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morownic · 2 months

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of fever dreams and jamais vu

And, of course, like all fever dreams, he had to wake himself up from it. (But this one? This one was real.)

warnings/tags: NSFW MDNI (non-graphic smut), non-ultraman AU, afab + fem pronouns

next — series masterlist · my other works · ao3

a/n: there were a lot of songs that i listened to while writing this (animals) and i do have a playlist of them but i would recommend color tv to listen while reading the flashback part bcs i did write this part with that song on repeat lol. enjoy!

All the world and his wife was scrutinizing Ken Sato the moment he stepped out of the airport and took his first deep breath in his homeland after twenty years. Of course, he welcomed and basked in the attention even if it suffocated him—quite literally, he must add, what with how the reporters and photographers were almost wrestling each other to get a scoop on him. What came after that only gave him a headache after a headache. He had to settle in his new residence, a mansion he bought just 15 minutes away from where his father lived, one that felt way too big for just one person and his supercomputer assistant. He finalized his contract with the Yomiuri Giants, followed by a meeting with all the staff members and a less-than-formal outing with his new teammates to some club in Shibuya he didn’t bother to remember the name of, where he was just constantly reminded that he was alone. The day after that, he had to deal with a hangover, a press conference, and an interview that ticked him off—Ami Wakita, was it?—before ending the night with a bar fight that left his shoulder aching.

Ken was sure he wouldn’t even have considered moving back to Japan nor would he have let his father somehow slip back into his life if it wasn’t for his mother.

With his injury, your father needs you, kiddo.

And so, Ken Sato began his baseball career in Japan with the Yomiuri Giants. He brought the team to their first victory of the season despite a lot of things: how the media was still on his ass about why he would leave his career with the Los Angeles Dodgers behind, how Coach Shimura seemed to have a chip on his shoulder when it came to him, how the pain in his own shoulder would stab and dull with every movement he made. The way his shoulder ached left him wondering if he should have treated it more seriously rather than seeing it as an inconvenience, perhaps put his pride aside to admit that yes, that drunken brawl was fucking stupid, and my shoulder fucking hurts. That was why he didn’t think much of it when Coach Shimura was talking about bringing in some new guy—something about a new performance analyst or whatever—as a matter of fact, he couldn’t care less.

So, imagine his surprise when he showed up to practice and saw a face he hadn’t seen since graduating college in the States. A face that made his breath hitch because one, she was just that beautiful, and two, he had no idea why she would be here. A face that was so familiar he almost threw up from shock, anger, guilt, longing. A face that contorted into contempt at the mere sight of him.

Ken Sato was sure of one thing at that moment.

He was completely, utterly, thoroughly fucked.

Ken Sato wasn’t always the famed world-class baseball star he turned out to be, and she wasn’t always the blunt and tight-lipped new analyst for the Yomiuri Giants she turned out to be.

He was a doe-eyed, lanky Japanese kid who had above average grades in his classes and showed promising results as a slugger for the baseball team. He spent most of his freshman year being stereotyped and made fun of for how he looked and talked, and it only changed because he had his growth spurt in sophomore year. Not only did he become a cleanup hitter by the end of the year, girls were suddenly giving him bedroom eyes in the hallway and guys tried to make up for their borderline bullying by letting him into their cliques. His friendships with them were shallow, really, because they would still poke fun at this old accent even after he had nearly perfected his American accent. Ken took it in stride only because he knew everyone would never make fun of him in baseball, not when he had practically put his school on the map by winning tens of titles and playing in the Senior League. And so, by the end of high school, Ken had baseball to thank for almost everything in his teenagehood.

She, on the other hand, came to high school smart and pretty. Where Ken stood out like a sore thumb, she stood out like a broken finger. Someone being academically gifted and socially relevant was practically unheard of at that time. She was among the top 10 students in freshman year, earned her spot as the leadoff hitter for the softball team in sophomore year, won a national debate championship in junior year, and passed 4 AP classes with flying colors in senior year. She, too, had put the school on the map, perhaps even more contributively than Ken did, so the teachers only kept their grievances for when she skipped class to smoke. Even so, everyone seemed to like her regardless of their cliques; she was always greeted in the hallways, was almost always invited to every party, and had gone out with all the popular students. She could have had it all, and whatever her secrets were, Ken and the other students in their school only knew her as the high school sweetheart, the kind you would see printed next to the definition of high school sweetheart itself.

Ken had seen her in passing during freshman year, but he never really talked to her until they shared three classes together in sophomore year. He remembered that she had approached him first during PE, suddenly speaking to him in fluent Japanese that he nearly had a whiplash. She told him that yes, I know you’re also Japanese and sorry I didn’t talk to you sooner, then babbled something about how she felt guilty that she had just been watching while others made fun of him. He didn’t think much of it at first, still surprised that one of the popular girls—if not the popular girl—in his year was actually talking to him. But then, he found himself understanding every word she said whenever she talked in Japanese and replying to whatever she was saying in English; he found himself exchanging notes and numbers with her in math class; he found himself going to the baseball field with her during lunch breaks and seeing who could hit the farthest. He was somehow roped into bringing her home after he offhandedly mentioned her to his mother, and then, they somehow became best friends. He would cover for her whenever she skipped class to smoke, much to his dismay, and she would introduce him to other social circles outside his baseball team, where he found his first girlfriend—who, admittedly, broke up with him because the way he spoke about his “best friend” was laced with more adoration than the first kiss he had with her. He would wait until their practice sessions were over and drive her home, where they would spend at least three hours talking on her porch before he went home, and she would show up to his games with an obnoxious handmade banner that read “KEN SATO THE G.O.A.T,” cheering the loudest whenever he hit a home run. He would pick her up from anywhere almost every time she asked, even if he had to get himself out of bed at two in the morning, and she would hang out at his place every other weekend, bringing fruit baskets and takeouts for his mother. It was somewhat domestic, how she settled in his apartment (and his life) whenever she came over. Ken almost always had to ground himself because his brain would feed him thoughts of a future with her, and his heart would beat so hard it threatened to break out of his ribcage.

But they were just best friends, he thought and said to his friends whenever they asked him about her. Best friends who happened to suck off, eat out, and eat each other’s faces pretty regularly. He found it funny at first, really; one time, their classmates told her that she just wasn’t human, what with how she juggled school and being popular. She only laughed it off, but he thought of how right they were when she came over while he was home alone at the end of sophomore year. There was no way the girl kneeling between his legs was fucking human. Not with that tongue of hers. Not with the way she looked up and batted her eyelashes at him. Not with how she literally gulped down his load in one go and played Tekken on his console as if she hadn’t just given him the best head of his life. She quite literally sucked the soul out of him that day, and he never had another head like that ever since. Even as they started hooking up—strictly platonic, she said, and he just went along with whatever she wanted as long as it was with her—that was still the stuff of his wet dreams, and it remained that way even long after they never saw each other again.

“Do you think we’ll be friends forever?”

The question caught Ken off-guard not only because it broke the comfortable silence between them, but also the feelings it evoked. Where is she going with this? he thought. A frown was etched on his face as he turned to look at her. Under the soft glow of the star projector in her room, she laid on her back, eyes tracing the constellations that danced across the ceiling. Her breathing was far more steady than his, chest rising and falling slowly behind the thin fabric of his shirt. Her hair fanned out around her on the pillow, framing her face as if it was her halo. At that time, her expression was probably the most serene and somber he had ever seen. She’s beautiful, he said to himself, and he thought it wouldn’t be so bad to keep a picture of this moment in his head for his selfish reminiscing should they ever stop being friends. (He hardly thought she meant that they could be more than friends, and he didn’t want to entertain the thought of not having her in his life.)

“Yeah?” He answered and mentally cursed himself for sounding so unsure. After clearing his throat, he corrected himself: “I mean, yeah, why not?”

There was no way she hadn’t seen the way he was staring at her from the corner of her eye. Even if she did, she didn’t turn her head to face him and only hummed in response to his answer. A look of contemplation appeared on her face as she kept quiet for nearly another minute. Ken swore it felt like an eternity.

“What if–” She sighed. “What if we fuck up and hurt each other? What then?”

Ken somehow knew that she already knew that there was no way she could ever fuck him up. (She already did, anyway, literally and figuratively.) Not with how he looked at her, not with how he reached out to hold her hand, not with how he promptly turned his head to face the ceiling once she was turning to look at him. Perhaps, what she was looking for was the reassurance that he wouldn’t fuck her up. He squeezed her hand when the thought crossed his mind.

“I’ll still be your friend anyways,” he said, softly, his voice barely above a whisper.

A chuckle left her lips then. She didn’t let go of his hand as she moved to hover over him, replacing the twinkling manmade constellations in his sight. (He thought she was brighter than any star in the sky, anyway.) He raised his brow when he saw the mischievous glint in her eyes as she leaned down, her lips nearly closing in on his.

The grin she had on her face was enough to tell him she was up to no good. “Are you a masochist?”

“You–seriously?”

He might’ve groaned from annoyance, but the way her body shook with laughter on top of him was enough to make that godawful warmth bloom in his chest. He pulled her in for a kiss, though he wasn’t sure if it was to shut her up or if he just wanted to, and he thought that if anyone were to see them like this, no one would ever believe him if he told them that they were just best friends. Hell, everyone had enough of his answer whenever they asked him about it at school, and he was even picked on again at some point—but not for how he looked or talked. No, he was picked on for being her “best friend” because no matter how many people had tried to make her theirs, she kept coming back to him. But then they would find Ken making out with one of the cheerleaders under the bleachers and her sucking off some guy from the football team at some senior’s house party. It was confusing for everyone, but even more so for Ken, because every time she asked him to pick her up from God-knows-where, he would see red when she saw her huffing out a smoke, disheveled because of someone who was not him.

And, of course, like all fever dreams, he had to wake himself up from it.

“–Sato.”

Two things snapped Ken out of his trance then. First, it was the voice that called out to him, then it was the pain in his shoulder. Ken found himself standing on the batter box in Tokyo Dome, a bat in his hand, and his breath was ragged. The seats were empty, the sky was turning dark, and then he remembered that he was at practice. He was at practice, not on the porch at her old house in Los Angeles holding her close as she cried over that one guy who supposedly broke her heart. He was at practice, not at the frat party where he met her again for the first time after months of no contact and saw her giggling on the lap of some jock. He was at practice, not in front of the diner they used to go to almost every other day where he said awful things he didn’t mean and maybe, just maybe, that was the reason why she had left for Japan the next day. (She had waited for him to come to the airport, to at least apologize, but he never came. He had turned off his phone during practice.)

Ken sighed and lowered his bat, hissing when he rolled his left shoulder. He steadied his breathing and regained his composure before his eyes flickered to the field. His teammates were waiting for him to hit another ball so they could continue their fielding practice. Then, he turned to the one in front of him—Yoshida, right?—whose voice pulled him out of his train of thought. Yoshida raised his brow when he locked eyes with Ken.

“Are you distracted or something?”

It was his turn to frown. “What?”

“Are you distracted by the new girl or something? You kept looking back at the dugout earlier.”

Ken almost dropped his bat when he heard that, his neck turning so quickly that he was surprised he didn’t give himself a whiplash. “What?”

Yoshida nodded in the direction of the dugout, and Ken turned to look. His grip around the bat tightened as his eyes darted towards the dugout. Her back was facing the field, leaning against the metal fence that divided the field and the dugout. Her arms held a clipboard to her chest, and he could only see her side profile from where he was standing as she spoke with Coach Shimura. The two of them looked familiar already—he really didn’t know how she did it, given that he was still at odds with the coach, but it was so her, he thought, the way she could get along with all the people he couldn’t—as Coach Shimura was talking more expressively with her than he had ever seen him. She was nodding to whatever Coach Shimura was talking about with a smile on her face, one that didn’t reach her eyes, and he berated himself because why and how the fuck could you tell from this distance? Ken’s lips parted as Coach Shimura’s expression changed and nodded in his direction, and his breath hitched as he saw her turning slightly towards him.

Ken’s heart dropped as the smile on her face faltered, replaced by an unimpressed look and an air of disdain that made him shiver. The world seemed to stop right then and there; even when she looked at him as if he was the reason behind her suffering—which was probably true, to an extent—he couldn’t help but think of how beautiful she was. Even with the hint of blood between her slightly cracked lips and the dark circles under her eyes that she didn’t bother to hide with some concealer. Even with how she looked even paler than she was when they were still in Los Angeles and how her cheekbones seemed to protrude and her cheeks seemed more hollow. She was beautiful, yet she contrasted her old self, which bothered him so much that dread started to pool in his stomach. Ken knew her and would even say he knew too much of her. But, right at that moment, it was as if he was looking straight into a stranger’s eyes and not the pair he had fallen in love with, as if he was looking at the stuff of his nightmares and not the girl of his dreams, as if he had never known her at all.

(What if it was true?)

Ken pinched his arm, hard, and winced when the pain seared through his body and kickstarted another throbbing ache in his shoulder. None of the stuff of his fever dreams, the dread and peculiarity of it, should have been real. This was real. So, if this was real, then God must not only be fucking joking, but He must’ve been thoroughly fucking evil to be putting him through this.

“Oh, fuck.”

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hopeluna · 7 months

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!! Fic Recs

Most of these are long fics or series and some of these are 18+ so be aware? But anyways, enjoy these works from absolute writing angels <33

Jujutsu Kaisen

Symptoms & Causes by @lostfracturess

Gojo Satoru x reader

Synopsis: he's arrogant, self-centered, and he's your professor. renowned for his brilliance in neurosurgery and infamous for his allure. too bad you have to work with him on this research team. now you're stuck with dr. satoru gojo, delving into the complexities of both the brain and the heart—and of how far you'd go for a love that could destroy not only him but you as well.

Love Entries by @chuluoyi

Gojo Satoru x reader

Synopsis: series of episodes of your life with the strongest sorcerer throughout the past and present

men are so quick to blame the gods by @awearywritersworld

Sukuna x reader

Synopsis: your boyfriend is a heavy sleeper, leaving you to form an unlikely relationship with the curse occupying his body during the late hours of the night.

wanna be yours by @nezuscribe

Gojo Satoru x reader

Synopsis: you find yourself in a marriage that you never wanted in the first place. your husband seems to hate you and you begin to wonder if anything you used to think of him was even true. who would have though a marriage to gojo satoru would be so difficult?

his kiss, the riot by @nezuscribe

Gojo Satoru x reader

Synopsis: the king has been struck by never-ending grief when he found out about his wife's infidelity. he has her ordered to be killed, but afterward, he is no longer the same. every night he marries a woman, and every morning he has her killed. the endless cycle continues until the night you're chosen to be his wife. instead of letting him ruin you, you tell him a story. you tell him a story that he just has to know the ending to. and so begins the story of one thousand and one arabian nights.

i'd crawl home to her by @likelilacwine

Geto Suguru x reader

Summary: the god of the underworld brings his most valued prize home at the risk of tearing the realm itself apart.

Boku No Hero Academia

@andypantsx3

Yes, her entire blog. Pls each and every series of her is god send. I cannot reccomend this to you enough!!

pretty white dress by @gaybybirth

Dabi x reader

Synopsis: You're shelving books like normal at work when a new face comes into the store. And in a small town where everyone knows each other, a new face really stands out. Especially when it's one that makes you burn in ways you never have.

FILL MY LITTLE WORLD (RIGHT UP) by @shibaraki

Aizawa Shouta x reader

Synopsis: you are employed by aizawa shouta to nanny for his vulnerable adoptive daughter eri while he’s at work. as time passes you find yourself equally smitten with them both, longing for a more permanent place in their family.

please save me by @hitoshiyoshi

Platonic!young!shimura tenko x reader

Synopsis: you save shimura tenko

Stranger Things

Not Wholly Evil by @uglypastels

Eddie Munson x reader

Synopsis: as the daughter of the Governor, there is quite a heavy prize set on your safe return home, and the captain will not let anything come between him and his bounty.

As you wish by @corroded-hellfire

Eddie Munson x reader

Synopsis: When Eddie isn’t appreciated like he should be, his babysitter feels the need to step in and comfort him.

Living After Midnight by @munson-blurbs

Eddie Munson x reader

Synopsis: Being a perpetual people-pleaser meant that you were constantly putting others before yourself--particularly your parents and the eccentric guests who stayed at their motel. But when a surly and mysterious musician checked in indefinitely, he flipped your whole world on its head.

Please do tell me if you want to be removed from this for whatever reason!!

#♡! hope's diary #support banner by @/saradika-graphics #lace divider by @benkeibear

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phant0mth1ef · 1 month

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the spark in your eyes, the look on your face.

you’d sat at the sorry excuse of a headstone that your brother had been given, the patchy green grass below you was beginning to fade as you tried to wipe dust off his name.

you’d gotten to choose the name that your brother had on his headstone.

shimura tenko. you’d also chosen how long he’d really lived for. the five years of his life that he’d lived with his family before all for one had taken him.

to everyone else, he was a person who’d committed mass genocide, mass murder, and so many more destructive crimes. to you, that was all true. but he was so much more to you. he was just a scared little kid, like you.

a voice behind you made you yelp. nobody else was supposed to be here, the guards were only letting you out here on the condition that you wore quirk cancelling handcuffs and stayed in their sight at all times.

bakugou and midoriya stood behind you. they’d grown, their features were sharper and scars littered their bodies.

“what’re you doing here?” you mumbled, turning back to attempt to clean up tenko’s headstone. god the way you had to fight them before they’d agreed to give him a headstone.

“came to visit shigaraki.” bakugou mumbled, he’d felt partially responsible for your loss of your brother.

“shimura. shimura tenko. not shigaraki.” your words were soft, genuine.

“shimura?” midoriya spoke up.

“shimura. he didn’t like shigaraki. i don’t like shigaraki.” you sighed, picking yourself up off the ground as you walked to the officer who was in charge of you, letting him know that you were ready to go.

your face was droopy, as if you’d been refusing to expose yourself to the outside world. and the truth was, you had.

they’d watched you leaving. just the same as they watched when you were released from prison ten years later. still the same scared child you were all those years ago when you’d been forced into war.

@aintseennothinyet @cupidsblonde here’s your part 2 💖

#mha #myheroacademia #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha bakugou #mha bakugou #bakugou katsuki #mha midoriya #mha x y/n #bnha x y/n #bnha x fem!reader #midoriyaizuku #bnha midoriya #deku midoriya #izuku midoriya

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scary-grace · 22 days

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the new postmodern age (chapter 3) - 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 3

Tenko doesn’t come to the café the next day. He doesn’t text you back, or answer your call, but you know he hasn’t blocked you because your messages get delivered. That’s a relief, but not much of one. He doesn’t have his laptop, so he can’t work. What’s he doing today? What happened to him? Is he all right?

It should disturb you that the latter question matters more to you than the others, mattered more than the fact that you slept with a customer and the fact that he’s apparently a supervillain in disguise. It’s the supervillain part that should overwhelm everything else – but you’ve spent the last five years living by the principle of judging people on who they are now, not what they were in the past. You can’t drop that principle now. Not with how you feel about Tenko. Not with what you saw him do.

You keep up a happy face at work, like always – there’s no such thing as a bad day for a reformed criminal, you should remember that you’re lucky to have gotten a second chance – but beneath the surface, you’re in turmoil. You save a babka for Tenko, but you know deep in your heart that he’s not coming in today. If you want to give him his stuff back, you’re going to have to go to him.

You don’t know where he lives, but you have enough information to figure it out. During the afternoon, as the steady stream of customers trails to a stop, you collect what you know – the exact time Tenko’s power went out, the list of outage alerts the town posted, naming the exact time and the affected neighborhood. When you match Tenko’s text to the outage alerts, you see that he lives in a lightly populated neighborhood on the edge of town, so far out that you’re surprised he didn’t lose power sooner. It’ll be a long walk from your café, but the weather is nice, and it’ll be a while before the sun sets. When five o’clock comes, you close up shop, package the babka to take with you, settle Tenko’s backpack on your shoulders, and set off.

You try to get your head in the game as you walk. Tenko probably thinks you’ve guessed who he is. That’s probably why he left. You’re not just dealing with a customer you slept with; you’re dealing with an undercover supervillain whose identity’s just been revealed. You need to be careful going in there. You don’t know what kind of mood he’s in. You don’t even know if he’ll want to see you. If your positions were switched, would you want to see him?

You would. You’d want to know you still mattered to him, and you’d want what you’ve always wanted – for someone to come find you, to make sure you’re okay. Even if it’s the last thing Tenko wants, you have to try.

Tenko’s neighborhood is sparsely populated, and of the houses there, you rule out most of them immediately – they were built three years ago, and you can’t imagine Tenko moving once he got here. One house is way too big, a fancy lodge used for weddings and corporate retreats. It leaves exactly one place. A house set back in the woods, away from the shore, serviced by a dirt road and barely visible through the trees.

It looks like the kind of place people go to get murdered. If you were a normal person, you’d think twice about going down that road. But you hung out in scarier places than this when you were a criminal, and unlike back then, you have at least some idea of what’s waiting for you in there. You pick your way down the dirt road, skirting the overgrown patches on your way up to the front door. Almost immediately you notice that something’s wrong. The doorknob’s completely gone, as if it’s just crumbled away.

You swallow hard and knock on the door. It sways slightly in place. “Tenko?” When there’s no response, you try again, without the knock. “You left your backpack and laptop at my house. Can I come in?”

“Leave it there.”

As fast as your heart leaped at hearing his voice, it sinks again at his words. But you did what you wanted to do. You checked on him, and you brought him his things, and you don’t want to stay where you’re not wanted. “Okay,” you say. You slide his backpack from your shoulders and set it down carefully on the steps. You put the babka next to it. “Um – you’ve got my number, if you want to talk. I want to talk to you, but I understand if you don’t. I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

You turn away and start down the path, your eyes stinging, blinking hard. You think you hear the door open, but you don’t look back – but when your phone buzzes, you yank it out of your pocket in record time. The text is from Tenko. come in if you want to

The relief that sweeps over you feels too strong. You turn around without texting back, gathering up the backpack and the babka before pushing open the door. Tenko’s house is dim, the curtains pulled shut. His TV is muted with a screen full of static. You can’t see him, but you can hear the dry sound of his fingernails against the side of his neck. His voice is flat. “Why are you here?”

“I was kind of shaken up after what happened yesterday. I thought you might be, too.” You take a few cautious steps forward. “I was worried.”

“Don’t lie.” The kitchen is empty. So is the bathroom, and the bedroom when you peer through the door. “You saw. You know.”

His breathing rattles ever so slightly. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” you say. “I like you.”

“You sure about that?” Tenko’s voice takes on a mocking note. “I think you’re just here to see if it really was a villain you fucked.”

“I don’t –”

“Don’t say you don’t care about it. You do.” Tenko won’t even let you finish the sentence. “It’s all you care about now, so take a look.”

He’s been sprawled out on the couch, but now he stands up. Hood down, mask off, and it’s perfectly clear who you’re looking at. Shigaraki Tomura turned to dust on the battlefield, but he’s here right now, in the living room of a house that’s falling apart. He stares at you, and you remember a thousand still photos, a thousand news broadcasts, all capturing the same light of madness glowing in his eyes. There’s no such thing there now. Whatever drove Shigaraki Tomura onwards, fighting to destroy until his last breath, isn’t there anymore. It’s easy for you to hold his gaze.

He’s the first to look away, his jaw clenched. “What were you expecting me to do?” you ask. “Scream and run away?”

“Call the cops. Or the heroes.” His shoulders lift, the fall. “Maybe the press. You can tell them all about your one crazy night with the villain who came back from the dead.”

“I didn’t want it to be just one night,” you say. He looks at you, then looks away. “I still don’t.”

“Yeah. I guess your tell-all with the press will be more exciting if we fuck a few more times.”

“Hey,” you snap. “If you’re waiting for me to freak out, stop waiting. It’s not going to happen.”

“You’re out of your mind.” He’s turned most of the way away from you now. One hand is clawing at his neck. The other’s up over his face. “Were you under a rock during the war? Did you see what I did?”

“I saw,” you say carefully. “I know what you did. I know that’s the person you were. I know that’s not who you are now. I make decisions based on the person I see in front of me, not by who they were before – as long as they’re trying to be someone different.”

“You think I’m different?” He laughs. At least, you think it’s laughter. You need it to be laughter, because if it isn’t, it’s the worst sound you’ve ever heard. “You must be high.”

“I’m not.” You keep watching him. “You could have let that kid drown yesterday. My quirk couldn’t have saved him, and my plan was even worse. No one would have known the truth except you, and maybe you could have lived with that. I don’t know.”

You’re half expecting him to interrupt and tell you that he can, that it’s easy. He stays quiet. “You decided to save him, though. Even though it could mess things up for you. Even if it meant people might find out who you used to be. I know what you did before. I like who you are.”

It’s silent. He scratches one more time at his neck, a hard, sharp dig that draws blood. Then his hand falls away. “What did you tell the cops?”

“It wasn’t a cop thing. Just EMS and the fire department,” you say. You wonder if that will make him feel better. “The kid was unconscious by the time you got rid of the log. He didn’t see anything. I told them a wave came up and moved the log enough for me and him to get free.”

“And they believed you?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t they?” You’re a criminal who used to lie on the regular. You know when someone’s bought your story. “When the kid woke up, he remembered I was there, but not you. You’re safe.”

He doesn’t say anything. You figure he’ll kick you out if he wants you gone and stay put. Some part of you is desperate to find out what happened, how he came back from the dead, how he ended up here instead of in prison forever. The rest of you doesn’t care very much. The ideals you’ve lived by for the past five years won’t let you care, and even if they did, you wouldn’t want to. In some ways, it reminds you of how you feel about the Day of Peace. Not forgetting the awful things that happened. Being thankful for what’s there now.

You’re hoping he’ll break the silence, and you get lucky, sort of. “My couch is disgusting,” he says. “You can sit down if you want.”

You wait for him to sit down, then join him, setting the backpack down at his feet and passing the babka his way. He stares down at it blankly, like he’s never seen it before. “You like me.”

“Yeah.” You watch as he pulls off a piece and eats it. “Should I keep calling you Tenko? Or do you want –”

“Tenko.” He peels off another strip of pastry. “Sensei gave me the other name. It died with him. And me.”

You don’t know what to say to that. You look down at your hands in your lap and remember Tenko’s gloved fingers laced with yours, your fingers closed around his wrist as you rode him. “You’ve got questions, right?” Tenko says. You nod. “Ask.”

“I do want to know what happened,” you admit. “I mean, you died.”

“Wasn’t the first time.” Tenko shreds another piece from the babka and eats it. “The heroes had this kid who could Rewind people. Turn back the clocks on their bodies. I guess there was enough dust left for it to work on me.”

Tenko tells you that the heroes Rewound him as far as possible, but they couldn’t go back all the way – just to the point before All For One’s quirk was transplanted into him. After that, they used quirk-canceling bullets to erase his quirks one at a time. Tenko was kept in a secret facility for four months, almost dead to the world but not quite, while the world he meant to destroy began to rebuild itself. The heroes ran out of bullets before Tenko ran out of quirks. When they were finish, he only had one left – Decay. Tenko tells you between bites of babka, then leans back against the couch. “They woke me up after that.”

“They?”

“It was All Might’s idea,” Tenko says. His eyes are closed. “He couldn’t give up on saving me, and he dragged Midoriya in on it, too. They told me about the new laws that were being passed and their plans to help my friends, and then they said it would only work if I stayed dead.”

Todoroki Touya’s words cross your mind: Deku made him a martyr. “Everybody else was redeemable,” Tenko says, “but not me. After what I did, nobody cared about how I got there. I’d rot in prison for the rest of my life, and knowing I was still out there would remind everybody that evil really exists. Me being alive was going to undermine their push to get villains recognized as people, and it was going to screw my friends over. What I did – it was never just for me. It was always for them.”

You think about the first six months after the war. The question of what to do with the surviving members of the League loomed over everyone, and Deku was right in the middle of it, insisting that they deserved a second chance. That everyone deserved a second chance. He swore up and down that villains aren’t born evil, that it’s about choices, and more than that, about chances. And everyone was in a softer mood knowing that the greatest threat to Japan, to the world, was gone. Shigaraki’s death made people feel safer. Knowing he was still alive would have put a bullet through any chance of reform. “So you agreed?”

“They weren’t asking,” Tenko says. “Their plan was for me to live. No rehab, no charges, nothing. They gave me a new identity and a job and money so I could pay rent somewhere. I can’t be found out or it’ll ruin everything. I can’t let my friends know I’m alive or it’ll ruin everything. I dye my hair and wear that stupid mask and hide in plain sight, and I’m supposed to do that forever. And live a happy life.”

His voice takes on a flat, bitter note. “Half the time I wish they’d let me stay dead for real.”

You’ve never found yourself in anything like Tenko’s situation. You never will. But you know that feeling – of waking up every morning and wishing you hadn’t, of dragging yourself through each day with no purpose and nothing to look forward to, no hope that anything would change. Nobody ever made you feel better by telling you how much you had to live for. You touch Tenko’s shoulder lightly to warn him, then wrap your arms around him in a tight but awkward hug from the side, your cheek pressed against his shoulder. Tenko’s hand comes up to grasp your wrist, and for a moment you think he’ll pull you away, or worse. But his hands are still gloved. All he does is hold on.

“This is your fault,” he mumbles after a while. “You and your stupid free WiFi.”

You manage something like a laugh. “What did my WiFi ever do to you?”

“It’s better than mine,” Tenko says. “I had a reason to go somewhere. And somewhere to go.”

Your throat closes off in an instant. That was what you wanted this whole time. Even if it was what you had in mind when you opened the café, when you added the internet, you never expected it to work on the person who used to be Shigaraki Tomura. So many things happened because he stopped by that day, and not all of them were because of you – he’s the one who kept coming in, the one who kept talking to you, the one who asked if he could come over two nights ago. You remember what Tenko said after the power went out, about wanting to find out if living differently would work. You wonder what he thinks the answer is.

“Do you like me?” Tenko asks, and you nod. “Do you still like me?”

“Yes.” You’ll probably get tired of that question at some point, but maybe you can get Tenko to a point where he doesn’t need to ask before that happens. “It’s getting late, though. And I’ve got an early morning.”

“So you need to go.” Tenko’s voice is dull.

“Probably,” you say. “You can come too, if you want.”

“You really want a supervillain in your house?”

“You let a convicted felon into your house,” you point out. “We’re sort of even.”

Tenko shakes his head. “Not even close to even.”

“I’ve done more time than you have,” you point out, and Tenko snorts. “Come on. Grab what you need and let’s get out of here.”

You let go of Tenko to get to your feet, then hold out your hands to help him up. He doesn’t let go once he’s standing. “I like you, too,” he says. “You know, right?”

You nod. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have let me in.”

Tenko studies you, and you look back at him. You have the whole picture now, or close enough to it. Even knowing what you know, you like what you see. You lean forward, rising on your toes to kiss him, and when he kisses you back, you taste chocolate and cinnamon on his lips. You’re still tasting it as the two of you walk back to your apartment, hand in hand.

You haven’t worn a dress in a while, and you’ve worn a formal dress maybe never. It’s really uncomfortable. So are your shoes – low heels, but heels nonetheless, and even the scant makeup you’ve put on feels like a mistake. You really don’t want anybody to see you like this, but you promised you’d show at least one person. You snap a selfie and send it to Tenko. I hate this outfit.

i’ll decay it for you if you’re still wearing it when you get back. Tenko texts back right away. He usually does. when are you coming back?

You got a hotel room, but only so you could have somewhere to change clothes. You’re not planning on sleeping over. Tonight, on the last train.

good. The typing bubble hovers for long seconds. you look hot. don’t hook up with any heroes.

As if. You roll your eyes. Don’t worry. I only date people who’ve done time.

What you and Tenko are doing isn’t dating. To you, dating means something casual, and it isn’t casual – not when you basically live together, not when he calls you his girlfriend, not when he pays for half the groceries and inexpertly folds the laundry and spends every night wrapped around you whether you’ve had sex or not. It’s serious to him, and it’s serious to you. The kind of serious where if you got invited to an important event, you’d ask for a plus-one if you didn’t have one already.

You got a plus-one for this event, but it’s not one you can take Tenko to. For a gala celebrating the reauthorization of every criminal justice reform bill passed at the end of the war, it’s safest for you to go alone.

You gave testimony this afternoon before the vote – you, aided and abetted by your probation officer, who was able to show hard data on what you’ve accomplished, as well as share five years of survey responses from the people in your town, which displayed a marked positive trend in their perception of former criminals. You got to hear other program participants and their probation officers testify, too, and their results were similar to yours. The NCRA is working as intended. It’s working well enough that the government decided to expand it. During the next cycle, accomplices to violent crimes will be eligible, too.

Present Mic’s nomination of you for early release from the program was accepted. They’re going to clear your record gradually, starting with your earliest convictions, which means that although you’ll be hanging onto your felony conviction for another five years, your record will be clear before you’re thirty-five. The bigger deal to you is the forgiveness of the interest on your startup loan. Now all you have left to do is pay off the original balance, and you can do that by the end of the year. And you get to take down the sign in your window informing everybody that you’re part of the NCRA.

You don’t plan to do that. You plan to leave it up, and to keep answering people who ask questions, as long as it takes for offering second chances to become the norm rather than the exception. If you can change even one person’s mind, give even one person a shred of hope, it’ll be worth it. It already is.

Tenko texts you back, after laugh-reacting to your message. are any of them going to be there?

Spinner and Toga were at the hearing. You send a thumbs-up, and Tenko responds. if you can talk to them without getting in trouble, find out how they are.

Definitely. A thought crosses your mind. Is there anything you want me to tell them?

i can’t talk to them

Could they talk to you, you ask. If they knew you were alive?

i guess. but they don’t so it doesn’t matter

Huh. You need to think about this, but you’ve got to go. You’re going to be late. You text Tenko a quick heart emoji, then stuff your phone in your purse and hurry out the door.

You’re the only person in formal wear on the Shinkansen, and you make yourself even more conspicuous when you start changing the color of your dress, trying to make it look even slightly better. By the time you get off the train, you’ve created some kind of nightmarish watercolor effect that will draw more attention to your dress than your face. You decide that’s as good as it’s going to get and meet up with your probation officer just inside the venue.

Present Mic greets you with a grin. “Hey, now that’s a look!” he pronounces. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” you say. “It’s kind of unreal.”

“You earned it,” Mic says. “Congratulations, listener. How would you feel about not being a listener anymore?”

That’s right – now that you’re off probation, you won’t need a probation officer. You won’t see Mic again. The thought makes you sad, even if it’ll decrease Tenko’s stress levels by a factor of twelve. “Because I was thinking,” Mic continues, “you’ve got a pretty good story here. Why not guest-star on my show and tell it?”

You cough. Mic snags a drink off a passing tray and hands it to you, all while making his sales pitch at full volume. “I mean, they just made a whole new group of people eligible for the NCRA. Who better to spread the word than one of the originals?”

One of the originals. That’s you, isn’t it? You were on mental health watch in an overcrowded jail when you first heard the news, and you showed your first signs of life in days in your efforts to find out more. You swallow some of your drink – it’s alcoholic, but only lightly – and Mic keeps talking. “You’ve been a good example for the civilians. Why not be a role model for other criminals, too?”

“I don’t think I’m a role model,” you say hastily. “But, um – if you wanted me to come on and talk about how the whole thing works, then I will.”

“Nice. My people will call your people and set something up!” Mic cackles at his own joke. “Finish that and let’s go. I’ve got some people I want you to meet!”

You have no idea who he could be talking about, but you get two nasty shocks one after the other – first, that Mic is married to Eraserhead, and second, that he brought Eraserhead as his plus-one. You probably should have been better prepared for the possibility of running into someone who captured you, because every hero you run into is someone who captured you. Or who didn’t capture you, given that you also meet Endeavor, and he pretends the two of you have never met. Almost every hero you’re introduced to is someone who faced Shigaraki Tomura in battle, who was injured at his hands. People who observe the Day of Peace the other way.

Mic finally runs out of people to introduce you to and you earn a temporary reprieve, which you use to sit down. You spend all day at work on your feet, but at work you’re not wearing heels. You lift your feet partway out of your shoes, hoping you’re subtle about it, and dig your phone out of your purse. Tenko’s been texting you. The first text is a photo of the biggest, ugliest spider you’ve ever seen – on the floor, in your kitchen. The next is a picture of the kitchen floor, empty. don’t worry I took it outside

You and Tenko have talked about this. You try to take them outside, but you aren’t mad at him if he kills them. His next text makes less sense: I changed my mind.

About what? The typing bubble is up, promising another message and probably a clarification, but you hear a familiar voice nearby, and you’re pretty sure it’s someone Tenko wanted you to check on. You look up, and sure enough, it’s Spinner. The woman he’s talking to has a familiar voice, too. Neither of them sound very happy.

“I had to rent this thing,” Spinner is saying despairingly. “When it comes back looking like this –”

“Maybe it’ll fade?” the woman pipes up. “I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t tripped –”

“It’s not you. And it’s not gonna fade.” Spinner sounds even mopier than before. “They’re going to call my probation officer and I’m going to get busted –”

“Over a stain?”

You know an in when you hear it. You slide your feet reluctantly back into your shoes, get to your feet, and make your way over. There’s Spinner, a big red-wine stain blooming on his white shirt. The woman next to him is tiny, maroon-haired, and holding an empty glass. She looks familiar, but you’re not sure from where. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” you start, “but if the stain is the problem, maybe I can help. My quirk –”

“You’re the color girl!” The short woman’s eyes brighten. “Oh, I was hoping we’d run into you! We –”

“If you fix it, will it stay that way?” Spinner asks. “If it goes back later, they’ll think I lied to them.”

“It’ll stay,” you promise. You extend one hand to touch the shirt and change it back to white, setting the color to stay from now until the heat death of the universe. “There. Good as new.”

“Thanks,” Spinner says, embarrassed. He takes a second look at you. “I saw you at the vigil this year.”

“I go every year,” you say. “I would have said something, but you and the others never look like you want to talk.”

If you go next year, you’ll be in the same boat as Deku – wanting to tell them that their friend’s alive, unable to say a word about it. “Yeah, we really don’t,” Spinner says. “Nobody gets it. They can’t, since they never knew him like we did.”

You nod. Your phone buzzes in your purse and you ignore it. You really should have silenced it before you got to the party. “I’m so glad you could fix Shuichi’s shirt,” the short woman says. “He was so stressed. But I wanted to talk to you, too! I’m Aiba Manami.”

That’s where you know her from. “La Brava?”

“That was me.” She smiles slightly, sadly. “I don’t remember your villain name –”

“I didn’t have one,” you say. “And if we met in lockup or something, I’m sorry I don’t remember. I was kind of – out of it.”

“Oh, we didn’t meet! Don’t worry,” Aiba rushes to reassure you. “It’s more just that I – um –”

She breaks off. “She’s not gonna laugh at you,” Spinner says to Aiba. “Just tell her.”

“So, um –” Aiba looks down at her shoes, which match her dress. And her earrings. Her whole look is way more on point than anything you’ve ever worn in your life. “I’m eligible for the NCRA now.”

“Congratulations,” you say at once. You could have sworn you heard that La Brava and Gentle Criminal were pardoned after the war, but they must have pulled something else. “Job training?”

“She’s got that. She’s great with computers,” Spinner says, almost proudly. Something dawns on you. “She’s got a better idea.”

“I want to open up an internet café,” Aiba says. You try to hide the goofy grin that crosses your face and probably fail. “I could set up the network in an afternoon. But I don’t know anything about running a restaurant.”

“Neither did I when I got started,” you say. Looking back, you’re amazed you had the guts to throw yourself into a business where the margins are so tight. “If you get a space that’s already up to code it’ll be even easier. I had to do a ton of renovation before I could even think about buying equipment.”

“Did your loan cover all of that?”

You nod. You know you’re getting way too hyped, but it’s hard not to talk about something that saved your life with a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm. “Part of the deal is justifying all your expenses. Your probation officer will review them to make sure you’re staying focused, and if they see a reason to give a little extra, they will – or at least mine did. That becomes more to pay back, though, so it helps to be careful. Do you know what kind of food you want to have? Or are you just planning to do coffee? Coffee keeps costs down but it’s also faster, so if you’re charging by the hour for internet access –”

“I kind of don’t want to do that,” Aiba says. You blink. “You said yours is free.”

“It is,” you admit, “but I didn’t add it until five years in, when I already had a customer base. Adding it when I did just picked up some people who hadn’t stopped by yet.”

Like Tenko. Every so often he makes a joke about being lured in by the free WiFi and winding up with a coffee addiction, a pastry addiction, and a girlfriend. Aiba looks a little disappointed, and you feel a surge of guilt. “The thing is, I was starting out under different conditions than you’ll be. You had name recognition as a villain, and an iconic look – I mean, you still do. People will come in just to see what you’ve got going on. So you’ve already got some customers there. The trick will be getting them to stick around.”

Aiba nods. She also grabs Spinner’s hand, and you blurt out the question before you can think about whether it’s a good idea. “Are you two together? I thought you and Gentle Criminal were a thing.”

“Me and Gentle love each other a lot,” Aiba says. Spinner looks like he’s doing okay with someone who you’re pretty sure is his girlfriend talking about how much she loves some other guy. “We just don’t love each other like that anymore.”

“They still talk all the time,” Spinner says. “He came along on our first date to supervise.”

“Poor Shuichi,” Aiba giggles. “He thought we were trying to make him our third.”

So Spinner’s dating. And unlike Todoroki Touya, he hasn’t broken his probation. You know Tenko will want to know more. “How are you doing? I don’t know what your terms are like, but I’m guessing they’re strict.”

“Pretty strict, but my PO is pretty fair,” Spinner says. His PO is Ryukyu, if you remember right. “Since I don’t screw around like Dabi does, I get to travel in-country and stuff. As long as I clear it far enough in advance.”

“We’ve been meaning to take a trip,” Aiba says, and you get a hit of inspiration. “We just can’t decide where to go.”

This time you’ve made a decision to speak, so it doesn’t count as blurting out. Or so you tell yourself. “My café is on the coast. Why don’t you come out there? It’s really nice this time of year, and if you wanted to stop by the café, I could show you the setup and bookkeeping and everything.”

Aiba’s eyes brighten. Spinner looks less sure. “How do they feel about heteromorphs around there?”

“I think it’s on the safe list. A customer told me that one time.” You watch as Spinner pulls out his phone to check for himself. “I definitely don’t want to boss you guys around. But if you’re serious –”

“I am!”

“Then I want to help as much as I can,” you say. “You’re welcome to swing by.”

Spinner looks up from his phone. “It’s on the safe list,” he reports, and Aiba beams. “When do you want to go?”

They decide on two weeks out, and you suggest that they show up on your last open day of the week, so you can show Aiba what a full week’s expenses, documentation, and income look like. You give them both your number so they can text for recommendations about where to stay, a weird anticipatory feeling humming with in you. This could work. You know Tenko misses his friends, but he can’t contact them himself. But if they just happen to run into each other –

It could work. You want it to work. Your phone buzzes with texts as Aiba and Spinner tuck theirs away. You can make this work for Tenko.

“Spinner!” someone calls out. You look up and see Deku waving from across the room. “Hi!”

“Shit, not him,” Spinner mumbles. “I don’t wanna do this right now.”

“I could pretend to faint,” Aiba suggests.

“No, he won’t buy that. I just –”

You remember the conversation you overheard at the vigil. Spinner has a lot of good reasons not to want to talk to Deku. “Pretend you’re getting sick. I’ll run interference and you can make a break for it.”

“Thanks,” Spinner says. Aiba’s already acting woozy. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, see you soon.” You set off across the room and intercept Deku before he’s halfway there. “Hi! I don’t know if you remember me, but we talked at –”

“The vigil! Of course I remember!” Deku smiles. “I was wondering if you’d be here. Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” you say. You feel a little weird being congratulated for being a civilian again when you’ve just been engaging in some lowkey villain behavior. “I wanted to come thank you in person. If you hadn’t been advocating for this stuff, I don’t think there’s any way it would have passed.”

Deku’s smile softens, saddens. “I can’t be a hero anymore. This is the next best thing, right?”

“You could look at it like that,” you say. “Or maybe you it’s that you can save more people this way than you ever could have working as a regular hero.”

“People say that to me a lot,” Deku says, and you cringe. “But it’s not usually people like you saying it.”

People like you. People whose lives changed because of the initiative Deku spearheaded, which he only took on because he failed to save Shigaraki Tomura. “It’s easier to believe from you,” Deku concludes. “I just wish I knew what he thinks of it all.”

You know exactly what Tenko thinks about it. He thinks you have to do too much stupid paperwork. He doesn’t like that the hero who monitors you is someone whose quirk is way outsized for your power set. He thinks it’s dumb that the only reason you stopped going to therapy even though, to quote, “you still have issues”, is because you knew the heroes were reading all the notes on what you said. And at the same time, you know he’s glad you opened the café. You know he’s glad he met you. And it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t let Deku and All Might fake his death, and if Deku hadn’t made it count.

Deku sighs. “I know I can’t,” he says. You really have to admire the coverup here – anybody who hears Deku express his feelings about Shigaraki will think he’s just really fixated on how Shigaraki’s doing in the afterlife. They’ll never guess that he’s really talking about Tenko, who’s alive and well and living in your apartment. “So I’ll think about it your way.”

“Okay,” you say. “Works for me.”

The two of you smile awkwardly at one another. Then Deku changes the subject. “Have you seen Spinner? I thought he was over there, and I wanted to –”

“I think he just went to get some air,” you say. “It’s a lot in here. I bet he’ll be back.”

Deku nods and hurries off, and you take a second to catch your breath. Tonight’s been a lot, but all in all you think it was a success. You didn’t look stupid in your dress, or if you did, no one said anything about it. You’re going to get to help out somebody who wants to join the NCRA. You got at least a little bit of the point across to Deku about what he’s done since the end of the war. And you set up a chance for Tenko to see his best friend again.

Tenko was texting you, wasn’t he? He was saying he’d changed his mind about something. You unearth your phone and swipe past the texts from unfamiliar numbers identifying themselves as Aiba Manami and Spinner to reach Tenko’s text thread. Spider, no spider, didn’t kill it, changed his mind – but now there’s follow-up. Follow-up you really should have taken the time to read before going to talk to Spinner.

don’t try to talk to him. Tenko’s serious enough to use punctuation, which means it’s as serious as he ever gets. i don’t want to fuck him up and i don’t want to find out i faked my own death for nothing.

You cringe in horror. You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do when you get home.

“This is crazy,” Tenko says. “You know it’s crazy, right?”

“You don’t have to do anything. You don’t even have to be there,” you say. You’re amazed Tenko is awake this early – usually he sleeps in when you go to work – but he’s here, leaning against the counter while you go through your opening checklist and yawning behind his mask. “It’s up to you if you want to talk to him or not.”

“He’s gonna be pissed at me.” Tenko slouches. “This fake-my-death shit – we were friends. I’d be pissed in his spot.”

“He and Toga both said they missed you,” you counter. You remember their sadness at the vigil and feel a distant ache in your heart. “Maybe he’ll be pissed at first, but then I bet he’ll be happy.”

“I can’t believe he has a girlfriend,” Tenko says. “One time he got his ass kicked because the hero he was fighting told him he was her type.”

You wonder what Spinner’s going to say when he finds out Tenko has a girlfriend. If he finds out. If Tenko decides to reveal himself. It’s the day Spinner and Aiba are supposed to get here, and you still have no idea what he’s going to choose.

Tenko wasn’t happy when you got home from the gala and came clean about what happened. He wasn’t angry, either – not when you told him you talked to Spinner, not when he found out you invited Aiba to come check out the café. The word you’d use was confused. Confused as to why you’d set up a way for he and Spinner to meet again. It could mess everything up, you remember him saying. Why would you risk that?

It doesn’t have to mess everything up.

Tenko shook his head. Aren’t you worried I’ll go back to it?

To being a villain? No. You and Tenko were sprawled out on the couch together. He’d yanked you down into his lap the instant you came close enough. When I was still on the other side of the law, I didn’t have friends, or allies. Most common criminals don’t. But you did. We all knew about the League, and how close you were. I used to think about how nice that would be.

You were understating it a little bit. You were jealous of the League’s closeness, of how clearly and obviously they cared about one another. The crowd you ran with was more likely to stab each other in the back than help each other out. I want you to have that again, you continued. If you want it.

Tenko didn’t answer you then. He just kissed you, and then the two of you made out on the couch until you fell asleep. The two of you have talked about it almost every day since then, and Tenko still hasn’t made up his mind. And it’s okay. He’s got until Spinner walks out the door to decide.

Osono knocks on the door, towing the pastry cart, and you abandon the opening checklist to hold it open for her. “I’ve got some new seasonal items today,” she says. “Mostly fruit – strawberries, peaches, that kind of thing. And – huh. What’s he doing here?”

She’s pointing at Tenko, who was taste-testing your flavored syrups until a split second ago. He ducks down behind the counter and vanishes from view. Osono stares. “Was that Shimura?”

“Yes,” you say. Osono raises her eyebrows. “We’re seeing each other.”

Seeing him is kind of understating it. He basically lives in your apartment and you’re pretty sure you’re in love with him. Osono’s eyebrows lift even further. “Since when?”

“Since –” You count back in your head. “Two months ago. Are there any allergens in the new pastries? I’m assuming they aren’t vegan.”

One of them’s vegan. You make a special label for it, and Osono helps you arrange the new pastries in the case, while Tenko stays hidden behind the counter even though she’s already seen him. The one time she comments on his presence is when he steals a pastry off the tray before she can put it in the case. “So you’re the one who’s been eating all the babka.”

“Mmph.” Tenko’s mouth is too full to respond, and once he’s swallowed the monster bite he took, he looks at you. “I can pay for that.”

“Just buy milk the next time we go grocery shopping. That’ll cover it.”

It’s not until Osono’s left that Tenko emerges from behind the counter. He’s grimacing. “That was stupid.”

“Telling her?”

“Hiding from her. Now she’s going to tell everyone that you’re shacking up with a freak.”

“She just knows we’re dating,” you say. “I didn’t say anything about living together.”

“Yeah, not until you mentioned us buying groceries.” To his credit, Tenko doesn’t call you a moron over it. “I don’t give a shit what they say about me. It matters what they say about you. Do you really –”

“Yes.” You kiss Tenko’s cheek over the mask. “And I still like you.”

Tenko’s voice is muffled. “I like you, too.”

It’s a busy day at the café. Tourist season is in full swing and the weather is bright and warm, which means everybody wants a blended drink and nobody wants to stay inside the café to drink it. You have four or five blenders going at a time, loud enough to partially deafen you but with enough capacity to keep you from falling behind on orders. You barely have any time to talk to Tenko, but he’s keeping busy, too – in the same spot as always, looking over the decision tree for a computer game. You’re not sure, but you think it might be the game he wants to make.

Spinner and Aiba show up just before closing, when you’re still swamped. You can’t even see Aiba – she’s that short – and Spinner calls out to you instead. “We’re gonna check out the beach for half an hour and come back”

“Sounds good,” you holler back over the sound of the blenders. Half an hour. You can clear the customers out, get your paperwork in order, and give Tenko some warning of what’s to come.

The nice weather’s worked in your favor all day, and it keeps working in your favor – you don’t have any trouble shooing out the customers once they’ve got their drinks. You flip the sign on the door to closed, drop all but two of the blenders in the dishwasher, and go to check on Tenko. He’s working hard at something, and you don’t want to interrupt. You sit down across from him and tap his foot under the table to let him know you’re there.

He looks up. “Did they leave?”

“For a little bit. They’ll be back soon.” You watch as Tenko pulls down his mask, unhooks it from over one ear. “How are you feeling?”

“If it happens, it happens,” Tenko says. “I’m not going to talk to him. But I’m not going to hide, either.”

“Okay,” you say. “I won’t mess around with it, either.”

“Any more than you already messed around with it.” Tenko kicks you lightly under the table, but he’s half-smiling at the same time. “I like having the choice. Didn’t get a lot of those before.”

“I know.” You hold out your hands for his, and Tenko gives them to you so you can raise them to your lips. He’s wearing his gloves, like almost always. “I –”

The bell rings, and both of you jump. It’s probably a good thing it cuts you off, because you have no idea what you were going to say next. Tenko’s grip on your hands tightens, and you kiss his knuckles again before standing up and hurrying to the door. Spinner and Aiba are out there, looking windswept but happy. “Come on in,” you say. “Do either of you want a drink?”

“Something cold,” Aiba says, and Spinner nods in agreement. “Do you have blended drinks?”

“Definitely.” You left two blenders out for precisely that reason. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Tenko’s arm pop up, giving you a thumbs-up. He wants one, too.

Since you know which one he wants, you start with his first, while your guests study the menu. Aiba’s eyeing the fruit flavors, but Spinner’s watching you. “Who’s that for?”

You could lie. But you’re keeping up appearances as usual, not making anything happen that shouldn’t, and if anyone else was asking, you’d answer honestly. “I have one person still hanging out back there. It’s for him.”

“I thought you were closed,” Aiba says. “Do you usually let people stay past closing time?”

“No. But he’s my boyfriend,” you say, “so it’s different.”

“Do you give him free stuff?”

“If he behaves,” you say. Tenko leans out from the booth to glare at you, and you struggle to keep a straight face. “Which he does.”

“If I gave you free stuff, would you stick around my café?” Aiba asks Spinner.

“No, I’d pay for stuff,” Spinner argues. “I don’t want to, like – grift, or something. Or take stuff away from people who will pay.”

Aiba frowns. “What if I want to give you free stuff?”

“I have a little room in my budget for stuff like that,” you say. “I’ll show it to you when we go over the expenses and stuff. Have you decided what you want yet?”

Aiba opts for white chocolate and strawberry. Spinner points at the drink you’re pouring into a cup for Tenko. “Can I get whatever that is?”

“Sure. And you can sit down wherever,” you say. “There’s no password on the WiFi, so knock yourself out. I’m just going to bring this one to my boyfriend, and then I’ll be right back to start yours.”

“I can take it to him,” Spinner says. Your heart lurches, and you shake your head, but Spinner’s already holding out his hand. “Seriously. If he won’t come up to get it himself –”

“Are you modeling good behavior? That’s so cute!” Aiba actually has to jump up to plant a kiss on Spinner’s cheek. She looks at you, grinning. “He’s so helpful. He never pours tea on me by accident.”

You don’t even want to know, and right now you’re in a bind. If you refuse, it’ll look weird. If you don’t, you’ll be setting Tenko up for a face-to-face meeting with a friend who’s spent the last five years thinking he was dead. What would be the normal, not-suspicious thing to do? Accept help when it’s offered. “Thanks,” you say, and pass the drink over to Spinner.

Then you turn away, back to the blenders. You can’t watch.

Aiba watches you make the drinks, asking how you know the proportions without measuring, asking how you came up with the recipes. You answer over the sound of the blenders, and all the while, you watch Spinner over the top of her head. Spinner dropped off the drink without incident, but he’s stopped to look at your latest mural – another sunrise, this one in the east over the ocean. Tenko kept suggesting weird things for you to paint, like the low-tide line or a slimy knot of kelp and seaweed, but when you started working on this, he sat and watched you the entire time.

You should do more like this one, he said when you were done. I like the horizons.

Spinner apparently likes them, too. He’s saying something to Tenko, who’s not responding and who’s probably face-first in his laptop. Spinner’s a nice guy, but you can sense him getting annoyed, and as you turn off the blenders, you hear him lose patience. “Did I do something to you? Why are you acting like –”

He breaks off suddenly. You see him take a step back, then another, until he collides with a table and chair and almost falls over. Aiba turns, concerns, as Spinner rights himself, stumbling over his words. “It can’t – you were – I thought you were – we all thought –”

“You were wrong,” Tenko says. “Get over it.”

You cringe. At the back of the café, Spinner explodes. “Fuck you!” he snaps. “That’s all you’re going to say? Get over it? Do you even have a clue, you bastard? We all thought – if you say get over it one more time –”

“Get over it.”

“You son of a bitch,” Spinner snarls, and he drags Tenko out of the booth. Tenko lets him do it, lets Spinner grab him by the front of his hoodie and shake him until the hood falls down. “You asshole, Shigaraki!”

“Shigaraki?” Aiba stares in horror, then goes for her phone. You reach across the counter and catch her wrist to stop her. “Let me go! If Shuichi talks to him – if anybody finds out –”

“Wait,” you say. Your hands are shaking. You take a deep breath. “Give it a second, okay? Just wait.”

Tenko finally gets tired of the shaking and plants his feet. “Are you gonna beat me up?”

“I should!” Spinner’s fury falters for a second, wavering into confusion. “You let us think you were dead, and all this time –”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Tenko says. “Do you want to keep shouting at me or do you want me to explain?”

“I don’t understand,” Spinner says. “I thought –”

“Yeah,” Tenko says. “I know.”

Spinner’s eyes well up, and you let Aiba go so she can race to his side. Tenko, meanwhile, snags his drink from the table and makes his way back to you, ducking behind the counter. “I was right,” he mumbles. “He’s pissed.”

“Give him a second,” you say. “It’s a lot to cope with.”

“You coped just fine.”

“I didn’t know you before,” you remind him. You set out two cups for Aiba and Spinner and pour their drinks before retrieving the whipped cream. “It wasn’t personal to me that you’d faked your death. It was personal to him.”

Tenko nods, but it’s clear that he’s dissatisfied. “I shouldn’t have come in today.”

“Give it a second,” you say again. You drop half a strawberry into the whipped cream on Aiba’s drink, then feed Tenko the other half, because his mask is down and his mouth is open. “If it went the other way, you’d need a second, too.”

Aiba’s still trying to comfort Spinner when you bring the drinks. Tenko trials after you. You set the drinks down on the table Spinner ran into, trying to ignore the way Aiba’s glaring at you. “You set this up,” she accuses. “You made Shuichi cry!”

“That was me,” Tenko says. He sits back down in the booth. “It was my choice to be here. If I hadn’t you’d never have known.”

“Why?” Spinner demands. His voice is watery. “It’s been five years. Why now?”

“I didn’t have a way to get in contact with you before,” Tenko says. “They made it pretty clear that I’d fuck up everything if I reached out on my own.”

Aiba hands Spinner a lacy handkerchief. Spinner wipes his nose. “Who’s they?”

“Maybe we should all sit down,” you suggest. “There’s a lot to explain.”

“Um, okay.” Aiba still looks wary, but you’re pretty sure the two of you are on the same side – you both want your boyfriends to quit fighting. “Come on, Shuichi –”

She manages to get Spinner into the other side of the booth, then slides in after him. You nudge Tenko until he scoots over and sit down, too. It’s quiet while Aiba tries her drink, Spinner tries his, and Tenko realizes you don’t have one and slides his over to share with you. Something about that breaks whatever’s keeping Spinner quiet. “How’d you get a girlfriend?”

“How’d you get a girlfriend?” Tenko retaliates. “Toga has more game than you.”

“More than you, too,” Spinner says. He’s glaring again. “What are you doing out here? What do you even do all day?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” Tenko takes his drink back from you and takes another sip. “One of us has to talk first. You’ve been doing more stuff than me, so it should be you.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t come back from the dead,” Spinner says. “You first. This is really good, by the way.”

He’s looking at you. “Oh,” you say. “Thanks.”

“Everything she makes is good,” Tenko says, which isn’t true by any stretch of the imagination. “You want me to talk first? Fine. As long as you don’t start trying to beat me up again.”

“I wasn’t trying to beat you up.”

“Or bite me –”

“I never bit you!” Spinner protests. “Stop lying about shit!”

“You totally bit him,” Aiba says, patting Spinner’s arm. “It was on TV.”

You remember seeing that, and experiencing a moment of pure bemusement before going straight back to running for your life. “You were supposed to be unconscious,” Spinner mutters. “I’m not boing to bite you and I’m not going to beat you up. Start talking.”

You remember how Tenko explained it to you. You let him tell it at his own pace, and you were quiet, not asking questions unless you really needed to know. Spinner asks questions every two seconds, fixating on tiny details, lingering on parts of the story that Tenko clearly doesn’t want to talk about. When Deku’s name comes up, you see Spinner’s jaw clench. “That little shit. I don’t care if Stain called him a true hero. I’m going to kill him!”

“It’s a waste of time,” Tenko says. He looks a little curious. “What did he do?”

“Lied. He’s been lying to me and Toga and everybody for five years! He told me there was nothing left of Shigaraki Tomura when he knew damn well –”

“That it’s not my name anymore,” Tenko says. Spinner blinks. “Sensei gave it to me. Even if I could use it again, I wouldn’t want to. Midoriya didn’t lie to you. Technically.”

Spinner scowls. “But even if he wanted to tell you, he couldn’t,” Tenko says. “That was the deal.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you as soon as you let me finish a sentence,” Tenko says. Someone kicks you under the table. “They used that kid Overhaul tortured to bring me back as far as they could – to right before I got Sensei’s quirk – and then –”

You get another kick. It’s Aiba. You’ve got no idea how she’s able to reach you from her side of the table, but you look up, and when you do, you see she’s holding up her phone. You take yours out, but she shakes her head sharply, then slides hers across the table to you. There’s an open Note. We have to talk like this. The government intercepts texts.

That’s not a surprise. You type a response and pass the phone. What do you want to talk about?

Aiba types really fast. Spinner, meanwhile, is trying to argue with Tenko about why he should have contacted the League anyway, consequences be damned. Aiba’s response slides back across the table. Shuichi’s tried really hard to change things. Harder than anybody else in the League, and people treat him terribly even when he’s doing nothing wrong just because he has a mutant-type quirk. I won’t let Shigaraki ruin it for him.

“He’s not going to ruin –”

She kicks you under the table, and you go back to reading. How do you know he’s not just biding his time and waiting for the right moment to come back?

You don’t. You aren’t naive, and you know that there’s no way to tell for sure what’s going on in someone else’s heart. Anyone can play any part, as convincingly as they’d like, until the moment they can’t take it any longer. You would know. That person used to be you.

And at the same time, you judge by action. You judge by Tenko not lashing out at Spinner even though Spinner’s provoked him. You judge by him keeping his hands covered, even though you know he can control his quirk. You judge by him keeping his head down, staying out of trouble, not seeking the spotlight or railing against the system. You judge by how he let you into his world, how he’s let you make yourself at home just as he’s made himself at home in yours. You judge by how he saved someone’s life.

I worry about him going back as much as I worry about me going back, you finally type. I can’t say never. I can say that things are better now than they were before. We could go back. I just don’t think we’d want to.

Aiba takes her time reading over your answer, and when she responds, she changes the subject. I think we should let them talk now. Will you still tell me about how you run your cafe?

“Of course,” you say out loud. You slide out of the booth, only for Tenko to catch your hand. “I’m just going to walk her through the business stuff. Send up a distress signal if you need me to come save you from Spinner.”

Spinner snorts. “Bring it over here instead,” Tenko says. His grip on your hand shifts, and you realize all at once that he doesn’t want you to leave. He wants you to stay while this happens. “I’ll move my shit off the table.”

He clears away his laptop, and you bring over the binder where you keep your expense reports, inventory sheets, income tracking, tax forms, and all the extra forms you have to fill out as part of the NCRA requirements. Aiba doesn’t look worried about it, although Spinner visibly blanches at the sight of so much paperwork. “Manami, I know I said I’d help you with the stuff, but –”

“It’s not that bad once you get used to it,” you say. You turn your attention to Aiba. “Where do you want to start?”

“I made a list,” she says. “Tell me about the loan application first.”

While you and Aiba go over the finer points of the initial stages of the NCRA, Tenko explains to Spinner. You listen with half an ear as he goes over everything, speaking quickly and with more assurance than he did when he told you, and you’d think he was comfortable with the story if not for how tightly he’s holding your hand under the table. It triggers a strange mix of feelings within you. You’re proud of him for trying to explain, for reaching back out to his friend. You’re a little worried that it’s stressing him out this much. And you feel – lucky, almost. Lucky that you’re the person he turns to. Lucky to find him. Or lucky, maybe, that he found you.

Aiba’s smartwatch beeps as you’re looking over the expense reports, and she sits up. “Shuichi, the sunset! We have to go.”

“Right.” Spinner looks kind of drained. So does Tenko. “It’s supposed to be really good here. We were gonna go down to the beach to watch.”

“You know the sun goes down on the other side of the country, right?” Tenko snarks. You elbow him. “Go check it out. I’ve never seen it, so don’t take my word for it.”

Then you should come with us, too,” Aiba says. Tenko startles. “And you!”

She’s looking at you now. “I don’t know if I can. I have to finish closing down –”

“We’ll come back and help you after,” Spinner says. He looks like he’s warming to the idea, even though a sunset beach walk is the kind of thing you’re supposed to do with just your girlfriend, not your best friend you’re mad at and his girlfriend who set the whole thing up. “Come on.”

You close up shop in a hurry, and the four of you set off for the beach. The crowds on the main beach are big, like always, so you lead the way to Fourth Beach, just like you did the day you found out who Tenko was before. Spinner and Aiba walk a little ways behind you, hand in hand, Aiba taking two steps for every one of Spinner’s. You match Tenko’s pace, like always. You watch him out of the corner of your eye. “How do you feel?”

“Weird.” Tenko sidles closer, leaning against you for a moment. “I’m not like he remembers me. I am, but I’m not. The last time we talked we were about to destroy the world, and now we’re just – normal.”

“You don’t think he wants to be friends with normal you?”

“I don’t think he thinks normal me is me,” Tenko says. His grip on your hand tightens for a moment. His hand shakes. “If there’s nobody down there – if it’s just us four – can you change my hair?”

A jolt runs through you. “Just for a little while,” Tenko says. “So he quits looking at me like I’m an imposter. Change it back when we leave.”

He looks miserable. You want to tell him that he’s not giving Spinner enough credit, that Spinner just found out today, that it’s probably still going to take time for Spinner to get used to the former Symbol of Fear slurping blended drinks in an internet cafe in a seaside town – but none of that is going to help. And he’s just told you what he thinks will fix it. You tighten your grip on his hand. “I’ve been meaning to offer to help with your hair,” you say. “I know you’ve been dyeing it yourself –”

“And I suck at it,” Tenko says. You didn’t want to say it. “You have better things to do with your quirk than fix my shitty dye job.”

“I can do a lot of things with my quirk at once,” you say. “What color do you want it today?”

Tenko’s quiet for a while, long enough for you to make the turn onto the path down to the beach, long enough for you to slow down and let Spinner and Aiba pass you. He doesn’t speak until you’ve both looked up and down the beach, confirming that the only people there are the ones who came with you. “Turn it white.”

“Okay,” you say. You let go of Tenko’s hands and beckon him closer. “Come here.”

When he’s close enough, you cradle his face in your hands, wait for permission to unhook his mask so you can kiss him. As he kisses you back, you run your fingers slowly through his hair.

He didn’t even own a hairbrush when he first started staying over at your apartment. You didn’t realize he was using yours until you started finding strands of matte-black hair caught in its bristles, and you didn’t realize how he was doing it until you caught him yanking the brush hard through the knots in his hair. It took a while for Tenko to grasp why you were offering to do it for him, but then he let you, and it’s become yet another small ritual in your lives. You don’t use a brush anymore. After the first few times, the knots are so small that you can draw them apart with your fingers.

If you were at home, you’d take your time changing Tenko’s color, a few strands at a time – but right now, you can’t. You run your fingers through Tenko’s hair, eyes closed, and when the two of you separate reluctantly, you open your eyes to check your work.

Even knowing what you know, knowing almost everything, there’s still a single moment of shock when you look at him. Maskless, white-haired, it’s impossible to see him as anyone but Shigaraki Tomura, Symbol of Fear, would-be destroyer of worlds – but only for a moment. Then he covers the back of his neck, glances awkwardly away and back again. “Does it look right?”

“Yeah,” you say. You take his hand again and start the walk down to the beach. “Let me know if you want to change it back.”

The sunset hasn’t quite started yet, but the sky is already beginning to change colors. The tide’s low, too, and you suppress the urge to tell your guests not to climb on the few beached logs with an effort. Tenko must be thinking of it, too, because he calls out to Spinner. “If you get stuck under one of those things, I’m not saving you.”

“You wouldn’t need to. I’ve still got my strength quirk. Unlike you, so –” Spinner looks back up the beach towards you and nearly jumps out of his skin at the sight of Tenko’s new hair color. “Fuck, don’t do that!”

“Do what? Look like me?” Tenko challenges. You wince. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I wanted you not to die,” Spinner says, and then it’s quiet, other than the crash of the waves and the distant cries of gulls. Tenko’s grip on your hand is tight and shaky. “Maybe it’s better this way. I couldn’t kick your ass in League if you were locked up in Tartarus.”

“You couldn’t kick my ass at League if I had on handcuffs and a straitjacket,” Tenko shoots back. “GTA, maybe –”

“Street Fighter, absolutely. Hand to hand combat isn’t your strong suit.”

“And sense of humor isn’t yours, if that’s the best hand joke you’ve got –”

They sound like they’re arguing, still. They sound like they’re arguing, but they aren’t. Tenko’s grip on your hand relaxes just enough that you can pull away, so you do. You leave them to talk and continue up the beach alone. Aiba’s taking photos of the sky as it goes pink and purple and gold, high over the hills. You leave her to it as well, but you commit the colors to memory, so you can use them later if you need to paint another horizon one day. You might. You probably will.

You believe in second chances, but this doesn’t feel like a second chance. It feels more like a miracle than anything else, the small kind, the kind you don’t notice until everything’s already fallen into place. The kind you would never have imagined when you moved here, six months after the war, hoping against hope that you could start over.

You stare up at the sky until you get a crick in your neck, then turn away to face the sea. The moon will be up soon. You haven’t painted a moonrise yet. Maybe this next time you will.

“Hey.” Tenko’s snuck up on you. He wraps his arms around your waist and pulls you back against him. “How’d you end up over here?”

“How did you end up over here? I thought you all were watching the sunset.”

“They wanted to kiss or something,” Tenko says. “Not my thing. So I cam to find you –”

“So we could kiss or something?” you ask, and Tenko snorts. “Or just to make sure I didn’t get stuck under a log?”

“You wouldn’t be that dumb.” Tenko hugs you a little closer. A few strands of his now-pale hair brush against your cheek. “Thanks. For getting Spinner to come out here.”

“Did you guys patch things up?”

“Not much to patch up. He just had to get it out of his system,” Tenko says. “He’s already trying to figure out how to get Toga down here.”

Another member of the former League of Villains hanging out at your cafe. It makes you nervous until you remember that you’re not on probation any longer. You wouldn’t have been in trouble for that even before. “Is that something you’d like?”

“It would be good to see her again,” Tenko says. “To see all of them. But I don’t think that’s what you signed up for.”

“Huh?”

“It’s not like with those two.” Tenko doesn’t have to tell you who he means. “There’s no rehabbing this. I didn’t talk to anybody in five years because anybody who got close enough could get close enough to guess. If you stick with me, you’re going to be hiding something your whole life.”

It always puts you a little on edge when Tenko starts talking about the future. You’re never sure how seriously he’s talking about it, if he really means it when he brings up staying together your whole lives. “I know that’s not what you wanted,” Tenko says. “You spent five years here tying yourself in a knot trying to be normal –”

“And look how many friends I made.” You kept to yourself, too. Being friendly to your customers isn’t the same thing as having friends. “Maybe it’s a good thing, if your friends are around more. We won’t have to hide anything from them.”

“You aren’t listening,” Tenko says. “Do you really –”

“What’s the alternative?” you ask. “Not for me, for you. That you never talk to anybody and never try anything new and never find things that make you happy? That’s not living.”

The thought of Tenko shutting himself away again – not just from you, but from everything – hurts more than anything nonphysical has a right to. “The world exists the way it is because of you. You should get to live in it.”

“Me?” Tenko scoffs. “Good try.”

“Yeah, you.” Spinner’s voice rings out from behind you. You peer out around Tenko to see he and Aiba approaching. “Deku feels so guilty for fake-killing you that he guilt-tripped everybody else into fixing things.”

“Not everything.”

“No, but some stuff,” you say. “If the laws hadn’t changed, I’d still be in prison.”

“Me and Gentle would have been, too,” Aiba adds. “And Shuichi.”

“I’d have been in Tartarus on a double life sentence. Toga’s and Dabi’s charges were even worse,” Spinner says. “You promised me and the others that you’d show us the most beautiful horizon we’d ever seen. This one looks pretty good to me.”

He gestures out over the ocean. The stars are already out, and the moon is just beginning to clear the horizon, a thin, bright crescent that casts a slender blaze of light across the water. You think he’s right. It does look pretty good, but there could be prettier ones, too. Maybe. You won’t know for sure unless you’re out here tomorrow.

So you will be. You’ll bring Tenko with you, as many times as you can, as many times as it’ll take, and maybe you’ll never make him see the world the way you do. But you can remind him that you like him when he asks, and switch in the other word sometime soon. You can find ways to bring his friends back to him, and maybe make friends with them yourself. He might think of it as hiding, but that’s not how you see it. It’s just part of living in the new world. You like living in it with him.

It’s quiet for a long time, all four of you watching the waves. One of Tenko’s arms unwraps from around your waist, but only so he can grab your hand and pull it up to his mouth. His lips brush against your knuckles, so soft that you can’t quite call it a kiss, and he keeps your hand there. When he speaks at last, it’s through your fingers, never looking away from the place where the ocean meets the sky. “Yeah,” Tenko says quietly, and you feel a smile break across your face. “It’s not so bad.”

#shigaraki tomura x reader #tomura shigaraki x reader #shimura tenko x reader #tenko shimura x reader #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x you #x reader #reader insert #man door hand hook car door #coffee shop rehab fic

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autumnmobile12 · 2 months

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I am happy for Natsuo's decision to go no-contact with his father. I think that's the best choice he could have made.

But I am sad that it had to come to that.

I genuinely think there was a part of Natsuo that did want to forgive his father, not because Endeavor deserved forgiveness but because Natsuo did want the father figure he'd been denied his entire life. For every time he comforted Touya, he had to have held some bitter thoughts that encompassed, "At least he loved you once. I never even had that." Only he could never say that out loud for the sake of his suffering sibling.

Still, no matter how much he may have wanted that, he knew there was no way Endeavor could realistically make up for his ruined childhood and so there was no way he could forgive him.

So yes, I am sad that Natsuo's circumstances led him to the completely justified choices he made.

I hope he has better luck with his in-laws.

...

That said, there is one thing about that decision that concerns me and that is the fact he will not allow his future children to meet their grandfather. And I don't mean that in an, "Aw, at least let your toxic father meet his grandchildren."

No, this is my concern:

Does Natsuo plan on hiding his father's identity from his children entirely? I cannot stress what an emphatically bad idea that is. One, unless he cuts contact with both his parents and remaining siblings, it's impossible. Two, even in the unlikely event he does go that far, his kids will figure it out one way or another. And if they find out the hard way, that's only going to cause resentment/raise questions. "Why did Dad lie about Grandpa? What else is he hiding?" Transparency is the only option to avoid that kind of drama.

If Natsuo does tell his children about his family, will he be comfortable with the idea that they may want to meet their grandfather regardless of what they've been told? In spite of their upbringing, kids are their own entity and not a complete reflection of their parents. Even if they know Natsuo's side of the story, even if Natsuo paints their grandfather as the unspeakable monster who destroyed their family, even if he makes it clear exactly what happened, there is still a fifty-fifty chance they may want to meet the man in question regardless, if only to sate a curiosity about where they came from. Natsuo can say 'no, absolutely not' all he wants, but that's not a decision he can control once his children are legal adults.

And in that scenario, he would be putting his kids in an awkward situation where they have to choose between alienating their father and meeting their grandfather. If they choose their father, then they will spend the rest of their lives wondering, "What if...?" If they choose their grandfather, they run the risk of Natsuo resenting them for going behind his back. No matter how Natsuo feels, unless Endeavor dies before it becomes an issue, this is a boundary that's going to be tested in some manner when his kids get older.

...

I'm not saying Natsuo doesn't have good intentions in wanting to protect his future children from what he went through. He has no obligation to capitulate and play happy family, but the above scenario is a very real situation that could absolutely happen whether he likes it or not. If he doesn't navigate that carefully, his determination to keep Endeavor away from his new family could very well end up pushing his new family away from him.

I guess what I'm saying is, "Natsuo, however justified you are, don't become the next Shimura Kotaro."

#my hero academia #natsuo todoroki #todoroki family #manga spoilers #endeavor #enji todoroki #boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #speculation #generational trauma #strikes again

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darkonekrisrewrite · 1 month

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This can't be the final "End", for both the heroes and the villains

(Spoiler warning, long post)

Deku and Ochako's stories didn't end well, and not just for the shipping or not keeping One For All.

The narrative endings they got, either don't make sense or flat out don't work at all.

The end of Ochako's arc doesn't work because it conflicts with what we've been shown to be true.

She does try to help others after hearing PARTS of Toga's backstory, a natural progression of her character.

But the problem is that it leads to this:

"Uravity to expand access to Quirk Counseling"

EXPANDING Quirk Counseling...

Not REFORMING and then expanding Quirk Counseling.

Remember that this is Quirk Counseling:

"Where they attempt to hammer out any bumps in your understanding of the world and program you to fit neatly into society's little boxes.

It's a far from perfect process, the counseling ends up emphasizing the inherent differences among us all, and that's one bug they've yet to work out of the programming."

Stated by Curious during the MVA Arc, then confirmed later in a flashback featuring a counselor talking to Toga and her parents:

"Let's straighten you out so you can be "Normal".

Deviance is common in children with strong Quirks.

We'll fix it. It'll be like it never existed."

Focusing only on repression and the appearance of being normal, not actually helping the child at all.

So yeah, knowing that this is how Quirk Counseling really is, how exactly does expanding this help??

THIS WAS WHY TOGA STAYING CLOSE TO OCHAKO WAS SO IMPORTANT

(Not being with her in the shipping sense but working, talking with her and just being together.)

Anything good about this project that Ochako is creating is only implied not shown, and it doesn't mesh well at all with what we already know.

And even if Ochako did do things right, it still wouldn't be a satisfying payoff.

Ochako wasn't fighting so hard and struggling so much to help random, unnamed, unseen people from the villain life.

She was fighting to help Toga Himiko.

Her failing to save Toga and only (implying) saving others we don't even know, will never carry the same weight.

It won't feel right in a story that's supposed to be "Hopeful", because there's no solid connection left for that sentiment to be attached.

And there was no saving going on between Deku/shigaraki and Ochako/Toga after their battles were over.

This is the sentiment put forth by Nana Shimura (and at the time agreed upon by All-might and Deku), on what a true hero saving someone means:

"When you have to save someone, they're usually in a scary situation. A true hero saves not only their lives, but also their hearts... That's what I believe."

"Saving" is supposed to be both the life and the heart.

Not just one or the other.

And even if Gran Torino was supposed to be the one in the right -

(The narrative sure as hell made it look like he was supposed to be in the wrong and Deku was going to be the one to prove that.)

- in that killing can be a form of saving.

Deku and Ochako didn't even save the villain's hearts.

Not fully.

Shigaraki tells Deku that he still needs to be a hero to the villains and that he fought to destroy until the very end.

Only giving a snide encouragement to Deku at the end of the fight because he's literally crumbling into dust and got his world view rocked by the "It was AFO all along~" reveal.

Toga tells ochako that she didn't make "the bad stuff", the pain in her heart go away.

Only telling ochako that her efforts and words made Toga feel happy, but that's it.

They couldn't save their lives, only partially saved their hearts, leading to the results:

100% - 50% - 25% = 25 % (final grade)

FAIL

The rest of Deku's conclusion doesn't fair any better.

Deku's heroic finale ends the exact same way it ended in every filler bnha movie, only with even less payoff.

He didn't succeed in his goal, with who he wanted to save and he just goes back to doing what he always did at the start, being a hero.

He doesn't develop in any noticable way until the OFA embers run out off screen.

Even the symbolic saving of the scissors boy, Deku doesn't get.

It would have been a world of difference if deku had seen tenko's full backstory, then told it to the world.

Telling the civilians that they needed to do their part to help those in trouble.

(Knowing that there's no AFO left to potentially get in the way.)

Resulting in many civilians coming together to help the scissor boy.

That would have delivered on everyone's narrative payoff.

But instead the theme doesn't work here because the single old lady who does step up to help, does so out of guilt (Not helping tenko) rather than because it is the right thing to do.

Nobody among the civilians besides the old lady stepped up to help on top of that.

So it looks less like a societal shift and more like the redemption of one single person.

The narrative makes a half-hearted attempt to tie this back to Deku but it doesn't work there either.

Because how exactly does Deku punching shigaraki into powder inspire the old lady to extend a helping hand to someone who represents that same villain??

It doesn't.

Even if the sentiment is: that everyone must do their part to help, there is a giant disconnect between:

Everyone seeing the heroes helping each other, fighting and succeeding in destroying the scary villain.

and

Realizing that someone has to help the person who looks like a scary villain.

It doesn't add up together.

Doesn't flow narratively at all.

The 8 year time skip makes more problems with Deku.

The line of: "You too can become a Hero."

Is meant to be the payoff callback to All-might giving those same words to Deku in bnha's beginning, so now Deku says the same thing to another kid that has doubts about his ability to become a hero.

It is kind of sweet but thinking about it for more than 5 seconds should give pause because:

Deku was about to receive the most powerful quirk in the world from All-might.

And the kid Deku was giving those same inspirational words to could throw plates from his head.

It's not even confirmed whether or not the kid could control their size, telepathically manipulate them or something like that.

So if what that other loudmouth kid in the final chapter said is true, about how only the most capable can become heroes in the current time.

The entire conversation, just like many other things in this ending, reads like false hope from the heroes.

Not like Deku has to deal with any of that or the kid himself anymore because he gets a tech suit, allowing him to be a hero again.

We don't know if he keeps his teaching job or not, maybe he did, maybe he didn't.

But still, once again Deku avoids any difficult questions that the story puts in front of him.

And all of this doesn't even cover the other issues that the story brought up:

The popularity poll expanding instead of ending, as if that would prevent the Endeavor/Dabi situation from happening again.

Lack of social/government help for anyone who gets dealt more than a couple of bad hands in life, those caught up in hero/villain conflicts or other disasters (quirk based or not).

Remember how twice became a villain?

THE QUIRK SINGULARITY DOOMSDAY

Now that AFO, shigaraki and the doctor (all of his research and technology) are gone, what's going to happen when children start wiping out whole city blocks?

(The doctor may be alive and imprisoned but with AFO dead, the doctor likely won't help anymore because AFO was so important to him.)

With the power and complexity of the quirks inevitably increasing, think Eri unintentionally killing her dad X10.

Then the next round of kids, make it X50 then X100.

And finally, in the last chapter it's stated that there's a: "Decline in the villain emergence rate."

Why exactly that is isn't said, but it's implied that it's due to the efforts of Ochako and Shoji.

Let's put aside the suspension of disbelief and assume that it's true, that what they did worked in stopping villains from being made enough to have a real impact.

What happens to the people that are already villains??

The ones currently on the run or in jail.

If the hero kids made that big of a difference in the demographic of villains just by expanding counseling and nonviolent resolution, then that only reinforces the truth that the villains are easily preventable victims.

The implications of that aren't doing the heroes or hero society any favors.

We don't know what happens after because Rehabilitation was never offered to anyone who wasn't a small time criminal (Gentle Criminal) or a former assassin of the state (Lady Nagant).

Are the other villains still currently stuck in their circumstances just out of luck, help came too late for them too just like the Lov?

We don't know.

You can assume, imply and head-canon the solutions to all these issues, with what the hero kids might do, as much as you want to.

But if you have to do that with the big questions and plot points, then the story hasn't delivered on what it said it was going to.

Maybe horikoshi isn't that good of a writer but it's hard to believe that.

Horikoshi put so much into this series and all the characters in it, the central villains and the hero kids being the most important ones.

That he'd just fumble everything and pull a Falcon and the Winter Soldier: "You need to do better" and then they did'-Type ending.

This can't be it.

Maybe the "Ending" endpoint of this narrative but not the end of the overall story.

For the villains just as much as the heroes.

Toga dying to a blood transfusion, despite everything other characters survived (Gran Torino donut, edgeshot worm, Dabi charcoal skeleton) and things that she herself survived already.

Having curious bombs go off inside her body leading to internal damage and severe blood loss, yet she still survived until she received help and recovered just fine.

They got Dabi to medical and kept him alive.

Other villains like overhaul, muscular, compress and spinner survived.

It's not like she either had to die or go to jail, she could have just escaped.

Leading to her meeting up with Ochako again in secret or something, to finally fulfill both of their arcs and iron everything out for what would have happened in the future.

Then the Quirk Counseling ending could have worked.

Shigaraki dying after finding out his life was entirely manipulated by AFO.

Strung along like a puppet, mentally and physically manipulated to believe he is a force of destruction, so much that by the time the series starts, it's all shigaraki can believe himself to be.

Twice and Kurogiri fight and die trying to save Toga and Shigaraki, so they can live and be reunited with their friends.

This all just meant nothing in the end??

Ochako, Deku, Toga and Shigaraki's stories can't be over yet because they are important characters and there's too much left unresolved.

Ochako's resolution is incomplete and undefined.

Deku's hero ending feels disappointing and tone-deaf.

Toga completely disappeared before Ochako was taken by the helicopter, nowhere to be seen where she should have been if she had died.

And how is shigaraki a force ghost still walking around in the world if there's no quirks left tethering him as a vestige?

ALSO this recent interview with Horikoshi himself:

(Warning: Spoilers for the most recent BNHA movie)

"Horikoshi says one thing to pay attention to from the My Hero Academia "You're Next" movie is the relationship between Giulio and Anna and how it connects with Deku and the others' goals.

He writes:

"The relationship between Giulio and Anna is a part of the goal point where Deku and the others will eventually reach.

The movie as a standalone in itself is interesting, but if you watch the movie then return to the actual story, then you might feel 'oh so this is where the story leads to.' As such, please pay attention to Giulio and Anna in the movie!"

To give context, by the end of the movie, Giulio is able to cancel out Anna's quirk using his own, allowing her to live a life without being sheltered in fear of her quirk or used as a weapon. So Horikoshi's comment is probably referring to how they help each other accept their quirks or lack thereof and still be able to live in harmony.

In regards to their relationship, Giulio tells Anna he will always be by her side no matter what, they hug and then walk off into the sunset together at the end of the movie."

And another heavily lampshaded moment in the movie novelization when Giulio inner narrates this:

'He knew that killing her wouldn't be a true form of salvation.'

What was all this about??

There has to be more left.

#bnha #mha #toga himiko #shigaraki tomura #ochaco uraraka #bnha meta #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers

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ddostoyevskyy · 26 days

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𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐄𝐑𝐀 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄... This is the official masterlist of WINGS ERA featuring MHA. Every short or long fic will be heavily based off BTS’ Wings album and based off the author’s imagination.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒... heavily implied DARK ROMANCE, fem!reader, yandere!reader, heavy gore, angel/devil quirks, based off BS&T lore, greek mythology, mentions of God, Lucifer, NO blasphemy, religiously implied, overpowered!reader, religious themes, trauma!reader, disassociation, split-personality, sexual themes; sexual abuse, mental abuse, assaultion, women oppresions, non-canon scenarios, coming-of-age trope, the following does NOT follow any canon implications, every fic were imaginary.

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄... I can’t promise that these will be canon through the characters. But I’ll do my best as I can. I’m actually challenging myself to write more complex characters (especially Touya, omfg) and as you can see, AWAKE and STIGMA was left without any character to fill so please, please, request anyone from MHA. I still can’t find the right character to fill the summary I made, so... help me :p

STATUS: UPDATING....

➹ 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎: 𝐁𝐎𝐘 𝐌𝐄𝐄𝐓𝐒 𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐋!

feat. Todoroki Touya, Dabi.

summary: ❛Why does that little girl’s naivety made the little boy too greedy? How does one protect with such little mind but his body’s already different? What does it makes to be bad as it too sweet at the same time?❟

note: following the Todoroki family lore but not the whole series’ canon plot.

➹ 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃, 𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐓 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒!

feat. Takami Keigo, Hawks.

summary: ❛The Fall of the Rebel of Angels and its familiarity always makes his own wings stutters. As fast as he was, as slow as the time goes by, the unforgotten desire of you will always be trapped in an asylum where they tucked you away.❟

note: following Hawks’ lore but not the whole series’ canon plot.

➹ 𝐁𝐄𝐆𝐈𝐍!

feat. Bakugo Katsuki.

summary: ❛Youth is a bitch, so was he. As he reflected along his mistakes and blames, sticks through the flames, the remnants of you stood still at the back of his head; all young and innocent — ‘til he stumbles upon you again, the same eyes and face but never the same heartbeat you shared.❟

note: following Bakugo’s childhood lore but not the whole series’ canon plot.

➹ 𝐋𝐈𝐄!

feat. Shimura Tenko, Shigaraki Tomura.

summary: ❛The mask he puts on his face where equivalent to what he portrays; a man that he wasn’t. He had lived his life driven by nothing and you lie awake.❟

note: following Shigaraki’s childhood lore but not the whole series’ canon plot.

➹ 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐆𝐌𝐀!

feat. tba.

summary: ❛As you lie awake, he slumbers and swim under your influence; in his dreams, he was having a conversation with his father; and when he wakes up, the man he wasn’t became your enigma’s puzzle.❟

note: CHARACTER REQUEST ARE OPEN.

➹ 𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐊𝐄!

feat... tba.

summary: ❛The relentless nights of nightmares haunts you down in vain, leaving you awake. You knew what you saw, so why is he here now besides you like you could forget the way his heart dropped a beat?❟

note: CHARACTER REQUEST ARE OPEN.

➹ 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐄: 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒!

feat. Takami Keigo, Hawks.

summary: ❛The world finally lets you spread your wings to fly — the world being him, because no matter how you denies, you knew he’s the reason why you wanted to fly.❟

note: spin off of ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears.’

#bnha #bnha smut #mha fic #mha todoroki #mha imagines #mha spoilers #mha smut #mha masterlist #[❤; niko's masterlist]#mha x reader #bnha x reader #mha x you #bnha x you #bakugou katsuki x you #dabi x reader #hawks x reader #shigaraki x reader #mha

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fabled-lady-twilla · 5 months

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Hi, I'm Twilla and I'm currently in the process of writing a ShigaDeku Dystopia/Soulmate AU fic that no one, and I mean literally NO ONE, asked for! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Why do I always join fandoms late and why do I always somehow end up loving/shipping the rarepairs in fandoms that barely anyone likes or wants to read about lmao? 🥺👉👈

I just finished reading the latest manga chapter, watched all six seasons, and binged all three movies. I am absolutely BURSTING with ideas of where I want this story to go. I want to at least post the first chapter by the time ShigaDeku Week 2024 is here next month. :)

In my fic timeline, the MHA canon story line doesn't happen until Class 1-A's third year, and since my story is set six years after their graduation, most of the main characters are in their mid to late twenties. My story starts after the Quirk Affliction, a strange illness that begins killing off Quirk-users all around to world, resulting in a massive a death toll that causes civilized society to collapse.

Anyways, here's the general synopsis:

The Final War was over before it had even begun. With the onset of the Quirk Affliction, a mysterious illness that disproportionately targeted the Quirks of heroes over the Quirks of villains, the world was left defenseless as it plunged into a new era of chaos and devastation.

It’s been six years since the onset of the Affliction and the death of All Might. Six years since the world’s heroes, and the society they desperately fought to protect, have crumbled into dust in Shigaraki Tomura’s hands.

From the ashes of this destruction, Japan’s new regime was born. The country was split into three territories, each with its own Grand Commander, united in nothing save for one singular rule: life for those who submit, and death for those who do not.

As Grand Commander of the largest and most plentiful of Japan’s territories, Shigaraki has lived the last six years reaping the fruits of his labors and taking pride in helping his Sensei accomplish his dream. But as of late, Tomura has been having strange dreams of his own: hazy memories of an abandoned park, of blooming wisteria trees, of laughter and freckles and forest green eyes.

Midoriya Izuku, now Quirkless due to the Affliction, has not stopped his pursuit of helping others, despite the world — and everything in it — turning itself upside down. Izuku dreams of a brighter future, and strangely enough, dreams of his long-lost childhood friend, Shimura Tenko.

The same Tenko that Izuku had unknowingly befriended as a young boy. The same Tenko who’d stopped him from jumping off the rooftop all those years ago. The same Tenko that, Izuku realized with horror, was now the monster known as Shigaraki Tomura.

Unfortunately, Izuku learns all too late that having a Soulbond with the King of Villains comes with a heavy cost. Shigaraki seems hell-bent on keeping Izuku as close to him as possible, believing Izuku to be his Soulmate, and thus, Shigaraki’s only true weakness, stirring up an ill-fated romance that neither has prepared themselves for.

As a new calamity encroaches upon them in the form of a mad man attempting to become a god, the heroes and villains must find a way to work together and solve the mystery of the Affliction before it destroys the world and everything they hold dear.

✨ P l e a s e ✨ let me know if you're interested in hearing about this by either, liking, reblogging, or sending me a PM. I'm working really hard to get the first chapter of this out by ShigaDeku Week 2024 in May!

Thank you so much for reading. 💚💚💚

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vtewig · 4 months

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The Identity of Deku's Dad

Has anybody else been so hyped after reading the latest chapters of MHA (418-422) because of the hints that the identity of Deku's father will be revealed soon?

In chapter 422, The U.S. president is shown, stating that all American heroes are to come to Japan, so perhaps Deku's father might be on that list of people arriving to help out.

I know there is still the possibility of the reveal being Dad for One, which is an interesting theory in my opinion, but the other chance that it might be an individual who works with heroes or is one of them also seems very intriguing.

It could also be the president himself, given how he is always in the shadows, but I honestly feel there is a slim chance for that to be true.

I can't be certain how Horikoshi will put the puzzle pieces of who Izuku's father is together, but I feel the president panels might be a piece of the puzzle somehow. His face is in the shadows...

...but again so was AFO's face for a long time.

I still feel really strongly about the DFO theory. On one hand I do see how people might be displeased by it, because AFO does insert himself in a lot of characters lives and influences them from the background, but precisely because of that I find him a very interesting and fleshed out character. So desperate for attention and love, even when he has it he doesn't know how to respond to it. He is also quite a charming character, which I feel you would have to be to impress the lovely Inko Midoriya. She is just too amazing, I also feel that he would be drawn to her as well because of that. Or perhaps because she bears resemblance to a certain Shimura? But again, Inko is very different to Nana, as in, she appears much softer as a character than Nana does, and I feel AFO would crave that from a person given that he wasn't taken care of and had to help his brother out and grew up in a very feral state and an incredibly hostile environment for anybody, let alone a child. Even though he does end up using people, I do think that that is because of his defense mechanism and constant living on survival mode affecting him.

AFO is also someone who doesn't want people to know the real him, his weaknesses and inner thoughts, his human side. The memories he does share with Deku and Tomura are only to traumatize them and break them up; in short: they are carefully curated.

If DFO does come into play, I feel that Tomura/Tenko will have a hand in the reveal. Perhaps helping or saving Izuku from within the vestige world? Maybe he will be able to help by seeing Izuku's memories and altering them like Deku did for him, because in the case that does end up happening, Deku will be the one needing a helping hand in coping with the reveal, and who better than the boy who that man was a father figure to as well. And in the end Deku and Tomura could also together "defeat" AFO by seeing his memories and saving the defenseless child he once was.

This is probably overthinking, but I wanted to share my thoughts with you guys. I love trying to guess what will happen and still being surprised by Horikoshi's amazing execution each time. I would love to read what you guys have to say on the topic.

#bnha #dad for one #bnha meta #hisashi midoriya #mha meta #shimura tenko #izuku midoriya #inko midoriya #dfo theory #mha theory #mha spoilers #bnha spoilers #all for one #shigaraki tomura #mha manga spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #afo is hisashi #bnha afo #afo

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itsabouttimex2 · 11 months

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Toshinori Yagi:

With Nana Shimura’s long lost granddaughter.

“I can get that for you, Mister!”

He turns around, getting ready to thank an unusually cheerful and upbeat employee for helping him grab an item just barely out of his reach, already smiling at your joyful tone. Your voice is like a shot of energy right into his heart, and he takes a look at you.

And then he freezes.

You hop on the air like it’s something solid, pulling an item from the top shelf and bringing it down for the blonde man, gently pushing it into his hands.

He doesn’t have a chance to react before you’re off helping another customer, using your Quirk once more. You send him into a deluge of memories, moments he tightly clings to and cherishes above all else. He sees her in you, and relives a storm of his previous life.

You’re just like his mentor.

You have her eyes. You have her smile.

And those two things alone aren’t so damning, but you have her Quirk.

And he decides that maybe he needs to come back to this store, just a few more times. Just to make sure.

He starts buying groceries for Izuku and Inko, disguised as thanks for treating him so well. Instead, it’s really just a reason to go back more often, to get more glimpses of you, of his mentor.

Each time, you greet him with the same enthusiasm and cheer, always with with that brilliant smile of yours. Always hopping around on the air with your infectious joy.

It hurts, deep inside. When he isn’t chasing the high that comes from your presence, he’s mourning, because let’s be honest, Toshinori never stopped mourning. He misses Nana as much as the day he lost her.

And here you are, a living memento, a fragment of Nana, in the flesh. Something she left behind, good and kind but dreadfully unaware of the dangers and threat that All for One poses, if he finds out that Nana has another grandchild he can hurt, all in the name of targeting Toshinori.

All Might realizes that Nana has something of herself left in this world. Not just Tomura, twisted, corrupted, and out for blood. But you as well, sweet and warm and loving.

A piece of her lives on.

One that he can save. One that he can protect. One that he won’t lose.

Because he’s lost enough. And he’s not taking the chance to lose you, as well.

#platonic yandere #yandere platonic mha #yandere MHA #Yandere Toshinori Yagi #Yandere All Might #Platonic Yandere All Might #Platonic Yandere Toshinori Yagi #Yandere Dadmight #Y/N Shimura

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chocol4tte · 1 month

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Not long ago I read a fic where Kakashi, heir of a group of hunters was bitten by a werewolf and Obito, who was a witch that has been living for a long time, saves him and makes a deal with him.

It was pretty cool and boy did I wish it had a continuation. Here is the link if you are interested!!

However the idea of perfect hunter Kakashi, who lived by the rules, meets in a black market, 3 small creatures in even smaller cages, a 9 tailed fox named Naruto, Sasuke, a cub from the fearsome panther clan, and Sakura, a small flower fairy with a dormant hability to heal any wounds... and strength. All minors and way far away from their home.

The last thing to cross Kakashi's mind is to speak with them, nor even feel something similar to a pang of pity for them, even less to befriend them thanks to the cub fox that was a small ray of sunshine in that black market.

As days went by, and he was slowly gaining their trust and he even began to enjoy their company despite his usual cold demeanor, things had to get worse for all of them. There was a buyer renowned by his preferences in exotic creatures and dissect them for his personal collection, also known as Shimura Danzo, second in command of the hunter village.

Time was becoming something of a luxury before the inevitable happens, Kakashi observed his almost empty room, only adorned with a photo of his deceased father and himself as a kid... how his father was labeled as a traitor for being emphatic with monsters and executed for the same reason.

It's not until the last second when Danzo's goons are taking the screaming kids away, that Kakashi jumps in front of them, frees them, and takes them on his arms and shoulders to get the fuck away from there.

Everyone tries to stop the son of the traitor... now traitor from getting away from the village, he is running away from everyone and everything, running unaware that Danzo had with him werewolf venom in a crossbow arrow and shot Kakashi right on his right side, eithout hurting any kid. It didn't stop him however, he just kept running away, ignoring the pain and the muffle shock cries from the kids on his back and arms.

I'll continue this another time, my 102⁰ fever is killing me... next time would be Kakashi discovering what happened and welp... let's see how it goes.

#my writing #kakaobi #naruto au #obikaka #kakaobi au #creature au #team seven #kakashi hatake #naruto uzumaki #sasuke uchiha #sakura haruno

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phntxm · 9 months

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love tropes ideas I have in mind (1/2)

Forbidden love with Shigaraki Tomura (& friends to lovers) (gremlin era)

Prohero!y/n who is in love with their childhood best friend, Shimura Tenko. y/n was assigned to work as a spy, become traitor at LOV, and found out that Shigaraki Tomura, the villainous boss, was a childhood friend. Though the feelings never fade away, how can I decide between justice and love when justice must always win out, am I right? although it seems like he's not Shimura Tenko, the on I'm in love with.

Secret identity with Shigaraki Tomura/Shimura Tenko (& enemies to lovers?) (college au)

Colleague!Tomura/Tenko, who likes to be in his own world in class and acts as though he hates everyone, even you. Then, one day, he finds out that his best friend, a gamer who he loves to gab to about his life, is actually his colleague. Maybe he'll give a chance to start making friends in real life, who knows?

Wedding fever with Todoroki Touya/Dabi (fake relationship & runaway brides/ I got inspiration from @theartofsimpatry corpse bride au!)

Bride!y/n and Groom!Touya wasn't fond with the fiance that their parents suggested. Touya don't wanna marry someone for their quirk just like his dad. He met y/n and they both agree to fake their relationship and since he's son of a great hero, who would deny it? The only problem at hand is that it looks like this fraud is true now...

(in gothic setting!!) Bride!y/n don't want to get arranged marriage. she running away from the chaotic wedding ceremony to old abandoned castle which have a legend of the living corpse who'd curses and tortures anyone who get into his castle by burning them, but some say that if he likes them he can fulfill their one desire, yet there comes with a price to pay...

Blackmail with Todoroki Touya (Narcissistic/Nepo Baby/Bully!Touya) (& force relationship/ inspiration from webtoon 'Girl Under Trial')

Colleague!Touya always like to bragging about his superior quirk and his dad. He's full of himself that he has bad reputation and a lot of enemies, yet no one can defeat him. Then it all ends for this man when I find out about his secret. So I decided to make him to be my boyfriend, but how long this secret will be useful?

I have more detailed for some of them I could write it as headcanons but let me know if anyone wants me to write or you can send through the trope you like and we sharing idea about it!

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scary-grace · 7 months

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Enough to Go By -- a Shigaraki x F!reader fic

Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

Chapter 1

You had a best friend when you were little, just like almost everyone, and the two of you were as different as two people could be. He was a boy and you were a girl. You were the oldest of four, and he was the youngest of two. His family was rich because his dad was some kind of business genius, and your family was – not. You and your best friend had exactly two things in common. First, you lived across from each other on the same street, him in a big new house and you in one that had been falling apart since before your parents were born. And second, and maybe most important, neither of you had a quirk.

It was okay for your best friend. He still had time. People in his family got their quirks when they were two or three or four or maybe even six, like they were supposed to. But everyone in your family is born with theirs. Your family’s quirks do different things, but they’re the same type of thing – powering up or watering down or just changing some part of somebody else, and they’re active until the person’s old enough to turn them off.

You hated being home. You had one younger brother who could turn your hearing up and down, one younger sister who could turn your color vision on and off, and twin baby brothers who could make you throw up whenever they wanted to. Going to school, or going across the street to play in front of Tenko’s house with him and his big sister and his dog, was the closest things ever got to normal for you.

Tenko wanted to be a hero. You knew he’d be the best hero, because he was a hero already, even without a quirk. Nobody was every left out when you and Tenko played at school, because Tenko could make everybody feel included, and you spent so much time trying to placate your siblings that you knew how to make sure everybody had fun. But for everybody to have fun, people needed to be there. Tenko was the one everybody believed in, the one who made everybody feel important. When you spent time with Tenko, you felt like you belonged. Tenko was already a hero, even as a kid. You knew he’d be amazing at it when he grew up.

Only he didn’t grow up, your best friend. You walked home from school together one day, said goodbye and crossed to your opposite sides of the street, and when you looked out your window the next morning, Tenko’s house was gone.

A villain did it. That’s what everybody said, and you didn’t know what else it could be, because Tenko’s house was in ruins, like a giant had smashed it with its foot or someone had blown it up from the inside. You raced across the street without your shoes on, right into the middle of what was left, and even though your parents spent money they didn’t have on a specialist whose quirk let them wipe memories right out of your brain, you still have nightmares sometimes about what you saw. Tenko’s big sister Hana was dead. His dog was dead. His mom and his grandparents and his dad were dead. But he wasn’t there, so you made yourself believe he was alive.

And some part of you kept believing, even after the foundations of an apartment building were laid over the spot where Tenko’s house used to be, even after your family moved away. Your youngest younger siblings, a set of triplets born after you moved, thought Tenko was your imaginary friend because of how much you talked about him. And even once you stopped talking about him, you never quite stopped thinking about him. Your best friend, who wanted to be a hero. Who would have been the greatest hero the world had ever seen.

Everyone else forgot him, forgot him so cleanly that you almost wonder if it was a quirk. But you remember your best friend – small things, weird things, like how he’d sometimes get so excited he’d almost cry. His All Might impression, which was so bad it almost worked. His dry skin and the way he’d scratch his neck. You wonder what happened, why he wasn’t found with his family. You wonder a lot of things.

“Everybody loses touch with their neighborhood kids,” Hirono says when you say something about it, while you and your friends are getting drunk in Kazuo’s backyard one weekend. “You’re not special.”

“Don’t be mean,” Yoshimi protests. “Her friend died. That’s different!”

“She just said he didn’t die. She thinks he’s still alive,” Sho says. He whistles and rotates one finger by his ear. “Cuckoo.”

“There should be a podcast about this,” Mitsuru says seriously, and Hirono and Mitsuko laugh at him. “No, there should! Five people confirmed murdered and a kid goes missing – and it’s never solved? That’s podcast material.”

“It’s newsworthy,” Kazuo says, his voice as expressionless as it always is these days. “Have you looked it up?”

“Yes,” you say. Too many times, probably. “The articles don’t say my friend went missing.”

“They said he died?”

“They don’t mention him at all.”

“Ooh. Spooky.” Sho makes a UFO noise, and Yoji, Yoshimi’s on-again, off-again asshole boyfriend, throws in some spiritfingers to go with it. “Maybe he’s imaginary after all.”

“Or maybe you do have a quirk,” Yuichiro, Mitsuko’s latest too-innocent boyfriend says earnestly. “Your family’s all status effects, right? Maybe you made everybody else forget him.”

“Why would I do that?” you ask blankly. You’re a little drunk. “He’s my best friend.”

“I thought I was your best friend,” Kazuo says. Kazuo’s also a little drunk. “You don’t have a quirk. I would know. I know everything.”

The confidence is annoying, or it would be, if it wasn’t true – and if you didn’t know just how badly Kazuo’s quirk has ruined his life. “Maybe not,” Ryuhei says speculatively. “You only know what you know to know, you know?”

You try to parse that for a second, then give up. Mitsuru is wheezing with laughter. “Come on,” Ryuhei says, annoyed. “You know what I mean. Kazuo only knows the answers to questions he knows to ask, right? What if he hasn’t asked the right question?”

Kazuo’s quirk is called Search Engine, and it’s not an overstatement. He can ascertain anything he asks about, and if the questions aren’t hyperspecific, he can take in vast amounts of information. Too much information for even the smartest person to sort through and interpret without going crazy under the strain. He was going to be a hero, but UA High pushed him too hard, and something went wrong in his head. The smartest guy you know, who used to be funny and kind and should be changing the world for the better right now, is instead drunk in his parents’ backyard, still trying to figure out where his emotions went. You haven’t seen Kazuo care about anything in two years.

But you can see him thinking about what Ryuhei said, trying to wrap his mind around a question. “Don’t,” you say, and he looks at you, puzzled. “If I had a quirk, I’d have had it when I was born, just like the rest of my family.”

“Your family has some funky quirks,” Yoji says. You have a feeling you know where he’s going with this, and you’re not wrong. “Isn’t one of your cousins a villainess?”

“She barely counts,” Hirono says. “What could they even charge her with if they caught her? Possession of a video camera and bad taste in men? They could charge Yoshimi with that, too.”

“Hey!”

Sho and Ryuhei join in on the ribbing, and you lean back against the steps. Kazuo rises from his chair a little unsteadily and comes to sit by you. “You never mentioned this friend of yours before.”

“It never came up.” You glance sidelong at him. “Why? Are you jealous?”

“No,” Kazuo says. He hiccups. His alcohol tolerance has always been weirdly low. “I’m surprised you never asked me to find him. Maybe I could.”

“I know.” If Kazuo ever recovers from what UA High did to him, the government will be all over him. He could find anything, anyone – but like Ryuhei said, he has to know what questions to ask. “I think I’m scared of what you’d find. I don’t want him to be dead.”

“Dead might be better.”

You almost choke on the sip of vodka you just took. “Excuse me?”

“If he died, he died,” Kazuo says. No shit. “If he’s still alive, he’s been missing for fifteen years. During my work-study, I assisted in the search for several missing children. Nothing good had happened to the ones we found alive.”

You hadn’t thought about that, what it would actually mean if Tenko is still alive, and your brain supplies you instantly with a list of terrible things that could have happened to your best friend. Your imagination is pretty vivid. Your stomach turns. “I don’t want that,” you say. “I just want him to be okay.”

“Sometimes dead is better,” Kazuo says again. And then he’s quiet.

You try to get back into the mood of the party, but what Kazuo said sticks, and you’re kind of mad at him about it. The old Kazuo wouldn’t have said something like that, or else he would have put it more gently. You miss the old Kazuo. Thanks to a villain fifteen years ago and UA fucking High, you’re now short two best friends.

Kazuo’s a good guy, but you’d be lying if you said you weren’t drawn to him because of who he reminded you of. You have a soft spot for dark-haired boys who want to be heroes. If Tenko hadn’t gone missing and the two of you had gotten to grow up together, you probably would have wound up with a big, stupid crush on him, the supercharged version of how you felt about Kazuo. But a relationship between the two of you wouldn’t have worked out, for the same reason your relationship with Kazuo didn’t work. Being a hero comes first. Being a hero always comes first with guys like them. You probably wouldn’t like them as much if it didn’t.

Getting drunk at Kazuo’s is a typical Friday night pastime among your friends, and usually everybody sleeps over. Everybody usually includes you, but you have to work tomorrow, which means you have to go home. Sometimes you and Kazuo still fool around when you’re both drunk, and you want to avoid that, too. You drink a glass of water and start sobering up while the others are still sorting out places to sleep, and then you tell them all good by and head out, taking three trains in a loop around the city to give yourself even more time to sober up before you have to walk home. You don’t live in the nicest neighborhood. You need to be alert.

When you finally get off the train at your stop, you realize you’ve got another problem. You’re hungry, and you won’t have time to cook when you get home if you want to sleep at all tonight. The all-night convenience store a few blocks up from your apartment is beckoning to you, and you give in without a fight. You’ll pick something to eat, eat it in the store for one last period of sobering-up, and walk the rest of the way home.

You feel a little better with a few bites of food in your stomach, and you’re pretty sure you’re not going to throw it up later. You hang out in the corner of the shop, a good spot to people-watch from if there were any people in here but you and the owner. The TV behind the counter is blaring the news about some villain attack, somewhere – two dumb-ass middle schoolers, one sludge villain, one can of whoop-ass opened by All Might. What else is new.

“Turn that shit off.”

The voice is raspy, and it’s coming from the far corner of the store. So there’s somebody else in here after all. You rise to your tiptoes and peer over the shelves to spot the speaker. They’re wearing a black hoodie with the hood up and browsing for energy drinks, and apparently they have a real problem with what’s on TV – which means the proprietor has a real problem with them. “Got a problem with heroics? Or does seeing real heroes just remind you what a bum you are?”

“Fuck off,” the guy in the hoodie says sharply. “You’ve got more in common with me than you do with them. If you were there, you think you’d run in to help? No. You’d wait for a hero, because you’re useless and pathetic. At least I don’t walk around pretending to be something I’m not.”

Hoodie guy sort of has a point, even if you don’t like how he’s phrasing it. Hoodie guy also sucks at reading the room, because after that little back-and-forth, he yanks an energy drink out of the case and a package of sour candies off a shelf and heads up to the counter. The proprietor laughs in his face. “Get out of here. If you think I’m selling even a stick of gum to you, you’re out of your mind.”

Hoodie guy’s shoulders tense. “You’re so desperate to defend All Might that you won’t take my money? He’s not gonna fuck you.”

You must be a little more drunk than you thought, because you have to clamp your hands over your mouth to stifle a laugh. But there’s nothing funny about the situation that’s unfolding in front of you. The proprietor’s looking increasingly pissed, and Hoodie Guy’s hands are out of his pockets, open and twitching at his sides. You don’t know what either of their quirks are, but you’ve got seven siblings. You know what it looks like when a situation’s about to spiral out of control.

“I said get out,” the proprietor spits. He shoves the drink and the package of candy back across the counter, hard enough that they fall off and roll across the floor. Hoodie Guy’s hands begin to lift from his sides, and you step out of your corner. “You want to start something? Go ahead. The cops will be here so fast –”

“Not fast enough for you,” Hoodie Guy hisses. His hands are all the way up, reaching over the counter.

You scoop the snacks off the floor and duck into the scant space between Hoodie Guy and the counter. You elbow him a bit by accident and he stumbles, swears at you. You ignore him and focus on the proprietor. “Hi. I’m still hungry. Can I get these?”

The proprietor squints at you, nonplussed. Behind you, Hoodie Guy’s gotten his feet under him, and if it’s possible, he’s extra pissed. “Get out of my way.”

“You don’t want this kind of trouble,” you say, ignoring Hoodie Guy. He’s the instigator. You need him to shut up so you can handle this before it escalates. “I know you don’t. You want him out of here and he wants his snacks. If you don’t want his money, mine’s just as good.”

You’re conscious of Hoodie Guy looming over your shoulder. He’s not all that much taller than you, but he’s standing a little too close. You take your wallet out, and that seems to settle the issue. “You’re lucky your girlfriend’s here to help you out. That’ll be ¥1800.”

You pay up and collect the snacks. When you turn away from the counter, Hoodie Guy’s right there, and you get your first good look at his face – or at the life-sized model hand clamped over his face. That’s – weird. You can’t see his expression, but his tone of voice is unmistakable. “If you think –”

“I know, I know,” you interrupt. “You’re not gonna fuck me.”

It’s not a joke you’d make sober, but with the proprietor calmed slightly down, you have to knock Hoodie Guy off his game somehow. It works. He makes a weird, strangled sound, and you grab him by his sleeve and tow him out the door.

He lets you do it, which is a surprise, and you let him go as soon as the doors close behind you. You hold out the snack and the energy drink. “Here.”

You can’t see his face, but you can see one red eye, peering out at you through the fingers of the hand. “It was pretty stupid of you to get in my way.”

“It was pretty stupid of you to go up to the counter. If you’d stormed off he wouldn’t have chased you.” You’ve seen Sho use that tactic before – needle a store owner until they want him gone more than they want to check his pockets. “Just take this, okay?”

He raises one hand and scratches at his neck. There’s something familiar about the motion, and the scarred, scraped-raw patch of skin there. Maybe you’ve seen something similar at work. “Either you used some kind of quirk or you got lucky. Which is it?”

“Neither. I have seven siblings and I’m good at toning things down.” You’ve wished for a quirk that lets you affect others’ moods more than a few times. You had to learn your de-escalation techniques the hard way. “Do you want these or not?”

He’s still scratching, and something’s pulling at the back of your mind, harder and harder. “Seven siblings,” he says slowly. “That’s three more.”

“Three more than what?” you say, puzzled. And then it clicks.

You have seven siblings now. When you lived across the street from your best friend, you only had four. And now you get why the scratching looks so familiar, why there’s so much scar tissue in the place he’s clawing at – because he’s been scratching that same spot for a decade and a half. It doesn’t matter than his hair is grey-blue instead of black, that his eyes are red instead of grey. It doesn’t even matter that he’s got a creepy hand stuck over his face. You know who you’re looking at, and the surge of joy that overtakes you is like nothing you’ve ever felt before.

You’d keep it to yourself, ordinarily. But tonight you’re a little drunk, and you can’t hold it in. “Tenko,” you say, and he freezes like he’s been struck by lightning. “You’re alive!”

Tenko stays frozen until you reach for him, at which point he bolts, and you really shouldn’t follow him – but you’re drunk and it’s your best friend and he’s alive just like you knew he was, so you chase after him. He was a little clumsy when you were kids. You were always a little faster on your feet, but his legs are longer than yours now, and he keeps you at a fair distance until he trips.

It’s sort of your fault he trips. He’s looking back over his shoulder, checking where you are, and he’s not watching his feet. It’s a bad fall. He sprawls out, the hand over his face dislodging and bouncing across the concrete, and you hear him cursing under his breath in a voice that carries a familiar strain. You’ve heard that before. You do what you did back then. You run to his side and drop to your knees, hands outstretched to help. “Tenko –”

“Get away from me! Don’t touch me!” Tenko lashes out with one hand, and instinct tells you to get out of range. The hand he lashes out with looks wrong – hurt, maybe, in the fall. His other hand is up over his face, covering it the same way the model hand was. “Father – I need – where –”

Father. You wonder if Tenko knows what happened to his father – but he’s feeling around on the concrete with the maybe-broken hand, and you realize what he’s looking for. “It’s over here,” you say. “Stay there. I can –”

“No.” Tenko lunges past you, seizes the hand, secures it over his face. Then he turns on you, and the hatred in his eyes sends a bolt of pure terror down your spine.

He knocks you onto your back. You know some self-defense – like any girl, like any person without a quirk – and you kick and thrash, arching your back, trying to throw him off. Some part of your mind is still spinning, because it’s Tenko, your best friend, who wants to be a hero – and it’s Tenko, his forearm coming down across your throat and half his body weight leaning onto it. You cough and sputter, and Tenko raises his other hand, all five fingers outstretched. “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll kill you fast. Lie and it’ll be slow. Who are you?”

You don’t know how he expects you to answer with his arm over your throat. Dark spots are beginning to fill your vision. You shove at his arm, and his hand closes around your wrist. His grip is hot and dry and shaking, and a split second after he’s touched you, the burning starts. It’s like his hand is dipped in acid, like it’s clawing through your skin one layer at a time, and you scream in pain. Or you try to. He increases the pressure on your throat and chokes the sound off. “Don’t touch me,” he snarls. “And don’t scream. Who are you?”

You manage to rasp out your name, and you see Tenko’s expression shift. “We went to school together,” you gasp. “I lived across the street from you. We played together. You were –”

You black out for a second, and the pressure on your throat lifts slightly. “What?” Tenko spits. “I was what?”

“My best friend,” you whisper. Your eyes well up, tears running down your face when you blink. “I missed you so much –”

Tenko stares down at you for a moment longer. Then he recoils away from you, up onto his feet and back five or six steps. He’s cradling his wrist. You roll from your back to your side and gasp for air. There’s a rattle in your breathing that tells you your windpipe’s damaged, and when you blink the tears and spots from your vision to stare at your wrist, you see that your skin is raw, bloody and oozing. There’s the outline of all five of Tenko’s fingers, his thumb and middle finger joined, rotted into your skin.

“Go,” Tenko says. You look numbly up at him and see his face twisted behind the hand. “Now.”

Your wrist – his hair – his eyes – Tenko has a quirk now. An awful quirk. “What happened to you?” you ask helplessly. “Where did you go? Are you –”

“Go!” Tenko snaps at you. “Before I change my mind. Run!”

You scramble backwards and collide with something. The energy drink and the package of candy, which you dropped when you ran to help Tenko after he fell. The sight of them makes you want to burst into tears again. You don’t want to take them with you. You bought them for him. Without looking his way, you pick them up and set them on the ground between the two of you, pushing them towards him so he knows who they’re for. Then you force yourself to your hands and your knees and your feet and run for your life, away from the best friend you now know you’ve lost for good.

You didn’t want Tenko to be dead, and he isn’t. But Kazuo was right, too. Maybe dead would have been better. Anything would have been better than this.

#shigaraki tomura x reader #tomura shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x reader #reader insert #x reader #shigaraki tomura #please hold #a bisquared production

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