Chapter Text
The man at your register looks about two seconds from keeling over. They don’t really school you on customer rescue during training at the SpeedTrip Convenience Store. Usually your MO is to ignore whatever’s in front of you and just run through your script, but you’re genuinely worried this guy is going to pass out on your counter.
So you ask, “You okay there, champ?”
The answer: Not really. He hasn’t slept in two days. He hasn’t eaten in sixteen hours. All of his focus has been dedicated to planning the LOVs next move. He hadn’t wanted to leave the hideout at all, but he needs caffeine, and despite his censure of the constant complaints about the place, the mustiness was beginning to get to him as well. Regardless, he didn’t intend to even look you in the eyes while he went about his business, but now his stare is hard and sharp on your face.
It’s an innocuous question, but it makes him seethe. A boiling low in his gut like the anticipation before a fight, like the rancid suspense before his quirk makes contact.
You’re holding out his change (250yen), and the little plastic bag with his purchase in it (three bottles of an energy drink the color of live uranium), and the smile on your face is so vacant and vapid he wants to slap everything out of your hands, he wants to bite you like a wild dog.
You have no idea what you’ve done.
He snatches the bag too quickly, all five fingers make contact. He feels his quirk activating, the dry wool brush of it all up his arm. He manages to make it outside before the whole thing falls apart, a mess of dust and neon liquid at his feet, the smell of burnt plastic in the air. So much for that. Waste of a trip. Waste of time.
Waste, waste, waste.
He doesn’t look back, at the place where you’re shoving the extra 250yen in your apron pocket. He doesn’t make note of the name of the store, the time of day. The utilitarian tilt of your smile. Not happy, not anything.
And your voice, ringing in his ears like the death knell.
...
His plan is executed. It fails. He sits at the bar and imagines pressing his palms flat against the surface of the counter, letting his quirk chew through the hideout, the city, all of Japan. Ashes falling through his fingers.
He goes to sleep, finally, after seventy four hours. Kurogiri is nagging him about something or other. Or maybe offering some encouragement. He doesn’t hear. The rage and exhaustion have propelled him into some kind of fugue state, only half-here.
He dreams about dogs. With mouths full of razors.
When he wakes he finishes the dregs of the instant coffee on his desk. It does nothing for him. He goes back to sleep. He dreams of you.
His soulmark has always been easy enough to ignore. It’s on a patch of skin that doesn’t see much light, running up his inner bicep in curling scrawl. Your curling scrawl.
He hates that he has a face to go with the words now. He only looked at you for a second—less, maybe—but the color of your eyes, the slant of your nose, is burned into his memory forever now.
All For One had let him watch TV, when Shigaraki was first taken off the streets. Never anything in Japanese. Old western bootlegs scrounged up off the internet. They didn’t even have subtitles, most of the time. But he could infer things from their expressions, their body language. He learned about soulmates from those shows, too. He’d learn that there are some people who make others crazy, make them desperate, maybe even make them murderers. He wouldn’t learn what they were called until years later, though, when All For One stared at the words curled around his arm, contemplating.
“Should we get rid of them?” he wondered aloud.
Shigaraki cocked his head, thinking, somehow, he meant get rid of the person behind the words. Get rid of you. Maybe that would be easier. Rational.
He couldn’t imagine feeling anything so hard, so powerfully. Anything but rage, which seemed to fill him like a tide, coming and going in pendulous swings. How could he ever have room for anything else?
He didn’t answer. It wasn’t expected of him. It was good to have a soulmate, strategically speaking. There’s a lot someone can do with that. Something to bolster or bargain with.
Something to make a person crazy.
His master often referred to it as a reward. “Just for you,” he’d tell Shigaraki. “Your prize.”
Shigaraki is not so sure of that.
...
Your schedule is perfectly predictable. It makes him grind his teeth.
You man the counter at the same time every day, and work into the late dark. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that change in routine is the key to safety? Anyone could figure out a way to hurt you, abduct you, kill you.
Shigaraki can think of twelve ways off the top of his head. And it’s not even noon yet.
He can’t tell if you recognize him or not. He’s stopped by three times in the past two weeks, to get food and assorted essentials for the other LOV members. That’s not enough in itself to be suspicious, but he’s also taken to walking past the store front everyday (or sometimes two or three times, if he’s feeling antsy). Just to make sure that your stupid, fleshy, vulnerable body is still in one piece. That you haven’t been destroyed, somehow. Like you might offer that strange, empty smile to the wrong person and the floor will just give out from under you or something.
Not that it matters.
He knows he’s being sloppy, absurd. You don’t even know each other. He hasn’t said a single word to you, so far.
You go through your little speech, each time you see him. You don’t even seem to care that he appears to be ignoring you, just peer at him with that strange, unhappy smile.
He keeps running through possible scenarios for if he did speak. How you would react. You clearly don’t recognize him as a wanted villain, but maybe you would look at him, really look, and hate what you see.
He could, of course, say something inane and inconsequential. “Thank you,” or “Good afternoon.” Something you’ve heard a thousand times, no way to tell if they’re your words. And then he could disappear, leave you to obscurity, continue with his meticulous plans that never involved another, powerless person.
But he doesn’t. He visits your shop and he buys chips and bar soap, little granola bars shaped like cats for Toga. He doesn’t say a word as you stare through him like a ghost.
You don’t notice him.
This routine, your hours and his visiting, is so infallible that the one day you’re gone he feels a bizarre sort of hostility. You’re supposed to be here—-how is he supposed to do this if you’re not here?
He stands in the doorway, staring at the place you should be. The electronic bell chimes continuously when he doesn’t move.
There’s another person at the register, a man, and without thinking Shigaraki demands, “Where is she?”
The cashier splutters, confused, and Shigaraki clarifies. “The girl who works here.”
“She’s in back,” is the hesitant reply. “You want me to go get her?”
Shigaraki follows his gaze, to the little door at the opposite end of the shop. “Why isn’t she up here?”
“She’s having a thing.”
“A what?”
“You don’t know? Aren’t you friends?”
Shigaraki doesn’t answer. He turns on his heel and walks out the door, thoughts gone cavernous with whatever trouble you’re in. He’s disgusted with himself for it.
Waste, waste, waste.
...
He tells himself he won’t go back. It’s his mantra as he rolls out of bed, as he sips cold coffee and works on his plans. As he wanders out the door, not in any direction.
He always ends up in front of your store.
It’s been a month and two days since he found you—-that’s how he thinks of it now. Found, like he’s an active participant in this farce. Like he was searching for you to begin with.
He doesn’t stop, even though he knows he should. There must be some sort of medical reason for it, some soulmate affliction, a biological urge driving him closer, closer.
He’s been reading about it. There’s a lot of information on the internet, medical journals and first hand accounts. The brunt of it amounts to: it depends. On the people, the timing, the circumstances.
And what are your circumstances? Hardly soulmates at all. Just people orbiting each other like twin stars, on the collision course.
Fuck.
But he doesn’t stop.
He learns your favorite color from the clothing you wear. Your taste in music from what you play on the store radio when no one else is working. Sometimes if he’s quiet, he can catch you doodling on old receipts when you don’t notice you have a customer. He almost asks you if he can have it, but it’s nothing, just garbage, and that would require speaking, anyway.
He learns other things, too. Things he absolutely shouldn’t know, but that scratches some secret itch in him. Something that’s come to crave the sight of you like the sun, that almost makes him dig through the trash searching for that little drawing you did.
He knows where you live, and that you live alone. You buy books and then forget to read them. Some nights you sleep with the lights on.
You’re quirkless. He finds that out from city records, browsing through your life like an old newspaper. Quirkless . How rare and tragic—- and of course you would be. Even more vulnerable to everything he is.
The rest of the LOV knows something is wrong, but they are (rightfully) too afraid to ask. Some of them simply don’t care. The good thing about collecting outcasts and unwanteds is that everyone has some sort of issue. A predilection for stalking cashiers is at the bottom of the list.
And he has it under control, mostly. The part of him that wants to be near you claws at him constantly, but he’s gotten good at ignoring it, these past few weeks. He’d swiped a picture of you, a while ago. Your profile turned ghostly by those fluorescents. It’s not pretty—-he’s not sure he would call you that even in better lighting. But it obsesses him, the shape of you, inside and out. Everything about you hanging over him like a sword about to drop.
You start to chatter at him. Pure nonsense. You talk about the weather and the construction down the road. The new bakery that's opened up. A dog you saw on the street.
He refuses to meet your eyes as you talk. He soaks it all in, starved for your voice.
He hates himself. A little.
But he hates the life you lead more, the way it seems to suck you dry. You could be happy, he thinks. In another life.
But this one—-
Your manager yells at you. He’s big, and he uses that cruelly. Looms over you as he berates you for—-something. Episodes he calls them. That thing that happened the day you were missing from the front. Shigaraki doesn’t fully understand. All he knows is that sometimes you just need to be gone, and sometimes you get in trouble for it.
He watches from outside as you get yelled at in the bold light of day. Your manager does it in front of customers, another employee. You take it stone faced, but Shigaraki knows you’re scared. He sees it in the tense line of your shoulders, your hands clasped against your belly. All you can do is nod and agree with the accusations.
Two hours later he stalks around to the back of the building, where your manager is having a smoke.
In another life, you’re happy. In this one, you at least won’t be bullied anymore.
…
Someone else takes over the store. The owner's sister or something.
She knows already that you’ve got issues; the other cashiers gossip terribly. No one asks and you don’t explain it, just silently take your leave when the world goes hot and bright, everything caving in on you like a supernova. You sit in the store room on an old Morinaga box and count your breaths like you’d learned from a video online. You tell yourself everything comes one day at a time. You imagine them trickling down like sand in an hourglass, the tick tick ticking of your life going by.
Then you get back to work.
...
The LOV’s plans are moving forward.
They’re on schedule, but it feels like everything is going so quickly, like he barely has time to blink before the next piece is set in motion.
He doesn’t have time to visit you. They need his firepower too much, his negotiation skills. His intimidation. He works all night, sleeps during the day. Someone else buys supplies, and they do it at one of the bigger chain stores downtown.
They’re transferring to a new hideout soon. No longer down the road from your place of work. The thought makes him jittery as he discusses the move with Kurogiri, his whole body throbbing like a heart attack.
This is for the best.
He knew the old adage, that a soulmates true purpose is to teach you something. This is your lesson—-there is nothing in this world more important than his work. Not even you.
And you’ll be fine. You’ve been fine, slipping along the outskirts of life, a drifter. You’ll land somewhere, eventually. Hopefully in a better world, one he’s brought to fruition.
Still, nostalgia draws him to you, on the day before the move. He doesn’t know why. Just to assure himself that you’re still here? That you haven’t simply vanished from his life like he’s about to from yours?
He enters the store and you greet him vacantly. He browses the shelves with no real intent. All of his focus is on you, stealing glances of you leaning on the counter, listening to the soft rustling of your movements.
You’re quirkless. He doesn’t know why, but the notion suddenly fills him with irritation.
Alone. Surrounded by miracles you’re unable to touch.
Then he’s full on staring at you, everything drawn to a fine point. And you’re staring back.
What , he wants to demand. Wants to ask if you feel it too. The mindless need. The futile desperation.
It’s all over now. He’ll walk away today and never look back. Never think about your face or your hands or your voice. Never think about all the ways you could be hurt, all the tragedies that could befall you.
He’s staring at you, mind made up.
Then he’s jumping the counter, covering you with his own body, arms folded above your head.
Then the glass front of the store is shattering, exploding inward. Shards rain down, glinting like diamonds.
...
You’d been about to say something stupid. Diverging from your natural script. You’d been about to ask him a question.
Do you hate me that much?
He must. He’s always glaring at you, ignoring your attempts at conversation.
There’s something almost comforting about it, the consistency of his animosity. You don’t know what you did to cause it—-just existing, maybe—-but it’s kind of nice, knowing that no matter what, everything will be the same with him.
If only you didn’t want him to like you so, so desperately.
You don’t understand it. It’s strange and ugly. Like you’re always clawing for his attention, grasping for any kernel of —- hope? Acknowledgment? And when you get it, when he meets your eyes for once, it feels like you can breathe for the first time.
You make yourself cringe with how much you want him to like you. With how silly and pointless it all is.
And now—-
“ Get down ,” he’s saying, not quite a yell. A gasp. A hiss.
He doesn’t give you the chance to follow his order. Suddenly he’s on top of you, his weight pressing all the air out of your lungs. You’d hit your head on something. You can’t exactly tell up from down, but you see a huge, lopsided scorch mark on the wall, and that must have been where you were standing. That was almost you.
The man peels himself away, rolling into a crouch. Just his eyes peek over the register.
“Is there a back door?”
It takes you a second to register that he’s talking to you. Your eyes are still glued to the burned wall. “Are we gonna die?”
He clicks his tongue. Useless , his sneer says. He reaches out, grabbing your collar with three fingers, hoisting you up. His other hand slams against the counter. Then the whole thing is gone.
A cloud of dust fills the store, sends you into a coughing fit. You’re half blind as the man drags you along, to the break room in the back. What he sees when he bustles through the door makes him curse.
“There’s no exit,” he snaps, rounding on you like it’s your fault.
You’re still choking, almost keeled over. And something else starts to kick at you from the inside. Your heart is beating too fast. Your chest won’t expand to take in enough air.
“Fuck,” the man says. “ Fuck .”
He pulls you to him again, and down into a crouch. You’re covered by something soft and warm, and you feel the entire building tremor as you’re bundled up.
You can feel the wind, hear the sounds of the city unmuffled. The store is—-gone? Disappeared just like the counter.
The man had pulled you against his side, under his oversized hoodie. He pushes you away just as quick, grabbing you by the apron this time as he steers you through the rubble and into the alley behind the shop.
Fear is still lancing through you, though. You can barely walk. Your vision is starting to burst with darkness.
“I’m going to throw up,” you whisper.
You don’t know how he catches it, your voice is barely there. But he throws a questioning glare over his shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?”
He’s still got you in an indomitable grip. Still pulling you forward. In the back of your mind, you’re aware you should fight, try to get away. Whoever this man is, he’s not your friend. But your vision is swimming and your throat feels like it’s closed up.
“I’m not gonna throw up,” you say.
“Good,” he returns, going even faster now.
“I’m gonna pass out,” you amend.
You don’t get to see the expression he makes when you collapse, but you’re sure it would have lended a bit of levity to the whole situation.
...
You wake to a pressure on your gut.
He’s carrying you—-it takes a few seconds to understand that. All you see is the filthy sidewalk and the back of his dusty hoodie. You’ve been thrown over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
You wouldn’t have expected him to be able to lift you, but he has a surprisingly sturdy grip on you, one arm lashed around your waist, the other holding your legs down, keeping you from kicking him. He’s moving quite fast, too.
You tap on his lower back. And again, harder, when he doesn’t acknowledge you.
“Put me down,” you say.
His grip tightens, his shoulder digging into your abdomen again. “Not yet.”
You squirm. He squeezes, threateningly. You close your eyes and let him do what he wants.
You don’t know how long he carries you for. It feels like days, being swayed along with him as he hurries. Leagues of asphalt and concrete passes under foot as you let yourself be taken, images of burnt wall and dust flashing through your mind. Keeping you docile. Whoever he is, whatever he is, you doubt his quirk only applies to checkout counters.
You’re barely cognizant of entering a building. You glance up, see dark corners, unfinished floors. A warehouse of some kind, with long halls leading in several directions. Another man stands by the far wall, if you can call him that. He hardly seems human, just darkness, staring back at you.
The man holding you grunts in acknowledgment.
“Shigaraki Tomura,” says the shadow. “You’ve brought a guest.”
Guest or prisoner you want to ask.
You don’t.
You let him haul you through the lower floor, up the stairs, barely taking in anything other than the noxious scent of smoke and mold, the darkness that permeates everything like spilled ink. Bad place, it tells you. Unfortunate place.
You’re brought through a door, then another. You scramble away as soon as he sets you down.
You take in your surroundings negligibly. This space looks more liveable. Bedroom-like, with a cot in the far corner, a desk pressed up against the wall. Not much else.
Mostly you’re staring at the man who brought you here. He looms in the doorway, taller than you remembered him being. Stronger, too, now that you know he can not only lift you, but carry you for blocks and blocks.
His face in the dim light seems to hold some sort of promise. He doesn’t come any closer, though. Just stares at you, chin tucked against his throat, eyes dragging up and down your form.
“What’s happening?” you ask. Your voice hardly sounds like your own. Too soft, shaky. Unmoored. You feel two heartbeats away from simply drifting off into the nebulous dark.
He seems to have to pull the answer out of himself. His expression is nearly a scowl. “We were attacked.”
“You’re a villain,” you say, a realization that was slow to dawn on you.
He doesn’t respond.
You try to side step him. “I’m leaving.”
He catches you before you can even put your foot back down, curling one finger around your apron strap and halting you with a firm weight. You’re unbalanced as you meet his gaze again, standing just a breath too close.
You can see more of him now. The hard lines of his face. The irregular scars. There are deep grooves beneath his eyes, the animal markings of pure exhaustion. How does he even hold himself up? How does the weight of his own body not just drag him to the floor?
“No,” he says.
You rear back, but he has you now-- even his fingers strong enough to support your weight. “Excuse me?” you snap. “Get out of my way.”
He sighs, but it sounds more like a hiss. He shakes his head, as if to levy his jumbled thoughts. “I mean -- you can’t.”
“ I’m not a villain .” You try to grab his wrist, wrench him away. For one split second, his face goes steely and bug eyed, pure terror. He releases you the next, and you fall, thudding painfully against the hardwood.
“They’ll be looking for you too,” he says, rising to his full height. As if he hadn’t reacted to your touch like you’re radioactive. As if you’re not puddled at his feet. His mouth hardly moves, almost like he’s just holding back from gritting his teeth. “Like it or not, you’re involved in this as well.”
You haul yourself to standing. Your legs feel like they might give out again at any second, and you retreat from him, shuffling to the other end of the room.
Shouldn’t someone be coming for you? A hero? The police? They must know by now that you’ve been taken hostage -- that you’re scared and alone, facing down a beast of a man.
“I’m not,” you say. “This isn’t my fault.”
He pulls out his phone. He opens the police scanner app, modified to pick out keywords, anything related to the Leagues activity. He looks you in the eye. He presses play.
Static and muffled voices fill the room, the audio jolting between sources like whiplash. But there’s clear information coming through, too.
They’re describing the store, now just ash and the skeletal remains of the wire shelves. And Shigaraki , the man before you. His clothes, the direction he fled in, the apocalyptic effect of his quirk.
And they’re describing you.
Your hair, your height. What you were wearing and assumptions they’ve made based on your gait. Still at large , they’re saying about you. Affiliation unknown .
“I’m not a villain,” you say again. A choked whisper. You’re not even sure it’s audible over the noise, but his frown grows ever so slightly deeper. “They know that, right? They know I didn’t go with you by choice.”
He shuts down the app, pockets his phone. He’s not looking at you anymore when he says, “Do they?”
And you’re reminded of the way the whole building shook as that hero fired off at it, at you. The scorch marks where you had been standing just a heartbeat earlier.
You sink onto the cot. It creaks under your weight. You think it might give out at any moment .
You feel another attack coming on, the tightness in your throat, your vision seemingly unable to catch anything, make sense of anything.
It would disgust him, probably. To see you like this, weak and frightened.
But he’s gone before anything really sets in, locking the door behind him.
...
Dabi is watching from the doorway, gaze following his boss lazily.
Shigaraki has to pass by him to get out.
“What the fuck are you doing, man?” Dabi asks. About this whole situation. About you.
It’s not accusatory in the least. Dry curiosity. Like a house cat batting around a mouse.
Shigaraki doesn’t have an answer. He just scoffs and turns the corner, out the door and into the daylight to hunt down a hero in need of a very firm lesson.
All he can think as he starts toward the rubble of the convenience store is that he almost failed, almost lost you.
He won’t make that mistake again.
...
You flit around the room, investigating, searching. There’s not much to it, all of its secrets already out in the open. There’s one window, overlooking a three story drop. It’s unlocked. You think about it for hours, staring down at the vacant streets below. No one passes by in that time. You don’t think you’re strong enough to crawl to safety with a broken leg, or worse.
So you sit, and you pace, and you stare down at the street. Waiting. You guess for Shigaraki (is that really his name?) to decide what to do with you. You expect him to be an unforgiving warden. The derelict state of this place doesn’t exactly suggest luxury, and you doubt he’d have any sympathy for someone who’d insulted him. Or any qualms about hurting you, in revenge.
Maybe he’ll just kill you, you think.
But he doesn’t.
He unlocks the door and shoulders it open, finds you sitting on the floor, hands in your lap. You look like a child waiting for punishment, and he wants to tell you that things can be more okay. You don’t have to look so frightened, so aggrieved. You can sit on the bed, if you want.
He can see the question in your eyes, the distrust. Like a little cornered animal—-he can almost hear your heart racing from across the room. And why shouldn’t you be afraid? He’s a villain. That comes with context, history. Innate fear.
He’s brought you omurice.
He’s not exceptional at cooking, but he can make something as simple as this without much trouble. Kurogiri offered to do it for him, but the thought of someone else feeding you made Shigaraki’s skin crawl. That’s his job, now.
He crouches before you, a fair distance away. Neither of you could touch the other, even if you reached out. The omurice is on a chipped plate, which he places on the ground and then slides toward you, as if this is a bank robbery.
You finger the chip, pressing so the blunt ceramic edge presses into your skin, threatening to cut. He makes a strange sound at that. A gurgle of distaste, almost a squawk.
You pretend you don’t hear it, choosing instead to pick up the plate, turning it this way and that, peering at the omurice like you’ve never encountered it before. It’s warm, not hot, in your hands. The perfect temperature.
This is one of the meals you make yourself, when you’re too tired to cook anything elaborate. It’s comforting, and familiar. A meal that’s seen you at your worst. And he knows that. He’s taken notes on that, though he’d never admit it, least of all to you.
For a split second, he imagines grief crosses your face, pain like a knife’s blade. But then the moment passes and rage replaces it.
You throw the plate at his feet. Neither of you flinch when it shatters.
And what can he do but rise and turn on his heel, slam the door behind him. A thousand words claw at his throat, desperate and pointless. He feels wild with them, like they might slip out without his consent, reveal too much. Make you even angrier.
Watch your feet, he doesn’t say. Don’t get cut.
Let me know if you get hungry.
Let me help you.
Let me have you.
...
You meet Dabi. More accurately, he enters your room, unprompted and without knocking, and sits himself down on the cot beside you.
He introduces himself, and part of you is sneering internally -- what a dick. The other half is quivering in fear. This face you recognize. He’s the cremation user. The one who burns people.
He leans back on his hands, peering down at you over the bridge of his nose. “They’ll kill you, if you run,” he says. “Are you gonna?”
“I don’t know,” you say honestly. “Is Shigaraki gonna kill me, first?”
He mulls that over for a minute, gaze lingering on your face. Finally, he drops a hand on your shoulder. A friendly pat. However friendly a man like him can be. “Don’t know,” he says. “Never do, with him.”
You clench your fists in your lap, trying not to look at him, and yet so curious. About everything. “He could have let me die,” you murmur. “Earlier. He didn’t.”
“That’s a first.” Dabi laughs. “You got him pussy whipped?”
You cringe at that. No. There hadn’t even been any touching. Hardly any interaction at all, at least on his part. You can’t imagine that he doesn’t hate you. You don’t know what to make of him. Never do, with him . That’s for sure.
Dabi has been with you less than five minutes when Shigaraki comes in, drawn by his internal sense of you, his anxiousness at leaving you alone in the hideout.
He enters the room face down turned, ready for your wrath, your tears, but seeing Dabi sitting beside you, seeing his hand on you -- he snaps. That’s the only way you can think to describe it. No questions, no accusations. He grabs the other man and tosses him to the floor. He’s on top of him quicker than you can blink, hand around his throat, minus one pinky.
You think he’s going to do it, turn him to dust.
You think you’re going to have to watch him kill someone.
It’s not even that you’re not particularly fond of Dabi. You don’t know anything about him, save for the fact that he makes you intensely afraid. You don’t want anything to do with him. But you don’t want him dead.
Shigaraki meets your gaze. His nostrils are flaring, eyes wide. His hand is trembling where it wraps around Dabi’s neck.
You shake your head. So minutely, you’re not even sure you were able to work up the nerve, get past the fear holding you rigid. But, like you’d cut the strings himself, the tension eases from his body. He draws away from Dabi with a click of his tongue.
“No touching,” he says. Then he’s gone, out the door like a wraith.
“Well,” Dabi says, sitting up. Seemingly unphased. “This’ll be fun.”
...
He brings you a salad the next day, with chicken and dressing on the side. He does the same song and dance, placing the food on the floor and sliding it to you. You eye it warily. You’re sure, somehow, that he hasn’t laced it with anything. It must be some soulmate sense, but you know he doesn’t mean you any harm. Still you can’t help but get a little bit squeamish every time he enters the room -- which is frequently, given that he’s taken to checking up on you any time he has the opportunity.
You’ve started to learn his schedule based on when he slinks through the door. Before he leaves and as soon as he comes back. Before he attempts to sleep, and just after the sun rises. You know he’s visited you when you were asleep too. Somehow. You feel it in your bones.
You turn the bowl around in slow circles on the floor. You’re hungry, but you won’t eat it. That feels like surrendering, somehow. Like giving up more than you’re willing to. All of this is his fault. His presence in your life has made you a villain by proxy.
His eyes follow the motion of your hands, like he’s waiting with bated breath. Like he’s the one starving.
“Why are you being so weird?” you demand. You don’t know why you bother talking at all. It’s that gnawing instinct, just like back at the store. You want his attention, despite everything. Even if it’s bad attention.
The glance at your face is quick, like he can’t look at you for too long or he’ll go blind. He says, “You’re afraid of me.”
“Yeah,” you tell him. “You’re afraid of me too.”
You look at his hands, where they dangle impotently between his knees as he crouches before you. They don’t look like the hands of a killer. They’re big, with prominent veins. Thick fingers. You think of reaching out, grabbing two to hold onto like a child. You wonder if he’s as cold as he looks, if you could warm him with your own body heat.
His hands twitch, like he can feel your gaze on him, a physical thing.
“You don’t want to go back,” he says, unprompted. “You hated your life.”
You don’t even have the strength to be offended. “ My life,” you say, exhausted. “Mine.”
You push the salad hard, away from you. It sends leaves shuddering to the floor, the bowl tipping precariously. He reaches out and takes it, slowly. A prey animal afraid of your bite-- isn’t that ridiculous?
“And you know what?” You almost laugh when he looks up at you through his bangs, like he’s a little kid about to be scolded. Your next words are no less heavy for how soft they’re spoken. “I hate you more.”
…
Seared fish and veggies, today.
You almost expected him to let you starve to death after yesterday, but he still checks on you. He hasn’t been coming all the way into the room, just cracking the door and peeking in. One red eye finding you in the shadow like a cheesy monster-of-the-week villain.
He’s extra careful as he slides the plate toward over. Not looking at it, or you. You poke at the cut, no fat, no seasoning from the looks of it. Disgustingly healthy.
“Do you even know my name?” you ask.
His face tightens. He’s clenching his jaw. “It was on your apron. Your nametag.”
You shift, coming closer. He leans back in turn, looking unsteady as he balances on the balls of his feet. That space between his thighs looks so welcoming, now. You want to crawl there, lean your whole body weight against him so he falls.
You ask, “What else do you know about me?”
“A lot,” he says.
You chew on that for a minute, watching as his eyes trail the room, running from corner to corner, avoiding you.
“You’re my soulmate, you know,” you say. You can’t remember your first words to him. Your little customer service speech, most likely. Something boring and inane. Safe.
But yours, the words you’ve been stuck with for your entire life—- Get down . Curled under your clavicle like a brand, like a warning.
You’d known it wouldn’t be pretty, no matter what it was. You’d humored the idea of your soulmate being a hero, for the first few years of your life. Some savior, rescuing you. An adventure rather than a horror scene. As you grew up you knew that the more likely scenario was something less savory. A robbery, you’d settled on. You were destined for a petty thief.
Never once had you considered something like this.
“I always wondered why I wanted your attention so bad,” you say, frowning down at your chipped nails. You’ve been picking at them again, down to the bleeding rind. “And you wouldn’t even look at me, most of the time.”
He’s frowning. “I thought it would be better to leave you alone.”
You give him a pointed look. See how that turned out?
You draw up, onto your knees. Closer to him. You can smell his soap, acrid and sharp. He always bought the anti-bacterial kind at your shop, and it makes him smell like a doctor’s office. “Show it to me.”
His breath catches. “What?”
“The words,” you say. “Mine. On you.”
He peers at you for a moment. Searching for a trick or something. But you’re genuinely curious to see where they are and what they look like. You can’t even remember the first thing you said to him.
He rolls up the sleeve of his shirt. It’s black, and it makes his skin seem to almost glow in contrast, he’s so pale. He’s more muscular than you anticipated. His clothes are always so shapeless you have trouble thinking of him as having a body at all. As the fabric crawls up his arm, you get the urge to touch, feel him, see if your hands will go through him like a ghost.
He has to fold his arm up for you to see them clearly. They stand out starkly on him, hidden yet prominent.
You wonder how it felt growing up with them, if he held onto them with an iron grip like you did. If they convinced him he’s worthy of some kind of love.
The notion opens up some tender space inside you, and you find yourself wanting to reciprocate. You tug on the collar of your shirt, until most of the soulmark is visible. It’s never been pretty. Scratchy, twitchy scrawl. The words are so very ominous.
And yet this is a part of you, too. Something you’ve lived with your whole life, almost symbiotically. It had kept you sane some nights, knowing that you weren’t so unloveable, so alone. You almost laugh as you look down at the words yourself. Look at you now.
When you glance up, you see his face is drawn, so gaze so sharp it seems like he’s looking straight through you. As if in a daze, he reaches for the words, for you.
You reel back, throwing a hand out to block him, in turn.
“You think you’re going to touch me ?” you say, incredulous, almost—-disgusted.
His hand hovers in the space between you impotently. He pulls back slowly, still looking at that spot on your chest. You can almost feel his gaze, molten and heavy.
He retreats without another word. Doesn’t even slam the door.
Your fingers immediately go to the words, pressing and pressing. Wishing, horribly, masochistically, that it was him doing this.
…
It’s been a little over a week with the two of you living beneath the same roof. He’s about to go off the deep end.
You hadn’t fled. You knew when he stopped locking the door to your room, that first night. You also knew that the threat of heroes hunting you down should be enough to keep you put, where he can protect you. Because, despite everything, you’re smart. Despite everything you’re still soulmates, and you’ll still seek out his safety like a burrowing animal.
The result is something he’d never thought he’d have to contend with. Wanting but being unable to take. Observing from afar. He sees you talking to the other members, every once in a while.
They’re gentle with you. Don’t talk about the grittier aspects of their lives. You’re still nervous around them, but you’re also aware that belonging to Shigaraki gives you immunity to their deadlier caveats. They’d never lay a hand on you. They’d never even mention blood in your presence. Or else.
Mostly they ask you questions, prodding for information about your life. They tell you about him, too. His likes and dislikes, his strange habits. He’s almost surprised they’ve learned so much about him (a little peeved, too), but you listen raptly to all of it, taking in the information with a little frown.
So he lets it continue. He lets you wander around the hideout, investigating, keeping yourself occupied. You like Kurogiri, his stability and level headedness. His manners. Shigaraki catches you often, leaned against the bar counter, listening to him talk.
He’s swamped with urges, flashbulb images of him coming up behind you, wrapping his arms around your middle, burying his face against your throat. Or dragging you off to some dark corner, testing out the theories he’s read about bodily compatibility.
He’s never been so hard for so long in his life. Even as a teenager, so closely monitored at all times that he had no hope of jerking off, at least he could 100% Zelda or go for a run to take his mind off it.
There’s no running from you.
You’re everywhere, around every corner, behind every door. You haunt him. His logical mind knows that’s not a fair accusation—you live here. But so does he.
And seeing you exit the bathroom in a cloud of steam, wearing nothing but a long tshirt-- one of his own that he’d surreptitiously added to your closet --it takes all of his will power to not simply grab the hem and lift it up, collapse on you like a torrent of rain.
Instead he turns tail and runs, closing the door to his room with a click of finality.
He’d taken the one next to yours. For ease of access, and because he likes hearing you. Likes knowing you still exist, alive and padding around, so close to him.
He sets himself on his bed, a mirror of the cot you sleep on. He thumps his head against the wall, right where he knows you’re laying, on the other side.
It’s making him almost feral, being so close to you. Making him behave in ways that are probably unbefitting of someone in his position. But you’re his soulmate, and he can’t have you, and what difference does it make that he swapped out your shampoo with his so you smell like him? That sometimes when you’re gonna he slips into your room and shoves his face into your pillow? That he’s swiped a pair of your panties?
He’s been carrying them in his pocket around since he took them, afraid that somehow someone would find them and wouldn’t that be humiliating. Would they tell everyone he’s being blue-balled by his own soulmate? Would they tell you ?
He tugs them out, just so he can look at them. It’s not something he imagines you would have picked out for yourself, but Toga appointed herself as your personal shopper, and she liked things silky and pastel. They’re — cute. Pink with a little bow on the front.
They make him want to punch something.
Knowing that you’re wearing a pair just like this—it makes his jaw clench so hard it hurts.
The material is soft between his fingers. Smooth. He rubs it against his cheek, just to feel it. Against his lips.
The scent of you has faded, but it’s still potent enough to make him groan, to make him leak in his pants. He takes a long, deep breath, imagining his face between your thighs, nuzzling at your core.
His other hand snakes down, under the band of his sweatpants, where he’s already painfully hard. He was never this sex crazed before. Never so hungry for it. He was driven, focused. But now just the sight of you is enough to stop his higher brain function altogether, and the scent of you—
He’s fucking his fist and thinking about you watching him, face curled in disgust—is it possible for you to hate him anymore than you already do? This would be the catalyst. Him mooning over you, so obsessed with you he loses all self control like some kind of bitch in heat. He’s thinking about how much you would hate it if you knew this was happening, how you would despise it.
Then he’s just thinking about you.
Your hair and the way your thighs squish when you’re sitting down. How badly he wants to touch that spot where your ear curves into your jaw. How he wants to bite the fat of your cheeks.
Everything coalesces into a flashpoint of want, until he’s not thinking of anything at all, just you. You and you and you. Until he’s panting open mouthed, drooling onto your underwear, almost shoving his whole fist in his mouth as he tries to drown himself in your scent. He’s choking back moans, knowing you’re still awake just on the side of this wall, so close, so fucking close, and for some reason that is what sends him over, spilling into his palm with a half formed groan.
He fucking hates himself sometimes.