Omg Thanks Really It Mean A LOT. I Guess Its Training My First Drawing Of Shigaraki Was In 2021 And Was

𝓓𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓬𝓪𝓷𝓸𝓷𝓼 𝓦/ 𝓣𝓸𝓶𝓾𝓻𝓪 𝓢𝓱𝓲𝓰𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓴𝓲

(𝑺𝑭𝑾 + 𝑵𝑺𝑭𝑾 𝑯𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝑾/ 𝑻𝒐𝒎𝒖𝒓𝒂 𝑺𝒉𝒊𝒈𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒌𝒊 𝒙 𝑭𝒆𝒎!𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓)

𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔: 𝑺𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝑺𝒖𝒈𝒈𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆, 𝑭𝒆𝒎!𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓, 𝑺𝒘𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 + 𝑵𝑺𝑭𝑾 𝑨𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅

When you first met Tomura, he was so fidgety and nervous around you, always scratching at his neck and cheek when he thought he had ruined his chance with you.

People would think it’s a bit creepy with the amount of staring he gives you, but he really is just awestruck by you; his eyes always admiring you.

When you two start officially dating, he feels like he’s in heaven; all his sorrows are washed away when he’s around you.

In public, he’s a bit distant, unlike in private, where he’s all over you. However, that all changes when he sees someone stealing your attention away from him.

He’s so possessive of you and will get jealous whenever he sees someone flirting with you or just chatting you up.

Expect a protective arm around your shoulders or a hand on your waist when you guys are out; he’ll lean in close next to your ear while walking you away from them. "You’re mine; remember that."

He’s pretty touch starved because of his past, so please smother him in kisses, hug him closely, and just make sure you’re close to him; he’ll 100% appreciate it.

He enjoys putting a hand on your thigh when you’re both sitting; he does it since it reminds him that you’re there with him.

When he’s playing video games, he’ll gladly let you play, though he might be an asshole when it comes to 1v1 games. He just likes being a winner LMAO

If you’re not into playing video games, then he wouldn’t mind you just watching him; he likes whenever you rest your head on his shoulder or when you let him rest on your lap while playing.

He also likes when you’re sitting on his lap, arms around his neck, while he's busy playing, though he’ll complain if you’re squirming around too much.

Tomura also likes sharing things with you; if it's his clothes, it's all yours. Food? He’ll pass you his plate; he just likes seeing your cute smile whenever he agrees to share things with you. He also loves having matching things with you, though he finds it ‘stupid’ his words—at first. He finds it really adorable to have matching jewelry or key chains with you.

When he compliments you, it comes off either possessive or a bit mean, so take it or leave it LMAO

"Your stupid face is so fucking cute." "So perfect just for me, my pretty girl." "Dumbass, why are you so adorable?"

NSFW BEYOND THIS POINT

Tomura was most likely inexperienced when going into a relationship with you, and he’s constantly thinking such impure thoughts when you’re around him.

When you’re sitting on his lap, he can’t help but grind his throbbing cock against you, his hands gripping the fat of your hips while he huffs hot breaths against your ear.

He has a love-hate relationship with the cute skirts and tiny tops you wear; oh, how the thin pieces of fabric make him want to pull them down and fuck your soft tits, flip up your skirt, and spank you, leaving his pants feeling tighter.

He’d fuck his fist, thinking about how heavenly your skin felt against him and how you’d look at him with those beautiful eyes and lips of yours.

Tomura is quite literally a pervert; when he goes over to spend time at your house, he'll steal a couple of your panties, maybe a bra or shirt, so he can later spill his cum along the fabric while thinking of fucking you.

When it comes to having sex with him, he often switches depending on his mood. If he’s needing to fuck out his anger, he’ll be more dominant, but in any other mood, he’ll let you decide and take the reins.

Oh, he definitely whimpers, especially when his head is buried between the plush of your thighs, his tongue lapping at your slick folds while you call him a good boy.

He loves it when you praise him, tell him how good he is, and reassure him that he’s making you feel so good; it always has his cock throbbing and tip leaking.

Loves when you sit on his face, his nose rubbing against the nub of your clit while his tongue slips inside you, and bonus if you pull his hair, he’ll give you the cutest whines.

If he’s feeling frustrated, he’ll become so rough with you, manhandling you and marking you up while he bullies his cock inside you.

When he’s upset, he shows more of his possessive side, especially if you make him jealous. His thrusts are harder, his grip on your ass is tighter, "You little slut, remember you’re mine."

"Don’t fucking forget who owns you—who owns this pussy." He groans out while he pushes your legs closer to your chest, his thrusts getting ever rougher as he reaches his high.

Tomura himself likes when you mark him up; he loves the feeling of your soft lips against his neck and chest, feeling your teeth graze his skin; it always has him melting against your touch.

"Such a fucking slut for me." He grunts out while you cock warm him inside your mouth. "Shit, so good at using that pretty mouth of yours."

When he’s fucking you, he enjoys positions where he can see your face, and he loves when you're all teary-eyed and flushed.

(Thank you so much for reading! Hope you all enjoyed! GYAH ok ngl this guy is so scrunkly but so fun to write about and in the future im definitely writing about him LMAO so if you're interested in that or want to request him my inbox is always open! also heads up i maybe unable to post for the weeks coming up due to a vacation im going on but i will definitely try to write some stuff during my break!)

Opposites Attract - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I didn’t have any!” Twice protests.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Did she say anything else?”

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

“Yes, Shigaraki Tomura?”

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

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

“Great.”

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

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

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

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

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

Yay team pokemon fire✨✨✨ma fav is Blaziken idk how to say his started in english

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 15) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

You knew the empty house in a quiet neighborhood was too good to be true, but you were so desperate to get out of your tiny apartment that you didn't care, and now you find yourself sharing space with something inhuman and immensely powerful. As you struggle to coexist with a ghost whose intentions you're unsure of, you find yourself drawn unwillingly into the upside-down world of spirits and conjurers, and becoming part of a neighborhood whose existence depends on your house staying exactly as it is, forever.

But ghosts can change, just like people can. And as your feelings and your ghost's become more complex and intertwined, everything else begins to crumble. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14

Chapter 15

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. Right now the thing that’s wrong with your house isn’t the ghost who haunts it, but the fact that said ghost is on day five of an extended sulk. With every day closer to your departure, Tomura’s gotten mopier, and no matter how many times you explain to him that you’ll only be gone for two days, it doesn’t seem to stick.

It’s Friday morning, and you’re leaving directly after work, which means you have to say goodbye to Tomura this morning. He’s not making it easy. “Someone else can go. Aizawa can go,” he complains. “I don’t see why you have to.”

“I’m the one who started looking into this. And Aizawa has kids to look after.” You finish packing your bag and zip it up. “Are you sure you’re okay to watch Phantom? Spinner said he would –”

“I know to feed her and play with her and let her out. I’m way better at taking care of our dog than Spinner.” Tomura is scowling worse than before, and you feel slightly guilty. You like hearing Tomura say that Phantom is both of yours, but that’s not a good enough reason to wind him up. “Why do you have to stay away that long?”

“It’s going to take me six hours to get there. I won’t be there until midnight tonight. I’ll take all of Saturday and some of the next day going over the documents, and I’ll be back late on Sunday.” You pick up your bag and start down the stairs. “I don’t like being away, either. I like it here.”

“Then don’t leave.”

“I have to.” You set your bag down by the front door, then crouch down to say goodbye to Phantom. You haven’t left her alone for this long in a while, and you’re going to miss her. If it wasn’t for Tomura, there’s no way you’d take this trip.

Tomura didn’t follow you down the stairs, and you hear his voice echo through a house that already feels a little too empty. “I won’t have anybody to talk to.”

You thought about that, too. You thought about it and decided that not talking to Tomura for two days wasn’t something you were prepared to tolerate. “Can you come down here? I’ve got something for you.”

Tomura’s footsteps are slow, almost reluctant, as he makes his way down the stairs. “What is it?” he asks. You don’t answer – you’re too busy searching through your hall closet for a bag you stashed there months ago. “If you want me to kiss you before you leave, just say that. Don’t act weird and –”

He stops talking when he sees the bag you’re holding out. “It’s a present,” you say. “Sort of. Open it.”

Tomura’s not very good at opening presents. He shreds the bag, followed by the box, and a charger cable and a pair of headphones fall out and clatter to the floor. He avoids dropping the main event, if nothing else – the smartphone remains in the palm of his hand, and he stares at it suspiciously. “This is for me?”

“We can set it up really quick right now.” If you were smart, you’d have done this last night, but last night you were busy – not with sex, which would have at least been fun, but with trying to snap Tomura out of his over-the-top bad mood. You beckon him closer and he hovers over your shoulder as you start the process. “See, this is your profile. What do you want to set your name as?”

“My name.” Tomura watches as you set it. “Now what?”

You adjust his phone so it’ll always be on battery saver, hook it up to the WiFi so he won’t burn through all your data, and mute all his alert sounds. “Now we’re going to get you some contacts. People you can call or text if you need to.”

You probably spent a lot more time than necessary thinking about whose numbers you should give to Tomura. You ruled out Dabi’s and Hizashi’s instantly – the last thing you want to do is give Tomura the ability to start fights with either of them whenever he wants. Giving Tomura Keigo’s number is risky, but you’re pretty sure Dabi doesn’t know Keigo’s passcode. Tomura gets Aizawa’s number, and Spinner’s, and Jin and Jin’s mom. Jin’s mom, after pleading from Himiko and significant hesitation, agreed to let you add Himiko’s number to Tomura’s phone. You add the other ghosts, too, even though Tomura doesn’t really need a phone to talk to any of them. Last of all, you add Mr. Yagi.

Tomura doesn’t like that. “I don’t want him on my phone. Get rid of him.”

“You don’t ever have to call him,” you say. “It’s just in case.”

“In case what?”

You don’t really know. Tomura makes an irritated noise. “I want Izuku’s number.”

“You can’t have Izuku’s number. Even I don’t have it.” You wouldn’t want it, honestly. Giving Izuku unlimited opportunities to text you or Tomura feels like a stunningly bad idea. “Okay, that’s everybody. Only text them if it’s important, not to start fights. I don’t want to have to fix the fence again.”

“I know,” Tomura says, annoyed. He studies his phone, then looks up at you. “Where are you? Are you in here?”

“I’ve been texting you all the contacts.” You tap your number. “This one is me. You can name me something if you want.”

You show him how to edit the contact, then watch with a little too much interest as he selects a name. He hesitates for a long time, then looks at you. “What am I in your phone?”

“Um –” You added him as a contact already. You hold out the phone for him to examine, and he studies it like he’s reading a textbook. “It’s just your name. Tomura. See? I thought about adding the ghost emoji, but that would have been silly. I can add it if you want.”

Tomura shakes his head, then sets your phone aside and types your name into his as your contact. Which is fine. Except then he adds a display name – My Human. “Hey,” you complain. “Don’t do that. I used your name.”

He smirks. Part of you wants to change his display name to something like “my asshole ghost” to return fire, but before you can say anything, Keigo honks his car horn and hollers from outside. “Hey, if we’re going, we need to go now!”

“We’re going!” you shout back. You pick up your bag and your work backpack and race out to his car. You’re about to get in when you realize you haven’t said goodbye to Tomura yet. And that you’re missing your phone. “Shit –”

“I have your stupid phone.” Tomura’s on the other side of the fence. You reach for it, but he holds it just out of range. “I want a kiss first.”

“I was going to kiss you anyway,” you say. You lean across the property line, grasp his shoulder to pull him closer, and kiss him goodbye. You don’t stop until Keigo honks the horn again.

You’ve been in relationships before, but none of your exes ever insisted on a goodbye kiss when you had to leave for more than a day, let alone a goodbye kiss in full view of the entire neighborhood. You’re a little giddy on the drive to work, and Keigo, to his credit, doesn’t rib you too much about it. “He knows you’re not going off to war, right?”

“He knows.” You slouch down in the passenger seat. “He’s been moping all week. Did Touya do that?”

“When I was gone for too long, Touya broke out of the house,” Keigo says. Your jaw drops. “He and a bunch of other ghosts haunted this old-style family compound, and each of them was confined to a specific area. He broke out of his and into somebody else’s. You can guess how that went. So that ghost broke out of their assigned haunt, and then –”

You remember what Keigo said about ghost fights. “How many ghosts were there, total?”

“Six.” Keigo winces. “I moved pretty fast after that.”

Dabi sounds like he was a lot to deal with even back when he was Touya. A terrible thought occurs to you. “You don’t think Tomura would –”

“You told him where you were going,” Keigo points out. “And you got him a phone so he can talk to you. When it was me I just dipped for a day or two. I had no idea Touya was going to take it like that.”

“So that was kind of early on for you guys?”

“I guess.” Keigo sighs. You’re at a stoplight, and he hits his head lightly against the steering wheel. “Anyway, that one was on me. If he’d been a normal roommate I would have told him where I was going. So I think you’re probably fine. But we’ll let you know if anything weird starts happening.”

You’re hoping it won’t. You change the subject. “Thanks for giving me a ride. Parking in the station lot for two days was going to be expensive.”

“No problem. I was headed this way anyway,” Keigo says. “It’s better that you’re taking the train than driving. Less expensive.”

“It’s harder to track, too,” you say. “I don’t think anybody’s watching, but – still. Better safe than sorry.”

“Definitely,” Keigo agrees. He merges onto the highway and floors it to a speed he swears the cops don’t pull people over for. “Nobody wants a repeat of last time.”

You’re hoping to avoid it. That’s what this trip is about. When you shared the idea with Mr. Yagi and Aizawa, they both approved, although they both suggested that they should go instead of you. You held your ground. Even fifteen years after his embodiment, Mr. Yagi has a reputation among ghosts, and Aizawa’s carrying around Hizashi’s marks with no conjurer-forged bracelets to conceal them. Besides, you’re the one who found the asylum, who found Shigaraki Yoichi. Since there’s basically nothing else you can do to help, you want to see this through.

But that doesn’t mean you’re looking forward to the trip. In fact, your dread of it increases throughout the day, until you’re dragging your feet along with your suitcase as you walk to the train. Some part of you knows the dread is irrational, but it’s hard to shake, and it’s got nothing at all to do with conjurers, asylums, or ghosts. The city nearest to the asylum is the one your parents moved to, after you went to college and they sold the house you grew up in. And you and your parents have an agreement to check in whenever you’re in the same city as they are. When you texted them to tell them you’d be there for the weekend, they told you to cancel your hotel reservation and invited you to stay with them.

It’s been over two years since you last saw them. Last time it was awkward, and it was awkward the time before that, too. Your parents’ ambitions for you included a college degree and financial independence, and once you hit those milestones, it was clear at least to you that they have no idea what to make of you. But turning down their offer of a place to stay would have made things worse, and besides, hotel rooms are expensive. Saving money is worth an awkward weekend at your parents’ new home. You’ve never been there before.

You doze on and off on the train, waking up at every stop and checking your phone. Tomura hasn’t texted you, but then again, why would he? He existed in the house alone long before you were even born. Maybe he’s figuring out that he likes the peace and quiet, too.

The thought doesn’t sit well with you, and you’re crabby for the rest of the ride, although you do your best to shake it off once you arrive. The meeting with your parents will be difficult enough without you being irritated at the ghost in your house at the same time. It’s just past eleven-thirty as you make the short walk to your parents’ house from the station, your stomach growling the entire way. You’ll have to order in from somewhere once you’re settled for the night.

Their house is in a small new development, multiple homes clustered around a large central courtyard. You step through the gate and make your way across it to your parents’ front door. You check your phone one last time, ordering yourself not to be disappointed when you see that Tomura hasn’t reached out. Then you raise one hand and press the doorbell.

The door swings open almost immediately, and your father smiles at you in a way that gives you pause. He reaches out and lifts your suitcase out of your hand, then pulls you into the house and into a hug shortly afterward. For lack of anything better to do, you hug him back.

He’s smaller than you remember. More frail, and there’s more grey in his hair. How old are your parents now? Pushing seventy – they had you late, and you’ve always had the impression that you were sort of an accident. “It’s been too long,” your father says to you. He waits while you take off your shoes, then beckons you further down the hall. “Come along. We held back dinner so we could eat together.”

That doesn’t sound right. You rarely ate with both parents at once when you were a kid; family mealtimes were no one’s priority, and you ate with whichever parent was in the house at dinnertime, or you ate alone. “Why?”

Your father gives you an odd look. “It’s been too long,” he says again, as if the distance is all your fault, as if they couldn’t have reached out just as easily. “And it seems you’ll be very busy this weekend. This might be the only time we can catch up.”

“I have a lot to do,” you admit. Your father sets your suitcase down just inside the door of a room and continues down the hall. You can smell food cooking. “Thank you for waiting for me.”

Your mother is busy in the kitchen, but when you go to help her, she waves you off, under instructions to wash your hands and get settled. “I’m making your favorite,” she tells you, and smiles. But then you see the smile waver. “Is it still your favorite?”

“I make it all the time,” you say. “It never tastes quite like yours.”

Tomura’s observed you working on the recipe more than once, and he always makes fun of you for changing it each time. No matter what you change, you can’t make it taste right, but maybe – “If you won’t let me help, can I stay and watch?”

“Of course,” your mother says. “It’s been too long.”

You wish they’d both stop saying that. If they wanted you to talk to them more now, they should have talked to you when you were a kid. Hizashi’s words pop into your head, like they do every so often: Mommy and Daddy didn’t love you enough. Maybe they didn’t. Or maybe they just didn’t know what to do with a kid once they had one.

Your phone makes the sad chiming sound that tells you it’s running low on battery, and you dig up your charger and plug it in, leaving it balanced on the corner of the kitchen counter as you watch your mom cook. Watching her, it’s easy to see where you went wrong in the recipe, or where you went wrong by following the recipe – there are spices your mom uses that are nowhere to be found on the ingredient list. You didn’t watch her cook very often as a kid. Maybe you should have asked if you could help.

The three of you sit down to dinner, and it’s beyond weird. The family dinners you remember were full of silence, but it’s been over two years since you last saw your parents, which means there’s a lot to talk about. You’re not sure how to talk about your life now, so you ask your parents about theirs, and hear that your dad’s retired but your mom is working part-time teaching English at a local middle school. They like their neighbors a lot. In fact, they want you to meet their neighbors tomorrow night. Apparently the neighbors have been asking about you.

“We told them a little, but you’re so busy that we haven’t talked in a while,” your mom says. Now you get why they invited you to stay here. Not knowing what your only child is up to looks pretty bad. “How have things been for you? Are you still working in the public defenders’ office?”

“What about law school?” Your dad takes a sip of his drink. Sometime in the last three years, your parents got sort of into fancy wine. “Are you still planning to go back?”

“Yeah. Money’s still an issue. I had a hard time saving with how high my rent was.” You try your own wine, but you don’t know enough about wine to know if it’s any good. “I bought a house, though. So I guess that’s new.”

It’s quiet for a bit. When you look up from your plate, you find your parents staring at you with their jaws dropped. “You bought a house?” your mother repeats. “You can’t afford law school. How can you afford a house?”

“I didn’t have enough for law school. I had enough for a downpayment,” you say. “My mortgage payments are cheaper than my rent was.”

“That’s hard to imagine. Is it in a good neighborhood?” your dad asks. “If it isn’t – what’s funny?”

Your neighborhood, being good. “There are five other houses besides mine. Three of them have families in them. They’ve been really nice to me, mostly. We all get together sometimes.”

“What for?”

Strategy sessions. Ghost fights on the sidewalk. Conjurer ambushes that end with half the street wrecked and some of you injured. “Just regular stuff. I went to one of the kids’ parties last weekend. I brought Phantom. She was a hit.”

“Who?”

“My dog,” you say. “I’d just gotten her the last time we talked. Don’t you remember?”

“She sent us a picture,” your dad reminds your mom, while you tamp down your frustration. “Is someone looking after her this weekend?”

“Yeah. My –” The stumbling block of how to describe Tomura temporarily breaks your brain. “A friend.”

You covered it well, you think – but you weren’t fast enough. “What kind of friend?” your mother asks, way too interested. “A special friend?”

“God, Mom. No.” You imagine the look on Tomura’s face if he heard someone refer to him as your “special friend” and experience a brief but powerful urge to crawl into a vent and die. “A friend. Really, I could have asked anybody in the neighborhood. They’re all really – nice.”

“A house,” your father muses. “In a good neighborhood. You must have a lot of friends over.”

You can’t tell if he’s needling you or not. He knows you’ve never been the type to have a lot of friends. “It’s kind of a ways out from where everybody else lives. Most people don’t like driving that far.”

“Oh, so that’s how you could afford it.”

You could afford it because it’s so goddamn haunted that nobody else wanted it, and the only reason you kept it is because the ghost who haunts it let you stay. “I don’t mind. I’d rather drive than have roommates and a landlord.”

Your father nods sagely. Your mother’s on a different track. “What about dating? Is there anybody special?”

“No,” you say, lying your ass off. “I’m not seeing anybody.”

Your phone starts ringing on the counter, but you ignore it, and so do your parents. “I don’t want to rush you, but you ought to get a move on, don’t you think?” your mother presses. “You’re going to be twenty-seven soon. If you don’t hurry up, all the good ones will be gone. Don’t you want to settle down?”

“I’m as settled down as I’m going to get,” you say. Your phone starts ringing again, and you ignore it again, even though you’d almost take a telemarketer over this conversation. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“You’re not disappointing us if that’s what makes you happy,” your dad says, and you’re impressed for about two seconds before he ruins it. “Are you sure that’s what will make you happy? What about –”

“What about kids?” your mother breaks in, looking honestly distressed. “Don’t you want kids? You’d be such a good mom –”

You would possibly be the worst mom on the planet. Your phone starts ringing again. “Are you going to get that?” your dad asks.

You should. Three calls in a row means it’s important, but this line of questioning from your parents is pissing you off, which means you’re not in the mood to do anything you should be doing. “Nope.”

“I’ll get it,” your mom announces. She picks up the phone and gasps. “Who’s Tomura?”

Your stomach drops like you’ve been kicked off a building. “Nobody,” you say. “He’s –”

“I knew you had a special friend!”

“He’s not a special friend!”

Your mom brandishes your phone, triumphant. “Then why is there a heart next to his name?”

He wouldn’t. He – you stare at the screen of your phone, and sure enough, there’s Tomura’s name on the caller ID, complete with an obnoxiously red heart emoji. You’re going to kill him. You seize the phone, accept the call, and press it to your ear. “What?”

Tomura sounds unfathomably sulky when he answers. “You got me the phone so we can talk while you aren’t here. Why didn’t you pick up?”

“I’m having dinner with my parents. It’s rude to pick up the phone at dinner.” You’re conscious of your parents staring at you with identical gleeful looks on their faces. “Just like it’s rude to call somebody three times in a row. What was so important?”

“You didn’t call me all day.”

“You didn’t call me, either,” you point out, trying not to lose your temper. If he had called you, you’d have noticed his little edit to his contact and gotten rid of it. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine. Phantom ate and everything.” Tomura’s quiet for a second. “You have parents?”

“Yesh,” you say. Did you tell him that’s who you were staying with? You don’t remember. “I’m staying with them, not at the hotel. They invited me.”

Tomura swears under his breath. You can hear him rustling around, but you’re not sure what he’s doing, and the longer you give your parents to prep for their interrogation, the worse it’s going to be for you. “Can I call you back in a little bit? I do want to talk to you. I just – can’t right now.”

“How long is a little bit?”

“I don’t know,” you say hopelessly. Why does it matter? It’s not like he’s going to fall asleep. “I will, though. I promise. I miss you.”

The words leave your mouth before you can really think them through, but it’s the truth. You do miss Tomura. You miss him extra right now, and you’re not looking forward to falling asleep without his presence lurking somewhere in the room. When you wake up from nightmares of the world between, he and Phantom are the only things that make you feel better. “I miss you, too,” Tomura says. Then he hangs up the phone.

You set it aside, then turn back to face your parents. “So,” your mother says, grinning, “who’s Tomura?”

Your ghost. The reason why you don’t date anymore. The reason why you’re as settled as you’re ever going to be and the reason why your parents aren’t getting grandkids and the reason you’re here at all in the first place. There’s no way to explain him that your parents will understand, so you pick the one thing they will understand, even if it’s sort of wrong. “My boyfriend.”

You stagger off to bed forty-five minutes later, feeling like you’ve been run over by a train. Your mom had lots of questions – about where you met Tomura, how long you’ve been seeing him, what he looks like, what he does for a living – almost all of which you had to lie about. You’re going to have to remember all those lies later, too. Your dad was more concerned about why you’d lie about having a boyfriend, at which point you lost patience a little bit and said that the conversation the three of you just had about it was all the reason you needed. Then your mom said she wanted to meet him, and you decided it was time to start clearing the table.

They have a guest room, which is where you’re staying. You get ready for bed, go inside, and shut the door before checking your phone again. You’ve got messages from Tomura – and from Keigo. You open Keigo’s first and grimace when you see what it says. The lights in your house are going berserk right now. If he’s trying to get ahold of you, you should pick up the phone.

Keigo sent a video, too. In it, the lights inside your house are flickering wildly, and the entire property seems to be surrounded by some kind of weird, wavering forcefield. Great. You check Tomura’s texts next. He wants to know where you are. Why you haven’t called him. Then there are a few texts of him winding himself up over reasons why you haven’t called him, externalizing a thought process you would have kept to yourself if it killed you, before it occurs to him that something might have happened to you. At which point the phone calls started. You dig your headphones out of your backpack, put them on, plug them in, and call Tomura back.

He picks up halfway through the first ring, and you start talking first. “I shouldn’t have gotten mad. I just wasn’t planning to tell my parents about you, and because you called me when you did – and because you put that emoji in your display name – they found out.”

“Why does it matter if they found out?” Tomura asks. “Why don’t you want to tell them about me?”

You almost point out that you said you weren’t planning to, not that you didn’t want to, but Tomura knows what you really meant. He knows you better than you think he does. “You’re hard to explain,” you say. “To people who don’t know about ghosts. It wouldn’t make sense to them.”

“Why not?” Tomura’s climbing the stairs. You can hear them creaking under his feet. “You’re my human. Not the kind of human Spinner and Jin are. The kind Aizawa is.”

“The kind Keigo is,” you correct. Tomura makes an irritated sound. “Aizawa and Hizashi are married.”

“So what? You’re that kind of human. That’s not hard to explain.”

Maybe it isn’t. Maybe you’re making this more complicated than it needs to be. “I told my parents you’re my boyfriend. I hope that’s okay.”

“Boyfriend,” Tomura repeats, like he’s never heard it before – but when he speaks up again, it’s clear he’s got a handle on what it means. “If that’s what you have to call it so people understand, fine. As long as they know you’re my human.”

You could probably play off Tomura calling you his human as a cute nickname or something, but you’d really prefer not to have to do that. “If I tell people you’re my boyfriend, they’ll understand for sure.”

“Good.”

There’s some rustling around on Tomura’s end of the line. “What are you doing?”  you ask. “Where are you?”

There’s a prolonged silence, which means Tomura’s somewhere he thinks he’s not supposed to be. There aren’t many options left these days. “You’re on the bed, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. So what?” More rustling. “It’s weird that you’re not here. I hate it.”

“I don’t like it, either,” you admit. When you close your eyes, it’s easy to picture Tomura stretched out on your side of the bed, taking up the space you usually would, head resting on your pillow. “Maybe there won’t be as much to go through tomorrow as I thought and I can get home tomorrow night instead.”

“The sooner you come back, the better.” Phantom’s collar rattles in the background of the call, and you know she’s jumped up on the bed with Tomura. “Spinner came over. He said I needed a game that wasn’t Rainbow Fish, so he gave me one and taught me how to play it. It’s – Pokémon?”

“He gave you something to play it on, too, right?” You need to thank Spinner. “What do you think of it?”

“It’s okay. The music is weird.” Tomura’s voice fades for a second, and you can hear Phantom slobbering into the microphone. “It was more fun before he left. I don’t like playing games alone.”

“You can ask him back over. I bet he wouldn’t mind,” you say. “Which starter did you pick? Fire, water, or grass?”

“Fire,” Tomura says. You could have guessed that. “My rival had water, though. I should have picked grass.”

“If you picked grass, your rival would have picked fire.”

“So they always pick the one that can beat yours?” Tomura sounds honestly pissed at the unfairness, and it makes you smile. “That’s stupid.”

“It would be boring if it was too easy,” you say. Tomura complains under his breath. “And they can’t beat you if you build a good team. I used to play that a lot as a kid. I can help if you want.”

“I don’t need help,” Tomura says. “You can watch if you want.”

“That sounds nice.” You imagine sitting next to Tomura with your head on his shoulder, letting the goofy Pokémon music lull you into a doze. It’s a weirdly relaxing image. You find yourself swallowing a yawn. “Sorry –”

“Go to sleep. If you don’t you’ll be slow, and then you’ll have to stay the extra day.” Tomura sounds annoyed, but he sounds annoyed any time you have to end an interaction before he wants it to end, so you’re used to it. What you’re not used to is what he says next. “If you have one of your nightmares, don’t just lay there doing that weird shivering thing. Call me.”

You lie there for a moment, stunned. You’ve never mentioned the nightmares to him. You never breathed a word. “How did you know?”

“I know what sounds you make in your sleep. When you’re having a nightmare they’re wrong.” Tomura’s quiet for a moment. “Don’t just lay there. Call.”

Your throat feels tight. “Okay.”

Tomura hangs up. You pull your headphones out of your ears, set your phone down on the nightstand, and squeeze your eyes shut. You don’t need to cry. There’s no reason why your eyes should well up.

You’re in your parents’ house. It’s a new house, but it feels the same as the old house. Even though your parents listen now. Even though they care about what’s going on in your life – for their own reasons, sure, but they care – your family is still the same way it’s always been. Quiet. Distant. Sterile. Your parents have seemed happier the last few times you’ve seen them. You’ve never admitted it out loud, to anyone, but you think they’ve been happier since you moved out, because you moved out. And that was okay with you. The last time you went back to visit, it was fine.

It’s not fine anymore – not because they’re different, but because you are. You remember Tomura saying once that he didn’t care about being alone before, but he does now. You didn’t let yourself care about the way your family was before, but you can’t stop yourself from caring now, because now you know how it feels to actually belong somewhere. You belong at your house. You’re wanted at your house. You make someone happy by being there. Somebody misses you when you’re gone, tells you to hurry back, tells you to call if you’ve had a nightmare. There’s probably something fucked up about the fact that the only person you’ve ever felt at home with isn’t even human. But you know what it means to feel at home now. Being away from that is hard. Harder than you want to handle.

You scramble for your phone, and it starts ringing in your hand. Tomura’s contact, with its stupid heart. You jam your headphones into your ears and accept the call, and for a moment you and Tomura are just talking over each other. The gist of it is pretty clear, though. You were about to call him, just when he decided to call you. “Um –”

“Stay on the phone while you’re sleeping. That way I’ll hear. And I can wake you up.”

Your heart lifts even though it shouldn’t. “How are you going to wake me up?”

You picture Tomura shrugging. “I’ll just yell.”

“Don’t yell.” The only thing that would be worse than having one of your nightmares is waking up from one to the sound of Tomura hollering in your ear. “If you hear me start to have one, hang up the phone and call me back. I’ll hear it ringing and it’ll wake me up.”

“Yelling is faster.”

“And it’s scarier,” you say. “You’d know if you slept.”

“Ghosts can’t.” Tomura’s quiet for a moment. “I wish we could.”

That strikes you as weird. It strikes you as weird any time Tomura talks about wanting to do one of the few human things materialized ghosts can’t do. “Why?”

Tomura doesn’t answer. “Fine. I won’t yell. Go to sleep.”

“Tomura –”

“Go to sleep,” Tomura says again. If you try to talk anymore, he’ll just ignore you. You hear Phantom snoring in the background and tell yourself that it’s time to sleep. You shut your eyes.

Somehow knowing that Tomura’s there on the other end of the line, knowing that he’ll wake you up if you start having one of your nightmares of the world between, helps you fall asleep. You think you hear Tomura whisper something as you drift off, but there’s no way you heard him right. It has to be a dream. At least it’s a better dream than the ones you’ve been having lately.

TOMURA SHIGARAKI MADE THE TOP 3 IN THE FINAL COMMUNITY BNHA POPULARITY POLL!!!!!!!

Followed by Dabi in 4th, and Toga in 6th ✌️🖤

NSFW Alphabet ~ Tomura Shigaraki

Author's Note: Since my other account @cheekyredwillow got deleted. I am adding some of my favorite fanfictions to this account and revamping this one with new ones. I hope to make an actual list of fandoms I am still a fan of! NO requests for the time being.

On to the alphabet! This is a nsfw version so minors DNI!

A: Aftercare (What are they like after sex?)

You had to teach Shigaraki aftercare. He honestly would have gone straight to playing video games. But he honestly loves to lay with you and talk. 

B: Body Part (Which body part do they like the most?)

He loves your lips. Your lips speak comforting words yet are deliciously sweet to kiss. He likes when you kiss each scar. 

C: Cum (Anything to do with cum)

Shigaraki likes to treat his cum like marking. Whether it is dripping out of your cunt or all over your body, it shows you as his. 

D: Dreams (Do they have sex dreams? If yes, what is it/happens after?)

He loves to dream of you in his favorite video game character and looking at him with a pouty expression before he gives permission to suck him off while he plays video games. But he never mentions it to you because he is afraid of what you’d think. 

E: Experience (How much experience do they have?)

Very little. He had the knowledge of porn but since most people were afraid of quirk, he never really had someone

F: Favorite Position (What is their favorite position for sex?)

Honestly loves you on top while he’s playing video games. He loves feeling your tight cunt milking him and loves to see how long he can last. 

G: Grab (Where do their hands lie)

After getting a pair of gloves to stop his quirk during intimacy, he loves to grab anywhere. He loves to feel how warm and soft you are under his hands. 

H: Hot and bothered (How do you know they want sex?)

Usually Shigaraki can hide it. He usually uses anger to hide it. But if he really is horny, he will elbow your side. When you look at him, he points down to the tent in his pants and then to the room. 

I: Intimacy (How caring and nurturing are they during the moment?)

Not usually very caring. He’s still unsure and has some insecurities. But there are some small things he does. He always seems to know how your body reacts and how your eyes react. He focuses on these things so he doesn’t hurt you.

J: Jack off (Do they jack off? What do they think about?)

Sometimes. You both are in the LOV but for the one instance that you are out, he jerks off. He honestly thinks about how you feel. How soft your body jiggles when you thrust. Your weeping cunt begging for him. 

K: Kink (Secret kink that you learn)

Praise kink. One night you told him that only he could make you cum this many times. That he is amazing. You figured when he began to get louder that was his kink. He could degrade you all you want but hearing you sing praises excites him.

L: Location (Favorite place to have sex)

He actually enjoys starting sex in the bar. He forces everyone out and begins making you cream on the bar table. Masturbating you till you beg for him to move and until you are soaking the table. Once you get there, he’s already entered your sopping cunt and rides you. He wants others to know their leader gets laid daily. He’ll worry about the mess later. After he messes your insides around. 

M: Motivation (what are their turn ons?)

Praise him, suck him off while playing video games, or let him play and edge you with your cunt during a meeting. Any of these things and he has to control himself from taking you wherever you are located. 

N: Nope! (Turn offs, things that they would not do)

Anything without his gloves. Even if he fingering you under the table, he will have something protecting him. You’re his first real intimacy. He doesn’t want you to fade to ash on his mistake.

O: Oral (Do they like to receive or give? Anything else.)

Loves to receive it. Something about your lips and pouty expression gets him riled up. That doesn’t mean he won’t eat you out till you cream. He just prefers to receive oral. 

P: Pace (How fast or slow are they? Is there a reason?)

Unless you provoke him, he is quite slow. He has the control how to rile you up. Even if you are begging him to go fast, he’ll laugh and go even slower. Every ridge of his cock bumping into you as slow as possible. Provoke him though and he is an animal of lust and will make you orgasm more times that you can keep track of. 

Q: Quickie (What are they like? Are they quick?)

Not really into quickies. He prefers to have you sopping his hand during a meeting and whimpering in his ear. Or the other option is just having you cockwarm him while he talks to Kurogiri or the others.

R: Romance (Is there anything that sets the mood?)

There usually isn’t music or anything that sets the mood. The only time anything is romantic is with Kurogiri’s help. He will help Shigaraki lighten the mood on special days. 

S: Stamina (How many rounds or how long?)

Normally you orgasm about 3 times and so does Shigaraki. Once by oral and twice by penetration. But if he is frustrated or angry, definitely you will lose track of your orgasms as Shigaraki cums over and over.

T: Talk (what is their dirty talk?)

Say my name Doll. Tell me about how good I’m fucking you. Tell the others how good I feel. I bet the others wish they had you. But you are mine. My Doll with this soppy cunt. 

U: Unfair (Do they tease and how much?)

Of course he does. I’ve mentioned previously making you orgasm with his hands during a meeting but I didn’t go into much of the cockwarming. After you are soaking, you slide onto his cock and he’ll force you to sit there. A few experimental thrusts just to embarrass you in front of Kurogiri. And let’s say your cunt is milking him, he’ll reach for your clit and rub it hard where you have trouble holding your moans. 

V: Vexing (Is there any outfits or looks that make them think dirty thoughts?)

Of course seeing you in cosplay is the best but another thing that makes him hard is you only in his hoodie. It proves your his and gives him easy access to play with you while hiding it. 

W: Walk it off (Can you walk it off or do you need help?)

Definitely need help. But usually Shigaraki won’t send you on missions just so you can bask in the afterglow. He’ll allow Toga or Kurogiri to help but Dabi and Twice are off limits. 

X: X-Ray (How big are they?)

About 7 inches or so. He’s slightly larger than most but also has ridges on it so it bums your walls every time.

Y: Yelling (Are they loud or soft vocally?)

Definitely vocal about what you do to him. It helps his ego but also makes him proud so he likes to say it loudly. But if he is teasing you, he’ll whisper insanely dirty things or locations to try. 

Z: ZZZ… (How quickly they fall asleep)

Usually Shigaraki goes back to playing video games but he’ll still be in bed because (even though he doesn’t want to admit it) when you cuddle into his chest, he’ll sigh and pat your head. 

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 12) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

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

Chapter 12

Any workday when you don’t go to work and aren’t sick feels strange, but you only got three words into explaining why you wanted the day off before Mr. Yagi excused you. Now you’re running around to every nursery and garden shop in the city, asking which of their plants are invasive, and buying all of them, leaving a trail of environmentalists who hate you in your wake. You’re going to have to go out of town if you ever want to buy plants again, but you’ve got plenty of plants. Enough plants to power up Dabi, Nemuri, and Tomura to a truly ridiculous degree.

“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Keigo says when he sees you coming with the fifth oversized butterfly bush of the day. “He can’t control his consumption rate the way he used to.”

“Who cares? It’s not like I need to materialize.” Dabi is eyeing the new plant in a way that creeps you out. Four pots with charred-to-death trees are already sitting in Keigo’s front yard. “When my conjurer gets here, I’m going to burn him from the inside out.”

“Not a chance,” Nemuri says from across the street. She’s hanging out on your front porch, barely materialized. “He’s tortured two of my friends. I get to suffocate him.”

“Fuck you both. This is my neighborhood.” Tomura’s not materialized at all, but his voice echoes up and down the street. “He’s mine to kill.”

This has been going on all day. “You’re all pretty,” Keigo says, exasperated, which cracks you up. Your laughter sounds ever so slightly hysterical. “Whoever gets him first can do the honors.”

Keigo hasn’t heard the same legend Spinner has, then – that, or the idea of Dabi getting sucked back into the world between doesn’t bother him very much. As far as potential conjurer assassins go, you think Nemuri’s most likely to do the deed. She’s stronger than Dabi is, and unlike Tomura, she’s free to move around the neighborhood. Likely as not, she’ll deal with the conjurer, and the rest of you won’t have anything to do at all.

At least, that’s what you’re hoping. You believe everyone when they talk about how strong Tomura is. You doubt there are many ghosts who could go up against him and win. But you remember what Mr. Yagi said about conjurers drawing power from the world between through multiple conduits, and you remember what Aizawa said about who usually wins in clashes between ghosts and conjurers of equal or greater power. Tomura could face one ghost. Maybe even ten. But twenty, or fifty, or a hundred? You don’t see how it could work, and you don’t know how many ghosts Garaki has left to draw from.

As terrible as it feels to admit, you’re okay with sacrificing Nemuri. When it comes down to it, you’d sacrifice Dabi, too, although you wouldn’t like upsetting Keigo. It’s Tomura you don’t want to lose. He’s got a lot of strength, but he’s never used it. With that in mind, you find yourself going to Hizashi for help for the second time in the last twenty-four hours.

You find him ransacking your garden shed for makeshift weapons. He doesn’t notice you, and you take the opportunity to scare him for once, something you regret doing the instant you hear the earsplitting shriek he lets out. Inside the house, Phantom howls. “What do you want, human?” Hizashi snaps, red in the face. “Don’t you have more plants to buy?”

“Not right now,” you say. Nemuri told you to stop bringing them. She and Dabi are maxed out, and if you power Tomura up anymore he might blow up the house. “I know you’ve killed a conjurer before. Have you killed a ghost?”

Hizashi raises an eyebrow. “That’s a personal question.”

“Get over it,” you say, ignoring the affronted sound he makes. “Have you killed a ghost?”

Hizashi glances left, then right, like he’s checking for eavesdroppers. Then he nods. “Good,” you say. “I need you to teach Tomura how.”

“I know how,” Tomura says, indignant. You should have known he’d be listening. “They die the same way anything else does.”

“No, they don’t,” Hizashi says, pointedly avoiding your eyes. “If you try draining another ghost, it won’t work. You’ll just keep sucking up power from the world between, and once you exceed your capacity, you’ll blow apart. It’s a stupid way to die, which would be in-character for you.”

For once, Tomura doesn’t rise to the bait. “So I’ll send power to them. That way they’ll blow up instead of me.”

Hizashi looks surprised, but he shouldn’t be. Tomura catches on fast when he wants to. “Right, but it’s a weird feeling. It’s the opposite of what comes naturally to us. It’s not something you want to try for the first time in the middle of a fight.”

“Then I need somebody to practice on,” Tomura decides. He raises his voice. “Hey, idiot –”

“No,” Hizashi says as Dabi shouts back from across the street, calling Tomura something unrepeatable. “Dabi and Nem are both maxed out. You can’t use them.”

“What about Shirakumo?” you suggest. “If we could get rid of the ghost –”

“That ghost is my friend, and separating them like that could kill them both,” Hizashi snaps. He turns away from you and begins to pace back and forth in front of the shed. “If you really want to practice, you gloomy brat – not that you’ll need it, Nem will handle most of this before Garaki clears the top of the street – there’s only one way to do it. And you’re not going to like it.”

Tomura’s influence deepens, so dark and threatening that even you can feel it. “That’s not an option.”

“That’s your only option. You can’t practice on a live ghost, and there’s only one person on the planet you care enough about hurting to make this even slightly safe,” Hizashi says, and it clicks into place for you. “Ghostly energy doesn’t affect them the same as it affects us, and you need to get used to the sensation of discharging power.”

“I’ve done it before. When I fucked up the fence.”

“By accident. You need to do it on purpose.” Hizashi lowers his voice, and you can tell he’s trying to sound reassuring. “You don’t need to use a lot, and even if you overdo it by accident, it won’t hurt her. She’ll glow in the dark until it burns off, but that’s it.”

“No.”

“Yes,” you say. You’re not sure how much you trust Hizashi, but you’re damn sure that Tomura needs to know how to fight properly. “It’s fine. Let’s do it.”

“No!” Tomura’s voice is sharp and angry. “Don’t be stupid. I’ll use his human.”

“You don’t give a shit about my human,” Hizashi snaps. “I don’t trust you with him. To be honest, I don’t trust you with her. I don’t even trust you with that dog. But you need to learn, and if she’s okay with it –”

He breaks off midsentence. For a second you wonder if Tomura’s silenced him somehow, but then you see the way Hizashi’s making eye contact with empty space and realize that he and Tomura are talking. It takes you a second to grasp the implications, and once you do, unease uncoils in the pit of your stomach. Tomura changed the mode of communication. Whatever he and Hizashi are talking about, it’s not something he wants you to hear.

The silent part of the conversation ends when Hizashi shakes his head. “Tough shit,” he says out loud. “If you want to win against whatever’s coming here tonight, this is how it has to be.”

Tomura materializes slower than you’ve ever seen him do it. “Good,” Hizashi says. He looks to you. “Hold your hand out.”

You extend your hand and Tomura takes it. His hand is cold, like always, but it’s shaky in a way that makes you worried. “It’s okay,” you say.

Tomura won’t look at you. “Shut up.”

“It’s time,” Hizashi says. “Take the smallest amount of power you can and deliberately push it out. It’s going to feel unnatural to you, but remember, it’s not going to hurt her.”

Tomura’s eyes are closed, concentrating. You see Hizashi waving his hand in your peripheral vision, and you glance at him in time to see him mouth two words, then raise a finger to his lips. He’s sorry. He’s saying he’s sorry, and shushing you – and then a rush of cold sweeps over you, obliterating every thought and feeling in its path except one. Pain.

Hizashi lied. You know why he lied. You’ve got no idea how he successfully lied to Tomura, or if he lied at all and Tomura decided that learning to fight was worth hurting you. You decided it was, didn’t you? That’s why you volunteered. That’s why you feel like razor-sharp shards of ice are piercing through every last nerve in your body.

But that’s not the only thing you feel. Your own feelings might be gone, but in their place there’s something else – a vast, yawning emptiness, unfathomably deep and dark. Other emotions waver at its edge, confusion and hurt and fear, and slowly but surely they’re being dragged down into the black hole at the center of it all. Loneliness, or hopelessness. In Tomura’s world, they’re one and the same. That’s what this is, what these are. This is Tomura’s power. This is how he feels.

The cold dissipates suddenly, and you hear Hizashi’s voice addressing Tomura. “I’m guessing that’s all the control you’re capable of exerting. How did that feel?”

Tomura’s voice sounds strange. “You’re sure it doesn’t hurt her?”

“Definitely,” Hizashi says. You blink hard, trying to clear your vision. “Ask her. Go ahead.”

Hizashi’s at least a little bit of a sadist. “I’m fine,” you say before Tomura can ask. “Just a little cold.”

“Let’s go again,” Hizashi says, and you revise your assessment from “a little bit of a sadist” to “fully sadistic”. “One time’s a fluke. Let’s see if you can replicate it.”

It’s worse this time, because you know what’s coming. The pain is bad enough, but you’re afraid of seeing what you saw before – that glimpse into Tomura’s feelings rattled your mind more than you want to admit. You keep your eyes open this time, and instead of feeling, you see. You’re not seeing your world through Tomura’s eyes. You’re seeing through Tomura’s eyes, back into the world he came from. The world between.

You can’t grasp it, not all the way. Trying feels like it’s twisting your mind apart. There’s no light, no direction, no up or down or left or right; no landmarks to work from, no wind to push in one direction or the other – but you can feel at the same time that there are features, structures, humming cities that you can perceive but not see. The world between is empty and boiling with life at once, a different kind of life than you can grasp, a different kind than you can understand. If you wanted to understand it. You don’t. All you want is for it to stop.

“Ease off,” you hear Hizashi say, and the world between disappears from your sight. Tomura’s all that’s in your field of vision now. “Was it easier this time?”

Tomura nods, but he’s looking at you. “We can stop now. I know how to do it.”

“One more time,” Hizashi says. He’s getting off on this. He has to be. “Prove to me that you’ve got it.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Tomura’s grip on your hand tightens, and it happens again.

You shut your eyes this time. As much as you don’t want to see into Tomura’s head, you’d rather look at anything but the world between. This time, when you’re pulled to the edge of the void, you see that it’s not quite as empty as you first thought. There’s a light flickering somewhere down in the darkness. No, two lights. Two tiny lights, small enough to mean almost nothing. But when the other feelings fall into the void, it’s the lights that swallow them. And the lights grow brighter with every scrap of confusion or fear they consume.

You focus on the lights with all your strength, clenching your jaw against the agonized howl that wants to escape. It’s not much protection from the cold and pain, but it’s enough. Enough that when it fades and you open your eyes again, you can tell Tomura that it doesn’t hurt and make him believe you.

Hizashi, pleased with Tomura’s success, heads across the street to teach Dabi the same lesson. He brings you with him. Ostensibly your job is to convince Keigo to let Dabi practice on him, just like Tomura practiced on you, but you’re pretty sure Hizashi has an ulterior motive, and once you’re over Keigo’s property line, he proves you right. “Personally. I don’t give a damn whether Dabi learns this or not. You can’t go back over there until I’m sure you won’t give the game away.”

“So he didn’t know,” you say. “You lied to him.”

“So did you,” Hizashi points out. “I’m glad someone around here can see the big picture.”

You see the big picture, all right. Hizashi pretends his big picture is protecting the neighborhood, but in reality, he’s just like Tomura – except there are three people he really cares about instead of just one. He’ll do what he has to do to keep them safe, and keep himself safe in the bargain. Keigo may not have heard the story about what happens if a ghost kills their own conjurer, but Aizawa and Hizashi have, and Hizashi wants to make sure the duty of killing Garaki falls to anybody but him. If convincing Tomura to torture you and convincing you to keep quiet about it is what it takes for that to happen, Hizashi will do it.

You don’t realize you’re glaring until Hizashi comments on it. “Don’t look at me like that. You could have said no.”

“And then what? Let you push him into a fight he doesn’t know how to win?” You shake your head. A flash of the world between spins through your vision and you almost throw up. “If I tell him what you did, you’re dead. You know that, right?”

Hizashi doesn’t respond to your threat. “How about I tell you what he and I talked about, hmm? We’ll call it even there.”

You really want to know. Besides, there’s no reason you can’t break your promise to Hizashi later. “Tell me.”

“He’s more aware than you give him credit for,” Hizashi says instead. “Not that much more aware, granted, but enough. Enough to tell that the way you feel about him is a lot different than the way he feels about you.”

Your stomach clenches. “That’s not what I asked.”

“He wanted to know if discharging power into you would let you know what we’ve all known for months,” Hizashi says. “I told him of course not. Human minds can’t comprehend us, we’re too complex, all that jazz. I told him not to worry, because there’s absolutely no way that the human girl could possibly find out how much he feels about her.”

Hizashi scoffs. “He knew I was lying, of course. I asked him why he was so spooked – clearly you’re not opposed to it, or you wouldn’t spend so much time having obnoxiously horny ghost sex with him – and he gets quiet all of a sudden. He’s not very bright, your ghost, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid. You see him as a – what do humans call it? A friend with benefits. He sees you as the only thing in his entire existence that’s ever made him happy. And he thinks that if you find that out, you’ll leave.”

For a moment, your hatred for Hizashi feels strong enough to wipe him off the map. You swallow it with an effort. “So naturally, the first thing you do is tell me the exact thing he didn’t want me to find out.”

“If he embodies himself permanently, we’re fucked,” Hizashi says flatly. “That won’t happen if you leave.”

“You’re fucked? Your conjurer’s dead after tonight. That just leaves his. We don’t even know if his is coming back.”

“You’re not that naïve. You’ve read the same research as I have,” Hizashi says. “His conjurer’s coming back one of these days. He might be planning to punish Tomura, but he’ll take the rest of us down, too. If we don’t have a ghost to stop him.”

“You think Tomura will keep protecting the neighborhood if I’m gone?”

“We don’t need him to actively protect the neighborhood. He does it just by being here and being a ghost,” Hizashi says. “How he feels about it is irrelevant.”

You fight to keep your temper in check, trying to match Hizashi’s cold calculations with your own. You replay all your interactions with Hizashi, all the times he’s scared you on purpose, all the times he’s deliberately made you uncomfortable, all the times he’s tried to provoke Tomura into acting like the kind of ghost he’s supposed to be. “You’ve wanted me gone since I moved in,” you say. “This is why, isn’t it?”

Hizashi does you the minor courtesy of not lying to you. “When you lasted longer than three weeks in that house, I saw the writing on the wall. Shou said I was being ridiculous, but I know ghosts like yours. I was a ghost like yours. All the power in the world doesn’t matter if there’s nothing you want enough to use it. And once you do, it’s over.”

He looks at you without a hint of remorse in his face. “My family is on the line here, and I’ll do anything to keep them safe. You wouldn’t understand what that means.”

Your stomach lurches. “Shut up.”

“I did some research of my own. Your backstory’s not tragic, it’s just pathetic. Mommy and Daddy didn’t love you enough, and nobody else liked you all that much, so you move in here and act like you belong.” Hizashi laughs, cold and cruel, and you feel your eyes well up. “If you think anyone here will miss you, you’re wrong. We were all happier when that house was empty.”

Some part of you knows Hizashi is lying. Most of you knows it, because if you were in his spot, you’d probably do the same thing – pinpoint the problem and do whatever you had to in order to get rid of it. Most of you knows that somewhere underneath this cruelty, Hizashi’s scared shitless. His conjurer’s gunning for him, he’s lost most of his powers, and his family’s in the line of fire. Knowing all that doesn’t change how it feels to hear him target every last one of your deepest insecurities, every agonizing thought you’ve ever tried to push aside. You’re one wrong move away from bursting into tears on Keigo’s front lawn.

You hold it together. It takes everything you have, but you do. “Did it feel good to get that off your chest?”

“It’s not personal,” Hizashi says, which puts the final nail in the question of whether ghosts are capable of lying. “I’d say good luck out there, but you survived here long enough. You won’t need it.”

Someone calls out to you from across the street, and you look over to find Aizawa on your porch. “We need some plants kept in reserve, in case the ghosts burn through more power than expected. Are there any nurseries you haven’t checked?”

“A few,” you say. Aizawa’s eyesight isn’t great. There’s no way he’ll be able to see the look on your face. “I’ll go right now.”

“We’ll Venmo you,” Hizashi says, patting your shoulder. If you thought you could get away with it, you’d break his hand. “I’ve been doing lots of gardening these days. I know plants aren’t cheap.”

“Thanks.” You force the words out around a smile, hop Keigo’s property line, and head for your car at high speed.

You make it out of the neighborhood. Quite a ways out of the neighborhood. You make it at least halfway to the next nursery on your list before you start crying too hard to drive. You pull over, put your hazard lights on, and double over with your head against the steering wheel. Your head hurts and you’re freezing cold and your stomach turns every time you think about what you saw in Tomura’s head – and worse every time Hizashi’s words sink into your chest. You’ve never felt this sick in your life. You want to die.

Your phone is ringing. You don’t care who it is, but whoever it is keeps calling, and when you pick it up to silence it, you see that it’s Aizawa. You text him, trying not to sound like you’re a) crying yourself to death and b) plotting the murder of his husband. I’m busy.

Tomura wants to talk to you. The phone rings again. This time you pick up. “Hi.”

“What did he do?” Tomura’s voice is full of cold rage, and your heart sinks. “I saw your face and I felt what he’s feeling, so I want to know what he did. That way he’ll know why I’m killing his human when I do it.”

“No,” you say. Your voice sounds awful – not calm and collected like you want to be, but sick and miserable and lonely. Like you got your feelings hurt exactly as much as Tomura thinks you did, which isn’t great when you’re trying to convince Tomura that it’s fine. “Tomura, don’t. Please. It’s not worth it.”

“He wants you to leave me. He made you leave.” Tomura sounds like he’s pacing. You try to pinpoint where he is in the house, but can’t. “I can take away his human, too.”

“Please don’t,” you say again. You just wanted to cry yourself out in peace. Why couldn’t you just do that? You grit your teeth and make a threat you never wanted to make again. “If you hurt Aizawa or the children to punish Hizashi, I am never coming back to that house.”

“He made you leave –”

“He can’t make me do anything.” Your voice wavers when you think about what Hizashi said, but you repeat yourself anyway. “If you hurt Aizawa or the children, I’m never coming home.”

It’s quiet for a moment. “Why do you care so much about them?” Tomura asks. It occurs to you that Tomura’s got Aizawa’s phone, that Aizawa’s probably sitting there listening to you try to talk Tomura out of killing him. “Why don’t you want to pay him back?”

“Because it’s not their fault,” you say. You’re pretty sure Aizawa wasn’t in on Hizashi’s little torture session, and you know for sure the kids weren’t. “They’re good people, Tomura. They’ve been kind to me, and even if they weren’t, they don’t deserve to die because Hizashi mouthed off.”

“He made you cry,” Tomura says. It’s quiet for a second. “I didn’t know you did that.”

You always cry in the shower when you cry at home. You’ve been doing that since you were little, and the memory of Hizashi’s taunt – Mommy and Daddy didn’t love you enough – blasts apart what little composure you’ve gained. You press your hand against your mouth, trying to stifle your tears. Tomura snarls, and you force yourself to speak. “Please don’t do what you’re thinking of doing. It won’t fix anything. It will make me feel worse if you do.”

“Fine.” Tomura’s voice is still icy. You wish you could drive home, drag him into the passenger seat, and drive around until he’s calmed down. You’re scared of what will happen when you hang up, and worse when you hear his voice, speaking to Aizawa. “You’re only alive because that’s what my human wants.”

“Understood.” Aizawa’s voice is steady, and when he speaks again, it’s clear that the phone’s back in his possession. “Go get the plants and come back. Everything here is fine.”

“Um –” You cough into your elbow, make some kind of godawful snuffling sound into your sleeve. “I’m sorry. About Tomura. That’s not okay. He shouldn’t –”

“You have as much control over Tomura’s behavior as I do over Hizashi’s.” Aizawa’s voice takes on a dangerous note, and for a split second you actually feel bad for Hizashi. “Get the plants and come back, quickly. The children’s bus is here, and it’ll be dark soon.”

You cough a few more times. “Right. I’ll hurry,” you say. Something occurs to you. “If he starts acting scary, get out of there. I’ll deal with it when I get back.”

“I’m past the property line. My husband and I need to have a conversation.”

Whatever conversation the two of them are about to have, you don’t want to be anywhere near it. You hang up the phone, blink a few times to clear your vision, and switch your hazard lights off before pulling back onto the road.

You do your best to calm down before you get to the nursery, but you know you look like you’ve been crying your eyes out anyway. There’s nothing you can do about that right now. You browse through the nursery, searching for plants you know are invasive, choosing the largest and healthiest ones, trying to focus on the task at hand. But Hizashi’s words hit home, as much as you didn’t want them to. Even thinking about hitting him with a shovel doesn’t make you feel much better, and the longer you dwell on it, the worse it gets, until you’re sniffling and wiping your eyes again in the middle of the tropical plants aisle.

“Are you all right?”

It’s a man’s voice. You’ve always been a little wary of men who approach crying women in public. “I’m fine,” you say blindly. “Um. Everything’s fine. I just –”

“Here.” The man, whoever he is, pushes a handkerchief into your field of vision, and you seize it, just to avoid wiping your eyes and nose on your sleeve. “You can keep that. I have plenty.”

“Thank you,” you say, and mean it. And then you feel like you’ve got to explain yourself. “I really am fine. I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

“That makes everything more difficult,” the man agrees. You peer up at him and discover that he’s around the same age as Mr. Yagi. The same height, too. “I doubt that’s all it is, though. Whoever made you so upset ought to feel ashamed of himself.”

You have a few problems with that statement, mainly with the assumption that you’re upset over a man, even if it’s true. But this man is being kind to you. You’re not immune to kindness. “That’s quite a lot of plants you’ve got there,” the man continues. “Are you a gardener?”

“I’ve got a garden. I don’t know if I can call myself a gardener,” you say. “What about you?”

“Oh, it’s been many years since I was settled enough to have a garden,” the man says, and laughs. “But I’ve planted many trees. It’s always interesting to check back and see what they’ve grown into. Some of them are magnificent. Others need a little – assistance.”

“I’ll remember that if I ever get into planting trees.” You wipe your eyes again, then glance down at the mess you’ve made of the handkerchief. “I really am sorry about this.”

“It’s no trouble. And it’s yours. If we should ever cross paths again, you can return it to me then.” The man inclines his head, then starts off down the aisle, heading for the saplings at the far end. You add one more plant to your wagon and make your way to the cash register.

You feel better after meeting the man. If a stranger thinks you’re worth being kind to, then it’s easier to believe in the kindness of your neighbors, who actually know you. By the time you reach the neighborhood again, the puffiness around your eyes has mostly gone down, and you feel ready to confront Hizashi. You’re not sure what you want to say when you confront him. “Fuck off” feels appropriate, but some part of you also wants to remind him that Tomura’s more than able and more than willing to return whatever insult Hizashi levels at you towards his own family.  But that’s shitty. You know it’s shitty. You’ll be better off telling Hizashi the truth: This is your neighborhood, too. And you’re not leaving.

When you get back, though, you realize there’s no need to confront Hizashi at all. Aizawa’s already doing it, or something similar. They’re both on Keigo’s lawn, standing a few feet apart, voices too quiet to hear from your side of the street. Hizashi looks mulish, defensive, sulky – just like Tomura looks sometimes, when he’s accepted that you get to be mad about something but still thinks it’s stupid. If Aizawa looked at you with the same expression he’s aiming at Hizashi, you’d run for your life.

“Hey,” someone hisses as you get out of your car. You look up and find Shinsou staring at you from the other side. He looks alarmed. “What the hell happened? My dads are fighting. I’ve never seen them fight. Dabi’s been texting me updates and he says they’re fighting about you!”

Dabi’s an asshole, and also a liar. You have a feeling that Aizawa’s upset less because of what Hizashi said and more because of Tomura’s reaction to it. But Aizawa’s clearly not worried enough about Tomura’s reaction to keep his kids away from the shelter provided by the house. Shinsou came down to talk to you from the porch. Eri’s still up there, on the swing, and she’s playing a game with somebody. At first you think it’s Nemuri. Then you see Nemuri up the street, talking to Magne, and you realize that Eri’s playing a game with Tomura.

You need to check on that. You need to check on that immediately. You skid around Shinsou and book it up the steps, only to find Eri sitting in the swing and Tomura sitting on the ground, a collection of facedown cards spread out between them. You recognize the cards. In fact, you’re pretty sure this game came from inside your house. It was one of the few things you managed to rescue when your parents downsized while you were in college. “Uh, is that the Rainbow Fish matching game?”

“It’s so pretty,” Eri says, smiling up at you. “Toshi won’t play with me but Tomura said he would.”

Tomura looks sort of like he’s regretting it. “How come it’s still your turn?”

“If you make a match, you get to try again. And you keep trying until you don’t get one.” You study Eri’s pileup of cards. She’s really good at this. “So it’ll be your turn when Eri misses one.”

In talking to you, Eri lost focus. She misses her next match, and Tomura promptly racks up eight matches in a row. You cringe, wishing he’d let Eri win like adults are supposed to do with kids, but Eri’s more pleased with the result than he is. “I knew you’d be good at this,” she crows. “You got the shells and the rainbow fish –”

“That’s not hard. There are ten of them.” Tomura looks sort of pleased with himself, and you wonder at how quickly he’s calmed down. Maybe it wasn’t actually that quick – you were gone for about an hour – but his control over his temper is shaky at best. You’d have expected to find the entire house vibrating with fury, not to find him sitting quietly and playing a kid’s game with the youngest ghost in the neighborhood, who also happens to be the daughter of the ghost who pissed him off in the first place.

He looks up at you. “Are you going to watch?”

“I have to move the plants.”

“I’ll move the plants. Me and Keigo,” Shinsou says hastily. Keigo pops up next to him, looking like he’s been through a war. You don’t even want to know what it’s like inside Keigo’s house right now. “You stay here.”

Shinsou clearly doesn’t trust Tomura’s unusual calmness any more than you do. You nod in thanks and settle down next to Tomura on the porch, only to hop up again to retrieve Phantom when she whines from inside the house. You hold her in your lap so she won’t run through the cards and scatter them, scratching her ears and watching the game. Eri and Tomura are playing with equal amounts of seriousness, which looks unbelievably funny. The two of them look enough alike with their grey-tinted hair and red eyes that they could almost be siblings. Eri’s pleased whenever Tomura gets a match, and after a few rounds of being congratulated every time he finds two of the same card, Tomura congratulates her on a match in response. It’s not much of a congratulations, but Eri beams at him like he’s just handed her a gold star.

Eri wins by one match, and although you’re worried he won’t, Tomura offers her a grudging congratulations. “Nice game.”

“Do you want to play again?” Eri asks eagerly. “I bet you’ll beat me this time.”

“I’ll play with you, Eri,” Himiko calls from outside the fence. “If Tomura lets me in.”

You think Tomura will say no, but it turns out that Tomura’s so desperate to get away from the Rainbow Fish matching game that he’ll say yes to just about anything. “That game is stupid,” he mutters once you’re both inside and out of earshot. “You actually liked that?”

“When I was a kid.” You were good at memory games, and you liked how pretty the cards were. But you’ve got a bigger problem than what Tomura thinks of a card game you played as a kid. “Why are you so calm? On the phone –”

“I don’t mess with other people’s humans. I’m not like him.” Tomura’s voice takes on that icy note again. He’s glaring out the front window. You wonder if he can hear what they’re arguing about. “You said it would make you feel worse if I hurt them. And last night you said you were scared the first time because you didn’t know what I’d do when I got angry. Me getting angry makes you feel worse. So I stopped.”

“Just like that?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Tomura says, insulted. “The kid said she knows how it feels to want to hurt people who make her human sad, so I asked her what she does to not kill everyone who makes her human sad. She said she has to do something else. So we played that stupid game.”

You’ve been searching for the right word to describe the scene you just watched unfold. “It was cute.”

“I thought I was pretty.”

“You are,” you say. “But that – you playing a game with her – was cute.”

Tomura’s nose wrinkles. “What does that mean?”

“It means –” Now that you think about it, cute is hard to define. “It makes you feel nice to look at. Warm. Happy. People react to babies that way a lot. Or dogs.”

“So that’s what it was,” Tomura says. You look questioningly at him. “The thing that happened when I saw you and Phantom. Cute.”

He’s talking about the day you moved in. You didn’t even know you had something in your house, much less what it was, and you thought Tomura was just as indifferent as you were. But what he just said – that means he wasn’t. And that means this all started a lot earlier than you thought it did. Hizashi’s words drift through your head, not his insults but something worse: He sees you as the only thing in his entire existence that’s ever made him happy.

Fine. If that’s how it’s going to be, you’ll take it. This is the only place in your entire life that’s ever felt like home.

“Hey,” you say, and Tomura looks at you. “Do you have enough energy stored up to stay materialized?”

“Yeah. Why?”

He probably thinks you’re angling for a hookup, but that’s not what you want. You step forward, closing the space between the two of you, and wrap your arms around him. The two of you are close in height. Your forehead is level with his chin, so you turn your head to the side, resting it against his shoulder. The same place he rested his head all of last night, until the sun came up and you set off on your mission to buy every invasive plant within twenty miles of here.

You’re expecting Tomura to complain, and you’re ready to fire back that it’s your turn, but he keeps quiet. His arms wrap around you in return, and the two of you stand there, each of you holding tight to something that could vanish easily from your grip, as the sun sinks and the neighborhood drowns in dusk, then sunset, and finally full dark.

Skin Hunger - 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

Chapter 1

The ringing of one of the dozens of bells on the wall in your boss’s office startles you out of the reverie you’ve fallen into. It isn’t much of a reverie – you were daydreaming about getting out of here, like always – but at the sound of the bell, you snap to attention. You know what a ringing bell means, even before your boss looks up at you from behind his desk and gives the order. “Suite Twelve needs a mop-up. Get to it.”

You check the floor plan out of habit, and your heart sinks. “Suite Twelve is still in use.”

“And? Clearly they aren’t ready to let the party end, and they’re paying by the hour.” Overhaul shrugs. “It’s not your concern. All you need to be concerned with is not interrupting, and we both know you’re capable of that.”

You bow your head. “Yes, sir.” The warlock looks away, back down to the grimoire he’s studying, and you risk another question. “Who was in there tonight?”

“That’s Chrono’s concern, not mine,” Overhaul says. “Why don’t you go find out?”

You know a dismissal when you hear it. “Yes, sir,” you say again, and you step out of Overhaul’s office, your glamour already settling over you.

A glamour is small magic, and as the lesser variety of half-fey, it’s all you’re capable of – but it’s enough to make your job easier, and to make you Overhaul’s go-to for dealing with disasters in progress. Other maids are obtrusive, no matter how hard they try not to be, and going into a room with a session in progress means risking their lives in addition to the worker’s. But your faint glamour allows you to slip in and out of the rooms unnoticed, clearing away the messes and the injuries. And the evidence. There’s always a lot of evidence. The patrons of the inhuman world’s most infamous brothel find themselves here for a reason, and it’s not because they’re careful.

You learned one side of the story in school in the human world, when you could pass as human, but Overhaul insisted that you learn the rest. You could recite it by heart by now. Humans have always outnumbered inhumans, but for thousands of years, the power held by inhumans – magic, physical strength, other natural gifts – was enough to allow them to act as they wished, without fear of retaliation. When human society advanced, that changed. The inhumans who could do so retreated to their own realms, but some inhumans are too intertwined with humanity to withdraw completely. Something had to be done to prevent their extinction.

The way Overhaul tells it, it was all his idea, two hundred years ago – creating a place for inhumans to satisfy their urges, contained away from humanity and outside of humanity’s control. You’re not sure if it was really his idea, but either way, it stuck. There are places like this one all across the world, in netherworlds and pocket dimensions, places where inhumans come to play or fight or fuck or feed. For some inhumans, in some cases, it’s all four.

Suite Twelve is on the fifth floor, and tonight it contains one of at least nine packs of werewolves. When you stop outside the door, you can hear them even through the soundproofing – human-sounding laughter and inhuman howls and the kind of noises that emanate from the rooms and suites every night of the year. It sounds like nothing you want anything to do with, but it’s the job. You raise your wrist, tapping your master rune against the locking rune on the door. It disables instantly, and you slip through the door without a sound.

You see instantly why one of the guests rang the bell for a clean-up. There’s a body on the floor – the body of one of the workers, a man you recognize only vaguely. He must be new. Then again, most of the workers aren’t here long enough for you to get to know them. You slip around the edges of the room, trusting your glamour, until you’re alongside the body. Legs askew, torso flayed open to the air, eyes wide and staring – sometimes the workers who die on the job have the luxury of an unexpected death, but this man saw it coming from kilometers away. Did he try to stop it? You lift one of his hands idly, checking for defensive wounds, and get one hell of a scare when his hand twitches in yours.

He’s alive. The worker is still alive, and your priorities shift in a heartbeat. This isn’t a corpse you can tip down the disposal trapdoor before you mop up the blood. Overhaul can heal any injury, even injuries as bad as this, which means you need to get the worker out of here and down to Overhaul’s study as soon as possible. But your glamour only covers you, and if the werewolves who mauled this guy half to death realize they didn’t finish the job, you’ll be in trouble, too. And there isn’t much time to solve the problem. If you wait too much longer, the worker will die right before your eyes.

If you had real magic, you’d apply your glamour to your voice and lull the werewolves into calmness, rendering them insensate to any noise the dying man might make as you drag him to the door, but you don’t have real magic. Charming seven werewolves is outside your abilities. Charming one dying man into staying still and quiet is within them. You whisper the instruction in his ear – stay quiet, stay still – and hook your hands under his armpits, dragging him across the floor and leaving a smear of blood in his wake.

There’s no way a party this large only had one worker with them. You force yourself to take a good look at the occupants of Suite Twelve, and in amongst the hulking, heavily-furred bodies of the werewolves, you spot human limbs, human skin. Strands of human hair woven through a wolf’s claws as it cups the back of the worker’s head. Human hands gripping one wolf’s shoulders, human legs hooked gingerly around its waist. At least three additional workers, and none of them are bleeding excessively. The part of you that’s human doesn’t like it, but the rest of you leaves without another look.

In the hallway, you call for help. Each floor of Asylum has a bouncer, hired specifically by Overhaul to deal with that floor’s usual patrons. “Rappa,” you call out. “Over here!”

Rappa’s footsteps are heavy as he comes down the hall towards you. “A fight?”

“Sorry,” you say. Even behind Rappa’s mask, you can tell he’s frowning. You’ve heard that when Overhaul hired him, he promised him a lot of fights to break up, but most of Asylum’s patrons are too frightened of the prospect of getting banned to fight much. “I’m supposed to mop up and the guy’s still alive. Can you take him to Overhaul?”

Rappa tilts his head, confused. “The boss can fix this?”

“If he gets to him in time.” You try to hold Rappa’s attention. It’s not easy. “I can’t get him there fast enough. You’re the only one who can save him.”

“He’s human. Why do you care?”

Your jaw clenches involuntarily, and you feel your glamour ripple. “I’m half-human,” you say. “So are you.”

Overhaul and his right-hand man are both pure human, extending their lives and augmenting their bodies with magic, but almost everyone else in Asylum’s management structure is a half-breed of some kind. Rappa is half-giant, and unlike you, he’s unambiguously proud of his inhuman heritage. Appealing to what he considers as the weak side of himself was a stupid move, but you’re getting desperate, and you try again. “If you help him, I’ll make sure you get the next fight, even if somebody else is in charge of the floor.”

You should have started with that. Rappa’s eyes light up. “Deal,” he says, and hoists the injured worker up, ignoring your requests to be careful. “Make sure it’s a good fight.”

You’ll get Rappa a fight to break up if you have to start one yourself, but you probably won’t have to. “It’s a full moon. All the fights are good.”

Rappa laughs and thunders off down the hall, leaving you to your actual job. You still have a mop-up in Suite Twelve, and possibly a worse one than you left, depending on what’s happened between your exit and right now. You call up your glamour again, confirming that it’s still intact, and tap the locking rune on the door to deactivate it once again. You might have saved somebody’s life, maybe, but that’s not your job here. Your real job is cleaning blood and bodily fluids off of every surface in Suite Twelve before they have time to set in. As the proprietor of the world’s oldest and most infamous inhuman oasis, your boss can tolerate a lot of things – but a mess isn’t one of them.

Most of the people who serve guests or work menial jobs in the oases are here as a last resort, and you’re no different. If you had somewhere else to be, you’d be there. You suppose you could have looked for work in another oasis, but when it comes down to it, you prefer the devil you know to the devil you don’t. You were born inside Asylum’s walls, the daughter of a worker and a faery guest, and although your mother scraped together the money to send you to boarding school in the human world, you’ve never had anywhere but Asylum to come back to. You coming back was a foregone conclusion. You could pass for human in childhood and adolescence, but in the last year or so, the truth’s begun to crawl its way out from beneath your skin. Asylum is your home. You can’t leave. And if you’re here, you might as well work.

No night in Asylum is easy, but full-moon nights are the worst, and the mop-up you’re called to do in Suite Twelve isn’t even close to the last task you’re called in to take care of. A patrilineal half-fey like you has next to no magical ability, but in Overhaul’s employ, you make use of all of it – glamour on your body to conceal you as you sneak in and out of the rooms and suites and hot springs, glamour on your voice to soothe tense guests until a bouncer or a member of Management can arrive to make amends more officially, spilling a drop or two of your own blood to distract an overwrought lich long enough to pry the worker it’s draining out of its grip. You get Rappa the fight he’s after – a brawl between two rival werewolf packs over a worker they both took a shine to – and as you’re helping clean up the mess, he gives you some news.

“Overhaul patched up the human you rescued,” he says, and for a brief moment, you feel better. “He’s already back to work.”

Feeling good doesn’t last. Good things don’t last in Asylum. You take a brief moment to wash your hands in the water of a hot-spring, then wander off to Room 309 on the demon floor. There’s been an orgy going on since the full moon broke the horizon in the farthest-eastern human time zone, and demon cum stains something awful.

You’ve heard from guests who’ve visited other oases that those oases have off-hours, but Asylum doesn’t. Asylum serves creatures of the night, so as long as it’s daylight somewhere on earth, Asylum will be open to receive them. When you asked Overhaul why, he pointed you towards the dictionary definition of the word ‘asylum’ – a place of refuge, a safe harbor. Then another book levitated off the shelf and dropped at your feet, shedding dust. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

You remember looking at it, confused. “Sir?”

“The other definition of the word,” Overhaul said. “They’re all mad here.”

It was a misquote, and you think the original is more accurate. We’re all mad here – Overhaul for building this place, the guests for coming to it, and you, for staying here instead of going somewhere, anywhere else.

The demon mop-up takes forever. By the time it’s done, you smell like smoke and sulfur, and there are still six hours left in the night. Chrono sends you to change into a clean uniform, then corrals you as you’re coming out of the servants’ quarters with wet hair. “Change of plans. You’re needed in the lounge.”

“What?” You know how to tend bar, sure – but not on a full moon night. “Why?”

Chrono doesn’t answer you, and you should know better than to ask questions. “Man the bar for the rest of the shift. You’ll receive instructions from Overhaul or myself if you’re needed elsewhere.”

You nod and set off, but Chrono grabs your arm again. “Change out of that uniform first. You’re front of house for now. Dress like it.”

The front of house uniform isn’t all that different than the uniform you wear on a nightly basis – just tighter and more modern, and with a mask of some kind over it. The higher-up somebody is in Overhaul’s organization, the more elaborate their mask is, but front-of-house wears simple half-masks, enough to match the aesthetic but not enough to obscure the face. You grab a simple black one on your way out of the servants’ quarters, tying it behind your head with a ribbon as you step into the lounge.

It’s empty, as usual. You’re not even sure why Overhaul keeps it open – most of Asylum’s guests don’t come here to drink, and the ones who do can order it brought to their rooms directly – but it’s been here as long as Asylum’s been standing, and just like the rest of Asylum, it’s never closed. Whoever was in charge before Chrono called you in left sort of a mess. Eight or nine dirty tankards, a sticky spill on one corner of the bar counter, and a solitary pickle balanced on top of an empty bottle of vodka. Given what you’ve been cleaning up all night, it could be a lot worse.

The cleaning goes quickly, and then you move on, filling out the restock sheet Chrono’s left for you underneath the ledger where you’d write guests’ orders, if there were any orders. An hour in, Room 512 calls for drinks – one Corpse Reviver, one Zombie, and three El Diablos – and you’re still working on them when the server arrives to bring them up. “Hey, make it snappy, huh? They’re not in a mood to wait.”

“I’m working on it.” You set down the El Diablos and start pouring shots of rum for the Zombie. “Is whoever’s in 512 actually undead, or do they just have a weird sense of humor?”

“Door number two. It’s one of those laughing demons.” Setsuno’s been working here at least as long as you have, but he looks unsettled behind his mask. “You know, the kind who want a performance.”

“I’m guessing the workers ordered the drinks, then?” You wait for Setsuno to confirm it. “Do you know which is the guest’s?”

“The Corpse Reviver,” Setsuno says. You strain the Zombie one-handed and go fishing for the components for the last drink. “Why?” “Are the workers holding up okay?” you ask. Setsuno looks blankly at you. “Did they seem scared or panicked at all?”

“Oh. Yeah. The youngest one looked pretty spooked.” Setsuno holds out his hand and the first four drinks fly from your end of the bar to settle onto his tray. “Are you going to be done with that last one any time this century?”

“Almost.” You’re trying to decide which of the components of the drink will be easiest to hide a glamour on. The gin? The Cointreau? The Lillet blanc? They’re all strong flavors, but demons aren’t easy to trick. It needs to look like a mistake, so that if you’re caught, it’ll reflect on you and not the workers. “Just a second –”

“Hey,” Setsuno protests, as you pluck a maraschino cherry out of a jar by the stem and wrap a glamour around it. “Does the boss know you’re putting spells on the guests?”

“They’re not spells.” Overhaul knows. In fact, he encourages it – your weak glamours, applied here and there, put the brakes on problems that would otherwise require management’s intervention before they can begin.  You drop the cherry in the glass and hold it out to Setsuno. “Here. Let me know if they need anything else.”

“Will do.” Setsuno glances around the lounge and sighs. “Man, I wish I had this gig. It’s a nice spot for a break.”

“You’re telling me. I used to nap here when I was little.”

Setsuno stares at you. “What?”

You shouldn’t have said that. You cringe, and Setsuno takes a step closer – but then another order unfolds itself on the bar counter, and you turn away, thankful for the distraction. When you look up again, there’s a different server waiting, and you breathe a sigh of relief. It’s not that you’re ashamed of growing up here. You just don’t want to spread it around.

Overhaul has strict rules about birth control amongst Asylum’s female workers, but with so much magic in play, things happen sometimes. Usually it results in an abortion – the workers, most of whom are human, want nothing to do with a half-human child – but every so often, a worker decides to keep the baby. The consequences of that depend on the inhuman parent. Werewolves, for instance, treat children they’ve sired with a worker the same as they’d treat children they sire with their mate, and no parent wants their child growing up in Asylum. Workers who get knocked up by werewolves usually leave, becoming part of the pack’s orbit as they raise their children. Workers who get knocked up by demons, on the other hand, typically go into hiding. Demons like their children. A little too much.

Faeries aren’t common guests at Asylum, which means your mother knew who your father was, even though she never told you. Overhaul knows, too, but you’ve never asked him. It doesn’t matter. Faeries as a rule look down on half-fey, and if you ever tried to visit a faery realm, you’d be thrown out at best and enslaved at worst. Only some inhumans are capable of siring or bearing children, and of those species, faeries are among the most disinterested. The only inhumans who take less interest in their half-human offspring are the inhumans least likely to come to Asylum.

You’ve just sent off yet another order of drinks, this time to a siren in Room 129 who really wants his worker to loosen up, and you’re in the middle of adding an instruction to the restock sheet when someone barks a question at you from the other side of the counter. “Does this place have WiFi?”

Guests have been asking you questions since you were old enough to talk, but in the twenty-three years you’ve lived in Asylum, you’ve never heard anybody ask that. You look up from the restock sheet and find the guest in question staring back at you. “What?”

“WiFi. Do you have it?” The guest brandishes a smartphone at you. A really nice smartphone, in a pale hand with dry skin and ragged nails. “Do you even know what WiFi is?”

“I know what it is. We don’t have it,” you say, and the guest swears. “If I were you, I wouldn’t try to use your phone in here at all. The flux field will fry your battery if you don’t turn it off.”

The guest’s eyes narrow slightly. The skin around them is dry and itchy-looking, and his irises themselves are red. He powers off his phone and glances around the lounge, eyes lingering on the light fixtures, on the faucet, on the scrying mirrors that act as a security system and the locking runes on the doors. “Nothing in here is electric,” he says. “It can’t be, if the flux field’s strong enough to fuck up my phone.”

You nod. “You should tell people that when they come in,” the guest says. He looks at his powered-off phone, grimacing. “This was new.”

“If you haven’t been in here long and you haven’t been using it, it should be fine,” you say. The guest doesn’t answer, just tucks his phone into his pocket and crosses his arms over his chest, and the silence goes from neutral to awkward in roughly seven seconds.

It’s the kind of situation you’d bail out of instantly anywhere else – you spend enough time being uncomfortable at your job that you’ve got no patience for discomfort in other situations. But you are at your job, which means you have a built-in conversation topic. “Can I get you a drink?”

“What?”

“A drink.” You gesture at the bar, and the guest’s eyes track your hand. “We have everything.”

“You don’t,” the guest says, and then orders champagne. You’re pretty sure every bar on the planet has champagne. “How do you know I can pay for it?”

“They opened up a tab on you when you came through the door.” You find a bottle of champagne and the correct glass – Chrono saw you pour it into a wine glass once and gave you hell – and pour. “And they gave you a passkey. Show it to me?”

He has it looped around his wrist. You copy the symbol into the ledger and write down the order and the price. The guest is leaning across the bar to watch you, getting much closer than you’d like, and he makes a surprised sound when the order you’ve written melts from the page. “Magic,” he says, and you nod. You’re not sure why he’s so surprised. Then: “You’re charging that much for a glass of champagne? This had better be the best champagne in the world.”

“You tell me.” You slide the glass across the bar and watch as he raises it to his lips.

He’s got to be some kind of inhuman, or part-inhuman – no human makes it through the door as a guest, unless they’re packing some heavy magic. You’d say he was a magic-user of some kind, a warlock or an occultist, except he was too surprised by the flux field and resultant lack of WiFi to be someone who works with magic regularly. Half-demon, maybe. He has blue-grey hair to go with his red eyes, worn long enough to brush his shoulders and slightly too tousled to have done it purposely. His clothes are formal – white shirt, black vest, black pants, black tie. The look should come with a suit jacket, but it doesn’t. Guests don’t exactly show up to Asylum in their pajamas, but it’s rare to see one come in dressed to the nines.

The guest finishes half the glass of champagne and sets it down on the bar. He glances at you and you raise your eyebrows. “Well?”

“Pretty good,” the guest says. “Still not worth what you’re charging.”

“It’s an import,” you say. Technically, everything’s an import when it’s coming to a pocket dimension. “And it was good enough for you to drink half of it.”

“Not much else to do.” The guest takes out his phone, scowls when he realizes it’s powered off, then sits down at a barstool. “What’s with the mask?”

“It’s part of the uniform,” you say. Your usual uniform is a hideous old-time maid outfit, but the front-of-house uniform is sleeker, and the mask is just the icing on the cake. You like how you look in this much more than you do in the other uniform, but that lasts only as long as it takes you to remember that guests like you in it, too. “Everybody has one.”

“Why? It’s not like it hides your face.”

“I don’t know. The aesthetic, maybe?” You have your own pet theory – something about Overhaul being older than you think, and picking up his germophobia during the Black Death – but you don’t know for sure. “It’s the boss’s thing.”

“Yeah, no kidding. He looks like a fucking toucan.”

You almost choke on thin air, and while you’re struggling not to laugh, the guest keeps talking. “I was supposed to stay with my master – to learn – but he kicked me out. What am I supposed to do around here?”

“Find a room and watch,” you say. It’s the guest’s turn to choke. Unfortunately for him, he just took a sip of champagne. “You can tell which ones are okay with it. Look for a green rune above the door.”

That’s all some guests come here to do – you can’t count the number of times you’ve seen a demon drop the entry fee without blinking and spend the entire time indulging their voyeuristic dreams. “I didn’t come here to watch strangers fuck,” the guest says, coughing. He picks up the champagne and downs the rest of it, then shoves the glass back towards you. “I came here to learn.”

You pour another glass one-handed and mark it in the ledger with the other. “Learn about what?”

The guest doesn’t answer, and when you slide the glass across the bar to him, he seizes your wrist. You jerk back, and his grip tightens, but he doesn’t pull you forward – just holds you in place, the fingers of his other hand pressing down over your pulse. “Not a lich,” he says. You plant your feet and yank your hand back again. This time you pull free. “Too strong to be a human. If you were a wolf you’d be howling at the moon right now. What are you?”

“What are you?” you retort. “You first.”

“Guess.”

You don’t have time to guess. Two more orders alight on the edge of the bar, and you get to work, mixing two Mai Tais for one and pouring eight blowjob shots for the other. “I’ll guess for you,” the guest says. “Half-demon.”

“Nope.” You glance at him while you shake the can of whipped cream. “Half-demon.”

“Try again,” the guest says. He takes a sip of his second champagne. “Mer?”

“Do I look like a mermaid to you?” You’re not even going to guess that for him. Half-demon was your best guess. Half-giant is out – he’s not tall enough, and no giant, half or otherwise, would ever call someone else ‘master’. You fall back on a guess you ruled out earlier. He could be a magic-user who’s just really bad at it. “Warlock?”

“Not a chance,” the guest says. “Shapeshifter?”

“If I was, I wouldn’t tell you,” you say, and he snorts. “You’re not a shapeshifter, are you?”

“I wouldn’t tell you, either.” The guest takes another sip of his champagne and props his chin in his hand to study you as you set the blowjob shots down at the end of the bar for the server to pick up. “I’ll give you one more guess. If you don’t get it by then –”

“You’ll what?” You see a smirk cross the guest’s face, his lips pulling back from his teeth, and then you see it. The word flies from your mouth before you can stop it and turns you into one enormous, cringeworthy cliché. “Vampire.”

“Half-vampire,” the guest corrects. His smirk grows. “I can’t believe you didn’t guess. That one was easy.”

You don’t meet a lot of vampires, and there’s a good reason for that. Vampires are bad for a business like Overhaul’s. You’ve heard there are oases that cater specifically to vampires, and you’ve heard that some vampires still like to hunt in the wild, and regardless of what you’ve heard or haven’t heard, you know you’ve seen exactly two vampires in your entire life. Both came uninvited. Both left quickly. And neither of them were turned loose to wander Asylum unsupervised.

Overhaul and Chrono must know there are vampires here. If you needed to know they’d have warned you, and if it comes to a fight between you and a skinny half-vampire who’s had two glasses of champagne, they must like your chances. Still – “A half-vampire,” you repeat, loud enough that the server who’s come to retrieve the Mai Tais can’t fail to hear. “What brings you and your master here?”

“Same thing that brings everybody else who comes here.” The half-vampire finishes his champagne, and before he can ask, you fill it again. “You know. Needs.”

If this half-vampire and his master are here to get their needs met, why is he down here with you while his master talks to Overhaul? Did Overhaul know they were coming? The half-vampire is watching you over the rim of his glass. “You meet weirder needs here. Don’t make that face.”

“I’m just wondering – why here?” you ask. “I know there are vampire-specific oases –”

“Those? They’re just blood banks.” The half-vampire shakes his head. “My master has better taste than that.”

You don’t like the word ‘taste’ in the context of drinking other people’s blood, and your mask isn’t anywhere near enough to conceal your grimace. The half-vampire isn’t paying attention. He’s drinking champagne, talking between swallows. “This place isn’t our first choice,” he says. “Our old arrangement fell through last month.”

“What happened?”

“Why do you care?”

“I want to know,” you say. You do. You don’t meet many vampires, let alone half-vampires who like champagne and are in a chatty mood. “What happened to make us the better offer?”

“The guy who runs the old place grew a conscience.” The half-vampire rolls his eyes. “Apparently it’s more honorable to hunt down screaming humans in the wild than it is to buy one who signed up for it.”

You wish you could say you were horrified to hear that people sell themselves to vampires, but the workers at Asylum sell themselves to all kinds of inhumans. The only difference is that the outcome of an encounter with a vampire can only be death. “So he stopped selling to your master?”

“Yeah. Something about upsetting the natural way of things.” The half-vampire finishes his third glass. You don’t refill it until he nudges it towards you, at which point you fill it to the brim. “My master can’t hunt like he used to. Not for the kind of humans he wants, but he can pay whatever it takes to get them. How much of a conscience would you say your boss has?”

You don’t even have to think about it. “Absolutely none.”

“Then I guess we’ll be seeing each other again,” the half-vampire says. “My master has an appetite. Shigaraki Tomura.”

“What?”

“Shigaraki Tomura. That’s my name.” The half-vampire – Shigaraki Tomura – takes another sip of champagne. “What’s yours?”

“You still haven’t guessed what I am yet.”

“I gave you a big hint. You owe me a hint, too.” Shigaraki looks interested. He’s leaning forward on his elbows, studying you. You wonder if he can tell that he’s making you uncomfortable, and if he can tell, if he cares – or if it’s something he wants to do. “A hint, or your name. Your choice.”

If you were anything other than the type of half-human you are, it would be easy. For most people, inhuman or otherwise, names mean nothing, and neither do lies. The rules for half-fey are blurry. You don’t want to find out what they are while dealing with a vampire. Because of that, you fall back into proper customer service. “Our names don’t matter at Asylum, Shigaraki-san. To us, it’s all about the guest.”

“If it’s all about the guest and I’m a guest, you should answer my question,” Shigaraki says. He’s smirking again. “Since you tried to sneak out of it, I get to pick what you tell me. And I want your name.”

“Why?” You can see that the question throws him, so you let it stand, and top off his glass of champagne in the bargain. “It makes sense for me to know your name, Shigaraki-san, but you’d have no use for mine.”

“Says who? I decide what I have a use for.”

“Why?”

Shigaraki takes another sip of champagne. “Why what?”

“Why would you have a use for it?” You sound like you’re bantering, but you want to know. Need to know, more accurately. “Most guests don’t concern themselves with the existence of servants.”

“If that’s true, then you shouldn’t wear these.” Shigaraki taps his own cheek, drawing attention to a scar over his right eye. It takes you a second to realize that he’s referring to your mask. “It makes it look like you’re hiding something. Like what you are. Or your name.”

“I’ll tell you my name,” you say, and you give Shigaraki a few seconds of triumph before you add the condition, “after you tell me why you want it.”

He opens his mouth. “And don’t lie,” you add. “I’ll know if you lie.”

“Witch.”

“No,” you say. You’re surprised he didn’t guess that sooner, but he’s still wrong. “What? You don’t want to know my name anymore?”

“I want it,” Shigaraki says. He picks up his champagne and drains the glass in one swallow. You refill it partway before he stops you. “I don’t see why I should have to tell you. I’m the guest. If it’s about what I want –”

“I’m giving you what you want,” you say. “You just have to give me something in return.”

Shigaraki watches you over the rim of the glass, and you look back. You’ve heard that full vampires can exert control over others through prolonged eye contact, but the same is supposed to be true of fey, and you’re not feeling inclined to do what Shigaraki wants you to do. He glances away from you first, takes another sip of champagne. You don’t look away, and when he looks back and makes eye contact again, you see his face flush.

That’s – weird. The words leave your mouth before you can think better of it. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t look at me,” Shigaraki snaps. He stares down into his glass, and you busy yourself putting away the almost-empty bottle of champagne.

You hear the whistle of something moving at high speed through the air and barely whip your head sideways in time to avoid the wing of Overhaul’s messenger slicing into your cheek. You don’t like spilling blood on the job, especially not when there’s a vampire nearby. The messenger flies past you, then comes back around, and this time, you catch it in midair. Shigaraki’s noticed it, too. “Origami?” he repeats. “Is that part of the aesthetic?”

You shrug. Almost everything travels on paper in Asylum – orders, bills, memos, contracts, and messages. Each type of communication comes folded into a different bird, but the only person who uses paper cranes folded from purple paper with gilded edges is your boss. The crane unfolds in your hand and you read the message in Overhaul’s cramped handwriting. Find the half-vampire Shigaraki Tomura and return him to my study. His master is ready to depart.

You’re about to look like the world’s most efficient employee. You tuck the paper into your uniform and turn to Shigaraki. “Your master’s ready to leave. If you’ll follow me, I’ll escort you back to him.”

“Great.” Shigaraki drains his glass of champagne, gets to his feet, and nearly tips over. He has to grab the bar to steady himself, and even then, it barely works. “What the hell?”

You make your way around the bar, waiting to see if he’ll straighten up on his own. You wonder if he’s faking it, but given how skinny he is, how much champagne he drank, and how quickly he drank it, it’s not a stretch at all that he’s pretty drunk. It’s clear when he straightens up that he’s still dizzy, and you duck in to support him. “Here. Lean on me. If your master’s anything like my boss, he won’t like being kept waiting.”

“What did you do to me?” Shigaraki mumbles as he slings one arm over your shoulders. When you wrap your arm around his back, you can feel his ribs through two layers of clothing. “You said you weren’t a witch. You lied.”

You have to laugh at that. “This isn’t magic. You’re just drunk.”

“Vampires don’t get drunk.”

“Humans do,” you say. “One of the downsides of being half-something else.”

Shigaraki makes a noise, but you can’t tell if he’s responding to what you said or to being drunk in general. You hustle him through the hallways as quickly as you can manage. Overhaul hates having to give the same order twice, and you can feel the unfolded message fluttering in your pocket, trying to fold itself again and tattle on you that the task isn’t complete. The faster you move, however, the more it seems like Shigaraki’s trying deliberately to obstruct you. More and more of his weight falls against you with every step.

You’re strong enough to carry him, but it starts to bother you. “If that champagne made your legs stop working, I really need to know about it so I don’t poison any more guests.”

“I’m conserving energy.” Shigaraki hiccups, then groans. “My master can’t find out. He’ll be pissed.”

There’s no way Shigaraki’s master isn’t going to find out. If you let go of him he’s going to go face-first into the floorboards. “How pissed is he going to be?”

Shigaraki doesn’t answer, but the way his shoulders tense tells you everything you need to know. You’re almost to Overhaul’s study. The door’s open, and you can see the weird light leaking through, the kind that means someone’s using magic. Inspiration hits. You shift Shigaraki so he’s leaning against the wall, shove him until he stands up mostly straight, and call up every ounce of glamour you have.

It’s not much, and it won’t hold long, but as long as Shigaraki manages not to say or do anything too weird, it’ll keep his master from noticing how absolutely plastered he is. Shigaraki stares at you as the glamour settles over him, clearly confused. “What –”

“It’ll hold until you’re by yourself as long as you keep your shit together,” you say. You pull him upright again, shifting position so it seems more like you’re escorting him than like you’re dragging him along. “Come on. We’re almost there.”

“Why?”

You could ask for clarification. Instead you ignore him. So far tonight he’s asked you multiple questions you don’t want to answer, and even though this is the one that’s least likely to get you in trouble, it’s the one you’re most likely to lie about. Shigaraki’s head, which he was holding up under his own power until two seconds ago, tips sideways until his cheek is resting against the top of your head. “You don’t smell like a witch.”

“That’s because I’m not a witch. Stand up straight.” You’d also like him to quit sniffing you, but you’re not going to win that one. You reach out with one hand and knock on the open door. “Sir, I’ve brought the half-vampire, as you requested.”

“That was fast.”

The voice that responds isn’t Overhaul’s. Shigaraki jerks out of your grip and stands upright, your glamour clinging to him, while you tense every muscle in your body, trying to hide the shiver that runs through you. Most inhumans leave some sort of calling card of their presence – a scent in the air, a shift in the temperature of a room, a momentary change in the light or shadows. You’re used to that. But the aura emanating from the vampire who must be Shigaraki’s master is intense enough to crawl under your skin, and it’s ice-cold. Barring two things you don’t think about, it’s the worst feeling you’ve ever experienced in your life.

Overhaul is responding to the master vampire. “The staff at Asylum are well-trained,” he says. “Shigaraki Tomura, welcome back. I trust you enjoyed your self-guided tour of our offerings.”

You linger outside the door, unsure of what you should do, but then Chrono sticks his head out into the hallway, spots you, and gestures sharply for you to leave. You don’t need to be told twice. You hurry back down the hall, down a set of stairs, and through a staff-only shortcut until you’re back at the lounge, with five drink orders folded into the shape of swans bobbing up and down at the end of the bar for your attention. You’ve finished all five and two more besides before the chill begins to seep out of you.

There’s nothing about what happened tonight that you’re comfortable with. Wire to wire, it’s been one of the worst full moons you can remember, and it doesn’t improve when Overhaul and Chrono step into the lounge at the end of your shift. Overhaul sits; Chrono stands. “Explain yourself.”

You could ask for clarification. You could do that if you wanted to spend the next decade paying for it. “The half-vampire came to the lounge. I thought it would be best to keep him there instead of letting him wander around.”

“How did you keep him there?”

You hesitate, and Overhaul steps in. “He was covered in your glamour when he came in. I want to know if we undercharged his master.”

Your face goes up in flames. “I didn’t – no,” you say. “I got him drunk.”

Overhaul coughs. Chrono’s shoulders shake briefly, the way they do when he’s trying not to laugh. You reach behind the bar and produce the mostly-empty bottle of champagne, followed by the ledger. Overhaul peruses the ledger while Chrono continues the interrogation. “If all you did was pour champagne, why was he wearing your glamour?”

You could get away with not answering Shigaraki’s question. Not answering your bosses isn’t an option. “He said he was going to get in trouble. I didn’t mean to get him in trouble, so I thought –” You can’t see Chrono’s eyes, but you can see Overhaul’s, and Overhaul’s looking at you like you’re out of your mind. “I thought if I put a glamour over him, his master might not notice.”

Overhaul doesn’t say anything. Neither does Chrono. An echo of the shiver from the master vampire’s aura runs through you. “Did his master notice?”

“His senses are too dull to hunt for himself. They’re certainly too dull to capture a glamour as weak as yours,” Chrono says. “Shigaraki Tomura escaped detection, at least while on the premises. And it seems he now owes you a favor.”

“No,” you say without thinking. “It was my fault.”

Chrono scoffs, then returns his attention to the bottle. Overhaul focuses on you. “Does he know what you are?”

You shake your head. “Good,” Overhaul says. “Next time, save your glamour for yourself. He and his master will return at the next full moon.”

Your stomach lurches. “They’ll be back?”

“The offer the master vampire made was quite lucrative. It would have been unwise to refuse,” Chrono says. “Serving vampires en masse is bad business, but on a limited basis – very profitable.”

You don’t even want to know – but you’ll find out. You’re dead certain of it. You grew up here, and you know where to listen to hear every secret told within Asylum’s walls. And even if you didn’t, even if you put your hands up over your ears and walked away from anyone who spoke of it, you know exactly who you’ll hear it from – the half-vampire Shigaraki Tomura, the next time he steps into the lounge with a bad attitude, a useless smartphone, and a list of questions you’re already dreading being asked.

Having thoughts of Incel!Shigaraki obsessed with Idol! Reader

Edit: Just realized I should warn y’all about a Noncon creampie.

MDNI

Like, imagine Shiggy watching every concert live at home. Buying all the merch available and keeping it in a little box in his closet. Buying tickets on a day off and attending because he wanted your true fan to be there supporting you.

You were his saving grace. The one thing that made him truly believe in something after hero society was eradicated. You made life worth living.

There’s multiple attacks during rival idol groups’ performances, as well as boy groups that people were getting a bit too comfortable shipping you with. But there’s never an attack during your performances.

He buys lingerie and sex toys themed after your idol group. Sprays the lingerie with perfume someone found on your dresser during a group AMA video and holds it to his face while fucking his fleshlight. He’s jerked himself raw watching you on more than one occasion. Fantasizing about meet cutes that lead to him fucking you backstage, in an alley, on a train, anywhere.

They’d always start with him making you laugh. He’s heard your laugh so many times that he can’t hear it without getting rock hard. You’d lean up to give him a kiss on the corner of his mouth. Such a fucking tease, he’d think. He’d wrap an arm around your waist and kiss you properly. You’d be a panting, needy mess.

He’d whisper in your ear all the things he wanted to do to you, squeezing your sides. You’d murmur something about being in public, and he’d lead you to the closest slightly-secluded area he could find. He’d strip you naked and tell you to be quiet while he fucks you like a mutt.

You’d keep whimpering about how big he was. You were splitting open, you couldn’t take it, slowly morphing into how good he was fucking you, how much you loved him, “Please don’t stop”, “I’m cumming,”.

He’d grit out that he was gonna breed your cunt. You’d beg him to pull out, but he keeps going and as you’re begging him “Not inside, please not inside, you’ll get me pregnant” His hips stutter as he pushed himself as deep as he could reach, cumming inside with a lengthy groan. And it’s so much, it’d spill out around his cock.

He’d pull out and more would spill onto the floor. You’d reach down and touch the mess between your legs, flinching slightly at the stimulation. He’d tuck himself back in his boxers, snap a photo of your used cunt, kiss your cheek, and leave.

Then reality would come crashing back down as he calmed down. He turns to look at the video he was watching, paused on you eating a push pop, leaving rings of lipstick along the length. His cock twitched in his flesh light.

Such a fucking tease.

Shiggy is so gross and mean god I want him.

Yay sunny

Round 3 Wave 1

Sanctuary of Nightmares PT 4

Platonic SB x GN Child Reader

Chapter Selection

Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Before I start I want to give a quick explanation of some personal headcanons and how I understand some lore that will make it easier to understand how I write some stuff in this story. Stick with me, this should only take a second.

Okay, first off my understanding is that Vanny/Vanessa hacked the coding of the robots to hunt down Gregory right? And I think that the way she did so was targeting him specifically as a threat, not just setting the animatronics to kill mode. Which is why they only seem to attack him throughout the game. They aren't outright hostile, they only see Gregory as a threat.

Secondly I headcanon that Sun is front and center in the daycare as the main animatronic because the first day Sun and Moon were tested they realized that when the lights go off Sun has to tear out his face to become Moon and, rather than remaking their design, they just decide to keep the lights on all the time. It was cheaper than remaking a whole animatronic. They also couldn't just seperate Moon from Sun because Moon's coding was interlaced with Suns.

Also, Moon's coding is where the security mode is. This is why in the game Sun isn't at all a threat to Gregory nor tries to be while Moon immediately sees Gregory as a threat due to the hacked coding.

Anyway! Enjoy the rest of the chapter!

- x -

As the puppet show continued your body began to slowly recognize its exhaustion. The weight of the day's events pulled at you, begging you to rest your tired eyes. Sun didn't notice at first, at least until after your third yawn. It was then that he paused the show, peaking over his built stage to fully realize your sleepiness.

"Tired? Already?! But it's so early in the night! We still have so much to do! I-" he stopped himself, your empty stare letting him know that playtime was over. You could barely keep your head up, let alone continue to play. Eventually the true reality of what came with that hit him.

He didn't deal with sleepy kids. Not once had he ever had to put one to bed or help them sleep, he simply wasn't built for it! That was supposed to be what his counterpart was supposed to do. It was a job taken by the nearby staff during the day

Yet now, as he stared at your exhausted form, a lull began to grow deep within his programming. It always pulled at him, always begged to be let out. In truth, he was terrified of it, of losing control. He didn't ever know what happened when his own hands tore away his consciousness, but he knew it was excruciatingly painful, not to mention horrifying for anyone watching. It had only ever happened a few times and each time he'd come back from that state he'd been left confused and scared.

Like a kid dropped off in the middle of nowhere...

He had always ignored that voice. He ignored its lull to be set free. The only contact he'd ever had with Moon was through what others told him. The staff had said that Moon could be dangerous, that the tearing off of his face could mess with his coding and corrupt the security measures meant to keep Moon and him from harming people. He'd been told countless times to never turn the light off, to keep Moon away at all costs. So that dark terrified him, the thought of becoming something that wasn't himself terrified him.

But that voice, that lulling voice! Staring at a tired child only seemed to worsen it! There was no staff to take you away, no alleviation from the sound. As if each yawn and attempt to keep yourself awake burned a sense of need in him. A need that wasn't his, a need deep in his being. It made his face itch and his fear spike. No no he couldn't! Not now! No! No no no-

"You can't do this on your own" the voice whispered.

The first full sentence he had ever heard it speak...

Why did it sound so soft? Like a comforting echo through his head, a deep yet peaceful noise that seemed to be able to dull even his sense of excitement. It didn't seem angry nor spiteful, its voice not as terrifying nor as creepy as he'd been told. And it's words- it's words! They dug into him, the sentiment something he knew was true. He needed help, he couldn't care for a child on his own.

"Let me help" it asked, the suggestion not one of greed or persistent pleading, but instead a request. Something he had every opportunity to ignore, yet he didn't really want to. The voice had successfully earned his attention, its sound similar to that of a lost friend, a part of himself he didn't know. One he'd come to fear, yet one he'd never met.

Suddenly Sun was pulled from his thoughts with a slight tug on his arm. He quickly looked down, surprised to see it was you. He hadn't even noticed you had gotten up. You stared with tired eyes yet your concern showed through, along with curiosity as you slightly tilted your head. Noticing the question implied in your actions he quickly snapped back to reality.

"O-Oh! Sorry, sorry! I just got lost in thought! Silly me! I-..."

"Please" the voice called with a clearer sound. Sun stared for another moment, your continued tired expression only further itching his mind.

"Fine!" Sun suddenly yelled, causing you to quickly pull away at the sudden outburst. Noticing that he'd startled you he felt a pang of guilt rush through him.

"Sorry! I-I didn't mean uh- to uh- scare! I didn't mean to scare...you! You I didn't mean to scare" he tried to apologize through broken sentences which only managed to further confuse you. Even so, you didn't have time to question it before he sprung up.

"You're tired! I uh, don't really know how to deal with that. But I know someone who does! Just stay here! I'll be right back!" He spoke quickly and with clear nervousness in his tone before he threw himself through a tub to a connected room. You were tempted to follow but quickly remembered he had told you to stay put. So, rather than upset him to satiate your own curiosity, you slowly took a seat on the ground, once again letting a yawn escape you as you did so.

The moment Sun had made it to the other room he could already feel that itching sensation get worse, the voice no longer speaking so much as echoing in sounds he couldn't understand. All he knew now was that he needed to find the least painful turn himself, a way that might not hurt. That's when he was reminded what he did in this roon.

Quickly he fell to the ground, moving some stuff around before finding a screwdriver still right where he left it, next to the arcade machine. It was a flat head screwdriver, one that he'd been using to try to fix said arcade machine that sat to his right. But now he found another use for it as he attempted to loosen the plate of his face. Every second that he waited he felt the itching feeling gnawing at him, especially as it began to burn.

He needed it off now now NOW!

The frantic nature of his movements grew until eventually the slow process was too much to bear as he instead used the screwdriver as a wedge device to pry away his face. However, due to the loosened screws, it came off almost immediately, the searing pain not even lasting long enough for him to scream out in agony.

Slowly Moon felt himself come too, his hands laid out in front of him, his eyes blinking to recognition as he spotted the sun plate of his counterpart. The pain was dulled by the time he took over, the senses of the animatronic body he inhabited coming back to him

It had been so long

It was only after fully recalibrating to his surroundings that the gleam of the nearby lights registered, creating discomfort in his system. Slowly he stood, though he had to cover his eyes to relieve himself of the discomfort.

Why was he here again? He had wanted to help Sun, to be allowed to do something. What had it been? It had felt so important-

A soft sound caught his attention, the unmistakable sound of a little yawn. It all immediately came back to him, the reason why he was set free.

"Hello?" He called. He was met with silence, the quietness and comfort of silence. Though in this case, he would have preferred an answer. He did, however, hear the hesitant steps of little feet as they approached, the sound of them stopping just a little bit further than he would have thought. Carefully he pulled his hands away from his eyes, instead cupping his hands around them to block out as much light as possible while being able to see. Quickly taking in his surroundings he noticed a small tube, one he'd known only to belong in Suns room. He crouched down to look through only to see the face of a child, tired and confused.

"Hello little one" he spoke oh so softly, his voice nearly a whisper. You blinked a few times before taking a step back, afraid of the confusion this interaction brought. Noticing this he was quick to quell this fear. Though calm in the way he did so.

"It's alright. Sun told me you were tired. I'm Moon, I'm here to help you sleep" he explained, not progressing any further in his movements as to not frighten you.

As you stared at the animatronic you were trying to piece together just how it got there and where Sun had gone. You were about to start running when he explained Sun had sent him.

Sun had said he was going to get someone right? Maybe this was who. Maybe there was a door you hadn't noticed over there.

Another yawn broke your thoughts, your continued exhaustion now even worse than it was before. You didn't have the energy to question it anymore, you were just too tired to care. You simply nodded, losing your fear in seconds.

"Could you turn off the lights, little one? They hurt my eyes. Then I can help you sleep" he asked and though you hesitated you simply nodded along, heading over to the light switch before flicking them off, your exhaustion only growing more as the darkness fell over the room.

Even with the lights off though there was still a soft glow from the daycare. It was just barely enough to let you make out your surroundings but dark enough that your eyes had to adjust.

The moment the light was off Moon came into the room, his eyes no longer covered as a soft blue glow came from them. The glow let you know where the animatronic was as he moved around the room, picking up soft blankets and pillows along the way. His movements were a stark contrast to Sun as he moved slower with a more intentional step. He reminded you of a little music box you had seen in your mom's room. He moved predictably and smoothly with a sense of purpose. It immediately quelled every other nerve you had about the bot, his presence seeping with peace.

Once he had collected all of the soft objects he could carry he found the darkest spot in the room and took a seat, covering himself in pillows and blankets as he sat against a wall.

"Come, it's past your bedtime" he beckoned with outstretched hands. His voice held a lulling quality, one that had your feet moving before your mind noticed. Once in reach he carefully picked you up, placing you comfortably in the warmth of the blankets that laid all over him. You laid in his lap, your form so small that it fit perfectly. You made yourself comfortable in the blankets he had covered himself in and only after you did so did he cover you with the remaining blankets.

"Would you like me to hum you a lullaby?" He asked just as your eyes shut, your nodding head letting him know the answer. So softly he hummed, your small form fully relaxing into him as you slowly drifted off into the land of dreams, guided by his soft sound.

This was the first time Moon had ever been allowed to deal with a child. He'd been forced for so long to watch, to be the voice in the back of a mind that was terrified of him. The only times he'd ever been out he'd been stared at with fear. He had only ever hurt anyone in an attempt to stay alive, to not go back to his prison. He only wanted to help.

But he was the thing that scared children, he took the blame as the reason why Sun had to go through pain every time he wanted a chance to exist. He was the broken programming, a glitch forgotten in the mind of another. He was never given a chance by anyone, even the mind that controlled his body...

Until now...

The child that he got to comfort, to lull to sleep. The child that he'd be allowed to care for was now his use for existing. He couldn't have anything else, he was nothing else. This was what he was built for! The reason he was brought into this world! After all this time of being forced into nothingness he was pulled back by the soft yawn of your little form.

He wasn't allowed to have anything...

But he had you

-

Time passed like fleeting seconds to Moon as he observed your sleeping state. Your soft breathing, your peaceful face. Such a small child, so innocent. He'd only been able to see small moments when you were with Sun, his ability to see impaired by Sun's unwillingness to accept that he was there. But he'd seen enough to know of your pain, to know why Sun had brought you here, why he let him see you. He held you a little bit closer at the thought.

He'd never be able to understand it. To understand why, why someone would do that to you, to a child. It had to be on purpose- it had to be! There was too much damage to your small body for it to be a mistake, an accident. The thought infuriated him, it burned a seething hatred through his metal. How- How dare someone hurt you! You were too small, too defenseless, too young!

Noticing his grip growing tighter than it should he immediately loosened, the resentment falling with it.

It didn't matter now. You were here, you were with him. He'd protect you! A-And Sun would too! You weren't ever going to get hurt again, he'd make sure of it! You wouldn't feel any fear, not with him, not with him, not with-

A sound caught his sensors. The moving of a slide before the crash of a ball pit. He was flown into an immediate panic.

Was that the security guard!? She couldn't see him! She'd get suspicious! She'd deactivate him! He couldn't stay hidden either, no. No, she was probably looking for Sun! Oh no oh no oh no-

Thinking quickly he gently removed you from his lap, making absolutely certain that you stayed asleep while doing so. Even so he moved quickly, scampering off into the second room to grab Suns plate left on the ground before rushing back, knowing that Sun couldn't be in the darkness of this room. When he made it to the incline that lead to the podium he swiftly climbed, not even bothering to use the stairs thanks to his insane agility. He had made it to the top when he rusher to place the plate back on, knowing how best to keep it in place even without the screws he'd left behind. He then jumped onto the podium and into the light to not further harm Sun.

When Sun blinked back to life he first felt dread. Where was he?! What had he done?! Where were you!? What had happened!?

He immediately sprung to his feet, confused and uncertain. Looking around he noticed he was on his podium above the play area, his room behind him. Knowing that was the last place you had been he was about to go back inside when the darkness of the room stopped him.

He would only turn back to Moon if he stepped in there.

It was then that he registered the looseness of his face. It was on, but not by much. After noticing that he knew it was the same night because if it had been morning the morning maintenance check would have solved that.

A sound then caught his ear and, turning around, his eyes were immediately met with something he hadn't expected.

A...kid? At this time of night? What? How? When? Why-

It was through his racing mind that a thought stood out.

Vannesa had been talking about that child

He had thought she meant you! That's why he had gotten so paranoid when she spoke about a missing kid. It started to make more sense to him now though. She was looking for a child that had been sneaking around, being in places that they shouldn't. You had been with him the entire evening! You hadn't been sneaking around! Coming to this conclusion didn't help him though as it led to understanding a final fact.

If he told Vanessa he'd found the kid then she'd come searching the play area. And if she did that, she might notice something isn't right with him, especially because of his loose face plate. He knew he was a terrible liar, he knew she was good at seeing through him. Under enough pressure, he'd break. And breaking meant losing you.

And he couldn't afford to do that.

So, quite literally jumping into action, he threw himself off of the podium and into the ball pit, catching the child's attention after they had just left it. Springing from the pit he effortlessly made it out, spotting the child immediately. The boy went to pull away when he quickly grabbed him, almost a sense of panic in his movements.

"Hel-LO. New friend!- You're sure up late!- Are we having a slumber party?! Where are all you're friends!" He spoke with feigned excitement, a skill he's learned over his time being here. He didn't let go of the boy at first, his mind running with panicked thoughts that all culminated around one goal.

Keep attention away from you

- x -

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