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It was hard to find, and you’re pretty sure you outed yourself as Tomura’s Secret Santa to Spinner in the process of figuring out what “video games” meant on Tomura’s list. Tomura apparently has a thing for retro consoles, and retro consoles only play old games. Spinner mentioned a game Tomura’s been half-assedly searching for since last year, and you decided to find it. It took a lot of time spent scrolling on Ebay and picking through thrift store discount bins, but you finally found it, and you even found an old console to test it on to make sure it worked. You were really excited to give it to him until you got here and saw what everybody else did.

But it’s too late to change anything now. You’re here with your tiny gift, and Tomura’s going to think you didn’t try at all. If he’s even here. “Do you know if Tomura’s going to be here?”

“Last I heard, yeah,” Spinner says. “He changes his mind last-minute about stuff, though. I can text him if you want?”

“I have his number,” you say. “I can do it.”

You can, but you won’t. You know Tomura hates parties, and you don’t want to put his maybe liking you to the test against how much he hates getting dressed up and going out. It’s what kept you from asking him yourself, even though the two of you have been texting more than two people who see each other every day at work really should. The only person who brought up the party was him, when he asked if you were going. You said yes, and then he asked why. There’s going to be free food, you said. And I want to meet my Secret Santa.

As far as you can tell, most people have at least some idea of who their Secret Santa is, but you don’t have a clue. Your Secret Santa’s never written a note to go with any of their gifts, and nothing about the gift-wrapping style – or lack thereof, with the first few gifts – has given them away. The only thing you know is that they haven’t been following your hyper-specific list to the letter. While everything they’ve gotten you has been on the list, it’s all been an upgrade from the versions you asked for.

So they’re generous and bad at wrapping gifts. That could describe half the office. You’d like to know who it is, and there’s free food, so you’re here. And if you might have dressed up a little more than you usually would for an office holiday party on the off chance that Tomura makes an appearance, you’re going to keep that to yourself. Nobody has to know. And you can have fun at the party whether or not he’s here.

It is a really nice party – probably the nicest one you’ve ever been to. The decorating committee went berserk, to the point where there are multiple live Christmas trees on each wall and food tables on either end of the ballroom, each stocked with its own chocolate fountain and champagne tower. There’s music, which Yamada apparently arranged for but isn’t actually performing. Yamada’s in a good mood. When you run into him while trying to grab a glass of champagne, he grins at you. “Next year. Acapella. Are you in?”

“Ask me next year,” you say. “Once the holiday spirit’s worn off.”

Yamada cracks up at that, snags two glasses of champagne, and speeds off through the crowd. You finally manage to separate one for yourself and get clear of the table. Half a glass of champagne later, you’re ready to mingle. Time to see if participating in the office’s holiday traditions as a way to make friends actually worked.

It feels like it did. People say hi to you, and when you stop to talk to them, it doesn’t feel awkward at all. You’re willing to admit that some of it might be because you’ve all been drinking a little bit, but at the same time, you’ve gone to office parties where people were drunker than this and still silent as the grave. Some of your coworkers have already found out who their Secret Santas are, and some of them are carrying gifts that look even more over-the-top unwrapped than they did when they were covered in festive wrapping paper. Maybe it’s better if Tomura doesn’t show up. You can find a bigger gift and leave it on his desk next week, and no one will have to know that you messed up.

You cross paths with Tomura’s friends here. They’re all dressed up, probably more than anyone else at the party, although it looks more like they’re here for a costume party than a Christmas party. “Like it? It’s an Enji’s credit card special,” Twice says, tugging at the lapel of his purple suit. “He really wanted Dabi to come home for Christmas this year.”

“Did you?” you ask Dabi.

“Yeah, but I brought everybody with me,” Dabi says. Everybody. Even – “Shigaraki, too. He hates this shit, but he never misses a chance to stick it to somebody else’s shitty dad.”

“It was fun this year,” Magne says. “Fuyumi made us our own stockings and everything. That thing was nicer than any of my actual socks.”

“It sounds fun,” you say.

“Could have been worse,” Dabi says. He glances at you. “What did you do?”

You didn’t, really, which is the other reason you’re here – Christmas alone in your apartment was fun or at least peaceful the first few years, but lately it’s been feeling lonely. “Not too much. I just slept in and then came here.”

Tomura’s friends exchange glances. “Next year you’ll hang with us,” Twice announces. “You can still sleep in. We always show up late anyway.”

“You don’t have to invite me,” you say at once. You must have sounded a lot more pathetic than you meant to. “And Twice, you probably shouldn’t invite me to Dabi’s house –”

“First, it’s not my house,” Dabi says. “Second, I invite whoever I want. The more of my friends I bring, the more uncomfortable I make my jackass of a father. As long as you don’t hit on my sister –”

“Come on, that was one time,” Twice protests.

“Yeah, one time too many –”

You sidle sideways out of the conversation while they’re still debating exactly how many times one of Dabi’s friends have made a pass at his siblings. Dabi probably didn’t mean the invitation. You won’t count on it. But it’s nice that they’re thinking about it tonight. Hearing it makes you feel a little better, even if it’ll evaporate well before next Christmas.

The party ebbs and flows around you. Sometimes there are people dancing, but other times, the music quiets enough to let people talk. There are fewer and fewer unopened gifts floating around. You see Spinner still toting his gift for Aiba, which means that Aiba’s either not here or he just can’t see her around the box. The latter seems more likely to you. She’s really tiny. No matter where you look, there’s no sign of Tomura.

You do find Aiba, though, when you stop by the chocolate fountain. You can’t tell if she’s trying to hide. “Hi,” you say, and she looks up. “He’s not here, if that’s what you’re worried about. I haven’t seen him.”

“He said he wouldn’t come to it,” Aiba says. She looks like she didn’t sleep well last night, but her outfit’s on point. “I’m not worried about him. I’m just not very – fun right now. I only came to it because I wanted to meet my Secret Santa.”

“Really?”

“I thought the Secret Santa was going to be ruined because of – him. But then I found out it wasn’t him,” Aiba says. You nod. “And that makes it – nicer, I think. All the gifts I got were perfect, and none of it had anything to do with him. So there’s still one part of my Christmas that’s nice. I want to say thank you.”

Spinner had better have a game plan. “They haven’t come to talk to me yet, though,” Aiba says. She frowns. “Do you think they’re even here?”

“I know they’re here,” you say. “If you stay here, I can go find them and tell them to come over.”

Aiba nods. “Thank you,” she says. “And thank you. For the other day. That was nice, too.”

“No problem,” you say. “Just stay there.”

Courtesy of the giant present, Spinner’s really easy to find. You give him specific directions to where Aiba’s standing, tell him to take it easy, and wish him luck. As you watch him go, you find yourself wondering what’s in the box. Maybe you should have asked. It would have given you a better idea about the kind of thing you should have gotten for Tomura.

“Hey.”

That’s Tomura’s voice. You turn and find him standing behind you, a haphazardly wrapped present in one hand. You feel a temporary surge of relief at the sight. He got something small, too. At least you aren’t alone in totally missing the boat. But then you take a look at the rest of him, and the relief evaporates into something you can only describe as a kind of awestruck surprise. Tomura cleans up nice. Really nice.

Like the rest of his friends, he’s dressed up. Unlike the rest of them, he went pretty standard with it – black suit and tie, although he’s got a red cape around his shoulders. It should be incongruous, but he makes it work. He’s done something to his hair. Brushed it, maybe. Either way, it looks good. You can’t help but stare.

But even though he looks great – he has to know he looks great, right? – he doesn’t look quite comfortable. Maybe because you’re staring at him, and you haven’t said a word. “You look really nice,” you say, and a faint flush comes up in his cheeks. “I didn’t know if you were coming. I know this isn’t really your thing.”

“It’s what you’re doing,” Tomura says, and your face turns red, too. “I want to meet my Secret Santa.”

That’s you. You and your stupid gift that’s too small. “Right,” you say. You fumble in your purse and pull it out, then offer it to him. At least you did a decent job wrapping it. “It was me. I’m your Secret Santa. Here.”

Tomura takes the gift, then holds out the one he’s carrying to you. You did a decent job wrapping it; he probably needs both hands to get it open. “The wrapping on this looks nice,” you say nonsensically while he picks at the tape on yours. “You don’t have to open mine right now. You probably want to give this to the person you were Secret Santa for.”

“I just did.”

It takes way too long for you to figure that one out. “Wait, it was you?”

“You didn’t guess?” Tomura looks almost affronted. “I figured out you were mine days ago.”

“How? Was it my handwriting on the notes?”

“No,” Tomura says. He gives you a weird look. “I wrote on my list that I hate the cold, but I don’t tell anybody that. The only way you would have known is if you got my list.”

“Oh.” You would have thought the thing that gave you away would be bigger than that – like getting too familiar in your notes, slipping up and using his given name and not going back to his surname when you realized your mistake. “Okay.”

“You really didn’t know it was me?” Tomura’s stopped trying to open your gift for the sole purpose of staring at you. “I thought Dabi gave me away. When he was talking about how shitty I am at wrapping gifts.”

You vaguely remember a joke Dabi made. You really shouldn’t have had so much champagne. “Sorry. I should have thought about it a little more.”

“It’s supposed to be a surprise,” Tomura says. It’s quiet for a second. “A bad surprise?”

“No,” you say at once. “A good surprise. But – you could have just told me it was you. Then you wouldn’t have had to come to the party.”

“This is what you’re doing.”

“I know, but we could have done something else. Something you wouldn’t hate as much.”

“I don’t hate it as much as last year,” Tomura says. He nods at the gift. “Are you going to open that or what?”

“Yes,” you say. “Thank you.”

“Don’t say thank-you when you don’t know what it is,” Tomura says. “Just – open it.”

You don’t have any idea of what it could be. You know Tomura’s gone through everything on your list already. His wrapping job is easier to get through than yours. You peel back the paper and untie the ribbons and find yourself holding a hat.

It looks sort of like your hat. The one you gave him. But you found that hat on sale somewhere, ages ago, and this one is a lot nicer. Yours is just knitted, but this one has a soft lining, and the fabric on the outside feels like it might be water-resistant. It also has a goofy little pompom on it, which yours definitely doesn’t have. This isn’t anything you’d have bought for yourself. But you like it a lot.

You look up, ready to thank Tomura, and find him staring down at your gift, unwrapped in his hand. “You didn’t leave a note,” he says. “I like the notes.”

You’d facepalm if you weren’t holding the hat. “I thought I would just say what I would have said in the note to you. Face to face.”

He looks up. You’ve never seen that look on his face before. In fact, you’re not sure you’ve seen that look on anybody’s face – wary, expectant, maybe surprised, maybe hopeful. You should have planned what you were going to say a little better. Before you can say anything, though, Tomura speaks up. “How did you know about this game? I’ve been looking for it. Where did you even find it?”

“I found it on Ebay,” you say. “It wouldn’t have shipped in time, so I picked it up in person. I made sure to test it. It works. And as far as finding out about it – I asked Spinner about the kind of games you liked. I wanted to get it right.”

“I half-assed my list. Why would you try that hard?”

“I just – I don’t know,” you say. “I know Toga kind of bullied you into doing this. I wanted you to get something nice out of it. Sad Christmas might make more sense to you – and me, sometimes – but I thought it would be nice for you to have a happy one.”

That was a dumb thing to say. Tomura hasn’t told you a lot about his background – you’ve really only gotten close recently – but what you know isn’t good. It’s dumb of you to think that one video game and a handful of other gifts could rewrite any of that. You avert your eyes in a hurry. “Thank you for the hat. I didn’t mean to make you go off-list.”

“You didn’t make me do anything,” Tomura says. “I just thought you needed a new one. Since I’m keeping yours.”

Your heart skips a beat. “You are?”

“If you weren’t lying when you said it looked okay,” Tomura says. His hand brushes against your jaw, then applies pressure, turning you back to face him. He looks almost frustrated, but his face is flushed in a way you recognize. “And if you like me.”

“Do you like me?” you ask without thinking, and Tomura kisses you.

You’ve been regretting not giving him a real kiss under the mistletoe at work, but now you think it’s for the best that you didn’t. You haven’t had very many good first kisses, and you want a chance to savor this one. You wrap one arm around Tomura’s waist and pull him a little closer, and even though he startles, he keeps kissing you. He’s not hesitant, so you aren’t, either. There’s no way you’re going to be the first one to pull away.

When you do separate, it’s at the same time, and for what you’re pretty sure is the same reason. The music’s kicked back up. “Is that the stupid Grinch song?” Tomura asks, and you nod. He’s ever so slightly out of breath. He looks kind of flustered, but not nearly as much as you want him to. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“I mean, I could always sing All I Want For Christmas Is You again –” You see the face Tomura’s making. “I’m kidding. Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care,” Tomura says. He unwraps your hand from around his waist, then keeps holding it as he leads you towards the doors. “It doesn’t matter, if you’re coming with me.”

The wind hits you in a sharp blast as soon as you’re outside, and you pull your new hat on one-handed. “Maybe somewhere warm?”

Tomura pulls on your hand, and when you turn towards him, he kisses you again. Now that you’ve got both your hands free and you’re not in the middle of a crowd, you can kiss him how you want to – one arm around his waist, your other hand gathering up a few strands of his hair. Tomura’s breath catches, and a moment later, so does yours, and although it takes a while for you to separate again, you’re both out of breath when you do.

Tomura doesn’t go far. His arms are tight around you, and when he answers a question you’ve almost forgotten, you can feel his breath against your skin. “I’m warm enough.”

the end

You didn’t hook up. You didn’t even kiss. Tomura hadn’t been the one to float the idea – it was you, but only as part of the list of things people in horror movies do that get them killed. Tomura thought you sounded regretful when you said it. Whether you were regretful or not, you stayed close to him, and the two of you talked for hours. Tomura can’t remember all the things you talked about. It felt like everything, and by the time Machia honked the horn from the parking lot to let Tomura know he was there, the two of you were curled up sideways on the couch, Tomura’s hands inside your jacket and your fingers gently pulling apart the knots the wind put in Tomura’s hair.

Tomura didn’t want to get up. He was almost asleep, and as the two of you got into Machia’s truck, Tomura almost asked you if you wanted to come back to his place instead. Right now, thinking about how good it felt to have you pressed against him is making his face feel hot, but that night he was tired. He was almost asleep before. He wanted to fall back asleep with you and not think about anything else until morning.

But he didn’t ask, and when he actually got back to his apartment, he realized what a mess it was. Even if it hadn’t been a weird question, it would have been a bad idea, one Tomura wouldn’t admit to having if someone put a gun to his head. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been thinking about it, about you, since he watched you climb out of Machia’s truck and hurry through the storm into your apartment building.

Tomura gets to work a few steps ahead of Spinner, who calls for him to wait up. Tomura slows down. Spinner draws even with him, out of breath. “I saw Dabi’s text. What’s he doing here this early?”

“No idea.”

“Do you think he’s joking about the mistletoe?” Spinner asks. The automatic doors hiss open and Tomura tries to shake off the memory of walking through them with you, your arm around his waist. “I thought they banned it after last year. Didn’t they say it made a hostile work environment or something?”

“The decorating committee found a way around it,” Magne says from the far end of the lobby. There’s a table covered with boxes and it smells like food. Tomura and Spinner trade a glance, then beeline for it. “Watch out, there. Stay out of the blue squares.”

Huh? Tomura glances down and sees that some of the tiles on the floor have been outlined in blue tape. “What are those?”

“Mistletoe zones,” Magne says. Tomura looks up at the ceiling. Sure enough, there’s a weird plant stapled up directly over the square. “No kissing allowed unless you’re standing under one of these.”

“That’s stupid,” Tomura says. He points at the boxes on the table. “What are these?”

“Christmas cookies. There’s a box for everyone,” Magne says. She picks one up and inspects it. “Everybody on the decorating committee was supposed to bring some in, but Dabi’s sister made half of them anyway. That’s why he’s here so early.”

“He was making Christmas cookie boxes?” Spinner asks, then cracks up when Magne nods. “He must be pissed.”

“He’s been eating Fuyumi’s cookies all morning. I’m jealous,” Magne says. She hands a box of cookies to Tomura and one to Spinner. “Good luck today. Watch out for mistletoe.”

Dabi wasn’t kidding about the mistletoe. It’s everywhere. On the stairs. In one corner of the elevator. Every twenty feet or so along the hallway. When Tomura and Spinner get down to the basement, they find Toga and Twice taping down a blue square right in front of the printer. “Hey. Get that out of here. We don’t want that down here.”

“When was the last time either of you printed something?” Toga asks. She looks up at Tomura and her eyes instantly sharpen. “That’s a cute hat.”

Of course it is. It’s your hat, which Tomura wore today to make sure he wouldn’t forget it at home. “That’s not your hat,” Toga continues. She straightens up and comes closer. “Whose hat is it, Tomura-kun?”

“Nobody’s.”

“I’ve never seen you wear a hat before,” Spinner says. Spinner’s supposed to be on Tomura’s side. Tomura glares at him. “Where did you get that?”

“Nowhere.” Tomura sidesteps around them and sits down at his desk. There’s a present waiting for him, which means his Secret Santa got here early. A knot of anticipation pulls tight in Tomura’s chest. He has a present for you, too, but now he’s missed his chance to leave it at your desk instead of in your mailbox. “Leave me alone.”

“It’s from your Secret Santa!” Toga flops down across the back of Tomura’s chair and scares the hell out of him. “It is, isn’t it? She’s doing such a good job –”

So his Secret Santa is a girl. Tomura’s pretty sure Toga wasn’t supposed to tell him that, just like he’s pretty sure she’s the only person in addition to his Secret Santa who read his list. He knows it’s not Toga – she got Uraraka, or gave herself Uraraka on purpose. Which means his Secret Santa is probably – “It doesn’t matter who it’s from. I just borrowed it. I’m giving it back.”

“Borrowed it,” Twice repeats. He’s making a weird face. “When?”

Tomura hasn’t told any of his friends about getting stuck at the office with you, and he’s not planning on it. He keeps his mouth shut and they keep harassing him, until Chikazoku arrives and tells them to clear out. Chikazoku must have missed the mistletoe warning. He steps right into the square Toga and Twice just taped down, and Twice plants a kiss on his cheek before running for the hills. That’s probably the only way the mistletoe’s getting used today. Somebody stepping into the squares by accident. Tomura can’t imagine anybody doing it on purpose.

Tomura’s imagination apparently isn’t very good, because as the day wears on, he sees plenty of people hanging out in the squares, waiting for somebody to come by and kiss them. And he sees a weird number of people taking them up on it. He hears from Compress that some of them have turned it into a game, trying to collect a kiss from one person in every department. IT is the smallest department in the company. For the first and probably last time in Tomura’s life, there are multiple people wanting to kiss him at once.

Hatsume’s taking advantage of the situation, handing out kisses in exchange for bribes, and Chikazoku hasn’t left his desk since Twice sneak-attacked him. That leaves Tomura, Spinner, Saiko, and Aiba as potential kissing options for everybody else. Spinner kisses Magne on the cheek to help her complete her Bingo card, then gets sucked into a lengthy negotiation with two girls from HR of all places over whether or not he’ll kiss them platonically. Aiba, meanwhile, parks herself in one of the squares outside the break room and waits.

Tomura figures out what she’s waiting for right around when you get there. You stop to talk to her, then turn away, and make eye contact with Tomura. He hopes he’s not imagining the way your eyes brighten, and he’s definitely not imagining you walking towards him. “Hi,” you say. “How was your weekend?”

“I need your number,” Tomura says without thinking, and your eyes widen. “I wanted to talk to you and you don’t check your work messages on off days.”

“This weekend I was,” you admit, and Tomura kicks himself. “You can have my number. But only if you keep my hat.”

“It’s your hat,” Tomura says. “It looks better on you.”

“I think it looks cute on you,” you say, and Tomura’s face heats up. “Keep it. And give me your phone so I can put my number in it.”

Tomura unlocks his phone and hands it over, and while you create a contact for yourself, he keeps an eye on Aiba over your shoulder. You follow his eyeline and look too. Tomura sees your shoulders slump slightly. “What?”

“I’ve seen him,” you say. “He’s playing the game.”

“So he should get down here. He’s the only person in the building who’s got an IT kiss he doesn’t have to bribe somebody for.”

That’s not quite true. You wouldn’t have to bribe Tomura for a kiss, but Tomura knows without asking that you’re not playing the game. You’re shaking your head. “He got his IT kiss already,” you say. Tomura stares at you. You lower your voice. “From Saiko.”

Tomura forgot about Saiko. “What the fuck?”

“He’s her Secret Santa,” you say, like that explains everything. The next thing you say explains better. “She likes tea, doesn’t she?”

Saiko can’t shut up about tea. Still – “What the fuck. Did you see it?”

You nod. “They didn’t see me, but I saw them.”

“You talked to her. Did you tell her?”

“She asked me if I’d seen him, and I said yes. I didn’t tell her where or who he was with,” you say. You look unhappy. “If I tell her and she tells him, he’ll just say they were playing the game.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Tomura says, probably too loudly. You catch his arm and tug him around the corner, away from Aiba and the break room. “If I was playing that stupid game – which I’m not – I wouldn’t kiss anybody except –”

You. Tomura cuts himself off, averts his eyes, and that’s when he realizes where he’s standing. And where you’re standing. There are two mistletoe zones right next to each other, and you’re each standing in one.

Did you do this on purpose? Tomura doesn’t think so. You look just as surprised as he does, and your face turns red. “I’m not playing the game, either.”

“If you were, you wouldn’t have to bribe me,” Tomura says. “But if you were playing the game, I’d want you to lose.”

You look confused at first. Tomura sees when you get it, though, and he sees you swallow hard. “I don’t want to win the game.”

There’s nobody in the hallway, which is good. Tomura doesn’t want to kiss you for the first time with an audience. He reaches out and catches your hand, pulling you a step or two closer and deciding that it’s more fun to hold your hand when he doesn’t have gloves on. He has a free hand, too. That’s good. If he doesn’t hold onto your face so you stay still, he’s probably going to miss. He might miss even if you hold still. Why is this so hard? Why can’t Tomura just lean in?

Your free hand comes up and grabs his shoulder, and Tomura feels a surge of relief. Maybe he won’t have to. Maybe if you just –

Noise suddenly erupts from around the corner, scaring the two of you apart, and a moment later, Tomura hears running footsteps. He doesn’t have even a second to be pissed about the interruption before Aiba bolts past him down the hallway, face buried in her hands. Tomura’s not exactly a student of human nature, but it’s not hard to guess what must have happened. “She knows.”

“Someone should go after her.” It looks like you think ‘someone’ should be you. Your hand pulls free of Tomura’s, and you step out of your mistletoe zone without hesitating. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Tomura says. It is and it isn’t, all at the same time. He doesn’t like that you’re leaving. He likes that you want to help somebody who’s hurt. “I’ll see you later, right?”

“Right,” you say. You glance down at Tomura’s feet, then up at the ceiling – and before Tomura can do much else than realize that he’s still firmly in a mistletoe zone, you lean in and plant a kiss on his cheek.

It’s not really his cheek. Either you missed or you were aiming lower, and he thinks you were probably aiming lower, because your lips linger just below the corner of his mouth in a way that tells Tomura it wasn’t an accident. “Sorry,” you say again, and you take off down the hallway before Tomura can tell you not to apologize for the best thing that’s ever happened to him under the mistletoe or anywhere else.

He doesn’t think you’re sorry for that, anyway. He thinks you’re sorry that you had to leave. Tomura knows the feeling. It’s the same one he’s had since Toga’s Christmas party, and as weird of a feeling as it is, it’s nice to know he’s not having it alone.

“It’s really cold in here,” Tomura mutters. “Are you sure they have the heat on?”

“They have to, for the pipes. It’s just not on very high.” In the time since you and Tomura left, the building’s gone from being wide awake to being on what you can only call life support. The elevator panel is dark, only some of the lights are on, and the only sound you can hear other than your breathing and Tomura’s is the howl of the wind. “Is it just me, or – uh –”

“This is fucking creepy,” Tomura agrees. “Like the start of a horror movie or something.”

You were split on how to feel about the situation – some part of you that never grew out of being in high school a little excited about being snowed in with the guy you like, the rest of you wondering how you’ll feel about that when neither of you have showered in a couple of days. What Tomura just said puts it in perspective. “You know how people are always really dumb at the start of a horror movie?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s not do any of that stuff.”

Tomura cracks a grin at that, and his lips split and bleed. “Sounds good.”

Not being horror-movie dumb starts with keeping away from the windows, because that’s where it’s coldest. It also starts with getting in contact with somebody who can help. Tomura has a friend who has chains on his truck and a snowplow he can attach to the front of it, but his friend lives all the way out of town, and it’ll be hours before he can make it in. Once Tomura’s gotten the ETA – sometime past midnight – the two of you set your phones aside to conserve battery. The power’s still on, for now, but you don’t want to be caught off-guard if it goes out.

“Now that we called for help, we have to stay put,” you say. “The people who go running off into the storm always die.”

“You couldn’t pay me enough to go out there again,” Tomura says. He’s shivering a little less now that you’ve cleared out of the lobby, with its open spaces and floor-to-ceiling glass doors. “What about food? Nobody I work with keeps snacks down there.”

“You couldn’t pay me to go down in the basement right now,” you say. “People up in my pod keep food around. And heat rises, so we should head up there anyway.”

You have to let go of Tomura to climb the stairs, which is when you realize just how long you’ve been holding onto him. You started out with your arm around his shoulders, but he’s taller than you are, and by the time you pull away, it’s slid down around his waist. The reasonable part of you is wondering why he didn’t tell you to let go sooner. The high-school part of you is deciding that guys’ waists are more attractive than you thought they were.

Neither of those parts of you are going to help you survive a horror movie, or being snowed in with the guy you like. You focus on finding food.

The head of the Acquisitions department keeps a stockpile of gourmet instant ramen in his office, and he’s always offering it to people. You don’t think he’ll mind if you steal two packages, and you can always apologize later. Add in water from the electric teakettle in the breakroom and some hot sauce and soy sauce packets you stole, and it’s a decent dinner. The two of you eat it huddled up in the waiting room outside the department heads’ offices, sitting in two uncomfortable chairs and ignoring the couch.

You’re not sure why you’re ignoring the couch. The two of you slept on the couch together at Toga’s movie night, albeit on opposite ends, and sitting there together when you’re wide awake and trying not to freeze is the smart thing to do. Even in your coats, it’s still cold in here, and you should try to conserve body heat. It makes sense. It all fits in with surviving a horror movie. You can’t get the words out of your mouth.

“Am I going crazy, or does it feel colder in here?” Tomura asks, after you’ve both set your empty containers of soup aside. “It’s colder.”

“Maybe because we ran out of soup.” You definitely felt warmer while you were trying not to burn your mouth. “I have hot chocolate packets at my desk. Or I guess we should probably make coffee –”

“If you mix hot chocolate and instant coffee, it’s like a mocha,” Tomura says. You blink. “Magne says so, anyway.”

Hot chocolate mix and instant coffee. “I’ll try anything once. I’ll be right back,” you start, and Tomura gets to his feet. “No, you should stay.”

“People in horror movies always split up, and that’s when they die,” Tomura says. “I’m coming with you.”

Whether it’s gotten colder or not, the lights have definitely gotten dimmer, and the air is still and moist. Tomura walks close enough to you that you keep bumping into him, and finally you put your arm around him to hopefully control the number of times you run into each other. You go to the break room first, since it’s furthest away, then stop by your desk for the hot chocolate mix. “My Secret Santa got me a hot chocolate bomb,” Tomura says as you walk back. “Have you ever had one of those?”

“No. They look fun, though,” you say. That’s why you got one for him. “Have you tried it yet?”

“Yeah. It was good.” Tomura’s carrying the instant coffee can and the cups you grabbed. He watches you over them. “Would you get something for somebody that you hadn’t tried to see if it was good?”

You get a weird hit of foreboding. “I mean, I think people usually just go off the list,” you say. You take three or four hot chocolate packets and stack them up on top of the coffee can and cups. “And I don’t think they try the stuff. Spinner didn’t try that limited-edition eyeshadow palette he got for Aiba, did he?”

“No.” Tomura snorts. “She still thinks it’s her boyfriend buying her the stuff. Can you believe that?”

“Yes,” you say. Then you think about Aiba’s boyfriend, who you run into at the copy machine every so often. “Wait, has he ever gotten her anything that wasn’t tea?”

“He only gets her stuff he likes,” Tomura says. You wouldn’t have expected him to be that tapped in to office gossip. “Don’t look surprised. There aren’t many of us down there and it echoes like crazy. I pick things up even when I don’t want to.”

“They’ve been together for a while, right?” you ask. Tomura nods. The two of you reach the waiting area and you lift the supplies out of his arms, then tap the electric teakettle to get it working again. “It’s kind of sad, then. That her coworker with a crush on her cares more about getting her what she likes than her boyfriend does.”

You realize Tomura’s staring at you. “Not that that’s a reason to break up or anything.”

“She edits all his YouTube videos for free,” Tomura says. “Not that that’s a reason to break up. Or anything. Stop looking at me.”

You return your attention to the hot-chocolate in a hurry. “I should send him to talk to you about this shit,” Tomura continues. He sits down on the couch. “Toga’s advice is always insane, and I don’t know anything.”

“I don’t know anything, either,” you say. “Except if you like someone, you should notice what they like instead of trying to get them to like the stuff you do.”

The teakettle clicks, and you pour water into each of the cups, stirring them one at a time. “Okay. Moment of truth. Does it taste like a mocha or not?”

Tomura takes his cup but doesn’t raise it to his lips. “Are you going to sit down or just stand there?”

There’s space next to him on the couch. You settle down into it before trying a sip of the doctored hot chocolate. “It’s – not bad. Not a mocha, but not bad.”

“Not as good as a hot chocolate bomb,” Tomura says. “You should try one sometime.”

So he liked it. You feel the familiar rush of triumph that’s come over you every time you’ve gotten positive feedback on a gift you’ve given him, even if it was indirect. Usually you’re not sitting next to him when it happens, though. Usually you’re not so close to him finding out. “Maybe I’ll put it on my Secret Santa list next year.”

The two of you drink in silence, and you come to the conclusion that Tomura’s right – it is getting colder in here. Even the hot chocolate, scalding when it went into the cups, can’t hold onto the heat for long. Without meaning to, you find yourself huddling closer to Tomura, your winter coat rustling awkwardly against his. Tomura drains his hot chocolate in one last swallow that must burn the hell out of his tongue, then turns to you. “Come here.”

You cough on your last sip. “What?”

“In movies. People always freeze to death because they don’t share body heat.” Tomura’s averting his eyes from yours again, his face flushed. He’s still wearing your hat. “Come here. And unzip your jacket.”

He’s unzipping his. You unzip yours, too. Tomura gestures for you to come closer, still averting his eyes, and once you’re within reach, he pulls you awkwardly in against his chest. With your jackets both unzipped, his body’s warmth is all too inviting. It only makes sense for you to settle closer. Tomura’s tense at first. As you relax into his arms, so does he.

You remember waking up at one end of Toga’s couch, remember how the first thought in your head was that you were at the wrong end. You were supposed to be at the same end as Tomura, wrapped up like this, because he hates the cold and you knew you’d be able to keep him warm. You wanted to be what he’d reach for first. Like you are right now. “Is this what you had in mind?”

“It’s close,” Tomura says. You’re wondering what else he could be after when his gloved hand finds yours, covering it completely. “We’re killing this horror-movie thing.”

“Unless there are monsters,” you say nonsensically. In your defense, he’s holding your hand. “If there are monsters, we’re in trouble.”

“We’ve still got it.” Tomura’s voice goes softer, losing just a hint of its harsh edge. You remember this from the movie night, too – remember that it wasn’t a sleep thing, remember that it was just a sign that he was comfortable, at ease. You’ve never seen him be that way without his friends nearby until now. “If you can protect me from Yamada and the stupid Grinch song, you can handle a few monsters.”

“Sure. I’ll just sing Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer until they lose their will to live,” you say, and Tomura laughs. You haven’t heard him laugh before, and your face flushes when you realize just how much you like the sound. “You’re right. Monsters have nothing on me.”

“On us,” Tomura corrects. His voice sounds calm, but his hand is shaking slightly where it covers yours. You shift your grip and lace your fingers through his. “We’ve got it.”

His hand settles in yours, steadying so quickly that it’s hard to believe it ever shook in the first place. You tuck it into place against your chest and let your head fall against Tomura’s shoulder. “Yeah. We do.”

Dear Tomura, this one reads. I know I’m off-list again, but I saw these and they reminded me of you. A lot of the things I see remind me of you, but I think you’d be freaked out if I bought you most of them. I kind of want to ask Toga to ask you what you think of what you’ve gotten. If I’ve missed something obvious. Or if you’ve thought of other things you’d like since you made your list.

Tomura’s thought of other things, yeah. The problem is, he’s usually only thought of them after he’s opened a gift from his Secret Santa that has one of those things in it. Whoever his Secret Santa is, they’re good at this. Better than him, even if he knows how to wrap presents now. He keeps reading the note. I’d like to say I got the gloves in advance, but if I’m being honest, they’re extra. I saw the storm in the forecast and I thought about how cold it already gets down in the basement. I can think of better ways to keep your hands warm, but this is probably the most practical. Merry almost Christmas! Yours, your Secret Santa.

The gloves are lightweight when Tomura puts them on, but warm and soft on the inside – and they’re touchscreen gloves, so Tomura won’t have to take them off to use his tablet or his phone. They’re exactly right, just like all the other gifts Tomura’s Secret Santa has gotten him, but even as he folds the note and tucks it away in the same place he’s kept the others, he keeps getting stuck on the idea of other ways to warm his hands.

It’s fucking freezing in the basement, and it’s empty, even though it’s technically still work hours. Did everybody else just bail after the gift-wrapping thing?  If nobody else is here, Tomura’s not sticking around, either. He packs up his stuff and heads upstairs. Maybe he can get home before this storm or whatever it is kicks up in earnest. But when Tomura gets to the lobby, he finds out that he’s missed his window. The sky’s already darkened, and the parking lot is already covered in a layer of snow.

Tomura waited too long. If he hadn’t stuck around to wrap gifts with you – but even as he has the thought, he realizes that he doesn’t regret it even a little bit. It’s worth it, even if it means that he has to trudge through snow to the train station. You take the train home from work, too, don’t you? Tomura knows you had more work to do after the two of you finished the gifts. You told him so. What if you’re still here?

Your part of the office doesn’t have windows. Maybe you haven’t seen what the weather’s like. Tomura turns away from the front doors and heads back into the building to give you a heads-up.

You look surprised to see him, when he gets to your desk – but you aren’t unhappy. “Hey. Did you find, um – what are those?”

“The gloves? Secret Santa gift.” Tomura looks around your desk, trying to see if the gift he left you is anywhere. “Did you open yours?”

“Do you like them?”

“I’m wearing them.” If Tomura didn’t like them, he’d have put them in his desk and forgotten about them. He spots the stapled-shut paper bag he left for you this morning sticking out of your backpack. “Do you not like opening yours in front of people?”

“I was saving it so I’d have something to open tomorrow,” you say. “I heard somebody say that the office might be closed because of the storm.”

The snow. Right. There was a reason Tomura came up here, and it wasn’t just so he could see you again. “It’s already snowing. We should go now if we don’t want the trains to stop running on us.”

You look surprised. “You came to get me?”

“You take the train, too,” Tomura says. He doesn’t get why you’re looking at him like that. “We can walk together.”

“Okay,” you say. You smile at him, and Tomura’s face flushes badly enough that he actually considers covering it with his hands. “I’ll get my stuff.”

The weather looked bad when Tomura was just watching it through the doors, but once the two of you actually get out in it, Tomura realizes that it’s even worse than he thought. It’s the stupid wind. It keeps changing direction, blasting snow and ice crystals into his face no matter which way he looks, and the hood of his coat won’t stay up. His ears are freezing, even though his hair is covering them. It’s not a long walk to the train station, but Tomura knows he’ll have a splitting headache by the time he gets there.

“Here.” You’re wearing a hat and a scarf, and you take off the hat and offer it to Tomura. Tomura tries to say no, but you put it on him anyway, tugging it down over his ears. “I’m not the one who hates the cold.”

You’re right, but something about it strikes Tomura as weird. “How’d you know I hate the cold?”

“Everybody knows that.”

Tomura’s pretty sure everybody doesn’t. If they did, he’d get a lot more ironic let-it-snow shit from his friends around Christmas. There’s only one place you could have heard that, which means that you either know who his Secret Santa is – or it’s you. “Where did you hear that?”

“Sorry?” You’re rewrapping your scarf, pulling it up over your face. “Couldn’t hear you. The wind is really loud.”

The wind is loud and it’s getting worse. Tomura can ask you again once you’re at the train station and out of the weather. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

You and Tomura started out walking side by side. By the time you approach the train station, you’re walking pressed close together, your hand grasping Tomura’s arm, Tomura leaning into you as much as he can without falling over. Part of him feels stupid about it. You’re not fighting your way through a blizzard or something. The rest of him is too happy with it to care. His ears are warm and he’s wearing warm gloves that he got from his Secret Santa who might be you, and you decided you wanted to hold his arm without him doing anything. In spite of the weather, Tomura can’t count this as anything but a win.

The station platform is empty when you get there, and Tomura feels a hit of foreboding even before he sees that every arrival screen is flashing the same message. “Out of service?”

You fumble your phone out of your pocket, almost dropping it. “They just shut down. We missed it by five minutes.”

Fuck. “We can’t stay out here,” Tomura says, and you nod. You don’t have gloves. Your hands are shaking. “We should go back to the office.”

“They have to keep the heat on so the pipes don’t freeze,” you say. “And we can probably get the lights back on even if Maintenance turned them off.”

Tomura’s pretty sure Maintenance left before the two of you did. You were the last ones still in the building. Everybody else left because of the storm, and if Tomura had just left instead of going back to tell you, he’d have been on the last train home – and you’d have been stuck at the office in bad weather, by yourself. Tomura doesn’t like thinking about it. He doesn’t like thinking about it so much that even if he’d known for a fact that going back to get you would have meant he’d be snowed in with you, he’s sure he’d have gone anyway.

He waits for you to put your phone away, then grabs your hands in his gloved ones. “Do you want your hat back?”

“It looks better on you,” you say. There’s nothing on the planet that would look better on Tomura than on you, and Tomura almost says so, except the way you’re looking at him is enough of a distraction that he can’t get the words out in the right order. “Come on. Let’s get back before it gets worse.”

It’s already worse on the way back. There’s more snow on the ground and more ice crystals whipping around in the air, and Tomura’s shivering on every step. You aren’t walking with your hand on his arm anymore. This time you’ve got your arm wrapped around him, even though you’re shorter than he is, holding on tight as the two of you shuffle along. Tomura wants to get inside and out of the wind more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life. And at the same time, he’s dreading the second when you’ll let him go.

A few weeks ago, you’d have found somewhere else, but you’re much more comfortable with Tomura and his friends than you were before. Seeing them outside of work at Toga’s party probably helped. Seeing them the next morning, waking up with bedhead and low-grade hangovers that could only be cured with diner food, moved them firmly from the category of scary coworkers to people you could call friends. And waking up at one end of Toga’s couch to realize that you’d spent the entire night sharing it and a blanket with Tomura moved him from Secret Santa recipient to something else.

You’re not sure what else, exactly. You’ve been keeping a close eye on him since the Secret Santa thing started, just so you could figure out good times to sneak down to the basement and leave things on his desk, but for the past few days you’ve felt different about seeing him out and about. Instead of being relieved, and using your next free second to race downstairs and plant a gift, you’ve gone to talk to him. Or you’ve stayed put wherever you were and hoped he’d come talk to you. He’s different at work than he is out of it, but now that you’ve seen him the other way, you can’t fail to see that the person who slept on the couch with you is there when he’s here, too.

Work doesn’t bring out the best in him, and work-related holiday festivities are even worse. You can hear him complaining as you make your way over. “I don’t need to learn gift-wrapping. The stuff I leave is fine.”

“No. Spinner’s gifts are fine. Yours look like you’re dropping off a sperm sample,” Dabi says. He’s organizing the pile of gift-wrapping supplies and ignoring the way Tomura swears at him. “It’s not going to kill you.”

“With everybody else here, Toga’s probably not just picking on us,” Spinner says. He spots you coming over and waves. “Hey. You got an invite, too?”

“My gift-wrapping must be worse than I thought,” you say. You drop down into the chair between Twice and Tomura. “Hi.”

“Hey.” Tomura glances quickly at you, then goes back to screwing around with a mostly-empty roll of ribbon. “You have a gift in your mailbox. I saw it when I checked mine.”

You didn’t put a gift in his mailbox today – it’s on his desk again, waiting for him whenever he gets back. You dropped it off after you saw him walk back on the way to the conference room. “I’ll look after we’re done with this. Does this happen every year?”

“No. It’s new.” Tomura scowls. “It sucks.”

“Hi everybody!” Toga’s standing on a chair at the front of the room, waving to catch the room’s attention. “Thanks for stopping by. It’s come to my attention that some of you guys don’t know how to wrap a gift to save your lives, and even though it’s the gift that counts, the way it’s presented matters, too! So for the sake of your Secret Santa recipients, we’re going to go over the basics of gift-wrapping –”

“And we’re going to practice on these,” Midoriya announces, holding up a clear plastic bin that’s full to the brim. “The gifts from the toy drive. Which we need to wrap anyway.”

“I told you we weren’t in trouble,” Spinner says to the group at large.

“No, we’re just free labor.” Tomura’s scowling worse than before. “I can’t wait to count my papercuts afterwards.”

“To help with this,” Toga continues loudly, “every table has at least one person who knows what they’re doing. Compress and Yaoyorozu will go over the basics, and then your group’s expert will help you get going.”

Where’s your table’s expert? You glance around, only to find everyone else looking at you. “We need to work quickly,” Iida announces, even louder than Toga. “It’s imperative that we get these gifts mailed this afternoon. If they’re delayed by the storm, they won’t reach their recipients in time. Do you want to be the reason why needy children go without presents this year?”

“Hey! Iida! That’s kind of harsh,” Midoriya says hastily. Dabi is snickering. “Just do your best, everybody!”

There’s a bin of toys under the table. Compress and Yaoyorozu order everybody to start with something in a box, since they’re easier to work with, but you have a bad feeling you’re the expert, and the things that are weirdly shaped are going to take longer. You take out a plastic dinosaur toy and get to work, listening with half an ear to the instructions. You don’t want to contradict anything they’re saying. It’ll slow things down, and based on the size of the toy bin, you can’t afford that.

You overhear the other supposed experts at the other table, and they seem pretty comfortable giving instructions, but you decide to keep quiet unless somebody asks you something. And somebody does. “Are girls born knowing how to gift-wrap or something?” Spinner asks, staring at the dinosaur toy you’ve successfully mummified in candy-cane wrapping paper. “How did you do that?”

“Practice, I guess?” You don’t really remember somebody teaching you. “It was probably just watching my mom.”

“Maybe you should handle all the weird-shaped shit,” Dabi says. He abandons the box he’s wrapping and starts sorting the toys in the bin. “I want to get out of here sometime this year and that’s not going to happen if you put me in charge of that.”

You nod and pick up the grotesque-looking nutcracker at the top of the pile. To your surprise, everybody else settles down to work quickly – even Tomura, who’s still scowling, and handling the wrapping paper like it might take a bite out of him. The other tables are chattering, but everybody at yours is quiet. Focused. When Midoriya swings by to pick up any wrapped gifts, he has to make two trips to collect all of them from you.

It’s not until you’re starting on the second round of presents that Tomura speaks up. “This isn’t so bad,” he says, and you almost amputate your finger in shock. “I thought it was going to be like that movie.”

“Which –” Dabi interrupts himself, then makes a weird noise. “The one where the guy’s cheating on his wife?”

“And he’s trying to get the clerk to gift-wrap that ugly necklace he bought for his mistress before his wife gets back?” That scene made you cringe. There are lots of scenes in Love Actually that make you cringe, but that one stands out. “Did he actually cheat on his wife or was he just trying to cheat?”

“He’s cheating.” Dabi measures out a huge scoop of glitter and drops it on top of the present he’s wrapping before he tapes the wrapping paper down. “My dad pulls shit exactly like that. Except he was fucking my boyfriend, not his secretary.”

You almost choke on thin air. “He – what?”

“That was ages ago,” Twice says. “They didn’t talk for like – five years. Then Dabi’s sister made them go to family therapy and now Enji makes up for it by giving Dabi money whenever he asks.”

“And when he doesn’t,” Spinner says. Dabi is making a face. “You’re better off, dude.”

“You know how Shigaraki hates Christmas? That’s how Dabi feels about Valentine’s Day,” Twice says. You probably would, too, if your dad had hooked up with your boyfriend. “If you’re still around by then, you can hang out with us. We always celebrate by maxing Enji’s credit card.”

If you’re still around by then. What does that mean? “Sounds fun,” you say, watching as Dabi adds two scoops of glitter to his next present. “Uh, what are you doing?”

“It’s there. We’re supposed to use it,” Dabi says. “The kids will get a kick out of this shit.”

“Yeah, but their parents will hate it.”

Tomura takes a scoop of glitter and pours it in the gift bag he’s been screwing around with. “It’s not about them.”

You remember who the gifts are for all at once. Kids in foster care, whose parents probably suck as a rule. They deserve to have some fun, and you’ve never met a kid who wouldn’t go crazy over a glitter bomb. When you start wrapping your next present, you add some glitter to it, too.

At some point the department heads come looking for all their employees, which is how you find out that Toga didn’t clear the meeting with anybody before she called it. Most of your table takes the opportunity to flee – Dabi first, then Twice, and Spinner after a second’s hesitation. Tomura stops halfway out of his chair when he realizes you’re not getting up. “Aren’t you leaving?”

“My supervisor hasn’t come looking for me yet,” you say. “And there’s still a lot to do.”

You know there’s work waiting for you back at your desk, but it shouldn’t take too long, and Iida’s guilt-trip about the presents definitely got to you. You empty the rest of the toy bin onto the table and grab a box with a model train printed on the front. A chair scrapes next to you as Tomura sits back down, and he lifts the train box out of your hands. “Give me that. I can’t wrap the weird ones.”

You stare at him. You can’t help it. “What are you doing?”

“My supervisor hasn’t come looking for me, either.” Tomura shrugs. “It’ll be faster if I help.”

“You hate this stuff,” you say.

“I’m not going to be the reason needy kids don’t get presents this year.” Tomura’s Iida impersonation is pretty on point, especially when he adds in Iida’s trademark hand gestures. You laugh. “And I haven’t gotten a paper cut yet. Nobody will put up with my bitching next year if I don’t get at least one.”

He says that, and it sounds like him – but somehow you don’t buy it. He’s not making eye contact, and his ears are turning sort of red, and your heart kicks up a weird, fluttery jolt. “If you want to hang out, you can just say that,” you say. “You don’t have to do – I know you hate doing this.”

“This is what you’re doing,” Tomura interrupts you. “That’s the important part.”

That one’s hard for you to parse, so hard that Tomura manages to wrap the train and start on the next gift before you can get even sort of a handle on it. And once you do, you’re not sure you want one. Tomura hates Christmas. Every Christmas thing you’ve seen him do has been done under pressure or threat, and he just got a golden opportunity to escape. Why would he give it up to hang out with you?

There’s one answer. An obvious answer. One you’d believe if it was coming from anybody but him. “I can use the help,” you admit. “Thanks for keeping me company.”

“Yeah.” Tomura reaches for the wrapping paper at the same time as you do, and your hands collide. You thought he’d flinch. You thought you’d flinch. But your hands stay still, poised against one another, for a long moment before Tomura draws away, his fingertips skimming the back of your hand as he goes. “Any time.”

It’s not like Tomura isn’t tired. Tomura’s really tired. He feels the heaviness in his limbs and the yawns tightening his jaw, but his mind is wide awake, and he’s going to pay attention to every second of the movie you picked. Since he gave up forcing everybody to watch Gremlins in favor of your movie, he wants to make sure it was worth it, and he wants to know exactly what happened in case you want to talk about it afterwards. He’s hoping you do. He’s not ready for you to leave yet.

Tomura wasn’t sure about seeing you outside of work, but then he decided it would help him figure things out. Seeing you around the office is one thing. For him to know if he likes you, he has to know what you’re like outside of work, so he can decide if he’d want to hang out with you then, too. Tomura’s not good at this whole liking-people bullshit. If there was some kind of life skills class where everybody learned it, he probably missed it while he was being homeschooled or in juvie. By the time he got out, halfway through high school, everybody already knew what they were doing. Tomura just has to fumble through somehow.

You make it feel less like fumbling. It makes more sense to Tomura when you’re sitting next to him, roasting Love Actually just like he is, actually paying attention during the horror movie he picked instead of drinking straight through it. You pay attention to things, notice them, just like Tomura’s Secret Santa notices stuff about him. Tomura feels less weird about being noticed than he used to.

But he doesn’t want to just sit here noticing and getting noticed all night long. He wants to talk to you about something that’s not work or whatever dumb Christmas thing is happening, and he can only manage half. “Is this really the first movie you thought of when I said you could pick one?”

“I was trying to pick one you all would like,” you say. Something about that reminds Tomura of the way you wrote your wish list. “I do like this one, though. Some people think it’s stretching it to call it a Christmas movie, but it’s all leading up to Christmas, so I count it.”

Movies that can only be called Christmas movies if Tomura’s stretching it are his favorite kind of Christmas movies. “Why do you like it when it’s going to be sad?”

You glance sideways at him. “What makes you think it’s going to be sad?”

“The grandma telling the story is the main girl when she’s old, and she’s telling it past tense,” Tomura says. You nod. “Besides, he’s – like that. No way is that working out well for anybody.”

“But it could,” you counter. “You might be right about how the story goes, but there’s nothing in the story that says it has to be that way.”

Tomura thought you were awake, but maybe you’re sleepier than he thought. “You mean, other than the whole story so far?”

“I mean –” You trail off. “In some stories, there’s obstacles that can’t be overcome. Like somebody being dead, or something being too wrong to work. And in some stories the obstacles are a choice, kind of. Those are the ones I like.”

Tomura’s played games where choices matter. Somehow he always stumbles into the bad ending, and knowing that there’s a good ending out there that he was too stupid to get makes it even worse. If you like those stories, you’re probably better at making choices than he is. Still – “If the end’s the same, why does it matter?”

“Well –”

“Hey, can you save the philosophy until after the movie?” Spinner yawns. “I’m still trying to watch.”

Tomura gives it five minutes until Spinner passes out, and he’s only off by about thirty seconds or so. Now it’s just the two of you awake, watching the weird movie you picked. Tomura’s trying hard to watch the movie, but just like he keeps getting the song you sang stuck in his head, he keeps getting stuck looking at you.

The movie ends like Tomura thought it would – sadly, but not surprisingly – and he glances at you. “You’re going to say she could have chosen to stay with him,” Tomura says, and you nod. “Why would she do that? When he’s – like that –”

Tomura doesn’t get why he’s being squeamish about calling it like it is. The main character’s ugly. Scary. Nothing anybody wants to touch. “Maybe she likes him how he is,” you say. You’re not looking at the screen anymore. You’re looking at Tomura. “There’s nothing about the story that says she couldn’t have picked him. There’d have been consequences, but there are always consequences. And I guess that’s why it’s sad. Knowing it could have been the other way just as easily.”

You look away from Tomura, and even though he usually hates being looked at, he sort of misses it. “I guess it’s good that everybody fell asleep,” you say. “This doesn’t really seem like a sad-Christmas crowd.”

“Sad Christmas makes more sense than happy Christmas,” Tomura says before he can really think about it. “It never made sense to me, except –”

Making friends. Spending the holidays with them instead of wondering why everybody but him got to celebrate with people they mattered to. And he’ll never admit it to Toga, or anyone, but the Secret Santa thing is kind of fun. He likes leaving stuff for you and seeing how you react. Almost as much as he likes getting things from whoever his Secret Santa is.

“Yeah,” you say, like he’s explained it all out loud. Maybe he’s tired enough that he has and just didn’t realize. “I can see that.”

You’re doing that noticing thing again. Tomura keeps looking at you, trying to notice you back, but the longer the two of you look at each other, the weirder it starts to feel between you. Like there’s something more that needs to happen. Tomura steels himself, braced for whatever you do or to act as soon as he has an idea of what to do.

And then you look away. “It’s late. I should go.”

“You could stay,” Tomura says. “None of us except Toga live here, and we’re all sleeping over.”

You look like you’re thinking about it. Tomura can think of a lot of reasons why you should – it’s late, it’s cold, it’s probably a long way to your apartment, you’d basically have to wake up again by the time you got home – but before he can say any of them, you nod. “Okay. Where should we sleep?”

You end up with your heads at opposite ends of the couch, under the same blanket. Both of you rustle around, knees knocking together as you try to settle in. You fall asleep faster than Tomura does. There’s no way he can imagine you tangling your legs up with his if you were awake, and Tomura’s so focused on trying to live with being this close to someone that the question of whether he likes you is answered definitively offscreen. It’s something he wakes up with. Just like he wakes up still sharing the couch with you.

He looks really unhappy about it. It makes you nervous. “Did she tell you to invite me?”

“Where do you think I got this?” Shigaraki gestures at it with one hand, and you notice that his skin looks less irritated than it did the last time you saw him. He must be using the hand cream, and the feeling of accomplishment that settles around you is almost enough to cut the nerves of this conversation. “Can you go to the party or not?”

You study the invitation. “A pajama party?”

“She just means not work clothes,” Shigaraki says. He scratches lightly at his neck. “We just eat and hang out and watch Christmas movies. Nothing weird.”

“Other than you watching Christmas movies,” you say. He glances at you, then looks away. “I thought you hated this stuff.”

“There are drinks, too. That helps.”

You’re kind of maxed out on Christmas drinks. You glance at the invitation. It’s for tomorrow, which isn’t a work night, and you don’t have anything planned. Toga’s been nice to you. If it’s Toga’s party and she’s inviting her friends, Spinner and Twice will be there, and they’ve been nice to you, too. You might not know Dabi or Magne or Compress very well, but you think you can probably avoid bothering them if you’re careful. There’s not a reason to say no – except the reason that’s standing in front of you, waiting with increasing irritation for you to reply. “Well?”

“Do you want me to go?” you ask, and Shigaraki stares at you. “If you’re only inviting me because Toga’s making you –”

“That’s not what I said,” Shigaraki says. He looks even more annoyed than he did a second ago, but there’s color coming up in his face. You wonder if that’s what you looked like when you were singing a Christmas song to ward off the carolers. “Can you go or not?”

“Um –” If you say yes, he’ll stop staring at you like that. And you still need to make friends. “Yes. Tell Toga I’m looking forward to it.”

Shigaraki nods once and stalks off, probably headed straight back to the basement. You study Toga’s invitation a little more carefully. There’s a list of movies on it that looks pretty good, and it says you’re not supposed to bring anything except yourself, your pajamas, and an ugly sweater if you have one. It sounds like a quieter party than the ones you’ve been going to, and it’s not a work night tomorrow, so there’s no reason for you to feel anxious about it. Is there?

“Hey!” Ashido’s peering over the wall of her cubicle into yours. “Did I hear that right? Shigaraki left the dungeon just to ask you out?”

Your face goes up in flames. “He didn’t ask me out. He was just dropping off an invitation to Toga’s party. She must have asked him –”

“That’s not what he said,” Hakagure says, leaning out of her cubicle across the way to stare at you. “You assumed Toga asked him to ask you, but he didn’t agree.”

“And we know Toga usually hand-delivers her invitations,” Ashido continues, “because Uraraka got one. Right, Uraraka?”

“I went last year, too,” Uraraka says. “It’s different, but it’s okay. They’re all a lot different when they’re not at work.”

Uraraka’s going, too. Knowing that eases your mind a little bit. And knowing that they’re different than they are at work is a positive. You think. Given that ‘what Shigaraki’s like at work’ is a category broad enough to include just about every behavior somebody can exhibit without getting fired, you’ve really got no idea what he could possibly be like in his off hours. In twenty-four hours and change, you’re going to find out.

You try not to think about what Ashido and Hagakure said, but it lurks at the edges of your thoughts overnight and into the next day, and by the time you’re knocking on the door to Toga’s apartment, you can’t ignore it any longer. He didn’t say Toga told him to ask you. He also didn’t say he didn’t want you to go. In your observations of Shigaraki, you’ve never seen him be shy about saying what he doesn’t like.  If he didn’t want you to go, you’d have known about it. Which means he does want you to be here. Why does he want to see you outside of work? Is he really –

“You came!” The door opens in your face, startling you out of your thoughts, and Toga pulls you inside before you can get your bearings entirely. “Tomura-kun said he needed an invitation for you, but we didn’t think he’d actually go through with it. I’m so glad you’re here!”

“He went through with it? Damn.” Dabi appears around the corner. If you’d been trying to predict his outfit for a pajama party, you wouldn’t have picked an actual pajama set, which is what he’s wearing. “I hope you like lame-ass Christmas horror movies, because that’s what we’re watching first.”

“There are Christmas horror movies?”

“Oh yeah! Lots of them!” Twice also has a pajama set. His comes with a hat on it. “We have to watch at least one every year so Shigaraki won’t get up and leave when we try to watch Home Alone or Elf.”

“And this year we had to have two horror movies,” Magne adds. She’s in the kitchen, mixing drinks. “It’s the only way we can get him to sit through Love Actually.”

“How do you pick the movies?” you ask. Magne hands you a drink, then shoos you towards the living room, which is a sea of couches and beanbag chairs. “Does everybody pick?”

“We always do Nightmare Before Christmas, since we can all agree on that one,” Spinner says. He’s already sitting down, and his idea of pajamas looks a lot more like yours – sweatpants, sweater, both sort of old. “Then we put all the others on a corkboard and play darts to pick.”

He points over to one wall, and sure enough, you can see a corkboard covered in darts and tiny pieces of paper. “Anybody who’s invited can suggest one.”

“One of mine made it this year,” Uraraka says brightly. “Die Hard.”

“You could have added one, too, if somebody hadn’t waited so long to invite you –”

“Give it a rest,” Shigaraki says, and you jump. You almost didn’t notice him, settled in like he is at one corner of the couch with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his hair. “Take one of my picks. So you won’t have to watch a bunch of things you hate.”

“Oh, that’s okay –”

“No,” Shigaraki says. He sits up and his hood falls down. “Pick something.”

“Pick something,” Twice agrees, edging past you to plop down on the couch next to Shigaraki. “Save us from the gremlins. I can’t watch the microwave scene again.”

“No, we should keep the gremlins. I don’t want to watch that Krampus thing,” Toga complains. “It looks so gross and weird –”

“We only have one movie that’s off-limits,” Spinner says. “It’s –”

“The Grinch,” you say, and Spinner gives you a surprised look. “Let me think for a second.”

“Sit down while you’re thinking about it,” Magne advises, reaching over the back of the couch to shove Twice towards the middle and free up the space next to Shigaraki. Is that where you’re supposed to sit? “Go on.”

You sit down, careful not to spill your drink, and think through the list of Christmas movies you know. You don’t want to pick something they’ll hate – or something Shigaraki will hate, given that he’s the one who invited you – and the only thing you have to go on is that they all like Nightmare Before Christmas. Hasn’t Tim Burton done another Christmas movie? You take a sip of your drink, which is thankfully not eggnog, to jog your memory. “What about Edward Scissorhands?”

“Never seen that one,” Dabi muses. “Spinner. Get rid of the gremlins and add it to the lineup.”

You haven’t seen it in forever. Hopefully it’s not bad, and hopefully everybody drinks enough by then that they don’t care whether it’s good or not. As Spinner screws around with the TV and everyone else starts looking for spots to sit, you turn your attention to Shigaraki. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Letting me pick one,” you say.

Shigaraki shrugs. The two of you are sitting close enough that his shoulder brushes against yours. “It’s not a big deal. I knew you wouldn’t pick the Grinch.”

“I know a Grinch-free zone when I’m in one,” you say, and Shigaraki’s scarred mouth pulls up slightly at one corner. You can’t imagine him smiling like that at work, and you don’t know how you feel about it. “Thanks for inviting me to this, too.”

“Toga didn’t make me,” Shigaraki says. “It was my idea. Just so you know.”

He was holding your gaze at first. When he says that, he looks away, and you don’t try to make him look back. You face front and wait for Toga to start the movie, and when Magne sits down on the couch, you scoot just a little closer to Shigaraki to make room. It reminds you of high school in some sense you can’t put your finger on, some way you’re not ready to look at too closely. But there are five movies in the queue for Toga’s holiday party. You’ve got a long time tonight to figure it out.

Tomura shrugs. “I’m supposed to read this,” he says, waving the card at you. You nod, and Tomura starts to unfold the message, for sheer lack of anything better to do. Before he can get more than a sentence into it, even more laughter erupts. “What’s going on in there?”

“Mina got a gift from her Secret Santa,” you say. Tomura tries and fails to remember which one Mina is. “And I think her Secret Santa must be a friend of hers, because there’s no way somebody would buy a book of Christmas smut for somebody they didn’t know.”

“Christmas smut,” Tomura repeats. The words aren’t connecting. “Huh?”

“It’s called The Naughty List,” you say. “A bunch of smutty short stories that are Christmas-themed. She’s been reading them aloud. Right now I think it’s about wrapping yourself like a gift and hiding under your neighbor’s tree, but the best one so far was about seducing a mall Santa by sitting on his lap and telling him all the naughty stuff that happened all year. Did you ever do that?”

“Sit on a mall Santa’s lap and lie about the stuff I did all year?”

“No, the photo op,” you say. “As a kid.”

“My family didn’t go for Western holidays,” Tomura says. Maybe that’s true, or maybe he’s just blocking something out. Most of the holidays he remembers with his birth family didn’t end well for him. “You?”

“My parents tried,” you say. “They really wanted the photo, but I was scared of the Santa.”

“Weird.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” Tomura says. “Just weird that you’re scared of mall Santas, but not scared of singing a Christmas carol in front of Yamada’s weird acapella group.”

“I sweated through my shirt trying to sing that,” you say. Tomura blinks. “It was for a good cause.”

Tomura looked up the other five verses to the song after you went back upstairs. You weren’t kidding about what it was going to be like. “Yeah. I owe you.”

You shake your head. “No, you don’t.”

Tomura doesn’t know what to say to that, and you don’t look like you know how to follow up. What would Tomura say if he could get his shit together, anyway? He already said thank you. He can’t tell you that you have a nice voice or that he got the song stuck in his head or that he was wondering if you had anybody in mind when you were singing it. Those thoughts need to stay inside his head. Nothing good is going to happen if any of them make it out of his mouth.

He has to say something. “You got a gift. Are you going to open it?”

“I’ll open mine here if you do,” you say. Tomura nods, and as you start prying open the bag Tomura stapled shut, he unfolds the note his Secret Santa left and reads it.

Dear Tomura, it starts. I know this wasn’t on your list, but I think it could help if you were out of other options. I get eczema on my hands in the winter, too, and this stuff is the only stuff that’s ever helped.

Knowing that his Secret Santa has eczema on their hands, it should be easy to figure out who they are, but Tomura can’t recall ever seeing somebody around the office with messed-up hands. Maybe the stuff really does work. He opens the box and comes up with a jar of hand cream with an unfamiliar name. Tomura looks at it, then back at the letter. I’m sorry if this is overstepping. It’s just something I noticed. If you do use it, I hope it helps. Sincerely, your Secret Santa.

They noticed. What does that mean? Spinner’s been going overboard on gifts for the person whose list he got because he wants to show her that people other than her boyfriend notice her and appreciate her. How much attention has Tomura’s Secret Santa been paying to him? Probably too much, or they wouldn’t have taken his stupid, half-assed list and turned it into a chain of gifts he actually wants. Too much, or they wouldn’t have known how badly his hands have been bothering him this winter in particular.

It’s weird. Tomura should feel weird about it, but he doesn’t. He feels – warm.

Across the mailroom, the paper bag tears as you give up on trying to pick out the staples. Tomura looks up and finds you staring down at his gift. He can’t read the look on your face, and he’s apparently a lot worse with suspense than he thought he was. He almost asks what you think of it before he remembers that you’re not supposed to know who left the gift, and modifies the question at top speed. “What did you get?”

“A pen,” you say slowly. “I put one on my list, but I asked for a cheaper one.”

Tomura knows. “Did you actually want the cheaper one, or were you just trying to come up with an easy list?”

“I didn’t want to make anybody overspend on me,” you say. “I mean, I know everybody else is – Mina’s Secret Santa didn’t take the price tag off that book – but I haven’t been here that long, and I didn’t want anybody to get my list and think I was asking for too much.”

Tomura thinks you weren’t asking for enough. That’s why he got the nicer pen. “Do you like it?”

Your grip tightens on the pen, like you think somebody’s going to take it away. “Yes.”

“Then don’t worry about it,” Tomura says. “The thing I got wasn’t on my list. You don’t see me overthinking it.”

He’s sort of lying. He’s definitely overthinking it, just not the same way you are. You study him for a second, then hit him with the same question. “Do you like it?”

“If it works,” Tomura says. You nod and leave the room without saying anything else.

He tells himself to wait to try it until he gets home so he doesn’t slime up his keyboard, but then he realizes that he’s only putting it on the backs of his hands and loses patience. It doesn’t change anything about how his hands look. They’re disgusting, dry and red and cracked and still trying to bounce back from the paper cut he got a week ago. But they feel better. A lot better. It’s the first hand cream Tomura’s used that doesn’t sting when he puts it on.

It smells okay, too. And sort of familiar. Tomura spends longer than he’d like to admit staring off into space, wondering where he smelled it before.

There aren’t a ton of them. Three of them are women – Saiko, Hatsume, and Aiba, whose cubicles are just as horrendously messy as the guys' cubicles are, only brightly colored. All three of them have Secret Santa gifts in their mail, and Aiba has a letter for you to bring back up to the mailroom. “That’s for her boyfriend,” Saiko informs you as she delicately unwraps her gift. “They’re in love.”

“He’s perfect,” Aiba says, beaming. “I just know he’s my Secret Santa. He won’t admit it, but all my gifts have been so thoughtful – and fancy!”

“Too fancy,” Hatsume puts in. She tossed her gift onto the pile of memos on her desk, where it joined at least one other unopened gift. Hatsume’s Secret Santa must be having a rough time. “He’s overdoing it.”

“Exactly! Who would overdo it but him?”

You leave them to discuss it and move to the next desk – Chikazoku’s. He accepts his mail without looking up or saying a word, and you move on in a hurry. Ishiyama is out sick, but he has a ton of mail and a Secret Santa gift. Next up is Spinner, who you couldn’t have picked out of a lineup two weeks ago, but who you’re now aware is Shigaraki’s best friend. Spinner has a lot of mail and a Secret Santa gift, and like Aiba, he has something he wants you to take up and mail for him.

His isn’t a letter, though. It’s a Secret Santa gift, clumsily wrapped. His face is flushed as he hands it over, and he speaks so quietly you have to lean in to hear. “That’s for Aiba.”

The conversation from before recontextualizes itself in a hurry. You feel a pang of sympathy for Spinner. “Yeah. No problem.”

He glances into your carton. “You might want to come back later for Shigaraki. He’s on a call and it’s, uh –”

Shigaraki’s voice issues from the next cubicle over, about as pissed off as he sounded when he gave himself a paper cut trying to hang up snowflakes. “The reason your cursor’s moving is because I have remote control of your computer,” he says. “It’s not a virus.”

Whoever’s on the other end of the line starts talking again, and Shigaraki cuts them off. “It’s not a virus,” he says again. “The problem isn’t on your computer’s end. Is your mouse plugged in?”

As you watch, Spinner types up a Slack message and sends it to Shigaraki: SPEAKER. A moment later, the caller’s voice echoes through the room. “My mouse is wireless.”

“Do me a favor and look at your mouse,” Shigaraki says. “Does it have a cord sticking out the back of it?”

Silence for a second. “Why?”

“If it has a cord attached, it’s not wireless,” Shigaraki says. It sounds like he’s speaking through clenched teeth. “Now follow the cord and tell me whether it’s plugged in or not.”

“Of course it’s not plugged in,” the caller says. “I needed a port for my webcam.”

Hatsume and Saiko both start snickering. Spinner is shaking his head. From the other side of the cubicle, you hear a thud, like Shigaraki’s hitting his head against the desk. “Why did you think your mouse would work if it wasn’t plugged in?”

“I thought it was wireless.”

“Even if it was wireless, it would still need a port, so –”

“You don’t need to take that tone with me, young man,” the caller says severely. Spinner wheezes. “It’s a common mistake.”

“Yeah. And I bet you’d iron your clothes while wearing them if there wasn’t a warning label saying not to,” Shigaraki says. You clamp your hand down over your mouth to stifle your laughter and almost drop the carton. “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

It’s quiet for a second. “I want to talk to your supervisor.”

“Right away.” The call ends with a click, and the phone in the department head’s office starts to ring. There’s another, louder thud. “Fucking shoot me already.”

“It could be worse,” Spinner says. Shigaraki makes a questioning sound. “We could actually have a supervisor to complain to.”

You’ve always thought Shigaraki was kind of a dick for no reason. Now that you know what kind of calls he’s getting, you can’t exactly judge him. Before you can step out of hiding and hand him his mail, the elevator dings, and a bunch of people pile out of it, led by Yamada, head of the PR department. They’re all wearing reindeer ears and holding songbooks. “Put your hands up if you’re ready to get festive!”

You’ve never worked somewhere with an in-house choir before, but apparently the head of PR is a DJ in his off hours, and he also organizes an acapella group that goes around Christmas caroling during the holiday season. The IT department reacts like a bunch of rabbits who just heard a twig snap. All of them, Chikazoku included, grab their lunches and flee to the opposite side of the office, up the stairwell and out of sight.

It’s too late for Shigaraki to get clear. The carolers form a semi-circle around him, cutting off his escape routes. “Lucky you. You get us all to yourself,” the head of PR says. “Any requests?”

“Yeah. Stop. And leave.”

“Ooh, somebody’s not in the holiday spirit! I’ve got the perfect song for you,” the head of PR says. Somebody produces a pitch pipe, plays a note, and the singing starts up a moment later. The song choice makes you cringe. “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch. You really are a heel! You’re as cuddly as a cactus, you’re as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch –”

You peek over the cubicle and see Shigaraki sitting there, shoulders hunched, face and ears red. He looks miserable, and you make up your mind in a second. “Stop it,” you say loudly, and everyone jumps. “That’s mean.”

“Hi there, listener!” Yamada says, at a volume that’s way too high for the situation at hand. “Did you have a request?”

“If you have to sing, don’t sing that song,” you say. “It’s mean.”

“It’s the perfect song,” Yamada says. “There’s a whole Christmas carol just for people who hate the holidays and want to ruin everybody else’s fun –”

“He just said he didn’t want you to sing to him,” you say. You feel like you’ve waded into something you maybe shouldn’t have, but you’re not going to back off. “That’s not the same thing as hating the holidays and wanting to ruin everybody’s fun.”

“Well, he definitely killed our vibe. Right, guys?” Yamada glances around at the rest of the carolers. Some of them are nodding. A few of them look kind of guilty. “It kind of hurts our feelings when we don’t get to sing. So you have to do something for us to restart our holiday spirit.”

“And then you’ll leave,” Shigaraki clarifies.

“And then we’ll leave,” Yamada says. He’s got a nasty grin on his face. “We’ll leave you alone for the rest of the holiday season if – drumroll, guys –”

The rest of the carolers come up with a drumroll. Shigaraki’s recovered from the embarrassment enough to roll his eyes. “If one of you sings a song for us,” Yamada says. Shigaraki blanches from red to white. “You owe us a Christmas carol.”

One look at Shigaraki tells you there’s no way he’s going for this. You can’t picture him singing at all, let alone under pressure and in front of an audience. You don’t do really well under pressure. You don’t know very many Christmas carols. And you don’t think you’ve sung anywhere that wasn’t your shower since you were in high school. But you know by the look on Yamada’s face that he’s not going to back off, and you don’t want to spend the next two weeks getting ambushed by acapella carolers. It’s up to you.

“Fine,” you say. Shigaraki looks up. “I’ll sing a song for you.”

“The floor is yours,” Yamada says. His grin looks a little less nasty than it did a second ago, but you still feel like you’re making a big mistake. “Lay it on us, listener!”

You don’t know very many Christmas carols, but of the ones you know, there’s only one you can remember most of the words to. You cough a couple times, clutch the mail carton for dear life, and suck down a deep breath. “I don’t want a lot for Christmas –” You’re immediately cut off with a lot of snapping from the carolers. Yamada is giving you a thumbs up, so you keep going, trying not to think about how badly your voice is wavering. “There is just one thing I need, and I don’t care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree...”

The carolers are humming along, which is nice of them. Maybe this way you can stay on key. “I just want you for my own, more than you could ever know. Make my wish come true –” You suck down a breath, using it as an excuse to cut off the high note early. “All I want for Christmas is you.”

You’re hoping that will be it. Praying that’ll be it. But instead the carolers hop in with the backing track, and Yamada is gesturing for you to keep singing, and the only thing you can think of that would be worse than having to sing the rest of this song is having to start over. You find the note again and keep singing, up-tempo this time. You can do this, right? This is as embarrassing as it’s going to get.

You forget the lyrics to the second verse, but the carolers help you out, and you can tell by their expressions – and Yamada’s – that they’re having the kind of spontaneous holiday-season fun they’re after. This does feel like something that would happen in a Christmas movie, or it would, if it was happening to anybody but you. The fact that all of this is happening right in front of Shigaraki’s desk is making it even worse. So much for him not hating you as much as everybody else. This has probably sealed the deal.

When the song finally ends, you’ve sweated through your blouse and your cardigan and your face is probably bright red. Yamada is grinning. “Now we’re back in the mood, listener!” he proclaims. “You’ve got a decent voice. We’ll come find you when practice starts next year!”

Once they’ve piled back into the elevator, you lean back against the wall of Spinner’s cubicle, then sink slowly to the floor, carton in your lap and hands pressed to your face. Shigaraki’s voice issues from the next cubicle over. “It would have been over faster if you let them sing the first song.”

“There were going to be five more verses just like that one,” you say. “You shouldn’t have to sit through that just because you don’t like people singing at you.”

“I can take it.”

You remember how red his face was. How unhappy he looked. “No, you can’t.”

That was the wrong thing to say, but you’re too out of breath to walk it back. You need to get out of here before you get yourself in any more trouble. You get to your knees, then to your feet. “What are you doing down here, anyway?” Shigaraki asks. “Most people don’t know where this place is.”

“You all never check your mail, so I was playing postman,” you say. You look down into the carton. “I’ve got some stuff for you here.”

You unload the mail onto the corner of Shigaraki’s desk a few pieces at a time, saving your latest Secret Santa present for last. Shigaraki gives it a suspicious look. “Where did that come from?”

“It was in your mailbox,” you lie. “I thought I would bring it down with everything else.”

You set it on the desk, on top of everything else, and turn to go. You can probably go a few more days without giving him another gift. As far as you’re concerned, rescuing him from the Grinch song should count as a gift all on its own. You might not be homemaking your Secret Santa gifts, or wrapping them so prettily that the package looks like a gift all on its own, but no one can say you aren’t putting the effort in. Not that Shigaraki will notice.

He speaks up while you’re waiting for the elevator. “Five more verses?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Nothing,” Shigaraki says. Then, as the elevator doors are closing behind you: “Thanks.”

Maybe he still hates you less than everybody else. You’re surprised to find yourself smiling at the thought.

Tomura has the misfortune to have the same favorite donut as Midoriya, everybody’s favorite customer support specialist, and because Midoriya’s office is on the same floor as the break room instead of in the fucking basement, Midoriya usually gets to the donuts first. “I hate you.”

“You love us,” Magne says, and adds a pile of precut paper snowflakes to the pile Tomura’s already holding. “Go, uh – over there. Make that wall look festive!”

The wall in question already has somebody standing in front of it. “Looks like it’s covered.”

“Oh, come on. Be a gentleman! Don’t leave the new girl to decorate alone!”

The new girl. Tomura studies you, or studies your back, which is all he can see of you at the moment. He hasn’t seen you before, he doesn’t think. He doesn’t even know what department you’re in, or how long you’ve been here, or anything more than the fact that you work here and you’ve worked here for less time than he has. “What’s her name?”

“Who knows?” Twice turns Tomura in the right direction and applies a shove to his back. “Go help her out. The sooner it gets done, the sooner you can go back to your cave!”

“With your donut,” Compress adds. He’s cutting out paper snowflakes. “Good luck.”

You’re in the middle of hanging up some kind of banner, balancing on an office chair that looks way too unsteady for the job. Tomura figures it could be worse – at least you didn’t pick one with wheels on it. “Hey,” he says, and you glance down at him just long enough for Tomura to realize that you’re pretty. “They sent me to – uh, help.”

“Okay,” you say. “Do you mind handing me the stapler? They gave me command strips but this thing is really heavy.”

Tomura drops the stuff he’s holding, finds a stapler, and passes it up to you, at which point you open it wide and basically hammer the banner into the wall. Tomura doesn’t think you needed to do it that hard. “What did that thing do to you?”

“It’s taking too long and I’m on my lunch break,” you say. You hook the stapler back into place and hand it to Tomura, then climb down from the chair. “I tried to be patient, but –”

Tomura’s already at the end of his patience and he hasn’t even done anything yet. “What am I supposed to with these?”

“Put them on the wall, I guess.” You pick up a roll of masking tape and tear off a piece. “I wasn’t here last year, but – this seems like a lot of effort to go to for just the break room. The party’s offsite, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Tomura’s planning to skip it this year, and unlike last year, he’s not going to tell anybody that he’s planning to skip it ahead of time. Last year he did, thinking he could talk Spinner and Dabi into skipping with him, and instead they kidnapped him and made him go to the party anyway. “You weren’t here last year. When did you get here?”

“Um – this spring,” you say. You roll the tape sticky-side out, attach one side to the snowflake, and attach the snowflake to the wall. “In time to sign your birthday card.”

In spite of the fact that the company’s enormous, the CEO has some weird thing about making everybody feel appreciated, which includes birthday cards signed by everybody HR can get to hold still long enough to do it. Tomura’s card had probably a hundred signatures on it. Yours wouldn’t have stood out. “What’s your name?”

You say it, and the bottom drops out of Tomura’s stomach. He might not have seen you before today, but he knows you for sure – he got your list for the stupid Secret Santa thing.

Toga promised him an easy list, and yours is really easy.  You wrote out the exact stuff you wanted, plus the prices and where to find it, and the total price for all your items is ¥4000. Tomura can’t tell if you understood the assignment or if you fucked it up; he saw the lists his friends wrote for their Secret Santas, and each individual item cost ¥4000. Tomura’s friends are going to get one gift each if their Secret Santa doesn’t go overboard, but Tomura could buy almost everything on your list and still come in under budget. Looking at your list made him feel kind of bad for whoever got his.

Tomura realizes he’s staring at you around the same time as you stop looking at him and go back to hanging snowflakes. He picks up a snowflake and some tape and gets to work. “I was kind of surprised by how into Christmas everybody is here,” you say. “My last job didn’t do anything like this.”

Maybe Tomura should quit and go work where you worked. “Did they skip it?”

“It was a nonprofit, and we got paid basically nothing. Our decorating budget would have covered, like – a snowflake and a couple of candy canes,” you say. Tomura snorts. “I guess it’s nice here. That everybody’s so involved.”

“Not everybody. I hate this shit,” Tomura says. A pointed memo he got about appropriate language use in the workplace flashes through his head on its way to his mental recycle bin. “I only came up here because they promised me a donut.”

“What kind of donut?” you ask. Tomura glances at you. “Not all donuts are created equal. Only some of them are worth decking the halls over.”

Tomura gets the weird sense that he’s walking into a trap. Are you really going to judge him over which donut he wants? Yes, you are, because he and Midoriya want the same stupid donut, and half the reason Midoriya gets to it first is because he’s willing to say it out loud: “Chocolate glazed with sprinkles.”

He glances at you, his face red. You aren’t laughing at him. “I thought you were going to say powdered sugar. I’d have had questions about your sanity.”

“Did they even have to bribe you to help with this? I have questions about yours.”

Tomura hears what it sounds like as it’s coming out of his mouth, and by then it’s way too late. You look surprised, maybe a little hurt, and Tomura returns his attention to the stupid snowflakes in a hurry. He snatches the next one off the top of the pile, scraping his hand against the others, and feels a sharp sting across his knuckles. Paper cut. “Fuck!”

“That looks kind of bad,” you observe. “It’s bleeding a lot.”

It’s bleeding a lot because Tomura’s fucking dry skin hates the cold and throws a temper tantrum every winter, splitting at the slightest provocation. The paper cut’s just an excuse. “It’s fine.”

“Hang on,” you say. You abandon Tomura and the snowflakes, cross the room, and come back with a paper towel and the first-aid kit. “Here. Give me your hand.”

“No,” Tomura’s mouth says. Tomura’s arm decides to do its own thing and sticks his hand out anyway. “This is stupid. I don’t need a band-aid.”

You aren’t listening to him. You have the paper towel folded and pressed down over the cut on Tomura’s knuckles with your thumb, and you’re sorting through the first-aid kit you’re your other hand. “All these band-aids are Christmas-themed. Do they really switch them out seasonally?”

Tomura wouldn’t put it past them. “I don’t want a band-aid. Especially not one of those.”

“Too bad,” you say. Tomura glares at you. “You’ve got options, though. Candy canes, gingerbread men, Santas, snowflakes – nutcrackers –”

“Nutcrackers.”

“I don’t know,” you say. You hold up the band-aid. “Want to find out?”

“No,” Tomura says, and you set the nutcracker band-aid back down. You look like you’re trying not to laugh. “The snowflakes. If there’s not anything else.”

The snowflake band-aid looks stupid against Tomura’s cracked skin. Anybody who sees it is going to laugh. You press it down carefully over the paper cut, then let Tomura’s hand fall back to his side. “Maybe you shouldn’t help with the snowflakes.”

Tomura’s in the clear. He can go back and get his donut and get the hell out of here before anyone notices and tries to make him do anything else festive. This time it’s his mouth that gets ahead of the rest of him. “You can hang them up. I’ll roll the tape.”

By the time the snowflakes are all attached to the wall, your lunch break’s basically over, and you vanish without a word to Tomura. Tomura sticks around long enough to get his donut before he retreats back to the basement. He wonders where you work. He doesn’t even know which department you’re in, not that it matters. Once he actually gets his shit together and leaves you a gift, he can just stick it in your mailbox for you to find later. That’s what everybody normal is doing, at least.

But whoever got stuck as Tomura’s Secret Santa isn’t normal, because when Tomura gets back to his desk, there’s a present sitting on it. It’s not a big box. It’s wrapped in red and green and tied with a ribbon, and Tomura studies it uneasily. He doesn’t have a clue what’s in it. If he’d made his list like you did, he’d have at least some idea, but he barely remembers what he put on his list at this point. Is any of it small enough to fit in that box?

One way to find out. Tomura sets the donut aside and opens the present, barely avoiding another paper cut in the process, and finds himself holding – “A hot chocolate bomb?”

“Huh?” Spinner looks up from his desk. “Oh, nice. Those things are supposed to be good.”

“What is it?”

“You put it in milk and it melts and then you have hot chocolate,” Spinner says. “Didn’t you put chocolate on your list?”

That sounds right. Tomura inspects the box and finds a sticky note attached to the top of it. Dear Shigaraki, Keep warm! Sincerely, your Secret Santa. Tomura doesn’t recognize the handwriting, and the longer he looks at it, the weirder he feels. “Did you see who left this?”

“No,” Spinner says unconvincingly. Tomura turns to stare at him. “I didn’t. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. It’s a surprise. That’s the fun part.”

Tomura’s not having fun. Tomura feels weird. His list is coming back to him now. He asked for chocolate and said he hates the cold – and his Secret Santa put two and two together. Whoever they are, they aren’t half-assing it. They’re putting in an effort. And now that Tomura knows what his Secret Santa’s doing for him, he feels a lot less okay about the idea of phoning it in for you.

He sits back down at his desk, ignoring Slack messages in favor of studying the hot chocolate bomb. You might have given him an easy list, but this is going to be harder than he thought.

“It’s – um, okay.” You take the origami heart and unfold it, looking for a name. But there isn’t one. Just a short list in cramped, messy handwriting. “Who is it?”

“He didn’t write his name?” Toga sighs. “It’s Tomura-kun. You know him?”

“In IT, right?” you ask. Toga nods. “I know him. Not really. I mean, I haven’t talked to him, but – I know who he is. Everybody knows who he is. He’s kind of – hard to miss.”

Every place you’ve ever worked has had prickly IT guys, but Shigaraki Tomura is the prickliest by orders of magnitude. You’ve never had to call him, but you’ve heard him on the phone with your coworkers, and seen the kind of emails he sends. Nobody can eviscerate somebody with punctuation like he does, and the only reason he’s never gone after you is because you’ve never flunked a phishing test. And even if he wasn’t famous for being kind of a dick, his looks would make him stand out. He has the longest hair of any guy in the office, and his is white.

New girl who keeps to herself gets scary white-haired guy for Secret Santa. It’s not hard for you to figure out Toga’s play here. “I’m his Secret Santa because he doesn’t hate me yet, right?”

“Maybe a little bit,” Toga says. The teakettle beeps and you pour hot water into your cup. “But look at it this way! If you can get Tomura-kun to like you, it’ll be even easier to make friends with everybody else.”

You hope she’s right. You’ve been hanging back, hoping that making friends will happen naturally, but it hasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t fair to expect it to. You need to put in some effort, too, and maybe this will be a good start. Toga walks away while your tea is steeping, and you take a closer look at Shigaraki’s list. He didn’t give very many items – or any items, really. It’s more just categories of things he must like. Video games is kind of a given. You haven’t met an IT guy who doesn’t like video games, and roughly fifty percent of the population likes dogs – but corgis seem like a weird favorite for Shigaraki to have. Or maybe it doesn’t. You don’t really know him,

He likes candy, although the way the parenthetical written makes it hard to tell whether he means ‘chocolate’ as a separate qualifier than ‘sweet and sour’. Does sweet and sour chocolate exist? You really hope not. Maybe you can ask Toga for some more specifics. With categories this broad, Shigaraki can’t expect you to know exactly what he wants, but you have a feeling that won’t stop him from being unhappy if you get it wrong.

“What is that?”

You glance over your shoulder and find some of your coworkers approaching. You refold Shigaraki’s list in a hurry. “Nothing. Just my list for the Secret Santa thing.”

“Ooh, who’d you get?” Ashido leans in to inspect the list, and you tuck it away. “No, it’s okay! You can trust me!”

You can’t, really. Only one person is supposed to know who got everybody, and you don’t want to get caught breaking the rules. “Did you get someone weird?” Hagakure asks. “Is that why you’re making that face?”

“Whoever it is must be really lonely,” Uraraka observes. “Or else they wouldn’t have folded it like that.”

You’re pretty sure Shigaraki didn’t fold the list into a heart. And based on the way the list is written and what Toga said, you’re pretty sure he didn’t want to write the list at all. Shigaraki’s given you exactly one specific instruction, and it’s about what he doesn’t want. But you can work with that, you think. If he hates the cold, you’ll just find him something warm. For ¥4000 per item or less.

“It’s not going to be fun anyway, because I don’t want to do it.” Tomura shoves the piece of stationary back towards Toga. “Find somebody else.”

“Nope! Remember last year? You didn’t do it, and then you were mad all twelve days because everybody got gifts but you,” Toga says. She pushes the paper back towards Tomura. “Come on. It’s easy. Just put things on your list – not too expensive – and somebody who gets your list will leave them for you! Doesn’t that sound fun?”

“No,” Tomura says. Toga scowls at him. “I have to go shopping for somebody, too.”

Coming up with a gift list is bad enough. Waiting around to see if he’ll get presents – or even one present – from whoever got stuck with him is worse. But Tomura watched all of last year, saw all the effort everybody else put into their presents. Special hiding places, special wrapping paper. Last year Dabi got into an arms race with his younger brother and started leaving actual riddles for the person he was giving gifts to. Tomura’s not going to do any of that shit. Whoever he gets is going to be disappointed.

“I’m not doing extra shopping,” he says to Toga. “I’m out.”

“I’m organizing this year,” Toga says. So? “What if I get you somebody with a really easy list? Somebody normal who’s not going to ask for anything weird and who’s not going to get mad if you don’t set up a scavenger hunt.”

Tomura thinks about his friends, then his coworkers. “There’s absolutely nobody like that who works here.”

“Yes there are. You just don’t know about them, because they don’t do anything to annoy you,” Toga says. Her smile starts looking a little sharp around the edges. “Write the list.”

The sooner Tomura writes it, the sooner this will stop happening. He picks up the pen, sets it against the piece of paper, and hits an instant snag. “I don’t want anything.”

“Yes, you do,” Toga says. Tomura thinks about it, then writes something. Toga grabs the pen out of his hand and crosses it out. “No. It has to be a gift. Something you wouldn’t buy for yourself. Something nice.”

“For under ¥4000?” If Tomura wants something, he usually just buys it. “This is stupid.”

 “If you don’t have specific things you want, just write down things you like,” Spinner suggests on his way past with a stack of copies. “Like say – video games, dogs, candy, energy drinks –”

“I’m not letting him put energy drinks on his Secret Santa wish list,” Toga says. Spinner shrugs and keeps walking. “That’s not a bad idea, Tomura-kun. Write the kind of things you like, and then your Secret Santa can find things like that for the right price.”

Fine. Tomura gets the pen back from Toga and writes: video games, dogs, candy – “More specific,” Toga instructs. Tomura scowls and adds parentheticals. “See, that’s perfect! Was that so hard?”

“Yes.” Tomura lets Toga have the list, then takes it back again a second later. “I need to add something.”

It’s only a sentence, and Toga reads it out loud, looking all kinds of skeptical. “I hate the cold, so I don’t want any let-it-snow shit. Wow, Tomura.”

“You said to be specific,” Tomura says. “Are we done?”

“Yes!” Toga folds Tomura’s list into a quick origami heart, then tucks it into her pocket. “This will be fun! You’ll see. You won’t regret it.”

She leaves without the stupid Christmas pen. Tomura tosses it after her and flops forward on his desk, regretting it already.