Spin The Bottle

heyy! I have a request, can you show us how unhealthy and toxic Tomura is? NSFW if you want ✨️

TOXIC!BOYFRIEND TOMURA HEADCANONS!

A/N : okay ty for the first ask!! but imo he's not like DETRIMENTALLY toxic or physically, it's more or so the mindgames he plays and how he unknowingly does the things he does.

WARNINGS: toxic tomura, this is my first time writing him like actually mean so plz forgive, manipulation, all of..that, warnings for NSFW will appear.

he's very into guilt tripping, like actually, it's somewhat sickening at this point, he'll get pissed at just the slightest things and accuse you of hating him or intentionally doing it to piss him off.

he's the jealous kind, like really easy jealous kind, he'll slowly nitpick things about your friends until you cut most of them off of else he'll make you choose between him or them.

he never, ever says sorry, most if not all the blame is on you, he will never acknowledge that he is in the wrong and will blame the world around him for his own failure.

he's very straightforward, he will tell you what's on his mind, for better and for worse. the way he treats Kurogiri reflects on you.

the more vulnerable he gets with you, the more he begins to put his guard up, he's not used to the sensations your giving him, he'll take and take and take, barely giving anything back though.

Don't cry around him, it'll piss him off and he'll make poor half assed attempt to get you to stop, 'stop crying, it's annoying me.' or 'those tears will get you nowhere.'

if you aren't a member of the league, he will put them above you because he craves his 'rightful' seat at the throne as king of destruction, and his hate outweighs his 'love' for you.

he doesn't know how to comprehend his own emotions and will say things he will barely regret during a fit of rage, he'll blame it on you for sticking around.

all your conversations will mostly be about him, once it's about you he kind of looks off to the side and waits with a scoff.

he wants you to touch him but he'll get mad at you if you do.

he's a mess, one day he'll be praising you, touching you and even telling you all sorts of compliments before a little slip up can cause him to lose it and degrade you, say nothing but insults and berate you.

you aren't above AFO, the moment his master finds out about your little relationship (if he even considers it that) he'll break you off like your nothing to him.

his love for you is the same as how AFO loves yoichi.

NSFW UNDER THE CUT!

WARNINGS: dubcon, piss mentioned.

sex with him is honestly a hit or miss, he only mostly focuses on his own pleasure and chases his own high instead of trying to get you to cum too.

he doesn't like it when your kinks have something to do with you being on top, and in the bedroom, it's all about him, and it'll always be about him.

he'll have his orgasm, and recover for a bit, a factory reset for his body before he gets right back up to use his PC or go back to the league.

he's very demanding.

horrible in bed, since it's mostly about him it's all about what he likes, what his kinks are, and what makes him cum. he practically just humps you like a dog before he goes on his way.

aftercare, prep, praise, safewords? what's that? those don't exist for Tomura, you stop when he stops, don't want to leave him pissed off do you?

his kinks are gross, honestly. he looks like a basement dwelling NEET, so he'd probably have some freaky kinks, (mhoj2 he says alot of bdsm based lines) probably even piss if he's willing to put his trust in you that you won't snitch.

even if you do, the more vulnerable he gets he'll remind you that he can take your life any day, to keep you in a constant state of paranoia so you'll stay quiet and alongside him.

huge fan of somnophilia, he'll ask you about it and fuck you like a fleshlight while you're asleep, he's not so kinky to the point he'll have sex with you outside but, he'll indulge in it.

don't be surprised if you wake up with a load in or on you.

He gets really mad when you don't swallow, why? you think he's gross? why don't you just leave him at that point?

When you two break it off, he'll only really try and call you back for a quick fuck because he's tired of using his fist.

he'll never apologize for going overboard in bed, it's your fault you couldn't handle it.

—Ake 2024

Who want to sit on his laps ? 😩✋🥵

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 19) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18

Chapter 19

You pitch forward, but Tomura’s there to catch you, and for a moment, everything’s right where it should be. You’re home. You didn’t leave him. He won’t let you fall. For a single split second, you let yourself believe things will be okay. Then one of Tomura’s hands brushes over an open wound and you cry out. When he pulls his hand back, his palm is shiny with blood. Tomura looks at his hand, then looks at you, and you see his eyes widen – first in horror, then in rage.

“You thought I’d blame them?” he asks his conjurer. “You think I’m weak. You thought I was stupid, too? You’re the one who tried to take my human away.”

He’s trying to put his arm around you, but you’re bloody from shoulder to knee. There’s next to nowhere he can touch that won’t hurt you, and with every second that passes, his anger grows, until he’s practically vibrating with fury. “I wouldn’t dream of taking your human from you,” Shigaraki says to Tomura. “On the contrary, I want to ensure that you keep her forever – without having to make any unnecessary changes to yourself!”

“What?”

Tomura sounds baffled. “Nomu,” you mumble. You seize the hand that’s been searching for a place to hold you and press it to your cheek. “He wants to make me a Nomu.”

“Think about it,” Tomura’s conjurer says. “As a Nomu, she’d be much less breakable. Much less mortal, too. All that effort you’ve put in to understand her – this way, she’d understand you. The process was nearly complete when she left to return to you.”

“Escaped.”

“It wouldn’t take much,” the conjurer says, like you didn’t speak at all. He’s coming closer. “It could be done in a matter of hours. If you wish it.”

“If I wish it,” Tomura repeats. Your blood turns to ice.

“Of course,” the conjurer says. “As I said, I’ve neglected you all these years. I’ll do what I must to make it right.”

Tomura’s thinking about it. Is he thinking about it? You don’t know. “You idiot,” Dabi shouts. “She wouldn’t be your human anymore. She’d be something else, and he’d own her just like he owns you!”

“Look what’s been done to her,” Shirakumo says, his voice low and quiet. “I know what it’s like. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

“Do you truly believe they have your best interests at heart, Tomura?” Shigaraki asks. “They’ll do anything to keep you trapped here, using your power for their own protection. You’ll be a slave to their fear forever. I’m offering you freedom.”

“At a cost.”

It’s Aizawa’s voice. He’s the only human who’s spoken up since you crossed the property line, and he speaks again, his voice perfectly calm. Not to the conjurer. To Tomura. “It comes at a cost,” he says again. “Neither you nor he will be the one to pay it.”

You still have Tomura’s hand pressed against your cheek. He looks at you, then at his other hand, smeared with your blood. You see fury flash in his eyes. Then he turns away, putting his back to the street, pulling you with him. “Spinner,” he says, and Spinner hurries forward. Tomura shifts you from leaning against him to leaning against Spinner. “I need both hands to clear this level.”

He’s not going to give you to his conjurer. He was never going to. Spinner ushers you away, pulling you over to where the noncombatants seem to be huddled – Himiko, Eri, Jin’s youngers siblings. Tomura, meanwhile, materializes fully, cutting off his conjurer’s access to the world between as he starts down the steps. “You were gone too long, Master,” he says. “There’s nothing you have that I want.”

“Yes, come here. Let me see you. I – ugh.” The conjurer makes a disgusted noise. “Now I see where my brother’s spirit went after it ceased to trouble me. You look like him. I’m aware you can’t control how you look when you embody yourself, but – forgive me. It’s quite frustrating.”

“I don’t care who you think I look like.” Tomura stops at the edge of the yard, just prior to the gate. “I’m pretty. My human said so.”

He sounds so proud of himself, and your heart leaps. Even the fact that half your neighborhood is laughing semi-hysterically doesn’t check your joy. You twist in Spinner’s arms, catching a glimpse of the conjurer standing on the opposite side of the gate. He looks horrible. Whatever energy the bracelet released when it broke, it looked like it scalded him, or boiled him, peeling back his skin until his face is nearly devoid of features. He’s looking at Tomura blankly, completely nonplussed. He looks like he doesn’t know what to do.

Finally he clears his throat and speaks again. “You’re quite possibly the most powerful being in this world. Is this – protecting this single neighborhood, and that particular human – truly all you intend to do with it? Is that the extent of your will?”

“No. This is.” Tomura crouches, sets his hands on the ground, and your fence blows apart for the third time this year.

That’s not all that happens. The ground shakes. You feel everything around you ripple and shift, and you hear Dabi swear loudly. Eri and Himiko are both cheering. You look around for answers and find Spinner staring, slack-jawed. “He said he could. I didn’t think he’d actually do it –”

“Do what?”

“Expand the boundaries of his power by force.” Aizawa’s got his gun. “His spirit is still tied to the property, but the entire neighborhood is now within reach of his abilities.”

“That means he can do more to all of them,” Shinsou says. He’s hunkered down with the other kids, but he doesn’t look like he likes it. “Except it means it’s easier for them to get to us, too.”

Jin’s mom steps out of your house. She’s holding a baseball bat and her expression is grim. “Go inside,” she tells her children, and most of them get up and hurry through the door. She looks at you. “Look after them. We’ll do the rest.”

You want to say that you’ll fight, too, but you can barely stand. There’s no way you’ll be anything but a liability. “I can fight,” Himiko protests.

“Me, too!” Shinsou gets to his feet. “We’re way outnumbered. You need us! We can help.”

Aizawa and Jin’s mom trade a glance. “Fine,” Aizawa says. “Himiko, back up Dabi. Shinsou, back up Shirakumo. Don’t engage anyone on your own. Understood?”

Himiko nods and takes off, pulling a knife out of absolutely nowhere. Shinsou casts about for a weapon, picks up a shovel that’s leaning against the house, and takes off, too. With nothing else to do, and Aizawa and Jin’s mom already taking up defensive positions in the yard, you herd Jin’s remaining siblings into the house. Eri’s already inside. She’s in Phantom’s crate, with Phantom. Phantom is whining, a low, continuous sound of distress, but when she spots you, she rockets to her feet, trampling Eri in an effort to get to you. You sink down to the floor, trying to greet her without getting any of your wounds stepped on.

From outside the window, you hear the conjurer’s voice. “Remarkable work, Tomura! But you don’t need to be so gentle with the use of your power.”

“Don’t worry.” Tomura’s voice is flat and icy. “I won’t be gentle on you at all.”

The air temperature plummets, inside the house and outside of it, and you hear the first set of screams rise. You’re seized with a desperation to see the fight, to see Tomura and make sure he’s okay, but you’ve got the kids and Phantom you’re responsible for. You rack your brains, trying to think of where the safest place to hide them will be. Finally you settle on the corner of the room, along the same wall as the front window. No one who peers in will be able to see them easily, and it’s a straight shot from here through the kitchen to the back door in case you need to get out in a hurry. Jin’s siblings, usually raucous, are quiet and scared. Eri’s the most agitated of the group, so you put her in charge of Phantom to give her something to do. And then you drag yourself across the floor again so you can peer out the window.

It looks like someone’s unleashed hell. The scene is eerily lit with flashes of blue fire, and you can see wisps of essence drifting through the air. Too many of them. At least two ghosts are already dead.

You search the battlefield, picking out every live ghost or ghost-adjacent on your side – Shirakumo, Natsu, Nemuri, Dabi, Tomura. They’re all here, although in Tomura’s case, here is a relative term. He’s almost fully materialized, but not quite. That’s not good. He needs to materialize fully if he wants to cut off his conjurer’s access to his power. Does he need to be dematerialized to access his own power? You should have asked, or somebody should have. If he can’t fight –

But he can fight. A ghost comes within reach and Tomura seizes them, blows them apart, adding more shreds of essence to the icy breeze. The next opponent is an embodied ghost. Tomura hits them hard enough to cave in their chest, then tosses them away. He didn’t drain them, even though draining them would have been faster. Why?

“He can’t,” Eri says quietly. “He wants to be like us. If he drains somebody he will be.”

And if he does, his conjurer will kill you all. The others are holding their own in the fight, but when you watch Tomura carefully, you realize that he’s stepping in to save them when they get in over their heads. That’s why he’s not fully materialized. When he’s incorporeal, his reach is longer. He can get to the others before they even know they’re in danger. “Knock it off,” Dabi snaps. “Quit stealing my kills.”

“Be faster, then.” Invisible hands grab Dabi’s current opponent, yank them backwards off their feet, and smash them face-first into the ground. It must be a live ghost, because they explode into a cloud of essence, and they don’t come back. “I’ll do this by myself if I have to.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to,” Hizashi hollers from somewhere out of sight. You can’t see him, but you see dark liquid spray up, and you decide not to think too hard about what it is. “Focus on your own fight! He’s – fuck! Nem, watch out!”

You don’t see what happens, but you see Nemuri sprint through your field of vision, clearly in full retreat. “Quit screwing around! Do it now!”

Tomura materializes fully. You always know when he’s done it, because you always see him stagger slightly when his feet hit the ground. Shigaraki tsks from somewhere nearby. “You think that will save you? Why do you think I brought so many of my friends?” he asks. You feel the ground shake, once and then again. “You can access the world between even while wearing that weak form. Show me what you’re capable of!”

The thing that appears from the shadows is enormous. You’re not sure if it’s a Nomu or just another ghost, but it towers over the rest of them, dwarfing Tomura so badly that he looks like a child’s plaything compared to it. You watch Tomura brace himself, hands outstretched to make contact, but the thing swats his hands aside. Then it seizes him around the waist and clenches its hand into a fist.

You scream in horror. You can’t help it when you see the spray of blood that exits Tomura’s mouth, the way his head falls back, eyes blank and bloody, features gone slack. The monster squeezes harder, then gives a vicious shake, and you swear you can hear his neck snap. Tomura might be the one crushed to death in the monster’s grip, but you’re struggling to breathe. “Tomura –”

Improbably, agonizingly, his head turns in the direction of your voice. Then he dematerializes, leaving the monster with an empty, bloodstained hand.

“He’s okay,” Eri whispers to you, but you don’t believe her. Tomura materializes fully again, just out of reach of the monster, but he looks shaken. You’ve never seen him look like that before. “See, he’s okay! He’s –”

This time, Tomura dodges one of the giant’s hands only to get grabbed by the other. It seizes him with the other hand, too. Then it tears him in half.

He can feel things when he’s materialized. You know that. Some things feel good and some things feel bad, and as you watch the monster destroy his physical form again and again, you’re sick with horror at how much it must hurt. You watch him die three times, five times, twelve times, his limbs torn off, his skull crushed, his body mangled beyond repair. Every time he materializes again whole, he looks worse. Not marked by what’s happened before. Tortured by it, haunted by it, until the monster seizes him and it begins again.

You can’t look away. Some part of you feels like you owe it to him not to. If you can’t help, if all you can do is sit and watch, at least you can let him know you’re here.

The monster throws him to the ground and stomps on him until his body disintegrates into a puddle of tissue and shattered bones, and he doesn’t reappear quickly. Second after second ticks past without him materializing again. Then a familiar rush of cold comes over you, and when you look away from the window, you find Tomura crouched beneath it.

He looks awful, sick and sweaty and pale, and when you reach for him, you can feel how badly he’s shaking. You pull him into your arms and hold on tight, ignoring the bright flare of pain from your wounds when he slumps against you, when he hugs you back even harder. There’s no time for a kiss. There’s not even time to speak. Just a split second of contact that leaves your skin damp with his cold sweat and his shirt stained with your blood, before he dematerializes and reappears outside the house.

The giant swings for him again, but this time it misses – and it misses its second swing, too. Tomura’s gotten his feet under him, and he’s moving faster than he was before, so fast that your eyes can’t track him. It makes your head hurt to try. You squeeze your eyes shut for a split second, only for them to fly open when you hear the sound of glass shattering right next to your head. You open your eyes and find an embodied ghost leering down at you.

You struggle to your feet, trying to stay between the ghost and the kids, trying to figure out how permanent the embodiment is. You strike out towards his face and see him flinch – but he doesn’t blink. Fully embodied, which means you don’t have to worry about being drained, which means you need to fight. You’re not a good fighter by any means, and you’re worse now, courtesy of every other horrible thing that’s happened today. When the ghost strikes at you, you’re too slow to dodge, and he knocks you sprawling across the floor.

You have to get up. The kids. You have to get up so you can protect the kids, but when you try to rise, the ghost kicks you in the ribs and knocks you back again. “Go on,” he says, leering down at you. “Call for help. Call him.”

You seal your mouth shut. If you didn’t scream for Tomura to save you while his conjurer was torturing you, there’s no way you’re going to do it here. The ghost draws his foot back to kick again, only to yelp and stagger as Phantom bites down hard on his other ankle, shaking and snarling until he loses his footing. She’s not the only one trying to help. Eri’s hitting the ghost in every spot she can reach, her tiny fists balled up and her face twisted with rage.

“No!” she shouts. One of her blows catches the ghost in the groin and he nearly falls. That’s your opening. You crawl across the floor, heading for the fireplace and the fire poker hanging from a hook on the wall. “No! You’re not supposed to be here! Go away!”

Her voice rises to a shriek, and you hear an odd, strangled sound. You twist around and freeze, struggling to grasp what you’re seeing. The ghost is – shrinking. From an adult to a teenager to a child to an infant, and finally to nothing, vanishing out of Eri’s grip completely. Eri looks surprised, then pleased with herself. “I didn’t know I could still do that!”

She scrambles across the floor to you and starts patting your head. “It’s okay! I got him! You don’t need that.”

You grab the fire poker anyway, your mind still reeling. “Is that how you – got people before?”

Eri nods importantly. Then her eyes brighten. “I have to go!” she announces, and before you can stop her, she bolts out the front door. “Tomura! I have something for you!”

You want to tell her not to distract him, but then he crashes through the porch roof, sprawled out with wooden spars protruding from his torso, his shoulder, his mouth. He dematerializes, then reappears, and Eri seizes one of his hands. “Here!” she says, and you see something pass from her hand to his. “I helped! Go!”

Tomura nods in thanks and disappears off the porch at lightning speed, while you pour all your energy into getting ahold of Eri and pulling her back inside. Eri goes willingly. “I have to tell Himiko,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut. “Maybe she can do it too.”

You vaguely remember Hizashi saying something about how Eri had massive untapped powers as a ghost. Somehow she figured out a way to pass off a human-sized dose of life-force to Tomura without requiring him to drain anybody, and when you peer out the broken window, you see Hizashi dart past the giant as it pursues Tomura, slapping Tomura in the back of the head on the way. Tomura turns to snarl at him, but when he steps back out of the giant’s range, he’s notably faster. Hizashi can still drain people, maybe. But there’s another live ghost in the equation who can do the same, and Nemuri dips in next, tapping Tomura’s shoulder before dematerializing.

You don’t see where she goes, but the giant staggers, howling in pain. You look to Eri, wondering if she knows. “He’s a Nomu,” she says by way of explanation. “She’s in his heart.”

You remember what Rumi did to the conjurer’s henchman she caught and feel like you’re going to be sick. The giant reaches into its own chest, trying to remove Nemuri, and blood oozes out, spattering the grass, the fence, everyone fighting in the yard and on the street. It stumbles, then stumbles again, and its shadow falls over your house.

If it falls on you, you’re all dead. “Get out of there!” Aizawa shouts. You yell for the kids, grab Phantom, and bolt into the yard once the others are out.

Nemuri and Tomura have gone from trying to kill the giant to trying to stop it from crushing the house, and the two Nomu jump in to help. For a second you’re confused about why they’d want to protect the house at all, but then you remember that even with extending his power over the neighborhood, Tomura’s still strongest inside the property line. If the house is destroyed, there’s nothing at all to stop the conjurer from coming through.

Where is the conjurer, anyway? A chill that’s got nothing to do with the high concentration of ghosts in the area runs down your spine. You turn just in time to see the conjurer step through your front gate.

Aizawa spots him, shoots him, his aim solid even with one eye. But Tomura’s incorporeal, pushing the boundaries of his power to try to contain the falling giant, which means the conjurer shrugs off the shot like it’s nothing. Then he slips into the crowd, weaving in between the combatants, making it impossible for Aizawa to shoot him without the risk of hitting someone on your side. Aizawa snarls, turns to deal with another opponent, and you set off.

You take the kids to hide. There aren’t very many good places to hide, but anywhere the giant isn’t is a good place to be. You find Keigo and tap his shoulder just after he’s finished knocking out an embodied ghost, leaving them easy prey for Natsu. In retrospect this wasn’t your brightest idea. He swings a crowbar at your head and almost knocks you out, checking his swing at the last minute. “Don’t do that! Why are you walking around? You should be –”

“I need you to take them and help them hide.” You gesture at the children. “In your house. I don’t know. Just get them out of here.”

Keigo stares at you. “And what are you going to do?”

“I have to get to him. The conjurer.” Your legs go weak when you think about what you’re planning to do, but you lean on the fire poker and stay on your feet. “I’m the only one he has a reason not to kill. I can get close. If I time it right –”

Keigo doesn’t need you to finish the sentence. He nods and turns to the kids. “We’re gonna cross the street and go hang out at my place, okay? Let’s go.”

Eri hesitates, but she eventually follows Keigo and Jin’s siblings. You force yourself upright, tighten your grip on the fire poker, and start off through the crowd in search of Tomura’s conjurer.

You’ll only get one strike to bring him down. It’ll have to do the job, and courtesy of Garaki, whatever inhibition you had against hitting another person with the intent to kill them is long gone. All you have to do is picture what’s happened to Tomura since Shigaraki got here, and you see red. One hit to stun him, and then as many more as it takes, until he’s dead and Tomura’s safe and this is over for good.

Shigaraki must be trying to stay hidden. With Tomura materialized for most of the fight, his conjurer’s access to the world between is cut off, which means he won’t be able to defend himself if one of the Nomus on your side comes for him. You can’t defend yourself, either. Where would you hide?

The house. The house is the best shelter there is if one isn’t worried about the giant, and the conjurer probably thinks you’re still in there. You look towards the house and spot him climbing the front steps. His back is to you. Tomura’s materialized, darting around the back of the house to evade the giant. Now’s your chance. You renew your grip on the fire poker one last time and set off at an unsteady run, ducking around fights where you’re beneath the combatants’ notice. Originally your plan was to hit him in the head, just like you did to Garaki, but as you close the distance between the two of you, you realize that you don’t have the strength or the balance for a swing. There’s a sharp point on the fire poker. That’s what you’ll use.

You remember thinking, when you were deciding how to attack Garaki, that you couldn’t stab someone. That’s changed. You make it two steps up the short staircase to the porch, lose your footing, and fall forward against the conjurer’s back, getting your makeshift spear into position just in time. Your momentum does most of the work. The fire poker stabs into the conjurer’s back, sinking in to the base of the spike. You apply the last of your strength and shove it the rest of the way, fighting the resistance of muscle and bone until you’ve run him through.

Blood gushes from the wound, soaking you all over again, and Shigaraki Akira lets out a pained grunt. It’s a much quieter sound than you’d make if you’d just been stabbed, and it’s the first sign that something’s gone wrong. The next is when the handle of the fire poker is yanked out of your grasp, pulled into the conjurer’s body. He’s pulling it through, hand over hand, until it exits his body on the other side.

You stumble, losing your footing, and fall backwards down the steps as Shigaraki Akira turns to face you, fire poker in hand. Blood is running from his mouth, but he’s smiling at you, and as you watch in terror, the wound in his chest closes completely. “Excellent try, but your timing was poor,” he says. He tosses the fire poker down the steps to clatter at your feet. “Why not try again?”

You should. Just because Tomura was incorporeal when you stabbed Shigaraki this time around doesn’t mean he will be the next time, but when you reach for the fire poker, you can’t close your fingers around it. The hard landing feels like it’s jarred some circuit loose in your brain, and you can barely move. The pain’s flooding back in, too, and suddenly you’re struck by the futility of it all. Even if you pick it up, even if you fight again, you’ve lost the element of surprise. He’s bigger and stronger than you. You don’t see how you can do anything but lose.

Shigaraki leers. “You spent all your will on one strike,” he says. He’s coming down the steps towards you. You shuffle backwards, but not fast enough. “Shimura’s farewell gift helped you escape my purpose for you before, but it won’t do so again. This won’t take but a moment.”

He reaches down and seizes you around your throat, hauling you to your knees one-handed. His other hand reaches out and snags a passing ghost, yanking them out of their embodiment in a single smooth movement. You can see the spirit twisting in his grip as his hold on you shifts, forcing your head back and your mouth open. “It’s a shame Rumi escaped. She would have suited you and Tomura better,” he says. You bite down on his fingers to no effect, and he grips your jaw tighter in response. “But this will do. Don’t struggle, now. There’s no need when you’ve given up already. Just – swallow.”

Something cold brushes your lips, then the back of your tongue, something that squirms and wriggles horrendously as it tries to escape. You raise your arms and try to pry the conjurer’s hand off your jaw, but his grip is iron, and it’s getting hard to breathe. He’s going to force the ghost down your throat, turn you into a Nomu, and you won’t be you anymore – and there’s nothing you can do. You can’t pull his hand free. You’re reduced to scratching at his knuckles as you choke on the ghost he’s trying to bind to you.

His grip on your jaw tightens past the point of pain. “Don’t struggle,” he instructs you again. “Just –”

Something plows into him from one side, moving too fast for you to track it. You sprawl out on the ground, coughing up what little essence you were forced to swallow, and the ghost he was trying to force-feed to you vanishes in a split second. You’d run if you could, too. Instead you struggle to pick your face up out of the dirt to see what’s happened to the conjurer.

The giant’s gone and Nemuri is nowhere to be found, but Tomura’s on his feet. He’s standing over the conjurer, eyes blazing but curiously blank. His shirt hangs in tatters. His blue-grey hair’s gone white. The very air around you is crackling with the evidence of his power.

The conjurer looks at him, what’s left of his mouth curving into a broad smile. “Well done, Tomura,” he says. “You’ve claimed your power at last. Dispense with the others.”

Tomura doesn’t move, but all around you, enemy ghosts and Nomus burst apart into clouds of essence, until the entire neighborhood hangs under a heavy fog. The only ghosts left are the permanently embodied ones, who promptly bolt. Tomura lets them go. The conjurer gets to his feet, grimacing slightly, but once he’s standing, he smiles for Tomura. “Now put an end to all of this,” he says. “Destroy the house.”

Tomura looks towards the house. He extends one hanz, and for a moment, you’re convinced he’ll destroy it. The conjurer’s right – it was a prison. Maybe it’s always been a prison to him, even if it was home to you. Then a vicious smile comes to Tomura’s face. He turns away from the house and seizes his conjurer by the throat. “I think I’ll destroy you.”

His conjurer doesn’t answer. That smile is still on his face, and you see Tomura’s eyes widen in surprise a moment later. He’s materialized. His conjurer has no access to the world between through him. So why is he hesitating? You see something crawling across the conjurer’s skin and blink hard as you try to get a handle on it. When you realize what it is, your stomach turns.

It’s essence. Tomura’s conjurer is covered in clouds of ghostly essence. Was he always like that? No, you would have noticed during the time he spent torturing you. You were out of it, but not enough to miss something like that. You see Tomura frown, shake his head. A wave of cold sweeps through the neighborhood, instantly coating everything in a sheen of frost and ice, but the conjurer only laughs. “You’ve already broken them. They can’t be blown apart smaller than this, and the neighborhood is full of the remains of your enemies. Even if you could destroy them, I’ll always have more.”

The scraps of essence are beginning to move, crawling over Tomura’s hand, and he draws back, revulsion on his face. The conjurer gestures, and the fog you saw hovering over the neighborhood descends. Where it touches a ghost, embodied or not, they recoil. When it touches a human, like you, the cold begins to burrow through your skin. You’ve got a lot of open wounds. It doesn’t have far to go before it hits bone.

You don’t want to scream, but as the cold begins to writhe beneath your skin, you can’t help it – and you’re not the only one. Human or Nomu or ghost, it doesn’t matter. Whether the scraps of essence trigger a response of disgust or agony, all you and the others can do is scream for it to stop, and the conjurer’s voice rises above it all. “This stops when you decide it does, Tomura. You can’t destroy me the way you wish to. Destroy the house, and I’ll let them go.”

“No, you won’t.” Tomura looks miserable. “I can see inside your head. You won’t let them go as long as you think you can control me with them. I know what you think I won’t do.”

“If you do what I ask of you, you’ll find I’m very reasonable,” Shigaraki Akira says. “I’ll have no reason to hurt them if you comply.”

But he will. Every time he thinks Tomura won’t do what he wants, he’ll hurt you all until Tomura bows to his will. The question of whether Tomura cares about the neighborhood has been settled for good – he does care. Enough that he’d give in to his conjurer to protect you all. “I don’t believe you,” Tomura says. His hand closes around his conjurer’s throat again. “And I’ll destroy you however I have to.”

Garaki had the chance to speak, but Shigaraki Akira doesn’t. You see a split second of shock on his misshapen features before he begins to disintegrate at the throat.

It’s fast and mercilessly simple. Tomura drains his conjurer to death at lightning speed, scattering essence into the air, and as the empty set of clothes falls to the ground, you see Tomura’s feet touch the mostly-dead grass in your front yard. There’s the little stagger he always does when he lands, like he’s not quite used to being on solid ground. And then the world begins to bend and warp around him, midair tearing open just behind him. A rush of cold sweeps over you again, a thousand times worse than anything you’ve felt from Tomura or any other ghost. It’s the world between. It’s pulling him back in.

Tomura’s body begins to fray, strips of skin peeling off and being sucked into the rift behind him, a moment before it yanks him off his feet entirely. In a split second he’s nearly swallowed whole. All that’s left of him is one hand reaching out, grasping uselessly at the air, seeking something, anything, to hold onto.

You move without conscious thought. You throw yourself forward and seize Tomura’s hand in both of yours, one hand closing around his palm and the other around his wrist. You don’t know if you can stop this. If there’s any way to stop this at all. But you know for a fact that you’re not going to let go of him. Wherever he goes, you’re going there, too. Tomura’s hand grips yours just as tightly. His knuckles have gone white. And his hand is warm.

Another set of hands covers yours and you nearly jump out of your skin. When you look to your right, you find Spinner crouched next to you. He gives you a strained smile and tightens his grip on you, and on Tomura. “You gotta hang on,” he shouts at Tomura. “I heard there’s a shiny Giratina in the new Pokémon game.”

You almost laugh. You would laugh if you couldn’t feel the cold leaking out of the world between. Another set of warm hands closes onto you, one around your wrist, one reaching further up Tomura’s arm. Himiko’s teeth are bared, either smiling or snarling – you’re not sure which. “Don’t you dare let go,” she says – to Tomura, not to you. “Your human will never forgive you, and neither will I!”

The pull of the world between is getting stronger. It’s dragging on Tomura, and now it’s dragging you, Spinner, and Himiko, pulling you closer to the breach. “Oh no you don’t,” a voice says sweetly, and someone grabs you and Spinner around the waist at once. Magne’s grip is strong as she hauls you both backwards. “Jin, honey, you too!”

Jin is holding onto you and Himiko. He’s pulling hard. With their help, you’re no longer losing ground to the world between – but you’re not making progress, either, and your hands are starting to go numb. An agonized howl issues from somewhere within the rift and your blood turns to ice. He’s hurt. This is hurting him. You have to get him out of there.

You open your mouth to call for help, but before you can, the air is unceremoniously forced out of your lungs as someone bearhugs you from behind. “Hold on,” Kurogiri instructs – not Tomura, but you. Tomura’s nails are scrabbling at the inside of your wrist, but you’re so cold you can barely feel them. “We will do the rest.”

Only Tomura’s forearm was visible before. Now his elbow and his upper arm are free of the rift. There’s another scream from inside it. Someone scurries past you, much closer to the rift than you thought anyone would dare to go, and grabs Tomura by his upper arm. “Pull together,” Atsuhiro shouts at the rest of you, as ice begins to spiral up from the spot where his hands are wrapped around Tomura’s bicep. “Now!”

Tomura’s shoulder emerges from the rift, but even as you pull him free, his grip on your hand is weakening. You tighten yours in response. “Hang on,” you beg him. “Come on, don’t do this. Hang on!”

Another yank and his head is free, but something’s wrong. He’s not conscious. His head is hanging forward, his hair in his eyes, and even when you say his name, he doesn’t stir. You keep pulling, and so does everybody else, but once you’ve freed his torso, the world between fights back. Even with all seven of you struggling to free him, you can’t win. Tomura’s hand is almost entirely limp in yours.

Himiko notices, too. She raises her voice. “Help!”

Who’s going to help you? Everybody who’s ever shown they care about Tomura is already here, fighting to steal him back from the world between. You know Aizawa won’t intervene. You wouldn’t be surprised if Hizashi tried to push Tomura back in. Who’s left? Keigo’s watching the kids. You don’t know where Nemuri is. Jin’s mom – Natsu – nobody. This is who you have. You’re not enough.

“Fuck,” Dabi explodes from somewhere behind you. You barely have time to tighten your grip on Tomura before a pair of burning-hot hands lock onto your forearm and haul you backwards.

You can smell your own flesh burning, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, because eight of you are enough. One final yank, all of you pulling together, and Tomura tears free of the rift, falling forward into the pile of rescuers and landing mostly on top of you.

“Ew, he’s naked!” Himiko scrambles backwards, and everybody else follows, as you shift Tomura off of you and onto his back. He’s definitely naked, whatever remained of his clothes torn away in the effort to free him from the world between, and his body’s a mess. There are patches of burns and frostbite, bleeding fractures in his dry skin, his lips split and bloody. His eyes are closed. He’s not moving.

“Tomura.” You shake his shoulder, gently at first, then with increasing desperation. “Please. Please wake up.”

His skin is warm. He’s permanently embodied. He’s alive, or he was. You feel for a pulse at his neck, but you don’t know enough about taking pulses to know if you’re even touching the right spot, and your fingers are still numb. Is his chest rising and falling? Your eyes are so blurry with tears that you can barely see, and you blink hard, trying to clear them away. A few droplets roll down your face to splatter on Tomura’s shoulder, his cheek. You keep shaking him, fighting to hold in a sob. You’re injured. You’re in pain. The cold of the world between is in your bones, and none of it hurts as badly as the thought that you’ve lost Tomura for good.

You’re so busy shaking him that you barely notice when he stirs, but you can’t fail to notice the hand that rises, first to brush at his face, then to awkwardly wipe under your eyes. Even then, it barely registers. You think you’re imagining it, that you wished so hard your mind told you it was true. “Don’t leave,” you say, the same words you’ve heard him say so many times. “I need you. Don’t leave me. I –”

“Stop crying on my face.” His voice is so quiet you can barely hear it, but it’s his. You’d know it anywhere. “Don’t be stupid. I’m right here.”

It’s not a dream, or a wish come true. If everything was exactly as you wanted it, the second sentence out of Tomura’s mouth after he embodied himself wouldn’t be “don’t be stupid”, so that’s how you know it’s real. Tomura’s alive. He defeated his own conjurer. He saved everyone. And you, with a whole lot of help from the neighborhood he’s always pretended he hates – you saved him.

It’s okay now. It’ll be okay. You get a split second of pure happiness and relief before the pain floods in, and for the first time since you were dragged out of the conjurer’s torture chamber, your mind gives up the ghost. Tomura’s crimson eyes, staring up into yours, are the last thing you see before everything goes black.

Come Down to the Black Sea III

Summary: The sea seems to call to you, but it’s not the tumultuous clash of the waves you should fear. Something lurks deep beneath the black waters, something sinister with a piqued interest and ill intent.

Rating: Explicit 

Warnings: Siren!Shigaraki, graphic depictions of violence, heavy sexual innuendo, implied noncon, foul language, sexual tension you can cut with a knife, and just general sexual grossness. Joking daddy kink also, if you count that. 

PART I, PART II

Here you go! The third installment. Your seafaring friend finds your hot button and decides to plant some lovely ideas in your brain. Listening to them probably is not the smartest idea in regards to keeping your heart beating, but it certainly gets your thighs clenching. 

Taglist: @lemonzoey​, @babayaga67​

You know, it’s really rough to explain to your superiors at work why you’re so distracted when it happens to be because a mythical being is giving you the cold shoulder. 

You’re not entirely certain why it bothers you so much that your last encounter with him ended rather sour. He had made it perfectly plain from the get-go that his intent with you was far from pure. Murderous, in fact. He had almost drowned you on your first meeting and insulted you incessantly during your second. Not exactly a friendly track record. 

Regardless, he’s made a permanent home crawling beneath your human skin, like some itch you can’t scratch away. You can try to justify it however you’d like, but you can’t ignore the truth. In a word full of mundane existence, you’ve found an oddity and as much as you’d like to pretend you aren’t, you’re drawn to it. It’s part of why you returned to the beach despite the clear and present danger. You’d found a living, breathing mermaid. Even more impressive, you’d managed to piss him off.

Mermaid? Is that accurate? He’s so sensitive to being classified wrongly, but still never told you what he was. Considering the circumstances, maybe you should be a little bit more concerned about other things rather than offending him, but it still bothers you. 

Your ignorance isn’t due to lack of trying. You’ve done extensive research in the spare moments you have during the day, but nothing quite matches his description no matter how deeply you delve into the weirder parts of the internet, even going so far as to browse around on conspiracy sites on the darknet. Mermaid? Merman? Siren? Fish-guy? Some distantly related offspring to that Ripley’s Believe it or Not monkey fish? Relentless searching proved fruitless. Plenty of old sun-crazed fishermen claim to have seen merfolk in the waters or sirens on the rocks, but more often than not, it was a walrus or stage 4 sea madness. No one had a legitimate account of meeting with a real, intelligent creature of the deep. Nothing that came remotely close to him, anyway.

Afficher davantage

As a small/medium boobs girlie this hurt xD

Kingly snuggles.

Dont repost

Shigaraki With a Girlfriend Headcanons

Warnings: fem reader as title suggests, sex, dub-con, shigaraki isn't healthy, fluffy if you can get past the darkish content, domestic abuse themes, misogynistic Tomura, anal mention, a lot of headcanons, typos but i don't have time to fix them right now

18+ Minors Don't Interact

Mellows out more, especially if he's around you and you alone

When Shigaraki has you around others he can get a bit cocky. He likes showing off his cute little girlfriend and how he's got such a cutie absolutely obsessed with him

When it's only you and him he's kind of domestic, surprisingly. You'll find him often coming up to cuddle you or touch you somehow and drag you to play games with him. Or more accurately you watch him game while he kisses and bites your neck

He likes doing cheesy couple things you'll come to find, such as going for walks, movies, out to eat, or just cuddle in bed for a while

That said, he's actually very cuddly once he's sure he can control touching you. If you're immune to his quirk, he'll still doubt it for a while and will touch you as if he's touching a hot stove. Once he knows you won't crumble, you won't be able to get him off of you

And if you aren't immune, those gloves that the doctor gave him as a child will make a comeback

He sort of doesn't even believe he has a GIRLFRIEND?!?! Makes him cackle and giggle sometimes

You can draw those cackles out by kissing his face and letting him touch you however he wants

He's horny so very horny

He's never had someone touch him so lovingly and without fear. He loves it. He loves that you love him.

As codependent as it is, you're pretty much the only thing he loves. That, and video games. And yes, he respects and appreciates his comrades. But love, as in genuinely caring for someone and wanting to see them happy? Only you

His temper is short and it's easy to piss him off but he sort of teaches himself a "count to 10" strategy for you. He doesn't actually want to hurt you or your feelings. Though he'll admit, seeing your eyes water when he does something bad makes that sick, evil part of him smile

He can get...carried away. During sex sometimes, too. He's actually very eager to please you and make you horny for him. It wouldn't be fun if you didn't crave his cock, right?

However, even if he knows there's something he's doing that's making you feel violated and timid, he'll still do it. You'll have to speak up, but even then he might banter with you, "come onnn..but you're so pretty thoughhh~"

After the fact he'll pull you into snuggle and sleep with him. He considers that his act of redemption.

In case it didn't dawn on you, he's evil

He's able to be down to earth with you too and will open up about things he'd never tell others with you. He trusts you thoroughly

His mommy issues may get taken out on you sometimes, and not even just in the sexy way. He can get very pouty and bratty with you or even just needy for attention. He'd melt and fall asleep in seconds if you let him lay on your boobs while you pet his hair.

He loves you sooo much. I've said that, but for real. His form of love is sick. Maybe it's better to say that he's obsessed with you. He wants you all the time, and wants you to be his and his ONLY.

That said, he's the boyfriend who goes through phones. He paid attention when you put in your password while he was behind you. He'll look through your messages to make sure there's no guys or funny people. He'll turn on location features while you're unaware so he can check on your location when he's not with you.

He'll look through your porn history too but he most likely won't be mad at anything he sees. It'll just make him horny and he'll pester you with questions. "Hehe you're into that?!" "Would it make you ooey gooey if I did that to you?" "Nasty whore hehehe."

Will take pictures of you without your permission, lewd or just innocent. He misses you when you're away and likes to look at them.

He doesn't show them to people except that one time he did let Dabi see a filthy video he took once while you and him were fucking. Dabi questioned his sexual abilities, so naturally he had to prove him wrong.

If anyone disrespected you the only person who could stop him is you, to be honest. He won't tolerate it and will absolutely hurt someone in your honor.

If anyone looked at you sexually or touched you: dead

Doubts himself a lot and makes you feel guilty for it. He'll pester you. Is he good enough for you? Do you not love him? Is he ugly? Is his dick too small? He's too crazy for you right? Too bad? Too damaged? There's no way you love him, you lying bitch!

He's kind of misogynistic. Mansplains. Complains about how women accuse men of shit that "they don't do" and then proceeds to do said things

Didn't take your period cramps seriously at first because he couldn't fathom how they were that bad. He thought you were being dramatic. He learned soon though after seeing your genuine face of pain and the way you'd close in on yourself. He actually felt bad.

Sometimes he'll even give you the princess treatment. Spoil you with kisses, cuddles, and games. He'll bring some snacks too. Maybe pull you into the shower if he's a smelly that day.

Boobies guy. But also loves butts. Actually, he can't pick. Because he loves sucking on titties but also likes putting his dick up your ass (when you let him coax you into it). He loves your body so much, but he's not THAT shallow. It's the fact that it's YOUR body on YOU, attached to your cute facial expressions, and your cute personality.

Sex with him varies. It can be pretty sexy and sensual actually. You'd be surprised how much Tomura just wants some genuine love and affection. But it can also very easily be rough and animalistic

All that hate and rage inside Tomura gets taken out on your wet pussy. You'll be sore. He'll say sorry and kiss you afterwards.

If you want him to brush his teeth, you have to take him with you. If you treat it as a "bonding time" between you and him he'll do it. Otherwise Tomura doesn't bother most of the time. His breath smells. It's bad sometimes. When he flosses once every 8 months there's a pool of blood in the sink. Probably has gum disease.

Collects figures! And he'll never demand that you buy him things but if you did he'd be super embarrassed, but also grateful. He'll just not be able to show it well. He'll probably just hide his face and mutter a little.."thank yew". But the fact that you care about him like that makes his heart HURT

These love feelings confuse him because he fucking HATES how tight his chest feels and how heavy his bones and foggy his head is when he finds himself simping for you so damn much. But he also LOVES you. You're his one and only and his only reason for ever doing anything generous to anybody. If he wasn't so fucking stubborn you'd probably be enough to "save" him

the new postmodern age (chapter one) - 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 1

You believe in second chances.

Before the war, you were living on the margins, just like the rest of even the pettiest criminals were. No one would hire someone with a record, even if the record was for something nonviolent, and that meant that you were always hungry, always freezing in the winter and getting heatstroke in the summer, always one step away from doing something worse and getting put away for good. You were going nowhere fast, and no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t get back on your feet. It was a struggle to get up in the morning.

But after the war, something changed. Not a lot, but enough, because after a heartfelt public plea from the hero who saved the day, the world decided to care a little bit about people like you. The government passed new anti-discrimination laws, including one banning hiring discrimination against people with criminal records, and for nonviolent criminals like you, they opened up an extra opportunity – a choice between job training or a startup loan for a small business, so you could pay down your fines and restitution while adding something good to society. Sure, it was all in the name of preventing new villains from being created, but you’ll take it. You took it, picked up a loan, moved out of the city to a small town on the coast, and decided to open up a coffee shop.

You’re not really sure why you picked a coffee shop. Maybe because the town you moved to didn’t have one yet, or maybe because you used to hang out in them a lot when you had nowhere else to go. And the program you’re part of worked exactly like it was supposed to. You had to hire people to help you get the building you chose up to code, and that meant you met people in your new community. You showed those people that the criminals they hated were people, too. You’ve paid most of your fines and you’re able to break even anyway, and even though there’s a sign on the door telling everyone that you’re a convicted felon and you have to answer any questions you’re asked about it, you have customers.

Not just customers – regulars. People whose kids you’ve seen grow up, people who talk to you when they see you out and about. After five years of trying, you’ve finally carved out a place where you belong. So yeah, you believe in second chances. How could you not?

You stand back from your front window, admiring the latest addition. There’s the sign identifying your business as one sponsored by the Nonviolent Criminal Reintegration Act, but just above it, you’ve added a bigger sign: Free Internet Access. Osono, whose bakery makes the pastries you sell, studies it alongside you. “Free access? Shouldn’t it be access with purchase?”

“I thought about it a lot, but no.” You’re sort of lying. You thought about it for two seconds and that was it. “This is better.”

“It’ll attract riff-raff.”

That’s the kind of comment that used to really piss you off, but you know Osono. You know it’s just a blind spot, and you know how to respond. “Most things are online these days. Job applications, apartment listings, information on government assistance. When I was in trouble before, free internet access would have helped me a lot. And I usually bought something anyway, even if it was just a cup of coffee.”

“Not a pastry?” Osono nods at the trays stacked on her cart, and you remember that she’s waiting for you to open the door. Oops. You unlock it in a hurry and prop it open with a rock you pulled up from the beach. “Where were you getting food?”

“Wherever I could.” You were hungry a lot. And sick a lot, because sometimes you had to eat things that were expired. You don’t like to think about that very much. “I stole sometimes so I wouldn’t starve. I’ve paid it all back by now.”

“You know how to take responsibility,” Osono says. She slides back the door on your pastry case without asking and starts loading things in. “I wish more of them were like you.”

“Most of us are,” you say, as gently as you can manage. “We just need a fighting chance.”

Sometimes people forget that you’re a criminal, that you’ll carry your record around for the rest of your life. You can’t let them forget. Osono nods in the way that tells you she’s humoring you and lifts a tray of pastries you haven’t seen before out of the cart. “These are a new recipe I’m trying out. What do you think?”

“They’re pretty,” you say. “Is that chocolate in the filling?”

“And cinnamon. They aren’t vegan, but there aren’t any common allergens in them.” Osono passes you the recipe anyway, and you scribble down the ingredients on the back of the name card you’re making, just in case someone asks. “Tell me how they do, all right? If they sell decently I’ll add them to my rotation.”

“Will do.” You help her with the last few trays. “Thanks, Osono. Say hi to the kids and Naoki for me?”

“Will do.” Osono wheels the cart back out the door, then pauses to study the internet access sign. “Good luck with this.”

“Thanks.”

You wait until the delivery van pulls away before you start rearranging the pastries to your preferred setup. You add “new arrival” to the label for the new pastry, then touch the lettering to turn it a pleasant but eye-catching green before placing it front and center in the case. Then you set up your espresso machine, wake up the cash register, switch on the lights and take down the chairs from the tops of the tables – and only then do you switch on the other sign in your window. It’s seven am. Skyline Coffee and Tea is open for business.

It’s grey and cold, and the low tide is closer to noon today, which means you’re in for a busy morning as the people who walk the beach daily stop in for food and coffee first. Only one person orders one of the new pastries, but almost everyone comments on the free internet access. They say the same kind of thing Osono said, and you say the same thing you said to her if they hold still long enough for you to answer. You say it nicely. It’s an effort to say it nicely, sometimes, but it’s worth doing.

Past noon, things slow down a bit. You decide to speed-clean the espresso machine, and you’re so focused on your work that you don’t notice the customer. It’s possibly also the customer’s fault, since he’s peering at you from over the pickup counter instead of standing by the cash register, and when he barks the question at you, it startles you badly. “What’s the password?”

“On the WiFi?” You tuck your burned hand behind your back. “No password. Find a place to sit down and have at it.”

The customer looks disconcerted. Or at least you think he does – the lower half of his face is covered with a surgical mask, and given that he doesn’t have eyebrows, it’s hard to read his expression. “Why?”

“Why isn’t there a password?” You haven’t gotten that question yet. “I want people to be able to use it if they need it.”

“They’re gonna watch porn.”

“Me putting a password on the WiFi wouldn’t stop that,” you say. “And I’m not the internet police. If somebody starts acting up, I’ll deal with it. If not – just use headphones.”

The customer’s expression twists. “I didn’t mean me.”

“Sure.” You’re not a moron. “It’s not my business what you do. Unless your business starts messing with my business. Seriously. Knock yourself out.”

The customer turns away, and you spend a second being extremely grateful that you went for single-occupancy bathrooms instead of multiple-stall bathrooms before you go back to cleaning the espresso machine. Your hand hurts, but it’s nothing running it under cold water won’t fix later. When you straighten up, there’s someone at the counter.

It’s porn guy, who you really shouldn’t call porn guy. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. You dry your hands and hurry over. “What can I get for you today?”

“Black coffee.”

“Sure. Anything else?”

The customer glances at the pastry case and shakes his head. Then his stomach growls. He knows you heard it. What little of his face is visible above the mask turns red. “No.”

“Tell you what,” you say. “I’ve got these new pastries the bakery wants me to try out, but next to nobody’s tried one yet. If you agree to tell me how it was, you can have it half off.”

“I have money.” The customer shoves a credit card across the counter to you, and you see that he’s wearing fingerless gloves. Or sort of fingerless gloves. They’re missing the first three fingers on each hand. “I don’t need help.”

“No, but you’re helping me out.” You add the pastry to his order and discount it by half, then fish it out of the case with a pair of tongs. “For here or to go?”

“Here.” The customer watches as you set it on a plate. “What is that?”

“It’s babka.”

“I can read. What is it?”

“I don’t really know,” you admit. Maybe that’s why people aren’t buying them. “The filling’s chocolate and cinnamon, though. It’s hard to go wrong with that. It’ll be just a second with the coffee.”

You fill a cup, then point out the cream and sugar. Then you realize you still haven’t tapped the customer’s card. You finish ringing up the order and glance at the cardholder’s name. Shimura Tenko. He hasn’t been in before today. You’re not the best with faces, but you never forget a name.

Shimura Tenko sets up shop at the booth in the farthest corner, and although you sneak by once or twice to check on him, you’re pretty sure he’s not watching porn. People don’t usually take notes when they’re watching porn. It looks like he’s working or something. Working remote, but he doesn’t have internet access at home? Or maybe he does, and he’s just looking for a change of scenery. That’s a normal thing to do. A change of scenery is one thing Skyline Coffee and Tea is equipped to provide.

Speaking of that, it’s been a while since you changed out the mural on the café’s back wall. Your quirk, Color, lets you change the color of any object you touch, and choose how long the color sets. You’ve used it for a lot of things over the years, but now you mainly use it to create new murals every few months or so. The back wall’s been a cityscape since the fall, when you saw a picture of Tokyo’s skyline at night and got inspired. Maybe this weekend you’ll switch it out for something a little softer. If people wanted the city, they’d stay there instead of coming here.

Customers come in and out, a few lingering for conversations or to test out the free WiFi, but Shimura Tenko stays put, somehow making a single cup of black coffee last until you give the fifteen-minute warning that you’re closing up shop. Another person might be pissed about someone hanging out so long without buying anything else, but you’ve been there. You let it go, except to ask him how the babka was as he’s on his way out the door. He throws the answer back over his shoulder without looking your way. “It was fine. Nothing special.”

Fine, sure. When you go back to clear his table, you find the plate it was on wiped clean. There’s not even a smear of the filling left.

“Check this place out!” Your probation officer leans across the counter, eyes bright, out of costume and way too enthusiastic for eight in the morning. “It’s looking great in here. You changed something. New color scheme? New uniform?”

“Nope.” You don’t get nervous for your check-ins, but you don’t like the fact that they’re random. Today’s not a good day. “There’s some new stuff on the menu, and in the pastry case. Maybe that’s it.”

“No,” Present Mic says, drawing out the word. He turns in a slow circle, then whips back around with a grin. “When did you repaint that wall?”

“I didn’t paint it,” you say. It’s best to be honest. “I used my quirk. I’m not making money off of it and it’s not hurting anyone, so it falls within the terms of my probation.”

“Take it easy there, listener. I’m not trying to bust you,” Present Mic says. Heroes always say that. You know better than to buy it. “It looks good. Really brightens the place up.”

“I thought it could use it,” you say. “It’s kind of a rough time of year.”

Cold weather always brings you lots of customers, but people are sharper, unhappier, and if they’re in the mood to take it out on someone, they pick somebody who can’t make a fuss or hit back. Somebody like you. You’ve learned not to take it personally. “Not too rough financially. You’ve made all your payments on time. I checked.” Present Mic is peering into the pastry case. “How’s that free internet access thing going for you?”

“Not so bad,” you say. “The connection’s pretty fast, so I get people in here who are taking online classes, or working remote. I’ve only had to kick one person out for watching porn.”

“Yeah, he filed a complaint,” Present Mic says, and your stomach drops. “You made the right call. Don’t worry.”

You’re going to worry. It’s going to take all day for that one to wear off. “I haven’t had problems with it otherwise.”

“Why’d you do it?” Present Mic gives you a curious look. “Free stuff brings all kinds of people out of the woodwork. Why give yourself the headache?”

“I want this to be the kind of place I needed,” you say. “Somewhere safe where nobody would kick me out if I couldn’t buy more than one cup of coffee, where I could use the internet without getting in trouble for it. A headache’s worth that to me.”

It’s quiet for a second, but Present Mic being Present Mic, it doesn’t last. “You really turned a corner, huh? Hard to believe you were ever on the wrong side of the law.”

“We all could be there,” you say. “It only takes one mistake.”

Present Mic sighs. “You’re telling me. Did you catch the news last week?”

“The thing with Todoroki Touya?” The surviving members of the League of Villains all went through their own rehab, and they’re on permanent probation – and last weekend, Todoroki Touya, formerly known as Dabi, lit somebody’s motorcycle on fire after they followed him for six blocks, harassing him the whole way. “I saw. Is he getting revoked?”

“Nope. The other guy was way out of line, and the panel ruled that the majority of people – former villains or not – would have reacted similarly under that kind of pressure.” Present Mic rolls his shoulders, and his leather jacket squeaks. “All I can say is, he’s lucky we’re in the business of second chances these days. Or fifth chances.”

“Why so many?” you ask. “The rest of us are on three strikes, you’re out.”

“Yeah, but you have to mess up a lot worse for it to count as a strike,” Present Mic points out. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a guilt thing. This whole rehab thing is Deku’s idea. And Deku never got over what happened with Shigaraki.”

Members of the League of Villains died leading up to the final battle, but of the five who made it that far, only one of them was dead at the end of the war – Shigaraki Tomura, their leader. To most people, it was good riddance to the greatest evil Japan has ever seen, but Deku’s always been publicly against that viewpoint. Insistent that All For One was the true villain. Regretful that the war ended with Shigaraki’s death, too. “Since he couldn’t save him, he’s stuck on saving the other four,” Present Mic continues. “Which equals infinite chances. So far Todoroki’s the only one who’s needed them.”

You nod. Present Mic stretches. “Let’s take a walk,” he decides. “I’ll buy coffee for both of us.”

“I can’t leave,” you say. “I don’t have anybody else to watch this place. If a customer comes by –”

“Half an hour, tops. Come on.” Present Mic produces a wallet from the inside of his leather jacket. “The sooner we leave, the sooner you can come back.”

You lock up, hating every second of it, and follow Present Mic into the cold, a to-go cup of your own coffee in your hands. Present Mic runs through the usual list of questions, the ones that cover your mindset as much as they cover your progress on your program requirements. Some of them are about how you’re getting along with the civilians in town, and you know he’ll be checking in with some of your customers, seeing if their perception lines up with yours. It feels invasive. Intrusive. Some part of you always pushes back. You always quiet it down. You made this bed for yourself, coming up on a decade ago. Now you have to lie in it.

“I’ve got some news,” Present Mic says, once he’s finished with the questions. “The program’s considering early release for some of the participants.”

“Why?”

“The legislative review’s coming up, and they want success stories,” Present Mic says. “You know, people who clawed their way out of the criminal underworld to become productive members of society. I’m putting your name on the list.”

You almost drop your coffee. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Mic says. He seems taken aback by your surprise. “I mean – you’re kind of who this thing was designed for, listener. You caught your first charge when you were underage, for a nonviolent crime, and the rest of your case is a perfect example of just one of the many problems Deku won’t shush about. Now look at you. You’ve got your own business, you’re paying back your debt to society, you’re participating in civilian life. There are civilians who don’t do that much.”

Of course they don’t. Actual civilians don’t have to prove they have a right to exist. “If you’re approved for early release, the government will waive interest on your startup loan, and I heard a rumor that they’re considering wiping charges off people’s records,” Mic continues. “It’s a pretty good deal, listener. And you’re making a pretty weird face.”

“Sorry,” you say, trying to fix it. “I mean – felonies are a forever thing. They don’t get wiped.”

“It’s just a rumor,” Mic says, and pats your shoulder. “Even if that doesn’t pan out, you could use a break on the interest. Anyway, it’s not a sure thing, but I put your name up. You’ve got as good a shot as anybody.”

You think that’s probably true, which is weird to think about. You’ve been behind the eight ball since you were in high school. Present Mic throws down the rest of his coffee, then turns back the way the two of you came. “Let’s go. I saw a pastry I wanted to buy, and I bet you have a customer or two.”

You’ve heard things about other program participants’ probation officers taking things without paying, but you got lucky with Present Mic – he always pays. Sometimes he even gives you a hard time for setting your prices too low. And he’s right about the customers. When you get back, one of your regulars is sitting cross-legged, leaning back against the locked door with his hood up and his laptop open.

It’s Shimura Tenko, who you never saw before you started offering free internet, and who’s turned into a regular ever since. The two of you don’t talk the way you do with some of your other regulars – something about the mask and the hood and the gloves tells you that Shimura isn’t looking to make friends. But he shows up two or three times a week, orders black coffee, and camps out in the corner of the café until closing time. Sometimes you can talk him into a pastry, and it’s always a babka. Whether he orders one or not, he’s always hungry when he comes in.

Shimura looks up as you and Present Mic approach. His eyes narrow, then widen abruptly, almost comically shocked. Then he slams his laptop shut, rockets to his feet, and books it, vanishing down the street and around the corner. You feel a surge of frustration. “Can you not scare my customers?”

“I’m out of costume. Even when I’m in, nobody’s scared of me.” Present Mic is lying. You’d have been scared out of your mind to run into him back in the day. “Damn, that guy was skittish. What’s his deal?”

“He’s one of my regulars.” Was one of your regulars, probably. People don’t react the way Shimura just did and come back for more. You unlock the door, feeling strangely dispirited. “Which pastry were you thinking about?”

Present Mic sticks around for an hour or so, long enough to talk to a few customers who don’t run away from him. Most of your regulars have seen him before. He leaves a little bit before noon, after eating three pastries he paid for, and as usual, the café quiets down in the afternoon. You don’t mind. Today wasn’t a good day even before Mic put in a surprise appearance and scared off a customer for good. Days like today, you’d rather have the place to yourself.

Sometimes in the midst of proving you’re a model citizen to anybody who looks your way, you forget that there’s a reason you weren’t. It wasn’t a good reason. Your family wasn’t rich, but you always had what you needed and some of what you wanted. Your parents weren’t perfect, but they loved you. You weren’t the most popular kid at school, but you always had someone to talk to. And none of that mattered, because you felt hollow and miserable and lonely no matter what else was going on around you.

Nothing you did or said could make you feel better. Everything felt the same, and everything felt awful, and no matter how hard you tried to explain, to ask for help, to raise the alarm, you couldn’t get your point across. You had a good life. What did you have to complain about?

The judge who handed you your first conviction said pretty much exactly that. You’ve heard that the sentencing guidelines for minors have changed, that untreated mental health issues are considered a mitigating factor these days, but back then it didn’t matter at all. You got help at some point. You take your meds like you’re supposed to, and you did therapy until you realized the people who monitor your probation were reading your notes. And you’re older now. You know the hollow feeling goes away. But that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to tolerate when it’s here.

You’re hanging out behind the counter, staring at your most recent mural and wishing you’d chosen something less cheerful than the field of wildflowers that’s currently decorating it, when the door opens. You barely have time to get your game face on before Shimura Tenko steps up to the counter. “Um –”

“How many heroes are you friends with?” Shimura asks shortly.

“I’m not friends with Present Mic,” you say. “That was a spot check. He’s my probation officer.”

Shimura blinks. He has crimson eyes and dark lashes, matching his dark hair. “Huh?”

“My probation officer,” you repeat. “I’m a convicted felon.”

“Don’t lie. They’d never let a convicted felon run a coffee shop.”

“I got a loan,” you say. “Through the Nonviolent Criminal Rehabilitation Act. It says so on the sign.”

“Your sign says free internet access.”

“Underneath that.” You wonder if it’s really possible that Shimura didn’t see the other sign. Maybe he was just too hyped at the prospect of free internet to look any harder. “How long have you lived here?”

“Five years.” Shimura looks defensive now. “What’s it to you?”

Five years, and you never saw him before today. He must keep to himself. “Nothing. I just – I thought everybody around here knew. I’m not very quiet about it. I’m not allowed to be.”

“Why not?”

You don’t want to do this right now, but rules are rules. “Part of the Reintegration Act involves educating civilians about where criminals come from – like, how a person goes from you to me.”

Shimura snorts. It’s rude, but not anywhere close to the rudest thing someone’s done to you when you talk about this. “The government thinks the people who are best equipped to educate about this are the actual criminals, so I’m legally obligated to answer any questions people ask me – about my record, about why I did it, about the program and why I’m doing that. So they understand what’s happening and why it’s happening. For transparency.”

“And that means anybody can question you, any time,” Shimura says, eyes narrowing.

“Yep. Stop, drop, and educate.” You wait, but he’s quiet, and you’re tired enough and hollow enough that the suspense gets to you first. “You can ask what I did. I have to tell you.”

Shimura nods – but then he doesn’t ask. About that, at least. “It’s dead in here. Did Present Mic clear everybody else out?”

“No. It gets quiet on sunny days when the tide’s low.” You nod through the window, and the sliver of beach visible between the buildings across the street. “I was thinking about closing early.”

“Why?” Shimura’s voice holds the faintest shadow of a sneer. “To walk on the beach?”

To lay facedown on your bed and wait for tears that won’t come, and won’t make you feel any better if they do. “Now you’re here, so I’m open. Do you want the usual?”

Shimura hesitates. Then he shakes his head. “Go home.”

“I’m open,” you repeat. You don’t want him to complain to Present Mic like the actual porn guy did. “Do you want the usual or do you feel like something new?”

“The usual.”

“Come on,” you say. He glares at you over his mask. There’s an old scar over his right eye. “There’s nobody here. Nobody’s going to catch you drinking something that actually tastes good.”

“The usual,” Shimura Tenko says, and crosses his arms over his chest. “And –”

He glances at the pastry case, and you see his expression shift into disappointment. It makes you sadder than it should, but you can fix it easily. You slide the babka you saved on the faint hope that he’d come back out of hiding and into full view. “One of these?”

Shimura stares at it for a full fifteen seconds before he looks up at you. “You saved it for me.”

“Yeah.” You pride yourself on knowing what your regulars like. You don’t want someone you see a few times a week to leave unsatisfied. “One babka and one black coffee, coming up.”

Shimura holds out his card, then hesitates. You’ve never seen him look uncertain at all. “And whatever you think tastes better than black coffee. One of those.”

“Really?” You can’t hide your surprise, or what an unexpected lift it is for your mood. “You won’t regret it. Which flavors do you like?”

“I don’t care.” Shimura waits while you swipe his card, then tucks it away. “This was your idea. I’m going – over there.”

He gestures at the back corner. “I know where you like to sit,” you say. “I’ll bring it out.”

As soon as he leaves, you get to work. You need to nail this. He’ll laugh at you if you bring him a tea latte, so it needs to have an espresso base. What goes well with babka? You already have chocolate and cinnamon on board – what about caramel, or hazelnut? Does he even like sweet things? He must, if he keeps ordering the damn babka. Maybe hazelnut, but what if he’s allergic? You pitch your voice to carry and see him startle. “Do you have any allergies?”

“Not to food.”

You wonder what he’s actually allergic to as you start pulling espresso shots for a chocolate hazelnut mocha. You really hope Shimura likes Nutella, because that’s exactly what this is going to taste like. Using bittersweet chocolate syrup instead of milk chocolate fixes it partway, but when you pour off a tiny bit to try it, it still tastes a lot like something you’d eat out of a jar with a spoon.

Whatever. You’re committed now. You don’t have a choice. You pour it into a cup, make some vague gesture at foam art, and carry it and the black coffee through the empty café to Shimura’s table. “One black coffee and one drink that actually tastes good.”

Shimura eyes the second cup. “What’s in there?”

“You said you didn’t care.”

“Yeah, well, now that I know you’ve done time I’m not sure I can trust you,” Shimura says, and you lock your expression down. That one hurt. A lot. He drags the cup towards himself with his right hand and lifts it to his mouth as he pulls down his mask with his left, but you’ve lost interest in the outcome. You turn and head back to the counter, trying not to feel like someone’s slapped you in the face and convincing yourself at least a little that it works.

You screw around behind the counter, taking inventory and counting down the minutes until last call, but Shimura’s back at the counter with forty-five minutes to go, an empty cup in his hand. It’s not the cup you put the black coffee in. “Fine. You win. I want another one of these.”

“Yep.” You set your clipboard aside and head back to the cash register to ring him up. “For here or to go?”

“Here.”

“I’m closing soon. To-go’s probably better.”

“Are you kicking me out?” Shimura asks. You look up at him, make eye contact, and whatever he sees in your face sets him off. Not in the way you thought it would. “Before, about the doing time thing. You know I was kidding, right?”

“Sure you were. Do you want a receipt?”

“Hey,” Shimura snaps. “It was a joke.”

“Not a good one.”

“Yeah, it was. If you –” Shimura breaks off, his scowl clear even from behind the mask. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I wouldn’t have said that if I didn’t get it.”

“Get it,” you repeat. “You’ve done time?”

“Yeah.” Shimura Tenko covers the back of his neck with one hand. “No charges, but – yeah, I did time. So it’s funny.”

“It’s still not funny.” You lift the empty cup out of Shimura’s hands and turn to start making a second Nutella-esque mocha, trying to decide if you feel better or not. “It’s just not mean.”

A shadow falls across you as you work. Shimura’s following you along the edge of the counter. “So am I getting kicked out or what?”

“Yes,” you say. “In forty-five minutes, when I close.”

Shimura’s eyes crinkle ever so slightly at the corners. You wonder what his smile looks like under that mask, but you’ve got espresso shots to pull, and you need to focus if you don’t want to burn your hand. You look away, and when you look back again, he’s at his table, laptop open, mask on, chin propped in his gloved hand. No charges, but he’s done time. You didn’t expect that. Even though you’ve spent the last five years of your life trying to prove that you’re no different than anybody else, it still catches you by surprise to learn that one of your customers is like you.

You bring the second drink by his table, then start working through your closing checklist. He stands up with five minutes to go, just like clockwork. He leaves without another word, as usual, but when you step outside, he’s still standing there. “You didn’t ask why.”

Why he did time? “Neither did you,” you say.

“Yeah, but I won’t break probation if I don’t answer.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” you say. It’s not quite dark, but the sun’s almost down, and the shadows are growing long. Late March already, but it feels like you’ve got a long way to go before spring. “If I want people who meet me to look at the person I am now, I have to do the same thing for them.”

Shimura Tenko makes a sound, half-laughter and half-scoffing. “They sure did a number on you,” he says. You turn and walk away, and his footsteps follow yours. “Hey. Come on. There’s no way you’re that sensitive.”

“I’m not,” you say. “I’m just having a bad day.”

A bad day, and you never get a day off. Even if the café’s not open, you’re still in sunshine mode every second, making sure that the people who want to treat you like a criminal look absolutely insane for doing it. You fought hard for this life. You’re glad you fought for it. And today more than usual, you’re just really tired. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Yeah,” Shimura says. You’re glad he doesn’t try to apologize again. You know it would be painfully insincere. “How did you know?”

“Hmm?”

“The pastry. How did you know I’d come back?”

“I didn’t,” you say. “I just hoped you would.”

You don’t know why you hoped. Maybe because he’d clearly been waiting a while when you and Present Mic got back. Maybe because you remember how much it mattered to have somewhere else to go, whether you had a place of your own or not. Maybe because you’ve gotten sort of a sense of him over the past few months, and you know he’s the kind of person who pretends not to want the things he wants. Wanting the coffee shop he hangs out in to be open and to have his favorite pastry available is such a reasonable thing to want. You were hoping he’d come back so you could give it to him.

Shimura doesn’t say anything. You keep walking, and he doesn’t follow you. When you glance back over your shoulder as you round the corner, you see him standing just outside of Skyline Coffee and Tea, staring intently at something. You can’t say for sure. But you’re pretty sure it’s the sign that explains about the NCRA.

A while back, you read that some countries set aside two days to commemorate a war. One day to celebrate that it ended, another to mourn that it happened at all. When it comes to the war you lived through, Japan does things differently. There’s just one day, a national holiday, where every government office closes and most businesses do, too. For most people, it’s a day to celebrate. There are carnivals, street fairs, concerts, parties. It’s been a holiday for exactly four years and a whole host of traditions have already sprung up around it.

But there’s one person who never celebrates, and it didn’t take you long to come around to his way of thinking. On April 4th, the fifth annual Day of Peace, you close the café early and make the trek to Kamino Ward.

You’re not sure how Kamino Ward became the place. Maybe because the final battlefield’s been overtaken by celebrations, and at least some people still see Kamino as hallowed ground. The place where the Symbol of Peace made his last stand. The place where the Symbol of Fear passed the torch onto his successor. You get there a little while before sunset, and you join the hundreds of people who’ve already gathered there. The crowd looks smaller than it did last year, and it hasn’t grown much by the time Midoriya Izuku, known to the world as Deku, climbs onto the steps leading up to the All Might statue’s plinth.

Someone hands him a microphone, which he takes with hands that tremble ever so slightly. He’s only twenty-one, and he looks old before his time. “I’m here,” he starts, then swallows hard. “I’m here because we didn’t win. Not really. If you’re here instead of at a party somewhere, I think it’s probably because you lost something. Something, or someone, who was important to you. Something you can’t get back.”

It’s quiet. It’s always quiet after he says something like that. “I’d like to think we did something. That we changed for the better,” Deku continues, “but I think we can only say that if we don’t forget what we had to lose for it to happen. So, um – you know the drill. If you brought a candle, great. If you didn’t, we have some. You can say the thing you lost if you want – we have a microphone – but when you’re done, light the candle and put it down somewhere that feels right to you.”

He takes a deep breath, lets it go. “And then you can go. But I’ll stay until they all burn out.”

People swarmed the first two years. This year they form a line, stepping up to light their candles one by one. You never know what to say when it’s your turn, because it’s not something specific you miss. The way things used to be was awful. You don’t miss that, and you weren’t close enough to anybody to lose someone who mattered in the war. But April 4th has never felt like a happy day. It feels wrong to you to be setting off fireworks and throwing parties in response to a war that almost destroyed the world.

A lot of people say names when it’s their turn to light a candle. Some say places. Some share an ideal they lost, a hero they venerated who fell from their pedestal, a dream they had that will never come true. Each lost thing named is met with respectful silence. But just like last year and the year before, there are three names that aren’t, no matter who says them. “Big Sis Magne. Bubaigawara Jin,” says Toga Himiko as she lights her candle. Say Todoroki Touya and Sako Atsuhiro and Iguchi Shuichi, who still answers to Spinner, as they light theirs. “Shigaraki Tomura.”

There’s always whispering after their names, especially Shigaraki’s. But Deku always goes last, and Deku always shuts them up. He lights his candle and grasps the microphone, speaking clearly, firmly. “Shigaraki Tomura.”

You remember what Present Mic said, about how Deku never got over failing to save Shigaraki. Deku was sixteen when he won the war. Still a kid. Was saving Shigaraki really his job? Maybe that’s the point of all this. It was everyone’s job to stop villains like Shigaraki from being created, and you all failed, so it fell to Deku – and he failed, too. It’s one big, sad, ugly mess. When you’re honest with yourself, you’re not surprised that most people try to cover it up with fireworks.

People begin to filter out of the memorial park, and you find a place to sit down. It’s not like you have somewhere else to go. The others who say settle in as well, in small groups amidst the rows and clusters of candles. You’re within earshot of one of the groups. Without meaning to, you find yourself listening in.

“They’d have hated this,” Todoroki Touya is saying, his voice low and bitter. “Every second of it.”

“Big Sis Magne wouldn’t have. And Twice would have liked it,” Toga Himiko says. Her voice is soft. “All the candles. He’d say it’s like his birthday.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Todoroki Touya’s voice goes even quieter. “Do any of us know when his birthday was?”

It’s quiet. “Shigaraki would hate this,” Todoroki states. “You know he would. What did he tell you to tell Spinner, Deku?”

Deku doesn’t answer. Spinner does. “Shigaraki Tomura fought to destroy until the very end.”

“Yeah,” Todoroki says. “To destroy. And Deku made him a martyr.”

“He destroyed a lot of things,” Deku says quietly. “All For One is gone. One For All, too – there’s never going to be another Symbol of Peace. He destroyed the way we saw villains. We don’t just get to look at what they’re doing right now. We have to think about how they got there. And he destroyed how we saw ourselves.”

“Yeah?” Spinner says. “How?”

“We didn’t think we were responsible for other people,” Deku says. “Now we have to be.”

It’s quiet again. This time it’s quiet for a while. “Whatever,” Todoroki says. “I’m going home. See you all at the next sobfest.”

“He always says that,” Spinner says, once his footsteps have faded. “He’s gonna get tanked at home and text us just like he did last year.”

“I miss Tomura-kun,” Toga says, her voice softer than before. “I thought we’d all be together at the end.”

“I know,” Deku says. “I’m sorry.”

“And you’re sure –” Spinner breaks off. “You’re sure you couldn’t get his ashes or something? So we could –”

“There was nothing left of Shigaraki,” Deku says. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Spinner says. Toga sniffles. “We know.”

The group splits, Toga in one direction, Spinner in the other. A moment later, Deku walks past you, and you do everything you can to fade into the background short of turning yourself camo-colored. It doesn’t work. “Did you hear all that?” Deku asks. You nod. He sighs, or sniffles, maybe. He looks younger up close. “You were here last year, right?”

“And the year before,” you say. The longer you look at him, the worse shape he’s in. “Um, are you okay?”

“It’s just –” Deku’s eyes well up, suddenly. “It’s hard. I can’t say what I want to say to them.”

“Why not?” you ask stupidly, and he shakes his head. “Um – do you want to sit down?”

You wouldn’t ask another hero that, but you feel like it’s worth the risk. Even though he’s twenty-one, you can’t look at him and see anything other than a kid, and it feels wrong to let a kid stand there and cry. Deku sits down next to you. “I know I’m not supposed to ask,” he starts, his voice watery, “but you never say anything when it’s your turn. Most people don’t come here. Even the ones who lost somebody would rather be at a party somewhere. Why do you come back?”

You have to think about it for a second. Deku cringes. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer.”

“I sort of do.” It might hit your probation requirements, and even if it doesn’t, you should explain anyway. “What you said earlier, in your speech – I’m one of the people the world got better for. My life would have been awful if it had stayed the same. But in order for me to have this life, we had to have the war.”

“What did you do during the war? Were you in a shelter?”

You shake your head. “The shelters banned people with criminal records,” you say. Deku’s eyes widen. “Nowhere would let me in.”

It wasn’t all that different from the way you were living before – not much food, not very safe. The only difference was a sharp increase in the number of abandoned buildings for you to crash in. But it looks like you’re making Deku feel worse, not better, and you scramble into part two of your explanation. “I’m one of the NCRA participants. That program only exists because of the war – and you, because you won’t let people forget why the war happened. So I want to remember why the war happened, too. And I want to honor it. Them.”

“Him,” Deku corrects, and your stomach clenches. “I wonder what he thinks of all of this. If it’s enough. If it’ll ever be enough. I mean, obviously it’ll never be enough for him, because he doesn’t – I mean, I can’t ask him, but I know he can see it. I don’t know where he is, but if I could just ask him –”

You didn’t realize Deku believed this strongly in the afterlife. You sit quietly, and after a few seconds, he remembers you’re there. He glances at you, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you say. “Do you not get to talk about it very much?”

“No,” Deku admits. “People want to move on. And I don’t really blame them. But I can’t. Not until I know for sure.”

It’s quiet for a little bit. He wipes his eyes. You watch the candles flicker down a few millimeters more. “You’re in the NCRA,” Deku says finally. “For job training, or did you get a loan?”

“I got a loan,” you say. “I run a coffee shop now. With free WiFi.”

“Do people like it?”

“I think so,” you say. You think of the kids who come to study, the people who use the WiFi for remote work, the old people who walk the beach every morning and stop by for coffee and pastry afterwards. “I have regulars, anyway. And people talk to me now. They never used to.”

“People talk to me now, too,” Deku says. “It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” you agree. “It is.”

It is, but it’s not quite what you meant, and you don’t want to interrupt when Deku starts talking about the NCRA. It’s not just that people talk to you. They talked to you before, but now they see you – not as a criminal, but as a person like them, minus the squeaky-clean record. That’s new, and that’s good. You know even less about Shigaraki Tomura than Deku does, but even if he’d hate what’s happened to the world he wanted to destroy, you’re thankful anyway. The world is better now. It’s better because of Deku, and Deku’s the way he is because of Shigaraki.

There are fireworks going off over the bay, distant enough that you can’t hear the sound. Closer than that, you hear music and laughter from a street party you passed on your way here from the train station. Deku trails off after a while, and you don’t speak up again. The two of you sit in silence until the last of the candles burns away.

You get home late, and it’s an early morning opening up the café. Luckily for you, everybody else is also running late courtesy of the holiday yesterday. Osono comes by fifteen minutes off-schedule and full of apologies, and while you’ve got your doors open by seven, it’s not until seven-fifty-eight that your first customers come through the door. It’s a double shot of espresso kind of day, and while you’re pulling them, your customers tell you about the parties they went to last night. When they ask what you did, you tell them you went into the city. It’s not a lie.

After the slow start, the shop stays quieter than usual, quiet enough that when Shimura Tenko rolls up just past noon, there’s still plenty of babka left in the pastry case. You start his order before he’s even opened the door – one black coffee, one Nutella-flavored nightmare – and he stops to drop off his stuff at his usual table before he comes up to the counter. You can tell he’s disquieted by something. “Did Present Mic come by and scare everybody off again? How are you going to keep this place open if no one’s here?”

“Mornings are a lot busier than afternoons,” you say. “And spring’s my quietest season, anyway. No tourists like there are in the summer, and it’s not very cold.”

“Yeah.” Shimura glances around, still displeased. “This place had better stay open.”

“It will,” you say. “One shot of espresso or two?”

“Three.”

“Three? It’s your funeral,” you say, but you pull the extra shot. “Late night last night?”

“I went to a party,” Shimura says. You nod. “It was my birthday.”

“Happy birthday.” You cancel half his order. You give people a free drink on their birthday, if you know it and they come in. “Your birthday is April 4th? That’s a tough draw, especially the last few years.”

“You’re telling me.” Instead of retreating to his table like usual, Shimura hovers at the bar. “What about you? Did you go to a party?”

You shake your head. “I went into the city.”

“Which city?”

“Yokohama,” you admit. Shimura’s eyes narrow. “I go to the vigil at Kamino. I have every year they’ve done it.”

“Really,” Shimura says, skeptical. “Why?”

Deku asked you the same question. You have a feeling Shimura won’t like the answer, but it’s the only one you have. “My life is better than it was before the war, because of what happened in the war. I want to be thankful for that. It doesn’t feel right to me to go to a carnival.”

Shimura doesn’t say anything, just watches you. It makes you feel weird. “If I’d known it was your birthday, though, I’d have gone to a party for that. It was your birthday way before it was the Day of Peace.” You’re babbling, and Shimura still hasn’t said a word. “Not that you’d invite me to your birthday party or anything.”

“I didn’t know you’d want to go,” Shimura says slowly. The espresso machine beeps, and you focus on it way harder than you’d do under ordinary circumstances. “Look, I – it wasn’t my party. Just a party. It’s not like I went in a fucking birthday hat.”

“That would look pretty weird with your hood still up,” you say. Shimura makes an odd sound. You look up and see the corners of his eyes crinkling again. “Still, though. I’ll remember for next year. I’ll get a cupcake or something. Even if you don’t want somebody who’s done time at your birthday party.”

Shimura laughs at that. Actually laughs. Your chest constricts, filling with warmth in a way that feels out of proportion to the situation at hand. “I only want people who’ve done time at my birthday party,” he says. “Don’t try to give me that drink for free. You letting this place go under would be a shitty birthday present.”

“Too late. It’s already free and I’m not rerunning the sale.” You pour the black coffee and set it down on the pickup counter, followed by the godawful Nutella drink. “Happy birthday plus one.”

Shimura rolls his eyes, but they’re still crinkled slightly at the corners. He doesn’t respond until he’s already halfway back to the table, and he’s so quiet that you have to strain your ears to hear. “Thanks.”

You should say something. Something like “you’re welcome”, or “any time”. Something that sounds like good customer service, instead of what you’re worried will come out of your mouth if you open it right now. The conversation is over. Nothing else needs to be said. You turn to face your small workspace, searching for a distraction. There has to be something you can clean.

It’s been so long since you had a crush that you barely remember what it’s like, but you’re pretty sure you have a crush on Shimura. As far as crushes go, he’s kind of a weird pick – because he’s a customer, because he’s not the friendliest, because he hasn’t given any indication that he likes you at all. He likes babka and free internet and the horrible off-menu mocha you make just for him. That’s it.

It feels weird to have a crush. Weird in how normal of a thing it is to do, when you’ve been so focused on looking normal and pretending to be normal that you haven’t done anything actually normal in a while. But maybe this is a good thing, and maybe it’s okay. You might get released early from your NCRA requirements, and even if you don’t, you’re doing well. You can afford to like somebody again.

The café stays quiet, and with two hours left before closing time, you’re getting bored. Bored, and you haven’t switched out the mural since before your last check-in with Present Mic. Now’s an okay time for that. You scribble a sign to prop up on the counter – I’m here, just yell – and head towards the back wall. You have to pass Shimura to get there, and as you do, he looks up. “I’m not looking,” you say. “I’ll just be over here.”

“Doing what?”

“A new mural,” you say. “Pretend I’m not here.”

Shimura decides to start right away, and you flex your fingers more out of habit than anything else. Then you set your hand on the wall and activate your quirk, changing the entire wall from the wildflower mural back to the same blank neutral as the others. That’s a good start. Now you just need to figure out what you’re going to do with it.

Actual muralists sketch and line their work. They work from references and they draft the design before they actually start painting. You know that because you used to want to be a muralist yourself. You could sketch and line things, but these days you’re more about feelings than anything else, and feelings take color. You block the wall into a few sections – you remember to do that, at least – and fill in general colors, running your fingers along the edges to blur them together. Grey base and sides. Dark-colored middle. The entire upper half of the wall is light. It’s not until you’ve added the half-circle above the horizon that you get a real understanding of what you’re making.

It's another cityscape, or the ruins of one, something you saw in photos or maybe in person. It looks a lot like the sunrise view from Kamino Ward, the sky on fire with deep purple and orange and pink and gold, the reflection of those colors splashed across the sea, the wreckage of the city bathed in morning light. You’ve done enough therapy to psychoanalyze yourself, and it’s not hard to see what you were going for with this. Things are horrible. Things were horrible for a long time before today, but the sun is still rising, and the sunrise is still beautiful. And it’s a lot easier to see now, with all the other stuff out of the way.

“That’s not paint.”

You weren’t expecting Shimura to say anything, and you weren’t expecting him to pay attention to what you’re doing. But when you look back over your shoulder, you see him staring, his phone set aside, the lid of his laptop shut. “It’s not paint,” you say. “Just my quirk.”

“How does it work?” Shimura asks. You turn back to your mural, and you hear him get to his feet. A moment later he’s standing beside you, answering his own question. “You can change the color of things you touch. And decide how long it stays that way.”

“Yeah.” After using it your whole life, you’re pretty good at it. You can fine-tune stuff, enough to add shading to the buildings and the rubble at the sides and bottom of the mural without compromising the light from the sunrise. “Not a very powerful quirk.”

“You could still cause trouble,” Shimura says. You could. And you did. “This is how you got your charges, isn’t it? Stuff like this.”

“Graffiti? Yeah,” you say. You remember the rush you got the first time you tagged something, the first time you spilled your thoughts and feelings in a way no one could ignore. “Except when you do that, you get charged with trespassing and vandalism, and when they figure out they can’t remove it, you get charged with destruction of property. Throw in malicious unlicensed quirk usage and – boom. Felonies.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Me or them?”

“Giving somebody a felony for painting stuff on walls.” Shimura studies what you’ve done so far. “All of these have been yours, right? Is this the same stuff you were painting before?”

“Not always,” you say. This conversation falls under your NCRA obligations, but it doesn’t feel like it’s the reason Shimura’s asking – and it’s not the reason you’re telling him. “When I first got into it, it was just words or sentences. Stuff I couldn’t figure out how to say out loud. The first time I really got busted, it was for tagging the side of my parents’ house.”

“Your parents called the cops on you?”

“And pressed charges,” you say. He’s staring at you again. You pretend you don’t notice and fuss over the shoreline in the mural. “I got better at it when I was older. The art got better, anyway. But I got in more trouble because of where I put it. And I guess what was in it.”

“Anything I’d have seen?”

“I don’t know. Where did you hang around?” you ask. You got booked in most of the big cities in Japan during your criminal career. “Uh, I did the UA barrier. The one with the – you know.”

“The human shields?” Shimura bursts out laughing. “Did you have a sibling in Eraserhead’s class or something?”

“No, I just thought it was stupid to do the Sports Festival a week after what happened,” you say. Shimura snickers. “It felt like they were using the kids as props to distract from how much of a mistake they’d made, and I was mad about a lot of other stuff, too, and – yeah. I kind of went off.”

You really went off. There’s no other way to describe triggering the UA barrier on purpose at two am so you could make a crude mural of All Might, Endeavor, Hawks, and Best Jeanist hiding behind a bunch of kids in school uniforms. Shimura is still snickering. “Damn. I’m surprised they call you nonviolent with how bad you hurt their feelings.”

“They had to replace the whole barrier,” you say, and Shimura wheezes. “I’m not trying to be funny.”

“No, but it is funny.” Shimura glances at you over the edge of his mask. “And now you run a coffee shop and make things like this.”

He looks away from you, back to the mural. “Is this something real? It looks familiar,” he says. Before you can answer, his eyes widen, and he says it himself. “Kamino Ward. Why would you paint it like that?”

“It’s how I see it in my head. Or how I feel it. I don’t really know.” You reach out and use the tip of your index finger to highlight one of the buildings that’s still standing in sunrise gold. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” Shimura reaches out and touches it with one gloved hand. “People are going to be pissed at you.”

“If they recognize it.” You’re not too worried. “Most people just look at the colors.”

“I recognized it.”

“You’re not most people.”

You instantly wish you hadn’t said a word. Shimura Tenko glances at you quickly, then looks back to the mural. “Yeah,” he says. “I was there.”

Your stomach drops. “You were?” you repeat hopelessly, and he nods without looking your way. “I’m sorry. It’s – insensitive. I’ll take it down –”

“No.” Shimura catches your wrist before you can make contact with the mural. “Leave it. I was gone for this part. It’s a nice view. The horizon, I mean.”

That’s your favorite part, and you’re not even done with it yet. “I still have some stuff to add,” you say. Shimura nods but doesn’t let go of your wrist. You pull at it slightly. “I need this back.”

“Fuck. Sorry.” Shimura recoils like you’ve burned him, then backs away. Way too far away. You’d say he was making fun of you, except you can see his eyes over the mask, and they’re expressive in spite of his complete lack of eyebrows. “Sorry. I don’t usually – touch people.”

“It’s okay.” Your wrist feels tingly where his hand made contact, and there are butterflies in your stomach. He doesn’t usually touch people, but he touched you. “Thanks for stopping me.”

Shimura turns away completely. “I have to work.”

“Yeah. I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“I know.” Shimura slides back into his booth. You turn back to put the finishing touches on your mural.

He’s right about it. In the hour left before you close, at least one customer who trickles in gives you a hard time for putting up something so upsetting. You listen to his concerns, but you stick to your guns, and when he sits down to wait for his order, you see him watching it. Just like Shimura is, the screen of his laptop long since gone dark.

Chapters: 6/? Fandom: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko/Reader Characters: Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Reader, Takami Keigo | Hawks Additional Tags: Yandere Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Quirkless Reader (My Hero Academia), Voice Kink, Hand & Finger Kink, Porn With Plot, Eventual Smut, really more like a smattering of smut here and there between therapy sessions (and sometimes during), Sexual Frustration, Touch-Starved, Choking, Canon-Typical Violence, Soft Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, not all the time but sometimes, Shiggy is a thighs and ass man I decided, wants to grab reader's ass and massage her thighs and rub his cheeks between them, Mutual Pining, Psychologist!Reader, Prisoner!AU, Shiggy gets therapy, it's giving harleen quinzel falling for joker vibes, you are too curious for your own good, Possessive Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, no beta so please be gentle with me senpai Summary:

Somewhere in the process of analyzing him, you realized that red wine gaze was starting to go to your head. By that point however, you were half-drunk already, settled in the palm of his hand.

Omg i loveeee this fic !

Goodbye Tomura. Goodbye MHA

To Mourn

Shigiraki…..

This may be an underwhelming one. But I’m pretty satisfied with my final Mha piece. Just like the story itself… it was fun.

Shigaraki gas STANIMA loads of it. Man can go at it all night. All those years of never having physical contact have built up and nows here's this pretty thing beneath him, wanting him, completely bare with legs spread. Oh and those sexy sounds he makes, animalistic grunts to needy whines. This though makes me weak

trigger warnings: explicit content

other: female reader

Tomura will never tell you this, but the main reason he has such abnormal amount of stamina is because he used to watch a lot of porn growing up. never getting a proper sex talk or something of the sort from AFO (why would he? AFO wants his apprentice be as sexuality frustrated as possible so he's more aggressive and underdeveloped) when he discovers internet and explicit content he is watching it every day when he has the time. and when you masturbate multiple times a day your sensitivity starts to decrease, making it more difficult to cum with every late night jack off session.

so imagine when he has his absolutely beautiful and sexy girlfriend lying under him completely naked, looking all erotic and ready to please him. for Tomura the sight of someone who loves him spreading her pretty legs so he can fully see what's there... it is better than any porn he watched so far. when he first sinks his leaking cock inside of you he'll cum moderately fast just from how warm and wet and tight you are inside (so much tighter than his fist could ever be), but when he recovers... you better get ready for long and exhausting fucking hours.

you just came with a scream of pleasure and a gush of your own juices leaking down your legs, ass shaking up in the air and face red, pushed in the pillows that are now wet with your tears because that dick was so good it made you cry? he's already on his knees, licking and sucking on your used pussy, slurping your and his cum from it to get you going again while jerking his cock vigorously to get it hard. you come again, go drink some water, pee, cuddle for twenty minutes or so and it's time to get pounded again. by the time you're finished your cunt is sore, your clit hurts from all the over stimulation, but it's so worth it. he will want to fuck you in the morning too.