#we all know

ʀᴜʟᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴜᴍʙ

a/n: nobody asked for this. i didn’t even ask for this. liking reigen is a disease and im here to spread the virus. may we find the cure. only dolly parton can save us now.

reigen arataka x gn!reader, foul language, established relationship, mental health talk, reigen calls you a bitch, mentions of vomit, and somehow this is fluff, (1.7k wc)

When Reigen asks when you fell for him, you pretend to think about it. You don’t really have to think about it, but you do have to think about if you want to tell him. He might not be all too pleased to hear it, though you’ve never really cared about coddling his feelings. Even though you are comfortable with him, this relationship of yours is less than a year old and there’s still a lot of unopened doors.

So you tell him the half truth, that you’ve always noticed him.

And it’s true - he’s not not a good-looking guy, and he appeared decently put together when you first met him. It’s not that you thought he was perfect, or even trying to be perfect, but his casual welcoming air at first introduction seemed calculated. You could tell he wanted something, not necessarily from you, but it’s almost as if you could see a pyramid of desire and him balancing on the point of junction at the top. Despite the tension of it, it seemed dull to you - certainly not any way you’d want to live your life, or even attempt to support someone living it. But call it whatever you want, you knew there was something about him, or maybe even wanted there to be something.

He seems satisfied with your answer. Smug bastard, but you’ll let him believe it. In turn, you ask him the same question back.

“Well, of course I thought you were attractive when I first introduced myself, but I also thought you were kind of a bitch,” he says way too candidly. One of the many reasons you hate being attached to him.

“I said only kind of!” He offers in defense when he sees your scowl. “But I really fell for you on my birthday last year, my twenty-eighth.”

“The night I found you puking your guts up in an alleyway?” You recall. Funny that he would say that.

“I call it personal growth.”

“You kept saying over and over that you thought you were gonna shit yourself between barfing,” you remind him. Ripping the sugar coating off his bullshit is always fun for you.

“Like I said: personal growth. Purging myself of toxic build-up and stuff,” he says and waves his hand flippantly. “And it must’ve worked, because you showed up.”

“Oh.”

You blink. He never delivers praise or appreciation in a way that you can take seriously. But for once, he seems sincere. Not in a cheesy way, and rare enough for you to feel a little self-conscious.

“And you rubbed my back, and convinced me not to strip down naked to shit in the alley,” he adds.

“I would have fallen for you anyway,” you tell him with a small laugh to try and keep your heart from beating too fast. Part of what you like about your relationship with him is that you don’t have to worry about serious feelings and conversations and the anxiety of being misunderstood that comes with them.

“Wait, I thought you already had?” He says, focusing in on you with a sheepish look that you return with a tight-lipped smile. Might as well tell him the truth.

“Well, I mean, I was down to maybe fuck you out of crushing desperation and loneliness before, but seeing you so pathetic that night made me like you - against my better judgement.”

He stares at you hard, face showing some kind of strong, unreadable expression. You fend off the urge to laugh, though you do worry that, like him, you’re being too honest.

“I mean, it was nice to see you so human. Not schmoozing, not pretending, not calculating. Just suffering for drinking yourself sick,” you explain.

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, which is slightly concerning. Reigen always has something to say in response to everything, especially when you’re being cheeky with him. Ever the menace, he lets your unease simmer just a little more.

“You know, there’s something I never told you about that night,” he says, making your heart jump and squeeze at the same time. There’s no cause for alarm in his voice, but the words still have you anticipating.

“I wasn’t drunk.”

“Oh, food poisoning. I see,” you nod slowly. Perhaps it would’ve been better for your opinion of his sanity to keep thinking for the rest of your life that he was drunk, but you’ve had enough experiences with bad sushi to know that stomach viruses can get the best of anybody.

“It could have been,” he muses. “But I think I was so disgusted with myself that my body was trying to kill me.”

Oh. Wow.

“I remember thinking that I was rotten, that I was rotting on the inside, so much that it was making my head spin. Next thing I knew, I was retching against the brick. It felt like I was going to die and that I deserved to go in such a sorry way.”

This is not-

“I swear I even saw the gates into the next life,” he laughs at himself to acknowledge that he probably sounds insane. He’s well aware that he’s known for exaggerating the truth, so he knows better than to expect you to believe him. “And it’s not some golden metal rolling gate like in the paintings. That’s why it felt so real.”

-what you were expecting.

“But even though I felt so disgusting and my body and mind were doing such horrible things to me, I didn’t want to go.”

Your heart clenches. You never knew that he was capable of feeling like that. The Reigen you know doesn’t get affected by anything. Though now it makes sense, that maybe he does and he just ignores it until it wants to kill him.

“Next thing I knew, I felt your hand on my back. It took me a while to hear your voice, but I could feel your thumb moving on my shoulder. It guided me back, and kept me grounded. I don’t know if I could’ve stayed tethered without it.”

The way he’s speaking, you would think he’s always been so open with you. It sounds like he’s telling you something mundane and ordinary, and not that you saved his fucking life. You don’t really know what to say. You feel like you should be crying, and yet he’s not leaving you any room to feel any kind of mournful.

So you simply reach out to him with your hand, holding the side of his face, some stubble scratching against the heel of your palm as you brush a thumb over his cheekbone in such a gentle way that he smiles a little. You’re not sure if you’ve ever looked him in the eye like this before, though it feels familiar. You recall feeling the same way when you dropped him off at his office the night you found him - apprehensive yet curious and completely powerless to whatever it is that compels you to want to be with him.

Maybe you wanted to help him, though he’s never asked for it and will act like he doesn’t need it. In reality, he hasn’t actually needed it. He’s surprised you nearly every step of the way with the shit he gets away with. You’ve come to learn that you don’t really need to worry about him in a traditional sense. Yet here he is, telling you that you did indeed help him.

“Be any more vulnerable with me, and I might just fall in love with you for real,” you say to him, a playful lilt in your voice that you hope he can read.

He chuckles lightly through his nose, bringing his hand up to cover yours. He mirrors the soft movement of your thumb.

“Can’t have that now. That would be terrible,” he teases. Even if you both believe it. Even if it’s far too late.

“The absolute worst.”

You guide your lips to his. He tastes like cigarettes and barbecue chips, and you gave up a long time ago on trying to convince yourself that you hate it. It’s always hard to pull away from him, his lips never failing to fit annoyingly in line with yours, but you open your eyes and draw back for a moment. The way your chest feels unfit to contain your heart when you look at him, it makes you desperate to distract yourself with kissing him deeper. However, you try to let the feeling settle rather than fighting or burying it.

“I’m glad you didn’t fall for me sooner,” he says. “You’d have shit taste.”

“I fell for a man who was puking and having an existential crisis in an alleyway in the middle of the night, and you don’t think I have shit taste?”

“Nah,” he waves off. “That was when I said I’d be better. And that’s when I started trying to be better.”

“You literally couldn’t do anything.”

“I didn’t throw up on you.”

“I-” You stop and sigh. “Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome,” he responds, smirking like the bastard he is. “If you like that, then you’re in for it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, though it’s soft and so out of place from his usual way of speaking that it grips you as something harsh would. “Gotta be as good as your thumb felt on my shoulder that night.”

You stop it there by pressing into him again for another kiss, more heated to guarantee that you won’t have to reveal anything deeper - like maybe you also remember the feel of his shirt under your palm as you brushed your thumb against him that night, hoping that he would feel that you cared about him through the subtle and tender movement.

Maybe there will never be a need to exchange the sentiment in words, for you notice the way his thumbs trace against your skin as he kisses you, or when you sit together on the couch, or when he grabs your hand on the train. You make sure to return the gesture, grounding him, grounding you together.

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