I’ve Been Obsessed With Thinking About Being Shiggy’s Favorite Cam Girl 😩

I haven't really been in the posting mood recently but I feel like I'm sleeping on the picture so I'm gonna post it even though I'm unmotivated. I hope you like it, I had a lot of fun coloring it. 🩷🩷🩷

Line art and base color.

A new life for Tomura part4

Okay but I love your hcs, especially since it deals with villains after winning the war which I think is so interesting. Like a imagine being shigaraki's darling but instead of being kidnapped or in process of being kidnapped, your his virtual crush. He met you on an international server and darling practicing their Japanese tried their best to befriend him. No one had wanted to be his friend before so he was hesitant but soon a friendship developed and it was so comforting, outside the screen he had villain missions, failures, strings of poverty or homelessness, and societal rejection. But in game he had darling and their fun civilian antics, jabs, wins together, it's like a home he never had and when the leauge gets money he can finally have the time to text and to call and realize his crush on darling. But he won't kidnap them yet, he's busy and there is a whole war to win first but when does the first thing he'll do is to send darling over to him. Now imagine darling, they have a internet pal who can sometimes get weird or dip out for life reasons but nothing to weird, playing with them is fun and when they start texting or voice calling you both get closer. Sometimes you hope their safe because you heard Japan as a lot of dangerous villains and their a little silent but it's alright. It's only not when tomura shigaraki the one you've only seen in still news photos, the one who took over Japan as a bringer of chaos knocks on your door, claiming to be that friend you've talked to all this time

shigaraki meeting his darling online

OMG i just love your idea, especially the fact that you both met online. i really liked your idea as it was so I just added some details + what happens when shigaraki takes reader away. i do think that everything happened before the attack of the USJ, shigaraki played a lot of MMOs because he had nothing else to do.

(y/un = your username)

word count: 1098 tw: obsessive behavior, clingy behavior, kidnapping, confinement, yandere, possessive behavior

✤shigaraki would be a really strong player and he is in one of the strongest guilds in the game. he plays a DPS character and he mostly plays solo, except in endgame because he can't play without a support (that's why he joined a guild). his username would be something a bit corny like DecayKiller (im sorry for this but I can't imagine him with anything different 🥲)

✤he changes support every time because he finds people annoying, that is until he met you.

✤this would be the first MMO you played, although you weren't used to it you were quite the good support and you quickly earned a good reputation which allowed you to join shigaraki's guild. after some days, he sent you a party invite and you started doing some dungeons.

✤at first you thought it was a one time thing just like with other supports but for some reason he asked you to play with him whenever you logged in. for some reason he grew quite fond of you without you knowing why.

✤you eventually added each other on discord and started to talk everyday. "DecayKiller" wasn't the most talkative person but you always found a subject to talk about with him.

✤you both would meet twice a week or more to play and to voice call together. it became a ritual and you both were really happy to spend time with each other. at first he wanted to speak english with you because he didn't want to bother you but when you told him you were learning japanese you almost always spoke in that language.

✤there was a lot of things you liked about "DecayKiller": his honesty, you didn't know a lot of people who would speak that frankly to you, the way he laughed, it wasn't often so you see this as a precious thing, the way he would sometimes be childish although he acted so mature and his voice, it was a bit hoarse and you honestly thought he sounded very hot (not that you would ever tell him).

✤everything went like that for a while until the league really started to get to work. you would meet less often, which made you kinda sad to be honest. you missed those days where you would spend hours talking together.

✤but "DecayKiller" would make sure to talk to you a lot even if not voice calling, he also made sure you could voice call at least three times a month. everything stopped when the paranormal liberation war broke out.

✤you were very worried because you had no sign of life from "DecayLord" for almost 3 months, especially since you heard the villains conquered japan. you could only send messages to him, hoping that he would respond. but he never did.

✤you had lost hope when you heard someone ringing at your door, you thought it was a delivery man and you opened the door. only to find one of the most infamous villains lately : shigaraki was here.

✤you took a step back, terrified when you saw him only to bump into someone else behind you.

"don't make this complicated y/un, we'll have a lot more time to talk."

✤you recognized "DecayKiller" 's voice as you felt a west tissue pressing against your mouth, making you fall into a deep slumber.

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.

✤you woke up to someone playing with your hair, your head pressed against what felt like a male's chest. it took a while for you to wake up and to realize the situation you were in, when you remembered what happened in front of your house you got up in a hurry, trying to figure out where you were.

✤the chest you were lying on earlier was none other than shigaraki's.

"don't move too suddenly the drugs aren't out of your system yet."

✤he grabbed your wrist and pulled you back against him. you were absolutely terrified and you tried to say something, without success. you waited for a bit before looking right at him, that's the first time you've seen him that close. after a while you finally managed to utter a word.

"w-why ?"

"because i wanted you. i always did. i waited to have you and when i could, i took you."

✤you bit your lips, nervous. you both stayed in like this in silence, only with him playing with your hair. you took your time looking through the room when you realized your right feet was chained to the wall.

✤the chain was quite long but not enough for you to reach the door of the large room, which looked like it was part of a penthouse but you had no way to be sure. shigaraki saw that you noticed the chain because he started talking again.

"this is only for a while, i want to make sure i can trust you. you'll be free to roam around the apartment after his, there isn't much to see outside."

✤you could only stare at your foot in despair as shigaraki kissed your forehead, keeping you against him.

.·:*¨༺ ༻¨*:·.

✤life with shigaraki isn't as horrible as you thought it would be. he would bring video games that you can play together. you would even play the MMO you used to play together, offline of course.

✤one of the good side would be that you would always eat nice food together. you weren't sure how but he would always bring you a variety of different food, each always tasty.

✤if you like cuddles, you'll love shigaraki because he is always all over you. he never leaves your side outside "work". when he does go to work he is always grumpy at the thought of leaving you and you find this strangely cute.

✤the bad side about all of this is the isolation and shigaraki's lack of patience. when shigaraki is not here you don't have anything to do or anyone to see, which can be quite oppressive. and although shigaraki told you he would wait to trust you you can see he get quite eager to be able to do more things with you.

✤he wouldn't try anything without you agreeing but the more you "test his patience", the more grumpy and almost mean he can get. it's in your best interest to get closer to him, if you want to live comfortably that is.

✤by the way forget about escaping. I mean, this man rules over a whole country far from your own, you can't get away from him. you'd better get used to this lifestyle or else... well good luck.

what have i done

❤️👀take a look

The First Taste

Tomura has his first sexual encounter. Poor touch starved baby doesn’t last long, at all. Will reader be forgiving and encouraging and let him try again, is he to embarressed, will he end up lasting or does he release to early again.

Thank you for 600 followers😭🥳🥳💥💜💫💋 Please please like, comment and reblog. It is very appreciated. I will love you. See my Masterlist for other Fics

WARNING SMUT 18+ ONLY THERE IS SEX HERE

FLUFF ANGST SOFT SHIGGY

SHIGARAKI X FEMALE READER

WORDS–4615 (This came out twice as long as it was suppose to be😥😳 sorry)

Shigaraki was not good with feelings or how to express them. He also was not good with people and regular everyday  interactions. His emotions, which were mainly anger and annoyance, just kinda exploded out of him. He hated pretty much everything and everyone, he just wanted to destroy the society that failed him. 

Then you came along. With your beautiful eyes, bright smile and that body of yours. These feelings were new to him. His heart beat faster, his face would heat up, pulse quickened. 

Obviously he knew he was attracted to you, well that was an understatement, he had become obsessed. You were always on his mind, your image permanently imprinted in his brain. He found himself constantly thinking about what your lips tasted like. What it would be like to have his arms around your waist, to snuggle his face into the crook of your neck. To have you underneath him as he had his way with you. 

Contrary to population belief he knew what sex was, he wasn’t stupid. 

He was indeed a regular guy, a very horny one at that. He masturbated on the regular, well more than regular, his mind was on sex a lot. He watched porn daily, this is the only sex education he had, but he had resigned himself to being alone. 

The need for physical contact was getting to him a lot lately. He craved it. Wanted it. The thought of your hands on him, around him. He couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be touched. 

He longed to caress your soft flawless skin. To feel your fingertips travel across his chest, your arms encircling his waist as you rest your head against him. To lay down next to you and feel your warmth. He would get lost in his fantasies of you. Imagining you cuddling up to him, calling him babe or some other cute nickname as he trailed kisses across your neck. Whispering dirty words in your ear, a promise of all the naughty things to come. 

The problem was he didn’t know how to go about it. 

Walking back to the hideout Tomura’s mind wandered,picturing what life with you would be like. To come home and have you waiting for him, greeting him with a hug and kiss. He was tired of being lonely, he longed for companionship and love. Each passing day the desire for you grew. His craving for you was consuming him.

Occasionally he would try to start a conversation, but he just was not good at it, and sadly you really didn’t seem interested in him. He was so very awkward, and since you appeared in his life he had become very self conscious about it, hell about everything. Thinking about you stirred up so many emotions, he was not used to caring about someone, little lone wanting them. 

As he walked into the hideout he noticed it was empty except for you, sitting alone on the couch, reading some book. His heart beating in his chest like a drum. He was alone with you. Should he try, what if you rejected him, told him to fuck off, called him a creep.

He really didn’t even know how to begin to flirt, but he had to give it a try, he had to know if he had a chance in hell with you. So he decided this was it, this was his chance, so he took a spot next to you, right next to you actually, even though there were plenty of places to sit. Hell he didn’t even sit at the other end of the couch. He literally sat right next to you, his leg rubbing against yours as he nervously bounced it up and down. 

Keep reading

Thanks!you anwser so fast too like damn!✨✋

Hiii i just discover your account it's so cool ! What about shigaraki with a darling that litteraly worship him ? 🧐

Have a nice day/night✨🛐

TOMURA/READER WHO WORSHIPS HIM HC!

A/N: gulps nervously in my tomura collection worth $1k+.. what..worship this guy? hah, never heard of it

(cough sidenote: utahime/urame whatever her name is and sukuna or xielian and huacheng...)

WARNINGS: nsfw under the cut! ooc tomura?, subby-ish tomura

oh my god this boy is sweating, confused, scared, angry.

he's sweating because he's shocked and nervous! how would he even react to someone holding him in their arms and whispering praises into his ear?

he's confused, where did this come from? why does he deserve this? are you serious or are you being sarcastic?

he's scared because there's an odd feeling in his chest that hurts yet feels so good, it outweighs the feeling of hatred that burns so deep within him.

he's angry because he thinks your a spy or is playing a cruel joke on him, that one day this will all just stop or your just using him to your own gain.

you have to try and try for weeks on end to show that your not going anywhere and that you genuinely worship him for who he is.

once he settles in and realizes your treating him like some sort of god, or how people idolize and admire stain/all might with genuine love in your heart he short circuits for awhile.

he lays in your arms quietly as he feels you kiss around his body and tell him that he did such a good job, how handsome he is, how much you love him, how much you care and how much all you wanna do to him is..take care of him.

he'll try and push you off and say something along the lines of 'you're being annoying/stupid, cut it out' or he'll say something cocky, 'you really see me as a god or something, huh? that sounds about right for a king like me.'

once it genuinely sinks into all of him that your being real and not playing with him, it all goes to his head and his dick he becomes more cocky but whenever a plan fails he falls so much harder than he would've if you weren't around.

he loves your kisses and will sulk if you don't give him atleast 5 per 10 minutes like you usually do.

cup his face and shower him with kisses, praise, tell him how handsome he is as your cuteness aggression kicks in and you squeeze his cheeks like they're your life line.

head? blank. mind? off.

even though he becomes more cocky/egotistical, he still short circuits and shuts down for a moment because..what?

he doesn't know what he did to deserve you (besides being a gross ugly gamer boy who should go eat a cup noodle) but he definitely thinks it's because all his hardwork and dedication to master got you by his side.

please be patient with him, if he ever sees you upset with him he might actually go insane.

NSFW under the cut!

he loves getting a handjob from you while he suckles on your chest and you whisper sweet things,

he cums so fast when you hug him from behind, one hand stroking his cock and the other playing with his nipples and stroking his chest while you whisper praise into his ear and leave hickeys on his scarred neck or shoulders.

when you praise him, sometimes it just immediately gets him erect, even if you didn't say anything inherently sexual.

he will watch with eyes blown wide or barely open (depends on how long you've been going) as you suck his cock and treat him with utmost care.

yes he is a pillow prince.

he loves it when you treat him like a valuable jewel that could shatter at the slightest touch, your gentle squeezes, your slow and tender kisses, your praise, it all swirls in his head and makes him cum, even if it's just foreplay.

he loves the aftercare, when he's laying down on his stomach and a pillow on his chest as you carefully use wipes to clean his cock, makes him hard all over again.

the aftercare where you shower with him? now he's not sure, he'll say he can bathe himself yet the soft moans he lets out whenever you lather soap on his body or dig your fingers into his hair says he would rather have you bathe him.

cuddles, cuddles please. he needs that.

atleast an hour or 30 minutes of you cuddling him, petting him and telling him how good he did for you, he will sulk if he doesn't get this.

when he's the one mostly in control he's so rough and mean, well..as rough as a lanky twink can get.

he loves watching you cry for him or having you tell him how good you feel, goes straight to his cock.

tell him to go harder, faster, deeper or tell him you're about to cum quick, he loves it, he loves it all.

when your giving him oral, he will just straight up hump/facefuck you, he loves the adoring look in your eyes, it makes him so hard.

—Ake 2024

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.

Silly Time

SO UH i finished it (: teehee

be kind as always as i was just having fun with it!! thank you for the love on the snippet of this... i hope you guys enjoy this silly thing!! Happy new year from me!!

[1,178 words]

---------------------------------------------

It was another sunny day in the Daycare. Kids were playing and screaming in delight as they ran around.

Sun was sitting with some quieter kids at the small table, where they all drew on some colored paper with crayons. He, too, was drawing along with them. It looked rather comical as he sat there, his legs bent like a frog would sit, and in his hand a tiny crayon as he doodled on the blue piece of paper he had gotten. Sun was enjoying his day until a tiny voice spoke up at the table.

"Uhm... Mister Sun?"

Sun looked up from his drawing, his faceplate doing a silly little spin and his grin soft. 

"Yes, little star Kris?" 

The little girl looked down at the crayon in her tiny hand before speaking again. "I was... Wondering if you knew why Mister Moon calls the nice security guard, who comes here sometimes, for Love."

Sun trained his barely moving expression to remain still, though inside, he was shocked by this new knowledge. "Oh? Moon calls them for Love?" He tried to poke Moon's AI in his headspace, but the other remained quiet. Sun and Moon were able to communicate through their shared headspace, but the other AI moved away from Sun's poking, making him scoff internally.

"Yeah... I was just wondering because my mom and dad call each other that." Little Kris continued before going back to doodling as little kids do when they lose interest in getting an answer.

Which fit Sun fine as his inner workings were reeling, his fans kicking in. Moon had never mentioned that he was hanging out with a night guard, and especially not this one.

Sun could usually peek through Moon's eyes and be present when Moon was in control, but lately, the other AI had closed the connection, and at first, Sun thought maybe Moon just needed alone time, which was, of course, fine! But it seems there were other things at play. 

But Sun couldn't ask Moon about this right now. He was working and busy as he was an excellent daycare attendant. He thought so himself, at least.

--

Luckily for Sun, the kids got picked up earlier today, and he decided that as soon as he had cleaned, he would poke his other half until he responded. 

As Sun swept the floors and cleaned the surfaces, he heard the doors open, and the Security guard came in. The animatronic scattered to the playground to hide as he often did when this guard came around. It was not that he hated this security guard or anything. He and Moon didn't trust any of the adults. But for Moon, that might have changed.

"Hello? Moon?"

Sun was in one of the play castles, quiet as he hid in the small tower, checking his internal clock. It was indeed time for Moon to come out, and Sun could feel the other stir.

The sunny animatronic kept his white eyes on the security guard, hiding behind the castle doorway as he spoke internally. 

"Oh! So now you respond to me." Sun grumbled.

"... I just woke up," Moon mumbled back in reply.

"And?! Moonie, what is this about you calling THIS security guard for 'Love'??!" 

Moon groaned in the headspace. "You said you didn't like them, and I wanted to see them for myself and quickly found out you're being a dumbass."

Sun squawked in their shared space. "ME?? A DUMBASS? Moonie! The adults are not nice to us ever. I mean, you even told me you hate all the night guards and the security guards!"

Sun could feel Moon rolling his eyes. "This one's different. Let me out. They're calling for me still."

"Nuh-uh."

"... What the hell do you mean 'Nuh-uh'??" Moon growled.

"Moon? It's time to do the rounds!" The short guard called out into the empty Daycare, then removed their hat to scratch their head. "Moon? It's okay if you don't want to! Uh..."

Sun kept his eyes trained on the guard from his hiding spot. 

Moon continued. "Sun! Let me out!"

"I can't believe you trust them to do those security rounds with you! They're small! weak!"

Moon scoffed. "They're nice! Now let me out!"

Sun hummed and then replied, "No."

"NO?! SUN!"

The Sunny animatronic then shut the other AI out, dooming Moon to sit back and watch as he moved down from the play castle and over to the security guard. 

"Hi, Friend!" Sun said with a bright smile.

The security guard jumped in surprise and dropped their hat. "oh! Hi Sun!" they stuttered and bent down to pick the hat up. "I was wondering why the lights were still on..." They mumbled to themself.

Sun frowned, and Moon broke through. "You have never been kind to them, you wannabe jester." Sun gaped internally. Oh, how he wished he could punch his other half.

"Well! Sunshine. I got the task of cleaning the Daycare, and it took a bit longer than I thought," Sun said with a smile, but it faltered when he heard Moon's deep chuckle in the back of their shared headspace.

The guard looked at Sun with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. 

Sun then realized he had given the security guard, he had avoided at all costs, a nickname, an endearing one as well. "Oh."

"Uhm... Well, if Moon isn't active, can you tell him to come find me once you're done?" The guard- ["-Sunshine." Moon supplied with a smirk in this tone.] 

Sun groaned lightly, running a hand down his faceplate before smiling at the guard. "Or we could go together?" 

Moon growled in the back of his head. "You cannot take my time! Sun! Go turn off the lights. Now."

Sunshine, the guard, looked shocked; it looked like this was so out of pocket for Sun to suggest. "Oh!... Are you able to leave the Daycare?" They curiously asked.

Sun hummed. "Yes, of course! If Moon can leave, why shouldn't I also be able?" he asked with a spin of his faceplate, causing Sunshine to let out a flustered giggle.

"True... Well, alright, if Moon doesn't mind," They said with a smile. Sun smiled sweetly as he heard Moon complain angrily, wandering around in their headspace. "He doesn't mind at all, Sunshine! It will be good for us to get to know each other!" He held his hand out to them, which they grabbed with a shy smile. 

"Ooooo, when I get you, Sun." Moon hissed quietly in their shared head, to which the sunny side of the animatronic let out a quiet chuckle before looking down at Sunshine and guiding them to the massive doors at the entrance to the Daycare.

The two left the Daycare hand in hand to do security rounds. Maybe Moon was right about this one, Sun thought as he glanced down at the guard as they walked together. 

This time it was different.

Not that Sun ever wanted to give Moon right, but perhaps he could let this guard close to them.

Just this one time.

Skin Hunger (Chapter 2) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

There's no such thing as a good night at work when you work in the world's most infamous brothel for monsters, but your night takes a turn for the worse when you find yourself serving drinks to visiting half-vampire Shigaraki Tomura. You don't mean to catch his interest, and you don't mean to start a conversation. You definitely don't mean to get him drunk. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Life in Asylum continues, and in the endless scroll of days and nights, cleanups in empty rooms and mop-ups in private parties, it’s almost possible to forget about the half-vampire who will be back at the next full moon. Almost, but not quite. Vampires are a rare enough occurrence in Asylum that everyone’s talking about Shigaraki Tomura and his master, and since they’re going to be regulars, Overhaul provides more than a little education for the staff about the one type of inhuman next to no one has experience with.

Most of the workers don’t care, but you pay close attention. Your knowledge of vampires contains next to nothing concrete. You need to learn, if you want to hold your own during your next conversation with Shigaraki Tomura.

Vampirism is spread through a bite – true. Everyone who’s bitten becomes a vampire – false. Apparently, creating a new vampire requires intention on the part of the vampiric sire, which probably helps to keep the population down. The mechanism that causes half-vampirism is unclear, but what’s perfectly clear is that half-vampires are something unusual. They need to consume blood, just like vampires do, but unlike vampires, they also need to eat. They still have heartbeats, still need to breathe, still need to see the sun every so often. Beyond that, though, no one’s able to describe what powers a half-vampire has, or the degree of strength advantage they have over an ordinary human, or whether they can turn into a true vampire – or how they do it. The question of what Shigaraki’s capable of is one you’re not able to answer, and it bothers you. Then again, if Shigaraki had correctly guessed what you are, he’d be equally in the dark as to what you’re able to do.

Most inhuman species have some sort of biological limitations, just like humans do. Werewolves still need to eat and sleep, and while bullets will damage them, silver bullets are the true threat. Liches and demons can’t set foot on holy ground, no matter which faith has consecrated a given spot, and shapeshifters lose their forms if they get too tired. Everybody knows all about vampires and sunlight. Faeries don’t have limitations. Faeries have rules.

Faeries can’t lie. Lying has physical consequences. Faeries have given names and true names, and while the true names are the most dangerous, even knowledge of a title or nickname can grant some degree of power over them. Faeries are vulnerable to iron, but not in the same way werewolves are vulnerable to silver. A gift offered by a faery is never just a gift; either it comes in repayment for an earlier favor, or it comes with strings attached. Nothing your father’s people give is ever given freely.

And that’s where you got yourself in trouble. You did Shigaraki a favor by using your glamour on him. If that particular rule applies to you as a half-fey, you’ve bound Shigaraki to you until he can repay the debt.

All of that would be enough to deal with heading into the next full moon, and you feel like it’s possible to handle. But three nights before the vampires are set to arrive, the itching starts, and things go from manageable to impossible in the space of an hour.

The last time this happened, you took a few days off of work until it was over, but it’s occurring over a much larger area on your body – your entire left arm, shoulder to wrist, and it’s not going to peel away until it’s ready. If you try, you’ll open yourself up to infection, and if that doesn’t kill you, the way it’ll look once it’s healed will probably make you wish you were dead. You can manage not to scratch while you’re on shift, but when you’re off, you’re scratching constantly, and every last one of your coworkers has something to say about it.

“Better not do that where the boss will see,” Nemoto remarks as you’re all eating in the cramped servants’ mess. “He finds fleas disgusting.”

Nemoto knows damn well you don’t have fleas; he just doesn’t like you, because his demonic ability to force confessions doesn’t work on faeries, and that includes you. The maid you’re sitting next to recoils away from you, and across the table, Tengai rolls his eyes. “It’s not fleas,” he says. “Haven’t any of you seen a half-fey molt before?”

“It’s not molting,” you say uselessly. It would only be molting if you did it regularly.

“Of course none of you have seen it,” Chrono says. Usually he eats with Overhaul, but sometimes Overhaul can’t stand being around even his right-hand man. “Half-fey in general are rare, and her variety of half-fey is rarer still.”

Everyone looks at you. You can’t tell if they’re waiting for you to explain or thinking that they’ll figure it out if they just stare hard enough. Either way, your face turns red, and Chrono heaves a dramatic sigh. “For most of you half-breeds, it doesn’t matter which of your parents was the inhuman. It matters for faeries.”

Tabe burps. “Why?”

Why questions are usually safe to ask Chrono – asking Overhaul a why question results in either a flat, irritated look or a two-hour lecture about the minutiae of the topic. “It’s unclear,” Chrono says. “What is clear, however, is that half-fey children take after their fathers in appearance and lifespan, and their mothers in magical ability.”

“Huh?”

Chrono doesn’t have his mask on. This time you can see him roll his eyes. “Children of human fathers and faery mothers resemble humans, and have human lifespans. Despite that, they have significant magical abilities.”

“How strong are they?” Rappa asks through a full mouth. “Stronger than regular human magicians?”

Chrono shrugs. You, meanwhile, think about a conspiracy theory you read in one of Overhaul’s books – that all human magic-users are secretly matrilineal half-fey, whose mothers either abandoned them to their fathers or swapped out the child of an unknowing human couple for one of their own. If that was the case, nobody would ever know. Other than the magic, matrilineal half-fey are indistinguishable from ordinary humans. “Hang on,” Setsuno says. “If half-fey take after their fey parent in how they look, how come she looks so human?”

“She doesn’t,” Chrono says. He looks to you, and you lower your hand from your shoulder. You’ve been using the cover of the conversation to scratch to your heart’s content. “Show them.”

You give him a pleading look, which he ignores, and finally you rise from the table and back away. You’re still wearing your uniform, so you pull up the skirt on your right side, revealing your leg. The table recoils as a group, and you’re pretty sure everybody’s thinking exactly what comes out of Rappa’s mouth. “What the fuck?”

“Patrilineal half-fey inherit their father’s lifespan,” Chrono says, “and their appearance – or some of it. They appear to be completely human until they reach physical maturity, at which point they begin a partial transformation. You can see the patches where fey skin has grown in to replace human skin, creating a patchwork which renders the half-fey unable to conceal their true nature.”

It’s not just your skin. Your ears have begun to change shape, growing pointed at the tips, and the natural color of your eyes has taken on a strange iridescent overlay. You need to blink less than you used to, sometimes – other times, it’s a struggle to keep your eyes open in the light without sticky, pearlescent tears oozing from them. If your father had been one of any of half a dozen varieties of fey, you’d have seen changes with your mouth, with your hands, even with the way you breathe. But while your mother never told you anything concrete about your father, she was at least able to confirm that he didn’t have gills.

Your transformation is mainly cosmetic. That doesn’t make it any less terrible, and cosmetic is a relative term. “Due to their appearances and lack of other gifts, half-fey used to make frequent appearances in human freak shows,” Chrono continues. “Some also theorize that the reason they’re unwelcome in faery society is due to their ugliness.”

“Oh.” Your coworkers are nodding at this, like it makes sense to them. Nemoto’s looking right at you when he responds. “I get it.”

You know you’re not pretty, but that doesn’t mean you like having it hammered home. You drop the right side of your skirt back down and sit again, and spend the rest of the meal picking at your food. Your appetite’s gone, and your shoulder is still itching. Even though you’re exhausted from your shift, you’re going to have a hard time falling asleep.

You’re making a beeline back to your quarters, with the intention of trying to shower off the itch and falling asleep immediately afterwards, when Chrono catches up to you. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”

“Thank you?” Backtalking to your boss is a terrible idea, but you can’t hold onto your skepticism. “For what?”

“I explained your situation, so you wouldn’t have to.” Chrono looks pleased with himself. “I did you a favor.”

“You could have done that without calling me ugly.”

“Should I have lied? It’s not as if you’re unaware,” Chrono says. He reaches out, hooks the neckline of your uniform with one finger, and pulls it aside. “How much skin are you going to lose this time?”

“Everything on my arm,” you say. Chrono looks surprised, and you seize the opportunity to shy away from his hand. “Goodnight, boss.”

“Your arm,” Chrono muses. “That’ll be a sight to see.”

Yes, it will. The juxtaposition of smooth, perfect, oil-slick shimmering faery skin with plain human skin on the same body is enough to make anyone’s skin crawl, yours included. You turn away from Chrono, and you’re almost out of earshot, almost to safety, when you hear him speak again. “You’ll have to show me when it’s done.”

That’s not the first comment like that you’ve heard from Chrono in the past year or two. They’re becoming increasingly frequent, and you know what they mean, just like you know you don’t want anything to do with them. You mumble another goodnight and duck into the female servants’ quarters, shedding your clothes and slipping a faint glamour over yourself as you step into the shower. You’re pretty sure there aren’t scrying mirrors in here, but at the same time, you’re pretty sure that if any guests wanted to pay to watch the maids shower, Overhaul would find a way to make it happen.

The hot water helps dull the itch, for now. You dry off and change into your sleeping clothes, noting every spot on your body where your heritage has surfaced. Your right leg is covered, thigh to calf, wide sashes and ribbons of fey skin interrupting your skin, jagged and gaudy. Your torso is covered, too, but you were smarter with that – when it was time, you peeled your dying skin away in a single piece rather than clawing it to ribbons. There’s some on your lower back that you never tried to peel away at all, and as a result, the fey skin is pitted and scarred. It looks hideous. You look hideous.

You know it’s true, but at the same time, you know you’re lucky. You’ve seen photos of half-fey whose fey skin broke through on their faces, unmistakable and impossible to hide. At least you’ve got a prayer of hiding this. Or you will, once you’ve peeled this next sheet of skin away to reveal what’s beneath. You crawl into bed and close your eyes, hoping that the itching will wake you in the middle of the night, so severe that you’ll have no choice but to peel the skin off right then and there. The waiting is the worst part. You just want it to be over before the full moon.

But it isn’t over before the full moon. It’s the biggest piece of skin you’ve lost – the last big piece you’ll lose, if only half your skin changes – and it’s clinging on for dear life. You beg Overhaul to help you, to employ the magic he uses to reshape the workers’ bodies when they’re injured, but he refuses. “The reaction between your meager magic and mine is too unpredictable,” he says. “I can’t help you.”

“Then let me have the night off,” you plead. He shakes his head. “Please. I won’t be any use if the skin breaks through.”

“You have my full permission to take your break to remove it,” Overhaul says, and you bite back tears. You were barely functional after you excised the skin on your torso. There’s no way you’ll be able to work with your left arm freshly peeled. “Not only is it a full moon, it’s also the autumnal equinox. We’ll need your glamours if any of the half-dozen rituals scheduled to take place here get out of hand.”

The equinoxes are the only nights where ordinary humans are allowed into Asylum, and they’re barely ordinary – they’re cultists, devoted to the worship of specific demons, conducting rituals that would get them thrown in prison in the human world. “And even if that were not the case,” Overhaul says, “there is a certain half-vampire scheduled to arrive with his master, and I doubt anyone else will be able to get him drunk.”

You were already stressed about running into Shigaraki Tomura again, but the idea of seeing him tonight sends you into a near-panic. “Sir –”

“That’s enough,” Overhaul says, and you fall silent in a hurry. “The moon is about to rise in Kiribati, and you aren’t in uniform. Get changed.”

You won’t win this. You know you won’t. You leave Overhaul’s study, hoping that the skin on your arm will hold out for another twenty-four hours – and hoping that Shigaraki Tomura’s master decided to leave him at home.

The autumnal equinox is fairly quiet as far as equinoxes go, but it’s not often that it occurs on a full moon, and from the moment the moon comes up over an even slightly populated area, Asylum devolves into barely-controlled chaos. The casualty count for workers exceeds an average full moon within the first three hours, and for the first time in a while, Overhaul comes out of his study to help repair the bodies rather than expecting them to be brought to him. Chrono equips the workers with alarm sigils, which will trigger a warning if their heart rates drop below a certain threshold. It’s an unusual precaution, but you know better than to think it’s out of any concern for the workers’ health – more that if too many of them die, Asylum won’t be able to serve all the guests who are flooding through the door.

You’re doing some of everything – a little cleaning, a little mopping up, a little belting a demon in the face with a mop when they won’t let go of the badly injured worker you’re trying to take back to Overhaul. You’re busy enough that you can almost forget about the itching, about the faery skin that’s trying to erupt through your skin on your left arm. For the first seven hours of the night, you run yourself ragged, doing whatever Overhaul’s ordered you to do, racing from floor to floor and trying to spot trouble before it begins. You’ve lived in Asylum your entire life. There’s nobody who knows their way around better than you do.

At hour eight, Overhaul summons you to the makeshift infirmary. When you get there, you spot a pile of discarded gloves on his right, a bubbling cauldron on his left, and a newly healed worker sprawled out in front of him. “Get out,” Overhaul orders the worker, and she scrambles upright, falls, and crawls unsteadily towards the exit. The instant she’s gone, Overhaul plunges his hands into whatever’s boiling inside the cauldron.

You don’t want to know what’s in there, and based on the grimace on Overhaul’s face, you don’t even want to go near him. But he summoned you. You step forward. “Sir?”

“The first ritual is about to begin. You’ll be supervising it.”

Your stomach drops. “I can’t,” you say. Overhaul mutters a curse under his breath. “I can’t! I don’t have magic –”

“You think throwing more magic at an out-of-control ritual will solve the problem? Playing stupid won’t get you out of it.” Overhaul lifts his hands from the cauldron and you startle at the sight of them. His fingers have been eaten down nearly to the bone, and in spite of the fact that he’s repairing them before your eyes, you can’t help but feel nauseous. “There are supply kits in my study, with the measures necessary to contain a ritual. All that’s required of you is to deploy them. Go.”

“Sir –”

“I don’t have time for this,” Overhaul snaps at you, and you flinch. You’ve never seen him this stressed before. “Chrono is needed elsewhere. None of the others but you possess a sensitivity to magic, and no one other than me is able to perform the repairs. Succeed at this and you’ll be rewarded appropriately. I don’t need to tell you what will happen if you fail.”

You know exactly what will happen if you fail. You nod mutely. “The supply kits can be found in the furthest cupboard. Hold out your hand,” Overhaul says. When you do, he traces a rune into your right palm. “Use this to unlock them. Go.”

You have more questions – like how to figure out which countermeasure to use first, or how to tell when they’re needed in the first place – but Rappa’s coming through the door carrying another worker, and Overhaul’s attention shifts from you. He’s not going to change his mind, and there’s no one else who can do the job. There’s nothing for you to do but head for Overhaul’s study. Being expected to supervise a ritual is bad enough. Being late to it is probably worse.

The cultists are making final preparations for their ritual in the smallest of Asylum’s three gardens. You’re not sure which cult this is, but they brought their own sacrifice, bound hand and foot in spite of the fact that they’re unconscious. You try not to look too hard at them. You don’t look too hard at the cultists, either. You pry open the supply kit and study the items within. Now that you’re looking at it, they seem pretty straightforward. Salt and consecrated chalk, for sealing the paths leading to the garden off from the rest of Asylum. A set of wardstones to keep anyone from entering once the ritual begins. A sheet of runes to trace in midair, as an extra precaution. None of it requires more than the tiniest amount of magic. Maybe this is doable.

You confirm that all the cultists are in the garden, then get to work, starting with the salt and chalk across each path leading into the garden. Next it’s the wardstones. The cultists are using a pentagram in their rituals, which means you need a hexagram to contain them properly. Wardstones are simple enough to set. You set them spinning with a twist of your fingers and leave them to hover. A few more of these, then a few sigils, and then you’re all set. You can do this.

A single footfall and a shadow falling across yours are the only warnings you get before a familiar voice rings out from behind you. “If you don’t want people to think you’re a witch, you shouldn’t spend so much time casting spells,” Shigaraki Tomura says, and you nearly jump out of your skin. “Did you miss me?”

It takes an effort not to throw the wardstone at him. “I’m not a witch. And this isn’t a spell.”

“It looks like a spell,” Shigaraki says. He looks way too pleased with himself for reasons beyond your understanding. “That’s two spells I’ve seen you do. Your boss is a warlock, so I don’t get why you’d lie about being a witch.”

You were dreading meeting Shigaraki again, in part because you were sure he’d guessed that you were half-fey. Apparently not. “That wasn’t a spell, and neither is this,” you say. “I’ll show you.”

“Huh?”

You motion for him to come forward, and he does, looking way too suspicious. What does he think you’re going to do? You’re not the one who drinks blood. “Hold this,” you say, and push the wardstone into his hand. “Now, do this –”

You show him the proper gesture to activate it, and he tries it – and drops it, just like you did the first time you tried it. Before you can tell him to try again, he picks it up and looks at you. “Show me again.”

You show him the gesture, and this time he copies it much more closely. The wardstone spins out of his hand and hovers in midair, the last piece of the hexagram you’ve been constructing falling into place. Shigaraki looks surprised, then pleased with himself again. You’re less annoyed with it this time, mostly because it’s given you a chance to prove your point. “You can do it, and you have even less magic than I do. It’s not a spell.”

“This one isn’t a spell,” Shigaraki agrees. He’s mimicking the gesture again, even better on the third try. “The other one was.”

A glamour’s not a spell. If it was a spell, it could be replicated by anyone else, but your glamour is an extension of your nature as a half-fey. You won’t be able to convince Shigaraki otherwise without outing yourself, so you keep quiet, and you set back off around the garden, headed for where you left the supply kit. Shigaraki follows you. “I went to the bar. You weren’t there,” he says. “Are you avoiding me or something?”

“I don’t work in the lounge most of the time. That night I was just filling in.” You’re conscious, suddenly, of the fact that you’re in the maid uniform – and that the maid uniform doesn’t come with even the most useless of masks. “To be honest, I didn’t know you were here.”

Shigaraki makes an affronted sound, but you’ve reached the supply kit, and you have runesigns to trace. In the garden, the cultists are moving into position to begin their ritual. You hold the sheet in one hand and begin to trace the sigils in midair. “What do you do most of the time, then?” Shigaraki asks. “If you’re not down there.”

“I clean.” You make the mistake of gesturing at your uniform, and Shigaraki takes the invitation to look you up and down. “And whatever else Overhaul needs me to do.”

“Like this. What is this?”

“There are cult rituals happening tonight. Overhaul and Chrono are both busy, so they asked me to keep an eye on this one.”

“Huh.” Shigaraki looks away from you, into the garden. “My master had a cult for a while.”

You really don’t know what to think of that, except that if it had been relevant, it would have been the first thing Overhaul and Chrono told the staff about. “How old is your master?”

“Old,” Shigaraki says, which tells you absolutely nothing. “What about your boss?”

“Also old.”

Shigaraki snorts. “What about you?” You clam up instantly, and he rolls his eyes. “Come on. Either your name, what you are, or how old you are. Give me at least one.”

Out of those three pieces of information, your age is the one that won’t get you in trouble. That doesn’t mean you won’t make him work for it. “You first.”

“Come on,” Shigaraki complains. You wait, watching as the cultists pick up their unconscious sacrifice and lay him out on the altar they built out of bones they brought from home. “Not that it matters or anything, but I’m twenty-three. Your turn.”

“Twenty-three,” you repeat. You can’t tell if you’re surprised by his age or not, but the fact that he’s still counting it means he’s still mortal. Your age stopped mattering two years ago, but you’ve kept count anyway. “Me, too.”

“Was that so hard?” Shigaraki grins, just a little too widely. The only thing that keeps you from calling it a leer is an instinct that it’s not born out of triumph at getting one over on you. A moment later, you’re proven right. “I knew it.”

Why does it matter to him that you’re the same age? A low hum begins to vibrate through the air, and the sigil hovering just in front of you wavers. The ritual’s beginning, and you need to focus. Unfortunately for you, Shigaraki’s still here. You need to shake him off. “I’m surprised you’re not with your master. Aren’t you here to feed?”

“He’s here to feed. I’m here to learn,” Shigaraki says. Learn what? “This looks more interesting than whatever else is going on around here.”

The hum in the air intensifies. Beneath the sleeve of your uniform, you feel your skin beginning to crawl. “If you’re going to stay, keep quiet. I need to concentrate.”

“Right. Witches need to concentrate when they’re doing magic.”

You’ve decided not to respond to any more witch jokes. The cultists are chanting in one of the demonic languages, drawing in close to surround the altar and obscure the sacrifice. Now that you think about it, you’re not sure what kind of sacrifice this is, and regardless of whether it’s symbolic or literal, you don’t want to watch it. You especially don’t want to watch it with Shigaraki – Shigaraki, who’s standing next to you, head tilted to one side, scratching idly at his neck. Seeing him scratch makes you want to scratch. You peer down into the supply kit instead, wondering which of the objects inside you’re supposed to use first if things get out of hand.

“Is there food here?”

Out of all the things Shigaraki might have said, you weren’t expecting that. “Huh?”

“Food,” Shigaraki says again. “Is there food here?”

It feels like round two of the WiFi conversation, except this time, you’re able to give him the answer he’s hoping for. “Yes. Why?”

“After this. We should get some.”

“Um –”

“You get breaks, right? Even witches have to eat.” Shigaraki’s scratching harder than before, and he’s not looking at you. “I’m hungry.”

He is really skinny, but he’s also a half-vampire. You know half-vampires still need blood, and you focus on that question instead of the other, worse one. “Not thirsty?”

“I have money. I can pay for it,” Shigaraki says, ignoring you. “And you helped me out the last time I was here.”

“I’m the one who got you drunk.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I don’t owe –”

“Stop talking.” You’ve interrupted him, but it’s not enough – he’s already opening his mouth again, and you slap your hand down over it before he can get another word out. “I mean it.”

Shigaraki’s red eyes are wide. You can’t tell if it’s with affront or with shock. His lips move against the palm of your hand, dry and rough, and a weird jolt travels through you, raising the hairs on your arms and the back of your neck. It’s drowned out a second later by a vibration through the air that makes you stagger. The sigil in front of you dissolves, unable to stand in the face of another wave emanating from the site of the ritual.

The wave abates, for a moment, and you think you’re safe – but the next thing you know, you and Shigaraki are both staggering as the vibration travels through the ground in addition to the air. You don’t need anybody to tell you that the ritual’s gotten out of hand, and you dive into the supply kit, searching desperately for something that can counteract a demonic curse. Something whips past you from the opposite direction, slicing your cheek. You don’t look up. You’re busy.

Shigaraki catches Overhaul’s message and pries it open, reads it aloud. “Your boss wants you to play a song. How are you supposed to play a song when phones don’t work in here?”

“Tell me you don’t really think that music only comes out of phones.” You pull a music box out of the bottom of the supply kit, dust it off, and open it. No music comes out – you must have to turn the handle. “Be quiet.”

Music begins to emanate from the box after two turns of the handle – a thin, quiet voice, singing what sounds like a lullaby in a language you don’t speak. You doubt the cultists speak it, either. But it doesn’t matter what the words are, or even that the singer is at least a little tone-deaf. All that matters is the glamour that drips from every note, stronger and heavier than anything you’ve ever called up. It’s a faery’s voice, and it’s already affecting Shigaraki. He sways sideways, falls hard against a column, the curse he mumbles more slurred than his voice was when he was drunk. The glamour is almost overpowering. If you weren’t half-fey, you’d fall prey to it yourself.

It’s strong enough to stagger Shigaraki and disorient you, but it’s not having much of an effect on the ritual itself. The vibrations are still traveling through the air, and worse, you can feel them in the ground beneath your feet. You keep turning the handle of the music box with no change in the strength of the demonic curse emanating from the center of the garden. Why isn’t it working?

The answer occurs to you just as Shigaraki speaks up. “It’s too quiet,” he mumbles. “Witch. Make it louder.”

You can’t. The despair barely has time to settle in before the answer occurs to you. You can’t make the voice from the music box louder, but you can make sure it’s not the only fey voice in the garden. You clear your throat, coat your voice in your glamour, and begin to sing.

It’s nothing – some song you liked when you could walk freely in the human world, the first thing that comes to mind. You make an effort to match the key the music box is singing in, and you project both your voice and your glamour, doing your best to build on what the faint fey voice is already providing. You think it might be working. You’re not sure.

What you do know is that Shigaraki’s figured you out. You can see him out of the corner of your eye, still slumped against the column, staring unabashedly at you as you turn the handle of the music box and sing. You’re able to console yourself with the thought that your uniform hides your patchwork fey skin before you realize what a stupid thing that is to think about – right now, or ever. Your throat is starting to hurt, your vocal cords straining under the weight of the glamour. You aren’t sure how much longer you can keep this up.

The vibrations from the ritual begin to fade just as your voice begins to crack, and it gives you the willpower to hold on a little longer, the notes you sing growing increasingly fractured and hoarse. By the time your voice gives out completely, the demonic energy’s faded to the point where the music box is enough to counter it. Your ears are ringing, so much that you almost miss Chrono’s footsteps as he approaches. He notes Shigaraki, then looks to you. “You should have called for help.”

“From who?” Your voice sounds awful. You cough. “I took care of it.”

“If that demonic energy had gotten into the flux field, it could have destabilized the entire dimension,” Chrono snaps. “Someone as weak as you has no business trying to contain –”

“If she can’t contain it, you shouldn’t have sent her to watch it.” Shigaraki levers himself upright. “Something was off about that ritual. Isn’t it your job to catch things like that? Or are you really okay with a bunch of human cultists sacrificing half-demons in your pocket dimension?”

“Half-demon?” Chrono swears. “They wouldn’t dare.”

“I can smell its blood.” Shigaraki shrugs. “She saved your ass. Give her a bonus or something.”

Chrono handles being told what to do by people other than Overhaul about as well as Rappa handles being told what to do by anybody. His shoulders stiffen, and his hand closes around your upper arm, venting a sharp jolt of magic into you rather than loosing it at Shigaraki. At least, that’s what you think he’s doing. Then the skin on your right arm, itchy and crawling since three days ago, erupts with an itch so sharp and acidic that it almost feels like a burn.

Your arm is on fire. You’ve felt this before, and you know instantly that you can’t leave it a second longer. “I need my break,” you say to Chrono, your voice strained.

He lets you go with a sharp nod. You turn and all but run from the garden, already clawing off your apron.

No time to get back to the servants’ quarters, but Asylum is full of places to hide if you know where to look. And you know where to look. With a master rune like the one you carry, you can open up passageways and closets that even the savviest of guests don’t know exist, and you’ve used them more times than you’d like to admit. You reach the nearest of the passageways and raise the rune to tap against the wall, only for the agonizing itch in your left arm to flare to new heights. Your body contorts in discomfort, and your right hand falls back to your side – and then, so fast that you barely register it, someone slips the rune from around your wrist.

It's Shigaraki, and he’s got enough of a height advantage over you that he can hold the rune out of reach just by extending his arm. You don’t have time for this. You really don’t have time for this. You can feel the fey skin beginning to eat through yours from below. “Give it back!”

“So that was why you wouldn’t let me say I owed you. You’re a faery, not a witch.” Shigaraki’s grinning like he’s figured something out, even though the clue you gave him was a thousand times more obvious than the clue you got a month ago. “Why didn’t you want me to owe you one? My master is powerful. You could have asked me for anything.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“Except this.” Shigaraki studies the rune. You reach for it again and he holds out his other hand to forestall you. “You want this, and I want a straight answer. The ritual’s done. Do you want to go get food with me or not?”

The small part of you that’s not panicking, caught in the desperate need to get the rune back, to get away, notices how he’s phrased the question. He knows that faeries can’t lie, and for some bizarre reason, he’s decided to corner you on a question so mundane that you wonder if you’re hallucinating it. Why would he waste a question he thinks you’ll have to answer on something this stupid?

It doesn’t matter, because half-fey can lie as much as they want, and because you’re done playing around. You glamour your left arm, faking a clumsy feint, and when Shigaraki shifts away from it, you snatch the rune from his hand with your right. He’s between you and the wall, so you turn away, pressing the rune against the opposite wall and opening up the passageway there. You dive through it, the relief at being out of the hallway marred only by the fact that Shigaraki followed you in.

The passageway you were aiming for originally had space. This one is a close fit for one person, tight for two, but you’re out of time to be picky. You can’t get your arm out of your dress without unbuttoning it partway. “What are you doing?” Shigaraki asks, clearly startled, as you undo the buttons one-handed and draw your arm from your sleeve. “Are you transforming?”

Even the slightest motion of your arm sets off a wave of pins and needles, and you grit your teeth as you work it free. Bared from wrist to shoulder, your arm looks awful, mottled, bulging in odd places, almost writhing in others – like the fey skin really is trying to claw its way to freedom from the inside out. Seeing what it looks like only hardens your resolve. You dig your fingers into your shoulder, trying to pry up a piece of skin. If you get a good enough grip on the first one, you can peel off the rest in one sheet.

But you can’t get a grip. Your hand is shaking too much, or your nails are too short, or something. You remember too late that the only other time you peeled the skin back, you made the first incision with a pocketknife. Overhaul doesn’t let the staff carry weapons. You don’t have anything on you that’s sharp enough to cut through your skin, and if you can’t – there’s no way you’ll be able to scratch all your skin away before the fey skin eats through. It’ll be agonizing. It’ll take forever. And Shigaraki will be watching you the entire time.

Shigaraki. You turn to him, desperate and hating yourself for it. You know that guests are searched for weapons when they arrive, but maybe – “Do you have anything sharp?”

“Like a knife?” Shigaraki shakes his head. Then his expression shifts, and he raises one hand to his mouth, pressing the pad of his thumb against one of his incisors. You see blood well up where the tooth breaks his skin. “My teeth aren’t as sharp as my master’s –”

If they can draw blood, they’re sharp enough. You beckon him forward. “Please.”

Part of you is expecting him to bargain. Any inhuman would, if they had one of the Fair Folk at their mercy – they’d never get better terms for any deal they wished to make. But Shigaraki steps forward, closing the slight distance between you without asking what you’ll give him in exchange. His hands are dry, his palms rough like before, as they close around your wrist and raise your hand towards his mouth. “Here?”

His breath is hot against your wrist. You shake your head. “My shoulder.”

Some part of you is terrified at the thought of letting a vampire this close to your throat, screaming in terror at the thought of those teeth meeting your skin. Shigaraki edges even closer to you, as close together as you were when you were dragging him drunk down the hall. His mouth brushes against your shoulder, and you freeze in place. What is he waiting for? You don’t need him to peel the skin off for you. You just need him to –

At least one of Shigaraki’s incisors punctures your skin, and you flinch, hiss – less at the pain, and more at the fact that he’s touching you, one hand on your waist and the other around your wrist, keeping your left arm extended and keeping the rest of you close. But you’ve got what you needed from him. You dig your fingers into the breach, get a good grip, and pull.

It hurts when you peel your human skin away from the faery skin that’s grown beneath, but the human skin is already dead. As it breaks contact with your body, it goes ashen, then transparent. There’s next to no blood. The faery skin glistens, slick with serous fluid, as it’s bared to the air for the first time. You mess up a little bit at the end, peeling away a piece of healthy human skin on the back of your hand by accident. It feels like a hangnail, and your entire arm stings. The pain would be worth complaining about if you didn’t know exactly how bad it was before.

Shigaraki’s still way too close to you. You try to sidle away, and he lets go of your waist, but not your arm. He’s peering intently at it, almost fixated. You brace yourself for the kind of comments you’ve heard every time someone’s seen what you really look like. “Wow,” Shigaraki says. “It looks even cooler than I thought.”

You’re not sure you heard him right. “Cool?”

“Don’t fish for compliments. I’m getting to it,” Shigaraki says. He hasn’t looked up from your arm yet. “I thought it would look cool, and I was right. Do you have more of it?”

You’re feeling weirdly lightheaded. You nod, and you can tell Shigaraki’s grinning just by the sound of his voice. “How much more?” he asks. “Can I see?”

That question snaps you out of whatever fog you’ve been floating in. “No,” you say, and pull away from him completely. “You weren’t even supposed to see this.”

“But you’d have been in trouble if I wasn’t here.” Shigaraki’s eyes follow you closely, not just focused on your arm this time. You can feel his gaze roving over you. If you had to guess, you’d say he’s trying to figure out where else you’re hiding fey skin. “I helped.”

He helped you, after you helped him. “We’re even, then,” you say. “Is that why you did it?”

Shigaraki’s not even subtle in how he ducks the question, and before you can press him for an answer, you hear someone or something knocking against the wall outside – a sharp, uneven rattle that startles you both. You start wrestling your arm back into your sleeve. The serous fluid will glue the fabric to the fey skin and removing it will be painful later, but you don’t have a choice. You need to get out there, and you need to beg whoever’s knocking not to tell Overhaul that they found you in the world’s smallest secret passageway with Shigaraki Tomura and your dress unbuttoned.

The knocking intensifies. You miss a button at the collar of your dress and Shigaraki’s hands knock yours aside, undoing it and buttoning it properly again. Is he trying to get you in his debt officially? You decide that’s a problem for later and open the wall again. There’s no one there but one of Overhaul’s paper cranes, battering itself to death against the wall. You grab it clumsily out of the air. Overhaul’s message is blunt and to-the-point – he wants you to assist Chrono in containing the next ritual, which starts in half an hour. Shigaraki is peering over your shoulder. “I can’t read it.”

“That’s because it’s not for you. They can only be read by the person they’re intended for,” you say. Half an hour. That’s not much time. “Look, I have to –”

Another paper crane zips past you, headed for Shigaraki. He whips his head to one side to avoid it, but he read the trajectory wrong. The wing slices into the dry skin on the side of his neck and he swears, clapping his hand over the now-bleeding paper cut. You capture the crane instead and hand it to him. His expression, already annoyed, deepens into frustration and discomfort as he reads. “What does it say?” you ask.

“What does yours say?”

“Mine says I have half an hour before I’m supposed to help with the next ritual,” you say. “What about yours?”

“My master wants me to feed while I’m here.” Shigaraki scowls. “I don’t want to feed. I’m hungry.”

He’s hungry, and he helped you, and he’s a guest – but it’s not any of those things that decides your course of action. It’s something else, something you’d go mute rather than admit to out loud. “I’ve got half an hour,” you say. There’s almost certainly something else you’re supposed to be doing with that half an hour. Overhaul can be angry with you later. “We can go get something to eat.”

Shigaraki looks surprised. “Really?”

“Sure.” You can’t figure out where that surprise is coming from. He’s been bothering you about it since before the ritual went sideways. Was he not expecting you to say yes? “And we should cover that cut on your neck.”

Shigaraki pulls his hand away from it, grimacing. “It’s not that bad. I get worse all the time.”

From scratching? “It’s still not a good idea to walk around bleeding in here. Let’s go.”

You steer clear of the infirmary and make your way instead to one of the supply caches, using your master rune to open it, and then to open an alcove where you can patch up Shigaraki’s injury in peace. Shigaraki complains as you try to clean the wound. “Why does he fold those things so sharp, anyway?”

“So people will snap to it faster,” you explain. “Most of us would rather drop what we’re doing and do what he wants than risk getting a papercut like that.”

“Your boss is an asshole.” Shigaraki tilts his head to the side at your request, then freezes. “What are you doing?”

“I just moved your hair. It was in the way.” You don’t care that he’s uncomfortable. After what happened tonight, after how much of you he saw, you feel like he deserves it. You get a fingertip full of some salve from the supply caches and start daubing it onto the cut, to the tune of a sharp hiss. “Sorry. I’m trying to be gentle.”

Shigaraki doesn’t respond to that. It’s quiet as you fish through the supply kit for a bandage, a quiet that feels awkward but not necessarily tense. Shigaraki doesn’t speak again until after you’ve placed the bandage. “Can you use one of your spells on it? Whatever you did last time,” he says. “If my master finds out –”

“It’s a glamour, not a spell,” you say. “No problem.”

A phantom itch travels along your left arm as you set the glamour, fading before you can scratch it in earnest. You store the supply kit, open another passageway that will lead directly to the kitchens, and start off, counting on Shigaraki to follow you. The awkwardness follows, too, and just like before, Shigaraki speaks first. “I get it now. Why you wouldn’t tell me what you were.”

You find yourself tucking your left arm close to your body, shielding it. Shigaraki keeps talking. “You helped me just now. I owe you a favor again. Ask.”

Earlier tonight, you’d have asked him to leave you alone. Now – “We’re even. Don’t worry about it.”

“You can’t do that,” Shigaraki says. “I know how this works. You can’t just cancel a debt because you don’t want anything from the person who owes it.”

“I’m only half-fey. I don’t know which of the rules applies to me,” you say. “You’re off the hook.”

“What if I don’t want to be off the hook?”

You can’t imagine why he’d want to be on the hook. The Fair Folk are notorious for driving cruel and twisted bargains. Whether it’s due to their morality, which doesn’t map onto human morals particularly well, or due to a desire to hurt others, everyone who’s ever found themselves in debt to a faery has been keen to get out of it as quickly as possible. Why on earth would Shigaraki want to carry around a possible debt to you?

You don’t want to ask that question. You stay quiet. “I guess I’ll have to stick around, then,” Shigaraki muses. “See about paying you back.”

You glance at him and find him smirking, or grinning. You can’t tell which. Your glamour is shimmering at the side of his neck, obvious to you but subtle enough to escape his master’s notice, and his lips, which would have cracked at a smile this wide even an hour ago, look smoother than before. You have a bad feeling about why that is – and at the same time, you aren’t as worried about it as you were before. Now that he knows what you are, interacting with him is significantly less stressful than before. It’s not something you’ll look forward to. But it’s not something you’ll dread.

“I guess you have to,” you say, and his smile brightens. Even that’s not enough to dredge up the ambivalence you felt before. “Let’s get some food.”