Day 3 | Tomura Shigaraki X F!Reader (18+)

A new life for Tomura part6

<<Sick in the head>>

cw: bdsm, degrading, violence, mentions of death, rough sex, both oral and vaginal, reader is a female, humiliation, autassassinophilia, dacryphillia, sliiiightest praise kink.

You woke up in the middle of the night due to incoherent mumbling and chanting disturbing your sleep. Groaning, you rub your eyes and yawn before standing up and out of your bed, it was only your second day living with the League of villains and you're already having trouble sleeping.

Slowly, you walk out of your room, hesitantly stepping closer and closer to where all the mumbling came from, leading you to Shigaraki's lair. "All these good for nothing heroes, all these pathetic losers thinking they're better than us in so many ways..! They make me so mad I sometimes think of unraveling and destroying everything around me..." Shigaraki's prominent voice is heard, raspy whispers coming out in shaky chuckles and manic laughing.

You stand there in silence, listening to all his nonsense babbling and feeling remorse for him. It was stupid, the last thing Shigaraki would ever want is people feeling pity for him, yet you couldn't help but feel a little bad for the villain. Sighing, you turn to leave, but stop all together when a particular plank you step on makes a high pitched, squeaky noise.

You hold still, holding your breath as you beg for Tomura not to have heard you, your heart pumping faster then ever before, adrenaline rushing through your body. How would you ever explain your presence near his door in the middle of the night to him? Hell, he would probably not even give you a chance at explaining yourself if he found out you've heard him talking to himself in such an intimate moment.

Shigaraki turns his head abruptly to where the noise came from, slowly moving to fiddle with the door handle as if to unlock it. "Who's there?" His voice resonates through the thin walls, his other hand coming up to his neck as he's started to feel frustrated, scratching at the dry skin relentlessly as he grunts quietly. Nevertheless, he already has a pretty good idea on who it could be behind the door due to the familiar presence lingering in the air.

"Shit..." you curse under your breath, wanting to slap yourself for your own stupidity before sighing and accepting your fate. "It's me, I'm sorry if I had bothered you in any way, I'll leave you be. Sorry again, boss." You muttered, trying to make your way out of the situation and escape without any damage. Clearly it wasn't going to be that easy, was it?

"No you fucking won't" He snaps as he opens the door, revealing his hunched figure and his clearly disturbed face expression, red eyes staring you up and down. He moves slightly to the side, as if leaving room for you to enter. "You've come for a reason, haven't you? You've got at least some sort of brain inside your head, haven't you?? I'm sure you had a good, undeniable reason to make your presence known at 3 AM in the morning, right?" He urges you on, a cynic smile making it's way on his chapped lips, grin so wide it already made you feel uneasy.

You gulped, feeling your knees grow weak as you decide not to push his limits any further, stepping inside the room and letting him close the door behind you. Your eyes widen as you hear the lock click twice, signaling that Shigaraki's locked the door, meaning you wouldn't be able to leave this room willingly anytime soon. Another anxious thought washes over you, overlapping your previous worry by fear as he walks in front of you, one of his fingers pointing at a chair, a silent order for you to sit down.

You oblige immediately, wobbly feet carrying you to the chair as you take your place in it, hands placing themselves on your knees as your gaze fixates on the floor, unable and not wanting to meet his piercing gaze for now. It doesn't stop you from hearing his infuriated voice as he gets closer to you.

"Say now.. what could be so important that it was worth disturbing my peace in the middle of the night?" He asks sternly, red eyes staring down at your smaller figure and intimidating you without any additional effort. You ought not to speak, can't speak as a knot ties itself up in your throat, lips pressing themselves together as you can practically feel his gaze devouring you whole.

As moments of silence pass by, Shigaraki loses his patience, a stinging and sudden pain inflicting on your cheek and snapping you out of your trance as you're forced to meet his eyes, his two fingers slapping your cheek harshly as you gasp due to the pain and shock you're experiencing. "I told you to speak!" He groans, shaking his hand slightly as he's felt the slap himself. "Useless waste of oxygen, making me lose my precious time with things like this..."

You bring up a hand to cover up your already forming bruise, parted lips and widened eyes staring up at him as you felt a tear slip down your cheek. "I've just..." you don't get to finish your sentence as another slap of his fingers land on your other cheek, small chuckles leaving his mouth breathily.

"You've just.. you've just..." He mocks in your own tone, grabbing your chin forcefully and bringing your face upwards, so close to his own face that you can feel his ragged breath on your skin. "You're just too dumb to think, aren't you? Not able to think of anything at all with that worthless mind of yours, ain't I right? Huh? Speak!" He spits out, gritted teeth building up another grin as he awaits your next words.

Your cheeks burn, not only from the pain he's lingered on you, but from shame and embarrassment too, ashamed of yourself for feeling... aroused at the moment of humiliation you were involved in. You feel wetness sip down into your panties, forming a visible patch on them and you're even more worried now as you think of the possibility of leaving a wet spot on the cushion chair you're sat in.

"Mhmm.." you mumbled, nodding at his accusations as your lower lip wobbled softly, sobbing quietly as your teary eyes stared up into his, nipples hardening under the thin fabric of your top at the sight of him, at the danger of his almost whole hand grasping at your chin.

Surprisingly for him, you don't even try to fight back, you're not even struggling against his grip as he strengthens it up, practically pinching your skin now. He laughs suddenly, eyes not breaking contact with yours as he pulled your face closer to his "Whats that..? It seems you're enjoying this whole act, aren't you, whore?" He leans down to whisper in your ear "Do you like this? Is your pussy begging to be filled? Is it why you've come to my door in the middle of the night, hm? To beg for cock?..." One of his hands slides down to your tits, thumb grazing over your already hardened nipple as you bite back a moan once he tightly tugs on it.

"Please.." you beg, biting down your lip to quiet down your sounds at the pressure he was applying to your chest, pressing your thighs together in a desperate attempt to relief down your arousal.

You've always found Tomura attractive, you were sure everyone in the league noticed your gaze lingering on him for a little too long during any encounters with the heroes. You've just never thought about the possibility of him noticing you. With the way he was always focused on his only goal in life, with the way he never cared for anything else in the world, you had no hopes for actually finding yourself in such a heated situation with him.

"Now you're begging? Ha..! Filthy whore, nasty, dirty slut... What're you even begging for, do you know?" He mutters, grinning down at you as his fingers trail back up to your neck, not quite closing around it before you felt his teeth graze and scratch over the lobe of your ear. You whimper, shaking softly as you feel the way his fingers begin to close around your jugular "You of all the people should be aware of my quirk..." you feel his lips curl up in a gruesome smirk "what is it that you want? I'm one finger away from killing you right now... s'that what you're so prettily pleading for?"

Tears flood down your face, straight up crying now yet you can't help it with the fear you're experiencing, can't help it with the way it feels just too wrong to feel so aroused by this. "..I want your cock..." you finally speak up, bold words and demand hesitantly leaving your mouth.

The room is silent for a good second as Tomura releases the strong hold on your neck, his hand now moving upwards to hold your chin roughly in place, thumb grazing over your lower lip harshly. "...You're sick in the head" he laughs before pushing his finger past your lips, circling around your tongue. "Crazy slut begging for my cock"

You sob, making his cock twitch relentlessly within his tight jeans with the way you start lewdly sucking on his thumb, gagging softly when he pushes a little too deep into your mouth. "I bet you're dirtying the whole chair underneath you with your filthy cunt, huh?" He chuckles, withdrawing his finger suddenly and landing another slap on your face before stepping away from you to admire your state.

Hands obediently placed on your knees that don't seem to stop shaking, your own spit smeared all over your chin, mixed in with salty tears that fall down on your boobs, smearing down all the way to your hard nipples and soaking the fabric of your top up, making it cling to your skin and revealing all of you shamelessly.

Shigaraki walks back to you, gripping your arm tightly and putting you on your feet as you yelp at the unexpected move, letting him carry you over to his desk as he threw you on top of it, bumping one of his knees between your thighs, forcing them wide apart before grabbing full hands of your lower clothing, decaying your panties along with it and licking his dry lips at the sight of your pussy.

He sneers down at you, trapping one of your legs between his own thighs as he presses down on the plush of your skin, grunting out at the little yet delicious feeling of his hard cock rutting against you. He swiftly moves one of his hands between your thighs now, wasting no time in sticking one of his thick fingers up your pussy, without warning nor preparation.

"Ah!" You yelp out at the painful intrusion, biting back tears and whimpers. You sling one arm over your eyes and are quickly stopped from doing so by his strong hand keeping it in place and above your head.

"You wanted it, remember? Acting as if you weren't a needy whore bare minutes before this." He mutters through gritted teeth, plunging another finger deep into your cunt as he's started pulling in and out of it, leaving you no room for rest as you gasped for air, fingers trying to clutch at the hard wooden desk for at least some kind of grounding.

Despite the burning feeling, you push your hips down and into his fingers, relishing in the way you could feel him so close to you, moaning out loudly as soon as his thumb pressed down your clit, your heartbeat increasing at the way he's started straight up humping your thigh now.

"O-ohh..! Please, I need your cock, it's not enough...!" You whine out, body squirming on his desk in a desperate attempt to get him to fuck you. Instead, you feel his hand resume his place on your neck, squeezing tightly and restricting your access to air as you see him stare up at you with the corner of your eye, noticing the sudden shift in demeanor. He's angry, annoyed at you.

"Oh won't you shut up already?" He snarls, fingers getting rougher and faster inside of your pussy. "Your whining and babbling is getting so annoying it's hard for me not to stand up and kick you out of here, unsatisfied, with your slutty cunt empty. Is that what you're trying to reach by crying like that?" He mutters, groaning from time to time whenever the fabric of his boxers grazed over a particular sensitive spot on the underside of his tip.

You rapidly shake your head, clearly alarmed by the thought of that, yet you clench down on his fingers at the harshness of his words. "Please please please no, I'll be good, just plea-" you gasp in pain as he squeezes down hard onto the meat of your pussy, almost tearing up the inside of your walls as you feel tears prickle at your eyes again.

"I told you to shut the fuck up, don't you get it?" Shigaraki repeats from within greeted teeth, making you fall completely silent now, only moans of pleasure now heard from you as he continues rutting against your thigh, eagerly fingering you. "Shit... fuck, you're so fucking wet, almost like you've gotten even more turned on by this, huh?" He stands up, withdrawing his fingers as you whimper in the emptiness he's left you in "Hush, I'm only getting ready to stuff you full of cock, be patient."

You nod in excitement as you hesitantly support your weight on your elbows, looking at him and admiring the sight in front of you as he unbuckles his belt, pulling out his reddened cock and pumping it hurriedly, throwing his head back and moaning as he focuses on his leaking, big tip. His shaft is even bigger, girthier, thicker, you notice, pretty v-line at his hips only making the sight even more desirable.

His head shots back to meet your gaze "ha.. hah..." He chuckles breathily, gripping at the base tightly as if letting you examine it standing hard. "You like it, bitch? What d'ya think, huh?" His manic red eyes question you, urging you on and adding to the heat in your lower belly.

You gulp down your want for him, nodding repeatedly "Y-yes, I need it so bad, Tomura, please.." you beg, eyes not leaving his as you feel your cunt ooze with arousal, closing around nothing when he approaches you, his hands gripping at your thighs from each side as he effortlessly rotates your body on the desk, leaving your head hanging off the edge and facing his dick.

"Then take it, sweetheart... it's all yours to worship, come on, open up" He grins as he taps his cockhead over your lips, smearing his precum all over your face before sliding it past and into your mouth, groaning, his voice blissful to your ears as you open your mouth wide open, the unusual petname he's whispered to you making your body shiver.

Both of his hands grip at your neck, holding you in place as he's started pounding into your throat, making you gag at his size and smell, yet feeling even more soaked than before. "That's it... good whore, doing a great job there" He praises, pressing down on your throat to make it tighter around his cock, moaning shamelessly while drooling slightly, small drops of his spit falling down on your chin, making you whimper around him.

His hips halter, uneven pace forceful and merciless as Shigaraki fucks your mouth and suddenly you're choking on his dick, throat fluttering tightly around it as he presses his hips flush against your mouth, balls resting against your nose and restricting your only source of fresh air.

You panic, shaking your head as one of your hands pushes against his pelvis, trying oh so desperately to get him off you so that you wouldn't suffocate to death on his cock. All you get in return is another sinister chuckle of his, pushing even deeper into your face "Ahh... fuck.. keep still, cunt" He orders, eyes rolling back into his head while his shaft throbs within your mouth.

You almost feel like passing out when he finally pulls away after another long moment, a long, thick trail of your spit hanging from his cockhead, smearing all over your tear stained face as you gasp for air, coughing up gobbles of drool, not seeming to get enough air as you heave uncontrollably under him.

Tomura clicks his tongue, watching you writhe while stroking his cock in long pumps "Stop being dramatic, I went way too easy on you.." He mumbles coldly, shaking off the spit off his dick and letting it fall down on the floor. "Fucking nasty, could you have gotten any messier than this?"

He yanks on your hair sharply, snapping you out of your attempt to calm down "What's wrong, hun? Already spent out?" He teases, eyes fixated on yours "I haven't cum yet, it's not fair to leave your boss with blue balls now, is it?"

You shudder, the burning pain on your scalp making you whimper softly and you can't lie to him when he's so close to you, can't lie about still wanting to be fucked by him. "M'not spent out.." you cough out, yet your state says otherwise, eyes blurred over and tears along with sticky precum smeared around your whole face. "...want your cock, please" you whisper, pouting softly and begging for him to fill you up once again.

You don't expect it, ready and prepared for anything but his lips pressing with weird softness on yours, the intimate and vulnerable moment ending way too quickly for your liking as he picks you up from the desk, hurriedly carrying you over to his bed.

You're placed on all your fours, Shigaraki getting on his knees behind you as his cockhead pokes at your entrance, dragging up and down your slit. You moan, face falling down into his sheets, his smell lingering on them as your hands curl up into them, grabbing tightly as you push your hips back into his with eagerness "fuck.. please, Tomura, just please fuck me.." your voice cracks down, chin shivering as you feel like crying again from how much you desired him.

"Hey, easy... easy, slutty baby" He whispers, smirking down at your ruined form as his body hunches over yours, lips barely touching your ear as he whispers into it "Don't worry, I'll fuck out every last bit of self consciousness out of your dumb little brain by morning" he promises, laughing breathily as he presses his dick into you, sliding in so easily due to how wet you were, resulting into you immediately letting out a gasp of pleasure and clutching down harder on the sheets underneath you.

Finally you feel it, the ecstasy of having him inside of you, pressing up against all of the right places as you can't help but moan continously with each snap of his hips against your ass. It all feels surreal, and for a moment you regret not having him fuck you earlier as you're so tired out that you almost see stars, present seemingly slowing down while Shigaraki fucks you raw.

You're a sight for sore eyes from Tomura's perspective, unfocused gaze and lulled out tongue as moans after moans fill the room, his hips not stopping even for a second as he watches your ass jiggle with each of his movements. "Holy fu-uuck..!" He heaves, not expecting to feel this heavenly nestled inside of you, balls slapping against your clit.

You don't hear him, not able to hear anything beside the slapping skin sound as you're drowning in a puddle of your own saliva, arousal and, mostly, undeniable pleasure. You can feel his nails digging deep into the flesh of your meaty thighs, whining like a bitch in heat at how much pleasure you were receiving.

"You're sucking me in so tightly, hah.. wouldn't be able to pull out even if I wanted to, your hole's drawing me right back in" He laughs, tilting his head in bliss and resting it against his shoulders while he watches his cock slide in and out of your cunt, covered in a thick layer of sheer, slick wetness.

He's high striked in his own cloud of pleasure right now, almost feeling like he's a virgin all over again, cursing under his breath whenever you clenched down on him, so tight he had to hold back from cumming a couple of times.

His body curls down on yours, mouth greedily attaching to your nape, tongue licking all over your sweaty skin as he bites down on your skin, rutting into you desperately, fucking you in an almost animalistic way. You don't react at the burning pain, only moaning dumbly as you feel your orgasm approaching.

With another deep thrust of his hips pressing flush against you, you whine out, cumming on his cock the next second while your fingernails tear through his bed sheets, biting down on them as you tiredly fuck your hips back up into his, body exhausted and drenched out from each and every last drop of strength within it.

You want to scream out at the overstimulating pleasure as soon as you feel him pulling out of you slowly, pressing right back into your cunt as soon as you've come down from your high, yet all you're capable of is small, helpless whimpers, too weak and dizzy to be able of more than that.

"Fuck.." you faintly hear Shigaraki curse above you, his moans way easier to catch with the way he's becoming quite loud himself "I'm about to cum..." He stutters against the back of your neck, hot, ragged breathing tickling your skin.

Using all the will inside of you, your head lifts up the slightest to take in the sight of his face distorting in bliss, biting your lip when he abruptly pulls out of you, stroking his shaft desperately a few more times and letting his hips fuck faster into his hand before his movements come to a stop, white cum messily landing on your lower back as he heaves and pants, stuffing his tip right back into your pussy on his last shot of cum and filling you up sweetly and you smile at the warmth it spreads within your body, happily falling back down onto his bed and closing your eyes with a soft sigh.

Shigaraki breathes out heavily, dry lips parted the slightest as he admires you laying under him, covered and filled up with his cum and it almost makes him hard all over again. He reaches down, finger pushing a strand of hair out of your sticky face, tapping your cheek sternly "Hey" he calls out and your eyes open up briefly, meeting his gaze "You're mine now..." He mutters, and you realize he's serious now by the deadly stare he sends you, rubbing sweat off his forehead before standing up and leaving you rest off in his bed as you hear the door handle click and heavy footsteps exit the door.

You feel both flattered and alarmed by his last words, yet you decide not to give it much thought and instead, you indulge in the now familiar smell of his lingering on the fabric underneath your fingers, nuzzling into it as you drift off to sleep. Little did you know that he meant those words, dead ass serious and that you could now say good bye to any guy who isn't him, because Tomura hates his things being touched by others, after all, they're his for a reason.

As a small/medium boobs girlie this hurt xD

Kingly snuggles.

Dont repost

reblog if you want anonymous opinions of you

bro i'm ruining my own chances...like i'm currently studying to be a psychologist (and hopefully a criminologist after 👉👈) but every time soemone tell mz they are intrested i'm like "haha whqt a good joke.."

Then they think i mocked them but i meant it in a "Don't act like you like me then you don't" a'd its always like this TvT i swear i only reamise after

tell us something about the reader x Shigaraki fic that the reader knows/you know but we don't!! about Shigaraki or life or anything. I know u have a few reader x Shigaraki fics so this remains intentionally vague for the potentially of a vague and provocative author response. <3

For a second I thought I'd lost this ask in my inbox and I almost had a heart attack, but it was still here and I am very thankful to get the chance to answer it. Since you didn't specify a fic (the intentional vagueness is a gift!) I'm going to go with one each from a few of them.

Skin Hunger -- the reader has played more than one...role...in Asylum since she was first hired, and in spite of what she tells Shigaraki and herself, her initial plan wasn't to stay in Asylum forever.

Expiation -- despite Sir Tomura's insistence that he's the one true monster left in the world, the reader has had close contact with someone who was arguably worse.

Enough to Go By -- the reader is not the only villain (or villain-adjacent) in her family! Who that villain is will be revealed at some point soon.

Thank you for the ask! I'm sorry it took so long to get to it, but I really appreciated getting to talk a little bit about the fics.

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 6) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

You knew the empty house in a quiet neighborhood was too good to be true, but you were so desperate to get out of your tiny apartment that you didn't care, and now you find yourself sharing space with something inhuman and immensely powerful. As you struggle to coexist with a ghost whose intentions you're unsure of, you find yourself drawn unwillingly into the upside world of spirits and conjurers, and becoming part of a neighborhood whose existence depends on your house staying exactly as it is, forever. But ghosts can change, just like people can. And as your feelings and your ghost's become more complex and intertwined, everything else begins to crumble. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Chapter 6

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. And to your dull human senses, what’s wrong with your house barely stands out on your street. You barely stand out on y our street anymore, either. Other people avoid this neighborhood. It’s not uncommon for everybody’s mail and packages to get dumped in a pile at the top of the street, because no postal worker wants to drive down this way if they can help it. But you’ve been here long enough now. Your neighborhood feels like home. Everybody here knows your name.

Shinsou and Hizashi are trying to start a garden, so you bring over some of your plants to help get them started. Keigo is teaching Jin to drive, and neither of them can get the hang of parallel parking, so you help out by shouting instructions from the curb as Jin tries not to murder your car or Aizawa’s while backing Keigo’s in. Sometimes you take Atsuhiro with you when you go grocery shopping, at Aizawa’s request – Atsuhiro has a shoplifting problem, and everyone else is tired of bailing him out of jail. And in the most awkward incident yet, Himiko gets her first period while Jin’s mom is at work and runs shrieking up the street to your house.

It’s your day off, but you’re in the bathroom when she arrives, so Tomura goes out onto the porch instead. Tomura’s not the person you want addressing a sensitive topic. When you finally make it out there, he’s in the middle of speculating that the unexplained blood loss means Himiko is going to die.

She looks close to tears, and you decide to address the biggest problem first. “You’re not going to die,” you tell her. Then you turn to Tomura. “And you – get out of here. This is girl stuff.”

Usually the threat of girl stuff banishes Tomura pretty quickly, but he doesn’t move. “Humans die from blood loss.”

“This isn’t that kind of blood loss. Shoo.”

Himiko ghost-blinks up at you through teary eyes. “It’s not?”

You shake your head. “It’s normal. Have you been feeling okay these last few days?”

“My stomach hurts. Since Friday.” Himiko’s mouth turns down at the corners. “Ochako at school says I’ve been mean.”

PMS is bad enough when you know it’s coming, but Himiko’s a former ghost, and her favorite human is a guy. She’s probably never seen this before. “Okay,” you say. “You should probably ask Jin’s mom more about this when she gets home. This is kind of a mom thing. But you’re not dying. You just got your period. It’s normal.”

“For humans.”

“Yep.

“Do you have one?”

“Not right now,” you say. You feel a little weird talking about this in front of Tomura. “Every month, though. I’m going to give you some pads to take with you, and you can borrow my heating pad. I’d invite you in, but –”

“Tomura’s a boy and he’s gross.”

“Hey!”

“Right,” you say, ignoring him. “Just a second.”

You duck back inside, pick up an unopened package of pads, and retrieve your heating pad from the medicine cabinet. When you get back to the porch, Tomura’s still there. He and Himiko are staring at each other. Neither of them are making a sound, but you get the sense that they’re talking. Spinner said the ghosts say weird things when they talk to each other, but he must have been eavesdropping on a conversation out loud. You’ve got no idea what Himiko and Tomura are saying to each other, and you have to clear your throat twice before either of them turn their attention back to you. And when they do, their expressions are different than you’d expect. Tomura looks uncomfortable, defensive. Himiko, still a little teary-eyed, looks pleased with herself. Why?

Whatever it is, you’ll have more luck getting it out of Tomura than her. “Here are the pads,” you say, holding them out. “You probably won’t go through them too fast, and when your mom gets back she can help you pick some out. And the heating pad is good for cramps. Put it on your stomach or your lower back, whichever feels worse.”

“Okay.” Himiko wipes her eyes, then smiles at you. “You’re nice. Are you old enough to be a mom?”

“I mean, probably?” A few of your friends from college have kids now. “Not old enough to be your mom, though. Why?”

“No reason.” Himiko turns and makes her way down the porch steps, staggering a bit like you do when you get hit with a bad cramp. “Thanks.”

“If you need anything else before your mom comes back, come over,” you say. You wait until she’s out of sight, then turn your attention to Tomura. “What was that about?”

“She asked if I like you like a mom.” Tomura looks like he wants to hurl. “I said no, and then she asked if I like you like she likes Jin, or like Eri likes Shinsou.”

“And you said no?”

“I said yes,” Tomura says, and your heart sinks – but only for a second. “The little brat can still read auras. She knew I was lying.”

It’s on the tip of your tongue to ask him what he lied about, but then you realize you already know. Himiko eliminated two of the three varieties of ghost-human relationships in the neighborhood – sibling-sibling and parent-child. That leaves two options, neither of which you like. Either Tomura likes you the way Hizashi likes Aizawa and Dabi used to like Keigo, or he doesn’t like you at all.

You should leave it. You should drop the topic and back away slowly. Instead you open your mouth. “Why did you lie to her?”

“What I do with my human is none of her business. Or anyone else’s.” Tomura is dematerializing. Now he’s just a voice and a pair of hands gripping the porch railing so hard that you’re worried it’ll snap. “Go away.”

Fine. You tell yourself it’s fine, that you’ll go, but your feet stay stubbornly planted until your phone rings from somewhere inside the house and you have to go back to retrieve it. Aizawa’s calling, and when you pick up, he starts talking without greeting you first. “Your job gives you access to public records. I’m going to give you a list of names.”

“I can’t just –”

Aizawa starts reading them off, proving that the ghosts aren’t the only ones in the neighborhood who can be assholes in the bargain, and you scramble for a pen and a piece of paper. Phantom is prodding you in the ankle with her snout, looking for a treat. “Hang on a second,” you snap at Aizawa. “I need to write this down.”

A piece of paper skids across the counter towards you, followed by a pen. “Thanks,” you say to Tomura. Then, to Aizawa: “Start at the beginning. The first name was?”

There are seven names on the list. They’re all men’s names. “I want all the information you can find,” Aizawa says. “As quickly as you can find it.”

“This is public record,” you complain. “Make a records request. This is my job. I’m not going to get in trouble just so you can avoid some paperwork.”

“It’s not the paperwork,” Aizawa says flatly. “If I make that request, my name and address become public. You’re the only one in the neighborhood who can look without giving us away.”

The neighborhood. You thought this was just some project of Aizawa’s, but – “Who are these people?”

“That’s what you need to find out,” Aizawa says. “As soon as possible.”

He hangs up the phone without saying thank you, and you look down at the piece of paper and the names you scribbled. Your handwriting is bad. You need to recopy them. “So that’s it?” Tomura says from the other side of the kitchen. He’s barely an outline. “Aizawa calls and you jump to it? Pathetic.”

You ignore him. What he says, at least. “Do you know any of these names?”

“Why would I know them?”

“Just look.” You hold out the list, and Tomura drifts across the kitchen to investigate. “I don’t know why he wants me to look these up. He made it sound really important. Do any of these look familiar?”

“No.” Tomura’s hand materializes fully, plucks the list out of your grip, and sets it down on the counter. “I wasn’t done with you.”

“You told me to go away,” you say. “I listened.”

It’s like you didn’t speak at all. The rest of Tomura materializes, from the tips of his fingers upward, until he’s standing before you, closer than he’s gotten in a while. “You asked me what I want. I know now.”

You can’t remember ever putting that question to him – according to Aizawa, asking ghosts open-ended questions like that is a really bad idea. But because you’re you, and you’re stupid, you ask it again. “What do you want, Tomura?”

A pair of cold hands close on your waist. Tomura pulls you forward so hard that you stumble, falling against his chest. “You’re mine,” he says. “I want you.”

A jolt goes straight down your spine. You’ve heard that note in his voice once before and imagined it a thousand times over, but hearing it again right now feels like a disaster. “Be specific,” you say, looking anywhere but up into his face. “What specifically do you –”

One hand leaves your waist to press against your jaw, forcing you to turn your head and look up. A moment later Tomura’s lips crash down against yours.

He kisses exactly the way you’d expect him to kiss, the way of someone who’s seen it in movies but never asked anyone how it’s done. Mouth closed, all pressure, nothing else. He’s not going to let you go, so you hold still, hoping Tomura will take some kind of hint that it’s not going as plan. Tomura stops and draws back, frowning. “You aren’t doing it back.”

“I can’t when you’re doing it like that,” you say. “You’re doing it wrong.”

“I’m not doing it wrong. You’re doing it wrong.”

“Hey. I’ve kissed somebody before. You’ve just watched it on TV.” You feel Tomura’s grip on you loosen slightly. This is your chance to escape, to tell him that you’re not interested, to threaten to move out if he ever tries this again and maybe mean it. “It’s more fun if you do it right.”

Tomura looks at you suspiciously. “How do I do it right?”

Some part of your mind that’s still sane, that still exists in the real world instead of the twisted upside-down haunt of your house and your neighborhood, is screaming for you to stop, but it’s fading fast. You let it go. You free your hands from where they’re trapped at your sides and frame Tomura’s face with them. “I’ll show you.”

You start with a gentle kiss, mouth closed but soft, and because Tomura’s an asshole, he starts arguing even before you’ve pulled away. “That’s what I did.”

“No, you did it too hard.” You kiss him the same way again, trying to get the point across. “You can still talk when I do it like this, which means you can respond.”

Tomura’s scowling now, but he leans in to kiss you again, and this time the pressure is significantly less. His lips are chapped. You part your lips against his, catching on his lower lip, and he startles. You wonder if anybody else in the neighborhood had to teach their undersocialized ghost how to kiss properly. Probably not.

Tomura’s fatal flaw with kissing is overenthusiasm. As soon as he figures out that opening his mouth is a thing he can do, he overdoes it. The only reason it’s not horrendous is because his mouth tastes like nothing, and it’s almost sandpaper-dry. You let go of his face, put your hands on his shoulders, and give a few shoves until he pulls back. “No.”

“I like it,” Tomura says defiantly. He does. That patchy flush is all over his face. “I don’t care if you do.”

“You should,” you say, and you fall back on a negotiating tactic from forever ago. “If you’re good at it, I’ll want to kiss you more.”

You’ve tried this tactic on human men before. Human men usually convince themselves that you’re playing hard to get and go right back to the vacuum-cleaner technique they were using. But Tomura looks like he’s thinking about it, so you try to sweeten the deal. “I’ll show you,” you say, and he’s already leaning in.

Part of you is still aware that this is a mistake. You won’t be able to turn back the clock on this incident the way you could with the last one. You can’t pretend that this is all for Tomura, that it’s got nothing to do with you, when you’re the one who won’t settle for less than a good kiss. You’re the one who keeps trying to get a reaction out of him, trying to put him back at the mercy of his body just like he was before, and there’s something heady and intoxicating about the fact that it’s working. Tomura’s breathing comes in sharp gasps, and yours isn’t doing much better – but it’s normal for you. “Why do you do that?” you ask, pulling away. Tomura lets out a frustrated whine and leans in again, but you stay just out of reach. “Breathing like that. You don’t need to breathe.”

“I can’t – help it.” Tomura’s shoulders heave beneath your hands. He claws at your hips, trying to pull you back. “Come on. I need it. I need it. I can’t go back like this.”

You’re still out of kissing range, but your hips are locked against his, and you can feel that he’s hard. It surprises you, although it shouldn’t. You got to him before by touching his hand. This is a lot more stimulation than that. You study him, your heart racing, taking in his dilated pupils, his flushed face. The scars over his lip and eye stand out in sharp relief. His skin is shiny, sweaty. You were right in all your daydreams about how desire looks on him. It looks good.

It looks good, and he looks desperate. “Don’t stare at me. Why are you staring at me?”

“You’re pretty,” you say without thinking. You lean in and kiss him again before he can complain about it.

The plan is to keep kissing him until he comes and dematerializes, but you like the sounds he’s making too much to keep muffling them. You duck away from his kiss and start kissing his neck instead, lips moving over the same spot he usually scratches. “Hey,” Tomura complains. “What are you doing? I – ah –”

He grinds against you, groans, and you realize you have a problem. You’re at least as turned on as Tomura is, only you can’t get off from just a kiss. He gets to dematerialize as soon as he comes, and after that you’ll be stuck. You decide that’s a problem for later. You’re busy. A second after you have that thought, Tomura loses patience. He pushes you back against the counter, pinning you in place as his hips jerk in brief, unpracticed thrusts. You keep kissing his neck. If he was human, he’d be walking around with love bites. That thought shouldn’t turn you on, but it does, and it occurs to you that Tomura’s possessiveness runs the other way, too. You’re his human, sure. But he’s nobody’s ghost but yours.

“I can’t,” Tomura gasps. He’s starting to dematerialize. “I can’t. Not yet –”

If he dematerializes while he’s still turned on, the entire street’s going to be pissed off at you for however long it takes him to materialize again. You back off from kissing Tomura’s neck and kiss his mouth again, as he moans and struggles for air he doesn’t need. Suddenly his back arches, pinning you harder than before, and you hold on tight as he shudders. It doesn’t matter how tightly you hold onto him. He’s already dematerializing, slipping away, just like you knew he would. The warm air rushes in once he’s gone.

One of the perks of having a ghost in the house is that the house is never too warm. Now, with said ghost too zapped to materialize, it’s way too warm in the kitchen, and even that isn’t enough to change how ridiculously turned on you are. You could stick your head in the refrigerator and try to calm down, but the idea of doing that pisses you off. Tomura got to get off to your weird but still hot kitchen makeout. So should you.

Some sense of propriety motivates you not to just stick your hand down your pants in the kitchen. You make your way to your bedroom upstairs, and this time, you settle onto the bed instead of the floor. This time, you don’t have to go to your imagination for something to fantasize to. You’ve got the memory of the absolute mess that occurred in the kitchen to keep you focused, and honestly, you’re so shamefully hot over it that you barely need to fantasize at all.

Your mind floods with a replay of the insistent pressure of Tomura’s mouth against yours, the uneven roll of his hips, and remembering the needy sounds he made makes your muscles clench tight in response. You have both hands between your legs, one teasing your clit while the other presses two fingers inside, crooking at an angle that’s never easy to reach on your own. If somebody else, somebody with longer fingers, somebody poised above you or settled between your legs – once you let that thought into your mind, it’s all over. You come so fast you’re almost embarrassed by it. Almost.

You’re lying on your bed, catching your breath, when the temperature of your room begins to change. Tomura’s voice, barely a whisper, snakes through the air. “I saw that.”

Your face heats up, but you’re already flushed, so it doesn’t matter. “So?”

“I want that next time.”

You’re not sure how you feel about Tomura’s assumption that there’s going to be a next time. But there’s a bigger problem. “Based on what I felt this time, you don’t really have the equipment for that.”

“Don’t be stupid. I want you to do this next time when I do.” The temperature of the room settles into the low chill you’ve become familiar with, but the cold spot itself is on the bed next to you, inching closer. “Or I can do it.”

You can’t think about that. Not right now, anyway. “Nobody’s doing anything right now. I don’t even want to know what you already drained to make this happen.” A terrible thought occurs to you. “Phantom! Where –”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tomura says again. You can hear Phantom scratching at the door and whining. She knows you and Tomura are both in here and she wants to know why she’s being left out. “I wouldn’t touch her. I used some plants.”

“Not the ones –”

“Not the ones you like.” If Tomura was materialized, he’d be rolling his eyes. “They all look the same anyway.”

“They don’t all look the same.” You sit up and swing your legs off the bed. “Stupid.”

Tomura makes an indignant sound, but you ignore him as you head to the bathroom to wash your hands. You’d expect things to be weird, so it’s a surprise to you how normal things feel. Normal except for the fact that Tomura’s in your room instead of lurking somewhere else in the house. So normal, in fact, that you find yourself dealing with a problem you’ve had since you found out you had a ghost. “You’re still not allowed in the bathroom when I’m in here.”

“You’re not even doing anything!”

You know you’re going to have to deal with the fallout from the kitchen makeout later. But it’ll be a while before Tomura can materialize again, and until that happens, you’re not going to think about it at all. “I don’t care. Get out.”

You were hoping you dealt with Tomura fast enough that none of the other adult ghosts caught on, but you’re not that lucky. When you leave the house the next morning to get in your car for the drive to work, Hizashi’s right out front on the sidewalk, holding a jar of fresh bugs as far from his body as humanly possible. When he sees you, he pushes it into your hands and backs away. “You know,” he says, and winks. “For later.”

You cringe and duck into your car, but a moment later, Keigo calls out to you from across the street. “Hey, can I get a ride to work? My car’s out of commission.”

“It looks okay,” you say – and then you realize it’s noticeably sinking on one side. “The tires.”

“Yep. Do you mind?”

“Nope.” You move your work bag to the backseat to make room, and look back up front just in time for a balled-up piece of paper to hit the windshield. It could only have come from one direction, and when you look up, you spot Tomura on the porch, barely materialized. “What was that?”

“Your dumb list.”

“The one Shou gave you?” Hizashi still hasn’t left, and he watches you closely as you pull the piece of paper into the car and un-crumple it. “Good. Let him know as soon as you find anything.”

“Sorry. Gotta move.” Keigo eases past Hizashi and hops into the passenger seat. You start the car and back out into the street a little faster than necessary.

You’re driving fast, but not fast enough to get past Spinner’s house before Magne steps out the front door. She waves at you, smirking, and gives a thumbs-up. You wave back, still cringing, and Keigo notices. He reclines his seat with a yawn. “Big night, huh?”

You hit your head against the steering wheel when you reach the stop sign at the top of the street. “Does everybody know?”

“Probably. He’s too powerful. Every time his mood changes, the whole street feels it.” Keigo shrugs. “Also, your whole front lawn is dead.”

You didn’t even notice. “Great,” you mumble. “Think he’ll tone it down if I ask him to?”

“You know him better than me,” Keigo says. He yawns a second time. “He seems like he cares about what you want. He made sure you didn’t forget your list when you left. Dabi, for comparison, snuck out of the house and slashed my tires before I woke up. You definitely got the better ghost.”

“Sorry about your tires,” you say, for lack of anything better. Keigo shrugs again. “Can I ask you about the list? Aizawa was cagey about it on the phone.”

“Sure.” Keigo spends a few minutes smoothing out the wrinkles in the piece of paper. You sneak looks at him out of the corner of your eye, and you don’t miss the way his eyes widen. “I don’t know most of these names. I know this one, though – Garaki Kyudai. He’s a conjurer. Touya’s conjurer.”

“What?” You stare at Keigo once you’re safely at a stoplight. “Touya’s conjurer is alive?”

“Most of them are,” Keigo says. He looks pale. “If Aizawa and Hizashi have that name, they know something we don’t.”

“Then they should tell us,” you say. Keigo looks worried. You’re not worried, maybe because you don’t know enough to be worried, maybe because Tomura didn’t recognize any of the names on the list. “Aizawa and Hizashi don’t get to hide things from the rest of us just because they’re the oldest.”

Keigo nods. “Do the research they asked for. Today,” he says. “Don’t give it to them until they level with us.”

“Sounds good.” Us could be you and Keigo. Us could also be the entire neighborhood, which is fine. If it concerns conjurers, it concerns the entire neighborhood, and everyone should know. But this is going to involve you saying no to Aizawa, who you owe big-time, and to Hizashi, who still sort of terrifies you. “Um, so I think I’m going to wait to say no until I’m in my yard.”

“Yeah, that’s probably smart,” Keigo agrees. “Hizashi won’t get into it with Tomura. Can you imagine if Hizashi was still incorporeal, though? That would be a hell of a fight.”

“Ghosts fight?”

“Yeah, big-time. Dabi’s old house – the one I moved into, like a moron – had a bunch of ghosts in it. It got crazy in there.”

Sharing a house with one ghost is chaotic enough. You can’t imagine a house with multiple ghosts, let alone multiple ghosts who are fighting with each other. You wonder if Tomura’s ever fought another ghost, and if so, how it went. He probably hasn’t. He’s picky enough with who he lets onto the property to begin with. No way he’d let another ghost in just to fight.

You park your car in the lot at the courthouse, and you and Keigo go your separate ways – you to the public defenders’ office in the courthouse’s lower levels, Keigo to the police station. He’s a social worker, not a cop, and he usually goes out on mental health calls. The two of you plan to meet after work, go over what you found, and book it into your respective houses once you get back to the neighborhood to minimize the chances that Aizawa or Hizashi will corner you. It’s only nine am on Monday and you’re already tired.

You didn’t sleep well last night. Part of it was still being sort of turned on and not being able to do anything about – not now that you know Tomura’s watching. And Tomura was watching. He’s been leaving you alone at night for the most part, but last night he was back to hanging out in the corner of your room. At least, you think he stayed in the corner of your room. At some point you woke up shivering, and you could have sworn he was on the bed with you, draped over you in some weird position that humans definitely don’t sleep in. But that could have been a dream. You’re hoping it was a dream. You don’t know what you’ll do if it wasn’t.

You’ve got no idea what Tomura thinks is going on between the two of you. He didn’t talk to you this morning. He usually doesn’t – you’re busy, and he doesn’t like it when you multitask while talking to him, and after you explained what will happen if you can’t pay your mortgage he’s stopped interfering with you going to work. But he was there. You could feel him there, shadowing your every move, close in a way that would be impossible to work around if he was human. Something’s changed in your relationship, and he wanted it that way. You can’t pretend you didn’t want it, too. But as you make coffee and take off your coat and go through your inbox, you realize you have no idea what you’ll be walking into when you get home.

You know you’ll be walking into it with the information Aizawa asked you to gather, though. You take the list out of your pocket and think things through. Technically you could get into the records database on your own, but you’re a paralegal, not a lawyer – people will be likely to question what you’re doing in there, which means you need cover. And you know just who to go to for help. Mr. Yagi likes that you’re thorough, that you check every angle when you have the time for it. If you ask his permission to get into the database, he won’t say no. You pocket the list again, square your shoulders, throw down your coffee, and go to his office.

The door’s ajar, like usual, but you knock anyway. “Come in,” Mr. Yagi says. He’s hunched over a document on his desk, marking it up in red pen. “I hate to start your morning off with editing, but this will need to be done by noon.”

“No problem,” you say. You can type fast. “Sir, I was wondering if I could log into the records database today.”

“You don’t need my permission for that, my dear,” Mr. Yagi says without looking up. “But you have it, of course. What do you –”

He looks up at you at last and bursts into a coughing fit. It’s a bad one. You duck out into the bullpen, fill a cup from the water cooler, and race back in with it, pushing it into his hands. Mr. Yagi takes small sips, but every time he looks at you, the coughing kicks up again. Something is dawning on you, something you don’t like, something about what Mr. Yagi said and did at the housewarming party. “Sir? Is there something wrong?”

“It’s all over you,” Mr. Yagi says, and your stomach lurches. “What happened?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” you stammer. You can feel your face heating up, and it gets worse when Mr. Yagi reaches into his desk and extracts a UV light wand. “Um –”

He switches it on and pans it over you, and suddenly you understand. There are handprints. Tomura’s handprints, on your shoulders, on your waist, along your jaw, invisible without the light but in stark relief under it. You were worried that the light was going to show ghost cum splattered on your skin, even though you showered and changed clothes twice since yesterday, but this might actually be worse. This looks like you were handled. It looks like you liked it.

Could Hizashi see this, and Magne? Did Tomura do it on purpose? Now that you think about it, you’re sure he did it on purpose. He’s been possessive of you since the beginning. Of course he’d mark you as his own the first chance he got, even if the only people who can see the marks are the other ghosts. If Keigo could see them, you’re pretty sure he’d have given you a heads-up.

But Mr. Yagi could see them without the UV light. And Mr. Yagi knew Tomura was there before you did, saw Tomura before you did. You stare hard at your boss, at his eyes. His eyes are bright blue, and their pupils are round, like they should be. But there’s a faint shadow around his irises in both eyes. You realize, with another lurch in the pit of your stomach, that you’ve never seen your boss blink.

“You’re one of them,” you say. It isn’t a question.

Mr. Yagi sighs. “I’ve been human long enough that my powers have faded. The contacts are enough to hide behind. But no former spirit, no matter how distant they are from their origins, could fail to spot that.” He gestures at you and you cringe. “Were you – aware of this as it happened? Did you consent to it?”

Your eyes well up suddenly, and Mr. Yagi panics, knocking over his cup of water onto his desk. You move to mop it up while he tries to hand you tissues, and in the chaos, it takes you a while to recognize the emotion you’re feeling as shame. What happened yesterday wasn’t out of the ordinary in your neighborhood. Keigo barely blinked when he found out, and Hizashi and Magne were teasing you, not mocking you. Hooking up with a ghost is a semi-normal thing to do in the world you live in now. But it’s not normal here. The way Mr. Yagi asked the question made it clear that he thinks nobody sane would do what you did yesterday. You feel like you’re going to be sick.

Mr. Yagi gives up on the tissues and hands you a handkerchief from his pocket instead. “I will get you out of there,” he says. “You can stay with my family and I, for as long as it takes for you to find your feet. You don’t have to stay –”

“It was consensual.” You force the words out of your mouth. Somewhere in the back of your mind it occurs to you that this conversation is wildly inappropriate for work. HR-reportable levels of inappropriate for work. “I’m fine. I don’t want to leave. Can I get into the database or not?”

“If you’re fine, why are you crying?”

Because you weren’t ashamed before and now you are. “I’ll have the brief retyped by noon. The database –”

“Why do you need it?”

It crosses your mind to lie, but there’s no need. Mr. Yagi is a former ghost. If you explain, he’ll understand. You draw the list out of your pocket. “These are the names of conjurers. I think. I need to get into the database to find out everything I can about them.”

Mr. Yagi takes the list, scans it, and immediately starts coughing again. You head out to the water cooler for the second time in five minutes. By the time you get back, Mr. Yagi is back at his desk, scribbling furiously on the list. You set the water down next to him and he ignores it. “This man is dead,” he says, and draws a line through the name – Akaguro Chizome. “Chisaki Kai – also dead, and recently. Ujiko Daruma is an alias of Garaki Kyudai. Which of the names is his true one, I can’t say.”

You stare at him. He continues to write, drawing circles around the remaining three names. “Garaki is worth locating, but concentrate your efforts on these three. They may be three different people or they may all be aliases of the same man. Who gave you this list?”

Some instinct makes you hold back Aizawa’s name. “Why do you need to know?”

“If they’re planning to hunt conjurers, I have some advice that might make the endeavor less dangerous.”

“Hunt them?” you repeat. “No. They wouldn’t. That’s not what – um.”

Mr. Yagi is looking at you, waiting for an explanation, but you don’t know how much to say. Your neighborhood might be sort of friendly, but there’s at least one murderer in every house except yours, and your boss is a lawyer. A lawyer, not a cop. And if he’s embodied, he’s killed someone, too. Based on your expression, he knows what you’re thinking. “Type the brief, then conduct your research. We’ll meet for lunch to discuss it.”

“Yes, sir.” Lunch is three hours away. You’ve got exactly that long to come up with a plan.

You text Keigo in between typing paragraphs of the brief. My boss is a ghost and he knows about the list. What do I do?

For real? I’ve never met one in the wild. Keigo texts back way too fast for somebody who’s supposed to be at work. You say so and get an eyeroll in response. I’m a crisis responder. If nobody’s in crisis I don’t go out. Did he have ideas?

He knew the names. I’m supposed to meet him at lunch to talk about it. You get an idea. If you’re still around at noon, come meet us.

Keigo sends a thumbs-up and you throw yourself into typing the brief. You print it and return it to Mr. Yagi, swapping it for the list of names. Then you settle in at your computer again, considering where to start. Mr. Yagi seems like he knows what he’s talking about, but it won’t hurt to double-check.

You start with the first name he crossed out. Akaguro Chizome has been dead for a while. Twenty years, almost, and he died from blunt force trauma that crushed his skull to powder. You wonder which ghost did that, if it was even a ghost that did it. There’s not much on him. Just an autopsy report. There’s a lot more on Chisaki Kai, when you look him up. Death certificate, police report, interviews. Interviews. You dig into those, and the name at the top of the first one stuns you into stillness: Aizawa Shouta.

The next interviewee is Shinsou Hitoshi, and after him, Aizawa Eri. The only name that’s missing is Hizashi’s, and slowly the pieces start to come together in your head. Chisaki’s remains were so splattered that he wasn’t identified until long after the investigation was closed. Hizashi wouldn’t have cared what Eri’s conjurer’s name was when he killed him, and as long as he was gone, Aizawa wouldn’t have cared, either. His name is still on their list because they never found out who he really was.

Chisaki’s cause of death was internal organ rupture – all of them, all at once. How the hell did Hizashi do that when he was already human? Probably the same way Dabi still burns Keigo – the stronger they are, the more of their powers they keep when they embody themselves. However Hizashi killed humans as a ghost, it must have been nasty. Really nasty.

You tell yourself not to think about that. The important thing is that Mr. Yagi is a credible source. You can take his advice on this. You borrow the computer at the desk next to yours – your coworker’s on maternity leave, leaving you with triple the workload in the bargain – and pull up a second database window. Then you set two searches to run simultaneously. One for Garaki Kyudai, since you want to have some information to give Keigo when you see him. And one for the first of the three circled names: Shigaraki Akira.

The Garaki search finishes fastest, and you print what you’ve got, then rerun the search for Ujiko Daruma. The search for Shigaraki is much more difficult. It’s not a common name, so while there will be fewer documents, they should be easier to find. They aren’t. You turn up some documents for a Shigaraki Yoichi, all of which mention an older brother, but the older brother’s name never comes up. You rerun the search, this time for Shigaraki Yoichi, wondering all the while if it’s futile. These documents are two hundred years old or more. These people, whoever they are, are long dead.

There’s more on Shigaraki Yoichi than Shigaraki Akira. Shigaraki Yoichi had a really shitty life. He was chronically ill at a time when regular illness was still too hard for most doctors to handle, and his mind wasn’t doing too great, either. He died when he was your age, in a mental hospital. Suicide.

At least, it was thought to be a suicide. The medical examiner’s report inserts some doubt into the equation, but it’s noted specifically that the family of Shigaraki Yoichi chose not to press charges against the asylum for his death. There’s a note about the family members – the ones who came to visit, and the one who identified the body. Mother: in a fragile state. Father: deceased. Sister: absent. Body was identified by deceased’s elder brother Akira.

“Got you,” you mumble, and hit print. Now you’ve got proof that there was somebody out there named Shigaraki Akira – and when you scan the list again, you spot the first name of the next name on the list. Kiriyama Yoichi. It could be a coincidence, but you’re pretty sure the asshole jacked his dead brother’s name. “Nice try. I’ve got you now.”

There’s more on Kiriyama Yoichi, but while that search is running, you look up the asylum Shigaraki Yoichi died in. Sure enough, it’s been shut down, but it wasn’t knocked down – it was turned into a museum. Maybe some of the documents were preserved. If they were, you’d love to read whatever Shigaraki Yoichi had to say about his brother.

You’re in the middle of writing an email to the curator when your phone rings. It’s Spinner’s contact number, which is weird. You can’t figure out why Spinner would be calling you, unless something’s gone wrong in the neighborhood. You pick up the call. “Hello?”

You hear Spinner’s voice, but it’s in the background. “Dude, give it back! Don’t go inside –”

There’s the sound of the door opening and shutting. “Phantom missed you,” Tomura says without preamble. Your jaw drops. “Say hi.”

“Hi, sweetie,” you say helplessly. You can hear her snuffling the phone. “Are you being good? Did you get in trouble?”

Phantom barks. “Good girl,” you say, and she barks again. If you were at home, you’d sit down on the floor to cuddle with her, but you’re at work – and Tomura called you. “You really should give Spinner his phone back.”

“He can have it when I’m done. If I feel like giving it back.” Tomura, you remind yourself, is still an asshole. “When are you coming back?”

“The same time I always get back,” you say. “Why did you take Spinner’s phone? Don’t lie.”

“Wanted to talk to you.” Tomura’s voice takes on an almost laughably sulky note. “What? You don’t want to talk to me?”

“I do. I just can’t believe you called me. I thought you hated phones.”

“I hate other things more than phones,” Tomura says. “Where are you, anyway?”

“I’m at my computer at work. I’m looking up things for the list.” You cast around for something else to say. “I’ll tell you about it when I get back. And I’m going to need help when I get back. Hizashi’s going to try to get it out of me, and I’m not telling anyone until they tell us what’s going on.”

“If he comes near us he’s dead,” Tomura says at once. You can hear knocking on the door in the background, and when Tomura speaks again, he’s not talking to you. “You can have it back when I’m done! Go away!”

“We’re done now. I have work to do, and if I don’t get it done, I have to stay late,” you say. Tomura makes an annoyed sound. “I don’t want to stay late and you don’t want me to, either. I –”

You slap your hand down over your mouth just in time. “What?” Tomura asks.

“I’ll talk to you later,” you say. You’re still reeling from whatever the hell almost came out of your mouth. The sooner you get off the phone, the better. “Give Spinner his phone.”

“Fine,” Tomura complains. “Say goodbye to Phantom.”

You tell her goodbye and listen to the appalling sound of her licking the microphone before Tomura hangs up. You’re going to have to apologize to Spinner when you get back. And you might have to get Tomura a phone.

You have time to finish your email to the curator and print the documents for Kiriyama Yoichi before Mr. Yagi ventures out of his office for lunch. “We’ll be going to the usual place,” he says. He nods at the folder you’re carrying. “It seems your search was fruitful.”

You nod. “One of my neighbors works nearby. Can he come with us?”

“Does he – know?”

You laugh. “He has one. A former one. Half a former one.” Mr. Yagi looks baffled, and you sigh. “I’ll let him explain.”

The lunch place is just up the street. You text Keigo to let him know you’re headed there and start the walk with Mr. Yagi. He insists on carrying your files along with his own briefcase, and all you can do is hover, waiting for him to drop one of the two. “The friend who will be joining us,” Mr. Yagi says, “is that who you were speaking with on the phone?”

“No,” you say. Mr. Yagi looks quizzically at you, but there’s no way you’re getting into it. The less you say about Tomura, the better.

When you get to the restaurant, Keigo’s there already, and he waves you and Mr. Yagi over. There’s a mischievous look on his face, and you watch it anxiously as you introduce the two of them. “Mr. Yagi, this is my neighbor across the street, Takami Keigo. And Keigo, this is my boss, Mr. Yagi.”

“Nice to meet you! And nice contacts,” Keigo says. Then he looks at you. His expression’s gone from a smile to a full-blown smirk. “So.”

“What?”

“The strangest thing happened this morning,” Keigo says. “I got a text from Dabi.”

“Dabi?”

“My – roommate,” Keigo says, modifying the sentence after you kick him under the table. “Usually Dabi’s communication style leaves something to be desired. Blighting crops and hexing people is more his speed. But today he texted me. Quite a bit. Take a look at this.”

He shows you the screen of his phone. You read, with Mr. Yagi reading over your shoulder, cringing on every line.

Dabi: do you believe this shit

Dabi: that asshole from across the street lured Spinner over to the fence like a pedo

Dabi: so then they’re talking about fuck knows what

Dabi: Spinner’s showing him his Switch

Dabi: then Spinner shows him his phone

Dabi: and that asshole fucking materializes one hand, grabs it, and hauls ass back inside

Dabi: it’s been thirty minutes and he still hasn’t given it back

Dabi: crazy shit

Mr. Yagi coughs. Keigo gives you a significant look. “Any speculations as to why Tomura stole Spinner’s phone?”

“Tomura is –”

“Her ghost.” Keigo nods at you.

“Ah,” Mr. Yagi says. “I imagine that Tomura stole the phone in order to place a call to her.”

Keigo wheezes. “He said Phantom missed me,” you say lamely.

“More like he missed you! You’re going to have to get him a phone.” Keigo misinterprets the look you’re giving him and keeps talking. “Don’t teach him how the camera works, though. I taught Touya and now I get photos.”

The last thing you want to do is teach Tomura about dick pics. If you get him a phone, it’s going to be a flip phone. Or one of the ancient ones with the keyboard that slides out. Mr. Yagi is studying Keigo carefully. “Is it true that you have a ghost? I was led to believe that there was something – odd about him.”

“Dabi? Yeah. He’s a scar wraith,” Keigo says. Mr. Yagi nods. “Do you know something about those?”

“Nothing, other than that it’s an uncomfortable state to exist in. How long has he been that way?”

“A while. Before we moved here.” Keigo focuses in on the file folder in a way that tells you he’s done talking about this. “What’s in there? Did you find anything on Garaki?”

“Here.” You pass him the relevant documents, then extract the files on Shigaraki to show to Mr. Yagi. “You were right. At least one of these is an alias. But this person – the first one on the list – was born two hundred and fifty years ago. He can’t still be alive.”

“Conjurers draw power from the world between,” Mr. Yagi says. “It allows them to exceed a natural human lifespan. But in order to draw that power, they require a conduit of some kind. Some are lucky enough to find a location that’s been consumed, in whole or in part, by the world between. Others must create their own.”

“What do you mean?” Keigo asks. “Like – well, shit. No wonder they keep coming back.”

Mr. Yagi nods. You feel like you missed something. “What?”

“The ghosts summoned by conjurers act as their conduits to the world between,” Mr. Yagi says. “When a ghost embodies itself permanently, the conduit is closed. A powerful enough conjurer will have summoned and bound many ghosts, and the loss of one or two will not trouble them. But weaker conjurers don’t have the ghosts to spare. When they lose a conduit, they come to investigate. And to punish.”

“Eri’s conjurer was weaker than the others,” you realize. “If Spinner’s right, and he was Magne’s and Atsuhiro’s too, then he lost three ghosts. He would have had to do something –”

“And he probably thought it was going to be easy until Hizashi murked him,” Keigo says. “I don’t think they even found out his name.”

“It was Chisaki Kai,” you say. “He was on the list. And he’s not the only one. Akaguro Chizome is dead, too. Do you know who killed him?”

“It is possible to kill conjurers,” Mr. Yagi says, noticeably avoiding your question. “However, it’s highly dangerous, as the conjurers are capable of harnessing ghostly power through their conduits to the world between. Humans who try to kill them often fail. I assume this Hizashi is a former ghost?”

“Probably the ghostliest former ghost, other than my idiot,” Keigo says. “If I was ranking power levels on the street, he and Dabi would be the strongest. If we’re counting former ghosts. We’ve only got one real ghost left.”

“You’ve been to my house,” you say to Mr. Yagi. “Is he really that strong?”

“Almost incalculably strong,” Mr. Yagi says. You’re weirdly proud of Tomura. “Given his presence, I’m not surprised your neighborhood has such a high concentration of ghosts. Unfortunately, such a high concentration poses a risk.”

“No, he blocks us,” Keigo says, frowning. “He blocks all of us.”

“I’m sure he does,” Mr. Yagi says. “What I mean is simply that if a conjurer discovers one of you, all of you will be compromised.”

He’s right. You hadn’t thought of that, and based on Keigo’s expression, neither had he – but Mr. Yagi is right. If a conjurer makes it past Tomura’s aura to investigate, they’ll find out that the neighborhood contains half a dozen former ghosts. “Do they talk to each other? Conjurers?”

“Some do,” Mr. Yagi says. “But all of them are able to sense the presence of ghostly power, just as ghosts are. If one finds your neighborhood –”

“We’ll just kill him,” Keigo says. “Problem solved.”

“Problem not solved. If we just kill some guy, our neighborhood will be his last known location,” you say. You’re not a lawyer, but after three years as Mr. Yagi’s paralegal, you know your way around a murder case. “We’d look guilty. And not everybody in the neighborhood can stand up to direct questioning. If the police show up we’d be in a lot of trouble.”

“We can get out of that,” Keigo says, waving his hand and accidentally attracting the attention of a server. “Now that I’ve met your boss, I know a good lawyer. Hi! We’re definitely ready to order.”

Keigo can put away food like there’s no tomorrow, but Mr. Yagi’s a slow eater, and your appetite’s taken a hit. Mr. Yagi notices. “Are you all right, my dear?”

“I’m worried,” you say. “Aizawa gave me those names yesterday, and Hizashi asked about them again this morning. Neither of them were taking no for an answer. It seems urgent. I think there’s a chance we’ve already been caught.”

“We’ve been caught. You haven’t been caught.” Keigo waves a piece of fried chicken at you. “You’ve got a live ghost. If a conjurer shows up, you’re the only person on the street who doesn’t have to worry.”

“That depends on the conjurer,” Mr. Yagi says quietly. “Conjurers lose ghosts for one reason and one reason only – permanent embodiment. Ghosts don’t embody themselves permanently without reason, and if Tomura’s conjurer were to suspect that Tomura might consider it, their wisest move would be to remove the reason why he would.”

“You’re saying Tomura’s conjurer might try to kill me,” you say. Mr. Yagi nods. “That would be stupid of them. He’d never embody himself. He likes being a ghost.”

“You sure about that?” Keigo eyes you over the rim of his soda. “I wouldn’t be. Since you two hooked up –”

“We didn’t hook up,” you say. There’s no world in which kissing constitutes hooking up. You’re not even all that sure Tomura knows what sex is, and you really don’t want to talk about it in front of your boss. You turn to your boss, pretending Keigo isn’t there. “I’m guessing a conjurer wouldn’t stop to ask. He’d just kill me. Right?”

“Yes.” Mr. Yagi sighs. “By that token, you’re perhaps the unsafest of all.”

“It’s a waste of time to decide who’s safest and unsafest,” you say. “If a conjurer shows up we’re all in trouble. Either Hizashi and Aizawa think somebody’s found us already, or – I don’t know. Maybe they’re trying to track where the other conjurers are?”

“That sounds right,” Keigo says. “If we monitor them, then we can figure out if they’re getting close, and kill them away from the neighborhood so nobody gets suspicious.”

“Let’s speak a little more quietly about this,” Mr. Yagi implores. People are starting to stare at the three of you. “Engaging with the conjurers this way should be your last resort. Stay hidden at all costs.”

“What if we have to kill someone in order to stay hidden?”

Mr. Yagi gives Keigo a look. “I’ve stayed hidden for fifteen years. Do you mean to tell me that you can’t hide better than an old man like me?”

The challenge is enough to silence Keigo on the issue – that issue, and only that issue, for the rest of lunch, until his work phone chimes. He drops his credit card on the table and bolts, and you and Mr. Yagi both stare at it for a moment. “Is he buying lunch?”

You think about some of Keigo’s bullshit today. “Yes.”

With Keigo gone, you seize the opportunity to go into a little more depth with your research. “With Kiriyama Yoichi, I need to do some more reading. Since Akira stole his brother’s name for his new identity, I’m guessing he stole a name from somebody he knew in the Kiriyama identity to generate the next alias. I’m not sure who it is, but it’ll help to find them. They almost certainly left a bigger paper trail than he has.”

You contemplate the stack of papers, then think about what your work inbox looks like. “There’s no way I can get this done before the end of the day.”

“Take it home,” Mr. Yagi says. You nod. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Please.”

“My son, Izuku, is very good at projects such as this one,” Mr. Yagi says. You’ve met Izuku. He’s simultaneously the friendliest and the most intense kid on the planet. “You won’t need to give him much background information, and he’s on summer break. Both of you can read over the information and share conclusions. Two heads are better than one.”

You nod. “In addition,” Mr. Yagi continues, “there are conjurers who do not engage in the practice of binding spirits. I’ll reach out to my contacts there and see what they know.”

“Thank you,” you say. Mr. Yagi nods, taking the last sips of his tea. “Sir, um – why are you helping me? I know I’ve been difficult the last few months. I’ve been slow. And this morning, I –”

“I’ve had no concerns with your work. And I knew all about your office demeanor when I hired you.” Mr. Yagi cracks a small, skeletal grin. Then his expression softens. “As for why I would help you, there are three reasons. First, because it’s the right thing to do. Second, because I care for you. And third, because it would have helped my wife immensely to have met someone who could explain the nature of these things, rather than having to find out on her own.”

“Oh,” you say. You weren’t sure what you were expecting him to say. Probably not that he cares about you, but it’s true, isn’t it? He’s the nicest boss you’ve ever had, and his first reaction to seeing Tomura’s marks on you was to offer to help. Even if you felt judged. Maybe the feeling of being judged was just you. “Thank you, sir. It means a lot.”

Mr. Yagi nods. “Be careful,” he tells you. “This world is more dangerous than you realize.”

You could take that as paternalistic, patronizing, if you wanted to. You’ve never doubted that the world of ghosts and conjurers was a dangerous one. The first time you learned of Tomura’s existence, it was because you saw him kill something, and even if everyone else on the street is incredibly blasé about it, you never let yourself forget the kind of neighborhood you live in. It’s almost a relief to hear Mr. Yagi’s reminder. “Don’t worry, sir,” you say. You aren’t scared of Tomura these days, but careful of the rest? Careful you can do. “I will.”

Like bro imagine soemone shipped an adult version of Eri with Overhall..

Alright so..it is personnal i don't ship shame but i'm sorry but shipping Tomura and Afo is litteraly not okay. Bro raised groomed and ruin Tomura's life like..what ? Like litteraly what ?!

Opposites Attract - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your quirk lets you capture almost anyone with ease, and you can't believe you let Shigaraki Tomura escape. Shigaraki can't believe it, either, and according to the League, there's only one possible explanation -- you let him go because you've fallen in love with him. He decides to find out if it's true. You decide you won't fail to capture him again. You both get a lot more than you bargained for. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1

This was supposed to be your day off. It’s all you can think about, which isn’t a good thing, because you’re in the middle of a villain attack and using your quirk at all requires a significant amount of your focus – but it was supposed to be your day off, dammit. You’re supposed to be doing something fun. Going shopping. Getting a haircut, or mani-pedis, and going out for drinks with your friends at a place crawling with photographers. All the stuff young, single, female pro heroes are supposed to do. So what if you hate that stuff, and you were probably going to sleep all day, wake up at 5pm, make dinner, and marathon the Alien franchise until you fell asleep again? You could have gone out.

But instead you’re here, because Eraserhead caught himself another spinal fracture, and when the doctors threatened to tie him to the bed if he tried to leave before they were done fusing it, he called in a favor you owe him and made you supervise his first-year-class from hell on a field trip to the brand-new Kamino Memorial Park. Go to Kamino Park, they said. It’ll be safe, they said. There’s no way in hell the League of Villains will hit the place a second time.

Well, they’re hitting it, and they’re hitting it hard – and it was supposed to be your goddamn day off. You throw out your arm to stop the trio of students you’re shepherding to safety as three knives thud into the grass in front of you, and make yourself a promise: The next time Eraserhead asks you to do anything, you’re telling him to go to hell.

“Hey, um –” One of the students taps your shoulder, and you know without even asking that they’ve forgotten your name again. “We got our provisional licenses. We can fight now.”

“You can, but you won’t. Create a perimeter and protect the civilians,” you order. You’re not sure why the League of Villains is here, but there’s no way you’re feeding a bunch of kids back into the same meat grinder they escaped from a month ago. “Other pros are on their way, and so are the police. In the mean time –”

You flick your fingers, calling up a magnetic field, and the knives lift out of the grass, hovering in midair. “I’ll keep them busy.”

You consider taking the knives and sending them back the way they came, but unless you want to fatally wound Toga, you’ll just be handing her weapons back to her. You curl your hand into a fist, compacting them into useless wads of metal. You’ve already used your quirk to tear up the park, creating uneven, unsteady terrain that’s dangerous for anybody who doesn’t have a way to take the fight airborne. Now it’s time for you to do what you do best. You narrow your focus, sensing out the concentrations of suspended iron that represent the League of Villains, and once you’ve got them, you lock them down.

Most of them, anyway. One proves a little more difficult to grasp than the others, and you get moving, using one hand to pull rebar and wiring out of the ground. You need it to ensnare the three you’ve already captured while you chase the villain who slipped away from you. You secure Toga and Twice, but Dabi burns his way free, and Twice sends a clone after you. Since it’s a clone, you don’t feel bad about yanking every molecule of trace metals out of its body and turning it to sludge.

Dabi’s on his feet, but you’re a bad matchup for Dabi for a lot of reasons. He’s got a ton of extra metal in his body. He throws his hands out towards you, blue flames already flickering. You fix your quirk on the staples holding him together and start pulling them out.

“What the fuck?” Dabi snarls, recoiling. Blood is already beginning to ooze from the holes on his wrists. “If you think you can just take me apart –”

You yank out another two – one from each wrist. “Stand down. You’ll run out of those before I run out of power.”

It’s true. Your quirk is Magnetism, and using it is easy for you. Using it safely is something else, but you can yank out every staple in Dabi’s body without breaking a sweat or destroying any property. Not that you want to do that. “I don’t want to hurt you, so just –”

There’s a shift in metallic concentration just behind you, and you dive to one side, just in time to avoid Shigaraki Tomura’s hand as it tries to close over your shoulder. A Twice clone is after you, too. You take the staples you pulled out of Dabi and fire them through its eye and throat as you roll out of Shigaraki’s reach. The leader of the League of Villains laughs, low and raspy. “Killing somebody? That’s not very heroic.”

You hate it when villains banter, but you’re not letting that one stand. “That’s not the real Twice.”

You’ve got the real one, and now you’ve got Dabi, too – at least for a few seconds. Maintaining a hold on Dabi, Twice, and Toga at once is within your abilities, but doing that and trying to capture Shigaraki at the same time – and maintain the barriers you’ve set up – and stay sharp enough to bounce Shigaraki into midair if he tries to touch the ground and vaporize Kamino Memorial Park out from under your feet – all of that is testing your concentration. When you lose concentration while using your quirk, bad things happen.

Shigaraki reaches for you again. A hero like Eraserhead would retaliate physically, kick or hit back, but you don’t want to be anywhere near Shigaraki’s quirk. You draw back out of reach, taking a step back every time Shigaraki steps forward. “You’re an underground hero,” he says. “Didn’t you learn what we do to underground heroes from what happened to Eraserhead?”

“Yeah. He shook that off, and sent me to take care of his light work.” The longer you can drag this out, the better – you can hear sirens approaching, and you know that Yokohama’s other pros are on their way. “Isn’t this a little high-risk for you? Returning to the scene of the crime so you can – what?”

Shigaraki sneers at you from behind the hand. “What do you think?”

You really couldn’t care less. Someone shouts for you, and your concentration slips for a second too long. You have to decide who to let go of, and between the three you’ve restrained, Toga’s the least dangerous. You let your control over the iron concentration in her blood relax and focus on trying to restrain Shigaraki instead. He’s hard to get ahold of. His body’s iron concentration is less than it should be. You lock him down for a second, but you can’t get a grip, and he slips free, smirking. “I know who you are,” he says. “The Capture Hero – Skynet. Not much of a capture hero, huh? You can’t even hang on to me. Are you sure the villains you’ve bagged didn’t let you get them?”

“No, they just didn’t have anemia,” you snap. Shigaraki blinks. “You don’t have enough iron in your blood for me to manipulate.”

Anemia’s not uncommon, but you’ve never come across a case this severe in someone you’re trying to capture. His iron concentration is so low that you can’t hold him for more than a split second. That level of anemia is crippling, and the words fly awkwardly out of your mouth before you can stop them. “Are you, like – okay?”

“What?”

He’s stopped trying to grab you. You should capitalize on it, pull up more rebar and wire to hold him down, but your mind’s off on its own track. “Do you get headaches?” you ask. “What about dizziness? Do you get tired a lot?”

Shigaraki looks disconcerted. He nods – then shakes his head, snarls, and sinks back into a fighting stance. “Why do you care?”

“What about a rapid heart rate even when you’re not doing anything?” When he’s doing something, like he is right now, it’s got to be even worse. You two have been trading barbs for thirty seconds at most and he’s out of breath. “You need to take care of yourself. This isn’t healthy.”

“Shut up!” Shigaraki lunges for you, and you twist aside. You get a good look at his fingernails as his hand goes by. They’re pale instead of pink. “Why do you care? So you can capture me and keep your precious reputation?”

You’re actually a little insulted. “So you don’t die!”

Shigaraki stares at you. The hand reaching out for you drops, and you close the distance between the two of you to shove him hard, knocking him backwards. Once he hits the concrete, you’ll figure something else out. You can hold him until someone else gets here.

But someone else is here, and they’re not here to help you. Shigaraki tumbles directly into a warp gate, staring at you like you’ve lost your mind the entire way.

Damn it. You can’t grasp the warp villain – wherever his real body is, it’s a long way from here, and you’re at risk of losing Dabi and Twice now, too. You tighten your grip on them, but even as you do, you see another portal opening out of the corner of your eye. This one is in midair, threatening to swallow a group of civilians who decided that hiding behind the All Might statue was a better choice than evacuating like the students ordered them to. “The civilians, or my associates,” the warp villain rumbles, from everywhere and nowhere. “Your choice.”

It's not a choice. You release your grip on Dabi and Twice, both the iron in their blood and the metal and wire holding them down, and warp gates devour them both. The warp gate above the civilians shuts, decapitating the All Might statue in the bargain, and as quickly as everything began, it grinds to a halt.

“Skynet!” someone snaps from behind you, and you freeze. “You let them go?”

Miruko is Number Six on the charts, and she outranks you by a lot, but you still bristle at her tone. “The civilians –”

“If you’re not stopping villains, you’re not doing your job.” She looks pissed. You have a feeling that she’s only holding off on kicking you because it’ll look bad in front of everybody. “If you’d held onto them a second longer, I’d have been here, and –”

“We could have helped!” That’s one of Eraserhead’s students – the one with the spiky red hair. “If you’d let us help –”

“You’re just kids. Do you have any idea what Eraser would do to me if I had –” You trail off when you realize that whatever it is, Eraser’s going to do it to you anyway for even letting the kids near the League of Villains. “I was the senior hero at the scene. It was my call. If you did what I told you – which you did – you did the right thing.”

“You did the right thing,” Miruko says to the student. The police are here. The cars skid to a stop, and you feel the iron concentration in what’s left of the park shift. There’s a helicopter in the air, too. More people, more cameras. Miruko is glaring at you. “You’re the one who screwed up.”

Yeah, you did. You stare dispiritedly at the headless statue of All Might as Eraser’s class regroups around you, as somebody starts questioning Miruko – the new senior hero at the scene – about what went wrong here. A few thoughts spin through your head, mainly of the hell you’re about to catch from the press, the heroic establishment, and the HPSC. Shigaraki Tomura’s case of life-endangering anemia makes it in there, and so does a hit of frustration at the fact that you’re in trouble for choosing to save a bunch of civilians from getting bisected by a warp gate. But the main thing that’s on your mind is the same thing that’s been there since the first spurt of blue flames erupted over the park: This was supposed to be your day off.

“Well, that blew,” Dabi says as he picks himself up off the floor of the League’s new hideout. “Whose idea was this, again?”

He’s glaring at Shigaraki. Shigaraki glares back. “I didn’t hear you say we shouldn’t do it.”

“I said we shouldn’t,” Twice pipes up. He’s still got a piece of rebar wrapped around his ankle. “No, it was a great idea!”

It seemed like a great idea when Shigaraki thought of it last night – go to Kamino Park, rattle the heroes’ cages, show everybody that the League of Villains isn’t scared of anything and isn’t even close to down for the count without Sensei to guide them. Then again, Shigaraki was three cans deep into a twelve-pack Compress had lifted last night, so his judgment might have been off. Twice is still talking. “I mean, we scared the piss out of those civilians. Those hero brats were running scared, too! And did you see what Kurogiri did to that All Might statue?”

“No,” Shigaraki says. He looks at Kurogiri. “What did you do?”

“Over there.” Kurogiri points, and Shigaraki looks. The head of the All Might statue is sitting on the warehouse floor. “It would have been a shame to leave without a trophy of some kind.”

“It’s on the news,” Magne sings out. She opted out of mission, and now she’s watching it on the League’s TV, lifted last week by Compress, which is hooked up to their generator, which was also lifted by Compress. “And it’s not looking too good for the heroes. That little one’s in big trouble.”

“Good. She’s a bitch,” Dabi mutters. His hands are bleeding. “What was that quirk, anyway?”

“Magnetism,” Shigaraki says. He feels weird. Maybe it’s the quirk. “She can manipulate magnetic fields. Any metal, on any of us –”

“I didn’t have any!” Twice protests.

“Then she used the iron content in your blood,” Shigaraki says. You told him how you were restraining the others. Amateur mistake. Or it would be, if there was any way to not have iron in his blood – but that’s a problem, too. “She couldn’t grab me. She said I didn’t have enough.”

“Is that so?” Kurogiri studies Shigaraki. “Did she say anything else?”

“Anemic.” It’s a weird word. Shigaraki scratches his neck. “She was weird about it. She wanted to know if I get headaches, or dizzy – or tired –”

The answer’s yes, which is why it was weird. It was weird that you knew. But the weirdest thing is what you said at the end. “She asked me if I was okay, and when I asked her why she gave a shit –”

“She answered you?” Magne mutes the TV, looking surprised. “What did she say?”

“What did I miss?” Toga skids into the warehouse before Shigaraki can answer. “I got away, but none of you came with me, so I went to the meeting spot alone. What happened?”

“The hero let us go,” Dabi grunts. “Shigaraki was just telling us about a little chat they had.”

“Ooh, you talked to her?” Toga sits down next to Twice on the ground, peering at Shigaraki. “What did she say?”

“She doesn’t want me to die.” Shigaraki feels his face contort behind Father’s hand as he says it. “Weird.”

“Weird,” Twice agrees. “Since when do heroes play mind games like that?”

It’s quiet for a second. “So she asked if you were okay and she doesn’t want you to die,” Dabi says slowly. “I don’t know, Shigaraki. It sounds kind of like she likes you.”

Shigaraki’s mind goes totally blank. “What?”

“You must have won her over,” Magne chimes in. “All that charisma you’ve got – how was a poor underground hero supposed to resist the leader of the League of Villains?”

You seemed like you were resisting just fine, until you couldn’t grab him. But it’s weird that you weren’t angry. You actually sounded like you were worried. Like you really cared whether Shigaraki has anemia, or whatever the fuck. Like you care if he’s okay. “Don’t be stupid. That’s not –”

“Come on, boss, don’t sell yourself short,” Twice says. “If you can seduce any hero you want, how come you didn’t seduce Miruko?”

“Ooh, Miruko’s so pretty!” Toga grins. “The other one’s okay, too. What was her name again?”

Shigaraki coughs, trying to make his throat feel less weird, but it’s not just his throat. It’s his face, too. “Skynet.”

“You said she was getting in trouble. I bet that’s why,” Dabi says to Magne. “They must have all figured out that she’s in love.”

“Shut up,” Shigaraki says. Nobody listens. He raises his voice. “Shut up! The mission was a success. Why aren’t we talking about that?”

“We are,” Toga says. Her grin’s devolved into a goofy, dazed smile. “You have to teach me how, Tomura-kun. If we make the heroes fall in love with us, it’ll be even easier to win! I want Ochako. No, Tsu. No, Izuku –”

Shigaraki stops listening. He picks himself up off the floor, hating the way his head spins, and makes his way over to Kurogiri. Kurogiri studies him. “Anemic,” he repeats. “The hero listed the symptoms of iron-deficiency anemia. Do you experience any of them?”

Shigaraki doesn’t answer. Kurogiri waits, just like he always waits, and Shigaraki figured out a while ago that the fastest way to make the itching stop is to answer the question. “Some of them,” he says. Kurogiri’s eyes tilt in the way that means he thinks Shigaraki’s full of shit. “Fine. All of them. So what?”

“Did she say anything else?”

Are you okay? “No,” Shigaraki says, pushing away the memory of how fast your expression shifted, how you went from focused on keeping Shigaraki’s comrades trapped and trapping him the exact same way to looking – worried. “That was it. Kurogiri, do you –”

“Yes, Shigaraki Tomura?”

“I mean, they’re just – they’re joking, right?” Shigaraki keeps his voice quiet. If any of the others hear this, he’s going to have to kill them. And maybe also himself, so he won’t have to remember that he thought about this at all. “There’s no way anybody – I mean, a hero – would like me. They’re kidding. Aren’t they?”

He wants Kurogiri to say yes. He wants him to say yes fast, and then to not pick on him for even considering it, and then to forget this ever happened. Instead Kurogiri thinks about it. “It is not impossible that they are correct,” he says. “Her behavior was unusual for a hero in her position. And it is likely that she knows more about you than you do about her. Perhaps she does have a certain – perception of you.”

“Great.”

“It could be,” Kurogiri muses. “She drew your attention to an issue that impacts your health, and therefore your effectiveness as All For One’s successor. And she chose to let you go. If the hero known as Skynet does have a soft spot for you, it has worked undeniably in your favor. It might behoove you to allow her to continue to nurse it.”

“Yeah, no.” Shigaraki shoots that idea down immediately. Any idea that makes him feel that weird is obviously a bad one. “I’m not going to track her down and say I’m not interested, but the next time I run into her, I’m saying it and you can’t stop me. None of you can stop me.”

He raises his voice, making sure everyone hears, and everyone looks up from whatever they’re doing. “Of course we can’t,” Magne says. “But you’re naïve if you think you can stop her. Nothing can stop a hero on a mission.”

“And nothing can stop true love!” Toga smiles at Shigaraki. “I believe in us, Tomura-kun! We can win their hearts together!”

The weird feeling multiplies. Shigaraki scratches hopelessly at the side of his neck and thinks about the remains of last night’s twelve-pack. Getting drunk again isn’t going to help, but it’s hard to imagine it making things worse.

MHA CHAPTER 402 SPOILER:

Is no one gonna talk about how Tomura just... swallows AFO's quirk...? Like, just straight up "gulp."

AFO's face says it all. Like, 😐.

Throat game strong.