Switched Au Part 15

I have to confess

I have another comfort character...yes Tomura isn't the only one even if he's my fav 😂✋

I also have sundrop✨ from fnaf i can't i...such a sunshine 🥺

What if we could lay an egg with narinder ?

Please if any developper see this, let us repopulate the lambs ! (And f*ck with narinder 👉👈)

Another drawing

I like it more irl but since i reeeealy love that one i share it anyway 0v0

Enough to Go By (Chapter 12) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Chapter 12

Saintess.

You look down at Kazuo’s one-word text, your stomach twisting. You’ve got no idea where he got that name, or what question he was ordered to ask that led him to it. You text back. Is that even a real word?

The question was whether the League of Villains has allies beyond those who were present at Kamino. Kazuo texts back slowly. Too slowly. The typing bubble seems to hover forever. I was unable to give them any more information about the villain known as Saintess.

Kazuo’s careful with his words. If he framed the question that way, then your name would be excluded – even though you pal around with villains, even though you’re the girlfriend of the League’s ringleader, you haven’t committed a crime. The word ‘villain’ wouldn’t apply to you, which means you’re safe. Thank you.

We need to talk in person. Tonight.

Why?

I’ll meet you after work.

Meeting you after work means he’s coming to your workplace, after work. Whatever this is, it’s important. And it’s going to clash with one of your other plans, which is also important – and a lot harder to get out of. You hate yourself as you ask the question. How long will it take?

As long as it needs to. Kazuo doesn’t really get irritated anymore, but you can remember what it used to feel like when you pissed him off. Do you have somewhere to be?

You do, actually. Tenko is supposed to negotiate with Overhaul tonight, and he wants you to be there with him. Overhaul wants you there, too – when you listened in on the phone call, you heard him mention “the one in grey” specifically. What is this about?

The Shie Hassaikai.

Shit. Hold on.

You turn to nudge Tenko awake and find him watching you through half-lidded eyes. He doesn’t sleep much, but when he does, he sleeps like a log. He barely stirred when your alarm went off. “Who are you talking to?”

“My friend Kazuo.” You brace yourself. “I can’t go with you to meet Overhaul. I have to meet him instead.”

Tenko doesn’t look happy, and he’s still half-asleep. It’s going to get worse. “You have to go with me. He asked for you specifically. If you don’t go, he’ll suspect something.”

“Tell him we can’t tonight,” you say. “Even if we’re supposed to be allies, we shouldn’t jump just because he says so. That looks suspicious, too.”

“Maybe.” Tenko looks like he’s considering it for a second. Then he shakes his head. “Tell your friend you can’t.”

“I can’t do that. I have to meet him.”

Tenko’s eyes narrow. “Why?”

“He has a quirk called Search Engine. He works for the HPSC gathering intel.” You try to figure out a good way to phrase it, then realize there isn’t one. “He knows about you and me.”

“And he’s a hero?”

“Not exactly.” You wonder if there’s anything else Tenko needs to know. “It’s not relevant, but I dated him in high school.”

“What?” Tenko looks like he’s going to blow a fuse. You’re pretty sure the structural integrity of everything he’s touching is in danger at the moment, regardless of the gloves. “He’s blackmailing you. That’s why you have to go. I’ll kill him.”

“He’s not blackmailing me.” You can’t let Tenko meet Kazuo. You can’t let anything happen to your old friends because of your new ones. “He’s been telling me how to stay clear of his searches. This morning he texted me to let me know that my code name popped up, but nothing else.”

“He’s a hero, but he’s helping you,” Tenko repeats. His expression darkens. “He likes you. That’s why. Do you like him?”

“He’s my friend,” you say, exasperated. “Half the reason I dated him because he reminded me of you.”

Tenko coughs. “What?”

You decide to pretend you didn’t say that. You unlock your phone and show Tenko the conversation in question. “He has information about Overhaul. We need that. Before we meet him?”

“Why would he know you needed information about Overhaul? What does his quirk do?”

“Search Engine – it lets him find the answer to any question he asks,” you say. Tenko looks – well, you’re not sure how to classify that expression. Somewhere between skeptical, pissed, and panicked. Whatever it is, it’s uncomfortable. “The problem is that it’s hard to come up with a query that excludes every answer except the one you’re looking for. And all that information comes in at the same time, so it’s hard to sort through. He –”

You trail off, trying to figure out how to explain. “He went to UA, but they pushed him too hard. His mind broke down and he dropped out, but the HPSC conscripted him to help find you. And since I’m with you, and I’m his friend, he’s helping me avoid getting caught.”

“Which means helping me, too.” Tenko looks really skeptical now. “I don’t buy it. No hero would help you if it meant helping me at the same time.”

“He’s not a hero,” you say. “The heroic system ruined his life.”

That seems to land a little better with Tenko than your previous explanations. He hands your phone back to you. “So he knows something about the Hassaikai that he wants to tell you,” he says. You nod. “And the stuff he’s told you before has been useful.”

You nod again. “Then I’ll tell Overhaul to shove it,” Tenko decides. A smirk crosses his faith at the thought. “We’ll meet him tomorrow instead. He’s not the only ally we’re considering. He can wait his fucking turn.”

You text Kazuo back, confirming the meetup while Tenko reads over your shoulder. At first he’s just looking. Then his chin notches against your shoulder, his arms wrapping around your waist. He’s wearing the gloves he went to bed in, and you let him rustle around for a few moments, getting so close he’s practically glued to your back. That’s going to be a problem in a few minutes. You have to go to work. But at the same time, you aren’t ready to go just yet. Lately you only feel normal when you’re with him.

“That guy,” Tenko says after a minute or so. “Did you really date him because he reminded you of me?”

“I was always going to be friends with him, but he made me think of you, and that’s part of why I dated him.” It’s embarrassing to admit this. You don’t like thinking about how much of your life has been marked by losing Tenko. “He was what I imagined you’d be like. If nothing had changed.”

You hadn’t realized that there was something else to it at first. Kazuo was brilliant, and he was funny, and he was kind. Half the girls in your class had a crush on him, but he wound up with you, because you made sure you were there. If there was something he needed, you had it. If he needed a partner for an assignment, you were right there, on top of everything, ready to pitch in and make sure his ideas shone. If he wanted to talk, you dropped everything to listen. You weren’t playing a part; more auditioning for one. The job of Kazuo’s sidekick, in theory. In practice, his girlfriend.

He was your second boyfriend. Your first one was an asshole who cheated on you with Mitsuko, who dropped him when she found out and made you drop him, too. That was how the two of you met, and you’re still amazed that the two of you are friends rather than mortal enemies. Kazuo was different than that, almost perfect, a version of Tenko all grown up, without the scratching and the father who shouted and a heroic quirk. You know he loved you, and you were close even after the two of you broke up, until UA pushed his quirk past its limit. And you loved him, too, in a way that was probably healthier than the way you – feel – for Tenko. Like Kazuo said, all those months ago: He never tried to kill you. And you’d never step in front of a bullet for him.

“What I would have been like,” Tenko repeats. “You must have been disappointed when you saw how I turned out.”

You elbow him lightly. “What part of me chasing you down the street said ‘I’m disappointed’? Don’t be dumb.”

“Don’t fall in love with any more heroes, then.” Tenko lifts your phone out of your hands, drops it somewhere in the blankets on the bed, and pulls you back down with him. “I already locked it down.”

He’s kissing you, one of his hands flirting with the edge of your shirt, slipping beneath it. You touch the screen of your phone and wince when you see what time it is. “I have to go.”

“It won’t take long.” Tenko’s hand slides all the way under your shirt. “I know what you like now. I’ll be fast.”

He’s probably underestimating how much time it takes for you to get fully turned on, but then again, it feels different with him. And it’s not something you want to get into before work. “I bet I can be faster.”

“Huh? You can after I –”

You twist out of Tenko’s arms and push him onto his back. He was already half-hard when he was holding you. By the time you disappear under the blankets, there’s a noticeable tent in his sweatpants. You haven’t asked if he’s okay with this, but when you catch the waistband of his pants, he lifts his hips to let you pull them down. His voice is raspy when he says your name, and before you can ask for his consent more directly, his legs shift apart, making more room for you between them. That strikes you as an invitation. You get settled a little more comfortably, although you’re not expecting to stay here for long, before you lean in to drag your tongue across the tip of his cock.

Tenko’s hips jerk. “Hold still,” you say. “Or I stop.”

“Why do I have to hold still?” Tenko freezes anyway, and you almost laugh. “It’s not fair.”

“I said I was going to be fast. I need your help. You can help by holding still.”

“So you’ll stop if I don’t.”

“Let me think.” While you’re thinking, you lick the tip of his cock again, and this time, Tenko stays still. You reward him with a kiss, and slowly open your mouth, tasting him for a long moment before pulling away to speak. “I guess if you don’t hold still, I’ll have to hold you down.”

His hips jerk again. You feel the muscles in his thighs go tense. Is that an idea he likes? You were just being playful, flirty, but suddenly your head is full of the idea of pinning Tenko’s hips to the bed and teasing him until he can’t take it any longer. You don’t get the sense that it would take very long, so you carefully shift your weight, to the tune of a sharp intake of breath from the head of the bed. Suddenly the sheet shifts back, and you glance up to find Tenko propped up on his elbows and staring down at you with glassy eyes. He wants to watch you suck his cock. That’s fine with you.

Unlike the first time you touched him, Tenko keeps his hands to himself. They’re curled into fists at his sides – no, grasping at the sheets – no, grabbing a fistful of his pillow and holding on tight. You keep your attention focused on the tip of his cock, since you’re not confident in your ability to suppress your own gag reflex, and you really don’t want to ruin Tenko’s first blowjob ever. But you’re not going to say it isn’t tempting. Every time you glance upwards, he’s a little more undone.

You’re just considering whether it’s worth a shot when Tenko’s mouth opens and a plea spills out. “I need it. I need you.”

He needs you. You wonder if something so simply can really be the magic words, the thing that takes you from unsure to dead certain, but you’re already taking him further into your mouth, your tongue flat against the underside of his cock as you breathe through your nose. Tenko shudders, gasps so sharply that could almost be a whine. You struggle to think of a way to signal your approval and finally settle on running your thumb over the exposed crest of his hip. You had one hand free when you started; now you have two, because you’ve taken his cock so far into your mouth that there’s no room left for your hand.

With Tenko’s hips held down, there’s no risk that he’ll thrust and trigger your gag reflex. You draw back partially, then sink down again, far enough that the tip of your nose brushes the coarse dark hair at his groin. The thought crosses your mind of how disastrous it would be to sneeze right now, and shortly afterward, you discover how difficult it is to laugh with a cock in your mouth. Your throat convulses as you struggle to hold it back, and Tenko moans, so loud and desperate that your face flushes and head floods through you.

You’re not laughing anymore. You draw back and sink down again and again, trying to keep the motion as smooth and effortless as possible, and Tenko’s body seizes beneath you. His back arches, and he stammers out something like a warning. It’s late. You’re not a fan of the way cum tastes – you haven’t met anyone who is except Yoshimi, and you think she’s probably lying about that – but you find that you don’t mind so much when it’s Tenko’s. There are a lot of things you don’t mind so much when it’s him.

You pull away once he begins to go soft, then duck back in to kiss the spot on his hip you were running your thumb over. He doesn’t make any move to pull his sweatpants back up, so you do it for him, and you take the opportunity to look him over. You thought he was just worn out. Now you think he might be passed out. “Are you okay?”

One hand catches you by the front of your pajama shirt and yanks you down for a kiss. You try to hit the brakes – kissing after a blowjob is iffy, and you’re not sure if Tenko knows that – but he won’t let you, and your lips crash together hard. He speaks without letting you pull away. “You just sucked my soul out through my dick. Of course I’m okay.”

“I think those two statements contradict each other.”

“I don’t care.” Tenko’s other hand comes up, landing half on your hip, half on your ass. “My turn now.”

“No.” You pull away and scramble out of bed. “Maybe later. I have to go to work.”

“Maybe later?” Tenko looks affronted, or he would if he wasn’t struggling to keep his eyes open. “What? Do you think I’d be bad at it?”

“I don’t think that. I just have to go to work. And you need to go back to sleep.” You’re pretty sure his soul’s still attached, but you definitely sapped most of his energy. Not enough to stop him from pouting, though. “Definitely later. Is that better?”

“No.” Tenko yawns. “But I’ll take it.”

He lets you go, already half-asleep as you pull your hand free, and you head to the bathroom to brush your teeth, noting an odd spring in your step. You haven’t felt this good waking up in a while. Maybe you should start the day like this more often.

Nobody else is awake when you head out to the living room and kitchen, which isn’t a surprise. Compress has been sleeping a lot, which is good – an injury like his requires extra rest. Twice goes to bed early, like an old man, according to one of his two personalities. Toga stayed up late. So did Spinner, and so did Dabi. Dabi’s the only one who stirs when you start picking through the kitchen for breakfast. “If you’re gonna fuck him before seven am, tape his mouth shut first.”

Half of you cringes at the thought that Tenko was audible from the living room. The other half, though – “Nobody made you listen.”

“Kinky. Maybe we should change your code name, Saintess.”

“If you think that’s kinky, you really need to educate yourself.”

You probably would have thought not caring if someone was eavesdropping was kinky back in the day, but then you met Mitsuko. She and Dabi would probably hate each other. Then again, Mitsuko’s not above a bout of hatefucking. Maybe that would be good for her. Speaking from personal experience, there’s nothing like getting intimate with a villain to exorcise some of your hatred of heroes.

It doesn’t matter, because there’s no way you’re introducing your friends to the League. The fact that Kazuo knows is bad enough. You make tea, pick through the kitchen for something to eat on the walk to work, and put on your shoes. It occurs to you that you should probably say something Dabi, because he’s awake, but you can’t figure out what it should be. “Um, have a good day.”

His response comes back dripping with condescension. “You have a good day too, Saintess.”

You lock the door, struggling to suppress an eyeroll. He’ll probably give Tenko a hard time once Tenko wakes up, but hopefully the blowjob high will insulate Tenko from caring about it too much. That’s not the only thing you’re hoping it’ll insulate Tenko from. At some point today he’s going to remember that you’re meeting up with your hero-adjacent ex-boyfriend after work, and the less time he spends thinking about that, the better.

You’re worried work will drag, but it speeds past, keeping you busy enough that you don’t worry too much about the fact that the League is still holed up in your apartment. Kurogiri’s looking for another potential hideout, but you don’t get the sense that any of them are in a particular hurry to leave. After all, your place is a guaranteed roof over their heads, a source of running water, a source of internet access, and a semi-comfortable place to sleep, more comfortable now that you’ve invested in an air mattress that sleeps two. You wouldn’t want to leave, if you were them.

You’re not sure you want them to, either. When you’re with them, you don’t have to lie to anybody about what you’re doing. When you’re with them, you’re not worried about being found out. When you’re with them, you’re with Tenko, and you – like him. You like him so much that you stepped in front of a bullet for him and gave him head with absolutely zero prompting. You’re not sure which of those is more out of character for you.

Your last patient of the day has a weird injury, weird in that even when you rack your brain, you can’t think what could have possibly caused it. It seems like his hand’s been degloved completely, then flipped inside out, with veins and muscles and layers of fat on the surface and skin enfolding his bones. “This was a quirk,” you say, once you’ve clenched your jaw and concealed the surprise. The patient nods. “What happened?”

He shakes his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s not our policy to ask questions like that,” you say. The patient shrugs. He’s not the most talkative, which is fine. You get his permission and take some pictures, getting as many views of it as you can, before you render a potential treatment plan. “I’m going to call a doctor to look at this, but based on what I’m seeing, this is a hospital matter. We’ll most likely prescribe you some painkillers for the trip and wrap this up to prevent any more exposure to bacteria. Do you have any questions?”

“Are you sure you can’t fix it here?” The patient’s expression says he doesn’t want anything to do with the hospital, which isn’t a surprise, but you’re fairly sure the doctor will be able to talk him into it. “They fixed whatever’s wrong with your hand, right?”

You glance at your bandaged hand, surprised. You’re still covering the scratches Tenko left, just because the scabs keep cracking. “That’s different. Mine are superficial. Yours is – just sit tight. I’ll grab the doctor and she can explain.”

The doctor on call is on break, and not happy to be interrupted. “Sorry,” you say. “The patient in Exam 3 – his hand’s turned inside out. He doesn’t want to go to the hospital, but –”

“What do you mean, turned inside out?”

“I mean, the muscles and blood vessels are on the outside,” you say. The doctor’s eyes widen. “He might need emergency surgery to keep the hand, and it’s probably infected already. I can’t talk him into going to the hospital. I’m just a nurse. Maybe if you explain –”

The doctor sets her bento aside and gets to her feet. “Did he say how it happened?”

“It was a quirk,” you say. “I took photos already. I’ll add them to our database while you talk to him.”

“Name, age, quirk.”

“He didn’t give a name. Early thirties. Quirk – I don’t know what it’s called, but his hair looks like arrows.” Sometimes quirks are easy for you to guess. Sometimes not. “He’s a little guarded, but he came here for help. That counts for something, right?”

The doctor nods. “Upload the photos. I’ll go talk to him.”

You added the photos to the clinic’s shared drive already, and you steal the doctor’s chair to upload them to the database that covers all the clinics in the network. Keeping a database of quirk-related injuries helps identify trends, develop treatment protocols, and tailor supply and personnel distribution. If a lot of burn injuries are showing up at a particular clinic, it’s helpful to be able to supply that clinic properly. But you’ve never seen an injury like this before, and when you add the photos to the ‘open wounds’ folder in the database, you realize that no one else has, either. There’s nothing even remotely close. What kind of quirk could do this?

You’re puzzling over it, wondering if it’s worth querying public records over, when you hear a door open and shut down the hallway. At first you think it’s the doctor coming back. Then you hear the exit door at the far end of the hallway open and shut, too, and thirty seconds later, you realize that something’s wrong.

You race down the hall, skidding into Exam 3, and find the doctor sprawled out on the ground, conscious and aware and bleeding from a superficial scrape in her upper arm – but not moving. “What happened?”

She tries to answer you, but she’s speaking with agonizing slowness, almost completely unintelligible even when you try to read her lips. You hurry forward, checking her respiration and heart rate, horrified to find at least thirty seconds passing between each beat of her heart. What is this? How is she still alive? The first answer is clear: A quirk. Your patient’s quirk, which you didn’t ask about, because it’s policy not to ask. The second answer’s in doubt, and although it’s never happened while you’ve been on shift in three and a half years of working at the clinic, you know what protocol mandates when a staff member is attacked.

You press the panic button taped to the underside of the desk – why didn’t the doctor go for it? – triggering a clinic-wide alert and placing an automatic call to the emergency line. Then you turn your attention back to the doctor, the doctor you sent in here alone, checking for pupil movement, for pallor, for anything to tell you whether you need to call a code along with the alert.

Emergency services get there before law enforcement’s even left the station, and because you had contact with the attacker, too, you’re sent along in the ambulance to Yokohama General. You spend the entire way there trying to stay out of the EMTs’ way and trying to apologize to the doctor before letting this happen, until one of the EMTs tells you to can it. “If you’d known, you wouldn’t have sent anyone, but you didn’t. Put the blame where it belongs.”

That’s hard to do. Lately you’ve been so used to placing the blame on yourself that it’s turning into your default position, but this time, it really isn’t your fault. You never would have sent the doctor to check on the patient if there’d been any indication that he was dangerous. You didn’t know. That’s all.

At Yokohama General, the doctor’s whisked up to intensive care, while you’re held back in the emergency room. You’re not sure what they’re looking for – you touched the patient while you were unwrapping the bandage he’d tied around the wound, and nothing happened to you – but you hang out in an exam room anyway, with nothing to do but nap behind a curtain and text Kazuo. Might be late. Somebody attacked a doctor at work and I’m at the hospital.

“I know.”

You nearly jump out of your skin. The curtain peels back and reveals Kazuo standing there, wearing a pair of glasses and a suit jacket over his usual white shirt and slacks. The man standing next to him is wearing a suit and a pair of glasses, too – but his suit is grey, and his hair is green with streaks of yellow, and –

Sir Nighteye. You shrink back in horror, and the third member of the trio, a blue-skinned woman with a mask over her face, pipes up in a hurry. “Don’t worry, we’re here to help! Sir is very friendly! He loves to laugh!”

Sir Nighteye glances briefly at you, then looks to Kazuo. “Is this your friend?”

“I would give her space,” Kazuo says. “She was attacked on her way home last year, and was a first responder to the incident at Kamino Ward. Therapy for these traumatic experiences has not progressed as far as those who care for her might have hoped.”

You give Kazuo a dirty look, which he ignores. “I see,” Sir Nighteye says, and takes a notable step back. “I understand you had contact with the individual who attacked your coworker.”

“Yes. I examined him.” You wonder how Nighteye’s quirk works. How long it works for, and if he uses on you, how far ahead in your life he’ll be able to see. “If I had known what he was going to do –”

“That wouldn’t have been possible,” Nighteye interrupts. Maybe it’s eye contact. You bow your head. “Describe the injury to me.”

“Um –” The word that comes to mind is ‘horrific’, but after what you’ve seen over the last few months, your bar for horrific is pretty high. “It looked like his hand had been turned inside out. Skin on the inside, veins on the outside.”

“I see. Did it appear to be clean?”

“What?”

“The separation of the skin on his hand from his wrist,” Sir Nighteye says, impatient. “Was it jagged or clean?”

“Oh.” You think of the photos you took. “Jagged.”

“But the skin was otherwise intact?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” Nighteye says again. What does he see? You need to know. You need to know if you can go home tonight, or if you have to stay as far away from Tenko and the others as possible to keep them safe. “You’ve been working there for three and a half years. Have you seen an injury of that type before?”

“No,” you say. “Not in our database, either. He said it was caused by a quirk, but our protocols don’t allow us to ask more than that.”

“Kiyohara.” Nighteye doesn’t say more than Kazuo’s family name, but it’s clear what he wants. “Now.”

Kazuo’s hesitating, and you know why. “That question is too broad,” you say to Nighteye. Nighteye pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger, eyebrows raised. “It has to be more specific, or the information influx will risk overloading his brain. Since you don’t care about his health, maybe you’ll care about the fact that he won’t be useful at all after a grand mal seizure.”

You haven’t blown up on a hero, ever. Suddenly you get why Mitsuko’s been doing it. It feels good, and Nighteye, unlike the sidekicks, doesn’t rise to the bait. “Is that so?” he asks Kazuo. Kazuo nods. “We’ll secure as much information as possible before you make the query. As of now, you’re off-duty. And you’re free to go.”

That last is to you, but a warning look from Kazuo keeps you seated on the bed until Nighteye and his sidekick are gone. You open your mouth and he holds up his hand. It pisses you off. “Don’t shush me. What was that about?”

“Not here. Outside.”

You grit your teeth and follow Kazuo out through the emergency room and onto the street. It’s dark, and with autumn well on its way, the wind whipping between the buildings is cold. You follow Kazuo for two blocks, then into a park, before he stops walking and turns to face you. “You shouldn’t have spoken up. I told you – you can’t save both of us.”

“So I was supposed to just sit there while he made you overload your quirk?” You’re already out of patience. “No. Tell me what’s going on. Right now.”

“The Nighteye agency is investigating the Shie Hassaikai,” Kazuo says. Your jaw drops. “They’ve enlisted the help of dozens of unaffiliated heroes. It’s the largest operation any hero has conducted since Kamino, and it will be far better planned than Kamino was. Sir Nighteye won’t act until he’s certain of victory.”

“Why are they investigating the Hassaikai?” you choke out. “Is it because of –”

“Your friend’s involvement is tangential. They aren’t after him this time.” Kazuo’s hand rises to his temple, and you catch it, pull it back down. You spend a lot of time dragging your friends’ hands away before they can hurt themselves. “Nighteye has been pursuing the Hassaikai since before Kamino. Their investigation is related to the distribution of Trigger. You’re familiar?”

You nod. A solid thirty percent of your patients who show up in costume are showing up after experiencing the adverse effects of Trigger. The compound boosts quirk activation at the cost of everything else, and it’s one of those things you’ll never understand about people with quirks – that constant desire for more of it, more power, more everything. “The Hassaikai’s involved with that?”

“They’re distributing an inferior version of it,” Kazuo says. Tenko didn’t know that. You know he didn’t, because he would have told you. How much else doesn’t he know? “And lately they’ve been distributing something else as well. Bullets that erase quirks.”

“I know,” you say. Kazuo looks surprised. “It’s temporary, but they work.”

Compress’s quirk came back within twenty-four hours, but you know it’ll be a long time before anyone in the League forgets what happened in that warehouse. The bruise on your shoulder is fading, but the creepy red lines haven’t. “Nighteye believes that Chisaki is pursuing a more permanent version of the quirk-erasing bullets, and doing so through less than ethical means,” Kazuo says. “Every use of my quirk in the last six weeks has been related to this investigation. Your new name came up in my queries because you crossed paths with Chisaki once. If you, personally, aid him in any way, you’ll become one of the investigation’s targets. So will your friend.”

Chisaki must be Overhaul’s family name. You wonder if he’s got a family. “I don’t think we’re planning to help him,” you say, and see Kazuo’s eyebrows lift. “He killed one of us and maimed another one. That’s not forgivable.”

“Indeed.” Kazuo sits down on a bench, and so do you. It’s quiet for a little while. “So. Saintess.”

“I didn’t pick it.”

“I know,” Kazuo says. Of course he does. “I’d have advised you to choose a name soon regardless. As this escalates, you’ll need to shield your true identity.”

“So I won’t go to jail,” you clarify.

“So you won’t be killed,” Kazuo says. You stare at him. “I’m aware of the – position – you hold in your friend’s organization. If his enemies believe they can use you against him, they will do it, and since targeting you when you’re with him will be difficult, they’ll do it when you’re alone, as a civilian. My query indicated that you haven’t been found out, but today was a very near miss.”

That should make sense to you. You force yourself to think. Why would the Nighteye agency care about an attack in a free clinic on the rough side of Yokohama? They wouldn’t, unless – “Was that guy one of the Hassaikai?”

“Sir Nighteye suspects he is. He won’t know for sure until I search,” Kazuo says. His phone buzzes. He checks it and sighs. “My parameters are in. I’ll let you know what I find.”

“Kazuo –” You don’t know what to say, and he’s already getting to his feet. “Why are you helping me so much? You could get in trouble.”

“I don’t care about that,” Kazuo says. He barely cares about anything anymore. Seeing the apathy overtake him for the past three years has been agonizing. “The world your friend wishes to create, a world without heroes, is a world where this would not have happened to me. It’s too late for me, but there are others who could be spared.”

You look at him, feeling your throat tighten and your eyes burn. “I’m sorry.”

“I told you,” Kazuo says, for the third time today, over his shoulder as he starts the walk back to Yokohama General, “you can’t save us both.”

You’ve always thought he meant himself and Tenko when he said that. Now you wonder if he means himself and you. You wonder what saving either of you would mean. And you wonder if it’s too late for you already.

Your phone buzzes, and you look at it. It’s the new group chat, the one you made because you couldn’t face the thought of never seeing Sho or Hirono’s phone numbers pop up again. Mitsuko’s texting you. And Ryuhei. Quit being a stranger. Come hang with us.

Tenko and the others are already expecting you to be out tonight, and you never said how long you’d be gone. Where are you?

Look up.

You look up, and sure enough, your friends are strolling towards you. “Kazuo dropped a pin,” Ryuhei calls once he’s in earshot. “We never see you anymore.”

It’s been a while since you saw Ryuhei, but Mitsuko? “We saw each other five days ago, Mitsu.”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t exactly fun. And you had to run off to your stupid job.” Mitsuko rolls her eyes. “Come on. Let’s go out. I swear I won’t get wasted and spit on any more sidekicks.”

“And no peeing on the All Might statue.”

“Fine.” Mitsuko heaves a dramatic sigh, while Ryuhei cracks up. “Drinks first.”

“Drinks,” Ryuhei agrees. “I found a maid bar, and they’ll treat me like a creep if I go in there alone.”

You’re pretty sure the three of you together look weirder strolling into a maid bar than Ryuhei would have by himself, but nobody who works there comments on it, and they’re nicer to you than you expected them to be. One of them knows you – she’s one of the people who uses the clinic as a primary care provider, so you’ve seen her a few times a year for the past three years. She cracks a joke about how Ryuhei would look better in a maid costume than she would, which leads directly into Mitsuko bullying him into trying on the headpiece of one of the costumes. You take a picture before you can stop yourself and drop it in the group chat. Kazuo’s busy, but now there’s a record, and you’re pretty sure it’ll make Yoshimi laugh.

You’ve been most comfortable with Tenko and the League lately, but it’s nice to have a night out with your friends, too – one that’s not complicated by your involvement with your childhood best friend turned boyfriend, who probably fits the criteria of a domestic terrorist and who’s been living in your apartment on and off for the past six weeks with his gang of domestic terrorist friends. Mitsuko and Ryuhei are the most irreverent of your group, and they live the closest to the edge. Ryuhei has a record that isn’t his fault – his quirk is entirely unconscious, and when a sidekick launched a quirk-based attack at him while he was running away from a building he’d graffitied, he couldn’t stop himself from reflecting it back. Mitsuko doesn’t have a record, but the cops in Yokohama know her too well to ever give her the benefit of the doubt again. They might have the privilege of having quirks, but you’ve always been able to complain with them in a way that you haven’t with the others.

After the maid café, you find yourselves at karaoke. You collectively suck at karaoke. Ryuhei’s got the best voice, but his enunciation is the first thing to go when he’s drunk, and you can’t listen to him slurring his way through a song without laughing. Mitsuko is tone-deaf, but makes up for it with enthusiastic dance moves, and there’s absolutely nothing about your performances that stands out. You’re such a nonevent at karaoke that Sho used to fall asleep when it was your turn to sing.

It should be fun. It used to be fun. But you’ve lost two friends now. One of your friends is sick, while another’s being forced into work that could snap his mind in two. Mitsuko isn’t okay; you’re not okay. Ryuhei isn’t, either, and when the three of you are alone and you run out of things to talk about, there’s no point in pretending otherwise.

“Everything sucks now,” Ryuhei says in a break between songs. “Not just since they died. For a while.”

“It sucked the whole time. We just didn’t admit it.” Mitsuko is facedown in one of the pillows on the couch. Her voice is muffled. “It was always bullshit. When they were here, it was easier not to think about it.”

“I miss them,” you say. Your voice wavers, but only once. “I wish they were here.”

“Yeah. They should be here, and those heroes shouldn’t.” Ryuhei’s words are slurred, but he’s getting his point across just fine. “If they’re so great, how come nine hundred people died on their watch?”

They sound like Tenko. He’d be happy to hear this, and like you’ve summoned him just by thinking of him, your phone pings with a text from the burner phone Tenko’s been using to call people – Kurogiri, Overhaul, and you. When are you coming back?

I’ll be back tonight.

When?

Can’t he just trust you? You’re about to text back that you’ll be home when you’re done when Mitsuko scoops the phone out of your hands. “Your new boyfriend’s kind of clingy, huh?”

“No,” you say. Part of you gets a stupid little thrill out of admitting that Tenko’s your boyfriend. “Not clingy. He knows I was meeting Kazuo tonight.”

Mitsuko makes an error sound. “Bad move. Telling the new boy about the former boy makes the new boy insecure.”

“No –”

“Especially if the first guy is Kazuo,” Ryuhei says. “Fucking hell. If I was dating his ex and she went out to meet him – and she didn’t tell me when she was coming back – I’d probably shit a brick.”

“Thanks. I really could have done without that picture in my head.” Even as you return fire, you’re wondering if they’ve got a point. If it’s not just that Kazuo’s working for the heroes. If any part of it is that Tenko’s jealous of the guy you dated before him. “What should I do?”

Mitsuko’s still holding your phone, and to your horror, she sends a text. This is Mitsu. Your girlfriend’s not banging her ex, she’s hanging with us. Chill out.

Tenko texts back immediately. Two words. Prove it.

“He wants proof,” Mitsuko announces. “Selfie time! Look cute.”

You can’t manage looking cute. You’re too stressed to look cute, and too distracted by the stupid faces your friends are making. Mitsuko snaps a photo and sends it off, followed by a text. Your turn.

For what?

To prove you’re not banging your ex right now.

You cringe. “He doesn’t have any exes.”

“Aww, you’re his first? No wonder he’s acting like such a freak.” Mitsuko snickers. “It’s fine, anyway. We already know what he looks like.”

Something about that strikes you as odd, but before you can ask, Ryuhei pulls a phone out of his pocket. Not his. This one has a cracked screen and a case with an Endeavor pinup card taped to the back, and all at once there’s a lump in your throat. “Is that Hiro’s?”

“Yeah. They released her personal effects, fucking finally. I was her emergency contact, so I got them.” Mitsuko takes the phone from Ryuhei, your phone forgotten even as it pings again. “You know she was conscious under there?”

Your stomach clenches. “No.”

“Like the whole time. When I unlocked it, there were a whole bunch of undelivered messages, to all of us. I guess the wreckage blocked the signal.” Mitsuko’s voice is flat. Her eyes are filling with tears. “She recorded a message for us. Here.”

You don’t want to listen. You don’t want to see. Not when you had something to do with the disaster that killed her, not when it’s partially your fault. The screen is black, but you can hear Hirono’s voice, rough and choked with dust and tears as she tells all of you that she loves you, that she hated waking up most mornings except that you all made her stupid life worth living. No jokes about Endeavor. No picking on you for being boring or Mitsuru for being a simp for his latest girlfriend or Mitsuko for whatever item of clothing she bought that Hirono hates. Just Hiro saying she loves you. And Hiro saying goodbye.

You’re crying by the end of it, messy, stupid tears. Ryuhei’s teared up, too, but unlike you, he’s still able to talk. “That was the last audio clip,” he says. “There were a bunch of others. While she was trying to grab the phone, I guess. The first one was really interesting.”

He presses play on it, and you know instantly what it’s recording: The fight between All Might and All For One, audio that the news helicopters couldn’t have picked up, audio that would have been suppressed if anyone had gotten ahold of it. All For One is taunting All Might over his failures, mocking him for his ideals, the same words you can imagine Tenko using but with thousands of times more glee. And then you hear it, All For One’s voice chilling your blood even through a recording: “There is one thing you might be interested to know. Shigaraki Tomura, my apprentice? He was once known as Shimura Tenko – your beloved master’s grandson!”

You freeze in place. “That name sounded kind of familiar,” Ryuhei says, after he’s hit pause. “We couldn’t figure out why at first. Yoshimi was the one who got it. Shimura Tenko was your friend. The one who went missing.”

“We all told you he was dead, but you were right and we were wrong.” Mitsuko sprawls out on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “We figured there couldn’t be two, so we checked with Kazuo, and then we asked if we should tell you. If it wouldn’t be too hard on you with everything else going on. You know what he said?”

You can guess. “He said, What makes you think she doesn’t know?” Ryuhei mimics Kazuo’s frozen voice. “And then it all made sense. Why you’ve been acting so weird. Why you haven’t been around. Where you got that weird scar on your wrist –”

“And that bite mark on your neck,” Mitsuko adds, and your hand flies up to cover it even though it’s long gone. She waves your phone at you, the screen lit up with texts from Tenko. “I’m texting Shigaraki Tomura right now, aren’t I?”

You could lie. You need to lie. But even as you’re stammering through the first sentence of your denial, you know it’s too late. Your friends know. Kazuo as good as told them. And in some weird way, you’re relieved. You don’t have to lie any more. You can let it go. So you stop talking, except for one sentence. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Are you kidding me? We don’t want to rat you out,” Ryuhei says. “We want in.”

You stare at him. “We want to meet him first,” Mitsuko says. “Since you’ve been hung up on him since you were a toddler and your judgment with guys isn’t usually garbage –”

“But we want in,” Ryuhei interrupts. “Like we said. It’s been bullshit for a long time. At least your psycho boyfriend is doing something about it.”

“So?” Mitsuko looks at you expectantly. “When do we meet him?”

Your phone pings again, and again – and then it starts ringing. Mitsuko holds it out to you, and you answer the call. “My friends want to meet you.”

“I’m not jealous,” Tenko says. Someone guffaws in the background. “I’m not. I thought someone had – when are you getting back? It’s –”

“My friends want to meet you,” you say again. “Do you want to meet them?”

“They want to meet me,” Tomura repeats. He sounds just as confused as you feel. “Like, me, or –?”

“They know. I didn’t tell them, they guessed.”

“We want in,” Ryuhei says loudly, and you jump. “Do we have to audition or something? I’ve got a record.”

“I’d have one if I hadn’t blown my arresting officer,” Mitsuko adds from your other side, and someone on the other end of the line – probably Spinner – breaks out in a coughing fit. “So?”

Tomura’s quiet for a second. “In a few days,” he says. Ryuhei digs an excited elbow into your side. “Tell them they’d better know exactly what “in” means for them.”

“I’ll tell them,” you say. He’s stressed. You can tell. This is your fault. “Sorry.”

“Don’t. When are you coming back?”

“Soon,” you say. “I promise. I –”

Whatever you were going to say gets drowned out by Mitsuko making incredibly loud kissing sounds right next to the microphone. You hang up and shove her away, hard. Not that it bothers her. She’s cackling to herself. “He said yes?”

“In a few days. And you’d better know exactly what you mean when you say you’re in.”

“Nice!” Ryuhei gives you what’s probably a friendly punch in the arm, and you recoil with a hiss. He hit just above the impact point of Overhaul’s bullet. “Oh, sorry.”

Mitsuko has a weird look on her face now. You decide not to overreact to it. She might just be drunk. When Ryuhei hops up to go rent your karaoke booth for another hour, she turns to you. “Does he hurt you?”

“Who, Ryuhei?”

“No. Your boyfriend.” Mitsuko’s expression is serious, maybe more serious than you’ve ever seen it. “That thing on your wrist. I remember when your voice was fucked up, too. There’s more, right? Something’s up with your shoulder. Did he do that?”

You shake your head. You didn’t step in front of the bullet on Tenko’s orders. He was mad at you for doing it. “But he’s hurt you before,” Mitsuko says. You open your mouth and she talks right over you. “You’re going to say he didn’t mean to, right?”

But he didn’t. The first time, he didn’t remember you until it was almost too late. When he bit you, he didn’t realize how hard he was doing it, just like he didn’t realize he’d activated his quirk the first time you touched him. When his nails tore up the back of your hand, it was because you put your hand there. “He didn’t mean to,” you say. Mitsuko makes a derisive sound. “Don’t. I know him and you don’t. He didn’t mean to.”

“Just because he’s sorry doesn’t mean he didn’t mean it,” Mitsuko says. “I know guys like him. I know them better than you do.”

Guys like him. Magne said something like that, too. You didn’t try to talk her out of it, and you don’t try to talk Mitsuko out of it, either – just like you’ve given up trying to talk Tenko out of the lies his master told him for now. “You’ll meet him soon. You can make up your own mind.”

Ryuhei comes back, and you and Mitsuko shut up in unison. “We got another hour, but then they’re kicking us out,” he reports. “We got another few songs. Who wants to sing?”

You don’t to. Mitsuko does, though, and after two songs from her, Ryuhei commandeers the mic and forces you to sing. Like always, you’re boring enough to send at least one of your friends to sleep, and with Mitsuko passed out on the couch, you hand the mic back to Ryuhei. He’s in a good mood, at least partially because he’s drunk, but you’re most of the way to sober, and you can’t help feeling like you’ve screwed up. You wanted to keep your friends out of this, and they’re in. You’re this close to getting Kazuo in trouble, too. And you’ve let Tenko down. Again.

You text him, wondering if he’s still awake, hoping he isn’t. I’m sorry.

Don’t. We still need allies, and if you trust them, I can trust them, too. Tenko’s response comes back fast, and the weight of his trust knocks the air out of you. When are you coming home?

We’re leaving soon. I should be home in an hour or so.

Good. Tenko’s immediate response gives you that weird hit of normalcy again. It’s a normal conversation, the kind you’d be having if you’d grown up together and gotten together and moved in together, if nothing had gone wrong. I miss you.

I miss you too.

“Hey,” Ryuhei says, and you look up. “I’m putting on the performance of a lifetime here. You two aren’t even watching?”

“Sorry,” you say. Mitsuko sits up, then lies back down with her head in your lap. “Go for it.”

Ryuhei gets back to it, aiming slightly sulky looks your way, and you settle in. You keep your eyes on him, but your mind’s left the building. It’s already on the train, halfway back to your apartment, all the way back to your apartment, through the front door and home to your best friend.

Enough to Go By (Chapter 7) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

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

Chapter 7

Kurogiri snatches you from the alleyway behind the clinic. You’re ready for it, or as ready as it’s possible to be when you don’t know what Tenko’s planning. When you reappear, you’re not in the bar – instead you’re in the hallway outside Tenko’s room, and the door to his room is open. He looks pleased to see you. The hand’s already down off his face.

“You’re here. Good,” he says – but his expression shifts from anticipation into something sharper almost instantly. “What is it? Are you –”

This has been the worst twenty-four hours you’ve had since the night you first saw Tenko again. Between the visit with your family and the news about Kazuo and your encounter with Tenko’s master, you don’t have it in you to pretend. You take an unsteady step closer to him. “Can I, um –”

“What?” Tenko asks, but some part of him must know, because his arms lift from his sides, opening to leave space between them. You take another step closer, until you’re well within the space, and you know when he realizes, because he takes a sharp breath. “Yeah, you can. Go ahead.”

He hugs you back too tightly, but you’re probably hugging him too tightly in the first place. He can’t decide where to put his hands. He keeps trying different spots, but no matter where he touches you, it’s never with more than three fingers down. For your part, you keep your hands still on his back, resisting the urge to run them over his shoulder blades or along his spine. He’s really thin. Almost malnourished thin. No wonder his wounds take so long to heal.

You let your head fall against his shoulder, let your eyes fall shut. “What happened?” Tenko asks. He adjusts his grip on you without fully letting go. “Why do you look like that?”

His master said not to tell Tenko – no, advised you not to tell Tomura. But he also said he’d have no further dealings with you. You don’t know where Kurogiri is, what Kurogiri might say, so you speak as quietly as you can, your mouth just below Tenko’s ear. “I met your master.”

Tenko stiffens. “What?”

“Kurogiri took me to him. I thought he was taking me to you, but –”

“What did he want?” Tenko asks. His voice is tense, already going flat. “What did you tell him?”

“He wanted to know how I knew you. I told him about how we met last year, when you came to the clinic.” You feel Tenko’s shoulders relax slightly at that. “I used the right name. I don’t –”

“Here.” Tenko pulls away from you, but only long enough to pull you through the door to his room and shut it behind you both. “What else did he ask?”

“About my quirk. He said he’d give me one, but he changed his mind.” You try to remember, but it’s hard verging on impossible. All you can think of is the hand closing over your face, the enormous figure looming over you. “He said I was your game piece, not his. What does that mean?”

You look up at Tenko. Tenko’s expression is somehow grim and calculating at the same time. “He says everything’s for me. Everything should be as I want it, so he won’t take you away,” he says. Then, almost to himself: “But he was suspicious. If he finds out –”

“Finds out what?”

“Here.” Tenko pulls you closer than before. This time you feel his chapped lips against your ear. “I was supposed to say goodbye to my old name. When he gave me my family to wear.”

His family to wear. His family – the hands. You almost throw up. Tenko keeps talking, faster now. “I didn’t think about it. I hadn’t in years, until – and I feel different when I hear it. Different than I’m supposed to. I want the same things, but more things. I don’t know how to say it.”

“You’re not supposed to be Tenko anymore.” You feel him nod. “You feel more like that when you’re with me.”

Tenko nods again. “You always know how to say it right.”

“I know you,” you say. His grip on you tightens. “You’re in trouble with him because of me.”

“No.” Tenko’s index finger taps a pattern on your back. “I feel better when you’re here.”

That doesn’t mean he’s not in trouble. It just means he cares about it less, or he’s less worried than you are. “Just be careful with my name,” he continues. “Call me Sensei’s name around everyone else, even Kurogiri. When it’s just us, like right now –”

“Tenko,” you say, and he nods. You feel a little better, maybe. You don’t know for sure. And you know you’ve been hugging him for way too long. You step back. “Sorry about this. I –”

“Don’t,” Tenko says. “I told you. I don’t mind.”

The two of you look at each other for a moment. In your peripheral vision, you can see that the room’s even cleaner than it was the last time you were here. The coffee table still has a pileup of games on it, but there’s also an open energy drink can sitting there. With a flower sticking out of it.

You fixate on the flower. “Where’d you get that?”

“I found it,” Tenko says, but he can’t hold your gaze, which means he’s lying and he probably stole it. “So you wouldn’t get confused this time.”

“About whether it’s a date?” you ask. He nods without looking at you. “Okay. It’s a date.”

“It’s a date right now,” Tenko corrects. “The new members of the League will be here at midnight. Do you have a disguise?”

“I think so.” You’ve been carrying it around in your bag, since you don’t have a way to predict when Tenko will call for you. “Do you want to see it?”

He nods. You fish both pieces of it out of your bag and put it on, situating the veil over your face and peering at Tenko through the filmy fabric. “Can you see my face?”

“Not really.” Tenko tilts his head, studying you. “What is it?”

“My friends and I dressed up as vampire brides last Halloween, but I went a little too hard on the bride part,” you say. “I was going to use a mask, but it was hard to breathe, and I couldn’t see very well. And the veil covers my hair, too.”

Tenko nods again. “What’s the crown made of?”

“It’s supposed to look like thorns.” You cringe a little bit. “Hirono made me wear it with the costume, and I still needed something to hold the veil in place. Does it work?”

Tenko comes closer. A lot closer. “Not at this range,” he says. You’d have to agree. If you can count his eyelashes through the veil, he can definitely see your face. “I’m not letting any of them that close to you or me. You can take it off now.”

You lift the crown off, and the veil after it, and Tenko takes them from you, setting them down on the end of the coffee table next to the hand he usually wears on his face. They look unbelievably weird laid out next to each other – like the costume pieces they are, things the two of you can take on and off whenever you want to instead of symbols of what Tenko already is, what you’re getting yourself into. “The others won’t be here for a few hours,” Tenko says. “Do you want to play a game?”

“Do you need to do anything to get ready for the meeting?” you ask. “It sounds important.”

“The plan’s already done. I’ll tell you about who will be there, but we don’t need anything else. Just –” Tenko lifts his head as if to scratch at his neck, then lowers it again. “I don’t want to think about it right now. I’ve thought about it enough. Can we –”

“Yeah,” you say at once. “Let’s just play.”

You play Call of Duty again, starting off in co-op mode this time. You were so worried that your skills would atrophy that you made Ryuhei and Mitsuru play with you until you got better, something Tenko remarks on right away. “I can’t believe you practiced.”

“I wouldn’t be much of a sidekick if I stayed dead weight,” you say. “Don’t worry. It won’t last long.”

The two of you still have a ways to go before the intermediate levels, and with the pressure off, Tenko starts telling you about the allies he’s collected. Mostly guys – for whatever reason, there aren’t a lot of female villains. The two women are Hiikishi, who goes by Magne, and Toga, who goes by Toga. Magne’s an adult with a serious record, and Toga would have a serious record if she was an adult, which she isn’t. “Seventeen?” you say, startled. “She’s just a kid.”

“She’s a Stain fan,” Tenko says. He rolls his eyes, then takes out an entire group of enemies advancing on the two of you without looking at the screen. “So are two of the others. One of them’s got a fire quirk. He’s an asshole. The other one – he’s hard to get a read on. Keep an eye on him.”

“I can do that,” you say. You see a solitary enemy sneaking up behind Tenko’s character, adjust your viewpoint minutely, and shoot them before they can shoot him. “Who else?”

Toga apparently isn’t the only kid who’s taking on a life of villainy. There’s another high school student, too, and you think about what Kazuo said, about the question of whether the creation of new villains can be prevented. Two of the other new allies fall into the category of those Kazuo said would be drawn to violence regardless. You recognize both names from the news, and you’ve listened to enough true-crime podcasts at Mitsuru’s behest to know that at least one of them is supposed to be behind bars. “Did you break them out?”

“Kurogiri’s doing that,” Tenko says, unworried. “They’re the distraction. Compress will be doing the real work.”

“Compress?”

“We were lucky to find him,” Tenko says. There’s a nasty grin on his face. “You’ll hear more about him when we go over the plan. We – dammit.”

The two of you leveled up while you were talking, and there are twice as many enemies as before. You decide to drop the line of questioning and focus on the game. Playing with Mitsuru and Ryuhei, you never got through the first of the intermediate levels. Tenko’s better than they are by a long shot, but you’ll need all your wits about you to avoid dragging him down.

You and Tenko play in silence for the most part, working together as a team, and you notice the two of you shifting closer together as the game continues, moving from your separate corners of the couch to the middle of it. You’re paying attention to the game, but every so often your mind drifts – to the flower in the energy drink can, to the fact that this is apparently a date, to the fact that Tenko let you hug him and hugged you back. If this is a date, if he keeps calling it a date, there must be something he wants from you that’s more than this, more than whatever the two of you are doing right now. You could ask what it is. Part of you doesn’t want to know.

You and Tenko clear one or two intermediate levels, but on the third one, you know the two of you are in deep trouble. You’re low on health already, courtesy of getting dinged a few times on the level before, and your skills, while improved, aren’t good enough to let you hold your own. Tenko’s having to protect you, just like you were worried he would, and in the process, he’s taking damage, too. Despite that, courtesy of Tenko’s skills and your weird accuracy, the two of you progress to the end of the level. Almost.

“Come on,” Tenko hisses. He’s two seconds away from disintegrating his controller. “We can make it.”

No, you can’t. Not both of you. But if Tenko can get through, he can get to a save point, and you can finish the level later. If you both die, you have to go back to the beginning. With that in mind, it’s an easy choice. You maneuver your character between Tenko’s and the enemies sneaking up on him from behind, and shoot as many of them as you can before they overwhelm you. Tenko turns to stare at you in horror. “You died?”

“You didn’t. Go!”

Tenko swears, shoots the enemies you couldn’t kill, and clears the level at speed. He saves his progress. Then he turns on you. “What happened?”

You point at the screen, which is showing a slow-motion replay of your character getting absolutely shredded by enemy fire. “You were blocking for me?” Tenko looks unhappy. “Idiot. We could have won.”

“I was slowing you down too much,” you say. “I could help you get through, so I did. Now you don’t have to start over.”

“But you do.”

“I’m the sidekick. It’s okay,” you say. You’re not sure why he’s looking at you like that. “And even if I wasn’t your sidekick – there’s no way I’d let my best friend lose.”

Tenko doesn’t say a word in response. Instead he sets his controller aside, then lifts yours out of your hands and does the same. You’re sitting really close together right now. He said this was a date. You make eye contact with Tenko, or try to. He’s not looking into your eyes. He’s looking at your mouth.

He’s being really obvious. You wonder if he knows. “Have you kissed anyone before?”

“Yeah. You.” Tenko doesn’t look away from your mouth. “Don’t you remember?”

For a moment you don’t. But then you remember the picture of the two of you on Valentine’s Day, and what happened after the picture was taken – you taking the valentine from him, planting a poorly-aimed kiss half on his mouth and half on his cheek, and promptly running away. You’re surprised he’s counting that. But you would count it, too, if it was the only thing you had to count.

“I remember,” you say. “So this is going to be our second kiss.”

“Who said I was going to kiss you?”

“You’ve been staring at my mouth for the last minute and a half. I’m not sure what else you could be doing,” you say. Tenko’s face turns red, which means you’re right, but he still doesn’t make a move. “Did you change your mind?”

“No.” Tenko shakes his head. “I don’t know where to put my hands.”

“Don’t do anything with them for now,” you suggest. Your heart is beating faster. “Let’s just try it and see how it goes.”

He’s leaning closer now, shifting position to close the gap even further. The flush in his cheeks is darker than before. “I’m not going to be good at it.”

“Hey, I was pretty bad at Call of Duty last time,” you say. Tenko starts to argue that kissing and Call of Duty have absolutely nothing in common, and you cut him off. “You know how I got better? I practiced.”

Tenko finally tears his eyes away from your mouth. “You wouldn’t have had anything to practice if I hadn’t taught you how. You should kiss me.”

“I kissed you the first time,” you say. “It’s your turn.”

It’s quiet for a second. “Fine,” Tenko says. He leans in and you tilt your head to the proper angle and your lips meet for the first time in fifteen years.

You really don’t want to count the kiss when you were five as your first kiss, but Tenko’s counting it, so you sort of have to. His lips are rough against yours, not in pressure but in texture, and you’re careful as you kiss him back. Careful for a whole host of reasons. His hands are curled into fists on his thighs, and you don’t want him to move without thinking. You don’t want him to pull away, either, which is what he’ll do if you go overboard. It’s not the hottest first kiss you’ve ever had, but it’s the most intense by far. The fact that your lips are the only point of contact makes it even more so.

You’re trying to be careful, but you’re not careful enough – Tenko’s lower lip splits, and you taste blood. You sit back in a hurry. “Sorry. I didn’t mean –”

“I don’t care.” Tenko closes the gap between you again, presses his lips against yours a second time. “Do you?”

“I don’t want to stop kissing you,” you admit. You feel Tenko’s lips curve into a smile, spilling more blood onto yours. “But you have to let me make it up to you.”

“How?”

You unfold your hands from your sides and raise them, setting them on Tenko’s shoulders. Tenko freezes. You risk dragging your thumbs slowly across his collarbones, too prominent just like his shoulder blades and vertebrae are, and see his eyes fall half-lidded. A slow shudder runs through him, shedding tension in its wake. “Do you mind?” you ask.

“No.” Tenko kisses you again.

Kissing Tenko is – strange. It’s not bad. Definitely not bad, and definitely not something you want to stop doing, but still, it feels strange. Part of it is the taste of his blood on your lips, the almost-starved ridges of his shoulders and spine under your hands, the fact that you can touch him but he can’t touch you. And part of it is the missing piece of time, those fifteen years where you would have known each other if this hadn’t happened to Tenko – whatever this was. It feels almost like a blink. When you look back in your memories, you’re little kids, linking pinkies on the way to school. Now you’re kissing on the bed in Tenko’s room with Call of Duty paused in the background. Or making out. If the total lack of daylight between your mouth and Tenko’s is anything to go by, you graduated to making out already.

You can’t get your tongue involved without tasting even more of his blood, but the sound he makes and the shudder that runs through him when you swipe your tongue across his lower lip to clear it away makes it almost worth it. His fists are no longer resting on his thighs – now they’re on yours, fingers uncurling and curling again. You dare to slide one hand upward, tracing the back of his neck, and Tenko groans, shudders. The thought comes to you, again, that you should be careful with him. He’s so thin, so shaky under your hands. If you push him too far, he might break apart.

Tenko’s trying to talk without disconnecting his mouth from yours. That’s not going to work. You wrap your arms around his neck so he knows you’re not going anywhere and sit back. “What is it?”

“I want to touch you.” Tenko’s eyes are locked on yours this time, and the hunger and desperation you see there takes you by surprise. “I don’t know how to make it safe. I don’t want –”

Something happens to him then. You don’t know how to describe it. Something flashes behind his eyes, and his shoulders tense beneath your hands, muscles turning so rigid and brittle that they feel as though they could shatter. “It’s okay,” you say quickly. You shift closer to him without asking first, halfway into his lap, trying to give him some of the contact he wants without getting his hands involved. “You could go slow. Or be careful. Or if you had gloves –”

Tenko’s eyes light up. “Wait here.”

You shift out of his lap as requested and he gets to his feet, heading for one corner of the room. You take a second to get composed.  You can still taste Tenko’s blood on your lips, and when you raise your hands to touch your cheeks, they feel hot. Kissing him feels good, is good – but you’ve always liked your makeouts a little more hands-on, and once Tenko’s able to touch you safely, you can’t vouch for how well you’ll behave yourself. Are you really the only one who’s ever kissed him? He must be a quick study. Even with his blood on your lips, you’re already missing the heat of his mouth on yours.

Tenko’s back a moment later. He has a pair of gloves on – gloves that are missing the first three fingers. It takes all five to activate his quirk, which means you’re safe, and he still has the chance to touch you directly. He hesitates before he sits down again. “Do you really want –”

“Yes.” You catch his hand – it’s safe to do that now – and pull him down beside you. He makes a startled sound, which you immediately muffle in a kiss. It’s cute, but there are sounds you like better. “I want you.”

You were going to be more specific with what you wanted – I want you sounds heavy as all hell when the two of you have only just gotten physical – but Tenko doesn’t give you the chance. He wraps his arms around you tightly, so tight that it’s almost hard to breathe, but he doesn’t hold you that way for long. Soon enough his hands are roaming across your back from shoulder to hip, freezing briefly when they encounter your bra through your shirt, all while he deepens the kiss to an almost unsustainable degree. It’s like he’s trying to steal the air out of your lungs.

Tenko’s hands seize your shoulder, your hip, and grip hard. You don’t like being handled roughly, but held – that’s something different. You swallow a gasp and press closer to him, almost in his lap again. His grip on you tightens further and he pulls you the rest of the way. Your lips unlock from his in the move, coming loose with a slurping sound that would probably make you cringe under other circumstances, with someone else. As it is, you seize the opportunity to catch your breath.

Tenko looks up at you. His fingers are pressing deeply into your skin, hard enough to bruise through your clothes. His chest rises and falls rapidly, pressing against your own, and his red eyes are wide, pupils dilated. When you shift, trying to get settled in his lap, he sucks in a sharp breath. “Hold still.”

You’re comfortable now. You don’t mind. You look at him, studying the small things, the ones you remember from before. The tousled, slightly messy texture of his hair. His eyelashes, always a little longer than you expect them to be. The birthmark at the corner of his mouth, which you lean in to kiss lightly. You’ve always wanted to do that. Half the reason your first kiss was so messy was because you couldn’t decide whether to aim for the birthmark or his lips.

When you draw back, you see a surprised look on Tenko’s face. “You like that?” he asks. You nod, and a strange expression flickers across his face. “My grandma had it too.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“My other one. I saw in a picture.” Tenko’s thumb moves in slow circles over your hip, like he’s rubbing a worry stone. You don’t think he even knows he’s doing it. “She was a hero.”

“Really?” You didn’t expect him to say that. He nods. “You never told me.”

“I was going to.” Tenko’s eyes shift away from yours. “I found out that day.”

That day. It takes you a second to parse that, but once you do, your blood runs cold. The question balances on the tip of your tongue, a question you’ve been asking yourself for fifteen years, a question you know you shouldn’t ask him. You don’t need to know what happened. You saw what happened. All you need to know is that he’s here.

“Hey,” you say softly. Tenko won’t look at you, so you reach out, cupping the curve of his cheek, turning him back to put you face to face, if not eye to eye. “I’m glad you told me now. Better late than never. It would have been good to know for our games.”

Tenko scoffs at that. “We used to play some stupid games.”

“I liked them,” you say. “I like any game I play with you.”

Tenko’s been avoiding eye contact, but now he looks at you, and your breath catches. You can’t let him look at you like that. You’ll say more than you mean to. “Do you want to keep talking?” you ask. “Or do you want to make out some more?”

For a second you think Tenko will opt for talking. He looks like he’s thinking about it. Then the hand on your shoulder shifts to wrap around the back of your neck, and he drags you down for another kiss.

This position seems like it works for the two of you. The difference in your heights is perfect for it, and it gives you a little more control over the kissing while giving Tenko the chance to put his hands wherever he wants. He keeps them well clear of anything too forward, and eventually he finds a place he likes for both of them – one on your lower back, beneath the hem of your shirt, and the other around the back of your neck. It keeps you close, as if there was any chance you’d pull away.

You’re kissing too deeply to talk, except for once, when Tenko pulls away to make eye contact. “No more dates with heroes.”

You only went on that one date with Sugimura. After the night on the rooftop in Hosu, you had to accept that your feelings were elsewhere. “None for you, either.”

Tenko snorts. Then, almost as an afterthought: “No more with anybody.”

“You’re trying to lock it down already?” you tease. “It’s only our second date.”

“I don’t care.” Tenko’s expression is serious. “I don’t want another sidekick. You shouldn’t want another –”

He trails off, searching for the word. The word that follows naturally is ‘hero’, but you understand why he won’t use it. “I don’t want that,” you say. “You can lock me down. As long as I get to lock you down. It’s only fair.”

When you’ve had talks with guys about exclusivity in the past, they’ve looked vaguely annoyed. Tenko actually looks pleased with the thought. Not that that stops him from ribbing you about it. “You’re the one with seven siblings. You don’t like sharing?”

“I hate it.” you say, and he laughs. “You would, too, if you were me.”

Tenko smirks. He leans back from you without loosening his grip. “Go ahead, then,” he says. “Lock me down.”

He really shouldn’t challenge you like that. It gives you ideas. You lean in like you’re going to kiss him again, diverting at the last second to kiss the side of his neck, and Tenko’s complaints about how you don’t get to lock him down if you won’t even kiss him evaporate in seconds. You keep kissing him anyway. He wants you to lock him down? Fine. You’ll make sure everybody who looks at him knows that he belongs to somebody, even if they don’t know who that somebody is.

His neck is sensitive, and he’s not the quiet type. As high as his pain tolerance supposedly is, he’s almost absurdly sensitive to pleasure, and you like the idea of making him feel good a little too much. You know it’s working when Tenko’s grip on you changes, when he starts scrabbling for purchase on your back or your hip rather than holding tight, but even better than that is the unsteady sound of his breathing in your ear, the little noises he makes. You like it when guys are vocal. After one sound that crosses the line into a moan, you stop, and speak without lifting your mouth from his skin. “Locked down enough for you?”

“Fuck,” Tenko mumbles. You draw back to look at him and find his face flushed. “Maybe a little more –”

You kiss his mouth this time. You’re getting used to the taste of blood.

You don’t hear footsteps in the hallway or hear the door open, but you absolutely hear Kurogiri’s voice issuing from the doorway. “Shigaraki Tomura. It is nearly midnight.”

You pull away from Tenko, but not completely enough – there’s a rope of saliva stretching between your lips and his, which you deal with by leaning in to kiss him again. Tenko’s clearly embarrassed by Kurogiri’s presence, but that doesn’t stop him from kissing you back before he pulls away. “Knock next time,” he snaps at Kurogiri. “Are they here?”

“I will retrieve them shortly. Once the two of you are presentable.” Kurogiri apparently doesn’t trust the two of you not to go back to making out. He stands in the doorway, watching as you scramble out of Tenko’s lap and Tenko gets to his feet. “So the date went well?”

There’s that syntax shift again. “Shut up,” Tenko mutters. “Don’t act like you didn’t break my rule. You took her to Sensei. You’re lucky I don’t kill you.”

“If his orders contradict yours, my instructions are to follow his,” Kurogiri says. Tenko’s head snaps up. “I thought you were aware.”

“Now I am.” Tenko straightens his shirt and settles the hand over his face. He turns to face you and you wince. “What?”

You’ve seen the sketch of him from the USJ incident. It’s been all over the news for the past few weeks. “The hands for your neck – you might want them. There’s, um, evidence.”

“Evidence?” Tenko repeats, puzzled. Then his face turns red around the hand. He hurries to the far corner of the room and lifts a set of hands out, quickly securing them around his neck. “Can you see it now?”

You shake your head. “It is well hidden,” Kurogiri remarks. He looks to you. “Your disguise?”

You forgot about that. You collect the veil and crown off the end of the coffee table and secure both over your head. “I will retrieve the others,” Kurogiri says. “But first, the two of you.”

Warp gates open beneath your feet and Tenko’s, and when they close, you find yourselves in the bar again. Kurogiri himself vanishes, and Tenko settles into his usual seat. You stand there awkwardly. “Where do you want me to be?”

“Sit here.” Tenko taps the bar, and you scramble up. “Watch everybody. Keep an eye on the Stain fans. Act like you already know the plan. I should have told you already. I just –”

“You had other things to think about.” Your veil hides your face better than the hand hides Tenko’s – your face can flush until you’re practically glowing and no one will be able to see it unless they’re right up close. “How will I know if you want me to step in?”

“You’ll know when, if you need to. I trust you.” Tenko looks left, then right – then down at his hands. “Fuck. I can’t wear these. They’ll –”

“Here.” You hold out your hands for Tenko’s, and when he extends them, you peel the gloves off and tuck them away. With the model hands on and all ten fingers exposed, he’s different. You’re not sure how to quantify it, but you know it’s there, and it prompts a question. “Should I call you Shigaraki or Tomura?”

“Shigaraki,” he says, and you nod – but then, as the first warp gates begin to appear, he changes his mind. “Tomura. You’re different than they are. They should know from the start.”

So he’s planning to make your status distinct from the others, right from the beginning. You don’t know if that’s a good idea, but before you can protest or push back even slightly, the first of the allies Tenko’s gathered step through the portals, and you fall silent. Unless something goes horrendously wrong, you’re going to stay that way for the duration of the meeting.

The first two villains to arrive are also the youngest – the girl, Toga, and the boy who named himself Mustard, after the gas. Next up is the fire quirk-user, notable because of his patchwork skin and the staples holding the living tissue to the dead. You stare from behind the safety of your veil. You have no idea how his body is holding together. It shouldn’t be possible.

Next is a heteromorph, green-skinned and purple-haired, wearing a Stain mask. He must be the one Tenko – no, Tomura – said was hard to get a read on. The one you’re supposed to watch.

Magne arrives, followed shortly afterwards by a masked man – Compress, definitely, because the two men who arrive last are the murderers Kurogiri must have just broken out of prison. They scare you in a way the others don’t, and you’re so wary of them that you almost miss the arrival of the last villain. And you really shouldn’t miss his arrival. After all, he’s the only villain here who you’ve met before.

“Twice?” you say, startled, and Tomura looks up at you. Luckily, everyone else is still getting their bearings, and at least you said it quietly. “Sorry.”

He shakes his head. “Tell me later,” he says, and then he faces the other villains.

You’re not sure what he’s going to say, where he’s going to start, but in spite of the hands and the crew of monsters he’s assembled, all you can see is your childhood friend when he speaks. He sounds like he always did, laying out the details of the story before the game begins. “The heroes have regained their confidence. Because they dealt with Stain, they think it’s all been solved. I know that at least a few of you have questioned the effectiveness of what the League’s done so far. So have I. So we’re going back to what worked last time. We’re going to attack UA.”

Your stomach lurches. No wonder Tenko didn’t tell you. He must have known you wouldn’t approve. “They’ve tightened up security since your last attack,” Toga pipes up. “I took a look around, like you said. Nobody noticed me, but the whole campus is locked up tight.”

“Good work,” Tomura says, and Toga grins. Her incisors are sharp. “Toga’s reconnaissance confirmed my conclusion: UA is impregnable for now, which is why we’re not attacking the school itself. They’re running a summer training camp at a remote location, with significantly less security. That’s where we’ll hit them.”

“Them,” the fire quirk-user repeats. “Not All Might.”

“Not yet. We need to level up before we take him on.” Tomura’s shoulders are tense. “Hitting the camp, threatening their precious students – if the heroes can’t even protect their own kind, they can’t claim to be capable of protecting everyone else. Besides, that’s not the only reason we’re going there. You all are a good start, but we’ll need more allies if we want to win.”

“Why do you need more?” Mustard asks. “You’ve got us. We’re not good enough?”

Based on the belligerence, this is a sore spot. If Tomura can’t navigate it, you’ll step in – but somewhere beneath the hands, Tomura’s still the kid who knew how to make everybody feel included. “We can’t fight a war on just one front,” he says. “You and the others will win the strategic battle by destroying UA’s sense of superiority. And while you’re doing that, Compress and Toga will collect what we need to win the PR battle as well.”

“Indeed,” Compress agrees. “Are there other students you’d like me to capture, Shigaraki? Or are you interested only in the victor from the Sports Festival?”

The explosion kid. You remember him – the one who was so batshit berserk that he had to be muzzled and chained to a pole for the award ceremony. Tomura wants him for the League? “Use your discretion,” Tomura says. “He’s the priority. If you see others who are better suited to us than to the heroes, take them, too.”

“And I’ll get the blood,” Toga chimes in. Everyone turns to stare at her. “My quirk lets me turn into the people whose blood I drink! I can make myself look like a student, and I can say anything I want.”

Like a living deepfake. You knew Tomura was smart, but this is verging on diabolical. “What about the rest of us, then?” Muscular asks. There’s a sharp smile on his face, and just like Tomura, he’s tense. “Are we supposed to just stand around?”

“There will be pro heroes present,” Tomura says. “Mustard will incapacitate the students, but the pros will be more difficult to handle.”

“Difficult? For me?” Muscular scoffs and takes a step forward. “Just because an underground hero handed you your ass doesn’t mean I’ll have a problem.”

“If Eraserhead cancels your quirk, you’ll be in the same spot as me,” Tomura says shortly. He gets to his feet. Not good. “If you think I’m that easy to defeat, try your luck.”

It looks like Muscular wants to. Tomura’s hands are open at his sides, rising slightly, and just like you did in the convenience store last year, you speak up. “Both of your records speak for themselves,” you say, and Muscular turns to stare at you. “Tomura recognizes that the pros pose a threat to the success of the plan. And he recognizes that you’re well-equipped to handle them. That’s why you’re here.”

It’s quiet for a second. Muscular doesn’t step back into line, and neither does Tomura – but neither of them make a move, and when Tomura speaks again, Muscular doesn’t interrupt. “If you haven’t been given a more specific assignment, your job is to sow chaos,” he says. “Dabi, Spinner, Magne, Muscular, Moonfish – deal with the pros. If you have the opportunity to kill them, do it, as slowly or as quickly as you’d like. If not, keep them out of the way.”

“What about the students?”

Moonfish sounds like he’s speaking through a mouthful of razors. It makes your skin crawl, but Tomura doesn’t flinch. “The focus needs to be on the heroes and their failings, not on a bunch of dead kids. If that happens, that’s all anyone will talk about,” Tomura says. “Hurt them. Don’t kill them. That goes for all of them – except one.”

“Which one?”

“Midoriya Izuku.”

“No.” The green-skinned heteromorph speaks up for the first time. “Not him.”

Tomura turns towards him, incredulous, and the heteromorph keeps talking. “Stain spared his life. He recognized him as a true hero. I won’t subvert Stain’s will like that.”

A joke pops into your head – Stain’s not gonna fuck you – and you clench your jaw shut. “Stain’s will?” Tomura repeats. “Stain lost.”

“His ideas still live,” the heteromorph – Spinner, you think – says. “Are you following in Stain’s footsteps or not?”

You see Tomura’s shoulders tense again and realize that you’ve got approximately three seconds before he blows his top. “Stain and Tomura share a belief that hero society is rotten to the core,” you say. “The fact that the only examples of true heroes Stain could find are All Might and a fifteen-year-old illustrates the decay. Don’t you think?”

You’ve put Tomura and Stain on the same conceptual level, and you’ve put Spinner on the spot – and most importantly, you’ve contained Tomura for the time being. “I guess,” Spinner says after a second. “I still don’t think –”

“If you’re worried about following in Stain’s footsteps, follow them by killing false heroes,” Tomura interrupts. “There will be plenty to choose from at the training camp. Don’t concern yourself with Midoriya Izuku. Act as your ideals demand.”

Tomura glances around the room. “That goes for all of you. Use what methods you’d like. Act as you see fit, so long as those actions don’t imperil our common goal. Disrupt the camp, disable any pro heroes who get in your way, kill them if you want, and assist Toga and Compress in completing their objectives.”

It’s quiet. You can tell Tomura’s waiting for an argument, and when one doesn’t come right away, he picks one. “Does anyone have issues with their assigned role?”

“I have an issue,” the fire quirk-user says. Dabi, you think. The one Tomura said was an asshole, and when he points one finger at you, you decide you agree with Tomura’s assessment. “What’s your role? Who are you?”

“Yeah,” Muscular says. “What’s under that veil? And why do you talk so much?”

“She’s our medic,” Tomura says. “She’s trustworthy.”

“She’s hiding her face.”

“So am I,” Twice pipes up. “And Compress. Shigaraki, too. Besides, it’s good to have a medic! If the medic’s good.”

You owe Twice for having your back, even if he doesn’t know you. Dabi doesn’t look convinced. “What’s your name?” he repeats.

“You get her name when I get yours,” Tomura says. “My alliance with her existed before the League did. She’s trustworthy.”

Toga squints at you, then takes a few steps closer. “I like your costume,” she says. “You look like a bride.”

“I can’t see your face at all,” Magne says. “Hopefully it’s cuter than the veil is.”

“I hope so, too,” you say. Magne laughs.

Tomura doesn’t like that. You can tell. “Kurogiri, bring the maps,” he orders. A warp gate opens in the middle of the room, disgorging a map taped to a rolling whiteboard. “I don’t know your quirks as well as you do. We’ll devise this attack plan collectively.”

Tomura wasn’t in school long enough to learn what a pain in the ass group project are, but given that villains don’t like being bossed around, it’s not the worst strategy. You hang back, physically and verbally, steering clear of Dabi and Muscular and only stepping in when the temperature needs to be turned down. You’re the least powerful person in a room full of people who think nothing of throwing their weight around. In some ways, it’s just like being at home with your family.

Tomura asked you to watch, and you start piecing together an understanding of the group’s dynamic. The most stable individuals in the group are Kurogiri, Magne, and Compress, all by a long shot. The most easily dysregulated is Mustard, and while you think Dabi and Muscular can probably control themselves, you also think they’ll choose not to. You have a pretty good grasp on Twice from your previous meeting. Moonfish doesn’t say enough for you to be able to tell, but he also doesn’t start fights, and Toga’s a dark horse. So is Spinner.

Spinner’s hard for you to figure. He’s got no criminal record, but unlike Toga and Mustard, he’s old enough to have collected one. He’s probably the biggest Stain fan of the group, the only one who pushed back against Tomura on ideological grounds, but he’s also something of a team player. His role in the attack gets settled early, and he shifts to the outskirts of the group. After a few minutes psyching yourself up to do it, you slide down from the bar and join him.

He glances over at you, then double-takes. “You look like a ghost in that thing,” he says. “It works, though. I’d hide my face if my face mattered.”

“How do you mean?” you ask. “You’re joining the League of Villains. Your face is about to get pretty famous if you don’t cover it up.”

Spinner laughs, but there’s a rueful note to it. “I’m not exactly breaking hearts by turning to a life of crime. At least this way I’m doing something with my life.”

Weird and weirder. “What were you before this? If it’s okay for me to ask.”

“Only if it’s okay for me to ask how long you’ve known Shigaraki.”

You think about that. “Does ‘a long time’ count as an answer?”

“That depends. Is it months or years?” Spinner asks. You don’t know if you should answer that, and Spinner can tell. “I know I pissed him off earlier. You shut it down pretty fast. I figure either it’s your quirk or you just know him really well.”

“It’s not my quirk,” you say. You think back to the first time Tenko told you his new name. “Less than forever, more than a year.”

“I was a shut-in,” Spinner says, answering your question without responding to your answer to his. No wonder he’s got a record. It’s hard to get a record when you don’t leave your room. “That video of Stain’s is the first thing I ever saw that made sense. If you all have the same goal as Stain did, then I’m in the right spot.”

You nod. Someone is raising their voice in the group, and you key in – but it’s just one of the versions of Twice, getting excited about something. Spinner glances curiously at you. “You sure you don’t have an alias or something?”

You shake your head. You might be at a meeting of villains, wearing a disguise, listening to them plan to kidnap one high school student and traumatize the hell out of a few more, but picking out a name for yourself feels a little far. If Tomura thinks you need a name, he’ll probably give one to you.

The meeting breaks up two hours after midnight. You missed hearing the date the attack will take place, possibly on purpose, and when the group splits, leaving just you and Tomura and Kurogiri, you don’t ask what it was. Kurogiri pours drinks for you and Tomura. You sit down at the bar next to him, and he speaks without looking up from his glass. “What did you find out about Spinner?”

“He was a shut-in before. As long as you can tie your goals to Stain’s, he’ll follow along,” you say. Tomura nods. “How did the rest of it go?”

“I’m leaving some of the on-site planning to them. I’m not there to give orders, so they need to be able to adapt.” Tomura takes a sip of his drink. “Dabi’s a pain in the ass, like I thought, but I’m giving him temporary control of a Nomu to use during the fight. That should keep him quiet for now.”

He’s thought of everything. “You’re good at this stuff,” you say. “You barely needed me.”

Tomura looks up. “Yes, I do.”

It’s quiet for a little bit after that. You and Tomura drink, you staring down into your glass and Tomura staring at you, until you look up at the clock behind the bar and realize what time it is. “I have work in the morning. I have to go home.”

“Stay.” Tomura catches your sleeve with three fingers, but a small portal opens, depositing your bag a few feet away on the bar. “Kurogiri can take you to work from here.”

“I can’t show up in yesterday’s clothes. And I need to sleep. So do you.” You’re right, and Tomura knows it. He scowls anyway. He’s never happy when you leave, but right now he looks unhappier than usual. “What is it?’

“Once the attack happens, I can’t bring you back until things settle down.” Tomura’s looking unhappier by the second. “The brat can’t see you until I know he’s with us.”

“Oh,” you say. You wonder how long that will take. “That’s okay. I understand.”

“It’s not okay,” Tomura snaps. “It’s – take that thing off. I need to see you.”

You take it off quickly. “Kurogiri,” Tomura says. “Turn around.”

“I will return in five minutes.”

Kurogiri vanishes, and once he does, Tomura lowers the hand from his face, pries the other two from around his neck, and just like that, he’s Tenko again. “It’s not okay,” he repeats. “I need you with me. I feel different when you’re here.”

“Different than what?” you ask. He must think it’s a positive change, or he wouldn’t want you to stay. Tenko doesn’t answer. “Send Kurogiri to get me as soon as it’s safe, Ten. I’ll be waiting.”

You see his eyes light up ever so slightly, but it fades fast. “You’ll forget.”

Your heart aches, but this is something you can fix. “Let me show you something.”

The last forty-eight hours have been chaos, and you’ve spent most of it miserable, terrified, drunk, hungover, or making out with your childhood best friend on his couch. But somewhere in the middle of that, you managed to get into one of the two boxes you brought home from your parents’ purge and take something out. You couldn’t bring yourself to wear the locket, but you tucked it into your bag along with your disguise, and when you put your disguise away, you fish it out.

Tenko looks suspicious. “Who gave you that.”

“My parents, probably. That’s not the important part.” You close your eyes and struggle to come up with an explanation, one that doesn’t make you sound obsessed or insane or too invested in this, in him. “I found this in a box in my parents’ house. There was a lot of stuff in there about you and me.”

“Like what?”

“Pictures,” you say. “A birthday gift from you. The valentine you gave me. I put all that stuff in there when I was ten and taped it shut.”

“Why?”

“My parents were taking me to get my memory wiped the next day, so I really would forget.” You see Tenko’s eyes widen. “I hid that stuff from them, but I saved it for me. So even if the memory wipe worked, I could open it up and remember you again.”

You open the locket and hold it out for Tenko to inspect. You see his expression twist. “I never forgot about you,” you say. “When we saw each other again, that’s why I reacted that way. I always hoped you were alive. If I didn’t forget you in fifteen years, a few days or weeks or months isn’t going to make a difference.”

Tenko’s jaw is clenched. The tendons in his neck stand out, and his hands are curled into fists at his sides. You were trying to help, but it looks like you’ve made it worse. “I’m sorry,” you say. “I shouldn’t have –”

Tenko seizes you and yanks you into his arms. “Shut up,” he mumbles, his voice muffled by your shoulder, or maybe your chest. “How am I supposed to let you leave now?”

“You have to. It’ll be okay,” you say. “I did promise not to go on any dates with heroes.”

It’s quiet for a second. Your arms are around Tenko, and you feel his shoulders shake. “That’s not funny.”

You know that particular note in his voice. It makes you feel better. “Don’t laugh, then.”

Tenko snorts, hugs you closer and tighter. Then he lets you go. “Next time you’ll stay,” he says.

“If I have the next day off, sure,” you say, and Tenko smiles slightly. “We never got to have sleepovers before.”

It’s true. You asked and so did he, but your parents said you were too young, even though neither of you would have been farther from home than right across the street. You see Kurogiri reappear out of the corner of your eye and know you’re out of time. “Be careful,” you say to Tenko. “Come find me as soon as it’s safe.”

“I will.” Tenko gets to his feet. “Turn around, Kurogiri.”

“Believe me, there’s nothing going on over there that I want to see.”

One of these days you’re going to ask Tenko why Kurogiri’s like that, why he seems like he’s two people in one. Not tonight. There isn’t time. You have time for one more kiss with Tenko, but that’s all – and the instant the two of you separate to take a breath, Kurogiri warps you away, dropping you back in your apartment. Your bag lands on the couch next to you. You still have the locket clenched in one hand. There are still a few drops of Tenko’s blood on your lips.

You lick them away, feeling twenty kinds of insane as you do it. Your mind is crowded with dozens of questions, thoughts, images, memories, all of them demanding to be addressed at once. You kick off your shoes, move your bag to the floor, and lie back on the couch. Your eyelids are heavy the instant you’re horizontal, and by the time it occurs to you that you should let go of the locket or at least put it somewhere safe, you’re fast asleep.

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 4) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

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

Chapter 4

You don’t see Tomura the next morning, but when you come home from work, Phantom is loose in the yard, and Hizashi is hanging out just beyond the fence, studying an empty jar. “I came to get this, since we’re out,” he remarks. He has sharp teeth, just like Himiko. “So, what happened last night?”

You play dumb for all you’re worth. “Something happened last night?”

“Of course it did. The vibes coming off this house are impressively horny,” Hizashi says, and you cringe so hard you’re surprised you don’t explode. “I’ve been there. Consequence of spending too much time embodied – you start feeling things a normal human body feels, and going incorporeal doesn’t make it go away. That was a nasty shock for me, too.”

You really don’t want to ask Hizashi any questions at all, but you’ve got one – and it’s a subject change, so you seize it. “Is it true that ghosts’ power levels are stagnant? Are you just stuck with what you started with?”

“That’s not what I thought you were going to ask.” Hizashi tosses the jar from one hand to the other. “I’m guessing you’re asking because of our sexually frustrated friend in there?”

“I’ll pay you to never say that again,” you say, and Hizashi laughs. “Yes. He said –”

“That he didn’t want to come here. I’d buy that, easy.” Hizashi glances over his shoulder at the house, then beckons you away down the block. You’re not sure how far you have to go to be out of Tomura’s earshot, but you stop when Hizashi does. “Here’s the thing. He and I are the oldest ghosts in this neighborhood, but we’re not the same kind of old. I chose to be here.”

“Why?” you ask. Hizashi stares at you. “Did you come here to hurt people?”

“I came here because I wanted to be people,” Hizashi says. You stare. “Ask him what it’s like in the world between and you’ll understand. But to answer your question, we don’t spend our whole existences at the same power level. There are two kinds of ghostly power. There’s what you get right at the start. Then there’s your potential. Conjurers – the worst ones, anyway – they want potential. That’s why they grab the youngest ghosts.”

His expression darkens, and your legs almost give out beneath you. Is this how Tomura makes other people feel? You’re surprised that anyone’s ever set foot in your house. Hizashi doesn’t notice what he’s doing to you, or if he notices, he doesn’t care. “Eri had low surface power but massive potential. Her conjurer bound her in the worst situation possible, figuring she’d have to tap into that potential to take control of her environment and make it her own. She found another way out, but your ghost didn’t.”

He glances back at your house. “Based on how strong your ghost is now, his potential was massive. He probably hasn’t even found his limit yet. What’s weird is that he hasn’t used it.”

“Did you use yours?”

Hizashi grins his sharp-toothed grin. “Why do you think it took them so long to burn my opera house down?”

You’ve wondered, every so often, what it would have been like to be haunted by Hizashi instead of Tomura. Now you’re pretty sure you’d have had a breakdown. Aizawa must have nerves of steel. “Anyway,” Hizashi says, “he’s not smart enough to tell a lie that big. He’s telling the truth.”

He tosses the jar at you and you barely catch it in time. “And whatever you did last night, don’t do it again. I can handle his mood, but it’s messing with the little ones.”

You cringe. The last thing you want is for Eri and Himiko to pick up on whatever Tomura’s doing – even if they do know all about sex from observing humans already. But you also don’t know how to fix this problem you apparently caused. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Ask Keigo,” Hizashi says, already walking away. “He’ll know.”

Keigo? You’ve talked to Keigo some, since he’s the only person in the neighborhood who’s actually in your age range, but it’s occurring to you now that you’ve never actually met Keigo’s ghost. You pull out your phone, considering texting him, but there’s no point when his house is across the street and his car’s in the driveway. You walk back to your house, retrieve Phantom’s spare leash from your car, and take her with you when you head across the street to knock on Keigo’s door.

Keigo answers it pretty fast. There’s a handprint-shaped hole burned in his shirt, still smoking faintly, and it draws your attention like a magnet. “Uh, what is that?”

“Ask Dabi,” Keigo says.

“Ask her damn ghost. It’s all his fault.”

“No, it isn’t. You can control your behavior, you just don’t want to.” Keigo rolls his eyes. “I saw you talking to Hizashi. I’m guessing he sent you?”

“Yeah. Can we talk?”

“Yeah. Just let me get my shoes. And a new shirt.” Keigo ducks back into the house, and you wait on the steps, wondering if you’ll get a glimpse of the former ghost who lives here. Keigo’s voice issues from within the house, but he’s not talking to you. “Don’t go out there if you’re just going to get into a pissing contest with the guy across the street. He could crush you with both hands tied behind his back.”

“He can’t cross that fence, and I didn’t give up my powers like an idiot. That means I can do whatever I want with his human –”

“He’d blow that house apart and come get you, and you know it.” Keigo reappears. “Sorry about him. He’s in a mood. Let’s go.”

“Hey, who said you could leave? I didn’t say you could leave! Get back here –”

“I’ll be back when I feel like it! Bye-bye!” Keigo waves and then slams the door. He hurries down the steps and you follow him. He doesn’t stop until you’re at the top of the street. “Sorry about that. I’m guessing you’ve got questions.”

You have a lot of questions. “Aizawa said Tomura was the only ghost left in the neighborhood.”

“He is,” Keigo says. “You know how ghosts have to want to be embodied more than they’ve ever wanted anything for it to work? Dabi tried to change his mind halfway.”

“Oh,” you say. “So that makes him half ghost?”

“It makes him a scar wraith. Half of him is permanently materialized, half of him isn’t, and most of the time he’s a total bitch about it.” Keigo crouches down to tie his shoes. “He lost half of his ghostly powers and picked up most of the downsides of being embodied. He’s going to be like that until he makes up his mind.”

“Oh,” you say again. “That’s, um – is that why your house is always on fire?”

“You got it.” Keigo straightens up again. “I know we got out of there in a hurry, but you’re not actually in danger from him. I just wanted to teach him a lesson. Like you do to yours when you leave.”

Is that what you’re trying to do? You don’t know if you’re trying to punish Tomura or just trying to figure out a game plan before you go back in. In this case it’s definitely the latter. “Hizashi says my ghost is, um –”

“Horny,” Keigo says. Your face heats up. He starts walking, and you follow him. “Yeah, they get like that sometimes. And they don’t like it. Usually they dematerialize to get away from feelings they don’t like, but it doesn’t work, and that pisses them off, too.”

Phantom stops to sniff a tree, and you let her for a second before tugging her along. “Why?”

“Maybe you don’t know, because you’re a girl –”

“Girls get horny too,” you say. This is maybe the dumbest conversation you’ve ever had, excepting the one you had with Tomura about why Phantom can’t have dead birds even though she really wants them. “Are you saying it’s because they have to do something about it? They don’t. They can just wait for it to go away.”

“Yeah, but waiting for it to go away is uncomfortable,” Keigo says. You’re not going to argue that one. Being horny when you don’t want to be is deeply unpleasant. “And ghosts suck at tolerating discomfort. Yours is pretty inexperienced with everything from what I’ve heard, so he probably doesn’t know what to do, and unless you want to leave a copy of The Joy of Sex lying around –”

“I don’t.” You shudder. “I don’t want him getting ideas.”

“Then you’re going to have to explain,” Keigo says patiently. You give him a pained look, and he sighs. “Tell him to materialize fully and get it out of his system. That’ll solve the initial problem.”

The thought of heading back to your house and telling Tomura he needs to masturbate makes you want to die. But you’re even unhappier about Keigo’s second sentence. “What do you mean, the initial problem?”

“Hizashi and Magne gave me the ghost sex talk when we moved here. Kind of late, but it helped, sort of.” Keigo rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “Once ghosts figure out how it works, they go one of two ways. Either they decide it’s gross and they’re not interested – that’s what Magne did – or they decide they’re really into it, which is what Hizashi did. And they can’t generate that feeling on their own the way people do, so they go after the people who made them feel that way the first time.”

That sinks in fast, but you’ve got no idea what to think or say or do about it. What comes out is the last thing you wanted to tell anyone. “I just held his hand. That was it! I was just trying to prove that there’s a difference between physical contact that hurts and stuff that doesn’t hurt because he won’t quit scratching his neck until it bleeds – and I’m pretty sure he hated it –”

“If he hated it, then you’re fine,” Keigo says. “Honestly, most of the adult former ghosts I’ve met aren’t into it even after they embody themselves permanently. Hizashi’s only like that because he spent enough time embodied to get used to it before he made it official. If it was a common thing Aizawa would have written a guidebook on it by now.”

Aizawa does have a lot of guidebooks. It took you a while to realize that most of the literature he sent you home with was stuff he’d written himself. “Although,” Keigo muses, “I guess Aizawa never hooked up with an actual ghost. He and Hizashi didn’t bang until after Hizashi was embodied.”

“So, um –” You can’t believe you’re about to ask this. “Did you, uh –”

“Did me and Dabi hook up before he fucked up his embodiment? Yeah,” Keigo says. You thought he’d be embarrassed, or proud. Instead he looks sad. “He didn’t use to be like this, or go by Dabi. His real name is Touya, and he was a lot, sure, but he wasn’t like this. I wouldn’t have gotten into it with him if he’d been like this the whole time.”

“I get it,” you say. You’ve had bad relationships before. “Do you think he’d go back if he embodied himself all the way?”

“Probably? I don’t think he’ll do that, though.” Keigo sighs. “They almost never decide consciously that they’re going to embody themselves. It happens because of how they feel. The little ones, they embodied themselves because they wanted to be with their families. They wanted to be seen and loved more than they wanted to be powerful. Magne jumped because Spinner didn’t have anybody but her, and as far as I can tell, she’s sort of surprised she did it. Hizashi did it on purpose, but Hizashi’s different – and from what he’s said, he’d probably have done it unconsciously at some point. He loves Aizawa that much.”

Now you get why Keigo looks so sad. “I bet Touya just got nervous,” you say. “I mean, it’s kind of a big decision, right? The biggest one they’ll ever make. And it’s not like he left. Even after you left his old haunt he stayed with you. That’s got to mean something.”

“Maybe.” Keigo smiles halfway. “A guy can hope, right?”

“Of course,” you say. Personally, you’re hoping for something different from Tomura.

You spend way too long pacing up and down the street after you say goodbye to Keigo, trying to work up your nerve. But eventually the weird tension from the house becomes perceptible to you even from outside it, and you remember what Hizashi said about the kids. You order yourself to suck it up, unlatch the front gate, and make your way inside. You can tell Tomura’s watching you, marking you closely, while you give Phantom a treat and some water. Once you’ve gotten her settled, you make your way upstairs to your room and shut the door. You can’t look at him while you have this conversation. You squeeze your eyes shut and speak up. “I know how to fix your problem.”

“What problem?” Tomura’s voice sounds tight and uncomfortable. “I don’t have a problem. You have a problem. You hung out with that guy across the street –”

“Because I needed help with you,” you say. It’s quiet for a second. “I figured out a solution to your problem. So you won’t feel the way you’re feeling anymore. I know it’s uncomfortable.”

“No, you don’t. Humans don’t feel like this.”

You manage to laugh at that one. “Humans feel like this all the time, Tomura. Half the dumb decisions people make in movies are because they feel like this.”

It’s quiet again. “How do I fix it?”

You bury your face in your head. “You have to materialize all the way. Then you have to touch yourself.”

“What do you mean, touch myself? You said I wasn’t supposed to scratch.”

“Not there.” You’re pretty sure your face is melting off from sheer embarrassment. “You know where that feeling is? The one you don’t like? You have to touch yourself there to make it go away.”

“Why?”

“It –” You chicken out. “You’ll figure it out once you try it. Go in the bathroom and shut the door.”

“Why do I have to go in there?”

“Privacy,” you say. There’s no way to tell him that you don’t want to have to clean ghost cum off the hardwood floors.

You hear footsteps down the hall, followed by the bathroom door opening and closing. “This is stupid,” Tomura says. You couldn’t agree more. “I’m doing it. It still feels – weird –”

That catch in his voice is something you really could have gone without hearing. “You don’t have to narrate,” you say. “You deserve privacy. I’m giving you privacy. I can leave the house –”

“No, don’t.” Tomura sounds pretty sure about that. “This was your idea. Don’t you want to – ugh.”

You don’t want to know what that was about. At all. You think about getting your headphones, except if you don’t respond when he talks to you, he’ll come looking to see why, and you really don’t want him to come talk to you in whatever state he’s in at the moment. Maybe it’s over already. Maybe he’s one of the vast majority of ghosts who think it’s gross and this will never happen to you again. You’re sure that’s it. It’s over already. It –

A low sigh echoes through the house, and you freeze in place. There’s a few uneven breaths, and then another sigh, followed by a sharper sound, somewhere between a gasp and a whimper. “What is this?” Tomura asks, his voice strained in an entirely different way than before. When you don’t respond, he says your name, followed by another one of those sharper sounds. “I don’t understand. Why – ah –”

You clamp your hands down over your ears, but it’s like your ears are attuned specifically to him. You can hear everything. Every ragged breath, every whimper, every needy, desperate moan, and suddenly you’re sure that you got the other kind of ghost, the kind that finds sex and lust fascinating instead of gross. You’ve made a mistake. Not just in telling him to solve the problem like this, but in sticking around to listen. Because listening to this, knowing that you touched his hand and turned him on so badly that it’s been permeating the neighborhood all day, is doing something to you, too.

Your face is flushed, but it’s not just from embarrassment. When you touch your wrist to feel for your pulse, it’s fast. And worse than all of that, you’re wet. Knowing it’ll make things worse doesn’t stop you from sliding one hand down the front of your jeans, recoiling when you realize just how wet you are. This is a disaster. You can’t let him know.

There’s only one solution you can think of. No time to get to the bed, or to do anything more than sink to the floor, unzipping your jeans just far enough to give your hand room to move. You shove the heel of your other hand against your mouth, because you’re not loud but you’ve never done anything like this before and you’re not sure what will happen. You squeeze your eyes shut as you brush your fingers between your legs, the sound you make muffled by your hand and drowned out by the almost-agonized moan that issues from the bathroom down the hall. “I can’t,” Tomura pants. “I can’t – stop – how does it stop –”

“You’ll know.” You think your voice is steady enough. How is he still going? The first time you masturbated, you were so wound up that you were done almost faster than you could think. And he’s a guy. “Just keep going.”

“Keep talking.” Tomura’s voice is just as raspy and ragged as his breathing is. It shouldn’t be hot. You shouldn’t find this hot. “Is this –”

He breaks off in a whine. “How it’s supposed to feel?” you ask. You increase the pressure of your fingers against your clit in spite of the fact that he’s clearly expecting you to talk and you don’t want him to know what you’re doing. “Like you’re going to fall apart, but it feels so good you don’t care?”

“Yeah. Ah –”

“Like that,” you say. You find yourself spreading your legs wider, giving more space for your hand to move. “Exactly like that, Tomura. Don’t stop.”

You’re telling him how to touch himself, but it’s all wrong. It sounds the same as what you’d be telling him to do if he was here, if the fingers slipping inside you were his. What is wrong with you? Thoughts flash through your mind, thoughts you shouldn’t have, and your breathing turns shallow and harsh. “Say something,” Tomura whines, begs. You picture what he must look like right now, face red and hair stuck to his neck and forehead with sweat, completely at the mercy of a body and a need, and crook your fingers, shuddering. “Come on. I need you. Don’t leave me. Please –”

“I’m here.” The strain in your voice would let anyone else know exactly what you’re doing, but Tomura doesn’t know – and even if he did, the sounds you hear tell you that he’s lost in his own touch, chasing his own high. You might as well not be here. All you are is a friendly voice, a guide in uncharted territory. “You’re doing great. You’re almost done, aren’t you? You know what you like by now. Do that, and keep doing it. Don’t stop until –”

The sound he makes is inarticulate and absolutely filthy. Your muscles clench around your fingers, and you rub desperately at your clit with your free hand. Without a hand over your mouth to muffle yourself, you’re reduced to biting your lip until it bleeds as you listen to Tomura shuddering through the first orgasm of his existence. And that’s what tips you over the edge, really – the thought that it’s his first, the thought that it’s because of you. Blood spills into your mouth as your hips jerk against your hands, your vocal cords straining with the effort of holding back the sounds you want to make. You can’t remember the last time you came this hard. All you want to do is sprawl out on the floor and go to sleep.

But you can’t. You need to hide the evidence. You can’t let Tomura know what you just did. You zip and button your jeans, cringing at the slickness of your fingers, and leave your room, hurrying to the downstairs bathroom to splash water on your face. You get a glimpse of what you look like in the mirror and stare in horror. Your face is flushed and your eyes are dilated and there’s a drop of blood at the corner of your mouth that you smear away with the back of your hand. You look like a mess. The only thing that will save you is that Tomura doesn’t know what to look for.

His voice drifts through the house, still unsteady. “There’s a mess in here.”

“I’ll clean it later,” you say. “Since it’s my fault.”

The floor creaks once or twice, then stops, and you know Tomura’s dematerialized. It’s not a surprise. You can’t imagine how much energy he burned through, and sure enough, when you look out the kitchen window, you see a line of dead blackberry bushes along the back fence. Sex stuff takes more life-force than anything else. All the more reason for this to never happen again.

Tomura’s presence slips into the room, surrounding you like he does sometimes. Usually you shoo him away, or threaten to leave until he slinks off, sulking. Today you can’t. You coped okay with your first orgasm, but you were alone. You know you’d have felt weird if you hadn’t been, and if the person who talked you through it had ignored you afterward. You let him settle in, staring fixedly at the dead bushes along the fence. Only one or two are still alive.

Tomura’s voice rasps against your ear. “Do I have to do that every time?”

“There’s not going to be another time,” you say. “It’s my fault for touching you like that last night, and you told me not to do it again. So we’re good.”

“It felt good.” Tomura sounds sure about that. Your stomach twists. “It only felt bad because I didn’t know what to do. Now I know.”

“I’m still not touching you like that again. You said no. I can’t ask you to respect my  boundaries when I don’t respect yours.”

“What if I take it back?” Tomura asks. The twist in your stomach is painful this time. “What if I want you to touch me?”

“Then it starts being about what I want,” you say. “And I don’t want to.”

It’s a lie. You’re lying. Another human would know you were, would know by the heat of your body and the flush in your cheeks and the heavy, painful sound of your heartbeat. “You don’t want to,” Tomura repeats. His presence slips away again, going to some place far enough that you can barely feel it. “I didn’t say I wanted it. Like I’d ever want you to touch me.”

His voice is the last thing to vanish. You want to stick your head under the faucet and drown. “Fine.”

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it, and after the hand-touching incident and everything that followed, the atmosphere in your house feels worse than it ever has before. You don’t know where Tomura’s going, but there are times when his presence vanishes almost completely, and when it does, you can barely stand the emptiness he leaves behind. You never lived alone until you lived here, and you thought you loved it. Now you realize that you were never living here alone at all. Until now.

The jar of bugs start piling up on the front porch, and rather than letting them die, you let them go. You don’t tell the others to stop bringing them. Some part of you is hoping Tomura will come back, that you can go back to the way things were before, but you don’t need one of Aizawa’s guidebooks to tell you that it’s not happening. You rejected him. And if there’s anything you’ve taught Tomura about how humans work, it’s that no means no.

You start spending extra time at work. Sometimes you bring Phantom with you, with Mr. Yagi’s permission, and it makes you popular with your coworkers like you never were before. You still hate it, but it makes it easier to be at work. And it means you don’t have to go home until you’re ready.

At least, most days you don’t. But you woke up with a splitting headache today, and a sore throat, and because you weren’t coughing, you decided that you didn’t have an excuse to skip work. You leave Phantom at home and drag yourself into the office, and you get through four hours of your workday before Mr. Yagi spots you and sends you home. Your pleas not to go home fall on deaf ears, and you drive home slowly, struggling to keep your eyes fixed on the road in front of you.

When you get home, Phantom greets you anxiously. She knows you’re not feeling well, and when you sit down in the front hall to pet her, you realize that you’re going to have a hard time getting up. It doesn’t matter. You can take a break. You let your eyes fall shut.

When you wake up, it’s to grey, rainy, late-afternoon light falling over your face, the sound of Phantom whining in your ear, and a voice you haven’t heard in three weeks. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Tomura,” you mumble. You were hoping sleep would make you feel better, but it feels like your headache’s actually gotten worse. “I’m fine. Just wanted to sit down.”

“Don’t be stupid. And don’t lie.” Even the sound of Tomura’s footsteps across the floor hurts your head, not to mention Phantom’s whining. “You fell asleep on the floor. You’re making this weird face. You don’t look right. What’s wrong with you?”

He almost sounds worried. “My boss sent me home. He thinks I’m sick.”

“Are you sick?” Tomura asks. You think about lying, decide not to, and nod. The pain that splits your skull makes you want to throw up. “Can you fix it?”

You have cold medicine somewhere, and pain relievers, but you’d have to get up to get them, and you’re so dizzy. Maybe you should call somebody for help, but who would you call? Nobody in your neighborhood is going to set foot in your house, and you don’t have any friends from work. And all your old friends have started to slip away, courtesy of your new world, your new friends, your new life. Who do you have to call? Nobody. The thought makes you sad, and feeling sad makes you even more tired than before.

“Wake up,” Tomura snaps at you. Phantom whines and licks your face. “Stop it. Wake up!”

Phantom’s worried. Tomura’s mad at you. Somewhere in your clouded mind, it occurs to you that you need help. That maybe it doesn’t matter who you call as long as you call somebody. You pull your phone out of your backpack and get as far as unlocking it. Then your head starts to ache worse than before, a dull pounding that fills every crevice and corner of your skull. Everything feels hot and humid and awful. You shut your eyes again. Anything to make it stop.

You’re cold when you wake up again. Well, some of you is cold. There’s a small warm patch on your stomach, but the rest of you is cold. Not regular cold. Tomura’s cold. He’s materialized, completely or close enough, and he’s holding onto you awkwardly with one arm while Phantom rests her head on your stomach. You can hear Tomura’s voice. He sounds pissed. “If I knew what was wrong with her I’d say it,” he snaps at whoever he’s talking to. “She keeps falling asleep. She’s not supposed to be home yet. She’s too warm.”

“So she’s sick.” That’s Keigo’s voice. Is Keigo here? Why did Tomura let Keigo in the house? “And she’s sleeping a lot?”

“I said that already. Stop repeating what I already said.”

“What are her symptoms?” That’s Aizawa’s voice. It starts to dawn on you slowly what’s happening here, and you almost laugh. “Symptoms. You named some of them already. Fatigue. Fever. Is she coughing?”

“No.”

“Does her breathing sound different than it usually does?” Jin’s mom is talking. Now you know for sure. “Does she have a rash?”

“Her breathing sounds normal,” Tomura says. He’s on the phone. He somehow unlocked your phone, went into your text messages, and conference-called the entire ghost friends group chat. You’d laugh if you weren’t worried it would make your head explode. “What’s a rash?”

“It would be on her skin. Does her skin look like it usually looks?”

An ice-cold hand brushes over your cheek. “It’s too hot. Her face is red. The rest of it looks okay.”

“Check for bites. We brought over tons of bugs. If enough of them bit her –”

“Hitoshi, hang up the phone,” Aizawa orders. “You’re supposed to be at school.”

“You’re supposed to be driving,” Shinsou fires back. “You’re picking up Eri from school early because she’s sick.”

Eri’s sick. You claw your way out of semi-consciousness and grasp the phone. “Does she have what I have?”

“Oh, good. You’re alive,” Keigo says. “Your ghost was pretty panicked.”

“I wasn’t panicked. Shut up.” Tomura’s grip on you tightens. “Someone else is sick?”

“She fell asleep in class. She has a headache and a fever,” Aizawa says. He sounds unhappy. “When would she possibly have been exposed?”

“We brought over some bugs last night,” Shinsou says. “Maybe it was then.”

“It could have gone the other way, too,” Jin’s mom says. “Kids get sick a lot easier than adults.”

“Good point. Maybe Eri got it first and brought it –”

“But Shinsou isn’t sick. If Shinsou lives with her and isn’t sick, how come –”

“I don’t care,” Tomura says loudly. “I don’t care about your sick kid. I want to know how to fix my human.”

Tomura’s making a great first impression. You’ll be doing damage control with Aizawa later, once you feel less like a puddle of body aches and sweat. “If she’s got what Eri’s got, it’s probably the flu,” Jin’s mom says. “She should have cold medicine on hand. Most people do. Pain relievers for the headache and body aches, cough drops if she has a sore throat. And she’ll need to eat. Do you know how humans eat?”

“I’m not stupid. I know how food works.”

“Don’t cook,” Aizawa, Shinsou, and Keigo all say at once. Keigo keeps talking. “You’re not embodied. You don’t have tastebuds. Whatever you end up cooking is going to be –”

There’s a scuffle on Keigo’s end of the line. “It’s going to be fuck awful,” Dabi announces, and Shinsou snickers. “Go ahead and poison your human. See if I care.”

“The next time you even look at my human I’m going to disintegrate your ugly face.”

“My ugly face? Have you seen what you look like? I’m surprised your human hasn’t gone blind.”

Tomura snarls. “At least I never set my human on fire –”

“You’re both pretty,” you mumble, and Keigo cracks up laughing. “I’m not that sick. I can heat up a can of soup in the microwave.”

“You’re so stupid. You fell asleep on the floor,” Tomura snaps at you. “You can’t do anything. I’m going to have to drag you everywhere.”

“No one made you touch me,” you protest. “If you weren’t here –”

“Well, I am here. So shut up and let me –”

“If you two are going to have a domestic, hang up the phone first,” Hizashi says loudly. You didn’t realize he was there. You jump, and your head collides with Tomura’s chin. He swears and so do you. “One of us will stop by later to make sure neither of you are dead. Goodbye.”

There’s a click as he hangs up the phone. Shinsou hangs up a second later. Jin’s mother hangs up after promising to bring over some food, and Keigo stays on the phone a little longer. “I’ll drop by in an hour or two, like Hizashi says. Can you promise not to kill me if I set foot in the house?”

“The only person I’m going to kill is your idiot ghost.”

“Cool,” Keigo says. You can hear Dabi arguing in the background that it’s not cool at all. “Bye.”

He hangs up the phone, too. Now it’s just you and Tomura and Phantom, piled up on the couch in the living room. You don’t remember getting to the living room. Tomura must have dragged you, like he said. You thought he was so mad at you that he was never going to show himself again. Apparently not.

“What’s a domestic?” Tomura asks after a while.

“A fight,” you say. “Just another word for fight.”

“Then why didn’t he just say a fight?”

You really don’t want to get into this right now. “A domestic is a kind of fight. The kind couples have. He was making fun of us by pretending we’re a couple.”

“I don’t like him,” Tomura says after a moment. “I can kill him for you.”

“Don’t do that,” you say.

“He scares you.” Tomura scratches at his neck with the hand that’s not gripping your shoulder. “If I can’t not scare you, I might as well be the only thing that does.”

Maybe you’re just sick and stupid, but you don’t hate the sound of that. “That’s kind of sweet.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tomura says. He slides out from behind you and drops you onto the couch with a thud. You see a patchy flush on his face before he turns away. “I’m getting your medicine. Stay there.”

You’re not really in a position to go anywhere. You scratch behind Phantom’s ears with a shaky hand and close your eyes again.

When you wake up, you find that Tomura’s turned your medicine cabinet inside out and brought you absolutely everything. Sorting through it is the first laugh you’ve had in a while, and once you’ve got a double dose of painkillers on board, you’re willing to risk it. “Why did you bring this?” you ask, waving a box of band-aids at him. “You’ve seen me use these. You know they’re not for this.”

“How am I supposed to know that? You use stuff that’s not for the stuff you’re using it for all the time.” Tomura snatches the band-aids away and picks up another box. “What are these?”

“You definitely didn’t need to bring those,” you say. “They’re condoms.”

“What?”

It figures. He didn’t know male from female until Hizashi told him, but he clearly has certain associations with condoms, and he doesn’t like them. Probably because of all the movies you didn’t know he was watching with you. “Relax. Does that box look open to you?”

“No,” Tomura says, inspecting it from all angles. “If it’s not open, why do you have it?”

“In case I need it,” you say. “I don’t need it right now.”

In fact, you’re having a hard time imagining that you’ll ever need condoms again. You can’t exactly bring anybody home to hook up with, not with Tomura constantly lurking around, and you like sleeping in your own bed too much to spend the night at anybody else’s house. Beyond that, if you ever wanted to get serious with anybody, you’d have to explain about your house, about Tomura. There’s no way to explain that. No way to explain him in a way that won’t end any relationship instantly. Maybe it’s just that you’re sick, but you find that you don’t mind the thought.

You choose a box of cold medicine and swallow a dose of it, then pop a cough drop into your mouth to soothe your throat. Tomura watches you the entire time, only partially materialized. “Does that taste good?”

“No. It numbs my throat so it hurts less.”

“What do you do when things hurt?”

You were going to try to fall asleep again as soon as you’re done with your cough drop, but Tomura’s in a mood to talk. And as much as you hate to admit it, you miss talking to Tomura. “There are different kinds of hurt, for people. If it hurts physically, like this does, I can take medicine. I can put ice on a bruise or use a heating pad for cramps. There are ointments that have numbing agents in them, same as the cough drops. There are lots of things to do when something physically hurts.”

“If something hurts my body, I can dematerialize,” Tomura says. You wish it was that easy for you. If you could evaporate right now, you’d do it in a heartbeat. “What about other kinds of hurting?”

“Um –” You break off, trying to wrap your head around it. “Emotions hurt sometimes. The bad ones, usually. Being sad or angry or lonely or scared – all of those can feel like they hurt. They can hurt a lot.”

“How do you make them go away?”

“You can’t,” you say. Tomura’s expression darkens. “There’s not medicine that fixes feelings, at least not all the way. You just have to live with them until they stop. Or until you get used to them.”

“That’s stupid,” Tomura says.

“You’re telling me.” You close your eyes. “I guess talking about them helps sometimes. Not for everybody, not all the time, but it can make you feel less alone.”

“I didn’t hate being alone before,” Tomura says. You open your eyes and find him scowling, his face flushed. “Now I do.”

You want to remind him that he’s the one who pulled away, that he’s the one who left, but there’s no point. You roll over instead, facing the back of the couch, and the words slip out of your mouth before you can stop them. “I missed you.”

You couldn’t have picked a dumber thing to say. Tomura’s got the emotional maturity of a frat guy – he gets mad easily and takes “no” poorly and makes you explain your boundaries five billion times before he even thinks about respecting them. Telling a guy like him that you missed him is a one-way ticket to being mocked for being needy and clingy and pathetic. You can already feel your eyes burning in anticipation of being humiliated.

But Tomura’s not a human man. He’s a ghost. The rush of air filling a previously occupied space tells you he’s dematerialized, but the cold settles around you, and his voice rasps in your ear. “I missed you too. Idiot.”

“You’re the one who left,” you answer. “You’re an idiot, too.”

You’re expecting him to slip away again. Instead the cold spot envelops you more securely than before. “Shut up.”

You fall asleep like that, and when you wake up, it’s to the sound of the fire alarm going off. Tomura’s watched you cook plenty of times and probably should know better, but apparently when you mentioned sticking a can of soup in the microwave, he took it literally. You should be pissed. You probably will be, once the cold medicine wears off. But at the moment, when you’re dizzy and sleepy and feverish, all you can think to do is be pleased that he tried at all.

Sanctuary of Nightmares PT 5

Platonic SB x Child Reader

Chapter Selection

Previous / Next

A/n: I meant to get this chapter out a little bit sooner but I've been having a really shitty day so I didn't have the time. But I have it out now so enjoy!

Sun was using every bit of his energy to keep the young boy distracted. He didn't let the boy stray out of arms reach in fear that he'd get too loud and gain attention from the others. And he'd been doing a great job too! He had everything going as smoothly as it could.

Until that voice came back...

See, Sun's job after hours was to clean up messes left behind by the kids in his care. It was a line of programming that was constantly there but was ramped up during the night to ensure the play area would be spotless by the time children got here. Usually he managed to keep thr place spotless as the kids played so that overwelming feeling during the nightime hours didn't effect him as much.

During this time he likened a mess to the feeling of dread, at least that's how the workers described it to him. Similar to the kind of feeling a child gets when they've done something incredibly bad. A sinking feeling that he'd get in trouble or that he'd be outright decommissioned if everything wasn't spotless. This, of course, wasn't the case. Though no amount of convincing could change purposefully made programming.

It was while he held the boy in his hands, attempting to place him down, that an echo screamed through his head.

"PUT THAT DOWN! IT'S DANGEROUS"

The scream greatly startled Sun, his mind overtaken by the sound. He dropped the boy before looking around as if he'd find the source of the voice manifested somewhere else. What happened instead was a clumsy fall as he tripped over a stack of toys, knocking them and him down in a loud fall. When he looked up and noticed the mess he felt that dreadful feeling sink in.

"Oh no. Oh no no no no no no NO! I-I've made a mess!" He yelled before quickly throwing himself at the toys, hastily trying to fix them.

The clanging of toys followed by his panicked yell had quickly awoken you. You had learned to be a rather light sleeper, ready to spring up at a moment's notice, just in case you had to run or hide. It was practically second nature at this point.

For a moment you panicked, not recognizing your surroundings. That didn't last long though as you soon recalled the day's events and remembered where you were. What caught your attention next was the lack of any nearby presence. Neither the animatronics you'd previously were here nor was anyone else for that matter. Blinking your tired eyes open, you wearily looked around before your mind fell onto a noise from outside. It sounded like Sun's voice but in your groggy state you couldn't quite make it voice out.

Hoping to see where he'd gone you silently ascended the stairs, not looking to draw any attention to yourself. You made it to the podium you'd seen briefly before. It allowed for a full look around the playroom, though your eyes quickly fell on an unfamiliar presence.

Is that a kid?

You couldn't make out much from here, the distance too great to fully see any features. Though they seemed to be quickly making their way to the security desk, as if on a mission. You couldn't quite focus more on the kid as Sun's voice caught your ear, the familiar sound immediately pulling your attention.

"I-I have glitter glue! Googly eyes?" He inquired in the kids direction as he attempted to quickly make his way over to the child, almost running to them. He didn't make it far though as he tripped over another pile of toys, falling on his face and in doing so losing his faceplate. He quickly grabbed it, shoving it back on before turning around to the toys he just tripped over as he quickly tried to pick them up. He had to keep one hand on his face to keep it in place, his other hand struggling to quickly pick up the mess.

Sun was in an absolute panic.

Everything was piling up. The day's events with you and your painful silence, his loud echos of Moon, his inability to keep himself together in both sense of the phrase, his panic to keep you staying here a secret, these knocked over toys, this little boy who was so incredibly close to the light switch-

All of it, all of it ran through his mind. His systems were nearly overloaded by stress as he desperately tried to get the small boy to listen.

If he was capable of crying right now, he would.

You easily noticed this. You intuitively knew what each small fidget and movement meant. He didn't need a face to show it. It was in the slight shake of his hands, the tightness of his grip, the way in which his body slumped over his objective. You grew a deeply concerned look, the behavior so strange now that you saw it genuinely expressed in another.

You'd seen anger, apathy, and a sweet sugar coat of happiness when in public, but you never saw sadness in others. You'd never known others to feel devastation or concern, you'd never seen panic or fear or pain on anyone else. Those emotions had always been saved for you, a tool often used against you. They were emotions that made you feel useless, broken. As if you were the only one who knew what those emotions were, the only one to know the loneliness of the pain those emotions brought.

Yet you saw it in him. You saw him doing the thing you'd never known others to do. You saw him holding it back, pushing it away, desperately trying to hide it from the world because it already hurts so much that feeling anything else might just make you break-

Suddenly the room went dark. A simple second was all it took.

Sun didn't move from his spot on the floor. His hand instead silently falling from his face, letting the metal piece hit the floor. He didn't bother to fight it, he was too stressed to even think about the consequences anymore.

When Moon slowly clicked back to life he was overtaken by emotion. He'd been able to feel Sun's stress, especially with the still heated circuits in his system. But, more than that, he'd heard every thought through Sun's head. It was always when Sun became stressed that he'd ever heard them, those frantic words that only the two of them understood. It always upset him when Sun was like that. He couldn't stand to see his other half that was usually so bubbly become so defeated.

He didn't have much time to think about that though, no. There was another emotion that flowed through his system.

How dare this little thing come here. How dare it harm Sun, how dare it threaten to harm you! It had no right- no RIGHT to be here! That dangerous little thing! That harmful little creature!

And, for the first time, he felt Sun. Not in the way where he echoed in Sun's mind, no. He feels Sun's anger. His frustration. He couldn't hear him, he couldn't begin to imagine Sun wanted anything to do with him still, but he knew he was there.

Moon's eyes turned red, his vision going with it. His security protocols had been going ever since he'd locked eyes with that creature and he'd be damn sure that it wasn't staying around to harm anyone else.

"Naughty boy, naughty boy" Moon spoke as he slowly stood from the floor. His voice was no longer lulling or comforting but rather terrifying. It sounded almost as if both Sun's and Moon's voices mixed to create a gravel-like high-pitched tone that would send a shiver up anyone's back.

In the sudden darkness of the room you couldn't see much which only made the terrifying sound all the more bone-chilling. Not only that, but the slight clicks of the moving bot along with the faint red glow of his eyes deeply unsettled you.

Sun was...that? Moon was that? They were the same?

Then who was this? This terrifing dark creature that resembled Moon yet felt not at all familiar. His clicks were intentional yet sharp, his eyes showing the bright red of danger. You felt your body freeze, your hands quickly covering you mouth to hide any sound you might make.

It was only moments later that you lost track of the glowing eyes, only for them to lunge towards the child you'd seen earlier. You heard the kid let out a slight scream, one that stopped your heart for a moment. You were only slightly relieved of your newfound panic when a flashlight glared and moved, signifying they were okay.

For the time being at least.

The shine of the flashlight disappeared into the jungle gym, the glowing eyes not far behind. You felt the stop of your heart turn into a frenzy of beats against your chest at what ensued. A chase, one that you had a hard time deciphering the movements of. You couldn't move, you could barely breathe. Panic had fully overtaken your senses leaving you too terrified to think straight. You could only watch in horror as the nightmare unfolded before your eyes.

Were you dreaming? Was this a nightmare? Moon had been so calm, so kind. He'd felt so safe and comforting. And Sun- Sun had felt so carefree! So happy you almost couldn't imagine him upset. Yet those two people were one, and they were what was hunting down a child. A child that could have been you- a child that could still be you! Were you in danger?! Were they going to hurt you?

All of it came to a sudden stop when the bright glare of a flashlight shined towards you. You stared back, unaware that the kid had noticed you for a moment. After a second when the light didn't turn away you two became fully aware of each other, of the situation the other was in. Two scared kids facing down a seemingly homicidal animatronic more than twice the size of either of you. You couldn't see each other well, but you could at least say that they knew you were there.

This moment of recognizing the other didn't last long though as you saw past the flashlight and noticed the red glow that slowly approached the kidm

Nononononononono-

"NO!" You moved your hands to yell, an action that startled the kid enough for him to turn and shine the light on the now frozen animatronic behind him. Without more than a split second of decision making the kid jumped down the slide, quickly removing themselves from the animatronics presence.

But those glowing red eyes didn't follow him.

You saw him turn towards you.

The blood drained from your face, your stomach falling as he locked eyes onto you. There was a moment of absolute silence, neither of you moving.

He had been so close, so close to catching that little creature. But that noise, that piercing, painful noise had stopped him. He hadn't heard that sound before, yet he knew exactly who it belonged to. When his eyes had turned to see you he was met with utter fear. You were recoiled yet frozen in terror, your hands covering your mouth again as you stared at him. You were...

You were terrified of him.

That little kid that had rested so peacefully in his arms, the one that had been so skittish yet curious, had become terrified of what he was.

And to acknowledge, to even think about what that meant hurt him. To think he'd scared you, to think he was the reason you were frozen...

It hurt.

No no no this was all wrong! You- You were supposed to be happy! He wanted to keep you safe, to keep you happy! That's why Sun had done any of this, why he had kept you here. You were hurt a-and they were supposed to fix you! To make you a happy little kid!

But you stared with those terror-filled eyes, fully untrusting of what they had become. Moon felt like he'd failed and he could feel that Sun blamed him for it. You were scared because of him. That's all Moon had ever been good at doing...

It was during these few seconds that these thoughts were held, these moments before everything truly went wrong.

All it took was one small movement. One step from the bot towards you had shattered your frozen state. You bolted off the podium and back into the room before practically throwing yourself down the stairs. You stumbled a moment, catching a railing with your hands and a shock of pain only outweighed by your rushing adrenaline. You heard the click of him landing on the podium, hid movements no longer silent as he chased. You ran towards the door, slamming it open before bolting down the hall.

"Wait! Please, please wait!" You heard their voice call but you felt you knew better than to turn back and face the thing that had been trying to attack the kid from earlier.

The halls were pitch black with not a single light to guide you. Your hands traced the walls as you ran, panicked and hoping to find some way- any way out of here. You heard the metal feet fall in the room behind you before quickly following after. You stumbled in the dark, your sense of direction minimal. Yet, whether by pure luck or past experiences in similar situations, you found a door. You struggled to find a knob to the door when suddenly the lights turned on, revealing the handle to you. Just as you had found the exit you heard a shill scream, one that shattered your ears but only further increased your terror. You quickly pulled the door open, almost certain the bot was going to catch you. Guided by the faint lights of the hall, you ran out the door. You didn't take note on the delay before they gave chase once again.

Bolting as fast as your little body could go you were speedily making your way down the hall. However, the clicks of the metal robot only grew closer, their terrifying sound echoed in words you believed were only used to trick you into stopping. You had been here before, you'd done this before. The moment you were caught there was no escape, you couldn't afford to stop.

Suddenly the bot jumped and landed in front of you, forcing your movement to cease. In fact you had stopped so abruptly that you fell backward. They had attempted to stop your fall but you screamed when they did so causing them to drop you in fear that they'd hurt you. You fell to the ground and immediately scooted away from the animatronic that now hovered over you.

It wasn't the same as before...

Moon and Sun were no longer seperate. There were parts of the metal sunbeams you'd seen on Sun that poked out though not all of them wer there. The hat you'd seen Moon rested on their head as well. One eye glowed with a familiar blue and the other a bright white. Their body seemed as if it had become a mismatched puzzle of the different colors of both sides making it near impossible to tell which one stood in front of you.

All of this together made a horrific animatronic. One that was an amalgamation of the two who had comforted you, a nightmare as a consequence of ever letting your guard down. You eventually scooted into a wall, effectively having cornered yourself. Seeing no other way out you threw your hands over your head, hoping to negate as much harm as possible.

"Don't be [scared] [frightened]. We're here to keep you s-s-s-Safe! Rem-Rem-Remember?" Their voices blended into a horrifying attack on your eardrums. It was similar to earlier in the dark with the other kid, but only slightly more distinguished between the whispers and actual voice. There was also an echo of the words, a fact that drove away all comfort there was left in their voice.

'Please just let it be a dream" you silently begged, your thoughts now only the echo of those words. Just a bad nightmare, a horrible twisting of reality. Anything, anything but real.

What followed was silence. A silence where seconds felt like years and a minute resembled a century. You didn't dare move- speak- breathe. You were so certain you'd be hurt, that you'd be punished for a crime you couldn't conceive. So you waited. You waited for that pain because you believed you couldn't escape it. It was your burden of existing, the weight you carried in hidden scars. There was no escape, there never was.

You always ended up here.

It was after this prolonged bout of silence that you realized there was no longer any movement. You felt your body start to shake, believing to know what came next.

They wanted you to show yourself. They wanted your arms to fall before they layed a hand on you.

You felt your tears freely fall as your hands slowly fell, defeated. Your eyes stayed shut, your ears only catching the sound of your heartbeat. Finally, with what was last of your resistance, you opened your eyes. Your breathing picked up a moment, prepared to feel pain as the robot remained in front of you. However, the fear that coursed through your veins was now clashing with your confusion at the animatronic. Their.arms lay slumped, the glow of their eyes now gone. Slowly you began to breathe again, the sudden danger now silent in front of you. It took an even longer time before you dared to move, your head turning to make sure the animatronic wasn't trying to trick you. After noticing no change you finally decided to move away from them. You crawled out from under the bot, your cuts causing the process to be painful yet bearable. When you did finally make it out from under them you quickly scooted away, afraid that they might pop back to life at any moment. After a few extra seconds you finally believed that the bot wasn't awake anymore.

Had you broken them? You suspected so, though you weren't entirely sure how. You were thankful either way since whatever had happened seemed to stop the them. You then finaly stood, though your injuries made your legs weak which made the process harder.

What were you supposed to do now? You were alone in the silence of the pizza plex, the only animatronic you've met so far now broken. You looked around as if you'd find an answer around you. Instead you saw something familiar. A staff bot, this time with a flashlight and roaming around on its own.

Maybe it could help you?

Even with that thought you didn't move, not as the shock of what just happened was still setting in. Instead, it wheeled closer and closer until, eventually, it stood in front of you. It then admitted a high-pitched beeping sound, one that had greatly startled you. In instinct you immideately backed away from the bot, afraid that the sound meant you were in trouble. You backed away until an almost garage door opened behind you. With the bot still following you, you practically stumbled out of the door, trying to escape the bot.

Unfortunately, you weren't looking where you were going and, in a horrifying clank, your back hit something metal.

Your entire body tensed, your breath caught in your throat. Afterward, you heard the clicks of metal pieces turning, letting you know that you had in fact gone back first into an animatronic. With full apprehension you turned your head to stare up at what you had backed into, soon meeting the eyes of the man- or rather animatronic rockstar himself...

Freddy

- x -

Sorry if I missed someone for the tag list. There were a lot so I'm sure I missed a few. Just ask again and I'll add you next time!

Couldn't tag for some reason on another -> @kingxbubblez @h1mbo-cryptid

Tag list -> @honeycovered-bandaids @lethalbeautiful @kiinokochii @questionableperson @mary-wolf @just-a-frudgin-simp @nothing-leave-me--alone @eafv2323 @lemonrolls @ch8rrybl0ssoms @crea8ive-traveler91 @porkcracker @carmelchocola @a-rare-female-blaziken @sssleepless @plaguerat44 @zachariethememerie @nothing-leave-me--alone @gundams90cmbobs @sunnshineflxwer @sundropsideup @givemesomebeans @isometimeswritestuff @allidde @wheres-the-effing-pie @imuziawi @theasexualpan @kittenlover614 @arialikestea @ayoitshayden @boiciph3r @jinxedleo @beanie-boo0 @over-active-daydreamer @mistertiberius @large-juice @lokigirlszendaya @baka-beka @s0ggyrats @feverish-dove @simpsilky @pencildrawer12 @pastelpinksippycup @thegeekisheere @nonamedasimp @hellsfinestwine

Not about Tomura but this make me laugh A LOT😂😂

*Y/n staring at Daryl for a long moment*

Y/n: this shirt shows your nipple.

Daryl: what?

Y/n: what?

Rick: nipple??

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 13) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12

Chapter 13

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it, and you’ve never felt the oppressiveness and terror that everyone else seems to experience when they come near it. Not until the first streetlight goes out at the top of the street, a split second too late to conceal the shadow that slinks past beneath it.

“Shit,” Spinner hisses over the comms network. Atsuhiro stole the pieces of it, enough for every adult human in the neighborhood, on the search team’s way back. “What was that?”

“Get back from the window,” Magne hisses. They’re inside their house. All according to plan. “Stay down. This isn’t about us.”

“It’s about all of us,” Shinsou argues. He’s got a headset. Hizashi lost headset privileges on the grounds that he’s a ghost, and he’s in the house anyway. “If we just – there’s another one!”

Another streetlight goes out, on the other side of the street, just a second too slow behind the shadow that passes under it. You get a look at the shadow’s face, or where it’s face should be, before the darkness cloaks it. “That’s not Garaki.”

“No,” Aizawa agrees. “He brought reinforcements.”

“What are those things?” Jin’s mother asks, just as the light in front of Atsuhiro’s house goes out. “Tomura, do you know?”

Tomura doesn’t have a headset. Tomura’s dematerialized, and keeping his head down as part of the strategy. But your house has two former ghosts in it, and since Hizashi’s getting the most malevolent silent treatment ever, Eri speaks up, and Aizawa repeats what she whispers in his ear. “They’re like Shirakumo. But they like it.”

Keigo’s voice crackles over the headsets. “What does that mean?”

“The ghosts signed up for it.” Tomura’s voice is barely a whisper in your ear. “They let a conjurer make them his puppets. They’re too weak to do what they want otherwise.”

You convey Tomura’s message to the others, then ask a question of your own. “What do they want?”

“Guys, there’s another one. We’re up to six.” Spinner says what you’re thinking a moment later. “That’s one for every house in the neighborhood.”

Mr. Yagi was right – if one former ghost in the neighborhood is discovered, you’re all compromised, and you’re all fucked. A moment later, a voice rings out down the street. It’s not a voice you recognize. “Hizashi,” it calls out, and Hizashi freezes in place. “Touya. I know you’re here. Come out, and we can avoid any – unpleasantness.”

Everyone in your house glares at Hizashi, ordering him to keep quiet, but Keigo doesn’t have anywhere near that kind of backup. “My name’s not fucking Touya,” Dabi says. “Get out of my neighborhood.”

Hizashi opens his mouth to chime in and Aizawa slaps his hand down over it. “Suit yourself,” Garaki says. “Nomu –”

There’s a sudden crash, and you hear Jin’s mom scream into the headset – the thing in front of her house just took down her fence. But it’s only a warning shot. A second later there’s another, louder crash. “They’re going after your house, Aizawa,” Atsuhiro reports. “When they find out you aren’t there –”

They’ll come here, to your house and Keigo’s. “It’s time,” Aizawa says. “Nemuri, go.”

You’ve never see an unbound ghost flex its powers in public before, and now you know why – powered up with dozens of plants’ worth of life-force, Nemuri is blindingly fast. She knocks the ghost-thing away from Aizawa’s house so hard that it dents one of the doused streetlights, then bolts towards Garaki. Garaki’s ready for her. You don’t know how you know that, but he must be, or he wouldn’t be standing still.

“Wait for it,” Hizashi hisses. “Tomura, now.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Tomura snaps, and his influence crashes back down over the neighborhood with the force of a breaking tsunami.

Garaki staggers, gasping for air, but the effect on the monsters he brought with him is even stronger. The one attacking Jin and Himiko’s house stops immediately and lunges at the one Nemuri just knocked away from Aizawa’s front steps. You hear a harsh, heavy whoosh, followed by a shriek like metal on metal. A rush of wind blasts up the street, visible even in the dark, and you can see something flickering within it, fighting to get back where it came from. “That’s essence,” Hizashi mumbles. “Nice work.”

Tomura doesn’t answer. If you had to guess, you’d say he’s focused on keeping the pressure on the street. The two monsters are tearing each other to shreds, which means that Nemuri’s less outnumbered than she was before, and you’re pretty sure that the monsters parked in front of your house and Keigo’s are there to keep you from leaving. That still leaves two loose monsters, though. Both of them turn and run towards whatever’s happening between Garaki and Nemuri. You can barely see it. There’s no light on the street, anywhere, but there’s one place where the darkness is completely opaque. You don’t know what’s happening in there. You don’t think you want to.

The first sign that something’s going wrong is the cold that begins to spread, worse than anything Tomura’s ever generated, radiating out from the opaque patch of darkness and creeping steadily up the street. Your house and Keigo’s are farthest from the trouble, but ice begins to spiral over your windows, and when Spinner speaks up over the comms, his teeth are chattering. “What’s happening? Magne won’t say –”

You’re pretty sure Magne can’t say. Jin breaks into the comms, reporting that Himiko’s down for the count, and in your own house, Aizawa’s trying with increasing desperation to rouse Eri. Hizashi’s on his feet, still. He speaks through gritted teeth. “Nem’s in trouble,” he says. “I’m going out there.”

“Dad, no!” Shinsou grabs for him, but Hizashi moves fast. “Dad –”

Aizawa’s too focused on Eri to notice before it’s too late. He reaches out futilely to Hizashi. “Zashi, don’t –”

Your front door slams shut behind him. “You’re in the way,” Hizashi says to the thing in front of your house. “Move.”

“Idiot,” Tomura snarls, from everywhere and nowhere. A moment later, Hizashi seizes the monster and drags it into your yard.

Having passed the responsibility for the situation over to Tomura, Hizashi bolts into the street, and Tomura materializes in the front yard just as the monster starts to pick itself up off the ground. Tomura knocks it down again, then straddles it, pinning it in place. “What are you?” he demands. The creature snarls. “You can still feel pain. I’ll hurt you. What are you?”

The monster snarls again. You don’t see what Tomura does, but you hear it let out an agonized howl in response. “Nomu. We are – Nomu.”

It tries to fight free of Tomura’s grip. Tomura slams it against the ground. He looks tiny compared to the monster – the Nomu? – but it’s clear that he’s got the upper hand. “Tell me. How many does he have?” You still can’t see what Tomura’s doing to the Nomu, but it lets out an earsplitting screech. “Now!”

Whatever answer the Nomu gives, it’s not what Tomura wants to hear. He blasts the Nomu apart, then dematerializes, reappearing again inside the house. He’s barley breathing hard. “He’s got too many ghosts. They can’t win.”

“Then do something,” Shinsou demands of Tomura. “My dad –”

Tomura can’t do anything more than he’s already doing, and Shinsou knows it. You hear footsteps behind you and turn to find Aizawa heading for the door. You couldn’t stop Hizashi, but you can sure as hell stop him. You block his way. “Where are you going?”

“This is a fight between ghosts. I’ll be beneath their notice.” Aizawa puts his hand on your shoulder and shifts you firmly aside. “If they lose, we all do.”

He’s out the door before you can stop him, and across the street, you see Keigo sneaking out as well. If you had to guess, you’d say Spinner and Jin are heading out, too. Now it’s only you, Shinsou, Eri, and Tomura inside your house, and you can feel Tomura seething, the air crackling with his power. He wants to fight. You can tell he does. You just don’t understand why. He doesn’t care about the neighborhood or the people in it. Is he really that bloodthirsty? Or maybe it’s not that he’s bloodthirsty. Maybe he just cares more about this, about everything, than you’ve let yourself realize.

“You idiot,” he snaps suddenly, and you and Shinsou both jump. “Stay inside!”

He’s not talking to you. You race to the front window just in time to see Dabi emerging from the house. He’s never looked more frightening than he does right now, half-embodied, half made up of the same darkness that’s now swallowed up half the neighborhood. He strolls up to the Nomu guarding Keigo’s house like he doesn’t have a care in the world. The Nomu doesn’t move. “Are they talking?” Shinsou asks. “What are they saying?”

Before Tomura has a chance to answer, Dabi speaks out loud, his voice bright and full of fury. “You really are stupid, conjurer. Of all the ghosts you could have brought to kill me, you picked my brother.”

You didn’t realize ghosts could have brothers. Then you remember what Keigo said about his old house having multiple ghosts in it. “Nice to see you, Natsu,” Dabi says to the Nomu. “Go get my human.”

The Nomu – Natsu – turns and dives into the darkness, followed by Dabi at a more leisurely pace. You think through the battlefield as it stands now. Garaki is down to two Nomus on his side, and Nemuri’s getting a helping hand from Hizashi, Spinner, Jin, Aizawa, Dabi, Natsu, and Keigo. The fight has to be in the neighborhood’s favor now, doesn’t it? Garaki’s outnumbered, and no matter how much ghostly power he has, he’s still human. He can be killed like any human. It’s going to be –

Eri lurches upright, her red eyes wide and terrified. “Papa!” she screams. “No –”

Everything outside the windows goes completely black. If you couldn’t see into it before, you definitely can’t see out of it now. But you can see what’s inside of it, at least until the frost starts to spiral across the glass – Garaki advancing down the street, flanked by two Nomus. Nemuri’s nowhere to be found. Spinner’s injured, somehow. Jin is dragging him backwards, away from the fight. Aizawa is carrying Hizashi, who’s fully unconscious. The only people in any shape to do anything are Keigo, Dabi, and the Nomu. The fight’s narrowed down to three on three – a conjurer and two monsters versus one monster, one scar wraith, and one human. Suddenly you understand why Eri’s in tears, why Tomura’s materialized next to you with that look on his face. So much for the fight being even. It’s not anywhere close to even. They’re going to lose.

Garaki clucks his tongue, shakes his head. “Touya, you disappoint me.”

“It’s too bad. I was just living for your approval.” Dabi pushes Keigo casually behind him. “I’d highly recommend pissing off. Stick around and I might get angry. You’re not going to like it when I’m angry.”

“In your position, I’d be angry, too,” Garaki responds. “You’ve been a scar wraith for four years. Don’t you want your powers back? Isn’t this mortal form exhausting to inhabit? Wouldn’t you rather be free?”

You thought Dabi was trying to stall. Now you’re not so sure. “You could do that?” Dabi asks.

“Of course! If you doubt my abilities, just look at my Nomus.” Garaki gestures proudly. He tortured six people to create them, and he’s proud of them. “There’s no reason why the same process can’t run in reverse. I would have offered it to Hizashi, too – but it appears he’s a lost cause.”

“What did he do to him?” Shinsou asks in a cracked whisper. “He’s not dead. He can’t be dead.”

“The conjurer went after Aizawa and he took the hit instead. He’s coming around.” Tomura’s hands are clenched into fists at his sides, so hard his knuckles are white. “Idiot. They’re all idiots!”

Garaki is still talking. “I expected much better of Hizashi, truthfully. He was so eager to enter this world and play his part, and he threw it all away for a human. But you’re wiser, Touya. Step aside and I’ll help you reverse your mistake.”

He wouldn’t. There’s no way Dabi wants to be a ghost again that badly, is there? There’s no way he’d sacrifice Keigo. Is there? Dabi glances away from Garaki, over at Natsu. “What do you think, little brother? Should I take him up on it?”

The Nomu doesn’t answer. In Aizawa’s arms, you think you see Hizashi stir. “Nah,” Dabi says finally. “You can go to hell. Natsu, now!”

The Nomu moves at terrifying speed. It seizes Keigo and hurls him through the air, over the fence and into your front yard. Tomura swears under his breath and you watch as Keigo’s fall slows slightly, enough that he’s got time to turn and land heavily on his feet. But he’s not the only one in flight. Hizashi’s struggled to his feet, and he and Nemuri launch Aizawa together. Their throw isn’t as good. Aizawa crashes through the fence and sprawls out flat in the yard. Jin drags Spinner through the hole and both of them collapse.

They need help. You grab your first aid kit out of the hall closet and try to open your front door, only to find that it’s sealed shut. It doesn’t move even when you yank on it with your full weight. You turn to glare at Tomura, who glares back with his arms crossed. “It’s not safe.”

“I won’t leave the yard,” you say. “That’s your territory, isn’t it? Are you telling me I’m not safe there?”

Tomura’s expression darkens even further, but before he can respond, an ice-cold hand settles on your shoulder. “I’ll go with her,” Shirakumo says in that odd doubled voice. You forgot he was here. He hasn’t moved off the couch all day. “I can help.”

You don’t know how much help Shirakumo will be – the hand on your shoulder is shaking badly – but the front door unseals itself, and you leave without a backward glance. Once you’re in the yard, though, you’re temporarily paralyzed. Aizawa’s not moving, but Spinner’s the most visibly injured, and Keigo’s awake but stunned, like his landing might have been harder than you thought. You’d rather help Spinner or Keigo, but Aizawa’s the only one who’s unresponsive. He helped you when you first found out about Tomura. He’s done nothing to you other than be abrupt bordering on rude, and he’s like that with everyone except his children. Are you really going to let him lie there just because you and his husband despise each other?

Shirakumo heads for Aizawa, making the decision for you, and you hurry towards Spinner instead. Spinner’s bleeding from two stab wounds, one in his left shoulder and one in his right thigh, just above his knee. There’s a lot of blood. You pry open the first aid kit for bandages and gauze and press Jin into service bandaging Spinner’s leg, working on his shoulder yourself and doing your level best to ignore whatever’s happening outside the fence. Spinner groans in pain. “I have to get back out there,” he says. “They can’t do this.”

“We have to!” Jin agrees, determined. Then his face falls. “We can’t help. That’s why they made us leave.”

“They’re outnumbered. Nemuri burned up too much power and the cold killed a lot of the plants before she could.” Keigo waits until you’re finished bandaging Spinner’s injuries, then helps you and Jin pick him up. “Me and Aizawa were useless out there. All we did was distract them.”

He means Dabi and Hizashi, but there’s something turning over in your head. You’re not sure what it is just yet. You see Shirakumo carrying Aizawa up to the porch out of the corner of your eye. Next to you, Jin is shaking Spinner’s non-stabbed shoulder, panicked. “What about Magne and Atsuhiro? Why aren’t they out there?”

“Not their fight. I stayed in – long as possible.” Spinner’s face is beaded with sweat. “So maybe she’d come out. But –”

You don’t think the other ghosts are cowards. You know they’re tough, you know they care. But neither of them are the ones the conjurer is after, and their humans might as well be an afterthought. You don’t blame either of them for staying out of a fight they can’t win. When it comes down to it, it’s not your fight, either.

It’s not your fight. It’s also not your neighborhood, according to Hizashi – but you’re done with Hizashi’s bullshit. You’ve got your bracelets on, which means you’ll be hard to spot, and none of the ghosts still fighting in the street care enough about you to distract them from the fight. You won’t distract the neighborhood ghosts. But you can damn well distract the Nomus. Or the conjurer.

You’re alone in the yard now, except for Shirakumo. Shirakumo looks like he’s got an idea, too, and all you can do is hope that the human half of him is enough to hide his intentions from Tomura. The two of you make eye contact. Shirakumo raises one hand from his side and shows you a broken fencepost. If you bend down slowly to grab one of your own, Tomura’s going to figure it out, and he’ll stop you. You have to move fast. You crouch, seize a fencepost, and lurch across the property line.

A howl rises up from the house behind you, enough to set your teeth on edge and make every hair on your arms stand on end. Tomura’s furious, but he’s going to be even madder if you get hurt because you were standing there, doing nothing, instead of doing what you came here to do. You glance to your left and realize that Shirakumo’s already run off to help Hizashi and Nemuri deal with one of the two remaining Nomus. That leaves you and your fencepost to join the remaining fight. You’re the only help Dabi and Natsu are going to get.

Your fencepost has a broken end, jagged and dangerous, but you’ve got no faith in your ability to stab someone with it. You’ll be better off using it as a club. The question is who to hit. You creep along the sidewalk towards where Dabi and Natsu are facing Garaki and the remaining Nomu. While the fight between Natsu and the last Nomu looks pretty even, it’s clear to you that Dabi’s losing his. Tomura said Garaki has too many ghosts. Dabi’s only one, and only half a ghost in the bargain. You have the thought that his human side is protecting him from being blasted apart, but it can’t last forever. You can see the ghostly sections of his body, rippling, bulging, as Garaki pours more and more energy into him. Neither of them are paying any attention to you.

Good. You work your way behind Garaki, take a firmer grip on the fencepost, and swing.

It’s not your best swing. Some part of you is still wrestling against the thought of bashing another human being over the head with a piece of wood, and it’s really dark. But even your not-the-best swing collides with the side of Garaki’s head, producing a dull thud. He lets out a grunt of pain and turns Dabi loose, wheeling around to face you.

You swing again, but it’s even harder to hit somebody when you’re looking them in the eye. Your blow strikes his arm, and he staggers but doesn’t fall. Garaki is bald, your height or maybe shorter. He has a mustache, and his green-tinted glasses are cracked and lopsided. Blood is tricking down the side of his head from your first swing. He steps forward. You step back.

“Not so brave now, are we?” Garaki laughs, but he’s grimacing. You swing at him again, but he dodges it. His hand closes on your shoulder. “Have some of this.”

You know what’s coming, courtesy of Hizashi’s lessons this afternoon, and unlike Tomura, Garaki’s got no plans to be gentle with you. You lock your jaw against the screams that are dying to get out and squeeze your eyes shut. You don’t want to see the world between. You need to see what’s in Garaki’s head. You need to know, so you can warn –

You can’t see. Maybe you can. You can’t understand it – a void full of open, howling mouths, pain worse than anything you’ve ever experienced, hatred stronger than you can even fathom. It’s nothing like what you saw in Tomura’s mind. It’s hell. You keep your jaw locked as long as possible, but eventually you can’t hold it in a second longer. You open your mouth and scream until your throat bleeds.

Or maybe you don’t. A hand closes around your wrist and jerks you away, out of Garaki’s grip. The hand is cold and warm at the same time. When you open your eyes, you find yourself looking up at Shirakumo.

He’s not the only one who’s here. Nemuri’s here, and Hizashi, Hizashi steps into the space where you were standing and promptly decks Garaki, hitting him about twice as hard as your strongest swing of the fencepost. “That’s for making my friends cry,” he hisses, and hits Garaki again. “Hit it, Toasty!”

Every plant on the far side of the street bursts into flames at once, and Dabi plants both hands on Garaki’s back and shoves him hard. With the rest of the plants’ life-force on board, Dabi’s charged up with enough power to send Garaki flying, and there’s only one possible place he could be headed. You turn slowly, your entire body numb and frozen, just in time to see Garaki land in a heap in the middle of your front yard. Tomura’s on him a split second later.

You think it’ll be over quickly. If Tomura is as powerful as everyone says he is, it should be. But you think of how many ghosts you saw in Garaki’s head, of the fact that Tomura’s never faced a conjurer before, and fear like you’ve never felt in your entire life surges through you. You can’t help him. All you can do is watch.

The sphere of darkness Garaki summoned before starts to descend, only for Tomura to blast it apart seconds later. Garaki reaches out for Tomura’s shoulder, but Tomura dematerializes just enough that Garaki’s hand sinks straight through him. He raises one hand, reaching for Garaki, and Garaki’s hand rises to block him. There’s a clear six inches of space between their palms, but it’s clear that they’re both pushing as hard as they can.

Cold wind whips out from the space where the two of them stand, rattling your windows loudly enough that you can hear it from the street. Your teeth are chattering almost as loudly. Garaki’s face shows intense concentration, and so does Tomura’s. His free hand is scratching frantically at his neck, and he’s bitten into his lip so hard it’s bleeding. There’s a sudden lurch, and Tomura takes a step back. Then another step back. “Fuck,” Dabi mumbles, then calls out: “Hey, asshole! Get your shit together!”

Tomura plants his feet, stopping Garaki’s advance, but you’re not stupid enough to think he’s got the upper hand. In fact, he’s got the opposite. His right hand, the one pressing back against Garaki’s, is beginning to bend backwards, past the point where a living hand would break, where living fingers would snap like twigs. His physical form, still mostly embodied, is beginning to bulge and waver, just like Dabi’s did. If Garaki’s able to do this, his power level and Tomura’s must be nearly equal. Aizawa’s words flash through your head again: Conjurers are human. Humans don’t want to die.

You want to call out to Tomura, beg him to fight harder, but your teeth are chattering too hard to speak. Someone else does it for you. Hizashi grabs your arm, pulls you away from Shirakumo, and drags you towards the fence. “Hey, guess what?” he shouts at Tomura, his voice loud enough to be heard above the wind. “I lied about what ghostly power does to humans. It does hurt them. It hurts them a lot.”

Tomura’s eyes dart sideways towards you. Then he turns his head to stare, and takes another step back, giving up ground to Garaki. “Yeah, you heard me,” Hizashi continues, even though he’s breaking Tomura’s concentration. “You hurt your human, and she let you do it. But guess what? The guy who’s beating you hurt her a whole lot worse.”

Tomura snarls. “Oh, you want to kill me over that? I’ll believe that when I see it,” Hizashi spits, and suddenly you understand what he’s trying to do. “How are you supposed to kill me when you can’t even kill him?”

Tomura looks away from Hizashi, away from you. Back to Garaki, who was just starting to look confident. “You won’t win. I have the power of a thousand ghosts behind me! There’s nothing you can do that will – what are you doing? Don’t –”

Tomura’s free hand materializes and clamps down over Garaki’s face. The hand pushing  back against Garaki’s breaks through the space between them and seizes it in a crushing grip. Garaki howls, but not so loudly that you can’t hear Tomura’s voice. “A thousand ghosts?” he says, gleeful and savage. “There’s one less now.”

The wind roars up from behind you this time, still ice-cold, as Tomura draws his power inwards, forcing more and more of it into Garaki. He bends Garaki’s hand backwards until the conjurer’s wrist breaks, keeps pushing until his forearm snaps in two. “Where are your ghosts now?” he taunts. The smile on his face is terrifying to look at, but you can’t look away. “Without them, you’re just a human.”

“Wait,” Garaki chokes out. “Don’t –”

“You’re just a human,” Tomura repeats. “Humans die.”

You’ve watched Tomura turn things to dust before, but never a person. Garaki crumbles, the same as the wasps and the other insects and the plants. You hear a last gasp of air leave his lungs, choked with dust towards the end, and see his eyes go blank a second before they turn dull and dusty and pop from his skull. It’s over in less than two seconds. Garaki’s clothes crumple to the ground, empty. And after that it’s quiet.

Next to you, Hizashi breathes a sigh of relief. “That was close.”

“That wasn’t close at all,” Nemuri corrects. She’s only partially materialized. “It was over the instant he stopped messing around. What were you doing, anyway? You – watch it, Zashi –”

Hizashi leaps away from the fence with a yelp. Tomura’s right there, struggling to reach past the property line, his eyes fixed on you. “Give me my human.”

“You sure about that?” Hizashi asks. He gives you a little shake and keeps talking to Tomura. “You’re looking a little rough, my friend. Why not dematerialize and get some of that blood off your –”

“Now!”

Tomura’s voice isn’t particularly loud, but it still shakes the ground, and you feel Hizashi’s grip on your shoulder tighten with shock. He laughs it off, but you aren’t fooled. “One human, coming right up!” he announces. He picks you up and tosses you over the wreckage of the fence.

You’re not in any way prepared to catch yourself, but Tomura doesn’t let you hit the ground. Wouldn’t let you hit the ground. Maybe. He’s mad at you the instant he gets ahold of you, snapping at you even as his arms lock tightly around your waist. “You idiot! You’re just a human. That guy could have killed you! There are bugs under the house that are smarter than you are! Why would you even – what? What are you doing?”

You’re twisting in his grip, trying to get your arms free, and when you manage it, you wrap them around him, holding on as tightly as you can even though being this close to him isn’t helping your rapidly advancing case of hypothermia. “Are you okay?” you ask senselessly. “Your hand – your neck – are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. Don’t be stupid.” Tomura shakes your shoulder with the hand you were asking about, the one Garaki bent completely back at the wrist. “My neck is fine. The scratches will go away once I dematerialize. Why are you acting so weird?”

You pull your hand away from his neck with an effort. It comes back smeared with blood, and you curl it into a shaky fist. “I was worried.”

“I said not to be stupid,” Tomura says. He shakes your shoulder again. “I had it right from the beginning.”

He didn’t. You know what you saw, and he didn’t. “You had it once you flexed,” Dabi says from just outside the fence. “You dumbass. Why did you think the guy who summoned me and the megaphone with legs would be weak? Give me back my human.”

You have a rule about not laughing at Dabi’s jokes, but ‘megaphone with legs’ as a description for Hizashi is too funny to ignore. You’re giggling weakly to yourself as Keigo emerges from your house, stepping through the wreckage of your fence to join Dabi on the street. He’s got one arm in a sling and a few scratches on his face, but otherwise he looks okay. “Was it just me, or was that way too close?” he asks the ghosts and the Nomu and Shirakumo still hanging out in the street. “If we do anything like that again, we need to fix – hey, watch the arm!”

Dabi’s grabbed him, not dissimilarly to the way Tomura grabbed you, and he plants an incredibly weird-looking kiss on him. You’ve never tried making out with Tomura while he’s half-materialized, and there’s a good reason. There’s – tongues. You can see them. Keigo puts his hand against Dabi’s face and pushes him partly back, but that doesn’t dissuade Dabi at all. He picks Keigo up and marches right back across the street, up their front steps, and into the house.

“Uh, goodnight,” you say faintly. The door slams shut.

“Is there a human saying for post-victory sex?” That’s Magne’s voice. She and Atsuhiro are making their way up the street. “Humans have the silliest names for the most disgusting things they do.”

“I think post-victory sex is about as descriptive as it gets,” Shirakumo says in that strange doubled voice. The other Nomu is still standing there, hands down at its sides, and Shirakumo turns to it. “Hey. Natsu, right? I think we probably need to talk.”

“He’s doing better,” Nemuri remarks to Hizashi as the two Nomus cross the street. “Did something happen?”

“They merged. Him and the ghost,” Tomura says. He’s still holding you, and you’re starting to get really cold. “They wanted to help more than they wanted to die.”

“Good,” Hizashi says after a moment. He looks relieved. “Can I have my humans back now?”

“I don’t want your humans.” Tomura doesn’t look up, but when you peer over his shoulder, you see Shinsou carrying Eri and helping Aizawa navigate the stairs at the same time. “If you even think about setting foot in my yard again, I’ll kill you and I’ll make it hurt.”

“Deal,” Hizashi says. He glances at you, still relieved even though Tomura’s just threatened to kill him. “I misjudged your human, anyway. She’s not so bad after all.”

You didn’t trust Hizashi very much before today, and now you don’t trust him at all – but you think you’ve got a handle on what he’s like, which means his comment makes absolutely no sense. He doesn’t like you. He sees you as a threat to his family’s safety because he thinks you could compromise Tomura. Why would he say that he misjudged you in front of another ghost, knowing that Tomura can probably tell if he’s lying? If he wasn’t lying, but if he wasn’t lying, why did he change his tune about you?

The question’s a little too much for you to answer right now. Your brain is still scrambled and you’re freezing cold. Tomura refuses to put you down until Jin’s mom, who’s coming over to retrieve Jin, realizes your lips are blue and makes him do it. You stagger into the house under your own power, peel off your shoes, and head straight upstairs to your room. You get under the blankets fully clothed and curl up into a ball, trying to stay warm. There’s no way you’ll be able to sleep until the shivers die down.

You hear the front door close and lock like it’s coming from a long way away, then footsteps up the stairs. Tomura drops Phantom on the bed and she snuggles against you over the covers. It helps, sort of. You sneak one icy hand out to pet her ears, only to bump against Tomura’s hand doing the same thing. “You feel cold like me,” he says. You make some kind of awful, teeth-chattery noise of agreement. It’s quiet for a second. “I hurt you. You let me. Why?”

“You had to learn.” You don’t want to talk about this. “I was fine afterward. What the conjurer did was way worse.”

“I hurt you. Are you scared of me again?” Tomura sounds miserable. “You’re scared again. You’ll leave.”

“Not scared,” you mumble. “Not leaving. I just wanted to help. I wanted to make sure you won, and I wasn’t sure you could.”

You’re hoping that doubting his strength will set him off on bragging about how tough he is, so he’ll forget all about this. But you’re not so lucky. You spent all of tonight’s luck somewhere else. “I don’t understand,” Tomura says. “You let me hurt you for the neighborhood?”

“Don’t be stupid,” you say, just in time for it to occur to you that you’ve never really let on that you’re concerned with anything but the neighborhood as a whole. “I let you to make sure you won. I didn’t want something bad to happen to you.”

“So I could keep protecting the neighborhood.”

“No,” you say, too fast and too sure. “So I could keep hanging out with you.”

There’s probably a better way to say it. A more honest way to say it. If you were a ghost you’d be one hundred percent busted, because you’re lowballing this to a ridiculous degree. You want more stupid movie nights where he spends the entire movie asking questions and you have to rewind it and watch it again. You want more moments where you spy on him playing with Phantom, more moments where you watch him try to understand humans and succeed a little more each time. You want to teach him how to cook more things, not so he’ll cook for you but because he likes to know how things work and how to do them right. You want more makeouts and hookups and moments where he stays close to you without either of you understanding why.

You want to keep hanging out with Tomura, sure. You want that because you love him.

“That’s what I want,” Tomura says, surprised. “Wait, do you –”

“We agree. We don’t need to talk about it anymore.” You curl up into a tighter ball around Phantom and look up at Tomura. “Are you staying or what?”

Tomura looks even more surprised than before. “You said I don’t get to stay on your bed at night.”

“And you don’t listen. I know where you are even when you’re dematerialized,” you say. “You might as well do it embodied. And outside the sheets, so I don’t freeze.”

You can tell Tomura’s confused, but he hops onto the bed anyway, sprawling out on the other side. “It wasn’t hard to kill that conjurer,” he says. “I could do it again.”

For some reason, that’s when it clicks for you – the reason Hizashi doesn’t hate you anymore, the reason he was relieved. His problem with you is that you’re a reason for Tomura to give up being a ghost. The only way to give up being a ghost is to completely drain a human being and take their place, and it only happens if the ghost wants to be human more than they’ve ever wanted anything else in the whole world, in all of time. Tomura completely drained a human being tonight. If he was going to embody himself permanently, this was his chance. And he didn’t.

You knew he wouldn’t. You’ve always known that. You’ve known forever that loving Tomura would mean loving him as a ghost and nothing else. It’s best this way. The neighborhood stays protected. Hizashi stops hating you. This is how it’s supposed to be.

“Hey.” Tomura shakes your shoulder, then touches your cheek. “What are these? Are you crying?”

“Humans do that sometimes to relieve stress,” you say. You’re amazed with the steadiness in your voice. “It’s fine.”

“Mm.” Tomura sounds skeptical, but he doesn’t argue with you. He edges closer to you, drapes one arm around your waist and presses against your back. All you can feel through the blankets is the faintest chill. “You can be the spoon this time.”

“The little spoon,” you correct. “You’re the big spoon.”

“What if I don’t want to be a spoon?”

“Then find a different way to snuggle.” You don’t want him to do that. You want him to hold you like this until you fall asleep, and when a vaguely aggrieved silence falls, you know you’ll get your wish. “It’s not so bad.”

“Idiot,” Tomura mumbles. “Go to sleep.”

You close your eyes, sandwiched between your ghost and your dog, not quite cold and not quite warm. It’s almost comfortable. Maybe you should fall asleep like this every night.

If you ever sleep again. When you wake up in the middle of the night, frozen with incomprehensible terror from a dream of the world between, you’re not sure you’ll even dare to close your eyes.

When he knows you dont like to be carried, but he does it anyway. So you hang on, like you're about to fall. LOL