For The First Time In His Life, Tomura Shigaraki Has Full Control Of His Quirk. With This Newfound Freedom,
For the first time in his life, Tomura Shigaraki has full control of his quirk. With this newfound freedom, there is so much that he wants to do. And it just so happens that you are at the very top of that list.
Fandom: My Hero Academia
Pairing: Tomura Shigaraki x GN!Reader
Rating: Explicit - Minors DNI
Contains: GN!Pronouns, Smut, Soft Shigaraki, Penetrative Sex (Reader Receiving), Oral Sex (Reader Recieving), Pre-Paranormal Liberation War, Post-PLF Manga Spoilers tho, Established Relationship, Alcohol, Massage, League Shenanigans. (Honestly, no crazy CW's with this one lol. It's just fluff and smut and angst lol)
Notes: I tried to write something wholesome to try and heal our mourning Shig-simp hearts... It had mixed results lol.
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That seemed a little too easy.
It’s the first thought that crossed Shigaraki’s mind when he came to on the Doctor’s operating table. Don’t get him wrong, the time Ujiko had spent vivisecting him from finger to finger had been hell on earth, but it seemed to go by a little too quickly for four months.
“That’s because it’s only been a week,” Ujiko explained as he approached Shigaraki with a paper cup of water — an absolutely pathetic offering considering the world of pain the man had just mercilessly put him through.
But Shigaraki took it anyway.
“Didn’t realize that there were going to be breaks,” he said before knocking back the cup in one gulp.
“Once we begin the transference of All for One, there won’t be,” Ujiko explained, “What I was working on this time, was completing your quirk.”
Shigaraki’s brows furrowed, “What do you mean?”
Ujiko chuckled, gesturing to the paper cup in the new leader’s hands, “Why don’t you try putting your pinky down?”
He shot the doctor a confused look, not sure what exactly that would accomplish other than sparing him a trip to the trash can. But upon Ujiko’s nod of reassurance, he looked back down at the cup, bringing his raised finger down on its crease experimentally.
Shigaraki’s eyes widened immediately.
The cup was still in his hand.
It didn’t turn to dust. Didn’t even crumble or sport a single crack. He touched it with all five fingers and yet it stood with as much integrity as the steel IV pole next to him.
He snapped to the doctor, something unreadable in his voice, “Is… Is decay gone?”
“No, no of course not. I’d never purge you of such a powerful quirk,” Ujiko assured, “You just have control over it now.”
Shigaraki willed decay to activate, testing Ujiko’s explanation, and in an instant, the cup dissolved under his touch, just like he was used to.
He stared at his hand in disbelief, the dust falling through his fingers. He couldn’t believe this…
“And it’s not just turning it on or off, all or nothing,” Ujiko continued, “You can stop the spread of decay at certain points, activate it with just one finger — you have full control.”
Shigaraki snapped to Ujiko, intensely. Desperate. Maybe he should’ve been doing a better job of maintaining his poker face like Sensei would’ve, to try and hide the way this was affecting him. But he just couldn’t. Not now. Not when something he’d longed for so badly, so primally was so close to his grasp.
“Are you sure?”
Ujiko didn’t seem to take notice of this lapse of control however. Or at least, he didn’t care. His bushy mustache just raised with a small smile and pride in his work.
“Quite sure.”
Shigaraki’s eyes narrowed. He was not fucking around here, “ How sure?”
Ujiko’s smile shifted slightly, a challenging smirk pulling at the corners as he offered his own hand as fodder.
Shigaraki slapped his fingers fully atop the back of Daruma’s fat hand, letting the full extent of his anger and emotions drive him. He wanted to test this fully, test that even in fits of passion, he wouldn’t lose control.
And he didn’t.
Daruma Ujiko stood just as whole and living in front of him as the moments before. The only change was the chuckle of satisfaction that Shigaraki’s dumbfounded expression brought him.
“Pretty neat, huh?” Daruma said, turning back to start pulling out equipment for the next phase of experimentation, large hulking tubes and wires that looked more akin to HVAC parts than real medical equipment.
Neat wasn’t exactly the phrase Shigaraki would use. But he didn’t really care anymore.
He had shit to do.
“Now, regarding the next steps in your transformation—”
The EKG machine behind him beeped loudly and suddenly, signaling that it had been disconnected. Ujiko turned back to Shigaraki curiously, watching as he pulled off the various electrode pads scattered across his chest and back.
“You don’t want to get started?”
“Tomorrow,” Shigaraki answered, ripping the IV from his wrist as he hopped off the table.
“But what about the power? Your dreams?” Ujiko pressed, something strained, irritated starting to form in his voice, “I would think that these are all things you’d want without delay.”
“I do. But achieving them one day later won’t kill me. And I have some shit to take care of before I grind for four months.”
Ujiko clicked his tongue, clearly unsatisfied with this new development.
He knew exactly what Shigaraki had to go take care of. And he didn’t like it. Didn’t like you . He’d never liked you in fact. You asked too many questions. Had too many suspicions…
But Shigaraki didn’t care about the doctor’s disapproval, simply turned to him after slapping a bandage over his free-flowing wrist and commanded, “Warp me back to the villa.”
This clearly wasn’t up for discussion. Ujiko could’ve protested, sure, but at the end of the day it wouldn’t have mattered. Shigaraki wasn’t a kid anymore, far from it. He’d taken the mantle of true leader by force, and held his head high with the confidence that accomplishment deserved. If he wanted to do something, he was going to do it. The risk of upsetting the doctor or even his master was not a concern anymore. It barely ever had been.
So in the end Ujiko just sighed and turned to his obedient servant sitting patiently in the corner, “Johnny.”
Shigaraki didn’t so much as flinch as the warp came spewing out of his mouth. In fact, a rare sheen of childlike joy took over his features instead. Daruma noted this with a shaking head as he warped away. Oh well. If Shigaraki wanted one last night with his companions, with his little distraction , who was Ujiko to get in the way?
This was the last night he’d have control over his own body after all. Might as well let him enjoy it.
“Robber!” you cheered victoriously, pumping your fist over the seven you rolled.
“Noooo, not again!!” Toga cried out.
You grabbed the little gray token off the board, twirling it around tauntingly as you hum, “Hmmm, and where should I put him? I wonder…”
Spinner glared at you from across the board, “If you put it on my wheat field one more time—”
“Great idea Spinner!” you mock-gasped, already well aware of where you were planning to put it, and slap the Robber down in the center of Spinner’s monopolized wheat hex.
“Great move! Cheap shot! ” Twice, the last player of the group, piped in.
“ Damn it !” Spinner punched his fist down on the table, shaking the drinks surrounding the board precariously.
“Oi, oi careful there!” you said, grabbing your glass of wine protectively, “If you party foul, you lose a turn.”
Spinner just grumbled irritably, grabbing his own beer and knocking it back to try and quell some of his frustration. You giggled at the sight. It would be easy to assume that Shigaraki was the most competitive and aggressive game player out of the League, but he actually managed to keep his cool during sessions most of the time. No, it was undeniably Spinner that was the most uncontrollably competitive, and it never failed to make you smile.
Even as the thought of Shigaraki threatened your demeanor with a frown.
You shook out the thought, because of course, you had another certain player to focus on. And you turned to her pointedly.
“Alright Toga, half your hand, let’s go.”
She gasped, “Whaaaat? What are you talking about!? I only have six cards!”
“That’s because two of them are sticking out of your sweater.”
Toga looked down to her sleeve, where indeed the corners of two resource cards were poking out rebelliously.
She snapped back to Compress in offense, who sat on the couch behind her, observing the game amusedly with his own glass of wine in hand, “Atsuhiro! You said that trick would work!”
“I’m sorry my dear,” he shrugged his hands tragically, “But it seems your sleight of hand needs a bit more work.”
Toga groaned, pulling her cards out of her sleeve and looking over which ones she wanted to discard with a pout.
Crushing his finished beer in his hand, Spinner turned back to Dabi who sat across the room, as far from the game as possible, and pretending not to watch it all, like he wsn’t invested in a single thing in this room. Not at all.
“Oi Dabi, can you grab me a beer?”
“You’ve got legs, get it yourself.”
“But the fridge is right freaking next to you!” Spinner shouted, pointing at the minifridge that actually, was not only right next to Dabi, but that he was currently resting his feet on top of.
But Dabi was a son of a bitch. So rather than even giving him an answer, he just crossed his feet over the fridge, making himself more comfortable.
“God, seriously ?!”
Shigaraki watched this all from the doorway with a whisper of a smile on his face. He’d stopped by his bedroom at the villa to grab a button down and even considered grabbing a quick shower while he was at it before coming here — the griminess of a week of experimentation sticking to him thickly. But ultimately he’d been too eager to see his comrades.
Yet, once he got to the doorway that the familiar rowdy laughter of his League led him to, he couldn’t help but just stop and take in the moment. It was nice to see them all so comfortable and content after months of chaos and vagrancy. And it was a look that especially suited you.
While you’d never been particularly materialistic or image-obsessed (if your decision to be with him didn’t make that obvious), you certainly also weren’t one to turn down the finer things in life when offered. And clearly here, you’d been offered, given the cashmere sweater and expensive bottle of wine you were currently enjoying. The regular access to showers and brand name moisturizers and cosmetics certainly weren’t hurting you either. Your skin was clearer and more glowing than he’d seen in months. You’d even seemed to have some time to style your hair today.
And of course there was your laugh. That big, uninhibited laugh that you only let out when you were truly comfortable. In general you were a pretty pragmatic person. It’s one of the things he’d always appreciated about you, particularly when surrounded by this circus that he calls a villain group.
You approached new situations skeptically and took most things seriously. It’s not like you had no sense of humor, quite the opposite actually. But you also were very aware that there was a time and place for everything. When the pressure was high, laughter was nowhere to be found. And it had certainly been nowhere to be found for a while now.
So it went without saying that seeing you like this now, laughing over a game board, cheeks tinged slightly-red from the wine, completely taken care of and without a care in the world…
It was quite the sight for sore eyes.
“Shigaraki?”
He blinked and looked back to Spinner who, in standing to go grab a beer from the fridge, had turned and spotted him in the doorway.
“Tomura!” Toga squealed excitedly, jumping up out of her seat with Twice to join Spinner in barraging him in the doorway.
“What’re you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be leveling up with the Doc?” Spinner asked.
“Got a night off,” he answered simply.
“That’s awesome boss! Who needs ya?! ”
He turned to look past the three as you approached behind them, much calmer than the others, as usual. But that didn’t mean you weren’t just as thrilled to have him here. The adoration in your eyes was clear from across the room and it warmed him up in a way that he’d learned to really enjoy.
“It’s good to see you,” you said, simple and sweet. There was clearly so much more behind those words, but you knew how Shigaraki felt about doing shit like that in front of people, so you kept it subtle.
Apparently the caution was unnecessary though, as Shigaraki seemed to have lost his own patience for pretense. Even if it made his next words the spark that set off a firework show of “ooo’s” and teasing from resident forever teenagers, Toga and Twice.
“Yeah…” he breathed, “...Can we talk? Alone?”
It was all you could do to sit down on his bed when he told you.
“Full control?” you repeated in disbelief.
“Full control.”
You smiled, so genuinely, eyes starting to shine. You weren't even thinking about what this meant for the two of you yet, you were just happy for him, for the peace he could now live with. The burden that had eased.
“That… That’s amazing Tomura…”
Shigaraki stared down at you, a lump of nerves settling in his gut. He wasn’t affected by things like nerves or apprehension very much anymore — barely ever was in the first place, and especially not now that he had all the confidence and authority of a “Supreme Leader”. But he couldn’t keep those feelings from surfacing in that moment, couldn’t shake the image in his mind of things going terribly wrong.
Of you crumbling into a pile of dust and viscera in front of him.
He swallowed down those fears though, and started to reach out a shaky hand, “Can… Can I…?”
Whatever apprehension he felt, you obviously didn’t share. You shot out a hand immediately, without hesitation. With complete trust in his word. In him.
His trembling palm pressed against your own firm one, fingers still raised taught and high on instinct, careful not to make contact. You slotted your fingers through his own, bringing them down to hold his hand with none of that same carefulness. His knee-jerk reaction was to scold you for being so reckless around his hands, just like he always did, but he held the words back, knowing he didn’t need to anymore. But the subconscious anxiety buzzing within him was just the same.
You didn’t rush him either. Just gave him a squeeze of reassurance, and that was enough to finally encourage him to put a finger down. And then another. Tip by tip resting firmly and fully against your knuckles, until only his pinky remained raised.
He stared down at the horrid appendage, the one that had betrayed him so many times. That he could remember the horrible, gruesome ways in which it had destroyed in full, vivid detail now. Of the damage it could do to not only the world, but had done to his world. To Mon-chan, his mother, his sister…
The League was his world now — you were his world. And the idea of destroying that all with his own hands. It was too much.
No, he decided, starting to pull away. This wasn’t fucking worth the risk.
But you leaned forward then, pressing your lips gently against his, locking him in place. You didn’t deepen it, nor did you pull away. You just held yourself against him, willing him to understand that this would all be okay. That he was a “Grand Commander” now, and with that came taking risks. Risks that you’d stand behind him through to the bitter end.
How you managed to communicate that all in just a kiss — how you always managed to communicate so much with so little — should’ve been a quirk of its own honestly. But regardless of how, the comfort of those unspoken words was enough to spur him forward. Shigaraki brought down his pinky.
And you didn’t turn to dust.
You pulled away in fact, just a little, your eyes fluttering open as a soft, tearful smile spread across your face.
“Tomura—”
He surged forward, all of that hesitation and fear from before vanished in an instant. He shoved your hands together forward, pressing you to the bed as he kissed you with new fervor. His free hand came to hold your face, full and tight, all five fingers scrambling up the length of your cheek, your temple, tangling tight into your hair.
You sobbed happily into his mouth as he pulled his other hand free from yours, running it all across your body, disintegrating your clothes on contact, and then bringing those fingers back up the same route of bare skin, fully in control.
He was just as quick to decay his own clothes as you reached forward to try and tear at the top button of his shirt, which, while haphazardly done, was still too secure for either of your patience. He needed to feel you, all of you. Every inch against every pad of his fingers for the very first time.
And possibly even the last.
He didn’t want to think about that now though. He just wanted to shove you up higher onto the center of the bed, shoving your legs open wide as he kissed down the expanse of your chest and stomach. As he buried himself into your center, the pads of his fingers squeezing painfully tight into the pudge of your thighs.
But you didn’t mind the pain. Not only because it surged the pleasure just that much further, but because it grounded you. Reminded you that this was real. It promised a world — no matter how distant or near-impossible it was in reality — where Tomura Shigaraki could be whole and happy.
Where he could fully be with you.
Your legs strained against his grip, instinctually trying to close as his working tongue pushed you closer and closer to climax. It wasn’t going to take you long at all to reach that peak. After all, the intensity and emotion of the moment aside, it had been a long while since your last coupling. The weeks of recovering from his fight with Re-Destro, the full month you all spent fighting Gigantomachia. And of course, even before that, with the close quarters and stress that came from living on the run and in complete squalor, your escapades had become pretty few and far between. (It was hard to get in the mood when you hadn’t eaten or showered properly in over a week).
So yeah, suffice it to say you were pretty touch-starved at this point, the work of your fingers on lonely nights at the villa having absolutely nothing on Shigaraki’s skillful tongue. And the voraciousness with which he assaulted your sex certainly wasn’t slowing things down for you either.
He didn’t even need to slip his long, knowing fingers into you to have you coming undone — he wouldn’t want to right now anyway, completely losing himself in the way your thighs felt squeezed between his fingers, but that feel of his nails digging into you spurred you on in their own way, ripping a cry from your throat as you came hard under his lips.
Shigaraki smirked up at you, wiping the excess slick from his chin with the meat of his palm, “Missed that.”
You smiled back at him, your own tinged with a bit of sadness as he climbed up over you, hands running up your ribcage. Because you didn’t just miss this. You missed him. And you knew that feeling wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. In fact, it was just getting started.
His brows furrowed at your expression. He’d always been good at reading you, and it’s not like you were being particularly subtle, “You good?”
You chased the melancholy from your smile quickly, planting a happy peck at the corner of his mouth before showing him teeth, “I’m great.”
He hummed, a gentleness overtaking his own features as he stared down at you. Adoration, pure and whole and unrestrained, particularly as he brought a hand back up to cup your face. His fingers spread across the expanse of your skin greedily, his thumb dipping down into your mouth.
They were small gestures, little things that he seemed the most eager to do with his newly-attained range of touch. But it was obvious that they were huge to him. They were a freedom and a comfort that he’d been chasing his entire life. Even if he didn’t know it.
He groaned as you wrapped your own fingers around his cock, guiding him eagerly to your entrance. You had to. As much as he obviously wanted to fuck you, he couldn’t bare to take his fingers off of you for a second. He’d settle for fucking the plush of your thighs if it meant that he could hold you fully in his hands for just a second longer.
You, of course, were not so willing to settle.
“God—fuuck yes,” he growled, low in his throat, as he sank slowly into you, eternally grateful that for once your patience was even more lacking than his.
You grinned up at him`, shifting your hands to settle on the hard curves of his hips, “That’s good, huh?”
It was all he could do to nod shakily, lip biting back a breathy whine and brows knitting hard, as he tried desperately not to blow his load immediately.
You hummed happily at the sight, bringing one of your hands up to run across his cheek and through his hair. You remembered thinking a few months ago just how much those fights with Gigantomachia and Redestro had hardened him, aged him. Foolishly, it had even had you questioning briefly if this would be the end of your relationship. If maybe the shift that occurred during his awakening would chasm too big a valley for you two to bridge.
Of course, in the privacy of the League’s quarters, off of the stages and away from all the new adoring fans (bandwagoners, you and Spinner sometimes like to joke), he had been the same old Tomura Shigaraki, if not a little more confident and level-headed. He still complained about how everyone sitting on his bed eating dinner while he was on strict bed rest was too loud, still invested himself fully and kicking ass at every little game – from video games to cards – they challenged him to in order to pass the time with a cocky little smirk on his face.
And right now, with his face flushed and mouth agape with pleasure, he still looked just as young and ready to take on the world as the day you met him.
Finally he started to rock into you, slow and deep. One of his hands slipped down to the crux of your neck, fingertips biting tight into that smooth skin as he pulled you closer and closer into him. The other found a tight, desperate purchase on the handle of your hip. He used the grip of both to pump harder and deeper into you with every snapping thrust.
Minus the dry spell the two of you had endured over the last couple of months, you and Shigaraki had, overall, had a lot of sex over the last year that you’d known him.
Like, a lot of sex.
Rough sex, soft sex, angry, and fun. And while the man who claimed to hate everything would of course be remiss to admit it, there had indeed been quite a lot of genuine, intense lovemaking mixed in there too. But this right now, with all of the feelings and newness and longing that came with every stroke and whisper?
If Tomura Shigaraki was in fact capable of love, you were positive that this was the representation of that.
His lips dropped hot against the shell of your ear, peppering desperate bites and kisses along the skin as a string of breathy babble spilled out between.
“God fuck, you’re so perfect. Feel so good. Every part of you, so good. So fucking perfect…”
Overwhelmed with emotion and pleasure, it was all you could do to just mewl out his name, “Tomura, Tomura, Tomura—!”
His hips rolled against you with every hard buck, stimulating your aching sex in the way he knew you loved. That would have you clenching and spilling around him over and over again in the way that he loved. You weren’t even sure if it was intentional at this point, or if you had memorized each other’s bodies so well that it just became an instinctual part of his movement. You certainly didn’t have the forethought to drag your nails up the curve of his spine in the way that had him cursing and speeding up immediately.
“F-Fuck, I’m not gonna last like that—” he growled out, rutting desperately into you in spite of his own warning.
“G-Good,” you breathed back, rolling your hips right back into his, “Don’t.”
“B-But—”
He couldn’t get the rest of the words out, his mouth overtaken by a deliciously loud moan instead as he hit that deep, spongy spot inside of you that was heaven for the both of you. You got the message anyway.
But he wanted to keep fucking you. But he wanted this to last.
But he never wanted this to end.
You tangled your hand through his locks, reveling in the fact that there was so much more to hold now, and yanked his head back hard so he’d look at you.
“But nothing,” you smiled through hot, huffing breaths, “You’re fucking crazy if you think this is our only round.”
He stared at you in complete awe for a moment, hips almost coming to a stop as he took in this moment, took in you and the way that you always seemed to know what he was thinking and what he needed, even when he didn’t.
Even if he hadn’t had his own dreams for the future, looking at you now, reveling in all that you’d been through together and all that you’d done for him, thinking about all that you deserved… If he could destroy this rotten society just so that you could have the freedom to be half as happy as you looked in this moment for the rest of your life, he’d gladly fucking do it.
Shigaraki’s face mirrored yours quickly after, a wide lascivious grin spreading across his face. It was all teeth and joy and feral desire to absolutely fucking wreck you. And let himself pound into you with the most reckless abandon he could muster.
You cried out at the new punishing pace, nails pushing hard into his skin, and heels locking sharp around his waist, spurred by the desperate need to have him pound into you harder, deeper, faster. Until you were completely coming apart around him, with his own violent release following close behind.
About two hours later, when you’re lying blissed out, sticky, and half-asleep on Shigaraki’s bare chest, he told you to roll over onto your stomach.
You groaned in protest — while your spirit was eager to roll around the sheets with him as much as possible before the sunrise, your body was sore and spent.
“Not for that,” he said, nudging your shoulder, “Just trust me.”
There was still some visible exasperation as you finally gave in, joints and back aching as you moved them before they were ready. You rolled over onto your stomach, dropping your cheek into the mountain of pillows that awaited you.
Shigaraki followed, moving his body over yours and straddling your hips. You were about to scold him for tricking you when, rather than grinding himself into the curve of your ass or thighs, he simply sat down on your butt and brought his hands to the base of your back. Then he started to knead and you knew exactly what he was doing.
Many a time during your months on the run did you take it upon yourself to try and alleviate some of his stress. Of course one of his favorite ways (and yours too) of doing so was to fuck each other’s brains out. But there were also many times when that wasn’t exactly an option. Whether because there were others around or because he was elbow deep in work for their next operation.
At times like those, when he was hunched over a shitty, half-dead laptop he’d manage to scrounge up from a dumpster, or held his fingers to the bridge of his nose, staring up at the ceiling as he tried to fight off an impending headache from the constant pressures of responsibility — you’d usually come up behind him and rub his neck.
It wasn’t like you made a big show of it or anything. Most of the time you’d just reach a single hand over to him and start to stroke his neck without a word. Not expecting him to say or do anything, not even expecting a thank you. You just wanted to do whatever you could. When it was just the two of you around whatever sorry excuse for a base you’d managed to find, or when you’d been lucky enough to be settled in a safehouse with private rooms, you’d manage to talk him into laying down on his stomach, much like this, and work knots that he could’ve sworn had been there since birth, right out of his back.
He never said anything about it, never thanked you nor told you to stop, but in retrospect he did realize that it was one of the few things that managed to bring him even a smidgeon of peace over those many stressful months, that actually got him through it all. Particularly in the fights against Gigantomachia, where, the second the beast was asleep, you’d insist he lay his head down in your lap while you rubbed softly at his temples, lulling him near instantly to do the same.
It truly meant the world to him, even if he’d never admit it. A deep, foolishly sentimental part of him always wished that he could return the favor.
And now he could.
Of course… That didn’t mean he was any good at it.
“Pinching, you’re pinching,” you winced as his thumbs pressed together, unoiled, on a patch of your back awkwardly.
“Oh shit,” he released his grip, settling to just rub his fingers up and down your back slowly, “Sorry…”
“It’s fine. You just can’t do it that hard if you don’t have any oil or lotion, you know?”
His brows furrowed, “You always did it that hard without any of that crap and it felt fine.
You smirked back at him playfully, “That’s because I’m really good.”
He shot you a look, completely unimpressed.
“I liked what you were doing before,” you conceded.
This was clearly something he wanted to do, and who were you to complain or judge when he was being so unabashedly giving?
“When you were using your palms. Just pressing and kneading with your whole hands rather than trying to do any pressure point stuff is really nice.”
“Yeah, okay…” he nodded, concentration settling over his features as he followed instructions.
You sighed, burying your face back into the pillows as he ran those hot, calloused hands purposefully up and down your back.
This was nice.
Again, while he wasn’t hurting you anymore, the massage itself wasn’t particularly skillful. It did put you at ease though, the way his smell and presence, the way those hands — even when you could never feel them fully against you — always managed to put you at ease.
After at least thirty minutes passed and Shigaraki showed no sign of stopping his ministrations, you peaked back up at him.
“You don’t have to keep this up you know.”
He snorted, “Yeah I know.”
And you should’ve expected that response. Because of course he knew. He wasn’t doing this out of obligation or anything. Tomura Shigaraki didn’t do anything he didn’t want to after all.
You rolled your eyes, “I just mean that you must be tired after all that. Don’t you want to sleep?”
“I’m gonna be asleep for the next four months. I think I’ll be good missing one night.”
The message behind those words was clear. He only had so much time to spend with you, he wasn’t going to waste even a second of it with something as stupid as sleeping.
You should’ve been flattered by that. And of course you were. And truth be told, you had the same mindset as him. You had no plans to sleep that night either, even if he had. But the reminder of his fate for the next four months brought a bitterness to your mouth that overpowered the sweetness of this opportunity.
“Sleep, huh?” you said doubtfully, “Is that what the Doctor is calling it?”
“I guess suspended animation,” he corrected himself, “Or whatever the fuck.”
Amongst other things. Hellish agony he believed was the way the Doctor so eloquently put it. But he’d chosen to spare you (and the rest of the League) those particular details.
Even without that knowledge though, you still weren’t thrilled by the prospect. Of course because you were going to miss him, but mostly because you trusted that fucking doctor about as far as he could throw you. Which, for that portly little creep, you were pretty sure wasn’t far.
Particularly, because now that the excitement and happiness you’d had for Tomura’s newfound quirk control (as well as the fog from your repeated orgasms) was starting to fade into something more grounded, a sneaky little question managed to worm its way into your head.
Had the Doctor been capable of “fixing” his quirk this entire time?
A loud pounding on the door suddenly broke the silence, at least two fists rapping. And then Twice’s muffled call of, “Alright you two, you’ve had your fun! Now come out and play with the rest of us! Take your time! Make babies if ya want!”
You snorted at the call. Shigaraki was substantially less entertained.
“Jiiiin!” Toga whined from the other side of the door, “Leave them alone! They want some privacy!”
Ah, so the two fists knocking must’ve both been Twice.
“But you missed Shigaraki too, Toga!”
“I know, but…”
A stretch of silence. And then apparently Toga’s support for love was outweighed by how much she missed her friend. Because then two more fists started knocking on the door.
“Tomuraaaa, come ooouuuut!!” Toga cried, Twice starting up his own pounding on the door right along with them.
“Yeah, yeah— come out! Stay away !”
“I’ll kill them…” Shigaraki growled, glaring at the door heatedly.
You just giggled as you rolled over under him, dropping him to sit on your waist.
“Oh don’t be like that Tomura,” you cooed, reaching up to cup his cheek in your palm and turning him to look at you, “We should all go hang out. I’m not the only one who’s gonna miss you these next four months, you know.”
He sneered at the suggestion at first, wanting nothing more than to spend the entirety of these next twelve or so hours with his hands holding on to you as tight as possible.
But then he really got thinking about it. About them.
Spinner, Toga, Twice, Compress, hell, even Dabi. There wasn’t going to be time to fuck around with them all once he woke up. They’d be going straight into action, into war. Into the future, wherever that may lead. This wasn’t just going to be his last guaranteed chance to enjoy time with you. It was his last chance to spend time with any of them, until they achieved their goals. And by the end of all that, who even knew how many of them would still be alive?
It was a weight he’d carried around with ease as they planned out their attack over the last couple of months, a weight he’d been carrying for the past year if he was being honest. But it never felt as heavy on his soul at this very moment.
You were right. Absolutely right.
How annoying, he thought with a grumble.
You smiled as you saw that shift on his face, the slight softness that always fell over him when he thought about the League, even if he wasn’t aware of it.
“Alright?” you pressed.
He sighed, “Yeah, yeah. Alright…”
And then let the corner of his mouth quirk up ever so slightly as he looked down at you, so splayed and fucked out and pretty. He leaned down to press a long, but surprisingly chaste kiss on you, for someone that was still sitting atop your naked form with his own.
Because just because he was going to get up, didn’t mean he was going to be in any rush.
Caught up in the feel of each other, neither of you noticed the click of the door and Spinner’s voice announcing, startlingly clear, “Guys, the door is unlocked.”
“Ack— SPINNER!! ”
“Okay, you’ve got that all memorized?” Toga chirped, sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor.
“Yeah, I guess.” Shigaraki, across from her, shrugged, strongly resisting the urge to tell her about how stupid this all was (again).
“Great! So then we start in that first position, crossed arms,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest by example.
Shigaraki sighed and mirrored her.
“Alright! One, two, three!” she sounded off excitedly, before fluttering her hands eagerly and singing, “Misssss Maaaaaryyyyy Mack, Mack, Mack! All dressed in black, black, black…”
You grinned from your position on the couch, glass of wine in hand, as you watched the two. Shigaraki was pointedly not singing along with Toga, but he was matching her claps with impeccable accuracy.
The League had been just as stunned and excited to hear about Shigaraki’s new upgrade. Not to the point of immediately jumping on his dick, but that was obviously more than okay with him.
No, they were more interested in giving him a speedrun through all of the things he’d missed out on in life from not being able to grab it with all five fingers. Playground clap games that Shigaraki, as a boy, couldn’t say he ever played even before his quirk awakened, were apparently of the highest priority to Toga.
“With silver buttons, buttons buttons— Tomura, you’re not singing!”
“And I’m not gonna,” he grumbled back, but not stopping his hands, “Take the W as it is, or don’t take it at all.”
You laughed at the sight, a new glass of wine that you were sure Shigaraki would want by the end of this.
Mr. Compress read Shigaraki’s palms next.
They supposed that this was technically something they could’ve done even before Shigaraki’s upgrade, but with how careful and particular he’d been with anybody getting anywhere near his hands, it definitely wasn’t something they had ever thought to give a go before now.
He decided to read the palm that hadn’t been marred by the fight with Redestro, for more “accuracy” (a reasoning that Shigaraki had openly scoffed at).
“Your love line is quite straight and short,” Compress explained, “Which indicates that you don’t have a lot of interest in love.”
“Booooo,” a red-faced Toga whined from her place on the floor between your legs, shooting Shigaraki an aggressive thumbs down.
You promptly grabbed the half-empty can of chuhai next to her foot, and moved it up to the side table out of her sight. Underage drinking was officially done for the night.
Unbothered, Mr. Compress continued his reading, running his mechanical finger along the top line of Shigaraki’s palm, “Since your love line begins below your middle finger though, it also means that when you do love, you’re quite selfish about it.”
You chuckled, “Hammer? Meet nail.”
“Oh shut up,” he waved you off with his free hand.
“Next is your head line, which represents the way you learn and communicate, as well as your overall intellectualism and thirst for knowledge.” Compress turned to the rest of the group, finger raised as he lectured.
Dabi, from his place leaning judgmentally against the wall across from them, huffed, “Alright, I agree with the Boss on this one. This is really stupid.”
Toga grinned at him, pointing teasingly, “You’re just saying that because you don’t have any more lines in your palm to read! Jelly!”
“I’m not—”
“Jelly!” Twice backed Toga up with a chant, “Jelly, jelly, jelly! Peanut butter !”
Dabi just sighed and returned to his nth beer of the night.
“You have a deep and long head line, that runs separate from your heart line,” Compress continued, “That means that you’re clear and focussed, with a great sense of adventure and enthusiasm for life.”
Shigaraki snorted, “Alright, now I know this is bullshit.”
You flicked his cheek scoldingly, “Just keep going.”
“I also see a singular cross in your heart line, which suggests that you carry some emotional crisis.”
Compress didn’t linger on that point. After all, everyone in this room was dealing with the same thing in one way or another.
“The lifeline is the most interesting in my opinion,” Compress explained, “As opposed to what you might think, it doesn’t have to do with the length of your life, but the quality of it. Yours runs close to the thumb and forks downwards, which means you’re often tired and a pessimist.”
Toga snickered a bit at that, “Still think it’s BS, Tomura?”
“I’m getting the distinct feeling you guys are doing this just as an excuse to insult me to my face.”
You gave his freehand a squeeze, “Oh we don’t need the pretense to do that.”
“ Oi. ”
“There’s a circle in the line too, which predicts great injury or hospitalization.”
The League looked at him pointedly, and he just rolled his eyes.
“The last detail about your life line is a curious one. It’s short and shallow,” Compress said, cocking his head in a way that clearly indicated that he didn’t exactly agree with it, “Which indicates that you’re easily manipulated by others.”
Your frowned.
The rest of the League members pulled faces that clearly showed their similar disagreement with the reading. But you, thinking back to all his interactions with All for One and the Doctor, everything in his life that he’d described to you…
Well, you weren’t so sure.
“Pffft, like I said,” Shigaraki scoffed, gesturing for you to hand him his wine, “It’s all bullshit.”
Deliberately, Mr. Compress did not read Shigaraki’s fate line.
You weren’t sure when the night turned into the League taking turns with choosing tasks for Shigaraki to complete, but you weren’t going to complain. You were already looking forward to Toga’s next round after she’d screamed up into the security camera you all knew Skeptic was watching irritatedly through to get her some string for cat’s cradle.
Spinner’s turn was pretty simple though, and at first, not especially different then before. You thought at first that maybe that was by design, that Spinner just wanted to spend some time with Shigaraki the way he always had.
He wanted to play video games.
Of course, there was a twist.
“Fingers down.” Spinner scolded him for what had to be the fifth time in the last ten minutes, “Toga, I need chicken.”
“Yes, chef!” she chirped back happily.
“God, fucking—” Shigaraki growled, forcing his pinkies back down onto the controller against every instinct in his body.
Years of having to hold things in a particular way had caused him to develop a very particular controller grip. One that, once, back at the bar — god, that felt like it was so long ago now — several of you had tried to mimic, just for the hell of it. (Or more accurately, just to get his goat). And it had been hard . The general consensus had been that no normal human should be able to hold a controller like this, let alone hold a controller like this and be as good at video games as Tomura Shigaraki was.
Now though, the shoe was on the other foot — or more accurately the controller was in the other hands — as you all forced Shigaraki to go a couple rounds of Overcooked while holding the pro controller like a normal fucking person. And it was not going well.
“Stop dropping shit!” you yelled hysterically next to Shigaraki, “Do you see how many burritos we still need to make?!”
“Do you think I’m doing it on purpose?!” he shouted right back, possibly more worked up than you’d ever seen him.
Toga on the other side of him giggled. She and Spinner were having absolutely no trouble at all on their side of the kitchen, “Tomura, I thought you were supposed to be good at video games.”
“I am! I’m just not used to this grip— FUCK! ” he screamed out as his character once again fell off the map, throwing his controller down onto the carpet.
The room erupted in doubled over laughter and “woah woah woah’s”, over the tantrum the sorts of which none of you had seen since the early days back at the bar.
Maybe he wasn’t such a good sport after all.
With Twice’s request, even you had to admit that things were getting a bit ridiculous.
Twice slammed his elbow down onto the table, holding his palm open for Shigaraki to take, “Gimme all you got, boss! Go easy on me, please!”
Shigaraki, on the other hand, seemed the most enthusiastic about this one, placing his own elbow on the table and grabbing Twice’s hand tight in his own with a cocky grin.
You suspected that the many beers he’d knocked back (not to mention the entire bottle of wine the two of you had killed together) played a decent role in that, but it was also impossible to deny that their dear leader was fiercely competitive, no matter the game.
“Ready?” you asked, looking between the two. They nodded, and you begrudgingly stepped further into your role as referee, clapping as you counted down, “Three, two, one— arm wrestle!”
The room blew up in a (small) chorus of screams and cheers. Actually, even that was generous. As referee you were expressly forbidden from picking sides (Twice was very serious about that), and Compress and Dabi were too composed and too uninterested respectively to participate. It was just Spinner and Toga going wild and slamming their hands on the table as Shigaraki’s and Twice’s muscles strained against each other — although they were more than loud enough for the whole group.
“Go, Jin go!” Toga cheered rhythmically, “Go, Jin go!”
“Kick his ass, Shigaraki!”
The match lasted a respectable amount of time, both sides putting up a pretty damn good fight. And while Twice was built like a tank and was no slouch either — he probably would’ve won this by a moderate margin a couple of months ago — Shigaraki’s month-long escapade with Gigantomachia had given him a strength and will that surpassed Twice’s own.
“Arrrrgh— damn it !!” Twice shouted as Shigaraki slammed his fist down into the table definitively, “Great game Shigaraki! Die!”
You chuckled as Twice got up from his seat, head dropped in defeat, then turned to Spinner, who was already rolling out his dominant shoulder.
“Next challenger,” you gestured to the seat, “You’re up.”
Dabi didn’t have any requests throughout the night (surprise, surprise), just a lot of eyerolls and snippy commentary. But he also didn’t ever split off from any of you, which made you consider that he may not have thought this was all as stupid as he claimed.
The part of the night he seemed to enjoy (or at least, not vocalize his annoyance or the group’s childishness over), the most, was when around 4 am rolled around.
Out of ideas and exhausted, but absolutely refusing to go to bed, the League decided to take a particularly noisy and drunken nightwalk around the property (much to the dread of whichever resident’s window they passed). This quickly turned into an equally harebrained climb up onto the roof so that you could all watch the sun come up.
That sunrise was still a good hour or so away though by the time you all got settled up there, and as chatty, adrenaline-filled, and drunk as most of you were, the late hour and comforting breeze was starting to get to you all.
Twice and Toga had long fallen asleep, heads resting together. Compress, with his hands folded over his stomach and Spinner, curling up tighter into a ball with every minute, were not far behind. Dabi’s eyes were closed, but he might’ve still been conscious. He didn’t make a sound either way.
Only Shigaraki seemed to be wide awake, staring up at the waning moon with a complex expression on his face. He looked like he was thinking hard, but also somewhat at peace. Grateful for this moment, but already mourning its inevitable end. Exhilarated by the future that began for him tomorrow.
Wondering just what exactly he’d be leaving behind in the past.
You watched this all cross his face, not shifting between expressions, but clearly feeling it all at once. Overwhelmed, and unprepared to process it all. The one thing that seemed to keep him grounded was the hand that held yours, tight and warm. Anytime tonight that his hands weren’t occupied with whatever silly ringer the rest of the League was putting through, he was threading those fingers right back with yours, savoring the one new experience that he truly wanted to indulge the most in.
And you were more than happy to let him.
He shifted a bit in surprise as you nuzzled into his shoulder, squeezing his hand just a bit tighter in your own.
“You’re still awake,” he commented, voice horse with the sleep his body clearly wanted.
“So are you,” you mumbled against the fabric of his shirt, just breathing him in.
“Yeah, but you need sleep,” he chuckled, “Like I said, I’ll be having more than enough of it for the next four months.”
You stilled against him, frowning.
Right. The next four months.
Shigaraki seemed to sense your shift in mood, and kicked himself. That was a stupid thing to mention again when you’d finally managed to put it out of your mind for a few hours, and when that fate itself was even fewer hours away.
He ran his thumb with a restlessness that was once reserved for his nails against his neck. Even with that itch seemingly gone for good from his life, Shigaraki was still a fidgety person by nature. Especially when uncomfortable.
“You guys will be busy,” he grumbled, “Planning the attacks, organizing your regiments, training… You’ll barely even notice I’m gone.”
You didn’t comment on the stupidity of that statement, even though it was a really, really stupid and patently untrue thing for him to say. Because frankly, it wasn’t what was on your mind at the moment, not the front of it anyway. Of course the fact that you were going to miss him and these days together was a constant parasite, gnawing and suckling in the back of your brain. But truly, your current concern was a bit less melancholy. Less abstract.
Shigaraki had full control over his quirk now. And it was great and beautiful and nothing short of a miracle of course, you wouldn’t trade this night and all the memories opened up by that particular door for anything in the world. And yet you could not fight that question that had first struck your mind the first moment you had to actually think about it.
Why now?
That question wrenched through you painfully, no matter how much you loved the feel and sight of his hand in your own. Because sure, Shigaraki had been out of touch with the Doctor ever since All for One’s arrest. But what about the last sixteen some years that he’d been at the personal beck and call of All for One and his ward? Why hadn’t he ever adjusted Shigaraki’s quirk then? Was it a matter of technology, a breakthrough in quirk alteration he only recently was able to make? Or was it something else? Was there something bigger going on here?
What was he not telling you all?
Shigaraki looked down at you, giving that flat expression of his that you knew translated to concern. You looked up from your locked hands to meet his gaze. He stared into you, those deep pools of carmine that stood so hard against the rest of the world, now soft and imploring. Even more than they were for the League. This look was for you.
“Tomura—”
“It’s gonna be worth it.”
You paused, that newfound calm confidence in his voice silencing you in an instant.
“I know these next four months are gonna be hard for all of us. This war is gonna be hard for all of us,” he said, turning to stare back up at the stars, “But it’s all going to be worth it in the end. We’re gonna make a new world where you’re all able to live as you want to. To be free. And this power that the Doctor is giving me... That’s going to assure that it all happens.”
“And… You don’t think that you can do all that now?” you breathed, “You’ve gotten so strong already, Tomura. Maybe you don’t even need that power.”
He turned back to you with a small but sincere smile. The one that betrayed that deep down tenderness he always tried so earnestly to hide. That called his bluff, revealing that there were feelings other than hate in that cursed body of his.
The one that made your heart skip a beat.
“I don’t want to take any chances,” he said, bringing his free hand — all five fingers — to rest on your cheek, “Not when it comes to my comrades’ dreams.”
Not when it comes to you .
Those unspoken words were loud and clear.
You swallowed something tight in your throat, fighting the burn that threatened to overflow from your eyes, the worry that brawled to burst out from your chest and ruin everything. But you had no choice but to shove it all down.
Forcing a smile onto your face, you squeezed his hand tight.
“I understand.”
His own smile remained the same, although a bit of relief did seem to fall over his eyes. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to your temple and stayed there, breathing as much of you in as he possibly could.
Shigaraki had made up his mind. He was going to go through with this. And there was nothing you could say, no concern you could voice or ultimatum you could give that would change his mind. This decision was beyond his own wants and dreams at this point. It was for something far more important to him, even if he’d never admit it.
This was for all of you.
And who were you to stand in the way of that?
The fears wouldn’t ease with time, the nagging in the back of your head wouldn’t be forgotten through training or planning or anything else that you could do in the next four months to try and drown it out. But you just had to suck it up. You had to support him.
You could talk about your fears and the Doctor and any secret ambitions he may have after this ordeal. After the war even. You could talk about anything then, really. It was only four months after all.
And the two of you would soon have all the time in the world.
More Posts from Flamme-shigaraki-spithoe and Others
Omg yes same ! 😭😂
my favorites can easily be put into a pattern
Don't worry xD you somehow get a lot of my oc personna 😭😂😂🫡
Oooooh wanna have headcanon with my oc tooo !
That would be so kind please TvT oh and take your time don't overwork yourself you post so fast omg i love ur account !
She got red (not ginger )dyed hair and blue eyes 5’1 and an alternative clothing style with many ezrs piercing✨✨
If you don't want to it's fine have a good day/night !
A/N: I'm out of bw images SORRY! SOS WHY IS HE LAYING THAT HELP ME😭 also sorry if this is butchered or not correct...sorry it's so short, I wasn't so sure what to do with just one small pic :(
Warnings: No nsfw...😔
He sometimes gets her glasses from her face and wears it ontop of father.
he calls her staple ears like he calls dabi staple-face.
he teases her about being so tiny sometimes and stands proud as if he isn't 5'9 LMFAOAOAO
toga loves her and has given her the same hairstyle as her!
mr.compress views her as an educated individual (glasses) only to find out yes she is smart, but also stupid.
she seems like she has very genz-ish slang, has probably repeated brainrot infront of the league. (Twice saying skibidi sos)
Tomura and her play lan games with spinner, or they trio in league!
she's not good with gadgets, she knows how the basics but when it comes to harder stuff she calls Tomura.
she wears Tomura's hoodie alot, and for some reason it takes way longer to smell on her than Tomura!
she looks like she'd play horror games while trying to order the league pizza and accidentally scream into the phone (true experience)
Tomura likes to play around with her belts and compares her to dabi, calls her emo too as if he doesn't dress like whatever old people call emo aswell.
he calls her chains distractions because it jingles alot.
he does like alternative fashion it's just not on his own body, he thinks it looks better on others, also he just couldn't be bothered to care what he looks like.
she's easily frightened and accidentally woke the whole league up while trying to go to the bathroom at night and Kurogiri was doing the same thing, but since she was half asleep, it's dark and she didn't know he w as there, he spoke up and well, the rest is history.
her and spinner are actually really close and sometimes geek out about games/game lore without Tomura.
she helps Kurogiri clean and cook around and bosses Tomura to clean his room.
she screams really loud and Tomura just stares at her after it.
—Ake 2024
A new life for Tomura part 5
Here is a doodle i made of my oc in color quickly !
I just sped run reading you oc x Shiggy comic and shes so cute- I wanna try my hand at drawing her (if your ok with it ofcourse), and I was wondering if you have any information on her and also if you could tell me what she looks like colored ^^
Omg yes of course ! Well first she' like a huuuge simp ! She's a weeb too tbh ! Get flustered easy but is very very caring ! And even if we don't currently see it 'cause she's in her pijama she have an alt clothing style ! With color well she have red dyed hair and blue eyes, and a pale skin ! I'm so happy you fond her cute and like the story ! I would love to see the resultof your drawing ! Omg i'm so happy you asked ^^ sorry if the description is a bit short my oc is pretyy self insert aaaand yk describing soemone that is similar to you is sometime hard !
Taking Care, Taking What's Mine - A "Play Nice" Commission
Summary: A Play Nice AU Chapter, in which, rather than taking the high road and trying to build a real relationship with the girl he's been sextorting for weeks, Tomura Shigaraki baby-traps her instead.
CW: Quirkless!AU, Dub-Con, Smut, Extortion, Baby-Trapping, Forced Pregnancy, Love-Bombing, Manipulation, Power Play, Possessive Shigaraki, Yandere Shigaraki, Morning Sickness, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat
AO3 Link
A/N: Happy fucking Father's Day readers!! Lmao! I got this AMAZING commission a while ago to write an AU of my AU (a fanfic writer's dream come true honestly), of Shigaraki baby-trapping MC and well, while it took longer then I meant it to to come out, I'm so glad that I could post it on Father' Day of all days lmao.
Anyway though, this was so much fun to write. Shigaraki has been on the journey of bettering himself for so long in Play Nice now, it was a total blast returning to form and writing him nice and scummy again.
I'd love to do more of these honestly, so as a reminder: I give discounts on Commissions that take place in my AU's.
Play Nice, Burnt Bridges, Step by Step -- all of them. They're super fun for me to write and most of the heavy-lifting of ideating and plotting has already been done for them, so I'm happy to write fics like this for cheaper. :)
Anyway, enjoy some forced parentification on this day of dads. xD
“Hey, hey— are you alright?”
She lifted her head from where she’d been resting it against her gym locker, the coolness of the metal being the first thing to even remotely ease the headache she’d been fighting for the last three days.
“Yeah, of course,” she tried to force a weak smile as Nejire approached her, clearly concerned, “Why do you ask?
The captain was dressed in her practice suit. And she quickly realized that so were all the other girls, most of them already making their way out the doors to the pool deck. She was the lone straggler who hadn’t even managed to undo her uniform tie yet. Nejire looked over at these girls, and then back to her, wordlessly demonstrating why that should be obvious.
She laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head, “Okay, I guess I’m feeling a bit under the weather today…”
And that was the understatement of the century. She felt like absolute shit . Piling on top of that stubborn pounding in her head were a pair of really sore tits, a lethargy that stuck with her no matter how much vending machine coffee she chugged, and cramps that had shot straight out of hell and directly into her uterus.
But to be honest, she couldn’t complain too much about these ailments. In fact, she was pretty damn relieved. These were all her tell-tale signs of PMS. They were a little worse than usual this time around sure, but if that was the tradeoff for the relief of not being pregnant, she’d take it in a heartbeat. Her period was only one day late at this point and it had all but paralyzed her with fear.
Of course in retrospect, the fear did seem a bit silly. After all, Shigaraki’s creepy family doctor had warned her there might be some changes.
“I never start patients new to birth control immediately on a Long Acting Reversible Contraception,” he explained, “Especially not teenagers.”
“Why not?” she demanded, “It’s reversible, right? It’s not like you’re tying my tubes or anything.”
“No, but you never know how your body is going to react to the hormonal shift. You could develop acne, weight gain, hair growth—”
“I don’t care about that superficial stuff.”
“... Migraines, blood clots, depression,” he continued, looking at her pointedly.
She looked away, feeling a bit stupid for interrupting him now that he’d listed the more serious side-effects.
“I’m not saying you have to stay on the pill forever. But give it a few months, see how you feel on it. It can help us better determine which long-term birth control is best for your body without any unnecessarily invasive procedures.”
She shuddered at the very thought of being stuck in this set-up with Shigaraki for months. She hoped he’d get bored of her sooner rather than later.
Well, on the brightside, at least this sketchy-ass doctor seemed to be as interested in looking under her skirt as she was having him down there. However, this still left the ever so pertinent issue of:
“Okay, but there’s still the issue of getting the pills. No pharmacy is going to give me these without signed parental consent.” She had the always convenient Japanese purity culture to thank for that.
Ujiko simply smiled and pulled out a wheel of birth control pills from his medical bag right then and there.
“Consider these the same as this appointment,” he said, cupping his hands over hers and placing the wheel firmly into her palm, “ Off the record. ”
And then the rest of the “appointment” had descended into one of extremely thinly-veiled intimidation that bizarrely enough, she’d relied on Shigaraki of all people to save her from. By that point, she’d been scared so shitless she had very little argument left in her to try and reason him into just giving her the damn IUD.
The regret of not standing her ground on the issue did hit her later that night on the train home. Particularly when she thought over the fact that the way they were keeping these pills off the record was by having her pick up her refills through Shigaraki. The idea of giving him even more power over her like that made her feel sick to her stomach. And yes, while logically she knew that he had just as much motivation to keep her from getting pregnant as she did (she had a feeling All for One would not take too kindly to his star successor knocking up a lowly commoner such as herself), she still just had a bad feeling about the whole thing.
So she’d resolved herself on her first refill day to completely lay into Shigaraki for any level of tomfoolery he may get up to in this situation. There would be no forgetting, no being too busy to pick up the pills for her, absolutely nothing. She was ready to rain full fire and brimstone on him if there was even a hint of bullshit.
But to her surprise (and relief), she hadn’t even crossed the threshold of his bedroom before he was tossing a new pack to replace her wheel with. Simple and nonchalant, and then he was just as quick as always to badger her about getting her clothes off already, get on the bed already, break up with your boyfriend already.
It was the same old, same old — for better or for worse. Even if she couldn’t trust Tomura Shigaraki himself, that action had at least ensured that she could trust his own desire for self-preservation.
And that was better than nothing she supposed.
Back in the locker room, Nejire asked her, “Do you think you’re coming down with something?”
She smiled at her friend, joking, “Nothing I don’t come down with every month.”
Nejire tilted her head in confusion for a moment before the lightbulb visibly lit up in her head.
“Ohhhhh,” Nejire nodded sympathetically, “Yeah, Aunt Flow can be a real meanie sometimes, huh?”
She laughed, then winced as the action worsened the throbbing in her head, “Damn it— you can say that again.”
Nejire’s brows furrowed and she brought a hand to the small of her friend’s back, “Hey, why don’t you take this afternoon off?”
She looked back to her, surprised, “Oh no, I couldn’t…”
“Sure you could!” Nejire chirped, “And honestly, you probably should. We’re working on our weakest strokes today. I had you down to work on your fly.”
Visible dread filled her as she thought about doing that much undulation in her current state.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Nejire laughed, “Seriously, go home. We’ll miss you, but we love you too. So we want you to take care of yourself.”
She debated a little more internally, one other loose thread dropping into her mind’s eye.
“If I do… Do you mind—”
“I’ll let Mirio know,” she shot her a wink as she clarified, “ After practice. I’ll let him know you just need the peace and quiet.”
She smiled at Nejire, genuinely grateful. This. This right here was what made all of the bending over backwards she did to fit in and please others worth it. To be cared about by such a good person.
The warmth of that care stayed with her all the way out to the school gates, where she was then immediately filled with dread upon realizing that she’d need to go in one of two directions depending on where she was going after school: the train station home, or the walk to Shigaraki’s.
And just which direction she was scheduled to go today.
She let out a long groan, anguished and loud enough to startle a couple members of the going home club that passed her. For once though, she didn’t care about her reputation, she was too focussed on what a goddamn nightmare she was falling into.
She pulled out her cellphone with a sigh. Yes she knew the effort was probably futile, but damn her if she didn’t at least try.
Yup. She could’ve seen that coming from a mile away. She sighed as she shoved her phone back into her bag and started the very slow trek over to Shigaraki’s.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding,” Shigaraki said as he looked her over his doorway, “You look like shit.”
She shot him a wholly unimpressed look as she shoved past him into his bedroom.
“Yeah, I fucking told you.”
Shigaraki, surprisingly, didn't have anything to say about her tone, even with her brusqueness towards him being more than usual. He just watched her drop down face first onto his bed and curl her legs up into her chest.
She sighed at the slight relief the position gave her. While dealing with Shigaraki’s antics was about the last thing she wanted right now, she supposed that at least she could be grateful for how much closer his apartment was to her school then her own home was. It saved her a good fifty-minutes of white-knuckling a train stanchion to keep down her groans of pain. Now at least she could get the relief of laying down much sooner.
If only for a little bit.
“What’s going on?”
She bristled at Shigaraki’s voice, the unwelcome reminder that she wasn’t going to be able to truly relax right now. And while there didn’t seem to be any entendre or even impatience in his question, the fact that his voice was getting closer to her was enough to make her suspicious.
“My head aches, my back aches, my boobs ache — everything aches,” she grumbled down into his sheets, “And I feel like I’ve been donkey-kicked straight in the uterus.”
“You start your period or something?”
He didn’t sound sarcastic when he asked it, not that typical boy way of asking any time a girl did something they considered “moody”. It was a genuine question. But it irritated her all the same.
Everything seemed to be irritating her these days.
“About to,” she answered, “It’s like a day late, but it’s definitely coming.”
She felt the bed shift a bit as he sat next to her.
“Are you nauseous at all?”
Her brows furrowed, a bit confused by the interest.
“I guess a little,” she answered, because even though it was mild, there was a certain turn in her stomach that wasn’t unlike motion sickness, “But honestly, I think it’s just from the pain. This has been going on for like three days.”
“Have you taken anything for it?”
She could’ve laughed if she wasn’t so annoyed by the reminder of all her futile attempts to alleviate this. Because of course he was looking for a quick fix so they could fuck already.
“I’ve taken everything for it,” she groaned, “Nothing’s working.”
He just hummed in response, and then she could feel the sheets behind her dip a bit as he repositioned himself. Into what orientation, she wasn’t sure. She was about to turn her head back and ask him what he was doing when she felt his hand featherlight across her hip.
And between her legs.
“No, Shigaraki please,” she whined, pulling he knees closer into her chest, “I’m not kidding, I’m seriously in a lot of pain—”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Tell that to your hand then,” she snapped as his fingers tried to wiggle their way between her clenched thighs.
“I mean I’m not doing anything for me. This is for you.”
“Oh is it now,” she deadpanned.
“I’m not gonna fuck you,” he insisted, more irritably this time, “Orgasms help with cramps, right?”
She stilled, sufficiently stumped by that particular statement. Because yes, she could say from experience that they absolutely did. She’d spent many a nasty period with her fingers latched to clit to chase that particular path of relief.
…but why the hell did Shigaraki know that?
She gasped as she suddenly felt the gentle roll of her clit under three fingers. Apparently, in her moments of distracted deliberation, Shigaraki managed to push his hand past the plush lock of her thighs and under the hem of her panties.
“Sh-Shigaraki…” she whined, pushing her elbow blindly and weakly back towards him.
He caught it gently in his free palm and, rather than trying to pin or strain it in whatever which way he desired, like usual, he just held it there. Didn’t even hold it in place really, just shielded himself against its determined path towards his ribs.
“I’m serious,” he said, uncharacteristically soft, “I’m trying to help you.”
She finally mustered up the strength to — despite how much her aching abdomen hated her for it — turn and glower at Shigaraki.
“No funny business?” she pressed.
He settled his own flat expression on her, “When have I ever been funny?”
More times than she’d like to admit honestly, but she got what he was saying here. He was a pretty serious, straightforward person on principle. He didn’t bullshit, he didn’t pull cheap tricks, and, shockingly enough, he didn’t typically lie. Frustrating as it was, Tomura Shigaraki was pretty much always unapologetically himself and he always did what he wanted.
So if he said that he was doing this to help her, then she supposed that she didn't actually have a lot of reason to distrust him.
Plus, his fingers hadn’t stopped their soft, but affective ministrations between her legs, and the pleasant sparks of heated relief they were sending through her were undeniable.
She turned back onto her side with a sigh that was half-exasperation, half pleasure.
“Fine,” she said, throwing back quickly before he got too victorious, “But fuck around and I’ll kick you.”
Shigaraki just chuckled, a soft throaty sound that shouldn’t have sent the chills up her spine that it did, “Yeah, yeah…”
In one motion, careful not to jostle her too much, Shigaraki both pulled her back and scooched himself closer, until her back was nestled snug against his surprisingly firm chest and her head laid in the crux of his bicep.
With this new closeness he was able to be a bit more deliberate with the angle and pressure he used to rub at her swollen sex. And, while she hated to admit it, the increased blood flow between her legs was causing the pressure within her to build quite a bit faster than usual. Enough so that it had her letting go of the tension in her neck and joints — the automatic stress reaction she had to any of Shigaraki’s displays of intimacy — and letting the weight of her head drop fully into his embrace.
A shuddering sigh left Shigaraki at that clear relinquishing of control, of the way she truly let herself lay back and relax into him. It gave him the encouragement he needed to enjoy her to the fullest extent that he wanted her as well, burying his nose deep into her hair.
He started to stroke wider circles around her, the flats of his fingers never leaving her clit, but now allowing the tips to dip softly into her entrance. He didn’t push them in at all past his first knuckles, just enough to catch some of that growing wetness and spread it all across her fluttering lips.
“A-Ah—” she gasped out, “Sh-shit…”
“Like that?” he rasped, hot against her ear.
She bit her lip, nodding needily, “Mm— Mm-hmm…”
He groaned at the response, doubling down on that motion as he started to stud long, hot kisses down the back of her jaw and neck. The feeling, so gentle and intimate and good in combination to the way he worked her sex, had her unconsciously rocking her hips into his touch, and back into his own.
Vaguely through the haze, she could feel the familiar outline of his stiff cock against the cleft of her ass, but shockingly he didn’t try to grind it against her for relief. If anything actually, when her own hips moved unconsciously back against it, he actually shifted his own hips away, anglind them down so his erection pushed into the bed instead. As if he didn’t want her to feel it, that he was concerned about her feeling pressured by its presence.
She didn’t have the chance to think too much into that though, not when his fingers were coaxing her closer to the edge by the second. The mess between her legs was obscene at this point, through teary eyes she could see the overflow of it spreading wide across her thighs and pooling down in the sheets.
“God look at you, so fucking wet,” he groaned, lips having made it down to her shoulder and staying there so that he could have a better view of her writhing under his touch, “You needed this, huh? Fucking needed me…”
She buried her face into his arm to muffle her moans, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of an answer, but also not wanting him to stop.
By some act of God, Shigaraki didn’t push for that answer either. She wasn’t sure why he’d abandoned his typical demands and taunts, didn’t threaten to stop until she gave him the verbal submission and begrudging praise he always wanted. Nor did she stop to think about why, she just let the gratitude course through her, spurred further and wider by the waves of heat rushing through her body, threatening — promising — to overflow.
Shigaraki could feel that axiomatic tension in her body, the boiling point it promised, and sped up his hand to stoke the flames.
“You’re close aren’t you? Oh yeah, you’re close…” his kisses turned to nips at her neck between progressively more demanding growls, “Gonna be a good girl and come for me?”
Fuck, hearing those last words spill from his mouth should not have done what it was doing to her. But it was speeding up her peak, and it was speeding it up audibly.
“Yeah, yeah that’s good, really good. Let it go. Go ahead, be a good girl and let it go.”
She cried out, her arching back forcing her face forward and mouth unmuffled as finally, finally her body went blissfully loose, the pain of the past few days overtaken by waves of heat and pleasure. One after the other, her hormone-driven sensitivity wrung out multiple orgasms, and his frantic fingers were happy to work her through each one until she was begging him to stop.
“Good girl, yeah, yeah, just like that. That’s a good girl,” he continued to praise, returning time and again to that phrase he could feel her getting unconsciously excited over, “That’s my good girl…”
It was just a few blurry moments of consciousness after that. She was pretty sure she whined something like “too much” to him at some point, and he whispered back something that she was sure was just utterly debauched right back. Or maybe it was sweet nothings, he had really favored those by the end of this escapade after all.
Whatever it all was, she supposed it didn’t matter. All that mattered in those seconds of labored breaths and fluttering lashes was the beautiful bliss and relief that finally overtook her body. That allowed her to immediately fall asleep in his arms.
Shigaraki held her there for a long time after. He raked his eyes greedily across her body, letting himself carve every detail deep into his memory. He knew he didn’t need to, not anymore. Her boyfriend, her parents, hell, whether or not she got into Todai with him, it was all a non-issue now. There was no reason for him to lose this anymore. She wasn’t going anywhere in life without him. He was going to be able to revel in this sight for the rest of his life now. And he just couldn’t believe how lucky he was for that.
He chuckled a bit at that. Well, maybe lucky wasn’t the right word. This was all by design after all, weeks of very deliberate planning and deception. It was just like he’d always been taught. It didn’t matter what hand you’ve been dealt — and Tomura Shigaraki had certainly been dealt a shit hand in a lot of ways — a real winner made his own luck.
Sensei would be mad, Shigaraki knew that much. Everyone would be mad in fact, but he didn’t care. He was just following the fundamental lesson Sensei himself had instilled in him the day they met.
Take whatever you want, and fuck all the rest.
Several minutes into hearing those sweet deep breaths of unconsciousness from the beautiful girl in his arms, Shigaraki finally peeled his fingers away from her cunt.
And slid a wide hand up to cradle her tummy.
It was dark when she woke up, not a single one of Shigaraki’s many monitors or television lit the windowless room. That was odd for a couple of reasons, the first of which being that the overhead lighting had definitely been on when she’d dozed off. The second of which was that any time Shigaraki wasn’t preoccupied with helping her study or studying her, he was chronically attached to at least one screen, if not multiple, so it was more than a bit odd for him to have zero on. The reason for the lack of blue light however became quickly apparent as her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness.
Shigaraki wasn’t here.
She was totally alone in his room, alone and tucked into his bed. Had he gone to the bathroom or something? But then why would all the lights be off? It seemed like he’d probably been gone for a while. Weird…
She threw off the covers and flipped her legs around with much more ease than she’d done anything over the last three days, much to her relief. However long she’d been out, the sleep had clearly done her some good. The pounding in her head and pelvis had finally ceased, perhaps just in time for her to actually start her period. She did feel some dampness between her legs after all. Although…
Her face heated up as she remembered the much more likely cause of that.
Damn it, she thought with a groan, dropping her head into her hands. She couldn’t believe that she actually let him do that to her, for her. He was going to get entirely the wrong idea from it. The idea that she might actually like him and want to spend time with him, that there was some kind of connection between them that extended past the time she was required to spend with him to keep him satisfied. And she absolutely could not deal with that.
Being his little sex toy was one thing. A demoralizing thing, yes, but a manageable one. She’d seen the way Shigaraki treated things he objectified — games and magazines and the like. He got bored of them quickly. And if she was one of those things in his eyes, then eventually he’d get bored with her too and she’d be free.
If he was attached to her though? Had found connection in her and a desire to keep her in his life? She didn’t even want to consider that nightmare scenario.
She made her way out into the hallway, looking up and down from the empty bathroom on one end of the hall to the top of the staircase on the other. She didn’t have to contemplate the lack of presence on this floor for long though, when she heard Shigaraki’s voice echoing up from downstairs, talking emphatically to Kurogiri, she assumed.
She couldn’t hear exactly what he was talking about, but whatever it was, he was being particular about it. “Don’t overcook” and “perfect” were a few of the words she managed to catch, so it was about food, maybe? The accompanying sounds of sizzling pans and clanking cookware would certainly support that. As would the smell that suddenly hit her.
It wasn’t an unpleasant smell by any means. In fact, it was salmon, one of her favorites. But for some reason at that moment, the smell hit her with a particular intensity that made her feel overwhelmed.
And really fucking nauseous.
She just barely made it to the toilet at the end of the hall, not even fully down to her knees by the time she was emptying her stomach into the bowl. It wasn’t just a brief moment of sickness either. The bouts were loud and long, she was sure that it echoed throughout the entire apartment. It left her red-faced, skin covered and hair clumped with sweat, not to mention still gagging long after she had nothing left to gag on.
A hand she barely even noticed came to rest on the small of her back in the midst of it all. It was only in the aftermath, spent and dry-heaving that she could process the fact that it was Shigaraki, kneeling at her side, patiently stroking small circles into her clammy skin and encouraging her softly.
“Let it out. Just let it all out.”
She groaned once she finally seemed to have a solid thirty seconds of dry, steady breath. And Shigaraki used that respite to nudge a glass of water into her hands.
“Here.”
She didn’t argue or agree, just took it from him with shaky hands, tossing half of it just into her mouth to swish around and spit the remaining bitterness from her tongue.
“Drink some of it too.”
She nodded shakily, still too drained and disoriented to be irritated with his telling her what to do, or suspicious of the fact that he was being so nice.
And still, as she took entirely too long to finish the rest of her water with timid little sips, he just knelt on the ground with her, moving the hand on her back to rest on her knee, thumb rubbing circles into the spot where a bruise would undoubtedly form.
Finally, after a long, silent stretch, she managed to croak out, “W-What time is it?”
“Only seven,” he answered, “Kurogiri’s got dinner almost ready downstairs. Seared salmon, brown rice, avocado salad—”
She whined, shaking her head roughly at the very implication of food.
“Don’t like salmon?”
“I-I do… It’s just—” she gagged a little as she remembered that smell that had set this all off in the first place, “Th-The smell right now. It’s too much…”
“Oh yeah…” he nodded understandingly, muttering something to himself that she couldn’t quite make out. It sounded kind of like, “Heightened” and “Read about that…”
Her brows furrowed a bit, frustrated and confused. She was getting the feeling that he was really not telling her something.
“W-What?”
Shigaraki just waved her off, “No, that’s fine, that’s fine. Salmon’s not the only thing he made. There’s sauteed spinach, wakame tofu soup, toasted—”
Jesus Christ, was Kurogiri cooking for an army down there or something?
Well, whoever it was all for, and as delicious as it all sounded in theory, imagining those foods in practice right now was making her feel sick all over again.
“Mm-mm, Mm-mm!” she whined, shaking her head again.
She didn’t want to risk opening her mouth right now, lest she blow chunks all over the front of Shigaraki’s shirt. Although wouldn’t that be a nice little serving of karma for him…
“You need to eat something,” he insisted, more lecturey than she’d ever heard him, but with a strange gentleness to his voice as well, “And you need to drink some more too. You’re totally dehydrated.”
She shook her head more emphatically at that, which only resulted in her falling forward into his chest.
He caught her before she could fall any further, scolding her not too harshly, in fact, a bit whimsically, “Is this how you’re gonna be the whole time?”
She pulled her head back to look at him, a confused furrow in her brows that brought the corners of his lips up.
“It’s not a bad look on you to be honest. All weak and petulant,” he brought a hand to pinch lightly at her cheek, “It’s kinda cute actually.”
Her eyes narrowed, finally feeling her stomach steady enough in her to be annoyed. He chuckled, just as amused and endeared by this look as the last.
“Well how about okayu?” he offered with a patronizing little lilt, “And maybe some ginger tea?”
He clearly wasn’t going to let this go. And infuriatingly, he was right not to. She definitely was in no shape to go home on this empty stomach.
She sighed.
“Yeah… Yeah okay.”
Going at her own shaking, snailish pace, Shigaraki helped her up onto her legs, pulling her immediately into his side as he led her back towards his bedroom. Normally she’d protest, stick an elbow right into his ribs and storm on ahead of him, but honestly she needed the help right now. So she sucked it up and let him lead her back into his bed.
But that didn’t stop her from eying him suspiciously as he propped his pillows up behind her and tucked her back in under his comforter, the overall way he doted and fretted over her, even stopping to look back at her one more time from the doorway before he returned downstairs to give Kurogiri the new marching orders.
She dropped her head back against the pillows when finally alone, a bad feeling settling heavier and heavier in her stomach. This was beyond weird, the way he was acting. Sure, the guy was overbearing and constantly demanding of her attention, stupidly needy even. But doting? Not only willing but eager to put her needs ahead of his own? Caring deeply about her actual well-being and not just what he wanted to be her well-being? This was all way too out of character for him.
“…You can tell me. If he bothered you, I mean. N-Not just the Doctor either… If um… If anything’s bothering you.”
She sighed at the memory. Alright, maybe she wasn’t giving him enough credit. He’d shown at least some capability and even interest in her wants and well-being, he wasn’t a complete monster.
But still, all of this? The cooing and the caring and the, erm, servicing even that he’d done? It felt like too much. Like she was missing something really key about it all.
Like something was wrong .
Whether she ended up getting lost in that train of thought for long, or Kurogiri had already had some okayu whipped up downstairs, she wasn’t sure, but she was startled by how quickly it seemed that Shigaraki returned with a breakfast tray in hand. She cocked her head as he set it up over her lap, this was a lot more robust than she was expecting, and, she realized as she examined everything on the tray, a lot more stocked as well.
There was okayu, front and center for her, yes. But also on the tray was another small bowl of soup (looked like the wakame that Shigaraki had mentioned, a thing of plain yogurt (the really fancy kind that came in the glass jars), a glass of orange juice…
And a little dish of four pills.
Painkillers or antiemetics maybe? They looked more like vitamins…
“Go ahead and start with the okayu if you want,” Shigaraki explained as he climbed up into the bed next to her, “But I want you to try and get some of the wakame and yogurt down too…”
As he settled down, his legs flush with her own, he continued to rattle off instructions and explanations for the rest of her tray, sending her mind completely spinning, faster and faster, like a goddamn Gravitron.
And she was ready to get the fuck off.
“...if nothing else though, take the vitamins. You need the folate, calcium, iron, and the omega-3 especially, since you don’t want the salmon—”
“Okay, stop, stop, stop !”
Shigaraki paused, having the audacity to look at her like she was crazy for snapping.
“Jesus—what the hell are you even talking about Shigaraki?!” she demanded, “What’d you say, folate? What? What is all this?”
He cocked his head, clearly playing innocent. Whatever this was, he was clearly enjoying the slow unraveling of it all.
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about!” she snapped, “All this attention and doting and food stuff! What the hell is this all about?!”
He just smiled back at her, taking in how pretty she looked, even when mad (especially when mad sometimes), God, to think that this really was his forever now. He wondered if they had a girl, how much she’d look like her. He hoped a lot…
“I just want to make sure you’re getting all the vitamins and nutrients you need…”
He reached over then, spreading his hand flat against her stomach.
“ Both of you .”
She froze.
No.
No, he couldn’t mean—
She tried to speak, tried to ask what the ever-loving- fuck he was talking about, but her mouth had seemed to go dry. She tried several times to open and wet it a bit, but every time she did, it felt like her throat was closing too. It took at least four desperate attempts for her to finally force out one rasped:
“... what? ”
Shigaraki’s grin widened, and he started to rub circles gently across her belly.
“You’re gonna look so cute, all big and round with my kid,” he giggled suddenly as he remembered something, “Oh, and your tits too. I wonder how big they’re gonna get…”
She stared at him, unblinking, unbreathing. Everything but un-fucking-existing.
He couldn’t be serious. He was fucking with her. He had to be fucking with her!
“Th-That’s not funny.”
His grin evened a little, not disappearing outright, but settling away some of its blissful excitement into something more coyly victorious.
“I said it already,” he reminded, “When have I ever been funny?”
She shook her head in disbelief.
“N-No. No, no, no this isn’t— there’s no way—”
“I’ve got the tests ready when you need to pee, but I think it’s pretty clear. These are all the symptoms I read about.”
“No!” she insisted, “N-No, no— this is, it’s my period! It’s just a day late, it’s not—!”
He chuckled, “I know the symptoms can be similar, but come on. When’s the last time you’ve hurled like that thanks to your period? And the sensitivity to smell? You know this is different.”
Crumbling, every argument she could possibly think of was crumbling to dust before she could even get the thought fully formed. And cruel, vicious reality was more than happy to take its place.
“B-But my birth control pills…”
“Fertility pills,” he explained, his splitting-grin returning in full, “I would’ve preferred to get Clomid from the doctor, but it looks like the over the counter stuff and tracking your cycle worked just fine.”
Her stomach dropped. Pieces of memories, peculiar behaviors and nagging thoughts she’d had over the last two months falling into place. How there were stretches of times where he’d cancel their sessions, only to insist they make them up a few specific days in a row. How he wanted to go multiple rounds a lot those days. How he’d stopped wanting blowjobs from her entirely. How he seemed to only want to fuck her from behind or with her knees pressed hard into her chest, positions he could fuck her the deepest in.
And how he’d have her stay still with his cock buried in her after he came.
Back then, she just thought he was being weird and pervy. And in a way she was right.
Horribly fucking right.
Shigaraki shifted his legs away from her so that he could bring his head down to her lap, laying his cheek blissfully against her belly.
“Was so easy,” he hummed against her skin, “Like your body was just waiting for me to knock you up. Waiting for me to make you mine…”
His hands moved across her body, one coiling behind her back so that he could pull her tighter into him, the other lacing his fingers through her own. The fingers on her trembling left hand.
“Both of you, forever,” he growled happily, a predator who had finally and definitively sunk his teeth into his prey, “All mine.”
For @oklolnoty
Down the Rabbit Hole - Five Chapters - 20k words - Yandere Shigaraki Tomura x Rabbit Quirk Female Reader
Chapter Navigation: 1|2|3|4|5 🐇 Ao3 Mirror
Whole story TW: Noncon, yandere with kidnapping, severe quirk based discrimination, binge drinking, canon typical threats of violence (reader directed), canon typical death (nonreader directed), oral (give/receive), PnV (doggie), breeding, and expensive designer clothing everywhere.
Rating: 18+ readers only - Minors DNI
Chapter 2: Nomination - 3.4k words
TW: Drinking, quirk discrimination, Incel Tomura being a massive jerk for "reasons", author makes a Javascript joke but only understands html Special thanks to @krystalwithakay for laughing at the aforementioned joke and programming the much more complicated Javascript joke yet to come.
“You have a nomination.”
Plastering the bandage to the back of your bleeding heel, you slipped your pumps back on. Your manager stared down her beak at you. You blinked at her before rising to your full height.
“A nomination? I thought Azuma-san canceled our Thursdays permanently after that fight with his wife?”
“It’s another client.” Blue plumage fluffed as she whipped her fan open. “An important client,” she stressed, narrowing her amber eyes.
“So this is the ‘best bunny behavior’ speech?” Tossing a floppy ear back behind your neck, you pitched your voice an octave higher. “Okay! I’m super duper excited to meet him, Mama-san.”
The fan snapped shut. She cocked her head and beckoned you towards the front desk. You tailed her, watching embroidered folds of black taffeta sway back and forth with every calculated swing of her Coke bottle hips. With all the grace of a prima ballerina, she dipped below the countertop and headed for the towel warmer. “You’ve met him before. Briefly. Last Friday.”
Your eyes rolled to the creamy plaster ceiling as you wracked your brain. “But Usagi is back, right? Wouldn’t Tano-san rather have her?”
“It’s not Tano-san.”
A cold sweat broke on your neck as memories of a tooth-and-nail conversation slammed into you like a loose brick. You staggered under the weighty realization. “Wait… you don’t mean—”
Long tongs placed cozy terry cloth on a small silver platter. Leaning over the counter, she snatched your wrist and foisted the tray into your grip. “I don’t know what you did, but you’re the first hostess he’s asked for by name.” Her glare could cut iron. “His sponsor is very well connected and I’m running out of staff. Do not fail me.”
“Yes, Mama-san,” you agreed, shrinking under her heavy expectations.
Just past the ratty leaves of the money tree, slouched in the center of the entryway, the slender-man of Nyanko’s nightmares looked just as bored as you remembered. Poor posture ruined the flawless lines of his expensive wool suit. Dull eyes and a flat expression looked better suited to a mummy than a man of twenty something. His dry, shrunken lips only enhanced the impression. However, the moment you slid into view, he lifted his chin.
It was hard to contain a confident smirk as red eyes rolled over your outfit from top to bottom. The sight of a real, live bunny girl in a halter neck, sleeveless tuxedo shirt and black leather miniskirt slaughtered most men on sight. Though conservative compared to usual club attire (read: T&A: on display), delicate ruffles drew the eye to pearl buttons trailing between sculpted cleavage. Chunky Mary Jane platforms elongated your legs until they could stop traffic. Add in a flash of thin garter belts holding old-school silk stockings at mid thigh and the entire collection could be classified as a weapon of mass erection.
“Welcome back, Shigaraki-san! ♡” Voice stuffed into a falsetto, you dipped into a bow while holding out the hot towel. “I’m soooooo excited that you requested me!”
Hair bristling silence was your only reply. He lifted the wipe up using only two fingers. With all the enthusiasm of a robot, he washed his hands one digit at a time before replacing the cloth on the tray.
Ouch. Like smacking your forehead against an iceberg.
"Please step this way." You gestured to one of the open booths like a variety show host.
He shuffled past, paying less attention to you than one would pay to a stray soda can laying on the pavement.
You hoisted the brown, leather bound menu. "Would you like me to recommend something? There’s a super taste cham—"
He rested his head on his palm, long fingers denting his cheek. "Cassis Orange."
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1= True
“Oh, yummy!” you cooed, flagging the bartender for one of the sweet cocktails. “Most guys won’t order that drink because of some weird macho complex.” You leaned into your palm, mimicking his stance. “It’s nice to drink with a man who is confident in himself.”
Unblinking eyes stared you down. “What do you want to drink?”
Sake bomb.
You tapped your chin. “Um… I think my favorite is a mimosa with Dom Pérignon.” The tinkling laugh you faked grated on your own nerves. You glanced away, curling inwards to fake lady-like shyness. “Champagne goes straight to my head though…”
Liar. In this profession, drinking skills made bank. Champagne was pricey. Pricey drinks lead to better bonuses. A little white lie here, a coy seduction there and while he was chasing bubbles for a chance to paw you up, you could rake in the cash.
“—so I should probably stick with something like a—”
Sake bomb.
No. Stick to the brand. Frufru girly-girls drink frufru girly drinks. No man picks the adorable bunny to have her drink him under the table. Way too emasculating.
“—lemon sour.”
SAKE BOMB.
Shigaraki rolled his eyes. “That’s lame.”
Says the guy drinking the cocktail equivalent of a pink polka dot ribbon?!
You scratched your cheek to cover the wince. “Well, it’s what I can manage. After all, it wouldn't be much fun for you if I got all silly and clingy, right?”
Perfect delivery. If that didn’t make him order you a champagne, the man was a eunuch.
He huffed, scratching his neck. “That does sound gross,” he agreed.
Excuse you?! What kind of man comes to a HOSTESS CLUB and says “ew… I hope hot women DON’T cling to me.” What was he?! Afraid of catching cooties?
You flinched into a fake grin. “I-I know, right? I try very hard to manage myself so I’m fun to be around.”
Ugh. You needed a sake bomb.
Shigaraki’s bored stare cut through you like a knife. You whipped your head around, flashing the waiter the sign for a lemon sour. With a deep breath to soothe your ruffled fur, you turned back to your new arch nemesis.
Game on, crusty boy. Let’s show you what max level charm can do!
Sliding smoothly beside him, you dragged one calf up your thigh until your tight little skirt nearly broke public decency laws. His eyes flicked to your legs. You schooled your expression into a peaceful smile more relaxing than a shiatsu massage.
“So Shigaraki-san, Mama-san mentioned you have a mentor. What is that like?”
“Pretty much the same as anyone with a mentor I guess.”
“What type of things does he teach you?”
“This and that.”
“It sounds like a well rounded education then.”
“I guess.”
Give a girl something to work with, you tight lipped little snot!
“What’s the favorite thing you learned so far?”
He leaned back in his seat, eyes rolling to the ceiling. The edge of his lip twitched upwards for one heartbeat. “Not to judge people at face value. To always assume they’re hiding something.”
You giggled. “Well, that’s good advice. He sounds very wise.”
“He’s done a lot of different things over the years.”
“How eclectic.”
“Eclectic?”
Crap! You let your bimbo face slip. Dial it back. Dial it back.
“Just something I heard Mama-san say once. She says people who have many interests are eclectic.” You raised one finger and put a bubble-gum pop into your words. “I guess that means they have a lot of energy or something since it sounds like electric!”
Perfect. Now he can “well, actually…” you and feel superior. Men love that. Nice save.
“You’re lying.”
You cocked your head and stared at him with the bald-faced bemusement of a proper airhead.
He leaned forward, resting his elbow on the table. Red eyes bored into yours. “You used the word correctly. You knew what it meant.”
When the waiter set the drinks by your elbow, you could have hugged him. You broke off eye contact with Shigaraki, clasped your hands together, and let out an excited squeal. “Oh my gosh this looks so cool! They cut the orange in the shape of a star. How fancy is that?!”
The deadpan stare continued.
You inhaled to puff your chest before carefully placing the drink before him. Steady hands kept the sunset colored gradient exactly as the bartender had prepared it. Then, you gripped your glass, being sure to twist your wrist and show off baby pink nails with tiny glitter bows.
See crusty boy? Nothing here but an empty headed bunny doll made of rack and back.
“Toasties?” you asked, holding your cup up for the clink.
Never breaking his gaze, your client lifted his drink with his pinky out and tapped your glass as if the sound repulsed him. He stirred the gradient away before sipping his fruity cocktail.
With a long suck, you drained half the lemon-sweet mixer in one go. “Yummy!” you cooed, licking your lips. “How does yours taste, Shigaraki-san?”
“Apparently, not as good as yours.”
You rubbed the back of your neck. “Ah! How embarrassing. It’s been a long time since I met a guy like you. When I get nervous I drink more.”
Peeling lips cracked into an amused sneer. “Oh really?”
“Being with someone like you is so exciting.” You took another sip, glancing at him from under mascara coated lashes. “It makes it hard to hold back.”
He laughed. “...and therefore you’ll be blowing through your drinks pretty quick, wracking up a big tab at my expense, right?”
“Maybe…” you teased coyly, tracing the rim of your glass with one finger. “I mean, it’s your fault for looking so good.”
He snorted. “How do you say that stuff with a straight face?”
“Huh?” You cocked your head the other way and pointed at your underbust. “Straight lace? No, my corset is a criss cross.” You leaned forward, angling your torso for maximum ‘round mound’ effect. “See? It’s all back and forth.”
Shigaraki looked you up and down, the smile dipping back to a frown. “That’s pretty boring though.”
Boring? Oh screw off. You try holding up a one sided conversation, douchebag!
“You don’t like fashion? But you’re dressed so nice!”
“No, what I don’t like is—” he gestured to all of you. “—this. Whatever this is.”
Hair bristling, you sat back in your seat. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“The lines are pretty good lies but that—” he waved at the whole of you again “—is messing it up.”
Your throat tensed, leaving a touch of gravel in your voice. “I’m sorry, but you’re talking too complicated for a stupid bunny girl like me. Can you dumb it down so I can understand?”
Now the grin was back but it was… pointy? Yes. That was the best way to describe it. All sharp lines and shadows like some creepy monster hiding in the closet.
“I want that.”
You blinked at him. “Come again?”
He leaned forward. “That. You. The real you. Not the act.”
“Act? I don’t understand—”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t play stupid. I want the girl from the alley.”
BANG
In an instant you were on your feet, shaking hands flat against the glossy table top. Manicured nails raked the surface until the glass shrieked under your sweaty palms. The room went silent. Dark shadows obscured your face. With a crack, your head snapped up to reveal a mechanical smile.
“Shigaraki-san, I am having difficulty hearing you over all the noise in this room.” You jabbed a thumb over your shoulder towards the back corner. “If we’re going to continue our little chat I think we should move to a private suite. The champagne room is lovely for cozy conversation. There is a 200,000 yen cover charge and the first bottle of Dom Pérignon is included.”
Curious eyes from all corners of the room stared at the show. Good. Now that he was on blast, he’d have to put up to save face or shut up and clamp down on his prying. Your chest burned with bated breath as you awaited his response.
Shigaraki groped into his pocket. With a flick of his wrist, a black, leather wallet arced through the air. Wide eyed, you caught it with both hands. He slid out of his seat and onto his feet.
“Sure. I’m game for a bonus stage.”
You glanced down at the thick billfold only to see a hefty clump of 10,000 yen banknotes sticking out the top. Your mouth ran dry. Shoving the wallet back into his hands, you gestured to the bouncer. He bustled over, tapping his key card to the electronic lock. As Shigaraki strolled past you into the private room, you glanced back at Mama-san. Her inscrutable expression disappeared behind the fluttering fan with a sharp snap.
Welp, hopefully that meant she wouldn’t fire you for what you were about to do.
Beyond the tufted leather door, the two of you entered a shrine to leisure and pleasure. Mirrored walls reflected soft, glittering light from the teardrop chandelier above. Upon plush, red carpet, overstuffed sofas crafted from butter soft, ivory leather begged for only the most pampered backsides. On the far wall, a massive television complete with jumbo speakers and a full karaoke set waited patiently for any party sized two to twenty. Glowing copper trim on the seating matched the metal frame of the oversized coffee table. Shigaraki flopped down on the low-backed loveseat. The waiter carried your chilled champagne in on a silver platter before quickly bowing out of the room.
As the door clicked shut, Shigaraki draped his arms across the back of the sofa and flashed you a sneer. "Got something to say?"
Sashaying across the floor, you smoothed the sofa and took your place next to your guest. Graceful as a swan, you lifted the bottle and sliced the foil with your thumbnail. A few quick twists freed the cork from its wire prison. With a roll of your wrist, his flute dangled between your digits.
POP
The speeding cork grazed his ear.
Golden bubbles arced from the bottle. When his glass was nearly full, you twisted the flow to a stop. Leaning forward flashed him a glance at your cleavage. A naughty smile hovered just above it. You set the bottle by his elbow and stroked the stem of your glass like a porn actress.
"Fill me up, Shigaraki-san?" you teased.
He flushed.
So crusty boy liked it a little dirty, huh? File that away for future reference.
Your guest sloshed the expensive liquid into your flute. The bottle clanked onto the table. He stared at you with a raised brow.
With a sweet smile, you hoisted your drink. The delicate tinkle of crystal on crystal accompanied a syrupy salute. "Toasties~!"
You shot the champagne like a middle aged manager whining about his alimony payment. The glass hit the table with a hard CLANK.
"All right, listen up," you growled. “First, I’ve spent a long time pretending 'Miss Sugar-Tits' is my personality and outing me in front of the clients is a dick move. If my regulars see me act like this—” you whipped your hand across your face “—my happy tail doesn’t get paid and you better believe I am all kinds of nasty when I can’t afford to eat.”
Shigaraki sipped his drink with a vulgar grin.
You crossed your arms and scowled. “Second, what is your deal?! You’re bored with the girls, you barely drink the booze, and you don’t want to talk. Why drag yourself out here night after night just to be a massive jerk to a bunch of women who you are paying to suck up to you?!” You huffed and turned your cheek. “Heck of a fetish if it is one.”
“I need to level up my coercion.”
You blinked. “Excuse me, what?”
Cracked nails scraped his neck “Sensei told me I needed practice handling people I don’t like. Hostesses are top tier at that skill. It was useful to learn but pretty boring until I saw you whaling on that dumpster. Not something I expected from the fluff-for-brains bunny girl you pretend to be.” He folded his hands in front of his face, resting his pointed chin on top. With a smirk he added: “The part about tearing down society was pretty interesting. Do you call that ‘hare razing’?”
You grabbed a floppy ear and shook it at him. “I’m a rabbit, not a hare, douchebag.”
He leaned back into the chair, arms open wide. “Whatever. The point is that I like that version of you much better than the act.”
You snorted. “Well literally everyone else disagrees with you on that one. Trust me.”
“That’s because society values sappy platitudes over the straight truth.”
“And what truth is that?”
He reached for his glass, knocking back the drink like you had only moments ago. Though he wasn’t a particularly tall man, when rose to his feet and leered down at you, you felt oddly small by comparison. Something about the glowing gaze left you rigid in your seat. Your breath hitched. Scarlet eyes burned as they rolled over your face.
“That the game is buggy and needs a hard reset.”
You shifted in your seat, looking away from his searing stare. Shaking hands balled in your lap. Ringing filled your ears. Voices from the past cried out from painful memories.
“No need to push yourself sweetie. We’re just happy to have you be our team mascot.”
“Aw… look at you trying so hard. How cute.”
“Don’t act like such a prude. We all know how you got this internship.”
Bile bubbled up your throat. You choked it down. A weary scoff puffed from quivering lips. “Not wrong there,” you muttered.
He blew out a long breath, as if he’d been holding it. “I knew you understood.”
Shaking off a prickling at the back of your neck, you forced a laugh. “But I’m just a bunny girl. I can’t do something as grand as change the world.”
Your guest narrowed his eyes and clicked his tongue. “Chcc. Boring.” He groped into his pocket, pulling out his phone. One glance at the screen and he shoved it into hiding again. “I have to leave anyway.”
Liquid rage poured through your body. “Excuse you!? What did you just call me ‘Mr. couldn’t-carry-a-conversation-if-it-had-a-handle?!’”
He raised his chin and sneered at you. “You’re boring when you’re like that. I’m just calling it like I see it.”
Sharp nails pricked your palms. “Oh!? Is that so?! Then, pray tell, when am I not boring?”
Shigaraki scoffed. “When you’re the real you.”
Bristling with fury, you stomped your heel. “Fine! You want the real me?! Screw it.” You jabbed a finger at his face. “You. Me. Paid date. Wednesday at 2 PM. 25,000 yen per hour.”
“Two? Isn’t that early?”
“What’s the matter?” A cruel smirk twisted on your lips. “Ain’t got the stamina?”
He scratched his neck. Red heat crawled across his skin.
You reached towards him, palm out. “Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
You rolled your eyes. “So I can put my number in it?”
He dragged out the device and tapped in the unlock code. “This better be worth it,” he declared, dropping it in your palm.
“I’m always worth it.” You zeroed in on his texts, stabbing in your number to the recipient line. There were only two words in the message: “crusty boy”. Pressing “send” so hard it nearly cracked the screen, you shoved the phone back in his chest. “What’s your first name?”
He squinted at you suspiciously. “Why?”
You put your hand on one hip. “You want me to spend the entire date calling you ‘Shigaraki-san’?”
After a long pause he muttered, “Tomura.”
You tapped the name into your contacts. “Got it. “I’ll drop you the details later—” Fluttering lashes accompanied a smile more sadistic than seductive. “—Tomura.”
His breath hitched as the warm flush tipped his ears.
You hummed, craning your neck.
His lips curled in a feral snarl. Snatching up the door handle, he nodded to the bottle. “It won’t keep. Finish it yourself.”
“How generous—” you licked your lips “—Tomura.”
As the door slammed shut, you giggled and picked up the champagne.
Maybe you could trade it in for a sake bomb.
Chapter Navigation: 1|2|3|4|5 🐇 Ao3 Mirror
Next Chapter Expected: July 15th, 2023
Expected Completion Date: Mid-Aug 2023
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the new postmodern age (chapter two) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic
Written for @threadbaresweater's follower milestone event, and the prompt 'a day at the beach'! Congratulations on the milestone, and thanks for giving me a chance to write this fic.
dividers by @enchanthings
Before the war, you were nothing but a common criminal, but in the world that's arisen from the ashes, you got a second chance. Five years after the final battle between the heroes and the League of Villains, you run a coffee shop in a quiet seaside town, and you're devoted to keeping your customers happy. Even customers like Shimura Tenko, who needs a second chance even more than you did -- and who's harboring a secret that could upend everything you've tried to build. Will you let the past drag both of you down? Or will you find a way, against all odds, to a new beginning? (cross-posted to Ao3)
Chapters: 1 2
Chapter 2
One of the dubious perks of living in a coastal town is fairly mild weather in the spring, but every so often it kicks up with a vengeance. The windows in your apartment are rattling with the wind and rain, and you keep getting power outage alerts on your phone. Your power is still on, along with about half the town’s, and the café has backup generators if anything goes wrong. But tomorrow’s the one day a week that the café is closed, anyway, so you’re curled up on your couch under a blanket, trying to make yourself read a book instead of scrolling your phone. It’s going all right, but when the phone buzzes on the coffee table next to you, you pounce on it with shameful speed.
It's a text from Tenko – Shimura. It’s from Shimura, who you’ve gotten into the bad habit of calling Tenko in your head. my power just went out
that sucks. You wonder if you should offer to help, but what would you even do? did you lose any files?
autosave. but the deadline’s tomorrow and my WiFi went down too. That still begs the question of why Shimura’s texting you about it. town still has power. can I hang out in the café and finish the project?
Now you get it. Shimura’s in hot water and he needs you to bail him out. It’s the kind of thing you’d do for a friend. A lot of things you and Shimura do are the kind of things friends do.
Not that you’re friends. You never see each other outside the café; you ran into him at the grocery store a few months after he started coming in and he pretended he didn’t know you. But inside the café, when it’s quiet, the two of you talk. You learned what he does for work – beta-testing computer games and identifying spots that need a patch – and he learned that you have basically no life outside your job, which he can’t judge you for because he doesn’t have one, either. When the two of you traded phone numbers, it was a work-related thing. Since the babkas have gotten popular, he texts on days when he’s planning on coming in, so you know to set one aside.
Except that’s not all he texts you about. He texts you about the most random things, in massive bursts between days of radio silence, and when he comes into the café again, he keeps talking about whatever it was like you’d been talking about it the whole time. It’s like he has no idea how to carry on a text conversation. Or how to have a friend.
You don’t have a great idea of how to have a friend, either. Let alone a friend you have feelings for. If Shimura was just your friend, you’d have texted back by now. Shimura texts again. I get it if you don’t want to come back into town when the weather’s shit. i would have asked about your place but I didn’t want to make it weird
Not weird. You answer without thinking too hard about it. I don’t know how much longer I’ll have power. You should probably come over now.
yeah. address? Shimura gives a thumbs-up once you send it. thanks.
You give him a thumbs-up, too. You’re already worried you’ve made a mistake.
The power’s still on by the time Shimura knocks on your door, which is one of your worries dealt with. You’ve changed out of your pajamas, and you moved stuff off the kitchen table and hid it in the hall closet so he’ll have a space to work. You’re feeling almost normal by the time you go to let him in, and he slinks through the door, looking like a drowned rat and shivering like a kicked puppy. “It sucks out there,” he mumbles. “My heat went out, too.”
“Mine’s still on. And I’ve got blankets and stuff if you want them,” you say. Shimura is still wearing his mask, but his hoodie is soaking wet, and when he takes down the hood you see that his hair is wavier than you thought. Or maybe it’s just the water. “The WiFi password is on the fridge. Make yourself at home.”
Shimura takes off his shoes and pushes his hair out of his face to peer at your apartment. “Nice place.”
“Don’t be mean.”
“I’m not. It’s not a mess and there aren’t holes anywhere. It’s nice.” Shimura gives you a look you don’t know how to interpret. “Thanks for letting me come over. Uh –”
He runs out of whatever he was going to say, but you’ve got no idea what he was going to follow up with. The two of you stand there for a second. Shimura’s hoodie is so sopping wet that it’s making puddles on the floor. “Okay,” you say finally. “Give me your hoodie and I’ll put it in the dryer.”
“You have a dryer? I drag my shit to the laundromat.”
You used to, but then you found out about all the petty things civilians do to make people like you feel unwelcome. Shimura hasn’t noticed because Shimura’s undercover. You wait while he peels off the hoodie. You’ve never seen him without it, barely seen him with the hood down, and beneath it, his clothes are just as oversized. His arms are bare and pale – and scarred. You wrench your eyes away, take the hoodie to the dryer, and take the opportunity to compose yourself along the way. You have a friend over. Normal people have friends over. You’re helping a friend. It doesn’t get more normal than that.
When you come back, Shimura’s hard at work at the kitchen table, laptop open and notebook at his side. You don’t want to distract him. You have a feeling the two of you are racing the clock with the storm and the power lines, so you sit down on the couch with your blanket and pick up your book. No way are you going to be able to read. When you’re at work, you have a million things to do. Right now, there’s nothing for you to do but watch Shimura.
He's focused on whatever he’s doing, typing fast but lopsided. It takes you a second to figure out what the problem is, but once you do, you’re startled – two fingers on his left hand are basically paralyzed. Maybe that’s why he wears the gloves. His hair falls to his shoulders, and although it’s black, there’s a flatness to the color that tells you it’s not natural, and that he did it at home. Maybe you should offer to do it for him when his roots start to grow out. You’ve never seen the lower half of his face, but apparently you didn’t need to in order to give yourself a crush on him.
You like him. You’re being silly about it. And you’re staring. You stick your face back in your book.
But it can’t hold your attention for long when he’s here, and when you inevitably look back up, you find Shimura already watching you. “What?” you ask.
“Get over here. I need your help with something.”
“I don’t game.”
“It’s not about gameplay. It’s –” Shimura beckons to you impatiently, and you abandon your book and blanket to peer over his shoulder at the screen. “Something’s wrong with this stage. It looks like shit. I told the devs that, and they said I had to be more specific –”
“It’s the color saturation,” you say. Shimura looks up at you. “And the shadows are wrong. If the light source is supposed to be coming from above – like the sun – the shadows should be in different spots. Or there should be shadows, and there aren’t any. That’s why the character looks like – that.”
You glance away from the screen, at Shimura. “What kind of game is this?”
“It’s a dating sim. Shut up,” Shimura says. “I don’t get to pick what I test. What was that about the shadows?”
“They need to fix the lighting.”
Shimura looks irritated. “They’re gonna want specifics.”
“The stage looks flat because they haven’t added shading to match the light source,” you say. Shimura pulls up another document and types something into it. “Shading gives dimension. And the color saturation is too high. That’s why it looks like –”
“A fucking eyesore.” Shimura minimizes the document, then clicks a dialogue option to advance the game to the next screen. “Same problem here?”
You nod, but it’s not the only problem. “Is this supposed to be a schoolgirl sim? High school girls don’t talk like that.”
“How do you know?”
“I was one,” you say. You read the response to Shimura’s chosen prompt again. “This skews really young. Like, twelve or something.”
Shimura’s face twists with disgust. “How do we fix that?”
“Fewer exclamation points,” you suggest. Shimura writes that down. “Does it have to be high school girls? For this game?”
“They’re supposed to be college girls so it’s legal. The outfits are how the dev wants it.” Shimura rolls his eyes. “But he’s a pro hero, so it doesn’t matter that he’s a perv. Right?”
“I didn’t know there were pros making computer games,” you say. “I know a lot of them have side hustles, but – pervy dating sims?”
“Pervy dating sims. Sorry to burst your bubble.”
“I’ve been captured seventeen times and only twice by cops,” you say. “I don’t really have a bubble.”
“Seventeen times,” Shimura repeats. “I can’t tell if that’s a flex or not. Who got you?”
“Um –” You think it over. “Kamui Woods, back when he was field-testing that Lacquered Chain Prison thing.”
“That thing fucking sucks.”
“Tell me about it. Death Arms nabbed me at one point, but he dropped me when I turned him green.” You’re still proud of that one, even if you got in worse trouble for it than usual. “Endeavor actually caught me tagging something once. I would have been screwed, except I guess he was looking for a more high-profile case.”
“So he just let you go?”
“Yep.” You think back on the other times you got booked. “One time Fatgum got me. And then some work-study kids from Shiketsu High.”
Shimura snorts. “Kids got you?”
“My quirk’s not very dangerous,” you say. By that point you’d learned that turning people different colors could net you an assault charge. “And then it was Eraserhead. Four or five times. I can camouflage with my quirk and he could turn it off.”
Shimura nods. He’s clicking through screens on the dating sim. “What about you?” you ask. “Who caught you?”
“I only got taken into custody one time,” Shimura says. “I had run-ins with, uh – Eraserhead, Present Mic, Thirteen, All Might, Endeavor, Kamui Woods, Ryukyu, Miruko –”
Those are all big-name heroes. You have to wonder what Shimura did. “But I guess Midoriya’s the one who made it stick,” Shimura concludes. Midoriya? It takes you a second, and Shimura fills in. “The one with the stupid name. Deku.”
“Oh.”
Deku’s active hero career was fairly short, and all his fights were big ones. Shimura must have been working for somebody powerful before the war, or during it. Shimura’s shoulders stiffen, suddenly. “Forget I said that.”
“Okay,” you say. Maybe he’s embarrassed about getting captured by a student, even if you just told him you did the same thing. “If you forget I got arrested seventeen times.”
“Deal.” Shimura clicks through a few more screens, then curses. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What?” You peer at the screen, and Shimura blocks it. “Is it proprietary or something?”
“No, it’s porn,” Shimura says. He’s scowling. “There’s not one route in this game that doesn’t end with the player getting laid by three characters at once.”
Three seems like a lot, but – “Isn’t that kind of what dating sims are for?” you ask. Shimura shrugs. What little of his face you can see around the mask is flushed. “Wait, is this how you have to test them? Playing through every route?”
“And getting all the bonus cutscenes.” Shimura rolls his eyes. He glances at the screen. “Great. There’s audio.”
“What kind?” you ask. “You have to check if it works, right?”
“Maybe it’s background music,” Shimura says. He presses play.
It’s not background music. It’s exactly what you’d expect, and it’s painfully loud. Shimura scrambles to mute the game and pauses it two seconds after a shot of something anatomically improbable. “Let me guess – the lighting’s fucked up here, too. Right?”
“And the facial movements don’t match the audio,” you say. “Did the developers send you this before it was ready?”
“No, they’re just on a budget. This is as ready as it gets.” Shimura shows you a dialogue prompt. “Do women say stuff like this?”
“Um – no. Not as a first-time thing. If this is a first-time route.”
“It is.” Shimura groans. “I still have a quarter of the route left. Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“The couch. I need your help with this and you only have one chair at your kitchen table.”
Your couch is sort of messy. You shift the blankets and pillows around to make room for two. Shimura props his feet on the coffee table, sets a pillow on his lap, and balances the laptop on it. “If you spot any more off-balance graphics, tell me. I already made a note about the dialogue.”
“Can you turn the brightness up?” You sit down next to him. The contrast shifts, and you wince. “The light’s wrong.”
“Again?”
“Yeah. Unless that love interest is supposed to give off light.” You don’t know anything about this game. Maybe it actually is about glowing college girls in high school uniforms who really like foursomes. “If she isn’t, that’s a problem, because she’s the light source for the whole frame. And if she is, there’s no shading, so it’s flat again.”
“Ugh.” Shimura rolls his shoulders. “This is gonna be a long night.”
It’s going to be a long night, but it’s also sort of fun. You haven’t hung out with a friend in a while, and it’s nicer than you remember. You decide you want hot chocolate, so you make a cup for Shimura, too, and you learn a lot more about making erotic dating sims than you ever wanted to know. By the third porn interlude, Shimura’s basically out of patience. “This is a waste of time.”
“You’re getting paid for it, right?” you ask. Shimura nods. “Is there something you’d be doing if you didn’t have to do this?”
“Yeah. I’d be talking to you about something other than this dumb game.” Shimura hits the skip button five times in a row. “What were you doing when I texted?”
“Trying to read.” You point out the book on the coffee table and Shimura inspects it. “I used to read a lot when I didn’t have a phone, but it’s hard to get back into it when the phone is right there. That’s why I texted back so fast.”
Shimura’s frowning behind his mask. “Why didn’t you text me first?”
“To ask if your power was out and invite you over?” you ask, puzzled, and Shimura’s frown deepens. “I’d text you more if I thought I could get away with it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Um, just that I’m not sure how much you want to talk,” you say, “and I don’t want to annoy you. That’s it.”
“You know what’s annoying? That.” Shimura clicks through a few more screens. “We can’t talk at the café because you’re busy. You never ask to meet up when you aren’t busy. When else are we supposed to talk?”
“Shimura –” You must have missed something, somewhere. Some little detail that makes all of this make sense. The lights in your apartment flicker, and your stomach jolts. “I think the power’s going.”
“Shit.” Shimura starts typing faster, splitting his screen between the game and the document where he’s been making corrections. “Shit!”
“If the internet goes out, I can use my phone as a hotspot,” you offer.
“The signal won’t be strong enough. I have to send so many fucking screengrabs.” Shimura’s fingers fly across the keys. “If you want to help, start praying that the electricity holds out long enough for me to get this done.”
“I’ll pray,” you say. “I don’t want to be responsible for you losing your job and going back to a life of crime.”
Shimura laughs at that, raspy and sharp, and keeps typing. You watch as he clicks through stages, skips cutscenes he’s already played, hits a key on his keyboard that generates screengrabs of any stage he’s found an issue with, all while typing into a note document at the same time. He’s fast. You’ve never seen him work this fast in the café, but then again, you’ve never really gotten to observe him in the café, either. You’re always busy. Too busy to talk – at least not as much as Shimura wants to talk. He wants to talk to you more. Has he really been waiting for you to make the first move?
The lights flicker again, the room going dark for a split second before brightening up again. Shimura’s no longer typing – instead he’s watching a file upload to a server, progressing a few megabytes at a time. You switch from facetiously praying to actually praying. Your power only needs to hold out long enough for Shimura’s upload to finish.
The entire status bar on the upload turns green, and a checkmark appears, confirming it’s complete. A second later, your power goes out, plunging your apartment into near-total darkness.
Shimura breathes a sigh of relief. “That was close,” he says, and shuts the lid of his laptop, making the darkness complete. “Now I don’t have to return to my life of crime.”
“Good,” you say. “I’d be sad not to see you at the café again.”
He said he wanted to talk to you more, so it’s probably safe for you to say you’d be sad not to see him. Your eyes haven’t adjusted enough to make out more than Shimura’s shape in the darkness. “I looked up the NCRA thing. You could have gone for job training. Why’d you decide to open up a coffee shop?”
“I didn’t just want to make money.” You got asked this same question when you applied for the NCRA in the first place. “People always told me that I was selfish, because all criminals are selfish, so I wanted to make something for other people. I wanted to be able to give other people something I didn’t have when I needed it.”
Shimura sets his closed laptop on the coffee table with a quiet thud. “You really seized the day with this stuff, huh?”
“I didn’t want to live the way I was living before,” you say. “It was either stop living or try something else.”
“Did you think it would work?”
“I didn’t know,” you say. “I wanted to find out.”
That’s what it was, more than anything else. You told yourself you’d go one day at a time, that at the end of each day you’d decide if it was worth trying again tomorrow. At first it was out of spite. The early days of the NCRA were filled with detractors, people who thought criminals and villains deserved to rot in prison or worse, and every day you went without violating your probation was a day you spent pissing them off. But soon it was more than that. You worked on names for the café, too focused on finding the right one to pretend it didn’t matter. You taught yourself to use an espresso machine, and you wanted the chance to use it. You put your first mural up and started planning the next one. Without meaning to, surviving out of spite became surviving for yourself.
“Yeah,” Shimura says after a second. “I want to find out, too.”
Something about his tone of voice captures your attention. You turn to face him, turning on the flashlight on your phone, but the brightness makes you flinch. You lower it partially, and Shimura’s hand comes up to force it down the rest of the way. “Don’t,” he says. “I have to take off my mask.”
Anticipation puts a twist in your spine, and as your eyes readjust to the darkness, you see Shimura unhook one side of his mask, then the other, lowering it away from his face. You’ve never seen the lower half of his face before. “Why did you take it off if you don’t want me to see?”
“Because I want to kiss you and it would get in the way.”
You thought your crush on Shimura was going nowhere fast. You didn’t think there was any chance he’d want you, too. His gloved hands settle at your waist and stay there, shifting you closer to him. You feel his breath against your cheek a moment before his lips, dry and cracked, meet yours.
It’s a quick kiss. Quick, and tentative. He draws back, but he doesn’t go far. You can still feel his breath against your skin, and when you lean forward again, he kisses you a second time. A second time melts into a third, a fourth, blending so seamlessly into each other that you lose count. Kissing Shimura doesn’t set you on fire, but you can’t remember another time where you felt curious like this. Where you’ve wanted to see what another kiss will do, rather than losing patience and pulling away.
The power doesn’t come back on, and just like the darkness emboldened Shimura to take off his mask, it emboldens you to unfold your hands from your lap and touch him. His kisses grow more insistent as you run your hands along his back, when you rest them against his shoulders, fingers uncurling along the length of his collarbones. Shimura’s hands don’t leave your waist, but his grip on you tightens. It tightens further when you run your fingers along the side of his neck.
You’ve seen him scratching there, so it’s not hard to imagine it’s a sensitive place. You draw back from kissing him and press your lips against it, and Shimura speaks, his voice even raspier than usual. “Did you like me this whole time?”
“Huh?”
“Did you like me this whole time? You gave me free stuff when I came in.”
“I gave you discounted stuff,” you correct. You kiss his neck again. Shimura stirs discontentedly under your hands and mouth. “You were a new customer. I wanted you to come back.”
“You saved a pastry for me the day that hero showed up,” Shimura says. “Did you like me then?”
He’s really stuck on this. “Why do you want to know?”
“I couldn’t tell if you liked me or not. I thought you did, but I wasn’t sure.” Shimura’s head tilts, exposing more of his throat, but you’re more interested in his shoulder, partially revealed by the neck of his oversized shirt. “I want to know when.”
“It would have been when I saved the pastry for you, except you were kind of a dick that day,” you say. Shimura snorts. “After that. But before your birthday. I meant it when I said I’d go to your party.”
“You’d be the only one.” Shimura’s hands leave your waist, sliding beneath your shirt. He’s still wearing his gloves, but his exposed fingertips are rough. “Next year.”
He’s thinking way ahead. How do you feel about that? “Yeah,” you say, edging closer to him. “Next year.”
Part of you feels crazy for this. You’re crazy for making out with Shimura on your couch, yanking off his shirt and letting him unhook your bra, tangling your hands up in his hair and tugging it ever so slightly and feeling a sharp stab of desire when he gasps against your mouth. The rest of you doesn’t care. There will always be something within you that doesn’t evaluate risk quite right, that doesn’t care about the aftermath when something you want is right in front of you. Shimura is the first thing you’ve wanted in so long that’s got nothing to do with the faultless new life you’ve been trying to build. You want him, and some part of you will always be bad at saying no to what you want.
An alarm goes off on Shimura’s phone and scares the two of you apart. You’re closer to it, and when you grab it, you notice two things right away. First, that Shimura’s alarm is labeled “go to sleep, moron”. Second, the time. “It’s two am.”
“Shit.” Shimura lifts the phone out of your hands and silences the alarm. “You need to wake up in three hours.”
“The café’s closed tomorrow.” You’re sort of touched that he remembered how early you have to wake up on workdays. Your heart is still beating too fast. “Do you need to go?”
“The streetlights are still out.” It’s pitch-dark outside your window. “Can I crash on your couch?”
“You could,” you say. “The bed’s more comfortable, though.”
“Yeah, no shit. It –” Shimura’s head snaps up. “Wait, seriously?”
“Yeah,” you say. “I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t done here.”
“Me, either.” Shimura stands up, and so do you. “Let’s go.”
Your apartment is tough to navigate in the dark, even for you, and Shimura bumps into every obstacle you know about and a few more you didn’t think would be a problem. He swerves to avoid the edge of your kitchen table and walks straight into the corner of the hallway that leads to your bedroom and the bathroom. “Fuck!”
“Back up a few steps,” you say. Shimura backs up. “Take two steps to the left. No, your other left.”
Shimura curses again, quieter. “Either this place is a fucking labyrinth, or –”
“You got so wound up you walked into a wall,” you say. Shimura snorts. “You’ve never been here before, Shimura. Take it easy.”
“Tenko.”
“Hm?”
“It’s Tenko,” he says. You get the faintest hint of butterflies in your stomach. “We made out for three hours and you invited me back to your bedroom. Quit it with the Shimura thing. I’ve been using your name the whole time.”
“Okay. Tenko.” You step forward until you’re right in front of him. “Hold out your hands.”
He holds them straight out at shoulder height and narrowly avoids smacking you in the face. You take them both and pull them down, noting how badly Tenko startles. “You’ve been using my first name, but you don’t want to hold my hands?”
“I don’t get why you want to hold mine.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” you say, puzzled. You take one step back, and another, and another after that, until your back hits your bedroom door. “Like you said, I asked you to stay over.”
“I asked to stay over. You said –”
“I remember.” You can’t believe you did that. You don’t regret it, but you’re a little floored. “I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t want to hold your hands, too.”
Tenko steps forward, crowding you against the door, and kisses you without letting go of your hands. It feels different than the earlier kisses, not frantic or heated, not light or uncertain, not slow or deep or inexorable. This feels like a movie kiss, the kind at the end of a romcom where everything and nothing’s been resolved. Your life has never been a movie. There’s every chance that this is a mistake. But you don’t mind setting it aside for a little while, from now until you fall asleep. You keep kissing Tenko in your lightless apartment, and you don’t let go of his hands until it’s time to open your bedroom door.
You’re not hungover when you wake up, and when you think about it, you’re not actually confused. You know why it’s warmer in your bed than usual, why you feel like that, why the first thing that hits you is uncertainty, anxiety. Shimura came over last night, because the power went out in his apartment and he still had work to do. The power didn’t go out in your apartment until after his work was finished. And you shouldn’t be calling him Shimura in your head, because sometime between the couch and your bedroom, he told you to call him Tenko – and then he gave you a lot of chances to get used to saying his name.
Your face goes up in flames at the memory, but there’s no stopping it, and there’s no relief in waking up. When you turn your head, you see Tenko asleep on his side, the shadowy scars on his back interrupted here and there with scratches you left. It’s the scratches more than anything that hammer it home to you, more than the fact that you’re naked or the soreness between your legs. You slept with Shimura Tenko last night, and you let him come inside you, and you didn’t pee after sex like you’re supposed to do. You didn’t even clean up. What did you do?
You sit bolt upright in a panic, and beside you, Tenko stirs. “Too early,” he mumbles. One hand reaches out for you, closes three fingers and a thumb around your forearm, and yanks you back down. “Sleep.”
“I don’t usually sleep late,” you say, trying to keep your voice steady.
“I don’t usually sleep.” Tenko’s halfway back to it already. You glance at the hand holding your arm and realize that it’s ungloved. You’ve never seen Tenko without his gloves. “Don’t ruin it.”
You’re ruining his sleep by getting up? How? The question is answered when he flops back against you, forcing you into the role of the big spoon whether you want it or not. You know he doesn’t sleep well. You’ve seen dark circles under his red eyes, and he wouldn’t have set a two am alarm that calls him a moron for staying awake if going to sleep was easy for him. Tenko’s a guest, and your friend – maybe – and whatever else he is or isn’t, you slept with him last night, and he slept over. Maybe you should just be grateful that he didn’t flee the scene. You’ve heard guys do that the morning after. It’s not something you’ve seen before, because nobody you ever slept with before stayed the night. They wouldn’t have, even if you’d had a place to stay.
You lie back down and wrap your arm loosely around Tenko’s waist, turning your head and pressing your cheek against his shoulder. There’s scar tissue under your cheek, just like there was on his neck, just like there is on his back and his arms. Something horrible happened to him. You don’t have the first clue what it is, but it’s in his past. He’s here. You close your eyes and do your best to fall asleep.
When you wake up again, there’s light slanting through the window, and your ceiling fan is on. The power’s back. Tenko’s here, awake, but he must have left at some point, because he has his mask on again. He’s also got his phone in his ungloved hand, scrolling away at something. His other hand, still gloved, rests on your bare back. Not doing anything, not starting anything. Just – there.
You clear your throat. “You’re still here.”
“Where else was I gonna be?” Tenko gives you a weird look. His bedhead is absolutely horrendous. “I don’t have a new project yet and it’s your day off. So we can hang out.”
You think through what you were going to do today. It wasn’t much. Mostly errands – laundry, picking up a prescription. But you’d planned to do something fun, too. “Want to go down to the beach?”
“The beach?” Tenko sounds like he’s thinking about it. Then he shakes his head. “Too many people.”
“On the main beach. I go to a different one. It’s a lot quieter over there.” You look up at him. “After a storm like last night’s there should be tons of good stuff washed up. And if you want we can come back here to hang out afterward. Or go to your place.”
“My place is gross,” Tenko says. He grimaces behind the mask. “I mean – I’m not gross. It’s gross. Everything has a hole in it. And I don’t have, like – I don’t decorate. It’s not –”
“It’s okay,” you say. “We don’t have to go there today.”
“Some other time,” Tenko says. “I have to clean.”
“I’d have cleaned if I’d known you were coming over.”
“This place is clean.” Tenko’s fingers tap a pattern on your back. “Fine. I’ll go to the beach with you. If anything bites me I’m leaving.”
“We’re not getting in the water. It’s still too cold,” you say, laughing. “But sure. Fine. You’ve got a deal.”
“I’m serious. If something bites me –”
“I’ll protect you.” You sit up as he scoffs, leaning in to kiss his cheek over the mask. “You agreed to try it. It’s the least I can do.”
You can tell Tenko’s frowning when you draw back. “We had sex last night and I get a cheek kiss?”
“I’m not making out with you through your mask.”
“Close your eyes, then.”
You do. You’re not sure why Tenko’s so insistent on only taking off his mask when you can’t see his face, but you don’t have a problem respecting that boundary as long as he still kisses you every so often. Just like last night, you feel Tenko’s breath against your skin before his lips meet yours – but while last night you had curiosity, now you have memories, and heat floods through you as you kiss him. When Tenko pulls you down into his lap, you don’t argue with him. He's already half-hard, and he hisses sharply when you shift against him. It’s all too easy to imagine his expression.
You saw shadows of it last night, and you remember something else, too. “Did you make me close my eyes so I wouldn’t call you pretty again?”
“Not pretty,” Tenko mumbles. “You’re weird.”
Maybe, but you’re not wrong, and you also know it’s not a mood killer. A few more kisses and Tenko’s hard again, his hands grasping your hips and pulling you down towards his cock. No condom, again. You didn’t have one last night, and you’re still not on birth control, but – you sink down on him for the second time in twelve hours, and your thoughts flutter uselessly alongside your eyelids. You had your period a week ago. You’re not going to get pregnant. It’s – fine –
It’s so close to noon that you can barely call it morning sex, but if this thing with Tenko keeps up, morning sex is a strong contender for your favorite kind. Or maybe you just like riding him. Maybe both. It’s slow and easy, and Tenko leans back against the headboard, letting you do most of the work. He has one request, though. One thing that’s odd. “My right hand. Hold it down.”
You curl your fingers around his wrist and pin it to the headboard, and his hips jerk sharply. “Yeah. Don’t let go.”
His right hand’s immobilized, but his left stays on your hip, fingernails digging in as you increase your pace. With your eyes closed, with nothing to ground yourself but Tenko’s touch, it’s all too easy to lose yourself. You come on his cock in a rush of pleasure that leaves you gasping, and Tenko’s wrist strains in your grip as he loses control seconds later, a low moan wrenching itself out of his mouth. He’s shaking beneath you, and when he speaks, his voice is a wreck. “This was a bad idea,” he says, and your heart plummets. “Now I’m too tired for the beach.”
You laugh breathlessly. “I bet we can rally,” you say. “Let me know when it’s safe to open my eyes.”
Even once Tenko’s put his mask back on, he doesn’t want to let you out of his lap. You get up anyway and stagger to the bathroom, catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror on the way. You definitely look like you had sex twice in the last twelve hours. You don’t look half as anxious as you feel. You vaguely remember telling yourself not to worry about what this means last night, but you and Tenko are going to have to talk at some point, because not knowing what’s going on is stressing you out.
You have to kick Tenko out of bed when you get back from the bathroom, because not changing the sheets is also stressing you out. So is not having very many choices in the breakfast department, even though you had no idea he was coming over and even less of one that he’d spend the night. You can provide coffee, at least – the espresso machine you learned on is still in your kitchen at home. You upgraded the café’s as soon as you possibly could.
You don’t have the usual flavored syrups here, but you mix two cappuccinos instead. Tenko pulls his mask to one side and tries a sip. “This is good,” he says, surprised in a way that should offend you but doesn’t. “Next time I’m ordering one of these.”
“Instead of the mocha?”
“Instead of the coffee.” Tenko takes another sip. “I found frozen waffles in the freezer. Can I eat those?”
“Yeah. The toaster’s over there.”
You discover a few seconds later that Tenko wasn’t actually planning to defrost the waffles before eating them, and you spend a little while being appalled before you show him how to toast them properly. The two of you eat standing up in the kitchen and finish your coffee, and Tenko plugs in his laptop while you switch out the laundry. “I can leave this here, right?” he asks when you come back to the living room. “We’re coming back after?”
“Yeah.” You watch as Tenko leaves his backpack but pockets his phone and keys. “Let’s go.”
Your anxiety was held at bay for a while, when you had things to do, but now it’s just the two of you walking side by side down the street, and you’re agonizing about whether to hold his hand. Tenko’s hand brushes with yours once, twice, before you lose patience. “Do you want to hold hands?”
Tenko’s eyes widen over his mask, and he doesn’t answer you, but a moment later, his hand closes awkwardly over yours. You haven’t held hands in a while. You don’t think this is how it’s supposed to work. But you’re holding hands with Tenko. That’s what you wanted. Everything’s fine.
“Why did you move here?” Tenko asks, as the two of you pass the street that leads down to the main beach and keep walking. “Out of everywhere?”
“It was strongly suggested by my probation officer that I get out of the city,” you say. “He thought I’d be less likely to fall back into my old ways if I was in a small town, since I’d actually know the people whose buildings I was defacing.”
“Didn’t you get busted for tagging your own house?”
“Yep.” Looking back, it was an incredibly stupid move. Your parents were already at the end of their rope with you. You should have known they’d cut you loose. “And I’d always wanted to live near the ocean, so it worked out. What about you?”
“I needed somewhere out of the way,” Tenko says. “It didn’t matter where.”
“And you got here five years ago?” You keep walking past the second beach access road. The road to your beach is a lot more out of the way. “We must have gotten here around the same time, then.”
“I was first. I’d been here three months when you started renovating that building.” Tenko’s eyes seem far away. “It was good timing. People were starting to ask questions about me, but then they switched over to you instead.”
“Glad I could help.” You feel funny about the fact that you were running interference for him, four and a half years before he ever set foot in your café. “And I’m glad you picked this place for a fresh start.”
“People like me don’t get fresh starts,” Tenko says. You’re about to point out that as a person without a record, all he has to do for a fresh start is move, but he speaks before you can. “I’m glad I ended up here, too.”
You’ll take it, even if you have a lot of questions about everything else he just said. The two of you walk in silence for a little while. It’s a cloudy day, with only faint sunbeams sneaking through, and the wind carries a faint chill even though it’s officially summer by now. “What should we do when we get back?” Tenko asks.
“We aren’t even there yet.”
“Yeah, but I want to know what I have to look forward to,” Tenko says. You roll your eyes. “You don’t play games. Do you want to learn?”
“Maybe,” you say. “I’m not going to be good at it. I’d slow you down.”
“You’ll get better fast if I’m the one teaching you,” Tenko says. “There are lots of different games. I can teach you to play any of them. Except dating sims.”
“You don’t like playing dating sims?” You fake surprise, and it’s Tenko’s turn to roll his eyes. “Do you have to test a lot of them?”
“I test whatever people send me. That’s why it’ll be easy for me to teach you,” Tenko says. “They’re all the same underneath. I haven’t played one in a long time that was actually a challenge.”
His grip on your hand relaxes slightly, his fingers sliding through yours to lace them together. “I used to really like games. It sucks.”
You squeeze his hand slightly. You’ve been there, or somewhere like it. It took you a long time to get back into art after you joined the NCRA. “Have you ever thought about making one? A game?”
“Like the kind I’d want to play?” Tenko seems to perk up for a second. Then his shoulders slump. “Nobody else would want to play it.”
“It sounds like you’ve got an idea, though.” You nudge him lightly with your shoulder and he stumbles. Oops. “Want to tell me about it?”
He hesitates for a while. A really long while. Then: “It’s mystery and horror, but not jump-scare horror. There are monsters, but they aren’t the real problem – or the ones you see aren’t the ones you should be worried about. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, the player character – it’s all going to be second-person – wakes up in a room they don’t recognize with no memory of how they got there. You can remember some things about your life, but how you got from where you’re supposed to be to stage one of the game is a total question mark. So there are two initial objectives. Figuring out what the hell is going on and getting the hell out of there.”
“Okay,” you say. It sounds stressful. “How do you do that? In the game.”
“You have to find a way out of the building first.” Tenko looks surprised that you’re still asking questions. “And that’s easy enough, so then –”
For a game he thinks no one else would want to play, Tenko’s put a lot of thought into it. He’s still talking about it as the two of you make the turn onto the beach access road – about the storyline of the game, the twists and reveals he’s thought of, the need to tweak the design and color palette to make everything seem just slightly off. The question of music or no music, and if music, what it should sound like. You like hearing him talk about something important to him, something he’s excited about, even if the concept of the game is giving you heart palpitations. You don’t think there are many things that make Tenko happy. You’d like to be one of them.
You get down to the beach at last, and just like you were hoping, it’s basically deserted. The tide is on its slow, steady way back in, but the beach is strewn with logs and twists of seaweed and kelp, and you’re willing to bet that there’s some sea-glass lying around in the debris along the high-tide line. Tenko studies it, significantly less ambivalent than he was a second ago. “When you said there’d be more stuff, I didn’t think you meant trees.”
“A storm can dredge up all kinds of things,” you say. “And last night’s storm was pretty bad. Come on.”
Tenko lets you pull him a little closer to the water, until you’re both walking on hard-packed sand. You get distracted by the debris field almost immediately, and you let go of Tenko’s hand without thinking so you can search for sea-glass more efficiently. Tenko’s tone of voice makes it clear he’s amused. “So this is like a scavenger hunt for you?”
“I guess.” You come up with a brown piece, followed by a green one, both of them old and smooth. “I want to make something for the café. I’ve been collecting it since I moved here.”
“Five years and you still don’t have enough?”
“The idea for the project keeps getting bigger,” you admit. Tenko snorts. “You can go on ahead if you want. I don’t want to slow you down.”
“I want to hang out with you.” Tenko crouches down next to you on the sand. “This is fine.”
You find multiple pieces in the time it takes him to find one, which he offers to you. It’s a pretty piece, sky-blue and frosted over, but you shake your head. “You found it. It’s yours.”
“I found it for you,” Tenko says, but you notice that he pockets it. And that he keeps looking.
The two of you wander from debris field to debris field, the tide inching up behind you. You’re comfortable with the silence – it’s how it usually is when he’s at the café, after all – but beneath the veneer of ease, questions are eating at you. Questions you don’t know how to ask or how to answer. Your crush on Shimura Tenko is intense, but it’s never been something real. It was just proof that you were getting back to normal, that you could live a life not dominated by the need to prove to the rest of the world that criminals are people, too. You never expected your crush to turn into sleeping with him, him staying the night, him wanting to hang out the next day – and even if you had expected it, you’d never have expected it to happen so fast.
“You were right,” Tenko says. You glance at him. “No people. It’s not as bad.”
You nod. “I’d come back if you wanted to,” Tenko says. He tilts his head, studying you. “Do you want to?”
“Do you want to do all this again?” you ask. He gives you a weird look. “The whole sex, sleepover, hang out the next day thing?”
“That’s what people do, isn’t it?” Tenko’s giving you an even weirder look now. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about –” The distress is building beyond what you can handle. You force yourself to take a deep breath. “What we are. To each other. After that.”
He’s not giving you a weird look anymore. He’s looking at you like you’re the dumbest person he’s ever met. You feel like the dumbest person anybody’s ever met, ever. “Like, are we friends with benefits, or –”
“You said you like me,” Tenko cuts you off. “I like you. Do you think I just – with anybody? I’ve been here for five fucking years. Do you know how many people have my phone number? One. The day that hero showed up, I never would have come back, except –”
His hand comes up, scratching his neck with gloved fingers. “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t like you. Why do you think it took me so long?”
It? What is he talking about? “I do like you,” you say. “I really like you. I just didn’t think anything would happen. Or happen that fast.”
“Hooking up like that was your idea,” Tenko says. You don’t want to own up to that, but it’s true – he was the one who kissed you, but you were the one who suggested heading back to your room. “Do you wish we hadn’t?”
“I wish I’d been better prepared,” you admit. Tenko blinks. “If I had condoms things wouldn’t have been as messy.”
“I like it messy.” Tenko states it so plainly that you feel your face heat up. “We’ll get condoms. You can stop freaking out whenever you want.”
“I’m not freaking out,” you say. “I just –”
The scream comes out of nowhere, cutting off a thought you didn’t have a prayer of articulating properly. “Help!”
It’s a kid’s voice, high-pitched and splitting with fear. You can’t identify where it’s coming from, and there’s not even a question of what you’ll do. You and Tenko trade a glance, then rocket to your feet. Tenko takes off down the beach. You head back the way you came. “Keep yelling!” you shout to the kid. “Let us know where you are!”
The kid keeps yelling, getting steadily less coherent. They must be closer to you than to Tenko, because their voice is getting louder. You veer closer to the water’s edge, your heart in your throat. The water’s already rushing up around the logs the storm left behind, up to your ankles and getting higher. The kid’s scream takes on a new urgency. “Hurry! The waves –”
You skitter around a log, giving it a wide berth to avoid the deeper pool of water beneath it, and find the kid, halfway trapped under another log and struggling to keep his head above water. He spots you, opens his mouth to scream again, and catches a mouthful of seawater from the wave that’s just rolled in.
You duck down beside him, hoisting his head and shoulders up, buying time. You suck down a breath and let loose a shout of your own. “Tenko! Over here!”
It seems like an eternity before he appears around the side of the log. He looks at the kid, then at you. “What the hell happened?”
The kid is crying too hard to answer, but it’s not hard to guess. “He must have been climbing on the log, and it rolled over on him.”
“What were you doing out here alone?” Tenko demands of the kid. The kid doesn’t answer, and Tenko’s red eyes flash with rage. “Who was supposed to take care of you? Why aren’t they here?”
“Hey,” you snap. This isn’t helping. “I need you to call emergency services. Tell them we’re at Fourth Beach and there’s a kid in trouble.”
Tenko pulls out his phone and dials, while you try to strategize. The tide is coming in faster now. Even if emergency services gets here at their top speed, there’s a good chance the water will have already covered the kid’s head. Based on the way he’s panicking, you don’t think he has a quirk that lets him breathe underwater, and you have a fleeting thought about heroes before remembering that you’re in a rural town. There are no heroes here. You and Tenko are going to have to get him out yourselves.
Your quirk is worse than useless for this. You don’t know what Tenko’s quirk is, or if he even has one. Tenko shoves his phone in his pocket and hurries back to your side. “They said they’re coming.”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes.”
The kid doesn’t have ten minutes, and all three of you know it. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” you say, trying to keep your voice calm. “When the next wave comes in, we can use its momentum to roll the log forward and pull him out from underneath it.”
“It’s huge,” Tenko says. “That won’t work.”
“It rolled from him stepping on it,” you say. “We can do this.”
Tenko doesn’t argue with you. He turns to watch the waves, looking for a likely one, while you explain the situation to the boy. He’s going to have to hold his breath while you and Tenko push the log, and then one of you – probably you – will pull him out. He starts to protest, but then Tenko calls out that a wave’s coming up, and the boy switches to sucking down air instead. Good. You hold him up until the last possible moment, then get to your feet. You take up a position at Tenko’s side, set your feet as firmly as you’re able to in the shifting sand, and shove hard at the log as the wave washes up around it.
You think you feel it move, a little bit. But then the water recedes, and you scramble back to the kid, and as soon as his head breaks the surface, he howls in pain. “My leg!”
You must have rolled the log back on it – or forward, or something. “We need a bigger wave.”
Tenko shakes his head. He looks like he’s going to be sick. You can hear sirens in the distance, but they’re too far away. The kid is screaming, clawing at your shirt, and you struggle to comfort him, promising that help is coming, promising it’ll be okay. It doesn’t work, or else what happened to his leg in your failed attempt to move the log is worse than you thought, because his eyes roll up in his head and he goes boneless in your grip. You shake him, terrified, desperate to keep his head above water as another wave crashes against your back. He’s going to die. A kid is going to die while you’re holding him, and there’s nothing you can do.
You can’t look at his pale, slackened face a second longer. You look up instead, and that’s when you see the solitary crack running across the log’s surface.
It wasn’t there before, and now it’s not alone. One crack turns into a dozen, and dozens more, spreading and colliding with each other until the log simply crumbles away, leaving nothing in its place. Nothing except Tenko on the other side, both hands outstretched – and ungloved.
Something twists in the back of your mind, but the kid is free now, and the tide is still coming in. You start dragging him up the beach, trying to get clear of the high-tide line. A quick glance at his leg shows you that it’s broken, badly, but you can’t worry about it now, or get lost in the fact that it’s your fault. The two of you make it onto dry sand just in time for a trio of paramedics to race down the beach, carrying a stretcher and pursued by five or six terrified people. “What happened?”
“He got – stuck,” you manage. Your teeth are chattering. You aren’t even that cold. “Is he going to be okay?”
The paramedics have questions for you, even as they shoo you out of the way. Did he swallow water? Yes. Did he breathe water in? You don’t know. How long has he been unconscious? A minute, maybe less. Time feels uneven, unreal. You don’t have a clue what’s going on, and you stand blankly off to one side, unsure whether you’re supposed to stay or go. Maybe you can go. Everybody knows where to find you if they have questions, and you’ll calm down faster if you and Tenko can –
Tenko’s not standing next to you. You look up and down the beach, but you can’t see him anywhere.
Maybe emergency services scared him off. He booked it pretty fast at the sight of Present Mic. You pull your phone out of your pocket to text him, but your phone’s dripping wet and unresponsive. Now you really need to get home, and maybe Tenko’s there already. He saved someone’s life. If he’s freaked out even slightly as much as you are, you want to be with him.
But something is nagging at you as you speed-walk back through town, something about Tenko’s quirk. You never asked what it was, but the gloves were enough for you to infer that it had something to do with his hands. And maybe he doesn’t feel all that comfortable with it. You wouldn’t either, if you had a quirk like that. The way it looked, how fast it moved – it was almost like –
You stop dead in your tracks on the side of the road. Tenko’s gloves. His red eyes. His dyed hair and scarred face and mangled hands, and a quirk that lets him destroy things he touches. Even their initials are the same. Shimura Tenko, and. And. Your mind won’t let you finish the thought. You won’t let yourself jump to conclusions like that. You need to be sure. You force yourself into motion, back to a speed-walk. Then into a run.
Back at home, you drop your phone in a bowl of rice and sit down at the kitchen table with your laptop without bothering to change out of your wet clothes. You haven’t been a criminal in half a decade, but you still know how to search the internet like one. This isn’t dark-web level, and it’s not illegal, but you could raise red flags, and if you’re right – you connect to a VPN, open a web browser you’ve never used before, set your cache to empty every five minutes, and type in your first query.
‘shigaraki tomura quirk’ gets you a long list. You have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the first page you click on to find the quirk you’re thinking of, and when you read the description, your heart sinks. You navigate away from the webpage and type in a new prompt. ‘shigaraki tomura decay’ gets you more pages analyzing the quirk itself, all of which feel unnecessary and unhelpful. You know what Decay is. You need to know what it looked like. You modify the search. ‘shigaraki tomura decay video’.
YouTube has nothing, courtesy of aggressive content moderation. You dig a little deeper, finding lesser-known, sketchier hosting sites, and the first video that pops up is of the destruction of Jaku City, at the very beginning of the war. It happens so quickly – too quickly to see anything except the way the buildings implode into nothing. You need an up-close view, so you modify your search, scrolling past video after blurry video until you find one tagged as part of the Deika City massacre.
The quality looks okay. You click on it and find yourself watching a group of people thundering up a street, headed for something just out of frame. A moment later, whatever it is ducks through the corner of the frame. A pale hand rises up, making contact with the face of one of the people in the group. And then you see it. Cracks spreading across their face, just a few at first, and then they spread so rapidly that the person simply falls apart where they stand.
You just watched a snuff film, but that’s not what makes you recoil. What Shigaraki Tomura did to the person in that video is the same thing Tenko did to the log on the beach. It’s the same quirk. They’re the same man.
Tenko’s hair is dyed, and it’s not dyed well. You never asked what his natural color is, but you’re betting it’s white, which is why there’s no way he can get someone else to color it for him. If he walked into a salon with white hair, red eyes, no eyebrows, and a scar over his right eye, there’s not a person in Japan who wouldn’t recognize him instantly.
You type in another query: ‘shigaraki tomura face’. It turns up a lot of photos of him with the signature hand over his face, but you get at least one without it, and the reason why he wears a mask all the time becomes clear in an instant. No eyebrows – happens. Plenty of people have red eyes. But add in the scar over the left side of Tenko’s lips, a scar you ran your thumb over last night, and the birthmark Shigaraki has just below the right corner of his mouth, and he’d be unmistakable. No matter how many bad dye jobs he did on his hair.
You shut the lid of your laptop with shaking hands and sit back in your chair. Shimura Tenko, your regular customer, who slept over last night, who you like and who likes you, is the same person as Shigaraki Tomura, an unrepentant supervillain who’s been dead for five years. It doesn’t make any sense. If Shigaraki had survived the war, he’d be in maximum-security prison for the rest of his life, not beta-testing video games and hanging out in your coffee shop. Shigaraki Tomura is dead. You met the hero who killed him.
Or did he? You remember thinking how odd it was that Deku kept referring to Shigaraki watching what he was doing, wishing he could talk to him. You remember what he said when Spinner asked about Shigaraki’s ashes: There was nothing left of Shigaraki Tomura. But somebody else walked away from that fight, and he’s got Shigaraki’s quirk – and the only time you’ve seen him use it, it was to save someone’s life. You can’t say for sure, but the circumstantial evidence is compelling as hell. You know who Shimura Tenko is. And you’re halfway convinced he used to be Shigaraki Tomura.
You fish your phone out of the bowl of rice to check if it’s working yet. It isn’t. You’re going to have to wait a little longer to reach out to Tenko. His backpack and laptop are still here. He’ll be back for them, probably tonight – and if not, you’ll see him at the café tomorrow, and you can give it to him then. And when you see him again, you can sort this out. There’s nothing else you can do right now.
You tell yourself that, make yourself believe it, and spend the rest of your one day off every week getting your chores done. And even though it’s been an exhausting twenty-four hours, even though there’s nothing you can do, you still toss and turn through the night, thinking about Tenko. Worrying about him. Wondering who he was before this, and wondering at how little it matters to you.
SWEET
This is my copium. Bite me.
Its just ice cream.
Shigaraki looks at you like a wet kitten. He isn't sure why he's acting like this is the strangest thing to ever happen to him. You offered him a bite of your ice cream that you happily scarfed down laying in his lap while he idly farmed away in Breath of the Wild.
He looks at the spoon, then at you. When you offer him a puzzled expression and ask if he doesnt like the flavor he doesn't exactly know what to say. Does he like the flavor? Is he expecting you to share spoons? Why do you eat ice cream with a big spoon? The small spoon is superior...
"I've never had ice cream before." he realizes he's speaking now. He wasn't supposed to say that out loud, it was supposed to be a quiet realization to himself that he had never had something like that before.
You make a face at that, and he knows its not a good face. You're upset with him? He's still not good at understanding your feelings and all of the faces you make, but he's trying. Even so, he can't understand what he's done to make you upset with him. But as if reading his mind, you simply say "thats so sad... I hate your sensei."
Oh. You aren't upset with him. You're upset because master never let him indulge in sweet treats. He wants to argue that he's never deserved them before, but recently you've been making him feel like he's worth it, and like he's not a dangerous return investment. You make him feel wanted, and as if hes the only one in the world worthy of your gaze, and you make him question everything he's ever known.
So cautiously, he opens his mouth and takes a small bite from your spoon. It tastes like... orange and vanilla... Its so cold. But the smile you give him when you see him eat it makes him feel so warm he doesn't even realize hes opening his mouth for you to give him another spoonful, and another after that.
Shigaraki gets his first brainfreeze after trying to eat the whole pint in one go. Your laugh makes it all worth it though, and he realizes he loves orange and vanilla. He realizes he loves this moment with you, its soft and quiet. The only sounds being satisfied hums and background music from Breath of the Wild. Its a domesticity he hasn't ever had in his life and he never wants to let it go, he wants to feel this peace with you again and again. He wants to taste all the ice cream and all the sweet treats he was never able to indulge in before.
But for now, he simply kisses your cold, soft lips. Because you're still sweeter than anything Sensei could've possibly tried to keep from him.
I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:
Fictional characters are objects.
They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.
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18+, minor don't interact with the 18+ contentTomura shigaraki's biggest simpArtist, writter
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