Silver and Gold

by Sifl-senpai

Reigen's got a silver tongue, but he also has a heart of gold- sometimes. When he feels like it. Teruki does not, though he admits that his tongue does gleam with an edge, like a knife. He doesn't want to steal what Reigen has so much as become an alchemist and to transform himself into something comparable- but from the inside. Or: Teru and Reigen have a chat.

Author's Note: For those of you who are anime-only, this is canon divergence and also contains spoilers in terms of context. I'm writing what I call my "Color in a Monochrome World" series for MP100 that explores different characters and dynamics, and this story fits into that. You can read them all on Ao3- my username is Sifl- but I will be uploading them here over time in the hopes that MP100 gets its own category soon! Thank you for reading and leaving feedback!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The office sat small, warped, and out of the way beneath the looming stares and gleaming windowpanes of the rest of Seasoning City leering down upon it, like a lopsided cake shoved in the back of a display case full of other, larger, more beautiful and more perfect pastries. The sign hanging off the stucco frosting of the place's tan, nondescript side advertised Consultation Office- Spirits and Such in thin, spidery strokes, like it was added in a hurry at the last second before presentation. Teruki took it in with deep, inquisitive eyes and made his way inside.

A bell chimed out in amazed enthusiasm that anyone would choose to walk through the door.

"Oh. Mob, I thought you said you couldn't make it today." Arataka Reigen glanced up from the cool blue glow of his computer screen. "Oh. Just kidding. You're not Mob." The laptop fell closed with a snap.

"Hello, Kageyama-kun's Master-san."

"Kageyama-kun's…?" Reigen cleared his throat to force down his incredulous chuckle. "Hello. What can I do ya for, Mob's friend?"

A calm smile graced Teruki's lips and stretched wide and slow over his face as if to indicate how much of the office he had bitten off to chew at a time. He considered the plant sitting by the plain bookshelf in the corner- a tomato plant, a real one, holding out its fruit for all to see as time slowly turned them from green, to yellow, to a splotched red from basking in the light of the sun streaking through the blinds of the nearby window. It radiated with the lingering ghost of Shigeo's energy, and called out to the other relics drenched in his presence; on the other side of the room stood a chair and table housing a cash box, and a vacant coat hanger behind that.

Teruki gestured at the setup. "This is where Kageyama-kun normally sits?" It was neat and nondescript, save a manga lying in the seat of the chair. The colored ink sparkled beneath the even gloss of the cover in yellows and reds and blues like glazed fruit shining atop a white Christmas cake.

"Yeah, when he's working in the office."

Teruki removed the deep purple jacket of his school uniform and swaddled one of the barren coat hooks with it.

"Were you looking for him?" Reigen asked, leaning further over his desk in curiosity, his forearms tucked beneath his chest like a curious child discreetly leaning over to look into a store display. "If it's important, I can call him for you."

Teruki picked up the book and ran his fingers over the cover images- a Jump, if the logo was any indication, and a more modern one. A ragged piece of paper stuck up out of the top, near the spine, and Teruki gently flipped open to the page it marked. "I've seen this. It has become quite popular at my school, too, it seems," Teruki said.

"Aw, Mob, I told him to put that back on the shelf when he left," Reigen muttered, pawing at the back of his neck and shaking his head.

"Kageyama-kun likes this?" Teruki asked, flitting over the black and white images of the interior with studious eyes. "I thought he was rather behind when it came to topics of pop culture. Perhaps I was wrong, since he owns something like this."

"It's not his, exactly," Reigen said, pressing forward with a sigh.

"Oh, so this belongs to Brother-kun?" Teruki blinked down at the striking stare of a character with sclera colored black and irises left to hold the white of the page. "Or the library?"

"No," Reigen said, and then a small breath of hesitation, "it's mine."

"Kageyama-kun's Master-san reads this," Teruki's words floated beneath the metronome of the fan beating the air above them into a spiral.

"You can call me Reigen, you know. It's fine."

Teruki quirked his head, and then acquiesced with a slow tongue, like he were tasting the name in his mouth. "Reigen-san reads this." He smiled, pleased and ready for more. "Why?"

"W-huh?" Reigen's mouth fell open, like he had been expecting a pineapple but instead received a pepper. "Well, because I like it, first of all. What's more to say about it than that?" He gestured out towards Teruki with his whole hand as if to push the conversation back to the boy. "Is that what you came here for? For a book recommendation?"

Teruki cradled the book to his chest, and looked down at Shigeo's vacant chair. His hand hovered over the honey colored wood, and then pulled away before it could stick fast, or like something in the air could come and sting him should he meddle with something else that was not his.

Instead, Teruki's dark shoes changed direction, and quickly crossed the plain tile before halting in front of Reigen's desk. The boy claimed the foldout chair sitting in the no man's land between Shigeo's desk and Reigen's, an island in the middle of the office, and sat. "What's it about?" Teruki planted the book in his lap.

Reigen opened his mouth and raised his eyebrows. "Superheroes," he finally said, the tips of his fingers parting from one another and then meeting once more in resignation. "It's a parody. It's silly, but still kinda cool. I think that's part of why he likes it."

Teruki looked back down at the panels breaking the pages up into pieces like the fragments of a broken chocolate bar scattered across an open wrapper. "And is that why you like it?"

Reigen's eyebrows furrowed, and he shrugged, his motions uncharacteristically small and closed off. His arms crossed, and he sat up straighter in his chair. "Well, yeah. Why?"

Teruki absorbed the character with the black eyes again. His body was wrapped in illustrative fire. "I can do that, too," Teruki said, quiet, questioning, almost under his breath. "Kageyama-kun can do things even cooler than this. So why would he read about someone with these kinds of powers when he wants so much to not be this?"

Reigen peered down at the page open in Teruki's lap. "Oh. Well, see, the story's not about that guy." He reached out and turned a few pages over.

An unassuming, bland character in a cape smiled up at Teru instead, his mouth but a quick, careless dash creeping across the bottom of his ovoid head.

"Honestly I think he kinda look likes Mob, myself. He's kinda got that," Reigen wiped a hand over the air in front of his face, back and forth, "you know, that vacant expression going on." He winked. "Like, he's sorta cute, but only because he isn't cute at all."

Teruki's shaven arrogance threatened to rear its unsightliness with how quickly he snapped to attention. "What! Kageyama-kun is very handsome and engaging!" He leaned forward onto the desk, the manga in his hand still sparkling in black and white on every page, and contested Reigen with bright, flared eyes and a decisive frown.

The fan stirred the thickened air in the room like cream, thrumming with the effort of dissipating the tension and fluffing the air. It peaked, and Reigen laughed.

"Handsome and generous, just like last time. Really, Hanazawa, Mob could stand to be more like you."

"No. I'm still the one who should be more like Kageyama-kun," Teruki deflected, bringing the manga up on the desk and smoothing the pages out flat. "He's amazing."

"You're still on about that?"

"I can make myself stronger, more disciplined, more humble, but no matter how much I think I learn, he's always ahead of me." Teruki stared down at his hands. "Always. I still can't catch up."

"I never knew that you could have a contest over humility," Reigen mused. "Doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose?"

"It's not a contest," Teruki said. "I don't want to beat Kageyama-kun, even if I could somehow do that. That's not what it's about." He traced over the smiling doodle in the billowing cape.

The rolling chair beneath Reigen creaked as he leaned back, observant.

"Winning and losing, better and worse, silver and gold, that's not what I want to worry about anymore. I don't want to be that person anymore. But I..." Teruki closed the manga, and then started as it was snatched from his hands.

Reigen's fingers peeled away page after page of the book, and then plopped it back down on the desk, open-faced. He pointed to a particular panel. "Humans have the power to change themselves," he said, grinning and looking up at Teruki. The blank-faced character smiling within the confines of the paper did and said much the same. "That's why Mob really likes these, I think."

"I knew this had to be special, if he liked it." Teruki took the book from Reigen and poured over the drawings. "So that's what he saw. He's really the best,"

"It's just a comic book. There isn't anything all that special about it. Like I said, it's just a parody." Reigen shrugged.

Teruki's eyes sparkled bright in the light. "Just a parody. Is that what you thought when you bought it?"

The fan directed the conversation.

"Reigen-san is amazing, too," Teruki continued. "If I could think myself an equal to Kageyama-kun, then maybe I," he shook his head, "I can't get there. It's not my place. I'm a commoner."

"A," Reigen blinked. "A commoner?" He snorted. "What is this, feudal Europe? So what? So's Mob."

"What?"

"Pedestals aren't good places to put your friends," Reigen said, standing up and ambling over to the bookshelf standing guard over Shigeo's tomatoes. Teruki twisted in his chair to keep the man in his line of sight, lest he slip away like water through a sieve.

The serene, sophisticated spines of photo books poked out of the shelf, crammed amongst a more motley assortment of comics and pulp fiction like a line of impulse buys sporting both designer chocolates and cheap candy corn side by side. Reigen's hand perused the lineup. "You're a normal, regular, run-of-the-mill middle school kid. Right? Well, so's Mob, except he's not as popular, probably. He stopped scanning the shelves to grin at Teruki, his dark eyes gleaming above his smooth features. "A clever, talented, handsome guy like you, I'm sure you've got lots of friends, right?"

Teruki clasped his hands over his knees and pressed the pads of his fingers into his leg.

Reigen pivoted around, his hand jammed into his pocket as if searching for the answer Teruki could not supply.

"Would you call people who admire you for your powers, or your talent, or the way you look," Teruki swallowed, "friends?"

Reigen made no answer, and instead plucked an assortment of books from his shelf.

"Kageyama-kun is really lucky," Teruki continued, "To have a friend like you, and a sibling like Brother-kun, and have people around him like his club members." Teruki smiled at the ceiling. "He says he's a regular guy, but he's surely, surely the main character of this world, if anyone is." He closed his eyes. "I was so stupid, to think I ever could be so important."

"Pfft. Mob is a regular kid," Reigen countered. "That's why he's called Mob. He's absolutely, completely unextraordinary." He carelessly dropped his load of books into Teruki's hands, like he would toss candy into a child's bucket on Halloween.

Teruki caught the books in midair as they slid off his lap, each one suspended by nothingness, and then bid them neatly organize themselves on Reigen's desk, stacked flush and arranged in numerical order.

"It's annoying how all of you can just do that," Reigen muttered. "It's so hard to surprise you."

"But can't you also do that, Rei-?"

Reigen cleared his throat. "You act like being a good person is some special thing, or having friends is some kind of miracle. It's not. It's good to be a good person, and to be good to your friends, and respect them. Being good is the most important thing you can be, but it's nothing so extraordinary. If you are good, good things will come to you, and other people'll be good to you. That's all." He pointed at Teruki's nose, and the boy's eyes crossed as he fixated on it. "Nobody's the protagonist of this world. Nobody's that important. But," Reigen flicked Teruki's shoulder with the back of his hand, "you are the protagonist of your own life. And nobody can take that away from you." He sauntered to his desk and plopped down into his chair, spinning around and then planting his forearm on his desk with practiced timing. "So there!"

"I'm the protagonist?" Teruki asked. "But I can't be. I'm not," he brought his hands to his chest, above where his heart beat a rhythm all his own, as if he could cover it over in shame, "I'm not good enough. I'm not special."

Reigen cradled his face in his hand. "Like I said, nobody's special. We're just different, is all."

"Then-!"

"So what kind of protagonist do you want to be?" Reigen asked. "Do you want to be a stuck-up jackass, or a pushover so busy putting himself down that everyone else walks all over him? Or," he took to his feet again, the wheels of his chair gurgling as the back of his thighs pushed it away, "do you wanna be second place forever, secluding yourself from everyone except that one guy that for whatever reason you think is better? 'Cause that's still all about silver and gold, Hanazawa-kun. It's not humble at all- it's just plain worshipping someone. Don't cloister yourself away like that and call it humility. Narcissism and self-loathing go hand in hand, you know, and both are bad."

"I don't know any other way to be," Teruki said.

"Okay, well, humans have the power to change themselves," Reigen prompted. "So what do you want?"

"I want," Teruki said, "I want." He searched the room.

The yellow tomatoes on Shigeo's vine swayed, glistening, like golden apples in the garden of a god, and the leaves of the plant conducted a silent, gentle orchestra beneath the swirling atmosphere generated by the fan up above. His chair remained empty like a throne, the royal purple of Teruki's jacket acting as a tapestry from where it hung on the rack behind it. Reigen stood in front of it, a knight dressed in plain grey instead of gleaming silver.

And Teruki himself was a commoner.

The boy fixed his gaze on Reigen's suit, and then his face. "What do you want, Reigen-san?"

"It's not polite to answer a question with another question, Hanazawa-kun," Reigen said, surprise acting as leavening to his rising annoyance.

"Why does he call you Master?" Teruki asked. "You're not psychic, are you?"

Reigen seized up. "Ha! Of course I am! I'm-!"

Teruki held up a hand. "Stop. Don't lie to me; it's demeaning. You have no aura. And besides, I can read between the lines of what Brother-kun thinks about you."

"Eheh," Reigen said, coughing and then stuffing his hands beneath the bends in his arms. "Thanks, Ritsu," he grumbled.

"I also read the news about your, ah, media foray and what happened before you-"

"Alright! Alright."

"Still," Teruki said. "Kageyama-kun chose you to wield his powers. Not me, not Brother-kun, not that ghost Ekubo." He shook his head. "But why? Why you?"

Reigen's confusion painted his face to look even younger. "That's what this is about? You're jealous- you're jealous of me? I thought you were jealous of Mob. Ha!"

Teruki shook his head. "I'm not jealous of you- or, rather, I am, and I am not. I want you to have what you have, but I want it, too, at the same time." The candy-coated characters on the spine of Reigen's manga were a captive audience to the boy's scrutiny.

The desk creaked as Reigen sat down on the corner, his legs straight, and leaned over to look at Teruki. "It's okay to want to be closer to Mob. It's okay to want to be friends. I told you to take care of him, didn't I?"

"Yes, but," Teruki sat up in his chair. "I think I understand him, but how do I do that? I've never really been..." he searched the floor. "How do I be a good friend? No, the best friend?" He stood up. "You're the one who told me we were friends- not him. So help me!"

"Eh, give him some time. Mob's not exactly stellar with words."

Teruki shook his head. "He doesn't seem to care if I say we're rivals, he doesn't mind if we're comrades, he doesn't notice when I try and show off. What do I do?"

Reigen laughed, the shoulders of his suit rising and falling as he inhaled. "It's not up to me if you become best friends. It's up to you, and it's up to Mob. You can't just decide." He grinned. "You're being really hasty." The fan squeaked in agreement up above, and Reigen clicked his tongue and turned it off. "Just, I dunno, ask if he wants to hang out. Or talk about something. Or after school, go get something to eat- speaking of which, are you hungry? Because I'm hungry." He glanced at his watch.

"But what do we talk about? I've gotten lucky. There was always some crisis to talk about, or something to do. What do I do when I don't have anything like that to talk about? I've never spoken with someone who has anything in common with me- it's always been both of us talking about me, or my powers!"

Red hair molded into peaks as Reigen ran his fingers over his head, and then fell back down as he ran his hand down his face. "What is with you kids?" He jerked a thumb at the tower of manga on his desk, the glossy white of the paper shimmering with colored ink. "How about you read those, and then, if you like them, you ask him what he thinks about them? Or why he likes them, or which of Genos's arms are cooler." He pointed at Teruki. "And listen to what he says, even if you disagree. And if you disagree, you don't just sit there and pretend to agree, but you don't get into a fight about it, either. You're two different people, with things in common, but also things that aren't. Mob's not a goal you try to emulate, and he's not some girl you're trying to date as a status symbol- he's a friend you admire for both his similarities and his differences."

Teruki grabbed the book at the top of his stack. His pink tongue darted out of his mouth, like he might devour the book instead of read it. "Is that how it's done? Is that why Kageyama-kun likes you?"

Reigen chose that moment to wander over to Shigeo's vacant desk. "You could say that." He removed Teruki's jacket from the rack, the deep purple vibrating against the man's light grey. "Now, look, I'm hungry and it's time for me to go home." He held the clothing out to Teruki. "I don't mean to kick you out, but you can either go home, go somewhere else, or come with me. The choice is yours, but I want something that isn't ramen since Mob isn't here."

The purple jacket gaped open in front of Teru like it was suddenly too big, a mantle he was unworthy for, like it might swallow him whole. "I," he swallowed, and thrust one arm in, and then the other, "I'd like to come. I'd like to talk to you some more."

"Awesome," said Reigen, checking his back pocket and producing his wallet. "You can grab the manga later. Do you like, like, steak and hamburgers and that kind of thing, or seafood?"

Teruki's answer was immediate. "Steak," he said.

"Expensive tastes," Reigen commented.

"What can I say?" Teruki answered. "Even a commoner like me can strive for the best."