Tomuuuuuuuu - Blog Posts

dunno if i wanna feel bad😢 or bad😈 for tomura shigaraki he's js so ughnn

haunted. - vampire!shigaraki x f!reader / part 7

cw: not beta read, descriptions of abuse/child abuse, blood, heavy sexual content, mdni ~13.3k words

one two three four five six

[Received on November 4]

5:43pm

-> toga⋆ heeyyy I miss u :( come hang out with me!!

5:57pm

-> toga⋆ pleaseeee the testosterone is suffocating

[Received on November 7]

7:21pm

-> toga⋆ jin is talking to himself again, ur the only one that can get him out of his loops, helpppp

[Received on November 12]

6:56pm

-> jinny Hey, what does ‘eccentric’ mean? Dabi just called me that. It sounds like a compliment!:)

7:01pm

-> jinny Nevermind. It wasn’t a compliment.

-> jinny He was nicer when you were around. Kind of. Come back!:)

[Received on November 15]

1:37am

-> Unknown Number Come take out whatever stick he’s got shoved up his ass before I kill him.

1:38am

-> Unknown Number Uh. Please.

[Received on November 23]

4:09pm

-> toga⋆ at least let me know ur not dead :(

I’m not dead. <-

-> toga⋆ omg u replied!! ily pls come hang out with me, I promise I’ll make sure he’s not here

[Read: 4:11pm]

The texts had stopped coming after that.

You assume they’d finally taken the hint. As much as it hurts to ignore them, lose all of them on top of… him, it hurts more to constantly be reminded. Of Tomura, the brief but admittedly enjoyable time you had with all of them, the private moments you had with him before he pulled the rug out from under you as quick as it had started, the night he reminded you that no, you’re not lovable, and yes, you were an idiot to believe that maybe you were after all.

It still doesn’t make sense no matter how many times you go over it in your mind to figure out what you’d done wrong. He’d left that day, smiling and soft and happy with promises to come back to you, and then he’d shown up two days later looking like your Tomura but somehow not at the same time. Whatever he’d gone to do that day, whoever he’d seen and whatever they’d talked about, he’d come back wrong. He was not your Tomura, not the one who you'd come to know as your fated other half. As it turns out, he was never really your Tomura at all.

***

“I’m not good for - no, you’re not good for me. You shouldn’t come back, and I won’t come here again. It’d be best for both of us.”

You step back from him, the hand you’d reached out to him falling limply to your side. You stare at him for several quiet, tense moments, waiting for him to take it back, to tell you it’s some kind of fucked up joke, but he remains silent, his blank expression giving nothing away. Surely you heard him wrong then, because how could he say that to you after everything?

“What? Where is this coming from? I thought-”

Tomura cuts you off, not even having the courtesy to let you finish your sentence. “It doesn’t matter what you thought. You can’t - I don’t want you. Don’t want any of this.” He looks away from you, his gaze casted off to the side like he can’t even stomach looking at you anymore. You suddenly feel self-conscious in a way you never have around him, your many insecurities he’d made you forget about resurfacing all at once.

“Things were easier before you showed up. There’s been nothing but problems since.” He’d sounded distressed at first, but now he sounds harsh and bitter, like he actually means what he’s saying. And why wouldn’t he? He’s right - you’ve brought nothing but complications with you since day one, ones he’s had to fix himself each time. His life likely was simpler before you came along. You’re nothing special, nothing like him. You’re just human, plain and uninteresting, a liability.

You’ve wondered a few times if he’d still want you if the bond wasn’t there, and now he doesn’t want you even with the supernatural thread tying you together. You should’ve known better, really. Your own mother couldn’t even find it in herself to love you, so why would he? Why would he be any different than anyone else? But he had been, hadn’t he? All the things he’s said, everything he’s told you, the way he looks at you and touches you. No, this isn’t right. Something is so, so wrong, something he’s not telling you.

There has to be a reason, some kind of explanation other than you’re just not good enough. Fuck, you don’t think you can handle it if it’s as simple as that. It’d be easier to stomach if he hated you instead, because at least that would make sense. He didn’t ask for you, didn’t get a real choice in any of this. It’d be easier to understand if that’s what forced him away from you.

“Tomura, what happened? Why are you doing this?” You’re painfully aware of how pitiful you sound, your voice meek and brittle. There’s a flicker of something in his expression then, something that looks a lot like the anguish you’d seen yesterday when he’d shown you the memory with his mother. When you’d woken up in his bed, in his arms, feeling safer than you think you ever have since your father passed away.

Tomura’s eyes squeeze shut, his shoulders rising and falling with a deep inhale and exhale, and when they open again, any semblance of emotion your imagination had conjured up in an attempt to cope with the situation is gone. “Stop. Don’t. Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.” He’s shoving his shoes back on, and you think you should say something else, do something to get him to stop, but nothing comes. You just watch silently, as helpless and useless as you’ve always been as all the things he’s told you play in your mind like a fucked up soundtrack to this moment.

“Saving you is the only real thing I have left to live for.”

“You’re everything.”

“I’ll never let anyone hurt you again. Ever.”

“Don’t be sorry for me. Not when I had you waiting for me at the end of it all.”

All of that, how soft he is around you, the things he’s done for you. He’s killed people for you just to keep you safe, opened up to you about himself and his life, told you his biggest secret in hopes that you’ll still want to be with him afterward. He’d told you he’s not sure he could live without you, that you’re everything, and now that means nothing?

You’re angry then, or maybe it’s just the hurt manifesting itself that way. Whatever it is, you grab onto it tightly with both hands and don’t let go. It’s the only lifeline you have left. “Fine. If that’s what you want. But if you go, if this is how you leave things, don’t ever fucking come back.” You glare daggers into his back, the blur of tears stinging your eyes not quite enough to hide the way his shoulders stiffen. He doesn’t turn around, and he doesn’t say anything else, just reaches for the doorknob in the painful silence that follows.

There’s a millisecond where his fingers hover over the metal, not quite touching it yet, and you think maybe he’s hesitating. Tomura’s head turns just enough to make out the slope of his nose and the barest hint of crimson in the corner of his eye, and it seems like he’s about to say something, but he just shakes his head, a curtain of white falling between you before he disappears out the door.

The soft click of it shutting behind him is deafening in the silence, and the only things you have left of him are the clothes you’d borrowed folded in your drawer and the drops of water where he’d just been standing.

***

It doesn’t get easier to remember that night, not the first time you’d replayed it in your mind and not now, even nearly two months later. You regret not doing more to stop him everyday. Maybe if you had, he’d still be here. Maybe you’d be like him now, or maybe you’d be his entirely, forever. You think maybe you still are, even after everything. You didn’t have a lot of time with Tomura, but the time you did have was enough to let you know that he was it. Your last chance at happiness, at finding someone who could somehow love you and want you despite everything that’s wrong with you. But now you have nothing but maybes, what-ifs, and memories that get a little more blurry the more you try not to think of them.

Needless to say, things are bad again. To be fair, you’re not sure they’d necessarily gotten good yet, but they’d been heading that direction. At least that’s what you’d thought, anyway. Stupid, stupid you.

It had been cold and rainy the last time you’d seen him, the streets dotted with fallen leaves. Now it’s frigid and icy, the concrete blanketed in a white that reminds you far too much of him, the fall having come and gone and winter in full swing. That’s the only real way you’ve kept track of the days since, the way the world changes outside your window. It’s a bizarre feeling, how the world as you know it has come to a full stop, but life still moves on around you right outside. 

It’s been around eight weeks since you last saw Tomura and the same amount of time since you’d stepped foot in the club, yet the direct deposits still hit your bank account like clockwork. The amount is suspiciously more than it had been when you’d been working for him, and you think maybe it’s his way of making up for the tips you’re missing out on now. That, or he just knows all too well how bad off you’d been prior to landing that goddamn job. Either way, you’d figure out how to wire it all back if you didn’t need the money, too busy feeling sorry for yourself and staying holed up in your apartment to look for yet another job.

Life is weird and empty and silent again in a way that it hasn’t been since you’d met him, and the only reassurance you have that any of it was real at all is through the borrowed clothes you’ve slept in nearly every night since and the briefest of glimpses in your dreams. Tomura doesn’t come to you anymore the way he used to; instead, you get a quiet black void that seems to stretch on forever no matter how far you wander through it to find him. You think maybe it’s meant to be peaceful and serene, but there’s a suffocating emptiness there each time, a bone-deep anguish that bombards you from all sides. You’d prefer the nightmares if this wasn’t the only real piece of him you have left.

You don’t understand why he bothers, both with the money and the dreamscapes. He’d made it clear that this is what he wants, that he wants nothing to do with you and the problems you cause him. It’s easy enough to assume he’s only paying your way through life and fending off your bad dreams because he feels sorry for you, pity for the human girl who was stupid enough to think anyone could ever want her, let alone someone so unlike her in too many ways to count.

He’s as vigilant as always whatever the reason, never making a mistake in showing himself physically. He’s only slipped up one time, around two or three weeks ago maybe, you’re not sure. You’d been trudging through the darkness for what felt like days, wandering aimlessly when you’d seen him. Even from a distance in that suspended space, he’d looked as awful as someone that ethereal could; haggard, so worn out and exhausted for someone that can’t and doesn’t need to sleep. By the time you’d gotten close enough to try to reach for him, he’d already realized what he’d done, had already started to shove you back out.

The tormented look in his eyes as he’d disappeared from your life for the second time has haunted you ever since.

***

“That’s the last of them after Kurogiri made off with the rest. Dr. Garaki did what he could, but questions have started circulating. We can’t take anymore without it raising more flags.”

Tomura stares blankly at the six bags of O negative spread out on the bar counter, one for each of them. He’s not really absorbing what’s being said, nor does he care enough to try. He doesn’t even know who had been speaking. Maybe Shuichi. Everything’s white noise now and has been for… shit, how many days has it been? He doesn’t know. He lost count after fourteen, and they’ve all blended together into one indistinguishable blur at this point, anyway.

Absorbing Rikiya’s operation has been just as shitty as he thought it would be, and it’s been far easier to dissociate and drift through on autopilot instead of facing the reality he knows he deserves. He’s lost track of how many cryptids have passed through the doors since he’d officially taken over - maybe twenty, maybe more - each of them tortured in ways even Tomura had never thought possible, dissected and flayed and surveyed before they’re eventually taken to slaughter, their heads on the wall becoming more trophies for Master’s collection.

The long-haired freak - Tomura thinks his name is Tomoyasu - says the same thing each time. “Soon. Soon, we will have what we need to have your Master restored to health and beyond. We are just missing one thing, something we have yet to figure out.” And each time, Tomura dies a little more inside knowing that the freak is likely right. He’s seen the progress for himself, and even though most of it is a bunch of scientific bullshit he can’t understand, the excited murmurs bordering the edge of the breakthrough are enough to go by.

It wasn’t long ago at all that Tomura had thought he wanted that - Master in full health, back at the helm of everything. Now, though, he wants him to wither away to nothing, wants to watch as he takes his final breath, see the light in his eyes fade when he drives that fucking dagger of Rikiya’s through his chest. He’s not sure who he hates more, if he’s honest. Himself for being stupid enough to think that someone like Master could ever care for him beyond his use and value, or Master for being the common denominator of all his torment and suffering.

He’s had plenty of time to reflect as of late, if nothing else. The hours he’d planned to spend with you are now filled with recounting every miserable detail of both of his lives, and each monumental disaster can be traced back to Master in some way. The hatred his father had for him, that fateful day at his family home, the transformation into the monster he is now, the loss of his literal soulmate that saw past all that and still somehow wanted him anyway, the fucked up reality he’s being forced to live in now, it all leads back to Master. Tomura has never thought of himself as stupid by any means, but goddamn does he feel like a fucking fool for not piecing it all together sooner.

Maybe if his childhood hadn’t been such a fucking tragedy, maybe if he’d had the luxury of growing up normal, he wouldn’t have lept into the arms of the first stranger that showed him any modicum of sympathy. Maybe he would’ve seen through Master’s bullshit from the very beginning when he’d come up to him on the streets that day instead of devoting his life to him. Maybe he could’ve been happy, grew up a normal human boy with a normal human childhood. 

But then he would’ve never met you, would’ve never known there was someone out there so perfectly made for him. He’d meant it when he’d told you all his suffering had been worth it because you were waiting for him at the end of it all. Tomura would have never imagined there was an end waiting for the both of you too when he’d said that. Now all he has are fucking maybes and what-ifs and a constant agony that follows him wherever he goes because you’re not there to help chase his demons away anymore.

“This isn’t enough. We’ll have to go back to picking through the crowd or go outside the city in pairs.”

The conversation that’s apparently still happening around him drags him out of his inner torment long enough to remember he’s supposed to be listening. That was Jin, Tomura thinks. Or maybe it was Atushiro. It all sounds the same to him now.

“Here is too risky. The investigation into all the missing persons is still active. We’ll have to travel. It’ll be inconvenient, but we can make it work for now.”

For now.

As if the situation will ever get better than it is at present.

The discussion continues, a distant hum in his ears, but Tomura’s had enough. They didn’t have to drag him out of his room for this, and he’d be pissed about it if he had it in him. He stands abruptly from the bar stool, the conversation halting immediately. The way they all stare at him like he’s a wounded animal makes him want to crawl out of his fucking skin. “One of you can have mine.” That’s as good of a farewell as they get before he’s stalking off to the door, their gazes trailing after him. He can’t find it in himself to give a damn.

The only thing that stops him is the sound of hands slamming down on the bar, the faintest splintering of wood beneath them. “You have to drink it, you fucking idiot. How long are you planning to keep up this woe is me bullshit, anyway?” Any other time, Tomura would flip his shit if someone talked to him like that, but it seems even Dabi can’t get a rise out of him anymore. He ignores him like he’s ignored everything else as of late, too numb to entertain the attempt at goading.

He’s almost to the door, finally on the cusp of miserable solitude again when a hand clamps down on his shoulder, hard enough to bruise if it was possible. Dabi spins him around, and he lets him, too checked out to care. Tomura stares at him, but he doesn’t see him, not really. He doesn’t see much of anything anymore other than your face when he closes his eyes. “It’s been two goddamn months. We’re all fucking sick of this. You left her. You made your choice, so either learn how to live with it or fucking fix it instead of wasting away to nothing, goddamn it!” Two months? Is that all? It feels like it’s been at least two years.

Tomura’s vision focuses for the first time in what feels like forever, and despite how harsh Dabi’s words are, there’s concern in his expression, something Tomura doesn’t think he’s ever seen on his stupid fucked up face before. There’s a flicker of something in the emptiness then, an anguish he’s worked hard and ultimately failed to bury, and once it fully surfaces, he can’t shove it away. It must show on his face because Dabi’s grip on his shoulder loosens, his brows pinching together.

“You think I don’t know that?” he murmurs, his voice raspy with disuse, so quiet and pained he hardly recognizes it as his. The image of your face before he’d walked through your door seared into his memory is reminder enough of what he’d done, not to mention the constant flow of your emotions through the goddamn bond, the ever-present reminder that his other half is gone and half of him is gone with it. Dabi’s hand drops from his shoulder entirely then, and Tomura almost wishes he’d kept it there. He may collapse without it. “You think I haven’t tried?” His voice raises with each word, his tone almost hysterical by the end. “Do you think I want to feel like this all the fucking time?”

Toga appears beside him then, or maybe she’d already been there and he hadn’t noticed. “We know you have, Tomura. We know.” She wraps her arms around his middle, and if it was under any other circumstances, he would immediately recoil from the contact and push her away. Your touch is the only contact he wants, the only contact he can tolerate. Toga glares at Dabi, who has the grace to almost look apologetic as he steps back to give some space. “You can talk to us, you know. You don’t have to deal with this by yourself.” She sounds so worried for him, and for likely the first time since he’s known them, Tomura starts to realize maybe he does have people that give a shit about him other than you.

Well, likely not you anymore. That thought almost sends him to his knees, Toga’s arms around him the only thing keeping him upright.

You’re the only one he’s ever really opened up to in any meaningful capacity, and he doesn’t know if he can do that with anyone else, but fuck, if it’ll make this even the slightest bit easier to handle, maybe he could try. He nods once and forces the words out of his mouth before he has a chance to come to his senses and change his mind. “It feels like half of me has been ripped away. She was never even fully mine, and it still feels like this. And now she hates me, and I hate myself, and I don’t know how to fucking fix it.”

Toga guides him back to the line of bar stools as he speaks, her hold never faltering on him even after he sits down. It’s… comforting, something he’d often wished for from his own sister way back when but never got. Atsuhiro nods at him to continue, a sad, reassuring smile on his face, and Shuichi places a careful hand on his shoulder, squeezing once in what Tomura thinks is encouragement. Jin looks like he’s about to fucking cry or laugh or both, and Dabi keeps his distance, leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, but he stays, offering silent support in the only way he knows how.

Tomura looks down at the floor, unable to hold eye contact with any of them. This is already uncomfortable enough. He clears his throat, searching for the words, but when none come he just spits out barely coherent sentences and hopes they make sense. “I can’t explain it, but the thing that’s tying me to her is constantly clawing and tearing at me to try to get back to her. I can’t turn it off, can’t fucking think about anything else, can’t see anything but her face. I can’t focus on anything but her. Everything is just wrong, fucked up, and I’m in fucking agony all the time, like I’m burning alive from the inside out.”

He takes a deep breath, and the silence tells him it’s okay to continue. 

“I can feel her all the time, all her emotions, everything. She’s always there, all around me. I don’t think she knows, and I could block it if I wanted to, but it’s the only thing I have left of her. The only reassurance I have that she’s still out there.” He knows it’d be best for him to shut you out, silence the constant flow of your emotions and shut off the warmth of your presence in his mind, but your scent had faded entirely from his room and his car weeks ago, and he has to have something, anything to get him through this.

If torturing himself like this is the only way he can still have a part of you, so be it, even if it’s selfish and wrong to have you without your knowledge. He thinks it’s fair, at least, that you get to torture him in some way even if you don’t know.

“I’m always so fucking exhausted from the constant effort of not letting her feel me because I don’t want her to know how fucked up I am over it. She can’t know. I need her to think that I don’t care, that I don’t want her. And it’s so fucking stupid how easily she believed me. As if everything I ever said and did for her never happened. Things I could never say to anyone else.”

Tomura’s voice breaks on the last word, and he’d throw himself out a seven story window from the embarrassment if he had it in himself to give a shit. You really had believed him almost immediately. He’s not sure if he’s more angry or hurt about that. How could you ever think that he doesn’t want you? Doesn’t need you? He’d made it obvious enough that you were his reason for breathing, hadn’t he? Sure, he’s not great with words, but fuck, he’d tried so hard to be good for you in the only ways he knew how.

It’s laughable, really, that someone as perfect as you could ever believe someone like him is anything but lucky to have you. You really must think the worst of him to have been able to think everything he’s said and done for you was an act, that it meant nothing. He wishes he could tell you that you’re the only one that will ever get to see that side of him, the side of him made just for you. Even now, he’s doing what he can in a sad attempt to atone for what he’s done, but the money and the dreams are nowhere near as much as you deserve. He’d give you the entire fucking world if he could, give you everything you want and more, give you the love everyone else in your life failed to show you.

He never thought he’d be capable of love, of feeling it or giving it, but fuck, could he love you enough to make you forget about all the useless idiots that came before him.

Tomura’s chest heaves, the rapid flow of words drying up on his tongue, nothing but the bitter taste of resentment and misery left. What else is there to say, anyway? They’d never understand, not really. Not unless they experience it for themselves, and he’s not sure he’d wish this upon anyone. Well, maybe Master.

The room is uncomfortably quiet and still in the aftermath, like they’re waiting to see if he’s finished or trying to figure out what to say to all of that. He doesn’t know; he’s still too much of a goddamn coward to look at any of them. As much as he doesn’t want to, he has to admit that getting all that off his chest helped ease the weight, even if just a little bit.

Toga’s arms tighten around him, and only then does he realize she’d kept them there the entire time. He still doesn’t push her away. Her voice is quiet when she breaks the silence, softer than he thinks he’s ever heard it. “Why do this then, Tomura? If this is so hard for you, why leave her in the first place?” He freezes, any weight that had been eased immediately crashing back down on him. He naively hadn’t expected that question, hadn’t planned on explaining that particular problem. It’s not like any of them could fix it.

Still, the words leave him without his permission. “Master. He knows about her. Knows what she is to me. I don’t know if Kurogiri told him, or if he just knew somehow.” Shuichi’s fingers flex where they still rest on Tomura’s shoulder, and Atsuhiro’s reassuring expression shudders into a scowl. It’s jarring, to see an expression like that on his face. Tomura can’t remember the last time he’d looked anything but kind and approachable.

“Okaaaay… So? He was bound to find out about her eventually, right?” Jin sounds confused enough that Tomura doesn’t immediately snarl at him out of frustration. Instead, he sighs heavily and runs a hand down his face. “He said something to me about her, said it in a way that I knew it was a threat. I’ve known him long enough to know what he meant. He views her as a liability to me, and thus to him. And you know he doesn’t tolerate liabilities.” Tomura spits the last word, venomous and acidic. 

There’s a cold, hostile shift in the room once that detail is revealed; collective glances towards the door that leads to the hallway, stiffening of spines, narrowing of eyes. Tomura watches it happen in real time, yet he still can’t quite believe the way everyone reacts. It seems he’s not the only one that had grown fond of you over the time you'd spent here. He’s not sure how to feel about that, but his ingrained possessiveness aside, he thinks he’s… grateful. Relieved, knowing that you have more than just him watching out for you, even if he’s all you’d ever need.

He’s just about to tell them so, the disgusting, sappy words about to spill out of his parted lips, but he doesn’t quite get the chance.

“You’re an even bigger dumbass than I thought.”

All heads turn to Dabi, who’s still posted up against the wall, his expression bored but his tone resolute. Tomura had forgotten he was even there. Toga looks like she’s about to yell at him, chastise him for being a dick yet again, but he continues before she gets the chance. “You have five people right in front of your fucked up face who’d lay their lives on the line for you. Who have done exactly that several times. You’re an idiot if you think that doesn’t extend to her now, too.” 

What had Tomura thought earlier? That maybe he had people other than you that give a shit about him?

Yeah, there’s no maybe about it anymore.

Everyone’s staring at Dabi like he’s grown a second head, but Tomura looks at him like he’s finally starting to understand him, like maybe they can find some kind of common ground after all. When Dabi glances his way, there’s reassurance in his eyes, hidden beneath the smug confidence he always seems to carry so effortlessly. “What? You really think we’d let that shriveled up fuck get his hands on her after you finally became something more than an edgy incel? Get real.” There’s a chorus of agreement that follows, and for the first time, someone other than you makes Tomura realize being loved wouldn’t be all that bad.

Dabi nods at him once, a half smirk on his stupid, patchy face. “Quit sitting there staring at us like the sorry asshole we all know you are and go fix your fuck up.” That’s the final push Tomura needs to go do just that, and he’s down the stairs and out the door before he has a chance to reconsider.

***

The light is off in your window and has been for the last twenty minutes he’s been standing out here in the snow like a fucking creep. Tomura’s not even sure if you’re home, and if you are, he’s sure as hell not sure of what to say to you. It’s not that late, just shy of 9pm, but maybe you’re already asleep for the night. He’s been thinking of all the possible scenarios, running through them all in excruciating detail; you slamming the door in his face or not answering it at all, you yelling obscenities at him, maybe slapping him too, or worst of all, you stumbling down the street with someone else, laughing and smiling as you huddle against their side for warmth.

That one forces a visceral reaction so strong that he has to lean against the wall and count to one hundred in his head to stop himself from nose diving off the nearest cliff. As much as he likes to think he’d murder any worthless excuse of a man brave enough to take you home, he knows deep down that he wouldn’t. Not if he knew you were happy and taken care of, no matter how much it would likely literally and figuratively kill him. That’s all he wants for you, even if he’s not the one to give that to you.

He’s just about psyched himself out enough to turn the fuck around and leave, resign himself to the miserable state of existence he’s in now, when a light flickers on. Tomura can make out the vague outline of a shadow crossing through what he remembers as your living room behind the curtain - just one, thank Christ - and then it passes through again a few moments later. So, you’re home, and hopefully alone. That’s good. Still, he can’t quite get his feet to move just yet, too overwhelmed by something as little as your shadow, too overcome with the knowledge that the only thing separating him from you is a cracked brick wall and a few flights of stairs.

He’d been in this same spot weeks ago, a couple nights after he left you. He’d told himself it was only to make sure you were safe and then he’d go, but then the sun was coming up over the horizon and he realized he’d been out there all night. It wasn’t until the early risers started to make their way out onto the street that he’d finally left and gone home. Well, maybe not home, because his home is tucked away in a little apartment on the outside of the city with all her endearingly nerdy figurines and tastes that match his perfectly.

The warmth that floods him when he thinks of you like that is enough to thaw his frozen limbs, the reassurance he needs to make his way inside and climb the stairs slowly, one at a time. It’s silent and still on the other side of your door, so quiet he almost second guesses what he’d seen through your window. It’s been more than enough days since he last fed - he thinks it’s maybe been about twenty-three now, give or take, a new record he didn’t know was possible - so it’s not exactly out of the realm of possibility that he’s hallucinating or some shit. He really should’ve had that bag of O negative before he came here so he could be stronger both mentally and physically, but that was pretty fucking low on his list of priorities.

The only way he knows what he saw was real is the bizarre sensation running up and down his body, the barely there pulses of electricity flowing through his nerve endings that only show when you’re nearby. Mine, mine, mine. That animal side of his brain resurfaces then, back with a vengeance, stronger now that he’s been away from you for so long. Fuck, that’s going to be an issue. He’s transported back to that night all those weeks ago, when you’d danced on him and he’d struggled so hard to keep himself from sinking his teeth in you. That had taken all the self restraint he’d had, and he’d been fully fed and satiated then. Tomura doesn’t know how he’s going to make it through this now, starved of not just blood but you, too.

He thinks maybe he should leave, come back and do this another day when he’s more centered, but if he goes now he’s not sure he’ll come back. After another ten minutes of deliberating and a suspicious glance from a passing neighbor, he knocks before he has the chance to change his mind. It’s silent long enough that he thinks maybe you didn’t hear it, and he’s about to knock again when he makes out the distant sound of feet shuffling across carpet. 

He can feel you then, the half of him that hasn’t been shredded to pieces screaming and fighting to get to you, each footstep magnifying it the closer you get to the door. If his heart functioned, it’d be galloping, his hands shaking from the effort of remaining still and composed. There’s a moment of silence, long and drawn out, but he knows you’re there, nothing but two inches of flimsy wood keeping you from him. Tomura thinks maybe the scenario where you simply don’t answer the door is quickly becoming a devastating reality, but then it creaks open halfway, and the scent of you that he’s craved so fucking terribly ever since it faded from his bedsheets bombards him so fiercely he almost falls to his knees.

“Why are you here.” It’s not phrased as a question, just a hollow statement that cleaves his chest down the middle, but your voice is still music to his ears all the same. Somehow, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed it until now, even with how devoid of emotion you sound. He doesn’t realize he hasn’t replied yet until you’re moving to slam the door in his face, far too enamored by the sliver of your face he can see to say anything coherent, and the toe of his boot just barely wedges in the crack on time to stop it from closing entirely.

“Fuck, wait-” You huff and make a show of trying to shut the door anyway, but his foot doesn’t budge, even when the pressure starts to toe the line of uncomfortable. “Why are you here,” you repeat, your tone a little more alive and a lot more angry. Tomura decides then that he’ll take that over the emptiness any day. He flounders, lost for words in the one moment he’s likely ever needed them the most, stammering through whatever first comes to mind. “I- Shit. Um. I wanted to see you.” He cringes at his eloquence or lackthereof, and you scoff, the half of your face that’s visible to him twisting into a sardonic smile.

Tomura hates you looking at him like that almost as much as he hates himself, but even with an expression like that, you’re still so fucking beautiful. “Well, it’s not mutual.” The coldness of your response stuns him enough that you’re able to kick his foot out of the way, the door slamming shut a second afterward. “Wait!” He’s painfully aware of how desperate and frantic he sounds, but he can be embarrassed about that later. You haven’t walked away yet; there’s no sound of retreating footsteps, and he can hear the sound of you breathing, so he knows you’re listening despite pretending otherwise.

Tomura has never begged for anything, not even his father’s attention, but he’ll get on his goddamn knees for you right now if it means you’ll hear him out. You’re the only one he’ll ever be pathetic for. He places his hand on the door and leans his forehead against it, and he swears he can almost feel you beneath his palm, his body alive and responsive even with two inches of wood between you.

“I know you’re still there,” he chances, testing the waters, and when you still don’t walk away, he continues. “I know I said some fucked up things to you, and I know you told me not to come back. You don’t owe me anything, but I just- Let me try to explain. Please.” There’s a little hitch in your breath, the only certainty he has that you are in fact listening, a stupid fucking ember of hope sparking in his chest. “Please,” he repeats, a tired, fragile plea carried on little more than a whisper.

The silence that follows is deafening, and it’s then that it really begins to dawn on him that he may have to live out however many goddamn centuries he has left with the knowledge that he’d ruined his only opportunity to have the happiness he’d spent his entire childhood dreaming about. But then you surprise him, as always, the door flying open so fast he has to catch himself on the frame to save himself from falling face first in your entryway. Maybe he’d be a little irritated by that if he wasn’t so in shock that you’re voluntarily letting him in. 

You don’t bother saying anything, or even looking at him, and he watches as you turn on your heel and stalk off deeper into your apartment. Tomura hesitates before he follows you inside, carefully shutting and locking the door behind him. He kicks his boots off, the memory of the last time he’d done exactly that sending a sharp pain lancing through his chest. His gaze finds the spot on the floor where he’d tracked rainwater in that day, and even though he knows it’s long since dried up, he swears he can still see it as clear as if it was still there.

You’re settled on the couch by the time he works up the nerve to follow after you, and you’re very pointedly looking anywhere but at him. The overwhelming scent of you clings to every surface, simultaneously calming him and sending him into a fucking spiral. You glance at him, your eyes burning with enough fire to scald him, and then your gaze flicks to the window he’d been staring up at a mere half hour ago. You’ve opened the curtain sometime between when he went inside and knocked on the door, the city lights a distant glow outside the glass.

It doesn’t feel right to sit next to you despite how badly he wants to, so he opts for the armchair in the corner instead, giving you as much space as he’s currently willing to allow. Tomura locks all his muscles to keep himself in place, the agony of denying his inhuman instincts the one thing they crave more than blood turning this into a dangerous assessment of just how good his self control really is. He takes a moment to just look at you, drink in the sight of you in hopes of calming his nerves and quieting his stupid fucking brain.

You look… tired. Exhausted. He knows you’ve been sleeping because he’s been there in your mind every night while you’re unconscious, but you still look as worn out as he feels. There are dark circles beneath your eyes, a droop in your shoulders like you’re trying to close in on yourself. A frown tugs at his lips; had he done this to you? He’d always thought things would be different for you, that the bond wouldn’t affect you anywhere near as much as it does him, but seeing you like this compared to how you were two months ago makes him think that maybe he was wrong.

Selfishly, that little ember of hope burns a little brighter. If his absence affected you like this, maybe you did miss him after all. Maybe he still means at least half as much to you as you do to him even after what he’d done. Maybe there’s still a chance that he can fix this somehow. His gaze travels over the rest of you, from the tattered Deftones shirt swallowing your body that had once been his to the long expanse of your bare legs tucked up next to you. He can hear the imperceptible sound of wood splintering, and only then does he realize he’s gripping the armrests of the chair far too hard.

He needs to speak, needs to do something to break this silence before he does something out of his control that he’ll regret more than leaving you. “Thank you.” Just two simple words, but Tomura hopes you can hear the weight in them, all the things he wants to say but can’t yet. You just nod stiffly, and then you finally look at him, the full force of your beauty disarming him entirely. Even with the exhaustion lining your features, you take his fucking breath away. Your expression is expectant, if not a little impatient, and he figures he’s on borrowed time.

So, he does what he does best these days; opens his mouth, and hopes whatever comes out makes sense.

***

“I need you to know that I didn’t mean anything I said. I had to say those things to you if I had any hope of leaving.”

Your immediate reaction is to laugh, or cry, or maybe both. Instead, you just scoff and roll your eyes before looking away from him again. It’s hard enough to have him in your apartment after you’d finally started to accept that he wasn’t coming back, that things were actually over between you two. You can’t bring yourself to look at him on top of that, not if you have any hope of getting out of this conversation without crying in front of him.

You can feel Tomura’s gaze burning into your side profile, the weight of it begging you to look at him, but you know if you do you’ll forgive him right away, and he doesn’t deserve that. You’re as weak as ever, it seems. “Whether you believe me or not, it’s the truth. I know you. I had to say what I did because if I told you the truth you would’ve stayed, would’ve tried to find a solution. I was trying to protect you.” He sounds honest, regretful, maybe a little broken. It makes it hard to stay pissed at him, but it doesn’t erase the hurt you’ve felt for months.

“Shouldn’t that have been for me to decide? If I wanted to be protected or not?” The words are barely more than a whisper, but it’s all you can manage right now, and you know he can hear you anyway with his stupid freak hearing. He shifts out of the corner of your eye, leaning closer to you like he wants nothing more than to reach out, and you’re suddenly grateful for the coffee table wedged between you two. You couldn’t handle it if he touched you, not right now.

“Yes. It should’ve. But I was just doing what I thought was best at the time.” Irritation starts to simmer inside you then; all of this hurt because he acted on his own volition without even fucking telling you what was going on. The insecurities, the second guessing, trying to cope with the fact that he didn’t want you anymore, all of it could’ve been avoided if he’d just fucking talked to you first. You turn to glare at him, choosing to ignore the way he’s already staring at you like you single-handedly put the stars in the sky.

“So, you thought it would be best to make me think you wanted nothing to do with me anymore, that I’m nothing but a problem you didn’t want, instead of fucking communicating with me?” Tomura’s lips part, like he’s somehow surprised by your acidity. He stammers for a second, and you can see the moment his demeanor shifts from vulnerable to angry in response to your tone. “I was doing it to protect you. You have no fucking idea what’s out there, who’s out there. If I have to be a little mean to you to keep you safe, then I’ll fucking do it,” he snaps, his voice raising a little more with each word until he’s nearly yelling by the end.

You shoot up from your place on the couch, the anger boiling over making it too hard to sit any longer. “Then tell me, explain it to me! All you had to do was talk to me! We could’ve figured it out instead of you being a fucking prick about everything!” Tomura follows suit, rising from the chair so fast it almost topples over behind him. You track him with your eyes as he circles around the coffee table, coming to an abrupt stop in front of you. You have to tilt your head back to level him with your glare, and he mirrors your expression, his eyes narrowed to slits, the crimson of his irises burning right through you.

“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. You don’t know how to take no for a fucking answer even when it’s in your best interest. You wouldn’t have let me leave if I didn’t hurt your goddamn feelings first,” he spits, and you reel back a step, stunned. You can tell he regrets it immediately by the softening of his eyes, the way his fingers twitch to reach out to you, the half step he takes to follow you. “Don’t,” you hiss, and he listens, his fingers instead going up to claw at his neck. There’s a pang in your chest from the sight, the image of him doing that exact thing in that sad family photo you’d found in his drawer working to soften your anger.

In its absence, you feel a bone-deep exhaustion, a resigned kind of sadness that’s lingered since he walked out your door that day. You don’t want to fight with him anymore, not when none of it really matters now anyway. “It doesn’t matter. It’s for the best. You were right when you said there’s been nothing but problems since we met.” He looks panicked then, his eyes wide, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Tomura goes to step towards you again, and you step back, retreating and following until the small of your back hits the kitchen counter and you have nowhere left to go.

He doesn’t touch you, just keeps you cornered there, but you can tell how badly he wants to, how hard he’s fighting to refrain from doing so. “Don’t say that,” he breathes, and you almost laugh; he’d said the same exact thing to you, hadn’t he? A sad little smile curves up your lips, one that’s meant to be resolute but likely fails. “It’s true, Tomura. You said it yourself. You didn’t ask for any of this.” And in a way, you didn’t either. You didn’t ask to be someone’s mythical soulmate, didn’t ask to get tied up with someone so volatile, so broken. But fuck, do you love him all the same despite all that.

That’s why it’s best to just let him go, tell him to leave and not come back, for real this time.

***

“You should go, Tomura.”

No, no, no.

Mine, mine, mine.

How has he managed to fuck up again, and even worse this time? Christ, all he does is ruin things.

A tremor runs through him when you say his name, and he’ll be damned if it’s the last time he ever hears it fall from your lips. “No.” It comes out harsher than he intended, more firm than he would’ve liked, but goddamn it he’s not leaving until he fixes this like he came here to do in the first place. He’s not walking back out that door unless you’re his, unless you’re coming with him, or he’s got a key to come back whenever he damn well pleases. “No,” he repeats, less abrasive but just as firm. You stare up at him in surprise with those beautiful, mesmerizing eyes, and in that moment he’s yours, and you’re his, and none of the other bullshit fucking matters to him anymore.

All caution gets thrown out the window, and then his hands are cupping your cheeks, and yours are coming up to close around his wrists, but you don’t try to pry him off you. “I came here to fix my fuck up, and so far I’ve only made it worse, but I’m not leaving until you know everything at the very least. Then you can decide if you want me to go.” Tomura wants to add that if you still want him to leave at that point, he will, but he knows he’d be lying, and he’s already lied to you enough. Instead, he gazes down at you, hoping everything he feels for you is reflected in his eyes. He doesn’t let go of you until you nod as much as his grip on your face allows, and it takes all his strength to remove his hands from you, to step back and away to give you some space.

You look a little dazed, but at least you’re listening. He figures it’s best to just dive right in and quit beating around the fucking bush, to get past this hurdle between you as quickly as possible. “My Master- you know him as our boss, at least that’s what I think you called him. He raised me, was my father figure for most intents and purposes. He made me into what I am when I was just a child, found me wandering on the street after… When I became an orphan. He told me he could help me, that he could give me the life I didn’t get from my family, and I believed him. I didn’t question how he knew what my home life was like because he was the first person to ever show me what I believed was concern and compassion at the time.”

Tomura pauses to make sure you’re following, and when you nod for him to continue, he does. “I never knew any better, didn’t know the difference between care and exploitation. I devoted my life to him, gave him my life when the time came and traded it for what I am now. I thought it meant I was special, that he wanted me to become like him because he viewed me as his son. I realize now how wrong I was about that. It just took all of this to realize it.” He’s aware of how bitter he sounds, how his hands are trembling with barely controlled rage, but you don’t seem scared. If anything, you look concerned, something he does not and never will deserve from you.

“I remember my turning so vividly. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced, like the culmination of all my father’s beatings happening at once. Master thought it was as difficult as it was because I was so young, my body still small and fragile. He told me I survived the transformation because I was strong, because it was who I was meant to be, but looking back on it now, he would’ve just found a replacement if I had died in the process. Sometimes I wish I did.” Tomura feels warmth then, the ghost of it skating across the back of his hand, and he realizes your fingers are just barely brushing over his skin. He turns his palm and slides his fingers through yours, gripping your hand tightly for the reassurance he needs to get through this.

“After I stepped into my new life, things changed. He no longer tolerated any weakness from me, any mention of my family, of my mother. He would drive iron nails through my fingertips each time I was weak, and he’d leave them there until he felt I had apologized sufficiently enough. Anytime I fucked something up or didn’t carry through one of his plans exactly how he wanted, he’d lash my back with iron chains. You’ve felt the scars for yourself.” You look sick and angry, and Tomura can no longer look at you, not when he’s this vulnerable.

He looks past you instead, his gaze focused on a tiny chip in the paint on your kitchen wall. “I thought it was justified. He’d given me everything, so being perfect for him was the least I could do. Over time, I got better, and as I got better, the things he had me do got worse. I’ll spare you the details, but I meant it when I told you I’ve killed more people than I can count and wronged just as many. I’ve been alive for a long time, and when time is all you have, you don’t realize how much those things add up.” Tomura figures that will be the moment, the deciding factor that makes you leave him, but your grip on his hand only tightens.

His brave, stupid, perfect girl.

“His health began to decline over the years, a symptom of what we are. It’s a misconception in books and movies that we don’t age, but we do, degrading slowly and excruciatingly bit by bit and cell by cell. Master has been alive for centuries, and when it caught up to him, it was brutal. I remember being scared at the time, terrified for the first time in what felt like ages. Like I said, I viewed him as my father, and I was afraid of what my life would look like without him. That was around the time Kurogiri came along, there to help guide me in Master’s absence. Not long after that, operations grew, and then the others came along one by one.”

He’s skipping a lot of details, but most of them are irrelevant right now, and he doesn’t want to overwhelm you more than he likely already is. Tomura wants to get through this as quickly as possible, and if you stick around, he’ll tell you more stories later on if you decide you want to hear them. “I never really knew what exactly it was he was doing behind the scenes. I only oversaw the simpler things like that meeting you saw with Rikiya. I never knew the specifics, or just how bad things are. I knew he harvested other cryptids, but I never thought it was as depraved as it actually is.” Your grip loosens on his hand, and he chances a glance at you, immediately regretting bringing this up when he sees how ashen your face has become.

But you have to know this, have to know all the ugly truths if there’s any hope left for you two. “I officially took over Rikiya’s operation the night that I dropped you off here. That was the night everything really fell apart. I left because I had a meeting with Master, and I thought it was to discuss what we were going to do with Rikiya after that fight in the bar. I was blindsided when he told me I’d be taking over the whole thing. And… it’s awful, the things I’ve seen, even by my standards. They find cryptids from all over the world, powerful beings like werewolves and fae, and bring them here to dissect them for research, all of it focused on how to bring Master to full health and make him immortal. They harvest their blood for Master to consume, to keep him alive and stable as he is now, and they flay them to try to understand what pieces they’re missing for immortality to be possible.”

Tomura would vomit all over your floor if it was possible. Reliving everything he’s been forced to witness over the last two months, having to lay it all out for you like this, it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done aside from leaving you. “I don’t know what to do to stop it. I don’t think there’s anything I can do. As weak as he is right now, Master is likely the most powerful being to walk among us, and he has too many connections to people even worse than him to count. That’s why I felt like I had to leave you, why I hurt you to keep you from asking questions. He knows about you. He threatened me with you because he thinks you’re a liability, and the less you know, the better. I did what I thought was best at the time to keep you safe from him because protecting you is all I fucking care about.”

His voice breaks on the last word, the lump forming in his throat nearly suffocating. Christ, if only Master could see him now. “I can’t- I don’t understand why you believed me so easily. I know I’m not good with my words, my actions, any of this, but for you to believe me right away when I told you I didn’t want you… I don’t understand it. I’ve told you so many times that you’re everything, that you’re my reason for breathing. Said so many things I could never say to anyone else, and I meant all of it.” Tomura looks at you then, at your beautiful, tear-stained face, and he hopes you can find it in yourself to believe this as easily as you’d believed his lies.

He reaches up to swipe his thumbs under your eyes, but it does little to stop the tears still falling from them. “Please don’t cry for me. I don’t deserve it. Don’t deserve you,” he murmurs, and it only seems to make you cry harder. “I ruin everything I touch, and I don’t want to ruin you, too. But I- Fuck. I can’t be without you. The bond plays a part, sure, but even without it, I… I know I would come to love you regardless eventually. Would still end up needing you as much as I do now.” There. He’d finally said it, without necessarily saying it, but that’s as close as he can get to telling you he loves you right now. He just hopes it’s enough for now.

You don’t say anything for the longest time, just stare up at him with wide, wet eyes. Tomura is starting to think you won’t say anything at all, that he’s sent you into shock or disgusted you too much to come back from all this, but then you speak, so soft and quiet he’d miss it if not for his hearing.

***

“Then ruin me.”

He stares down at you like you’ve stunned him, his hands falling away from where they’d been uselessly brushing away your tears. “What?” He sounds as winded as he looks, as winded as you feel after all of that. You don’t know what you’d been expecting when he showed up here tonight, but it sure as hell wasn’t that. It’s a lot of information for you to work through, but you’re too mentally exhausted to process it all right now, and what matters to you the most is he’s trying. Tomura dumped the TLDR version of his life story in the middle of your kitchen, and somehow in your fucked up brain, that makes it easy to forgive him for everything else.

You can figure out the rest later.

“If you ruin everything you touch, then ruin me. I don’t care.” He blinks slowly, once, twice, three times, like he’s trying to determine if he’s imagining this or not. When you don’t falter or look away from him, he inhales a shaky breath, his entire body relaxing like he’s been holding the weight of the world since he’s been gone. “I won’t ruin you. I can’t. But if you mean that, if you don’t want me to leave after everything I just told you, you’ll be stuck with me forever. I will not let you go ever again. It won’t be possible for me, and I can’t guarantee I could change that if you ever changed your mind.”

Maybe you should think about it harder, and maybe you shouldn’t make this heavy of a decision while emotions are running as high as they are, but you’ve gone through enough of your life without happiness. If this is the form that it’s finally chosen to come to you, if dealing with Tomura’s bad times means you get to have his good times, too, well, it’s the easiest fucking decision you’ve ever made. You two can deal with the rest as it comes.

“Then don’t let me go. I’m yours, Tomura. Have been since the night we met. All that’s left now is for you to finalize that the way only you can.” He inhales sharply, and there’s a split second of hesitation on his end, for your sake and not his. But then his pupils dilate, and he’s on you so fast you’re forced back against the kitchen counter. Maybe it’d hurt a little if it didn’t feel so good. His hands are everywhere, running all along your body like he can’t figure out where to start, and his mouth is moving against yours so fervently it’s hard to keep up.

When your tongue finds his, he groans into your mouth, and when your fingers knot into his hair, his hands find the backs of your thighs to lift you onto the kitchen counter. The hem of your - his - shirt rides up your hips, and Tomura forces his way between your legs, his right hand digging into the bare skin of your thigh while his left tangles into the hair at the nape of your neck. He keeps your head tilted back for him far enough that it toes the line of uncomfortable, but when his mouth leaves yours and he starts biting and sucking along your throat, it’s hard to care.

He’s careful to not break skin, not yet, and you tremble in anticipation for that moment to come. You want to ask him what it’ll feel like, if it’ll hurt, but your brain is devoid of any coherent thoughts, anything that’s not him and the feeling of him against you. The skin of your neck stings, but he laves over each bruise and mark with his tongue to soothe the ache. “Tomura, please,” you gasp out, and you can feel the growl vibrating in his chest more than you hear it. When he pulls back to look down at you, you don’t think he’s fully present anymore.

You’ve only seen the inhuman part of him a couple of times, but never directed at you. Right now, though, the black of his pupils nearly eclipses the crimson of his irises. His eyes are glazed over like he’s in a trance, not fully coherent, and the raw hunger burning in his eyes should scare you, but it only makes you want him more. “Please,” you repeat, fully aware of how needy you sound but not caring in the slightest. His hands are back on your thighs in a millisecond, and he’s hoisting you up and carrying you through your apartment to your bedroom faster than your brain can keep up.

You’re thrown on your bed carelessly, the little ‘oof’ that leaves you immediately silenced by his lips and tongue. Tomura’s teeth catch your bottom lip, maybe by accident, you aren’t sure, but this time it draws blood. He freezes, and for the first time, you feel a tremor of fear run through you. You’ve never seen how he reacts to blood, and for all you know he’s about to devour you whole, unable to help himself. When he leans away, the look he gives you tells you he’s about to do just that, just not in the way you’d been afraid of.

He catches the pinprick of blood on his thumb, holds your eyes as he brings it to his lips, keeps you pinned there with his gaze alone as he slowly licks it off. Tomura’s eyes slip closed, and he moans, a shiver running through his entire body. When they open again, they’re blazing, and the razor sharp smile he gives you is enough to know he’s likely going to ruin you after all. “Take that off.” His voice is dark, dangerous, unlike you’ve ever heard it before. It’s not a suggestion or a request, it’s a demand, one you’re quick to obey.

He hardly allows you enough room to sit up and slip the shirt over your head, and once it’s gone, you’re left bare before him aside from the drenched panties clinging to your core. He sits back on his heels, simply stares at you for what feels like hours, his fingertips trailing featherlight down your sternum, back and forth between your hip bones, back up to circle each of your nipples in turn. You’re writhing beneath him already and he’s barely even fucking touched you yet.

“Tomura,” you whine, breathy and desperate. He hushes you by tapping his thumb against your lips, and you don’t realize what he wants until he narrows his eyes at you in warning. His thumb slides in after your lips part for him, and you suck on impulse, a wicked smile stretching across his face. “Good girl. So fucking perfect, so obedient. My beautiful, perfect girl.” You can’t speak around his thumb caressing your tongue, so you nod frantically, hoping to please and appease him. He takes mercy on you, removes his thumb with a gentle tap on your cheek, and trails his fingers all the way down between your legs.

He gives you no warning before he’s circling your clit over the wet fabric of your panties, and your back arches off the bed, your hips jerking from the unexpected contact. “So wet already. So good for me.” His voice is at once mean and fond, both sides of him warring with each other for the lead, and the praise coupled with his steady fingers on your clit tears a moan from your throat. “You can cum for me like this, can’t you? I know you can.” And he’s right; you’re already teetering on the edge, the thread already drawn tight, and it only takes a few more circles of his fingers to send you free falling.

You moan his name, and he groans, his fingers not stopping until your legs are trembling with the aftershocks. “See? I knew you could do it,” he coos, a cruel mockery of affection, and the underlying current in his tone lets you know he’s far from done with you. Tomura bites and licks his way down your stomach until he’s kneeling at the end of the bed, the dull sound of his knees hitting the floor hardly registering in your clouded brain. You don’t realize where he’s at until his fingers grip your thighs to tug you downward, a choked gasp leaving your lips from the sudden movement.

He laughs, husky and raspy, and then he’s snapping the fragile elastic waistband of your panties to toss them carelessly into the corner. “I hope you weren’t fond of those,” he sighs in mock concern, the only reprieve you get before his mouth is on you. A strangled moan rips from your throat, and he gives you no time to acclimate to his tongue on your swollen clit before he’s sinking two fingers into you, the overwhelming stimulation enough to make your hips buck away from him on impulse. Tomura holds you in place with an arm across your stomach, pinning you down so easily, the only option left to take everything he gives you.

“So fucking sweet,” he groans against your clit, his fingers moving in tandem with his tongue. “Missed this so much, missed you, missed this perfect fucking pussy.” He rambles barely coherent words against you between each pass of his tongue, and he may have only done this once before, but fuck, he remembered every little detail. His fingers curl just right, hitting that spot inside you each time so easily, his tongue abusing your overstimulated clit in a way that borders on painful. “My good fucking girl. You gonna cum again for me? Yeah, I know you will. Always so good for me.” 

You don’t want to, don’t think you can handle another one, but he’s not giving you a fucking choice. Your fingers tangle in his hair, either to pull him away or keep him held to you, you’re not sure. You lean up to look down at him, and the sight of him between your legs, his eyes burning with sin as he watches you, it’s enough to send you spiraling again. This orgasm slams into you harder than the first, bursts of color appearing behind your closed eyelids, and you think maybe this is it, this is how you die, because it’s too fucking much and somehow not enough at the same time.

You’re vaguely aware of his mouth leaving you, his fingers sliding out with an embarrassingly wet sound, and the faint sound of rustling fabric. You don’t open your eyes until you feel his weight on top of you, your mouth dropping open from the sight that greets you. His shirt is gone, nothing but a smooth expanse of pale skin in its place. You knew he was strong, lean, but Christ, he’s toned. Scars are scattered along his skin, some longer than others, some so small they’re hardly visible, but each one only makes you love him more.

He’s watching you carefully, gauging your reaction through whatever frenzy he’s been in this entire time, and when you meet his eyes, you hope he can see just how much you admire him. Your fingers trail along his skin, tracing over each scar, your lips caressing the ones your mouth can reach. “You’re perfect, Tomura. Everything I’ll ever want.” He shudders against you, and when he kisses you this time, it’s a lot less savage but just as heated. Your hands make quick work of the button of his jeans, the zipper following, and you’re doing the best you can to shove them down his hips in the position you’re in when he stops you. “Are you sure? Because if we do this, if it goes this far, I won’t be able to stop myself. I won’t be able to keep myself from solidifying the bond, not when I’m that… distracted. I might hurt you.” You think maybe this is the most lucid he’s been this entire time, a last ditch effort to pull himself out of the spiral before it completely drags him under.

The trembling in his hands and the muscle ticking in his locked jaw tells you it’s taking all the restraint he has, and that’s all you need to know this is the right decision. “I’m sure. Do it, Tomura. Put us both out of our misery.” And then he’s gone, the inhuman side of him completely taking over.

***

Tomura can’t remember taking off the rest of his clothes, or when he’d pinned your thighs up as far as they could go, or when he’d lined himself up with your entrance. His lucidity is coming and going, mostly going, and he’s so fucking scared that he’s going to hurt you, but you’ve given him the greenlight, the consent to do the one thing that’s been tormenting him since he fucking met you, and any control he had left evaporated the moment you’d said yes. Your scent is clouded all around him, your sweet taste lingering on his tongue, your body pliant and ready for him; how the fuck is he supposed to resist now?

He taps his cock against your puffy, swollen clit, admires the way your hole is glistening so prettily for him. He vaguely makes out the sound of you whining, and when his gaze travels to your face, any doubts he had left are gone. You’re staring at him with love in your eyes, devotion, admirance, all the things he’ll never deserve but will take gladly like the selfish creature he is. He leans down, presses one last lingering kiss to your lips, and then brings his mouth to your ear.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make it feel so good, so good for my perfect girl.” His lips trail from your ear to your throat, all the way to your pulse point, the erratic thrumming that greets him enough to make his mouth water. He should’ve fed before he came here, should’ve prepared for this outcome, but it’s too fucking late now and he’ll just have to find it in himself to stop before he kills you. He presses a kiss there, and then he pushes in, and in, and in. You’re so fucking soaked for him that there’s hardly any resistance, and if you feel any discomfort, he can’t tell around the long, drawn out moan spilling beautifully from your lips.

And then the thread on his sanity snaps, and he can’t fucking take it anymore. His teeth sink home in your neck at the same time his cock sinks home inside you, and then everything is crystal clear in a way that it never has been before. The taste of your blood blooms on his tongue, sweeter than anything he’s ever experienced, and he knows this is the closest to Eden he’ll ever get. Everything aligns perfectly in that moment, all the pieces finally falling together. The bond that had been there this entire time snaps fully into place, the strength of it enough to disarm him. He thought he’d been able to feel you before, but Christ, he feels everything, every flicker of emotion, every thought, every hope and desire you’ve ever had, all the love you somehow feel for him.

Tomura sends everything he has back and then some, lets you feel it all, lets you see just how much he needs you, how lost he’s been the last two months without you. The taste of saline mixes in with the fragrant taste of your blood, and it’s then he realizes that you’re crying, hopes it’s because you’re as overwhelmed by this as he is and not because he’s hurting you. He draws out of you slowly, slides his cock back in just as carefully, relishes how your walls cling to him, how perfectly he fits inside you. Your blood trickles down his throat, and he takes in greedy mouthfuls of you as he finds a rhythm, his pace picking up the more his strength blooms with the essence of you.

His fingers dig into the flesh of your thighs to keep you pinned beneath him, the animal part of his brain telling him to claim, claim, claim, and he knows he’s being rough with you but he can’t find it in himself to fucking stop. He doesn’t tear his mouth from your throat until he registers your hand weakly tapping against the side of his face, and even then, it takes all the self restraint he has to stop drinking, to stop consuming. Tomura pulls his face from your neck to look down at you, and even though he was far too close to killing you just now, you’re still staring up at him with watery eyes full of nothing but affection.

“I love you.”

He still doesn’t say it out loud, but he sends the thought to you down the bond, and he knows you hear it when you give him one of those beautiful smiles that he’d burn the entire world down for.

“I know. And I love you.”

His eyes burn, and his throat constricts, and he kisses you with everything he has to hide the emotion he knows is displayed on his face. His pace picks up, his hips slamming against yours with each thrust, and Tomura knows that this is it. This is home, everything he’s subconsciously been searching the entirety of both his lives for. His gravity shifts, his entire world narrowing down to the ethereal, angelic woman splayed out before him, and he knows he’d do anything, kill anyone, be anything to keep you safe, keep you his.

You spasm around him, and then you’re cumming for him for the third time tonight, a choked groan ripping from his throat when you squeeze around him. His forehead settles against yours, his hips stuttering as he meets you in the middle. His cock twitches when he cums, spilling inside you the same moment his words spill out of his mouth unbidden.

“I love you,” he whispers, so quiet he wonders if you heard him.

He gets his answer when he hears you whisper it back, the words breathed across his skin travelling straight to his dead heart.

note: can't tell you all enough how sorry I am that this took so long to post. I've been in college, and transitioning into a new job, as well as a few other things that were happening all at once. I'm happy to say that life will be mellowing out significantly from here onward, and I anticipate having a lot more free time after this upcoming week. I don't think I can convey in words how much I appreciate all the kind comments and asks, all the patience and love you've given me while I slowly chipped away on this chapter, and all the support you guys show me. couldn't do it without you, ily ❤︎ I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you a lot sooner this time :)

haunted. - vampire!shigaraki x f!reader / part 3

In which you're down on your luck, taking the first job that will have you after being laid off from Endeavor Dynamics. There, you cross paths with a certain mysterious, red-eyed individual who seems to be harboring a secret, and (un)fortunately find yourself tangled in a web of obsession and danger you're not sure you can handle. Or stay away from.

cw: alcohol use, death, blood, gore, sexual content, mdni, not beta read

~7k words

part one part two

Three weeks.

It’s been three very long weeks of pretending, walking on eggshells, and avoiding. After Kai Chisaki almost made you the next name on his victims list, things have been… weird, to say the least. The group has more or less been avoiding you, besides Toga. If anything, she’s been more attached to you than she already was. The rest of them, though, seem to prefer pretending you don’t exist unless interaction is absolutely necessary.

You’d like to chalk it up to everyone being a little traumatized by what had almost happened to you on your first night on the job, but you know better. You haven’t outright confirmed it yet, but all the signs are there, and it’s not hard to guess they’ve all seen worse than a girl they hardly know almost getting kidnapped. More importantly, you know where their loyalties lie, and it sure as hell isn’t with you. 

Their loyalties lie with the red-eyed asshole who’s apparently decided he hates your guts. He’s avoided you like the plague throughout all the shifts you’ve worked since, either staying holed up in that mysterious back room upstairs, lingering in the shadows where he knows you won’t be, or just straight up glowering at you on the rare occasions you do happen to cross paths.

You’re not sure what exactly you did to warrant such disdain besides being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he thinks you’re more trouble than you’re worth, or maybe his little stunt in saving your life caused problems for him in the aftermath. That wouldn’t be surprising, considering what you’d seen on the news two days later.

“A prominent figure in Japan’s crime syndicate, Kai Chisaki, has been found deceased in Shinano River. While law enforcement has declined official comment to Juko News, we were able to discern from credible sources that his death was a homicide. His remains were spotted by a night fisherman around three in the morning on Saturday, October 17th. Investigators recovered his body and his arms, bafflingly separated from his torso, but have yet to find Chisaki’s hands. This gruesome act was likely carried out by a rival organization to the Yakuza, as the sheer brutality of the murder seems to indicate. Law enforcement encourages…”

You had stopped listening after that. The mental picture of the scene was more than enough.

So yeah, it’s not really a stretch to think he hates you because you’d been the catalyst for him fucking murdering and dismembering someone. You haven’t exactly confirmed that yet either, but you’d be the biggest idiot on the planet to not put two and two together on that one. Tomura is a killer. There’s blood on his hands, and for all you know, Chisaki wasn’t even his first. The brutality of how he’d done it makes you think he’s no stranger to violence. 

Tomura is a killer, a killer who loathes you, and he makes it a point to let you know that in however many silent ways he can, considering he hasn’t actually spoken a word to you since he’d demanded you run upstairs to Toga that night. That fact should really concern you a lot more than it actually does. You should’ve packed up your shit and left the country the moment you’d heard that sleazy reporter say those words. But… he’d killed for you. He severed a man’s arms from his fucking torso just for choking you a little bit, and in your trauma-riddled brain, that surely means he’s not all bad.

And maybe you hate yourself for caring so much about what a murderer thinks of you. You had stupidly thought - well, you don’t know what you thought, exactly. Are you really so lonely, so starved of basic human decency that you think someone swooping in and saving your ass from being kidnapped and murdered means something? Apparently so. Anyone would have done that, wouldn’t they? But in a place like Nine Lives, you doubt it. Nobody else in the vicinity had been primed and ready to rescue you from those psychos. Nobody but him, and he was nowhere near you. That, at least, you’re certain of.

You could have sworn there was something, something in his eyes and on his face when he looked at you for the first time. Something a far cry from hatred. You had felt it too, after all. What exactly it is, you haven’t figured that out yet, but it was profound enough that you’re fucking dreaming about him now. Just barely there glimpses at first, so fleeting when you woke up you didn’t even realize what it was about. Now, however, you’ve dreamed of Tomura Shigaraki an irritating total of eleven times across the last three weeks, each more vivid than the last. At least they replace the usual nightmares you’re used to.

The most recent one from last night has stuck with you all day, even now as you stupidly get ready for another shift. It started with a pair of glowing red eyes peering at you from the darkness and nothing else. You remember clearly how quiet and empty it felt, like you were suspended in a void. Nothing but those eyes you know were his and the overwhelming silence. And then he got closer and closer, until he was right in front of you, staring into the deepest depths of your soul. He stared and stared, and there was the lightest of touches against your hand, so fleeting and hesitant. Then, he seemed to phase through you, into you.

Dream you became something else, then. Someone else. The inky black was slowly replaced by moonlight fading in, and all of a sudden you were on what you think was a rooftop. You were staring up at the stars, but it wasn’t you that was seeing them. You were seeing through someone else’s eyes, feeling emotions in a body that wasn’t yours, thinking things in a mind that wasn’t your own. It felt so cold, so empty and angry, so sad. A melancholy kind of longing that makes your own chest ache even now, fully conscious.

You were no longer just you, but both of you combined somehow. Your own thoughts and feelings were still there but dulled, eclipsed by his. The one time you tried to reach out throughout the dream, it felt like hitting a wall, and then you were thrown back into that void space. You felt a flicker of yearning before it was all over, those eyes gazing into you one more drawn out moment before he slowly retreated with one final graze against your hand. 

It was so fucking bizarre, but it was so real it’s like you were actually experiencing it all in real life. You can still feel that emptiness and anger and yearning echoing in your chest, can still feel those cold, careful touches against your hand like it really happened. Maybe you really had finally lost your goddamn mind. You can’t entirely rule out that possibility at this point, especially when you’re once again walking through the doors of Nine Lives when you know in your bones you should never come back here again.

***

“Are you excited? I know I am! And you look incredible!”

You wince, Toga’s eager voice so loud in your ear even over the music blaring through the speakers. Somehow, you’d survived to Halloween, and even more surprising than that, you’d willingly agreed to work the event they were putting on for the holiday tonight. It’s abundantly clear this is one of the busiest nights of the year, the space more packed than you’ve seen it yet. Who knew criminals cared so much about Halloween?

Someone - likely Toga - has decorated the space aptly, fake spider webs strung up in the corners, black and orange drapes hanging from the rafters, bats and skeletons dangling from banisters, everything you’d expect from Halloween. The usual strobe lights have been replaced by purple, red, and white lasers waving fluidly in time with the music, the way they pass through the thick fog rolling through the space making everything appear in slow motion.

There's a surprising number of people in the crowd dressed in costumes, most of them scandalous enough that even you almost clutch your pearls.

You’d gone simple. And by simple, you’d gone with the best of what was left of the meager selection when you’d panic-bought your costume two days ago. You’d done your makeup a little more dramatically, a sultry smokey eye and winged liner that left a heap of smudged cotton swabs on your bathroom counter. Pair that with a red corset, a black leather miniskirt, and some little red horns on your head, and you’ve got the best last minute devil costume this place has ever seen. It was either this or the cowgirl, and you’d rather die than be caught in cow print assless chaps.

Toga has opted for what you think is a hero costume of sorts - a black full-body suit with pale pink accents, boots and a headpiece to match. The others, of course, are nowhere to be seen, likely hiding upstairs with your number one fan.

She seems to take your silence as enthusiasm, her own excitement growing as she continues. “It’s gonna be suuuper busy for the next few hours, but once it starts to level out some, we can join in the fun!” For once in the last few years, you’re not entirely opposed to the prospect of letting loose a little.

The past few weeks have weighed on you significantly more than they should - almost getting assaulted and murdered, a man's blood on your hands, another man who looked at you like you'd created the world in six days that now seems to despise your existence, still feeling drawn to him despite that - and the idea of letting all that go even for just an hour has some of Toga’s optimism rubbing off on you. You decide right then your mission for the night is to forget all about Tomura Shigaraki as easily as he seems to have forgotten you, even if you have to pretend.

***

A few hours ends up feeling like a few fucking years with how non-stop it’s been the whole night, and it’s not until almost 1am that it starts to mellow out enough for you to finally take a step back and bask in some of the fun you were promised. At least you’ve made more than a decent amount of money in tips. That alone makes the ache in your feet worth it.

You let Toga know you’re heading out into the crowd, but she doesn’t let you leave until you down enough tequila shots with her to leave you sufficiently warm and more than a little buzzed. She kisses you on the cheek as you’re sputtering for breath after the last one then disappears into the fray herself, and you’re on your own. You laugh to yourself after you recover, feeling light as air for the first time in years. You’d forgotten how nice it feels to be drunk.

You stagger unsteadily into the sea of bodies, giggling as you try to find your footing. The song playing is one you've heard a lot over the last few weeks, a dark, haunting beat that seduces you into moving with the people surrounding you. Your eyes slip closed, your hips start to sway, and your thoughts of a certain someone drift away with the rest of you.

You’re not sure how long you stay like that, hypnotized by the atmosphere and the alcohol, but when you open your eyes again the crowd has thinned a little bit. There’s hands on your hips that weren’t there before, a chest behind you pressed against your back, a man swaying in time with each of your movements.

He’s breathing against your neck, whispering something about how sexy you are and how he couldn’t resist approaching you. You’re too far gone to care about the fact you really shouldn’t let any man that frequents this place touch you, let alone like this, and the contact feels nice.

So you let him stay, let him keep his hands on you and his body pressed against yours, and you move.

***

Three weeks.

It’s been three very long weeks of pretending, avoiding, and coveting.

So, so much coveting.

Tomura doesn’t know what to do with a feeling like that. He doesn’t know how to process anything that’s not black and white, cut and dry, familiar territory. It’s been decades since he’s wanted anything other than blood and violence, and it’s been even longer since anger wasn’t the front-running emotion in his still heart.

But you, you’ve crash landed into his life, and now all he does anymore is want. Wants so many things he can’t even begin to understand. He’s fairly certain he hasn’t truly allowed himself to want anything since childhood, back when Father had broken his arm because he’d said he wanted to be in the military like grandma. He was only five years old.

You should be no exception to the No Wanting Things rule, but you haven’t given him a goddamn choice.

~~~

“What?”

“He said she’s-”

“Shut up, Jin.”

Perhaps the only time Dabi had been helpful throughout the entire time Tomura’s known him.

Tomura had stared blankly at Kurogiri then, his already deathly white complexion paling further. He’d heard what Kurogiri had said, but he couldn’t process it. How the fuck could he, when that disaster of a sentence had been dropped on him like an anatomical bomb?

“It is true, Tomura. The girl is tied to you, and you to her, though not completely. Not yet.”

Kurogiri had kept talking, as if Tomura wasn’t one more syllable away from hurling himself off the Harukas Observatory.

“I do not fully understand it myself, but you are connected to her beyond mere emotion. She can see as you see, feel as you feel, and you through her, if you should will it. It is incredibly rare for our kind. Our Master had one, long ago. I have yet to see it myself throughout my decades, until now. Other species like ours refer to such partners as mates. Whatever term you choose to use, with what you have described, she is yours, linked by your very souls.”

Tomura had slid down to the floor at that point. Or had he already been there? He can’t remember.

“It is not fully solidified yet, not until you drink from her, and only if she willingly offers her blood to you. Only then will the bond be completed. But even now, the connection is there, brought to life when she met your eyes and saw you as you truly are without judgement or fear. It was made stronger when you halted Kai Chisaki’s attempt to harm her, protecting her life with your own.”

He had stopped listening after that, the ringing in his ears making it too hard to distinguish anything else, anyway.

~~~

That was three weeks ago, right after he’d slammed the door in your face. He’d hate you for it if he wasn’t so consumed by pressing need every time you’re within fifty fucking feet of him.

He did his best to pretend you didn’t exist after that talk with Kurogiri. In his mind, if he avoided you, it’d go away on its own. He’d done good for the first week; glaring at you the one time you tried to approach him, holing up in his room on the nights you worked, shutting down Toga anytime she was about to bring you up. But then that second week started, and he’d felt you for the first time.

He remembers it being around one in the morning, in the middle of destroying the enemy’s Nexus on League, when he’d been temporarily blinded. He initially thought it was a new symptom of not feeding for so long and had stood from his gaming chair so fast it crashed into the wall behind him, frantically feeling his way around his room to go feed on the first living being he came across.

He didn’t have a chance to make it to the door before he started to make out shapes through the darkness. He could tell right away none of it was real, and then began to assume he was hallucinating instead of going blind. His hand was on the doorknob, his focus redirected to finding Kurogiri, but as soon as he made it into the hallway, the shapes finally took form.

He knew it was you, even appearing to him as a child. It’d be hard to mistake those sad eyes. You looked to be around six or seven, and you were staring into a mirror while crying. There were bruises on your face and arms, a bit of dried blood on your bottom lip. He’d frozen in the middle of the hallway, his body as still as a statue as he slowly began to realize what was happening.

You cried and cried while you wiped the blood and tears away with a dirty towel, and then you screamed so loud his hands flew up to his ears on instinct even though this was all happening in his head. Someone was beating on the door, and he couldn’t see you anymore because you’d presumably turned to look that way. Cracks started to form in the dry rotted wood until it broke down completely, and then you’d ran to hide in the closet.

He could hear you shaking and sniffling, and he could hear whoever was coming for you walking across the floor. It was deadly quiet for a moment, and then the door was ripped open, and you screamed again, louder than the last. He thinks he may have yelled then, too; for you, to you. The person wasn’t distinguishable, just a black shadow with a wide, grotesque mouth, grinning down at you. And then they yanked you out of the closet, and you were gone.

He came back to reality by Shuichi shaking him violently by the shoulders, Kurogiri standing behind him, looking at Tomura like he already knew what had happened. It was the connection Kurogiri had told him about, how he could see through your eyes and feel as you feel, presented to him in a dream you were having. Kurogiri had figured your mental walls had come down in your sleep, and Tomura’s had been down because he’d been playing fucking League of Legends and didn’t realize he had any to keep up in the first place.

So, yeah, he couldn’t ignore you anymore after that. It felt wrong to, knowing what he knows now. It wasn’t hard to piece together you’d been abused as a child, something he can relate to more than most. He knows it’s not his fault he saw what he did, just as much as it’s not your fault for barging into his mind in the first place, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little grateful for a small piece of insight into who you are even if it feels dirty to know something so vulnerable about you without your consent.

Kurogiri had given him all the knowledge he had about how Tomura could keep that from happening again if he didn’t want it to. It was on Tomura’s own time that he slowly figured out how he could visit you. He wasn’t good at it at first; only able to linger in your unconscious mind for a few moments at a time, and unable to really manifest anything other than one part of himself at a time. But the more he practiced, the better he got, and by the time he tried again last night, he was able to fully show you what he wanted you to see.

He’d been up on the roof of Nine Lives, a rare night where it was relatively peaceful and quiet, no police sirens or screaming arguments from the street below. He thinks that may have made it easier since he could fully focus on you, his hearing not picking up any overly distracting sounds. He doesn’t know if you meant to - likely not - but he could make you out this time, too, waiting for him in the darkness.

He took his time, allowed himself the opportunity to just look at you, appreciate you. Even in a suspended space, you were beautiful, staring at him like you were waiting for what came next. He liked that idea, you waiting for him. Liked that you saw him. He approached you through the darkness and dared to brush his fingers over your hand one time. He had to feel your skin at least once, even if it wasn’t necessarily real, but fuck, did it feel real.

And then he’d pulled you into his mind, into his consciousness, and looked up at the stars so you could see how peaceful it was. So he could see how it’d feel to have you with him on a night like that. He couldn’t stop the overwhelming desire then to have you fully next to him in person, feel your warmth against his side as you watched the sky change with him. Then came the sadness, knowing he could never have that. He could never really have you, not with what he is, who he is. You deserved more than what he could offer you.

He’d felt a flicker of something warm, like you were trying to reach out to him, reassure him maybe, he wasn’t sure. It had startled him so much that you even tried, that you’d wanted to and that you’d figured out how to, that he’d pushed you back into your own mind on impulse. He wasn’t ready, but he knew his time was up, so he’d selfishly touched your hand one last time and then he’d left you.

It’s not something he can do every night. Some nights he’s busy, or some nights your mind is completely closed off to him somehow, but he does it every chance he gets. Anything he can do for you indirectly to relieve your suffering, even if it’s just keeping a handful of your nightmares away. Anything he can do to have even the smallest part of you in his life, even if it’s just in your dreams.

***

“Tomura, I wouldn’t-”

“I don’t care if she’s still here.”

“No, that’s not-”

He turns to glare at Jin, who mercifully stops talking, despite the anxious look on his face. They all of course know about you and what you are to him, the goddamn gossips, and they definitely all know how he can get when he obsesses over something. He can’t tolerate your name coming out of another man’s mouth, even the ones he’s known for decades, and he definitely can’t stand the thought of any of them talking about you or to you when he can’t even do that himself. 

The one time he'd seen Dabi talking to you on your first shift after that night, it took Jin, Atsuhiro, and Shuichi to hold him back. He’s not sure what he would have done if they didn’t. Toga is the one exception in talking to you, and even she pushes it sometimes.

He feels a little guilty about that, mostly because it’s not hard to tell that it upsets you when everyone ignores you. He wishes he could tell you it’s not personal, that they’re only doing it to save themselves from being torn apart and set on fire. It’s hard enough to restrain himself from ripping apart every man down there that dares to look in your direction every fucking night you show up to work looking too alluring for your own good.

He starts down the stairs under the guise of finding Toga, to tell her that Atsuhiro is looking for her, but he’s pretty sure everyone knows he just wants to see you from a distance, make sure you’re okay, that you’re still just as perfect as you were when you came in. Watching over you from the shadows has been his favorite pastime as of late.

It’s busier than even he’s ever seen it, his lip curling up in disgust from the sight of just how large the crowd is. He’s always hated Halloween, and the fact that it’s going to be that much harder to catch a glimpse of you makes him hate it even more. He has half a mind to barge into your consciousness and see where the fuck you’re at that way, but it’d be too risky. He can’t chance it when you’re fully aware.

It doesn’t take long to determine that Toga has abandoned post for the night, if the current free-for-all at the bar is anything to go by. Likely off gorging on the blood of whatever sorry assholes she thinks are cute and entertaining enough to toy around with. He scowls, assuming that means she’s told you to leave for the night, too. He’s missed his chance, then. He’ll have to wait until later, after you’ve fallen asleep, but the dejection bubbling up inside him tells him it’s not the same.

He’s just about to turn around and stalk back to his room, fuck around on Valorant for awhile to take out his frustrations, when he feels it. You can’t be doing it consciously, seeing as you don’t have the slightest clue about any of this shit, but he can feel a euphoria that he knows doesn’t belong to him. Like you’re on cloud fucking nine, wherever you are. It’s strong, stronger than any emotion he’s felt from you yet.

Kurogiri had said it’s heightened the closer you are, so maybe…

He gets deja vu when he scans the horde much like he did that night three weeks ago. It’s a lot easier to find you this time than he expected, maybe because he’s more in tune to you, or maybe because he can feel you mentally. You’re facing towards him from where you are below, not far from the bottom of the stairs on the outside of the crowd. He almost laughs when he sees the devil horns on your head, but it dies in his throat when he sees the rest of you.

The top you’re wearing lifts your chest in a way that has his gaze stuck there for longer than he cares to admit, the shape of it highlighting your curves. The scrap of fabric clinging to your thighs is so short he could see everything if you bent over, a fact that both enrages and arouses him. He’d do just about anything right now to see you bent over in that, just for him. Your eyes are closed, your hands are sliding up your body, and your hips are moving so hypnotically in time with the music he thinks he’s gone into a fucking trance.

He already knew your body was perfect, but seeing you like this, you’re a fucking divine gift from the gods themselves, one he wants to unwrap slowly, piece by piece, until you’re bare before him. He can’t tear his gaze away, can’t stop watching you move, his eyes following the path your hands are taking down, down, down…

And then they grab another pair of hands, hands that have settled on your hips.

He should just leave, go upstairs and pretend he never saw this. He should let you do whatever you want, with whatever trash you choose. He should -

He’s down the stairs and through the crowd in three seconds flat.

***

“Man, what the f-”

You’re so lost in your own little world that it takes a few seconds to register that something is happening. Your eyes blink open slowly, the world spinning for a moment before it rights itself. The hands you’d been holding are no longer there, your fingers grasping nothing but empty air above your hips, and the warmth that had been pressed against your back is gone. There’s a few heads turned your way, but they’re not looking at you, they’re looking at whatever’s happening behind you.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

Huh. That sounds like the voice that’d been murmuring nonsense into your ear for the last - well, however long it’s been.

“Don’t fucking touch her. Don’t even look at her.”

And that sounds like the voice that’s been the star of most of your thoughts lately.

You sober up impossibly fast, whirling around to confirm your ears haven’t failed you. The scene you’re met with reminds you too much of that night, except you hadn’t been in danger this time. Had you? Maybe you had been and hadn’t noticed, because why else would he look like he’s about to rip this guy to shreds right here in this sea of witnesses?

Any lingering confusion is replaced by fear. Not of him, no, but fear for the guy that’s still standing there, stubbornly holding his ground.

“Last I checked, she was enjoying herself. Ain’t that right, sugar?”

You remain silent, your gaze shifting between him and Tomura, who hasn’t looked at you yet. You stare at his side profile, silently begging him to stop and look at you. His jaw is clenched so tight you can see the muscle tick, his eyes narrowed and gleaming with murder, his body so rigid you wonder how it’s possible to remain that still.

“Tomura,” you breathe, so quiet you don’t know how he hears it, but he does. His posture relaxes so minutely you would’ve missed it if you weren’t already staring at him, his body shifting slightly towards you, his gaze sliding to you out of the corner of his eye. His jaw unclenches when he turns to look at you fully, the intent to kill in his eyes simmering down to something a lot less concerning.

And then you’re stuck again, that feeling resurfacing, trapped under the full weight of his gaze, his pupils dilating and eclipsing the crimson of his irises the longer he stares at you. His eyes travel across your face, scrutinizing every feature, and you do the same, taking in every detail of him you didn’t get the chance to last time. You’re once again struck by how attractive he is; even the scars only seem to accentuate his features.

He’s dressed in all black; jeans and combat boots, a compression shirt and a long, stitched jacket with gray details to match. You get the impression he’s not one to try or care about his appearance, but even with no effort, he looks fucking incredible.

You’re vaguely aware of the guy yelling, some inarticulate string of words thrown either at you or Tomura, you aren’t sure. You don’t care.

“Get the fuck out.”

Tomura says it without taking his eyes off you, his voice low and dangerous. It sends a shiver down your spine, and not one of fear. Something else that you don’t want to put a label on.

The idiot sputters, goes to say something else, and Tomura tears his gaze from yours to look at him before he gets the chance to.

“Do you want to find out what happened to the last one that put his hands on her? I’d love to show you.”

He grins, wide and wild, and your heart skips a beat. The guy finally takes the hint, maybe even looks a little scared, before he spits a nice little “fuck you” at the both of you and turns tail into the crowd.

Then it’s just the two of you, and the rest of it fades to background noise.

***

He can’t help himself. Not when you’re right there, just two steps away.

He knows he should leave now. He’s made enough of a scene, crossed the one boundary he’d set for himself, and now he should leave before the line is gone entirely.

But he’s always been a little selfish, and you’re staring at him like he put the fucking moon in the sky. The stars in your eyes outshine the ones he’d shown you last night tenfold.

***

“Come here.”

It’s a command, one you don’t hesitate to follow.

You take one step, then two, and then you’re right in front of him.

“Turn around.”

You do. And then you wait, your body trembling with anticipation.

He’s careful at first. Hesitant, almost. Two of his fingers brush over the back of your hand, and you’re transported back to your dream from last night when he’d done exactly the same thing. That had felt so real, but you know now it pales to reality. They trail up your arm so slowly, over your shoulder and then your neck to brush your hair out of the way. His other hand comes to settle on your hip, his thumb caressing the sliver of exposed skin there.

Hadn’t he hated you? Hadn’t you hated him just a few minutes ago? Your mind spins, the whiplash of the whole thing making you dizzy. He killed a man for you, then avoided and ignored you for weeks, and now he’s touching you so carefully it’s like he thinks you’ll break. And you’re letting him. You need to push him away, stop playing whatever game this is, get answers to -

“So soft,” he whispers in your ear, his voice husky. He tugs you backwards in one fluid motion, so fast it momentarily startles you, until your back is pressed fully to his front. “So delicate.”

Maybe answers can wait. Maybe you can let yourself enjoy whatever this is for now and yell at him later. You owed that to yourself, right?

Your heart is in your throat, your lashes fluttering with each whisper of breath against your ear. He leans down, his nose trailing along the expanse of your throat, strands of his hair tickling your neck.

“You smell so fucking good. So sweet.”

Had you put perfume on this morning? You can’t remember. Can’t process anything other than his voice and his touch.

His fingers trail down, back over your shoulder and down your side until they curl around your other hip.

“Little devil, hm?” he murmurs, his lips brushing against your pulse point with each syllable. He inhales an unsteady breath, long and deep. “How fitting, for what you’ve done to me.”

You shudder, unable to fully comprehend what he means but liking the sound of it regardless.

“Now move.”

You hesitate, unsure of what he’s asking for. He growls in your ear, a deep rumbling in his chest vibrating against your back, and his hands squeeze your hips once, right on the edge of painful. You like that much more than you should.

“What, you can do it for him, but not for me?”

He sounds angry, jealous. It dawns on you what he means.

You don’t make the mistake of hesitating further. You’re a little off-kilter at first, a little off-beat, too overwhelmed by what’s unfolding that your movements are more jerky than they are fluid. It takes a second to find a rhythm, but when you focus on how good his hands feel on you, how good the weight of him pressed against you feels, it’s as easy as breathing.

His grip tightens with each pass of your hips against him, his fingers digging into your skin, and you can feel a rumble of approval resonating in his chest. No man's touch has ever felt like this, so right, like everything's as it should be. His hands fit against your curves perfectly.

He doesn’t move with you, just lets you sway on him, breathes you in where his mouth is pressed against the juncture of your neck and shoulder. You can feel his teeth scrape against your skin, but he doesn’t bite down, and you’re taken aback by how badly you suddenly want him to do just that.

“Good girl,” he rasps, his voice so strained it almost makes you stop, but he pulls you back even tighter against him as if reading your thoughts, a silent way to tell you to keep going. And how could you not, when praise sounds so fucking good coming from him?

It only makes you more bold, only makes you want to please him more. One of your hands comes up to rest against his own on your hip, the other traveling up your body to reach behind you until it settles against the side of his neck. He freezes at the contact, his body going inhumanly still like you’ve stunned him. You go to pull away immediately, but his free hand flies up and presses your hand back down before it leaves his skin completely.

“Touch me. I want you to touch me.”

He sounds pained, like it’s hard for him to say those words, but it’s all the encouragement you need. He slowly lifts his hand, like he’s waiting on you to try to disobey, but once he’s sure you’re doing as he wants, it returns to its previous place on your hip, his fingers splaying wide. You tentatively caress the side of his neck, and he exhales a deep breath, his weight relaxing against your back.

You wonder how often he’s touched like this. It can’t be much, if he reacted like that. Then you realize how much you hate the thought of anyone else being with him like this and abandon the thought altogether.

You don’t know how long you stay like that, moving against him while he just breathes you in, and you don’t care. You’d stay like this forever if he’d let you. When you open your eyes again, his arms are constricted around your waist, and he’s glowering over your shoulder at someone you assume looked in your direction a little too long. It should probably concern you how possessive he is of you, but the way your body reacts to it tells you all you need to know.

You’re in deep shit.

***

Mine. Mine. Mine.

His throat is on fire, and his brain is fried, whatever primal fucking animal you bring out of him begging to just sink his teeth in, drag you away to his room and never let you out again, but he knows he has to do right by you, by whatever this is, even if it kills him in the process. You’re the one thing he can’t just take simply because he wants to. He shouldn’t even be taking you at all.

But he’d already crossed the line. Dumped gasoline on it, tossed the match, and let it burn to ashes, and now it’s too late. He has you in his arms, has your scent burned into his nose, the imprint of your body against his, and now he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to ever let you go after this. He’d fucked up, monumentally. No, he’d been fucked as soon as you breathed his name like that to keep him from killing that worthless idiot.

He can waste his time on the should haves and could haves all he wants later, but having your ass swaying against his dick for the last half hour makes it pretty difficult to have regrets right now. He wonders if you can feel how hard he is for you, if you know what you do to him, the effect you have on him, but he’s pretty sure you don’t know the goddamn half of it. 

You get to be blissfully unaware, meanwhile he wants to scream from the fact you’re tied to him in ways he still doesn’t fully understand, and he can’t even tell you. Not if he doesn’t want to scare you away. It’s too much too soon, and despite how content you seem to be right now, he can’t trust that you won’t run for the hills as soon as he clues you in to just how deep all this really goes. And he can’t have that. Not now, not ever.

So he just takes what he can get, for now. Inhales deep breaths of you even though his throat burns more and more each time, his body singing with the desire to taste how sweet he knows you’ll be. Grazes his teeth over the fragile skin of your neck even though they ache so badly to just break through, mark you so everyone knows you’re his, take your blood so you’ll be tied to him forever. Stands there while you grind against him even though his cock is already so painfully hard it’s truly a miracle he hasn’t busted in his jeans yet.

You’ve awakened so many desires in him in such a short period of time that it’s hard to keep up with them all, things he’s never cared about until now. Sure, he’s been horny before, but he’s never actually wanted a woman in his bed, at least not to this magnitude. He’s never wanted to sink more than his teeth into anyone, but fuck, he’d move heaven and earth to sink his cock into you, to feel you quivering around him and hear you moaning his name. He’d have to get himself off to that image later, at least for now until he can have the real thing.

Hadn’t Master said once that good things come to those who wait? Tomura had thought it was total bullshit at the time, just another one of Master’s nonsense philosophies, but now it’s starting to make sense. You’re the most good anyone like him could ever hope to get, so he’d wait. Bide his time, keep visiting you in your dreams to sway you even more, spend more time with you in reality after tonight, and then he’d reveal his hand, show you all the cards on the table when he’s sure you won’t run away from him. 

He’s not sure he’d have it in himself to let you.

***

note: sorry this one took a little longer, hopefully it's worth the wait. there's a lot of POV switching in this part, but I wanted to give perspective on everything that's unfolding from both sides so things hopefully make a little more sense.

as always, thank you so much for reading and for being here. it means the world to me that even a few of you spend your time reading things that I write. <3

see you in part 4.