HE'S SO HANDSOME

blind date (part ii) - shigaraki x reader

After endless failed attempts to help Tomura up his game, his friends have settled on their last resort: A blind date. Even before you show up, it's not going well. No quirks AU, female reader.

Part 1

Part 2

“No.”

“Yes,” you say. You look sort of embarrassed. “Eight times.”

“No way.” Tomura studies you across the table. His eyes feel blurry with exhaustion and alcohol, but he’d prop his eyelids open with toothpicks before he’d let you think he was falling asleep. “I don’t buy it. Two, maybe. Not eight.”

“Why would I lie about this?” You take a sip of a drink. It might be yours, or it might be Tomura’s. There are so many mostly-empty glasses on the table between the two of you that Tomura’s forgotten which ones he ordered. “If anything, I’d lie the other way. Being stood up for eight first dates isn’t exactly a good sign.”

Tomura finds another drink, finishes it, and gives his verdict. “It’s a sign you met eight stupid guys.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” you say. “If it was one person, or two – but eight? At that point it’s more likely that I’m the problem.”

Tomura doesn’t think so. Tomura’s been talking to you for a while. Probably hours. He lost track of time at some point, probably around when he lost track of which drinks were his and which were yours, and there’s nothing about you that looks like a problem to him. Except the fact that nobody else is dating you, and that looks more like a crazy stroke of luck for Tomura than anything else.

Tomura might not be good at this shit, but he’s not naïve. He keeps checking in with himself, trying to make sure his interest in you isn’t just because you’re a woman who’s talked to him for longer than five minutes without looking at your phone. He hasn’t seen you take your phone out except once, and that was to put it on silent. Which was – hot isn’t right, but Tomura doesn’t really have a better word, except nice, which isn’t right, either. It’s not just because you’re a woman who talked to him or held his hand or ran to meet him even though you were late. He likes a lot of other things about you, too.

He likes that you showed up looking the way you actually look most of the time, instead of dressing up like Magne told you to. He likes that you don’t try to pretend to be something you’re not. When Tomura started talking about video games, you didn’t act like you knew something about them – just like he didn’t pretend he knew something when you started talking about horror movies or novels or manga. You’re funny, but not on purpose. Or at least that’s what Tomura thought, until he glanced at your face after you’d said something that made him laugh and realized that it was what you’d been hoping to do.

“Sorry,” you say, and Tomura snaps out of it. “Talking about past dates on a first date is kind of a red flag, isn’t it?”

“I asked,” Tomura says, wondering if you called this a first date because you’re hoping for a second one. You shrug. “If you’ve met that many shitty guys, how come you agreed to this? What did Magne tell you about me?”

“What did she tell me.” You finish one of the drinks and grimace slightly. “Um, she said you were my age.”

“Okay.”

“She said you have a job,” you continue, “and friends.”

“Yeah,” Tomura agrees. “We have an apartment. We were friends before we had the apartment. It’s not just because we have an apartment.”

“Magne said you’ve all known each other forever,” you say. You smile slightly. “It sounds nice.”

It’s a good thing Tomura’s known them forever. He hasn’t had a lot of luck making friends as an adult. The closest he’s come to making a friend as an adult is probably Dabi’s stupid fiancé, and that’s only because he never leaves. Toga keeps saying that she thinks he’ll like her girlfriend, but she also never lets her girlfriend within a kilometer of the apartment. One time Tomura asked her why not and Toga gave him the weirdest look he’s ever seen. “You’re all boys,” she said. “You’re gross.”

Maybe that’s true. Tomura’s never been in a woman’s apartment, so he doesn’t really have a way to confirm. How gross could it be, really? He should probably ask Toga for specifics. “Did Magne say anything else?”

“She said online dating and the apps weren’t really working for you,” you say. “You do better in person. I don’t know what you’re like online, but – I feel like she was probably right.”

Tomura’s face flushes. He finishes another drink to cover it up. “Your turn,” you say. “What did Magne tell you about me?”

“Uh,” Tomura starts. He finds another drink, but can’t quite stomach finishing it just yet. He’s already about to screw this up, and it’s going to be worse if he throws up on you afterwards. “Not much. Just that you were a girl and you were my age and that you agreed to it.”

You laugh at that. “That’s the important stuff,” you say. “She did a good job managing your expectations.”

“No,” Tomura says. You blink. “She should have told me more.”

“She doesn’t really know more,” you say. “I only see her at work. She got my number so I could tell her when I’m on shift and my boss is off.”

“What’s your boss’s deal, anyway?” Tomura asks. “Just an all-purpose asshole, or –”

“He’s not great to us. The employees, I mean.” You don’t like talking about this. Tomura can tell. “But he makes things really hard on customers who have certain prescriptions. HRT and stuff like that. He doesn’t do anything they can report him for, but he makes it so miserable for them that they don’t want to come in to pick their meds up.”

Tomura knows that type. Magne runs into that type a lot. If it happens when all of them are out together, Tomura and the others take care of it, but they can’t be there every second. “A few people have my number,” you continue. “I give them a heads-up when their prescriptions are in and he’s out.”

“Why didn’t she tell me that?”

“She did,” you say. Tomura meant before, and says so. “Maybe she thought you’d think I was too nice.”

Tomura snorts. “That guy who tried to cut us in line didn’t think you were too nice.”

If he’d been by himself, Tomura would have let it slide just because he doesn’t care enough, but you blocked the guy’s way with your arms crossed, and when he told you to move, you stared at him until he backed off. “Okay, so not too nice,” you say. You pick up another glass, see it’s empty, and wince. “But if she’d told you more about me, you’d have found a reason not to show up.”

“If she’d told you more about me, you’d have said no.” Tomura feels pretty confident in that, and more so with however many drinks under his belt. “She told you I was bad at app dating.”

“Lots of people are.”

“So bad at it that I’ve never been on a date.” Tomura feels pretty good about one-upping you right up until he sees your eyes widen, but his mouth is way ahead of his brain. “Beat that.”

It’s quiet for a second. Tomura stares at you, feeling his face heat up with embarrassment, while you peer into glass after glass, trying to find one that hasn’t been emptied yet. “I don’t know,” you say. “I think being stood up eight times is worse.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“My record is terrible,” you say. You find one more glass and drain it. “Your record, on the other hand – you’re one for one. I’d say that’s pretty good.”

“One for one on what?” Tomura asks.

“Dates,” you say. “This one’s going well.”

“Yeah?” Tomura’s mouth goes dry. He looks around for a glass with something in it, so that he’ll be able to speak without swallowing his tongue, but he comes up empty. You slide your water glass across the table to him and Tomura gulps half of it. “You think it’s going well?”

You looked pretty calm until he said that. Tomura sees you getting nervous. He slides the glass of water back across the table to you in case you want to drink it, but you leave it alone. “I mean,” you start, “we met up at five-forty-five, and it’s almost last call. Maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t spend eight hours hanging out with somebody if it wasn’t going well.”

“Last call?” Tomura says, like a dumbass, only for the bartender to shout it out to the room at large a few seconds later. “Eight hours? Really?”

You nod. “So either it’s going well,” you say, “or you just didn’t have anything better to do.”

If Tomura doesn’t want to be somewhere, he goes home even if there’s nothing better to do. He’d rather spend hours watching the most boring vintage simulation game streams in history than spend two seconds longer being social than he wants to. Eight hours hanging out with one person is a record, even once Tomura subtracts the bathroom breaks he had to take because he was dumb enough to break the seal four drinks in. Has he ever spent eight hours doing nothing but talking with someone without getting bored? No. Not even close.

“It’s going well,” he says, and you look relieved. Not happy, just relieved. That’s – not good. “They’re kicking us out now.”

“Yeah.” You get to your feet and stagger a little bit. You probably drank at least as much as Tomura did, but you’re shorter than him, and you’re a woman. Are you okay? “I’m going to go pay. We should figure out rides home. The trains don’t run this late.”

Tomura fucked up somehow. He can’t figure out how, but he’s pretty sure he did. But you’re still about to get kicked out, and somebody has to pay the tab – and somebody has to figure out how you two are getting home. He gets to his feet, too. “I’ll get it. It can’t be that much.”

You look back at all the glasses on the table. “I think it’s going to be a lot. We’ll split.”

Even with the split, it’s more than Tomura’s spent on a night out, ever – and the longer he spends upright, the clearer it is that he’s trashed. You’re trashed, too. Maybe less than he is, because you’re still trying to work out how to get home. “It’ll be cheaper if we split a rideshare,” you say, and hold out your phone. “Put in your address.”

Tomura forgets his own address for a second. Then he types it in, and you take your phone back. “Okay. It’ll drop you off first, then me. Let’s go.”

Tomura follows you out, only weaving a little bit, and then the two of you are on the sidewalk again. The air’s still warm and humid, but at least there’s more of a breeze than there was before. You lean against the boardwalk railing and Tomura copies you. He leaves one hand open at his side in case you want to reach for it. You don’t, so Tomura goes for yours instead, and you look up at him. “Tomura?”

“It’s going well,” Tomura says. Your eyes slide away from his, and he asks a question that’s been on his mind since an hour or so in. “Want to do it again?”

“Stay out until two am on a work night and blow five times my hourly rate on drinks?” You shake your head. “Go on another date? Yeah.”

Tomura hears all of that in the right order, except the thing in the middle that he actually asked about. “It’s a work night?”

“For you, too. You said earlier.” Your hand moves in Tomura’s, unfolding your fingers to lace them together with his. “We should have called it quits four hours ago.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to.” Tomura shouldn’t have had this much to drink. He’s saying stuff he probably shouldn’t. Or should he? He doesn’t see the point in lying about shit on a regular basis. Why start now? “I still don’t.”

Next to Tomura, you take a deep breath, then let it go. “Okay. Give me your phone.”

Tomura fishes it out of his pocket with his free hand and passes it to you, then has to take it back to unlock it. He watches as you navigate to his contacts and add yourself to them – your first name, plus the words “blind date”, like Tomura’s going to forget who you are. How many women do you think he has in his phone? You hand it back to him after saving your contact and Tomura waits for you to hand yours over so he can add his number to yours. You don’t. “I need your phone. You need my number.”

“If you text me, then I’ll have it,” you say. “If you don’t, I won’t need it.”

Tomura feels weird about that. “Is this some kind of test?”

“I’ve gotten stood up eight times. I’m done chasing after people who don’t want me.” You loosen your grip on Tomura’s hand, like you’re giving him the chance to let go. “I ran sixteen blocks to meet you. You can send me a text.”

Tomura can see where you’re coming from. Sort of. The rideshare shows up, and the two of you slide into the backseat. Going from standing up to sitting down gives Tomura some kind of drunken headrush, and he slumps sideways against you. “Sorry –”

“It’s fine.” You shift around in your seat until Tomura’s cheek is resting on your shoulder. You’re still holding his hand. “I don’t mind.”

Tomura doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but the next thing he knows, the rideshare’s coming to a stop outside his apartment building and you’re shaking him awake with the hand that was holding his. “We’re here,” you say. “It was nice to meet you, okay? I had a really good night.”

Tomura nods. His mouth tastes like something died in it, and his mind feels foggy, but not so foggy that he can’t figure out how he wants to say goodbye. Maybe you know. “What do we do?”

“How about a hug?”

Sounds good. Tomura’s mouth tastes too bad for kissing, anyway, and his lips are gross enough to make you wish you’d never met him. He reaches out and drags you awkwardly across the backseat and into his arms, and you – fit. Tomura normally hates touching people, and he hates it even more when he’s drunk, but you fit, still and quiet with your head tucked in against his shoulder and your eyelashes brushing the side of his neck when you blink. Tomura could go back to sleep like this, easy. He’s having a hard time keeping his eyes open.

“Hey,” the driver says from the front seat. “Are you staying or going?”

“Are you in a big hurry or something?” Tomura pulls away from you with an effort and gets out of the car. The door shuts behind him, and Tomura turns to say goodbye, but he’s too slow. All he gets is a glimpse of your face through the window as the rideshare drives away.

Tomura should text you right now. The thought occurs to him, but then a mosquito bites him, and he slaps it a second too late. He’ll get inside the stupid building and get to his room, and then he can text you. It’s a good plan. Whether Tomura will remember it by the time he gets to the apartment is an entirely different story.

Tomura and his friends live on the top floor. The entire top floor. It used to be a penthouse, back when both the building and the neighborhood weren’t shit, but now the rent is cheap enough that the seven of them can afford it together. They all get their own rooms, three bathrooms is usually enough for everybody, and usually there’s at least one person who’s willing to cook dinner and let the rest of them mooch. Tomura and his roommates all keep weird hours, but by two-thirty in the morning everybody’s usually in their rooms, even if they’re awake. He’s not going to bother anybody as long as he’s quiet.

Or at least that’s what Tomura thinks. He’s dead wrong, because when the elevator doors open, he finds all the lights on in the living room, and most of the people he lives with sitting in there, wide awake. It looks like they’re waiting for something. It occurs to Tomura with slowly dawning horror that they’re waiting for him.

He makes the first move out of shock more than anything else. “What the fuck?”

“We decided to wait up for you. Since it’s baby’s first date and all,” Dabi says with a smirk. His stupid fiancé is here, too, perched on the arm of the chair Dabi’s in. “So how’d it go?”

Tomura doesn’t want to talk about this when he’s drunk. He wouldn’t want to talk to Dabi about it stone sober. He shakes his head. “Come on,” Twice announces from where he’s sprawled out on the rug next to Toga. “Nobody comes back from a date at three in the morning and gets to shake his head about it. Spill. No, don’t spill! I don’t want any nasty details.”

“I want all the nasty details,” Magne says. “What happened?”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t quiz him,” Sako says from the other chair. “Shigaraki will tell us what he wants to, when he wants to.”

Sako is officially the only person Tomura’s not pissed at right now. “No, he has to tell us now,” Toga says. “We’ve all been working on this for a month. We have to hear how it went!”

“Give us at least a few details,” Dabi’s idiot fiancé says. “We need something to base our wild speculations on.”

“You don’t live here,” Tomura says. Dabi glares at him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Wait, it was bad?” Spinner runs the opposite way with it. “Why didn’t you just come back? Or you could have called us – we’d come drink with you –”

“It wasn’t bad,” Tomura snaps. “I got her number.”

He was hoping that would shut everybody up. Instead they all trade glances. “That’s it?” Dabi asks, incredulous. “You get back an hour after last call and all you got was her number?”

That’s not all Tomura got. “She said we should go out again. And we held hands.”

“Are you thirteen or something? That’s so lame,” Dabi’s idiot fiancé says. “Was she like, not –”

“She’s not that kind of girl,” Magne says. She reaches over from the couch to punch Dabi in the arm, even though it was the goddamn fiancé who said it. “You think I’d set Shigaraki up with that kind of girl?”

“Yeah, because that’s the kind of girl he’ll be dealing with in Vegas. Did you time-warp back to the fifties when I wasn’t looking?” Dabi grimaces. “You’re supposed to be upping your game. This is a setback.”

Tomura finally gets his feet under him. “No, it isn’t,” he says. “I had fun.”

He feels weird saying it, even though it’s true. He had fun walking around with you trying to find a bar you both wouldn’t hate, because both of you hate when things get too loud. He had fun talking about any of the fifty things the two of you talked about over the course of the eight hours you spent together. He liked seeing you square off with the asshole who tried to cut you both in line and he liked seeing you order the weirdest drink on the menu, even though it was disgusting and neither of you could finish it. He liked that he didn’t notice you trying to make him laugh until it already happened. He liked holding your hand.

Tomura had fun on his date, end sentence. “You guys are assholes. I’m going to bed.”

“We’re not assholes! We want to help,” Twice protests. “You don’t need our help! You’re doing fine.”

“Yeah, I’m with Twice,” Spinner says. Twice starts arguing with him, but Spinner ignores it. “It’s a win if you say it’s a win. Hanging out with somebody who’s not us for that long is definitely a win.”

“It’s not a game,” Toga says. She rolls over on her back and stares up at Tomura. “Are you going to text her?”

Right. Tomura was going to do that. He fumbles his phone out of his pocket. “No,” Dabi and his fucking fiancé say at the same time. Dabi keeps talking. “It hasn’t even been an hour. Are you trying to look desperate?”

“I texted Ochako while I was on the train home from our first date,” Toga says. Toga’s the only one other than Dabi who’s in an actual relationship, rather than a bunch of situationships, friends-with-benefits things, and hookups they block the next day. “I wasn’t desperate.”

“You’re the most desperate person I’ve ever met. But you’re a girl, so it’s cute on you,” Magne says. “It’s not cute on guys. It’s weird.”

“I don’t think it is,” Spinner says. Tomura adds Spinner and Toga to the list of people he doesn’t hate right now. “Sending a dick pic or begging for nudes would be desperate. Just saying something is – nice. I’ve never had a date text me the same night before. I wouldn’t mind.”

“In that case, your date would be a girl,” Magne points out. “Cute when girls do it. Weird when guys do. I’d know.”

Tomura lost the plot a few sentences back. “I wasn’t going to send a dick pic. I don’t even have a dick pic.”

Dabi’s fiancé wheezes. “What?”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Toga pops up off the floor. “Tomura-kun has work tomorrow and so do I – and so does Spinner – so we’re all going to go to bed.”

“We are?” Spinner asks, then yelps as Toga yanks him off the couch. “Hey!”

“That’s right,” Toga sings out. She grabs Tomura’s arm, too, and Tomura barely manages to avoid getting yanked off his feet. He stumbles down the hall after her, colliding with Spinner a few times. It’s all he can do to keep ahold of his phone.

Toga’s bedroom, Spinner’s, and Tomura’s are all along the same hallway, sharing the same bathroom. Once they’re in the hallway, Tomura plants his feet. “Why are you kidnapping me?”

“We’re not kidnapping you. Your room is right there.” Toga points, like there was any way Tomura was going to forget. He’s drunk, but not that drunk. “They were being mean. I’m happy for you. So is Spinner. Right, Spinner?”

“Like I said. A win’s a win.”

“It’s not a game.” Toga elbows him. Then she looks at Tomura. “They’re making it sound complicated and it’s not. If you like her, text her. If you don’t, don’t. Easy. Now go to bed.”

It’s not a puzzle game. It’s a yes or no question. Tomura likes that a lot better than whatever the hell the others wanted him to do. Still – “Do I need a dick pic?”

It’s quiet for at least a minute. “You know what,” Spinner says finally, “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. I’m with Toga. Go to bed before you get yourself in trouble.”

Tomura’s tempted to tell them both that he’s doing it because he wants to, not because they’re telling him to, but then he decides not to waste the air. The sooner he goes to his room, the sooner he can send you a message without everyone bothering him about it. He shuffles back to his room, flops down on the bed – which he didn’t make this morning, because he’s just going to get back in it later – and pulls out his phone. When he taps the contact icon, the first thing he sees is the contact you set for yourself.

Your name (blind date). Tomura opens a message and gets stuck trying to think of what to say. Short is probably better. His mind is off on some weird paths right now, a lot of which have to do with you and his dick and all of which would be a lot more of a problem if he wasn’t still drunk. And none of which you need to know about. You also don’t need to know about the ambush his friends set up for him when he got home. Or the fact that Tomura’s friends only sent him on this date so he could get better at women before the trip to Vegas in two months.

That might have been why Magne set you and Tomura up, but that’s not why Tomura’s texting you. this is tomura. i want a second date. That gets the point across for sure. If you texted Tomura that he’d count it as a win, so he sends it. But Toga said it’s not a game. Spinner said it would be nice to get a text from a date. What would Tomura want you to say, if he got a text from you?

Tomura overthinks it. He overthinks it so hard that he falls asleep, and only wakes up when he drops his phone on his face. You haven’t texted back yet, but it’s only been fifteen minutes since he sent the message, and you’re probably asleep. What kind of text would Tomura want to see from you when he woke up in the morning? That you liked him. That you had fun. Maybe you’d say something funny, too. Tomura doesn’t do funny. He almost falls back asleep again, then hauls himself up to wakefulness hand over hand, sitting up in the bargain. One more message. It should be easy.

sorry I fell asleep on you is what Tomura says. He barely manages to plug in his phone before he falls asleep for good.

He wakes up to his alarm howling, right on schedule. He can hear Spinner’s alarm doing the same thing from across the hall. Tomura’s mouth tastes like he threw up in it in his sleep. He fumbles for his phone to hit snooze on the alarm, but in the split second before he does, he sees a text notification. Everybody he texts has been asleep for the last – Tomura looks at the time and groans – four hours. So who –

Tomura unlocks his phone at warp speed and taps the message icon. He remembers texting you last night, but he didn’t remember how stupid he sounded. Sorry he fell asleep on you? You’re probably texting him to fuck off. Tomura glances down at your message. His head hurts badly enough that he has to read it five or six times to process it all the way.

You gave his first text a thumbs-up, then asked what he wants to do on the second date. But you replied directly to his stupid second message. it’s okay. next time it’s my turn.

Tomura’s lips split as an uncontrollable grin crosses his face. He got four hours of sleep. He’s got a full day of work and a hangover to go with it, and the instant he sets foot in the living room, his friends are going to start up on him about how he’s handling this all wrong. But Tomura must not be handling it all that badly, because he’s got a second date, and for a few seconds, the hangover and work and everything else doesn’t matter at all.

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