Archive of Our Own

The aliens had a new toy. A gift, from the spritely Zhuemins. A cannon that shot beams. 

“What kind of beams?” they had asked. 

“Beams-beams,” the Zhuemins had responded, ears and wings held high as the other. “Yes beam, some beams beam so. Think of it. Look at the friends.” 

The alien’s translating system did not always work as well as it should. 

“We thank you,” the aliens had told them, “and we leave you.”

Back on their own ship they could think of nothing to do with the cannon. It was not, in all truthfulness, pretty enough to display, and given its size it was not convenient to store either. There seemed only one thing to do.

They aimed at the nearest (probably) uninhabited planet and fired the mechanism. A single line of bright purple-pink shot through space and the aliens tensed as it drove closer to the planet’s surface, closer still, and eventually…passed through entirely, exiting cleanly from the other side and disappearing into the great-deep emptiness.

Unanimously they agreed to throw the cannon into space where it could float and hit things and, to them, this was the end of it.

_____

Reigen Arataka liked to play it cool. Grandma’s been chanting and scaling the walls at all hours like a geriatric cockroach? No problem, he’d seen it tens of times and had his assistant on the way. Have a herniated disc and can’t walk straight? He had a massage technique for that. Aliens stole your little white dog? He could send a message, but no guarantee you’d receive a reply.

Reigen was good at hearing these kinds of issues and nodding sagely, imbuing the situation with the kind of normalcy they deserved. Some things though…some things shook him to an extent he could not downplay if he wanted to. 

For instance, 60 seconds ago he and Serizawa had been standing at the water boiler, Reigen nodding in shallow agreement with something Serizawa was saying about metaphysics and mysticism and practical healing. 30 seconds after that, he was watching Serizawa fall limply to the ground after taking a laser beam to the face.

The fact that he was crouched over him now, breathing rapidly, trying to conjure the CPR training he hadn’t paid attention to in high school while muttering manically, was not from a lack of familiarity with the abnormal. It was from the lack of a pulse and the colorless pockets that were Serizawa’s cheeks- it was from the fact that Reigen had seen plenty of very dead people before and Serizawa looked like one of them.

“No, no, no,” he muttered. “No no no no no. Dimple!”

Dimple mumbled something in return.

“Help him!” Reigen yelled.

Dimple offered no response.

“I said help him!”

“I don’t know how, asshole!” Dimple yelled back. “I don’t see him!”

“What does that mean?” Reigen was yanking his sleeves up his arms. He was ripping open Serizawa’s button-up shirt.

“He’s not in his body!” Dimple yelled, “I don’t know where he is!”

Reigen looked up, still breathing hard, scared of breaking his friend’s ribs. “Can you find him?”

Without any confirmation, Dimple disappeared. Reigen took a deep breath and reached out, his hands hovering over Serizawa’s chest, positioned how and where he thought they ought to be.

“Okay,” he breathed. He watched his own hands descend into the center of Serizawa’s sternum, feeling distant from the situation in an odd way all of the sudden. He pressed down once, felt the give of his friend’s chest cavity and, just like that, the world went white.

_____

Reigen sat up, his own voice bouncing around his head.

“-from shock? Or a concussion? What if I hurt him? It could be a brain bleed! Should I call Shigeo or would that-”

Reigen groaned as loudly as he could, hoping to drown out the sound of his own voice.

“Shit!” he said aloud.

“Reigen?” he heard himself say. Unfortunate, that his mouth was doing something without any input from his brain, but not unheard of. “Are you okay?”

He sat up and opened his eyes. “I’m good!” he announced, expecting several things to be in front of him. His office, namely. And Serizawa’s dead body in need of reviving. He did not find either. Instead, he seemed to be in a bedroom, a short man sat at the foot of the bed. None of this struck him as particularly important.

 “Okay!” he said, getting to his hands and knees. He would crawl, he decided, to find Serizawa and start over with whatever life saving measures he’d managed before fainting. With what felt like exceptional speed he threw himself off the edge of the bed hands-first and started to maneuver towards the door, ignoring the world as it tilted on its axis.

A gentle hand fell on his back. It was enough to send him falling sideways.

“Hold on, please,” his own voice said. He’d never been that polite to himself before. It was abruptly clear that he had no strength to fight if he needed to right now. It was once again time for him to talk.

He looked up and there stood, in the dim light of an unfamiliar and outstandingly bleak bedroom, his own self.

Huh.

His cheeks did not hold the characteristic red circles of Dimple’s body snatching. And he did not seem to be twitching or jerking. His form looked relaxed, actually, if not a tiny bit more nervous than normal. If he were on the job, he wouldn’t label this person possessed. He might be hallucinating. Or…

He recalled the pink-purple sky beam, travelling faster than most things on Earth ought to.

“Aliens,” he said. He watched his own head nod, expression as wise and self-assured as he’d always hoped it was.

“I believe so,” they said.

“Serizawa,” he tried. He needed to find him. Those aliens he’d met were nice enough. Perhaps this one would simply tell him where they’d taken his friend.

“Yes.”

What? “Katsuya Serizawa.”

“Yes.”

“My coworker,” he tried again. 

“Yes!” He was watching the beginning of a smile grow on their face.

What the hell. He couldn’t tell if they were being purposely obtuse or if they really weren’t catching on to what he was asking about.

“Where is he?” 

“What?”

“Where is my coworker?”

“Oh,” the smile died and in its place a pained expression developed. They raised a finger to point at themselves. “It’s me.”

“Hm?”

“I’m Serizawa.”

Reigen felt a lot of things upon hearing this. Anger, first. And then fear. Confusion came last.

“Why do you have my body?” was the question that came out of him, despite the fact that he did not actually believe it was Serizawa standing in his body.

“I think aliens shot me.”

To the ultimate bullshiter, this did indeed sound like bullshit.

“And who else has my body?”

He watched his own face scrunch up in confusion.

“No one?”

“Then what body am I in?”

At this, the person across from him froze, eyes wide, mouth ajar on some series of words left unsaid.

Without preamble he stood. The person who was maybe Serizawa stood with him, placing a steadying hand under his elbow as he wobbled. He looked down at them, and that was not right at all.

He glanced to his right, where there stood a floor-length mirror, and gave himself a looking over, top to bottom. The first thing he noticed was that his hair was different. Thicker, which was nice, but darker too, which did not bring him joy. His forehead was larger. And his face was…

His face was Serizawa’s.

But was it really? How did he know for sure that it wasn’t just a replica of what the aliens thought Serizawa looked like. What if, in a less obvious way, this body wasn’t Serizawa’s at all. 

He knew what he needed to do in a situation like this.

He started walking to the bathroom.

“Reigen?” Serizawa called after him. “Are you okay?”

At the precipice of the bathroom he turned and looked behind himself.

“You’re in me,” he said. Serizawa nodded. “And I’m in you.” Another nod. He looked Serizawa up and down. Narrowed his eyes at him.

“Did you look at my penis?” he asked.

Serizawa visibly blanched. Reigen had no idea shock was such an obvious expression on him. “What?”

“My chinchin. My Little John. Did you look at him?”

“No!” Serizawa yelled. “Of course not! I just brought you here while we waited for you to wake up.”

Reigen nodded and started undoing his belt buckle. “You’re an upstanding man, Serizawa.”

He slammed the bathroom door behind him, locked it, and slid his pants off his hips. They fell around his ankles and he let his gaze follow them down.

He could confirm, by the sizable (and begrudgingly familiar) object of his attention, that this was in fact Serizawa’s body.

From outside the bathroom, Serizawa started to holler.

“Wait-Reigen! What are you doing? You’re not looking, are you?”

“I am grieving,” he murmured to himself, then, louder, “no!” He spared one last glance downwards before hoisting his- Serizawa’s pants back up. He opened the door, still clumsily buckling his belt.

Serizawa’s eyes were trained on his hands as he did this. The tips of his ears were red.

“Did you look?” Reigen scoffed and brushed past him.

“What do you think I am, a pervert?” He turned back and raised an eyebrow. “I had to relieve myself, Serizawa. Would you prefer I suffer?”

“No, but you made it seem like-”

“Like what?” he turned to face Serizawa squarely, “like I was going to look at your private parts for fun? You think too lowly of me.”

Serizawa opened his mouth to say more, but Reigen could not allow it.

“The Giant Squid is an elusive creature you know!”

Serizawa’s mouth gaped, open and closed again.

“Very few people get to see one in real time! Mostly pictures, and even that is lucky! The place they live- it’s too deep. Tell me Serizawa, do you think aliens live in the ocean?”

“No…” Serizawa said, looking confused and a bit concerned.

Reigen took two big steps towards him. “I have seen a Giant Squid.”

“...Are we talking about my penis?”

“The aliens are in space, Serizawa! Not in the ocean! And we have been victimized by them!”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“Yes, but tell me, Assistant. How do we know this to be true?”

“Because if it was esper it would feel different. There would be traces of their unique power signature.”

Reigen regularly had moments like this, when his esper acquaintances would drop some unbelievable tidbit of information as if it was common knowledge, and he would have to simply file it away for full examination later on. Power signatures though. Huh.

“Precisely! It was not an esper, so what else could it possibly be? A curse?” He raised a hand and started to wave it, as if clearing a cloud left by the idea. “Nonsense. No one could possibly wish to curse us. Remind me Serizawa, what is our official protocol for when you’re shot by aliens and forced into a body that’s not your own?”

“You stay together all the time.”

“That’s exactly right! We need to-” Wait. Reigen fixed his gaze on Serizawa, alarmed by the suggestion and already attempting to form a rebuttal.

“I think it’s best if we aren’t out of hearing distance from one another.”

Reigen shoved his hands in his pockets. “Ah, well, maybe during working hours, but I don’t think-”

“What if someone visits our homes? Or calls? What if someone needs you outside of working hours and approaches me?”

Serizawa was clearly anxious about this, but staying together all the time…it wasn’t possible. Reigen would not survive it. Or he and Serizawa’s relationship wouldn’t survive it. And that just wasn’t fair. Serizawa had just started making friends after all.

“One other thing, Reigen. Can you feel my powers in you?” Serizawa asked. 

Still thinking of a potential solution to their dilemma, Reigen waved a distracted hand in the air as he paced through the room, gaze set on the floor.

“I don’t have those,” he mumbled.

“Mine don’t feel normal. And you feel weird. I think I left some in there.”

“Sure, okay.”

“But they’re there?”

Reigen fought off the urge to shush Serizawa, whose rambling was making it hard to think. “What if we did hourly check-ins, like concussion patients? We could just call each other?”

“I don’t think that will be enough, Reigen. Can I have my phone back, please?” 

“I’m not holding your phone.”

“I know.”

Reigen looked up and there, levitating directly in front of his face, was Serizawa’s phone, his contact pulled up on the screen. He cocked an eyebrow and glanced around it.

“Why are you showing me this?"

“I’m not doing that.”

Reigen scoffed. “Then who is? Me?”

Serizawa nodded, eyebrows knit with awkward concern.

Slowly, Reigen looked down and saw, emanating around his own hands, the characteristic swells and swirls of Serizawa’s psychic aura.

_____

Reigen stepped out of the shower feeling only slightly less shell shocked than when he’d stepped in.

He had psychic powers. He was a psychic. He was a…brunette.

This was big. Bigger than big, this was huge. And yet, it still wasn’t the thing that had him feeling so thoroughly kicked off his axis.

He’d lost in an argument. An argument with Serizawa. An argument he most certainly could not afford to lose. And now he was here, stepping out of Serizawa’s shower, feeling the water that Serizawa paid for run off his (Serizawa’s) hair and down his (Serizawa’s) neck.

As a general rule, Reigen didn’t acknowledge problems. He preferred very much to let them sit and stew and build until they threatened his immediate well-being, thanks. Then he could call Mob or some other more well-adjusted individual to come and help him sort things out. He had come to realize though, by messing up enough and by watching Mob and his friends grow, that there were times when he could not ignore problems forever. Not because the problem put his life in danger, but because it put his business in danger, and he could not afford to lose any amount of money at any time.

Indeed such a time had come. So Reigen scrubbed at a head of hair that was not his own and acknowledged, to the fullest extent he could personally manage, that he had what was perhaps the world’s worst, most devastating, most pathetic crush of all time on Serizawa. 

This was an issue for a number of reasons. He was technically Serizawa’s boss, though given the less than conventional nature of his business this was not his main concern. If Serizawa grew uncomfortable and left though, he’d be forced to take on fewer jobs, and that just wouldn’t do. There was also the fact that Serizawa was his best friend, even if Reigen would never admit this so plainly, and he’d prefer to have one adult friend than zero adult friends. He also had to consider the fact that he had no real reason to believe, despite all his snooping and investigating over the years, that Serizawa was interested in men.

All of these considerations would typically fall away in the face of the fact that Reigen was a skilled gambler and all-mighty master of risk weighing. What he could not gamble though, or would not rather, was Serizawa’s relationship with the kids. Because he knew, as the child of separated parents himself, that when a relationship went awkward it went bad, and when a relationship went bad someone left, and he refused to be the reason those kids were deprived of an adult they could trust.

He had grown quite a lot himself, despite what some believed, in the years since the disaster with Mob. He knew what he had to do, and that he had to do it now.

Vacantly, he dried himself and stepped into the pajamas Serizawa had provided him. They were cotton and well worn, boasting light blue and white stripes. To him they looked large, but when he put them on he found the pants just barely skimmed the tops of his feet and the sleeves only barely reached the bottom of his thumb. They were painfully comfortable.

Perhaps it was a curse that had brought him here. That could explain why Reigen’s nightmares were being brought to life before his very eyes. Or maybe it was karmic retribution finally rearing its head in the wake of all his years of working as a conning liar. 

Quickly, violently, he finished scrubbing at his hair with the towel and then threw it to the ground carelessly. He stepped out of the bathroom and made his way to the bedroom with the gate of a prisoner destined for the gallows. There he found Serizawa sitting on his bed in pajamas they’d picked up from Reigen’s place, along with a week’s worth of working clothes and toiletries, smiling up at him with Reigen’s face on, expression full of friendly warmth, and Reigen tried not to vomit. He moved his gaze to the futon on the ground and crawled onto it, leaving all blankets beneath him, settling on his back with his hands on his stomach.

“Okay?” Serizawa asked. Reigen nodded, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Let me know if you need anything else then. I’m a deep sleeper, but I’ll only be across the room, so just shake me if you need to wake me up.”

Reigen nodded again, numbly, and closed his eyes. He listened to Serizawa shuffle around for a bit and before he audibly laid down with a great sigh. The light turned off with a gentle “click”.

“Goodnight,” Serizawa whispered.

Now or never.

“Serizawa,” Reigen said.

“Yeah?” Came the quick reply.

“I have feelings for you.”

For several beats the room was silent. Then that same soft “click” brought light back to the room.

Reigen sat up. Serizawa was already sitting, staring at him with wide eyes and a mouth set in a gentle ‘oh’ shape.

“Romantic,” Reigen specified. 

Serizawa started to nod, softly. “Okay,” he whispered. Then he cleared his throat. “Why are you telling me…” the sentence petered out but Reigen heard the rest anyway.

“Because we’re going to be living together indefinitely, and I’m in your body, and I don’t know how to do this and know that and not constantly feel like a creep. Plus-” he took a breath. Swallowed. “Plus I know what it feels like now. To reach the point when it’s no longer worth it to keep a secret. I don’t want you to…ah-” Yeah, okay. He’d met his honesty threshold. “I can sleep on the couch, okay?”

Already he was standing, gathering the futon and blankets the way he’d imagined he would. He kept talking.

“And I’ll go back to my place tomorrow. We can try the concussion check-in thing, if we want, and obviously this doesn’t need to impact work. It’ll probably pass pretty quickly anyway now that I’ve said it out loud. The only thing we really need to worry about are the kids at this point, since they’re all either freakishly observant or telepaths or friends with one of those two. I could try-”

The futon pile was being dragged out of his hands and thrown back in its spot next to Serizawa’s bed, smoothed and arranged as if it was never messed up to begin with. Reigen looked at Serizawa, who had not left the bed. Serizawa looked back, eyebrows curved sympathetically, a cautious curve to his mouth.

“It’s fine,” Serizawa said, voice set to soothe. “I don’t-” Reigen braced for impact, for rejection. He had not left his place near the door. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Mm. “Mm-hm,” Reigen said. “Right.” He crossed his arms. “Well that’s…good. But what I’m trying to communicate is that I can’t be normal. About this.” He gestured between them. “Us. I’m going to be weird, and that will bother you, ultimately, so I think what would make more sense is if you didn’t levitate my bed over here,” he trudged to the futon and grabbed its edge, dragging it towards the door again, faster this time. “And instead we kept a great deal of space between us. That way you don’t resent me, and I don’t feel gay ever again.”

He was watching his step and the space behind him, so he was not expecting the laugh Serizawa unleashed when he did. He tripped and fell, gently, with Serizawa’s support, flat on his ass.

He looked up at Serizawa and glared with all his might. “It’s not funny,” he said.

Serizawa caught his look and sobered up quickly. “It’s not, you’re right. I’m sorry. You deserve an answer.”

Ah. The time was truly here.

“You don’t have to-”

“But I don’t have one.”

Reigen glared. “Huh?”

“I can’t answer you. You’re in my body, in my pajamas, confessing to me with my voice. I can’t properly consider it, and that’s not fair to you. I can’t answer you yet.”

Sweet Son of Dimple Christ the man was too nice for his own good. And once again levitating the futon back to his bedside, so perhaps not too nice.

“You can’t, I don’t know, envision me in your mind’s eye? Imagine a scenario or something.” He was, he realized, using his salesman’s voice. The situation was proving harder to exit than he thought.

“No, I don’t think so. Sorry.”

“Did you even try?” 

“With you right there?” Serizawa replied, and Reigen gave himself all of one millisecond to consider the meaning of this response before he returned to his old ways. Deny deny deny .

“You don’t even like men,” Reigen said, hoping to get this over with sooner rather than later. Yet again, he made his way back to the futon.

“Haven’t,” Serizawa corrected, a small smile fixed on his face. Reigen let the word wash over him. Rolled his eyes. 

“We’ve known each other for years. I think you’d know if I…floated your boat, by now.”

But he was crawling back onto the futon now, pulling the blankets to his chin before flipping onto his stomach. To move the futon for a third time would be too much.

“Stranger things have happened,” Serizawa said, switching off the light again, and Reigen could hear the smile in his voice. His stomach flip-flopped, in a normal, “moving on from your long term crush” kind of way. “Goodnight, Reigen.”

Reigen snorted into his pillow and ignored the way his feet hung off the edge of the futon.

_____

Reigen was late for work. The only solace to be found in this fact was that Serizawa had still been snoring when Reigen had snuck out of his apartment, and so Reigen had the chance to get there before him, making him less late than someone else and therefore a winner.

It was as he stumbled off the bus at his usual stop that he realized he felt…heavy. He’d never been a morning person but the headache and the brain fog was new. He felt bad. Like how he’d felt the first time he tried to quit smoking cold turkey. But Serizawa wasn’t a smoker, had never been one as far as Reigen knew, and it wasn’t as if they’d drank the night before. That really only left one thing.

As soon as the cafe doors opened he was enveloped by coffee bean and vanilla warmth. He breathed deeply, shaking some of the damp morning feeling off himself, and made his way to the back of the line so he could consider the menu for a moment.

He was trying to decide whether he wanted an Americano or a drip coffee, unsure how much caffeine Serizawa’s body was used to processing in the mornings, when he realized something about the space felt weird. He looked down from the menu to quickly survey the room, sure he was just imagining the feeling, and caught at least three sets of eyes dancing away from him.

Huh.

He considered what he looked like. He’d mimicked the hairstyle Serizawa did most days to the best of his abilities, and he was sure he’d picked out a suit he’d seen the man in hundreds of times. He might have vouched for his own pink tie, but the length difference wasn’t that atrocious, and quite frankly if a man wanted to wear a pink tie that seemed like his own business. 

He brought his sleeve to his nose and sniffed it twice, but there was nothing strange to his scent that he could detect. Just Serizawa’s shampoo, Serizawa’s detergent, and his own usual cologne.

He decided to shrug the stares off, seeing as they’d left him now, and he was nearing the front of the line anyway. He ordered both drip coffee and Americano, so he could let Serizawa decide what he wanted when he got there, and was turning away from the counter when he took a sip of the former beverage and found it both milky and sweet.

“Ah-” he turned around, intending to let the barista know that he’d grabbed someone else’s drink by accident, and watched the person nearest to him flinch. “Oh-” he started, putting a calming hand out, but this only served to make the guy flinch back further.

If the sets of eyes on him before were embarrassed, now they were staring blatantly. 

Well, some people were just jumpy. With a close-toothed smile and a lowered head, he moved around the man and approached the counter once more. When the barista saw him, she paused the order she was putting in with another customer and ran to him.

“I’m sorry!” she said immediately, and Reigen was impressed that she’d already caught the issue.

“No need to apologize!” he said, “I just didn’t want to mess up anyone’s morning!”

“Please don’t,” the barista said, and Reigen’s steadily mounting confusion soared higher as she took both drinks out of his hands. “I’ll fix this right away. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s-” she was already walking away from him, pouring the drinks down the sink and starting the order over.

Was this what it was to be tall? Even now, Reigen felt eyes on the side of his face. He turned and there stood a man dressed in a suit of his own, a good three inches shorter than Reigen was in this body, his gaze fixed on Reigen’s.

Reigen offered him his best salesman smile. “Good morning!” he said.

The man did not look nervous or uncomfortable, the way others did. This guy looked more like he was stuck, actually. Like he could not look away from Reigen if he tried.

After a beat of awkward silence Reigen looked away, back to the barista working in front of him. He patted his own pockets, trying to figure out if he’d packed something odd this morning by accident. Like a gun, or something vaguely gun shaped. All he felt there was his typical packets of salt and his non-threatening trinkets. He settled with his hands at his sides and whistled a few notes. 

He hit a particularly high note when a hand wrapped itself around his arm, just above the elbow. Suppressing a yelp, he wrenched his head to the side and gawked at the strange man holding his arm. The hand squeezed harder as the man’s eyes grew wider.

“You’re one of them,” the man said, “I can feel it. You can help me. You have to help me.”

“Help you to-”

To his right he heard the barista cry out.

“No!”

With surprising ease he ripped his arm out of the man’s grasp and turned back to the barista, who had both coffees in her hands held away from her body. One of them dripped, and Reigen figured she must have tripped a bit. Her expression was wrought with devastation, as if she had poured both coffees, still boiling, directly over his back.

“It’s okay!” Reigen tried. Before she could do something insane like take the coffees to make again, he reached far over the counter and grabbed them out of her hands. “These are perfect! Thank you so much!”

He turned and, without sparing a single glance for the crazy barista or even crazier man, walked right back out the doors of that cafe.

_____

Their sixth and final appointment of the day was an old woman Reigen had been treating for years. Each time she came in she would vent for ten minutes about how shitty her husband, best friend, and neighbor all were, and then Reigen would perform a forty minute, full body…spiritual cleansing. 

Today she sat in front of Serizawa, who she should not have known to be any different from Reigen, and refused to say a word. 

“Can I make you some tea?” Serizawa tried, and Reigen nodded to himself. That’s exactly what he would have said in this situation too. Perhaps, for the first time in two years, the woman had come to possess a desire for privacy and needed softening up. The old woman shook her head though, and looked down at her hands, frowning.

“Would you prefer for me to perform the spirit cleanse first, today?”

The perfect follow up. A shake up of routine was what they needed, and nothing helped a person relax like a massage. 

Again though, Serizawa received nothing but a shake of the head. They seemed to be losing her, but Reigen was too good at his job for things to end here. He stood and made his way to the electric kettle behind them both, grabbing three cups and as many tea bags. He would wait until she tried the tea, he decided, and then tell her he’d brewed a truth serum into it. Hopefully, they could trick her into talking this way. While he waited for the kettle to boil he fidgeted, gently tapping his hands on his legs.

“Are you okay?” The words were practically whispered, barely audible to his own ears, and not meant for them to begin with. He turned his head and, from the corner of his eye, watched Serizawa crouch on the floor in front of the old woman’s chair. Were the man in his own body, Reigen might have found the view endearing. Seeing himself look up at this woman though, his expression knit with concern and compassion, made his stomach twist in an odd way. As if he was being misrepresented or…outdone. 

For several seconds Reigen heard nothing. The water started to rumble in the kettle and he turned back to it.

“Your…” the word seemed to slip out of her. “Your man,” she whispered back, “there’s something wrong with him.”

Reigen, in the process of pouring boiling water into the first mug, slammed the kettle back down on the counter.

He’d spent the entire day ignoring other people’s behavior towards him, the averted gazes and the sidesteps, the stares and the unwanted touching. The whole thing was beginning to frustrate, rather than confuse him. Behind him several more seconds passed in silence.

“Mr. Serizawa has been here for many months now, Mrs. Furukawa. He’s sat in on our last several sessions. Do you remember?”

“He’s not right. Something’s not right. Have you checked him for possession?”

There was nothing wrong with him. He was normal. 

“Of course,” Serizawa said, and Reigen could not decide if he should hate or love him for it. “But if you’d prefer a one-on-one today, I’m sure Mr. Serizawa wouldn’t mind stepping out for a moment.”

What? Serizawa wasn’t trained in massage therapy. He couldn’t do the spirit cleanse. Reigen had to do the spirit cleanse. He always did the spirit cleanse.

“I think that would be good, yes. And if I were you I’d consider hiring someone less-”

Behind him Reigen heard the woman exclaim at the same moment he heard Serizawa’s characteristic intake of air that signified danger. He whipped around, prepared for any manner of evil creature, and instead found the office’s potted plant, a small palm tree he liked very much, hovering just over the old woman’s head, pot included.

Was that him?

“Is that me?” he mumbled, eyes fixed on the plant. 

“Yes, I believe so,” Serizawa answered. Reigen nodded. 

“How do I-” not hurt her even though I want to, “set it down safely?”

“Mrs. Furukawa, I think the best course of action at this time would be to reschedule. Would you mind calling later today to do that? I’ll make sure your appointment is at the top of our priority list,” Serizawa said, eyes wide but smile steady as he spoke to the woman.

Mrs. Furukawa, to her credit, did not visibly panic. Rather, she nodded and, in the fashion one walks away from an angry dog, backed herself into and out of the office’s door.

The plant did not move an inch.

“Serizawa,” Reigen said, simultaneously asking for and demanding help.

“You have to calm down,” he said, steadily approaching Reigen in the meantime. Reigen took his eyes off the plant to watch him get closer.

Great. Perfect. Easy. “I am calm.”

“You’re upset.”

Reigen shot a glare Serizawa’s way that was sharp enough to cut.

“She was mean. All day long people have been mean and weird, just because you’re tall. It’s not fair. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not because I’m tall.” Serizawa stood directly in front of him now, and Reigen realized this was as close as they’d gotten, in their new bodies, since the aliens had shot them. He looked down at his own face and saw a patch he’d missed on his neck while shaving, and the true extent of the bags under his eyes. Ugh.

“Of course. It’s because you’re old, and that’s what really upsets me, Serizawa. We’ve got to learn how to respect our elders again.”

“It’s my powers.”

Reigen stared at him and tried to connect a dot. He failed, and took this as a sign that Serizawa was mistaken.

“No, no it can’t be that,” he said, letting his gaze drift past Serizawa while he thought, “because normal people can’t see your powers. Because they’re normal people. Maybe it’s your hair?”

“They can’t see them,” Serizawa said, and his grin was simultaneously full of light and impossibly heavy. He wouldn’t meet Reigen’s eye anymore. “It’s a feeling, I guess. It drives people away usually, but sometimes they’re drawn to it. I’m not sure why.”

Serizawa’s voice was laced with something dark, a kind of discomfort paired with resentment. Reigen let his eyes jump around Serizawa’s face and saw the same mood there, that same self-loathing mixed with anger.

Ah. This was part of his thing. The hikikomori thing. 

“It’s like-” he swallowed and stepped back from Serizawa, considering his words and his memories. He did vaguely remember the feeling actually, though it had been so long since he’d been capable of perceiving the extent of Serizawa’s powers as anything but regular. It had never been a bad feeling. Just…full. A feeling of muchness. And it didn’t even come close to being in close proximity with Mob’s powers. 

Reigen started to pace in front of the man, back and forth. “It’s like a well.”

Serizawa’s eyes jumped up to him and then back down. He was listening. 

“When I first met you, that was what it felt like to be-” too gay. “When I was in your radius-” No. “It’s the feeling of standing on the edge of something.”

Serizawa’s frown, somehow, became more pronounced. Reigen elected to trudge on.

“And I guess it might be a ledge up high, you know, if you’re the nervous type. But if you’re power hungry like the guy that grabbed me, or like I was the day we met, I think it feels like standing at the top of a deep well.”

“What?”

Reigen stopped his pacing and looked at Serizawa dead on. Serizawa watched him back, his body language communicating ‘settled’ while his eyebrows said ‘unsure’. Reigen was not messing this up.

“Like waiting for the bucket to come. Like you know what’s in there, and it’ll be great if you can just wait for it to make its way to you. Like it wants to make its way to you.”

Serizawa blinked at this, and eventually his eyebrows smoothed out to match his posture. He looked at Reigen and Reigen squinted back, unsure if they were about to fight or if something else was happening. He cocked a hip and crossed his arms in front of him, just in case. The action drew Serizawa’s eyes down for a split second, before his mouth quirked up on one side.

“It’s weird to see you stand like that in my body.”

“It’s weird you haven’t hit anyone for treating you like a freak yet.”

“I figured out that it doesn’t matter. And people seem to get used to the feeling, after a while.”

“Psht,” Reigen rolled his eyes, “it took me like, two minutes. And I never even considered grabbing you.”

“You said that before,” Serizawa said, turning around and making his way to the office couch where- oh right. The tree. Reigen had forgotten. “Someone touched you?”

“This weirdo grabbed me! Like,” Reigen made his way over to the closet, fetching the broom from within. “‘Give me your money!’ except it was more of a ‘Let me put my grimy hands in your well!’ kind of thing, if we’re sticking with the well metaphor. And then earlier,” he bent over, using the broom to quickly swipe the remaining dirt off the couch and then sweeping it one handedly into the dust pan. “That teenage girl with her friend came right up to me, when you left to grab them snacks, and she called me a weirdo! Like I’d done anything other than hand them a pamphlet when they came in!”

He dumped the dirt in the trash and returned the broom to the closet. When he turned around Serizawa was in the corner with the tree, seemingly examining each of its individual fronds.

“Is it damaged?” Reigen asked.

“I think it’s fine.” Serizawa looked up at him. “Are you okay?”

He was, actually, somehow. He grabbed his bag off the desk. “Yeah, just a long day. Wanna go grab a drink?” The words were out of him before he could consider them; before he could recall what he’d confessed the night prior. He paused, bag slung over his shoulder, eyes fixed downwards.

Serizawa did not hesitate though. “Sure,” he said, fetching his own bag from the closet.

And so they went.

_____

Reigen agreed to take the bed that night. Was it wise? Perhaps not. To Reigen, this did not matter. He was multi-faceted, the jack of most trades, and a gambler to boot, but he would not claim to be wise. So when they made their way back to Serizawa’s apartment, two drinks deeper than either man needed to be, and Serizawa mentioned the idea, Reigen did not think further than ‘that sounds better than the floor’ before agreeing.

He managed his typical nightly shower, even in his drunken state, and this helped him to sober up only slightly. When he emerged from the bathroom and spotted the bed, rather than reconsider the idea, both his brain and body seemed to grow even more excited at the prospect of comfort, and he threw himself onto it.

The dark brown comforter pillowed up around him and he took one great breath, inhaling the scent of Serizawa and linen and soap and sleep. He deflated right then and there, the room spinning above him even behind his closed eyelids, and assumed this the end of his night.

“Um. Reigen.” 

Reigen ‘mm’ed.

“Can I have a pillow?”

He groaned but listened, grabbing a pillow out from under him and throwing it to the ground. 

“Thanks,” Serizawa said, and Reigen ‘hmm’ed in reply.

He heard rustling as Serizawa arranged himself on the futon, and Reigen turned his head on his pillow so he faced him, though he kept his eyes closed. Serizawa did not smell like soap, even from his spot on the floor. He smelled much better, like the cigarettes from the bar and the drawer Reigen kept his sleep shirts in. Cheap toothpaste and his usual deodorant. This was exactly what Reigen imagined him smelling like in bed.

“That’s good,” he heard himself say, and it was not meant to sound sultry. It was meant to sound like passing judgement on a hit in baseball. It did not.

He listened to Serizawa swallow and said nothing. He kept his eyes closed only by force of will.

“What is?” he heard, and Reigen was sure he had never heard his voice speak at such a low octave. He felt the way he did in a famously haunted cave, when danger was imminent and close. He could not, he realized, predict the direction this conversation would take.

“The bed,” he lied. “Soft.”

It was Serizawa’s turn to hum as he tucked himself in. He settled with a sigh and, for the second time that night, Reigen convinced himself the day was done.

“How’d you know you were gay?”

Okay. “I’m not gay.”

“Huh?” Reigen heard Serizawa shift, and finally convinced himself to crack an eye open. Serizawa was sitting up, blanket pooled in his lap, looking at him with furrowed brows. “I thought you said you liked…men?”

Subtle. Reigen let both eyes fall closed again. “Do not worry, Assistant,” he slurred. “I will give you a crash course professional lesson. Some people like men or women. And!” he paused for emphasis. “Some people like other people. I am that other person.”

“So…” Reigen listened to Serizawa lie back down. “So when you’re…when you want to…feel good. By yourself.” Holy shit, they were talking about masturbating. “What do you watch?”

“Uuh.” Reigen actually had to think about that for a second, his brain working as slowly as it was. It had been months, maybe even years since he’d last watched porn. He tried to think of the last thing he would have watched. Something with boobs, probably. “I think lesbians?”

“Oh.” 

Right. That should do it. “Well, I’ll be around in the morning if you have any other-”

“Do you imagine you’re a woman when you sleep with other women?” 

Dimple help him. “No. No, that’s not what- I’m a man. I imagine I’m a man.”

Silence. Reigen thought that maybe, mercifully, the conversation would end there.

“So why don’t you watch porn with men in it?”

‘I do!” Except he’d stopped watching porn. “I used to!”

“But you didn’t like it?”

“I did!”

“So it worked?”

“What worked?”

“Like,” Reigen could hear Serizawa very gently tapping his covers. “It didn’t turn you off. Seeing men. Even though you like people other than men.”

Reigen was not wise, but he was not stupid either. “You want to watch gay porn.”

“I don’t really know how else I’ll figure this out, once we’ve switched back.”

From the tone of his voice Reigen could tell Serizawa was serious. He must have been thinking about this for a while. So, in the way of a true friend, Reigen sat back and really considered the issue. 

He’d known he was attracted to men since he was a boy, since he had his first crush on a boy resulting in his first wet dream. But if he were a man trying to figure it out…he’d probably just go and find someone to try to have sex with, honestly. 

In no universe was he willing to give Serizawa this advice. It did inspire him in other ways though.

“Gay porn isn’t the worst idea,” he said eventually, “but it’s not going to be very accurate either. Something more realistic could be ideal.”

“What do you mean?” Serizawa asked, and he sounded equal parts curious and dubious.

“I mean you have my body already,” he said, trying for casual. “Go use it.”

“Huh?” Serizawa was sitting up again, and Reigen mirrored him this time, taking in the pink of his cheeks he was sure matched his own. He shrugged.

“If you think a man’s penis will turn you off, then go see. Try to turn yourself on and then go watch yourself in the mirror for a second, see what happens.”

Serizawa’s face blossomed from pink to red. “Absolutely not!” Serizawa said, waving both hands in front of his face. “I couldn’t.”

“Nonsense.” Reigen was climbing out the bed again, grabbing those two hands in front of Serizawa’s face, and dragging him to his feet. “In the name of science, you must! Now remember not to look in the mirror until you’re close, then turn around and see what happens!” He ignored Serizawa’s unsure protests as they moved, corralling him gently towards the bathroom door. “I’ll be out here, sleeping probably, and absolutely not listening.” 

He backed away from Serizawa now, leaving him the decision to open the bathroom door or not, entirely sure that in a matter of seconds the man would explode in a fit of embarrassment and shove past him to get back to his futon.

He did not. Instead, Serizawa looked Reigen in the eye and seemed to come to some kind of conclusion. Nodding to himself, he placed a hand on the bathroom door handle, and then shot a serious look at Reigen. 

“I’ll do my best!” he said, and flew into the bathroom with a flourish.

Stunned into silence, Reigen stood there until he heard the sound of the bathroom light being switched on, and then he immediately turned to throw himself into the bed once more.

For several minutes he really did try to sleep, and a few times even felt himself drifting off, but occasionally a sound from the bathroom would reach him and yank him out of his dozing state. He wasn’t sure when Serizawa would emerge, or what kind of state he would be in, and it was this uncertainty that kept him alert.

Then the noises grew more regular. It wasn’t anything vulgar at first, just a rhythmic shuffling of fabric, effectively imperceptible to someone who wasn’t trying to listen, but Reigen was, and he could not really keep his mind from wandering.

He imagined a shirt sleeve, partially rolled up, rubbing against Serizawa’s clothed hip as he worked himself up slowly. He imagined his own hand, controlled by Serizawa, getting him hard so he had something nice to look at in a moment. He imagined the bottom of his pajama shirt, wrinkled by the way Serizawa held it in his mouth, keeping it out of the way.

And then he was not just imagining this. He was hearing it, the sounds from the bathroom growing louder, growing sloppier, and if there was one thing Reigen knew about his own dick it was that, if he was really turned on, it would leak a great deal. He imagined Serizawa realizing this, how obvious it would be when Reigen was really into what he was doing, how wet he could get for someone if they worked him right. 

He could hear Serizawa’s breathing now, just barely, heavier exhales pushed from his nose in time with the strokes of his hand. Reigen had a hand down his own pants before he knew what he was doing, and the first brush of his palm against the tip reminded him that this was not his usual body, that he was in fact touching Serizawa’s right now, and that thought alone had him biting the inside of his mouth as he properly wrapped a hand around himself. Serizawa was big, he’d known that for a while, had confirmed it in the bathroom himself that first hour and again each time he’d relieved himself the past couple days. But now that he was hard, Reigen realized the man’s shaft was thick too, the girth filling his palm in a way that felt heavy in a good way.

A muffled grunt from the bathroom and Reigen was thumbing his slit, spreading what little precum there was down his length and, without any preamble, settling into a pace he thought matched Serizawa’s. It was fast, for him at least, guaranteed to get him off before he felt he’d fully expended himself, but he could not risk Serizawa finishing before him. He was hearing gentle sounds from Serizawa now, muffled, he assumed, by the shirt he held in his mouth- small ‘uhn uhn uhn’ noises that had Reigen’s core tightening. His- Serizawa’s length twitched in his hand.

He could hear Serizawa speeding up even more, the wet sounds coming from the bathroom anything but subtle at this point, and Reigen matched him as he ground down on the bed so his head was off the pillow behind him. Spreading his legs further open he pressed his heels into the bed and started to fuck up into his own grip, ignoring the bed’s creaking in the process, confident Serizawa was too wrapped up in what he was doing to suspect Reigen of doing something even worse just a few feet away from him.

“Fuck,” Reigen heard, and the word was uttered loudly from the bathroom, meaning Serizawa had either dropped the shirt in his mouth or had turned to look in the mirror and Reigen knew what he was seeing, knew that his body would be flushed from his chest to his ears, knew his cock had probably leaked enough to drench his hand, to drip on the floor in front of him. He knew sweat would have soaked through his shirt at the back, at the armpits, knew it would be beading his hairline. He imagined Serizawa seeing all of this, seeing him in his most aroused, messiest state, and being moved to swear- something he hardly ever did. Too afraid to offend. Too good.

Reigen came, and he died.

_____

It did not take very long for the Zhuemins to track down the place and those entities the beam had made contact with. It was lucky, they knew. The last time this had happened they had found the accidentally soul-switched entities dead- murdered by their own kind for behaving in a deviant, inexplicable manner. Some societies were stranger than others, and the cannon remained a great gift, even if the pink fools they’d most recently bestowed it upon could not see that.

They flew in the direction they’d watched said pink fools fire the cannon and stopped at the first well-populated planet they came upon. Their people referred to this planet as A Cheap Short-term Parking Lot. Some others referred to it as Earth. To the Zhuemins it did not really matter so long as they had somewhere to meet up for carpooling.

They circled the planet a couple times, looking for the massive crater the beam should have left, but did not see one. They did not really want to spend unnecessary time here, so they called upon their most talented academic officer to analyze the situation and predict the most likely contact point for the beam. 

A dart, thrown at a globe by said academic officer, was what led them to Japan. They hovered over the island for all of two hours before their ship was set bobbing by a massive wave of energy, and that led them to the apartment they stood at now.

They knocked three times, politely, and waited while the individuals inside screamed and threw things. The door eventually opened and revealed a tall human with dark hair. He was sweaty and oddly dressed.

“Hello,” he said, “are you the aliens that shot us?”

“No,” said all five Zhuemins at once. The human nodded as if he understood.

“Well,” he said, “we’re back to normal now, so-”

“We are so fucking far from normal, Serizawa! So far!”

The Zhuemins were confused. The humans had already carried out the Returning ritual? How had they known where to begin? It was meant to take years to get to this point.

“You’ve returned to your born bodies?”

The human moved his head twice and their smile grew larger, almost painful looking. “Yes! So no worries on our end unless you plan to shoot us again. Do you?”

“No,” said all five Zhuemins once more. The human began to move his head up and down rapidly, and the Zhuemins collectively took a step back, unsure what the movement meant.

“Great! We’re all set then. Hope you have a safe flight!”

Without saying a formal goodbye, which the Zhuemins had been taught was customary on the planet for the most part, the human merely closed the door. Immediately there was a groan from the other side of the door, followed by a loud curse from further inside the room.

“They must have already been bonded,” said someone in the group. There was a collective sound of acknowledgement. “I do not see how else they would have thought to self-pleasure within 12 feet of one another while thinking of the other’s greatest internal qualities until they produced a simultaneous and equally powerful spike of spiritual energy.”

“Perverts from Parking Lot Town,” someone else said. “We should visit the Dark Matter Thieves.” These statements were met with a second, much louder collective sound of agreement. 

“Cults…” The group turned and finally acknowledged the small cloud of green man who had been blushing at them since they arrived. What a creep. “Are not happening in Seasoning City. No cults. Get out of my town.”

Without arguing, they left.