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#protagonist trope comes into play
dyinggirldied · 1 year
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Just reading about this TV trope and hey, a little idea pops into my head. Like, imagine Ra al Ghul one day found Danny Fenton, who shared a lot of resembling to Bruce Wayne/Batman, and sent his spies to capture or kidnap him.
Easy peasy right? Wrong because through incredible luck and oblivious, Danny managed to evade and defeat the spies, while in his human form all the time. And Ra, in all his creepy seriousness, felt that there was a better heir or threat and sent even more top spies, ninjas and assassins after the boy.
Danny won, of course.
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antimnemonic · 2 months
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new getter robo is GREAT bc it's literally one of those archetypal twilight zone-esque horror stories where some freaky shit happens, we don't really get any answers, just a conclusion of damn that was fucked up. anyways! but the main character is a screaming hot blooded guy and energetic music is playing throughout
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cephalomicide · 2 years
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concept: one of those isekai things where it works like a video game for some reason except the main character has never played video games and is really bad at them
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neechees · 1 year
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Negative & racist depictions, tropes, and Stereotypes regarding Native Americans in Road to El Dorado.
Mayaincatec: The film homogenizes multiple Indigenous cultures cultures into one, specifically and mainly Maya and Nahua cultures, with the story being based on a mythical place set in Colombia.
Mighty Whitey: the basis of the film comes from the Spanish lie and myth that the Indigenous Aztec population worshipped them as gods, with the city of El Dorado doing the same with Miguel and Tulio, who use this to trick Native people to steal gold from them.
Oversexualized Native Woman: Chel’s character has overemphasis on her sex appeal and sexuality, with her character design being very revealing and exageratted on her chest, hips, and thighs. There is little to no exploration of her character outside of her sexuality and servitude towards the White characters. She does not pass the Aila Test and is a near opposite. Chel is a perfect example of how many Native female characters are sexualized
Evil Shaman: The Native religious leader Tzekel-Kan is demonized as evil & plays a heavier role as the main antagonist instead of the famed genocidal colonizer Hernan Cortez. Tzekel-Kan being enslaved by Cortez at the end is depicted as a “good ending”.
Demonized Spiritualiity: connected to the above, all scenes depicting traditional Mesoamerican spirituality/religion or practices are shown as evil, barbaric, savage, scary, and associated with the main antagonist.
White Saviors: El Dorado is saved by the main White protagonists, the idea to destroy the gates to the city is Tulio’s idea, the warriors of El Dorado are portrayed as helpless and no match for the Spanish conquistadors despite Indigenous Mexican warriors going toe to toe with them, and winning against them in various battles in real life.
Whitewashed Colonialism: Cortez, despite being one of the worst colonizers in history, serves as a minor, secondary antagonist & his evilness is only vaguely implied, and never explained why it (his actions) is bad. Cortez has the same goal as Miguel and Tulio (to steal gold from Indigenous people), but the protagonists aren’t shown as bad for doing it. Colonization is essentially excused (& is never explicitly named as harmful) as long as the colonizers are “nice” about it.
There’s likely some other stuff I’m missing but these are some of the big ones that are shown in this film, & its depictions of Indigenous Peoples are extremely harmful. I also don’t wanna see anybody trying to defend any of these with somehow implying “Well it’s not ACTUALLY racist or harmful because-” etc etc save it for a vague post and take our inability to see criticism of racism within a movie you like elsewhere.
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agnimybeloved · 2 years
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i will never understand the appeal of those until dawn type games i haven’t been impressed by any of them 😭 seems like theyre intentionally trying to lean into the absurd and campy stereotypes of horror but its just all of the insufferability and none of the charm 
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iceunhie · 2 months
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˗ˏˋ ꒰ ⊹ unexpected development ! ꒱ ˎˊ˗
summary ⁠☆ you get transported into your favorite otome game’s world as a shitty side character with a raging death flag. you try to prevent your inevitable destruction... but it doesn't go according to plan as much as you'd hope.
notes ☆ of course it's another scaramouche fic except this time it's plot is manhwa inspired
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“This trashy game!” you curse, watching the pitch black GAME OVER screen linger in your phone. Happy music plays despite the current cg of your character at the hands of the tyrant character slash love interest Scaramouche. You sigh, tapping on the back button. “I was so close to completing his route… stupid, stupid game, ugh…”
Teyvat’s Seven Stars was a new otome game that you'd tried out for fun, bored out of your mind. The amazing art and soundtrack garnered your interest, not to mention the male leads were totally your type!
It had an array of tropes and spared no expense of flowery scenes and fanservicey excerpts that made you play despite its massive cashgrab feature. Heart fluttering near death scenes! Action packed romantic scenes with the main characters! It was consuming you and you loved it.
Even if the Scaramouche route was testing your patience.
You get that he was the most difficult to conquer out of all of them, but really, one! wrong! move! ….and an immediate gameover. Life sucks when he's your favorite character, and when your favorite character was notoriously known for having a horrid and difficult complete clear route that no one has completed yet, of course you needed to complete it, no matter what!
Damn it, now you've run out of love points to restart another run. Fuck you, system! Stupid trashy money grabbing game! You put down your phone, closing it. An immediate heavy weight settles on your shoulders, making you feel sleepy as you clutch your phone to bed.
Tomorrow… you'll complete his route for sure…
[ TEYVAT’S SEVEN STARS SYSTEM ACTIVATED! RUNNING GAME FILE NOW ]
Ah. You should've known what was coming.
[ CHARACTER FILE: [NAME] [LAST NAME] - CROWN PRINCE KUNIKUZUSHI’S BETROTHED! ]
What the fuck.
You think you've lost feeling in your jaw when the glare of the system shines bright, mocking you.
“[Name], you're awake!” You turn to the sound, and you face probably the most beautiful person you've ever seen. No, what the hell. You've seen him before.
Beautiful silky dark hair, glossy electric indigo eyes, a perpetual aura of ethereal lightness…. the game descriptions weren't lying after all. yes, you weren't dreaming. This was Scaramouche, or should you say at this point in time… Kunikuzushi?
He immediately clings to you. Oh. Oh. Well fuck. “I… uh.”
Scara- ahem, Kunikuzushi’s eyes are littered with tears and oh no you're a weak hearted person for your favorite character. “I'm so glad you're okay! I'm sorry, my mother- I mean, I'm so glad you're okay.”
The rest of the moments is a blur when your… fiance? betrothed? fills you in on what happened. Your mind is fuzzy and you can only piece together just a rough summary of what point in the game you're in.
So, you are currently three years early from the main story. Unfortunately, you are not either of the main protagonists Lumine or Aether. No, the system apparently hates you for being a hater and gave you the most egregious role.
A side character. A side character who barely even appears in the story, left to be trampled on by the story's plot. What's more, you're in the timeline wherein the current Kunikuzushi doesn't take the name Scaramouche because his Mother, the lone Queen Raiden Ei left him when he could not pass the Inazuma kingdom’s test to be worthy of the gnosis.
He took the name Scaramouche after being trained by the shady organization known as the Fatui, the main villainous force in the game and usurped his mother. In other words, a blackened tyrant character!
...And you were the betrothed his mother set for him - executed in the future because he didn't want any trace of Ei’s influence. Amazing.
The future Kunikuzushi would be an arrogant, tsundere and soft-for-only-one-person type of character, but now, he was like a gentle, tucked away from the world young prince.
Wait…. wasn’t he also gullible before?! Very cute, but it's no wonder he blackened so quickly with such a naive personality!
You, well, technically, the character [Name] [Last Name] ended up in this situation after they threatened to leave Kunikuzushi because he was far too fragile for their taste. A side character who’d contributed to Scaramouche’s blackening and paid for it with their life. That was who you were.
Okay, now you pity this boy a lot. He already had a traumatic childhood with Ei not giving him enough love and therefore a plethora of issues, and he'd even end up being a crazy tyrant who stopped at nothing to get the main protagonist in his grasp! For your death flag not to happen, you HAD to do something about that.
You had no choice.
To survive this horrendous fate, you came up with a plan. And that would be Plan give-kunikuzushi-all-the-love-in-the-word-before-he-meets-the-protagonist-and-turn-into-a-blackened-dark-tyrant!
Okay, lengthy plan, but to plan ahead is to be smart, so you can take care of the name later.
So far so good, this plan of yours. Plan get-kunikuzushi-to-turn-into-a-sparkly-prince character and not his blackened self was going well! (You gave up on thinking of a cool name) Thank god for cliche romance novels.
So far, you've increased your proximity to him, including him to spend time with you, showering him with bouts of affection and care. And so far, it's been paying off. The once secluded Prince has become so cute and so sweet!
You have to pat yourself on the back for this. You were doing the protagonist a huge favor that now they had a wonderful love interest in their sights for future reference.
Although, if there was one nitpick you had on your conduct, it would be the fact that Kunikuzushi didn't take kindly to others aside from you, and would even be panicked, utterly devastated if you even brought up the mere mention of leaving.
“Break… our engagement in the future?” if it weren't for him looking shell-shocked and deathly pale, the furrow on Kunikuzushi’s face would've been cute. “No! I don't want that! You aren't planning to leave me, are you?”
He gives you the most horrendous god kneeling look of a plea, and of course you drop the subject immediately.
“It was a joke, of course. I'd never want to break our engagement!” you hurriedly reassure, gently taking his hands in yours.
Kunikuzushi looks at you, all puppy eyes and pink cheeks. So cute. Who wouldn't want to stay by his side? You reassure him, “Whatever happens, I'll always stay by your side, okay?”
He looks at your intertwined hands with an unreadable expression on his face. “Do you promise?”
You nod. “I promise, Kuni.”
He nods, gripping your hands tighter, and his expression rivals a blazing sun, brimming with conviction as he pulls you in for a huge hug.
And of course, who wouldn't turn down an opportunity to hug their favorite character?
Surely this time, you’ll definitely escape the death flag and horrendous side character ending, right?!
You don't notice the shadow on Kuni’s face when the mere mention of being separated from you comes up.
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In the back of your mind, you wonder what would happen if your Kunikuzushi met the protagonist. Would he immediately fall for them? you wonder, and an uncharacteristic pang of discomfort tugs at your chest. Ah, what would it matter.
You smile at the gentle, pristine and kind Kunikuzushi that's currently excitedly telling you about how Ei praised his sword skills after he beat his younger sister. Even if the main protagonist would come here, you could keep this adorable Kunikuzushi for yourself for just a little longer.
You kiss his cheek, and he heats up. Yes, the future can wait for now.
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How the hell did it come to this?
“You told me you'd always stay by my side, right?” a hand slicked with blood is resting on the side of your face. Electric indigo eyes, these ones now having a ruthless glint to them, stare up at your own. “I've removed everything else that can take you away from me. Now, you have no reason to leave.”
By remove, he meant the man who'd decided to make a move on you after you went to the gardens for some fresh air. Hence the blood on his hands and sword, hence the reason why there's a dead body by your feet.
The once adorable and fair-faced Kunikuzushi still turned into Scaramouche after all, and you failed to prevent his blackening. He was truly, undoubtedly the same game Scaramouche.
But… Why was he acting like this? Wasn't this the exclusive feature only the protagonist should be experiencing?
He presses a kiss to your forehead, then the back of your palm. You blush.
Yes, he is now an extremely dangerous individual capable of executing anyone he deems appropriate to just for the sake of it, and yes, this same man is kneeling before you as you're just about to leave after the main storyline cg act just started. And yes, like the protagonist, you should stay far, far away from him.
But could you really? When he was pleading you with such an expression of longing and yearning? He takes your hand to caress it to the side of his face, eyes haughty and grin unsettling, gosh was he so… so attractive, like that.
“You won't leave, right?” Why was he so…. so sweet? Why was this scene structured as if you were the one he wanted to be with, not the protagonist? “You promised me, after all.”
….And why on earth did your heart leap out of your chest when he said he wanted you to stay?
(It was hard to pretend you didn't know why when the smile on your face said otherwise.)
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1.5k words, only the real ones know that ive been planning a cliche otome game au since day 1 I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED TO ME WHEN I WAS WRITING THIS FIC 😭 might turn this into a series if people like this though <3
@ MHIIEEE : do not repost, copy or plagiarize or claim my content or work as your own.
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writingwithcolor · 2 months
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What Makes an Ethnic Villain "Ethnic" or "Villainous?" How Do You Offset it?
anonymous asked:
Hello WWC! I have a question about the antagonist of my story. She is (currently) Japanese, and I want to make sure I’m writing her in a way that doesn’t associates [sic] her being Asian with being villainous.  The story is set in modern day USA, this character is effectively immortal. She was a samurai who lost loved ones due to failure in combat, and this becomes her character[sic] motivation (portrayed sympathetically to the audience). This story explores many different time periods and how women have shown valor throughout history. The age of the samurai (and the real and legendary female warriors from it) have interested me the most, which is why I want her to be from this period.  The outfit she wears while fighting is based on samurai armor, and she wears modern and traditional Japanese fashion depending on the occasion. She acts pretty similar to modern day people, though more cynical and obsessed with her loss. She’s been able to adapt with the times but still highly values and cherishes her past.  She is the only Asian main character, but I plan to make a supportive Japanese side character. She’s a history teacher who knows about the villain and gives the protagonists information to help them, but isn’t involved in the main plot otherwise.  Are the way I’m writing this villain and the inclusion of a non-antagonist Japanese character enough to prevent a harmful reading of the story, or is there more I should do?
Why Does Your Villain Exist?
This makes me feel old because David Anders plays a villain with this kind of backstory in the series Heroes starring Masi Oka. 
I think you want to think about what you mean when you say: 
Villainous (In what way? To whom? To what end?)
Harmful (What tropes, narratives and implications are present?)
I’m relatively infamous in the mod circle for not caring too much about dimensions of “harm”. The concept is relative and varies widely between people and cultures. I don’t see much value in framing motivations around “What is less harmful?” I think for me, what matters more is: 
“What is more true?” 
“Are characteristics viewed as intrinsic to background, or the product of experiences and personal autonomy?”
“Will your portrayal resonate with a large audience?”
“What will resonate with the members of the audience who share the backgrounds your characters have?” 
This post offers additional questions you could ask yourself instead of “is this okay/not okay/harmful.” 
You could write a story where your antagonist is sly, sadistic, violent and cold-blooded. It may not be an interpretation that will make many Japanese from combat backgrounds feel seen or heard, but it’s not without precedent. These tropes have been weaponized against people of Japanese descent (Like Nikkei Japanese interned during World War II), but Japan also brutalized a good chunk of Asia during World War II. See Herge’s Tintin and The Blue Lotus for an example of a comic that accurately showcases the brutality of Japan’s colonization of Manchuria, but also is racist in terms of how Japanese characters are portrayed (CW: genocide, war, imperialism, racism).
You could also write a story where your character’s grief gives way to despair, and fuels their combat such that they are seen as calculating, frigid and deeply driven by revenge/ violence. This might make sense. It’s also been done to death for Japanese female warriors, though (See “Lady Snowblood” by Kazuo Koike and Kazuo Kamimura here, CW: sexual assault, violence, murder and a host of other dark things you’d expect in a revenge story). 
You could further write a story where your antagonist is not necessarily villainous, but the perceived harm comes from fetishizing/ exoticizing elements in how her appearance is presented or how she is sexualized, which is a common problem for Japanese female characters. 
My vote always goes to the most interesting story or character. I don’t see any benefit to writing from a defensive position. This is where I'll point out that, culturally, I can't picture a Japanese character viewing immortality as anything other than a curse. Many cultures in Japan are largely defined by transience and the understanding that many things naturally decay, die, and change form.
There are a lot of ways you could conceivably cause harm, but I’d rather hear about what the point of this character is given the dilemma of their position. 
What is her purpose for the plot? 
How is she designed to make the reader feel? 
What literary devices are relevant to her portrayal?
(Arbitrarily, you can always add more than 1 extra Japanese character. I think you might put less pressure on yourself with this character’s portrayal if you have more Japanese characters to practice with in general.) 
- Marika. 
When Off-Setting: Aim for Average
Seconding the above with regards to this villainess’s story and your motivations for this character, but regardless of her story I think it’s also important to look specifically at how the Japanese teacher character provides contrast. 
I agree with the choice to make her a regular person and not a superhero. Otherwise, your one Asian character is aggressively Asian-themed in a stereotypical Cool Japan way (particularly if her villain suit is samurai-themed & she wears wafu clothing every so often). Adding a chill person who happens to be Japanese and doesn’t have some kind of ninja or kitsune motif will be a breath of fresh air (well, more like a sigh of relief) for Japanese readers. 
A note on characterization—while our standard advice for “offset” characters is to give your offset character the opposite of the personality trait you’re trying to balance, in this case you might want to avoid opposites. You have a villainess who is a cold, tough “don’t need no man” type. Making the teacher mild-mannered, helpful, and accomodating would balance out the villainess’s traits, but you’ll end up swinging to the other side of the pendulum towards the Submissive Asian stereotype depending on execution. If avoiding stereotypes is a concern, I suggest picking something outside of that spectrum of gentleness to violence and making her really boring or really weird or really nerdy or a jock gym teacher or…something. You’re the author.
Similarly, while the villainess is very traditionally Japanese in her motifs and backstory, don’t make the teacher go aggressively in either direction—give her a nice balance of modern vs. traditional, Japanese vs. Western sensibilities as far as her looks, dress, interests, values, etc. Because at the end of the day, that’s most modern Japanese people. 
Sometimes, the most difficult representation of a character of color is making a character who is really average, typical, modern, and boring. 
- Rina
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austinsastrology8991 · 10 months
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> Neptune IN the HOUSES < How your DELUSIONS find you RESOLUTIONS
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Neptune in the First - You act so naive, and now people actually think your naive. But you hate it when people treat you this way, but your always swaying around and acting oblivious to everything around you, but ik its all a front, and people find you to be mystical and now everyone is entranced by this dance you make acting oblivious. its obvious its an act, but then the more you get to know them you realize its not and thats actually who they are, and you wonder why no one has bonked them on the head yet Neptune in the Second - you dont really value anything, you think everything comes and goes, and your just like a paper bag flowing through the wind tbh. But this quality of letting things be and go, allows you to be molded by life and that can be a useful tool for artisty, but man yall just give up easy tbh. also your voices are like ethereal - kiddd cudiiiiiieee Neptune in the Third - you guys talk like a movie character, and its never the villain but the naive protagonist who just believes in a bunch of bullshit. but everyone thinks your so amusing to lissten to and i suppose you are but sometimes you guys really are playing up this movie trope and well im done watching the same movie i want a re-cast. then next week you will re-cast yourself as a new protagonist and well everyone just loves to watch you be an idiot so keep it up Neptune in the Fourth - Your literally 'good will huntings robin Williams'. you act like you figured out emotions because you let them come and go, but when someone questions whats going on with you, you find a million reasons to explain why you behave this way, and why others do, whilst completely avoiding letting your emotions out because your way too sensitive youd rather keep it at them at a distance that way you can handle it Neptune in the Fifth - You guys are the embodiment of a amusement park. YOu perform a million different acts, and never run out of ideas on how to entertain. Very amusing to watch, but people tend to take you for granted since your always so fun to be around we just expect yalll to keep performing, and you can, but this eats you up inside. then you perform again showing us how you feel as usual, and how it feels being used, and well i guess its all good because you have a never ending source of material - yourselves
Neptune in the Sixth - IMO the real mvps of delusions. No one is as delusional as them but they dont even care because they have thought of so much bullshit and have found so much evidence for their bullshit that they now realized that what most people believe in is bullshit, so they just think everything is bullshit. They dont even give a fuck anymore because to them everything isnt real, and everything is real, they have trouble understanding reality, because they have seen things no one could ever believe exists Neptune in the Seventh - Hopelessly projecting what they want in the world just for it to never come to fruition. This is actually how they pull, so dont hate their game. but they tell people how they wish things would be, and people want to save them by showing them how the world works, or giving into their stupid delusions and pretending what they believe in is real. Kinda a lot to deal with. But they'll never admit that they act so innocent but then your basically taking care of a baby Neptune in the Eighth - They make the universe bend to their will whether it wants to or not. They will pull every magic trick they know to make sure that their delusions are not delusional anymore. And its impressive how much they believe in there imaginings that it does tend to become real, but i would warn them and whoever is around them; That their fantasies tend towards the dark. so if they want something to be real (and they gonna do everything they can to get it) they may or may not resort to black magic or some shady ass shit Neptune in the Ninth - They believe in god a lot, maybe too much to appear normal. They are the type to make up a cult and behave liek mormons and say it was the will of god. The people ive met with this are strange, and their beliefs alter quite a bit, and for some reason they always have met deities and angels. But they are so delusional in their beleifs that if you hear them out, its so far fetched youll get lost in them because your so curious how someone got so lost in their own religion you wonder if they'll ever return to the real world Neptune in the Tenth - They are openly strange. Bro dennis Rodman has this conj his midheaven and its just iconic really. These guys are the strangest most ethereal beings and everyone gets lost in their cult of personality. Always switching up their identity, they think reality is bullshit and well we are all here for it because yall do the strangest things and i just wanna watch what your gonnna do next. but im still trynna figure out how close i wanna get to you because being seen with you is a risk for my reputation, because you clearly dont give a fuck about yours Neptune in the Eleventh - How many acid shirts do you own. Its like your the public personification of 'make love not war and peace bro' and its cool everyone wants a freidn like you, but no one takes your advice seriously. Because your so lost in the make believe that you think your make believe can actually make someone make believe..... But like cmon how the fuck do you think thats going to change anything. WHen has 'peace bro' ever actually worked. do your charities or whatever but i do not see it working as much as you think it can. sorry not sorry. But i do love you. But get a haircut Neptune in the Twelvth - Your literally the type to lick your finger , put it up in the air and say 'yep it going to rain wednesday' then it actually rains wednesday. And your so cooked no one believes you (because why would you) but then it does happen and now eveyrone thinks your even more cooked because what you had cookin is a real recipe. Now everyone wants to know how you have your third eye or whatever open and now you just want to hide again lmao. Also incredible artists, i recommend you guys keep your intuitive insights to yourself because you are right a lot but why tell people when everyone is just going to question how you see signs rather than heed your advice
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yurimother · 6 months
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'I'm in Love with the Villainess' Anime - Episode 1 Review
An astounding and hilarious first outing for the series with the power to revolutionize Yuri
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We are finally here, the long-awaited and much anticipated first episode of Platinum Vision’s I’m in Love with the Villainess anime aired on Tokyo MX and is streaming everywhere outside of Asia with a plethora of dubbing options, including English, on day one on Crunchyroll.
The first outing covers most of the events of the light novel’s first chapter, or the first three chapters of the manga, at a rapid but steady and not overwhelming pace. At this rate, the anime should be able to cover much of the series’ first arc, or the first two out of five books, in a single cour. Perhaps a bit less, depending on which of the story’s various adventures it elects to include. This is an exciting possibility, to be sure, as the story is a character-driven, socially mindful, and expertly written and, despite its fantasy setting, an exceptionally relevant tale of romance, socio-economic inequality, and of course, queerness.
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While the first arc of Villainess is a triumph, it would be a shame not to see at least some of the developments from the extra chapters that lead into the second story, like (spoilers for the end of volume 2) Rae and Claire’s wedding and their adopted twin daughters May and Aleah. If we are lucky, perhaps they will appear in the final episode or, dare to dream, a second season (end of spoilers).
Now, onto the show itself. For those who, for whatever reason, have not read Inori’s masterpiece, I’m in Love with the Villainess follows Rae Taylor. A salary worker who dies and is reincarnated as the protagonist of her favorite otome game, Revolution. However, Rae has no interest in any of the game world’s three eligible royal bachelors and has eyes only for the game villainess Claire François. Armed with exceptionally magical ability, Rae sets out determined to secure a happy ending for her beloved Claire against the coming revolution and perhaps win her heart in the process.
Now, the opening of I’m in Love with the Villainess is the series' weakest moment in all mediums, which, considering episode one’s outstanding quality, only highlights just how superb the Yuri masterpiece is as a whole. Even with its need to establish the setting, characters, and premise of the series, the premiere managed to be an excellent introduction and set the bar high with lots of laughs, entertainment, and service between our two leads.
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I watched the Japanese audio, and Yu Serizawa and Karin Nanami are fantastic in these roles, with Serizawa playing up Rae’s teasing adoration and borderline masochism at full blast, and Nanami explicitly giving voice to Claire’s arrogance and frustration. She even manages to deliver a perfect Ojou-style laugh to seal the character’s elite status and lean into the show’s use of otome tropes. And having the leads sing the excellent opening and ending themes is just icing on the cake.
Speaking of tropes, while Ironi’s original work is a genre-defying masterpiece that broke the Yuri mold, it is never afraid to play with the genre’s iconography and its otome game setting. Every other scene had another allusion, including to the book’s cover. As always, I am likely overeager to see connections, however intentional they may be, but the academy’s halls harken to otome staples, the bells and strings of the first scene's soundtrack conjured blistering memories of Strawberry Panic (perhaps a sacrilegious comparison to make but I digress), and even an areal shot of the campus was another check mark on my “Scenic Yuri” theory.
Now, as mentioned, I’m in Love with the Villainess has to establish the groundwork here, and narratively, these are the weakest moments, often direct exposition, with a few exceptions like Rae’s conversation with her roommate Mash about maintaining Claire’s attention. The narration is at least accompanied by relevant and creative, if perhaps limited, animation. But to their credit, these moments are succinct, existing only as long as they have to in order to provide the necessary information and get out of the way for what matters most: the characters.
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Rae and Claire are front and center from the very get-go, and there is little time wasted in showcasing Rae’s intense bottom energy or establishing Claire’s elitism and bewildered anger towards Rae’s excitement in the face of Claire’s carefully calculated cruelty. It is a montage of silly and fun competitions between the two that had me laughing and smiling all the way through, as the Yuri was present in full force, and gives glimpses at the mutual obsession the women have for each other that will soon blossom into a wonderful romance.
These early story beats have a light tone and focus on the bullying, teasing, and rivalry between Rae and Claire, a dynamic that previously and understandably made a subset of readers somewhat uncomfortable. However, assuming the anime unfolds in a similar manner to the manga and light novels, the narrative will explore meatier, heavier subject matter and a far deeper lesbian romance, all without losing its sense of fun and adventure. The next episode or two will be incredibly telling - as the source material is perhaps the most profound and forthright depictions of LGBTQ identity in Yuri, and that all starts with a pivotal conversation that, if it is included, will be coming up shortly.
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Overall, I am incredibly excited for this series. The first episode is everything I had hoped for out of an adaptation of one of my favorite works of all time, save the animation, which is average at best. While there is a lot more to see, and we will have to wait to know if I’m in Love with the Villainess lives up to its incredible potential and source material, I am extremely hopeful. We have one of the funniest, most thoughtful, and queerest works of Yuri transformed into a stunning anime project unlike anything that has come before and offers the chance at not just a new Yuri “gateway” but to continue the work of its source material in revolutionizing the genre.
Ratings: Story – 8 Characters – 10 Art – 5 LGBTQ – We shall see… Sexual Content – 3 Final – 8
I'm in Love with the Villainess is streaming on Crunchyroll with English sub/dub.
Review made possible by Avery Riehl and the rest of the YuriMother Patrons. Support YuriMother on Patreon for early access, exclusive article, and more: patreon.com/yurimother
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whirlwindwonderland · 26 days
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What do you like about Princess Tutu (as someone who only knows the name)? What made you enjoy it?
Oh boy.
Okay so Princess Tutu is one of my favourite ever stories. And if I were to list everything I liked about it we'd be here long enough for you to actually go watch the show yourself.
Which you should do.
Because it's awesome.
But to sort of sum up my feelings... I like Princess Tutu because of how it chooses to tell its story. Every story is told a specific way for a specific reason, and Princess Tutu chooses the medium of a Magical Girl Anime about Ballet to tell a story about Love, Hope, and Willpower triumphing over Tragedy and Despair.
That's fucking genius.
It plays its premise completely straight. There's no subversive takes on the magical girl genre here. No turning to wink and laugh at the camera to try and save face. It's completely earnest, plays its tropes completely straight, and makes it all work together, and it all serves the main themes of the story.
You can really get a good summary of this in the main character Ahiru.
Because Ahiru, in the general space of the magical girl anime genre, is not an outlier from what I can tell. She's kind and she's sweet and she's a clumsy, and her power comes from her empathy and her love of others. There's a lot of characters like her.
But Ahiru is different because all of these things- Her empathy, her kindness, her silliness and innocence and clumsiness and big open heart, they all serve the themes of the story. Because when the main villain, the big bad, the thing you have to stand against, is a seemingly inescapable force of fate, pulling you down the path of tragedy, it takes a special kind of truly indomitable soul to fight back.
See, this is a magical girl anime built around the stories of ballet, and a neat thing that many don't know about ballet is that a solid 75% of what's considered the 'Classics' of the medium are tragedies. Swan Lake, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet, and La Sylphide are all referenced in the show proper, with Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet being referenced particularly often. The overarching Villain of the story could be said to be this conceptual tragedy that Ballet seems so enamoured with.
But by applying the fixings of the magical girl genre to this tragedy, approaching this idea of roles in life being fixed like the roles on a stage, of working towards helping someone you love knowing that the result will ultimately be your demise, with the attitude of "I'm going to fix this problem with the power of love and friendship". you get a really interesting story.
Over and over again, Ahiru sees dangerous situations, and reaches out with a kind hand to help those involved. Over and over again, she succeeds. Over and over again, Ahiru almost falls in the face of the despair of her situation. And over and over again, her own kindness comes back to help her, as the people she's befriended come to her side, to support her, to catch her when she falls, and to give her the openings she needs to solve the problems.
Despite being told that her life is meant to be a footnote on the stories of others, that her role is one no one else would take because no one else would want it, that she can never share the love she feels with others, because to do so would literally kill her. Ahiru continuously chooses love. She never becomes bitter to her situation, and continuously chooses to do what she thinks is right, to be kind, to care, and to try to help, and it is this unfailing kindness that, in the end, forces the genre of the story around her to change.
By being unflinchingly and unfailingly herself in the face of adversity and a story that wants her to suffer, she inspires others to want to help her succeed. And in doing that, she forces a grand, cyclical tragedy, to finally resolve with a happy ending.
It's such a clever and beautiful marriage of two different storytelling mediums, and that's just the basics of what you can talk about with the protagonist. The rest of the cast is equally as interesting, and I love them all so very much.
I love stories about storytelling, stories about the triumph of hope, and stories about love and friendship, and Princess Tutu is all of the above. I honestly cannot recommend it enough, it's one of my favourite things ever.
Also it's hilarious. Where else am I going to get a cat ballet teacher that repeatedly threatens his students with marriage if they don't improve at ballet? Or a girl in a donkey costume delivering love notes all around the school? Or... Femio? Just Femio in general???
Great show. Go watch it.
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yuri-is-online · 2 days
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Hi Yuri! Have you ever considered the idea of there being an alternate version of the twst boys in Yuu’s world? Since we have no clue if it’s just another planet or an entirely separate universe, it’s theoretically possible. Poor Yuu would think they are going crazy seeing a familiar face or hearing a familiar voice in another world. Perhaps it is even painful to the point Yuu tries to avoid interacting with the boy in question. - 🦐
(Also, I am well aware of how often I’ve been sharing these thoughts. If they’re annoying you or you don’t feel up to it, I don’t want you to feel pressured to respond or anything. I’m just spitballing and posting before I forget. 👉👈)
OH BOY DO I HAVE SOME THOUGHTS ON THIS!!!!! (first and foremost being that you are very much not annoying <3)
An alt version of a twst boy in Yuu's world is just so yummy. There's so much angst potential depending on what the relationship is/was. Did their boy die in some horrible accident? Is he waiting for them, anxious and terrified about where Yuu went? Does this imply that twst also has a version of Yuu somewhere out there in the world? Questions questions. I did sort of write about this idea in the tags of this yan version of the soulbound au, wherein a cursed Yuu driven insane by their curse kills their soulmate before being isekaid to Twisted Wonderland and finding a different version of him, horrified with the realization that they could kill him again... but I want to cook up some dynamics for what the dorm leaders/overblot boys could be up to in Yuu's world first sooo...
I had a hard time thinking about Riddle until I remembered he's a horse girl and cast Yuu in the role of bad boy ranch hand whose dad's got a job at the barn so they're forced to help take care of the horses and warn all the would be YA protags about the "special horse" who doesn't take orders from just anyone. Not that Riddle is the protagonist... he's more the well established rich petty bitch who looks down on the new girls and especially on you because you're never taking care of his horse in accordance with all his stupid rules. And in stereotypical horse movie fashion Riddle has a massive not so secret crush on bad boy ranch hand Yuu who just doesn't get why he keeps trying to talk to them.
There isn't much royalty left in the world, but imagine Leona as the son of some rich business magnate whose older brother got the company and left him with "nothing." Maybe Yuu works at a liquor store part time and Leona comes in to pick stuff up every once in a while. You wouldn't call him a friend, but you guys shoot the shit enough that you have a general feel for each other to the point he joins you on your breaks to keep up the talk and play chess.
I love the idea of student president council Azul. He's made for that trope. Born for it, he'd be such a terror with Jade as his VP and Floyd as well. Floyd. I can't see him really being a part of the student council but I had this idea the other day based off this instagram post I saw about this mom who sews right? Her daughter was running for class president and she made these bracelets with little shrimp on them and attached them to cards that said "Keep it shrimple! Vote for (kid's name)!" And I was struck with this vision of Yuu doing that so like. Yuu running against Azul with that campaign slogan and he's tearing his hair out over it being so popular because people like memes (the original idea had Floyd running as Yuu's vp but they both dropped out at the last minute because neither him or Yuu wanted to do the actual work lol.) I also like student council president Azul and delinquent Yuu... but that's because of Tsuredure Children ha
Kalim and Jamil are hard... but I think the same set up of rich businessman's kid and his bodyguard in training still fits. How Yuu meets them is beyond me, but if you were friends with either of them could you imagine how painful seeing the same tragedy play out in this new world would be? Jamil doomed to always be a servant and Kalim doomed to be betrayed by his best friend... that would be so painful for someone who cared deeply about either of them I could see it motivating Yuu to try and resolve things for twst Jamil and Kalim that much harder.
Ok so hear me out... Vil still wants to be an actor in your world but he doesn't have the connections to his dad and is working as a pharm tech with Yuu at your local drugstore while going to school and hunting for gigs. He mentions being interested in cosmetics and magical pharmacology in game... and he also mentions knowing nothing about his mom so like. Your world Vil ended up with his mom instead of his dad and you get to see him on the cusp of his big break as one of his number one supporters from the very start, only to get isekaid to a world where you get to see what things could have looked like. It's strange how similar and yet not both versions of Vil are...
Idia is the guy who comes in to buy snacks at your convenience store during the night shift who you start talking to when you notice him buying a game time card for something you also play. You're stupid awkward around each other at first, but it's nice to finally have someone to talk about your niche interest with once you've passed each other's sniff tests. You don't actually know him know him though... so getting sent to another world where there's another version of him makes you worried the more you learn about his backstory that maybe you should have been there for your Idia more. Is he doing ok back home? Did he think of you as a friend? You hope he isn't blaming himself for any of this...
Malleus is an old money trust fund baby whose family was absolutely royalty at some point and is still overly attached to it. He likes old buildings, cemeteries, long walks in the fog, you know all those good goth things. He's tall and socially awkward and so grateful for you, his first and best friend who he met one moonlight night he swore was a dream in his favorite abandoned building who spoke at length with him about all sorts of things he liked. So you know. More or less the same. Just without the world ending powers... I think this is another one that would be quite sad. Which version of Malleus needs Yuu more? Which one is the real one? I'd hate the idea of him being destined to always be lonely and lose the ones he loves.
As for Yuu avoiding them... I could see that. It would feel weird seeing someone you love so much only for it not to be them at all. I know that the Lovebrush Chronicles kiiiiind of deals with this??? I wish I had the patience to play through it has an appealing glasses wearing ro but it's a mobile otome :/ but still. It's a concept I promise I am totally normal about.
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comicaurora · 1 month
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Non comic related ask,
A while ago you were asked about Jujutsu Kaisen and said something to the effect of you didn't like the direction it seemed to be headed in. At the time only the first season of the anime was around and I thought it was pretty nifty at the time.
Now that the second season is concluded and it's at least as far as I'm concerned it's suffering in tone plot and pacing your words have come back as best I can remember them anyway.
So the question as it were, what were the clues that tipped you off to this? I respect your well earned media literacy skills, but even with your statement I would not have thought it was going to turn out this way.
Huh, interesting!
Since I haven't been keeping up with it I don't know what the recent developments are, and it has been a hot minute since I watched the first season, but from what I recall I just realized pretty quickly that JJK was aiming to purposefully subvert a lot of shonen action anime tropes, starting with the Superpowered Evil Side and going from there. Vibes-wise, the power and combat system was pretty visceral - most of the characters had to do pretty gross or unpleasant things to get their powers working, which wasn't really my speed from the outset, so I was already wibbling a little on how invested I wanted to get.
And when the darkness ramped up with that one major character death - the one who was in the anime intro having lovely downtime with all the heroes in a peace he never actually got to experience because instead he died horribly - I got the impression that the underlying theme that was playing out was "our hero thought being a shonen action protagonist would mean the world around him played along to the classical narrative beats, and he has just learned that this is not true." It essentially ties in with my thoughts on Tone Armor: the story was playing with a familiar space of shonen anime tropes in such a way as to make the audience and characters expect one thing, suddenly experience something much worse than anticipated, and thus feel unsafe in the world it was establishing. Kind of similar energy to Madoka's sudden reveal of What The Story Actually Is the first time a magical girl gets her head bitten off.
I didn't think this was bad, it was pulling off everything it wanted to accomplish very effectively - it just didn't really play to my tastes at the time, so I fell off of it and haven't heard anything to get me reinvested.
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dashielldeveron · 3 months
Text
soulmate trope | shigaraki tomura
Shigaraki’s route of soulmate trope.
"post-canon shigaraki? canon isn't even finished as of when this was posted on 4 january 2024!"
yeah. thank god. gives us time to write our own endings. and obviously i will be wrong about some things. i recommend you read at least one other route, preferably dabi’s, before reading this one. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to around chapter 390-411ish, based on language used by others to describe shigaraki and his trauma. bodily consequences to his trauma (some things are intended to read as AFO having forced an ED on shigaraki, but this is not made definitive). sexual content. stalking. gore (in a game). reader is experiencing a type of gifted kid burnout.
~28k
There’s a hentai book lying on your bed.
You’ve never seen it before.
Flipping through it, you winced at the positions the large-titted, ponytailed woman was manhandled into, and though you were frankly impressed that she managed to wear such intricate lingerie underneath her everyday business attire, the protagonist only just got home from work; let her decompress for, like, ten minutes before railing her against the window, please.
Whom did you know who would read volume four of something called GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK?
Unfortunately, you were burdened with knowledge about your friends’ sexual habits, and some of them, therefore, were already ruled out: Shinsou only read erotica because he preferred his own imagination to any images hentai or live-action could provide, and Monoma only read hentai in which the woman’s eyes had hearts in them to let the reader know she’s enjoying it—not to mention Monoma wouldn’t buy a hard copy of it, let alone a story that didn’t have more plot and character development to it. There wasn’t enough drool for Sero to be interested, and the male protagonist wasn’t enough of a twink for Kaminari to project onto, so whose was this?
Moreover, who the fuck would come all the way back to your old school’s campus to break into your room to leave it on your bed? (Shinsou would be your best bet for that part, but whenever he finished a patrol nowadays, he went directly to sleep, and his and Monoma’s flat was across town.)
You cat, Dango, jumped onto the bed, slithering up next to you and bumping her head on your elbow affectionately.
“Is this yours?” you asked her, and she sniffed the book before climbing into your lap.
You tossed the book aside to pet your cat with both hands, and you resolved not to think about it any longer, even though the cringy way the mangaka depicted the female orgasm was burnt onto your brain.
***
Hopping to put your heel back into a ballet flat, you held the phone between your ear and shoulder while you struggled towards the lift. “I’ve got to cancel on you, Ochaco,” you said, flipping the back of your blazer collar down and adjusting the lapels, “I’m, fuck—I’m not gonna be able to make it this evening, so just go without me.”
Uraraka sighed on her end. “Okay. I know a lot of us were excited to see you after so long—there’s a card Tsu’s made us all to sign, and everything—but we’ll manage. ‘Spose we’ll just have a routine night at the bar and reschedule when you can make it. I miss you,” she said, “and I’m pretty sure I can say the same for everyone.”
The elevator door slid open, and you entered. “All of you are so clingy. I’ve only been away from the agency for around two months, and you know where to find me.” You mashed the button for the ground floor. “In fact, it’s embarrassingly easy to access me.”
“Well, we’re very busy,” said Uraraka, “People are very eager to conscript us for missions, even if they really could be done by the police. U.A. alumni have somehow upticked in their popularity even more since we graduated—”
“Ochaco, I know. I was there. Allow me to weep for your success. I am playing the world’s tiniest violin.” You shifted your bag’s full weight onto your shoulder and exited into the commons. “But listen. I’ve got to go; I’m running late this morning. I couldn’t find my pantyhose even though I laid them out last night, and they weren’t in any of my cat’s usual hiding places. I had to turn my flat upside down and still never found them.” The outside doors slid open when you approached, and the harsh, morning wind upset your hair on impact. “Give everyone my love, O. Tell Todoroki to smile in his next interview.” Eyes darting across your surroundings for any witnesses, you shrank in on yourself and bit the inside of your cheek. “And tell everyone I’m sorry, okay?”
By the time you arrived at U.A.’s administration building, the wind had been joined by a light drizzle that would probably morph into a storm within the hour, a prediction compounded by a plethora of faculty umbrellas in and beside the stand by the sliding doors. The front office was gloriously vacant, though, so you were able to slip behind the front desk without someone rebuking you for being—you shook the computer mouse to wake it up, the clock popping up in the corner—seventeen minutes late.
(You’d graduated with the rest of the class six months ago, and you’d founded the all-girls agency uptown, with most of the women in the graduating class joining to form an instant powerhouse of the industry.
Founding an agency appealed to a good deal of graduates, but you were the only one to go the distance: you were the one to actually make the calls, fill out the paperwork, get aggravating shit done, and by the time to move into the building, it had pleased you to no end that Midoriya had asked you for help on kickstarting his own.
And then two months ago, you’d pulled off, frankly, what was supposed to be an impossible rescue. For the first time, you were getting enormous amounts of attention, from civilians, from press, from other heroes—and you were being followed, never having more than a moment to yourself—always being watched, either from well-wishers or nay-sayers—and sometimes, the analytical critic, eager to point out your faults in the rescue mission to try to drag you out of the hero scene.
You hated yourself for this, but they won.
Too many expectations. All sinking down on you, as if no other hero existed while the light shone in your direction. [And you hated yourself for even daring to consider this—what reprehensible audacity, but—but was this how All Might had felt?]
You’d had something next door to a panic attack when a convenience store, a regular stop in your weekly routine, filmed your reaction to how they’d auctioned off your signed receipt for over nine hundred thousand yen. Breaking their cameras, Shinsou had to escort you out of there in a rush and call Aizawa for help.
Sobbing into Shinsou’s phone on the soggy concrete of a darkened alleyway, you did something you never fathomed you’d ever do, something you could never see any of your friends ever doing, something that seemed as alien and unthinkable as sticking your hand into a pit of needles: you begged Aizawa to get you out of the hero business.
You’ve been handled with care and relocated into a surprising covert secretarial job in the U.A. admin, Nezu’s logic was that you’d adjust to one person needing you at a time, say, over email or at the desk, and if you only answered the phone with only a shortened version of your name, then no intruding civilian would be the wiser.
The job was easy, anyway. Paid well for what it was, but perhaps that was simply standard for U.A. Nowhere nearly as well paying or exciting as working as a hero, but you were adjusting into mundanity. Some days had stretches of hours in which you didn’t interact with anyone, sitting at the front desk without a task, and you even had a few days in which you’d gone in, piddled around at the desk for your whole shift without seeing another soul, and gone home.
Your friends were always so busy. The two times you’ve been able to meet with them contained nothing but conversation about hero work, or else everything was somehow tangentially related to it, and you found yourself unable to contribute to the conversation. Both times, you’d left early, a little overstimulated, leaving Shinsou to make your excuses.
And Shinsou, bless him. Not avoiding you on purpose. In fact, you knew he’d drop almost anything for you to hang out, but you knew his schedule and how little rest he got. So, it was more of a self-imposed boundary on your side, taking into account that he needed sleep more than he needed to spend time with you.
So, yes, some of it was directly your fault, but you were achingly, astonishingly lonely, with an ever-lowering threshold for tolerance of outside stimulation, ultimately feeling like you didn’t belong here.)
Pens aligned. Coaster. Check the school email for—good, no emails. No voicemail. Get out your planner and write your hours in it to look busy. Hey, your water bottle’s nearing empty; maybe you could go fill it or even waste time brewing coffee. But where’s your work mug? You probably left it on the cleaning rack next to the office sink. You should go check.
“Hey,” said Aizawa out of nowhere, ignoring how you jumped out of your own skin, “Good morning. Are you doing a specific job at the moment?”
You gripped the arms of your swivel chair to ground yourself. Is this a test? “I was about to take a moment to make some coffee,” you said, because never let someone in a position of authority know that you were doing jackshit, “Is there something I can help you with, Aizawa-sensei?”
Frowning, he dipped his chin into his capture weapon, still tucked closely to his neck to shield him from the wind, and he shifted his weight to one leg, his fingers tapping in a ripple on the reception desk. “You don’t have to call me that anymore.”
“I’m gonna,” you said, “How can I help?”
Please don’t need anything. Please don’t need anythi—
“Permission has just cleared for me to assign you a long-term task.”
Shit, you thought, internally wincing at how he used the term task and not mission, as if you’d be plunged into the ice-cold water of a panic attack at the word. The kid gloves that everyone handled you with somehow both ingratiated and insulted you.
“You’ll be paid for it,” Aizawa continued, “and it’s low stakes interaction, not even face-to-face. It’s all online.” Aizawa clasped his hands on the desk and hunched over the top of it, the ends of his scarf trailing down onto your keyboard. “You’ll recall moving some boxes into room 310.”
“Of course.” Early in your first month back at U.A., you’d helped clean out and move some boxes into 310 in the same hall that housed Aizawa, Eri, and now you—you’d unofficially dubbed it as U.A.’s drawer to shove social rejects. “Is someone about to move in?”
“He’s been moved in for a while,” said Aizawa, pulling his capture weapon away from his neck, “Keep all of this quiet. You’re allowed to know because I’ve advocated for you, because I trust in you and in your ability to do this well.” Aizawa paused, the silence dragging on much longer than usual. His eyes glazed over, as if considering how to phrase his next proposal.
You waved your hand, prompting him to continue.
His eyes focused again. “The new person is a ward of the school, but All Might and I are his primary—caretakers isn’t quite the right term, and nor is supervisors, so perhaps it’s better to—”
“No, I get it,” you said, “This person is an adult, but they’re not quite independent. Go on.”
Aizawa paused, brow furrowed just slightly as he scrutinised you again, but he nodded slowly after a moment. “I’ll allow him to introduce himself to you. He doesn’t need me to set up expectations. What’s important for you to know, regarding your own participation, is that he’s very new to the hero scene and is receiving his hero training later in life than usual. He won’t be attending class but will be trained personally by select U.A. faculty, mostly All Might, Nezu, and me.”
“Is he officially a student?”
 “On paper.” Something strange passed across Aizawa’s face, but you couldn’t name it. “Where you come in is his socialisation. He’s spent most of his life in disciplinary isolation. Because of the adults raising him, his instincts trend towards distrust and animosity.”
So, Aizawa wanted you spend time with him until he was no longer bad with people, like spending time with feral cats at animal shelters until they’re ready to be adopted. “So, he’s distrustful. Hostile. Angry,” you said, scratching the side of your head, “Is he—do you think he’ll bring up bad stuff I’ve done to use it against me?”
“He doesn’t know who you are, aside from someone trusted by U.A. with hero experience,” said Aizawa, shaking his head, “and you can choose what information you give him.”
“Does he,” you said, sucking in through your teeth, “Does this guy know about how you’re going about this? I think—wouldn’t he be insulted if he knew about how you’re socialising him like an animal?”
Aizawa looked over his shoulder at the empty office, but he bent farther over the desk and spoke softly, anyway. “Recently, when I was training him at night, he expressed that he never knows what to do when someone wants to talk to him after mission, whether it’s successful or not. He froze entirely when a senior citizen thanked him last week, and that’s when we decided something tactile needed to be done. Since he’s grown used to me, you’re the solution.”
Okay. A volatile man, someone who couldn’t go to U.A. at the average age but for whom Aizawa, Nezu, and All Might were making an exception, even going so far as to personally take him out at night to practise hero work.
Hm. Fishy.
But if the good, good men who took care of you wanted you take care of another misplaced person, then you’re going to do it to the best of your ability.
“I hope I can live up to your expectations,” you said, making a note in your planner, “What am I doing?”
“I need you to learn how to play a video game,” said Aizawa, “and I need you to be absolute shit at it.”
***
For you to help some loser with socialisation, he would be teaching you how to play some janky, twenty-five-year-old MMORPG called Cipherstone—and not even the current, polished version of it; you had to sign up for an account on the version preserving the game exactly as it was in 2007. Nostalgia reasons, apparently.
You nudged Dango out aside to check your bedside clock. The discord call would start in five minutes, and you were making your Cipherstone account, completely unable to come up with a suitable username.
“Don’t connect it to your other online accounts or your actual identity,” Aizawa had said that morning.
Dango’s tiny prance across your stomach was not helping, and you couldn’t use Dango in your username, because if someone knew about your cat (and hopefully no one did, because cats were not allowed in the dorms), then a Dango username could be linked back to the real you. You plopped your head back on your pillow, knocking against the headboard. What’s something that couldn’t be traced back to you? Slumping, you let your head fall to the side and sulked.
The hentai book peeked out from underneath a jacket on your dirty clothes chair.
GinsengTea
That username is unavailable.
Well. You couldn’t use your birthdate as added numbers. You kept typing.
GinsengTea69
That username is unavailable.
You’re not about to try Lustful Ballsack. Maybe if you put aside your secretarial propensity for being correct for a moment.
GinzengTea
Username available!
Oh, thank God. You sorted out your password and started customising your character, though you couldn’t do much with the negative six billion pixels you were dealing with, and oh, is that the noise discord makes for a call? You plugged in your earbuds and clicked the answer button.
“Hello?” you asked into the microphone on your earbud cord, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture of a rotund, cartoon mouse. Username Tenkopeito. Looks like he ran into the same spelling trouble you did.
“Greetings and salutations,” he said, his tinny, rasping, just-got-out-of-bed, gruff-from-lack-of-use voice striking you with about fifty psychic damage, “I am Aizawa-sensei’s pupil, here to teach you about the intricacies of Cipherstone. It will be my pleasure—”
“Cut that shit out,” you said, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture: actually, that mouse was so round because it had just swallowed an enormous piece of konpeito whole, with the little star spikes jutting out underneath its fur. “No one talks like that. You sound fake as fuck.”
“I see,” he said after a beat, tone deflating to sound resigned (and though he’d relaxed, it somehow sounded as if talking this way took more effort, like it physically strained his vocal cords). “Am I not supposed to be nice?”
“You weren’t exactly being nice. You were using a customer service voice—which is being polite, not nice. Not even kind. Politeness is usually some sort of put-on affectation of niceness, forced for the situation. I understand if that’s what you think you need to do when you talk to people as a hero, but in hero work, since the stakes are high, you need to be genuine, or at least sound like you are.” Dango crawled across your stomach again, but you lifted her off before she could settle into a loaf on your keyboard. “In the field, it’s often hard to be kind because of how involved you get as a hero; being kind takes effort and drains you emotionally. Kindness implies there’s some sort of reciprocity, some sort of ongoing relationship. You can choose to be kind if you want, but it may wear on you in the long run. What will probably be healthiest for you, on your side, is if you aim to be nice, meaning being honest in a gentle way, framing situations positively but realistically for listeners. The public doesn’t want to be lied to and told everything’s fine, but telling them the harshness of reality doesn’t go over well. Kills morale.”
“Holy shit.” He was scratching something close to his microphone—it must be a fairly good mic, since you could deduce short fingernails against a dry surface. “That’s…a lot.”
“It is. But you can do it. All it takes is practise, and that’s what I’m here for,” you said, moving Dango from your keyboard again, “And I didn’t mean to overwhelm you with all of that; it just came out—I, uh, I happen to know a lot about the way heroes present themselves.” Swallowing thickly, you ran your tongue over your lower lip. “Why don’t we begin with what you were saying before? But in the actual way you talk, please. You need to be comfortable in your own voice.”
His mic picked up the distant noise of slurping through a straw, against what sounded like the bottom of a metal cup, which clinked when he set it back down. “Have you played Cipherstone before?”
“Total newcomer. Though I’ve seen some screenshots in memes.”
“Cool,” he said in a way that was clear it was not cool, “I can’t add you to my in-game friends list until you get off Tutorial Island. Share your screen with me until then.”
All right. You can be bad at this. You can be so bad at this. “What’s a screen?” Not that bad, idiot! “I mean,” you said, fumbling, “How do I share my screen with you?”
The scratching grew louder. “Bottom left. Screen button. Right click. Share option.”
“Ah.” You should probably lure him into thinking you’re competent while there was a literal tutorial onscreen so that he would be more frustrated with you later. “Gotcha.”
For a few seconds after your avatar popped onscreen for the first time, nothing came through but the 8-bit tutorial music. “Is that what you look like in real life?” he finally asked.
“No,” you said, not exactly lying. The character had her hair down in her face (which you wouldn’t normally do when you were on patrol, since it could get in the way of physical hero work), and, hoping to endear yourself to this weirdo, you’d chosen the sluttiest shirt: while none of the horrible pixelated options showed any boob whatsoever, the poor rendering still managed to convey that the top was off-shoulder. Again, not great for hero work. “In real life, I’ve much, much more panache.”
Another silence, during which you assumed he was looking up the word. “So, you click on the screen to go where you want to walk, on either the overall game interface or in the mini-map in the corner. Your destination will show up—”
“Wait, what should I call you, screwboy?”
“—as a red flag,” he said, frown audible, his rasping voice screeching to a stop the way brakes are slowly applied to the wheels of a train. “Not screwboy.”
“I’m not calling you by your handle. Not only is it cringe, but you won’t have to answer to it anywhere else in your life. If you don’t want to give me your name, that’s fine. I could call you by your hero name, if you like; it’d help you get used to answering to it. But no, I’m not calling you your username,” you said, shoulders slacking once Dango finally settled in a ball at your hip, “Especially since you couldn’t even get the correct spelling of Ten Konpeito.”
“It’s—it’s not supposed to say that,” he said, sputtering with a groan coming in at the end, “It’s a play on my name, and including the n makes it harder to say aloud. I think these things through; I have to be aware of my public image and branding now; that’s the whole point of this stupid—my name is Tenko, you asshole.”
“Oh, you’re gonna call civilians asshole?” You clicked your tongue. “Bad. Bad and evil. Speaking from experience, people don’t like that.”
“Just fu—just click on the map.”
“Fine. But you can’t fool me with your medieval, point-and-click game,” you said, clicking to pick up a fishing net, “Incidentally, the oldest known fishing net is the net of Antrea, crafted of willow and dating back to 8300 B.C.”
Tenko paused. “What would be the socially expected response to that?”
Your avatar fished for shrimps. “Oh, usually people yell at me. Get mad for bringing up total non sequiturs. My friend Bakugou is fond of telling me that I’m a collection of those bottle caps with facts printed on the inside.”
“Would…would you like me to get angry? Am I supposed to? I was under the impression I was supposed to curb my anger. To be nice.”
Your inventory filled with shrimps.
“You only need one shrimp,” said Tenko.
“You’ll thank me when we have food later,” you said, continuing to fish for shrimps.
“It’s the tutorial,” he said, frown creeping into his voice, “You won’t keep any resources from it. You should go chop the tree down to light a fire.”
“Well, hell. I want my shrimps.” You clicked away from the fishing spot and onto a tree. “Nothing’s happening.”
Tenko cleared his throat. “You need to talk to the woodcutting tutor first. She’ll give you an axe.”
“I thought this game had magic,” you said, guiding Dango’s head away from blocking the screen, “Can’t I just get logs with magic?”
“No, it’s—you must want me to get angry. As a test.” Scratching. “Magic comes later. Not for getting logs.”
You interpreted that as a sign to make the rest of the tutorial go smoothly. You followed the instructions for a few silent minutes, proving to him that you could read, and when you reached the end of the tutorial, a wizard teleported you to the crossroads of a town centre.
“Ah,” you said, genuinely surprised as other players’ avatars, decked out in what must be high-level gear, dashed past, “I don’t know where I am.”
“You can turn your screen-sharing off now.” Tenko typed on what sounded like a mechanical keyboard. “I’m over here. I’ve got—by the fountain—white hair, all black clothes. I’m not—there you are.”
Dozens of other players were running past the two of you, the only bare, new players in the area. Tenko’s pixelated avatar waved at you. Cheeky bitch. He’s so poorly animated and so very 2007 that it gave no indication what he could look like in real life. But he’s chosen to have a black t-shirt as his default, so he has to be a slut.
You resisted the urge to ask to feel his pixelated bicep. “You don’t have any equipment. I thought you’ve played Cipherstone before?”
“My main account is max-ed out. I started a new account to grow at the same rate as you. Before anything else, notice where we are,” said Tenko, “We’re in the centre of the city of Renfield. Get familiar with it. Think of it as home. It’s where you’ll always come back to when you get lost.”
It’s a barely animated town centre, with a short path up the stairs to a castle door and a few market stalls split between fountains.
“I have no idea what that means, Tenko.”
“It means that—that,” Tenko said, and stopped.
You couldn’t stop grinning, biting at your lower lip to keep from laughing—he’d let out a flustered huff, sounding a little strangled, because you’d said his name for the first time—and, judging by how long this delicious silence was dragging on, Tenko was probably his given name, not the family name. Beautiful, really, that a guy his age (however old he was, but he’s at least the same as you, since he couldn’t attend U.A. at the usual time) could get this nervous over a woman calling him by his name.
Tenko recovered in a way that showed he didn’t: “It means that you are always able to cast one spell, regardless of magic level,” he said in a rush, “It is a homing spell that teleports you back to this spot, so even if you get lost, you can always get back to Renfield. You can teleport other ways, too, but that’s for another time, and I need a cup of coffee.” He inhaled sharply.
It's only the first day, so you should go easy on him. Let his moment of awkwardness go.
However, Aizawa gave you a mission.
Excuse you, a task.
“Do you plan on getting flustered every time a civilian calls you by name?” you asked, petting between Dango’s ears, “Or are you planning on avoiding as much publicity as possible by being an underground hero like Aizawa?”
“I don’t—they’re not going to—it’s different with you. I can already tell,” said Tenko (you froze, fingers curled into Dango’s fur), “because I’m going to have some sort of working relationship with you. I assume you’re here to stay.”
Putting it that way made your heartbeat throb around your ears. You decided you could ask directly. “Tenko’s your first name, then?”
“Yeah.” He must have covered his hand with his mouth, muffling his voice at first. “But people usually—people have been calling me something else.”
“Then I can call you something else, if you like,” you said, getting back to petting Dango behind her ears and resolving to treat him with the same tenderness—he must need it, since no one in his life knows him well enough to call him by his given name.
“No, I think you should,” he said a bit too quickly, “Call me that. Tenko. I’m tired of that other stuff. Click on something to keep from logging out, by the way. There’s a timer.” Mechanical typing noises. “No, Aizawa-sensei wants me to be better. Of all things, I need to learn to respond to my real name.”
You squinted at your screen, as if the methodical rise and fall of his avatar’s chest could betray how he was feeling. Something had to have happened to this guy to make him feel this way about such a basic part of his identity, to make other people avoid his real name so universally. Aizawa couldn’t’ve have assigned you this task just to socialise him; something else was unfolding here. How did you enter the equation? If you’re supposed to guide someone who’s also lost their direction in life, you’re a hell of a bad candidate.
But what if you fuck up Aizawa’s plan, whatever it was?
Your recent history is riddled with things going downhill. What if you somehow screwed over Tenko? You’d be dragging someone else down with you, down to…the beginning again, a humiliating re-start, back at your fucking school, when the rest of your friends were out living the dream you’d all crafted together, the dream that apparently could go on without you in it.
Well. Enough of that. Distract yourself. Distract Tenko, too. “Got it. I want a hat.”
“What?”
“I want a hat,” you said, clicking the space around the fountain for your avatar to walk, “My head is cold. How do we get a hat? Hats. You should get one, too.”
“Hats. Very well,” said Tenko, clicking to face you across the shitty fountain, “Do you want one that’s purely decorative or one that has some sort of stats? Decorative ones we can get within a minute, with good RNG, by killing goblins across the bridge. There’s a low chance we could get a low-tier wizard’s hat doing that, too.”
“Then it will be a pleasure killing goblins with you, Tenko.”
“Mm,” he said at the back of his throat, “First, we’ll need to obtain some sort of weapons, since bare-handed punching them will take forever. We could either talk to the melee tutor to get a temporary sword or start wi—actually, we should talk to the melee tutor. Melee will probably be the easiest fighting style for you right now, and it’ll be the simplest, since you won’t have to worry about running out of ammunition or runes.”
“Sure,” you said, leaning back in bed, “Do we go starboard or port?”
“You can just call them east and west, y’know. And we go north.”
To be obstinate, you clicked the opposite direction that Tenkopeito was going, and the moment you ran offscreen, Tenko spoke in a low, grumbling voice into his microphone. “No, don’t run away from me. Come back here.”
The rumble in his voice shot warmth straight to your lower stomach, the nature of the encounter between the two of you changing in a second. Your avatar kept running to her destination, your hand frozen and hovering above the tracking pad. You blinked, your throat drying. Snapping back into it, you ran back to Tenko, who seemed unaware of what he just did to you—and he almost negated your arousal in the way he kept talking about sword upgrades and something called RNG.
Uh.
“—now, it’ll take about ten minutes, but it’ll seem like two hours of hard labour. Follow me across the bridge. Follow—there’s a follow mechanic, if you’ll right-click on me.”
Oh, you’ll right-click him, all right. You needed to know more about Tenko—why you’ve been paired off, what Aizawa’s planning for him, what—a tinge of shame soured at the back of your tongue, because what currently gripped you were minutiae: more about him, what he looks like, what he likes, what he does for fun, if you’re…the sort of person he’d get along with in real life, if you hadn’t been forced together.
God, get over yourself. You spend two months away from men your age, and now, you’re thirsting over someone you don’t even know because he said one hot thing. You needed to be socialised—no, stop. This isn’t about you. Stop thinking about what his hands would feel like on you, what he’d sound like grunting into your ear as he ground against you—
“You’ve been quiet for a minute,” said Tenko, slashing the first goblin, “Are you all right?”
A very heroic question when you haven’t been thinking too heroically. The thought of his voice muttering against your neck still grasped you tightly. “I’m having—technical difficulties.”
***
Poking your head outside of your dorm/apartment door, you scanned the hallway for witnesses. You gripped the handle of Dango’s carrier, still hidden behind the door inside your dorm, and you nodded back at her when she meowed at you.
“I know, baby,” you said, listening for footsteps, “We’ll be outside soon enough. Gotta check for people, though.”
Okay, nothing coming. You shifted Dango’s carrier out of your dorm and pulled out your key, sticking it in the lock at the same time as a door opened down the hall.
Too fast—you had to prod her carrier back inside, your foot stuck in the crack between wall and door, just as—as Midoriya strode down the hall. Keys jangling. Civilian clothes (a Froppy hoodie, in fact).
“Oh, hello!” Midoriya only seemed to notice you once you were struggling to close the door despite the carrier being the way, and hopefully you thrust it fully inside swiftly enough for him not to catch the flash of burgundy. He trotted up to you, hands in the pockets of his worn cargo pants. “I didn’t think you’d be around. Do you not have work today?”
Dango meowed mournfully through the door, and you stepped in front of it. “It’s my lunch break. I’m going for a walk.”
Midoriya nodded, and he glanced over his shoulder back to the room he’d left. “Gotcha, gotcha. Good weather for it, especially after that storm earlier this week.” easy smile stretched across his face as he faced you again, but his gaze weighed down on you, as if the number one hero’s attention magnified your failures in comparison to his rise to the top—and the fact that he didn’t mean to pressure you only exacerbated the feeling.
“Uh,” you said, stuffing your keys in your backpack and setting it on the ground, as if you’re not waiting to go back inside, “May I ask what you’re doing here? Don’t you have better—aren’t you busy?”
Chuckling, Midoriya scratched the back of his neck (and oh, in that laughter, he was hiding something). “I make time. I’m just visiting,” he said, jerking his head back towards the end of the hall, “A friend. I want to take care to see him regularly. I didn’t know you lived on the same hall.”
“If you can call it living,” you said, and for some reason, Midoriya frowned, took a step closer to you, and said your name under his breath, eyes fucking wide and too damn concerned for your comfort. Fuck, you only meant to make a self-depredating joke, not make the situation serious. 
“You—you know that you can reach out to us. I mean that. If you’re scared you’re gonna burden any of us—”
You’d squatted down to go through your bag, just to have something to do, to have an excuse to not look him in the eyes. If you were going to cry—which you were not!—then the number one hero’s not going to get to witness it.
“—then reach out to me, at least. I’ve got time, or else I can make it.” Midoriya was kneeling next to you, and you kept your eyes on the inside of your backpack. “If it makes you feel less like you’re bothering any of us, I could check in with you when I come see my friend. I’d already be on campus. I wouldn’t be going out of my way.” He sighed to fill the space when you didn’t answer. “What are you looking for?”
“I can’t find my planner,” you invented, and, acting like you were upset, you zipped your backpack again. “I think I need to go back inside to locate it.”
He shifted his jaw, and he glanced down at your bag and back at you. “Come with me to the vending machines, at least?”
The new symbol of peace, asking to spend time with you. You didn’t deserve it, so you shook your head. “I don’t have much time left in my break. I think I’d better let you go.”
Shifting his jaw, Midoriya tilted his head at you, his eyes glinting. “All right,” he said slowly, “You know yourself better than anyone else. Do what you need to. Rest up.” He started walking backwards towards the stairs. “And I want to see you more—we all do. I’ll see you the next time I come around. Maybe the three of us could hang out?”
“Sure,” you said, shoving your key in the lock to let a thrashing Dango out of her misery.
***
“The church. It’s the one with the altar icon in the minimap.”
You clicked enough so that your avatar would backtrack. “How am I supposed to know that’s the church? Is that icon supposed to be an altar? It looks nothing like an altar. It looks more like a steaming cup of tea.”
“That’s fair,” said Tenko into his headset, “but this is the easiest quest in the game. How are you having this much trouble with it?”
“Oh, stop that,” you said, reaching his character in front of the priest, “It’s intuitive to you because you’ve been playing this for years. Do we kill this guy?”
“What? No. He’s going to give us each the key to a dungeon underneath the church.”
“How can he give us both a key if there’s only one?” You clicked through the dialogue with the priest, and a key appeared in your inventory. “Also, how accurate is this dungeon? Because if this is a broadly medieval game, then the dungeons will be closer to underground bathrooms rather than, like, creepy and wet with shackles and bones. That was popularised by Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.”
“How the hell do you know that,” Tenko asked flatly, “Ne—never mind. It doesn’t matter. Follow me to the trapdoor outside.”
You did, and it was locked. “Are we allowed to do this?” you asked, clicking on the key and then the lock, “Will we get arrested for trespassing?”
“Wha—no. No, we’re supposed to in order to progress the quest. In fact, our characters do a frankly criminal amount of breaking and entering throughout the game and never get checked for it. Hey, don’t go down there without me.”
Your character had only just gone down the trapdoor, prompting a blackout loading screen, but you popped back up to the surface before you could get a good look around. Your character stood next to Tenko’s, still next to the trapdoor. “What’s the holdup? I thought the only step was to use the key on the door. Did I skip something?”
“No, I—huh,” said Tenko, cutting himself off with a tinge of frustration creeping into his voice, “I lost the key.”
Raising a brow, you tilted your head. “What? How’d you lose it?”
“I don’t know. It was in my inventory one minute, and now it’s not. I didn’t touch it.” His mic picked up light scratching. “You’re not supposed to be able to lose the key, but I guess I can go back to the priest to get another. You wait—”
“Hold up,” you said, brow furrowed, “I have it. It’s in my inventory.”
“The hell? Are you sure it’s not just your own key?”
“Positive. I have two of them now. Same key, right next to each other. Want me to share my screen?”
“No, I—I believe you.” Tenko took a moment. “I’m not familiar with this sort of glitch, where an item from one player’s inventory randomly transfers to another’s. This doesn’t even happen, in my experience, but maybe it’s because this is one of the earliest quests coded into the game. It’s twenty-five-year-old code at this point, and it might have glitched because we’re both trying to perform the same quest actions on the same game tick.”
“Sure,” you said, “So, what do I do? Do I drop the key for you to pick up, or?”
“It disappears if you drop it. Trade me. Right-click, trade option.”
Once the key was traded, the two of you went down the trapdoor and wove your way back into the underground headquarters of a low-level cult, vacant for the moment but with evidence of rituals on the walls and floors, particularly in front of their bloodstained altar.
“Okay, we’re in their headquarters,” you said, making your character walk up the aisle, “What now? Priest guy didn’t give us any instructions.”
His avatar followed you and sat on the only programmed-to-be-sittable seat in the pew, his black cape (that he stole from a highwayman’s corpse) folding under his legs. “Actually, he did. You just clicked through his dialogue.”
“Because you’re here to tell me what to do, Quest Man.”
“Click on the—” Tenko heaved an enormous sigh, microphone sparking. “You figure it out. What’s clickable in this room? What has examine text?”
You hovered your mouse over most of the room, and nothing popped up with the examine option, except for something on the altar. “It’s this weird-looking, severed hand, isn’t it? This thing standing up on a slice of wrist by itself?” Your character walked nearer to it, fingers splayed widely enough to hold an in-game apple. “Weirdest ring-holder I’ve ever seen.”
When Tenko didn’t say anything, you glanced towards his character, but he was still sitting on the pew.
“Is this whole quest a pun? Because it’s one of the easiest quests, so they’re giving us a lot of guidance, so it’s like they’re holding our hands to get it through?”
That broke his silence: he scoffed into the mic. “I doubt it,” he said, “You need to grab the hand for the quest to keep going.”
“Fine,” you said, clicking the hand, and the instant your avatar touched it, a zombie spawned from the altar and began to attack you. “Dude! Did you know that thing was gonna jump me?” you asked, clicking away a few spaces but turning around to stab at it with your stupid bronze dagger, “And you just sat there? You could’ve warned me.”
“I did, and the priest did, and the duke who gave us this quest did. That’s why we went and baked all those pies in your inventory, yeah? For you to eat during this fight?”
Your character kept missing hits. “Yeah, but—like! I didn’t know the fight would be now.”
“Hey, relax.” Tenko’s voice sounded muffled, like his mouth was smushed as his fist dug into his cheek. “It’s only a level 12, and you’re level 9. Not too big of a difference. With your armour and weapon, you out-level it.”
The miss sound effect spoke for itself.
“You’ll kill it eventually. You won’t always hit zeroes, so it’ll pass.”
Though your character dealt her first damage, you frowned. “That’s…that’s actually really good advice, Tenko. The stuff you just said would work well if you were trying to calm someone down—reminding people of reality and emphasising perseverance over luck or natural talent are some of the better ways to encourage people.”
“Is that so,” he asked flatly, trying to put off a yawn and failing, “I haven’t—I wasn’t thinking about hero work. Just thinking about the game.”
“Well, it was nice,” you said, “and it seemed like it came naturally. Mind if I ask if something caused it?”
He yawned again, but he must have leant away from the mic so that you wouldn’t hear anything besides the initial inhale. “Nothing special happened today, but I’m too tired to get irritated. Therapy took a lot out of me today.”
Therapy. Therapy. Okay, so he’s got an official diagnosis somewhere. The word today implies that it’s a regular thing, and for some reason, this session was more intense. Intense emotionally? Physically? What kind of therapy? Well, they offered cognitive behavioural therapy on campus, but considering his non-traditional student status, his might be outsourced. Plus, if you, a former hero but technically a civilian, are being implemented into his care plan without being informed directly—
“You usually don’t go this long without saying some inane non sequitur,” said Tenko, that same, strange scratching picking up on the mic, “Snap out of it. You’re gonna get killed by the easiest quest boss in the game.”
Making an undignified noise, you shook yourself and spam-clicked on a cherry pie for your character to eat until she was healed completely, and then you clicked on the zombie to attack again.
“Why’d you pause when I said therapy? Surprised I’d go? Think that sort of thing is below me?”
“Of course not,” you said, trying to seem like you were focused on the fight so that he wouldn’t get nervous about sharing personal information, “Therapy good. Therapy great. Everyone needs to go to therapy.” Since he appeared to be taking this casually, you could probably ask after the type without it seeming too intrusive. “What kind? CBT? That’s what—”
“You think U.A. would arrange for me to get my cock and balls tortured? That wouldn’t qualify as therapy for me, certainly, and there’s no way that U.A. would pay for—”
“Not fucking cock-and-ball torture, you muppet; cognitive behavioural therapy. The sitting-down-with-therapist-to-talk-about-your-trauma-and-restructuring-the-way-you-think-through-practise type. You fuckin’ pervert,” you said, grinning at his avatar onscreen.
“Good to know. I didn’t know the name for it.”
“It’s good that you made this mistake with me instead of with Aizawa-sensei.”
“He’s probably more inclined towards bondage. Congratulations on killing your first boss,” said Tenko, and you blinked in surprise at your character: you’d defeated the zombie while staring at him. It fell to the ground, dropping bones and some sort of arrows.
“Take those. Check to see if they’re iron or steel. All right, equip them in your ammo slot for now so that they don’t take up an inventory space.”
You did so. “Why didn’t it attack me with the arrows if it were holding them?”
“There’s no logic to it besides that arrows are on its drop table. It’s coded to attack by punching you in the face, which doesn’t involve arrows.”
“Sure. Now, let’s get out of the cult basement; I wanna bake more pies until we can make apple ones. Did you know that the first record of fruit pies was around 1600? That means these fruit pies are anachronistic, since this game pitches itself as medieval.”
“Is that…” The hesitance had you beaming, daring him to actually ask it. “Is that not medieval?”
“Tenko, get your head out of your ass. For reference, 1600 is arguably the year the Azuchi-Momoyama period ended and the Edo period began. The game frames itself as medieval European, and 1600 is hard Renaissance-slash-Early-Modern. That’s Shakespeare times, screwboy.”
Only silence on your headphones. Character still on the pew. You made your character walk over to his to perform the curtsy emote, and in real life, you frowned. “Did I go too far there? Bit too annoying? I’m really sorry if I’m bothering you with this sort of thing; my friends say that I—”
“Nothing’s wrong. I needed a moment,” came Tenko’s voice, quiet and steady, “I could hear you smiling, and it was—it was good.”
Inhaling sharply, you pressed a fist to your mouth. Great. Fucking fabulous. Goddammit, you hadn’t aimed for it to go this way, but were you now the one getting flustered at something as simple as—
“Do most people consider a long pause in conversation rude? Did I fuck up with that?”
“No! No, of course not,” you were saying, trying to recover but still startled at how he was able to flip the vibe of your conversations in so few words, words that seemed so casual to him but grabbed you by the throat/cunt, “Especially since you followed-up with a check-in of how it might be strange; a lot of times, people will be comforted by checking to see if something’s okay with them personally…”
Frowning, you trailed off when another avatar entered the cult’s sanctuary and strode up the aisle. You hovered over the new guy’s stupid frog mask to see his username was Venomothman.
“Fucking great,” grumbled Tenko, “Here comes someone else to break our immersion. Ignore him. I’ll go ahead and fight the zombie so that we can get out of here.”
“The zombie’s dead. You don’t have to fight him,” you said, as Venomothman sat directly on top of Tenkopeito, with both avatars glitching as they took up the same space on the pew.
Tenko made some sort of noise in the back of his throat. “No, I have to kill it, too. It’s like each of us is the only one doing the quest, so in your version, the evil has been defeated, but in my version—it’s this thing called an instance—”
Venomothman: wow a couple questing together
Venomothman: bet ur one guy on two accounts
Venomothman: roleplaying that he can get a gf
The new guy’s in-text chat appeared in yellow font above his avatar’s frog-faced head, and somehow, the boggly, green eyes made his words more irritating.
Venomothman: leave the basement sometimes ya incel
“Some people are assholes recreationally,” said Tenko, making his avatar stand to go to the altar as the clatter of mechanical typing came through the mic, “Let me get rid of this fucking scumba—wait.”
 Venomothman: ur doing too much work to stare at pixelated ass
“Would it be correct for a hero to insult someone online?”
You shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “Eh. You’re not on duty, and you’re not under any persona connected with your public branding. I would say go for it, but since you’re trying to be better with people, you may want to practise.”
Venomothman: somehow this is even more pathetic than never knowing the touch of a woman at all
“Then I’ll shut him down. The shit-talking isn’t bothering me so much as his breaking our immersion in the game,” said Tenko, grabbing the hand on the altar to start his instance of the fight, “I’m trying to cultivate a particular experience for you, and he’s a fucker who won’t stop yapping. Give me a second.”
Venomothman: is this what does it for you??
Venomothman: why no response
Venomothman: hard to type with one hand, isn’t it, ******* shithead
You laughed through your nose. “Cipherstone censors the word fuck?”
“It censors fuck; it censors cunt,” said Tenko, avatar casting a weak air spell at the zombie, slowly, slowly draining its health, “Everything else is fair game.”
“Will it censor variations of cunt? Like, if I typed in cuntbag? Or—actually, let’s find that out later,” you said, tapping the buttons on your earbud cord to turn up the volume, “Let’s practise navigating difficult social interactions. What’s our goal here in this conversation? Is it to continue to engage?”
“No.” His spell missed, and the zombie landed a hit on his character, prompting him to eat half of a pie. “It’s to close the interaction. Therefore, I need to say something concise that invites no response, right? I’m assuming that a simple fuck off is unacceptable.”
“You’re getting better at this, y’know?”
“Is that condescension I detect?”
“Only a little.” You slumped back against your headboard and reached for the bottle of water on your bedside table. “Actually—no. No condescension. Genuinely, Tenko, you’re picking up on this stuff easily, and it’s impressive. You’ll be able to walk little old ladies across the street with style and flair in no time.” 
“Hilarious,” he said, voice restrained and tight at the mention of his name (too easy—he gives himself away aurally so freely; who knows what you could read off of him when you had a visual?), “I’m sure no one wants me touching them. Can I—hm.” He sounded like he was pressing his fist against his face somehow. “Why you keep bothering to compliment me? Most people bitch down to me like I’ve spat my own cum in their coffee.”
“Wha—how about because you deserve to be complimented? Listen,” you said, electing to brush over his vivid simile, “Silent admiration rots. By keeping in appreciation or gratitude, you’re not doing anyone any good. Kind regards are meant to be shared. Like, now, if I held back any positive thoughts concerning your growth, then you might not feel encouraged to keep going.”
“Like I’m gonna go around fucking complimenting ev—”
“I’m not saying you have to,” you said, “but consider trying it more often. See if anything turns out better. And be sure to be sincere about it—obviously.”
“This is bullshit.”
“Just consider it. So. What has he told us about himself based on how he’s insulted you?”
“He’s so low-level that it looks like he just created his account. His stats are even lower than ours,” said Tenko, speaking more quickly now that it was a subject he was more comfortable with, unequipping his wand to punch the zombie instead, “But he’s gone out of his way to get the frog mask.”
“His words, Tenko,” you said, unscrewing the cap and doing your fucking darndest to pinch your mouth from smiling at his slight hitch when you said his name, “I’m trying to get you to notice on whom he looks down and what that means for his personal social status.”
“Right,” he said a bit too quickly, a bit of a break in his voice on the word, “He’s debasing me for—oh, you’re brilliant. How the hell do you notice these things? He’s using basement dweller as insult, meaning he considers himself above that. Leave it to me.”
You muted yourself briefly to glug down water; you didn’t know how sensitive the mic was on your earbuds, but considering that you could catch onto Tenko’s occasional rustling of what sounded like plastic bags on his side or typing on his mechanical keyboard, as he was right now, you would prefer not to be emitting the same.
Tenkopeito: Your mom wishes you would come out of your room to talk with the rest of the family more often
You spluttered into your water bottle as the yellow text appeared above his head, and you unmuted yourself. “That is not what I meant for you to—”
“Was I being mean?” The mic caught the creak of Tenko’s chair as he leant back in it, and you could picture him defensive and pouting as he crossed his arms (and it struck you that you couldn’t imagine his face. Grimacing, you bit the inside of your cheek). “I wasn’t being rude. I could be so much crueller, but I thought this would be more of a devastating blow. Living on the same floor as your family isn’t the same as living in the basement, so I’m acknowledging his level of social power while still demeaning—”
Venomothman: i mean you right
Venomothman: lmao how tf did you know it was me
“I think we should log out,” you said, wiping the water off of your chin with the back of your hand and setting the bottle back on the bedside table.
Over Tenko’s microphone, you heard the shrill pitch of a custom ringtone and a startled but violent shuffle at the noise. “Hold on. I’m getting a call,” he said, voice coming through at a distance, as if he’d knocked his mic aside.
“Oh? Who is it?”
It took him a minute, but Tenko eventually replied, “A friend.”
That must be a damn good microphone, because you could still pick up on Tenko’s side of the conversation a few feet away. “Yes, hello?” he asked, a bit more brusquely than you’d heard him before.
“Oh. I didn’t,” he was saying, “How was I supposed to know that you’d—yes, that’s her. The one working with Aizawa-sensei.”
Very nice, you were thinking, as you unlocked your own phone to check your messages. Very good for him to have friends. Not that you would’ve pegged him as the absolute loner type, because he proved to be adaptable and quick on his feet, but since Aizawa’d recruited you for interpersonal help, you’d considered that he may not have friends. So, good on him for having at least one friend, it seemed, who cared enough to create an account on some stupid video game solely to annoy him.
“—cool of you to make an account to hang out with me. Stop fucking laughing; I am trying to be kind to you, shitstain. Okay. I don’t know. I haven’t been in contact with him in the past two days. I’ve been busy. Let me check.” Tenko leant back towards the mic to address you. “Do we have a schedule for the rest of the week? For instance, are we doing this again on Thursday?”
“I thought we were,” you said, scanning your room for your planner so that you could check your calendar, “Did something come up?”
“It’s not imperative that I go,” Tenko was saying into your ear, while you picked up your laptop to walk over to your U.A.-issued desk, “but another friend who’s been out of town will finally be back then. We might hang out.”
“Psh, go with your friends,” you said, delighted that he had more than one (fighting envy that it was so easy for them to meet up), “We can do this another time.”
“Understood,” Tenko said and backed away from the mic.
Venomothman: so have you sucked his dick yet
Tenko’s incensed shout of “Touya!” had you turning down the volume.
Venomothman: not to be the world’s worst wingman, but my dude is packing. and goes commando all the time.
Venomothman: and i would know. “i” sometimes “did” our “laundry”
You: what’s with all those quotation marks
Venomothman: and do you know the last time it was sucked? never
(Fucking hell. This Touya was walking you back into forbidden territory: the sexualisation of Tenko. After that first session, when you’d been turned on by his confident, rumbling voice as he’d given you an order, you’d felt guilty for sexualising him for the rest of the night. It was as if instead of friend-zoning him, you’d sex-zoned him, only able to see him as a sexual person/object. For the sake of your mission task, that felt unfair.
Or maybe you weren’t even sexualising him. Maybe your brain was appropriately interpreting what he’d done as sexual.
Whatever. Something in your gut was begging you not to see Tenko only through romantic or sexual lenses right now, and you couldn’t explain why.
And talking about Tenko’s apparently massive dick was not helping.)
Tenkopeito: Touya if you don’t ******* shut up I am going to tear off your other arm
Venomothman: no need, boss man
You heard Tenko sigh and say into his phone, sounding exhausted, “I’m not your boss anymore, Touya.”
Venomothman: no need, douchebag
***
Draped over the side of your bed, you dangled a shoelace in front of the gap in an attempt to coax Dango out from underneath. “Dango, sweetie,” you said, whipping the shoelace to the side, “Come out here so that I can look you in the eyes. Where is my planner, you whore?”
At a firm knock on your door, you shot up, dropping the lace. “Never mind,” you said, sliding off the bed, “Stay hidden.”
You opened your door on Aizawa, bare arm raised in mid-knock, wisps of hair plastered to his forehead by dried sweat, and a sweatshirt tied around his waist. He took two seconds to look over you before saying, “Get dressed. Civilian clothes. You have three minutes.”
Throwing on yesterday’s outfit, you rushed to follow Aizawa out of the dorm and off campus, nearly stepping on his heels while he wove through night pedestrians, pulling on his own sweatshirt to minimise skin contact once the crowd thickened.
You flipped up your coat collar to sneak a glance over your shoulder. “Is this a test?”
Aizawa combed his fingers back through his hair, gaze straight ahead. “Not for you.”
“Right.” You stepped more lightly, naturally falling back into patrol patterns: noting exits (narrow alleyways favouring the left side, underground into the subway station), checking vantage points (upper-storey windows in the resident buildings, non-industrial rooftops), honing in on light sources (yellow- and LED-tinted streetlamps, ambience from open businesses) and physical presence (close enough to brush shoulders with passerby [putting you on edge, because the slightest touch could be pivotal]). You had to consciously unclench your jaw, body flooded with stress it hadn’t felt in months. Swiping at the inner corner of your eye, you asked, “Does it have anything to do with the guy in the black hoodie and face mask following us?”
Aizawa laughed through his nose, once. “All right, then. What’s that ice cream place you and Shinsou went to all the time? Take us there.”
Bewildered, you changed directions to head towards Nekozawa’s, with Aizawa placing a hand on your shoulder to slow your pace, and by the time you pushed open Nekozawa’s glass door to the glowing, pink parlour, you were prepared to hold it open for your follower in the face mask. You watched his broad back as he ordered some ungodly, radioactive-blue ice cream with gummy bears before retreating to a table outside despite the dropping temperature, and Aizawa gestured you forward so that he could pay for the three of you.
Holding your ice cream, you hesitated at the door, swaying underneath the seasonal cat decorations dangling from the ceiling.
“Go on,” said Aizawa, retrieving the U.A. card from his wallet, “I’ve got to make a phone call, so don’t wait up. Don’t be too harsh on him; we’re here because he did a good job in the field today. Tailing you was extra practise.”
Nodding, you nudged open the door, bracing yourself at the cold, night air, and let it drift shut behind you as you approached the table, the farthest one from the pink lights.
Hood pulled up, Tenko bent over his blue monstrosity, face mask hanging by a loop over his left ear. Scuffing your boots on the concrete to announce your presence, you sat across from him, setting your cup on the cast iron before swinging your leg over the bench. You managed a cursory glance over what appeared to be a sketchbook before he closed it, and once he’d stowed it away, he swopped his spoon to his dominant hand to keep eating.
“You draw, Tenko?” To make him feel more comfortable, you kept your gaze towards Aizawa inside on the phone. “Do you think you’re any good?”
“Not yet. But I’m gonna be,” he said, clicking his pen and clenching it in his left hand, “I’ve got all these fucking artist’s gloves, so I might as well put ‘em to use.”
“Very nice,” you said, nodding, closing your eyes as you dipped your spoon into your ice cream, “But as a reminder, you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. I love doing stuff I’m absolute shit at. It reminds me of medieval bestiaries. They didn’t know shit about animals, but, boy howdy, did they have fun illustrating them. Did you know a weasel used to be called a polecat?”
Tenko huffed, his face mask fluttering. “It really is you.”
“Of course it is,” you said, beaming, and for the first time, you looked at him.
Tension flooded your teacup of a body and overflowed into the saucer and onto the floor. Heightened by the cold, a vein on the back of your hand strained and pulsed visibly, and, jaw locking, you lunged over the tabletop to grab him by the shoulders, shaking him.
“What the hell is wrong with you‽” You climbed over the table, pushed his ice cream out of the way (he shot out a hand to save it from toppling off the table, and he ripped off his face mask to set it aside before it fell to the ground), and planted your foot on his thigh and your elbows on his chest, caging him in as you forced him flat on the bench. “Why the fuck are you using your real name in your fucking Cipherstone username, you fucking moron‽ People could fucking track you!”
The man who had been Shigaraki Tomura eyed your fists in his hoodie and then his cup of ice cream. “You didn’t have a problem with it before.”
“I—” This idiot! “I didn’t know it was you. There are a lot of Tenkos.”
“Then there’s my logic,” he said, hands dangling by his sides, making no attempt to touch you—you didn’t know if you appreciated it or not. “I thought you knew who I was.”
“No, I fucking—I would have given you advice that was more specific to you, over the spiel I was giving interns.” Releasing your grip on his hoodie, you sat back up and scooted over on the tabletop. Though you wanted to keep holding him, to hug him after all he’s been through, he probably wouldn’t want that. “I’m—sorry about tackling you. I, uh—fuck,” you said, and, grimacing, you slid his ice cream back to him and reached across for your own, pretending with everything you’ve got that it was perfectly normal that you were sitting on a table next to Shigaraki Tomura, who’s been teaching you to play a video game, who’s apparently living at the end of the hall, who’s decorated his door with Eri’s silver tinsel for Christmas, who’s banned from drinking caffeine, who could rest his fucking head on your thigh if he wanted. Normal. Yeah.
“Again, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep doing that,” he said, fishing out a gummy bear like you hadn’t lunged at him, “Your reaction was reasonable.”
“It—it wasn’t, really,” you said, laughing nervously, “I wasn’t expecting you. I mean, no one knows what—what happened to you. Afterwards. It was really unclear.”
“It was that way on purpose,” said Tenko, “It was thought to be better to emphasise the total destruction of All for One instead of whatever happened to his leftovers.” He shifted a bear to his back molars to bite into the frozen gummy better. “Nezu-sensei decided it was better to keep it muddled for now.”
Muddled was a good way to put it. There’d been so much chaos at the end of the war that so much never was accounted for. You’d think that the location of Shigaraki’s body would be high on the list, but satisfaction was found simply in the splintered, spectacular remains of AFO. Shigaraki’s name wasn’t cleared, per se, but in the aftermath, Midoriya especially stressed that yes, Shigaraki committed atrocities, but he’d been abused, groomed, and literally bodily possessed by AFO to think that way. Didn’t excuse him, but wasn’t entirely his fault.
The locations of the other PLF members—well, the core of the League, really—were public, if not vague. Spinner was in the States at a rehab that specialised in heteromorph trauma; Toga was at a local women’s facility called Sakura Grove, and Dabi was living with his family—he must have been that Touya on the phone, holy shit.
So, here he was, sitting on the bench at the same ice cream parlour you visited with the same friends who fought him, hunched over in oversized, black clothes you suspected were Aizawa’s, broad shoulders and faded scars out of place in the pink lights, white hair pulled back in a blunt ponytail with his bangs flopping over his forehead, seemingly unbothered by the toe of your boot pressing against his denim-covered thigh.
God. He’s scratched at his neck so much that it looks like he’s been beheaded with a blunt axe.
Tenko’s eyes flickered up to you, their colour deepening to crimson in the tinted lights. “So. You’ve got questions.”
“Are you okay?”
Tenko swallowed with effort, scowling. “Don’t start with a hard one.”
“Right,” you said, throat drying, “Who knows you’re staying at U.A.?”
“Faculty and staff. My therapist. The police force. The ramen shop Aizawa-sensei and I go to. The intensive rehab I was at before. The top of the hero commission. Touya, Touya’s father, Spinner, Toga. Eri and Midoriya,” he said, tongue swiping over his lower lip, “You.”
Somehow both fewer and more than you’d figured. “What exactly…is the situation? Aizawa-sensei was vague.”
“Officially, I’m like Eri: a ward of U.A. My old rehab thought I was good enough to live off their campus, so I’m back here, where I can be watched by people capable enough to bring me down if I go crazy again,” he said, brow furrowed as he traced the side of his cup with his spoon, “I should resent that, but it’s not like I have anywhere else to go, especially somewhere as comfortable as this. This is fucking stupid to say aloud, but fucking—fuckin’ All Might is the closest thing I have to family now, along with Midoriya.”
“I’m not following.”
“My grandma was the holder of One for All before All Might had it.” He pointed at you with his spoon. “So you can make the connection from there. But it’s stupid; I’m stupid—” He was shaking his head and staring into his lap. “—because it’s like I have a brother in Midoriya and a goddamn father in All Might—and then Aizawa-sensei’s acting like a dad, too, to me and Eri, and Nezu-sensei? Nezu-sensei is so fucking cool,” said Tenko, dragging his hand down his face, “He’s got a driver’s license! I don’t even have one of those. And he can type fucking 210 words per minute with those little rat paws, and I’m still getting used to using all five fingers, fuck.”
Cute. You scraped the bottom of your cup. “Hey, I think you type well.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why it takes me so long to reply in the in-game chat function. Why I prefer communicating over voice call. Learning new habits, and shit.” Tenko stabbed his ice cream with his spoon. “Nezu-sensei has arranged for me to train as an aftermath-clean-up hero. I had been—” His fingers on one hand circled the thumb of the other. “—in discussion with him in rehab about what I could do, and we decided I could consistently help when there’s collapsed buildings after attacks; I could dust the wreckage so that we could find hostages or make it easier to clean up and rebuild, and Aizawa-sensei and All Might-sensei have been working with me to control what parts of what I touch gets dusted so that I could create pitfall traps for holding criminals. It’s…going. It’s going,” he said, curling his lips in his mouth to moisten them, and with narrowed, determined eyes, he took another bite of ice cream, the blue staining the inside of his lips.
“Tenko, that’s a really cool application of your quirk. I hope you can find more,” you said, tilting your head and smiling down at him, “but—I have to ask—aren’t you tired?”
Tenko rolled his eyes. “Of course. You’re part of the group ensuring I don’t have caffeine.”
“No, I mean,” you said, shaking your head, “I mean, you don’t have to be perceived as useful. You’re—you’re just fine if you wanted to rest. You’re worthwhile just as you, not as—as a job, as a, I don’t know, a redeemed hero or anything. You can just be Tenko.”
“I know. My therapist keeps reminding me. But one of the most vivid memories I have from when I was living in that house,” said Tenko, sneering, “is that I desperately wanted to be a hero and that I would pretend to be one a lot. While I’m aware that I can never atone for what I’ve done, if I did nothing but rest, I’d be alone with my thoughts. And with what I’m learning to do, as a hero, someday, someone might…need me. Need my help. I imagine that’s a good feeling.”
You sat back, leaning on your hands, the cast-iron pattern cutting into your palms, to survey him. “You’re very much re-writing my first impressions of you as my gaming buddy and as the post-war Shigaraki. You’re surprisingly well-adjusted.”
He snorted. “I shouldn’t think it’s surprising. I’ve had almost a year and a half in intensive rehab, and I’m still in therapy every day.” He started listing on his fingers, starting with his thumb. “I’m on antidepressants; I know where my next meal’s coming from and when I’ll get it; I consistently have a safe roof over my head, and I know my friends are getting that, too. I have mentors who care for me as a human person instead of as a tool. I get to stay in contact with my friends and get to make new ones,” he said, nodding curtly at you before quickly looking away, “I’m fucking away from that sadistic fuckface. He’s goddamn dead and burned away to nothing. That’s the main thing. Everything else is a bonus.”
Tenko sighed, bangs fluttering with the movement, his shoulders straining as he leaned onto both his elbows on the table. He sighed again and scooped the last gummy bear out of his cup, and you let the silence carry on while you finished eating.
“Long phone call,” Tenko said eventually.
An increasingly grumpy Aizawa was leaning against the glittery wall inside, phone between his ear and shoulder, and furiously scraping the inside of his ice cream cup.
“Yeah,” you said, “but it’s been good talking to you, Tenko. I really appreciate you telling me all of this.”
“I would’ve talked about it sooner, but I figured you knew who I was and didn’t want to address it,” said Tenko, tapping his fingers one by one on the table.
Pulling the collar of your coat closer to your neck, you frowned, hesitating on how to phrase it. You watched your breath cloud in the night air before settling on, “There’s an off-switch?”
Brow pinching very slightly, Tenko followed your gaze to his hand, with all five fingers coming to rest on the cast iron, and he tapped all five of them on it for emphasis. “Yeah. There always has been. All for One kept it from me. Power of belief kept me jittery and alert my whole life.”
“So long as you thought you’d destroy anything you touched, you would?”
He nodded. “That bitch.”
“Agreed. We should kill him.”
And Tenko laughed. Just for a moment, barely making any noise, but he smiled with his teeth, grin stretching across his face as he looked away and eventually closing his lips, the smile lingering for a few more precious seconds.
***
You closed your laptop to answer the phone at work, clearing your throat to ready your receptionist voice before you picked up. “U.A. University Administration; how may I help you?”
“I need you to fucking murder me,” Tenko spat through the phone, angry and panicked, “I need you to rip out my bones and suck out my guts through a straw. He fucking let me hold onto them, and I’ve fucking gone and lost such a fucking iconic piece of—”
“Tenko, please, take a breath,” you said, relaxing your customer service mode but clutching the phone to your ear, and after catching the eye of the woman with jars of strawberry preserves waiting to see Nezu, you slumped over in your seat so that she couldn’t see you over the desk’s overhang. “Tell me what’s wrong. We can fix it. Are you alone? Is everyone else busy? Do you need to come sit with me?”
“I—fuck,” he said, and you heard some deliberately slow breathing, but his voice still had an irate, twitchy edge afterwards. “During our practise patrol last night, Aizawa-sensei was talking about support equipment for me. I’d never given it much thought, because it’s always been just me and my hands. He leant me his Eraser Goggles for me to think about for my—and I don’t know where they fucking are,” he said, inhaling sharply on the last word, “I’d left them on my desk, but I’d taken them up to the roof to sketch them, and then I’d brought them back to my dorm—”
“And Aizawa-sensei must have swung by to pick them up since then,” you said, pushing yourself back to slide in your swivel chair to the back of the reception desk, “because he was here at the beginning of my shift to print something off, and the goggles are on top of the printer. Relax, Tenko.”
“Hooooooly fuck, you’re kidding,” said Tenko, audibly deflating, and you smiled to yourself as you slid their band around your wrist.
You kicked yourself back up to the front. “You’re okay. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I’ll bring them by at the end of my shift.” You sat up straight, and the strawberry preserves woman was shooting a concerned look in your direction. “I’m at work, though, so I think we’d better end the call soon. Anything else you need?”
Tenko hummed into the phone. “Not really. You can’t be that busy.”
You smiled again, feeling—feeling domestic, as if he were your boyfriend calling you during work hours. How strange, Shigaraki Tomura. How interesting. “Would you believe I was grinding in Cipherstone when you called?”
“And you don’t call yourself a gamer,” he said, clearing his throat multiple times, “What skills?”
“Woodcutting and firemaking,” you said, opening your laptop again, “Are you feeling under the weather? Your voice had a bit of a rasp there.” Sounded like his old voice for a moment.
“Further cementing that Aizawa-sensei’s right to be worried about you. He says your brain’s going haywire analysing any detail work you can get, because you’re not out in the field anymore,” said Tenko, clearing his throat again (?), “Am I your new project?”
“Tell me what’s wrong, lest I pick up some damn throat lozenges for you before I come home,” you said, and a voice in the back of your head screamed that that threat was extremely cosy and intimate, especially since you’re claiming both of you have a home in the same place—which, sure, you both lived on the same hallway, but so did Aizawa and Eri, and please shut up; Shimura Tenko needs a friend, not a lover right now. Besides, that stupid hallway wasn’t really home for either of you but was more like a temporary holding cell.
“Fine. I’ve been throwing up all morning.”
“Thank you,” you said, electing not to make a pregnancy joke, “Do you need to see Recovery Girl?”
“No, I’m used to it, and I’ve already talked to her about it. I threw up a lot out of anxiety and stress when I was growing up with All for One, and now I’m throwing up because my body can’t handle the amount of food it’s getting regularly, which is fucking ridiculous, since it’s still less than a normal person’s version of three meals a day.”
What. The fuck. How can he casually drop details of deep trauma like it’s nothing? How could AFO let a child keep vomiting out of stress for years and years and never interfere? Well. Yeah, he could. You supposed that Shigaraki’s voice, as you first heard it as the USJ incident, was the ultimate result of that heavy strain on his throat for years. Explains some things about his teeth back then, too.
God. If AFO weren’t dead, you’d strangle him. Keeping a child physically weak because he’d be easier to mould. It was known that AFO had been psychologically manipulating Shigaraki, but now that you thought about it, manipulating his physical growth would have served AFO, too, since he was planning to move into Shigaraki’s body.
And what did this guy do now that he’s got bodily autonomy? Oh. Just. Play some video games. Talk with his friends. Try out some new hobbies. Make crafts with Eri.
It’s a shame AFO didn’t have a grave, because you’d be skiving off work to drown it in acid.
“My stomach is killing me,” said Tenko, “I’ve got to hang up to drink something and go to sleep. Knock on my door when you get home. I want to start a new quest as soon as you finish work.”
Home. He’d said it, too. He probably didn’t mean it in the same, domestic way that you’d been entertaining, but it made your heart swell. “Okay, Tenko. See you then.”
***
His therapist had assigned him homework: go on a planned, public outing with a peer, and stay out for at least an hour.
It wasn’t exactly a picnic you were packing, you kept telling yourself, scooting behind Tenko to get to the spice cabinet in the dorm kitchen, because that’d be too close to a date rather than homework. But the two of you packed a meal to take, with Eri sitting on the kitchen counter while she nibbled at rabbit-cut apple slices, and she held the thermos of decaf tea in her lap until it was time to stow it away.
After a short train ride and a quiet walk through midtown, Tenko stopped you in front of the back gate to what appeared to be a restored, historical estate, judging by the golden shachihoko shibi on each corner of polished hip-and-gable rooftops of the extensively aristocratic—mansion? palace?—that you could make out in across the distance of its sprawling grounds, the immediacy of which was the excessively well-kept, traditional garden that you and Tenko were breaking into.
“Is this legal?” you asked as Tenko reached through the grate to unlatch the doorway.
“I have an in with the gardener,” he said, sweeping the gate open for you and gesturing brusquely for you to enter.
“No, that wasn’t a joke,” you said, taking the few steps inside, finding yourself planted onto a polished, level stepping stone, and staring down a squeaky clean tsukubai despite the thin layer of frost over the water’s surface as the whole bowl began to freeze, “You can’t be doing anything even vaguely illegal, Tenko.”
When you said his name, he closed his eyes, pausing for just a hair in his relatching the gate, before facing you and shifting the strap of his bag farther up his shoulder. “Prude. Yes, we have permission from the owner.”
He kept looking back over his shoulder at you as he led you through the gardens, hopping across stepping stones to pass over a carefully shaped brook that led to a tiny waterfall near stone lanterns, weaving through trellises with the wintry shells of wisteria vines and shaped evergreens. He tutted and rolled his eyes when you stopped at the waterlily-coated koi pond, its fish swimming and flicking their tails in the artificially heated water (for some, odd reason, what appeared to be a compact duck coop had been constructed near the pond’s edge, its wood new and un-bleached by the sun like the rest of garden décor). You’d been about to ask about it when Tenko had jumped out of his skin at the sound of a deer scare, bamboo tapping stone.
“Stop laughing,” Tenko said, cheeks burning (and you tried not to take too much pleasure in that, but you couldn’t help it).
“Oh, a sensitive boy, a delicate boy,” you said, grinning as you hopped onto the same stone as him, cool, clouding breaths mixing together in the proximity, and you yourself could feel heat rise to your face. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Good traits to have, actually. Means you’re feeling secure and comfortable in your surroundings, if you’re off-set that easily.” Feeling bold—it was the cold; it was how the proximity already flustered him; it was how his hands were full because of the bag; it was—whatever—you reached for his silly All Might scarf and re-tied the front, fluffing it up to cover more of his neck.
You made the mistake of making eye contact: full of caution, his eyes kept darting from your hands to your face, searching for something, his lips parted, otherwise completely fucking frozen.
Were you making him uncomfortable? You stilled, your fingers still in the fringe of his scarf, tension tightening in your chest and jaw (clenching).
Tenko noticed. And—and to this day, you can’t believe he fucking did this—he ran his tongue over his lower lip and lifted his chin, exposing more of his neck to you. He then was suddenly very interested in the koi pond, the ruddiness spreading from his cheeks to his ears.
Throat dry, you gave his scarf a final tug and patted it (?) to show (??) a job well done (???). “Yeah,” you said, smoothly, like a smooth person, like someone who adjusts scarves of hot, in-process-of-reformation villains on the regular, “Where are we going?”
Tenko spun on his heel and strode away, muttering what sounded like, “Right into my grave.”
You pretended not to hear it and let him lead you to the only building unattached to the main house: a small, traditional teahouse that had a recent addition to it in the back. The creak of the bamboo engawa when you climbed onto it was muffled underneath the bright pealing of windchimes strung across the covered porch. Tenko was already kneeling at the tearoom’s sunken fireplace inside, its handle carved into a fish, fiery as its kindling, and was unpacking the travel teacups from the bag as you closed the door behind you, shutting out the cold, enveloped by the comfortable heat trapped inside by the cushioned walls.
Tenko must have arranged for this space to have been prepared for you. A kotatsu with floor cushions was tucked near the fireplace, pre-heated, with two further space heaters in the unoccupied corners, cords trailing into what must be a hallway linking the traditional and modern rooms, the latter of which was shut off from view. Beside a red-tinted wooden dresser stood an oddly empty tokonoma, and instead of a scroll or painting, amidst bits of pieces of scotch tape hastily half-torn off the back was a shittily cut-out, paper heart.
Shaking your head, you took a step towards Tenko, and the floor chirped at you, freezing you in place.
“Yeah, I don’t know why they do that,” said Tenko, pushing on his knees to stand, “They just do.”
“These must be nightingale floors,” you said, crossing to the kotatsu, a bird under each step, “The chirping’s caused by the way the nails rub against the v-shaped clamps holding the floor together. Have you been to Nijō Castle in Kyoto? These are in the hallway—supposedly used as a security measure, but who knows.”
“You need a hobby.” Tenko ripped the paper heart from the back of the tokonoma, crumpling it in his fist. A shred of it remained under the scrap of tape on the wall, which he bent towards to scrape off with a blunt fingernail.
“I have several,” you said, easing down onto a cushion and unfolding your legs underneath the kotatsu blanket, the luxurious heat swaddling your legs and hips. You fought the urge to curl up underneath it entirely.
“How many of them involve getting your ass thrashed by me in Cipherstone?” Tenko retrieved the bag from the sunken fireplace before returning to the kotatsu, and he sat on your left, resting the bag between the two of you.
You took the thermos of decaf tea when he handed it to you. “Tenko, you’ve been playing that game for years, and I just began. Of course my ass is gonna be thrashed by—you know how the game works. You have all of this previous information about the game that I don’t have.”
Tenko scoffed and slid your teacup across the kotatsu’s surface.  “As if I could conceal any information from you. You’re too…eh.” He waved it off, shaking his head.
“I’m too what?” You unscrewed the thermos lid, and steam surged upwards, rising to caress the planes of your face.
“It’s been unfair of Aizawa-sensei to make me tail you,” said Tenko, leaning your way, all five fingers curled around his own teacup as he stretched across the tabletop. “I’d have a chance of success if it were anyone else.”
“I’ll give you that,” you said, pouring steaming, amber tea with slices of yuzu into Tenko’s cup, “You’re getting quite good at it, not that you were bad in the first place. But yeah, it’s a bit mean of him to test your tracking skills on me.” He’d never said to stop, so you poured until liquid almost overflowed at the rim.
He gasped at the heat but nudged his teacup back to his place at the table, unable to hold it in his palm anymore. “I think I would’ve preferred working with Hound Dog-sensei for that. He’s less detail-oriented. I could win, if it weren’t you.” Jutting out his lower lip, Tenko glared down at his tea for a moment before slumping in his seat to slurp at the tea without picking it up.
“Don’t feel bad about it. It was literally and actually my focus for hero work, profiling and detail shit and being aware of my surroundings. Information stuff. Infiltration stuff.” Setting the thermos on the far corner, you cupped your hands loosely around your teacup, appreciating the warmth and getting cosier by the minute.
Tenko was rooting through the bag for the other thermoses, full of sukiyaki for each of you. “It’s clear you’ve worked hard to hone your skills. Were you this talented as a student?”
You accepted the new thermos, fingers clenching tightly around it. “Uh. I think I may have been better back then. More focused. More passionate, anyway. I had to think about it really hard back then, make conscious decisions to notice things, and now I think I do it instinctively. I think I’m slipping because of that.”
“Hm,” said Tenko, tongue rubbing over his teeth behind closed lips, and he opened his mouth to say something but shut it, instead twisting off the cap to his soup thermos. He took the first sip of sukiyaki broth and—and was absolutely beautiful (you couldn’t make sense of it beyond that; he was a mess of details that you couldn’t fit together into a larger picture that made any sense: white eyelashes light against his cheeks as they fluttered shut, face muscles relaxed, scars overlapping with laugh lines, cracked lips becoming moistened by the soup, both hands cupped around his thermos like a child, no strain to his posture, baggy hoodie swallowing him up, kotatsu blanket yanked up to his hips to cover his crossed legs, scar on the corner of his mouth delicately shifting with his baffled smirk when he caught you staring, a strange pink rising to the tips of his ears). “What?”
Uh. Hm. You pinched the bridge of your nose and then moved to rub your eyelids. “What were you going to say about me?” you asked, and you withdrew your hand from your face to raise the soup thermos to your lips, taking a mouthful of noodles and the sweet, salty broth.
Tenko shook his head. “I’m trying to avoid thoughts that fall back into my old habits.”
“Try me,” you said, holding his gaze when he met it, “I won’t tell.”
Weary, he broke eye contact, and he fixated on fishing out a certain slice of green onion. “We needed someone like you back then.”
Back then? When he—oh.
Back in the League.
Though you attempted to hide your grin by taking a sip of sukiyaki, you caught his eyes flicker to it. “You would’ve taken me? You would’ve let me in?”
“Would you have joined?” he shot back, a bit too quickly.
“No,” you said, rolling your shoulders and settling down farther underneath the kotatsu, “Never. But since you shared something you shouldn’t’ve, I’ll do the same.” You set your thermos down to rub your eyes again—God, you couldn’t look at him for too long, lest your intrusive thoughts hand you your ass. “I thought about it. About joining you.”
You dragged your hand down your face, peeking between your fingers at a muted clink. Tenko was staring at you, something fucking unreadable in his scrounched eyes, and both hands lay five-fingered and flat on the kotatsu, steam from his open thermos fluffing up hair on one side of his head. “You’re not serious. You wouldn’t have.”
“Not in the way you think,” you said, tilting your head back, “but I often thought, in the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation Raid, what I could’ve done, if I’d known what I know now. And as the rest of the war was unfolding, I only wanted it more.”
Tenko blinked, slowly. “Tell me what you would’ve done.”
“Oh, you would’ve hated me, down to the dregs of my very soul,” you said, shifting to sit on your knees, “I would’ve started after your fight with Re-Destro, after the PLF was established. When you were letting allllllllll those heroes in, the sidekicks, the nobodies, anyone who seemed like they were with the cause. I would’ve infiltrated. Slipped in without notice. Hawks did, with the Commission, but I would’ve been going in as a free agent.”
“No one notices a U.A. student slide in between the masses. Re-Destro’s lackeys wouldn’t notice you at the door like I would. You get in,” Tenko said, taking his thermos in hand again but still engrossed in you, “What then?”
“There was a short period of time between the PLF establishment and your procedure, right? Around a month? That’s when I go. I worm my way into the good graces of some of the nine lieutenants—I’ve decided my pipeline would’ve been Geten to Toga to you. You’d just come out of an enormous battle, with Re-Destro and that city and Gigantomachia for a whole month. I heard you were bandaged up, on crutches, that you’d lost fingers that you regrew in that regeneration tank,” you said, eyes on his hands, one in a fist in his lap and the other around his thermos, five fingers pressing onto the grip but the pinkie finger hitched farther up than the rest, “That you’d given a speech and made your appearances regardless. That you’d pushed yourself to your limit and then broke yourself a little more. And you would’ve loathed me, because I would’ve come in, earned my way to your side, and I would’ve put my hand on your shoulder, slid it up your neck to cup your cheek to ask Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to rest?” You smiled and huffed, shoving it down, and though his hard stare should’ve pinned you to your seat, you pushed on the corner of the kotatsu to edge yourself over to his side, a knee on his cushion. “I like to think that you’ve sighed, sulked a bit, reluctant to admit anything was wrong at all, because back then, you had no use for moonlight. But I would’ve made you look at me, taken you to a bed, made you lie down until your eyes fluttered shut and the tension swept through your body and left. And you would rest,” you said, finding yourself leaning over him very slightly, knees touching his, just enough so that he leant backwards just a fraction, “I would’ve made that month so soft for you. I would’ve taken care of you, when nobody was fucking paying attention to you in the way that they should’ve. I fucking—I wanted it.” You gripped the front of his hoodie, fist grasping more fabric than necessary to shake him. “I wanted it. I wanted to care for you. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know. And you were fucking alone, in an unfamiliar place, and it kills me to think about that.”
You ducked your head to wipe your watery eyes on your sleeve, taking a breath—and realising what you were doing. You loosened your grip, but before you could pull away, Tenko was cat-like quick to grab your sleeve—why won’t he touch you?
“I wouldn’t have accepted your help,” he said, quiet, controlled, holding you down with his eyes, hand shifting to curve under your sleeved wrist, signalling that you could escape at any time, “That was after the worst month of my life, fighting Machia, and I wouldn’t have accepted it. I had too much to do. I would’ve shaken you off.”
“No, you wouldn’t’ve.”
“I would’ve,” he said, a bare finger, featherlight, skimming over the tender, bare skin of the underside of your wrist (oh, wow), “I wouldn’t trust that easily in that short of a time. You’d have met me, and that’d be it. If you’d persisted, I would’ve ripped you to shreds and tossed you aside.”
“Tenko,” you said, both relief and tightness blooming from your wrist, “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”
The hallway shoji slammed open, somehow rattling as it slid in its tracks and shook the walls, and you and Tenko scrambled apart, with you jolting backwards on your hands, grappling for your seat cushion, and Tenko banging his thermos on the kotatsu, hastily wrestling with keeping it upright as he flung his body to the side.
“Hey, fuck you, Touya,” Tenko spluttered out, elbowing himself upright as—as fucking Dabi strode inside, hands in the deep pockets of his black sweatpants. “You said you’d stay in the main house.”
“Don’t mind me,” said Touya, cool as you please, raising both of his hands in defence, “I had to ensure you’re not fucking in my bed.”
“What is—” Tenko clambered to his feet to cross to him, chirping with each stomp, and whisper-shouting once he’d corralled Touya into a far corner. “I said we’d hang out later today, Touya. You swore you’d stay inside and watch Naruto this afternoon.”
The polite thing to do would be to appear fascinated by the tea. You returned to your cushion and poured yourself another cup.
“Yeah, but I’ve been told I’ve got shit to do later. I’ve got to go to this fuckin’—fuckin’ family stuff. I don’t wanna get into it,” said Touya, at full volume, “and I wanted to check that your girl was real. Y’know, she looks nothing like someone who’d have GinzengTea as her username. Have you given it to her already?”
“Shut the fuck up. I was just about to do that, if you hadn’t interrupted, cockhead.”
“Cool,” he said, a bird-note as he shifted his weight, “I wanna see what she thinks.”
“Hell, no—”
“I helped pick ‘em out. Let me watch and have an ohagi, and I’ll leave,” said Touya, chirping towards you before he finished the sentence, and Tenko followed him, muttering under his breath.
Touya sat on the bare tatami next to you, joints cracking as he yanked the kotatsu blanket up his legs, shooting you a small salute and a concerningly charming smile. “Hey,” he said, tilting his head, eyes half-lidded, smile stretching to show more of his even, white teeth, “I’ve seen you before, yeah? When was the last time you laid eyes on me?”
Tenko pelted him in the chest with a plastic-wrapped ohagi, cutting off the ooze of charisma. “Show-off,” he said, nudging another sweetened rice ball your way.
You nodded but didn’t move to unwrap it, since you were still working on your sukiyaki. “I’m surprised you remember, Touya,” you said, the name feeling strange on your tongue, “It must’ve been years since I elbowed you in the tit.”
Eyes lighting the fuck up, you snapped towards Tenko when he laughed into his plastic wrap: still not loud, still not making any vocalisation with it, but releasing a heavy, sharp burst of air with a wide, open grin. He hunched over to hide more of it, using both hands to unwrap his ohagi—and in the moment he realised he’d been unwrapping it with only his pointer fingers and thumbs, he dropped the rest of his fingers onto the rice ball, still smirking to himself.
Biting your lip in your own smile, you turned back to Touya (you caught his moment of mild alarm at how thrilled you were when Tenko laughed—or maybe it was alarm at Tenko laughing at all—but Touya relaxed his eyebrows and shut his mouth the second you faced him again). “God, yeah, it must have been before that last battle that we’d met in a fight, and I’d gotten close enough to hit you, and…” You shook your head. “Actually, I don’t wanna talk about that stuff. It’s not who we are now.”
“That’s fine.” Touya nodded towards Tenko and took a bite of his ohagi. “Shimura, don’t you have something to give her?”
Shimura. That was his last name, you supposed, but wasn’t it odd that Tenko called Touya by his given name and that Touya called Tenko by his family name? Tenko didn’t make you call him Shimura. Well, you supposed that there’s only one Shimura now, and because of the number of Todorokis, it paid to be specific—
“Here.” Tenko set a flat box in front of you, flipping the buckle of his bag back over. “I was going to give it to you with more formality, but since this bastard showed up, I’m doing it like this.”
Biting the inside of your cheek, brow furrowed, you unpacked a pair of pale blue headphones, soft to the touch with a mesh headband so that your head wouldn’t ache.
“Noise-cancelling,” Tenko said, gabbling, frowning very slightly, “Rechargeable. There’s a detachable microphone so it can function as a headset. I wanted to do something good for you.” His eyes darted towards Touya, and they dropped to his ohagi’s bulging filling, seeping out onto the plastic wrap. “You need them, anyway. I’ve been sick of hearing you through those shitty earbuds; their sound is terrible, and when you said you’d lost your only pair—which I don’t fucking understand how you can lose those things, because they just fucking show up in my shit all the time, like a goddamn plague—I thought you needed something quality—just to make it easier on my end, obviously, so that I don’t have to tell you to yell into that shitty, built-in micropho—”
“Tenko,” you said, reaching over to place your tea-hot hand over the back of his, fingers curving with his along ohagi’s edge, “Thank you so much. I adore them. I’m really grateful that you would think of me.”
Tenko froze, the same as he had when you’d adjusted his scarf. Unable to look you in the eye, like a prey animal, stiff, shoulders tense, colour rushing up his neck to his face and ears again—but this time, he lifted his hand just a hair from his ohagi to press back into your palm, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Hoo, boy,” said Touya, startling the both of you when he slammed his hands on the kotatsu to push himself up, “I’ve had enough. I’ve had my little snack. I’m leaving.” Once on his feet, he stretched, pressing his hands to his lower back and arching it, grunting.
“Good fucking riddance, cocksucker,” said Tenko, rising and grabbing Touya by the elbow to haul him to the door.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Touya, dragging his feet, chirping slurred and confused by his movement, and when Tenko had him at the wall, trying to shove him out, Touya, smirking under your watch, whispered something to Tenko while forcing something into his palm. Touya ducked out as Tenko looked at what he’d accepted and, letting out a yelp, dusted whatever it was before he hurried back to the kotatsu.
(When you left the teahouse half an hour later, you discovered that he’d decayed only the wrapper and not the condom itself.)
***
“One moment, please. Nezu-sensei is in a meeting right now, but he’ll be out momentarily. Please take a number—yes, the ticket puncher when you first came in,” you said to yet another impatient and pissed client in the admin waiting room, packed to the gills with parents, press, vendors, potential sponsors, and, for some reason, Mt. Lady’s entire representative team. “By the door. If you’ll take a seat, we’ll be with you shortly.”
God, you could punt Nezu for this. Not that there was anything wrong with establishing a new, annual event for U.A.—a cherry blossom garden-set, competitive scavenger hunt coming up in the spring—but because of his casual comment that it would rise to the same importance as the Sports Festival, you were swamped with those eager to invest early. Unable to take a break, you had to work with your head bowed, desperately hoping none of these people recognised you and your failure, when all you wanted was to reply to Tenko’s messages on Cipherstone that morning.
Tenkopeito: You’ll like the next quest. You can pet a dog in it
Tenkopeito: Come over to my room this evening so that we can talk in person
Was he intending to speak with innuendo or with such sincerity that it cut right through you? Moreover, was he aware he was even doing it? Based on what you’ve observed, Tenko had no idea what he was doing to you, nor did he know how hard you were trying not to act on your attraction, though you weren’t even doing a great job of suppressing it.
It’s strange: Tenko evoked some strange, unnameable emotion in you like nothing else. You wanted to coddle him; you wanted to play stupid video games with him; you wanted to sweep his hair out of his eyes, and though you kept telling yourself that you didn’t, you wanted him to tell you how to touch yourself, how to touch him. You brushed it off. Another time. Perhaps never.
“Oh, hi!” Former pro-hero Ragdoll squealed your family name, making you jump in your seat. “It is you. I couldn’t tell from farther back in the line.” Fuck, Ragdoll would recognise you, since she and the rest of the Wild, Wild Pussycats trained Class A, and she specifically spent time with you on your tracking skills because of her Search quirk.
Don’t cause a scene. “Hello, Shiretoko,” you said, doing your best not to let your face be seen from over the reception desk’s overhang, “It’s good to see you. How can I help?”
When she beamed, she was as bright as ever. “Oh! The Pussycats want to offer our services for the scavenger hunt! We wanna get back into charity and civilian events now that we’re back from our mission for—but wait, you know all about that!” You didn’t. But her cheerful voice carried, and people were already turning towards Ragdoll, part of a hero team ranked in the top thirty. “I wanna hear more about what you’ve been up to! Since you left the hero business, no one’s known where you’ve been! Gosh, have you been behind this dreary old desk the whole time?” Ragdoll leant over the overhang, flicking at a loose strand of your hair. “I thought you were sent out on missions out of the country! Like, really important, top-secret stuff. It’s weird seeing you in an office, especially since I consider you a mini me. Why are you back at your alma mater? Did your agency not want you anymore?”
She wasn’t meaning to be cruel. Her loud, blunt sincerity, though, drew the attention of onlookers, and their flashes of recognition, subsequent judgment, and turning away made your chest tight. “I needed a break. That’s all.”
A thin, blonde woman in a burgundy overcoat leaning against the wall immediately next to the reception had been evaluating you, scanning you from top to bottom during the exchange. She didn’t bother hiding her curiosity, and when you shakily handled the rest of the conversation with Ragdoll, she turned to the short, softly featured man beside her. “You know her?” She hadn’t even tried to quiet her voice; it jolted you from Ragdoll, but you steeled yourself and continued printing off a schedule for her—and from the depths of your brain came the woman’s identity: Uwabami, the snake hero, one who usually flaunted her celebrity status but currently dressed down, without her hair snakes (a rattlesnake, a yellow king cobra, and a Japanese rat snake, which—shut up! You don’t need this information right now! Can you be fucking sane, please?).
Her sidekick—no, an intern, a student at U.A., some fuckin’ twink in the year below you, name escaping you at the moment—had some iota of tact when he looked you over, slanting his body away, as if he weren’t staring. “Yes,” he said, trying not to let you hear, “She’s my former senpai and nothing more to me. We didn’t run in the same circles. She’s the one who made that rescue a few months back, the one that got a lot of online backlash.”
“No, seriously,” Ragdoll was saying, “Why are you back at U.A.? Don’t you have somewhere else to go?”
“My—” People behind Ragdoll in line were listening. Trying not to show it. Your throat ran dry, and you couldn’t think of a lie or a pleasant half-truth. “My flat was compromised. My address was leaked, and eventually, people were—look, Shiretoko,” you said, forcing the words out of your mouth, “I really don’t want to talk about this. Here’s the printed schedule. I’ll talk to you later.”
You slid the paper across the counter, and she took it, waving goodbye and still beaming.
“Is this what happens when a hero career doesn’t work out? They just shove you back where someone will take you? At any old office desk?” that fucking twink was asking Uwabami, “I can’t—it honestly scares me to think I could lose myself and be misplaced like that. It’s wasting talent, don’t you think?”
“How can I help you?” you asked the next person in line through gritted teeth.
When Uwabami lowered her sunglasses to glance over them, you inhaled sharply and swung your swivel chair so that you wouldn’t see her. “I don’t know about that. Maybe this dreadful administration office is where she’s meant to be.”
Biting his lip, he shifted his jaw and crossed his arms, slumping against the wall. “You’ll always have a place for me, right, Uwabami? I don’t want this to happen to me.”
“Yes, I can print you out a copy of the same schedule. If you’ll allow me a moment to print.”
“Of course, Kakeru,” Uwabami said, ignorant of how you were gripping a pencil so tightly that it could snap any second, “You’ll never be left behind.” But then she fucking stared you down, deliberately holding eye contact while you were at the printer, and she said, “You’ll never need a place to hide. I’ll make sure you don’t fail.”
“Hey, how about you shut up?” you hissed, ripping the printer-warm schedule from the tray and storming back to your current client to shove it into their hands. “Aren’t Japanese rat snakes supposed to be in hibernation this time of year, anyway?”
***
Someone in Mt. Lady’s group recorded it. Someone posted it.
wizardjenkins11: jesus christ who knew u.a. had its own island of misfit toys
emotionalsupportdynamightsweat: nice to see that she kept her snark, but what is she doing back at school?? don’t heroes have some sort of paperwork component to their work. why isn’t she still at an agency
blood-is-thiccer: lol ua’s the only one who’d take the bitch. she’s being rude as hell to an actual pro hero. lameass quirk anyway and ass flat as hell lmao she fucken deserved that guy lighting her mailbox on fire
LynchianTiddies: You’re encouraging domestic terrorism???
blood-is-thiccer: that’s not domestic terrorism
LynchianTiddies: Then what, pray fucking tell, is it??
blood-is-thiccer: wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism
XylemPhloemBuckaroo: no but I get what that guy was saying about wasting talent tho. Out of everyone in that class a, she’s the only one not topping the fucking hero charts rn. She’s the only one who’s left hero work. What makes her weaker than the rest of her classmates? What happened to her to make her like this?
koiboi69: wouldn’t you quit if people were camping outside your house/work/grocerystore? And also FUCK, man, there’s no fucking need to say she’s fucking weak. that’s kicking her while she’s down
XylemPhloemBuckaroo: I’m not kicking her while she’s down. I’m stating facts and asking reasonable questions.
koiboi69: bro wouldn’t YOU feel down if you’d didn’t have a home to go back to??? going back to u.a. is like admitting defeat, like you couldn’t handle it on your own and need protection
mawatadaddysgorl: i love seeing updates on her bc it makes me feel so good about what i’m doing with my life
***
Uraraka and Shinsou texted you but couldn’t call, let alone come from across town. Aizawa was AWOL, and Dango was hiding under your bed, so you, blotchy-faced and damp, were crumpled on the floor outside of room 310, eating vending machine bullshit and waiting for Tenko to return home.
Exactly all the insecurities you’d been stuffing down for months and months, brought out to air in front of everyone. Instead of doomscrolling, you locked your phone and slid it across the hallway carpet, burying your face in your hands and stomach lurching to the thought that you might soon be plastered everywhere in sight, again. Another round of intensive laying low loomed on the horizon, especially now that your location was made public. Your little secretary job was good enough, and relocating elsewhere on campus would lead to more job training, which would be a bitch.
Where was Tenko? You needed him here to say something irreverent and vindictive. Something unhinged. Or you needed him to hold you, pull you into his lap, and bitch about the whole thing while watching a movie. Tenko had messaged you to come by after work, so why wasn’t he…?
The staircase door hissed open, Tenko pushing it with his back, reusable grocery bags on his arms, and—and wearing a cape? Who the fuck wears a cape casu—oh shit he’s in his hero costume.
You’d heard that he had one, designed by the same company that’d made Midoriya’s and Shouto’s, and the similarities were clear: a boxy sort of design due to thick fabric that still somehow hugged his chest, a minimalist utility belt, and sturdy, knee-capping boots, positively flaming scarlet in contrast to the dark greys of the rest of his jumpsuit. The most obvious connection with another hero, though, made your chest throb: his cloak fastened with the same clasp his grandmother’s had. His dust-blocking respirator lay around his neck for the moment, but what was most embarrassing for you was how your brain fucking wheezed like a boiling kettle at his bare arms, biceps bulging, every fucking inch of skin down to his fingertips completely on display like a goddamn slut.
Whore behaviour. Whore behaviour! You had to duck your head when he squatted next to you, because oh, now you could see the stretch marks on his upper arms, because he’d gotten large way too quickly to be healthy, and smell his fading Old Spice and sweat from being out on what must have been an emergency call, and he was setting his grocery bags aside, reaching out to graze your shoulder, and wow, he’d been complaining about how he didn’t have abs yet despite working out five days a week now that his stamina had increased, but that fabric clung to his lower abdomen, looking very, very flat.
Initially pinching the fabric of your sweater, he shifted his jaw and laid his hand on your shoulder. “Who am I dusting?”
“God, Tenko,” you said, trying to look anywhere but his arms, or his abdomen, or his fucking lips, but he was leaning so much over you that he occupied most of your line of vision, and the only way to avoid seeing anything besides wisps of white hair was to gaze at the popcorned ceiling. “You’re not supposed to do that anymore.”
“Oh, yeah? Who am I dusting?” He squeezed your shoulder, stretching his thumb out to rub at your collarbone.
“Unless you can dust everyone in the country, I don’t think decay will help.”
Tenko clicked his tongue. “I have been explicitly told not to do that,” he said, shifting to sit on his knees, “I have—” He dug into a grocery bag for a moment. “—this for you. You like this shit, right?” Tenko pressed a bottle of pink lemonade into your hands.
“Fucking. Fuck. I do,” you said, passing the condensation-coated bottle from one hand to another, chest tightening, blinking to keep the water levels low, “Thank you. You didn’t have to get me this.”
“I know that,” he said with a dismissive wave, and he paused, fists in his lap. “Would it help if I gave you a hug?”
(What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the—)
“Yeah,” you said calmly, like a calm person, and when Tenko opened his (muscular) arms, you crawled into them, wrapping your own around his back to rest between his shoulder blades. You rested your chin in a fold of his cape, cheek pressing against the side of his respirator, and you frowned as his embrace tightened, pulling you closer in a sloppy, unpractised sort of way, grounded by the steady rise and fall of his very solid chest.
(This felt…affectionate. Romantic, even.
But Shigaraki Tomura didn’t do romance, and you don’t—you’re not—you wouldn’t dream of being conceited enough to read someone’s perhaps thoughtless actions as flirtation, because why would someone be flirting with you? No one did that in general, and being U.A.’s humiliating problem child exacerbated the fact.
Moreover, why would the man who was Shigaraki Tomura, in the middle of his rehabilitation and re-discovery of self, even in the microscopic chance that he had the mental energy to experience romantic feelings, aim that romantic impulse towards you? It would make more sense if he liked someone he’d known for a while, like Touya or Spinner or Toga, and if his romantic feelings leant towards recuperative trauma-bonding, wouldn’t it be more apt to feel for someone at his rehab? His therapist, maybe? He’d idolised Aizawa before he’d met him, and even that would make more sense than latching onto someone as late in the process as you.
He’d gotten flustered when you’d tied his scarf, and Touya’s played terrible wingman. But still. You couldn’t know. You can’t read into this, even though reading into things had been your job, because—because no one would want you. You’ll have to…You’ll have to gather more evidence. You couldn’t be certain.)
Tenko hummed, chin digging into your shoulder, blowing strands of your hair out of his face. “I calmed a kid down earlier by hugging her. Is this working for you?”
(…oh.)
You sniffled and hid your mouth in his cape so that he couldn’t catch your pout. “That’s—that’s good that a kid allowed you to comfort her. What happened?”
“Pipes broke in an old apartment building in the Takoba district. The third floor collapsed under the pressure, and it trapped families in part of the building. I was called out to dust the rubble trapping them,” Tenko said, tapping his fingers high on your back in a ripple, “and they had me dust some other walls to help start the repairs. It was cool. And this one little girl who’d gotten out before the rest of her family was really nervous, and she was sticking to me, holding onto my cape. I was telling her that everything was gonna be okay, like you’ve taught me, and when I asked how she was doing, this fuckin’ kid extended her arms to me. So, I fucking hugged her. Picked her up so she could see what was happening better. It was weird, but it felt good.” Tenko sighed. “I hate how it wants me to be kind more.”
And fuck, fuck, that’s the last straw to this horrible day, and you’re crying, silently, controlling your breathing to keep Tenko from finding out, because goddammit, this idiot bastard man was surprisingly easy to love.
You buried your face fully in his shoulder, hoping he couldn’t feel any wetness through his costume, and you and Tenko sat in the quiet of the hallway for a minute, interrupted only by the A/C kicking in.
Tenko tried to part the two of you enough to look you in the face, but you doubled down, curling your fingers into the fabric of his jumpsuit and keeping your head bowed. Scoffing, he sat upright, making you follow his movements to stay hidden. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong yet?”
“Forget all that shit I’ve taught you,” you said, grumbling to his tits now that he’d changed positions, hating how stopped up you sounded already, “It doesn’t matter what you fucking do in the public’s eye, because there’s always gonna be someone who hates you. You can’t please everyone, so just fucking be yourself. That’s funnier, anyway.”
“Did you psychoanalyse some press member’s pathetic sex life, or something? Deduce an affair based on the way he knots his tie? Announce the state of his dick to the whole room because of the length of his pants?”
“Fuck off, Tenko. I’m not some pretentious-ass Sherlock Holmes bitch,” you said, pursing your lips and instinctively pulling back to glare at him—
And the moment you did, Tenko cupped your face in his hands, soft at the palm and strongly calloused along his fingers, keeping you facing towards him no matter how hard you tried to jerk away, struggling to stay upright. “You are crying.”
“No, I’m not,” you said, just as a falling tear touched his thumb. As you adjusted to his grip, your hands fell to his thighs, pressing against them in fists.
“Hm. Well, you don’t have to tell me,” he said, eyes on another tear trailing down the other cheek, “but you’re joining me to watch a movie with Eri. I got snacks on the way home.”
You sighed, taking in how big his hands were and how much of your face they encompassed, trying to memorise their feeling until they were snatched away forever. “I thought we were gonna start a new quest tonight. I was excited.”
Tenko balked and shifted into a sceptical grin. “You wanted to play Ciperstone tonight?” he asked, both thumbs rubbing your cheekbones and moving to swipe underneath your eyes.
You sighed again, shoulders heaving as Tenko released your face to flick tears off of his hand. “I didn’t want to be myself for a few hours.”
Tenko pushed on his knees to stand. “That’s actually related to what I originally wanted to talk to you about. Furthering the working-with-others mission,” he said, and he extended his hand to help you up. “What do you know about Dungeons and Dragons?”
***
“God fucking dammit!” Tenko slammed his palm to his forehead and leant back to balance on the kitchen chair’s back legs and then combed his fingers back through his hair, upsetting some strands from his ponytail. Groaning, he crooked his face your way, smushed his face against the chair back, and pointed towards his forehead, where a red splot was forming. “Hit me as hard as you can.”
“Being bludgeoned won’t change the fact that you rolled a three,” you said, nodding towards his d20, “I ignore his whining and continue to drain the fig tree to charge my spell.”
Behind the DM screen, Shinsou rolled his own dice, and once his eyebrows had shot up to his hairline, he turned to Midoriya. “I need you to roll two d12s and a d4.”
Tenko bolted upright, hastily sweeping his bangs out of his face. “Wait, what does Midoriya have to do with it? He’s across the fucking grove! He’s engaged in close-ranged combat.”
You turned away from Shinsou’s sly grin and towards Tenko, mouth nearly a straight line, yanking another cluster of grapes from the communal bowl, and shoving two grapes in his mouth. He pinched at his lower lip as he chewed, twisting and peeling at dead skin, frowning as he focused on his character sheet, scanning it for some sort of information he was forgetting and absentmindedly raising his knee to his chest, the heel of his foot propped on the seat of his chair (thank God his jeans were from Best Jeanist’s Moulded to Your Ass line: the denim strained with his muscles. Your eye twitched). In this particular morning, with the five of you squared off at Aizawa’s kitchen table, papers and dice strewn among grocery store bakery cinnamon rolls and coffee cups (Tenko’s was full of gatorade instead of coffee, much to his chagrin), as Tenko was throwing grapes into Touya’s mouth while Shinsou did math, the narwhal house slippers dangling off Tenko’s feet, it struck you that Shigaraki Tomura had become just some guy. One who went for walks to clear his head, who spent hours failing to do a kickflip on Present Mic’s skateboard, who used emoticons over emojis, who got nervous in fast food drive-throughs, who collected hero merch (of Aizawa fervently and Present Mic against his will), who was losing his sensitivity to foods like leeks and onions, a man who was growing more and more exquisitely mundane.
And goddamn, he’s clever and perceptive and patient and cheeky in a devastatingly attractive way, and he’s flustered easily, eager to do a thing correctly, and utterly, totally captivating in his endless discoveries of what it means to be alive.
You timed it so that the shudder and shock crossing his face could pass as response to Shinsou’s description of how Tenko’s enchanted crossbow bolt missed the Spirit Realm Necromancer entirely, instead sinking into the sacred Grand Oak and instantly shattering the tree as if it were glass, its elaborate root system holding up the floating grove splintering into thousands of tiny shards, the ground beneath your party’s feet crumbling at the slightest suggestion of the shifting of weight. But really he curled in his lips with a furrowed brow and stuttering breath when you reached underneath the table to graze the back of his hand, and when he forced himself to relax, shoulders slackening, frown fading, Tenko spread his fingers to cover more of his denim-clad thigh, which you took as a timid sort of consent. Biting the inside of your cheek, you eased your palm over the back of Tenko’s hand, lacing your fingers through his and going through the motions of reacting to Shinsou’s shattered earth. Neither of you looked at each other while Midoriya’s character suffered the Necromancer’s spell to increase gravity, each movement of Midoriya’s bulky, steel armour accelerating the fall of the floating grove. By the time each of you had had enough turns to land on solid ground, preserving little of the sacred grove but all surviving, Tenko finally squeezed your fingers back, curling his own to grip them more firmly, keeping your hand pinned to his thigh, steeling himself, sitting up straight, and proposing getting close enough to the Necromancer to drive a crossbow bolt directly into his skull.
Midoriya was already muttering to himself over the effectiveness of the action while Shinsou worked, and Touya irreverently flicked his dice at Tenko, chugging coffee with his other hand. “You plunge the bolt by hand into the Necromancer’s head,” said Shinsou, “but with your strength debuff still in effect, you only nick him.”
“I try stabbing it through his ear.”
“It goes through,” said Shinsou, nodding and running his hand back through his hair, which sprung back into place, “It doesn’t pierce the neocortex, so he can still summon another—“
“I stomp him to death with my hooves,” said Touya, picking at his teeth and running his tongue over the spot.
The rest of you turned to him slowly in various states of incredulity.
“You don’t have hooves, Touya,” you said, tilting your head at the same time Tenko rubbed his thumb over yours, prompting your breath to hitch and a strange warmth to travel through your body, making you feel dizzy.
Touya grimaced and reached for a cinnamon roll. “I take off my leather breeches and boots to reveal my hooves. I have been a satyr masquerading as a human this whole time.” He leant forward on his elbow, glaring at Shinsou and gesturing with his cinnamon roll. “I stomp him. To death. With my hooves.”
Tenko sneered, his teeth cutting into his lower lip, but he merely opened his mouth and closed it, poking his tongue into his cheek. “I suppose maiming a party member wouldn’t coincide with my character’s chaotic good alignment,” he said, heaving a huge sigh to—oh, that cunning rat bastard—to conceal how he flipped his hand over in yours to touch palms, weaving your fingers back together and squeezing again, planting them back on his upper leg, massaging between your knuckles with his thumb.
“What’d you just roll?”
“Nineteen,” said Touya, casting Shinsou a slice of his most charming smile.
Midoriya let out a little laugh as Shinsou bitterly plopped his head on his fist. “Fuck you, Touya. Congratulations. You clomp over to the Necromancer and stomp all over him. Stompy stomp stomp stompy stomp. It’s difficult to watch at the insane speed you’re going, so no one stops you from doing such a good job pounding him that he’s ground into dust. Bits of him drift away in the wind.”
Here Midoriya winced. “Weren’t we supposed to retrieve the soul crystal embedded in his gauntlet? We can’t get our reward from that Silver Age dragon rider if we don’t have it.”
“Correct,” said Shinsou, glancing down at his notes, “It has been stomped to smithereens. You can’t even make out what parts of the pile of dust were once flesh.”
Ready to bolt, Touya was getting up from the table and holding up his hands in defence, but before Midoriya could start a speech that would have been more apt for the number one hero to use on patrol rather than during a DND game, the door to Aizawa’s flat opened, and in he walked, covering his yawn with the back of his hand. He halted at the sight of the five of you around his kitchen table, taking in the scattered papers and remnants of breakfast before settling on your DM. “Shinsou,” Aizawa began, disappointment outweighing the exhaustion in his voice.
“You’re the only one with a table that could fit all of us,” Shinsou said, spinning in his chair to face him, “This dormitory doesn’t have a good common area like the student ones do. Would you really prefer us to—”
“We can find you a table; there’s plenty on campus.” Aizawa lifted his goggles over his head to set them on the counter. “Is this why Monoma kept slowing me down during patrol?”
“No,” you and Shinsou said, while Tenko said, “Yes.”
Aizawa actually smiled as he unwound his capture weapon from around his neck. “Look who’s the only one telling the truth.”
“Why would I lie to you, sensei?”
Touya smacked Tenko on the arm. “Suck-up.”
“You promise?” Tenko shot back, nose wrinkling with his grin.
“This coffee had better be amazing, because it’s the only thing keeping me from kicking you all out right now,” said Aizawa, rubbing a dry eye with the heel of his palm, other hand outstretched for someone to pass him a mug.
Tenko’s thumb bent inward to swipe the inside of your palm, a silent protest while he drank from his stupid little mug of gatorade, and when he noticed what was at the bottom, he flinched. It must have been Touya who’d put your dice in Tenko’s cup.
***
Following the video of you insulting Uwabami, you’re garnering an unnerving amount of attention again, but it’s clearly someone different than last time. Whoever your stalker(s) was this time around, they were careless and unsubtle—and this confidence to be careless left you jumping at the slightest sound when you were alone.
Furthermore, you legitimately couldn’t deduce your stalker’s motivations, because no clear message linked his actions. At first, you chalked it up to the dorm’s shitty dryer eating your bright blue thong, but when you couldn’t find your lip balm or trolley pass or eventually your favourite sweater, you concluded that something else was at play here, further cemented by more and more tiny things going missing—things that, if you were stalking someone, you would’ve selected as small enough not to miss.
But bizarrely, your stalker left shit of his own lying about. A phone charger appeared underneath your pillow; loose change and a travel pack of alcoholic wipes showed up in your bathroom sink. Hello Kitty band-aids, a hair clip that looked like one of Rumi’s ears, deep-moisturising hand cream, a tiny lizard keychain with a white hamburglar mask drawn on. You couldn’t wrap your head around it. What could your stalker be trying to say besides he could access your personal space with ease? Hoarding it all in the drawer with the GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK hentai, you were struck with the notion that this may have been going on even before the video.
God, you missed when this school felt more like home instead of a holding cell, back when Shinsou and Uraraka and the rest were all still living together with you, when you could simply turn the corner to the common area to demand who took your laundry detergent and get an answer immediately (you also missed taking Aoyama’s bougie food, though you suspected that towards the end he was buying extra specifically for you). You sent an email to Aizawa about the potential break in security, and he promised to monitor the situation, though there was no evidence of physical entry.
Evidence. It’s been on your mind.
Sure, Tenko’s done stuff that could be read as romantic: how he plops your hand onto his head to demand you play with his hair, how he hovers whenever Touya stands too closely to you, how he gets upset on your behalf when people glare at you in public.
(Tenko grabbed your elbow, breaking your focus on the clothing rank. “We’re going.”
“But we haven’t found you a red coat yet.”
He lifted the hangers from your arm and slid them back onto the rack, despite belonging elsewhere. “Don’t care. I don’t like the way the cashier’s looking at you,” he said, jerking his head their direction, and when you tilted your head to glance at them over his shoulder, Tenko tapped your chin twice, guiding you to look back at him. “You shouldn’t have to be on guard when I’m with you.”)
If you were reading into it—and you were—Tenko was being so careful with talking about the pro-hero scene around you that it was almost as if he’d gotten a mission task from Aizawa to distract you from anything that might make you feel bad about yourself.
(“I hear you’re causing a lot of paperwork for my old man,” said Touya, pulling out another floor cushion from the storage space in the teahouse wall, “He hates that you’ve had to dust so many structures near his agency. He’s a decrepit creature of habit, and now that his commute is different, he’s—”
“Hey, Touya, tell us what flower bulbs you planted this winter,” Tenko said abruptly, clamping the lid on the pot hanging over the sunken fireplace, “Tell us what your garden’ll look like in spring.”
You shut your book, even though you’d just opened it. “Wait, are you saying that Touya is the one who keeps this garden? That’s—”
“You like it, sweetheart?” Touya dropped his cushion next to yours, ignoring the way Tenko was glaring daggers into his back. “Think it’s impressive?”
“Holy shit; I thought we were in the back of some professionally restored historical site the first time we came here,” you said, smiling at how Tenko’s petulant stomps to his seat chirruped, even when he scooted his own cushion towards yours (adorable; you’d think he didn’t like you giving attention to anyone else).
“Well,” said Touya, propping his hands on the kotatsu so that he could get a better view of Tenko, “With enormous pride and a huge erection, I’m pleased to announce that this garden is all my hard work.”
“Stop that,” barked Tenko, jabbing a finger towards Touya, “Stop bringing up your cock.”
“I could talk about yours, if you want. His monster cock is excruciatingly leaky and so shaped.”
Groaning, Tenko clonked his forehead on the kotatsu’s tabletop before Touya could say anything else, arm still outstretched. He peeked out from underneath his bangs towards you, tension leaving his body at your burst of laughter.)
He’s also taken your comment about silent admiration to heart. Over the discord call (through very comfortable headphones), you’d made a dumb joke about not being able to play for long, and he’d shut up immediately. When you’d confessed to lying and hoping you’d scared him, he’d replied seriously: “I want to protect my time with you. I don’t like it being taken away. I feel better when you’re with me.”
You’d frozen in the middle of weaving bowstrings while his character continued stringing them onto bows. You’d never have gotten that sort of remark at the beginning of your relationship. Tenko must genuinely be listening to you.
Anyway. You decided in the event that Tenko was collecting evidence, too, that you would leave him some.
The first time you’d been in his room had been for a specific purpose, which was to help him rub in his new facial scar moisturiser (not to take them away, or anything, because Tenko wanted to keep them, claiming he wouldn’t recognise himself in the mirror if he didn’t have his scars—and you thought they were devastatingly attractive, anyway—but just to keep them hydrated enough not to itch), but now you were here just to spend time in the same space. You were reading on his bed (oh, hohoho, his bed), and Tenko was drawing in his sketchbook on his couch by the window. With his mouth pinched in concentration, he squinted down at his paper, swiping away eraser shavings with his artist-gloved hand.
Drawing by natural light. Tenko was in room 310 because of its wide windows. It had been his one request when U.A. was placing him.
AFO had deliberately raised him in a bedroom without windows. You’d kill him if he weren’t already dead.
Thankfully, AFO’s influence was absent from Tenko’s dorm: Naruto sheets from Touya, an old Nintendo DS on his bedside table with Nintendogs in the cartridge slot, Present Mic’s skateboard propped against the coatrack that held only a black hoodie, unfolded but clean laundry in a basket next to a dresser with prescription bottles atop it, a mirror that served more as a bulletin board of Eraserhead merch than as a way to check his reflection, red shoes by the doorway, books borrowed from everyone from All Might to Shinsou to the ramen delivery guy strewn across the room, on shelves, his computer desk, his rug. The thing Tenko’d had to explain to you was a therapist-assigned painting hanging over his desk: he’d painted a murky, purple-blue, abstract sort of thing, and you were strangely touched when he’d explained it was Kurogiri (and now that you were looking, among his bulletin board of Eraserhead, a few drawings of Loud Cloud were mixed in).
There’s a lot of people in Tenko’s life who care about him now, and you’re happy to be one of them. Setting your book aside, you got up to sit next to him on the couch.
He paused when you sank into the cushion next to—well, no, you were basically sharing the same cushion, especially since he unfolded his legs from underneath him so that you could get closer. You scooted over so that your shoulders touched (scandalous) and looked over his drawings.
He’s drawing your DND characters. While his sketches aren’t exactly good, you can clearly tell who’s supposed to be whom, and they’re fun to look at, so that’s all that matters. At the centre is your character, Ginseng—you named it after your Cipherstone account because why not—in the process of spell-charging. Your character relies on the traditional ritual of tea ceremonies, from the growing of the tealeaves to serving it, summoning whatever tools you needed, like the table and dishware, and if an enemy got caught by the conventions of politeness of the tea ceremony, they were trapped in it until they’d drunk their teacup dry. Tenko had drawn her early in the spell-charging process, with branches of tealeaves sprouting from underneath her skin, with her harvesting them from her forearm. It’s rather flattering, the way her determined expression lit up her face.
Next to Ginseng was Tenko’s character, Peito, also lifted from his Cipherstone character. He was sitting on the same log as Ginseng in the middle of camp, backs touching while he cut feathers as the first step in the fletching process. His carved-willow quiver leant against his knee-high boot, red even in a fictional universe. Peito’s hands were bare, five fingers pressed against his knife and arrows.
Further back in the camp (really just towards the top of the paper, since Tenko wasn’t good at foreshortening yet), Midoriya’s character, Jackrabbit, was holding up two hangers, one with his steel and the other with sleek, black leather armour. A nice touch, really, since Midoriya had swopped Jackrabbit’s primary armour to the more lightweight leather since the shattered grove incident, and wow, you could even tell it was leather based on the pencil strokes.
Seated nearby, Touya’s character, Granddaddy Slapkins, roared with laughter at him. His shoes lay next to him, his hooves out. For some reason, he’s not holding his pet duck; he’s instead cradling what looks like your character’s wild shape, a cat with the same chocolate-point markings as your real cat (your character’s shapeshifted form was just Dango, but Tenko didn’t know that. He still didn’t know Dango existed, because cats were still illegal in the dorms, and Tenko, that little brown-nosing shit, would probably tell Aizawa about her. Cute how he’s only a suck-up to Aizawa, though).
Your favourite detail, though, was how his character was smiling. Unabashedly. As if it were a no-brainer, as if doing anything else made no sense at all.
With a stab of affection, you nuzzled into Tenko’s shoulder, resting your chin there while he sketched loops of chainmail onto Granddaddy Slapkins’s shirt, and a shiver racked through him.
“Oh, are you cold?” you asked, sitting back up and heading over towards the bed, “Let me get your blanket.”
“Wha—no, I—sure,” said Tenko, setting his pencil on his sketchbook and the whole thing on the arm of the couch, eyes half-lidded as you returned with his throw blanket.
And without thinking, you moved on impulse, as if all higher orders of cognition had checked out for the night, because you behaved like you did in your head whenever you thought about Tenko: casually, intimately, and domestically. You wrapped the blanket around yourself and knelt on the sofa before swinging a knee over his lap, and you snuggled into his chest, clutching his shirt and nosing at his neck.
Your eyes snapped open.
(What the fuck?
If this had been a planned attack, then it would’ve been a thing of brilliance: casual, seeming to meet a physical need [heating a chill] in the name of physical closeness. But you fucked it. This wasn’t planned, and thus you don’t have a way out of it without otherwise betraying your romantically-motivated interior.
Thank fuck he’s frozen up, too. But how do you get out of this? God, you really shouldn’t be teaching him how to navigate interpersonal relationships when you get yourself into shit like this.)
You swallowed thickly, pulse pounding in your ears.
“I need your advice.” Tenko’s chest barely rose when he took his first breath since you climbed onto his lap. “What would be the socially expected response to this?”
“Uh. That depends on if you’re into it or not,” you said, forcing yourself to sit back in his lap to give him some space, “If you dislike it, then it’s to get me to get off of you, and if you welcome it, then, uh. Anything else.”
Tenko unclenched his fists at his sides and—a pause, shifting his jaw—he let his hands rest at a barely-there touch on your hips, dragging them upwards to your waist, applying enough pressure there for you to feel all ten fingertips through your shirt. “Is this,” he said, wetting his lower lip, and he couldn’t continue, instead swallowing saliva.
Gathering your nerve, you wove your hand through his hair to scratch at his scalp in the way he’d liked when you’d played with his hair, and at the familiarity, Tenko huffed, shutting his eyes tightly and pressing his forehead to yours in a rush, almost knocking them together. He took another breath, heat washing over your face, and you slid your other up hand to cup his cheek.
Tenko shivered again, and he clamped his hand over yours to keep it there. “Are you sure this is what you mean to do?”
He seemed receptive enough to it, but you couldn’t be certain. “Yeah,” you said, “If I’m reading it right.”
“But it makes no sense. I’ve got to be reading it wrong,” Tenko was saying, frowning, “No one would willingly like me—”
“For fuck’s sake, Tenko—”
Practically slapping your other hand to his cheek, you kissed him, pulling him closer, one of his hands still over yours with the other now gripping your waist as if he’d never let you go. Tenko grunted into it, surging forward to keep his rough lips (sticky from his freshly applied pineapple-beeswax chapstick) seared to yours. You felt, more than heard, his miniscule whimper at the back of his throat when he opened his mouth, sliding his tongue into yours, and you could hardly keep kissing him for smiling. But he needed a breath before you did, so you broke it, sensing he wouldn’t do it out of wanting to keep you nearby.
Panting, Tenko tried and failed to push your hair behind your ear in an attempt to be suave. “Now, I perceived that as romantic.”
“It was romantic, you muppet,” you said, thumping his chest with the back of your hand.
“Good.” He cleared this throat. “Cool. Excellent,” he said, shifting underneath you (with difficulty, under the constricting denim of his Moulded to Your Ass jeans), “I want it to be, when it comes to you.”
“Thank God, I really want that, too,” you said, sighing, “but, like, I really don’t know if it’s ethical to pursue a romance this early into your recovery—”
“The fuck is wrong with you? I want it. I want you.” Frustrated, Tenko grabbed your hips in an iron grip and ground up into you, slowly, and that tight-ass denim let you feel precisely where in the drag of his hips his cock touched you, letting you feel the shift in pressure at his tip, down his shaft, to the first curve of his balls. “I thought I was alone. I thought no one else would ever be able to understand me, having fallen from what I was raised to be. Fallen,” he said, spitting, “Such a nasty word for what we’re actually doing: we’ve been reborn together. We get to build our lives back up together. We get another chance at it. I wanna spend mine with you.”
He strained his neck upwards to kiss you again, insistent, moving with confidence when he took your lower lip into his mouth but only nibbling on it once, despite being posed to bite down with vigour.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone else thinks of you and what anyone else thinks of me. I—”
“That’s not true,” you said, your turn to catch your breath, “You care so much about what Aizawa-sensei—”
“You know what I mean,” he said, shaking his head, hair falling out of his loose ponytail, “You think of me as me, and that’s all that matters. If you’re really that fucking worried about me getting into a relationship too early, go talk to my therapist. She says you’re good for me. A good influence, anyway.”
“Holy shit,” you said, mostly in reaction to how Tenko started trailing frantic, dry kisses down your neck, and, realising you should probably be doing something back, you rolled your hips, feeling awfully warm under the blanket.
He bucked back up into you, more out of desperation to keep you close over a need for friction but still giving you a taste of what it would be like to have him thrusting into you. “Fuck,” he said, almost grumbling, “I’d say fuck being ethical about it, because I’ve wanted you for a long time. I got hard when you shook me by the shoulders outside of that ice cream shop; I thought my soul was gonna leave my body when you adjusted my scarf. Hell, I—” He cut himself off, grinning in a way that, back before you knew him, you might have described as maniacal. “I wanted you back during the war. I saw you fucking elbow Touya during that battle, and the way you made him crumple to the ground was so fucking sexy. And you recovered from when he swiped at you so easily; you slipped around his attacks like it was fucking second nature. I thought it’d be cool to have you by my side, having you—” He realised what he was saying, and he relaxed, smile fading into a curious, pensive sort of look while he brought his thumb to your kiss-swollen lips. “And now I get to.”
You kissed the pad of his thumb, blinking slowly.
“So. Yeah,” he said, dropping his hand to your shoulder as he broke eye contact, a little red, “I think it’d be cool to be with you, even if we have to be careful.”
“That’s the thing, Tenko,” you said, biting the inside of your cheek as you gathered your thoughts, “I’m scared, because while I know that we should, because that’d be safe, I don’t want to be careful. Since I’ve quit being a hero, every single thing about how I’ve been living has left me feeling empty and alone, because it’s like I’m wandering through limbo. Everything screams that whatever I’m doing now is temporary, that it’ll pass, that I don’t truly belong in this situation, because I’ll find what I’m supposed to be doing later and my real home is somewhere down the line, but—fuck.” You rubbed your eye with your fist. “You, Tenko. You don’t feel temporary. You feel forever.”
Underneath you, Tenko stretched to pop a crick in his back, and he tilted his head to lie on the back of the couch. His ponytail had come loose, and his hair splayed against the fabric as he stared at you, one hand idly rubbing at your waist.
“Well. You’ve got to belong somewhere,” he said eventually, and he tapped all five fingers onto your thigh. “It could be with me.”
***
Dango was missing.
Incredible how the best evening of your life preceded the worst day you’ve had in years. You called out of work and spent hours scouring the dorm and then campus. A gruelling, miserable sort of day, anyway, grey and rainy and cold, and the campus was swarmed with people setting up for the scavenger hunt event later this month, populating the area with non-U.A. personnel and construction. Your cat was out in that mess, and you didn’t even know where to search first. It’s loud, scary, and wet, so Dango would most likely be hiding and not come when she’s called.
Had Dango escaped your flat? Had your stalker stolen her? Had she been confiscated by U.A.?
You couldn’t call any faculty for help; they’d get onto you for having an illegal cat on campus—and Hound Dog, the one who’d be the most help, might just scare her to death. Too early in the morning to call any of your friends, and you doubted they’d alter their busy schedules to help you out of a situation you should be able to fix yourself. But damn it, how come your own tracking skills only worked on people?
You shook yourself, coming out of your spiral the best you could, and you were close to hyperventilating. You sat down on a curb.
You found yourself calling Tenko, despite it being too early in the day for him to be out of training, filling with dread about never seeing your cat again and having to clear out her stuff from your room. Pulling your soaked jacket closer, you wiped at your nose and waited at the dial tone.
“Hey, I thought you couldn’t call during work. Miss me that much?”
The second you heard his strangely chipper voice, you started crying into the speaker.
He inhaled sharply, tone shifting. “Tell me who the fuck I’m stomping to death with my hooves.”
Ducking your head, you managed a smile but continued to fucking sob. “You don’t—don’t have to kill anyone, Ten—Tenko. I’ve f—fucked up.”
“What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“I’m on cam—campus,” you said, unable to speak for a full sentence without having to cut yourself off to keep bawling, ugly and loud and getting snottier by the minute, “It’s my fucking fault that I haven’t been ta—taking my stupid sta—stalker seriously, and I should’ve reported it, but—but I—goddammit!” The rain picked up again, coming down in rapid, fat drops, and, shielding your eyes, you rubbed your phone screen on your sleeve, not that it did much. “Sor—sorry. Rain got heavier.”
“Where on campus?”
“No, Te—Tenko, I’ll get up. I’m coming to you,” you said, sniffling and pushing on your knees to stand, wet and hungry and ready to crawl into your sock drawer to sleep for days. “I—I’m just so fucking pissed at myself, because my cat is fucking lost, and I could’ve sto—stopped it if I hadn’t been so secreti—tive.” Hands shaking, you yanked your soaked hood over your head and trudged towards your dormitory, and you kicked gravel, rocks scattering over the path, before losing your footing on it and nearly falling. Fuck this.
“You have a cat,” said Tenko, losing his fervent. “What’s it look like?”
“Beautiful.”
“I need more than that.”
“She fucking—I based Ginseng’s cat form on her, okay? She’s this enormously fluffy thing, mostly whitish with a brown face and legs, and it makes her look like she’s wearing a mask and thigh-high socks like God’s sluttiest little jester,” you said, knocking on your dorm’s mailboxes for luck out of habit as you passed them, “And you can’t tell Aizawa-sensei about her, because if she’s taken away the moment I find her, then I—”
“I have her,” said Tenko, “She’s in my dorm with me.”
You ran the rest of the way to his room, panting and absolutely disgusting by the time you got there, and when Tenko opened his door, there was Dango, loafing on the back of the couch and watching raindrops race down the window.
“What the fuck,” you said, dropping your wet coat and toeing off your shoes, “How the hell did she get in here?”
Tenko shrugged and hung your coat next to his hoodie. “Can she open locked doors?”
“I hope to fuck she can’t,” you said, and you rounded the couch to wrap your arms around that dear little loaf, and Dango jumped off the couch to crawl underneath it before you could fully hug her. “Oh, good. She’s fine. Acting like normal.” You sat on the couch’s arm, adrenaline evaporating to render you boneless.
“She was in my room when I came back from training. We ended early today, since Aizawa-sensei has something.” Tenko stooped to yank two bottles of gatorade from their plastic rings and headed towards the sofa to offer one to you. “She didn’t seem upset or hurt. She’s been sitting there, napping on and off.”
You accepted it and twisted off the cap. “So, who put my cat in your room?”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know,” you said, taking a shallow sip, careful not to overwhelm your agitated stomach, “They’d have to know about Dango in the first place, and I suppose my stalker would, since they’ve theoretically been breaking into my room.”
Tenko paused mid-sip, and he hastened to swallow. “Someone’s been breaking into your room?”
“Yeah,” you said, easing down the arm of the couch and onto its cushions, “I think. There’s no physical sign of entry, but my shit keeps going missing, and stuff that’s not mine keeps showing up. Let me tell you, I need some of that shit they’ve stolen; it’s hard to replace—”
Tenko touched your lips with three of his fingertips to quiet you, and he gestured for you to stay put while he scrambled over to his closet, where he stood on his toes to retrieve a wicker basket from the top shelf. He dropped the thing into your lap. “Are any of these yours?”
All of it was, missing things you blamed on everything from Dango to your stalker to your own forgetfulness: your favourite sweater, your trolley pass, lip balm, your shitty earbuds, your good pantyhose, your planner, your d10, and, among many smaller things, even that bright blue thong you’d lost in the wash (Well. It’s better to find your thong with your new boyfriend over finding them returned to your dorm coated in your stalker’s cum, you supposed).
“I was losing my goddamn mind,” Tenko was saying, “Stuff kept showing up. I thought it was a test at first—”
“I don’t have a stalker,” you said, absentmindedly rubbing the fabric of your thong between your fingers, “Your shit has been—you read that GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK shit? Tenko.”
“Oh, you have that?” Tenko scratched the back of his neck, but not in his self-harm way; it reminded you of Shinsou’s nervous habit more than anything. “Haven’t you read it? Isn’t that what you were naming your characters after?”
“Ah, ha, ha. Moving on. What is important, though, is why and how this is happening to us.”
“Yeah, I don’t…”
The two of you spitballed for a while, long enough for the both of you to finish your bottles of gatorade and for Tenko to start another, and neither of you came up with anything substantial.
“Hell with it,” said Tenko, standing to stretch, his movement disturbing Dango from her nap in his basket of clean laundry, “Let’s go ask Aizawa-sensei.”
Aizawa was not pleased when he discovered the both of you waiting in his kitchen, but he listened to the story, and when you were done, he stepped out of the room to make a phone call. When he came back, he looked even more exhausted than when he’d first come in.
“I’ve just gotten off the phone with Sakura Grove,” said Aizawa, wincing when his bones creaked as he sat in his chair, “Tenko, do you remember villain in-fighting within the PLF? In particular, I’m asking if you remember breathing in a pink dust cloud. It would’ve been in Deika City, in the month between your fight with Re-Destro and your body modification surgery. If our sources are accurate, you would’ve been with Touya.”
Tenko scrunched up his face. “Why would I have been—hm.” Frowning, he reached into the bag of popcorn you’d commandeered from Aizawa’s cupboards. “I know what you’re talking about. They were only letting me eat healthy stuff in the week before I went under. Touya was taking me to scrounge for something salty and shitty for me, because I couldn’t take it anymore. He started hitting on someone he thought was a waitress, and she—this is why I remember it—she compared the width of her hand to his thigh and said no thanks.”
“That’s Ito,” said Aizawa, sighing and crossing his arms, settling his chin into his capture weapon, “When did she use her quirk?”
“She shoved her hand on Touya’s face when he opened his stupid mouth again, and he passed out with swarming, pink particles floating around his head. She turned to me—and she must not have recognised Touya, but she knew me, because her face lit the fuck up. She never touched me, but I remember having to sneeze.”
“She never told you what her quirk did?”
“I woke back up in the PLF headquarters. I assumed whoever picked me up had killed her and that her death negated any effects.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why? What does it do?”
Aizawa let out a soft laugh, muffled through his capture weapon, and he jerked his head in your direction. “You tell him,” he said, snatching the bag of popcorn and heading towards his bedroom.
***
He’d been nervous about wearing a suit. They reminded him of AFO.
But you’d strayed away from dark colours and too much structure, so his light greyish-blue suit jacket stayed unbuttoned even as you leant across to the passenger seat to adjust his All Might tie for him (a Put Your Hands Up Radio tie had been offered, but Tenko had already closed his fist around the striped tie Midoriya would loan him). Part of his bangs had been pinned back to show off his annoyingly handsome face, especially in how his sharp, red eyes observed caught every movement of your terrible attempt to tie the tie based on the pictures Aizawa had sent you.
“We’re not gonna be late, are we?” Tenko drawled out, the corner of his mouth quirking upward, hand resting on the car ceiling as he angled his chest towards you.
“Shush; we are in the parking lot,” you said, looping the larger end. Or were you supposed to be looping the smaller one? “Besides, the world won’t end if we’re a few minutes late to my class’s annual reunion.”
A flimsy excuse for a party, one made because hero agencies needed some sort of named event as an excuse to dismiss your friends en masse. But it was spring again, and they were coming out of the winter blues, and they wanted to see you again, so, hey, why don’t we work something in around your schedule? If you can’t come to this date, then we’ll reschedule it until you can.
And, like. They knew. They knew Tenko was your soulmate. You suspected they all wanted to see what he was like now, too, because no one but Shinsou, Midoriya, and, apparently, Bakugou had known.
You undid the loose knot and tried again. “Are you nervous?”
“No,” he said, scrutinising the tacky balloons and streamers swaying in the night breeze outside of the otherwise intimidatingly elegant venue, “but those kids might be.”
“Those kids happen to be friends my age,” you said, “and I’m barely younger than you are. They know you’re coming. You’re fine.”
Tenko sucked in through his teeth, tapping the roof of the car one finger at a time. “The last time they saw me was as a thing. An object of destruction.”
“Well, they’ll definitely see you as a human person when I spill how you designed a unicorn DND character for Eri.” You pulled the fabric taut but kept it from lying closely to his neck (a boy didn’t like feeling constrained). “You know what? This tie is as good as it’s gonna get.”
He ducked his chin to examine its knot. “It’s shit.”
“It adds to your devil-may-care, reformed-bad-boy sort of charm,” you said, giving the tie a final smooth-down and poorly suppressing your smile when you felt his muscles through his shirt. “Mathematically, there are only 85 ways to tie a standard tie knot. I don’t believe we’ve reached any of them.”
“How do you know these things? You’re unbeliev—” Tenko jerked his face out of view of the window as Aoyama and Kouda, gesturing wildly, strode past the car and into the venue. “Listen,” he said, clearing his throat, “I know I don’t care and that you don’t care, but other people will. Your reputation is gonna plummet right into its grave if we’re out in the open together.”
You shook your head, letting your smile show. “So, I fucked part of a rescue job almost a year ago. So what. So I’m dating my soulmate. Am I supposed to do otherwise? Honestly, Tenko,” you said, curling loose strands of hair behind his ear, letting your fingers linger around his cheek and neck (he leant into the touch), “I don’t care. I would’ve chosen you even without the soulmate bond. You’re too endearing to pass by. You’re too…babygirl.”
Tenko had been guiding your hand to his mouth, and he snorted before it got there, warm air scattering in a short burst. “Don’t call me that,” he said, pressing his lips to the centre of your palm and waiting until you met his gaze to retract them.
A different warmth shot to your lower stomach, but you had to keep pressing, for the sake of the bit. “Oh, then what should I—darling? Honey? Pookie bear?”
He scoffed and nipped at your pinkie. “None of those are good.”
“Tenko.”
He breathed in, shoulders rising, eyes fluttering shut. Taking a moment to kiss the tiny bite mark on your finger. “Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes in a slow blink, catlike, “Feels good. Feels—like coming home.”
Beaming, you reached down to lace his fingers through yours. All five of them squeezed back. “Then let’s go.”
soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare
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thebellearchives · 9 months
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Belle my BELOVED!!
If I may graciously request fluff prompt number 12 for our husband inumaki 🖤 maybe a friends to lovers situation bc I’m a whore for tropes (or quite literally any direction it inspires you to go- bc all your jjk writing it chefs kisses 🤌🏻)
Forehead kitheth for u bestie muah okaybye
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𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐄 𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄
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~ inumaki toge ; jujutsu kaisen
✧˚ · . S Y N O P S I S : this is it: the romantic movie night you once daydreamed about, so is it gonna go down as it did in your head days ago?
‧₊˚ c o n t e n t s : gn!reader, fluff, sequel to the romance alley, friends to lovers, onigiri words are in japanese
‧₊˚ a / n : girl you’re in for a ride because this is the longest request i’ve written for now, like can you blame me? IT’S INUMAKI, of course I went overboard what were we expecting, i’m down bad for him ): Anyways, I know you loved romance alley so here you go, a second part 🫶🏻
i also got requests for this prompt with sukuna and gojo, so i’m gonna link those here for whenever i post them
Toge ver. || Sukuna ver. || Gojo ver.
prompt list
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So there you two were. Just like you had imagined: sitting in front of your TV, lights off and a fluffy blanket covering you both. In the screen the lead protagonists were laying in bed in front of each other, trying to hold hands despite the girl being just a ghost. By then your eyes would’ve been tearing up like they always did whenever you watched this movie, but this time wasn’t like the others.
Ever since you and your friends had gotten back from the shop two days ago you and Toge had been in this situation where you’d glance at each other constantly and yet tried to play it cool in front of the others. Your touches would linger, the smiles were usually accompanied by a small sigh. But then you’d both quickly pretend everything was normal again. Your friends had probably caught up with the fact that something was going on anyways, but since no one had said a word you both didn’t either.
And now you were watching your favourite movie with him. In your couch, alone. So close you could reach for his hand like you had wanted to before that kiss at the shop.
And your eyes would wander from the bright screen of your TV to those soft, shiny lips and the way he’d use one of his fangs to nibble on the straw of his drink.
And your face would flush wishing he was nibbling on your lip instead.
Fuck, you looked away once again.
Your eyes felt like they were on fire by now, staring at the screen so hard that you could’ve damaged it permanently if they were daggers. But after a minute or two you looked at him again, this time staring at his eyes. Long, white lashes that framed his beautiful violet irises. He blinked once, twice, line of sight never moving away from the screen.
With a smile you went back to the movie. The protagonist was rushing through the streets in an ambulance, coming up with the most insane plan to get his lover back. Your favourite part was coming up soon, you glanced towards Toge once more just to find him typing away in his phone.
“Toge!” you frowned, then reached for a pillow to hit him in the head with it “what are you doing?!”
He giggled, shrinking in his own space in reaction to the hit.
“Tuna” he shook his phone in his hand and staring back at you as if the answer wasn’t obvious enough: texting.
“Who are you even texting?!”
Toge tapped the screen. Suddenly your phone ringed.
“You were texting me?” your eyes widened and your face turned red in embarrassment “… sorry”
Toge’s little snickers reached your ears as your hands searched across the blanket. While trying to find your phone the sound of the text notifications ringed two more times.
“I thought we were watching the movie, why are you staring at me so much?”
“ 'wHo aRe yOu tExTiNg ?! '
why do you wanna know? are you jealous (:? ”
“You idiot” you hit him with the pillow once again and he laughed out loudly this time “of course I’m not jealous, why would I be jealous?! don’t be ridiculous!”
“Shake, shake!” he fought off your pillow attacks with his arms.
“I just wanted to make sure you were paying attention to the movie!”
“Tch” he rolled his eyes and moved close to you “tuna mayo?”
The sorcerer pointed to you, then to your eyes and then at himself, raising an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t staring at you like that, i just wanted to see your reactions to the movie, obviously”
Toge snorted, incredulously.
“I’m telling the truth!” you tried to push him away but he caught your hand in his, bringing you even closer.
“Okaka” he shook his head.
He placed his index on your forehead, then on your lips, and then placed it over his own lips.
“You think I want to kiss you?” immediately a complicit smile brightened his face, he nodded and chuckled at how quickly you picked up what he meant “you’re becoming insufferable ever since you kissed me, you know that? where is all this confidence coming from?”
Toge rolled his eyes and then pointed at you once again.
“Duh”
You couldn’t help but laugh at that.
“Me? Oh I see, the moment I start sneaking glances at you throughout a movie you get all smug”
Chuckling, he ended up resting his head on your shoulder, his frame shaking from his laughter.
“Fine. Yes, I’ve been thinking about it the whole time” you whispered, smiling, he held your other hand too.
“Mhmm” he knew. He totally knew.
So he raised his head and placed a kiss on your cheek. Then underneath your jaw. Then on the corner of your lips.
“Toge!” giggling, you tried to pull back, but he squeezed your hands and made sure to keep you in place.
Until he finally kissed your lips, tilting his head slightly and pulling you close until your body was over his and his back was leaned backwards. His arms slithered their way around your waist and you clung from his shoulders, kissing him back.
None of you noticed, but in your TV screen the two protagonists shared a sweet kiss too.
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linisiane · 6 months
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The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois
It's fascinating to me to think about how satire is used as the 'touch grass' or 'be fucking for real' genre. Oftentimes it's making fun of tropes/conventions by humorously contrasting them with reality, which is exactly what Disco Elysium is doing with the RPG!
It goes hand in hand with the idea of RPGs as escapist power fantasy. RPGs are often thought of as the ultimate self-insert fantasy by its detractors or worst players, ahem looking at all those DND horror stories about entitled mangsty murderhobos.
One of the most infamous criticisms of Disco Elysium is its lackluster combat.
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ID A screenshot of a random forum discussion post by dungeon master Zed Duke of Banville. It reads: "Disco Elysium has neither combat nor exploration, and therefore is missing two of the three fundamental components (or sets of components) that define the RPG genre." End ID
The game has essentially bordered off your ability to make Harry into a power fantasy murderhobo because you just are physically unable to equip an longsword or cuisse to murder your average citizen on the street of Martinaise.
But even on a less mangsty level, it subverts a lot of the basic expectations of RPGs.
Like the encounter with the racist lorry driver! You never get the ability or quest to change his mind, you only choose how you react to him.
Where other RPGs might let you act as the white savior or the white knight of chivalric romance, no questions asked, you're changing the minds of everybody who's wrong so we can all get along, Disco Elysium really makes you confront your ability to whiteknight, makes you confront if whiteknighting is even helpful, and why you wanted to whiteknight in the first place.
It’s part of the fun/humor experience of Disco Elysium that you at first expect to solve the world’s problems with a couple quests and lines of ‘good’ dialogue and then get socked in the faced with the fact that yeah, you can’t do much, you’re one person, what did you expect, asshole? Cuno doesn't fucking care!
By subverting our RPG expectations, it forces us to become more aware that these expectations even exist and how they fall short of reality. Yet, despite this subversion, the world of Disco Elysium feels so much realer to us.
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ID a screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue YOU - "Don't call it a dump, you've made it nice and cosy here." NOVELTY DICEMAKER - "Yeah." She stares out of the window, not really hearing your words. "Or maybe it's the entire world that's cursed? It's such a precarious place. Nothing ever works out the way you wanted." "That's why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there's something inherently violent even about dice rolls." "It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...." She picks up a pair of dice from the table and examines them under the light. End ID
Like, Neha is highlighting this little meta element of how you can stack your Harry in any RPG to pursue a certain ending or situation, but the actual outcome is still influenced by a dice roll out of your control.
A lot of the satirical humor in Disco Elysium comes from the absurdity that you can do everything right or everything wrong, and the dice can still fuck it up or save it for you—not just for things like high-fantasy attacks, but mundane things like remembering your name.
The dice are, at their core, about how RPGs aren't just for the control fantasy, of winning high-fantasy battles, but also can represent life as it is, mundane and uncontrollable.
Similarly, Harry is clearly written—complete with all the 'lore' that this would entail—to couch his RPG protagonist nature in the real.
If RPG characters are blank slates? Let's give ours amnesia! Need fast travel?! Kim teases the 41st Precinct for constantly running everywhere by calling it the Jamrock Shuffle. He needs to have deep and intimate conversations with everyone, even when they're strangers? Yeah, that's so weird we gave him the name 'Human Can-Opener,' and everybody remarks on his uncanny manipulation skills.
It's commenting on difference between controlling an RPG avatar and navigating in a human body.
As Kurvits said: “In reality we do not have control, or complete control, of our minds. Just like our body, it is something that we give-not even commands wishes to, and we hope it's gonna do it. We hope it's not gonna break down, we hope it's not gonna rebel against us.”
In one type of RPG fantasy, we don't even question our total control and even assume the joy is from the control.
But in Disco Elysium, we lack control and find joy in it anyway. That is the fun of the game making us, the players, 'self-aware' about its RPG elements, and it especially resonates with anybody not able-bodied, anybody neurodivergent.
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atmajolish · 11 months
Text
obey me as smut tropes
it‘s all going under the cut because it is nsfw, even if i was holding back just a bit. especially with lucifer. if only because my view of them might be a bit different than the majority.
warnings: thoughts of stabbing for belphie‘s part
(no mephisto, raphael and thirteen this time, maybe another time)
lucifer -praise
he‘s the avatar of pride and as such he obviously has quite the high opinion of himself. it’s just a difference when you are the one to tell him these things. when you tell him how handsome he is, how well he did something. it’s hard for him to not get hard right then and there. he should have known that you would notice sooner or later and use that information against him. lucifer is used to being in control, especially when it comes to sex. no one has ever considered even trying to take control from him there, yet when you start praising him, there is a part that wants to submit to you. it’s only a matter of time before he actually does. he needs a break and you riding him as you tell him how pretty he looks beneath you might just be enough to recharge him.
mammon - exhibitionism
it’s a fantasy for him. the idea of other people recognising you as his and him as yours. it’s not even the idea of getting caught but the idea of people actually watching you. you two putting on a show as you moan for him and not for anyone else. him whimpering for you two just go for one more round. people watching you in that moment and realising they never had a chance satisfies a primal part of him. he likes leaving the door unlocked, doing it in places where anyone could walk in, but it’s not really enough. mammon can settle for this though, he’s not that picky, because in the end he knows that no one could ever have you the same way as he does. he is the avatar of greed and a certain possessiveness does come with that title, him wanting to show you off is just another expression of that.
leviathan - overstimulation
levi doesn’t really have much experience in actual life. sure he knows all the tropes, has read a bunch of manga and seen some of the most degenerate hentai there is, but it’s different from actually experiencing it. he cums untouched the first time you two have an actual make out session, but he wants to keep going. levi likes being overstimulated, if only because otherwise all sexual escapades would be rather short. while in hentai the protagonist usually takes the lead, he doesn’t mind having you taking it and drawing out orgasm after orgasm from him until he is nothing but a whimpering mess. he will do his best to make it good for you too, inexperienced has he may be. his premium akuzon subscription makes sure you can get just as overstimulated as him.
satan - temperature play
there’s something familiar about the feeling of hot and cold on his body. it feels an awful lot like the anger that used to run through his veins. he likes you sucking on an ice cube and then kissing him with your tongue still freezing. loves the feeling of hot wax between your bodies as he fucks into you. he has read about some more extreme sides of temperature play and he wants nothing more than try it out with you, but considering how easy it would be for the temperatures of the devildom to hurt you, he will let you do it to him instead. it‘s almost embarrassing how quick he cums when you bounce lit fire wands against his skin.
asmodeus - biting/marking
asmo cares a lot about his appearance and usually hates when people mess with it in any way. you are the exception to this. in fact he embraces it when you bite, scratch, mark him any way you want out of pleasure. he won‘t even bother to hide it, instead showing it off to anyone willing to listen. the thing with that is, that he wants to mark you up just as much. he likes drawing out foreplay, adding hickeys as he goes lower and lower to where you want him most, biting down every once in a while just to hear you squeal a bit. it‘s cute to how much he can wind you up with just this much. asmo also likes facials quite a bit. seeing your face covered with his cum just gets him immediately ready for the next round.
beelzebub - size difference
it‘s not a secret that beel is big. part of it comes from being a demon, the other part comes from working out all the time. but either way, you are probably small to him. fragile in a way. and he doesn‘t know why that exactly arouses him so much. it‘s when you hug him and he notices how much he has to hold back to not crush you. it doesn‘t compare to how he feels when you‘re riding him while sitting in his lap, maybe even struggling with just how big he is. he has to bite his lip to keep the groan that is threatening to leave his mouth in. it‘s hard holding back and beel hasn‘t been particularly good at it for a long time, so it‘s only a matter of time before he will flip you around.
belphegor - knife play
this once again goes either way. belphie is not really picky as to who wields the knife. when it‘s him holding it, a part that definitely amplifies the experience is how much you trust him after what happened. he has a hard time believing that you actually forgave him so a moment like this, with him connected to you as much as possible, having a knife near your most vulnerable parts, it‘s hard for him to not moan at the thought alone. when it‘s you holding the knife he loves it for the anticipation of whether you will actually use it. of course you never do, you‘re too good for this, but a part of him wants you to stab it right into him just once. he‘s a demon, he wouldn‘t die but it might be a suitable punishment for what he did. the thought of it really shouldn‘t get him off as much as it does.
diavolo - degradation
as the most powerful demon in the devildom there is no one that would dare talk against him. hence why it gets him so worked up when you do it. when you degrade him in any way it makes him want to prove you different, fuck you well enough that you will have to admit how wrong you were to say anything bad to him in the first place. it doesn‘t happen a whole lot, but whenever you want to initiate something just mention that you don‘t see why he is so respected, that you don‘t think he is all that strong and diavolo will spend all night proving you different.
barbatos - voyeurism, guided masturbation
the thing about barbatos is that he is always so busy. it‘s hard to find the time for sex. it really shouldn‘t be a surprise that he is surprisingly into walking in on you while you touch yourself, urging you to keep going as he simply watches and observes. telling you just how you should touch yourself to make yourself feel good. barbatos knows your body surprisingly well and has an easy time urging an orgasm out of you, even without touching you at all. he never lets you repay the favour though, he‘s more than content just watching you and getting himself off later. even if he has to stop time for that.
simeon - role play
simeon is a writer and he loves coming up with new characters. the fact he gets to try just how these characters would react in certain situations is helpful as well. most of the characters he writes for the scenarios he comes up with to spice up your bedroom life don‘t play a role in any of his books, but he ignores it whenever you bring it up. the role play aspect allows him to try out as many new things as you‘re both comfortable with while putting you into a different setting. there‘s always some guilt within simeon and pretending to be someone else slightly eases that up
solomon - hypnotism
when he first brought it up it was a bit of a joke, but the more he thought about it the more he wanted to try it out. it intrigues him how something like hypnosis can be used in situations like this. training you to cum when he says it, letting you wonder how you got in the situation. it also requires a whole lot of trust to do this with someone and he would lie if he claims that he‘s not interested in knowing just how much you trust him and whether you would do this with him.
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