How About Some Catnips? Or Nice Treats.

A new life for Tomura part4

Yay !

Chapter two of the shiggy x reader series will be delayed a bit but it is in progress!!

A new life for Tomura part 5

hi jasmina. i haven’t stopped by in a hot minute mostly because i’ve been rotting on tokyo rev (read: draken) for like three weeks straight. but i wanted to stop by for shameless saturdays because i’ve missed interacting with you.

i don’t have an idea that’s new or profound, really, but i’ve been thinking about shigaraki and pet play with his cute bunny!reader that’s constantly by his side. at his feet. in his lap. on his bed. collared and sitting pretty, doing nothing but being dumb and giving him something to take his emotions out on. he’s surprisingly not as cruel as you’d think; shigaraki’s got a lot of anger and pain, and he can be so, so mean, but at the end of the day, you’re his pet. he’s going to take care of you in the best way he knows how while using you as a soft, pretty stress ball as often as he wants. because in a way, having pet to ‘love’ that loves him back, is a little bit healing.

how you came to be in his life is a story in itself, but that’s for another day.

ok ily bye!!

Hi bunny!! So good to see you in my inbox again. I missed you too!

Tomura can't get enough of you. You're everything that he thought he'd never get to have. You're soft and make the prettiest noises when he can't resist squeezing you tight. You wear his collar like its a crown, and god your pussy is the best stress relief he's ever felt.

Doesn't help that you seem to love him for some reason, even when he's in a mean mood and starts mocking you for how wet you get for him. It makes him hard to know that no matter how messed up he is you still look at him like he hung the moon for you.

"Dumb little bunny, can't help yourself huh?" He always smirks when you get needy and climb into his lap, trembling with desire and gushing on his thighs as you rock against him.

"Don't worry, I'll give you what you need."

He fucks you like he's punishing you, his fat cock bullying your pussy open until you're taking all of him. But still you cling to him and cream on his cock like you were made for him and him alone. It healed some dark part of his heart to see the unconditional love in your eyes as he fucked his load into you.

He was never letting you go.

smut but like... someones a mermaid/man and the other is a lad who hangs out by the sea, and sees merperson stuck in a net or smth lad helps them out then they fuck on the beach

Bro your a fucking genius. Imma do shigaraki cause you didn't really specify who you wanted this for.

~~~

Title: In The Waves

Tomura Shigaraki x Siren!F!Reader

Warnings: Smut, monster fucking, drowning, death, little angst

A/N: I know it isn’t exactly mermaid but i couldn’t process how it would work so i went for the siren approach. Please don’t be mad :,)

~~~

You swam around the jagged rock that you and many other sirens called the ‘feeding grounds’. So many foolish fisherman, divers, and surfers have been victims to you and many other sirens as they went near the rock. Their bones littered the bottom of the rock. Some even with their scuba goggles on.

You always got your prey. No matter who they were. Your sickening sweet song has lured in even the toughest of sailors. You can still remember how they would jump off their ships and swim towards you in desperation, begging to hear more of your song before they were dragged down by the hiding sirens waiting for their next meal. Every single one got a full meal, their own human to devour.

You had been in this ocean for as long as you could remember. You had called the ocean your home from the moment you opened your eyes. Your parents had showed you the feeding grounds and taught you all you know. You really missed them.

Once you had turned 100 years old a big ship had came by the feeding grounds. You hid under the waves ready to grab your first catch and watch your parents do their magic only to hear the screeching of your fellow sirens. A older siren had grabbed you and swam quickly away from the rock. You were confused as you screeched out for your parents, trying to hear them call you back. 

You had tried to wiggle out of the older sirens arms but they held onto you tight before hiding under a underwater cave. The siren had let you go and you looked at them with an angry glare, wondering why they took you away.

“Where are my parents? When are they coming here?” Before you could say anything else, the other siren had placed it’s clawed hand on your cheek before stroking it in a soothing yet comforting manner.

“Im so sorry little one, but, they won’t be coming.” You looked at them confused. What did they mean? Of course they were coming back.

“What are you talking about?” More older sirens had surrounded you and the other siren, looking at you with pity and remorse.

“What’s going on? Where’s my mommy and daddy?” You began to cry as you wanted to know what was going on and why everyone was surrounding you.

“The humans took them away. We tried our hardest to get them out but it was no use.” Your eyes widened. No one came back from the humans and lived to tell the tale. Once they got you, you knew you were never coming back.

“They’re gone?” You hiccuped before grabbing the siren before you and put them into a crushing hug.

“Don’t worry little one, we’ll take care of you.” The other sirens agreed and from then on it felt like time had flown by until you had become of age to become the next leader of the pod.

You had learned later on what really happened that fateful day. Apparently what really happened was far more gory than what the little you was told. They had told you that the humans had simply caught your parents. You really wish that was what happened. In reality, the humans had just tried testing out their new harpoon guns and it just happened that one of them misfired and stabbed your father. Your mother held him and tried to run away, hoping to get help only to be pulled back forcefully and lifted up into the boat. The sirens that stayed to try and help heard your mother screech in anger before a loud gunshot was heard and the screeching stopped quickly.

Ever since you learned what truly happened to your parents, the hatred for humans was so strong that every time you saw one you wouldn’t hesitate to take them into the deep and watch as they drowned before your eyes. Feasting on their bones gave you a sense of revenge. A sort of vengeance that only someone could feel if they lost someone important.

You did this for centuries, feeding your pod to the best of your abilities and protecting them with your life. You didn’t want another life lost to those ignorant humans. Sure you may have eaten many but they’ve deserved it after everything they’ve done to your home and your parents. 

You hated them for years and always have. 

But this one. This one specifically pissed you off.

He’d always show up near the ocean, going to the farthest end of the dock. Taking of those red shoes before dipping his toes in the water. Same time every weekend Saturday at midnight where everything was silent. You’d think it would be the perfect time to grab that asshole and drag him down to the farthest end of the ocean. But no, every time you tried to grab him he seemed to pull up his feet and walk to a different part of the dock. You always knew it was him coming because of those crimson red eyes and medium length baby blue hair. If he wasn’t a human, you would have considered him to be a possible mate, of course there was a way to convert him to a siren, but the thought sickened you.

You hated this asshole with a fiery passion that you just couldn’t seem to let go.

~~~

“Going to see that human again huh (Y/N)?” A female siren in your pod elbowed you in the ribs before moving her eyebrows up and down. This little cat and mouse game you had going on with the red eyed human had spread throughout the pod and now everyone was making fun of you, telling you to just convert him already so you could do the deed. Well if you were to convert him he probably wouldn’t handle the sex considering sirens mate extremely rough.

“Yeah, so what if I am?” 

“Just fuck him already jeez.” She laughed at you before patting you on the back and swam away to go into the hideout.

You rolled your eyes before swimming towards the god awful dock. And of course that asshole was already there. You scoffed before swimming the lowest you could go and hiding under the dock. You could hear him walking along the dock before plopping down at the very and and putting his shoes off to the side.

This was your chance to finally catch him by surprise!

you quickly but silently swam over to him, you reached out to grab his feet before two hands caught yours and yanked you up to the dock. his pinkies never touching your skin. In your state of shock and fear of being caught you reverted into your human form. Sirens had used this for decades to hide what they truly were from humans, making them think that you guys needed help. This form was only really used after the death of your parents. You weren’t complaining cause you got twice the amount of humans coming to your song than you ever had. You could only keep the human form for about 20 minutes above water but if you were below water it was free range. Even if that meant you were naked. Since you were sirens you never really gave a shit about stuff like that but you should have really thought ahead in this case cause you’ve heard the stories of what humans think about naked people in general. But this wasn’t the time to think about that.

“Care to tell me what you were doing trying to grab my feet weirdo? And why your naked?” The man with red eyes looked at you with an annoyed look on his face. You gave him credit for not trying to look at your exposed body but you really didn’t care. But this was the first time you saw his face up close now that you think about it, and you couldn’t help but look at all the detail that you couldn’t see from afar. Like the little mole near his lip.

“Care to let me go asshole?”

“Not until you tell me why you tried to grab my feet so many times. Seriously do you just hide under docks to grab peoples feet?” You quickly realized that he knew you were under the deck this whole time? You were the stealthiest in your whole pod! How in the world did he know you were there?

“How long did you know I was under the dock?”

“I wouldn’t have noticed if you wouldn’t have peeked your head up from the water one time i was heading home. From then on I wondered how long you were gonna keep this going.” Oh god damnit you remember that night. You had a feeling he saw you but brushed it off cause it was extremely dark out.

“Are you serious right now? And yet this was the first time you decided to confront me about it?” Your voice held an annoyed tone.

“Well yeah, I had to let you think you were in clear waters before i caught you.”

“You have no idea how much I want to tear you into shreds.”

“Wow it’s always the hybrids that have the snarkiest tones.”

“What the fuck is a hybrid?” He gave you a look of shock and you sent one right back.

“What do you mean you don’t know what a hybrid is? Your obviously one! I’ve seen that tail of yours. It’s the first time I’ve seen a hybrid being able to change their form.” Fuck you were in deeper shit than you thought.

“Answer my question what is a hybrid?!” You yell at him while he still held your hands. half your body sticking out of the water while your pelvis and below was still in the water.

“...Do you know what a quirk is?” Okay now this asshole just has to be fucking with you.

“Okay seriously what is with all this shit your making up? Hybrids? Quirks? Are you on some sort of drug?” You looked at him like he was the stupidest man on earth.

“Okay now your testing my patience.” 

“Okay and your testing mine. I don’t know what a hybrid is and I don’t know what a quirk is.” He rolled his eyes before looking at you.

“Bring me something and I’ll show you what MY quirk is.” He quickly let you go and you really contemplated on just swimming away but your curiosity got the better of you as you grabbed a lost fishing lure before going to the surface once again.

“You were under for a long time. I’ll ask about that later but give it to me.” You swam over to him before giving him the said lure. He then touched it with all his fingers and the thing slowly turned into dust, leaving some ash on his pants. You couldn’t help this new found interest in the man and dived deep down to grab more things he could do that with. Maybe that’s why he didn’t place his pinkies down on your skin?

Once you came back up to the surface, you pulled yourself up to the dock and dropped everything near him.

“Do it again.”

“What?”

“Do it again. It’s the first time I’ve seen a human do such a thing.”

“What do you mean human?” Your eyes went wide before you jumped into the water once more, swimming far away from him until you couldn’t see the dock anymore.

Shigaraki just sat there, thinking to himself. You were so strange. how could you not know what a hybrid and quirk was? And why did you look at his quirk like it was the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen. But most importantly, why did you refer to him as a human, surely you couldn’t have been so stupid to not know you were one yourself and why did you swim off when he called you out on it? You looked like you had said such a forbidden word. He couldn’t help but be curious about you. Maybe he could come here a little more often.

~~~

You were so annoyed with yourself.How could you have let your guard down and been so stupid?! You just risked your pod and everything! Now even if you were silently interested in the man, you’d have to kill him. You could convert him sure but the process was long and painful. Plus he seemed to like his life as a pathetic human.

What were you doing?!

Don’t sympathize with such a creature! God you needed to get your act together and get you head out of the gutter. 

After that day you decided to move your pod a little bit deeper into the ocean just to make sure no human could dive down with regular air. If they were to use the top notch stuff then they were free range. You highly doubt humans would even come near here anyways cause it was a complete drop off and the cave was a hole in the cliff of the drop off.

You haven’t visited the dock for a few weeks in fear the man brought other humans. Even if you would never admit you, you did kinda miss him and his crimson red eyes. They reminded you of the blood of the humans you killed as edgy as that seems.

But after about three months of not visiting the dock you decided to swim over in the dark of midnight on another fateful Saturday, but this time you hide behind a couple of rocks. To your surprise he did come back and did the same routine. Took off his shoes and put his bare feet over the edge of the dock, but this time he seemed to be looking for you. You felt this urge, this tugging feeling to go over to him, to talk to him. So you did. Well tried to.

As soon as you went to swim you realized that your tail had been caught tangled in a lost fishing net. Must have gotten untied from where ever it came from and landed near the rocks, You go to untangle your tail from that wretched thing but you soon realized that it was more tangled that you originally thought. You tried to cut the net but soon came to the horrible realization that this net wasn’t rope.

It was a metal one. 

You started to flip out and tried to change into your human form, thinking it would be easier to get loose that way. Once you did, the metal ‘rope’ started to dig deeper into your skin, causing scratches and blood to come out. In pain you switched back, it wasn’t much better but you didn’t want to revert again in fear you might waste your energy.

You started panicking as your mind ran through scenarios of what could happen. What if a human saw you and killed you? Or tortured you until you took them to your pod. Of course you would rather die than do that but the thought was still running through your mind. 

You brought your head up to the surface and turned to face the man, still sitting at the end of the dock. Swallowing your pride you yelled out for him.

“Hey! Over here!” The man turned his head to see you waving your arms near a hunk of rocks. He quickly put on his shoes and ran across the shower to your location. Unfortunately for him, it was a bit away from shore, meaning he had to swim to get there, he let out an annoyed sigh before talking off his shoes once again and getting into the water. 

Once he got to your location is when he noticed the large abandoned fishing net. He looked into your eyes and saw the pure fear and panic that ran through them. realizing what was going on her quickly swam to the net before grabbing it underwater and touching it with all 5 fingers. The net quickly disintegrated and you were free from that horrific experience. 

Tomura got onto one of the flattest rocks he could find and the less slippery one. His wet hair clingy to his face as he looked at you from behind you.

You swam near him. Your tail clearly showing itself from the water as you looked at him, his clothes clingy to his body. He seemed so skinny for a human that you wondered if he even ate at all.

“Thank you, im sorry for not showing up for three months.” You hop onto the rock with him, changing into your human form just for awhile. He let out a chuckle.

“Your not human are you.”

“Take a guess.” You laughed back. You both began laughing before an actual conversation started between you two. You told him what you truly were, you didn’t say everything cause you were still afraid and always put your pods safety first. In return for you telling him what you truly were, he told you all about those quirks and hybrids he was talking about. Seems like you weren’t in the times with the humans anymore.

“Oh so that’s why you were able to do that. You must be pretty popular with such a quirk like that.” He grew silent. Shit you must have hit a nerve.

“Well you seem to be the only one that thinks so. I’m considered a villain in the human world.” You looked at him in shock. How could such a extremely useful quirk be considered evil? If he were in your pod, he could be such a great protector and extremely useful. He could disintegrate large rocks and help anyone if they were caught in a net like you just were.

“Humans are stupid. No offense, but from ones I’ve encountered. They’re usually extremely selfish and only care about killing everything beautiful and are so quick to judge.” You look at him and he looks back at you like you had just said something that captivated him.

“We think the same! We both think that humans and hero’s are whats wrong with this world!” His red eyes seemed to light up and a smile spread across his face.

“Well I usually eat them but yes, I agree that normally ever human I see i kill with no thought.” You laugh before you felt your back being pressed against the rock you sat on with Shigaraki hovering on top of you.

“Uh hey-.” Before you could say anything you felt his chapped lips press against yours. You’ve kissed a few humans before just to kind of fuck with them before they die but it was very obviously this mans first kiss.

And you realized you didn’t even know the mans name.

You tried to pull away from the kiss but he kept trying to steal away your words. You didn’t know what to do so you just went along with it, trying to at least teach him how to kiss normally and not like a starved man who hasn’t had water in weeks.

You grabbed his cheeks gently and slowly kissed him back. Your clawed fingers lightly scratching his temples and head. His wet hair clung to your fingers while his were placed on each side of your head. He would let out little groans when ever you would lightly you would tug on his lip with your sharp teeth.

His kisses went from your lips slowly to your jawline then your neck. He peppered kisses before sucking on a few spots. You let out little gasps before smirking and leaning to whisper in his ear.

“If this is going where I think it is, I’m warning you that we sirens like it rough, most humans can’t handle it and die before we’re finished.” He laughed at you before bucking his hips into yours and responding to you in a similar tone.

“I think I can handle a few scratches.”

“If you say so.” You wrap your legs around his waist before pulling him down so you two were fully touching chest to chest. You smirked at him before leaning into his neck and giving it a long lick before opening your mouth and clamping down on his shoulder, letting your teeth dig deep into his shoulder.

“Fuck!” You felt one of his hands dig into your bare rib-cage, his trimmed down nails dragging down. He went back to kissing your lips, every once and awhile sneaking glances at your bare chest. 

He let your lips go before licking a path down your chest until he reached your exposed breasts. He took one in his mouth and started sucking harshly. His arms wrapping around your body, caging you to keep you from moving while he sucked on your breasts before tugging on them with his teeth. He once he sucked one raw he would move onto the next one, trying to encourage more moans out of your mouth. 

You placed your clawed hands along his back and every time he gave your breast a harsh tug you would dig your deep into his back, deep enough to bleed. You moved one of your hands to his hair, lifting his head of your breast. Saliva connecting his lips to your nipple before You started to kiss him again, this time you used your claws to tear up his shirt until it was nothing but pieces of cloth. his pants soon suffered the same fate as he was soon only left in his boxers.

“You know, I never caught your name.” You say before kissing him again smiling.

“Tomura.”

“Such a cute name.” You dragged Your fingers towards his boxers before the familiar rip of clothing hit both of your ears as now he was as naked as you. You wrapped you legs tighter against his pelvis as you felt him try to line up with your pussy. While male sirens could only mate during the full moon, humans could do it whenever they please. 

You felt the head of his cock slowly push its way inside you as you heard him hiss. You used your legs to pull him closer, causing him to be fully inside you. It wasn’t your first rodeo when it came to sex but it seems like the man above you had never even done the deed.

“Something wrong Tomura?” You smirk at him. You loved the face he was making. It was so pretty seeing this asshole come undone above you. He was so lost in the feeling of your cunt wrapped around his cock that he lost his train of thought. It wasn’t until you bucked your hips that he was pulled out of his trance.

“Come on Tomura, don’t tell me you can’t handle it?” You laughed at him but were quickly silent when he pulled back and slammed into you, causing you to gasp for breath.

“I can handle anything slut.” You smiled before kissing him once again as you dug your clawed nails into his bare back. Your nails scratched all the way up his back even deeper than before. Blood started to drip off his back and coat your hands. The bite mark slowly dripping blood as well.

He soon found a rhythm as his hips smacked against yours. The feeling of the tip of his cock hitting that certain spot made you bite your lips and arch your back closer to the man above you. You nails made there way to his shoulder blades as you drag them down to his biceps.

“Fuck...your so tight ahh.” You felt him start to stutter in his strokes. You were about to make fun of him about coming early but you were quickly shut up when he delivered a specific harsh thrust to your g-spot. Once he saw your reaction to it he began to pound that certain spot until your knees where shaking.

“Shit Tomura.” After a few more harsh thrusts against your g-spot he let out a groan before cumming inside you with your following soon after.

He fell onto your chest as he wrapped his arms around your torso before putting his head between your shoulders, letting out pants and trying to gasp for air.

You didn’t know what to feel. You were so caught into the moment that you didn’t think about what were to happen after the deed was finished. Sirens mate usually mate much rougher but you were afraid of killing him mid-sex. and in doing so, led to the problem you had before you now.

What should you do?

You tried to bring yourself to kill him. To drag him down beneath the waves and watch the life fade from those beautiful crimson eyes but you couldn’t. No matter how hard your hatred for humans were this one was different. You liked this one.

You didn’t want to turn him into a siren against his will cause what if he had a family and he’d hate you forever? Sure you’ve seen many sirens do the same trick and their newly converted siren mates be mad at them but after the 5th year of being a siren they usually just gave up in fighting back once realizing there was no way to return to human.

You wanted to enjoy time with him, not just met up every Saturday for a fling. You wanted to have someone to be with your always. The conflict was so strong in your head that you didn’t even know what to do. It was eating you up inside. It wasn’t until what he said next that you made your choice.

“I should probably head off...sorry. I don’t want anyone seeing me butt ass naked trying to walk home-”

“NO!” You wrap your arms around his torso before zipping into the water. He didn’t even get a chance to breathe air before getting dragged down into the depths.

“I can’t let you leave me like that. I’m sorry please don’t hate me.” You said to him as you dragged him deeper and deeper into the waves. You could feel and hear him struggling to get free but you couldn’t let him go.

After all, he could still be a siren and destroy the world right? He’d love you in time.

narilamb through #2

lamb: hey narinder !

Narinder *hiss*

(Yes just that. Thanks for reading)

some random headcanons of tomura that i thought of

just like ochaco, he sleeps either with gloves on or bandages on his pinky fingers

i’ve seen many people say tomura would listen metal or heavy metal but i really think he’d prefer game OST’s over anything>>>

blasts bury the light at 3am

he’d call kurogiri at 3am just to tell him about his plans to kill all might

apparently he’s awake all day, having anxiety attack cuz he drank monster on an empty stomach

i think he’s the type of guy to meticulously plan everything only to have it ruined by bad luck

he’d occasionally pick on his flaky skin/lips

he has a habit of collecting figures, only to leave on at the shelve without looking at it again

if you’re close to tomura, he’d invite you to eat something tasty and then tell you that he destroyed one of your items

tomura is not the type to use bar soap but rather dispenser soap…that’s if you’re lucky enough he used one

he doesn’t use his quirk much and he’s used to only using 4 fingers

very competitive and mean when he plays against you in a PvP game

too mean he’s not giving you an ounce of hope to win

you got upset and he decided to switch to simulation games instead (he doesn’t admit this but he plays animal crossing to relax)

say goodbye to your personal space, this man knows no boundaries

he’s not shy, he’s just like a cat that doesn’t know how to express its feelings to you

*gets jumpscared in a horror game* “fuck all might, fuck endeavor, fuck hawks, fuck—“

your man is the type to pick his food off the floor :(

shigaraki is the type of guy to buy you the most luxurious & beautiful black nightgown while he stays on his creeper boxers

tomura doesn’t like to shower on his own, he likes the feeling of your fingers brushing through his hair 🚿🛀

(NSFW below this point:)

expect him to talkshit about all might mid-sex

i really think his hatred for all might surpasses his sex drive

prefers receiving and will be mean about it, he just likes making a mess of you

degradation & slight breeding kink

your boobs are his favorite pillows

he likes fucking you with the skirt on—

missionary & doggy 👑

call him sweet names during sex and he’ll melt under your arms

doesn’t like shower sex but a blowjob will do

i think he would be into somnophilia, only if you’re fine with it

💗

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 17) - 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-down 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 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16

Chapter 17

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. Right now, the thing that’s wrong with it is the fact that every last light in the place is on when Hizashi guides his sports car to a stop in front of it. He rolls down the window and raises his voice in a holler that wakes you out of your doze and probably wakes the rest of the street up, too. “Special delivery, o petulant one! One human, safe and sound.”

Tomura opens the door and steps through it, which is unusual. Usually he materializes straight through the door, but this time, he’s solid enough to leave footprints all the way down the steps and along the path to the gate. You unfold yourself out of Hizashi’s car, wincing at the stiffness in your legs. Hizashi’s car is cool, but it’s sure as hell not comfortable.

Once you’ve retrieved your suitcase from the backseat, you turn to face Hizashi. “Thanks for the ride back,” you say. “And the sketches from the photos. I couldn’t have done those.”

“That wasn’t the worst research trip I’ve ever been on,” Hizashi says. You figure that’s as close to “you’re welcome” as you’re going to get.

He pulls a u-turn and zooms off down the block, and you turn to face your own house. The gate’s already open, and once you step through it, Tomura seizes you, suitcase and all. Your feet leave the ground, and Tomura sets off up the path, awkwardly carrying you. “Hey,” you complain. His shoulder’s wedged underneath your sternum in a way that’s deeply uncomfortable, and one of his hands is glued to your ass. “Put me down.”

Tomura doesn’t answer, and you consider thrashing until he puts you down. But he’s so stubborn that he probably wouldn’t let go, and the only thing worse than being carried through the yard like a sack of potatoes would be taking yourself and Tomura down for everybody to see in an attempt to escape. You decide to stick it out. You can thrash once you’re inside.

As it turns out, you don’t get a chance to thrash. Tomura drops you on the floor the instant the door shuts and climbs on top of you, and Phantom leaps over your dropped suitcase to join the party. All the air whooshes out of your lungs and it takes you a second to recover. “So you weren’t joking when you said you missed me.”

“Shut up,” Tomura mumbles. His ice-cold hands slip beneath your shirt, splaying across your ribcage, grasping at your shoulder. “You said you’d be back last night. It’s morning.”

“Two in the morning. That’s still nighttime,” you protest. Tomura makes a discontented sound. With your shirt hiked up, your stomach’s exposed, and you startle when Phantom pokes you with her nose. “Hey! I’m already cold enough.”

“She missed you.” Tomura shifts his weight slightly, allowing you to free one of your hands so you can scratch Phantom’s ears. “I missed you more.”

Phantom would probably dispute that if she could talk. You wrestle your hand out from being crushed between your chest and Tomura’s and swat his shoulder lightly with it. “I can’t believe you put a heart in your contact on my phone.”

“You said I could have an emotion thing.”

“An emoji. And I said you could have the ghost one. Not a heart,” you say. “A ghost is what you are. A heart – says things. It wouldn’t make sense to you.”

“It’s not that complicated,” Tomura says. There’s an odd note in his voice. “I’m not stupid. I know how human things work. I know what it means that you don’t want people to know about me.”

For a moment you’re reminded of Hizashi, of Hizashi’s insistence that he understands humans enough to know why people do what they do. “It’s just hard to explain. That you’re a –”

“I can pass as human if I need to. I even blink the right way. The others don’t.”

“But –” You break off, clamp your mouth shut. Not tonight. You don’t want to have this argument tonight. Not when you’ve missed him. Not when you just got home. “I told my parents you’re my boyfriend. They want to meet you. When they come here we’ll figure something out. Okay?”

“You’re embarrassed about me,” Tomura says. “That’s what –”

“Stop listening to Dabi about me,” you say. You talk over Tomura’s question about how you knew what he was going to say. “It’s always Dabi trying to make you feel bad about yourself. Has anybody else ever said things like that to you? Anybody who’s not a dick?”

Tomura makes an irritated sound in response, which means you’re right about this. “Hey,” you say. You lift one hand from where it’s resting between his shoulder blades and start to comb your fingers through the ends of his hair. “I missed you the whole time I was gone. You staying on the phone with me all night was maybe the nicest thing anybody ever did for me. If I’m weird about you meeting my parents, it says more about them than it does about you.”

“Mmh.” Tomura still sounds unhappy, but he settles into your arms, and you feel him relax muscle by muscle. “Would you still be weird if I was human?”

“Weirder,” you say, and he snorts. “Can we get off the floor now?”

“The floor’s fine.”

“Says the person not laying on it.” You shift around until Tomura pulls his hands out from under your shirt and moves. “I’m going to the couch.”

“I was comfortable,” Tomura complains.

“If you let me get to the couch in the first place, you wouldn’t have had to move.”

You have a feeling Tomura had something in mind for when you got home tonight, but the two of you kiss for approximately ten seconds before Phantom jumps on the couch with you, and you know Tomura would never push her away. She makes herself comfortable in between your feet and Tomura’s and starts to snore. Ordinarily it’s a mood killer, but ordinarily you haven’t been gone for a day and a half. Tomura waits a few seconds to see if she’ll wake up, then leans in to kiss you again.

In general, Tomura has one type of kissing in his repertoire – hot and heavy making out, more enthusiasm than technique. The technique’s there, sure, but it takes a backseat to trying to enthusiastically suck your soul out through your mouth. Except for right now. Right now his kisses are softer, almost gentle. And slow. One of his hands grips your jaw to turn your head for better access, but then it shifts to cradling it, cold fingers pressed against your cheek and your throat as he kisses you. You’re not really sure what to make of it. But you like it.

It gives you more time for things. You have time this way, time to slide your hands beneath his shirt, tracing over the outlines of his vertebrae, a little more prominent than they should be. If he was human, he’d be almost skeletally thin, but you’d touch him like this more if you could get away with it. Maybe he’ll let you sometime. Tomura makes a contented hum against your mouth and sinks deeper into the kiss.

But it’s weird. Usually when he kisses you he’s wound up within seconds. You draw back, or try to. He won’t let you, so you pull one hand from under his shirt, plant it on his cheek, and shove him back just enough to give yourself space to talk. “What is this about? You’re not usually like this.”

“I never get to do it as long as I want. My body starts acting stupid, and then I burn through too much life-force and I have to go.” Tomura is holding perfectly still, even though he’s sprawled out on top of you in a way that’s probably hard to balance. “I thought maybe if I went slower I could stay longer.”

He peels your hand away from his face and leans in again. You still have one hand on his back. With the other one free, you can run your fingers through his hair, and you’re surprised to find that it’s not tangled. This time you speak around the kiss. “Did you brush your hair?”

“No.”

Huh. You go back to kissing him, unconcerned, until a thought crosses your mind and you sit partway up in surprise. Tomura starts bitching immediately at being jarred out of position, but you ignore him. “Did you dematerialize at all while I was gone?”

“No.” Tomura sits up, too, but only for the purposes of pushing you back down. “Come back. I’m not done.”

You’d really like to keep kissing him and not thinking about anything at all, but now your mind is spinning and you can’t make it stop. “Why would you do that? That was thirty-six hours. Why would you burn that much energy?”

“Why does it matter? I still have enough.” Tomura’s being dumb on purpose. You know he is, and you don’t think it’s just because he wants to go back to kissing. “Humans are like this all the time.”

No. Not right now. You can’t have this fight right now, but – “But you aren’t!”

“Aren’t what?”

“Human,” you say. “Why –”

You break off. Tomura’s red eyes are fixed on yours. “Say it.”

You’ve wondered on and off if he knows this fight is coming. Now you know for sure. “No,” you say. “Not tonight.”

“Why not?”

“I just got home. It’s late and I missed you and you missed me.” You pull at Tomura’s shoulders. “I want to kiss you. I don’t want to do this. Not tonight. Please.”

If he asks you any more questions, you might lose it. If he asks you what you’re so scared of, it might all come spilling out at once. But Tomura doesn’t ask. He doesn’t ask when the two of you are going to talk about it, either. He just thinks about it for a few seconds before leaning in to kiss you again.

It feels like kissing and making up, when the two of you haven’t even had a fight yet. The real fight is coming. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, or the day after that. One of these days you’re going to snap and tell Tomura to stop talking about wanting to be human when he threw away his chance at the real thing, and he’ll probably ask you why you give a damn, and then you’ll have a choice to make. Lie and say you don’t care either way. Or tell him what you can barely admit to yourself: You love him, and you want a life with him. It’s easy to imagine Tomura protesting that the two of you have a life already and having to correct him. A human life. Together.

You can’t say that. He might talk about being human, but you know better than to think that’s what he really wants. What you have with him right now is what you’re going to get, and it’s good. It’s enough. You sink your hands into his hair and kiss him until your eyelids start to feel heavy, and you don’t stop there. The last thing you’re aware of before you fall asleep is the icy pressure of Tomura’s body against yours, and the sensation of his ribcage expanding and contracting beneath your hands as his lungs fill with breaths he’ll never truly need.

You’re a wreck in the morning, partially from sleeping on the couch all night and partially from a nightmare you had while you were there. You didn’t wake up from it, and Tomura didn’t notice anything – when you ask him in the morning if you’d done anything weird in the night, he shakes his head and flops back down on you, unwilling to let you move even though he’s been there for hours. You don’t tell him you had a bad dream, and you definitely don’t tell him what it was about.

You were in your neighborhood, or where your neighborhood used to be. The houses were ruins of what they’d been before, and you were alone in the middle of the street. There were scraps of something floating by in the wind, something that looked like the shreds of a ribbon made of clouds and ash, and you were chasing them, grabbing as many as you could. No matter how many you grabbed hold of, there were always more, and as you raced frantically down the street, the wind kicked up, carrying them further and further away. Scattering them, until there was no hope you’d ever find them all.

In the dream you felt sick. You wanted to scream and cry, but mostly, you wanted to find Tomura. You called out for him over and over again with no answer, and you remember the exact moment in the dream when it dawned on you. When you looked down at the meager wisps of cloud and ash in your hands and realized that you’d found all that was left of him already.

You try to be normal about it. It was just a dream. But you’re creeped out after your conversation with Hizashi yesterday, and instead of being calm and collected, you wind up clingy. You’re worried Tomura will be annoyed, but Tomura’s pretty enthused about it, at least until you start shivering and your stomach growls. He dematerializes out of your grip. “Go eat or something. I’m not going anywhere.”

Your phone rings while you’re waiting for your electric teakettle to finish heating up and staring at a banana, trying to summon up any desire to eat it. You answer. It’s Keigo. “Yo, humans-only strategy breakfast today. Are you in or are you in?”

“You have to be in,” Spinner says from somewhere in the background. “You owe me.”

You do owe Spinner. A lot. “Okay. I can come over –”

“We’ll drive. Be ready to go in five minutes.”

You hang up the phone, feeling a little whiplash. Tomura’s hovering close enough over your shoulder to have listened in. He’s frowning. “You’re leaving again?”

“I owe them,” you say. Tomura flops against your back, chin notched over your shoulder, clearly pouting. “I’m sorry. I want to stay.”

“Then stay.”

“I won’t be gone long.” You twist in his arms to face him and hug him, burying your face in his shoulder. The dream comes back to you, the memory of those scraps of essence fluttering in your hands, and you hug him tighter. The words slip out before you can stop them. “I love you.”

Tomura freezes in your arms. “What?”

You should stay put. You should explain yourself. You can’t just drop something like that and expect him to let it go. In his spot, you wouldn’t. But instead of explaining, you yank yourself out of his grip and bolt for the front door. “Hey!” Tomura snaps, chasing after you. He’s not dematerializing. That gives you the edge. “Get back here. You can’t just –”

You open the front door, book it down the steps, and step through the gate just in time for Keigo’s car to reverse out of his driveway, hang a turn, and come to a stop in front of your house. “Get in.”

Jin is in the front seat with Keigo. You and Spinner are in the back, and you think that will be everyone – but then Keigo hits the brakes outside of Aizawa’s house, and Aizawa comes shambling down the front steps, looking like hell. Keigo snorts. “Looks like somebody had a busy night.”

Jin snickers, then twists around to look at you. “Did you sleep? You look like you slept a little bit. Damn, I had a bet that Tomura was going to keep you up all night.”

The idea of the neighborhood discussing your sex life, let alone betting on it, is absolutely horrendous, even if the former ghosts are kept apprised of everything that happens courtesy of Tomura’s unwillingness to keep a lid on his feelings. Jin waits for a comment from you, doesn’t get one, and turns to Spinner. “You hung out with him the other day. Did he say anything to you?”

“About what?” Spinner looks like he feels the same about this conversation as you do, which is reassuring. “We were just playing Pokémon. He was kind of mopey, but that was it.”

That reminds you – you need to thank Spinner. “How much do I owe you for what you gave him?”

“I didn’t buy new stuff. I just gave him old stuff I don’t really use,” Spinner says. “He’s not bad to play with. Better than Jin.”

“Don’t be mean,” Jin protests. “I suck!”

Aizawa knocks on the passenger-side window and scares all four of you. Jin rolls it down to stare at Aizawa and Aizawa stares back. “Out.”

The five of you set off for breakfast, Aizawa riding shotgun while you’re sandwiched between Jin and Spinner in the back of the car. The tight conditions don’t do much to improve your mood. “Is this really necessary?”

“Yes,” Aizawa says. “It seems the responsibility for dealing with Tomura’s conjurer will fall to us.”

You don’t know where he got that idea. From Hizashi? Hizashi’s conjurer is dead, so it shouldn’t matter to him if Tomura takes himself out killing Shigaraki. Everybody else in the car seems to be on board with it, though, and it’s not like you can get out of the car. You’re trapped. Worst of all, your phone is buzzing, and you have a bad feeling you know who’s sending the messages. You would, if you were in Tomura’s spot. If he’d told you he loved you and promptly ran for it, you’d start blowing up his phone with no guilt whatsoever.

You decide that for the sake of your sanity, you’re not going to look at your phone. You’ll deal with this when you get home and not before.

The restaurant the others are dragging you to is one you recognize. When you and your college friends needed hangover food after a long night, you came here. Keigo must have had a similar experience, because he orders for all five of you without looking at the menu, and once there’s coffee in front of everybody, he looks at you. “So. What did you find out?”

“I didn’t find anything worth dragging me out of my house this early,” you say. “Ask him.”

You point at Aizawa, who’s too busy chugging coffee to answer. He finishes his cup, takes Keigo’s, and drinks half of it before speaking up. “There’s a strong chance that Tomura’s conjurer has very few remaining ghosts. If that’s the case, all Tomura needs to do in order to cut his conjurer’s access to the world between is to remain materialized.”

To remain materialized. Like he’s apparently been doing for most of the last forty-eight hours. “If he does so,” Aizawa continues after the rest of Keigo’s coffee, “he’d leave his conjurer with close to the same degree of power as a human man possesses. Which would leave him vulnerable to us.”

“So that’s what this is about,” Keigo says. He steals Jin’s coffee, and you drag your cup closer in case Jin’s getting any ideas. “If we want the conjurer dead –”

“And we don’t want Tomura to get sucked back into the world between –” Spinner breaks in.

“We have to do it ourselves.” Keigo completes the sentence. “Our thoughts are safe. They can’t read our intentions. When he gets here, we’ll kill him.”

“Great,” you say. “That still doesn’t explain why I’m here.”

“We need to tell you because we need Tomura to buy in,” Spinner says. “If he decides to get into it with his conjurer as a ghost, we can’t help. And, uh –”

“The plan from before is still a good plan,” Jin says eagerly. You look at him, your mind utterly blank. “I mean, it sucks. But it’s better than nothing.”

“The plan from before,” you repeat. And then it clicks – the plan for dealing with Garaki, and the reason why you and not somebody else need to be the one who convinces Tomura. “Except this time I’m the bait.”

“Right,” Keigo says. “He’s not going to come out of hiding unless he’s got a good reason. We need to offer him something big. His wayward ghost’s human? It doesn’t get any bigger than that.”

If the conjurer’s hesitating to take on Tomura, you have a hard time believing that he’ll risk coming after you. But you don’t need him to attack you. You just need him to show himself. Still – “If Tomura doesn’t think you can protect me, he’ll never go for this plan. All of us fought Garaki. We couldn’t touch him.”

“Funny you should say that, because I remember you sneaking up out of nowhere and hitting him with a stick.”

You can’t keep the sarcasm out of your voice. “And look how much good that did.”

“A lot of good, given that he released Dabi when you struck him,” Aizawa says, and you shut up. “Garaki was connected to a thousand ghosts. It’s likely that Tomura’s conjurer is working with far fewer.”

“One.” You speak before the thought’s fully formed, but then you realize what you’re actually saying and keep talking. “He told me that when Mr. Yagi and his conjurer fought, he felt the other ghosts connected to his conjurer being destroyed. So unless that conjurer’s made a bunch of new haunts –”

“He hasn’t,” Aizawa says.

“Then it could work,” Keigo says. “Let’s come up with a plan.”

Thankfully, breakfast arrives before the planning starts in earnest, so the server doesn’t have to interrupt a conversation about how to get away with murder. The how-to-get-away-with-murder conversation includes you only tangentially. Your main role is to be here, memorize the plan, and present it to Tomura as totally simple, easy, and low-risk. You pick at your breakfast, horrified to find that you wish you were more involved in the planning. As terrible as it is, it would be better than thinking about what’s going to happen when you get home.

Eventually the group settles on a course of action. You’ll take off your bracelets to expose yourself and give them to Hizashi instead, hoping they’ll hide his powers long enough for the conjurer to close in on you. Once he does, Hizashi will restrain him, someone will contact Tomura and order him to materialize, and everyone else will kill the conjurer once he loses access to the world between. You’re pretty sure Tomura will have issues with multiple parts of the plan, and you say so, but as Spinner points out, Tomura won’t be able to stop the plan once it’s in motion without endangering you. You’re inclined to point out that all Tomura has to do to stop the plan from ever getting going in the first place is to stop you from leaving the house, but you’re pretty sure he won’t do that. In fact, if he’s mad enough at you about this morning, there’s a good chance he won’t let you back in.

You’re hoping to get home immediately after breakfast, but everyone else decides that they might as well run errands while they’re out and about. You get dragged to the dry cleaners, the grocery store, the game store, and the makeup counter at the nearest department store before Aizawa puts his foot down. On the way back to the neighborhood, everybody quizzes you about the plan, making sure you’ve got all the details. You’ve got them. You’ve also got a pit of dread yawning open in your stomach, and it gets worse the instant Keigo makes the turn onto your street.

You wonder if the other ghosts have felt anything emanating from your house, or if Tomura’s kept a lid on his feelings for once. Now that you think about it, you’ve got no idea what Tomura might be feeling right now. Keigo comes to a stop in front of your house and you square your shoulders. You’re about to find out.

The front door swings open as you climb the stairs, then shuts and locks behind you. Phantom runs to greet you, just like always, and you sit down to cuddle with her. There’s no sign of Tomura. With Phantom cuddled in your lap and licking your chin, you fish your phone out of your pocket and check your messages.

Tomura ❤️: did you mean it

Tomura ❤️: you can’t just say that and run away

Tomura ❤️: if you didn’t mean it don’t come back

Tomura ❤️: i don’t need you

Tomura ❤️: i don’t need any of this

You set your phone down and push it away. Then you look up and out at the empty space in front of you. “I meant it. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

Tomura’s voice echoes out of everywhere and nowhere. “Then why did you leave?”

“I wasn’t planning to say it right then. Or like that,” you say. “It sort of just – came out. Sorry.”

“How long?”

“Huh?”

“How long?” Tomura demands. He materializes partially in front of you, and Phantom scrambles out of your lap and runs to him. Based on the way she’s acting, you can tell he’s been hiding from her all day, and he feels guilty enough about it to materialize the rest of the way. He’s petting her, fussing with her ears, and when he speaks again, his voice is quieter but just as intense as before. “How long have you loved me?”

It crosses your mind that you could lie. Moreover, that you should lie. That you should say it’s something recent – the last few weeks, or maybe the last month at the very most. So recent that it barely means anything at all. But you’ve been in love with Tomura a lot longer than you’ve wanted to admit to, and you owe him the truth. “A while.”

You don’t have to specify much further than that. Tomura gets it. “Fuck,” he snarls, and Phantom startles, shies away. “Sorry. Sorry. No, don’t –”

“She just needs a second. Let her go.” You watch as Tomura loosens his grip. Phantom scrambles away, runs in a little circle, shakes so hard her ears flap, and comes cautiously back within reach. “I don’t understand. Why does it matter how long I’ve felt that way?”

“A month ago. That was my chance! If I’d known then – if you’d told me instead of – I would have –”

Tomura breaks off, and your chest tightens. “You wouldn’t have,” you say, but there’s a note of uncertainty in your voice. You don’t know that. You’ve fallen into the trap of thinking you know what’s going on in Tomura’s head before. “That’s not how it works. You have to want it –”

“More than anything else? Yeah.” Tomura’s jaw is clenched. He’s scratching hard at the side of his neck. “Except I didn’t want to change and find out you didn’t want me more.”

This is the fight you’ve been dreading. It’s almost a relief to get it out in the open at last. “Don’t pin this on me,” you say. “You weren’t sure before, but you’re sure now because I said three words?”

“They’re important!” Tomura snaps. “Everybody knows that. If I’d known you were sure about me –”

“That’s not what ‘I love you’ means,” you say. Tomura glares at you. “It means I’m serious about you. It means I don’t want anybody else. It means I see you in my future, and I like the fact that you’re there. But it’s not a sure thing. There’s no such thing as a sure thing.”

You shut your eyes for a moment, pressing the heels of your hands against them. “If you were waiting on me to say something so you could decide about being human, it must not have been what you really wanted.”

“You don’t know anything! The others were sure when they changed!”

“I don’t think they were,” you say slowly. “Aizawa was unconscious when Hizashi embodied himself. Spinner was barely conscious when Magne did it. Neither of them could have gotten an answer from their human. Himiko and Eri didn’t ask Jin and Shinsou if they could be their little sisters before they did it.”

“So?” Tomura’s voice is sharp and bitter.

“They didn’t have a sure thing,” you say. “They changed anyway. If being human was what you really wanted, it wouldn’t have mattered whether I loved you or not.”

“You don’t know anything,” Tomura says flatly. “It doesn’t matter now. This is how you’re stuck with me.”

“I’m not stuck,” you say. Tomura scoffs. “I’m not, Tomura. This didn’t happen because I’ve been hoping you’ll embody yourself permanently the whole time.”

“Then why?”

Why does anybody fall in love with anybody else? “I’ll answer that when you tell me why you let me stay here instead of scaring me off like everybody else.”

It’s quiet in your house. Phantom loses patience with the two of you and trots off into the living room, leaving you and Tomura to stare at each other from opposite ends of the front hall. You’re not going to try to answer his question, and he looks like he’s got no plans to answer yours, and contests to see which of you is more stubborn usually end with neither of you getting what you want. You edge a few inches backwards and lean against the door, posture open and legs loosely crossed. You know what this pose looks like to Tomura. It’s all the ground you’re willing to give, which means the ball is firmly in his court. All you can do is wait.

Tomura dematerializes, and your heart sinks – but then a rush of cold sweeps over you, and he settles into your lap like he always does. “You’re stuck with me like this.”

“I’m not stuck,” you say, rolling your eyes. “I haven’t been waiting for you to embody yourself. I guess neither of us know if we want that.”

Tomura rolls his eyes in response, you feel him relax slightly. “There are some things I know I do want,” you say. “I want to stay here with you. I want to call you whatever I have to call you so people stop questioning what you are to me. I want to introduce you to my parents –”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You don’t. You think I’ll act weird –”

“I’m counting on it,” you say, and Tomura gives you a surprised look. “If we’re weird enough to them, it’ll be a long time before they come back.”

Tomura laughs at that. You hear him laugh infrequently enough that it still makes you feel like you’ve won something. “I like it best when it’s just us,” you say. You wrap your arms around him, pulling him closer, and he lets you do it. He’s fully relaxed now, which makes you feel sort of bad for what you’re about to say. “And I know I want us to have sex. Today. What do you think?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tomura says, because he’s an asshole. He twists in your arms and presses his lips against yours – lightly enough that he can talk, and so can you. “I’ve only been waiting for a week.”

His voice goes rough and raspy in a way that makes your skin crawl with anticipation, but it’s not like you haven’t been waiting, too. “We could have done it earlier, but you were too busy being mad that I had to leave.”

Tomura protests, but you kiss him again, and he stops talking in a hurry. You’ve spent a lot of time making out with Tomura by now, and you know what he likes. You know how to wind him up at lightspeed, which has the effect of winding you up at lightspeed, which is great when the two of you don’t have a lot of time on your hands. It’s not so great when you’re trying to have sex. But you’ve been thinking for a while about how to make this work. Step one involves making Tomura come.

Tomura catches on quickly, but not quickly enough. He’s already grinding against you, his cock already hard and straining the confines of his pants, his breathing harsh and unsteady in your ear when you bow your head to kiss his neck. “What are you –” he breaks off, struggling to form words. “Hey. If you – if you don’t stop –”

“Do you want me to stop?” you ask. “I will.”

“No,” Tomura says through gritted teeth. You slide one hand between the two of you, tracing the outline of his cock through his pants. “Hey! I thought we were supposed to –”

“Have sex?” You keep touching him, your stomach twisting with desire at the needy, desperate sound he makes. “We’re going to. I need you to come for me first.”

“Why?”

“Do you want me to stop?” you ask again. You draw back from kissing Tomura’s neck to look him in the eye and your stomach twists again, harder this time. He looks so pretty, his face flushed and his dilated eyes shrouded by too-long eyelashes, and he’s shaking his head. No, he doesn’t want you to stop. Good. “Then you’ll see soon.”

You kiss him. He’s squirming in your lap, hips rocking unevenly as he chases the scant friction provided by your hand, and your mind goes temporarily blank as you imagine your positions reversed, your legs hooked over his hips as he thrusts inside you. The thought distracts you to such a degree that Tomura notices – and because Tomura’s an asshole, he points it out. “Are you getting off on this?”

“What else am I supposed to do?” you respond. “You’re just too pretty.”

Tomura startles, and you say it again. Better yet, you elaborate on how hot it is that he wants you this much, how much you like his desperate squirming in your lap as he seeks release. It doesn’t take much. A few sentences, and a strangled sound escapes from Tomura’s mouth as he shudders, throws his head back. A damp patch blooms through the fabric of his pants. You yank him closer, pressing your mouth against his throat. “Stay here, Tomura. Stay with me.”

He mumbles your name, and you kiss him again. When he speaks up, he sounds a little more like himself. “Now what?”

“Now we go upstairs,” you say. “This next part will be better with the bed.”

Tomura’s a little shaky as he gets to his feet, and you hold his hand on the way up the stairs. He’s holding onto his physical form pretty well. You shoo him over to your bed, shut your bedroom door, and head into the bathroom to retrieve your still-unopened box of condoms. Tomura leans back on his hands and watches you through half-lidded eyes. “We need those?”

“Yes, we do,” you confirm. You set them down on the bedside table and start taking off your clothes, starting with your jeans.

You’ve been naked in front of Tomura before. Fully naked when you didn’t know he was there, partially when you did, but getting purposely, completely nude in front of him is something new. You lose your underwear next, and take your bra off without removing your shirt. When you glance over at Tomura to see how he’s taking this, you find that he’s taken off his shirt and is in the process of peeling off his pants. He glances down at himself, grimaces. “Why did I have to do this first?”

“So you’ll be less sensitive for this,” you say. You decide to leave your shirt on for now. “I want to make sure you last.”

“I can last as long as I need to.”

You remember the time the two of you tried edging – tried being the operative word – and wince. “Then it was just to make sure. Are you really going to complain about getting to go two rounds instead of one?”

This really isn’t a good time for Tomura to hit you with that dumbest-person-ever look, but he’s doing it anyway. “It’s not fair,” he says. If there’s something you’re supposed to understand about that sentiment, you don’t have a clue what it is. “What if you can’t last?”

You laugh before you can stop yourself. “Most women don’t come from just this kind of sex by itself. Me lasting isn’t going to be a problem.”

“That’s stupid. Why are we doing it if you’re not going to like it?”

“I’ll like it,” you say. Your face heats up just thinking about it, but Tomura doesn’t look convinced. “It’s complicated. Do you really want to talk about this right now?”

“No. I want to do this.” Tomura reaches over, grabs you by the hem of your shirt, and yanks you onto the bed. “If you won’t come from sex, you have to come from something else.”

Like always, Tomura’s got weird ideas about how sex is supposed to work. You try to tell him that, but he’s already pushing the hem of your shirt up to bare your breasts, scraping his thumb along the underside of one while his lips close around the opposite nipple. Your skin is tingling. One of Tomura’s legs slips between yours and your hips lift against it involuntarily. Tomura draws back, smirking. “You’re already so wet. I barely did anything. You like watching me that much?”

“Yes.” You had a better retort, but he’s fiddling with your other nipple now, and it’s hard to focus. “You watch me all the time. I don’t get to watch you?”

“Only when I want you to.”

Once the two of you are done here, you’re going to introduce Tomura to the concept of hypocrisy. The thought forms in your head, then slips away as Tomura pushes your legs apart and sprawls out between them. Cold air brushes over your clit as he exhales, followed a moment later by his tongue. A gasp sneaks out of your mouth. Tomura makes a pleased sound, parts your folds with his thumbs, and dives into eating you out in earnest.

In general, Tomura is about as good at teasing as he is at edging, which is to say he’s terrible at it. He likes being told he’s good at things, and no matter how much he makes fun of you for getting off on him, he gets off on you just as much. But he’s teasing you today, absolutely merciless with it, his mouth barely leaving your skin while the pressure of his tongue and lips remains unbearably light. You lift your hips, seeking more friction, and he pins you down and continues at the same steady, insufficient pace.

“Tomura,” you plead. You know he’s weak to hearing you say his name. “Please, Tomura. I need you. Please –”

“What?”

“More,” you whisper, and Tomura stops, because he’s an asshole. “Please. When do I ever make you beg?”

Tomura’s cheek is pressed against your thigh. His mouth is wet, and you feel his lips curve into a smile. “Say it.”

Your brain is so scrambled that it takes you a second to realize what he means. And once you do, you’re borderline appalled. “No.”

“Why not?” Tomura accents the question by sliding two fingers inside you, torturously slow. “You said it before.”

“Humans don’t say ‘I love you’ during sex,” you say. The slow motion of his fingers is driving you insane, half because you know what he can do with them if he wants to and half because you’re a few minutes away from having his cock inside you and you’ve been thinking about it for weeks. “Besides, why should I say it again? You never said you loved me.”

Tomura’s only response to that is to bury his face between your legs. It doesn’t worry you. It’s impossible to worry about anything other than whether he’ll stop, but even if you could, you wouldn’t be worried about this. You’ve never expected Tomura to feel the way a human would about things, or express how he feels in the type of words humans use. You’ve always been willing to take what you can get, and if what you can get is the full focus of his attention and enthusiasm on making you come so hard you see stars, that’s more than fine with you.

You sit up as soon as your head’s stopped spinning, only to immediately find yourself squirming away from Tomura, who’s more than ready for round two. You put a hand on his chest to hold him back. “Condom first.”

It’s been a while since you had to deal with a condom, but it’s not the kind of thing you forget about. You decide it’ll be easier to do it yourself than to try to talk Tomura through it. You pry open the box, noting as you do that the collective expiration date is sooner than you thought it was, and get to work, trying not to think about the fact that you’ve had an unopened box of condoms in your possession long enough for it to practically expire. Tomura seems on board with the condom situation until you try to put it on him, at which point he makes a face. “I thought you had to wear it.”

“No, this time you do.” You haven’t been on birth control since your last relationship, but you’ll make an appointment with the doctor tomorrow and get back on it. If nothing else, you can be confident that Tomura’s not going to give you an STD. “Just to be safe.”

“Fine,” Tomura says, rolling his eyes. You shove at him until he sits back and leans against the headboard. “Hurry up.”

You were never uncertain about whether making Tomura come at least once before trying to have sex was a good idea, but now you’re convinced – even after that, he’s sensitive enough that putting on the condom makes him twitch and moan. For your part, you’re reminded all over again just how big he is, and you feel a sharp twinge of nerves. You shove it away. You’re not a virgin. You can handle this. This is why you decided to be on top.

You straddle Tomura carefully, leaning down for a kiss to settle your nerves. He’s enthusiastic as always, and it’s a struggle to pull away long enough to speak. “We’ll go slow at first. If one of us needs to take a break, we can.”

“A break?” Tomura’s eyes are dilated. His hands slide up beneath your shirt. Either they’re not as cold as they used to be or you’re getting used to them. “Why?”

“To compose ourselves so we don’t finish too soon.” You’re being very charitable in describing it as a “we” thing. “Or so I can adjust.”

You’re hoping Tomura won’t ask what you need to adjust to, and to remove the possibility entirely, you position yourself appropriately and start to sink down on his cock. It should be easy. You’re wet. You’ve already come once. You’re not a virgin. But Tomura’s easily the biggest you’ve ever slept with, and it’s been a while. The stretch is bordering on painful. More than bordering on it. Your eyes are watering.

Tomura sucks in a breath, eyes squeezed shut. One hand grabs a fistful of the pillows on the bed. The other seizes your hip like a lifeline, hard enough to leave ghost marks and real bruises. The pressure on your hip distracts you slightly from the pressure between your legs, and you sink down a little further, a whimper escaping from your mouth. Tomura’s eyes fly open at the sound. He shifts beneath you, and the sudden motion combined with your weak efforts to relax allow you to settle down the rest of the way, your body flush with his and his cock seated fully inside you.

You can feel your muscles straining, struggling to adjust. Tomura’s hold on your hip tightens even further. “Don’t move,” he hisses. You’ve got no intention of it. “I can’t – I want –”

“What?” You set your hands on his shoulders and cling desperately. You want to bury your face in his shoulder, but you’d have to lean forward, and you’re supposed to be riding him. You picked this position. You have to make it work, and the longer you have to adjust, the more accustomed you get to the pressure building up inside you. You need to hold still. You feel like you’ll split apart if you move. And at the same time you’re starting to feel – good. “Tomura?”

He shakes his head, jaw clenched. The hand on your hip loosens and slides down to cup the curve of your ass, shifting you forward and upwards ever so slightly. Even that slight change in position electrifies you. You gasp, and Tomura presses on your hip to shift you back to the same position as before. Then his hand slides to your ass again, and you figure out what he’s doing. You figure out what you’re doing, too. You take the motion Tomura outlined and shift slowly through it, at your own pace and under your own power.

The stretch of Tomura’s cock is easier to work through now that you know how to make it feel good. Each movement is still enough to drive the air out of your lungs, and your face heats up with a flush that spreads down your throat until your entire body feels hot and slick with sweat. Tomura’s flushed, too. He moves unsteadily beneath you with uneven jerks of his hips, trying to match your rhythm but either too inexperienced or too undone to manage it properly. The hand not grasping your hip slides beneath your shirt, along your back, fingernails sinking in. Nobody’s ever done that to you before. It’s really hot.

Tomura’s usually noisy when the two of you hook up – noisy, but never talkative unless you’re teasing him. At first you think this will be like that, and at first it is. The desperate noises escaping from his parted lips are as familiar as they are intoxicating, and your body tenses with desire in response. Tomura’s head falls back against the headboard, his chest heaving. And then, to your shock, he opens his mouth and speaks.

“You feel good,” he says, his voice raspier than you’ve ever heard it. “So good. So tight and hot and wet. You want this. Say you want it. Say you want me.”

You forgot about this part of sex, the part where anything feels reasonable if it keeps him inside you and keeps that almost-unbearable tension building through your body, radiating from the inside out. “I want you.”

“Say it again.” Tomura’s crimson eyes open, focus on yours. The intensity of his gaze and the sensation of his nails digging into your back and the feeling of his slow, almost experimental thrusts is almost too much. You’re not sure you can talk. “Say you want me like I want you. I wanted you before I knew how to want things. You feel so good. Fuck –”

You don’t have a praise kink like Tomura does, but you’ve never been immune to the sound of his voice. “I want you,” you say again. “So much, Tomura. I – ah –”

He’s moving faster now, not matching your pace so much as setting your own. You need that. You didn’t know how much you needed it until Tomura seized control, but for the first time in a long time, you’re completely at his mercy, letting him take the lead without direction or argument. You like the role you play in your relationship, and you wouldn’t want it to be different, but every so often it feels good to go along for the ride.

But it’s not a ride anymore. Tomura rolls the two of you over, pinning you beneath him. His cock slips out of you as you change position, and when you reach down to help him guide it back into place, you register something odd about the slickness of the condom. Any thought about it at all exits your mind as Tomura thrusts back into you. You hook your legs over his hips, gasping at the change in angle. “I want you,” you say again, and Tomura shudders, swears. “I want you, Tomura. I need you. Tomura, please. Please –”

You can feel him trying to control himself, trying to outlast you, and you’re about to tell him not to – except you don’t have to tell him, because the pressure building within you lasts for exactly three more thrusts before it snaps. You’ve never come just from something inside you before, but there’s a first time for everything, and you note through the haze that it makes a certain kind of sense. Tomura’s not like anyone you’ve met before, let alone slept with. Of course you’d come from just his cock.

Your back arches, your legs locking tighter around Tomura’s narrow hips, and although your vision is blurry, you can see him staring down at you, his hair falling around his face, his eyes dilated and his mouth open and panting. Your muscles clench tight around his cock and his jaw drops, the filthiest moan you’ve ever heard drifting through his cracked, parted lips. His hips jerk in the frantic thrusts that mean he’s close, the ones you remember from the times you’ve used your hands or your mouth, the times he’s rubbed himself to orgasm against your leg, your hip, your ass. What he says is familiar, too. “Tell me again. Tell me –”

“I love you,” you say. You’re his first – first handhold, first orgasm, first kiss, everything. If you have it your way, you’ll be his only. “You’re mine.”

Tomura comes, his body shaking, his eyelids fluttering. He’s so pretty. You tell him that and feel his hips twitch weakly again. Sometime – next time, maybe – you’d like to roll the two of you over and ride him to overstimulation, until he’s a sweaty, sticky, shuddering mess beneath you. That kind of thing will be easier once you’ve got birth control worked out. Right now there’s a condom to deal with.

Tomura’s physical form is fading fast, but he still manages to pull out, and he’s the one who alerts you that there’s a problem. “It broke.”

You slide one hand down between your legs and find that the condom is one hundred percent broken – and your fingers come away covered in some mix of your own wetness and Tomura’s cum when you dip them inside yourself to check. Tomura’s faded almost completely, but you can feel him watching, and feel his anxiety, too. There’s something endearingly human about it. Ordinarily you’d be unhappy, too, but you find yourself oddly calm. “It’s fine.”

“It’s fine?”

“Yeah. Not ideal, but I’ll pick up the morning-after pill on my way to work tomorrow.” You’ve never used it before, but you had friends who did, and while it’s expensive, it seems relatively low-impact. “I’m not worried about it.”

It’s quiet for a second. “So we can do it again.”

“Yes,” you say. “Not right now. I don’t think either of us has the energy for that.”

“I had to use some of your plants.” Tomura sounds guilty. “The – what do you call them. The ones that die every year.”

“Annuals. It’s okay.” It’s late October. They were dying anyway. “I’m glad you did.”

You don’t plant very many annuals. You wish you’d planted more – enough to give Tomura the energy to stay with you, so you won’t have to fall asleep alone tonight.  But at least you’ll fall asleep amidst the evidence of everything you do have, instead of thinking about the one thing you don’t.

You get up from the bed on absurdly shaky legs and dispose of the condom in the bathroom trash, then set about cleaning up. You can’t clean up all the way, courtesy of the condom fiasco – according to your college friends, who definitely had more adventurous sex lives than you did, cum leaks out at its own pace. You and Tomura didn’t bother getting under the covers, so you peel off the duvet and swap it out for a quilt from the closet. Then you start getting dressed.

You have to undress the rest of the way in order to put on clean clothes. You’ve just taken off your shirt when a cold hand lands on your back, scaring the hell out of you. You twist around, looking for Tomura, but he’s not materialized, and his hand lands on your back again. “What are these?”

It takes you a second to realize what he’s referring to. “The scratches? You did those. When I was on top.”

“They hurt.”

You shrug. The soon-to-be bruises on your hips hurt more, and you’re sorer than expected, courtesy of Tomura’s size and his enthusiasm towards the end. “It’s fine.”

“You’re really calm,” Tomura says suspiciously. “Why?”

You were thinking about putting on real clothes. You change your mind and get into your pajamas instead. “Sex is always sort of weird. I was expecting that. But sex for humans releases all kinds of stuff in our brains that makes us feel good, even if it’s not the best sex ever. And this was really good. So I feel calm. How do you feel?”

Tomura doesn’t answer. You open the door to your room in case Phantom wants in, then get into bed and curl up tight. The cold settles in around you a few moments later, and you hear Tomura’s voice in your ear. “I thought humans weren’t supposed to say I love you during sex.”

“Sometimes humans don’t do what we’re supposed to do,” you say. Tomura snorts. “It’s usually sort of a mood killer.”

“I liked it.” For a moment, Tomura’s physical presence feels real. You feel the weight of his arm draped over you, the solidity of his body curled around yours – and then he’s gone. “I love you.”

You didn’t need to hear him say it. You knew how he felt about you. But it’s nice to hear it anyway. You fall asleep fast, with a smile on your face.

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.

I'm so happy !

I looove cult of the lamb like, its one of my hyperfixation (the main at the moment even if Tomura is still my fav) and by posting on it i found other blog of fan of the game and all ! That's so cool ! 'Cause like i feel like the game is sooo underated !