Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 18) - A Shigaraki X F!Reader Fic

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

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17

Chapter 18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I haven’t said yes yet.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Rumi.” The ghost dematerializes and vanishes completely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You sped the whole way here!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Round 3 Wave 1

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flamme-shigaraki-spithoe

1 year ago

Two Hours - Chapter 1 - Shigaraki x Reader

***

Maybe, just maybe, some things might be worth waiting for.

***

Two hours.

He was late by a full two hours. Meaning 120 minutes, 2700 seconds, 7200000 precious milliseconds wasted of your life. You'd know, you counted.

You glared at the library clock again, as if it was its fault you had been stood up. Disgruntledly, you pushed back your chair, getting up to put your laptop and revision materials back in your bag. It was the last time you'd try and help a stranger because clearly, strangers sucked.

You had done tutoring for different classes since your second year in college. Literature, philosophy, anthropology, history- name it, you could teach it. And you loved doing it like few other things made you happy. Was there anything as wonderful as showing others the beauty of human nature, its creativity, its passion, its sincerity?

"Sincerity my ass," you thought, angrily shoving your backpack on one shoulder. It clunked loudly as it bumped against a wooden shelf, and the librarian threw you a dirty look from the other side of the room. Part of you felt bad; you had spent a while trying to cultivate a good relationship with the older man, since you spent most of your free time in the library. But the rest of you, which was to say almost all of you, didn't care, because you were unbelievably frustrated.

You had had students give you tons of excuses before: they were sick, their mom was sick, their neighbors' dog was sick, and they just had to skip the tutoring session. You didn't mind that; they'd always text at least an hour in advance, and you'd have the time to read their message and go home with a smile, instead of walking all the way to the library.

But today's guy was different. You knew he had your number and your email address: it was part of the tutoring agreement you had both signed online. And yet he hadn't had the decency, the respect, to send a single message to tell you he couldn't come to the two-hour appointment he himself scheduled. And now, you had just wasted two hours, excitedly waiting to expose the wonders of literature to a guy who couldn't even bother to text you "can't come".

You gave the librarian a half-hearted nod of apology and headed toward the big glass doors at the front of the building. The weather looked moody outside, the sky grey and heavy like rain could start pouring at any moment. You didn't need to check your bag to know you didn't pack an umbrella. It was clear this was one of the days.

Sighing, you opened the heavy door to walk out at the same moment a man pushed to get in. You tucked your body to the side to keep the door open for him, but he flatly ignored the gesture, walking past you without uttering a "thank you".

"Yup," you thought, "strangers suck."

Before you could take more than a few steps outside, a droplet of water fell right on top of your nose, stopping you in your tracks. And then another, and another, and in a flash, the area was getting flooded, puddles already forming around on the dark asphalt. You couldn't help as another sigh escaped you, bracing for the impact of the freezing rain as you took a step forward into the tempest.

Then, something grabbed you by the shoulder.

You yelped in surprise and turned around, fists instinctively bunching up to your chest to protect yourself, heart racing. It took you a few seconds to recognize the rude guy who had just passed you on his way in.

He was tall, taller than you had first realized. His oversized hoodie made it hard to gauge his frame, the visibly worn-out fabric stretched shapelessly around his torso. Your eyes looked up for a face you couldn't find: the black hood fully obscured his features, and for a second, images of killers in horror movies alarmingly flashed through your mind.

You shoved yourself out of his grip and took a step back, eyes wide. He nonchalantly placed his hand back in his pocket, an unimpressed glare staring right back at you. His eyes were red, bright red.

"You're the tutor, right?"

You looked at the ominous figure incredulously.

"What ?"

"You're the tutor, right ?" he repeated in a low, raspy tone. He sounded annoyed.

You kept staring at him, wondering if he was speaking in a foreign language you had never heard of.

Then, his words started registering.

"Tomura..." you started uncertainly, the math adding up in your head as you remembered the name on the little manilla folder you had prepared for today, "Shigaraki ?"

A small smile etched itself onto the man's face, and you noticed how cracked his lips were, a faded scar going through the dried skin. Strands of slightly greasy hair, white as snow, rebelliously escaped the black hood, and for a second you caught another glimpse of his crimson eyes. But they disappeared back under the shadow of the fabric, and you realized your body had tensed like a rock.

"I'm the guy," he said nonchalantly, the hand you had pushed away going up to his neck and mindlessly scratching the skin there. There were marks there, some old, and others so fresh they looked like they were bleeding. Anxiously, you wondered if instead of a killer, you had stumbled on an addict.

"Hey, so when do we go get a seat inside? It's fucking cold out here," he added, gesturing lazily towards the library.

You kept staring.

And staring.

He hadn't possibly said what you thought he had just said. No one was so impossibly clueless and self-centered that they would come two hours late to a meeting and act like they were the one who was being bothered. But the cold rain falling down your face made it aboundedly clear: this was real.

"No," you finally said, enunciating the word slowly.

He looked as confused as you first did, the smug, composed look on his face instantly falling. He didn't look like he was told "no" often, and you felt the flame of anger start to burn inside you.

"What do you mean, no?"

"I mean no," you replied drily, feeling confidence coursing back through your body. There was no doubt in your mind you already looked like a drowned rat from the rain, and that your waterproof mascara was starting to reach its limits. But you weren't about to be scared of some loser trying to look tough with a crusty hoodie and unwashed hair.

"You came two hours late for the tutoring, which lasts two hours. My work slot with you is from four to six, and it's exactly," you snapped, bringing your phone up to his face, "Ten past six, so my work here is done."

He stared at your phone in incomprehension, then back at you, irritation slowly settling on his pale features. His thin brows frowned, and you noticed another scar marring his right eyelid the piercing crimson stare bore into you. Maybe he was some kind of gang member, and if so, was it a good idea to mouth off to him?

"Look, I don't know what crawled up your ass, but I'm paying to have a tutor," he snarled drily. "That's not fair."

You had to wonder if you were even talking to an adult. So maybe he was a killer, or an addict, or a gang member, and he would end up stabbing you for it, but by God, were you going to put that guy back in place.

"Well, tough luck, buddy," you almost spat out, your usually level-headed patience entirely fizzled out, "it wasn't fair to make me wait two hours and then expect me to have nothing other to do in my life than tutoring your sorry ass. But life isn't fair, is it ?"

You turned around, throwing the man one last angry look: "If you want tutoring, then be there next week. On time."

You felt oddly proud of yourself as you walked away, leaving him wet and alone in the rain. And if you were slightly trembling at the feeling of the crimson stare boring through you all the way down the library path, well, you just had to pray he didn't notice it.

---

"Huh," you noted with both surprise and apprehension, "you're here."

And indeed, there he was, slumped in one of the library's chairs, the stranger you were certain wouldn't come to your meeting this week: Tomura Shigaraki.

You had spent a few days feeling bad about the way you had handled things; yes, he had been incredibly late and entitled, but you never gave him any time to explain himself for it all. Maybe he did have a good reason, and maybe he had only acted so entitled because he was having an especially rough day.

One look at the condescending glare he threw you was enough to confirm that wasn't the case.

"Yeah, I'm here," he muttered, looking away, his right hand still ripping away at his neck like the last time you had seen him. You couldn't help but wonder about the gesture, the practiced way his fingers would visibly carve into the skin. Allergies? Eczema?

His vermillion eyes never left your figure as you put your bag down and awkwardly sat across from him, looking down at the carpeted floors.

"Why are you that surprised ?" he added flatly, "I told you, I'm paying for this shit."

You weren't a confrontational person; or at least, you did your best to avoid confrontation. But you'd been tired last week, and his whole little disrespectful charade had pushed you over the edge. You weren't sure you were up to deal with it again.

Your lack of response seemed to irritate him; he picked up a small handheld console from his lap, immediately busying himself in a game like your presence held no meaning to him.

You took a small breath, not wanting your temper to rise again; if you wanted this to work, you'd need to be the first to give the olive branch. You put on a nice, professional smile: "Let's put everything to the side for a moment, start over. Maybe we could both introduce ourselves again ?"

His thumbs toyed with the joysticks on his handheld, disinterest palpable."Why? I know who you are."

You could have strangled him.

"Nevermind," you smiled so forcefully it hurt your cheeks. "So, you're here for Lit 3250, Absurdism in Literature. That's a fun class."

"I'm only taking it because I have to," he grumbled. "I'm in computer programming. They make us take a class in the humanities department because the education system is fucked."

You raised an eyebrow at that, genuinely surprised: "They're making you do literature in computer science ?"

He shrugged, his eyes going back to the game on the small screen with obvious boredom.

"Told you. The system is fucked."

You pulled out the little manilla file you had prepared for him from your bag, spreading a few documents on the table between the two of you. For a second, you could have sworn his bored expression flickered into something new, but it was gone before you could register it.

"Well, I might not be able to do much about that, but I can try and make the class easier," you smiled a little more genuinely this time as he put his handheld to the side to look at the papers you had slid in front of him.

To your complete astonishment, as you guided him through the material, the man listened, never once taking notes, yet able to answer any question you threw his way in the shortest, most concise way possible. He seemingly absorbed the information while looking wholeheartedly disinterested, like remembering the words was barely any more work than eating or breathing. You had to wonder if the programmer in him coded the sentences in his mind, imputing every word as little lines of binary code, or if he was just this naturally, annoyingly smart.

"Alright, that's it for today," you concluded, noticing you had gone over the material you had planned for two sessions in just the last two hours. "I didn't take you for the kind of guy to listen to a tutor, but you've done a really good job today."

You gave him an honest smile, hoping to finally mend the bridge from last weekend's incident. Instead, he promptly looked away, lips tightening into a thin line.

"S' just cause I need to pass the class to get my diploma. I don't really give a shit about any of this stuff."

If he saw your face fall at that, he didn't show it. He grabbed his handheld and shoved it in his front pocket, promptly throwing his ragged backpack over his shoulder, as if the last thing he wanted was to stay here a minute longer with you.

"I'll see you next week, then," you hesitantly said, more a question than a statement. He didn't look back at you when he spoke with a grunt, already making his way out.

"Whatever."

---

"So Camus' thing is society is fucked, and as soon as you realize it you gotta kill yourself, right ?"

"Basically !" you beamed excitedly, circling a paragraph in the text facing him with the tip of your finger. "It's the idea that when you understand your role as just a cog in the machine in a mindless daily life, you have to either ignore it to rejoin society, or leave society altogether."

A small smile danced on Shigaraki's chapped lips, as smug and mocking as all his smiles were. You sometimes wondered if his face could ever express pure, genuine happiness, or if it was perpetually stuck with that self-satisfied expression.

"Yeah, I can get behind that."

It fit him, in a strange way. And he had every reason to be pompous: in three weeks, you had both gone through double the material you had planned for his first sessions, as be blasted each lesson like a simple tutorial fight in one of the many video games you'd catch him play before each lesson.

"Me too, actually," you agreed.

He looked at you disbelievingly: "You? Feeling like you're not a part of society? Give me a break, you're a tutor in university, there's probably a normie award for that."

"Well, even us normies are really just always doing the same thing, aren't we ?" you explained, laying your chin against your hand pensively. "Take the two of us. We always meet here at four o'clock on Wednesdays, at the same library, at the same table. We don't go through the motions because we want to, we do it because we have to, and that's what everyone expects from us. Kinda makes you want to quit society too, doesn't it ?"

For a moment, he said nothing. There was something unsettling in the way his ruby eyes bore into you, like he was judging your very soul. You felt your cheeks unwillingly redden after a few seconds under his piercing stare, looking away in slight embarrassment. If a few weeks spent with him were enough to convince you he wasn't a serial killer, you still found yourself troubled whenever he'd look at you too long.

He finally seemed satisfied with whatever he found looking into you, eyes mercifully leaving your face before settling on something on the table.

"That's a Plus Ultra sticker," he commented flatly.

You followed his gaze to your cellphone, face down, the small video game logo barely visible on the cover. How had he even noticed it?

It wasn't that you were ashamed of gaming in your free time, but you knew for a fact the entire literature department bore a clear disdain for any media not printed onto pages. They laughed off anything else as childish and a waste of time. Needless to say, you had never shared that passion with anyone on campus before that moment.

But damn, did you love Plus Ultra.

You couldn't help but grin excitedly at him: "Oh wow, you play too !"

"Sometimes," he shrugged with obviously fake disinterest, his crimson eyes brighter than you had ever seen them before."It's not the best game or anything, but it's alright. I feel like the whole hero fantasy trope is kinda overplayed."

He suddenly clammed up, like he had just remembered who he was talking to. The classic sour, haughty look you had gotten to know reappeared on his face.

"I just didn't know any girls played that game," he mumbled.

And there he was, the asshole you had met on that first rainy day.

"Well," you replied drily, "I play, and I'm actually one of the top All Might players in the country."

His pale fingers tremored at that, the excited brightness that he was trying very hard to conceal back in his eyes. It was so childish it was almost endearing, in a way.

"Well, what a coincidence. I'm also a top All Might player, except I was in the world ranking, last time I checked," he bragged, nonchalantly picking at his fingernails. "Maybe I could teach you a thing or two later."

As soon as the words left his mouth, the implication of a "later", of a world where you would be together outside of the required tutoring time, seemed to dawn on him. He stammered wordlessly, red spreading like fire on his pale face. It was... a lot more endearing than you would have thought.

"F-forget it. That was stupid."

You couldn't help but soften at that. Maybe, underneath the dirty hoodie and the deadly glare, he was as timid and insecure as you felt he was. The lashing out, the quips, the bratty entitlement- were they all just a facade for a guy who genuinely didn't know how to interact with others?

"Well," you hummed, "maybe after you're done with your midterms you could come over to my dorm for a match. There's a big communal TV you can pair consoles with."

The cold, detached mask was back, but it was much harder to believe with the pink coloring that reached the very tip of his ears.

"Yeah, maybe."

---

A month passed before you encountered your first hurdle in your tutoring work with Shigaraki, in the form of a "CLOSED" sign glaring back at you from the library's glass doors.

"Damn it," you mumbled, opening up your phone to find an unread message from the faculty announcing a temporary shutdown. Shigaraki, who had taken up the habit of coming on time for your sessions, looked incredibly pissed.

"So the fuckers think they can send one email and be done with it ?" he angrily snapped, kicking the library's plexiglas door so harshly it made you flinch. You took a mental note to never do anything to find yourself on the wrong side of that kick.

"Well, we can reschedule for tomorrow!" you chirped. Perhaps he'd appreciate you trying to put a positive spin on the situation.

The look he gave you could have turned you into dust.

"I'm already here. And I'm busy tomorrow. I have important things to do."

Briefly, you wondered if by important things he meant staying home and gaming. The college's main campus wasn't very large, and in the few years you had studied here, you had never caught a glimpse of him once. He had the kind of dim presence one could easily forget, but if you had passed him before, you would have known.

"I think the law building lets you take rooms for study sessions, " you proposed.

He sighed, voice raspy with irritation. "It's full of pretentious assholes," he replied drily, "and it's almost a thirty minutes walk from here."

"You're kind of a pretentious asshole yourself", you thought silently. It was clear he wasn't going to help or do anything that required too much effort on his part. When Shigaraki wanted to be annoying, he was really annoying.

"You got a better option ?" you mumbled, frustrated.

He looked down at his shoes, suddenly silent. "Ah ha", you thought victoriously, "didn't think so".

Then, words you could have never expected came out of his mouth: "Yeah. Come to my place."

You looked at him incredulously. He looked as surprised as you did, like he wasn't the one who had just talked.

"I live like ten minutes from here," he explained hurriedly, glaring down at the asphalt like it might melt and swallow him whole, "it'll take way less time."

It wasn't as if you didn't know the guy at all, but to say you knew him enough to go to his house, alone, was a stretch.

Although you had been able to shake off your initial fear of him, you still felt something dark and looming in the way he carried himself. For as easy as it was to read him when he was embarrassed or caught off guard, the calculating, sharp gaze he seemed to judge the world with still left you at a loss. Even more so right now, when it was directed at you.

"Ok," you eventually said before you could decide against it. What was the worst that could happen?

At first, you hadn't had much reason to worry; you walked along the main streets that cornered the campus, still filled with quite a few students going about their business. But then, he took you into a small alleyway. And then another, and another, and another, to the point where you couldn't recognize what part of the city you were even in. The buildings you passed had gotten older and older the more you walked, most of the ones surrounding you were now decrepit and abandoned. They loomed over you and Shigaraki, fully blocking the sun, a claustrophobic maze of old bricks and concrete.

You realized that you had drifted closer to Shigaraki unconsciously, your shoulder almost brushing against his. But you couldn't bring yourself to move away, the simple proximity of someone you at least relatively knew reassuring to your mind.

If Shigaraki noticed, he said nothing, his long, lanky legs moving forward without hesitation. You took a moment to discreetly observe the man, his features more detailed now that you stood next to him. The scarring was much worse than you had first realized. It spread from the small glimpses of his forehead you could see behind strands of shaggy white hair, to the start of his chest hidden by his black shirt. In some spots, the skin looked dry, old; in others, it was like it had been freshly ripped apart by sharp and uneven nails. You had found it worrying for yourself, at first, when you thought he was some kind of junkie; but now you found yourself worrying over how much the bruising hurt him.

His hand protectively grabbed his neck when he noticed your staring, thin eyebrows frowning in annoyance.

"Before you ask, yes, I've tried creams and ointment and all that shit the doctors send you to buy at the drugstore. It doesn't work. I know I'm ugly, you don't need to rub it in."

A pang of guilt hit your chest. You didn't think before honestly replying: "I don't think you're ugly."

He looked at you coldly, any trace of friendliness gone: "You think you're real smart playing with me, don't you?"

"No, I mean it, I don't think you're ugly!" you hurriedly exclaimed. "Just, ok, look."

You quickly pulled back the sleeve of your shirt, showing him the inside of your forearm with insistence. His eyes narrowed suspiciously: "What the hell am I supposed to look at?"

"A scar," you replied, showing him the thin pale line that crossed your skin. "I got it as a kid when I fell from a tree in kindergarten. Oh, and I also have this one!"

You tugged at your pants to reveal a darker webbed mark on your ankle, the skin smoothed by time: "That one is really stupid, I got it from wearing heels three sizes too small at my high school prom and falling down a flight of stairs. And I also have this other one-"

"I get it !" he interrupted, frustrated. "Yeah, alright, you have some scars too, but it's not the same thing as me."

"I know it's not," you replied calmly. "I'm not trying to say it is. But... I don't think having scars makes me ugly. I think they show I've been through something, and I'm still here to tell the story. And I think you might have been through a lot, but you're still standing here with me. So... if you don't think my scars make me ugly, then you shouldn't think yours do."

He didn't reply, silently making his way forward. Had you made him feel angrier, or even embarrassed? In one last effort to get your point across, you added:

"I think they kind of make you like Eraserhead in Plus Ultra 3."

That made him stop right in his tracks.

"You...think I look like Eraserhead ?" he hesitantly asked.

You nodded, and his cheeks reddened slightly. He took a few seconds before letting out the next words:

"Don't laugh," he warned you, "or I'm leaving you here. You can just find your own way back or get murked in an alley for all I care."

You crossed your fingers, presenting them to him ceremoniously.

"I won't laugh. Promise."

"I actually decided to grow out my hair to look like him."

Cute.

That was the first word to come into your mind. Cute.

You quickly chased the very strange and unwelcome thought away, in case Shigaraki interpreted your pause as a laugh.

"Well," you replied, "when I was seventeen, I dyed my hair bright yellow to look like All Might. I think I definitely got the short end of the stick in the idea department. "

He laughed, honest to God laughed, a raspy and genuine sound that made something foreign in your chest tightened. You started laughing too, and soon, you were nothing but two giggling idiots in the absolute middle of nowhere.

"Guess you're not that smart after all, miss tutor," he commented with a smirk.

His eyes lingered on you for a moment too long, like he wanted to say something else, but ultimately chose against it. He continued walking without a word, and you followed him the rest of the way in companionable silence, never straying far from his side.

---

It was a bar.

Or rather, the remains of something that once was a bar. A dingy neon sign with the three-letter word hung precariously above the door, the large "B" flashing within an ounce of its life. The walls were covered in graffiti and grime, a suspiciously moldy smell seemingly emanating from the bricks themselves.

"You... live here?" you asked hesitantly as Shigaraki made his way towards the building with no hesitation.

"Yeah," he let out, head snapping back around and eyes narrowing defensively. "You have a problem with that?"

Yes, several, including the probability of being stabbed to death here and my remains being found in the back of a garbage truck.

"No, no problem," you said.

He answered that with a grunt. The small staircase that lead to the entrance creaked under his weight, and he pushed the front door open.

"Wait here," he commanded. It was clear the subject wasn't up for discussion, so you opted for nodding along. "I'll come get you when I'm done with something."

It was all starting to feel like a terrible idea. So what if he liked the same games you did and actually seemed to listen to you rant about literature? You barely knew anything else about him.

You knew he felt lost in society and rejected by the world. You knew his whole face would become red as a tomato anytime he felt embarrassed or flustered. You knew he would bite his lip in concentration when he played on his handheld, and that his leg would bounce up and down like a puppy's tail every time he got close to winning. You knew his eyes were unlike any you had seen before.

But what did you really know?

"You lost ?"

You spun around so fast you stumbled on your own feet, almost falling straight onto the dirty pavement.

The man standing in front of you had sneaked by so silently you had never registered his presence, even with how close he had gotten. He seemed very amused at the way you backed away in fear, your eyes wide.

"No, no I'm fine, I'm- I'm waiting for a friend, actually," you managed to stammer out.

Somehow, he didn't look like he believed that at all.

He was the picture-perfect example of men your parents had told you to stay away from. His skin was covered in dark tattoos, their shapes incomprehensibly mingled with what appeared to be burn scars, seemingly spreading all over his body. In the dark, one could mistake him for a walking corpse, blue eyes glistening unnaturally in the middle of a patchwork face.

The man dragged his cigarette across his lips, letting a dark puff of smoke escape.

"What a friend, making you wait outside in the cold," he commented, the burnt and inked skin around his mouth moving in a manner you could only describe as uncanny. "Pretty stupid of you to hang out with people from here, princess. Lots of creeps in the area."

He moved closer, so close you could smell the tobacco off his breath, and the instinctive need to run coursed through your body.

"No need to be scared though," he let out with a smirk that screamed the absolute contrary. "I can stay with you for a while. Protect ya."

He was too close for you to run, now; if you tried, he could easily grab you with the large hand that was nonchalantly making its way toward your waist.

"Dabi."

Your head spun towards the entrance at the same time as the man's did. Relief spread through your body at the sight of Shigaraki, standing in front of the door where he had left you. His crimson gaze, which usually never left your form alone for more than a few seconds, was not focused on you, but on the stranger, who looked back at you with an utterly flabbergasted expression. Whoever he was, Shigaraki wasn't happy to see him.

"That's your friend ?" the stranger snorted as he started laughing uncontrollably, like he had just heard the funniest joke in his life. "Holy shit, you're even dumber than I thought you were !"

Clearly, Shigaraki did not find that funny in the slightest. You had forgotten how cold his expression had been when you first met him, uncaring and eerie. This was that, but colder, angrier, like the ripples that started forming in the water as a devastating storm would approach.

"Dabi," he repeated, and his tone was dark, final. For the first time in weeks, you felt something akin to fear at the sight of him, even knowing his anger wasn't directed at you. Had he always looked so unnervingly intimidating?

"Ok, ok, she's all yours, boss," the man finally said as he backed away, dropping the butt of his cigarette before unceremoniously stomping it. "Didn't mean to touch the property."

Tomura silently walked towards you, a rigid, cold hand forcefully grabbing yours and pulling you towards him. He headed back in, fingers so tightly clutched against yours that it hurt, and you followed without protest. You threw one last look at the man he called Dabi, a look of pure amusement on his face.

"Property", he had said.

The innards of the bar were much cozier than the outside view let on. It was relatively well kept, with a red counter with a few retro-style stools occupying the majority of the space, the leftover corner dedicated to an old leather couch facing a battered TV. With no windows on the walls, the only light came from a few yellowish neons hanging on the ceiling. The room was empty except for the well-dressed man behind the counter, who you could only assume was the bartender. He merely nodded at your arrival, his face obscured by a cloud of dark hair in the dim light, what you could discern of his body barely a shadow against the wall of bottles.

Shigaraki ignored him, pointedly dragging you to a door at the back, which lead to a small, dark corridor. He only stopped when he reached the last door, swiftly turning the rusty knob.

It wasn't difficult to understand it was his bedroom; the only light came from the double monitor screen connected to an impressive gaming PC. With the exception of a few shelves filled to the brim with trinkets and figurines, the walls were mostly bare, the white coat of paint discolored and yellowed. Visibly dirty clothes were pilled up in a corner, as if someone had hurriedly picked them up for the floor and tossed them there in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal them.

"Sit anywhere," he grumbled, looking away. "Or don't. Whatever."

He was even worse at hiding his blush than he was at hiding his clothes. You couldn't help but smile.

There were only two spots you could sit in the room: the expensive-looking gaming chair, which was clearly the most valuable item in the entire bar, or the messy one-person bed, which seemed to not have seen a washing machine in a while. The last thing you wanted was to anger Shigaraki after the encounter with the man outside, so sitting in his gaming chair seemed like a bad idea. You opted for the bed, praying to God the sheets naturally looked so patchy and discolored.

"W-what the fuck are you doing?" he sputtered immediately as you sat, eyes wide.

"Sitting," you replied simply.

"Not there! Are you stupid or something?" he audibly cringed. Damn it, you had made the wrong call. "Just sit on the floor. It's not dirty or anything, Kurogiri cleaned it recently."

You glanced doubtfully at the impressive amount of energy drinks and used tissues littering the room before lowering yourself down out of fear of seeming rude. Briefly, you wondered if Kurogiri was the man you saw mend to the bar. He looked nothing like Shigaraki, and referred to him far too politely to be family. He was too young to be his father either way. Was he both the bartender and the housekeeper?

"But why would Shigaraki have a housekeeper?", you wondered silently

"The guy outside, Dabi," you finally said. "He called you boss."

Shigaraki didn't even bother turning around to answer flatly: "And ?"

"Do you... own this place?"

"Something like that. Here."

He handed you a controller you immediately recognized, your hands automatically wrapping themselves around it just like with the one you had spent countless hours playing with at home. Shigaraki smirked slightly at the sight of you already being ready for combat.

"So, spill it out. What's your tragic backstory ?" you asked, leaning your back to the wall with a mischievous smile.

"What ?" he replied, seemingly caught off guard.

"C'mon," you pressed. "I've never seen you wear anything other than a black hoodie over a black shirt and black sweatpants. You're not subtle about it."

"I don't think you've unlocked that dialogue option yet," he retorted, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his tone. "How about you? What's your tragic backstory ?"

You chuckled: "What makes you think I have one?"

"You'd have to be a little fucked up to follow some guy you barely know into a shady bar in the middle of an abandoned factory district," he replied, raising an eyebrow, a wicked smile on his lips.

You couldn't help but smile at that; he was right. "Well, I don't think you've unlocked that yet either, Shigaraki."

"Just call me Tomura," he offered, a touch of resignation in his voice. Was he finally warming up to you? "Might as well if I'm stuck with you for the rest of the semester."

Maybe not. But something felt oddly nice about this, about him, and no matter how weird it all was, you couldn't help but let yourself bask in the strange feeling.

The computer let out a familiar little tune as the game booted up on the screen. Shigaraki visibly hesitated between sitting on his own chair or the floor, ultimately selecting the floor while keeping a reasonable distance from you. You had a feeling he wasn't very comfortable with women. But what he may have lacked in social skills, he definitely made up in gaming: his eyes burnt with fiery passion as the title screen appeared on the monitor, his hands tight around the controller. The look he threw you was one of pure confidence:

"C'mon. Show me what you're made of."

He immediately selected All Might in the character selection, implicitly daring you to do the same. All Might was the most powerful character in all the game, but he was famously the hardest one to master, with his controls requiring intense speed and dexterity. You could tell Shigaraki hadn't been lying about being one of the greatest All Might players; his fingers were already lined up on the buttons for a noticeably hard deadly combo. But you weren't one to back down on a challenge.

"5 rounds. No bonus power-ups," you smiled right back at him, pressing the button to also select All Might. The screen flashed red as the game loaded the fighting arena.

"You're playing a pretty dangerous game, you know that, player two ?" he commented, a hint of warning in his tone.

"I don't intend on losing," you replied with a grin.

And if the wild spark in his eyes meant anything, neither did he.

107 notes View Post

flamme-shigaraki-spithoe

1 year ago

More Virgin!Tomura because I can’t help myself. Never has another character oozed more virgin energy and I genuinely believe even just a crumb of pussy would’ve had him renouncing his evil ways.

Virgin!Tomura x GN reader, description of oral sex and how he behaves during.

Virgin!Tomura getting head for the first time and absolutely losing his mind. He’s not used to loving touch of any kind so when you kiss his neck he whines from the sensation of your soft lips against his rough skin. The further you kiss down his hard stomach the faster his breathing becomes, he squirms away from you the closer your mouth gets to his cock, but only because he isn’t used to these feelings.

When you stroke him he whines even louder, he says “Oh fuck” who knows how many times like he’s in utter disbelief of how good your hand feels. When you kiss his tip he leans back and groans, he wonders if just a kiss felt good, how would your whole mouth feel? When you take his tip into your mouth he almost screams. He grabs your free hand that rests on his thigh and he squeezes it in alternating waves from a light touch to a rough grip. You can tell you’re doing a good job when he squeezes your hand so hard you think he might crush it.

When you deep throat him and look up to see his face you’ll see his eyes have rolled so far back into his head you only see white fluttering behind his half-open lids. The sloppier you suck him the more tense his face becomes, he wants to look at you but when he feels his cock hit the back of your throat his eyes involuntarily roll back. When you ease up on him, he leans forward so he can get a good look at how your tongue licks the cum from his slit, and the way your cheeks suck inward when his dick moves into your mouth. You seem to know his dick so well that you can extend the pleasure and pull back before he cums.

When you look up you see his widened eyes staring down at you like he can’t believe what your mouth is capable of. It’s an amazing discovery to him that the mouth that says such sweet words to him is also capable of sucking his soul out. He stares down at you with his jaw hanging slack, drool drips from his lip and his moans gurgle in his throat because he forgets to swallow. He groans “Fuck yes baby just like that” every time he feels your tongue swirl around his tip, he says “Please don’t stop baby” when you bob your head quickly to fuck him into your mouth.

Both of his hands grip the sides of your head, he tangles his fingers in your hair and grips it to fuck your face deeper onto him. His breathing speeds up and deepens to the point where he’s gasping for breath, and if you weren’t occupied with his dick in your mouth you’d see how cute he looks almost folding in on himself. His toes are curling, his posture bent inward to get a good look at you sucking him off. His hair sticks to a light sweat he’s worked up on his face and his lips are wet with the spit frothing from his mouth.

He chokes out some desperate moans and whines “I-I’m so fucking close baby” so you suck him even harder. The harder you suck his dick the more pathetic his noises become, he’s gasping for air and struggling to moan your name but he can barely get out the sound. He can’t find the words when he’s actually about to cum so you have to rely on the other cues. His hands in your hair grip tighter, his stomach tightens and he hovers closer to you. He grunts loudly and you suddenly feel a hot gush of his cum hit the back of your throat. He groans “Ohhhfuuuuuhhh-“ and twitches intermittently as you finish sucking out the rest of his cum.

Just a few minutes of your mouth on his cock can heal this man more than years of therapy ever could. He’s prepared to admit his love, merge bank accounts, put a ring on your finger, die for you. He won’t hesitate to kiss you shortly after you’ve swallowed his load and he’ll groan in your mouth when he tastes his own cum on your lips. Your mouth can do many things, and now Tomura knows you’re also capable of sucking him so well he forgets his own name.

396 notes View Post

flamme-shigaraki-spithoe

1 year ago

Unravel Yourself Before Me ⛓️ Chapter 12 - Bystander Effect▸Shigaraki x femReader

Chapter Summary:

◤He fucking groans. “See, you could be so good for me, but you always choose to be a mean little bitch instead.”

You shoot him a contempt-filled glare and he just chuckles in return. Shigaraki slips his fingers out of your mouth and wipes your drool against the side of your reddened cheeks in order to further humiliate you.

“Monster,” you croak a whisper and try to look away, but he grabs your chin between two fingers and forces your gaze back on him.

“I thought we already established that?”◢ Setting: University AU - No quirks (unless degenerate personalities count) Tags: Slow burn, Eventual Smut, Very Unhealthy/Toxic Relationships, Humiliation, Mentally Ill Reader, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to ??? Warning: Dead Dove – Do Not Eat | Mind the tags TW: Implied Su/Self H, Dubcon, Past Child Abuse, Bullying, Reader has a super shitty past like actually, Shigaraki Tomura is his own warning.

AO3 Crosspost | Chain Divider by firefly-graphics

Chapters: One • Two • Three • Four • Five • Six • Seven • Eight • Nine • Ten(ko) • Eleven • Twelve • Thirteen Updates every Monday!

Chapter 12 - Bystander Effect

So far, tonight has only been two things—boring and incredibly annoying.

Maybe it was the lack of alcohol in your system and you ought to fix that.

Abandoning the idea of going back to the bar entirely, you head out for the open drinks in the living room, the ones that were available for anyone to roofie. You find a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of coke, and you pour those motherfuckers into a big cup, praying you’ll have a well-deserved blackout in the morning.

You weren’t planning to get wasted before, but you don’t think you can stomach waiting for Taylor to go home without being highly intoxicated anymore and you weren’t about to cut their fun short over some toxic bitches from high school.

Some time passes, allowing the alcohol to properly loosen you up and making the music sound decent enough in the dark room for you to sway your hips next to other strangers. You get lost in the rhythm until you take out your phone, checking for updates from your friend and only seeing random strings of letters they spammed you with.

Taytay – dd ykn w ur th best [Sent 10:19 PM]

Taytay – I f knig lov u nbitch’;’2134 <5 [Sent 10:23 PM]

The stupid messages from your already wasted friend brought warmth to your chest, making you genuinely smile—until someone accidentally bumps into you and knocks you away from the dancing mass, where you caught a glimpse of a strangely familiar looking group, hanging out on the couch not too far away from where you stood.

Feeling dizzy, you try squinting to see better through the flickering party lights, when you finally realize that the person you’re looking at was—Shigaraki?

You swallow. Why was he here?

Next to Shigaraki who was manspreading on the couch, sat Dabi, the Dabi–that you’re semi-sure appeared only because of you manifesting his existence earlier. You’re now ninety percent convinced that he’s the one Mina’s purple haired arm candy downloaded his style and personality from.

But they weren’t alone, no.

Dabi was getting the equivalent of a lap dance from some slutty girl, who in the process of basically riding him, was sinking her hand into Shigaraki’s shoulder, fingers gripping him tightly and him just staring at her grip in a daze. She looked exactly like the type of girl you’d speculated he’d be into, back when you only thought of him as a creep.

Something indescribable courses through your blood, clawing at your heart and twisting in your chest, making you shift your gaze from him to the rest of his group—three more dudes and a blonde chick that looked to be too young to be here—passing blunts and alcohol between the six of them.

All of them were enjoying themselves drinking, smoking, getting high and laughing.

He was laughing.

You’re positive you’ve never seen Shigaraki laugh so freely before, the thought nagging at you for some reason.

He’d seem to snap out of something, grabbing the girl’s hand that was casually sliding closer to his chest, forcefully pulling her into him and whispering something into the girl’s ear with a creepy smile, her almost losing balance off Dabi’s lap if not for the fuckboy’s hands on her hips holding her closer and him angrily shouting something at Shigaraki in return.

It wasn’t a surprise for you to figure out you weren’t special to him, but seeing it in front of your eyes ended up burning like acid. It bothered you enough to look away, emptying the remaining contents of your plastic cup, crumpling it in the process and missing the look of horror on her gorgeous fucking face as you chuck the offending piece of garbage at the floor.

Why would he lie to you? Why go through the trouble of confessing to you, of attempting to fix things with you?

And why the fuck do you care who he fucking toys with?! Shouldn’t you be happy?!

You snap out of your bubbling betrayal when you notice someone from the group waving excitedly in your direction. He shouts something at his friends, handing his smoke and his drink to the blonde chick while you squint to understand what’s going on. Six pairs of eyes start scanning the room until their gaze finally lands in your direction.

Shigaraki’s eyes visibly widen the second he sees you and you look around yourself feeling flustered, counting on a miracle that it wasn’t you they were all fucking looking at.

When you see your arcade friend quickly rushing to get to you, swerving through the mass of bodies, you quickly realize how morbidly wrong you are.

Fuck.

You don’t think you’re ready for another bout of trouble tonight, so you try getting away before your new friend reaches you, hoping—praying, to melt with the crowd and lose them, to pretend like there weren’t two pairs of eyes, angry crimson and amused cerulean, that stared holes through your body.

Unfortunately, your hopes of an escape are cut extremely short when a strong buff arm grabs you by your shoulder, effectively spinning you around and pulling you into a sweaty bear hug.

“Sorry, ‘m tipsy, but I can’t believe I got to see you here!” Iguchi shouts happily through the music and closely into your ear, making you nod your drunk head and trying to make sense of what was happening to you.

You couldn’t return a proper greeting to him, because you spot Shigaraki swiftly cutting through half the room in the blink of an eye, angrily pushing bodies away from him while the rest of his flock hurries to follow behind. Iguchi leans into your vision, pink color spreading over his cheeks and says something to you, but you struggle to focus when you feel the knot in your stomach growing.

When Shigaraki finally reaches you, he violently shoves his own friend to the side, looking angrier than you’ve ever seen him be.

“Fucking my friends now too, huh? Disgusting whore.” He actually spits right in front of your feet and you have to take a step back, nearly getting hit and scrunching your nose in the process.

You look around and see that you’re now surrounded by his circle, people you’ve only heard of from the insane fucking rumors circulating around Shigaraki.

Iguchi looked absolutely bewildered when he regained his balance. “Y-You guys know each other?” was all he could ask.

Shigaraki finally broke the intense eye contact with you and snapped his head to his friend.

“Know each other?” he growled through clenched teeth.

The blonde girl starts jumping excitedly, a sort of unsettling manic look coloring her face. Dabi only smiled at you slyly, standing there, arms crossed and enjoying the show, his little slut in tow.

The fuck? Were all his friends as insane as he was? Surely they could tell a fight was about to break out, and knowing Shigaraki, it was bound to be ugly. Were they not concerned at all? Unless–

Unless that’s exactly the kind of thing they were looking forward to.

You can’t help but feel a tremor in your bones. This was not high school and you weren’t fighting teenagers anymore. These were very much possibly convicted adult criminals standing around you and waiting sadistically for something bad to happen.

And you cannot take Shigaraki in a real fight.

Random people were now also turning their heads, trying to figure out what was going on, eventually pulling out their phones to either text or film the potential shit-show. You realize how badly you’d fucked up to get drunk.

“Answer me, bitch. Are you fucking my friends?” he hissed the question at you, grabbing the fabric of your clothes and pulling you to him, red eyes full of contempt.

“Can you blame her, boss?” a rough low voice spoke up before you could reply and adds, “She was so fucking cute in the store last time, lookin’ at me all starry eyed, weren’t you doll? Let me have her after you.” Dabi coos, sending you a kiss and unnecessarily fanning the flames to stir trouble, completely ignoring the obvious disappointment on his partner for the night.

And it worked like a fucking charm, because Shigaraki looked at you, white knuckling the fabric of your top like he was about to burn this entire building down, together with you in it.

Your head spun so fast—too many voices, too many people, too much shit going wrong tonight.

You’re anxious. You’re pissed. You wanna go home.

You’re tired, you’re tired, you’re tired. You miss your—

He snarls at you, red eyes narrowing and you snap.

“Fucking—ENOUGH!” you scream at the top of your lungs and straight into Shigaraki’s face, making him flinch and loosen his grip. Then you do the only thing your drunk overwhelmed brain could think of—

You slap the absolute living shit out of Shigaraki Tomura.

The entire room—including yourself, gasped in unison.

He completely froze, placing one hand on the burning and rapidly reddening cheek, staring off into space.

You heard his friends giggle and Dabi toppling over in laughter. The only person who was more unamused than yourself and the guy you just humiliated in front of an entire party of people, was Iguchi.

Not only was he unamused, he was shaking, looking absolutely horrified at what you’ve done to his friend.

The music died down completely by now, and you unwillingly became the protagonist of this room.

You try to step away, but your back hits the front of one of Shigaraki’s taller dark-haired friends, who was sporting a smug look that told you, you weren’t going anywhere.

“Uh oh, the creep is gonna snap her neck!” you hear someone shout from the peanut gallery. That comment seemed to wake him up because he lunged forward to grab your arm and started dragging you away with him somewhere—until Taylor drunkenly stepped in to break up whatever this mess was that you got yourself tangled into.

“Ya, okay, enough of that, Crusty!” They clap their hands twice like they were talking to a servant, grabbing Shigaraki’s arm to get him to let go of you.

He forcefully pushes them out of the way, causing your drunk friend to lose their footing and hit the floor hard.

You screeched at him again, kneeing him in the stomach as hard as you could, hearing him groan and finally freeing yourself. Your brain barely registered the blonde chick reaching for something and you saw a glint of familiar shaped metal as you stumbled to get to your friend who was kneeling on the floor, tears running down their face.

Shigaraki looked at his own friend who was gearing up for something and signaling her to stop whatever she was going to do.

Only for you to belatedly realize that she was just about to fucking stab you, had he not intervened.

You swallow emptily, feeling yourself shake and all color draining from your face.

“Don’t you fucking dare touch them again, you—you s-sick, depraved—fucking—fucking assholes!” you sobbed, struggling to help your friend up.

Where were all of Taylor’s useless fucking friends to help when they needed them?

You looked around but all you could see were cold stares everywhere you looked. Nobody lifted a finger.

Nobody dared to cross him.

A familiar sound of a deranged giggle cut straight through the silence like a knife. Your eyes shifted to the direction of the sound only to find red irises filled to the brim with unadulterated glee, staring right back at you.

Shigaraki felt something going off in his brain the moment he saw your adorably lost and confused face looking for help.

You’re finally, finally realizing it, aren’t you?

He walked over to you, sinking on one knee and you cursed yourself for wearing this stupid fucking outfit and leaving your pepper spray at home. You consider opting to violence for a second, but one look into his terrifying eyes has you second-guessing yourself long enough that he reaches forward first.

Shigaraki grabs you by your hair and gets up, forcing you to let go of your friend as you were dragged on your feet. Taylor whimpered from somewhere beneath you, but his tense grip wouldn’t allow you to turn your head and look.

You’ve never seen him look like this. He didn’t just look angry, he looked fucking savage.

The speechless crowd and his cruel but amused friends, split and made way for him with you in tow as if it was Moses himself, parting the red fucking sea.

You were too dizzy from the alcohol and the roots in your head burned too hard to be able to tell exactly, but you think you climbed a few stairs, walked a little more and suddenly you were shoved into a room with him right behind you.

Two strangers were caught in the act, but a quick look of recognition over Shigaraki’s form and a short barked order from him were enough for them to fuck off faster than you could yell for help.

He was right. You did finally realize.

You finally realized why everyone was so incredibly terrified of him. Why people whispered behind his back whenever he was around, but cowered if he were to give them a dirty look. Why there were so many insane rumors surrounding him and his shitty friends.

You finally realized that… those weren’t fucking rumors.

Hearing the telltale click of a door locking and seeing him turning to you has your brain beginning to sober up quickly. The only light that was barely illuminating this room came from a yellow colored bedside lamp.

“Let’s talk, hm?”

“You literally said—No, you promised!” you choked out, “You fucking promised you wouldn’t try to hurt me anymore,” you say, sobbing, fat fucking tears rolling down your cheeks, leaving behind dark trails of ruined mascara.

“So I lied. Now answer my fucking questions,” he growls, patience running thin. ”Did you think it was fun, telling me you liked me? Making me run around like some idiot?”

Shigaraki steps forward.

What? When did you ever tell him—

The phone call.

“What the hell are you talking—You! You’re ruining any chances of reconciliation with me, with every fucking second—” your voice cracks, “W-With every second that I’m locked in this fucking room with you, Shigaraki.”

He chooses to ignore you at first, taking another step in your direction.

“That’s fine.” He smiled. “Maybe you were right for once.” His fingers reached the back of his neck, rubbing it thoughtfully and humming as he moved in your direction, more self-assured than you’ve ever seen him be.

“Maybe I am done playing nice.”

“That so? Color me surprised.” You roll your eyes, unable to push your growing anxiety away.

He however doesn’t stop stalking towards you so you begin stepping back, but the back of your knees meet with the edge of someone’s bed.

You glanced behind you nervously.

“S-So what now,” you look back at him and huff. “Gonna rape me? Teach me a lesson?”

He chuckles, amused by your stupid question.

“No,” he clicks his tongue disapprovingly, placing a hand squarely on your sternum and effortlessly shoves you back.

You fall gracelessly on top of the bed, immediately grimacing knowing that someone else’s bare, sweaty ass was exactly where the back of your head now rested.

“Now, we’re going to talk.”

“Yeah? Well you better talk fast, because people—” you stuttered, feeling angry, scared and ashamed, “B-Because people—Because Taylor will call the fucking cops on you.”

And the fucking second you finish babbling your empty threats, you hear the party come alive once again, music blaring and vibrating through however many layers of brick separated you from the main room.

You cursed under your breath.

“Are they now?”

“Shigaraki, stop.”

“You look fucking adorable when you’re scared of me, did you know? Gets me reaaally hard,” he fucking moans as he shamelessly starts palming himself through his jeans. You couldn’t help but glance at his hand anxiously.

The warm dim light made him look nothing short of a beautiful, ethereal monster.

“Stop, stop, stop. Don’t do this to me. Please don’t do this to me,” you chant uselessly as you screwed your wet eyes shut, trying to get away from him as much as possible, but he only reveled at the sound of your desperate pleas.

Yes—fucking yes, at last.

He cracked a wide grin. The only regret on his mind is not doing this to you sooner. It was so much more efficient using terror to break you down and make you his, compared to the previous pathetic attempts at getting you to want to be with him.

He could barely hold back his delight. You were so close.

Shigaraki climbs up your legs, effectively straddling you and patiently observing your reaction.

“I said relax, idiot,” he rasps, but the way he reached his hand out and used his dry, rough knuckles to slowly brush the side of your cheek, did absolutely nothing to help you relax. The touch felt like warm sandpaper and you couldn’t help but squirm under it. “We’re just going to talk.”

His fingers uncurl, exploring the planes of your soft face, the pads running gently over the bridge of your nose all the way to your lips—and if you didn’t know any better, you would’ve thought he was admiring you by the slightly dazed look in his eyes. The same dazed look he gave that whore.

Shigaraki pushes his index finger into your mouth and you go ahead and bite it hard enough to leave a deep reddened dent. He just smiles and forces a second one in.

“Sho fuhkin’ tawk then,” you mumble around his salty fingers, words coming out funny and making you feel even more humiliated. You placed both of your hands against his firm chest, looking for a semblance of separation from him—any sort of false security.

His sinister smile spread even wider before he leaned in so close to your ear that you could feel his breath fanning against it. “Did you know that you have a lot of weak exploitable points?” he asks, biting his lower lip and pulling back just enough for you to look him in the eyes.

Gone were any traces of his softness from the time before tonight—all replaced by what looked like honest malice and bitter spite towards you.

The only thing you could reply with was a pathetic whimper.

“Your scholarship, the filthy fucking videos of you letting some lowlife scumbag fuck you.” He grimaced while he spat out the second part, but his wicked smile quickly returned to his lips. “Your…past,” Shigaraki says with an upward lilt in his tone, taking his fingers out and resting them on the top of your lips, allowing for your reaction.

“What?! How did you—”

His giggles cut you off. “People talk. You’d be surprised how easily they give me what I want, once they feel threatened,” he tells you, voice dark and foreboding.

You wanted to rebuke him, but the second your mouth opened again, he slipped his spit-covered fingers all the way to the back of your throat, the brusqueness prompting you to gag ugly around them.

Your hands try to reach for his wrist and push it away, but he was stronger and he was faster. He clicks his tongue at your disobedience, using his free grip to grab both of your hands, effortlessly pinning them to the side of your head in an uncomfortably forced position.

Was every time you could push him around just for show? And are you seriously only realizing that now?

Shigaraki waits for your breathing to slow, before he begins tormenting you by pumping his long bony fingers in and out of your mouth in a sickeningly slow manner. The sound of you gagging over and over and the wet sloppy squelches of your mouth were echoing in the room, complemented by the dampened party music and the sounds of his feral breathing.

“Ugh!” You try to get away from him, but he wouldn’t let you.

“Shhh, I’ve seen you take worse. Good girl,” he cooed with his face close to yours, gaze fixated on the way your mouth clung to his fingers. You cringed when you felt him lick a long disgusting stripe from the bottom of your cheek all the way to the source of the trail of bitter tears.

He fucking groans. “See, you could be so good for me, but you always choose to be a mean little bitch instead.”

“Monster,” you croak a whisper and try to look away, but he grabs your chin between two fingers and forces your gaze back on him.

“I thought we already established that?”

You spit in his face, making him flinch.

Catching him off-guard seemed like a privilege today, so you quickly free yourself from his grip the moment his hand was loose enough.

Before he can take that freedom away, you grab his shirt with one hand and your fist flies towards his face using whatever leverage you had in this position.

Now or never.

“You little–!” he growls at you, unfortunately dropping his entire weight on top of your body before your punch could connect, causing you to only be able to uselessly smack the top part of his shoulder.

He slides his arms to grab yours and uses bruising force to render them useless at the sides of your head. “Are you trying to piss me off today?” he barks at you angrily, getting halfway up to shift one of his knees on top of your stomach and pressing his weight into it.

“Urk—” you almost literally vomit from the pressure, but he lets up before you can.

“Are you going to behave now and listen to what I say, or are you going to keep being difficult?”

Difficult? You were being difficult? You’d laugh if this wasn’t quickly going up the ranks as one of the worst nights of your life. Instead, you just roll your eyes, as if you weren’t a quivering mess. As if he wasn’t scaring you.

Shigaraki’s gaze narrows. He thought he was closer to breaking you, but you obviously still had a lot of fight left in you. He supposes you’ve been through worse, so maybe he had to truly outmatch your greatest monsters.

He decided he’ll start easy.

“Answer my question, slut. The next time you don’t answer me, I’ll have to start punishing you,” he grunted but you remained defiantly quiet.

Shigaraki huffed, lifting his knee away from your sensitive stomach, earning him a relieved exhale from you—that quickly turned into alarm the moment he wedged it between your thighs instead, inches away from your cunt.

He smirked at your horrified expression and began pressing it against you experimentally, drawing out a pathetic whimper.

“Oh?” he breathes into your ear, bending his body to press his knee against your core again.

That, unfortunately, wins him another distressed gasp from you.

“Fuuuck,” he groans in response, momentarily forgetting that this was supposed to be your punishment and reminding you just how much of a depraved virgin he really was.

Which gives you an idea.

You close your eyes and softly grind yourself up against his thigh, all while pretending you didn’t want him to notice. It slightly backfires when you start feeling a little hot, your face slightly scrunching up in pleasure.

When you opened your eyes again, Shigaraki looked a little more disheveled than before.

His vindictive demeanor from seconds ago slightly softened.

“I thought you didn’t want to fuck me?” he throws you a playful grin and you snort.

“You call getting myself off on your leg ‘fucking’ you?”

Something dangerous sparked in his red, obsessive eyes, the moment those words left your mouth, sending a jolt through your spine all the way to your core and it made you swallow. Hard.

“Okay,” he resolves, pressing his forehead against yours and chuckling darkly.

“Huh?”

“Go ahead, get yourself off,” Shigaraki offers, putting more pressure against your heat.

You try moving away, glaring at him.

“You’re a fucking freak,” you finally conclude, despite the blush spreading on your cheeks, the growing warmth between your legs and your stupid little plan falling apart.

“What’s wrong? Thought you wanted to get off?” He leaned in looking smugly and his nose brushed yours, breath smelling like cigarettes and gin. You roll your eyes and he’s slightly disappointed that you don’t give him what he wants.

Your gaze falls onto his chapped lips for just a second, but even that doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Do you want to kiss me instead?” he whispers tilting his head and his grin spreads.

“In your dreams,” you lie. “Now let go of me.”

“Why, I think you quite like this position.” He lowers his head to the junction between your neck and your shoulder, deeply inhaling your scent like a depraved pervert.

You wouldn’t understand the level of patience he was exerting with you. You probably thought he was incredibly cruel, but he was still holding back.

Burning with the desire to mark you, he let go of one of your arms and slid his hand all the way to your neck, spindly fingers wrapping around it, then squeezing experimentally.

“Why…do you act so—” he tightened his grip some more, making you struggle to breathe the words out, “fu—fuh—cked…up?”

The sight of you made his hard cock twitch in his pants.

“Because I want you,” he admits completely unapologetically, pressing his dry, cracked lips to the side of your neck and kissing it softly. The rough texture in contrast to the odd gentleness of the kiss made you shiver. “—and I’ve decided that I’m gonna have you.”

The audacity makes you burst into hysterical laughter, but he immediately cuts off your airway using the hand that still rested on your neck, making you gasp soundlessly.

“Is it that funny?” His teeth graze the sensitive skin on your neck. “Did you fuck Spinner?” Shigaraki growls at you suddenly and forgets you can’t breathe. Only when your body starts convulsing slightly from the tight grip, does he let up.

“Who?” you coughed.

“Don’t act stupid now,” he hisses, “The fucking nerd with long purple hair.”

“Oh, him?” You grinned angrily, taunting him, “That’s too bad, because it’s really none of your business.”

—was the wrong thing to say apparently, because he punches the bed with brutal force right next to your head, making you yelp.

“Fucking, ANSWER ME!” he screams and you flinch again.

“N-No, you asshole. I didn’t fuck any your friends, fuck.” you whisper submissively, feeling a familiar burn in your chest.

“Then why—!” he chokes, his face remaining partially hidden from behind his white hair, as you were staring at the ceiling with a fresh round of tears brimming in your eyes.

Shigaraki slowly sits up to look down at you and your gaze follows him as his whole body weight finally lifts from you. On your neck, he could see the faint red outline of his hand. His handprint.

His gaze hardens, going back to his stiff, unemotional self.

“It doesn’t matter,” he resolves in a tone so cold, it sends another chill down your spine.

“W-What do you mean?”

“I mean, that starting tonight you’ll become my bitch.” He pushes himself off of the bed, fixing his clothes and you couldn’t help but stare at him in disbelief. “You’ll do whatever the fuck I tell you to do, and if you don’t—” He smirked sadistically before he continued, “I’ll just destroy everything you’ve ever held dear.” Shigaraki says, patting down his arms and his clothes as if to dust your filthy presence off.

You lie motionless at first until the words finally register into your alcohol addled brain. Sitting up, your face contorts in anger and you go off.

“You’re absolutely fucking nuts if you think—”

A sharp crack echoed in the room and judging by the position of your head, you realize Shigaraki had hit you across the face. Hard.

You don’t hold back the violent sobs that escape you. It really fucking hurts.

“Are you going to listen to me now?” he growled, grabbing you by the roots of your hair and turning your head to him. His jaw was clenched tight. “You’re a pathetic, self-destructive, little, fucking whore,” he hisses through gritted teeth. “And you should’ve taken the chance to kill yourself right after I showed your cute little ass to everyone. But do you know what?” You felt the warmth of his breath brushing over your cheek.

“Now you belong to me. So go ahead and try blowing your brains out, because not only will I make true on everything I told you, but your precious little friend, your coworkers, your boss—even your fucking therapist will regret the day you were fucking born.”

“No…” your breath came out as shaky, and the following words that came out of his mouth completely shattered you.

“Just like your mommy did. That’s why she killed your brother and shot herself up with heroin until she fucking died too. Just like your brother always will, from under his cozy little grav–”

You remember a loud howl but you don’t remember how you landed in the middle of the street, shoes and your jacket long forgotten.

You don’t remember how long you’ve been walking for, or where you were right now.

You don’t remember, you can’t stop trembling or crying hysterically and you don’t know what to do.

You don’t know what to do.

YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

— NEW MESSAGES —

Psycho – i’m nice to my toys so i’ll look past your little tantrum this time [Sent 2:34 AM]

Psycho – you better show 2 class tmr otherwise i promise u really won’t like what will happen if you dont. [Sent 2:35 AM]

Psycho – sweet dreams :) [Sent 2:35 AM]

It was game over.

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