It was no secret that Reigen was something of a junk food junkie.

If he were to get psychological about it he would have attributed his love of all things fried, buttered, salted, sugared, and cheese blasted to hid parents. After Dad had left the family mom had needed to go out and join the workforce. That meant that she was out of the house for the entire day and most of the night pulling in double shifts. One shift at the convenience store, one at the laundromat, and when she could squeeze the time in she tutored people in English. All of that work hadn't left much time for cooking.

But hey, that was what the microwave was for.

His parents had split when he had been young, too young to be trusted to use the stove. So it was snack food for him. Cookies, cakes, frozen dinners, and whatever the convenience store had been about to throw out. To this day Reigen preferred the taste of slightly stale donuts to freshly baked. At the time it had been like a dream. All the junk food he could have eaten but then once he'd hit his teenage years….he wasn't going to pretend that he'd suddenly become a mature and health conscious person.

Yeah, it had been more of the same through his teenage years.

In his defense it wasn't like Mom'd had the time to teach him how to cook. Dad never sent money, he'd moved onto his new family suspiciously fast after leaving his old one, so it was just him and Mom. He'd helped out as best as he could but he hadn't exactly had the drive to sit down and teach himself the fundamentals of good cooking, of nutrition and all of that boring stuff, so it had been more of the same long into his young adult years.

But now he was older.

He was older and wiser and took care of himself. He didn't sit and blame his parents for his formerly poor eating habits, and really the TV he watched was just as much to blame so it was really society's fault, or maybe it was his fault or….or nothing! The point was that now, in his twenty eighth year of life, he was long past his old junk food junkie days. He made healthy eating choices at every meal, be it vegetable broth in his ramen or veggies on his pizza or…whatever else he could fit vegetables onto. No, nary a morsel of junk food would pass his lips and had passed his lips since…well…

About five seconds ago.

But in his defense, and it was a very good defense, this was the polite thing to do. When someone showed up with a box of cookies the polite thing to do was to have one, and when you had a light breakfast as Reigen had it was important to take two since the last thing you wanted to be was hungry when you had a physical job like his, and then you took three because of…reasons.

Important reasons relating to hunger and nutrition and manners. Ones so important that they didn't even seem worth mentioning.

"Serizawa, these are amazing. Where'd you get them? The new place down on Nutmeg and Coriander?" asked Reigen as he bit into what must have been the best chocolate chip cookie that he'd ever had in his life. These were better, even, than Grandma's Cookies. The place down in the baking district, not his own grandmother's cookies. Grandma had been a terrible cook.

"No, I made them." said Serizawa as he brushed the crumbs from the coffee table out into his hand. Reigen looked down at the mess he made, both on the table and on the front of his shirt.

He discreetly brushed his shirt clean.

"Well I mostly made them. The recipe was on the chocolate chip package, I didn't invent it or anything like that." Said Serizawa as the crumbs from his hand flew up into the air before landing in the garbage can. The crumbs that Reigen had brushed off of himself quickly followed, including some that he had missed.

"You should give yourself more credit, Serizawa, cooking like this takes skill." Said Reigen as he felt a familiar feeling across his body, from the tips of his ears to the souls of his feet. He always felt it when Serizawa's aura touched his. It happened when he used his powers, mostly, but sometimes it just happened when he got too close to him. Reigen needed to get a bigger coffee table, this one was too small. It had been fine when Mob had been little but those times were over now. He had other people to share his meals with now.

He made a mental note to check the alley behind the building on trash day. Hey, lightning could totally strike the same place twice!

"Excuse me." Said Serizawa as he surveyed the room. A crooked picture on the wall straightened it's self out, a cobweb flew from the ceiling fan and into the trash can, and the couch underneath Reigen jumped. Reigen shifted to the side as a series of candy wrappers, chip bags, and what looked like old chicken bones flew into the garbage.

Ok, that couldn't have ALL been his fault.

"Who needs a cleaning service when they can just…uh…ask you?" asked Reigen, again losing his train of thought. It had just been because of the small dumpster Serizawa had managed to pull out of the couch cushions…and also from under his desk…and in the vent grate. He was so focused. He was doing that thing where his eyebrows were knitted together and his shoulders were so…kind of strong but…well he always looked strong, he was one hundred and eighty nine centimeters tall after all, and also he was one of the most powerful psychics in the world and…

Reigen took another cookie. He was getting lightheaded from hunger…or maybe too much sugar…he put the cookie back down.

"We have a cleaning service?" asked Serizawa as he finished giving the room a better cleaning than it had ever had in the history of Reigen renting it.

"No, I just meant that you're good at cleaning. Very, um, neat? I mean I never would have thought you would have been such a clean freak!" said Reigen, his voice getting both much louder and higher towards then end of that sentence. The one that he never should have started in the first place.

"I wasn't always…I was pretty messy. When I was a kid, I mean." Said Serizawa

"Well we all went through that phase. My mom used to threaten me, she'd say 'Arataka if you don't clean this room up I'm going to put it all in garbage bags and leave it on the curb' and I never took her seriously until one day she, uh, did." Said Reigen

"My mom never did anything like that." Said Serizawa

"She sounds-" said Reigen

"She never knew how dirty my room was since she couldn't really go in there." Said Serizawa. He was looking down, now, at the box of cookies between them. Reigen looked away. The office was so still, so quiet, he could have heard a pin drop. He didn't of course, the only thing he could hear was the roar of the heater and the clanging of the plumbing. Somehow they weren't loud enough to drown out the silence.

Where was Tome when he needed her…oh, right, at school. It was eight in the morning on a Tuesday after all…oh God…he had nine more hours of this ahead of him….

"I mean she did, sometimes, when I was asleep or in the tub but that was mostly when I was little. It just felt kind of weird to have her in my room even if it wasn't in there." Said Serizawa. Reigen didn't know what he was supposed to say to that so for once in his life he just kept his mouth shut.

"Not weird-weird just…it was the kind of thing that put me on edge so I asked her to stop and she did, eventually I mean, and I felt better but also worse since my room was a mess." Said Serizawa

"Yeah that…that sounds…" said Reigen wracking his brain for something, anything, appropriate to say. He had never been in this situation before. He had never had to, he didn't even know, reassure someone? About something like this…he had no experience with anything like this…but he had to say something, right? Otherwise Serizawa wouldn't have been telling him this…that is unless this was one of those situations where he just wanted to be heard?

This was what friends did for one another, right? They listened to each other's troubles?

"I mean it was worse than a mess. It was so bad that…actually I'm not sure, I mostly just sat in the dark. The light just reminded me of daytime and daytime reminded me of going outside but night wasn't much better because it reminded me of time passing." Said Serizawa

"That's…" said Reigen. He glanced over at the blinds. Should he have been keeping them closed during the day? Or was it better to leave them opened so Serizawa could recover from…everything? What would a good friend have done? Not that they were…he still wasn't entirely sure what they were.

"My TV gave off enough light though, enough that I could kind of see. I couldn't see how bad it had gotten, though. The President actually had to tell me how bad it was. He said 'you've lived like this for fifteen years?' and at the time I didn't feel bad but then later on I thought about it…and also he kind of had to teach me to clean up after myself. Toui-President Suzuki liked things to be very neat. His parents, his dad mostly, used to-" said Serizawa

"Yeah, he seems the type." Said Reigen with a dismissive wave of his hand. At least he hoped that it looked dismissive. He needed to dismiss this, that, that guy. He needed to dismiss that asshole from Serizawa's mind. Serizawa didn't need that guy anymore. He wasn't anyone's lackey anymore. He wasn't that guy's lackey anymore or any kind of lackey! He was Reigen's sort of employee and sort of friend and he wasn't about to let that guy keep his claws in Serizawa like that.

Heh. Claws…Claw. He could be kind of clever sometimes…but now was not the time for jokes.

"The type?" asked Serizawa

"You know, those neurotic type-A types. The kind of people where everything has to be 'just so' and if there's even a hair out of place it's the end of the fu-freaking world." Said Reigen

"Yeah, he could be kind of like that. He hated messes, which was kind of hard since I was always making them. Not on purpose though! Not like Sho. I just couldn't help it but he helped me, the President did, and-" said Serizawa

"You're giving him too much credit. Everything you did, everything you do for yourself, you do on your own. Don't attribute your success to that guy. He's not worth it." Said Reigen. Serizawa nodded, his eyes meeting Reigen's. He was giving him that look again, the look like Reigen was the answer to all of his hopes and dreams…that look that Reigen knew that he shouldn't have liked getting.

He took another cookie.

"Like these cookies. I can't see that guy having anything to do with this. You found the recipe, you got the idea in your head to make these, and now here they are. You made these all by yourself and for yourself. Suzuki whatever his given name is had nothing to do with this." Said Reigen before he took a maybe too big bite of the cookie in his hand.

"Touichirou, his given name is Touichirou." said Serizawa

"His given name doesn't matter." Said Reigen, ignoring years of his mother's attempted conditioning and talking with his mouth full.

"And you're right, I didn't make them for him." Said Serizawa

"See-" said Reigen as he swallowed

"I made them for you." said Serizawa. Reigen had been about to take another bite when he felt the cookie slip between his fingers and land on his formerly white, formerly freshly cleaned, shirt. It hadn't been his fault, his hands had just decided to stop listening to him. Actually his entire body seemed to be involved in the mutiny. He was practically paralyzed. His mind went to a documentary he had seen about that thing, what was it? Locked in syndrome…

He wiggled his toes. There. At least something was still listening to him, even if at this rate it looked like he was going to have to learn how to write with his toes.

"Come-come again?" asked Reigen, parlaying with his vocal cords. In exchange for extra swallowed saliva they agreed to form the following words. Further negotiations would take place with the rest of his body at a later date.

"I made them for you to thank you." said Serizawa

"Thank me?" asked Reigen. He sat up a little straighter. Negotiations were going well, it seemed. His heart was the last thing that he needed to parlay with. No matter what he did it just wouldn't stop beating, not that he wanted it to stop beating or anything! He just wanted it to stop being such an overachiever.

"For everything. For giving me a job and a second chance and being my friend and just…for everything." Said Serizawa. Reigen nodded. That was truly…something. Something that had been dropped right in his lap. Now he just had to figure out what to do with this, this, this radical sincerity he had just been given.

"You don't have to thank me, I'm not doing anything any decent person wouldn't have done." Said Reigen. He wanted to add 'idiot' to the end there, or maybe 'dummy', but he thought against it. Serizawa wasn't Mob or Tome, it was different saying that to another adult.

Of course everything was different when it came to Serizawa.

"I still want to, though, it just feels right. Felt right. You just…you gave me a second chance at everything and without you I'd probably still be with the President, or in prison, either way my life would have been a lot worse." Said Serizawa

"Alright, alright, alright already. From the bottom of my heart, you're welcome, alright?" said Reigen. He had meant to sound sarcastic, but not bitingly sarcastic, the charming sort of sarcastic, but of course it went right over Serizawa's head. He was staring at Reigen now, his eyes brimming with Reigen didn't even know what…he didn't need to know what. He just knew that he shouldn't have been enjoying the way Serizawa was looking at him.

He didn't need to be that person to anyone. Not again.

"Now come on, help me finish these so we can get to work already. For once we've got a full day today." Said Reigen before he took another much too big bite out of the cookie in his hand. It tasted good, better than good, it tasted like what he had always imagined a homemade cookie should have tasted like. Something made with care and passion and love…something better than what a person could get from a convenience store. It was almost enough to make him want to learn how to cook.

Almost.

He'd leave the cooking, the baking, to Serizawa. He seemed to have a gift for it.