If You Can Show Your Appreciation Somehow, Please Do!!! (if You Use)

This poor man 🥺

oh but can you do good things shigaraki addition??? plez

pairing: yandere!Shigaraki Tomura x darling!reader goodiebag WARNINGS: yandere, angst

tip-jar: Kofi

He fears hurting you.

Not in the pretty love bites and itty bitty bruise or two or ten he gives you, but really hurting you.

He might end up giving you some more proper damage every now and again when you fight back or make him hunt you down after escaping, but he doesn’t really enjoy inflicting that sort of pain on you at all.

The thought of actually hurting you haunts him.

He’ll dream about it. Wake up shaking and in tears, wide-eyed and hyperventilating, unable to speak, and itchy like never before. And he’ll be afraid to look, the chills strangling him as he slowly turns to his head to where you ought to be lying. Dreading, with every knot in his gut tightening, the bed is full of dust.

But there you are. Pretty face still pretty on the pillow, adorable soft snores escaping you with a little spill of drool running down the corner of your mouth. And he breaks out into a cold sweat of relief, finally allowed to breathe again. 

Though guilt still haunts him where he lies awake thinking about maybe, just maybe… letting you go.

tip-jar: Kofi

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 !

hi can i please request something with tomura (I’ve been seeing you say you want to write for him again lol plus i love him to so) like maybe something soft and comforting but also with smut in it?

hellooooo (*ˊᗜˋﾉﾉ

yes you absolutely can! thank you for giving into my current hyperfixation lol he has been on my mind sooooo much lately. probably in order to cope with what happened with the source material…

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

“Inside the Open Window”

Tomura x afab Reader

word count: 2,000+

disclaimer/content warning: 18+ content! minors dni! size difference mentioned, soft tomura, some smut, some angst, established relationship, afab reader.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

The room, for once, is filled with honeyed light. You blink open bleary eyes and stare out into the shallow pools of morning puddling in swaying shapes on the floor, vision slowly focusing until you catch the lazy swirls of dust motes dancing through the air. You keep telling Tomura to open some windows, let the fresh air in before it gets too cold and you all end up even more cooped up than you already feel you are on the daily, but he’s stubborn about it so you have to sneak his open a crack when he’s not around. So far he hasn’t noticed. Maybe you’ll risk sliding it up a little further this afternoon.

Beside you, you can hear Tomura’s slow, shallow breathing from where he lays, one of his arms slung across your middle, elbow resting in the dip of your waist as you lay on your side, your back almost touching his chest. You find his hand where it’s carefully placed up near your own chest, fingers curled tightly inward even though he wears those two-fingered gloves whenever you two sleep together. You tell him you trust him, that he’s spent a majority of his life learning to sleep through the night without decaying anything while unconscious, but he says having your trust isn’t the deciding factor.

“I don’t trust myself,” he’d snapped one evening when you were pressing him about it, trying to come from a place of reassurance but inevitably pushing him a little too far. “You don’t understand,” he’d continued, after a short huff of a sigh and a trembling hand raked back through his unruly waves. “It’s just— If that were to happen, I can’t take it back. I can’t take it back. I—”

You’d approached him, slow and cautious, like he was an injured animal that looked vulnerable right now but, once within reach, might thrash and snap, bare its teeth and bite down hard. “Tomura…” you’d murmured, reaching out a hand, testing to see if he’d let you place it on his cheek. “It’s ok…” He’d leaned into your touch, let his eyes flutter closed, his next exhale coming out as a shaking, raspy whine. You’d gently pulled him down until your foreheads were touching, hoping that simple act helped to make at least some of his fear melt away, the terror pulling back from shore for a short while even if its return was inevitable. You’d let the silence settle between you two before you’d said, your voice barely above a whisper, “I know…”

So he slipped on the gloves, you buckling them in place around his thin wrists, and from then on some of the tension he held whenever he’s around you disappears.

The first touch is always the hardest though.

It’s always the scariest.

It’s as if he worries the rules of his quirk will suddenly change, that needing all five fingers in order to decay will mutate into needing only one and he’ll be forced to helplessly watch you crumble to dust between his destructive hands, frantically trying to gather up the particles as if he could use them to reconstruct you somehow, or maybe just to keep a part of who you used to be, if worse came to worst.

But once his hand— palm, fingers, and all— was safely resting against the side of your neck, he allowed himself to feel some relief.

Because, like that, you could be his.

Like that, he could hold you.

You stiffly shimmy out from beneath his arm, making sure to carefully lift the limb and set it comfortably back down close to him. You stand, greeted by the quiet crackling pops of a few joints, and make your way over to that cracked window. You glance behind you. Tomura’s still asleep. So you catch the lip of the window with the edge of your grip and pull upward, struggling for a moment before it finally gives and slides all the way to the top, the rush of sound quick but louder than you were hoping for.

When you look over your shoulder again, you see Tomura’s eyes are open now, looking fully alert in just an instant, though his body remains still and frozen in the same position that you left it, tufts of white hair hanging at odd angles in his eyes and over his shoulder.

“Sorry…” you wince, coming back over to sit on the bed beside him. He begins to stir, turns over onto his chest to push up onto his elbows, the tousled sheets slipping and exposing more of his pale back, the scars cross-hatching across the skin shining faintly silver in the morning’s soft glow. 

“You can go back to bed if you want to,” you tell him, feeling guilty for waking him so soon. You know he’s usually one to sleep into the afternoon and beyond.

He clicks on your phone, 8:15 lighting up on the screen before fading to black again. “It’s fine,” he sighs, turning over again to sit up, slouching over a bit as he rubs at the back of his neck, fingers getting caught in a loose knot in his hair as he combs it through, letting out a pronounced yawn. He looks at you as you shuffle closer and asks, “How long have you been up?”

“Not long,” you tell him. “Only a few more minutes before you.”

Tomura opens his mouth, about to say something, but stops when you both hear one of the other members of the League creaking around from downstairs. You’re willing to bet it’s Atsuhiro. He’s the only regularly early-rising person among you.

Whatever words Tomura was going to speak are reduced to a low rumble of annoyance and the clenching of his jaw, as if he’s just been reminded of something he’d been trying to avoid.

In this small bout of contemplation, Tomura shifts from beneath the covers and swings his legs over the side of the bed, bending down to grab up the bundle of black denim on the floor which unfurl into his jeans, fishing out his phone from the back pocket and turning it on only to be greeted with an abundance of notifications. Instead of reading them, he mutters something under his breath and tosses it onto the nearby side table, leaning forward to give you a better view of his back again. Now that you’re closer, you can better see the fading red scratch tracks that travel down his shoulders, though for once the marks weren’t made by his own jagged nails.

The sight of it takes you back to last night, when the room had been doused in silver instead of gold and filled to the brim with the quiet, lilting sounds of your combined pleasure. You could still feel the ghost of him wrapped around you, encasing you in his scent, his touch, his very essence as if attempting to meld you both into one.

But, like most things, no matter how much you tried to tell him he didn’t need to be so delicate with you, doesn’t need to treat you like you’re one touch away from being broken, he doesn’t listen. He’s so gentle, even as his hips meet the inside of your thighs and he drives himself into your tight, wet heat even deeper, as if hoping to burrow a new home inside of you, to leave a piece of himself there so you’ll always carry it around.

Your moans are perhaps his favorite sound in the entire world, hearing the way they break off into a clipped whimper when he hits that soft, spongy spot deep inside of you, his own moans choked out as your silky walls squeeze around his length, wringing pleasure from him in a way that’s both relentless and heavenly.

When you wrap your legs around his waist to pull him in deeper still, he’s on the verge of losing any ounce of control he has left, tempted to take your wrists and pin them above your head so he can pound into you hard enough to well tears in your eyes and have you crying out in a way that’s helpless and hurting and all his, his, his.

But when he looks down at you, sees that telltale trust that reflects back at him in your gaze, he keeps the more carnal parts of his desires at bay. Because, while he may take pride in being a symbol of fear to the rest of the world, if there’s only one person he doesn’t want to view him like that, it’s you.

When you come undone, arching your back as your mouth hangs open with a silent scream, that’s when your nails rake across his flesh quick and hard, not quite breaking the skin but bursting the blood vessels beneath, a speckling of bright red stippling the tracks of a slightly lighter shade.

He’d let out a hiss followed mere moments later by his own body letting go, a broken whine welling in his throat, the types of sounds he only allows you to hear him make. You’d forgotten you’d scratched him so hard last night almost as soon as it had happened, your mind glazed over with a thick layer of pleasure and saccharine lust, the world around you blurring until the only thing you could seem to make out through the dim dark of the room was him and all that alabaster, scar-covered skin sheened over with sweat.

Now, Tomura beckons you back into his embrace, wanting to feel the warmth of your body seeping into his one more time before he’s forced to rise from his bed and slip back into the cold, hardened role of being the leader of the most feared group of villains in the entire country, perhaps even the entire world.

You’re wearing his t-shirt, the soft black fabric oversized on your form, nothing underneath, the rest of your clothes still left discarded and strewn across the room in a trail from the door to the foot of the bed. Like this, you’re enveloped in his scent, and it leaves you feeling calm and sated. Safe. Like nothing inside of these four walls could ever go wrong.

But you really should’ve known better.

The moment you start to get even a little too comfortable is always when something rears its head to remind you there are no happy endings here. 

After a while of listening to your steady breathing and staring out the open window, Tomura works up the courage to say, “Today’s the day, y’know…” hence breaking the illusion that you’d be allowed to live in the fantasy of this haven for more than a single night’s rest.

You close your eyes, let out a long breath, trying to stay your worry. “I know,” you tell him. “I know, but, Tomura…” You turn your face up towards his, hoping to lock eyes with him, even if only for a moment, but he’s still focused on the window he rarely lets you open, furrowing his sparse, silvery brow in a look of intense concentration. Eventually, however, he does look at you, the intensity he held before melting away into something much more concerned.

Be careful, you want to tell him.

If things start to go wrong just get out. Don’t risk letting the heroes get their hands on you.

But what comes out instead is, “Nothing, nevermind…”

You figure he has enough to worry about already. You know he’s fully aware of the risks of this mission and the consequences that will follow if he fails.

So, for now, you allow yourself to sit in this false sense of security and serenity a little longer, whether for another minute, another hour, another day.

He won’t fail, you tell yourself as he places a kiss to the top of your head and smoothes down your hair, rising from the bed and gathering up more scattered articles of his clothing to slip back on before heading downstairs. He can’t.

You then regret opening the window. Perhaps, if you’d left it alone, you could’ve bought a few more hours of peace before the weight of responsibility settled in.

But, at the same time, you also knew that you were both on borrowed time.

Why not enjoy what moments of fresh air and sunlight you could get before it all was reduced to rubble and ash.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

bro i'm ruining my own chances...like i'm currently studying to be a psychologist (and hopefully a criminologist after 👉👈) but every time soemone tell mz they are intrested i'm like "haha whqt a good joke.."

Then they think i mocked them but i meant it in a "Don't act like you like me then you don't" a'd its always like this TvT i swear i only reamise after

Shiggy from mha

Please reblog for a larger sample size.

Game night

Starboy Tomura animation

Omg i get a nose bleed while drawing it🥵🥹

“And then no one ever fucking listens to me.”

You sat on Tomura’s unmade bed as he paced back and forth in his room, ranting about this and that. You weren’t exactly sure how you two started dating. He couldn’t stand you when you first joined the league, finding you to be rather annoying. Yet now, it’s like he has separation anxiety if he’s away from you for too long. You brought peace to him, he needs you more than you’ll ever know.

“Sometimes I just wanna dust them all just so I don’t have to see those dumb fucks again.” He huffed, running a frustrated hand through his light blue locks.

You chuckled softly at his words, opening your arms invitingly. “Well let’s maybe not do that.”

Without much hesitation, he’s crawling onto the bed with you and into your open arms, resting his head on your chest. He began to slowly relax as he felt your arms around him, but then let out a slightly irritated huff, reaching to take one of your hands with his pinky raised and placing it on his head. You smiled at this, obeying his silent demand as you started to play with his hair.

It was one of his favorite things to have you do in private. You’ve been trying to work with him on dealing with his anger in ways that weren’t decaying everything within a ten foot radius. Once Tomura realized how much he likes when you play with his hair, the rest was history. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, if he wants you to do it, you better do it or else you’re not going to hear the end of it for the rest of the day.

“Well it’s not like they don’t deserve it.”

“Someone annoying you isn’t a good reason to kill them, Tomu.” He rolled his eyes with a scoff. “Well I think it is… especially Dabi.”

You almost didn’t catch his little mumble as you glance at his face that’s currently hidden in your chest. “What did Dabi do?”

“What doesn’t Dabi do? Yeah his quirk is powerful, but he’s so annoying, and rude, and the way he looks at you pisses me off.” His voice was low, his insecurities starting to show. “Tomu, are you jealous?”

He fell silent. Everyone knew that he wasn’t someone who was good at talking about his feelings. Honestly, it wasn’t just Dabi that upsets him, it was anyone. He secretly hates anyone who gets close with you, because he’s terrified that you’ll like them more than him and leave him. He knew he wasn't the best boyfriend ever, but he was trying, he really really was. He might not say it very often, but he loves you more than anything, and the thought of losing you hurts him more than most of the things he’s been through in his life.

He doesn’t want his one form of happiness to be ripped away from him.

“Well there’s nothing to be jealous of, Dabi’s cool and all I guess, but I’m not into him like that at all.” You spoke up when he didn’t say anything. “I love you, and only you.”

He continued to stay silent for a few moments. “Tell me that again.” He demanded quietly.

Smiling, you cup his face in your hands, lifting it so you can meet his gaze. You begin peppering his face with kisses, saying quick “I love you's” in between each kiss.

“Ugh! Okay! That's enough!” Tomura frowns, pushing you away from him. He might be acting like he hates your affection on the outside, but on the inside his heart is beating so fast he thinks he might have a heart attack. “Now come on, I wanna play minecraft.”

Giggling a bit as he attempts to hide the deep blush on his face, you nod. “Anything for you, Tomu.”

My heart is breaking in a million pieces because Tomura thinks he can destroy the world and go back to the League, but he doesn't know that most of them are either dead or terribly hurt.

He doesn't know Twice died because he refused to betray them. Tomura doesn't know that Mr. Compress sacrificed himself to save him, doesn't know about the way that Compress screamed he loved the League as he went down. He has no clue about what AFO did to Spinner in Tomura's name, the way Dabi explained so perfectly to Shouto the LOV and their philosophies because he always paid attention even if he said he didn't, Tomura wasn't there to witness Toga's breakdown over not being able to use the Dabi's flames or his decay even if she loved them so much.

At his absolute worst, even once the worst of his own past is over, the thought of them keeping him going.

He wants to destroy the world for them.

His League of Villains.

They love him so much. He loves them so much.

They can only imagine it, but they. don't. know.

Haunting for Beginners (Chapter 2) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Ghosts summoned and bound to the human world have one purpose - haunting - but Tomura's never met a human he could stand long enough to haunt them, and he's pretty sure he never will. When you cross the threshold of his house, you capture his interest, and for the first time, he finds himself with a chance to do what ghosts are meant to do. It's too bad he doesn't know how. Scenes from Love Like Ghosts, as seen through the eyes of the ghost in question. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

It doesn’t take Tomura long to figure out the problem with wanting things: Getting the thing he wants doesn’t make the wanting go away. It works for a little while. Sometimes even long enough to make Tomura think it’s gone for good. But it always comes back, and when it does, it feels just as itchy and awful as before. Worse, maybe, because now Tomura knows what it feels like to have the thing he wants.

He wants you to talk to him, and you do talk to him. At first he doesn’t care what you’re saying. He just – likes – the sound of your voice, and he likes that it’s just for him, that if he wasn’t there you’d be quiet except for talking to the dog. The dog’s name is Phantom. Tomura’s decided that he doesn’t mind sharing your attention with Phantom. Phantom was here first, and it pays attention to Tomura, too – and it can’t talk back. Tomura could. Can. Maybe.

At first he doesn’t care what you’re saying, but soon enough, he starts to. He has to, because sometimes you’re upset about things, and if you’re too upset about things, you might leave. Once he starts paying attention to when you’re upset, he starts to see differences in it. There’s sad-upset, when your voice is quiet and your movements are slow and even Phantom jumping up in your lap doesn’t make you smile. There’s angry-upset, when you’re still quiet, but you’re restless and pacing, every piece of you tense. And then there’s frustrated-upset, when something small has gone wrong, or when there’s something you don’t understand or can’t fix.

Tomura sees frustrated-upset more and more as the days go by. And the realization creeps up on him slowly, the same way everything did when time didn’t matter, that the thing you’re frustrated with is him.

He’s mad that you’re frustrated with him at first. He’s not doing anything except helping you – helping you with the coyote, helping you get rid of the humans who came over when you didn’t invite them, helping you get rid of one of the ghosts and its weird human when they invite themselves over, too. What right do you have to get mad at him? Tomura spends a solid week and a half sulking before he realizes why you’re frustrated with him, at which point he discovers a new feeling. He doesn’t know what to call it, but it’s spiky instead of itchy, and it feels urgent, like he has to do something about it right now. You’re mad at him because he’s shown himself to other people, talked to other people, but not to you. That means you want to see him. Tomura has to figure out how to make it happen.

The spiky feeling is terrible. It won’t let him have a second of peace. It’s always there, poking holes in his essence, prodding him to look for a way to make you see him. Ghosts in movies never let people see them all the way, but the ghosts in the neighborhood must have shown themselves to their humans at some point, or else they wouldn’t have them. How did they do it?

Tomura gets an answer, sort of, when you drop a bag of flour and he steps into the plume of white dust that rises up. If he has enough life-force to make himself even slightly substantial, things like dust or smoke or flour will settle around his form and show the rest of him. You’ve figured it out, too. Tomura was already pretty sure you wanted to see him, but the number of times you turn and spray water at him to reveal him only proves it. You’re weirdly accurate about it, too. You always seem to know where Tomura is, and that makes Tomura feel – something.

He watches you all the time, learning about you. You might not be able to watch him, but you’re learning things about him, too.

Tomura doesn’t want you to learn things about him. You might get it wrong. The only way to make sure you don’t is to find a way to talk to you, and Tomura doesn’t know how to give himself a voice. All he can do is give himself hands. He could write something with his hands. Where? There are pens and paper all over your house, but when Tomura tries writing, his hands are clumsy and useless, smearing letters across the page and covering his hands in ink. Then he has to hide the evidence before you get home. Phantom helps out. When Tomura sweeps the papers off the table in a fit of frustration, it eats them.

Tomura could write with a pen, maybe, if he practiced more. But he’s too impatient for that. You’re frustrated with him. Frustrated means you could leave. He needs a solution now. He spends days thinking about it, then weeks, only for the answer to come to him at the absolute last minute – when you’re in the shower, and the bathroom is full of steam, the mirror fogged until it’s almost opaque.

If Tomura lets the steam show his form, and makes a hand to write on the mirror – you switch off the water in the shower, and Tomura scrambles for something to drain. He’s just barely found a spider, barely trapped it in a coil of his essence, when you step out of the shower wrapped in a towel. Tomura materializes a shadow of himself, more than he’s ever materialized before, standing squarely in your path. You’ve been trying to see him. If he’s going to show himself to you, he’s going to make sure you see everything.

Your eyes are wide as you look at him, but you aren’t screaming or running, and you don’t try to wave him away like you did the first time he showed himself to you. Tomura’s stupid itching starts again, stronger than it’s ever been, and for the first time he tries to scratch it. He scratches it and studies you. Now he gets why you always look so proud when you make him show himself. He’s showing himself, finally, and you’re not mad at him. That’s worth being proud of.

There’s a sensation he hasn’t experienced before, in his face. Tomura has a face right now, and it’s doing something weird. You turn away from him, and he raises the hand that’s not scratching to touch the spot where a mouth would be on a human, where his mouth is. His lips feel dry and rough, and they’re curved upwards. He’s – smiling. Humans smile when they’re proud, sometimes. He’s doing it right.

He can’t see himself in the mirror. He doesn’t have a reflection. You do, even when the mirror’s coated in steam. You aren’t looking at Tomura. You’re looking at the mirror, like you’re waiting for him to write on it, and just as Tomura’s reaching forward to write ‘hello’, you speak up. “You’re my ghost.”

Your ghost. Tomura is your ghost, just like you’re his human – and you talked to him first. The feeling of like multiplies through Tomura’s essence as he materializes one finger to write in the steam on the mirror. Yes.

“Who are you?”

Tomura tilts his head, just like the dog does when it’s confused. He thought you knew. Your ghost.

“Who am I?”

That question makes sense. Tomura knows the answer now. Mine.

“No.” Your bare shoulders stiffen, and Tomura’s itching gets even worse. “What do you mean?”

Mine to haunt, Tomura writes. That one’s easy.

He can’t tell how you feel about the answer, though. Humans in the movies you watch don’t like being haunted. But you still aren’t running away. You ask another question. “What should I call you?”

That one’s not as easy. Tomura feels his expression distort, and you speak up again to explain more. You’re explaining things now. He should have talked to you a long time ago. “Your name.”

That’s easy, too. Tomura writes it out as fast as possible, before you can change your mind. “Tomura,” you say, and the feeling of like and the feeling of want engulf Tomura together. Like what? Want what? “Hi.”

Hi.

Tomura’s said hi. Now it’s your turn to talk. He waits, and you ask him a question. “Tomura, what do you want?”

He likes hearing you say his name. He doesn’t like when he doesn’t know the answer. He wants you to talk to him, and he wants to talk to you. He wants you to see him, like he sees you. And. And there’s something else, something he can’t put his finger on. Putting his finger on. He has fingers now. He can touch things. What if he touches –

The spider he’s been slowly draining in order to materialize goes cold, and all at once, Tomura’s out of time. He reaches desperately for the mirror, trying to write again, but his fingers dematerialize, and all he can do is swipe through the messages, wiping them out. Your eyes widen with unmistakable fear, and you bolt, fleeing from the bathroom to the bedroom. Tomura doesn’t chase you. Tomura’s too busy searching for something to kill, something to drain, so he can keep talking and explain that you shouldn’t be scared of him, that he’s not going to hurt you, just haunt you – not like the ghosts in movies haunt, but the way the ghosts in Tomura’s neighborhood must have haunted their humans, before they stopped being ghosts. You’re his human. Why would he scare you? He doesn’t want you to leave.

But you are leaving. The front door slams, and when Tomura chases after you, he sees your car pull out of the driveway, you in the front seat with wet hair and clothes that don’t match, and the dog in the backseat, curled up tight. You’re leaving. You haven’t left in the car and taken the dog since the night the coyote attacked you. What if you don’t come back?

Tomura tells himself to count minutes – it’ll make a smaller number – but he finds himself counting seconds instead, and they pile up faster than he can track. So do the feelings. Missing, but worse. Wanting, but more intense. Anger, but aimed in the wrong direction – not at you, not at the other ghosts, not at their humans. At himself. He messed this up so badly that you’re leaving him, and without life-force to materialize hands and write, he can’t fix it. The feelings build and build until Tomura’s essence can’t contain them, and he lets them all loose in an anguished howl that breaks window in every house on the street except the one he’s supposed to share with you.

Tomura’s not sorry about it, and he doesn’t care that the other ghosts and their humans are mad at him – but he does feel a little stupid when you come back. You aren’t leaving him. Why would you leave him? You said he was your ghost, so why would you leave? You come back to the house, and better yet, you say his name the instant you’ve crossed the threshold. “Tomura, can we talk?”

You didn’t just come back, you want to see Tomura again. And talk to him. Tomura still doesn’t have an answer to the question you asked him, but he can think of other things to talk about. He comes closer to you, shadowing you as you climb the stairs and step into the bathroom again. You turn the water on hot, standing still as the bathroom fills with steam. Tomura waits, too. The instant the steam is thick enough, he burns the life-force he collected while you were away to materialize an outline of himself.

He knows it’s a mistake the second he does it. If he doesn’t have life-force, he can’t make hands, which means he can’t write – which means the two of you can’t talk. But when you speak up, he realizes that he doesn’t need to write to answer your first question. “Tomura,” you say cautiously, and Tomura’s mouth curves upwards before he can stop himself, “are you mad at me?”

Tomura shakes his head. He wants to do something stronger than shake his head, but he doesn’t want to startle you and make you run away again. But it’s a stupid question. You’re his human, and you came back, and you want to see him and talk to him. What is there for him to be mad at? If Tomura could just say all that, things would be fine, but he used all his energy on making you see him. Your next question tells him that it was an even bigger mistake than he thought. “If you’re not mad at me, why won’t you talk to me?”

Tomura can’t talk to you. If he could, he would, but all he can do is shake his head again. You can see him, sure, but seeing’s not good enough – just like it’s not good enough for Tomura, not now that he knows the two of you could be talking instead. You look upset again. Sad-upset. You don’t leave the bathroom, and neither does Tomura, and the two of you look at each other while the steam slowly dissipates. Tomura waits for you to look away, but you don’t. You keep watching him, just like he watches you, and the itching kicks in again. Tomura wants to scream.

Why is it back now? He got what he wanted. All the things he wanted. You saw him and he talked to you and you came back and you know his name and you said his name – so why won’t the itching go away? What else could Tomura possibly want?

Something. Tomura wants something, and you must know that, or you wouldn’t have asked that question. Even if Tomura had an answer, he doesn’t have any way to tell you. All he can do is burn through the scant remains of his stolen life-force, staying visible to you as long as possible, wondering how he could have gotten everything he wanted and still wind up wanting to claw his essence apart.

Your sad-upset doesn’t go away, and to Tomura’s horror, you start spending less time in his house. Sure, you’re doing it because you’re talking to the other humans, or you’re working on your garden in the backyard, but you’re still avoiding the house. Avoiding him. Tomura’s house is empty more often than it’s been since you moved in. He hates it. He hates the way it makes him feel.

It’s a new feeling – not like wanting, although he’s been itching for weeks over just how badly he wants it to stop. The new feeling isn’t exactly new, either. It’s familiar, but now he has a name for the way he felt before you moved in. He felt that way for a hundred and ten years and it didn’t bother him, but it bothers him now. Maybe it didn’t bother Tomura because he didn’t know any different. Now he knows different, and the stupid new-but-not feeling – lonely – is agonizing. As days tick past, days where he can’t talk to you and you don’t try to talk to him, the need to do something, anything, about it grows.

There’s a hornets’ nest on the back porch, just like there is every summer. Tomura’s aware of it distantly – it’s just another part of his house – but it doesn’t actually capture his attention until he hears a string of curses from the backyard. It’s been so long since Tomura heard you say anything that wasn’t to the dog. He sweeps through the house and onto the back porch to find you sprawled out in the yard, clutching a hand that’s already been stung twice to your chest.

Tomura doesn’t know what pain feels like, but he knows what humans look like when something’s hurt them, and he sees you gritting your teeth, your jaw clenched. You get to your feet. Then you back slowly away from the nest, all the way to the far corner of the yard.

Tomura’s never paid much attention to the nest before, but now he doesn’t have a choice. You’re his human, and they’ve hurt you, just like the coyote would have hurt you if he hadn’t gotten to it first. Tomura should have dealt with this a long time ago. Even as he has the thought, he sees you set off, planning to deal with it on your own. And your plan is – bad.

It’s not just bad. It’s the dumbest plan Tomura’s ever seen. As soon as you’re out of sight, Tomura seizes the hornets’ nest in a dozen threads of essence and drains it for life-force. He has to get rid of them before you get back. There are hundreds of hornets inside the nest, more living things than Tomura’s ever drained before, more life-force than he knows what to do with. What should he do with it? Make hands, probably. With this much, he could make hands and keep them for hours. He could make hands, or –

Tomrua loses focus on the hornets as he pulls his essence together, forming the structure of a body from the hands up. One of them gets away as the rest of the nest crumbles to ash, and Tomura catches it by the wings, holding on as his feet hit the ground for the first time. Having a body is heavy. Tomura weighs something. He has height and width and mass. His chest feels tight, and he follows the impulse it demands of him – draw air inwards, then release it, an action he's seen humans undertake hundreds of millions of times. Something is rattling in his chest, setting up a rhythm of its own. Tomura realizes, with an odd sense of fascination, that it’s his heart.

It’s not really his heart, just like they aren’t really his hands. It’ll all be gone once he dematerializes again. Tomura tells himself that just in time for you to come back around the corner, wearing about five extra layers of clothes and dragging a garbage can.

You look as dumb as Tomura’s ever seen you look, and you look even dumber once you catch a glimpse of him and your eyes widen in shock. Tomura’s heart does something weird, and unlike his hands, it doesn’t stop doing it when he tells it to. “Um,” you start, still staring, as Tomura kills the last hornet and lets its ashes fall, “I was going to get that.”

Tomura knows. That’s why he got it for you. “I haven’t – not been talking to you,” he says. Now he sounds as dumb as you look. But he’s got a voice now. He can talk. That means he can explain. “I can’t influence this world without life-force. And I can’t get it from you or the dog.”

“Why not?”

What kind of question is that? “You’d die,” Tomura says. His body does something weird at the thought – twists, lurches, his chest turning tight. “My house would be empty.”

“And you don’t want it to be empty,” you guess. You’re right, and you must know you’re right, because you don’t wait for Tomura to answer. “Then why do you scare everybody away?”

Because everybody else isn’t you. “You left,” Tomura snaps instead. “You can’t leave.”

“Like hell I can’t,” you say. “I came back, didn’t I? I needed time to think. Your little temper tantrum with the mirror –”

“I couldn’t answer. I ran out of time.” It wasn’t a temper tantrum. Tomura kicks through the pile of ash, scattering it, realizing too late that doing it probably counts as a temper tantrum all on its own. “That spider wasn’t enough. No matter how slow I drained it.”

“So that’s why it was in one piece,” you say. You found it? No wonder you ran away – Tomura knows you hate spiders. “You drained the hornets faster, though. Does that work better?”

“I guess.” Tomura’s itching again. Scratching feels better when he actually has a neck to scratch. “We’ll see how long it lasts.”

You tilt your head, studying him. Then the worst thing Tomura’s ever heard you say comes out of your mouth. “You don’t know how this works, do you?”

“I know how it works,” Tomura snaps. “Shut up.”

No, that’s not right. Tomura doesn’t want you to shut up. He wants to talk to you, and he’s not sure how this is supposed to go, but he’s pretty sure it’s not going well. Something is happening to Tomura’s face. It feels tight and prickly, and when he lifts his hands to touch it, he figures out what that feeling is – it’s heat. “What is this? What’s happening to me?”

“I think you’re embarrassed,” you say. “You’re blushing.”

“No I’m not.” Tomura knows what blushing is. He hates it. He scratches harder, wondering if that will make it go away. “You can’t leave.”

“I can leave if I want to,” you say. “If you don’t want me to leave, you need to respect my rules.”

“Your rules?” Tomura scoffs. There’s no way the other ghosts put up with this stuff from their humans. Forget him not knowing how it works – you don’t know, either. “It’s my house.”

“And I can leave whenever I want to.”

Tomura knows that. He’s seen you do it, and he doesn’t want it so badly that he can feel everything inside his body crumpling around the thought. He wonders if you know you have him backed into a corner. You probably do, because you start in with your rules. “Rule number one: Stay out of the bathroom when I’m in there.”

“It was fine before.”

“It wasn’t. I just didn’t know about it,” you say. “Now that I do, I’m still not fine with it, and I want you to stop. Same with watching me at night.”

Tomura will cave on the bathroom thing. You don’t spend much time in there, anyway. But you spend a lot of time in the bedroom. He’s not giving up all those hours. “You sleep fine.”

“No, I don’t,” you say. “Stop.”

Why are you so stuck on this? Tomura’s not doing anything weird. It’s normal. “What, so it’s fine when he does it but not when I do?”

“What?” You look startled. No, scared. “Has someone else been in here?”

“No,” Tomura says. Maybe that’s why you’re acting so strange. You don’t know how haunting works, either. You don’t know that you’re his human, that he decides what happens to you, that he’s already decided not to hurt you. Not to hurt you, and not to let anything else do it. “Nobody comes in unless I let them.”

“Then who’s he?”

“The one in those movies you watched,” Tomura says. “He hangs out in that person’s bedroom all night and he doesn’t get in trouble.”

Now you look like you understand what he’s talking about. “You mean in Twilight? That’s not good either. She’s just too dumb to know it’s bad.”

Tomura knows that’s not right. Were the two of you even watching the same movie? “No hanging out in my room at night,” you continue. “Or I leave.”

“You’ll leave,” Tomura repeats, and his insides do that crumpling-up thing. He might hate that more than he hates the blushing. “And go where?”

“Anywhere,” you say. “I’m pretty sure you can’t follow me past the fences.”

If Tomura could do that, he would have. If he could do that, it wouldn’t make him – feel – so much when you leave. He can’t let you know that. He doesn’t want you to have that much power. “Who cares about what’s out there? I’ve got this.”

Tomura gestures at his house, his yard – you, since you’re his human. But as his hand crosses his own field of vision, he sees that it’s starting to thin out, going insubstantial. He’s dematerializing. The hornets’ nest wasn’t enough.  “No,” he explodes, not caring that you’ll hear, not caring that you’ll know. “Not yet. Damn it!”

“Hey,” you say quickly. “If you need energy to materialize and talk, I’ve got tons of weeds and mushrooms in the yard that you can kill.”

Tomura’s never heard your voice sound like that before. It’s softer, gentler, in spite of the urgency you’re speaking with. It makes him feel weird. “Or the blackberry bushes out by the fence,” you continue, still in that same tone of voice. “There’s ways for us to talk without you killing me or Phantom.”

Right. Now that Tomura knows how it works, maybe he doesn’t need a body to talk to you. Maybe he can just be a voice, like he’s just a pair of hands sometimes. Having a body is awful, anyway. It feels things and it doesn’t do what he tells it to do. “I have to go,” you say, and what’s left of Tomura’s face twists into a scowl that he doesn’t care at all about hiding. “I have to pick up some stuff to treat the stings I got, but I’ll be back later. We can talk more then.”

“You’ll come back,” Tomura says. He wants to say more, but his lungs and his throat and his vocal cords fall apart before he can.

“I’ll come back,” you promise, and some knot in Tomura’s essence relaxes. “I wouldn’t leave Phantom, and she likes you.”

Tomura knew making friends with the dog was a good idea. Or letting the dog make friends with him. He’s not really sure what happened there. The rest of his body falls away, and once it’s gone, you make your way up onto the porch and into the house. You’re not running. Not scared. You take off most of the extra layers of clothes until you look like you again, give the dog a kiss and a scratch behind its ears, and head out the front door. Phantom always looks happy about getting scratches. Now that Tomura knows what itching feels like in a human body, he wonders if you scratching his neck for him would make the itching go away.

He can’t ask you to scratch his neck. He’s not sure why he can’t, except that he knows somehow that it’s a weird thing to ask, and he’s just barely convinced you not to run away from him. Or has he? You weren’t talking to him like somebody who’s this close to running away from him. You were talking to him like – like –

Tomura doesn’t have a good word for it. He just knows he likes it. If he has to choose between you scratching his neck for him and you talking to him like that, he’d choose the talking in a heartbeat. He knows how long a heartbeat is now. He knows they happen fast.

You’re gone for a long time, long enough for Tomura to miss you, long enough for him to get angry about missing you. You’re gone long enough for the dog to get upset, to cry to be let out, so Tomura kills a few mushrooms and makes hands to open the door for it. You’re upsetting Phantom and Tomura at the same time. You need to come back soon. What’s taking so long?

When you finally come back, you’re carrying a lot of books, and you look tired. You look surprised to see the dog in the yard, but you don’t thank Tomura or say anything about it, and once you get inside, Tomura speaks first. He’s tired of waiting, and after he kills all the mushrooms in the front yard, he has enough life-force to make a body – and a voice. “Where did you go?” he demands. “You were gone for hours.”

“I went to see the neighbors,” you say. “To ask them about you.”

What? “Why didn’t you ask me about me?”

“Because you might life, and I needed the truth.” You look really tired. The stings on your hand are bright red and swollen. “They had a lot to say.”

That’s not good. The other ghosts need Tomura, but they don’t like him. If they liked him, they’d have talked to him, and they haven’t. “What did they say?”

“They said you’re strong,” you say. Tomura manages not to do the stupid blushing thing again. Maybe it only happens when what you’re saying isn’t true. “That’s why they moved here. Because you being so strong hides them from the people who summoned them.”

“It’s their fault they need to hide. They embodied themselves, like idiots.” Tomura wonders why he was worried that they’d lie about him. They can’t lie about him. They need him too much, and if he wanted to drive them out, it would be easy. “They can stay. I don’t care. As long as you stay.”

“I can stay,” you say. “I’ll be a lot more comfortable staying here if you give me some space.”

“Space,” Tomura repeats. “What kind of space?”

“When I’m in the bathroom. Humans like being alone in there,” you say. Tomura already decided to give up on the bathroom thing. He nods. “And at night when I’m sleeping. We like to be alone then, too.”

“Not everybody,” Tomura argues. He’s not caving on this one. “In those movies –”

“I’m not going to watch any more movies if you keep getting dumb ideas from them.” You’re calling Tomura dumb. If you were anybody else – “Life isn’t like movies. I like to be alone when I’m sleeping.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Do you sleep?”

“Sleeping is for humans,” Tomura says. He doesn’t understand why this is a problem, why you’re making it a problem. He cares about what you want. You should care about what he wants, too, because all this wanting is making him itch. Maybe he should explain. “It sounds nice when you sleep. I can’t hear it if I’m not in your room.”

“What sounds nice?” You look sort of alarmed. “What kind of noises am I making? Are they weird?”

“I don’t know,” Tomura snaps. He explained. Why did that make things worse? “I don’t know what noise humans are supposed to make when they’re sleeping. They don’t sound weird to me. They’re just – nice.”

You look like you’re thinking about something. Tomura waits. “I’m not fun to hang out with when I’m sleeping,” you say after a little while. “Why don’t we hang out more when I’m awake and I can talk to you?”

Tomura’s about to argue that he’s plenty entertained when you’re sleeping – and you don’t even have to do anything – before what you’re actually saying lands with him. You don’t just want to see him and talk to him. You want to spend time with him. What does that mean? Tomura could wait and find out, but he doesn’t want to wait and find out. He wants to know right now, because the itching’s even worse and his heart is beating faster and if it goes much longer, you might notice that he’s – what?

You don’t look like you’re noticing anything. “Well?”

“I need more life,” Tomura says, instead of yes, definitely, of course, what took you so long. “I killed all your mushrooms in the front yard. Find me something else and I’ll – hang out with you. You are boring when you sleep.”

“I’ll find something,” you say. Tomura’s body wavers, and when he glances down, he can see the floor through his feet. You notice too. “Thanks for letting Phantom out. I’ll see you soon.”

“Soon,” Tomura says. It had better be really soon. He doesn’t want to wait any longer than he has to.

When you said you’d find something, you must have really meant it, because you take your phone out and start messaging the other humans in the neighborhood, asking them to bring you bugs. You really hate bugs. If you’re asking for them, you must want to talk to Tomura a lot. Maybe as much as Tomura wants to talk to you. Not talk to you. Hang out.

You said hang out, and Tomura hovers over your shoulder, reading the texts and wondering if you’ll explain what “hang out” means. You don’t. Instead a shiver runs through you, one that says he’s gotten too close, that says the heat of your body and the cold of his essence don’t mix. Tomura couldn’t agree more. The few times you’ve walked through him by accident, it’s been gross. Tomura feels weird calling his human gross, but he doesn’t really have another word for it. Or he didn’t.

Now he knows what a human body feels like, and he knows it’s normal, so he doesn’t mind as much. You do. “Don’t,” you say. “I’ll get a chill.”

Tomura will back off when he’s ready, not because you told him to. But then he remembers what you said about space and needing it, and he draws away. You want to hang out with him. That’s better than tracking you when you don’t know he’s there, better than watching you sleep, better than writing on the mirror. Hanging out. Maybe that will be the thing that makes the itching go away for good.