#lovhalloweenhorror

[doumadono]

Warnings: blood, mentions of decomposition, violence, mental & physical abuse, toxic relationship, gore, nakedness, merman!Dabi, female original character, original characters, descriptions of murders and drowning, smut (p in v, oral - f & m receiving), manipulation

Summary: Miyaka, a young woman driven to the brink by a domineering and aloof husband, resolves to end her life in the lake near her husband's estate. Little does she realize that one quaint encounter will irrevocably alter everything, reshaping her understanding of herself, and blurring the boundaries between reality and the inexplicable

Word count: circa 12.1k A/N: I'm delighted to have had the opportunity to take part in this captivating even created by talented @candycandy00 It was my maiden voyage into the world of horror writing, and I genuinely hope that you find my contribution enjoyable. A huge shoutout to my merman specialist, @crystalwolfblog – her unwavering support and expertise were instrumental in shaping this story!

It was an enchanting night.

She stood at the edge of the great lake, its inky waters reflecting the dim glow of the moon like a mirror tainted with despair. Her heart, heavy with the weight of an unhappy marriage, throbbed in her chest, matching the rhythm of her labored breaths. Tears welled up in her eyes, and a lump formed in her throat as she gazed into the blackness of the abyss before her.

The night was eerily silent, save for the distant croak of a lone frog and the rustling of leaves in the chilling breeze. She shivered, not from the cold, but from the darkness that had consumed her entire life. A long, white, flowing dress clung to her trembling form, a stark contrast to the beauty of the night. It felt like a shroud of misery, concealing the bruises and scars that marred her body.

She had been married to a man she loathed, a man who had wed her solely for her parents' substantial dowry. He was possessive, controlling, and violent, and every day with him was a torment she couldn't escape. As she looked down at the scars on her palms, she could hear his voice in her mind, venomous and cruel. "You're mine, and you'll do as I say," he would snarl, his eyes filled with a possessive rage that chilled her soul.

Tonight, as she stood by the lake, she knew she had reached the precipice of her despair. The moon's silver rays bathed the water in an eerie glow, and she found herself muttering out loud, as if trying to rationalize the unthinkable. "I can't go on like this," she whispered to the inky depths before her, her voice a hollow echo in the night. "There's no escape from this torment, no end to the pain he inflicts upon me."

Her fingers brushed against the bruises on her neck, a painful reminder of her husband's merciless grip. The darkness seemed to envelop her, offering a macabre solace, a release from the relentless agony that had become her life.

A sense of dread washed over her as she took a step closer to the water's edge, the lake beckoning with a malevolent allure. She could hear the echoes of her own pleas for help, trapped within the walls of her loveless home. She had no one to turn to, no one to confide in, for he had isolated her from all those who cared about her, even though there weren't many of them.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and sobs wracked her body. The weight of her misery threatened to drag her under, deeper into the cold abyss. Her mind was a whirlwind of torment, and she continued to speak her sorrow aloud. "I just want the pain to stop," she murmured, her voice quivering. "I want freedom from this living nightmare."

Meantime, claws, like daggers forged in the abyss, pierced the tender flesh of the fish, snapping it asunder with the ease of breaking brittle twigs. Delicate bones shattered, their lamenting cracks akin to dried leaves crumbling beneath a malevolent force, as the ichor of life spilled forth in crimson tendrils, vanishing into the dark, ravenous depths. Razor-edged teeth, like shards of obsidian, tore through the delicate meat, rending it into fragments devoured by the insatiable monster.

This lake, embraced by a shroud of old woods, lay in proximity to a quiet city, a deceptive guise for an ideal feeding ground, or so it would seem. Elders strolled along its shore, seeking solace in the serenity of its waters, while children harbored dreams of frigid immersion, and clandestine encounters found their haven amidst the trees. Yet, the reality proved far bleaker.

Touya had ventured here in the hopes of a bountiful feast, having expended immense effort to navigate a subterranean passage connecting the vast expanse of the open sea to this secluded lake. His rewards were meager, a pitiful array of minuscule fish, native to these forsaken waters.

Resting on the lakebed, his lithe form culminating in a shark-like appendage, he contemplated a return to the boundless sea, where sustenance was plentiful. However, his sharply pointed, fin-like ears detected a peculiar disturbance, both auditory and visual.

The cacophony of a loud splash rent the silence, an intrusion too substantial for a mere fish or woodland creature's leap. Touya's senses honed in on the source, identifying an anomaly—an unmistakable human presence.

Swiftly, he propelled himself towards this enigma, only to discover a form cloaked in a long, flowing white gown, gradually succumbing to the lake's murky abyss. Drawing nearer, he seized the delicate ankle, hauling the figure closer for examination.

Fortuna's fickle favor had delivered a woman into his grasp, and while the prospect of her tender flesh stirred his primal hunger, an audacious notion overcame his instincts. The thrill of an encounter akin to a true siren's seduction beckoned, and the notion of her consumption transformed into a sinister game.

Against his ravenous desires, Touya encircled the fragile woman's frame with his sinuous arms, drawing her from the water's embrace onto the shore, where the macabre performance of a siren's sinister plan would soon commence.

As she splashed and struggled in the water, her vision blurred with panic. Her arms flailed wildly, and she gasped for air, unaware of what had caught her beneath the surface. Each thrash seemed to pull her deeper into the dark abyss, and the murky water filled her mouth easily, making her gag and sputter.

She couldn't see what had a hold of her, but the sensation of strong arms wrapping around her fragile body only heightened her fear. Her heart pounded in her chest, and her lungs burned for oxygen as she continued to fight against the unseen force.

Desperation set in, and she opened her mouth to scream, but instead, she inadvertently swallowed more water. It flooded her throat and rushed into her lungs, choking her, a burning sensation filling her pharynx and nose. The world around her grew dimmer, and her struggles weakened as her consciousness waned.

In the end, the water won, claiming her as its own. She slipped into unconsciousness, her body limp.

The beast, concealed beneath the watery veil of his domain, observed her futile resistance with a dispassionate eye. In the realm of aqueous shadows, humans were like vulnerable prey, their minds adrift in a soporific stupor. Submerged in liquid depths, they became rabid creatures confined within a cage of their own making, drawing ever nearer to the precipice of their demise with each gasping breath.

In a stroke of providence, the woman in his grasp surrendered to the dark embrace of unconsciousness. Her unconsciousness spared him the ordeal of wrestling with her thrashing form. It was a mercy he granted her, one she should consider herself fortunate to receive, for he had contemplated a far less compassionate fate.

With a grace befitting a creature of his nature, he transported her limp form to the water's edge, a sanctuary where the forest's tender grass merged with the lake's sandy shore. Touya did not deign to change his form, instead choosing to remain perched beside her prone body, a silent sentinel.

Reclining with his tail coiled comfortably, his scrutinizing gaze fell upon the woman's fragile form. Despite the dark blemishes that adorned her skin like aged spots upon a ripened fruit, her flesh beckoned like an illicit delicacy. The mere thought of sinking his serrated teeth and razor-sharp claws into her tender form sent his mouth awash with anticipation. He yearned to hear her cries of agony, to witness the crimson cascade of her life's essence, to observe the last flicker of vitality extinguish from her eyes as he ravaged her insides.

Yet, in a rare moment of restraint, the monster resisted the primal urge. No, he would savor this encounter, extracting a different form of pleasure if she were to awaken, for the thrill of her torment held a dark allure all its own.

Coughing violently, she jolted back to consciousness, her body wracked with spasms as the water that had filled her lungs was expelled with each hacking cough. It felt like her chest was on fire, and every cough sent painful ripples through her body.

For a moment, she struggled to sit up, her vision still blurred and her head pounding. She couldn't see clearly, but she had a distinct feeling that she was not alone. Panic gripped her again as she realized that someone or something was nearby.

Her coughs soon subsided, and she took ragged, shallow breaths, trying to clear the lingering water from her airways. Her gaze finally focused, and she saw it – a creature unlike anything she had ever encountered.

It sat beside her, its sharp features illuminated by the faint moonlight filtering through the trees. Its eyes, piercing and predatory, had turquoise irises with black sclera, a striking and unusual combination, creating an otherworldly appearance. The turquoise color itself was vibrant, reminiscent of the clear, tropical waters of a pristine ocean. Its gaze was fixed on her. Its body was a grotesque blend of human and sea creature, with scales and fins that seemed to shimmer in the dim light.

Terror coursed through her as she realized she was not in the safety of her own world anymore. She had been pulled into a nightmare, and this creature, this beast, was surely about to kill her.

She scrambled back, away from it, her heart pounding in her chest. Her voice trembled as she stammered, "W-who are you? What do you want from me?" But deep down, she feared that she already knew the answer.

As she desperately attempted to crawl through the grassy-muddy ground, every movement felt like a relentless struggle against the unforgiving terrain. The thick mud clung tenaciously to her hands and knees, making progress slow and arduous.

Eyes, vibrant and eerily alive, remained fixed on her every frantic movement. Yet, the pallid form that lay behind her, marred by ominous, dark splotches, remained immobile, preserving its enigmatic stillness until the woman's frenetic struggles yielded to silence.

A hand, adorned with webbed membranes that stretched sinuously between each finger, terminated in formidable claws. It moved through his own hair, a short cascade of pristine white, like freshly fallen snow. An insidious smile played upon his lips, revealing rows of serrated teeth that glistened malevolently in the dim light. His ears, akin to the finned appendages of some abyssal creature, possessed two sharp points and twitched slightly as he cocked his head in contemplation. "Is this how you extend gratitude to your savior?" His voice, a beguiling cadence that rivaled the most enchanting melody, seemed ill-fitted for his grotesque form. Yet, it was a weapon, not an adornment, a reminder that he wielded both power and allure. "One should exercise greater caution around these waters, miss. The prospect of losing one's life so recklessly hardly seems appealing."

The sight of her futile attempt to flee stirred a perverse pleasure within him. He found himself increasingly torn by his own plot, yet its wheels were set in motion, and he felt compelled to carry it to its conclusion. "Are you unharmed, miss? Do you feel any pain?" The inward cringe he felt at his unexpected benevolence clashed with his innate siren pride, an unsettling dissonance that inexplicably satisfied him.

The shock of hearing the creature speak, its voice so mesmerizing and soft, took her aback for a moment. She struggled to regain her confidence, her voice quivering as she managed to stammer out a question again, "W-What are you?"

As she continued to tremble, she finally collapsed onto her still-muddy knees. The weight of despair and desperation bore down on her, and she found herself confessing her dark intentions, her voice heavy with anguish, "I... I wanted to end my life."

She couldn't fathom why she had confessed her merciless plan to end her own life to this strange water creature. It felt surreal, as if she had already crossed into some sort of hellish realm beyond the realm of the living. Perhaps she had succumbed to the deadly water filling her lungs, and this creature was nothing more than a manifestation of her fractured mind.

But despite the uncertainty and the eerie circumstances, a part of her clung to the hope that maybe, just maybe, this encounter held some deeper meaning.

End her own life? He understood all too well that humans were, in his estimation, pitiful and often nothing more than a source of sustenance. However, this act was a new level of wretchedness, a lamentable display that played perfectly into his hands. It would grant him effortless dominion over her fragile psyche, cloaked in a deceptive veneer of benevolence, free from the shadow of his true nature. It promised to be a game as simple as toying with a child's plaything.

Touya edged closer, his movements constrained only by the limits of his domain. His cold hand, pallid and adorned with menacing claws, extended toward her own, long fingers encircling her palm with a touch that grazed her skin like a whispered threat. "End your life? Miss, how could you contemplate such a tragic act?" His voice, like the sweetest of lullabies, dripped with feigned empathy. "A woman of such exquisite beauty, extinguishing her own light — it would be a grievous loss to the world."

The sole witnesses to this deceitful charade were the moon, whose silvery glow bathed the lake and the encircling dark forest, and the enigmatic veil of night. The woods formed an impenetrable barrier, a divide between his aquatic realm and the distant human settlement, lending an illusion of sanctuary. This tableau, a fusion of darkness illuminated by the radiant moon, resembled a masterpiece plucked from the realm of the surreal, gracing the place with an eerie charm.

Her body shivered, not just from the cold but from the sensation of the creature's wet hand with its sharp claws closing around hers. It was an eerie feeling, like a surreal dream that she couldn't wake up from. The moonlit darkness around her only added to the strangeness of the moment.

The creature's soothing voice seemed to be at odds with the sharpness of its claws, and she couldn't help but feel a mix of fear and fascination in the beast's presence. Everything about this encounter defied logic and reason, and she was desperately seeking some semblance of understanding in this bizarre situation. "What are you?" she asked once more, her voice trembling as she stared into the creature's captivating turquoise eyes. "Am I... am I dead?"

Touya tenderly clasped her hand, his fingers exploring the contours of her skin and the supple muscles beneath. An insidious hunger stirred within him, and he battled the overpowering urge to sink his teeth into her soft flesh.

Instead, he brought her delicate palm to his lips, where his tongue languidly traced a sinuous path across her skin. A shiver of desire coursed through him as he inhaled the intoxicating fragrance that clung to her, an aroma as sweet and irresistible as the most alluring of temptations. "I believe you are quite alive, miss," he purred, his voice a seductive whisper. "One cannot be considered dead while radiating such warmth."

Horrified and disgusted by the creature's unsettling actions, she finally found her voice and strength. With a shudder, she forcefully withdrew her hand from the creature's grasp, her face contorted in a mixture of revulsion and fear. "What are you?" she demanded, her voice trembling with a newfound determination. The earlier feeling of hope had been tainted by the creature's disturbing behavior, and she needed answers more than ever. She was no longer willing to tolerate the enigmatic presence of the creature without understanding the truth of its nature.

A pair of luminescent, cerulean eyes bore into her with an eerie intensity, even as the monstrous figure let out a low, mocking laugh. He unfurled his form, revealing a pale body adorned with enigmatic dark markings and a magnificent tail that shimmered like a sinister jewel beneath the moon's ghostly radiance. "Is it truly so challenging to discern, miss?" he taunted, his voice a silky, melodious cadence. "I am a water-dwelling creature, inhabiting these very depths. You seem remarkably ungrateful - I saved your life, and not a word of thanks graces your lips."

The sudden audacity displayed by the woman intrigued him. It was a peculiar sight to behold — someone who had sought to end their own existence, now attempting to assert dominance as if he were the lesser of the two. He harbored a morbid fascination for this unfolding drama and was more than willing to indulge her in this charade.

As she shivered in the coldness of the night, her mind raced with conflicting emotions. The creature's words were unsettling, yet there was a grain of truth in what it had said - it had saved her from her own desperate act, and she couldn't deny that fact.

Swallowing her fear, she decided to pursue the conversation further. "I... I appreciate that you saved me," she stammered, her voice still shaking. "But I need to understand. What's your name? Do you even have one? And why did you intervene? I didn't want to be saved, that's not what I hoped for."

"You may call me Touya," he acknowledged with a nod, bestowing upon her a disarming smile that revealed a row of dangerously sharp teeth. "I am, by nature, a siren, and you, dear miss, have disrupted the tranquil harmony of my lake. At first, I assumed it was some unsuspecting creature taking an ill-fated plunge, but when my eyes fell upon a human as resplendent as yourself, I simply couldn't ignore the spectacle."

He offered this explanation in a voice as smooth as velvet, its mellifluous tones designed to insinuate themselves into her fragile psyche. Touya typically employed this beguiling cadence to lure unsuspecting individuals into the water, but in her case, he sought to quell her anxiety and delay her inevitable flight. "I dare say, fortune itself must be watching over you," he continued, his voice dripping with a honeyed reassurance. "For you have chosen to cast yourself into these depths, and in that choice, you've affirmed the value of life, young miss."

She remained silent, her shock and bewilderment apparent in her wide eyes as she stared at Touya. She blinked several times, as if trying to convince herself that this surreal encounter was real.

Her formerly white dress, now covered in mud and grass, clung to her body, the once pristine fabric marred by her ordeal. Some marine flora had found its way onto the dress as well, further adding to the disarray of her appearance. Her hair was a tangled mess, damp from her recent struggle in the lake. The soaked material of the dress offered little concealment, and her perky breasts were subtly visible through the fabric.

The woman struggled to make sense of it all, torn between the desire to flee from this creature and the nagging feeling that there was something soothing about his presence.

The woman's bewilderment bore a certain charm, and Touya couldn't help but relish the success of his beguiling voice. Seizing the opportunity, he inched closer to her until he was positioned right beside her, his attention now devoted to the delicate task of untangling debris from her disheveled hair. "I hope you don't find it intrusive, but might I inquire about your name, miss?" he asked, his voice a soothing melody, while he carefully plucked remnants from her tangled locks. "I find myself quite intrigued by the enigma I've just rescued."

His gaze wandered to her, swiftly detecting the telltale marks that marred her neck — a grim testament to the assailant who had been thwarted in their pursuit. With a possessive glint in his eyes, he whispered softly, his fingers lightly grazing her throat as he voiced his observation, "It seems someone has inflicted harm upon you."

"My name is not important," she replied with a distant, haunted look in her eyes. "I've been called so many slurs, I almost forgot my own name."

As Touya got closer, her senses were alarmed, and she instinctively got up, her stained attire a mess as she attempted to improve her appearance. She felt a mixture of fear and unease in the presence of this enigmatic creature.

Suddenly, a male voice came from afar, calling out for Miyaka. 

She gasped, her heart pounding as she recognized the voice of her husband. The very mention of her name sent a chill down her spine, and she knew that her desperate escape had not gone unnoticed. Panic washed over her, and she turned to Touya, her voice trembling. "I need to go now," she said urgently. "I have to go."

And with that she simply ran away, stopping twice to look back at the merman over her shoulder. Soon yet, she vanished in the woods.

Touya felt the embers of his anger smoldering within him, stoked by an ever-growing hunger, especially after the tantalizing taste of her skin.

With a frustrated growl, he retreated back into the murky depths of the lake, cursing himself for the absurd notion that had briefly gripped him.

The embrace of the cold water swiftly quelled his rising temper. As he sank to the lake's bottom, he contemplated how best to reclaim the woman he refused to let slip from his grasp.

_____________________________

Over the following days, Touya employed his hypnotic voice, weaving a mesmerizing aria to beckon her back to the waters. It did ensnare a lost, young soul, but not the one he so fervently desired. Nevertheless, the young girl, enticed by his enchantment, undressed and ventured into the chilling embrace of the lake a few nights later.

That was the moment he seized.

As the girl floated on her back, lost in the tranquility of the lake's surface, a sinister force latched onto her ankle, yanking her beneath the water's surface.

Desperation and fear churned within her, and she thrashed wildly, her outstretched hands clawing at the surface, futilely struggling against the monstrous grip. A pale hand, equipped with menacing claws, clamped onto her slender ankle, sealing her grim fate as prey to a relentless kelpie.

He held her under until her struggles ceased, ensuring her life was extinguished before allowing himself to retrieve the lifeless body.

With an eerie detachment, Touya surveyed his gruesome feast. He tore into her flesh, devouring the most succulent portions and discarding what he deemed unworthy. Each organ yielded a delectable, squishy texture, untainted by the ravages of time and human indulgence. 

But the heart, that was his ultimate indulgence. Delving for the heart was always a pleasure for Touya, akin to prying open a clam. He reveled in the visceral experience — ripping through flesh, unveiling the rib cage formed from robust bones that snapped like dry twigs under his unrelenting grasp. Inside lay the heart. Sinking his teeth into the still-beating organ was akin to prying open a precious pearl encased within the ribs, the bones cracking like brittle twigs beneath his formidable grip.

Having sated his appetite by consuming the choicest portions, he discarded whatever seemed unworthy, flinging it aside. Seated beside the lifeless body on the bottom of the lake, he seized the hand, twisting it until the elbow joint surrendered with a gruesome pop. The skin tore haphazardly, leaving jagged edges adorning the amputated limb. Now he could relish the taste of human flesh as he bit into it.

This grotesque repast sustained him for the next few days, casting a pall of momentary satisfaction over his insatiable hunger. All that remained were bones, some still intact while others lay shattered, along with soiled garments and scattered remnants of meat.

Yet, he didn't forget about the girl named Miyaka. He toiled tirelessly to entice her back to the lake, driven by an unrelenting determination to make her his own once more.

_____________________________

Her husband was furious at her attempt to escape, and his anger had escalated to violence. The evening had been unbearable, her husband's rage unleashed upon her for daring to defy him and attempt to escape. He had scolded and hit her, his anger leaving her bruised and terrified. As a punishment, the man decided to confine her to a cramped guest bedroom in their shared, or rather his exclusive, house.

The memories of her near escape and her encounter with Touya, the merman, haunted her constantly. She longed for the soothing presence of the lake, where she had briefly found respite from her torment.

One evening, as the sun began to set and darkness crept over the land, she heard a faint, melodious voice carried by the evening breeze. It was distant, yet unmistakable. The voice belonged to Touya, the merman who had saved her life just a few days prior. The sound seemed to come from afar, but Miyaka was more than sure of its origin.

Miyaka cried throughout the day and night, her tears eventually lulling her to sleep in her cramped confinement. And there, in the depths of the night, the magical, soothing voice of Touya returned to her. Sometimes she would shake off the feeling, trying to rationalize that it was impossible for her to hear his voice from so far away. But in the lonely darkness of her captivity, she began to dream about the merman, his appearance simultaneously dangerous and alluring. His presence in her dreams became a lifeline, a glimmer of hope in her otherwise bleak existence.

One night, Miyaka decided to try her luck as their maid forgot to lock her in the bedroom after bringing her supper. The nights had become colder, and she threw a light coat over her shoulders, concealing her black dress beneath. Tiptoeing downstairs, she could hear her husband engaged in a conversation with his friends who had come to visit. Luck seemed to be on her side as she also heard the clinks of glasses, most likely filled with sake – it meant her husband wouldn't notice her leaving the house.

Quietly sneaking through the corridor, she closed the front door gently behind her. The cool night air filled her lungs, and a smile crept onto her lips – she felt free again.

Suddenly, a female voice emerged from the darkness on her left. "You shouldn't be seeing him, he's a demon," it cautioned. It was their maid, an old lady named Yuki.

Miyaka frowned and replied, "I have no idea what you're talking about. I just need to take a walk. I can't function like this."

Yuki sighed, her eyes filled with concern, and she moved closer, holding some logs in her hands. She reached out and gently placed one hand on Miyaka's shoulder. "My child, stay away from that lake, it's a cursed place. Many souls were lost there, long forgotten by this world. Don't let your sadness and loneliness drag you there, to that hellish place."

Miyaka shook the hand of the older woman off her shoulder. "Please stop, Yuki-san. I'm a grown-up, and I know how to take care of myself. I've been there many times before, and I've never seen or heard anything unusual," Miyaka lied smoothly. "People often concoct unusual stories, usually to frighten children away from venturing there on their own, to prevent accidents or drownings. And don't tell my husband you saw me."

Yuki let out a deep sigh, her eyes carrying a sadness that seemed to weigh her down. "You're making a mistake, my child."

But Miyaka wasn't listening anymore. She was already running towards the lake, as if some strange, invisible force was pushing her towards it.

Touya's throat felt raspy as he completed his haunting melody. A gnawing doubt crept in, questioning the worth of straining his vocal cords for the sake of a pitiful human.

With an irritated growl, Touya glared at the moon before submerging himself back into the water. He couldn't help but feel frustrated that the woman hadn't been devoured when she first plunged into the lake; it seemed like that was her intention after all. Yet, the irresistible urge to play with human pathetic life had taken precedence.

As he rested on the lake's bottom, he patiently waited, a glimmer of hope in his heart that perhaps she had at last heard his enticing voice, sparing him the need to actively seek her out once more.

Miyaka finally arrived at the lake, the moon casting an eerie glow over the surrounding woods. The night was heavy with a sense of foreboding, the tall trees looming like silent sentinels in the darkness. The lake, approachable through a narrow path in the woods, shimmered like a dark mirror, its surface reflecting the cold, distant stars.

As she crouched near the water, her fingers trembling, she tapped the surface with her fingertips, whispering his name in a hushed, desperate tone. Her heart pounded in her chest, and a chill ran down her spine. The air seemed thick with an unnatural stillness, as if the very forest held its breath, waiting for something to happen.

Miyaka's feelings were a tumultuous mix of fear and longing. She had been drawn here by an inexplicable force, a connection she couldn't explain. Her mind told her to flee this eerie place, to return to the safety of her husband's house, but her heart and soul yearned for something else, something she couldn't quite comprehend.

As she continued to call out to him, the water remained still, and a sense of dread settled over her. In the heart of the night, in the midst of the haunted woods, she was about to confront a reality she could never have imagined.

A shock of white hair emerged from beneath the water's surface, followed by a pair of radiant blue eyes that observed her with an eerie, almost otherworldly glow, resembling the lost flames of souls.

So she had returned! The woman had willingly walked back into the snare that would ultimately lead to her demise. It was a stark testament to the foolishness of humans, their vulnerability to the allure of his voice despite their long-standing awareness of water creatures like him. Truly, their ignorance was nothing short of pathetic.

As the woman extended her hand into the water, he gracefully swam closer and gently enveloped her hand with his own, guiding it beneath the water's surface just enough to plant a delicate kiss on the top of her palm. To her, it likely appeared as a customary human gesture, but for him, it was an opportunity to savor her essence once more, and she tasted exquisite.

He released her hand and revealed his full form to her. "You've returned, miss," he stated calmly. "I thought you were too frightened of me to come back."

When her hand dipped into the water, she felt a gentle pull, and her breath caught as the merman's lips pressed against the top of her palm. It was a fleeting gesture, one that she perceived as a kind human custom, but the sensation sent shivers through her.

As he let go of her hand, she finally saw him in his entirety. He revealed himself to her, and she was spellbound by his otherworldly appearance. His words reached her ears, and she couldn't help but respond, her voice trembling with a mixture of fear and fascination. "I... I couldn't stay away," she admitted, her gaze locked on his mesmerizing eyes. "I don't understand what's happening, but there's something about you that draws me back, despite my fear."

"Oh? Is that so?" He mused with a hint of curiosity. Without further ado, he gracefully submerged beneath the water's surface without unnecessary words.

Miyaka watched with a mixture of fascination and trepidation as he hummed and disappeared beneath the water's surface. Her heart pounded in her chest as she waited for his return, her mind awash with questions and a growing sense of unease.

She couldn't help but wonder what secrets lay hidden beneath those dark, mysterious waters.

Touya emerged from the murky water just a moment later, but there was something different about him this time.

Instead of his tail, Touya was now standing on his own two legs. His body was strong, but his skin was pale with dark purple splatters all over it. He sighed deeply, running a hand through his wet hair.

Then he turned to her, standing there like the day he was born, completely unbothered by his nakedness. "Maybe it was destiny itself that brought you here, or perhaps you are in love, miss. How about we take a little walk?" he hummed, using his voice in a specific way to maintain his control over her.

Miyaka's eyes widened in shock as she saw him looking more like a human. Her cheeks flushed at his nakedness, and at first, she turned her head away, trying to regain her composure. His voice, however, was so sweet and enchanting that she found herself unable to resist his offer.

With a shy smile, she finally met his gaze and nodded in agreement. "A walk sounds nice," she replied, her voice slightly trembling.

"Then, come on, for it would be my privilege to stroll alongside a lady of your grace," Touya whispered, his voice a gentle melody, its soft vibrations resonating in the quietude of the night.

As they embarked on their journey, the moonlight filtered through the forest canopy, bestowing an otherworldly glow upon their surroundings. Miyaka found herself caught in a swirl of emotions. On one hand, the night's beauty enthralled her — the moon's tranquil reflection upon the serene lake and the enigmatic presence of her companion held an undeniable allure.

Yet, beneath this surface enchantment, a lingering fear clung to her heart. She walked alongside a creature she could barely fathom—a being who had both saved her and possessed the potential to harm her. Her steps were cautious, her senses acutely attuned, yet she couldn't deny the strange magnetism of the situation that kept her near him.

"Touya," she ventured with trepidation, "you mentioned being a siren earlier, and I believe you obviously... But I've been pondering... What sustenance does a being like you feed on?"

The merman gazed at her through half-lidded eyes, offering a subtle shrug of his shoulders. "I am indeed a siren, and I'm pleased that you trust me. If you're truly curious, I subsist on fish and other creatures that dwell within this very lake." Touya gently entwined his hand with hers, their fingers interlocking. "Is there a particular reason for your concern?" he inquired softly.

Miyaka's fingers held onto Touya's hand with a hint of tension as she confessed, "Our maid, Yuki-san, she warned me about you. She called you a devil and spoke of the many people who have disappeared near this lake." Her gaze wavered between fear and fascination as she continued, "Despite her warnings, I couldn't resist the pull of this place, and of you."

In response, Touya emitted a low purring sound and drew a bit nearer, his hand reaching to tenderly brush her cheek. "People often spin tales to frighten children or to add intrigue to their lives," he remarked, his voice laced with a soothing quality. "Do you truly believe I would have saved you if I were the monster they depict?" he lied smoothly.

Miyaka yielded to the allure of Touya's touch, her fear momentarily giving way to an inexplicable attraction. "I... I don't know what to believe anymore," she confessed, her voice quivering with uncertainty. “But I trust you…”

As they continued their walk, Miyaka was suddenly assaulted by a foul odor that made her wince and scrunch up her nose. "Oh God, what an awful smell!" She scanned the area, trying to locate the source of the stench.

Dabi's brow furrowed with a sense of foreboding; he already had a suspicion about what she was referring to. It was likely the remains of the girl who had come to the lake before her, her torn and discarded body now possibly decomposing in the tall grass, right where he had left it; Touya had no inclination to allow the wretched remnants of a pitiful human to decompose within the sacred waters of his lake. He cursed himself for not disposing of it more discreetly, hiding the evidence of his previous encounter.

Miyaka couldn't resist investigating the foul odor. She carefully approached the nearby bushes, her heart pounding with dread. As she parted the dense foliage, she was met with a gruesome sight.

There, partially concealed among the tangled branches and leaves, were the decaying remains of what appeared to be a human. The body was in a horrifying state of decomposition, and the stench was overwhelming. Maggots crawled in and out of the decomposing flesh, and Miyaka felt bile rise in her throat.

She stumbled back, horrified by the grisly discovery. "Oh my God," she whispered, her voice trembling with shock and disgust. "What... what is this?!" The realization that something terrible had happened here sent shivers down her spine. "Oh my dear God!" She started crying.

Touya swiftly ensnared her in his grasp, drawing her nearer as his arms coiled around her, a tight and sinister embrace. His hushed whispers carried an eerie weight, like a sinister lullaby meant to enthrall. "You humans are often desperate creatures," he murmured, his tone taking on a dark, chilling timbre. "I didn't know she was here. She probably came for the same reason you did those days ago, but she succeeded."

The sinister undercurrent in his words hung in the air, weaving a web of unsettling secrets and uncertainty. Miyaka's heart raced as Touya pulled her into a tight hug, but his touch only intensified her fear and disgust. The overwhelming desire to escape this situation consumed her, like a trapped animal seeking freedom. As her mind churned with conflicting emotions, the feeling of unease grew stronger. She needed to get away, to put distance between herself and whatever had transpired here. "That's disgusting! Poor soul..." she whispered, her voice trembling. 

But then realization struck, and her horror deepened. "Wait... How do you know it was a woman? These remains are unrecognizable, you can't determine who it was... Oh my God... oh my God, you killed her..." Miyaka began to back away slowly, her eyes filled with a terror that clawed at her very soul.

Touya's frown deepened as he regarded her, her skepticism gnawing at his patience. His voice, laced with irritation, rumbled like distant thunder, "You are too quick to pass judgment, miss. My existence is far removed from your understanding, and my senses perceive the world in ways you cannot fathom."

Turning away from her, he continued in a lower tone, his words designed to play on her human psyche, "I saved your life, yet you accuse me of murder."

Miyaka, caught in a conflict of emotions, felt a wave of guilt cascade over her like a shadowed waterfall. Had her accusations been too hasty, she wondered? Touya's words, though cryptic, resonated with a strange sincerity. Yet, the puzzle pieces of this enigmatic encounter didn't quite fit into the mosaic of her understanding.

Opting to retain her doubts in the vault of her thoughts, Miyaka approached Touya, her arms encircling his waist from behind with a hesitancy akin to a delicate breeze quivering through a forest of doubts. Her voice trembled, a blend of trepidation and contrition as she spoke. "I... I apologize if I misconstrued, Touya. The world here feels surreal, and my fear cast shadows over my judgment. Forgive me."

Touya's lips curled into a smile, hidden from her eyes. In her vulnerability, her heartstrings resonated to his voice's enchanting tune. The pieces of his plan were falling into place as he desired.

He released a deep, contemplative sigh, his fingers gently caressing the arms wrapped around his waist. His voice, a velvet whisper, embraced the still night air. "Yes, I saved you. If I were the monster you fear, you would have been my meal the very day you graced the water with your presence. But, dear miss, I forgive you, for there's something about you that intrigues me."

Miyaka's voice quivered as she made her request, her longing for confirmation overpowering her doubts. "Touya," she murmured, the name like a sweet melody on her lips, "would you... kiss me? To anchor this moment in reality, to assure me that I'm not merely adrift in some dream?"

Touya's hands gently slid to Miyaka's, separating them from his waist. He released himself from her embrace and turned to face her, his smile still present as he cupped her face with his cool palms. "Sirens are known for granting wishes. Your wish is my command, fair lady," he whispered softly before leaning in to kiss her.

Their kiss was both slow and intense, a dance of desire and mystery. Touya's sharp teeth clanked against hers, but he quickly took control of the kiss, his forked tongue parting her lips, exploring her mouth.

Miyaka responded eagerly to Touya's kiss, her initial hesitation giving way to a surge of desire and curiosity. Her hands began to explore his physique with a boldness she hadn't known she possessed. Fingers traced the lines of his pale skin, feeling the strange yet alluring texture of his body. As their lips moved in a passionate dance, her fingers traveled from his chest to his back and further south, grasping his ass. Her tongue danced with his.

Touya blinked, and retreated, his gaze locked on her with a smug, playful smile dancing on his lips. He ran his tongue over his mouth. "Behold, dear lady, clutching a monster’s ass, nurtured by the wild with manners undefined?" he mused with a hint of amusement in his voice.

Miyaka's cheeks flushed a deep shade of crimson as she felt the heat of embarrassment wash over her. She stammered out an apology, her words a mixture of guilt and confusion. "I'm... I'm so sorry," she murmured, her voice quivering. "I don't know why I did that. It was impulsive, and I should never have... I didn't mean to offend you." Her eyes averted, unable to meet his gaze, she felt a strange mixture of attraction and shame clouding her judgment.

The monster chuckled, capturing her lips with a playful kiss, his palm caressing her cheek. This time, his arms enveloped her waist, and his hands embarked on a slow journey downward, firmly fondling her ass.

Miyaka's gaze locked with Touya's as she struggled to find the words to convey her complex feelings. "Touya," she began, her voice filled with uncertainty, "I want to be with you, but I'm lost. I don't know what to do or how to navigate this... connection we have... What am I supposed to do?"

Touya emitted a soft, melodic hum, gently pressing his forehead to hers. "You see, my dear, you have the power to rid yourself of your tormentor, to break free from those chains that bind you. Return to me, and I shall envelop you in a love that knows no bounds, a love that will shield and cherish you," he whispered, his words like a seductive melody. 

Dabi couldn't contain his satisfaction. He marveled at how effortlessly he manipulated her. She was not only surrendering herself willingly, but she was also unwittingly becoming a pawn in his sinister game. The thrill of her impending arrival, the promise of chaos in her wake — oh, how he relished it all!

In that surreal moment, Miyaka found herself strangely drawn to the merman's words. The idea of breaking free from her tormentor, of taking control of her own destiny, it all felt so tempting, so liberating. The plan that had sounded wrong at first now seemed like the path she was meant to take, the one that would finally lead her to a life free from the clutches of her abusive husband.

She hesitated for just a moment, the weight of her decision sinking in, and then, with newfound determination, she whispered, "Yes... I'll do it. I'll break free from him, no matter what it takes." 

Using his seductive voice, he whispered into her ear, his tone laced with malice, "Do it. Show him what you're truly made of, and we shall be bound together for eternity." His words were a siren's call, leading her deeper into the abyss of darkness that he reveled in.

Touya watched Miyaka's retreating figure, a sinister smile curling on his lips as he imagined the torment he would inflict upon her. To him, she was nothing more than a pawn in his twisted game, a foolish woman who had fallen right into his meticulously set trap. The prospect of torturing her and relishing in her suffering thrilled him.

_____________________________

That night Miyaka found herself trapped in a nightmare. She stood alone in a strange, dark room that seemed to stretch endlessly in all directions. There was no light, no discernible features, just an overwhelming sense of oppressive darkness that threatened to swallow her whole.

The first thing that assaulted her senses was the pungent scent of blood, heavy and metallic, hanging in the air like a suffocating fog. It clung to her, filling her nostrils with a sickening, nauseating aroma that made her stomach churn with dread.

As she cautiously took a step forward, her footsteps echoed eerily in the void, the sound resonating through the darkness. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, the fear intensifying with each passing moment. She called out for help, but her voice seemed to vanish into the abyss, swallowed by the oppressive silence.

The room felt like a labyrinth, a never-ending maze of despair. Miyaka's breath quickened, and her skin prickled with a cold, clammy sweat. Panic welled up inside her as she desperately searched for an escape, but the darkness remained unyielding, trapping her in its suffocating grip. 

In the next moment, the oppressive darkness was pierced by a strange, eerie light that suddenly illuminated a portion of the floor in front of her. The ghastly scene that unfolded was horrifying beyond imagination.

There, sprawled out in a grotesque and mangled state, lay a heavily destroyed female body. It bore the unmistakable marks of teeth, deep and savage, along with numerous bruises and cuts inflicted by sharp, brutal claws. The sight was enough to make her blood run cold, and a wave of revulsion surged through her.

The lifeless figure on the ground seemed to be a cruel testament to unimaginable violence. It was as if some malevolent force had unleashed its fury upon this unfortunate soul, leaving behind a gruesome tableau of suffering and torment.

Miyaka's breath hitched, and her heart pounded in her chest as she gazed upon this macabre scene. The strange light continued to flicker, casting eerie shadows that danced across the lifeless form. She felt a suffocating dread wash over her, realizing that she was trapped, unable to escape the horrors that lurked in the shadows.

Suddenly, amidst the surreal horror, Miyaka heard a grotesque noise that resembled something being voraciously chewed. Her heart raced as she turned her head to the side slowly, where the eerie light flickered once more, revealing a chilling sight.

In the dim illumination, she saw a dark figure, unmistakably Touya, slowly devouring a still-beating heart held in his clawed hands. His sharp claws dug into the quivering meat of the organ, his eyes glinting with a sinister hunger.

The gruesome scene played out before her eyes, and she was paralyzed with terror, unable to look away from the horrifying spectacle unfolding in this twisted nightmare. Miyaka's terror reached its zenith as she opened her mouth in a desperate attempt to scream, but to her horror, no sound escaped her lips. Her voice had been stolen by the darkness surrounding her.

The next moment, she was outside, and the moon hung low in the obsidian sky, casting a sinister pallor over the desolate landscape. The eerie silence was shattered by the mournful cries of ghostly sea creatures that drifted ominously in the air, their twisted forms contorted in agony.

Amidst this nightmarish scene, the water's surface rippled and churned, as if it were alive with malevolent intent. From the inky depths, a grotesque figure emerged. It was Touya, but he bore no resemblance to the benevolent creature she had encountered before. His once-lustrous white hair now hung in limp, tangled strands, darkened with the stains of blood and decay. His eyes, once mesmerizing pools of turquoise, were now empty voids, devoid of any humanity. His scales and fins had become jagged and twisted, oozing with an otherworldly ichor.

Touya's mouth gaped open unnaturally wide, revealing rows of serrated teeth, each one gleaming with an eerie luminescence. He lurched toward Miyaka, his movements disjointed and unnatural, as if he were a puppet controlled by some malevolent force. With a gut-wrenching lurch, his grotesque form surged out of the water, and he loomed over her, his breath rancid and putrid. He reached out with his twisted, clawed hands, and ripped right through her chest, pulling her heart out; his touch sent a searing pain through her body.

The next moment, Miyaka found herself standing at the edge of the dark lake once more, alone. The haunting memories of what she witnessed still lingered, but a strange compulsion had drawn her back to this place.

She began to undress, her trembling fingers fumbling with the fabric of her dress. The moonlight cast a silvery glow on her as she shed each layer, leaving her vulnerable in the night. The cool breeze rustled the leaves in the surrounding woods, and the night seemed to hold its breath, as if nature itself watched in anticipation. With each piece of clothing that fell to the ground, she felt a strange sense of liberation, as if she was shedding not just fabric but the weight of her past as well. She stood bare under the moonlight, the lake's dark waters reflecting her silhouette.

Miyaka shivered, whether from the cold or from the anticipation of the unknown, she couldn't tell. 

As the woman stood by the edge of the lake, the moonlight illuminating her bare form, a sudden change in the atmosphere caught her by surprise. Without warning, the heavens opened, and rain began to pour down in a torrential downpour.

The raindrops drenched her, mingling with the tears that had welled up in her eyes. She felt the cool water cascade down her skin, as if nature itself wept for the strange and unsettling journey she had embarked upon.

The rain intensified, soaking the earth around her and turning the once-silent night into a cacophony of sound. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

As another loud clap of thunder echoed through the night, the world seemed to vibrate with its intensity. Miyaka stood drenched and shivering, the rain pouring down around her, when something utterly unexpected unfolded before her eyes.

From the dark depths of the lake, a figure began to emerge. Slowly and deliberately, Touya materialized, his form once again taking on a human shape. The rain-slicked water glistened on his bare skin, accentuating the contours of his body.

He stepped out of the lake, his movements graceful and unhurried, and stood before her in all his naked glory. The moonlight and raindrops played tricks with the shadows and highlights on his body, creating an almost ethereal, mesmerizing effect.

Miyaka's heart raced, and she couldn't tear her eyes away from this captivating sight. The storm raged around them, but in this moment, it was as if time had stood still, and the world held its breath in the presence of the enigmatic creature before her.

She watched helplessly as Touya's delicious naked body walked purposefully towards her. She felt as though her heart were consumed by a white-hot fire, and was being stabbed with a thousand needles, and she didn't know why. Never had she felt a pain even remotely like this before; it was horrendous. It was a pain she would never wish upon anybody, even a foe.

Touya wrapped his arms around Miyaka, pulling her close, and they both sank to their knees on the wet sand. The storm raged fiercer around them.

Touya, with a powerful force, pushed Miyaka down onto the ground, pinning her beneath his weight, the storm's intensity mirroring the tempestuous passion that had ignited between them.

Miyaka parted her lips, rolling her head back, as Touya's lips found the sweet spot on her exposed neck. His mouth closed over it, and a shiver of pleasure coursed through her as he gently sucked on the sensitive area, right where her pulse point was located.

The merman, displaying skill and patience, gently inserted two fingers into her, his groan reflecting the tightness he encountered. Leaving a trail of wet, open-mouthed kisses along her body, his head descended to her pussy, where he proceeded to wrap his lips around her needy core. Two fingers gently ran across her clit, up and down, up and down.

The woman moaned in pleasure at his fingers massaging her insides.

Touya seemed to be savoring every moment, leisurely tracing his tongue along her slit. His captivating turquoise eyes locked onto her, a mischievous smirk gracing his face as he reveled in the heavenly expression on her face. His forked tongue, with expert precision, skillfully explores every tantalizing crevice, evoking a passionate response that leaves her drenched with desire.

They shifted their positions, with her now kneeling between Touya's legs. She proceeded with deliberate and seductive movements, using her soft hands to sensually stroke his aroused member. A smile of satisfaction graced Miyaka’s lips as she noticed the uncontrollable moan that escaped the merman's mouth when her tongue made contact with the engorged head of his throbbing shaft.

A heated tongue writhed sloppily inside of her cunt, catching Miyaka off guard once more. 

Her breath caught in her throat, and she surrendered to the intense pleasure coursing through her. In a symphony of blissful moans and gasps, she couldn't contain herself, her body quivering as Touya's skilled hand rubbed her swollen clit raw.

Soon, Miyaka mounted Touya, aligning his throbbing dick with her glistening, slick  entrance. She eased his impressive length into her eager pussy, relishing the intense sensation of being stretched beyond what her husband had ever provided.

Touya's hands firmly gripped Miyaka's hips, and he drove himself into her with unrestrained fervor, lost in the primal rhythm of their connection. Each powerful thrust was accompanied by a guttural growl leaving his lips.

Miyaka's breath caught in her throat as she rested her hands on Touya's chiseled chest, snapping her hips back and forth, riding him like he would be a wild stallion. 

Her young body quivered as the successive waves of her climax surged through her. Miyaka's breathing quickened, and her gaze appeared to lose focus as if her eyes were drifting backward. She rode Touya for what felt like an eternity, and then, in a sudden motion, she forcefully slammed down on his throbbing dick, her pussy muscles clenching tightly around his shaft. As she relaxed her pussy slightly, merman shot hot, sticky ropes of cum deep within her core. Miyaka leaned forward to share a passionate kiss with him; their tongues danced together. 

As the ecstasy of the moment began to fade, Miyaka's senses returned, and she suddenly became aware of the rain growing thicker around them. But to her profound horror, when she reluctantly opened her eyes after breaking the passionate kiss with Touya, she realized that it wasn't water pouring down upon them; it was a deluge of blood, staining everything in a nightmarish crimson hue. 

Miyaka wanted to scream, to release the overwhelming anguish that gripped her, but no sound escaped her lips. Instead, she felt like she was suffocating, the blood rain gathering in her nose, making each breath a painful struggle.

After she blinked, Miyaka found herself standing by the side of their marital bed, a sinister calmness in the room as her husband slept soundly. The air was heavy with the weight of her suppressed emotions, and in the distance, she could hear the cruel slurs and insults he had hurled at her throughout their troubled marriage. Each word echoed in her mind, a painful reminder of the torment she had endured.

The anger within her boiled over, a searing rage that consumed her. Unable to contain her emotions any longer, she reached out and began to strike his chest with a fury she had kept buried for far too long. Her screams filled the room as she unleashed the pent-up hatred she felt towards him, her voice cracking with the intensity of her emotions. "I hate you!" she screamed, her voice raw with bitterness. "I hate everything about you!" Her fists hammered down, each blow a cathartic release of the pain and suffering she had endured in silence for too many years. The room seemed to close in around her as she confronted the source of her torment, the darkness of the night bearing witness to her long-suppressed fury.

_____________________________

A haunting, low moan pulled Miyaka out of her nightmarish slumber. Confusion gripped her as she slowly opened her eyes, disoriented and uncertain of her surroundings. It took a few bewildering moments, but then the horrifying realization struck her like a bolt of lightning.

She stood next to her marital bed, her trembling hand gripping a bloodied butcher's knife. On the bed, the nightmarish scene unfolded before her eyes — her husband, lying there with numerous gruesome cuts to his chest and neck, blood pooling around him. His eyes, filled with terror, locked onto her with a fading, desperate gaze, his voice stolen by the brutality of his wounds.

Miyaka's breath caught in her throat as she stared at the gruesome tableau of violence she had somehow become a part of. 

"Noooo!" Miyaka screamed. Her world shattered in a cacophony of horror as she screamed hysterically, the knife slipping from her trembling hand. Her husband's neck bled profusely, a torrent of crimson that stained everything it touched.

In sheer desperation, she pressed her trembling fingers against the gaping wound, trying to stem the relentless flow of blood. Warm, sticky liquid soaked through her delicate palms, mingling with her own tears splashing on top of her palms as they streamed down her cheeks. "I'm so sorry, my love, I'm so sorry! Oh my God, what have I done?! What have I done?! Oh God!" Apologies escaped her trembling lips, choked with guilt and fear. 

As Miyaka stood over her husband, the time seemed to slow down. 

His once-threatening presence now lay vulnerable before her, his breaths shallow and labored. The weight of her decision bore down on her, and a tumultuous mix of emotions churned within her.

She knelt by his side, his life slipping away with each passing moment. His eyes, once filled with cruelty, now held a hint of fear and regret. The realization of what had transpired seemed to dawn on him in those final moments.

Miyaka watched as his chest rose and fell for the last time, his breaths growing weaker until they ceased altogether. His life ended in her arms, and as she looked down at him, a complex array of emotions washed over her — relief, sadness, and the haunting knowledge that her life had taken a dark turn. She had taken control of her destiny, but it had come at a cost she could never truly escape. The memory of his death would forever be etched into her soul. "What have I done..." Miyaka was whispering, her tears streaming uncontrollably.

The old maid, Yuki, was rudely awakened by the piercing screams that echoed through the once-quiet house. Fear gnawed at her as she rushed to the source of the disturbance, her trembling hands clutching the edges of her nightgown.

When she entered the room and laid eyes upon the nightmarish scene, Yuki’s own scream pierced the air. Horror contorted her features as she beheld the lifeless form of Miyaka's husband and the distraught Miyaka herself, tears streaming down her face.

Yuki, her voice shaking with dread, stammered, "What... What happened here, ma'am?! You... You murdered him!"

Miyaka, overwhelmed by the gruesome events, could only sob in response, trying to explain the inexplicable. She was lost in a maelstrom of emotions, her world unraveling before her eyes.

In the end, unable to bear the weight of her actions and the night's horrors, Miyaka made a fateful decision. She fled from the scene, her tear-streaked face a mask of desperation, and ran toward the only place she believed was safe — the dark embrace of the lake that had lured her with its eerie allure, where the enigmatic merman awaited her. Her mission was accomplished.

_____________________________

Touya's keen senses detected the hurried steps drawing nearer to the lake, and the unmistakable scent of blood hung heavy in the air. She had done it — Miyaka had followed through with their dark plan! He could already sense the turmoil coursing through her, her distress palpable.

With a predatory grace, he decided to rise to the surface of the water, and he waited there, anticipating her arrival.

Miyaka ran through the woods, her breath ragged and her heart pounding in her chest. Her once-silky, pink nightgown was now marred by dark stains of blood, a chilling testament to the horrors she had taken part in. Her long, dark hair was tangled and matted, wild strands framing her flushed cheeks.

She moved with a frantic urgency, her feet making a wet sound as they pounded against the damp earth. Every step took her farther away from the nightmarish scene she had left behind, but the memory of it clung to her like a shadow.

Miyaka reached the shore of the lake, her voice trembling as she called out for Touya. Her desperate cries echoed through the eerie stillness of the night, each plea carrying the weight of her fear and longing. "Touya!" she called, her voice quivering with emotion. "Please, I need you!" She scanned the dark waters, her heart racing in anticipation, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. 

Touya's head emerged from the water, his wet hair clinging to his pale skin, and his piercing blue eyes locked onto her. "My love," he beckoned, his voice soothing yet strangely commanding. "Why the distress? Didn't I promise to protect you? Come to me, and find the safety and solace you seek." His words were laden with an irresistible invitation, drawing her deeper into his world.

Miyaka, trembling all over her body, took slow, hesitant steps into the water. Her tear-stained face glistened in the moonlight as she approached Touya, her heart heavy with guilt and despair. She continued to cry, her voice shaky as she began to tell Touya about what she had done. "I... I did it," she whispered, her voice quivering with remorse. "I... I followed your words, and I hurt him. He's gone now." Her confession hung in the air like a dark cloud, and she looked into Touya's eyes, seeking some form of understanding or absolution for the choices she had made.

The water enveloped Miyaka, and she shivered involuntarily as its icy coldness seeped into her skin. The sensation sent a shock of discomfort through her, a stark contrast to the tumultuous emotions swirling within her. Her nightgown grew heavy, soaked with the icy water.

Touya extended his hand, gently seizing hers, and drew her closer, enveloping her in his warm embrace. One of his hands tenderly caressed her hair, his touch a deceptive contrast to the darkness that lay beneath.

He savored the sensation of her distress, finding it akin to sweet nectar, adding an intoxicating layer to the unfolding narrative of their entwined destinies.

"My sweet Miyaka," he murmured, his voice laced with a sinister sweetness. "Such a good girl." His praise was both soothing and unsettling, as he reveled in the intricate web of emotions he had woven around her.

Miyaka found solace in Touya's embrace, even as her body went numb from the cold water. His presence provided a strange comfort that she couldn't quite explain.

She looked up at him, her voice quivering, and asked in a trembling whisper, "What... What do we do now?" The world around her had descended into chaos, and she clung to him as her anchor in this bewildering nightmare.

Touya held her in a tight embrace, "I shall shield you, for you are mine," he said with eerie grace.

Miyaka looked up at Touya with worry in her eyes, her voice filled with desperation. "My maid... she saw what happened. I can't return to the estate. What should I do now?"

The monstrous being scoffed dismissively. "Don't concern yourself with that old hag. She knows nothing. You are under my protection now, and you shall remain safe for all time."

Miyaka snuggled closer to Touya, resting her head on the crook of his neck for comfort. Her curiosity piqued, she asked in a soft voice, "Touya, what are those dark purple spots on your skin? I forgot to ask earlier..."

"That's how my body looks," Touya replied openly, "They are just marks from years ago when some sailors tried to burn me alive after I killed their captain on the open sea."

Miyaka's eyes widened as she listened to his gruesome story. She struggled to reconcile this dark tale with the merman who had saved her and told her he had never attacked anyone. She asked, her voice filled with uncertainty, "But... you saved me, and you said you've never harmed anyone. I don't understand, Touya..."

"Perhaps it's because you're nothing more than a naive, little human," Touya chuckled, his hold on her growing stronger.

Miyaka winced as Touya's grip tightened, causing discomfort. She mustered the courage to speak up, her voice trembling. "Touya, your hold is hurting me," she said softly. "Please, let's not be unkind..."

"Well, my dear, I need to ensure my prized possession won't simply slip through my fingers," he remarked with a sinister smile. "Oh, I've been waiting for this moment for so long — to have you back in my embrace."

Miyaka attempted to slip out of Touya's strong embrace, but her efforts were in vain. Instead, a sudden force of his hands pushed her beneath the water's surface, and panic surged through her. She thrashed and struggled, desperate for air and to break free from the grip that had become suffocating.

Her distress only seemed to heighten his pleasure. The sight of her desperately thrashing around, fighting for her own life, sent a thrilling wave of excitement through him.

The merman seized a handful of Miyaka's hair and yanked her back up, a cruel grin on his face as she gasped for air. "Did you truly believe that I would want a pathetic human like you?" he taunted with a chilling edge to his words.

Tears streamed down Miyaka's face as she sobbed, her voice trembling with desperation. "Why are you being so cruel and nasty?!" she pleaded, her distress palpable in her words. "I love you, and I did what you told me to do so we could be together, Touya!"

Her cries echoed through the dark waters, mixing with the eerie ambiance of their surroundings. Her huge distress was like a storm within her, a maelstrom of emotions that threatened to consume her. She continued, her voice broken and filled with anguish, "You... you visited me in my dreams, brought me pleasure... Why are you doing this now?!"

Touya's voice dripped with cruelty as he responded, "Visit someone as pathetic as you? Never. But it seems my voice has indeed worked wonders on you." He playfully tugged at her hair even harder, causing her pain. "To me, you're nothing more than a piece of meat, and I take great pleasure in tormenting naive humans like you. It adds a delightful flavor to the meal." His words sent a chill down her spine as the darkness of their situation enveloped her.

The merman summoned his strength and, with a powerful motion, pulled Miyaka beneath the water with him. 

Her world plunged into darkness and turmoil as she was dragged into the depths of the lake, her struggles intensifying as she fought against the relentless force pulling her down. Sinister shadows danced around her, and she felt a suffocating pressure in her chest as the water closed in on her.

The eerie silence of the underwater world was broken only by the sound of her muffled cries. She could see Touya's malevolent grin in the dim light, his eyes gleaming with a predatory hunger. The water seemed to press against her, threatening to crush her as she struggled for breath, her desperate gasps for air drowned by the malevolent embrace of the lake.

Dabi launched a relentless assault on Miyaka. His sharp claws tore through the water, leaving vicious trails in their wake. With terrifying swiftness, he closed the distance between them, his razor-sharp teeth bared in a menacing grin. He attacked with ruthless ferocity, his claws raking across her skin, and his teeth sinking into her flesh. The water around them turned crimson as the horrifying struggle unfolded, and Miyaka's desperate cries were silenced by the watery abyss that enveloped them.

Miyaka's nightgown offered little protection as Touya's relentless assault continued. With a vicious tear, the delicate fabric was rent asunder, leaving her exposed to the cold, merciless waters of his lake.

Touya's clawed hands gently cradled Miyaka's cheeks, holding her gaze with a cold, unfeeling intensity. Their eyes locked in a chilling embrace as she struggled to hold onto the last remnants of breath in her burning lungs, each painful gasp a stark reminder of her impending doom.

In that haunting moment, beneath the unforgiving waters, they were locked in a macabre dance of predator and prey.

With a swift and cruel motion, Touya pierced Miyaka's chest with his clawed hand, the flesh yielding easily to his monstrous strength. A searing pain shot through her. Dark haired woman's senses barely registered the horrifying reality of what was happening. The world around her dissolved into a surreal blur, and the excruciating pain in her chest seemed distant, as if happening to someone else. As her life ebbed away, her consciousness faded into a murky abyss, and the last remnants of her existence were swallowed by the cold, merciless waters of the lake.

Touya tore the beating heart from her chest, the organ pulsating in his grip, still warm and alive. As he held it before him, the last vestiges of life ebbed away from Miyaka, her body going limp.

Touya, with a grotesque hunger, sank his sharp teeth into the still-beating heart he held in his clawed hand. The organ yielded to his bite, and the taste of youth surged into his mouth. He savored the sickeningly sweet taste. 

Once he had consumed the last morsel of Miyaka's essence, Touya's malevolent gaze turned towards the lifeless body he still held by the arm. A fleeting pang of guilt tugged at his consciousness, but he quickly dismissed the emotion. "You're mine now, forever," he declared, his monstrous arms embracing the lifeless form. "You'll remain with me for all eternity, sweet naive girl, at the bottom of my lake." 

Touya, in a sinister tone, offered a twisted form of thanks to the lifeless Miyaka. "Thank you for your heart, love," he murmured, his voice laced with malevolence. "It has provided me with the strength I needed to regain my full power." 

The waters of the lake seemed to shiver in response to his sinister words, bearing witness to the unholy pact forged in the depths.

After a moment of holding Miyaka's lifeless body close to his muscular chest, Touya swam further down into the unfathomable depths of the abyss that was the lake. With Miyaka's body firmly in his grasp, he descended into the darkness, disappearing from the realm of the living and vanishing into the watery tomb that was his dominion.

[candycandy00]

The Scarecrow Walks at Night - A Shigaraki x Reader Halloween Fanfic

You spend Halloween night alone at your grandparents’ farm, but there’s something strange about the scarecrow you’ve always felt a connection to.

Part of the League of Villains Halloween Horror Anthology! Featuring Shigaraki as a scarecrow!

Smut. 18+. Horror (the creepy kind not the gory kind). Mild blood. Fem Reader.

🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

On your way back from a concert you just attended several states away, you decide to stop and spend the night at your grandparents’ farm. You thought it would be fun to drive to the concert instead of flying, make a solo road trip of it and stop here and there along the way, seeing the sights. 

Turns out there aren’t that many sights to see in rural farm country. So you decided to just drive straight home after the concert, but you’ve been getting drowsy and decide you need to stop somewhere today and rest. That’s when you remember the farm your grandparents live on, just a thirty minute drive out of your way, sitting at just about the halfway point between the concert venue and home. It’s the perfect place to rest, and you just know your grandparents will be thrilled to see you. 

As a child, you visited the farm often, spending many summers there. But when you were around nine years old, your parents stopped taking you to the farm. Something about your grandparents buying an RV and looking for any excuse to travel, so they came to visit you and your parents instead of the other way around. You missed playing on the farm, feeding the animals, running through the massive cornfield. But over the years your memories of the farm faded, until your time there was more like half forgotten dreams. 

Still, you had GPS, and when the signal cut out on your phone due to the unreliable rural cell service, you had your hazy memories to guide you to the farm. 

It was hard to miss actually, being large and having a beautiful big white farm house, a bright red barn, and various other structures like tool sheds, storage buildings, and things of that nature. All things you suddenly remember playing around or in as you pull into the driveway. 

You immediately notice that there are no vehicles in sight. You know they still own an SUV and an old pickup truck aside from the RV, but none of them are parked nearby. You tried to call them a couple of times before you lost service, but couldn’t get through to them. They were old fashioned though, and disliked cell phones. If they were not home, chances are you’d never get ahold of them. 

After getting out of your car, you walk to the front door and knock. No answer comes. The whole house is silent. In the distance you hear chickens clucking, but no other noise. With a disappointed sigh, you walk over to a free standing garage your grandpa had built way before you were born. There’s a crack between the heavy wooden doors big enough for you to peek inside. You can see the SUV and the pickup, but no RV. They must be out traveling somewhere. 

You’re about to give up and go find a motel in town when an idea strikes you. When you were a child, you remember your grandparents leaving a house key under some stones in the front yard. You jog over and search, easily finding a shiny metal key. It was amazing how many memories were coming back to you now that you were here. 

You step back onto the front porch and use the key on the door. You know your sweet, easy going grandparents wouldn’t mind you staying at their house even if they aren’t home. 

As you open the door, you notice a homemade wreath decorated in orange and black colors, a plastic pumpkin glued to it. You’d almost forgotten that today is Halloween! 

After carrying in your overnight bag and looking around the house a bit, you walk back outside. There’s something you need to see before it gets dark out. 

You walk through the cornfield, the path feeling familiar to you, almost like second nature. Yes, you remember now. How could you have ever forgotten? You walked this same path so many times as a child, walking it now is like muscle memory. 

Finally, toward the end of the cornfield, close to the edge of the property, you find it. 

“I’m back, Tomura,” you say, looking up. “Did you miss me?”

High above you, affixed to a wooden stake, is a scarecrow. He’s dressed in faded denim pants and a red and black flannel shirt that is in surprisingly good shape. On his head sits an old hat, long scraggly corn silks hanging out from under it serving as his hair. Two red-colored stones function as his eyes. As always, he seems to be looking right at you. 

While there are many scarecrows on the property, this one is special to you. Even as a child, you were drawn to it. You came out here to play every day, and you pretended he was your “boyfriend”. Which meant you had tea parties with him and imagined him dancing with you at Cinderella-style balls. Most of all, you just talked to him. You told him everything, every mundane detail of your day, every secret, every fear. And somehow, it felt like he was listening. 

Some local kids who came over to play with you occasionally told you his name was Tomura, and you never forgot it. You almost forgot the scarecrow himself, but not that name. It was burned into your mind. 

They told you other things about him too. Things that made you cry. What was it again? Something about Tomura once being a real young man. Ah, the memories were coming back more clearly now. 

It was the kind of silly story kids make up to scare each other. They told you that long ago, way before your grandparents owned the farm, Tomura lived there with his family. When he became an adult, he wanted to leave the farm and move to the city. But his abusive father wouldn’t accept that, and as punishment, Tomura was tied to the stake like a living scarecrow and left in the cornfield. It was just supposed to be an unpleasant afternoon, but something went wrong, and Tomura died out there. 

For some reason, his corpse was left tied to the stake, and exactly one year later, on Halloween night, Tomura came back to life and slaughtered his entire family in his madness. 

But that’s not the part that bothered you. No, you were crying over the cruelty of his father, the sadness Tomura must have felt. As a child, you ran to the scarecrow and hugged his feet, sobbing out apologies for what had been done to him. Around that time your grandparents told you to stop playing with the scarecrow, apparently worried that you were growing too attached to the thing. Come to think of it, that was the last summer you spent with them. 

There was another part to the story the kids told you, a part that did actually frighten you, but you can’t remember what it was. As you gaze up at the scarecrow, you wonder if that memory will return while you’re here. 

When you were here last, you could barely reach his feet, but now you’re tall enough to reach his waist. You step closer to him, feeling oddly shy before giggling to yourself. He’s just a scarecrow. It was just a dumb story. You find yourself wrapping your arms around him, giving him the hug you couldn’t quite manage before. 

Looking up into those red “eyes”, you smile at him. “I don’t know if you remember me,” you say, feeling a little foolish for talking to him but also feeling the need to say this, “but I came here a lot when I was little. I played here, talking to you and pretending we were friends. I know you couldn’t talk back, but I always felt like you heard me. Thanks for that. You made my childhood a little less lonely.” 

You release his straw body and back away. “I’m sorry it’s been so long since I came to see you. I’ll be here tonight and a little while tomorrow. I’ll come say goodbye before I leave.”

Blushing slightly at your own silliness, you walk back into the cornfield, toward the house. You feel a little better now that you’ve gotten that off your chest. You knew he couldn’t actually hear you. He was an inanimate object after all. But you said those words for yourself, not him. 

You feel your phone vibrate in your pocket just a few feet into the corn. You check it to see that you have two bars of signal out here. You make sure there are no important messages or missed calls, no contact from your grandparents, before going back to the house. 

The sun is setting as you step onto the porch, and you take a moment to appreciate the view of the lovely pink sky over the farm before going inside. 

Over the next hour, you make yourself comfortable. You shower and change into comfy little knit shorts and tank top, what you use as pajamas, and help yourself to some snacks in the kitchen before curling up in front of their surprisingly impressive tv to watch a movie. Being Halloween night, most channels are having horror movie marathons, so you settle on part eight of a random horror franchise. It’s a movie you saw when you were a teenager, but you’ve forgotten most of the “plot” by now. 

Only twenty minutes into the film, you hear a knocking at the front door. Your first thought is that it’s your grandparents, but then you quickly remind yourself that they wouldn’t knock on their own door. So who could it be? Trick or treaters? Possible, but this house is practically in the middle of nowhere. Maybe your grandparents are known for giving out great candy? If so, these kids are going to be disappointed. 

You grab the Little Debbie cake and small bag of chips you’d laid out for yourself and head to the door. When you open it, no one is there. You sit the snacks on a nearby table and step out onto the porch. 

“Hello?” you ask, rubbing your bare arms with your hands. You didn’t realize the nights were so chilly here in the fall. The porch light is glowing bright yellow above your head, and you get the distinct impression that someone is looking at you, watching you. It suddenly feels like you’re under a spotlight as you gaze out over the inky black darkness of the farm, only broken up by a couple of lights situated near the tool shed and the garage. 

Mildly creeped out, you hurry back inside, making sure to lock the door. 

You return to the movie, having apparently not missed much. As the minutes pass by, you begin to relax again, figuring you were probably just mistaken when you thought you heard the knocking. This is an old house that you’re not overly familiar with. Of course it’s going to make creepy sounds occasionally. 

Just as your eyes begin to slide closed, drowsiness overtaking you, the knocking comes again. This time louder, more frantic. You practically jump off the couch in alarm. You stand there for a moment, listening, your heart beating wildly. This is not your imagination. This is definitely not just the sounds of an old house settling. This is literal banging! And it won’t stop. 

You mind races. Could this be trick or treaters? Doubtful. The banging certainly doesn’t sound like it’s coming from children. A Halloween prank then? Perhaps some local teens spotted your car in the driveway and decided to have a little fun with you? 

As the banging intensifies, you can’t help considering the darker possibilities. Maybe someone had planned to break into your grandparents’ house while they were away and now you’re just an unexpected obstacle they would have to deal with. Or maybe it’s a serial killer on the prowl? Or hell, maybe the house is fucking haunted. 

You slowly step closer to the door, and when you’re just a few feet away, you scream out, “What do you want?”

The banging immediately stops. You stare at the door, disappointed that it’s an old wooden type that has no peephole or windows. You don���t hear a response. You don’t hear anything. No voices, no footsteps walking off the creaky wooden porch. So are they still there? Just waiting on the other side of the door? 

“I have a gun!” you shout. “If you try to come inside, I’ll blow your fucking brains out! I don’t care who you are!”

You listen for any sort of reaction, but hear nothing. You creep closer to the door, trying to hear footsteps, hoping to hear them leaving. Just as you get close enough to press your ear to the door, something on the other side bangs against it loudly, making the wood tremble on the hinges. You scream and leap back. 

That’s it. You’re not putting up with this any longer! You run over to the landline phone in the kitchen and pick it up to call the police, but to your horror, there’s no dial tone. You check two more phones in the house, but get the same results. Did the person outside cut the phone line? Or had your grandparents been off traveling for so long that they didn’t bother paying their phone bill? Either way, you’re fucked. 

You check your cell phone just in case, hoping for a miracle, but there’s no service. 

Suddenly you remember something, more of that story the kids told you all those years ago. Something happens every year on Halloween night, that’s what they said. But what was it? You try to force yourself to remember the rest, but you just can’t. Anyway, it was just a dumb kids’ story. You have more important things to deal with, like the banging on the front door that just won’t stop. 

All you want to do is run to your car and drive away from here, but you’re too scared to go outside. Also, you’re parked close to the front porch, which is exactly where the threat is. 

“Go away!” you scream through the door. “I called the police! They’ll be here any minute!”

The banging suddenly stops again. Did your bluff work? You creep closer to the door again, cautiously. Then you hear it, the sound of footsteps! The porch floorboards creak and groan as someone makes their way across it, slowly and steadily. Then it sounds like they’re going down the steps. 

You run to the living room and try to peep out the window without being seen, but you only catch a quick glimpse of a shadow going around the corner of the house, toward the back. 

Is the back door locked? You never checked it after you got here, but surely your grandparents left it locked. Then again, this was exactly the sort of place where people would feel safe leaving their doors unlocked. 

You make a mad dash for the back door, running through the living room, kitchen, and laundry room to find the brown wooden door. 

It’s unlocked! 

Just as you reach for it, there’s a sudden banging on the wood, making you jump back in terror. You’re too late! You back away from the door, waiting for it to open and reveal some dangerous figure ready to kill you. 

But it doesn’t open. The knob never even turns. Are they not even going to check to see if it’s locked? The banging stops then, and is replaced by another sound. Scraping. Like metal on wood. Like a blade scratching the door. 

What the hell is going on?! If they’re not coming in, are they actually just trying to terrify you? Is it a Halloween prank after all? Or is it a killer who just wants to toy with you for a while first? The fact that they’re still here after your bluffs about the gun and the police suggests they aren’t just pranksters. 

But… something else occurs to you. If they’re back here, then they’re not on the front porch. Which means you could possibly make it to your car! There’s a risk involved. If there’s more than one person out there, one of them could be waiting to ambush you. Or the person could run around to the front before you make it to your car. But the risk of  staying put is even greater. Whoever is out there could come in at any moment. Even if the back door was locked, there were several windows that could easily be broken and climbed through. 

With no time to give it any more thought, you make a split decision. You dash through the kitchen, grabbing a knife from the wooden knife block on the counter as you go, then to the living room where you grab your keys and your phone. You cram the phone into your bra, having no pockets in the tiny, thin pajama shorts you’re wearing, then you unlock the front door and fling it open. 

Thankfully, there’s no one on the other side, and no one on the porch when you step outside. With the coast clear, you run straight for your car and throw yourself into the driver’s seat. You stick the keys in the ignition, still clutching the knife in one trembling hand. You turn the key, and you hear the engine begin to start, and then… nothing. It dies. You turn the key again, but the car still won’t start. You try several more times, growing more panicked and frantic with each attempt. Screaming in frustration and slapping the steering wheel, you accidentally cut your own hand with the knife. 

“Shit!” You wipe the blood off on your white tank top and jump out of the car, popping the hood at the same time. You know nothing about cars, but you feel like you should check anyway. When you look under the hood, you feel your stomach drop to your feet. 

The engine is completely demolished. It looks like someone took a large blunt object and just… wrecked it. Destroyed it. You close the hood and look toward the house. Do you have time to make it back inside and lock the front door? What if the person outside the back door finally tried to open it and is now hiding in the house? 

While you’re still debating with yourself on what to do, you see movement coming from the side of the house. Someone is coming! You want to see who it is, but you don’t want to be discovered out here. You had the good sense to shut the front door, so it might take them a while to realize you’re no longer in there. 

You dart into the cornfield, using it as cover. You try to look through the stalks, but you can’t see the person clearly. You can only make out what looks like a red shirt, and some sort of long, shiny weapon. 

Suddenly you remember that your phone got a couple bars of service earlier today when you were close to the end of the field, near Tomura. Deciding this is your best shot at getting help, you run through the corn as fast as you can. 

It takes several minutes for you to reach the end of the field, and you’ve already got your phone out, checking for bars, staring at the brightly lit screen in the darkness. When you reach Tomura, you’re focused on your phone, but there’s still no service. When you finally glance up, you realize something is wrong. You step back and tilt your phone up, using its light to see. 

The stake is empty. Tomura, the scarecrow, is gone. 

The confusion is so strong that it briefly overrides your fear. Did someone steal him? For what purpose? 

And then, like puzzle pieces fitting together, you remember the rest of the story those kids told you so long ago. 

“Every year, on Halloween night, Tomura comes back to life. He climbs down from his stake and stalks the farm, killing everyone he finds!”

You stare at the empty stake, trying to convince yourself that it was just a story, that someone is pulling a very elaborate prank on you. But somehow, in that moment, you know the truth. You sense it. Tomura had been outside those doors. Tomura had destroyed your car. And Tomura was going to kill you. 

The vibration of your phone startles you, causing you to yelp in fear. You look at the screen one bar! Praying it’s enough, you quickly begin dialing 911, but the bar disappears before you can finish. 

“No!” you hiss at your phone, trying to walk around to different spots to get more service. 

You’re so focused on the phone again that you bump into something in the darkness. You freeze, swallowing and slowly turning the phone’s screen around to illuminate what your body is currently pressed against. 

A red and black flannel shirt. You scream and jump back, realizing that Tomura is right in front of you, narrowly avoiding the blade of an enormous reef hook that he’s swinging at you. In the chaos and the dark, you don’t see his face clearly, but you know it’s him. He swings the reef hook again, then a third time, each time barely missing you as you shriek and dodge. 

“Please stop, Tomura!” you cry, still holding the knife in your hand but unable to get close enough to use it. 

He freezes mid swing, the weapon held high above his head. The shiny metal blade seems to quiver for a moment as you scramble to back away, but then he swings it down. You try to jerk out of the way, but it swipes your shoulder, severing the strap of your tank top and leaving a thin, bloody slice in your skin. You cry out in pain and clutch the wound. It’s not very deep, but it hurts, and blood is leaking out around your fingers. 

Again, Tomura seems to freeze in place. This time you manage to run back into the cornfield, turning off your phone so the light doesn’t give you away. You run and run, not even sure which direction you’re going in. Are you going back to the house? Or somewhere else? Where even is the nearest neighbor? 

When you finally break free of the corn, you find yourself in front of the old barn. It hadn’t been used in years even when you used to visit as a child, so you’d often played in it. You remember being scolded for climbing into the hayloft. With precious few options, you decide to try hiding inside it. 

The barn smells a bit musty, but not too bad otherwise. Your grandparents were sticklers for maintenance, even on old buildings they no longer used. You find a corner, behind some hay stacks, and hide there, trying to be as silent as possible. 

If the story those kids told you is true, and it’s certainly looking that way at this point, then Tomura only has Halloween night to roam about. So when morning comes, he’ll have to return to the stake. You look at your phone. It’s not quite ten yet! You don’t know if you’ll be able to evade Tomura until sunrise. 

Sitting here hiding, you finally have a moment to think about what’s happening. Tomura is alive. He’s a scarecrow, but he’s alive! But his body didn’t feel like straw when you bumped into him in the cornfield just now. It felt more solid than that. Almost like a real human body. 

Regardless, he is trying to kill you, and that thought pains you even more than it scares you. Why is he doing this? You’ve always felt a connection to him, an affection for him. Did he hate you all along? Or does he simply kill whoever he sees on Halloween night, no matter who they are? Maybe he doesn’t even recognize you. Maybe he doesn’t even have an actual consciousness, but is just a killing machine. Every possibility seems sadder than the last. 

Your thoughts are interrupted when you hear the door to the barn swing open. You clamp your hand over your mouth to muffle your breathing, and try to sink closer to the ground, to blend in with the darkness and the hay. 

You hear footsteps walking through the barn, stacks of hay being tossed aside. He’s searching for you! This is a bad idea. You need to get out of the barn, try to get to another house, maybe even flag someone down on the road. Before he gets any closer, you jump out of your hiding spot and run toward the back door of the barn. He sees you, of course, and you hear the footsteps running behind you. But you’re close to the door. You can make it! You can disappear into the cornfield again and-

It’s locked. Just as you reach the back door of the barn, you realize it’s locked up with a chain and padlock. You let out a frustrated whine and turn around just as the reef hook swings toward you. Ducking to avoid it, you run to the side, where you find a ladder to the hayloft. You know climbing up there is a terrible idea, that you’ll just be trapped up there, but at the moment, it’s the only path open to you. Maybe you’ll get lucky and be able to push him off the edge. 

So you climb, and you feel a strangely warm hand grab at your bare thigh. That’s definitely not straw! You jerk away, shaking off his grip as you climb further up, finally reaching the hayloft and then backing away from the ladder, watching him climb up after you, his weapon’s handle stuck in the waistband of his jeans. 

Once he’s up here with you, he walks slowly toward you, and when he steps into a beam of moonlight shining in through a small window in the barn, you finally see his face. 

Oh. He’s not a scarecrow at all. Not anymore. Standing before you is a totally alive human man. Young, early twenties you’d guess, with long silver hair that looks almost blue in the moonlight. He’s pale, with a few small but noticeable scars on his face, and striking red eyes that are staring at you as he gets closer. 

He’s beautiful. He’s everything you imagined all those years ago, when you dreamed of him being a “real boy”. 

You back away, almost in a daze, and end up tripping on some hay and falling to the floor. You manage to get to your knees, but by this point he’s reached you, looming over you with his weapon gripped in both hands. You’re a mess at this point. There’s blood all over your tank top, cuts on your hand and your shoulder that are still bleeding, one strap of your top sliced through and hanging low, almost exposing your breast, your shorts ripped. 

You look up at him, knowing there’s no escape, deciding to at least die seeing your precious Tomura alive and real. He lifts the reef hook over his head, still staring down at you, and all you can say is one word. 

“Tomura…”

He falters. The reef hook trembles in his grip. “Why are you here?!” he screams, his voice strained, his face twisting in pain. “Why would you come here, tonight of all nights?! Any other day… any other night… and I would have been so happy to see you…”

“What are you talking about?” you ask, totally confused. 

He growls in frustration, the weapon still shaking in his hands. You get to your feet. The knife from the kitchen is still in your hand. Right now, you could stab him. You’re close enough. But that’s not what you want to do. Instead, you do the one thing you’ve always wanted to do, since you were a little girl. 

You hug him. 

The weapon slips from his hands and lands with a dull thud on the hay strewn floor as you hear him make a faint gasping sound. 

“Please talk to me, Tomura,” you say. “I can finally hear your voice. So please just tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s Halloween night!” he yells, his arms dropping to his sides, not touching you. “Don’t you know? It’s the one night a year my body is restored! And I… I can’t control myself… all I can feel is rage and hate and… I just want to kill, to destroy… that’s the only way I can feel alive!”

He stops for a moment, and you can hear him breathing, feel his heart beating in his chest. He truly is alive! 

“Every year, your grandparents leave the farm on Halloween,” he says, his voice a bit calmer now. “I haven’t killed anyone in years, and all this bloodlust I feel has been building and building… and then you show up. You! The one person I never wanted to hurt!”

You look up at him. “You recognize me?” 

“Of course I do! For years you were the only person who talked to me! I knew you the moment you came to see me today in the field, even if you’re grown up now.”

His red eyes seem to sweep down over your figure, and you feel heat in your face. “Wait… does that mean you’re conscious when you’re a scarecrow?”

“Yeah. I’m aware of everything that goes on around me.”

Now you’re really embarrassed. All that time you were talking to him, he really was listening! But you can’t dwell on it for long. He pushes you away from him suddenly. 

“You need to run. Get off the property. Or get inside the main house. I’m not allowed to go inside it.”

You shake your head. “No, Tomura, I don’t want to leave you out here. I dreamed of you being real, being alive, all my life. I want to stay with you!”

His beautiful face looks anguished. “I don’t know how long I can keep myself from attacking you! Every inch of my body is screaming to hurt you, to do anything to feel alive!”

You step closer to him again. You thought you felt something when you hugged him before, but you want to be sure. You press yourself against him, and sure enough, you can feel that he’s hard, his erection straining against his pants. You reach down one hand and lightly rub over it. His breath hitches as his eyes widen. 

“Maybe there’s another way you can feel alive,” you tell him. 

A faint blush spreads over his face. “Is that… something you want?” 

You nod. “Do you want it too?”

Without a word, he suddenly kisses you, finally wrapping his arms around you for the first time as his lips press to yours. You breathe out a sigh against his mouth, content to be held by him. 

Then his hands are moving over you, a bit clumsily, tugging at your tank top, trying to pull it up. You laugh as you pull back from him. “Have you ever done this before? I mean, before you…”

“Before I died?” he asks, looking a little shy. “Yeah, a few times. It’s been about a hundred years though.”

You slip your tank top off and unhook your bra, letting it fall to the floor while he stares with wide eyes. “It’s okay,” you say as you wrap your arms around his neck, “I’m sure it’ll all come back to you.”

He smiles then, his warm hands sliding down your bare back, stopping to squeeze your ass through your shorts. You kiss him again, this time more deeply, your tongue in his mouth, and then your hands fly to the buttons of his flannel shirt, undoing them as quickly as you can. When he lets you pull his shirt off his shoulders, your eyes rake over his toned body appreciatively. In life, he was a farm boy, and it shows. 

His fingers hook into the waistband of your shorts and panties, pulling them both down in one go. You step out of them, then unbutton his jeans. Before you can slide them down his hips, he’s pushing you gently down into the hay, on your back, and climbing on top of you. 

You’d been chilly before, but now your whole body feels hot as his half-clothed body grinds against yours, his mouth warm on your neck. One of his hands is gripping your thigh, pulling it up beside him and making it easier for him to position himself between your legs. 

His mouth moves down from your neck to your chest, his lips enclosing over one nipple, his tongue darting out to flick it. You moan, your hands in his soft hair. When he slides one hand down to stroke the wet, hot flesh between your thighs, your back arches automatically, your body smashing against his. 

You can’t wait any longer. You shove his pants down to his knees, not entirely surprised that he’s not wearing underwear. He was a scarecrow until a few hours ago after all. Even though you know he’s a living breathing human right now, you’re still relieved to see that he has all his parts and they’re in working order. 

He begins kissing you again, and when his hand brushes over your shoulder, it grazes your wound, making you wince. He draws back, looking at the cut. “I’m sorry,” he says, sounding hurt, “I was so confused. I wanted to kill you, but at the same time I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. So I held back, and I hesitated.”

“I’m glad you did,” you say, raising up to kiss him again. “You could’ve taken my head off if you hadn’t held back.”

“I could never…” he murmurs, moving himself against you, rubbing his warm body across your form. You open your legs, giving him easy access, closing your eyes with a moan. 

“Tomura… I want you inside me…”

His breathing gets faster, more ragged, as he gets into position, then he gently pushes inside you, slowly filling you up. His mouth finds yours as he slides all the way in, and then begins thrusting into you, carefully at first before picking up speed. When you respond with moans and cries of his name, your arms tight around his neck, he begins thrusting more deeply, more roughly, using your reactions to judge how you want him to move. 

He fucks you so well, his body must have remembered exactly how it was done. He’s good, good enough to make you tremble in his arms, clutching him with all your strength as you cum on his cock. 

You wrap your legs around him just to steady yourself as he fucks you through your orgasm, and he kisses you, groaning into your mouth as he cums deeply inside you. 

The next few hours are precious to you, because you know he’ll go back to being a scarecrow when morning comes. You feel like Cinderella enjoying her last few minutes at the ball. 

The two of you sit in the hayloft together, you snuggled up in his flannel shirt, and talk. He tells you about his life before, what really happened to him and his family. His father really had strung him up in the field as punishment, and Tomura really had returned to life one year later and killed his whole family. Aside from his older sister, who had married and moved away from the farm before his death. He seems happy that she was spared, and regretful about killing his mother and grandparents, even though the rage was at its strongest that year. 

He doesn’t know why he comes back to life every year, what sort of magic or curse restores his body and drives him to kill. But the biggest surprise is that your grandparents know about him. 

“They’re nice. I like them,” he says. “They’re a little scared of me, I think. They tend to stay away from me even when it’s not Halloween. But they put new clothes on me when mine get worn out and they even throw a tarp on me when it’s raining real hard.”

The fact that your grandparents take care of a cursed scarecrow makes you smile. But then a thought occurs to you. “Has anyone tried to destroy you?”

He laughs. It’s the first time you’ve heard it but you like the sound of it. “Some have tried over the years,” he says, “but even when someone burned me up in a fire, a few hours later I was back on my stake like nothing happened.”

Happy to know he’s indestructible, you lean your head on his shoulder as the last bit of time you have together slips by. When the sky begins to lighten outside, the two of you walk into the cornfield and to his stake, hand in hand. When you reach it, you pull off his shirt and help him put it back on before he climbs onto the stake and holds his arms up to the wooden frame.

For a moment, you just watch, but then you climb up onto the stake with him and give him one more kiss. “I’ll come back to see you, I promise,” you tell him. 

“I’ll be waiting,” he says back, and then his head droops as rays of sunshine spread across the farm. In an instant, he’s no longer flesh and blood but made of straw. You hug his now thin body before climbing down from the stake. 

****************

It’s Halloween night, one year later, when you park your new car close to your grandparents’ farm house. They’re gone, of course, and despite their misgivings about you being there on Halloween night, they ultimately agreed to let you stay there. 

You’ve been back to the farm several times over this past year just to visit Tomura and talk to him. But today is special. In just a couple of hours, he would come to life and be able to speak to you, touch you, hold you. 

You walk through the field until you reach Tomura. Knowing now that he can hear and see you, a smile spreads over your lips. 

“I’m back, Tomura. I’m really excited about tonight. You are too, right?” you ask, standing at a perfect distance for him to see the cute outfit you wore just for him. You reach down and take hold of the hem of your flowy skirt, then slide the fabric up your thighs, revealing your black lace panties. 

You know it must be your imagination, but you could swear his red stone “eyes” are shining. You laugh and drop your skirt back down. “Just a little preview of what’s waiting for you in the barn tonight,” you say, giving him a sensuous smile before walking back into the field. As you disappear into the corn, you call out, “Happy Halloween, Tomura!”

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 21) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20

Chapter 21

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. You were okay with that when you bought it, but right now the thing that’s wrong with your house is the fact that you’re not in it. Tomura is coming home today – is home right now, in fact – but you’re not there with him. Instead you’re out to breakfast, in the same diner where you and the others plotted to kill the conjurer, with every single human in the neighborhood. Plus Inko, because why not?

You said you’re in the diner. It would be more accurate to say that you’re trapped in the diner, because you’re stuck in the corner of the booth between Shinsou and Jin’s entire family, wedged in so tightly that going out over the table or under it would be impossible. You’ve determined that this is Aizawa’s fault, so you glare at him. “There had better be a good reason why you dragged me here.”

“It’s for your own good,” Aizawa says. “And for Tomura’s, so if you claim to care about him –”

“If I claim to?”

“You’ll allow us to speak. We have more experience with this than you do.”

“None of us had help,” Jin’s mom says. “We had to figure things out by trial and error, and given the situation, we didn’t think it would be fair to let you go through the same thing.”

“Helping a ghost get used to being a human is hard,” Shinsou says. “And getting used to being human is hard for a ghost. We’re helping you. The other ghosts are all at your house helping him.”

“Oh.”

“They have a lot of stuff to explain,” Keigo says. “Stuff you wouldn’t want to explain. Like body stuff.”

“And hygiene stuff,” Inko adds. “They’re used to dematerializing any time they get dirty. Having to clean up is an adjustment.”

“It’s all an adjustment,” Aizawa says. “Our purpose here is to make the adjustment as easy as possible. Let’s begin.”

“No, let’s order,” Keigo says. The server’s here. “Hi. We’ll need a lot more coffee than this.”

There are so many of you that ordering takes forever, and while you wait your turn, you think over the events of the last few days. You went back to work the day after you were discharged from the hospital, scared the hell out of your coworkers, and got booted out by Mr. Yagi, who insisted you go home and rest. You went to the hospital instead, hanging out in Tomura’s room with the ghosts who were on shift. You and Hizashi spent some time formulating a backstory for Tomura, one that lines up with the lies you already told your parents, and Mr. Yagi helped you sneak the fake birth certificate into the government records. That was your first day out. On your second day out, you got to go back to work.

Work sucked. You tore through your inbox like a crazy person, trying to get as much done as possible, knowing you’d be out the whole next week and probably longer. Your progress was impeded by your coworkers, who’d heard rumors about what happened – you and your boyfriend getting kidnapped by a serial killer – and wanted to know if they were true. Surprisingly, Nakayama came to your rescue, shooing the others off. She made it clear that the price was a tell-all happy hour later on, but you decided it was worth it to get everybody else off your back.

Tomura woke up officially last night. The ghosts went to pick him up this morning, right around when the humans dragged you out of your house. You haven’t even seen him, and you’re so crabby about it that when the server asks you what you’re having today, you order half the menu on Aizawa’s dime.

Keigo manages to hold in his snickers until after the server’s walked away. “Gotta fuel up for when you get back, huh?”

“Hey. Gross,” Spinner protests. “There’s kids here.”

“Nah, I’m kidding. I saw what he looks like now. Too much exertion would probably kill him.” Keigo tips a huge wink at you and you roll your eyes. “Anyway, I officially call this meeting of ghost friends anonymous to order. Who wants to start?”

“Probably one of you two,” Jin says, gesturing at Inko and Aizawa. “You all have the same kind of ghost.”

Inko and Aizawa trade a glance, and Inko speaks up first. “Be prepared for a lot of frustration on Tomura’s part,” she says. “Most ghosts permanently embody themselves into healthy forms, so it’s likely that he’ll perceive some unfairness, and possibly express some regret. It’s got much less to do with you than with the adjustment to living as a human, so try not to take it personally.”

“Yeah, don’t take anything personally,” Jin agrees. “Himiko bit us a lot at first. For, like, no reason.”

You try to imagine Tomura biting you for no reason, and can’t. “Remember,” Aizawa says, “Tomura wouldn’t have been capable of permanent embodiment unless it was what he truly wanted. That doesn’t mean adjusting to it will be easy.”

“Like Takami says, the physical stuff is hard to explain,” Shinsou says. He grimaces. “But even just the rules of being human are a lot for them to figure out. They’ve been watching us all follow the rules, but they’ve never had to do it themselves, and they’re still them. They still don’t get a lot of the stuff we do. He’s gonna ask a lot of questions. And he’s gonna complain.”

“Magne had this thing about crosswalks,” Spinner says. “Also about clothes. She still has a thing about clothes. She thinks she can wear whatever she wants, wherever she wants, whenever she wants, as long as the important bits are covered up. I don’t really know how to explain that you just can’t do some stuff.”

You sort of like Magne’s don’t-give-a-fuck attitude about it, but you can see how it would cause trouble. “The more power they had before they embodied themselves, the less attentive they are to social norms or boundaries,” Aizawa says. “Behavior in public is something to be watchful of. A public indecency charge is not something you want to incur.”

He’s scowling in a way that says this piece of advice is coming out of personal experience. You can’t decide if you want to hear the full story or if you never want to think about it again. “I mean, I think you’ve done sort of a good job training him on this stuff already,” Keigo says. “He’s got some social skills.”

You feel like he might be giving Tomura a little too much credit. “Like three social skills.”

“That’s three more than Dabi’s got,” Spinner points out, which shouldn’t really make you feel better but does anyway. “I hung out with him more than anybody except her, and he’s not that bad. It’ll probably get harder once you two start going out in public, but he’s not starting at zero. He’s at like – level three.”

“One level for every social skill,” Shinsou says, and snickers. “Nice.”

“I think the larger problem is overstimulation,” Jin’s mom says, and it takes all your self-control not to start in with some really inappropriate thoughts. “However they’ve been perceiving through their senses when they’re embodied, it’s much more intense when the embodiment’s permanent – at least from what we saw with Himiko.”

“In general, they struggle with one sense more than the others,” Aizawa says. “For Eri it was taste.”

“Himiko, too,” Jin’s mom confirms. “That might have been what the biting was about. She also struggled with smell, which makes sense, since taste and smell are fairly connected. What about Magne, Spinner?”

“Sight for sure,” Spinner says. “Light sensitivity, color sensitivity, everything. She sees colors the rest of us don’t even know exist. It’s cool. But it sucked at first.”

“For Hizashi it was hearing,” Aizawa adds. “Ghosts are able to hear in multiple dimensions, and his hearing was particularly sensitive as a ghost. It took him two years to be able to go without noise-canceling headphones outside.”

You have a feeling you already know what Tomura’s oversensitivity is going to be. Given the number of contact allergies he’s already displayed and what he was like as a ghost, physical touch is going to be a big problem. It’s so daunting to think of that it pushes you into asking your first real question of the day. “How did you help them cope with it?”

“Patience,” Inko says.

You thought that was a given. “Time,” Jin’s mom adds.

“Space,” Aizawa says, and everyone nods. “Now, for the first few weeks –”

You knew helping Tomura adapt to being human wasn’t going to be easy, but as the ghost friends outline all the things you hadn’t even considered, you begin to grasp just how hard it’s going to be. Every last ghost did damage to their relationship with their human, or humans, while they were trying to adjust. Every human had more than a few moments of thinking how much easier it would have been for their ghost to stay a ghost. Even Hizashi and Mr. Yagi, who were the most intentional about their embodiments, had days where they made living with them feel impossible. You’re glad everyone is being honest with you, thankful that they aren’t sugarcoating it, but your stomach is tying itself in a knot.

Tomura’s embodiment wasn’t just an adjustment, it was a last resort to avoid being sucked back into the world between. And it almost didn’t work. If even the ghosts who wanted this were nightmares to live with at first, what’s going to happen with him? Nobody can answer that for you, or tell you how to cope with however many times Tomura will probably tell you that he wishes the two of you had never met. All they can tell you is the same three things: Patience, time, and space.

To be fair to the ghost friends, they highlight the fun stuff, too. Spinner talks about taking Magne to a museum for the first time, and to a mall. Jin and his family turned themselves into foodies so they could try everything alongside Himiko. Even before Shinsou and Eri were adopted, Shinsou taught himself to make candy apples, because Eri had seen them on TV and wanted to try them. Aizawa, looking as calm and reflective as you’ve ever seen him, talks about taking Hizashi to movies, to concerts, to the opera, and watching him hear things as they were meant to be heard for the first time. Inko, smiling broadly, tells you about when she was pregnant, and Mr. Yagi’s reaction the first time he put his hand on her stomach and felt Izuku kick.

“He looked like he��d seen a ghost,” she says, laughing. “He didn’t know babies did that.”

Keigo is laughing, too. You picture Mr. Yagi’s startled expression, the one you’ve seen so many times right before he starts coughing blood, and find it in yourself to smile. “They’re still themselves underneath it all,” Inko says. “Even if it takes time to see.”

It’s quiet for a moment. Most of the plates are empty, including yours. You’ve been eating steadily just to have something to do with your hands. “There’s one more thing,” Keigo says. “Stronger ghosts keep some of their powers when they embody permanently. According to Touya, Tomura kept a lot of his. He can still read auras, like they all can, but he can project a pretty strong aura all on his own. And he can still drain stuff, even if he can’t do anything with the life-force. So far it’s looking like he needs to touch something with all five fingers for it to happen, and since it’s not anything close to a natural human ability, he has to really want to destroy it. Just keep an eye on him if he starts to get mad.”

“Okay,” you say. “What else?”

“We’re happy for you,” Shinsou says, and Inko nods, smiling still. Everybody’s smiling, now that you notice it. “It’s a big thing. And it’s a good thing. Now you’re really part of the neighborhood.”

You could be. You can be, now that you and Tomura can both leave if you want to. For a moment, hope begins to tug at you – but then you remember what Keigo said, and what everybody else said about patience, space, and time. It’ll be a long time before the two of you can be part of anything. And probably a long time before the two of you are a two of you again, too. Aizawa’s phone buzzes, and he looks at it. “They’re finishing up over there. We should head back, too.”

He heads to the cash register to pay the bill, and the rest of you work on extricating yourselves from the booth. You wince as you stand up, feeling your stitches pull. Keigo notices. “How are you holding up?”

“I’ll live.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard with this stuff,” Keigo says. He gestures awkwardly at his broken arm with the other. “It’s a lot to bounce back from. I’m here when you need to talk. Like I have been.”

“Same here,” you say, and Keigo smiles. “And, um – thanks for taking over with the kids, during the fight. I had to try.”

“It was a pretty good try,” Keigo says magnanimously. “You ran a fire poker right through that guy’s chest. Remind me not to piss you off.”

“You know, I think your house is still the scariest house in the neighborhood,” Jin muses. “I figured Dabi’s house or Aizawa’s was going to take over, but nope. Tomura still has a bunch of his powers and you almost killed two guys. You’re the scariest for sure.”

The scariest house in the neighborhood, and now you’re part of the reason why it’s scary. The list of things that make you feel better these days is short and weird, and Jin’s statement  gets added almost instantly. “Thanks.”

You all carpooled in the Bubaigawara van, and Jin’s mom parks it in front of her own house, allowing everybody else to spill out onto the sidewalk. You and Keigo and Aizawa are last out, and as you get your feet under you, you notice a lot of ghosts milling around in front of your house. In front of it, not inside the fence. You make your way over, stumbling a little bit. “Did he kick you out?”

“Nah, we left. Figured he needed some processing time,” Hizashi says. He’s looking past you, at Aizawa. “Hey, what are you doing walking around? You’re supposed to rest your leg.”

Himiko skips up to you, towing Eri and Izuku after her. “It’s all fine,” she tells you, smiling. “He understands everything and we gave him some of everybody’s clothes until he can buy his own.”

“He looks even more like me now!” Eri is bouncing from foot to foot. “He’s going to come over to our house.”

“Oh.” You wonder if Tomura actually meant it, or if he just said it so she’d leave him alone. “That’s – nice.”

“You’re invited, too,” Eri assures you. Then she, like Hizashi, looks over your shoulder. “Dad! Hitoshi!”

Himiko peels off to meet Jin, leaving you with Izuku, who’s watching the house. “Tomura’s still really powerful,” he says. “Even when he’s human the aura is still there. Dad says he could probably take on a strong conjurer, even like this.”

“What else did your dad say?”

“That’s for you to ask Tomura yourself,” Mr. Yagi says, drawing up alongside Izuku. He smiles at you. “I’ve cleared your schedule next week. Let me know if you need more time.”

“And call if you need anything,” Inko reiterates. She takes Mr. Yagi’s hand and wraps an arm around Izuku’s shoulders. “Come over for dinner when you’re ready.”

“Yes!” Izuku looks way too happy at the thought. “I have lots of questions for both of you!”

You decide you’ll wait a while to take them up on that invitation, but they’re not the only ones who stop to talk to you specifically. Each of the ghosts stops by briefly, all of them reassuring you that Tomura’s fine. You’re not going to believe them until you see it for yourself.

Finally, Aizawa and Hizashi are all that’s left. Aizawa hands you a book – another one of his. You read the cover out loud and snicker. “What To Expect When Your Ghost Embodies Itself? Great title.”

“It’s a little boring,” Hizashi says, and you realize he doesn’t get the joke. Aizawa is smirking slightly. “Good stuff in there, though.”

“It covers everything we discussed earlier, and a little more,” Aizawa says. “Good luck.”

“You probably won’t be up to it, but come over later if you want,” Hizashi says. “That conjurer ruined our Halloween, so we’re throwing a make-up party at our place. Costumes mandatory.”

There’s no way you’re making it to that party. You thank them for the invitation anyway, tuck the book under your arm, and step through the front gate into your yard. Up the front steps, through the unlocked door, into the front hall. Some part of you is expecting Tomura to materialize in front of you, but he can’t do that anymore. “I’m home,” you call out, and Phantom comes scrabbling across the floor towards you, wagging her tail. You greet her, then pick her up. “Tomura?”

“In here.”

He’s home. Your heart leaps so hard and fast it seems a little ridiculous, and you hurry into the living room to see him. He’s there, sitting on his usual couch cushion, wearing some bizarre mix of clothing from every guy in the neighborhood, plus a pair of socks that could only have come from Himiko. The urge to launch yourself at him, to climb all over him like he’s done to you so many times and prove to yourself that he’s alive and he’s safe, is overpowering. But you remember what the others said. Patience, time, space. You don’t want to overwhelm him. You set Phantom down on the couch next to him and take a few steps back, keeping a respectful distance.

It’s quiet for a while. You break the silence. “How do you feel?”

He has the hood of his hoodie up, throwing his face into shadow. “Like shit.”

That’s about what you were expecting. You need more detail if you’re going to help, but you don’t want to push him. “Did everything go okay at the hospital?”

His shoulders lift, then fall. You see him grimace. “It was weird. All that stuff they did. The stupid paperwork is over there if you want to look at it.”

“Okay.” Before, when he wasn’t human, you’d have helped yourself. Now – “Do you want me to look at it?”

Another shrug. If he didn’t want you to, he’d say no, right? You pick the folder up off the coffee table and open it to the discharge summary, which is a mistake. The list of injuries Tomura came in with is staggering. Seeing this, you’re amazed they only kept him in for five days. “Well?” Tomura asks.

You set the folder down. “You healed up really fast.”

“There are things wrong with me,” Tomura says. One hand rises to scratch his neck. “My skin is messed up. I’m – allergic.”

“I have allergy medicine for stuff like that. And itch cream.”

“They gave me some.” Tomura still hasn’t taken down his hood. “What did the humans want?”

“They wanted to tell me how to help you adjust,” you say, and Tomura makes a derisive sound. Phantom stirs, whines, and noses closer to him. “What did the ghosts want with you?”

“To explain.” The derision is obvious in Tomura’s voice. “Like I’m stupid or something.”

“You aren’t. They don’t think that,” you say, only to realize that Tomura still probably knows what the other ghosts are thinking better than you do. “They probably don’t want you to make the same mistakes as they did. From what the humans were saying, they all made a lot of mistakes.”

“They almost scared their humans off.” Tomura’s voice goes weirdly flat. “I already did that.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know what I look like. When I saw the picture on the ID, that was the first time.” Tomura seems to sink further into his hoodie, and suddenly you understand why he hasn’t taken down the hood. “No wonder you didn’t want me embodied. You’d have to look at me all the time.”

“Tomura –”

“I just wanted to stay. I didn’t want to go back. I thought it would be the same, but it’s not,” Tomura says. There’s a weird strain in his voice now, one you’ve never heard from him but know intimately yourself. “There are things wrong with me. I’m ugly. You wanted me when I was a ghost and I was powerful, not when I’m human and weak. You won’t even come near me.”

“No,” you say, and Tomura scoffs. “No! When I was talking to the others, they said it’s hard to get used to a human body – stuff might be harder to cope with now that it’s permanent – they said I should give you time and space –”

“I didn’t do this so I could have time and space!” Tomura’s still got enough power to rattle the walls without raising his voice. “I did it so I could – so we –”

His voice breaks. Phantom edges closer to him and he shies away, both hands coming up to cover his face at odd angles. You stand there for a moment, paralyzed by the decision between everything the other ghost friends told you and what Tomura’s saying now, what he’s doing now. But in the end it’s not a decision at all. You hurry around the coffee table, move Phantom to the cushion at the far end of the couch, and sit down right next to Tomura, getting in his space without asking the same way he always does to you. You pry his hands away from his face one at a time, and he fights you. He’s fighting you with a fraction of his strength and you both know it. “Let go. I don’t want you. I don’t want your pity –”

“It’s not pity,” you say. He lets you have one of his hands and you immediately try for the other. “I don’t know what this is like for you. I’m trying to do the right thing, but I should have just asked you what you needed. I can do better.”

“You don’t want to. You don’t want this!” He pulls his hand free of yours to gesture at himself. “I know what you wanted. You wanted –”

“You.” You don’t even have to think before you answer. “I wanted you. I want you.”

He stares at you from between his fingers. You give up on trying to free his hands and press in close against his side. He startles at your touch, but doesn’t shy away. He smells like the hospital. His voice is quiet, shaky, strained. “You liked when I was cold.”

“It was nice. But I’ve got AC. And now I can hold you for as long as I want without getting frostbite.”

“You liked that I got rid of the bugs.”

“I’m still making you get rid of the bugs,” you say, and Tomura makes a sound that’s too watery to be laughter. “But I can get rid of my own, too. I had a whole plan for that hornets’ nest.”

“Your plan sucked.” It did sort of suck, looking back. Tomura’s voice is quieter when he speaks again. “You liked when I was stronger than you.”

“You’re still stronger than me.” You can feel it when you touch him, a faint thread of power vibrating just beneath his skin. “That’s not the important stuff.”

“What is?”

“Everything else,” you say. “You’re still you, Tomura. It might feel different to be in the world like this, but you’re still who you are. That’s who I want. Who I love.”

It’s quiet for a long time. “You liked the way I looked before.”

It’s a weird enough thing to say to startle a laugh out of you. “The way you look now is how you’ve always looked, Tomura. Your hair’s a different color, that’s all.”

“I always looked like this.” Tomura sounds skeptical. “You said I was pretty.”

“You are pretty.” You reach for the edges of his hood and his hands come up, grasping your wrists, holding you still. He holds you there for a few seconds, then lets go, and lets you pull down the hood.

It’s him. Those same features you saw outlined in steam in the bathroom, on your back porch with the ashes of a hornets’ nest at his feet. The same red eyes that have watched you for almost two years, that have catalogued every inch of you, that looked up into yours after the gateway to the world between slammed shut for the last time. You’ve seen all his expressions before, except this one: The way he looks when he’s been crying. As you watch, his pupils open and shut, and more tears slip down his cheeks.

You scramble to wipe them away, cradling his face in your hands. He flinches when your palm gently meets his cheek, and you draw back, only for him to catch your wrist and press your hand hard against his skin. That feels normal enough to make you smile. Tomura’s never been shy about pulling you around. “You’re pretty,” you say again. “You’ve never looked any different than this. I like it. I don’t care if you do. I don’t care about anything except that you’re home.”

“But –”

“The next words out of your mouth had better not be ‘Dabi said’.”

An aggrieved silence falls, and you find yourself struggling not to laugh. It feels normal. It feels like any weird little argument you and Tomura have had, except that he can’t dematerialize to teach you a lesson and you can’t end the fight just by stepping outside. “You love me,” Tomura ventures after a while. “Like this?”

“Don’t be stupid,” you say. “Of course I do.”

Tomura knocks you over a second later.

Cuddling on the couch is more complicated than it used to be, mainly because Tomura’s a long way from being used to what touch feels like in a truly human form and he can’t get comfortable the way he usually would. If he can barely stand to stretch out on top of you, there’s no way he can handle kissing, and you can tell that the overload of sensation doesn’t turn him on so much as it fries his brain. Not that that stops him from trying to kiss you more. “Take it easy,” you say. “You just got home. I don’t want to take you back to the hospital because you tried to kiss me and had a heart attack.”

“That doesn’t happen,” Tomura says with confidence. Then, as you watch, you see him start to doubt himself. Some how he’s less sure about humans now that he is one. “Does it?”

“It could.” You remember something from a few days ago about how too much exertion on not enough calories could damage Tomura’s heart, and he still feels way too thin. “Can you reach your discharge papers? I want to read them.”

He reaches out to grab them from the coffee table, but it’s ever so slightly too far away. Before he’d dematerialize one hand, snatch them, and bring them back. Now he just glares at them and keeps glaring – and as you watch in some mix of surprise and horror, the folder lifts from the table and drops to the ground next to the couch.

Tomura realizes you’re staring at him and smirks. “I never said all my powers were gone.”

Now that he’s realized you still love him, he’s cocky, but you’re not annoyed about it. You’re not going to forget what it was like when you got home, what it was like to see him cry, and you’re not dumb enough to think today will be the last time it comes up. Tomura flops down again, his head against your chest, and you pick up his discharge papers and flip through them. Sure enough, there’s one specific instruction highlighted and in bold type. “No intense physical activity until you’re cleared by a doctor,” you say. Tomura scowls. You keep reading. “Your follow-up’s in two weeks. It’s not that long.”

“Maybe if we go slow –”

“No.” You set the papers down and trace over one tendon in his neck, wincing as he twitches and writhes and digs his knees and elbows into every soft body part you possess. He’s lying on top of all your stitches, and it’s starting to hurt. “You can barely handle being touched at all right now. I’m not going to send you back to the hospital and I’m not going to melt your brain.”

“It’s my brain. I get to decide –”

“You don’t get to leave me,” you say, and Tomura looks up, startled. “Two weeks.”

Tomura studies you for a moment. Then he flops down again. “Fine. Two weeks. But then I get to – what happened? Why did you make that noise?”

You tried not to. Really. But one of the too-prominent points of Tomura’s ribcage just dug directly into one of your largest wounds, and you think you might have popped a stitch. Tomura sits up, pulls you with him, starts yanking at your shirt. “I want to see. Let me see –”

Your shirt turns to dust in an instant. You didn’t realize Tomura could do that to things that weren’t alive, and you sit there, bemused. Tomura is staring at you, eyes blazing with fury. “My marks,” he says, and you nod. It occurs to you that this is the first time he’s seen the extent of your injuries. “How did he take them out?”

“One at a time. With a knife.” You try to make light of it, try to sound like it isn’t haunting you, like waking up in a hospital bed after it was all over didn’t scare you so badly that you had to be sedated. “Not my best Monday ever.”

“Don’t joke about it.” Tomura’s voice is hard. “He hurt you so much you wanted to die. I should have killed him slower. It should have taken exactly as long as this did.”

You wrap your arms around yourself, trying to cover up the worst of the wounds. The doctors who treated you had decent poker faces, but since you’ve gotten home, you’ve gone out of your way to avoid getting a good look at what happened. Tomura’s expression as he looks at you tells you everything you need to know about how bad it is. “I haven’t even had them for a week yet,” you say. Your voice sounds thin. “They won’t look like this forever.”

Tomura’s jaw clenches. “I don’t care what they look like. I care that they hurt.”

You don’t know what to say to that. You sit there numbly and Tomura watches you, clearly thinking something over but not doing it, whatever it is. “I can’t,” he starts frustrated. “I can’t do the thing I want to do anymore. When I wasn’t materialized I could –”

He makes a gesture, and suddenly you understand what he means. You crawl forward across the couch into his arms, and he wraps himself around you. It’s not like it was before. He can’t enfold you completely like he used to, fitting like a second skin. But now you’ve got something solid to lean against, someone who’s warm like you are, someone who maybe understands how you feel about this whole thing. Tomura’s hugs were always a little awkward, even when he was fully materialized. He didn’t understand what was comfortable and what wasn’t, why you’d be at ease in one position but not in another, and he’d complain when you tried to adjust. Tomura’s not complaining now. He adjusts with you, and once you’re settled, you try not to move too much. It’s weird. But it’s the kind of weird you can get used to.

“You smell nice,” Tomura says after a little while. He unwraps one arm from around you and sniffs his own armpit. Then he makes a face. “I smell weird.”

“You smell like the hospital,” you say. “We can fix that. Want to shower?”

Tomura gives you a suspicious look. “I’m not allowed in the bathroom while you’re in there.”

“That was before.” You think over the events of the last week. He’s already seen you naked. The two of you have had sex. He’s your boyfriend, and he’s human. Whatever objections you had, they aren’t valid anymore. “The rules still apply if either of us is using the toilet, but we can shower together. If you want. Do you want to?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tomura says, which means yes. “I thought you’d never let me.”

There are a lot of things you thought would never happen, and a lot of them happened in the last week. You pull yourself out of Tomura’s arms reluctantly and lead him up the stairs.

You check over your wound care instructions and Tomura’s as he gets undressed. Everything looks about the same for both of you. You also take the opportunity to go over the list of known allergens the doctors gave you yesterday. Almost all your soaps and shower products meet the criteria already – low to no scent, hypoallergenic, no harsh chemicals. You set out an extra towel and an extra sponge and lay down a bath mat, then turn on the water.

Since you met Tomura you’ve been taking hot showers, but they can be hard on skin, and you don’t want Tomura to faint. You opt for warm water instead, take off your own clothes, and inspect your stitches for a moment before stepping into the shower. The spot Tomura elbowed by accident looks unhappy, but the coarse black stitches haven’t come undone. Seeing them makes you feel sick. You look away and step into the shower, leaving the door cracked for Tomura to follow you in.

There’s room for both of you inside, but it’s a close fit. You have a feeling that you and Tomura will be having a discussion about the impracticality of shower sex at some point in the future, but that’s not for today. You switch positions carefully with Tomura so that he’s under the majority of the spray and watch him startle as it patters against his skin. You wonder what he’s thinking.

You’ve spent a lot of time wondering what Tomura’s thinking since you met him, but it occurs to you that you can ask. “What’s going on up there?”

“It’s – so much. Loud. But not loud. It feels like – a lot.” Tomura’s hair is plastered to his face from the water. He pushes it out of his eyes. “I’m fine. I don’t want to get out.”

“We won’t get out,” you promise. “Take the time you need.”

He twists this way and that under the spray, working on getting used to it. He’s got stitches, too, all of them taken with the same coarse thread as yours. “Now what?”

You pick up a bottle of shampoo. The mild kind. “Put this in your hair and sort of scrub it around, then rinse it out,” you explain. Tomura brushes his hair out of his eyes again, looking vaguely skeptical. “Or I can do it for you.”

“You.”

You should have known he’d answer like that. He’s got enough of a height advantage on you that you’re going to need him to sit down for this to work, and there are an awkward few minutes while the two of you get settled. You lean back against the wall, and Tomura leans back against your chest, head tipped forward. “Make sure you close your eyes,” you say. “This will sting if it gets in them.”

Tomura nods without looking up. You pour some shampoo into your hand and get to work.

His hair is tangled, like always. Worse than always, because he’s been materialized this entire time, and he hasn’t brushed it at all. You forget about washing his hair for a second in favor of detangling it, and Tomura slumps back against you. “You’re still doing that now that I’m here all the time? I thought you’d stop.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” Tomura says quickly. You return your attention to the knot you’re working through. “I thought it was just because I was a ghost.”

Huh. “What other things do you think I was only doing because you were a ghost?”

The answer, it turns out, is a lot of things. If Tomura had asked any of the other ghosts about them, he wouldn’t have had to worry, but they probably would have told him not to be stupid, which is probably why he didn’t ask. No wonder he was upset when you got back, if he thought he was losing so many things – sleeping on top of you, sitting on your lap, having his hair played with, being held. He names gesture after gesture as you untangle his hair, and you reassure him about each one.

Once you’ve worked through all the knots, you move on to washing Tomura’s hair in earnest. You don’t think you’re doing a very good job, but when your fingers slow their progress, Tomura complains in a voice that sounds distinctly sleepy. “Don’t. It’s nice.”

You add conditioner, too. Tomura probably won’t bother with it in the future, but you might as well give him soft hair while you can get away with it. Then you shake him out of relaxation and help him to his feet to wash off. He’s sort of floppy when he’s tired, and although you can already tell that it’ll annoy you sometimes, right now it’s just cute. There’s no way you’re telling him he’s cute. You hand him a sponge and some soap and put him in charge of washing his front. You’ll take care of his back.

The fight left Tomura beaten up all over, but his back took a lot of damage while he was caught between the living world and the world between, and it’s where the majority of his stitches are. Even looking at them upsets you. You can’t help but think that if you’d been faster to get to him, if you’d been stronger, if you’d called the others to help you instead of waiting for them to come on their own, he wouldn’t have spent so long trapped between worlds. He wouldn’t have been hurt like this. But that’s only the last set of mistakes you made. If you’d killed his conjurer like you meant to, he’d still be a ghost, and there’d be no marks on him at all.

“Hey.” Tomura glances over his shoulder at you, and you realize that your hands have gone still. You duck closer, hiding your face, and go back to washing, but Tomura’s not fooled. You keep forgetting, somehow, that he knows you as well as you know him. “Don’t make that face. You’re just a human. What were you supposed to do?”

“Kill him.” Your voice wavers. “So you could be human because you wanted to. Not because you didn’t have a choice.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tomura says. He turns to face you, and when you don’t look up, his hand rises to hold your jaw and tilt it upward. “If I was just doing it to avoid going back, it wouldn’t have worked. I wanted to be like this.”

You know that, but – “I wish I hadn’t let you get hurt.”

“Yeah, and I wish I hadn’t let my conjurer torture you.” Tomura gives you a few seconds of protesting that characterization of events before he springs his trap. “See how dumb it sounds when I say it? It sounds dumber from you, since you’re the human and it wasn’t even your job. You told me the stupid plan the others had. You were never supposed to do it.”

He pauses for a moment. “I guess it would have worked if I’d been materialized, though. Dabi saw you stab him. He said it was kind of hot.”

Your mind goes sort of blank at the sheer weirdness of that statement. “And he’s still alive because?”

“I can kill him whenever I want to,” Tomura says. He turns away again, and you go back to washing off the unstitched parts of his skin, shaking your head in bemusement. “I bet it was really hot.”

Tomura thinks the fact that you ran his conjurer through with a fire poker is hot. That’s probably a good thing, because you’re not sorry you did it. You rest your forehead against the back of his neck for a second, resisting the urge to kiss him, and note that his pale skin is turning pink and flushed from the water. The water’s not that warm. You should probably get him out of here sooner rather than later. Inko warned you that newly embodied ghosts aren’t aware of the physical sensations that proceed things like throwing up or passing out, and you’d really prefer for Tomura not to faint in here.

Tomura complains about having to get out, but you remind him that showering is something humans have to do regularly and shoo him out anyway. You stay in a little longer to wash up, then step out into a mildly steamy bathroom. For a moment you’re cast back into the memory of the first time you saw Tomura face to face – in this bathroom, outlined by the steam, looking you up and down with a smile you couldn’t identify as creepy or not. Thinking about it now, you know it wasn’t creepy. He was proud of himself for figuring out how to make himself visible, proud that you could see him at last. Standing here more than a year later, it’s hard to believe how much has changed.

There are puddles of water down the hall on the way to the bedroom, evidence that while Tomura’s figured out showering, he hasn’t figured out drying off. When you step into your room, you find more evidence in the form of a pile of wet clothes discarded on the ground. Jin’s mom said that the ghosts have to learn by experience sometimes. You glance towards the bed and find Tomura sitting on it, dressed in a pair of pink sweatpants of unknown provenance and – “Um, is that my shirt?”

“Yeah.” Tomura gives you that dumbest-person-ever look. You’re not thrilled to see that it’s survived his embodiment. “It was right there. It fits.”

You buy your pajama shirts almost comically oversized, and Tomura’s not all that much taller than you. Something that’s huge on you is still pretty big on him. It fits, but it’s the principle of the thing. “Didn’t the others give you clothes?”

“Yeah. They didn’t smell right.” Tomura pulls the collar of the shirt up over his nose and mouth and breathes in. “This one smells like you.”

You were never into stealing your boyfriend’s hoodies, back when you had human boyfriends. You don’t love wearing other people’s clothes. But apparently there has to be at least one clothing thief in every relationship, and Tomura’s taken over the role. Tomura yawns so widely that his jaw pops, then recoils. “What was that? Why did I do that?”

“That’s a yawn. You’re tired.” You were thinking about street clothes, but just like you did the last time you and Tomura were in this room together, you opt for pajamas instead. “I could go for a nap, too.”

You climb into bed on your usual side, leaving the door cracked open for Phantom in case she comes up, and Tomura gets awkwardly into bed on the other side. “How do I do it?”

“Do what?”

“Sleep.”

Right – he’s spent the last week either in an induced coma or heavily sedated. He hasn’t had the chance yet to fall asleep naturally. “Get comfortable,” you say, and Tomura, semi-predictably, abandons his side of the bed in favor of getting in your personal space. “Now close your eyes. You’re tired, so I bet your eyelids feel kind of heavy, right? Let them close. Think about stuff if you want to think about it, or don’t think about anything. It’ll happen on its own.”

“That sounds too easy,” Tomura mumbles, half-asleep already. “Sometimes it takes you forever.”

“Sometimes it’s harder than others,” you admit. “It’s pretty easy right now. Just relax.”

Tomura mumbles something else, but you can feel the tension leaving his body, until he’s relaxed save for the icy thread of ghostly power running through him. It’s faint, but you have the sense that that’s illusory, at least a little bit. Tomura might be permanently embodied now, but he’s the most powerful of the embodied ghosts, and probably still the least human. He can’t dematerialize anymore and he needs to eat and sleep, but it feels likely that the effect of his powers on your daily life won’t change too much.

But you can figure that out later. Right now he’s asleep next to you, his red eyes closed, his lips parted slightly, warm and breathing and undeniably alive. The same kind of alive as you are, finally. For good.

You shift a little closer to him, and his arm wraps around you tightly. That’s fine with you. You close your eyes and fall asleep almost as fast as he did.

When you wake up, it’s to the sound of your phone buzzing, startling you out of a nightmare. You have all kinds of material for nightmares now, and your subconscious has been mixing and matching it in increasingly horrible combinations for the last few nights – or afternoons, since you can tell by the light coming through the window that sunset is a ways off. You reach for your phone, desperate for a distraction, and Tomura’s arms tighten around you. He sounds like he’s mostly asleep when he speaks. “No.”

“I’m not leaving,” you say. You get ahold of your phone and flip it to silent before reading the texts. They’re from Shinsou.

Shinsou: are u guys coming or not

Shinsou: everybody else is

Shinsou: Eri says you have to or she’ll cry

Shinsou: she says Tomura promised

She mentioned something about that earlier. You shake Tomura’s shoulder. “Did you promise Eri you’d come to the party?”

“No.” There’s a pause. “She wouldn’t leave until I said yes.”

Great. “How much do you care about making her cry?”

“I don’t care,” Tomura mumbles. You wait. “She backed me up in the fight. I owe her.”

“So we have to go,” you realize. The idea is less upsetting to you now than it was when you first heard about it, namely because you just had a nightmare and you don’t want to go back to bed. You text Shinsou back. Your dad said it’s a costume party. Do we have to have costumes?

Yeah. Shinsou sends a shrugging emoji. Not serious ones. One of my dads is going all out and the other one just has cat ears on.

Aizawa can get away with just cat ears – he’s the one hosting the party. You and Tomura are going to have to come up with something a little better. Shinsou texts again. It starts in an hour. Be there. You really don’t want Eri to cry.

You’d feel really bad making Eri cry, especially now that you remember her helping Tomura during the fight – and saving your life just beforehand. You start to sit up, and Tomura drags you back down. “No. I like sleeping. I want to sleep.”

“Humans sleep every night,” you remind him. “You can go back to sleep later. Right now we have to go to a party.”

It takes a while to drag Tomura out of bed – twenty minutes at least, leaving you with forty minutes to come up with some kind of costume. You get in your own way a little bit when you realize how cute Tomura looks with bedhead, then order yourself to pull it together. Tomura can’t shadow you as closely as he did when he could dematerialize, but he still gives it his best shot, and you two end up colliding and tripping on each other – and on Phantom – way more than is actually necessary. After ransacking your house for costume ideas and coming up with nothing, you finally turn to Google for help.

Tomura reads over your shoulder. “These are dumb. I thought Halloween was supposed to be scary.”

“It is,” you say. You decide to get into the part of Halloween that’s supposed to be sexy later – later, as in next year. Or never. “This is the wrong neighborhood for scary, though. No matter what I dress up as, I won’t be scarier than everybody else who lives here.”

And that’s when it clicks for you, oddly enough – it clicks, and you can’t help but laugh. The perfect low-effort Halloween costume. How did you not think of it before? Tomura eyes you suspiciously. “Why are you laughing?”

“I have an idea. It might get us kicked out.”

“If we get kicked out, we can come back and go to sleep again,” Tomura says. Introducing Tomura to the concept of naptime may have been a mistake. “What is it?”

You head for the stairs, and the linen closet. “You’ll see.”

It takes you approximately two seconds to assemble the first costume, and once you do, you show Tomura. It occurs to you way too late that he might think it’s offensive. But once he realizes what you are, he cracks up laughing – then wincing, as the laughter strains the stitches on his back. “They’re going to hate it,” he says. “I bet they won’t even let us in.”

“If they don’t let us in, then we get to go home right away.” You gesture at the linen closet. “Pick your poison.”

It takes you a few more minutes to leave, mostly because Tomura insists on bringing Phantom, and Phantom needs a costume, too. She’s a lot less into her costume than you and Tomura are. She keeps wiggling out of it, and while Tomura tries to lure her back under the sheet, you peer out the front window. The street still looks like hell. Everybody’s houses are still at least partially wrecked. If you drove past this neighborhood, not knowing anything about who lives here and why this happened, you’d avoid it like the plague.

You watch as Keigo and Dabi and Natsu leave their house. Natsu looks like he’s wearing normal clothes, but Keigo has a fake halo and Dabi has a pair of devil horns on. It occurs to you that Dabi might be the only other person in the neighborhood who thinks your costume is funny.

“I got her to wear it,” Tomura says, and you turn to look. There’s Phantom, wearing a flower-patterned pillowcase with holes cut out for her ears, eyes, and nose – and there’s Tomura, wearing a grey sheet over her head with holes cut out so he can see. “I think she’s mad at me.”

“She’s not mad,” you say. You’re pretty sure she’ll forgive you both when she realizes you’re headed over to Aizawa’s house. Shinsou is probably her favorite person other than Tomura. “You look pretty.”

Tomura gives you a once-over. Your sheet is lavender, and you accessorized with a pair of reading glasses you accidentally stole from Mr. Yagi’s office and never gave back. “Cute,” he decides. “The sooner they kick us out, the sooner we can come back.”

He heads for the door, opens it, and steps outside. You gather up Phantom’s leash and follow him onto the porch. When you turn to lock the door, Tomura stops you. His eyes crinkle at the corners, the way they do when he’s smiling creepily on purpose. “Don’t bother,” he says. “This neighborhood is still mine.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” You tuck your keys back into your pocket and make your way down the front steps, to the front gate, and out onto the sidewalk. It’s not until you hear the gate’s hinges creak open again that you realize Tomura hasn’t followed you. You turn back. “Tomura?”

Tomura’s hesitating on the far side of the property line. You can’t figure out why. He’s left before. He was away from the house for five days – but not by choice. The ambulance took him away and the other ghosts brought him back, but in all the time since he was summoned, Tomura’s never left the property of his own free will. You hold out the hand that isn’t grasping Phantom’s leash, and he comes closer to take it. His hand is warm.

Warm, and a little sweaty. He’s nervous. “We don’t have to go to this thing,” you tell him. “You just got home today. It’s a lot. If you’d rather stay home, we can.”

“You want to go.”

“I think it might be fun.” Mostly you want to see what Hizashi does when you roll up to his party dressed like the world’s most stereotypical, low-budget ghost. “But I still like it’s best when it’s just us. If you don’t want to go, we won’t. I’m not leaving you.”

“Because you love me,” Tomura says, almost hesitantly. You nod. “I love you, too.”

It’s a good thing you’ve got the sheet on. You’re not sure you want Tomura to see the goofy smile you’re wearing. Tomura raises his free hand and touches your mouth through the sheet, feeling along the curve of it until you dare to kiss the tips of his fingers. He startles, and you remember the touch sensitivity. It’s fine when he’s the one initiating contact, since he’s the one who decides what he can handle, but you need to be careful. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tomura says. He kisses you.

It’s not a great kiss, given that there are two layers of cotton between your mouth and his, but you’ll take it. You’ve always been willing to take what you can get from Tomura, and you’ve gotten more than you ever expected. It came at a price, sure. You’ll be paying that price in one way and another for the rest of your life, but it’s worth it. It would be worth it if Tomura never crossed the property line again.

But Tomura draws away from you without letting go of your hand and steps forward. You step back to give him space, and watch as he sets one foot over the line and onto the sidewalk, and then the other. And all at once, for the first time in a hundred and ten years, there’s nothing wrong with your house at all.

The End

[selinearts]

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! 🎃

TOGA HIMIKO AS AN ANGEL & DEMON 😇😈

[doumadono]

Warnings: manipulation, rusalka!Toga, fem!Reader

Summary: on Halloween night, you and your friends venture to a lake near a quaint village, determined to debunk the rusalka legend as mere folklore. Little do you know, the eerie creature is far more real than you could ever imagine.

Word count: circa 2.3k

A/N: this story is my final offering in the collection by a talented @candycandy00 I hope you enjoy this brief horror tale

The autumn night was heavy with an eerie stillness, a prelude to Halloween, the night she chose to haunt the living. Himiko Toga, the rusalka, lurked in the shadows of a murky lake. Her long, light hair draped over her waterlogged form, and her beautiful but otherworldly allure concealed a malevolent intent.

In a nearby village, the locals spoke of the legend of the rusalka, a vengeful water spirit who lured unsuspecting souls to their watery graves. Children dared one another to approach the lake after nightfall, and the bravest among them claimed to have heard a hauntingly beautiful, yet chilling melody that resonated from its depths.

Nestled within the heart of a dense, ancient forest, the village lay hidden from the bustling world. Surrounded by towering trees and a sea of vibrant green, it was a place of solitude and tranquility. The thick woods enveloped the village in a natural embrace, concealing its existence like a well-kept secret.

For the villagers, life here was a world unto itself, a haven of simplicity and the quiet rustling of leaves. It was a place where the daily rhythms of life were dictated by the seasons and the cycles of nature.

The journey through the dense woods was a challenge, and the village remained untouched by the hurried footsteps of those from the more populated areas. This isolation was both a blessing and a curse, preserving the village's unique way of life while also keeping it sheltered from the outside world.

On this particular Halloween night, a group of adventurous teenagers from one of the surrounding towns gathered by the lake, their laughter masking the fear that lingered in the back of their minds. Among them were you, a curious and bold young woman. You'd heard the legends but believed them to be mere stories to spook the timid. "I don't get what all the fuss is about," you said, you voice tinged with skepticism. "It's just a lake, and there's no such thing as a rusalka. Not to mention those people live like they would be stuck in some ancient times. That's sick!"

Your friends exchanged uneasy glances. "You're brave, Y/N, but be careful. Some say they've heard a song coming from the water," one of them warned. "I came across an old article while browsing Google," the guy mentioned, "and it mentioned something quite unsettling. It seems that a significant number of people, particularly young boys and girls, have mysteriously disappeared in this place."

You waved it off, unfazed. "I'll prove to you all that there's nothing to be afraid of."

"Come on, seriously?" one of your female friends laughed heartily. "You don't actually expect us to believe in all that internet nonsense, do you, Tom? Witches, rusalkas, and all those creepy tales are just meant to spook the kids, nothing more."

As you approached the edge of the lake, you felt a sudden chill in the air. The night grew darker, and the surface of the water seemed to ripple with a sinister presence. You shivered but continued to move closer. With unwavering determination, you set out to debunk the local legend of the rusalka that had been perpetuated by the villagers. You firmly believed that this eerie tale was nothing more than a concoction, a clever ruse to send shivers down the spines of curious tourists and entice them to leave their money in this quaint, remote place.

Just as you reached the water's edge, a hauntingly beautiful melody began to drift through the night, captivating your senses. The notes were hypnotic, pulling at the very core of your being.

Toga's ghostly figure emerged from the depths, her eyes fixed on you. "Come closer, my dear," she whispered, her voice like a siren's call. "I have something to show you," she sung, playing with her long, blonde hair. Her flowing hair cascaded like shimmering waterfalls. Her eyes, large and alluring, seemed to hold secrets of untold depths, their color an enigmatic shade of yellow, reminiscent of golden sunlit waters. Her complexion was porcelain fair. As a rusalka, she moved with an otherworldly grace, her every motion reminiscent of water's gentle caress.

"Holy shit! Do you see that?!" Tom's exclamation pierced the air, his eyes wide with astonishment.

The rest of your friends were quick to react, their expressions mirroring his shock. Startled whispers filled the air as they instinctively began to move away from the lake shore, creating a small, anxious cluster.

"Come on, let's go, Y/N!" one of your friends called out urgently, waving for you to join them.

"Retreat, guys! This is getting too weird!" another one urged as well.

But it was as though their voices had faded into the distance, a mere murmur in the background, as you continued to draw nearer and nearer to the mysterious entity emerging from the shadowy waters. Its silent beckoning seemed to compel you, a magnetic force pulling you closer with every step.

Your friends watched in horror as you stepped into the lake, your movements guided by the rusalka's eerie song. You waded deeper into the water, your face bearing a tranquil expression that sent shivers down their spines.

As Halloween night deepened, the legends of the rusalka proved all too real for you and your friends. Himiko Toga's vengeful spirit had claimed another soul, and her haunting melody echoed through the chilling darkness. Himiko led you further into the murky waters. As you moved deeper, the moonlight cast an eerie glow upon the lake's surface, creating an unsettling spectacle. The world above seemed to fade away as you became ensnared by the enchanting melody.

With each word, her allure seemed to grow, wrapping you in a cocoon of her seductive timbre. The world around you began to blur and fade into obscurity, as though her voice held the power to transport you to another realm. As she spoke, your attention shifted solely to her, her words becoming the only reality that mattered. Nothing else held significance; her voice was your anchor and your universe, a hypnotic cadence that pulled you deeper into its spell.

The rusalka's voice was both beautiful and melancholic. It whispered secrets of the underwater world, of long-forgotten loves and tragedies that had unfolded beneath the waves. Your thoughts and fears were replaced by a sense of tranquility, your will utterly dominated by the rusalka's spell.

Himiko leaned in, her yellowish eyes locked onto yours with an intensity that sent a shiver down your spine. Her voice was a sultry, almost hypnotic purr as she spoke, "You know, becoming one with me, it's going to be… exquisite. All I need is just a tiny, little taste of your blood."

You couldn't help but feel a mixture of curiosity and trepidation, "What do you mean?"

A sly grin curved her lips as she explained, "Well, it's quite simple, really, my sweet darling! Just a drop of your blood, a mere morsel of your essence, and we'll be forever connected. Our desires, our pleasures, they'll meld into a tantalizing dance of passion."

Your heart raced, the air suddenly charged with anticipation, as you asked, "And how does that work, exactly?"

She moved even closer, her breath warm against your skin, "Oh, darling, it's a secret spell only we can share. But trust me, it'll be the most electrifying connection you've ever experienced, hihi!"

Your thoughts were a whirlwind, but curiosity and a burgeoning desire overtook any hesitation, "I… I think I am…"

Unbeknownst to you, every word she spoke was a clever ploy to draw you deeper into the water. Her delicate fingers reached for yours, their touch gentle as they caressed your hand. With a subtle, sensuous motion, she brought one of your hands closer to her lips, her tongue lightly tracing your wrist. Her actions seemed as if she were trying to capture the scent of the life force coursing through your racing heart.

Back on the shore, your friends watched in helpless horror as their friend disappeared beneath the surface. The rusalka's haunting song lingered in the air, creating an unsettling atmosphere.

Meanwhile, your friends hurriedly left you by the lake, determined to seek assistance. As they sprinted towards the village and knocked on several doors, their desperation grew with each step.

Only one door creaked open, revealing an elderly woman. With a sense of urgency, your friends quickly explained the dire situation unfolding at the lake. Desperate to save their friend, your friends sought the guidance of an elderly villager, and it turned out she was known for her knowledge of folklore and the supernatural. She listened to their tale with a heavy heart and instructed them to bring a rare herb that was said to have the power to dispel enchantments. She offered them a piece of the dried herb and decided to help them face the rusalka.

With the herb in hand, the group returned to the lake, determined to break the rusalka's hold over you, even though they were scared you were already long gone. The night was eerily silent now, devoid of the haunting melody that had drawn her beneath the water.

The rusalka sensed their presence and confronted them, her beautiful but malevolent form shimmering in the moonlight. "You dare to challenge me?" she hissed, her voice filled with centuries of anger and sorrow. "You have no power here, weaklings."

Your friends held their ground, brandishing the herb. The elderly villager chanted incantations that carried the power to weaken the rusalka's spell.

Amid the chaotic scene, your friends gathered around the water's edge, their voices raised in a chorus of desperate screams. The rusalka, had a tight grip on you, your head submerged beneath the unforgiving surface already, leaving only your nose and forehead exposed.

"Let her go! Release her!" one of your female friends shouted, her voice filled with a mixture of fear and anger, the urgency in her pleas piercing the air.

But rusalka, with her eerie, yellowish eyes and an ethereal grip on your form, seemed indifferent to their protests. Her grip remained relentless, and her silent, haunting stare seemed to taunt your friends' futile efforts.

The tension in the air was palpable as your loved ones desperately tried to break the hold of this mysterious, otherworldly being, their voices echoing in a symphony of fear and determination, all while you struggled for breath, your life precariously balanced between the surface and the depths.

As the herb was cast into the water and the elderly woman chanted her incantations, a subtle magic began to weave its enchantment.

Slowly but surely, Himiko's form started to fade away. Her grip remained unyielding, as she continued to sing her haunting song, a desperate plea to retain her presence. Himiko began to emit an otherworldly, high-pitched squeal that reverberated through the still night. Her voice, though beautiful, had a chilling quality that sent shivers down their spines. It was an eerie, haunting sound that seemed to defy the very laws of reality.

As the piercing notes continued, those witnessing this spectral phenomenon felt a sense of unease. Her voice grew louder, more desperate, as if trying to break through the veil of existence. The air around her shimmered, and she began to slowly fade away, becoming transparent, like a wisp of mist in the moonlight.

With each passing moment, she vanished further, her voice a ghostly memory in the stillness of the night, leaving a haunting imprint on those who had the eerie privilege of witnessing her mysterious departure.

You gasped, your senses returning as the rusalka's hold over you waned. The villager's determined efforts had disrupted the enchantment, freeing you from the vengeful spirit's grasp.

With a final, mournful wail, the rusalka disappeared beneath the water, defeated but not entirely vanquished.

You were safe, but the chilling memory of the rusalka's haunting melody would linger, a reminder that some legends held truths that were best left undisturbed.

The lake would forever be a place of whispered fears and shrouded mysteries.

You, forever changed by your encounter, had a profound respect for the supernatural. You couldn't help but wonder if the rusalka had truly moved on or if she still lurked in the depths, awaiting another chance to ensnare an unwitting soul. You had to concede that there were phenomena that defied the boundaries of time and comprehension, veering into the realm of the supernatural, forever beyond human understanding.

At times, Toga would reappear in your dreams, a haunting presence that both captivated and unnerved you. Her voice, like a gentle, melodic whisper, would fill your slumbering mind. Those enormous, yellow eyes, seemingly capable of peering deep into your very soul, held your gaze, and her untamed, hair was fashioned into two haphazard buns. In your dreams, she would extend an invitation, beckoning you into her enigmatic world. The allure was undeniable, like a magnetic pull that drew you in. But just as you were about to step into the unknown, you'd jolt awake, drenched in a chilling sweat, the remnants of her presence lingering in the recesses of your consciousness.

Years passed, and the memory of that Halloween night at the lake haunted the villagers. The rusalka, though defeated, was never truly vanquished. Her presence lingered in the water, and the lake remained a place of eerie quiet, where the night held its breath as if waiting for the return of the vengeful spirit. And as the years passed, the rusalka's haunting melody became but a distant echo, a testament to the enduring power of legends and the strength of those who dared to face the unknown.

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 2) - a Shigaraki x f!reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Chapter 2

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it – except you didn’t know quite how wrong it was, and you don’t know what to do. That feeling of being watched that Shirakumo mentioned has come. It isn’t constant, like he described it. You can feel that there are moments when the ghost’s eyes are elsewhere, moments when it’s just existing alongside you, like it did before. And then there are moments where it’s scrutinizing your every move, its eyes – if it even has eyes – running over you again and again, even if you haven’t moved. You never know when it will happen or why. All you know is that sometimes you’re being watched and sometimes you aren’t, by a thing that can at least pretend to look human.

You don’t want to feel unsettled. You don’t want to let it win. This is your goddamn house, and it’s too late for you to leave. You like it here. You might even love it. The ghost can’t change that, even if it tries. Or so you tell yourself. You’re not sure that the ghost is trying to get rid of you at all. But when it comes to whatever’s happening here, the ghost has the upper hand, and there’s not much you can do to fight back – except negate its main advantage over you. It likes to be invisible. And now you know how to force it to show itself.

For a few days you make do with a spray bottle, misting the air every so often and watching the water droplets settle around an invisible figure, revealing shoulders, torso, the shape of a head. The spray bottle doesn’t last for long enough, so you scale up your efforts. The next time you’re outside watering the small garden you’ve planted, you wait until the ghost’s gaze settles on you, then turn around and spray the spot where you think it’s standing with the hose. Unfortunately you also spray Phantom, who was sprawled out in the grass, and she runs away with an indignant yelp.

“Sorry, sweetie,” you call uselessly after her. But the hose is working a hell of a lot better than the spray bottle did. Enough that you can see the whole shape of the ghost for the first time, head to toe. You don’t get any details of its face, but you know its height (a few inches taller than you) and its build (not bulky, but lean), and you’re not sure, but you think its hair might be long. Past its chin, just brushing its shoulders. That isn’t that long, if you’re talking about a woman. But Jin and Himiko were pretty insistent that your ghost is male, and you think they’re probably right. You don’t know how you feel about that.

There’s also nothing you can do about it. All you can do is keep escalating. The ghost can steal your privacy, but now you can steal its privacy, too. Even when you don’t catch the ghost, you can catch where it’s just been – a trail of fading footsteps, a handprint on the banister, a disturbed spot in the velour cushions on the couch. That weirds you out more than anything else. Your couch has three cushions. One for you, the one in the middle for Phantom, and apparently the ghost has been hanging out on the third one. If it’s going to start using your furniture, you should start charging it rent.

You haven’t tried talking to it in a while, and it hasn’t shown itself to you purposely since it made you drop your flour. The silence feels weird and awkward, but you don’t really know what to fill it with anymore. It was easier to talk to the thing in your house when it was just a presence. It’s harder when it’s got a mind and a will of its own, and when it’s clearly got plans for you. You don’t want to encourage any of those plans until you know what they are. And because of that, you find yourself spending a lot less time in your house.

You’ve been trying to walk Phantom more, and trying to meet more of your neighbors other than Himiko and Jin, and you’ve sort of had some luck. You’ve met another late-teens, early-twenties guy with a Switch and a skateboard who lives in an orange house with his mom, or his older sister, or something – his name is Spinner, and his older female relative’s name is Magne. You’ve met a kid named Shinsou who lives up near the top of the street with his parents and baby sister, and a guy named Keigo whose house always seems to be smoking faintly. He raced out of his house to stop you the first time you tried to call the emergency line about it.

They seem nice, but there’s a certain way they look at you. Expectantly. Like they’re waiting for something. You wish you knew what it was.

One afternoon the sky is grey, and you seize the opportunity offered by the cooler weather to take Phantom for a longer walk than usual. That turns out to be a mistake. The rain starts when you’re a solid three kilometers away from home, and the lightning and thunder kicks up before you’re even halfway back. Phantom hates thunder, and she tries to bolt. You manage to avoid getting yanked off your feet long enough to scoop her up in your arms, and even though she’s heavy, you carry her the rest of the way home.

By the time you get back, you’re both drenched, and Phantom is shivering. You manage to hold off your awareness of the cold until after you’ve dried Phantom off and dragged out a space heater for her to sit in front of, but once you’ve got that taken care of, you realize that you’re shivering just as badly as she is. It’s August and you’ve somehow managed to give yourself a chill, and drying yourself off and joining Phantom in front of the heater isn’t going to cut it. You need a shower. A hot one.

As dumb as it feels to be taking a hot shower in August, you can’t deny that it feels really good to warm up. You almost never like being warm. You’ve always preferred the comfort of being cold, of curling up tight in a blanket or an oversized sweater to keep it out. Cold is comforting. But warmth is – relaxing. Relaxing enough that you forget, just a little bit, the nonsense of your job and the nonsense with your ghost. Relaxing enough that instead of staying quiet, you sing.

Singing in the shower was something you did in your apartment, back before your roommate told you that you had a shitty voice and she hated hearing it. But there’s no one around to complain now, so you sing whatever pops into your head without worrying about what it sounds like. This is your house, and you live here alone. You can sing if you want to.

You’ve sung through your favorite song five times before you finally start to warm up, and you switch off the water at last. You open the shower door just far enough to grab your towel and wrap it around yourself, not wanting to give the chill even the smallest chance at you. Then you push the door the rest of the way open and step out onto the mat.

The bathroom is full of steam. A lot more steam than you thought there’d be. You can barely see the mirror through it, and there’s something blocking your view. It takes you long seconds to piece it together, to remember the first time anyone saw evidence of your ghost, to think of all the things you’ve done to try to reveal its presence. The figure of the ghost displaces the steam completely. For the first time, you’re looking directly at the ghost. The whole ghost. Face to face.

Jin and Himiko were right. Your ghost is a man. Not a particularly old man – in fact, he looks like he’s your age, or like he was your age, when he was alive. The definition provided by the room full of steam shows you details you couldn’t see before. Your ghost has a small scar over the corner of his mouth, a larger one over his right eye. He raises one hand to scratch at the side of his neck, brushing aside his overlong hair as he looks you up and down. You, in your towel, with your hair plastered to your skull from the water and your skin flushed from the heat. Your ghost looks you up and down, makes eye contact, and smiles.

You can’t decide whether that smile is creepy or not. Either way, you don’t want to look at it any longer. You turn away until you’re facing the condensation-covered mirror, but that’s no good. You can just barely see a blurry reflection of your own shocked face, and behind you, over your shoulder, the ghost’s maybe-creepy smile. You squeeze your eyes shut before you speak. “You’re my ghost.”

You regret the possessive almost instantly. You expect the ghost to argue, but it doesn’t speak. All you hear is an odd squeaking sound, and when you open your eyes again, you find the shape of a hand in the steam, drawing letters in the condensation on the mirror. Yes.

Okay, it talks. He talks. “Who are you?”

Your ghost.

Maybe he can only repeat what he’s heard. You ask him a question he won’t be able to answer with your words. “Who am I?”

Mine.

“No,” you say reflexively. The steam ripples behind you. “What do you mean?”

The ghost’s handwriting isn’t great. Mine to haunt.

Your first impulse is to say that the ghost isn’t all that great at haunting. You haven’t been scared until just now, and you’re not even all that sure you’re scared. You’re confused. You’re not pleased about the fact that you’re wearing a towel and nothing else while the ghost is hanging out fully clothed in the steam. And you still don’t know what the ghost wants. You don’t even know its name. Does it have a name? Does it even remember what its name was?

“What do I call you?” you ask. This time you keep looking at him, and you see a puzzled expression cross the ghost’s face. “Your name.”

He gets that, at least. He reaches forward eagerly. His handwriting is worse when he’s excited about something. It takes you a few moments to decipher it. “Tomura,” you say slowly, and the ghost grins at you in the mirror. That smile isn’t creepy. At least, you don’t think it is. “Hi.”

Hi.

So you’ve made introductions. You take stock of the situation. Your ghost has a name, and it’s Tomura, and he still doesn’t seem to want to hurt you – just haunt you, although he kind of sucks at it. But the biggest question is one you still don’t have an answer to. “Tomura,” you say, “what do you want?”

His expression shifts in a way that makes you really nervous. He’s focused on something, almost scowling – and then his expression distorts into a snarl. You flinch back from the mirror as a hand smears through Tomura’s answers to your questions. Is it his hand? What did you do? Why did he get angry so quickly? Your flinch has carried you backwards, right into the cold spot, and suddenly you lose all your nerve. You push open the bathroom door and bolt for your room.

Once you’re there, you grab the first clothes you can find, pulling them on without caring whether they match. Then you race downstairs, scoop up Phantom and your wallet and your phone, and scramble into your car. You can’t remember if you locked your house. You don’t care. You turn the key in the ignition, throw your car into reverse, and drive.

You’re not sure how long you drive, but you know you’re driving in circles, never getting too far away from home. Is it actually home? It was the ghost’s home – Tomura’s home – before it was yours. You thought you and the ghost were getting along okay, but now he’s angry, and you don’t know why. What did you do? What would have happened if you stayed? What’s going to happen if you go back? Is it going to feel as unfriendly to you as it apparently does to everybody else the next time you set foot inside? You pull over on the side of the road and force yourself to focus. Phantom is whining, so you lift her out of the backseat and cuddle her in your lap, trying to think rationally. It’s hard to do when your heart is beating this hard.

You really don’t want to think of this thing with your ghost as a relationship, but it doesn’t feel like having a roommate. Roommates don’t hang out in the bathroom while you’re showering, or watch you when you least expect it. If you’re comparing it to a relationship, you haven’t had many good ones. When you think of your last relationship, all you feel is trapped and scared. You felt safe enough with the ghost until it – until he got mad. But he wasn’t mad at you, was he? Or if he was, he didn’t hurt you. He wiped out the mirror and vanished. By the time you stepped back, the cold spot was all that was left. All you did was go back to the status quo.

You stroke Phantom’s ears, taking deep breaths. You like your house, and so does your dog. The ghost that lives in your house hasn’t hurt you, even if it’s supposed to be haunting you, and the one time you felt truly unsafe, the ghost protected you. The ghost told you his name when you asked him. It’s okay. You can go home. You and Tomura could probably stand to talk a little more, anyway. Roommates are supposed to set up ground rules.

By the time you’re parked in the driveway, your heart rate’s slowed down, and Phantom is wagging her tail and whining to be let out of the car. She races inside as soon as you open the door, and you follow her in a little more cautiously. “Tomura?” you call out, and that sense of being watched descends on you again. It doesn’t feel malevolent, exactly, but it feels heavier than before. “Uh, can we talk?”

There’s no response. Maybe he can only talk through the mirror. You lock your front door behind yourself and head upstairs to the bathroom. It kills you to think of what your water bill is going to look like, but you switch on the water anyway, waiting as the steam fills the room and the mirror fogs over. You can tell Tomura is there. When you twist around to look behind you, you can even see him. “Tomura,” you say, and his lips curve upwards slightly. “Are you mad at me?”

You hate yourself for the question. He shakes his head, but you feel the pressure of his gaze on you again, heavier than before. “If you’re not mad at me, why won’t you talk to me?”

Tomura shakes his head again. Maybe he is mad at you, or punishing you, and he doesn’t want to admit it. There’s nothing you’ve ever heard about ghosts that says they can’t lie, and the thought that something you don’t understand is angry at you for reasons it won’t explain sets off an ugly twist of anxiety in the pit of your stomach. You’re not going to beg for a response, but you’re not going to back down, either. You sit in the steam until it dissipates and Tomura vanishes from view.

Later, you find a huge dead spider in the corner of the bathroom. Maybe ghosts can lie after all – they can, and they do, and they will.

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it, and now that you know exactly what’s wrong with it, an anxiety that’s got nothing to do with the haunted nature of your house fills the pit of your stomach. You know Tomura’s here, and now you know the difference between the way a room feels when he’s in it and the way it feels when it’s empty. He shadows you, sometimes into places he shouldn’t – the bathroom, for instance. Sometimes his presence in the corner of your bedroom keeps you up at night, long past when you needed to fall asleep for work. The situation’s not sustainable. You have a feeling that some of it could be fixed if you could just talk to Tomura, but he’s not talking to you. Asshole.

You try to spend as much time outside the house as possible, even though you know his influence stretches into the yard and probably stops at the fence. Your yard’s never looked so nice, and neither has your garden – the front garden, or the back garden. And it’s a good thing you’re spending so much time out there, too. The yard wants to be full of weeds and mushrooms, all of them constantly encroaching on your fragile plants. You spend all your time in the yard, never on the back porch. Which means that when you do go up on the back porch, looking for a tool you stashed there sometime this spring, the presence of the massive hornets’ nest takes you completely by surprised.

In the time it takes you to notice and register the problem, you’re stung twice, and you lurch backwards off the porch, missing the last step and falling on your ass. You swear, clutching your hand close to your chest as you stare in dismay at your newest house-related catastrophe. The nest is huge. You can’t leave it there – what if Phantom gets stung? You can’t afford an exterminator, either, and your solitary can of bug spray isn’t going to do the job. You back away from the porch, further into the yard, and try to come up with a plan.

Finally, you settle on something that feels sort of likely to work. You’ll get a garbage can, put it under the nest, and knock the nest down into it. Then you’ll slam the lid shut and leave the little creeps in there to starve. Or you’ll roll the trash can into the river and drown them. Whatever it takes. You nurse your hand for another moment, wishing you hadn’t been stung, then set off in search of supplies.

It takes you a while to find something you can use to knock the nest down from a sort of safe distance, and another little while to put on a few layers of clothes that should hopefully be hard to sting through. You remind yourself that this is a part of home ownership, and that you’d still rather do this than fight with a roommate about doing the dishes. Then you steel yourself and head onto the back porch to set your trap.

But when you get there, the nest is gone, and something in its place. Tomura, your ghost, looking way too solid and way too real, with a solitary hornet pinned by its wings between his fingers. As you watch, it disintegrates into ash, drifting down to join a larger pile of ash on the porch.

“Um,” you say, like an idiot, and Tomura looks up at you. “I was going to get that.”

“I haven’t not been talking to you,” Tomura says, and a jolt runs through you. He can talk. His voice is raspy in a way that makes you want to beg him to clear his throat or drink some water. “I can’t influence this world without life-force. And I can’t get it from you or the dog.”

You piece it together slowly. He has to take power from somewhere to materialize, to touch things, to talk. “Why not?”

Tomura gives you a look like you’re the dumbest person on the planet. You wonder how many times you’ve gotten a look like that and didn’t see it. “You’d die,” he says. “My house would be empty.”

“And you don’t want it to be empty,” you surmise. “Then why do you scare everybody away?”

Tomura’s scarred mouth twists into a scowl. “You left,” he snaps. “You can’t leave.”

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

“I couldn’t answer. I ran out of time.” Tomura kicks through the pile of ash, scattering it. “That spider wasn’t enough. No matter how slow I drained it.”

“So that’s why it was in one piece,” you say. Tomura nods shortly. “You drained the hornets faster, though. Does that work better?”

“I guess.” Tomura scratches at the side of his neck. “We’ll see how long it lasts.”

Something occurs to you. “You don’t know how this works, do you?”

“I know how it works. Shut up.” Tomura’s face is flushing unevenly. He raises his hands, touches it. “What is this? What’s happening to me?”

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

“No I’m not.” Tomura scratches harder at his neck. “You can’t leave.”

You wish he’d stop scratching. It looks like it hurts. “I can leave if I want to,” you say. “If you don’t want me to leave, you need to respect my rules.”

“Your rules?” Tomura scoffs. “It’s my house.”

“And I can leave whenever I want to,” you say. “Rule number one: Stay out of the bathroom when I’m in there.”

“It was fine before.”

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

“You sleep fine.”

“No, I don’t,” you say. “Stop.”

Tomura’s expression takes on a stubborn cast. “What, so it’s fine when he does it but not when I do?”

“What?” you say blankly. A chill runs down your spine, one that’s got nothing to do with the fact that there’s a ghost on your back porch. “Has someone else been in here?”

“No.” Tomura scoffs again. “Nobody comes in unless I let them.”

“Then who’s he?”

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

It clicks for you. “You mean in Twilight?” you repeat incredulously. “That’s not good, either. She’s just too dumb to know it’s bad. No hanging out in my room at night. Or I leave.”

“You’ll leave,” Tomura repeats. “And go where?”

He’s right, but you’re not going to let him know just how stuck you are. “Anywhere,” you say. “I’m pretty sure you can’t follow me past the fences.”

“Who cares about what’s out there? I’ve got this.” Tomura gestures around at the house – gestures with a hand that’s starting to go transparent. “No. No, not yet. Damn it!”

“Hey,” you say, alarmed. “If you need energy to materialize and talk, I’ve got tons of weeds and mushrooms in the yard that you can kill. Or some of the blackberry bushes by the fence. There’s ways for us to talk without you killing me or Phantom.”

And without him getting mad. It scares you a little bit when he gets mad. “I have to go,” you say. His expression, what you can see of it, is unhappy. “I have to pick up some stuff to treat the stings I got, but I’ll be back later. We can talk more then.”

He’s faded almost entirely now. All that’s left is his voice, still so raspy. “You’ll come back.”

“I’ll come back,” you promise. “I wouldn’t leave Phantom, and she likes you.”

You think you see him smile again, but it’s gone a moment later, along with the rest of him. It takes all your self-control not to run.

You go to the store, like you said you would. The stings really do hurt. And while you’re there, you think over your situation with Tomura. Seeing him looking so – alive – was weird. He has blueish-grey hair and red eyes and pale skin that looks dry and easily cracked. You find yourself hesitating over an extra bottle of the hand lotion you use when your eczema acts up and shake your head at the ridiculousness of the thought. He doesn’t need hand cream. He’s a ghost.

A ghost, and you were apparently the last one in the neighborhood to know about him. All those expectant looks from everybody else make sense, sort of. The only thing that doesn’t add up is Himiko’s reaction to the house. Tomura wasn’t visible when she stepped into the yard, but she acted like she could see him, and talk to him. Twelve is a little old for playing pretend. What if she could see him? What do she and her older brother know? As you browse for antihistamine cream, you decide you need to find out.

When you get back to your neighborhood, you park your car at the top of the street, out of sight of your house. Then you head down to the street to the pink house where Jin and Himiko live and knock on the door. When that doesn’t work, you ring the doorbell, and Jin opens it wearing tube socks and a pair of boxer shorts, looking like he just rolled out of bed. “Huh?”

“Sorry,” you say. “I, um –”

Understanding flashes across Jin’s face. “You saw him, huh?” he asks, and you nod wordlessly. “Finally! Stay here, we’re going on a field trip!”

He leaves the door open, vanishes into the recesses of the house, and re-emerges a minute and a half later, fully dressed. “Come on! Let’s go!”

“Where are we going?”

“Up the street. You got questions. Old man Aizawa’s got answers.”

You’re not sure which house is Aizawa’s, or who Aizawa even is. But you want answers, so you follow Jin. You pass the orange house where Spinner lives on the way. Spinner is on the front porch, fixing his skateboard, and he looks up as you pass by. “Where are you two going?”

“Aizawa’s,” Jin says. He nods at you. “She saw him.”

“No shit,” Spinner says. “What did he do?”

“Um –”

“You gotta tell us,” Jin says. “Was it pervy?”

There’s no way you’re saying that your ghost likes to hang out in the bathroom while you’re in there and your bedroom at night. “He killed a hornets’ nest after two of them stung me.”

It’s quiet for a second. “Huh,” Jin says. “Damn. I owe Keigo ¥3000.”

“You owe me ¥4500,” Spinner says. He sets down his skateboard and stands up. “I’m coming with you. Let’s go see Aizawa.”

Aizawa, it turns out, lives in the house at the top of the street where Shinsou lives. Is Aizawa one of Shinsou’s dad? Spinner hangs back while Jin marches up to the door and bangs on it repeatedly, with you cringing and trying to shush him the entire time. The door opens with maybe thirty seconds of knocking, revealing a dark-haired man with an eyepatch who looks like he hasn’t shaved in a week. “What?” he barks.

“She saw it,” Jin says, pointing at you. Understanding crosses his face, the same as it did with Jin. “She has questions.”

“Which you can’t answer because?”

“Wrong kind of ghost, my man!” Jin crows, like he’s the announcer on a game show. Then he lowers his voice. “She’s got one like yours.”

“Like whose?” you demand. You stare hard at Aizawa, who looks back, expressionless. “You have a ghost in your house?”

“He’s got two ghosts,” Spinner says.

Aizawa shakes his head. “Not anymore.”

That makes no sense to you, which is frustrating, since Jin and Spinner seem to think it’s totally reasonable. You feel tears spring to your eyes and you look away, embarrassed. You’re not going to cry about this. You’re not stupid. “Look, I didn’t want to come here,” you say, fighting to keep your voice from wavering. “I just went to ask Jin and he dragged me here. I don’t need – ”

“Miss?” A small, squeaky voice emanates from the doorway, and you look back to find a small girl peering out at you from behind Aizawa’s legs. She has greyish hair and red eyes, like Tomura does. “Why are you crying?”

You look blankly at her, and she looks back. A moment later, her pupils open and shut vertically, just like Himiko’s did. And that’s when it clicks into place. You look from the little girl to Jin and back to Aizawa. In the time since you looked away, Aizawa’s gone from expressionless to looking like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in decades. “You’d better come inside.”

The inside of Aizawa’s house – Shinsou’s house, too, you realize when you see the framed photos – is bright and somewhat cluttered. There are kids’ toys all over the floor and the walls are painted brightly. There’s an upright piano with a guitar balanced on top of it and a record player wedged into one corner of the room. Aizawa navigates through the chaos, limping slightly, while the little girl – the ghost? – scrambles over everything with ease. You follow Aizawa through the living room and into the kitchen, Spinner and Jin trailing after you. Aizawa sits at the kitchen table. You sit down across from him. And then it’s quiet. “Um –”

“Start at the beginning,” Aizawa says. “What happened?”

You don’t know what counts as the beginning, but once you start talking, it all spills out – the coyote, the hornets, the bad vibes, the sudden appearances and the temper tantrums and the whole voyeuristic thing you can’t figure out. That last starts an argument between Jin and Spinner about whether it counts as pervy behavior if the ghost isn’t getting off on it, and whether or not the ghost is actually getting off on it, and how to tell whether the ghost is actually getting off on it, which continues until Aizawa tells them to shut up. “Don’t say shut up,” the little girl instructs. She’s shown you three or four of her toys so far, and you’ve managed to muster some kind of positive response to all of them. “It’s not nice. Papa says.”

“Papa’s the loudest person on the planet. Of course he says that.” Aizawa turns a glare on Jin and Spinner. “I don’t want to hear another word about that while Eri’s in the room.”

“I know all about that,” Eri says impatiently. “Humans do all kinds of weird things with their bodies when they’re alone. Humans are gross.”

“You’re human now,” Aizawa tells her. Eri pouts. You just stare. “The longer you think it’s gross, the happier I’ll be. Go work on that picture you were drawing for Hitoshi.”

“I don’t want to,” Eri protests. “I want to hear about him. He’s why Papa said we had to move here!”

“Wait, what?” You feel like you’re spending a lot of time staring at people today, but you can’t help it. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“Enough to fill several books. You’ll be going home with some required reading,” Aizawa says. Spinner and Jin groan, but weirdly enough, it makes you feel better. There are books to read. Someone knows more about this than you do. “But there’s context you’re unaware of. Your house contains a very powerful ghost. The fact that your ghost is apparently incompetent at haunting does not change its strength. The psychic vibrations it emits are powerful enough to cloak this entire neighborhood. And to draw others to it.”

Your stomach lurches. “What do you mean?”

“This neighborhood is full of ghosts,” Aizawa says. “Former ghosts.”

“What do you mean, former ghosts? Ghosts are dead people. They can’t come back to life.”

“Ghosts were never people,” Spinner says. “They’re, like – wraiths. Spirits. They don’t come from here. They come from the world between this one and the next one. They’re not people, but they can become people. That’s what Magne did.”

“And Himiko,” Jin adds.

“And me!” Eri chimes in.

You sit there with that for a second, stunned. “Is there anybody in this neighborhood who didn’t use to be a ghost?”

“Yes,” Aizawa says, “but every house in this neighborhood has at least one. Forget everything you think you know about ghosts and hauntings. We’ll start at the beginning.”

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

You knew the empty house in a quiet neighborhood was too good to be true, but you were so desperate to get out of your tiny apartment that you didn't care, and now you find yourself sharing space with something inhuman and immensely powerful. As you struggle to coexist with a ghost whose intentions you're unsure of, you find yourself drawn unwillingly into the upside world of spirits and conjurers, and becoming part of a neighborhood whose existence depends on your house staying exactly as it is, forever.

But ghosts can change, just like people can. And as your feelings and your ghost's become more complex and intertwined, everything else begins to crumble.

Cross-posted to Ao3

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Chapter 1

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. Rent in the city you live in is so goddamn fucking high that it was either keep living with the worst roommates in existence or find a way out to the suburbs. But the suburbs are wall-to-wall McMansions, so far out of your price range that calling it a bad joke would be an insult to both concepts. All except this one single neighborhood. And within this one single neighborhood, this one single house.

You knew there had to be a reason it hadn’t sold. You’re not an idiot. So you did your research, like the law student you wanted to be before your loans from undergrad kicked in, and found absolutely nothing. No murders in the house’s history. No accidental deaths. No urban legends about curses and creepy children living in the walls. You even went so far as to track down a previous owner, who was perfectly nice, and perfectly willing to talk about the three weeks he spent living there before he sold it and ran for the hills.

No, he said, he didn’t hear anything. Or see anything. No strange accidents or unstable floorboards. There were no strange bumps in the night or objects left out of place. Just a constant, ever-present feeling that he was being watched.

Carbon monoxide leak, maybe. When the pre-purchase inspection happened, you made them check that twice. And for toxic mold. But there was nothing. Just an old house in a too-big lot at the end of a quiet street, hemmed in by the wetlands on three sides. A total steal. You couldn’t believe that no one had bought it.

People come close, your realtor told you on your last walk-through. One time I had a lady come all the way to the end of escrow before she backed out.

Why’d she back out? you asked idly. Your realtor made a face. She didn’t say?

Oh, she said all right. Said something was wrong. That it didn’t like her. The realtor scoffed. It doesn’t like or not like anybody. It’s a house.

He said that, but you could tell he didn’t believe it, and because of that, you asked him if you could finish the walkthrough alone. He left reluctantly, clearly concerned that you were going to back out of the sale, too. You weren’t planning on it. You just wanted to see if there was something you were missing, if everybody else who hadn’t bought this house had picked up on something you didn’t. You walked from room to room, picturing where you’d eat, where you’d sleep, where you’d set up your office when you finally went to law school and got licensed and set up your own practice. You didn’t feel anything wrong, even when you sat down in front of the fireplace and played devil’s advocate one last time, trying to talk yourself out of signing the papers. It was just a house. Your house.

When you came down the front steps, your realtor was leaning against his car, looking more than a little dejected. His face fell when he saw you coming. Change your mind?

You shook your head. Give me the papers, you said. And I’ll need a pen.

Moving in took you one weekend. Less, even. Living in tiny apartments through college and your first few years on the job didn’t give you much room to accumulate pointless stuff, as much as you might have liked gathering little trinkets as a kid. It took you one and a half trips to move all the important stuff, and then it was just you yourself. You, yourself, and your dog.

Looking back, you definitely should have brought Phantom with you to check things out before you signed the papers. In horror movies, dogs are always the first ones to figure things out. But when you hooked up Phantom’s leash and let her out of the car to sniff around, she didn’t react at all beyond how dogs usually react to arriving in a new place – sniffing everything, picking up everything in her mouth, yanking at the leash until you let her tow you around the front yard. When she clambered up the steps to flop down on the porch, you breathed a sigh of relief. Phantom liked it here. You liked it, too.

And you still like it, three and a half weeks after you moved in. In fact, you think you might like it more than you did when you moved in. That’s not a surprise, really – your main criteria in buying a house was that it was a house, and not an apartment you have to share. Sure, your commute in to work sucks now, but it’s worth it when you get to come home to somewhere quiet. No terrible music. No terrible perfume or makeup smears on the bathroom counter. No rotting food in the fridge or moldy dishes in the sink. Nobody’s having very loud, very kinky sex in the room next to yours all night, because there’s no room next to yours – and there’s nobody in your house but you. You sort of wish you’d done the home ownership thing a while ago. It would have saved you a lot of stress.

“It’s kind of perfect, actually,” you say to your friend over FaceTime. “Really perfect. I wish you could come see it.”

“Yeah, me too. But you know how it is. Loans.”

“Loans,” you agree. “The downpayment on this place basically cleaned me out. If anything goes wrong I’m going to have to start selling my organs.”

Your friend laughs. “Start with plasma. You can replace that easier.”

“Or feet pics. I don’t have to replace those at all.”

She laughs, and so do you, and the sound echoes through your house. “Listen to that,” your friend marvels. “It must be dead quiet there.”

Quiet, sure – but over the past three weeks, you’ve noticed that the house feels alive even when nobody’s making noise on purpose. You can hear Phantom’s toenails clicking on the floor in the living room and remind yourself to get a rug. And a couch. You’re doing laundry, and the sound it makes is comforting. The hum of the fridge is, too. “I don’t mind,” you say. “I like it here. The only problem is the dust.”

The house has been empty for years by now, so it makes sense that there’s a lot of dust. You knew that going in, and you’re still slightly horrified at the clouds that come up every time you touch a surface that you haven’t dusted earlier that day. “We’ll just call you Cinderella,” your friend jokes, and you scowl. “Or not. Sheesh, lighten up. And throw a housewarming party! Get some real noise in there.”

“We’ll see,” you say. The idea of letting people you work with know where you live is frankly upsetting. And so is this conversation, honestly. You don’t know where the frustration’s coming from, but you’ve got to get off the phone. “I have to go. Phantom’s eating something and I need to fish it out. Love you.”

“Love y-”

You end the call and drop your phone screen-down on the table. The frustration you felt before is ebbing already, and with it comes relief – and confusion. You know you’ve got a bit of a temper, but you never let it out on friends, and you keep it hidden at work. Even at home you’re careful. You got Phantom from a rescue, and too much banging around or sharp words stresses her out. So why did you get so close there? Is the fairytale thing really that upsetting? Were you really that pissed at the idea of letting someone else in your house? Why?

Because it’s yours. It’s your place, where you don’t have to make excuses for anything you’re doing, where you can do whatever you want. God knows you worked hard to be able to have this place. You’re going to enjoy it the way you want to enjoy it. Nobody else gets a say.

The weird mood clings to you through the afternoon and into the evening. Of course it’s a Sunday, which means you’ve burned through the last of your weekend being mad at a friend over nothing. You could keep moping, or you could try to get out of it. You pick door number two and head out to the back porch with Phantom.

You didn’t pay much attention to the yard when you bought the house. You were more interested in the bigger stuff, like making sure it wasn’t haunted or cursed. But the yard is – nice. Or it will be nice, once you get your shit together and start pulling weeds. You got rid of anything that might make Phantom sick, but you’ve let everything else run wild, and the blackberry bushes along the border to the wetlands grow so high you can’t even see the fence. You did check and make sure there was a fence, of course. Phantom is pretty docile, but it’s hard to trust the judgment of a dog who chews on her own feet and sleeps upside down.

She looks like she’s having fun, though. She’s doing that thing dogs do, where they clearly want to take off at high speed but can’t decide which direction to go. Maybe you should help her out. You pick up her ball out of her toybox and wave it to get her attention. “Come on, Phantom! Go get it! Get your ball!”

She starts running before you’ve even thrown it, and you call her back, laughing. “Come here, you. I’ve still got it. Wait –”

She prances in place, ears pricked and tail wagging. “Wait – okay, go! Go get it!”

You chuck the ball and she takes off after it at full speed, catching it on the run and depositing it back at your feet covered in grass and slime. You remind yourself that slime is part of having a dog. You pick it up and throw it again, and again. On the third throw, Phantom stops mid-chase and freezes in the middle of the yard.

You’ve never seen her do that before. “Phantom,” you say, but she doesn’t turn. “Phantom, leave it. Come here.”

She doesn’t move. She whines, cowers, wiggles a few steps backwards – and then the biggest coyote you’ve ever seen springs out of the darkness, jaws wide open and ready to close on Phantom’s throat.

Phantom turns and bolts, but she’s not fast enough. Its jaws close on her hind leg and she howls. “No,” you shout, your voice somehow strident and shrill at the same time. You pick up the nearest thing you can find – your phone, totally useless – and bounce it off the coyote’s head. It snarls and lets go of Phantom, who limps back to your side, making the worst sounds you’ve ever heard in your life. You can’t help but try to calm her, even as the coyote prowls closer, even as you watch your dog’s blood drip from its teeth. “Sweet baby. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

The coyote’s going to bite you. You’re going to live with that. But while it’s biting you, you can hurt it as much as possible. You’re bigger. You have body weight and hands and a dog you have to protect, and so what if the fucker looks absolutely rabid? There’s a shot for that. They can probably give it to you at the emergency vet when you take Phantom in. The coyote sinks into a crouch, preparing to lunge. You get your feet under you and try to calm the racing of your heart. The coyote snarls, leaps, and –

And. You don’t know how to process what you’re seeing, so you’re stuck on and. And the coyote is poised in midair, thrashing and snarling at something that’s holding it in place with all four of its paws off the ground. And it stays suspended there just long enough for you to blink a few times, for you to realize that what you’re looking at is real. And then its neck breaks with a hideous snap, so hard that its head is nearly torn off, and its body drops to the ground at your feet.

You stagger back, almost tripping on Phantom – and then you scoop her up in your arms, even though she’s not anywhere close to being carryable long-term. It’s the only way to be safe as you back up the porch stairs, as you both collapse just in front of the back door. Something just happened. Your dog’s leg is bleeding and your heart is pounding and something just happened. What was it?

Something broke the coyote’s neck. That didn’t just happen on its own. Something killed the coyote, fast and brutal but not fast enough that you didn’t see fear flash in its eyes when it realized there was no way out. It wasn’t another animal that did that, and there was nobody in your yard but you. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens when you move into a nice, normal house. This is the kind of thing that happens when your house is haunted. And whatever’s haunting your house can snap necks with its bare hands.

But not your neck, you realize. Not your neck, and not Phantom’s. Whatever’s haunting your house can kill things, but it hasn’t killed you or your dog, in spite of having all kinds of opportunities to do so. In fact, this is the first time anything haunted has happened in your house at all, and it paid off for you, big-time. Maybe whatever’s in your house is –

Friendly is not a word you’re going to use when there’s a sort of mutilated, completely dead body in your yard. But you think you can safely call whatever it is ‘not hostile’, at least not to you. And if it’s not being hostile to you, you should be friendly in response. “I don’t know who did that,” you say to your empty yard. “But whoever it was, thank you.”

You don’t wait for a response. Your dog is hurt, and you have to get her to the vet, and for the rest of the night you don’t think about what happened at all. But the next morning, when you go out to chuck the dead coyote over the fence and patch up whatever hole it got in through, the coyote is gone. The only evidence that anything happened at all are a few drops of Phantom’s blood dried on the ground, and a spot of dry, dead grass that was definitely alive last night.

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it, and when you talked to the previous owner, it’s not like he didn’t warn you. But what he warned you about isn’t quite what’s happening to you. The previous owner, a perfectly nice guy named Shirakumo, told you that he spent his entire three weeks here feeling like he was under a microscope. Like it was trying to make up its mind about me, he said. I decided I didn’t want to be here when it figured it out.

You’re pretty sure whatever’s in the house has made up its mind about you. At least enough to decide that between you and the coyote, it would rather keep you around. So unlike Shirakumo, you don’t feel like you’re being watched. You just feel like you’re not alone.

It’s a weird distinction, but it’s undeniably there. There’s something in here with you, something unseen, and if it was watching you, you’d know. It isn’t watching you. It’s doing whatever things it does, and you’re doing the kind of things you do, just coexisting side by side in your new house. It’s there when you leave and it’s there when you come home, just like Phantom is, and Phantom doesn’t seem to mind it. More than a few times, you’ve caught her play-bowing and wagging her tail at empty space. If she was nervous about it, you’d be nervous, too – but dogs always know when a house is haunted in horror movies, and Phantom’s not acting scared. But your house is still haunted. Maybe it’s just not haunted like that.

You tell yourself to just live with it, but it starts getting weird after a little while. If someone was here in person, you’d talk to them, include them in the silly questions you ask Phantom about whether the two of you should get takeout for dinner instead of cooking and whether or not she is in fact the bestest girl in the whole wide world. Maybe the thing in the house is waiting for you to talk to it, and getting upset that you’re not. This is a good time for you to remind yourself, like you do every so often, that the thing in your house isn’t friendly just because it’s not hostile to you, and it can still snap necks with its bare hands. It’s in your best interest to keep it – not hostile.

You keep telling yourself to talk to it, and you keep chickening out for a whole week and a half. Then you’re in the middle of emptying the dishwasher and hit your head on an open cabinet door hard enough that you see stars. Then you stumble backwards and land flat on your ass on the kitchen tiles. “Fuck,” you say, with feeling, and Phantom comes running. “Sorry, sweetie. I’m fine. I’m just a dumbass.”

You’re conscious of the thing in your house, of the fact that it’s here, just like always. It’s not watching you, but if it was, what would it say about this little scene? A response flies into your head, and you say it before you can think of whether or not it’s the smart thing to do. “Yeah, keep laughing. The first time this happens to you I’m going to laugh my ass off.”

There’s no response, but you weren’t expecting one. You should probably have made your opening statement to the ghost a little friendlier. But your neck hasn’t snapped yet, so you pick yourself up off the floor, close the cabinet so you won’t hit your head again and kick off round two of this embarrassment, and get back to work.

Attempt one on talking to the ghost was a failure, but you have a rule about trying things at least three times before you give up, so you try again. This time you come home from work, greet Phantom like always, and then slowly, deliberately turn to face the totally empty patch of air in the hallway. “Hi,” you say. “I’m home.”

Nothing then, either, and if you’d started the sentence with “honey” instead of “hi” you’d have sounded exactly like your dad. You’ve always thought that the way characters in movies deal with their haunted houses is cringe. Yours is a different kind of cringe. Possibly a worse kind of cringe. But when you turn away from the empty air, your neck stays unbroken, and that sense of company, of presence, doesn’t fade. If nothing else, you’re not pissing it off.

To be clear, you don’t talk to your house all the time. You don’t feel like talking all the time. But when you do, you start speaking out loud, and soon it becomes a habit. It might be an embarrassing habit, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. And talking to it instead of tiptoeing around it makes you feel a little better about the situation. Less like you’re being haunted. More like you’re at home.

Your coworkers find out that you moved after two months. You’re not sure how, because you definitely didn’t tell them, but you did have to tell HR to start sending your pay stubs to a new address. Somebody there must have spilled the beans, and as pissed as you are, there’s nothing you can do about it now. Just like there’s nothing you can do about the fact that half your coworkers have invited themselves over for an impromptu housewarming party. Tonight.

“This is stupid,” you complain as you wipe down every flat surface on the first floor, trying to get as much of the ever-present dust up as possible. “I see them enough at work. The whole point of working is so I can afford to spend time not at work.”

Phantom huffs a little bit. She’s mostly friendly, but big groups bother her, especially big groups with too many loud guys. “I would never just invite myself over to someone’s house,” you continue. Back in the day you’d have called a friend to complain. Now you just do it out loud. “How the hell am I going to get them to leave? They’re not going to want to leave. This place is perfect.”

You pause for a second, transfixed with horror at the idea of having to kick your coworkers out. “This sucks. Think it’s too l ate for me to fake my own death?” As soon as you say that, you wish you hadn’t. You don’t want the thing in your house to offer to help. “I can’t do that. If I don’t have a job, I don’t have a mortgage payment, and I need a mortgage payment so I can keep my house.”

You finish dusting, then dig out a baby gate from when Phantom was still potty-training and prop it across the stairs. You don’t want anybody thinking it’s okay to go upstairs. The doorbell rings just as you’re straightening up. Coworkers. You grit your teeth, then paste on a smile and go to open the front door. “Hi. Go ahead and invite yourselves in.”

If you’re going to be fair to your coworkers – and you feel like you have to be, because otherwise you might kill them and wind up with a whole bunch of ghosts haunting your house – not all of them are bad. They don’t have to be bad for you to not want them in your house. Most of them just have irritating habits, like clearing their throats on every other word or laughing too loudly at their own bad jokes. There’s only one or two you really don’t like – they pick on your clothes and the way you do your hair, or steal tea bags from the secret stash you keep in your filing cabinet. Both of them are here, and their presence puts you in an even worse mood than you already were.

The only person you’d actually hang out with after work is Mr. Yagi, but he’s your direct supervisor and also sort of old, which means you can’t be friends with him. He’s here, too, and he seems like he’s trying to rein everybody in. You see him stop one of your coworkers from hopping the baby gate and going upstairs and give him a grateful look. He smiles back. Then he startles, coughs into his handkerchief, and stumbles back against the wall.

You start towards him, concerned, but midway there someone slings an arm around your shoulders and stops you in your tracks. “Honey,” Nakayama slurs, flopping most of her weight onto you, “your house’s vibes are fuck awful.”

You didn’t provide alcohol, but it looks like your coworkers brought their own. You shrug her arm off. “Wow. I’m so glad I asked your opinion when I asked you to come over.”

“You didn’t ask,” Nakayama says, confused. You raise your eyebrows, waiting for the penny to drop. It doesn’t drop. Instead a full-body shiver overtakes her, and she wraps her arms around herself like she’s shielding her body from something or trying to keep warm. “Don’t you feel that? It’s – male – male-eh –”

She thinks your ghost is a man. You’re not even sure your ghost is a ghost. “Malevolent,” she says finally. Oh. “It doesn’t want me here.”

“Maybe that’s because I don’t want you here,” you say, and Nakayama laughs. She thinks you’re joking. Mr. Yagi, who’s snuck up alongside you, knows you aren’t. “If the vibes in here are so bad, go check out the back porch. I fixed the hole in the fence, so there shouldn’t be any more coyotes.”

“Coyotes?” Mr. Yagi asks worriedly as Nakayama wanders off through the house. “Is that how Phantom was hurt?”

“Yeah.” You were worried the incident would put Phantom off the backyard, but she loves it just as much as ever. You have a feeling that’s got something to do with the thing in the house. “Like I said, I fixed the hole. What do you think of the house?”

You haven’t asked that question of anybody else, but Mr. Yagi’s opinion is one you’re interested in. “It’s quite – nice,” he says. “Very – lively.”

The pauses in his speech make you wonder if he’s holding in a coughing fit. He has some kind of lung illness. You’re not sure what it is. “Are you okay?”

“Your house.” Mr. Yagi coughs. “I can see why you purchased it. I can see that you feel comfortable and at home here. And at the same time, I understand Miss Nakayama’s use of the word “malevolent”. Something does not want us here.”

“Maybe it’s just me. I didn’t exactly invite people over.”

“I’m very familiar with your demeanor when dealing with a situation you don’t like,” Mr. Yagi says, and chuckles. He sobers up a few seconds later. “This darkness is orders beyond what you could emit. I don’t know how you live with it. It could drive a person mad.”

If this was somebody else, you’d gaslight the hell out of them. But you like Mr. Yagi, and liking him makes you honest. “I talked to people who’ve owned this place before. They said they felt like you do, or like they’re being watched. But I’ve never felt like that here. Watched over, maybe.”

“Watched over?”

You can’t tell him about the coyote. You just – can’t. “Maybe I’m imagining it and I just like the quiet. I believe you about the vibes. I just don’t feel them.”

“I see,” Mr. Yagi says. He looks troubled. You don’t want him to look like that. You don’t want to be worried about this. “Perhaps it’s just an old man’s musings, my dear. You have a lovely home. You should enjoy it.”

There’s a shriek from outside, and you barely manage to mumble an apology to Mr. Yagi before running to investigate. One of your coworkers is freaking out on the back porch, and frantically stubbing out a cigarette in the bargain. You’ve been patient, but the sight of the cigarette pushes you over the edge. “I thought I told you not to smoke here!”

“There was a thing!” Todoroki gestures frantically towards the other end of the porch. “I saw it. Right there. In the smoke –”

“Use your words,” you say. Something’s uncurling in the pit of your stomach, something you’re not all that eager to put a name on. “What did you see in the smoke of the cigarette you weren’t supposed to light up on my back porch?”

“A hand,” Todoroki says. “I saw a hand reaching for me.”

“Maybe it’s your guilty conscience,” you say. Todoroki is close enough that you can smell alcohol mixed in with the smoke on his breath. “Coming after you for inviting yourself to my house and breaking my rules.”

“Your rules are a little strict.” Nakayama slings her arm around your shoulders again. “Don’t you think?”

“No,” you say, sharper than you should be. “I think you don’t know how to listen!”

“Easy there.” Mr. Yagi slides into the conversation sideways. “Todoroki, our hostess did request no smoking. Very politely. And Nakayama, I’m sure you know that hosting an event can be stressful! Let’s go inside and give our hostess a moment to herself, all right?”

Mr. Yagi is hard to say no to, and Todoroki is eager to get off the porch anyway. Nakayama follows him in, and then you’re alone, seething with an emotion you’re finally forced to name: Jealousy. “Come on,” you say out loud, once you’re sure no one else could possibly be listening. “Of all the people you could show yourself to, you picked him?”

There’s no answer, of course. There never is, and after a while, you’ve got no choice but to go back inside and deal with all your mostly-unwanted guests. The bad vibes are infecting the rest of the party, and Todoroki isn’t being shy about whatever he thinks he saw on the porch. Pretty soon everyone is ready to leave. You think Mr. Yagi will be out the door along with everybody else at high speed, but instead he gathers everybody just inside the door for a group picture. “To commemorate the evening,” he says, but you get the sense he’s not telling the truth. Not all of it, anyway. “Everyone smile!”

Everybody smiles, you included – and then everybody scatters, including a few who are probably too tipsy to be driving. You chase after them, make sure everybody who’s drunk is riding home rather than driving themselves, and slink back inside, tired and frustrated. Your house is messier than you like it, your boss thinks you’re living in some kind of hell dimension, and the thing in your house showed itself to one of your dumbass coworkers and not to you. This evening has sucked.

Your phone pings with a message from Mr. Yagi. He’s texted you the photo he took of the group without comment, and when you see it, you see instantly why he wanted a picture in the first place. There are your coworkers, smiling with varying degrees of discomfort. There’s you, smiling because you’ll have the house to yourself again soon. And there’s the shapeless shadow, defying the light beaming directly onto it, hovering just over your shoulder.

There’s something in your house. You know that now for sure. It shows up as a shadow in pictures, but Todoroki saw it as a hand. Other people feel very differently about it than you do – or it makes them feel differently about it than you do. That’s the only explanation you can think of for why every person who’s set foot in the house has had a borderline allergic reaction to it, except you. There’s nothing special about you. For whatever reason, the thing in the house hates you less than it hates everybody else. Why? And why, if it hates you less than everybody else, did it show itself to Todoroki instead of you?

You’ve been thinking about it for a week. You’re thinking about it so hard that you’ve fucked up installing your front porch swing twice, and so hard that you don’t hear a kid calling out to you from the sidewalk. “Hey! Hey, you! Are you the new neighbor?”

The question snaps you out of your fog. You look up and find a girl who looks like she’s about twelve hovering at the end of the path leading up to your door, taking tentative steps over and then pulling her foot back. She’s holding a foil-covered plate in her hands. Behind her there’s an older guy, maybe in his late teens or early twenties. You’re older than him, but not by much. “Hi,” he says awkwardly. “I told Himiko not to shout. But shouting is so fun!”

His demeanor shifted completely between the first sentence and the second. “You’re Himiko,” you say to the girl, and she grins. Even from this distance, you can see that her teeth are oddly sharp. You turn to the older guy. “And you are?”

“This is my big brother Jin!” Himiko gives him a glowing look, then turns her attention back to you. “Now you tell me your name! That’s what people do!”

“It sure is,” you say, bewildered, and you make your introduction. Then you feel weird shouting at them from the porch, so you make your way down to the edge of the yard, still holding a screwdriver. “So you all are my neighbors?”

“Yes! The pink house just that way!” Himiko points it out. “We live there with Jin’s mom and his brothers and sisters!”

“Sorry it took us so long to introduce ourselves,” Jin says. Then that demeanor switch happens again. “We didn’t want to grace you with our presence until we were sure you wouldn’t cut and run!”

“Everybody leaves,” Himiko says, swinging on your front gate. “We made you cookies to say hi!”

“They’re the best cookies in the world,” Jin says, and Himiko sneaks in past the gate. “Don’t eat them. She still doesn’t know how taste buds work.”

That might be the weirdest thing they’ve said to you so far. “Oh.”

“Himiko, come back,” Jin calls, looking past you. “They didn’t invite us in.”

“I know! But – ooh.” Himiko breaks off midsentence with a shiver. Not the same kind of shiver as you saw from Nakayama when she was here, like it’s too cold – the kind you’d do if a spider walked across the back of your neck. “I just want to meet you! Jeez, calm down!”

“I’m calm,” you say.

“She doesn’t mean you,” Jin says, and a chill runs down your spine. “Himiko, come back!”

Himiko skips down the path back to the gate and steps through. “You should come visit us at our house,” she announces. “He doesn’t want us here.”

He. “What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t like to share,” Himiko says. She laughs, high and almost shrill. “I don’t need more people. I have as many people as I want! I have Jin and Jin’s mom and Jin’s sister and Jin’s brother –”

She’s not talking to you. She’s looking back at the house. “Who’s he?” you ask, and she smiles at you. “I’m not joking. I really want to know.”

“You know,” Himiko says. “Or you will, anyway. You’re his.”

“Excuse me?” Something inside you rebels at the thought. “It’s my house.”

“Yeah,” Jin agrees. Finally – a voice of reason. Or not, because what he says next makes everything worse. “You wouldn’t have kept it if he hadn’t let you.”

Himiko nods importantly, still smiling. Then she looks at you, and – “Um, did you just –”

“Just what?” Himiko asks, but you shake your head. There’s no way you saw what you think you saw. There’s no way her pupils closed vertically, almost disappearing, and opened again – like a blink, but not a blink, because eyes aren’t supposed to do that. “Come visit us, then! Everybody in the neighborhood wants to meet you!”

She pushes the plate of cookies into your hands and goes skipping off down the sidewalk. Jin gives an apologetic shrug, followed by a hyperenthusiastic wave goodbye, and follows her, leaving you standing just inside your front gate with a plate of cookies you’re now eighty percent sure are poisoned and even less of an idea about what’s going on than you had before. You decide, with a skill at compartmentalization that you’ve been honing since you moved in, to table it until you’ve set up your porch swing.

But after the swing’s up, you’re hungry. So hungry, in fact, that you pry up the foil on the plate and take a look at the cookies Jin and Himiko brought over. They look suspect. So suspect that you wouldn’t risk eating them unless you were starving, and even then you might try chewing off your own arm first. It’s too bad. You really could have gone for a cookie right about now.

But you’re an adult, and you have your own house, and a decent amount of ingredients in your pantry. Maybe cookies aren’t as out of reach as you thought they were.

One quick shower later, you’re in the kitchen, measuring out ingredients for your favorite cookie recipe. Back in the day you’d play music, or call somebody. Now you either talk to Phantom, talk to the thing in the house, or both. But Phantom is napping on the tiles on the front hall – her favorite spot on hot days, even though you have air conditioning and you like to use it. That’s a good thing. You and the thing in your house need to have a talk.

“You’ve got an attitude problem, huh?” Your opening lines with the thing in your house are never as polite as they probably should be. “I’m fine with you scaring my coworkers. I’m pretty sure I thanked you for that one. But those were my neighbors. I have to live with them. Or near them. And they seemed – nice.”

It gets quiet after that. Sometimes you can use the silence to convince yourself that the ghost is answering, just not in a way you’re able to hear. Sometimes you even imagine what the ghost is saying. Today is one of those days. “Okay, fine. They were weird. I still have to live with them.” But you have to live with the ghost, too, and the ghost apparently has some weird ideas about what’s going on here. “And while we’re talking about it, what’s this possessive shit? You think you own me? You’ve talked more to my twelve-year-old neighbor than you have to me, so you’ve got a lot of nerve talking about me like I belong to you.”

You’ve got no idea what the ghost would say in response to that, and you have to get out your dry ingredients. You head to the pantry and dig out what’s left of your flour, noting that you’ve got a new bag waiting, and go back to the counter. Except something happens to you midway there. You step into a cold spot, colder than anything you’ve ever felt in your life, and your hands go nerveless and numb like you’ve been flash-frozen. The bag of flour drops from your hands and splits open on the floor, letting up a puff of flour that climbs high into the air like a mushroom cloud. Higher than it should. But that’s not what you’re looking at. You’re looking at the two clean spots on the flour-coated floor, directly in front of you. Two clean spots in the shape of a pair of feet.

They’re not children’s footprints. Whatever’s in your house isn’t a child like Himiko – it’s an adult, like you, and it’s standing really close to you. Your eyes are drawn almost inexorably upwards through the already-dissipating cloud of flour. You’re looking too late. You almost miss it. But before the flour falls completely back to the floor, you see the outline of a torso, the slope of a shoulder. The length of an arm. And the shape of one hand, thumb and forefinger poised to flick against your forehead.

You react before you can think about it. “What are you, twelve?” You wave your hand through the air, trying to dissipate the rest of the cloud, resolutely ignoring the way you obliterate the shoulder, the torso. “Learn some manners.”

The cloud vanishes, and the figure with it. You could almost believe it had never happened at all, except for the pair of clean footprints on your otherwise flour-covered floor.

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 3) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Chapter 3

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. Except now you know damn well that the thing that’s wrong with it isn’t the house itself – it’s what’s in it. What was put in it. What’s stuck in it. “In most hauntings, ghosts are summoned from the world between by conjurers, whether they like it or not,” Aizawa says. “These ghosts are bound unwillingly to specific locations and left to haunt them as they see fit. Eri was this type of ghost.”

“So’s Himiko,” Jin says. He pauses. “I think.”

“So was Magne,” Spinner adds. “She didn’t like it here.”

“Can’t she go back?” you ask.

Aizawa shakes his head. “Once a ghost has been summoned and bound, there’s only one way out,” he says – but he doesn’t tell you what that way is. Of course. “As I said, in most cases, the ghosts are bound to their haunts unwillingly. The ghosts who came willingly are the ones to be scared of.”

You’re smart enough to catch the implication. Most of the ghosts in the neighborhood didn’t want to be here. “You think Tomura did.”

“A ghost of his strength could have resisted the summons, and killed the conjurer who made it,” Aizawa says. “Your ghost is here because he chose to be.”

“Which is way we brought you to old man Aizawa,” Jin says. Aizawa, who’s not actually that old, rolls his eyes. “He’s got one of those, too.”

Not Eri. It’s not Eri, and Shinsou’s not a ghost, so – “Your husband’s a ghost?”

“He was a ghost,” Aizawa corrects. He looks even more tired than before. “I suppose it’ll be easiest to tell you what happened. It’ll cut down on the useless questions you’ll undoubtedly ask. My husband Hizashi was summoned form the world between two hundred and nineteen years ago, to haunt an opera house that was being built –”

Aizawa’s husband was a very powerful ghost, he says. He could have resisted the summons, but he didn’t, and he spent a hundred and fifty years terrorizing the opera house and everyone who set foot in it before the last person who owned it burnt it to the ground on purpose. “That was a mistake,” Aizawa says. “Destroying a haunt releases the ghost to wander. Releasing a ghost like Hizashi is – unwise.”

“Look up the opera ghost murders,” Spinner stage-whispers. You glance back at him. “Let’s just say Hizashi spent a lot of time embodied.”

Tomura’s words flash through your head: I can’t get it from you or the dog. You’d die. You stare at Aizawa. “Your husband killed people?”

“People who deserved it. Or people he felt deserved it,” Aizawa says. His voice is flat. “Ghosts aren’t human. They don’t think like humans do. Their sense of right and wrong is accordingly – skewed.”

“Sometimes Papa killed people who hurt other people,” Eri says. “Sometimes he killed people who were mean to their waiters. But that was before he met Dad.”

You’re still stuck a few sentences back, slowly piecing something together. “The energy doesn’t last long when they’re – embodied,” you say, stumbling on the word. “Your ghosts are just killing people all the time?”

“No,” Aizawa says shortly. “The ghosts in this neighborhood, excepting yours, are former ghosts. They no longer have that power.”

“We’re people now. We don’t need it,” Eri explains to you. She looks back to Aizawa. “Tell how you met Papa!”

Aizawa sighs. “My current job is as an author. Prior to this, I was an investigative journalist. My specialty was exposés, and I often took risks to ensure the truth came to light. During this time, unbeknownst to me, I caught Hizashi’s attention. He began watching me, following me – helping me, although our definitions of helpfulness diverged more often than not. His word for it was ‘haunting’.”

That’s Tomura’s word for it, too. A shiver runs down your spine. “On my last assignment, I was investigating corruption in the police force,” Aizawa says. “While I discovered plenty of it, I also discovered something worse – a serial murderer, using his role in law enforcement to conceal his crimes. I knew that no one would believe me unless I brought them incontrovertible proof. I took appropriate precautions, or so I thought, then confronted him to force a confession.”

“And it didn’t work,” you guess.

Aizawa’s fingers trace a scar under his right eye in a movement that almost looks unconscious. “It didn’t go as planned,” he says. “I was badly injured. If Hizashi hadn’t intervened, I would have been killed. As it was, I fell unconscious. When I woke up in the hospital three days later, Hizashi was there. Alive.”

“Not a ghost anymore,” you clarify. Aizawa nods. “How?”

“Ghosts can embody themselves permanently if they kill someone and take the complete measure of their life-force,” Aizawa says. “That’s what Hizashi did, and Eri. That’s what they all did.”

Eri killed someone. You glance at her, more than a little creeped out, and find her smiling a gap-toothed smile. “I had to,” she says. Her pupils open and shut again. “She was hurting Hitoshi. She made him cry.”

“Did you mean it?” you ask lamely.

“To be people?” Eri frowns for a moment. “I must have. Or it wouldn’t have worked.”

“The embodiment thing doesn’t just happen,” Jin says. “They don’t just trip and fall – like, whoops, I’m embodied now! They have to want it.”

“They have to want it more than they want anything else,” Aizawa says. “More than they’ve ever wanted anything else in all their existence. It’s not something that happens often.”

“Which is a good thing,” Spinner puts in. “Because once you’ve got one, you’ve got it for life.”

So every ghost – former ghost – in the neighborhood had at least a split second where they wanted to be human. “If a ghost who was summoned unwillingly becomes human, their contract with the conjurer who summoned them is broken,” Aizawa says. “The conjurers often come back to exact punishment, and while a ghost in this world has significant power, most permanently embodied ghosts have roughly the same power as a human.”

“Papa’s strong,” Eri argues.

“I said ‘most’,” Aizawa reminds her. “When Eri’s conjurer came for her, Hizashi’s residual abilities allowed us to defeat him. But Hizashi’s conjurer, should he reappear, would pose a significant threat. Every family in this neighborhood is under a similar threat.”

“Which is why we’re all here,” Spinner says. “The ghost in your house is so strong that his presence hides the rest of us completely. If Atsuhiro’s conjurer or Himiko’s or Hizashi’s looked here for them, they wouldn’t be able to find them. All they’d see is your ghost.”

“That’s why we all want to meet him so bad,” Jin says. “He’s the boss! The baddest guy around! And we owe him, see? If not for him, they’d find us, easy.”

You look at their faces, Eri and Jin and Spinner. They all look pretty enthusiastic at the prospect of your ghost. Nothing like the way you feel when you think about him, some weird mix of gratefulness and comfort and confusion and fear. You look away from them, to Aizawa. He doesn’t look sad, exactly. Not resigned, either. But when he looks at you, you get the sense that he understands it. He’s been where you are, or somewhere like it, and suddenly you’re intensely grateful to Jin for bringing you here. You aren’t crazy for having mixed feelings about your ghost. Aizawa had them, maybe still has them, too.

“This information, while interesting, is ultimately irrelevant to you,” Aizawa says. You didn’t want to say it, but he’s right. “I imagine you’re more interested in how to handle your interactions with – Tomura, was it?”

You nod. “He hasn’t hurt me. I don’t think he wants to hurt me. But I don’t think he knows what he wants.”

“That’s likely. For all his power, he doesn’t seem to have much experience actually haunting anyone,” Aizawa says. “The fact that the house stood empty for so long suggests that he’s selective, and the actions he’s taken suggest that he has an interest in keeping you appeased. That gives you leverage.”

“You kind of need that,” Spinner says. “Like Aizawa said, they don’t get right and wrong like we do. Magne thought all kinds of shit was okay at first. It gets better if they’re embodied, but since yours isn’t gonna do that, you’ll have to explain a lot.”

“Frame the situation in terms of how the action you want the ghost to take will benefit the ghost,” Aizawa says. “For instance, if you want privacy, explain how respecting your privacy will increase your comfort in the house and make you more likely to stay there. Avoid asking him to do things.”

“Like asking him not to stare at me while I sleep?”

“No,” Aizawa says. “Avoid asking him to undertake tasks for you. The means he’ll use to achieve them will likely be unpleasant.”

You think of the coyote. All you needed was for it to leave, but Tomura basically tore its head off. “I don’t need him to do anything,” you say. “Just to leave me alone.”

“Sorry, sister. That’s not happening,” Jin says, and your heart sinks. “That house has been empty ever since we moved in. He’s been waiting for somebody to haunt this whole time, and he picked you. You’re his now. He told Himiko so.”

“Magne said she got the same vibe,” Spinner adds. “It’s not so bad, having a ghost. Think of it like having a really good roommate, or a best friend –”

“Or the coolest little sister ever,” Jin adds, grinning. “All the best people I know used to be dead!”

“I’m not dead! Take that back,” Eri protests. “I’m just your kind of alive now. And it’s the best kind of alive. There are flavors. And tastes –”

Spinner asks Eri what kind of tastes she likes best, and that sets all three of them off. You look back at Aizawa, who’s studying you with that same flat look in his eyes. “I don’t think mine wants a best friend,” you say.

“Mine didn’t,” Aizawa says. You wonder how he ended up married to his ghost, raising kids with his ghost. If that was really what he wanted. If he ever had a choice. “I don’t think so, either.”

When you head back to your house, it’s with an armful of books and a low, heavy feeling in the pit of your stomach. Phantom greets you cheerfully the instant you latch the gate behind you. You wonder how she got out when you know you left her inside, but the answer comes to you almost ahead of the question. Tomura must have let her out. He’s watched the whole process play out hundreds of times by now – Phantom going to the door, aiming sad looks your way, crying until you open it – and he did exactly what you do. You remember Aizawa’s admonition against asking Tomura to do things. You didn’t ask for this, and he did it anyway.

He materializes the instant you close the front door. “Where did you go? You were gone for hours.”

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

Now he looks confused. “Why didn’t you ask me about me?”

“Because you might lie, and I needed the truth.” You wait to see if Tomura will argue, but he doesn’t. “They had a lot to say.”

“What did they say about me?”

“They said you’re strong,” you say. Tomura goes from suspicious to proud of himself in about two seconds flat. “That’s why they moved here. You’re so strong that you can hide them from the people who summoned them.”

“It’s their fault they need to hide. They embodied themselves, like idiots.” Tomura at least sounds like he’s against permanent embodiment, which is a relief for you. “They can stay. I don’t care. As long as you stay.”

“I can stay,” you allow. You think of what Aizawa said and give one of his negotiating tactics a try. “I’ll be a lot more comfortable staying here if you give me some space.”

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

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

“Not everybody,” Tomura argues. “In those movies –”

“I’m not going to watch any more movies if you keep getting dumb ideas from them.” You ignore the affronted sound Tomura makes. “Life isn’t like movies. I like to be alone when I’m sleeping.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Do you sleep?” You should have asked Aizawa about things like that.

“I don’t sleep. Sleeping is for humans,” Tomura says. You raise your eyebrows and he scowls. “It sounds nice when you sleep. I can’t hear it if I’m not in your room.”

“What sounds nice?” You’re not a sleep-talker, and nobody’s ever told you that you snore. “What kind of noises am I making? Are they weird?”

“I don’t know,” Tomura snaps. “I don’t know what noises humans are supposed to make when they’re sleeping. They don’t sound weird to me. They’re just – nice.”

You decide to set up your phone to record tonight, just to figure out what kind of sounds you’re making. And then you’ll buy a white-noise machine so this doesn’t happen again. This isn’t working. Maybe you need to try something else. “I’m not fun to hang out with when I’m sleeping,” you say. “Why don’t we hang out more when I’m awake and I can talk to you?”

His red eyes light up. Part of you wants to call his excitement childish, but you’ve felt that way as an adult. Aizawa says that ghosts materialize or embody or whatever you’re supposed to call it at the equivalent human age. Tomura’s an adult by ghost standards. You have to interact with him like one. “Well?”

“I need more life,” Tomura says. “I killed all your mushrooms in the front yard. Find me something else and I’ll – hang out with you. You are boring when you sleep.”

“I’ll find something,” you say. You can see that Tomura’s starting to fade, and you move to end the conversation before he can freak out again. “Thanks for letting Phantom out. I’ll see you soon.”

“Soon,” Tomura says. He doesn’t look happy, but he’s not angry. As long as he’s not throwing a fit, you’ll take it.

Once he’s faded completely, you take out your phone and text the newly formed group chat that has the numbers of every human in the neighborhood old enough to have a phone. Jin’s renamed it eight times already. Right now it’s “ghost friends anonymous”. You text it with a request: If you all catch bugs in your houses, bring them to my house. I need them.

So you can talk to him? Keigo texts back first. Wish I’d thought of that when it was me. No problem. Bug buffet coming right up.

Shinsou responds next. Can we leave them on your porch? Dad says not to go up there.

You’ve got my permission, you say, even though you and everybody else knows it’s not your permission that counts. And his, once I tell him what they’re for.

The cold spot settles around your shoulders and you startled badly. You’ve walked through Tomura by accident before, and he must not have liked it, either, because he stays out of your way when you’re on the move. But he’s here now, not sinking through you but wrapped around you. “Don’t,” you say aloud. “I’ll get a chill.”

Tomura stays there a moment longer, probably just to prove he can. Then he slips away, leaving you with the worst case of goosebumps you’ve ever had and a feeling you don’t like in the pit of your stomach. You’ve got a ghost in your house – fine. It’s not being a ghost that makes him an asshole.

Tomura’s an asshole, but he must want to hang out with you more than he wants to spy on you, because the bathroom’s empty except for you when you shower before bed. And for the first time in weeks, you fall asleep in an empty room.

Your bug idea works out pretty well. Every day you find at least five or six jars on your porch with holes drilled into the lids and spiders or ants or wasps rattling around inside, trying to escape. Two jars of bugs buys Tomura five minutes of complete materialization, but he’s starting to get smart about things, only materializing what he needs for a given interaction. A pair of hands to throw the ball for Phantom. His head and shoulders when he’s talking to you. His whole body, barely visible, when the neighbors come over to the house to drop off the day’s catch.

The first ones to come by are Jin and Himiko, and Himiko shrieks in excitement when she sees Tomura’s shadow on the front porch. “It’s you!” she squeals. “You’re so cute!”

“I’m not cute,” Tomura says, disgusted. Then he looks at you. “What’s cute?”

“Not you,” you say, and he breathes a sigh of relief. Even though he can’t breathe. It’s weird-looking for sure. “Jin, Himiko, this is Tomura. He’s, uh –”

“The boss!” Jin flashes a double thumbs-up. “The king of the neighborhood! Frankly, my dude, you terrify me.”

Jin’s mood switches stopped being weird to you a long time ago, but Tomura’s not used to him yet. “What’s wrong with it?” he mutters.

“Nothing’s wrong with him! Don’t make fun of my humans,” Himiko says. She smiles with her sharp teeth and ghost-blinks a few times. “I don’t make fun of your human. Even though she wears the same shirt three times a week.”

“It’s my favorite shirt,” you protest. “It’s comfy. And I wash it in between.”

“My human wears what it wants to wear,” Tomura says. You don’t have the heart to correct him on the pronouns.

And you don’t have to – somebody else does it for you, when Shinsou stops by with a bug delivery two afternoons later. He’s not alone, but it’s not Aizawa with him. It’s a blond man with a tiny mustache and bright green eyes, and he’s standing as far away from Shinsou as humanly possible without letting go of Shinsou’s hand. “I admire the ingenuity, but this is gross,” he says, projecting his voice ridiculously loud with seemingly no effort. Then he looks up at you and smiles. “Hey there. Shou’s told me all about you. The name’s Hizashi.”

“Aizawa told me about you, too.” You’ve met almost all the ghosts in the neighborhood already, but this is your first time seeing Hizashi, and something about him makes you nervous. Maybe it’s just what you know about his backstory, or maybe you’re worried he’s going to come up here and give Tomura ideas about things he can do with his human. “Tomura, this is Hizashi. He lives up the street.”

“I know who he is,” Tomura says. He’s more visible now than he was a second ago. “Back off. You’re scaring it.”

“It?” Hizashi repeats. “Most humans don’t go by ‘it’, friend. That’s a she. Your human’s a woman.”

“Huh?” Tomura looks at you, looks you up and down in a way that makes you really uncomfortable. “How can you tell?”

“You could ask,” Hizashi says, unruffled. He turns his attention to Shinsou. “You’re sure you have to go up there? Spooky McScarface doesn’t look too friendly.”

“I don’t touch other people’s humans,” Tomura says. He studies Shinsou as Shinsou comes up to the porch and sets his jar down on the first step. “Which kind are you?”

“I’m a guy,” Shinsou says. Tomura keeps staring at him. “The opposite of a girl. Not a girl. Most humans are guys or girls. Men or women. I’m a guy. Your human’s a girl.”

“Whatever,” Tomura says. Shinsou sets down the bugs and backs away toward the front gate. You’d elbow Tomura if he was embodied. When you elbow him anyway, your elbow goes numb from the cold. “I’m supposed to say thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Hizashi says. He yanks Shinsou back through the gate and hurries him up the street. “We’ll be back! Enjoy your worms.”

They’ve given you a lot of worms. “This is great,” you say. “Maybe we can get through a whole movie on these. What do you think?”

You glance at Tomura and find him mostly dematerialized, lost in thought. “You’re a girl,” he says. You nod. “What am I?”

“Whatever you want to be, I guess,” you say. “You look like a guy, though. Your voice sounds like a guy’s voice, and you don’t have – um –”

You gesture at your breasts, which is a mistake. Now he’s looking at them. “Would you rather be a girl?”

“No,” Tomura says decisively. “I don’t like girls that much.”

Tomura’s understanding of gender probably still has a couple of big holes in it, but you decide to steer off the topic for now and count yourself lucky that it wasn’t worse. It’s not until you’re trying to fall asleep in your still-empty room that you realize what Tomura actually said – that he doesn’t like girls enough to want to be one, not that he doesn’t like girls at all. You thought you were off the hook. It turns out your ghost is straight.

You text Aizawa in a fit of pique. Your husband taught my ghost how to like girls.

Your ghost already liked girls. Now he has words to explain it. Aizawa’s typing bubble appears, then vanishes. Trust me, it helps.

You’re not all that sure that it does, but after a week or so of normal behavior from Tomura, you decide that it’s probably not a disaster. Whatever Hizashi told him, it’s not anywhere as bad as what Tomura’s getting out of the movies he watches with you.

You’ve been trying to be careful about what you show him, but you learn pretty quickly that he can get something weird out of whatever he watches. Tomura is shockingly observant, picking up on stuff that even you don’t notice, but he almost invariably draws the wrong conclusions about whatever he’s caught on to. That’s fine when you’re watching sci-fi. Not fine when you’re watching a romcom.

“No,” you say to Tomura for the fifth time. You feel like you’re talking to Phantom. “That’s not good. He shouldn’t be doing that.”

“Why not? He wants to protect her and she’s being stupid.”

You agree she’s being stupid, but – “He’s scaring her,” you say. Tomura blinks. He doesn’t blink like the embodied ghosts do. He blinks like a human does. “It’s scary for someone to grab you, or to block you in a corner and not let you leave. People who care about you don’t scare you.”

Tomura’s quiet for a little bit. You’re just picking up the remote to unpause the movie when he speaks again. “Do I scare you?”

“Right now? No.”

“So you’ve been scared of me before,” Tomura says. Sometimes you can get away with lying to him, but not right now. You keep quiet, and he takes it how you meant it. And he’s pissed. “Why would you be scared of me? I didn’t do anything to you. I helped you –”

“Humans are scared of things we don’t understand,” you say. Tomura studies you, scratching the side of his neck. He’s not materialized enough for it to show, which is good. You hate seeing the scrapes appear. “It’s normal.”

“The others say their humans weren’t ever scared of them.”

“Their humans were kids,” you say. “I’m not.”

You haven’t run your theory by Aizawa yet, but you’re still pretty sure you’re right. Jin, Shinsou, and Spinner were all kids when they met their ghosts, and their ghosts were there for them when nobody else was. You’ve heard the stories of how they met in bits and pieces, but you know Himiko protected Jin and Jin’s siblings from their abusive dad – and killed him to embody herself when he took it too far. Eri told you what she did to the foster sibling who hurt Shinsou. Spinner hasn’t told you how he met his ghost yet, but you feel like it’s probably something similar. They were all kids, and their ghosts were their best friends before they became human. They didn’t think about it any more than that.

You and Aizawa were older. You can’t speak to whatever brought Aizawa to Hizashi’s attention, but you went out of your way to make sure your house wasn’t haunted and wound up with a seriously haunted house anyway. When Tomura killed the coyote to protect you and Phantom, you were grateful, and you said so – but your next thought was about how easily that same violence could be turned against you. You’re an adult. You don’t trust easily. Of course you’re wary of the insanely powerful ghost in your house. Who wouldn’t be?

Tomura’s still studying you. “How do I make you – not?”

“You can’t make me do anything,” you say. Tomura rolls his eyes. “Don’t do that. You asked.”

“And you didn’t answer. How do I make you stop being scared of me?”

“You can’t,” you say, which is probably the stupidest answer you’ve given to any question ever, even if it’s true. “Why do you want me not to be scared of you? You’re supposed to be haunting me. Don’t you want to act like a ghost?”

Tomura vanishes, which is about as close to a fuck-you as it gets. You resign yourself to a rough night and settle in for the rest of the movie. In retrospect, daring your ghost to actually haunt you was a really bad idea.

You haven’t shown Tomura any horror movies, but you watched a few before you knew he was watching them with you, and over the next few hours, he pulls every trick he must have seen in them. The lights flicker. The house fills itself with weird sounds, creaks and screeches and moans, and the hallways warp before your eyes as you try to walk through them. If you had to guess, you’d say Tomura wants you to beg him to stop, but you’re not going to do that. You brush your teeth, ignoring the way the water from the faucet runs read and the creepy shadow behind the shower door. You check your closet, ignoring the pair of feet very obviously sticking out below the racks of clothes, and pick up your feet to avoid the hands that grasp at your ankles as you try to get into bed. Then your bed starts to rattle, like he’s grabbed it by the post and started shaking it around.

And that, of all things, is what makes you lose patience. “You suck at haunting things.”

Tomura’s voice issues from beneath the bed. “Maybe you just suck at being haunted.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” You suck at all of this, and all the time you spend trying to solve your ghost problem has been sapping your focus at work. Mr. Yagi’s nice about it, but he can’t be nice forever. “I didn’t ask for this. You did.”

Your bed rattles again, harder than before, then goes still. “No, I didn’t.”

“Don’t lie. I know how this works. A ghost as strong as you –”

“I wasn’t always strong.” A scratching sound emanates from beneath the bed. Not only is Tomura still down there, he’s materialized fully enough that you can hear him scratching his neck. Why would he waste that kind of energy? “I didn’t want to come here. Master made me. I couldn’t get back.”

Master – his conjurer. It must be. But Aizawa says that ghosts are strong or weak, that their powers don’t grow or increase, and all the former ghosts agree. If Tomura started out weak enough to be summoned unwillingly, how did he get strong enough to hide an entire neighborhood of former ghosts? “I don’t understand.”

“So I bet you’re extra scared now.”

Tomura’s voice is bitter, mocking. But you can still hear the scratching, and before you can think better of it, you sit up and slide off your bed. When you’re lying flat on the floor, you can see into the darkness beneath the bed and make out Tomura’s red eyes, his pale skin, the scraped-raw spots on the side of his neck. “Hey, don’t do that,” you say quietly, and he scoffs. “It looks like it hurts.”

“Things don’t hurt. There’s feelings or not-feelings. I don’t care either way.”

“If you don’t care either way, then stop,” you say. Tomura scoffs again. “I’ll prove it’s different. Hold your hand out.”

He holds out the hand he’s not scratching with, like an asshole, but maybe you can use that. If he’s still scratching, the contrast will be obvious. You reach for Tomura’s hand with both of yours and hold it still. Part of you is expecting your hands to sink through and meet in the middle, but Tomura’s hand is real enough to touch. His skin is rough and ice-cold.

Tomura stops scratching the instant your hands enclose his. You’re tempted to call attention to it and gloat over being right, but it feels like it would be the wrong thing to do. It’s banter, and this doesn’t feel like banter. It feels like something else. You don’t think too hard about what that something is.

Tomura’s not thinking about it, either, but that’s because Tomura’s an asshole. “It only feels different because your hands aren’t moving.”

“You want me to move my hands? Fine.” You turn Tomura’s hand over and run the pads of your fingers lightly over his palm, noting as you do that his palm is completely unlined. He doesn’t have fingerprints, either. You notice that when you trace the length of one of his fingers, and then the next, and the next after that. But if you ignore that, and you ignore the cold, Tomura’s hand is just a hand. You match your palm to his, then run your fingers down the length of his all at once. It’s just a hand. It could be anyone’s.

Tomura yanks his hand free of yours and vanishes for the second time tonight, leaving you sprawled out on the floor of your room, staring into the now-empty space under your bed. It occurs to you to be embarrassed, but this isn’t even close to the dumbest thing you’ve done because of the ghost in your house. You lay there for a second, wondering how long it’ll take for Tomura to get whatever stupid thing he’s doing out of his system, and then climb back up into bed.

Tomura’s sitting there, cross-legged, both hands up over his face. “What was that?” he asks. Usually when he asks you questions like that, it’s a demand, but it sounds different this time. “Why did you do that to me?”

“I was proving a point.” Were you, though? Suddenly you aren’t sure. “Get off my bed.”

“Never do that again,” Tomura says. His shoulders are rising and falling fast, like he’s breathing hard. “Never! I don’t want to feel like this!”

“Like what?” you ask, but now he’s fading – not dematerializing, fading. He’s run out of energy, and he won’t be back tonight, unless he changes his mind and decides you and Phantom are fair game as far as living batteries go. “Fine. You started this. Don’t play your stupid games with me anymore.

The lights flicker on, then off, then on again. You roll over, press your face into your pillow, and fall asleep.

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 6) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Chapter 6

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. And to your dull human senses, what’s wrong with your house barely stands out on your street. You barely stand out on y our street anymore, either. Other people avoid this neighborhood. It’s not uncommon for everybody’s mail and packages to get dumped in a pile at the top of the street, because no postal worker wants to drive down this way if they can help it. But you’ve been here long enough now. Your neighborhood feels like home. Everybody here knows your name.

Shinsou and Hizashi are trying to start a garden, so you bring over some of your plants to help get them started. Keigo is teaching Jin to drive, and neither of them can get the hang of parallel parking, so you help out by shouting instructions from the curb as Jin tries not to murder your car or Aizawa’s while backing Keigo’s in. Sometimes you take Atsuhiro with you when you go grocery shopping, at Aizawa’s request – Atsuhiro has a shoplifting problem, and everyone else is tired of bailing him out of jail. And in the most awkward incident yet, Himiko gets her first period while Jin’s mom is at work and runs shrieking up the street to your house.

It’s your day off, but you’re in the bathroom when she arrives, so Tomura goes out onto the porch instead. Tomura’s not the person you want addressing a sensitive topic. When you finally make it out there, he’s in the middle of speculating that the unexplained blood loss means Himiko is going to die.

She looks close to tears, and you decide to address the biggest problem first. “You’re not going to die,” you tell her. Then you turn to Tomura. “And you – get out of here. This is girl stuff.”

Usually the threat of girl stuff banishes Tomura pretty quickly, but he doesn’t move. “Humans die from blood loss.”

“This isn’t that kind of blood loss. Shoo.”

Himiko ghost-blinks up at you through teary eyes. “It’s not?”

You shake your head. “It’s normal. Have you been feeling okay these last few days?”

“My stomach hurts. Since Friday.” Himiko’s mouth turns down at the corners. “Ochako at school says I’ve been mean.”

PMS is bad enough when you know it’s coming, but Himiko’s a former ghost, and her favorite human is a guy. She’s probably never seen this before. “Okay,” you say. “You should probably ask Jin’s mom more about this when she gets home. This is kind of a mom thing. But you’re not dying. You just got your period. It’s normal.”

“For humans.”

“Yep.

“Do you have one?”

“Not right now,” you say. You feel a little weird talking about this in front of Tomura. “Every month, though. I’m going to give you some pads to take with you, and you can borrow my heating pad. I’d invite you in, but –”

“Tomura’s a boy and he’s gross.”

“Hey!”

“Right,” you say, ignoring him. “Just a second.”

You duck back inside, pick up an unopened package of pads, and retrieve your heating pad from the medicine cabinet. When you get back to the porch, Tomura’s still there. He and Himiko are staring at each other. Neither of them are making a sound, but you get the sense that they’re talking. Spinner said the ghosts say weird things when they talk to each other, but he must have been eavesdropping on a conversation out loud. You’ve got no idea what Himiko and Tomura are saying to each other, and you have to clear your throat twice before either of them turn their attention back to you. And when they do, their expressions are different than you’d expect. Tomura looks uncomfortable, defensive. Himiko, still a little teary-eyed, looks pleased with herself. Why?

Whatever it is, you’ll have more luck getting it out of Tomura than her. “Here are the pads,” you say, holding them out. “You probably won’t go through them too fast, and when your mom gets back she can help you pick some out. And the heating pad is good for cramps. Put it on your stomach or your lower back, whichever feels worse.”

“Okay.” Himiko wipes her eyes, then smiles at you. “You’re nice. Are you old enough to be a mom?”

“I mean, probably?” A few of your friends from college have kids now. “Not old enough to be your mom, though. Why?”

“No reason.” Himiko turns and makes her way down the porch steps, staggering a bit like you do when you get hit with a bad cramp. “Thanks.”

“If you need anything else before your mom comes back, come over,” you say. You wait until she’s out of sight, then turn your attention to Tomura. “What was that about?”

“She asked if I like you like a mom.” Tomura looks like he wants to hurl. “I said no, and then she asked if I like you like she likes Jin, or like Eri likes Shinsou.”

“And you said no?”

“I said yes,” Tomura says, and your heart sinks – but only for a second. “The little brat can still read auras. She knew I was lying.”

It’s on the tip of your tongue to ask him what he lied about, but then you realize you already know. Himiko eliminated two of the three varieties of ghost-human relationships in the neighborhood – sibling-sibling and parent-child. That leaves two options, neither of which you like. Either Tomura likes you the way Hizashi likes Aizawa and Dabi used to like Keigo, or he doesn’t like you at all.

You should leave it. You should drop the topic and back away slowly. Instead you open your mouth. “Why did you lie to her?”

“What I do with my human is none of her business. Or anyone else’s.” Tomura is dematerializing. Now he’s just a voice and a pair of hands gripping the porch railing so hard that you’re worried it’ll snap. “Go away.”

Fine. You tell yourself it’s fine, that you’ll go, but your feet stay stubbornly planted until your phone rings from somewhere inside the house and you have to go back to retrieve it. Aizawa’s calling, and when you pick up, he starts talking without greeting you first. “Your job gives you access to public records. I’m going to give you a list of names.”

“I can’t just –”

Aizawa starts reading them off, proving that the ghosts aren’t the only ones in the neighborhood who can be assholes in the bargain, and you scramble for a pen and a piece of paper. Phantom is prodding you in the ankle with her snout, looking for a treat. “Hang on a second,” you snap at Aizawa. “I need to write this down.”

A piece of paper skids across the counter towards you, followed by a pen. “Thanks,” you say to Tomura. Then, to Aizawa: “Start at the beginning. The first name was?”

There are seven names on the list. They’re all men’s names. “I want all the information you can find,” Aizawa says. “As quickly as you can find it.”

“This is public record,” you complain. “Make a records request. This is my job. I’m not going to get in trouble just so you can avoid some paperwork.”

“It’s not the paperwork,” Aizawa says flatly. “If I make that request, my name and address become public. You’re the only one in the neighborhood who can look without giving us away.”

The neighborhood. You thought this was just some project of Aizawa’s, but – “Who are these people?”

“That’s what you need to find out,” Aizawa says. “As soon as possible.”

He hangs up the phone without saying thank you, and you look down at the piece of paper and the names you scribbled. Your handwriting is bad. You need to recopy them. “So that’s it?” Tomura says from the other side of the kitchen. He’s barely an outline. “Aizawa calls and you jump to it? Pathetic.”

You ignore him. What he says, at least. “Do you know any of these names?”

“Why would I know them?”

“Just look.” You hold out the list, and Tomura drifts across the kitchen to investigate. “I don’t know why he wants me to look these up. He made it sound really important. Do any of these look familiar?”

“No.” Tomura’s hand materializes fully, plucks the list out of your grip, and sets it down on the counter. “I wasn’t done with you.”

“You told me to go away,” you say. “I listened.”

It’s like you didn’t speak at all. The rest of Tomura materializes, from the tips of his fingers upward, until he’s standing before you, closer than he’s gotten in a while. “You asked me what I want. I know now.”

You can’t remember ever putting that question to him – according to Aizawa, asking ghosts open-ended questions like that is a really bad idea. But because you’re you, and you’re stupid, you ask it again. “What do you want, Tomura?”

A pair of cold hands close on your waist. Tomura pulls you forward so hard that you stumble, falling against his chest. “You’re mine,” he says. “I want you.”

A jolt goes straight down your spine. You’ve heard that note in his voice once before and imagined it a thousand times over, but hearing it again right now feels like a disaster. “Be specific,” you say, looking anywhere but up into his face. “What specifically do you –”

One hand leaves your waist to press against your jaw, forcing you to turn your head and look up. A moment later Tomura’s lips crash down against yours.

He kisses exactly the way you’d expect him to kiss, the way of someone who’s seen it in movies but never asked anyone how it’s done. Mouth closed, all pressure, nothing else. He’s not going to let you go, so you hold still, hoping Tomura will take some kind of hint that it’s not going as plan. Tomura stops and draws back, frowning. “You aren’t doing it back.”

“I can’t when you’re doing it like that,” you say. “You’re doing it wrong.”

“I’m not doing it wrong. You’re doing it wrong.”

“Hey. I’ve kissed somebody before. You’ve just watched it on TV.” You feel Tomura’s grip on you loosen slightly. This is your chance to escape, to tell him that you’re not interested, to threaten to move out if he ever tries this again and maybe mean it. “It’s more fun if you do it right.”

Tomura looks at you suspiciously. “How do I do it right?”

Some part of your mind that’s still sane, that still exists in the real world instead of the twisted upside-down haunt of your house and your neighborhood, is screaming for you to stop, but it’s fading fast. You let it go. You free your hands from where they’re trapped at your sides and frame Tomura’s face with them. “I’ll show you.”

You start with a gentle kiss, mouth closed but soft, and because Tomura’s an asshole, he starts arguing even before you’ve pulled away. “That’s what I did.”

“No, you did it too hard.” You kiss him the same way again, trying to get the point across. “You can still talk when I do it like this, which means you can respond.”

Tomura’s scowling now, but he leans in to kiss you again, and this time the pressure is significantly less. His lips are chapped. You part your lips against his, catching on his lower lip, and he startles. You wonder if anybody else in the neighborhood had to teach their undersocialized ghost how to kiss properly. Probably not.

Tomura’s fatal flaw with kissing is overenthusiasm. As soon as he figures out that opening his mouth is a thing he can do, he overdoes it. The only reason it’s not horrendous is because his mouth tastes like nothing, and it’s almost sandpaper-dry. You let go of his face, put your hands on his shoulders, and give a few shoves until he pulls back. “No.”

“I like it,” Tomura says defiantly. He does. That patchy flush is all over his face. “I don’t care if you do.”

“You should,” you say, and you fall back on a negotiating tactic from forever ago. “If you’re good at it, I’ll want to kiss you more.”

You’ve tried this tactic on human men before. Human men usually convince themselves that you’re playing hard to get and go right back to the vacuum-cleaner technique they were using. But Tomura looks like he’s thinking about it, so you try to sweeten the deal. “I’ll show you,” you say, and he’s already leaning in.

Part of you is still aware that this is a mistake. You won’t be able to turn back the clock on this incident the way you could with the last one. You can’t pretend that this is all for Tomura, that it’s got nothing to do with you, when you’re the one who won’t settle for less than a good kiss. You’re the one who keeps trying to get a reaction out of him, trying to put him back at the mercy of his body just like he was before, and there’s something heady and intoxicating about the fact that it’s working. Tomura’s breathing comes in sharp gasps, and yours isn’t doing much better – but it’s normal for you. “Why do you do that?” you ask, pulling away. Tomura lets out a frustrated whine and leans in again, but you stay just out of reach. “Breathing like that. You don’t need to breathe.”

“I can’t – help it.” Tomura’s shoulders heave beneath your hands. He claws at your hips, trying to pull you back. “Come on. I need it. I need it. I can’t go back like this.”

You’re still out of kissing range, but your hips are locked against his, and you can feel that he’s hard. It surprises you, although it shouldn’t. You got to him before by touching his hand. This is a lot more stimulation than that. You study him, your heart racing, taking in his dilated pupils, his flushed face. The scars over his lip and eye stand out in sharp relief. His skin is shiny, sweaty. You were right in all your daydreams about how desire looks on him. It looks good.

It looks good, and he looks desperate. “Don’t stare at me. Why are you staring at me?”

“You’re pretty,” you say without thinking. You lean in and kiss him again before he can complain about it.

The plan is to keep kissing him until he comes and dematerializes, but you like the sounds he’s making too much to keep muffling them. You duck away from his kiss and start kissing his neck instead, lips moving over the same spot he usually scratches. “Hey,” Tomura complains. “What are you doing? I – ah –”

He grinds against you, groans, and you realize you have a problem. You’re at least as turned on as Tomura is, only you can’t get off from just a kiss. He gets to dematerialize as soon as he comes, and after that you’ll be stuck. You decide that’s a problem for later. You’re busy. A second after you have that thought, Tomura loses patience. He pushes you back against the counter, pinning you in place as his hips jerk in brief, unpracticed thrusts. You keep kissing his neck. If he was human, he’d be walking around with love bites. That thought shouldn’t turn you on, but it does, and it occurs to you that Tomura’s possessiveness runs the other way, too. You’re his human, sure. But he’s nobody’s ghost but yours.

“I can’t,” Tomura gasps. He’s starting to dematerialize. “I can’t. Not yet –”

If he dematerializes while he’s still turned on, the entire street’s going to be pissed off at you for however long it takes him to materialize again. You back off from kissing Tomura’s neck and kiss his mouth again, as he moans and struggles for air he doesn’t need. Suddenly his back arches, pinning you harder than before, and you hold on tight as he shudders. It doesn’t matter how tightly you hold onto him. He’s already dematerializing, slipping away, just like you knew he would. The warm air rushes in once he’s gone.

One of the perks of having a ghost in the house is that the house is never too warm. Now, with said ghost too zapped to materialize, it’s way too warm in the kitchen, and even that isn’t enough to change how ridiculously turned on you are. You could stick your head in the refrigerator and try to calm down, but the idea of doing that pisses you off. Tomura got to get off to your weird but still hot kitchen makeout. So should you.

Some sense of propriety motivates you not to just stick your hand down your pants in the kitchen. You make your way to your bedroom upstairs, and this time, you settle onto the bed instead of the floor. This time, you don’t have to go to your imagination for something to fantasize to. You’ve got the memory of the absolute mess that occurred in the kitchen to keep you focused, and honestly, you’re so shamefully hot over it that you barely need to fantasize at all.

Your mind floods with a replay of the insistent pressure of Tomura’s mouth against yours, the uneven roll of his hips, and remembering the needy sounds he made makes your muscles clench tight in response. You have both hands between your legs, one teasing your clit while the other presses two fingers inside, crooking at an angle that’s never easy to reach on your own. If somebody else, somebody with longer fingers, somebody poised above you or settled between your legs – once you let that thought into your mind, it’s all over. You come so fast you’re almost embarrassed by it. Almost.

You’re lying on your bed, catching your breath, when the temperature of your room begins to change. Tomura’s voice, barely a whisper, snakes through the air. “I saw that.”

Your face heats up, but you’re already flushed, so it doesn’t matter. “So?”

“I want that next time.”

You’re not sure how you feel about Tomura’s assumption that there’s going to be a next time. But there’s a bigger problem. “Based on what I felt this time, you don’t really have the equipment for that.”

“Don’t be stupid. I want you to do this next time when I do.” The temperature of the room settles into the low chill you’ve become familiar with, but the cold spot itself is on the bed next to you, inching closer. “Or I can do it.”

You can’t think about that. Not right now, anyway. “Nobody’s doing anything right now. I don’t even want to know what you already drained to make this happen.” A terrible thought occurs to you. “Phantom! Where –”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tomura says again. You can hear Phantom scratching at the door and whining. She knows you and Tomura are both in here and she wants to know why she’s being left out. “I wouldn’t touch her. I used some plants.”

“Not the ones –”

“Not the ones you like.” If Tomura was materialized, he’d be rolling his eyes. “They all look the same anyway.”

“They don’t all look the same.” You sit up and swing your legs off the bed. “Stupid.”

Tomura makes an indignant sound, but you ignore him as you head to the bathroom to wash your hands. You’d expect things to be weird, so it’s a surprise to you how normal things feel. Normal except for the fact that Tomura’s in your room instead of lurking somewhere else in the house. So normal, in fact, that you find yourself dealing with a problem you’ve had since you found out you had a ghost. “You’re still not allowed in the bathroom when I’m in here.”

“You’re not even doing anything!”

You know you’re going to have to deal with the fallout from the kitchen makeout later. But it’ll be a while before Tomura can materialize again, and until that happens, you’re not going to think about it at all. “I don’t care. Get out.”

You were hoping you dealt with Tomura fast enough that none of the other adult ghosts caught on, but you’re not that lucky. When you leave the house the next morning to get in your car for the drive to work, Hizashi’s right out front on the sidewalk, holding a jar of fresh bugs as far from his body as humanly possible. When he sees you, he pushes it into your hands and backs away. “You know,” he says, and winks. “For later.”

You cringe and duck into your car, but a moment later, Keigo calls out to you from across the street. “Hey, can I get a ride to work? My car’s out of commission.”

“It looks okay,” you say – and then you realize it’s noticeably sinking on one side. “The tires.”

“Yep. Do you mind?”

“Nope.” You move your work bag to the backseat to make room, and look back up front just in time for a balled-up piece of paper to hit the windshield. It could only have come from one direction, and when you look up, you spot Tomura on the porch, barely materialized. “What was that?”

“Your dumb list.”

“The one Shou gave you?” Hizashi still hasn’t left, and he watches you closely as you pull the piece of paper into the car and un-crumple it. “Good. Let him know as soon as you find anything.”

“Sorry. Gotta move.” Keigo eases past Hizashi and hops into the passenger seat. You start the car and back out into the street a little faster than necessary.

You’re driving fast, but not fast enough to get past Spinner’s house before Magne steps out the front door. She waves at you, smirking, and gives a thumbs-up. You wave back, still cringing, and Keigo notices. He reclines his seat with a yawn. “Big night, huh?”

You hit your head against the steering wheel when you reach the stop sign at the top of the street. “Does everybody know?”

“Probably. He’s too powerful. Every time his mood changes, the whole street feels it.” Keigo shrugs. “Also, your whole front lawn is dead.”

You didn’t even notice. “Great,” you mumble. “Think he’ll tone it down if I ask him to?”

“You know him better than me,” Keigo says. He yawns a second time. “He seems like he cares about what you want. He made sure you didn’t forget your list when you left. Dabi, for comparison, snuck out of the house and slashed my tires before I woke up. You definitely got the better ghost.”

“Sorry about your tires,” you say, for lack of anything better. Keigo shrugs again. “Can I ask you about the list? Aizawa was cagey about it on the phone.”

“Sure.” Keigo spends a few minutes smoothing out the wrinkles in the piece of paper. You sneak looks at him out of the corner of your eye, and you don’t miss the way his eyes widen. “I don’t know most of these names. I know this one, though – Garaki Kyudai. He’s a conjurer. Touya’s conjurer.”

“What?” You stare at Keigo once you’re safely at a stoplight. “Touya’s conjurer is alive?”

“Most of them are,” Keigo says. He looks pale. “If Aizawa and Hizashi have that name, they know something we don’t.”

“Then they should tell us,” you say. Keigo looks worried. You’re not worried, maybe because you don’t know enough to be worried, maybe because Tomura didn’t recognize any of the names on the list. “Aizawa and Hizashi don’t get to hide things from the rest of us just because they’re the oldest.”

Keigo nods. “Do the research they asked for. Today,” he says. “Don’t give it to them until they level with us.”

“Sounds good.” Us could be you and Keigo. Us could also be the entire neighborhood, which is fine. If it concerns conjurers, it concerns the entire neighborhood, and everyone should know. But this is going to involve you saying no to Aizawa, who you owe big-time, and to Hizashi, who still sort of terrifies you. “Um, so I think I’m going to wait to say no until I’m in my yard.”

“Yeah, that’s probably smart,” Keigo agrees. “Hizashi won’t get into it with Tomura. Can you imagine if Hizashi was still incorporeal, though? That would be a hell of a fight.”

“Ghosts fight?”

“Yeah, big-time. Dabi’s old house – the one I moved into, like a moron – had a bunch of ghosts in it. It got crazy in there.”

Sharing a house with one ghost is chaotic enough. You can’t imagine a house with multiple ghosts, let alone multiple ghosts who are fighting with each other. You wonder if Tomura’s ever fought another ghost, and if so, how it went. He probably hasn’t. He’s picky enough with who he lets onto the property to begin with. No way he’d let another ghost in just to fight.

You park your car in the lot at the courthouse, and you and Keigo go your separate ways – you to the public defenders’ office in the courthouse’s lower levels, Keigo to the police station. He’s a social worker, not a cop, and he usually goes out on mental health calls. The two of you plan to meet after work, go over what you found, and book it into your respective houses once you get back to the neighborhood to minimize the chances that Aizawa or Hizashi will corner you. It’s only nine am on Monday and you’re already tired.

You didn’t sleep well last night. Part of it was still being sort of turned on and not being able to do anything about – not now that you know Tomura’s watching. And Tomura was watching. He’s been leaving you alone at night for the most part, but last night he was back to hanging out in the corner of your room. At least, you think he stayed in the corner of your room. At some point you woke up shivering, and you could have sworn he was on the bed with you, draped over you in some weird position that humans definitely don’t sleep in. But that could have been a dream. You’re hoping it was a dream. You don’t know what you’ll do if it wasn’t.

You’ve got no idea what Tomura thinks is going on between the two of you. He didn’t talk to you this morning. He usually doesn’t – you’re busy, and he doesn’t like it when you multitask while talking to him, and after you explained what will happen if you can’t pay your mortgage he’s stopped interfering with you going to work. But he was there. You could feel him there, shadowing your every move, close in a way that would be impossible to work around if he was human. Something’s changed in your relationship, and he wanted it that way. You can’t pretend you didn’t want it, too. But as you make coffee and take off your coat and go through your inbox, you realize you have no idea what you’ll be walking into when you get home.

You know you’ll be walking into it with the information Aizawa asked you to gather, though. You take the list out of your pocket and think things through. Technically you could get into the records database on your own, but you’re a paralegal, not a lawyer – people will be likely to question what you’re doing in there, which means you need cover. And you know just who to go to for help. Mr. Yagi likes that you’re thorough, that you check every angle when you have the time for it. If you ask his permission to get into the database, he won’t say no. You pocket the list again, square your shoulders, throw down your coffee, and go to his office.

The door’s ajar, like usual, but you knock anyway. “Come in,” Mr. Yagi says. He’s hunched over a document on his desk, marking it up in red pen. “I hate to start your morning off with editing, but this will need to be done by noon.”

“No problem,” you say. You can type fast. “Sir, I was wondering if I could log into the records database today.”

“You don’t need my permission for that, my dear,” Mr. Yagi says without looking up. “But you have it, of course. What do you –”

He looks up at you at last and bursts into a coughing fit. It’s a bad one. You duck out into the bullpen, fill a cup from the water cooler, and race back in with it, pushing it into his hands. Mr. Yagi takes small sips, but every time he looks at you, the coughing kicks up again. Something is dawning on you, something you don’t like, something about what Mr. Yagi said and did at the housewarming party. “Sir? Is there something wrong?”

“It’s all over you,” Mr. Yagi says, and your stomach lurches. “What happened?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” you stammer. You can feel your face heating up, and it gets worse when Mr. Yagi reaches into his desk and extracts a UV light wand. “Um –”

He switches it on and pans it over you, and suddenly you understand. There are handprints. Tomura’s handprints, on your shoulders, on your waist, along your jaw, invisible without the light but in stark relief under it. You were worried that the light was going to show ghost cum splattered on your skin, even though you showered and changed clothes twice since yesterday, but this might actually be worse. This looks like you were handled. It looks like you liked it.

Could Hizashi see this, and Magne? Did Tomura do it on purpose? Now that you think about it, you’re sure he did it on purpose. He’s been possessive of you since the beginning. Of course he’d mark you as his own the first chance he got, even if the only people who can see the marks are the other ghosts. If Keigo could see them, you’re pretty sure he’d have given you a heads-up.

But Mr. Yagi could see them without the UV light. And Mr. Yagi knew Tomura was there before you did, saw Tomura before you did. You stare hard at your boss, at his eyes. His eyes are bright blue, and their pupils are round, like they should be. But there’s a faint shadow around his irises in both eyes. You realize, with another lurch in the pit of your stomach, that you’ve never seen your boss blink.

“You’re one of them,” you say. It isn’t a question.

Mr. Yagi sighs. “I’ve been human long enough that my powers have faded. The contacts are enough to hide behind. But no former spirit, no matter how distant they are from their origins, could fail to spot that.” He gestures at you and you cringe. “Were you – aware of this as it happened? Did you consent to it?”

Your eyes well up suddenly, and Mr. Yagi panics, knocking over his cup of water onto his desk. You move to mop it up while he tries to hand you tissues, and in the chaos, it takes you a while to recognize the emotion you’re feeling as shame. What happened yesterday wasn’t out of the ordinary in your neighborhood. Keigo barely blinked when he found out, and Hizashi and Magne were teasing you, not mocking you. Hooking up with a ghost is a semi-normal thing to do in the world you live in now. But it’s not normal here. The way Mr. Yagi asked the question made it clear that he thinks nobody sane would do what you did yesterday. You feel like you’re going to be sick.

Mr. Yagi gives up on the tissues and hands you a handkerchief from his pocket instead. “I will get you out of there,” he says. “You can stay with my family and I, for as long as it takes for you to find your feet. You don’t have to stay –”

“It was consensual.” You force the words out of your mouth. Somewhere in the back of your mind it occurs to you that this conversation is wildly inappropriate for work. HR-reportable levels of inappropriate for work. “I’m fine. I don’t want to leave. Can I get into the database or not?”

“If you’re fine, why are you crying?”

Because you weren’t ashamed before and now you are. “I’ll have the brief retyped by noon. The database –”

“Why do you need it?”

It crosses your mind to lie, but there’s no need. Mr. Yagi is a former ghost. If you explain, he’ll understand. You draw the list out of your pocket. “These are the names of conjurers. I think. I need to get into the database to find out everything I can about them.”

Mr. Yagi takes the list, scans it, and immediately starts coughing again. You head out to the water cooler for the second time in five minutes. By the time you get back, Mr. Yagi is back at his desk, scribbling furiously on the list. You set the water down next to him and he ignores it. “This man is dead,” he says, and draws a line through the name – Akaguro Chizome. “Chisaki Kai – also dead, and recently. Ujiko Daruma is an alias of Garaki Kyudai. Which of the names is his true one, I can’t say.”

You stare at him. He continues to write, drawing circles around the remaining three names. “Garaki is worth locating, but concentrate your efforts on these three. They may be three different people or they may all be aliases of the same man. Who gave you this list?”

Some instinct makes you hold back Aizawa’s name. “Why do you need to know?”

“If they’re planning to hunt conjurers, I have some advice that might make the endeavor less dangerous.”

“Hunt them?” you repeat. “No. They wouldn’t. That’s not what – um.”

Mr. Yagi is looking at you, waiting for an explanation, but you don’t know how much to say. Your neighborhood might be sort of friendly, but there’s at least one murderer in every house except yours, and your boss is a lawyer. A lawyer, not a cop. And if he’s embodied, he’s killed someone, too. Based on your expression, he knows what you’re thinking. “Type the brief, then conduct your research. We’ll meet for lunch to discuss it.”

“Yes, sir.” Lunch is three hours away. You’ve got exactly that long to come up with a plan.

You text Keigo in between typing paragraphs of the brief. My boss is a ghost and he knows about the list. What do I do?

For real? I’ve never met one in the wild. Keigo texts back way too fast for somebody who’s supposed to be at work. You say so and get an eyeroll in response. I’m a crisis responder. If nobody’s in crisis I don’t go out. Did he have ideas?

He knew the names. I’m supposed to meet him at lunch to talk about it. You get an idea. If you’re still around at noon, come meet us.

Keigo sends a thumbs-up and you throw yourself into typing the brief. You print it and return it to Mr. Yagi, swapping it for the list of names. Then you settle in at your computer again, considering where to start. Mr. Yagi seems like he knows what he’s talking about, but it won’t hurt to double-check.

You start with the first name he crossed out. Akaguro Chizome has been dead for a while. Twenty years, almost, and he died from blunt force trauma that crushed his skull to powder. You wonder which ghost did that, if it was even a ghost that did it. There’s not much on him. Just an autopsy report. There’s a lot more on Chisaki Kai, when you look him up. Death certificate, police report, interviews. Interviews. You dig into those, and the name at the top of the first one stuns you into stillness: Aizawa Shouta.

The next interviewee is Shinsou Hitoshi, and after him, Aizawa Eri. The only name that’s missing is Hizashi’s, and slowly the pieces start to come together in your head. Chisaki’s remains were so splattered that he wasn’t identified until long after the investigation was closed. Hizashi wouldn’t have cared what Eri’s conjurer’s name was when he killed him, and as long as he was gone, Aizawa wouldn’t have cared, either. His name is still on their list because they never found out who he really was.

Chisaki’s cause of death was internal organ rupture – all of them, all at once. How the hell did Hizashi do that when he was already human? Probably the same way Dabi still burns Keigo – the stronger they are, the more of their powers they keep when they embody themselves. However Hizashi killed humans as a ghost, it must have been nasty. Really nasty.

You tell yourself not to think about that. The important thing is that Mr. Yagi is a credible source. You can take his advice on this. You borrow the computer at the desk next to yours – your coworker’s on maternity leave, leaving you with triple the workload in the bargain – and pull up a second database window. Then you set two searches to run simultaneously. One for Garaki Kyudai, since you want to have some information to give Keigo when you see him. And one for the first of the three circled names: Shigaraki Akira.

The Garaki search finishes fastest, and you print what you’ve got, then rerun the search for Ujiko Daruma. The search for Shigaraki is much more difficult. It’s not a common name, so while there will be fewer documents, they should be easier to find. They aren’t. You turn up some documents for a Shigaraki Yoichi, all of which mention an older brother, but the older brother’s name never comes up. You rerun the search, this time for Shigaraki Yoichi, wondering all the while if it’s futile. These documents are two hundred years old or more. These people, whoever they are, are long dead.

There’s more on Shigaraki Yoichi than Shigaraki Akira. Shigaraki Yoichi had a really shitty life. He was chronically ill at a time when regular illness was still too hard for most doctors to handle, and his mind wasn’t doing too great, either. He died when he was your age, in a mental hospital. Suicide.

At least, it was thought to be a suicide. The medical examiner’s report inserts some doubt into the equation, but it’s noted specifically that the family of Shigaraki Yoichi chose not to press charges against the asylum for his death. There’s a note about the family members – the ones who came to visit, and the one who identified the body. Mother: in a fragile state. Father: deceased. Sister: absent. Body was identified by deceased’s elder brother Akira.

“Got you,” you mumble, and hit print. Now you’ve got proof that there was somebody out there named Shigaraki Akira – and when you scan the list again, you spot the first name of the next name on the list. Kiriyama Yoichi. It could be a coincidence, but you��re pretty sure the asshole jacked his dead brother’s name. “Nice try. I’ve got you now.”

There’s more on Kiriyama Yoichi, but while that search is running, you look up the asylum Shigaraki Yoichi died in. Sure enough, it’s been shut down, but it wasn’t knocked down – it was turned into a museum. Maybe some of the documents were preserved. If they were, you’d love to read whatever Shigaraki Yoichi had to say about his brother.

You’re in the middle of writing an email to the curator when your phone rings. It’s Spinner’s contact number, which is weird. You can’t figure out why Spinner would be calling you, unless something’s gone wrong in the neighborhood. You pick up the call. “Hello?”

You hear Spinner’s voice, but it’s in the background. “Dude, give it back! Don’t go inside –”

There’s the sound of the door opening and shutting. “Phantom missed you,” Tomura says without preamble. Your jaw drops. “Say hi.”

“Hi, sweetie,” you say helplessly. You can hear her snuffling the phone. “Are you being good? Did you get in trouble?”

Phantom barks. “Good girl,” you say, and she barks again. If you were at home, you’d sit down on the floor to cuddle with her, but you’re at work – and Tomura called you. “You really should give Spinner his phone back.”

“He can have it when I’m done. If I feel like giving it back.” Tomura, you remind yourself, is still an asshole. “When are you coming back?”

“The same time I always get back,” you say. “Why did you take Spinner’s phone? Don’t lie.”

“Wanted to talk to you.” Tomura’s voice takes on an almost laughably sulky note. “What? You don’t want to talk to me?”

“I do. I just can’t believe you called me. I thought you hated phones.”

“I hate other things more than phones,” Tomura says. “Where are you, anyway?”

“I’m at my computer at work. I’m looking up things for the list.” You cast around for something else to say. “I’ll tell you about it when I get back. And I’m going to need help when I get back. Hizashi’s going to try to get it out of me, and I’m not telling anyone until they tell us what’s going on.”

“If he comes near us he’s dead,” Tomura says at once. You can hear knocking on the door in the background, and when Tomura speaks again, he’s not talking to you. “You can have it back when I’m done! Go away!”

“We’re done now. I have work to do, and if I don’t get it done, I have to stay late,” you say. Tomura makes an annoyed sound. “I don’t want to stay late and you don’t want me to, either. I –”

You slap your hand down over your mouth just in time. “What?” Tomura asks.

“I’ll talk to you later,” you say. You’re still reeling from whatever the hell almost came out of your mouth. The sooner you get off the phone, the better. “Give Spinner his phone.”

“Fine,” Tomura complains. “Say goodbye to Phantom.”

You tell her goodbye and listen to the appalling sound of her licking the microphone before Tomura hangs up. You’re going to have to apologize to Spinner when you get back. And you might have to get Tomura a phone.

You have time to finish your email to the curator and print the documents for Kiriyama Yoichi before Mr. Yagi ventures out of his office for lunch. “We’ll be going to the usual place,” he says. He nods at the folder you’re carrying. “It seems your search was fruitful.”

You nod. “One of my neighbors works nearby. Can he come with us?”

“Does he – know?”

You laugh. “He has one. A former one. Half a former one.” Mr. Yagi looks baffled, and you sigh. “I’ll let him explain.”

The lunch place is just up the street. You text Keigo to let him know you’re headed there and start the walk with Mr. Yagi. He insists on carrying your files along with his own briefcase, and all you can do is hover, waiting for him to drop one of the two. “The friend who will be joining us,” Mr. Yagi says, “is that who you were speaking with on the phone?”

“No,” you say. Mr. Yagi looks quizzically at you, but there’s no way you’re getting into it. The less you say about Tomura, the better.

When you get to the restaurant, Keigo’s there already, and he waves you and Mr. Yagi over. There’s a mischievous look on his face, and you watch it anxiously as you introduce the two of them. “Mr. Yagi, this is my neighbor across the street, Takami Keigo. And Keigo, this is my boss, Mr. Yagi.”

“Nice to meet you! And nice contacts,” Keigo says. Then he looks at you. His expression’s gone from a smile to a full-blown smirk. “So.”

“What?”

“The strangest thing happened this morning,” Keigo says. “I got a text from Dabi.”

“Dabi?”

“My – roommate,” Keigo says, modifying the sentence after you kick him under the table. “Usually Dabi’s communication style leaves something to be desired. Blighting crops and hexing people is more his speed. But today he texted me. Quite a bit. Take a look at this.”

He shows you the screen of his phone. You read, with Mr. Yagi reading over your shoulder, cringing on every line.

Dabi: do you believe this shit

Dabi: that asshole from across the street lured Spinner over to the fence like a pedo

Dabi: so then they’re talking about fuck knows what

Dabi: Spinner’s showing him his Switch

Dabi: then Spinner shows him his phone

Dabi: and that asshole fucking materializes one hand, grabs it, and hauls ass back inside

Dabi: it’s been thirty minutes and he still hasn’t given it back

Dabi: crazy shit

Mr. Yagi coughs. Keigo gives you a significant look. “Any speculations as to why Tomura stole Spinner’s phone?”

“Tomura is –”

“Her ghost.” Keigo nods at you.

“Ah,” Mr. Yagi says. “I imagine that Tomura stole the phone in order to place a call to her.”

Keigo wheezes. “He said Phantom missed me,” you say lamely.

“More like he missed you! You’re going to have to get him a phone.” Keigo misinterprets the look you’re giving him and keeps talking. “Don’t teach him how the camera works, though. I taught Touya and now I get photos.”

The last thing you want to do is teach Tomura about dick pics. If you get him a phone, it’s going to be a flip phone. Or one of the ancient ones with the keyboard that slides out. Mr. Yagi is studying Keigo carefully. “Is it true that you have a ghost? I was led to believe that there was something – odd about him.”

“Dabi? Yeah. He’s a scar wraith,” Keigo says. Mr. Yagi nods. “Do you know something about those?”

“Nothing, other than that it’s an uncomfortable state to exist in. How long has he been that way?”

“A while. Before we moved here.” Keigo focuses in on the file folder in a way that tells you he’s done talking about this. “What’s in there? Did you find anything on Garaki?”

“Here.” You pass him the relevant documents, then extract the files on Shigaraki to show to Mr. Yagi. “You were right. At least one of these is an alias. But this person – the first one on the list – was born two hundred and fifty years ago. He can’t still be alive.”

“Conjurers draw power from the world between,” Mr. Yagi says. “It allows them to exceed a natural human lifespan. But in order to draw that power, they require a conduit of some kind. Some are lucky enough to find a location that’s been consumed, in whole or in part, by the world between. Others must create their own.”

“What do you mean?” Keigo asks. “Like – well, shit. No wonder they keep coming back.”

Mr. Yagi nods. You feel like you missed something. “What?”

“The ghosts summoned by conjurers act as their conduits to the world between,” Mr. Yagi says. “When a ghost embodies itself permanently, the conduit is closed. A powerful enough conjurer will have summoned and bound many ghosts, and the loss of one or two will not trouble them. But weaker conjurers don’t have the ghosts to spare. When they lose a conduit, they come to investigate. And to punish.”

“Eri’s conjurer was weaker than the others,” you realize. “If Spinner’s right, and he was Magne’s and Atsuhiro’s too, then he lost three ghosts. He would have had to do something –”

“And he probably thought it was going to be easy until Hizashi murked him,” Keigo says. “I don’t think they even found out his name.”

“It was Chisaki Kai,” you say. “He was on the list. And he’s not the only one. Akaguro Chizome is dead, too. Do you know who killed him?”

“It is possible to kill conjurers,” Mr. Yagi says, noticeably avoiding your question. “However, it’s highly dangerous, as the conjurers are capable of harnessing ghostly power through their conduits to the world between. Humans who try to kill them often fail. I assume this Hizashi is a former ghost?”

“Probably the ghostliest former ghost, other than my idiot,” Keigo says. “If I was ranking power levels on the street, he and Dabi would be the strongest. If we’re counting former ghosts. We’ve only got one real ghost left.”

“You’ve been to my house,” you say to Mr. Yagi. “Is he really that strong?”

“Almost incalculably strong,” Mr. Yagi says. You’re weirdly proud of Tomura. “Given his presence, I’m not surprised your neighborhood has such a high concentration of ghosts. Unfortunately, such a high concentration poses a risk.”

“No, he blocks us,” Keigo says, frowning. “He blocks all of us.”

“I’m sure he does,” Mr. Yagi says. “What I mean is simply that if a conjurer discovers one of you, all of you will be compromised.”

He’s right. You hadn’t thought of that, and based on Keigo’s expression, neither had he – but Mr. Yagi is right. If a conjurer makes it past Tomura’s aura to investigate, they’ll find out that the neighborhood contains half a dozen former ghosts. “Do they talk to each other? Conjurers?”

“Some do,” Mr. Yagi says. “But all of them are able to sense the presence of ghostly power, just as ghosts are. If one finds your neighborhood –”

“We’ll just kill him,” Keigo says. “Problem solved.”

“Problem not solved. If we just kill some guy, our neighborhood will be his last known location,” you say. You’re not a lawyer, but after three years as Mr. Yagi’s paralegal, you know your way around a murder case. “We’d look guilty. And not everybody in the neighborhood can stand up to direct questioning. If the police show up we’d be in a lot of trouble.”

“We can get out of that,” Keigo says, waving his hand and accidentally attracting the attention of a server. “Now that I’ve met your boss, I know a good lawyer. Hi! We’re definitely ready to order.”

Keigo can put away food like there’s no tomorrow, but Mr. Yagi’s a slow eater, and your appetite’s taken a hit. Mr. Yagi notices. “Are you all right, my dear?”

“I’m worried,” you say. “Aizawa gave me those names yesterday, and Hizashi asked about them again this morning. Neither of them were taking no for an answer. It seems urgent. I think there’s a chance we’ve already been caught.”

“We’ve been caught. You haven’t been caught.” Keigo waves a piece of fried chicken at you. “You’ve got a live ghost. If a conjurer shows up, you’re the only person on the street who doesn’t have to worry.”

“That depends on the conjurer,” Mr. Yagi says quietly. “Conjurers lose ghosts for one reason and one reason only – permanent embodiment. Ghosts don’t embody themselves permanently without reason, and if Tomura’s conjurer were to suspect that Tomura might consider it, their wisest move would be to remove the reason why he would.”

“You’re saying Tomura’s conjurer might try to kill me,” you say. Mr. Yagi nods. “That would be stupid of them. He’d never embody himself. He likes being a ghost.”

“You sure about that?” Keigo eyes you over the rim of his soda. “I wouldn’t be. Since you two hooked up –”

“We didn’t hook up,” you say. There’s no world in which kissing constitutes hooking up. You’re not even all that sure Tomura knows what sex is, and you really don’t want to talk about it in front of your boss. You turn to your boss, pretending Keigo isn’t there. “I’m guessing a conjurer wouldn’t stop to ask. He’d just kill me. Right?”

“Yes.” Mr. Yagi sighs. “By that token, you’re perhaps the unsafest of all.”

“It’s a waste of time to decide who’s safest and unsafest,” you say. “If a conjurer shows up we’re all in trouble. Either Hizashi and Aizawa think somebody’s found us already, or – I don’t know. Maybe they’re trying to track where the other conjurers are?”

“That sounds right,” Keigo says. “If we monitor them, then we can figure out if they’re getting close, and kill them away from the neighborhood so nobody gets suspicious.”

“Let’s speak a little more quietly about this,” Mr. Yagi implores. People are starting to stare at the three of you. “Engaging with the conjurers this way should be your last resort. Stay hidden at all costs.”

“What if we have to kill someone in order to stay hidden?”

Mr. Yagi gives Keigo a look. “I’ve stayed hidden for fifteen years. Do you mean to tell me that you can’t hide better than an old man like me?”

The challenge is enough to silence Keigo on the issue – that issue, and only that issue, for the rest of lunch, until his work phone chimes. He drops his credit card on the table and bolts, and you and Mr. Yagi both stare at it for a moment. “Is he buying lunch?”

You think about some of Keigo’s bullshit today. “Yes.”

With Keigo gone, you seize the opportunity to go into a little more depth with your research. “With Kiriyama Yoichi, I need to do some more reading. Since Akira stole his brother’s name for his new identity, I’m guessing he stole a name from somebody he knew in the Kiriyama identity to generate the next alias. I’m not sure who it is, but it’ll help to find them. They almost certainly left a bigger paper trail than he has.”

You contemplate the stack of papers, then think about what your work inbox looks like. “There’s no way I can get this done before the end of the day.”

“Take it home,” Mr. Yagi says. You nod. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Please.”

“My son, Izuku, is very good at projects such as this one,” Mr. Yagi says. You’ve met Izuku. He’s simultaneously the friendliest and the most intense kid on the planet. “You won’t need to give him much background information, and he’s on summer break. Both of you can read over the information and share conclusions. Two heads are better than one.”

You nod. “In addition,” Mr. Yagi continues, “there are conjurers who do not engage in the practice of binding spirits. I’ll reach out to my contacts there and see what they know.”

“Thank you,” you say. Mr. Yagi nods, taking the last sips of his tea. “Sir, um – why are you helping me? I know I’ve been difficult the last few months. I’ve been slow. And this morning, I –”

“I’ve had no concerns with your work. And I knew all about your office demeanor when I hired you.” Mr. Yagi cracks a small, skeletal grin. Then his expression softens. “As for why I would help you, there are three reasons. First, because it’s the right thing to do. Second, because I care for you. And third, because it would have helped my wife immensely to have met someone who could explain the nature of these things, rather than having to find out on her own.”

“Oh,” you say. You weren’t sure what you were expecting him to say. Probably not that he cares about you, but it’s true, isn’t it? He’s the nicest boss you’ve ever had, and his first reaction to seeing Tomura’s marks on you was to offer to help. Even if you felt judged. Maybe the feeling of being judged was just you. “Thank you, sir. It means a lot.”

Mr. Yagi nods. “Be careful,” he tells you. “This world is more dangerous than you realize.”

You could take that as paternalistic, patronizing, if you wanted to. You’ve never doubted that the world of ghosts and conjurers was a dangerous one. The first time you learned of Tomura’s existence, it was because you saw him kill something, and even if everyone else on the street is incredibly blasé about it, you never let yourself forget the kind of neighborhood you live in. It’s almost a relief to hear Mr. Yagi’s reminder. “Don’t worry, sir,” you say. You aren’t scared of Tomura these days, but careful of the rest? Careful you can do. “I will.”

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 4) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Chapter 4

You don’t see Tomura the next morning, but when you come home from work, Phantom is loose in the yard, and Hizashi is hanging out just beyond the fence, studying an empty jar. “I came to get this, since we’re out,” he remarks. He has sharp teeth, just like Himiko. “So, what happened last night?”

You play dumb for all you’re worth. “Something happened last night?”

“Of course it did. The vibes coming off this house are impressively horny,” Hizashi says, and you cringe so hard you’re surprised you don’t explode. “I’ve been there. Consequence of spending too much time embodied – you start feeling things a normal human body feels, and going incorporeal doesn’t make it go away. That was a nasty shock for me, too.”

You really don’t want to ask Hizashi any questions at all, but you’ve got one – and it’s a subject change, so you seize it. “Is it true that ghosts’ power levels are stagnant? Are you just stuck with what you started with?”

“That’s not what I thought you were going to ask.” Hizashi tosses the jar from one hand to the other. “I’m guessing you’re asking because of our sexually frustrated friend in there?”

“I’ll pay you to never say that again,” you say, and Hizashi laughs. “Yes. He said –”

“That he didn’t want to come here. I’d buy that, easy.” Hizashi glances over his shoulder at the house, then beckons you away down the block. You’re not sure how far you have to go to be out of Tomura’s earshot, but you stop when Hizashi does. “Here’s the thing. He and I are the oldest ghosts in this neighborhood, but we’re not the same kind of old. I chose to be here.”

“Why?” you ask. Hizashi stares at you. “Did you come here to hurt people?”

“I came here because I wanted to be people,” Hizashi says. You stare. “Ask him what it’s like in the world between and you’ll understand. But to answer your question, we don’t spend our whole existences at the same power level. There are two kinds of ghostly power. There’s what you get right at the start. Then there’s your potential. Conjurers – the worst ones, anyway – they want potential. That’s why they grab the youngest ghosts.”

His expression darkens, and your legs almost give out beneath you. Is this how Tomura makes other people feel? You’re surprised that anyone’s ever set foot in your house. Hizashi doesn’t notice what he’s doing to you, or if he notices, he doesn’t care. “Eri had low surface power but massive potential. Her conjurer bound her in the worst situation possible, figuring she’d have to tap into that potential to take control of her environment and make it her own. She found another way out, but your ghost didn’t.”

He glances back at your house. “Based on how strong your ghost is now, his potential was massive. He probably hasn’t even found his limit yet. What’s weird is that he hasn’t used it.”

“Did you use yours?”

Hizashi grins his sharp-toothed grin. “Why do you think it took them so long to burn my opera house down?”

You’ve wondered, every so often, what it would have been like to be haunted by Hizashi instead of Tomura. Now you’re pretty sure you’d have had a breakdown. Aizawa must have nerves of steel. “Anyway,” Hizashi says, “he’s not smart enough to tell a lie that big. He’s telling the truth.”

He tosses the jar at you and you barely catch it in time. “And whatever you did last night, don’t do it again. I can handle his mood, but it’s messing with the little ones.”

You cringe. The last thing you want is for Eri and Himiko to pick up on whatever Tomura’s doing – even if they do know all about sex from observing humans already. But you also don’t know how to fix this problem you apparently caused. “What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Ask Keigo,” Hizashi says, already walking away. “He’ll know.”

Keigo? You’ve talked to Keigo some, since he’s the only person in the neighborhood who’s actually in your age range, but it’s occurring to you now that you’ve never actually met Keigo’s ghost. You pull out your phone, considering texting him, but there’s no point when his house is across the street and his car’s in the driveway. You walk back to your house, retrieve Phantom’s spare leash from your car, and take her with you when you head across the street to knock on Keigo’s door.

Keigo answers it pretty fast. There’s a handprint-shaped hole burned in his shirt, still smoking faintly, and it draws your attention like a magnet. “Uh, what is that?”

“Ask Dabi,” Keigo says.

“Ask her damn ghost. It’s all his fault.”

“No, it isn’t. You can control your behavior, you just don’t want to.” Keigo rolls his eyes. “I saw you talking to Hizashi. I’m guessing he sent you?”

“Yeah. Can we talk?”

“Yeah. Just let me get my shoes. And a new shirt.” Keigo ducks back into the house, and you wait on the steps, wondering if you’ll get a glimpse of the former ghost who lives here. Keigo’s voice issues from within the house, but he’s not talking to you. “Don’t go out there if you’re just going to get into a pissing contest with the guy across the street. He could crush you with both hands tied behind his back.”

“He can’t cross that fence, and I didn’t give up my powers like an idiot. That means I can do whatever I want with his human –”

“He’d blow that house apart and come get you, and you know it.” Keigo reappears. “Sorry about him. He’s in a mood. Let’s go.”

“Hey, who said you could leave? I didn’t say you could leave! Get back here –”

“I’ll be back when I feel like it! Bye-bye!” Keigo waves and then slams the door. He hurries down the steps and you follow him. He doesn’t stop until you’re at the top of the street. “Sorry about that. I’m guessing you’ve got questions.”

You have a lot of questions. “Aizawa said Tomura was the only ghost left in the neighborhood.”

“He is,” Keigo says. “You know how ghosts have to want to be embodied more than they’ve ever wanted anything for it to work? Dabi tried to change his mind halfway.”

“Oh,” you say. “So that makes him half ghost?”

“It makes him a scar wraith. Half of him is permanently materialized, half of him isn’t, and most of the time he’s a total bitch about it.” Keigo crouches down to tie his shoes. “He lost half of his ghostly powers and picked up most of the downsides of being embodied. He’s going to be like that until he makes up his mind.”

“Oh,” you say again. “That’s, um – is that why your house is always on fire?”

“You got it.” Keigo straightens up again. “I know we got out of there in a hurry, but you’re not actually in danger from him. I just wanted to teach him a lesson. Like you do to yours when you leave.”

Is that what you’re trying to do? You don’t know if you’re trying to punish Tomura or just trying to figure out a game plan before you go back in. In this case it’s definitely the latter. “Hizashi says my ghost is, um –”

“Horny,” Keigo says. Your face heats up. He starts walking, and you follow him. “Yeah, they get like that sometimes. And they don’t like it. Usually they dematerialize to get away from feelings they don’t like, but it doesn’t work, and that pisses them off, too.”

Phantom stops to sniff a tree, and you let her for a second before tugging her along. “Why?”

“Maybe you don’t know, because you’re a girl –”

“Girls get horny too,” you say. This is maybe the dumbest conversation you’ve ever had, excepting the one you had with Tomura about why Phantom can’t have dead birds even though she really wants them. “Are you saying it’s because they have to do something about it? They don’t. They can just wait for it to go away.”

“Yeah, but waiting for it to go away is uncomfortable,” Keigo says. You’re not going to argue that one. Being horny when you don’t want to be is deeply unpleasant. “And ghosts suck at tolerating discomfort. Yours is pretty inexperienced with everything from what I’ve heard, so he probably doesn’t know what to do, and unless you want to leave a copy of The Joy of Sex lying around –”

“I don’t.” You shudder. “I don’t want him getting ideas.”

“Then you’re going to have to explain,” Keigo says patiently. You give him a pained look, and he sighs. “Tell him to materialize fully and get it out of his system. That’ll solve the initial problem.”

The thought of heading back to your house and telling Tomura he needs to masturbate makes you want to die. But you’re even unhappier about Keigo’s second sentence. “What do you mean, the initial problem?”

“Hizashi and Magne gave me the ghost sex talk when we moved here. Kind of late, but it helped, sort of.” Keigo rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “Once ghosts figure out how it works, they go one of two ways. Either they decide it’s gross and they’re not interested – that’s what Magne did – or they decide they’re really into it, which is what Hizashi did. And they can’t generate that feeling on their own the way people do, so they go after the people who made them feel that way the first time.”

That sinks in fast, but you’ve got no idea what to think or say or do about it. What comes out is the last thing you wanted to tell anyone. “I just held his hand. That was it! I was just trying to prove that there’s a difference between physical contact that hurts and stuff that doesn’t hurt because he won’t quit scratching his neck until it bleeds – and I’m pretty sure he hated it –”

“If he hated it, then you’re fine,” Keigo says. “Honestly, most of the adult former ghosts I’ve met aren’t into it even after they embody themselves permanently. Hizashi’s only like that because he spent enough time embodied to get used to it before he made it official. If it was a common thing Aizawa would have written a guidebook on it by now.”

Aizawa does have a lot of guidebooks. It took you a while to realize that most of the literature he sent you home with was stuff he’d written himself. “Although,” Keigo muses, “I guess Aizawa never hooked up with an actual ghost. He and Hizashi didn’t bang until after Hizashi was embodied.”

“So, um –” You can’t believe you’re about to ask this. “Did you, uh –”

“Did me and Dabi hook up before he fucked up his embodiment? Yeah,” Keigo says. You thought he’d be embarrassed, or proud. Instead he looks sad. “He didn’t use to be like this, or go by Dabi. His real name is Touya, and he was a lot, sure, but he wasn’t like this. I wouldn’t have gotten into it with him if he’d been like this the whole time.”

“I get it,” you say. You’ve had bad relationships before. “Do you think he’d go back if he embodied himself all the way?”

“Probably? I don’t think he’ll do that, though.” Keigo sighs. “They almost never decide consciously that they’re going to embody themselves. It happens because of how they feel. The little ones, they embodied themselves because they wanted to be with their families. They wanted to be seen and loved more than they wanted to be powerful. Magne jumped because Spinner didn’t have anybody but her, and as far as I can tell, she’s sort of surprised she did it. Hizashi did it on purpose, but Hizashi’s different – and from what he’s said, he’d probably have done it unconsciously at some point. He loves Aizawa that much.”

Now you get why Keigo looks so sad. “I bet Touya just got nervous,” you say. “I mean, it’s kind of a big decision, right? The biggest one they’ll ever make. And it’s not like he left. Even after you left his old haunt he stayed with you. That’s got to mean something.”

“Maybe.” Keigo smiles halfway. “A guy can hope, right?”

“Of course,” you say. Personally, you’re hoping for something different from Tomura.

You spend way too long pacing up and down the street after you say goodbye to Keigo, trying to work up your nerve. But eventually the weird tension from the house becomes perceptible to you even from outside it, and you remember what Hizashi said about the kids. You order yourself to suck it up, unlatch the front gate, and make your way inside. You can tell Tomura’s watching you, marking you closely, while you give Phantom a treat and some water. Once you’ve gotten her settled, you make your way upstairs to your room and shut the door. You can’t look at him while you have this conversation. You squeeze your eyes shut and speak up. “I know how to fix your problem.”

“What problem?” Tomura’s voice sounds tight and uncomfortable. “I don’t have a problem. You have a problem. You hung out with that guy across the street –”

“Because I needed help with you,” you say. It’s quiet for a second. “I figured out a solution to your problem. So you won’t feel the way you’re feeling anymore. I know it’s uncomfortable.”

“No, you don’t. Humans don’t feel like this.”

You manage to laugh at that one. “Humans feel like this all the time, Tomura. Half the dumb decisions people make in movies are because they feel like this.”

It’s quiet again. “How do I fix it?”

You bury your face in your head. “You have to materialize all the way. Then you have to touch yourself.”

“What do you mean, touch myself? You said I wasn’t supposed to scratch.”

“Not there.” You’re pretty sure your face is melting off from sheer embarrassment. “You know where that feeling is? The one you don’t like? You have to touch yourself there to make it go away.”

“Why?”

“It –” You chicken out. “You’ll figure it out once you try it. Go in the bathroom and shut the door.”

“Why do I have to go in there?”

“Privacy,” you say. There’s no way to tell him that you don’t want to have to clean ghost cum off the hardwood floors.

You hear footsteps down the hall, followed by the bathroom door opening and closing. “This is stupid,” Tomura says. You couldn’t agree more. “I’m doing it. It still feels – weird –”

That catch in his voice is something you really could have gone without hearing. “You don’t have to narrate,” you say. “You deserve privacy. I’m giving you privacy. I can leave the house –”

“No, don’t.” Tomura sounds pretty sure about that. “This was your idea. Don’t you want to – ugh.”

You don’t want to know what that was about. At all. You think about getting your headphones, except if you don’t respond when he talks to you, he’ll come looking to see why, and you really don’t want him to come talk to you in whatever state he’s in at the moment. Maybe it’s over already. Maybe he’s one of the vast majority of ghosts who think it’s gross and this will never happen to you again. You’re sure that’s it. It’s over already. It –

A low sigh echoes through the house, and you freeze in place. There’s a few uneven breaths, and then another sigh, followed by a sharper sound, somewhere between a gasp and a whimper. “What is this?” Tomura asks, his voice strained in an entirely different way than before. When you don’t respond, he says your name, followed by another one of those sharper sounds. “I don’t understand. Why – ah –”

You clamp your hands down over your ears, but it’s like your ears are attuned specifically to him. You can hear everything. Every ragged breath, every whimper, every needy, desperate moan, and suddenly you’re sure that you got the other kind of ghost, the kind that finds sex and lust fascinating instead of gross. You’ve made a mistake. Not just in telling him to solve the problem like this, but in sticking around to listen. Because listening to this, knowing that you touched his hand and turned him on so badly that it’s been permeating the neighborhood all day, is doing something to you, too.

Your face is flushed, but it’s not just from embarrassment. When you touch your wrist to feel for your pulse, it’s fast. And worse than all of that, you’re wet. Knowing it’ll make things worse doesn’t stop you from sliding one hand down the front of your jeans, recoiling when you realize just how wet you are. This is a disaster. You can’t let him know.

There’s only one solution you can think of. No time to get to the bed, or to do anything more than sink to the floor, unzipping your jeans just far enough to give your hand room to move. You shove the heel of your other hand against your mouth, because you’re not loud but you’ve never done anything like this before and you’re not sure what will happen. You squeeze your eyes shut as you brush your fingers between your legs, the sound you make muffled by your hand and drowned out by the almost-agonized moan that issues from the bathroom down the hall. “I can’t,” Tomura pants. “I can’t – stop – how does it stop –”

“You’ll know.” You think your voice is steady enough. How is he still going? The first time you masturbated, you were so wound up that you were done almost faster than you could think. And he’s a guy. “Just keep going.”

“Keep talking.” Tomura’s voice is just as raspy and ragged as his breathing is. It shouldn’t be hot. You shouldn’t find this hot. “Is this –”

He breaks off in a whine. “How it’s supposed to feel?” you ask. You increase the pressure of your fingers against your clit in spite of the fact that he’s clearly expecting you to talk and you don’t want him to know what you’re doing. “Like you’re going to fall apart, but it feels so good you don’t care?”

“Yeah. Ah –”

“Like that,” you say. You find yourself spreading your legs wider, giving more space for your hand to move. “Exactly like that, Tomura. Don’t stop.”

You’re telling him how to touch himself, but it’s all wrong. It sounds the same as what you’d be telling him to do if he was here, if the fingers slipping inside you were his. What is wrong with you? Thoughts flash through your mind, thoughts you shouldn’t have, and your breathing turns shallow and harsh. “Say something,” Tomura whines, begs. You picture what he must look like right now, face red and hair stuck to his neck and forehead with sweat, completely at the mercy of a body and a need, and crook your fingers, shuddering. “Come on. I need you. Don’t leave me. Please –”

“I’m here.” The strain in your voice would let anyone else know exactly what you’re doing, but Tomura doesn’t know – and even if he did, the sounds you hear tell you that he’s lost in his own touch, chasing his own high. You might as well not be here. All you are is a friendly voice, a guide in uncharted territory. “You’re doing great. You’re almost done, aren’t you? You know what you like by now. Do that, and keep doing it. Don’t stop until –”

The sound he makes is inarticulate and absolutely filthy. Your muscles clench around your fingers, and you rub desperately at your clit with your free hand. Without a hand over your mouth to muffle yourself, you’re reduced to biting your lip until it bleeds as you listen to Tomura shuddering through the first orgasm of his existence. And that’s what tips you over the edge, really – the thought that it’s his first, the thought that it’s because of you. Blood spills into your mouth as your hips jerk against your hands, your vocal cords straining with the effort of holding back the sounds you want to make. You can’t remember the last time you came this hard. All you want to do is sprawl out on the floor and go to sleep.

But you can’t. You need to hide the evidence. You can’t let Tomura know what you just did. You zip and button your jeans, cringing at the slickness of your fingers, and leave your room, hurrying to the downstairs bathroom to splash water on your face. You get a glimpse of what you look like in the mirror and stare in horror. Your face is flushed and your eyes are dilated and there’s a drop of blood at the corner of your mouth that you smear away with the back of your hand. You look like a mess. The only thing that will save you is that Tomura doesn’t know what to look for.

His voice drifts through the house, still unsteady. “There’s a mess in here.”

“I’ll clean it later,” you say. “Since it’s my fault.”

The floor creaks once or twice, then stops, and you know Tomura’s dematerialized. It’s not a surprise. You can’t imagine how much energy he burned through, and sure enough, when you look out the kitchen window, you see a line of dead blackberry bushes along the back fence. Sex stuff takes more life-force than anything else. All the more reason for this to never happen again.

Tomura’s presence slips into the room, surrounding you like he does sometimes. Usually you shoo him away, or threaten to leave until he slinks off, sulking. Today you can’t. You coped okay with your first orgasm, but you were alone. You know you’d have felt weird if you hadn’t been, and if the person who talked you through it had ignored you afterward. You let him settle in, staring fixedly at the dead bushes along the fence. Only one or two are still alive.

Tomura’s voice rasps against your ear. “Do I have to do that every time?”

“There’s not going to be another time,” you say. “It’s my fault for touching you like that last night, and you told me not to do it again. So we’re good.”

“It felt good.” Tomura sounds sure about that. Your stomach twists. “It only felt bad because I didn’t know what to do. Now I know.”

“I’m still not touching you like that again. You said no. I can’t ask you to respect my  boundaries when I don’t respect yours.”

“What if I take it back?” Tomura asks. The twist in your stomach is painful this time. “What if I want you to touch me?”

“Then it starts being about what I want,” you say. “And I don’t want to.”

It’s a lie. You’re lying. Another human would know you were, would know by the heat of your body and the flush in your cheeks and the heavy, painful sound of your heartbeat. “You don’t want to,” Tomura repeats. His presence slips away again, going to some place far enough that you can barely feel it. “I didn’t say I wanted it. Like I’d ever want you to touch me.”

His voice is the last thing to vanish. You want to stick your head under the faucet and drown. “Fine.”

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it, and after the hand-touching incident and everything that followed, the atmosphere in your house feels worse than it ever has before. You don’t know where Tomura’s going, but there are times when his presence vanishes almost completely, and when it does, you can barely stand the emptiness he leaves behind. You never lived alone until you lived here, and you thought you loved it. Now you realize that you were never living here alone at all. Until now.

The jar of bugs start piling up on the front porch, and rather than letting them die, you let them go. You don’t tell the others to stop bringing them. Some part of you is hoping Tomura will come back, that you can go back to the way things were before, but you don’t need one of Aizawa’s guidebooks to tell you that it’s not happening. You rejected him. And if there’s anything you’ve taught Tomura about how humans work, it’s that no means no.

You start spending extra time at work. Sometimes you bring Phantom with you, with Mr. Yagi’s permission, and it makes you popular with your coworkers like you never were before. You still hate it, but it makes it easier to be at work. And it means you don’t have to go home until you’re ready.

At least, most days you don’t. But you woke up with a splitting headache today, and a sore throat, and because you weren’t coughing, you decided that you didn’t have an excuse to skip work. You leave Phantom at home and drag yourself into the office, and you get through four hours of your workday before Mr. Yagi spots you and sends you home. Your pleas not to go home fall on deaf ears, and you drive home slowly, struggling to keep your eyes fixed on the road in front of you.

When you get home, Phantom greets you anxiously. She knows you’re not feeling well, and when you sit down in the front hall to pet her, you realize that you’re going to have a hard time getting up. It doesn’t matter. You can take a break. You let your eyes fall shut.

When you wake up, it’s to grey, rainy, late-afternoon light falling over your face, the sound of Phantom whining in your ear, and a voice you haven’t heard in three weeks. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Tomura,” you mumble. You were hoping sleep would make you feel better, but it feels like your headache’s actually gotten worse. “I’m fine. Just wanted to sit down.”

“Don’t be stupid. And don’t lie.” Even the sound of Tomura’s footsteps across the floor hurts your head, not to mention Phantom’s whining. “You fell asleep on the floor. You’re making this weird face. You don’t look right. What’s wrong with you?”

He almost sounds worried. “My boss sent me home. He thinks I’m sick.”

“Are you sick?” Tomura asks. You think about lying, decide not to, and nod. The pain that splits your skull makes you want to throw up. “Can you fix it?”

You have cold medicine somewhere, and pain relievers, but you’d have to get up to get them, and you’re so dizzy. Maybe you should call somebody for help, but who would you call? Nobody in your neighborhood is going to set foot in your house, and you don’t have any friends from work. And all your old friends have started to slip away, courtesy of your new world, your new friends, your new life. Who do you have to call? Nobody. The thought makes you sad, and feeling sad makes you even more tired than before.

“Wake up,” Tomura snaps at you. Phantom whines and licks your face. “Stop it. Wake up!”

Phantom’s worried. Tomura’s mad at you. Somewhere in your clouded mind, it occurs to you that you need help. That maybe it doesn’t matter who you call as long as you call somebody. You pull your phone out of your backpack and get as far as unlocking it. Then your head starts to ache worse than before, a dull pounding that fills every crevice and corner of your skull. Everything feels hot and humid and awful. You shut your eyes again. Anything to make it stop.

You’re cold when you wake up again. Well, some of you is cold. There’s a small warm patch on your stomach, but the rest of you is cold. Not regular cold. Tomura’s cold. He’s materialized, completely or close enough, and he’s holding onto you awkwardly with one arm while Phantom rests her head on your stomach. You can hear Tomura’s voice. He sounds pissed. “If I knew what was wrong with her I’d say it,” he snaps at whoever he’s talking to. “She keeps falling asleep. She’s not supposed to be home yet. She’s too warm.”

“So she’s sick.” That’s Keigo’s voice. Is Keigo here? Why did Tomura let Keigo in the house? “And she’s sleeping a lot?”

“I said that already. Stop repeating what I already said.”

“What are her symptoms?” That’s Aizawa’s voice. It starts to dawn on you slowly what’s happening here, and you almost laugh. “Symptoms. You named some of them already. Fatigue. Fever. Is she coughing?”

“No.”

“Does her breathing sound different than it usually does?” Jin’s mom is talking. Now you know for sure. “Does she have a rash?”

“Her breathing sounds normal,” Tomura says. He’s on the phone. He somehow unlocked your phone, went into your text messages, and conference-called the entire ghost friends group chat. You’d laugh if you weren’t worried it would make your head explode. “What’s a rash?”

“It would be on her skin. Does her skin look like it usually looks?”

An ice-cold hand brushes over your cheek. “It’s too hot. Her face is red. The rest of it looks okay.”

“Check for bites. We brought over tons of bugs. If enough of them bit her –”

“Hitoshi, hang up the phone,” Aizawa orders. “You’re supposed to be at school.”

“You’re supposed to be driving,” Shinsou fires back. “You’re picking up Eri from school early because she’s sick.”

Eri’s sick. You claw your way out of semi-consciousness and grasp the phone. “Does she have what I have?”

“Oh, good. You’re alive,” Keigo says. “Your ghost was pretty panicked.”

“I wasn’t panicked. Shut up.” Tomura’s grip on you tightens. “Someone else is sick?”

“She fell asleep in class. She has a headache and a fever,” Aizawa says. He sounds unhappy. “When would she possibly have been exposed?”

“We brought over some bugs last night,” Shinsou says. “Maybe it was then.”

“It could have gone the other way, too,” Jin’s mom says. “Kids get sick a lot easier than adults.”

“Good point. Maybe Eri got it first and brought it –”

“But Shinsou isn’t sick. If Shinsou lives with her and isn’t sick, how come –”

“I don’t care,” Tomura says loudly. “I don’t care about your sick kid. I want to know how to fix my human.”

Tomura’s making a great first impression. You’ll be doing damage control with Aizawa later, once you feel less like a puddle of body aches and sweat. “If she’s got what Eri’s got, it’s probably the flu,” Jin’s mom says. “She should have cold medicine on hand. Most people do. Pain relievers for the headache and body aches, cough drops if she has a sore throat. And she’ll need to eat. Do you know how humans eat?”

“I’m not stupid. I know how food works.”

“Don’t cook,” Aizawa, Shinsou, and Keigo all say at once. Keigo keeps talking. “You’re not embodied. You don’t have tastebuds. Whatever you end up cooking is going to be –”

There’s a scuffle on Keigo’s end of the line. “It’s going to be fuck awful,” Dabi announces, and Shinsou snickers. “Go ahead and poison your human. See if I care.”

“The next time you even look at my human I’m going to disintegrate your ugly face.”

“My ugly face? Have you seen what you look like? I’m surprised your human hasn’t gone blind.”

Tomura snarls. “At least I never set my human on fire –”

“You’re both pretty,” you mumble, and Keigo cracks up laughing. “I’m not that sick. I can heat up a can of soup in the microwave.”

“You’re so stupid. You fell asleep on the floor,” Tomura snaps at you. “You can’t do anything. I’m going to have to drag you everywhere.”

“No one made you touch me,” you protest. “If you weren’t here –”

“Well, I am here. So shut up and let me –”

“If you two are going to have a domestic, hang up the phone first,” Hizashi says loudly. You didn’t realize he was there. You jump, and your head collides with Tomura’s chin. He swears and so do you. “One of us will stop by later to make sure neither of you are dead. Goodbye.”

There’s a click as he hangs up the phone. Shinsou hangs up a second later. Jin’s mother hangs up after promising to bring over some food, and Keigo stays on the phone a little longer. “I’ll drop by in an hour or two, like Hizashi says. Can you promise not to kill me if I set foot in the house?”

“The only person I’m going to kill is your idiot ghost.”

“Cool,” Keigo says. You can hear Dabi arguing in the background that it’s not cool at all. “Bye.”

He hangs up the phone, too. Now it’s just you and Tomura and Phantom, piled up on the couch in the living room. You don’t remember getting to the living room. Tomura must have dragged you, like he said. You thought he was so mad at you that he was never going to show himself again. Apparently not.

“What’s a domestic?” Tomura asks after a while.

“A fight,” you say. “Just another word for fight.”

“Then why didn’t he just say a fight?”

You really don’t want to get into this right now. “A domestic is a kind of fight. The kind couples have. He was making fun of us by pretending we’re a couple.”

“I don’t like him,” Tomura says after a moment. “I can kill him for you.”

“Don’t do that,” you say.

“He scares you.” Tomura scratches at his neck with the hand that’s not gripping your shoulder. “If I can’t not scare you, I might as well be the only thing that does.”

Maybe you’re just sick and stupid, but you don’t hate the sound of that. “That’s kind of sweet.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tomura says. He slides out from behind you and drops you onto the couch with a thud. You see a patchy flush on his face before he turns away. “I’m getting your medicine. Stay there.”

You’re not really in a position to go anywhere. You scratch behind Phantom’s ears with a shaky hand and close your eyes again.

When you wake up, you find that Tomura’s turned your medicine cabinet inside out and brought you absolutely everything. Sorting through it is the first laugh you’ve had in a while, and once you’ve got a double dose of painkillers on board, you’re willing to risk it. “Why did you bring this?” you ask, waving a box of band-aids at him. “You’ve seen me use these. You know they’re not for this.”

“How am I supposed to know that? You use stuff that’s not for the stuff you’re using it for all the time.” Tomura snatches the band-aids away and picks up another box. “What are these?”

“You definitely didn’t need to bring those,” you say. “They’re condoms.”

“What?”

It figures. He didn’t know male from female until Hizashi told him, but he clearly has certain associations with condoms, and he doesn’t like them. Probably because of all the movies you didn’t know he was watching with you. “Relax. Does that box look open to you?”

“No,” Tomura says, inspecting it from all angles. “If it’s not open, why do you have it?”

“In case I need it,” you say. “I don’t need it right now.”

In fact, you’re having a hard time imagining that you’ll ever need condoms again. You can’t exactly bring anybody home to hook up with, not with Tomura constantly lurking around, and you like sleeping in your own bed too much to spend the night at anybody else’s house. Beyond that, if you ever wanted to get serious with anybody, you’d have to explain about your house, about Tomura. There’s no way to explain that. No way to explain him in a way that won’t end any relationship instantly. Maybe it’s just that you’re sick, but you find that you don’t mind the thought.

You choose a box of cold medicine and swallow a dose of it, then pop a cough drop into your mouth to soothe your throat. Tomura watches you the entire time, only partially materialized. “Does that taste good?”

“No. It numbs my throat so it hurts less.”

“What do you do when things hurt?”

You were going to try to fall asleep again as soon as you’re done with your cough drop, but Tomura’s in a mood to talk. And as much as you hate to admit it, you miss talking to Tomura. “There are different kinds of hurt, for people. If it hurts physically, like this does, I can take medicine. I can put ice on a bruise or use a heating pad for cramps. There are ointments that have numbing agents in them, same as the cough drops. There are lots of things to do when something physically hurts.”

“If something hurts my body, I can dematerialize,” Tomura says. You wish it was that easy for you. If you could evaporate right now, you’d do it in a heartbeat. “What about other kinds of hurting?”

“Um –” You break off, trying to wrap your head around it. “Emotions hurt sometimes. The bad ones, usually. Being sad or angry or lonely or scared – all of those can feel like they hurt. They can hurt a lot.”

“How do you make them go away?”

“You can’t,” you say. Tomura’s expression darkens. “There’s not medicine that fixes feelings, at least not all the way. You just have to live with them until they stop. Or until you get used to them.”

“That’s stupid,” Tomura says.

“You’re telling me.” You close your eyes. “I guess talking about them helps sometimes. Not for everybody, not all the time, but it can make you feel less alone.”

“I didn’t hate being alone before,” Tomura says. You open your eyes and find him scowling, his face flushed. “Now I do.”

You want to remind him that he’s the one who pulled away, that he’s the one who left, but there’s no point. You roll over instead, facing the back of the couch, and the words slip out of your mouth before you can stop them. “I missed you.”

You couldn’t have picked a dumber thing to say. Tomura’s got the emotional maturity of a frat guy – he gets mad easily and takes “no” poorly and makes you explain your boundaries five billion times before he even thinks about respecting them. Telling a guy like him that you missed him is a one-way ticket to being mocked for being needy and clingy and pathetic. You can already feel your eyes burning in anticipation of being humiliated.

But Tomura’s not a human man. He’s a ghost. The rush of air filling a previously occupied space tells you he’s dematerialized, but the cold settles around you, and his voice rasps in your ear. “I missed you too. Idiot.”

“You’re the one who left,” you answer. “You’re an idiot, too.”

You’re expecting him to slip away again. Instead the cold spot envelops you more securely than before. “Shut up.”

You fall asleep like that, and when you wake up, it’s to the sound of the fire alarm going off. Tomura’s watched you cook plenty of times and probably should know better, but apparently when you mentioned sticking a can of soup in the microwave, he took it literally. You should be pissed. You probably will be, once the cold medicine wears off. But at the moment, when you’re dizzy and sleepy and feverish, all you can think to do is be pleased that he tried at all.

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 16) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20

Chapter 16

The knock at the door comes as you’re putting on your shoes to leave, bright and early when the sun’s barely risen. Your mom calls out for you to go get it, since you’re closest, and you open the door just in time to get one of the nastiest shocks you’ve ever gotten in your life. “What are you doing here?”

“Good morning to you, too,” Hizashi says. He’s wearing a leather jacket with spikes on the shoulder pads and horrible triangular sunglasses, tinted yellow. “As to why I’m here at your parents’ house, I wouldn’t be if you’d stayed in your hotel like you were supposed to.”

Tomura did this. Why did Tomura do this? You hear footsteps down the hall and your mother almost knocks you over in her attempts to get a look at who’s at the door. “Are you Tomura?”

As pissed as you are that Hizashi’s here, the look on his face when he realizes he’s been mistaken for Tomura cracks you up. You lean against the doorframe, wheezing, while Hizashi tries to recover. “No, ma’am. I’m one of their neighbors.”

“Oh,” your mother says, puzzled, while you pray to every deity you can think of that she hasn’t realized that “they” refers to you and Tomura. You and Tomura, living together. “You’re a ways from home.”

“I’m on a mission! See, my husband’s a novelist – Aizawa Shouta, best of his generation – and your daughter agreed to take a research trip up here for him! But it looks like there’s going to be a lot more research than we thought, so Shou sent me up here to help out!” Hizashi gives your mother a smile that would probably be winning if it wasn’t so sharp. “Plus, I’ve got a car of my own. That way we can get back to the neighborhood tonight!”

You can only see your mother in profile, but you see her face fall. “You were supposed to meet the neighbors –”

“Oh, we can stay for that,” Hizashi says before you can say a word. “We won’t leave until after the party! Isn’t that right?”

He’s looking at you. You look back, wondering if he knows just how badly you want to kill him right now. “Right,” you say. You put your hand on your mom’s arm and she looks at you. “I promise I’ll stay for the party.”

She smiles at you, but there’s a line drawn between her brows, and you don’t know what to do about it. Not reassure her, that’s for sure. Hizashi clears his throat from the front step. “We’ve got lots of paper to go through. Let’s rock and roll!”

Your departure’s interrupted by your dad, who’s spotted Hizashi’s goddamn sports car and wants to ooh and ahh over it. Because your parents are both on the curb, you have to wait until you’re around the corner before you unload on Hizashi. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Ask your boyfriend,” Hizashi says. His smile’s gone. He looks just as pissed as you feel, except you’re a human and he’s a way-too-powerful former ghost who really doesn’t like you. “Two seconds after you left, he started putting the screws to every ghost in the neighborhood, trying to make somebody follow you.”

“Why?” you ask, baffled. “Nobody out here is looking for me.”

“They aren’t looking for you, and they can’t sense you at a distance, but if they come across you at close range they’ll know exactly what they’re looking at,” Hizashi says. He taps the horn at a moped and nearly scares the driver into a crowd of pedestrians. “Your weak human senses won’t let you see them coming, either, which is why I’m here. Call me your early warning system.”

“Okay, but aren’t you going to attract a lot of attention all on your own?” You really don’t like the fact that you’re in Hizashi’s car right now. As far as you can tell, the two of you are still headed for the museum, but you could veer at any moment. “You’re the most powerful one in the neighborhood next to Tomura. People can probably spot you from miles away, and when they come looking for you, they’ll spot me.”

“Not until they’re up close, and I’ll know they’re coming. Plenty of time for me to hide you somewhere.”

The way he says that, it sounds like he’s talking about hiding your dead body. “Why are you doing this? You don’t even like Tomura. Why would you do what he says?”

“So he’d stop trying to bully Shou into it.” Hizashi’s grip on the steering wheel is white-knuckled. “That, and one other reason. If anything happens to you away from the neighborhood, he’ll blow that house apart and come looking for whoever did it.”

And all Hizashi cares about is making sure Tomura stays in the neighborhood, stays a ghost. “You’re manipulating him.”

“As if. If anything, he’s manipulating me!” Hizashi scoffs. “I told him to send somebody else – somebody without kids, somebody who’s got free time on their hands – and he wouldn’t. Of course, his other option was Dabi, so that was never going to happen, even though Dabi owes him for sheltering Keigo during the Garaki thing – I swear, nobody does dick-measuring contests like live ghosts who are insecure about their humans –”

You’re pretty sure Dabi’s not insecure about Keigo. You hope Tomura’s not insecure about you, and even if he was, you’re pretty sure he could beat Dabi in a dick-measuring contest. Every time the two of you hook up you’re a little taken aback by how big he is. This isn’t a great time to be thinking about that. Luckily, Hizashi’s not paying attention. “But no! Instead of sending the neighborhood’s least favorite burnt marshmallow, he sends me. He must be really worried about you if he thinks it’s worth trapping us together in a car.”

You scrunch down in your seat, more than a little pissed off at Tomura. He might not know what Hizashi said to you the day of the fight with Garaki, but he knows it hurt you, and even if Hizashi’s changed his tune towards you, you doubt Hizashi actually cares whether you live or die. What Hizashi cares about is his family. His family, who will be under threat if Tomura destroys his house and leaves. His family, who Tomura will almost certainly kill if Hizashi lets anything happen to you.

There’s only one thing that can be said about it. “This sucks.”

“For once we agree.” Hizashi’s fingers drum against the steering wheel. “What’s the point of going to this museum again?”

“It used to be an asylum. The conjurer’s younger brother was there, and he died under questionable circumstances,” you say. “But he was there for a while before that. There are lots of records of him, and I want to see if he had anything to say about his brother.”

“Sneaky,” Hizashi remarks. “What are you hoping you’ll find?”

“I don’t know. Something. Anything I can use.” You scrunch further down in your seat. “I was useless fighting Garaki, but the stuff I found out about him helped us get ready. This is the only thing I can do that might help Tomura win.”

“You could always die. He’d be so mad about it that his conjurer wouldn’t stand a chance,” Hizashi says. “Of course, he’d probably take half the city out along with him.”

You decide not to dignify that with a response and resign yourself to an hour and a half of Hizashi picking on you, trying to get you to lose your temper. Your phone pings and you pull it out of your backpack to find Tomura’s contact number. He’s texting you. Is he there?

He’s not even pretending he didn’t do it. My parents thought he was you. You hesitate a moment, then send another text. I don’t need a babysitter.

You didn’t need to leave, either. Tomura discovers the emoji keyboard and sends you twelve in a row, none of which make any sense. Tell me if he does anything to you. I’ll kill him.

It says something about you that you honestly think it’s sweet of Tomura to offer, but it’s long past time for you to fight your own fights with Hizashi. You interrupt him in the middle of a lengthy digression about why Tomura chose poorly when he chose you as his human and drop the conversational equivalent of the atomic bomb. “You know, I used to wonder if you forced Aizawa to marry you.”

Hizashi nearly drives off the road. “You what?”

“Yeah. The way your meet-cute went, it sounds like he didn’t really have a choice,” you say. Antagonizing Hizashi is a stupid move, especially when you’re stuck in the car with him, but you’re tired of being his punching bag. “Did you ever wonder about that? Do any of you ever wonder if your humans really wanted you?”

“Watch it,” Hizashi warns through clenched teeth. “If you keep running your mouth off –”

“You say this kind of stuff to me all the time,” you point out. “Except you say worse things about Tomura than I’d ever say about Aizawa. I’m not taking it lying down anymore. So either we keep going like this and I give as good as I get, or we accept that we’re stuck together for the next eighteen hours and call a truce. Your choice.”

Trying to be reasonable with a ghost who doesn’t want to understand is like smashing your head repeatedly against a brick wall. But you can see that Hizashi’s thinking about it. He doesn’t like having his bullshit turned around on him, and he knows he can’t retaliate worse. And you are stuck together for the next eighteen hours. “Tell me about humans, then,” he says finally. “Since you know so much.”

“Can’t you ask Aizawa about humans?”

“There are things he says I won’t get. That he knows I won’t get, because my frame of reference is wrong.” It sounds like it bothers Hizashi. Like it bothers him a lot. “I’m two hundred and nineteen years old. My frame of reference is pretty fucking broad. But apparently it’s not broad enough to get it.”

“Get what?”

Hizashi doesn’t answer. “Here’s the deal. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about ghosts. The kind of shit your stupid brat ghost won’t say. You tell me what I want to know about humans. That’s our truce. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it,” you say, wondering what Hizashi thinks Tomura won’t say about being a ghost. “What does Aizawa think you don’t get?”

“Sacrifice,” Hizashi says. You blink. “If he had to save me or the kids, he’d save the kids, and he thought I’d say the same thing. Like it’s a no-brainer. Why?”

“I don’t have kids,” you remind him.

“The way he reacted, it’s not a parent thing. It’s a human thing. You’re supposed to choose the kids,” Hizashi says. “Why?”

“Um –” You really don’t want to wade into this, but you also don’t want to spend the rest of the day going back and forth with Hizashi to see who can be the bigger asshole. “It’s – when you have kids, they’re here because of you. The only reason they’re here is because you wanted them to be. So a lot of people think your responsibility should be to them over everything else. Over you and over your job and over the stuff you own – and over your spouse.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Hizashi says flatly. “I love my kids. I’d do anything for them. Except let my human die.”

With Hizashi’s conjurer and Eri’s conjurer both dead, this little hypothetical is probably never going to come to pass. But you’re thinking of something else, something Aizawa said about how to convince ghosts to change their behavior. “Think about it this way,” you suggest. “If you saved Aizawa and let the kids die, he would never forgive you.”

“If I didn’t, he’d be dead. It wouldn’t matter.”

“Nobody knows what happens after you die.” You shrug. “It might be nothing, but you might see him again.”

Hizashi glances sideways at you. “It’s not nothing,” he says. Your stomach lurches. “The world we come from is called the world between for a reason. It’s our entire world, but it’s nothing more than a pathway for your kind. Sooner or later, you all pass through.”

You’ve seen into the world between. It’s horrifying. “Pass through to what?”

“We don’t know,” Hizashi says. “I’ve followed those paths. Most of us do, if we stay there long enough to grow up. We can’t cross over, so we don’t know for sure. All I can tell you is there’s something there.”

You think of something Tomura said a long time ago: They embodied themselves so they could follow their humans. Wherever they go. Even after they’re dead. Hizashi laughs quietly. “One of these days I’ll find out.”

He sounds pretty unconcerned about the possibility. Then again, he’s never said he’s scared of dying – only of outliving Aizawa. You don’t want to talk about the afterlife anymore. “Did I answer your question?”

“Close enough.” Hizashi merges onto the freeway and accelerates. “Your turn. Got any ghost questions for me?”

Just one. “What happens if a ghost kills their own conjurer?”

“Nothing good,” Hizashi says. Your heart sinks. “First of all, it’s hard. They’ll draw on their other ghosts to fight back, and you’ll have to blast through those ghosts, too. If you’re permanently embodied, it’s not possible. They’ll just kill you. If you aren’t embodied and you take out your conjurer personally, you’re breaking your link to this world.”

Aizawa told you there was only one way out once a ghost has been summoned. Probably because he never expected things to go like this. “It sends them back?” you ask. “Every time?”

“Every time I’ve seen, which isn’t many.” Hizashi shrugs. “Theoretically he could fight it. If he took out the other ghosts, drained his conjurer, and embodied himself, he’d have a chance. But he’d have to want it. More than –”

“He’s ever wanted anything else, in all his existence.” You don’t need to fill in what you and everybody else in the neighborhood have figured out already: Tomura doesn’t want to be human. “This is more important than I thought, then. If you want him to keep protecting the neighborhood, the rest of us have to figure out how to kill his conjurer.”

You and Hizashi spend the rest of the drive to the asylum talking about conjurers. As the oldest ghost you know of, Hizashi’s seen a lot as far as conjurers go, and he even met some of the other ghosts Tomura’s conjurer summoned. You ask him what they were like and watch his expression turn grim. “By human standards, I’m a monster,” he says. It doesn’t weird you out even slightly to hear him admit it. It’s more of a relief than anything else. “Compared to those ghosts, I’m nothing. We’re lucky none of them are left.”

“If none of them are left, then what’s Tomura’s conjurer going to bring as backup?” you ask. “There’s no way he’ll come alone.”

“More Nomus, maybe?” Hizashi runs a red light and waves cheekily at the semi-truck he just cut off before roaring into the museum’s parking lot at full speed. “Let’s hope this place helps us figure it out.”

The old asylum looks exactly like what it is – a place built hundreds of years ago to imprison people who just needed help. You don’t pick up anything at all from setting foot on the property, but Hizashi hesitates to get out of the car, and once he does, his face goes pale. “You’re not getting that? Damn. I guess if his aura didn’t put you off, this wouldn’t either, but – damn.”

“No, I feel it.” You do, not on the grounds, but with every step you take inside the museum. There’s something about this place – not scary, but sad. From your research, you know this was the kind of the place where people locked up their family members and threw away the key. You imagine being dragged through these doors, never to come out alive, and feel your stomach lurch. “It’s – not good in here.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Hizashi leans against the wall and takes out his phone, only looking up when he realizes you’re staring at him. “This is your party, not mine. Get to work.”

“Oh, fuck off,” you mutter. Of course he won’t make himself useful. You square your shoulders and head for the front desk alone. “Hi. I’m here about Shigaraki Yoichi.”

“Yes, the curator warned me you’d be coming.” The docent looks you up and down. “What’s your interest in this former inmate?”

“I’m, um –” You should have thought of an excuse ahead of time. “I’m –”

“Sorry, she’s a genealogist. She doesn’t get out much.” Hizashi’s there, suddenly, his arm slung around your shoulders and his mouth running a mile a minute. “We’ve got this client, see – old family, not much to go off of, but he’s pretty interested in his family history. It took us a lot of legwork to find this place! We think this Shigaraki guy might be the missing piece in our client’s family tree, so we’re here to check into it. How about we get started?”

In spite of his bizarre outfit, the docent clearly finds Hizashi a lot more credible than you. It bothers you. “What happened to ‘your party, not mine’?”

“The faster we get this done, the faster I get back to my husband and kids.” Hizashi is all business as the two of you step into the archive room and stare down at the table full of documents that awaits you. “All right. Divide and conquer. I’ll take everything on the left, and you can –”

“I’ll take the left side,” you say. The right side has a lot of photos, and you don’t want Hizashi hovering over your shoulder while you’re trying to read. “It’s still my party.”

You’re expecting Hizashi to bitch about it, but all he does is ask you for a pen and one of the notebooks you brought, which you’re happy to provide. Shigaraki Yoichi’s files don’t have an organization system, or if they did, it vanished sometime in the two hundred years since he died. You resign yourself to starting from scratch, pull on the mask and pair of gloves the docent provided, and get to work with the first set of files.

You were worried there’d be nothing useful, but it turns out that this asylum was pretty on top of things as a function of serving mostly rich families. The Shigaraki family was absolutely loaded for the time period, and if Akira’s managed to hang onto even a little bit of that wealth through the ensuing centuries, interest rates will have turned it into a fortune. With this kind of money, Shigaraki Akira could erase his own identity and recreate it a thousand times over, pay off anyone he needed to pay off, make anything that could be traced back to him disappear. With this kind of money, it’s a miracle you found anything about him at all.

But you’re not focusing on Akira right now. You take a few notes based on his brother’s admission paperwork, then open the folder containing the medical chart.

Shigaraki Yoichi was ill almost from birth. It looks like tuberculosis. That’s what the autopsy report says, anyway, and you’re not a doctor, so you can’t come up with another reason why his lungs might bleed. His mental health looks like it was normal for the first few years of his life, with an episode of some kind occurring when he was eight. When he was eight, and his brother Akira was sixteen. Yoichi is described as being tormented by nightmares, even in waking. He’s quoted as raving about cold places in his home, of unseen things touching him, of feeling constantly, unceasingly watched. Reading over it sends a faint chill down your spine, and cold certainty settles in the pit of your stomach. Yoichi might have been crazy. But he was definitely being haunted.

He had a pet – it doesn’t say what kind – that died, withered into a husk as it slept next to him on the bed. The family appears to have seen it as a small sadness, nothing worth crying over for more than a day or two. Yoichi saw things differently. He swore up and down to anyone who would listen that his older brother killed his pet. His older brother, and his friends.

The doctor or worker or whoever was taking Yoichi’s history took the time to point out that all of Akira’s friends, and Akira himself, were confirmed to be elsewhere on the night in question. But not all of Akira’s friends, you don’t think. At least one stayed behind. At least one couldn’t leave.

Your first big shock comes when you learn that Yoichi begged to be sent to the asylum, that he was happy to be there. He kept a journal during that time, too, and you turn the ancient pages carefully, reading the words of a long-dead man who, for the first time in his life, sounds completely sane. It doesn’t take you long to realize what must have happened. Yoichi figured out at some point that the ghost his brother summoned to haunt him was tied to the house. All he had to do to escape it was to leave.

Yoichi lived in the asylum for seven years before anyone from his family came to visit him. The notes say that after a visit from his brother, Yoichi’s mental health degraded significantly. It shows in his journal, too. He draws things – shapes in the shadows, in the smoke from a candle, in the steam – and with every page you turn, he sounds more and more desperate, more and more hopeless. He writes about marks that appear on his body, marks only he can see, and the slow, suspicious deaths of every friend he’s made. In the notes, he’s described as paranoid, fixated on his brother. In his journal, he’s perfectly clear: I will not survive much longer. I want it known to whoever reads this that he did this to me. But I will not go quietly. I will resist him for as long as my spirit holds out, in life and in death. For all his power, he cannot touch the souls of the dead. It is my turn to haunt him.

You tap Hizashi on the shoulder, and he looks up, annoyed. You ignore it. “Can humans stay behind?”

“What?”

“After we die,” you say, and understanding crosses Hizashi’s face. “Can humans stay behind?”

“In theory,” Hizashi says. “Why do you ask?”

You slide Yoichi’s journal carefully across the table to him. Hizashi reads over it. “It’s possible in theory,” he says again. “In practice, your kind’s souls leave this world like they’re being fired out of a cannon. It would take an insane amount of willpower to hang on without a living body as an anchor. I’ve met maybe two humans – ever – who could pull a move like that. Did this guy really want vengeance that much?”

“Not vengeance, I don’t think.” Your eyes catch on one word in the journal entry. Resist. “He knew what his brother was. He wanted to stop him.”

You look around the archive room, a thought crossing your mind. “Do you think he’s still here?”

“Doubtful. If he really stuck around, he wouldn’t have been tied to this place the way a ghost would be,” Hizashi says. “If he stayed behind and if he went anywhere, it was probably after his brother. Or after anybody who could deal with his brother.”

Somebody was dealing with his brother – Mr. Yagi and his master. Hizashi glances over at the journal again. “How does it say he died, anyway?”

The entry you just read is the last entry in the journal. You reach for Yoichi’s chart again and come face to face with the causes of death: Starvation and dehydration, both severe, with no other complicating factor. You recall a coroner’s report saying Yoichi starved himself to death, and the chart says he stopped eating, but one of the people who cared for him added a note of their own. They said that Yoichi ate and drank as normal, but it didn’t matter – He withered away before my eyes into a shell of himself. Withered. Just like the pet that was killed by the ghost did.

You don’t realize you didn’t answer until Hizashi leans over your shoulder and reads for himself. “This whole thing smacks of Tomura,” he says aloud. You glare at him. “No, I know this wasn’t him. But Shigaraki here has a type of ghost he prefers. They don’t just kill, they torment. They destroy.”

“Isn’t that what you did?”

“Artfully,” Hizashi says. He slides the notebook he’s been sketching in across the table to you. “There’s nothing artful about this.”

You take one look and recoil. “I did this off a sketch in there, since we can’t take photos,” Hizashi says. He turns the page quickly, but the image of Shigaraki Yoichi’s twisted, shriveled corpse is going to stick with you for a long time. “Check this out, though. Shigaraki Yoichi, age twenty-five. Who does he look like?”

Tomura. He looks sort of like Tomura. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing,” Hizashi says innocently. “We’ve got no control over what we look like when we materialize, by the way. It just happens, and not everybody gets blessed with my good looks.”

“Why mention it, then?”

“It’s just funny,” Hizashi says. “How Tomura’s the only one who didn’t go completely fucking batshit crazy, and how he’s also the only one who looks like his conjurer’s crazy little brother.”

“He doesn’t look that much like him,” you say. You pull your phone out of your pocket, realize that you get approximately zero reception in the archive room, and stand up. “I’ll be back. I have to make a call.”

Hizashi shoos you off, and when you glance back over your shoulder on your way out, you see him peering at your notebook. Fine. It’s not like there’s anything in there you aren’t planning on telling the entire rest of the neighborhood once you get back.

The instant your phone gets reception back, you get a truly insane pileup of texts – from Magne, Himiko, Spinner, Keigo, and even Aizawa. But even all their texts together are still dwarfed by the sheer number of texts you’ve gotten from Tomura. You can only stare in horror, and as you watch, another three texts come in.

Two of them are from the ghost friends groupchat. Aizawa’s direct-replying to Keigo. What on earth possessed you to use that word?

It’s just a word! How was I supposed to know it would make him worse? Keigo’s indignance is leaking through the phone. ‘Dead zone’ is metaphorical! It’s not –

You stop reading and call Tomura before he can text you again or blow up the house. “I’m fine,” you say the instant he answers, and before he can say a word. “There are places where phones don’t get good service and the room the documents are in is one of them. That’s why your messages weren’t going through.”

“Then why is it called a dead zone?”

Tomura sounds stressed. You haven’t heard him sound like that since the time he conference-called the ghost friends while you were sick. “It’s just a turn of phrase,” you say. “Humans use ‘dead’ a lot to mean that something doesn’t work. Like something being dead in the water means it’s stopped working. Somebody being dead weight means they’re not helping as much as they should. The slowest runner in a race is dead last. Does that make any sense?”

Tomura’s quiet for a moment, then renders his verdict. “Humans say ‘dead’ too much.”

“Maybe,” you say. Tomura makes an irritated noise. “Hey, can you relax? I don’t know what you were doing to the house, but whatever it was, it probably scared Phantom. She doesn’t like loud sounds.”

“She’s fine. I wasn’t being loud.” Tomura still sounds guilty, which means something got damaged, and based on the fact that the entire neighborhood was texting you, it probably had something to do with the lights. You wonder how many lightbulbs you’re going to have to replace when you get back. “You should have told me about the spots with bad service.”

“I would have if I’d known you were going to freak out.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Tomura snaps. “Did you learn anything? Was there any point to you going?”

“Yeah, I learned some stuff,” you say. “I’ll know more once I call my boss.”

“Is that why you looked at your phone? To call him?”

“I was going to text you, too,” you say. Tomura hasn’t been this clingy in a while. It’s getting annoying – except last night you were upset because he hadn’t called, so you’re clingy, too. “I didn’t come here to get away from you, Tomura.”

“I know,” he says. “I didn’t think you ran. I thought – I don’t know. He didn’t pick up, either. I thought –”

He thought something happened to you. “Nothing happened,” you promise. “I’ll be home late tonight or early tomorrow. Everything’s fine.”

“I should have gone with you.”

Your stomach clenches. “Don’t be stupid. We wouldn’t have anywhere to live if you’d gone with me.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Tomura doesn’t follow up with what he’s actually saying, which is good, because you already know. This fight’s been brewing for a month, and you don’t want to have it over the phone. “Just go call your boss.”

“Okay,” you say. “I’ll message you when me and Hizashi are done. I –”

You cut yourself off one word into the slip-up. You haven’t come that close in a while. “What?” Tomura asks.

“I miss you. Bye.”

You hang up the phone, cursing the near miss. You have a rule about telling Tomura you love him, which is that you don’t do it. You call Mr. Yagi instead, and even though it’s Saturday, he picks up right away. “Sir, did you and your master ever encounter a spirit? A human spirit?”

“A human spirit,” Mr. Yagi repeats. “In what sense?”

“Something – friendly,” you say. “Or maybe not friendly. Just not harmful. To you.”

The instant you say it, you realize how similar it sounds to the way you originally thought about Tomura. Dangerous, but not dangerous to you. “I would not have called it human then,” Mr. Yagi says, “but for a time, early in our hunt for Shigaraki Akira, a presence accompanied my master and I. Neither she nor I had words for it. It was not something either of us had encountered before.”

Hizashi said it would be rare, if it was even possible at all. Mr. Yagi’s voice is wary when he speaks. “Why do you ask?”

“Shigaraki Yoichi. In his last journal entry, he swears to stay behind after his death and oppose his older brother,” you say. You hear Mr. Yagi suck in a breath. “Could it have been him?”

“If it was, the strength of his spirit must have been immense,” Mr. Yagi says. “Human souls were not made to dwell here without bodies. To remain with us as long as he did would take a tremendous act of will, and to provide any kind of strength – he aided us in our battles on more than one occasion.”

“So he had power.”

“Great power. Human souls aren’t fragile the way the souls of ghosts are,” Mr. Yagi says. “They cannot be blasted apart. In our early battles, this spirit – Shigaraki Yoichi, if you’re correct about this – shielded me from errors that would have killed me otherwise. Instead I was able to learn from my mistakes. By the time the spirit departed, I was more than able to fight for myself.”

So Yoichi’s mission did succeed. He was able to resist his brother. “Do you know why he left?”

“I assume that once we no longer needed him, his will to remain in this world was no longer sufficient to resist the pull of the world beyond,” Mr. Yagi says. “To resist as long as he did was miraculous.”

“How long ago did he vanish?”

“That will take me a moment. My memory is not what it once was.” Mr. Yagi speaks up again after maybe two seconds. “Between a hundred and a hundred and twenty years ago.”

“Okay,” you say. “Did he ever say anything to you? Were you able to communicate with him at all?”

“I was not, but my master was. I’ll check her journals and let you know what I find.”

You thank Mr. Yagi and hang up the phone. Before you go inside, you text an apology to the ghost friends groupchat for whatever nonsense Tomura pulled. And then you sit there for a second, trying to figure out how to respond to the pileup of crazy texts Tomura sent.

You try to put yourself in his shoes, think about what this looks like from his side. The person you care about has left. They gave you a phone so you could talk to them, only they’re not answering, and the person you sent with them to protect them isn’t answering, either. You know the world’s dangerous. You’re worried that the person you care about will leave you for good. You don’t understand enough about the outside world to come up with alternate explanations for the undelivered messages. Thinking about it like that, it’s not a surprise that Tomura panicked.

It's not your fault, but you still want to make him feel better. Feeling twenty kinds of crazy, you snap a quick selfie and send it to him. Then you send a message – thinking about you – and add a heart emoji to go with it.

It’s not a lie. You are thinking about him. The heart emoji isn’t a lie, either. But it feels weird. This is the kind of thing you’d do with a boyfriend, and Tomura – you remember last night and wince. The two of you defined the relationship. He is your boyfriend. Which makes it not weird at all, except for the part where your boyfriend’s a ghost.

Ghost boyfriend. You have a ghost boyfriend. The thought’s so absurd that you’re still giggling about it when you get back to the archive room. Hizashi looks up, scowling, as you step through the door. “What’s so funny?”

You put your mask back on and make an effort to get your shit together. “I talked to my boss. He says that there was a presence following them – helping them – from the time they started fighting Shigaraki until about a hundred and twenty years ago. After that it vanished. He said he thinks its will just ran out.”

“Huh,” Hizashi says. He doesn’t look convinced. “You know what else happened a hundred and twenty years ago?”

“You got an ear piercing you regret?”

Hizashi’s scowl deepens. “I know you’re not this stupid, human. What happened a hundred and twenty years ago that’s relevant to you, specifically?” You get the answer, but not fast enough for Hizashi’s liking. “If you’re right, if Yoichi stuck around, if he was helping your boss and his master, and if he fucked off purposely a hundred and twenty years ago, where would he have gone except straight to that house?”

“What would have been the point of that?” You look at your notes, then at the pile of papers left. Then at your watch. “Let’s just copy the rest of these word for word. We can go through them when we get back.”

“Fine by me.” Hizashi picks up his pen again.

By the time the two of you leave the museum for good, you’ve copied down everything including the photos, courtesy of Hizashi’s apparent skills as a sketch artist. You’ve also got a bunch of texts – from the ghost friends groupchat accepting your apology for all of Tomura’s nonsense, from your mom wondering what time you and Hizashi will be back, one from Spinner that’s just a list of crazy things Tomura’s been naming his Pokémon. One from Mr. Yagi, telling you that he and Izuku are compiling every mention of the spirit from his master’s journals. A bunch from Tomura that are just pictures of empty space, in various spots in the house, occasionally with Phantom in the background.

It’s so weird that you eventually have to show it to Hizashi, who takes one look and cracks up. “Idiot,” he cackles. “He’s trying to take a selfie.”

Live ghosts don’t show up clearly on camera, even when they’re embodied. Tomura figured that out about twenty photos in. Hizashi, who’s still got your phone and is refusing to give it back, reads the texts aloud. “I’m materialized so it should work. This is stupid. You’re gonna forget what I look like.” Hizashi howls with laughter. “It would be cute if it wasn’t so pathetic.”

You snatch your phone away from Hizashi before he can read any more of your texts. You read the remaining messages from Tomura in silence. Phantom misses you. She keeps going from room to room and crying. That’s not a surprise – Phantom’s barely been away from you since you adopted her. It makes sense that she’d be worried about where you are. You said you were thinking about me. What are you thinking about?

A lot of things. You’re not sure how to break them down, but somehow it feels easier to talk to Tomura by text than in person. He can’t see your face like this, read what you’re feeling from it. He only knows what you tell him. Different things. What you and Phantom are up to. What we should do when I get back. Whether you and Tomura have been sharing space with the spirit of Shigaraki Yoichi all this time. If it was really necessary for you to send Hizashi up here after me. That kind of thing.

It was necessary. So you’d be safe. Tomura types fast. Are you coming home yet?

In a couple hours. I have to meet my parents’ neighbors first so they’ll know my parents weren’t lying about having a daughter.

That was mean. You shouldn’t have said that, but you’re tired and stressed, and you wish more than anything that you were already home. Tomura responds. When are they coming to meet me?

You almost choke on thin air. You don’t want to meet them.

I’m supposed to. That’s what happens with boyfriends in those dumb romance movies.

It’s been a while since you wished you’d been more careful about what you let Tomura watch. You didn’t miss the feeling, and you’d love to never put your parents and Tomura in the same room – but your parents know Tomura exists, and they want to meet him, too. We can talk about it when I get back.

Tomura’s only been texting for twenty-four hours, and he already has some bad habits, like hopping subjects whenever he feels like it instead of in any way that makes sense. Send me another picture.

You’ve created a monster. You sigh and send another selfie, and in the driver’s seat, Hizashi snorts. It bothers you for some reason. “Do you have a problem? How did you get pictures of Aizawa?”

“Took them myself,” Hizashi says with a shrug.

“Did he know you were taking them?”

Hizashi waves one hand. “Technicality.”

“No, it isn’t,” you say. “What did he say when he found out about you?”

“Who are you and what the hell are you doing in my hospital room?” Hizashi says, and you muffle a snicker. “But I’d just saved his life. That bought me a whole lot of goodwill. How did your gloomy brat introduce himself? Flopping face-first in your lap and begging for attention?”

“No,” you say. You’re not about to say that your first official introduction to Tomura occurred in your bathroom right after you stepped out of the shower. “A coyote broke into the yard and attacked me and Phantom, and he saved us.”

“Huh,” Hizashi says. It’s quiet for a second. “People are going to ask how you met him. If you want them to like him, tell them that.”

You sit there, your mind blank. “Say it was on a walk or something,” Hizashi continues. “Don’t tell them he was in your yard.”

“That’s good advice,” you say after a moment. “Thanks.”

By the time you get back to your parents’ house, their party is in full swing. You knew that they invited you for a reason, and that the reason was to prove that they definitely weren’t lying about having a daughter. You know that. And still, it’s – nice. It’s nice that your parents want to brag about you, to introduce you to their neighborhood as their daughter who’s got a job and a boyfriend and a house of her own. It’s nice to hear them talk about you like they’re proud of you.

You’re conscious of Hizashi lurking at the edges of the party, and Hizashi’s words never really left your head. Mommy and Daddy didn’t love you enough. Maybe they didn’t. There’s nothing you could have done to change the way you grew up. But you’re okay now. You’re happy now. If they want to be proud of who you’ve become, that’s fine with you.

It’s fine with you, but you’re still glad to be out of there when it’s time. Your parents are worried about you and Hizashi driving home so late, but Hizashi’s wide awake, and you don’t think there’s any way you can fall asleep in his presence. You’re pretty sure he won’t kill you, but still. “Here,” your mother says, pushing a travel mug full of coffee into Hizashi’s hands. Hizashi protests that she should keep her mug, and she shakes her head. “I’ll pick it up later. We’ll be coming down for a visit soon.”

It’s a good thing you’ve already said goodbye and gotten in the car, and that Hizashi’s car has tinted windows. You’re pretty sure all the blood drains right out of your face.

Even if your mom didn’t see it, Hizashi does, and he spends the first fifteen minutes of the drive laughing about it. “You should throw a party just like they did. Let them meet the whole neighborhood at once, and maybe they’ll be so distracted by the cute kids and what Dabi looks like that they won’t notice what a crusty goblin your boyfriend is.”

You scrunch down in your seat like a twelve-year-old. “I’ll just tell him to stay invisible. And I’ll tell them he’s out of town.”

“Good luck convincing him to stay invisible. They might be the two people in the world he’s actually interested in meeting.” Hizashi gets his snickering under control and sobers up slightly. “What is it with you humans and wanting to hide us from your families, anyway? We’re important, but you all do it. Why?”

“We’re used to you guys. They aren’t,” you say. “Even when you’re embodied, there’s something a little – off. More than just your eyes.”

It’s hard to explain what it is, but there’s something with every ghost you’ve met other than Mr. Yagi. Maybe if you’d known about ghosts before you met him, you would have been able to spot it with him, too. “Besides, I don’t get the sense that a lot of us have families we want to introduce anybody to.”

“That’s sort of a theme. Shou’s theory is that most people who end up hanging with ghosts have had some pretty bad experiences with humans.” Hizashi flips on his turn signal, hops in the high-speed lane, and floors the accelerator. “Your parents aren’t bad. A little cold, maybe. Definitely not bad enough to make hanging out with Tomura the better offer.”

He’s throwing out bait, waiting for you to jump on it. You’re not going to. You sit quietly as five or six miles zoom past, and Hizashi speaks up again. “What, you’re not going to defend him?”

“Nothing I say is going to change your opinion about me or about him,” you say. “Nothing you say is going to change my opinion about him, either. So there’s no point.”

“Stubborn, huh?” Hizashi chuckles. “I like that in a human. You probably could have done better than him, but he could have done a hell of a lot worse than you.”

Any compliment from Hizashi’s sure to have a backhand to it. You’re just tired enough to take this one at face value – ignoring the fact that the person giving it hates you, ignoring the fact that Tomura’s never going to embody himself permanently, ignoring the fact that you’re most likely walking into a fight you’ve been putting off for a month when you get home. You give up on scrunching down and roll your seat back instead. “Thanks.”

[candycandy00]

The League of Villains Halloween Horror Anthology Sign Up

This is the sign up post for the first annual League of Villains Halloween Horror Anthology!

The deadline to sign up for this event is September 30th! Please keep that in mind!

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What it is:

The anthology will be various fanfics and fanart of League of Villains members reimagined as horror creatures/icons/characters, to be posted throughout October of this year. I thought it would be a fun way to get us all in the spooky Halloween mood.

This is an adults-only event! Please do not sign up unless you have your age listed in your bio or pinned post! Minors do not interact!

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Rules:

You can make fanfic or fanart, or both! But each piece must feature a League of Villains member (past or present, but only one per piece) as a horror creature/icon/character, such as a vampire or a masked killer. They have to be the source of the horror, so no zombie fics where the character is fighting zombies. If you pick zombie as your horror creature, the character you pick has to be a zombie.

Multiple people can claim each character, so if we get 30 Dabi fics, so be it. However, only one person can claim each horror icon for the medium you chose. So if someone already signed up for one of the characters as a vampire in a fic, you can’t sign up for a character (even a different one) as a vampire in a fic. You can sign up for a vampire in a fanart, provided no one else has. I will do these on a first come, first serve basis. So the first person to claim a given creature will get it. If a lot of people sign up and I feel like we’re legitimately running out of horror tropes, I might bend this rule a bit. Also! You can be specific to differentiate between creatures. Like an undead pirate is different from a regular zombie, and so on.

Fanfics can be X Reader or not. They can be NSFW/smut, or not. That’s up to you! If you choose Toga as your character, only write/draw SFW pieces for her, as she is a minor. It doesn’t matter if you age her up. You don’t have to make your piece horror, but it’s encouraged. This is a Halloween anthology after all. At the very least, a spooky vibe should be present, even if your piece is overall light hearted. Likewise, you don’t have to set the story on or around Halloween, but it would be nice to have some works that do so.

You can post your piece any time in October. From the first day of the month to the last. Ideally, the pieces will be spread out a bit throughout the month, but I’m not assigning anyone specific days. Just post it whenever you want in October.

If you sign up, but decide to drop out, that’s fine! This is a zero pressure event. You don’t even have to explain why. All I ask is that you send me a message or Ask letting me know so that I can remove you from the sign up list. Someone else might have wanted to write about the creature you chose, but couldn’t because you picked it.

When you post your piece, use the tag #lovhalloweenhorror. Feel free to use the tag before then! Use it to talk about the piece you’re working on, use it to post sketches or previews! Heck, use it even if you just plan to enjoy the fan works! Use it to talk about things you’d like to see/read as a viewer. Anything goes! Let’s build up some excitement!

As works begin to be posted in October, I’ll create a Masterlist post to list all of them in one convenient place. If you post your piece and you don’t see it added to the list within a day or so, send me a message to let me know in case I missed it.

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How to Sign up:

If you’d like to sign up to create a piece for this event, send me an Ask or a direct message with the following information:

Fanart or Fanfic?

Character?

Horror Creature?

That’s it! Please send a separate message for each piece you plan to make.

As people sign up, I’ll list them in this post so everyone can know what’s been claimed. Please be patient with me. I might be slow!

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The List:

Fanfiction:

@missrosegold - Dabi - Demon

@candycandy00 - Shigaraki - Scarecrow

@jabberwocky-92 - Shigaraki - God of Decay

@scary-grace - Shigaraki - Ghost/Wraith

@spicymeatball1992 - Shigaraki - Incubus

@jabberwocky-92 - Dabi - Grim Reaper

@gamergirlghost - Toga - Vampire

@doumadono - Dabi - Merman

@doumadono - Toga - Rusalka

@red-as-mars - Dabi - Charro Negro

@candycandy00 - Mr. Compress - Mad Scientist

Fanart:

@sammystep - Twice - Dr. Frankenstein

@fleetwoodmoth - Dabi - Fire Atronach

@selinearts - Toga - Demon

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Ideas/Inspiration:

If you’re having trouble deciding on a horror creature/icon/character, here’s a list of some to give you some ideas! Obviously, what you pick doesn’t have to come from this list, and in fact I’m looking forward to seeing all the different ideas I never thought of. You can even create your own creature! This is just a list of some possibilities.

Vampire | Werewolf | Demon | Witch/Warlock | Zombie | Ghost/Wraith | Banshee | Masked Killer | Mad Scientist | Scarecrow | Executioner | Butcher | Alien | Cyborg/Android | Witchfinder | Deep Sea Creature | Clown | Cannibal | Mummy

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Feel free to reblog this! Let’s get as many people involved as possible!

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 5) - a Shigaraki x f! Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Chapter 5

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it, and you’re slowly coming around to the idea that what’s wrong with your house might be one of your favorite things about it. Part of it is how happy Phantom is – you feel guilty leaving her at home alone, but a lot less guilty when you know she’s with Tomura, who’s kind of crazy about her. Part of it is knowing that you’ll never find another insect in your house again, and that even if you do, you won’t have to kill it. Part of it is never worrying about a break-in, because based on how Tomura responds to even friendly people coming over, he could probably give any potential intruder a massive heart attack even without materializing.

All of that is nice. But if you’re being honest – and you try to make yourself be honest, with yourself if no one else – the main reason why you’re so happy with what’s wrong with your house is because you and Tomura are sort of, maybe, finally getting along.

You have to buy a new microwave after the soup can incident, and it wasn’t the only time Tomura tried to take care of you while you were sick. He ruined a lot of the stuff he tried to help with – flooded the hallway with bubbles after using liquid detergent in the washing machine, left the fridge open for eight hours and cranked up your electricity bill to unsustainable levels – but when you explained what went wrong, he didn’t get mad at you. He called you an idiot a lot, mostly for getting sick in the first place, but he also fed Phantom and brought you food so you wouldn’t have to get off the couch, and in the biggest shock of all, he let Keigo into the house to check on you. You’re pretty sure he only did it to piss Dabi off, but still.

There hasn’t been any more touching. Other than dragging you from the hallway to the couch the first day you were sick, Tomura doesn’t get close to you unless he’s dematerialized. That’s fine with you. You’re pretending the whole incident didn’t happen, or trying to. Sometimes the thought creeps into your head anyway. You’ll be doing something completely innocuous and all at once your mind will explode with the memory of Tomura’s raspy voice begging you to keep talking, not to leave him.

And then the images come in, things you never saw but things you can picture perfectly: His pale skin flushed and his shoulders rising and falling in unsteady pants and his hands frantic and shaking as he jerks himself off. It invariably turns your face into a furnace, and Tomura always notices. But Tomura thinks a flushed face means you’ve got a fever, so you’re safe from being found out. You don’t know what would happen if he did find out. The longer you go without anybody finding out anything at all, the better.

The flu sweeps through the neighborhood, but strangely enough, you’re the only non-ghost who catches it. Eri, Himiko, and Magne all get sick, and Hizashi spends a lot of time gloating until he comes down with it, too. The only sort-of-former ghost who avoids it is Dabi, but that’s because Dabi never goes outside. Or Keigo won’t let him go outside. You’re not sure which it is.

“It’s weird,” Spinner says. You’re giving him a ride to the grocery store because you both need to go, and because you owe him for somehow catching a whole anthill and leaving it on your porch. “That just the ghosts caught it. Usually they don’t get sick.”

“Shouldn’t they get sick more than we do? They don’t have immunity or anything.”

“I guess,” Spinner says, frowning. “But I brought home all kinds of weird shit when I was in school, and Magne never caught any of it until now.”

That is weird. “Jin says he and the others always got sick, but never Himiko before this time. If it wasn’t for me getting it, I’d think it was a ghost thing, too.”

“It could still be a ghost thing even if you got it,” Spinner says. “You spend all your time hanging out with the most powerful ghost anybody’s ever seen. Maybe you’ve got enough ghost on you to catch the – hey, are you okay?”

“Fine,” you wheeze. There’s no way you’re telling Spinner that you misheard “ghost on you” as “ghost in you” and choked on your own spit. “Go on. What were you saying?”

But Spinner’s changing the subject. “What’s that like, anyway? Living with a ghost that strong.”

“You should know. Magne’s pretty tough.”

“She’s got a body count, sure,” Spinner says. All the ghosts in the neighborhood have killed somebody, but Magne and Hizashi are the only ones who need both hands and both feet to count how many. “But I never got the feeling from her that the whole street gets from Tomura. That aura he projects is something else. Did you really not feel it when you were buying the place?”

“I didn’t,” you say. “I knew there had to be something off about the house, or somebody else would have bought it. But I did everything I could think of to figure it out and there was nothing. I’ve never felt what you all are talking about from him. From Hizashi, sure. But not from him.”

“Hizashi’s scary even as a human,” Spinner agrees. “I don’t know how Aizawa handles it. I’d be pissing myself.”

“Aizawa seems pretty bomb-proof,” you say. “I guess that’s a good thing. Or they would have been in trouble when Eri’s conjurer showed up.”

The whole street knows the story, even if the Aizawa family never talks about it. You heard five separate versions of it, one each from Himiko, Jin, Jin’s little brother, a former ghost named Atsuhiro who lives at the top of the street, and Keigo. You’re inclined to trust Keigo’s version, but you see the look on Spinner’s face, and it makes you question things. “Do you know something about it that I don’t?”

“They had the same conjurer,” Spinner says. “Eri and Magne.”

Your jaw drops. “We’re pretty sure he was Atsuhiro’s, too,” Spinner continues, “but Atsuhiro says he doesn’t remember who conjured him. The circumstances are pretty close, though. That conjurer liked abandoned buildings, or ones that were in danger of falling in. When the building comes down, it turns the ghost loose.”

“He wanted to set them free?”

“I guess,” Spinner says. “Loose ghosts can cause a lot more trouble than trapped ones. I’m glad he’s dead. And I’m glad he found the Aizawas first.”

Eri’s conjurer sounds like a real creep, but Spinner didn’t strike you as the kind of guy who wishes he could shove the bad stuff off onto somebody else. “Why? You don’t think Magne could have taken him?”

“She probably could have,” Spinner says. He gets out of the car and heads for the store, leaving you to chase after him. “But there’s this legend. Or a myth. Maybe a ghost story. It says that if you kill your own conjurer, even after you’re embodied, it sends you back.”

“I thought they couldn’t go back to the world between,” you say. “Aizawa never said –”

“Aizawa doesn’t know everything,” Spinner says. His jaw is clenched, and the next words he speaks are hard to hear. “I didn’t want her to go back.”

“Oh.” Your feelings on Tomura are just mixed enough that the idea of him vanishing permanently doesn’t make you panic. Or at least you tell yourself that it doesn’t make you panic and try not to think about it any harder than that. But Spinner looks miserable just saying it out loud. “Um –”

“I need to grab my stuff. I’ll meet you back here when I’m done.”

“Okay,” you say. You want to say something else, but Spinner vanishes down the aisle before you can think of what it should be.

You’re turning a lot of things over in your head as you do your grocery shopping. The legend about ghosts returning to the world between. The world between itself, what it’s like there. The now-dead conjurer who summoned Magne and Eri. The maybe-still-alive conjurer who summoned Tomura. But Tomura’s still a ghost. Even if his conjurer came back, there’s nothing they could do to hurt him.

You remember Spinner saying that Magne didn’t like this world at first, all the way back on the first day you met Aizawa. Maybe he was worried she’d go back if she got the chance. You gather up your last items, pay for them, and go to wait for Spinner, who comes back five minutes after you with a bottle of soda, a bunch of bananas, and a whole bag full of makeup and nail polish from the discount bin. “It’s for Magne,” he says when he sees you looking at it. “She likes pretty stuff. I’d buy nicer stuff if I could afford it.”

“Sometimes the cheap stuff is best.” Your favorite sunscreen is a discount brand, and you’ve never had very much money. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I think I was being kind of insensitive.”

“You didn’t know or anything,” Spinner says. “I don’t talk about it very much. I, like – it’s not heartwarming. Or cute. Or anything like that.”

“It doesn’t have to be any of those things,” you say. It’s not like your ghost story fits, either. You struggle with what to say as the two of you walk back out to the parking lot. “You don’t have to tell me. You can if you want to.”

“Really? Everybody else wanted to drag it out of me,” Spinner says. “Somebody new shows up in the neighborhood, and everybody else cases the joint for a few days and comes crawling out of the woodwork. I’d been here two weeks when Aizawa ambushed me with a tape recorder. Everybody’s in everybody else’s business all the time.”

You didn’t get that treatment, but then again, you didn’t have a ghost when you moved in. “It makes sense,” you say as you start the car. Spinner raises his eyebrows. “Ghosts don’t have any boundaries at all. The more of them you hang out with, the less boundaries you have.”

Spinner snorts. “You wouldn’t believe what happens when they start talking to each other. The shit they’ll say – one time I heard Himiko telling Eri how cute it is that Jin picks his nose and farts in his sleep. And she wasn’t being sarcastic. Once they choose a human, they really commit.”

You wonder what Tomura would say about you to the other ghosts, if he ever talked to them. If he’d say anything about you at all. “How do you think about your relationship with Magne, then? Is she like your friend, your sister, your aunt –”

“My big sister,” Spinner says. You back out of the parking spot and steer towards the road, and the noise in the car almost covers up what he says next. “My mom.”

You’re not close with your parents. There was never any real reason why, and it’s not like you hate them. You’re an only child, and the three of you just never felt like a family – not like the families your friends were part of, or the ones you saw on TV, or even the weird ghost families in the neighborhood you live in now. Maybe it was different when you were too young to remember, but as you grew up, the three of you felt more like roommates than anything else. You always felt like you were alone. Moving out just made it official.

But it’s not that way for everybody. Not even most people. You glance sideways at Spinner. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, and then he tells you the story.

Spinner’s parents weren’t great. That’s not an uncommon story in the neighborhood – Jin’s dad was an all-purpose batterer, and Shinsou was in foster care – but unlike the two of them, there was no friendly ghost in Spinner’s house. Spinner ran away from home when he was twelve, and nobody looked for him. He went from town to town, building to building, alone. He was fifteen when he found himself staying in the abandoned warehouse Magne haunted.

At first, Spinner says, there was no way to tell that the place was haunted at all. When Magne showed herself, she was always embodied, and he thought she was human, just like him. And she was nice to him. She brought him things he needed, although she never said where she found them. She talked to him, although she never answered the questions he asked her about herself. “She cared about me,” Spinner says. “For real, not pretending like everybody else did. I never wanted to leave.”

But he had to. Spinner caught the attention of the wrong gang of criminals, and although Magne hid him, they found him anyway. Magne’s way of draining people was different than Tomura’s is. Spinner tells you about lying on his back on the concrete floor of the warehouse, watching the people who were attacking him implode, one by one. “And then, with the last one, something happened,” Spinner says. “The whole world – I don’t know how to describe it. It did something. Usually people aren’t conscious when their ghosts embody themselves permanently, but I was. I saw it happen. I knew before she did.”

You wish Spinner could describe it better. It’s not like you’re ever going to see for yourself. “It was scary for everybody,” Spinner says. “Me and her. There we are in that stupid warehouse and there are dead people everywhere and we can leave, finally – except I’m so beat I can’t tell which end is up. It was three whole days before we got anywhere it was safe to talk about stuff.”

“Was there a lot to talk about?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Spinner says, shaking his head. “All the human stuff? Even when they embody themselves, they never embody themselves long enough to get a feel for what it’s really like. And there’s no way for them to experience all the human stuff ahead of time. Like eating, sleeping, taking a piss –”

You imagine the look on Tomura’s face if he permanently embodied himself and then found out about having to pee, and then you’re struggling not to laugh. “That’s bad enough,” Spinner says. “But then there’s the thing where she’s, like – a whole human. A whole human who didn’t exist before. There was paperwork. It sucked.”

You hadn’t thought about that. “How does that even work?”

“Honestly? That’s how we met Hizashi,” Spinner says. You blink. “He spent so long blending into the human world before he embodied himself full-time that he had to learn to forge documents to do stuff, and he’s creepy good at it. He gets you the basic stuff – birth certificate, ID – and then he builds a whole paper trail. Somebody who looks at Magne’s documents is never going to know she didn’t exist five years ago.”

“So that’s how you found this place, too,” you realize. That means Hizashi and Aizawa were here before Spinner and Magne, but when did the rest of them move in? “Who was here first?”

Spinner gives you an odd look. “Your ghost,” he says. “Tomura.”

“He’s not mine,” you say, almost on reflex. “He’d be mad if he heard you say that.”

Spinner basically straight up ignores you. “I gotta say, it was weird to hear you name-drop him that first time. We’ve all always known he’s there, but we know so little about him that he’s basically got legend status – and to you he’s just Tomura. And that’s it.”

“What else was he supposed to be? I didn’t know anything about any of this until I moved here.” You feel hurt, even though you shouldn’t. Spinner’s not saying any of the things your brain is telling you he’s saying – not that you shouldn’t be here, not that you don’t deserve to be in the same house as Tomura, not that you don’t understand. “I’m glad he does what he does for everybody in the neighborhood. I don’t think it’s conscious –”

“Oh, we know that. He doesn’t give a shit,” Spinner says, and laughs. “Maybe that’s why it’s weird. Because he clearly gives a shit about you.”

You knew that. Hearing somebody else say it, somebody like Spinner who doesn’t have a weird relationship with their ghost, makes you all kinds of uncomfortable. “Like, he got on the phone for you. Live ghosts hate technology. They hate anything they can’t haunt. For a ghost like him to get on the phone, he must care a lot.”

You laugh, wondering if it sounds as uncomfortable as you feel. “I still have to apologize to Aizawa for that phone call. Tomura was kind of a dick.”

“They’re all kind of dicks,” Spinner says, and your laughter feels a little less uncomfortable this time. “They can’t really help it when they don’t understand. The embodied ones learn eventually.”

You’re not so sure about that. Dabi’s still very much of a dick. Magne was a dick when she was sick, but so was everybody who got the ghost flu, you included. Hizashi’s a dick on purpose sometimes, but most of the time he isn’t. He can’t be. Aizawa wouldn’t have stayed with him otherwise.

Out of all the ghost families in the neighborhood, you’ve spent the most time observing Aizawa’s. You don’t know why, when you’ve got Keigo and Dabi right across the street, but your eyes are consistently drawn to the house where Aizawa and Hizashi and their kids live. At first it might have been because you needed to confirm your conclusion. You needed to know whether Aizawa married Hizashi because he wanted to or because he had to. And you’ve watched them long enough that you’re sure: Aizawa loves Hizashi, in the same weird way Hizashi loves him.

It’s not like you can’t see why, even if you’re legitimately spooked by Hizashi. There’s nobody more committed to a relationship than an embodied ghost. Hizashi likes to make sweeping statements about all the things he’d do if Aizawa asked him to – like fighting God, or bringing him a piece of the sun, or breaking into the cat shelter and stealing all the cats – but what he actually does is quieter. Aizawa’s relaxed when Hizashi’s around. He doesn’t look so tired. He smiles more. Hizashi makes him comfortable. Hizashi makes him happy.

There’s a line in one of the few ghost books Aizawa didn’t write that’s been playing in your head lately: Ghosts haunt the space they’re given. That’s how they haunt houses. Maybe that’s how they haunt people, too.

“Thanks,” Spinner says, and you glance at him. Somehow you’re parked in front of his house already, when you barely remember driving home. “For the ride. And for not being weird about things.”

“Any time,” you say, and you mean it. You watch as Spinner makes his way up the front steps and opens the door, only to find Magne waiting there already. She hugs him so hard she lifts him off his feet.

You drive the rest of the way back to your house, lost in thought, and greet Phantom on autopilot before you start unpacking the groceries. You know Tomura’s around somewhere, and sure enough, there’s a puff of cold air against the back of your neck – the air chilling and then displacing in response to his presence. “Spinner,” he says without preamble. “Do you like him?”

For once you don’t play dumb. “He’s a nice guy. Kind of young for me.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-six,” you say. “How old are you?”

“A hundred and ten,” Tomura says, and your jaw drops. “I think. It was hard to count in here before. It never felt like anything changed.”

“It probably didn’t.” The first time you stepped into the house, you felt almost like time had stopped. “Me and Phantom change. I bet that helps.”

“Whatever,” Tomura says. At his heart, Tomura’s still an asshole most of the time. When he speaks up again, his voice sounds different. “When you say change, you mean age. Don’t you?”

You nod. There’s an edge to Tomura’s voice now. “How long do you live?”

You don’t like thinking about how long Phantom will live. Your vocal cords feel pinched and tight when you speak. “Phantom’s breed of dog can live to be thirteen or fourteen if you take good care of them. I take good care of her, and she’s only two. That’s – eleven more years.”

“That’s not long enough,” Tomura says. He’s telling you. Your eyes well up. “What about you?”

“If I’m lucky?” It’s easier to think about this for you than for Phantom. “I might make it to ninety. If nothing goes wrong.”

“That’s not long enough, either,” Tomura snaps. “What do you mean, if nothing goes wrong?”

If you’re not allowed to play dumb, Tomura isn’t, either. “You’ve watched medical dramas with me. Car accidents. Heart attacks. Alzheimer’s – the one where you forget everything. Cancer. All those things can happen to humans at any time. And they do, every day.”

“No,” Tomura says.

“It’s mortality. You can’t just say ‘no’ and opt out.”

“No,” Tomura says again. “That’s not how this works. You don’t get to leave me.”

Your stomach twists. “I’m sixty-four years away from being ninety. That’s a long time.”

“It’s not long enough!” There’s a light thud from behind you, the sound of Tomura’s feet hitting the floor as he materializes. A pair of ice-cold arms wrap around your waist, gripping you tightly and yanking you backwards against an equally cold chest. He’s breathing hard, even though he doesn’t have to breathe. His heart is beating harder, even though there’s no reason for him to have one. If not for the chill spreading over you, you couldn’t tell a difference between him and someone human.

His voice, when he speaks, is full of menace. “It can try to take you. I won’t let it.”

“There’s not a grim reaper,” you say. At least, you think there isn’t. But the world has ghosts in it. Maybe it’s got a personification of death, too. “There’s nothing for you to fight. This is just how things are.”

“No, it isn’t. You and Phantom are mine.” Phantom comes running at the sound of her name and drops her ball at your feet. You kick it away and she runs off in pursuit. “The others are stupid. They did it wrong. I know better.”

Your teeth are starting to chatter. “What do you mean?”

“They embodied themselves so they could follow their humans,” Tomura says. “Wherever they go. Even after they’re dead. I’m going to make you follow me.”

You want to tell him to quit talking like a lunatic. Remind him that ghosts and humans are two different species, that ghosts can become human but not the other way around. Tell him that this isn’t a fairytale, that the rules won’t bend just because he wants them to, that you’re going to die one day and there’s nothing he can do about it. “Don’t be so sentimental,” you say, like an idiot. Like an asshole. “What kind of ghost are you?”

The last time you said something like that to Tomura, he vanished, haunted your house all night, and then got so turned on from touching your hand that he flooded the entire neighborhood with horniness. This time he doesn’t vanish, but he doesn’t answer, either. He stays exactly where he is, arms lashed tightly around your waist, cheek resting against your hair, and the cold seeps into your bones.

“Is that really why they did it?” you ask after a while. Tomura makes some kind of noise that’s muffled by your hair. “The others.”

“Why do you care?” Tomura’s quiet for a second. “I get it. That human thing where you have to understand stuff so it won’t scare you.”

“I guess.”

“Then ask somebody else,” Tomura says, almost derisive. “I’d never do something that stupid.”

“Yeah,” you say. Your heart sinks, and you compartmentalize like you haven’t done since the first few months after you moved in. It’s almost been a year. A year ago you’d never have imagined this, and you wish you’d stayed that way. Don’t you? “I know.”

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 11) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Chapter 11

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. You’ve had various types of feelings about it since you figured out the details, but none of it quite compares to the sheer annoyance you feel when you wake up in the middle of the night to find Tomura dragging you off the couch. “What are you doing?”

“Shut up.” Tomura’s hand comes down over your mouth. “There’s a ghost out there.”

“Are you sure it’s a ghost?” you hiss around his hand. “What if it’s a conjurer.”

“Ghost.” Tomura shakes his head, then frowns. “Two ghosts. No. I don’t know.”

You try to stand up for a look and Tomura yanks you back. “Stay down. They can’t know you’re here.”

“My car is in the driveway,” you point out, exasperated. “They know someone’s here. And if they really are a ghost, why would they –”

Tomura dematerializes partially, going almost transparent. You’ve seen him do that before, when he’s trying to push his influence past the boundaries of the neighborhood or intensify its effects, and from out in the street you hear someone cough, then retch, then cough again. It sounds awful, but the sound is getting louder. Whoever it is, they’re coming closer. It has to be a conjurer. There’s no way another ghost would keep dragging themselves forward knowing Tomura’s waiting for them. If it’s a conjurer, not a ghost – Aizawa’s words flash through your head. “Stay here,” you tell Tomura. “I’ll handle this.”

“What?” Tomura lunges for you, but he can’t materialize fast enough. You get to the front of the house before he can grab you and peer out the window.

There are two people on the sidewalk. One of them is a woman, tall and dark-haired, dressed in the kind of clothes you can’t imagine wearing, let alone going outside in. She’s dragging someone with her, a man with blueish-purple hair. A man who looks sort of familiar, although you can’t place him. A man who’s definitely unconscious. The woman pushes open your front gate, steps over the threshold, and promptly dry-heaves into the dead grass. Tomura’s intensified his influence, so toxic that it’s even making you dizzy, but the woman keeps dragging herself forward, pulling the unconscious man after her.

She doubles over again, retches again, and calls out in a voice that trembles and cracks, barely loud enough to hear. “Help us,” she begs. “Help us, please –”

“Get out,” Tomura hisses, his voice reverberating through the house and into the yard, but something twinges in the back of your mind as you study the unconscious man. You open the door. “Don’t –”

Tomura grabs for you again, misses again, and you step out onto the front porch. The woman in the yard looks up at you. Her eyes are wide in the porch light and she’s blinking hard, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps. Her eyes are watering, or it looks like they should be. She’s blinking, but there are no tears coming down her face. The air ripples around her strangely, and suddenly you understand what she is, why she’s so affected by Tomura’s aura, why her eyes only work halfway. She’s a ghost. Not a former one. An unbound one.

The person she’s dragging is a ghost, too – or is he? The longer you look at him, the more familiar he gets, and the more obvious it becomes that something’s wrong. “I know him,” Tomura says suddenly. “He was here –”

The name clicks into place in your head. “Shirakumo,” you say, and the man stirs, groans. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” the unbound ghost says. She looks past you, focused on Tomura. “Please let us in.”

Tomura’s never let even a former ghost into the house. There’s no way he’ll let in a live one, especially not like this. But he’s not looking at her. He’s looking at Shirakumo, then at you, and then at Shirakumo again. Then back to you. “It’s our house,” he says, almost hesitantly. This is the wrong time for you to get butterflies, but it happens anyway. You’re really stupid. You nod, and Tomura faces the unbound ghost again. “If you try anything, I’ll kill you. You can drag him up here on your own.”

Tomura, in spite of everything, is still an asshole. You hurry down the steps barefoot to help the ghost carry Shirakumo, and when you touch him, you recoil in shock. Some parts of Shirakumo’s body are hot, so burning hot that you can feel them through his shirt. Other parts of him are so cold that it’s like sticking your hand in a bowl of dry ice, colder by far than what Tomura projects. Shirakumo’s not a ghost. He wasn’t a ghost when you met him. But touching him now feels like walking over your own grave.

Tomura helps to a certain extent, if only by propping the door open with his foot and holding Phantom so she won’t run away. He levels a question at the unbound ghost as the two of you carry Shirakumo up the stairs. “Why did you come here?”

“He told me about this place,” she says. She’s starting to have trouble holding her form. You can tell by the way her voice wavers, the way Shirakumo’s full weight falls on you for a split second. “It was the only place we could hide.”

“Hide from what?” you ask. The unbound ghost looks helplessly at you. “Where did you come here from?”

She says the name of a city. You see her mouth move, but the name goes in one ear and out the other without sticking in your thoughts. You have to ask her to say it again, and then the weight of what she’s saying crashes down on you. It’s a good thing you’ve finally made it to the living room and dropped Shirakumo on the couch. If you hadn’t, you’d have dropped him on the floor in horror.

You try to hide it, but Tomura notices. How long has Tomura known you this well? He issues a few threats to the other ghost about what will happen if she touches you or Phantom, then comes over to you. “What?”

“It’s –” You don’t know how to explain. You didn’t explain what you and Aizawa were looking for when you went back to the office “A ghost went missing in the city she just said. A conjurer was in that city, too. He could have had something to do with this.”

“I don’t know what this is.” Tomura makes a sharp, frustrated gesture. “He’s alive. You’re human and even you can see that. You can’t see the ghost. If you could you’d never have touched him. Fuck!”

The lights flicker. “Calm down,” you plead. You hold out your hands for Tomura’s and he gives them to you. “What do you mean? There’s another ghost?”

“It’s – attached to him. Part of him but not. It’s –” Tomura wavers for a moment, his materialization failing. His shoulders heave like he’s about to throw up. “It hurts.”

“Garaki did this.” The unbound ghost is mostly dematerialized now, down to nothing but a pair of eyes and a mouth and a voice. It’s unsettling to look at. “His conjurer. I don’t know how. We barely got away.”

On your couch, Shirakumo stirs. Shirakumo, or the ghost that’s apparently attached to him. When he speaks, you can hear two voices in one. “Kill me.”

“No,” you say reflexively. You can’t have a dead body on your couch, and you need more information. You need to know what happened. You need to know why. “I’m going to call Aizawa.”

Aizawa’s going to kick your ass for calling him this late. You pick up the phone and call him anyway, and he picks up on the fifth ring in the worst mood you’ve ever encountered him in. “This had better be important.”

“I found the ghost who went missing,” you say. Aizawa swears. “One ghost, and one person who’s – they’re alive, but there’s a ghost attached to them –”

“Where are they?” Aizawa demands, but it only takes him a second to figure out why you’re the one calling him. “They’re in your house?”

“Uh – yes.” You glance at Tomura. Tomura is scowling. “They said the person who did this – it was Garaki.”

You’re expecting some kind of response from Aizawa. Instead there’s a scuffle on his end of the line, and you hear Hizashi’s voice, faintly. “Shou, I’m not fucking around. Give me the goddamn phone.” A moment later, you hear his voice loud and clear. “Put your ghost on. Right now.”

You hand the phone off to Tomura in a hurry, desperate to get away from Hizashi’s voice. Tomura takes the phone and lifts it to his ear. “What do you want? I –”

You can’t hear Hizashi’s voice anymore, even when you come closer, and Tomura isn’t speaking out loud in response. They’re talking, though. You don’t know how, but they are. When you put your hand on Tomura’s shoulder, you feel tension that shouldn’t be there. The physical contact is a mistake. Tomura’s free hand snakes out, wraps around your waist, and pulls you tightly in against his side. A moment later he hangs up the phone.

“What happened?” you ask. Tomura’s jaw is clenched so tightly that tendons are standing out in his neck. “Tomura –”

“They’re coming here,” Tomura says through gritted teeth. “All four of them.”

“They’re all coming here?” you ask, shocked. “Why?”

“It’s their fault.” Tomura throws a venomous glance back into the living room. “That conjurer is hunting them. He’ll follow them here. He’ll pass Aizawa’s house before he gets here.”

“So? He’s not –” You remember your conversation with Aizawa earlier, the picture you found of the conjurer, the fact that Aizawa kept it. “He’s Hizashi’s conjurer, too.”

Tomura nods once. “They’re coming here to hide,” he says. The lights flicker again. “I can’t be here. My body. I have to make a shield.”

“Did Hizashi tell you to do that?” You’re going to have words for Hizashi when he gets here. “Garaki’s not even your conjurer. Why are you –”

“It’s our stupid neighborhood,” Tomura snaps. Your jaw drops. “Don’t look at me like that. I have to go.”

“Wait,” you say, struggling to speak around the shock. Tomura stops mid-dematerialization, and you step close to him, wrap your arms around a body that’s barely there enough to embrace, press a kiss to a mouth that’s less than a whisper against your own. You sound insane even to yourself when you speak. “Be careful.”

He vanishes without a word, and you kick yourself. Be careful? Garaki’s not his conjurer, and even if he was, Tomura’s still a ghost – an unbelievably powerful ghost, powerful enough to cast an aura over the entire neighborhood. There’s nothing for Tomura to be careful of. Tomura’s going to be fine. That’s more than you can say of any of the unexpected guests you’ll be hosting this evening.

Aizawa and the others will be here soon. In the meantime, you turn to the last spot you saw the unbound ghost. “What should I call you?”

“My customers call me Midnight.” That explains her outfit when she’s materialized, at least. “My friends call me Nemuri.”

“Nemuri,” you say. You nod at Shirakumo on the couch – Shirakumo, and whatever ghost he’s fused to, are unconscious again. “Which one is he?”

“A little of both.” Her eyes are bright blue. They appear briefly, aimed at Shirakumo, then vanish. “The ghost he’s bound to was the same.”

Phantom’s been sniffing Shirakumo’s hand where it dangles over the edge of the couch, but suddenly she jumps up and runs to the front door. Aizawa and the others must be here. You check out the front window to make sure and find them negotiating the path to your front steps, Aizawa dragging Hizashi and Shinsou carrying Eri. You feel the air inside the house ripple as they approach. “What happened?”

“Your ghost has intensified his aura. It’s making them ill.” Aizawa dumps Hizashi into the porch swing, then turns to lift Eri out of Shinsou’s arms. “Can’t you feel it?”

You can’t feel anything – just unease that gets worse when you see the same emotion on Aizawa’s face. Aizawa sits down on the front steps, and so does Shinsou, and something occurs to you. “Did Tomura say you couldn’t come in?”

“Hizashi gave that impression, right before he threw up.”

Tomura, as always, is an asshole. “It defeats the purpose of hiding if you’re out in plain sight on the porch,” you say. “Come in.”

Aizawa hands Eri back to Shinsou, and you help him haul Hizashi off the porch swing and into the house. “Nice place you’ve got here,” Hizashi mumbles. “Aside from the ghost. Dammit –”

He retches, but nothing comes up. Eri, meanwhile, is quiet and wide-eyed. “It’s nicer in here,” she says. “It feels safe.”

“That would be the aura,” you say awkwardly. Your house doesn’t really have a lot of entertainment value for little kids. “Um –”

“It’s not the aura. The aura’s hideous,” Hizashi mutters. “The aura’s not in here. Not many houses have a happy ghost in them.”

You’re really not sure how you’re supposed to take that. “I don’t think Tomura feels –”

Six months ago you could have ended the sentence there. I don’t think Tomura feels. He reacts to sensations. He has things he wants and things he doesn’t. He’s territorial and possessive and easily pissed off, but feelings? Tomura doesn’t have those. Not for anyone. Not for you.

An awkward silence falls. “No, he does,” Eri says blithely, oblivious to how deeply you’re cringing. “Everything is bad out there, but it’s happy in here because he is.”

You decide you’re not going to think about that right now. You look to Aizawa. “You need to take a look at this. Something’s really wrong with this person.”

Aizawa follows you to the living room, but so does Hizashi, and when they see Shirakumo, both of them curse. Hizashi hurries forward, then stops as a full-body shiver runs through him. “God, Nem – back off! I’m trying to help!”

They know each other. While Hizashi tries to untangle himself from Nemuri, Aizawa examines Shirakumo, his expression darkening by the second. “The ghost attached to him is trying to drain him of energy and escape, but because it’s attached to him, it’s experiencing the pain of the siphoning simultaneously. If it could be convinced to stop –”

“The ghost? Nem says she’s been trying.” Hizashi is still grimacing, but he’s not throwing up on your floor, so you decide to call it a win. “It won’t listen. And I wouldn’t have, if that had been me. If I’d been forced to embody myself, I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Forced embodiment? Is that what this is?” You look at Shirakumo, then back at Hizashi. “Why would Garaki want that?”

“The ghost is still a ghost. It’s still got powers,” Hizashi says. “And now it’s got a guaranteed source of energy, and a semi-permanent anchor to the human world.”

So Garaki turned Shirakumo into a living battery for the ghost who went missing. “Combine that with the pain and rage this situation will inspire in the ghost, and you’ve got the recipe for a rampage,” Hizashi continues. He reaches out and puts his hand on Shirakumo’s forehead. “At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen.”

Nemuri’s voice emanates from the corner of the room. “What do you mean?”

“Our friend’s never wanted to hurt anyone in his entire existence,” Hizashi says. “I don’t know Shirakumo, but they must be similar, because they’re in agreement: They don’t want to hurt anyone. They’d rather die.”

“They want to die,” you correct. Nobody’s dying in your house. “What do we do?”

The silence that falls is panic-inducing, especially when Shirakumo stirs again, groans again. Eri comes over and takes his hand, and Hizashi’s hand remains on his forehead. They’re trying to calm the ghost, and there’s only one ghost whose moods you can alter. You back away from the couch and retreat into the kitchen. Shinsou and Aizawa follow you. Shinsou switches on the sink, followed by the garbage disposal, and turns to Aizawa. “Dad, what do we do?”

Aizawa switches off the garbage disposal and turns off the water. Then he’s quiet for a little while. “Our options are limited,” he says finally. “I doubt Nemuri made significant efforts to cover her tracks, and the ghost fused with Shirakumo was likely unable to do so at all. If we proceed under the assumption that our location’s been compromised and Garaki is on his way, the question turns to how we can defend ourselves.”

“You have that gun,” you point out. “What was it you said? It takes a lot of ghostly power to stop a bullet?”

“It takes a lot of ghostly power to fuse a ghost to a human being,” Aizawa says. “We have no idea how that process works, or how quickly Garaki can accomplish it. That means none of us are free from risk in facing him. Even Tomura –”

“If Garaki was Dad’s conjurer, Dad’s probably his upper limit as far as power goes,” Shinsou breaks in. “Tomura’s way above that. Besides, Tomura is another conjurer’s ghost. Would he really mess with somebody else’s ghost?”

“Tomura can’t influence the living world outside the property line,” you remind Shinsou. Then you look at Aizawa. “And didn’t you say that no conjurer on the planet is dumb enough to come in here? If you want Tomura to deal with the conjurer, you have to get the conjurer past the fence.”

“Maybe we lure him,” Shinsou muses. “Use Dabi as bait or something. Get him to follow Dabi down to this end of the road and then shove him into the yard.”

The mention of Dabi’s name sets off an alarm bell. “We have to warn Keigo. He should be over here, too.”

“That’s another problem. We can’t stay hidden here forever,” Aizawa says. “Tomura will lose patience, and even if he doesn’t, our absences will be noted. It’s in this conjurer’s best interest to make us wait.”

“No, it isn’t.”

The voice is Tomura’s, disembodied and raspy and rough – and tired. He sounds tired. “The longer he waits, the more time we have to plan. The more time me and that other ghost have to store up power. If he waits, he loses.” It’s quiet for a second. “He’ll be here by tonight.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s what I’d do.” Hizashi’s voice, just as disembodied as Tomura’s, floats in from the living room. “Send the search team and Atsuhiro out, like we’ve been doing. Send the kids to school. Go to work.”

That last is to you. Hizashi addresses his husband next. “Shou, you can take the day off. Go get some invasive plants. We need batteries for Nemuri and Tomura – and Dabi.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Dabi’s remaining powers are unpredictable.”

“If we can’t predict them, neither can Garaki.” Hizashi’s quiet for a second. “He’s like any other ghost. He doesn’t like the idea of anyone taking what’s his.”

Hizashi’s words take a second to sink in. In the panic over Garaki’s impending arrival, you forgot why Garaki’s coming here in the first place. Two of his ghosts are in this neighborhood, two ghosts who shirked their duty. Garaki’s coming to punish them. And the fastest way to punish them is to take away the people they embodied themselves for. It’s not Dabi and Hizashi who are in danger. It’s Keigo and Aizawa – and because Hizashi has a family, Shinsou and Eri, too.

“Are you sure we should act like things are normal?” you ask. “We can’t protect Shinsou and Eri if they’re away from the neighborhood, and we don’t know how closely Garaki’s watching us.”

“He doesn’t know to look for them,” Aizawa says. “What Hizashi did is – unusual. Embodied ghosts don’t typically like to share their humans, even with their children. It’s not something Garaki will think to check.”

“Then you should stay home,” you say to Aizawa. His eyes flash. “You and Keigo. The rest of the team can go out and I’ll take off work to buy the batteries. My boss will understand.”

Mr. Yagi is probably going to tell you that you shouldn’t go out, either, but you’ve got the bracelets, and nobody’s looking for you. You make your way back into the living room, over to Hizashi and Eri. Shinsou and Aizawa follow you in. “It’s late,” you say. “Shinsou, Eri, you both can sleep up in my room. Aizawa, Hizashi, you can have the floor. I’ve got extra blankets and everything. I think it’s probably best if Shirakumo stays on the couch.”

“I’ll stay up with him. Someone needs to keep him calm,” Hizashi says. “I’ll try to find out what happened, too. All right?”

He’s not asking you. He’s asking Aizawa. Aizawa looks unhappy, but he nods. He brushes past you, kisses Hizashi’s forehead, and turns back for the children. He scoops Eri up and puts a hand on Shinsou’s shoulder before looking to you. “Lead the way.”

The only person who’s ever been up to the top floor since you moved in is you. You show everyone where the upstairs bathroom is, switch out the heavy blanket on the bed for one that you and Tomura weren’t hooking up on, and drag an ancient sleeping bag out of hiding for Aizawa to use. Then you stand there awkwardly, trying to think if there’s anything else you need to take care of as a host. “Um, Tomura sometimes comes in here at night, but I don’t think he will if I’m not up here. He’ll stay out of the bathroom, too. If you hear anything weird it’s probably just Phantom. She has a crate to sleep in, but she might be a little more active tonight.”

“Can she sleep on the bed?” Shinsou asks.

“No,” Aizawa says before you can answer. “Your sister is allergic, and so am I. We’d prefer to sleep with the door shut.”

“No problem.” You head for the door.

“But this is your bed,” Eri says around a yawn. “Where are you going to sleep?”

“I probably won’t,” you say. “I have some things to take care of.”

You have to let the rest of the neighborhood know what’s happening, communicate the plan, and convince them to follow it, starting with Keigo. Aizawa can probably guess that. “Wake me if you need help.”

You nod and switch off the light. Then you step into the hallway and shut the door behind you.

The house always feels alive, but right now it feels chaotic. There are two live ghosts, two former ghosts, and one ghost-human abomination inside it, and the clashing energies are making your head hurt. You push through it long enough to retrieve your laptop and sit down at the kitchen table. You leave the lid of it shut. The first thing you need to do is give Keigo a wakeup call.

But as you’re unlocking your phone, you see something scribbled on the back of your hand. It takes you a second to remember what it is, but once you remember, you set your phone aside and open up your laptop to search Garaki’s forwarding address. It’s a fancy hotel in a city an hour or so north of yours. You need to confirm if he’s still there. The trick you used before should work just fine. You check the reporter’s name again, block your number, and call the hotel. When the reception desk picks up, you give them the reporter’s name and ask for Dr. Garaki.

“I’m afraid you just missed him. The doctor checked out this morning,” the receptionist says. Your heart sinks. “My apologies. What did you say your name was?”

You repeat your borrowed name – and your borrowed cover story. “Did he leave a forwarding address? There’s been an update to the story I wrote and my boss wants me to get a comment.”

“Let me see.” The receptionist’s fingernails click audibly against the keys. “Yes, he did. It’s –”

You write the entire address, but your fingers go numb after you’ve written the city name. It’s here. Garaki’s at a fancy hotel in your city, which means Tomura’s right, and Hizashi’s right, too. He knows where you are. He’ll be here soon. He’ll be here tomorrow.

You thank the receptionist for her help, hang up the phone, and lean back in your chair, feeling sick to your stomach. Garaki’s here. You have his exact location. You could call the hotel right now and get his room number, and then you could borrow Aizawa’s gun and go solve this yourself. It would be easy. You’d wear your bracelets, so he wouldn’t see you coming, and you’d blow his head off the instant he opened the door. All the ghostly power in the world won’t save him if he’s caught by surprise. You could do all that if you want to go to prison for the rest of your life.

You push the thought away. You need to strategize, and you can’t do it alone. As much as you hate to do it, you pick up your computer and your phone and make your way into the living room to join Hizashi.

He doesn’t look up. “I heard you on the phone. Did you get something?”

“I know where Garaki is.” That gets Hizashi’s attention, and you turn your laptop around to show him. “I can’t think of how we’d get him without someone going to prison.”

Nemuri’s voice emanates from the chair you were planning to sit in. “I could go.”

“His power level’s too high. In a straight fight he’d win,” Hizashi says. Nemuri emits a scathing noise. “He’s already gotten one of my friends, Nem. I don’t have a lot of friends. I don’t want to lose another one.”

“Tomura’s plan could still work,” you say. “Somebody could lure him out of there, out of sight, and we could take care of it.”

“Something’s already luring him out of there. Us. Tomorrow night.” Hizashi says. “This is our territory. He thinks he’s coming here to retrieve Shirakumo and punish me and Dabi. He’s not going to be ready for Nem, and he’s sure as hell not going to be ready for Tomura. Even if Tomura can’t leave the property, he can project his aura, and if he focuses it on one person, it’ll slow them down significantly.”

“Wouldn’t he have to decloak the whole neighborhood?”

“Only for a split second. That’s all we’ll need,” Hizashi says. He pitches his voice to carry. “You can do that, right, Crusty?”

Whatever Tomura says in response, he doesn’t say it out loud. Hizashi grimaces. “We’re all set on that front,” he announces to everybody who wasn’t in on the conversation, which is just you and Phantom. “In other news, I found out what happened with our friend and this guy. He calmed down enough to tell me, and it’s – not good.”

“Spit it out,” Nemuri says, and you nod in agreement. “Can it be fixed?”

“If it can, we’re not the ones to do it,” Hizashi says heavily. Nemuri’s despair floods the room. “It seems like Garaki’s found a way to temporarily bind ghosts – something that allows him to capture and contain them while he finds and contains a host. From there, he has to draw the host’s life-force out enough for the ghost to latch onto it. I can’t tell if it’s the fastest way or the only way, but whatever way it is, he does it through torture.”

“Until the host loses their will to live,” you realize, and Hizashi nods. “That’s when he ties the ghost to them. Like binding a ghost to a house.”

“Right. Except a ghost bound to a house can destroy it and escape,” Hizashi says. “As far as I can tell, this type of binding leads the ghost to view the human host as an extension of themselves. Killing the human is the same as killing themselves, and ghosts, uh – we don’t do that.”

“You don’t or you can’t?”

“Both,” Nemuri says. “We can’t destroy our own essences, and even if we could, what purpose would there be in it? We aren’t like humans. What makes humans kill themselves, anyway? Do you know?”

She’s asking Hizashi – Hizashi, who looks weirdly disquieted. “Don’t look at me. Ask the human.”

“Ask Google,” you say. “I’m not an expert on human stuff just because I’m human.”

Nemuri either doesn’t know what Google is or doesn’t care. “Why do humans kill themselves?’

There are two ghosts staring at you now, and distantly, you can feel Tomura’s eyes on you. “Um,” you start. “So, there are a lot of reasons why. Usually it’s multiple reasons at once, I think. Sometimes it’s after something bad has happened to us – something traumatic, or something we feel really guilty about. Or someone we love leaving us or dying. Sometimes it’s smaller stuff that builds up over time, like having depression or alcohol or things like that. Or being really lonely for a long time.”

As you’re talking it, it occurs to you that everything you’ve said has something in common. You can’t tell if it’s a brand-new realization or some long-ago memory of psych 101 crawling to the surface, but you say it anyway. “There are lots of reasons why a human might kill themselves. But people who do that – they do it because they think things are going to be like that forever, that nothing’s ever going to change. And they decide they can’t take it anymore.”

You sounded way too authoritative when you said that. You qualify it in a hurry. “I think.”

The ghosts, both present and former, sit with that for a second. “But some things can’t be changed,” Nemuri says, puzzled. “A human who dies is gone forever. Humans die every day and the rest of you don’t kill yourselves over it.”

“You’re right. We can’t change death. But how we feel about it can change,” you explain. “We can grieve. And we can move on. So thinking about the person we’ve lost will hurt less.”

“Ghosts can’t change,” Hizashi says quietly. He glances up at the ceiling, probably looking for the room where Aizawa’s sleeping. “I won’t be here long after he’s gone.”

“Don’t say that,” you say without thinking. “For all you know, you’ll go first.”

It’s dead silent for a moment. Then Hizashi bursts into quiet but somehow still raucous laughter. “Serves me right for being dramatic. Now I get how you handle him.”

You wouldn’t say Tomura was dramatic, exactly. Moody would probably be more accurate, and like you’ve summoned him on a thought, he materializes right in front of you. You’ve been sitting on the floor, laptop balanced in your lap, and he sets it aside to make room for himself. He doesn’t seem to care that you’re in full view of everybody, or that Hizashi is staring unabashedly at the two of you, his jaw practically on the floor. “What about the shield?” you ask faintly.

Tomura’s busy getting situated in your lap. He’s fully materialized, his face pressed into the curve of your neck. “I can do that and this at the same time.”

“He can,” Nemuri says after a moment. “It feels just as it did before. Most of us aren’t able to utilize our powers in the psychic plane and maintain control of our energy usage at the same time.”

“Our little misanthrope is quite impressive. We’re very proud,” Hizashi says, only partially sarcastically. He makes eye contact with you. “Have you updated the others on the plan yet? Maybe save the cuddling until after your work is done.”

You’re conscious of how tightly Tomura is holding onto you, and simultaneously, how brittle his grip feels. You reach out to close the lid of your laptop and pick up your phone instead. “I can do that and this at the same time.”

Hizashi and Nemuri have probably been hanging out among humans long enough to know that seeing a man sitting in a woman’s lap is weird, but thankfully they both keep quiet. Nemuri’s presence drifts away, heading out to the front porch, and Hizashi focuses back in on Shirakumo. You wait until they’re both occupied before you turn your attention to Tomura officially. “Are you okay?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m doing what I’d do if none of them were here.”

“If you were doing that, you’d be staring at me from the corner of the room.” Your bed, with you, at night, is a boundary Tomura’s never tried to breach while embodied. You’re not sure why. “What is it?”

Tomura shakes his head. More of his weight falls against you, and you scoot back a few inches, leaning against the wall to prop yourself up. Tomura’s hair brushes against your cheek, and you bring the hand that’s not holding your phone up and begin to work it through the tangles. It’s not something you do often. Usually when Tomura’s materialized this close to you, he’s after a hookup, and he usually dematerializes fast after the two of you are done. You can count on one hand the number of times he’s been like this, and two of them happened today.

Maybe he’s just tired. Ghosts might not be able to sleep, but you’ve never seen or heard anybody claim that they can’t get tired. “I’m going to call the others and update them,” you say to him, and he nods. “Stay here as long as you want.”

Tomura doesn’t respond this time, just settles against you, heavy and cold. You keep combing your fingers through his hair and call Keigo first. He doesn’t pick up on the first call, so you call back again, already feeling awful about the news you’re going to give him. After you call him, you’ll call Spinner next, then Jin – and then you’ll work your way through the other numbers, until everybody in the neighborhood and Mr. Yagi outside of it know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Thinking about it scares you, even if it’s not your ghost the conjurer is after. It would scare you more if Tomura wasn’t here.

Maybe that’s why this is happening. Maybe he knows you’re scared, or maybe he’s scared, too. You try to be careful about things that reveal your feelings, but you turn your head and kiss his temple, letting your mouth linger there for longer than really necessary. A lot longer. You don’t pull away until Keigo picks up your call. He sounds sleepy, and like he’s in a mood. “This had better be good.”

“Keigo. Hi.” Your stomach clenches with anxiety, and you focus as best you can on the texture of Tomura’s hair as it slides through your fingers. It grounds you, somehow, the same way as his weight in your lap does. “Sorry to wake you. It’s about Garaki.”

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 10) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Chapter 10

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. As summer ends and the neighborhood kids go back to school, it begins to feel like there’s something wrong with the neighborhood, too. Keigo and the others haven’t found Dabi’s conjurer yet, and with school back in session and two of the former ghosts in the neighborhood going to and from the same place five days a week, the likelihood that the conjurer will find the neighborhood before he’s found and killed feels higher than it should be. You’re worried about that, distantly. If Garaki comes here, it won’t be you he’s after.

You and Aizawa are monitoring any mention or recurrence of any of the aliases Tomura’s conjurer has gone by, but there’s no sign of him. It also seems to have been a long time since he summoned and bound a ghost. You got sick of running messages back and forth between Aizawa and Mr. Yagi, so you finally introduced them, and through a mix of Aizawa’s contacts, Mr. Yagi’s contacts, and former and current ghosts Hizashi knows, you were able to determine that nobody’s created a new haunt in at least a decade. “I don’t understand,” you said. “Did it go out of style or something?”

“It became too dangerous, most likely.” Aizawa turned to his copy of the map and began marking through former haunts, until the entire map was marked in red. “All of these were destroyed by Mr. Yagi and his master. Any conjurer summoning a ghost in this country over the past hundred years was taking a significant risk.  Why would they do that when they could just leave?”

“Would they just leave?” You looked to Mr. Yagi.

“It’s possible,” Mr. Yagi allowed. “My master and I did our job well. Even if we missed one.”

“There was nothing to miss. In spite of his overall unpleasantness, Tomura has yet to truly harm anyone,” Aizawa said. Mr. Yagi glanced meaningfully at you. “That doesn’t count.”

You weren’t pleased with the characterization, but it wasn’t worth disputing. Regardless of what anyone in the neighborhood thinks about your relationship with Tomura, they’re at least pleased that it makes him easier to deal with and marginally more interested in helping the neighborhood defend itself. Tomura, meanwhile, notices less and less of what’s going on outside the property line. Most of his focus – all of his focus, really – is on you.

As far as you can tell, he stays incorporeal most of the day, conserving energy so he can materialize fully once you’re home. What happens when you’re home varies. Sometimes he follows you, marking your every move, asking questions about everything nothing, questions that lead and questions whose answers you can’t imagine he cares about. Sometimes he tries to help you with whatever you’re doing, because the sooner you’re done with it, the sooner you can focus all your attention on him. And sometimes he’s not interested in waiting for anything at all. Sometimes he follows you up to your room and pounces on you before you’re even finished changing out of your work clothes.

Today is one of those days, and Tomura’s gotten strategic. You wore a dress to work, with tights underneath because you’re paranoid about clothing malfunctions, and he doesn’t grab you until after you’ve taken them off. Then he pulls you away from your closet, pushes you down on the bed, and pushes your legs apart. This, or things like this, have happened enough that you can sort of keep your wits about you. “Tomura, the door –”

It shuts, keeping Phantom out. The two of you learned that lesson the hard way. Tomura pushed you down in the middle of the bed, but now he pulls you to the end of it, until your legs are dangling over the edge. They’re unsupported for only a second before he props them on his shoulders. It’s embarrassing that you’re so slow on the uptake, but when you figure it out, you sit partway up in shock, staring as Tomura grins up at you from between your legs. “What are you doing?” you ask weakly.

“What does it look like?” Tomura looks way too pleased with himself in the split second before his head disappears under your dress.

He’ll stop if you tell him to. Sometimes you do, and he always complains, but he never refuses. Your head is spinning, and you make one last effort to slow things down. “I can’t reach you from up here.”

His voice is muffled. “Wait your turn,” he says, and a moment later you feel an almost-experimental lap of his tongue against your clit. “I had to wait all day.”

The idea of a human man waiting all day for you to come home so he can throw you on the bed and eat you out is absolutely ridiculous. But Tomura’s a ghost, not a human. You’re not even sure where he got the idea of eating somebody out in the first place. “Have you –” you stutter as he licks again, slower and with more pressure than before. “Have you been watching porn?”

“What’s porn?” Tomura sounds thoroughly uninterested, which is a good thing for you. You don’t want to explain – well, at the moment you’re not good for explaining much of anything. Tomura’s hair tickles against the insides of your thighs, and his hands press eagerly into your hips. Your stomach lurches. “Stop moving. Why are you trying to –”

“The marks.” Your heart is hammering, your body torn between the impulse to lie back and spread your legs wider and the impulse to get up and run. “People will see them. They’ll see them and they’ll know –”

“I don’t care if people know.”

“I do. My friends – my boss –” It gets worse the longer you think about it. “I don’t want them to know what we do.”

Part of you wonders if you’re being ridiculous. You’re an adult, and if you were with a human boyfriend, everyone would assume you were having sex with him. Then again, if you were having sex with a human, you wouldn’t wind up with ghost handprints on your hips that your boss is going to see through your clothes. And Tomura’s not your boyfriend. “I only leave marks when I want to,” Tomura says. He emerges from under your dress, his hair messy and his mouth wet. “You have enough already. Nobody’s going to get confused.”

“So you won’t leave them here?” you ask, and Tomura shakes his head. “Oh. Um, thanks.”

He disappears under your dress again, and you lie back on the bed. The impulse to spread your legs wider is still there, and when Tomura runs his tongue over the length of your entrance before closing his lips around your clit, you give in without a fight. The house is alive around you, humming with electricity and creaking slightly in the early-autumn wind. It’s quiet in your room other than your own harsh, unsteady breathing and the increasingly obscene sounds emanating from under your skirt.

Tomura’s never done this before, so he doesn’t have any bad habits, and based on the direction his explorations take, he’s well on his way to developing good ones. Your entire body feels like it’s being tied in knots, knots that get tighter with every swipe of his tongue. You’re trying not to move, to arch your back or buck your hips. You’re worried that if he has to try too hard to hold you down, he’ll forget about his promise not to leave marks. But in your efforts to stay still, you completely forget about staying quiet.

At first it’s just quiet, desperate sounds leaving your mouth – little gasps, split up here and there with moans when he sucks on your clit or gives your entrance a long, slow lick that makes you wish for something, anything inside you. You could ask Tomura to finger you, and the thought sits fully formed on the tip of your tongue, only to disintegrate when he pushes your legs a little further apart and licks inside of you. The rush of heat that sweeps through you is almost overwhelming. “Tomura –”

“What?” He stops, which was absolutely not what you wanted to happen. You unclench one hand from the blankets on the bed to hit yourself in the forehead. “Am I doing it wrong or something?”

“N-no,” you stammer. You’ve gone from having to convince Tomura that his technique could use some work to having him ask on his own, which is really great for any time except now. “I just, um – no. You’re good. Really good. That’s why I said your name.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” you say, wondering why his voice sounds like that. “I don’t want you to stop. Tomura, please don’t –”

You break off in a gasp. Tomura was never the most methodical about this, but he’s thrown himself back into it with an absurd amount of enthusiasm. You feel like you might pass out. It’s hard to think, but you don’t want him to stop again, so you talk, struggling to breathe. “You’re so good at this,” you manage to say. “You’re doing so well. I don’t want you to stop. Tomura, please – ah –”

His grip on your hips tightens. You think you hear him whine. But his lips close around your clit again, teasing you with his tongue, and you lose the ability to focus on anything else. Unclenching your hands from the sheets feels impossible, so you bite your lip instead, managing to restrict the sounds you make as you come to a few desperate moans. In the past you’ve had to tell Tomura to stop or push him away to avoid getting overstimulated, but this time he lets you go in a hurry, emerging from under your dress and scrambling up onto the bed. His mouth and chin are wet and there’s an almost frantic look in his eyes.

“Tomura,” you say, puzzled and breathless. “Are you okay?”

“Tell me again.” Tomura’s mouth presses against yours, and you taste yourself on his lips. He speaks without pulling away. “I did it right. Tell me –”

Now you get it. “You were perfect,” you say, and Tomura presses himself against you, grinding against your thigh. “You did such a good job. You made me feel so good, Tomura. Nobody’s ever made me feel like you do.”

It’s not empty flattery, as much as you might wish it was. You sit up, rolling Tomura from his side to his back and undoing his pants. His cock springs free, and like always, you’re surprised at how big he is – but the few seconds you take to stare is too long for Tomura to wait. His hips thrust uselessly upwards, seeking your hands, and you oblige in a hurry, stroking idly while you look him over. His face is red, the color extending down his neck and beneath his shirt, and his blue-grey hair is glued to his neck and forehead with sweat. He has longer eyelashes than you thought he did. His eyes are dilated to the point where you’re shocked he can see. You’re sure you look like a mess right now. There’s no way you look anything close to this.

“You’re pretty,” you say without thinking. Tomura’s mouth falls open and a moan escapes him. His hips jerk frantically against your hands as you continue to stroke his cock, as you slide one hand between his legs to fondle him. “You’re so pretty, Tomura. And you make such pretty sounds, too. Listening to you the first time you touched yourself turned me on so bad. I kept imagining what you must have looked like – all sweaty and desperate and so, so pretty –”

Dirty talk never used to be your thing, and this barely counts, but the effect it has on Tomura is mesmerizing. He’s squirming on the bed, worse than you were by a long shot, his hands grasping the sheets or yanking at his shirt. You see his hand rise to scratch at his neck and you stop fondling him to pull it away. “You look even better than I imagined,” you say, holding his hand even as his grip tightens almost to the point of pain. “You look so pretty like this. And the way you sound – there’s nobody in the world who sounds as pretty as you do. You did so well for me just now. Are you close?”

The sound he makes in response is somewhere between a gasp and a sob, and you think, like you always do, that the two of you need to work out how to come at the same time. Touching him invariably winds you up again, and he’s too impatient to let you touch him first. “You’re so good, Tomura,” you say. You can feel the tension in his body increasing, the movements of his hips growing sharp and uneven, and you drag his hand to your mouth, speaking through his fingers. “You’re perfect.”

You usually try to contain the mess he makes with your mouth, but you’re slow this time, too busy watching him fight to hold onto his physical form in the face of an orgasm. Most of his cum winds up on your dress, although some of it ends up on your face. You can live with that, so long as you don’t have to change the sheets on the bed,

You wipe your face with your sleeve and lick your lips, working off a vague sense that it would be rude to wipe your mouth. Guys who want you to swallow get offended by stuff like that. “What does it taste like?” Tomura asks in that raspy, breathless voice that always winds you up.

“It doesn’t taste like anything.” You’re almost eternally grateful for that.

“What do you taste like?”

You cringe a little bit. “Not everything tastes like something else.”

There’s a pattern to things now. Tomura usually dematerializes for a while after the two of you are done, and you do whatever you need to do – showering, to start with – until he comes back. Then you negotiate about the rest of the night, Tomura wanting more, you reminding him that there aren’t unlimited supplies of life-force and doing more today imperils his chances for tomorrow. Most of the time you win. If the pattern is followed, he should be dematerializing right around now. You get up.

Or try to. Tomura grabs you and pulls you back. “Where are you going?”

“The same place I always go.” You try to peel yourself out of his arms, but it doesn’t work. “What? You’re not going to let me go?”

“No. You won’t let me go with you.”

“You don’t need to clean up,” you remind him. “You’ll be fine as soon as you dematerialize and come back.”

“I don’t want to.” One of Tomura’s legs hooks over your hip to hold you in place, another one of those weird things he does that reminds you he’s got no idea how straight guys are supposed to behave. “Don’t leave.”

You don’t want to deal with this right now. You need time alone after you and Tomura hook up to get your head screwed on straight, to remind yourself that this is insane and not normal, to keep it all in perspective. But your track record for getting away from Tomura when he wants to hold onto you is not good, and he’s never acted like this before. You let him pull you back onto the bed. At first he curls himself around you, almost like the two of you are spooning, but then he changes his mind, pushing and pulling at you until you realize that he’s after a complete switch in positions. “If you wanted to be the little spoon, you could just ask.”

“What’s the little spoon?”

“The person in the position you are right now.” You adjust your arm around his waist and press against him from behind. “This is called spooning.”

“Why?”

“Because it looks the way spoons look if you line them up properly in the drawer instead of just throwing them in.” You’re guilty of the latter, but in your defense, you’re usually in a hurry. Tomura makes a skeptical sound. “I’ll show you later.”

He’s cold, but you’re still overheated, and holding him like this helps you cool down. It would help you settle your mind if you weren’t still confused about why this is happening. You could ask Tomura, but when it comes to talking about how he feels, he’s a typical guy. It’s about the only thing about him that’s typical. Tomura doesn’t know what he’s supposed to want, and you have a feeling that he wouldn’t care even if he knew. He wants the things he wants, and while he’s not great at communicating them, you usually figure out where he’s going with it eventually.

It’s quiet for a while, and Tomura’s the one to break the silence. “Did you mean what you said?”

You don’t pretend you don’t understand what he means. “I meant it,” you say. You’re not an expert in praise kinks, but you’re pretty sure it doesn’t work if the praise is false. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”

Something odd happens to Tomura then – he shivers, or his embodied form fails for a moment, and you instinctively tighten your grip on him. “Why do you ask?”

“You’re pretty, too,” Tomura says instead of answering. “Don’t leave.”

“I’m not leaving,” you say. You need to shower, but you can shower later. You adjust your arms around Tomura again and close your eyes.

You don’t mean to fall asleep, but you were up late last night and early this morning, and this afternoon’s hookup wore you out more than expected. You don’t sleep for long, but Tomura’s gone when you wake up. You’re curled up around the space where he used to be. You wonder how long it was before he left, and why it’s okay for him to leave you when you’re not supposed to leave him. You hate how lonely it makes you feel.

But you shake it off, like you do any time you start feeling that way about a ghost that can’t understand human feelings, and proceed with the rest of the night. And the rest of the night goes exactly like it usually does. You shower, start the laundry, start making dinner – and Tomura shadows you, angling for a second hookup. He’s getting strategic about that, too.

“You like it when I use my mouth,” he says. “Better than my fingers.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” You focus on the food you’re trying to cook, reminding yourself firmly that you’re hungry, not horny. You turn the question around on him. “Which do you prefer? Handjobs or blowjobs?”

“Handjobs,” Tomura says without hesitating. You blink. “You still use your mouth a little bit. And you can talk.”

“The talking really does it for you,” you muse, even though winding Tomura up is the last thing you should be doing if you want to eat dinner any time soon. “Interesting.”

“It’s not interesting. I like your voice.”

That’s not what you expected him to say. You set down your knife so you won’t amputate your fingers and focus on him. He’s looking away, scowling. “You talked to me. I couldn’t figure out how to talk back at first, so I listened. I like your voice.”

“I like yours, too,” you say. Then you think about drowning yourself in the sink and ask a question before Tomura can get too smug about it. “How soon did you talk to me after you figured it out?”

“As soon as I figured it out.” Tomura won’t look at you. “I messed it up the first time and you ran away.”

“You got angry. I didn’t know what you’d do.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt you. Or Phantom.” Phantom’s been poking around by Tomura’s feet, pretending she’s not hoping he’ll drop some food. Sure enough, he steals a piece of the carrot you just sliced and drops it on the floor for her. “I helped you before. You knew that.”

“I didn’t know what you’d do when you got angry.” You don’t want to have this conversation again. “I still don’t know.”

“But you’re not scared of me.”

“I’m not scared of you.” You startle as Tomura’s arms loop around your waist, as his chin notches over your shoulder. “You figured out how to talk just so you could talk to me?”

“I needed to learn anyway,” Tomura says. There’s a pause. “Yeah, I did. So what?”

“Nothing,” you say. Tomura thinks you’re pretty. Tomura taught himself how to materialize and talk so he could talk to you. It’s a good thing he can’t see your face right now. You’re finding it hard not to smile.

Your phone rings from the living room, and you go to investigate it. It’s Aizawa, so you pick up. “What?”

“One of the unbound ghosts has gone missing,” Aizawa says. “When was the last time you ran the search for Garaki?”

“Last week,” you say. You run the search every week. “Do you want me to run it again tomorrow?”

“Tonight,” Aizawa says. “I’m coming with you.”

“No,” you protest. “I can’t go in after hours. Mr. Yagi –”

“Call him and ask.” Aizawa hangs up the phone.

“Asshole,” you mutter, and you go ahead and call Mr. Yagi. He picks up on the second ring. “Sir, Aizawa’s worried about something and he wants me to check the database again tonight.”

“Of course,” Mr. Yagi says at once. You grit your teeth. “Update me on what you find, if you find anything. Izuku’s working on generating a map for all the conjurers on the list.”

“And Aizawa wants to come with me,” you add. “That’s not policy, is it?”

“Technically, the database is public record,” Mr. Yagi reminds you. “Just make sure no one spots you.”

“Yes, sir,” you say. You hope he can’t tell that you were hoping he’d say no.

Tomura follows you as you change into your street clothes, clearly unhappy. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the office. I won’t be long.” You stick your head out the front door and realize that it’s gotten colder since the sun went down. You find a hoodie and pull it on. “Aizawa’s just being paranoid.”

“He’s outside,” Tomura says. You don’t question how he knows that. “You didn’t eat yet.”

“I’ll eat when I get back,” you say. You lift your bracelets out of the bowl where you keep your keys and slide them on, then tuck your keys into your pocket before turning to Tomura. He’s either pouting or sulking. “Don’t do that. I’ll be home soon.”

Tomura’s frown deepens and he dematerializes, which annoys you. It’s not like you wanted this to happen. “I was going to give you a kiss goodbye, but since you’re going to be like this –”

“I’m not.” Tomura materializes again, right in front of you, and pushes you back against the wall for a kiss. You feel an odd tingling where his hands touch you and get the sneaking suspicion that he’s marking you again, but it’s only on your shoulders, and it’s not like Aizawa will be able to see it. Tomura draws away. “Go.”

You leave, your head spinning a little bit, and find Aizawa standing just outside the fence. There’s a suspicious-looking bag slung over his shoulder. “We’re not breaking in,” you say.

Aizawa ignores you. He gets into the passenger seat of your car as soon as you unlock it, and the two of you drive out of your neighborhood in complete silence. You’re not pleased with this, and the bad vibes Aizawa’s giving off prove that Tomura’s moods aren’t the only ones that can affect other people. You don’t speak until you’re halfway there. “So what’s up with this ghost who went missing?”

“They haunted an apartment building that came down fifteen years ago. They’ve stayed in the vicinity of their old haunt,” Aizawa says. “We sent Keigo and the others to speak to them, to see if they’d seen or heard anything. There was no sign of them anywhere in the city.”

“Which means – what?” you ask. Aizawa doesn’t answer, and it pisses you off. “They could have just left.”

“A ghost like that doesn’t just leave.”

“Maybe they decided to,” you argue. “Or they could have embodied themselves. There are a lot of things that could have happened that aren’t ‘they got snatched by a conjurer’. Can ghosts even be killed?”

Mr. Yagi said they could, but he also didn’t tell you how. “They can,” Aizawa says shortly. “If they clash with a being of greater power – another ghost, or a conjurer – their spirit can be blasted apart and scattered. Each shred retains some small piece of consciousness, but there are so many that there’s no way to piece them back together.”

“Conjurers can do that?”

“They threaten it when binding unwilling ghosts,” Aizawa says. “Eri and Magne both report receiving that threat, although it’s doubtful that Chisaki could have carried it out, given how easily Hizashi defeated him.”

You never appreciate a reminder of how strong Hizashi is. It makes it harder not to be scared of him. “The worst a conjurer can do to a human is kill them,” Aizawa continues. “The worst that can be done to a ghost condemns them to eternal torment. Most ghosts are hesitant to confront a conjurer, and the fear remains even once they’re embodied permanently. We were surprised that Tomura was able to convince Atsuhiro.”

You were surprised, too. But you’ve got something else on your mind. “So it’s just a power game. They clash and the strongest one wins,” you clarify, and Aizawa nods. “What if they’re equally powerful?”

“Then it comes down to a test of will,” Aizawa says. “The stronger-willed of the two will win, and in ghost-conjurer conflicts, the conjurer is the stronger one.”

“Why?”

“They’re human,” Aizawa says simply. “Humans don’t want to die.”

It’s quiet again in the car. You make the turn into the courthouse parking lot and choose a spot that’s hard to see on the security cameras. Aizawa speaks again as you’re turning off the engine. “If you’re worried about Tomura, don’t. There’s no conjurer on the planet stupid enough to cross your property line.”

“I’m not worried about Tomura,” you say. You’re lying. “What’s in the bag?”

Aizawa unzips it, revealing – “A gun?” you squeak. “There are metal detectors. You can’t bring that in!”

“The metal detectors are on the way into the courthouse, not the public defenders’ office.” Aizawa zips up the bag again. “Conjurers are still human. It takes a lot of ghostly power to stop a bullet.”

You were already unhappy about this whole thing. Now it’s worse. You pull up your hood and get out of the car. “Just keep it hidden. Mr. Yagi told us not to be seen.”

The two of you sneak across the parking lot, keeping to the shadows. If anybody spots you, you look suspicious as hell. You unlock the door to the office, lock it again behind Aizawa and yourself, and sneak through the halls until you reach your cubicle. “I’m just running the Garaki search again,” you warn. “Then I’m out.”

“Fine.” Aizawa leans against the wall behind you, scanning the office.

He’s acting like he thinks someone’s in here, hunting the two of you. It’s making you uneasy. You ignore it as best you can and focus on the search, cross-referencing both identities and coming up with the same points of connection as always. Then, because you got dragged out here and you might as well be thorough, you focus on the city Aizawa’s worried about and run a library search for public records-adjacent documents – the kind of things that are publicly available, but aren’t considered national government property. When you run the wider search, something pops up that didn’t before; a business license, for a clinic in the same city. You draw Aizawa’s attention to it and he pulls out his phone to search. Meanwhile, you keep looking. You find a record of property taxes on the location of the clinic, paid by check. There’s a scan of the checks attached, with the same name over and over again – Garaki Kyudai.

Aizawa swears. “He’s not listed as one of the staff – he’s listed as the clinic’s founder. It’s been there for decades. Long enough to have summoned that ghost.”

“Why would he kill his own ghost? I thought they avoided killing conduits.” There’s a newspaper article, a recent one. You try to open it, hit a paywall, and start looking for a way around it. “Have you heard from Keigo and the others since they said they couldn’t find the ghost?”

“No.” When you glance back at Aizawa, he’s got his phone to his ear.

You get around the paywall and start reading. The article’s about the sale of historic old house in the city, one that’s been in the same family – the Ujiko family, fuck – for over a hundred years. It went on the market last week, by order of the last descendent of the Ujiko family, and – “Aizawa, I’ve got a picture of him!”

“Print it,” Aizawa orders. You do, in color, and meanwhile, whoever Aizawa’s trying to call picks up the phone. “Keigo, where are you?”

You can hear Keigo loud and clear, even though he’s not on speaker. “We’re on our way home. Can you give us a ride back from the station? It was supposed to be Jin’s mom’s turn, but it got kind of late.”

Aizawa glances at you. “Sure, but somebody has to sit in the back,” you say. You hop up to retrieve the article from the printer and come back. “Ask him if there was any sign of ghostly power in the city. Specifically in the neighborhoods. Um –”

You scan the article, pass the name to Aizawa, and wait. “No,” Atsuhiro says into the phone. “We found nothing, not even traces. Why do you ask?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll meet you at the train station.” Aizawa hangs up the phone and turns to you. “Garaki was there, now he isn’t, and a ghost is gone. We need to figure out where he went.”

“I’ll see if there’s a forwarding address.” You find the name of the realtor involved with selling the house, pick up your work phone, and make a call. It’s after hours, but a realtor selling a house this fancy might pick up.

Aizawa is tapping his foot, clearly impatient, while the phone rings twice, then picks up. You leap into the conversation first. “Hello, this is –” you check the article for the reporter’s name and borrow it as an alias. “I made an error in the article I wrote about the house and misquoted the doctor. Would you happen to know where I could get ahold of him to correct it?”

Realtors are a lot more gullible than you thought they were. You find a pen but not a piece of paper and end up scribbling the address on the back of your hand. It doesn’t look familiar, which is a good thing. “It’s not here.”

“We need to keep it that way. He’ll have to be lured even further away.” Aizawa slides the printed-out article into his bag. “For now, we need to retrieve the others.”

The two of you sneak back out to your car. You drive to the train station, sticking to the speed limit like your life depends on it, while Aizawa peruses the newspaper article for more details. “Garaki is older than we thought. At least old enough to have summoned Tomura – but he would have summoned Tomura before Dabi. It doesn’t make sense unless he lost a significant amount of power in the interim, which wouldn’t have happened if he was using Tomura as a conduit.”

“I don’t think it was him,” you say.

“The evidence is more compelling the other way,” Aizawa agrees, “but we can’t rule anything out.”

“If we can’t rule anything out, then we need to think about whether he’s Hizashi’s conjurer,” you say. You see Aizawa’s shoulders stiffen. “If he’s two hundred and fifty years old, he’s old enough to have summoned Hizashi, too – and since Hizashi wanted to escape the world between, he wouldn’t have had to try too hard.”

“Hizashi said no.”

“Hizashi said he doesn’t remember,” you correct. “If Garaki was his conjurer, too –”

“It’s immaterial.” Aizawa cuts you off. “If Garaki finds us, we’re all in danger. We’re almost to the train station, and we don’t have any solid conclusions. We shouldn’t tell the others until we’re sure.”

You don’t like this secret-keeping thing. “But you’re going to tell Hizashi.”

“And you plan to tell Tomura,” Aizawa retorts. You would if Tomura cared about this at all. “What happens in our respective households stays there. But there’s no reason to throw the entire neighborhood into a panic with news that Dabi’s conjurer is on the move.”

“Fine,” you say. “But we can’t sit on this for long. Two days and we’ll tell everyone what we know. Whatever we know.”

“Fine,” Aizawa says. He’s silent for the rest of the drive, until you pull into the train station parking lot and he sandbags you with this: “Keigo and I would be grateful if you encouraged Tomura to keep a lid on his – feelings. Dabi has next to no self-control, and Hizashi’s self-control, while impressive, is not up to this task. Some restraint on his part, or yours, would be appreciated.”

It takes you a second to interpret that one, and once you do, your face goes up in flames. Tomura’s apparently so horny that he’s making the two other non-asexual ghosts horny enough that their partners are asking you for help. “I’m sorry,” you say. “I, um – I’ll see what I can do.”

Aizawa leans his seat back and closes his eyes. “Good.”

The silence in the car after that is extremely awkward, and you’re grateful when Jin, Keigo, Spinner, and Atsuhiro all pile into the car. Rather than one person sitting in the back, all four of them squeeze into the backseat, with Keigo sprawled out across the other three’s laps. Spinner wants to tell you about the day’s events, Atsuhiro wants to sleep, and Jin wants to go to McDonald’s. Jin is the loudest one. You pull into the drive-through.

As much as you’re tempted by the fast food, you have food at home, and you’ve sort of lost your appetite. Fear over the threat of the conjurers, discomfort at the idea of withholding information from the rest of the neighborhood, and the sheer cringe of being told to make your ghost less horny will do that to you. It’s a relief to drop everyone off at their respective houses, Aizawa in particular, and pull into your own driveway.

The first thing you notice when you open the front door is the smell. It smells like food cooking, and it doesn’t smell burnt. Did Tomura let somebody else in the house to cook something? He must have, and the evidence gets stronger when you hear footsteps through house towards you. But when you look up, there’s no one there except Tomura, and Phantom trotting at his side. “Take your bracelets off. You’re supposed to take them off when you get to the neighborhood.”

You know that. You just forgot, because you were busy trying to convince Jin to let you stop the car before he got out. You slide them off your wrists and drop them into the bowl with your keys. “Did you let someone in the house?”

“Why would I let somebody in the house?” Tomura looks annoyed that you’d even consider it. “You had to leave before you were done cooking, so I finished it.”

“You – what?” You’ve heard terrible things about ghost cooking from everybody whose ghost gave it a shot. Even the embodied ones aren’t very good at it. “How?”

“I’ve seen you make it. I did what you do.” Tomura catches your wrist, fingers closing around the same spot where the bracelet was and pulling you along. “Come on.”

You were making soup before you left. It’s kind of hard to mess up soup, but then again, you’ve heard stories from Shinsou about Hizashi managing to mess up instant noodles. The kitchen looks sort of like a bomb went off in it, but none of the ingredients scattered around look wrong for the soup you usually make. When you peer into the pot on the stove, nothing strikes you as immediately wrong. “Are you going to try it?” Tomura asks impatiently. You pick up a spoon and dip it in. “Well?”

Your ghost can cook. Somehow you got the only ghost in the neighborhood that can cook – or at least the only ghost who can copy what their human did exactly enough that there’s little difference in taste. You retrieve a bowl and a ladle and fill it up, then switch off the burner and put a lid on the pot to trap the heat in. Tomura follows you as you head for the kitchen table. “I did it right,” he says. You nod. Your mouth is too full to talk. “I know how to make other things, too.”

You’re not sure you trust him with anything more complicated yet, or maybe at all. “Maybe we can work on it together. It’s probably boring for you to just stand there and watch me.”

“Watching you isn’t boring.”

That’s not what you were expecting him to say. “Oh.”

It’s quiet for a little while. Phantom comes to nap at your feet and you keep eating your soup, thanking your lucky stars that you skipped the fast food tonight. “I wish I could taste things,” Tomura says out of nowhere. You eat another spoonful of soup, burning your tongue in favor of displaying your shock. “I’d be better at it if I could.”

“Not necessarily. I can taste things and the things I cook still aren’t very good sometimes.” You’ve heard Aizawa theorize that the fact that former ghosts have tastebuds is what gets them into trouble with cooking – they judge taste by the strength of the flavor, and they can’t distinguish between flavors that are good and flavors that are bad. You focus on Tomura. “This is really good, though. Thank you.”

Tomura looks pleased with himself. “I know.”

You eat a second helping of the soup and put the rest away for lunch tomorrow, and then, even though it’s later than usual, you decide you want to watch something before you go to bed. It’s less that you want to watch something and more that you want to hang out with Tomura a little longer, but there’s no way you’re telling him that. The two of you settle onto your usual couch cushions, and Phantom hops up into her spot on the middle one, getting comfortable. You pass the remote off to Tomura. “I don’t care what we see. You pick.”

Tomura gives you a skeptical look. “You hate what I pick.”

You hated it when you thought it was giving him ideas. There’s no point now that it turns out he can get ideas all on his own. “Not tonight I don’t.”

Tomura’s always a bit like a kid in a candy store when he gets ahold of the remote. You watch the light flicker across his face as he scrolls through show after show and finally settles on the last thing you were expecting him to choose. “You don’t want to watch that,” you say.

“It says it’s a disaster movie. I like those.”

He does. One time you made the mistake of watching Twister and then had to spend the rest of the night explaining how tornadoes work – and then showing him videos on YouTube when he realized you didn’t know what you were talking about. “This isn’t that kind of disaster movie.”

“The ship sinks, doesn’t it?” Tomura doesn’t wait for your answer before he presses play on Titanic.

The two of you get through the opening of the movie in the usual fashion. Tomura keeps asking you questions, missing part of the movie while you answer, and then asking more questions about what he missed. It takes him a little bit to grasp the framing device. Ghosts don’t have the same sense of time as people do, and you have to explain why the same character is being played by two different actors a few times before he gets it. And then he’s confused, confused to the point where he makes you pause the movie. “Why is this happening? When is the ship going to sink?”

“We can fast-forward to that part,” you say, probably a little too eagerly. “Do you want to do that?”

“I want to know why this is happening.” Tomura gestures at the screen. “Do you know? Or is this like the tornadoes again?”

He’s never going to let you forget about that. You sigh. “All this stuff is happening because the filmmakers want the people watching the movie to care about the characters. To understand what they want and want it, too.”

“Why?”

“So it matters to you when the ship sinks with all these people on it.”

“How many people are on it?”

“Uh – around two thousand.”

“Two thousand?” Tomura looks floored, probably because he’s never seen a group of people larger than forty or fifty. “How many of them die?”

You probably know a little too much about this shipwreck for comfort. You were kind of a weird kid. “About fifteen hundred of them. Give or take a few.”

“How do they die?”

You should have known Tomura was going to fixate on the body count. “Let’s just fast-forward to that part.”

You’ve been fast-forwarding for about two seconds when Tomura stops you. “Go back.”

“Why?” you ask. Tomura gives you that dumbest-person-ever look. You hate that look. “Why do you want to watch all the boring stuff?”

“To see if they can make me care about it.” Tomura settles back onto his couch cushion, looking smug. “I bet they can’t.”

Now you get it. He’s decided it’s a game and he wants to win. You rewind back, resigning yourself to a whole lot of explaining over the next hour and a half.

But you don’t have to explain quite as much as you thought you were going to. Some of the things you thought Tomura would fixate on are nonevents, because he was summoned and bound to the house in the same era as Titanic sank. He’s not confused by the lack of phones or the weirdly elaborate clothes – when you look at the clothes he materializes in, the shirt and pants are similar in style to what some of the characters wear in the movie. After extracting some assurances from you that the movie’s going to go into lots of detail about how the ship sinks, Tomura starts asking other questions, usually about the characters. And sometimes he doesn’t have questions. He has opinions.

“That one is stupid. I don’t like him,” he says of one character. You ask him why. “She’s scared of him. I can tell. He gets in her space when she doesn’t want him to and he grabs her and pulls her around. You had to tell me that stuff, but he’s a human. He should know already.”

“He does know,” you say. “He wants her to be scared of him.”

Tomura looks like the thought’s never crossed his mind, which is ridiculous, given that he’s a ghost who was summoned specifically to haunt and terrorize people. “Aren’t they supposed to get married?”

“Yeah.” You unpause the movie and up the volume. The last thing you want is for Tomura to start asking questions about marriage.

You were worried Tomura was going to have a bunch of questions about the love story, but he keeps mostly quiet on that front, which is a relief for you. He also doesn’t spend a bunch of time talking about how stupid it is, which is less of a relief. Most of his annoyance is focused on the characters for caring about the diamond necklace that keeps getting passed around, because it’s a rock and it’s stupid that humans care about rocks that much. The only question he asks about the love story serves as yet another reminder that ghosts don’t understand humans very well. “Why do they treat that one that way?”

“Because he’s poor and they’re not,” you say. “They think you should marry your own kind.”

“They’re both humans. That’s the same kind,” Tomura says. “Humans are humans. It’s stupid.”

“Humans divide ourselves up by all kinds of stupid things,” you say. When you think about it, it’s a really long, really pointless list. “We kill each other over a lot of that stuff, too. Or we have in the past. People say this stuff is old-fashioned, but a lot of them still feel this way. They don’t say it like that, though. They’d say those two don’t have enough in common. Their life experiences are too different. That kind of thing.”

“Humans are stupid,” Tomura says. He looks weirdly unnerved. “The ship had better sink soon.”

The scene changes and you breathe a sigh of relief. “Yep. Right now.”

The disaster portion of the movie clearly lives up to Tomura’s expectations. He shuts up for the most part, focused on the screen. You have to admit that the movie does a good job of laying things out: Ship sinking, ship sinking fast, not enough lifeboats, water too cold, et cetera. You don’t have to explain anything at all. You’ve seen this one enough times that you don’t feel guilty zoning out, but you don’t realize you’ve fallen asleep until Tomura starts shaking your shoulder. “Why are they staying behind?”

You squint at the screen. “Women and children first.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really know,” you say. The rationale behind that was never clear to you, and if you can’t figure it out, there’s no way you’re going to try to explain it to Tomura. You don’t want a repeat of the tornado thing. “This is basically the only shipwreck in history where they did that, though. On most wrecks men took all the boats and the women and children drowned.”

“You’re a woman.”

“Yep.” You remember imagining how you’d escape from Titanic as a kid, then running the same thought experiment as an adult and realizing that you probably wouldn’t. “Anyway, I don’t know why they did it like that instead of the other way.”

“It’s stupid,” Tomura says. You flop over the arm of the couch and decide to forget about it.

You must be really tired, because you fall back asleep in spite of the noise from the movie. The next thing you wake up to is Phantom crawling onto your lap – or Phantom, still mostly asleep, being dropped onto your lap by Tomura. At first you’re confused, but then you feel the cushions shift as Tomura settles into the spot Phantom was in before. He’s moving quietly, trying not to wake you up, but you wake up anyway. “What –”

“Nothing. Shut up.”

You roll your eyes, and catch a glimpse of the screen in the process. The ship’s vanished. “The good part’s done. Want me to turn it off?”

“No,” Tomura says. Phantom makes herself comfortable in your lap. “Go back to sleep.”

He’s acting strangely. You pretend to go back to sleep, keeping your breathing even and your eyes mostly shut, alternating between watching the screen and watching Tomura on the cushion next to you. He’s still focused in spite of the fact that the ship’s already sunk. He usually gets focused at some point when he’s watching a movie, but this time, his expression’s different than the usual interest. He looks unhappy, but if he’s unhappy, why wouldn’t he let you turn it off? Why is he studying the screen like his existence depends on the outcome of this barely-a-disaster move? You let him think you’re asleep through most of the wrap-up, and take your time waking up when he starts shaking your shoulder again. “What does this mean?”

It’s the last scene. “Her ditching the necklace?”

“No. This stuff. Why is she on the boat again? It sank. And she’s not old anymore either. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh,” you say. Suddenly you understand why he’s confused. “I guess it wouldn’t make sense to you. Ghosts don’t die.”

Aizawa told you they do, but he also called it eternal torment, not death, so you’re going to go ahead and assume that dead for ghosts and dead for humans are two separate concepts. Tomura looks pissed. “She’s dead?”

“She’s a hundred and one. Humans aren’t supposed to live that long.” You were faking sleep too convincingly, and now you’re actually tired. You smother a yawn. “This part – she’s dead. She died in her sleep. This is her meeting everybody again in the afterlife.”

“Is that what happens?”

You’re way too tired for this. “We don’t know. People don’t,” you say. You have a feeling ghosts might, but if Tomura knew, he wouldn’t be asking this question. “Some people think it’s like falling asleep. You’re just gone, forever. Other people think it’s like in the movie – when you die, you see everybody you love who died before you, and you’re all together forever. But like I said, we don’t know. And I don’t think about it too much. It’s probably the sleep thing, anyway. The other way would be too nice.”

You’re rambling. “Does that make any sense?”

Tomura dematerializes. That makes twice in one night. “Okay. Good talk.”

You switch off the movie before the theme song can really kick in and weigh your options. You could boot Phantom off your lap and head upstairs for the night, or you could twist around and fall asleep on the couch. You choose door number two, stopping just long enough to pull your phone out of your pocket and set an alarm. You got a text from Aizawa about two seconds ago, too: When I asked you to address the situation, I didn’t mean to do it like this.

You don’t know what ‘like this’ means, and you’re too tired to care. You set your phone screen-down on the coffee table and go to sleep.

[scary-grace]

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 20) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

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

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21

Chapter 20

“Sorry about the clothes,” Spinner says as the two of you walk down the front steps of the hospital. “Himiko picked them out.”

“It’s fine,” you say. As long as you have clothes that aren’t bloodstained and torn to pieces, you don’t care what you look like. You’re just glad to be headed home.

Nobody exited the near-apocalyptic conjurer fight in good shape, but some of you were worse off than the others. Nemuri was almost blasted apart trying to defeat the giant, and although she survived it, collecting the shreds of her essence back together is apparently a slow process. Keigo took a pretty sizeable hit protecting the kids, while Aizawa had to deal with a beastlike Nomu chewing the hell out of his leg before Hizashi blew its head off. But you and Tomura were by far the worse off. You’ve been in the hospital for two days. Tomura will be in for another three at least.

Most ghosts are healthy when they permanently embody themselves, but apparently it’s different for ghosts who use their own conjurers to do it. Tomura is starvation-level thin, with severe contact allergies to almost every type of medical equipment in the hospital, and the injuries he got from the fight and the rescue from the world between were bad enough to land him in the ICU at least temporarily. They had to put him in an induced coma, too. He’s had meltdowns or panic attacks or some kind of fit every time he’s woken up.

“He’ll bounce back quickly,” Mr. Yagi assured you when he came to visit. “I did.”

That was how you learned that Mr. Yagi embodied himself from his conjurer, too – except she gave him permission to do it, when she realized she was going to die of cancer anyway. Mr. Yagi’s permanent embodiment involves chronic issues with his lungs and his stomach, all of which you’re familiar with after working as his assistant for years. Chronic, but manageable. Sometimes over the past two days, it’s seemed like Tomura’s allergic to the entire human world.

Spinner told you that permanent embodiment creates complications, but you didn’t realize just how severe those complications would be. There’s no legal record of Tomura’s existence. He doesn’t have ID or health records or health insurance. There’s no next of kin who’s empowered to make decisions for him while he’s under heavy sedation, dead to the world. Hizashi’s working overtime to forge some kind of documentation for him. The doctors have been hinting that they won’t release him without it. Legally, you don’t have any right to be involved in or updated on Tomura’s medical condition, but he managed to identify you as somebody important before he went under, which means you get a little more information than you would have gotten otherwise. The doctors have been referring to you as his girlfriend. Apparently he called you his human.

Tomura might not have a next of kin, you do, and the doctors called your parents when you were too doped up on painkillers to stop them. You managed to talk them down from coming to visit, mostly by lying and then promising that they can come visit you soon. The last thing you need is for them to come here right now. Things are too chaotic. It’s hard to think that anything normal will ever happen again.

Like today. Jin and Spinner are picking you up from the hospital and driving you home to a house that, for the first time since it was built, doesn’t have a ghost in it.

When you and Spinner make it down the steps, Jin’s idling the van near the curb with Atsuhiro snoozing in the back row. Jin bursts out laughing at the sight of you, ignoring Spinner hissing at him to shut up. “No wonder Himiko wouldn’t let me see what she picked! Ready to get out of here?”

“Yes.” That’s not quite true, though. The sharp pain in your chest as the hospital vanishes around a curve in the highway tells you that you’d rather have stayed until Tomura could come with you.

You’ve been there, the few times they��ve tried waking him up. He’s promptly freaked out each time, and while your presence settles him a bit, the fact that he’s now in a human body, experiencing the world as a human does, is way more than you can calm him down from. Luckily for you and Tomura, the embodied ghosts stepped in to help. Since last night, there’s been one of them stationed in his room at all times, ready to corral him, ready to explain, so nothing else in his hospital room goes up in dust. Tomura lost a lot of his ghostly powers, but he’s still got more than enough left to raise hell.

You don’t want to leave him there. You want to stay there until he wakes up for good, and not leave until you can bring him home. But your health insurance won’t pay for more than the two nights you already spent in the hospital, and you have a bad feeling about who’s going to be on the hook for Tomura’s hospital bill. You have to go home. You’ll be back to visit tomorrow after work, but tonight you have to go home.

“How did he look?” Spinner asks Jin. Spinner came to get you, while Jin brought Magne for her shift in Tomura’s room. “You saw him, right?”

“He looks like hell.”

“He looks like he’s looked the entire time,” Atsuhiro says sleepily from the back row. Then, to you: “They mentioned removing the feeding tube in two days. His body is burning calories rapidly, and if he doesn’t have enough in reserve, he’ll have a heart attack when he starts moving around.”

“Great,” you mumble. “Did he wake up at all?”

“Not perceptibly to the staff,” Atsuhiro says. Ghost stuff. Again. “I was able to tell him that you were being released today.”

You sort of wish Atsuhiro hadn’t done that. Tomura’s going to think you’re leaving him, and based on the conversation you had the day before things went to hell, he didn’t want to embody himself for anything less than a sure thing. You’re a sure thing. About as sure as it gets, given that you were ready to get sucked into the world between along with him rather than let him go. But he’s not going to know that until the two of you talk. And you can’t talk to him while he’s got a feeding tube down his throat.

When you left the neighborhood three nights ago, you left it in the back of an ambulance, so you didn’t get a good look at everything that happened. Now it’s daylight, and what you see isn’t pretty. A weird fog still hovers over everything. Almost every plant on the block is dead, courtesy of being flash-frozen a dozen times over, and the pavement and asphalt on your end of the street is pitted and ruptured and cracked, courtesy of the giant. Nobody’s house escaped getting knocked around a bit, but you know yours took the largest amount of damage – window smashed, porch roof caved in, fence down, yard chewed to bits – so when you get out of the car and make your way closer for a look, you’re expecting the worst.

What you’re not expecting to see is a new fence, in the process of being painted greyish blue. You’re not expecting to see Himiko and a girl you vaguely remember meeting at her birthday party painting it. And you’re definitely not expecting Izuku to pop out of absolutely nowhere, hands smeared with dirt. “Hey, you’re back! Are you okay?”

He waits long enough for you to confirm you’re not about to keel over, then pivots. “Tell me everything that happened.”

“We already told you what happened,” Spinner says. “Don’t bug her.”

“You did tell me! It was great,” Izuku says. He refocuses on you. “But you spent the most time with the conjurer, didn’t you? And you got away from him! How did you do it?”

It occurs to you, sort of suddenly, that you haven’t told anybody exactly what happened. Everybody’s clear on the important details – kidnapped by conjurer, tortured by conjurer with the intent of Nomufication, escaped, rescued by what Jin inexplicably decided to call the Vanguard Action Squad. Nobody’s asked you more until you right now. And you should probably tell somebody, just to get it on the record. “Um, it was –”

“Izuku! Leave her be,” Inko scolds, stepping out onto your front porch. You should have guessed that at least one of Izuku’s parents would be present, but you’re still surprised to see her. “I’m sorry to startle you. We were hoping to be gone by the time you got back so you’d have a quiet house.”

A quiet house. A house without Tomura in it. “It’s okay. Um – why are you here?”

“We’re helping patch things up,” Izuku says. “I’m filling in the footprints in the yard – Toga says there was a huge Nomu here – like, building-sized –”

“Bigger,” Himiko says. She looks over at the other girl, who looks worried. “I didn’t fight that one. I did lots of other fighting.”

“And Toga and Uraraka are fixing the fence,” Izuku continues. You forgot that Himiko picked out a different last name than Jin’s when she embodied herself. You’re not sure why. “Mom was keeping an eye on the guys who came to fix the window and the roof and Dad and Kacchan are in the backyard clearing out your dead plants! There are a lot of them. Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? You didn’t do it.” You step through the gate, barely avoiding putting your hand in wet paint. “The fence looks really nice, Himiko. You guys didn’t have to do this.”

“The old fence matched Tomura’s new hair. We had to fix it,” Himiko explains. “Now it matches his old hair.”

“He has new hair?” Uraraka asks.

“Yeah, it’s white now. He looks like an anime villain,” Spinner says, and Himiko giggles. “I didn’t know your fence was supposed to match your hair.”

“It’s not. That’s why we’re fixing it.”

“Thank you,” you say to Himiko and her friend. “And – thanks, Izuku. I’ll tell you about all the stuff later.”

He beams at you, then goes back to filling in a massive hole in your yard. You thank Spinner and Jin for the ride home, and Atsuhiro for sitting with Tomura, then make your way into your house. The last time you were here, you could barely walk. You were oozing blood everywhere and you were in agony, but you remember seeing Tomura on the porch and stumbling into his arms and feeling for just a moment like everything would be okay. Everything is okay. But just like Aizawa said of you being turned into a Nomu, this came at a cost – and you weren’t the one to pay.

There are a few bloodstains on the front porch steps. You collect some varnish from your hall closet and come back out to paint them over.

“My dear.” Mr. Yagi’s feet appear in your field of vision and you look up at him. He looks miserable, his mouth trembling. “I’m so sorry.”

You shake your head. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“You were taken from the parking lot. I knew the conjurer could be near. I knew you were in danger. And instead of ensuring your safety I allowed you to –”

“You weren’t responsible for my safety. I was,” you say. You’re pretty sure nothing could have stopped the conjurer. If he hadn’t grabbed you from the parking lot before work, he would have grabbed you when you went outside on your lunch break or when you headed home. “The bracelets you gave me helped me get away from him. I wouldn’t have escaped without them.”

Mr. Yagi looks surprised. “Is that so?”

“When he noticed them, he broke one. It released all this energy and threw him across the room. That’s how I got out. And me and the ghost who helped me escape used the other one to blow up the building we were in.”

“My master must have known he would break them,” Mr. Yagi says. He smiles slightly, sadly. “She was a master tactician. And speaking of her – I suppose it’s no longer relevant, but I brought over the notes Izuku and I took from her journals, if you’d still like to read them.”

“I’d like to.” You’ll need something to do tonight, when you’re here all alone for the first time. “Thank you.”

The two of you sit together on the steps until the varnish dries and the smell of food begins to drift out of the kitchen. You go to investigate and find that Inko’s turned your kitchen into some kind of industrial cooking facility. “This is for tonight,” she says, gesturing to a pot simmering on your stove. “I’ve made things for the next four days also. The list on the counter is a list of common food sensitivities, in case Tomura picked up anything during his embodiment. And if you have any questions about anything, please call me.”

You feel a lump growing in your throat, making it hard to swallow. “I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

“You wouldn’t,” Inko says. She smiles at you. “I would have liked someone to talk to, when it was me.”

You nod a few times, manage to thank her. Then you excuse yourself to the bathroom, so she won’t see you struggling not to cry.

You’re not sure why you’re so miserable, why it’s so hard for you to hold it together as everyone heads home for the evening. The only thing that helps even slightly is when Phantom comes home, brought over by Shinsou and Hizashi, who’ve been keeping an eye on her for you. She’s so happy to see you that she leaps a full three feet off the ground and knocks you over, which hurts. You hug her close even though you can tell she’s dying to zoom ecstatically around the house and look up at Shinsou and Hizashi from the floor. “Thanks for looking out for her. I owe you.”

“That’s the closest I’m gonna get to getting a dog until I move out. It’s great,” Shinsou says. Aizawa and Eri are committed cat people, but Shinsou’s said multiple times that he likes both. “So you got out of the hospital. Are you, like – good?”

“Great,” you say. It’s a good thing you and Shinsou aren’t ghosts, because if you were, you wouldn’t have a prayer of getting away with the lie. “It’s nice to be home.”

Hizashi nods impatiently as you pick yourself up off the ground and Phantom goes tearing off to inspect the house, Shinsou in hot pursuit. He has a folder tucked under one arm, and he holds it out to you. “Here. ID and birth certificate for him. I’m working on the rest.”

The ID is right on top, complete with a photo. “How’d you get a photo of him?”

“Took it in the hospital. Fixing the background and photoshopping his eyes open was a bitch.” Hizashi looks pretty proud of himself anyway. “I made him the same age as you. He looks it at least. The birthday is an approximation of his summoning date. I couldn’t use his embodiment date. I didn’t want the doctors asking too many questions about how he had the worst birthday ever.”

“Thanks.” You inspect everything a little closer, then nearly drop the folder in shock. “Shigaraki Tomura? You gave him his conjurer’s last name?”

“I couldn’t think of anything else,” Hizashi says. “It flows pretty nicely, right?”

You guess it does, except for the part where you’re going to think of the conjurer every time you use Tomura’s new full name. “Thank you,” you say again, uselessly. “I don’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t helped.”

Hizashi looks as uncomfortable being thanked by you as you are doing the thanking. “Don’t worry about it. His shit’s a lot easier to forge than the Nomus’.”

Shinsou and Hizashi stick around for a little longer, checking out the repairs and marveling at all the food Inko cooked, then head home. You shut and lock the door behind them, and all at once you’re home alone. Just you and Phantom, like you thought it would be when you bought this place. Phantom is wandering from room to room, greeting you when she passes by but very much looking for something. Looking for Tomura.

“He’ll be home soon,” you promise her. She knows who you’re talking about. She whines. “I miss him, too.”

You feel aimless, and you feel sick. You should probably eat something. You fill a bowl from the pot Inko left on the stove and settle in on the couch to pick at it, staring at nothing if you’re not looking into the bowl itself. It tastes good, but you’ve got no desire to eat it. You eat it anyway. If you’re going to be miserable no matter what, you might as well do it on a full stomach.

Part of you thinks it’s normal to feel wrecked after everything that’s happened. You were kidnapped and tortured. You watched your ghost die in front of you nineteen times. You almost got force-fed a ghost and almost turned into a Nomu and almost watched your house be destroyed and almost killed somebody and almost lost your ghost to the world between. Only a crazy person wouldn’t be upset. But at the same time, it’s a whole lot of almost. It could have been so much worse. It almost was. What is there for you to be upset about?

Your phone rings and you pick it up just for somebody to talk to. It’s your mom. “When I called the hospital they said you’d been discharged today. Why didn’t you call?”

“It’s been a lot. I just got home.” It’s probably not good that your default is to lie to her. “Everything’s fine.”

“Everything isn’t,” your mom says severely. “I raised you. I know you. Even over the phone, I know that tone in your voice.”

“How do you know me, Mom? We barely talk. We barely talked even when I was a kid.” You shouldn’t say this. Now’s not the right time to say this, but you’ve started, and you can’t stop yourself. “Everything’s not fine, and I don’t want to talk about it. Not with you. Not with anybody! The only person I want to talk to about it is Tomura, and he’s –”

In the hospital, in an induced coma, with a feeding tube down his throat that they won’t remove for two more days. Your own throat closes up, and your mom is silent on her end of the line. You brace yourself for her to blow up at you, to talk about how you never let her in, how the distance between the two of you is your fault. Instead: “You must be really worried about Tomura,” she says. “How is he doing?”

“He’s – they think he’ll be out in three days,” you say haltingly. “It’s – it’s worse for him than it was for me. I was healthier to start with. But they said he’ll be home in three days.”

“Are you going to visit him tomorrow?”

“I want to,” you say. “I have to go back to work, too. My boss said he’d give me as much time as I need, but I need to save it for when Tomura’s home.”

“When he’s home,” your mother repeats. “You live together?”

Oops. “Yeah. For a while now.”

“So it’s serious.”

“As serious as it gets,” you say. For a moment you’re overwhelmed by the memory of clinging to his hand as the world between dragged him in, refusing to let go even if it meant you’d be pulled in, too. “I’m – this is it for me, Mom. He’s it. I’m not leaving him.”

“I would never ask you to leave him,” your mom says, surprised. You shouldn’t have said that, should have known that the weight behind it wouldn’t make sense to her. “I’m looking forward to meeting him, once the two of you have recovered from all of this. You still haven’t told me what happened.”

You haven’t told anyone. “It’s hard to explain,” you say. Your phone begins to beep again, signaling an incoming call, and your stomach lurches when you see Magne’s caller ID. “I’m getting a call from the hospital. I have to go. Sorry –”

“Go,” your mom says immediately. “I’ll call back later. I love you.”

You manage to mumble that you love her too, then end the call and accept Magne’s. “What’s happening? Is he okay?”

You hear Magne speaking to someone else, but you can’t hear what she’s saying, and then her voice is there again, right in your ear. “Tomura’s awake,” she says. “They’re trying to sedate him again, but he’s a little upset. You can imagine.”

You can imagine. “Can I talk to him?”

“That’s why I called you, honey.” Magne puts you on speaker, and you hear her voice from a distance. “You’re right by his ear. Go ahead.”

“Tomura,” you say, and you hear a strangled sound. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay. Nobody there wants to hurt you. They’re just trying to help.”

You imagine him arguing that it hurts anyway. Probably also that it’s not helping, and he still feels like hell. “The sooner you get through this, the sooner you can come home,” you tell him. “That’s where I am right now. Me and Phantom are waiting for you. We’ll be here when you get back. Three days, right?”

“Right,” a doctor confirms from somewhere in the offing. “The wounds are healing well. The nutritional deficiencies are the main concern now.”

“You’ll be home soon,” you promise. “I’ll come visit you tomorrow.”

He’d be protesting if he could talk. Probably saying that he’ll be asleep tomorrow if he lets them sedate him again. “I’ll be there,” you say. “You’re fun to hang out with even when you’re asleep.”

You wonder if he’ll hear what you’re calling back to – all those months ago, when you were trying to keep him out of your bedroom at night. “I love you. I’ll be there tomorrow. Tomura –”

“He’s out,” Magne tells you. She laughs quietly. “We all knew you had him wrapped around your finger, but it’s really something to see in action.”

You close your eyes. “Thanks for sitting with him. It would be harder if you weren’t.”

Magne says something about how it’s not a problem, even though it is, and you thank her again and hang up the phone. You wish you were there with Tomura in the hospital. Even if you can’t talk to him, you can hold his hand. You could get used to the warmth of his skin and the new rhythm of his pulse and the sight of his white hair, before he comes home to you for good. You finish your soup and lift Phantom into your lap. She was with you at the start of all this, before all of this. She’s the only thing right now that feels like home. She lets you hug her and licks your face a few times, and for some stupid reason, that’s when you start to cry.