ear-wincing crunch plays through the speaker. Ritsu whispers oops to himself, and Shigeo smiles against the rim of his glass.

The ache in his head pulses out into refreshed agony, and he bites down onto the glass to stifle the flinch. And then he blinks, and sees the DS in his brother’s hands in a way only tunnel vision could produce, and he tastes iron on his tongue.

His temple aches, fierce and loud, and he stares at the screen until the picture is simply white and hazy and the buttons are popped off and the paint on it is green instead of blue. He stares until the pixels malfunction, until the cracks across the screen spiderweb out into static and grain and a noise that sounds like tires screeching.

He thinks of the smell of burning rubber, of the dust from fallen buildings in his lungs he didn’t have the control to hack up, of the asphalt beneath his—its— his feet shuddering and crumbling like a pastry, like it’s made of chalk and not tar. He thinks of the yells when people saw his figure, of the cameras pointing at him and broadcasting his earthquaking steps like he was a monster people needed to be warned of. He thinks of fists slamming into his chest, of a bouquet shredded and torn, of his own aura going against him and trapping his own brother in those lines he still doesn’t know how to call upon himself.

The audio from the speakers freezes on its last syllable, dinosaur roars flattened out into single notes that carry and carry and ca—

“Shige.”

He blinks, and it’s gone. Everything is gone, and he darts his attention away from his brother’s DS to look Ritsu in the eyes. And there is no sense hiding what just happened, because Ritsu’s screen is riddled with red and white bars and static, and his brother is watching the way Shigeo’s hands tremble against the glass of water he grips.

He squeezes it until his knuckles are white, and Ritsu notices. His breath comes out shuddering, and Ritsu notices. His eyes must be wide and open and scared, because Ritsu looks back at him like he wants nothing more than to fix whatever it is that’s wrong. He’s looking at him like people look at stray cats on the streets, DS and stylus dropped to the counter and attention twisted to Shigeo and only Shigeo.

He sort of wishes he’d just keep playing, but his aura absolutely swamps the kitchen and flickers the screen like it wants to give either of them a seizure. He wants to apologize, but he feels that’s not going to get them anywhere. He feels they’re past that point.

Ritsu looks at him with eyes that seem magenta in the low, blue-ish light, but it’s a crisp and devastating version of him. His brother wrings his fingers together with one fist, grips the counter with the other while he thinks. Shigeo is holding onto the fact that there is no fear in his brother’s gaze this time—he holds onto that like he’ll die if he doesn’t.

“Please at least tell somebody,” Ritsu starts, and it almost hurts how quiet and just barely unsteady it is.

Shigeo stares, opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and he feels like he’s flailing about in an ocean with a lifesaver two feet to his left. He feels like Ritsu has been casting this floatie out for the last five years and all Shigeo has ever done is swim away.

“It doesn’t have to be me,” his brother continues, and Shigeo cannot help but catch onto the hurt in his voice at the line, but Ritsu forges on, “It can be anybody—it can be Teru, Tome, mom and dad, it can be fuckin’ Dimple for all I care. It can be some random ghost you find on the street one day. It doesn’t matter—just… just please…”

Ritsu is begging him. Ritsu has resorted to something he never, ever does unless he feels truly cornered, and for that, Shigeo is so sorry. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what’s bothering you and it’s okay if I never know, as long as somebody does. All I want is for you to not be… plagued by this. Whatever it is. You don’t deserve this.”

Shigeo feels like if he grips his glass any tighter it’ll shatter. He forces himself to ease the grip. “Please, Shige. Get it off your chest.”

He doesn’t know what else to do, so after a few beats of utter stillness, he nods. And then he nods again, because he feels that one was just to appease him, but Ritsu is begging. He can’t just appease and run away again. He can’t keep doing this to him.

“Okay,” Shigeo lets out, shaky and wobbled, and he nods a third time, mostly to himself, “Okay.”

Ritsu studies him for longer than he thinks the Earth has existed, gaze calculating around something else in there that looks terribly close to grief. Ritsu chews his lip, looks away, nods too. “Okay.”

They sit there in deafening silence until Shigeo feels he shouldn’t be blocking Ritsu from his game any longer with his sporadic aura, so he stands up on stiff legs and numbly bids his brother a good night. He doesn’t hear Ritsu’s response, and he doesn’t hear the stairs creak on his way back up to his room. He doesn’t even remember the trip, and then he’s suddenly sitting on his futon again, glass of water trembling ever so slightly in his hand.

He stares ahead after he gulps down the last of it, blindly setting it down some ways away on the floor. Shigeo glances to his phone, the screen shut off, and he picks it up and turns it on.

A new text from Teruki. He reads it through the jittering of the letters and the static his aura introduces to the screen.

[2:23 AM] ‧  ˚ teru 🌟 🌷:
aaaaaand just what
do u think ur doing up
at 2 in the morning my love?

Shigeo types something out, something that makes his fingers shake and his heart stutter. And then he erases the message.

[2:35 AM] Shigeo:
Was just thirsty

Chapter Text

They’re out a little later than he wants to be, but it’s the only time the two of them had today. And Shigeo feels like if he puts this off any longer, it’s never going to happen.

The way Teruki has been rather quiet makes him think the blond understands, to some degree. His partner has been waiting this out, in all likelihood; waiting for the moment Shigeo feels ready to talk about things, to share what’s been plaguing him. To listen and to learn and to comfort, as long as it’s taken him.

Shigeo isn’t ready in the slightest. But the constant buzz of static in his chest and the lack of sleep has him on a time limit, and he will not lose control again. He won’t.

“Uhm… I guess I just… feel uh…” he’s stumbling, fisting the fabric of his hoodie in his lap and crossing and uncrossing his legs like it’ll help. He’s looking anywhere but Teruki, and Teruki is looking nowhere but him. “Uhm.”

He hasn’t really gotten anywhere, not yet, but Teruki is a patient person when it comes to Shigeo, and he sits atop their little rusted school bus hideaway and looks at him with the most open gaze he’s ever seen. It’s equal part encouraging and paralyzing. Shigeo twists the strings dangling from his hood like it’s an acceptable substitute for conversation.

Their backs are illuminated in a yellow-orange, and it’s one of those sunsets that makes the clouds look oddly green. The vines along the school bus windows snake and weave around the old welding of the metal, leaves rustling in the breeze that picks up the ends of Shigeo’s hair just for little moments. The junkyard feels a world away from everything else. Even a world away from judgement and consequences, Shigeo still cannot unfold.

He can hear distant thunder in the back of his mind and he genuinely cannot tell if it’s coming from the low hum of his aura or the clouds. His energy seems to crawl around the metal of the bus underneath them like it wants to pry it away from the Earth that’s claimed it. Shigeo pulls back at it as if it’s a dog on a leash. Teruki’s aura settles over his own like a hand, calming and misty and smelling of sugar.

A steady thump sounds from his partner swinging a leg out from his perch atop the bus. He allows his feet some air-time and then lets the heel of his converse hit the metal. Shigeo focuses on that, on the rust chipping the blue paint of their hideout away, on the sunbleached metal that feels cool to the touch and yet warm to his core.

Shigeo picks at the old paint job on an old vehicle that used to go to some school that doesn’t exist anymore. He looks out over the mini junkyard, at the stacks of tires and old mangled shopping carts and dirty car doors and broken air conditioners, like it’ll all give him an idea on how to continue.

He’s starting to regret this, when he realizes he can’t bring himself to speak anymore.

“Uhm,” he mumbles intelligently again, and he feels stupid. He feels so incredibly dimwitted, because who on Earth has this much trouble speaking their mind? Who in the world acts this withdrawn when faced with the fact that they can’t bottle it up anymore? “I don’t… I’m sorry.”

Teruki shifts next to him, metal creaking underneath as he scoots closer. Shigeo’s starting to feel like he just beckoned his partner out here to stare at him while he crumbles. The shame is thick on his face, he’s sure.

“If you’re looking for a correct way to speak your mind, there is none,” Teruki prods with care, and when Shigeo works up the courage to meet him in the eyes, the blond tilts his head playfully, hair dangling down and catching in the pale breeze, “You can’t go wrong here.”

His expression is so patient and so open it makes Shigeo want to curl into himself, for some reason. It’s almost too much, it’s almost too bright, but he would never dare to ask him to stop, not in a million years.

“Just say what you feel,” is uttered, and that’s…

That’s the issue. Shigeo doesn’t know what he feels.

And even if he did, he doubts he’d have the vocabulary to describe it. Sad doesn’t cut it, angry doesn’t scratch the surface. Those aren’t even synonyms of what’s in his chest. He doesn’t know what’s in his chest because his aura is taking up the whole house and knocking over load-bearing walls and building new stories that there’s no room for. He’s never been the best at identifying emotions, linking them to names and occurrences. His powers are simply amplifying that confusion.

A light goes off in his head. Teruki must see the eureka moment ignite his gaze, because he leans forward, ever so patient.

“... I think… whatever it is that’s wrong, it’s making my powers, uh—weird,” Shigeo starts slowly, syllable after syllable. Teruki nods along, and his lack of annoyance tells him to keep going. “I don’t really… know what’s wrong. I don’t. But I think that… if my powers weren’t so crazy, it’d be easier. For me. To… to figure it out.”

Teruki leans back a bit as Shigeo plays with the tears in his jeans. He’s thinking. Shigeo hopes to every higher power in the world that Teruki comes up with something, because if he doesn’t, then that’s Shigeo’s most reliable source of information drained. Teruki knows more about powers than Shigeo ever has. His partner practically studies the stuff.

“But I obviously can’t just… ya’know—get rid of my powers. They’re me. So now I have to figure out how to stop… me from… no. I—You know what I mean,” he fumbles, and promptly ignores the fact that Teruki probably doesn’t know what he means.

“No yeah, I think I get it,” he proves him wrong, bringing a knee up against his chest to wrap his arms around as he glances away, pondering, “If I was spewing as much energy as you’ve been lately, I don’t think I’d get anything done.”

Shigeo blinks at that, but he doesn’t really have time to think about it too hard, as Teruki straightens up and starts nodding, slowly, and then he’s grinning as a plan forms in his head. Shigeo straightens with him, daring to feel a sliver of early relief as Teruki shifts in his spot and moves to hop down from the top of the bus.

“Yep. I think I’ve got it,” Teruki preens, kicking up dust where he lands in the dirt below. He stalks around the side of the bus, pacing lazily while he raises a finger up, pointing and glancing around while he thinks. He kicks a leg out and lets it hang before he presses it into the dirt again that whirls his body back to face him. “You’re able to offer your powers to others, right?”

Shigeo blinks. “Uhm—yeah.”

“Aaaand that’s offering your powers, not just copying the energy to another person?” he clarifies, gears churning behind his eyes as he looks up at Shigeo’s figure, “You actually physically give somebody else a chunk of your energy that you can no longer use?”

“Yeah, I—I think so.”

Teruki suddenly brings two hands together in a clap that echoes off the metal scraps around him. “Excellent! Then it would stand to reason that if you give a chunk of your powers to me, you’d be free of your metaphorical shackles for a while!”

The suggestion halts everything and Shigeo blinks at him, rouses to climb down the bus and join his partner on ground level. He… supposes that could work. “Are you sure? I don’t wanna pressure you into—”

“Of course I’m sure! I’m offering, aren’t I?” Teruki beams at him, “Now—you do have a shit ton of energy built up in there—”

He points at Shigeo’s middle, making swirling motions with his hand. “So I will say I might not be able to carry the whole bag,” he says, and then pauses, scrunches his brows together as he presses a hand to his chin, “Although, Reigen seemed fine afterward, and he’s not even an ESPer…”

Shigeo puts his hands up, smile strained. “Let’s not uh—! Let’s not go off assumptions, I don’t—I don’t want to hurt you!” he frets. Normally, he’d find this a perfectly sound solution, but something about the volatility of the static in his ears tells him otherwise. “It’s been building up a lot, I don’t know if sending it all off to you is a good—”

“Oh, Shigeo, I’ll be fine! I’ve handled your other form—”

Shigeo would not call that handled—

“—and Reigen had never come into contact with ESPer auras himself and yet he took some of your strongest energy just fine! If a non-ESPer can do it, I’m sure—”

“That was different, that was positive energy—!”

“Well it’s not like all my energy is positive, hm? Everyone’s got neg—”

“This amount of energy is a whole different ballpark—”

“Then let’s hit a home run, what’s the worst that could hap—”

“Teru, please, the whole point of this is is to make sure I don’t hurt any of you again!” Shigeo barks.

Teruki stops, one hand still in the air, and the distant thunder overtakes the silence that jams itself between them. Shigeo has his nails digging into his palms, and he forcibly eases the pressure off his skin so he doesn’t puncture it and make crescents. Leaves rustle in the absence of their chatter, and metal creaks somewhere in the corner of the junkyard.

A few seconds pass, and Shigeo gathers the courage to lift his eyes to his partner’s. And he watches in horrid quiet as the strained grin on his face drops, ever so slowly, into something that resembles realization.

“… I thought the point of this was to make you feel better.”

Shigeo flinches at the way Teruki looks at him, at the way his brows are furrowed into something that’s stern, and hurt, and maybe a little bit agonized on his behalf, and he hates that. He hates all of that, he hates the expressions he makes Teruki wear sometimes. 

Most of all, he hates that Teruki’s aura is still curling around him, still smelling of sugar and flour and pastries, still trying to snap his own aura out of that high it’s perpetually been in lately.

Teruki drops the hand that’s hovered there in the air slowly, and Shigeo can’t look at his strained expression anymore, so he focuses his attention on the weeds behind the blond instead. They stand there in the choleric silence, breaths and ambitions held back; he wonders if this is how most “couple” fights go.

He wonders if this is considered a fight at all. Any vague disagreement is a fight in Shigeo’s world—years of avoiding altercations comes with the fear of saying anything that could be misconstrued as provocative. In Teruki’s mind, this might be nothing. This might simply be another conversation. He’s… not sure. Ever.

He thinks about something Tome had asked him months ago; he doesn’t even recall the question, but he knows he had mentioned that he and Teruki fight all the time. Apparently that had made its rounds, because the next time Teruki met up with him, he’d greeted him with a, “We literally never fight, what were you on about?”

That had been a fight, ironically. In Shigeo’s standards, as well as Teruki’s.

The way Teruki is looking at him now, he thinks maybe this is indeed a fight, and for some reason pinning that term to this conversation makes him feel sick.

But then Teruki sighs out into the thundered air, quiet and mitigating. “Okay… okay,” he breathes out in acceptance, and then, “Tell you what:—”

There’s movement, and Shigeo flits his eyes back to his partner to see a hand raised between them, like he’s waiting for a handshake. He traces the orange of his jacket until he meets the determined lapis. “—how about we do it a little at a time, then?”

Shigeo’s gaze reverts back to Teruki’s hand, open and steady and solid. “You give me what you’re comfortable with, and when it works out and I turn out fine, you give me a little more.”

His aura writhes in his chest like it senses a vessel it can pour into, and Shigeo’s hand twitches at his side as he raises it, unsure and timid. His eyes flit back and forth between his partner’s open and honest palm and his open and honest eyes, holding something so trusting there that Shigeo feels like it’d be a disservice to refuse such an offer, an offer that doesn’t benefit Teruki in the slightest.

Shigeo would only ever give his powers to people he trusts wholeheartedly. Teruki is at the top of that list.

“... Are you sure?” he asks again, because he feels he needs to. He wants Teruki to be able to back out. “There’s… nothing in it for you.”

Teruki’s expression lilts, bemused, as he tilts his head. “Of course I get something out of it. I get you back.”

The pang in his soul reverberates and comes back for seconds at that, and Shigeo looks down at Teruki’s offered hand like it’s some forbidden cure-all. His own digits come to tremble closer.

Teruki’s hand is cool and dry against Shigeo’s sweaty, stifling skin. His partner’s fingers are sure in the way they grip around the creases of his palm, his gaze steady in the way he stares, tenses, ready for an influx of energy, ready to help.

Shigeo swallows—breathes in deep. He stares down at their interlocked fingers, wonders if they thought this out properly, wonders what would happen if they didn’t. He swallows again and it makes him feel even more ill.

He nods, breathes, nods again, and then tenses his hand. Shigeo lets his energy funnel to the forefront and separates it into globs that he splits and splits and splits, and he sends just a trickle, just a drop, just a test , from his palm.

Teruki screams.

+

It’s scraping at his soul like it thinks he’s made of pebbles.

It’s rasping at his innards like it’s trying to burrow in the heat of his blood, like it’s trying to snake through the marrow of his rib cage, and the pain is so instantly white-hot that Teruki buckles. He knows he buckles, he tries not to, but his jaw is already hinged open and he’s already screaming so he might as well throw in the towel.

Any sounds that flood his ears are overpowered by the sheer volume of Shigeo’s aura, trampling every cell and every atom and every sense until there is nothing but static and grain and colors that he cannot see but rather feel. It’s warm indigos and cold corals, shades that don’t make sense, shades that he’s never felt from Shigeo before, but now they’re here and they’re wrong and they’re shrieking in glitched barks and atonal screams.

Halftone rivers cut through any of his own aura’s attempts at fighting back—they dance like wolves, they tear into each other like they’re rabid, even when his yellows are so intimately familiar with his cotton candy tones that Teruki swore it’d never strike at those shades. The colors take bites out of each other like they’re both black holes, but Shigeo’s is stronger—it’s always stronger, and it laces into his soulskin like it’s cracking an egg. Like it’s trying to spill his being out into the grass he doubles over onto.

His vision is every color he’s ever seen and somehow more that he cannot name, but in his head it’s too much to see so it’s simply nothing all at once. He’s grabbing at his chest where the colors lunge and wrench and fizz at each other like teeth and acid, he’s clawing at his shirt and at his skin like it’ll help at all.

And then the burning starts. Teruki didn’t even know he could scream this loud.

It’s melting him. It’s fucking melting him—cotton candy and honey gold meld into one horrid kaleidoscope that turns everything it touches into simple grain in a still picture, and it’s melting him. He feels it all come up his throat, liquid mana in stark mustards and teals and fuschias, and it all pours from his mouth and melts from his tongue in glowing, colorful pools.

Excess energy comes from everywhere it can, leaking out of his vessel desperately when Shigeo’s aura evicts everything else—the hand that was around his partner’s glows and drips with watery energy, skin raw and scraped away by pure power and heat. Cracks in his skin snake up over his knuckles and along his wrist, beaming with light and whining out in a high-pitched buzz.

He’s on his knees. His tears are glowing too. The pain in his face where all the liquid mana is escaping is too much, and he starts clawing at it.

Teruki feels the way the energy eats at his skin, loud and stinging and bubbling up like it’s molten, and something in his jaw breaks loose. The joints there are sanded down by sharp grain and noise and his mouth hinges wider without his consent and he grabs at it. He wraps his fingers around his lower jaw and he pulls like he thinks he can simply be free of all of it with a tug or two.

The energy dissolves the skin around his mouth. He’s pretty sure there’s holes there, where the auras are eating away at the cells.

He hears screaming that’s not his own—he just barely picks it out beyond the white of his vision and the roaring of static in his ears—and instantly he wants to tell Shigeo to get away, to leave before he has to watch something even more horrible happen. He’s sure this looks bad, he’s sure the scene is straight out of a horror movie, and Shigeo doesn’t deserve any more trauma. He doesn’t deserve his fears of hurting people to come true.

But then the pain crescendos, and falls.

Everything is blank for a long while—the static and the hissing and halftone shades take up so much of everything, everywhere, that Teruki can’t take it all and his mind stops. The white void is not blissful, nor is it merciful, because he can tell the pain is still otherworldly and his soul is still being shredded and torn, but just barely beyond the veil.

His yellows curl around him like whimpering dogs. And then the blanket of white lifts.

The pain cracks at him instantly and he lets out a yell, and the first thing he notices is that he’s no longer screaming. Mana still drips from his face, but it’s different—the cotton candy tones have sunken down into his middle, still pressing and shoving and raking against his edges, but his yellows aren’t being swiped at or bitten into and instead meld with the rest of the shades, a cacophony of bright, seething hues that feel far too big and too much for a vessel this ill-equipped.

There’s a voice that floats in the corner of his mind, and Teruki is scrambling across the grass when he notices how hysterical it is.

“Teru?! Please, can you h—”

“I’m—” Teruki starts, voice oddly layered and desynchronized with itself, syllables overlapping words that come before and after and in between. He can’t see clearly; he blinks and there’s green and brown and orange in vague brushstrokes and watercolor patches. “I’m f—. F—Fine—”

He hears things being spat at him in that muted, horrified way, panic clear in words that are muddled and levitated where he can’t reach. He blinks away the mana from his eyes but they still glow and they still drip along flushed, scraped skin. He’s heaving into the dirt, gasping and sucking in air like he’d just been drowning.

Teruki’s collapsed against a tire in the grass, trembling arm holding him up by pure physics and gravity, and he raises a wobbling hand to his jaw to find that it’s locked into place again, no longer eaten out of its socket and dangling.

He trembles as he feels around through the wetness of the mana along his face, and almost vomits when he still feels the holes around his mouth, like his skin had been stretched so much it had started to tear open. His new mangled aura is working to close them though—he moves his fingers away when he realizes they’re shrinking, Shigeo’s blues and pinks weaving in between the atoms to reverse the damage.

Instead of pain, there is now an almost overbearingly loud numbness, everywhere. It buzzes incessantly, like bugs in his ears, and compared to the agony of eighteen seconds ago, it feels like heaven. He’s sure that sentiment will wear off soon.

Teruki’s middle still shakes and trembles, and he doesn’t think that’s going away. He’s sweaty and gross and glowing mana is still dripping from his chin and his ears and his eyes and his nose, but then his vision starts to clear and the world’s sounds start coming back to him, and Shigeo is crying.

The blond looks up with his shaky vision that pulses in odd reds at the edges, and he sees tears dripping from his partner’s chin. Shigeo is half crouched down to the grass and his trembling hands are held out to touch, to comfort, but the boy keeps pulling them back, out, and back again. His eyes are stretched wide and his cheeks are wet and he’s shaking nearly as much as Teruki is.

The blond wants nothing more than to comfort him, and hug him, and tell him that it’s okay, that he didn’t mean to, but something else weights on him just a little bit more.

“H—Holy shi—it,” he gasps out through his rapid breaths, and he stares at Shigeo with eyes just as wide, “Tha—That was—”

“I’m sorry!” Shigeo lets out in one high, whispered yell, “I’m so sorry—I only—I—!”

“That was…” Teruki gulps while he shifts in his awkward landing, and the taste of the mana on his tongue is like he’s ingesting pure creation, “just a f—fraction… was—wasn’t it?”

Shigeo nods furiously, not seeming to take in what exactly he meant, “I only gave you a tiny bit—I’m so sorry—”

It hurts Teruki to hear Shigeo so upset, so hysterical in his croaked words, but he cannot help but continue. He cannot help but prod forward, because he has just been made aware of something impossible. “You… carry around this much?” he stutters out between gasps, words wobbly and hiccuped, “No—more, you—you carry so mu—uch more…”

It’s unfathomable. Teruki genuinely cannot imagine anything greater than what’s in his chest right now. He’s simply never experienced it. The only thing that matches is his fight with Shigeo last winter, when the city was destroyed. His greatest show of power, condensed into this, right in Teruki’s core?

He can feel it writhing in there, can feel it push against the inside of his skin like it’s three gallons of water trying to fit in a one-tablespoon measurement—it’s a miracle their auras ended up meshing at all after a clash that big. It’s a miracle Teruki wasn’t incinerated instantly; and it’s actually rather lucky that Shigeo’s shades have the ability to heal, or these injuries would’ve been permanent.

No wonder Shigeo has been so weird lately. No wonder he’s looked tired and spacey—Teruki can’t even imagine falling asleep to this constant fizz. No wonder Shigeo can’t focus on his schoolwork anymore; he’s got the sun’s worth of energy in his soul. No wonder he’s been distracted, and distant, and jumpy; he’d be afraid of losing control too. And Teruki just has a fraction of it. There’s more, so much more, hiding in Shigeo’s core.

And yet Shigeo had treated this like it was just some bothersome annoyance, had spoken of his powers distracting him from dealing with another, bigger issue. Shigeo seems to believe that this is not the issue, that there is something else weighing on his mind that his powers are simply keeping him from addressing.

What could possibly be bigger than this?

“You carry all this around… this is… s—so much—” Teruki trembles, shifts and winces when the energy in him rolls. It feels like the ghost of a flame licking at his innards; he hisses through his teeth and Shigeo jerks forward with his hands out, looking two seconds away from bawling. “H—H—How do you…?”

He handles it so well. Shigeo walks around with power this massive, holds it all in near perfectly, and then has the gall to say he’s reckless when a floor tile or two gets cracked. Shigeo saved the city from being brainwashed by a fool acting as a god, when Shigeo himself could easily rule.

This isn’t even “the main problem.” It makes Teruki wonder how he handles whatever the hell else is going on with him. The fact that Teruki’s not even sure of the issue is… evidence enough that he hides it well.

“I… I don’t know,” Shigeo offers, looking very far away from actually processing that question, “Should I—? I should take it back, it’s way too much for you, I—”

“No,” Teruki hisses out, sitting up in the grass and blinking when the world blurs and sways about, “No, I’m—I’m fine.”

“Teru you’re not, you’re shaking—”

“S—So are you.”

“Because it scared me! You were—you screamed so much, you—”

Shigeo’s voice breaks, and Teruki is not used to hearing that. He flits his eyes up to his partner’s face and more tears roll down his cheeks, lip wobbling and the ends of his choppy hair floating up as his aura undulates and swells around the junkyard.

“You were in so much pain,” Shigeo whispers, like if he says it any louder his aura will burst and break them both, “I—I’m so sorry…”

Teruki regrets this. Not necessarily because of the agony he’d just endured, but because now Shigeo is arguably worse-off, and Teruki didn’t fucking do anything of note but get nearly obliterated.

He scoots forward, shifts to get his trembling legs underneath him, and he pulls Shigeo into the tightest hug he can. Shigeo latches on like he’s a lifeline, and Teruki does not dare let go. He lets his partner hiccup and shake into his shoulder and Teruki buries his own face into the fabric of his friend’s hoodie too, takes in the familiar scent of lemon his aura makes when it’s agitated.

It usually smells like berries. Lemon is all it ever smells like anymore.

The foliage around the bus’ windows behind them shake and wobble for a long while as they sit there. Squares of fiery sunlight shine through its metal shell and rest against the grass and their backs. Teruki still trembles in Shigeo’s hold, the energy in his vessel too much for him to simply stifle it. He guesses he’ll be shaky for the next few days.

“... That d—didn’t help at all, did it?” Teruki speaks quietly into his friend’s shoulder, listening to the soft thunder that rolls miles away, “You barely even feel a difference.”

 Shigeo doesn’t say anything. He simply curls up tighter against Teruki’s middle, hugs him harder. The blond plops his forehead against his partner’s shoulder.

Fuck.

Chapter Text

[7:49 PM, yesterday] little dipper:
meet me at our spot
before classes tomorrow.
it’s urgent.

“Left me on read, the jackass,” Ritsu grumbles down at the dim light from his phone, manually wheeling his bicycle up the last hill on his route, “He better be there.”

“You really think it’s Teru’s doing?” Dimple ponders, floating along backwards to match Ritsu’s pace. “I have a hard time believing that kid would ever try to hurt Shigeo. He’s obsessed with him.”

Ritsu glances at the time on his phone before floating it back to a pocket in his bag. The treeline and the silhouettes of buildings behind him are dark against the sky, the sun just barely peeking out from somewhere behind the jagged shapes of the city.

The tires of his bicycle roll over asphalt, then gravel, then dirt. The steady click of his wheels gives him something to focus on.

“I don’t think he hurt Shige,” Ritsu explains, eyes locked to the horizon where the slope starts to level out, “I just think something happened. And whatever it was, it scared him. Scared him enough to act like that, anyway.”

“Aaaand you think you have a right to know becaaauuse…?” Dimple raises an eyebrow, lips pursed out skeptically.

Ritsu narrows his resolve. “Shige isn’t scared of Teru; Teru isn’t scared of Shige. Why on Earth would he come home then, with Teru’s aura on him, and act so… weird?”

“You know couples have fights, right?”

“If Shige is that scared after a fight between them, then something else entirely is going on, and I’ll end that quick. Also, they’re not a couple,” Ritsu says absently, pausing when he feels his bag vibrate against his side. He digs through the pocket and promptly ignores Dimple’s oh you know what I mean when he blinks the screen on, eyes darting across the notification.

[6:47 AM] moron — 🏹 ☁️:
right behind ya <3

Ritsu blinks down at it, slowly turns his head back, and sees Teruki’s silhouette standing out of earshot down the dirt path. He jumps a little, admittedly, hand to his chest and already rolling his eyes again by the time Dimple’s cackling.

He pockets his phone and waits for Teruki to come close enough to hear him. In the dim light of early morning, he can’t see much of him beyond the outline of his school uniform. “Can you be normal for a minute?” he calls.

“What kinda question is that? No,” the blond replies easily, hands in his pockets and stance rather relaxed, but as soon as he comes closer Ritsu can tell something is… off.

He’s got his head tilted up and he’s looking down at Ritsu along the bridge of his nose, just like he used to act around everyone. He doesn’t do that anymore unless he’s cornered; this is a guarded Teruki. “So what, sir, did you want to discuss? I am a very very busy man so please do keep this short.”

Teruki examines his nails for extra effect, mock disinterest in his eyes, but when he pockets the hand and meets Ritsu’s gaze there is something strained there in the back of that cobalt. Right through his windows, Ritsu sees something different about him, something vaporously guilty that he can’t quite catch up to.

He looks the guy up and down, ignores Teruki’s dramatic tut at his lack of tact. He looks a bit like he’s on a sugar high, too strung up to fully slack his posture, too awake to look tired even though the discoloration under his eyes points to definite sleep loss. Now that he thinks on it, his clothes look a little more wrinkly than normal—and he knows Teruki is adamant about the ironing thing.

But there is something else that yells when everything else whispers, and it’s the fact that Teruki’s usual yellows are now melded with familiar blues and pinks.

Auras stick to clothes sometimes, and Teruki and Shigeo hang out a lot. Ritsu tells himself it’s just lingering traces, and he doesn’t even believe his own words for a second.

“What the hell did you do,” Ritsu glares at him, more like a threat than a question.

Teruki, predictably but still annoyingly, simply tilts his head like he loves to do. “What do you mean?” he lifts a brow, innocent placating smile and the spreading of concealer under his eyes digging into Ritsu’s patience. He knows how to spot it—he does it himself.

What’s concerning is that Teruki didn’t even do it well; the blond knows how to apply make-up just fine. And Teruki Hanazawa doesn’t halfass anything.

Dimple, it seems, is starting to catch on. “Wow you look like shit,” he mumbles, a tint of skepticism in his tone.

Teruki’s face drops and he gives the spirit a flat look. “Thank you, old man.”

“Something happened to Shige,” Ritsu cuts in, patience sanded down until the dust of it hits his dry throat, “What did you do?”

The blond rakes his eyes over him, and to others it might look like boredom, but Ritsu knows Teruki. This is tension, thick and creeping. This is an odd, out-of-place disquiet in his gaze, and he’s beginning to fear his more ludicrous suspicions were correct. There’s no way Teruki would… No. He’s not like that. Ritsu is friends with the blond too, and he’s not friends with people like that.

“What makes you think it was my doing?” Teruki asks, and Ritsu cannot help but notice it’s done carefully, slowly, like he’s smoothing out the hackles along his back.

“One, because his aura is all over you. Two, because Tome and Shige never fight,” Ritsu points at him, red in his eyes sharp. He’d ruled Tome out a while ago; she’s not the type to keep tension between friends standing for very long, at least not anymore. “You guys do all the time.”

It seems to break his guard, because Teruki’s stern look drops and he raises both hands and tsks while they slap back down to his sides. Ritsu notices he’s wearing a glove on his other hand. “What is it with everybody thinking we fight all the time?” he seemingly asks the air in a breathier tone, and then his attention swings back to Ritsu and he furrows his brows, “I’m starting to think it’s just a Kageyama thing.”

“Shige came home the other night and wouldn’t go anywhere near me. He was super dodgy, aura really dark and weird, and he wouldn’t answer any of my questions,” Ritsu narrows his eyes, steps closer, “He was scared, Teru. And he’s been weird since—well, weirder than his recent weird.”

Teruki’s eyes soften instantly. “He was scared?”

“Yes,” Ritsu lets out in a softer tone, dials back a bit on the murder stare. He knows the blond—it takes a unique, well-balanced mix of gentle and terse to get any information out of him. “It was worrying, Teru. I’m fucking worried. Please just tell me what the hell I can do to fix it.”

Dimple’s gaze flits to him oddly, but Ritsu ignores it. He ignores the slip-up. “Tell me what you did.”

Teruki isn’t looking at him. He’s staring off into the dirt path, expression tight and bothered, and then he's sighing and running a hand through his hair.

“Look—I didn’t mean to scare him, I didn’t. It was—I was trying to help. But it went wrong, and…” he pauses, gaze wandering over Ritsu’s shoulder somewhere far off, remorse settled into his eyes very solidly,  “—and it scared him. Rightfully so, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?” Ritsu grits out, desperate, “What were you doing?”

The blond hesitates. “I’m… not really sure it’s my story to tell,” he glances at him, apologetic. The sun rises up and glares between the gaps of the city skyline, hitting the edges of his figure in the faintest hints of gold.

Ritsu watches the way his expression changes carefully; it morphs in the taut silence, going from thick emotion to thick emotion quicker than he can follow. And then he opens his mouth again.

“Although…” Teruki murmurs, soft and quiet and half-mumbled to himself as he stares away at the dirt. He’s fidgeting with his hands, rubbing his fingerpads together in a distracted hush. “I think maybe it’s getting to the point where it shouldn’t be a secret…”

That’s the breaking point. If Teruki is worried, then everyone should be. “What do you mean?!” Ritsu grills louder, steps forward and forward until he’s backing Teruki up along the dirt path, “Just fucking tell me what’s wrong with him—!”

Ritsu reaches out to grab his sleeve, to pull him back before the distance between them is too great, and then Teruki shoves him off with far more force than he braces himself for.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” is barked out, hurried and panicked, but Ritsu’s vision is already warped and he’s immediately thrown back to the dirt.

A wave of energy lurches through his chest and rips at his own blues and purples, but the swipes are desperate and frightened, not aggressive, and they don’t hurt nearly as much as he’s expecting. He’s tossed away and his back smacks against the metal frame of his bicycle, a jolt of agony shooting up his spine as he and the aluminum tumble to the ground.

He hears Dimple yell something along the lines of hey hey, no fighting! but Ritsu is already scrambling to get his arm untangled from the metal frame and whipping his head up to the blond.

The air between him and Teruki is warped and distorted with a familiar barrier, yellows and pineapples cutting through the air, but there is an even more familiar addition now. Cotton candy tones reflect along it like an iridescent paint job, melded with Teruki’s proud shades harmoniously only to overshadow and overpower them.

The barrier wobbles and croaks out odd, desynchronized hums, like it’s fighting for stability and control over which shades take leadership. Ritsu can feel it in the air, the push and shove of electric currents that are the same and yet different, growling and snapping at each other when one makes a move the other doesn’t agree with. It’s unlike anything Ritsu’s ever seen—he’s never witnessed energy that fights with itself.

The humming is almost too loud, even when Ritsu knows it’s barely a whisper against the air. He feels it more than he hears it; a low rumble in his chest, but it feels wrong, it feels unnatural, like it’s scraping against his soulskin like sandpaper. He winces at the grainy noise that fills his head, his own energy pulsing back against whatever this is, confused and agape in shock and—

The funnel of power to the barrier cut outs and it blinks away instantly, the hum and the grain gone from his head like it was never there to begin with, but he can feel traces of it leaking from his friend’s chest still, oozing like a cut.

“Please,” Teruki huffs out, hands stuck out in front of him and eyes wide, and only now does he notice that the blond’s hands are trembling. It’s an ever-so thing, just barely there, but once Ritsu sees it, it sticks—they shake even when everything is calm again, even when the quiet of the early morning comes back and the dust around Ritsu’s fallen form settles.

“I mean it,” the blond gulps, “You’ll get hur—”

“That was Shige’s.”

Teruki clamps his mouth shut with an audible click of his teeth, looking like he suddenly wants to exit this conversation, and Ritsu rises from the dirt and swipes at his clothes before he has a chance to run off.

“That was Shige’s energy. That was Shige’s blast,” Ritsu growls lowly, because he is very, very intimately familiar with it and maybe he says it a little aggressively, but he’s currently trying to shake old trauma from his limbs, so he cuts himself some slack, “You… took his powers.”

Teruki levels him with a wary glance. “He offered a chunk of his powers,” he corrects, hands up in a surrender motion. They’re still shaking, even the gloved one. Ritsu wonders how long they’ve been doing that. “He needed it. They’re building up.”

Ritsu’s throat closes. “What the fuck do you mean they’re building up?”

Teruki clicks his tongue, struggling to explain, but Dimple floats up beside them and cuts in. “Woah, hold on, hold on,” he makes leveling motions with his little hands, “What do you mean a chunk? Because that right there, inside of you, is a lot of energy.”

“I—” Teruki hesitates, and then straightens and sighs, defeated, “Okay, okay, I—yes, it’s a lot. But that’s the problem. He needed a break from it, it’s been building up a lot, and I offered to take a little bit to… ya’know. Ease the burden.”

“Then why do you have so much?” Ritsu blinks.

“Because the energy that’s in him right now is insane,” Teruki enunciates, hand motions all over the place to emphasize his point. Reigen’s mannerisms have bled into him. “Seriously. Completely fucking unfathomable. This is a tiny chunk of it—he gave me a drop and I—”

He pauses, gulps. Something in his eyes is scared, but Ritsu has a feeling it’s not for himself. “I don’t have no idea how he’s functioning right now.”

Ritsu exchanges wide glances with Dimple, and he feels a deep dread starting to boil in his stomach. “That’s—okay. Okay,” he breathes, mostly to calm himself, as he glances away.

“Is that why the kid acted so scared when he came home?” Dimple asks, “It was too much for your vessel, wasn’t it?”

Teruki nods, raking anxious fingers through blond. “You could say that.”

Ritsu’s thinking. Teruki didn’t hurt Shigeo, Shigeo accidentally hurt Teruki. That’s why he’d been so scared, why he’d inched through the front door like he wasn’t allowed inside, why he’d flinched away from Ritsu’s greeting and wouldn’t come anywhere near him. That’s why he’d locked himself in his room and skipped dinner that night. That’s why he’d been weird and distant and quiet yesterday too.

It’s happening again. History is repeating itself. It’s fucking happening again.

“Then—I’ll take some of his energy too,” Ritsu blurts, staring through Teruki’s uniform while he conjures up desperate ideas, “Between three ESPers it’s bound to—”

“No,” Teruki snaps, and Ritsu darts his gaze up to see lapis stabbing coldly through his face, “Did you not hear what I just said?”

“But this time it’d be three people sharing the burden, that’s bound to—”

“That wouldn’t be enough.”

“I’ll ask Sho, he’d be willing! A—And Serizawa adores Shige, he’d be down—”

“Ritsu stop.”

“I matched his powers last winter! It was only for a moment, but I could do it! I can hold a lot of energy, I’d be—”

“This is way bigger than last winter, Ritsu!” Teruki barks in his face, and Ritsu steps back away from the cold aura that surrounds him and crackles with power, “Last winter is nothing compared to this!”

Panic is gripping him. He needs to calm down. “We can handle it! If we all take a chunk of his power and learn to control it then—”

Teruki moves, stern eyes flicking down to his right hand, and he rips off the glove and shoves his digits in his direction. “No. We can’t.”

Something cold grips his chest.

Teruki’s hand is cracked, glowing white fissures embedded deep in his skin that look red and raw and painful. They spiderweb out from the center of his palm and crawl over his knuckles, overtaking the tendons and spreading out along his wrist where they disappear into Teruki’s sleeve. 

His hand trembles ever so slightly still, and when he feels the sheer energy pouring from the wounds, he understands now why Teruki looks like he’s on a sugar high. If he listens closely enough in the haunting silence, he can hear the high-pitched whine of pure vigor emanating from the cracks.

He hears Dimple gasp. Ritsu cannot find it in himself to look away, even when the sight makes him a little sick. “Teru…”

Teruki blocks out the glare of the sun with his silhouette. All Ritsu can see when he looks up is his bright eyes that reflect the light from the cracks, staring deeper into his soul than he thought was possible. “I mean it, Ritsu. I’m not gonna let you do that. And Shige sure as hell isn’t gonna let you even suggest it after what he saw.”

He speaks lowly, the warning choking his voice until it’s taut and quiet. Ritsu wonders what Shigeo saw. He feels he shouldn’t ask.

“Are you okay?” he asks instead.

Teruki leans away from him, gaze darting off as he slowly slips the glove back on his hand. “I’ll be fine,” he answers in a breath that sounds decidedly not fine, “My vessel’s able to handle it, just barely. I’ll eventually use the energy up and then maybe I can actually sleep.”

Ritsu watches him slip the glove back on, thinking over his words from earlier. “You said… this was a chunk…”

“Yes,” Teruki answers, “And no, I don’t think he’s sleeping either. He can’t be.”

“Great,” Ritsu croaks numbly, “Awesome.”

Why didn’t Shigeo tell him any of this? Why did Ritsu have to resort to interrogating his partner for information? Why does Ritsu have to dig up answers like he’s searching for some hidden ancient artifact? He’d told Shigeo—he’d proved to Shigeo—that he’s not afraid of him. He’s past that. He’s okay.

He’d thought Shigeo was okay too. Did he miss something? Was he not fast enough to spot it?

“Though—” Teruki sighs out, shoulders dropping as he leaves the cold gaze behind and looks at him with a level head, “—I have a suspicion I wanna test.”

Ritsu looks up. Anything. Give him anything to work with. “Yeah?”

“You know how I’ve been keeping an eye on those little Claw leftovers? And how I mentioned they’re starting to organize again?”

Ritsu nods slowly, seeing where he’s going with this. They’d destroyed Claw a long while ago, but there’s always loyal subjects that follow in their gone leader’s footsteps. Idiots with pitiful abilities, thinking that if they try hard enough, they can copy the boss and do it better. “You think they have something to do with Shige’s powers suddenly growing so much?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Teruki ponders, hand on his hip and tapping a finger where it rests on his belt. He slides his eyes back to Ritsu from where he’d let them wander to the powerlines, gaze hardening with that mischievous glint. “Either way, I think a visit would be fun. Gotta kick em’ while they’re down, yeah?”

Ritsu matches his resolve, opens his mouth with a sharp grin, but then Dimple cuts in. 

“Absolutely not.”

They both turn to him like deer in headlights. “Oh? And why is that?” Teruki ventures, unbothered.

“I am not letting you kids fight with Claw again, not after that clusterfuck,” Dimple grunts, little arms crossed in front of ghostly green as he pauses, and then adds, “without me in on it.”

Teruki and Ritsu’s grins return, slid onto their faces evilly with sharp angles and sharper teeth, and Teruki raises his ungloved hand in between them all. Ritsu senses him hold his crackling aura to his center as tight as he can to not hurt him at the touch.

“Tonight, after school. Junkyard first,” Teruki smiles, “I know where their dumb little hideout is. We plan an ambush, we find the information we need, and then we burn the place. Deal?”

Ritsu grins and grips his hand. They’ll help Shigeo, one way or another.

Chapter Text

“Mob! Just the person I wanted to see!”

He moves his gaze from his curry like it’s heavy and dragging on air, and he meets Mezato with a blank look. “Oh. Hi.”

Mezato plops down on the bench across from him with a heavy thump, her lunch tray clanging against the laminate. The chatter of the cafeteria is already loud enough, and he stifles a wince at her noisy entrance, rubbing a finger against his aching temple.

The lights of the school cafeteria are too bright and the way the sun reflects off the tabletop from the windows makes his very eyeballs ache. He picks at his lunch without much gusto, chopsticks swirling around sauce.

“... Not feelin’ hungry?” Mezato asks after a few long beats, and Shigeo hums out a noncommittal answer, glancing up at her.

“What did you want?” Shigeo asks in a tone that’s perhaps a bit too short.

Mezato makes a face, clearly not offended, but put-off nonetheless. “Can I not just see my friend and have lunch with him? Without some other dubious agenda?” she rolls her hand around while she talks, and Shigeo meets her gaze head-on.

Her facade slips. She sighs. “Okay, okay, I get it. Sorry. But this is interesting!” she leans forward, raising up a little notebook in her hand that she unclips and pulls open, rifling through the pages, “Apparently, everybody’s phones at school have been acting really weird.”

Shigeo blinks. “Okay.”

Mezato plows forward. On a good day, Shigeo would admire her tenacity. Today isn’t a good day. “They’ve been glitching and shutting off randomly, sending muddled texts to numbers people don’t have in their contacts. And normally this would be weird, but not a super big cause for concern, ya’know? Things happen, anomalies come and go—”

Shigeo thinks that anomalies are a pretty big concern, but Mezato’s priorities seem to be elsewhere. “But get this!” she slaps the table lightly, turning her notebook around to face him. He sort of dreads looking at it; her writing is a little messy, and looking at letters hasn’t resulted in productive things for him today.

She points to sections of text with the end of her pencil, sharpened down over the weeks to half of its original length. “There are way more cases of this happening in this particular class. Not super narrowed down, but now I know it’s probably not the teachers causing this, ‘cause they rotate. It’s gotta be one of the students, or something inside the classroom.”

Shigeo follows slowly, and a little distantly, perhaps. Her voice feels a bit like jello; it doesn’t help that the rest of the cafeteria drowns out half of her words. “Is there a reason you think somebody is doing this and not… ya’know… just bad reception or something?”

Mezato ticks her finger back and forth like a grandfather clock. “Mob, Mob, Mob… First of all, bad reception does not cause phones to overheat and explode—actual case here, by the way—and second of all, don’t you want it to be some weird, paranormal thing going on?”

“Uhm,” Shigeo tries, deciding between the “correct” answer in Mezato’s head and the correct answer in basic morality, “No?”

She blinks, and then slumps, eyes lidded as her neckerchief almost dips into her vegetables. “Simpleton, Mob. Simpleton! Don’t you like excitement?”

Shigeo stares at her blankly, hoping the message is clear. It is, because Mezato jabs the page of her notebook with the end of her pencil, etching a dark line down the paper accidentally.

“What I was getting at is that it’s you, Mob,” Mezato drawls, tapping the paper. Shigeo glances down at the words she points at, something about… Takenaka… noise… ask Kageyama. “I was asking around earlier. Takenaka—ya’know, the dude who’s also an ESPer and reads minds? Yeah, he said you’ve been putting off some crazy noise from your head lately!

“I asked him for how long, and the time frame matches up perfectly with the first cases of phones acting strange,” Mezato preens, looking alight with victory. Shigeo’s core feels at the opposite end of the spectrum. “You’ve even messed with the teacher’s computers—lucky break for us!”

“I’m doing this?” Shigeo breathes over the low rumble and chatter of the cafeteria, chopsticks forgotten and dropped into his curry. Mezato looks back at him, startled by the shock in his tone. “I’m… I blew up that person’s phone?”

She backpedals, because that’s what she always does. She barrels forward fast, falls in the mud, and then doubles back and turns around right before the finish line. “Well—I mean I guess? Yeah. Oh but don’t worry, he didn’t get hurt or anything. I don’t think. Probably not.”

Shigeo moves his gaze down to her book, her notes on all the things he’s messed with, all the strings of code he’s mixed up, all the money spent on that phone he’d apparently destroyed. He desperately wants to ask to read it now, to study every line and see exactly what he’s done by simply existing. He knows that will just make him feel worse, but in the end, he sort of deserves it.

He opens his mouth to ask, moves his hand to reach for it. Agony cracks at his chest before he can get a word out.

His breath shudders out in an odd cough, and he hears Mezato say something, shift in her seat and look at him oddly, but he’s too busy grabbing at the fabric of his uniform right where his heart is. Grain seethes at the edges of his vision and he grips the particleboard of the table with white knuckles, staring through his curry sauce until the image doubles, then triples.

Nausea eats at him and looking at his untouched lunch no longer seems like a good idea, so he squeezes his eyes shut and bites down on his tongue to stifle the noise in his throat. It all comes in a wave of dry heat and graveled throbs, licking at his nerves and chopping at the endings.

And then it disappears. Everything instantly stops and then everything instantly starts again, the chatter of the cafeteria booming in his ears much louder than he expects, and he jumps at the sudden influx of sensory overload. Mezato’s voice carries above it all, hurried and loud against his throbbing skull.

“—ou okay?! What’s wrong?” she frets as he gets his bearings, breathing hard against the laminate that he shifts away from to sit back up, “Oh my God, you’re not having a heart attack are you?!”

“No,” Shigeo gets out, just barely. What little he’s eaten the past few days comes up his throat, and he presses the back of his wrist against his mouth to keep it down. His middle shakes and trembles—his hands do much the same as he does his best to loosen his iron grip on the table.

His vision recenters and he stops seeing doubles, and he gulps down the sick in his throat and stands up from the bench abruptly. Mezato stands up too, matches him in height, and it takes everything Shigeo has to look her in the eyes.

They’re wide, but resolute, and Shigeo really, really hopes she doesn’t latch onto this. “What is going on with you?” she murmurs against the cafeteria noise lowly.

Shigeo picks up his tray with shaking hands, aftershocks of pain raking through his chest. “It’s none of your business.”

He feels bad instantly, but he doesn’t stick around to see her reaction. He simply turns and he stalks across the cafeteria on unsteady legs, wondering what the hell just happened.

+

“You’ve gotta step it up, kid.”

Shigeo looks down at the red 67 circled along the top of his worksheet numbly. A pen comes to point at it, like it’s not obvious, and he feels a rush of deja vu—somehow, he thinks more people will come to him and point at papers showing what he’s done wrong later today too.

The classroom behind him is empty, the bell from a whole sixty seconds ago still ringing in his ears like afterimages in his eyes. He can hear the faraway chatter of students milling about the halls, walls muffling their laughs and yells. He feels every bang of a locker with his whole chest, and he does his absolute best to keep his eyes on the teacher’s table.

Mr. Endo taps the tip of his pen along the numbered questions, rolled up into the barrel so he doesn’t blot ink over his messy scrawlings. “The way these are written out, it seems like you’ve got the whole thing backwards,” he says, and Shigeo feels some part of him deflate at it, “Your brother’s handwriting isn’t on this one—I assume you’ve been forgoing the help?”

That seems like a low blow, but Shigeo shakes his head politely anyway. “I wanted to try it myself, sir.”

“Oh so you… did indeed try?” Mr. Endo has never been a famously kind man, but he seems to be particularly irritated today. Shigeo wonders if this is the source, or if something else happened and he decided to take it out on him. “‘Cause I’m gonna be honest kid, it feels like you didn’t.”

It hurts more than it ought to. He’s not sure why it stabs him so hard—maybe it’s because Shigeo did this worksheet instead of sleeping last night. Maybe it’s because he worked on it with every belonging taped down to his desk lest they float. Maybe it’s because he wrote the equations with music playing so loudly in his headphones that it drowned out his partner’s echoed screams in his mind.

He did try. “I did try.” He tried really hard. “I tried really hard.”

“That’s what they all say, kid,” Mr. Endo grunts while he leans back in his chair. His wrinkled face squints down at the pages. “This looks like laziness to me.”

Shigeo stands there. It feels more like a slap than when he was actually slapped by a teacher in That Place, and he stands there like he’d been told to stand there, upright and embarrassed and cheek stinging as the rest of the class moved on without him.

Something rattles on Mr. Endo’s desk. Shigeo darts his gaze to it, a paper weight, keeps it pinned there forcefully.

“If you don’t try now, you’re not gonna get the chance to try later, when it actually matters. Out in the real world,” Mr. Endo speaks, like he’s not burying Shigeo’s will to succeed himself, “You skimp on success now, you skimp on success later.”

That sounds kind of exhausting. He has a feeling his definition of “success” is different from Mr. Endo’s. He keeps going, fiddling with the pen in hand and twirling it between his fingers. “Laziness will not be tolerated in my classroom.”

“I did try,” Shigeo repeats, because it’s one of those moments where he’s so full of everything that he gets stuck. He clenches his hands at his sides, willing the words to get unlodged, but they simply come out again. “I did try.”

Mr. Endo raises a brow at him. “And you got an F. Try harder.”

“I did try.”

“I heard ya, kid,” Mr. Endo drawls, waves a hand at him dismissively, “I’m just tellin’ ya. You’re gonna have to pick up the slack.”

“I d—” Shigeo stops himself from saying it again, just barely, and the rest of it eeks out into pitiful little separated syllables. Mr. Endo looks at him oddly, and Shigeo cannot find it in himself to meet his gaze anymore, so he drops it to the corner of the desk where the wood is chipped.

“... You’re dismissed, Kageyama,” he says it like a challenge, or maybe that’s just what Shigeo wants out of him. Maybe he wants this conversation to turn back around on the teacher so he’s simply reading into the shades of pink and making them red. “Take your paper an’ go.”

Shigeo moves like he’s in molasses, presses his fingers against his failed assignment and slides them across the table to pick it up. He holds it in both hands awkwardly, staring at the top of the page where the white of the papers meets the white of the floor tiles.

He turns, and he leaves without a word. When he gets outside of the school, he lights the paper on fire with a snap.

+

The smell of tea and office supplies hits him as soon as he opens the door, and his very core seems to sag in relief.

The hinges creak minutely as he trudges through the threshold, the office illuminated by the slats of sunlight through the blinds. There’s a lingering aroma of plant life and soil ever since Reigen had decided to introduce more greenery here, and Shigeo likes it. His crackling aura seems to enjoy it as well, pouring out over the tiled floor and prodding at the leaves of a monstera.

“Afternoon, Shigeo!” Serizawa beams from his desk, purple halftone pulsing at the sight of him, and Shigeo feels something in him relax at such a genuine greeting.

“Afternoon,” he says, hearing clambering in the back and a dramatic curse echoed against the walls. He pays it no mind, really, and neither does Serizawa, so Shigeo sets his school bag down on the floor and settles into the sofa.

It’s slow and manual as he relaxes every muscle one by one, and he rests his neck over the back of the couch and sinks into it like he’s melting. A long sigh sounds from his nose, slow and manual just like everything else, and he lets his lids flutter shut when the exhaustion pulls at them, breaths steady and quiet.

“Wow,” Tome says, materializing beside him, “I think that was the longest-suffering sigh you’ve ever made.”

“Long day” Shigeo mumbles out, slitting an eye open to look at her. Her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail—he recognizes a red hairpin there as one of Teruki’s old ones she “borrowed” until time itself had claimed it her’s.

He smiles a little when he remembers how Teruki never fails to say hey nice hairpin who’d you steal it from? whenever he sees her wearing it.

“Yeah?” Reigen frowns down at him as he comes up behind her, making his way around the coffee table in the middle of the room. He reaches out and wordlessly offers the cup of tea in his hands to him, fingers holding it by the rim. “Who do I need to beat up?”

Shigeo lifts his head from the back of the couch and takes it, feeling warm at the thought of Reigen offering his own just like that. He isn’t even scheduled to work today, and he hadn’t told them he was coming. “Nobody,” he breathes out a chuckle into his tea, watching the water ripple, “You’d get arrested.”

“I ain’t afraid o’ no jail,” Reigen hardens his face.

“Yes you are.” Tome and Shigeo layer together.

A beat, and then Reigen slumps away from the steely facade. “Okay yeah I am, but—” he grins, digging through his pockets, “—anything for Mob.”

Shigeo blinks up at him, chest cottony and warmed even though he hasn’t even taken a sip of his tea. He brings his lips to the rim of his cup to hide his smile as he watches Reigen rummage through his pockets. He finds his phone, flips it open.

“Well now you can relax, kiddo,” Reigen smiles easily, and then grimaces, pointing at Tome who settles down next to him on the couch, “... with Tome. Sorry—exorcism downtown.”

“Am I not enough for him?” Tome shoots him a knowing, daring look over the rim of her cup. Reigen avoids the laser that is her gaze with practiced skill, whirling around and beckoning Serizawa to pack up.

“That’s okay,” Shigeo smiles easily, sipping slowly at his tea. For the first time in a while, he actually tastes something on his tongue that isn’t pure fizz.

Rustling takes over the office as they grab everything they need, Reigen bothering to come over and ruffle his hair. Shigeo shrinks down into the couch but he smiles against it nonetheless, hair a frizzy mess by the time his Master is out the door.

Serizawa follows, smiling warmly at him like he always does. “Nice seeing you, Shigeo!” he waves, shutting the door behind him with a gentle click.

And then it’s quiet.

Shigeo plops his head down against the back of the sofa again, resting his eyes. The hum of the office is a very familiar one, and the tone of the revolving fan in the corner brings highs and lows to the song that lull him in a breathy calm. The clock on the wall ticks, steady and infinite. Shigeo’s heart beats in tandem, rhythmic and resting.

It would be calming, if not for Tome’s constant, loud sipping.

It’s deliberate, he knows, because when he opens his eyes again and swivels his head to glance at her, she is already staring at him. She continues to slurp up her tea in the loudest, most obnoxious way possible, deadpan stare directed straight at the eye bags under his gaze, and she doesn’t stop even once to take a breath.

“What?” Shigeo asks, amused.

“You never answered him,” Tome says, voice echoed oddly into the cup she still holds against her mouth. When Shigeo blinks at her, lost, she puts it down and rolls her hands around like she’s trying to whirlpool the words out of his head. “Who do we need to beat up?”

Shigeo snorts and looks away, tracing the ceiling tiles with his tired gaze. “I said nobody.”

“Hmmmm yeah I don’t accept that,” she shakes her head, chin in her hand as she looks down at him along the bridge of her nose, “Wrong answer. Try again.”

He rolls his eyes playfully, thinking for a beat. “I guess you’d be beating up Mr. Endo.”

“Mr. Endo,” Tome echoes like he’d just uttered the devil’s name, throwing her head back for flair, “The very picture of evil.”

“Well I don’t know about that.”

“What’d he do? Catch you for chewing gum? Yell at you for sharpening your pencil?” Tome leans forward with each guess until she’s practically over top him, “Rake you across the coals for answering two instead of five?”

“No,” Shigeo laughs softly, gently shoving her away, “He… He called me lazy for getting an F.”

A beat. “I’ll burn his house down,” like she’s reciting the weather forecast.

Shigeo laughs, and it feels really, really nice. “No you won’t.”

“I’ll dox him online.” Her attempts at sparking light back into his eyes are unique and a bit unconventional, but Shigeo appreciates it so much. He wants to hug her but he’s too busy laughing.

“I will fill his shoes with mustard. Watery mustard.”

“No—you—you won’t,” he giggles, struggling not to spill his tea.

“I will, my liege. On the morrow, justice will have been served.”

“S—Stop it,” Shigeo grins, shoving her shoulder weakly, and she simply smiles back at him, unmoving from her spot and from her evil, evil ambitions.

“He will know fear.”

“He won’t—” Shigeo breathes out—

And immediately sucks it back in when that agony in his chest whales again.

The edges of his vision go dark and it’s all tunneled to the center where he suddenly sees the tiled floor instead of his tea. There’s something wet in his lap and he hears a clatter as his hand lunges for his chest, fisting at the fabric of his uniform, clawing at the buttons. The noises of the office drain out from his ears instantly, the tick of the click gone, the hum of the fan replaced by static snowfall.

His aura wrenches away from his core and pushes against his skin, begging for air, asking when his skull will explode so it can breathe. It all writhes and yells and burns, and it’s searing, and the skin along his chest feels raw with pain and the core right beneath feels wet with agony. He can feel how it spreads, how it inches along outwards from his heart and explores the unscarred, untouched skin there, stabs it like a hooked scorpion stinger and drags.

Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

Tome is shouting. He desperately wants to tell her it’s okay, that he’s fine, but he doesn’t feel it at all and even if did he couldn’t speak, not with way his teeth clench together so hard he thinks they’re cracking.

It’s easing. It’s slow this time, but it’s easing, and once the ache passes back through the unbearable threshold he gasps out air and sucks it back in like he’s mad for it, like he’s drowning. He breathes against the sweltering heat blooming in his middle like some sort of strange after effect, wet coughs and stuttering inhales rasping against the wood of the coffee table.

He’s on the floor. He doesn’t remember falling, or gripping the corner of the table, or spilling his tea and letting the hot liquid drench his lap, luckily not hot enough to burn. Shigeo blinks against the static in his vision, gasps coming out ragged and gravelly.

Something is wrong.

Tome’s voice floods in his ears, thick with panic. Shigeo forces himself to raise his head.

She’s holding her phone in one shaking hand, her other on his back that he just now notices. She’s shaking her head back and forth as she hits buttons that don’t seem to do anything, face twisted into panicked frustration. “It’s not working—”

He sees books and papers and folders behind her, floating in the air. On instinct, he cuts the metaphorical cord, and everything comes crashing down to the floor as once. It makes Tome jump, and she jerks her gaze up at him. “Oh— Mob, can you hear me?! Are you—?!”

“I—I’m okay,” Shigeo gets out in unsteady syllables, his hand still clawed and buried in his wrinkled up uniform, and even though he knows it isn’t helping, he can’t find it in himself to remove it yet, “I’m—i—it’s okay. I’m okay.”

“You’re okay my ass! What was that?! We need to get you to the hosp—”

Something is wrong. He can feel it, something is wrong.

He doesn’t even entertain her idea of a hospital, or whatever she’s talking about, because he knows this isn’t something they can diagnose. This is something else. This is beyond their field, and when it clicks in his head he moves to stand no matter how dizzy it makes him.

“Mob—! Sit down, I really don’t think you should be—” Shigeo ignores her, and he feels bad, but he needs to see. He needs to check. Something is wrong.

There’s a pinprick in his hand and he looks down, sees his fingers clenched into the wood of the coffee table so firmly he’d cracked it in half. The splinters dig into his skin, draw blood that trickles from his nails and drips onto the laminate. He wonders how much that costed. More than his allowance, he’s sure.

He moves around her, ignores her pleas to stay seated. She grabs at his arm, something like Mob please you’re scaring me pouring from her mouth, and something about that makes his skin crawl and old memories resurface, but he can’t find it in himself to open his clenched teeth so he simply shrugs her off.

He hurries across the office, to the bathroom, in an unsteady gait. Tome follows. “Mob there is something wrong—” Yes. There is something wrong. “—we need to go to the hospital, don’t you dare just act like this is—!”

He stumbles into the bathroom and slams the door in her face. She yells through it, tries the knob, but he has his bloody fingers over the lock a millisecond before she does, and he wins the race.

She’s still yelling through the door, knocking and banging and shouting muffled words that are thick and panicked, and he feels so bad for worrying her like this, but—

Shigeo struggles with the buttons on his uniform, shaking hands fumbling around the plastic so much he’s not even sure if he’s able to unfasten them. He doesn’t bother with the light; the window in here gives off enough sun through the blinds, and once he gets the first button off the others come away quickly too.

His jacket falls to the floor and he goes for his undershirt next, fingers running over flat buttons and getting blood along the fabric. He ignores how he looks in the mirror. He ignores the pale skin and the sweat matting some of his hair to his head. He ignores how tired he looks, how the discoloration under his eyes is starting to turn into inflammation, and how his legs wobble underneath him like they’re stilts.

He ignores Tome’s yells, now desperate pleas have replaced the panicked yelling, and he finally gets his undershirt off. His t-shirt goes next, and—

His chest is cracked.

White fissures, all over the skin. It starts right over his heart in a thick welt of white void, skin around it irritated and inflamed, and it spreads out along his chest and over his collar bone in white lines that glow against the mirror. They rise with his shaky inhales and fall with his wobbly outs, and while it doesn’t… bleed, it sings to him in a high-pitched thrum that’s barely louder than his own heartbeat.

He has seen this in two places before.

He thinks of his partner’s hand, first. He thinks of the liquid mana dripping from every hole of his friend’s face while he screams, of the cracks spreading out along his palm and skin peeling away only to glow with something its vessel cannot contain.

And then he thinks of Sho’s father. Of the burnt afterimage of his body, the sunken-in flesh around his skull, the cracks marring the surface as he screams and shrieks out in manic bursts. As he yells and writhes with no aim, eyes and mouth pouring out energy that he knows will kill him.

Shigeo stares wide-eyed in the mirror. Tome’s thumps against the door sync with his rapid heartbeat.

+

He and Teruki have a study date. In any other timeline, Shigeo can imagine himself going; not in this one.

He winces when Reigen pulls on the bandages too hard, his Master spewing strained apologies left and right and easing up on the pressure. There’s rustling in the background, where Shigeo refuses to look—Serizawa is cleaning the spilled tea on the floor (and the blood), and Tome has been standing stock still three feet away in absolute unnerving silence since Reigen sat him down to patch him up.

The clock on the wall ticks quietly, but Shigeo cannot help but notice the time is several hours off now. Things are still strewn on the floor, soil spilled across the tiles from potted plants that were knocked over. He’d clean it all in an instant for them with his powers, but he’s afraid. He’s afraid to use them.

He holds his phone in his uninjured hand, shooting off a text to Teruki to tell him he can’t come. It feels a bit like a failure—he knows it’ll raise alarm bells in his partner’s head, the fact that he’s ditching him, but he doesn’t have much of a choice, really.

Teruki will see the blood on his clothes. He’ll see the bandages around his fingers. He’ll see his pale skin and his unsteady limbs and he’ll worry like he always worries.

“That feel okay?” Reigen asks, and Shigeo clicks his phone off and moves his bandaged digits. Serizawa had removed the splinters with gentle psychic tugs—the table wasn’t as easily saved as his skin.

Shigeo nods, because he doesn’t trust his voice. He lets his hand plop down into his damp lap with a twinge at the movement, his pants still covered in tea. He sits on his Master’s desk and he hopes he’s not getting it wet. Reigen spends a single second away from him to shift his first-aid kit to the side, and then he’d running a hand over his back, thumbing his shoulder. He gives a little and leans into it, keeping his gaze on his shoes.

“Tome, why don’t you empty the trash, yeah? We’ll need a new bag for the wood chips,” Reigen prods, and Shigeo knows it’s an empty task, but Tome likes doing things with her hands and being occupied, and she takes the out after only a second of hesitation.

Shigeo listens to her shoes thump against the tiles, to the plastic that rustles, to the office door that opens and shuts in a manner that’s a little quicker than necessary. And then Reigen comes to block his view of the mess he’s made of his Master’s office, and Shigeo ducks a little under the shadow he casts.

“First off,” Reigen murmurs, remarkably cool compared to the panicked sputtering from earlier, when they’d come back to see a trashed place and a bloody Shigeo, “I know you want to apologize, and I know you’re drowning in guilt over there, so lemme just make it clear; you do not have to apologize for anything.”

Shigeo looks up at him, opens his mouth to retaliate, but nothing comes and he simply struggles there like a fish out of water. Reigen repeats the sentiment, face firm but gentle. “The table is replaceable. You? Not so much.”

He wants to wring his hands together just to have something to do other than be stared at, but his fingers hurt when they’re rustled about so he simply plays with the seams of his pants with his good hand. Shigeo looks down, nods a little; mentally promises to pay him back for it someday.

“Now; is there a real, justifiable reason you didn’t wanna go to the hospital?”

Shigeo nods, his voice still hiding somewhere. Reigen knows this; he’s dealt with his quiet moments plenty.

“Are you still in pain?” A head shake; a lie.

There’s a moment of silence that’s peppered with Serizawa’s quiet rustling. “Was that a lie?” Hesitation; a nod, because he’s a bit of a coward.

“Mob…” Reigen whispers, shoulders drooping, “I’m worried here. Please, kid, don’t lie to me.”

He thinks that’s the breaking point—maybe for this particular scenario, maybe for the whole day, he isn’t sure—but his throat tightens and his face sours and the bottom of his vision blurs. “I’m sorry,” he croaks out pathetically, head dipping down as his voice drips.

Reigen instantly envelopes him, a big hand cupping the back of his head and another sliding over his shoulder blades, and Shigeo presses his face into his Master’s chest and does his best not to lose it; he already did that with Teruki, and Shigeo doesn’t really enjoy crying in front of his family.

“Shh, Mob, I told you, no apologies,” Reigen murmurs into his hair, holding him tight, “You have nothing to apologize for. Nothing.”

Shigeo sniffles into his chest and listens to the coos and the clock on the wall like they’re lifelines. It’s admittedly been a while since they’ve hugged; he missed this. He missed Reigen a lot—he wonders why, because it’s not like he left.

Serizawa has moved to the bathroom, probably to clean the blood he got on the doorknob and possibly the floor. He thinks about the red on his uniform he’d hurriedly put back on, and how it’s probably getting on Reigen’s suit. His Master doesn’t seem to mind.

“I’m assuming it’s not medical,” Reigen whispers, still holding him, still hugging him close, “Is it your powers?”

Shigeo nods against the lapel of his jacket. Reigen doesn’t tense at the knowledge. Doesn’t show any fear, any resentment, doesn’t tell Shigeo what he already knows about this being a big deal. It’s nice. It’s really nice.

“Do you know what it is?” Sort of. A nod.

“Are you able to tell me?” A shake of the head. No. No, not now. There’s no point—it’d only scare him.

“... Okay,” Reigen says, accepts it instantly and doesn’t push, but he does pull away from the hug. Shigeo sniffles in the absence of the warm, rubbing at his eyes with a palm. “Do you… know what’s causing it?”

A thump from the bathroom. Shigeo shakes his head, looking down at his shoes again.

“... Okay. That’s okay. We’ll figure it out, bud. And hey—”

Shigeo looks up, but Reigen already has both of his hands grabbing his face and lifting it up to meet his gaze, and this feels very familiar.

“We’re here, Mob. I don’t know what’s been going on with you exactly, but whatever it is, we’re here. Every single one of us.” His Master says it with such conviction, such overwhelming certainty that it’s hard to not believe. He says it with such a fierce fire in his eyes that Shigeo is fairly sure that it could never be distinguished. “We’re here for you, Mob.”

Shigeo eyes water all over again, and he nods in Reigen’s hold. He knows.

He knows.

+

Reigen had insisted on driving him home. Shigeo had told him it wasn’t necessary, that he could walk back just fine, but he’d only said it twice and he thinks that was the nail in the coffin for his Master, who was probably expecting more of a fight. Shigeo does his absolute best not to fall asleep on the short drive there, and thankfully (for once) the static is loud enough to keep him from drifting off.

Tome had hugged him fiercely before he left, and he’d hugged back just as tight. He’d apologized for scaring her. She’s punched him in the shoulder and griped at him never to do it ever again, and then hugged him a second time.

Now, he trudges up through the walkway to his house, legs heavy and mind heavier, with Reigen’s gaze searing the back of his skull. He turns the knob, but it’s locked, which is sort of weird because he’s pretty sure Ritsu should be home, but he finds the key under the mat just fine and manages to carry himself through the threshold.

He waves to Reigen before he shuts the door. The car stays there on the side of the road for a few long beats before pulling away.

“I’m home,” Shigeo calls emptily, and when he doesn’t hear a response, he looks up the stairs across from the mudroom, “Ritsu?”

He waits in the silence, soft thumps sounding from his shoes hitting the floor as he slips them off. The house is dead and quiet, no lights on and no sounds of televisions or electronics. He prods through the walls with his aura—no Ritsu.

Shigeo lumbers up the stairs as he searches through his pockets and finds his phone. In a way, he’s sort of glad Ritsu isn’t here—that would mean he doesn’t have to explain the blood on his uniform, or the bandages around his fingers—but he finds it a bit odd. Student council meetings usually end by now.

Maybe he went to Sho’s. Shigeo clicks his phone on, squints through the fizz along the screen that’s ever-present nowadays. His only new message is from Tome.

[5:52 PM] tome tomato ! :
we are Absolutely talking
about that. btw. but sleep
first or else

[5:52 PM] tome tomato ! :
and u better not be doing
homework. if ur not in bed
in the next 18 minutes i am
coming over there and i am
beating u up

He gives his screen a tired smile, and then it fades when he notices that Teruki hasn’t even responded to his last message. His partner is almost always instant with replies, no matter the time. Typing with one hand was never Shigeo’s strong suit; he hopes the blond doesn’t read too much into the errors.

[5:30 PM] Shigeo:
I won’t be albe to come to study
Sory

Shigeo glances below his message and stares at the delivered indicator.

He shoulders his bedroom door open, and his eyes hurt from looking at the screen after such a long day, so he pockets the phone and tosses his bag to the floor. He tells himself Teruki has a reason—hell, the blond unfortunately has a chunk of his powers now, so maybe it’s messing with his phone too.

Teruki is fine, and probably busy. Ritsu is fine, and probably with other friends. They’re fine. They’re fine.

Shigeo sheds his uniform jacket and pulls out his futon in practiced motions. As much as he wants to shower and perhaps change out of his vaguely bloody clothes, he would just like to lie down for a moment, even if it means washing his bedding afterward. He takes the plunge, collapses into his sheets, and it is the most relieving thing he’s felt in a long while.

The sigh he lets out is slow and measured, creaking through his lungs as the tensions drains from his limbs, and he hums contently out into the still air of the house. His eyes slip closed and it feels like it’s been ages since he’s been home even though it’s been a measly, regular ten hours.

Shigeo breathes, slow and steady and thankful for soft blankets. As tired as he feels, he thinks he might even be able to sleep through the popping of static in his veins. He hopes. He wants to try.

In the silence, with his eyes still closed, he prods the world. “Dimple?”

Quiet. Now that’s weird.

If he was at the office, he’d get it. Dimple can only zip across town so fast to answer a soft summon like that, but he wasn’t at the office. Shigeo hasn’t seen him at all today. Not a weird thing in and of itself—Dimple has an afterlife outside of him—but it’s… strange.

Teruki, Ritsu, and Dimple, all quiet and absent. Maybe they’re hanging out… Maybe…

Maybe Shigeo is just tired.

And he drifts, in and out of the waking world in gentle waves of slow breaths. His aura settles against the floor too, seemingly spent from the scares today, and it rolls over the hardwood like mist, billowing and curling. He lies atop his blankets in a lump, weaves between the sounds of the floor vent and the fuzz of dreams.

He doesn’t know how long he drifts for—it feels like both three minutes and five hours—before something jump-starts his soul.

Shigeo jerks awake, sitting up instantly. He presses a hand to his chest, fearing for a moment that it’s another wave of agony, but nothing hurts any more than the dull ache that’s settled there, and he blinks into the silence like he’s waiting for an ambush, stiff like a deer.

The house is stagnant, nothing else in it other than him and his exhaustion, and it proves it with the cold hum it gives back to his mental call. He stares at the walls, at the window, at the electrical socket above the trim. He waits.

And then it comes again. It’s a burst of power right in the corner of his chest, an echo of a familiar pop of blues and pinks, but it feels oddly faraway. Miles away, west to be exact. He doesn’t know how he knows that, doesn’t know what this tugging is, but he turns his head to the pull and moves to stand from his blankets.

Another one—sharp, explosive, and big, and his breath hitches just the tiniest bit when it swirls; it doesn’t hurt, not at all, and he’s oddly… drawn to it.

He feels something else there, in the midst of it. Something lighter, something brighter in tone and quicker in its zips. It’s familiar, very much so, and he wills it to come again so he can grab at the sensations.

Another burst comes, bigger, wider, and as he stares through his bedroom wall like he sees something worth looking at, it comes to him.

That’s his own power.

That’s his own aura, a chunk of it, razing and lashing. And the lighter tone—that’s… that’s his partner’s yellows, quicker and louder in its raging blows. They’re big bursts; if Shigeo is feeling it this far away, they have to be massive. They have to be destructive.

Teruki isn’t like that anymore. He doesn’t just use his powers for fun and for profit, especially not these amounts.

Another burst. It feels… panicked.

Teru.

Chapter Text

“Shigeo just called for me.”

Teruki slits his eyes open, vision blurring around the bubbling green looking at him. The railcar nudges them from side to side in quick jolts, floorboards rumbling under the soles of their shoes. Chatter from the other passengers is quiet and inconsistent, barely heard over the loud mechanisms of wheels on metal rails.

Ritsu lifts his head from Teruki’s shoulder. “Is he okay?” he asks just over the noise.

“Yeah,” Dimple reassures, green waving about in the constant air currents of the railcar, “Felt… worried, but nothin’ beyond that. I think maybe there was some Ritsu in those thoughts too.”

“Did you not tell him you were going to Sho’s or something?” Teruki mumbles, letting his eyes rest again. The buzz in his soul flickers, quiet but hot like a candle.

“... No,” Ritsu sighs, shifting beside him. Teruki doesn’t need to look at him to know he’s probably fidgeting with his uniform. “Didn’t have the heart to lie so I just… didn’t text him at all. He’ll probably think I’m just with other friends.”

“What other friends?” Teruki raises an eyebrow, watching the colors behind his eyelids flicker with the lights spewing through the car windows.

Ritsu elbows him and he grins. He dearly hopes Shigeo isn’t mad at him for ditching their study date; he’d typed out a message before they got on the train, but ever since That Incident Shigeo’s shades have been clogging up his phone signal. The text had still been trying to send when they boarded.

Teruki digs through his pockets and fishes out his phone, slitting an eye open to peek at the jittering screen and the Hello Kitty charm dangling from his case. No new texts from Shigeo, it seems. He looks at the status of his last message. Sending…

Great. Now they’re both ghosting him.

“I’ll admit, I don’t know how I feel about you fighting right now,” Dimple grumbles.

Teruki forces his eyes on him, and they sting under the harsh florescents. He lifts his head from the shuddering wall, leveling a glare at the spirit with a little more frigidity than he means to. “I’ve fought with less sleep.”

Dimple, curse his undead soul, levels the harshness with his own glare. “That doesn’t mean anything, kid. And I’m not just worried about that, I’m worried about your power levels. Fighting with this much energy stored up is dangerous.”

“Fighting is dangerous?” Teruki gives him a mock look of surprise. The passengers in the car give him odd looks as he talks to air, but they’ve probably seen weirder on their daily commutes, and they mostly ignore him. “Huh… Who knew?”

“Stop being a brat and listen to me,” Dimple zips back and forth, little arms crossed. He leaves light trails of green behind that fade as quickly as he moves. “If anything happens to either of you boys under my watch Reigen will kill me! Toss me into whatever realm there is beyond the afterlife; even without powers, he’ll find a way! That’s not even mentioning what Shigeo will d—”

“Shige won’t even know about this if it goes well,” Ritsu cuts in, hushed.

“And I’m telling you it won’t go well with Teru how he is right now!” Dimple gestures to him, and Teruki feels something icy crawl in his lungs at the words. He pushes it down, but it keeps rising up like cracks in a vase. “I thought it was fine earlier, but the longer I’ve had to think about it, the worse the scenarios get.”

Teruki opens his mouth, eyes sharp and teeth ready to sink, but he pauses. He looks at Dimple’s face, really looks at it; the eyes of spirits have always been different from humans in some vague, unexplainable way. He’s always had issues reading their disfigured faces and their many eyes and their five-dimensional movements, but Dimple is one of the few lucky souls that seemed to have taken their humanity past the veil.

And right now, Teruki can clearly see the worry there. The hesitation. He knows Dimple didn’t come with them just to join them in kicking ass. He’s not stupid. He knows Dimple came as a glorified babysitter. And normally that would grate against him, normally that would have him spitting and thrashing at anybody who dare question his ability to take care of himself after seven years of just that.

But maybe babysitter isn’t fair. Maybe babysitter is too harsh, too infantilizing to the both of them. He thinks maybe Dimple is simply a concerned friend, here. A worried adult, looking after kids.

Ever since Reigen and Serizawa signed the adoption papers, Teruki has very quickly learned to appreciate when the adults worry. Not everyone has that.

“... I’ll sleep on the way there,” Teruki settles, knowing for a fact that sleep is not a guaranteed thing, but he’ll try for the sake of Dimple’s conscience, “And if I can, I won’t use my powers at all.”

The honest surprise on Dimple’s face sparks some close cousin of pride in his chest, and he secretly preens and bathes in it. He can feel Ritsu’s wide gaze on him, but he doesn’t look back. “Deal?” Teruki raises a brow.

Dimple studies him, and his demeanor softens. “Deal,” he rumbles quietly, floating down an inch or two, “You gave us the location. Just rest; we’ll wake ya when we get there.”

Teruki crosses his arms and lies his head back against the shaking wall behind him, lids sliding closed. The railcar groans and jostles them for beats he can’t measure, the world hazy and blurred after just a few minutes of relative silence. At some point he hears Ritsu and Dimple whispering somewhere beyond him, in a different realm that’s not laced with drowsiness.

As he drifts in and out, he can’t help but feel a bit selfish for already feeling sluggish from one or two all-nighters—after all, Shigeo has probably been doing this a lot longer.

+

Gold lines the treetops. Ritsu’s footsteps are clunkier and louder than Teruki’s, but he doesn’t comment on it—he already feels bad for moving the guy to the front lines without notice.

The building, to Claw’s credit, looks rather discrete and unassuming; an office on the outside, with perhaps one two many cameras along its corners the only thing giving it away (Ritsu muddles their footage before they even crest the hill). One side of it sings in the sun, golden light blaring along the windows and sparking blind spots in his eyes. He shields himself with a hand until they round the building and step into the shade.

Grass crunches under his shoes. Ritsu’s a pace or two ahead of him, walking a bit agonizingly slow, but the blond supposes caution should always be practiced. Especially since only one of them can safely use their abilities.

Power lines weave above their heads as they walk in silence, all congregating from the treetops and funneling into the building. It’s like a slanted matrix of gashes in the sky from where they stand below it all, and Teruki can almost hear the electricity trickling through the cords. Or maybe that’s just the fizzing in his head.

Ritsu stops and Teruki slows behind him, rounding his shoulders and eyeing the four stories they’ll have to comb through. This might take a while. The blond rummages for his phone, eyeing the Sending… status of his texts to his partner and to his now-parents, and stifles a sigh.

Dimple floats ahead, tossing them a peace sign before he melds through the wall and disappears to the other side. Teruki chances a glance to Ritsu while the spirit scouts, studies the way the wind teases his spikes and the antsy darting of his gaze across the building.

“Nervous?” Teruki grins. He’s not sure if he means to tease him or if he’s genuinely asking; he supposes Ritsu’s answer will decide for him.

“No,” Ritsu answers just a tad too eagerly, and the blond watches him with a calculating stare, sees the way his face twitches and scrunches up and how his shoulders drop just an inch, “... Yes.”

He thinks Ritsu never would’ve admitted that a year ago, and a distant feeling of warmth blooms in his chest for reasons he can’t quite put his finger on.

Teruki remembers the vaguely haunted look in Ritsu’s eyes upon meeting him at the 7th Division. He remembers him waking up in that room, scrambling away from Teruki at the first sight of his movements, watching the blond’s hands as they motioned around with his words like he thought they’d strike instead of emphasize.

Ritsu had teared up at the mere sight of his brother lying there against the wall. Teruki hadn’t known him well at the time, but he’d hazarded a guess that Ritsu usually wasn’t a very big crier. He’d been right—the stress of that day and the attempt on their lives had simply… cracked him a little.

Teruki keeps forgetting that Ritsu is only fourteen. He keeps forgetting that he himself is only one year older.

Why the hell did he bring Shigeo’s brother out here against this?

“Hey,” he murmurs out. He thinks about the words Reigen had barked at Shigeo that day, grabbing his face and begging him to run. Teruki knows Ritsu would never—not in a million years—take an out, so he doesn’t even bother offering one. He gives him the next best thing.

“You’re stronger now. And they’re weaker. And I’m not gonna let anything happen to my buddy,” Teruki grins at him, blue on red, and he winks, “Piece o’ cake.”

The maroon in Ritsu’s gaze shifts and morphs between emotions he can’t quite grasp, but Dimple’s call breaks the trance.

“Coast is clear,” the spirit says, green liquifying through the wall until he pops out on their side. He jabs a little thumb to the left of them. “Nearest room with staff is two doors down on the right.”

Teruki glances at Ritsu, steps back with a flourish, and bows with a hand out. He watches the kid nod after a beat, and then he raises a hand and his aura alights with blueberries and violets, spikes swaying over burning eyes.

The bolts in the wall in front of them tink and creak, metal buckling and twisting as the edges of the tile are sanded away from the pressure. The sounds are muffled and quiet, Ritsu’s control over fine-tuned tasks practiced and confident, and the panel comes off after only another beat of twisting and warping.

It’s slid to sit against the rest of the intact wall, and Teruki smiles, mentally prepping himself as he struts past Ritsu and ducks under the load-baring beams that reveal themselves beneath.

His soles thump against tiled flooring as he enters, an unlit room to greet them with grain in the corners. Teruki locks his eyes on the windowed door that leads into the hall, a single square of light illuminating the edges of desks and tables around him. He waits for Ritsu to duck in after him, and then he grins into the darkness to rid of the anxiety in his stomach.

“Dimple, possess the first person that catches us,” he says into the dark, and then they’re moving.

It’s a stealth-until-caught kind of plan. They prowl through the facility in silence, taking out any staff or scientists that see even a trace of their presence, but Teruki knows they’ll get caught eventually. Claw isn’t completely stupid, even the leftover lackeys—they’re capable of tight security, and it’s rather rare that Teruki gets through an entire hideout without being spotted at least once.

He’s never been very good at stealth, and he prefers taking on the whole wave at the start. But Ritsu is here, the blond’s abilities have affectively been grounded, and Teruki has a feeling Dimple wouldn’t like a brute-force plan. So stealth-until-caught it is, and then they riot.

Teruki rifles through file cabinets while Dimple stands guard at the door, Ritsu clicking into computer files and sparking the towers to glitch through passwords. The quiet hum of silence is always cold and empty in these facilities—he hates the lack of color on the walls and the plastering of metal and plastic everywhere he looks.

He sees plenty of files about past test subjects, and plenty of things he wish he hadn’t read that he’ll definitely fail not to think about in bed tonight, but nothing of relevance. Plenty of torture, plenty of psychological manipulation, plenty of medical tests resulting in slow deaths. He flicks past them, and he thinks his hands shake for a different reason than energy overload.

He does find a report of the 7th Division fall. A folder of reports really, lots of paperwork detailing the figurative demise of the Scars (and the guy who Teruki… actually did kill), the firings of all the lackey staff, the expense reports for damage to the site. He sees Shigeo’s name there, mentioned in passing a couple times in different sections; all of their names are there, even the Awakening Lab kids. Still though, nothing of relevance.

Teruki finds a subject file under the name of Ritsu Kageyama—the folder tab has something that looks like Shigeo scratched out, replaced with Ritsu on a later date in different colored ink.

Teruki burns it with a pinch of energy to his fingertips, and he keeps looking.

“Someone’s comin’!” Dimple hisses out, zipping away from the door, “I think they’re an ESPer!”

“Keep looking,” Ritsu whispers out in a sharp breath, darting away from the computer desk and weaving around tables and cords. Teruki really doesn’t like his back turned to the action, but he puts his faith in the kid and keeps rifling; unlike Shigeo, Ritsu has no qualms about using his powers to hurt.

He hears a shout—voice unfamiliar—and then bursts and volleys of berry and violet rake down the hallways. The ESPer aura feels weak, probably one of the trainees that think they’re hot stuff, but he’s found over time that Ritsu doesn’t often hold back. Teruki is glad for that now.

And then the siren blares overhead.

Teruki curses when his vision is washed in red light, scrambling to stand, but he hears Ritsu’s voice in the doorway and pauses. Keep looking! is shouted over the alarm, Ritsu sweeping an arm out to pin somebody to a wall.

The blond can’t do much but obey, yanking open cabinets and sifting through the folders. The obnoxious horn overhead grates on his nerves and he darts shaky fingers over paper and metal, the room bathed in harsh amber light that whirls and shrinks.

Another cabinet done, another opened. He stands to search through the taller ones, eyes darting to numbers and words that don’t match the ones in his head and discards them with forceful slams, sorting through drawer after drawer. The letters are hard to see in the red.

A glance over his shoulder tells him Dimple has possessed somebody—red cheeks overlaying a manic grin as he makes a labcoated body swipe and kick. There’s a lot of people rushing down the halls, but they must not be ESPers or very strong, because Ritsu is handling them well enough.

He digs and searches and pries, and he’d love to join the fight and get it over with so they can go back to searching in peace, but Dimple was right about the risk of his powers, so Teruki might as well just keep searching. He finds it hard to focus under the blaring alarm; it’s all quick bursts of mutilated noise, echoed against colorless walls, and Teruki grits his teeth through it and keeps scouring.

A presence sneaks behind him, inexplicable and abrupt and extremely, dreadfully familiar, and before Teruki can even think about it, he lashes.

The room detonates.

There is a split second before everything turns white, and he sees the power in the way the screens on the computers crack before he even raises his hand. He sees it in the way the walls bend to the will of altered gravity, sees it in the way the red lights overhead bust and blink out in smoke and seized circuits. The metal of the file cabinets make horrid shrieks that last a nanosecond. His heart stutters.

He doesn’t get to even see the silhouette; Teruki is slammed against concrete by his own energy before he can look.

His vision is white, but he feels pieces of drywall thump against his uniform and spill over his head from the ceiling. Teruki’s whole being shakes, energy swirling in his chest like a whirlpool that sands at his rib cage, and the blaring alarm is echoed and whined in his ears, high and wrong and hitched in odd jolts when his hearing comes in and out.

He’s scrambling already though, something about that presence stuttering his resolve, and he’s struggling to place where he is in the room, if the room is even here anymore. His body trembles from the energy and the cracks glow through his gloved hand—he can see the light pouring through the fabric, dim but there. Every drop of borrowed energy in his gut wants to burst out to follow the first, and Teruki grits his teeth and muscles it down.

And then the voice comes.

“Woah-ho!” they exclaim, and Teruki’s body goes rigid, “That was a lot more energy than you had last time!”

He whirls around, heart thumping, vision shaking as he peers into the white mist of drywall dust and smoke. He can hear the distant sounds of a fight somewhere beyond a wall or two, beyond the ringing. The voices are familiar—they’re shouting his name, but he doesn’t dare keep his focus away from the voice. Not for a second.

Something wet is running down his face. He ignores it. “Actually… your energy is almost completely different now,” the voice says, and it’s still a voice, because Teruki doesn’t want to admit it’s who he’s thinking of until he sees the bastard’s face, “Hm… familiar.”

A pulse, and then the silhouette is right in front of him, and then it’s not a silhouette anymore and Teruki’s stomach sinks.

“I thought I told you you couldn’t beat me, kid,” Shimazaki smirks.

Teruki thrusts a hand forward, desperation taking over logic. More energy than he knows what to do with lams from his palm and connects with Shimazaki’s afterimage, explosion bright and knockbacking. He’s rushed off his feet from the recoil, arm stinging until it feels red and bloated, and he’s already darting his gaze around the white again as he scrambles to recover.

A hand comes from the nothing and grabs his face, and coldness grips his chest in much the same way.

“Something about this isn’t right,” Shimazaki ponders casually as the world flickers and Teruki throws out another volley with blind coordination.

The hand over his face blinks away and the blond is thrown back from his own attack again, spine rapping against floor tiles so hard the scream he lets out is choked and cut. The air in his lungs leaves in a heave that he rolls over and tries to suck back in, the bottom trim of the building in his vision—this is a new hallway, which story are they on?—cracked and weathered away by sheer power.

He struggles to get to all fours on wobbly limbs, gasping in air and coughing up red onto the shattered porcelain. Teruki darts his eyes and staggers to his feet, looking, searching. He does a quick sweep of the place for Ritsu’s energy— is he okay is he okay please tell me he’s okay—

Something hard cracks against his temple. His head bounces off the wall, his vision blurs and shakes, and Shimazaki is already grabbing him again before he can even register the movements.

He sees colorless walls, a kick to his middle, then it’s to computer screens and keyboards where he’s tossed across the table and rammed into the sharp edges of desks and monitors like a ragdoll. Grey, a punch to his nose, greenery and trees and a sharp knock to his chest that sends him barreling through colorless walls again. Blurs of movements, pricks of pain that makes the energy in his gut warp and writhe, movement again, another hit to a body part he forgets he’s in control of.

Teruki is tossed against a television in some break room, the glass shattering and slitting his shoulders, and remarkably when he lands he isn’t immediately teleported to something else sharp. He thuds onto the floor and coughs until his lungs hurt, trembling as he scrambles across the glass-covered tiles to get away from the sound of leather shoes against porcelain.

Oh, hush, Shimazaki mutters, and the speakers blaring the alarm fizzle out all at once, leaving them in dreadful silence.

“This is more energy than you can handle,” Shimazaki smiles into the cold hum of the break room, plain and fake, and Teruki bares his teeth like a dog, “isn’t it?”

“What happened to running?” Teruki grits, swaying to his feet and pinning a hand to a table so he legs don’t give out, “I thought you loved that.”

“I run to where the fun is.” He steps forward. Teruki staggers away. “And this here? Well, it’s pretty fun so far.”

Teruki can still feel Ritsu’s arcs of energy; two floors down. They feel hurried. He cannot let Shimazaki hurt Ritsu. “What have you been doing to Shigeo Kageyama?”

It makes Shimazaki pause; which is a first, which is progress. “Who?”

Teruki snarls. “Shigeo Kageyama. There’s no way you don’t know who that is.” Some of the adrenaline is leaving him. The cuts and the welts along his body ache.

“Hm… rings a bell. But the bell is kinda far away.”

“He’s the ESPer you fucking ran from last time!” Teruki barks out, rabid, “You’ve been doing something to him, now spit it out!”

He screams and he attacks, and he really shouldn’t have, because Dimple had absolutely been right. The energy in his core breaches the surface and Teruki already sees Shimazaki’s figure dissipate before it even makes it across the room.

But when it does, it is blinding.

His senses are obstructed by the pure mana in the air, and he thinks he floats for a moment in bliss before everything erupts. The building shatters, concrete instantly crackling into the millions and every single glass item in the facility shattering all at once, wholly and loudly. The lights bust, the air leaves, sparks fly as the world struggles to swallow up this fucking force of nature that is Shigeo’s energy, and he thinks he screams. Teruki doesn’t even know where the floor is anymore.

He catches Ritsu’s aura right outside the bubble, right at the edge of ground zero, and he holds onto the presence as he falls through nothing. The world suspends itself in a haze of paused time and crackling air and he feels like he’s suspended with it on cords that creak and threaten to snap. He drifts in and out of it, blood bubbling and skin a raw mess of burnt out nerve endings, mana sizzling.

And then he lands in charcoal.

Teruki blinks in and out of existence, he feels—two seconds, two hundred years, six minutes. But then he opens his eyes and his cheek is smooshed up against blackened concrete and he tastes soot on his tongue. He coughs, then hacks, then gags into the ash, body numb and buzzing as his vision triples.

He hears his name being echoed across burnt framework and crumbled concrete. Struggling to all fours, lifting his head, and vaguely feeling blood drip from his chin, he sees a distant blurred figure clambering over debris to get to him, green dot zipping right behind him.

A shoe kicks him to his back and stomps on his chest, and he whistles out a cough and throws another burst.

It sparks pitifully against Shimazaki’s own barrier, his own yellows and nothing else wheezing.

“Looks like you’re all out,” Shimazaki presses his shoe farther into Teruki’s chest, and he feels blood dribbling out from the corner of his mouth and trickling down his jawline. He wheezes at the pressure. “Man. You had so much of that you didn’t even know what to do with it. All of that power used up in a few minutes… impressively bad budgeting there.”

Teruki stares at his outstretched hand, trembling in the ashy air as stray pieces of his now shredded-away glove sway from his fingers. The cracks in his skin aren’t glowing anymore—they’re dark and empty, deep fissures that no longer sing with energy but simply make the red and raw edges throb.

Past his fingers, where his vision blurs and teeters, he sees Shimazaki open his mouth.

“Get away from him!” he hears Ritsu scream, footfalls scrambling atop ash and glass, and Teruki swivels his head and thrusts out one last bit of energy.

A yellow barrier manifests between them, warping and wobbling with a weak structure and even weaker consistency, and Ritsu could probably wave the damn thing away with his mind, but Teruki knows he won’t because it’s his.

Ritsu follows it to a T. He sprints up and hesitates when it shimmers in the evening light, and his hands bang against the surface. Ritsu looks at him with such a terrified expression the blond regrets ever bringing him here. “Teru?!” he yells through the distorted air.

Teruki slides his gaze back to Shimazaki, moves his tongue to test the words in his numb mouth. “Let ‘im talk,” he breathes.

A beat of silence, of Ritsu looking at him like he’s crazy, and then Shimazaki chuckles, short and loose. “Hm. You were the smart one of the bunch, weren’t you?”

Shimazaki breathes in, hunches up his shoulders, lets them fall again. “To answer you, I don’t think Claw is behind… whatever it is that you suspect. We haven’t done anything to your precious Shigeo Kageyama. We’d be fools to. Surely you know that.”

The revelation is something Teruki doesn’t know how to feel about. Mainly because his body and mind has seemingly forgotten how to feel anything.

Shimazaki taps his chest with the toe of his shoe. Teruki wants to kill him. “Though… are you sure you haven’t done something to him? ‘Cause that energy of yours… that new energy, it—”

His head suddenly rises, breath hitching as he lets pressure off of Teruki’s chest, and he knows that look. He’s not exactly surprised—there’s no way Shigeo didn’t feel this fight.

“Yeah. Go. Run,” Teruki breathes, raspy and little, “He’ll definitely kill you once he sees what you did t’ me.”

Shimazaki steps off his chest, smirk crooked and nervous. “What a good idea.”

His figure blips out and Teruki stares at air and concrete. He lets his own barrier lower, like relaxing a muscle, and Ritsu’s climbing over it before it’s even done dispelling.

“Teru!” Ritsu yells, Dimple shooting along through the air right behind him, and Teruki’s dull eyes fix to his face while he lets his head plop to the shattered concrete.

The kid skids to a stop right beside him, wide eyes and worried hands hovering, looking for an injury that he can fix, and the blond lets out a breath when Ritsu doesn’t seem hurt; a scrape or two and a bruise along his brow, but nothing else. Teruki realizes his stillness is probably scaring him when he sees the shine building up in Ritsu’s eyes.

He shifts, gets an arm beneath him to push himself up, and then he hisses through his teeth as the slits in his shoulders burn and the ache in his ribs double. Ritsu’s saying something, and Dimple is too, but he can’t really hear them over the grain in his ears like sand pouring. His skin feels pebbly—his blood feels halfed and like water.

His palms are dry ice, and he goes with Ritsu’s movements to get him sitting against a wall only because he doesn’t really know what’s happening in the first place; his brain feels genuinely fried, like the energy had singed the edges of it in the explosions and now he can only think in short bursts. He doesn’t know if it’s the energy doing that, or a possible concussion. Maybe both.

“‘M f’ne,” Teruki slurs out, weakly waving a dismissive hand when Ritsu’s voice picks up into real panic at his lack of responses, and he sees the kid pause and look him in the eyes, really study the workings within them. The blond does his best to look alert. “Feel great.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Ritsu snarks back, but the tremble in his voice cancels out the bite that’s meant to be there. Teruki rasps out breaths that sound just as concerning to him as they probably do to Ritsu, and then his unsteady gaze flicks to Dimple.

Teruki doesn’t see Dimple look genuinely scared very often—maybe startled, maybe astonished, but real genuine fear is often reserved for when one of them get hurt, he’s noticed. One of the kids. And the blond realizes that he is both one of the kids, and that he also broke their deal.

He swallows down the dry grit in his throat, ash and drywall dust on the roof of his mouth, and looks at Dimple through the blood running down his face. “‘M sorry.”

Dimple is not a babysitter. He is a worried friend, just as Ritsu is a worried friend that’s currently fumbling with his own phone and smacking the side of it, like it’s malfunctioning and he’s desperate. Dimple is not looking at him like he’s a babysitter and Teruki is just the kid he was assigned to look after.

Dimple is looking at him like he’s a worried, scared friend, and Teruki remembers to appreciate the ones that bother with worry.

“‘S not your fault, kid,” the spirit says, soft against the ashy air and crumbling rebar, “None of us knew Shimazaki would be here.”

“My phone’s not—it must be Shige’s powers still fucking with it, it’s still in the air—” Ritsu mumbles out in a quivering tone, and then he jerks his head up away from the glitching screen and stares at something just beyond Teruki’s shoulder.

Teruki doesn’t need to look. Judging by the roar of energy shooting this way and the faraway sounds of trees being uprooted from sheer force, he’d say he knows exactly who it is.

In his peripherals, he does see the treeline move and sway beyond the broken walls, and it might be the concussion, but he almost smiles at the ridiculousness of it, like his partner is some big animal that brings down forests with a single footstep. He watches them fall, thinks about how horribly this is about to go, and braces for it.

The burst of energy that cuts through the woods ends in a single dot, a figure that pauses at the sight of them and then runs for it full speed, and Teruki works to lift himself away from the wall before Shigeo fully sees his slumped figure. Ritsu frets with hands that grab and press, but Shigeo is already in earshot and shouts Teru! and it’s like a spell that stills him.

Shigeo, with messy hair and tired eyes and a bloody undershirt— bloody?— skids to crouch down next to them both, breaths short and fast. That red gaze rakes over his body, his tattered uniform, the dull cracks in his hand, the blood and the cuts, and no matter how much Teruki prepares himself for it, he is never, ever ready for the look of devastation in Shigeo’s eyes.

He looks at him exactly how he’d looked at him back at their hideout, when Teruki had screamed until his throat was raw and buckled under the pressure of a star. Beyond the sound of his soul crackling, he lifts a hand that trembles a little too much to make his next words trustworthy.

“Hi, love,” Teruki rasps, coughs, recovers, “I’m fine. I prom’se.”

Ritsu says something about a hospital, about Shigeo carrying Teruki back to the nearest one at only speeds he can reach, but instead of listening, Shigeo tackles the blond in a hug.

Teruki gasps out, pain flaring up from wounds he didn’t know he had, but he lifts his unsteady arms and hooks them around his partner nonetheless. Shigeo’s arms are tight and he holds him like he’s holding the universe, and Teruki holds the universe back.

And then the hues fill his eyes.

Corals and teals ebb from Shigeo’s middle, wrap around them both like ribbons and strings, and Teruki hitches in a breath at the sensation of it, at the zing of power and the softness of velvet. The gold of the evening light catches in the colors and makes them shimmer like bird feathers, like silver glitter in air, and then they all conjoin and twist against Teruki’s form in swirls.

Hues melt into his skin and it feels like warm rain soaking cuts and bruises, fizzing at the openings and working through his veins. Shigeo tightens his grip around him and Teruki suddenly realizes when he’s doing, where all of this sudden energy is going, and he can’t help but stare out into the treeline beyond and wonder how exhausting something like healing is on somebody who’s already scraping by.

The colors light up the soot and ash on the ground and Teruki thinks it’s exhausting both of them, because his eyelids are suddenly drooping and sleep tugs at them eagerly. He fights against it, blinks at the light and the hues and the golden sun on the horizon, but eventually he’s slumping against his partner like a ragdoll—

“Woah woah, Shigeo, I don’t think he can take anymore!” Dimple barks out, and the colors cease instantly. The sudden halt jolts him awake, and he blinks sluggishly against the body that shifts back away from the hug. The only thing holding him upright is his partner’s hands around his shoulders.

“Teru?” Shigeo prods out in a huff, breathless.

“‘M fine,” he repeats, words just a breath and a half, but the way Shigeo instantly drops his shoulders a little tells him it’s comforting enough, “Jus’... tired.”

It’s true; the cuts along his shoulders and the bruises peppering his skin are all but healed—the worst of it has been taken care of, and all he feels now is a dull leftover ache from the few things he couldn’t get to, and exhaustion tugging his lids down.

He wonders how Shigeo does it—uses this much power—and then he remembers that the boy really doesn’t. And when he does, he’s asleep for the next whole day.

“Oh thank goodness,” Shigeo sighs out and brings him close to his chest again, arms scooping him up to let Teruki’s cheek settle on his shoulder, and he does just that, melting into the embrace, “I was so worried… those bursts felt so scared…”

Teruki feels the questions coming. He desperately hopes the others can handle them, because right now he’s struggling to simply keep consciousness.

“Ritsu…” Shigeo mumbles in little breaths, “Dimple… what happened? Why are you all out here? What used to be here?”

A beat. Dimple starts. “Well… uh. We were… this is uh—”

“We were worried about you,” Ritsu blurts, and mentally, Teruki goes ah. Dimple is the fibber—Ritsu is the one who couldn’t even lie to his brother over text, “This is… it was a Claw hideout. Your powers have been… they’ve been wonky lately—”

Shigeo stiffens and tightens his hold around Teruki minutely. Teruki squeezes back and wonders if his partner even feels it. “—so we—we wanted to see if it was Claw’s doing.”

There’s a beat of silence that goes on a little too long, and it lulls Teruki away into the fuzz and the foam. He drifts off in Shigeo’s arms, the rest of the conversation lost to him.

+

There’s blood on Shigeo’s clothes.

They had settled Teruki on Ritsu’s back, the blond limp in a way that had scared Ritsu a little bit, but his breathing had no longer been raspy and his expression was no longer pinched in pain, so his heart had settled. Dimple had offered to possess him for the walk home, but without Teruki’s consent they all figured it wasn’t a good idea. Plus, Teruki’s body needed the rest too.

Shigeo had cleared a path through the forest the size of a highway in his haste to get to them, apparently. They’d walked it back to the city, the trees on either side bent and snapped in half away from the uprooted foliage. Wood had creaked the entire walk through it, trunks groaning under the pressure, and it had been the first time ever that Ritsu had been outside in the evening and hadn’t heard a single cricket.

His brother had been silent the whole walk, Dimple taking up most of the chatter. Shigeo has a lot of silences, but Ritsu knows the differences between them; this wasn’t a content one, and Ritsu stayed quiet beside him.

His brother also had red on his undershirt before he’d even touched Teruki, before the blond’s blood had even been smeared along his shoulder. Shigeo’s fingers are bandaged. It’s a question he leaves on his tongue the entire trip, waiting with bated breath to let it slip, but he’s never brave enough to ask.

They make it to the city long after the sun sets. They would’ve taken the train back, but Teruki is currently a bloodied, frayed mess atop him and he feels as though people might question that. And maybe call the police. So walking for hours it is.

His feet are sore by the time they’re in their neighborhood, shoes thumping along concrete instead of grass and brambles. They stop in front of Reigen’s apartment complex, and Ritsu shifts to nudge Teruki on his back.

With a few Teru’s he’s rousing and blinking into the dark. Shigeo helps him down and then he’s swaying against hands that hold him up, muttering I’m fine’s and don’t worry’s that are mumbled and slurred.

Shigeo hugs him again before they part ways, and he makes Dimple promise he’ll look after him. The spirit doesn’t need to be told twice, already chattering away at Teruki as he stumbles to his apartment.

Either way they look at it, Reigen and Serizawa will flip out; even if Teruki isn’t actively injured anymore, his uniform is still shredded and he’s still got crusted blood down his face in a smeared line. He just hopes they’ll show him some mercy and let him rest before the questions come.

They both watch him enter the apartment before they move to carry on down the road.

The streetlights stretch their shadows and the crickets are back in Ritsu’s ears, clicking and sputtering out their little songs that are only overwhelmed by the occasional passing of a car. He keeps his eyes to the ground, mind whirring, and eventually he moves his gaze to the left to watch Shigeo’s slightly shorter strides.

The way he shuffles along the sidewalk spells exhaustion, and even then, Ritsu still sees him purposefully step over cracks in the concrete. He smiles a little at that, despite everything, and then he looks at the blood on his brother’s shirt and it fades from his face.

“Splinters.”

Ritsu blinks and raises his gaze up, but Shigeo isn’t looking at him. He’s looking at the ground, still stepping over the cracks and the lines that separate tiles. “My fingers got cut. Splinters. No big deal.”

He processes that, studies Shigeo’s face in the dark. “Oh,” he says, because he doubts he’s lying to him, but he also doubts it’s the full truth, “Okay… doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“No,” is said emptily.

And that’s that.

A car engine purrs in the distance, another blinds them with their headlights as they pass by. As they walk, Ritsu watches the signs on the road reflect the glow from streetlamps and moonlight, letters shimmering in the darkness. Light pollution rids of the stars he looks for in the sky, and he lowers his gaze emptily to stare at the sidewalk.

It’s now or never, he supposes.

“So…” he starts, “... it isn’t Claw.”

Shigeo doesn’t reply for a moment, and thinks that maybe he’s playing hard-to-get, as stupid as it would be, but then his brother speaks. “... No.”

Ritsu eyes him. “It has to be something else, then,” he explores carefully, and the only something else that he could possibly think of is stress. But it seems… impossible. Shigeo’s stress was at an all-time high last winter, and so were his energy levels. This is… like Teruki said, nothing compared to last winter.

If this is truly stress related… just how stressed is his brother?

“... I guess so,” Shigeo replies, short and simple. Ritsu prods along further.

“... And it’s affecting your powers,” he clarifies, the unspoken and that’s not to be taken lightly booming between them, “What can I do?”

Another beat, filled with crickets and car purrs. “Nothing, I guess.”

Ritsu swallows, hardens his resolve. “There has to be something. Anything… anything at all, Shige, I’ll do it.”

“Can’t really think of anything,” Shigeo lies. Or maybe it’s not a lie; maybe it’s not even stubbornness, maybe it’s just a genuine lack of answers for himself. “Sorry.”

It’s a closer. It’s absolutely the end of the conversation, but something about tonight has made him brave. Maybe it’s the idea that the night has already dipped into rock bottom that makes him take a leap—he’s survived the worst of it, so what else could possibly go wrong?

“Is it something that happened? Is it grades? Something somebody said to you?” Ritsu presses, studying his brother’s face in the light of the passing streetlamps, “Whatever it is, Shige, I’m sure there’s something I can do to help.”

Shigeo very carefully keeps his attention to the sidewalk. Ritsu clenches his fists. “Is it multiple things? Are people bullying you or something? Is it work? Is it… something I did?” he asks, “Shige, if you don’t tell anyone, than nobody’s gonna be—”

“Ritsu,” Shigeo cuts in, and Ritsu’s voice drops like a deadweight, “Please just stop it.”

“No, Shige, I can’t just… sit around and watch you fuckin’ wither away!” Ritsu barks, and his heart thumps against his chest harshly. Their fights are still new—their fights are still unfamiliar and jerky, but Ritsu plows forward. This is normal. They’re being siblings right now. “I can’t do that. I won’t.”

Shigeo’s jaw is clenched hard, but he walks on in silence. A car passes and lights the red in his eyes ablaze, something sharp there Ritsu doesn’t see very often; it makes him pause, but it doesn’t make him stop.

“You’re my brother, Shige, we’re supposed to be there for each other. We’re supposed to talk to each other, that’s what siblings do,” Ritsu stresses, “You haven’t been yourself in months. I miss my fuckin’ brother.”

Something like hurt crosses Shigeo’s face for but a second, and Ritsu considers stopping. He considers it, but he doesn’t take that opportunity and he’s an idiot for it. “Just let me help, Shige, I can—”

“Ritsu just stop it!” Shigeo snaps, for the first time in a long, long while, and Ritsu freezes in place when his brother suddenly whirls around and pins a glare, a glare, to his soul, “I don’t need help, I need you to not stepping into dangerous facilities full of people that have tried to kill us before because you think they’re after me when they’re not!”

It is very rare that Ritsu hears so much genuine emotion in his brother’s voice that it leaks out into the air and turns it cold like this. It’s even more rare that it’s directed at Ritsu of all people.

“Now you and Teru are diving into real danger because of me! Teru took some of my energy and screamed in agony over it because of me!” Shigeo barks, voice raspy with volume he doesn’t hit very often, “Please just stop it, Ritsu. Just stop. You don’t need to worry about me, I’ll figure it out on my own! I’m fine.”

The words aren’t even that loud, but Ritsu finds the sentiment booming. The crickets have quieted a little at the noise, at Shigeo’s aura that swamps the woods behind him and seeps into the cracks of the sidewalk. The streetlamps flicker overhead, and the light from it bathes Shigeo’s face at an odd angle that sharpens his features—a shadow lies just beneath his bangs, right over eyes that look at Ritsu with so much desperation he seriously considers nodding and accepting defeat.

But that’s repeating history. He will not repeat history.

“Bullshit.”

Shigeo hitches back just an inch, glare dissolving in the red that shifts colors in the streetlight. “What?”

“I said bullshit,” Ritsu enunciates, and he never dreamed he’d ever snarl at his brother, but he bares his teeth and waning patience with a stare that stabs, “Don’t fucking tell me you’re okay. Don’t lie to my face like that through your goddamn teeth. Stop doing that!”

His brother’s eyes dart across his features, probably drinking in one of the only times he’s ever raised his voice at his brother, and Ritsu carries on with venom in his tone he wishes wasn’t there. “Isn’t this the kinda behavior that caused that catastrophe last year?”

Shigeo reels back like he’s been slapped, hurt in his face clear, and it makes Ritsu want to burrow into the ground and maybe die there, but he keeps going. Something in him prevents him from stopping.

“You held it all in for so long. Said you were fine for years. Said you didn’t need any help for years! And look where that got you!” Ritsu barks, hands flying, “Didn’t that teach you anything? Didn’t that tell you that maybe you oughta stop being scared of hurting people when asking for help?!”

His hands are shaking. Shigeo’s aura creeps away from Ritsu’s looming one, eyestraining purples and reds forming in the air like nebulas. His brother’s gaze is wide and haunted, hurt and crackled, and Ritsu breaths out one last question, voice tumbling down from the frustrated high.

“Don’t you realize that keeping this charade up costs you?”

Ritsu doesn’t even notice the car that passes behind him, doesn’t notice the flickering of the streetlamps or the glitching of the traffic lights a block down from them. He only sees his brother, and the way he dips his head down like he wants to disappear. He only sees Shigeo and how he holds his own hands to his middle, clasps them together twisted and tight enough to turn his skin white.

He only sees the wobbling of his lips, and only hears the surprisingly steady, quiet words that pour from his brother’s mouth.

“... I’m trying, Ritsu,” Shigeo whispers, and all of the fight leaves his body in an instant, “I am. I’m trying.”

Ritsu stands there in the ugly shade of the streetlamp light, tired and worn and angry, but he cannot help but deflate at his defeated tone. He cannot help but feel bad when he sees Shigeo’s fidgeting hands, his bowed head, his hunched shoulders. He cannot help the way his aura wobbles and breaks away from the rigid clouds and comes to mingle with Shigeo’s.

And with the way his brother’s hues instantly flock to the comfort, Ritsu cannot help but step forward and raise his arms.

Shigeo falls right into the hug, buries his face in his shoulder, and Ritsu holds him twice as hard. As soon as they’re both secure in the hold, the bulb in the streetlamp above them busts, and so do all of the others down the street one after another in glassy pops. Ritsu doesn’t mind the darkness, doesn’t even jump at the noises; when he was younger, he might have scrambled away from his brother for that—this time, he holds him tighter.

“I know you’re trying, Shige,” Ritsu whispers into his shoulder, and he feels Shigeo’s aura wrap around them like a cocoon, “I know.”

Chapter Text

Shigeo watches the clock on the wall tick through molasses, his English teacher’s words floating around his head in loose shapes and looser concepts he can’t grasp. He’s got his head burrowed in his arms atop his assignment, scribblings of pencils and whispered chatter surrounding him on all sides, and he drifts in and out to the sound of markers squeaking against the whiteboard up front.

Apparently, they had scared their parents enough last night for them to call the police.

He and Ritsu had sped up to a jog once they spotted the blinking lights of red and blue down the block, swirling in alarming shades. When they’d realized the lights were in their own driveway, they both booked it down the sidewalk.

The wide open front door and the bloody jacket he’d left discarded on the floor was what had gotten the police involved. Curfew had long since passed when they got home, and the front door had still been hinged open to let officers in and out; they’d beelined past the cop out front, ignoring their questions and calls, only to be trapped in a bear hug by their father in the threshold of the mudroom.

They’d fretted and worried and squished their faces in their holds, and Shigeo had honestly been a bit surprised; physical affection isn’t their parents’ strong suit, but they had been very happy to hold them for quite a long time, even after the police had left. He wouldn’t exactly call their hysterical worry an eye-opener, but maybe a reminder.

He’d felt bad because of the circumstances, but it had given Shigeo a much-needed tap on the shoulder that their parents are there for them—sometimes he forgets, if only for a moment or two.

Ritsu had told them it’d been a biking accident; it explained the scrapes and little cuts along his skin quite well. Shigeo had felt Ritsu’s aura fling their bikes out into the woods outside when he said it—so their parents wouldn’t find them completely intact later—and he’d almost burst into laughter despite the mood of the room. Shigeo had told them the blood was from splinters at work. They’d believed them—or just pretended to—and then hugged them yet again.

Their parents must’ve seen the exhaustion in their eyes, though, because they’d prodded them both down the hall to shower and sleep soon after everything had settled. Last night had been the first good night’s rest he’s had in a long while.

The clock ticks through molasses. Shigeo thinks about his argument with Ritsu through the haze of sleep.

He thinks he knows what’s happening. There’s really only one thing that could be happening, because it’s simply how his powers work, and it’s that Shigeo is overwhelmed. He’s stressed and tired and he keeps thinking of things that were never real and events that have come and gone. Every decent four hours of rest he gets grants him another night of tossing and turning and waking up trembling. He isn’t very hungry at all anymore; the vaguely ill sensation has built a permanent residence in his stomach.

Crows and ravens make his world seem fake. Sudden movements toward him have him cowering away. He can’t wear his turtlenecks anymore because anything around his neck feels like hands instead. He still has dreams about holding an unconscious Ritsu in that long white hallway. Fire makes him scared and lonely.

He knows none of this is normal. He knows he’s not okay. The issue is that it’s so many things piled up over the years that he doesn’t even know where to start.

And to him, it feels unfair to be so bothered by all this. It’s not like he’s the only one that’s experienced all of these things. Ritsu is the one that got kidnapped in the first place—he seems to have moved past it. He’d gone and clenched Teruki by the neck last winter too, like some sort of sick revenge that he’d never wanted to begin with, and he seems fine. Reigen is the one who got sliced in the back and he seems perfectly okay with the memories—so why does Shigeo have nightmares about it constantly?

Maybe everyone isn’t okay. Maybe they’re all really bothered by these things. But that just means that Shigeo is the only one of them that is this bad at hiding it.

Mogami’s mindscape wasn’t even real. The burnt corpses of his family were dummies. There are so many reasons piling up in his head why he should be okay, but he’s not, so is he the issue? Is he just sensitive? Is he just dramatic? Most of the things on his mind happened over a year ago. He’s had more than an entire year to get himself sorted and process it all.

He’s trying really hard. He is.

Maybe he’s not trying hard enough.

Trying any harder sounds like a death sentence to him, to be honest. He’ll collapse before he gets anywhere. He’ll worry everyone even more before he fixes anything. It doesn’t sound like it’s within his abilities, to try harder. So is that it?

“You haven’t been yourself in months. I miss my fuckin’ brother.”

That had hurt. That had hurt more than anything, more than Ritsu spitting out that the events of last winter are just going to happen again if this keeps up. It hadn’t hurt as much in the moment, but the implications of it keeps on building until it’s all he can think about, like a slow pursuit. He might’ve been too exhausted to not sleep through it last night, but he knows he’ll be thinking about it in bed for the rest of the week.

Ritsu sees him every day. Ritsu misses him.

Ritsu misses him. Ritsu sees him every day.

Shigeo drifts to the clock ticking through molasses.

+

Energy welts down his palm at a speed that’s much faster than he anticipates, and he cuts off the funnel before anything else escapes. It’s still an amount that should not have built up so much so fast, and he flinches his face away from the blast of white that seethes down the middle of the junkyard.

The arc it makes reaches up into the sky to match three-story buildings in height, and it razes across the metal and rubber and foliage and carries into the twiggy woods beyond. Shigeo staggers back from the recoil and he feels hands catching him from falling, and they both watch as his blast whips around through the woods and fells a few trees before dissipating.

The creak and loud thump of them falling echoes against the metal of the bus behind them, tinny. Teruki’s hands leave his back, but one of them comes back to his shoulder soon enough as Shigeo brushes away multicolored sparks from his uniform.

Teruki whistles lowly into the silence, scanning the damage. Where there used to be a congregation of metal and scraps and plastic overgrown with brambles, there is now nothing but scorch marks and scattered debris. The smell of burning rubber carries in the breeze; it sways the patches of weeds and grass that survived, and a single piece of metal falls from its hang time in the sky and thumps to the dirt.

“It’s getting too much for even you to handle a blast, isn’t it?” Teruki worries, grip around his shoulder tightening, and Shigeo looks down at his good hand.

“I think I can still handle it,” he says, flexing his fingers, “I just…”

He raises his hand again, and Teruki steps back a few paces. Shigeo lets the cotton candies surge forward, loud and fast in his ears like blood rushing to his head, and then he bottlenecks it right at the end. He doesn’t expect it to hurt as much as it does, but he stifles the hiss through his teeth as another volley explodes from his palm.

Fizz collects in the corners of his skull, and he watches a wall of mana plow through the scorched grass again with a vague sense of unease in his gut. It’s barely smaller than the last one—not enough to matter, anyway. If that hits a non-ESPer, it could absolutely kill them, and he hasn’t exactly been the best at controlling the outbursts lately.

He has to remind himself that that’s always been a possibility. Ever since he was ten, he’d always been aware of how much power he has at his fingertips, how easy it would be to end something he doesn’t want to end.

This is the same. It’s always been there, at the back of his mind. This is the same.

Shigeo aims to spew just a spark from his fingers. Fireworks of pinks and blues erupt instead, popping and spraying out more arcs across the junkyard that hurt his arm from the pressure.

This is not the same.

“Keep trying,” Teruki encourages from behind him, settling down on the ground against the side of the bus, “If you do that enough, maybe you’ll eventually use it all.”

They both know that’ll take literal months to do. Still, maybe this can be good practice to control it better.

He lets out another burst. It rages against the clearing with loud hisses and otherworldly hums, and he stumbles back a step.

“How did last night go?” Shigeo asks, releasing another tide of colors and wiggling his digits when they start to sting. He has to raise his voice a little to be heard from the space between that he absolutely insists on being there. “With Reigen and Serizawa?”

Teruki makes a noise that Shigeo can’t discern the meaning of—a perfect mix of satisfied and disappointed. “Eh… it went about as well as you’d expect. They both kinda flipped out—really shoulda cleaned the blood off before going inside.”

Shigeo winces; Teruki doesn’t even know about the fiasco at the office yesterday. He doesn’t even know Reigen and Serizawa had probably already been stressed by his episode, and then their other kid comes home covered in ash and red and wobbling like he’ll collapse. He feels bad for worrying them so much in one day.

Another blast snaps a metal car door in half. “Do they…?”

“Know?” Teruki finishes, “Yeah.”

Shigeo turns around at that, vaguely surprised. Teruki has never been one to shy away from a fib that could save somebody a headache. Lying on his part would’ve been easy; after all, Teruki has a past with school gangs. Pointing the blame to a gang fight had been what Shigeo expected him to say.

He meets Teruki’s gaze. The blond looks back, blinking, and then he turns bashful.

“I passed out pretty fast, but Dimple filled them in,” he says, and that makes even less sense because as much as Shigeo adores Dimple the spirit is a liar, but then Teruki continues, “I, uh… I told him to tell the truth. I don’t like lying to them. They don’t deserve that.”

Shigeo processes it, and then smiles minutely. “And how did they take that?”

“Beats me, I was honk-shooing,” Teruki claps his hands together and places them beside his tilted head, mocking sleep, “but Dimple said they wanted to talk to me after work today. So… lookin’ forward to that.”

He says it with a grimace as he swings the Hello Kitty charm on his phone around in the air, a circular blur of whites and pinks. The chain clinks quietly just above the breeze, and he observes the color that’s back to Teruki’s cheeks and the light that’s returned to that blue. It’s a far cry from last night, with his dull, drooped eyes and that pale, cut up skin.

He never wants to see him like that again.

Shigeo turns back around to let out another blast. It scrapes against a stack of tires and sheers the sides of them, and as soon as the crackling of the air dissipates Teruki speaks again.

“What about you? You’re out here, so I assume you didn’t get grounded,” the blond sighs out, charm chain still tinging about.

“Uhm,” Shigeo says, an arc breaching from his hand and almost snapping his fingers back. He winces and shakes his hand out, dearly hoping Teruki didn’t see that, “our parents called the police.”

“Seriously?” Teruki chortles out, the laugh more astonished than anything else, “I didn’t take your parents for helicopters.”

“They aren’t,” Shigeo replies, “In their defense, it did look like we’d been kidnapped. Bloody jacket on the floor… wide open front door. My fault.”

“Oh… oh.” Shigeo doesn’t need to be looking to know that Teruki is doing that slow nod he does, wince on his face. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”

Shigeo tests another blast and it explodes out in tendrils this time that lick at the taller weeds within tire stacks. Static is starting to infest his veins, and he ignores how fatiguing this is; it’s not even the energy output that exhausts—it’s the effort of keeping the rest in.

“How’s that hand, by the way?” Teruki calls over the burst sizzling off into nothing, “Were the splinters deep? Seemed like a lot of blood for splinters.”

“It’s fine,” Shigeo calls back, flexing his fingers and raising his good hand for the umpteenth time, “Not too deep.”

Grain sprays from his fingertips and a spate of colors splices the air in half, cuts deep into the dirt and makes a gash four times his height in the grass. The recoil sends him flying, back of his head thumping to the dirt and chest stuttering at the impact as he holds his throbbing arm close.

He hears a woah, hey! from Teruki, then footfalls, and Shigeo attempts to sit up through the overbearing static shooting up and down his arm. His partner is crouching next to him in an instant, hands hovering, and Shigeo feels one of them on his back while another grabs for his palm.

“Woah woah, okay, let’s take it easy,” Teruki coos, and Shigeo regrets forgetting to fix his expression, because the blond sees the pain there in his face and instantly cuts it all down, “Okay—this is hurting you. You’re shaking. Let’s—let’s just take a break, yeah? Settle down for a bit.”

Shigeo sort of hates the idea and he’s not sure why, but he nods anyway and lets Teruki lead him back to the side of the bus. He pulls him by the arm that’s throbbing and shaking, and the warmth of the blond’s hand against his palm that feels like dry ice again is more soothing than he expects it to be.

He takes a lot of solace in the fact that the cracks in Teruki’s hand were healed with everything else.

Their shoes rustle against the grass and stray leaves until they reach the shade of the sunbleached bus. They settle down against the metal siding and leave the scorched junkyard to rest, thighs touching as Teruki grabs his hand like he owns it and places it in his lap. Shigeo lets him, secretly melts at the sensation of spirals being thumbed into tingling skin.

Teruki’s aura feels tight as it stretches out over both of them, the pink undertones that drip in between like oil taking on darker shades. He pulls his own aura back from prodding at it, from crowding it too much, but the yellows are actively seeking him and he gives in after a moment.

He expects Teruki to talk. He anticipates the silence to be filled with chatter like it so often is with him, but the blond says nothing. He says nothing while his colors stew, taut and wrong, but the gentle thumb against the middle of his palm contradicts it, and Shigeo feels like he’s been left behind.

Tension builds in his stomach, heavy and grating. His arm trembles ever so slightly in Teruki’s hold and the blond treats it like it’s treasure, drawing stars and constellations into his skin, but the yellows and scarlets around them hold a different sentiment.

Shigeo feels like he’s missing something. It’s a very familiar feeling; but it’s grittier when it’s Teruki.

They still haven’t talked about the Claw thing, not really. They’ve barely even talked about the incident before that, where Teruki had buckled to his knees and screamed his throat raw. He thinks about Ritsu’s outburst last night and curls into himself a little; maybe everyone is getting tired of this.

Maybe everyone is getting tired of him and his problems.

“... Are we in a fight?”

Shigeo says it into the quiet without the bravery to look him in the eyes, and he prepares to shrink in on himself at a sharp yes, but it never comes. The yellows and reds undulate and zing at the question, and then Teruki breathes a little laugh through his nose and plops his head back against the bus siding.

“No, Shigeo,” Teruki says softly, gently, knowingly, “We’re not in a fight.”

Shigeo swallows, but doesn’t unfurl. “What are we in, then?”

A beat for him to think. “A rough patch, I suppose. But I’m not mad at you.” Teruki swivels his head from the metal to shake it back and forth. Shigeo raises his eyes to meet him. “Not at all.”

There’s still so much compassion there, in that blue, and Shigeo looks away in fear of it overwhelming him. He shifts his legs in front of him, taps his knees together, fidgets with the buttons on his uniform.

Teruki moves, the rustling of clothing brushing against grass in his ears, and in his periphery he can see the blond’s facing him now. Full attention on him, he asks, “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” Shigeo replies quickly, instinctively, and he considers leaving it there, but then, “Well… maybe mad isn’t the right word.”

Teruki’s grip on his palm tightens, ever-so-slightly, as he waits in the silence. Shigeo thinks, wanting desperately to peek at his partner’s expression, but fearing the end result far too much. He stares at his own knees instead, playing with the bandages around his fingers.

“I don’t know the right word,” he mumbles out, and it feels cheap, it feels insufficient, even to him. These moments are the most frustrating—important moments where answers matter, where the timing of the answers matter, and he never feels fast enough to compete in that race.

Teruki is patient with him, far more patient than Shigeo thinks he deserves, but he appreciates it. The blond waits, and waits, and then Shigeo gathers the courage to open his mouth.

“Just… please don’t do that again. Rush off like that and get hurt,” he pleads, leaning over and plopping his head down on Teruki’s shoulder, “Especially not for me.”

Teruki’s hair tickles his forehead where it splays over his own, and then Teruki curls up and rests his own head atop it all. “You say that like you aren’t worth it.”

“Teru.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” his partner laughs, quiet and maybe a little tired and words muffled into Shigeo’s hair, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… Scaring you wasn’t part of the plan.”

The breeze smooths out against Teruki’s yellows and wines, and they watch the shadow over them stretch out across the junkyard as evening makes its rounds.

And Teruki holds Shigeo’s stinging hand like it’s the universe.

Chapter Text

Shigeo wakes up to something nudging his foot.

There’s cotton in his muscles and webs in his head, and he raises a hand to rub the sleep from one eye while he peers up with the other. His vision rakes across plastic seats and metal floorboards, white fluorescent beams reflecting off of every surface he finds, and then the figure in the middle catches his attention.

A middle-aged man looks down at him, frowning just a little in annoyance in the middle of the bus aisle. Shigeo meets his eyes and looks away almost instantly, not awake enough to deal with eye contact from strangers.

“Ya gotta go, kid,” he grumbles out over the rumble of the bus engine, voice raspy and breath smelling of tobacco even from a few feet away. The way he keeps patting his pocket where something square is kept, Shigeo thinks he’s probably desperate for a smoke break. “‘S the end o’ my shift. Ya gotta get off.”

Shigeo blinks at him, tired mind lagging, and then his eyes wander beyond the man’s shoulder and catches the darkness past the windows, neon lights of the city brighter than he’s seen them in a while. Alarm grips him, and he jerks up off the seat in a hurry, hand already curled around his school bag.

“Oh, I’m—yeah, I’m sorry, I didn’t—” he fumbles, catching himself on a metal support rail when he stands up to fast and almost topples. His vision blackens around the edges and stars float, and he looks around the bus to see it completely empty save for him and the driver.

Somehow, the harsh lights inside the bus feel unnatural in the darkness of the city beyond.

The grab handles that dangle from the ceiling are still swaying, ever so slightly. The man turns back down the aisle wordlessly, and Shigeo follows with a timid unease in his chest.

“Uhm—sir, what time is it?” he asks as they approach the front of the bus. The man steps aside to let him through the aisle and prods him along a little faster than he thinks is necessary.

“One thirty,” he answers gruffly, and Shigeo barely has time to freak out about that before he’s being ushered down the steps of the bus. The doors are already swung open, and the driver waves him off dismissively.

“Have a good night, kid,” is called emptily as soon as Shigeo’s soles hit the sidewalk, and then the door is closing behind him and the bus is rolling away down the street.

And then he’s alone.

Shigeo blinks out into the darkness, white beams in his vision from the bus lights, and he wills them to clear away. He stares at the lone bench and signpost placed along the walkway in front of him, and then he slowly turns around to look at the city behind him.

The neon lights dribble down into the wet asphalt and stretch along the length of it, all signs and traffic lights and pixelated billboards advertising sodas. Hotspots and glares move and creep along the roads, headlights from drivers that are out even this late at night rolling atop damp gravel.

His sleepy gaze moves up along the buildings, tracing the edges of the dome of light the city makes and the stars it doesn’t let shine through. A car or two passes, engines purring quietly and water hissing along the tires.

He doesn’t recognize any of this.

Shigeo rakes his eyes across the cityscape, searching for a landmark he can orient himself with, a store he knows, a sign he passes a lot. Every time he thinks he sees something useful, it’s brought down by the fact that it doesn’t match up with the map in his head, even when he flips it upside down and inside out.

The city hums, quiet and wrathful and unfamiliar. Shigeo turns back around.

The signpost next to the bench sits there in the darkness, not even illuminated by a streetlamp, and he looks up in search of one with a busted bulb and finds there was never one here to begin with. Shigeo takes to squinting as his eyes finally adjust to the dark, leaning into the plastic of the board to read the tiny letters on the map.

He has trouble even locating his position as first, but when he brushes aside other notices and papers he finds the you are here marker printed in red. Shigeo traces roads and pinpoints stores, leans even closer to read street names and avenues.

He doesn’t recognize any of these streets either.

He swallows, anxiety thick in his chest, but this is salvageable. Shigeo rummages through his school bag, looking for cool plastic, and pulls out his phone when his fingers run along the side buttons. He clicks it on and the screen is immediately invaded with static and glitched lettering.

Clicking to Mobgle Maps isn’t the issue—it’s inputting the street name that becomes a problem. The screen is simply too bugged for it register his touches, and every icon he taps takes him through a million pages that reroute to something completely different. The text turns upside down and the estimated route time keeps ticking from one minute to nine nine nine nine—

He closes the app; he isn’t getting anywhere with that, especially not if he has to use it the entire way home. Shigeo taps the side of his phone nervously and worries his lip, glances around at the signpost he stands near, the city lighting up his silhouette.

He taps to his messages, the app loading far longer than it ever needs to, and then everything blinks at him at once and it’s quite possibly the most amount of messages he’s ever had unread at one time.

Shigeo winces at the list, at the red circles that glitch about with fives, eights, and elevens inside them. He reads through the previews under the contact names, growing more guilty with each one.

Worry is a common theme here, repeated phrases and empty threats of being grounded if he doesn’t call back soon. There’s even a few from Teruki, about Ritsu asking if he was with him, and now his partner is worried by extension.

Some small part of him feels very warm at the thought that so many people immediately notice his absence, but the rest is simply cold and guilty.

Shigeo moves to tap on his mother’s message, screen glitching underneath his thumb, and then he stops. He hesitates.

He worries his lip more, static growing across the panel.

He doesn’t know why he hesitates. If he had a heart, he’d call her back right now and apologize for scaring her, for giving her such a big fright twice in one week. If he had any sense, he’d message Ritsu and tell him he’s okay, because he knows his brother and he knows he’s sitting in his bed right now picking the edges of his phone case off and chewing his nails away.

If he had any sense. But something in him pauses when faced with the coddling.

He doesn’t want to call his mother. He doesn’t want to look at the worry in her gaze, at the calculating, studying looks she’s been giving him lately. He doesn’t want to give his parents any more reason to keep an eye on him—they’ve been closer lately, hovering more, observing more, and with so many eyes on him all the time, watching his every move, it’s been getting harder and harder to stand the pressure.

Shigeo knows they mean well; they all mean well, they all love him, and he loves them, so much. But…

He lifts his thumb away from the screen, and then clicks the contacts app instead.

He scrolls through the limited list and it jumps around and he loses his place more than once, but he finally finds his name within the static. Shigeo breathes in, wonders why he’s so nervous, and then presses the call button under his contact.

Shigeo slowly brings his phone to his ear, staring off into the street that glows and sways with city lights. It rings once and he pulls back his aura as tightly as he can so the call can go through, so his own static doesn’t interfere with the signal.

He looks down at his shoes and toes his laces as it rings another time. He considers sitting on the bench, but then he sees the water beads clinging to the metal and he decides against it. A third ring and he’s pacing. A fourth, and he’s considering hanging up because it’s one in the morning of course Reigen wouldn’t be awake, he’s got work tom—

His phone clicks. “Mob?”

Shigeo startles. “Hi Master,” he tumbles out, and he didn’t really think this through as much as he should have.

“Well this is new; you usually don’t call first. Wait—what time is—” Reigen greets him, grin in his tone, and Shigeo slumps at bit as the lack of sleep in his voice. He hears rustling on the other end. “—kid aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”

“I…” Shigeo starts, and then winces as his speakers squeal in his ears.

“Are your powers still makin’ your phone wonky?” Reigen asks, voice crackling, and Shigeo works to muscle back the energy grappling at his phone like his aura wants to eat the thing, “There’s this weird whine in the background.”

“Uh—yes,” Shigeo answers, because that’s easy and doable and knowable. He can answer that, he can do that. Anything else after this point remains to be seen. “Master, I don’t… know where I am.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line, but Shigeo still hears the static and the hum, so he waits it out and mentally prepares himself. He watches a car make a left turn as rustling comes from the speaker, and then Reigen’s voice filters through, layered with static and concern.

“Come again?”

“I’m uh… I’m lost,” Shigeo murmurs against the mic, shame broiling up his face. Even though Reigen can’t see it, he hides the redness along his cheeks with his bangs while he looks down at his shoes. “I missed my stop on the bus—I don’t… I don’t recognize any roads.”

There’s more silence on the line, and Shigeo doesn’t know why he called Reigen. He doesn’t know why he ignored his parents and turned to his Master instead, like he’s a rebellious teenager with nothing better to do. This isn’t rebellion, not really—Shigeo wouldn’t consider himself a rebellious kid, and this isn’t out of spite for his family. Not at all.

It’s… Maybe it’s because Reigen worries differently. Maybe it’s because Reigen doesn’t give him those pitying looks or those soft coos; it’s a different breed of concern, one that doesn’t smother him. Maybe it’s the fact that Reigen hides it better, maybe it’s that he has a lot of experience in deceitful communication, and Reigen prides himself on his ability to stay stone-faced.

Nothing against his parents, but maybe it’s because he needs somebody that’s actually dealt with an upset Shigeo within the last five years.

“Okay. Right, okay, that’s—you’re safe though, right? You’re safe right now? You’re not hurt?” Reigen tumbles out, the rustling coming back tenfold.

“No,” Shigeo answers, then backtracks with a stutter, “Well, yes. Yes to I’m safe, no to being hurt. I’m fine.”

“Good—okay good. Do you see any street signs nearby?” Reigen presses on, then takes his voice away from the mic to talk to someone else—maybe Serizawa, “Like are you in town lost or in-the-middle-of-the-fuckin’-mountains kind of lost?”

“Town,” he replies as he leans against the signpost again, squinting at the tiny words in the dark, “I have a street name.”

“Okay sweet, gimme that and I’ll come pick you up okay? Just stay where you are.” The speakers buzz and whine with noise that cuts into his words here and there, and Shigeo pulls back his aura again while it bucks. The effort makes his head pulse. “—ob? You there?”

“Yes,” comes out of his mouth—he’s not sure whether the aura or the tiny lettering along the map is causing his headache, “Sorry—powers.”

He gives Reigen the street name in slow syllables, and after a moment of silence where he guesses he’s inputting the name into his maps app, Reigen makes an odd noise on the other end.

“What in the world are you doin’ all the way—okay, I’m comin’ kid. It might take a bit, but I’ll be there soon, okay?”

“Okay,” Shigeo says, and he feels bad that he can’t offer anything more than— “Thank you.”

“Not a problem, buddy. Want me to text your mom? Tell her I’ve heard from ya and I’m pickin’ ya up?”

Shigeo smiles down at the sidewalk minutely, shuffling his feet with a sigh. “Please.”

+

It takes Reigen about forty minutes to get there, which is a lot longer than Shigeo thought it would be. 

He pulls up along the sidewalk slowly, wet tires sloshing over wet asphalt and high beams flicking low to rake across the ground. The car rolls to a stop, and Shigeo sees his Master’s figure lean across the console through the tinted window.

The passenger door is pushed open with a grunt, and Shigeo timidly slides into the car seat. He shuts the door gently, and the noises of the world outside are instantly muffled in favor of the rumbling of the engine and whir of the heating.

“Hey kiddo,” Reigen greets him, and after Shigeo stares at his lap and simply says hi his Master reaches for the heating controls on the dashboard.

He cranks up the dial and warmth comes softly through the vents, a calming hum within the interior of Serizawa’s car that smells vaguely of new rubber floor mats. Shigeo rubs the soles of his shoes over them gently, blindly inspecting the patterns.

“Thank you,” he repeats, just to say it in person.

He can hear the soft smile in Reigen’s tone. “No need, buddy.”

Reigen takes it out of park and rolls back onto the street, seat belt being uttered out and Shigeo twisting to pull on it and lock it in. They ride down the streets in relative quiet, Reigen seeming much more mellow at this hour; or maybe he senses something off in the atmosphere and is staying quiet for Shigeo’s sake.

They pass neon street signs and low beams from other cars, yellowed to pierce through the mist of rainwater clinging to the roads. He hears a horn honk somewhere a block or two away, sees of a group of women laughing and stumbling along the sidewalk.

The reds and blues of traffic lights pour out onto the road in streaks, and Reigen slows to a stop when maroon blinks at them. The engine purrs and the heat soaks into his vaguely damp uniform, and Shigeo glances to the side to see Reigen isn’t in his suit for once, but that makes sense. A big sweater drapes from him instead, grey fabric a haunting brick in the red of the traffic light.

Shigeo plays with the bandaids around his fingers; old bandages replaced by his mother that worries too much. In the silence of the empty intersection, Reigen speaks.

“So is there a reason you called me instead of your parents?” and he says it gently enough to where Shigeo doesn’t sense any annoyance in the tone. It’s simply curious. He’s simply prodding for answers Reigen is patient enough to eventually get no matter what.

Even though he knows Reigen is worrying, it’s… relieving, to not see it on a face for once. He wonders if that’s selfish; he wonders if Reigen would say it’s selfish.

Shigeo thinks on it, stares at the beads of water that collect near the dormant windshield wipers. “I just wanted you,” he says truthfully.

He chances a glance at his Master, and his expression reminds him a lot of the day after that conference, when Reigen had asked him that burning question with a wobbling voice and Shigeo had answered that even if he is a bit of a liar, he still helps people when he lies. He still has morals and he’s still a good person—one of the better ones, in fact.

Reigen visibly fights a teary smile as he stares at the red light, and when the interior of the car blinks to blue he lets off the brake and rolls on through the neons.

“Hey. I know a good ramen place that does late hours,” Reigen grins minutely at him, patting his leg from across the console, “Up for some grub?”

Shigeo meets his gaze with a muted smile of his own.

+

They’re the only customers in the ramen shop.

It feels a bit like a crime, eating out at this hour; it’s strangely quiet and the air feels liminal and stagnant, like he’s in some other realm that doesn’t measure time in an Earthly way. The familiar smells of noodles and broth keep him grounded enough to feel the cracks in the wooden countertop, and he traces them with his fingers while Reigen scarfs down his own order.

The shop is all orange hues and loud signs, warm lighting bouncing off the tables and warmer smells wafting from the back; it feels a world away from what’s beyond the window at his shoulder, all blues and purples and neon lights singing his hair. The lighting fixtures up above have holes in them and it creates patterns Shigeo traces with his eyes, gaze crawling across the floor slowly.

“Mm,” Reigen hums across from him, mouth full and dipping his chopsticks into the fray of noodles in his bowl, “Mh mh.”

Shigeo watches him twist the noodles between his chopsticks and scoop them up onto his bottom lip that slurps up the grease, Reigen’s satisfied humming the only sound in the restaurant other than the occasional clang of metal from the kitchen. His has his own hands wrapped around his order, the broth warm through the ceramic of the bowl, but he hasn’t gathered the energy to dig in just yet.

“Mmm tol’ ya thi’ place wa’ good,” Reigen struggles out through a mouthful of noodles, pointing his chopsticks at Shigeo and bouncing his hand around before he swallows, “Eat up, Mob, it’s gonna get cold on ya.”

Shigeo moves, slowly, to break apart his chopsticks and pick at his meal. He swirls his noodles around in flat bubbles that glisten against the lighting overhead, aimless in his little whirlpool, and he feels Reigen’s eyes on him past the steam in his face.

“C’mon, kid,” his Master says, and it’s gentle and prodding in that spacious way, “You’re gettin’ skinny, Mob. At leasy try a bite.”

He is getting quite skinny; he’d noticed it the other day in the mirror after a shower that had frankly exhausted him. His eyes had been tired and his skin had been pale and his arms had been skinny like they’d been skinny near the end of Mogami’s realm, and Shigeo had refused to look in the mirror after that, even to make himself look presentable the next morning.

Shigeo takes great care to not look down at himself, at how thin he’s gotten, and takes a slow bite of his ramen.

He feels Reigen’s eyes on him still, still looking, still searching for something. Maybe he finds it, because the heat of his gaze finally leaves as his Master shoves down another gulp of noodles.

Shigeo listens to the clang of utensils from the kitchen and hopes the sounds override the taste; his aura, like it always does anymore, tightens at his core and throws a bout of nausea that he has to stop chewing to contain. He stares at a knot in the wood while he works through it, carefully separates his energy into manageable chunks, swallows mechanically.

He keeps his gaze on the wood as Reigen starts talking again.

“So,” he says, scraping the sides of the ceramic in front of him, “do you know yet?”

Shigeo lifts his gaze to meet him, blinking. “Hm?”

Reigen picks the bowl off the table and leans back in his seat with it, scooping another loose ball of noodles into his mouth and swallowing. “The last time I asked you if you were okay, back during that storm, you said you didn’t know,” his Master recites, “It’s been a bit, though. So… do you know now?”

Shigeo’s gaze flickers across his features, drinking in the carefully neutral expression, and he thinks. He thinks about how his very first instinct is to say yes, I am fine, just like how it’d been his first instinct then too. It’s his first response to anything nowadays, because that question simply keeps coming and if he says no he feels like the world will end.

It’s all anybody ever says to him anymore, even the kids at school that normally don’t notice his presence. Even the teachers that watch him and his grades slip. Even his parents; their conversations feel closer to interrogations than anything else nowadays.

He’d thought that if he said it enough times, people would believe him. But the evidence against that is everywhere, all around him, and Shigeo doesn’t know how he didn’t realize it sooner. 

The more Teruki had lied about his living situation, the more Reigen and Serizawa had gotten involved. The more Reigen lied about being an ESPer the more reasons Shigeo was given not to trust him. The more Dimple lied about loving godhood, the more Shigeo knew he was getting lonely.

Still. Still. Telling the truth is so much harder.

Shigeo opens his mouth, the beginnings of it on his tongue because he’s tired and he simply doesn’t have the energy to do anything hard, but then he stops.

“Don’t fucking tell me you’re okay. Don’t lie to my face like that through your goddamn teeth. Stop doing that!”

Shigeo grips his bowl in both hands, the heat from the ceramic soaking into his skin until it stings.

“Mob… I’m worried here. Please, kid, don’t lie to me.”

Since when had Shigeo become a liar?

He stares into his ramen, devastated by the very thought; Shigeo Kageyama isn’t a liar. He values the honest truth, he values it above most other things, so when had he decided that preaching honesty and lying to his family in the same breath was acceptable? When had he crossed that line? Where had that line even been? At what moment had Shigeo broken and decided that lying was the better option?

“Dimple filled them in. I, uh… I told him to tell the truth. I don’t like lying to them. They don’t deserve that.”

At what point had he decided that his family deserved to be lied to?

Ritsu was right; he isn’t himself. Shigeo Kageyama isn’t a liar. Shigeo Kageyama doesn’t hurt his family like that, doesn’t even consider it, so who does he think he is, to be able to get away with this? Who is this new fake Shigeo that twists his blank words along a split tongue?

Actually, he doesn’t think this is new. As horrifying of a prospect as it is, Ritsu had been right, every word that had spit from his mouth. Shigeo had said he’d been fine for years, he had said he didn’t need help for years. He has been lying.

“And look where that got you!”

And look where that got you, Shigeo thinks bitterly.

Distantly, like a gentle knock to his skull, he hears a worried kid? across the table, muffled and faraway in the frothy confines, and Shigeo blurts it out before he can even think about taking the easy path.

“I know,” he whispers out, wobbly, and then his words recover and get on their own two feet and he flows forward, “I do know… now. I’m… no. I’m not okay.”

He cuts the cycle. Oddly, his aura freezes instead of writhes.

A beat of silence reigns, and Shigeo stares at the lip of his bowl to avoid Reigen’s gaze, because if he makes eye contact while feeling this bare he thinks he might explode. It’s more short-lived than he expects, because Reigen shifts in his seat and taps the side of his bowl with his chopsticks like he’s ringing a bell.

“Progress! That’s the first step; now you can check that off the list,” he grins, makes a scratching noise through his teeth as he swipes at the air with a finger, and he’s not exactly sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this, “Done! How’s it feel?”

Like the world just paused. Like he just did something that he’d trained himself for five years not to do. “Like I’m about to die.”

“Wow, okay—you know what, that’s understandable,” Reigen props his chin on the back of his hand, “First step—admitting somethin’s wrong—is always one of the hardest.”

Shigeo shifts in his seat, trying to rid of the feeling that everything around him is suddenly see-through. “What’s… the second step?”

Reigen puffs his cheeks out while he looks around, blowing air out like a balloon slow and steady. “Well,” he thinks, tapping the table, “You figured out that something is wrong. Now you need to find the root of the problem.”

“My powers,” Shigeo says, because that answer is easier, but Reigen knows him better than that.

“The root, Mob. Not the branches,” he says gently, “Your powers don’t just go crazy for no reason.”

Shigeo looks back down at his ramen and swirls the bubbles with his chopsticks again. He thinks of the ghost sensations of metal grills against his skull, the heat of the house fire against his skin, the clenching of hands around his windpipe. He thinks of different realms and brainwashed cities and demolished towers floating in the sky; how hard it is for him to parse through in his head, much less out loud to somebody else.

This is why he’s been lying.

There’s a lot of things. There’s a lot of “roots,” and counting them up in his head gives him a weird frothy decimal he doesn’t really understand, so he tries again and it simply repeats. The world had continued without him last winter, had kept spinning on its axis while he’d struggled to stand, and the further away from everyone else he’d gotten, the less he’s tried to catch up.

Everyone had simply moved on. Nobody thinks about the things he does, about the metal grills and the fire and the bruises, and nobody thinks about these things because they happened an eternity ago. In the hustle and bustle of the city, of the world, those things might as well have happened centuries ago. Shigeo feels like the only person on the planet that still dreams of them.

Shigeo feels like the only person on the planet that is still living them.

And how crazy will that sound? That he’s still living in moments that he should’ve forgotten by now in favor of more room in his brain for math tests? That he’s a fifteen-year-old kid who’s stuck in the past when he’s not got much of a past to begin with?

How insane will he sound, if he tells Reigen all of this? That he’s seemingly the only one bothered? So bothered by these things, in fact, that he’s stopped eating and sleeping and caring to hold his morals high like they used to be? So bothered that he’s starting to break, and the last few times he’s been broken? He’d hurt people because he wanted to.

He doesn’t want to hurt people. But who’s to say that sentiment won’t disappear after a few more weeks of this?

Shigeo doesn’t really know why he says it; he thinks it’s maybe just a reach, just a desperate hand out for any sign that he isn’t alone in this. It’s a weird question, a personal one, one that he shouldn’t have asked without a warning, and he feels bad as soon as it slips from his mouth.

“Does the scar on your back ever bother you?”

Reigen blinks, leans back just an inch, and then blinks some more. His expression is careful and guided, confusion overlaying his features thinly, and then he speaks. “Hm? Oh—from the Claw guy?”

Shigeo nods, and when Reigen fidgets in his seat he knows he’s made him uncomfortable. One knee underneath the table starts bouncing. Guilt presses at him while he watches his Master glance around, and he’s about to dismiss it with a never mind, I’m sorry, but then Reigen looks at him and he finds the words dying on his tongue.

His Master’s gaze darts across his face, searching for something, gears churning in his head, and he gets that subtle, faux grin on his face he makes when he’s about to lie, but then he stops himself. Reigen stops and looks at him again, seems to feel guilty about something, seems to backtrack.

“Uh… sometimes,” Reigen answers, honestly, and Shigeo distantly thinks this is one of the few times he’s ever given him private information that wasn’t just… constructed, “Yeah.”

Reigen leans back in his seat, as if to flatten his scar out against the wooden backing to hide it behind another layer. “Occasional phantom pains,” he says, flippant hands rolling while his gaze stays anywhere but Shigeo, “Hurts a little more in the winter.”

“Do you have nightmares about it?” he blurts before he can stop himself.

His Master stiffens, and stares, and it’s one of his calculating looks that feels so sharp and so stern that it used to scare Shigeo. Now he simply feels uneasy under the gaze, under the churning cogs and the hardening resolve there in the brown. Reigen’s bouncing knee stops, stills at the crescendo, and in the silence of the restaurant Shigeo hears him swallow.

“Yeah… sometimes,” Reigen answers, looking at him oddly, and this one is also honest and open but it’s also stiff and distracted. This whole conversation tastes like ash to him; maybe that’s just the noodles under his nose mixing with the vivid memory of fire, though.

He’s not the only one. That happened ages ago, and Reigen still thinks about that. He’s still bothered by that, still haunted by it just like Shigeo is, which is obviously horrible and he feels bad for the sense of victory in his chest, but this means he’s not alone. This means it’s not just him being sensitive. Maybe this is okay; maybe this is manageable.

Maybe this is normal; relatively speaking.

“... Is that what’s bothering you?”

Shigeo looks up. Reigen, wide-eyed, stares at him like a deer in headlights, and he suddenly feels like he’s done something wrong. The look is more devastated than he’s prepared for, and Shigeo hitches up his shoulders and stutters out a few noises that wobble.

“Well—! It’s, uhm—” he starts, looking away, “It’s… more than that. It’s uh… it’s a lot of things.”

He moves his gaze down to the cracks in the table, picking at the knot there with a finger to avoid the stare that’s pelting him. “But… that’s one of them,” he mumbles out against his noodles.

The metal clangs in the kitchen sound faraway and buried beneath the look Reigen is giving him; it’s one of wide open remorse, frenzied in the caramel with something else that tastes not of pity, but of grief, and Shigeo remembers this look.

He’s seen it twice, he thinks. Gold and glass enter his thoughts, blood on his tongue and gunshots in his ears, and him being dropped to the floor in a heap of bruises while Reigen points a gun at another man for his safety. And then wind, strong and glowing with energy he couldn’t contain and Reigen pushing against him, yelling out with a raw voice and rawer intentions.

Shigeo watches his Master’s eyes like they’re windows to his head—watches every moment flicker through his thoughts like frames of an old movie, and then he hears a fuck whispered out over the table.

“How uh…” Reigen wobbles out, ramen in his bowl forgotten, “How many things are there exactly?”

Shigeo doesn’t know how to reply to that, and he feels like Reigen knows that too. The number is translucent and it phases through his hand when he tries to reach for it, when he tries to compile everything that is wrong with him, and the question ends up settling over them heavily with no answer to be given.

He shrugs against the weight, tracing the woodgrain in the table with his gaze.

After a beat, Reigen sags against the table and puts his head in his hands. “Fuck,” he whispers, and Shigeo feels like he should apologize, but he gets the feeling Reigen won’t like that, so he keeps quiet, “I didn’t even… Fuck, I should have known—”

“Is—Did I do something wrong…?” Shigeo teeters out instead, because he figures he’s allowed to at least ask, and Reigen flies up from his slouch.

“No! No no no—!” Reigen waves his hands about, shaking his head, and then he presses his elbows into the wood and worries his lip, starts bouncing his leg again, “I just—”

Reigen spends a moment to think, face pinched and expression taut, and then he looks back up at Shigeo after a few long beats. “Kid, I’m… I should’ve seen it. The signs have been there, of—of everything that you’ve been through, and I just… I just thought…”

He bows his head down a bit, fingers raking through his hair until it’s ruffled and swiped up. “I don’t know what I thought,” his Master wobbles, “I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner.”

The words feel familiar somehow, and he thinks of Ritsu.

“It’s okay,” Shigeo says, and he means it, because he’s been in a similar boat and he knows the guilt that’s eating at Reigen is heavy beyond compare, “Really. I get it. It’s… not like I’ve been very cooperative up until now.”

Reigen breathes out and leans back, tapping the side of his ramen bowl absently as he thinks. Shigeo thinks too, stares at his cold noodles and traces the twists and bends in them, and then in a little burst of bravery, he speaks first.

“Ritsu and I had a fight last week,” Shigeo says, and he senses Reigen’s gaze shoot to him. He pins his eyes on his food so he doesn’t lose the courage to keep going. “It made me realize that I’m hurting him. I’ve been hurting everybody, by refusing help.”

“... You’re the one hurting the most, Mob,” his Master mumbles gently.

That doesn’t really matter to him. Distantly, he knows that’s not a particularly good thought, but he stashes it away to think on it later. “Then for all of our sakes,” Shigeo says, “I want it to stop.”

He catches a smile in the corner of his eye and he chances a glance up to see it in full, gentle and sloppy and victorious. “That’s the spirit, kiddo,” Reigen grins, leaning forward.

His Master plops his chin down on his hand, looking down at him as his head tilts up. “Now, as much we wanna dig down into those roots and have a good ole therapy session, you—” Reigen points at him with his other hand, swirling his finger in circles, “—look like you’re about to face plant into your noodles, so I propose we go home for the night and try for some shuteye.”

Does he? He guesses that’s fair. He feels a bit like a husk, like he’s simply the exoskeleton that existed around something before him, and if he moves then he’ll crinkle up and dust away. His eyes flick to his skinny arms and how pale they look even under warm, generous lighting.

“... Yeah… okay,” Shigeo breathes, because Reigen is fully correct on the fact that he wouldn’t be able to talk about much of anything after all of that. He feels like nothing and everything happened simultaneously, and the exhaustion hits him all at once somehow, like it had been waiting for a lull between it all.

Reigen takes both of their bowls, doesn’t comment on the fact that Shigeo took one singular scoop from his, and pulls him along to the counter and then to the doors. Cool, wet air hits when they open and it drags Shigeo back to the present world long enough to get to the car. He trudges along the rainy asphalt and slides into the passenger seat, Reigen releasing a hand from his shoulder he hadn’t even known was there when he ducks in.

By the time Reigen is in the driver’s seat, Shigeo is already slumped in the passenger side and staring lifelessly at the neons glowing through the windshield.

By the time the car starts, Shigeo is already drifting off, and he distantly senses Reigen clicking on his seat belt for him before he sinks.

Chapter Text

Dimple is a man that has a very close relationship with death.

It seems like an obvious thing, with him being a spirit, but that fact tends to slip the others’ minds. He supposes they don’t see him as some evil, morphing entity anymore, but simply as a friend—it’s easy to forget he’s a spirit, even with his appearance, because he acts human anyway. Even after all these years, he hasn’t lost his humanity.

But the concept of death has always clung close to him, even before he died. He doesn’t necessarily remember much from his previous life, but he knows Death had hung over him in his dreams right up until the very end. It had been scary at first—it had been relieving by the time it was done.

The idea of it scares most humans into doing pretty much anything, and spirits have an innate ability to sense that. It’s in them all from the start, and besides actual mind readers and possessions, it’s the only time they ever get to peer into somebody else’s head.

Thoughts of death linger in the air like the stench of the thing itself—spirits tend to gather around it like vultures waiting for sick prey to die. Sometimes it’s to instantly slurp up whatever little spirit will pass over to their realm, like some twisted version of spawn-camping. Sometimes, if the newly-died is lucky, they will be greeted by kind souls with humanity still keeping their faces in comprehensible shapes.

People with death on their mind often enough to lure evil to them are people to be weary of, occasionally. Sometimes they’re murderers, other times they’re people that haven’t killed yet but desperately, hopelessly want to. Sometimes it’s people that kill indirectly, from the chain of actions that they are acutely aware they are making, until the trickle-down lands some stranger in a grave and they repeat.

Dimple knows better than to chalk them all up as murderers, though. They’re often artists who simply think differently and are enamored with all things end. Sometimes they’re simply morticians, or grieving people who just lost a loved one, or doctors that didn’t have the time or the chance to save somebody. The thought of death doesn’t solely belong to bad people.

Sometimes, it is people who aren’t happy. And in the few memories he has of the beginning of his afterlife, he remembers feeling incredibly hopeless at the sheer number of unhappy, death-ridden minds.

Depending on where you go, it’s relentless. The stench wafts from at least one apartment in every complex, and it’s generally worse than that in the poorer sides of town. Dimple doesn’t go a single day without smelling death at some point, either from some depressed twenty-something-year-old just trying to scrape by or a suicidal middle-aged soul that doesn’t see the point anymore.

Dimple has never stepped in to help these people, even if deep down, some nicer part of him has always wanted to. It’s not necessarily because he doesn’t care—although he will admit, he doesn’t care nearly as much as he should. But the stench of thought-death keeps him away and reminds him of things, of reasons he’s dead in the first place, and he simply can’t find it in him to get past it all.

The spirits with less humanity flock to their apartments, waiting for the day it happens. Dimple floats the other way every time, feeling ill and dizzy.

He stays away from most of the thought-death smell, and he even hangs back on jobs Reigen and Serizawa take that taste of suicide to him. He always gives the flippant excuse that it’s boring and he isn’t their servant, but he thinks they’ve recognized a pattern over time. If they’re smart, they won’t ask.

Thankfully, most of the people he knows now aren’t addled with constant thoughts of the end. He can tell Reigen used to be—takes one to know one—but he seems okay now. Serizawa is still struggling a little bit, but compared to how he was when they first met him, he’s worlds away from it.

Most of the kids are alright too, relatively speaking; for a group of ESPers that have fought against crazy odds and seen quite of bit of violence, they seem to be doing remarkably okay. Ritsu thinks about death a slightly-more-than-normal amount, but Dimple is pretty confident that’s just who he is. Teruki, as hard of a life as he’s led, is surprisingly hardy against thoughts like that.

Most of the kids are fine. Keyword is most. Because Shigeo? That kid is plagued with death.

Now, when Dimple had first met him, the smell had seemed suspiciously strong for a kid his age. Dimple had figured it’s the ESPer in him talking—the kid sees spirits constantly, of course he’s thinking about death. That’s only natural.

But here recently, it’s spiked up to alarming levels. It’s a strong smell, a persistent one, and there’s no real reason for a kid his age to be so intertwined with the concept of death that he thinks about it even with company, even when he’s laughing with friends. A kid that young shouldn’t be thinking about death this often—it isn’t normal.

The other spirits are too afraid to go anywhere near Shigeo, most days, even when the stench lingers on his clothes and permeates the whole house. Even in town, wherever Shigeo goes there is a wide, expansive radius around him where spirits do not dare intersect, his aura too wild, too snappy. If Dimple chases away the occasional idiot that tries to break through the barrier, nobody has to know.

Nowadays, though, Dimple finds it hard to be around the kid, in all honesty. The thought-death clings to the very drywall of his room, billows down the hallways in plumes, soaks into the floorboards like they’re sponges. It even creeps along the front lawn and weaves between the fencing, sticking to the flowers out front like pollen.

The Kageyama family’s house itself is riddled with death, and yet all of its residents are alive and accounted for.

He watches Shigeo now, seated at his desk that’s currently strapped to the floor and hunched over a math assignment that’s pinned down with a hand. Everything else around him is taped to the surface, pens and rulers and removable eraser tips all gathered into pencil bags that are clamped to the table. The lamp sitting there on the corner keeps flickering and dimming and then surging with energy that threatens to pop the bulb.

Shigeo’s aura wriggles along the corners of the room, pressing against the walls and pushing on his window. Little bursts of noise wave through the air when the kid flips his pencil over to erase something, colors turning a redder shade of pink.

The thought-death isn’t there, right now, nor is it always. It’s usually quite potent when the kid is lying in bed though, struggling to keep his eyes closed. When he’s alone for long periods, the smell is stronger. Sometimes, even when there’s people in the room and laughter in the air, Shigeo is quiet and the stench is overwhelming.

This is the first time Dimple has ever been this close to it before, since dying.

He thinks about their first meeting, and how the rage in Shigeo’s eyes had been sullied with something exhausted and remorseful, something that didn’t belong on a kid’s face. He thinks about the way he’d raised his hand, the way he’d said those last few words before Dimple had been eviscerated. The way his victory hadn’t felt like a victory at all, the way he said it.

“I’m… terrible.”

This is also the first time he’s ever considered helping.

It surprises him just how quick it comes, how effortlessly the idea enters his head and how long it stays there, stubborn and stuck. He wouldn’t say it aloud, but Shigeo is one of the few people he’d do practically anything for, even if it means burrowing past his own trauma. Even if it means digging up old memories and sounds and sensations.

But he could be jumping the gun; he hopes he’s jumping the gun, because that would mean the kid’s thoughts aren’t what he thinks they are and that would be a blessing. He dearly hopes it’s something else, because practically anything else would be better than the thoughts Dimple is versed in. Death isn’t often a good thing to be thinking about regardless, but Dimple hopes to every higher being out there that Shigeo isn’t thinking of his own.

Dimple can’t see himself not helping, in all honesty, no matter what it is. This is Shigeo Kageyama, a kid he’s come to adore against his will, a kid who’s sweet, who’s intentions are golden, who’s very life motto is to help other people.

This is the kid who apologized to him for dismissing his want of godhood, even after Dimple had said horrible things to him, even after Dimple had brainwashed the entire city and had made Shigeo feel isolated and hopeless on purpose. Shigeo had apologized. Of everybody on Earth, this is the kid who deserves this the least.

Only issue is that he’s not entirely sure how to go about it.

Another spike of static plumes out from his core as he flips his pencil over again, erasing with frustrated jerks. Dimple floats closer, slow but steady, until he’s settled atop a book that’s taped down to the wood in front of him.

Shigeo doesn’t seem to notice, or simply doesn’t think to greet him—he’s looking down at the numbers on the page with something akin to hatred, gaze scanning the same question over and over again, fast, slow, everything in between. The lamp flickers across the desk, warm light dimming against the moon coming in from the window.

He scribbles some more, writes numbers down with a pencil that shakes in his grip. Dimple watches its eraser swirl and dance in jerky swipes and pulls, the room silent save for the crickets outside and the distant whir of running water in the pipework. Shigeo’s pencil scratches against the paper, the eraser bouncing off the wood of the table as he thinks and stares, and then he’s flipping it over again and sighing out, short and frustrated.

Shigeo recenters himself, stares at the problem with a million eraser marks in the empty space below it, and then his shoulders and demeanor slowly sag. Dimple watches what little energy the kid has drain from his eyes, and he ends up gazing through the paper with a dead expression.

“I’m gonna fail,” the kid lets out in a mumbled whisper, and Dimple slugs forward along the book he perches on.

“Oh c’mon kid, why don’t you take a break already? You’ve been at this for hours.”

“Dimple, my grades can’t afford a break,” Shigeo answers, dropping his pencil and putting his head in his heads. He scrubs at his face and stretches down the skin, and it makes his eye bags look even more hideous, “I’m going to fail.”

“Can’t Ritsu help ya?” He’d offer to do it himself, or at least help out, but they’ve long since determined that this new-math bullshit is lost on him. “There’s no way you’ll fail, you’ve got the smartest kid in the grade as a brother!”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” the kid sighs out, although it’s halfhearted and he can tell Shigeo is tempted, “It’s not fair to Ritsu either—he shouldn’t have to do two kids’ worth of assignments because his brother is too stupid to—”

“Hey,” Dimple bites, harsh enough to startle but soft enough that even Shigeo wouldn’t scare at it, “None of that talk. You’re not stupid, Shigeo. School grades are a ruse; there’s more to someone’s intelligence than the ability to memorize a few equations.”

“The teachers don’t care about that,” Shigeo rests a cheek against a hand, squishes it up, “They’re paid to give lessons and grade papers. They don’t care.”

That doesn’t feel like something Shigeo Kageyama would’ve said a year ago. It feels wildly pessimistic, and Dimple has never known him to be negative. “C’mon, kid, if you don’t take a break you’re not gonna get anywhere.”

Shigeo doesn’t respond, simply flicks his pencil up the desk and watches it roll up and back down the slanted wood. His gaze flicks to the questions again, moves across the words, and Dimple lets out a good-natured sigh and moves.

He floats two inches across the desk and then sits right atop Shigeo’s homework, the green of his form warping the words. He crosses his little arms for good measure, and Shigeo meets his gaze with a look that’s too tired for him to even get a read on.

“A ghost ate your homework,” Dimple announces.

“They’ve probably heard that one before,” Shigeo says, but there’s the tiniest of smiles in his words, and Dimple takes it as a victory. The kid sighs, long and soft. “...Okay. Break time, I guess.”

Shigeo doesn’t get up from his chair, but he doesn’t try to peer through Dimple’s translucence at the questions either. He simply plops his head down on his arm and keeps flicking his pencil up, down, up, and down again. Over and over, wood and wood sounding out hollow tinks.

He watches Shigeo’s eyes droop after a long minute, lids sliding closed and eyes staring past nothing as sleep starts to addle his brain. Dimple lets the silence take over, but he knows the peace won’t last long, and he knows his sleep won’t be deep enough to even count. The constant bubbling of his aura in the room makes it almost impossible to get a good night’s rest, he’d imagine.

There is one solution to that, however.

“I have a proposition for ya, kid,” he speaks up.

Shigeo peels his eyes open with a subtle jerk of his muscles, having already slipped into a thin unconsciousness. His tired gaze rakes over to Dimple, a questioning hum leaving him, and his lids cut off half of his irises as he looks at him, like he’s struggling to lift them any higher.

Yeah, he definitely needs this, Dimple thinks dimly.

“Let me possess you.”

That wakes the kid up, at least a little bit, because he tilts his head away from his arm and lifts it from the table, confusion on his face. “What?”

“Let me possess you so you can sleep,” Dimple elaborates, floating up away from the homework to come beside him by his chair, “Hosts can’t dream while possessed unless the possessor wants them to. Part of your sleep deprivation is because of nightmares, yeah?”

Shigeo blinks, blinks again, and then nods silently. Dimple grins. “Well I can stop those— if I’m possessing you. Host sleep is one of the most peaceful things on the planet! If you’re… a willing participant, that is.”

The kid seems to think on it, long and hard, and this is further than Dimple thought he’d get if he’s being honest. He’s seemed pretty stubborn lately about help, but ever since Reigen had left his home at two in the morning to go pick up a Shigeo that had apparently been lost (whatever that means), he’s been a little different. More open to the idea of vulnerability. More willing to unfurl in front of friends.

Dimple watches Shigeo’s tired eyes churn, gears slow and rusted, and as soon as doubt flickers across his face, he knows it’s going to be a bit of a fight from here.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea…” Shigeo mumbles, staring off somewhere past Dimple’s right, and he reels in his immediate urge to get loud as he usually does.

“Why not?” Dimple asks instead, patient and cool and neutral. Shigeo is, for once, listening to an offer to help; he is not losing this battle to his natural hotheaded barks.

Shigeo fidgets with his hands, leaning back in his chair. The lamp flickers in the corner, buzzes with energy it wasn’t made for and then dims when the electricity is yanked out of the sockets. The kid worries his lip, studying the floor with interest, and then he’s looking up at Dimple with those big worried eyes.

“What if I accidentally exorcise you?”

Dimple lets his careful expression twist and fall, which is a mistake, because Shigeo shifts in his seat and looks ready to decline, through and through. He scrambles to salvage it.

“Oh c’mon, that’s not gonna happen!” Dimple hadn’t even considered it. “It’s not like it’d be a surprise, you’d know the possession was coming!” That could absolutely happen, if Shigeo isn’t careful enough. “You have good control over—”

“I used to be have good control over my powers,” Shigeo enunciates, turns in his chair to face him, and it takes a lot of effort for Dimple not to deflate at the words, “Not anymore. If I make one mistake, Dimple, you’re gone.”

It’s true. Even a drop of the energy Shigeo has in his middle would incinerate him instantly. He’d be nothing before he’d even realized something had gone wrong. “You won’t make a mistake.”

“How do you know that?!” Shigeo suddenly pops up from his seat, the lamp on the desk flickers, and the legs of his chair scrape against the hardwood loudly, “How do you know I won’t j…just—”

Shigeo’s face goes a shade paler and he teeters. Dimple gasps and darts to his side, little hands on his shoulder that definitely wouldn’t help steady him at all, but the kid juts a hand out to his dresser and steadies himself before he has a chance to tip over. Dimple keeps a hand on his arm solely for comfort and by instinct, watching as Shigeo blinks away the stars that are no doubt in his vision.

Silence takes over, taut and strained, and the crickets chirp nervously from beyond the window. Shigeo’s legs wobble beneath him—quietly, Dimple wonders how long it’s been since he’s eaten anything substantial.

The kid blinks until the fog fades from his pupils and the color returns to his cheeks, or what little of it there is nowadays. His gaze finally focuses again on Dimple, and when it does, it’s strained and guilty.

“You need sleep, Shigeo,” Dimple says with as much honest authority in his voice as he can muster. He hates playing the senior authority card on the kid since he knows Shigeo isn’t one to go against adults out of anxiety, but he thinks it’s needed here. “I’m serious.”

“I just stood up too fast,” Shigeo tries, but his voice is thin and his reasoning thinner, “I’m fine.”

“This is getting bad, kid,” Dimple ignores it, “Do you really, honestly believe it’ll get better by itself any time soon?”

Shigeo’s wide eyes flicker across his face, and Dimple kind of hates how cornered the kid looks. But sleep is one of the main issues here, and it’s undoubtedly making the guy feel half dead, so personally, that’s Dimple’s first step.

Besides, looking at his pale complexion and his lifeless eyes scares him more than he’d ever admit.

Shigeo winces after a beat at the question, looking away to a knot in his hardwood floor. “...No,” he whispers out, and it’s kind of pathetic, and Dimple feels a tug in his chest.

“Exactly. That’s where I come in,” he slowly floats away once he knows Shigeo has balance, “Just for one night. I possess you, you get the grandest sleep you’ve ever had in your life, and while you’re busy schnoozing, Ritsu will do your homework.”

Dimple holds out a little hand. “Deal, partner?”

Shigeo looks at it like he’s seeing another world, like it’s the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, and his hand twitches at his side. He’s still got his other against his dresser and he grips the wood until his fingers go white, digits wrapping around the corner like he wants to snap it off.

But he also looks at it like he’s seen this before, like he knows how this will go, like he wants to say no and turn away and then his legs are wobbling and his eyes are tired and he’s losing steam by the day. Dimple watches him think over the consequences, weigh the reward against it, watches him go back and forth between an open expression and that stern, guarded one.

This is exactly why he hadn’t offered this sooner. If he’d done this a few weeks ago, Shigeo still would’ve had energy left in him, no matter how little, and it would’ve convinced him he could keep going. He would’ve said no immediately, would've turned him down without a thought.

But now, the kid is worn down. The kid is salivating at the idea of a good night’s sleep, a full, deep eight hours uninterrupted, and Dimple is an expert in offering deals at good moments. He knows how to starve people of things they need, knows how to cut off the things that make people straight thinkers, and he also knows this isn’t the most honest way to do this, but he has to.

Possessing the kid will give him access to his thoughts. Shigeo gets to sleep, and Dimple gets to find out if the stench of death is really what he thinks it is.

It’s a win-win. He hates violating the kid’s privacy, but if he asks, he’ll lie. If it wasn’t such a serious subject, he wouldn’t be going to these lengths. But he needs to know. He needs to know, and then help him, if he can.

Shigeo looks at him like he’s apologizing for something that hasn’t happened yet, for something he fears is about to come, but then he’s swallowing and raising a hand. It trembles between them, ever so slightly, and Dimple’s digits wrap around his pointer finger.

The kid nods, nervous, but steeled and ready. Dimple gives him the most reassuring smile he can manage, and then dives in.

Possessing Shigeo is familiar, but possessing him with so much power in his gut is an entirely new experience. It’s instantly loud, louder than anything Dimple has ever heard, and his own energy collides with Shigeo’s like oil and water, slides off of each other as soon as they make contact. His greens and blues trickle between Shigeo’s cotton candy in quick spurts, and the kid’s energy is so densely packed that it feels a bit like wading through jello.

This requires him to be at the helm, so his energy zips up to the brain and rewires the connections, cuts things off he doesn’t need, reconnects parts he does, and he can’t help but notice Shigeo’s energy is remarkably still. He can tell the kid is putting his all into holding back, can feel the strain of it as it tries to rush at him—Dimple makes sure to move quick.

In all of his times possessing Shigeo, he usually had to jump to action in order to not get crushed to death or something. But now, as the connections are made and Dimple’s aura settles against the walls of Shigeo’s skull, branches out to the nerves along his limbs, his vision opens up to the kid’s calm room. It’s a bit strange, not having to immediately twist and punch and pull.

In the empty space that always comes after a possession, like his aura is still melding with the controls, his senses are fogged for a moment. The room is blurry and grey, the crickets aren’t in his ears yet, and he doesn’t feel the floor beneath his feet immediately.

Still, he grins with Shigeo’s face, red surely along his cheeks, and brings his new hands up to look at their blurry, greyed outlines. “See, Shigeo?” he says with the kid’s vocal chords, his own timbre coming out instead of anything that sounds like a child. He can feel the palpable relief from Shigeo in his middle, something so massive the emotion almost comes out of his mouth in a choked laugh. “Told you it would be f—”

His senses blink in—he sees the room, he smells the distant soapy water from Ritsu’s shower down the hall, he hears the crickets, he feels socked feet against the floors. But something else much, much more important comes and hits him like a truck, zips up his spine like it’s electricity aiming to fry him.

There is something incredibly wrong here.

Dimple stares through Shigeo’s eyes at the opposite wall, static in his peripherals as Shigeo’s being in his middle hitches, asks what’s wrong. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t even think to over the immediate panic, because there is something wrong with Shigeo’s body and the sensation is instant and loud and horrifying.

He feels it, in the kid’s chest, something… crackled. Something broken and split in pieces, something white-hot and angry and seething with energy he doesn’t even know how to comprehend. It’s irritated and the ache of it haunts his chest like every breath is a punishment, like there’s something in there that wants out and his rib cage and his skin is the only barrier it needs to break through, so it’s started chipping.

No.

He can feel realization from his core, from Shigeo’s being balled up in the backrooms of his mind, can hear the yelling of garbled words and panicked scrambling, and Dimple raises a hand to his chest and feels something unnatural through the fabric of the shirt there. He feels raised edges of red and irritated skin, feels something otherworldly between them, something he’s never felt before that’s oddly cold.

No, no. No.

Shigeo’s vessel is breaking.

Something shifts in him, and his senses blink out in one fell swoop that leaves him lightheaded and spiraled. A surge of energy strikes out from Shigeo’s middle and shoves everything in his room against the walls—everything taped down to the desk is flown at the drywall with ease and the furniture scrapes against the floors in a push so strong it almost sends his whole dresser toppling. The glass in the window cracks.

The light from the desk lamp, now on the floor, flickers and flashes until Shigeo’s room is igniting in blacks and whites, and he can feel the kid’s energy panicking, beelining for the intruder in his vessel. Dimple panics too, whirls around and zips between the particles like he’s dodging raindrops, and he can feel that Shigeo is trying so hard to hold it back, the kid is trying so damn hard—

Dimple’s green pulses out from Shigeo in a burst that knocks both of them back, and the light bulb of the desk lamp finally pops.

It leaves them in darkness that’s only broken by the moonlight dripping through the window, but as Dimple wobbles and recovers he can see Shigeo pressed against where his dresser and his wall meet, cowered up to their sides.

His eyes are big and wide like a scared animal, blue glow lighting up the flare of red there in a spark of worry as it darts across Dimple’s features. “Dimple?”

“I’m okay—!” Dimple reassures, little hands up to placate, but he loses track of his thoughts when he sees the dim, subtle glow of white underneath Shigeo’s shirt in the darkness, “Shigeo— what—”

“Shige?!” Ritsu’s voice carries through the door, footfalls hurrying down the hall until they stop in little shadows they can see through the gap, “What was that? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” Shigeo immediately calls back in a shaky timbre. Dimple can’t help but notice he locks the door with a zip of his powers—Ritsu definitely hears the click; it’s loud against the silence. “Just tripped, I’m fine!”

Shigeo’s energy is being pulled back away from the door, scraped off the woodgrain of the floor and piled up to the other side of the room where Ritsu isn’t, but the silence from the kid on the other end is palpable. The shadow of his feet still perch right outside the door, cutting into the orange light that seeps from underneath it, and Dimple sees them shuffle.

“You sure?” Ritsu calls through the door again, and Dimple’s glare meets Shigeo’s wide eyes as the kid gulps in air as quietly as he can, “I felt something weird.”

“Yep! Just—just panicked, when I fell!” Shigeo calls, meeting the spirit’s gaze when he gathers up the courage again. The look is colossal in ways Dimple doesn’t know how to describe. “I’m okay!”

Ritsu hesitates, long and worried, and for a moment Dimple fears he’ll twist the lock open with his own powers and barge in, but he’s not exactly sure why he’s nervous about that prospect. If anything, somebody should definitely see this.

But then the shadows shuffle again, and Ritsu’s feet carry him back down the hall. “Alright…”

Both of them let out breaths into the air and Shigeo’s energy sags with his shoulders, but Dimple meets the kid’s gaze again and it stills in the room that’s suddenly frigid.

“Shigeo,” Dimple starts, voice carefully leveled and even, and then it bursts up into a bark at the end that he can’t help, “Your body is—!”

“I know, Dimple,” Shigeo shakes out, shifting away from the corner he’d crammed himself into and sitting in a lost looking hunch on the floor, “I know it is.”

“Have you told anyone about this—?!”

“No, why would I?” Shigeo looks up at him, exhaustion slowly returning to his eyes as the adrenaline fades, “It would just worry them. It’s not like they can fix it—all it would do is worry them.”

He watches as the kid brings his legs up close to his chest, hugs his knees and hunches into himself. Shigeo buries the bottom half of his face in his arms, unkempt hair spiking up in choppy tufts that float and sway ever so slightly. “You weren’t supposed to find out about that,” he mumbles against his skin.

Dimple lets his arms dangle down as he stares at the kid, and then he’s drifting across the dark room and letting what little green light he gives off rake across the hardwood. The glow stops to settle next to Shigeo, illuminating his pale skin and making it look even sicklier than it already is.

“You’re on a time limit,” Dimple says, finally catching up, and Shigeo’s whole demeanor shrinks beneath the words, “You’ve been on one. This…”

“Might kill me?” Shigeo finishes in a whisper that’s remarkably steady for the substance, but he sees the way his eyes water just under his hair, “Yeah.”

Jesus Christ. That’s what the death stench was.

This isn’t anything like Dimple thought it’d be—it isn’t even close. In a way he’s relieved, but this arguably isn’t much better, this is something unavoidable. This is something that can’t be stopped, no matter what they do, no matter if Shigeo gets better or not. His energy has to go somewhere eventually—it won’t just fade like emotions do.

Those cracks will grow. The energy in him will keep compiling as long as he keeps up this charade, but even if he doesn’t, even if Shigeo finally talks to someone and even if he heals from this, the energy in his core even now is still way too much for his vessel to handle. He’s already bottled everything up too much—he’s already sabotaged himself.

He’s going to have to let it out eventually, and when he does, it’s either going to destroy everything it touches, or it’s going to swallow its own vessel up like a black hole.

Shigeo’s vessel is shattering, and this kid has been living with this knowledge for who-knows-how-long and hasn’t uttered a single thing about it to anybody. This fifteen year old has been staring at a looming Death, been feeling the weight of its hands on his shoulders, and hasn’t told a soul.

“Kid…” Dimple breathes out, and then settles against an arm and wraps a little hand around the side of Shigeo’s head. He leans into it, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow, and Dimple works past his own devastation and keeps his voice steady—this isn’t the end.

“We’ll figure this out, kid, alright?” he murmurs, and with the way Shigeo instantly nods his head along in a desperate little jerk, Dimple wonders how long the kid’s been waiting to hear something like that, “I’m not losing you. It’s simply not happening—I’ll figure somethin’ out.”

Shigeo sniffles into the darkness of his cold room, wiping at his face, and Dimple stays smooshed against his head where the kid leans into the hug. He does his best not to think about the repercussions of all this, of where it would all end up if Shigeo really did…

No. He’s not thinking about that. None of them are losing Shigeo, and that’s a promise.

“Let me guess: you want this a secret between us?” Dimple asks, because really, he sees Shigeo’s point.

Telling the others would simply cause panic, and nothing else; the kid’s right about that much. He could argue they deserve to know, but against Shigeo’s own peace of mind, who is Dimple to interfere? The kid’s dealing with enough as it is—having an entire family clinging to him and worrying over him even more simply isn’t what he needs.

“Please,” Shigeo croaks out over the crickets, sniffling and lifting his head from their hug, and Dimple floats back to see moonlight glistening there in his puffy eyes. His cheeks aren’t wet—the poor kid won’t even let himself cry over this.

“Yeah… okay,” Dimple sighs, little hand on the kid’s arm, “I get it. Lips are sealed.”

Shigeo gives him the thinnest of smiles, wiping his face. “Thank you, Dimple.”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” he waves, patting the kid’s arm. Shigeo looks up at him with exhausted eyes through his bangs, messy and knotted and oily, and Dimple wonders when the hell he got so soft.

Evil spirit my ass, Dimple thinks wryly, as he offers Shigeo a hand. “Still up for wonderful dreamless host sleep?”

Shigeo looks at his hand, moves his gaze up like it’s trudging through syrup, and then he smiles, muted and tired, and takes it.

Chapter Text

Either Tome is made of money, or she secretly saved up her allowance just for this, because this is definitely more sparklers than they planned to buy. The look on her face suggests she’s well aware of this, and simply does not care.

It also suggests a certain urge to light a forest on fire, so Ritsu keeps a close eye on her. There’s a reason they didn’t buy actual fireworks.

“Hurry up,” Tome gripes over her shoulder, her call echoing down the neighborhood street, “You boys are like snails back there!”

“There’s no sense in hurrying,” Ritsu calls back, but pedals his bike (retrieved from the woods in their backyard) down the hill faster anyway. An impatient Tome is a Tome who will stoop to murder. “They look better in the dark.”

Shigeo and Teruki pedal just beside him, scattered out along the road. Shigeo’s bike in particular sports an awkward bend in the frame that Ritsu had fixed with a shove of his powers—it had been stuck in a tree when they’d gone to gather them. His brother hadn’t seemed to mind; luckily, the wheels and the pedals still work, and his doesn’t have hand brakes to worry about.

They pedal past streetlamps that make the metallic glitter on Teruki’s bike shimmer, sparkled under the harsh gold and the faraway glow of the sun that dips into the treeline. A blue-purple colors everything overhead, pink gradient just barely tracing the city’s silhouette.

Ritsu keeps his eyes on the blurred pebbles across the road, curling around the larger rocks as they click their wheels down the hill.

“They’ll still glow—it’s already getting dark!” Tome barks back, the alien stickers plastered lazily on her bike’s frame catching in the lamplight, “We have a zillion sparklers to light, hop to it boys!”

And who’s fault is that? Ritsu thinks with a grin, not having it in him to actually be upset, because when he glances over at his brother, his face isn’t blank or troubled for once.

The bags under his eyes are still tired, lids still drooped and heavy, but there’s light there in his irises that’s returned rather recently. He’s still pale, and the meat on his bones is still disappearing slowly but surely, but Ritsu knows how to read Shigeo’s one million microexpressions and this one breathes contentment.

His brother has his chin pointed up just a tad and the wind billows his sweater out, catches in the fabric and balloons against where he has it tucked into his pants. He’s letting his momentum carry him down the rest of the hill, wheels ticking quietly while he lets his feet rest against the still pedals. His bangs fly away from his forehead and the tiniest of smiles lift up the droop of his face.

Ritsu starts to wonder if Tome’s purchase of so many sparkles was inspired by something other than her own excitement.

Even when Tome says to hurry, she still takes the long path. Shigeo is quiet in a different way today, and it’s not necessarily a bad way, but a contemplative way where they know company and fresh air would be best. His brother has a habit of losing himself in his head if he’s left alone with it long enough. The breeze in his face seems to be helping, and he’s apparently content to simply listen, so they talk across the road to give him something to listen to.

Gravel turns into dirt as they bike past the outskirts of the neighborhood. The light of the streetlamps fade and disappear as they leave them behind, and they follow Tome’s back tire through the winding dirt and the foliage that grabs at their clothes. None of them have lights on their bikes, so they simply deal with the darkness that has them stumbling a little.

After a rough bout on the path bounces Tome around a little too much and spills half of the sparkler boxes from her basket, they finally make it to their beloved little junkyard. Teruki rings his stupid little bell as if to announce their arrival to the zero souls in the area. The metal of the old school bus creaks back like a greeting.

Stepping into the clearing feels like walking through his house’s threshold; an odd home away from home, even if it is just a pile of metal and plastic and weeds that ticks or something dwell in. His shoulders sag when the soles of his converse meet the well-trodden dirt, like some invisible gate behind him has just shut the rest of the world out for an hour or two.

If his parents knew about this place and how often they visit it, they’d probably tell them to stop, and Ritsu wouldn’t find himself disagreeing with the sentiment. It’s abandoned for a reason.

He does finds himself wondering why the hell they chose a junkyard of all places to hang out, but when the thought of spending his days elsewhere occurs to him, there’s an odd sense of sadness tinting it. The school bus, as old and unstable and rusted as it is, feels sheltered and safe in a way even his own room doesn’t compare to. Even with the long-since shattered windshield and the holes in the roof.

“Finally!” Tome cheers, flipping her kickstand up, whirling off her bike, and snatching a box of sparklers from her basket in one fell swoop. She tears into the cardboard like she also tends to tear into snack bags—viciously.

Ritsu waves his foot to blindly prop his kickstand up, settling his bike to lean in the dirt while he stares at her show of bloodlust. “Again—there is no rush here,” he calmly reminds her.

She violently reminds him to shut up, and he does as he’s told with a fond eye-roll.

Tome rips the package open and all of the sparklers—simple lines of grey in the low light—tumble out in a spray. Teruki’s yellows catch them and whirl them back to one bundle that’s placed in Tome’s immediate grabby hands.

She drops the box carelessly to the dirt. Shigeo picks it up and places it in the basket gently like he’s gifting it to the weaved straw. “Okay, okay—light it!” she beams with sharp teeth, holding out the bundle of seventy-two sparklers with a little bounce.

“Okay freakshow settle down,” Teruki laughs, raising the bundle from her hands and redirecting it to the middle of the clearing, high up above the height of the school bus, “Seventy-two pack, right? This should be high enough.”

“Fire crew ready?” Tome looks at Ritsu, and he doesn’t remember agreeing to be the fire crew, but he doesn’t know what else he’d do, so he nods with another eye-roll.

Teruki’s yellows hold the bundle high up in the air, and as soon as Tome says then let her rip! there’s a single spark that ignites all seventy-two in an instant.

The light flares out across the clearing, illuminating the brambles along the dirt and the rusted metal of the bus in quick bursts and flickers. There’s a pillar of sparks spewing from the tops of them, so many that it’s simply a blob of gold with fuzzy edges. Ritsu summons a thin barrier like a net underneath it all to catch the embers, purple light like an aurora shimmering against the honey and lighting up the rest of the clearing with his signature berries and violets.

Tome cheers at the fwoom that reaches their ears, the sparks spraying out in violent hisses until they cease and then it’s simply a bundle of sparklers on fire. He hears Teruki cheer with her, chuckles interrupting the flow, and their laughter is unfortunately contagious, so Ritsu’s smiling too. He waits until the embers cease their glow before he lets the barrier fizzle out.

Tome is already bouncing to her basket again, grabbing another one of the many boxes she’d bought and raving about how awesome it’ll be if they put several to them together in one blast, but instead of listening, Ritsu looks at his brother. He looks at him and watches the reflection of the burning sparklers hiss in his eyes, swaying and flickering, and at the gentle breeze grabbing at Shigeo’s hair and curling the fire around his irises.

He’s smiling, just a little, into the dark. Ritsu smiles wider, and helps the others ready a bigger bundle.

They light another one—two boxes to make a one hundred forty-four bunch—and it’s just as grand (if not quick) as Tome had apparently hoped. It’s bright and it’s popping and it singes the leaves of a nearby plant that Ritsu quickly extinguishes with an air-tight barrier, and Shigeo’s smile grows to a little grin as Tome shakes him around by the shoulders in her excitement.

There’s only so many boxes to burn, so they decide to keep the one-bundle-at-a-time tempo to pace themselves. Teruki climbs up atop the school bus to sit along the roof, and Tome and Shigeo stay in the clearing and spread their arms out as if to catch the embers that never make it to them. Ritsu keeps the empty boxes in a pile by their bikes, flattening them out by the creases as he watches the light show in the sky.

The uneven plain of dirt is rolled over in long shadows as he gazes at the sparks, the dark grain moving and swaying with the flames, and Ritsu finds himself watching the ground instead of the sky, just to study how the light moves. Copies of grass blades and leaves stretch themselves where the glow can’t reach; Tome and Shigeo’s silhouettes dance across the clearing and overshadow everything else in their messy twirls.

He takes a few sparklers from the next box and saunters over to the middle of it all, beneath the light show. Ritsu hands one to Tome and ignites it for her, and she grins and spins with it, leaving a trail of smoke behind in a spiral. He lights another one for his brother and he smiles when Shigeo blinks and takes it, looking lost for a moment, before deciding to carve little figure-eights into the air.

Ritsu hauls himself up the side of their beloved school bus and sits down next to Teruki. The gold of the sparks and the flame up above them light up his face in warm tones and cool shadows, heat against their fronts and crickets to their backs. The blue in his irises turns a bit purple in the lighting, indigos and denims striking out against the crackle of marigold. The blond gazes into the center of the blazing sparklers, his pupils fire.

Ritsu offers him a sparkler. Teruki takes it, lights it up, waves it around and doodles what Ritsu thinks is a cat into the air. The smoke is carried off by the breeze one single second into his drawing, but the blond doesn’t seem to care. He ignites his own and silently joins him in drawing invisible animals.

Tome’s cheers echo out against the metal and the plastic, laughter chasing away any critters scurrying just outside of their circle. She hurries to get another bundle of sparklers, apparently no longer resisting the urge to put several boxes together, because she comes back and holds out a thick bundle for Teruki to levitate up.

She steps back and bounces on her feet, hands pressed together and fiery grin etched into her face, and Teruki lifts this one up just a bit higher and lights it.

The pillar of sparks is tall and bright and they’re all showered in embers that Ritsu catches with his barrier, but he can’t help but look away again to his brother, to the grin on his face. To the tired eyes that light up at the spray of gold, his own sparkler forgotten at his side as it sizzles its embers to the dirt.

It’s not like Shigeo never smiles anymore—he does, just as he’s been doing a lot more since last winter, but the honesty of those grins have started to fade lately. The energy of them don’t carry to his dark eyes anymore, and it feels dreadfully close to the expressions he used to make, back when they were little. Back when Ritsu would ask what was wrong, knowing full well what it was, and never getting anything more than it’s nothing!

Back when his brother had seemed convinced that he had to hide himself away to protect people, like he’s some weapon, like he’s some animal. In his defense, though, he supposes Ritsu had treated that other side of him like it was a monster that needed to be muzzled.

He wants to apologize, right here and right now, just thinking about it.

“—just gonna be sparklers, but Tome mentioned you like fireworks and said you’d prolly wanna come,” Ritsu offers, leaning against the pole of the tennis net in the middle of the gym. The air is kind of sweltering in here—maybe he should hint to the student council to invest in an air conditioner or something.

He watches Takenaka pluck a tennis ball from the bucket next to him, serve it up, swipe at it with his racket. It sails across the net stilted up in the court’s center and bounces against the floor. “Just sparklers? Not even any flares?”

“We’d rather not get in trouble, so we’re airing on the side of caution,” Ritsu reasons with a hand up, shrugging one shoulder, “I think Tome’s planning on getting some colored ones.”

“Eh, that’s somethin’,” Takenaka replies easily, taking another ball and serving it across the net. He thinks on it for a moment and Ritsu watches him open his mouth, pause, and close it again, seemingly backstepping.

“Is your brother gonna be there?”

Ritsu moves his gaze to Shigeo, who beams the first genuine smile he’s made in a good few days.

“...Yeah,” Ritsu says, some deep protective instinct churning to the forefront that he pushes down. He says it more like a question than an answer. “Why?”

It feels like he’d had Takenaka on the line, and then as soon as his brother was even mentioned, he swam off. Takenaka hums, thoughtful and face twisted into hesitance, and then he’s plucking another ball from the bucket and serving again. “I’ll pass this time. Thanks though.”

Ritsu stiffens, doing his best not to jump to conclusions, but the words instantly dig under his skin. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he says, hackles raised.

Takenaka flickers his full attention to Ritsu for the first time, and he blinks. “Oh—no, I didn’t mean it like that, I just—” he fumbles a little, raising a hand to scratch at the back of his head, “Uhm—here lately your brother’s been doin’ this weird thing?”

“His powers must be goin’ crazy or somethin’ cuz it’s just this… constant noise. Really loud, like a super high-pitched shriek? Never stops,” he says, pointing to an ear, “Hurts my head and the ear plugs are useless against it.”

He grabs another ball. “It’s Kageyama though, so I doubt it’s intentional. He’s not like that,” he sighs, swinging his racket, and Ritsu traces the ball’s path across the net to distract himself from the ball of lead in his stomach, “Nothing against him, man. I’ve just been steerin’ clear. Might wanna… see what that’s about, though.”

Shigeo grins up at the light, Teruki’s yellows twirling the bundle of sparklers around in swiveled bursts. Against the harsh glow and the stark shadows casted along his face, his eye bags are more apparent than ever, but so is the gleam of his smile. So is the life in his eyes, still there despite everything.

Under the fizzle of sparks and their laughter, Ritsu speaks lowly.

“Do you think he’s gonna be okay?”

The question doesn’t still Teruki’s hand that draws things into the air, using a new sparkler stolen from Tome’s seemingly endless bundles she lifts into his aura. Ritsu chances a glance at him, watches the indigos in his eyes churn and the smoke make a lazy snail. Tome’s talking now, clapping and moving her hands like she loves to do as she rambles on about something to his brother. Ritsu can’t hear her words over the pops of the fire in the sky.

He can’t hear her, over Teruki’s deafeningly careful expression.

He’s not sure why he’s asking Teruki, as if the guy would know any more than him. Maybe it’s because Shigeo went to Teruki first, instead of him. Maybe it’s because his brother cracked and allowed Teruki to actually try to help, instead of him. Maybe it’s because Teruki seems to know and love a side of Shigeo that Ritsu had once been deathly afraid of.

He thinks back again, to when he’d first met Takenaka.

“Brothers, huh? I see, interesting… Could it be you’re insecure about your ability to understand him?”

He feels as though showing his fear of Shigeo cut off all paths to any future that matters. At least, any future that involves him being a good brother.

Teruki shifts in his spot, stilling his hands to rest in his lap as he watches the sparkler fizzle. “I think… Reigen and him talked,” he says into the fry of light, and Ritsu leans forward.

“Yeah?” he breathes, hope gripping his chest in a wonderful, tight clench.

“Yeah… I think so, anyway. Reigen’s seemed… different, when Shigeo’s brought up,” the blond speaks, quiet and lowered to just them and their tight circle, where the laughter and the embers can’t reach, “I think… he’s figuring it out.”

Teruki’s gaze lands on Shigeo, and Ritsu follows. He’s laughing while Tome runs back to her bike, the light just barely reaching her before she returns with the last two boxes. She’s waving them around, flourishing them much like Reigen would, and her smile is crooked and ecstatic.

“I forgot I bought colored ones!” she yells, ripping open the box, “Green and blue!”

The light show is even cooler when the smoke looks like treetops and the sparks are blue like water; there’s only two packages, so they ignite one whole and then play with the other like normal people do, trails of colored smoke curling around their forms. Teruki and Ritsu jump down from the bus roof and the blond starts dancing eloquently (obnoxiously).

He watches Teruki move around Shigeo in little twirls and flashy gestures, and his brother giggles and joins him in much more confined, muted style.

Ritsu smiles into the dim greens and blues. He’s figuring it out.

+

Cold air seeps from the cracks of his doorway and spills out into the hall.

Shigeo’s bedroom is locked.

He doesn’t remember using his lock very often; even after unfortunate school days and times when his parents had yelled at him, he’d always kept the door unlocked. Even when he hadn’t felt like talking much when he was younger, but didn’t quite know how to show that, he’d still kept his door unlocked; because even back then he didn’t have a good grasp on emotions and he could never tell whether he could handle another person in the room or not.

When everything is okay, both his and Ritsu’s doors are ajar, letting bars of light skitter across the hardwood of the hallway.

But Shigeo’s door is latched shut now. Even to him, it feels wrong.

And it’s odd timing, because Shigeo feels a desperate need to speak to another human being. He wants the presence of another person in the room so badly he can feel his aura stretching all the way to Ritsu’s space, begging for a conversation, pleading for company, but Shigeo pulls it back and digs his metaphorical heels into the metaphorical dirt with the effort.

Ritsu is already doing his homework for him. He hardly thinks bothering him on top of that is acceptable.

His brain is too swollen for his skull and his skull is too small for his skin and it doesn’t make any sense. The air in here feels off, his chest is tingling with something akin to yearning, but it feels wrong, it feels conflicted and unsure, even if the moments where it’s confident in its choice feel stronger than anything he’s ever felt before. The anxiety that shoots along his nerves send a dull ache through his knuckles.

Shigeo fiddles with the rubber of his phone case, slumps against his folded up futon. He stares straight at the light in his ceiling and kind of hopes he goes blind.

The silence of his room is a different type of full than the mass in his chest. He can hear the hum of electricity feeding into his (newly purchased) lamp, and even though it’s switched off the current still leaks up into the bulb, still flickers it on sometimes and plasters orange hotspots against his drywall.

The sound is quiet and high, pitched right to the frequency that prods at his core a little too much. He doesn’t get up to unplug it. He doesn’t take his eyes away from the crack still in his window, slithering out from the right border and cutting into the center.

He’d pulled his curtain over the crack to hide it from his parents—they’ll probably find out eventually, though. He’s clumsy and forgetful, especially here recently; he’ll forget to close his blinds and then they’ll see it and ask and maybe get mad or something. Shigeo doesn’t really know how they’ll react.

Energy hums from his chest, broken and fractured, and he darts his empty gaze away from the window. They don’t know about these cracks, either.

His mother had made him his favorite tonight—had said he seemed tired, and if he needs a break from school she could call tomorrow off for him. It seemed so sudden, at the time, so unprecedented, but then when he excused himself from the table to go to the bathroom he’d looked in the mirror and understood. He barely feels like a human being anymore—his looks are starting to catch up.

The fact that he’d vomited hadn’t really helped his case, but his mother had taken his temperature and found nothing of note. He’d rested against the wall opposite the toilet while her hands worked through his oily bangs, worry stifling the air and pulling it taut. Shigeo had insisted he felt fine—it both sounded and felt like the weakest defense in history.

He’d seen the look his father was giving him in the bathroom doorway. Ritsu’s aura had billowed out between his feet and raced around their mother, running along him with comforting lilacs and fretful grapes.

Shigeo’s door is locked.

His fingers slide along his phone, along the buttons on the side and the camera on the front. He thumbs the edge of the panel where his screen protector ends, barely a difference in height between the plastic and the real glass.

Shigeo clicks it on, swipes in the pattern to unlock it as he blinks away the spots in his vision, ghosts of the overhead lights infesting him. There’s hushed blips from the speakers before he even knows his hands are moving.

He sees text scroll in hitched movements, pixels colliding in the sea of static his poor phone tries to plow through. He’d stopped charging the thing as soon as it starting becoming unusable, but his energy keeps the battery at one hundred percent at all times anymore. He’s surprised the battery in the back hasn’t burst. That would be the least of his problems, to be honest.

He doesn’t even realize he’s in his contacts app until he sees Mom and Dad slip by in the pinned section. His thumb moves automatically, slides across the glass and simply reorients when the app crashes halfway through. He scrolls again, screen jittering, until he stops at a contact that makes his eyes focus back to the fonts and the icons.

His core stutters. He swears he hears the faint crrk of one of the fissures in his chest widening within the silence.

Shigeo hears his breathing against his lap too, hears how the base of his breaths wobble on the exhales, and he presses it flat in his mind, smooths over the wrinkles. His aura creaks dangerously against the drywall of his bedroom, and he pulls it back in with an uncharacteristic snap.

His thumb hovers over the green Call icon, the lines of his fingerprint swirling in the blues and greys of his screen.

Since that night at the ramen shop, he’s told Reigen about a couple things that have happened to him, things he wasn’t around for. He’s told him about the alleyway, when he’d fought against Koyama to protect Ritsu. How he’d grinded his brother’s face into the concrete. How Koyama had beaten him to a pulp for no other reason than to dominate. How he still dreams about Ritsu screaming, begging at the man to stop, tears mixing with the blood on his face.

He’s told him about getting hit by a car that day, before everything had crumbled apart. He’s told him about his vision blinking out, his world feeling black and empty, and then snapping to consciousness to see Teruki’s bloodied, beaten form in front of him, in a body he couldn’t control. He’s told him about the phantom pains in his head, of the ghostly metal grills against his temple—about how moving across the street feels impossible, some days.

He’s skipped his first meeting with Teruki, the hands around his throat, and the vicious words flying from the boy’s bared teeth. Teruki is technically Reigen’s son now, so it feels… inappropriate. Feels wrong, to bring up Teruki’s old persona, when he’s changed so much. When he’s put so much effort into changing.

He’s skipped over the house fire, for now. When he thinks about it too long he feels like crying, and he doesn’t like crying in front of his Master and his Master hates to see him cry, so he hasn’t mentioned it. Maybe one day he’ll be ready for that.

He’s skipped arguably the biggest contender, Mogami, for many stacking, piling reasons. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready for that.

And even though saying some of it out loud really does help, and letting it all eek out of him in slow syllables and jerky sentences is weight off his shoulders, it feels wrong. It feels like he’s breaking some core rule of the universe by speaking of these things, by blabbering on to his Master about such heavy topics. By talking of this weight he deals with; it feels selfish, to pick it up and half it and place it on somebody else’s shoulders, even if they offered their ear.

He likes that Reigen is turned around and usually making food when he’s speaking—there’s something infinitely more paralyzing about the idea of Reigen sitting across from him and making eye contact while he spills his guts out. He has a feeling his Master knows this. His Master knows a lot of little things about him, little quirks he accommodates for, and Shigeo feels warm whenever he notices.

But he doesn’t like that look on his face. That haunted, remorseful gape he tries to hide with a turn of his head, with a clearing of the throat, with turning around and reaching into cupboards for dishes he doesn’t need. It’s a muddied mix of emotions so far beyond Shigeo that he genuinely thinks he simply hasn’t lived long enough to know what they are.

It’s the face he made in that tower again, holding that gun and telling him he’d failed as a Master. It’s that face his brother makes, that eerie, narrowed look like he’s studying his every movement, his every atom, and then swallowing down something heavy when he finds what he’s looking for.

It’s that face his parents make, lost and grieving for a son that’s still here.

Shigeo doesn’t like it.

That night, when he’d missed his stop—he’d called Reigen because Reigen doesn’t let the worry show on his face. He doesn’t let the devastation leak into his words and wobble them. He doesn’t let the regret make his eyes big and his expression pinched.

This must be a lot for even Reigen, because he’s not doing that anymore.

Shigeo needs company, desperately, like if he doesn’t talk to someone in the next seventeen minutes he’s going to hurl again and lose all the two crackers he ate this morning. But his door is locked. He’s shoved everyone away. He’d told his parents he was fine, and that he’ll go to school tomorrow, and then shut his door in their faces and made sure the click of his lock was loud against their ears.

What am I doing? he thinks, and pushes his sweaty thumb into the glass.

He almost forgets to raise his phone up to his ear, and he forces himself to stare at the grain of the hardwood flooring while he lifts his hand. The ring is long and low, foreboding in a way that doesn’t exactly make sense to him, and he wonders why this call in particular feels so taboo. It’s not like it’s their first conversation over the phone. There’s been many.

It rings again. He keeps his aura neatly folded in on itself even while it writhes and pleads. He pleads back when the low drone coming from the speaker crackles.

A third ring, and Shigeo taps his index finger against the rubber of his case. His phone substitutes the gap between rings with echoed whines that hurt his ear, and he winces away while it sputters.

He shifts his knees farther up against his chest, and the cracks there sing in the silence. Shigeo stares at his closer door until the wooden slats in it double and blur and twist into Xs.

An odd sort of silent agony settles over him when it rings a fourth time, and then it’s cut off by a garbled click, and her voice comes through the speaker.

“Hi, Mob,” Tsubomi greets, as normal and as neutrally friendly as she always is. He feels himself melt at the voice—it’s a bit strange, still, to melt for entirely different reasons than a year ago.

He feels like pudding as his shoulders sag, but then he remembers he has to greet her and he picks himself up, goop and all, and tries to solidify again.

“Hi, Tsubomi,” he wobbles out, kicks himself a little for the shaky entry. He’s too busy berating himself to think of a further reply, and a horrifying bout of silence stretches between them before Tsubomi picks the conversation back up.

“What’s up? We haven’t called in a while, how’ve you been?”

Shigeo’s tongue is watery and unreal, just like the rest of him. He feels idiotic in his own home. “Uh—uhm—” he fizzles out pathetically, and then seriously debates hanging up on her. It would be extremely rude, and he’d likely never have the strength to call her back ever again, and that thought is the only thing keeping him on the line.

He considers what to say. He knows the choice that might make this call weird and stilted. He also knows the obvious choice, the socially accepted choice. It feels ugly to say, but Shigeo doesn’t really know Tsubomi well enough to grasp the type of reply she really wants.

He feels like she’d appreciate honesty. But he’s also seen how she acts around people, and how similar it feels to Ritsu’s forced politeness. He hadn’t seen it before, when he was still enamored with that false image of her. He sees it now.

It’s been too long of a gap in the conversation for it to be natural, and he goes with his gut.

“I’m… not good, I guess,” he eeks out.

It’s the first time his instincts have lead him down this path.

Of all the people he thought he’d finally admit it to, after Reigen, he wouldn’t have imagined it’d be Tsubomi. It feels wrong, feels bad— not necessarily to admit he’s feeling down, even, but to admit it to her.

He doesn’t know why that is. He can’t… articulate why it feels like such a crime, to have those particular words filter through these particular ears.

“Oh? What’s wrong?” she frowns through the receiver, largely unbothered, but he thinks there’s a hint of concern there. Maybe. He’s too frazzled about what he just said to look into it too much.

He mentally checks himself. She’s just a person. She’s just another kid, just like him. They’re friends. Friends go to each other when they’re down.

You’re allowed this, he thinks.

“I…” he starts, intelligently and gracefully, “I don’t really… know.”

Silence follows, bloated and dreadful, and this is going horribly. What is she supposed to say to that? Why did he even call her?

He worries his lip, picks at the skin there, and then—

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, which undoubtedly makes it worse, but he feels like he’ll implode if he doesn’t at least apologize for… whatever it is he’s doing.

“You apologize every time you call, Mob,” Tsubomi shoots back, not unkindly—there’s a chortle in her tone, amused, maybe exasperated, but not annoyed, and Shigeo’s core sails at the relief of it, “What are you apologizing for this time? Being ‘not good?’”

Among other things, Shigeo thinks. He doesn’t say it; contrary to popular belief, he isn’t a total numbskull. “Right. Sor—heh.”

Tsubomi laughs through the mic, and he smiles with her. It’s uneasy, and his stomach is starting to roll from the stress and the sickly grain, and his head hurts (has hurt, for weeks), but it’s a smile. And it feels wonderful.

“I was just… I just wanted company, I guess,” Shigeo lets out, runs his fingers over the woodgrain of his flooring. The words feel too big and too honest, and they press against the walls of his room like they’re aiming to crack the framework.

He can hear his parents’ hushed voices downstairs, sharp Ts and Ss punctuated with worried lilts. Shigeo tightens his grip on his phone and the speaker crackles and spews. “Everybody’s all… worried about me. I appreciate it, but…”

He trails off, not really aiming to continue because he knows he doesn’t have the words for it. He’d got the mold, but no filling. He doesn’t know how to describe the claustrophobic tightness in his gut and the simultaneous overwhelming desire for closeness—he knows it’s there, he just doesn’t understand its substance.

Tsubomi pours her two cents into the mold. It sticks. “It gets crowded?” she guesses, a knowing tint in her words.

Shigeo straightens, nods enthusiastically, and then goes uh-huh when he remembers she can’t see him.

“Yeah… I know what you mean,” Tsubomi sighs on the other end, voice glitching in the middle, “It gets crowded for me too.”

Shigeo blinks. He… didn’t anticipate that. He didn’t think she’d ever relate to any social problems he deals with, especially mental problems, but maybe she’s speaking in other terms. Lighter terms. Terms that don’t make arms skinny and chests fractured and sleep restless.

Or maybe she isn’t. Shigeo doesn’t know—didn’t even think about the possibility of her having experiences that overlap with his own. He didn’t even think about how she must’ve felt, having to reject almost every boy and occasional girl in their grade back before she’d moved. That had felt pretty crowded to Shigeo.

Yeah… no wonder it gets crowded for her, she’s wonderful and people tend to flock. No wonder it bothers her sometimes; he just hadn’t… considered that.

“Well I’d be glad to be your company,” Tsubomi continues, and she does it in a way that Shigeo knows she’s probably playing with her own hair, twirling it around a finger absently.

Shigeo smiles, wobbly and grateful.

And then they talk. For hours.

And it, too, is wonderful.

Chapter Text

Serizawa is a fan of sharks. Shigeo likes frogs.

The aquarium is the next natural step.

Serizawa likes to take him once in a while, during a time when he’s free from both work and classes and when Shigeo is free from both school and friends. He always walks to Reigen’s apartment those days and comes in for tea and a snack, exchanging smiles and little stories, before he and Serizawa shuffle into his car and drive off. The radio is usually quiet and turned to whatever music channel produces the least amount of static. Serizawa turns it down even quieter when anxiously making turns.

Shigeo and him are masters at comfortable silences—they used to be a little taut, back when he’d first started working at Spirits and Such, but Serizawa seems like a different man now and his tension no longer carries to Shigeo’s shoulders. He holds himself straighter and doesn’t fidget with his fingers as much, doesn’t mess up his tie with all the pulling, doesn’t fumble over every other word like he used to. There’s a new sense of self-confidence in his steps, even if it does seem a bit fragile—Shigeo is proud of him.

The car ride is mostly quiet, but there’s no malice in the lull of conversation. Serizawa has never been one for small talk, and Shigeo isn’t very good at it, so he’s sort of relieved there’s not much of it between them. The man usually talks about any new exhibits the aquarium might’ve added—he always mentions his long-lived wish for a tiger shark to be introduced. Serizawa likes tiger sharks the most.

Shigeo gets the opportunity to ramble about species of frogs and toads in the lull between exhibits. He’s long since ran out of new facts to tell—he doesn’t go online and research every species of frog like Tome does cryptids and alien encounters, but he knows a little-known tidbit here and there.

He thinks he repeats himself sometimes, but Serizawa never stops asking questions, and it smooths out something anxious in his gut. The man probably knows more about frogs than Shigeo does at this point, when he pulls his poor memory into the picture. But that just means Serizawa is actually listening and taking it in, and it makes his chest warm when he thinks about it.

Serizawa shares facts about sharks when they reach his favorite exhibits, the ones with the bull sharks and the manta rays. He points out the other species in the tanks— “There’s a silvertip! A lemon, in a back; that one’s new… Oh, they still have the leopard! Those are beautiful,”— and Shigeo smiles when he starts running out of fish to name and doubles back to ones he’s already listed.

Serizawa always buys them both ice cream at the truck stationed just between sections of the aquarium; it’s tradition at this point, and the man knows his order like the back of his hand because Shigeo always asks for the same thing. He’s stopped offering to pay for it himself with the loose change in his pockets; it always makes Serizawa jittery and sweaty and the man insists against it.

It’s cool in the next building; the air snakes under his uniform and leaves him with goosebumps, and he follows Serizawa through the arched entrance and stares up at the screens harboring high definition pictures of bluegills and spadefish. It smells of fish tanks and cleaning supplies, wet floor signs propped along tiles that they skirt around. He smiles to a janitor; they smile back.

The ceilings are high in here, with the fossil of a megalodon hanging from the rafters and spotlights pointed at walkways where the glow from the tanks don’t reach. It’s rather quiet in here too, and Shigeo only hears distant conversations from staff members across show floors and small families that make the same trek they do. The babble is echoed against the walls and the steel support pillars cutting through rooms; even for a 4PM visit on a Wednesday when admission is free, the chatter of visitors is quite muted this time.

Shigeo enjoys the silence, the thump of their feet hitting tile, the hum of the tanks rippling blues and greens across the room. The ice cream sandwich in his hands stays relatively intact within the coolness of the air conditioning in here, and he peels some of the wrapper down and takes another measly bite. Serizawa already finished his long ago—his aura protests against any kind of food anymore, but he does his best to nibble.

Serizawa, on the other hand, seems quite tense.

It’s a different tension than normal, and Shigeo thinks he wouldn’t have caught on if he wasn’t an ESPer. Outwardly, the man is pointing at signs and grinning at the eels they pass, saying something about the information posted outside the tanks with steady words. The only giveaway is the hand inching around the bottom hem of his shirt, playing with the fabric and folding it obsessively, but Shigeo would normally chalk that up to simple nervousness about the public.

His aura crawls, though—the purple spirals and worms along the cracks between tiles and slithers along the glass of the aquariums, and Shigeo watches the colors fluctuate and deepen into eggplant shades he’s never seen before. It shimmers and sparkles against the archway of the hall they enter, where glass domes over their heads and they’re ushered underneath the surface of the tank water like they’re cutting through a miniature ocean.

Serizawa’s aura prods at his own, but it’s jittery and frightened, and Shigeo pulls his cotton candy hues back in fear of it snapping out and scaring him. The purple only comes closer though, hovering and inspecting like he’s looking for something in particular and studying the tendrils that leak out from his vessel. He does his best to look unbothered, and he nibbles on his ice cream sandwich to distract himself from the sensations.

The tunnel they enter is dim, and most of the light comes from the gentle blue glow of the tank surrounding all sides; the bottom half of the tunnel walls are stone, cobbled together and supporting the glass that arches overhead. Purple tinted light leaks out from the bottom of the wall, strips of bulbs illuminating the walkway and lighting up the rubber soles of his shoes.

Conversations from other visitors are faraway and echoed. Serizawa speaks up and it feels like he’s in Shigeo’s head.

“So, Shigeo, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something,” he speaks, and something in his chest coils and tenses, “For a… for a while, now.”

Neither of them stop, and Shigeo hears the first hint of nervousness in his tone, how it wobbles just at the end of his sentences. He prepares himself for it, for the repetitive questions and the useless prodding, and tells himself not to get snappy. He won’t get snappy—Shigeo Kageyama doesn’t do that, especially not to Serizawa of all people.

But the questions never come.

“I know Teru took some of your powers a while back.”

Shigeo can’t help the way his eyes dart up to him, the way they cuff through the man’s soul and jab at his core, and he feels bad when Serizawa jerks up straighter and moves his gaze anywhere but Shigeo. They still walk, but he almost trips over his own two feet from the words.

“Did—”

“He didn’t tell me, I just… I just knew,” Serizawa cuts in, looks guilty for a moment, and then plows on, “I knew as soon as he came home that day. There was so much energy radiating off of him that I couldn’t think of any other answer.”

Shigeo’s mouth is dry, but he can’t bring himself to take off another chunk of his ice cream, so he simply holds it in sweaty hands and hopes it doesn’t melt from the heat.

“And when Teru came back past curfew that day, when he went to Claw, the energy wasn’t there anymore and I knew he’d used it all somehow, in some sort of fight,” Serizawa explains carefully, and now his fingers are wriggling against each other and he’s looking at the fish around them in new, desperate interest, “It was the only explanation I had for why he slept so long afterward.”

Something ugly gnaws at his heart, and Shigeo presses his molars down on his tongue to rid of the itchiness that creeps along it. He wonders if he should apologize for that, for making Serizawa worry about his son. Somehow, he feels that’s not what the man is looking for, but then that begs the question: why is he telling him this?

“I know something happened, when you… cracked our table at the office,” he carries on, and Shigeo stifles a flinch, “I felt it. We didn’t even… We didn’t end up going to the exorcism because I felt a wave of your energy from all the way down the block and I knew something was wrong.”

Serizawa stops, and so does Shigeo. He looks back at the man, at his shoulders forcefully kept low and his back rigidly straight, at the hands clasped there in front of him and his gaze darting across the plaques stuck to the stone wall.

“I’ve… known something is wrong. I’ve known for a long time,” Serizawa utters, and Shigeo feels something in him shriveling and expects that question to come back around again, but then he continues, “So I’m not going to ask you if you’re okay, because I know. I’ve known. And I’m…”

Shigeo thinks he knows what’s about to occur, and he gently takes a step forward. The cool air of the aquarium gives him more goosebumps, makes him shiver, and he stifles it. “Serizawa, you don’t have to—”

“No, I—I want to. I’ve… made the mistake of sitting back and watching before,” he mumbles out, and Shigeo thinks of red hair and green jackets and floating towers.

He thinks of orange hantens and curly, bushy cuts, of shaking words against sparkling air, of spit flying and denial running rampant. Of hunched shoulders and apologies after hits, of umbrellas dropping to the floor and guilt spilling from mouths.

A family walks past them, and he barely pays them any mind. Shigeo watches the blue glow ripple along Serizawa’s face, and sees the same guilt there in his gaze.

“I’m… not going to make that mistake again.”

His eyes are pinned to the floor, at the purple light soaking into Shigeo’s sneakers. He sees them dart back and forth, and thinks that maybe he’s tracing the shoelaces.

“Hell, I’ve known you weren’t okay from the start,” he says, and Shigeo swears he feels a white crack in his chest widen and the sensation is proven with a prick of pain in his lungs, “When we… when we met, and I saw everything you’ve been through… I should’ve known you weren’t okay. Of course you weren’t, after all those things I saw.”

They haven’t talked about this at all. They’ve never uttered a word about it since that day, and when Shigeo thinks back to the overwhelming sadness he’d felt in Serizawa’s chest it makes him want to vomit, so he bites his tongue again.

The man has his hands to his stomach, angled and clenched like he’s holding the handle of an invisible umbrella.

Serizawa makes a conscious effort to hold eye contact, and as heavy as Shigeo’s chest feels, he tries his best to match it out of sheer respect. He respects Serizawa—a lot. And he holds his gaze like he’ll die if he doesn’t.

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner.”

His chest crackles more, the crrk echoing in his mind.

There is it, again, that sentence. That sentence that digs and burrows into his stomach lining and reminds him of things he’d rather not think about. He’s not even quite sure if this is an emotion that can be named—doesn’t know if it has one, if many people have felt it before, but it sure feels like Shigeo is the only one in the world.

He wants to say it’s okay, because it is, because Shigeo doesn’t harbor any negative feelings towards inaction from people he didn’t even expect action from, but something clogs the words in his throat and comes out instead, something he wants to say a little bit more.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give anybody the chance to notice,” he whispers, and he finds his words falter when he keeps his gaze on Serizawa, so he flits them back to the blue in the tank and watches a surgeonfish meander through the bubbles.

He sees Serizawa straighten a little in his peripherals, feels his gaze study his features, feels his aura prod his cracking walls. The hum of the tanks and the echo of footsteps down the tunnel bring his heart to a simmer, a slow bubble that stays manageable and doesn’t yet spill over the edges. Watching the eels worm through the blue on the other side of the glass is mesmerizing.

“I think… I have an idea,” Serizawa speaks up again slowly, and Shigeo blinks, looks at him. The man fiddles with the front of his shirt, picking at the buttons. “Well, it might be weird, but…”

“When… When I was younger… i—in that room, I… I was in there for so long that I ended up sort of forgetting how to talk to people,” he stutters out, and Shigeo straightens, “I forgot how to engage with society. I forgot how to… exchange pleasantries, how to seem approachable. I trapped myself in there for so long that I… sort of forgot how to be human.”

His fingers wriggle against themselves again, and Shigeo holds his gaze out of necessity now, because if he looks away he feels like he might miss something somehow.

“And I think, maybe, you’re just like me in that regard, too,” he wobbles out, and something in Shigeo is unfurling, “You’ve spent so long holding everything in that… now that you feel you’re allowed to express yourself you… don’t know how. So it’s… building.”

Shigeo blinks, and his skin feels tight and too small for his body. His soul feels impossibly small under such a macroscopic world but the words come to unravel it and take it to the surface, where it’s seen and heard and acknowledged in a way it’s never been acknowledged before. The center of him is warm and the tips of his fingers are cold, but maybe that’s just from the ice cream sandwich he tries not to smash in his grip.

He realizes Serizawa is looking at him, waiting for some kind of confirmation, and Shigeo doesn’t really care how silly he looks when he bobs his head up and down until his neck hurts.

Serizawa smiles against it, shoulders slouching. “And… I know you have trouble talking about it all, but maybe it would be better… easier… if you told somebody that… already knew?”

His gaze flits up to Shigeo, and his mind ticks through it slowly, not quite understanding. Serizawa fumbles, elaborates.

“I know that sounds unproductive, but just—the point of telling somebody isn’t necessarily to fill them in, it’s to get it off your chest. But telling people is the hard part, and I know that, so—” Serizawa rubs his neck, “What if they already knew? What if it… was me?”

Shigeo feels something in him go slack, and his eyes feel wider than they should be, and he’s thinking over it even as Serizawa keeps fumbling forward.

“Think—Think of it as practice,” he nods mostly to himself, “There’s no pressure to—to explain it in a way that cushions the blow for other people. I already know what happened to you, I saw it all. There’s no need to step around the nasty parts because you already shared them with me, when we met. So instead, you can focus on… just getting it out there. Getting it off your chest.”

Shigeo’s gaze wanders to the shine on the bronze plaques, looks over the words without reading them, and he feels like he just found the fountain of youth or something. His aura roars in his ears and makes his teeth buzz against each other, makes the corners of his vision hazy and inverted, but he doesn’t pay attention to that.

He pays attention to the way Serizawa is looking at him, the way his hands have stopped fidgeting and the way he stands, resolute in his mission, with only a touch of that stiffness left in his shoulders. When he’s determined about something, when he’s really and truly set on one goal, through the sweat clinging to his forehead Serizawa shrugs away the anxiety like water off a duck’s back, lets it fall to the floor even when it still tries to grip his ankles to the ground.

Serizawa breathes through the worry, and stands tall against his own mind that berates him, and Shigeo respects him for that most of all.

It makes perfect sense. Serizawa saw his memories, knows of everything that had happened up until their meeting. He’d watched the most important moments of his life like a television show at one thousand percent speed, knows all of the important beats, has witnessed the most horrifying parts himself.

He suddenly wants to apologize for burdening him with that. But it’d been the only way to convince him, back then, that Shigeo understood. He hopes Serizawa understands that, now.

The point of telling somebody isn’t necessarily to fill them in, it’s to get it off your chest… Shigeo had never… considered that. He’d never thought of it like that before. He’d always tried to present it like patchwork, a detail here, a smidge of information there, so that people wouldn’t look at him like they do, like he’s some poor mangy cat in an alleyway.

Telling people has always been hard because he has to phrase it so carefully, has to soften the crunch of bones, has to shallow out deeper cuts for their sake, when what he really needs is to delve straight into it.

His talks with Reigen have been helping, they have, but he feels like he can’t talk about certain things with Reigen. He didn’t have it in him to talk about his son choking him to unconsciousness. He didn’t have it in him to share the fact that when Reigen had sent him to exorcise Mogami, he’d unknowingly sent him into six whole months of hell.

Serizawa is the only other person on the planet that understands the full extent of what he went through in Mogami’s mindscape. And Shigeo hadn’t needed to struggle in telling him at all—his memories had done that for him.

The hardest part might already be over.

There’d be no pressure to sand it all down to something that fits somebody else’s mold. It’ll still be hard, surely, and Shigeo will still struggle to word it right, to even get it out at all, but this lifts a huge burden.

Serizawa is familiar with this. Serizawa has become very good at playing with his own mind and coming out on top. Shigeo trusts him with this.

“Y—You don’t have to, if you don’t want to—!” the man frets suddenly, the gap in conversation grating on him, and he fans his hand around to placate, “It’s just an offer, there’s no pressure to—”

“No, I—” Shigeo straightens, fretting himself and shaking his head, “I mean yes. Yes!”

Serizawa pauses, blinking, and a relieved smile is already eeking up his face.

“I’d… I think that would work… really well,” Shigeo nods, stifling his own relief because there’s still something he’s uncertain of, “But are you… sure? It’s… a lot.”

He shuffles his feet—Serizawa is already burdened with it anyway, so it’s not like this is much different, but still. It’s still a lot.

Shigeo looks up at him, at the open gaze of the only person that understands him this much, and just by the look in his eyes he can tell he’s sure. It’s the surest look he’s ever given anything, Shigeo thinks.

The blue glow ripples over his form, makes the shadows along his shirt waver and lighten and then deepen again, and Serizawa’s eyes crinkle up a little in a smile that feels so grounding Shigeo has to dig himself up from the Earth.

“The President may have gotten me out of that room, but you got me away from the President,” Serizawa breathes, “I can never thank you enough for that, but I hope this’ll cover at least a little.”

Even when he can see the top of the water sloshing above them in the tank, Shigeo finally feels like he’s resurfaced.

Chapter Text

“Hello? Reigen?”

The wall clock ticks on through the clacking of his keyboard, fingers straying from the home row on instinct. His eyes trail along with his cursor that moves across the screen at a jittery pace, leaving behind polite words and thank you for your business’s in e-mails he writes purely from muscle memory.

“Ah, Mrs. Kageyama—what a pleasant surprise! Everything okay?”

The air conditioner shudders and spews coolness out to the tiles, its fan sounding slow and filled with dust. Reigen should clean it sometime soon—it always slips his mind.

“Well—I called to ask you something.”

He blindly reaches for his tea, lukewarm and a little bland for his tastes. He’s not used to the chamomile flavor, but he’d bought it for a reason.

“Yeah? I’m listening.”

He clicks Send on an e-mail, scrolls up to the next one on the list. It’s a complaint—something about their temporary replacement coffee table seeming cheap and unprofessional, and that this place obviously doesn’t have enough funds to even keep its clients comfortable, like that’s the one thing they noticed about the entire sparsely decorated office.

He presses his fingers against the keys with slightly more force than necessary while he types up a tight, apologetic response.

“Did something happen to Shige?”

Reigen pauses, his cursor blanking steadily through half of guarantee, and his gaze moves right above the top of his laptop screen. It lands on Shigeo across the room on the couch, where his chamomile tea sits untouched—mission failed—and his homework spread out along the new coffee table. His pencil shakes in his hands.

His attention flickers to the table itself, new and cheap and oddly high, made of thin plastic and wobbly legs. The new quality one is in some warehouse miles away, according to the tracking number, late in its shipping.

Shigeo erases something on his worksheet and the table wobbles back and forth with the movement.

“... Uhm—”

“He’s been… distant, lately. He won’t tell us what’s going on, and we’ve asked Ritsu and he doesn’t know either. He barely speaks anymore, and he looks so tired… I don’t know how much he tells you, but somehow I feel like it’s more than any of us.”

Reigen thinks about rushing back to the office and outrunning Serizawa on the way, clambering up the stairs two at a time. The door had rolled a tipped over pot across the tiles when he’d shoved it open, soil spilt between the cracks and books littered across the floor. His eyes had caught Shigeo’s across the room, Tome hovering over the red along his fingers and rambling in that panicked way she does where she doesn’t stop for a breath even if she needs one.

Shigeo had looked two shades paler than when they’d left. It had made Reigen’s stomach twist.

“I—I don’t know if—I don’t think he’d want—”

“Please, Reigen. He’s my son. And it’s getting bad.”

Reigen thinks about that call he’d gotten from the kid, Serizawa sandwiched between him and the couch cushions while they watched some B movie in the dark. The volume had been lowered for Teruki’s sake, in his bedroom down the hall, but it’s not like it had mattered—later they’d find out the kid had been awake and worrying, shooting texts to a partner that wouldn’t answer.

Reigen thinks about how Shigeo had skipped over everybody else and reached for him instead. I just wanted you, the kid had said, like he deserved that. Like Reigen had any right.

“... Something did happen. Uhm. A lot of things, really.”

Like Reigen even deserves to be a pillar for him, after what he’d told him at the ramen shop.

The kid’s scared of cars. He freezes up sometimes at crosswalks, eyes darting to every movement in the city around him as he hurries across the lines, and now Reigen knows exactly why. He has nightmares of Ritsu screaming and begging for Shigeo’s life, of blood against concrete, of getting beaten so bad it had hurt to breathe.

The kid told him he gets scared at loud voices, gets overwhelmed in the hallways at school because of the sheer noise of the lockers shutting. He doesn’t like sudden movements, flinches sometimes when people move in for a high five or a hug too fast. He’d said other things too, listed things he didn’t like with little explanation; crows, turtlenecks or anything near his throat, long hallways, being asked to come closer to somebody without a reason.

The things the kid shares with him, in the after hours at the office, makes Reigen feel sick.

“What do you mean, ‘a lot of things?!’ What things? Reigen, what’s going on with my boy?”

He can tell there’s a lot of things Shigeo doesn’t say. He can tell he’s withholding things, and he has every right to, so Reigen doesn’t push, but he can tell. The kid hasn’t even mentioned the house fire, and Reigen knows from Dimple that Shigeo nearly lost it completely at that. He doesn’t know how realistic the dummies were, but even the implications that somebody had placed fake corpses for the kid to find—it had made something monstrous in Reigen writhe at the news.

He has a gap in his memory, sometime last year, right before that giant broccoli had disappeared. The last thing he remembers is Shigeo walking away from him, away from Reigen, who for some reason was not following, and toward the great tree in the distance, and then the next thing he knew it was gone. He knows Shigeo had something to do with that. Dimple had up and disappeared for a slice after that, until winter had come. The kid had seemed quiet and mournful for a while—different. Shigeo hasn’t mentioned it at all, and neither has Dimple.

“I—Mrs. Kageyama, I… Listen… Your son’s been through… a lot. I know you don’t know what I’m talking about, but there’s a lot of things he shouldn’t have seen. A lot of things I wasn’t even there for, a lot of things I don’t even know about. Mo—Shigeo is just… struggling to process it all, I think.”

For several weeks after the Asagari job, Shigeo had been weird. Jumpy, apologetic, squirming under too much eye contact, blinking when Reigen praised him for a job well done like he suddenly didn’t know how to handle positive engagement. His eyes had look haunted on the train ride back, right after the job; Reigen had prodded him, asked him gently what the deal was, and when Shigeo failed to react to anything, Dimple had simply given him a heavy look, a look Reigen could probably etch into his desk from memory.

After a week, Shigeo had turned oddly clingy—asking for hugs between jobs, sitting closer against him on the train, eyes sparkling back to life when Reigen praised him for getting good math grades, like he was ten again. Reigen had practically interrogated Dimple after the first few days of it; it’s been one of the only times Dimple hasn’t been a gossiper, swearing up and down to keep his mouth shut and going all I’ll say is that he went through hell in there—a whole lot of psychological hoo-ha. It’s not my story to tell, Reigen, so drop it. Just be gentle.

Mrs. Kageyama had called the night after that job, too. Apparently Shigeo had come home and burst into tears, hugging them all like he hadn’t seen them in centuries. What the hell happened, Reigen? She’d asked. Reigen hadn’t been able to answer her.

“I don’t… I don’t understand.”

The kid has nightmares about Reigen getting sliced in the back. And that one hurts the most, because that one felt avoidable.

“I don’t think I understand either, Mrs. Kageyama. At least not nearly as much as I should. But he’s trying—he’s telling me things now. I think he’s gonna be okay.”

“This place smells like peanut butter and they’re complaining about that?” Dimple materializes next to him, right over his shoulder, and scowls at the laptop screen.

Reigen jumps a little in his seat. “Would you stop doing that? You’re gonna give me a heart attack one of these days,” he breathes out, raking his fingers over the keys and carrying the e-mail on, “And it does not smell like peanut butter in here.”

“Tell that to the peanut butter lover you hired,” Dimple cracks a grin, and Reigen fights his own off his face.

“Remind me to stock the mini-fridge with more juice—all that peanut butter is gonna suck the life out of her pretty soon.”

It’s oddly quiet without Tome here. She’s usually the chatterer, bickering with Dimple about whatever the hell they talk about when Reigen’s trying to focus. Serizawa is off studying in his classes, and it’s Tome’s day off, so Shigeo is filling in for them without complaint.

It isn’t quite a familiar silence though—it had just been Reigen and Shigeo for years, and it was never this brand of quiet.

It’s understood that he’s not doing anything today except homework, and maybe a nap on the couch. On top of his powers acting up, which would be dangerous on a job, the poor kid looks two steps away from falling into his school papers.

Lidded eyes trudge across the words there, no doubt retaining zero of the information posted, and he hunches over the table and scribbles something under a question, flips the eraser around to get rid of it, writes again, erases again. His hair hangs down to cover his face, oily and definitely not combed, but Reigen still sees the paleness of the skin on his hands. They tremor, ever so slightly.

Shigeo is a different brand of quiet.

Reigen had offered to walk him home as soon as he’d come through the door, as soon as he’d seen how borderline sickly the kid looked, but he’d declined. And Reigen hadn’t known how to tell him he looks like the undead without offending him, so he didn’t.

The hand that holds his pencil fumbles and loses its grip, like his body isn’t responding, and it clanks against the plastic of the table and rolls to settle against Shigeo’s neglected cup of tea. Reigen sits up straighter and tries to school his expression into something neutral, tightness pulling in his middle.

“Need any help with your school stuff, Mob?” he asks, tone light, typing the last of his reply and clicking Send without double checking the grammar.

The low drone of the air conditioner continues into the silence that’s drawn out afterward, and Reigen feels like each tick of the clock in the dead quiet office is like a pluck of a string in the air. Worry manifests in his chest, and he keeps it to a low simmer, puts a lid on it with a slow, soundless inhale as he waits.

His kid doesn’t answer. Dimple floats forward. “Shigeo?” he calls.

He lifts his head at that, slow and delayed, and stills to stare through Dimple’s green that hovers just past Reigen’s laptop. Reigen studies the look, counts the seconds it takes for recognition to flash and the film the clear, and he swallows down the torrent of concern that comes through.

The bags there, under that hazy gaze, are puffy and dark. Shigeo takes a few seconds to respond.

“Hm?” is all he says at first, croaked and almost too quiet to hear, and then his voice comes out just a little bit stronger. Still; Reigen has to strain to hear him. “Oh—no, I’m okay.”

The kid lowers his head back down, and Reigen watches as he scans another question and tries to write something with nothing in his hand. Shigeo pauses for a moment, lagging behind, and then he’s slowly fumbling for the pencil next to his cup of tea.

Dimple gives him a look. Reigen returns it, and slowly picks up his phone from the desk.

He swivels in his chair while he scrolls through his contacts, landing in the Ks after struggling through the static. His gaze flits up to the time in the corner, sifting through his mind to try and remember which parent is off work sooner. He clicks to Mr. Kageyama’s contact and starts typing.

Reigen taps his foot against the corner of his desk in time with the ticking of the clock, little blips of his phone’s keyboard sounding off against the silence of the office. Something moves and scoots across the tiles, and he flickers his gaze up to see Shigeo slowly standing, accidentally bumping the cheap, weightless table on his way up.

Reigen looks back down at his phone as he senses Shigeo walking toward the bathroom. And then he hears Dimple gasp, and a loud thud reverberates around the office.

Reigen shoots out of his chair in an instant, Dimple zipping across the room, and he’s already hurrying around his desk when he sees Shigeo’s limp form on the floor. Shit, shit, is uttered as he races to him, dives down to a crouch next to the kid and hovers hands over his shoulders, prods at his head until his neck swivels around so Reigen can see his face.

“Kid?!” Reigen calls to him, hands coming to turn him over, and fuck, Shigeo is radiating heat through his clothes like he’s made of magma, “Hey, Mob—!”

Dimple’s calling to him too, but Reigen barely pays him any attention, just smiles at the sight of Shigeo’s eyes fluttering. He’d got him halfway up against the wall, slumped like cloth over Reigen’s hands that hold him up by his armpits. He works to sit him up straighter, but he can only do so much when Shigeo’s a ragdoll in his arms and his head still lolls to the side even when coming to.

Reigen watches with wide eyes as the kid blinks, life coming back to his pupils and head lifting a little. Against the light directly overhead, he sees the sweat that beads along Shigeo’s face, along his neck that looks shiny even in the shadows his collar casts over it. Fuck, did this kid seriously to go school like this?!

Shigeo makes a noise, pitiful and small and confused, as he blinks away some of the haze in his eyes and finally meets Reigen’s gaze. “Wh…” is all he gets out, pale face now a couple of shades paler than Reigen thought was possible.

“Hey, Mob, you with me?” he eases out, keeping his voice steady even as his core shakes. It shakes even more when he attempts to let go of the kid but his body just slumps down lifelessly, so he hefts him back up against the wall and holds him there.

It takes a moment—a really long moment—for Shigeo to answer him. His eyes are wandering through Reigen’s collarbone, glancing to the green aura of Dimple’s form without much clarity in his gaze, and he’s blinking up at the light overhead like he’s confused about the concept of the bulb being right above him. Confused on why Reigen is holding him up, on why he’s on the floor.

He makes another noise, more of a croaked hum, and then he’s looking up at him again. “Mas…ster…?” he mumbles, a hand coming up to hook around Reigen’s arm. It’s warm, even through his suit’s sleeve.

Reigen gives a little laugh, tight and stressed. “There ya are, kid,” he grins, and he can tell by the way he blinks rapidly that Shigeo’s grip on the world isn’t quite solid yet, so he keeps his arms where they are.

“You passed out on us,” Dimple floats down lower by Reigen’s side, “How ya feelin’?”

Shigeo shifts his legs across the floor, looks at them like he just remembered they’re there. “Mh… weird.”

Reigen shifts to settle against the tiles, back protesting. “Yeah, I bet, bud,” he mumbles out, moving one hand out from Shigeo. Thankfully the kid seems aware enough to catch himself now, but he keeps one hand there for support anyway and presses his other to Shigeo’s slick forehead. “You’re burning up…”

He gives a charged look to Dimple, tilting his head back behind him at his desk and mouthing text. The spirit looks vaguely confused for a moment before perking up and zipping off between them, and Reigen realigns his attention to a Shigeo that looks like he’s trying to form words on a slippery tongue.

“I am?” the kid mumbles, staring through Reigen’s middle, and he desperately wishes he had a thermometer in the office. This already seems bad—he sees sweat drip from Shigeo’s chin and he curses under his breath. “Mh… tha’ makes sense…”

He can hear the quiet blips from his phone sounding across the room, hurried and close together. Dimple’s green glows softly against the papers on his desk, and for once, Reigen is glad for a slow day with no walk-ins.

Reigen moves Shigeo’s bangs away from his forehead, strands sticking and slick with sweat, and it concerns him that Shigeo doesn’t react all that much. His clouded gaze rises up to wander aimlessly across his face, and Reigen peers into it, searching. The lack of clarity there scares him.

It makes him think of being in that hideout, waiting for Sakurai and Koyama to come back with Shigeo. Of seeing the kid wander into the room in a daze, hair a mess and clothes singed, eyes widening into the most devastated look he’d ever seen the boy make. Of talking to Dimple and throwing worried glances to his charge all the while, at the way he’d simply stared ahead, unmoving, while everything else moved around him.

At least this gaze here seems a lot less haunted.

He pats Shigeo’s cheek and sadly wonders where all the baby fat went. “Ya still with me, kid? What do you need? Water? Actually, yeah, water is—” Reigen moves away to get up, to rush to get a cup from the table, but when he’s already halfway across the room something in the air changes.

Shigeo makes a noise that frightens him to his core. It’s sudden and gasped and pained, choked out like he tries to stifle it at the end, and Reigen whirls around to see the kid’s eyes blown open, both hands clutching the fabric of his uniform right where his heart is. Shigeo buckles forward and doubles over in his lap, the overhead light flickers, and he hears Dimple curse from his desk.

“Mob!” Reigen shouts, the air vibrating at a frequency that makes his bones shake, and he dives back to a crouch next to the kid, hovering as he grips Shigeo’s shoulders that hunch to his ears. “What’s wrong?! What is it—?!”

The room goes dark and light and dark again, static in the air overwhelming and tasting of pure electricity on his tongue. He bends over, hands overlapping the kid’s own sweaty ones right over his heart, and he has to steady him with his side when Shigeo starts toppling even when sitting down.

“Dimple, get an ambulance on the phone!” Reigen barks out when Shigeo buckles even more, when the light flashes so fast he’s glad neither of them have epilepsy, when books start floating and the blinds start shimmering enough to cut through the sunlight streaming from the window. He holds Shigeo up when he no longer seems to be able to do it himself, and he feels the way his hands claw at his uniform like an animal even when his whole body trembles with everything it has.

Reigen tries to get the kid to look at him, to raise his face up so he can gauge things he can’t with body language, but Shigeo heaves and gasps like his soul has been dipped in agony and nothing Reigen does seems to register at all. He hears something crack, high-pitched and whining, and he doesn’t know if it’s the windows or the glass on the clockface or the porcelain underneath them.

He whips his head up across the room at Dimple, who simply floats there a few paces away with Reigen’s flip phone in his little hands. Reigen doesn’t understand the expression there—he doesn’t get the inaction, the wide eyes but the knowing glint, the tug at the corners of his mouth that spell anticipated devastation.

“Dimple!” Reigen shouts over the noise in the air, over the loud gasps and inhales from the kid in his arms, “Call one-one-nine! What are you doing?!”

Dimple’s glow replaces the light when its off—everything turns green every second or two and then it’s all back to sharp whites from the fluorescent bulbs, and the colors are starting to confuse him.

The way the spirit floats there, unmoving and gripping the phone like he’s about to shatter it, confuses him more.

“They can’t help with this, Reigen,” Dimple calls over the noise, and Reigen doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand what the guy means, where the noise in the air is even coming from, but it reminds him of last winter and he doesn’t like that.

“What the hell do you mean?! Just call them!” Reigen shouts, the buzz in his ears overtaking the words halfway.

“This isn’t something they can fix!” Dimple shouts back, a stray piece of shattered clay from a pot slicing through his form harmlessly. Reigen flinches and wraps himself around Shigeo, human shield against everything that batters against the walls.

“Dimple, give me the phone!”

“It’s not working, dumbass!” he yells, and he tightens his hold around Shigeo when the kid chokes out a garbled half-scream that hurts something in Reigen’s middle, “And even if it was—”

“You know what this is?!” he grits out, Shigeo an oven against his chest, and then everything crescendos.

The lights flare and everything on every surface is thrown off tables and shelves, and Reigen tightens his hold around Shigeo when the bookshelf to his left topples forward and slams to the tile. The kid’s hair floats and brushes against his chin while the air is sliced with books and cups and broken pieces of knickknacks. His eyes dart to the wall clock and the hands are both spinning too fast to follow.

Everything is searing white for one solid second, the light overhead shrieking in a pitch that hurts his ears, and then the bulb busts and everything stops.

The glass from the light hits his back, slides off his suit harmlessly and plinks against the cracked tile behind him. A unanimous bang plows out around the office and shakes the walls, the couch and his desk released from Shigeo’s psychic hold and crashing down to the floor recklessly. He watches his laptop clatter down and the hinge snaps when it lands, screen glitching against the darkness of the office.

Everything falls, and Shigeo gasps in a breath so desperate Reigen fears he’s going to pass out again.

He fumbles, forced to hold the kid up as he coughs and breathes ragged, wheezing exhales that feel hot against his sleeve. Reigen curses, shifting to get Shigeo sitting up again, but he doesn’t seem all that there yet and ragdolls against his movements.

Dimple’s green glow illuminates more of Shigeo’s figure as he floats closer, and Reigen is too caught up in propping him against the wall and cupping the kid’s jaw to notice how reluctant the spirit seems to get near him. He holds Shigeo’s face with shaking hands that sweat almost as much as the poor kid does.

“Hey, hey—you with me? Can you hear me, Mob?” Reigen trembles out, trying and failing to smooth his tone out into something sturdy, something Shigeo can really hold onto.

Shigeo looks through him while his chest heaves, exhales ending in little wheezes that Reigen doesn’t like one bit, and sweat drips down his face and soaks into the collar of his uniform. He has one pale hand propping himself up so he doesn’t fall over, but the other one isn’t clutching his chest anymore and instead grasps his left arm, pinning pressure to the bicep there.

Alarm bells (as if they hadn’t already been here all day) blare in his head, and he snaps his head around to Dimple and glares daggers at him. “Dimple give me the fucking phone, I’m pretty damn sure he just had a heart attack—!”

“He didn’t have a heart attack,” Dimple scurries around him, finally coming forward, and Reigen can’t help but notice his face is oddly pinched, like he’s going to be sick, “Here, call em’ if you want, but they’re not gonna be able to do squat about it!”

Dimple lets his flip phone float to the floor by his knees, and then he’s lowering himself just above eye level to Shigeo. There’s something about the way his gaze flicks between the kid’s pale, sweaty face and his chest that spells out something bright and confusing in his head.

The grief in Dimple’s gaze is palpable, and even though he gets it, to an extent, it feels… premature. Out of place, even in these circumstances—why is Dimple looking at Shigeo like they’re already losing him?

“Still kickin’?” the spirit calls, gentler than Reigen has ever heard him speak, “Hey, Shigeo, look at me.”

Reigen still has his hands cupping the kid’s face, and even though Shigeo blinks through the agony in his eyes and moves his gaze around to look for Dimple, he can’t find it in himself to remove his hold. They stay there and Shigeo seems fine with that, even leans into the touch as he sees the spirit and attempts to keep his wobbly attention on him.

Something in Dimple’s face cracks. “You have to tell him, kid.”

Heart hammering in his throat, Reigen looks between them both, feeling miles away. Shigeo, still breathing hard and still looking unsteady in terms of consciousness, takes a moment to register the words, but when they drill through his head his glazed over eyes widen just a little.

The no that eeks across the room makes Reigen want to cry, it’s so small.

“Tell me what?” Reigen hears himself say, but he isn’t really paying attention to the way his mouth moves and it feels like somebody else lets the words leak out, “Mob? What’s he talking about?”

Shigeo shakes his head with a breathy gulp, and Reigen removes his hands from his face. The kid still has a palm pressed to his arm and when he shifts the limb propping him up gives out from underneath him with one last tremor. Reigen and Dimple both rush forward to catch him, and Shigeo sucks up a hissed breath through clenched teeth as he tries to move it again.

Reigen’s hands instinctively dart there to check for injuries, but Shigeo flinches away from him with a scared noise he’d never make if he were lucid, holding it up to his chest and scrambling farther against the wall. “No! No, please—”

“Woah—Mob, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Reigen eases, hands up to placate, and he knows they’re shaking, so it doesn’t feel like a very comforting gesture even to him, “Are you hurt there? What’s going on, kid, talk to me—”

“Shigeo,” Dimple calls again, floating right into the kid’s line of sight, “C’mon, kid. I know you don’t wanna worry him, but he’s already worrying.”

“No,” Shigeo answers, stronger, more defiant, but his voice is still pitiful and weak against the dim office, still trembling with his limbs. He shakes his head again, stops when he visibly wobbles off-center. “No, I’ll be okay—he does’n have t’ know.”

Reigen feels like he’s about to drown. “Have to know about what? Mob, what is it? Please, kid, just tell me—whatever it is, anything at all—” he pleads. He’s gonna start getting down on his hands and knees and begging soon, he swears to everything holy. “Are you afraid I’ll be mad? I won’t, Mob, I promise I won’t—”

“I’ll s’rvive it, I’ll be okay!” Shigeo shakes his head again, mostly to Dimple, and Reigen feels like he’s going to have a heart attack, “My—It happ’ned be’fore—My v’ssel got shattered, an’ I was f’ne—”

Survive? Shattered?!

“That was in a different realm, kid,” Dimple emphasizes, shoving down any of Reigen’s hopes of gleaning anything from this, “That place coulda been working on completely different logic! For your sake, I hope you’re right, but that still doesn’t give you a good reason to not tell Reigen.”

“What is going ON?!” Reigen shouts, throwing his arms up and gripping his hair—it’s sticking to his forehead and he brushes it back with a nervous swipe, “Will one of you please fill me in—you’re pulling out a whole lotta words I don’t like. What do you mean you’ll survive it, Mob? Survive what?!”

Shigeo flinches at the noise and it instantly coils something tight in Reigen’s core. He lowers his hands away from pulling at his hair, shrinking himself down so he’s not looming over the kid’s vulnerable figure.

He’s situated against the wall now, no longer holding himself up against the floor, but he still slumps to it and lets out breaths that are loud against the silent air and wheezed as they trail off. Even as he looks at Reigen with as much clarity as he can, his lids still flutter and fight against him to fall. He wants desperately to hold him and simply let him rest, wants to just call the kid’s father and get him real help, but Reigen feels a tug in his center to do this first.

Something is wrong with his kid. And Reigen doesn’t have it in him to keep giving him space. Not after that.

“Mob… just let me help you,” he utters, knees touching the kid’s pretzeled legs splayed out on the floor, “It’s all I want, kid—all I want is to help.”

Shigeo looks at him like he’s being stretched across the cosmos, like he’s being tugged between two sides and split apart right down the middle. His gaze is so tired, the light in that red so dulled and so overrun that the glaze of fever that films over it arguably has more going on. The discoloration under his eyes is the only color to be had in his face anymore—Reigen can see ghosts of veins just beneath the skin all over, blurred and melded shades of purple and blue crisscrossing.

The kid stares, gears with broken teeth and rusted shafts churning along behind his windows. The pupils dart across his features, to his stiff shoulders and his hovering hands and his wide eyes and upticked brows.

Shigeo makes that faces he makes when he’s cornered—that wobbly lip and the wet shine in his eyes that doesn’t read well through the fever clouding them up. He still has a hand to his left arm, still putting pressure there, still arching his body up in a stiff, awkward position he has no reason to be in if he isn’t in pain.

Reigen leans forward and gently grabs his shoulders, desperation leaking through his fingertips.

“Please.”

The kid’s eyes widen, just a little, and there’s a moment of clarity there in the feverish mist—it’s a few long seconds where Reigen is holding the shoulders of his kid again, instead of this shell of Shigeo he’s been trying to gently coax into talking these past few months. And oddly, Reigen understands the grief in Dimple’s eyes earlier. He gets it, now. Because those brief seconds of clarify there gave him a taste of what it used to be, and how far away from that they’ve ended up.

He misses his fucking kid. Goddammit, Reigen misses Shigeo so fucking much.

And something in his eyes must crack him, because the kid’s lip wobbles and there’s defeat there in that gaze, tired relent hovering over his form as he shifts. Reigen lets him, watches as Shigeo slowly removes his hand from its spot and raises his left arm up to him.

It trembles in the air, and Reigen grabs it before it falls. His gaze darts to the sleeve of his uniform, back up to Shigeo, to the sleeve, to the kid. Shigeo nods, something like fear on his face, and Reigen’s heart lurches while he places the limp arm there against his leg.

He rolls up the sleeve as Dimple trails to Shigeo’s shoulders, and the look the spirit gives him is significant and heavy and Reigen doesn’t have the mental capacity to unpack it yet, so he simply doesn’t. He just focuses on rolling up the fabric of his student’s uniform with gentle, shaking fingers, waiting for some horrid sight to peek out from it any second.

It meets him sooner than he thinks. And he… he doesn’t understand what he’s looking at.

White breaks his skin in two, splits it apart like it’s stone instead of flesh, and Reigen only sees the tip of it and rolls his sleeve up farther to try and understand what the hell he’s seeing, but the rest just confuses him more. The cracks slide down the limb and widen the farther up the kid’s arm they travel, fissures spiderwebbing out across the freckles there and breaking through the flesh.

They glow and sing in a whine that Reigen can barely hear, white light against his face dim and muted, and he swears the frequency of the song syncs up with Shigeo’s fast heartbeat. It fluctuates in volume, pulsing out in high notes that sound suspiciously even and quick.

They’re like jagged veins, like a second circulatory system outside his body pumping energy out into the atmosphere. Even in the dim light Reigen can see the edges of the cracks are raised and puffy—irritated skin that’s warm and raw, swelling up around the edges.

He holds his student’s arm like it’ll shatter apart if he drops it, staring and waiting for his head to stop spinning. His own heart hammers and skips a beat in his chest, but before he can’t ask any questions, Dimple speaks up.

“There’s too much energy in his vessel,” he explains, and Reigen can’t help but feel he says it too lightly. Like his whole world isn’t about to wither away right in front of him. “His body can’t handle that kind of power anymore, so it’s… breaking apart.”

Reigen can feel his jaw start to chatter and he clenches it against the rest of his teeth. Distantly, he wonders if he’s shutting down—the rest of the world washes away, trickles into the back of his mind as he faces one of his biggest fears, and he reminds himself to breathe when he hears a wheeze from Shigeo.

He hasn’t said anything, and he desperately wants to, but there’s ice in his throat and tar in his veins and he can’t get a word out if he tried. He wants to comfort the kid more than anything because the longer Shigeo looks at him with those wide, scared eyes, the more the need to speak jabs itself into his larynx, and yet he’s got… nothing. For the first time in Reigen’s life, he’s got nothing.

Dimple had been right—this isn’t something a hospital can fix. This isn’t something anybody can fix, because by the sounds of it Dimple knew about this, and there’s no way the spirit would’ve let this slide if there was some kind of solution to it. But the guy looks just as lost for answers as Reigen feels. And that scares him almost as much as seeing his kid get cracked apart like marble.

Reigen’s jaw wobbles and shakes, and when he moves his tongue around his dry mouth it feels like sandpaper. He shifts, holds Shigeo’s arm in his lap and raises a tentative finger to the cracks. Shigeo lets out feverishly hot breaths that roll against his face, and he gently, oh so gently, prods at the redness around a patch of untouched skin.

“Does it… hurt?” Reigen finally asks, sifting through his priorities and lining them up once the weight of the sight stops grating on him so much. His voice shakes and he knows it; he wishes it didn’t, because Shigeo looks guilty when he hears the wobbling.

The kid shakes his head back and forth, slow and swiveled against the wall, but the way he stiffens when Reigen prods at the skin spells a different answer. The way his face twitches minutely when Reigen moves his arm has him thinking otherwise.

He slides his gaze up the cracks, along his shoulder that likely hides more, to his chest where Shigeo had clutched his hand over his heart and cried out. He thinks of how Tome had described it, the table incident; he was clutching his chest like he was having a heart attack, and—and Jesus Christ he looked like he was in agony—!

He meets his student’s gaze, piercing, but he keeps his demeanor gentle, his words as smooth as he can.

“... Was that a lie?”

Shigeo’s pupils dart across his face, down to his own arm, up again, and then he’s crumbling. He nods, lip wobbly and face screwing up, and Reigen curses under his breath.

He opens his mouth and he immediately forgets what he’s about to say when Shigeo interrupts him.

“Please don’ tell anyb’dy,” he croaks, tugging his arm from Reigen’s grip, and he lets go absently while he stares at his kid, “Please.”

Reigen blinks, flicks his gaze to Dimple. His green glow mixes with the white from Shigeo’s arm and he looks back at him with a sharp look, lips in a tight line. He darts his attention back to the kid, but he’s already begging.

“Please—you c’n’t tell th’m,” he’s shifting, trying to scramble further up the wall to give himself leverage to stand, but he’s failing miserably and simply kicking spilled soil across the tiles, “Please, M’ster—”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Reigen shushes, hands to the kid’s shoulders, and he’s easing him back down to the floor. The light in Shigeo’s eyes leaves for a terrifying moment, lightheadedness whisking him away and wobbling his figure, and Reigen holds him upright while he blinks the feverish haze off. “Easy, kiddo, easy. Just rest.”

“R’gen you h’ve t’— ” Shigeo breathes, what little light that’s coming from the closed blinds reflecting off the thick sheen of sweat on the kid’s face, “You h’ve to.”

He’s repeating himself, hooking his hands around Reigen’s arms that hold him steady. The cracks reach about halfway down his forearm and they cover the other side of it too, winding around the length of it like a corkscrew when he twists his arm in to grab Reigen’s.

Shigeo rests, just to catch his breath and look at him, and fuck, why did he let it get this bad? He should’ve… He should’ve noticed. He should’ve seen this—should’ve known it wasn’t just trauma holding him down. It’s manifesting into the real world; it’s infecting him like some sort of disease, like some incurable sickness.

And Reigen is just now finding out, when the kid’s already wheezing and so pale he can see the veins in his face.

“Mob, I…” he breathes, gripping Shigeo’s shoulders like iron, and he feels his lips curl up along his gums, “I can’t.”

“You h’ve to—”

“I can’t, Mob,” Reigen repeats through gritted teeth, mournful, “I can’t keep your parents in the dark about this. This is serious, kid, it’s bad—”

“Reig’n,” Shigeo cries— cries— and Reigen widens his eyes when his hazy gaze starts glistening against the white glow of his breaking vessel. He’s squirming in his hold, kicking his legs out weakly, and Reigen is quite unnerved at how easy it is to hold him down and make him rest.

Shigeo’s choppy bangs hang over his eyes, matted and oily, and its darkness is stark against the pallor of his face. And then he speaks again, still kicking his legs out and letting his sneakers squeak against the floor, still gripping Reigen’s arms with more force than he thinks he means, and Reigen would’ve done anything to not have to hear what the kid says next.

“I don’t w’nt th’ last of their t’me w’th me t’ be spent scared.”

Reigen feels like his own chest is cracking instead.

It’s the most sobering thing Reigen has ever heard come out of a fifteen-year-old’s mouth, and he almost breaks right there. By the look on Dimple’s face, and the way the spirit instantly turns away from the kid and curses and picks up Reigen’s flip phone to finish his text, Reigen thinks it disturbs him too.

He watches the tears spill from Shigeo’s wide eyes, drip down cheeks that aren’t nearly as round as they used to be and blending in with the sweat that glistens there. He watches them trickle over the discoloration of his bags, sees them run over the inflammation there. The fever takes his pupils over, clouds them up in a fog the kid tries to blink through, and he squeezes Reigen’s arms like he’s the only thing tethering him to Earth anymore.

Something snaps in him, some long-stretched cord there in his soul that keeps him from doing these things, and he pulls Shigeo forward into a messy hug of splayed limbs and ragdolled torsos. It’s quick and it’s sudden and Shigeo makes a little noise at the rushed movement, but he settles against Reigen’s chest after a moment and he holds his kid like it’s the last time he ever will.

“Mob…” Reigen whispers into his hair, and Shigeo isn’t even fighting him anymore which makes him think he knows he won’t win this. Still, Reigen holds him close and speaks over Dimple clicking along the keypad of his phone, “I hate to break it to ya kid, but your parents are already scared. They’ve been scared. For a long while.”

Shigeo hiccups against his chest, and Reigen holds back a curse and buries his face in the kid’s messy bangs. “I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I’m so sorry, Shigeo. They have to know—I’m so sorry.”

He rocks them both in the middle of a floor splattered with soil and spilled tea and tipped over bookshelves and cracked porcelain, and Shigeo cries into his chest while the ding of a text being sent calls across the office. Reigen tightens his hold on him; Shigeo curls against him and hides his face in the crook of his neck, radiating warmth like a space heater.

Reigen fights back the lump in his throat and fails. His words turn thick and trembled. “I’m so sorry.”

Chapter Text

The next few hours are a confusing haze for Shigeo.

He’s against his Master’s chest and drifting in and out one moment, and then the next he hears the familiar voice of his father, feels two pairs of hands around his shoulders. He’s led down stairs, those same hands catching him when his knees wobble and the railing comes for his face.

He feels sunlight, and leather seat covers, and then he’s in a car. The radio smears its words and notes across the dashboard and blurs the touchscreen there in static—his father’s voice pours over the middle console while Shigeo slumps in the passenger seat. He doesn’t remember putting his seat belt on, but it’s there and buckled.

His father’s hand is gripping his own, reached across the gap between their seats and holding it like a lifeline. Shigeo stares at his sleeve that’s still rolled up, still showing off the cracks in his skin for the world to see, and distantly he thinks there’s something alarming about that with his father right there. The fog gets thick though, too thick to think through, and he floats for the rest of the ride.

He wakes up again to a car door slamming, to footsteps careening across sunshine and greenery and the familiar paint job of their house. Shigeo’s leg twitches, sensing he’s supposed to follow, but he sees the clouds above them and realizes he’s already moving, carried bridal style up their home’s walkway.

He doesn’t feel like that’s necessary, at first, but then the spike of pain from hot energy in his soul has him falling back to the void.

He’s in and out for a while—at least, he thinks it’s a while. It feels like centuries and no time at all simultaneously, and each awakening adds more cotton to his bones and more ache to his limbs. The light from the windows never changes in his limbo, and the sun and the shadows never move; time feels thick when he’s in the waking world, and thin when he’s out.

He opens his eyes, sees his father pacing the living room from where he’s been gently deposited on the couch, closes them. He opens them again, swearing it’s only been a second, but his father is gone from view and his voice is sounding from beyond the kitchen counters behind him, hushed and stressed. He blinks and his jacket has been removed, the top buttons of his undershirt unfastened. He blinks again and his father is next to him, hushing him, big hands thumbing the skin around his sweaty temple and lulling him back to unconsciousness.

He thinks the furniture looks weird and out of place now, like everything is warped and slightly to the left, but his limbs also feel fake and his head is a balloon in weight, so maybe it’s the fever. He chalks it up to illness when he opens his eyes and lifts his hand, only for his father’s own to seemingly materialize out of nowhere and gently pull it away.

Shh, don’t touch that, kiddo, his father says when he tries to reach for the cracks that seethe through his collarbone. He listens, and falls again.

Things are placed on and removed from the coffee table every time he opens his eyes; remotes are moved, cups are whisked away, a new can appears on a coaster, books are pushed aside. Pillows are rearranged around him, tucked against him to support his neck and his legs. The television is on now, low volume and playing some channel his father doesn’t even like.

Shigeo sinks again. And again. And again.

Shige? Can ya hear me, son? he thinks his father calls from somewhere beyond the veil, and Shigeo simply stares through the black water clogging his senses. He sinks again, even when his father calls him twice more. He sinks. Again, and again.

Even when he hears the front door open and he cracks his lids apart, he’s drifting in between it all, breaths hot and shallow. Even when he hears Ritsu’s voice, alarmed with hurried footfalls beelining for the couch, he drifts and doesn’t get to say hi. He falls instead. Again and again.

The next time he wakes up, it feels real—or as real as everything can feel when his mind is being baked. It’s quiet, and the lighting in the house has finally changed; the sun has finally shifted and he’s out of time’s thick jello. Shadows have moved on from their spots on the hardwood floor and are climbing the walls now, squared and separated by the frames holding the glass.

It’s orange and pretty. Shigeo thinks it’d taste like a dreamsicle, if evening light was edible.

The couch cushions underneath him feel translucent, which isn’t a word that belongs to the sense of touch, but he can’t think of any other way to describe it. He shifts his leg, his muscles ache and tingle, and he finds that the fabric is as solid as it’s always been. It confuses him, and he hums into the quiet living room.

Footsteps bounce off the furniture from the kitchen. Shigeo swivels his eyes across the things on the coffee table. He sees Ritsu’s homework there, splayed out and not a single question filled in. His fingers twitch, cracked limb hanging off the edge of the couch.

“Shige?” somebody calls, familiar and warm. He blinks, and his mother is suddenly settling down on the edge of the couch.

His body sinks with the movement, presses against her lower back, and she’s searching for something in his eyes as she leans over. She must find whatever she’s looking for, because when his vision clears and he stops seeing blurred shapes, she smiles down at him, delicate and oddly full of emotion.

“Hey, baby,” she whispers, raising a hand up toward his face. Her fingers brush against his hairline, and it’s soaked and he feels kind of bad, but she doesn’t seem to pay it any mind.

“M’m?” he croaks out, his single syllable slurred and mumbled with sleep, and she smiles wider, sadder. The wrinkles along her eyes crinkle up, and Shigeo wishes it was a happier grin. There’s something devastated about this one.

“It’s me, honey,” she beams in that muted, soft way she does, fixing the wet rag along his forehead that just now blips into his radar. He hums at the coolness, even if his own body heat is already sucking the thing dry.

His eyes stray from her and wander along the ceiling, trace the edges of the living room fan blades, and then settle on the coffee table again. Ritsu’s phone lights up with a notification that vibrates against the wooden surface, and then the screen dims.

“Wher’d R’tsu…?” he mumbles out, tongue feeling like stone and water all at once, and his mother brings her fingers away from the rag.

“Bathroom, baby, he’ll be back in a minute,” she coos, thumbing his cheek, and his lids threaten to close on him. He fights it this time, pushes the void back even as it crawls over his veins. “Your father n’ I are figuring this out, okay? You just need to rest.”

Her eyes flit down to his chest, where the cracks there glow against his undershirt, but they’re back up and looking at him before he can really focus on it. “Do you need anything?”

Shigeo’s mind whirs along slowly, lagging behind. He hears the trickle of the water pipes in the walls, and a door opening upstairs. He latches onto it, uses the noise to drag himself from the veil, and he tests his dry tongue. “Wa’er…?”

“Water? Of course, baby,” she says, leans forward to press a kiss to his wet hair that goes on longer than he thinks one’s ever lasted, and then she gets up from the couch and adjusts the pillows, lets her fingers linger along his scalp on her way around the armrest.

Footfalls come down the steps. Shigeo falls before he can say hi again, and before his mother comes back with the water.

+

He floats just below the surface of everything, breaths bubbled and strained. The voices that flow to his ears when he drifts closer to air are muffled and faraway, words lost to the rapids.

There’s other sounds that overlap them though, that block the syllables and the sharper Ts and Ss that dart between the legs of furniture. The television stays at low volume, whispers of dialog lines against music that creeps out of the speakers through static. There’s paced footsteps somewhere in the corner, where the voices snap and hiss. The quiet tick of the wall clock syncs with his heartbeat.

Scribbles sound from the coffee table, lead against paper in quick loops and dots. Beyond his own aura pressing against the walls, he can feel Ritsu’s flushed against it.

The scrawling of his pencil almost lulls him back to sleep; the deep, agitated reds in Ritsu’s aura pull him up from the deeper waters.

“—fever’s still not bad enough for the h—”

The voices welt through the fog in his head, soak into his bones when he emerges to the top. It’s deeper and belongs to his father, placating and hushed, but it sounds like sirens to Shigeo and he twitches against the couch cushions.

“Oh why does that matter?! He should be in there anyway, it’s—”

His mother, gritted and taut. Her voice is lowered to an even quieter trickle, but her jagged consonants make up for the muted vowels. They spit across rocks where the rapids push him against the surface, and all his body wants to do is rest and all his mind wants to do is listen and comfort.

“Like he said, honey, this isn’t something they can—” Their words meld with the water, and Shigeo drifts in and out of their sentences in a dizzying haze.

“Well there’s got to be some— there that speciali—”

His aura rustles at the noise, curling around the legs of the coffee table. His mother is upset. His father is worried and using that tone he lets through only when something has gone wrong. There’s no light except the blue of the television glowing through his lids, and it makes it that much harder to open his eyes.

It’s dark and comfortable, pillowed up on the couch. The rag on his head is newly soaked and cold and Shigeo shifts his head so he presses it between a cushion and his temple and he sighs at the coolness. He fights against the weight on his eyes and his mind—his parents are scared, just like he knew they would be.

The rustle of movement sounds directly next to him. He feels a red gaze burning his soul.

“Reigen said he’d call some other ESPers that might know—”

“And how long will that take?!” his mother hisses back. Something in him writhes at the tone. “How long does he have?!”

Something shifts beside him and Ritsu’s aura comes to cradle him, slips over his thoughts and under his worries and fogs up the sharp edges. Warm skin comes over his sweaty hand, grips around his palm and squeezes. Shigeo’s own aura stirs at the noise in his brother’s core, at the deeper shades that are only there when he’s hurting and stressed.

The dim colors behind his lids change with the pictures on the television, and then it turns garbled and grey and he hears static consume the movie dialog. He fights against the exhaustion pressing his limbs to the cushions—his parents are scared. Ritsu is scared.

Their words muddle and he pushes at unconsciousness. His family is scared. His father’s tone is shaken and the jolliness is gone from his smile and it’s wrong. His mother’s sternness has hardened to wrath that’s unsteady and unsustainable. Her words are sharp and spat and it’s rare that they ever see her legitimately angry—exasperated and annoyed, maybe, but genuine ire is hard to come by from her.

It’s scary. It’s even more scary the way her rage is obviously wet with fear.

“Honey, please, just breathe—”

“No, Minato, I can’t breathe when my son is—!”

“Mom.”

The voices stop, and the static pours into the gap. In the new silence, Shigeo hears crickets outside. “You’re scaring him,” Ritsu’s voice quakes, just a little, at the end.

Shigeo tries to stir, he really does. He moves against the cushions and turns his head away from the wet rag that makes him want to sink again, flutters his eyes open to a dim square of static and the silhouette of spiky hair and a green wisp of light. He sees it for a moment, a single second, and then footsteps hurry along behind the couch and a big hand rakes fingers along his scalp.

He hums against it, fighting sleep, fighting rest with all his might, but his father shushes his attempts, smooths out the worries in his head with soft words he doesn’t even catch, but hears the meaning behind. Ritsu’s hand in his tightens its grip.

Shigeo squeezes back, and that’s all he’s able to do before he goes under again.

+

He blinks his eyes open to a different ceiling. He recognizes the popcorn patterns and the stain in the corner as the ones he lives under most nights.

There’s voices again, echoed and too far away to grasp at the words. The hum of the air vent by his desk lulls him to a comfortable in-between, the sound hollowing him out and scraping the thoughts from the floor of his mind. It’s clearer now, but not by much. His senses are unclogged, but still offbeat and delayed and warped.

There’s a hand in his, and it’s thumbing the meat of his palm. The sensation is familiar; so is the firm give of his futon underneath him, and the blankets stopping at his waist, and the slit of sunshine through the closed curtains that warm a line along his stomach.

It’s peaceful and comforting, and not even the sound of Reigen’s voice down the hall of his own home keeps him from the depths.

Teruki’s aura, though, does.

It’s settled over him in a light snow, a gentle layer of comforting pinks carefully separated and organized into something soft. It pillows his soul and dances with the shallow rise and fall of his chest, fabric of his undershirt unbuttoned and peeled back from the cracks that spread down his ribs. It’s warm and smells like cherries, and it mingles with his own aura that buoys against it.

The leftover yellows are carefully contained somewhere else, caged up beside him where another heart beats. They are angry and scared and beating against a sternum that locks them in place. He wants to swivel his head to look at him, to see beyond the rumpled folds of blankets and pillows, but he’s so tired.

His own cotton candies push against the pinks, like a gentle prod, and leak between the gaps in the net to reach the butterscotch. Teruki’s thumb pauses it’s little spirals.

He hears an oh—! as the weight against his side shifts, and then Teruki’s face peeks into view. His hair drapes and his cheeks squish up into a hopeful smile, warm and lovely and singing with pink energy. His eyes look tired, but they’re still bright when he looks down at him, solid and sturdy against everything else that feels like slush.

“Hey sleepyhead,” his partner greets, light and airy in a particularly careful way.

An unrealized tension in Shigeo’s center eases at the sound; he doesn’t know how long it’s been, how long he’s been in and out for, but Teruki is still in sleep clothes and the sun is shining in the same spot it always does when he wakes up for school. Maybe it’s only been a night, but it feels like it’s been so much longer.

He relishes the gentle tone, humming out a greeting that’s croaked and dry and quiet.

“You feelin’ ok? Anything I can do?” Teruki asks, and he feels like he’s been asked those questions recently. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember.

Shigeo hums again, empty answer giving him time to think of a real one, and he ponders while his partner picks at the wet rag on his forehead. He straightens it out and then goes for another that’s in the crook of his neck down, adjusts it so it’s spread out along the slick skin.

He blinks his feverish eyes at the ceiling. His father’s voice trails down the hall and through his cracked bedroom door, Reigen’s coming right after and slightly louder in nature, and they both echo and become hollow by the time the conversation reaches his ears.

He strains to listen, but it’s all muffled syllables and hums and ineloquent chatter, and his head aches from the mental strain of such a simple task.

“Shigeo?” comes Teruki’s voice, concerned, but patient.

His eyes dart back to his partner’s face, waiting, and then he realizes Teruki is waiting too. Oh. He’d asked him a question, he thinks. He doesn’t remember… it was something about feeling.

“Swea’y…” Shigeo rasps out. He hopes that’s an answer that matches.

It must be good enough, because Teruki lets a little chuckle loose, hands in his oily hair. “That checks out,” he smiles, and it’s sad. Shigeo wants it to be happy. “Want somethin’ to eat? I know you had soup earlier but it’s no big deal if you’re still hungry.”

Shigeo blinks slowly, something not clicking. “I ha’ soup?”

Something in Teruki’s eyes stills and something else takes its place, churning and whirring and proceeding carefully. “Yeah…” he answers, “You don’t… remember?”

No. He doesn’t. And by the look on Teruki’s face, he’d say his confused, halted staring is enough of an answer already.

“That fever’s makin’ everything confusing for you, isn’t it?” Teruki smiles again. He keeps doing it, and the only one that had been even remotely real is the one he gave him when he first woke up. “That’s okay. You were… pretty out of it, so it makes sense.”

Shigeo hums. He wonders if that’s the only nugget of consciousness he’s forgotten. “S’rry,” he mumbles. He doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for. A lot of things, maybe.

Teruki blinks at him, and then he’s chuckling again and bowing his head down so he only sees the beginnings of brown roots coming in. When he lifts his head again his eyes are wet, but the pinks in his aura are soaking into his soul so much that he finds it really hard to be alarmed in the trance of it.

“Please don’t apologize,” Teruki whispers, blinking away the shine that reflects the slit of sun from the window. His voice wobbles and hitches at the end, and Shigeo shifts, widens his eyes a little, but then his partner is moving.

He leans over Shigeo’s chest, arches over the cracks that seep with energy carefully. Both of his hands are suddenly around his face and Teruki’s clamping his eyes shut and pressing their foreheads together, nose to nose, soul to soul. His hair tickles Shigeo’s jaw and his knee digs into his thigh, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t mind.

The coral hues sing; the golds roar.

“Please don’t. Please don’t do that to me,” his partner teeters, and the watermelon seeping into his skin is now tainted with harsher reds, deeper magentas. He can tell Teruki is trying so hard to keep it light, to keep it gentle and comforting for him—controlling an aura when emotions are high is one of the hardest things in the world.

And yet he’s holding his partner, who is crackling apart at the seams in every sense of the word, and all that seeps from him is a little fear that get snuffed out instantly upon exit.

“You are going to make it through this,” Teruki grits, hardened and clear, “And then—and only then—are you going to apologize for scaring me shitless. Okay?”

Teruki doesn’t move away from the hold, doesn’t remove his forehead from his own even though he’s sure the heat radiating off of him is making him hot and sweaty too. He doesn’t even leave to see Shigeo nod, or give him a chance to respond, and Shigeo doesn’t blame him; he doesn’t want to move away from this either.

Instead, he lifts shaking arms and hooks them around Teruki’s back, grips the fabric of his nightshirt there with weak fingers, and to the two of them, it’s a very loud okay.

They stay like that for a while, and then some, Teruki carding fingers through hair that needed washed days ago. The motion is soothing. Teruki’s presence is soothing.

Shigeo’s arms fall from the hold, and he drifts. His partner stays, steadfast and loyal.

+

He wakes up screaming.

There’s a prick of pain in the dreamless void and he twitches in his sleep, and then it swells and balloons out to something that arcs and explodes so fast he’s snapping his eyes open and stirring the rest of the room up, making questions fly from silhouettes he can’t identify.

The scream slips from his lips before he can even think to stifle it—it continues while his sick brain forgets he can do that in the first place.

People are yelling around him and something slides across the floor, loud and hitched as it bangs against planks of hardwood that poke out from the rest. His chest turns white-hot, his ribs go red from the heat, and he’s fighting the blankets and ripping his hands from where they’re twisted in the covers to claw and grab and press.

Shouts echo against the walls of his bedroom, panicked and frantic, and Shigeo’s aura pulses out in a wave that audibly shoves everything to the walls, loud clangs and slams reverberating up to the corners. He hears a yell get cut off with the slam of wood against drywall, curses following it.

Shigeo chokes on screams, fingers clawing at the cracks that spread to his stomach and his wrist and his other shoulder and his throat— he digs the tips into the white and grips at the edges and it’s cold even though the pain is so hot, so intense that he feels like he’s on fire. There’s nothing there but energy to grasp at, nothing but cold mana that leaves his fingernails freezing.

Hands clench around his wrists and pry them away and he fights them, he flails against the silhouettes that shout his name and beg for things he can’t hear over his own shrieking. There’s pounding somewhere behind him, beyond the back of his head, and he twists in their holds and yells, less from pain and more from fear, thick and panicked.

Somebody grabs his legs that kick out against fabric, somebody holds him down and he doesn’t like that and he thrashes, scared and agonized, and then another wave of pain cleaves his soul and doubles everything. It’s seething and it smolders against his neck, up his throat’s tendons where he chokes on a gasp and inhales wrong and then he’s struggling to breathe.

Deeper voices join the mix, graveled shouts flung out against objects that swarm the air and hit the walls. He thinks he hears a yell from his mother, grieved and devastated, and he doesn’t like that either and he fights against the hands pinning him harder.

“Suya keep everything still—!” comes Reigen’s voice, and purple overcomes the cotton candies that siege the place. His own aura pushes and shoves and roars out, frightened and looking for freedom where there is none.

Through the wetness in his eyes that blur the bottom of the world he sees faces he knows but can’t put names to in the fury of his aura, even if it feels like he should be able. There’s spiked hair and blond bangs and pink ties in his vision, all doubled and tripled and wide-eyed. He thinks he sees fissures in the drywall behind him that spread up to the ceiling and crumble while the room shakes.

“Shige it’s okay—!”

“Breathe, Mob, breathe!”

Three auras all congregate against him, seep into his core and all envelope him at once—oil-stained yellows and dotted purples and starry blues cloud his senses, dull everything down to a boil that just barely drips over the edge. His yelling warps in his ears, the static in his periphery grows—

The cracks split up his windpipe, and he screams until his throat is raw.

Everything is a blur and the colors fade to grey and he can barely make out shapes from his clouded vision anymore. There’s still pressure on him, still hands holding him down to his futon, and he’s distantly aware he’s still fighting, still arching his back away from the blankets from the way his veins seethe.

He’s still yelling, he’s still screaming. His mother is still crying. His brother is still telling him it’s okay and his partner is still holding his hands away so he doesn’t hurt himself and his Master is still coaxing him to breathe. Serizawa is still holding everything in the air, suspending it away from the wires of Shigeo’s wobbly bridge of an aura.

The pain peaks and then falls, fades deep into his chest where his heart whimpers and hammers so fast he worries for it. His screams dwindle to gasped cries, to trembled groans he’s no longer present enough to hold back. He stops pushing and flailing, stilling in his family’s holds where they huddle closer and coo and switch to holding him against them instead of holding him down.

He thinks his mother joins the fray because her face peers into his grayed vision and her hands come up to cup his head, to hold his cheeks, and she’s absolutely crying. She’s saying something he can’t hear through the jello in his head and it’s ushered out in thick syllables and thicker chokes, tears dripping from her chin.

He’s moved against her and his form is limp—he’s probably not making it any easier on them, but he feels even raising an arm to be an impossible task with how exhausted he feels and how burnt out his core is, so he simply ragdolls. Maybe it’s not a good idea, because his mother cries harder.

She holds him, presses her lips to his hairline and whispers wet promises he doesn’t hear. He breathes against her chest, loud and weak and raspy, and her shoulders shake from the silent sobs she lets loose. Even as she cries, she wipes away the wetness on his cheeks instead of her’s.

Something in him wants to look back at the others, to say he’s sorry for scaring them, but Teruki had told him not to do that and he doesn’t even think he’s capable of it at this point anyway. Not right now, at least. Right now his body is still calming from the agony and his breaths are still labored and croaked.

The three other auras in the room all conjoin and envelope him like a silent hug. His eyes slip closed, and he chooses rest over having to think about how petrified Ritsu’s in particular feels.

He falls back asleep to the gentle, desperate rocking of his mother, held against her chest like he’s her world.

+

Even with all the sleep he’s getting, none of it is restful, and his body is becoming more and more exhausted by the hour.

It’s all power naps that last twenty minutes in actuality, but to him one awakening feels like seconds away from when he’d fallen asleep, and another feels like three days. It’s disorienting, and he feels like he keeps asking the same questions every time he wakes up. He wouldn’t be surprised if they were starting to get tired of it, but they always answer gently like it’s the first one he’s voiced.

There’s almost always somebody next to him when he floats to the surface. Most of the time he doesn’t know who it is, doesn’t have the energy to shift his head to look; he only feels the pressure of them sitting against his side, or their hand thumbing skin that’s untouched by fissures.

Sometimes it’s just voices, close and hushed. Most of the time they’re low and murmured so quietly Shigeo can’t make out the words, but sometimes he awakens to chuckles, and that soothes him in a way he hadn’t expected. Even if they feel a little empty, at least it’s not all gloom within their house’s walls. At least he’s not making the place completely unbearable.

He wakes to his father taking his temperature. He wakes to Reigen’s hands fixing the wet rags. He wakes to Teruki curled up beside him, breathing deeply and under blankets with him he only distantly recognizes aren’t his own. He wakes to Dimple resting right by his head, the coolness of his spirit form heaven-sent against his fever. He wakes to Ritsu’s voice, just beyond a wall that separates them. He even wakes to Tome in the room at some point, voice clogged and unsteady.

He doesn’t even know where he is anymore, but he knows it’s not his room. The hum of the air vent is in the wrong corner. The stains on the ceiling don’t match the picture in his mind. Light streams in from open curtains, and the window isn’t cracked.

He’s in Ritsu’s bed. He thinks of spiderwebbed breaks in his drywall, branched out from the middle of his floor where he’d lied in his futon and screamed.

Maybe it’s the exhaustion talking, but Ritsu’s bed feels more comfortable than anything he’s ever slept on.

So he drifts.

+

He wakes up just long enough to take medicine, and he’s just aware enough to hear his mother tell him that she loves him.

He falls asleep before he can reply.

+

“‘M s’rry,” Shigeo croaks out to his Master, who’s sitting on the edge of Ritsu’s bed. His brother is on the opposite side, slouched across the mattress and clutching his hand in his sleep.

Reigen had said sorry to him earlier, when he’d discovered the cracks. So he doesn’t understand why his Master looks so devastated by Shigeo’s own.

Isn’t he allowed to apologize too?

+

Ritsu joins him on the bed at some point, because he wakes up with his brother atop the blankets, holding Shigeo’s uncracked arm in his own and sleeping his eye bags away.

He scoots closer with what little strength he has left, and drifts with his face in his brother’s unkempt hair.

+

Shigeo opens his eyes to Ritsu’s muffled yelling downstairs, sobs breaking his words apart.

He doesn’t have the strength. He falls again.

+

There’s crickets outside. He flutters his eyes open to blue and red.

The light blurs in his groggy vision, but he blinks the sleep away from them and his attention lands on the digital clock on Ritsu’s nightstand. The red glow reflects off the wood, bathes Shigeo in maroons that are soft on the outer edges and harsh in the middle.

It says 2:11.

There’s a figure sitting on the edge of the bed, sniffling.

Shoulders hunched, spiky hair barely pops out from everything else in the dark room, grainy and distorted with shadows and fever-induced warps in his vision. Ritsu hangs his head down, hands gripping the edge of the mattress, and he sniffles once into the dark, quiet and empty.

Moonlight streams from the window. He can see Teruki sleeping at Ritsu’s desk, slumped over the surface sideways and propped up in a way that will definitely give him neck pain in the morning. Squares are painted onto his brother’s floor, moonlight contained within the window frames burning blue into the hardwood.

It drips against Ritsu’s back, etching the shadows of leaves outside onto his shoulder blades. He’s wearing his favorite sweater, big and oversized and cable knit.

Ritsu’s aura is red like the light of his alarm clock, and it’s dropped to the floor like a low-hanging mist. Shigeo has never seen it that shade—even when he’d looked up at him during his fight with Toichiro, fear on his face, the red hadn’t consumed him.

He’s also never tasted utter defeat in his brother’s aura either, but it’s potent enough to make his eyes water now.

The house is quiet, but it’s an unfamiliar sort of silence that makes everything much too still. Everyone is much too aware of a faltering heartbeat somewhere in the household. Everything is waiting for something, even the very walls of the building that shelters them, and Shigeo refuses to think about what they’re waiting on, even in their sleep.

The house isn’t dead; it feels like it’s playing dead. Like everybody is simply pretending. Pretending things are normal, pretending they have time to sleep, pretending that have mundane chores to do in the morning and not something else infinitely heavier.

The house itself pretends to sleep as well, lights off and windows shut and doors locked.

The clock blips to the next minute on the counter.

Shigeo shifts, aura fizzing and bubbling with an intensity that scares him as he reaches out. He pulls back, afraid the cotton candies will suddenly stop listening.

Ritsu stiffens, and then lifts his head, turns to look at Shigeo. His eyes widen a little when they make eye contact—he wonders how long it’s actually been since they’ve even spoken. Since Shigeo collapsed, and then slept in fever-induced half-dreams for what’s felt like ten whole days.

Shigeo watches as Ritsu flits through emotions like old paper animations. His eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, tear tracks subtle but still there, especially in the moonlight that glistens off the wetness around his eye bags. The blue of the window’s glow turns his irises into a deeper grape and matches his purple sheets.

He waits, because he doesn’t think he has the voice to speak much anyway. Because Ritsu seems like he’s sorting through a whole mountain of emotions, digging through the cluster to find the base, the origin. It usually takes ages for Shigeo to do that—hence… all of this. Ritsu is a lot more eloquent when it comes to these things, and if he’s having trouble, Shigeo can only hope it’s not hurting him.

Ritsu looks like he wants to say everything is okay, because he has a tendency to wrap these situations in blanket statements like that. He looks like he wants to say hello and he looks like he wants to say goodbye. He looks like he wants to say he’s sorry—for what, he has no idea.

Ritsu looks like he wants to say a million things, really.

And at the crest of it all, where his brother’s chest hitches and emotions reach their peak, where he digs through that mountain and finds the base of everything else, his aura swamps the entire house and leaves the walls smelling like grief.

“I love you, Shige,” he chooses.

Shigeo’s core swells with something so big, he doesn’t even know what to call it. His own hues layer atop Ritsu’s and mingle with the nebula of reds—it’s jittery and spastic and probably not comforting, but his brother’s aura warps underneath it and moves between it, wanting it more than anything, and Shigeo gives it to him.

“I l’ve you too, R’tsu,” he croaks, slurred and broken up by raw flesh of screamed out lungs.

The smile his brother gives is a little bit devastating, wobbly to the core and shaking like it’ll shatter. Tears run down his face, and he sniffles again, and he wants to say more, wants to do so much more than that, but then Shigeo’s energy is spent, and he’s falling back to the abyss tragically early.

His eyes flutter shut, and he sinks again. This time, it feels oddly final.

+

The next time he wakes up, he’s in pure static. Instantly, something feels wrong.

The singing of his chest is louder than ever, still a subtle, quiet hum, but in his head everything is roaring, pressing against his skin and his bones until they vibrate and ache, until they thrum like instruments and until his organs slosh from the noise. It is instantly loud and painful, and Shigeo mentally braces for another attack, for the cracks to start splitting his head open.

Everything sings in different, atonal notes, steady and strong and too much, but it never bursts like he expects. His chest doesn’t split any farther and his windpipe stays intact and his fingers aren’t split off like he’s been dreaming about in the hazy gaps of slumber. Everything stays the same.

Shigeo opens his eyes. But something is wrong.

The house is still quiet. He swivels his head and sees Ritsu’s digital clock read 4:48 in harsh red lettering. The crickets still chirp and Teruki still slumps against the desk, shifted to a slightly better position, but drooling along the wood. Ritsu sits against the side of the bed, on the floor, limp and head propped up against where the bed and the nightstand meet.

Moonlight still shines, the glowing squares creeping up Ritsu’s door that hang ajar. Everything is the same. He even feels Serizawa’s aura downstairs, probably sleeping on one of the couches with Reigen. Everything is the same.

He feels it though. He struggles to sit up in bed, hears the springs underneath it creak quietly and feels the wet rags on him fall to his lap, and when he presses a hand to his chest that glows against the blankets, he feels it. The sheer density of the energy in him, in between the cracks that leak some of it out like a dripping faucet. It feels desperate. It feels hungry for air. It feels starved for space.

Shigeo breathes shakily in the dark.

It’s happening.

Chapter Text

Ritsu is dragged awake to a difference he can’t identify yet.

He lifts his head from the wood of the nightstand he leans against, no doubt a red line from it etched into his temple. He breathes in, red light trickling over the hair in his face, and he raises a hand to brush it away from his forehead, spikes unkempt and knotted.

Shifting his legs underneath him, his brain slowly turns on and struggles to wake immediately, exhaustion lugging it down. His headache throbs back to the forefront and he sighs against the cool air of his bedroom, digging fingers into his eyes to clear the sleep from them.

He stares at the trim of his wall while the anxiety bursts through the floodgates, reminders of what he’s about to lose threatening to overtake him.

The bottom of his vision blurs and he scrubs at his eyes violently until it’s gone, until the skin around them just hurts and his head throbs from the movement. He keeps his palms pressed against his sockets with his elbows to his knees for a long moment as he breathes through the quiet. Every horrid thought that crosses his mind is met with gritted teeth and mental scrubbing of his skull walls.

Teruki shifts in his desk chair across the room, sighing in his sleep while his aura spills restlessly over the window. He hears his alarm clock tick to the next minute. Nobody is awake but him.

There is something missing.

Ritsu realizes with a horrid, shaky breath that it’s Shigeo’s raspy wheezes, no longer crackled out through lungs that are rattling with death, and pure fucking fear zips through his core. He doesn’t hear the shallow huffs, or the hitches in his brother’s breath when he’s dreaming of something he shouldn’t be. It’s utterly silent.

For a moment, he doesn’t have it in him to turn around. For a moment, he sits there against his mattress and listens, because maybe the breeze outside is simply too loud or the hum of his own aura in his ears is simply overshadowing it, but as he stares at the wall opposite of him he realizes there is nothing. There are no breaths to hear, other than Teruki’s.

Shigeo’s aura isn’t there anymore, either.

It takes everything in him. It takes every ounce of courage he has to shift his legs underneath him, to sit up and balance on his knees, to grab the edge of the bed for support, and turn around.

Shigeo isn’t even there.

His heart bricks to his stomach so fast he’s seeing stars, and he rushes up from the floor so quickly his vision doubles. His blankets pool from the mattress on the other side of the bed, and there’s a divot where Shigeo’s head used to be pillowed by cotton and fabric. A quick lean over the mattress proves his brother didn’t fall out on the other side.

A rushed burst of his own energy proves Shigeo’s aura is nowhere in this house.

Ritsu rushes out of his room, socked feet thumping into the hallway. That doesn’t prove anything. If Shigeo is… if Shigeo is gone then his aura would be gone too, right? That doesn’t prove anything. He can’t rely on searching for an aura anymore, not when his brother is so close to—

Ritsu throws open the bathroom door. He checks Shigeo’s bedroom, ignores the giant cracks embedded across his drywall and the taped down pencils they’d found on his desk. He’s being loud about it—he’s probably waking people up, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care in a million years. Against his better judgement, he throws his parents’ bedroom door open too, darting away when the two lumps of blankets in the bed start to stir.

He storms down the stairs, Serizawa’s aura already waking from its stillness. His socks rampage down the wood and he’s already twisting into the living room, eyes darting to both of the couches. He zips to the kitchen, finds it empty, ignores Reigen’s mumbled groan as he hurries around the living room furniture and slams the downstairs bathroom door open too.

Nothing. Shigeo isn’t in the house. It’s baffling, but Shigeo isn’t in the house anymore and Ritsu doesn’t understand how. His brother had barely been able to stay awake the past four days, and recently he’s struggled to even move. How did he…?

Ritsu plunges out another burst, going as far as he can while he clamps his eyes shut in the middle of the living room and breathes through his panicked huffs.

It’s much farther than he needs. He finds Shigeo’s aura rather quickly, still there, still alive, but an entire block down the street.

What? he thinks, but he doesn’t have time for that. He doesn’t bother being quiet as he races around the couches again, he doesn’t bother to answer Serizawa’s groggy question he doesn’t hear the words to. He doesn’t bother to put on shoes as he unlocks the front door and yanks it open, spring night air hitting him while he dives outside and runs down their walkway.

Huffing, he looks to his right, and all the way down the street he sees a little dot stumbling along the sidewalk.

Fuck, Ritsu thinks, and he runs.

His socked feet pound against the path, cold and rough, and the closer he gets the more he sees the way Shigeo wobbles down the road like he’ll fall any moment, staggering to the side with blind hands down to catch himself on something that isn’t there. A familiar green wisp is next to him, swirling around his shoulders, darting back and forth across his face.

Shigeo stumbles, and falls to the concrete. “Fuck,” Ritsu grits in a whisper and runs faster.

“Shige!” he shouts when he thinks he’s in earshot. In the burst of seconds it takes him to catch up, he hears Dimple’s stressed chattering.

“—eriously, kid, what did I tell you?! Just let me possess you, I’ll get you as far away from here as pos—oh, Rits—”

“Shige!” Ritsu calls again, huffing as he dives to a crouch and scrapes his knees against the concrete, “What the hell is—”

“He’s trying to get away,” Dimple explains, and Ritsu really appreciates it when the spirit settles for quick elaborations, “It’s happening, kid. This whole city’s gonna be leveled if we don’t get him out of here.”

Ritsu stares, hands absently hooking around his brother where he struggles to pull himself up from the sidewalk. His jaw shakes, heart hammering. “Shit—o—okay—”

Shigeo coughs wetly against the concrete, wheezes short and fast. “D’mple, go—”

Ritsu pulls him up farther so he stops straining to do it himself, holding his brother against him like he’ll crumble if he doesn’t.

“I am not leaving you,” Dimple barks back, zipping down to eye level with Shigeo, “I’ll get you miles away before you blow up, it’ll be f—”

“‘M g’nna k’ll you if you do th’t,” Shigeo breathes, and it’s the most Ritsu has heard him talk since the morning before he collapsed, “I can’t h’ld it b’ck an’more, D’mple, it’ll k’ll you!”

“It’ll be worth it!”

Ritsu doesn’t think he’s ever seen Dimple so terrified, not even after everything they’ve been through. He’s never seen him this… desperate to help any of them. It scares him, considering the circumstances. “Shigeo—”

“He’s right, Dimple, you need to go— I’ll take him,” Ritsu blurts, “Get as far away from here at possible; his blasts are usually wider than they are tall, get into the sky.”

There’s something like surprise etched in his face when the spirit looks back up at him, crickets filling the gap. The breeze swirling around the trees of the lawn nearby overshadow Shigeo’s loud wheezes and stuttering breaths. Each rattle in his chest makes Ritsu wants to scream, but he just holds him tighter and tries not to think about how limp his brother is in his arms.

“D’mple,” Shigeo slurs out. The moonlight makes him look twice as sickly, and his voice turns to an exhausted whisper at the end. “Please.”

The spirit hangs there for a moment, slowly drifting to the edge of the sidewalk. It feels like centuries pass before he gives any real answer, but when Ritsu nods his head quickly and mouths go to him, Dimple’s reluctantly nodding.

“Fuck—okay. Okay!” he growls out, little hand pointing, “You better be okay when I come back down, you hear me? You too.”

Dimple points to Ritsu, and there is something in his gaze that spells out take care of him so clearly that for a moment he thinks the spirit says it out loud. He nods in a daze, pulling Shigeo against him so he’s slumped against his chest and breathing harshly on his neck, and then Dimple’s darting high up beyond the roofs of the houses around them.

Ritsu looks down at his brother, who’s already trying to move. “Easy, easy, Shige,” he murmurs, wincing at the way his brother’s whole body trembles with the effort of it all. Ritsu grabs his wrist that pushes against his chest, pulling it away and feeling sick at how little effort it takes. “Hey, hey—how long do you think we have?”

Shigeo rattles out wheezes and places his other hand to his own chest, over the cracks that are slowly getting brighter. They trail up his jawline now, ending right at his chin, and something about the sight makes Ritsu so angry when Shigeo’s face turns pained and he squeezes his eyes shut, temple pressed against Ritsu’s collarbone.

“... Not very long,” Ritsu answers for him, getting the message, and he’s nodding mostly to himself as he looks up from his brother and out onto the street.

He scans the neighborhood, eyes squinting into the dark blues that blend into each other from the grain. For the first time, he realizes the streetlamps are all busted—they’ve been off since Ritsu got outside, instantly warped and overloaded as soon as Shigeo had walked near them.

He looks up at the streetlamp right above them, at the way the steel slowly but surely bends and contorts at a snail’s pace. His eyes trail to the car parked paces away, at how all the tires are flattening and the trunk lid is crumpling into itself in slow, tiny dents. The fence next to them is creaking and snapping, warped away from them in an arch that curves the whole thing.

His brother’s aura is so bright and so piercing he feels lightheaded from it, but he ignores that. His own colors come to reign it in, and he does the only thing he can think of.

“Okay. Okay, that’s fine,” he mumbles mostly to himself, moving Shigeo’s huffing form to his back, where his brother’s limbs instinctively hook. Ritsu adjusts, pulls at clothes and wraps his arms under his brother’s legs, and he grunts when he stands with the extra weight. “We can make it.”

Shigeo mumbles something into his ear that’s slurred and jumbled and incomprehensible, and Ritsu’s heart hurts so much from it he feels like it’s shattering, but that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter—he doesn’t matter. Only Shigeo does.

“We’re gonna make it, Shige,” Ritsu says, energy building up as he plots along the sidewalk, steps charged with purples and reds until he’s leaping, “You’re gonna be okay.”

Shigeo’s aura curls around him, gnawing and warping his vision even as he senses his brother doing his best to hold it all back.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

+

Shigeo feels wind against him, sees buildings far below, feels Ritsu’s favorite sweater rippling against the breeze where they catapult across the neighborhood. His brother holds him tight, aura scared and rushed, but there’s determination there in the purples that blot the reds again. There’s resolve there in the stars of his nebulas, bright teals overtaking the maroons.

Ritsu leaps across rooftops, and Shigeo tries not to let his own aura eat his brother alive.

He can tell it’s effecting him, and that thought alone makes Shigeo wants to vomit. Ritsu’s breathing harder than he should be—he’s always been athletic and all he’s doing now is jumping every few seconds and letting his colors take him the rest of the way, and yet he’s panting and gasping for air as the buildings rush by.

Ritsu’s aura condenses against himself unnaturally, clouded as densely as it’ll go to his skin. Shigeo thinks it’s to protect himself, and he hopes it’s working, but he can feel how his pinks and blues seep through the guard anyway and leak through the gaps.

His brother puts more energy under the soles of his feet with each and every bounce, goes farther and farther with each lift-off, pushes harder with each mile they fly. He doesn’t know if Ritsu’s sweating because of the exertion, Shigeo’s feverish skin against him, or the effect his aura is having on him, but Shigeo watches it drip from his chin and thinks maybe it’s a mixture of all three.

He thinks he hears Ritsu’s voice under the wind, asking him something, telling him things in that tone he uses when he’s stressed and in denial. Shigeo can’t pick out the words over the haze in his head, eyes half-lidded and mind only having room for one task, and that’s holding back his aura as long as possible. He doesn’t have it in him to reply with more than hummed responses and melded syllables.

He ignores the pang in Ritsu’s aura every time Shigeo does that.

He hates that it’s gotten this bad. He hates that even though he’s been getting better, and talking to people, and being more honest, it’s still happening. It simply went on too long, he thinks—he’d held it all back too often, too much, and once he’d realized something was wrong it was already too late.

He hadn’t even noticed anything was wrong for almost a year. After last winter, he’d felt like a new person, felt like he’d been granted permission to be a new him. But he supposes that hadn’t happened. He supposes he’d kept those old habits, carried them over to the new Shigeo that laughed and cried and got frustrated.

He supposes he’d simply switched up how he hid things, instead of walking away from those old, unhealthy practices. He got better at tuning his expressions to what people expected of him instead of that blank stare, but that didn’t fix a goddamn thing. He still kept it locked up in his chest. He still lied to his family’s faces. He still bottled everything up—he just learned how to make it seem less obvious.

He thought he’d had it. He thought he’d finally figured it out, how to live with himself.

He watches skyscrapers morph to houses, and houses morph to trees and dirt, and he supposes that wasn’t true at all, and he’s the exact same person he used to be.

Ritsu leaps through a familiar looking junkyard, their beloved old school bus blurring past his vision. Yellows and pinks and blues and purples embedded in the metal seep out into the air, curl around their shoulders in the one second Ritsu spends there to recover and jump again. It smells like berries and stardust; like his partner and his brother.

The bottom of his vision blurs. The realization that that might be the last he’ll ever feel of Teruki’s aura is a scathing one, and it scrapes his inside in ways that he’s not ready for. It rushes at him—he might never see Teruki again. He might never see Tome again. He didn’t get to say goodbye to anybody, not his partner, not his parents, not his Master.

Something tells him he won’t get to say goodbye to Ritsu either. He’s too much of a coward to let the word escape him without sobbing.

It hasn’t really, truly hit him until now. Yes, he’d known from the start that these cracks were a sure sign of energy overload, and that there was a real chance he could die from it, but it hadn’t truly soaked in. You can die from lots of things—you can die from eating the wrong food. You can die from crossing the street. You can die from an explosion that levels city blocks from a man who wants to conquer the world with powers he thinks are superior to the rest of humanity.

You can die from lots of things. He’s never let it get to him, but with the way his heart is hammering weakly against his rib cage, it’s getting to him now.

He didn’t want the last of their time with him to be spent scared. Ritsu’s aura is absolutely terrified, and Shigeo cries silently against his shoulder.

It’s starting to hurt. It’s been hurting for a long time, but now it’s starting to burn— his veins ache and his hands grip Ritsu’s sweater as tight as they can without his consent. Ritsu says something over his shoulder, something soothing and comforting, but all Shigeo hears is the way his words wobble.

His heart skips a beat and he hiccups against his brother’s sweater, pain blooming in his chest and his eyes as his vision starts to turn to sand. The sky no longer glows with the dome of city lights and they’re leaping through clearings now, grass under Ritsu’s socks and branches scratching at the thin shield his brother projects out.

Shigeo doesn’t know how long they’ve been going for. It feels like too short of a distance, but then again, he thinks if they leapt to another continent it’d still feel too close. He has no idea how big this will be. Destroying an entire forest is bad, but destroying an entire city and knocking over skyscrapers where people he loves are sleeping feels worse.

He sees light against Ritsu’s sweater right in front of him, right at the bottom of his vision that blurs with tears, and he studies it for a moment only to realize it flits back and forth when his own eyes move. His eyes are glowing. The cracks in his chest are seething against Ritsu’s back so brightly it hurts to look at. His hair is floating up against Ritsu’s own.

Pain thrashes at his core, aura roaring to get out and escape, and he bites back a scream halfway through and tightens his grip on Ritsu until it hurts his fingers. He hears his brother make a worried call; the wind that whips at them slows.

Ritsu lands a little harshly, the tug yanking something in his core and spilling a pained noise from his lips. His brother slows to a stop, legs forced to carry them through the momentum for a moment, but then he’s twisting around and shrugging Shigeo off his back, holding him up.

“Do you think this is far enough?” his brother gasps between the words, sweaty and pale and shaking. Alarm bells ring in Shigeo’s head as he’s held up by the shoulders, and something scratches his arm. It’s… wheat. They’re in a wheat field.

Pain clamps down on his chest and he cries out, fingers rising to pull at the intangible, but Ritsu’s hands are already around his wrists and his brother is already supporting his weight even as Shigeo buckles.

His energy presses. He can’t hear the crickets past the fall of sand and grain in his head, past the overwhelming, prolonged violin screeches of his aura; it vibrates against his skull in a frequency he thinks is made to shatter it, and he croaks out groans in his little half-breaths.

“R’tsu you h’ve t’—”

“I’m not leaving.”

Shigeo raises his head, the world spins with it, and Ritsu steadies him with hands that are shaking just as much as he is. He can’t help the tears that trickle over sweaty skin. “No, Ritsu—you—you h’ve to—”

“I’m not,” Ritsu says, full and devout, and no, that’s not what he wants. This isn’t…

“I’m alr’dy h’rting you,” Shigeo cries, shakes his head even as it leaves him dizzy. The wind picks up—he has a feeling it’s not a natural occurrence, the way its swirls around them both and pelts their ears. It’s instantly loud. “Pl’se—”

Ritsu is already pale. He’s already staggering in the sheer grain of his aura and how it eats at his cells, but he’s also stubborn and staunch and unyielding. He’s brave and he’s ruthless sometimes, both against the people he loves and those who oppose said people. He’s unrelenting in his loyalty, extremes are his forte even when he pretends they’re not—he looks up to his older brother like he’s his entire world, even though Shigeo feels like it’s quite an empty world to gaze upon.

They’re all traits of his that Shigeo usually adores and loves—right now, it’s his worst nightmare coming to life.

“R’tsu, I mean it—”

“And you don’t think I mean it too?!” Ritsu barks, has to shout over the wind that grabs at the wheat field that towers them. Shigeo’s eyes glow with pinks and blues that bathe his brother’s desperate face, light up the way his teeth grit against the energy seething at his skin.

He holds his shoulders in a grip so tight he thinks it might bruise. The only thing keeping Shigeo upright is the adrenaline, and his brother. “R’tsu I’m not gonna l’t you—”

“I’m not gonna let you do this by yourself!” Ritsu yells over the wind, over the crackle in the air that clicks and whirs with energy it’s not used to, “What kinda brother would I be, huh?! To drop you off here and leave!? I’m not doing that!”

Ritsu’s tears instantly fly sideways in the wind, dragged over the bridge of his nose where his hair get whipped in the same direction. “I’m staying, Shige! I’m staying and then afterward I’m gonna walk you home and you’re gonna get better and you’re not gonna die in my bed and everything’s gonna be fine!”

Shigeo stares, eyes wide and petrified while Ritsu’s voice cracks from grief and panic. The wind roars around them, dragging the tips of the whole wheat field with it, and Ritsu watches his tears get torn from his cheeks.

Their parents are going to lose both of their kids in one fell swoop.

His face scrunches up, twisted and teetered, and he sobs into air that fluctuates in temperature so fast he no longer knows what it’s supposed to be anymore. “I—I don’t w’nna h’rt you…” he cries out, barely heard above the wind and layered like he says it twice, but Ritsu seems to know.

He seems to get it, because his brother lets go of his shoulders and grabs his face instead. “Hey,” he barks over the howl of the world, teary-eyed but resolute, “I’m not afraid of you.”

His chest boils, aura raging and hungry.

“You shouldn’t be either.”

The cracks split up across his face. Shigeo shrieks.

There’s a pulse, ravenous and malignant, that lurches across the field in a single second, rolls over wheat and trees and soil and cracks the very Earth. It tears at the grass and gouges at the roots of everything underneath them, an uproar that no doubt disturbs the peace miles from here. It propels everything upward, sticks and branches and entire wagons whirling over them in a familiar looking spiral of wind and energy. It reminds him of winter and bouquets.

His aura pikes through his throat, rallying in his lungs where it claws at the insides of it, and his soul screams in the agony, rips itself apart in its haste to get away from its own lifeblood. He’s screaming with it, ardent halftone leaking from his maw that hinges down and screeches.

His face is crackling apart with the amount of energy that spills, flaking and crumbling, and distantly he thinks this is happening a lot faster than he expected. He’d had a taste of it with Teruki—had seen him scream and buckle and claw at his unhinged jaw with mana dripping around canines and cheeks and earrings—but it had taken a moment. It had taken a moment of yelling and pain before it all burst out from a vessel that couldn’t contain it.

He doesn’t want Ritsu to see that. He doesn’t want that to be Ritsu’s last memory of him.

His vision whites out into colors he’s never seen before, hazy and hot like the mantle of Earth, or maybe that’s just his tears that glow. His core yanks against the energy that explodes from his vessel, muscles it down and tears at it with intangible teeth, but his energy bucks back, shrieking and yelling and pleading with a voice that’s just as raw as his own, just as scared.

It’s begging, he can hear it. It just wants out. It’s too much; it just wants air.

He screams louder when the cracks in his chest widen and break, when they stretch the muscles there beyond their limits and turn his flesh to string that sticks and glows. His ribs crack from the heat and his organs feel like they’re melting, like he’s turning to slush, and the only comfort he holds against that is his own hands against his face.

There’s fingers around his wrists, holding, fighting, a voice belonging to them screaming for him to stop clawing at the jaw that hinges open farther than its supposed to and the skin that tears and rips. He can’t help it. He’s dying.

It’s turbulent and turning rancorous the longer he holds it back—he doesn’t know why he’s doing this, what the point of it is other than saving Ritsu from seeing him like that, but the mana is already trickling down his face, it’s already floating from his eyes and dripping up into the sky, flowing past his lip and dripping over his chin in hot, pinkish blues. It’s already happening, it’s already a nightmare, he just—

He wants Ritsu to get away. If he stops holding back, his brother will get caught in the blast. But there’s no way he’s winning this; Ritsu won’t leave, not after this. Ritsu is stubborn and staunch and unyielding, even when he’s scared, even when he’s petrified.

Why is he doing this? It’s going to end the same.

He can hear himself screaming. It’s loud and brittle like bones being crushed and sifted, dry, porous, decaying. Ritsu is hearing it; Ritsu is screaming too over the sound, barking out words he doesn’t understand unless he really focuses, and that’s hard to do when his aura fucking skins him alive.

“Stop it! Stop holding it in, you’re killing yourself!”

He barely comprehends it. He can’t, not with everything biting down and lurching up and twisting him into knots he doesn’t know how to untie. He can’t let go—he won’t, not with Ritsu here, he can’t do that to him. But he’s already seeing it, he’s watching his brother get ripped apart, so is this really the better option? How will Ritsu be able to live in a normal mindset after this?

He doesn’t get to think about that. Because there’s suddenly arms around him, hooking under his shoulders and gripping him tight and fast, and then his energy billows and yells, molecules barking and clawing over each other in their haste to—

No.

Ritsu hangs onto him, invites the energy in, and half of it instantaneously sucks to his brother’s chest instead, spilling mana and screams from his mouth.

No, no NO NO—

Shigeo fights, shoves and screams from more than just pain, but Ritsu grips him like he’ll dust away if he lets go. Beyond the bestial rage of his energy pouring and trickling, beyond the haze of colors that are in his vision, he sees the world shake and tremble around them, sees it warp and contort even faster with a second conduit for his aura to spill out of.

Ritsu’s making himself into a shunt—another conductor to share the burden, another vessel to half the pain and the energy that leaks from Shigeo. He’s using his body as a divider, to lessen the damage. He’s going to fucking kill himself; his body can’t handle that, he—

Shigeo screams louder than he ever thought his voice would go, half to drown out Ritsu’s that pierces his ears and haunts him, and half to shock himself into being able to move through the agony. He presses and shoves and punches and kicks, but his body is still so weak that none of it does anything that matters; Ritsu holds onto him like he’s deadbolted into the hug, unmoving as he yells his throat raw.

His brother can’t handle this, he can’t go out and bring Ritsu down with him. He can’t do that, he’s going to die if this keeps up. He’s going to kill his brother if this doesn’t stop, he—

He—He has to—

Shigeo lets go. Everything ruptures.

It all turns white. The world crackles and the air clicks with energy, wind sweeping every sensation away before impelling it all back faster than he’s ever ready for. Everything collides and separates, his energy kneads into the soil, and his very heartbeat palpitates into the atmosphere, like a siren, like a nuclear call.

Everything is turned to cotton—he doesn’t know what he’s looking at, where he is anymore. All he knows is that his body is no longer getting ripped apart, and he doesn’t think he’s screaming anymore, but maybe he is and the numbness and the lack of sound is just his body dying. He doesn’t know.

It takes forever. It takes seemingly years, billions of them, for him to perceive anything that matters. Anything other than the webby structure of existence that catches them, the ever-going system of fractals that breathes and deflates to the beat of it all. He thinks he breathes with it, thinks he feels a pinprick of that sensation, of air going through lungs, of ribs moving against skin. Maybe. He thinks so.

When he opens his eyes, or when his vision stops greying, the wheat field is gone.

He sees blackened dirt instead, squished up against his numb face. The world is blurry for a while, sounds distant and stretched and muffled. His limbs feel bubbly, prickly and fake. Leaves sprinkle around his form, crinkled and charred.

An odd sort of bliss laves over him, froths at skin that glows and seals back up. Exhaustion pulls at him, but the now calm breeze combs through his sweaty hair and it rouses him enough to let his gaze wander.

The crickets are nowhere to be heard, and the night is eerily silent above his brother's body.

He's on the ground next to him, arms limp, but still loosely hooked around his middle. There’s a line along his cheeks that stretches back to his jawbone, seared and stretched flesh from a jaw that was forced open too wide by escaping energy. The seams of his favorite sweater are ripped. Thread pools to the scorched grass.

The holes in his skin are healing already, the very last of Shigeo’s aura desperately clinging to their faces and healing what it can, like an apology.

Ritsu’s chest is moving. It’s hard to see in the darkness, but the gentle glow from his healing jaw lights up his silhouette and it’s shallow and quick, but he’s breathing, and Shigeo feels fresh tears trickle across his nose at the sight.

Ritsu is out, unconscious to the way the air still clicks and feels impossible to suck in. Shigeo twitches, moving limbs that don’t respond right away and feel three times heavier than they should. It’s exhausting, just moving around.

He does it sloppily, but he manages to scoot closer, to throw an arm over Ritsu’s form. He knocks his forehead against his brother’s chest, and it’s all he has left in him, so he sighs out a shaky breath that rasps from a raw windpipe, and he settles.

He’s pretty sure he hears a car engine nearby before he lets exhaustion take him.

Chapter Text

Shigeo rolls his thumb across the Joy-Con stick, cart on the screen drifting around a sharp turn through castle walls. Icons flash at the bottom and he holds a banana behind his car, red shell bursting into it harmlessly. Teruki curses under his breath next to him and Shigeo grins.

He swerves around red cubes in the middle of the track, takes a shortcut that boosts him off a ramp and places him right in front of the finish line. His corner of the screen flashes and whistles as he finishes, everybody else sagging a little bit in exasperated groans.

Ritsu and Tome battle for second, the latter winning by a hair. Teruki, famously bad at Mario Kart, scores a semi-respectable sixth place.

“Using shortcuts when you’re already in first—what are you, a monster?” Teruki grumbles nonchalantly, head moving up with each syllable, as his chin rests on his partner’s shoulder and peers at their television over the fabric of his hoodie. Shigeo breathes out a laugh, knocking his head against Teruki’s mock glum look.

“Tellin’ you, man, he’s unbeatable,” Ritsu sighs with an easy smile, leaning forward on the couch and stuffing his hand in a bag of chips on the coffee table. It crinkles loudly against Tome’s silent dance at her second place earnings, and Teruki perks his head up and darts to peek over Shigeo’s hair.

“Get your greasy paws off my Joy-Con,” Teruki growls in slow, faux anger, and they watch as Ritsu very deliberately takes a chip from the bag, bites down on it loudly, and then flicks a crumb in Teruki’s general direction.

He chews on the chip with satisfaction in his gaze while Shigeo’s partner sputters, scrambling out from behind his partner where he’d been lovingly squished against the cushions.

“Alright that’s it, c’mere you little—”

Teruki grins, teeth sharp and eyes wild, and Ritsu’s eyes flash with mischief and a little bit of oh no as he raises his arms up to defend himself. They clash and Ritsu topples to the armrest, Teruki following right behind, and then they’re pushing and shoving and elbowing each other just for kicks.

Shigeo and Tome watch them fight silently, engrossed in this odd dance of Teruki smothering Ritsu with a pillow and his brother grappling at the other’s bright t-shirt, begging for mercy. The Mario Kart music plays from the television over their squabbling, the cushions jostling them all while Ritsu fights for his life. His socked feet kick against Shigeo’s thigh unknowingly, and all he can really do about it is grin like an idiot.

Tome gets up from beside him, calmly walking around the coffee table with confident strides. Shigeo watches her plot up to the giggling mass of limbs and elbows, reaches forward to put both of her hands on the back of their heads, and then clonks their foreheads together.

A chorus of augh’s and ow’s ring out, trailed along with incredulous laughter that Shigeo mimics silently. They rub their poor foreheads and scowl up at her in betrayal while she smugly looks down her nose at them.

“Now that you two are done bickering, how about we get all of our greasy paws off all of the Joy-Cons and go eat something substantial,” she declares, pushing the bag of chips to the other end of the table with a crinkle, “Anybody else starving?”

That seems to bribe them off the couch. Teruki gets up by pushing himself off Ritsu and smooshing him further into the cushions. His brother’s grunt ends with a laugh as Teruki forcefully pulls him from the seats and he gets up with a stumble. They elbow each other as Tome lists off things she hopes the Kageyama’s have in their pantry, Ritsu answering in distracted bursts of yays and nays.

Shigeo shifts to get up and then his phone vibrates in his pocket. He leans sideways to pull it out, clicking the screen on. There’s no static clinging to the edges.

“You comin’?” Ritsu calls, peering around the corner of the kitchen wall.

Shigeo looks up, blinking. “Oh—in a minute, Master’s texting,” he says, Ritsu humming an okay as he glances back down.

[1:25 PM] Master:
Cannot believe you ate
ALL of the granola bars
in the office and didn’t even
leave any for me. OR dimple

Shigeo smiles, feeling a little bad—he’d forgotten to tell Reigen the box was empty.

[1:26 PM] Shigeo:
Sorry. I was hungry.
Forgot to tell you.

[1:26 PM] Master:
At least you have your
appetite back

A month ago, Shigeo had woken up in the hospital.

They’d found him and Ritsu in the middle of a charred expanse of disintegrated plains; everything had apparently been destroyed. Evaporated. The trees had been ripped apart, chunk of wood after chunk of wood, then torn apart more until the chunks were gone. For miles, it’d been nothing but dry, crackling soil and broken up pieces of Earth. And two unconscious kids at ground zero.

Even though he tried, Ritsu hadn’t taken him far enough away. The edge of the city was still decimated by the blast. Windows had shattered and buildings had fallen, foundations had cracked and melted. Cars had been blown across blocks and streetlamps had bent to his aura’s will until they were crunched down into thin slits of metal parallel to the sidewalks. The tar in the roads still cracked like an earthquake had split them.

But it had just been the edge, even if the entire city had a blackout. No skyscrapers had been tipped. No apartment complexes had been thrown and tossed to the atmosphere. The tornado had been quick and far away from any people. Their efforts had been better than nothing.

The others had somehow convinced their parents to climb into a flying car, because after Ritsu had charged through the house after a stumbling Shigeo, Serizawa had simply lifted his own vehicle off the asphalt and told everyone to get in. The blast had rocketed them back midflight, both ESPer’s layered barriers crumbling under the sheer density of cotton candy shades. Without Teruki’s tight telekinesis, they would’ve been whisked away like the ripped apart trees shattering the windshield.

Two little specks in the grand, grey aftermath. Teruki had told him their auras were barely readable over the radiation-like crackle in the air. It became so dense that Serizawa’s control over the car faltered, and they had to land to drive the rest of the way. It’s not like anything would stop them—the land around ground zero had been rendered packed down and flat from sheer force.

They’d found both of them seemingly uninjured, cracks and tears in their skin healed, but unresponsive despite that. Shigeo’s fever had reached dangerous levels from all the exertion, and they’d rushed him and his brother to the hospital when neither of them would wake up to anything.

Dimple had survived the blast and flagged them down midair after everything stopped crackling. As guilty as Shigeo feels for still managing to destroy parts of the city, he’s glad he got away as far as he did, even if it wasn’t far enough to avoid damage—he would’ve lost a friend otherwise.

They’d landed in a destroyed, rumpled up vehicle that, comically, Serizawa centered perfectly in their parking spot. Shigeo still feels bad for destroying his car, but he’s said multiple times to not worry about it. You’re infinitely more important to me than some hunk of metal, he’d said. Another thing he promises to himself he’ll pay for in the future—that’ll take longer than a wooden table for sure.

It had taken a whole twenty four hours for Ritsu to wake up. Apparently, Reigen had reassured their parents that an ESPer being unresponsive after a lot of energy usage is normal, and they’d listened, but that still didn’t make the fear go away. Their parents had paced their hospital rooms restlessly, according to Teruki, both of their sons out for the count.

Ritsu had woken up groggy, confused, and with a voice that rasped and bled out broken syllables. Shigeo’s fever had broken that same night, and then he’d woken up a day later, voice stolen by screams, but body intact.

Their mother had cried into their chests so much they feared she’d lose her voice too.

The brothers were both discharged, the doctors pinning Shigeo with extreme fatigue and orders to rest. He hadn’t had a problem with that, because he’d slept on the way home, slept through the night, and most of the next day.

He’d spent most of the first week lounging, body still weak from the fever and the prior months of little sleep and sparse food. He nibbled on crackers the first day back home, but once he realized he could actually taste things again instead of his tongue getting covered in static, he’d apologetically gorged half of the pantry within a weekend.

His parents hadn’t seemed mad at that—just desperately relieved.

Ritsu refused to leave his side for that first week, too. They’d slept squished together on the couch with their comfort movies on, neither of them drifting off with blankets and yet waking up with covers lovingly tucked around them.

His brother had gotten his voice back before Shigeo did, still a bit raspy, but in working condition, and the first thing he did with it was uncharacteristically ask him for a hug.

The last time they’d hugged, it’d been after Ritsu had told him he missed him when he’d been there the whole time. It’d been after Ritsu had warned him that holding it all back like he had been spelled disaster. It’d been after Ritsu had said, “Don’t you realize that keeping this charade up costs you?”

Ritsu hadn’t even known about the cracks at the time. He hadn’t known about the real penalty of death. He’d been right, though. It feels like Ritsu is always right.

“No, Shige, I can’t just… sit around and watch you fuckin’ wither away! I can’t do that. I won’t.”

He’d thought about the sobs from downstairs he’d heard, somewhere in the middle of his fever-induced delirium. He’d thought about Ritsu hugging him while he screamed, his vessel becoming another conductor to lesson the burden. Shigeo’s voice had still been gone, but he’d wanted nothing more than to say thank you. Or maybe sorry. Probably both.

He’d hugged him tighter than he ever has, hoping it said everything his voice couldn’t.

He hears his brother in the kitchen, voice raised into that octave he gives when he’s just heard the dumbest thing on the planet, and Tome’s cackly laughter bounces off the furniture. He smiles, his phone screen already dimmed and shut off in his grip. The Mario Kart music pours over the coffee table, their Joy-Cons carelessly dropped to cushions. He watches the colors on the screen blur and swipe between shots, menus and buttons glowing.

Arms suddenly snake around him, slow and warm and from behind, and Shigeo tilts his head and sees blond. He leans farther into it, spine against the cushions, and Teruki’s chin comes sliding over his shoulder again, heads pressing together.

“They’re bickering about strawberries or something,” Teruki grins quietly into his ear, Ritsu’s soft chuckles sprinkling the air beyond the counter. Shigeo huffs out in a laugh, moving his head to look at his partner.

He has to cross his eyes a bit because he’s so close, and it makes his face a bit warm. He traces blond hair that dangles and droops, held up by a glittery hairpin only to droop anyway; his roots are bleached again, all lemon and no brown. Last week it had had more caramel at the top than Shigeo had ever seen him with.

He wonders if he’d simply been too distracted by… other things, to care.

Shigeo’s smile falls a little, staring at the slope of Teruki’s nose and the tiny scar on his forehead that’s always been there, white and faded and usually hidden by his bangs.

His partner stares back, studying his gaze and the smile that drops. He tilts his head to rest his cheek against the couch cushion, considering him with a touch of concern.

“What’s on your mind?” he whispers gently, and Shigeo blinks to his eyes, to the rings of teal in the deeper blues, and he rolls the question around in his head.

Their text conversations have been filled with hovering, lately. It’s all Teruki, asking him if he needs anything, if he wants anything, if he’s free for movies or if he wants to rest instead.

It’s been a month—Shigeo doesn’t really need to rest anymore. The bags under his eyes aren’t completely gone but they’re very faded and fading even more by the day; sleep is still plagued with nightmares, but it’s easier to drift off when he’s free from static clinging to his skull. Color has returned to his cheeks, and the rest of his skin to boot.

He’s even put on some pounds, sliding away from the underweight category and slowly but surely building up fat again. He’s no longer a skeleton with his wrist bones poking out and face sunken and hollow; he’s still quite thin, but his parents want to bring him back up to a healthy weight at a safe pace.

Reigen smiles wider every time he sees him, every time he sees the extra pound or two a week. Claps him on the shoulder and squeezes it for a greeting and hugs him goodbye a little tighter than usual. Serizawa said he’s proud of the progress he’s made. Tome pretends to not be hungry so she can give him her leftovers at the school cafeteria.

Everyone is… still worried. Still a little shaken, he thinks. It’s not eggshells they’re walking on, but it’s something like it—they glance at him when he thinks they aren’t looking, they ask him how he’s doing with a new tint to their words that spells something heavier. His mother hugs him longer, and a lot more than she used to. His father looks guilty, and the kisses he presses to his hair feel a bit desperate.

He’d scared them. Bad. And he hasn’t apologized to a single one of them.

He’d said sorry to Reigen, back when he was sick, but he thinks he shouldn’t have. Sometimes when Shigeo apologizes for something mundane in the office, he catches Reigen swallowing thickly. He’d looked agonized when Shigeo had slurred it out then, doped up on medicine and warped thinking.

Shigeo’s last words to Reigen and Teruki both would’ve been sorry, if not for Ritsu. It feels fitting to him, it feels appropriate; it’d been important, so he doesn’t really understand why they hate it when he says it so much.

He still feels like he should apologize—properly, anyway. Why don’t they want to hear it?

Shigeo opens his mouth, hears a clang in the kitchen, followed by laughter and an affectionate you idiot. “Are you gonna be upset if I say that I’m sorry?”

He studies the look Teruki gives him carefully, and he can tell his partner guards it just as closely. It’s deliberate and slow, like he’s counting to ten in his head like Reigen taught him to, and it’s laced with something low and cautious. Teruki’s aura ripples along the fabric of the couch cushions, calculating.

“What would you be apologizing for?” he asks back, neutral and curious, but his aura brings in a touch of red to its pinks that make Shigeo wonder if this was a bad choice.

“Well… when I was sick… you said to only apologize after I got better. For scaring you,” Shigeo explains, a little stumbled, but he gets it out, “So… I’m sorry. For… for scaring you shitless.”

Teruki blinks, aura stilling in a fashion he’s only felt a handful of times, and then a smile creeps up his face and he’s shaking his head into the crook of his own elbow. He seems to have an internal debate with himself, but he doesn’t seem mad, so Shigeo lets him argue against his thoughts.

Teruki comes back in with a whip of his head and love in his eyes. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “... It’s okay, Shigeo,” he says, smile lilting it, “I know you’re sorry. We all know you’re sorry, and we all forgive you. It’s okay.”

Shigeo darts his gaze across his features, searching for things he can’t really focus on, because Teruki’s face is getting closer and then he’s pressing his lips to Shigeo’s temple. His cheeks warm and his chest fuzzes, and he’s left with a bubble of heated cotton that floats in his core.

“Boys.”

Teruki darts up from where he’d bent over the back of the couch like lightning, bubbly, nervous laughter spilling from his chest. “Hi Mrs. Kageyama!” he greets too enthusiastically.

Shigeo is left to stare at his mother in the doorway, dazed as his face still feels hot, but she doesn’t seem the least bit upset. The look borders on ecstatic in an odd way, fond and exasperated as she looks at Shigeo’s red cheeks that are starting to get baby fat back on them, and she smiles.

“Hi Teruki,” she greets lovingly, walking around the coffee table and bending down on the cushions. She presses her own kiss to Shigeo’s head, motherly and gentle, and raises her voice a bit when she pulls away to be heard through the walls. “I’ve gotta run to the store real quick—anybody need anything?”

“We’re out of ice cream!” Ritsu calls from the kitchen.

“Yes, because that is a priority,” his mother mutters with a grin under her breath, and flips her attention back to her older son, “Anything, baby?”

“Mm…” he thinks, “Granola bars?”

“Granola bars coming right up.” She taps his knee when she passes him, heading for the door. “Be good, kids! If you go outside, use sunscreen!”

They shout their okay’s and then she’s out the door, and Ritsu and Tome are coming back a minute later with sandwiches. They’re bouncing into the couch and switching the channel to a show they can enjoy and make fun of at the same time, and Ritsu settles into one side of him and Teruki slumps into the other, careful not to drop crumbs onto the cushions.

Tome speaks over the dialog, complaining about the cheesiness through the ham in her mouth. Shigeo eats his sandwich and reads the subtitles over their talking, if only to keep his mind from wandering. It doesn’t really work.

His parents had pulled him aside two days ago and asked if he wanted to try therapy.

It’d been a big request. Therapy is a big thing, at least for him. It involves telling a stranger your deepest traumas, having all the attention in the room placed on you, having to watch them write things down about you while you speak, like you’d just said something wrong. He doesn’t know if that’s actually how it is. He’s only seen it in television shows, after all.

Even if it’s not all that, he knows he’ll have to tell some sort of stranger his problems in some way or another, and that leaves a weird hole in his gut. It’d be a lot to say. It’d be a lot to explain, given his psychic abilities and his past with world-conquering organizations. Even if powers don’t make him better than other people, he still thinks he’ll be quite a unique client in those aspects.

He doesn’t know if he wants to. He’d been doing well before the explosion, in terms of telling people things—or at least better than before. He’d told Serizawa about the fear of losing control, and the house fire, and even if he hasn’t yet dug deep into it, he’d even stuttered over the gist of Mogami’s mindscape. At the time, that had felt on parr with landing on Mars.

He’s told Reigen plenty of things. A week ago, he’d even told Teruki about the car crash that had sent him into that state last winter. He’d admitted to Ritsu the other night that the reason he couldn’t sleep was because of bad memories, and that had been a big step for them, even if it seems rather small to the world.

Even to people he talks to every day, it’s really hard to tell them things. It’s still really hard to parse through his thoughts—it hasn’t gotten easier, he’s just gotten a little bit more practice in. It still feels monumental, whenever he tells them things.

It’s still scary. It still scares him more than it probably should, to express all of this.

His father had told him that talking to strangers about your problems is sometimes easier than talking to loved ones. He thinks he gets the gist of why, but he still feels like that monumental task will climb to impossible status instead.

They’d told him he doesn’t have to. They’d said there are other forms of therapy, countless ones, that he can try instead. They’d explained that they weren’t going to force him into anything he didn’t want to do, but they’re worried and they know he’s experienced things that they aren’t even aware of—that they know they aren’t equipped for this, and they just want the best for him, so they’ll get him the best.

He’s been like this—bottled up—for so long, he’s a little bit scared of who he’ll be after it, if that comes. He doesn’t even know himself anymore. Up until a year ago, he’d barely known what his own laugh sounded like. He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t know how he reacts to things. He hasn’t truly experienced that in five years.

He’s scared of the future him that’s healed, and changed, and maybe even confident. He doesn’t know who that person is. And he’s often scared of strangers and change.

He looks to Ritsu, who lazily slaps Teruki on the arm for chewing with his mouth full, and Shigeo thinks that maybe it won’t be so bad.

Ritsu knew him before everybody else in this room, when he was little and happy and not afraid to show it. He watched him change after the incident, watched him tuck himself away and hide everything in his chest, and yet he’d still loved him and cared. He watched him slowly morph back away from that again, and even when in the midst of change, Ritsu still loved him.

Ritsu loves the past him, and the present him, and everything in between. So why wouldn’t he love the future him? Why wouldn’t his friends love him too? Why wouldn’t Shigeo himself love him?

Maybe he will try therapy. Maybe he’ll tell his parents that, yes, I want to try. Maybe he’ll like it, maybe it’ll work. Maybe it won’t, and he’ll move onto something else and try again. Maybe he’ll learn to stop being scared.

“Hey. I’m not afraid of you. You shouldn’t be either.”

He’s been given a second chance. He’ll do it better this time. He’ll do it right.