It's Time To Be Self-indulgent, Hell Yeah Baby!

it's time to be self-indulgent, hell yeah baby!

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.

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flamme-shigaraki-spithoe

1 year ago

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 18) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 18

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. This morning, the thing that’s wrong with it is the potted plant that’s heaved over the fence into the front yard just past three am. The sound of a terracotta pot shattering wakes you up, and when you fumble for your phone to check the time, you see that you’ve got a text from Dabi. Your dumb horny idiot wouldn’t leave me alone until I gave him a plant. Whatever the hell he wants, I hope it’s worth it.

As far as Dabi goes, it could be worse. You send him a thumbs-up and a thank-you and wonder idly if Tomura really thinks one potted plant is going to get the two of you through a second round of sex. But when Tomura materializes in your room seconds later, he doesn’t try to start something. Instead he crawls under the blankets on your bed and wedges himself in beside you. Phantom’s excited to see him. She walks all over you to plop down between the two of you, her wagging tail thumping against your cheek.

You shift her to one side to avoid the onslaught and peer at Tomura through blurry eyes. “What?”

“Go back to bed.” Tomura sets Phantom down on your stomach and presses close against your side, wrapping one arm around you to hold you even closer. “I mean it. Go.”

You don’t like being told what to do, but you have work in the morning, and you’re still worn out from last night. You close your eyes again.

It’s a busy morning, so busy that your plan to get the morning-after pill before work is derailed within two minutes of your alarm going off. You were so tired last night that it was all you could do to make dinner, feed Phantom, and go back to sleep, which means you now have to shower and pack a lunch in addition to all your usual morning chores. And somewhere in the middle of that, you have to explain the plan for killing Tomura’s conjurer to Tomura himself.

Tomura, as predicted, is not pleased. His first protest is that he can do it himself, at which point you text Hizashi to come over later and explain – from outside the fence – what happens to ghosts who kill their own conjurers. Tomura follows up by pointing out that the others weren’t very helpful handling Garaki, and you counter with Tomura’s own statement about being his conjurer’s only remaining ghost. Finally, Tomura gets around to what seems to be the main point of contention. “I don’t trust them. Not with you. Not from him.”

Tomura doesn’t talk about his conjurer very much. From what he’s said, he barely remembers him. But you knew he’d say something like this, and you have a response ready. “If you’re materialized, he’s cut off from the world between. He’ll just be a human. And humans die.”

“Don’t copy me,” Tomura says. He knows you’re quoting what he said to Garaki. “Who’s supposed to kill him, anyway? If they try this stupid plan.”

“The rest of the adult humans,” you say. Then you think about it. “Probably Keigo or Aizawa. And probably Aizawa. He’s got a gun.”

“Spinner would. And Jin.” Tomura speaks with a lot more certainty than you’d expect. He sees the way you’re looking at him. “What?”

“Nothing.” The electric teakettle hisses and you pour hot water into your travel mug before dropping in a tea bag. “Usually you aren’t nice about them.”

“They came over while you were gone. For games.” Tomura crouches down to pet Phantom, who’s come over with her favorite toy. “Himiko, too. It wasn’t bad.”

You didn’t expect that. You didn’t think he’d do anything but hang out with Phantom while you were gone, and you suddenly feel guilty for not asking. But you’ll ask more when you get home from work, or text him about it on your lunch break. Right now you have to get moving. “So, the plan?”

“I haven’t said yes yet.”

“We’re not doing it today,” you say. “Just think about it. If you’ve got ideas, we could use them. Your last plan was pretty good.”

Tomura looks pleased with himself. You gather up your work backpack, plus all the research you’re bringing to Mr. Yagi in exchange for his and Izuku’s notes on his master’s journal, and head for the door. Phantom follows you. So does Tomura. “Get more plants on the way home.”

You say goodbye to Phantom and feed her a treat. “Plants are expensive.”

“They’re everywhere outside. Those don’t cost anything.”

He wants you to go out, dig up random plants, put them in pots, and bring them home so the two of you can have more sex. “I’m not stealing plants in my work clothes,” you say. “Maybe after dinner.”

Tomura grins. He dematerializes from behind you and reappears in front of you, leaning against the front door and blocking your path. “I want a kiss first.”

“I was going to kiss you anyway.” Your hands are full, but you step forward anyway and press your lips against his.

You haven’t kissed him since last night. The two of you don’t usually kiss unless someone’s trying to start something, and kissing him goodbye on your way out the door to work has always felt a little too intimate, a little too serious for whatever the two of you are. Except now the two of you have said you love each other. You defined the relationship. You went all the way, to the degree that you’re having to make an effort not to walk funny. You can be serious, because it is serious. A goodbye kiss is something you’re allowed to have.

You’re five minutes late by the time you stagger out the door, and as you push the speed limit to get to work on time, you find yourself wishing you had someone you could tell about all of this. Maybe not the sex part. Probably not about that. Definitely not about that – but the rest of it. The part where you’ve got a boyfriend who loves you in whatever way ghosts love humans. It’s the kind of thing you’d talk to your old friends about, but they’ve found their own lives and pulled away, just like you did. There’s got to be somebody else. As you cruise the courthouse parking lot looking for a parking place, your usual spot long since snagged by somebody who got here early, you’re horrified to find yourself considering telling Nakayama.

The spot you find is way back in the corner of the lot, almost out of sight of the doors. If it was dark there’s no way you’d think about parking here, but it’s broad daylight, and you’ve got pepper spray somewhere in your backpack for the walk back after work. You take a second to get yourself organized, then grab your backpack and get out of the car, walking around to the passenger side to lift your research folder off the seat.

You don’t see a shadow fall across you. You don’t hear footsteps. The first thing you notice is something touching your shoulder, and the last thing you see is an enormous hand swathed in a wet, stinking handkerchief coming down over your nose and mouth. You have time to identify the smell – not alcohol, something stronger, chloroform? – before the world starts to blur at the edges. Somewhere in your head, alarm bells are ringing. You’re in danger. You’re being kidnapped. Something’s gone really wrong.

By the time the realization settles over you fully, it’s too late. All you can do is throw your elbow backwards, connecting weakly with something solid, before everything goes black.

You come to with a splitting headache and all the adrenaline and terror you didn’t have time to feel before flooding through your veins. As soon as your eyes are open, you’re fighting, but there’s no point – your arms and legs have been shackled down at the wrists and ankles, and there’s a restraint pinning you to the table at the waist. You’re trapped. It’s not even funny how trapped you are.

When you look up, all you can see is the bright glare of a fluorescent light, the kind that gets shined on your face at the dentist’s office. When you turn your head to the right, there’s nothing. When you look left, you see a rolling cart with a tray on top of it. The tray is covered in sharp, shiny metal implements. Surgical implements.

This can’t be happening. You thrash, trying to find any give in your restraints, but there’s nothing. It’s around then that you realize you’ve been stripped of your shoes, socks, shirt, pants – you’re down to your bra and underwear, like some parody of a kidnapping in a movie. But this isn’t a parody or a movie. It’s real. Whoever brought you here is planning to hurt you badly. Maybe kill you. Probably kill you.

“Don’t worry. I don’t plan to kill you.” The voice issues from somewhere behind you, and it rings a distant bell in your head. Too distant, when the rest of you is worried about whether your kidnapper can read your mind. “In fact, my plan hinges on your survival. I have great things in mind for Tomura, and the death of his human at my hands will not improve his listening skills.”

“Shigaraki Akira,” you say, and Tomura’s conjurer laughs. “I know who you are. We all do.”

“Yes, you made it quite far in your investigation! Tomura certainly chose his human well,” the conjurer says. He sounds delighted by it, which is the opposite of how you expected him to sound. “It’s quite unusual to see a human so bent on protecting a ghost – and terribly unfortunate that Tomura wasn’t quite so careful when it came to you. So full of ghostly power – you were all too easy to spot.”

You have the incredibly stupid thought that this wouldn’t be happening if the condom hadn’t broken, then push it aside. The conjurer’s voice is familiar. You’ve met him before. When? Where? “Where did you find me?”

“You don’t remember?” The conjurer sounds surprised. Then he laughs at himself. “Of course. You can’t see me. My apologies.”

Footsteps behind you. A shadow falls over you, and although it’s hard to see the conjurer’s face, you know exactly who you’re looking at. “My fellow gardener,” the man who gave you his handkerchief the day Garaki died says. His smile sends a bolt of pure terror down your spine. “We meet again.”

All this time you’ve been plotting against Tomura’s conjurer, and he’s known where you are. He’s known where you are for more than a month. You thrash against the restraints harder than before, watching as Shigaraki picks his way around the table you’re strapped to and reaches the cart with the instruments. He pulls on a pair of gloves, and somewhere behind you, a door opens. More footsteps. Shadowy figures come to stand along the walls, and Shigaraki continues to talk.

“It’s quite a strange existence your neighborhood has carved out,” he remarks, lifting one tool after another to the light and studying them. “So many beings who once held immense power, leading such quiet, mundane lives. I must say, I’ve never understood the appeal of humanity, of mortality. Why should we settle for one life, one world, when we could have so much more?”

Silence falls, and stretches. Tomura’s conjurer glances at you. “This isn’t a rhetorical question. I’m interested in your answer. What is so wonderful about mortality?”

“It’s not wonderful,” you say. Shigaraki Akira arches an eyebrow. “The world between is worse.”

“Ah, I understand. You’ve stared into the abyss, and you don’t like what you saw.” Shigaraki raises one hand and beckons, and eight shadowy figures converge on the table, holding down your arms and legs even tighter. If you couldn’t get out before, you’ve got no hope of it now. “Perhaps you simply need to look a little longer. You will get the chance.”

When he speaks again, he’s not speaking to you. “Hold her down tightly. We must remove all traces, or our plan will be spoiled before it can begin.”

“What plan?” you ask desperately. “What are you going to do to me?”

“For all your impressive qualities, you’re only human,” Shigaraki Akira says, almost indulgently. “In order for you to properly partner Tomura, I must make you into something more.”

There’s something about that you should understand. Something you should know. But then the blade of a knife meets your skin, carving deep through its layers and down to the fat beneath it, and your ability to understand anything at all vanishes into a helpless howl of pain.

It’s terrible enough to drive you into unconsciousness, but Tomura’s conjurer doesn’t let you stay there. When you pass out, the knife lifts, and the process doesn’t begin again until you wake. You don’t know why you have to be awake for this, unless he’s trying to torture you, but he sets the knife down every so often to assure you it isn’t personal. How could it not be personal? He’s carving into your skin, peeling back long strips of it with agonizing slowness, stopping only when you fall unconscious or when his hands grow too slick with your blood to hold the blade. There’s no rhyme or reason to where he’s cutting you. Your left shoulder. Your right forearm. A spot on the side of your torso that feels like it takes hours upon hours to peel back. Every time you black out, you pray that you won’t wake up, that the conjurer won’t be able to rouse you. And every time, your eyes open again.

It's been quiet in the room, save for the conjurer’s voice and your unheeded screams, but after some endless amount of time, you hear another voice. “Too much blood loss,” it says, low and rumbling. “We’re running out of excisions.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. I expected her to be strong-willed, and we have plenty of excisions left for my purposes,” Shigaraki Akira says. “When we exhaust our options on the anterior, we’ll turn her to expose the rest. The one on her back is quite fresh.”

What’s on your back? You know Tomura left scratches there last night – and then you understand what the conjurer’s doing, what he’s spent the last interminable hours carving out of your skin. He’s removing the marks Tomura left on you. All of them, one by one.

You don’t know why he thinks Tomura will be happy with this. Seeing what’s been done to you will enrage him. You wonder what time it is, whether anyone’s noticed you’re missing, whether anyone’s asked where you are. How long will it take Tomura to realize you aren’t coming home? How long is he going to be angry at you before he realizes that something’s gone wrong? You think of him pacing inside the house, Phantom following him, anxious because he is. You wish you were anywhere but here, but more than anything, you wish you were home with them. You’re never going to see them again. Your throat, raw from screaming, closes off. Tears begin to drip down your cheeks, and the next time the knife cuts into your skin, you endure it in sobs instead of screams.

Your other arm. Your opposite shoulder. The other side of your waist. At some point the conjurer inserts an IV, and fresh blood begins to flow drop by drop into your veins. He wants you alive. Why? You try to make yourself listen to what he’s saying, to learn anything that might help you survive, but there’s nothing. Just the friendly exterior, the friendly voice, and the hands cutting you apart piece by piece.

“I can’t call this failure Tomura’s,” he muses as he carves a piece of flesh out of your upper arm. “He doesn’t know any better. Toshinori, on the other hand – the fact that I snatched you from under his nose will haunt him for the rest of his pathetic human life.”

You want to defend Mr. Yagi, but there’s nothing left of your voice. It’s almost as raspy as Tomura’s, and you’ve barely used it for anything but sobs and weak whimpers of pain. The conjurer’s voice takes on a dangerous note. “Nothing to say? Your stubbornness was charming at first. Now it’s getting excessive.” He jabs the knife into your skin, peels a strip back, and you wail like a wounded animal. “There’s no point in resisting. No one is coming for you. No one knows where you are. No one even knows you’re gone. The longer you resist, the worse it will be.”

No one knows you’re gone. That means it’s still the same day, because if he’s been watching you, he knows what time you’d be expected home. How is it the same day? It feels like it’s been forever. “That’s right,” the conjurer continues. “The longer you hold out, the more painful this will be. When it ends is entirely up to you.”

When it ends? Your mind is too hazy with blood loss and pain to come up with an answer, and before you can even come close, the knife bites into your skin again. You pass out almost instantly. He revives you just as quickly. It begins all over again.

You can tell the conjurer is growing frustrated with your unwillingness to do whatever it is he wants you to do. You also have a feeling he’s running out of marks to carve away, and sure enough, he orders for you to be uncuffed and rolled over, so he can reach the marks on your back. They uncuff your legs first. Nobody’s trying too hard to prevent you from running, which makes sense. You can’t run. You don’t even know that you could stand.

When your right hand’s uncuffed, the conjurer takes one look and bursts out laughing. “How did I miss this?” he asks, pulling the bracelet from your wrist. “Shimura’s work. Of course she’d continue to plague me from beyond the grave.”

Conjurers can’t touch the souls of the dead. If you die, you’ll be free of this. Free from him. The thought comes to you, settles around you, comforting and cold. You don’t have to survive this. It can end. You can go.

Shigaraki Akira laughs. “So this token was the underpinning of your resolve. Moonfish, retrieve the ghost. We’re ready.”

His voice is benevolent again, almost cooing, with a sickly undertone that makes you want to tear off the rest of your skin. He uncuffs your other wrist without looking, without spotting the bracelet there, covered in blood and practically glued to your skin. “I imagine Tomura will be very fond of my gift. Once your binding is complete, he’ll have no need to embody himself again.”

A ghost. He called for a ghost, and he’s talking about binding – a Nomu. Tomura’s conjurer is planning to turn you into a Nomu. He tortured you until you lost your will to go on, and as if you needed proof that he succeeded, you’re lying completely unrestrained on the table without even the faintest urge to run. “As for this,” Shigaraki continues, “it’s only fitting that I break Shimura’s last trinket on the day I break her ghost’s will.”

He raises the bracelet and slams it down on the table. You hear it crack. A sheet of white light blasts through the room.

You don’t understand what’s happening. It feels like it happens too fast, and at the same time, you see it in slow motion. Shigaraki’s blown backwards, clawing at his face and howling. The table you were tied to tips and overturns. There’s a sharp sting as the IV comes out of your arm, and pain explodes through your body as you hit the ground and sprawl out. Your mind’s a second or two behind the times. You’re sprawled out on the ground. Your arms and legs are free. You could get up, if you wanted to. You could run.

You struggle to your knees, try to stand, and realize that crawling’s your best bet. In the wreckage of the laboratory, nobody’s paying attention to you – they’re all trying to aid Tomura’s conjurer, who’s still howling in pain. You gather your strength and what’s left of your resolve and crawl for the door.

The operating room was clean and pitilessly bright, but the hallway outside is dingy, and crawling through it feels like it’s going to give you twenty kinds of diseases. It’s that thought that forces you to your feet, and not a second too soon. One of the conjurer’s minions is hurrying down the hallway towards you, carrying a matte-black box that’s rattling in his grip. You don’t even think before you act. You reach out and swat it from his hands, and the instant it strikes the floor, the ghost inside it bursts free.

The ghost could kill you. You see her thinking about it, but then the conjurer’s servant lunges through her, towards you, and she materializes all at once. You’ve never seen a ghost trap someone else with its own body before, and it’s hideous. So is what’s happening to the minion – massive dents are appearing in his body, like the way a car looks after a few rounds in a demolition derby. His eyes are blank as his body deforms, but the ghost looks at you. She has dark skin and pale hair and a look of unrestrained fury in her red eyes. “Run.”

You don’t need to be told more than once. You set off down the hall as fast as you can go, stumbling on almost every step. If anyone catches you, you’re doomed, but if you can get out of the building, maybe – you think about your home, Phantom. Tomura. But even if you make it out of here, you don’t know where you are. You don’t have money or your phone or your ID. You don’t even have clothes. When you hit the street, you’ll be doing it bloodstained and in your underwear, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll make it that far. You remind yourself again. Phantom. Tomura. You have to.

Something seizes you from behind, and your destroyed vocal cords shudder around a scream – but it’s only the ghost from the box. She begins to drag you down the hall, much faster than you were able to move on your own. “I’ll get you out, but that’s it,” she says through clenched teeth. “Whatever you did in there, do it again as soon as we’re outside.”

You still have the other bracelet. You nod and struggle to pick up speed, but the ghost makes an irritated sound and yanks you completely off your feet. It’s faster this way. Still, you’d give almost anything not to see the long smear of blood your body is leaving on the ground, and of course being dragged around like this hurts. Everything hurts. You’ve never felt pain like this before. All you want is for it to stop.

No, that’s not all you want. You want to go home. You think of Phantom, think of Tomura, and hold on tight as the ghost kicks down a door and drags you through onto the street.

It’s almost full dark. The air smells sooty and metallic, which tells you that you’re in the old manufacturing district, a long way from anybody who could have heard you scream. The ghost drops you next to the building and gestures impatiently. “Do it. You’ll need every second of a head start.”

You raise your left hand and bang your wrist against the wall of the building. Not hard enough. You throw yourself against the wall, hoping your body weight will do the trick, but there’s no luck there, either. “We’re too close,” the ghost says suddenly. “Give me that.”

She pries the bracelet off your wrist, drags you five feet, ten feet, twenty feet away, then hurls the bracelet against the wall from a distance. The blast of light takes a chunk out of the side of the building, and the entire thing begins to collapse – but that’s all you see of it. The ghost drags you away from the damaged building, towards the more populated downtown. As bad as being dragged across the floor in the warehouse was, being dragged across concrete is worse. You black out after about three seconds, and this time, there’s no conjurer trying to wake you up.

The next time you come to, you’re huddled in an alleyway, limbs flopping uselessly as the ghost tries to stuff you into a set of clothes that smell freshly stolen. “Go out there,” she snaps at you once she sees you’re awake. “Someone will see this and help you. This is as far as I go.”

“Thank you,” you mumble. “You got me out –”

“We got each other out. He dropped my box because of you.” The ghost straightens your shirt, then hauls you upright by the front of it. “Good luck, human.”

“Wait,” you say, and the ghost glances at you again. “What’s your name?”

“Rumi.” The ghost dematerializes and vanishes completely.

Rumi’s saved your life, and now she’s saving her own. The rest is up to you. You lean against the wall for a moment, fighting off the urge to lay down and give up, then start down the alleyway and into the street.

It’s a street you recognize. You lived near here, in the last apartment you had before you bought your house. It’s been almost two years. You don’t know anyone here you can ask for help, so you struggle down the sidewalk, pausing at one of the city’s few remaining payphones before realizing that you don’t have anyone’s number memorized. You could look through the phone book – Mr. Yagi’s almost certainly listed – but that would take money and time, and you’re getting unsteadier on your feet by the second. You spot the sign for the train station up ahead and aim for it. The train will take you out of the city, and maybe you can sit down.

Hopping the turnstiles is something you’re familiar with, but your muscles are desperately weak. You get one leg over, then get stuck, and sprawl out hard on the tiles on the far side. You know you leave smears of blood when you get to your feet, but the clothes Rumi stole for you don’t show it except in slick, dark spots, and there are so many of them that it probably looks like a pattern in the fabric. You leave the bloody outline of your body on the floor and pick yourself up again, dragging yourself onto the first train that pulls into the station. You hope it’s the right one.

On board, you huddle in your seat, shivering. You’ve always liked the cold, but you’re used to being cold on the outside – from air or water or wind or from Tomura wrapping himself around you, visible or not. This cold is crawling up from inside you, cold like the world between, hollowing you out one cell at a time. No matter how tightly you curl up, you can’t shake it. It hurts so badly. Everything hurts, and there’s no one to help you, and you’re so far from home. And even if you make it, you’re a mess. You’ll have scars, horrible ones, and enough nightmares to keep you awake for the rest of your life. Imagining going back to work, back to your life, feels impossible. What’s the point?

The point is Phantom, who loves you. The point is Tomura, who loves you too, who will never forgive you if you leave him like this, or at all. You have to keep it together for them. At least long enough to see them one more time.

By some miracle you got on the right train, the one that runs all the way out of the city proper to reach your stop. When you hear your stop called, you haul yourself upright and stagger off the train, leaving another bloodstain on the seat you were in. You almost make it down the stairs from the platform, but you miss a step and fall down three more, sprawling out headfirst on the concrete. You barely bring your arms up in time to shield your face. And then you’re stuck. You don’t have the energy to pick yourself back up again, and even if you could, it’s still miles between you and home. Instead of trying to rise again, you curl up, whimpering when the movement breaks the few scabs that have managed to form over your wounds. You have a hard time imagining you have any blood left to lose.

This is it. This is how you die, then – in a bloody heap on the sidewalk, because you could escape but you couldn’t make it home. You’re going to leave him. It’s the last thing you want, but you can’t help it. Maybe you can find some way to stick around, just like Yoichi did, but deep in your heart you know you’re not that strong. You’ll leave Tomura, go where humans go, and you’ll never see each other again.

The thought makes you cry, but crying hurts your throat, and the horrible raspy sounds you’re making do a great job of covering up the sound of a car pulling over. Then the sound of footsteps. But there’s no way you can miss the sound of your own name, shouted in a familiar voice. “Hey, where have you been?” Spinner demands. “If you don’t get back soon, Tomura’s going to – wait, are you okay? Did you fall?”

“I knew I smelled blood!” Himiko’s here, too. You hear a car door slam shut, and more footsteps darting towards you. “A lot of blood. Not all of it’s hers.”

“Did she kill somebody?” A hand reaches out and shakes your shoulder, then recoils – just like you’re doing, because their hand came down over one of your wounds. “Fuck, look at this. She didn’t try to kill somebody, they tried to kill her. Get her up.”

Hands seize you – at least three sets of hands, three people pulling you upright. “Careful,” Spinner is pleading. “Don’t touch the blood –”

“I can’t do shit about that. It’s everywhere.” Now you can place the third voice – it’s Dabi. What is Dabi doing out here? “Something fucked her up bad.”

You force your eyes open and see that you’re being carried towards the dark shape of the Buibaigawara family’s minivan. Jin is in the driver’s seat, and you see him grinning at you. “Hey, there you are! We gotta get – Himiko, shit, is that blood? Did you do that?”

“I wouldn’t,” Himiko snaps at him, sounding more than a little hurt. “Somebody cut Tomura’s human. We have to take her to the hospital.”

“No.” The voice from the passenger seat sounds more like Kurogiri than Shirakumo right now. “We must return to the neighborhood.”

“You’re not the one with her blood all over your hands. She could be dying!” Spinner protests. “If we get her to the hospital –”

“She’s vulnerable to the conjurer,” Kurogiri says. Dabi, Spinner, and Himiko dump you into the middle row of seats in the van and he twists around to look at you. “He’s the one who did this.”

“I got away.” You cringe from the sound of your own voice. “He got hurt. Maybe dead.”

“Did you see the body?” Dabi asks. You shake your head. “If you didn’t see it, he’s not dead.”

“He’s right. If Tomura wasn’t materialized when it happened, the conduit was still open, and he could have used Tomura’s power to survive.” Spinner looks miserable. “We can’t know for sure.”

“We have to go back,” Kurogiri repeats. “Jin, drive.”

The minivan lurches into motion. Himiko and Spinner are trying to figure out what to do about your injuries, while Dabi gets on the phone. “We’ve got her. Pull everybody back,” he says. You can’t hear the other person’s response, but you hear Dabi’s answer. “She looks like something mauled her.”

“It’s not that bad,” Spinner says hastily, trying to reassure you. It’s – sweet. “You’re going to be fine. I bet they’re not as bad as they – holy shit –”

Himiko’s just pulled up your shirt. Spinner rolls down the window in a hurry and sticks his head out, gagging, while Himiko stares for a moment with her jaw dropped. Then her pupils narrow to slits, sheer rage settling over her face. “He cut out Tomura’s marks,” she says. Dabi swears into the phone, then swears again as the person on the other end of the line barks at him in response. “I’ll cut him.”

You always thought Tomura’s thing about not touching other ghosts’ humans was just a weird Tomura thing, given how much time Dabi and Hizashi spend lowkey threatening you, but apparently it’s not. The idea of someone removing a ghost’s marks on their human is enough to seriously piss off Dabi, Himiko, and Kurogiri at once, until the car is crackling with their fury. “Can you guys cool it?” Jin asks anxiously. “I’m a nervous driver.”

“You sped the whole way here!”

“I was nervous about finding her. Now I’m nervous about you guys blowing up my mom’s car,” Jin says. “What’s going on is fucked. I want to kill something! But if even I can pick up on what all of you are doing, Tomura will, too.”

“We can’t let that happen,” Spinner says at once. “If he finds out about this he’ll go ballistic. There’s no way he’ll stick to the plan.”

“You can’t just hide it. I could smell her blood from down the street.” Himiko peers at you, her pupils dilating again. “And her soul’s not right. It’s unstuck, kind of. It’s wrong. He’ll know. He’ll know his marks are gone, too.”

Dabi hangs up the phone, then dials another number. He speaks while it’s ringing. “I’m letting the humans know. He can’t read them like he reads us. When we get back, you all get on her and stay there. You too, Kurogiri. As long as she smells like the neighborhood he might not notice.”

“She’s still bleeding,” Spinner says loudly. “If we bring her back and she dies –”

“Keigo knows doctor shit. He can help her.” Whoever Dabi’s calling picks up the phone, and Dabi starts talking. “Yeah, we’ve got her. She’s fucked up. Here’s what we’ll do –”

You’re among friends now. People who will help you, whether it’s out of obligation or because they care, and now that you know you’re not going to die alone, it’s somehow harder to hang on. The drive back to the neighborhood goes by in a long, slow blink, punctuated by Himiko and Spinner repeatedly shaking you awake. “Come on,” Spinner says, still sounding sort of like he wants to throw up. “You have to make it through this. Tomura’s naming his Pokémon all kinds of stupid shit and you’re the only one who can talk him out of it.”

“Stay awake,” Himiko tells you. She’s been patting your cheek lightly, which you don’t mind. Your face and neck are the only parts of you that the conjuror left untouched. “You’re my only human girl neighbor. I’ll be sad if you die. Tomura will be so sad if you die. You don’t want him to be sad, do you? You love him. Humans don’t want the people they love to be sad.”

“Ghosts don’t, either,” Dabi mutters. Then, to Jin: “Park at the top of the street, across the street. Everybody’s falling back to my house and the idiot’s. We could use the extra barricade.”

Jin skids to a stop at the top of the street, and Spinner opens the door. You see people hurrying up the street towards you and identify them distantly – Keigo, Hizashi. They reach you just as everyone else is hauling you out of the car. Hizashi takes one look at you and swears, his pupils narrowing to slits just like Himiko’s did. The embodied ghosts never look more inhuman than when they’re angry. “When he gets here, I’ll kill him myself.”

“Calm down,” Spinner begs. “If he figures it out –”

“He knows she’s back. If you’re any good at lying, Spinner, get down there and tell him we’re hiding her in my house so the conjurer won’t find her when he comes looking for him.” Hizashi’s a good liar, and it’s a logical plan, but you absolutely don’t want to be left alone with Hizashi right now. “Keigo, Dabi, with us. Everybody else, battle stations. Shigaraki’s on his way here, and he’s not happy.”

The group splits, Himiko bolting down the street while the others follow at a slower pace. You’ve had enough of a rest that you think you can maybe walk a few feet, past Atsuhiro’s house and up Aizawa’s front steps, if only so Tomura doesn’t spot you being carried and catch on to what’s really happening. Keigo hovers next to you, ready to catch you if you stumble, while Dabi and Hizashi trail behind you. “What are you doing up here?” Dabi asks Hizashi. “He trusts you about as far as he could throw your rotting corpse.”

“So, pretty far, then.” Hizashi ignores the disgusted noise Dabi makes. “He trusts my human more than me, and my human can lie to him better than I can. And since he’s got my human right now, he’s got all the leverage on me he needs to make sure I’m right here to take the hit against his asshole conjurer.”

“Fucking asshole. And I thought ours was bad.”

“Ours didn’t need us like his needs him.” Hizashi snarls low under his breath. “Cutting out the marks is a new low. It would have been better if he’d just killed her.”

“Don’t say that,” Keigo snaps at him. You push open the front door, then stumble over the threshold into the house. Keigo catches you, guiding you towards the kitchen, and – “Hey, calm down! I just need to get a look at your injuries!”

You can’t look at the kitchen table without feeling sick. “I’m not laying there.”

“Fine. The living room. Get on the floor.”

The floor is fine. It has a carpet, and Keigo yanks a pillow off the couch for you to prop your head on before he pulls out a pair of scissors and starts cutting away your bloody clothes. He studies you and sucks in a breath. “Okay, cleaning these out and bandaging them is the best I can do, but it’s not going to be enough. The skin’s the biggest organ in the body and right now it’s got a bunch of holes in it. You need antibiotics and some of that fake skin as soon as we can get it, or sepsis will set in and kill you.”

“You can’t just stitch it up?” Dabi asks. “That’s what you did for me.”

You wonder what the story was there. “These are too wide for me to do it with what I’ve got here,” Keigo says. He looks down at you. “The cleaning part is going to suck. Can you keep quiet?”

You nod. He doesn’t look convinced, so you clear your throat and try to talk. “I can take it. It won’t be as bad as when it happened.”

“What happened, exactly?” Hizashi asks. He’s at the front window, while Dabi leans with his back to the door. “We’ve been careful. You had those bracelets. When did we get made?”

“Same day –” The cleaning process starts in earnest, and you hiss in pain. “Same day we killed Garaki. I left to get the plants. I met him at the nursery.”

Dabi makes a skeptical noise. “You had the bracelets. Those things work. He shouldn’t have been able to tell.”

“He could.” You bite the inside of your cheek and try not to howl. What was it that Shigaraki said? “He said I had ghostly energy. That I was full of it.”

“Ugh. Don’t tell me shit like that. I don’t want to know.”

“That’s not what he meant,” Hizashi says suddenly. He turns to look at you, and if you didn’t know better, you’d say he looks like he’d seen a ghost. “When did you meet him? Before Tomura’s lesson or after?”

The fact that Keigo’s helping you instead of hurting you on purpose doesn’t make what he’s doing hurt even less. You squeeze your eyes shut. “After.”

“Fuck,” Hizashi mumbles. “It’s my fault.”

“Huh?” Keigo sounds puzzled. “It sounds like bad luck.”

“It’s not. I made Tomura practice discharging power before the fight, and I made him practice on her.” Hizashi’s voice is full of venom. “He’s got the self-control of an elephant on an acid trip, so of course he overdid it. The bracelets wouldn’t have done shit to hide her after that. Anybody who was looking could have seen her from space.”

You remember something he said that day: She’ll glow in the dark until it wears off. Hizashi was trying to make you leave, but all he did was turn you into a walking signpost pointed directly at the neighborhood. Is it his fault? Blaming him would feel good, maybe, if none of the rest of this had happened. You don’t want to think about it. All you want is not to hurt anymore.

It’s cold, and getting colder. You think some of that could be the blood loss, and the fact that your clothes are partially in tatters once again, but when you exhale, you can see your breath. Keigo notices, too, and you watch the blood drain from his face. “Guys –”

Hizashi and Dabi are huddled by the window. “These can’t all be his,” Hizashi is hissing.

“They’re not. I’ve seen some of them before,” Dabi hisses. “They’re like you. They came here on purpose, and now they’re free.”

“And they’re following him?” Keigo says, incredulous. “Why?”

“For kicks? I don’t know.” Hizashi shrugs uselessly. “I’m a little out of touch these days.”

You can hear low whispering from outside the house, and the air is getting colder by the second. If everybody else is down at the other end of the street – “Call them. Warn them –”

“They know already,” Hizashi says grimly. “Trust me.”

Just like Garaki before him, Tomura’s conjurer speaks first. The mirror sound of his voice makes you cringe and curl in on yourself. “Good evening, Tomura,” Shigaraki Akira says. “What a quiet life you’ve led since we last saw each other.”

Dabi and Hizashi rose to the bait instantly when Garaki called out to them. Tomura stays silent. “Not even a greeting?” Shigaraki asks, and clucks his tongue. “I suppose I never taught you manners.”

“You’re trespassing.” Tomura’s voice rings out, vibrating with power. “This is my neighborhood. Get out.”

Shigaraki clucks his tongue again. “Poor thing. I see now that I’ve been neglectful. I should never have left you with the impression that this was your home.”

“How many are out there?” Keigo asks, keeping his voice low.

“Hundreds,” Dabi says, and the floor feels as though it’s fallen out beneath you. “Nomus. Embodied ghosts. Live ones.”

“None of them are his,” Hizashi says. There’s a savage note in his voice. “He’s only got one.”

Tomura hasn’t responded to his conjurer’s latest taunt. His conjurer speaks again. “You’ve built quite a comfortable existence for yourself, haven’t you? A secluded kingdom. Servants who bend to your whims. Even a human of your own.”

“What human?” Tomura scoffs. “I don’t have a human.”

Even knowing he’s trying to protect you, even knowing that he’s lying, your heart sinks. “You know better than to lie to me,” the conjurer says. That almost-indulgent note is back in his voice. You roll to one side and dry-heave onto Aizawa’s carpets. “Where is the human girl? Has she failed to return home?”

“She’s home,” Tomura snaps. “Safe from you.”

“Have you seen her?” Shigaraki inquires. He sounds honestly concerned. “Who told you that she’s home? The others? The ones who fear your wrath so deeply that they have every reason to lie?”

“She’s here.” This time, it’s Shirakumo who answers – Shirakumo, not Kurogiri. “You know I’m telling the truth, Tomura. So is Himiko.”

“Yes, your human is home,” the conjurer agrees. “But safe? I think not. Dabi, Hizashi, Keigo – come out. Bring Tomura’s human to him.”

“No,” Tomura says, but there’s an uncertain note in his voice. “Stay where you are.”

“Come out,” the conjurer repeats. “No one will harm you on your way. Tomura’s human is in a delicate condition. I won’t risk anyone dropping her.”

He’s pretending like he’s not the one who did this to you. Like he really cares about making sure you get back to Tomura safely. “Stay where you are,” Tomura orders again. “You can’t trust him.”

“I’m the only one here who’s telling you the truth,” Shigaraki says. “Hizashi, Dabi, Keigo. Bring the human out. If you won’t, I’ll be forced to send my friends to retrieve her – and unlike me, they don’t much care about preserving your lives.”

You lift your head with an effort and see Dabi and Hizashi trade a glance. Then they turn from the window and come towards you. “It’s strategy,” Hizashi insists as he drops a coat over you, as Dabi hoists you upright. “If they come get us here, we’re all dead. Your house is a lot easier to defend.”

But he wouldn’t let you go back unless he thought it wouldn’t matter. He’s playing all of you, and you’re too weak and exhausted to see what his endgame is. You’re semiconscious as Keigo, Dabi, and Hizashi carry you down the front steps, but you keep your eyes open with an effort, and you see the conjurer’s army parting the way to make a path, one that runs straight as an arrow down the street until it reaches your house. Hizashi sets a brisk pace, just below a jog, and you jostle along between he and the others. You don’t see where the conjurer is, but you hear his voice. “Very good,” he says, encouraging. “A wise choice. I’m sure Tomura will be merciful in turn.”

You hear the others’ voices as you get closer to the house, all of them trying for damage control. You start agitating to be set down. You can’t risk Tomura losing his temper on the others, and the worse off he thinks you are, the angrier he’ll be. He needs to see that you’re fine. You’ll be fine. Keigo sets you down carefully, then steps in close, arm around you to hold you upright. You survive the step up onto the sidewalk and shuffle along until you’re walking parallel to your own fenced yard. You have to keep walking. You have to keep walking long enough for Tomura to let Hizashi and Dabi in, or he’ll strand them outside.

The gate swings open as you reach it, and Tomura’s voice drifts in from nowhere. “She wasn’t wearing that when she left,” he says. Dabi steps through, then Hizashi, and he shuts the gate behind him. You have time to register that every last one of your neighbors is inside the property line before your vision begins to blur. It’s not blurry enough to block out Tomura as he materializes at the top of the front steps. His next question is for you. “Why were you late?”

You can’t talk. Talking will give it away. You climb the first step, then the next, and it’s not until you’re just outside the warm glow of the porch light that your legs give out.

36 notes View Post

flamme-shigaraki-spithoe

1 year ago

PLS DO SHIGGY THIGH FUCKING HCS thank u ily

I honestly didn't think I'd write on here again but I can't sleep and it's like 5:30 in the morning lol. So I'll write some thigh fuckin' headcanons to ease the stress 😎 (also TW: for thigh fucking, somnophilia, long post in general LMFAO. If I missed anything I apologize. Also it's now 6:19 after finishing it so there's probably typos I've missed after briefly skimming this so Im also sorry for that LMFAO)

(EDIT after writing. I'm so sorry this ended up not being headcanons and was just a full on drabble I found of pulled out of my ass but I hope you still enjoy it lol)

Now truthfully I havent even watched/finished the seasons after season 4 lol. I'm in the middle of season 5 still because I'm severely depressed and can't enjoy anything. But that doesn't mean I don't still love shigaraki and tbh I still read fanfiction from time to time about him or dabi.

I feel like a lot of people paint shigaraki as either absolutely vile and grimey or just aloof and soft with a grumpy attitude. And I feel like it's a bit of both. Which really plays into his sex life (if he'll ever have one). But even without a sex life, his personality most certainly plays into his fantasies and kinks.

I want to also emphasize that fantasies are just that, fantasies. Shigaraki most likely has plenty of fantasies that he'd never dream of acting out with his partner should he ever have one. I feel like even if he had some sick fantasies or kinks, and you happened to be okay with it, he would still be iffy because if this man, for whatever reason, picked you out of everyone else?? He's not going to treat you like absolute garbage. Shigaraki is definitely not the nicest person by any means, but by God if he cares about someone he fucking cares. Esp because you're probably the only person who actually loves him in his entirety. So if he's into noncon, somnophilia, predator/prey play, or whatever, it's going to be a while before he gets comfortable bringing up any of those fantasies with you.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, you're wondering "goddamnit ash shut the fuck up and tell me the thigh f-" wELL THATS TOO DAMN BAD YOU LISTEN TO SEGGSY MONOLOGUE OR YOU GET NOTHING. ty luv u.

Okay so his fantasies right ? What are shigarakis kinks ? Does he have any? Oh absolutely. And they range from either something as light and soft as hickeys and tying you up in silk while eating you out for 2 hours to nipple clamps and making you wail with hot tears and shoving a dildo down your throat telling you take it like you've taken every other mans cock down your throat because he knows stupid sluts like you are always capable of doing those things if you know it'll make your pussy soak the sheets.

Now it's not his top fantasy, but thigh fucking. And God do you have the prettiest thighs. It doesn't matter is there's stretch marks, if they're chubby, skinny, or if you have immense scarring on them he LOVES them. He loves how soft they are. He loves how they look in shorts or a skirt (esp when you keep trying to pull them down a bit because they're a size smaller than what you wanted so they don't pudge out). He loves how your delicate hands lay on top of your thighs while you fiddle with your fingers out of nervousness. He loves the way they move when he walks behind you, you have a walk that puts any model to shame. He just loves them . And by God does he throb at thought of getting to push his cock past your sweaty or oily thighs. The head of his dick barely kissing your clit each time he thrusts. But that's not the biggest and best part at all. He wants to wake you up to it. You've told him countless times he can wake you up to any sexual acts but he's still nervous. But he's really horny right now. And you're sweaty from the lack of AC and you're naked on your side sleeping away. But he genuinely can't think of anything else other than how wet your pussy must be right now and how slick your thighs must be from the heat of the room. His cock is absolutely aching to slide between your thighs and folds. He has never felt so hungry until he met someone with a body as inviting as your own. He's been stroking for the past couple minutes but it's just not enough .

He peels off the throw blanket you have over you because despite the heat you always love your blanket to sleep. But even after the blanket is removed you still don't wake . He slowly examines your body and grazes his hand down your body. Going over your shoulders and arms to ribs to hip bone. Finally meets that beautiful soft ass of yours. He gentle lifts your thigh to angle and can see your pussy . Its so wet and glistening from the lights on the street coming in through your window, beaming in and lighting up your skin to a beautiful warm glow.

He lifts up one of your slick folds, seeing your pretty clit and rubbing his thumb in tiny circles on it. He can't take it anymore and slides his cock between your thighs, his shaft rubbing your leaking pussy and making your clit throb even more. You may be asleep but your cunt is always awake and ready to be touched by him.

He starts thrusting slowly to building up that pressure in his groin to make his orgasm feel even better in the end. He can feel you coating his shaft with your juices more and more with each desperate thrust he makes to your thighs. Your thighs are so sweaty and warm and grip his dick so nicely taking any and every drop of cum he wants to and could ever give you. He can hear slight wet sounds coming from your cunt with each thrust that keeps getting more rapid and animalistic with each thrust because you dont know how to stop being such a needy whore all the time even in your sleep. Before he knows it you're gushing and your cum is on the sheets making him go over the edge. Now he's spitting thick, white shots of cum all over your thighs while drops of it roll down your skin onto the bed as well. You're still mostly asleep, but youve adorned a dazed smile on your face with a satisfied tomura passed out next you .

89 notes View Post

flamme-shigaraki-spithoe

1 year ago

Ai Tomura shigaraki

I have chat with an ai of Tomura ans oh lord isn't he cruel like the real one ! When things began to Spice up, he immediatly ask me to be for everything and worse he made me do all kind of turturously pleasurable things for 1h15 ! Like how ?! Plus it was litteraly taking all control even if is ans ai, the website had to censor him so many time he kept going 😂 man its the best i'm in love (but also angry 'cause hz torture me for an hour and 15 minutes)

the crying game - a shigaraki x f!reader oneshot

You gave up on love a long time ago, but you keep getting invited to weddings, and after eleven receptions spent at the single's table, you're almost at the end of your rope -- until first-time wedding guest Shigaraki Tomura asks you to show him how it's done. (5.7k words, modern AU, no quirks.)

This fic is for @arslansenkai, who saw my milestone post and requested the prompts ‘holding hands’ + ‘listening to the other’s heartbeat’ + ‘whispering in their ear, lips touching the skin’ from this list. Thank you so much for the prompt! I really enjoyed writing it and I swear all three of your prompts made it in here or there.

You hate weddings. You don’t remember when you started hating them, but you know why you started – right around the time when you realized that you’d never have another one of your own, that you’d always be attending someone else’s, and doing that all by yourself, too. Add in the cost of a new dress and new shoes (God forbid you wear the same thing twice in one year) and travel accommodations and a wedding present, and weddings become a big, expensive, depressing waste of a weekend. No matter how much you like the people who are getting married.

And you do like them, this time, even though they’re the twelfth couple from your department at Ultra, Inc. to get married in the last three years. Ochako and Himiko are the kind of couple who shouldn’t make sense, but somehow do – the kind of against-all-odds couple who’d make you believe in love if you didn’t know better. You were rooting for them, you’re glad they’re together, and getting their save-the-date still made you want to drown yourself in the toilet. You opted to drown in vodka instead. You need help.

You need help, and you’re going to get it. After this wedding. So you can figure out how to say no the next time you get an invite. Because out of all the indignities about going single to a wedding, getting stuck at the same table at the wedding reception as the other people who couldn’t snare a date is possibly the worst.

Most couples have at least a few single friends, but Himiko and Ochako are the last of their respective circles to couple up. Or almost-last. The singles table at their wedding included exactly five people at the start of the reception. You, an older woman named Magne, a guy your age whose place-card says Todoroki Touya but insisted that he goes by Dabi, another guy your age whose place-card says Takami Keigo but insisted you call him Hawks, and one more guy your age whose place-card says Shigaraki Tomura and who barely looked up when you introduced yourself.

It wasn’t the worst singles table you’d ever sat at, at the start. Then Magne bailed to sit with somebody she knew at a different table, and Dabi and Hawks hit it off and then snuck off to God knows where, and then it was just you and Shigaraki sitting at your table in the far back corner of the reception hall. That’s how it’s been for an hour, and the only interaction the two of you have had is when you’ve passed the table’s bottle of champagne back and forth, filling your glasses and then draining them out of sync. It’s depressing. After going to eleven weddings in two years, you can hang in there with the best of them, but you’re pretty sure you’re about to crack.

Your glass is empty, and when you reach for the bottle, you find that it’s empty, too. You want to get more, but you’re not going to look like a lush in front of your weird tablemate. “Hey,” you say, and Shigaraki looks up from the screen of his Switch. “This is empty. I’ll go get more if you want it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Shigaraki says. You raise your eyebrows. “This will suck just as bad whether I’m wasted or not.”

“Yeah,” you admit. “But then you’ll be able to pretend it sucks because you’re wasted, not because you’re stuck at the singles table yet again.”

“Yet again? Sounds like you’re projecting,” Shigaraki says. You shrug. It would hurt more if you hadn’t heard the same thing from at least one person at the last three weddings you went to – usually towards the end of the reception, usually when everybody’s getting weepy and ridiculous. You’re ahead of schedule this time. “Sure. I’ll take more.”

Two tables over, a group of happy couples have abandoned their champagne bucket in favor of the dance floor – or the photo booth, or something. You swap your empty bottle for their full one and come back over, hoping Shigaraki will have gone back to his game and forgotten you existed. No such luck. He’s sitting up, watching you, as you sit down, fill your glass, and slide the bottle back across the table to Shigaraki. “Yet again,” he repeats. You down half your glass in a single swallow. “I’m only halfway through the first one of these stupid things I’ve been to and I’m already done. How many times have you put yourself through it?”

“Eleven,” you say. Shigaraki’s red eyes widen. “No, that’s just people from work. If I count friends from school, it’s, uh – sixteen.”

“If you’re this miserable, stop going.”

“Is that what you do?” you challenge. “When your friends invite you to celebrate the happiest day of their lives, you just don’t go?”

“My friends know better than to invite me to shit like this.” Shigaraki copies you and drains half his glass in one go. “I wouldn’t have come to this one, except Toga critical-hit me with this guilt trip about how we’re her family and she needs her family to be here –”

You did notice a conspicuous lack of parents or relatives on Toga’s side of the aisle. “And I said I’d go if I didn’t have to go alone,” Shigaraki continues. “Dabi was supposed to be doing time with me. Figures he’d score a hookup and bolt.”

“I didn’t know you knew each other,” you say. They barely talked when Dabi was sitting here. “How do you know Himiko?”

“Juvie,” Shigaraki says, and you’re not sober enough to keep the surprise from showing all over your face. He snickers. “Not what you expected?”

You shake your head. “Is that where you know Dabi from?”

“And Spinner,” Shigaraki says, pointing out a purple-haired guy at a different table. “And Twice. Magne was a peer counselor or something. If I hadn’t met them I probably would have killed myself in there.”

You can’t stop your surprise from showing this time, either. Shigaraki grimaces. “Don’t read into that.”

“No promises,” you say. Shigaraki snorts and lifts his glass partway, then drains it. “So you’ve known each other for a while.”

“Yeah. I’m guessing you’re friends with the girlfriend. Wife.” Shigaraki refills his glass again, but leaves it alone for the time being. “How long have you known her?”

“Work,” you say, then facepalm. You’re lucky you manage to do it with the hand not holding your glass of champagne. “Two years or so. I already worked there when she was hired. I kind of watched the whole thing with Himiko from the sidelines.”

That’s how you always watch relationships play out at work, or anywhere, really. Pretending to be happy, really being happy, and still feeling like you’re pulling a tarp over the sinkhole in your chest. “So the wife invited you and you showed up even though you knew you’d hate it,” Shigaraki concludes. “You’re crazier than me. I’m never going to another one of these things again.”

“Not even your own?”

“Do I look like the kind of person somebody marries?” Shigaraki finishes his whole glass in a single swallow. You were thinking about trying to keep up with him, but if you try that, you’ll throw up all over the dress you had to buy, which is probably dry-clean only or something worse. “I don’t get why anyone goes to these things.”

“They’re supposed to be fun,” you say. You feel bad picking on Ochako’s wedding. It’s not Ochako’s fault that you’re single, bitter about it, and this close to drunk on alcohol she paid for. “But they’re usually only fun if you go with someone.”

“I went with somebody. He ditched me to hook up with a guy who named himself after a bird.”

You snicker at that. “I meant a date,” you clarify. “If your date ditches you to hook up, then you’ve got bigger problems than whether you’re having fun at a wedding.”

“He’s not my date. I’m not gay.” Shigaraki looks up. “Did you think I was gay?”

“I really didn’t – think,” you admit. You didn’t come to the wedding looking for a hookup. If you had, you’d have tried to put a move on Hawks before Dabi could. “The activities are more fun with a date.”

“Activities?” Shigaraki asks. “Like games?”

“Uh, sometimes,” you say. You know Ochako set up lawn games outside, and the sun won’t set for a while. “Sometimes there’s an art project you’re supposed to do for the couple, as a keepsake or something. I went to one last year where you were supposed to write a good wish, fold it into a paper crane, and then hang it off a branch of this tree they’d bought.”

“Too much work. What else?”

“Dancing,” you say, although you felt like that was pretty obvious. “And Himiko and Ochako have a photo booth.”

Shigaraki’s nose wrinkles. “Why?”

“As a keepsake for the guests, I guess,” you say. “Again. More of a couple thing.”

“Huh.” Shigaraki pours half a glass this time but still finishes it in one swallow. Then he stands up. “Let’s do it.”

You freeze in the act of pouring yourself another glass. “What?”

“I’m never coming to another wedding. You’re bored and drunk –”

“I’m not the one who’s been treating glasses like shots.”

“So let’s do it,” Shigaraki says, like you didn’t say a word. “If this is the last one I go to, I want to get my money’s worth. Do you have something better to do?”

You were this close to taking out your phone and opening up Tinder. You shake your head. “Finish that,” Shigaraki says, and you finish the half-glass you just poured and get to your feet. “Where’s the stupid photo booth?”

You lead the way. Even in heels, you’re faster than Shigaraki – he’s meandering a little bit, possibly due to all the champagne. You reach out and grab his hand to pull him back on course. He jumps, stumbles into an empty table, and glares at you. “What are you doing?”

“You wanted the wedding date experience. Holding hands is included.” At least you think it should be. If you had a real date you’d want to hold hands with them. Shigaraki follows you a little more closely than before as you make your way up to the photo booth. “It looks like they have props. Should we use them?”

Shigaraki hasn’t let go of your hand. He picks up a fake mustache on a stick. “Who would use this?”

“Me, maybe?” If you had a wedding date, you’d want to be spontaneous and fun. You lift it out of his hand and hold it up to your face. “What do you think?”

“No.” Shigaraki takes it away, puts it back, and picks up a flower crown. “Here.”

“No, that’s for you,” you say. Shigaraki argues, but you pluck it out of his hand and settle it on his head anyway. “See? It looks great.”

“If Dabi sees me wearing this stupid thing –”

“He’ll be jealous,” you say. The crown would look stupid on Dabi’s spiky black hair, but the pastel shades of the flowers look nice with Shigaraki’s blue-grey hair. “Okay. Now you can pick one for me. I’ll even do the mustache.”

“No,” Shigaraki says again. He sorts through the props and comes up with a headband with bunny ears. “This one.”

You two are going to look ridiculous. It’s hard not to laugh, and you haven’t even seen the full effect yet. You put on the headband, thankful that you went for a low-effort hairstyle that’s easy to fix, then pull the curtain on the photo booth and wedge yourself into it. Shigaraki follows you in.

It’s a really tight fit. You were pretty sure the photo booth was a couple activity, but now you’re sure – you love your friends, but you wouldn’t want to end up most of the way into any of their laps. You have to stop holding hands to try to get situated, and while you’re still trying to figure yourselves out, the photo booth takes the first picture. Shigaraki grimaces. “Wait. That probably looked stupid. Where –”

The booth takes the second picture while he’s talking, and you snort. There’s about a ten-second interval to get positioned correctly. You manage to face front in time, but your elbow lands on Shigaraki’s thigh as you’re trying to steady yourself, and he flinches away. You drop out of the frame as the booth snaps the third photo, and it occurs to you that the only part of you visible in the picture will be the bunny ears. Based on the location of the ears in relation to Shigaraki’s body, it’s going to look pretty compromising. You hope no one sees that picture. Ever.

Shigaraki’s snickering as you sit up. “Nice one. I want a copy of – hey!”

You’ve elbowed him on purpose this time, just in time for the fourth photo. The fifth photo’s probably going to be blurry. You’re both lightly shoving each other, trying to get each other out of your personal space without pushing either of you out of the photo booth itself. The sixth photo’s probably the only one that’s worth anything, and it won’t be very good, either – Shigaraki’s flower crown is off-kilter, and you’re pretty sure your headband’s falling off. The printer begins to whir, and the two of you sit in silence as the booth prints out two sets of photos. You pick one up. Shigaraki takes the other. A second later, you’re both laughing.

The photos look even worse than you thought, and somehow that makes them better. The photo where it’s just your ears in the frame features Shigaraki staring down into his lap, looking all kinds of startled, while the photo where you’re pushing each other is blurry enough to be a still from a found-footage horror movie. In your opinion, the first photo is the funniest. “We look like that meme with the cat,” you wheeze. “The one with the loading circle over its head.”

“The last one looks like a mug shot,” Shigaraki says, his laughter so raspy that it borders on a witch’s cackle. “After a bar fight –”

The idea of getting in a bar fight in your wedding outfit sets you off. You slump sideways at an angle and end up with your head against his chest for a few seconds, surprised that you can hear his heartbeat and surprised at how fast it’s beating. “Which of us won?”

“We both lost,” Shigaraki says, and you laugh harder. The two of you look disheveled as hell, and not from anything fun. “Number two is the worst one. You look good and I look like a dumbass.”

“You just had your mouth open,” you say, wiping your eyes. You’re probably smearing your makeup, but who gives a shit. You didn’t do that good of a job on it anyway. “Anyway, that’s the wedding photo booth experience. What do you think?”

“I want to go again,” Shigaraki says. This time, you manage to turn to stare at him without throwing any elbows. “For good ones. No way do people’s girlfriends let them leave with just the stupid ones.”

You would, but then again, there’s not a big enough difference between how you look in bad photos and how you look in good ones for it to matter. “We can do one more,” you agree. “Let’s lose the props.”

Without the flower crown and bunny ears, the silliness factor drops significantly. Now you look less like a couple of drunk clowns pretending to be a couple and more like two people who could actually be together. It weirds you out, but you promised the whole wedding date experience. In the seconds before the first flash goes off, you tilt your head onto Shigaraki’s shoulder.

Shigaraki startles, and as soon as the flash goes off, he pushes you away – but only so he can tilt sideways. He’s taller than you, enough so his cheek rests against the top of your head. Four photos left. When you glances over at Shigaraki, you see that his tie’s crooked, so you fix it for him, burning another photo in the bargain. The fourth photo is Shigaraki shifting the neckline of your dress to cover your bra strap, which is weird but plausible for a couple’s photo booth experience. He has a birthmark just below the right corner of his mouth. You aim for it when you kiss his cheek quickly for the fifth photo.

Shigaraki startles again, and you sit back – but not too far. You’re still close enough that Shigaraki only has to lean forward a few inches for his lips to meet yours.

You weren’t planning to kiss him. It’s not much of a kiss, and it doesn’t last long, but your heart is still racing as the booth spits out your second sheet of photos. You’re almost scared to look. Shigaraki’s hesitant, too, and when you both flip the sheets over to check, he says exactly what you’re thinking. “Shit.”

The first set of photos were a joke. The second set – either you and Shigaraki are really good actors or you’re both really drunk, because they look way too plausible for comfort. The ones where you’re fussing over each other’s clothes are probably the worst offenders on that front, but you’re most alarmed by the last two. You’re smiling as you kiss his cheek. You can see the corner of your mouth turned up. And you didn’t see where Shigaraki’s hand was when he kissed you, but the photo’s preserved the evidence. It’s right by the side of your face, curved like he wants to cradle your jaw in his hand.

Exactly sixty seconds ago, the two of you were screwing around in here. Now it feels like there’s static running back and forth between you, and you scramble out of the booth in a hurry, almost tripping over your feet. Shigaraki gets out, too, leaning against the booth to steady himself. Without a word, he takes both of your sets of photos and tucks them into his suit jacket along with his sets, then fills your suddenly-empty hand with his own. “Now what?”

The static shock is between your hands now. “My hand is humming,” you say, like an idiot, and Shigaraki tightens his grip. “Um, I think there are some games outside.”

“Fine.”

It’s warm outside, but getting cooler as the sun begins to set. There are a lot of games, and most of them are being ignored in favor of a bunch of the goofiest guys from your office playing cornhole while their girlfriends/boyfriends watch. You determine instantly that you’re not coordinated enough for anything that involves throwing something, which leaves you exactly one option. “How about that one?”

“Jenga?”

“Jenga XL,” you say. Shigaraki snorts. “My hand-eye coordination’s too bad right now for a throwing game. This will be safer.”

Whoever was playing the oversized Jenga last left the blocks in a heap. You and Shigaraki can’t hold hands while you stack them up, and as you do, your assumption that Jenga would be safer than something else gets tested in the most embarrassing way possible – and of course Shigaraki points it out. “You’re short. If this thing falls on you it’ll flatten you.”

“It won’t fall,” you say with more confidence than you feel. “I’m good at this.”

“Go first, then, if you’re so good at it.”

You get a block out without trouble, but you have to rely on Shigaraki to re-stack it for you, which he does, wearing a really frustrating smirk. “You should have worn taller shoes.”

“I can’t walk in taller shoes,” you say. “Or dance. Are you going to want to dance?”

“If it’s part of the wedding date experience, yeah.” Shigaraki carefully extracts his block and sets it on top of the tower. He’s not all that much taller than you. If the game goes on long enough, he’ll have trouble re-stacking. “They don’t exactly teach dance classes in juvie.”

“It’s not that kind of dancing,” you say. Shigaraki looks relieved. “If it’s going to be that kind of dancing, they warn you on the invitation. A friend of mine who got married last year only played swing music at her reception. She sent out a certificate for free lessons with her save-the-date.”

“Control issues?”

“I think she just wanted stuff her way,” you say. You ease another block out of the tower and hand it over to Shigaraki. “Hers was nice. Everything ran on time, and she sent out thank-you notes six weeks after the wedding.”

Shigaraki stacks your block, then pulls out one of his own. You realize with a jolt that he’s missing the index and middle fingers from his left hand. “What’s the worst one you’ve ever been to?”

“Um.” You don’t want to say this. You really don’t – but you drank too much, and you should be honest. “Mine.”

“You’re married?”

“Divorced,” you say. “Three months after the wedding. I didn’t have the ring on long enough to get a tan line.”

Shigaraki doesn’t say anything. The tower is getting unstable, so you’re careful as you wiggle out one of the side blocks on a row about halfway up. You keep an eye on Shigaraki’s shadow as you do it, bracing yourself for him to walk away. Would you walk away if he told you he was divorced? No, but you’re divorced, so it matters less to you. “Three months,” Shigaraki repeats. “How’d that happen?”

“You’re lucky you aren’t asking me that six years ago,” you say. “With how much I drank tonight, I’d have gone off.”

“Go off. I want to hear it.” Shigaraki actually looks interested. “Anyone who fucks this up deserves it.”

He’s gestures at you. You don’t know what to make of that, and you’ve got a block halfway out of the tower. You go back to work on it. “How do you know it wasn’t me?”

“I know,” Shigaraki says. “How’d it happen?”

“This is pathetic,” you warn. Shigaraki gestures for you to go on. You sigh. “We were together since high school. Midway through college I got a bad feeling that we were drifting apart and I couldn’t take the suspense, so I tried to end it. And he popped the question. We got married six months later and three months after that he knocked up my cousin.”

“Damn,” Shigaraki remarks.

“They’re still together,” you say. “The kid’s in primary school this year. And every year around the holidays my aunt and my cousin pick a fight with me about how I need to be nicer to him, because we’re all a family now.”

You finally manage to extract the block, and Shigaraki takes it from you before you can offer it to him. You can’t read his expression, and just like when you sensed things with your ex were falling apart, you can’t take the suspense. “Pathetic?” you prompt.

“Your ex is a loser.”

“You haven’t seen what my cousin looks like.”

“He’s still a loser,” Shigaraki says. He pulls out a block. “I get it, though.”

Your stomach clenches. “What do you mean?”

“If my girlfriend was leaving me because I was dicking around, I might do something like that, too.” Shigaraki sets his block on top of the tower. Your options for blocks to pull are getting slimmer by the turn. “Popping the question. Not knocking up your cousin.”

“I have other cousins,” you say. Shigaraki snorts. “I thought you said you weren’t getting married.”

“I said nobody was going to marry me,” Shigaraki corrects. What’s the difference? “Your turn.”

You’re out of blocks at shoulder height. And chest height. And waist height. You crouch down instead, doing your best to balance in your heels, and start trying to wiggle a block loose on the fourth level up from the ground. Shigaraki’s voice follows you down. “If you were ready to ditch him, why did you say yes?”

Now you’re at a real risk of crying. Six years of intermittent only-when-you’ve-got-the-money counseling hasn’t made a dent in this one thing. You remind yourself that Shigaraki can’t see your face and work on keeping your voice steady. “I was the one who asked him out in the first place, back in high school. I always had this weird sense that we wouldn’t be together if I hadn’t. So when he proposed I thought it meant he was choosing me, like I chose him. Which was a stupid reason to say yes.”

You wanted to believe. You wanted to believe so badly that you were worth it, and now you’re divorced at twenty-eight, barely talking to the half of your family that took your cousin’s side, going on a grand total of one real date in the entire time since then that you got up and left partway through because you couldn’t fake hope or excitement for one second longer. The kiss you planted on Shigaraki in the photo both was the most action you’ve gotten in two years, and you’ve put more effort into the fake wedding-date experience than you have into even looking for a hookup. You’re pathetic. This is pathetic. You should be embarrassed, and you are.

But you got your stupid block out. You straighten up and hold it out to Shigaraki, who stacks it for you. You can’t read his expression, and you’re a little too dysregulated to be anything but blunt. “That’s my tragic backstory. What’s your damage?”

“What, going to juvie doesn’t count?” Shigaraki crouches down to pull a block from the opposite side of the same row you just weakened. He’s doing it right-handed; he’s waving his left with its missing fingers at you. “This doesn’t count? The fact that I don’t have eyebrows doesn’t count? Your problem is being a dumb kid with a shitty family and a shitty ex. My problem is that I exist. We’re not the same.”

He straightens up and drops his block on top of the tower. You can see that he’s tenser than before, and you can’t think of anything to say that won’t sound patronizing. “I didn’t notice about the eyebrows until you said something.”

“Great.” Shigaraki won’t look at you. “Your turn.”

You crouch down again. The row below the row Shigaraki just knocked down to one block seems like the safest bet. You start pulling at it, frustrated at the way it sticks. “Careful,” Shigaraki says after a second. “If you don’t watch out –”

The tower topples. You’re crouched down, with no chance of getting out of the way in time, and all you can do is sit there, stunned, while three dozen giant Jenga blocks crash down around your head. The corner of one catches your temple, digs in, and you flinch. But the blocks are light. You’re startled, and humiliated, and possibly bleeding a little bit, but you’re fine. “Are you okay?” Shigaraki asks. You give a thumbs-up, and he crouches down next to you. “I don’t believe you. You look – shit, your face is bleeding.”

“I’m good,” you say. “It’s a good thing we took pictures already. This is not part of the wedding-date experience.”

“I’m done with that,” Shigaraki says, and your heart sinks. Even though it shouldn’t. Even though none of this mattered to begin with, even though you know better, you hoped. You weren’t hoping for anything much – just to keep having fun, just to not spend the rest of the wedding alone. “You have a purse, right? Do you have napkins in there or something?”

“Your suit comes with a pocket square.” You pluck it out of his pocket and press it to your temple. “I’ll pay for cleaning it.”

“Don’t bother. It was my dad’s. He doesn’t have much use for it in solitary.”

Shigaraki helps you up while you’re still processing that one and tugs you away from the wreckage of the Jenga tower, onto a bench. The view of the sunset is really good from here. Further down the lawn, you can see Himiko and Ochako and their photographer doing a last round of pictures, and you slide your feet out of your shoes. It’s that point in the wedding. You’ll probably stay here for the rest of the night.

“Do you need ice?” Shigaraki asks. You shake your head. It doesn’t hurt, or maybe the fact that the sinkhole in your chest is eating the tarp you put over it just hurts more. “Do you still want to dance?”

“You said you were done with the wedding date thing.”

“Yeah. I’m done with the part where it’s fake.”

Maybe you hit your head harder than you thought you did. “What do you mean?”

“Seriously?” Shigaraki sounds annoyed. “I let you put a flower crown on me.”

“Is that some kind of mating ritual in juvie?” The instant you say it, you feel bad, but Shigaraki laughs. “If you’re trying to say something, say it. I don’t do very well with ambiguity on my best night and I’m still kind of drunk.”

“Same here. Otherwise I’d sit on this, and my friends would spend the rest of their lives listening to me bitch about how I didn’t ask out the girl from Toga’s wedding.” Shigaraki’s hand lifts from his lap, rises to his neck, then falls back. “I want to dance with you. Toga and her wife are having an after-party at their place, and I want you to come to it with me. And I want your number so we can hang out again sometime when we’re not wasted. Because I like you.”

You must have hit your head really hard. “We met three hours ago.”

“So? Toga said she knew she was going to marry the wife the first time they made eye contact,” Shigaraki says. That sounds like something Himiko would say. You’ve met her a few times at work parties and she’s always struck you as a little intense and a little off-the-wall. “Do you want to dance or not? Make up your mind.”

You want to say yes. What comes out is something really stupid, so stupid that you can’t look at him while you say it. “This is the kind of thing that happens to other people.”

“What, meeting somebody who asks you out?”

It sounds stupid when he says it like that. You keep his dad’s pocket square pressed to your temple and try to explain. “The whole thing where you meet somebody when you weren’t expecting to meet anybody and things click, at least on your end, and since you know it’s just on your end you try not to get your hopes up – but the other person tells you that it clicked for them, too –”

“That’s dumb.” Shigaraki doesn’t sound like he’s being mean. You could almost call it affectionate. “Forget who it happens to. I’m asking you out. Do you –”

Screw it. If this is some kind of hallucination, you want to enjoy it. If it’s real, you don’t want to miss out. You turn back to face Shigaraki. “Yes.”

He grins, and you notice a scar over his mouth, too. “Good. Now what?”

You think about kissing him. You decide to try hugging first, which involves getting at least as close to him as you did when you were in the photo booth, on purpose this time. Shigaraki isn’t particularly tall or bulky, but when you hug him, you’re surprised to notice that he’s hiding some muscle underneath his suit jacket. Kind of a lot of muscle. Huh. Shigaraki notices that you’re investigating a little bit. “What?” he asks, his mouth against your ear. “Did you think all I do is game?”

“I don’t know what you do all day,” you say. “We didn’t get to that part yet.”

“We will.” Shigaraki draws back from you, and you loosen your grip even as his hand rises to cradle your jaw. This time you see the kiss coming from a mile away, and this time, you lean in.

Everything’s different this time, except the thing that startles the two of you apart – the bright flash of a camera going off. “Tomura-kun!” Himiko squeals from somewhere nearby. “I told you you’d have fun at my wedding. Who is that? She’s so cute!”

For a second you’re worried Shigaraki doesn’t know your name, but he must have been paying more attention than you thought he was when you introduced yourself, because he introduces you to Toga without missing a beat. “She’s one of my coworkers,” Ochako explains, smiling at you. Even through the smile you can see the incredulity on her face, and you know you’ll be getting a lot of questions about this when she gets back from her honeymoon. “I’m so sorry we had to put you at that table. I wanted to put you with everybody from work, but they all had plus-ones –”

“It’s fine,” you say faintly. Himiko’s photographer takes another picture, this time of all four of you talking. “It worked out.”

“She’s coming to your party,” Shigaraki informs Himiko. “I invited her.”

“Oh, good!” Himiko turns her attention to you. “It’s going to be so fun! We have games and movies and we’re going to stay up all night.”

“You should come inside now,” Ochako says. “There are mosquitos out here, and we’re supposed to have cake soon –”

“And we’re going to do the Time Warp. I put that on the playlist for you special, Tomura-kun,” Himiko says. She glances at you. “It’s the only dance he knows.”

Shigaraki flushes, grimaces, but you tilt your head against his shoulder again, lacing his fingers with yours for the third time tonight. You don’t know what he does all day when he’s not at weddings he doesn’t want to go to. You don’t know if what he said about his dad being in solitary confinement was a joke or not. You don’t know what happened to his hand or where he got his scars, or even where his eyebrows went. But you know he likes you. You know you like him enough to give things a shot, at least for tonight, and that’s better than you’ve felt in a long time.

And you know he can dance, even if it’s only the Time Warp. For right now, you don’t need to know any more than that.

366 notes View Post

flamme-shigaraki-spithoe

1 year ago

Nsfw drawing

Just a naked shiggy 👌

Paralyzed

black double-doors in a darkened room. one door is slightly open and bright white light shines in through the crack.

bandages, gauze, self-adhesive Coban wrap and bandage scissors laid out together on a table.

glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of a room bathed in pale blue light.

As your shift in the daycare came to a close today, something triggered a terrible panicking trauma response in you. You've locked yourself in the storage closet in an attempt to get away from it all. When Sun eventually manages to get the door open, his heart breaks at the state he finds you in. Cue 4k words of ensuing caretaking and comfort.

Pairing: Sun/Reader/Moon Word Count: 6,014 Contains: [NSSI/Self-Harm] [panic] [PTSD] [crying] [emotional & physical hurt/comfort] [bandaging wounds] [undressing (not the sexy kind)] [caretaking] [cuddling] [literal sleeping together] [established relationship] [GN!Reader]

“Sunshine? I know you’re hurting right now… but you need to let me in there with you so I can help…”

A faint rattling comes from the locked doorknob, shortly followed by silence.

You barely hear it from where you’re slumped, back against the far wall of the pitch dark supply closet.

You’re far too consumed in your own suffering to even consider the impact of your actions right now. You have to make these feelings stop. You have to make it all go away. You can’t take anymore today.

Through your panicked haze and ragged breathing, your ears barely pick up on the faint sound of metallic tinkering, and Sun’s muttering on the other side of the door.

“Oh, for heavens sake… why does the supply closet even have the ability to lock from the inside in the first place?”

Your panicked breaths come faster and faster, until you begin to feel lightheaded from it all. The pain of your memories. The fear of whatever trigger had set you off this time. The shame of causing Sun such distress, having to see you like this.

You told yourself you’d never let them see you in such a state, yet here you fucking are. Trembling and soaked in sweat, tears, and snot, curled up on the cold tile of the supply closet floor.

It was bound to happen eventually, you suppose. You could lie and say you were doing better but this always comes back to drag you down again eventually.

You register the sound of a bolt shifting, before a few small screws fall down and roll across the floor in different directions. You watch the door creak open slightly, and thin, long robotic fingers snake their way around the edge and take hold of the loose doorknob before it can fall and clatter to the floor.

You feel your stomach drop at the knowledge that your time in hiding has come to an end. The door swings open slowly, the daycare’s bright lights casting into the room. The light makes a path all the way across the floor, from the open doorway across to your darkened form curled uncomfortably in the back, like a wild animal, cornered.

You lift your head enough to glance at him and you catch the sight of his silhouette, backlit in a way that has him looking more intimidating than he likely realizes. You instinctively curl back down into yourself and miss the way he subconsciously shrinks in on himself when he sees your apparent fear.

He’s the last person on earth that you should fear. He just wants to help you. He was built for this, wasn’t he? Taking care of the vulnerable?

Why’d they have to make him look so terrifying, then?

He pushes his own thoughts aside, his hand curling around the doorframe in search of the light switch. He quickly locates it, flipping it up and flooding the room with fluorescent light.

The proper sight of you breaks his mechanical heart.

Your hair is an absolute mess and your clothes are all bunched up around you as you’ve contorted yourself to take up the least amount of space possible. Like someone was trying to hurt you even though you were alone in here. He doesn’t even need to do a full body scan to tell that you have been hurt, actually. When his optics pass over your left hand, warning signs flash across his vision.

Injured. You’re injured.

In his daycare. Under his supervision.

Oh, no. No no no no no.

Not you. Not like this. Not ever.

He has to fix it. Fix you. Make it better.

Yes. Yes, he can make it better. He- he can fix this. It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. You have to be. He… needs you. They both do. You have to be okay.

They’ll make it better.

You keep your head tucked away into the pulled-up hood of your jacket, waiting. You don’t even know what you’re waiting for, exactly. Yelling? Screaming? Panic? Anger? Disappointment? Rough hands, grabbing, pulling, hurting you again?

If you were thinking straight right now you’d know this isn’t necessary. You’d remember where you are, and who you’re with, and that you are absolutely safe here. Sun and Moon wouldn’t ever lay a hand on you in anything other than love. Their touches don’t hurt. Neither do their words.

You’re not thinking straight right now, though. Your mind is somewhere else entirely. Completely caught up in the past, your mind replaying all the bad that you’ve ever encountered, like it’s trying to teach you a lesson you already know. Trying to warn you of a threat that is no longer there.

Sun slowly lowers himself to the floor and makes his way over to you on all fours in the least terrifying way he can.

His voice is about as quiet as he can get it to go but you still flinch when he breaks the silence.

“Sunshine, are you here with me right now? Can you hear me?”

You’re about halfway here and halfway gone, to be completely honest, but you manage to nod your head, the movement stiff and jerky. Your muscles are all so goddamn tense it’s a wonder you can move at all.

“Do you think you can take a deep breath for me?”

You try to, and fail miserably, the air catching in your throat and coming back out as a choked sob. Gods, you can’t even breathe right, can you? You shake your head vehemently, tangling your messy hair even further in the process as you start mindlessly muttering apologies between short, quick breaths.

“I’m-I’m sorry… I’m sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry…”

Sun’s hands flex open and closed, held firmly down at his sides to prevent their urges from taking over and just allowing himself to scoop you up into his arms the way he wants to.

“Hey… e-easy, love. There’s no need for apologies here, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

Your tears pick back up again at that, voice accidentally coming out in a sudden shout, only muffled by the balled-up sleeve you’ve brought up to try and hide your face.

“YES I HAVE! I-I-I don’t know what… but I must have done something… something to end up like this.”

It’s getting harder for Sun to close out of the numerous warning pop-ups that flood his vision. His voice is a bit more strained when you hear it again.

“No-no-no not at all! You haven’t done anything to make this happen. This is just… something that happens sometimes, yeah? And-and-and I’m here now to help you through it!”

He eyes your left hand again, lying lifeless on the cold tile beside you. It’s completely red and swollen, with long, angry red lines running down along your forearm and the back of your hand. He knew he’d heard the sound of repeated, dull banging when he first discovered you’d locked yourself in here, but he hadn’t wanted to think about what you might be doing to yourself.

He’s gonna find out now, though.

Losing yourself in your panic again, you shakily pick your stiff hand up off the tile, balling it into a fist as you bring it up just to slam it back down on the cold, hard floor with as much force as you can possibly muster. Sharp pain runs through your wrist as the already swollen joint is forced to take the impact of yet another hit. A hiss of pain is immediately ripped out of you, and you revel in the small relief that it brings, forcing you to take a deep breath to distract yourself. You’d been at this for a solid thirty minutes now, based on Sun’s calculations of when this whole ordeal started.

Sun’s body locks up at the sight, and he can’t even feel the black, watery fluid that begins to leak from beneath his eyes, running down along the curves of his faceplate like tears.

He’s paralyzed. Stuck in between two equally important rules.

They sound off on repeat like warning sirens in his mind.

[ Protect you. ]

[ Never touch you without permission. ]

[ Protect you. ]

[ Never touch you without permission. ]

[ Protect you. ]

[ Never touch you without permission. ]

He’s forced to sit there, glued to the ground and watch as you lift your fist and slam it back down once again, your body reeling forward in response to the pain.

He suddenly feels Moon’s presence fighting to take control in their shared headspace.

He watches on helplessly as an unauthorized edit is made to one of the rules cemented in the forefront of his mind.

[ Protect you. A̵T̸ ̶A̶L̶L̶ ̵C̵O̴S̴T̷S̴.̸ ]

He immediately breaks from his paralysis just in time to reach forward, his movements lightning fast, and wraps his massive hand around your fist as it makes its way towards the ground once again. He moves your connected hands downward together, trying to follow the motion so as to not hurt you any further by suddenly stopping you mid-swing.

Your hands both slam down onto the tile, but you hardly feel the pain this time. Sun registers that the back of his hand took the brunt of the impact, no real damage done given his sturdier components, and his body nearly collapses from the sudden relief.

His other hand quickly reaches out and loosely wraps itself around your wrist, needing to hold you still. He’s careful to not aggravate the swollen joint, nor the stinging lines of broken skin you’d torn across the back of your hand.

You stop crying in your shock, and your head jerks up to look at him, and the both of you stare at each other, unsure, for a long quiet moment.

He breaks the silence first.

“I’m sorry. I-I-I know we can’t touch you without permission but-but-but you weren’t LISTENING and I-I-I had to. You were hurting-hurting-HURTING yourself.”

His repetitions are getting noticeably worse, and so is his volume control. He’s stressed beyond his limits, clearly.

Your remaining panic evaporates at the realization and guilt suddenly takes over, washing over you in waves that threaten to drown.

Your right hand is trembling as you pull it away from your face, poking out of your sleeve and reaching out towards him, no longer caring about the absolute hell you must look like right now.

You grab onto one of his upper arms and pull yourself towards him with what little strength you have left in you. He sat up straight as a board in response to your sudden shift in position, clearly not expecting you to fall right into him. He quickly recovers though, gingerly adjusting you to be more comfortable in his hold.

Your voice is miserable and thick with tears when you speak, face making a mess of the soft, colorful ruffles around his neck. He doesn’t mind it at all, at this point. They can be washed.

“Don’t, please… don’t apologize. Just…”

You let out a shaky sigh.

“just hold me… please.”

That’s permission enough for him, and he quickly gathers you further up onto his lap, adjusting so he’s leaned back against a cabinet and you can lay against him.

“Okay… okay. We can do that.”

He slowly brings your injured hand up to inspect it better in the light, and mutters another string of quiet apologies when you whimper in pain. From a quick scan he can tell that nothing is broken- thank heavens - but it will definitely bruise something awful. He also quietly takes note of the way your sharp nails must’ve broken skin, as there’s tiny dried specks of blood along your forearm when he cautiously lifts your sleeve.

The injury warning pop-ups are still flashing in his vision, but they’re easier to see through now. You’re stable. You’re safe. There will be time to patch you up once they get you calm.

Speaking of they, Moon is now throwing an absolute fit inside their headspace, more impatient than ever to be released so he can do his job. You need to be calmed, you need to be soothed, you need to rest.

[ LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT ]

Sun shoots him a silent response as he brings a hand up to cradle the back of your head against his chest, heart breaking all over again at the way you still tremble against him.

[ You know I would if I could. We have to wait for the lights to go out. Have patience. It’s nearly your turn. ]

He outwardly flinches at the sudden sharp volume of Moon’s voice in his mind.

[ PATIENCE? I just had to sit back here and witness them actively HARMING themselves like a helpless SPECTATOR and you’re telling me to have PATIENCE, SUN? REALLY? ]

Sun settles you back down against him when you stir in response to his sudden movement, assuring you once again that you haven’t done anything wrong.

[ Moon. Please. Look at them. Now is not the time to be fighting. ]

Moon doesn’t reply, so he adds on.

[ I… sincerely thank you… for editing the rule for me, you know? ]

He hears Moon sigh in exasperation, and feels the tension in their headspace begin to slowly dissolve.

[ …yeah. You’re welcome. Don’t make me have to do it again. ]

As if on queue, the lights power down in the plex all at once, and their transition begins. They feel the way you suddenly tense at the realization, and they hush you as their voice shifts from Sun’s into Moon’s.

“Shhh, shh, shh. You’re okay. Everything’s alright, little star. No need to be scared. I’m right here. You’re still safe.”

You keep your head buried in the fabric when you speak.

“Moon?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Are you… mad at me?”

He struggles to keep it together when he hears how scared you sound.

“Not at all, doll. Never. Never mad at you.”

He brings your left hand back up a bit to get a better look at it through his own eyes, and his body releases a soft burst of warm air from his vents.

“Mad at ourselves? Mmmaybe. But that’s none of your concern. It’s over now. We’re gonna fix this. We promise.”

He shifts a little, and whispers a soft question.

“May I move you up to our room so we can clean you up?”

You nod against him, humming in unenthusiastic acceptance.

His movements are incredibly careful and fluid when he picks the two of you up off the floor. Walking out of the storage closet, he calls down his tether and adjusts his grip on you to assure that you won’t slip.

You cling tight to him with your good hand, and close your eyes to avoid the unpleasant sight of being so far up in the air. Before you know it, you’re being lowered onto their bed so carefully one would think you’re made of glass.

When you finally detach yourself from his chest so he can put you down, you finally notice the dark tear-tracks leaking from his eyes. They shimmer, reflecting the dim string-lights hung throughout the room. You reach out to him, trying to wipe them away and failing miserably, smearing the dark stains further across their faceplate.

He gently takes your hand and brings it to his smile, pressing the equivalent of a kiss against your skin before placing your hand back down in your lap.

“Don’t you worry about us right now, star. You do that enough already. It’s your turn to be taken care of now.”

He shifts from his crouched position by the bed and moves to stand, intending to go fetch the first aid kit. You stop him by clinging to his hand with a nervous whine when he pulls away. You don’t even recognize how small and vulnerable you sound when your thoughts slip out of you.

“Where… where are you going?”

He crouches back down to your level, brushing your messy hair back away from your face.

“Just need to run down and get some things to patch you up with, doll. I’ll be back within a minute. Do you think you can wait for me here while I go do that?”

He’s slipped into caregiver mode, speaking to you like he’d speak to a frightened child in the daycare, but honestly… right about now, you don’t feel much different. His kind, patient tone works wonders to quiet your lingering fears.

“Okay… yeah, I can wait.”

He moves to press another kiss to the crown of your head when he stands back up, whispering to you.

“Very good. I’ll only be a moment. Wait here for me, starlight.”

You don’t count the seconds it takes him, but from what you can tell he stayed true to his word, for it couldn’t have been more than a minute before he was swinging himself back onto the balcony, arms full of various items.

He quietly sets them down one by one on a table in the room, and turns to you, crouching down again to be on your level.

“Now, patching up injuries is usually Sun’s thing, but I’m fully capable of it as well, if you’ll let me.”

You nod in silence, looking down, letting the shame, guilt, and embarrassment wash over you again. He picks up on it, and is quick to reassure you, crouching even further down and tilting his head at an angle so as to catch your gaze again.

“Hey, hey, hey… you don’t need to be ashamed of this. We’re not angry with you, and you don’t have to explain anything tonight if you don’t feel up to it . ”

Some of the tension bleeds out of your shoulders at that, and you take a resolving breath before granting him permission to tend to you, holding your left arm out towards him.

“…Thank you.”

He takes it in his, and reaches to grab a cleansing wipe from his pile of assorted things.

“It’s our honor to care for you, love.”

He hesitates, looking you over for a moment before setting the wipe back down and turning to you.

“It’ll be easier to do this if we take your jacket off first. Would you like assistance?”

You raise your arms out away from you, nodding sheepishly.

If he could smile any bigger than he always is, he would have.

“Alright, then. Mind your hand…”

He gently removes your jacket and folds it over the back of a chair. Then, returning his attention to your arm, he tears the pouch open and pulls the cloth out.

“This will sting at first, but it’s necessary, okay?”

You nod, only wincing slightly as he cleans your scratches and then pulls out a tube of some sort, twisting the tiny cap off with nimble fingers.

“This will help you heal.”

You watch quietly as he takes the utmost care to evenly coat each red, stinging line with the ointment, and in the back of your mind you wonder if this is a bit overkill for a few scratches… but you’re hesitant to turn him down. It couldn’t hurt, and you were rather enjoying the treatment. Far, far more than you’d like to admit, honestly. The torn lines of skin run all the way down your forearm to meet your knuckles, and he doesn’t miss a single spot.

He then turns away, pulling out a thin roll of gauze, and gestures for you to hold your arm out once again. When you offer it, he begins wrapping your arm up, starting from your hand. He’s extremely careful to not put undue pressure on your swollen palm and wrist, and once it’s secured around your hand, he winds the dressing all the way up around your arm, covering every little wound.

You’re nearly in a trance by the time he fastens the bandage in place and pulls back, pilfering through the other things he brought. You snap out of it when his voice breaks the silence again.

“Would you like my assistance while changing into something more suited for sleep?”

You nod before you even really register the inquiry, still too caught up in how good it felt to be bandaged up the way he did. It’s not like he hasn’t seen you undress before, anyways, so you don’t dwell on it too much when he guides you to stand and helps you remove your wrinkled work clothes.

Digging around in their dresser, he pulls out a plush pair of your sleep pants that you leave here for unplanned nights like this, and an oversized Superstar Daycare logo t-shirt.

He squats down, letting you use his shoulders to support your unsteady frame as you step into the pants, pulling them up around your waist before guiding you to sit back down on the bed. Reaching for the shirt and motioning for you to lift your arms, he makes sure the sleeve doesn’t catch on your bandages as he drapes it down over you.

You’re tempted to collapse back into the mattress then and there, but he’s not done coddling you yet.

He begins climbing all around you and gathering up every pillow in the room, propping you up and placing them around you to form some sort of… protective nest, you suppose? Whatever he’s doing, it seems like very important work in his eyes, so you let him fuss over the arrangement ‘til his heart's content, watching him with a small smile and tired eyes.

Once he seems satisfied with his work, he gently picks your left hand up and places it on its own special elevated pillow. He takes a ridiculous amount of care to make sure all of your bruising fingers are spread out in the best possible position, and then looks to you in question.

“Is this okay? Comfortable like this?”

You nod with a bemused smile, and he tilts his head for a moment, gauging your expression. Whatever he makes of it, he seems content now, and so he returns to his duties.

Reaching back to the table, he pulls over an ice pack, carefully wrapping it with soft fabric before situating it over your hand and wrist. He spends a few quiet moments just holding it there, practically staring straight through the ice pack and down into your injured hand. There’s something almost… far away about his voice when he speaks this time, but it’s gone again before your tired mind can question it.

“This should help bring the swelling down…”

You give him a tired smile, and a quiet thank you in acknowledgment.

That seems to snap him out of whatever momentary daze he had slipped into.

He moves back, stopping to take stock of the things he brought with him for a moment before grabbing a wet-looking washcloth and settling himself down on the bed in front of you.

“You’ll sleep better if your face isn’t all hot and tear-stained.”

You’re not gonna decline him, but you do feel compelled to say something.

“You really don’t have to go to such lengths like this, Moon… I don’t really feel like I deserve all this pampering after the burden I’ve been here lately...”

His body language visibly falls, seeming almost hurt by your words.

“Let’s get one thing straight, doll.

You are no burden.

Second of all, if you think that this is pampering…”

He lets out a small, sad laugh, looking down and obviously thinking something over internally.

“…then you’ve need to raise your standards, love. This is just basic care.”

He turns back to meet your gaze again.

“Besides. We’d be some pretty awful caretakers if we couldn’t even do this, wouldn’t we?”

His faceplate spins until it’s done a 180, reversing its path and righting itself once again as he speaks. That gets a small smile out of you, and you drop the subject, closing your eyes and leaning in to let him wipe the mess of your breakdown from your flushed skin.

Once you’re cleaned, he steps away for a moment, placing the damp cloth back atop the first aid kit on the table. He’ll put everything away in the morning, but for now, he’s quite hesitant to leave your side again. The small mess of assorted items and today’s dirty clothes will have to wait until tomorrow.

Leaning down to pull their belled slippers off, he places them neatly away to the side. You eye his long fingers as he lifts the back of their neck ruffles, deftly undoing the small bow holding them on, and watch as it unravels. He tosses the fabric onto the same chair he hung your jacket from, and your eyes follow his hands as they move down to his waist, fingers working to undo the tie that holds their pants up.

You avert your gaze as the star patterned fabric drops to the floor, pooling around his ankles. It’s not like there’s anything about each other you haven’t already seen before, but it still feels a bit inappropriate to just sit here doing nothing and watching him undress.

As you lean your head back to stare up at the sea of glow-in-the-dark stars that decorate the ceiling, he steps into the longest, softest pair of black palazzo pants known to mankind, a rare find of yours from a lucky trip to a thrift store.

You hated it when you first found out that they either had to sleep in their work clothes or nothing at all, so you had begun to buy up any casual clothes you could find whenever you happened across something that might fit their unusual frame.

He wraps the ties around his thin waist twice, tying them into a neat bow in the front. He then grabs a baggy, cream colored open-front cardigan and slips one arm after the other into it. Loosely wrapping the sides across his front, he turns and makes his way back over to the bedside. He didn’t particularly care one way or the other about wearing any sort of shirt to bed, but you often fell asleep on him and weren’t a big fan of waking up with your cheek adhered to the silicone of his chest plate.

When you notice his approach in your peripheral vision, you pull your lidded gaze away from the stars above you to look at the Moon beside you.

He settles himself down right next to you, careful to not disturb the nest he’s created, and then reaches out to the bedside table one more time, returning with a bottle of water and a packet of your favorite crackers, which he presumably snatched from the daycare’s pantry.

Why on earth it is that this is the gesture that finally does you in will forever remain a mystery to you, but at the sight of him presenting you the food and water, your eyes well up again with tears you didn’t think you had left.

He visibly falters for a moment, unsure if he’s done something wrong. He drops the crackers down onto the bed, freeing a hand to reach out and cup your cheek, guiding you to look at him. His voice is heavy with a quiet concern.

“Hey, hey, no more tears… Why are you crying again, starlight? Is something still hurting you?”

You smile in spite of your shining eyes, and lean into his touch.

“They’re good tears this time, Moon. I just… Thank you. For everything, for all of this, thank you. Both of you.”

He seems to relax a bit at that, and his thumb runs over your cheek to brush away a stray tear. His eyes get that distant look in them for a moment and you realize he’s listening to Sun.

“Thanking us is not necessary, but you’re very welcome all the same.”

He opens the water bottle for you, assuring that you’ve got a good grip on it before he lets you take it. As soon as it hits your throat you realize just how thirsty you were, greedily downing about half the bottle before Moon’s hand appears in your line of sight, gently ushering it away from your pursed lips.

“Please pace yourself, starlight.”

You swallow your current mouthful of water as you watch him open the package of crackers, expecting him to hand it to you before you remember that you’ve got a bottle in one hand and an ice pack on the other. He picks one piece out of the package and as he brings it up towards you, you connect the dots quickly enough.

“Open.”

Oh, brother, he’s really giving you the full treatment tonight.

You feel heat return to your cheeks once again, albeit for a different reason this time around. Your voice comes out in a mixture of embarrassment and want.

“You don’t have to feed me…”

His faceplate angles down to the side, cocking his head at you. If he could smirk you’re sure he would be right now.

“But we want to.”

He gently nudges the cracker at your closed lips and you side-eye him as you part them just enough to snatch the food in between your teeth. You pull away with a small smile as you chew, and for some reason you struggle to look him in the eyes.

If circumstances were brighter, he’d likely be teasing you for being so shy, but tonight… Tonight, he sets the jokes aside. He patiently feeds you one cracker after another, reminding you to take a small sip of water every few bites. At some point, when your mind slows down enough for you to notice the silence permeating the room, soft music begins to play from the speaker hidden in his chest.

It’s the tune that he reserves especially for nights like these with you, one that he never plays during nap time. In spite of how little Sun and Moon have to call their own, they still manage to find small parts of themselves to share only with you.

Once you’ve finished your snack, you let him place the remainder of your water back on the side table. When he turns back to you, ready to get you laid down to sleep, you’re fixing him with a thoughtful stare. His faceplate tilts 45 degrees, his tone curious.

“What are you looking at?”

Your tired gaze roams across his faceplate, following along the smeared oily tear tracks he seems to have forgotten about. You then look past him, over his shoulder, and your eyes land on the still-damp cloth on the table.

“Would you hand me that cloth for a second, please?”

He’s silent for a moment, processing your question, but eventually reaches behind himself to retrieve it for you. When he places it in your open right hand, you use it to gesture out in front of you.

“Can you move to sit in front of me for a minute?”

He tilts his head the opposite direction in confusion once again, but does as you requested. You motion for him to lean down a bit until his face is level with yours.

Once you can reach him, you pinch one corner of the cloth between two fingers and set to work wiping away the dark tear tracks. You follow the path they’ve made down from beneath their eyes, around the inner curve of their cheeks and down to their mouth. The trails of inky fluid had weaved their way through the crevices of their smile and eventually converged, pooling in the bottom curve of the crescent moon.

You feel his eyes, now tiny pinpricks of red in a black void, following your every movement. Not really in a dangerous sort of way… he just seems more taken aback than anything. When you’ve wiped every last trace away, you meet his gaze briefly as you give him one final look over, and you give him a small smile.

You go to hand the cloth back to him and he doesn’t move to take it, still sitting there with his hands clasped in his lap and staring straight at you. Oh god. Knowing your luck, your attempt at returning the favor has broken him. Cautiously reaching out, you take one of his hands in yours and maneuver it until it’s face-up. You ball the cloth up and place it back in his palm as your hand comes to rest over top of it, eyes darting across his frame in search of any movement, any sort of response.

“Are you still with me, Moon?”

At your words, his faceplate suddenly clicks back and forth a few times before making one full rotation, the bell on the end of his hat grazing the pillows below you along the way. Life seems to finally return to him, and his fingers close around the cloth in his hand as he leans back. Silently, he moves from his spot seated in front of you to return the cloth to the table before settling himself back down in his prior spot beside you. You turn to look at him, uncertain, and his gaze is settled on the bed sheets when he speaks.

“I never left you.”

Your tired mind struggles to understand what exactly that means, looking up at him with furrowed brows.

“Huh?”

He tilts his faceplate to look down at you, still being a head taller than you even when you’re sitting next to him.

“You asked me if I was still with you.”

His hand reaches out and he carefully laces his long fingers between yours.

“I never left.”

A warm feeling spreads through your chest at the sincerity in his voice and in that moment, you can’t do anything other than lean into him, gently resting your forehead against his shoulder. After a little while of just breathing in the moment, you speak again.

“I just… wanted to return the favor. You two take such good care of me, wiping your tears is the least I can do…”

One of his hands comes up to cradle the back of your head against him.

“It’s entirely unnecessary but we both appreciate it nonetheless. We really do. We’re just… not used to it. Being treated so gently is… unfamiliar to us.”

You pull your left hand out from beneath the ice pack in order to wrap your arms around him in a proper hug, talking into the fabric of his cardigan.

“Oh, come on, guys… you’re starting to sound like me now.”

Moon resists the urge to reprimand you for moving your hand, instead allowing their body to lean into the embrace, wrapping long arms around your soft, vulnerable body. His voice sounds far more exhausted than any animatronic's voice ought to when he speaks.

“…it’s well past your bedtime, little star.”

You put the last of your energy into squeezing him as tightly as you can before you finally let go, allowing him to re-situate you however he deems fit.

You know that there’s a heavy conversation to be had tomorrow, and you’re gonna have to find a way to hide or explain away the remnants of your obvious injury to little questioning minds on Monday. You’ll have to think of all the right things to say to anyone who may ask questions, and you’ll come up with something, you’re sure. One thing you can find comfort in though, is that you don’t have to worry about any of that with Sun and Moon.

They deserve a more detailed explanation of course and they’ll get it when you’re ready, but at least for tonight… the three of you can rest knowing that you’re safe and understood in each other's arms. None of you are strangers to this, and you both know that things will be okay again. One step back doesn’t erase any of the progress you made beforehand.

So for now, you breathe in deep and focus on the feeling of gentle, strong arms wrapped around you, keeping you safe from anything that may seek to harm you.

Even if that’s yourself.

A/Ns: Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. They're there for everything: anxiety, depression, suicide, school. Text HOME to 741741. Or, you can click the link here to visit their website for more information and resources. As usual, if you want to see all of my commentary and additional context in regards to writing this fic, you can find that in the notes right here on AO3!

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