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a decade gone up in smoke

Summary:

Reigen started smoking somewhere around his sixteenth birthday and hasn't exactly stopped since. Sure he's taken a break or two, but never long enough for it to mean anything.

It saddens his family and it saddens him too, but quitting a bad habit after sticking to it for so long is awfully hard; he would know, he has collected a lot of those throughout the years.

Notes:

hiiii this is a sort of character study i think. i don't know how to summarize everything that's going on so your safest bet is to rely on the tags for this one,,,,im sorry

please be mindful of the warnings ! that said there really is nothing graphic except for like one(1) evil spirit/manifestation thing at some point. this is reigen being #patheticcore for over 20k words

that said i hope you enjoy :)

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1

Notes:

starting smoothly with a little introduction to the shitshow that is reigen's thought process

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Reigen thinks the reason he is incapable of throwing his cigarettes away is that as a soon-to-be thirty year old man, he has no hobbies other than smoking. It’s true; at this point in life he often finds himself at a loss for things to do that aren’t connected to his work and the people occasionally gracing him with their presence. In his free time, he doesn’t have friends to publicly ‘hang out’ with who do not make him look like a sexual predator, nor does he have a healthy coping mechanism to escape his daily routine.

 

To be fair he has tried. No: he is trying, thank you very much. There is half a journal lying around somewhere in his bedsheets, the carcass of a canvas depicting a clumsily sketched dog with only her golden accents painted in mocks him on his windowsill, his only-used-once tennis racket stays stilted against the wall next to the TV, and so on so forth. Reigen has shaky fingers and a wandering mind and lungs that make him feel twenty years older than he is, and his hair is starting to revert to a deep natural black at its roots. He pays for his overpriced nicotine and bleach and hopes the smell of the latter covers the stink of the former.

 

It isn’t because he doesn’t smoke when his coworkers are around that he doesn’t smoke at all–in fact he fears some of them are very much aware of his pass-time. Most of the kids scrunch their noses when they stand too close to him for too long (Mob being the only exception, maybe because he is incapable of such a crude emotion or maybe because he is used to it), and for all the badmouthing they do about him he tries to keep the window behind his desk ajar as much as possible to make the wind air his soiled suits. He pertinently knows it is a lost cause, but it makes him feel better.

 

Somewhere along the ride he remembers his mother throwing heaps of freshly cleaned clothes at his feet, all rumpled and unironed, crying and yelling about how they were ruined forever. She forced an expensive dress shirt he only wore on special occasions in his face and screamed at him to smell it. ‘It’s all ruined, it’s all ruined, what will you do ?! I cannot clean them anymore, you’re too dirty for them!’

 

She was right, of course. If she entered his flat now she would probably have an asthma attack and die. The image makes him incredibly upset despite popular belief (read: his mother’s) that he wished nothing but ill upon his family. For the sake of debate, Reigen will even admit he misses the sister and brother-in-law who cut him out of their happy family life as soon as they got pregnant. The girl who had always watched over him from afar finally admitted she thought he would give second-hand smoke to her and poison the baby in her womb among other nasty words. 

 

Through his mother, he knows that the baby is healthy and her eyes are like his but she never sent any pictures. In his dreams she is a miniature version of her sister, with twin tails because every little girl should have those, and she is coughing up blood on the teddy bear Reigen had planned on offering her on her birth. Said teddy is also lost among the pile of things he needs to get out of his apartment someday. 

 

 

Of all people, it’s Serizawa who digs the plush out from beneath the couch while Reigen reheats leftovers for the both of them. When he comes back from the kitchenette his employee slash pseudo-friend is dusting off the small pink thing, his fingers digging around the fur to uncover its beady eyes.

 

“What does it smell like ?” Reigen asks before the other can say anything. Serizawa’s pupils seem to dilate, flying from the open tupperware to the bear and then up to meet his employer’s. His thick eyebrows are furrowed, and if he were so adventurous Reigen would dare to pretend his eyes are watering up. 

 

“Who is it for ?”

 

Reigen takes the plush from his hands and shoves it with a little more force than needed under the couch again, and the conversation ends. If he isn’t mistaken, little Emiko turns eight this year, and a sparkly pink bear might be too childish for her. Not that he would give anything this poisonous to her. He forgets the faux-pas barely a few days later, and replaces the unpleasant memory with Serizawa’s bright smile as he wins his first prize at a claw machine. 

 

 

Serizawa is many things, but he is above all Reigen’s first age appropriate friend (Dimple doesn’t count: he is neither alive nor a friend). Calling him a friend is allowed, he thinks, since the man spends many nights on his couch when he stays at the office for too long studying and forgets to take the last train back to his own home. Reigen lives closer, and never has the heart to tell him how late it is, so he quietly invests in a bigger and more comfortable couch and moves the offensive toy under his own bed instead. If Serizawa notices, he doesn’t speak of it.

 

Sometimes Reigen thinks Serizawa will tell him to stop smoking. Say something along the lines of how bad his flat stinks, how it’s impossible to focus on anything else, how it pisses him off that Reigen takes some smoke breaks when it’s only the two of them in the office, how it’s driving him away–but he never does. For some reason he waits for the ESPer to spill and maybe even explode, because he is pretty sure if any of his relatives had a fraction of his powers they would have killed him dozens of times already.

 

It isn’t that Serizawa doesn’t speak to him; he just seems blind to his biggest flaws. He even comes to sit on the balcony with him when he smokes, looking out to the city waking up, and mentions things like his newest homework or the strange hair clips Tome wore the day before. Reigen motions to put the cigarette out the first time he is caught but Serizawa shakes his head like it’s nothing. He hands him a mint when the cherry burns out, though.

 

So yes, Reigen thinks he can’t stop smoking because he just can’t. Despite being a world-class liar and the greatest bullshitter of the 21st century, this is the one thing about himself he just cannot find the will to defend. No Dimple, the pink tie isn’t ugly–it’s a fashion statement ! No Ritsu, the website isn’t ‘fishy’–people click on it all the time don’t they ? No Serizawa, I do not see you as more than a friend–we are both men ! No mom, I haven’t found a spouse–I–

 

Maybe the reason he likes to eat heavily spiced food is because it numbs out the ashy texture of his tongue.

 

 

Reigen expects Serizawa to ask about the bear again, because at this point he has seen it several times. Reigen stashes many things under his bed, so it is only natural the toy gets swiped out when he doesn’t pay attention. What he doesn’t expect however is Tome burst into the Spirits and Such Office one bland Thursday evening after class, the newest abomination she calls a hair clip bob up and down in her hair when she throws herself onto his desk.

 

“You have a sister !?” she screeches, only backing off when the smell hits her. Reigen is too appalled to open the window. He forgot to do it today.

 

“Huh ?”

 

Behind him, the window’s lock pops open and wind blows in, a shaky purple cloud disappearing in the corner of his vision. Serizawa has stopped writing. Tome bangs both her fists on Reigen’s desk, making the potted plant next to Serizawa’s chair bounce in surprise.

 

“We have this new replacement teacher–” she babbles on, punctuating every word by showing Reigen a different angle of her face, “and her name’s Reigen-sensei, and she looks just like you ! Her hair is black though, no way, do you bleach yours ?! Why didn’t I know you had a sister ??”

 

Reigen raises a finger, then lowers it. He isn’t proud to admit it takes him a long time to get his wits in order but to be fair, Tome doesn’t help by loudly ‘huh’-ing him in disbelief. Even if he wanted to answer, which he most certainly does not, she isn’t letting him and he rolls his eyes to pretend she didn’t just flip his entire world like a pancake and stick it on the ceiling.

 

Dutifully, Serizawa’s purple aura shoves a cereal bar with its wrapper still on into Tome’s mouth and effectively shuts her up for approximately two seconds before she starts violently gagging and coughing around it. This should have made Reigen laugh and maybe even thank his coworker but all he can hear is a young girl coughing–he vaguely registers what feels like nausea.

 

He answers when Tome is done with her comedic act and is unwrapping her undeserved snack. “I thought she changed her name when she got married.”

 

“Yeah well she’s divorced now.” his secretary bites back through a mouthful of food. “She’s the kinda teacher to overshare. Like you. Or so I thought !”

 

“Huh.” Reigen muses before she has the time to launch into some rant about how little he actually shares about himself beyond his non-existent psychic abilities, and a tiny voice in the back of his brain says ‘eight years old’. He shrugs it off, because it’s none of his business. It’s a wonder his mother didn’t mention any of this in her incessant e-mails.

 

Without thinking about it he directs his eyes towards Serizawa, who is happening to be staring at him with a strange sort of look on his face. Maybe Tome is still talking but he isn’t really listening, too focused in trying to understand which cogs are turning in his friend’s mind as his eyes boldly hold Reigen’s own gaze, visibly too pensive to register the weight of their eye-contact. 

 

 

In-between them is Reigen’s box of matches, the one with the mystical symbols he got for cheap at the mall, and the office is suddenly really hot.

 

 

“Don’t you have any tips to get on her good side ?” Tome is now asking, her voice resuming a normal pitch in Reigen’s mind. He stops looking at Serizawa and reaches for his matches.

 

“Not really. I haven’t seen her in almost ten years.” when she gasps in obviously exaggerated horror, he gets up. “Going for a smoke. You’re in charge, Serizawa.”

 

Through Tome’s appalled stuttering, he makes out the low voice declaring “You got it.”, much more confident than the one he welcomed into Spirits and Such a certain time ago. It's almost laughable that between the two of them, the former shut-in is the one capable of more growth; if he were a tad more like the Greatest Psychic of the 21st Century Reigen would have the gall to feel offended by this.

 

He isn't though, so he grabs his overcoat and closes the door behind him, leaving the sign on the door proudly displaying 'OPEN'–he trusts Serizawa to hold his own in the office until he is done with one or two sticks. 

 

But as ironic as it is, once he is outside Reigen is incapable of lighting a single cigarette. The air is crisp and a little cold with only a very slight breeze, making his face numb enough to register the cold without being aggressed by it. He has lit sticks in worse weather, fought against the elements to keep the cherry as red as possible, but today he cannot even take a match out of the offensively purple case.

 

 

His sister likes purple. She says it is a royal color that is mute enough to make for classy outfits without overdoing it or falling into the bad connotations of fully dark black clothes. Reigen goes back to his last two thoughts and changes the verbs to past tense, feeling the matchbox’s weak carton lose against his suddenly viciously strong grip. Why had he even stepped outside ? What day were they ? Was his niece born yet ?

 

“Reigen ?”

 

The box falls out of his hand but doesn’t reach the floor, getting surrounded by a shaky violet aura. It sputters and struggles to keep a linear trajectory as it goes back up into Reigen’s hand, and disappears in a disorganized puff–unlike Mob’s liquid smooth aura, this one dissipates like sand. He can almost feel its phantom weight in his palm.

 

Serizawa is standing on the sidewalk behind him. Reigen has a second to consider that he himself is not on the sidewalk before his coworker steps down to his level and nudges him back up to safety, which he follows without complaining. He almost comments on Serizawa’s forwardness, how he takes initiative by himself and interacts with people and objects surrounding him with confidence he used to be deathly afraid of; he doesn’t say a thing though, maybe because he doesn’t think he can.

 

“I closed the office but Tome insisted on staying.” Serizawa takes the lead of the conversation, a thing he has been doing a lot recently. “What happened up there ?”

 

He shakes his head. “Just felt like smoking.” 

 

“Really ?”

 

“That’s how addictions work, I don’t know what to tell you.”

 

“But you’re not smoking.”

 

Reigen looks down at this point, unable to hold eye contact. He goes through one, two, three beats of nonsensical hand gesticulation before he speaks again. “Changed my mind.”

 

“Is that how addictions work ?”

 

Refusing to pick up on the obvious sass, he mutely scoffs. If this were any other day he would have nagged Serizawa on his boldness and how unfit it was for customer service, but today he cannot find the will to argue. Arguing for useless things is what he spent (spends) his whole life doing, and also what drove away one too many acquaintances, so Reigen takes one for the team by choosing to keep his mouth shut for once. Surprisingly, that doesn’t please Serizawa.

 

 

They stay here on the sidewalk, watching the cars drive by. Reigen absentmindedly counts the red ones, unsure whether he should go back up to the office or not–he feels like he just stepped out a minute ago, and isn’t ready to face Tome’s glare just now. He counts six red cars before Serizawa shifts next to him.

 

The taller male starts a sentence but nips it in the bud, distracting Reigen who looks up to him in unhidden curiosity. After his assured actions, it is almost disturbing to see Serizawa struggle so much with his speech again. “I–I’m going to eat with my family, next Tuesday night,” he says.

 

“That sounds nice.” Reigen replies slowly, because he doesn’t want to intimidate him.

 

“And I was, I was thinking,” Serizawa takes in a breath, escaping eye contact, “I was thinking maybe you could swing by with me.”

 

Reigen is at a loss for words.

 

It seems his silence is the wrong answer because he feels his tie slowly start to levitate out of his overcoat and sees Serizawa’s mirror the action, his work associate (friend ? If he was willing to invite him to dine with his parents–) visibly panicking. “It’s just that they’ve been a-as-asking about you since you gave me a job offer and all, and-and so I wanted you to meet, to meet them and make them stop asking !”

 

“Is that so.” he tries tucking his tie back into his coat, feeling a little guilty when Serizawa pales in horror at the gesture before suddenly pulling even harder on the fabric. Reigen gives up, letting the pink abomination float straight above his head as his business partner dissolves in apologies and tries calming himself down to no avail.

 

He keeps rambling, which Reigen lets him in the hope of getting released (the sides of his coat have also started levitating at this point, exposing his thin undershirt to the autumn air). “Plus, you’ve been a little out of it–if I dare say–ma-maybe this can help improve your mood ? My mother cooks very well.”

 

So not only was he invited to a family dinner, he was invited to a home cooked family dinner. It makes Reigen vaguely sick to imagine the scene; he knows what Serizawa’s parents look like from pictures he has been shown, and also knows they are a happy couple who care about their son’s well-being very, very much. There is a reason why Reigen never accepted the Kageyama household’s offers, and it isn’t the socially expected one.

 

But Serizawa was not Mob, he was much older and much less blunt in his propositions. He also didn’t have a younger brother who hated Reigen, thankfully. And it is true he misses eating home-cooked meals (his ego can accept admitting that he misses his own mother’s and sister’s meals. Oh, his sister).

 

 

But. He is a Reigen. By now he is staring at the top of Serizawa’s head; the psychic had not stopped getting worked up, levitating him pretty high up into the air. He feels a little nauseous.

 

 

“I don’t think you want your parents to meet me,” he says.

 

“No, I do.” and Reigen hates the lack of hesitation in his voice. “I do want them to meet you.”

 

As he is carefully floated back down to the concrete, Reigen rages. He curses Serizawa’s honesty, curses that his own insecurities were what got him to act so sure of himself again. Out of all possible things, it was Reigen he was choosing to be certain about. He doesn’t deserve it.

 

The moment he feels solid ground against his soles is the moment all his animosity vanishes, crushed under the weight of gravity. Serizawa gently pats his shoulders, straightens his tie, re-buttons his coat and flattens his pockets. He is incredibly close and yet Reigen lets him fuss, pliant under his big hands. It is only once he brushes yellow hair right over his brow with a shaky square thumb that Reigen actually processes what is happening and tenses up, watching the palm obscure his vision before retreating.

 

It would have been so easy to reach out and kiss it. He represses that. Serizawa himself looks a little frazzled but he is already tightening his own tie and Reigen accepts that his help isn’t needed.

 

“So, will you be coming ?” The large man sounds awfully shy all of a sudden.

 

Reigen doesn’t exactly answer. “You know my family doesn’t want me around. I’m saying yours won’t either.”

 

“You can’t know that until you meet them.” his bold tone returns, now a little reproachful. “Will you be coming ?”

 

“I really don’t want them to meet me. You’ll leave if they hate me.”

 

He doesn’t have the time to realize just how vulnerable he sounds because Serizawa’s hand is back on him, this time pulling at his sleeve. “From what I’ve told them about you, they already like you.”

 

“What did you tell them about me ?”

 

Serizawa’s face turns an interesting shade of red. “Will you be coming ?” he repeats a third time, back to embarrassment.

 

“Sure.” Reigen says.

 

His own response takes him aback but apparently not as much as it surprises his taller partner if his two wide eyes are to be trusted. He pries away the hand on his sleeve that had started to grip a little too hard, then he casually brushes the fabric back in place. “Do you know what we will be having for dinner ?” Reigen asks, only to break Serizawa out of his stupor.

 

“N-not yet !”

 

“That’s alright. You should just know I don’t digest dairy too well.”

 

“I’ll take note of that !” his associate blurts out but his tone is already calming down, his voice not cracking at the end of his outburst. Reigen almost mentions something about how it was admirable the man took such socially risky initiatives but before he can go into a familiar rant, Serizawa decides to surprise him a little further. “Reigen, about your sister-”

 

Now Reigen dislikes the assurance, and can feel his interlocutor noticing his quickly plummeting mood because his voice dies down in his throat. Instead of congratulating like he first wanted, he almost calls the guy out for insubordination.

 

“My family matters concern nobody but myself.” he declares with definitely more anger than he meant to put in there. Sue him for getting worked up. Eight years old.

 

“Of course. Sorry. I’ll text you the details for Tuesday.” Serizawa recovers admirably fast, nodding politely. The return of his professional demeanor stirs up something very ill in Reigen’s stomach–he is apologizing and then he isn’t because he is the boss here, and he owes apologies to nobody but the clients he lies to. When Serizawa turns around to get back to the office, ending the conversation, he finally manages to light a single cigarette and brings it to his lips.

 

He is dumb. He is so dumb and he doesn’t remind himself enough. Maybe he could ask Tome more about this Professor Reigen, maybe he could tell her to try to sneakily mention him when around her or something; the idea is nipped in the bud as fast as it is conjured up along with a plume of smoke, invisible in the gray sky. She banished him from her life and made it very clear he was not to fight back. 

 

Distantly, he remembers telling her about the pink bear toy and her responding it probably smelled like smoke and booze and ‘Chizue don’t do this to me I packed it and stashed it with a little lavender pack I swear it’s so nice and fluffy she’ll love it you can’t do this to her you can’t do this to me. Did mom and dad put you up to this ?’

 

Reigen really wants to see her. No he doesn’t. The cigarette dies too fast for comfort and before he knows it he is dusting off his overcoat and pushing back into the office, grateful for how subdued Tome is on the couch. All she does is complain about the lack of snacks around, to which he replies “And who’s fault is that ?” before giving her an allowance and letting her run buy some. Meanwhile Serizawa is so deep in thought he doesn’t even look up until their secretary loudly drops a pack of liquorice on his desk.

 

 

They’re his favorite and if Reigen is the one who has to remind Tome to keep buying them despite Serizawa being the only one in the office who actually enjoys them, it’s really unimportant.

 

 

The following days are as normal as they could be. They have an average number of clients and their routine doesn’t break and Reigen genuinely forgets about the dinner until Serizawa texts him the address and tells him to be there at 7pm. In fact it takes him so much by surprise that he doesn’t even have the time to dry-clean his best suit and ends up drenching it in the most expensive cologne he owns (some present from when he left his past job) to avoid smelling like an ashtray.

 

Smoking was slowly climbing back up to the top of Reigen’s ‘most pressing matters I need to deal with until they kill me’ list. It almost dethrones his whole family issues but the two are somewhat inter-connected, so his mind blurs their lines until they become one and the same huge fucking pain in his ass. 

 

It doesn’t help that Tome shows one of her lesser works, spouting nonsense about unfair Reigen-sensei’s grading was, and Reigen (the younger and dumber one) almost has a heart attack when he very much recognizes his sister’s cursive. It had always been neater than his, and it looked like it still was. If he were an ESPer half as strong as Mob he would have blown up the building on the spot.

 

 

At least Serizawa stops asking.

 

Notes:

sometimes the use of psychic powers can be so personal. who wants to be the serizawa to my reigen ?

i hope you enjoyed and see you next chapter ! it'll be posted in two days from now. the entire fic has been written so i'm just uploading chapters at a...pace.

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