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egg0tistic · 2 days ago

Text

slippery slope

Summary:

His skin is crisp and cold over his crinkly clothes. His injured side, clutched loosely with a hand, is damp with blood. Sticky-wet and seeping through the fabric of his ill-fitting suit. Serizawa hasn’t spoken a word since they left the scene. OR Where Reigen has a tendency to throw himself into danger, and Serizawa has had just about enough.

Word Count: 2,222

Rating: G

Characters/Relationships: Serizawa Katsuya/Reigen Arataka

Tags: Blood and Injury, Protective Serizawa Katsuya, Hurt Reigen Arataka, Arguing, Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Not Beta Read, Self-Sacrifical Reigen Arataka

A/N: Guuuuess who’s experimenting with writing styles again and ended up not only with, yet again, overuse of metaphors, but even *more* gratuitious em dashes???? Anyway! Here is an injured Reigen! *yeets*

(Let’s not talk about how I’ve had this fully written and edited since July and only now got the wits and courage to post it. Just consider yourself lucky I didn’t hate this enough to scrap it away)

TW: they talk about Reigen's tendency to throw himself into danger and not caring about the consequences. They do get a little deep about the suicidal implications, but nothing beyond that. Still -- just a heads up so folks who are sensitive to that stuff can heed the warning!

AO3

They climb the steps up the office in silence. Reigen can sense it in the air—tension drawn tight like a bowstring, electric pinpricks over his skin, the brewing of an electric storm. It feels a little like being underwater. Static hangs in the air, held like a dam, humming, draped all over him. He’s pretty sure it’s carrying most of his weight. He’s pretty sure it’s the only reason he’s still standing. He’s not sure why he’s not floating yet.

His skin is crisp and cold over his crinkly clothes. His injured side, clutched loosely with a hand, is damp with blood. Sticky-wet and seeping through the fabric of his ill-fitting suit.

Serizawa hasn’t spoken a word since they left the scene. His face is shadowed like this, brows pulled together, a stiff knot gathered where they meet. His hand—a large, calloused thing—clasping Reigen’s uninjured side tightens intermittently. Perhaps that’s it. A tether, keeping him grounded to the Earth. His other hand is holding Reigen’s wrist where he’s slung an arm over Serizawa’s shoulder; a man on a one-track mission to get them into the office, as quickly as conveniently possible. Perhaps too quickly.

“W-wait,” Reigen rasps, stopping them halfway through their ascend, “Just—wait a second. We need to—to slow down.” His breaths are coming in laboured, the pain blooming everywhere with every shift and move—he feels a little dizzy, frayed at the edges. He thinks it might be the blood loss catching up on him. Then again, he left after the brief collection of the client’s payment carrying that feeling; of being off-rhythm, disjointed, out-of-sorts.

Serizawa does stop at this, immediate and alarmed. There’s guilt quickly etching in his lines, clear as day even under the thick layer of shadow. Reigen moves his attention away from it in favour of allowing himself a moment’s reprieve.

After a while of this he breathes an, “Okay,” and looks up to see the few steps they need to climb before they reach the office door. “Okay, I’m alright.”

At the cue, they start again to stagger their way up slowly. One shaky step over the next. Serizawa’s hand is heavy on his side. His eyes are downcast, swimming in unseen and unheard thoughts. He is a bundle of static by Reigen’s side, and some part of Reigen can’t help but wonder why the walls haven’t started rattling.

Reigen knows he’s keeping it together—he’s been doing so well, managing himself like this, but there are cracks beginning to show, tearing at the seams, and Reigen worries the storm will flood him. He’s not a stranger to this. It’s not an unfamiliar sight by any means. He’s seen Mob like this, after all—it must be hard, to grow up halfway and learn to shove everything down, then grow a little more just to reroute to attempting to unpack it all safely—and he knows it’s only about time before he reaches a point of needing release.

He wonders if it’s a little like stepping into a minefield. Just one wrong move to set it all off; immediate decimation. But Serizawa is not a minefield, Reigen thinks stubbornly; he is a trickling faucet, a fountain, pulsing with the threat of emptying but not exploding. Bleeding. Lava is always seeping somewhere but no one would know, they don't see it underwater.

Reigen is already patting down his pockets in search of the office keys with a free hand a step before they reach the door. He hears it jingle like wind chimes as he slips it into the lock with some difficulty, the twist of it and the creak of the door.

Serizawa practically carries him over to the couch, and while this eases some of the tension hanging protectively around Reigen’s shoulders, weighing down on him like wet clothes, the air is still thick with the taste of it. The aftermath of lightning. Metallic on his tongue, but that might also be the split lip still oozing blood lazily from a pretty nasty cut. That spirit really did a number on him.

Serizawa leaves for the bathroom—there is a little box of first aid under the sink because Reigen can’t afford hospital bills at the rate they get injured in this business, which is more often than he’d like, so he’s trained all his employees and himself on basic wound-tending—and still the proverbial storm clouds roll high about the ceiling. Towering, multi-level clouds. Ice crystals.

Serizawa manifests around the corner after a while, humming with unperceivable energy. He is silent, but not in the nervous or gentle way he carries his silence around people. There is a sharp edge to this silence. Deafening. His ears are ringing with it. Loudest of them all is his heart, beating in his chest like a caged hummingbird, ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum, one-two-one-two; the loudest thing inside of him.

Serizawa brings the aid kit and his silence to the couch. He lays it open and bare on the table before them, rummaging through.

“Let me bandage this myself,” Reigen insists, making quick but careful work of shucking his ruined jacket off and unbuttoning his even more ruined dress shirt, but Serizawa won’t let him grab the gauze. He gently pries Reigen’s hands away.

“I want to,” he says, gentle but with firm finality. It’s the first words he’s spoken for a while now, but the relief Reigen feels is clouded slightly with annoyance. But even that slowly trickles away as understanding slots into place—this is more to reassure Serizawa himself, if anything. “Stay still,” Serizawa instructs, so Reigen obliges. He gets to cleaning the wounds first, carefully wiping down matted or fresh blood with a clean damp cloth, then dressing and bandaging them, and Reigen gives himself a mental pat in the back for hissing minimally.

“Tell me if it’s too tight,” Serizawa says after finishing with a gash over his forearm, eyes raking over the length of it fretfully and thumb rubbing the clean bandage to smoothen invisible creases.

“It isn’t,” he answers. Reigen thinks it isn’t tight enough.

They had considered going to the hospital. Well, Serizawa suggested it, really, and they ended up with a semi-public dispute as Reigen insists they go to the office instead, bleeding all over his clothes all the while—which in hindsight probably made for a ridiculous, strange sight, but he’s lost all sense of shame after breakdancing and throwing salt around for half an hour straight in front of live television—but it is, after all, as Tome likes to describe it, physically impossible to win an argument against Reigen.

And besides—

“It’s not too bad, ‘Tsuya.”

Serizawa’s face hardens. Something flares from his skin, spanning along Reigen’s in a nanosecond surge of crackling power, leaving goosebumps in its wake. Not in any intention to harm; Reigen can sense it. Another thing this business has helped him develop—a particular attunement to psychic aura.

“Arataka, that spirit—” He draws a thin breath. “That spirit slid a little too close. You could’ve—things could’ve gone worse if I weren’t there.”

“You were there,” Reigen points out. “And no one could’ve seen it coming anyway.”

“It would’ve helped if you stayed behind me.” He says this with uncharacteristic sternness. “Like I told you to.”

“I can handle myself just fine, Katsuya. I’ve been in this business for years.”

“I warned you that spirit was dangerous—”

“And we’ve faced many of those!” Words are, he knows, the most dangerous of all, and this is a slippery slope he’s falling into. They could be his greatest weapon or his greatest downfall with just one flick of a switch. Still he pushes on— “You’re being—” He flaps his hands about exasperatedly, barely mindful not to aggravate his injuries as he ignores the sparks of pain, and there rises the annoyance again with a vengeance, surging on tenfold. “unreasonably overbearing.”

“Unreasonably?” Serizawa’s hands stutter where they’re tending to the worst of the wound.

“Yes!”

“You could’ve— This isn’t even the first time this happened, how is this unreasonable, ‘Taka? I’m just—” He looks, for a moment, completely winded up, but Serizawa is nothing but infuriatingly patient, so he spirals down and softens, a droop of the shoulders. The air thins, stretches taut like rubber, but instead of snapping like Reigen expected—some twisted part of him even hoped—it would, it gradually loosens. While earlier Reigen feels held underwater, now he feels like being slowly dragged upwards; not breaking up and through, but held in suspension. Surface tension. Not drowning but at the brink of suffocating, still. He is grappling for air. “I’m just trying to look out for you because I care. But you don’t—you don’t seem to.”

“What? Of course I care,” he shoots back huffily.

“You’re always throwing yourself into dangerous situations. It’s almost like you don’t care if you get hurt, I can’t help but think—” He stops here.

Reigen looks him dead in the eye. “What?” Sharp as a dagger. “You can’t help but think what, Katsuya? That I’m actively throwing myself into these situations? That it was fully my choice? That I wasn’t conscious of the potential ramifications of my own actions?”

“There are always better options.”

“Well I definitely didn’t think of any when I had to stop Mob.”

“Even then you seemed ready to face the prospect that you might not make it out!” Serizawa snaps, and with it the atmosphere did, too. Some objects tip precariously to the side as if shocked, before they land safely back to their original position, though there’s a quiet, persistent tremble to them. Serizawa continues, “It was the same with the Rusty curse.”

Reigen squares his jaw. “I knew the risk I was taking in both cases,” he counters defensively.

“But it shouldn’t be so easy for you to accept.”

“It—Look, Katsuya, do we really need to be talking about this right now? I’m just—” He rubs both his temples in an attempt to drive away the headache that’s really coming on, or that might just be a concussion. He did get shit-kicked onto that wall… Surely not, if he’s still conscious enough for this conversation, right? “What happened, happened, alright? And Mob and Tome and Dimple and you and I are all safe, that day and the day after and today. There isn’t much to discuss beyond that.”

“But—”

“I’m exhausted, alright?!” Reigen throws out his arms. “I’m just— We both are, I know that. So stop dragging this on and let me just bandage myself up and we can finally head home, okay?”

That must’ve done it for Serizawa, whose jaw shuts but remains tense. He seems to acquiesce, for now, stopping Reigen’s weak attempt at stealing the gauze again and silently setting back to work. Reigen lays back and just lets him, too tired to protest.

Silence befalls them, grows thick and slowly carves them into something tender.

Serizawa is the first to break it, and his voice comes in a soft murmur. “Many people care for you. I care. And I just… I hate seeing you hurt, is all.”

Reigen breathes a drawn-out exhale. The adrenaline of it all is really wearing down now, and he’s feeling… everything hitting him at once. When he speaks, it feels as though his words are stripped bare to the bones. “I know. It’s not like… It—I didn’t want to die. I was ready to accept that it was a possibility, sure, but it’s not like…” He sighs. “This is hard.” He rubs his face with a palm, stops at the bottom half of his face. The numbness creeps in. “I’m tired.”

“Hm.”

“I’m sorry I snapped at you. And for being difficult.”

The invisible hold around him seems to soften at that, more a caress than a grip. He leans onto Serizawa’s shoulder—not quite a hug, not quite nothing. Just a lean. A weight shifted. A body asking silently, Can I stay here? Just for a little while?

Serizawa reciprocates, lifts an arm and winds it around Reigen’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry, too. For being… overbearing.”

Reigen shakes his head against Serizawa’s collarbone, feeling raw and a little feeble. He mumbles into the bit of stubble under Serizawa’s chin that he always forgets when shaving, “You’re just looking out for me.”

“I was, but I know how it feels to be underestimated. I admire you and everything you can do, of course, and I know you’re capable of many things, it’s just…” He trails off. Reigen nods, shrugs.

“I just possess insane luck, I guess. I’m surprised I haven’t died a stupid death yet honestly.”

He means it lightly—an attempt at levity—and follows it with an awkward chuckle for good measure, but Serizawa’s hold only tightens.

“...Maybe I shouldn’t speak like that.”

“Yeah. That’s a start.” His hand comes down, slowly upwards again. Rubbing soothingly. “I love you,” he confesses. Reigen closes his eyes. Serizawa is always so warm. “I’m scared of losing you.”

He can say many things to that. He can make a million promises to assure Serizawa that he’ll stay, he’ll never leave, he’ll be by Serizawa’s side for as long as Serizawa lets him.

“I know,” he says instead. “I love you, too.”

#saving for later

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