#shigaraki fic

[tomurasmoleunderhislip]

I go bazoonkers whenever I see his neck and collarbones 🛐🛐🛐

His neck looks so kissable and biteable

(RAWRARAWRWAAAHHHAJQBAJNDJQNARAWR)

Chest, jaw, hands and lips too.

If he needs a dog...I can moo 🍞

#shigaraki #tomura #league of villains #shigaraki x reader #tomura headcanons #tomura fluff #shigaraki fic #tomura x reader #shigaraki tomura #tomura shiragaki #shigaraki headcanons #rawr rawr #shigaraki thirst #my brain farted #he lives in my mind rent free

[dashielldeveron]

soulmate trope | shigaraki tomura

Shigaraki’s route of soulmate trope.

"post-canon shigaraki? canon isn't even finished as of when this was posted on 4 january 2024!"

yeah. thank god. gives us time to write our own endings. and obviously i will be wrong about some things. i recommend you read at least one other route, preferably dabi’s, before reading this one. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to around chapter 390-411ish, based on language used by others to describe shigaraki and his trauma. bodily consequences to his trauma (some things are intended to read as AFO having forced an ED on shigaraki, but this is not made definitive). sexual content. stalking. gore (in a game). reader is experiencing a type of gifted kid burnout.

~28k

There’s a hentai book lying on your bed.

You’ve never seen it before.

Flipping through it, you winced at the positions the large-titted, ponytailed woman was manhandled into, and though you were frankly impressed that she managed to wear such intricate lingerie underneath her everyday business attire, the protagonist only just got home from work; let her decompress for, like, ten minutes before railing her against the window, please.

Whom did you know who would read volume four of something called GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK?

Unfortunately, you were burdened with knowledge about your friends’ sexual habits, and some of them, therefore, were already ruled out: Shinsou only read erotica because he preferred his own imagination to any images hentai or live-action could provide, and Monoma only read hentai in which the woman’s eyes had hearts in them to let the reader know she’s enjoying it—not to mention Monoma wouldn’t buy a hard copy of it, let alone a story that didn’t have more plot and character development to it. There wasn’t enough drool for Sero to be interested, and the male protagonist wasn’t enough of a twink for Kaminari to project onto, so whose was this?

Moreover, who the fuck would come all the way back to your old school’s campus to break into your room to leave it on your bed? (Shinsou would be your best bet for that part, but whenever he finished a patrol nowadays, he went directly to sleep, and his and Monoma’s flat was across town.)

You cat, Dango, jumped onto the bed, slithering up next to you and bumping her head on your elbow affectionately.

“Is this yours?” you asked her, and she sniffed the book before climbing into your lap.

You tossed the book aside to pet your cat with both hands, and you resolved not to think about it any longer, even though the cringy way the mangaka depicted the female orgasm was burnt onto your brain.

***

Hopping to put your heel back into a ballet flat, you held the phone between your ear and shoulder while you struggled towards the lift. “I’ve got to cancel on you, Ochaco,” you said, flipping the back of your blazer collar down and adjusting the lapels, “I’m, fuck—I’m not gonna be able to make it this evening, so just go without me.”

Uraraka sighed on her end. “Okay. I know a lot of us were excited to see you after so long—there’s a card Tsu’s made us all to sign, and everything—but we’ll manage. ‘Spose we’ll just have a routine night at the bar and reschedule when you can make it. I miss you,” she said, “and I’m pretty sure I can say the same for everyone.”

The elevator door slid open, and you entered. “All of you are so clingy. I’ve only been away from the agency for around two months, and you know where to find me.” You mashed the button for the ground floor. “In fact, it’s embarrassingly easy to access me.”

“Well, we’re very busy,” said Uraraka, “People are very eager to conscript us for missions, even if they really could be done by the police. U.A. alumni have somehow upticked in their popularity even more since we graduated—”

“Ochaco, I know. I was there. Allow me to weep for your success. I am playing the world’s tiniest violin.” You shifted your bag’s full weight onto your shoulder and exited into the commons. “But listen. I’ve got to go; I’m running late this morning. I couldn’t find my pantyhose even though I laid them out last night, and they weren’t in any of my cat’s usual hiding places. I had to turn my flat upside down and still never found them.” The outside doors slid open when you approached, and the harsh, morning wind upset your hair on impact. “Give everyone my love, O. Tell Todoroki to smile in his next interview.” Eyes darting across your surroundings for any witnesses, you shrank in on yourself and bit the inside of your cheek. “And tell everyone I’m sorry, okay?”

By the time you arrived at U.A.’s administration building, the wind had been joined by a light drizzle that would probably morph into a storm within the hour, a prediction compounded by a plethora of faculty umbrellas in and beside the stand by the sliding doors. The front office was gloriously vacant, though, so you were able to slip behind the front desk without someone rebuking you for being—you shook the computer mouse to wake it up, the clock popping up in the corner—seventeen minutes late.

(You’d graduated with the rest of the class six months ago, and you’d founded the all-girls agency uptown, with most of the women in the graduating class joining to form an instant powerhouse of the industry.

Founding an agency appealed to a good deal of graduates, but you were the only one to go the distance: you were the one to actually make the calls, fill out the paperwork, get aggravating shit done, and by the time to move into the building, it had pleased you to no end that Midoriya had asked you for help on kickstarting his own.

And then two months ago, you’d pulled off, frankly, what was supposed to be an impossible rescue. For the first time, you were getting enormous amounts of attention, from civilians, from press, from other heroes—and you were being followed, never having more than a moment to yourself—always being watched, either from well-wishers or nay-sayers—and sometimes, the analytical critic, eager to point out your faults in the rescue mission to try to drag you out of the hero scene.

You hated yourself for this, but they won.

Too many expectations. All sinking down on you, as if no other hero existed while the light shone in your direction. [And you hated yourself for even daring to consider this—what reprehensible audacity, but—but was this how All Might had felt?]

You’d had something next door to a panic attack when a convenience store, a regular stop in your weekly routine, filmed your reaction to how they’d auctioned off your signed receipt for over nine hundred thousand yen. Breaking their cameras, Shinsou had to escort you out of there in a rush and call Aizawa for help.

Sobbing into Shinsou’s phone on the soggy concrete of a darkened alleyway, you did something you never fathomed you’d ever do, something you could never see any of your friends ever doing, something that seemed as alien and unthinkable as sticking your hand into a pit of needles: you begged Aizawa to get you out of the hero business.

You’ve been handled with care and relocated into a surprising covert secretarial job in the U.A. admin, Nezu’s logic was that you’d adjust to one person needing you at a time, say, over email or at the desk, and if you only answered the phone with only a shortened version of your name, then no intruding civilian would be the wiser.

The job was easy, anyway. Paid well for what it was, but perhaps that was simply standard for U.A. Nowhere nearly as well paying or exciting as working as a hero, but you were adjusting into mundanity. Some days had stretches of hours in which you didn’t interact with anyone, sitting at the front desk without a task, and you even had a few days in which you’d gone in, piddled around at the desk for your whole shift without seeing another soul, and gone home.

Your friends were always so busy. The two times you’ve been able to meet with them contained nothing but conversation about hero work, or else everything was somehow tangentially related to it, and you found yourself unable to contribute to the conversation. Both times, you’d left early, a little overstimulated, leaving Shinsou to make your excuses.

And Shinsou, bless him. Not avoiding you on purpose. In fact, you knew he’d drop almost anything for you to hang out, but you knew his schedule and how little rest he got. So, it was more of a self-imposed boundary on your side, taking into account that he needed sleep more than he needed to spend time with you.

So, yes, some of it was directly your fault, but you were achingly, astonishingly lonely, with an ever-lowering threshold for tolerance of outside stimulation, ultimately feeling like you didn’t belong here.)

Pens aligned. Coaster. Check the school email for—good, no emails. No voicemail. Get out your planner and write your hours in it to look busy. Hey, your water bottle’s nearing empty; maybe you could go fill it or even waste time brewing coffee. But where’s your work mug? You probably left it on the cleaning rack next to the office sink. You should go check.

“Hey,” said Aizawa out of nowhere, ignoring how you jumped out of your own skin, “Good morning. Are you doing a specific job at the moment?”

You gripped the arms of your swivel chair to ground yourself. Is this a test? “I was about to take a moment to make some coffee,” you said, because never let someone in a position of authority know that you were doing jackshit, “Is there something I can help you with, Aizawa-sensei?”

Frowning, he dipped his chin into his capture weapon, still tucked closely to his neck to shield him from the wind, and he shifted his weight to one leg, his fingers tapping in a ripple on the reception desk. “You don’t have to call me that anymore.”

“I’m gonna,” you said, “How can I help?”

Please don’t need anything. Please don’t need anythi—

“Permission has just cleared for me to assign you a long-term task.”

Shit, you thought, internally wincing at how he used the term task and not mission, as if you’d be plunged into the ice-cold water of a panic attack at the word. The kid gloves that everyone handled you with somehow both ingratiated and insulted you.

“You’ll be paid for it,” Aizawa continued, “and it’s low stakes interaction, not even face-to-face. It’s all online.” Aizawa clasped his hands on the desk and hunched over the top of it, the ends of his scarf trailing down onto your keyboard. “You’ll recall moving some boxes into room 310.”

“Of course.” Early in your first month back at U.A., you’d helped clean out and move some boxes into 310 in the same hall that housed Aizawa, Eri, and now you—you’d unofficially dubbed it as U.A.’s drawer to shove social rejects. “Is someone about to move in?”

“He’s been moved in for a while,” said Aizawa, pulling his capture weapon away from his neck, “Keep all of this quiet. You’re allowed to know because I’ve advocated for you, because I trust in you and in your ability to do this well.” Aizawa paused, the silence dragging on much longer than usual. His eyes glazed over, as if considering how to phrase his next proposal.

You waved your hand, prompting him to continue.

His eyes focused again. “The new person is a ward of the school, but All Might and I are his primary—caretakers isn’t quite the right term, and nor is supervisors, so perhaps it’s better to—”

“No, I get it,” you said, “This person is an adult, but they’re not quite independent. Go on.”

Aizawa paused, brow furrowed just slightly as he scrutinised you again, but he nodded slowly after a moment. “I’ll allow him to introduce himself to you. He doesn’t need me to set up expectations. What’s important for you to know, regarding your own participation, is that he’s very new to the hero scene and is receiving his hero training later in life than usual. He won’t be attending class but will be trained personally by select U.A. faculty, mostly All Might, Nezu, and me.”

“Is he officially a student?”

 “On paper.” Something strange passed across Aizawa’s face, but you couldn’t name it. “Where you come in is his socialisation. He’s spent most of his life in disciplinary isolation. Because of the adults raising him, his instincts trend towards distrust and animosity.”

So, Aizawa wanted you spend time with him until he was no longer bad with people, like spending time with feral cats at animal shelters until they’re ready to be adopted. “So, he’s distrustful. Hostile. Angry,” you said, scratching the side of your head, “Is he—do you think he’ll bring up bad stuff I’ve done to use it against me?”

“He doesn’t know who you are, aside from someone trusted by U.A. with hero experience,” said Aizawa, shaking his head, “and you can choose what information you give him.”

“Does he,” you said, sucking in through your teeth, “Does this guy know about how you’re going about this? I think—wouldn’t he be insulted if he knew about how you’re socialising him like an animal?”

Aizawa looked over his shoulder at the empty office, but he bent farther over the desk and spoke softly, anyway. “Recently, when I was training him at night, he expressed that he never knows what to do when someone wants to talk to him after mission, whether it’s successful or not. He froze entirely when a senior citizen thanked him last week, and that’s when we decided something tactile needed to be done. Since he’s grown used to me, you’re the solution.”

Okay. A volatile man, someone who couldn’t go to U.A. at the average age but for whom Aizawa, Nezu, and All Might were making an exception, even going so far as to personally take him out at night to practise hero work.

Hm. Fishy.

But if the good, good men who took care of you wanted you take care of another misplaced person, then you’re going to do it to the best of your ability.

“I hope I can live up to your expectations,” you said, making a note in your planner, “What am I doing?”

“I need you to learn how to play a video game,” said Aizawa, “and I need you to be absolute shit at it.”

***

For you to help some loser with socialisation, he would be teaching you how to play some janky, twenty-five-year-old MMORPG called Cipherstone—and not even the current, polished version of it; you had to sign up for an account on the version preserving the game exactly as it was in 2007. Nostalgia reasons, apparently.

You nudged Dango out aside to check your bedside clock. The discord call would start in five minutes, and you were making your Cipherstone account, completely unable to come up with a suitable username.

“Don’t connect it to your other online accounts or your actual identity,” Aizawa had said that morning.

Dango’s tiny prance across your stomach was not helping, and you couldn’t use Dango in your username, because if someone knew about your cat (and hopefully no one did, because cats were not allowed in the dorms), then a Dango username could be linked back to the real you. You plopped your head back on your pillow, knocking against the headboard. What’s something that couldn’t be traced back to you? Slumping, you let your head fall to the side and sulked.

The hentai book peeked out from underneath a jacket on your dirty clothes chair.

GinsengTea

That username is unavailable.

Well. You couldn’t use your birthdate as added numbers. You kept typing.

GinsengTea69

That username is unavailable.

You’re not about to try Lustful Ballsack. Maybe if you put aside your secretarial propensity for being correct for a moment.

GinzengTea

Username available!

Oh, thank God. You sorted out your password and started customising your character, though you couldn’t do much with the negative six billion pixels you were dealing with, and oh, is that the noise discord makes for a call? You plugged in your earbuds and clicked the answer button.

“Hello?” you asked into the microphone on your earbud cord, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture of a rotund, cartoon mouse. Username Tenkopeito. Looks like he ran into the same spelling trouble you did.

“Greetings and salutations,” he said, his tinny, rasping, just-got-out-of-bed, gruff-from-lack-of-use voice striking you with about fifty psychic damage, “I am Aizawa-sensei’s pupil, here to teach you about the intricacies of Cipherstone. It will be my pleasure—”

“Cut that shit out,” you said, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture: actually, that mouse was so round because it had just swallowed an enormous piece of konpeito whole, with the little star spikes jutting out underneath its fur. “No one talks like that. You sound fake as fuck.”

“I see,” he said after a beat, tone deflating to sound resigned (and though he’d relaxed, it somehow sounded as if talking this way took more effort, like it physically strained his vocal cords). “Am I not supposed to be nice?”

“You weren’t exactly being nice. You were using a customer service voice—which is being polite, not nice. Not even kind. Politeness is usually some sort of put-on affectation of niceness, forced for the situation. I understand if that’s what you think you need to do when you talk to people as a hero, but in hero work, since the stakes are high, you need to be genuine, or at least sound like you are.” Dango crawled across your stomach again, but you lifted her off before she could settle into a loaf on your keyboard. “In the field, it’s often hard to be kind because of how involved you get as a hero; being kind takes effort and drains you emotionally. Kindness implies there’s some sort of reciprocity, some sort of ongoing relationship. You can choose to be kind if you want, but it may wear on you in the long run. What will probably be healthiest for you, on your side, is if you aim to be nice, meaning being honest in a gentle way, framing situations positively but realistically for listeners. The public doesn’t want to be lied to and told everything’s fine, but telling them the harshness of reality doesn’t go over well. Kills morale.”

“Holy shit.” He was scratching something close to his microphone—it must be a fairly good mic, since you could deduce short fingernails against a dry surface. “That’s…a lot.”

“It is. But you can do it. All it takes is practise, and that’s what I’m here for,” you said, moving Dango from your keyboard again, “And I didn’t mean to overwhelm you with all of that; it just came out—I, uh, I happen to know a lot about the way heroes present themselves.” Swallowing thickly, you ran your tongue over your lower lip. “Why don’t we begin with what you were saying before? But in the actual way you talk, please. You need to be comfortable in your own voice.”

His mic picked up the distant noise of slurping through a straw, against what sounded like the bottom of a metal cup, which clinked when he set it back down. “Have you played Cipherstone before?”

“Total newcomer. Though I’ve seen some screenshots in memes.”

“Cool,” he said in a way that was clear it was not cool, “I can’t add you to my in-game friends list until you get off Tutorial Island. Share your screen with me until then.”

All right. You can be bad at this. You can be so bad at this. “What’s a screen?” Not that bad, idiot! “I mean,” you said, fumbling, “How do I share my screen with you?”

The scratching grew louder. “Bottom left. Screen button. Right click. Share option.”

“Ah.” You should probably lure him into thinking you’re competent while there was a literal tutorial onscreen so that he would be more frustrated with you later. “Gotcha.”

For a few seconds after your avatar popped onscreen for the first time, nothing came through but the 8-bit tutorial music. “Is that what you look like in real life?” he finally asked.

“No,” you said, not exactly lying. The character had her hair down in her face (which you wouldn’t normally do when you were on patrol, since it could get in the way of physical hero work), and, hoping to endear yourself to this weirdo, you’d chosen the sluttiest shirt: while none of the horrible pixelated options showed any boob whatsoever, the poor rendering still managed to convey that the top was off-shoulder. Again, not great for hero work. “In real life, I’ve much, much more panache.”

Another silence, during which you assumed he was looking up the word. “So, you click on the screen to go where you want to walk, on either the overall game interface or in the mini-map in the corner. Your destination will show up—”

“Wait, what should I call you, screwboy?”

“—as a red flag,” he said, frown audible, his rasping voice screeching to a stop the way brakes are slowly applied to the wheels of a train. “Not screwboy.”

“I’m not calling you by your handle. Not only is it cringe, but you won’t have to answer to it anywhere else in your life. If you don’t want to give me your name, that’s fine. I could call you by your hero name, if you like; it’d help you get used to answering to it. But no, I’m not calling you your username,” you said, shoulders slacking once Dango finally settled in a ball at your hip, “Especially since you couldn’t even get the correct spelling of Ten Konpeito.”

“It’s—it’s not supposed to say that,” he said, sputtering with a groan coming in at the end, “It’s a play on my name, and including the n makes it harder to say aloud. I think these things through; I have to be aware of my public image and branding now; that’s the whole point of this stupid—my name is Tenko, you asshole.”

“Oh, you’re gonna call civilians asshole?” You clicked your tongue. “Bad. Bad and evil. Speaking from experience, people don’t like that.”

“Just fu—just click on the map.”

“Fine. But you can’t fool me with your medieval, point-and-click game,” you said, clicking to pick up a fishing net, “Incidentally, the oldest known fishing net is the net of Antrea, crafted of willow and dating back to 8300 B.C.”

Tenko paused. “What would be the socially expected response to that?”

Your avatar fished for shrimps. “Oh, usually people yell at me. Get mad for bringing up total non sequiturs. My friend Bakugou is fond of telling me that I’m a collection of those bottle caps with facts printed on the inside.”

“Would…would you like me to get angry? Am I supposed to? I was under the impression I was supposed to curb my anger. To be nice.”

Your inventory filled with shrimps.

“You only need one shrimp,” said Tenko.

“You’ll thank me when we have food later,” you said, continuing to fish for shrimps.

“It’s the tutorial,” he said, frown creeping into his voice, “You won’t keep any resources from it. You should go chop the tree down to light a fire.”

“Well, hell. I want my shrimps.” You clicked away from the fishing spot and onto a tree. “Nothing’s happening.”

Tenko cleared his throat. “You need to talk to the woodcutting tutor first. She’ll give you an axe.”

“I thought this game had magic,” you said, guiding Dango’s head away from blocking the screen, “Can’t I just get logs with magic?”

“No, it’s—you must want me to get angry. As a test.” Scratching. “Magic comes later. Not for getting logs.”

You interpreted that as a sign to make the rest of the tutorial go smoothly. You followed the instructions for a few silent minutes, proving to him that you could read, and when you reached the end of the tutorial, a wizard teleported you to the crossroads of a town centre.

“Ah,” you said, genuinely surprised as other players’ avatars, decked out in what must be high-level gear, dashed past, “I don’t know where I am.”

“You can turn your screen-sharing off now.” Tenko typed on what sounded like a mechanical keyboard. “I’m over here. I’ve got—by the fountain—white hair, all black clothes. I’m not—there you are.”

Dozens of other players were running past the two of you, the only bare, new players in the area. Tenko’s pixelated avatar waved at you. Cheeky bitch. He’s so poorly animated and so very 2007 that it gave no indication what he could look like in real life. But he’s chosen to have a black t-shirt as his default, so he has to be a slut.

You resisted the urge to ask to feel his pixelated bicep. “You don’t have any equipment. I thought you’ve played Cipherstone before?”

“My main account is max-ed out. I started a new account to grow at the same rate as you. Before anything else, notice where we are,” said Tenko, “We’re in the centre of the city of Renfield. Get familiar with it. Think of it as home. It’s where you’ll always come back to when you get lost.”

It’s a barely animated town centre, with a short path up the stairs to a castle door and a few market stalls split between fountains.

“I have no idea what that means, Tenko.”

“It means that—that,” Tenko said, and stopped.

You couldn’t stop grinning, biting at your lower lip to keep from laughing—he’d let out a flustered huff, sounding a little strangled, because you’d said his name for the first time—and, judging by how long this delicious silence was dragging on, Tenko was probably his given name, not the family name. Beautiful, really, that a guy his age (however old he was, but he’s at least the same as you, since he couldn’t attend U.A. at the usual time) could get this nervous over a woman calling him by his name.

Tenko recovered in a way that showed he didn’t: “It means that you are always able to cast one spell, regardless of magic level,” he said in a rush, “It is a homing spell that teleports you back to this spot, so even if you get lost, you can always get back to Renfield. You can teleport other ways, too, but that’s for another time, and I need a cup of coffee.” He inhaled sharply.

It's only the first day, so you should go easy on him. Let his moment of awkwardness go.

However, Aizawa gave you a mission.

Excuse you, a task.

“Do you plan on getting flustered every time a civilian calls you by name?” you asked, petting between Dango’s ears, “Or are you planning on avoiding as much publicity as possible by being an underground hero like Aizawa?”

“I don’t—they’re not going to—it’s different with you. I can already tell,” said Tenko (you froze, fingers curled into Dango’s fur), “because I’m going to have some sort of working relationship with you. I assume you’re here to stay.”

Putting it that way made your heartbeat throb around your ears. You decided you could ask directly. “Tenko’s your first name, then?”

“Yeah.” He must have covered his hand with his mouth, muffling his voice at first. “But people usually—people have been calling me something else.”

“Then I can call you something else, if you like,” you said, getting back to petting Dango behind her ears and resolving to treat him with the same tenderness—he must need it, since no one in his life knows him well enough to call him by his given name.

“No, I think you should,” he said a bit too quickly, “Call me that. Tenko. I’m tired of that other stuff. Click on something to keep from logging out, by the way. There’s a timer.” Mechanical typing noises. “No, Aizawa-sensei wants me to be better. Of all things, I need to learn to respond to my real name.”

You squinted at your screen, as if the methodical rise and fall of his avatar’s chest could betray how he was feeling. Something had to have happened to this guy to make him feel this way about such a basic part of his identity, to make other people avoid his real name so universally. Aizawa couldn’t’ve have assigned you this task just to socialise him; something else was unfolding here. How did you enter the equation? If you’re supposed to guide someone who’s also lost their direction in life, you’re a hell of a bad candidate.

But what if you fuck up Aizawa’s plan, whatever it was?

Your recent history is riddled with things going downhill. What if you somehow screwed over Tenko? You’d be dragging someone else down with you, down to…the beginning again, a humiliating re-start, back at your fucking school, when the rest of your friends were out living the dream you’d all crafted together, the dream that apparently could go on without you in it.

Well. Enough of that. Distract yourself. Distract Tenko, too. “Got it. I want a hat.”

“What?”

“I want a hat,” you said, clicking the space around the fountain for your avatar to walk, “My head is cold. How do we get a hat? Hats. You should get one, too.”

“Hats. Very well,” said Tenko, clicking to face you across the shitty fountain, “Do you want one that’s purely decorative or one that has some sort of stats? Decorative ones we can get within a minute, with good RNG, by killing goblins across the bridge. There’s a low chance we could get a low-tier wizard’s hat doing that, too.”

“Then it will be a pleasure killing goblins with you, Tenko.”

“Mm,” he said at the back of his throat, “First, we’ll need to obtain some sort of weapons, since bare-handed punching them will take forever. We could either talk to the melee tutor to get a temporary sword or start wi—actually, we should talk to the melee tutor. Melee will probably be the easiest fighting style for you right now, and it’ll be the simplest, since you won’t have to worry about running out of ammunition or runes.”

“Sure,” you said, leaning back in bed, “Do we go starboard or port?”

“You can just call them east and west, y’know. And we go north.”

To be obstinate, you clicked the opposite direction that Tenkopeito was going, and the moment you ran offscreen, Tenko spoke in a low, grumbling voice into his microphone. “No, don’t run away from me. Come back here.”

The rumble in his voice shot warmth straight to your lower stomach, the nature of the encounter between the two of you changing in a second. Your avatar kept running to her destination, your hand frozen and hovering above the tracking pad. You blinked, your throat drying. Snapping back into it, you ran back to Tenko, who seemed unaware of what he just did to you—and he almost negated your arousal in the way he kept talking about sword upgrades and something called RNG.

Uh.

“—now, it’ll take about ten minutes, but it’ll seem like two hours of hard labour. Follow me across the bridge. Follow—there’s a follow mechanic, if you’ll right-click on me.”

Oh, you’ll right-click him, all right. You needed to know more about Tenko—why you’ve been paired off, what Aizawa’s planning for him, what—a tinge of shame soured at the back of your tongue, because what currently gripped you were minutiae: more about him, what he looks like, what he likes, what he does for fun, if you’re…the sort of person he’d get along with in real life, if you hadn’t been forced together.

God, get over yourself. You spend two months away from men your age, and now, you’re thirsting over someone you don’t even know because he said one hot thing. You needed to be socialised—no, stop. This isn’t about you. Stop thinking about what his hands would feel like on you, what he’d sound like grunting into your ear as he ground against you—

“You’ve been quiet for a minute,” said Tenko, slashing the first goblin, “Are you all right?”

A very heroic question when you haven’t been thinking too heroically. The thought of his voice muttering against your neck still grasped you tightly. “I’m having—technical difficulties.”

***

Poking your head outside of your dorm/apartment door, you scanned the hallway for witnesses. You gripped the handle of Dango’s carrier, still hidden behind the door inside your dorm, and you nodded back at her when she meowed at you.

“I know, baby,” you said, listening for footsteps, “We’ll be outside soon enough. Gotta check for people, though.”

Okay, nothing coming. You shifted Dango’s carrier out of your dorm and pulled out your key, sticking it in the lock at the same time as a door opened down the hall.

Too fast—you had to prod her carrier back inside, your foot stuck in the crack between wall and door, just as—as Midoriya strode down the hall. Keys jangling. Civilian clothes (a Froppy hoodie, in fact).

“Oh, hello!” Midoriya only seemed to notice you once you were struggling to close the door despite the carrier being the way, and hopefully you thrust it fully inside swiftly enough for him not to catch the flash of burgundy. He trotted up to you, hands in the pockets of his worn cargo pants. “I didn’t think you’d be around. Do you not have work today?”

Dango meowed mournfully through the door, and you stepped in front of it. “It’s my lunch break. I’m going for a walk.”

Midoriya nodded, and he glanced over his shoulder back to the room he’d left. “Gotcha, gotcha. Good weather for it, especially after that storm earlier this week.” easy smile stretched across his face as he faced you again, but his gaze weighed down on you, as if the number one hero’s attention magnified your failures in comparison to his rise to the top—and the fact that he didn’t mean to pressure you only exacerbated the feeling.

“Uh,” you said, stuffing your keys in your backpack and setting it on the ground, as if you’re not waiting to go back inside, “May I ask what you’re doing here? Don’t you have better—aren’t you busy?”

Chuckling, Midoriya scratched the back of his neck (and oh, in that laughter, he was hiding something). “I make time. I’m just visiting,” he said, jerking his head back towards the end of the hall, “A friend. I want to take care to see him regularly. I didn’t know you lived on the same hall.”

“If you can call it living,” you said, and for some reason, Midoriya frowned, took a step closer to you, and said your name under his breath, eyes fucking wide and too damn concerned for your comfort. Fuck, you only meant to make a self-depredating joke, not make the situation serious. 

“You—you know that you can reach out to us. I mean that. If you’re scared you’re gonna burden any of us—”

You’d squatted down to go through your bag, just to have something to do, to have an excuse to not look him in the eyes. If you were going to cry—which you were not!—then the number one hero’s not going to get to witness it.

“—then reach out to me, at least. I’ve got time, or else I can make it.” Midoriya was kneeling next to you, and you kept your eyes on the inside of your backpack. “If it makes you feel less like you’re bothering any of us, I could check in with you when I come see my friend. I’d already be on campus. I wouldn’t be going out of my way.” He sighed to fill the space when you didn’t answer. “What are you looking for?”

“I can’t find my planner,” you invented, and, acting like you were upset, you zipped your backpack again. “I think I need to go back inside to locate it.”

He shifted his jaw, and he glanced down at your bag and back at you. “Come with me to the vending machines, at least?”

The new symbol of peace, asking to spend time with you. You didn’t deserve it, so you shook your head. “I don’t have much time left in my break. I think I’d better let you go.”

Shifting his jaw, Midoriya tilted his head at you, his eyes glinting. “All right,” he said slowly, “You know yourself better than anyone else. Do what you need to. Rest up.” He started walking backwards towards the stairs. “And I want to see you more—we all do. I’ll see you the next time I come around. Maybe the three of us could hang out?”

“Sure,” you said, shoving your key in the lock to let a thrashing Dango out of her misery.

***

“The church. It’s the one with the altar icon in the minimap.”

You clicked enough so that your avatar would backtrack. “How am I supposed to know that’s the church? Is that icon supposed to be an altar? It looks nothing like an altar. It looks more like a steaming cup of tea.”

“That’s fair,” said Tenko into his headset, “but this is the easiest quest in the game. How are you having this much trouble with it?”

“Oh, stop that,” you said, reaching his character in front of the priest, “It’s intuitive to you because you’ve been playing this for years. Do we kill this guy?”

“What? No. He’s going to give us each the key to a dungeon underneath the church.”

“How can he give us both a key if there’s only one?” You clicked through the dialogue with the priest, and a key appeared in your inventory. “Also, how accurate is this dungeon? Because if this is a broadly medieval game, then the dungeons will be closer to underground bathrooms rather than, like, creepy and wet with shackles and bones. That was popularised by Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.”

“How the hell do you know that,” Tenko asked flatly, “Ne—never mind. It doesn’t matter. Follow me to the trapdoor outside.”

You did, and it was locked. “Are we allowed to do this?” you asked, clicking on the key and then the lock, “Will we get arrested for trespassing?”

“Wha—no. No, we’re supposed to in order to progress the quest. In fact, our characters do a frankly criminal amount of breaking and entering throughout the game and never get checked for it. Hey, don’t go down there without me.”

Your character had only just gone down the trapdoor, prompting a blackout loading screen, but you popped back up to the surface before you could get a good look around. Your character stood next to Tenko’s, still next to the trapdoor. “What’s the holdup? I thought the only step was to use the key on the door. Did I skip something?”

“No, I—huh,” said Tenko, cutting himself off with a tinge of frustration creeping into his voice, “I lost the key.”

Raising a brow, you tilted your head. “What? How’d you lose it?”

“I don’t know. It was in my inventory one minute, and now it’s not. I didn’t touch it.” His mic picked up light scratching. “You’re not supposed to be able to lose the key, but I guess I can go back to the priest to get another. You wait—”

“Hold up,” you said, brow furrowed, “I have it. It’s in my inventory.”

“The hell? Are you sure it’s not just your own key?”

“Positive. I have two of them now. Same key, right next to each other. Want me to share my screen?”

“No, I—I believe you.” Tenko took a moment. “I’m not familiar with this sort of glitch, where an item from one player’s inventory randomly transfers to another’s. This doesn’t even happen, in my experience, but maybe it’s because this is one of the earliest quests coded into the game. It’s twenty-five-year-old code at this point, and it might have glitched because we’re both trying to perform the same quest actions on the same game tick.”

“Sure,” you said, “So, what do I do? Do I drop the key for you to pick up, or?”

“It disappears if you drop it. Trade me. Right-click, trade option.”

Once the key was traded, the two of you went down the trapdoor and wove your way back into the underground headquarters of a low-level cult, vacant for the moment but with evidence of rituals on the walls and floors, particularly in front of their bloodstained altar.

“Okay, we’re in their headquarters,” you said, making your character walk up the aisle, “What now? Priest guy didn’t give us any instructions.”

His avatar followed you and sat on the only programmed-to-be-sittable seat in the pew, his black cape (that he stole from a highwayman’s corpse) folding under his legs. “Actually, he did. You just clicked through his dialogue.”

“Because you’re here to tell me what to do, Quest Man.”

“Click on the—” Tenko heaved an enormous sigh, microphone sparking. “You figure it out. What’s clickable in this room? What has examine text?”

You hovered your mouse over most of the room, and nothing popped up with the examine option, except for something on the altar. “It’s this weird-looking, severed hand, isn’t it? This thing standing up on a slice of wrist by itself?” Your character walked nearer to it, fingers splayed widely enough to hold an in-game apple. “Weirdest ring-holder I’ve ever seen.”

When Tenko didn’t say anything, you glanced towards his character, but he was still sitting on the pew.

“Is this whole quest a pun? Because it’s one of the easiest quests, so they’re giving us a lot of guidance, so it’s like they’re holding our hands to get it through?”

That broke his silence: he scoffed into the mic. “I doubt it,” he said, “You need to grab the hand for the quest to keep going.”

“Fine,” you said, clicking the hand, and the instant your avatar touched it, a zombie spawned from the altar and began to attack you. “Dude! Did you know that thing was gonna jump me?” you asked, clicking away a few spaces but turning around to stab at it with your stupid bronze dagger, “And you just sat there? You could’ve warned me.”

“I did, and the priest did, and the duke who gave us this quest did. That’s why we went and baked all those pies in your inventory, yeah? For you to eat during this fight?”

Your character kept missing hits. “Yeah, but—like! I didn’t know the fight would be now.”

“Hey, relax.” Tenko’s voice sounded muffled, like his mouth was smushed as his fist dug into his cheek. “It’s only a level 12, and you’re level 9. Not too big of a difference. With your armour and weapon, you out-level it.”

The miss sound effect spoke for itself.

“You’ll kill it eventually. You won’t always hit zeroes, so it’ll pass.”

Though your character dealt her first damage, you frowned. “That’s…that’s actually really good advice, Tenko. The stuff you just said would work well if you were trying to calm someone down—reminding people of reality and emphasising perseverance over luck or natural talent are some of the better ways to encourage people.”

“Is that so,” he asked flatly, trying to put off a yawn and failing, “I haven’t—I wasn’t thinking about hero work. Just thinking about the game.”

“Well, it was nice,” you said, “and it seemed like it came naturally. Mind if I ask if something caused it?”

He yawned again, but he must have leant away from the mic so that you wouldn’t hear anything besides the initial inhale. “Nothing special happened today, but I’m too tired to get irritated. Therapy took a lot out of me today.”

Therapy. Therapy. Okay, so he’s got an official diagnosis somewhere. The word today implies that it’s a regular thing, and for some reason, this session was more intense. Intense emotionally? Physically? What kind of therapy? Well, they offered cognitive behavioural therapy on campus, but considering his non-traditional student status, his might be outsourced. Plus, if you, a former hero but technically a civilian, are being implemented into his care plan without being informed directly—

“You usually don’t go this long without saying some inane non sequitur,” said Tenko, that same, strange scratching picking up on the mic, “Snap out of it. You’re gonna get killed by the easiest quest boss in the game.”

Making an undignified noise, you shook yourself and spam-clicked on a cherry pie for your character to eat until she was healed completely, and then you clicked on the zombie to attack again.

“Why’d you pause when I said therapy? Surprised I’d go? Think that sort of thing is below me?”

“Of course not,” you said, trying to seem like you were focused on the fight so that he wouldn’t get nervous about sharing personal information, “Therapy good. Therapy great. Everyone needs to go to therapy.” Since he appeared to be taking this casually, you could probably ask after the type without it seeming too intrusive. “What kind? CBT? That’s what—”

“You think U.A. would arrange for me to get my cock and balls tortured? That wouldn’t qualify as therapy for me, certainly, and there’s no way that U.A. would pay for—”

“Not fucking cock-and-ball torture, you muppet; cognitive behavioural therapy. The sitting-down-with-therapist-to-talk-about-your-trauma-and-restructuring-the-way-you-think-through-practise type. You fuckin’ pervert,” you said, grinning at his avatar onscreen.

“Good to know. I didn’t know the name for it.”

“It’s good that you made this mistake with me instead of with Aizawa-sensei.”

“He’s probably more inclined towards bondage. Congratulations on killing your first boss,” said Tenko, and you blinked in surprise at your character: you’d defeated the zombie while staring at him. It fell to the ground, dropping bones and some sort of arrows.

“Take those. Check to see if they’re iron or steel. All right, equip them in your ammo slot for now so that they don’t take up an inventory space.”

You did so. “Why didn’t it attack me with the arrows if it were holding them?”

“There’s no logic to it besides that arrows are on its drop table. It’s coded to attack by punching you in the face, which doesn’t involve arrows.”

“Sure. Now, let’s get out of the cult basement; I wanna bake more pies until we can make apple ones. Did you know that the first record of fruit pies was around 1600? That means these fruit pies are anachronistic, since this game pitches itself as medieval.”

“Is that…” The hesitance had you beaming, daring him to actually ask it. “Is that not medieval?”

“Tenko, get your head out of your ass. For reference, 1600 is arguably the year the Azuchi-Momoyama period ended and the Edo period began. The game frames itself as medieval European, and 1600 is hard Renaissance-slash-Early-Modern. That’s Shakespeare times, screwboy.”

Only silence on your headphones. Character still on the pew. You made your character walk over to his to perform the curtsy emote, and in real life, you frowned. “Did I go too far there? Bit too annoying? I’m really sorry if I’m bothering you with this sort of thing; my friends say that I—”

“Nothing’s wrong. I needed a moment,” came Tenko’s voice, quiet and steady, “I could hear you smiling, and it was—it was good.”

Inhaling sharply, you pressed a fist to your mouth. Great. Fucking fabulous. Goddammit, you hadn’t aimed for it to go this way, but were you now the one getting flustered at something as simple as—

“Do most people consider a long pause in conversation rude? Did I fuck up with that?”

“No! No, of course not,” you were saying, trying to recover but still startled at how he was able to flip the vibe of your conversations in so few words, words that seemed so casual to him but grabbed you by the throat/cunt, “Especially since you followed-up with a check-in of how it might be strange; a lot of times, people will be comforted by checking to see if something’s okay with them personally…”

Frowning, you trailed off when another avatar entered the cult’s sanctuary and strode up the aisle. You hovered over the new guy’s stupid frog mask to see his username was Venomothman.

“Fucking great,” grumbled Tenko, “Here comes someone else to break our immersion. Ignore him. I’ll go ahead and fight the zombie so that we can get out of here.”

“The zombie’s dead. You don’t have to fight him,” you said, as Venomothman sat directly on top of Tenkopeito, with both avatars glitching as they took up the same space on the pew.

Tenko made some sort of noise in the back of his throat. “No, I have to kill it, too. It’s like each of us is the only one doing the quest, so in your version, the evil has been defeated, but in my version—it’s this thing called an instance—”

Venomothman: wow a couple questing together

Venomothman: bet ur one guy on two accounts

Venomothman: roleplaying that he can get a gf

The new guy’s in-text chat appeared in yellow font above his avatar’s frog-faced head, and somehow, the boggly, green eyes made his words more irritating.

Venomothman: leave the basement sometimes ya incel

“Some people are assholes recreationally,” said Tenko, making his avatar stand to go to the altar as the clatter of mechanical typing came through the mic, “Let me get rid of this fucking scumba—wait.”

 Venomothman: ur doing too much work to stare at pixelated ass

“Would it be correct for a hero to insult someone online?”

You shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “Eh. You’re not on duty, and you’re not under any persona connected with your public branding. I would say go for it, but since you’re trying to be better with people, you may want to practise.”

Venomothman: somehow this is even more pathetic than never knowing the touch of a woman at all

“Then I’ll shut him down. The shit-talking isn’t bothering me so much as his breaking our immersion in the game,” said Tenko, grabbing the hand on the altar to start his instance of the fight, “I’m trying to cultivate a particular experience for you, and he’s a fucker who won’t stop yapping. Give me a second.”

Venomothman: is this what does it for you??

Venomothman: why no response

Venomothman: hard to type with one hand, isn’t it, ******* shithead

You laughed through your nose. “Cipherstone censors the word fuck?”

“It censors fuck; it censors cunt,” said Tenko, avatar casting a weak air spell at the zombie, slowly, slowly draining its health, “Everything else is fair game.”

“Will it censor variations of cunt? Like, if I typed in cuntbag? Or—actually, let’s find that out later,” you said, tapping the buttons on your earbud cord to turn up the volume, “Let’s practise navigating difficult social interactions. What’s our goal here in this conversation? Is it to continue to engage?”

“No.” His spell missed, and the zombie landed a hit on his character, prompting him to eat half of a pie. “It’s to close the interaction. Therefore, I need to say something concise that invites no response, right? I’m assuming that a simple fuck off is unacceptable.”

“You’re getting better at this, y’know?”

“Is that condescension I detect?”

“Only a little.” You slumped back against your headboard and reached for the bottle of water on your bedside table. “Actually—no. No condescension. Genuinely, Tenko, you’re picking up on this stuff easily, and it’s impressive. You’ll be able to walk little old ladies across the street with style and flair in no time.” 

“Hilarious,” he said, voice restrained and tight at the mention of his name (too easy—he gives himself away aurally so freely; who knows what you could read off of him when you had a visual?), “I’m sure no one wants me touching them. Can I—hm.” He sounded like he was pressing his fist against his face somehow. “Why you keep bothering to compliment me? Most people bitch down to me like I’ve spat my own cum in their coffee.”

“Wha—how about because you deserve to be complimented? Listen,” you said, electing to brush over his vivid simile, “Silent admiration rots. By keeping in appreciation or gratitude, you’re not doing anyone any good. Kind regards are meant to be shared. Like, now, if I held back any positive thoughts concerning your growth, then you might not feel encouraged to keep going.”

“Like I’m gonna go around fucking complimenting ev—”

“I’m not saying you have to,” you said, “but consider trying it more often. See if anything turns out better. And be sure to be sincere about it—obviously.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Just consider it. So. What has he told us about himself based on how he’s insulted you?”

“He’s so low-level that it looks like he just created his account. His stats are even lower than ours,” said Tenko, speaking more quickly now that it was a subject he was more comfortable with, unequipping his wand to punch the zombie instead, “But he’s gone out of his way to get the frog mask.”

“His words, Tenko,” you said, unscrewing the cap and doing your fucking darndest to pinch your mouth from smiling at his slight hitch when you said his name, “I’m trying to get you to notice on whom he looks down and what that means for his personal social status.”

“Right,” he said a bit too quickly, a bit of a break in his voice on the word, “He’s debasing me for—oh, you’re brilliant. How the hell do you notice these things? He’s using basement dweller as insult, meaning he considers himself above that. Leave it to me.”

You muted yourself briefly to glug down water; you didn’t know how sensitive the mic was on your earbuds, but considering that you could catch onto Tenko’s occasional rustling of what sounded like plastic bags on his side or typing on his mechanical keyboard, as he was right now, you would prefer not to be emitting the same.

Tenkopeito: Your mom wishes you would come out of your room to talk with the rest of the family more often

You spluttered into your water bottle as the yellow text appeared above his head, and you unmuted yourself. “That is not what I meant for you to—”

“Was I being mean?” The mic caught the creak of Tenko’s chair as he leant back in it, and you could picture him defensive and pouting as he crossed his arms (and it struck you that you couldn’t imagine his face. Grimacing, you bit the inside of your cheek). “I wasn’t being rude. I could be so much crueller, but I thought this would be more of a devastating blow. Living on the same floor as your family isn’t the same as living in the basement, so I’m acknowledging his level of social power while still demeaning—”

Venomothman: i mean you right

Venomothman: lmao how tf did you know it was me

“I think we should log out,” you said, wiping the water off of your chin with the back of your hand and setting the bottle back on the bedside table.

Over Tenko’s microphone, you heard the shrill pitch of a custom ringtone and a startled but violent shuffle at the noise. “Hold on. I’m getting a call,” he said, voice coming through at a distance, as if he’d knocked his mic aside.

“Oh? Who is it?”

It took him a minute, but Tenko eventually replied, “A friend.”

That must be a damn good microphone, because you could still pick up on Tenko’s side of the conversation a few feet away. “Yes, hello?” he asked, a bit more brusquely than you’d heard him before.

“Oh. I didn’t,” he was saying, “How was I supposed to know that you’d—yes, that’s her. The one working with Aizawa-sensei.”

Very nice, you were thinking, as you unlocked your own phone to check your messages. Very good for him to have friends. Not that you would’ve pegged him as the absolute loner type, because he proved to be adaptable and quick on his feet, but since Aizawa’d recruited you for interpersonal help, you’d considered that he may not have friends. So, good on him for having at least one friend, it seemed, who cared enough to create an account on some stupid video game solely to annoy him.

“—cool of you to make an account to hang out with me. Stop fucking laughing; I am trying to be kind to you, shitstain. Okay. I don’t know. I haven’t been in contact with him in the past two days. I’ve been busy. Let me check.” Tenko leant back towards the mic to address you. “Do we have a schedule for the rest of the week? For instance, are we doing this again on Thursday?”

“I thought we were,” you said, scanning your room for your planner so that you could check your calendar, “Did something come up?”

“It’s not imperative that I go,” Tenko was saying into your ear, while you picked up your laptop to walk over to your U.A.-issued desk, “but another friend who’s been out of town will finally be back then. We might hang out.”

“Psh, go with your friends,” you said, delighted that he had more than one (fighting envy that it was so easy for them to meet up), “We can do this another time.”

“Understood,” Tenko said and backed away from the mic.

Venomothman: so have you sucked his dick yet

Tenko’s incensed shout of “Touya!” had you turning down the volume.

Venomothman: not to be the world’s worst wingman, but my dude is packing. and goes commando all the time.

Venomothman: and i would know. “i” sometimes “did” our “laundry”

You: what’s with all those quotation marks

Venomothman: and do you know the last time it was sucked? never

(Fucking hell. This Touya was walking you back into forbidden territory: the sexualisation of Tenko. After that first session, when you’d been turned on by his confident, rumbling voice as he’d given you an order, you’d felt guilty for sexualising him for the rest of the night. It was as if instead of friend-zoning him, you’d sex-zoned him, only able to see him as a sexual person/object. For the sake of your mission task, that felt unfair.

Or maybe you weren’t even sexualising him. Maybe your brain was appropriately interpreting what he’d done as sexual.

Whatever. Something in your gut was begging you not to see Tenko only through romantic or sexual lenses right now, and you couldn’t explain why.

And talking about Tenko’s apparently massive dick was not helping.)

Tenkopeito: Touya if you don’t ******* shut up I am going to tear off your other arm

Venomothman: no need, boss man

You heard Tenko sigh and say into his phone, sounding exhausted, “I’m not your boss anymore, Touya.”

Venomothman: no need, douchebag

***

Draped over the side of your bed, you dangled a shoelace in front of the gap in an attempt to coax Dango out from underneath. “Dango, sweetie,” you said, whipping the shoelace to the side, “Come out here so that I can look you in the eyes. Where is my planner, you whore?”

At a firm knock on your door, you shot up, dropping the lace. “Never mind,” you said, sliding off the bed, “Stay hidden.”

You opened your door on Aizawa, bare arm raised in mid-knock, wisps of hair plastered to his forehead by dried sweat, and a sweatshirt tied around his waist. He took two seconds to look over you before saying, “Get dressed. Civilian clothes. You have three minutes.”

Throwing on yesterday’s outfit, you rushed to follow Aizawa out of the dorm and off campus, nearly stepping on his heels while he wove through night pedestrians, pulling on his own sweatshirt to minimise skin contact once the crowd thickened.

You flipped up your coat collar to sneak a glance over your shoulder. “Is this a test?”

Aizawa combed his fingers back through his hair, gaze straight ahead. “Not for you.”

“Right.” You stepped more lightly, naturally falling back into patrol patterns: noting exits (narrow alleyways favouring the left side, underground into the subway station), checking vantage points (upper-storey windows in the resident buildings, non-industrial rooftops), honing in on light sources (yellow- and LED-tinted streetlamps, ambience from open businesses) and physical presence (close enough to brush shoulders with passerby [putting you on edge, because the slightest touch could be pivotal]). You had to consciously unclench your jaw, body flooded with stress it hadn’t felt in months. Swiping at the inner corner of your eye, you asked, “Does it have anything to do with the guy in the black hoodie and face mask following us?”

Aizawa laughed through his nose, once. “All right, then. What’s that ice cream place you and Shinsou went to all the time? Take us there.”

Bewildered, you changed directions to head towards Nekozawa’s, with Aizawa placing a hand on your shoulder to slow your pace, and by the time you pushed open Nekozawa’s glass door to the glowing, pink parlour, you were prepared to hold it open for your follower in the face mask. You watched his broad back as he ordered some ungodly, radioactive-blue ice cream with gummy bears before retreating to a table outside despite the dropping temperature, and Aizawa gestured you forward so that he could pay for the three of you.

Holding your ice cream, you hesitated at the door, swaying underneath the seasonal cat decorations dangling from the ceiling.

“Go on,” said Aizawa, retrieving the U.A. card from his wallet, “I’ve got to make a phone call, so don’t wait up. Don’t be too harsh on him; we’re here because he did a good job in the field today. Tailing you was extra practise.”

Nodding, you nudged open the door, bracing yourself at the cold, night air, and let it drift shut behind you as you approached the table, the farthest one from the pink lights.

Hood pulled up, Tenko bent over his blue monstrosity, face mask hanging by a loop over his left ear. Scuffing your boots on the concrete to announce your presence, you sat across from him, setting your cup on the cast iron before swinging your leg over the bench. You managed a cursory glance over what appeared to be a sketchbook before he closed it, and once he’d stowed it away, he swopped his spoon to his dominant hand to keep eating.

“You draw, Tenko?” To make him feel more comfortable, you kept your gaze towards Aizawa inside on the phone. “Do you think you’re any good?”

“Not yet. But I’m gonna be,” he said, clicking his pen and clenching it in his left hand, “I’ve got all these fucking artist’s gloves, so I might as well put ‘em to use.”

“Very nice,” you said, nodding, closing your eyes as you dipped your spoon into your ice cream, “But as a reminder, you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. I love doing stuff I’m absolute shit at. It reminds me of medieval bestiaries. They didn’t know shit about animals, but, boy howdy, did they have fun illustrating them. Did you know a weasel used to be called a polecat?”

Tenko huffed, his face mask fluttering. “It really is you.”

“Of course it is,” you said, beaming, and for the first time, you looked at him.

Tension flooded your teacup of a body and overflowed into the saucer and onto the floor. Heightened by the cold, a vein on the back of your hand strained and pulsed visibly, and, jaw locking, you lunged over the tabletop to grab him by the shoulders, shaking him.

“What the hell is wrong with you‽” You climbed over the table, pushed his ice cream out of the way (he shot out a hand to save it from toppling off the table, and he ripped off his face mask to set it aside before it fell to the ground), and planted your foot on his thigh and your elbows on his chest, caging him in as you forced him flat on the bench. “Why the fuck are you using your real name in your fucking Cipherstone username, you fucking moron‽ People could fucking track you!”

The man who had been Shigaraki Tomura eyed your fists in his hoodie and then his cup of ice cream. “You didn’t have a problem with it before.”

“I—” This idiot! “I didn’t know it was you. There are a lot of Tenkos.”

“Then there’s my logic,” he said, hands dangling by his sides, making no attempt to touch you—you didn’t know if you appreciated it or not. “I thought you knew who I was.”

“No, I fucking—I would have given you advice that was more specific to you, over the spiel I was giving interns.” Releasing your grip on his hoodie, you sat back up and scooted over on the tabletop. Though you wanted to keep holding him, to hug him after all he’s been through, he probably wouldn’t want that. “I’m—sorry about tackling you. I, uh—fuck,” you said, and, grimacing, you slid his ice cream back to him and reached across for your own, pretending with everything you’ve got that it was perfectly normal that you were sitting on a table next to Shigaraki Tomura, who’s been teaching you to play a video game, who’s apparently living at the end of the hall, who’s decorated his door with Eri’s silver tinsel for Christmas, who’s banned from drinking caffeine, who could rest his fucking head on your thigh if he wanted. Normal. Yeah.

“Again, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep doing that,” he said, fishing out a gummy bear like you hadn’t lunged at him, “Your reaction was reasonable.”

“It—it wasn’t, really,” you said, laughing nervously, “I wasn’t expecting you. I mean, no one knows what—what happened to you. Afterwards. It was really unclear.”

“It was that way on purpose,” said Tenko, “It was thought to be better to emphasise the total destruction of All for One instead of whatever happened to his leftovers.” He shifted a bear to his back molars to bite into the frozen gummy better. “Nezu-sensei decided it was better to keep it muddled for now.”

Muddled was a good way to put it. There’d been so much chaos at the end of the war that so much never was accounted for. You’d think that the location of Shigaraki’s body would be high on the list, but satisfaction was found simply in the splintered, spectacular remains of AFO. Shigaraki’s name wasn’t cleared, per se, but in the aftermath, Midoriya especially stressed that yes, Shigaraki committed atrocities, but he’d been abused, groomed, and literally bodily possessed by AFO to think that way. Didn’t excuse him, but wasn’t entirely his fault.

The locations of the other PLF members—well, the core of the League, really—were public, if not vague. Spinner was in the States at a rehab that specialised in heteromorph trauma; Toga was at a local women’s facility called Sakura Grove, and Dabi was living with his family—he must have been that Touya on the phone, holy shit.

So, here he was, sitting on the bench at the same ice cream parlour you visited with the same friends who fought him, hunched over in oversized, black clothes you suspected were Aizawa’s, broad shoulders and faded scars out of place in the pink lights, white hair pulled back in a blunt ponytail with his bangs flopping over his forehead, seemingly unbothered by the toe of your boot pressing against his denim-covered thigh.

God. He’s scratched at his neck so much that it looks like he’s been beheaded with a blunt axe.

Tenko’s eyes flickered up to you, their colour deepening to crimson in the tinted lights. “So. You’ve got questions.”

“Are you okay?”

Tenko swallowed with effort, scowling. “Don’t start with a hard one.”

“Right,” you said, throat drying, “Who knows you’re staying at U.A.?”

“Faculty and staff. My therapist. The police force. The ramen shop Aizawa-sensei and I go to. The intensive rehab I was at before. The top of the hero commission. Touya, Touya’s father, Spinner, Toga. Eri and Midoriya,” he said, tongue swiping over his lower lip, “You.”

Somehow both fewer and more than you’d figured. “What exactly…is the situation? Aizawa-sensei was vague.”

“Officially, I’m like Eri: a ward of U.A. My old rehab thought I was good enough to live off their campus, so I’m back here, where I can be watched by people capable enough to bring me down if I go crazy again,” he said, brow furrowed as he traced the side of his cup with his spoon, “I should resent that, but it’s not like I have anywhere else to go, especially somewhere as comfortable as this. This is fucking stupid to say aloud, but fucking—fuckin’ All Might is the closest thing I have to family now, along with Midoriya.”

“I’m not following.”

“My grandma was the holder of One for All before All Might had it.” He pointed at you with his spoon. “So you can make the connection from there. But it’s stupid; I’m stupid—” He was shaking his head and staring into his lap. “—because it’s like I have a brother in Midoriya and a goddamn father in All Might—and then Aizawa-sensei’s acting like a dad, too, to me and Eri, and Nezu-sensei? Nezu-sensei is so fucking cool,” said Tenko, dragging his hand down his face, “He’s got a driver’s license! I don’t even have one of those. And he can type fucking 210 words per minute with those little rat paws, and I’m still getting used to using all five fingers, fuck.”

Cute. You scraped the bottom of your cup. “Hey, I think you type well.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why it takes me so long to reply in the in-game chat function. Why I prefer communicating over voice call. Learning new habits, and shit.” Tenko stabbed his ice cream with his spoon. “Nezu-sensei has arranged for me to train as an aftermath-clean-up hero. I had been—” His fingers on one hand circled the thumb of the other. “—in discussion with him in rehab about what I could do, and we decided I could consistently help when there’s collapsed buildings after attacks; I could dust the wreckage so that we could find hostages or make it easier to clean up and rebuild, and Aizawa-sensei and All Might-sensei have been working with me to control what parts of what I touch gets dusted so that I could create pitfall traps for holding criminals. It’s…going. It’s going,” he said, curling his lips in his mouth to moisten them, and with narrowed, determined eyes, he took another bite of ice cream, the blue staining the inside of his lips.

“Tenko, that’s a really cool application of your quirk. I hope you can find more,” you said, tilting your head and smiling down at him, “but—I have to ask—aren’t you tired?”

Tenko rolled his eyes. “Of course. You’re part of the group ensuring I don’t have caffeine.”

“No, I mean,” you said, shaking your head, “I mean, you don’t have to be perceived as useful. You’re—you’re just fine if you wanted to rest. You’re worthwhile just as you, not as—as a job, as a, I don’t know, a redeemed hero or anything. You can just be Tenko.”

“I know. My therapist keeps reminding me. But one of the most vivid memories I have from when I was living in that house,” said Tenko, sneering, “is that I desperately wanted to be a hero and that I would pretend to be one a lot. While I’m aware that I can never atone for what I’ve done, if I did nothing but rest, I’d be alone with my thoughts. And with what I’m learning to do, as a hero, someday, someone might…need me. Need my help. I imagine that’s a good feeling.”

You sat back, leaning on your hands, the cast-iron pattern cutting into your palms, to survey him. “You’re very much re-writing my first impressions of you as my gaming buddy and as the post-war Shigaraki. You’re surprisingly well-adjusted.”

He snorted. “I shouldn’t think it’s surprising. I’ve had almost a year and a half in intensive rehab, and I’m still in therapy every day.” He started listing on his fingers, starting with his thumb. “I’m on antidepressants; I know where my next meal’s coming from and when I’ll get it; I consistently have a safe roof over my head, and I know my friends are getting that, too. I have mentors who care for me as a human person instead of as a tool. I get to stay in contact with my friends and get to make new ones,” he said, nodding curtly at you before quickly looking away, “I’m fucking away from that sadistic fuckface. He’s goddamn dead and burned away to nothing. That’s the main thing. Everything else is a bonus.”

Tenko sighed, bangs fluttering with the movement, his shoulders straining as he leaned onto both his elbows on the table. He sighed again and scooped the last gummy bear out of his cup, and you let the silence carry on while you finished eating.

“Long phone call,” Tenko said eventually.

An increasingly grumpy Aizawa was leaning against the glittery wall inside, phone between his ear and shoulder, and furiously scraping the inside of his ice cream cup.

“Yeah,” you said, “but it’s been good talking to you, Tenko. I really appreciate you telling me all of this.”

“I would’ve talked about it sooner, but I figured you knew who I was and didn’t want to address it,” said Tenko, tapping his fingers one by one on the table.

Pulling the collar of your coat closer to your neck, you frowned, hesitating on how to phrase it. You watched your breath cloud in the night air before settling on, “There’s an off-switch?”

Brow pinching very slightly, Tenko followed your gaze to his hand, with all five fingers coming to rest on the cast iron, and he tapped all five of them on it for emphasis. “Yeah. There always has been. All for One kept it from me. Power of belief kept me jittery and alert my whole life.”

“So long as you thought you’d destroy anything you touched, you would?”

He nodded. “That bitch.”

“Agreed. We should kill him.”

And Tenko laughed. Just for a moment, barely making any noise, but he smiled with his teeth, grin stretching across his face as he looked away and eventually closing his lips, the smile lingering for a few more precious seconds.

***

You closed your laptop to answer the phone at work, clearing your throat to ready your receptionist voice before you picked up. “U.A. University Administration; how may I help you?”

“I need you to fucking murder me,” Tenko spat through the phone, angry and panicked, “I need you to rip out my bones and suck out my guts through a straw. He fucking let me hold onto them, and I’ve fucking gone and lost such a fucking iconic piece of—”

“Tenko, please, take a breath,” you said, relaxing your customer service mode but clutching the phone to your ear, and after catching the eye of the woman with jars of strawberry preserves waiting to see Nezu, you slumped over in your seat so that she couldn’t see you over the desk’s overhang. “Tell me what’s wrong. We can fix it. Are you alone? Is everyone else busy? Do you need to come sit with me?”

“I—fuck,” he said, and you heard some deliberately slow breathing, but his voice still had an irate, twitchy edge afterwards. “During our practise patrol last night, Aizawa-sensei was talking about support equipment for me. I’d never given it much thought, because it’s always been just me and my hands. He leant me his Eraser Goggles for me to think about for my—and I don’t know where they fucking are,” he said, inhaling sharply on the last word, “I’d left them on my desk, but I’d taken them up to the roof to sketch them, and then I’d brought them back to my dorm—”

“And Aizawa-sensei must have swung by to pick them up since then,” you said, pushing yourself back to slide in your swivel chair to the back of the reception desk, “because he was here at the beginning of my shift to print something off, and the goggles are on top of the printer. Relax, Tenko.”

“Hooooooly fuck, you’re kidding,” said Tenko, audibly deflating, and you smiled to yourself as you slid their band around your wrist.

You kicked yourself back up to the front. “You’re okay. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I’ll bring them by at the end of my shift.” You sat up straight, and the strawberry preserves woman was shooting a concerned look in your direction. “I’m at work, though, so I think we’d better end the call soon. Anything else you need?”

Tenko hummed into the phone. “Not really. You can’t be that busy.”

You smiled again, feeling—feeling domestic, as if he were your boyfriend calling you during work hours. How strange, Shigaraki Tomura. How interesting. “Would you believe I was grinding in Cipherstone when you called?”

“And you don’t call yourself a gamer,” he said, clearing his throat multiple times, “What skills?”

“Woodcutting and firemaking,” you said, opening your laptop again, “Are you feeling under the weather? Your voice had a bit of a rasp there.” Sounded like his old voice for a moment.

“Further cementing that Aizawa-sensei’s right to be worried about you. He says your brain’s going haywire analysing any detail work you can get, because you’re not out in the field anymore,” said Tenko, clearing his throat again (?), “Am I your new project?”

“Tell me what’s wrong, lest I pick up some damn throat lozenges for you before I come home,” you said, and a voice in the back of your head screamed that that threat was extremely cosy and intimate, especially since you’re claiming both of you have a home in the same place—which, sure, you both lived on the same hallway, but so did Aizawa and Eri, and please shut up; Shimura Tenko needs a friend, not a lover right now. Besides, that stupid hallway wasn’t really home for either of you but was more like a temporary holding cell.

“Fine. I’ve been throwing up all morning.”

“Thank you,” you said, electing not to make a pregnancy joke, “Do you need to see Recovery Girl?”

“No, I’m used to it, and I’ve already talked to her about it. I threw up a lot out of anxiety and stress when I was growing up with All for One, and now I’m throwing up because my body can’t handle the amount of food it’s getting regularly, which is fucking ridiculous, since it’s still less than a normal person’s version of three meals a day.”

What. The fuck. How can he casually drop details of deep trauma like it’s nothing? How could AFO let a child keep vomiting out of stress for years and years and never interfere? Well. Yeah, he could. You supposed that Shigaraki’s voice, as you first heard it as the USJ incident, was the ultimate result of that heavy strain on his throat for years. Explains some things about his teeth back then, too.

God. If AFO weren’t dead, you’d strangle him. Keeping a child physically weak because he’d be easier to mould. It was known that AFO had been psychologically manipulating Shigaraki, but now that you thought about it, manipulating his physical growth would have served AFO, too, since he was planning to move into Shigaraki’s body.

And what did this guy do now that he’s got bodily autonomy? Oh. Just. Play some video games. Talk with his friends. Try out some new hobbies. Make crafts with Eri.

It’s a shame AFO didn’t have a grave, because you’d be skiving off work to drown it in acid.

“My stomach is killing me,” said Tenko, “I’ve got to hang up to drink something and go to sleep. Knock on my door when you get home. I want to start a new quest as soon as you finish work.”

Home. He’d said it, too. He probably didn’t mean it in the same, domestic way that you’d been entertaining, but it made your heart swell. “Okay, Tenko. See you then.”

***

His therapist had assigned him homework: go on a planned, public outing with a peer, and stay out for at least an hour.

It wasn’t exactly a picnic you were packing, you kept telling yourself, scooting behind Tenko to get to the spice cabinet in the dorm kitchen, because that’d be too close to a date rather than homework. But the two of you packed a meal to take, with Eri sitting on the kitchen counter while she nibbled at rabbit-cut apple slices, and she held the thermos of decaf tea in her lap until it was time to stow it away.

After a short train ride and a quiet walk through midtown, Tenko stopped you in front of the back gate to what appeared to be a restored, historical estate, judging by the golden shachihoko shibi on each corner of polished hip-and-gable rooftops of the extensively aristocratic—mansion? palace?—that you could make out in across the distance of its sprawling grounds, the immediacy of which was the excessively well-kept, traditional garden that you and Tenko were breaking into.

“Is this legal?” you asked as Tenko reached through the grate to unlatch the doorway.

“I have an in with the gardener,” he said, sweeping the gate open for you and gesturing brusquely for you to enter.

“No, that wasn’t a joke,” you said, taking the few steps inside, finding yourself planted onto a polished, level stepping stone, and staring down a squeaky clean tsukubai despite the thin layer of frost over the water’s surface as the whole bowl began to freeze, “You can’t be doing anything even vaguely illegal, Tenko.”

When you said his name, he closed his eyes, pausing for just a hair in his relatching the gate, before facing you and shifting the strap of his bag farther up his shoulder. “Prude. Yes, we have permission from the owner.”

He kept looking back over his shoulder at you as he led you through the gardens, hopping across stepping stones to pass over a carefully shaped brook that led to a tiny waterfall near stone lanterns, weaving through trellises with the wintry shells of wisteria vines and shaped evergreens. He tutted and rolled his eyes when you stopped at the waterlily-coated koi pond, its fish swimming and flicking their tails in the artificially heated water (for some, odd reason, what appeared to be a compact duck coop had been constructed near the pond’s edge, its wood new and un-bleached by the sun like the rest of garden décor). You’d been about to ask about it when Tenko had jumped out of his skin at the sound of a deer scare, bamboo tapping stone.

“Stop laughing,” Tenko said, cheeks burning (and you tried not to take too much pleasure in that, but you couldn’t help it).

“Oh, a sensitive boy, a delicate boy,” you said, grinning as you hopped onto the same stone as him, cool, clouding breaths mixing together in the proximity, and you yourself could feel heat rise to your face. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Good traits to have, actually. Means you’re feeling secure and comfortable in your surroundings, if you’re off-set that easily.” Feeling bold—it was the cold; it was how the proximity already flustered him; it was how his hands were full because of the bag; it was—whatever—you reached for his silly All Might scarf and re-tied the front, fluffing it up to cover more of his neck.

You made the mistake of making eye contact: full of caution, his eyes kept darting from your hands to your face, searching for something, his lips parted, otherwise completely fucking frozen.

Were you making him uncomfortable? You stilled, your fingers still in the fringe of his scarf, tension tightening in your chest and jaw (clenching).

Tenko noticed. And—and to this day, you can’t believe he fucking did this—he ran his tongue over his lower lip and lifted his chin, exposing more of his neck to you. He then was suddenly very interested in the koi pond, the ruddiness spreading from his cheeks to his ears.

Throat dry, you gave his scarf a final tug and patted it (?) to show (??) a job well done (???). “Yeah,” you said, smoothly, like a smooth person, like someone who adjusts scarves of hot, in-process-of-reformation villains on the regular, “Where are we going?”

Tenko spun on his heel and strode away, muttering what sounded like, “Right into my grave.”

You pretended not to hear it and let him lead you to the only building unattached to the main house: a small, traditional teahouse that had a recent addition to it in the back. The creak of the bamboo engawa when you climbed onto it was muffled underneath the bright pealing of windchimes strung across the covered porch. Tenko was already kneeling at the tearoom’s sunken fireplace inside, its handle carved into a fish, fiery as its kindling, and was unpacking the travel teacups from the bag as you closed the door behind you, shutting out the cold, enveloped by the comfortable heat trapped inside by the cushioned walls.

Tenko must have arranged for this space to have been prepared for you. A kotatsu with floor cushions was tucked near the fireplace, pre-heated, with two further space heaters in the unoccupied corners, cords trailing into what must be a hallway linking the traditional and modern rooms, the latter of which was shut off from view. Beside a red-tinted wooden dresser stood an oddly empty tokonoma, and instead of a scroll or painting, amidst bits of pieces of scotch tape hastily half-torn off the back was a shittily cut-out, paper heart.

Shaking your head, you took a step towards Tenko, and the floor chirped at you, freezing you in place.

“Yeah, I don’t know why they do that,” said Tenko, pushing on his knees to stand, “They just do.”

“These must be nightingale floors,” you said, crossing to the kotatsu, a bird under each step, “The chirping’s caused by the way the nails rub against the v-shaped clamps holding the floor together. Have you been to Nijō Castle in Kyoto? These are in the hallway—supposedly used as a security measure, but who knows.”

“You need a hobby.” Tenko ripped the paper heart from the back of the tokonoma, crumpling it in his fist. A shred of it remained under the scrap of tape on the wall, which he bent towards to scrape off with a blunt fingernail.

“I have several,” you said, easing down onto a cushion and unfolding your legs underneath the kotatsu blanket, the luxurious heat swaddling your legs and hips. You fought the urge to curl up underneath it entirely.

“How many of them involve getting your ass thrashed by me in Cipherstone?” Tenko retrieved the bag from the sunken fireplace before returning to the kotatsu, and he sat on your left, resting the bag between the two of you.

You took the thermos of decaf tea when he handed it to you. “Tenko, you’ve been playing that game for years, and I just began. Of course my ass is gonna be thrashed by—you know how the game works. You have all of this previous information about the game that I don’t have.”

Tenko scoffed and slid your teacup across the kotatsu’s surface.  “As if I could conceal any information from you. You’re too…eh.” He waved it off, shaking his head.

“I’m too what?” You unscrewed the thermos lid, and steam surged upwards, rising to caress the planes of your face.

“It’s been unfair of Aizawa-sensei to make me tail you,” said Tenko, leaning your way, all five fingers curled around his own teacup as he stretched across the tabletop. “I’d have a chance of success if it were anyone else.”

“I’ll give you that,” you said, pouring steaming, amber tea with slices of yuzu into Tenko’s cup, “You’re getting quite good at it, not that you were bad in the first place. But yeah, it’s a bit mean of him to test your tracking skills on me.” He’d never said to stop, so you poured until liquid almost overflowed at the rim.

He gasped at the heat but nudged his teacup back to his place at the table, unable to hold it in his palm anymore. “I think I would’ve preferred working with Hound Dog-sensei for that. He’s less detail-oriented. I could win, if it weren’t you.” Jutting out his lower lip, Tenko glared down at his tea for a moment before slumping in his seat to slurp at the tea without picking it up.

“Don’t feel bad about it. It was literally and actually my focus for hero work, profiling and detail shit and being aware of my surroundings. Information stuff. Infiltration stuff.” Setting the thermos on the far corner, you cupped your hands loosely around your teacup, appreciating the warmth and getting cosier by the minute.

Tenko was rooting through the bag for the other thermoses, full of sukiyaki for each of you. “It’s clear you’ve worked hard to hone your skills. Were you this talented as a student?”

You accepted the new thermos, fingers clenching tightly around it. “Uh. I think I may have been better back then. More focused. More passionate, anyway. I had to think about it really hard back then, make conscious decisions to notice things, and now I think I do it instinctively. I think I’m slipping because of that.”

“Hm,” said Tenko, tongue rubbing over his teeth behind closed lips, and he opened his mouth to say something but shut it, instead twisting off the cap to his soup thermos. He took the first sip of sukiyaki broth and—and was absolutely beautiful (you couldn’t make sense of it beyond that; he was a mess of details that you couldn’t fit together into a larger picture that made any sense: white eyelashes light against his cheeks as they fluttered shut, face muscles relaxed, scars overlapping with laugh lines, cracked lips becoming moistened by the soup, both hands cupped around his thermos like a child, no strain to his posture, baggy hoodie swallowing him up, kotatsu blanket yanked up to his hips to cover his crossed legs, scar on the corner of his mouth delicately shifting with his baffled smirk when he caught you staring, a strange pink rising to the tips of his ears). “What?”

Uh. Hm. You pinched the bridge of your nose and then moved to rub your eyelids. “What were you going to say about me?” you asked, and you withdrew your hand from your face to raise the soup thermos to your lips, taking a mouthful of noodles and the sweet, salty broth.

Tenko shook his head. “I’m trying to avoid thoughts that fall back into my old habits.”

“Try me,” you said, holding his gaze when he met it, “I won’t tell.”

Weary, he broke eye contact, and he fixated on fishing out a certain slice of green onion. “We needed someone like you back then.”

Back then? When he—oh.

Back in the League.

Though you attempted to hide your grin by taking a sip of sukiyaki, you caught his eyes flicker to it. “You would’ve taken me? You would’ve let me in?”

“Would you have joined?” he shot back, a bit too quickly.

“No,” you said, rolling your shoulders and settling down farther underneath the kotatsu, “Never. But since you shared something you shouldn’t’ve, I’ll do the same.” You set your thermos down to rub your eyes again—God, you couldn’t look at him for too long, lest your intrusive thoughts hand you your ass. “I thought about it. About joining you.”

You dragged your hand down your face, peeking between your fingers at a muted clink. Tenko was staring at you, something fucking unreadable in his scrounched eyes, and both hands lay five-fingered and flat on the kotatsu, steam from his open thermos fluffing up hair on one side of his head. “You’re not serious. You wouldn’t have.”

“Not in the way you think,” you said, tilting your head back, “but I often thought, in the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation Raid, what I could’ve done, if I’d known what I know now. And as the rest of the war was unfolding, I only wanted it more.”

Tenko blinked, slowly. “Tell me what you would’ve done.”

“Oh, you would’ve hated me, down to the dregs of my very soul,” you said, shifting to sit on your knees, “I would’ve started after your fight with Re-Destro, after the PLF was established. When you were letting allllllllll those heroes in, the sidekicks, the nobodies, anyone who seemed like they were with the cause. I would’ve infiltrated. Slipped in without notice. Hawks did, with the Commission, but I would’ve been going in as a free agent.”

“No one notices a U.A. student slide in between the masses. Re-Destro’s lackeys wouldn’t notice you at the door like I would. You get in,” Tenko said, taking his thermos in hand again but still engrossed in you, “What then?”

“There was a short period of time between the PLF establishment and your procedure, right? Around a month? That’s when I go. I worm my way into the good graces of some of the nine lieutenants—I’ve decided my pipeline would’ve been Geten to Toga to you. You’d just come out of an enormous battle, with Re-Destro and that city and Gigantomachia for a whole month. I heard you were bandaged up, on crutches, that you’d lost fingers that you regrew in that regeneration tank,” you said, eyes on his hands, one in a fist in his lap and the other around his thermos, five fingers pressing onto the grip but the pinkie finger hitched farther up than the rest, “That you’d given a speech and made your appearances regardless. That you’d pushed yourself to your limit and then broke yourself a little more. And you would’ve loathed me, because I would’ve come in, earned my way to your side, and I would’ve put my hand on your shoulder, slid it up your neck to cup your cheek to ask Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to rest?” You smiled and huffed, shoving it down, and though his hard stare should’ve pinned you to your seat, you pushed on the corner of the kotatsu to edge yourself over to his side, a knee on his cushion. “I like to think that you’ve sighed, sulked a bit, reluctant to admit anything was wrong at all, because back then, you had no use for moonlight. But I would’ve made you look at me, taken you to a bed, made you lie down until your eyes fluttered shut and the tension swept through your body and left. And you would rest,” you said, finding yourself leaning over him very slightly, knees touching his, just enough so that he leant backwards just a fraction, “I would’ve made that month so soft for you. I would’ve taken care of you, when nobody was fucking paying attention to you in the way that they should’ve. I fucking—I wanted it.” You gripped the front of his hoodie, fist grasping more fabric than necessary to shake him. “I wanted it. I wanted to care for you. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know. And you were fucking alone, in an unfamiliar place, and it kills me to think about that.”

You ducked your head to wipe your watery eyes on your sleeve, taking a breath—and realising what you were doing. You loosened your grip, but before you could pull away, Tenko was cat-like quick to grab your sleeve—why won’t he touch you?

“I wouldn’t have accepted your help,” he said, quiet, controlled, holding you down with his eyes, hand shifting to curve under your sleeved wrist, signalling that you could escape at any time, “That was after the worst month of my life, fighting Machia, and I wouldn’t have accepted it. I had too much to do. I would’ve shaken you off.”

“No, you wouldn’t’ve.”

“I would’ve,” he said, a bare finger, featherlight, skimming over the tender, bare skin of the underside of your wrist (oh, wow), “I wouldn’t trust that easily in that short of a time. You’d have met me, and that’d be it. If you’d persisted, I would’ve ripped you to shreds and tossed you aside.”

“Tenko,” you said, both relief and tightness blooming from your wrist, “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

The hallway shoji slammed open, somehow rattling as it slid in its tracks and shook the walls, and you and Tenko scrambled apart, with you jolting backwards on your hands, grappling for your seat cushion, and Tenko banging his thermos on the kotatsu, hastily wrestling with keeping it upright as he flung his body to the side.

“Hey, fuck you, Touya,” Tenko spluttered out, elbowing himself upright as—as fucking Dabi strode inside, hands in the deep pockets of his black sweatpants. “You said you’d stay in the main house.”

“Don’t mind me,” said Touya, cool as you please, raising both of his hands in defence, “I had to ensure you’re not fucking in my bed.”

“What is—” Tenko clambered to his feet to cross to him, chirping with each stomp, and whisper-shouting once he’d corralled Touya into a far corner. “I said we’d hang out later today, Touya. You swore you’d stay inside and watch Naruto this afternoon.”

The polite thing to do would be to appear fascinated by the tea. You returned to your cushion and poured yourself another cup.

“Yeah, but I’ve been told I’ve got shit to do later. I’ve got to go to this fuckin’—fuckin’ family stuff. I don’t wanna get into it,” said Touya, at full volume, “and I wanted to check that your girl was real. Y’know, she looks nothing like someone who’d have GinzengTea as her username. Have you given it to her already?”

“Shut the fuck up. I was just about to do that, if you hadn’t interrupted, cockhead.”

“Cool,” he said, a bird-note as he shifted his weight, “I wanna see what she thinks.”

“Hell, no—”

“I helped pick ‘em out. Let me watch and have an ohagi, and I’ll leave,” said Touya, chirping towards you before he finished the sentence, and Tenko followed him, muttering under his breath.

Touya sat on the bare tatami next to you, joints cracking as he yanked the kotatsu blanket up his legs, shooting you a small salute and a concerningly charming smile. “Hey,” he said, tilting his head, eyes half-lidded, smile stretching to show more of his even, white teeth, “I’ve seen you before, yeah? When was the last time you laid eyes on me?”

Tenko pelted him in the chest with a plastic-wrapped ohagi, cutting off the ooze of charisma. “Show-off,” he said, nudging another sweetened rice ball your way.

You nodded but didn’t move to unwrap it, since you were still working on your sukiyaki. “I’m surprised you remember, Touya,” you said, the name feeling strange on your tongue, “It must’ve been years since I elbowed you in the tit.”

Eyes lighting the fuck up, you snapped towards Tenko when he laughed into his plastic wrap: still not loud, still not making any vocalisation with it, but releasing a heavy, sharp burst of air with a wide, open grin. He hunched over to hide more of it, using both hands to unwrap his ohagi—and in the moment he realised he’d been unwrapping it with only his pointer fingers and thumbs, he dropped the rest of his fingers onto the rice ball, still smirking to himself.

Biting your lip in your own smile, you turned back to Touya (you caught his moment of mild alarm at how thrilled you were when Tenko laughed—or maybe it was alarm at Tenko laughing at all—but Touya relaxed his eyebrows and shut his mouth the second you faced him again). “God, yeah, it must have been before that last battle that we’d met in a fight, and I’d gotten close enough to hit you, and…” You shook your head. “Actually, I don’t wanna talk about that stuff. It’s not who we are now.”

“That’s fine.” Touya nodded towards Tenko and took a bite of his ohagi. “Shimura, don’t you have something to give her?”

Shimura. That was his last name, you supposed, but wasn’t it odd that Tenko called Touya by his given name and that Touya called Tenko by his family name? Tenko didn’t make you call him Shimura. Well, you supposed that there’s only one Shimura now, and because of the number of Todorokis, it paid to be specific—

“Here.” Tenko set a flat box in front of you, flipping the buckle of his bag back over. “I was going to give it to you with more formality, but since this bastard showed up, I’m doing it like this.”

Biting the inside of your cheek, brow furrowed, you unpacked a pair of pale blue headphones, soft to the touch with a mesh headband so that your head wouldn’t ache.

“Noise-cancelling,” Tenko said, gabbling, frowning very slightly, “Rechargeable. There’s a detachable microphone so it can function as a headset. I wanted to do something good for you.” His eyes darted towards Touya, and they dropped to his ohagi’s bulging filling, seeping out onto the plastic wrap. “You need them, anyway. I’ve been sick of hearing you through those shitty earbuds; their sound is terrible, and when you said you’d lost your only pair—which I don’t fucking understand how you can lose those things, because they just fucking show up in my shit all the time, like a goddamn plague—I thought you needed something quality—just to make it easier on my end, obviously, so that I don’t have to tell you to yell into that shitty, built-in micropho—”

“Tenko,” you said, reaching over to place your tea-hot hand over the back of his, fingers curving with his along ohagi’s edge, “Thank you so much. I adore them. I’m really grateful that you would think of me.”

Tenko froze, the same as he had when you’d adjusted his scarf. Unable to look you in the eye, like a prey animal, stiff, shoulders tense, colour rushing up his neck to his face and ears again—but this time, he lifted his hand just a hair from his ohagi to press back into your palm, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Hoo, boy,” said Touya, startling the both of you when he slammed his hands on the kotatsu to push himself up, “I’ve had enough. I’ve had my little snack. I’m leaving.” Once on his feet, he stretched, pressing his hands to his lower back and arching it, grunting.

“Good fucking riddance, cocksucker,” said Tenko, rising and grabbing Touya by the elbow to haul him to the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Touya, dragging his feet, chirping slurred and confused by his movement, and when Tenko had him at the wall, trying to shove him out, Touya, smirking under your watch, whispered something to Tenko while forcing something into his palm. Touya ducked out as Tenko looked at what he’d accepted and, letting out a yelp, dusted whatever it was before he hurried back to the kotatsu.

(When you left the teahouse half an hour later, you discovered that he’d decayed only the wrapper and not the condom itself.)

***

“One moment, please. Nezu-sensei is in a meeting right now, but he’ll be out momentarily. Please take a number—yes, the ticket puncher when you first came in,” you said to yet another impatient and pissed client in the admin waiting room, packed to the gills with parents, press, vendors, potential sponsors, and, for some reason, Mt. Lady’s entire representative team. “By the door. If you’ll take a seat, we’ll be with you shortly.”

God, you could punt Nezu for this. Not that there was anything wrong with establishing a new, annual event for U.A.—a cherry blossom garden-set, competitive scavenger hunt coming up in the spring—but because of his casual comment that it would rise to the same importance as the Sports Festival, you were swamped with those eager to invest early. Unable to take a break, you had to work with your head bowed, desperately hoping none of these people recognised you and your failure, when all you wanted was to reply to Tenko’s messages on Cipherstone that morning.

Tenkopeito: You’ll like the next quest. You can pet a dog in it

Tenkopeito: Come over to my room this evening so that we can talk in person

Was he intending to speak with innuendo or with such sincerity that it cut right through you? Moreover, was he aware he was even doing it? Based on what you’ve observed, Tenko had no idea what he was doing to you, nor did he know how hard you were trying not to act on your attraction, though you weren’t even doing a great job of suppressing it.

It’s strange: Tenko evoked some strange, unnameable emotion in you like nothing else. You wanted to coddle him; you wanted to play stupid video games with him; you wanted to sweep his hair out of his eyes, and though you kept telling yourself that you didn’t, you wanted him to tell you how to touch yourself, how to touch him. You brushed it off. Another time. Perhaps never.

“Oh, hi!” Former pro-hero Ragdoll squealed your family name, making you jump in your seat. “It is you. I couldn’t tell from farther back in the line.” Fuck, Ragdoll would recognise you, since she and the rest of the Wild, Wild Pussycats trained Class A, and she specifically spent time with you on your tracking skills because of her Search quirk.

Don’t cause a scene. “Hello, Shiretoko,” you said, doing your best not to let your face be seen from over the reception desk’s overhang, “It’s good to see you. How can I help?”

When she beamed, she was as bright as ever. “Oh! The Pussycats want to offer our services for the scavenger hunt! We wanna get back into charity and civilian events now that we’re back from our mission for—but wait, you know all about that!” You didn’t. But her cheerful voice carried, and people were already turning towards Ragdoll, part of a hero team ranked in the top thirty. “I wanna hear more about what you’ve been up to! Since you left the hero business, no one’s known where you’ve been! Gosh, have you been behind this dreary old desk the whole time?” Ragdoll leant over the overhang, flicking at a loose strand of your hair. “I thought you were sent out on missions out of the country! Like, really important, top-secret stuff. It’s weird seeing you in an office, especially since I consider you a mini me. Why are you back at your alma mater? Did your agency not want you anymore?”

She wasn’t meaning to be cruel. Her loud, blunt sincerity, though, drew the attention of onlookers, and their flashes of recognition, subsequent judgment, and turning away made your chest tight. “I needed a break. That’s all.”

A thin, blonde woman in a burgundy overcoat leaning against the wall immediately next to the reception had been evaluating you, scanning you from top to bottom during the exchange. She didn’t bother hiding her curiosity, and when you shakily handled the rest of the conversation with Ragdoll, she turned to the short, softly featured man beside her. “You know her?” She hadn’t even tried to quiet her voice; it jolted you from Ragdoll, but you steeled yourself and continued printing off a schedule for her—and from the depths of your brain came the woman’s identity: Uwabami, the snake hero, one who usually flaunted her celebrity status but currently dressed down, without her hair snakes (a rattlesnake, a yellow king cobra, and a Japanese rat snake, which—shut up! You don’t need this information right now! Can you be fucking sane, please?).

Her sidekick—no, an intern, a student at U.A., some fuckin’ twink in the year below you, name escaping you at the moment—had some iota of tact when he looked you over, slanting his body away, as if he weren’t staring. “Yes,” he said, trying not to let you hear, “She’s my former senpai and nothing more to me. We didn’t run in the same circles. She’s the one who made that rescue a few months back, the one that got a lot of online backlash.”

“No, seriously,” Ragdoll was saying, “Why are you back at U.A.? Don’t you have somewhere else to go?”

“My—” People behind Ragdoll in line were listening. Trying not to show it. Your throat ran dry, and you couldn’t think of a lie or a pleasant half-truth. “My flat was compromised. My address was leaked, and eventually, people were—look, Shiretoko,” you said, forcing the words out of your mouth, “I really don’t want to talk about this. Here’s the printed schedule. I’ll talk to you later.”

You slid the paper across the counter, and she took it, waving goodbye and still beaming.

“Is this what happens when a hero career doesn’t work out? They just shove you back where someone will take you? At any old office desk?” that fucking twink was asking Uwabami, “I can’t—it honestly scares me to think I could lose myself and be misplaced like that. It’s wasting talent, don’t you think?”

“How can I help you?” you asked the next person in line through gritted teeth.

When Uwabami lowered her sunglasses to glance over them, you inhaled sharply and swung your swivel chair so that you wouldn’t see her. “I don’t know about that. Maybe this dreadful administration office is where she’s meant to be.”

Biting his lip, he shifted his jaw and crossed his arms, slumping against the wall. “You’ll always have a place for me, right, Uwabami? I don’t want this to happen to me.”

“Yes, I can print you out a copy of the same schedule. If you’ll allow me a moment to print.”

“Of course, Kakeru,” Uwabami said, ignorant of how you were gripping a pencil so tightly that it could snap any second, “You’ll never be left behind.” But then she fucking stared you down, deliberately holding eye contact while you were at the printer, and she said, “You’ll never need a place to hide. I’ll make sure you don’t fail.”

“Hey, how about you shut up?” you hissed, ripping the printer-warm schedule from the tray and storming back to your current client to shove it into their hands. “Aren’t Japanese rat snakes supposed to be in hibernation this time of year, anyway?”

***

Someone in Mt. Lady’s group recorded it. Someone posted it.

wizardjenkins11: jesus christ who knew u.a. had its own island of misfit toys

emotionalsupportdynamightsweat: nice to see that she kept her snark, but what is she doing back at school?? don’t heroes have some sort of paperwork component to their work. why isn’t she still at an agency

blood-is-thiccer: lol ua’s the only one who’d take the bitch. she’s being rude as hell to an actual pro hero. lameass quirk anyway and ass flat as hell lmao she fucken deserved that guy lighting her mailbox on fire

LynchianTiddies: You’re encouraging domestic terrorism???

blood-is-thiccer: that’s not domestic terrorism

LynchianTiddies: Then what, pray fucking tell, is it??

blood-is-thiccer: wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism

XylemPhloemBuckaroo: no but I get what that guy was saying about wasting talent tho. Out of everyone in that class a, she’s the only one not topping the fucking hero charts rn. She’s the only one who’s left hero work. What makes her weaker than the rest of her classmates? What happened to her to make her like this?

koiboi69: wouldn’t you quit if people were camping outside your house/work/grocerystore? And also FUCK, man, there’s no fucking need to say she’s fucking weak. that’s kicking her while she’s down

XylemPhloemBuckaroo: I’m not kicking her while she’s down. I’m stating facts and asking reasonable questions.

koiboi69: bro wouldn’t YOU feel down if you’d didn’t have a home to go back to??? going back to u.a. is like admitting defeat, like you couldn’t handle it on your own and need protection

mawatadaddysgorl: i love seeing updates on her bc it makes me feel so good about what i’m doing with my life

***

Uraraka and Shinsou texted you but couldn’t call, let alone come from across town. Aizawa was AWOL, and Dango was hiding under your bed, so you, blotchy-faced and damp, were crumpled on the floor outside of room 310, eating vending machine bullshit and waiting for Tenko to return home.

Exactly all the insecurities you’d been stuffing down for months and months, brought out to air in front of everyone. Instead of doomscrolling, you locked your phone and slid it across the hallway carpet, burying your face in your hands and stomach lurching to the thought that you might soon be plastered everywhere in sight, again. Another round of intensive laying low loomed on the horizon, especially now that your location was made public. Your little secretary job was good enough, and relocating elsewhere on campus would lead to more job training, which would be a bitch.

Where was Tenko? You needed him here to say something irreverent and vindictive. Something unhinged. Or you needed him to hold you, pull you into his lap, and bitch about the whole thing while watching a movie. Tenko had messaged you to come by after work, so why wasn’t he…?

The staircase door hissed open, Tenko pushing it with his back, reusable grocery bags on his arms, and—and wearing a cape? Who the fuck wears a cape casu—oh shit he’s in his hero costume.

You’d heard that he had one, designed by the same company that’d made Midoriya’s and Shouto’s, and the similarities were clear: a boxy sort of design due to thick fabric that still somehow hugged his chest, a minimalist utility belt, and sturdy, knee-capping boots, positively flaming scarlet in contrast to the dark greys of the rest of his jumpsuit. The most obvious connection with another hero, though, made your chest throb: his cloak fastened with the same clasp his grandmother’s had. His dust-blocking respirator lay around his neck for the moment, but what was most embarrassing for you was how your brain fucking wheezed like a boiling kettle at his bare arms, biceps bulging, every fucking inch of skin down to his fingertips completely on display like a goddamn slut.

Whore behaviour. Whore behaviour! You had to duck your head when he squatted next to you, because oh, now you could see the stretch marks on his upper arms, because he’d gotten large way too quickly to be healthy, and smell his fading Old Spice and sweat from being out on what must have been an emergency call, and he was setting his grocery bags aside, reaching out to graze your shoulder, and wow, he’d been complaining about how he didn’t have abs yet despite working out five days a week now that his stamina had increased, but that fabric clung to his lower abdomen, looking very, very flat.

Initially pinching the fabric of your sweater, he shifted his jaw and laid his hand on your shoulder. “Who am I dusting?”

“God, Tenko,” you said, trying to look anywhere but his arms, or his abdomen, or his fucking lips, but he was leaning so much over you that he occupied most of your line of vision, and the only way to avoid seeing anything besides wisps of white hair was to gaze at the popcorned ceiling. “You’re not supposed to do that anymore.”

“Oh, yeah? Who am I dusting?” He squeezed your shoulder, stretching his thumb out to rub at your collarbone.

“Unless you can dust everyone in the country, I don’t think decay will help.”

Tenko clicked his tongue. “I have been explicitly told not to do that,” he said, shifting to sit on his knees, “I have—” He dug into a grocery bag for a moment. “—this for you. You like this shit, right?” Tenko pressed a bottle of pink lemonade into your hands.

“Fucking. Fuck. I do,” you said, passing the condensation-coated bottle from one hand to another, chest tightening, blinking to keep the water levels low, “Thank you. You didn’t have to get me this.”

“I know that,” he said with a dismissive wave, and he paused, fists in his lap. “Would it help if I gave you a hug?”

(What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the—)

“Yeah,” you said calmly, like a calm person, and when Tenko opened his (muscular) arms, you crawled into them, wrapping your own around his back to rest between his shoulder blades. You rested your chin in a fold of his cape, cheek pressing against the side of his respirator, and you frowned as his embrace tightened, pulling you closer in a sloppy, unpractised sort of way, grounded by the steady rise and fall of his very solid chest.

(This felt…affectionate. Romantic, even.

But Shigaraki Tomura didn’t do romance, and you don’t—you’re not—you wouldn’t dream of being conceited enough to read someone’s perhaps thoughtless actions as flirtation, because why would someone be flirting with you? No one did that in general, and being U.A.’s humiliating problem child exacerbated the fact.

Moreover, why would the man who was Shigaraki Tomura, in the middle of his rehabilitation and re-discovery of self, even in the microscopic chance that he had the mental energy to experience romantic feelings, aim that romantic impulse towards you? It would make more sense if he liked someone he’d known for a while, like Touya or Spinner or Toga, and if his romantic feelings leant towards recuperative trauma-bonding, wouldn’t it be more apt to feel for someone at his rehab? His therapist, maybe? He’d idolised Aizawa before he’d met him, and even that would make more sense than latching onto someone as late in the process as you.

He’d gotten flustered when you’d tied his scarf, and Touya’s played terrible wingman. But still. You couldn’t know. You can’t read into this, even though reading into things had been your job, because—because no one would want you. You’ll have to…You’ll have to gather more evidence. You couldn’t be certain.)

Tenko hummed, chin digging into your shoulder, blowing strands of your hair out of his face. “I calmed a kid down earlier by hugging her. Is this working for you?”

(…oh.)

You sniffled and hid your mouth in his cape so that he couldn’t catch your pout. “That’s—that’s good that a kid allowed you to comfort her. What happened?”

“Pipes broke in an old apartment building in the Takoba district. The third floor collapsed under the pressure, and it trapped families in part of the building. I was called out to dust the rubble trapping them,” Tenko said, tapping his fingers high on your back in a ripple, “and they had me dust some other walls to help start the repairs. It was cool. And this one little girl who’d gotten out before the rest of her family was really nervous, and she was sticking to me, holding onto my cape. I was telling her that everything was gonna be okay, like you’ve taught me, and when I asked how she was doing, this fuckin’ kid extended her arms to me. So, I fucking hugged her. Picked her up so she could see what was happening better. It was weird, but it felt good.” Tenko sighed. “I hate how it wants me to be kind more.”

And fuck, fuck, that’s the last straw to this horrible day, and you’re crying, silently, controlling your breathing to keep Tenko from finding out, because goddammit, this idiot bastard man was surprisingly easy to love.

You buried your face fully in his shoulder, hoping he couldn’t feel any wetness through his costume, and you and Tenko sat in the quiet of the hallway for a minute, interrupted only by the A/C kicking in.

Tenko tried to part the two of you enough to look you in the face, but you doubled down, curling your fingers into the fabric of his jumpsuit and keeping your head bowed. Scoffing, he sat upright, making you follow his movements to stay hidden. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong yet?”

“Forget all that shit I’ve taught you,” you said, grumbling to his tits now that he’d changed positions, hating how stopped up you sounded already, “It doesn’t matter what you fucking do in the public’s eye, because there’s always gonna be someone who hates you. You can’t please everyone, so just fucking be yourself. That’s funnier, anyway.”

“Did you psychoanalyse some press member’s pathetic sex life, or something? Deduce an affair based on the way he knots his tie? Announce the state of his dick to the whole room because of the length of his pants?”

“Fuck off, Tenko. I’m not some pretentious-ass Sherlock Holmes bitch,” you said, pursing your lips and instinctively pulling back to glare at him—

And the moment you did, Tenko cupped your face in his hands, soft at the palm and strongly calloused along his fingers, keeping you facing towards him no matter how hard you tried to jerk away, struggling to stay upright. “You are crying.”

“No, I’m not,” you said, just as a falling tear touched his thumb. As you adjusted to his grip, your hands fell to his thighs, pressing against them in fists.

“Hm. Well, you don’t have to tell me,” he said, eyes on another tear trailing down the other cheek, “but you’re joining me to watch a movie with Eri. I got snacks on the way home.”

You sighed, taking in how big his hands were and how much of your face they encompassed, trying to memorise their feeling until they were snatched away forever. “I thought we were gonna start a new quest tonight. I was excited.”

Tenko balked and shifted into a sceptical grin. “You wanted to play Ciperstone tonight?” he asked, both thumbs rubbing your cheekbones and moving to swipe underneath your eyes.

You sighed again, shoulders heaving as Tenko released your face to flick tears off of his hand. “I didn’t want to be myself for a few hours.”

Tenko pushed on his knees to stand. “That’s actually related to what I originally wanted to talk to you about. Furthering the working-with-others mission,” he said, and he extended his hand to help you up. “What do you know about Dungeons and Dragons?”

***

“God fucking dammit!” Tenko slammed his palm to his forehead and leant back to balance on the kitchen chair’s back legs and then combed his fingers back through his hair, upsetting some strands from his ponytail. Groaning, he crooked his face your way, smushed his face against the chair back, and pointed towards his forehead, where a red splot was forming. “Hit me as hard as you can.”

“Being bludgeoned won’t change the fact that you rolled a three,” you said, nodding towards his d20, “I ignore his whining and continue to drain the fig tree to charge my spell.”

Behind the DM screen, Shinsou rolled his own dice, and once his eyebrows had shot up to his hairline, he turned to Midoriya. “I need you to roll two d12s and a d4.”

Tenko bolted upright, hastily sweeping his bangs out of his face. “Wait, what does Midoriya have to do with it? He’s across the fucking grove! He’s engaged in close-ranged combat.”

You turned away from Shinsou’s sly grin and towards Tenko, mouth nearly a straight line, yanking another cluster of grapes from the communal bowl, and shoving two grapes in his mouth. He pinched at his lower lip as he chewed, twisting and peeling at dead skin, frowning as he focused on his character sheet, scanning it for some sort of information he was forgetting and absentmindedly raising his knee to his chest, the heel of his foot propped on the seat of his chair (thank God his jeans were from Best Jeanist’s Moulded to Your Ass line: the denim strained with his muscles. Your eye twitched). In this particular morning, with the five of you squared off at Aizawa’s kitchen table, papers and dice strewn among grocery store bakery cinnamon rolls and coffee cups (Tenko’s was full of gatorade instead of coffee, much to his chagrin), as Tenko was throwing grapes into Touya’s mouth while Shinsou did math, the narwhal house slippers dangling off Tenko’s feet, it struck you that Shigaraki Tomura had become just some guy. One who went for walks to clear his head, who spent hours failing to do a kickflip on Present Mic’s skateboard, who used emoticons over emojis, who got nervous in fast food drive-throughs, who collected hero merch (of Aizawa fervently and Present Mic against his will), who was losing his sensitivity to foods like leeks and onions, a man who was growing more and more exquisitely mundane.

And goddamn, he’s clever and perceptive and patient and cheeky in a devastatingly attractive way, and he’s flustered easily, eager to do a thing correctly, and utterly, totally captivating in his endless discoveries of what it means to be alive.

You timed it so that the shudder and shock crossing his face could pass as response to Shinsou’s description of how Tenko’s enchanted crossbow bolt missed the Spirit Realm Necromancer entirely, instead sinking into the sacred Grand Oak and instantly shattering the tree as if it were glass, its elaborate root system holding up the floating grove splintering into thousands of tiny shards, the ground beneath your party’s feet crumbling at the slightest suggestion of the shifting of weight. But really he curled in his lips with a furrowed brow and stuttering breath when you reached underneath the table to graze the back of his hand, and when he forced himself to relax, shoulders slackening, frown fading, Tenko spread his fingers to cover more of his denim-clad thigh, which you took as a timid sort of consent. Biting the inside of your cheek, you eased your palm over the back of Tenko’s hand, lacing your fingers through his and going through the motions of reacting to Shinsou’s shattered earth. Neither of you looked at each other while Midoriya’s character suffered the Necromancer’s spell to increase gravity, each movement of Midoriya’s bulky, steel armour accelerating the fall of the floating grove. By the time each of you had had enough turns to land on solid ground, preserving little of the sacred grove but all surviving, Tenko finally squeezed your fingers back, curling his own to grip them more firmly, keeping your hand pinned to his thigh, steeling himself, sitting up straight, and proposing getting close enough to the Necromancer to drive a crossbow bolt directly into his skull.

Midoriya was already muttering to himself over the effectiveness of the action while Shinsou worked, and Touya irreverently flicked his dice at Tenko, chugging coffee with his other hand. “You plunge the bolt by hand into the Necromancer’s head,” said Shinsou, “but with your strength debuff still in effect, you only nick him.”

“I try stabbing it through his ear.”

“It goes through,” said Shinsou, nodding and running his hand back through his hair, which sprung back into place, “It doesn’t pierce the neocortex, so he can still summon another—“

“I stomp him to death with my hooves,” said Touya, picking at his teeth and running his tongue over the spot.

The rest of you turned to him slowly in various states of incredulity.

“You don’t have hooves, Touya,” you said, tilting your head at the same time Tenko rubbed his thumb over yours, prompting your breath to hitch and a strange warmth to travel through your body, making you feel dizzy.

Touya grimaced and reached for a cinnamon roll. “I take off my leather breeches and boots to reveal my hooves. I have been a satyr masquerading as a human this whole time.” He leant forward on his elbow, glaring at Shinsou and gesturing with his cinnamon roll. “I stomp him. To death. With my hooves.”

Tenko sneered, his teeth cutting into his lower lip, but he merely opened his mouth and closed it, poking his tongue into his cheek. “I suppose maiming a party member wouldn’t coincide with my character’s chaotic good alignment,” he said, heaving a huge sigh to—oh, that cunning rat bastard—to conceal how he flipped his hand over in yours to touch palms, weaving your fingers back together and squeezing again, planting them back on his upper leg, massaging between your knuckles with his thumb.

“What’d you just roll?”

“Nineteen,” said Touya, casting Shinsou a slice of his most charming smile.

Midoriya let out a little laugh as Shinsou bitterly plopped his head on his fist. “Fuck you, Touya. Congratulations. You clomp over to the Necromancer and stomp all over him. Stompy stomp stomp stompy stomp. It’s difficult to watch at the insane speed you’re going, so no one stops you from doing such a good job pounding him that he’s ground into dust. Bits of him drift away in the wind.”

Here Midoriya winced. “Weren’t we supposed to retrieve the soul crystal embedded in his gauntlet? We can’t get our reward from that Silver Age dragon rider if we don’t have it.”

“Correct,” said Shinsou, glancing down at his notes, “It has been stomped to smithereens. You can’t even make out what parts of the pile of dust were once flesh.”

Ready to bolt, Touya was getting up from the table and holding up his hands in defence, but before Midoriya could start a speech that would have been more apt for the number one hero to use on patrol rather than during a DND game, the door to Aizawa’s flat opened, and in he walked, covering his yawn with the back of his hand. He halted at the sight of the five of you around his kitchen table, taking in the scattered papers and remnants of breakfast before settling on your DM. “Shinsou,” Aizawa began, disappointment outweighing the exhaustion in his voice.

“You’re the only one with a table that could fit all of us,” Shinsou said, spinning in his chair to face him, “This dormitory doesn’t have a good common area like the student ones do. Would you really prefer us to—”

“We can find you a table; there’s plenty on campus.” Aizawa lifted his goggles over his head to set them on the counter. “Is this why Monoma kept slowing me down during patrol?”

“No,” you and Shinsou said, while Tenko said, “Yes.”

Aizawa actually smiled as he unwound his capture weapon from around his neck. “Look who’s the only one telling the truth.”

“Why would I lie to you, sensei?”

Touya smacked Tenko on the arm. “Suck-up.”

“You promise?” Tenko shot back, nose wrinkling with his grin.

“This coffee had better be amazing, because it’s the only thing keeping me from kicking you all out right now,” said Aizawa, rubbing a dry eye with the heel of his palm, other hand outstretched for someone to pass him a mug.

Tenko’s thumb bent inward to swipe the inside of your palm, a silent protest while he drank from his stupid little mug of gatorade, and when he noticed what was at the bottom, he flinched. It must have been Touya who’d put your dice in Tenko’s cup.

***

Following the video of you insulting Uwabami, you’re garnering an unnerving amount of attention again, but it’s clearly someone different than last time. Whoever your stalker(s) was this time around, they were careless and unsubtle—and this confidence to be careless left you jumping at the slightest sound when you were alone.

Furthermore, you legitimately couldn’t deduce your stalker’s motivations, because no clear message linked his actions. At first, you chalked it up to the dorm’s shitty dryer eating your bright blue thong, but when you couldn’t find your lip balm or trolley pass or eventually your favourite sweater, you concluded that something else was at play here, further cemented by more and more tiny things going missing—things that, if you were stalking someone, you would’ve selected as small enough not to miss.

But bizarrely, your stalker left shit of his own lying about. A phone charger appeared underneath your pillow; loose change and a travel pack of alcoholic wipes showed up in your bathroom sink. Hello Kitty band-aids, a hair clip that looked like one of Rumi’s ears, deep-moisturising hand cream, a tiny lizard keychain with a white hamburglar mask drawn on. You couldn’t wrap your head around it. What could your stalker be trying to say besides he could access your personal space with ease? Hoarding it all in the drawer with the GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK hentai, you were struck with the notion that this may have been going on even before the video.

God, you missed when this school felt more like home instead of a holding cell, back when Shinsou and Uraraka and the rest were all still living together with you, when you could simply turn the corner to the common area to demand who took your laundry detergent and get an answer immediately (you also missed taking Aoyama’s bougie food, though you suspected that towards the end he was buying extra specifically for you). You sent an email to Aizawa about the potential break in security, and he promised to monitor the situation, though there was no evidence of physical entry.

Evidence. It’s been on your mind.

Sure, Tenko’s done stuff that could be read as romantic: how he plops your hand onto his head to demand you play with his hair, how he hovers whenever Touya stands too closely to you, how he gets upset on your behalf when people glare at you in public.

(Tenko grabbed your elbow, breaking your focus on the clothing rank. “We’re going.”

“But we haven’t found you a red coat yet.”

He lifted the hangers from your arm and slid them back onto the rack, despite belonging elsewhere. “Don’t care. I don’t like the way the cashier’s looking at you,” he said, jerking his head their direction, and when you tilted your head to glance at them over his shoulder, Tenko tapped your chin twice, guiding you to look back at him. “You shouldn’t have to be on guard when I’m with you.”)

If you were reading into it—and you were—Tenko was being so careful with talking about the pro-hero scene around you that it was almost as if he’d gotten a mission task from Aizawa to distract you from anything that might make you feel bad about yourself.

(“I hear you’re causing a lot of paperwork for my old man,” said Touya, pulling out another floor cushion from the storage space in the teahouse wall, “He hates that you’ve had to dust so many structures near his agency. He’s a decrepit creature of habit, and now that his commute is different, he’s—”

“Hey, Touya, tell us what flower bulbs you planted this winter,” Tenko said abruptly, clamping the lid on the pot hanging over the sunken fireplace, “Tell us what your garden’ll look like in spring.”

You shut your book, even though you’d just opened it. “Wait, are you saying that Touya is the one who keeps this garden? That’s—”

“You like it, sweetheart?” Touya dropped his cushion next to yours, ignoring the way Tenko was glaring daggers into his back. “Think it’s impressive?”

“Holy shit; I thought we were in the back of some professionally restored historical site the first time we came here,” you said, smiling at how Tenko’s petulant stomps to his seat chirruped, even when he scooted his own cushion towards yours (adorable; you’d think he didn’t like you giving attention to anyone else).

“Well,” said Touya, propping his hands on the kotatsu so that he could get a better view of Tenko, “With enormous pride and a huge erection, I’m pleased to announce that this garden is all my hard work.”

“Stop that,” barked Tenko, jabbing a finger towards Touya, “Stop bringing up your cock.”

“I could talk about yours, if you want. His monster cock is excruciatingly leaky and so shaped.”

Groaning, Tenko clonked his forehead on the kotatsu’s tabletop before Touya could say anything else, arm still outstretched. He peeked out from underneath his bangs towards you, tension leaving his body at your burst of laughter.)

He’s also taken your comment about silent admiration to heart. Over the discord call (through very comfortable headphones), you’d made a dumb joke about not being able to play for long, and he’d shut up immediately. When you’d confessed to lying and hoping you’d scared him, he’d replied seriously: “I want to protect my time with you. I don’t like it being taken away. I feel better when you’re with me.”

You’d frozen in the middle of weaving bowstrings while his character continued stringing them onto bows. You’d never have gotten that sort of remark at the beginning of your relationship. Tenko must genuinely be listening to you.

Anyway. You decided in the event that Tenko was collecting evidence, too, that you would leave him some.

The first time you’d been in his room had been for a specific purpose, which was to help him rub in his new facial scar moisturiser (not to take them away, or anything, because Tenko wanted to keep them, claiming he wouldn’t recognise himself in the mirror if he didn’t have his scars—and you thought they were devastatingly attractive, anyway—but just to keep them hydrated enough not to itch), but now you were here just to spend time in the same space. You were reading on his bed (oh, hohoho, his bed), and Tenko was drawing in his sketchbook on his couch by the window. With his mouth pinched in concentration, he squinted down at his paper, swiping away eraser shavings with his artist-gloved hand.

Drawing by natural light. Tenko was in room 310 because of its wide windows. It had been his one request when U.A. was placing him.

AFO had deliberately raised him in a bedroom without windows. You’d kill him if he weren’t already dead.

Thankfully, AFO’s influence was absent from Tenko’s dorm: Naruto sheets from Touya, an old Nintendo DS on his bedside table with Nintendogs in the cartridge slot, Present Mic’s skateboard propped against the coatrack that held only a black hoodie, unfolded but clean laundry in a basket next to a dresser with prescription bottles atop it, a mirror that served more as a bulletin board of Eraserhead merch than as a way to check his reflection, red shoes by the doorway, books borrowed from everyone from All Might to Shinsou to the ramen delivery guy strewn across the room, on shelves, his computer desk, his rug. The thing Tenko’d had to explain to you was a therapist-assigned painting hanging over his desk: he’d painted a murky, purple-blue, abstract sort of thing, and you were strangely touched when he’d explained it was Kurogiri (and now that you were looking, among his bulletin board of Eraserhead, a few drawings of Loud Cloud were mixed in).

There’s a lot of people in Tenko’s life who care about him now, and you’re happy to be one of them. Setting your book aside, you got up to sit next to him on the couch.

He paused when you sank into the cushion next to—well, no, you were basically sharing the same cushion, especially since he unfolded his legs from underneath him so that you could get closer. You scooted over so that your shoulders touched (scandalous) and looked over his drawings.

He’s drawing your DND characters. While his sketches aren’t exactly good, you can clearly tell who’s supposed to be whom, and they’re fun to look at, so that’s all that matters. At the centre is your character, Ginseng—you named it after your Cipherstone account because why not—in the process of spell-charging. Your character relies on the traditional ritual of tea ceremonies, from the growing of the tealeaves to serving it, summoning whatever tools you needed, like the table and dishware, and if an enemy got caught by the conventions of politeness of the tea ceremony, they were trapped in it until they’d drunk their teacup dry. Tenko had drawn her early in the spell-charging process, with branches of tealeaves sprouting from underneath her skin, with her harvesting them from her forearm. It’s rather flattering, the way her determined expression lit up her face.

Next to Ginseng was Tenko’s character, Peito, also lifted from his Cipherstone character. He was sitting on the same log as Ginseng in the middle of camp, backs touching while he cut feathers as the first step in the fletching process. His carved-willow quiver leant against his knee-high boot, red even in a fictional universe. Peito’s hands were bare, five fingers pressed against his knife and arrows.

Further back in the camp (really just towards the top of the paper, since Tenko wasn’t good at foreshortening yet), Midoriya’s character, Jackrabbit, was holding up two hangers, one with his steel and the other with sleek, black leather armour. A nice touch, really, since Midoriya had swopped Jackrabbit’s primary armour to the more lightweight leather since the shattered grove incident, and wow, you could even tell it was leather based on the pencil strokes.

Seated nearby, Touya’s character, Granddaddy Slapkins, roared with laughter at him. His shoes lay next to him, his hooves out. For some reason, he’s not holding his pet duck; he’s instead cradling what looks like your character’s wild shape, a cat with the same chocolate-point markings as your real cat (your character’s shapeshifted form was just Dango, but Tenko didn’t know that. He still didn’t know Dango existed, because cats were still illegal in the dorms, and Tenko, that little brown-nosing shit, would probably tell Aizawa about her. Cute how he’s only a suck-up to Aizawa, though).

Your favourite detail, though, was how his character was smiling. Unabashedly. As if it were a no-brainer, as if doing anything else made no sense at all.

With a stab of affection, you nuzzled into Tenko’s shoulder, resting your chin there while he sketched loops of chainmail onto Granddaddy Slapkins’s shirt, and a shiver racked through him.

“Oh, are you cold?” you asked, sitting back up and heading over towards the bed, “Let me get your blanket.”

“Wha—no, I—sure,” said Tenko, setting his pencil on his sketchbook and the whole thing on the arm of the couch, eyes half-lidded as you returned with his throw blanket.

And without thinking, you moved on impulse, as if all higher orders of cognition had checked out for the night, because you behaved like you did in your head whenever you thought about Tenko: casually, intimately, and domestically. You wrapped the blanket around yourself and knelt on the sofa before swinging a knee over his lap, and you snuggled into his chest, clutching his shirt and nosing at his neck.

Your eyes snapped open.

(What the fuck?

If this had been a planned attack, then it would’ve been a thing of brilliance: casual, seeming to meet a physical need [heating a chill] in the name of physical closeness. But you fucked it. This wasn’t planned, and thus you don’t have a way out of it without otherwise betraying your romantically-motivated interior.

Thank fuck he’s frozen up, too. But how do you get out of this? God, you really shouldn’t be teaching him how to navigate interpersonal relationships when you get yourself into shit like this.)

You swallowed thickly, pulse pounding in your ears.

“I need your advice.” Tenko’s chest barely rose when he took his first breath since you climbed onto his lap. “What would be the socially expected response to this?”

“Uh. That depends on if you’re into it or not,” you said, forcing yourself to sit back in his lap to give him some space, “If you dislike it, then it’s to get me to get off of you, and if you welcome it, then, uh. Anything else.”

Tenko unclenched his fists at his sides and—a pause, shifting his jaw—he let his hands rest at a barely-there touch on your hips, dragging them upwards to your waist, applying enough pressure there for you to feel all ten fingertips through your shirt. “Is this,” he said, wetting his lower lip, and he couldn’t continue, instead swallowing saliva.

Gathering your nerve, you wove your hand through his hair to scratch at his scalp in the way he’d liked when you’d played with his hair, and at the familiarity, Tenko huffed, shutting his eyes tightly and pressing his forehead to yours in a rush, almost knocking them together. He took another breath, heat washing over your face, and you slid your other up hand to cup his cheek.

Tenko shivered again, and he clamped his hand over yours to keep it there. “Are you sure this is what you mean to do?”

He seemed receptive enough to it, but you couldn’t be certain. “Yeah,” you said, “If I’m reading it right.”

“But it makes no sense. I’ve got to be reading it wrong,” Tenko was saying, frowning, “No one would willingly like me—”

“For fuck’s sake, Tenko—”

Practically slapping your other hand to his cheek, you kissed him, pulling him closer, one of his hands still over yours with the other now gripping your waist as if he’d never let you go. Tenko grunted into it, surging forward to keep his rough lips (sticky from his freshly applied pineapple-beeswax chapstick) seared to yours. You felt, more than heard, his miniscule whimper at the back of his throat when he opened his mouth, sliding his tongue into yours, and you could hardly keep kissing him for smiling. But he needed a breath before you did, so you broke it, sensing he wouldn’t do it out of wanting to keep you nearby.

Panting, Tenko tried and failed to push your hair behind your ear in an attempt to be suave. “Now, I perceived that as romantic.”

“It was romantic, you muppet,” you said, thumping his chest with the back of your hand.

“Good.” He cleared this throat. “Cool. Excellent,” he said, shifting underneath you (with difficulty, under the constricting denim of his Moulded to Your Ass jeans), “I want it to be, when it comes to you.”

“Thank God, I really want that, too,” you said, sighing, “but, like, I really don’t know if it’s ethical to pursue a romance this early into your recovery—”

“The fuck is wrong with you? I want it. I want you.” Frustrated, Tenko grabbed your hips in an iron grip and ground up into you, slowly, and that tight-ass denim let you feel precisely where in the drag of his hips his cock touched you, letting you feel the shift in pressure at his tip, down his shaft, to the first curve of his balls. “I thought I was alone. I thought no one else would ever be able to understand me, having fallen from what I was raised to be. Fallen,” he said, spitting, “Such a nasty word for what we’re actually doing: we’ve been reborn together. We get to build our lives back up together. We get another chance at it. I wanna spend mine with you.”

He strained his neck upwards to kiss you again, insistent, moving with confidence when he took your lower lip into his mouth but only nibbling on it once, despite being posed to bite down with vigour.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone else thinks of you and what anyone else thinks of me. I—”

“That’s not true,” you said, your turn to catch your breath, “You care so much about what Aizawa-sensei—”

“You know what I mean,” he said, shaking his head, hair falling out of his loose ponytail, “You think of me as me, and that’s all that matters. If you’re really that fucking worried about me getting into a relationship too early, go talk to my therapist. She says you’re good for me. A good influence, anyway.”

“Holy shit,” you said, mostly in reaction to how Tenko started trailing frantic, dry kisses down your neck, and, realising you should probably be doing something back, you rolled your hips, feeling awfully warm under the blanket.

He bucked back up into you, more out of desperation to keep you close over a need for friction but still giving you a taste of what it would be like to have him thrusting into you. “Fuck,” he said, almost grumbling, “I’d say fuck being ethical about it, because I’ve wanted you for a long time. I got hard when you shook me by the shoulders outside of that ice cream shop; I thought my soul was gonna leave my body when you adjusted my scarf. Hell, I—” He cut himself off, grinning in a way that, back before you knew him, you might have described as maniacal. “I wanted you back during the war. I saw you fucking elbow Touya during that battle, and the way you made him crumple to the ground was so fucking sexy. And you recovered from when he swiped at you so easily; you slipped around his attacks like it was fucking second nature. I thought it’d be cool to have you by my side, having you—” He realised what he was saying, and he relaxed, smile fading into a curious, pensive sort of look while he brought his thumb to your kiss-swollen lips. “And now I get to.”

You kissed the pad of his thumb, blinking slowly.

“So. Yeah,” he said, dropping his hand to your shoulder as he broke eye contact, a little red, “I think it’d be cool to be with you, even if we have to be careful.”

“That’s the thing, Tenko,” you said, biting the inside of your cheek as you gathered your thoughts, “I’m scared, because while I know that we should, because that’d be safe, I don’t want to be careful. Since I’ve quit being a hero, every single thing about how I’ve been living has left me feeling empty and alone, because it’s like I’m wandering through limbo. Everything screams that whatever I’m doing now is temporary, that it’ll pass, that I don’t truly belong in this situation, because I’ll find what I’m supposed to be doing later and my real home is somewhere down the line, but—fuck.” You rubbed your eye with your fist. “You, Tenko. You don’t feel temporary. You feel forever.”

Underneath you, Tenko stretched to pop a crick in his back, and he tilted his head to lie on the back of the couch. His ponytail had come loose, and his hair splayed against the fabric as he stared at you, one hand idly rubbing at your waist.

“Well. You’ve got to belong somewhere,” he said eventually, and he tapped all five fingers onto your thigh. “It could be with me.”

***

Dango was missing.

Incredible how the best evening of your life preceded the worst day you’ve had in years. You called out of work and spent hours scouring the dorm and then campus. A gruelling, miserable sort of day, anyway, grey and rainy and cold, and the campus was swarmed with people setting up for the scavenger hunt event later this month, populating the area with non-U.A. personnel and construction. Your cat was out in that mess, and you didn’t even know where to search first. It’s loud, scary, and wet, so Dango would most likely be hiding and not come when she’s called.

Had Dango escaped your flat? Had your stalker stolen her? Had she been confiscated by U.A.?

You couldn’t call any faculty for help; they’d get onto you for having an illegal cat on campus—and Hound Dog, the one who’d be the most help, might just scare her to death. Too early in the morning to call any of your friends, and you doubted they’d alter their busy schedules to help you out of a situation you should be able to fix yourself. But damn it, how come your own tracking skills only worked on people?

You shook yourself, coming out of your spiral the best you could, and you were close to hyperventilating. You sat down on a curb.

You found yourself calling Tenko, despite it being too early in the day for him to be out of training, filling with dread about never seeing your cat again and having to clear out her stuff from your room. Pulling your soaked jacket closer, you wiped at your nose and waited at the dial tone.

“Hey, I thought you couldn’t call during work. Miss me that much?”

The second you heard his strangely chipper voice, you started crying into the speaker.

He inhaled sharply, tone shifting. “Tell me who the fuck I’m stomping to death with my hooves.”

Ducking your head, you managed a smile but continued to fucking sob. “You don’t—don’t have to kill anyone, Ten—Tenko. I’ve f—fucked up.”

“What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I’m on cam—campus,” you said, unable to speak for a full sentence without having to cut yourself off to keep bawling, ugly and loud and getting snottier by the minute, “It’s my fucking fault that I haven’t been ta—taking my stupid sta—stalker seriously, and I should’ve reported it, but—but I—goddammit!” The rain picked up again, coming down in rapid, fat drops, and, shielding your eyes, you rubbed your phone screen on your sleeve, not that it did much. “Sor—sorry. Rain got heavier.”

“Where on campus?”

“No, Te—Tenko, I’ll get up. I’m coming to you,” you said, sniffling and pushing on your knees to stand, wet and hungry and ready to crawl into your sock drawer to sleep for days. “I—I’m just so fucking pissed at myself, because my cat is fucking lost, and I could’ve sto—stopped it if I hadn’t been so secreti—tive.” Hands shaking, you yanked your soaked hood over your head and trudged towards your dormitory, and you kicked gravel, rocks scattering over the path, before losing your footing on it and nearly falling. Fuck this.

“You have a cat,” said Tenko, losing his fervent. “What’s it look like?”

“Beautiful.”

“I need more than that.”

“She fucking—I based Ginseng’s cat form on her, okay? She’s this enormously fluffy thing, mostly whitish with a brown face and legs, and it makes her look like she’s wearing a mask and thigh-high socks like God’s sluttiest little jester,” you said, knocking on your dorm’s mailboxes for luck out of habit as you passed them, “And you can’t tell Aizawa-sensei about her, because if she’s taken away the moment I find her, then I—”

“I have her,” said Tenko, “She’s in my dorm with me.”

You ran the rest of the way to his room, panting and absolutely disgusting by the time you got there, and when Tenko opened his door, there was Dango, loafing on the back of the couch and watching raindrops race down the window.

“What the fuck,” you said, dropping your wet coat and toeing off your shoes, “How the hell did she get in here?”

Tenko shrugged and hung your coat next to his hoodie. “Can she open locked doors?”

“I hope to fuck she can’t,” you said, and you rounded the couch to wrap your arms around that dear little loaf, and Dango jumped off the couch to crawl underneath it before you could fully hug her. “Oh, good. She’s fine. Acting like normal.” You sat on the couch’s arm, adrenaline evaporating to render you boneless.

“She was in my room when I came back from training. We ended early today, since Aizawa-sensei has something.” Tenko stooped to yank two bottles of gatorade from their plastic rings and headed towards the sofa to offer one to you. “She didn’t seem upset or hurt. She’s been sitting there, napping on and off.”

You accepted it and twisted off the cap. “So, who put my cat in your room?”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know,” you said, taking a shallow sip, careful not to overwhelm your agitated stomach, “They’d have to know about Dango in the first place, and I suppose my stalker would, since they’ve theoretically been breaking into my room.”

Tenko paused mid-sip, and he hastened to swallow. “Someone’s been breaking into your room?”

“Yeah,” you said, easing down the arm of the couch and onto its cushions, “I think. There’s no physical sign of entry, but my shit keeps going missing, and stuff that’s not mine keeps showing up. Let me tell you, I need some of that shit they’ve stolen; it’s hard to replace—”

Tenko touched your lips with three of his fingertips to quiet you, and he gestured for you to stay put while he scrambled over to his closet, where he stood on his toes to retrieve a wicker basket from the top shelf. He dropped the thing into your lap. “Are any of these yours?”

All of it was, missing things you blamed on everything from Dango to your stalker to your own forgetfulness: your favourite sweater, your trolley pass, lip balm, your shitty earbuds, your good pantyhose, your planner, your d10, and, among many smaller things, even that bright blue thong you’d lost in the wash (Well. It’s better to find your thong with your new boyfriend over finding them returned to your dorm coated in your stalker’s cum, you supposed).

“I was losing my goddamn mind,” Tenko was saying, “Stuff kept showing up. I thought it was a test at first—”

“I don’t have a stalker,” you said, absentmindedly rubbing the fabric of your thong between your fingers, “Your shit has been—you read that GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK shit? Tenko.”

“Oh, you have that?” Tenko scratched the back of his neck, but not in his self-harm way; it reminded you of Shinsou’s nervous habit more than anything. “Haven’t you read it? Isn’t that what you were naming your characters after?”

“Ah, ha, ha. Moving on. What is important, though, is why and how this is happening to us.”

“Yeah, I don’t…”

The two of you spitballed for a while, long enough for the both of you to finish your bottles of gatorade and for Tenko to start another, and neither of you came up with anything substantial.

“Hell with it,” said Tenko, standing to stretch, his movement disturbing Dango from her nap in his basket of clean laundry, “Let’s go ask Aizawa-sensei.”

Aizawa was not pleased when he discovered the both of you waiting in his kitchen, but he listened to the story, and when you were done, he stepped out of the room to make a phone call. When he came back, he looked even more exhausted than when he’d first come in.

“I’ve just gotten off the phone with Sakura Grove,” said Aizawa, wincing when his bones creaked as he sat in his chair, “Tenko, do you remember villain in-fighting within the PLF? In particular, I’m asking if you remember breathing in a pink dust cloud. It would’ve been in Deika City, in the month between your fight with Re-Destro and your body modification surgery. If our sources are accurate, you would’ve been with Touya.”

Tenko scrunched up his face. “Why would I have been—hm.” Frowning, he reached into the bag of popcorn you’d commandeered from Aizawa’s cupboards. “I know what you’re talking about. They were only letting me eat healthy stuff in the week before I went under. Touya was taking me to scrounge for something salty and shitty for me, because I couldn’t take it anymore. He started hitting on someone he thought was a waitress, and she—this is why I remember it—she compared the width of her hand to his thigh and said no thanks.”

“That’s Ito,” said Aizawa, sighing and crossing his arms, settling his chin into his capture weapon, “When did she use her quirk?”

“She shoved her hand on Touya’s face when he opened his stupid mouth again, and he passed out with swarming, pink particles floating around his head. She turned to me—and she must not have recognised Touya, but she knew me, because her face lit the fuck up. She never touched me, but I remember having to sneeze.”

“She never told you what her quirk did?”

“I woke back up in the PLF headquarters. I assumed whoever picked me up had killed her and that her death negated any effects.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why? What does it do?”

Aizawa let out a soft laugh, muffled through his capture weapon, and he jerked his head in your direction. “You tell him,” he said, snatching the bag of popcorn and heading towards his bedroom.

***

He’d been nervous about wearing a suit. They reminded him of AFO.

But you’d strayed away from dark colours and too much structure, so his light greyish-blue suit jacket stayed unbuttoned even as you leant across to the passenger seat to adjust his All Might tie for him (a Put Your Hands Up Radio tie had been offered, but Tenko had already closed his fist around the striped tie Midoriya would loan him). Part of his bangs had been pinned back to show off his annoyingly handsome face, especially in how his sharp, red eyes observed caught every movement of your terrible attempt to tie the tie based on the pictures Aizawa had sent you.

“We’re not gonna be late, are we?” Tenko drawled out, the corner of his mouth quirking upward, hand resting on the car ceiling as he angled his chest towards you.

“Shush; we are in the parking lot,” you said, looping the larger end. Or were you supposed to be looping the smaller one? “Besides, the world won’t end if we’re a few minutes late to my class’s annual reunion.”

A flimsy excuse for a party, one made because hero agencies needed some sort of named event as an excuse to dismiss your friends en masse. But it was spring again, and they were coming out of the winter blues, and they wanted to see you again, so, hey, why don’t we work something in around your schedule? If you can’t come to this date, then we’ll reschedule it until you can.

And, like. They knew. They knew Tenko was your soulmate. You suspected they all wanted to see what he was like now, too, because no one but Shinsou, Midoriya, and, apparently, Bakugou had known.

You undid the loose knot and tried again. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” he said, scrutinising the tacky balloons and streamers swaying in the night breeze outside of the otherwise intimidatingly elegant venue, “but those kids might be.”

“Those kids happen to be friends my age,” you said, “and I’m barely younger than you are. They know you’re coming. You’re fine.”

Tenko sucked in through his teeth, tapping the roof of the car one finger at a time. “The last time they saw me was as a thing. An object of destruction.”

“Well, they’ll definitely see you as a human person when I spill how you designed a unicorn DND character for Eri.” You pulled the fabric taut but kept it from lying closely to his neck (a boy didn’t like feeling constrained). “You know what? This tie is as good as it’s gonna get.”

He ducked his chin to examine its knot. “It’s shit.”

“It adds to your devil-may-care, reformed-bad-boy sort of charm,” you said, giving the tie a final smooth-down and poorly suppressing your smile when you felt his muscles through his shirt. “Mathematically, there are only 85 ways to tie a standard tie knot. I don’t believe we’ve reached any of them.”

“How do you know these things? You’re unbeliev—” Tenko jerked his face out of view of the window as Aoyama and Kouda, gesturing wildly, strode past the car and into the venue. “Listen,” he said, clearing his throat, “I know I don’t care and that you don’t care, but other people will. Your reputation is gonna plummet right into its grave if we’re out in the open together.”

You shook your head, letting your smile show. “So, I fucked part of a rescue job almost a year ago. So what. So I’m dating my soulmate. Am I supposed to do otherwise? Honestly, Tenko,” you said, curling loose strands of hair behind his ear, letting your fingers linger around his cheek and neck (he leant into the touch), “I don’t care. I would’ve chosen you even without the soulmate bond. You’re too endearing to pass by. You’re too…babygirl.”

Tenko had been guiding your hand to his mouth, and he snorted before it got there, warm air scattering in a short burst. “Don’t call me that,” he said, pressing his lips to the centre of your palm and waiting until you met his gaze to retract them.

A different warmth shot to your lower stomach, but you had to keep pressing, for the sake of the bit. “Oh, then what should I—darling? Honey? Pookie bear?”

He scoffed and nipped at your pinkie. “None of those are good.”

“Tenko.”

He breathed in, shoulders rising, eyes fluttering shut. Taking a moment to kiss the tiny bite mark on your finger. “Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes in a slow blink, catlike, “Feels good. Feels—like coming home.”

Beaming, you reached down to lace his fingers through yours. All five of them squeezed back. “Then let’s go.”

soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare

#bnha #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki/reader #shigaraki imagine #shigaraki fic #mha #shigaraki headcanons #shigaraki fanfiction #shigaraki fanfic #soulmates #soulmate au #soulmate #dash it all

[bat-eclecticwolfbouquet-love]

Tomura dating a popular Instagram beauty. He's so proud of being able to call her his girl. Goes out of his way to make sure every member of the league knows, without a doubt, that you're HIS WOMAN. But knows your not as proud of him, well he "thinks" he knows.

He'll never admit it but he'd give anything to have you feel pride in having him as your man.

"Why would she want to show me off, I'm no catch, just look at me" the thought plays in his mind over and over like a broken record that he can't stand hearing.

Then it happens one night, laying in bed with you cuddled up next to him, your head resting on his chest. Picking up your phone you hold it above the two of you, "smile babe" you say, clicking a picture of the both of you then posting it on your Instagram. Tomura's heart beats a little faster realizing what you just did.

"You posted that." He questioned.

"Fuck yeah. I want everyone to see my man"

The brightest smile overtakes his features as a lightness fills his chest, she wants people to see me, to know I'm her guy. The happiness that filled his heart almost brought a tear to his eye. His arm brings you on top of him before planting a kiss on those lips he loves so much.

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki fluff #shigaraki #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki fic #shigaraki x y/n #shigaraki x you

[bugs1nmybrain]

Give Your Heart a Break - Chapter 3: Tomura Shigaraki x fem!reader series

Notes: This series is going to be released slowly due to my workload from school and jobs. That said, it may be sloppy and inconsistent. I will try my best to make it all mesh together! I reread Chapter 2 and will admit it was weak, but I was kind of just trying to gear up for them to meet in person.

ALSO! I am going to try to include songs that inspire my fics at the top of them! I hope it helps convey the mood of my stories.

Summary: Tomura and the reader finally meet in person after their discord call from last chapter.

Warnings: 18+ content (minors don't interact), shigaraki has a psychotic disorder and his voices act up violently when he's stressed, substance use (weed), POV swings, repressed Tenko Shimura themes, Dabi shows up but doesn't do much, long chapter, reader and Tomura are moving fast tbh, not fully proofread

Word Count: 4568

Notes About Y/N?:

anything from ch 1 and 2 applies here

she's a stoner

reader is actually hella shy

autistic coded

she has an interesting quirk<3

reader is the child of people who use substances, but she herself doesn't use anything past the holy trinity of "okay" substances: alcohol, weed, and nicotine

she's a virgin

Shigaraki was about to jump out of his skin. He could see your silhouette through your window as he stood outside your house. Even through the window, he could see how curvy you were. It made his mouth water. Fuck, you aren't even out the door and he's already being a pervert.

He was so anxious yet very excited. He was confident that you somewhat liked him, too. You wouldn't have agreed to come out with him at almost midnight if you didn't. His mission tonight was to be as not-scary as he could be, which he didn't think he'd ever want to do.

The sound of your front door opening made his heart pound viciously, and he stood where he was across the road with a shit-eating grin on his face and a fruit punch rockstar (pinky up!). You looked at him with a blushy smile and began stepping close to him, stomping heavily in your platform-heeled black boots. When you got up close to him, he couldn't help but laugh softly when he realized that you were still so short even with the shoes, though you didn't seem to pick up on his laughter.

"Hey," Tomura said with a crack in his voice, as if his voice couldn't get any more raspy.

"Heyy," you replied nervously, but forcing a smile.

"Howyadoing?"

"I had a long day at work before we started talking."

"Sounds like shit. I got you this," he looked at you like an excited puppy and held you the energy drink. "This is the kind you like, right?"

"Yeah," you smile kindly, taking the can. "Thank you for getting this."

"Of course, hehe. Have you been dressed like that all day?"

"No, I only got dressed like, 20 minutes ago?"

"You look pretty," Tomura smiled, looking visibly turned on by your fitting clothes, though he tried very hard to keep eye contact. He noticed you look down at yourself briefly whenever he snuck a look and you were clearly uncomfortable. Fuck, that's the last thing he wanted. Has he already fucked this up?

You fucking monster

Take her

Tomura began itching his neck in frustration, though he took a deep inhale through his nose and tried to pay attention to you instead.

"Whatcha wanna do?" He asked, huffing out his words anxiously.

"I don't know. To be honest, I don't hang out with people often," she shared.

"That's good, it means you realize how shitty most people are, right?" he laughs.

"Yea, that's true. I'm also new around here."

"It's my pleasure to be your new best friend, then," Shigaraki chuckled. "Or no?"

"You move fast."

"What's moving, exactly?" He retorted with a cocky face.

damn,,

Your laughter was like bubbles popping to him when he heard you giggle in response. He's got you, he knows it. You kept holding your head down at your feet, a habit Tomura noticed while you were talking. It frustrated him because he wanted to see your pretty face and the spooky makeup you put on it.

On the other hand, he understood what it was like to not want to flaunt your face. If you didn't happen to be a normal civilian he would've shown up with father on his face and maybe some of the others. Instead, he wore a hoodie, though his hood was up. He hardly ever left it down in public.

Now that he thought of it, he remembered you saying you liked his hair. Tomura let his hoodie down, falling to his shoulders and exposing his dry, tangled blue hair. Your face froze as you admired his baby-blue pigment. You also began to take in his ruby-red eyes and dehydrated appearance, with scars on his neck and face. He looked like a beaten-up kitten and a strange part of you instantly wanted to take care of him.

Shigaraki took your appearance in as well because now he could properly see your face. You looked at him with curious eyes, perky and alert. At the top of your shoulder, though, he saw what looked like an animated red heart beside you. Then it faded away.

Was he hallucinating again?

He shook the thought off and started noticing your face, instead. Your black eyeliner smudged your eyes, making them look intimidating, though to him you were no threat whatsoever. He admired your lips, as well. They looked softer than his, and he wondered how they'd feel. Even at 20, he had never kissed anyone. He had gotten one blowjob, but it was a hooker that he had paid for, and he couldn't shake the thought that the one sucking his cock was only doing it for money. Not that there was anything wrong with that at all, Tomura was just more romantic than he thought. They never kissed, and it felt empty for him.

"We could just take a walk," y/n suggested. He noticed your face back down facing your feet.

"Do you want to come to my place?" Tomura suggested back. Though bringing you around his roommates might be a challenge. You're cute.

He saw your hesitant face, a little offended by your quick distrust, at least from what he could tell. "I promise, I don't bite." Oh, the irony. The only thing roaming around in your head was what his intentions were. Tomura didn't exactly know himself.

"Where's your place? I'm not sure if I can stay the night."

"When did I say you could?" He retorted sarcastically.

"Oh, sorry."

"I'm teasing. I live about a 15 minute walk from here, is that okay?"

"Yea."

On your way to his place, you took in the fresh air and calming night scenery. There was a strange nostalgic feeling, though for no particular reason that you could think of. There were moments between you two when you wouldn't talk at all, but when you did, you came to notice that Tenko was a geeky, yet feisty guy. He had an interest in games, and had admitted to playing League of Legends, DOOM, some shit on the Switch, and occasionally GTA but he said that "the fun stopped years ago."

The two of you fumbled a bit, more you than him. Your socially awkward composure made it hard for you to not be jittery, but he seemed like a harmless guy thus far (haha, you had no idea). He was awkward, too, but had more guts to speak up.

Tomura would discover how truly shy you were. Your body shook when you talked, and your voice cracked in sheepish fear (he knew well what that looked like). He could tell you were socially anxious and that it probably wasn't just because he was scary, but he had a deep feeling that you thought he was. However, when he managed to get you to talk, you were quite funny and unique. It was cute to him, freakily enough, turning him on a little. He's had a semi for a bit, but the hoodie covered his crotch, thankfully.

His libido got the best of him sometimes, because the ass on you was a distraction. You were walking a little in front of him, so he could get a look without feeling like too much of a pervert. You looked cozy and huggable.

"fuck," Shigaraki thought abruptly.

He thankfully had a pair of gloves from Dr. Ujiko, ones that combated his quirk. He only really used them when he was sleeping or when he couldn't possibly avoid disintegrating something. He'd been careless, not even realizing how his quirk could easily fuck this up until now. Maybe he was being a bit entitled to already think that you'll automatically let him get close enough to touch you.

Still, explaining his quirk to you was going to be interesting. It would probably break his heart if you didn't want him, fuck, even want to be friends with him because of his quirk.

grab her, she is yours

Tomura ignored his aggravating voices and you and him continued to walk, laugh together, and drink your energy drinks like punkass kids. You finally came up on an apartment complex. It looked run down from the outside, most of the nearby apartments did, too.

His place was a few floors up. As soon as Tenko opened the doors, there was a whiff of a musky, dusty smell. A linger of cigarette smoke, maybe a little weed. For you, there was some level of familiarity with the smell because of your upbringing. The time was about 12:11am, so the apartment wasn't loud, although there was a faint sound of rap music playing in someone's room, and they were clearly smoking, based on how fresh the odor was.

"So, let me address this now," Tenko began. "Are you comfortable being in my room?"

You cocked an eyebrow.

"I mean, like, I know it's awkward being in a guy's room. We can hang out in the living room, if ya want," he pressed his lips together, sort of wishing you said yes to his room.

"Can we hang out-out here?"

"Nooo," Tomura thought internally.

"Aight," he said aloud.

Tomura plopped down on the couch, looking in your direction to indicate that you could sit there too. You sat some space away from him, making him a bit sad.

Shigaraki had never had a girl in his place before, not one that wasn't Toga or Magne. Not one he wanted. He was kind of nervous, but excited! He saw this as a good opportunity to try to get to know you, and maybe rizz you up a lil. Though, he'd never done that to anyone who wasn't a person on Discord, so he wasn't sure how to establish a bond.

Honestly, he was taking a bit of a chance with you. You didn't really do much to impress him yet, but your warmness to him made him feel important. In a different way than being his master's successor.

"Do you want to play video games? That's kind of the only thing we have to do here. And smoke weed, but I don't know if you do drugs."

"That's kind of an intense way to refer to weed," you comment.

"Then you smoke?"

"Yea."

"Awesome. Let me grab some shit and we can smoke. Maybe game at the same time??"

You laugh softly, "sure, sounds fun."

He could see a restless tremor in you, though, he felt that you liked him. That you enjoyed him, thus far. You were probably just shy because you had a crush on him :)

You had taken note at his neck when Tenko took off his hoodie, noticing how slender he was under it. You only saw him with his sweatshirt on so far. He was kind of...sexy? Your body radiated a few small hearts, dark red in color. Tenko was already out of the room before he could see, you thanked.

Little did Tenko know, you were also an inexperienced person when it came to girl and guy interaction. You were attracted to him, definitely. You were a virgin, though, and were worried to get too close to the "wrong person." You didn't know much about him yet. You sat patiently in the living room, tired from the day behind you. Thanks to Tenko, you now had caffeine, helping you fight the eepy.

It didn't take Tenko long before he reemerged with a pipe and a bag of pot. You got an instant waff of the flower when he opened the bag and took some out. He sat down, close beside you. You were a little nervous and startled, but you now got to smell his scent. He was a little smelly, but in a way that you hadn't known before. It was masculine and acted as pheromones for you right now.

Your hearts started popping out, this time colored a tangerine orange shade.

Tenko swung his head in your direction, instantly seeing them. He squinted at you and looked confused. You recalled that he heard voices, so maybe he thought that he was seeing things. You averted eye contact very quick and started mumbling.

"Uh..I'm sorry.."

"Huh?"

"Oh..um..tch..."

"Huh? I can't hear you."

"My quirk."

Tenko began picking out the stems in the weed, and you noticed he was wearing black gloves, but they were only covering he ring finger, pinky, and thumbs. You hadn't seen them on him before. Did he have a germ phobia? He didn't smell like he did.

He turned to face you every now and then, "I'm listening."

"I..uh.."

"You sure stutter a lot."

"Yea, I do."

"Are..the hearts your quirk? Or am I seeing things. In that case, this must be confusing as fuck to hear. Sorry."

"No! It's okay. No, you're not seeing things."

"Huh..What does it mea-."

Separate foot steps came up to the living room. You and Tenko looked up to see an average height man with black hair and burn marks all over him, staples keeping himself in place. He had piercings on his ears and his nose, and he had a cocky demeanor to him. You recognized this guy, you thought, but were having trouble thinking where from.

"You smoking?" He drawn out in a tired yawn.

"Uh..yea," Tomura replied.

"Who's this?" Dabi said, eyeing you down. Tomura had a millisecond instinct of possession. If Dabi swooned you, which wouldn't be a surprise, he'd be very pissed. Furious, even. He shot Dabi a look of "don't try anything," and Dabi knew full well what his face was telling him.

"I'm y/n," you said.

"Ah. I've never seen you. Are you and Shigaraki together?"

Tomura froze.

Not this quick, he thought. He thought he could pull some Aladdin shit and roll with a fake identity for a bit.

DABI YOU FUCKING IDIOT he thought, starting to panic internally.

K-kill he-

"Jesuss..." Tomura groaned, trying to drown out his voices. He held his hands at the back of his neck and leaned back.

Fuck

Fuck

Destroy her, destroy, kill

You furrowed your brows and now it was coming together on your end.

The League of Villains were infamous, of course you knew the name "Shigaraki." The most wanted criminal around and notorious for rather..inhumane crimes. You tried telling yourself that he could be a different Shigaraki, but you now figured out the guy with patches on himself. Dabi, who stood out like a sore thumb in the photos that were taken of their gang. Shigaraki did, too. But he had a dead hand on his face whenever you saw pictures, so you didn't recognize him.

Tomura could sense your own panic from planets away. He saw you trembling, and he was trying to come up with a quick lie in his head, but you were already speaking.

"Are you Dabi?" you said in a neutral tone.

"Yeuh. How'd you know?"

"Uh.Ten...Tomura?" you said his name as if you were asking him a question, but continued. "He's talked about you."

He was confused now. Were you playing along? The fuck? Or did you feel like you had to? You could've felt in danger, he considered.

"Good things, I hope," Dabi slurred.

Tomura wanted to question you, but didn't want to cause tension about the fact that you now both knew he was manipulating you into thinking he was some ordinary guy. He also didn't want to have this conversation around Dabi. You didn't say anything else.

Dabi crouched on the floor. "Give me some."

"Invite Spinner, too, I don't want to look at only your ugly face."

"He's sleeping. Don't you have eye candy next to you?"

Oh right. He thinks you and Tomura are dating. And he called you "eye candy." So many angry thoughts were racing through Tomura's head. You were probably terrified right now, and he knew this whole situation was fucked. He had no idea what to say.

But he tried, turning to you shamefully and mumbled out, "do you still wanna smoke?"

You paused, unsure what the answer should be. You should be trying to find a way to leave and soon. These guys are...well. The League of Villains. Though, you found yourself agreeing with their mission, even if murder, abducting a high schooler, and assaulting people weren't anything you necessarily felt comfortable with.

Tenko- or Tomura, had made you feel seen up to this point. You didn't feel that way, ever. He took interest in you while also wanting to listen to you. You shared interests, and personality traits even if yours were more sheltered away. When you knew someone closely, you were talkative and feisty, too. You felt understood, somehow. And maybe that shouldn't excuse him being a horrible person, but your need for validation and attention took over you.

"Light that shit up," you declared.

You saw a smile crack on his face, which was admittedly very cute. He was scary looking, but not to you. He looked run down and scrunkly, with his pale skin and tinted sharp teeth. Itch marks all over him and dry wrinkles at his forehead and eyes. He also had a beauty mark below the edge of his dry lips.

But he looked adorable, and you had a desire to just have him hold you. You knew of his quirk, of course. But you were guessing that his gloves were because of his quirk. He was protecting you.

Your hearts fluttered rapidly, and Dabi raised an eyebrow. He didn't care to ask anything, figuring it was your quirk. He could tell it was in response to Shigaraki, which was easy to deduce. Tomura started to get it, too.

Tomura, you and Dabi all passed around the bowl, not saying much. You'd cough viciously, trying to hold it back. Shigaraki saw your eyeliner mess up from the tears you made from coughing. He wanted to snatch you up, absolutely infatuated with your girlish charm.

"You alive?" He asked.

"What strain is this??" You asked with slurred speech and dozed off red eyes.

"Uh, weed. I don't know. Dabi, what's this shit?" He asked, as Dabi usually was the one who acquired the League's stash of pot.

"Probably GMO."

"Probably? If you lace my company I'll knock you out."

You giggled out. Tomura's sense of humor was one of your favorite things about him so far. And maybe you should be scared, but you felt comfortable around him whenever he cracked jokes and smiled at you.

"Jesus, it's not laced. If I wanted to do coke or something, I'd do the actual thing," Dabi joked.

"It's okay. I'm just really stoned," you laughed.

"A lightweight, huh?" Tomura snickered. "It's cuz you're so little."

"Am not."

"You're like, 5 foot nothing."

"I'm (your height)!" You retaliated.

"Uh-huh. I could put you in my pocket, if I wanted. Do you wanna game?"

"Yeaa."

Tomura turned on his console, giving you the option to pick a game. You chose your favorite video game, as it was already owned by Shigaraki. He and Dabi watched you play badly, with Dabi chuckling and Tomura groaning at the sight.

"Let me try," he said.

"You'll just steal it from me," you assumed.

"Well, you've tried this mission like 6 times," he pointed out.

"Three."

"Oooo okay smart ass," Tomura said in a flirty tone. "Let me show you then, hm?"

Tomura scooched closer to you, holding his controller with his hands perched on against the top of your thigh. He was trying to show you what moves to play, telling you all his strategies. He was also testing you and paid close attention to how you responded to his close proximity. You had to now know what his quirk was. You didn't pull back from him to his satisfaction, but he was still confused.

"Here, you see how I'm doing this? Now you try."

Every time he talked to you, he had a sort of softness to his voice. A raspy yet nurturing tone, even when you messed up your game repeatedly. And you'd respond with a blushy and embarrassed tone, but obviously swooned by Tomura's charisma.

Dabi could sense the horny from Tomura and got up, not wanting to see this shit. "You two have fun."

Shiggy felt like he could breathe with Dabi leaving. Now he had you all to himself, which might work in his favor. You still seemed uneasy, but at the same time he saw that your body had relaxed more. He was a little shocked, and wondered what the ulterior meaning was for it.

"So.."y/n started. "You're..not Tenko? Or is that a nickname?"

"Uh..jesus," He sighed, cupping his forehead anxiously. "No. No, I'm not. You know who I am, right? I'm sorry."

"I, um. Yea, I think so. I knew who he was, too. You're Tomura Shigaraki?"

"That's meee. Are you gonna leave? Tell someone?" He sad in a worried and sharp voice.

What? No. I won't, it's just, I guess I'm taken aback."

"I couldn't just tell you who I was that quick, d'ya get it? Especially online."

"Yea, I know."

You and him turned and faced each other, both of you breathing hard. Your hearts turned blue, but appeared in slow succession. Tomura cocked a brow, and finally was able to inquire about your quirk now that Dabi was gone.

"What are those hearts about? I have a guess, but.."

"mmmnNN," you grunted in embarrassment. "It's nothing.."

"Liar," he chuckled. "Is it cuz you like me?"

He was taking a bold risk to ask that, but so much was already on the table. Asking you if you wanted him wasn't much more intimidating, unless it added to the mess. His eyes were lidded and he smirked when he questioned you. You could tell he liked you, himself. There was a hint of desire and arousal that you could sense from him, as well.

You blushed a deep rose color and looked away from him. "K-kind of..."

"Mm, and is the Shigaraki thing a dealbreaker?"

"I..I don't want it to be," you smiled, and he saw your eyes shine at him.

"I promise I'll be nice to you," he joked, leaning closer to you.

"I...okay. I trust that, and honestly, I kind of don't care? That you're Shigaraki, that is. Well! Of course I care. But I like you, and you've made me feel like my company is wanted. People see me as weird, and offputting. You don't, at least I don't think. Why me, though? I mean, why do you like me?"

"Uh, cuz you're cute?" wow Tomura. "Shit, that was creepy. Uh, you're nice. Nicer to me than most people, and you like my hair and stuff. You also seem to find me quite funny, yea? You're also unique, and you dress spooky. You're a funny girl, and you play games with me!! I can tell you're an anxious mess, but you seem to want to be around me, and even when you found out about me being who I am, you didn't try to leave or treat me differently. I don't know, I just think you and I would be good together. And what's not to like? You're kind of my dream girl."

You laugh, flustered and feeling undeserving of all the praise. "You don't know me much."

"Can I get to know you, then?"

"I mean..yes..can I get to know you too? I don't know if what I hear on the news is all that you are,"you smiled widely while looking away from him. It pissed him off a little when you'd avoid him. He brought his gloved fingers to hold your jaw, and gently turned you to look at him.

"I can see you better when you look at me," he said in a seductive tone. He stroked the side of your jaw with his thumb while he ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth. The risk of decay scared you, but you trusted the gloves would be okay, and if your quirk did the right thing, you two may not need them soon...The hearts you produced had many colors now, all red, dark red, and white.

He snickered. "Do the different colors mean different things?" Tomura asked.

"Y-yea..The standard color is red, but different colors mean different emotions."

"So," Tomura rang his hand to pet your hair for a brief moment before setting it at your side. Rapid dark red, white, and red hearts continued to flutter out of you. "What do those ones mean?"

You tensed up, knowing full well the meanings, but admitting to two of them was embarrassing. Vulnerable, even. Was this all going too quick? Frankly, the adrenaline and attraction were entirely operating you at the moment.

"Spit it out," he jabbed.

"The red ones..they're standard hearts that say, "I think you're attractive.""

"Thanks. I think I'm ugly as shit, but-"

"You aren't. I think you're very cute, hehehe!!"

"Oh really?" He teased. "Ehah..what do the burgandy colors mean? And..the white ones?"

"Mrnrnjdsn..."

"What?" He laughed, getting the feeling that they had a not-so-innocent meaning to them.

"They, uh..they mean that-that I'm..that I'm turned on."

Satisfaction grew in Shiggy's eyes, his eyes the color of a scorching fire. He clenched his grin into an excited and relieved expression.

"So I turn you on?"

You nodded your head bashfully.

"And the white ones?" Shigaraki pestered.

"urrrnnnnn, I can't say it!!"

"Come on! Out! I wanna know..."he said with a yearn in his voice.

"They, they mean my body is responding. You know..that I'm wet, and that my horny-ness is spiking."

"Cum colored, haha. That's not surprising."

You and Tomura sat in a quiet tension for a bit, and he looked like he was hungry and trying to hunt his prey silently. His lips parted a little, and you saw his tongue run against his teeth as he leaned his face closer to you discreetly. You pressed your lips together tight and tilted your head up slowly, your eyes darting all across Tomura's handsome face and instinctively moved closer, as well. Your body knew exactly what it wanted and what was natural. Tomura became daring, and pressed his lips on yours without much warning, wrapping his lips in between yours.

You instantly hummed, unsure what to do. You moved your lips to dance with his as well as you could, and you started with passionate and sweet kisses. The whole act was uncoordinated, and you both weren't sure how to keep going. He kissed you for a long time, holding your neck while he leaned closer than you thought possible. His smell clouded your thinking, and built your arousal little by little.

He finally pulled away, taking a deep breathe and looked at you with a seduced flushed face. "Do you wanna go to my room now?" He scoffed, knowing his intentions, and you did too. He wanted you. It was fast, but he didn't really care. He just wanted to claim you, and make you his.

"Mhmm," you mumbled in approval.

Taking your hand in his protected ones, he guided you off the couch.

"Lets do that then, yea? I want to get to know you, like we talked about. I gotta know all about you."

#shigaraki tomura #shigaraki x reader #tomura shigaraki #shigaraki tomura x reader #shigaraki x fem!reader #tenko shimura #shigaraki fic #Spotify

[peachesandmilktea]

𝕭𝖊𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕯𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖑 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕯𝖊𝖊𝖕 𝕭𝖑𝖚𝖊 𝕾𝖊𝖆 [𝒫𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝐼𝐼𝐼]

Click here to see the full art!! I had to crop it and my heart BLEEDS. Shout out to @obsidianne-art / @beware-thecrow for being the best wro/co-writer/artist this earth has ever seen.

Part I. Part II. Current Part. Part IV.

Captain Shigaraki is a merciless pirate, a terror over the seven seas, a monster of a man who fears neither god nor man. You’ve sworn to take him down and bring him to his knees under the crown’s justice, and you would have, if only he hadn’t discovered your most well-kept secret.

TW: Lots and lots of horny thoughts, enemies to lovers, Shigaraki Tomura is bad at feelings, smut to come soon.

If some days were lazy, others were busy.

They were long, hours stretching for what felt like an eternity, minutes ticking with the speed of years. Tomura would spend them hunched over his desk, crimson gaze trailing the length of a stupid document or another, all to try and tear any information from them that would grant him victory against his enemies. If you’d been his greatest one, that didn’t mean you were the only opponent he had to face, and others would take your place as long as you remained on his ship.

And so, he calculated. Made plans. Thought every little thing through so that he could maintain the rule he held on the sea in the palms of his murderous hands. There was still the uncertainty of you, though, one he couldn’t theorize for he didn’t know the true extent of your loyalty to your fleet. Would you betray them, then? Would you disavow the fate you’d chosen for yourself, and take the one he offered instead? Or would you turn from him, stab him in the chest when he expected it the least and leave him for dead in your wake?

The perspective left a bitter taste on his tongue.

He wouldn’t let you betray him, but the thought that you might was enough to make a migraine birth beneath his temple. It was a dangerous game the two of you were playing, a cutthroat waltz just as sharp as a blade. A single misstep could mean doom for either one or the other, and Tomura wasn’t planning on being defeated so soon.

At least not before uncovering each and every last one of the secrets your eyes held, whenever they caught his gaze.

With a sigh, he pushed the last of the documents away from him, as far as possible on that worn-out desk of his — after so many hours spent studying each and every word those stupid papers held, he would have gouged his own eyeballs out rather than see another trace of ink on a crumpled sheet. A slight pain pulsed beneath his skull, remains of the migraine the mere thought of you had given him, and he resolved to take a break, albeit a small one.

Before duty called again and pushed him back towards those cursed documents, he stood and strode towards the door for his cabin, eager to take a deep breath from the night breeze surely blowing through the sails of his ship. The wind was cold that late at night, and the fresh air made him feel anew, just like the faint clamor of noises he could hear from the higher deck, right above his cabin.

“The coat, the hat,” Sako’s voice mused in the distance, barely loud enough for Tomura to hear. “Are you planning on stealing our dear Captain’s whole wardrobe?”

“Stealing would imply that I got them without permission,” you replied, matter-of-factly. “The coat was a rental, and the hat I earned, fair and square.”

Tomura didn’t mean to eavesdrop — had it been about anyone else, he would have climbed the stairs towards the higher deck, where the whole crew was gathered in the light of a few candles like every evening, and joined the conversation. But this time, it was you talking about him, and curiosity wrapped around his heart like a prickling blanket, sinking its claws into his thoughts as mercilessly as a wild animal. Instead of either going back to his cabin or making his presence known, he simply leaned against the doorframe without a noise, his arms crossed over his chest as he listened.

“You should ask for his blood next,” Toga chimed in, tone as cheerful as ever. “Make a little vial that you could wear on a necklace or something. That would be the cutest thing.”

The sea breeze carried the sound of your laugh like a song.

“It’s probably full of diseases,” Dabi said, always so sour in the way he spoke. “What the hell do you see in him, for you to be so smitten with that mug of his?”

The question made Tomura roll his eyes, an annoyed sigh spilling from his lips.

But he’d studied you long enough that he could picture your reaction clear as day, without even seeing it — you would frown, throwing a glare at Dabi, your gaze terrifying enough it could make a grown man weep and then, you would bite your lower lip in a soon-to-be-unsuccessful attempt at holding back the jab you were dying to throw at your opponent. It would be insulting, it would be cold, it would be devastating, because you were as violent with your words as you were with your blade, and Dabi was the main receptor of the rage you kept so silently tucked in the depths of your mind, concealed beneath a soft little smile and eyes full of gentle kindness.

But silence stretched, and for a second, Tomura wondered if Dabi had managed to shut you up — or if, perhaps, you shared the tattooed man’s opinion on his appearance, a thought that filled his chest with pure, overwhelming dread.

“It’s just…” you started after a few seconds of hesitation, some type of uncharacteristic shyness pulling at your words. “He’s…”

Tomura waited with a frown, desperately wishing you could get it over with faster.

“He looks like… moonlight.”

Moonlight.

What the hell did it mean? If he’d been confused by your words or behavior before, that was a whole new level. Was his skin too pale? Was his face too covered in weird little spots, damaged skin that was rough to the touch here and there? Did he look like a creature of the night, a monster that found shelter in the shadows only?

“That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!” Toga sang.

“That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard,” Dabi mocked.

The sigh that crossed your lips was so loud even Tomura could hear it.

“You don’t understand,” you said, almost indignantly. “It’s the kind of light that’s just so soft and gentle, you want to bask in it. There’s a kind of comforting loneliness to moonlight, as I think there is to him. Maybe to me, as well.”

You marked a pause, and Tomura noticed he’d been holding his breath.

“And he’s just as pretty as the moon. I could stare at him for hours.”

He raised a trembling hand to his face in the desperate hopes to conceal the searing blush that he felt creeping over his cheeks. It burned underneath his skin, making even more heat birth in the depths of his chest, a fire that he didn’t know how to extinguish. Slowly, he turned back towards his cabin, taking the few steps needed to get inside, and closed the door behind him, drowning the sound of your voice into the silence of his quarters.

He hadn’t been supposed to hear that.

He wished he hadn’t, because now, a thunderstorm was raging in his heart, threatening to rip out of his chest, pulsing beneath his ribs as it called your name. The feeling was as painful as it was exhilarating, and it stole each and every breath from Tomura’s lungs as it settled deep inside his entrails, never to be chased away.

“Moonlight,” he murmured for no one but himself, some kind of awe pulling at his voice as the word rolled on his tongue.

If he was moonlight, you shone brighter than the sun.

He longed to reach for you and bask in your light, to let your warmth fill his harsh, rotten little heart, to lean into your touch, ever so gentle. He would cradle your face in clumsy, rough hands as pale as the moon and you would smile, sunlight made flesh, until he felt like he could die for a chance to get a taste of your lips, of your skin, or more.

And maybe you’d let him.

Or maybe he’d get burned on the way.

Either way, that was a pain he was eager to feel.

—

Each breath after that felt like diving into dark waters, devoid of any knowledge of the monsters it contained. Tomura wasn’t easily impressed — not by syrens, not by seastorms, not even by your blade as you had wielded it against him merely a few weeks before. He was a man made of sharp edges and clever wits, a proud leader who’d learned to swallow every hint of fear or worry before it could clog his lungs, his throat, his thoughts.

Yet, you made him feverish.

It was an unknown evil that spread through his entrails and made a home there, like a dire, overwhelming need. It was a stash of desires, some gentle and some sickeningly filthy, all catching fire in a burning inferno whenever your eyes lingered on his face. He now knew your thoughts about him, and he’d never felt less like moonlight than since you’d referred him as such in that conversation that was meant to be secret from his prying ears.

Act on it, Tomura, the voice of a ghost whispered in his mind. Just take. Anything you want is yours to have.

But he wouldn’t, because the mere thought of it was a liability as long as he didn’t know where your loyalties lay. You’d called him better, and he hoped he was — or at least, good enough to swallow his own desires and cravings until he knew you wouldn’t stab him in the back on your way to his bed. For his own sake, and the sake of his crew.

It wasn’t easy, though.

Thoughts plagued his mind like a disease, and he sometimes wished he were as reckless as he used to be, lifetimes ago. It would be so easy, if only he just gave in, if only he decided to put his trust in you at last, his fateful enemy turned faithful companion. He would only have to hold out a hand and reach out for you, and how nice would your skin feel under the touch of his callous fingers? He’d dreamed of the taste of your lips, the whimpers that would cross them as he took you, of a thousand ways he’d tear each and every cute little sound from the safe comfort of your mouth.

He took a deep breath in a vain attempt to shake those images from his sickened mind, instead doing his best to focus on the task at hand — the sharpening of his sword. The stone laid on his thighs as he sat in his cabin, the blade moving in quick, dangerous moves and leaving a trail of iron dust in its wake. It was mechanical, and not difficult enough to clean the filth from Tomura’s mind, no matter how much he silently pleaded his own heart to turn from the thought of you.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Hey, Captain, I was wondering—”

The sound of your voice echoed in Tomura’s cabin when you pushed the door to it, at the same time as the blade slashed through his palm. He cursed himself in silence, barely stifling an annoyed groan as he took in the cut — it was a big gash, deep and dark, enough to make blood drip in rivers down his forearm, staining his clothes, splattering on the wooden floor.

Maybe he’d been underestimating the extent of his little weakness, if the mere sound of your voice was enough to startle him so.

“Careful with that blade,” you said, but the words weren’t mocking. Instead, you eyed him with quiet concern. “If you hadn’t slashed me once or twice already, I’d even think you were clumsy with a weapon. Or is something on your mind, perhaps?”

If only you knew — he couldn’t tell you, wouldn’t tell you, though.

His mind was playing enough tricks to torment him without you barging into the scene as well. You wouldn’t be cruel with it, he knew, and that was what made the perspective so damn dreadful — you’d be gentle, you’d be kind, you’d whisper sweet nothings in his ears like you’d done unknowingly last time, and Tomura wouldn’t be strong enough to keep your thieving hands away from the filthy, darkened heart that lay in the safe comfort of his chest. If he knew how to fight opponents by thousands, he’d never faced such a threat, and who was to say he was cold enough to withstand the desire, the need he felt should it be requited?

He ignored the thought once again.

“Nothing,” he replied, the sourness in his tone barely concealed. “Nothing’s on my mind. What were you wondering?”

“If you’d let me patch you up,” you simply replied, striding your way towards him. No matter the words, you weren’t asking for permission, he knew, and despite his wishes that you would simply turn and leave him to his misery, you still sat on his desk right beside him, eyeing the cut with careful attention.

“Since when do you have nursing credentials?”

The jab was stupid, but an amused smile reached your lips.

“I had to learn to heal myself, for both shallow and deep wounds,” you explained. “Can’t exactly go to the navy’s infirmary with these.”

You gestured loosely to your chest, and Tomura instantly averted his gaze.

Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look—

No amount of self control was enough for the way you leaned towards him from the desk you were perched on, grasping his slashed hand between gentle fingers. His eyes wandered then, despite his cold resolutions, on the soft, silky skin he could make out beneath the fabric of the shirt Toga had lent you. It looked inviting, mesmerizing, fascinating, and he wondered if it would mark easily under his touch, bruise in the shape of his fingers, or redden with the brand of his teeth.

When you slightly turned to study the wound more closely, the piece of clothing slid just a few inches along your shoulder, letting Tomura peek at the cut he’d given you, right underneath the cream-colored fabric. It started near your collarbone and ran lower, lower, lower, in places he wasn’t yet allowed to see but could picture and imagine just as well — places he wished he could claim again, with his mouth instead of his blade this time.

“It’s not that deep,” you commented. “This should be enough.”

In a careless gesture, you pulled at the piece of fabric that held your hair together. It wasn’t luxurious enough to be called a ribbon, not old or crumpled enough to be called a rag either, just somewhere in between that. Most of all, it smelled like you, like iron and blood, like seawater and vanilla.

You wrapped it around his wound and Tomura watched, almost entranced, as your fingers brushed against his, gentle and warm and kind. He wondered what else those hands of yours could do, the mere thought of it making too-hot shivers run down his spine.

He let a relieved sigh cross his lips when you let him go, his hand now all patched up.

But, of course, you wouldn’t allow him any kind of respite.

“Want me to kiss it better?” you asked, eying the results of your work with slight amusement.

The perspective had him grit his teeth in a vain tentative way to keep a grasp on his self-control. It was only half-effective.

“What?”

You simply shrugged in response, but the look in your eyes didn’t seem to reflect the filth of the thoughts that were swarming his own mind — he saw nothing but gentle innocence in those irises of yours, the type of kindness you’d accustomed him to.

“My mother used to do it when I was younger, before she died. Always said a kiss would make anything better. I figured you hadn’t ever experienced that, given your upbringing.”

Tomura’s only memories of a gentle touch were fleeting, blurry, from a past that had unfolded long before he became the pirate Tomura Shigaraki. He hadn’t ever been kissed kindly after a cut, had never been caught in a loving embrace, nor felt a heart beat against his as he let himself melt into the warmth of someone’s tender arms. All because he didn’t even consider it as something plausible for someone like him.

But now, as you slowly grasped his hand in yours once again, he found that he wanted to. Desperately.

And so, he nodded.

“Alright. Do it quickly before I change my mind.”

Because it was dangerous, it was risky, it was a liability. But every single hint at worry that had clogged his mind before faded into a cloud of dirty smoke when you raised his hand to your lips and kissed him there, right in the crook of his wrist, a mere inch below the beginning of the cut, concealed beneath the piece of cloth that smelled like you.

Fire burned beneath his flesh at the touch, so soft and gentle it felt like the kind embrace of a warm summer breeze. It was short, fleeting, gone as soon as he’d felt it, and he almost wished he could beg you to keep going, or at least return the favor, and not only on your wrist but on every single inch of skin you would allow him to touch.

The stupidest idea flashed in Tomura’s mind, but he chased it away with a shake of his head — no, he wouldn’t try and bribe Dabi to get him to punch you in the lips just so that he could make you the same offer. Mostly because Dabi would rat him out at the first opportunity, despite being the only one of his crew members who would accept such a deal.

“There,” you said. “Wait and tell me if it worked, okay?”

You stood up and made your way to the door, your now untied hair gracefully framing your face. The sight made Tomura wish he could pull back one of the strands behind your ear, letting his fingers brush against your cheek as he did so.

“I doubt it will,” he simply replied.

As you laughed, mentioning something about dinner being ready and left him there, closing the door to his cabin behind you, he stretched his hand, searching for the pain that should pulse through the wound there. But instead of the prickling of the cut, the only thing he could feel on his skin was the memory of the soft touch of your lips and so, maybe you’d been right.

Maybe he hurt less than he did before.

----

We're slowly but surely getting there with their relationship hehe!! Next chapter is a bit spicier and then we get to the smut, it's already written 👀✨

I'll post the next chapter as soon as I get enough comments on this one hehe 💕 (People tend to comment only the last chapter of a fic but I need my fill for each of them djsndsnjkjsk)

Please leave a comment, it'll make my day!!

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki fic #shigaraki x you #shigaraki x y/n #mha x reader #bnha x reader #mha x you #mha x y/n #bnha x you #bnha x y/n #mha fic #bnha fic #Peaches writes #between the devil and the deep blue sea #pirates au #shigaraki smut #mha smut #bnha smut #shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko

[his-lune]

☾ shigaraki tomura masterlist ☽

-`♡´- key -`♡´-

angst (a) ;; fluff (f) ;; smut (s) ;; crack (c)

☾. one shots

ᯓ★ coming soon...

☾. series

ᯓ★ coming soon...

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x reader imagines #shigaraki x reader fic #shigaraki x reader fanfiction #shigaraki x reader oneshot #shigaraki imagines #shigaraki oneshot #shigaraki fic #shigaraki fanfiction #shigaraki tomura x reader #shigaraki tomura imagines #shigaraki tomura oneshot #tomura shigaraki imagines #tomura shigaraki x reader #tomura shigaraki oneshot #shigaraki masterlist #shigaraki tomura masterlist

[erensnubs]

𝑴𝒂𝒔𝒌𝒔 𝑶𝒇𝒇 !

Businessman!Tomura Shigaraki x Hotel Manager!Reader

WC: 9.2k

Roaring 20's AU, Jazz Age AU, Gatsby Setting, New York City-esque? Reader is implied that they first generation immigrant, Shigaraki is a traveling, international businessman, some language barriers, lots of fluff, pining, strangers to lovers, present mic is a little shit, lots of cheesiness, yearning, mentions of smoking, little snippets of history, reader and shiggy are both edgy, morbid, workaholics, teensy bit of angst if you squint Thank you @earlesskitten for letting me join your 555 collab! and ofc this is dedicated to my beloved moot and shiggy simp @letsnot77

Synopsis: Parties were something you despised but maybe you'll tolerate this one because it's a masquerade. Not because of a handsome stranger you saw the other day.

December 30th 1923, 5:17 PM. 

Right now people all over the world are getting ready for parties and festivities to celebrate the coming of a new year. 

You are in the bathtub after another day at work. 

New Year's Eve meant as much to you as your next office party, the next anniversary. 

Your body sinks into the tub, and your eyes lazily follow the ripples. 

What talk of new resolutions and new beginnings when the next day you're just going to be hungover and have to clean up the house. And then the next week you were going to have to follow your mundane life of working and putting on a smile. 

It might be a new year but it wasn't going to be much of a change. 

You're planning to celebrate by calling up your aunt, who's currently on her retirement trip in Europe and having a glass and saying cheers with her. It'll be lowkey, small but you'll spend time with someone you actually want to be with. 

Bringgggg 

You look over in the direction of your phone and groan. 

You clamber out of the bathtub and wrap a robe around you. 

You mutter condescendingly as you pick up the ringer, "Why did they have to call right now…" 

"HEYO, [NAMEEE]!" 

You inwardly groan, "Oh Hizashi. How are you doing?" 

It was your obnoxious neighbor, and even more obnoxious client at your firm. 

And somehow your only friend? 

"I'm doing absolutely fantastic! How bout you [Name], how're ya doing?" 

You lazily thumb the fabric of your robe, "Perfectly fine, until you had to call." 

You can hear his frown before he pouts, "Oh don't be like that sweetheart. You know you'd be absolutely lonely without me." 

He wasn't wrong but you weren't going to admit that to him. 

"Whatever. What do you need me for? And if you broke something, I'm not vouching for you. End of story," you say sternly. 

You walk to the edge of your bed, mouthpiece in one hand and receiver in the other, careful to walk slowly so the wire wouldnt tangle up.

His loud voice laughs and it makes crackles in your ear, "I did not break anything at all. Well at least this time. Buttttt…. I do need a favor." 

You set the receiver down on the bed, "Let me guess. You need me to get my private pilot to fly you to a party-" 

"No, but that would be convenient," he says thoughtfully. 

You continue rattling off, "Perhaps you need gambling money, assuming from Aizawa's scowl the last time you went to a casino-" 

"Uh-" 

In a mock response you say, "Oh you want to throw a party but don't have the money to throw it? Is that it?" 

There was silence and then a crackle. 

You stood up and shook your head, "No, no, no, no Hizashi do not do this to me. 

Hizashi nervously chuckles, "Okay, I know what it looks like-" 

"Hizashi. You know that I will always help you, but this is too much," you tell him. 

Hizashi interrupts you, "Just hear me out [Name]. I do want a party and I wouldn't ask you if I didn't have the resources to do it!" 

His voice is annoyingly more whiny and you had to scoff, "Resources. You sound like you're deploying products for when wartime comes." 

You walk over to the window and sit by the nook. You breathe in the magnificently tailored view in front of you, the sky glistening after the setting sun and the emissions from the factories downtown curled in wisps flying up above. It made it seem magical, but you knew better than what the view showed. 

Hizashi laughs nervously, the quakiness in his voice apparent even when he was wires away, "Very funny, [Name]. But seriously, I need to have this party." 

"You can have this party, that's not what I'm upset about. I'm just more curious as to why I have to provide for the party." 

Hizashi sighs exasperated, as if he was the one whose energy is drained, "Because…." 

"Because…?" You press on. 

"Because my parents cut me out of my inheritance/allowance money because of the last party I threw." 

You groan audibly, "Was this the California incident?" 

You hear Hizashi humming, "Mmmmm maybe… yes?" 

If current technology allowed it, you would travel to wherever Hizashi was hiding, no doubt because his parents probably kicked him out, and slap his goddamn face. 

“Why do you do this to me? Why ask me out of all your friends?” 

Hizashi starts protesting, “Look I wouldn’t have asked unless-” 

You cut in, “Unless what?” 

You hear Hizashi sigh, “Unless it was absolutely necessary. You see, my parents have some important clients coming from Japan. Before the California incident, they expected me to host this New Years party to welcome these clients. You know how they are.” 

You couldn’t put that against him, as an heir of a company Hizashi already had a lot on his plate. 

“And I just need to use one of your hotels for this one night. I have money for catering, music, valets and staff-” 

You sigh and regretfully say, “Hizashi, I wish I could help you but I’m only the district manager for these hotels. I don’t own any of them, I’m simply the manager. The only way I could let it happen is if I was there chaperoning.”

Hizashi seems to jump at this, “Then come! Join the party! Please [Name]. Pleaseee.” 

Your laugh is barely tinged with humor, “No, you know that I like relaxing on my vacation.” 

“Which is what you’re going to do! You don’t have to pay for any food, or ‘manage’ anything! Just get in there and enjoy yourself! Play cards, eat and drink food to your heart's content!” Hizashi says pleadingly. 

You roll your eyes, “No, Hizashi. I’m sure you could find another location for you to have this party. It’s also unnecessary for me to attend anyways. How would those investors feel when they realize that the Yamadas had to ask a lowly district manager of the hotel to use the ballroom for this event?” 

Hizashi whines, “We don’t have to tell them! You’ll blend right in, just [Name] please I need this to work. It’s just one night and I promise I’ll…” 

Your thoughts drift away again, Hizashi’s pleas simply becoming background noise as you scan the city outside. You really needed to go outside and not listen to Hizashi prattling around. 

You cut him off, “Listen Hizashi, I’ll think about it okay? I’ll give you a call once I have made my decision. If I don’t call you, expect a telegraph from me containing my condolences and information for other places you could set up reservations for your party” 

You hear Hizashi cheer, “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you! Just remember to give me the call by tonight! The investors have no idea where they’re supposed to be going and-” 

“I understand Hizashi, have a pleasant night.” 

You slam the mouthpiece to the receiver and sigh. As much as you wanted to help Hizashi, you knew you couldn’t enable him any longer. For far too long he’s been leaning on your charity, when he could just ask his other “friends” the ones who invested in automobile companies and cigarette startups. You didn’t need time to make your decision, you were going to say no. You just need time outside of the confines of your apartment and take a walk.

Standing up, you briskly walk to your closet and slip on a fur-trimmed coat, something that one of your business partners gave you as a gift, because they hated seeing you wear “drab” and “dull” things. You put on your flats and place a box of cigarettes in your coat pocket and swing open the door. 

5: 30 PM 

“Mama! Look! It’s an  automobile!” 

A little Irish boy is tugging on his mother’s hand and pointing at one of the greatest sensations the start of the 20th century had to offer. After World War 1, the people began to hope for some kind of miracle to look forward to, something to ooh and ahh at. Enter the automobile industry, where Henry Ford produced the latest kinds of transportation. No more walking, now you just need to buy a car. 

The mother hushes the child and you have to stifle a giggle as you watch the child break free from his mother’s hold and rush toward the car. He waves aggressively, hoping for the driver to notice but to no avail, he doesn’t. 

Little things like these, you think, are part of the reason why you loved this city. Despite its flaws and all your trials you had to face to get to where you are, it was the little moments that, if you were lucky to catch, that made it seem worth living. It wasn’t the big factories and businesses that made the city boom and thrive. It really was the people and their hopes and dreams. That’s why you liked coming downtown, where most of the small businesses built up by immigrants lived. It reminded you of your upbringing and where your roots are. 

Here everything was down to earth and was all about the people. Here was where families and communities thrived and where businesses and money were an afterthought. 

You walk down further to the little bridge that goes over a small stream, your favorite spot. The sun was no longer prominent in the sky and the evening turned chilly, families going back home and you see the lights in the shops closing down for the night. 

A small jazz ensemble is playing near the bridge, but you can tell they’re wrapping up. The melody they’re playing is like humming, the perfect buzz to accompany the end of the day’s activities and entering the city’s nightlife. 

You walk up to them and place a couple bills in the saxophone case, while the trumpet player tips you his hat in appreciation. You smile back, and slowly make your way to the bridge. 

Your feet make no sound on the wooden bridge, the sound of the rushing water and buzzing of the bugs and music drowning out anything that didn’t set the scene. 

If the downtown parts of the city were your favorite places, then this was your favorite time to be in the city. 

You lean against the railing and inhale the cold air. Most people when they think of New York, were either the bright days, full of bustling cars and people moving around, going about their day. Endless chatter and the smell of emissions fill the air. Or they think of the nights, where the lights completely disappeared and a significant throb of music and secrecy passed through the city, full of dancing, money and music. Of course, this only happened in the upper circles of wealth, where it was famed that if you were part of these things, it would make you unbearably happy. All a farce. 

You pull out a cigarette and your fingers search for something else. 

You groan. You forgot to bring a lighter. 

You sigh again, waving away that little mistake and focus on the beautiful landscape before you. Frosted grass, with white tinted bark on the trees. Not a sight of clouds of smoke from a car or a factory, no loud noises of the streets. You consider yourself lucky that you were able to have some alone time. 

You lean forward to stare at the river, hoping you’d find something interesting when your hat decide to fall forward. In a panic, you frantically let go of the railing and for the most part, jump to grab your hat. 

Your fingers slip and catch it but your body still felt like it was in the air. Falling. 

Until you feel a pair of warm hands course through your hips and pull you down to the ground. 

5:55 PM

Breathlessly, you turn around and jump back. 

Standing in front of you, was your regularly dressed man wearing a three piece suit. His jacket and pants were navy blue, his vest and tie were matte black. Despite his well tailored appearance, his  clothes seemed disheveled. The tie was loose and his chest was heaving up and down as if he was running. Your eyes travel upward and you meet his face and your heart stammers a bit at the sight you see. 

You first notice the glowing, moonlit pale face of the man. Was it his natural tone or was it the waxing moon that reflected its light on this man’s complexion? As your eyes wander, you notice that despite his complexion that was likened to the moon, his face was nothing like it. He had an impeccably strong jawline and cheekbones that cut deep into his face. You wonder if an architect designed his face, rather than an artist, with all the harsh, strict angles of his face. Did a different supreme being than the one that created this world, made this man? 

The only thing that made him less godly, and more human was perhaps the sunken eyes that gleamed red? Or were they brown? Nevertheless, they were surrounded by the familiar purple pools of exhaustion that was evidence of hardworking, human life. Oh, and his ruffled hair, that seemed gray but you were convinced it had to be a certain shade of blue. 

You stare at his eyes again and his angular cheekbones. Considering the style of his tie, you could assume he came from East Asia. But this wasn’t where the Asian immigrant community was, this area was more of the blurred line between the white immigrants and white “americans”. Which could mean that this man was- 

“Are you alright?” 

You swear you could fall right back into the river, because, good God, this man was divine. 

His voice was low, a little quietly with an edge of raggedness. You were right, he was a foreigner, his English was heavily accented but you could tell he practiced the language like a wealthy man. Was this man a wealthy businessman? And if he was, what was he doing here? But you suppose that you couldn’t argue with that because you yourself, an upperclassman, was here flirting between the boundaries of the ones who made it, and the ones who have yet to do so. 

Instead of answering his question with a “Yes, I’m fine thank you. What’s your name? How do you like your eggs cooked in the morning? Let me brush the stray hairs on your face for you.” 

Your mouth runs along without you thinking and you blurt out, “Did you run here?” 

You immediately clamp your mouth. How embarrassing?! The handsome man just asked you if you were fine after he practically saved your life and you asked him if he ran here?! 

A laugh rings in the air and you’re shocked that it’s coming from his mouth. 

“Oh no. I actually came here by ship, but if we are talking about this situation, then yes I did.” 

His eyes crease in a teasing smile and your body practically sighs in relief. 

You quietly reply, “Well to answer your question, I’m okay. Thank you.” 

You expect the man to leave after saying something in the likes of, "Of course" but to your surprise he steps forward and leans on the railing, facing forward, with you. 

Trying to hide your astonishment, you attempt to casually lean your back on the railing.  He digs through his pocket and you can't help but notice his fingers, adorned with rings. None seemed of any status importance, though for sure expensive. He pulls out a lighter and flicks it open. 

He turns to you, glazy eyes that bore into the very depths of your soul. 

"Are you willing to share some cigarettes with me?" 

Flustered, you nod carefully. You pull out your cigarette box and stretch it out to him. He plucks one out of the box and places it in his mouth. After that, you grab one and place it in your mouth as well. He brings the lighter close to the tip and uses his hand to cover both items, the air suddenly getting windy. It catches on fire and he closes the lighter. Your fingers reach out for the lighter, but he doesn't hand it to you. 

The man beckons you closer with his finger. You stare in confusion. 

He smiles again, incredibly cheeky, and beckons his finger closer. 

Oh my god, he wants to light the cigarette for you. 

You thank the night sky that swallows up the small blush that rises on your cheeks. 

Your face leans in, waiting for the familiar fire of the lighter to touch your tip. 

Instead, you get the man's face leaning in. 

Instinctively you want to pull back but you're due for some kind of temptation. After all the hard work you do, it would be nice to take some risks. 

Starting with letting a stranger light your cigarette with theirs.  

He stops short of the cigarette tip but his face seemed impossibly close, especially how his angle of approach was. His head was incredibly tilted and you could see the expanse of his neck. 

You forget to breathe but thank God he moves back away for a second. 

"My name's Tomura Shigaraki." 

He introduces himself after he is inches away from your face? 

You reply, "[Full Name]. It's nice to meet you…" 

"Call me Shigaraki. Japanese last names are spoken like a first name here." 

You could tell he wanted to say so much more, lips moving with no sound but it felt like he couldn't express himself fully with the barrier of language between the both of you. 

You try to smoothly move the conversation along, “What brings you here… Shigaraki?” 

He smiles at you and you notice that he had sharp canines, “A business party? I am not sure why we need to celebrate business on New Years but that is why I’m here.” 

You had to laugh, “Don’t tell me you dislike parties.” 

Shigaraki raises his eyebrow, “I did not say that. I am just confused why we need to categorize it as a business event, when we all know that we will just drink. Like a Nomikai.” 

You taste the syllables on your tongue, “Nomikai. What does that mean?” 

“Drinking meeting,” he replies. “A social event.” 

Shigaraki takes out his cigarette and places it between his first two fingers, still looking out at the river in front of him. 

“How about you? What brings you here?” 

He punctuates the word you with a thrust of his cigarette in your direction. 

You fumble for the right words. For all you know this man might be a crazy con artist, or a pickpocket. You didn’t want to reveal too much about yourself. 

You finally decide on the right words, “To breathe. I’ve been stuck at work and had to deal with a friend.” 

He waves his cigarette around, “Is this… your place?” 

Shigaraki says the word your, like you owned this place. Like this was your sanctuary. 

In a sense he was right, but despite how many times you’ve come back to stroll down Memory Lane, you felt out of place. You changed since the last time you ever called this place, yours. You got older and you moved out, you made it “big” as some say. You could feel the difference when you walked here with your fancy clothes and the way your body seemed restrained, rather than freeing. 

Seeing your silence, Shigaraki senses a discomfort and speaks, “I only ask, because I feel that you are well acquainted with this place.” 

You shake your head, “No, I’m sorry if I didn’t answer quickly. But you’re right. I knew these streets very well.” 

You exhale a puff of smoke and look at the twinkling nights above you, “But I would never call it my place. I don’t think it ever was.” 

Shigaraki tilts his head with curiosity at your remark, he opens his mouth to say something but you beat him to it. 

You face him straight on. It seems the darkness of the night is your comrade tonight, giving you enough confidence to say such frivolous things. 

“I have to say. Your English is really good. Better than mine, with all the grammar and everything.” 

Shigaraki chuckles, “Trust me, participating in international business affairs pushes you to learn lots of languages. Just enough to impress the people I talk to.”

He gives you a wink at that and you turn your head away to hide the big smile that lights up on your face. 

Shigaraki longingly stares at you but stops once he realizes you’re not going to flirt back. He shrugs and places the cigarette back in his mouth. 

You thoughtlessly ask, “Who are you meeting up with? I don’t know too many businessmen who have parties on holidays.” 

Shigaraki counters, “And you know lots of businessmen?” 

It’s your turn to raise your eyebrow. Shigaraki laughs. 

“I say that because I know so little of you. You know that I am here for a-” 

You jump in, “Nomikai” 

He chuckles, “Yes, nomikai. But you, I know so little of. I only know that you are in this place, used to be of this place, but considering that you come back…” 

You look in confusion at where he’s going with this. 

“... You are not of your place, where you are right now.” 

You chew your lip, “Vaguely accurate.” 

“Which is why you should tell me more about you.” 

He finishes with a proud smile, resembling a kid in a candy store and you fight the urge to smile back. 

“What would you like to know?” 

If it was time for indulging, it might as well have been now. 

“Did you live here as a child? Where do you live now? Am I wrong to assume you live in the upside of this city?” 

Surprised at his remark, you reply, “I did. I’m first generation, my parents came here when they got married. How did you know I don’t live here anymore? 

Shigaraki shrugs and nonchalantly gestures at your clothes, “Those are Coco Chanel pants. Your jewelry seems expensive.” 

You glance at the items he listed, “Oh I guess so. I manage some hotels up there. It’s a lot, but it's a fulfilling job. Makes me challenged.” 

Shigaraki tilts his head, “Challenged? How so?” 

You sigh and go into your regular spiel, “The market changed drastically after World War 1. The people wanted a new age of prosperity and wealth. Something to forget all the destruction after the war. Hotel business is less of taking in travelers, it’s become more of a hub for entertainment and making connections. I’m constantly checking up on hotels to make sure they provide the best service possible to compete with other hotel chains.” 

Shigaraki glances at your slumped form, “It must be tiring.” 

You laugh bitterly and take a drag out of your cigarette, “It is. Part of the reason why I’m going to avoid New Years Eve events.” 

Shigaraki chuckles along with you, “I understand. I am dreading this particular one. The host is supposed to be a Japanese businessman I worked with before, but I guess the host is now his son. I received an invitation but no address or directions for the location of the event.”

Your eyes widen. He’s going to Hizashi’s party. 

You turn away slightly, trying to hide your surprise, “Really? That’s unfortunate.” 

Shigaraki nods, “Truly. I’m afraid my last hours of this year will be filled with stress.” 

The sky has fully taken its cloak of darkness, the sky was pitch black and the stars were pale lights compared to the street lamps and lights of the buildings all around you. The musicians, you realize were long gone, and it was only you, the slumbering city and crickets outside. 

And Shigaraki of course. 

You glance at him, and find Shigaraki staring at you too. You quickly whip your head around and attempt to smoothly face away from his intense eyes. 

You could tell the both of you wanted to say something, to advance but how you ended your conversation earlier seemed to set the tone. You both had jobs, things you had to do. Would you even have time to talk to Shigaraki if you did anything? Would he even remember you? 

A slight tap on your shoulder broke your reverie. 

You turn around and see Shigaraki, an angular face with a small frown. 

“I’m afraid that I have to go back to my hotel.” 

“Oh,” you say, trying to hide your disappointment. You quickly shake your head, “Thank you again. For catching me.” 

Shigaraki smiles, “It was my pleasure. Thank you for spending time with me.” 

“Of course. Happy early New Years.” 

Shigaraki starts walking back, “Happy early New Years as well.” 

He turns his shoulder and his clothes blend into the night. You thought he had disappeared until a small light waving around, indicated a goodbye. 

You watch his figure walk away from you, forever lost in that empty darkness and you feel empty in your stomach. 

That same feeling stays with you, all the way to your apartment. You couldn’t shake it off. You remember settling into your bed and staring at the roof above you, placing your hands on your stomach as if it could help the ache settle there. 

It wasn’t until you reached over and picked up your phone did that ache leave. 

“Is this Hizashi Yamada?” You start off. “If he isn’t on, could you relay this message? ” 

The servant on the line affirms. 

“This is from [Name]. Tell him that he’s welcome to have one of my hotels for his New Years Party and I’ll send him a telegram for the address. Yes, that will be all. Thank you.” 

You place the phone down and get into your sheets again. It looks like you’ll be spending New Year's Eve at a party. 

***

“When you told me this was going to be a party, I didn’t expect something this extravagant,” You tell Hizashi once you walked into the ballroom and noticed all the decorations. Streamers of iridescent gold and silver hung everywhere in the room. You notice the many golden spheres that hang low from the ceiling. Everything seemed like gold, the decorations reflecting one another. 

Hizashi is dressed in a freshly pressed tux, the smell of lavender wafting all around him. He finally shaved of the stubble he had and slick backed his long blonde hair. 

“Well it is New Years, [Name]. I gotta impress my guests! Thank you for helping me out as well. You picked a pretty nice venue, I’ll tell you that.” 

You stuff your hands in your pockets and allow yourself to bathe yourself in all the lights, “I did didn’t I?” 

You could say the manager for this particular hotel was confused by the telegram you sent in the early hours of the day. Nonetheless, they were able to pull through by clearing out the ballroom and having tables set up ready for the endless amounts of food. Employees were clearing the winding staircases and big white balloons were being added to the railings. 

You raise your eyebrow at Hizashi, seeing two handymen pulling through a large platform.

Hizashi shrugs, “It’s for the musicians and the dancers. I like my entertainment comfortable and what better than a stage for them to perform on?” 

You roll your eyes and mutter, “Entertainment. Might as well have this party at a strip club.” 

Hizashi might be a friend, but he came from old money. He could never understand the lives of others beneath him, especially the “entertainment” that he paid for all his events and parties. 

You felt sorry for all of them, but you knew better than to pity. You can relate to the hunger and need for just one more gig, one more opportunity, one more chance to make living better. 

Now, you know that all that glitter was gold. 

Hizashi says, “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention, what did you say?” 

You purse your lips, “Nothing. Is there anything else you need?” 

Hizashi shakes his head, “No, I think I’ll be fine. My parents are coming to visit the place to see how the preparations are coming.” 

You nod. 

“Well I’m very glad you like the venue-” you start out. 

“Of course I do! Your really pulled through for me [Name]! I thought that it would take more convincing than what I did, to let you do this favor,” Hizashi says with a nervous chuckle. 

You had half the mind to just straight up tell him that it really wasn’t him, it was a particular stranger you met just hours before. 

“Maybe you underestimate my generosity,” you offer instead.

Hizashi laughs, “Good one!” 

With that you slowly back away from Hizashi, to the stairs and give him a wave goodbye. 

First part of your day is finished, then it’s time for the party.

***

It seems that your time as a district manager for multiple luxury hotels never prepares you for the extravagance of the rich and the wealthy. 

If you thought the early stages of the party preparations were grand, that paled in comparison to what you’re seeing right before your eyes. 

You were at the top of the stairs, handing your white fur coat that Hizashi so charitably gave to you a couple months ago to a servant. You didn’t bother to stop and take a look, until after you got the coat off but boy was it worth it. 

The chandeliers were lit and were hung low on the ceiling illuminating everything it touched, and honestly it felt like it did. The lights reflected the thousands of streamers everywhere, the shiny glasses, plates and platters stacked up and golden spheres. And of course, to match with the amazing interior was the people in it. 

Everyone attending was wearing the most flashy attire, jewelry and accessories dangling and dripping from their bodies like they were their own personal ballroom decked out with their candles and chandeliers. Flashes of pearly blues and slated whites whizzed by your eyes, as wisps of smoke left the mouths of the party goers. Surrounded by all these gem studded figures that reeked of the smell of wealth and power, that you knew too well, it was chaos freeform, beauty with no limits. 

Through the regular, untrained, innocent eye, they wouldn’t get past all the blinding lights. They would be awestruck. But you’ve seen everything through your way up the ladder. You knew that all this was smoke and mirrors, and that underneath all these diamonds and wealth were secrets, silent crimes. 

Was it ironic that this party was a masquerade? It was like that for you. When you placed the feathery, white mask over your eyes, it was no different than you hiding, more like abandoning, so many parts of you for you to be accepted into this society. 

You glance at the stairs and descend down, lifting your skirt carefully, the strands of beads clinking down the stairs. 

It’s a smart tactic, you think glancing at all the masks people wore. Everyone had to be nice to each other, because they didn’t know who was who. Funny, it was New Years Eve, the last night of the year and you’re going to spend your time being someone else. 

It should be easy. 

You glance at the center of the ballroom and see the platform adorned with all sorts of glitter and lights, dancers performing to the jazz band. You see a man wearing a red suit, the jacket embroidered with sequins of gold and a half mask, colored black. Familiar blonde hair waves around under a conquistador costume hat catch your attention so you make your way there. 

You slip in easily into Hizashi’s circle of friends you see he’s entertaining. 

He’s talking animatedly, glass swishing furiously in his hand, “And by God, I was terrified because-” 

He looks over his shoulder and sees you. You give a lift of your eyebrows in response. 

Hizashi slings his hand over your shoulder and it's too late for you to leave. 

Hizashi drunkenly slurs, “This is my friend, one of the best people on earth [Full Name].” 

You awkwardly introduce yourself, “Pleasure to meet all of you.” 

They nod in agreement, others tossing out introductions as well. 

Hizashi flicks your forehead and you flinch back, “This wonderful person right here? Yeah they let me use this ballroom.” 

Someone wearing what you think is a princess costume pipes up, “Oh, you own this chain of hotels?”

You reply, “No, but I'm the district manager of some of these hotels.” 

The company oohs and ahhs, some affirm and nod at that revelation. As expected. Hopefully that’s all they ask before Drunk Hizashi says something stupid, you wishfully think. 

A man wearing a raven costume turns to Hizashi, “I was made aware that you paid for the venue?” 

Hizashi opens his mouth to speak but you jump in, “Yes he did. He owes me for all the times he was a sore loser at poker.” 

To top it off you give them a gleaming smile and to your relief everyone laughed as well. 

You say in a rush, “It was truly nice to meet you all, but I think Hizashi needs some water.” 

With that you grab him by the shoulders and drag him over the food table. 

You grab a glass of water and hand it to Hizashi, with which he stupidly downs quickly. 

You say through gritted teeth, “What were you thinking? Drinking this early? You were about to out yourself.” 

Hizashi smiles, “Yes but you saved me.” 

He wags his fingers in approval, while you all but grimace.

“Don’t you think I’m done with saving your ass already? You could have outed yourselves and your parents!” You say in exasperation. 

Hizashi rolls his eyes, “But I didn’t.” 

You answer back, “But you could’ve.” 

Hizashi says in a sing-song tone, “But I didn’t.” 

You open your mouth to argue back but you close it, “There’s no point in arguing. But the fact of the matter is, you need to watch what you’re saying and who you’re saying too.” 

Your eyes sternly gaze into Hizashi’s glazed ones. The longer you glare at him, the haziness in his eyes slowly dissipates. 

This might be a masquerade but Hizashi was an open book, these sharks of businessmen would eat him alive if he said something off-kilter or spilled some secret. 

Hizashi nods slowly and in shame he turns his gaze away from you. Your mind started to dance in happiness, Hizashi finally listened to your scolding. 

Your victory, though, was a short one, for as soon as Hizashi blinked in embarrassment away from you he quickly sauntered over to a group of Three Musketeers who were ogling at the dancers. 

You do your best to keep cool, willing to turn your emotions of frustration into disgust as you watch them stare and gawk at the dancers. It really took just a couple of fishnetted stockings and bold lips for these men to lose their sanity. 

The best you can do for now is pray that Hizashi will be fine mingling on his own. You nervously look through the dessert table, deciding between the chocolate dipped strawberries or the mini custard. You decide to reach for the miniature custard, your newly manicured nails, dragging on the metal tray not noticing another hand reaching forward. 

While you were in, God knows where, a man with a swan-like costume steps forward to the dessert table and attempts to grab a custard. 

Your nails brush over his and in surprise you look up and meet this person’s eyes. 

You couldn’t see anything, of course they were wearing a mask. You realized this person was a man, dressed in a fine white suit with patterns of sun and water, intricately stitched on the lapel and cuffs of the jacket. The stitching seemed like a pale blue, that went with the miniature wings attached to his back. His mask covered the right side of his face, or was it his left? You couldn’t really tell. The same pattern of stitching matched onto the white mask. 

You scanned his face again. The side of his face you could see was an angled cheekbone, purple-y eyebags and red-brown like eyes. Wisps of hair, now more combed neatly than when you first met him, dangled in imperfectness on his forehead. 

Your body seemed to let out a collective sigh, “Shigaraki?” 

And in one second it started to tense up after you heard Shigaraki chuckle, the sound dry from a bit of drinking you presume, but nonetheless the only sound your ears want to hear tonight. 

“It seems as if fate cannot keep us apart, [Name].” 

You smile and snatch up a custard. He pouts and it was your turn to laugh. 

“Fate? I think it’s just pure coincidence,” you say jokingly. 

Shigaraki leans across the table, face inching closer to yours. 

“If it was just a coincidence, why are you at this party? There are many New Years Eve parties, yet we are both at this one?” 

He raises his eyebrow at you and you reply, “There are lots of people here.” 

Shigaraki shrugs and he leans in impossibly close. His breath tickles your ear when he whispers. 

Your face burns and your heart is beating erratically. 

Not from this close proximity, but because you can hear his go as fast as yours too. 

“Well, if you were not lying to me last night, you managed some hotels. It seems to me you not only attended the same party as I, but you actually took a part in making it happen.” 

He steps back, suave as ever and stares at your disheveled face, “Am I wrong?” 

You quickly compose yourself and step back, hands behind your back. 

You turn your nose up, “You do know that there are countless hotels, yes? It’s a big city.” 

You lean forward and give him a smirk of your own, “What would have been more accurate is if you had noticed that practically half of the city is here, and I just so happen to attend.” 

Shigaraki scoffs, a low, raspy sound, “Trust me, [Name], just from the few moments I had the pleasure to make your acquaintance, your presence seems far more important than just being a regular partygoer.” 

Your heart skips a beat at his statement. How dare he make you this uncomposed? 

You clear your throat, “To answer your question, yes I did make it happen. I helped with the venue for this party, this hotel is one of the many I manage.” 

Shigaraki nods thoughtfully, glancing around and spectating the ballroom. You notice how his hair gleamed silver with all these decorations. He truly looked the part of the elegant, majestic swan. 

Suddenly Shigaraki walks over to your side of the table. You furrow your brows in surprise. 

He sticks out his elbow, which you now notice has a partial attachment of a wing on it, the feathers pure white with streaks of black. 

You slowly hook your arm into his, careful to remain a comfortable distance. 

Shigaraki smiles, and you notice a slight dusting of pink on his otherwise pale face when you look up at him. 

“Where are you going to lead me, Shigaraki?” You say, honestly. 

Shigaraki stops to think, eyes honing into yours. His eyes squint, eyebrows furrow and you giggle at his pouty lips. 

“What are you doing?” You say with a laugh.

Shigaraki answers with no humor, “Trying to figure out where you would like to go.”

His free hand twitches at his side, almost reaching out into the space between the both of you. 

“It’s just so difficult when I can’t even see half of your face.” 

His voice came in a low murmur, a steady hum might be quiet for others, but it was the only thing you could hear. Shigaraki notices it too, if the fidgeting with his fingers was anything to go by. 

You murmur back, “Then maybe take me somewhere, where I can take off my mask.” 

You don’t miss the nervous gulp Shigaraki takes when you say that. You squeeze his hand and his red eyes take on a look of determination. 

“Allow me to lead the way,” he says after just a moment’s hesitation. 

The two of you weave in and out of the circles and groups that occupy the room. It was a miracle how you both survived, not being stopped by colleagues to chat, no servers came to offer your food. 

You were two swans gliding in that crowded ballroom, people moving away like ripples in a pond until Shigaraki led you to a set of glass doors. 

You raise your eyebrows at him. 

He looks at you in feign confusion, “You manage these hotels yet you don’t know there’s a balcony?” 

Shigaraki excuses himself from some people in front of the balcony, head slightly tilted like a bow. You follow suit, eyes downcast as if you were embarrassed of being seen like this. 

It wasn’t that you were embarrassed of being associated or seen with Shigaraki. You feel like it should be the other way around. Shigaraki had a godly presence of a man, and you were just another nobody in a sea of somebodies. 

Shigaraki doesn’t ignore your body language, but doesn’t make a comment. 

Shigaraki pulls open the door and slightly bows and brings his hand out. You let out a huff of a laugh and step outside, a gust of winter’s air rushing by. 

Shigaraki quickly follows and watches your face. 

You speak first, “I do know that there’s a balcony here. I’m just surprised you knew where it was.” 

Shigaraki shrugs, “It’s the first thing I looked for when I came here. Somewhere to rest. Sort of like your bridge.” 

He takes a step forward and leans on the railing and you reel from the sense of dejavu that permeates your body. 

“Unfortunately, I travel a lot for business so I do not have the pleasure of having a place to go to all the time. I have to find one wherever I go, no matter how long I stay there.” 

He glances at you, a shadow falling on his face, feather-like brushes of darkness that cover his open half of his face. Your fingers itch to take off that damn mask so you could see that face entirely and wonder what he’s thinking with those tired, beautiful eyes. 

You shake your head, “It’s not my place. I don’t think I ever had one. When I lived down there.” 

You gesture with your head, at the fading lights and the view from the river. 

Then you point with your thumb back, not taking a glance behind, “Or over there.” 

Shigaraki inches forward toward you and you don’t move away. You don’t think you’ve ever opened up to someone like this, not your family, not your “friends”, let alone with a stranger wearing a mask. 

You could blame it all on the fact you were a little tipsy, that the lights and the glamor phased you. Maybe you succumbed to the pressure of taking risks since it was the end of the year. But you know, deep down you want someone to understand the burden you carry. The pasts you tried to bury. Secrets you are ashamed of telling, reasons as to why you do certain things. 

Someone to take off the mask you have sacrificed your life for, to craft and to perfect. Making and wearing that mask wasn’t worth it in the end, and you regret doing it in the first place. Was it selfish of you to ask for some mercy for the regrets you have today? 

Slowly, fingers are outstretched towards your face. Your instincts tell you to flinch, but your body is being pulled by them. Shigaraki’s fingers stop at the surface of your mask, tips dancing over the rhinestones. 

“We are all alone here,” he starts out. “Take off your mask and I will take off mine.” 

You nod, a sense of relief washes over your body but at the same time a feeling of nervousness rushes through. 

You know what he meant when he said to take off the mask, you think as you remove the mask from your face, untying the unnecessary knots you made behind your ears. He’s seen you calm and vulnerable before, but would he like what was truly underneath it all? 

Shigaraki watches your movements with an odd rapture, as if he couldn’t take his eyes off of you. You turn away, hoping he didn’t catch your abrupt movements. After you take off your mask, you clutch it tightly in your hands while Shigaraki follows suit. 

You oblige your greedy mind and let your eyes wander and watch as Shigaraki unravels his face and you are blessed with the sight of seeing everything. The brown-red eyes. The lavender crescent moons under his eyes. You even notice stray hairs that were caught between his mask that now dance and billow on his forehead and cheekbones, like wispy clouds. 

Shigaraki says, “I understand what you mean. When you said you had no place.” 

You look at Shigaraki trying to cover up your surprise. 

He gives you a small smile, “I did not grow up like some of these people. My parents both worked. We did not have a grand home that hosted lavish parties. I did not have the money to receive a higher education. There was a great divide between me, and the people over there when I was younger.” 

Shigaraki takes a deep breath, albeit shakily, “It was not until I got older, that I decided I needed to be like this people. Have this money, have this lifestyle. A life where I did not have to live paycheck by paycheck. I wanted money, but I also wanted time. I dedicated most of my teenage years studying and working in internships for big companies.” 

He shrugs, “I got what I wanted. One of my internships led me to do international business affairs as one of the top leaders of the company, and now all I ever get to do is attend lavish parties such as these.” 

You watch Shigaraki’s body language. The confident stature of a man you saw in the ballroom was gone, replaced by a man worn down by years of work, years of time spent. 

Before you could even think, you hesitantly place a hand over his, rubbing with your thumb his fingers as if you could comfort him. 

Shigaraki’s eyes widen, the most you’ve ever seen looked surprised but he quickly composes himself and his body didn’t seem to slump but rather relax in your touch. 

“I think that is why I was so drawn to you at the park,” he says nonchalantly. 

“What do you mean?” You ask. 

Shigaraki’s pale face takes on a pink hue, “Well-” 

“Well..?” You press on. 

Shigaraki’s voice takes on a nervous tone, “Well, before I had to save you from falling, which is quite embarrassing by the way I cannot believe you could not catch that hat.” 

You scold him playfully, “Do not change the subject on me Shigaraki.” 

He laughs, “Before I had to save you, I may or may not have been watching you as I was making my way down the bridge.” 

Now it was your turn to blush. Shigaraki sees your expression and exclaims, “See this is embarrassing! Now you know I was staring at you!” 

You laugh it off, “More embarrassing than me falling off because of a hat?” 

Shigaraki pouts and you want to photograph that expression into your brain for forever. 

“Anyways, what I was trying to get across was that-” 

Shigaraki stopped talking, and his voice fell flat. He turns to you with rapt attention. 

“You stood at that bridge, like you’ve been there before but your appearance, the way you walked, your mannerisms. They weren’t of that place. You knew where to look, where to walk but when we talked last night it seemed that you were taking everything in for the first time.” 

You feel like your circulation has been cut off, you momentarily stop rubbing your thumb on his hand. 

You feel Shigaraki doing it back to you and you start to breathe again. 

“Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to you. Because I feel as if you understand me,” He says finally, in a whisper. 

You finally speak, “My parents, just after they got married decided to immigrate here. I grew up in a very different way than most, if not all, of these people here.” 

You were always on the outside looking in. Your mother was a housekeeper, so you always had that constant reminder as a child that you were below these people. It left a significant influence on you that turned into determination, ambition, then into this old, festering piece of garbage. 

You take in a breath, “I gave up a lot of things for a lifestyle like this. Family, a community, a home for me. I regret it. ”

Shigaraki watches you with caring eyes and you continue, “When I’m surrounded by people, they’re not people anymore. They’re business transactions, clients, ways to make more money, wealth, more growth. When I strived for power and a place in this world I didn’t realize-” 

“Realize that there’s no humanity here,” Shigaraki says. 

You shrug, “A bit morbid but yes.” 

Shigaraki laughs at your banter and you laugh too. 

The two of you sit in a comfortable silence again, an echo of your conversation the night before. 

This time you break the silence, “What time is it?” 

Shigaraki glances at his wrist, “Almost midnight actually. A couple more minutes until the new year.” 

You nod thoughtfully, “You know how people make resolutions for the next year?” 

You turn to meet Shigaraki’s eyes and they dance playfully in recognition of what you’re going to propose. 

He doesn’t assume though, instead plays dumb and teasingly replies, “Yes?” 

You cheekily smile back, “Would you like to make some resolutions with me for the next year?” 

Shigaraki leans forward, catching you in surprise and nods rather eagerly. 

“How should we do this then? I don’t suppose you have paper and a writing utensil with you?” Shigaraki says, tilting his head downward towards you. 

Despite everything your brain is telling you to do, your body betrays you and you magnetically lean forward. 

“No I do not, so I guess we cannot sign a contract or papers tonight. I suppose we have to trust each other’s word,” You say with an air of finality. 

Shigaraki ponders thoughtfully, eyes still trained on your face.

“I suppose we do.”

You open up first, your voice coming out in reverence, “I want to make an effort to reconnect with my family, and old friends.” 

Shigaraki nods, “I think mine is similar to yours. I want to reconnect with the things that I left behind.” 

You reply, “Hmmm… I also want to connect with new people too. Have real, sincere relationships. Built on things unseen and not signatures and paper.” 

Shigaraki gives you a lopsided smile, “I think you already did that, [Name].” 

This time you’re surprised. Your eyes squint in confusion, “What do you mean?” 

Shigaraki’s smile grows impossibly wider, “Well you and I are connected, are we not?” 

You let out a nervous laugh, “Please… I barely know you.” 

Shigaraki leans in and gives a smirk, “That is perfect. Because I, too, also barely know you.” 

He leans in closer, dangerously so. Strands of his hair are blown by the wind, tickling your cheek ever so faintly. You could feel the soft inhale and exhale of his breath close to your ear, but at the same time you could hear his heartbeat, the polar opposite of what his breath’s rhythm was. 

“Maybe for another New Year’s resolution we should get to know each other better. No papers, documents, contracts at all,” he says in a soft, lulling whisper. 

He pulls back from you, just enough that the tips of your noses barely touch. 

There was no smirking, smiles, blushes or anything of the sort. Both of you looked at each other with a strong intensity that ringed in yearning and truth. 

22! 21! 20! 19! 

Your ears pick up on the countdown from inside, but your focus remains on Shigaraki. 

“Shigaraki?” you ask softly, lips almost brushing his. 

He hums in response, the vibrations sending shocks throughout your body. 

“I have another New Year's Resolution,” you say, looking up at him through hooded eyes. 

Shigaraki nods and whispers, “I think I have one too.”

14! 13! 12! 11! 

You feel fingers sliding from your hips to the small of your back. They grip onto you and pull you closer. Shigaraki inhales shakily, featherlight, and delicately. You smile inside, knowing his actions mirrored the nervousness that was festering inside of him as well as yours. 

He brushes stray hair that got caught in the wind from your face, thumb lingering on your cheek to stroke it, “I do think though…” 

You look up at him through your lashes, eyes glued to his. 

“That I will be able to do my New Years Resolution, right now.” 

5! 4! 3! 2!- 

Despite your preference for something slow and steady, your greediness overtook your body and governed your actions. Before Shigaraki could even say anything else, your hands immediately grab his tie and pull you closer. You press your mouth to his in a slight rush. 

You feel his body go rigid, but it immediately relaxes, hands gripping you instinctively as if he’s known you for lifetimes before. He rubs his thumbs on your hips in a comforting, circular motion and your hands relax from its stiffness. Your hands opt to travel up his face, placing them on his angular cheekbones and practically squeezing them. You feel the ends of his lips curl into a slight smile and that small opening gives Shigaraki the opportunity to kiss you back. 

You feel absolutely elated, your body light and free as if suspended in the air, no heels or heavy drapes of beads to weigh you down. Just Shigaraki’s lips, hands, eyes, words…. Just him. 

You were disappointed when you feel your lips disconnect, your lips turning into a frown. Shigaraki laughs out loud, head thrown back and hair flowing. He tilts his head toward the sky and it was until then you realize why he pulled back. 

The dark night was filled with fireworks. Everywhere. Purple flowers blooming to your right, green hearts and red water drops near the water. The chaotically harmonious sound of firecrackers and cheers from inside and outside filled your ears. 

Shigaraki comes up from behind you and wraps his arms around you, whispering into your ear, “Happy New Years.” 

You turn to look at a big, crooked smile, and floppy, flowing hair. 

“Happy New Years,” you say back, before diving in for another kiss, to celebrate the New Year. 

#tina's cafe menu☕︎ #tina's fics⌨︎ #tina's collabs #-555 collab #shigaraki tomura #shigiraki x reader #shigaraki x y/n #tomura shiragaki #tomura x reader #shigaraki fluff #boku no hero academia shigaraki #shigaraki imagine #shigaraki fic #tomura bnha #mha fic #mha fluff #mha x reader #bnha fic #bnha fluff #bnha x reader #shigaraki tomura x reader

[spiritofwhitefire]

Chapters: 2/2 Fandom: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Sensei | All For One & Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Dabi | Todoroki Touya/Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Midoriya Izuku & Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko & Shimura Family, League of Villains & Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko & Toga Himiko Characters: Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Dabi | Todoroki Touya, Midoriya Izuku, League of Villains (My Hero Academia), Shimura Nana, Sensei | All For One, Toga Himiko Additional Tags: Paranormal Liberation War Arc Spoilers (My Hero Academia), Final War Arc Spoilers (My Hero Academia), Unreliable Narrator, Emotional Manipulation, Possession, Blood and Gore, because of tomura's quirk, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, duh - Freeform, Character Study, Character Analysis, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, 5+1 Things, but a little unconventional, not a shippy story but there is a scene with Dabi in chapter 2, Animal Death, cause of Mon :(, Redemption, Post-Final War Arc (My Hero Academia) Series: Part 1 of Awaken Summary:

It startles him how young he was at that point, how young they all were. This was nothing, just a little skirmish that cost none of them anything of true value. But this was also when he really became desperate, this was finger pushing at the first domino in a long row toward what would ultimately become a devastating event horizon for all of them.

Midoriya, did you know even then?

 Tomura Shigaraki wakes up. -------------------------

4 times Tenko wakes up, 5 times Tomura does, and one time he reawakens as something new, yet familiar.

---------------

Ayyy it’s done!

#mha fic #shigaraki fic #tomura shiragaki #bnha #boku no hero academia

[cheesecakethots]

i LIVE for the angst of a yandere initially being fucking awful to their darling after taking them, and overtime changing and becoming more loving, as well has having newfound and immense regret for what they’ve done. it is literally my fave yan scenario.

tw // pretty heavy angst, mentions of noncon

i specifically imagine it for shigaraki, going from being this disgusting manbaby who treats his darling like they’re nothing but a toy for him to use, only to later realise how much he loves them and mature in how he treats them, making his regret for the past even stronger.

him trying to coax his darling into coming out on a date with him - they can go anywhere, he doesn’t mind, darling has free reign to choose what they do. he tries to be so soft and quiet in his tone, as though not to startle them.

it’s only when tears start forming in their eyes and they mumble, “have i been bad?” that he realises how badly his past self fucked up.

the only other time he really took them out was when he’d decided they needed a punishment, and had made them stand and watch as he disintegrated the first group of people they saw out. he had then fucked them against the alleyway wall, bodies still around them both, just to really get the point across.

he wishes he could take back everything, but he can’t. as of now, he needs to take baby steps in order to bring you out of the very same hole he once caved into your mind.

(i love regretful yans urm send me some thots about them pretty please)

#i might write an acc fic on this #give me some angsty thoughts im in a major angst mood #justttt darling not being able to comprehend that yan is doing this to make THEM happy… #i can kindaaaa see this with geto too #going from treating his darling as some womb or toy #later realising she’s the last thing that keeps him the slightest bit grounded #post kfc breakup ofc #tw yandere #tw.yandere #yandere #yanderecore #tw noncon #tw: noncon #implied noncon #yandere mha #yandere bnha #yandere shigaraki tomura #yandere shigaraki #yandere tomura shigaraki #yandere tomura x reader #yandere tomura #yandere shigaraki x reader #yandere tomura shigaraki x reader #yandere angst #tw angst #yandere my hero academia #yandere boku no hero academia

[tomurasmoleunderhislip]

It's okay he's still my babygirl

#shigaraki #tomura #league of villains #shigaraki x reader #tomura headcanons #tomura fluff #tomura x reader #shigaraki fic #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki fluff #shimura tenko #tomura shigaraki x reader #tomura shigaraki #shigaraki headcanons #shigaraki tomura x reader #tomura imagine #tomura shiragaki #tomura hc #tomura shigiraki x reader #bnha tomura #shigaraki imagine #shiggy

[bat-eclecticwolfbouquet-love]

Imagine Shigaraki working his fat cock into you while you're on your hands and knees, once he's completely buried inside he pauses for a moment but you're impatient so you start rocking yourself back and fourth, fucking yourself on his cock and moaning his name

I absolutely love this. Sorry for not answering sooner, i meant to and then forgot. My memory is shit lately.

Here's a little part of an unposted fic

Obvious Smut ahead 18 +

You were in such a vulnerable, submissive position, both holes in clear view of his hungry gaze, exposed for his choosing. You're so wet and impatient you began rocking your hips back towards him, searching for that big beautiful cock of his. His hands grip your ass, holding you in place.

"Hmm is my dirty girl impatient. Don't worry I'm gonna treat you to a good, deep pounding, you deserve it." he says in that sultry husky voice that has your toes curling. "Look at you, your more then ready to become mine, arent ya" he laughs noticing how wet you are. "Damn you're cunt is soaking wet, and all for me".

Not knowing which hole he'll pick you glance over your shoulder in time to see him line his dripping length up to your pussy. Your breathing hitches when you feel the head of his cock pushing past your slick folds. He's so warm and thick you can't help the sharp gasp that leaves you, or the way your body shudders from finally having him inside you.

He slides deeper till he's stuffed your greedy hole with every fucking inch of his dick. You try to scream but no sound comes out. Slowly he starts to pull out only to slam back in causing you to cry out when his fat length roughly forces your walls apart. He feels so thick, so very good you cum right then, drenching his cock.

Shigaraki groans above you as your tight pussy clenches and flutters around him so desperately, sucking him in. A smirk takes shape on those tempting lips as he chuckles "so quick little one. I haven't even started yet and you've already made such a pretty mess. You're in for a very" he thrusts "very long night" he grunts.

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki tomura x reader #shigaraki x y/n #shigaraki x you #shigaraki #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki fic #tomura x reader

[ifearloveisviolence]

He's very pretty

#bnha fanart #bnha #mha fanart #shigaraki tomura #tenko shimura #I love the bright hair ppl have drawn him with #and I wanted to try it #I've recently gotten really into his character #many good fics out there

[peachesandmilktea]

𝕭𝖊𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕯𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖑 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕯𝖊𝖊𝖕 𝕭𝖑𝖚𝖊 𝕾𝖊𝖆 [𝒫𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝐼𝒱]

Click here to see the full art!! I had to crop it and my heart BLEEDS. Shout out to @obsidianne-art / @beware-thecrow for being the best wro/co-writer/artist this earth has ever seen.

Part I. Part II. Part III.

Captain Shigaraki is a merciless pirate, a terror over the seven seas, a monster of a man who fears neither god nor man. You’ve sworn to take him down and bring him to his knees under the crown’s justice, and you would have, if only he hadn’t discovered your most well-kept secret.

TW: Lots and lots of fluffy/horny thoughts, an erection somewhere, enemies to lovers, Shigaraki Tomura and Reader are both bad at feelings, smut to come in the next chapter.

Dabi was a menace.

He loved to rile Shigaraki up, as he did you, you had come to learn. Each word out of his mouth was nothing but sweet poison, playful teasing that sank its claws into your thoughts until they were filled with nothing but unavoidable annoyance. He’d watch with a smile pulling at his pierced lips then, a glint of malicious amusement in his cerulean eyes, always relishing in the little bits of chaos he managed to spread with only a few sentences carefully chosen.

If Shigaraki seemed to be his preferred opponent, the more he got to know you, the more often he made you the target of his malevolent attacks. Thankfully, you were nothing if not a dedicated adversary, and you always replied with just the same level of guile.

“So,” he started one day while the two of you were coincidentally watching violent waves crashing on the ship’s hull, the sign of a nearby sea storm. “Think you’ll be going back to your sweet, sweet navy soon, doll?”

Since you perfectly recalled the filthy things he’d called you when he still thought you a man, you took the pet name with a grain of salt.

The tattooed man wasn’t even looking at you now — instead, his gaze trailed along the lines of foam swaying up to the line of the horizon. Leaning over the railing as he was, he just needed a little push if you wanted to help him join the fishes, and the perspective did have some appeal to it. But, as if he’d heard your thoughts, he suddenly perked up, settling his lower back against the railing instead, his arms crossed against his chest.

“Why are you asking?” you simply shrugged. “Thinking of joining the navy as well? You’ve grown fond of me and would rather have me as captain, is that it? I wouldn’t go easy on you just because you’re making eyes at me.”

He laughed, and the sound was full of unconcealed mockery.

“Isn’t that the opposite of what’s currently happening? You’ve got a disgusting little crush on our dear ol’ captain, and pretending you’re above such a lowly feeling isn’t going to help your case.”

The words made you frown — if you hadn’t exactly hidden your gratitude or the respect you held towards the pirate king, having Dabi bring it up made things a little more realistic. Your devoted admiration was now something more than a distant, comforting feeling and instead turned into something you felt like you needed to hide, if only to protect your heart from the thieving hands of a pirate.

“It’s not a crush,” you corrected, sour, but it sounded like a stupid lie even to your own ears.

“It sure is a crush, sweetheart,” Dabi replied, a wolfish grin spreading over his lips. “Don’t tell Toga, though, she would have you married in less than a heartbeat. Spinner could officiate the ceremony as the first mate, and he probably wouldn’t need much convincing on her part.”

The mere thought made heat spread over your cheeks, prickling your flesh from underneath until it felt hot enough to sear your fingers should you raise a hand to your face. You averted your gaze, avoiding Dabi’s in the hopes that he wouldn’t notice the dreadful embarrassment that had filled you whole, but you knew you’d already lost that game of his.

“No need to get so riled up,” he mocked, and you elbowed him in the ribs.

“I’m commodore in the Royal Navy!” you snapped, doing everything in your power to make him drop the subject. “He’s a pirate, and I’m an officer of the law!”

Dabi marked a pause, arching an eyebrow.

“Are you really, though?”

The question stole a breath from your lungs, for it wasn’t mocking for once. It was sincere instead, one of those rare moments when all malevolence disappeared from Dabi’s cerulean gaze, when he seemed ready to tear you apart with the mere strength of his words. Dabi was clever, almost as much as Shigaraki, though he hid it well beneath a cold, distant facade.

Seeing a glimpse of the more genuine side of his personality felt like breaking down a wall — it was both exhausting and terrifying, for you didn’t know if it would crumble over you and bury your weakened form beneath the rumble.

“What do you mean?” you asked, though you knew all too well.

“You’re playing stupid,” he noted with a glare. “Would you really return to the navy, all so that you can go back to hunting and killing pirates?”

He wasn’t scared, not even worried. His words had another intent — he meant to make you doubt, to push you back into a corner and watch as you did your best to justify the blood on your hands. It was a useless attempt on his part, though. In those few weeks spent as a pretend hostage on Captain Shigaraki’s pirate ship, all of you had changed, from your core values to the gentle feeling that had settled in your heart in replacement of the shackles that you’d kept tightened over it like a cage before.

“Never,” you hissed between gritted teeth. “If I choose to return, it would be to change things. To make the sea a better place for anyone who decides to sail it.”

Dabi’s gaze dawdled over your face, studying your expression as if seeking to uncover the lies you would conceal beneath the frown that pulled at your brow, the snarl on your lips, or the light of determination that burned in your gaze. He didn’t seem to find anything of interest, though, and simply shrugged, his eyes trailing back onto the sight of the ocean then.

“Let’s hope you’re telling the truth, doll. You might meet your end sooner than later otherwise.”

That was fair, you supposed. Shigaraki was an opponent that was equal to you in many fields, from his wits to his swordplay and, if he went back to being your enemy, one of you would soon enough make a mistake, letting the other send their soul to the realms of the dead in a heartbeat. It would be a fitting end, to let him tear your life from your hands when he’d been the one to save it, but that wouldn’t happen, for you would never betray.

And it was hard to see him as a murderer now when you’d seen him with his crew, the family he’d crafted by himself with hands not coated in blood but gentle and warm instead. Shigaraki had seen untold nightmares, battled against monsters bigger than you ever could imagine, and still seemed to bask in every little kindness you’d showed him, as if he were only just a boy craving for some kind of tenderness, and not the king of pirates, leading a fleet of merciless killers with an iron fist.

But you’d come to like that boy. You’d come to wish you could tuck wild strands of his hair behind his ears just so that it would make it easier for your eyes to dive into his at will. Maybe even kiss his lips rather than his wrist, and watch as a slight blush spread over his cheeks. And yes, you now yearned for his touch to linger just a bit whenever his fingers brushed against yours, if only that meant you could bask in his warmth a little more.

You’d thought him merciless, but he was anything but. He’d offered you shelter when you’d needed it and, the more you asked for, the more he gave. Saving, protection, crumbs of his attention — he’d even granted you his trust, although not fully yet. He gave it bit by bit, slow and steady like the tide, and you’d come to long for it enough that you’d grasp every single opportunity to get closer to him, to prove yourself at last.

Maybe, someday, he would accept you whole. And maybe, someday, you would accept him as well, pirate king or not.

“Stop making heart-eyes, stupid,” Dabi spat at you as he kicked your calf, almost making you stumble over your own feet. “The object of your foolish affections is coming over here.”

He was right — Shigaraki exited his cabin where he’d been all day, working on more and more devious plans, and was now making his way towards you.

The days had gotten warmer, and he wasn’t wearing his coat anymore, merely a cream-colored shirt that stuck to his skin as the sea breeze pulled at the thin fabric. It kissed the shape of his arms and chest like the ocean embraced the sky, pretty in the way such a sight made you want to gaze at it for hours. Strands of hair as white as foam framed his face despite the fact that he’d tied most of them in a low ponytail that hung between his shoulder blades. It almost made you want to reach for the black ribbon he’d used for it, and—

“You’re so fucking obvious,” Dabi mocked again when he caught you staring, and you averted your gaze while a blush crept over your cheeks. “You’re not going to be able to convince anyone that you’re ogling him non-stop just to look for weaknesses or some other commodore bullshit.”

You let out a cough in a vain attempt to get a hold of yourself again.

“Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing,” you tried. “Maybe I’m just studying him because I’m wondering if I could still take him in a fight. Nothing more.”

He laughed at that, a deep, low sound that made you feel even more stupid.

“Hey, Captain!” he called, because of course he would. Dabi wouldn’t let you have any kind of respite, not when he held the keys to pure, unbridled chaos in his tattooed fingers. “Commodore here says she’d like to take you.”

Tomura froze at the words for a second, raw confusion swarming his gaze.

He’d walked on Dabi and you seemingly enthralled in a talk that had you all flustered — you were biting your lower lip almost to the point to draw blood, and you kept averting your eyes, no matter how many times Tomura attempted to look into them. Whatever you’d been conversing about, it had left you with some type of uncharacteristic shyness that lingered in your expression still, one he wondered at for a bit too long. He would have found it cute, if it didn’t seem like Dabi of all people was the cause for it.

“Take me?” he asked, almost certain he must have misheard.

“What?” you frowned, finally meeting his gaze. “You don’t think I could? You shouldn’t underestimate me, Captain. I could take you any day, any time you want, as many times as you want.”

Tomura fully stopped in his tracks.

There was no way in hell, on earth or even in the skies, that you could possibly mean what he thought you meant. Yet, his mind didn’t wait a second more to play tricks on him and, soon enough, he pictured it clear as day, as if he could truly feel you beneath his fingers as he took you, truly took you in the way he meant, over and over in the filthiest fantasies he’d ever cradled.

“Really?” he asked, holding the tiniest sliver of hope that you’d meant the same thing, no matter that he knew the sun would rise in the west and set in the east sooner than you started being so blunt about such things. “Then care to prove  it?”

Dabi’s laugh echoed in the sea breeze at the same time that your fingers closed around Tomura’s throat, stealing every single breath from his lungs. The strength of your attack and the way you purposely tripped him was enough to make him tumble backwards, until his spine hit the wooden wall of his cabin with a slightly painful little crack.

In a fight. You’d meant to take him in a fight.

Tomura took a deep breath, and threw himself into the brawl.

It had been a while since he’d met you in battle, and you moved just like you always had — efficient and quick, fast enough that he barely saw it before the pain rippled through the targets of each one of your strikes. He let you play for a while just like he always had, simply enjoying the way you moved, the warmth of your breath tickling his skin whenever he let you get a little too close, or the goosebumps that spread over your flesh when he caught you in one of his deadly embraces.

If your strength was your fastness, his was just that. Pure, raw power.

Tomura was taller, he was thicker, he was stronger. A single hit of his fist would send you sprawling, and you knew that all too well, which was why you did your best to simply build up your defense and exhaust him instead, avoiding each one of his attempts at striking you in your weakest points.

But if you knew him well, he knew you as well, and could read you just as good, if not better — he’d studied you long enough, both as a commodore and as a pretend pirate, and Tomura now prided himself in being able to see through you like he would through the translucent water of the coast.

The game was amusing, though, and he let it last for a while, relishing in the thought that each and every bruise you left on his pale skin was a cute little mark branded by your hands. They were all received on purpose, if only to rile you up just a bit, to give you a sliver of hope before he snatched it away with too-skillful hands. Soon enough, you felt like you were winning, absolutely certain that you’d pushed him to his limits, that he would tire soon, that he wouldn’t be able to stand his ground any longer.

And soon enough, he smiled, a wolfish grin full of youthful mischief, and turned the battle to his advantage.

He pushed you against the wall, in the very same place you’d attacked him first, and towered over you, all threatening and oh so powerful. His taller form shadowed yours in each and every corner, concealing the mere light of the sun from your eyes, his crimson gaze seemingly swallowing the whole word but the two of you as it dove into yours. He was close, maybe a bit too much — close enough that you didn’t have a single means of escape, should you decide not to give in.

He’d cornered you like a prey, and somehow, you wondered if you had ever stood a chance against him.

“Give in,” he said, triumph pulling at his voice, deep, raw satisfaction making each syllable rumble like thunder. “You lost.”

He’d been going easy on you all this time, you realized. Even when you’d been enemies, he’d been underestimating you, perhaps — after all, you were smaller, significantly weaker and less used to spilling blood, no matter that you were his equal in wits or determination. You’d taught him that the hard way by slashing a cut through his chest, the scar now still visible beneath the clear fabric of his shirt that clung to his skin with the dampness of his sweat. But now, he showed his true colors, the real extent of his strength.

It would be absolutely infuriating, if only he didn’t look so damn good doing it.

Each breath you took was filled with the smell of him, the deep, heavy scent of seawater, blood and dust. Close as he was, leaning towards you like a shark waiting on its prey to make the wrong move, you could feel the warmth emanating from his skin, tickling yours in a way that was too intoxicating for your treacherous heart to ignore.

He tilted his head with a smile that was full of victory and wild strands of his hair tickled your cheeks, making a blush course through them that you hoped wouldn’t be too noticeable, though it deepened still when you felt the blow of his breath against your lips, warm and kind like a summer breeze.

You wouldn’t let him get away with victory, though. And so, in a desperate attempt to defeat him with a surprise attack, you pushed him with all the strength you could muster and held out a fist to strike him.

He caught it before it could reach his face.

A pained, ridiculous little yelp escaped your lips when he turned your attack against you, grasping your arm in an embrace that was all too threatening, and twisting it until you had no choice but to take a step back until you were flushed against his chest unless you wanted him to shatter the bone. You were caught, stuck, prisoner of his hold like a mere insect in a spider web, and, as he leaned towards you, close enough again that you could feel the softness of his breath brushing against your collarbone, you knew he was smiling.

“Nice try,” he said. “That’s not going to be enough to defeat me, though.”

Tomura was elated.

Not only did you give him the opportunity to make a show of strength right in front of your astonished eyes, but the closeness forced by the brawl made his blood run faster in his veins, hot and burning like a campfire. He could feel your skin all over — against his chest, under his digits when he raised a hand to curl his fingers around your throat in the same gesture you’d done before, and on his wrist, when you struggled your best to push him away, your movements however led by more defeated annoyance than true fear or worry.

Your heartbeat pulsed under the palm of his hand.

Thump, thump, thump.

You were at his mercy, and the thought was appealing enough that he had to take a long, deep breath, and part from you just slightly, all so that you wouldn’t discover the sickening effect you had on him. It wasn’t enough to deter him, though — he was drunk on victory, drunk on the scent of you and the feel of your flesh kissing his in each and every place he could get away with. He could have drowned into the feeling and now, like an opium addict, he craved for more, and more, and more.

Be damned the stupid navy and your mysterious loyalties, he wanted you now.

“Hey, Captain, don’t be too hard on her,” Dabi called, interrupting Tomura’s thoughts with a smirk on his lips. The fucker knew exactly what he was doing — filth spilled from his lips in a low laugh that sounded way too mocking to be but playful teasing.

It annoyed Tomura to no end, but now that the moment had been stolen from his hands, he didn’t have a choice but to let you go, a quiet groan filled with annoyance rolling on his tongue. You let out a sigh of relief and turned to him, cheeks flushed and your gaze fleeting, as if you’d been feeling the same way he had all along these instants of closeness he’d forced you into.

He wished he could make you go out of breath in other ways.

He wished you would let him.

And, when Tomura went back to his cabin, the smell of you lingered on his clothes. The sweet scent filled each one of his senses, leaving a gentle taste on his tongue, one he was eager to try from the source. Yes, maybe he liked you just a bit too much, and maybe that was a weakness, but was it truly one if such defeat was as blissful as victory? He would hold triumph in the palms of his hands just like he would cradle your body once you gave in.

Loyalties didn’t matter anymore, and the thought felt like delightful heresy.

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what's an enemies to lovers story without a playful fight filled with sexual tension, AM I RIGHT!!

smut is in the next chapter hehe

thank you so much for all of your comments on the last chapter, it really made me super happy! once again i'll post the next one (already written) once i get enough opinions on this chapter, i can't wait to read your thoughts <3

#shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x you #shigaraki smut #shigaraki x y/n #mha x reader #bnha x reader #bnha smut #mha smut #bnha x you #bnha x y/n #mha x you #mha x y/n #mha fic #bnha fic #pirates au #shigaraki fic #fluff #shigaraki fluff #pirate shigaraki #Peaches writes #between the devil and the deep blue sea

[his-lune]

☾ villians masterlist ☽

☾. dabi

ᯓ★ masterlist

☾. shigaraki tomura

ᯓ★ masterlist

#dabi x reader #dabi x reader imagines #dabi x reader oneshot #dabi oneshot #dabi imagines #dabi fic #dabi fanfiction #dabi x reader fanfiction #dabi x reader fic #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x reader imagines #shigaraki x reader oneshot #shigaraki x reader fic #shigaraki x reader fanfiction #shigaraki imagines #shigaraki oneshot #shigaraki fanfiction #shigaraki fic #shigaraki tomura x reader #bnha masterlist #mha masterlist #mha villians masterlist

[spiritofwhitefire]

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Sensei | All For One & Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Dabi | Todoroki Touya/Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Midoriya Izuku & Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko & Shimura Family, League of Villains & Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko Characters: Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Dabi | Todoroki Touya, Midoriya Izuku, League of Villains (My Hero Academia), Shimura Nana, Sensei | All For One Additional Tags: Paranormal Liberation War Arc Spoilers (My Hero Academia), Final War Arc Spoilers (My Hero Academia), Unreliable Narrator, Emotional Manipulation, Possession, Blood and Gore, because of tomura's quirk, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, duh - Freeform, Character Study, Character Analysis, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, 5+1 Things, but a little unconventional, not a shippy story but there is a scene with Dabi in chapter 2, Animal Death, cause of Mon :( Series: Part 1 of Awaken Summary:

Tenko goes out that night covered in the hands of a family he no longer remembers and kills those two boys in two seconds flat. The torn apart faces, crumpled in anguish cause a painful bile to rise up in his throat, but something silences then as well. A small crying voice that has been calling out in his head since before he ended up on the streets finally stops screaming.

Tenko closes his eyes, reveling in the silence, and then opens them in the dark, starless night.

 Tomura Shigaraki wakes up. -------------------------

4 times Tenko wakes up, 5 times Tomura does, and one time he reawakens as something new, yet familiar.

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Well, I think we all saw this coming lol, I’m not even gonna defend myself here, enjoy

#shigaraki tomura #bnha #mha #mha fic #shigaraki fic #character study