#there are six for ritsu and five for mob and one for both of them

[grimalkinmessor]

Mobrit Quote Board 🫶💖

[serenlyss]

Mob Psycho Fic Recs

I've been keeping track of some of my favorite finished and in-progress mp100 fics as I find them and figured I'd show them some love by linking them here! They come in no particular order or genre, just whichever I bookmarked last haha. If you"re looking for good mp100 fics be sure to check these out!

To Strike A Chord Author: Hino Rating: Teen Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: Complete Tags: platonic ritshou, mutual trauma, post world domination arc Summary: Ritsu visits Shou, feeling uneasy about his past. But he's not the only one. My Notes: Short and sweet, it touches on Shou and Ritsu’s mutual trauma from the World Domination arc and gives insight in the Suzuki family relationship before Touichirou decided to take over the world. Also Shou plays the guitar.

Of Cold Hands Reaching Author: UncannyCookie Rating: G Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: Complete Tags: terumob (can be read as platonic), angst, ptsd, trauma recovery, hurt/comfort, dissociation, miscommunication, post-mogami arc, slow burn Summary: After six months in Mogami's mind world that weren't even real anyway, Mob returns to his old life. Everything is fine. My Notes: A really interesting take on what Mob’s mind looks like after spending six months in Mogami’s fake world. It gets pretty real when discussing Mob’s dissociation and apathy about the whole thing but gets sweet at the end and has a happy ending. It’s introspective, which I really like, but has enough lighter moments in between that it doesn’t feel heavy constantly.

Delirium Author: Janekfan Rating: G Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: Complete Tags: serirei, pneumonia, hospitalization, guilt, smoking, depression, sel-harm, panic attacks, fever, sickfic, love, kissing, caretaking, misunderstandings, mental instability, flashbacks, unconsciousness Summary: Reigen questions himself. My Notes: Reigen decides to pick up smoking again as a coping mechanism and hides it from Serizawa. It goes into Reigen’s feelings of self-loathing and depressive tendencies that the manga only really touches on. It’s dreary pretty much throughout but does have a happy ending to end on a high note!

April Fools Author: SparkyFrootloops Rating: G Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: Complete Tags: dad reigen, good parent reigen, teru is reigen’s son, hijinks & shenanigans, pranks Summary:  Teruki gets to celebrate April Fools Day at his new home with Reigen. My Notes: This fic is short but so so funny and full of heart. Teru trying to prank Reigen, who he lives with in the context of the story, is hilarious and all the dialogue is just gold. I also really love Mob’s cameo in the second half. Just a solid found family comedy one-shot to lighten your mood and make you smile.

Broken, Repaired, New Author: GalacticConfectionist Rating: T Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: In Progress Tags: serirei, abuse, child abuse, domestic violence (all abuse is only implied/referenced, never shown), light angst, hurt/comfort, pining, good parent reigen, good brother reigen, original character but she’s really good Summary: “You’re a good kid” He said, ruffling his student’s hair. There’s a moment of quiet and Reigen sighs, “Mob, remember this. Guys who hit women are the biggest losers in the world.” Reigen’s sister comes to visit, shenanigans ensue. My Notes: I don’t usually go for fics with ocs in them since I don’t typically end up connecting with them but this is one of the rare exceptions! Reigen’s sister escapes her abusive husband with her daughter and goes to Reigen for help. She ends up staying with Serizawa and trying to set him up with her brother. Despite the references to abuse it’s actually a very lighthearted fic about wanting to make your friends happy and taking care of those you consider to be family. Misaki and Reigen’s sibling relationship is well-written and she has enough personality and motivation to make me invested in her situation. Just an all-around good read if you want to smile and feel happy.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! lol Author: marnies Rating: Not Rated Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: In Progress Tags: serirei, good parent reigen, good parent serizawa, sickfic, fluff, epic family moments Summary:  reigen and serizawa adopt teru and shou and move in together asmr My Notes: This fic is just a good time. It’s not too far in but still has enough content to be worth a read. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but that’s the charm of it, and it comes across as humorous and lighthearted with its found family dynamics. Reigen and Serizawa are both clueless parents of their adopted sick kids and are just trying to help each other out.

The Space Between Author: sofia-estrella Rating: M (nsfw content in later chapters) Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: In Progress Tags: serirei, reigen pov, slow burn, coworkers to friends to lovers Summary: Reigen never expected Serizawa to stay. My Notes: A really nice fic about how Reigen and Serizawa’s relationship grows and evolves slowly as they spend more than a year together over the course of the narrative. Both Reigen and Serizawa are very in character and their relationship is approached with care and concern from both sides, which I think is very fitting for them! It does a good job of balancing soft character interaction with personal squabbles and drama, which makes for an interesting and entertaining read.

The Joy of Cooking (for a Family You Didn’t Know You Had) Author: pepperfield Rating: G Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: In Progress Tags: good parent reigen, background serirei, found family, unintentional parenthood, cooking, meddling kids, family fluff, food as a metaphor for love, getting together, light pining, 5+1 Summary: At first, it's easy. Mob likes takoyaki. This, Reigen can remember. When Teru moves in, things get a little more complex, but it's fine. He only has to feed one kid on a regular basis; he can handle this. But before he knows it, he's memorized all of Tome's favorite restaurants and he's keeping a stash of snacks in the office just in case Shou visits. This whole "family" business has gotten out of hand. My Notes: Good old dad Reigen taking care of his five unruly children. In this fic Teru lives with Reigen and everyone else is just along for the collective ride. It’s a 5+1 fic about Reigen cooking/buying food for the kids as a way to show he cares about them. It’s really cute and shows how much Reigen cares about the esper boys and Tome after all is said and done in the manga.

On Revelations and Renovations Author: mustdang100 Rating: G Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: In Progress Tags: good parent reigen, reigen adopts teru, background serirei, hurt/comfort, adoption, fluff and humor, 5+1 Summary: “I’m really sorry to bother you, but, ah, I don’t suppose that offer to stay at your place for the night was still an option?” Five times Reigen got called a 'dad,' and one time he called himself one - a vignette-style fic on how Teruki grows up and Reigen acquires a family in the days, months, and years following the World Domination arc. My Notes: Teru decides to stay with Reigen after all following the world domination arc, and then never leaves. It’s a super cute and fun fic about found family dynamics between all the main cast, but specifically Reigen and Teru. Teru and Reigen’s banter is well-written and funny, and the whole concept and execution is really charming and fun to ready.

A Real (Psychic) Conman Author: Trinz Rating: T Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: In Progress Tags: esper!reigen, empath!reigen, swearing, reigen centric Summary:  An AU where Reigen actually is the 21st century's greatest psychic- or at least the second, or third, or maybe fourth- the point is that he’s an esper and his "I'm so powerful I can hide my aura" thing is... actually true. My Notes: This is one of my current favorite fics. I read it all over the course of like two days up to its current chapter and I’m in love with the author’s psychic Reigen concept. It follows the canon storyline with some divergence to account for Reigen actually having powers, and really paints him in a different light. It also has an air of mystery with its over-arching plot that, seventeen chapters in, still has only been hinted at, but the real star of the fic is the way a psychically powered Reigen interacts with Mob, Ritsu, and Dimple and the creative ways the author incorporates his powers of telepathy and empathy. Really creative and a super fun long read if you want a longer story!

[strawbrymilkshake]

i just watched the first six episodes of the mp100 netflix show for no good reason other than that i apparently hate myself, so to not put my pain to waste here’s a half-review half-rant thing

i guess ill start with the good and make my way to the shit i hated about this show, but as you can probably guess there’s hardly any good

tome was fun, i guess. she’s got that same chaotic™ energy and had some of the only lines i genuinely laughed at, but also she’s the only member of the telepathy club for some reason? and they merged her character with mezato’s, so i guess she’s got more to do. but judging by the sfx i doubt they had the budget for even one (1) more actor, so ig i can forgive them for that. overall probably the only adaptation that both wasn’t painful to watch and actually warranted the changes they made

teru (from the little i saw of him) was also pretty good. the fight had some....changes, but on his own i thought he was fine, pretty harmless adaptation overall. i stopped watching once i realised that they weren’t gonna go all in and give him the cactus hair so points deducted for that

and the last thing i liked about this show: ritsu! they got a young actor who was good and i didn’t have many issues with him. there was one interaction he had with tome that i liked when she introduced herself and he said ‘oh! tome’s my grandma’s name!’ and tome was like ‘...yeah you and mob are definitely brothers.’ the reason why he’s lower than tome and teru is because. for whatever fucking reason. he is in every. goddamn. scene. like even when it doesn’t make any sense. when mob joins the body improvement club? he’s there. when mob is taking down the lol cult? he’s there. the teru fight? he’s there. i lost count of how many times i was asking myself ‘why the fuck is ritsu here?’ he was inescapable. his presence in those scenes didn’t even add anything to the story. also he’s friends with tsubomi for some reason....i guess to give him more things that mob can be envious of?

speaking of tsubomi.....god. not to be like ‘they didn’t understand the source material!!1!!11!1!!!’ but like. please. it hurt. i get that they were probably trying to lean into the ‘guy gets the girl/high school romance’ type show more but uhh....way to horribly misunderstand the source material, guys. the problem with her is that she is in it so much that it almost entirely defeats the point of her character & what she’s supposed to mean to mob. they interact like every other scene! she’s a pretty close friend to ritsu, so that means they interact even more! she’s their next door neighbour ffs! i only watched the first six episodes and i think i still saw more of her than her entire screen time in the anime put together

and apart from her being so close to mob that it completely destroys the point of him idolising her, it also meant that the writers had to come up with a full personality for her and an actual dynamic for her and mob. and hoo boy they really went and decided that the two of them would have the most awkward, unappealing dynamic ever, huh. like there’s this running gag where she always messes up the words to common phrases, and mob has to correct her, and it’s painful every time. which, i guess (????) makes sense for what their relationship is in the manga & anime, where they’re not close anymore and mob doesn’t even know what she’s like/what he likes about her, but in this show, they were trying to push them together to lean into the romance tropes, so their uncomfortable dynamic doesn’t make sense anyway??

the stageplay got it fuckin RIGHT when they went and cast NO ONE for tsubomi. like. the legend jumped out. they got mob pining for a silhouette. chef’s kiss

holy shit this got long fast. ok the rest is under the cut

i guess im just going character by character now so: dimple. weird guy. the cgi was awful, but you knew that already. but he was just....so weird. and by that i mean he was awkwardly,, never there? when teru exorcises him it’s supposed have at least some impact, but in this show he had like three (3) scenes before it (rather than a couple episodes leading up to it) (and also they cut a shit ton out of the middle of the lol cult arc for...whatever reason) so when he gets exorcised here it’s like...oh no.....that guy...........did mob even speak to him more than once.....

speaking of the pacing of this show: it’s horrendous!! good lord i hate it!! the pacing is shit awful, and it feels like they’re just throwing in ‘’’’’’’’interesting’’’’’’’’ scenes that should take place later in the story bc they know that the audience isn’t going to want to stay around for the atrocious writing! case in point: we see the flashback of mob and reigen meeting in the second episode. the second fucking episode. the reason why it’s delayed so much in the anime (and even more in the manga) has a lot to do with the unfolding of reigen’s character depth and they just?? throw it in so early?? it feels like they’re just going ‘oh by the way, he’s good, or whatever. yeah, he’s totally complex and interesting. just trust us, okay, keep watching the show’ and the pacing of that completely throws off reigen’s character arc

i can’t really remember which episode(s) this was in but they also have this weird subplot with reigen going to the bar alone (yknow..like....s2 scenes...) and lowkey being friends with the bartender guy?? i gotta be honest i wasn’t paying much attention during these scenes but suffice it to say: god i hated reigen. like sure, he’s a sleazy character, but they just made him disgusting. netflix reigen does not drink his respect women juice, and that’s all i wanna say about that

also why is he like 40 years old

anyways back to the pacing, apart from throwing in scenes from wayyy later in the plot, this show also tried to have like four or five plot threads going at once. the place that this hurt the most was probably the teru fight, where the anime spends like two episodes entirely on it and nothing else, but in this show it keeps cutting to the start of the big clean up arc (probably just so they could keep showing ritsu) and reigen’s weird subplot 

and there’s other stuff like that, where they kept cutting to the awakening lab & the scars doing psychic stuff or whatever, i guess trying to entice the audience like ‘we swear there’s plot stuff!! it’s not just slice of life!! there’s evil™ people!!’ and i guess they were gonna pull the ol’ switcheroo™ where the audience thinks the awakening lab and the scars are working together but oh no!! only the scars are evil!! the awakening lab was actually on our side!! but i can’t be bothered to watch that far

also in the teru fight, they got most of the message across (don’t use your psychic powers against other people....mob and teru are the same...) but because they kept cutting away from it they lost the dramatic impact of all of it. the choreography and sfx weren’t as bad as they could have been i guess, but they definitely showed the budget. it also didn’t take place in a school (which...fine, whatever) but it led to something i actually did like: teru attacked mob with glass shards instead of knives, and although i do like the knife metaphor + imagery, you could also argue something about the destructive nature of his power use coming back to hurt him in the shards of glass, and also something about reflections or...something. i just thought it was neat, although i don’t know why they changed the setting from the school in the first place

also in the teru fight: it was raining and ???% stopped the rain katara-style mid air, and even though the cgi still wasn’t all that good, i thought that was a rad concept. but then he just made a tornado instead of ripping buildings apart and you get the idea not a lot of it was good

back to things i hate because i don’t have a good segue!! the writing!! bad!!

i see the writers of this show engaged in the age old storytelling practice of ‘tell, don’t show’

when reigen tells mob to be a good person: “ok, i won’t show off my powers or use them against other people. i’ll become a good person”

when mob loses control of his powers and hurts ritsu as a kid: “these powers are awful and cause nothing but trouble. i’m not going to be using them again”

god i wish i was exaggerating

and, going back to the lol cult, for whatever fucking reason they decided to have that latter line of dialogue to be the full explanation of mob’s complex. like i get that there’s a time for exposition and a time for subtly, but take some cues from the original author and maybe fucking explain the main plot device of the show and not the protagonist’s sad vague backstory rather than the other way around. want to confuse and alienate your audience? good fucking job!! you’ve done it!!

and just because this was my favourite episode in the anime and im fucking bitter!! they cut out so much of dimple’s monologue and just had mob get to 100% pretty much after all dimple says is ‘get a clue.’ like. he puts the mask on, it doesn’t work, ‘get a clue,’ 100%. yeah im totally gonna care when this character comes back to try and manipulate mob later.

also....mob...........

i havent talked about him that much here, have i?

okay specifically w the lol cult first, the whole thing where they put the mask on and he’s not smiling is completely devoid of any impact because!! he’s full on emoting throughout the rest of the show!! like he’ll look worried, embarrassed, he’ll cringe or smile or whatever, and the most it looks like is that he’s just slightly uninterested, but otherwise has a pretty good grip on his emotions. unlike the anime + stageplay where it’s clear that he’s (seemingly) completely unemotional. the reason why i bring up the stageplay is bc, while i know that setsuo ito is 10ish years older than the guy that plays mob in the netflix show, i kinda wish that they just....cast him anyway.....bc they clearly didn’t have any hangups on casting adults for all the other middle schoolers, and ito did such a good job in the stageplay. he’s the only guy who is mob to me lmao (kyle mccarley is on thin ice but he can stay)

i mean mob just straight up showing emotions through the show could have been down to the directing as well. also i’m pretty sure a majority of it is bc he’s constantly around tsubomi, so. stupid decisions lead to stupid outcomes!

and that’s basically it for my weird review/rant on this show. the writing’s bad, the pacing’s bad, they didn’t care at all about the source material, i’m not entirely sure if they cared about the audience either, there was maybe two (2) changes i liked, if that, and everyone should go watch the stageplay. there were probably way more points that i wanted to bring up but i think my brain is already repressing the memory of it for my own safety

if i ever try to watch the rest of this show, shoot me

[owletstarlet]

ritsu from mp100!!!!

What I think about this character:

For this, I’m just gonna straight-up copy and paste a post I made about Ritsu a couple weeks ago, because it sums up how I feel about him pretty well:

“I really wanna write something about Ritsu, because boy howdy do I remember a thing or two about being 12-13 years old, sitting on my own pile of corrosive and self-sabotaging mental illnesses that I had no idea about, with none of the adults around me suspecting anything was off because I was one of those goddamn gifted-and-talented kids who was a diligent student and nice to people. 15 years later and this is still Quite The Mood for me—”

(Important to note that his issues manifest themselves way differently than mine ever did, with all the anger and spite just bottling up until they exploded outward at everyone and everything. As to my own issues, they manifested a lot more like Serizawa’s did, with a buttload of paralyzing fear and hiding from the world.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Really only with Shou, but I gotta note that I am a person more than twice Ritsu’s age who teaches junior high schoolers for a living (I see their birthdays in the school computer and marvel at how these lil goblins were all Just Born Two Seconds Ago), I gotta say the concept of romantic shipping for the majority of the mp100 characters is a little weird for me. It’s more important to me that Ritsu has good friends and people supporting him. And Shou is definitely that for Ritsu. He’s the first person to tell him frankly and objectively how much potential he has to become a strong esper, and continues to tell him that, and comes to him for help because of it, and I know that means the world to Ritsu. But more importantly, of course, I think he immediately sees what kind of person Ritsu is without any of his bullshit pretenses he puts on for everyone else, and he genuinely likes him for it. I am all for Shou sending him terrible memes to make him smile if only at how stupid they are, and inviting himself over for video game tournaments and marathoning awful animes and Perfectly Average And Sweet adolescent pastimes that they both really need to engage in for their own sanity and healing.

People I ship non-romantically with this character:

I’m super charmed/amused by the idea of him being friends with Teru. I do think their personalities would grate on each other a bit (a good 80% of that is Ritsu being annoyed with Teru just for Being Himself), but there’s a lot to be said for them being the heart of the support group of People Who Said/Did Horrible Things To Mob And He Forgave Them Immediately Anyhow And They Still Feel Shitty About It. They’re both actively trying to become better people and I kind of want to see them supporting one another in that, even if it’s mostly unspoken. I also wanna see them sparring with each other, to practice/improve/blow off steam. (Also: “I swear to god I’ll reshave your head if you ever try to take my brother clothes shopping again—”)

My unpopular opinion about this character:

I’ve not interacted enough with the fandom to really know what’s unpopular, so it’s shameless headcanon-listing time! Fun ones first:

I think he likes cats, a lot, and the more hateful and standoffish the cat is the more he loves it. He’s probably too self-conscious to go around petting strays all time, but he’d really want to and would probably do it if he was with Mob or Shou.

I think he’s seen Breaking Bad at least five times. *whispers* He is the Danger.

I think the only meme-speak he will deign to use in regular conversation, much to Shou’s delight, is “Then Perish.”

I think he’s actually pretty terrible at board games, especially shogi or chess or something strategy-based, because he’s canonically prone to making crappy snap decisions, and the more he wants to beat the person the worse his game gets. He’s never played Reigen at anything because his dignity would not be able to handle the guaranteed loss.

More Serious Headcanon is that he’s got sensory issues—which is shameless projection of my own neurological disorder onto a character I love but I do not fucking care. The way Sensory Processing Disorder manifests for me is physical pain/serious discomfort and certain touches and sensations (it can be completely arbitrary what sets it off and what doesn’t), pain or tingling around your spine at certain pitches or volumes of sound. Even stupid things like needing a billion blankets on you to sleep so you feel weighted down properly or clothing tags bothering you way too much. And the big one is not being able to maintain physical contact with someone for very long/avoiding it when you can, which people can easily take personally. This would work really well for Ritsu, I think, who probably the least touchy-feely person in the series, and who spends so much time alone. Being sensory-avoiding is isolating in itself, and it’d give a believable extra layer to the things that already make him feel isolated. (Also, the canon fact that he almost never listens to music—headphones can be a bitch sometimes for SPD because if you’re not careful your own music can hurt you because of the pitches in your ears.)

One thing I wish would happen/had happened to this character in canon:

Here, have three:

A proper, cathartic conversation with Mob after the 7th Division arc—in other words, let this child have a good long cry, not just the 5ish seconds/single page of it we got in canon.

Ritsu figuring out something’s seriously wrong after Mob comes home at the end of the Mogami arc. I’m of the mind that Mob probably didn’t ever tell anyone what happened in his six months of Mogami-hell, because he didn’t want to upset anyone or make it their problem, but damn it I wish he had, and I think if Ritsu were to figure out something was up that it’d be when Mob’s going around thanking everyone like he said he would. It may be wishful thinking that either of them would be good enough at communicating with each other for a conversation like that to get off the ground and actually be healing for Mob, but I want them to have fumbled through it and tried.

And finally, I want him to have some actual meaningful bonding time with Reigen. Ritsu may not like Reigen as a person, but you can’t tell me that somebody who’s chosen to make a living out of deceiving people doesn’t know a thing or two about self-loathing, self-sabotage and hopelessness, and how to identify it in others. It’d be a tall order for him to get Ritsu to sit down and listen to him, but it’d it be so goddamn good for him to feel validated by an adult who genuinely understands and wants the best for him.

Anyways, @fmobbu, I’m sorry I’m wordy, but I hope you enjoy anyhow! Thanks for giving me the chance to ramble about the spoon child ;)

[msfcatlover]

TakeRitsu Week Day 3: Action

AND WITH 20 MINUTES TO SPARE! 

@takeritsuweek2017

You know, as much as I normally hate writing action scenes, I had a lot of fun with this.

Featuring: Momo has a crush, Tome knows about it, and camping. 

Warnings for a fight scene, implied choking, and implied vomit. Oh, and unedited writing.

It started with a test of courage.

Well, technically it started when the Awakening Lab kids decided to go camping, and word got out to the telepathy club, but when time came to point fingers and call out blame, it was hard to ignore how Kurata was so pleased with herself for finding a cave, just a short walk away from their campsite.

(Mob tried to point out that it didn’t seem safe to be wandering around the woods alone at night, but then Teru grabbed his hand and declared he would look after him the whole way. Which both effectively reduced Mob to a blushing mess and made everyone else realize arguing wasn’t going to be an option here. Not when both Tome and Teru were on board with this plan.)

Tome went first with Rei, waving a mug above her head and saying she’d place it at the back of the cave. “There’s another thing the next team will have to swap it out for. That way, we’ll all know the others went just as far as we did!”

When they got back ten minutes later, Tome went straight to her bag and fished out a rock, which she thrust into Momozou’s hands. “Here. You’re next.”

“I’m not playing.”

“You can’t bail on us now!”

“I didn’t even want to come, why do you think I’m going to do this?”

Tome leaned to the side. “Kageyama-kun!” she called out. (Momozou jumped.) “No, Mob, not you—I would never deprive Teru-kun of his favorite partner—the little brother. Yeah, you. You’re with Takenaka-kun. Play nice.”

She straightened again, meeting Momozou’s glare with a smile.

You’re evil, Kurata.

Tome nodded. “Now remember, you need to swap the mug for the good luck charm, okay? If you don’t bring back the mug, it doesn’t count.”

Momozou sighed, and glanced back at Ritsu. The younger boy shrugged, and got to his feet.

Might as well get this over with, right? Ritsu thought.

Momozou shoved the “charm” into his pocket and marched over to grab Ritsu’s hand. “Right,” he mumbled, and the two walked off into the woods. Behind them, someone laughed.

Momozou wondered if Ritsu would be his alibi if he decided to commit murder that night.

.

Momozou gasped and pointed suddenly up at the trees. “Look out, I think it’s another bat!”

“Shut up,” Ritsu grumbled. He’d pulled his hand away a little after the teasing began, and had taken the lead as an excuse to not make eye contact.

“No, you were right! They’re all going to kill us! We should run!”

“It flew right at my face. You jumped too!”

“Yes, but…” Momozou paused, squinting into the distance. “…I’m guessing that light up ahead is our goal. Kurata probably left one of the flashlights in there or something.”

Ritsu stopped. “I don’t remember her taking a flashlight.”

“Well, maybe Kurosaki took one.” There was a feeling of disquiet in Ritsu’s mind that was neck and neck with the irritation from earlier. Momozou tugged gently on his sleeve. “Hey,” he said, dropping his voice to a little above a whisper. He waited until Ritsu turned before projecting, Is something wrong?

I don’t know, Ritsu replied. He shifted his weight and glanced back towards the light. Can you sense anything?

There’s you. Back at the campsite, I can still feel the others. There’s some night-hikers about two miles east of us, and… Momozou frowned. There was an unplacable fuzziness, like static, being kicked up somewhere, but he couldn’t quite parse any information from it. It didn’t sound much like a mind. …some miscellaneous noise. That’s about it.

Ritsu nodded, and started walking towards the light.

Hey, wait! Momozou scrambled to catch up with him. What’s wrong?

Ritsu glanced back at him, face in shadow, before turning back towards the light. It could be nothing.

…Or?

Or. You should stand back and let me handle it.

Well. That wasn’t comforting.

.

Ritsu got quieter the closer they got to the light, and the more apparent it got that it was indeed coming from the cave they were meant to head into. He was concentrating on something very hard, and Momozou was genuinely beginning to worry about it.

In the last thirty feet, Ritsu herded him off to one side of the entrance. Momozou found himself pressed back against the rock as Ritsu leaned over, looking into the cave.

What is it?

Ritsu didn’t say or think anything directly; he simply allowed what he was seeing to bubble up to the surface of his thoughts. A lanky creature, mostly obscured by a waterfall of yellow-green hair, crouched in the middle of the cave, shuffling something with four sets of hands. The light poured out from the gaps in its hair, and shifted slightly every time it moved. The impression that it wasn’t quite corporeal came with the images.

The mug they were supposed to bring back sat on a rock behind it.

Momozou tried to keep his breathing even and regular. He reached out his mind towards the creature, and found more of that haze of static, so much denser this time around.

Through Ritsu’s eyes, he saw it look up.

Ritsu. What is that?

Ritsu glanced back at Momozou briefly before turning back to the creature. It’s a spirit. My brother and I deal with them sometimes. Ritsu took a deep breath and relaxed his shoulders. It might not be hostile. If it is, I’ll exorcise it. Wait here.

The image at the surface of Ritsu’s mind flickered and vanished, as Ritsu’s mouth curved up into his Helpful Student Council Member smile and he stepped out into the mouth of the cave. His voice echoed slightly when he raised his voice, clearly addressing the creature within. “Hello. I’m sorry to bother you so late, but I’m afraid my friend forgot something when she was up here.”

“I understand,” Ritsu said, responding to something Momozou had not heard. “That must have been quite the hassle.” He stepped into the cave. “No, my friend won’t be joining us. It’d be rather pointless when he can’t see you, wouldn’t it?” Another step.

Ritsu was out of sight.

Momozou leaned over and peeked around the corner of the entrance. The light seemed to come from nowhere, but it illuminated the walls evenly.  Ritsu cast a long shadow as he approached, still making absent conversation the whole way. Each step, objects of varying size lifted up off of the floor and began to spin in the air. Ritsu didn’t seem to pay them any mind.

Momozou bit his lip and dropped his hands into his pockets. There was an odd weight in one of them… He realized suddenly he’d forgotten about Tome’s “good luck charm.” Idly, he began rubbing his thumb along the smooth, crystalline surfaces.

Ritsu made it five steps into the cave, before one of the flying rocks lobbed itself at him. His barrier crackled to life just in time, and the rock bounced off.

Ritsu paused. “I was hoping we could solve this peacefully. I suppose that hope was in vain though, wasn’t it?”

His hand shot out to the side, and the barrier vanished. The next rock that came flying, Ritsu dodged. He kicked off of the wall, twisting in the air to avoid something unseen, only to come to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room. He kicked and struggled, hands grappling with something by his waist, only to be thrown into one of the other walls.

Ritsu spat onto the ground, and the odd shifting feeling of his aura filled the air. He glared at the unseen specter, and lunged again. Something deflected him, and—and now there was a rock in the way. Momozou leaned a little farther out, and saw Ritsu catch himself with his powers, then send a wave of rocks flying towards the spirit himself. They all pinged off of what Momozou could only assume was another barrier, scattering in random directions.

(One flew out of the mouth of the cave, forcing Momo to duck sharply. Neither of the fighters seemed to notice.)

Ritsu flipped through the air and slammed his foot into the spot the rocks had scattered. There was a sound like breaking glass, and a puff of smoke rose up. He continued in his somersault, bringing an open palm down just beyond.

There was a small explosion, and suddenly the cave was filled with dust. The light danced across the cloud, turning it all but opaque.

There were several more crashes, and a pained-sounding grunt, but it was impossible to tell just by looking what was going on, and Momozou didn’t want to reach out to Ritsu; not when distracting him might put him in danger. He listened hard, but beyond the static all he got was that Ritsu had some sort of plan which, based on his frustration and disappointment, was not working out. And there was something…  something was laughing.

Momozou frowned and tried to dig through the static towards that. It had to be the spirit, but it sounded distant, like he was hearing it through a long tunnel. It was cold and cruel and—

It was like tuning a radio and suddenly finding the right frequency, it finally clicked. Cold, cold, cold, bones and mud and water and ice and possession, a deep possessiveness of this cave and everything in it, everything was hers, and she wouldn’t let any of it out. She’d let the girls pass because they’d left an offering, but this one had come to take, this one who she could feed off of for months, this one she had pinned against the wall, hair wrapped around his throat—

Momozou didn’t think as he stumbled into the mouth of the cave. The dust was beginning to settle, and he could see Ritsu, hands at his neck, feet kicking at the air. Ritsu’s eyes widened when he saw him, and he began shaking his head desperately. No, Momo, go back to camp, don’t come in, you can’t beat it, I can deal with this—

Where is it?!

Ritsu’s eyes involuntarily landed on the specter once again. She was about six feet tall, standing to the left of that big rock, just behind the crack in the floor, which meant her head must be…

Eight months of tennis club had given Momozou two useful things: decent aim, and a very good throwing arm. Tome’s luck charm might not have had the perfect shape that he was used to, but it still flew straight and true and lodged itself firmly in the spirit’s head.

Through Ritsu’s eyes, he saw her eyes widen. The hair went slack as all four hands raised to her head, patting around roughly where the stone had entered. Her form distorted. Wobbled. Caved in until she was hair and bones, then expanded like a deep breath, and she…

…Popped.

The light went out. There was a chorus of thuds as rocks rained down to the cave floor.

Ritsu began to laugh. It was high-pitched and shaky, and rapidly devolved into a hacking cough almost as soon as he’d started. Momozou blinked the spots out of his eyes, and stepped into the cave.

“Ritsu? Are you okay?”

“I’m fi—” the cough returned. After a few seconds, Momozou heard Ritsu clear his throat. “I’m fine. How did you do that? I didn’t know you could exorcise spirits.”

“I didn’t either,” Momozou responded. His eyes finally adjusted enough to make out Ritsu from the rocky wall, and he hurried to his side. “I just. She was hurting you, so I threw the luck charm at her. Guess it’s not a useless hunt of rock after all.”

“This thing?” Ritsu reached forwards, and picked up one of the stones littering the ground.

Before Momozou had time to respond, both of Ritsu’s hands flew to his stomach, and he tipped over onto his side, retching.

(Later, there would be a conversation with Reigen about how this is why you don’t use purified salt around genuine psychics. Later, Mob would thank Momozou for saving his younger brother all the same. Later, Tome would take her “charm” back and promise that next time would be much better.)

(For now, there was only worry, and fear, and one shaking voice calling out, desperate for a reply.)

[subcorax]

Fic: Aubade (ch. 5)

Rating: Teen

Pairing(s): Kageyama Ritsu/Suzuki Shou, Background Teru/Mob Characters: Ritsu, Shou, Teru, Mob Tags: Future fic, college setting, fluff, slow burn Chapter Word Count: 4703 Total Word Count: 21341

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Summary: Ritsu and Shou have been orbiting around each other ever since they were thirteen years old. Really, something like this was inevitable. (Based off of a prompt!)

Read on Ao3

There were six trains leaving Seasoning Station on the day they set off: two in the morning, and four in the afternoon.

Ritsu had immediately and vehemently vetoed the 6 AM train, whereas Shou had objected to taking another night train, on the grounds that he couldn’t sleep on trains at all, and he needed Ritsu awake to keep him company, so that had ruled out the two trains leaving after 6 PM. They’d both been kind of iffy about the early-afternoonish trains, knowing they were the most likely to have families and tourists and the like.

So, their little group had ended up huddled together on the platform, waiting sleepily for the 9 AM train to pull in.

Ritsu’s parents had said their goodbyes the night before at the house, so it’s just Mob, Teru, and Reigen who’ve shown up to send them off at the station. As usual, their group is receiving some odd looks from the sparse groups of people scattered around the station, although every employee they’ve met has recognized Reigen and Mob on sight.

Shou is, Ritsu thinks, not actually awake. Oh, sure, he’s standing, and he’d showered and gotten dressed and dragged luggage behind him on the walk, but he hasn’t actually formed a coherent sentence yet, and he’s been leaning on Ritsu more and more heavily for about the past five minutes. He has no less than three times flipped off Teru, who actually had the nerve to jog ahead of them to the station, is wearing neon pink running shorts, and is drinking something that looks like shit and smells like the ghost of bananas past.

Reigen, for what feels like the thousandth time, starts to drill Ritsu. “You have your phone? Your wallet?” “Yes, of course.” “Your chargers?” “Yeah, we-- wait.” It’s always worth double-checking the chargers. He leans down and partially unzips one of the pockets of the suitcase at his feet, and finding a horrifically tangled ball of two phone chargers and two laptop chargers exactly where they’d been when he’d last checked three minutes ago, nods. “Got the chargers.” Reigen still looks dissatisfied. Between his supply checks and Mob’s constant drifting back and forth from where the train schedule is posted, Ritsu thinks that the two of them are going to worrywart each other into a full blown panic. “Do you have your passport?” Ritsu blinks in confusion. “My passpo– Dad, we’re not fleeing the country!”

“Not yet!” Reigen replies, waving his arms frantically as if this is a legitimate possibility that Ritsu should’ve prepared for. He snorts and doesn’t reply, instead opting to mull over what’s more likely to get someone from his family deported from the country: Reigen’s scam business, or Teru’s fashion choices. While, sure, aspects of Reigen’s business are technically illegal, Teru’s outfits are simply in bad taste.

They hear the train before they see it, a distant chugging that breaks through the annoying bird noises and the vague chatter of the other people at the station. Around them, Ritsu sees most of the other people waiting on the platform straighten up, readjust their backpacks and jackets, start shifting around in anticipation. Surprisingly, Shou’s the same, pulling himself away from Ritsu’s side and blinking around them, looking fully awake for the first time that morning. Ritsu pushes down the handle on his little wheely case and hefts it onto his back, reaching out to take the larger suitcase from Mob. He’s not sure how he ended up carrying the most stuff, considering that out of the three bags they’ve brought, most of the stuff inside of them belongs to Shou. While Ritsu had only grabbed the bare necessities and a few jackets and shirts from his room, packing up Shou’s belongings had been a goddamn ordeal, including doing three loads of laundry from his already packed suitcase, and a two-hour long argument about whether or not it was appropriate to bring an entire desk lamp on a new move.

(“It’s my oldest friend!” Shou had argued, trying to wrestle it from Ritsu’s hands. “Six years I have known you, Suzuki, and never once has there been a working bulb in this lamp.”) Ritsu is eternally grateful that he doesn’t have a family that sobs as they send him off somewhere. The sadness he’s feeling is familiar, a pre-emptive homesickness that sinks into his stomach, makes him want to look around and take everything in so that he’ll remember the exact details of Seasoning City forever, makes him want to call the whole thing off and just stay home. Mob is smiling though, just a little, when he pulls him in for a hug, and all he feels from the aura that envelops him is warmth. “Be safe,” he murmurs into Ritsu’s shoulder. “Text me when you get there.” He receives quick but back-breaking hugs from Teru and Reigen that leave him gasping for air, but he finds that Shou got the short end of the Farewell Stick, because he looks over to see Mob giving him a hug that has him flailing with his feet a good few inches off the ground.

Reigen ushers them onto the train before they can be idiots and miss it, and Shou half climbs over Ritsu in the seats to wave out of the windows as the train starts to move. A quick jolt sends Shou sprawling, and it’s only bracing himself between the table and Ritsu’s shoulder that stops him from whacking his head on the window. Ritsu’s laughing even as he pushes Shou out of his lap, trying to get him to sit in his own goddamn seat for, oh, two minutes? Admittedly, there’s been an odd feeling of dread tinging his excitement, keeping him subdued over the past few days as they planned. It was the lingering worry that even though their plans, their situation, was becoming more and more concrete, that it wouldn’t actually happen. That some intangible, nonexistent problem would suddenly pop up and stop everything. He feels it settle, dissipate. He watches Shou move into the seats on the other side of the table, settling with his back against the window and his legs stretched out in front of him, and thinks, We’re actually doing this. It sounds almost stupidly awed to his own mind, and it’s threatening to put a giddy sort of smile on his face, and he manages to tamp down on it only because he knows that if Shou notices, he’ll ask about it, which will eventually lead to Ritsu being forced to admit that he’s feeling things, which, well, no.

Shou, for his part, manages to stay quiet and relatively still for all of three minutes before he starts fidgeting. He pulls out his phone, but seems to think better of it, because he puts it down in favour of looking over at Ritsu. “Can I borrow your phone?” On autopilot, he reaches into his pocket to hand it over, but stops himself. “Why…?” He asks, squinting, knowing he probably doesn’t want to know the answer. Shou leans over the table, making grabby hands at the phone, pouting when Ritsu moves his hand so that it’s just out of his reach. “Please? It’ll be funnier if I do it on yours!” On one hand, Shou’s desperation is kind of hilarious, and Ritsu isn’t sure he wants to know exactly what he’s planning. On the other hand, he’s got another ten hours on this train, and if he doesn’t give in now, Shou will literally carry on at him the entire time until he does. With a resigned sigh, he hands his phone over, and then groans when Shou immediately points it at him, obviously taking pictures. Instinctively, he flips Shou off, sending him a death glare, before looking at the camera and throwing up a peace sign with dead eyes. He relaxes when Shou finally puts the phone down and starts tapping away at the screen, and contents himself with staring out the window until Shou breaks the silence. “What the fuck is a Shigeo?” He asks, incredulous. Ritsu reaches out to try and snatch the phone back from Shou. “It’s my brother, you fuck, what are you sending to him?” Shou holds the phone out of his reach, contorting himself so that he can keep typing with it held above his head. Finally, he finishes and hands it back to Ritsu with a self-satisfied grin. Like the cat that got the cream, he thinks, and then two moments later, Oh god, what did he do. He taps in his passcode and finds his messaging app already open. TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) [Picture Attached] [Picture Attached] we r. on the fuckin train.

FROM: DAD Language.

FROM: SHIGEO Be safe!!! <33

FROM: TERUKI Don’t look up anything inappropriate on his phone or he might kill you ;p

TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) wow r00d TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) I have my phone back. ignore him entirely.

FROM: YOUR FAVOURITE ;) WOW R00D

Shou, when he’s jetlagged at least, is a little like a windup toy.

He’ll run around at the speed of sound for a while, and talk your ear off given half the chance, but after a while he starts to grow noticeably… slower. Of course, he’ll protest the fact, still make a decent imitation of a hyperactive kitten, but all in all, it grows more sluggish until finally, inevitably, he keels over.

On the train? He doesn’t even last an hour. It’s easy to get drawn into a conversation with Shou, even easier to let him jump from topic to topic as something new strikes his fancy, and so Ritsu learns about Shou’s year overseas in a patchwork of unrelated information, one minute hearing about the godawful coffee served by this one particular Korean hotel, and the next about some strange western kids’ cartoon he’d seen at some ungodly hour of the morning. It’s always a fun little game with this, trying to piece together the snippets of information like puzzle pieces, except he’s working with about three different puzzles, and he can’t find any edge pieces. In this state, waving his arms around wildly to emphasize his points and cutting himself off every other sentence, Ritsu thinks it’s basically impossible to get a coherent story out of Shou. The probability goes even further down when Shou pauses mid-sentence to yawn. Ritsu finds himself yawning in response, but he manages to ask around it, “You tired?” Shou snorts. “Pff, nah. I’m great. I slept for like, seven hours yesterday.” Now, Ritsu, because he actually wanted to be awake in time to, oh, catch the train, had gone to bed at a half-decent time the previous night. He had, however, woken up for the bathroom at some point, and he knows for a fact that Shou is rather generously rounding up from not much more than three. While Shou looks awake, it’s a bad sort of awake, an ‘I really should be sleeping now oh god’ sort of awake, an ‘I am awake out of sheer determination not to be asleep’ sort of awake, the type of slow-blinking, faux-happy sort of awake that Ritsu forces after he’s just pulled an all-nighter for an essay. God, at least he’s usually had coffee or cereal or something. Shou, with a bad tendency to get nauseous in the mornings, hadn’t so much as been able to touch the water Ritsu had offered, let alone the leftover smoothie Teru had tried to shove in his face.

He tugs a jacket out of his bag and hands it over wordlessly. Shou eyes it for a moment, like a deer liable to be spooked, before reaching out and snatching it from him. There are a few moments of adjustments before he settles, arms folded on the table and the hoodie bundled on top of it as a pillow. Ritsu sees him blink heavily for a little before his eyes fall closed, and then he’s out like a light. He’s vaguely disturbed by how quickly Shou manages to fall asleep, especially in a weird position like that. Sure, he’d managed it back in high school, when his only options for quick naps had been to rest his head on the desk or risk it falling out of his cupped hands when he nodded off. Still, it had always left him stiff and vaguely sick, his stomach protesting being bent over in the single laziest yoga position in existence for any length of time. So, he doesn’t really understand why it’s Shou’s first choice, when there’s a perfectly good window right there. For his part, Ritsu isn’t quite drowsy enough to sleep, so he messes around on his phone for a while, switching from app to app until it buzzes with an email. FROM: gcuhousing@gcustaff.org TO: r-kageyama@gcustudent.org

Mr. Kageyama,

This email is to inform you that we have received your notification of residence change.

You will be required to vacate your dormitory at least one (1) week prior to the beginning of the new academic year, on June 30th. You must notify the University’s department of Student Housing within three (3) days of your vacating your dormitory. The department of Student Housing can be reached at +81-429-884915 .

Ritsu leans back and pulls one knee to his chest, sighing.

This was what it came down to, really, actually finding a place to live. Somewhere within walking distance of the university, with four walls, a roof, and a floor, two bedrooms, working plumbing, and included appliances. It seemed impossible. This, he had thought, this is where it will all come crashing down. And yet. They’d spent most of yesterday looking at online listings, emailing and calling landlords, setting up viewings. The less time spent in Ritsu’s dorm, the better, after all. They’d actually had to narrow down their choices, from ten to seven to about four or five places that they both agreed looked promising. He decides he might as well get something productive done while he’s here, and starts to tap out an email. FROM: kageyamaritsu@hotmail.com TO: nishigori-k77@yahoo.com

Mr. Nishigori, My name is Kageyama Ritsu; we spoke a few days ago on the phone, about a possible tour of your apartment on Rye Street. My friend and I will be in town later tonight, and were hoping to set up a time as soon as possible. We would greatly appreciate if you could give us a set of times that work for your schedule over the next couple of days. Thank you for your time,

Kageyama Ritsu +81-9064625949

He sends a couple more emails along those lines, even gets a couple of replies, before it suddenly hits him again, this light, giddy feeling, like his heart is filled with helium and it’s trying to float into his throat. We’re actually doing this, he thinks, and stifles a vaguely hysterical giggle.

On instinct, he gives a cursory sweep of the train to make sure that nobody actually noticed the weirdo laughing to himself. Thankfully, the only other people in the compartment with them are a small family that seem to be occupying themselves with some travel game, the kind of “what can you see out of the window” tactic that his parents employed on him and Mob when they were kids in the car, and then a few more people scattered around in individual seats, either occupied by their own phones or fast asleep.

He’d shrugged on a thin hoodie this morning, to face the early morning chill as they walked to the station, but now that the sun has properly risen he finds himself uncomfortably warm and vaguely sweaty. He pulls it off, leaving it bunched at his back, and notes with absent interest that they’re driving through a forest of some sort. For the most part, the sun only manages to break through the foliage in bits and pieces, painting the compartment in shadowed, dappled greens. Occasionally though, there’ll be a gap in the trees allowing the sun to hit him. Right in the eyes. Inevitably, they chug past the forest, and Ritsu is left completely defenseless against the ball of burning hellfire in the sky. He tries holding his hand in the exact position needed to block it out, but, well, his arm gets tired pretty quickly. He tries draping his hoodie over his head, but the cavern of black fabric gets too hot to breathe in pretty quickly, and Ritsu has little-to-no interest in becoming a baked potato. He’s pretty sure this is a decent argument as to why they should’ve taken the night train, but whatever, he can’t really be bothered to wake Shou up to make a point.

Heaving a greatly put-upon sigh, he stands, steadying himself on the table. He grabs Shou’s backpack from the spare seat and chucks it unceremoniously across to where he was just sitting, and plops down beside Shou. Now that the sun isn’t making a concerted effort at blinding him, he can see the light glinting off of Shou’s hair, lighting it up like some sort of precious metal. There are a lot of dust motes floating around his head.

Shou only wakes up once in the next six or so hours, and then only briefly. By the three and a half hour mark, Ritsu has done everything he can think of to keep himself occupied, including looking for shapes in the clouds, doing terrible little stick figure doodles in his notebook, doing what little he can without wifi on his laptop (about fifty seven games of solitare, not that he’s keeping track,) and a short-lived and incredibly uncomfortable nap. He feels like he should be able to sleep, given the easy, lazy warmth of the train, given how easily Shou has been able to slip into it, the soft lines of his shoulders in his white shirt rising and falling as he breathes, blending seamlessly with the almost ethereal summer light.

He’d managed to entertain himself with his phone, for a little while, but once it had hit less than half battery he’d decided to turn it off and definitely not think about it at all, in case he needed to use it for something actually important.

So, he half jumps out of his skin when it starts vibrating like mad in his back pocket. He fumbles with it until he can see that Matsuo is calling him.

“Hey! Kageyama! My bro! Rumor around here is that you’re ditching us, bro!” Ritsu forces himself to bite back ‘I’m not your bro, bro,’ instead deciding on a polite, “Hello, Matsuo. Yes, I’m moving out.” “Ha, dude, nice! Did you score with some chick? Are you actually moving in with your girl? You always seemed like a player, bro!” Ritsu squints. How in the fuck would I strike anyone as a player? A movement to his left draws his attention, and he looks over to see Shou stirring, propping himself up on one elbow to blink blearily at Ritsu. There are red lines in the pattern of the hoodie fabric all over his cheek, and Ritsu has to hold back a laugh at the knockoff Two-Face vibes. He waves dismissively at Shou’s questioning look, a sort of ‘tell you in a minute’ kind of gesture that he hopes Shou understands. “Yeah, about that,” he starts, unsure how to breach the topic. “I’m actually moving in with a friend of mine, but he just got back from overseas, so neither of us actually have a place yet. Is it cool if he sleeps on the couch for the next couple of days, until we’re good?”

“Ha, I can do you one better, bro! Daichi’s still chillin’ with his girlfriend until the end of break, so your dude can just crash in his bed instead!” A pause, and then, “...Yo, Kageyama, is this buddy of yours the one that drank five Red Bulls when you were skyping him, like, to prove that he could?” Ritsu sighs. Naturally, Matsuo has his priorities straight. “Yes. Yes it is.” “Tell him I said hi, yo. He’s hardcore.” A hardcore dumbass, Ritsu thinks, but what manages to come out of his mouth is, “Will do. Thanks, Matsuo.” “Anytime, bro!” As soon as he hangs up he turns to Shou, who’s back at it with the questioning eyes in full force. He’s not quite upright anymore, having slipped downwards so that his head is half-pillowed between the crook of his elbow and the hoodie. Ritsu shakes his head, summarizing. “Just my roommate. He wanted to know if I was actually leaving. Also, Daichi’s gone, so you can take his bed until we get a place.” Shou nods, which is an action really more to the effect of rubbing his face against the jacket, but Ritsu gets the general idea.

“Daichi’s the one you sleep with, right?” He murmurs. “Again, phrasing, but yeah, he’s in my room. I emailed a few of the landlords for the places we were looking at, so hopefully we can decide within a couple days what we’re–” He interrupts himself, in favour of asking the real questions. “Are you… alright? Shou has buried his face entirely in the hoodie. Ritsu isn’t sure exactly how he can be breathing. After a few moments of complete silence, Shou turns his head back to face him. “Not to be creepy, but this jacket smells like your house. It’s. It’s good.”

Ritsu blinks, raises one eyebrow. He feels like he maybe should find that creepy, but it’s not the weirdest thing Shou has ever said to him, and in this state, delirious and actually nuzzling his jacket, it’s almost… is cute the right word for it? Flattering, maybe. Endearing. Something like that, some word he can’t name for the fond exasperation colouring his smile and his voice as he says, “Oh? And what does my house smell like?” “Hmmmmmmmmmn.” Shou makes a long noise of consideration, burrowing his nose into the fabric again. “Smells like you.”

He’s asleep again before Ritsu can even try to think of a response to that one.

He’d had to physically drag Shou away from Matsuo, who had a six pack of some godawful energy drink and some very, very bad ideas which were right up Shou’s avenue.

It feels oddly intimate, having Shou sitting across from him in a pair of faded Sonic boxer shorts on his tiny, creaky bed in his tiny, creaky dorm room. He’s cross-legged, coveting a pile of snacks he’d pillaged from the communal pantry in his lap, but he doesn’t complain when Ritsu snatches a chip from his hand every now and again. Ritsu’s been trying to keep them on-topic, but it’s difficult, when Shou’s been wound up again, and he’s bouncing off the walls. He chews thoughtfully for a moment, then asks, “Do you guys have any soda?” Ritsu sighs. “The last thing you need is more sugar.”

At that, Shou perks up, and then he’s gone, bouncing off of the bed and running to the other side of the room with a force that Ritsu thinks must’ve woken up everyone in the next three floors below them. Somehow, his pile of snacks is still on the bed, looking relatively undisturbed. He rummages around in the pockets of his backpack, dumped on top of his suitcase at the foot of Daichi’s bed, until he eventually comes up with– “Shou, no.”

Shou jumps back onto the bed, and this time, a granola bar goes flying. Shou doesn’t seem to notice, because all of his attention is on the bag of melted chocolate and broken dreams that used to be his mother’s cookies. “No, nonononono no,” Ritsu says as Shou starts to open the bag, and leans back so that he can dig his heels into Shou’s back and forcefully push him to the floor. Shou goes willingly, rolling onto his back with the cookies curled close to his chest, and giggling like a maniac. It makes him laugh in return, despite himself. “No. You eat that on Daichi’s bed, you little shit, or you get nothing.”

Shou already somehow covered in melted chocolate, scurries over to Daichi’s bed and hops on with an evil sort of grin that almost makes Ritsu feel sorry for Daichi, the poor ass. Ritsu dumps the rest of the snacks onto the floor and stretches out on his newly free bed. “As I was saying,” he begins, as if it hadn’t been twenty minutes since he’d last been derailed, “We’re looking at three apartments tomorrow, so we’ll need to leave here kind of early. I know a place we can get lunch. Most of the ones we’re looking at are pretty much fully furnished, so if we do decide on a place tomorrow, we might be able to talk the landlord into letting us sleep there tomorrow night. Especially if we can wave some money around, or whatever. If we can’t…” he sighs. “I can’t say I want to spend much more time here, but it won’t be the end of the world.” He turns his head to look at Shou. “Sound alright?” The look on Shou’s face is something Ritsu doesn’t get to see much out of him: awe. He’s staring, wide eyed and blank for a few beats before he seems to shake himself. “Yeah,” he says, firmly, and then, “Yeah, that’s…” this time, much less so. The silence hangs in the air, pensive and waiting to be filled, so Ritsu waits. Eventually, Shou rolls onto his back, staring resolutely at the ceiling. He starts. “You’re so… on top of this.” Ritsu bites back his immediate retort of ‘well, one of us has to be.’ It’s a joke, but from the vulnerable, almost reticent tone of Shou’s voice, he has the feeling it might hit a little too close to home. At a lack of response, Shou keeps going. “I guess I thought… I, I don’t know what I thought! I didn’t think I’d get this far, I didn’t think you’d agree to this in the first place! It was just some… some dumb idea I had that seemed fun in my head and you’re…” he waves his hands around in some gesture that could mean anything, that sends panic deep into Ritsu’s mind, because he’s sure that Shou is about to finish that sentence with “You’re actually taking this seriously.” What he says instead, is “...You’re actually making this work!” And then he puts voice to what Ritsu’s been thinking for almost a week now, spoken softly, like if one of them finally says it aloud, then, then is when it becomes real. “We’re really doing this.”

Ritsu breathes, “Yeah, we are.” It’s a stupid worry, really, but he can’t help but pray that this isn’t the moment Shou decides he regrets it.

“Thank you,” he says, and it’s almost painfully earnest. “I seriously don’t know how any of this stuff works, and I was just sort of going to, I don’t know, wing it? When I thought I was doing this on my own. But you’re just sort of… doing it. We’re actually looking at apartments tomorrow. And I’m…” And this time, Ritsu can’t resist the jab. “Lying on my roommate’s bed covered in chocolate?” Luckily, neither can Shou. “At least I’ll always bring the sex appeal to our duo,” he says, glancing quickly over at him with a barely veiled grin. “Hm. Debatable.” “Hey!” Ritsu makes himself turn towards Shou, after a while, propping himself up on his elbow. “It’s fine, you know. That you’re not really doing the organizing stuff.” Before he can tell himself not to, he more or less blurts, “I wouldn’t want to do it half as much if it were anyone other than you.” Shou hasn’t moved, hasn’t looked away from the ceiling above him, and Ritsu doesn’t think Shou knows he’s watching him, because the smile that spreads across his face, slowly, and then like a flashbang, like a grenade, God, it could’ve outshone the sun. Shou laughs, a small, shaky thing. “Well, someone has to provide the comic relief.”

[avecorviidae]

Fic: Aubade - Chapter Six

Fandom: Mob Psycho 100 Rating: M Relationship(s): Kageyama Ritsu/Suzuki Shou Word Count: 3834

Ao3 Link

Rye street is… nice, he thinks. A few apartment buildings, some small businesses, a convenience store, a couple of fast food takeaway joints, even a little cafe with a fence around the outside tables, looking like it’s straight out of some soft indie film. It’s all pretty average, which at first was honestly more than Ritsu had dared to hope for. The landlord of the building is a fairly stout man with perpetually ruddy pink cheeks, and he stands shorter than even Shou, much to Shou’s obvious delight. He shows the two of them around the building, (five floors, he tells them like it’s some sort of selling point, I’ll show you gentlemen the one you were looking at on the third, of course, but wouldn’t you like to see some of our empty ones on the top floor? Only a little extra rent, I assure you, and the view is–

No, thank you, Ritsu interrupts before Shou can say something decidedly less polite, we’re just interested in the one we saw online.) It’s hardly their first choice, and unless there’s some great disaster, it almost certainly won’t be the place they end up living. It’s a little cramped, a little run-down, and even looking around now at the flaking paint on the exposed pipes, the suspiciously dark patch on the ceiling of the hallway (is that mould?), Ritsu could see quite a few maintenance issues in their future, if they ended up here. Besides, it’s too far away from the school to walk, and not even nearly close enough to a bus stop for Ritsu’s lazy ass. The only reason they’re actually visiting in the first place is because, well, he can’t help but feel like he needs a test run, a general idea of how these things work before anything’s actually at stake. Figure out what to look for now, before they end up in a perfectly nice place with no air conditioning and a toilet in the living room.

He tunes back into reality just in time to grab Shou’s shoulder, barely stopping him from crashing right into the landlord. Apparently both of them had zoned out of his little extravagant speech, so they hadn’t realized they were coming to a stop at one of the doors.

Jeez, looks like someone had a nice game of hallway golf, he notes with vague amusement. Maybe Dad’s client was here with his stapler.

He wonders, if they were seriously considering this place, what would be an absolute dealbreaker, because he has the somewhat foreboding feeling that this place is going to get worse than that dent in the door.

The landlord (Mr. Amori? No, that was his year three teacher. Anami? Anami. Maybe,) seems to think that if he’s loud and fast enough, maybe, just maybe they won’t notice. Playing dumb, he follows him into the apartment, trailing a few steps behind Shou. He doesn’t have to feign polite interest as he looks around the main room, though he does have to stifle a smile at the way Shou immediately bounds off like a dog let off its leash, one moment poking his head through the curtains to look out of the little window, the next rummaging through the empty kitchen cabinets. He’s ooohing and aaahing every now and again, and tossing questions in the landlord’s direction which are both completely irrelevant to the apartment and in too much of a rapid fire succession for the poor man to even think about answering.

Probably-Anami is watching Shou with almost frightened bewilderment, so Ritsu takes pity on him and starts asking real questions.

“There’s AC and heating, right?” The man smiles gratefully at him, clearly glad to be on familiar ground.

“Yes, yes, of course! Air conditioning, heating, a refrigerator, an oven, even a microwave! Well, the microwave may have some, some very minor issues, but I can assure you…” I asked what utilities there were, not appliances, dumbass, he thinks, letting his eyes glaze over as the man continues to talk at him. He tries to think what questions he’s supposed to ask next, his fingers itching at his side to reach for the folded piece of paper in his pocket. Did it count as ridiculous, planning this far ahead, looking up what questions you were supposed to ask your landlord? Shou had called him uptight, but jokingly, and it’s not as if he’s much of a standard to go by anyways, Mister Mad-Dash-Across-LAX-Because-He-Didn’t-Check-His-Flight-Times.

He waits and nods along until Probably-Anami seems to be probably finished speaking, and then starts on a small barrage of questions as they come flooding back to him like a set of definitions memorized the night before a test, and he takes incredible satisfaction in the pure anxiety on Anami’s face every time he’s asked a question that he’d almost definitely wanted to avoid.

Are utilities included in the rent? Apparently not, that’s an additional fee, joy oh joy.

What are the circumstances that allow the landlord to let himself into the property? There are none, and he can come in at any time. Well, then.

How often are the locks changed? Hm, it seems that since the last tenants left so suddenly there just hasn’t been time to get the locks changed, how reassuring. Are there quiet hours? Anami is halfway through the beginning of an answer when Ritsu feels light tapping on his shoulder, and by the time he’s turned around, Shou is already half-dragging him into the nearby bathroom, ostensibly to show him something, although the manically delighted grin on his face says otherwise.

The bathroom is disgustingly dirty, Ritsu notes absently, scuffed white tiles and black grout, some ominous damp mush gathering in the line between the tiny bathtub and the floor. Sure, he wasn’t one to leap at bathroom duty in his dorms or at home, but christ, he’d never let it get this bad. It was probably more on the last tenants than the landlord, but did he not clean before he showed the place to prospective tenants? Had they left yesterday, or something? “So,” Shou starts, and then pauses, clearly hoping to build up anticipation for his big reveal. “So,” Ritsu echoes, crossing his arms over his chest and letting his tone lilt up into an expectant question.

Shou’s grin widens fractionally. “Those ‘minor issues’ with the microwave?” He leans closer into Ritsu’s space, and when he’s speaking again, it’s in a conspiratorial whisper. “Cockroach crispies.” “Augh, no!” He gives Shou exactly what he wants, letting disgust colour his voice and scrunching his face as Shou collapses into hysterical laughter.

“No, no, nope absolutely not,” Ritsu says, making for the door, “we’re done here.” “Aw, you’re telling me you don’t want to see it for yourself?” Shou is obviously only fake disappointed, his tone more teasing than anything, because apparently he knows Ritsu far too well for his own good.

“One look. Then we’re leaving.”

-

Their second appointment on Barley Avenue is not much better.

It was a little after eleven by the time they’d finally managed to worm their way out of Anami’s grasp, and the first thing they did was make a beeline for the nearest place that had food, some food literally any food, dear god why had they not thought to bring, god, like a granola bar or something.

Once Shou’s not allegedly starving to death, he’s back to full energy and he is ready to go, and he keeps weaving ahead of Ritsu on the street, his orange spikes disappearing into the crowd until he’s lost him completely. Ritsu might worry, but Shou always ends up trailing back within a few minutes, once he remembers that he has no actual idea where the bus stop is.

-

The landlady, Yamada Sachiko, is typically professional, with a soft yellow blouse and black pencil skirt and a clear plastic clipboard piled with neatly sorted paperwork held to her chest. Her hair is pulled into one of the strictest buns he’s ever seen, and it’s giving him a sympathy headache just to look at.

She’s waiting for them in the lobby of the building when they arrive, and he gives an appropriately polite greeting as she shakes his hand. There’s an uncomfortable pause after he pulls away, as her previously warm smile turns plastic and patronizing, and she seems to hesitate before holding out a hand for Shou to shake as well. Jeez, and she’s actually looking down at him, could she be any more like a teacher?

Admittedly, between the height, the hair, and the skinny jeans, Shou usually looks a good few years younger than he actually is. You certainly wouldn’t know from looking at him that he’s spent the last five or more years cleaning up his father’s messes, including dealing with whatever high-profile business associates he may have had.

Which is why it’s viscerally satisfying to see the slight shock on Yamada’s face when Shou straightens his shoulders, holds his head up to meet her eyes, shakes her hand firmly, and says with a saccharine smile, “Miss Yamada, a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for taking the time to show us around, we’ve been looking forward to it.” Ritsu’s not sure if he’s imagining a particular emphasis on we. It’s entirely an act, of course, and Ritsu can sense the hostility underneath it, even moreso once they all step into the elevator and the tension thickens between them all in the stale air. Yamada is shifting, somewhat uncomfortably, while Shou seems to be revelling in it. So, Shou’s decided to put on a show. Ritsu isn’t entirely sure why, yet, but he’s perfectly willing to play along.

The elevator pulls to a stop and Yamada leads them out into the hallway, never faltering as she strides across the thick patterned carpet, despite her insanely high heels.

While the other apartment building had given off the general atmosphere of a horrifying mutant hybrid between a dormitory and a prison, this place feels like a hotel, generically ornate carpets underfoot and not-quite-faded wallpaper on either side, interrupted by fancy lamps whose gold paint was peeling to reveal black metal underneath.

The smell of stale air freshener is making his nose itch.

Even so, he probably comes off as overeager with how quickly he steps into the apartment once Yamada unlocks the door, quickly making his way to the middle of the room and looking around.

This place had been his favourite of the ones they’d looked at online, and truth be told, he was already most of the way to sold on it. It had an open floor plan that left a nice amount of space without feeling empty, rich hardwood floors, a kitchen bigger than a matchbox, and god, did it ever have windows. Sunlight fell into the room in bits and pieces, dappling the kitchen counter through half-shuttered blinds, making the beige-ish couch and scratched up coffee table look more warm and rustic than worn and torn.

He hears Shou come in behind him, but surprisingly, he doesn’t wander off to explore like last time. Instead, he stays hovering at Ritsu’s elbow, looking around the apartment with an almost blank curiosity.

Yamada is clearly more practiced at this than Anami had been; she shows them around the main living space in a way that highlights its most attractive features, explains the utilities and appliances that come with the place with clinical objectivity that still manages to sound almost welcoming. All in all, it’s incredibly pleasant.

Ritsu has never been more uncomfortable in his life.

There’s something about the way the woman looks at him, a little too personal, a little too… intimate? Regardless, it’s putting him on edge, even as he plasters on a smile in return, asks cordially about the hours for the building’s laundry facilities, what forms the rent money is accepted in, about the security deposit.

She steps into his space, looks up at him. He can smell lavender, cloying and artificial, too strong to be anything but cheap perfume.

“Of course,” she says, with an alarming smile and a new undertone to her voice that Ritsu can’t identify and doesn’t want to, “you’ll be welcome to contact me at any time. I’d be happy to help.” “Uh,” Ritsu says eloquently, taking a half-step back. Too close, she’s too close for him to think. And then there’s sudden warmth at his side, and his right arm is looped around a set of —oh thank god, familiar— shoulders. Shou, he thinks, with a rush of relief. He hadn’t even really noticed him wander off, hadn’t missed him until he was back.

The physical closeness, that’s not unusual, but the way Shou is looking at him, head pressed back against Ritsu’s shoulder so that he can meet his eyes upside-down, a soft, dopey sort of smile on his face, well that’s– that’s not something he sees every day, and for good reason. They only do this when they need an out, and Ritsu knows an escape rope when he sees one. Shou’s aura embraces him like a safety blanket, but he can feel the defensiveness, the way it prickles at the edges, little hedgehog spines surrounding them protectively.

“Ritsu,” and it’s said pleadingly, softly, like Yamada isn’t standing right there, “Can we choose a bedroom already?” Ritsu lets himself relax, returns Shou’s smile with a small, exasperatedly affectionate one of his own. He slips his arm more snugly around Shou, makes to move towards the hallway leading to the bedrooms, then spares a cursory glance at Yamada, as if she’s an afterthought, rather than the main cause of his little panic. “If we could...?” he says, and it’s not a question, not really.

She nods sharply regardless, looking suitably ruffled, and without further ado Ritsu steers them as quickly as is appropriate into the hallway and into the first bedroom. The tension doesn’t fully slip from his shoulders until the door clicks shut behind them, and he slumps against it with a sigh. Shou follows his movement, and he hears him mutter “creep” half into shoulder.

“Mhm,” he mutters by way of agreement, scrubbing his free hand over his face. He didn’t think he was getting worked up over nothing, but he also couldn’t pinpoint exactly why Yamada made him uncomfortable. It wasn’t– it wasn’t overtly inappropriate, or rude, or flirtatious…

Wait, was it? The saccharine smiles, the too-close-for-comfort tour, the intimate tone of voice, the perfume, the– the flash of sudden recognition in her eyes when Shou had stepped in, the step backwards she’d taken and–

“Jesus, she was coming on to me, wasn’t she?”

There are a few moments of silence as Shou goes rigid against him, and then he collapses into fits of giggles, leaning his weight on Ritsu in earnest now as he muffles his laughter into Ritsu’s shirt.

Ritsu sighs, but as usual, there’s no real heart to it. That Ritsu has a tendency to miss those sorts of specific social cues is a given, and since they were kids, that Shou will help him out of those situations is one too. The one-year gap had stretched between them again, in that respect, and Ritsu reflects that he can certainly take being made fun of a little if it means he gets this again, Shou leaning into him and pulling him away from situations like this, his laugh making the discomfort and panic tight in the back of Ritsu’s throat dissipate like so many butterflies, well. Seems like a fair tradeoff to him.

-

They don’t last too long in that apartment after that. Arguably, Yamada would still rent to them, but Ritsu is feeling strange and shaky around her, too distracted to see the idealized apartment, keeps focusing on the threadbare curtains, the weird smudge on the sofa, the way some of the floorboards sort of bounce under his feet (didn’t his dad once say that meant they had water damage?) and frankly, it’s enough to turn him off the place entirely. Besides, Shou’s clearly made an enemy of the woman, and Ritsu can’t think of a single possible benefit of having a landlord that hates your guts.

On the bus, Shou looks distracted, harried, staring out of the window and not meeting his eyes. He looks exactly how Ritsu feels: I didn’t think it would be this hard.

Frankly, it shouldn’t be as draining as it is; they’ve looked at one place seriously, and one-and-a-quarter bad experiences does not a disaster make. Still, as Ritsu finds with all Adult Responsibilities, he can’t help but feel that it’s disproportionately difficult for what it actually is. He just wants for this day, no, this move to be done with, wants a bed in a new apartment with his best friend for him to collapse into and fall asleep already.

On impulse, he reaches out and grabs Shou’s hand, squeezes it once. “Third time’s the charm?” It’s as much to reassure himself as it is Shou.

Shou, for once in his life, doesn’t have anything to say beyond a quiet hum of agreement that’s almost lost in the constant muted sound of the engine, but the quick squeeze of fingers around his speaks volumes.

-

Whatever powers-that-be have been fucking with them all day have finally decided to let up, apparently.

Their third landlord, Nishigori, is the kind of man who seems to face the world with a genuine and gentle smile. He shows up a little less than ten minutes late to their appointment, and his explanation-cum-apology about his newborn triplets makes sense of the shadows under his eyes, the slightly rumpled effect of his clothes and hair, the fact that the man looks absolutely, utterly exhausted, and is somehow happy about it.

He seems to find Shou’s hyperactivity genuinely amusing, and he answers Ritsu’s questions informally, but honestly.

The apartment itself is smaller than the last one, with a bit more of an awkward layout; the front door leads into a straight hallway with doors on either side, leading to the living room, the bathroom, a couple of cupboards, and the bedrooms. Nishigori tells him which door leads to what, but Ritsu immediately forgets and finds himself lost, so he just follows the him into the living room. Shou, in his usual exploration mode, seems to have opted for trial and error, because he distantly hears two or three doors opening and closing before Shou finally pokes his head into the living room and strolls inside.

“Carpets in the bedrooms,” Shou reports to him, sounding impressed.

Oh, nice. Most of the apartment seems to be like the last one, darkish hardwood interrupted periodically by a rug, or sectioned off like the bathrooms and the kitchen into slate grey tile. A wooden-floored bedroom wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for him, but he’d definitely prefer carpet.

Interestingly enough, while nothing in the apartment is what he thought he’d wanted, it is in its own way shaping up to be ideal. It’s pretty sparsely furnished (IKEA, reads the final bullet point of the list in his back pocket, and won’t that be a shopping trip and a half,) but not enough to make the place feel empty. It seems like the white walls should be clinical, boring even, but as evening turns the sky grey Nishigori wanders around turning on lamps that seem to warm the rooms, make the empty spaces smaller, hell, makes the whole place homey. It doesn’t look like something out of a furniture catalog or a movie, particularly, but it looks soft, comfortable, lived in.

For the third time that day, he and Shou step into another room for a little private conference. For the first time that day, it’s not to shittalk about how completely fucking awful everything is.

They’ve moved into one of the bedrooms, the one with the blue-grey sheets on the bed and little lamps on the bedside table and the dresser, and Ritsu notes the plush of the tan carpet under his feet as he goes to sit on the bed. Shou plops down beside him and leans forward, elbows on his knees and chin in his palms. “I really like this place,” Shou says without preamble.

“Me too,” he replies, equally as frank.

He thinks, thinks, that Shou shares the same worry and hesitation as him: that he likes this place, that he’s ready to decide on this place, but that the feeling isn’t mutual. There’s a heavy silence as Ritsu tries to think of what to say, to test the waters.

“It doesn’t have to be now that we decide. I mean, we’ve still got appointments tomorrow, we could find something better.” He thinks that more reluctance shows through in his tone than he intended.

Shou doesn’t answer right away, instead falling backwards so that he’s half-lying on the bed, feet still grazing the floor. After a few more beats, he says, “Dibs on this bed.”

-

He asks as they’re going over a basic packet of paperwork, the first steps to putting in a security deposit and getting their names down on the lease.

“Mr. Nishigori? Shou and I, we’re…” Hm, how to phrase it, and he decides last minute on a half-truth, “...We’re about to be out of a place to live, honestly. Of course,” and at this he rubs his hand at the back of his neck, reluctant, sheepish, “I know it’s unconventional to let your tenants start living in the apartment before they’ve even signed the lease, but…” Nishigori blinks at him, surprised, and then smiles. “Nonsense! You’re certainly moving in, yes? Might as well make the transition easier and start now.” He claps Ritsu softly on the shoulder, and he has the distant, tired thought of, he’s going to be a good dad.

“If nothing else,” their new landlord jokes, “it’ll make it easier for me to track you down and get you to sign all this damn paperwork.”

-

Ritsu dozes off on top of the blankets of the blue-grey bed at almost one in the morning, pressed thigh to shoulder with Shou, propped up against the pillow monster they’ve made of the headboard. Ritsu’s laptop is balanced somewhat precariously between them, tinnily blaring some shitty B-movie that Shou had drug out of the dredges of his old hard drive for them to laugh at.

He’s not paid much attention, a little too tired to follow the plot, a little too giddy, occasionally just repeating Apartment 401, 37 Amaranth Street, Grain City to himself in his head.

Ritsu dozes off on his first night in his new apartment with his best friend, and the laptop on his leg is too warm but his feet are too cold, and the gelled spikes of Shou’s hair are vaguely tickling his face, and he’s going to have to do everything tomorrow, but beyond the easy, drowsy happiness of we actually fucking did it, he can’t really bring himself to care.

[serenlyss]

Mob Psycho Fic Recs Part 2!

So I keep a running tag on my bookmarks in AO3 with my favorite mp100 fics on it, and now that I have a bunch more it’s time for part 2! Like last time I’ll be including my personal thoughts on them and why I think they’re so good. If you notice your fic on this list and want me to tag your tumblr, let me know!

Effusive Author: Yuu-chi Rating: T Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: Complete Tags: serirei, slice of life, character study, relationship study Summary: In the quiet corners of his mind, Reigen cannot help but be unbearably smug. He thinks of Sakurai’s disapproving expression, and the too-careful way he’d said goodbye to Serizawa at the door. He can just imagine how the other former Claw members are going to react when they find out. Serves you all right, Reigen thinks, fingers tangled in the knot of Serizawa’s tie. None of you seem to really understand him at all. My Notes:  Sakurai warns Reigen not to push Serizawa too hard or manipulate them, but Reigen knows that Serizawa isn’t as childish or dumb as they think he is. It’s very sweet and both Reigen and Serizawa are well-written and in character.

Through Hardships to the Stars Author: BeyondTheClouds777 Rating: T Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: In Progress Tags: no romance, brotherly affection, protective kageyama brothers, canon divergence, hurt/comfort, dad reigen, injury, healing, protective reigen Summary: Shigeo and Ritsu have been on the run for most of their lives, and Claw has never failed to be right behind them. For as long as they can remember, running is all they've ever known. It's all they've ever done. But then, they stumble into the life of Reigen Arataka, and maybe, just maybe, the time has finally come for them to stop running. My Notes: This fic is just... so good. Ritsu and Shigeo protecting each other from harm is simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking, and the writer is so good at creating both tension and moments of levity that let you rest for a bit. Reigen is fantastic in this fic so far despite only being in a few chapters so far, but he’s already proving to be one of the best parts of the fic.

Ostensible Author: CScarlet Rating: T Archive Warnings: Major Character Death Completion Status: Complete Tags: ritshou, character death (or is it?), blood, swearing, panic attacks, angst, psychic violence, corpses Summary: Shou is already searching for Ritsu’s hand with his own. He moves slowly, arm raising in a sluggish arc, like a newborn kitten, blind and unable to control its gait. His complete trust is written all over that poor motion, and Suzuki’s overly sure that Ritsu is going to take his hand. But the thing is, Ritsu can’t. My Notes: This fic threw me for such an emotional loop. It’s extremely well-written and ominous, with a very distinctive and mysterious feel to it. The whole thing is super atmospheric and has maybe one of the most jarring and impactful twists/realizations I’ve ever seen in fanfiction, and once I realized it it made me grin like a madwoman despite the dark atmosphere and content. One of my all-time favorite mp100 fics.

Milk Doesn’t Taste the Same Anymore, Does it? Author: Nyomio Rating: T Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: Complete Tags: fluff and angst, happy ending, post-mogami arc, fallout & recovery, transitioning back to normal, swearing Summary: Ritsu knows something is wrong. He feels it before he can even see it. Reigen knows something is wrong without even needing psychic powers. It's all in the body language. Teru doesn't know what's wrong, but he can feel it in the air and in the motions his friend makes. Dimple knew something would be wrong as soon as they left Mogami's hellish world - the question was just how bad it would be. None of them know how to solve it, but they sure as hell were going to find out. After all, if something was bothering Mob - their student, brother, best friend, partner - well, it was bothering them, too. They were going to help. After all, Mob had helped all of them just so much - and Mob was going to learn to accept help back. After all, what goes around comes around, and Mob was overdue for some help of his own. My Notes: This is a really sweet recovery fic focusing on Mob’s trauma post-mogami arc and how it affects him in the days and weeks afterward. It’s overall fairly light-hearted despite the subject matter and has a heavy focus on how much Mob’s friends/family care about him, which is always nice to read.

Permanency Author: Aerugonian Rating: T Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: In Progress Tags: serirei, canon divergence, dad reigen, reigen as teru’s dad, canon divergence, referenced child abuse/neglect, found family, swearing, slow burn Summary: Reigen never planned on having kids. His relationships have always been short and shallow, he doesn't really care for the idea of marriage (except for the tax breaks), and that's without even considering his lack of interest in women. Reigen can barely take care of himself half the time. The point is, he’d make a terrible parent. Letting Teruki stay on his spare futon after the kid’s apartment was destroyed during the Claw attack was an impulse decision. Reigen never had any illusions that he was a good guy, but he wasn’t such an asshole that he’d let a fourteen-year-old stay on the streets alone. They'd find Teru's parents any day now, and everything would go back to normal. Teru's lack of concern over their whereabouts was weird, but surely no parent in their right mind would ever leave their kid on his own without even a phone call to let him know they were alive. Right? My Notes: If you’re a fan of dad Reigen or Teru as Reigen’s adopted son/ward, this is the fic for you. It’s cute, tender, sweet and just a little heartbreaking, focusing on Teru’s estrangement from his parents and the way Reigen becomes privy to that information after the world domination arc. I really love the way Reigen is written in this fic as a guy who really isn’t cut out to be a father but finds himself unable to say no when Teru needs his help, I think it’s very in character and makes for a really fun and interesting dynamic between them.

Five Second Rule Author: SpiritusRex Rating: G Archive Warnings: Unspecified (no alarming content) Completion Status: Complete Tags: angst, family, time travel, bad decisions, hurt/comfort, brotherly bonds Summary: Ritsu discovers something new about his powers. And then he takes it too far. My Notes: Another fic that quickly shot to the top of my favorites list as early at the first chapter. Despite having short chapters and a relatively simple premise, every chapter has a lot of emotional weight and relevance, packing its own punch despite the low word count. Ritsu having time manipulation abilities wasn’t something I knew I needed until I came across this fic, but it’s such a cool and fun idea that I instantly fell in love with. The author’s writing has a very distinctive and engaging tone and makes great use of the short chapters to pack as much as they can into each installment and it lands pretty much every time. I was so impressed every chapter how they managed to work the time travel concept into so many parts of the story in so many unique ways, definitely a must-read for any fandom member!

tea leaf bandages Author: shcherbatskayas Rating: T Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: Complete Tags: no romances, ageswap au, post-mogami arc, mental health issues, panic attacks, PTSD, hurt/comfort Summary: Kageyama Shigeo knows that he isn't the most observant person in the world, but he knows when something is wrong with his students. And so he knows that ever since the Mogami job, Reigen just hasn't been right. (If only he knew exactly what was wrong.) My Notes: An ageswap AU ficlet where Reigen gets possessed and manipulated by Mogami instead of Mob. It focuses on the fallout and Shigeo attempting to comfort Reigen as a student without prying too deeply. It’s very sweet and sad but does have a happy ending.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words Author: Hino Rating: T Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: Complete Tags: post-mogami arc, mute mob, PTSD, dad reigen, sign language  Summary: Six Months trapped in that world didn't just go away the moment Mob opened his eyes. He tried to speak and found himself unable. But Reigen, he always knows how to talk to someone. My Notes: This fic is so nice. In the wake of the Mogami arc Mob becomes mute due to his PTSD from the events, so Reigen teaches him sign language to help him communicate better. It’s really sweet to see Reigen patiently teaching Mob (and Dimple trying his hardest to learn too, bless him), and Mob being just really excited to learn and have another way of communicated that doesn’t require him to speak. It’s well-written and heartwarming.

Leftovers Author: SpiritusRex Rating: G Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: In Progress Tags: time travel, 5+1, brotherly bonding Summary: Ritsu knows now how his power works.But he thinks that, with his brother's help, he can push it further than before, and maybe even do something meaningful with it. (Five times Ritsu and Shigeo use Ritsu's time travel to comfort someone, and one time it's used to comfort Ritsu himself) My Notes: The sequel to Five Second Rule, which is also on this list. It’s only a few chapters in atm but I’m super excited to see where it goes! There’s sure to be plenty of time travel hijinks in this one as well, plus Ritsu and Mob’s sibling relationship is very good.

When there’s nothing but the long way ‘round Author: taizi Rating: T Archive Warnings: None Completion Status: Complete Tags: terumob, slow burn, found family, dad reigen, lots of fluff, getting together Summary: If it were anyone else, his tone would have been teasing, and the thoughtful lift of his brow would have been playful, and the tilt to his mouth would have leaned closer to a warm smile. As it is, only bits and pieces make it through Kageyama’s careful repression, shining like irrepressible dawn through tiny cracks in a window shade, and Teruki blinks rapidly, something like sunspots dancing across his eyes. My Notes: An oldie but a goodie! It’s a series of loosely connected terumob shorts for the mp100 valentine’s day event back in 2017, and maybe the cutest terumob fic I’ve read so far. It’s ridiculously sweet and fluffy, told from Teru’s perspective, and it made me cry with how just soft and nice it was to read it. It’s a quick but really worthwhile read if you just want to feel good.

[avecorviidae]

Fic: Aubade - Chapter Five

Fandom: Mob Psycho 100 Rating: M Relationship(s): Kageyama Ritsu/Suzuki Shou Word Count: 4703

Ao3 Link

There were six trains leaving Seasoning Station on the day they set off: two in the morning, and four in the afternoon.

Ritsu had immediately and vehemently vetoed the 6 AM train, whereas Shou had objected to taking another night train, on the grounds that he couldn’t sleep on trains at all, and he needed Ritsu awake to keep him company, so that had ruled out the two trains leaving after 6 PM. They’d both been kind of iffy about the early-afternoonish trains, knowing they were the most likely to have families and tourists and the like.

So, their little group had ended up huddled together on the platform, waiting sleepily for the 9 AM train to pull in.

Ritsu’s parents had said their goodbyes the night before at the house, so it’s just Mob, Teru, and Reigen who’ve shown up to send them off at the station. As usual, their group is receiving some odd looks from the sparse groups of people scattered around the station, although every employee they’ve met has recognized Reigen and Mob on sight.

Shou is, Ritsu thinks, not actually awake. Oh, sure, he’s standing, and he’d showered and gotten dressed and dragged luggage behind him on the walk, but he hasn’t actually formed a coherent sentence yet, and he’s been leaning on Ritsu more and more heavily for about the past five minutes. He has no less than three times flipped off Teru, who actually had the nerve to jog ahead of them to the station, is wearing neon pink running shorts, and is drinking something that looks like shit and smells like the ghost of bananas past.

Reigen, for what feels like the thousandth time, starts to drill Ritsu. “You have your phone? Your wallet?” “Yes, of course.” “Your chargers?” “Yeah, we-- wait.” It’s always worth double-checking the chargers. He leans down and partially unzips one of the pockets of the suitcase at his feet, and finding a horrifically tangled ball of two phone chargers and two laptop chargers exactly where they’d been when he’d last checked three minutes ago, nods. “Got the chargers.” Reigen still looks dissatisfied. Between his supply checks and Mob’s constant drifting back and forth from where the train schedule is posted, Ritsu thinks that the two of them are going to worrywart each other into a full blown panic. “Do you have your passport?” Ritsu blinks in confusion. “My passpo– Dad, we’re not fleeing the country!”

“Not yet!” Reigen replies, waving his arms frantically as if this is a legitimate possibility that Ritsu should’ve prepared for. He snorts and doesn’t reply, instead opting to mull over what’s more likely to get someone from his family deported from the country: Reigen’s scam business, or Teru’s fashion choices. While, sure, aspects of Reigen’s business are technically illegal, Teru’s outfits are simply in bad taste.

They hear the train before they see it, a distant chugging that breaks through the annoying bird noises and the vague chatter of the other people at the station. Around them, Ritsu sees most of the other people waiting on the platform straighten up, readjust their backpacks and jackets, start shifting around in anticipation. Surprisingly, Shou’s the same, pulling himself away from Ritsu’s side and blinking around them, looking fully awake for the first time that morning. Ritsu pushes down the handle on his little wheely case and hefts it onto his back, reaching out to take the larger suitcase from Mob. He’s not sure how he ended up carrying the most stuff, considering that out of the three bags they’ve brought, most of the stuff inside of them belongs to Shou. While Ritsu had only grabbed the bare necessities and a few jackets and shirts from his room, packing up Shou’s belongings had been a goddamn ordeal, including doing three loads of laundry from his already packed suitcase, and a two-hour long argument about whether or not it was appropriate to bring an entire desk lamp on a new move.

(“It’s my oldest friend!” Shou had argued, trying to wrestle it from Ritsu’s hands. “Six years I have known you, Suzuki, and never once has there been a working bulb in this lamp.”) Ritsu is eternally grateful that he doesn’t have a family that sobs as they send him off somewhere. The sadness he’s feeling is familiar, a pre-emptive homesickness that sinks into his stomach, makes him want to look around and take everything in so that he’ll remember the exact details of Seasoning City forever, makes him want to call the whole thing off and just stay home. Mob is smiling though, just a little, when he pulls him in for a hug, and all he feels from the aura that envelops him is warmth. “Be safe,” he murmurs into Ritsu’s shoulder. “Text me when you get there.” He receives quick but back-breaking hugs from Teru and Reigen that leave him gasping for air, but he finds that Shou got the short end of the Farewell Stick, because he looks over to see Mob giving him a hug that has him flailing with his feet a good few inches off the ground.

Reigen ushers them onto the train before they can be idiots and miss it, and Shou half climbs over Ritsu in the seats to wave out of the windows as the train starts to move. A quick jolt sends Shou sprawling, and it’s only bracing himself between the table and Ritsu’s shoulder that stops him from whacking his head on the window. Ritsu’s laughing even as he pushes Shou out of his lap, trying to get him to sit in his own goddamn seat for, oh, two minutes? Admittedly, there’s been an odd feeling of dread tinging his excitement, keeping him subdued over the past few days as they planned. It was the lingering worry that even though their plans, their situation, was becoming more and more concrete, that it wouldn’t actually happen. That some intangible, nonexistent problem would suddenly pop up and stop everything. He feels it settle, dissipate. He watches Shou move into the seats on the other side of the table, settling with his back against the window and his legs stretched out in front of him, and thinks, We’re actually doing this. It sounds almost stupidly awed to his own mind, and it’s threatening to put a giddy sort of smile on his face, and he manages to tamp down on it only because he knows that if Shou notices, he’ll ask about it, which will eventually lead to Ritsu being forced to admit that he’s feeling things, which, well, no.

Shou, for his part, manages to stay quiet and relatively still for all of three minutes before he starts fidgeting. He pulls out his phone, but seems to think better of it, because he puts it down in favour of looking over at Ritsu. “Can I borrow your phone?” On autopilot, he reaches into his pocket to hand it over, but stops himself. “Why…?” He asks, squinting, knowing he probably doesn’t want to know the answer. Shou leans over the table, making grabby hands at the phone, pouting when Ritsu moves his hand so that it’s just out of his reach. “Please? It’ll be funnier if I do it on yours!” On one hand, Shou’s desperation is kind of hilarious, and Ritsu isn’t sure he wants to know exactly what he’s planning. On the other hand, he’s got another ten hours on this train, and if he doesn’t give in now, Shou will literally carry on at him the entire time until he does. With a resigned sigh, he hands his phone over, and then groans when Shou immediately points it at him, obviously taking pictures. Instinctively, he flips Shou off, sending him a death glare, before looking at the camera and throwing up a peace sign with dead eyes. He relaxes when Shou finally puts the phone down and starts tapping away at the screen, and contents himself with staring out the window until Shou breaks the silence. “What the fuck is a Shigeo?” He asks, incredulous. Ritsu reaches out to try and snatch the phone back from Shou. “It’s my brother, you fuck, what are you sending to him?” Shou holds the phone out of his reach, contorting himself so that he can keep typing with it held above his head. Finally, he finishes and hands it back to Ritsu with a self-satisfied grin. Like the cat that got the cream, he thinks, and then two moments later, Oh god, what did he do. He taps in his passcode and finds his messaging app already open. TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) [Picture Attached] [Picture Attached] we r. on the fuckin train.

FROM: DAD Language.

FROM: SHIGEO Be safe!!! <33

FROM: TERUKI Don’t look up anything inappropriate on his phone or he might kill you ;p

TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) wow r00d TO: SHIGEO, TERUKI, DAD, YOUR FAVOURITE ;) I have my phone back. ignore him entirely.

FROM: YOUR FAVOURITE ;) WOW R00D

-

Shou, when he’s jetlagged at least, is a little like a windup toy.

He’ll run around at the speed of sound for a while, and talk your ear off given half the chance, but after a while he starts to grow noticeably… slower. Of course, he’ll protest the fact, still make a decent imitation of a hyperactive kitten, but all in all, it grows more sluggish until finally, inevitably, he keels over.

On the train? He doesn’t even last an hour. It’s easy to get drawn into a conversation with Shou, even easier to let him jump from topic to topic as something new strikes his fancy, and so Ritsu learns about Shou’s year overseas in a patchwork of unrelated information, one minute hearing about the godawful coffee served by this one particular Korean hotel, and the next about some strange western kids’ cartoon he’d seen at some ungodly hour of the morning. It’s always a fun little game with this, trying to piece together the snippets of information like puzzle pieces, except he’s working with about three different puzzles, and he can’t find any edge pieces. In this state, waving his arms around wildly to emphasize his points and cutting himself off every other sentence, Ritsu thinks it’s basically impossible to get a coherent story out of Shou. The probability goes even further down when Shou pauses mid-sentence to yawn. Ritsu finds himself yawning in response, but he manages to ask around it, “You tired?” Shou snorts. “Pff, nah. I’m great. I slept for like, seven hours yesterday.” Now, Ritsu, because he actually wanted to be awake in time to, oh, catch the train, had gone to bed at a half-decent time the previous night. He had, however, woken up for the bathroom at some point, and he knows for a fact that Shou is rather generously rounding up from not much more than three. While Shou looks awake, it’s a bad sort of awake, an ‘I really should be sleeping now oh god’ sort of awake, an ‘I am awake out of sheer determination not to be asleep’ sort of awake, the type of slow-blinking, faux-happy sort of awake that Ritsu forces after he’s just pulled an all-nighter for an essay. God, at least he’s usually had coffee or cereal or something. Shou, with a bad tendency to get nauseous in the mornings, hadn’t so much as been able to touch the water Ritsu had offered, let alone the leftover smoothie Teru had tried to shove in his face.

He tugs a jacket out of his bag and hands it over wordlessly. Shou eyes it for a moment, like a deer liable to be spooked, before reaching out and snatching it from him. There are a few moments of adjustments before he settles, arms folded on the table and the hoodie bundled on top of it as a pillow. Ritsu sees him blink heavily for a little before his eyes fall closed, and then he’s out like a light. He’s vaguely disturbed by how quickly Shou manages to fall asleep, especially in a weird position like that. Sure, he’d managed it back in high school, when his only options for quick naps had been to rest his head on the desk or risk it falling out of his cupped hands when he nodded off. Still, it had always left him stiff and vaguely sick, his stomach protesting being bent over in the single laziest yoga position in existence for any length of time. So, he doesn’t really understand why it’s Shou’s first choice, when there’s a perfectly good window right there. For his part, Ritsu isn’t quite drowsy enough to sleep, so he messes around on his phone for a while, switching from app to app until it buzzes with an email. FROM: gcuhousing@gcustaff.org TO: r-kageyama@gcustudent.org

Mr. Kageyama,

This email is to inform you that we have received your notification of residence change.

You will be required to vacate your dormitory at least one (1) week prior to the beginning of the new academic year, on June 30th. You must notify the University’s department of Student Housing within three (3) days of your vacating your dormitory. The department of Student Housing can be reached at +81-429-884915 .

Ritsu leans back and pulls one knee to his chest, sighing.

This was what it came down to, really, actually finding a place to live. Somewhere within walking distance of the university, with four walls, a roof, and a floor, two bedrooms, working plumbing, and included appliances. It seemed impossible. This, he had thought, this is where it will all come crashing down. And yet. They’d spent most of yesterday looking at online listings, emailing and calling landlords, setting up viewings. The less time spent in Ritsu’s dorm, the better, after all. They’d actually had to narrow down their choices, from ten to seven to about four or five places that they both agreed looked promising. He decides he might as well get something productive done while he’s here, and starts to tap out an email. FROM: kageyamaritsu@hotmail.com TO: nishigori-k77@yahoo.com

Mr. Nishigori, My name is Kageyama Ritsu; we spoke a few days ago on the phone, about a possible tour of your apartment on Amaranth Street. My friend and I will be in town later tonight, and were hoping to set up a time as soon as possible. We would greatly appreciate if you could give us a set of times that work for your schedule over the next couple of days. Thank you for your time,

Kageyama Ritsu +81-9064625949

He sends a couple more emails along those lines, even gets a couple of replies, before it suddenly hits him again, this light, giddy feeling, like his heart is filled with helium and it’s trying to float into his throat. We’re actually doing this, he thinks, and stifles a vaguely hysterical giggle.

On instinct, he gives a cursory sweep of the train to make sure that nobody actually noticed the weirdo laughing to himself. Thankfully, the only other people in the compartment with them are a small family that seem to be occupying themselves with some travel game, the kind of “what can you see out of the window” tactic that his parents employed on him and Mob when they were kids in the car, and then a few more people scattered around in individual seats, either occupied by their own phones or fast asleep.

He’d shrugged on a thin hoodie this morning, to face the early morning chill as they walked to the station, but now that the sun has properly risen he finds himself uncomfortably warm and vaguely sweaty. He pulls it off, leaving it bunched at his back, and notes with absent interest that they’re driving through a forest of some sort. For the most part, the sun only manages to break through the foliage in bits and pieces, painting the compartment in shadowed, dappled greens. Occasionally though, there’ll be a gap in the trees allowing the sun to hit him. Right in the eyes. Inevitably, they chug past the forest, and Ritsu is left completely defenseless against the ball of burning hellfire in the sky. He tries holding his hand in the exact position needed to block it out, but, well, his arm gets tired pretty quickly. He tries draping his hoodie over his head, but the cavern of black fabric gets too hot to breathe in pretty quickly, and Ritsu has little-to-no interest in becoming a baked potato. He’s pretty sure this is a decent argument as to why they should’ve taken the night train, but whatever, he can’t really be bothered to wake Shou up to make a point.

Heaving a greatly put-upon sigh, he stands, steadying himself on the table. He grabs Shou’s backpack from the spare seat and chucks it unceremoniously across to where he was just sitting, and plops down beside Shou. Now that the sun isn’t making a concerted effort at blinding him, he can see the light glinting off of Shou’s hair, lighting it up like some sort of precious metal. There are a lot of dust motes floating around his head.

-

Shou only wakes up once in the next six or so hours, and then only briefly. By the three and a half hour mark, Ritsu has done everything he can think of to keep himself occupied, including looking for shapes in the clouds, doing terrible little stick figure doodles in his notebook, doing what little he can without wifi on his laptop (about fifty seven games of solitare, not that he’s keeping track,) and a short-lived and incredibly uncomfortable nap. He feels like he should be able to sleep, given the easy, lazy warmth of the train, given how easily Shou has been able to slip into it, the soft lines of his shoulders in his white shirt rising and falling as he breathes, blending seamlessly with the almost ethereal summer light.

He’d managed to entertain himself with his phone, for a little while, but once it had hit less than half battery he’d decided to turn it off and definitely not think about it at all, in case he needed to use it for something actually important.

So, he half jumps out of his skin when it starts vibrating like mad in his back pocket. He fumbles with it until he can see that Matsuo is calling him.

“Hey! Kageyama! My bro! Rumor around here is that you’re ditching us, bro!” Ritsu forces himself to bite back ‘I’m not your bro, bro,’ instead deciding on a polite, “Hello, Matsuo. Yes, I’m moving out.” “Ha, dude, nice! Did you score with some chick? Are you actually moving in with your girl? You always seemed like a player, bro!” Ritsu squints. How in the fuck would I strike anyone as a player? A movement to his left draws his attention, and he looks over to see Shou stirring, propping himself up on one elbow to blink blearily at Ritsu. There are red lines in the pattern of the hoodie fabric all over his cheek, and Ritsu has to hold back a laugh at the knockoff Two-Face vibes. He waves dismissively at Shou’s questioning look, a sort of ‘tell you in a minute’ kind of gesture that he hopes Shou understands. “Yeah, about that,” he starts, unsure how to breach the topic. “I’m actually moving in with a friend of mine, but he just got back from overseas, so neither of us actually have a place yet. Is it cool if he sleeps on the couch for the next couple of days, until we’re good?”

“Ha, I can do you one better, bro! Daichi’s still chillin’ with his girlfriend until the end of break, so your dude can just crash in his bed instead!” A pause, and then, “...Yo, Kageyama, is this buddy of yours the one that drank five Red Bulls when you were skyping him, like, to prove that he could?” Ritsu sighs. Naturally, Matsuo has his priorities straight. “Yes. Yes it is.” “Tell him I said hi, yo. He’s hardcore.” A hardcore dumbass, Ritsu thinks, but what manages to come out of his mouth is, “Will do. Thanks, Matsuo.” “Anytime, bro!” As soon as he hangs up he turns to Shou, who’s back at it with the questioning eyes in full force. He’s not quite upright anymore, having slipped downwards so that his head is half-pillowed between the crook of his elbow and the hoodie. Ritsu shakes his head, summarizing. “Just my roommate. He wanted to know if I was actually leaving. Also, Daichi’s gone, so you can take his bed until we get a place.” Shou nods, which is an action really more to the effect of rubbing his face against the jacket, but Ritsu gets the general idea.

“Daichi’s the one you sleep with, right?” He murmurs. “Again, phrasing, but yeah, he’s in my room. I emailed a few of the landlords for the places we were looking at, so hopefully we can decide within a couple days what we’re–” He interrupts himself, in favour of asking the real questions. “Are you… alright? Shou has buried his face entirely in the hoodie. Ritsu isn’t sure exactly how he can be breathing. After a few moments of complete silence, Shou turns his head back to face him. “Not to be creepy, but this jacket smells like your house. It’s. It’s good.”

Ritsu blinks, raises one eyebrow. He feels like he maybe should find that creepy, but it’s not the weirdest thing Shou has ever said to him, and in this state, delirious and actually nuzzling his jacket, it’s almost… is cute the right word for it? Flattering, maybe. Endearing. Something like that, some word he can’t name for the fond exasperation colouring his smile and his voice as he says, “Oh? And what does my house smell like?” “Hmmmmmmmmmn.” Shou makes a long noise of consideration, burrowing his nose into the fabric again. “Smells like you.”

He’s asleep again before Ritsu can even try to think of a response to that one.

-

He’d had to physically drag Shou away from Matsuo, who had a six pack of some godawful energy drink and some very, very bad ideas which were right up Shou’s avenue.

It feels oddly intimate, having Shou sitting across from him in a pair of faded Sonic boxer shorts on his tiny, creaky bed in his tiny, creaky dorm room. He’s cross-legged, coveting a pile of snacks he’d pillaged from the communal pantry in his lap, but he doesn’t complain when Ritsu snatches a chip from his hand every now and again. Ritsu’s been trying to keep them on-topic, but it’s difficult, when Shou’s been wound up again, and he’s bouncing off the walls. He chews thoughtfully for a moment, then asks, “Do you guys have any soda?” Ritsu sighs. “The last thing you need is more sugar.”

At that, Shou perks up, and then he’s gone, bouncing off of the bed and running to the other side of the room with a force that Ritsu thinks must’ve woken up everyone in the next three floors below them. Somehow, his pile of snacks is still on the bed, looking relatively undisturbed. He rummages around in the pockets of his backpack, dumped on top of his suitcase at the foot of Daichi’s bed, until he eventually comes up with– “Shou, no.”

Shou jumps back onto the bed, and this time, a granola bar goes flying. Shou doesn’t seem to notice, because all of his attention is on the bag of melted chocolate and broken dreams that used to be his mother’s cookies. “No, nonononono no,” Ritsu says as Shou starts to open the bag, and leans back so that he can dig his heels into Shou’s back and forcefully push him to the floor. Shou goes willingly, rolling onto his back with the cookies curled close to his chest, and giggling like a maniac. It makes him laugh in return, despite himself. “No. You eat that on Daichi’s bed, you little shit, or you get nothing.”

Shou already somehow covered in melted chocolate, scurries over to Daichi’s bed and hops on with an evil sort of grin that almost makes Ritsu feel sorry for Daichi, the poor ass. Ritsu dumps the rest of the snacks onto the floor and stretches out on his newly free bed.

“As I was saying,” he begins, as if it hadn’t been twenty minutes since he’d last been derailed, “We’re looking at three apartments tomorrow, so we’ll need to leave here kind of early. I know a place we can get lunch. Most of the ones we’re looking at are pretty much fully furnished, so if we do decide on a place tomorrow, we might be able to talk the landlord into letting us sleep there tomorrow night. Especially if we can wave some money around, or whatever. If we can’t…” he sighs. “I can’t say I want to spend much more time here, but it won’t be the end of the world.” He turns his head to look at Shou. “Sound alright?” The look on Shou’s face is something Ritsu doesn’t get to see much out of him: awe. He’s staring, wide eyed and blank for a few beats before he seems to shake himself. “Yeah,” he says, firmly, and then, “Yeah, that’s…” this time, much less so. The silence hangs in the air, pensive and waiting to be filled, so Ritsu waits. Eventually, Shou rolls onto his back, staring resolutely at the ceiling. He starts. ���You’re so… on top of this.” Ritsu bites back his immediate retort of ‘well, one of us has to be.’ It’s a joke, but from the vulnerable, almost reticent tone of Shou’s voice, he has the feeling it might hit a little too close to home. At a lack of response, Shou keeps going. “I guess I thought… I, I don’t know what I thought! I didn’t think I’d get this far, I didn’t think you’d agree to this in the first place! It was just some… some dumb idea I had that seemed fun in my head and you’re…” he waves his hands around in some gesture that could mean anything, that sends panic deep into Ritsu’s mind, because he’s sure that Shou is about to finish that sentence with “You’re actually taking this seriously.” What he says instead, is “...You’re actually making this work!” And then he puts voice to what Ritsu’s been thinking for almost a week now, spoken softly, like if one of them finally says it aloud, then, then is when it becomes real. “We’re really doing this.”

Ritsu breathes, “Yeah, we are.” It’s a stupid worry, really, but he can’t help but pray that this isn’t the moment Shou decides he regrets it.

“Thank you,” he says, and it’s almost painfully earnest. “I seriously don’t know how any of this stuff works, and I was just sort of going to, I don’t know, wing it? When I thought I was doing this on my own. But you’re just sort of… doing it. We’re actually looking at apartments tomorrow. And I’m…” And this time, Ritsu can’t resist the jab. “Lying on my roommate’s bed covered in chocolate?” Luckily, neither can Shou. “At least I’ll always bring the sex appeal to our duo,” he says, glancing quickly over at him with a barely veiled grin. “Hm. Debatable.” “Hey!” Ritsu makes himself turn towards Shou, after a while, propping himself up on his elbow. “It’s fine, you know. That you’re not really doing the organizing stuff.” Before he can tell himself not to, he more or less blurts, “I wouldn’t want to do it half as much if it were anyone other than you.” Shou hasn’t moved, hasn’t looked away from the ceiling above him, and Ritsu doesn’t think Shou knows he’s watching him, because the smile that spreads across his face, slowly, and then like a flashbang, like a grenade, God, it could’ve outshone the sun. Shou laughs, a small, shaky thing. “Well, someone has to provide the comic relief.”