Mon

The second reason why Leviathan couldn’t stop chortling to himself: the latest and greatest limited edition Sucre Frenzy concert DVD, with bonus content. It even came with a companion book full of interviews, costume turnarounds, and choreography breakdowns. Only ten exist in the world. Lucifer wouldn’t divulge how he got it. When Leviathan pulled it from the gift pile, wedged between a pack of socks from Mammon and a fruity shampoo kit from Asmodeus, he screamed. Then he ran to the bathroom to wash his hands before touching it again, as the concert DVD was practically a legendary artifact.

Though he had been to the concert in person, seeing it again in HD with surround sound and a running commentary was an entirely new experience. The very first screening was to be a highly selective affair, reserved for the birthday boy himself and one VIP guest: you. That you were sober enough to actually set up the DVD player was a coincidental bonus.

The two of you had plenty of snacks and pen lights for Levi’s little after-party. The after-party that started while the main party was still winding down. At this point, it was practically expected that the guest of honor would sneak off with you while everyone else turned a blind eye.

Cushions and large plush toys were strewn about the floor for comfort. Some of them were freshly unwrapped presents. Others were your usual seat when you came to game with Leviathan. You dimmed the lights then rushed back over to the TV as he rapidly beckoned you. “Come on! It’s starting, you don’t want to miss- oh! That trumpet - that’s the opening cue!”

There was awed silence for around ten seconds. As soon as the idols descended to the stage, Leviathan jumped to his feet, stumbling a little in his inebriated state. He grabbed his trusty sticks. “Let’s goooo!”

You cheered him on with your wotagei knowledge, having accompanied Leviathan to enough karaoke sessions to know when to shake the lights in what manner. It was a workout. As the first song transitioned into a second, Leviathan pointed at the screen.

“This song was debuted at DeviFesta last year and instantly rose to the top of the charts!” he explained during the interlude. Light stick as his microphone, he belted out lyrics with flawless rhythm. On somewhat unsteady legs, he spun and waved at you, mimicking the fanservice the singers were performing on stage. This concert must have been seared into his memory. You clicked the pen lights to orange and egged him on.

“It makes my heart race - hey! When I look at your face - hey! 'cuz I really really love you~ Chu! Chu! Chu!”

Mid-chant, Leviathan’s focus wavered. He never put much thought into the lyrics before. It was typical idol fluff, the cheap kind that every song had to tug on your heart strings. It didn’t really mean much because idols love all of their fans equally. But to sing it to you, to your face, when you were so close and cheering him on, gave the words actual weight.

You were no stranger to drunk Leviathan’s honesty. It was far from the first time he’d had a few too many drinks and started confessing his true feelings to you. It’s really the only way he can directly say how he feels without stammering through an uphill battle of nerves. The way he suddenly dropped to his knees took you off guard, though. The concert hadn't even been on for ten minutes. You scrambled over with a cushion, asking above the performance, “woah! Are you alright?”

Leviathan averted his eyes. He held his flushed face so low that you couldn’t see how red it was, but during special moments like these, he at least felt the courage to speak his mind.

No more singing. He shuffled forward to softly pick up your hand and give it a squeeze.

“I really, really love you,” he repeated. “I don’t… say it enough… because I’m…” Leviathan’s voice trailed into a mumble as he pressed your hand against his forehead. It was too strenuous to try and hear what he was saying. You expected him to fall asleep. Maybe exhaustion finally caught up with him. The day was long, there was a lot of excitement, the DVD could wait until tomorrow.

Instead, he proved you wrong. He was always proving himself capable in the most unexpected of ways. Leviathan slowly tilted his head to look at you with wavering eyes reminiscent of a sunset. “C-can I hold you?”

You nodded, glad that he was alright. “It’s your birthday. You can do whatever you want.”

Leviathan softly tugged at your arm, dragging you into his lap with clumsy coordination. He handled you like his brand new DVD, with the utmost respect and reverence, but he couldn’t decide if he wanted to look at face or turn you away and hug you from the back. He settled you sideways, with an arm curled around your back and your knees bent above his thigh.

Sucre Frenzy performed in the background despite no one facing their way. Leviathan had a more important fave to pay attention to. One that was live, not something pre-recorded. When the final chorus hit and the idols sang their bit, he placed three kisses on your cheek. Each perfectly timed to a “chu!

“You’re my number one,” he professed into your ear.

Now was your turn to be giddy. With a laugh, you snuggled against Leviathan’s front. His anime t-shirt was one hundred percent cotton. Super soft and Leviathan-scented. “You know I love you too, right?”

He pushed his face into the top of your head with a “gyaaah!” and squeezed you tighter. Too much emotion could easily overwhelm an otaku. “Why do you have to be so… perfect!? You’re the whole package.”

“I should have put a bow on myself, then,” you told him. “Then you could have opened me as your present.”

Leviathan rubbed your back. You could smell the demonus on his breath, sweet and fragrant, as he half hummed a tune, half whined knowing he was going to die of embarrassment in the morning. In the moment, though, this sounded like a pretty suave thing to say: “Then, maybe next year, that’s not such a bad idea... You as my birthday present.”

It could get cold on the tiled floor of Leviathan's bedroom, yet the two of you together felt nice and toasty. He lifted his knees a speck, tilting your body towards his. It made it easier for you to rest your chin on his shoulder. He flinched at every little touch, an uncontrollable gut reaction that sent cold shivers up his veins like lightning, but soon found himself craving more.

Pixel art in the graphic done by the amazing @priestessofpie!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEVI! HERE'S A 7K WORD FIC FOR YOU! Also shout out to @zephyrchama for reminding me that this WIP existed!

Read the fic on Ao3 HERE and catch an excerpt below the cut!

Leviathan x gn!AFAB!reader

a/n: wow she's alive. who woulda thunk it lol I'm gonna try and smash some more of this out so we can get to the penetrative bit (Idk what else to call it) sooner unless y'all are cool with the foreplay? I feel like Levi's the kind of guy who needs a lot of time to get ready to actually be inside of someone but I also understand being impatient. let me know!

THIS IS VERY NSFW MINORS GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE

CW: self-indulgent smut (unprotected vaginal sex, dry humping, fingering), loss of virginity

the question takes a moment to sink into your brain. getting him to come out of his shell has been your entire goal and yet it feels like a joke when he finally does. you nod, offering him a kind smile.

“god yes, I would love that.” you can’t help but chuckle as his expression lights up. damned demon, always tugging at your heartstrings. he takes a moment to sit himself up, pressing his chest against yours. he nuzzles into the crook of your neck. his breath is hot against your skin. you arch instinctively into him. but then, he sighs, hesitating. you feel him graze his lips over your neck with the force of a feather in the breeze, and you impatiently  weave your fingers through his hair.

that’s all the encouragement he needs. his attack is gentle at first. restrained. tentative, like he’s still afraid of doing something wrong. but as he nips at your neck, mirroring you from just moments prior, sending wave after wave of pleasure down your spine, you find yourself growing proud of his efforts.

your head rolls back. he migrates to your jaw, leaving a trail of sloppy kisses in his wake. you don’t notice how your hips have resumed their rhythm until he growls against your mandible. the noise is startling until you remember he’s a demon. slender fingers grip at your waistline. sharp teeth brush below your earlobe. his forehead lands on your shoulder, hot breaths heavy on your chest.

claiming my @aftgtandn canon-divergence fest prompt: what if lola had partially blinded neil?

ao3 | full T&N collection 🔀💚 sorry for posting late after reveals!!! 🙇 no surprises lol these are my guys! thanks SOOO much to the t&n mods for the wonderful event!!!

click for the emotional support drawing i had to make to keep myself from losing it:

it’s just, it’s such an important display of the best parts of reigen’s character, and it’s so viscerally fucking satisfying.  like, he walks in and immediately understands the situation, blatantly points out that the pot looks cheap but the salesman says “it’s clear you don’t know how things work,” and whoo boy, m8, are you in for a wild ride. it’s just such a brilliant moment for reigen, who goes, you think that’s how that works? no, this is how it works, and i can do it better than you. this isn’t reigen’s first rodeo, he knows every trick in the book, and he’s not afraid to throw it back in their faces.

but i mean, there’s a reason reigen went off at these two, beyond the fact that they were trying to extort his kid, or that they were going to try and make him pay for it. reigen and these two salespeople, they’re both cons, but for very different reasons.

reigen, he talks to people seeking help for ‘spiritual problems’. sometimes these are real, sometimes, not so much. when it comes to legitimate spiritual issues, he’ll let mob handle it, no problem. when it comes to the type who’re certain they’ve got some kind of curse, or haunting, or whatever, then sure, that’s where reigen does his business.  it’s a very different sort of con, though. like, sure, he’ll pressure people into buying certain courses and talk them in circles all day, but we don’t really see him extort people. he doesn’t try to take money from people with none to give. he does help, through a sort of placebo effect, often entertaining the fantasies of people who would’ve thrown money at the nearest person claiming they could solve their problem. take the people who are determined to think that their heavy shoulder is some kind of curse. yeah, they’ve most likely just been sitting or sleeping in the wrong position, and they’ve got stiff shoulders. reigen could tell them this, and recommend a chiropractor. instead, he gives a legitimate, good massage, and lets his client believe what they want to believe, because hey, the problem’s gone. in the manga, it’s made clear that a lot of the clients reigen deals with have money to waste. compare that to the pot salespeople, who grab easy marks off the street (a fuckin middle schooler who makes it clear that neither he nor his family have much money) and essentially terrorize them into thinking that they’re going to have to find some way to pay for something they neither needed nor wanted, and can’t afford. i think one of my favourite changes from the manga to the anime was this line from reigen, after he and mob leave the pot shop:

reigen doesn’t always make people pay. sometimes, he does jobs for free, like that youkai dude, and he’ll call it volunteer work. or he’ll work with the client if money is short like those farmers in the roots chapter who pay him in seeds. if he is paid, however, he will ALWAYS look for a way to solve the problem - like the omake with the dirty mansion. he cleans a fucking mansion to fix his clients problem because he already took their money. on top of this, he’s apparently the cheapest exorcist in town. he doesn’t overprice what he does (compare his 20000 yen to the sun psychic union’s 200000 yen charge.) He also follows through with a lot of his clients and checks up on them, assuring them they can come back when necessary (yeah for more money probably but also he’s a good dude and wants to ensure his clients are happy and satisfied). Look at the former claw members. It was he who forced them back into societal life, so he took the responsibility to help them get jobs and fit into society like he said they should. He didn’t just drag them back to reality and leave them.

More importantly, why he became a con is different as well. I imagine the pot salespeople do their thing for money but Reigen obviously doesn’t. MOSTLY he opened his shop because he was bored of being a salary man. Not because that’s where the money is or because it’ll make him famous, but because he was bored and this is what Mob needed at the time. He picked a psychic because of Mob (and maybe his childhood idolization of Mogami I guess?). When he does get famous initially, it’s due to hard work and making himself memorable to people through good deeds (wearing his shop’s sign while cleaning a park or giving out FREE YES FREE classes on HOW NOT TO BE CONNED).

as you said, reigen actually solves his clients problems rather than shoving them onto someone else (something reigen thinks is pretty irresponsible of other cons who do that), but the way in which he does it is really fucking clever. he fixes people’s problems without giving them the whole ‘there’s a reasonable explanation’ bullshit spiel. he knows clients don’t want to hear that or they would have gone to a doctor rather than an exorcist. Reigen is quite aware that some of his clients might legitimately have a spirit problem and it’s clear he keeps this in mind when doing client evaluations.

Reigen is more of a psychologist than a psychic in my opinion (no i’m not projecting i’m serious). Visits to his office are akin to therapy (psychological, physical, chiropractic - I’ve been to all three of these types of therapy so I’m talking out of experience, not out of my ass). reigen’s consultation office operates pretty similarly to a therapist’s consultation office, actually. he evaluates his client by asking them to explain their problem. He assess their speech pattern, mannerisms, and beliefs and then uses his client’s personality and follows their lead in order to develop practical solutions that will solve their issues for as long as possible without changing his clients’ beliefs. Usually, this means a massage, some use of Photoshop, or giving someone a makeover, but sometimes he has clients who simply have anxiety or a lot of stress, such as the first client Serizawa sees. In these cases, Reigen talks them down and helps them by listening to them and giving them advice on what to do, maybe adding in a talisman or charm for an extra placebo effect (placebo, yeah, but effective, like good luck charms. you believe things will get better, then they will. it’s a proven psychological thing). The fact that he’s a sort of jack of all trades (slightly above average at a lot of stuff but not the best at one thing) probably helps with varying client needs.

In the Mogami arc, we see that he treats his client’s daughter as though she were a mental patient as opposed to someone possessed. He talks to her normally in order to assess her speech patterns, behaviors, and mannerisms. He doesn’t try to sway her one way or another and only gives his name and sticks to normal topics like sports or her current situation. His session with her seems pointless to the other psychics, but due to his tactic, he is the only one out of all of them to notice the contradictions in the way she acts and talks. He also uses his understanding of basic human psychology to beat out a room full of psychics at Rock Paper Scissors. His attention to detail also saves his life later when he places his hands behind his head to keep himself from bashing it open against the ground when Mogami throws him like a ragdoll.

He also uses these assessment skills in the case of real spirits, to either convince clients he’s the real deal while using Mob or to help keep clients calm while Mob is busy. He even uses this on Dimple once or twice. Or more importantly a few times, to keep Mob calm in stressful situations (I mean look at 100% gratitude). One of the reasons I believe he takes Mob out to eat so often is because it’s a de-stresser for him. In MOST cases (obviously there are exceptions) Mob’s explosions percentage level barely goes up at all while he’s with Reigen and this isn’t on accident. Reigen’s good at saying what people need to hear, and he does so convincingly, whether it’s true or not. The same goes for Mob, and Reigen knows what to say in order to help Mob feel better when he needs it. In this light, Reigen’s smooth talk is good for more than just conning people. It also helps people.

I haven’t counted, but I think Tsubomi shows up in less than 30 pages throughout the entire comic, plus a single omake. That’s really not much, especially considering half of those appearances are just to point out that she’s present in the given scene.

In other words we never get to know much about her and she has no character development to speak of (unless you want to call her remembering that Mob exists character development). Normally that would annoy me to no end - Love interests that only exist to be love interests and the “guy gets the girl in the end (as a reward)” trope is boring at best and offensive at worst.

I was apprehensive while first reading through the comic because right off the bat it looks like mp100 sets itself up to follow the “guy gets the girl” narrative. However, ONE did a pretty clever thing with the trope by both taking advantage of the expectations we have for it and completely discarding them.

“Middle school boy tries to impress the girl he’s in love with” isn’t exactly an adequate description of mp100’s plot. Anyone can see from very early on that that isn’t what the story is about at all. But to Mob? To Mob that’s exactly what it’s about. Everything Mob does that doesn’t involve people being in immediate danger, everything Mob wants to change about himself, is to some degree motivated by Tsubomi. In his mind Tsubomi is the end goal and he’s doing his best to make his life a “guy gets the girl” kind of story.

But, by thinking like that, even after years of never actually talking to her, he has put her on a pedestal where she has become an ideal and no longer a person. Mob never really talks about Tsubomi or gives any explanation as to why he likes her so much, and I guess because she’s the school idol and lots of boys are interested in her, no one really questions it either. Of course he would like Tsubomi, right? Everyone likes Tsubomi.

Tsubomi gets to stay on her pedestal, silent and with almost no sign of a personality, for almost the entire comic. It isn’t until chapter 94 that we get to see her as an actual person, because that’s when Mob, for the first time within the comic’s timeframe, treats her as an actual person by doing something as mundane as handing her a paper tissue because she sneezed. Even Takane Tsubomi sneezes you know.