She Is A Total Monet!

“You can’t. You have to stay here and get better.” You want to scream, and Rika’s still on the phone. “I’ll come back. I’m not leaving you. I just have to go get her.”

Tomura’s grip doesn’t loosen. “You’ll bring her back here?”

“If the press is at your house, you definitely can’t bring her back there,” Spinner says.

“I can help,” Rika says. “I’ll bring her home with Kaori when the Nodas show up.”

“Thank you, Rika.” You feel the knot of dread in your chest loosen slightly, even as Tomura’s grip remains brittle and painfully tight. “I owe you one.”

“No, you don’t. I’d never leave Chihiro to those vultures.” You can hear the disgust in Rika’s voice. “You do owe me a story, though.”

“What kind of story?”

“What this is. How this happened,” Rika says. You grimace. “Is the guy talking in the background who I think he is?”

“If you think it’s Shigaraki Tomura — yeah.” You’re going to need to get used to saying that. You’ve kept the truth inside yourself for so long that speaking it feels strange. “You get why I didn’t say anything.”

“No kidding. I’d have glued my mouth shut if it were me,” Rika says. It’s hard to imagine Rika not talking about something, but maybe it’s different where her daughter’s concerned. “I’ll text when I’ve got her.”

“I’ll call her and explain,” you say. “Thank you.”

Rika scolds you not to thank her for something you’d do for her before she hangs up, and as soon as she’s off the phone, you get off of Tomura’s bed. You have to pull yourself free. “I’m coming back,” you say to Tomura. “I’m going to get her and we’ll be back.”

“When?”

His voice breaks on the question. “However long it takes me to get up to Hokkaido and back,” you say. “I’ll be here again soon. I promise.”

You gather up your things quickly, stopping to unfold the quilt you made for Tomura around his shoulders. He immediately wraps it tighter, his injured hand holding it together so hard that his knuckles go pale. Spinner is on the phone with someone, talking fast, and when you go for the door, he blocks your way. “Hang on,” he says, although you’re not sure if he’s talking to you or the person on the phone. He hangs up the call and faces you. “Hang on. One’s Justice is going to send someone up with you.”

“I don’t need help,” you say. “Last time I did this myself.”

“Last time you fucked off for nineteen years,” Spinner says. “You don’t have to do it by yourself. Let people help you.”

Your phone starts ringing, and you yank it out of your pocket, but it’s only Midoriya. “I’m going to come with you to get Chihiro. So is our main PR guy,” he says, talking over you when you argue. “I can update you on our legal strategies and someone else can drive. I know you probably haven’t slept in a while.”

He’s right. You haven’t. Not well enough to treat the drive back to Hokkaido like the marathon and sprint combined that it’s going to have to be. “How fast can you get here?”

“We’ll meet you there in — fifteen minutes,” Midoriya says. “We were already getting ready to go up there. It wasn’t until I called Spinner to warn him that I realized you were down here.”

“Okay. See you soon.” You hang up, then face Spinner. “Midoriya and their PR guy are going with me. Can you stay with Tomura?”

“I texted Kurogiri, too,” Spinner says. “We’ve got things under control here.”

He glances over your shoulder at something and his eyes widen. “Hey! Shigaraki! Don’t do that —”

You turn and find him trying to take out his own IVs. You almost trip over your own feet in your haste to get to his side. His hands are shaking when you seize them, and he lets you pull them away. “I need you to trust me,” you say. “I waited for you for nineteen years. I’d have waited the rest of my life if I had to. There’s no way I’m not coming back to you.”

“I want to come with you.” Tomura’s voice is rough. “Being stuck here —”

“The sooner you get better, the sooner you can leave,” you remind him. His mouth is trembling when you kiss him goodbye. “I love you. I’ll text when I can.”

“Call me when you’re with her,” Tomura says. You nod, blinking back tears. “I love you too. Tell her.”

“I will.” You kiss Tomura one more time, then straighten up. This time, when you head for the door, Spinner doesn’t stop you.

Midoriya’s waiting for you in the parking garage, alongside a skinny blond man who introduces himself as Yamada Hizashi, shakes your hand enthusiastically, and relieves you of your car keys. “I’m in charge of keeping the media off your back,” he tells you. “And of getting you back to Hokkaido in record time!”

“Don’t get pulled over,” Midoriya says as he buckles himself into your backseat. “We have to stay clean. We can’t give them anything they can use to discredit us.”

“You got it. This will be the smoothest ride you’ve ever been on!”

You glance at Midoriya in the mirror and see the skeptical look on his face. Based on the way Yamada floors it out of the parking garage, you kind of doubt it, too.

You call Chihiro, but she doesn’t pick up, and when you check her Snapchat, you see that she and Kaori and Satomi were on the ski lift an hour ago. Maybe you should just be grateful that she’s not skiing and texting at the same time. You’re in stop-and-go traffic out of Tokyo, just like you were on the way in, and Midoriya passes you some anti-nausea meds before popping a handful himself and leaning back in his seat. It’s not until you’re on the highway, approaching highway speed, that he speaks up again. “I can start with the criminal or civil cases. Which are you —”

You only heard one word in that sentence. “They’re charging Tomura again?”

“No! No, absolutely not,” Midoriya says hastily. “This is the case against his adoptive father — Shigaraki Zen. We’ve just been calling him Zen so we don’t mix him up with our Shigaraki. Do you want to hear about that one first?”

“Yes,” you decide. “What’s going on?”

“In addition to the murders, he’s being charged with child abuse, since he drugged Shigaraki to force participation in the murders,” Midoriya says. “That’s not the only instance, unfortunately. More will probably come out in the trial, but I’ll let Shigaraki tell you about that. In addition to the murder and abuse charges, he’s also being charged with a slew of white-collar crimes, mainly related to theft.”

“Theft,” you repeat. “He was stealing from Tomura?”

“At first,” Midoriya says. “For the last nineteen years, he’s been stealing from you.”

“What?”

“Shortly before his arrest, Shigaraki changed the beneficiaries on his accounts,” Midoriya says. “Previously the beneficiary was his adoptive father, but after the change, you were the only person listed. When he was convicted, that money should have gone to you. Zen managed to keep control of the accounts instead. In fact, um —”

Midoriya breaks off, looking fifty kinds of uncomfortable. “What?” you ask. “Just tell me.”

“We think the motive might have been financial. All of it,” Midoriya says. “The Shimura murders. Shigaraki getting framed for them. All of it meant that the money stayed within Zen’s hands.”

Tomura’s adoptive father murdered six people. He stole nineteen years of Tomura’s life — and stole Tomura from you and Chihiro and all his friends, too. Shirakumo’s told you some things, but you know you’ve barely scratched the surface of what happened to Tomura in prison. Tomura’s adoptive father did so many horrible things. “For money,” you repeat. “That’s all?”

You feel like an idiot the instant you say it. “To be fair, we’re talking about a ridiculous amount of money,” Yamada says. “Shigaraki’s real dad was a real whiz kid when it came to business, and his fake dad is creepy good at investment banking. It was a lot of money when Shigaraki inherited it, and it was a fuckton of money by the time he was convicted. And now —”

“It’s the kind of money people do awful things for,” Midoriya says miserably. “He killed the Shimuras to ensure that Shigaraki inherited the money. He planned in advance to frame Shigaraki for the murders if Shigaraki ever tried to take control of the accounts. And, um — it’s probably a good thing that you decided to lay low after the trial. As Shigaraki’s direct descendant, Chihiro would have been in line to inherit the money, and with what Zen was already willing to do —”

You almost wish he’d come knocking. You’d have killed him on sight. “He might have come after us. Now what?”

“You’re likely to be called as a witness,” Midoriya says. “Shigaraki’s friends will be called as well. You’ll be asked about anything Shigaraki ever said to you about money, as well as about any interactions you had with Zen.”

“His defense attorney’s good, but we’re better,” Yamada says. “It’ll all be fine. Tell her about the civil suits.”

“Right. The civil suits.” The car lurches slightly, and Midoriya grimaces. “The government’s being sued for violating the human rights of death-row prisoners. We’re suing them separately on Shigaraki’s behalf for wrongful imprisonment, and for the damages component, we’re going to need you. It’ll help if you’re able to articulate how you were affected by Shigaraki’s imprisonment. Did you keep a journal? Or see a therapist?”

You didn’t keep a journal, because Chihiro might find it and read it. You saw a therapist while you were pregnant with her, but stopped going when you realized that all the therapist was going to say was to do something you were never going to do. She never told you to forget Tomura or to move on with your life — she just kept talking about growth. Change. Closure. You were watching yourself grow, your belly getting bigger by the week. You were about to change your whole life with your child’s birth. And closure? No way. You’d get that when you died and maybe saw Tomura again.

“I saw a therapist for a little while. Years ago,” you say. “The other stuff — I never talked about it. To anyone. Not even Chihiro.”

“Because you were embarrassed?”

“Embarrassed?” You laugh hollowly. “No. I could barely stand to think about him. I missed him that much. And I didn’t want her to walk around with the same hole in her heart that I had to live with.”

That was part of it. The other part — “And I remember what the press did to me. What people did, too. I wasn’t going to let them do the same thing to her over something she couldn’t control.”

“So you were protecting her,” Yamada says. “Makes sense. Sounds like something a good mom would do.”

“Don’t say that around her. I lied to her for eighteen years, and she’s right to be angry.” Your head hurts. You resist the urge to bury your face in your hands. “I had my reasons. I’ll get on the witness stand and explain them. And I’ll see if that therapist still has my records. She might not. It’s been a while.”

Midoriya nods. His phone starts ringing, and he whips it out of his pocket. A moment later, yours rings, too. Chihiro’s calling. “Sorry,” she says as soon as you answer. “I told Kaori what — Dad — said, and then she wanted to go back out to the ski lifts, so we did —”

“It’s okay,” you say. “How was it? Did you guys have fun?”

“It was awesome. Can we switch to FaceTime now? Is he still awake?”

“Did you listen to my message?” you ask. It sounds like she didn’t, and you decide not to drag it out. “I’m not at the hospital right now. I’m driving up to come get you, because the press knows who you are and where our house is. When you get back to town, you’re going to go home with Kaori and her mom. I already talked to her mom and set it up. When I get there, we’re coming back down to Tokyo.”

Chihiro’s silent for a few seconds. “How did they find out?”

“I don’t know.” You have a theory, though: The nurse who was trying to convince Tomura to let her help him shower. You’re pretty sure either you or Tomura mentioned having a kid in front of her. “I don’t know, but whoever it was, they’re not on our side. There’s more security at the hospital in Tokyo. And we’ll be with your dad. You can meet his friends, too.”

“We can’t go home?” Chihiro’s voice pitches up slightly. “Why not?”

“They’ll be all over it. They might not even let us in. I had to change jobs and apartments during the last trial just to stay away from them,” you say. You can feel your heart starting to race, your stomach dropping the way it used to when you caught someone looking a little too long. “It’s not going to be forever. I promise. Just until we figure out a way to keep them off us.”

“It won’t be hard,” Yamada says loudly from next to you. “We’ve got a plethora of legal options to keep them as far away from you as possible! But we need a second or two to implement them, so for now, it’s best that they don’t see you.”

“What if I want them to see me?” Chihiro asks. There’s a harsh note in her voice. “What if I want them to stick a camera in my face so I can tell them to go to hell?”

“We really need you to not do that,” Midoriya says, leaning in over your shoulder. “We’re all part of Shigaraki’s — your dad’s — case against the state. All of us have to stay clean, or they’ll use it against him.”

“See,” Yamada says, leaning in, “your dad might be totally innocent, but a lot of the people we work with aren’t. They did the shit they went to prison for, but that doesn’t mean they deserve to be treated inhumanely. As you might imagine, that’s not a popular opinion.”

“No shit,” Chihiro says. You’re too drained to tell her not to swear. “The people who don’t want things to change are looking for reasons to stop caring. And me going off on a reporter —”

“It’s not illegal, but it looks bad,” Midoriya says. “Your dad’s safe. He’s not going back to prison. But this case against the state is how we pay them back for what they’ve done to him. You and your mom are going to get your chance to talk about what’s happened to you, but it’ll be on your terms. Not because some reporter stuck a camera in your face while you were trying to get into your house.”

Chihiro’s quiet. You can tell she’s thinking about it. “I want to know what the government did to my dad,” she says. Your heart sinks. “I saw him on FaceTime. He looks really sick. What happened to him?”

“I’ll explain,” you say. “Not over the phone. On the drive back down.”

“You think we’re driving? No way. We’ve got flights,” Yamada says. “Still plenty of time to explain.”

“Okay,” Chihiro says. “Mom —”

“Yes?”

“You’re coming up here right now?” Chihiro asks. “Drive fast.”

“As fast as we can without getting pulled over,” you say. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

Tomura calls you when you’re a few hours out from home, or at least you think it’s Tomura — the call’s coming from his number, but it’s not his voice on the phone. It’s Spinner’s. “Don’t freak out,” he starts, “but —”

“Did something happen to Tomura?” you demand. “Tell me what happened. Now!”

“I’m trying! Stop freaking out. It’s not that bad — just a little heart thing —”

There’s no such thing as a little heart thing. You’ve worked in a doctor’s office for a decade and a half. A heart thing is an emergency. “Tell me what happened right now or I’m going to come back there and —”

“I told you to let me do it,” Shirakumo says in the background. There’s some rustling, and when he speaks up, you can tell he’s got the phone. “Due to malnutrition, Tomura has experienced some irregular heart rhythms. This one needed to be shocked in order to revert, which it did. He’s resting now.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“I will have him call you when he wakes up,” Shirakumo says. “He wanted to call you before they sedated him for the procedure, but the doctors insisted.”

Spinner was downplaying. You trust Shirakumo a little more, but he’s underplaying it, too. “How many times have they shocked him?”

“This is the third time. All three arrhythmias required only a single shock,” Shirakumo says. His voice softens. “The doctors have full faith that Tomura will recover. But when you return it’s important that you help him stick to his routine. Too much excitement or exertion will be detrimental.”

“Are you saying I made him sick?”

“He skipped a meal and ate less at the two he did consume. It’s very important that he eats,” Shirakumo says. “We’re exploring additional strategies to make eating more appealing to him. You can help with that.”

“We both will. Me and Chihiro,” you say. “Please have Tomura call me when he wakes up.”

“He will,” Shirakumo says. More rustling. “Spinner wants to talk to you.”

You’re not sure you want to talk to Spinner, but you stay on the line when Shirakumo hands it back. “Look,” Spinner says, “he’s okay. Really. This one was only borderline shockable, but they decided better safe than sorry. The other ones were worse. And he looked more alive seeing you than me or Shirakumo or anybody else has seen him since he got out.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying grab your kid and get back here,” Spinner says. “Shigaraki needs his family. His whole family.”

“I’m trying,” you say. Once you’re off the phone, it’s an effort not to burst into tears.

Tomura’s adoptive dad ruined his life for money. Tomura spent nineteen years in prison being neglected and abused and tortured, separated from his friends and from you, never meeting his daughter or even knowing she was there. Now he’s in the hospital, missing two fingers and so sick from malnutrition that he can’t maintain a regular heartbeat. And you can’t even be there with him, because you have to rescue your daughter from the fucking press corps. You fight back tears as kilometer after kilometer grinds past, and the longer you spend fighting, the more your feelings begin to shift. By the time you see the first signpost for your town, you’re angry.

You hold onto it for a few minutes, making sure it’s real. “I want to say something to them. The press.”

“Uh —” Yamada and Midoriya trade a glance in the rearview mirror. “Why?”

“Someone needs to distract them while Chihiro packs a few more things. She can sneak around back of the house if they’re focused on me,” you say. “And I’m sick of just running away from them. I’ll tell you what I want to say and you can workshop it. But I’m going to say something. Okay?”

Midoriya and Yamada trade another glance. “Okay,” Yamada says. “What are you thinking?”

By the time you get to Rika’s house, you’ve got a rough idea of the points you want to hit, but when you see Chihiro coming down the front steps, every other thought exits your head. You barely manage to unbuckle before you’re out the door, and she drops her bags in the snow and reaches for you. It reminds you of when she was a little kid, always wanting to be carried. How you never wanted to put her down. You catch her and pull her into your arms, and she hangs on tight. “I’ve got you,” you say, rocking her slightly. “I’ve got you. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“It won’t. They’re ruining everything!” Chihiro’s tears are soaking into your shirt already. “I’ve watched the shows. I know what they do to the families. Why can’t they just leave us alone?”

“Because they suck,” Yamada says from the car. “No other reason.”

“They’re greedy and selfish, and idiots who like seeing other people suffer will buy their magazines,” Rika says from the doorway. Kaori’s come out, and she’s patting Chihiro’s back while Chihiro cries. “They’ll find another target soon. You just gotta lay low.”

“I’ll send you all the school stuff. And we’ll FaceTime every day until you get back,” Kaori promises Chihiro. “I can’t wait to meet your dad.”

“Me either,” Chihiro mumbles. She detaches from you enough to reach for Kaori, and you find yourself hugging Kaori, too. “Don’t tell anybody where I went. Just say I’m sick or something.”

“I won’t,” Kaori promises. You meet Rika’s eyes over your daughters’ heads and see her shaking hers. If the press are at the school, everyone already knows.

You thank Rika and Kaori at least five times while you’re loading Chihiro’s one bag into the car, and then you’re off, headed for the edge of town and your house. You swap seats with Midoriya so you and Chihiro can strategize. “What do you need from the house? I’m not sure how long we’re staying, so —”

“More clothes. My laptop and my school backpack,” Chihiro says. She wipes her eyes. “If the press are at the house —”

“You’ll go in through the back. I’m going to stay up front and talk to them,” you say. Chihiro’s eyes widen. “I know I said you couldn’t, but — you will. I promise. Just not today.”

“Your mom has experience with it,” Midoriya says. “That helps when it comes to them.”

“Do you want to see what I’m going to say?” You hold out your phone, complete with the note you’ve been editing in response to Yamada’s feedback. Chihiro wipes her eyes and scans it. “What do you think?”

“It’s — good,” Chihiro says. “I think you should be meaner.”

“I wanted to. Yamada made me cut it.”

“Just remember. Every time we do something, we gotta think about how it’ll affect Shigaraki’s case,” Yamada says. He makes the last turn onto your street. “I see press vans. Ready for this?”

He glances at you in the rearview mirror. You nod.

Chihiro sneaks through the woods to the back of the house, along with Midoriya in case any of the press have thought to cover the back door, too. Her job is to pack her stuff and grab a few things for you; then she’ll signal you when she’s done and Yamada will separate you from the press and all of you will leave. As you drive closer to the house, none of the reporters or cameraman turn towards the sound of your car. They’re all focused on the house. You reach into the front seat, over Yamada’s shoulder, and tap the horn.

That gets their attention. They turn as a group, and you get out of the car. “Hi,” you say, and you force a slight smile. “It’s been a while, huh?”

It’s been twenty years, but you recognize some of the reporters. Those are the ones who pause, guilt etched into their faces. The younger ones, who were probably still in middle school when it happened, launch at you with no hesitation. “Is it true that Shigaraki Tomura is your daughter’s father?”

“Yes,” you say.

“Why did you choose to hide her parentage? Don’t you think your neighbors should know their children are attending school with the daughter of a mass murderer?”

Yamada said they’d try to make you lose your temper. He wasn’t wrong, but you’re ready. You know better than to accept the premise of such a stupid question. “Tomura was exonerated,” you say. “You wouldn’t be here if he was still in prison.”

“Your neighbors have a right to —”

“My family has a right to privacy, which you’re currently violating,” you say. “One of you has a source who broke confidentiality, or you wouldn’t have even known my daughter existed. As far as investigative work, this generation of reporters is slipping. Your seniors harassed me out of one city, two apartments, and three jobs without doing anything more than following me around.”

Yamada knocks on the inside of the window, warning you to knock it off. Or maybe to stick to the script. “I have something to say,” you say. The cameras rotate, turning on you, and you feel a distant surge of despair. Twenty years ago, this entourage of strangers was a reminder of everything you’d lost. Not anymore. “You guys used to scare me. When I looked at you, I didn’t see journalists pursuing the truth at any price — I saw sharks in a feeding frenzy, ripping apart mine and Tomura’s lives until there was nothing left that mattered.”

You see Kizuki Chitose in the crowd, see her eyes cast down. “But you were wrong,” you say. “There was something left. Tomura was never who you said he was, and everyone knows it. He has a second chance, and because of that, you’ve got a second chance, too. You can do the right thing this time. Be the pursuers of truth you always said you were, instead of scavengers picking apart other people’s pain. You can choose to do better.”

Lights flicker on and off inside the house — Chihiro, signaling that she’s ready to go. “But whatever you choose,” you say to the reporters, “I’m not scared of you anymore. And if you come for my family again, you’ll wish you’d never heard my name.”

Yamada rolls down the window and projects his voice. “Hey, let’s move it! We’ve got places to be!”

“One question,” Kizuki shouts as you get back in the car. You keep the window rolled down. “If Shigaraki Tomura was watching this, what would you want to say to him? Are the two of you planning to resume your relationship?”

“Resume it?” you repeat. It almost makes you laugh, and you answer a split second the window shuts up, projecting your own voice to make sure you’re heard. “We never broke up.”

“Not bad,” Yamada says, as the two of you turn back the other way to pick up Chihiro and Midoriya. “I was worried you were going to cuss them out. Not that I’d blame you, but —”

“I’d never do anything to hurt Tomura’s case,” you say. “I meant it when I said they don’t scare me anymore.”

“I hope the government’s lawyers saw that. They’ll be pissing themselves in fear about having to cross-examine you.”

Yamada likes that idea, but you don’t. You want the civil trial to be completely uneventful. And even with all the reporters, who really cares this much about you and Tomura and Chihiro? Your statement was decent, but nobody’s going to see it. When Chihiro asks how it went, as she slides into the backseat and you swap places with Midoriya to sit next to her, you tell her that it could have been worse.

It must be a slow news day, because by the time you’ve reached the airport, every single person you know has texted you linking the video, asking if it’s true. Your old friends have texted, Dabi giving you a 3/10 — not enough profanity — while Twice tells you both that you did great and that you should have been a lot meaner. But the review of your performance that matters the most comes in while you’re waiting at the gate to board, Yamada and Midoriya making scary eye contact with anyone who stares too long. Your phone pings with a message from Tomura: you look good on tv.

You smile, and you’re still smiling when the next message comes in. better in person. when are you coming back?

we’re about to board. You realize Chihiro’s reading over your shoulder and beckon her closer. “Help me take a picture to send to your dad.”

“If you want a good picture, I have to hold the camera,” Chihiro says. “You always drop it when you try to get a good angle.”

Guilty as charged. You hand her the camera, smile while she snaps a selfie with the two of you, and send it off to Tomura. i’ll text when we land. i love you

Chihiro takes your phone without asking and makes an edit. ****we love you

“You don’t have to say that,” you remind her. “This is all really new. You don’t need to rush things.”

“It’s not. He’s my dad, so I love him.” Chihiro sends the message, then hands you back your phone. A moment later, she flops sideways, head on your shoulder. “Do you think he’s going to like me?”

Tomura response to your message with a heart. Or five of them. If you had to guess, you’d say he’s trying to figure out message reactions. Still, you get the point. “He already does.”

<- Chapter 5

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You asked her why, the first time she Decayed the pills Kurogiri gave her and asked you to bring her some from your bottle of acetaminophen. Are you worried they’ll give you something?

No, Tomura said, but her gaze drifted away from yours. I just know you wouldn’t.

You wouldn’t. You’d take the messed-up pills yourself and suffer the consequences, or you’d jam them down the throat of whoever tried to drug Tomura. You love her, but you don’t love the people she surrounds herself with. Or the people who surround her, whether she likes it or not.

When you and Tomura first started talking, you didn’t know what you were getting into. By the time you found out, you were in way too deep, and you knew too much for Tomura’s bosses to let you run free. It was join them or die, and you picked joining up almost before the choice was offered. You knew it wasn’t Tomura’s idea. Kurogiri was the one who brought you to Sensei, and Tomura looked horrified to see you there.

You’re still in too deep with Tomura, the kind of stupid, crazy love you thought was made up by people who wanted to sell engagement rings and romance novels. You know she loves you back, because even when she pushes Kurogiri away, she keeps you close. You’re the only one who she’ll take medicine from. You’re the only one she lets change her bandages.

Today’s a bandage change, and Tomura is grimacing as she slides one arm out of her jumpsuit. “This fucking hurts,” she says. “I bet they’re worse.”

“Or maybe it’s just a bad day,” you counter. “I’ve been taking good care of you. You’re not allowed to get worse on my watch.”

“I know,” Tomura says, almost sulky. Then, softer, as you unwrap the bandages: “You‘re too nice to me for how bitchy I’ve been.”

“You got shot four times. I’d be bitchy too,” you say. You’d probably be bitchier, honestly — at baseline, your temper is a lot worse than Tomura’s. “This one actually looks okay. It’s starting to close, see?”

“I don’t want to see.” Tomura averts her eyes. “Cover it up.”

“You got it.” You rewrap her arm, then let it go. “Next one.”

Tomura works her other arm free of her jumpsuit, but she doesn’t put her rebandaged arm back into her sleeve. Usually she does, because if she doesn’t, she’s topless. And she doesn’t wear a bra. “Um, are you going to —”

“Are you going to?” Tomura asks impatiently. She gestures with her arm and you refocus in a hurry. Which isn’t easy. You don’t usually get a chance to look at Tomura even partially nude — she likes to fuck with the lights off — and you don’t want to miss an opportunity. “What about this one? Is it closing too?”

“Yeah.” You readjust that bandage, too. “They look good. So if it’s a bad day for pain, then maybe —“

“Maybe it’s these.” Tomura shoos you back from the bed and starts struggling out of her jumpsuit entirely, exposing the bullet wounds in both legs.

Usually she treats those herself. You’ve offered to help, but she doesn’t like her legs being looked at, probably because of the sheer number of scars and scratch marks on her upper thighs. It doesn’t matter that you don’t care about the scars. She doesn’t want you to see them, so you don’t push it. You don’t push it so much that you’ve left her to handle the other two bullet wounds alone.

Now she’s sitting on the edge of her bed, naked except for the bandages, and it feels like there’s nowhere you can look that won’t give you an eyeful of something you can’t ignore. “I can look at those if you want,” you tell Tomura, keeping your eyes aimed at her feet. It’s safe for now, but given how into her you are, you’ll probably develop a thing for her feet if you look at them too long. “You just haven’t wanted me to.”

“I changed my mind,” Tomura says, and you sink to your knees.

The bullet went straight through her right thigh, missing her femoral artery by fractions of an inch. Most of her blood loss came from this wound, but like the others, it’s healing well. You rewrap it carefully, fighting to keep your hands from lingering where they shouldn’t be. You want to kiss her, touch her. Tomura’s usually the one to initiate physical contact, and she hasn’t since she got hurt. You sleep in the same bed, curled up together. But sleeping is all it is.

You give into temptation and press a quick kiss to her her knee before you move to her other leg. That one’s healing even better, but you still draw the process out, finding reasons to stay and look and touch. You know you can’t stay there forever. You sit back on your heels and look up at her. “It all looks fine,” you say. “Just a bad day.”

Tomura’s legs swing slightly, her feet brushing against your thighs, and you try to keep it together. “I can bring you a painkiller if you want. Anything.”

“It doesn’t work.” Tomura’s voice takes on a dull note. “I’m killing my liver for nothing.”

“Maybe you need a distraction,” you offer.

“I’ve tried that. Games, movies, reading, binging stupid TV. None of it works.”

You lean forward and press your lips against her other kneecap; then you do it again, ever so slightly higher. “Can I show you my idea?”

“Yes,” Tomura says. You kiss her one more time, then rise back. “What are you going to —”

You kiss her. The two of you spend a lot of time kissing, but it’s been a while since you really made out, so you start slow. Gentle kisses, drawing away for a kiss to her birthmark, to the scar over her eye. The scars on her face are the only ones she’ll let you attend to. Tomura kisses you back eagerly, but her hands stay at her sides. She doesn’t trust Decay — Not with you, she said, when you asked. I can replace everything else.

Since she can’t touch you, you get to touch her as much as you want, no distractions at all. Her extremities are bandaged, but that leaves her torso for you to explore. You run one hand along the sharp curve of her waist, down to her hip and then back. You do the same with your other hand, but you don’t stop at her waist on the way back up. Your hand finds its way to her breast, fingers drifting over her nipple almost by accident, and Tomura leans forward into your hand. She’s not self-conscious about her body except for her scars, and she’s sensitive. You only have to play with her nipples for a few moments before she’s panting against your mouth.

You draw back slightly. “Distracted yet?”

“No,” Tomura says. Her eyes are starting to dilate, and you see the beginning of a flush on her cheeks. “More.”

Her heart is beating fast when you kiss her neck, and worse when your free hand finds its way into her hair. Her scalp is sensitive, too, which is why she likes it when you comb out her hair with your fingers, fiddling with it until it’s to your liking. You tug slightly, pulling her head back to expose her throat, and a soft moan slips out of her mouth. You hear it again, quiet but sharper now, when you scrape your teeth over her collarbones on your way to kiss a path down her sternum.

Usually Tomura doesn’t let you take this much time. Usually she’s a hell of a lot more demanding, and you’re almost embarrassed by how much you get off on getting her off. This is different. You draw her attention away from her injuries, into whichever part of her you’re currently touching. Right now, her breasts, which fit perfectly in your hands. You’re tracing over her nipples, fingertips light, while your lips find every birthmark on her pale skin, as she arches her back to press herself closer to you.

“More,” she says again, her voice rough and breathy in a way that sets your nerves humming. “Fuck. Stop screwing around.”

“This is screwing around?” You pin one of her nipples between your thumb and forefinger and pinch slightly, your stomach twisting as she moans again. “What do you want me to do?”

“You said you’d distract me. I still feel it. Distract me more.”

You work your way down her body, mostly with kisses, sometimes with bites too gentle to leave a mark. She’s fine with some of the marks, but not the ones that look like bruises. By the time you reach her hips, her legs are already spreading. You push lightly on the inside of her thigh and Tomura spreads them further.

That’s never going to get old. The way she relaxes for you, gets vulnerable for you, lets you see her and make her feel good. She told you once, way before you even kissed, that she doesn’t feel good very often. Your imagination latched onto it, and you made up your mind that if you ever got the chance, you’d make Tomura feel so good she couldn’t think.

“What are you waiting for?” Tomura mumbles as you get settled between her legs.

“Just getting comfortable. I’m going to be here for a while.” You’re looking up at her, and you see her face flush. “Has anybody told you that you’re really hot?”

“Don’t say stupid things.”

“It’s not stupid. You’re really hot. You’re so hot that I —“ You feel her hips twitch upwards under your hands and lose patience. “Hold that thought.”

Tomura’s demanding, usually, and she’s worse when you’re actually fucking her. You usually counter it by slowing down, teasing her, making her beg for you before you make her come. You’re not interested in teasing right now. You need to taste her. You clamp your hands over her hips, holding them down, and bury your face between her legs. She tastes just as good as you remember, and her legs are trembling even before you’ve turned your attention to her clit.

Her legs. You loosen up on her hips so you can lift one leg to rest on your shoulder, avoiding any strain on her injury. The other’s splayed out wide, and you tuck your hand behind her knee, helping support it. And if you push her legs a little farther open in the bargain, who’s going to complain? Not you, as you run the tip of your tongue along her slit, pushing inside every so often. Not Tomura, if the harshness of her breathing tells you anything.

She’s not quiet, but she must be trying, because the slick, messy sounds of your tongue against her are louder than she is. For a little while, anyway. Until she starts to squirm, hips bucking up against your face for more. Maybe you should change positions, have her sit on your face instead. The thought crosses your mind, but you push it away with an effort. That position would probably hurt her legs more. Even if she wouldn’t think about it until later.

“Fuck,” Tomura gasps suddenly. “Fuck, not yet, I —”

She comes, hips jerking sharply as jagged moans issue from her mouth. You’re too busy steadying her legs to hold her down, and one thrust of her hips is a hell of a lot harder than the others. Your nose doesn’t break — you know what that sounds like, and this isn’t it — but it definitely starts to bleed.

You tilt your head back, trying to keep it running down the back of your throat. Can you still eat Tomura out like this? She said she wasn’t done, and even if she’d probably understand you taking a break for a second — “Don’t stop,” Tomura begs, and you decide you can handle the bloody nose without getting off your knees.

The fact that you need to keep your head at least partially tilted back means you have to get creative with your angles. It means you need your fingers, too. Tomura’s wet enough to handle two at once, and she clenches down on them so tightly that you can barely curl your fingers. It takes longer to make her come this time, but you don’t mind — you like the sounds she makes too much. You like how her entire body shudders when you suck on her clit. And you like being so absorbed in her that she has to switch from begging you for more to telling you to stop before you realize that she’s come a second time.

You’re pretty pleased with yourself when you come up for air, enough that you forget something important. Tomura peers at you through blurry eyes that widen in shock. “What the fuck happened to your face?”

The nosebleed. Dammit. “Nothing.”

“I fucked your face so hard I broke it,” Tomura says, and you burst out laughing. “Stop. It’s not funny —“

“It’s really funny.” You pinch your nose shut and tilt your head back, watching Tomura out of the corner of your eye. “Seriously. If I was in real trouble I’d have stopped.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Tomura says. She catches your arm four-fingered and yanks until you climb up on the bed next to her. “You were distracting me.”

“Did it work?”

“You made it worse,” Tomura says. Your stomach lurches. “My legs are shaking so bad I can’t walk.”

“Good. You scared me for a second there.”

“Yeah. Just like you scared me when you sat up and blood started dripping down your face.” Tomura rolls sideways, face-first into your shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry,” Tomura repeats, more forcefully this time. “For all of it. It’s not what you signed up for.”

It’s not. You’d be lying if you said it was. If you hadn’t thought you were falling for a normal girl, if your stomach hadn’t dropped when you realized what you’d really walked into. In some ways it’s your nightmare. But you don’t regret it. Maybe you’re just lovesick — and a little concussed — but you don’t regret it at all.

“I got exactly what I signed up for,” you say. You wrap your arms around Tomura and pull her closer, fighting a smile when she settles in against your side and ignoring the taste of blood as it drips down the back of your throat. “You.”

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