Sometimes watching a movie together was just watching a movie together
Sometimes sitting next to someone on the couch was just sitting next to someone on the couch.
Sometimes having someone's arms around you was just having someone's arms around you.
Sometimes resting your head on someone's chest was just resting your head on someone's chest.
Things weren't always what they seemed….but sometimes they were. Sometimes things were exactly what they looked like and there was no need to go looking any deeper into them. Reigen certainly wasn't. So she was sitting on Serizawa's couch in his apartment and he was using her as a blanket and she was using him as a pillow? So freaking what? This was nothing. This was just them watching Netflix and chilling….not like that. Not like…well she wasn't even going to bring that up. No, it was still way too early to bring any of that up with him. She didn't want to scare him off, to ask too much, to make him do anything that he wasn't ready to do.
They had already done enough as it was.
They had done…well not much of anything in the grand scheme of things….but they had done enough. Enough for her to think…well a lot of things. She knew that he loved her and she knew that he loved him and she knew that she liked…well she had always been a physical being. She liked getting physical be it in her work, there was no way to give a nonphysical massage after all, and in her life…her romantic life. The life that she finally had…well she had for more than a couple of nights anyway….
His hand was on her waist. That should have been enough for her.
She sighed and buried her face in his chest. His shirt was soft, some kind of cotton blend, and she could hear his heartbeat. It was fast, maybe as fast as hers, or maybe even faster. She didn't know. She wasn't going to sit there and count the beats per minute. She didn't think that she could focus. She couldn't even focus on whatever movie was on the TV let alone the feel of his heartbeat under her head. He was just so….distracting…..
But in a good way.
In an impossibly good way. The way his heart beat, the way his chest rose and feel under her head, the way he smelled….just…all of it. She knew that she was acting like a kid. She was a grown woman. There she was sitting down cuddling with her boyfriend and all she could think about was his hand working it's way under her shirt…and it had, before, it had….and it could again….and she was too old to be sitting there thinking about making out with her boyfriend. She was an adult and adults….they communicated what they wanted…and it wasn't like she didn't know how communication worked…
They had been working on that.
They had been working on their communication skills and she knew that she liked…well she knew some of the things he liked…the things that they had already done…and that was not the problem. Introducing new things was the problem. Thinking about asking him to…well if she was going to completely lose herself in fantasy she would have imagined him picking her up and carrying her through that doorway…the one right next to the couch…and then throwing her down and doing things that, well, were R18+….she was such a kid right now.
She was going to go at his pace.
There was nothing wrong with his pace. There was nothing wrong with slow and steady. They had reached the making out portion of the relationship and they had been there for months and…well she didn't think that she could stay there for much longer…but she would have to. She would have to because…well she wasn't going to push him.
She didn't have to consult the cards to know that it wouldn't have ended well.
He hadn't done anything before. She was and had been, so far, all of his firsts. She had been his first girlfriend and his first kiss and the first woman he had ever seen topless and the first woman who he had ever felt up…a lot of firsts….and she knew that she couldn't push him. Firsts were big. Firsts were…well when you were young firsts were big…but he was so young when it came to all of this…and she wasn't going to push him too far too fast…
If he wanted to be with her…in that way….then he would have said something.
"Reigen? Reigen? Arataki?" asked Serizawa. He shook her a little. He wondered if she had fallen asleep. She was sighing and her eyes…well he couldn't see her eyes from this angle…and he didn't want to move. She might have been asleep…and he didn't want to wake her. She'd done a lot that day. It had been an endless parade of people coming in and out of the massage room and sitting at her desk asking for help from the cards….she was tired. She was tired and she wanted to sleep and…and he would let her sleep. He would let her sleep on him.
He had never slept with her before.
He could have turned the TV off and let himself drift off to sleep. He knew that he was tired too and…and he had never slept with her before…NOT LIKE THAT! He wasn't going to…to even bring that up. There was no way that he was just going to come out and ask her about that. He liked what they did already and…and he knew that she had done all of that before…and he hadn't but…well that was the thing of it….
He had no idea what he was doing.
He wished that there was some kind of…instruction manual…or something…for all of that. There were plenty of books to be read but those were so…clinical. Like reading a medical book or something…like instructions for building a model…or a game play through. Insert tab A into slot B and repeat as necessary. Step one, kiss her, step two, keep kissing her, step three…it was just so…schoolbook-y. The interest wasn't much better…and he may not have known much but he did know that he couldn't just go and do the things that he had seen in certain…adult….art…films. No, people did not do that and if he asked her to then she would probably have run away and started a new life somewhere else…or something….
Not that he was going to be asking her to do anything he had seen.
Not that he was going to ask anything of her. Even though…she was so warm on top of him and…and he had seen…well he had seen part of her and he had felt her skin and she had been so soft and warm and…and now he felt like he was talking about an electric blanket instead of a human being…and she was warm like an electric blanket…and also she was…well she was his living girlfriend and he cared about her and…and also…his hand was above her shirt. He knew that underneath this she had her silk undershirt and then her bra…and he'd been under all of those layers…but he couldn't just randomly reach under her clothes like that. No, that wouldn't have been right. He had to ask her. He had to use words to ask her and…
Well she might have been asleep…so maybe he shouldn't have even thought about any of that.
"Hmm? Katsuya? What is it?" asked Reigen. She opened her eyes and looked up. His hand left her waist. He could feel it against the small of her back. She wished that his hand went back to where it was…and she wished that…well she wished for a lot of things. She wished that she had been able to remember if she turned off the office lights before she left, if she had any more tofu in the fridge, that she had done something more with her hair instead of just putting it up, and that she had been watching this movie more closely because there was a retriever and she loved retrievers the most out of all dogs….
But mostly she just wished that he had been holding her again.
"I just wanted to see if you had been sleeping….sorry if I woke you!" said Serizawa
"You didn't wake me, I was just closing my eyes for a little bit." Said Reigen
"Oh….um…you can close your eyes again if you want…and you can fall asleep if you want to, too." Said Serizawa
"That would be pretty rude of me, falling asleep in the middle of our date." Said Reigen
"I-I wouldn't mind. You….you look….peaceful when you sleep….and I know that you had a busy day today." Said Serizawa
"I did…but I still don't want to fall asleep on you. I can't just fall asleep on you and leave you to watch on your own. That would be a pretty boring date, I think." Said Reigen
"I…I really wouldn't mind…if you went to sleep….on me…I mean." Said Serizawa
"Well I don't want to be the only one sleeping. You can sleep with me if you want to." Said Reigen. The minute the words left her mouth she wished that she could have just reached over and pulled them back in. She had just….how could she have just….SAID that? How could she have just come out and said all of that to him? She had just….what was wrong with her? She was tired and…and she wasn't thinking and…and maybe she had low blood sugar and…and well she was too keyed up for her own good….and just….
Where was the reset button?!
"I…..I…well…um…..I would…." Said Serizawa. That was…she had asked him and….well yes, of course he wanted to. Of course he wanted to be with her…like that. Of course he wanted to hold her and kiss her and…and take her to bed and…and do all of those things that came afterwards. He wanted to but…but he had no idea what those things were, fully, well he did but he didn't know how to do them and…
And he would have just ended up disappointing her.
He would have just ended up letting her down. He knew that if they went to his room like she wanted then…then he would have just…well he wouldn't have had the first clue what to do. He had no idea what she liked…or what he liked, even, when it came to all of that and all of the books had said that in order to make her feel good he needed to be able to know what made him feel good and…and he had no idea what he liked…in that context and…and he knew that she would have just…well she never would have laughed at him or told him that he was terrible but….
But she deserved someone who could make her feel good….she deserved a guy like that…but she had asked him of all people….
Well he was her boyfriend after all.
"I meant to sleep! Not…not….you know. It just came out wrong. I would never ask that you of." Said Reigen
"Oh…" said Serizawa. He looked away from her…not that he was mad…he understood. He knew why she wouldn't have wanted to…with him…and it felt like…like he had been kicked in the chest but…but he got it. She knew that he wouldn't have had the first clue about…about any of it and of course, since she'd been with people who knew what they had been doing, she wouldn't want to have to put up with him figuring it all out…and everything….
"Wait! That came out wrong too! I meant that…that I would never just…come out and ask you. I mean I wouldn't push you. I mean…I would plan it better….you know? Make it something special for you…you deserve it. I mean…you never forget the first time and…yeah. You deserve…you deserve a good one. Katsuya, believe me, you don't want to have a sucky first time." Said Reigen. She never wanted to see him like that again. She never wanted to see him looking so…down. His eyes had dropped down and he had just…turned away from her and…and she needed to get better at this. She had always been so good at talking, at communicating, but when it came to him her entire brain just turned to ramen broth…and not the good kind either.
"Yours…wasn't good?" asked Serizawa. That was….he didn't want to think about her being with someone else. He knew that she'd had a life before him and he knew that she had chosen him out of literally anyone else in the world….but he didn't want to think about her being with anyone else like that…and maybe that made him terribly jealous or…or maybe that was just something private that he wasn't supposed to want to know about…or something….
He didn't want to think about this anymore.
"Katsuya….you don't want to know about that." Said Reigen. Nope. He did not need to hear about how, when she had been fourteen, she had believed a bunch of lies from a guy and then did a lot of things that she hadn't been ready for with the promise that they'd be together forever…and then her heart had been shattered into a million pieces and…yeah. That was not a story that she liked to tell and that was not a story that her BOYFRIEND would have wanted to hear.
"I do….I mean…I don't want it to have been bad but…I mean if it's not something that you're comfortable talking about…or if something happened to you…" said Serizawa. The thought of some guy hurting her….well the thought of it made him want to do things that he knew would get him thrown in that esper prison he barely managed to avoid. He took a deep breath. He could see his aura. He needed to calm down….but how could he? If someone had hurt her…the woman that he loved….
Well they'd better have been VERY good at running away….
"No! No, nothing like that. I was just young and stupid, that's all. I was young and stupid and he was this cute guy from my class and…well I did a lot of things that I wasn't ready for…and I just…don't want to be that person to you. I don't want to push you into doing anything that you're not ready for." Said Reigen. She had never seen him like that….like he was getting ready to go out and kick someone's ass….for her. That was…she should not have been so happy that he was so willing to fight for her. First of all she could fight her own battles and second of all there wasn't even a battle to fight…and also violence was never the answer and all of that…but still….
It was…nice to know….that he would have been so willing to fight for her like that.
"Oh….I'm glad that….nothing bad happened to you…I mean-" said Serizawa
"I know what you meant…and…thank you. For caring so much about me, I mean. Nobody's ever cared as much about me as you do…and…I…I love you…for that." Said Reigen. The words were getting stuck in her throat and…and she had never had that happen to her…well not with anyone else but him and…and she just….she didn't mind.
The words may have gotten stuck but she still meant them.
"I love you too." Said Serizawa. The words came quickly. They came quickly and he wanted to take them back…but he also didn't. He could say that now. He could stay that now and she could…she had said it first and…and they were at that point in their relationship and…and he had never thought that he ever would have had this with anyone else before in his life…
And he loved it…what he had…what they had together.
"So…" said Reigen after a moment. A long moment. A moment that as way too long. She had to say something. There was too much silence, they needed words, and she had to keep the words there…the words coming there…because they needed words. They needed words before the silence overtook them and they were stuck with what she had said before…what she had said without even thinking.
"So…" said Serizawa
"Do you want to watch something else? Or I could get going or…whatever you want." Said Reigen
"We can do whatever you want to do." Said Serizawa
"We always do whatever I want to do. What do you want, Katsuya?" asked Reigen
"I want…to…can we kiss? I mean…really kiss and…can we….I mean I know that you wouldn't want to…with me…and I don't know what I'm even asking." Said Serizawa. What was he thinking? She wasn't going to say yes…and if she did then he didn't know what he would…this was a bad idea. He was just…he was just being a moron. She didn't want to…and if she did then what was he supposed to do? Write notes on his arm and diagrams and stuff? No. She was just going to be disappointed…and then she wouldn't want to be with him anymore and…and he had no idea what he would ever do without her.
"Asking? What are you….oh." said Reigen. He wanted…oh. Ok. She wanted…she could…she did. She wanted this and…and he wanted this…and they were adults. They were consenting adults consenting to do adult things…things that he had never done before…things that she would be the first person that he would ever do those things with and…and she could be that person. She had never been that person to anyone before but…but he wanted her to be that person…and if he wanted her to be that person to him then she would be that person to him…
She was his girlfriend after all.
"I…I mean I know that-" said Serizawa
"I wouldn't…mind. I mean I want to but…but you don't have to just because I can't think before I speak. I mean I know that it must be a lot for you…and I don't want it to be something that you end up…regretting." Said Reigen. She didn't know what she could do if he ended up regretting it…all of it…and then…and then it all got to be too much…too messy…they were so intertwined as it was and maybe it was stupid to try and make it…more than it was…but she also…she wanted that with him but…but she didn't what she would do if…
She didn't know what she would do without him.
"I…could never regret…anything that….that I did…will do…would have done…with you. I could never regret you…but I know that…that you'd regret me…since I…I have no idea what I'm….doing." said Serizawa
"What? I know it's your…I mean it would be…will be…your first time. I know that…and I wouldn't regret it. How could I ever regret anything with you? I love you." Said Reigen
"I love you too." Said Serizawa
"So…shall we?" asked Reigen
"...yes…I mean….if you want to…I mean…yes." said Serizawa
"After you." Said Reigen. She expected him to get up but…well he did. He got up but instead of walking over to his room, opening that door, and walking through to the next point in their relationship. She had been expecting that but she hadn't been expecting him to reach down, pick her up, and practically carry her over the threshold….
Not that she was complaining…and not that he was, either.
No, nobody was complaining that night…or the next morning.