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Reigen’s knuckles are white, clutching the black of the steering wheel, but he can’t keep his grip, sweat sheen on the plastic glinting in afternoon sun, a direct hit through the windshield. He’s readjusted his handhold maybe a dozen times, maybe a hundred times, but it just keeps slipping.
A cigarette was lit a few minutes ago, maybe a few hours ago, ash in the cupholder, smoky entrails desperate for escape through the driver side window, unthinkingly cracked open just an inch. He told Mob he would stop smoking, told himself he would stop smoking in front of Mob, is telling himself now that he needs to say something, he needs to provide some sort of consolation, needs to verbalize the ache in his chest, demonstrate some sort of empathy. But a question is all that creaks out, obscured by the gray tendrils that can’t seem to find an escape route.
“Six months?”
There’s a slow nod in his peripheral, bitten lips, and another pair of white knuckles, clasped in the boy’s lap beside him. They’ve been parked on the dirt for what feels like hours, maybe days, a habitual fix for Mob’s motion sickness, especially on these windy backroads. Reigen’s never minded the pit stops.
But he doesn’t know what was different this time. What prompted Mob’s “I’ve been thinking about something. A lot. Can I talk about it with you?”
Maybe it was comfortable silence of being off the beaten path, the seemingly endless well-worn blacktop that stretched out in front of and behind them, the solitudinous muted greens and fading browns accompanying them. It was something liminal, their gazes meeting the horizon but not each other.
Six months.
Smoke burns his throat in staccato. Should be inhale, exhale. Should be questions, advice. Should be seeking, giving. The natural progression of things, automatic intervals.
He should say “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
There should be a reassuring touch on the shoulder, “thank you for telling me,” “you know you can talk to me about anything.”
But there’s only slipping hands and an unspoken “why didn’t you tell me sooner?” caught in his stomach, fogging up his critical thinking as the shared air hazes over.
Mob rubs along the length of his thighs, black fabric bunched tightly in his palms, pale skin on his ankles peeking out, the tips of his shoes barely finding purchase on rubber floor pads. His soft jawline clenches.
Reigen has to say something. Disarm the bomb with therapeutic catchphrases, offer to share the weight, to carry the burden of Mob’s retelling of six months in some sick, sadistic mental prison that Reigen let him enter.
But as heat coils around his torso, as he leans over the steering wheel, folding in half to hide the strain in the front of his slacks, as dampness seeps down the nape of his neck, shivering along his spine, he knows.
He knows that Mob shouldn’t have told him at all.
That Mogami freak hadn’t even stooped this low. There was some twisted rationale, some abhorrent excuse for ideology. Pain and manipulation for the sake of a lesson.
What was Reigen’s excuse?
What explanation could there possibly be hiding behind his response?
Mob, I know you just bared your soul to me, and to only me, I can’t believe it’s only me, and most people don’t experience in their whole lives the type of trauma that was inflicted upon you each and every day in that hellscape but, you know what, unfortunately I just happen to be crushingly, soul-splittingly attracted to the idea of you whimpering under the hands of someone else. I know, super awkward, right! Honestly, I can’t even describe to you how much I wish it were me wrenching those noises from your throat, watching you writhe beneath me. I’m actually mind-numbingly hard right now just thinking about it.
Oh, and by the way, I really am so sorry about all of it. Hope that was obvious.
He stews in silent suffocation, as the sunlight bores holes into his skull, ant under the magnifying glass, praying that it’s better than the alternative. Saying nothing at all has to be better than the alternative.
“There’s something else,” says a trembling voice.
It must be Mob’s, because of his aforementioned silence. Because all that’s come out of Reigen’s mouth besides is nicotine-ridden broken promises.
But what else could there possibly be?
This piece of shit metal contraption is so goddamn small. It’s not big enough to hold all this. All that Reigen’s keeping locked away can’t ever balance the scales with what Mob’s shared.
His wrists itch horribly, stiff white shirt rasping against guilty skin. He needs to get out of this fucking car and out of Mob’s life. It’s already too late to repair the inevitable damage. There’s no redemption arc in this story.
Reigen’s transparent half-reflection is repulsed, the dirty windshield mirroring his downturned lips as a “hm?” slides out of them anyway, twitchy fingers finding the lighter again.
How can Mob not see what’s happening? He knows the kid isn’t that great at reading people, but how can he still be willing to entrust Reigen with anything now? Can Mob really not see what he’s doing to him? Acting as innocent bystander to the motion sickness is one thing, but now this?
In Mob’s reflection, the boy’s whole face is blistering, rivulets of some kind of salt water streaking along the cracks, black hair plastered to his forehead, knees quaking ferociously. Like he was the one who had something to repent for.
The voice is so quiet that he can’t hear Mob over the rushing pulse in his own ears. But he forces his head to turn, to be the proverbial shoulder to cry on, all the while holding in the bile and the cough fomenting in his throat.
Mob scrunches his eyes closed, the words draining out.
“…he said that people ‘use’ me, that I let them.”
Ash falls into the space between them, flakes coating the armrest. Reigen’s fingernails carve semicircles into his palm, each one a futile attempt at nerve damage. If he presses hard enough, maybe something in his brain stem will eventually be rewired. Maybe he’ll lose his hearing. Maybe he’ll stop thinking for good.
“The way he said it then, it wasn’t… it isn’t true,” Mob mouths, below a whisper as he sucks in the smoke through his nose. “But I think- I think- I think…”
Reigen swallows thickly, ramming down the urge to rip off the car door and run away, tongue glued to the roof of his mouth.
Leaving would be better, though, wouldn’t it? The remorse of deserting Mob here would have to be more palatable than the current maelstrom, the present spiral into damnation, surely.
Sweat glistens on the door handle, one finger looped around the curve.
It’s dizzying, how hard he is.
“I think sometimes… it’s okay,” Mob’s wheezes out, fists punching down onto his thighs.
Teeth bite into the underside of Reigen’s tongue. It tastes sour and sickly sweet. Did he do that? He winces as a jolt sears through him.
“IthinkthatsometimesIlikeit.” The words race out of Mob’s tight lips, vaporizing on contact with the air.
Reigen wishes that he could hear the rumble of other cars on the road, of tires scrambling on the dirt, of the wind whistling through the trees.
But there’s nothing.
He’s hyperventilating. He can’t breathe. His vision narrows. He stares wide-eyed at Mob, unbelieving, the turn in the conversation giving him whiplash.
And Mob finally opens his glazed eyes to look up at him, shame sewn into his features. Brows furl around irises bleeding scarlet in the light.
“Reigen-shishou… what’s… what’s wrong with me?” Mob murmurs, sniffling, naïveté pleading for wisdom. For guidance. For an answer.
Reigen can’t give him any of it.
Nothing at all.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
“Nothing,” he says, voice low.
His hand flicks the still-lit cigarette out the window, an ashen streak fusing with the grime on the glass.
“…shishou?” Mob repeats, the word comfortable and innocent in his mouth.
Did it always sound so needy?
As his gaze inadvertently scrapes down Mob’s frame, he thinks that maybe, impossibly, there really is no reason to worry, nothing to be concerned about.
The boy’s chest vibrates underneath the black uniform, sleeves pushed up to reveal lean forearms.
There was always a solution, that’s what he’d always told Mob. This was no different than before.
A hint of musculature, twilight blue veins raised under the skin, Mob’s hands still contorted through his slacks in worry.
Maybe this was just another situation to navigate, Reigen at the helm. Typical. Routine, even.
Finger pads push on red plastic, silver glides over his palm.
Reigen wonders offhandedly why he had his seat belt on this entire time.
Mob’s face wrinkles up, vulnerability soaking his apology. “I’m sorry, I'm sorry, I shouldn’t have said-”
“There’s nothing wrong,” Reigen interrupts. It sounds assured. Level-headed. Like his last remaining brain cell, invigorated in its depravity, finally managed to pull on the reins of his vocal cords.
A hand slithers around Mob’s wrist, pressing his palm flat against a bony thigh, calming, engulfing the quivering fingers beneath.
Were Mob’s hands always this small?
Mob’s eyes trip between the man’s mouth and the hand on his thigh, smothering his own. Breaths hitch in his throat.
The hand squeezes. Hard. Pinching skin underneath thin linen.
“Whatever you’re feeling is completely okay.” Reigen’s voice is gravel, paving over Mob’s blunt gasp.
Another hand seizes Mob’s jaw instinctively, the boy’s cheeks caving in between thumb and forefinger like molded clay. A wet pink circle gapes around his exposed tongue, a whimper stuttering out.
Are those Reigen’s hands? The ones scratching up Mob’s thigh, clinging onto Mob’s chin?
Is this the solution, the explanation he can give him?
Mob peers at him, head tilting with curiosity in Reigen’s grip.
An “are you sure?” drools distorted out of his opened mouth.
Reigen’s temples pound in time with his pulse. He moves forward, shifting his weight for a moment onto a frail thigh. The car seat’s groan matches Mob’s.
“I’m certain of it. This is all very normal.”
It has to be his hands. Has to be his voice. Who else’s could it be?
Who else would Mob tell this to? Who else would be willing to not only listen, but hear what was left unsaid? To answer the unasked questions, to act on the insinuations?
His fingers unearth themselves from soft flesh, clairvoyantly, undoubtedly marked with blues and blacks and purples, two of his fingers pressing the pack’s final cigarette into composed lips, the lighter’s spark following soon after.
The filter smolders in the bottom of his vision, the rest overtaken by Mob’s drooping eyelids, his face settling and sinking willingly into the crook of Reigen’s hand. Like it was habitual, natural.
He pulls Mob’s mouth open further, the red of the boy’s mouth paired with his irises.
“I promise it’s all good,” Reigen croons, taking a long drag, the smoldering in his lungs barely registering against the molten heat in his stomach.
It was so, so hot inside the car, the metal insulating them from the outside. No one could be expected to suffer that alone.
They’d have to do it together.
Reigen leans in, a hair’s breadth between Mob’s lips and his own.
“It’s all good,” he breathes again, sharing the heat, a waterfall of smoke through that reddened tunnel, crashing into the back of the boy’s throat.
Eye’s bursting from their sockets, Mob immediately heaves a great breath in surprise.
Coughs spasm and wrack through his chest as he doubles over in the seat, barely able to grip his knees to keep himself from fully falling over.
The gags freeze over Reigen’s fever dream in an instant, the entirety of their trip and his warped fantasies dissolving, the reality of the situation kicking him in the gut, wresting the steering wheel back onto the road.
What the fuck was he doing?
Reigen’s head and hands fly back against the window, instinctive exoneration from the scene of the crime.
“Oh my god, oh my god, Mob, I’m so sorry, oh my god.”
He frantically searches around the car as Mob continues to hack and gasp. A half-consumed bottle of water finally materializes in the backseat after what feels like days, leftovers of the prior motion sickness episode.
Reigen grabs it, the cap spinning off into the void. “Water! Drink the water!”
He shoves the bottle into Mob’s shaking hands, coaxing him upright by tipping it towards his lips. Reigen’s fingertips are barely grazing Mob’s shoulder as he helps him settle, but he feels as if he’s branding the boy’s pale skin with every passing second.
As soon as Mob’s gulps turn into stuttered breaths, Reigen pulls his hands away, shoving them underneath his armpits. He turns away instinctively, fighting his own urge to gag. The sun has dipped below the trees, shadows floating amongst the smoky fragments of Reigen’s advances.
He shakes his head vehemently, unconsciously. His forehead bangs once against the steering wheel, ceaseless apologies driveling out of his mouth.
How could he have let this happen? How could he do this? How could he do this to Mob? After all that Mob had confided in him? Especially with what Mob had confided in him? To finally escape those horrors just to be met with something worse, something physical and real, forced upon him by the one person he trusted to hold his truth?
Eyes still unwilling to open, Reigen’s fingers fumble for the keys in the ignition. They just need to go. They need to not be here. He needs to go. He needs to drive Mob home to his parents and get Mob away from him and leave the city and, and, and...
Soft touches reach across the gap, through the panic. They pull a hand off the keys slowly, place it back in his lap.
The keychain dangles out of his grasp helplessly. Reigen’s eyebrows grate against the wheel. He refuses to open his eyes. If he can’t leave for whatever reason, he can at least delude himself into thinking he isn’t here.
Mob’s hands are clammy, barely recovered from the coughing fit as they extend towards Reigen’s free one. The boy hiccups intermittently as he catches long fingers, guiding them away from the wheel, bending and stretching the wiry arm backwards.
Reigen knows he deserves whatever Mob has in store for him. And he’s selfish enough to look forward to the retribution.
His hand is crooked again, this time positioned over taut muscle, a thin, trembling column.
Mob’s neck. His hand is covering Mob’s neck.
Reigen whips his head back to look at Mob, stomach curdling in self-disgust as he impulsively tries to recoil. But despite the shaking, Mob holds him firm, gaze focused, half-lidded eyes half-shrouded in the shadows of the trees.
Mob’s pulse hammers beneath his thumb, a hummingbird’s wings whirring just underneath his skin. Reigen is certain that his own heart stopped a minute ago.
“I like…this,” Mob explains, the words vibrating through Reigen’s hand, featherlight on the boy’s throat.
“To be… held… like this,” he continues, through a deep blush, unable to hold Reigen’s gaze, his adam’s apple jumping below the man’s palm.
Reigen blinks in disbelief, unable to move.
Unwilling to move.
Clearly overcome with embarrassment, Mob chews at his top lip. “I’m sorry... if that’s too much-”
“No! Nope!” Reigen quickly replies.
His mouth squeezes shut dumbly, unaware that he intended to respond that way. God, could he have said that any faster? Could he not maintain any semblance of dignity?
He clears his throat, unsuccessfully expelling the lingering regret lodged there. “I mean, uh, no, no… I… uh, I meant what I said,” he says.
As long as I don’t think about why I said it. And how I meant even more what I didn’t say.
Reigen’s limbs are still stone, Mob’s request thrumming through his veins, faster and more potent than a shot of adrenaline. He forces something akin to a relaxed intonation into his voice.
I’m the adult here.
Why the hell am I the adult here.
“It’s okay. I- I just… are you sure?” Reigen asks, the words hollow in his mouth, yearning to be thronged with validation.
Mob’s gaze flits back to meet Reigen’s, thick black strands of hair lifting from the roots, marking a blast radius. Something unspoken passes between them, sparks racing along a wire, raising the hairs on the back of Reigen’s neck.
Mob nods, a nervous determination emanating from him. Willingness. Trust.
Reigen knows he shouldn’t be on the receiving end of either.
A buzzy static runs along the length of his arms, burning at the pinpoints of skin contact. Mob lets his arms fall to his side, gold buttons on his cuffs rustling against the frayed, worn fabric of the car seats. He closes his eyes.
Reigen’s thumb and forefinger press inward, ever so gently.
He’s never been one to refuse something he’s so graciously been given.
The warmth of Mob’s skin ignites something in him, in both of them, maybe, at the touch. All the muscles in his hand feel like they’re on fire.
Reigen’s trembles as he sits up, allowing himself to fully appraise the sight in the passenger’s seat, the tightening of the connection around Mob’s throat, the boy’s posture loosening reflexively, sneakers hanging over the floor, as if a lock inside of him had finally been unclasped.
“You are being so good for me, Mob,” he breathes, fanned embers glowing on his tongue.
Mob shivers bodily, the same as if someone had poured ice water over him, his fingers flexing and tensing at the statement. His hips lift minutely, tugged upward by an invisible string.
Reigen’s head spins, vision fuzzy, body moving on its own accord, as if possessed. His knees find divots next to Mob’s hips, free hand slipping over the reclining lever on Mob’s seat, lowering the two of them down. He crouches over Mob, back pressed against the dashboard, shoes smearing already dirtied plastic, the shadow of his torso engulfing those of the trees, his frame caging in the smaller one beneath him.
He doesn’t breathe, the knuckles around Mob’s throat aching with the stiffness of resistance. Mob shifts back and forth, lips parting slightly. Reigen stares down, eyes boring into the black hole dotted with gold stars under him. There’s a precipice waiting to be breached, a cliff ready to fall from.
“Please,” Mob whispers, the noise trailing off into a whimper.
Nauseous with want, Reigen sinks his head down, hot breath ghosting over Mob’s ear, the hand on Mob’s neck smoldering with inaction, tendons cramping. Rocks crumble off the edge.
“You seem like you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to,” Reigen says, a roughness grinding over the words.
His words, perhaps.
A statement beckoning the response he wants to hear, the green light he needs to see, as if he could compel himself to take accountability for Mob’s hips now bucking unrepentantly below him, black and grey not yet intertwining.
“Please,” Mob gasps through the strain, the metal frame of the car yawning under a great pressure. “Ah- please, Reigen-shishou-”
All at once, suddenly lucid, Reigen clamps down, a vice grip on Mob’s neck, his other hand rummaging through and yanking on Mob’s hair, a profane friction finally, finally catching fire as Reigen thrusts against him.
Once.
Mob yelps, his eyes ripping open even as they roll back. His tongue lolls out, wanton, dumbfounded, and absolutely, undeniably desperate.
Reigen thought he was hard earlier.
Objectively, factually, he was harder than he’d ever been in his life. The only other contender being the present moment, of course.
Mob is maybe one accidental brush away from disintegrating on contact.
And Reigen can’t let this wildfire die out quite so soon, now could he?
They’d only just started.
“That’s better,” he hums, as he extracts his lower half from Mob, releases the tension around his neck. The boy's hands grasp onto Reigen’s arm, pleading. Mob pants at the sudden loss, the moans quiet but anguished. Betrayed.
“I think you should flip over,” Reigen posits, his voice cool but largely inaudible over the screeching of car’s roof bending in.
His thoughts wander towards Mogami, wondering if the man had ever seen Mob like this, if Mob had ever shown this side of himself to anyone.
Or if it was only him.
Mob’s mouth gapes as his eyes jerk around, fingers grabbing up Reigen’s arm like he’s at the end of a rope, seconds away from dropping into the abyss.
Reigen tears at Mob’s roots, snatching with the same desperation, eliciting a cry below him.
“I said flip over. Now.”
Scrambling to readjust himself, Mob shoves his limbs around heedlessly, arms splaying out above his head, his wrists clutching at each other, unconsciously pressing his ass up against Reigen’s length in the crowded, shrinking space.
Reigen shudders, arms and legs forming a cage, nearly keeling over and falling on top of Mob at the contact. His fingers dig deeper into the boy’s hair, fingernails scratching at the scalp, unmerciful.
“I need… shishou, I-I need” Mob gulps the air in, heavy breaths, drowning in his own desire, lower half jerking against nothing, white knuckles clinging onto himself, looking for any reprieve.
“…I need more.”
So does Reigen.
He needs much, much more.
Hands latch onto the waistband of Mob’s black pants, his hands, they’re Reigen’s hands, there’s no denying it anymore, there’s no delusional smog left to obscure the terrifying want that courses along him, the wildfire swallowing up the entirety of his skin, the whole of his mind.
Those hands pull down with a single-minded focus, exposing pale blue boxers. Reigen leans back against the dashboard once again, handles and knobs prodding into his spine, his own fingers scraping along the backs of Mob’s thighs. The boy moans, muffled only by the sound of tires popping outside.
Reigen stares at smooth, pale skin, previously uncontaminated by rotten hands. It envelopes his vision. He feels like a freight train that’s been derailed, his thoughts barreling down a path with no sense of destination.
He wants to sink his teeth into Mob, to wrap his tie around that willing throat, pink against white, their bodies flush and inseparable, to feel the sting in his own hands as Mob’s ass scalds underneath him, to revel in his cries as cigarette-shaped scorches trail along clavicles and inner thighs.
To eradicate any confusion, any pretense, around the nature of the relationship, around the boundaries of his mentorship, around what kind of person he really is.
But.
There will be time for all of that.
Of course there will be.
And so nimble fingers clink against his belt loop as he takes a deep, singular breath. Mob whimpers at the loss of contact again. Reigen slides his hand under his cock, he too aching in anticipation, an exhale sputtering out of dry lips. Reigen licks them, thinking of collateral damage, of shrapnel, of lacerated skin.
He thinks of puncturing metal, of the car folding in around them, of cauterizing wounds.
He thinks of the fact that in some situations, in some dire circumstances, the only solution is to let it burn.
Reigen spits, thinking for sure that steam would hiss off his palm. But there’s only the sweltering, wet heat under his clothes, and in Mob’s mouth as he pushes his other fingers into its inpatient embrace.
Mob’s teeth bite down onto him, groaning in relief, the boy’s tongue drooling lattice into the webs of his fingers. His tip pushes through Mob’s thighs, carves out a chasm between them, as he settles his chest on top of Mob’s back, sighing.
He quickens his pace immediately, rolling his hips, his free hand shifting to the contours of Mob’s ass under the blue fabric, thumb tracing up and down the middle.
Mob writhes underneath him, keening through the confines of Reigen’s fingers, the sound of their collision mixing with the crunch of steel.
Reigen mouths against Mob’s scalp, damp hair looping around his tongue, fluttering his eyes closed at the friction between them.
“Is this what you meant?” he groans, rabid and frantic in his movements. “Is this what you want?”
Mob’s head flies up and down, maniacal, he’s nodding, he has to be nodding. He nearly dislodges Reigen from his mouth, the boy’s spine curving back to meet him.
“Please, please, please, please,” Mob cries, noise mangled around bent fingers and clenched teeth.
His thumb presses bristly cotton against Mob’s entrance, his cock slicked and gliding through Mob’s thighs.
Reigen whispers, to himself or to Mob, he’s not sure.
“You’re going to come without me even touching you,” he says, unable to tell if it’s an order or a statement of awe, lost in the smoke, wandering amongst husks of trees, curling around Mob’s torso as the roof curls around him.
And it takes only a few seconds for Mob to convulse, electrocuted, drawing blood from Reigen’s knuckles in his mouth, a high-pitched whine wrung out of him, his body wracking like it had earlier, uncontrolled and submissive to the whims of the present.
Broken shards of plastic pinch against Reigen’s legs, tearing his slacks. He thrusts wildly, his cock chafing against the wetness now soaking Mob’s front. Mob moans at each push, tender and exhausted.
Reigen slides bloodied fingers into the sweat of his own hair, pushing it out of his eyes before moving a hand to grip Mob’s waist, the other underneath him to palm against the both of them.
Sobbing at the contact, overstimulated, Mob squirms beneath him. “Shishou…. shishou… please…”
Reigen’s so close, pounding against the opening Mob’s made for him, tight and scorched.
“Please? Please?” he all but growls, lightheaded, vision spotting as he tumults over the edge.
“What about a fucking ‘thank you’?”